Three and Out Page 6

back in the recliner.

  “Eddie!” Rebecca exclaimed. “I was beginning to wonder what happened to you.”

  “I just a…you know…had a lot to do.” He wanted to go on but couldn’t find any words.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. She knew how hard he’d applied himself lately, how determined he’d been since his mother died. But the fact remained that he was unprepared. It was hard to change one’s history in the period of thirty weeks.

  “The goddamn Trig test. I failed it.”

  “Come on. You couldn’t fail it. You had a low ‘B’ going in.”

  “I failed the motherfucker, Becky. I know I did.” He paused and she heard him swallow. She wondered if he was crying, though she was not sure he was capable. She hadn’t seen him do it at his mother’s wake or funeral.

  “I’m coming over there,” she said flatly.

  “No, don’t,” he said. “I’m wore to the bone. I can barely keep my eyes open. I’ll call you in a coupla hours, okay?”

  “I don’t know, Eddie, you sure? You sound terrible. Have you eaten today?”

  “Yes, I’ve eaten,” he lied. Then, “Look, I’m all right. I swear. I just need to lay down for a coupla hours. I’ll call you soon’s I get up.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure, Baby. Just give me a few hours.”

  “Call me as soon as you get up. Understand?”

  “Yes, boss,” he said and laid the phone down.

  The second nightmare came on like an old movie. It had a black-and-white, grainy texture as if it’d been used before and rediscovered only recently. Eddie found himself in a life raft. In the distance there appeared a monstrous shadow pressing in on the pale darkness. Fog masked everything, definite lines erased to mere phantoms. But he seemed to be getting closer to whatever it was.

  The ship broke through the blanket of fog and darkness far above his head, a huge, rusting hull tarnished from what appeared to be centuries of disregard. It went broadside of Eddie’s raft and he saw the twenty-foot letters stretching above him. Titanic, they read.

  People were standing far above him on the deck, bedraggled, soaking wet, many hung in seaweed. They moved lethargically, taking no mind of the life raft below. Yet there was one soul apparently unaffected by the others’ dour predicament. He pushed himself through the wet mob clustered around the handrails, and Eddie watched as the Trig professor, old doctor Salmon, waved down at him. A curled knot of rope unfurled from up there somewhere, coming to rest in a straight line that bounced alongside the ship near the water line. Eddie mindlessly took hold and began to climb.

  Halfway up he noticed the rope was saturated with blood. It was tacky and stunk in his hands, a greasy chord that pulsed beneath his sweating grip. Startled, his feet scrabbled against the metal hull and his hands slipped. He lost his balance and spun around, his back colliding soundlessly against the hull as he stared wide-eyed at the thrashing water below. The life raft was gone. A rotted hand appeared from above (he could smell the putrescence), and he grabbed ahold without hesitation. His fingers split the corrupted skin he found there to the bone.

  The nightmare lost substance, but only for a moment.

  “So we meet again,” Eddie heard the familiar voice say. He stared into the melted, running face, watched as the demonic smile slid off the chin—

  And Eddie found himself in the echoing confines of a tunnel now. Either that or a sewer system, but as to how he’d come to be there…nothing. He listened to the sound of thick water plopping down in fat, oily drops. The screeching of rats was colossal. The professor stepped up from the darkness, his frame distorted in the tight quarters. “You’ve seen too much,” the figure said. Then a flash of light. Eddie now found himself sitting at a desk in the dreaded Trig classroom. No other students were present. The only other person was the professor, scratching through the contents of an opened drawer in his desk. The man’s head was turned from Eddie, and Eddie found he couldn’t move.

  Then the professor looked up, finally closing the pencil drawer with a gentle delicacy. Its face was not human, clawed and stretched into a ghastly parody of age. White hair sluiced back from the wrinkled forehead, falling in a broad swath around the thing’s thin neck. Broken pieces of bone masqueraded as teeth in the wet maw of its mouth. The eyes were pinpoints pressed deeply into a sea of mottled flesh. And as it looked his way, Eddie saw the calendar hanging lopsided from its place near the chalkboard. February, the first two days crossed out, this year.

