Karl Wagner - The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

What kind of man was he who would take his brother’s side in preference to his wife? Joshua knew what kind of a father he had. Now, he knew. He’s in the synagogue right now, no time for children, no time for Mother. I’ll never, he vowed for the thousandth time, treat my kids like that. Kids were far more important.

“Yes,” Joshua said, “go call Jeremy. He can come over here and you can both play with Harlow.” The wisdom of Solomon: make it so Kevin didn’t want to go.

Kevin started to complain, but when Joshua opened his eyes, he saw Kevin running toward the back door. He ran better than Harlow by a long shot. Of course, Harlow would do as well when he was nine, too. They’d get older, learn more things, marry, but Joshua would always know them, love them. He’d never disown them, pretend they were dead, cease to love them.

The patterns of the leaves and branches overhead shifted slightly. Everything seemed to move sideways as if an earthquake had hit the hammock. After an initial queasiness, Joshua recognized the warmth as it crept up from his toes.

Oh, shit, he thought. Why me? He knew another “vision” was coming. Another pogrom, another massacre. Why? he wondered. Why now? He didn’t want another vision. At all. Ever. There was too much blood and too much gore in them. But he had no choice. Dr. Veille told him they were some sort of seizures that might be controlled by phenobarbital. Phenobarb—he had spent many a college night trying to get phenobarb. Probably the phenobarb would not work anyway—these were not normal seizures, he knew that instinctively.

Black uniforms—goddamned Nazis in S.S. uniforms, and locals in black uniforms with gray sleeves—formed a line. Inside the line, the Jews’ faces were packed tightly, some screaming, some crying, some oddly silent, dull with resignation. One woman’s nose was flattened against the hair of the man in front of her. She sobbed silently. Like some monstrous, multilimbed insect, the naked people inside the line of guards moved. Slowly, lashed and taunted by the guards. Joshua glimpsed a single female breast forced out from the crowd. A large cowhide whip slashed across it.

He could not move to help. He could only witness. As always. He wanted to scream. He could not. He watched through tightly closed eyes as the line was whipped relentlessly forward. A woman of sixty fell to the ground. She smiled as she was crushed. The rest pressed forward, surged forward, were beaten forward. A machine gun fired tiny holes which spouted red into ten naked men and seven naked women who were lined up against a rock cliff. The bodies fell into a very large pit where others—some writhing, most still—awaited them.

Eight men and seven women took their places against the cliff face, and the red spouted again. And again.

“Joshua!”

The machine gun fired again.

“Joshua!!”

And again.

Joshua opened his eyes. He saw Socorro’s concerned black eyes staring down at him.

“What’s the matter?”

“I…” He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “I had another…”

“Poor baby,” she said. “Okay now?”

“No. It was… No. Yeah. It was—”

Harlow interrupted. “Can I ride on rocking Daddy?”

Socorro laughed, rubbed the boy’s head. “No, Daddy’s done rocking the hammock,” she said. She picked him up onto her hip. God, Joshua thought, I wish I could hug them as easily as she does. It didn’t feel right to him. Thanks again to Father. But there was more to love than the physical.

Joshua reached out and stroked the back of Socorro’s leg. The contact soothed him. The vision was past, receding. And Socorro was here, present. The sexiest part of a female body, he thought, the back of the leg. He squeezed her his desire.

“Later,” she winked. She put Harlow down, kissed him on the head, and sent him into the house. “This was bad?”

“This was bad,” he echoed. “It looked like World War II. They’re moving closer and closer to the present.”

“Are you ready to see Dr. Veille again?”

“No, drugs won’t help. I know that.”

“How?” she had asked him several times, “how do you know that?” He didn’t know how he knew. He just knew this wasn’t a problem that doctors or drugs could treat. This was not merely an abnormal form of epilepsy. It wasn’t that simple.

“We’ve got to do something.”

Joshua turned and sat awkwardly, his feet barely touching the ground. He tried to stand, but his legs gave way and he fell to the ground.

“Klutz,” Socorro laughed quietly, but Joshua could feel the concern behind the voice. How many words like klutz did she use now? How many words like miho did he?

Joshua laughed his agreement, yes—it always was tricky getting out of a hammock, wasn’t it—not admitting that it was a lack of strength in his knees which had made him fall, not wanting to add to her worry. This vision had taken a lot out of him, more than any of the others.

At first the visions come only rarely. Now they were occurring more and more frequently. All were murder and butchery, blood and brutality. From the seventeenth century until World War II. All the victims were Jews.

Jews. All the victims had been Jews. Joshua had been brought up as a practicing Jew. At thirteen he had stood before the Torah next to his adoring father. His first public speaking—he remembered the terror. And the money which put him through college. When it came to Judaism, his father was adoring. When it came to atheism, the crime Joshua committed in his fourteenth year, his father had turned his face away. Shocked. Scandalized. Unforgiving. His father became cold and distant—if he won’t talk to God, he won’t talk to me! the old man had bellowed. The phrase became an incantation. He spoke only to correct his son. Mealtimes became a deadly chore. God, how Joshua had hated dinner!

Religion, Joshua understood early, meant more to his father than blood, God more than love. If Joshua would not have the Lord, then neither would he have his father’s love.

Three days out of Princeton’s M.B.A. program, two weeks before he started his job he married Socorro. That was it, the final blow. “He married an Indian!” became the new refrain. Socorro was not kosher. Beautiful, but not Jewish, not even white. Trayfe. Not even mentioned in Scripture. Central America was not in the Scriptures. (But then, neither was North America, South America, most of Asia, etc.)

Socorro was love and joy and freedom. She reveled in the fact that she was four months’ pregnant with Kevin at the wedding. The contest between honoring his father and mother and cleaving unto his wife had been no contest at all: Socorro won. She would always win. The boys would always win. Who needed the old man, anyway? For ten years he had not come to look at his grandchildren, had not spoken to his son. His God must be a cold comfort.

After the boys had been told for the final time to stay in bed, Socorro and Joshua lay together. The television flickered a pale blue light and droned in the background. Joshua liked making love with some light in the room. He could see all the fine smoothness that he felt.

“I called your father today,” Socorro said.

“You what?” Joshua was aware that he had spoken too loudly.

“I explained about your dreams.”

He sat up against the scrolled headboard. “They’re not dreams.”

“I know that. You know that. I was in a hurry to get his attention before he hung up on me.”

“You called him!” She nodded her head. “Really?” He found it impossible to believe.

“He wants to talk to you. He’s coming tomorrow night for dinner.”

Joshua stood up. “Dinner? He’s coming here?” He started pacing around the bed. “For dinner?” My mother will be in trouble, he thought. Harlow will blow her cover. “Hi, Gramma,” he’ll say and Father will know that she’s been sneaking visits.