They weren’t singing in English, so Ginnie turned to her dad. “What’s the song about?”
Dad cleared his throat. “Oh, it’s, uh, it’s too fast for me to understand, sweetie. Probably about a boyfriend and girlfriend.”
He sounded amused. Ginnie eyed him with suspicion, but her dad wasn’t smiling, so she relaxed, satisfied that she wasn’t being laughed at. “Oh.”
“How about we listen to the oldies station? We should hear a couple of songs before we get home,” Mother suggested.
Dad smiled. “Good idea.” He reached for the radio dial, but his hand froze in mid-air.
The singing abruptly stopped. Into the thick silence an eerie crooning rose, causing the hairs on Ginnie’s arm to stand straight up.
She craned her neck, but her head didn’t even top the seat so all that she saw was blue-black vinyl patched with duct tape. Ginnie squirmed, tugging at her seat belt, but she failed to create any wriggle room. She couldn’t see what was happening behind her, why the men were so quiet, and what was making that weird noise.
Ginnie shivered and wrapped her thin arms around her body.
One of the men banged on the rear window. “Drive faster, sir!”
Dad peered into the rear-view mirror. He cursed and the truck jolted forward. Ginnie’s seat belt pressed against her stomach. She kept her eyes focused on the solid lights that represented her house. The lights were getting closer, but, as she’d heard her mother complain many times, the truck was old and didn’t go very fast. It would take awhile to get home.
Despite the increased speed of the truck, the crooning grew louder, and Ginnie knew that whatever was making the noise was getting closer. Close enough that her ears parsed the sound better, and she realized that she was hearing howling, not crooning.
Her stomach felt strange, knotted and hard, like it had before her piano recital. She opened her mouth to ask, “what was making the noise,” but nothing came out.
“We’re in a car, we’re supposed to be safe,” Mother said. “Michael’s back there.”
Hearing the quiver in her mother’s voice, Ginnie looked over. Her mother’s teeth clamped her bottom lip; a drop of blood trickled down her chin.
The choir of howls encased the truck in cotton batting, creating a surreal world for the truck and its passengers. Baby John’s tiny face was scrunched into a ferocious scowl, the one he made when he screeched with anger. Ginnie knew she should have been able to hear him, but she didn’t.
Something thumped in the back, and there was a distinct sensation of sinking. One of the men screamed, the shrill sound piercing the auditory fog.
“They’re jumping aboard,” Dad hunched over the steering wheel.
Something banged into her mother’s door. Ginnie flinched. “Ginnie,” her mother said, slamming her hand down on the lock, “undo your belt.” The something banged into the door again, which distended into a vaguely animal shape. The truck swerved.
Ginnie’s fingers felt fat and far away from her body and she couldn’t grasp the buckle.
“Ginnie!” her mother snapped.
“I can’t! I don’t know how!” Ginnie wailed. Her eyes burned and her throat ached, and her ears rang with the sounds of screams and snarls and wet, ripping noises.
Then her mother’s fingers, cool and strong, brushed Ginnie’s fat, useless fingers aside. The belt unsnapped with a smart click. “Get on the floor,” her mother instructed. “Now.”
Ginnie crawled down around her mother’s knees and curled into a ball, squeezing into the small space. “Here, hold your brother,” her mother’s voice drifted down and Ginnie found herself clutching Baby John.
She cradled the infant against her chest, ears pricked, concentrating on the sounds from above. Yelling, a lot of yelling, and metallic bangs convinced Ginnie that she didn’t want to see anything happening in the truck, but when the sharp tinkle of glass rang out, a chill crept up her back. What if Mother and Dad were hurt?
Biting her lip, Ginnie wedged Baby John into the corner with the cider jug and casserole dish. His face had become an interesting shade of purple, and Ginnie wondered if her baby brother would scream until something popped. She patted him, making sure he wouldn’t roll out of his corner, and twisted her legs underneath her. Once kneeling, she leaned forward and peered over the edge of the seat.
