Glimpses: The Best Short Stories of Rick Hautala Page 22

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Lisa said as she looked at the house they were in front of and then scanned the road up and down. “What if someone—the owner—sees us?”

  “We’re not stealing anything. He put it out here.” Jeremy was struggling to keep his voice even when he said, “We’re just not letting something good go to waste, is all. It’s recycling.”

  “Hurry up, then. I don’t want the neighbors to see us doing this.”

  Jeremy grabbed the bottom of the window frame, and Lisa took the top. It was heavier than it looked, but they angled the frame around and somehow managed to get it into the back of the car. They couldn’t close the hatch, but Jeremy secured it with a few Bungee cords he kept in the back.

  “You got, like, a pillow or blanket or something we can cushion it with?”

  Lisa scowled, and even without looking at her through the glass, Jeremy caught a glimpse of feline irritation in her expression.

  “It’s not even a mile back to the house,” Lisa said.

  “I know, but—” Before he finished, Jeremy peeled off his sweatshirt, even though the late afternoon was getting chilly, and wedged it between the window frame and the top of the hatch. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do. He’d make sure Lisa drove nice and slow, which she did.

  Once they were back home, though, and getting the window frame out of the trunk, Jeremy’s hand slipped. The frame dropped and hit the rear bumper hard enough to knock Lisa’s grip loose. She let out a squeal that, Jeremy noticed, sounded quite cat-like, and jumped away from the car. The frame dropped to the pavement accompanied by the loud sound of splintering wood and breaking glass.

  “Jesus! … Fuck! .... Damn!” Jeremy shouted as he stared in frustration at the broken glass that was scattered across the driveway. “Why the hell did you—?”

  But then he stopped himself, knowing that he couldn’t blame his wife. She looked at him with genuine fear in her eyes. He had a quick mental image of a cat, cowering from an angry human being, and stopped himself before he said anything he’d later regret.

  “I know. I know … It wasn’t your fault,” he said mildly. “I dropped my end first.”

  Lisa looked at him with such a wounded, helpless expression that it nearly broke his heart. He told himself this was probably the best thing that could have happened to him. Maybe the previous owner was throwing the window away because he had been so frightened by what he had seen through it.

  “So what are you gonna do?” Lisa asked, her voice high and fragile.

  “Throw it out with the trash, I guess.”

  Jeremy ran his fingers through his hair as he glanced up and down the street. The sun had already set, and shades of twilight washed the street with a purple glow.

  “I’d feel foolish taking it back,” he finally said.

  “Great. It will sit there for weeks on end until the clowns from the town finally get around to picking it up.”

  Lisa shook her head, and Jeremy was half-convinced he heard a faint hiss when she turned and strode into the house.

  “I guess finishing our walk is out of the question now, huh?” she said over her shoulder.

  Jeremy started to protest but then fell silent. She was pissed, and she had every right to be. This would teach him to go dump-picking. He watched in frustrated silence as she went into the house by the side door, slamming the door shut behind her. A light came on in the living room, and seconds later, the flicker of the TV lit up the window.

  Feeling like a fool, he walked around to the storage shed he’d been planning to refurbish this summer and grabbed an empty box and large work broom and dustpan. After ducking into the house to turn on the outside lights, he started sweeping up the mess. It would be just his luck, he thought, to run over some broken glass and get a flat tire.

  He picked up the largest chunks of glass first and then swept and scooped up the remaining fragments. Once all the broken glass he could find was in the cardboard box, he carried it down to the curb and then came back for the frame. He was heading out back to return the broom and dustpan to the shed when an idea hit him.

  There were some large pieces of glass remaining.

  Maybe he could do something with them …

  “Like make a pair of glasses.”

  He was surprised he said the words out loud, but it was a good idea. He had piles of junk in his basement workshop. Maybe he could cut the glass and fit it to a pair of old eyeglass frames he had.

  With glasses like that, he could look at people and see them for what they really were.

