Supernatural Noir by Ellen Datlow Read Free Book Online Page A

Every few minutes his hands get to shaking. The gunmetal vibrates in his hands.
    I’ve tried slowing down, pulling off the road or into seemingly empty rest areas, but Mike won’t have it. He threatens to shoot me in the head if I stop. Says that I have to keep driving. Keep going. I keep going, more because I’m scared, and don’t know what else to do. I know Mike won’t shoot me, would never shoot me. Still.
    “Hey, Mike.”
    “Still here.”
    “Need to think about this. Back at the pawnshop. Did that old guy shoot Henry?”
    “It happened so fast. He jumped up with that gun pointed at us and . . . I can’t remember, Danny.”
    “Did he shoot Greg, too?”
    Mike shakes his head, and it turns into a shrug of the shoulders, and that turns into his hands shaking all over again.
    I don’t ask Mike if he thinks what happened to Greg happened to Henry. I don’t ask Mike about the three gunshots I heard. I don’t ask Mike if he thinks what happened to Greg will happen to him. I know Mike’s answer to the questions. And I know mine.
    We cross the border, into Vermont. Things feel kind of funny in the car. The air all wrong. Too light. Or too heavy.
    Mike says, “Remember that one summer your grandma let me come up to the lake house?”
    “What? Yeah, of course I remember. Grandma never called to run it by your mom and you didn’t tell your mom you were going and by the time we got back the cops had put up posters on half the telephone poles in Wormtown.”
    Mike breathes through his nose. Almost sounds like a laugh. He says, “That was the first time I’d ever been in Vermont. This is my second.” I watch Mike talking in the rearview mirror. Maybe if I focus hard enough on watching him, he won’t disappear.
    “You need to get out more often.”
    “Henry or Greg ever go up?”
    “Fuck, no. Greg would’ve burnt the place down just trying to make toast. Just you, man. And Grandma didn’t know about Henry.”
    “She knew. She told me we shouldn’t be spending time with a stranger in the neighborhood that much older than us. She told me it wasn’t right.”
    “When did she tell you that?”
    “At the lake house. It was the only time she talked to me the whole week up there.” Mike laughs for real this time. “I loved it up there, Danny. I really did. But man, it was really weird too. Your grandmother would cook us meals and make our beds, but I remember her not talking much at all and spending most of the week by herself, smoking her Lucky Strikes on the dock, going for walks by herself, leaving us alone.”
    I say, “She did the same shit back home.” Grandma fed us but would kick me and Joe out of the apartment until it got dark out, and Joe would usually go off on his own, not let me come with him. If it was raining or something and we couldn’t go out, she’d stay in her room with a book or her little black-and-white TV. Away from us.
    “I’m not feeling right, Danny.” Mike rubs a forearm across his forehead. Doesn’t let go of the gun. His voice sounds smaller, farther away, coming from another room.
    “We’re almost there, Mike.” I say it without thinking. I don’t know what to do.
    “I know your grandma ignored us all at your home. But it was different up there, all by ourselves, away from the city and everything. Up there, I really noticed it. I got up earlier than you and your brother a couple of mornings and spied on her. She’d just stare into the mountains or into nowhere, really. It was like we weren’t even there, Danny. I’m getting fucking worried; maybe we were never there. Oh shit, Danny, I don’t feel right.”
    “I’m pulling over, Mike. You relax. Keep talking to me.” We’re only ten miles from the exit, not that it matters. I slowly pull over onto the shoulder and I want to believe that if we just get out of the car, then we’ll be okay; he’ll be okay. But there were three shots.
    Mike’s eyes are closed and he’s concentrating hard on something. Brow