by Jeffrey Ford
“He’s got mythic qualities,” I told her. The monster nodded without lowering his arms.
“He smells like an epic shit. I can’t believe you can stand the smell of him. Move it along.” She looked directly at me and then her gaze went slowly out across the field toward the old white garage and she winked. “Unload this walking turd and get back here for dinner. Hurry up.”
I turned to the monster and apologized for my wife calling him a walking turd. He shrugged and said, “Not uncalled for by any means.”
We stood out front for a few minutes, and I made as if I was unsure if I wanted to take the journey. When he started to get impatient, reminding me I had promised to go, I said, “Come to the garage with me. I have an ATV in there that we can take out into the woods. We’ll go see your deal and then I can get home quick.”
“I do have an appointment to break a priest’s legs this evening, so if we could pick up the pace, that would be fine,” he said.
We headed for the garage, a big building at the edge of the field beneath a white oak. I let him lead the way. “Your wife is lovely,” he said. I quietly laughed. He opened the whitewashed door and stepped into the dark. “Hey, where’s the light switch?” he asked. An instant later I heard him get wacked by whatever she wacked him with. I guessed it was that big plumber’s wrench just by a twinge of a metallic ding as it cracked his skull. He went down like an eight-foot furry sirloin and slapped the cement floor. We worked together and had him strung up in chains in no time. In the middle of the garage there was a large hole dug through the concrete and fifteen feet into the ground. Lynn emptied a can of lighter fluid into the hole. We shared a cig, discussing the clean, accurate blow to his head. Before the smoke was out, I tossed it into the pit. The flames took and in no time he was awake and in agony at the melting of his flesh. The screams kept up for a while. The whole thing really stunk.
Right when we thought he was finished, and things simmered down to a sizzle and an occasional pop, Lynn called me over to the rim of the pit. She had been inspecting the remains from above with a powerful flashlight. I joined her at the edge and she said, “What’s happening?” I squinted and could see in the harsh beam that the charcoal remains of the local monster were splitting open. “We’ve done three of them so far, and none of them before has done this after roasting for forty-five minutes,” I said.
“Yeah, this ain’t right.”
“Do you have the gun?” I asked.
She pulled it out of her pocket, and as she did, the remains of the local monster, a flame-blackened shell, split open, and something quick as a wink shot out and hovered up by the rafters. It was red, with a long, flickering tongue.
“Oh shit,” I said. “It’s Monster Eight.”
“No.”
“Plug it,” I yelled. She fired, and her shot went wide through the roof. I grabbed her arm as we made for the door of the garage. It chased us out across the field toward the house. Lynn stopped twice in our escape and each time fired a shot at it. It seemed she hit it twice, as it was bounced back through the sky a few yards with the impact of each bullet. We ducked into the house, ran upstairs to our small library, and shut the door. I pulled the copy of The Marble Dance in the first bookcase to our right, and the shelves opened like a door. We ducked and stepped into the darkness, and the bookcase closed behind us. In that cramped space, we held each other. Only once we were in there did it become clear that we should have left the gun outside. We heard him enter the room and heard him draw a chair up next to the shelves we were behind. The flow of his reasoning was such that I was already convinced about early inconsequential points in an argument for suicide before I realized he was speaking at all. His bleak message was relentless. We each closed our eyes, drew nearer, and staked our love against his monstrous powers.
Inn of the Dreaming Dog
Start in a car and drive due west till your money for gas runs out or the vehicle fails, shedding parts, coughing, jerking to a standstill, hissing steam into the blue. Then you can hire a guide to take you on foot over the snowcapped purple mountains. The peaks are so tall and so treacherous and teeming with creatures who feast upon weary travelers.
In the past there were a number of guides to choose from, and the price wasn’t too dear, but the mountain eventually took all their lives but one. The one that remains, a brooding fellow known as the Misanthrope, is the most accomplished guide of any who has ever traversed the treacherous way. But now he tells his customers, “This may be my last trip.” They ask if he is planning to retire, and he scowls and says, “No, die!” The customer finds this frightful news and says, “What’ll happen to me if you pass away on the mountain?” “Should I care?” roars the Misanthrope.
