Just After Sunset

Grunwald screamed and tried to catch it, but he missed. The hair dryer splashed, then sank. One of the water jets turned it over and over on the bottom. It bumped Grunwald's scrawny legs and he jerked away from it, still screaming, sure he was being electrocuted.

"Take it easy," Johnson said. He was still smiling. He unsnapped first one strap of the overalls he was wearing, then the other. They dropped to his ankles. He was naked beneath, with faint streaks of filth from the holding tank still on the insides of his arms and thighs. There was a nasty brown clot of something in his navel. "It wasn't plugged in. I don't even know if that old hair-dryer-in-the-tub thing works. Although I must admit that if I'd had an extension cord, I might have made the experiment."

"Get away from me," Grunwald rasped.

"Nah," Johnson said. "Don't think so." Smiling, always smiling. Grunwald wondered if the man had gone mad. He would have gone mad in circumstances similar to those in which he'd left Johnson. How had he gotten out? How, in God's name?

"The rain shower this afternoon washed off most of the shit, but I'm still quite dirty. As you see." Johnson spied the nasty wad in his navel, pried it out with a finger, and flicked it casually into the hot tub like a booger.

It landed on Grunwald's cheek. Brown and stinking. Starting to run. Good God, it was shit. He cried out again, this time in revulsion.

"He shoots, he scores," Johnson said, smiling. "Not very nice, is it? And although I don't exactly smell it anymore, I'm very tired of looking at it. So be a neighbor, would you, and share your hot tub."

"No! No, you can't--"

"Thanks!" Johnson said, smiling, and jumped in. There was a great splash. Grunwald could smell him. He reeked. Grunwald floundered for the other side of the hot tub, skinny shanks flashing white above the bubbling water, the tan on his equally skinny legs looking like taupe nylon stockings. He flung one arm over the edge of the tub. Then Johnson grabbed him around the neck with one badly scratched but horribly strong arm and hauled him back into the water.

"No no no no no!" Johnson said, smiling. He pulled Grunwald against him. Little brown-black flecks danced on the surface of the bubbling water. "Us gay guys rarely bathe alone. Surely you came across that fact in your Internet researches. And gay witches? Never!"

"Let me go!"

"Maybe." But Johnson hugged him closer, horribly intimate, still stinking of the Port-O-San. "First, though, I think you need to visit the gayboy ducking stool. Kind of a baptism. Wash away your sins." The smile became a grin, the grin a rictus. Grunwald realized he was going to die. Not in his bed, in some misty, medicated future, but right here. Johnson was going to drown him in his own hot tub, and the last thing he'd see would be little particles of filth floating in the previously clean water.

Curtis grabbed Grunwald's naked, scrawny shoulders and shoved him under. Grunwald struggled, his legs kicking, his scant hair floating, little silver bubbles twisting up from his big old beak of a nose. The urge to just hold him there was strong...and Curtis could do it because he was strong. Once upon a time, Grunwald would have been able to take him with one hand tied behind his back, age difference or not, but those days were gone. This was one sick Motherfucker. Which was why Curtis let him go.

Grunwald surged for the surface, coughing and choking.

"You're right!" Curtis cried. "This baby is good for aches and pains! But never mind me; what about you? Want to go under again? Submersion is good for the soul, all the best religions say so."

Grunwald shook his head furiously. Drops of water flew from his thinning hair and more luxuriant eyebrows.

"Then just sit there," Curtis said. "Sit there and listen. And I don't think we need this, do we?" He reached under Grunwald's leg--Grunwald jerked and uttered a small scream--and snagged the hair dryer. Curtis tossed it over his shoulder. It skittered beneath Grunwald's patio chair.

"I'll be leaving you soon," Curtis said. "Going back to my own place. You can go down and watch the sunset if you still want to. Do you still want to?"

Grunwald shook his head.

"No? I didn't think so. I think you've had your last good sunset, neighbor. In fact, I think you've had your last good day, and that's why I'm letting you live. And do you want to know the irony? If you'd let me alone, you would have gotten exactly what you wanted. Because I was locked in the shithouse already and didn't even know it. Isn't that funny?"