The angle wasn’t good, but Ginnie could see plenty. Her mother huddled in the corner of the cab, blood trickling down her cheek from a narrow cut. The back window was broken; shards of glass were scattered over the seat.
As Ginnie gawped at the jagged hole, two gigantic gray paws curled over the edges of the opening. A wolf (not a coyote, too big) thrust its shaggy, silver head into the cab, snarling and snapping its jaws. Ginnie’s mother shouted and smacked its nose with the flat of her hand. The wolf drew back, blinking dirty orange (moon colored) eyes.
The wolf lunged again, coming farther into the cab, its teeth missing her dad’s shoulder by a hair. Ginnie shrieked, and the wolf turned towards her, rust eyes regarding her with the clinical detachment of children ripping the wings off flies. Its tongue snaked out and ran along its chops.
The wolf wanted to hurt her, she realized. It shifted its paws, preparing for another surge forward. Ginnie felt a prick in her side. She reached into her pocket and closed her fingers around the corn dolly. Rabbit’s foot. Good luck. Protection? She hurled the dolly at the wolf. It smacked against the wolf’s chest. Something sizzled. The wolf flinched and drew back with a low whine.
A dark shape appeared behind the wolf.
“Joseph,” Ginnie whispered.
The farm hand wrapped one arm around the wolf’s neck, stilling it, and drove a knife into the wolf’s chest. The wolf yelped, a sharp exclamation of pain and protest, dirty orange eyes wide with surprise, then slumped against the window.
Joseph shoved the carcass aside and leaned into the cab, avoiding the spikes of glass. “It was the last one! We managed to push the others off. They’ve fallen behind now.”
“Thank God,” Mother said.
“We will need silver to purify the bodies,” Joseph said.
Mother shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
The truck took a hard right turn, bounced along the driveway for a few seconds, then rolled to a stop. Ginnie rocked back onto her heels, then forward; her forehead bumped into the seat.
Mother and Dad immediately slid out of the truck. Ginnie pulled herself back onto the seat. Her eyes skimmed over the horror of the truck bed, then focused beyond and behind it. Several large four-legged animals milled at the end of the driveway. Their fur glinted orange in the moonlight. One wolf looked up, meeting her gaze; its mouth drew back into a snarl.
“Dad!”
He looked over his shoulder, mouth tightening when he saw the wolves. “They can’t come on our land, Ginnie. We’re safe.”
“Mind the baby,” Mother ordered as she shut her door.
Ginnie tore her eyes away from the animals, and forced herself to watch her parents as they joined Joseph on the lawn. She could see everything that was happening, and, thanks to the broken rear window, she could hear everything too.
Mother’s voice floated on the still night air. “Joseph—”
“The men think as I do,” he said, cutting her off. “It is Harvest night, and we aren’t the only beings preparing for winter.” All heads turned towards the road, where the wolves gathered. Ginnie thought that she could hear them snuffling like hounds searching for the trail. As one creature, the wolves sat back on their haunches and howled.
Joseph cleared his throat, dragging attention back to himself. “Purification is necessary, especially for those who were bitten.”
“I know that, Joseph.” Mother had assumed her don’t-try-to-lecture-me-Missy tone. “But given that we were attacked i
n a group, and none of us have set foot on public ground, I don’t believe that purification will work. Especially for those of us who are living. We followed the rules; we were supposed to be safe from Harvest.”
Ginnie gnawed on her lip. Rules? Public ground? Harvest?
Joseph stiffened. His eyebrows knit together in a disapproving scowl. “We will use standard purification procedures on the men who didn’t make it.” His voice was cold; Ginnie shivered, glad that Joseph wasn’t angry with her.
Mother sputtered, but Joseph continued in a low rumble. “As for the rest of us … I have a tincture which will purge the body. It will be … unpleasant … but it should work. Your son is injured. He will need to be purified as well.” He removed a small envelope from an inner pocket of his coat, and handed it to her mother. “I don’t travel on this night without it.”
Ginnie moaned. Michael was (bitten) hurt? By one of those … wolves?