Then the customer gets a good look at their guide and sees that Gaspar Maloney, master navigator through the purple mountains, is so old that a big patch of skin on the left side of his face has turned to leather, his hair to straw, and his eyes are cracked and yellowed as ancient ivory. When he speaks, a black sand like pepper blows out of his mouth, the disintegrating detritus of his weakest organ, the heart.
Gas, as all know him, of course, charges a higher price once he becomes the sole guide. It isn’t money he wants, though. He never goes to town, buys almost nothing, but resides in a cabin at the base of the mountains, living off the bounty of the land. What he asks in payment is the customer’s pinky finger. The price really doesn’t make any sense. If money is useless to him, what good is a cut-off pinky finger going to be? For certain, people try to argue him out of it by offering a horse, a pistol, a lifetime supply of steaks. Nothing makes a difference. If you want to have as good a chance as you can get in arriving alive at the Inn of the Dreaming Dog, you have to resign yourself to one less finger.
All payment is up front. Gas’s method for removing the digit involves a rusty pair of garden clippers. The ritual takes place inside the hollowed-out trunk of an enormous tree, whose branches tear at the clouds and rings lead back to the origin of everything. Just before reaching for the clippers, Gas lights a big fat cigar of rolled foxglove petals. He puffs it up and gets it smoking with a red-hot ash. The patient gets an old piece of boot sole to bite on. Then snip, crunch, a spurt of blood, and the sad little appendage falls into a bucket of chopped-off fingers. Gas grabs the throbbing wrist and lifts your arm. With his free hand, he jams the end of the cigar onto the fresh wound and seals it with a sizzle.
What this whole bizarre operation points to is just how badly those who are traveling want to reach the inn. And so, the next morning, with a phantom finger screaming in agony, you set out, following Gas up through the yellow leaves of the birch stands on the eastern side of the mountain. One is right to wonder why such a treacherous journey is undertaken in late autumn. Winter must play a part. When asked about the season, Gas, if he answers at all, says, “The cold is cleanly.” The ascent is steep, but the guide knows a secret path that takes his party inside the mountain. There they find steps and a handrail carved from the very rock. All along the interior passage are ancient paintings of fantastic beasts and men in bird masks.
Ask Gas Maloney the meaning of any of it and he’ll reply, “From the dawn of time there’s been no shortage of ways that folks have found to waste their precious hours.” Still, to the untrained, unaccustomed eye, the work of the bygone artists is beautiful, one surprise after another. In the torchlight, the colorful forms appear to move. Certain travelers attest to the fact that they most definitely heard the sounds of breathing all around them, and when bedding down at night on one of the occasional landings among the seemingly infinite steps, they were awoken by far-off echoing screams. It could all have been in the mind, but then why would a startled traveler, torn from sleep, open their eyes on a scene of Gas, shivering, holding a lit torch, his pistol at the ready?
Another day in the darkness, climbing the throat of the mountain, and they reach the mouth, so to speak, and are regurgitated o
ut somewhere above the tree line. The winds are brutal there, the sky, nothing but blue. And the snow is hip deep at least. This is where if someone on the journey, a husband or wife or partner, any member of a party, is holding up the progress of said pilgrims, Gas makes sure they meet with a fatal accident. Usually a fall into the spiral ice crater it takes a day to hike around. If the remaining members of the party grouse about it, he gets in their faces and yells, “Shut yer pie hole.” If you don’t, an ice pick to the forehead is his strategy.
On his journeys back and forth from his cabin to the inn, he often passes the remains of his victims. His justification is, “If you can’t cut it, you don’t deserve to visit the inn.” The words spill over his blistered lips. The way he escapes prosecution is that those who plan to visit the inn have no intention of ever returning. So, whether they are enjoying the sublime stillness of Willow Pond or rotting at the bottom of an ice fissure, it’s all the same to the outside world. Though he hates them all equally, Gas is committed to getting those who can withstand the rigors of the journey to their destination and has safely delivered far more than he has extemporaneously dispatched.
