The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII

PERFECT DAYS by Chet Williamson

It was the sheer perfection of the day that made Franklin Richards think about killing again. What there had been so far of winter was cold, harsh and biting. The first snowfall had come in early November, and the freezing temperatures had kept most of the four inches on the ground, though the roads and driveways and parking areas of the homes had long been bare. But this day was different. This day was glorious.

Richards had been a resident of the homes for six years now. It was the twin curse of mind and bowels that had decided him. His bowels had become more and more reluctant to obey his orders, and his mind had become less and less anxious to give them. He would awaken in the night soiled and not caring, lying in his bed until the discomfort and the smell finally drove him to his feet and into the bathroom to clean himself. He made the decision, no one else, as he had no children to make a pretense of caring for him. His decisions were his own, as always. He had never needed anyone to make them, indeed had never needed anyone at all, except for the times when he had killed. The women were the only others he had needed.

It had been easy to enter the homes. It was the national retirement community of a fraternal organization he had joined in the forties, after the war, when he had attained a small amount of respectability. He had gone to meetings from 1947 through 1949, but when the urge came again and he was forced to leave the town for weeks at a time to satisfy it, his attendance diminished, and finally lapsed, although he always continued to pay his national dues. Writing the check once a year gave him a feeling of belonging.

It also gave him a place to go when he was old and incontinent. He had merely signed over all his property and financial holdings (which were minimal), and moved into the “mid-care” building of the homes. He had been 78 then, and was 84 today, on this perfect day.

Richards stood on the balcony and looked down over the plaza, a half acre of cement pathways lined with old trees. Anderson was there, alone, hobbling along with his walker, snarling curses with his twisted mouth as he negotiated the aluminum frame around a patch of ice that had not yet fully melted. Richards glanced at one of the thermometers set here and there about the balcony railing, as if the residents could have no more fascinating pastime than to check the air temperature. Sixty-five. It was positively balmy on December 21st, a thing unheard of in their latitude.

Though Richards had never been a religious man, his required attendance at chapel (and, he thought, his inexorable approach to his own death) had brought out a spiritual side to him he had not known was there, and he had begun, as a result, to look for reasons in slight things, purposes and patterns in what he had before considered to be only a random cosmos. So now he wondered why the weather should have been so kind, what the gentle season augured.

Was it, he fancied, a boon to one of the residents who would die today or tonight? A final gift of grace before passing into the cold of the grave? Such an unexpected pleasure could not be mere happenstance. And then such thoughts passed, as he remembered other golden days, sunshine flooding down, making cold flesh warm, red blood gleam like rubies, metal blades flash blindingly when he licked them clean.

The memories had lost the power to stir him the way they used to. But still he thought of those times the way other old men thought of living flesh, of women hot and alive with passion, and the memories hardened their minds without touching their bodies, and they rejoiced in the memories while they grieved for the years that had stolen away their own lust, left them with only water spouts, and sometimes not even that.

The same grief overtook Richards now, as he thought of those bright days, as the mild, moist air bathed his aching joints. He remembered a summer day in 1931, the very first time he had killed a woman. He had been bumming his way across Illinois, and had just gotten off an eastbound freight to see if he could earn a bite to eat by doing some chores when he saw her. She had been near his own age (a fetish with him—as he had grown older, so had his victims), and very pretty, though dressed poorly. She was picking daffodils by the side of the track, and he had said hello to her, and they had talked, and she told him that she often came down to the track to pick flowers, and he thought she spoke as if she were simple-minded.

And then the thought had come to him for the first time, the thought that would come again scores of times before age slowed him and dulled the savagery, blunted the need, the thought that he was alone with her here, that no one had seen him get off the freight, and no one would see him get on another one that would carry him away. And his mind told him that where the girl’s life was concerned he was God, and, as he felt the God he had read of in the Old Testament was wont to do, he killed. The hunger of which he had felt only small pangs became insatiable, and he killed her, doing other things before and after, things of which he had not known he was capable, but which, in retrospect, did not trouble him. He did decide, however, that a pocketknife was not very effective for that kind of work, and resolved to use a larger blade in the future. And when he had cleaned himself, hidden the body, and leapt into the open boxcar door of another freight, he knew that he had found his life’s purpose.

