Needle Freak, page 16
He jerked awake to the sound of a loud banging knock on the door. They did not have a doorbell and the screen door frame was metal so it made a startling racket.
Jack looked at the clock near the TV. It was a quarter past one in the morning.
“Shane?” he called. His voice broke and he coughed.
The clattering knock came again.
“All right, all right,” Jack called. He got up and went to the door. “Jesus.”
Standing on the porch when he opened the door was a little boy of about five dressed in a black and white clown costume. Jack stared down at the kid and the kid stared back at him, nose painted red and eyes an unnatural shade of holly green in his white face, hair a bush of over-glossy black wig curls. He stood there all alone in the dark on the porch and regarded Jack solemnly, without even a crack of a smile.
“Hey there,” Jack said. His pulse was thumping rapidly in his throat, making it itch. “Ah… is your mommy or daddy around somewhere?”
The boy shook his head; left, right and back to center.
“Trick or treat?” the boy asked.
He didn’t ask it the way it was usually asked; not like a question at all so much as a phrase kids knew because it brought candy. He didn’t ask it with a smile. He remained unsmiling. He asked it like he meant it; like he really wanted to know.
Make a choice, Jack, but be prepared to live with your decision.
“Mister?” the kid said. “Trick or treat?”
He held open a dirty old pillowcase. Jack looked down into it and saw a handful of tiny candy bars and a lollipop lying at the bottom. He picked up the bowl of candy he had left sitting on the table inside the door, but instead of giving the kid the candy, he heard himself say, “Trick first, treat after. How about that?”
Instead of appearing confused, disappointed or even very surprised, the boy nodded. Then he threw out his arm in a theatrical gesture, flipped his hand palm up and a shiny green apple appeared, held with two fingers and a thumb. He offered it to Jack. His fingers were exceptionally long and slender for a child, Jack noticed. He took the apple and dropped the candy into the outstretched pillowcase. The packages rattled as they hit the other treats at the bottom and the sound made Jack shiver.
“Thank you, mister,” the boy said. He smiled then and Jack winced. His teeth were small baby teeth, which wasn’t abnormal for a small child, but they were also slightly pointed.
It’s Halloween, he reminded himself.
But they didn’t look like fake Halloween teeth.
“Sure, kid,” Jack said. “Have a good… um. Happy Halloween.”
The boy was still standing in front of the door watching him as Jack closed it. Then he locked it. It was silly and he knew it, but the kid gave him the creeps. He was only a child, a little strange acting, but still only a little boy. Except Jack couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being fucked with. The weird little kid looked awfully familiar; he looked exactly like his old pal Phineas. Except for the little kid part. No parent in their right mind would allow a child that young to go wandering alone at night on Halloween out in the countryside begging for candy at one in the morning.
Jack tried to shake it off and started to go back into the living room to watch another movie, but he was tired and the unsettling little clown had bothered him enough that he wouldn’t open the door again. Shane wasn’t home yet, which didn’t worry Jack because he figured he had probably drank a little too much as was his wont and someone had likely taken his keys away, but he wished he would hurry back. He didn’t like being alone in the house with that kid—that thing—out there.
He passed the door on his way through the house to his room and paused, wondering if the boy might still be standing out there. He pictured it; five year old Phineas the clown standing on his porch, still facing the door and staring fixedly at it with his blazing green eyes.
There had been stains on that old white pillowcase.
It’s blood. What do you think he keeps in that thing the rest of the year?
Jack shrugged his shoulders against a shiver, walked by the door and through the kitchen toward his room.
He realized he was still holding the apple the kid had given him and started to turn back, intending to throw it away in the trash. Phineas, the real Phineas, was standing there a few feet behind him and at the sight of him Jack let out a startled yelp and stumbled back a step.
Phineas lifted his hand and waved at Jack with a wiggle of his fingers and a smile. Jack could see the paper thin creases in his flesh and the way the blue veins writhed like worms beneath his white, white skin.
Jack had thought he was gone for good and with Phineas staring him in the face, mocking him with his cracked makeup smile and his presence, he was overcome with despair. He had hoped he was gone and thought that he was rid of him for good. He had started to believe that fixing his life a little at a time was making a difference. That perhaps he would never be one of the happy, shiny people out there who had never been abused or mistreated, who had never gone down on their knees in front of a strange dick for fifty dollars or sat outside in the cold while their only friend fucked corpses, but that he was getting better and that such things were behind him. Phineas had never spoken a word to him in all the years Jack had known him, but his very presence after all the time he had been absent was enough; it was a shrill burst of jeering laughter. Disappointment was sudden and painful. A weight crashing down on him that made his bones ache.
Phineas’s smile was mean. He knew exactly what he did to Jack and he was enjoying it. Suffer me, Jacky. I’m here to stay. You really should not have expected anything else.
“No,” Jack said. He shook his head and turned his back on the clown, walked down the hall past the bathroom and Shane’s room to his own, went inside and closed the door.
When he turned toward the bed, Phineas was standing beside it waiting for him.
“No!” Jack screamed.
