Karl Wagner - The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

“Which of my boys did you see?” Joshua managed to ask finally. To the silence which met his question he added, “In your last vision. Which of my boys did you see destroy the world?”

Still the silence from his father.

“Joshua, I am sorry,” the old man said painfully. “It has come to you, too. This final dilemma. I am so sorry.”

“Which one?” Joshua asked. The less time this took…

“I,” his father said. After another pause he said, “I saw only you, Joshua. Only you. You were the only one I saw. Not your boys, neither of them. And the vision that it would be the end of everything if I did not…”

“Kill me,” Joshua muttered. More loudly he said, “The end of everything, and you didn’t kill me.”

“I was not Abraham. I could not give up what he was asked to give up. I loved my son too much. Even though you had given up the faith, Joshua, you were still my son.” Even though he had married Socorro and his father hadn’t spoken to him in ten years, still he was his father’s son.

Harlow and Kevin—they were both his sons.

“What can I do?” Joshua knew what he could not do, but not what he could.

“Trust in God. Trust in love.” The two were mutually exclusive.

“Help me,” Joshua begged.

“I can’t,” his father answered.

Joshua put the telephone down on his bed. Yosevs was the last name of Kevin and Harlow, both of whom would be of the proper age at the proper time. Since his father had seen Joshua as the nexus, it must be either Kevin or Harlow. Either. Both.

Which? Joshua had no way of knowing. If the visions went to one of the boys, would they be the force that drove him insane? He could not know. Better dead than insane.

Socorro came to check on Joshua after he had been in the shower for more than an hour.

“Another vision?” she asked from outside the door.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t speak. The water ran off Joshua, not cleaning what could never be cleaned. It was appropriate that he was in the shower. Many a good Jew had died in the shower.

Gas.

She helped him to dry, dress, and to bed.

“You know I love you and the boys,” he said, helplessly from the bed.

Socorro turned off the lights by the beds. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Now, go to sleep.”

He slept.

When he woke, Kevin was standing at the foot of the bed. Harlow ran in and said, “Good morning, Dad,” with his usual chirrup, bounced up onto the bed.

“Mom went to the doctor,” Kevin said. “She’ll be back for lunch, she said, so don’t eat anything. She wants to go out.”

“McDonalds!” Harlow added.

Joshua wondered which doctor she was arranging for him to see. A psychiatrist, no doubt, who wanted to talk to her first. A psychiatrist couldn’t help him now.

Gas, he thought as he got dressed. Not Zyklon-B, like the Nazis had used in the camps. Carbon monoxide—they had used that, too, in early experiments.

“Come on, boys,” he said when he found his sons watching television. It was the last week before Kevin had to go back to school, his last week of Superheroes during the day.

“Where?” Harlow asked.

“The mall,” Joshua said. “The toy store.”

Kevin didn’t want to miss the show, but the toy store was too much for him to resist. “What about Mom?” he asked.

“We’ll be here when she gets back.”

Yes, they would be there when she got back. Poor Socorro. Pity poor Socorro finding them. Socorro who was innocent of all this.

“Can I get a model rocket,” Kevin asked. He turned off the television.

“And a shopping cart? They were out of them before,” Harlow said.

“We’ll see,” Joshua answered.

“That means ‘no,’ ” Kevin said to Harlow.

Joshua closed the door to the garage. He didn’t push the automatic door opener. “Get in and buckle up,” he said. How many times had he said that. He got into the car and started the motor.

“You better open the door,” Kevin said.

“In a minute.” Joshua got out of the car and opened Harlow’s door. He adjusted the car-seat belt, kissed Harlow on the cheek.

“You dumb-head,” Harlow said.

He didn’t know how long it would take. He could smell the supposedly odorless gas. Or maybe the car needed a tune-up. Probably did, hadn’t been tuned up in…

He got back in his seat.

“Dad.”

Socorro didn’t mind the rabbi talking over the boys. Joshua might have minded, but she didn’t know anymore. He had changed so much in the last months.

The old man, Joshua’s father, had arranged everything. If it had been left to Socorro, they would still be—

She didn’t mind the rabbi talking. She listened to his words, the rolling murmur of them, but didn’t understand, even when he spoke English. It didn’t matter. What could words do? What could anything do?

The old man, Joshua’s father, sat next to Socorro, and next to him was his wife. They had grown gray together. To lose a son was their grief. But she had lost two. And a husband.

The old man held his prayer book so tightly his knuckles showed white. More words.

She didn’t mind the rabbi and his words. What did he understand? The music was strange, and he never mentioned death.

Life. All he talked about was life. Those who go on, not those who have left. Those who have chosen to leave.

Life… she never had the chance to tell Joshua…

How could he have done such a thing? To his own sons? She knew it was no accident.

She was almost glad she hadn’t been able to tell him the news from the doctor. Two children were enough for him to take. She would protect the third, the one in her womb. Yes, for the good man that Joshua had been, for the man she had loved and married—not for the monster he had become—she would protect their child. She would give Joshua someone to carry his name, Yosevs, down through the years. She would protect his heir. Their child.

She placed her hands on her belly.

Their son.

Copyright ® 1993 by DAW Books, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Les Edwards

DAW Book Collectors No. 928.

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

First Printing, October 1993

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