  The idea was totally crazy, but the truth was—he was intrigued by it.

  He didn’t know how or why he could see what he saw through the glass, and he had no idea if it would work now that the window was broken, but it was worth a shot.

  After putting the broom and dustpan back, he went back down to the curb and fished through the box, retrieving five of the largest pieces of glass. A car went by, and he cringed, knowing the driver would think he was scavenging someone else’s junk after dark. He looked up and tracked the car as it disappeared down the street, and then—glass in hand—went back into the house.

  “You get that all cleaned up?” Lisa called from the living room as he entered the kitchen. She was in her usual chair, knitting and watching the evening news on TV.

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure I got it all. I’ll check again in the morning when I can see.”

  “I hope you got it all. I go outside barefoot in the morning to get the paper. The last thing I need is to—”

  “I know … I know.”

  Jeremy, still in the kitchen, raised one of the pieces of the glass and looked through it. There was no noticeable change in the way the kitchen looked, but then, moving quietly, he stepped around the corner and took a quick glance at Lisa.

  Sure enough, looking through the glass, he saw the large, gray cat seated on Lisa’s chair. Lisa had been knitting, but now she was just a huge cat, playing with a tangled ball of yarn.

  “Jesus,” Jeremy whispered.

  Lisa looked up at him, and he quickly lowered the glass.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, but he shook his head and walked back into the kitchen. Picking up the stack of glass shards from the counter, he flipped on the light at the top of the cellar stairs and headed down to his workshop.

  “I’ll be downstairs for a bit. I won’t be long,” he called out. He felt a twinge of guilt for avoiding Lisa like this, but he knew she was content in the living room, with or without him. She was, after all, a cat.

  Once in his workshop, Jeremy set to work. It took a while to find the old eyeglass frame, but once he did, he traced the shape of the opening on one of the pieces of glass. He was about to start cutting out the first piece when the doorbell rang.

  “I’ve got it,” Lisa shouted, and Jeremy had a mental image of a huge, gray cat stretching as she got up from her chair and sauntered to the front door. He paused in mid-motion, listening to the activity upstairs.

  “Oh, hi-yah, Bob,” Lisa said. Her voice, coming from upstairs, was muffled, and he couldn’t make out what Bob said.

  “Yeah,” Lisa said. “He’s downstairs in the shop.”

  “Yo! What’s up, bud?” Bob called out from the top of the stairs. His feet clumped heavily on the steps as he came down.

  “Just tinkering around a bit,” Jeremy said, shielding the glass on his workbench as best he could before he turned to face his next-door neighbor.

  “Saw you out there sweeping the driveway in the dark and thought maybe you could use a cold one.” Bob raised his right hand, which held two bottles of Sam Adams beer. The brown glass was beaded with moisture.

  “Sure could,” Jeremy replied, but the truth was, having a beer with Bob was the furthest thing from his mind. He wished Bob hadn’t shown up and was anxious to get him out of here as fast as he could.

  “Here yah go,” Bob said as he popped the top off the bottle and then handed it to Jeremy. Then h
e cracked his own.

  “Thanks,” Jeremy said before toasting and then tipping his head back to take a pull. He was surprised by how refreshing the beer tasted as it bubbled down his throat.

  “So … what’s your latest project?” Bob asked as he stepped to one side and tried to look past Jeremy at what was on the workbench.

  “Nothing much. Just messing around with some … glass.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Just cutting it into shapes to … I dunno. See what I can come up with. Maybe a mobile or something.”

  “You’d want colored glass for that,” Bob offered. “Maybe wind chimes?””

  “Yeah … Maybe.”

  Realizing there was no way to stop Bob from seeing what he was doing, he picked up the top piece of glass and held it carefully between thumb and forefinger. Bob looked a little confused, but the expression quickly passed as he took a sip of his beer.

  Jeremy, meanwhile, watched him carefully, fighting the temptation to look at him through the glass to see what kind of animal he really was. He told himself not to feel guilty about it. Wasn’t that why he was making these glasses in the first place? So he could see what people really were?

