New Year's Eve

There was a knock on the door. My stomach turned. I sat, motionless in the dark. A second knock, just one short rap, thudded softly on the door. I swallowed hard. And waited. Silence. For a moment, I was sure I’d been hearing things. There hadn’t been any knocks. And then it came again, like a bell tolling in the distance. A single knock on my door. It echoed in my mind like a scream in a cave. Without even thinking, I stood and walked over to it. The peephole was dark. Nothing out there. Just my imagination. Then something in that convoluted glass eye moved. Just slightly. I nearly jumped out of my slippers as the fourth knock broke the silence again. I could feel a drop of piss tickling the tip of my prick. No, my imagination was not playing games. Not this time.
I saw the black car for the first time three years ago. I had recently picked up the habit of smoking. It wasn’t heavy yet. But after that night, it quickly had become the center of my tiny little life. Since then, I’ve smoked two packs a day. You would too if you’d seen what I’d seen that night.
I’d walked out onto my back porch, lit up, and looked at my watch. The illuminated face of it told me it was three minutes till midnight. Three minutes till midnight of the New Year. 2000 was quickly fading into just a distant memory and 2001 was just a drop in the bucket away. And I was newly acquainted with the joys of smoking. And the pains. If only I’d just walked into my house then, a minute before the ball would drop, as the last ashes of my cigarette flew away in the wind. Of course, I didn’t.
It had been quiet. Deathly quiet. And then, all at once, from the distance came the inevitable hoops and hollers that accompany the night air on every cold New Years Eve. Five quick shots of noise erupted into the air from three blocks over. I told myself it wasn’t gunfire, but surely it was. It unsettled me. But lighting up again would quickly dissipate that. And so I did. Why not ring in the New Year with one more smoke? What would it hurt? I’d quit that very week, still able to do such a thing being so new at it. Just one more smoke.
It had been one too many. The gunfire had been early. My watch told me the ball wouldn’t fall for another minute. I smiled in spite of myself as I held the lighter up to the tobacco roll jutting from my mouth. And that is when the car rolled around the corner onto my stretch of road. It wasn’t necessarily a nice car. Just some sedan. The windows were dark. I told myself then that it was nighttime. Of course the windows were dark. But they weren’t just dark. They were smoked. They were tinted. Looking into them was like looking at the night sky, only one without stars.
It sat there idling for a moment. And slowly, the passenger door facing away from me opened. And out stepped a man clad in a suit. The porch light from the apartment facing the back of mine streamed out over him and the car. But all I could see was his frame, silhouetted darkly in the light. I assumed it was a man from the build, not to mention the cigar dimly glowing four inches from his hidden face. His white hair momentarily lifted in the wind from under a black fedora. The image of some big city kingpin drifted through my mind.
I watched, slowly dragging on my cigarette as he strode up to the lighted front door before him. He raised a hand, and before he let it fall, seemed to glance for a moment over his right shoulder. A shudder ran through my body. His face was still dark. His white hair picked up again in the soft early morning breeze of the New Year. His hand fell on the door before it once. He stood there a moment. Nothing happened. Exhaust fumes rose lazily in the night air from the idling car. I took another drag on my cigarette, then half gone.
He raised his hand again and knocked. Still no answer. He knocked a third time, and then a fourth. I watched patiently as he glanced over his shoulder in my direction again, another chill racing down my spine. I was intrigued. He put a hand in his left interior coat pocket and pulled out what must have been a watch on a chain. After consulting it for a moment, and then nodding his head once, he placed it back in its pocket, and lowered his hand to the doorknob.
A moment later, the door stood wide open, only the dimness of a bedroom light above illuminating the room within. He stepped in, and the door closed behind him. I waited and watched. The car sat, still idling, below. Nothing moved, not even the breeze that had moved his stringy hair. I flicked my spent cigarette to the ground twelve feet below and started to turn to my own door, ready for another drink and a quick flip through the channels to witness the birth of a new year across the world.
And just then, the door to the apartment across the way opened again. I could hear the turn of the knob like it was the drop of a pin in a sound proof room. Looking back, I watched as the man exited the apartment he’d just waltzed into. And now, I could see his face, clear as day. The same white hair poured out from under the brim of his hat around long thin cheeks. The brim covered his eyes, but from the nose down, he was a waxy white. His lips were a rose red, as if he were wearing makeup. And he stopped as the door shut behind him.
I held my breath as he looked up at me. His cheekbones were skeletal. His nose was long and severe. And as his eyes came into view, his lips curled into a ghastly smile, revealing dozens of glaringly white teeth. And they weren’t dull at the ends like a normal person’s. They were jagged, sharp, the teeth of a shark. He lifted his head and hand in one slow motion, pulling his hat off as he did. If the mouth had scared me, the eyes paralyzed me. They were an empty black, like the color of the car, like the color of his suit, like the color of the night sky, only deeper. My bladder screamed at me, and maybe that was what saved me.