And just think, say you actually happen to be on Gas’s last trek. It’s you and the old guide, and you’ve made it to the downhill winter slope that leads to the valley of the inn, and right there in the thinning snow of your descent, he goes over hard like five sacks of potatoes off the back of a truck, dead before he hits the ground. What will you do? You might try to go back, but even in your frightened state you know that will be certain death. Besides, you’ve promised your wife or husband or partner that you would meet up at the Inn of the Dreaming Dog. You might fall into despair, but instinctively you know what’s at the end of that trail. No, I imagine you’ll frantically pull yourself together and continue on. But first, will you bury Gaspar Maloney? Or leave him to the wolves and snow rats? Bury him?
No, of course not. You’ve never let on, let him see it or feel it, but you’ve despised him every step of the way. You feared for the entire journey to close your eyes at night at the thought of what he might do to you. The thing foremost on your mind is that leather patch of his face—cracked, rough, the colors of reptiles—you pray, and you’re not particularly religious, that you might never have to touch it for eternity. In fact, you flee the Misanthrope’s corpse for fear he might find a trail back to life. Just admit it and let’s move on. Down you go, all the way down.
Just past the tree line, having finally left the snow behind, you can see the lush green of the valley below, smell its bouquet of pine, mountain laurel, flowering dogwood, and snapdragon. As you descend, you hurry, anxious to see your loved one, anxious to be not alone anymore, but your hurry makes you lose your step and you pitch forward into a roll and slide and bounce down the mountain. A mile or more you careen, getting the stuffing knocked out of you, and are finally abruptly stopped by the massive trunk of a cedar.
From then on, realizing yourself lucky not to be dead, you rise and stagger forward. There are no stores left in your pack by then. You’re thirsty when you finally discover the dirt road that leads to the inn. Or at least you hope it leads to the inn. Somewhere around midnight, about to fall down from exhaustion, you use your last match in order to read the words on the first sign post you’ve come to. There is an arrow pointing down the road and the words Inn of the Dreaming Dog are sloppily carved.
The next day after rising, you may find wild blueberries along the side of the road or if you still have enough energy left you might hunt down a squirrel with your ice axe, given you’ve kept it until this point and not tossed it to lighten your load. But let’s not forget the time it will take for you to have skinned it. Too much time. You’ll be wanting to get to the inn before sundown. You’re Achilles tendon is aching from your having run in your dreams, chased by a fierce dog. In the bright morning light, you notice the full skeletons along the sides of the dirt path. Sun-bleached skeletons, ever pointing toward the destination they will never achieve. Take them as a sign, each a kind of monument to failure, and push on through the pain.
Here is where you remember your loved one. By now you know they are waiting for you in the leisure of the garden patio, listening to the charming artist from Rome spinning a mournful story about an individual’s affair with a ghost. They are waiting for you deep in the surrounding forest, along the creek, where the ruins of an old graveyard have been swallowed by the trees. The wind is in the leaves, and there’s a chill in the air. They are waiting for you at night, on the porch, in a creaking rocker, half drunk on wine and staring at the moon. The night erupts with the sound of breathing and a distant cry.
There is a proper sign, neatly lettered at the end of the drive that leads away from the dirt road. The path to the big house is paved with round white stones. Flowers have been planted all along the walk, mostly roses red and yellow, some daisies, cosmos, and sunflowers. You ‘ll look up, of course you will, to see the place. A three-story wonder of a house with gingerbread trim, a wraparound porch, a large cupola in the center of the top floor with doors that open to a third-story porch. The place stands solidly like it has been and will be there forever. The color is a sea-foam green with white trim. It looks brand-new but how can that be? From the porch to the screen door to the lobby, and when you enter the lobby, all tension, all pain, drain out of you.
