Jack Ketchum - Sleep Disorder

“Eyes left."

We looked. "Hubba hubba," Neal said.

A real head-turner. Tall and sleek with mile-long legs walking along like a runway model in this sheer off-the-shoulder top and flowing organdy dress. Lots of jewelry and fiery red hair.

The redheads always get to me.

Behind us Anna laughed. "You perverts! She's dead!"

She was right. When she turned her head you could see the long, unhealed gash along the side of her throat. Like somebody had tried to cut her head off but didn't quite make it.

John groaned.

"So much for hubba hubba," I said.

Neal ordered a plate of fried calamari and Anna went to place the order with the kitchen. We watched her too. Anna was quite a looker herself but way off bounds. You didn't mess around with your bartender.

"So? Like what?" John said.

"Huh?"

"Those stories you were talking about. These Dead Chats. What's so fuckin' interesting?"

"Okay. Take this guy last night. Ninety-two years old, starved to death in his own apartment. Got out of bed one morning, got dressed, wanted to take a leak but his bedroom door wouldn't open. He starts yelling for his nephew, who lives with him. Nephew's only sixty-four. No answer. So the old guy opens his bedroom window, takes a four-story piss, then goes back to pounding on the door and yelling for his nephew. Who still doesn't answer."

"Where's the nephew?"

"I'm getting to that. So this poor guy's trapped in his bedroom with no phone and no food and nothing but a John Grisham novel to keep him company. Can you imagine that? He's trapped in there for a week with John Grisham. So finally he just lies down on his bed and dies."

"So then he comes back, right?"

"Right. And you know what they say. Sometimes they're stronger than when they were alive. So he pushes at the door and this time it opens. What's been blocking the door is the nephew. He's dead on the floor from a heart attack."

"How come he didn't come back like the old man?"

"No brains."

"Say what?"

"See, the nephew had a plate in his head from a war injury. So when he fell down behind the heart attack his head slammed into the radiator knob. Pops the plate right out of his skull along with half of what's inside. Rats made short work of whatever was left."

John laughed. "I dunno whether you call that good luck or bad. For the nephew I mean."

"Got me. Depends on your point of view, I guess most of them seem pretty content, though. At least they're walking around."

"Eyes left! Quick! Man, is that one hot dish or what?"

John and I looked. Then gagged.

"Yeah, one hot dish of ground chuck," John said.

"Prick!"

She was roadkill in a sundress, probably pushing three hundred pounds and all of it rot. One eye was gone and so was her lower lip. At least she'd done her hair up nice. Neal was having a good old time though, laughing at our expense.

"Now that's what I call a wood-killer," John said.

I had to look away. "Jesus, I bet she leaks, leaves a trail of drippings. There oughta be a law against the ones like that."

"The dead aren't toxic, remember?" Neal said. "Nobody knows why but they're not. So there's no reason there should be a law, you bigot. Come on, now. The dead are people too."

He was mocking me. I probably deserved it. I could get a little preachy sometimes on the subject of the dead. There were laws to protect them these days and I agreed with those laws. A lot of people didn't. But sometimes it got to be a little much even for me, seeing the really-maimed or rotten ones like this. I once saw a guy walking down Broadway carrying his guts in front of him in a wicker basket.

Wasn't pretty.

"You were saying something about Gustavo and last night? Something about the flower shop?"

His calamari had arrived in front of him and Neal was nibbling the batter off a piece of squid to expose the grey-black tentacle. That wasn't pretty either.

"Oh, yeah. Last Saturday he's sitting here in the bar tossing back a few tequilas and notices a couple of squad cars pull up over there. They don't have their lights on or anything but he just happens to notice them and while he's talking up some woman beside him, he keeps an eye on them. Comes from growing up in Spanish Harlem — you watch the cops. Anyway, they're no sooner out of their cruisers when the old lady who runs the flower shop comes out and she's yammering away and keeps pointing up to the third-floor apartment over the shop."

"That apartment's been empty for years," John said.

"You bet."

"So what happens next?" I said.

"The cops — four uniforms — go up into the apartment and they're in there a while. The old lady's still outside wringing her hands and looking like she's gonna have a heart attack right then and there. So Gustavo says fuck it, leaves his drink on the bar and walks over and asks the lady what's going on and the lady tells him that she keeps hearing this loud banging sound coming from upstairs. She's spooked. The apartment's wiring's bad and nobody's supposed to be up there. She's too scared to check it out herself so she calls the cops.

"Finally they come back down, and three of them are carrying kids wrapped in blankets. Little kids. A few minutes later an ambulance arrives. Turns out the kids are a year old, two years old, and about three years old — two boys and the oldest one's a girl. Their parents went dead two days ago, OD'd on heroin and then came back with brains so fried they were totally retarded, wandering around and jabbering and bumping into walls. But that's where they were living, in the old apartment over the flower shop. Squatters, sneaking in and out at night."

"So they died. And came back…?"

"Five days later. But for those five days…"

"Oh shit. Nobody to take care of the kids. They're lucky they didn't starve to death."

"Right. And the apartment's a total shithouse. Gustavo talked to one of the cops and I guess it was pretty grim. Garbage all over the place, clothes and dirty diapers and human shit all over the floor. The three-year-old told them that they were drinking out of the toilet bowl. Sinks hadn't worked in years."

"What'd they do with the parents?" John said.

"Dead junkies walking? Took 'em straight to the ovens. Can you believe it? Stuff like that happening right across the street?"

"So what was the banging sound?"

"Huh?"

"The banging sound the old lady heard."

"Oh jesus, yeah. The three-year-old was whacking cockroaches with a hammer. That's what they ate."

My stomach went sour. John was shaking his head. But it was just another case in point as far as I was concerned. Some people were total fuck-ups, alive or dead.

Even after the roaches-as-baby-food story Neal still had the munchies. He ordered two more sides. Oysters on the half-shell and grilled octopus. I ordered another drink.

I guess we were all getting pretty tanked. The ass-end of Happy Hour was long gone and it was getting dark. We listened to Jagger singing "Midnight Rambler" on the juke. The bar was filling up. Now that the sun was going down most of the action was coming in. Down at the end, Madeline was sitting with her current squeeze and we heard her laugh at something he said, the same phony laugh she always used on them, a lawyer's laugh, dry as a ten-page brief. Madeline drank zombies. She thought that was pretty funny.

"Be honest," John said. "You ever make it with one?"

"With a dead woman?" I shook my head. "Never. But Burt did. You know Burt, he'll fuck damn near anything."

Neal laughed. "Burt? That psycho's so perpetually horny he'd probably fuck this plate of octopus."

"Better finish it quick then," John said, "case he comes in. Burt say it was any good?"

"Said it was damn good, actually. Wasn't what he expected, her being dead and all. I guess it got pretty lively. Of course he had his Colt under the mattress just in case. He said they're not cold inside the way you'd think. More like room temperature."