Joe Lansdale - Lost Echoes

“So,” Tad said, “it’s like someone gets hurt, they touch something, the sounds, the whole event is in what they touch?”

“No. Woman gets slammed violently against a jukebox, that records. Guy kills himself in a toilet, and the lid clicks as the gun goes off, that records. Not only the sound. Not only the event. The emotions. Sometimes I get echoes from the original sounds. Reverberations. Old images…only I’m not so sure they’re images. It’s like…there are ghosts. Spirits. Not religious bullshit, but some bit of something left over from when they were alive. Their emotions. I feel it, and I can hardly shake it.”

“I want to believe you, but—”

“It’s amazing how much violence there is in the world. Sometimes it’s just a kind of mind bump, a push, a sound and color flash, and it’s gone. Not always something big-time serious. But it’s there, and I can hardly go anywhere without coming up against it.”

“You got a point, kid.”

“The world is full of it, stuffed with it. And it’s not just the hidden stuff. I got to deal with that, then I got to deal with what everyone else hears as well. All the anger and meanness. It’s in the music. Fuck this, motherfucker that, kill this one, fuck that one. Death to cops and queers and women. If it’s not the music, it’s the way people talk to one another. It’s the goddamn talk shows, the political shows, all that arguing. Never stops. And you want to know why I drink? Why I won’t stop?”

When Harry finished talking, he slid down in the chair and took a deep breath. He had almost worn himself out.

Tad studied him for a moment, said, “Kid, you ever go to a real city, not some burg like here, some big place like Houston, someplace like that, and this sound shit is real, or you even think it’s real, you’re gonna have the top of your head blow off.”

15

Harry drove home, wondering why he had told Tad about it, this problem he had. It wasn’t something he talked about anymore, not since Joey and the doctors thought he was crazy. His mom too, though she would never say such a thing. And now he had told this guy.

But it was different. He didn’t know Tad, really, so it didn’t matter what he thought. This way he got to rant, get it off his chest. Tad would just write him off as a nutter, go back to the bottle.

They would be drunk nutters together in different places.

Something like that.

Harry had a full day to kill, and he killed it studying, when he could concentrate. But he spent a lot of time thinking, thinking about Tad and his family, the way the old man had whipped the shit out of those thugs out back of the bar, whipped them while drunk, took their money and didn’t even know it.

He believed Tad didn’t remember taking the money. Believed it wasn’t so much robbery as irony. An object lesson for assholes.

He tried to concentrate on his psychology book, but a shadow fell over him and the page went dim. He looked up to see night come early. Or so it seemed. It was a rain cloud, and it filled the room until it was black as a wedge of chocolate on chocolate.

Harry sat back, didn’t bother with the lights. The dark was pleasant. He could feel and taste the ozone in the air, could hear the wind picking up, the rain pounding lightly on the roof, then he heard it grow heavy, as if the drops were full of lead.

He got up, pulled back the curtain, and looked out. There was a bit of light in the shadow, and he could see big balls of hail. Lightning tore at the darkness like an angry child ripping at paper.

He thought about his car as he listened to the hail hit. There wasn’t any kind of garage; place didn’t have one. But he thought maybe the big oaks on either side of the drive would protect it some. Not that it was anything special, anything to be proud of, any kind of chick wagon. It was a brown car of nondescript nothingness.

He hoped at least the hail wouldn’t crack the windshield.

The ice came down hard and beat on the roof, and some of it clattered against the glass. Harry tried to figure if there was any way some horror could be trapped in the sound made by the hunks of ice; if in their impact on the roof there was an event, colorful and loud and terrible, just waiting to leap out. What if there was a guy drowned in a lake, thrashed and screamed and slapped the water a lot before he went under; say later some water evaporated, became rain, or hail—could that hold the memory?

No, that was too much. The water would have been transformed; wouldn’t happen. He hoped.

Harry moved back a bit, and it was a good thing. A ball of hail struck the glass near the windowsill, broke through, came bouncing into the room, rolling across the floor, sprinkling glass, shedding ice slivers. It came to a stop between his feet.

He picked it up. It was cold and firm. Felt like a small baseball found in morning-dew grass. He took it into the bathroom, dropped it into the sink to let it melt. That cold touch made him think about a cold beer. He had a few in the little refrigerator. But he decided against it.

A thing the old man had said, about the drinking. It stuck with him. How did it go exactly? Something about being a self-made man.

Yeah. That was it. A self-made man. Tad said he was a self-made man, a self-made drunk.

Tad told him he was driving the same road.

Harry tore off the edge of a cardboard box and got some tape and taped the cardboard over the hole in the window. Maybe the landlord would fix it.

He got a broom out of the bathroom, where it leaned against the edge of the shower frame, swept the glass onto a piece of firm paper, picked it up, and tossed it in the garbage can.

Harry moved his chair to the center of the room and sat listening to the summer hail. It slammed against the house for about fifteen minutes, subsided. Then there was a slice of light in the darkness, and it slipped through the curtains and filled the room.

Harry didn’t move.

He sat and listened, and the last of the hail, smaller now, passed, followed by a smattering of rain, then it too was gone, and the light outside grew brighter yet and he could see clearly in the room.

He sat in the chair and listened.

There was nothing now, not even cars out on the road in front of the house.

There was only silence and sunlight, and he sat in the warmth of the light and listened to the nothingness of silence for as long as it lasted.

16

“The Beast in Me” sung by Johnny Cash was playing on the FM station as Harry drove to campus. He thought, the beast is not in me. It’s out there, and I let it in from time to time. A beast belonging to others. That’s the rub. It’s not even my beast.

As Harry drove he navigated according to his knowledge of “bad places.” He felt he was safe in the car if he stayed out on the road. He had never had one of his experiences just driving on the road, but he thought it could happen. Maybe hit a pothole where some tire had hit and blown and the car had gone off the road. If driving into a pothole frightened someone enough, it might be recorded, because things were like sponges when it came to fear; they soaked it up and held it.

And he squeezed it out.

God, was there anyone else in the world with this problem?

He couldn’t be the only one.

He drove onto campus and found a spot. When he got out of the car he slung his backpack over his shoulder, locked the car door, and started walking, keeping himself aware of where “things” had happened, at least the ones he knew about.

He had a path he always took, and he knew it was a safe path. He’d worked it out, followed it for weeks, and nothing had leaped out of the architecture at him, off of the sidewalk.

He avoided touching anything as he walked.