A garbled curse broke his reverie, and he looked down and saw Anderson, his roommate, smashing his walker up and down as if he were killing ants. Richards saw that the rubber tip of the back left leg had become wedged between the root of a tree and the edge of the sidewalk.

“Do you need help?” Richards called down in his gentle tenor. “Do you want me to call a nurse?”

“Go to hell, goddammit,” Anderson replied, as Richards had known he would, and battered the hapless walker all the harder until he finally extricated the leg. He swore often, but always, Richards thought, with the air of a man who felt uncomfortable with the words he used. Anderson had been a small town used car dealer for fifty years, and, beside belonging to their mutual organization, was also a member of the Rotary, the Lions’ Club, and the Odd Fellows, and had been active in his church, none of which smiled on blasphemy. Anderson, Richards theorized, had always been a closet blasphemer, and now age permitted him liberties.

Richards, on the other hand, had taken liberties ever since 1931, when the so-called Midwest Ripper had begun his nine year killing spree that had claimed eighteen female victims (eighteen who were found, at any rate), During this time Richards worked for a Chicago firm selling cookware door to door from the safety of an anonymous company car. His territory stretched from southern Michigan to northern Kentucky, and from the Mississippi River to central Ohio. It was a large area, filled with possibilities, and not once in nine years did anyone in Chicago mention that Richards’ territory was the same as the Ripper’s. Richards, however, took the precaution of never killing a woman in Michigan. Only many years later, when he read of geographical patterns in serial killings, did he realize that his evasive maneuvers were far ahead of their time, as were the killings themselves. He took pride in that.

On the balcony, he paused, felt a stirring in his abdomen, told himself to go in and relieve the pressure before he had an accident. If he had an accident, then he would have to be cleaned up, and that would take too much time away from this lovely, perfect day, from the warm sun, the balmy air.

He made it in time, congratulated himself, and, as he left his room, received a smile from Marianne, the nurse on duty. Then he got a styrofoam cup of decaffeinated coffee from the large, metal urn and took it back out onto the balcony, thinking about Marianne. He could have easily killed her. She was the type he wanted during what he thought of as his second, more mature period, after the war. He had been 34, older than a lot of the enlistees, but he had worked hard, taken initiative, and had been a sergeant when he left the Army five years later. The legalized killing had been good for him, and though he had not felt the ecstasy as he had with the women, it was, temporarily, enough.

In 1945 he felt as if his hunger had been satisfied for life, and gave up the road, moved to a small town in Indiana, where, through his Army contacts, he took a job as an assistant manager at a drug store, and, for the next four years, became as bourgeois and respectable as he would ever be. This was the time he had accepted his boss’s invitation to join the organization which now housed him in his old age.

But in 1949 the aching need had returned, and he left the small town and went back to the Chicago firm, where, despite a ten year hiatus, there were people in sales and in personnel who recalled his previous successes, his great drive, and rehired him. His work of selling started anew, as did the real work of his soul, done with blade and hands and lips and tongue, sometimes in darkness, but most often and most joyously in the light, on the warm, sun-dappled, mossy floors of forests, or upon lush mattresses of bent wheat, or on grass as green as a hundred memories.

The women were all like Marianne, older, in their forties, with figures that had filled out, and round, rosy faces. Many of them were widowed by the war, and ached for a tall, strong, and handsome man like Richards to sweep them away in his big black car, fill the needs of which they had not been aware, make them more than women, transform them past their sundered flesh, create legends of them. By 1950 it was obvious to all that the Midwest Ripper had returned.

The notoriety dismayed Richards, as it had in the thirties. He wished for anonymity, and read the stories in the newspapers only to see how much was known, if any detail could draw the search to him. Only once, in 1953, did someone see a black car, either a Pontiac or a Dodge, near the house where a victim lived, but the witness, a child, had not recalled nor even thought to look at the license plate. Richards was relieved, as he never had any wish to be caught. He thought that if that tired cliché of criminology was true, it was true of men other than himself.

