by Jeffrey Ford
They spent Thanksgiving together, eating dinner at the Uncertain Diner. Later there were drinks on the porch. She smoked and he fiddled with a music box he’d recently bought where through Bluetooth you could listen to the music from your phone. Three bourbons in, Gary’s favorite head music swirled the night. Hester said, “We’ve got to go back.”
At first he said nothing, but eventually he nodded and said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yeah.”
“Tonight,” she told him.
“One stipulation,” he said. “Let’s take the fucking car.”
“There are no other houses over there, and once you’re off the road, it’s so dark no one will see. I can park it in the empty tractor shed and we can walk from there.”
“Solid.”
“Above all others, what’s the one thing you want to know?” she asked.
“I’ll start with a general what the fuck and proceed from there.”
“I want to know the calamity of events that led to it.”
“Led to what?”
“Whatever tragedy keeps calling these people back.”
“Jeez,” he said and poured them each another drink.
Hester drove Gary’s CRV. They rounded the corner and as the Bridges place drew near, she turned out the headlights and coasted through the dark. She slowly piloted the car in and around tree trunks and hid it in the old structure as she’d said she would. Gary had a better cane, stronger, made to support the weight of an adult. It had a rubber tip and grips along the crook. His hip was worse every day, and walking was becoming too great an effort, but Hester insisted he keep moving. So he did. They both wore all black and carried their flashlights. She brought the taser she’d bought online. He’d asked why she didn’t just buy a gun. And she said, “I don’t want to kill anyone.”
“How do you kill a ghost?” said Gary.
“You know what I mean.”
She led him through the shadows and he tried mightily to keep up with her. From using the cane, he’d adopted a rocking, side-to-side gait like he was a windup toy. The house loomed in front of them and they slipped around the side to where the steps led down. They took the same route as they had before. This time they didn’t inspect the basement but went straight for the stairs that led up into the house. They passed the refrigerator and the Chef Boyardee and went directly to the hallway on the second floor.
“Same rooms?” he asked.
“No, up to the third floor.”
“We’ll be trapped up there.”
“We have to get up there and hide before that whole thing goes down.”
“Hide?”
“Yeah, so we see what happened. We need to know more.”
He shook his head but followed her up the steps, which led to a large room, a window on every wall. It was lined with carpets and plush furniture in a powder blue with silver trim that shimmered in the flashlights’ glare.
“Find a place to hide,” she said.
He turned in a circle, looking for something substantial to hide behind where it wouldn’t discomfort his hip, but there wasn’t anything that big in the room. “I’m not getting on the floor again.”
“Shhh. Go in the closet over there,” said Hester and pointed with the light beam.
He saw where she meant, went to it and opened the door. It was dark and empty, damp concrete. Who has a concrete closet? he thought. He stepped in and closed the door behind him but didn’t shut it. When he got in position, leaning on his cane, he peered out and around the room, using the flashlight, and finally found her ducked behind a sewing machine on a wooden box in the corner. The instant he spotted her, he heard tires on gravel. A moment after he doused his light, the front door downstairs flung open and that voice called, “Sunny!”
The lights came on at once in a silent explosion. And there were the mother and two girls sitting on couches. The girls were silent and stock-still in their white party dresses. From Gary’s vantage point in the closet, he stood behind and above the blond woman who sat on a divan in front of him. He watched her turn around on her seat. She had only eyes that stared directly into the sliver of an opening he watched through and pierced his gaze. “Save yourself,” she said as if directly to him. That’s when Mr. Bridges stepped through the door, head turned in a way that made it impossible for Gary or Hester to clearly see his face.
He wasn’t in the door more than a moment before she again said, “Save yourself.”
As he approached his wife, the two girls slid off the bench they were sitting on and fell to their knees. They clasped hands in prayer and recited the Act of Contrition. While they prayed, a dark cloud began to form against the wall across the room. They prayed hard, in unison, eyes peering through the roof to heaven. The father lifted the gun and put it inches from the back of the older girl’s head.
It became obvious that the intonation of their words was the impetus for the cloud to take the shape of a man in a raincoat and hat. The vagueness of smog solidified into a cruel face, sharp like an axe head but also handsome. He walked forward as in a slow dream and took the gun from Mr. Bridges’ hand. Hester thought she heard cymbals clash, and next she knew, the husband and wife were bleeding profusely from a hundred cuts each. The fog man moved with such speed and grace she didn’t see the blade until he was almost done filleting them. Seven more stabs between them and the mother and father fell to the floor in puddles of blood.
He called for the girls, still praying, to follow him. They stood in silence and did as they were told. As they headed for the door, Hester and Gary saw that, at his edges, the man in coat and hat was beginning to transform, vines of smoke slowly twining upward. Just then a coughing fit seized her. The fog fellow stopped, spun around on his heels, and took in the parlor. Gary didn’t watch, but he heard the words, “You, in the corner. Come out of there.” His legs went numb and his breathing became erratic. There was a struggle, and the stranger bellowed, “Come with me for a drive.” Gary could tell Hester was being dragged toward the stairs.
