Down To Sleep Read online

  DOWN TO SLEEP

  Greg F. Gifune

  eBook

  February 2010

  DarkFuse

  P.O. Box 338

  North Webster, IN 46555

  www.darkfuse.com

  Down To Sleep © 2010, 2004 by Greg F. Gifune

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR

  Apartment Seven

  Heretics

  House of Rain

  Judas Goat

  Lords of Twilight

  Sorcerer

  The Bleeding Season

  The Living and the Dead

  The Rain Dancers

  Check out the official Greg F. Gifune page at DarkFuse for a complete list:

  www.darkfuseshop.com/Greg-F.-Gifune/

  WEBS

  Mine is a gradual death, one that creeps up with all the subtle skill of a gentle summer breeze quietly evolving into a hurricane. Even now I must remember that the Devil, while horrific and evil, is always well dressed.

  I could have been anywhere, and that’s the whole point. Countless hours spent wasting time in hideaways like this one, sipping bad coffee, trying to forget. Funny how the memories a person needs—the ones we so desperately cling to—are the first to go, while those that torture and haunt tend to outlive even the host.

  The diner is interchangeable with hundreds of others along endless stretches of highway, yet this day feels different somehow from all the rest. I light a cigarette, watch trails of blue-gray smoke casually spiral toward the dingy ceiling. Tarnished shakers of salt, metallic napkin holders smudged by the fingers of those nameless, faceless automatons before me clutter the table, and I am gripped by a sudden, nearly overwhelming urge to sweep it all onto the floor.

  “Another coffee?” a waitress with platinum hair asks.

  I don’t make eye contact and she goes away, walks briskly toward the kitchen through air thickened with grease, nicotine, and the ghosts of billions served.

  As my eyes scan the diner I sip my coffee, push the visions away. I seem to go unnoticed by those sharing this most artificial space with me, but I understand none of them possess even a vague clue that I am more time bomb than man.

  A couple of senior citizens argue in a booth on the far side of the dining area. The old man wrestles with a map, the kind gas stations sell. He stabs a crooked finger at it as his wife shakes her head, jowls swaying menacingly. As they bicker, I am reminded of conversations with my father.

  He’s dead more than ten years now, and I miss him. It’s something I’ll never become completely used to in any concrete sense, although I’ve obviously no choice but to accept it. A massive heart attack claimed him in much the same manner one had taken the life of his father, and just as one day something similar will come looking for me.

  I can remember him talking about coming home from his tour of duty in the Pacific after the Second World War, and being driven to the brink of insanity by the blatant unimportance of his family’s arguments and petty concerns. After spending two years of his life trying to stay alive in the jungles of the Philippines, a debate over unpaid light bills or who was going to be inconvenienced long enough to go to the corner store for a gallon of milk seemed not only senseless, but sinful.

  One night at the kitchen table my father had had too much to drink. I listened with the fertile ears of a boy while he described what it does to a man to have to impale another human being on one’s bayonet. He asked me if I thought hand-to-hand combat was dashing, if it was exciting to smash a man’s rib cage with the heel of your boot in order to free your bayonet from his body.

  He confessed to having slept with a pistol beneath his pillow for more than two years after the conclusion of the war. Rambling, he dismissed the courageousness of Air Force fighter pilots, claiming that the infantry soldier was the only true warrior. “Anybody can press a button from thirty thousand feet and wait for a little puff of smoke,” he growled. “Try killing a man when he’s looking you right in the eye.”

  He’d told me he’d chosen to fight the Japanese instead of the Germans because killing someone who looks different than you is easier. It was many years before I fully understood the intricacy of that statement.

  When he’d staggered from the room I was left wondering why of all the people my father could have chosen to share his drunken memories of horror with, he’d decided on me.

  Later, I’d been awakened, torn from nightmares of my own. My father was teetering on the edge of my bed, his breath hot, sour, and thick with whiskey. “Can you see it?” he asked, bleary eyes blinking to focus, his hand extended, open palm just inches from his face. “Can you? Can you see it?”

  I ignored the natural desire to recoil, left my head against the pillow and shifted my eyes from his hand to his tortured face. “Daddy?”

  “Don’t lie to me, son.” His pale lips curled into a spasm-like grimace, a thin line of perspiration arranged precariously along the space just beneath his nose. “You see it, don’t you?”

  It was more statement than question, but I offered a quick nod anyway. He looked so frail sitting there, so broken and damaged—not at all the heroic knight in shining armor most boys see when they look at their father. But it was because my father was a hero, I concluded years later, that he had been left a tattered and devastated soul. The price of freedom had been sanity, peace of mind, and all these years later he was still fighting the same war that had robbed him of youthful, carefree vision. His body surrendered into a slump-shouldered posture, his hand now held in front of his own face, eyes searching the lines and crevices for answers, remedies to his afflictions. “It never comes clean, it…it always comes back.”

