He k-kept crawlin and tryin, cuh-crawlin and tryin, until there weren’t hardly no more good things left at all.
But there was still one more guh-good thing, and he knew it.
Suh-somehow, he knew it.
28
The weather was turning. Never snowing but sometimes freezing, the cold was coming more quickly than normal for a Florida December. The chill felt nice in Ben’s lungs as he walked to the store.
Frank had finally quit. For the first time, he’d resigned officially, citing higher wages up the road. Ben had just stood there and watched it happen. He wanted to talk him out of it. Hell, he wanted to leave in his place, but he’d done neither. Regardless of what Frank said, he wasn’t leaving for better pay. Ben was sure of that.
Every time Ben saw Bill Palmer, his eyes looked more swollen and tired, but they had a lot more looking to do if they were going to find someone to replace the kid who’d had his throat torn out doing the very job they’d be putting in for. Palmer had granted Ben a reprieve, if it could be called that. It was an act of desperation. Ben was all Palmer had, and neither man seemed to relish that fact.
Palmer wouldn’t stop threatening to take the cost of his office door out of Ben’s paycheck. And each time they talked about anything at all, Palmer found a way to mention the mountain of applications he had for prospective hires, but it had been a week since the accident, and Ben’s name was still alone on the schedule. It wasn’t all a bluff, though. Ben knew that as soon as Palmer could, he’d cut Ben loose.
So Ben didn’t have much time to waste if he wanted to see what was on those tapes.
The doors slid open with their expected graceless rumblings. Chelsea stood solemnly behind her register, her face still beautiful but now fixed with an expression of restless confinement, like an animal standing at cage doors she hoped might open at any moment. That same atmosphere loomed like low clouds over anyone who punched a clock there, their eyes searching for a way out of the fog caused by what happened to Marty.
After pulling the pallets onto the main floor, Ben worked the damages while he waited for the store to close. After enduring the smell the morning of the accident, Palmer would just not shut the fuck up about it. So every couple days, Ben would haul soggy boxes and dented cans into the bathroom to wash them off, so they could be scanned against inventory.
On his fourth trip to the sink, the bottom of the cardboard box gave way just in front of the exit into the store. Ben jumped backward as glass shattered and rancid mayonnaise splattered near his shoes. Holding air in his lungs, Ben squatted and picked the larger shards of glass out of the sludge. The air conditioner banged and roared to life. Sliding the box aside with his foot, Ben stepped away from the curdled puddle and leaned against the wall. He pulled his kerchief down under his chin and checked his watch. Close enough, he thought.
Ben climbed the iron steps. For a few months, the store had been transformed in Ben’s mind from a permanent reminder of the pain he had caused to a place where he might find…what? Peace? Redemption? Had that been what he was looking for? How stupid.
Well, he was free to look for whatever he wanted to now, not that he knew what that was. He’d found the symbol right where he should have expected to find it. Right on the side of that cruel machine. A beacon shining sickly in dull rust amid ancient green, calling out to bad people and bad things, calling them home to a store that wasn’t a store at all. A cruel, laughing void. An echo chamber where the devil once spoke.
More than any part of the store, Ben hated the upstairs. More than the freezer or the air conditioner. More even than the baler. It might have just been the narrow, dark hall lined with all those locked doors, but it didn’t feel like that’s all it was. The whole area reeked of Palmer, reeked of the man who never fixed his cameras, who fired Ben for being the brother of a stolen boy. Who lied about tapes.
Gently, Ben pushed aside Palmer’s crumpled and sagging door. The office was dark, but Ben could still see enough to navigate, thanks to the light pouring in through Palmer’s voyeur windows and the deli cam TV.
Chelsea’s voice sounded over the intercom. Ben watched her through the window. Occasionally, she’d look around as she counted down her till. He waited for her to leave the store.