His last killing was in December of 1955, a month before his fiftieth birthday. When he finished, he was tired, and felt only a ghost of the exultation that had previously filled him. Was it, he wondered at the time, because his victims were older too? Because they had lived more of their lives, was there less vitality released by the knife, less life in the blood that flowed? His passion was still there, but cloaked with thick velvet, tired and tiresome, as if he were like other men his age, men married for years, making love to women who had no more surprises to share. Or maybe, he thought, he was just getting older.

It was possible, wasn’t it? As men entered their fifties and sixties, youthful passions flagged, things that were of burning interest no longer retained their novelty. The lust that made a young man of twenty seek out whores was dead in men of eighty. Such a diminution of fire was not instantaneous. It was not there one day and gone the next. Rather, Richards knew that it subsided slowly, the flames fading to glowing embers, and then to the last sparks that gleamed only when blown upon, and finally to cold and dusty ashes, all heat gone, incapable of flaming again.

Richards sighed and shook his head, then took a sip of the decaffeinated coffee. What he could taste of it was bitter, and he wished his diabetes allowed him to use sugar. There were packets of Sweet ’n Low, but he did not relish the thought of putting unnecessary chemicals into his body. He had never smoked, and seldom drank alcohol. Indeed, he had not had a taste of whiskey in over thirty years. No, it was never drink that had driven him to what he did. He had carried his own drives within him.

For years he had looked back, struggling to psychoanalyze himself, but found nothing. His childhood had been happy, he had been loved by both his parents (who had loved each other as well), he had never tortured animals, his early sexual experiences were as normal as the next boy’s. None of the patterns seemed to apply to him. There was no reason.

There was only that first summer day, the pretty girl picking daffodils, the knowledge of what he could do with her, and the will to do it. Sometimes he thought that will was the only difference between him and other men. Everyone had the desire to—how could they not? But something held them back, something that he mercifully did not possess. It was the only way he could comprehend it all.

Such a warm day it was. A day like this.

Then someone new entered the plaza, an old woman in a wheelchair, pushed by an overweight man in his fifties. Despite the weather, the woman wore a heavy cloth coat of once-bright red that fell far past her knees, a gray knitted cap that fit her like a second, diseased skin, and a green scarf that hid her nose and mouth. Only her eyes and her hands, which for some inexplicable reason were not swathed in gloves, were visible, and Richards could see that the fingers were crooked claws. Arthritis, no doubt. Then the eyes looked up at him where he stood on the balcony, and he saw recognition gleam in them, recognition that, in another second, was mirrored in his own.

He had seen this woman before, but could not remember where. A former customer? A neighbor? A victim? No, all his victims were long gone, weren’t they?

Then he remembered. Except for one. The one who had not quite become a victim. And he knew who the old woman was.

Her eyes, pink marbles in putty, widened as her wheelchair approached the balcony, and her head continued to tilt back as if to keep him in sight. Just when she was almost directly beneath him, her neck reached the angle where pain began, and the head jerked, the eyes slammed shut as she and the man disappeared into the building.

Richards stood for a while, thinking. The woman was as old as he was, so perhaps she was senile. Wheelchair-bound, arthritic to the point of agony—what were the odds her mind was any less worn? Finally he smiled, and decided to go downstairs to meet the new arrival.

She screamed when he rounded the corner. He had expected some sort of reaction if she was indeed who he thought she was, but the scream was the worst possible reassurance that his memory had been correct. It was a mindless scream, a cry of pure emotion, unleavened by logic or the desire for communication. Though Richards had heard many such screams in years past, he was not prepared for the sheer intensity of it, nor for the way it made him feel. For an instant it was like being young again.

“Mrs. Jenks!” said Marianne, used to dealing with the quirks of the aged. “It’s only our Mr. Richards.”

“It’s him!” said Mrs. Jenks through a mouthful of loose dentures. “It’s him, he’s the one!” The claws attempted to point, but to no good effect. It looked more, thought Richards, like the gesticulations of the Witch of Endor. The other hand plucked at the loose scarf around her neck as if it was cutting off her breath.