  The thing stood, revealing hands at the ends of excessively long arms bristled with clots of rusted nails. It took several clumsy steps to the edge of the platform and—

  Eddie woke to his own dark bedroom in another cold sweat. He didn’t even need to glance at the bedside clock to know he’d drifted far into the night. It was 3:31. The Spanish and English exams didn’t start until the following afternoon. The latest, English, wasn’t scheduled until 6 p.m. He thought it odd Rebecca had not called as he ran a hand through his hair and laid back in bed, trying to gather himself back from the brink.

  He allowed himself a running breakfast the next morning (a Milky Way and the last third of a bottle of Gatorade), before bailing out to check on the posted scores. It was still far too early to phone Rebecca, but he figured to catch her fresh from a shower shortly after he learned the chemistry grade. Seward Hall was the closest building to the parking lot, and there were no other students this early. The grades were hanging on the door (probably since late the previous night) and with a mind-numbing sense of relief he scanned the list until he saw the ‘A’ beside his name. He checked the Social Security number three times to make sure there was no mistake. “Yes!” he whispered triumphantly under his breath, his troubles of the last few days momentarily forgotten.

  He walked with new purpose the short distance to the Student Union. There was a bank of phones next to the Early Morning Coffee Shoppe, and it wouldn’t be the first time the crew had seen him this early. He made his order and as he stood there sipping the hot Java, he rang her house. It was answered on the second ring. Rebecca’s mother. There was something strange in her voice. He heard her ask, “Who is this?” and swallowed hard.

  “Hello…Mrs. Webster? This is Eddie. Is--?“

  “Eddie!” she said excitedly, cutting him off. “Have you seen Rebecca? We’ve been calling all over!? Even tried your place…”

  The tremor started deep in his back, by the tailbone and quickly worked higher. Beads of sweat oiled his forehead. “I don’t know…I haven’t—“

  Again he was cut off. “You mean you haven’t seen her? She’s not with you? She left here last night when you didn’t call! She said she was going to your place!” She began tripping over her tongue and Eddie jumped in, attempting to slow the slide.

  “Mrs. Webster. Hold on! You’ve tried calling her place?”

  “Of course I did, Eddie! It’s just the same thing: the phone rings and rings and the answering machine picks up!”

  “And you tried my place?” he asked. He could already feel the dread.

  “Well yes! We tried last night and again this morning! No answer! Where are you?!”

  “I was home. Didn’t hear anything. Maybe there’s a problem with the line or something. Look, Becky’s isn’t far from where I am. I’ll go check it out.” A consuming darkness clutched around him. He hung up even though Rebecca’s mother was obviously not finished and left the phone dangling as he ran down the stairs to his car.

  Rebecca’s seldom-used apartment was nestled on the east side of the new golf course, no more than five minutes ride from the Union. The complex had two pools instead of the one that Eddie’s apartment lauded, and cost well over the sum he squeezed out each month from a pizza route. It was scheduled to be gated soon, but Eddie had never heard of any violence on this side of campus. The west side backed up to the projects but that was over two miles and several social striations away.

  Even from the street he saw Rebecca’s Mustang in
its accustomed spot. No dents, nothing out of the ordinary. He pulled alongside and killed the engine. Rebecca’s bedroom window was directly behind the hedge past the parking lot and due to the cast of the shadows through the pine trees he saw no light coming from inside. He got out of his car and walked along the sidewalk, underneath the arch to Apt. 111 at the corner beneath the staircase. One of the numbers lay on the concrete near her door. With a terrible ache in his bones he noticed the door was ajar. Eddie forced himself to step forward and pushed it the rest of the way open. All dark within but at least nothing disturbed. He stepped inside, wrinkling his nose from the smell hunched down deep. Acrid and old, like a library months after a fire. He shivered in the heat.

  “Rebecca?” he called.

  Nothing. He closed the door and turned on the lamp near the television. The nightmare kept trying to surface, and he beat it away by hurrying to her bedroom. This door was open too but she was not there. The bed was made and it didn’t look like she’d been here. “Where the hell…?” he muttered, turning back to the hall.

  He suddenly jolted to a stop, his hands clasped in front of him. He knew why the smell had made him uneasy when he opened the door: he had smelled it before. The Trig classroom. It was moldy and damp down there in the basement, but the mold had always seemed undercut by another, more plying and lethal