The filing cabinet rattled as Ben pulled on the bottom drawer. Ben squinted and tried to move his body out of the light, only to see what he had expected to see: that Palmer had moved the tapes. Ben sighed through his nose and almost shut the drawer, then he slipped his hand inside. He twisted and bent his wrist like he was digging in a raffle bucket. Papers. Magazines. The same bag of old chips. A pair of Pop-Tarts. An action figure.
A tape.
Ben’s heart fluttered. The plastic spools clattered as he pulled the tape free from the drawer. “Fuck,” he whispered. He put his hand back inside and dug until he was sure he’d touched everything.
There were three tapes.
He held them up to the light. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find on them. There wouldn’t be a label that said I’M A LYING FUCK #1, but there weren’t any labels at all. How long would it have taken to slip the flyer into Ben’s locker? How long would it take Ben to find that sequence within days of footage crammed into three six-hour tapes?
“Fuck,” he whispered again. He should have brought a VCR. He couldn’t take the tapes home, could he? No, that would be a mistake. Could he wait? Bring a VCR in tomorrow? He could see the tapes weren’t rewound—the spools were all encumbered differently. Maybe Ben wouldn’t need to do much looking.
Ben punched the eject button on the VCR for the break-room camera, forcing himself to commit. He powered on the monitor and slipped in the first tape.
The time stamp on the grainy video said that Ben was watching footage of the break room from three years before. There was only one person in the frame. An employee standing in the corner of the room with her hands over her face. Doing what? Laughing? No. When she moved her hands, Ben could see that she was crying, and suddenly he forgot why he’d started watching the tape in the first place.
The tape whirred backward and choppy blobs poured into the room. Ben waited a few more seconds and then pushed play.
Seven people were in the room now. They moved around unsteadily on the tape, talking, preparing food or eating it, some just avoiding work. Ben could see the girl who’d be crying soon standing near the microwave. He watched the seconds tick by on the counter.
This tape had nothing to do with anything that concerned Ben, but he couldn’t help himself. He didn’t want to know what distressed the woman, but he did want to know why Palmer cared.
Another employee entered the room, and before Ben could comprehend what he was seeing, the newcomer struck one of his coworkers in the back of the head. There was no reaction from the victim. He slumped over onto the floor and out of frame. Two people left the room; the others stayed while the beating continued. The quality of the tape and the recording speed made the assailant’s arms look like wings as he swung his fists repeatedly into the person beneath him. Finally, the guy grabbed a chair and brought it down with tremendous force. The attacker left and so did his audience, all except for the crying woman and the beaten man, who must have been lying out of frame when Ben first started the tape.
Ben jabbed the eject button. He’d forgotten to note the time the tape started. His heart was thundering. He turned quickly to face the door. There had been a noise. Or maybe not. He stood and looked out into the store.
Ben picked up another tape and let it rest halfway in the mouth of the VCR for a while before he slid it in completely. His throat was dry. He pressed play and noted the time.
A dark-haired woman in a floral dress stood in front of the deli cooler six years ago. Ben was just about to rewind the tape when a man in a checkered shirt appeared at the far end of the frame. He moved slowly, parallel to the cooler, and as the frames flick
ered by, it was clear that the man wasn’t just walking in the woman’s direction. He was walking toward her. Ben’s palms began sweating. He wanted to stop the tape, but instead he watched the man. He was very close now. The woman still had time, if she started moving. But she didn’t move. Where the fuck was everyone else? Anyone else?
The man approached the customer from behind and slid his hands over her stomach. Ben winced at his own expectations, but the woman didn’t fight. Instead, she leaned back into him. They seemed to know each other.
She looked around as the guy slipped his hand down from her stomach and up the front of her dress. Though the image was distorted, Ben could see the woman smile for a few frames before she craned her head back and kissed him, could see that she was grinding her hips against him.
Suddenly, the couple parted and scurried away from the camera’s gaze. A few frames later, an employee was standing where they had been.
Ben rewound the tape. He understood why Palmer would have it. He supposed he understood why he had the other. But Palmer had them both. And there was something about that, something about the presence of them together—unmarked and uncataloged here in this place—that made Ben want to leave.