He lunged out of the closet as the sisters passed, knocking them over like pins in a split, his cane waving in the air. He clutched it near the rubber tip and swung the crook end at the head of the abductor. Hester reached into her jacket pocket and took out the taser. She pressed the button to charge it up and then jammed it against the fog man’s rippling neck. He was solid and smoke at the same time. With the addition of the electricity, his head lit up and he glowed green like an iridescent fish. The application of the cane nearly knocked him down. He staggered and Hester broke free of his grip.
Gary caught her in his arms. She turned and screamed, “Get out!” at the ghosts.
The man in the raincoat and hat turned to dust, and each of the sisters became a puddle. The lights were out and he was suddenly hard pressed to remember an instance where they hadn’t been all night.
“I’m never coming back here,” Hester said, as much to the walls as to Gary. “It’s a trap.”
He said nothing until they were driving through the snow. “It’d take us a hundred trips to figure the whole thing out.”
“I don’t want it anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to know. I’m too tired.”
Gary and Hester tried to forget the entire enterprise, but the sound of the chime on the porch had the ability to drill through the walls of the house and find them wherever they were. Every time the wind blew that winter they contemplated the mystery, extrapolating scenarios based on the flimsy knowledge they’d gathered. By January, they were aware that every sounding of the wind chime distorted Time, lengthening seconds, shrinking weeks, twisting speed and dealing crooked minutes. A year buzzed by like a mosquito and they were retired.
Hours became epics, and Gary and Hester missed each other, passing along different corridors. Whole days went by and he wouldn’t see her, but he heard her above or below in the house and coul
d call out and she would answer him. He would call that he loved her and she would answer the same. Different seasons, all but spring, came and went. And eventually her presence grew rarer and her voice quieter. One weak cough from some far-flung room of the old house. The sudden noise of a toilet flushing downstairs or the microwave dinging woke him from sleep in the middle of the night. These intermittent sounds, proof she was still there, helped him hold out hope that he’d run into her before long. Eventually, though, they stopped altogether, along with the written notes she’d leave through her days like breadcrumbs on the trail. The loneliness overwhelmed him.
One afternoon, he found himself in the bedroom, unable to recall why he was there. He happened to look out the window and saw her standing in the driveway with two suitcases. She wore her beret she only put on when traveling. He couldn’t believe it was her and tried to lift the window to call out for her to wait for him. His hip was so bad that by the time he reached the side door and the driveway, she was gone. He caught a glimpse of the yellow car, turning out into the street and heading away. He staggered, about to fall, and the blond girls appeared on either side of him. They helped him into his rocker on the porch, pulled down the shade of night, and set the breeze to blowing.
“Where’s he taking Hester?” asked Gary. “The man with the raincoat and hat. Where?”
“Shhh,” said Imsa. “Every ghost story is your own.”
“Where’s he taking her?” he repeated.
“To find out,” said Sami, and their high, light laughter became the music of the jeweled wren.
Not Without Mercy
The snow angled down fiercely out of the west, filling the parking lot and road and fields beyond. Amy stood at the office window and peered into the storm, trying to spot the headlights of Harry’s old truck coming up Sossey Road. She shut off the lamps and signs out by the pumps in order to see better. Her boss, Fareed, had called earlier and told her not to shut down the gas in case someone traveling through the storm might need fuel. “Cash, they’re out of luck,” he’d said. “But a debit card, yes. Travelers in need.” He’d laughed and so had she, but now she was worried. It was a ten-mile drive from the edge of town out to the gas station and it looked to her like there was already eight inches on the ground, no sign of letup. Drifts were forming in the road.
She took out her cell phone and dialed Harry. Three rings later, he answered. “Have you left yet?” she asked. “I was just thinking I could stay here on the cot and you could come out tomorrow morning and get me. It looks really shitty out there.”
“Too late,” said Harry. “I’m here.”
She peered again and now saw the headlights and the silhouette of falling snow they cast. “OK,” she said and hung up.
Harry pulled into the darkened parking lot. Amy put her coat on and locked the garage and office doors. She left the office light on as a gesture to lonely passersby. He stayed in the truck and rolled his window down as she approached.
“How’s Sossey?” she asked.
“Bad. We’ll have to take it slow and hope we don’t get stuck.”
She walked around to the passenger side of the truck, clasping closed the top of her coat with her right hand. The door of the truck squealed miserably and she shook her head. “How old is this rolling pile?”
“Shhh,” he said, patted the dashboard, and then lit the two cigarettes he held between his lips. She got situated in the seat, shut the door, and he handed her one.
“How are the kids?” she asked and took a long drag, closing her eyes like she was praying.
“They’re in bed, asleep. Your old man is listening for them.”
“Good,” she said, and he put the truck in gear and crept out of the parking lot.
Amy tapped the pocket of her coat on the left side. “Oh, I thought I’d left it in the office.”
“What?” He opened the window a slit to flick his ash.
“Fareed’s wife, Susan, brought by that necklace this morning that I paid her to make for Becky. It’s beautiful. Fake diamonds and a real sapphire.”