I slowly backed away from the glance of that horrible wraith until I hit the solid wall and door of my apartment. I grasped blindly at the knob there, and finding it, turned it with the strength of an enraged gorilla. I nearly fell flat on my ass into my kitchen. Once I had regained my stance, I stepped forward again, not wanting to see those eyes, but wanting to all the same. And the car, with its mysterious passenger, was gone. I hadn’t even heard the squeal of the car moving in reverse as it backed down my drive and onto the short road that would take it back out to the main road. It was gone.
And that was just fine. I put myself back together, relieved myself in the toilet, and trudged upstairs with a bottle of rum in my hands. Forget the coke to mix it with, what I needed then were a few quick shots of courage, and the rum would do just the trick.
The next morning, I woke up with a splitting headache. No mystery there. I’d finished off the bottle I’d bought that very New Year’s evening. It was nearly one o’clock. I went about my way; sobering up as best I could with a hot shower and a half dozen cups of coffee. I’d nearly forgotten the events of the previous evening when I stepped out onto the back porch for another smoke. And then memory flooded back like a ghost at the doorstep.
Below me were four cop cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck, lights whirling in the afternoon glare. I was thunderstruck. The apartment door across from my own was wide open. The same door the creepy man had entered and exited the night before. Something had gone terribly wrong.
Four paramedics slowly walked out onto the porch forty feet away, and behind them, a gurney followed. Upon it was a white sheet thrown carefully over a body-shaped bulge. The wind picked up just then, my luck, and tossed the sheet up just enough for me to see the lower half of an arm. The wrist on it had been cut, longwise. A medic quickly covered it up again as another wheeled the gurney onto the ambulance.
The ambulance departed, no lights or siren, followed by the cop cars, and finally the fire truck. I stood shaking with fear all over. There had only been two cigarettes left in my pack then. I rushed right out and bought two more packs, and had the first smoked by the dawn of the next day.
After that, I slowed my smoking a bit. I fell back into my routine of work and school. After a while, and after telling a few people at work and in class what I’d seen, the memory of that night faded, and I wondered if it had really happened at all. I’d gotten the paper that day, January 1st, with my smokes. Something inside told me I should. On the front page, big black letters told me all I needed to know. LOCAL GIRL KILLS HERSELF ON NEW YEAR’S EVE. I didn’t even read the article.
And a month later, it was old news, and I was too busy with schoolwork and the boring night shift at the nearest seven eleven to worry about it any more. It was just one of those things that happened. That was all. Case closed. Or so I thought.
Four knocks, that’s all the guy had landed on the door before he tried it. This thought races through my mind as I stand inches away from my door, four knocks down. I quickly back away and my ankles collide with the lowest step on the stairway behind me. And I’m up them. I don’t turn and look back as I hear the doorknob turn below. I just keep going. And now I’m shutting the door to my room. It’s dark, and maybe it should stay that way. My roommate’s door is shut too, maybe that will throw him off. Or maybe it will just give me a false sense of security. Either way, it may buy me a few extra seconds to gather my thoughts. If only my roommate was here.
The second time I saw the car, and the man in it, was the next New Years Eve. I’d strolled out onto my front porch, being in a new apartment, and subconsciously wary of smoking on the back porch, go figure, to light up a cigarette. This time around, there was a party going on next door, and there were other people on the porch with me. I shared a cigarette with some frat guy who was telling his life story to every one nearby. I wasn’t paying attention. Thoughts of the previous new years were on my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about those eyes, and the crooked smile. I was about to share my story when something caught my eye, and caused my sphincter muscles to suddenly tighten.
The new place I lived at was between two hills. A parking lot dissected them, and from the porch, I could see the front doors of another complex on the hill closest to me. What sent shivers of cold through my body were headlights; the headlights of a black car, non-descript, maybe a sedan, driving slowly up the lane there. The car stopped in front of an apartment with its front porch light on. Smoke went down the wrong pipe and I coughed just as I was about to start my story.
I watched, sweat building on my temples, as a man clad in a black suit opened the door facing the apartment and stepped out into the night air. From under a black fedora hung stringy white hair. I nearly shit right then and there. I watched in panicked fear, as others watched me, whispering to one another about the weird guy from next door, as the man stepped up to the illuminated door a football field away. He knocked once. Twice. Thrice. And finally, a fourth time. No one came. And then he stepped in. I instinctively raised the cigarette in my hand to my mouth and pulled on it hard.
The crowd around me went back to their own conversations after at least a full minute of mute silence from their neighbor. I watched the apartment across the way with rapt horror. The same black car sat there, idling as it had the year before, black windows, white plume of exhaust rising into the night above. A few moments after he had entered, the man in the suit opened the door and stepped out again. And he paused on the first step of the porch as he made his way back to the car. From his interior suit pocket he pulled a long cigar, lit it, and puffed it solemnly.