Mother tried to put the envelope back into Joseph’s hand. “He doesn’t need this. He was just cut by the glass, like I was. I saw it.”
Joseph frowned. “That big one made a beeline for the boy. With all the blood, it would be safer—”
“If we were wrong about the conditions to ensure our safety,” Mother said, “then how can we be sure that the purification rituals are true? We could be wrong about those too! We could cause unnecessary pain to, to the living.”
“Of course they’re true,” Dad said, closing Mother’s fingers around the envelope. “Michael will take the treatment, and we’ll have to make up more for everyone else. Now, Joseph, about the unlucky ones…”
Joseph and her father stepped farther away from the truck, their heads bent close together. Ginnie couldn’t hear their words, so her attention wandered back to the truck. The farm hands were climbing out of the truck bed, many of them bleeding, but a couple didn’t move at all. Those still figures were dragged to the edge of the truck bed, passed down to the men waiting there, and then laid out on the ground. Puddles of blackness stained their throats and chests. One of the unmoving men was the dancing farm hand. Ginnie gulped.
Her mother seemed oblivious both to the solemn farm hands and the intense discussion between Dad and Joseph. She fluttered around Michael. Blood oozed down his cheek. “Are you all right, Michael? Let me see that cut.” Mother fished a tissue out of a pocket and wiped his face. “I was right; it’s just a scratch.” She glanced over her shoulder at Joseph and Dad.
She turned back to Michael. “I don’t think you’ll even need … stitches. Here, let’s take you to bed, Okay? I’ll fix you a mug of warm milk; it’ll help you sleep.” She stuffed into her pocket the envelope that Joseph had given to her. Mother wrapped an arm around Michael’s shoulder and led him to the house, her voice fading to a murmur.
Ginnie watched them enter the house, peeked down at Baby John, who gurgled at her, and then resumed observing the others through the broken window. The men hadn’t bothered with the wolf carcass. It lay in a careless heap in the corner of the truck.
The wolf, the dead wolf, shone. Ginnie inched closer to the hole in the window and cautiously poked her head out. The wolf’s body flickered and thinned, becoming more of a silvery patch of light instead of a silver bundle of fur and flesh with every passing moment. In a few seconds, the wolf dissipated, and nothing remained where it had lain but a brilliant moonbeam.
Ginnie tried to scream, but a hoarse whine was all her throat could manage. She gawked at the spot where the body had been, then looked beyond the tailgate to the road. The wolves stared at her, before they too dissolved into the night sky, their rusty eyes the last to fade away.
Ginnie whipped around to stare at the moon through the windshield. It was still full and orange, the dark spots that made up its face small bloodstains that dotted the surface. As Ginnie watched, the dark spots rearranged themselves and, suddenly, it was a wolf’s face grinning down at her, tongue lolling out of its mouth.
Ginnie screamed.
Now she was the one being fussed over. The door swung open and several pairs of hands carried her out, everyone asking: “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
And urgently, someone — her dad? Joseph? —demanded, “Where did the wolf go?”
Ginnie could see it in her mind, the wolves, both dead and alive, evaporating in the moonlight, but how could she explain that the moon had somehow absorbed the wolves? That the wolves were the moon? “Disappeared,” she mumbled. “It disappeared.”
“Maybe it wasn’t dead after all,” her dad said, pushing her hair out of her face, petting her arms, checking for injuries.
“Perhaps,” said Joseph, but he sounded doubtful. He looked uneasily at the moon.
Then Mother returned, and ushered Ginnie into the house. A saucepan of warm milk sat on the stove. Mother poured some into a mug and handed it to Ginnie. “Drink this while I put Baby John to bed.”
Ginnie drank quickly. Without cocoa, warm milk didn’t taste so good. She placed her empty mug in the sink. Strange herbs rested in a neat heap in the porcelain basin. Michael’s mug also sat in the sink, traces of milk, nothing else, ringing the bottom of the mug. Ginnie stared at it for a few seconds, her face blank, before returning to her chair.
Her mother returned, walked with Ginnie upstairs and tucked her into bed.
A few gunshots roared outside.
