The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

SPRING AHEAD, FALL BACK by Michael A. Arnzen

I could see the Arch on the horizon—the lights of St. Louis appeared to be captured by its thin silhouette, a black rainbow that loomed over the night. The curving architecture was comforting—like the welcoming hips of a woman after a nonstop coast-to-coast route. My feet hurt—the patent leather shoes that were part-and-parcel with the silly bus drivers’ uniform cut into the soft tissues around my ankles—but I managed to give the gas pedal a little extra weight to push us closer to the city, closer to the “Gateway to the West.” Checking my watch, I realized that we’d make it with plenty of time to spare.

I looked up into the long rear-view, to check out the passengers. Most were snoozing, some were looking blandly at the approaching city. And The Watcher was there, too, as alert as ever, and meeting my gaze in the mirror.

I call him The Watcher because that’s all he did: watched. He watched the way I jiggled in neutral while shifting the gears, the way I used two hands to steer—even just to change lanes. He watched the way I tipped my hat up before turning up the A/C when it was getting hot in the bus. And he watched me, too—studying not only my work, but my face. As if he recognized me. As if I were parent and teacher all wrapped up into one man.

And those red eyes of his—glaring, staring, burning into my own whenever I looked in the mirror. Trying to get my attention for some reason or another. He was like one of those kids who stared at construction workers or firetrucks, though he was much older than any child. In his forties, I’d guess. White, pale white, with blue eyes and dark wrinkles across his forehead like something from a cartoon. His hair was one big squiggle of black-turning-gray, a twisting greasy tuft that stuck out in the center of his bald, shining head. He looked, again, like a cartoon—like that Charlie Brown character—except less innocent and childlike. Almost evil. Ol’ Chuck… with some serious mental problems.

I looked down at the white lines of the road, like tiny beads of time, clicking off each second as the bus crawled nearer to its final destination. To St. Louis. And for me: to sleep.

Thirteen continuous hours from Denver, stopping only once for grub at the usual fast food joint at the Kansas border. It had been a hellish journey—the usual crying babies and complaining old folks—and The Watcher was like a demon on my shoulder the whole way, his eyes a weight I could feel behind my head like a shadow. I was eager to get to the depot.

“You look tired,” he said from the seat directly behind me. It was the first time he spoke during the whole trip, though to me it had been like we’d been having an ongoing psychic conversation the whole way, with me saying, “What the hell are you looking at?” without actually mouthing the words.

“Yup,” I replied, not bothering to look up at him in the rear-view. “Long trip.”

“You must get sick of driving so much, right? I mean…” his voice rose as he sat forward in his seat, leaning close to my ear. I could smell his breath, a cloud of dead fish stench wafting over my shoulder. “I mean, don’t you ever get tired of it all? Always on the road, never at home, never having the time to stop and take in the sights?”

“Sure,” I said. “But it’s a living.” I rolled an eye up to mirror. He was grinning. I grinned back, blatantly humoring him. “And I see plenty of sights, believe me.”

“You must see a lot of people, too, right? I mean, heck, lotsa people ride the bus. Lots, right?”

“Uh-huh.” Lotsa psychos like you, I thought.

He paused to peer through the windshield. “Ever had someone ride twice? Like… someone who rode the bus two years ago, and then rides back two years later? Ever seen that? Ever recognized that sort of person?” He returned his eyes to mine in the mirror.

It was as if every sentence he uttered was a question. I couldn’t tell if he had let all these dumb questions build up during the whole ride, or if he was just naturally inquisitive in his shy, slightly-paranoid way. Whichever, it was definitely irritating. “Nope,” I said apathetically. “Never happened.” It was a lie, and not a very tactful one, but I didn’t feel like getting into a conversation with The Watcher—an answer would no doubt only lead to more stupid questions. I’m a bus driver, not a friggin’ tour guide.

He leaned back in his seat—the red vinyl squeaked beneath his chubby weight. Before I took my eyes away from the mirror, I saw him cross his arms and pout and look down at the floor of the bus. And he was nodding, a large disbelieving smirk on his face. He knew I had lied.

I stepped down harder on the pedal. The guy was giving me the creeps. I did not look in the mirror again, not even when I pulled into the depot. I just parked, opened the door and exited, happy to be on my way to a bed and a drink and to not have some weirdo looking over my shoulder. But I knew he was still watching me, even as I quickly walked away from the bus. I could still feel his eyes on my back, like a heavy wet rucksack.

