The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson

Author:Brian Evenson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-56689-266-7
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2010-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

At first, through the windows, she could see a fine snow, tiny flakes drifting in the air without settling, the air bitter cold. Quarter to five. She tore another piece of tape off the roll, creased the paper, folded it. “Next,” she said.

When she had finished wrapping—board games, scriptures, inspirational tapes, even a book or two, lines from nine in the morning until six when the bookstore closed—she walked out through the Wilkinson Center, past the theater, down the stairs and past the flower shop, under the awning and out into the open air.

She crossed the street to her car, one of the few left in the lot. She got in, turned on the car, then sat there. Snow was coming down quicker now and gathering on the glass. She could not bring herself to drive. What’s wrong with me? she wondered. The snow gathered until she could see nothing, the car enclosed and silent, the whole of the world outside blotted out. There was nothing but herself and the interior of the car. She found the thought alarming and flicked the windshield wipers once, the snow scraping back. Yet the glass was so fogged within that it was still difficult to see. She brought her hand to the gear shift, but already the snow had begun to fill in the windshield and, as it did so, she was again unable to bring herself to drive.

Why is it? she thought. And then, What is it about parking lots?

And, What if he comes after me?

Who?

The one who came after my family.

And who was he?

I don’t know.

She had been worried for Rudd because he had seen the killer. Rudd knew. Or might know. But what of her? She was the only member of her family left. If the killer had meant to kill her father and mother and sister, if this was not some random crime or accident of fate, then there was every reason to believe he might come after her. Yet the police had immediately assumed the crime was random, had never given her a guard, had done nothing, not a thing, to protect her. Anyone could kill her at any time.

She remembered, in the other parking lot, the odd procession of the dead she had seen—her father, her mother, her sister, and finally Rudd, not dead, lagging behind, though when she had first seen it she thought it meant that Rudd too had died. Were she to open her door here, in this parking lot, would she see them again?

She tried again to drive the car, again could not bring herself to do so. A white haze hung before her eyes and even when she cleared the windshield again it was still there, and she was uncertain whether it came from outside or from within, or somehow both. She could hear, through the wind, the voice of her father, slight, almost indiscernible, yet somehow there. Or was it her father? Perhaps it was not him at all but the killer, or maybe just the wind.

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