Grunwald said nothing, only looked at him with his terrified eyes. His sick and terrified eyes. Curtis could almost have felt sorry for him, if the memory of the Port-O-San was not still so vivid. The lid of the toilet flopping open like a mouth. The turd landing in his lap like a dead fish.

"Answer, or you get another baptismal dunk."

"It's funny," Grunwald rasped. And then began to cough.

Curtis waited until he stopped. He wasn't smiling anymore.

"Yes, it is," he said. "It is funny. The whole thing's funny, if you see it from the right perspective. And I believe I do."

He boosted himself out of the hot tub, aware that he was moving with a litheness The Motherfucker would never again be able to match. There was a cabinet under the porch overhang. There were towels inside. Curtis took one and began to dry off.

"Here's the thing. You can call the police and tell them I tried to drown you in your hot tub, but if you do that, everything else comes out. You'll spend the rest of your life fighting a criminal case as well as dealing with your other woes. But if you let it go, it's a reset. Odometer back to zero. Only--here's the thing--I get to watch you rot. There will come a day when you smell just like the shithouse you locked me in. When other people smell you that way, and you smell that way to yourself."

"I'll kill myself first," Grunwald rasped.

Curtis was pulling the overalls on again. He had decided he sort of liked them. They might be the perfect garment to wear while watching the stock quotes on one's computer in one's cozy little study. He might go out to Target and buy half a dozen pairs. The new, non-compulsive Curtis Johnson: an overall kind of guy.

He paused in the act of buckling the second shoulder strap. "You could do that. You have that gun, the--what did you call it?--the Hardballer." He finished with the buckle, then leaned toward Grunwald, who was still marinating in the hot tub and looking at him fearfully. "That would be acceptable, too. You might even have the guts, although, when it comes right down to it...you might not. In any case, I'll listen with great interest for the bang."

He left Grunwald then, but not the way he had come. He went around to the road. A left turn would have taken him back to his house, but he turned right, toward the beach. For the first time since Betsy died, he felt like watching the sunset.

Two days later, while sitting at his computer (he was watching General Electric with especial interest), Curtis heard a loud bang from next door. He didn't have his music on, and the sound rolled through the humid, almost-July air with perfect clarity. He sat where he was, head cocked, still listening. Although there would be no second bang.

Us witches just know shit like that, he thought.

Mrs. Wilson came rushing in, holding a dishtowel in one hand. "That sounded like a gunshot!"

"Probably just a backfire," he said, smiling. He had been smiling a lot since his adventure at Durkin Grove Village. He thought it wasn't the same sort of smile as the one he had worn during the Betsy Era, but any smile was better than none. Surely that was true?

Mrs. Wilson was looking at him doubtfully. "Well...I guess." She turned to go.

"Mrs. Wilson?"

She turned back.

"Would you quit me if I got another dog? A puppy?"

"Me, quit over a puppy? It'd take more than a pup to drive me out."

"They tend to chew, you know. And they don't always--" He broke off for a moment, seeing the dark and nasty landscape of the holding tank. The underworld.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Wilson was looking at him curiously.

"They don't always use the bathroom," he finished.

/>   "Once you teach them, they usually go where they're supposed to," she said. "Especially in a warm climate like this one. And you need some companionship, Mr. Johnson. I've been...to tell the truth, I've been a little worried about you."

He nodded. "Yes, I've kind of been in the shit." He laughed, saw her looking at him strangely, and made himself stop. "Excuse me."

She flapped her dishtowel at him to show he was excused.

"Not a purebred, this time. I was thinking maybe the Venice Animal Shelter. Someone's little castoff. What they call a rescue dog."

"That would be very nice," she said. "I look forward to the patter of little feet."

"Good."

"Do you really think that was a backfire?"

Curtis sat back in his chair and pretended to consider. "Probably...but you know, Mr. Grunwald next door has been pretty sick." He lowered his voice to a sympathetic whisper. "Cancer."

"Oh, dear," Mrs. Wilson said.

Curtis nodded.

"You don't think he'd...?"