“Mother had a bad experience some years back,” said the man breathily. The long push in the wheelchair appeared to have tired him. “She was… almost attacked.”

“Ah,” Richards said sympathetically, trying to ignore the woman’s babbling.

“It was after my father died—”

“It’s him, David…”

“She was rather old to be—”

“I tell you it’s him.”

“—to be attacked like that. She’s never been able to—”

“Listen to me, listen, he’s the one who did it!”

“—put it out of her mind. Now, Mother, it’s all right, this isn’t the man…”

“You can’t leave me here, not here with him. He’ll kill me, kill me, do awful things to me.”

“I believe it,” came a voice from behind Richards. He turned around and saw Anderson leaning on his walker. “Son of a bitch steals my candy.”

“Mr. Richards doesn’t steal your candy, Mr. Anderson. You eat all your candy.”

“Only eat a little,” Anderson said, hobbling into their midst. “He steals the rest.”

“Now you know that Mr. Richards is diabetic,” Marianne went on patiently. “He can’t eat candy. You eat your candy but you forget you ate it. Now why don’t you go back to your room and put in your teeth?”

“Son of a bitch steels my teeth.”

Through this conversation Mrs. Jenks continued to pluck at her son’s sleeve and mutter things about Richards, who kept smiling gently at both her and Anderson, raising his eyebrows every now and then to Marianne and Mrs. Jenks’s son, as if to say, I know, I understand.

Eventually Marianne led Mrs. Jenks and her son away, and Richards gave a friendly little wave to the old woman as she struggled to turn her head and keep her eyes on him. In another minute the elevator doors closed on them, and Richards and Anderson were alone in the hall.

Anderson squinting and hunched over like a malignant troll, eyed him. “You’re gonna kill her, aren’tcha?”

“Bob,” Richards said, “you’re a very nice man, and so am I, and I don’t take your candy, and I would never, never harm Mrs. Jenks. Happy now? Then why don’t you do what Marianne suggested and go put your teeth in.”

“Why don’t you go and shit yourself,” Anderson said, and, with that bon mot, turned in a series of jerky moves that undercut his approximation of the satisfied air of a man who knows another’s weakness.

Slowly Richards’s smile splintered, and he walked down the hall and up the stairs just in time to see Mrs. Jenks being wheeled by her overweight, wheezing son into the room directly across from his own. Of course. Mrs. Hodgkins had died in the infirmary last week, so there was the vacancy. Mrs. Jenks would be Mrs. Wilson’s new roommate, tired, deaf Mrs. Wilson, who would not be able to hear Mrs. Jenks’s crazed accusations, paranoid fantasies. Fantasies, at least, to the other people in the homes.

Richards stepped onto the balcony again. It was still empty. What was wrong with his fellow dodderers? Why was everyone not out here on such a day?

Such a day.

And then, with his newly found causality, Richards saw the connection, realized the purpose behind the day. It was too much of a coincidence that the glory of this day should come at the same time as the return of Mrs. Jenks into his life. Only a fool would say that there was no correlation between the two events. The day, the scream, both took Richards back—the warmth of the day to the glories of long ago, and the scream to the efforts of not too long ago, back only to 1973, when he had tried once more, once for old time’s sake, an aging man’s attempt to reclaim the ecstatic pangs of his prime.

He had been 67 then, and retired, and for some weeks had felt the provocation of desire, but hesitated, unsure of his ability to perform. So he had decided to sublimate the desire through nostalgia, and that summer undertook an excursion to the sites of his previous triumphs, driving through the Midwest, stopping at places that looked familiar, that progress had not changed. It had been remarkable how much he remembered, how a curve in the road through a field, or a stone railroad bridge overgrown with laurel, could roll back the years. He got out of the car often, and walked into groves of trees, remembering, often standing over what graves were still there, undiscovered after so many years. Then he would kneel by them and touch the earth, knowing what souvenirs of joy lay beneath. Once or twice, recalling a particularly moving experience on some lovely afternoon when all had been perfection, he cried.