Her mother sighed and glanced out the window. “Unfortunate, but necessary. Cremation is the next step, I suppose, for their families’ sake. Ours too. We can’t have any awkward questions about posthumous wounds.”
Ginnie nodded, even though she didn’t know all the big words.
“An outsider, Ginnie, would call us primitive,” her mother continued with a wobbly smile. “They’d look at the silver bullets and laugh. But we know better, don’t we?” She turned away from the window and muttered, “Or we thought we did.”
Mother took something out of her pocket. “You forgot this.” She placed the corn dolly on the bed next to Ginnie. The doll’s face had blackened. Bits of yarn had melted, becoming hard and shiny. “It brings luck,” Mother said, smoothing her hand over Ginnie’s brow. “One thing that worked like it was supposed to. Try to get some sleep, sweetie. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”
Ginnie listened to her mother go downstairs and re-enter the kitchen. In the quiet house, the gush of water roared from the faucet like river rapids. The herbs. Ginnie shuddered.
She yanked the covers over her head so that she wouldn’t see the moonlight shining through the window, cutting an orange swath through her bedroom. The thick blankets also muffled noise: the sound of Michael, in the room next to hers, talking to the moon.
Heat Death ~ or ~ Answering the Ouroboros Question
Patrick Johanneson
The ferret draped around my shoulders farted, and I laughed. One of the toga-clad old men turned to glare at me. I grinned back as widely as I could, showing him how I still had all my teeth. Disgusted, he turned back to his conversation. I could just guess what they were discussing in hushed voices: Why are we here? Who came first? Did we make man, or did man make us?
You’d think after man vanished, that’d be the end of that line of questioning. You’d be wrong, I’m afraid. The old chicken-or-the-egg conversation is about the only one most of these hoary old fuckers seem to be interested in having. No matter how often I point out that it’s plainly an ouroboros of a question, a snake endlessly eating its own tail — not to mention it’s irrelevant besides — they insist on discussing it.
Gods. You gotta love ‘em.
I snapped my fingers and made fire. “Hey,” I said to my ferret. “Remember when I gave fire to Prometheus?”
He yawned with a movement that threatened to unhinge his jaws, then smacked his lips. Ignoring my question, he said, “I’m hungry.”
I glanced around. A golem w
as approaching, carrying a tray piled high with organs: the livers of jaguars, the spleens of skunks, the tiny hearts of shrews. I made for it, brushing past one of the philosopher gods as I went. I touched my flaming middle finger to his linens as I passed.
“Ah,” said my ferret, as the golem stopped and bowed my way, “lovely.” He dipped his sharp snout into the carnate pyramid and came out with a veined globe clutched in his teeth, a minotaur’s testicle. It made a distressing snapping sound as he bit down.
Behind me, angry voices rose. I looked back over my shoulder. Through ferret hair I could see that the god whose robe I’d lit was now wreathed in flames, his toga nothing but blackened rags hanging on his unblemished, unimpeachable alabaster skin. He looked very angry indeed.
“Remember when I gave fire to Prometheus?” I said again, walking faster.
“As I recall,” said my ferret, chewing with his mouth open, “you stole fire from the People, because you thought it’d be funny to let ‘em freeze in the winter like the other animals. But then Mother Thunder came to you, angry, and you—”
“Yes, enough,” I said.
I risked another glance back. One of the Roman gods had made a little rain cloud above his flaming peer. Somehow it had failed to improve his mood. I didn’t get it. Who didn’t like being naked and wet?
“As I recall, you pissed yourself.”
“I was a fox,” I said. “Of course I pissed myself. All the time I pissed anywhere I—”
“You know what I mean,” said my ferret.
“I think you need to shut up now,” I said.
A bolt of lightning sizzled by overhead. I wasn’t sure if that was bad aim or a mere warning, and I didn’t plan to stick around to find out.
“Besides, nobody gave fire to Prometheus. He stole—”
“Seriously, shut up.”
“Whatever,” he said, swallowing the last of the testicle. He laid his head down and began to snore.
Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories Page 9