His hands clenched and in the right one he squeezed the apple he still held. Pain shot through his hand and up his arm and Jack looked down to see tiny, sharp needles poking through the skin of the apple in his fist. Some of them had pierced his skin when he squeezed it and needles were stuck in his flesh deep enough that when he tried to take the apple with his other hand, it did not immediately come. When it did, the needles pulled free and little spots of blood appeared in his skin. The blood swelled to beads and began trickling down over his wrist.
He recalled the knowing green eyes of the boy in the clown costume and smiled to himself. Then he went over to the bed, ignoring Phineas completely, and sat down, his bleeding hand cupped against his knee, and began to laugh.
The boy had known. Trick or treat?
Jack’s laughter turned into giggles and he shook his head. He looked up to see Phineas smiling right along with him, his bright, insane eyes saying that he knew the joke too. He thought it was hilarious.
“Fuck you,” Jack said, speaking around his laughter.
Phineas shook his head slowly. Right, left and back to center. His smile did not waver in the slightest.
“No, you didn’t,” Jack said, his laughter stilling to hiccups. He looked back down at his hand. Juice had leaked from the apple around the holes left by the needles under the green skin. It ran down the sides of the fruit into his hand where it mingled with his blood, burning and turning pink before it slid down his wrist. “You just watched everyone else do it.”
The clown nodded. Jack didn’t have to look to know he did it; he just knew. “Shane will come home,” Jack said.
Phineas shrugged one shoulder.
“Yeah,” Jack said, smiling a little himself as he began to pull one of the needles carefully from the crushed apple. “Doesn’t matter, does it?”
The clown reached out to rest one of his strange, spidery hands on Jack’s shoulder. It was almost a comforting gesture. Almost tender.
Jack turned his head and looked up the length of Phineas’s arm to meet his eyes. “I hate you,” he whispered.
Phineas just looked at him, regarding him with calm patience and that horrible, wicked smile. Clowns in Hell smiled that way, Jack thought.
“I hate you,” he repeated, mumbling it as he looked away and returned his attention to the needle he’d extracted from the apple.
Phineas leaned down, the nearness of him making the fine hairs at the back of Jack’s neck rise to attention. His breath on Jack’s ear was warm and smelled faintly of sugar. It smelled like cotton candy on a hot summer day. “I know,” Phineas whispered.
Jack tensed and his eyes widened. He had never heard the clown’s voice. Never. He hadn’t even thought him capable of speaking. Now… now he wished that he had been right about that. Phineas’s voice was soft, melodic even, but it was like a physical ache. With every word, it was like the skin of the apple in his hand was wrapped around him, needles and all, squeezing tighter and tighter.
“I know,” Phineas said again, and touched the tip of his tongue to Jack’s earlobe with a dry flick like the tongue of a snake.
Jack thought he was going to scream or maybe vomit.
“I made you,” Phineas whispered. His voice was the scuttling of a thousand insects and it made Jack’s skin crawl.
“Like this,” Jack choked out. “Only like this. You didn’t make me.”
Phineas stood back up and walked away from him to lean against the dresser at the foot of the bed. “You are this,” he said.
“Go away,” Jack said, pleading. “Please, just go away!”
The clown shook his head no.
“Go away,” Jack whispered, turning the needle between finger and thumb so it caught the light. “Go away, go away, go away, go away…” He lifted the needle to eye level, turned it so that he was staring at the very point, the needle a speck between his fingers. He had heard once or read somewhere that the pupil of the eye was a hole. It widened and narrowed to let in light or keep it out. He couldn’t remember where he had learned that, but he thought of it as he plunged the first needle into his left eye. He was screaming, “Go away! Go away! Go away!” over and over as he thought of that and wondered if the hole in his eye would just swallow it up. If he slid it in just right, would it go on forever right into his brain?
He had blood and clear fluid running down his cheeks like tears by the time he ran out of needles. The apple was a mess of pulp and blood between his fingers and his fingertips were slick and sticky with fruit juice and the clear fluid that had burst from his eyes when he punctured them. Jack held what was left of the apple in his fist and lay down on the bed, curled into a fetal position, gently rocking himself. “Go away, go away, go away,” he whispered, over and over until the words didn’t mean anything anymore.
There was soft laughter like the rattling backs of cockroaches fighting to climb over each other. Jack flinched at the sound and went quiet. He breathed, drawing in air through his nose and letting it out shakily, afraid to exhale it. The laughter ran over his skin like the fur of a soft dog and he was afraid. He felt no pain, but he was afraid.
“No,” Phineas whispered, and Jack felt his warm cotton candy breath on the back of his neck. “No. I won’t.”
Outside, a vehicle door slammed and a few minutes later, the front door opened and closed. Shane called Jack’s name, something clattered in the kitchen and he cursed then shushed himself. Shane was home and he was, as Jack had expected, drunk.
He listened to the sound of Shane’s unsteady footsteps in the hallway. There was a knock on his bedroom door. It was soft, the knock of someone who would not knock again if it wasn’t answered because it was late and Jack should be sleeping. Jack almost didn’t say anything. He almost let Shane go on to bed, believing him asleep and safe.
He couldn’t do that though. Sanity had reasserted itself, if only a little and only momentarily and he needed to go to the hospital. He had just poked out his eyes with needles from a Halloween apple and he needed to go to the hospital.