The proprietress, who is always at the ready to welcome new guests, syphons off your cares and lets them pour into a big mason jar that one is given as an initial token of hospitality. Do what you like with it, pour it out, hide it under your bed. It’s been said that only by drinking that poison swill might you have a chance of returning to the world. Since the beginning of the inn, no one has made it past the nauseating smell of the mix in order to so much as take a taste. The aroma is said to contain the stench of every dark moment of your life, even the secret ones. Besides, the inn is cool and calm and wonderful. A bucolic daydream, like a place from the center of your wish lobe. Why would you want to leave?
The proprietress, Miss Sally (some of her longtime guests call her Sally Forth, as she has never married but has constant secret affairs with her boarders; her name is Alice Sally), takes you gently by the arm and gives you a tour of the inn and its gardens and ponds and walkways and gazebos. One room is taken up by a giant fish tank holding brightly colored tropical fish, a human skull the size of three, and an octopus that lives behind the eye holes as the very brain of it. The library is massive—on that first day, you never make it to the end of the stacks—and everywhere you look you see volumes you’ve never heard of by your favorite writers. You visit the parlor, where couples play cards and two ladies smoke cigarettes and quietly whisper about the gentleman across the room dozing over his volume of The New Adventures of Maqroll.
The room contains a gorgeous chandelier, each of its crystals a beacon of enchantment. Around the corner at the back of the oasis is a short dark hall that leads to a snooker table. And there beneath the glow of a dim bulb Manfred Jenkins and Shell Tock discuss in whispers neither you nor Alice Sally can hear a plan to escape the Dreaming Dog. You are shown one calm, contemplative room after another—the dining hall and its 100-yard table, the grotto, directly below the library, accessible by a secret door and winding bone stairway, lit only by blind, phosphorescent fish in a warm underground pond, the den of the Dog’s masseuse, the crystal tea room, made entirely of glass and overlooking the inn’s vegetable gardens. And finally, not a room too soon, your room.
The feather down mattress of your bed rests on the cherrywood hand-carved likeness of a sea turtle. The proprietress promises that after the sun has left the sky, and its effluvium no longer seeps in your windows, the floor of your room will glow blue and the ceiling will appear a dark sky full of stars. On the small table next to your bed there is a pitcher of water, a plate of sliced lotus, and a pipe full of the inn’s special blend of hashish, orange peel, and violet petals known as Pistol Witch. You are sho
wn the rope you are to pull for room service and told that dinner is at six sharp. You are warned not to miss it. Alice Sally smiles but says, “The consequences are severe for those who are tardy or absent.” Wanting to seem compliant, you nod eagerly and then see you have put off your hostess by too great a display of acquiescence.
She turns to leave you to your new life, but you call out, “Just one thing.” She stops, her back to you, and does not move. You say, “I’m looking for my partner,” and you give their name and inquire as to their room number. The proprietress is silent for a moment, but as she exits your room, you hear her laughter. It trails away down the hallway. Something seems off to you about the inn. You push it out of your head. You know you need to freshen up, change your clothes, and set out quickly to locate your love.
All this is accomplished in a thrice; you mark the location and number of your room, so as not to lose yourself to the Dreaming Dog, and push off into Eden. You’ve managed to smuggle through from the other side of the mountain a photo of your partner. You hid it under a liner in your boot, and you got Gas drunk the night he inspected your gear for illegal contraband. It’s illegal to take any kind of picture or book to the other side. There are those who’ve been killed for it and one or two sent back, which was supposedly far worse. In any event, you have the picture and are dead set on using it. You start at the Cocktail Lounge on the southern terrace.
The very first person you try happens to be Manfred Jenkins, direct from his conspiratorial rendezvous at the snooker table. He grumbles to you, “You know, a photo like that, from the other side, will get you in trouble here. Throw it away and forget about it.” He doesn’t walk away after speaking, though, but continues to stare at you. Yes, he has prodigious sideburns. Yes, his face is an ass, gray in complexion. As you move to show the photo to someone else, he grabs you by the collar and pulls you close. His breath is rutabagas and shit. He whispers and this time you do hear him. “You look like a real malcontent,” he says. “Like you’ve seen to the core of this chicanery and you’re ready to bust out. Would you agree?” He releases you and you instinctively take a step back. You nod and give him as much of a yes as you can muster through your fear.