Lost Cause

©2000 Donald Pulker
All rights reserved.

A young man sat in his grandfather's study reading an anthology of horror stories. After a time he closed the book, set it carefully down on the ink blotter, rubbed his eyes, stretched, and rose out of his seat. Reflecting that all he seemed to have learned from his reading was that bad things happened to people who took walks, he made his way downstairs.

He wanted to be made afraid, but lately it seemed a lost cause. He recalled his first reading of I Am Legend at the age of twelve, over which he'd lost sleep. Almost six years ago now. Six years of steadily decreasing fear.

That wasn't strictly true. In many ways, fear was a much larger presence in his life now than it had been then, but it wasn't the same. A far cry from the enjoyable dread derived from reading about encounters with the supernatural, there was nothing enjoyable about the nameless anxieties which plagued him now. He knew that his grandfather was dying of cancer. Suddenly death was more real, and there was nothing fanciful about it. It was remorseless and merciless. It was ugly. And he was afraid of it.

Just as he was afraid of the future. His heartbeat pounded with anxiety when he thought about having a nine-to-five job and having to worry about paying bills. And the thought of the ultimate deterioration of his body terrified him so much he felt as though he could hardly breathe. Was that all that life had to offer? The prospect of having a family held some appeal, but the terrors that came with that were more than he cared to contemplate, and deterred him from even entertaining the notion. Car accidents? Leukemia? How did people live with the constant potential for disaster? He realized his hands were clenched into trembling fists, and did his best to release them.

His parents and his grandparents sat in the living room drinking tea and straining to have a conversation. He walked passed them to the front door. His mother called after him: "Where are you going, Jerome?" He came back. Grandfather looked up at him from his easy chair, his filmy eyes twitching behind the lenses of his glasses, his mottled hands hanging limp as dead fish over the head of his cane. He said, "Enjoy that book? You can have it if you like. I haven't looked at it in years."

"Really, I can have it? Thanks a lot." He stood in the doorway, his family all looking at him, like an audience. "I was just going to take a walk," he said.

He opened the closet by the door. Amidst the pastel hues of those of his parents and grandparents, his overcoat was a stark black shape. He pulled it out, enclosed himself in it, and left the house.

Earlier the sun had been out, but a mass of ragged grey clouds had now blocked it from view. He began to walk, hands in pockets, eyes on the ground. All around him stood the expressionless faces of suburban homes, pale and bland. The yellow grass of their expansive lawns was strewn with the shed leaves of the maples and birches which lined the street. There were no sidewalks: Jerome walked along the edge of the road, enjoying the sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot.

He wished he had a friend with him to distract him from his thoughts. He had few friends, and, truth be told, those he did have frustrated him immensely with their inability to take him seriously. When they spent time together he felt as though he was there solely for their amusement, like a performing monkey. It wasn't his fault if his features conformed to a stereotype of earnest sensitivity, and he couldn't restrain his tendency to be over-dramatic. There was certainly no one he would have asked to accompany him to the suburbs to visit his grandparents.

And so he was alone. The whole neighbourhood seemed unnaturally silent. Behind half-curtained windows he could see television screens flickering, and elderly people sitting in front of them. A stout Asian woman swept dust off a front porch. Occasionally a car passed, going faster than it should have been on these small side streets. Leaves danced in its wake.

The air was cool, but by no means uncomfortably so. Jerome kept walking until the streets became less familiar. Nevertheless, they all looked the same. The houses looked the same. Their inhabitants, too, would no doubt be indistinguishable to him.

Boredom muffled his nerves. He regretted not having brought his book: he may have liked to have sat on a park bench and read for a while. He sighed and kept going, his eyes trained on the pavement before him, the scattering of wrinkled leaves. He felt surrounded by his feelings, especially the notion that nothing was as real now as it had been when he was young. Perhaps it's just a phase, he thought, that would pass with time.

Emerging from his reverie, he looked up, and was startled by the sight of a black figure standing about a hundred yards ahead. It stood completely still, apparently wearing a black cloak, possibly hiding its face. Though his mind insisted it must be some nutcase rehearsing for Hallowe'en, he was surprised to find himself growing uneasy.

Indeed, his first impulse was to retreat. Instead, he walked toward it. As the distance between them closed, the figure somehow failed to further articulate itself. It remained as ambiguous as it had been on first sight. Jerome began to suspect that it wasn't even a person, after all. Just a rack hung with clothes. A practical joke?