The VCR hummed as it swallowed the third tape. Ben noted the time and—
“Oh my God,” Ben said. “Oh my God.”
Two customers stood in front of the poultry section five years ago. Twenty minutes before the last time Ben saw Eric.
“Oh, Jesus,” Ben said through his hand. He turned to look at the door, then faced the screen. A family at the cooler walked down an aisle and was replaced by other meandering customers.
Ben cupped his elbows and slouched forward, as if he could somehow make himself so small he’d disappear. Minutes ticked by on the counter. A man with a beard picked up a steak, put it back, then picked up a different one. It was Bobby Prewitt.
Another customer came to shop the same section, and the two talked for a while. The man left, and Prewitt turned back toward the cooler, swapping his steak again. Then he walked out of frame.
The aisle was dead now. Ben watched the clock. He knew what he was seeing before the tape did, when the image was still mangled and unclean. Ben watched himself materialize on the tape, holding Eric’s hand. They were on their way to the bathroom.
“Oh, fuck,” Ben sobbed. “Oh, jeez.” Eric looked so small next to Ben. Even as they got closer, Ben couldn’t see his brother’s face, couldn’t see his own for that matter. They walked side by side, Eric trailing just a little behind. The boy stopped at the cooler to scrape ice from its rim. Stampie was tucked under his arm.
Eric lurched forward. Ben flinched as he watched the tape, watched himself pull Eric so hard the boy almost fell over. There was a sick feeling in Ben’s throat. And then Ben did it again for no reason at all. Eric pulled back. Not toward the cooler. Maybe not even to defy Ben. He turned in such a way that it was almost like he was hiding Stampie. Protecting him.
“What the fuck?” Ben whimpered. He watched his past self drag Eric out of frame. Ben stood in front of the monitor. His legs were shaking. His whole body was shaking. Gripping his head in his hands, he stared at the screen, stared until he could see himself again. Panicked. Frantic. Alone. “What the fuck?!” he whimpered. “That’s not what happened! What the fuck did you do?”
He jammed his finger hard enough into the VCR that the monitor rocked backward. His hands trembled as he snatched the tape from the machine. He collected the others and threw them back in the filing cabinet, slamming the door.
29
Ben stocked what he could, but most of the truck would still be sitting on pallets by the time the store opened. The bag boys would throw the rest, or Ben would finish when he came back in half a day. It didn’t matter.
No matter how he tried, Ben couldn’t get the grainy image of Eric’s tape out of his head. He could still see the choppy movements of his baby brother, the fuzzy frown on the blown-out picture as Ben jerked and yanked on Eric’s small arm. It hadn’t happened like that. Again and again, Ben returned to that day in his mind. He tried to imagine it even as a hypothetical, and he failed. Because that tape wasn’t real.
As impossible as that was, it was the only explanation that made any sense. Standing there in the baking aisle, Ben could remember all sorts of things. See Clint, he brought home a chocolate cake every year for Eric’s birthday, but that was wrong. Eric liked yellow cake. Everyone else had forgotten that, but not Ben. And if he could remember that, then he sure as shit could remember the worst day of his life.
Staring at the boxes of chocolate cake and containers of fudge frosting, Ben knew he wasn’t going to be able to choose. Every option was wrong. Someone else could decide, then. Someone else could think about cakes and birthday parties. When Ben left the aisle his legs were stiff, as if he’d been standing there for ages.
Ben walked back into Receiving, again stepping over the mayonnaise. The jar had exploded like a rotten bomb, and Ben had left most of the cleaning supplies in the bathroom on the other side of this moat. He could use a mop, but then he’d have to clean the bucket and the mop itself. Maybe the dustpan or the broom. He could scrape up the mayonnaise like spackling paste—
Ben stopped thinking about cleaning the mess when he saw the pattern stamped into its outer edge. Ben’s face puckered as he moved around the sour puddle. It was only a sliver, but it was there, right on the rim. Geometric and alien: the zigzagging hills and accompanying valleys of a shoe print.