  “Just something to keep me busy,” he said as he casually raised the piece of glass to his left eye and glanced at Bob.

  As soon as the glass was between him and his friend, he saw something that sent a wave of nausea through him. He let out a soft gasp as he sagged back against the workbench.

  “You okay there?” Bob asked, but through the glass, the face that formed the question belonged to a huge, bloated toad. Its eyes were golden with flecks of black that popped out of its face. The toad’s mouth was split by an impossibly large grin. The creature’s skin was like a pile of dry, lumpy leather, mottled with black and brown.

  “Wha—? Oh … Yeah … Nothing … nothing,” Jeremy said, fighting to keep his composure. He was surprised he didn’t drop the glass when he placed it back on the workbench. Closing his eyes for a moment, he tried to wipe the image of the toad from his mind. Then he smiled at Bob and raised the beer bottle to his mouth. The coldness in the pit of his stomach only got worse.

  For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, he and Bob hung around making small talk about the weather (mostly crappy), the Red Sox (mostly losing), the fishing season (mostly just getting the hooks wet), and what a pain in the ass their wives could be (mostly no comment from Jeremy). All the while, Jeremy couldn’t stop fidgeting. He was still nauseated by what he had seen, but he was anxious to get back to work. The whole time he and Bob were talking, he couldn’t stop thinking that he really was talking to a huge toad.

  That’s when it hit him.

  What would he see if he looked through the glass at himself in a mirror?

  “Well, best be getting on back before Cheryl calls the cops and reports me missing,” Bob finally said, to Jeremy’s immense relief. He placed his empty beer bottle on the cabinet beside him. “You can keep the five cent deposit.”

  “Ten cents,” Jeremy said, raising the bottle he was holding.

  “That’s right. Well, at that rate, you’ll be able to retire in a year or two,” Bob said with a laugh as he turned and trudged back up the stairs.

  Jeremy couldn’t help but imagine what it would look like if he looked at him through a piece of the magic glass. The thought of seeing Bob’s huge toad body, hopping clumsily up the steps made him feel ill. As soon as Bob closed the door at the top of the stairs behind himself, Jeremy turned back to the stack of broken glass on his workbench. He jumped when, seconds later, Lisa opened the cellar door and called down, “You coming up, or you gonna be down there a while?”

  “Be up in a bit,” Jeremy replied.

  He wondered if she could hear the tension in his voice. Maybe a cat would sense it. He’d have to be more careful around her. He was still tense, and he couldn’t get rid of the image of the bloated toad that was his neighbor. It suited Bob so perfectly he wondered why he hadn’t seen what Bob really was before, even without the glass.

  He listened as Lisa walked back into the living room. He heard the creak of her chair as she sat back down. And all the while, he was imagining that it wasn’t his wife he was listening to up there. It was a huge, gray cat.

  This is sick … This is really dangerous, he thought as he covered his face with his hands and took a deep breath.

  How was he ever going to be able to trust anyone ever again if all he could think about was not the people they were on the outside, but the animals they were on the inside?

  Maybe making these eyeglasses wasn’t such a good idea.

  Maybe—right now—he should take the remaining shards back out to the trash and be rid of them. He should forget all about the glass.

  But first … No, first he at least had to see what he looked like through the glass.

  A cold constriction gripped his throat as he picked up a piece of glass and started up the stairs to the kitchen. He tried to convince himself he was being foolish, that all of this was his imagination gone wild. As he walked softly into the kitchen, he couldn’t help feeling like a thief, about to get caught committing a crime.

  And the truth was, seeing what he saw through the glass probably was wrong. The most reasonable explanation was that it was all in his imagination, anyway. He was having a mental breakdown and was hallucinating all of it. That was the most likely explanation.