He was now a few feet away, and he still couldn't tell. Was that the suggestion of shoulder blades beneath the black material? Not a single square inch of flesh was visible: no neck, no hands, no hair. Without thinking, he reached out to touch its shoulder. When his hand made contact, the whole thing collapsed. It lay in a heap at his feet. Stunned, he stared down at it for some time.

The sight of the heap of black cloth filled him with revulsion. He turned, feeling sluggish and weak, and began to walk away. Strangely, he felt no fascination with the peculiar situation. He wanted only to get away.

Progress seemed slow. He turned to see how far he'd gotten, and saw that he'd managed only about five feet. I won't look back again, he thought, and kept going.

Jerome felt something solid hit his back. Soft arms enclosed his neck. Knees knocked against his sides. Buckling under its weight, he clutched its arms and tried to throw it off. A black shape bulged into his peripheral vision. A hand that was no more than bone draped in a loose layer of rotting skin clutched at his face.

He grabbed its shoulders and yanked it over his head. It was a body, clothed in black, with no face. Blackness filled the space where its face should have been.

Surprised at how easily overcome it was, he brought it to the ground, ramming its spine, if it had a spine, into the pavement. Its arms reached for his face. He knocked them aside and started slamming his fists into its torso, which seemed to break and split apart. He pinned it down with his knees and felt its ribcage cracking and splintering.

Rage welled up inside him. At once the thing had a head: a skull encased in threadbare flesh, lipless, with eyes like cataract marbles, a few clumpy strands of pale hair. He grabbed hold of it and slammed it against the sidewalk. It split open. His thumbs found its eyes and pushed them back into its head.

He got up and started running, but in a split second the thing was on him again, and what was worse was that it seemed intact. This time he grabbed it by the neck, swung it around and sent it sailing through the air. It landed lightly several feet away, got up, turned around, and charged toward him. He raised his arms to ward it off: it rammed against them. His fists sunk into dusty flesh. Its hands again reached for his face, its fingers like pincers going for his eyes. He ducked and wrapped his arms around its middle, squeezing and crushing bone. Its fingers clawed his back. With the energy of rage he grabbed hold of it, threw it to the ground, and started stamping on its head, which again cracked. He stamped on its chest, feeling ribs splintering and poking into the soles of his shoes. He kicked it repeatedly, and it broke and tore like a threadbare doll. He broke its wrist against the corner of the curb, and stamped its hand to a pulp amidst the dead leaves in the gutter. Its jaw cracked and broke off beneath his stamping feet.

Nevertheless, its ragged hands clawed at his legs. Its broken legs kicked and flailed. He stumbled away, crying with rage and horror and incomprehension, and immediately the thing pulled itself together and moved in on him. Never making a sound. Just mindlessly attacking. Kicking his shins, clawing at his eyes.

Now it had a face, now it had none. At one moment it seemed a coherent human form, at another it was shapeless blackness. He kicked and punched, he charged and tore and bit. He used his elbows, his knees, his head. The thing carried on unmindful. Desperately he tried to ward it off, but his energy was waning.

From the depths of him, depths that just now opened up, he summoned every ounce of strength he owned and made one last attempt to get the better of it. His hands found its neck and tore off its head. He slammed it against a tree and broke its back against the trunk. With bloodstained hands he clutched the trunk of the tree, and with both feet he jumped up and down on the thing's body until was nothing but broken remains.

Then his strength deserted him entirely, and he fell to the ground. His ruined hands clutched dead leaves, and sobs tore through his body. Gradually the sobs subsided. It dawned on him that the thing had ceased to attack. He rolled over and looked at it lying there, no more than a puddle of blackness.

At last he found the strength to lift himself up off the ground. He inspected himself: his coat was covered in dust and fleshy clumps of pale, dusty cloth.

The puddle of blackness was shrinking.

Jerome began to walk away, gradually overcome by a sense of exhilaration. It seemed years since he'd felt anything of the kind. His pace quickened until he was almost jogging. A sudden impulse to jump up and click his heels together had him careening into someone's lawn, laughing foolishly. As he righted himself, he noticed the stout Asian housekeeper was having an eyeful of his antics. He continued on his way, barely registering embarrassment

On the periphery of his thoughts, he was aware of a vague sense of fear, but it didn't seem to matter just now. Feeling capable of conquering anything, he arrived back at his grandparents' house, said hello to his family, and made his way upstairs. He knew that it was not over. He'd won a battle, not the war itself; but as he took hold of the book his grandfather had given him, he felt as if he was arming himself against future ambushes. He opened the book. And began to read.

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