He lifted his dark face up and looked from side to side. Then he raised his chin in the air and stuck his nose out, as if sniffing the air. A second later, his eyes were resting on me again. He grinned that same shark toothed grin. And this time, he lifted his long thin arm and pointed at me, smiling the whole time. He nodded, and quickly walked down the steps to his car. It pulled forward and vanished from sight around a corner. I realized later that week that the corner it had rounded ended in a dead end.
The paper the next day told me again all I needed to know. TWO FOUND DEAD, LOVERS QUARREL GONE BAD. This time I kept quiet. I didn’t mention the black car to anyone at work. After class, I talked about New Year’s resolutions with my classmates, while in the back of my mind two black eyes hovered above a razor sharp nose and a gaping grin. I spent most of the first week of that New Year in a drunken swoon. And my smoking habit picked up considerably.
I’m standing, ear pressed to my bedroom door, listening to the soft footfalls coming up the stairs. They mount the top and approach my door. It’s locked. Somehow, I don’t think it’ll matter. The squeal of old wood under two inches of carpet stops short three feet away. My intruder and I are separated by an inch of wood and a few feet of still air. I can feel my stomach turning, and I think the front of my jeans are growing a darker hue than they were a few minutes ago. And now, it sounds like something is coming close. I listen in horror as the man with white hair and eyes like pits presses his own ear against my door. Silence. And I step away.
The last time I saw the car and the ghost inside was a year ago. It was, three guesses, yep, you’re right, New Year’s Eve. After the last two, I figured staying home wasn’t the right thing to do. What better way to shake the inevitable visit from the waxy man than to go out to the nearest bar to do my drinking? That’s just what I did. There was no way I’d see anything there. It was a bar, for Christ’s sake!
But I saw him, and his car, all the same. I decided to get drunk early that night, and keep on drinking until someone hailed a taxi, or an ambulance, for me. I didn’t take a watch. I’d know when it was midnight. And the caterwauling of the patrons at the bar would be sound enough for me to know the new year had come, and that I was finally free of the horrid vision. I lost track of time, it seems, and my hourly habit needed fixing. So I stepped outside.
I don’t know why I went outside to smoke. It was a bar after all, and I’d smoked half a pack there already while sipping on martinis and cognac. But in a stupor, I did, not even realizing it was a couple of minutes till midnight. I walked a pace down the sidewalk to a sheltered spot around the corner of the bar where the wind wouldn’t catch the flam from my lighter, and lit up.
As I puffed away, dreamily watching the tendrils of smoke rise from my cig, I only half noticed a black car pull up into the driveway of a house a block down the road. I watched, not even thinking about the past two years, as a man in a black suit, cigar in his mouth, glowing dimly in the darkness, stepped out of this black car. I smiled, half realizing what I was seeing. It was the black man. I think I laughed. He half turned, glancing over his shoulder as I did. And the humor was lost. White hair, waxy white skin tightly covering jutting cheekbones. And a mouth, open on one side in a half grin. I waited and watched.
He walked calmly up to the lighted porch, leaned carefully over, snubbing his cigar on the cold concrete below. He studied it for a moment, and slid it into the interior pocket of his suit jacket. When he pulled his hand back out, he held a watch, dangling from a golden chain. He nodded his head, and knocked on the door. No answer. Three knocks later, he looked up at the second floor window and stepped in. A few moments later, he stood on the porch again.
This time, he didn’t look around, he didn’t sniff the air, he just looked straight at me. And this time, there was no smile. This time, the red lips looked a bit smeared. This time, blood was dripping from his chin. I puked up four shots of fine cognac and three of vodka onto the wet pavement below. When I looked back up, the black car and the man were gone. In spite of my emptied stomach and the swimming feeling in my head, I lit up another cigarette and laughed white smoke into the air. Then I lit up another, and another. I finished the remainder of the pack before I slumped back in to order another double shot of vodka. I woke up the next day in the hospital.
A stomach pump and fluid drip later, I was fine, except for the splitting headache and a numbness that pervaded my body from my feet up. The beautiful candy striper in charge of my dirties managed to swipe me a copy of the daily paper. MAN FOUND DEAD FROM SELF INFLICTED GUNSHOT WOUND. I wasn’t laughing any more.
And I’m not laughing now. Now I’m sifting through the top drawer of my desk. I quit smoking two months ago. But here, in the top drawer, I’ve found a half pack of camels. And now I’m lighting up. The knob on my bedroom door is turning. I’m dragging as hard as I can on the cigarette in my mouth, holding back the spasm my lungs are trying to push out of me. And the door is slowly opening. And there he is, black eyes, white hair, fedora off, cigar in his bony right hand. And he’s grinning at me like a shark…

Front-page title from Bloomington Herald Times, January 1, 2003:

APARTMENT COMPLEX BURNS TO GROUND, ONE FOUND DEAD