The Black Phone
by
Joe Hill
1.
The fat man on the other side of the road was about to
drop his groceries. He had a paper bag in each arm, and was
struggling to jam a key into the back door of his van.
Finney sat on the front steps of Poole's Hardware, a bottle
of grape soda in one hand, watching it all. The fat man was
going to lose his groceries the moment he got the door
open. The one in his left arm was already sliding free.
He wasn't any kind of fat, but grotesquely fat. His
head had been shaved to a glossy polish, and there were two
plump folds of skin where his neck met the base of his
skull. He wore a loud Hawaiian shirt – toucans nestled
among hanging creepers – although it was too cool for
short-sleeves. The wind had a brisk edge, so that Finney
was always hunching and turning his face away from it. He
wasn't dressed for the weather either. It would've made
more sense for him to wait for his father inside, only John
Finney didn't like the way old Tremont Poole was always
eyeballing him, half-glaring, as if he expected him to
7,250 Words
break or shoplift something. Finney only went in for grape
soda, which he had to have, it was an addiction.
The lock popped and the rear door of the van sprang
open. What happened next was such a perfect bit of
slapstick it might have been practiced – and only later did
it occur to Finney that probably it had been. The back of
the van contained a gathering of balloons, and the moment
the door was open, they shoved their way out in a jostling
mass... thrusting themselves at the fat man, who reacted as
if he had no idea they would be there. He leaped back. The
bag under his left arm fell, hit the ground, split open.
Oranges rolled crazily this way and that. The fat man
wobbled and his sunglasses slipped off his face. He
recovered and hopped on his toes, snatching at the
balloons, but it was already too late, they were sailing
away, out of reach.
The fat man cursed and waved a hand at them in a
gesture of angry dismissal. He turned away, squinted at the
ground and then sank to his knees. He set his other bag in
the back of the van and began to explore the pavement with
his hands, feeling for his glasses. He put a hand down on
an egg, which splintered beneath his palm. He grimaced,
shook his hand in the air. Shiny strings of egg white
spattered off it.
By then, Finney was already trotting across the road,
left his soda behind on the stoop. "Help mister?"
The Black Phone... 2
The fat man peered blearily up at him without seeming
to see him. "Did you observe that bullshit?"
Finney glanced down the road. The balloons were thirty
feet off the ground by now, following the double line along
the middle of the road. They were black... all of them, as
black as sealskin.
"Yeah. Yeah, I –" he said, and then his voice trailed
off and he frowned, watching the balloons bobbing into the
low overcast of the sky. The sight of them disturbed him in
some way. No one wanted black balloons; what were they good
for, anyway? Festive funerals? He stared, briefly
transfixed, thinking of poisoned grapes. He moved his
tongue around in his mouth, and noticed for the first time
that his beloved grape soda left a disagreeable metallic
aftertaste, a taste like he had been chewing an exposed
copper wire.
The fat man brought him out of it. "See my glasses?"
Finney lowered himself to one knee, leaned forward to
look beneath the van. The fat man's glasses were under the
bumper.
"Got 'em," he said, stretching an arm past the fat
man's leg to pick them up. "What were the balloons for?"
"I'm a part-time clown," said the fat man. He was
reaching into the van, getting something out of the paper
bag he had set down there. "Call me Al. Hey, you want to
see something funny?"
The Black Phone... 3
Finney glanced up, had time to see Al holding a steel
can, yellow and black, with pictures of wasps on it. He was
shaking it furiously. Finney began to smile, had the wild
idea that Al was about to spray him with silly string.
The part-time clown hit him in the face with a blast
of white foam. Finney started to turn his head away, but
was too slow to avoid getting it in his eyes. He screamed
and took some in the mouth, tasted something harsh and
chemical. His eyes were coals, cooking in their sockets.
His throat burned, in his entire life he had never felt any
pain like it, a searing icy-heat. His stomach heaved and
the grape soda came back up in a hot, sweet rush.
Al had him by the back of the neck and was pulling him
forward, into the van. Finney's eyes were open but all he
could see were pulsations of orange and oily brown that
flared, dripped, ran into one another and faded. The fat
man had a fistful of his hair and another hand between his
legs, scooping him up by the crotch. The inside of Al's arm
brushed his cheek. Finney turned his head and bit down on a
mouthful of wobbling fat, squeezed until he tasted blood.
The fat man wailed and let go and for a moment Finney
had his feet on the ground again. He stepped back and put
his heel on an orange. His ankle folded. He tottered,
almost fell and then the fat man had him by the neck again.
He shoved him forward. Finney hit one of the van's rear
doors, head-first, with a low bonging sound, and all the
strength went out of his legs.
The Black Phone... 4