We’d arrived in St. Louis early, with plenty of time to spare. I had a ten a.m. trip the next morning (back to good old Denver), and while I’d normally just crash in the Holiday Inn right away, I decided to take my time about getting the room and taking a shower. And instead of hitting the sack, I hit the bar.

It was midnight—a Sunday night—which meant that the place was crowded with tourists and even locals who were there because the liquor stores were all closed for the weekend. I managed to get a table, one of those candlelit two-seaters that are meant for lovers and not lonely old bus drivers like myself. The waitress rushed me three beers, and I chugged the first one down in mere seconds. The second beer was for slurping. The third for nursing.

I was fairly tipsy by the time I noticed him. The Watcher. He was sitting at the bar with his back to me, right in front of the neon beer-bottle clock above the dangling bar glasses. At first it looked like he was giving the barkeep the same routine that he gave me on the bus—watching his every move like a curious child—but then I realized that he was actually staring at me in the mirrored wall behind the bar. Unfortunately, we made eye contact. I nodded and smiled at him—to merely affirm our acquaintance—and then diverted my attention.

And the next thing I knew, he was sitting down in the chair opposite mine. He cocked his head to one side, and just stared at me, as if expecting me to start a conversation. I pulled on my beer instead.

After a minute, he set fire to the end of a thick cigarette, and asked: “Do bus drivers often drink alcohol?”

Weird question. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t drink and drive, if that’s what you mean…” The liquor, I realized, had loosened my tongue. I was now trapped in yet another conversation with The Watcher.

The Watcher nodded, then smiled. “Did you know that it’s the end of Daylight Savings Time today? That we set the clocks back an hour tonight at precisely two a.m.?”

“Sure…” I lied—I had forgotten. “Of course I know. It’s part of my job.”

He wrinkled his face. “Since last call is at two, do you think that the bar will stay open an extra hour?”

I rolled my eyes. “Hell if I know,” I said, finishing off a beer. “Doubt it.”

“Me, too. And how would I know anyway? As always, I’ll be much too busy setting my clocks.”

This, I thought, is a very strange man. It was my turn to ask a few questions. To give him a taste of his own habit. “Why wait till two? Why not just set them before you go to sleep?”

His face turned serious, too serious for such lighthearted small talk: “Because, Mr. Bus Driver. Time is of the essence.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I see,” I replied awkwardly, making a mental note not to ask this weirdo any more questions.

The waitress—thank God—appeared then, and I ordered three more beers. I would have just gone to my room and had them room serviced, but that would cost too much. And what the hell? Since it was time to change the clocks back, I was due an extra hour of sleep. At least I had learned something talking with the bastard.

The Watcher ordered a tequila sunrise. He sipped it; I slammed my beer.

And then I noticed his arms—The Watcher, aptly, was wearing two watches, identical wristbands, one on each arm. At first I thought he was some sort of mooch on the make, a sidewalk salesman. The typical bus station con man. But he was too inquisitive for that—he asked too many questions. Most cons dominate a discussion; the only questions they might ask are, “Ya interested?” or, “How much you got?” Not this guy.

“Staying at the hotel here?” he asked, waving an arm at the surrounding bar.

I nodded, noticing that the watches he wore were set at different times. He couldn’t be that hung up on the time change, could he? No… he was probably wearing them because of the interstate travel, so he could know what time it was in both places. He had a weird way of keeping track of it, but that was surely the reason, I thought.

“Me, too,” he grinned. “I was lucky. This hotel had only one vacancy, and I got it. Pretty lucky, right?”

“I guess.”

“But I think it was much more than luck,” he said, sipping on his sunrise. “It was more a matter of perfect timing. I’m very punctual, you see.”

I smirked, repeating myself: “I guess.”

“In fact,” he continued, wrapped up in his own little world, “I think I would make a good bus driver, don’t you? I time everything, with the utmost precision. Just as you must, I’m sure. It wouldn’t do to be late, now would it? No… a bus must reach its destination precisely on time. Society depends on it.”

I shrugged.

“And society depends on you. Your job is very important. Certainly.” He sipped. “I envy you.”

I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Now that he was actually beginning to use sentences instead of questions, his tone had changed. He sounded almost like a college professor, throwing around his notions about society and precision. Perhaps he was a scientist on vacation.

“So tell me,” he said, his eyes squinting at me. “How do you become a bus driver?”