“Shit, that’s right, her birthday’s next week.”
“She’s gonna be fourteen.”
“Ain’t that a kick in the head,” said Harry, and a deafening roar pounced from above. The truck vibrated and swerved across the road. He did everything he could to keep it from going into the drainage ditch.
“What the—” said Amy, and her words were cut off by the appearance from over the truck roof of something on fire, whistling down against the storm. In a moment it was gone out of sight behind the trees. Then they heard it hit, felt it, and saw an eruption of sparks shoot up in all directions. Harry managed to keep the truck on the road and swerved around the bend ahead, which brought them closer to the field that had been brimming with soybeans not but three months earlier and now was home to whatever had dropped from the sky.
They saw the thing, the size of their garden shed, glowing in the distance. Harry slowed to a stop. “What do we do?” he asked.
“It doesn’t look like a plane,” said Amy.
“That’s no plane.”
“Is it a meteor?”
“Doesn’t look like that either.”
“Well, forget it,” she said. “I don’t want to find out.”
He pushed down on the gas, the wheels spun and smoke billowed out of the exhaust pipe, but they sat pretty much where they were.
“Oh, bullshit,” she said.
“Yeah.” He revved the engine and spun the tires a few more times until finally she said, “OK, that’s enough. Is that shovel in the back?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll dig the ice out from under the tires and maybe we can grab some road.” She zipped up her coat, flipped the hood on without securing it, and got out.
Harry left the lights on and kept it running. The residual glow from the high beams faintly lit the area around the sides of the truck. He found a flare in the bed, lit it, and set it up a few yards behind where they’d stopped. The wind had abated considerably since they’d left the station. Snow still came down but not quite as furiously. “I’ve got some sand in the back too,” he said.
Amy asked him for another cigarette. He lit it in his cupped hands for her. With the butt in the corner of her lips she went to work, chipping and scraping at the frozen slush. Harry resorted to carrying handfuls of sand and throwing them under the tires.
“Hey,” she said. “Let me shovel a little, otherwise I’m shoveling the sand away.” She shook her head.
“Oh, sorry.”
“You’re an idiot,” she said and they both laughed.
She dug for a while and he watched. He said, “Whatever came down in the storm has gone out. It’s just dark there now.”
“If it was a nicer night we could walk out and see,” she said. She handed him the shovel and motioned for him to take a turn. While he went at it, she peered across the field and saw nothing but snow falling and that eventually disappearing a few yards beyond into black. She thought of that field in summer with the moon shining over it.
“I’ve hit road under three tires,” Harry eventually called. “I’ll get some sand with the shovel, throw it on there, and we’ll be out of here in a minute.”
“Christ, I’m freezing,” said Amy.
They both heard a very odd sound coming up from the ditch at the side of the road. “Do you hear that?” he said.
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Like burbling, right?” she said.
They looked down into the ditch and something was crawling up the side of it.
“What is that?” he said.
“A possum or skunk?”
“Nah.”
The thing pulled itself up the snowy embankment and stood to its full height.
“No fuckin’ way,” he said.
“I never
saw anything like it,” said Amy.
“A three-foot block of scrapple?” said Harry.
“And three tentacles.”
He cocked the shovel over his shoulder, wanting to hit the thing back into the ditch, but he was stunned by the sight of it. The creature had a thousand little legs under the bottom side of that bad meat block. Those tiny legs had to scrabble like mad for it to scuttle only a half a foot. It had no eyes, just two holes at seemingly random spots on the right side of its front. One was oozing a glistening drool. The hole at the top of the left side of the body, somewhat larger than the two on the other side, poorly hid sharp teeth in a lipless hole.
Amy yelled, “Get it away.”
He swung with all his might and the shovel head hit the thing with an echoing slap and thud. The blow sent it sliding down the side of the ditch. Although it sank out of sight, they could hear it still burbling and now sputtering, choking and giving off a whispered growl like a demon purring.
“What kind of deal was that?”
“Let’s get out of here.”
They jumped into the truck and as they shut the doors it stalled out with a shudder. She turned the key but there was only a click. Three more times she tried to start it.
“Don’t flood it,” he said.
“Will you shut the fuck up.” She tried it again.
“The battery’s brand-new,” said Harry. “I just had the whole thing checked out.”
“The lights are still on,” she said.
“That thing’s got a brain lock on us.” He opened the glove compartment and pulled out a Colt pistol. “We’ll see about this,” he said.
As Harry was climbing back onto the road, the thing was coming up out of the ditch again. Amy jumped across the console in the middle of the seats to watch from the open passenger door. The thing waved its tentacles at Harry and advanced, albeit slowly. He raised the gun, said “Fuck you,” and fired, once, twice. Harry and Amy blinked with the noise of each round. The first bullet put a neat hole through the thing, so instead of having two maybe-eye-sockets it now had three. The second shot chipped a rounded corner of scrapple off the rumbling brick of alien and brought a reedy scream from the thing. It toppled over at the edge of the incline.