Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,49
leading to the cavernous basement where Dad parked the new car and had all his shop tools and gardening equipment, and where dwelt the Molochian coal furnace named Fear and its nether realm, the monster-haunted coal cellar. The yard was bigger than any of his friends had, and until he grew old enough to have to mow the grass and cuss, it was a limitless playground to run and romp with the dogs, for ball games and playing cowboy or soldier, for climbing trees and building secret clubhouses out of boxes and scrap lumber.
Garrett loved the house on Cedar Lane. But he wished that he wouldn’t dream about it every night. Sometimes he wondered if he might be haunted by the house. His shrink told him it was purely a fantasy—longing for his vanished childhood.
Only it wasn’t. Some of the dreams disturbed him. Like the elusive fragrance of autumn leaves burning, and the fragmentary remembrance of carbonizing flesh.
Garrett Larkin was a very successful landscape architect with his own offices and partnership in Chicago. He had kept the same marvelous wife for going on thirty years, was just now putting the youngest of their three wonderful children through Antioch, was looking forward to a comfortable and placid sixth decade of life, and had not slept in his bed at Cedar Lane since he was seventeen.
Garrett Larkin awoke in his bed in the house on Cedar Lane, feeling vaguely troubled. He groped over his head for the black metal cowboy-silhouette wall lamp mounted above his bed. He found the switch, but the lamp refused to come on. He slipped out from beneath the covers, moved through familiar darkness into the bathroom, thumbed the light switch there.
He was filling the drinking glass with water when he noticed that his hands were those of an old man.
An old man’s. Not his hands. Nor his the face in the bathroom mirror. Lined with too many years, too many cares. Hair gray and thinning. Nose bulbous and flecked with red blotches. Left eyebrow missing the thin scar from when he’d totaled the Volvo. Hands heavy with calluses from manual labor. No wedding ring. None-too-clean flannel pajamas, loose over a too-thin frame.
He swallowed the water slowly, studying the reflection. It could have been him. Just another disturbing dream. He waited for the awakening.
He walked down the hall to his brothers’ room. There were two young boys asleep there. Neither one was his brother. They were probably between nine and thirteen years in age, and somehow they reminded him of his brothers—long ago, when they were all young together on Cedar Lane.
One of them stirred suddenly and opened his eyes. He looked up at the old man silhouetted by the distant bathroom light. He said sleepily, “What’s wrong, Uncle Gary?”
“Nothing. I thought I heard one of you cry out. Go back to sleep now, Josh.”
The voice was his, and the response came automatically. Garrett Larkin returned to his room and sat there on the edge of his bed, awaiting daylight.
Daylight came, and with it the smell of coffee and frying bacon, and still the dream remained. Larkin found his clothes in the dimness, dragged on the familiar overalls, and made his way downstairs.
The carpet was new and much of the furniture was strange, but it was still the house on Cedar Lane. Only older.
His niece was bustling about the kitchen. She was pushing the limits of thirty and the seams of her housedress, and he had never seen her before in his life.
“Morning, Uncle Gary.” She poured coffee into his cup. “Boys up yet?”
Garrett sat down in his chair at the kitchen table, blew cautiously over the coffee. “Dead to the world.”
Lucille left the bacon for a moment and went around to the stairway. He could hear her voice echoing up the stairwell. “Dwayne! Josh! Rise and shine! Don’t forget to bring down your dirty clothes when you come! Shake a leg now!”
Martin, his niece’s husband, joined them in the kitchen, gave his wife a hug, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He stole a slice of bacon. “Morning, Gary. Sleep well?”
“I must have.” Garrett stared at his cup.
Martin munched overcrisp bacon. “Need to get those boys working on the leaves after school.”
Garrett thought of the smell of burning leaves and remembered the pain of vaporizing skin, and the coffee seared his throat like a rush of boiling blood, and he awoke.
Garrett Larkin gasped at the darkness and sat up in bed. He fumbled behind him for