“Well, you apply just like any other job. But you have to be lucky, too—it’s an easy job, so lots of people apply. I just happened to apply,” I said, wincing at my own words, “at the right time.”

He grinned. “Naturally. So there was a vacancy and you filled it. Perfect! Time and space, working together.” He nodded his head, and then quickly checked both of his watches. Then he glanced back at the beer bottle clock, to check its accuracy. “Well, it’s time—ha ha!—for me to run. I’ll be seeing you.”

He left, rolls of fat jiggling over his belt as he walked away. He had a bouncy spring in his step, purposeful, rushed, as if he had a mission to accomplish.

What an oddball, I thought, and returned to yet another beer. In a way, he reminded me of the man Julie had left me for two years ago. “Till death do us part” was the biggest joke of our marriage… it had only lasted two months, and Julie had already begun the affair some time before that. She blamed my job for it all—the way I was never home, always on a route—as if it were my fault. But she was a liar; she just fell into the arms of another man, I knew, because there had been a “vacancy” in her life. Too much free time on her own, I guess. She filled my absence with the body of some fat slob, and blamed me for it all. Bitch.

I was getting groggy—the drive had been a killer, and the booze wasn’t helping matters—so I downed the rest of my final beer, and went to up my room.

I unlocked the door and flipped on the lights.

And then—suddenly, violently—the lights went out.

Consciousness returned in a whirlwind of blurred vision, the room spinning clockwise. At first I thought I had downed a few more beers than I should have… and then I saw him, The Watcher, a solid figure in the background of my swirling mind, like a dark shadow on a psychedelic painting. “You’ve awakened just in time,” he said, his face without a grin, without any emotion.

I heard music—I couldn’t be sure if it was real or imagined. It was an old song, one I couldn’t quite place until I heard its familiar chorus: “To everything, turn, turn, turn…”

“What the hell?” I shouted, and tried to sit up. I couldn’t move—not only was I too dizzy and weak, but I was being held down by something, as well… belts, tied around my wrists and ankles.

My chest hurt. I looked down, and realized that I had been tied facedown on the bed—and even worse, the mattress had been removed. My chest was scratched from the raw, exposed coiled springs of the bed’s frame. I wondered how the hell I could see these things—looking down at my chest, sighting The Watcher in my mental whirlwind—if I was strapped down on my stomach, when I made the connection.

The bed had been lifted and propped up vertically, perpendicular to the wall, with the mattress and several pieces of luggage used as counterweights to hold it in place. A tricky balancing act—he must have rigged it all with me strapped on the bed frame in order for it to work. And that meant that this psychotic, Charlie Brown-looking freak was very strong.

I closed my eyes and tried to regain balance… and sanity.

He prodded my eyelids with a finger, forcing them open. “Listen, Mr. Bus Driver. You will not go to sleep, do you hear me? It is very important that you stay awake for the change. The adjustment must be precise.”

I heard my voice reply, as if someone else was doing the talking: “What change? What the hell do you mean?”

“The change. Turning back the clocks.” He lit a cigarette—I thanked God that he hadn’t prodded my eyes open with that—and continued. “You cannot get your extra hour of sleep. It will ruin everything.”

“I see…” I tried to stay calm as I searched for the clock in the room. It was 1:46. Fourteen minutes till the change he was talking about. And what else?

“Since we have a few minutes, let’s talk.” I yanked on the looped belts, trying to pull myself free. He just watched, as if curious, head cocked like a dog’s. “Save your energy, Mr. Bus Driver.”

Panic was exchanged with anger. I knew I was in trouble. “Just what is this all about, asshole?”

“This,” he said, drawing on his cigarette and puffing out a smoke ring, “Is about what it’s ALL about. Time. And space.” He paced as he spoke, wrapped up in his world. “We all have a biological clock, as it were—a life that ticks away as we age. Basic biology tells us this.” He checked one of his watches before continuing. “But society… people like you… tries to change that biological clock. You all think that it’s fine and dandy to tamper with me, with my insides, my inner timepiece!”

I just stared at him, trying to follow. The circulation in my hands and feet was weak, numb as my mind.

“You see, Mr. Bus Driver, I am not going to be a victim of that. I won’t have my batteries run out just for Daylight Savings Time. No, my body and mind are very delicate instruments, not to be tampered with by the likes of you. I will not gain an hour of sleep—I will not lose an hour of sleep—I WILL NOT alter my metabolism for ANYONE!” His left hand was fiddling with something on his belt. A sheath. A rounded nub of plastic with a compass—or perhaps a watch face—on its tip. A survival knife.