“Shane,” Jack said. It came out soft, so he said it again, “Shane?”
The door opened and Jack could not see him, but he heard the instant Shane understood what he was seeing when he looked at him. He gasped and said, “Oh, fuck, Jack. Shit. What the hell happened? What did you do?”
The bed shook as Shane hurried over to it and knelt beside it. Then his hands were on Jack’s face, turning it toward the light. Jack realized that he could still see light and shadow. Then it began to hurt and he realized he was crying. His tears burned.
“Jack? What the fuck happened?”
“Shane, I think I need to go to the hospital.”
“Oh, my god, Jack, what the—Hold on. I can’t drive you to the fucking hospital. Jesus.”
Shane left the room and Jack heard him on the phone. He tried to be calm, but his voice shook and then he started shouting.
“Shane!”
Shane’s voice quieted a little, but remained urgent. Jack couldn’t understand what he was saying, but when he returned to the bedroom, he said, “They’re coming.”
The ambulance. Shane sounded so upset, so horrified that his voice cracked and shook and Jack hoped he wasn’t going to cry. It was really serious then. Jack had known that it was, but he had still hoped in his own doomed way that it would be worth it. If a clown doesn’t make a sound and you can’t see him, is he really there? Now that was a riddle for the ages.
“Shane, I’m sorry,” he said.
Shane sat down on the bed beside him and brushed his hair back. He didn’t know what else to do. “I know,” he said.
“I had to,” Jack said. “I had to do it, but I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Jack,” Shane said.
“Nope,” Jack said. “I don’t think so. He found his voice.” He laughed, but the hysterical sound of it frightened him so he made himself stop. “I’m sorry, Shane.”
Shane shushed him and his breath was warm, but it smelled like whiskey and that was all right. Jack took his hand and held it and Shane started to cry then. Jack lied to him then and told him it would be all right. Shane didn’t believe it, but that was okay.
Chapter 13
The blindness was permanent but not total. Jack could still see shadows and fragments of light. He could see enough to tell when someone was standing there if the light was bright enough, but not who it was. He learned the way people moved in ways he had never noticed before by listening to their footsteps. Mark and Shane both wore boots, the heavy kind with buckles, but Shane was bigger than Mark and taller by a few inches, so his footsteps were heavier. Mark walked quickly while Shane strolled. Shane’s legs were longer so they ate up the space faster than Mark. It took Mark fifteen steps to walk from the front of the shop to the register where Jack usually was and it only took Shane twelve. Chris was a short Mexican guy who had a habit of breaking into Spanish halfway through a sentence when you were talking to him and Jack knew it was Chris because he wore Converse sneakers and walked very quickly. It took him twenty-one steps to get from the front of the store to the register, but he could do it five seconds faster than Shane.
It was hardest at first. Not just getting used to being unable to see, but all of it. He was in shock initially and it all seemed unreal, but there were a few times while he was in the hospital, when he was alone, that it really hit him and when that happened he lost it. He did that in private though; it was both a matter of pride and to protect the people he loved. It was bad, he knew it was bad, but if he freaked out about it in front of Shane or his grandmother, all it was going to do was scare them. Grandma Chloe had come to the hospital the day after it happened and she had tried to keep her voice bright and cheerful, but ten minutes into her visit, she had burst into tears. Jack spent a lot of time those first days comforting other people. He hadn’t cried for himself for a long time, not since right after Shane found him. It didn’t really hit him at first and he was preoccupied waiting for Phineas to return.
It took Phineas zero steps to move from the front of the store to the register so far as Jack could tell. He didn’t make a sound when he moved. Then again, he likely didn’t enter through the front door either.
Jack gradually stopped relying on his untrustworthy and imperfect sight. Shane helped him to walk if they were in a strange place, but he could move around the house by himself by the second month without any trouble. Unless Hank got in the way. He had tripped over Hank three times since losing his sight. Then Hank had learned and Jack didn’t trip over him anymore. He could get around the shop at Donovan Automotive on his own, but he was still learning where everything was located so he sometimes had to go find Shane or one of the other guys to help him when customers asked for certain things that were kept behind the counter. He still answered the phone, but he didn’t write down messages anymore. He was getting better at remembering such things, but he would tell Shane the first chance he had. His memory was better, but it wasn’t perfect and he had spent eight years of his life frying his brain cells so, like his sight, it was not to be trusted.
He wondered for a while if his other senses would become more acute after he was blind like in movies, books and comics. Would he develop superhuman hearing and be able to hear people arguing three streets over in their attics? Would he be able to locate a person in a room by the sound of their cough via echolocation? So far, no such thing had happened. He paid more attention to what he heard than he had before, but he didn’t think his hearing was any better than it had been before he went blind.
Unfortunately, now there was Phineas and he sometimes wondered if maybe he should have poked the needles through his eardrums instead.
“That man is staring at you rather rudely.”
Jack ignored Phineas and rang up the man’s purchase: a bottle of windshield cleaner and an air freshener shaped like a tree that smelled like strawberries. He gave the man back his change: two quarters, a nickel and three pennies.