And it was while he was crying, twenty yards off a hiking path in Indiana, that Mrs. Jenks came along. She was walking firmly then, on the path and alone, a canvas knapsack on her back, a canteen slung over her shoulder, a healthy, retired woman, he thought, seeking exercise and communion with the outdoors. The day had been so perfect, his memories so overpowering, that it was with no thought at all that he burst onto the path, ready to live his aging fantasies, remembered realities, again. His face was still moist with tears, and he looked to make certain the woman was alone, and said, “Help me, please, my wife is back in there—” And the woman paused in surprise, dropped her guard at his plea long enough for him to lash out and strike her in the side of the head with a clenched fist.

She went down, moaning, and he thrust his hands under her arms, dragged her into the brush, tore at her clothes, and, too late, realized that he did not have a knife. Frenzied, he ripped open her knapsack, but found only snacks and a paperback book.

There was no knife. It was wrong. The palette of flesh lay before him, but what he had to do could not be done without a knife. Without a knife there was no joy, no beauty, and he suddenly realized that there now lay within him not the slightest sense of pleasure, only of frenzy. He felt only the strain of an aging body, his heart racing, his chest rising and falling as though someone was hugging him tightly.

He shut his eyes, put his hands on his pounding, tripping heart, and prayed to a god in whom he did not yet believe for the panic to pass. When he opened his eyes the woman was looking at him, her expression dazed, her hands beginning to flop like fish at her sides. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, then staggered to his feet and ran through the brush, onto the trail, and down it to his car, into which he fell, pains in his side like hot needles.

As he drove away, he consoled himself with the fact that the woman had been coming out of the woods, so she had not seen the car. And she could not have known him, for he was hundreds of miles away from his home, and he had never seen her before. No, they would not find him. She would have to hold her clothes together and write this off as a nightmare from which she walked away.

It had been a lesson. He was too old, he had told himself. Too old, too tired, too foolish. Richards had never again felt the hot urge, never until today, this spring day in the heart of winter, this perfect day, which he now knew had been made for him, all for him.

He realized that he had made a mistake with the woman he now knew as Mrs Jenks. He had let her walk away, but he should have killed her. He should have used a rock, or a branch, or choked her. But he had panicked. His age, his own death, had scared him too much, and now she had returned, returned so that things could be made right, so that an old man could know joy once again. This time, he told himself, he would be ready.

Richards was fairly certain that he would be caught, but it didn’t really matter anymore. Perhaps the experience of imprisonment, trial, and appeals would bring some needed novelty to his last few years. Certainly, he thought, prison could be little worse than sharing a room with Anderson. Besides, he probably wouldn’t go to prison, not with his physical problems. A state home, perhaps. Or maybe, just maybe, he could get away with it.

For the first time in years, Richards actually felt excited, as though there really was something worth living for. He felt a pressure in the crotch of his trousers and thought he might have to go inside again, then realized that it was not the demands of his bladder that caused the tightness, but other demands that he had not known for a long time, and he laughed at the discovery. Then he started to think about what he would do, and how he would do it.

When he went back to his room, he heard a low keening sound from the door of what was now Mrs. Jenks and Mrs. Wilson’s room, and guessed that Mrs. Jenks had been given a sedative to calm her. He hoped that she would receive another before bedtime. It would make things easier.

Several hours later, he was relieved to see that Mrs. Jenks was not in the dining hall for supper, which lent credence to his sedation theory. As Richards munched his soft and easily chewable meat loaf, he examined the butter knife that lay across the rim of his plate, and dismissed it. The blade was not at all sharp, and had only a blunt point. A steak knife would have been perfect, but they never had steak. It was too difficult for most of the guests to chew. No, it would have to be Anderson’s fudge knife.

The candy of which Anderson prattled, and unjustly accused Richards of stealing, was chocolate and peanut butter fudge that his daughter brought him. It came in trays of aluminum foil, and was firm enough that it needed to be cut with a sharp knife. Often Richards watched as Anderson sliced out a piece, put it in his mouth, and waited until it was soft before beginning to chew, open-mouthed, streams of brown snaking down the creases in his chin like thin worms. The knife was metal, horn-handled, and the blade was serrated and ended in a nasty point on which Anderson had cut his fingers more than once, cursing and licking the wound with the same inattentive lack of gusto with which he ate the fudge. While Anderson locked the candy in his closet when he had finished gumming it, he never put away the knife, which the nurse on duty cleaned whenever she saw it, and returned to his dresser top. It was always out, ever accessible.