I suppose that at this point, I should have been scared witless. But I wasn’t. I felt amazingly calm. I thought of Julie, of the few moments of pleasure I was lucky enough to have had in my life.

The Watcher rushed up into my face, staring at me through the springs of the bed frame. He looked, oddly enough, as if he were imprisoned, not me. “Do you understand, Mr. Bus Driver, why I must do this?”

Because you’re a psycho? I almost replied. Instead, I tried to think logically, to, perhaps, convince him that he had made some sort of mistake in his reasoning. “Wait a minute,” I said, my voice surprisingly strong. “What’s the difference to your biological clock or whatever, if you turn the clock back to where it was each year? It all evens out in the end. You don’t really lose or gain sleep either way.”

The muscles in his face loosened, and for a second, I thought I had him. But he just shook his head and “tsk”-ed, as if disappointed with my ignorance. “You just don’t understand the laws of space and time, do you? When time is displaced—like it is each and every year by the change of the clocks—the body’s metabolism, too, is displaced. For half a year! But not me, not my metabolism. I make sure of that.” He put out his cigarette. “Wait there,” he said, as if I was going anywhere. “I’ll prove it to you.”

He left, apparently, to get something from the bathroom.

The clock read 1:53. Time was running out. I tried pulling back forcefully on the bindings on my feet. The bed frame rocked in the air with a rusty creak, and for a second, I thought I might fall flat on my back, crushed beneath the frame’s heavy metal weight. It was a worthless attempt—even though my legs were fairly strong from years of working bus pedals, I couldn’t budge free.

The Watcher returned with a paper grocery bag. He held it up for me to see—it was wet, stained like a sack lunch left in a locker for several days. And it stank, too. A strong fishy odor. “This,” he said proudly presenting the bag to my eyes like a gift, “you will see when the time comes. Then, perhaps, you will understand.” He ceremoniously set the bag down next to the clock radio on the bedside table. “Hey,” I interrupted. He faced me, curious. “Why don’t you just let me go, huh? I’m not gonna stop you from changing the clocks, or anything. There’s no reason in the world that you have to tie me up like this…”

He acted as if he were seriously contemplating my request, but then looked coolly in my eyes. “There is all the reason in the world for this, Mr. Bus Driver. You see, because time is displaced, space must be displaced, as well.” He raised his eyebrows, as if he had no choice in the matter. “For every hour I lose, I must take an hour from someone else, to make up for it. To make the change in not only time, but space—life itself—too. There is no alternative.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, Mr. Bus Driver. I must take an hour of your life—your final hour.” He rechecked his watches. “And I will have to do so slowly, precisely… so that not a second is gained or lost. It is no easy task; but I have done so before.”

He moved behind me. I could hear the knife being slid free of its sheath—slowly, purposefully, the jagged serrations on the back of the blade rhythmically plunking against the leather. My eyes roamed the room involuntarily, looking for impossible escape. I scanned the room: a blank wall faced me, an insanely mellow pattern in the wallpaper; the clock on the bedside table had red digits that warbled and mutated in my mind like red coals, unreal; and that ugly paper bag sat on the bedside table like something in another room altogether…

The tip of the knife was against my back. No pain—it just tickled, cool like ice on my spine.

His voice whispered into my ears, carried on a hot cloud of stench that crept over my shoulder: “As I said, there is no such thing as luck—just perfect timing. Being in the right place at the right time. And you—yes, you, Mr. Bus Driver—were lucky enough to have brought me here to St. Louis. After all… it was you, wasn’t it, that brought me to Denver last April? It was you, was it not, who carried me from Central to Mountain Time, so that I could make my last adjustment?”

I frowned, looking at the clock. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

“No matter. It happened. In time you would probably remember that you had seen me before. I cannot afford to have that happen.” He ran the blade from shoulder to shoulder across my back, then down, as if enscribing a rectangle, a door on my back. My skin made a sound like shredding fabric, its pierce faint, numb… it was not a deep cut. He was playing with me, warming up his sickness, lubricating his blade.

“It is almost time to begin the adjustment.” I could hear the spit in his cheeks crinkle as he smiled. I could only imagine the look in his eyes—a hungry, eager look. “As I have discovered over the past few years, it must be done accurately, with the utmost precision. It will be slow, Mr. Bus Driver. Slow… and painless. For exactly one hour.” He wetly licked his lips. “No turning back now!”