Puzzled, Ben stared blankly at the lines, pressing his lips together in befuddlement before walking away. He took only a few steps before returning. Bracing himself against the wall with his hand, Ben winced as he tried to bend his weak leg across his locked knee, stopping when the pain became too much to bear.
With a groan, the heater wound down, and Ben stepped toward the puddle. He tapped his fingers against his leg and looked around as if someone might confirm just how foolish he was. Taking great care, he pressed his foot into the mayonnaise, which rolled like mud from under his shoe. Withdrawing it slowly, Ben felt a fluttering in his stomach. He backed up and leaned against the wall, trying to rub the prickling sensation off the back of his neck. But he could feel it spreading to his whole body. The treads didn’t match.
He looked for a long time—longer than he needed to—trying to make them the same print in his mind. The doors swung inward, and Ben’s body jolted. Bill Palmer cursed as he nearly barreled into Ben.
“Godfuckingdamnit!” Ben shouted.
Palmer looked at Ben in disbelief, then yelled for Ben to clean up the mess. He tried to shake the mayonnaise off his shoe, then cursed again and climbed the iron stairs, disappearing down the catwalk.
There were no more patterns to look at, only streaks and smears. The heater whirred back to life, and Ben walked back into the store.
Ben kept stocking the shelves until he finally caught sight of Beverly in her department. A little late today, she hurriedly ran a serrated knife through a warm loaf of rye. Ben watched how easily the blade moved through the steaming bread.
“Chocolate, hmm?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This for a birthday?” Her eyes moved up to Ben’s as she continued sawing the bread.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said again, nervous that his eyes were now the only ones watching the blade.
She squeezed her lips together in a thin line as she put down the knife, wiping her hands on her apron. Ben followed her over to the display case. “This’d be the one for you, I reckon,” she said, hooking her fingers under the edge of a large plastic container. Browns and blacks swirled and crested atop chocolate icing flowers that marked the treat’s circumference.
“That looks great,” said Ben.
“You want it to say somethin? A message?”
“Huh? Just ‘Happy Birthday’ would be good.”
“Bill decided to keep you on, hmm?” the woman asked, prying the plastic lid off the cake.
Ben nodded. “Hey, Ms. Beverly, I was wonderin—was I rude to you? The morning Marty—”
“You were,” Beverly said, working an icing bag over the cake.
“I didn’t mean to be. I want to say sorry. I just…Well, I’m sorry is all.”
“It’s alright. It was an awful thing what happened. Awful. I’m sure Martin’s laughin about it now. Real shame.”
Ben winced but smiled through it. He stood without saying anything more until she was finished.
“Hope this is alright,” she said, spinning the cake on its platter so he could see it: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ERIC!
A floating feeling moved into Ben’s stomach. “M-Ms. Beverly? I…” Ben tried to remember if that’s what he had asked for.
“Did I get it wrong? I just assumed. Is it alright?”
“Yeah, Ms. Beverly. It’s real pretty.” Ben paused, weighing the cake in his hands. “You got a sticker or something? For the price?”
“No price.”
“Ms. Beverly, I can’t—”
“Why not? Cuz the sun’s up?” She smiled knowingly at him. “You get on out of here,” she said cheerfully. “ ’Fore I change my mind.”
Ben thanked her again and hurried out of the store, avoiding returning Palmer’s gaze as he passed by the registers. The third letter in his brother’s name was dotted with a star.
“Hey there, Ben,” a voice called from behind him.
Ben turned to see James Duchaine leaning out of his Crown Victoria.
30
Duchaine’s radio crackled as they drove. The exchanges were curt and in a language that Ben didn’t speak. But that was fine; it was something to listen to. Duchaine didn’t say anything. That would come soon enough, Ben supposed. He’d put everything in Palmer’s office back where it was supposed to be. It was possible that Ben should have pushed the tapes deeper into the drawer, but Palmer wasn’t likely to notice that. Maybe he would, though. They were special tapes, after all. Magic tapes from other worlds.