The adhesive tape was easy to come by as well. It was not locked up, as were the drugs, and he simply entered a supply closet when the hall was empty, and put a full roll in his pocket. It was the white fabric kind, very strong.

Richards waited until midnight. He had no fear of falling asleep, for his excitement was too great for that. He got up, went into the bathroom, and evacuated his bowels, sitting and waiting until something happened. He could not risk having an accident, not tonight.

Then he removed his pajamas and put on his bathrobe so that he was naked beneath it. In one pocket he put the roll of tape and a wash cloth, in the other Anderson’s knife. He thought that even if he cleaned the knife and put it back afterwards, the police might be able to identify it. But then he recalled reading that they could tell less from cutting wounds than from stab wounds, and he had never stabbed, always cut. Stabbing was so brutal, and so final. It could end things too early.

Standing at the door of his room, he was, for a moment, afraid. His heart lurched like a rabid animal inside his chest, and he took deep breaths, made himself relax, stood there until he could raise his hand and not see it tremble. Then he opened the door a crack and looked out.

The hall was dimly lit, and he stuck out his head, looked both ways, saw no one. The door of the room across the hall was closed, and he stepped across to it and pushed gently. It swung silently inward, and when it was just wide enough to admit his shoulder, he passed through the opening and let the door drift shut.

The room glowed with pale yellow from a night light plugged into a wall socket near Mrs. Wilson’s bed. It was ceramic, and shaped like a quarter moon. There was a face sculpted on the inner edge, the mouth of which neither smiled nor frowned, and said nothing.

Mrs. Wilson was asleep, her head turned toward the wall, away from Richards. Mrs. Jenks lay on her back, her eyes closed, breathing deeply under the sheet and blanket. Richards very gently shook her, but she did not awaken. He put the wash cloth over her mouth, then put tape over it and around her head, lifting it from the pillow. By the time he had finished putting tape around her wrists, she was starting to stir, and he wrenched her arms up, and wound the tape around the top two legs of the bed.

He was relieved to see that Mrs. Jenks did not kick with her as yet unsecured legs. She tried, but whatever kept her in a wheelchair also prevented her from thrashing about, and Richards realized that there was no need to tape her legs. They would stay in whatever position he put them. All in all, it seemed quite safe. There were whines and moans from beneath the wash cloth, but nothing that would carry to the next room, and sleeping Mrs. Wilson was stone deaf, mercifully for her and Richards both.

But before Richards took out Anderson’s fudge knife, he did one more thing. He walked to the window and opened it. Even at midnight, the air was unseasonably warm, and Richards thought he could scent the promise of spring in it. He stood there for a long time, marveling at the way life occasionally worked out, how the little things blended together so that loose ends could be tied up, so that an old man could die happy, possessed by yesterday’s memories, while creating new ones. He sighed, remembering, measuring out his years in crimson drops, uncounted seams of flesh, marking the red and yellow days that had brought him to this final, perfect day.

Then he smiled, and turned for the last time to his occupation, his heart’s work, his soul’s dream. He worked on into the night, not realizing that Mrs. Wilson had awakened, turned, and observed his ministrations with as much concern and as much knowledge of what was happening as the wide-eyed, expressionless, ceramic moon. Had he known, he might have welcomed the audience, but his attention was so fixed on Mrs. Jenks that he did not.

So Mrs. Wilson and the moon continued to watch until the darkness faded and Richards’s heart burst with the passion that his frail body could no longer bear, and sunbeams appeared on the ceiling, worked their way down the wall, and lit the tableau of joy and death just in time for Marianne to see it as she entered the room, screaming and dropping the little tray that held pills in paper cups. The scream brought others into the room, and Anderson, leaning on his walker, saw and trembled.

“He’ll burn in hell,” Anderson said, not knowing with what ease Richards had died on this glorious morning, this most perfect of days.