Slices

by Michael Montoure

  Toniele said something, but it was too gossamer-thin a sound for Jasper’s tired old ears to catch. “What? I can barely hear you.”

  “— I want you to tell me about the monsters.”

  “Monsters?” Jasper scowled. “What monsters?”

  “You know.” Toniele sighed with the impatience that only the very young have. “The monsters. The ones who look just like people.”

  “Oh,” Jasper said, letting it hang between them. “Those monsters. Aren’t you a little old to be believing in monsters?”

  “Why isn’t there any food in your kitchen?”

  “I just moved in. I said, aren’t you a little old for stories?”

  He looked at her a long moment. The light from the fire was the only light in the room. “No.”

  “Hmmmm. All right. Well, then. Tell me what you know. And I’ll tell you how much is true. And you can see if you believe me.”

  Toniele lit up. “Okay. They say monsters built the roads.”

  “Well, now. I don’t know if I believe that, do you? The roads go on and on and I don’t think they ever stop, so maybe they never started, either. I don’t think anybody built the roads.”

  “Oh.”

  “Now, don’t look so discouraged. We’ve only just started.” Jasper’s throat was parched. She would have given anything for a cup of tea, but she didn’t dare. “Tell me what else you know.”

  “They say — they say monsters kill babies.”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, I’m sure that’s true. They’d hardly be monsters if they didn’t, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. I guess. Raishaillion’s heard that monsters — ”

  “Now, I’m not talking to Raishaillion, now. He was too scared to come inside, remember? You were the brave one; I don’t care what Raishaillion’s heard, you tell me what you know.”

  “Okay … I’ve — I’ve heard that monsters have dark, dark skin, so they can hide in the shadows better.”

  “Oh, yes. Not as pale as you, pretty boy.”

  “And that they get old fast. That they only live a few months.”

  “Yes, I think that sounds about right. Yes. What else?”

  “I’ve heard that they’re — that they’re warm. And that their hearts move.”

  “Move? You mean they get out and move around?”

  “No, no!” Toniele laughed. “You must have heard. That they move. In and out, like this.” He demonstrated, little fist pulsing. “And that their lungs are always moving, too, even when they’re not talking.”

  “Yes. Yes, I’ve heard all that, too.”

  “That’s creepy.”

  There was silence in the kitchen for a moment. Nothing but the crackling of the fire.

  “What else?”

  “They used to … eat animals. The whole animal, not just the blood. Right down to the bone. They had the teeth for it, too, small and rough and just for tearing and tearing. Animal teeth.”

  “Anything else? Anything magical about them?”

  “They could stay up all day! They never slept. And they could go out in the day, too, they could go out in the sun without burning.”

  “Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Raishaillion says — ” The boy stopped, bit his lip, suddenly aware he’d spoken the forbidden name.

  “It’s all right,” Jasper said, soothing. “What does Raishaillion say?”

  “He says they had a powerful god.” He was still biting his lips, not sure he should continue, not sure if he should blaspheme in front of this old woman. “One of the old gods. A god they’d killed, nailed to a, a cross of wood, so they could have his power. And they’d use these crosses against us.”

  “Did they work?”

  “Sure. Sure they did. And if they didn’t, they’d come after people with garlic and wooden stakes, and they’d cut people’s heads off and — and — ”

  “There, now. There. You settle yourself right down. You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. How old did you say you were?”

  “I’ll be fifty in another two years.”

  “Fifty, huh? Fifty’s too old to believe all this nonsense. All this talk about monsters. No such thing as them.”

  “Oh.” He watched her for a long moment, listening to the fire hiss and crack. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Don’t you think I’ve lived long enough that I would have seen one, by now? I think I know better than you. I’m a little older than you, aren’t I, now?”

  He laughed. She just smiled.

  “So you answer me some questions, and we’ll call ourselves even. All right?”

  He looked immediately nervous. “What kind of questions?”

  “Sociable questions, that’s all. I want to know what kind of guest I have here. What do your parents do? They have any more like you at home? What’s your town like? That sort of thing.”

  Every young boy likes talking about himself. Toniele answered her questions eagerly and easily. And soon, she knew, without Toniele being aware at all of what she was really asking, roughly how many were in the settlement. Where they slept by day. How vulnerable they were.

  Jasper stood finally, slowly, her old joints feeling locked in position already, a little taste of rigor mortis. She stretched the life back into her arms and legs and said, “I should be letting you get on home. It won’t be too long until sunrise and I’m sure your friends must be worried sick by now. They’re probably convinced that I’ve eaten you down to your bones.”

  Toniele laughed delightedly.

  She showed him to the door, let him out, and he turned toward her shyly and reached for her hand, reaching in his memory for the right words. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Jasper.”

  She hesitated, just for a moment, and then held her hand out to him. “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance, as well, Master Toniele.”

  She took his small hand in hers.

  His eyes widened, staring up at her in new awe.

  The second she released his hand, he bolted, back down the steps, down the path, running to his still waiting friends as fast as he could.

  She laughed, watching him go, a little worried this would all be for nothing, that he’d carry a warning back with him to the settlement, but no, she shook her head, not believing it.