  “Gotta take a leak,” he said to Lisa as he tiptoed past the living room doorway and went down the hall to the bathroom. He glanced at her as he went by, surprised that he didn’t see a cat curled up in her chair. By the time he got to the bathroom, he was shaking all over. His stomach was churning with sour acid as he closed and locked the door. For a long moment, he stood, breathing heavily and staring at his reflection in the mirror.

  “So what am I?” he whispered as he leaned over the sink, close to the mirror.

  He looked at the single piece of glass in his trembling hand. It was shaped roughly like a knife blade, and the thought flashed through his mind that as soon as he looked at his reflection and saw the animal he really was, he could use the piece of glass to slash his throat, if he had to.

  The light in the bathroom seemed unusually bright. It stung his eyes as he gazed steadily at his reflection. He wondered if that had anything to do with the truth he was about to reveal about himself. In spite of the beer he’d just had, his throat was parched. Other than the bathroom fan, the only sound was the high, fast thumping of his pulse in his ears. When he finally could stand it no longer, he raised the glass slowly in front of his eyes and looked.

  The figure he saw in the mirror stared back at him with a cold, unblinking gaze.

  The moment froze as Jeremy stared at himself, and the horror of what he saw … of what he really was … filled him. A low, strangled cry came from deep inside his chest as he lurched away from the mirror. When the backs of his knees bumped into the toilet, he dropped the glass. It shattered on the tile floor, but Jeremy barely noticed it. All he could think about was the monstrosity he had seen in the mirror.

  “Hon …? You all right in there?”

  Lisa’s voice echoed as if it came from deep within a canyon. Jeremy opened his mouth and tried to answer her, but he couldn’t imagine how the mouth he had seen in the mirror could make even the faintest human sound. He could see his human form reflected in the mirror now, and he watched in stunned amazement as he raised both hands to his face and sank his fingertips into his skin.

  He had to fight the impulse to claw at his skin, tearing it away to reveal the hideous thing he knew he was beneath the surface. Tears filled his eyes, blurring his vision.

  “Jeremy …? It sounded like something broke in there. Are you all right?”

  “No, I—Yeah … Just …. just a—”

  He stopped himself, unable to believe that the mouth he had seen reflected in the mirror could actually make any sound at all. The last thing he wanted was for Lisa to come in here a
nd see him like this … see him for what he really was.

  How could he live with himself if she ever found out?

  How could he live with himself now, knowing what he knew?

  It would probably be best if he killed himself here and now, and saved Lisa and everyone else in his life the pain of discovering his true nature. He was numbed with shock, and his brain was barely working as he stared at the broken glass on the bathroom floor.

  “I have to get rid of it,” he whispered. “I have to get rid of all of it!”

  His body was so stiff his knees felt like they would snap as he knelt down on the tile floor and scooped up the slivers of broken glass. A razor edge nicked the inside of his thumb, but he didn’t feel any pain as his skin split open, and beads of blood formed along the inch-long gash.

  Then a sudden rage swept through him. Once he had collected all the glass, he closed his fist on it and began to squeeze it as tightly as he could. The glass snapped and crackled in his tightening fist. Blood started to seep out from between his fingers. Gritting his teeth and moaning softly, he flexed his hand until the veins in his forearm stood out in sharp relief. He still didn’t feel even the slightest twinge of pain although he knew he should. When he loosened his grip after almost a full minute, he watched with detached amazement as the blood flowed freely from his hand and dropped in large, red splashes onto the tile floor.

  “Are you ‘bout done in there?” Lisa called out.

  The suddenness of her voice just outside the door startled Jeremy. He turned and stared wide-eyed at the door, waiting for her to open it and see him bleeding like this.

  “No, I—umm … Could you use the upstairs bathroom? I think I’m gonna be a while.” He was surprised that he could speak at all.

  “Sure,” Lisa said, and a wave of relief flowed through Jeremy when he heard her footsteps sound on the stairs.

  He knew he had to act quickly.

  Grabbing one of the hand towels, he wet it at the faucet and wiped up the blood as best he could. Every swipe left a damp a pink streak on the floor, but soon enough he had most of it cleaned up.