I swallowed a mouthful of spit. My muscles were shaking with a fear that had not yet registered in my mind.

“And the beauty of it all, Mr. Bus Driver, is that I will get your job! I will create a vacancy in your fleet of bus drivers… and, naturally, I will apply for the job just when they need me! They will think I am lucky, but I alone will know that it was just perfect timing! Ah, to be in control of time itself! To travel where I need to go—without anyone, anyone like you, to know the difference! No longer will I depend on society; society will come to depend on me!” He laughed aloud, horribly. “Now do you understand? Now do you see why there is no such thing as luck? Why we must manipulate time and space, in order to survive?”

1:59.

He brought the blade to the base of my neck. “Let us begin…”

My mind was racing. For the first time, I realized that I was about to die, despite his sermon, despite the fact that he had just told me over and over that he was going to take my life slowly, draining me over the course of an hour in some twisted idea of turning back the clocks in order to maintain his balance.

And then I remembered what he had said about time zones.

“I, THE KEEPER OF TIME, WILL NOW COMMENCE THE ADJUSTMENT, THE BALANCE ON WHICH LIFE ITSELF DEPENDS! I, WHO ONCE DENIED THE SPRING AHEAD, WILL NOW DENY THE FALL BACK!” Unmercifully, he pressed down on the blade.

“Afraid not,” I said, my voice so matter-of-fact that I thought I’d crack.

He sighed. “It is truly sad that you are too ignorant to truly understand…” With a free hand he rubbed the top of my head. “Maybe during this next hour, you will.”

“No, YOU don’t understand.” I grinned, though I knew he couldn’t see it. “You’re an hour late. You’ve missed the adjustment.”

“Huh?” Now even his voice sounded cartoonish. He cautiously lifted his knife.

I shook my right arm, rattling my watch against the metal bed frame… the watch that I had forgotten to move ahead an hour for the change from Mountain to Central time. “According to my watch, you missed it. That’s what you get for talking so goddamned much.”

He raced around the bed frame to look at my watch.

And I rocked forward with all my weight.

The bed hit the floor with a thunderous thud. The Watcher was pinned beneath me, his face directly beneath mine ensnared by the metal springs, his face trapped in a look of terrified shock. His eyes clocked like fast pendulums, searching for escape through the metal mesh. His fingers strained in an attempt to reach the survival knife that had spilled out of them, but his arms were locked in place by the heavy weight of the bed—he could not reach the knife.

I could.

Two a.m. announced itself on the clock radio with an audible click.

I pass the brown wooden sign that reads WELCOME TO COLORADO—a square shape in mockery of the state’s real boundaries—and sigh in relief.

It is good to be back in Mountain Time. Real time. Even if I’ve lost two hours of sleep—more, if you count how long it took the cops to investigate my hotel room, asking me more questions than The Watcher himself ever had.

I’m not quite sure I want to sleep again, anyway. Sleep brings dreams, and dreams—because they try to make sense out of a nonsensical world—bring nightmares.

I’ve had a great deal of time to think about what The Watcher was really up to, what was really going on in his sick mind. And after ten hours of driving, watching the white lines of the road bead off moments of transient time, I still can’t make sense of it. He had his own logic—a ceremony, of sorts—true, but his way of carrying out his insane scheme still doesn’t quite add up, no matter how I figure it. It’s too irrational—like time and space itself, I suppose—abstract and senseless. One could go crazy just thinking about it all. And that, no doubt, is exactly what The Watcher did, long before he ever met me.

But he did say one thing that makes a great deal of sense, one phrase that I keep repeating over and over in my mind.

Spring ahead, fall back.

He muttered it over and over, chanting it as I freed myself from the belts, cutting the leather with his knife. His voice had drowned down into a whisper by the time the cops arrived… but still I could see the words quivering on his lips, a silent prayer: spring ahead, fall back, spring ahead, fall back, spring ahead…

Over and over.

My back still stings, the salty sweat that pools there from so many hours of driving a sweet torture all its own. But I am thankful for the pain, the reminder.

And I am lucky… so lucky… that it was—still is—Autumn, Fall. The woman whose head was in that paper bag, his Spring victim, long lifeless and rotten, was not lucky at all.

Spring, a head. Fall, back.

I pull into Denver late, and the passengers complain, one by one as they exit the bus. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s perfect timing.