  I tried to distract myself, allowing my eyes to scan my darkened room. Somehow none of it seemed to matter. All the toys and stuffed animals; story books and Matchbox cars—like childhood itself—little more than a calculated diversion from what lie ahead, a sleazy magicians slight-of-hand prank.

  He fumbled a crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes, and a silver lighter from his shirt pocket and stared at them blankly. Like the times before, no words were spoken as I carefully removed the items from his hand, rolled a cigarette between my lips and lit it for him as he’d taught me. With the harsh taste still coating my mouth, I handed him his cigarette and picked a small piece of tobacco from the tip of my tongue.

  “Good,” he mumbled. “Good boy.”

  I watched him sitting there, eyes now focused on the sheets surrounding me but obviously seeing something more. He smoked his cigarette as if it had done something to offend him; hard, long, violent drags, and when he exhaled it was with conviction—like he was expelling the evil from his system—the streams of smoke bursting from his mouth and nostrils the slain demons festering within him.

  “Where’s Mommy?”

  “Asleep,” he sighed, waving his cigarette at the open doorway with one hand and wiping away drool from the corner of his mouth with the other. “It’s not easy for her, you know.”

  “Should I go get her?”

  “Leave her alone.” His bloodshot eyes squinted, as if he were losing sight of me. “Can’t hide behind your mother’s skirt forever, son. You have to be a man, understand?”

  I lied, as I’d become prone to do, nodding through a yawn. Yet even now I have no idea what defines a man.

  A man like my father. A man like me.

  “One day you’ll meet a woman,” he said, coughing, his chest wheezing with each breath drawn. “You’ll fall in love and get married and have a family
of your own.” He glanced away and back over his shoulder as if fearful my mother might suddenly appear in the doorway. When he returned his pained gaze to me the agony in his voice manifested in his expression, like a child on the verge of tears. “And you’ll forget all this. None of it’ll mean anything because you’ll have your own life…you’ll have your own lies to tell and your own scars to hide. You’ll tell your boy things you won’t tell anybody else—nobody else, okay? Because no matter how hard the both of you try that boy is you and you’re him. The same, understand? You’ll be the same.”

  I thought he was lying—prayed he was lying. But he wasn’t.

  Some time later a church bell began to chime, ringing in a new day as the beginnings of daylight delicately pierced the lingering darkness. Another struggle ongoing; never-ending, just like the battles in my father’s mind.

  “Do you love me?” he asked, exhaustion and alcohol slurring his speech.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you? Do you love your father?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled and waved a reprimanding finger at me. “Shame on you.”

  At that surreal moment I had no way of knowing there would come a day when I would be the one sitting on the edge of the bed doing all the talking. The only difference is that for me, there’s no one there to listen.

  The vision of that vacant bed never leaves me. The bed where my father died, passing quietly, gradually as his heart finally gave way. To have survived the horrors he had, only to slip from this world so silently, the scene void of the melodrama that had been his life. I’ve often thought he’d have preferred to die in a different manner, perhaps many years earlier on those battlefields scattered with the remains of friends and enemies alike. Yet in death, like life, we’re afforded only our choice of paths, never destinations.

  Not long before he died he seemed to change somewhat. Never completely at peace, but as close as he was ever going to get, he assumed a more resigned air, as if someone or something had explained it all to him then sworn him to secrecy. Those things haunting him no longer mattered because his ghosts were of this world, not the next.

  On his deathbed, his cold and clammy hand limply resting in mine, his glazed eyes looking straight through me, machines humming and beeping all around him, connected with tubes and cords and needles and other distractions, I told him I loved him and he told me the same, forcing a smile and whispering the words, “I tried”.

  Yes. My father did try.

  So do we all.

  * * *

  I hear the sounds of a cash register, see a rugged truck driver pay for his lunch and it all comes crashing back into focus. I am in a place where decaying old couples cling to each other in the darkness and wage verbal warfare against themselves as it is the only true power they still possess.

  Something prevents me from smashing my mug to bits, though I’ve no idea what. Perhaps the soothing voice of an angel whispering in my ear. My mother claims we all have a guardian angel who watches over us.

  Mine must be exhausted.

  The sun beats down on the back of my neck through the large windows of the diner, and I picture myself slithering beneath a flat rock where the soil is moist and cool.

  It is a simple trick of the mind for one so savagely alive. But I cannot stay a shelled bug for long.

  My eyes focus on the restroom door, wait patiently for my wife to emerge and rescue me. I picture her standing nude in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom, her small hands gently gliding back and forth across her swollen belly, proudly caressing our child not yet born, and I wonder, could this baby—a boy the doctor tells us—really be mine, or just my father revisited, disguised as a child?

  I have come to learn my reactions, or lack thereof, have little bearing on these curious hauntings. His hands, stained with blood only the two of us can see, will continue to reach for me as he hangs from a thin web that dangles him into this world, while still tethering him to the next.

  Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to matter.

  At least not anymore.