The marching numbers on his computer screen melted into the screen saver: aerial photos and beach scenes, all featuring Turtle Island. Curtis stood up, walked to Mrs. Wilson, and took the dishtowel from her hand. "No, not really, but we could go next door and check. After all, what are neighbors for?"

Sunset Notes

According to one school of thought, notes such as these are unnecessary at best, and suspect at worst. The argument against is that stories which need explanation are probably not very good stories. I have some sympathy with the idea, which is one reason to put this little addendum at the back of the book (putting it here also avoids those tiresome cries of "spoiler," which are most commonly uttered by spoiled people). The reason to include them is simply that many readers like them. They want to know what caused a story to be written, or what the author was thinking when he wrote it. This author doesn't necessarily know either of those things, but he can offer some random thoughts that may or may not be of interest.

"Willa" This probably isn't the best story in the book, but I love it very much, because it ushered in a new period of creativity for me--as regards the short story, at least. Most of the stories in Just After Sunset were written subsequent to "Willa," and in fairly quick succession (over a period of not quite two years). As to the story itself...one of the great things about fantasy is that it gives writers a chance to explore what might (or might not) happen after we shuffle off this mortal coil. There are two tales of that sort in Just After Sunset (the other is "The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates"). I was raised as a perfectly conventional Methodist, and although I rejected organized religion and most of its hard and fast assertions long ago, I hold to the main idea, which is that we survive death in some fashion or other. It's hard for me to believe that such complicated and occasionally wonderful beings are in the end simply wasted, tossed away like litter on the roadside. (Probably I just don't want to believe it.) What that survival might be like, though...I'll just have to wait and find out. My best guess is that we might be confused, and not very willing to accept our new state. My best hope is that love survives even death (I'm a romantic, so fucking sue me). If so, it might be a bewildered love...and a little bit sad. When love and sadness occur to my mind at the same time, I put on the country music: people like George Strait, BR549, Marty Stuart...and the Derailers. It's the latter who are playing in this story, of course, and I think they're going to have a very long engagement.

"The Gingerbread Girl" My wife and I live in Florida for part of the year now, near the barrier islands just off the Gulf of Mexico. There are a lot of very large estates there--some old and gracious, some of the bloated nouveau sort. I was walking with a friend on one of these islands a couple of years ago. He gestured at a line of these McMansions as we walked and said, "Most of these places stand empty six or even eight months of the year, can you imagine that?" I could...and I thought it would make a wonderful story. It grew out of a very simple premise: a bad guy chasing a girl along an empty beach. But, I thought, she'd have to be running away from something else to start with. A gingerbread girl, in other words. Only sooner or later even the fastest runners have to stand and fight. Also, I like suspense stories that turn on crucial little details. This one had a lot of them.

"Harvey's Dream" I can only tell you one thing about this story, because it's the only thing I know (and probably the only thing that matters): it came to me in a dream. I wrote it in a single sitting, doing little more than transcribing the tale my subconscious had already told. There's another dream-story in this book, but I know a little more about that one.

"Rest Stop" One night about six years ago, I did a reading at a college in St. Petersburg. I stayed late, and ended up driving home on the Florida Turnpike, after midnight. I stopped at a rest area to tap a kidney on the way back. You'll know what it looked like if you've read this story: a cellblock in a medium-security prison. Anyway, I paused outside the men's room, because a man and a woman were in the ladies', having a bitter argument. They both sounded tight and on the verge of getting physical. I wondered what in the world I'd do if that happened, and thought: I'll have to summon my inner Richard Bachman, because he's tougher than me. They emerged without coming to blows--although the lady in the case was crying--and I drove home without further incident. Later that week I wrote this story.

"Stationary Bike" If you've ever ridden on one of those things, you know how bitterly boring they can be. And if you've ever tried to get yourself back into a daily exercise regimen, you know how difficult that can be (my motto: "Eating Is Easier"--but yes, I do work out). This story came out of my hate/hate relationship not just with stationary bikes but with every treadmill I ever trudged and every Stairmaster I ever climbed.