  His friends would tease him and tell him the old woman must have been playing a trick, she must have warmed her hand at the fire, that no one’s hand was really that warm.

  That only monsters had hot blood pulsing through their skin.

  She watched the boys run off. The tallest of them — Raishaillion, probably — stole a moment longer to watch her, watching them, before his fear took over and carried him away as well.

  Only monsters.

  She went back inside, stretching again, trying to put her age aside.

  She had much to do before sunrise.

  LULLABY FOR TWO VOICES

  Sarah sat in her car, her eyes on the door of the school, fingers tapping the wheel. School had been out for twenty minutes, and her boys hadn’t come out to meet her.

  The door burst open, and here was Josh, running, and she smiled at his energy, then the smile died — she could see from here his pale face, his wide eyes —

  He wasn’t in trouble. She knew that. She didn’t spend even a second wondering. He wasn’t hurt, he wasn’t scared, he never was, but as she ran toward him, unlocked doors and keys in the ignition forgotten, she knew the first words from his lips would be:

  “It’s Kyle.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Playground. Come on.” He took hold of her hand and led her around the side of the building almost faster than she could keep up. Off in the distance, a clot of children, clustered tight, laughing and yelling. It didn’t look like a game. It looked like trouble, which meant Kyle was right in the middle of it.

  She ran closer. There was Kyle, on his back and bleeding, centered in the circle with a boy twice his size looming over him, scr
eaming, “Get up! Come on! Get up, you little pussy!”

  She just froze. Don’t hurt him, she thought, Oh, God, please don’t hurt him. But she didn’t know for sure who she meant.

  Kyle stood. The other kids stood back. Josh just looked at her, his blue eyes huge, the color of kite-flying weather, and he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to say anything. Aren’t you going to do anything? They were both thinking it.

  “You want some more?” the older boy was saying. “Come on. Come on, hit back, you little chickenshit.” He hadn’t noticed there was an adult there; none of them had. She was the adult here, wasn’t she?

  Kyle didn’t say a word. He didn’t even reach up a hand to wipe at the blood that ran from his nose, spilling down onto his shirt. He just took a firm stance, feet apart, and stood his ground.

  And stared.

  “Come on,” the older boy said. He shoved a hand in Kyle’s chest, but Kyle wouldn’t be moved.

  He stared, and his eyes were like an open furnace.

  “Stop it,” the boy hissed, and he raised a hand to hit him again, or push him again, but the hand hung there, aimless, until he dropped it. “Stop it. Quit looking at me like that.”

  There was a sound. Sarah thought she heard it. Like locusts, or like the sound between stations on the radio in the middle of nowhere. But when she tried to listen to it, it wasn’t there. It was an absence of sound; something being taken out of the world.

  “Stop looking at me.” The words were almost lost in the anti-hum.

  The only real sound, now, was the trickle of urine running down the older boy’s pants leg. Kyle’s bleeding had stopped. Now the older boy’s nose had started bleeding instead.

  “Stop it!” he screamed. His face twitched; Sarah could tell he wanted to look away, look to someone else for help. “Make him stop! Make him stop looking at me!”

  “Kyle.” Sarah was almost surprised to realize the voice was hers. “That’s enough. It’s time to go home.”

  Kyle turned to look at her, astonished. The older boy broke and ran, shoving his way out of the circle. The moment broken, the other children scattered.

  Kyle stared at her for a moment as if he couldn’t remember where he was, or what he was.

  Then, inexplicably, he burst into tears and ran into her waiting arms.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  The small voice from the back seat wasn’t Kyle’s. It was Josh.

  Sarah just nodded, eyes on the winding road. Heavy branches curved low overhead, and the sunlight just reached them, filtered and watered down by thick fall leaves, still green, but only just. It was their secret road, almost never another car on it.

  Kyle wasn’t saying anything.

  “I try not to let him get in trouble,” Josh said. “I try to keep an eye on him, but the big kids won’t leave him alone.”

  “They will now,” Kyle said, so quietly Sarah wasn’t sure she really heard it.

  “It’s not my fault,” Josh said.

  “Nothing’s ever your fault,” Kyle said.

  “Enough.” Sarah looked at them through the rear-view mirror. Josh’s golden curls, Kyle’s straight raven hair, her two twins, night and day.

  “So am I in trouble?” Kyle asked.

  “Did you start the fight?”

  “ … No.”

  “Josh? Did he?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “You know what? I don’t care. It doesn’t even matter. You’re too old for this shit. You’re both nearly — ”

  Nearly twelve.

  Sarah felt herself grow pale. Her eyes lost focus.

  “Mom?”

  She’d been trying not to think about it, to put it all out of her head, a fairy tale long ago and far away —

  “Mom look out!” Josh screamed.

  She blinked, saw, swerved too late.

  “Oh, no.” Josh started crying as she pulled over. “Oh, no. Poor kitty.”

  “Is it dead?” Kyle asked.

  She got out of the car — “You two stay here — ” and Kyle ignored her and followed. After a moment, Josh came as well — concern outweighing the need to be obedient.

  “Oh, man. Poor little guy.” Kyle kneeled right down next to it.

