Golden Eagle (See You in the Can) - John K. Peck

“Not so much what it is”—Bub paused to take a big drag of his cigarette—“as what the hell it was doing there.”

Bub’s name was actually Carter, but if you called him anything but Bub he’d get pissed, like really pissed, so that’s what we called him. Anyway Bub was three-quarters drunk and starting to look walleyed but he was keeping it together, even though it was late and the party was winding down. “Could be anything, rock, army man, fuckin’ stapler, still messed up it got walled up inside there.”

He turned the can, which had a wide flat pushed-in top like a varnish can in the weird way they once packaged food, looking at the images and words printed all around it, the eagle logo on the front, the writing on the sides and back. It was dinged up and rusty in spots, and dusty and faded, but still readable. Lily, Bub’s girlfriend, reached out as if to grab it and he yanked it away from her, saying a sort of git under his breath, then refocused on the can, passing it from his right hand to his left and back again.

After a minute Bub reached into his pocket and pulled out his multitool, and flicked open the flathead screwdriver and stuck it into the can’s varnish-lid. I thought it would pop right off, but I guess it was sealed and sticky with age, because he had a hell of a time with it, the lip bending up in spots until he finally got some purchase on part of it and pried a bit of air into it. There was a sort of hiss like someone taking a quick breath, like weirdly like it, hissing through lips, and then the lid lifted up and off.

Bub looked down into the can and stuck a few of his fat hotdog-fingers in, pulled out a piece of paper that was off-white with age, and uncrumpled it. His eyebrows rose a second before he looked up at us. “Now I know y’all are fucking with me.” He held the paper up to show us the two words written on it:

CARTER BEALE

No one said anything, which made Carter—Bub—angry. Not in a scary way, as he did at least a few times a week, but more in a sullen, fuck-y’all way that gave him the look of a small child, despite being close to thirty and having a fairly full beard.

Then he crumpled up the small piece of paper and dropped it in an ashtray on the coffee table, and pulled a receipt out of his wallet. “Fine, we’re playin’ around, see how y’all like it.” He grabbed a pen from the table and scrawled something on the receipt, then dropped it in the can, picked up the lid, and pushed it closed. When it wouldn’t seal all the way, he pulled off one of his boots, set the can on the carpet, and banged at the lid with the heel until he’d pretty much sealed it back up. Then he grabbed the can and stood up and walked back to the fireplace, still wearing one boot with his other foot in a raggedy sock, CLOMP, thump, CLOMP, thump, and when he reached the fireplace he crammed the can back into the recessed spot at the back, and replaced the bricks in front of it how we’d found them.

After that we all trickled away and I walked home, plodding through the hot night on tree-lined streets as insects circled in the streetlights.

###

I’d been dreaming, or at least I remembered coming out of a dream where I’d been walk-running through the halls of the old high school, before they’d moved to the new building, leaving the old one abandoned. I guess it was abandoned in the dream too, but someone else had been there, and though I hadn’t seen them I’d heard them following me, their footsteps matching mine no matter how fast or slow I went.

Now I was awake, and I looked around, not sure why. There was a sudden humming sound that made me jump, like someone right next to the bed muttering, but then I saw the glow and realized it was my phone. I held the screen close to my face and saw the red “6” at the corner of the phone icon. I got up and started turning on lights as the voicemails played. It was Lily, crying, barely comprehensible. He’s just, he’s not, I don’t know what happened.

I hung up, not sure whether to call her back, and then I remembered the sound from my dream, of the footsteps following me, alternating loud and quiet.

###

I didn’t talk to Lily, but I did finally get hold of Jamie, who told me what he’d heard. As I listened to him describe it, I tried to picture Bub in my mind, losing his shit and yelling, breaking the window in their bedroom, picking up a piece of the broken window glass. I tried to picture him as I’d last seen him, sitting in the living room, finishing off a cigarette, smiling, then sullen, then smiling again.

I don’t really remember ending the call, but as I stood there in my room, wondering whether to get dressed, I kept hearing the words Bub had apparently said right before he did it, repeated over and over to Lily, who said them to Jamie, who said them to me, see you in the can, see you in the can, a big smile at the end despite the blood everywhere and his face going white. From what it sounded like the experience had made Lily into a raving mess, to the point they decided to keep her in the hospital for observation.

###

It took me a long time to get back to sleep, and I didn’t so much start dreaming as wander from dream to dream. First I was at the river, but in winter, the tree-branches overhead bare, sky gray, then I was back at the abandoned school, but not walking anywhere, just sitting in a classroom, lights off, looking out onto the sunny courtyard between the buildings, at some figure facing away from me. I looked awhile, then turned to the board, where something was written, but the sun was going down and it was dark in the room and before I could read it I was somewhere else, a third place I knew I hadn’t been before. It was a dark space with a dusty floor, and there were men and women sitting or milling around, and a kid too, stark-ass naked, skinny as hell. There was something odd about most everyone there; they were clothed, but in old-timey clothes mostly, some in blankets and such, lots of leather shoes and brimmed hats, the women mostly in dresses.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, grabbing me from behind, and I heard a voice, or not so much heard it as felt it in my head, and I knew it was him, or something like him but older, thousands of years old. Sorry man, nothin’ personal. Honestly, your name, just the first one came to mind. As soon as I heard-felt the words, everyone paused, staring at me, even the skinny naked kid, all of them looking at me and through me at the something behind me.

I heard the voice again, this time loud, present, right there in my ear, hot cigarette-breath and all, like it had always been talking and always would be talking, and I had just stepped into its stream of words like stepping into a river: …bricked up, you get small and you sort of get used to it, but then you remember being big and you feel the lines of the can pressing against your face, and when you wake up it’s not waking but just sitting here again. So if this is hell or some kind of other place isn’t the question, and who put you here is also not the question, because the person who put you here is here with you, all the way back the generations, Ezekiel back to Adam. But something even older, something keeping us at the base of the chimney, something we will sure as shit never know…

As the words continued, the hand with its ancient strong fingers gripped my shoulder tightly, and I stayed there in the dark space inside the dream, listening.

***

John K. Peck is a Berlin-based writer and musician. His fiction has appeared in Interzone, Pyre, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Cold Signal, Dark Horses, Glasgow Review of Books, and various anthologies, and his novelette “Evergreen”, cowritten with L. Mahler, is part of the Split Scream series from Tenebrous Press.