"The Things They Left Behind" Like almost everyone else in America, I was deeply and fundamentally affected by 9/11. Like a great many writers of fiction both literary and popular, I felt a reluctance to say anything about an event that has become as much an American touchstone as Pearl Harbor or the assassination of John Kennedy. But writing stories is what I do, and this story came to me about a month after the fall of the Twin Towers. I might still not have written it if I had not recalled a conversation I had with a Jewish editor over twenty-five years before. He was unhappy with me about a story called "Apt Pupil." It was wrong for me to write about the concentration camps, he said, because I was not a Jew. I replied that made writing the story all the more important--because writing is an act of willed understanding. Like every other American who watched the New York skyline burning that morning, I wanted to understand both the event and the scars such an event must inevitably leave behind. This story was my effort to do so.

"Graduation Afternoon" For years following an accident in 1999, I took an anti-depressant drug called Doxepin--not because I was depressed (he said glumly) but because Doxepin was supposed to have a beneficial effect on chronic pain. It worked, but by November of 2006, when I went to London to promote my novel Lisey's Story, I felt the time had come to give the stuff up. I didn't consult the doctor who prescribed it; I just went cold turkey. The side-effects of this sudden stoppage were...interesting.* For about a week, when I closed my eyes at night, I saw vivid panning shots, as in a movie--woods, fields, ridges, rivers, fences, railroad tracks, men swinging picks and shovels on a stretch of road construction...and then the whole thing would start over again until I fell asleep. There was never any story attached; they were simply these brilliantly detailed panning shots. I was sort of sorry when they went away. I also experienced a series of vivid post-Doxepin dreams. One of them--a vast mushroom cloud blossoming over New York--became the subject of this story. I wrote it even knowing that the image has been used in countless movies (not to mention the TV series Jericho), because the dream had a documentary matter-of-factness to it; I woke with my heart pounding, thinking This could happen. And sooner or later, it almost certainly will happen. Like "Harvey's Dream," this story is more dictation than fiction.

"N." This is the newest story in the book, and published for the first time here. It was strongly influenced by Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, a story that (like Bram Stoker's Dracula) surmounts its rather clumsy prose and works its way relentlessly into the reader's terror-zone. How many sleepless nights has it caused? God knows, but a few of them were mine. I think "Pan" is as close as the horror genre comes to a great white whale, and that sooner or later every writer who takes the form seriously must try to tackle its theme: that reality is thin, and the true reality beyond is a limitless abyss filled with monsters. My idea was to try and wed Machen's theme to the idea of obsessive-compulsive disorder...partly because I think everyone suffers OCD to one degree or another (haven't we all turned around from at least one trip to make sure we turned off the oven or the stove burners?) and partly because obsession and compulsion are almost always unindicted coconspirators in the tale of horror. Can you think of a single successful scary tale that doesn't contain the idea of going back to what we hate and loathe? The best overt example of that might be "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. If you ever read it in college, you were probably taught that it's a feminist story. That is true, but it's also a story of a mind crumbling under the weight of its own obsessive thought. That element is also present in "N."

"The Cat from Hell" If Just After Sunset has the equivalent of a hidden track on a CD, I guess this would be it. And I have my long-time assistant, Marsha DeFilippo, to thank. When I told her I was going to do another collection, she asked me if I was finally going to include "The Cat from Hell," a story from my men's magazine days. I responded that I surely must have tucked that story--which was actually filmed as part of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie in 1990--into one of the previous four collections. Marsha provided tables of contents to show that I had not. So here it is, finally between hardcovers, over thirty years after it was originally published in Cavalier. It came about in an amusing way. The fiction editor of Cavalier back then, a nice guy named Nye Willden, sent me a close-up photograph of a hissing cat. What made it unusual--other than the cat's rage--was the way its face was split down the middle, the fur on one side white and glossy black on the other. Nye wanted to run a short story contest. He proposed that I write the first five hundred words of a story about the cat; they would then ask readers to finish it, and the best completion would be published. I agreed, but got interested enough in the story to write the entire thing. I can't remember if my version was published in the same issue as the contest winner or later on, but it has since been anthologized a number of times.