  Sarah knelt down beside him, wincing, feeling under long blood-matted fur with hesitant fingers.

  “What are you doing?” Josh asked.

  “Looking for a collar,” she said. “I should — I need to call — ” His? Her? “The owners. Let them know.”

  She unclipped the collar, wiped off the tag.

  “Josh, you should see this,” Kyle said. “It’s kind of cool-looking.”

  “You’re sick,” Josh said, his face scrunched up. But he came to look.

  Sarah made it back to the car. Back to her purse, her cell phone.

  Somewhere, down in the bottom of that purse, was a single piece of paper, torn from a legal pad. No one would look twice at it — but Sarah knew. It couldn’t be torn, couldn’t be cut, wouldn’t burn. And the name — she didn’t want to think about it, but she had to — the name written at the bottom of the page was hers.

  She couldn’t read the ID tag in the dim light of their secret road, and she turned on the overhead light and started dialing the number.

  She looked out her window and stopped.

  Her twins, light and dark, were petting the dead cat, trying to comfort it even though it was gone.

  But then something — changed. They looked up at each other, at some wordless signal. They kept stroking the cat, their touch growing less tentative, more purposeful, each using both hands now.

  Looking up at each other for mutual guidance and reassurance. Hands moved in a complex spiral dance.

  Then the cat jerked its legs, its head, once, twice, and was on its feet and gone in a moment.

  She dropped the phone.

  “What did you do?” She got out of the car and ran to their side. “What did you do? That cat was dead, what did you do?”

  “I don’t know,” Josh said. “We were just petting it, I don’t know what happened — ”

  “Are we in trouble?” Kyle said.

  She just stared, off into the woods where the cat had gone, and then grabbed both her boys tight and held them very close.

  “You’re my special boys, you know that?” she said, rocking them like they were babies again. “You’re my special, special boys.”

  The screams woke her up that night. She sighed, looked at the clock, got out of bed. Kyle didn’t look up at her as she came into the living room.

  She stood for a moment at the threshold, watching the flickering black and white from the television play over his face.

  “It’s after midnight,” she said finally.

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “What is this?”

  “Night of the Living Dead.”

  She started looking for the remote. “You’re too young to be watching this.”

  “Mo-ommmmm. I’ve seen it already. Last Halloween at Jordan’s.”

  She stared at the blank faces, the boarded windows. “I still don’t think you should be watching it,” she said uncertainly. “Doesn’t it give you nightmares?”

  “No.” He shrugged. “I never get nightmares.” He said it with the certainty that came with his age. He looked up at her. “Josh is having bad dreams. Right now. That’s why I can’t sleep.”

  She glanced back down the hall toward their room. “Could you hear him?”

  “No — I can see it. I can see what he’s dreaming.”

  She sat down next to him on the couch, brushed some of his ink-black hair out of his eyes. “It sounds more like you were dreaming,” she said.

  He frowned and batted her hand away. “Mom, no. You’re not listening.”

  He stood up and walked down the hall, and she turned off the TV and followed him into the dark.

  “Kyle? What are you doing?”

  “Shhh. You’ll wake him.”


  He was standing over his brother’s bed, looking down. Josh stirred, a low sound in his throat, and he kicked at the blankets, but he didn’t wake up.

  “See? Dreaming.” He looked down at Josh’s closed and shifting eyes, seemed to look past them. “He’s dreaming about you. You a long time ago. You’re driving — no, you’re in a car, someone else is driving — ”

  “Kyle, stop it,” she whispered.

  “You’re going really fast and it’s dark and you’re laughing, you’re saying slow down, but you’re laughing — ”

  “Kyle. Stop. This isn’t funny.”

  Josh was squirming, grabbing at the edge of the blankets, face screwed up tight, and Kyle’s features had gone slack, his voice quiet and mild. “You’re upside down. Something happened. You’re upside down and you’re bleeding. Everyone’s bleeding and you’re screaming. You’re the only one. Why isn’t anyone else screaming, mommy?”

  “Kyle. Stop.” She grabbed hold of his arm, tried to haul him away from the bed.

  “You’re hurting me,” he said, in that same dead calm voice. “There’s a man coming. You can hear footsteps. He’s getting closer and closer and you can’t move, and you can hear him get closer and closer and he’s gonna tap on the window and you can’t move — ”

  “Josh!” She dropped Kyle’s arm and shook Josh’s shoulders. “Josh, wake up!”

  Josh jerked awake and screamed, and Kyle fell backward, sat down hard on the floor. She held Josh as he cried and rocked him back and forth.

  Kyle just stared up at her. “He’s still coming,” was all he said.

  Three days later, and she’d tried to put it out of her head, tried to pretend their birthday wasn’t nearly here.

  But the knock came at her door one night. Sarah nearly dropped her coffee — it’s him, it can’t be him, he’s two weeks early — and her boys looked up at her from their dinners, curious and wordless.

  It’s not him, she told herself, it’s not, and in a voice barely louder than a harsh whisper she said, “Wait here.”

  It wasn’t him. She’d never seen the red-faced angry woman on her doorstep before.