  Jean Harlow in an apron returns. “Anything else I can get you?”

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “How about a little peace?”

  She doesn’t get it, nor do I…and I am not surprised.

  CHASING MOONLIGHT

  He swept into the room like a tornado touching down in a library; his sudden presence disrupting what had been an otherwise quiet conversation in the burned out shell of an apartment Bonnie called home these days. All black leather and drama, the heels of his dark boots clacking the floor, white teeth flashing in contrast, the biggest goddamn gun I’d ever seen in one hand and a plastic bag filled with yellow capsules in the other. “Tamer of the beast,” he said, waving the gun at me like a bit-player in an old western. “And enough speed to wake the fucking dead.”

  Bonnie rolled her eyes, and, with a sigh, forced herself to her feet and moved quietly across the room to a boom box propped on an old cranberry crate in the corner. With a press of a finger Soundgarden was singing a familiar tune. She fired a quick and unpleasant glance in Priest’s direction, then slid her eyes back to me and smiled, narrow hips swaying seductively, arms at her sides, fingers snapping, head thrown back, long razor-straight hair dangling to near the middle of her back.

  The sunburst tattoo encircling her navel caught my attention like it always did when she wore half-shirts, and I suppressed a light laugh, reminded of a stoned out girl I’d once seen in an old documentary about Woodstock. It was just Bonnie’s way, always finding an avenue of escape, if only for a while.

  Priest shook his head and placed the pills on what remained of the counter space near the hollowed out kitchen. His black eyes made love to the cold steel in his hand while mine took a break from making love to Bonnie. I watched him now, that swarthy skin and leading man build. That outfit: the long leather coat and matching black pants, a large gold crucifix dangling from his neck like always, brilliant even in dull light against the backdrop of an opaque silk shirt. The Priest was fucking deranged, and he dressed the part, like some Apocalyptic Cowboy conjured in the mind of a comic book artist high on crack.

  I stayed where I was, on the floor with my back against the doorframe, a cigarette waiting to be lighted between my fingers, a hunting knife strapped to my ankle and concealed beneath the lip of my boot, visible only from my vantage point. I played a quick game of visual tennis, bouncing my eyes back and forth between my partners, and caught myself wondering how the hell I’d ended up in this place, at this time.

  Confronted with sudden images of my grandmother—her sad gray eyes and gentle, bird-like fingers—I remembered how her soft voice could soothe me and her love had cradled me through the early years after my mother had died. Those afternoons wandering the fields and dunes surrounding her little cottage near the ocean had deceived me into believing my future was bright and limitless. My mother was a drug addict, pregnant with me at the age of sixteen, back on the streets turning tricks even before I’d learned how to walk and dead in an alley only weeks before her twentieth birthday. My father was some bleary-eyed asshole slinking through the streets picking up teenage girls for pocket change. I guess.

  It all seemed so distant now, like a dream fading to black with each passing hour of consciousness, the details swallowed and transformed into the twisted wreckage of harsh reality. The rest—the here and now and all the bullshit—was little more than fate, the luck of the draw…or the lack thereof.

  “Sometimes life is long,” Priest said, as if reading my mind. He swept back one side of the coat and stuffed the gun in his belt, then came back with a match in the other, struck it against the wall and leaned closer so I could use the flame. “The key is to not believe in time.”

  I pretended to have some idea what the hell he was talking about while I drew a deep drag on my cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke at him. “Where’d you get the piece?”

  “You let me worry about that.” He spun around, his c
oat billowing as he turned his back to me and approached Bonnie. “You just worry about pulling your weight when all this goes down, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said, although I’m not sure he even heard me.

  Priest looked back over his shoulder, and I knew from the look in his eyes he’d seen the spike and tin foil near Bonnie’s dancing feet. “How much this time?”

  “Enough to keep her happy,” I told him with a shrug. “What the hell difference does it make?”

  “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you clean?”

  “I’m never clean.”

  Priest didn’t say anything, but he knew what I meant and replied with a slight smile and a knowing nod. He strode right past Bonnie and stood at the only window in the place, hands on his hips now, gazing out at the neon lights illuminating the city streets below. Dusk had become night and I hadn’t even noticed, and I found myself wondering if I’d ever have it together like the Priest did.

  There were days I’d have just as soon killed him as died for him, but we’d developed our love-hate relationship beyond the simple confines of most friendships. He was in charge, like a father to Bonnie and me, a teacher who seemed shackled to a single lesson. Do as I say and do as I do. We were either too weak or too stupid to do anything else, but the end result was always the same. Priest had the ideas and Bonnie and I executed them. While sitting on the floor watching him study the streets I wondered if I’d live my life like this forever.

  Bonnie just kept dancing, eyes closed, body moving like only hers could. It struck me that once, just like the rest of us, she’d been an infant, a baby swaddled in blankets, innocent and wide-eyed. Goddamn, I thought, Priest’s right again. Some-times life is long…too fucking long.