Creatures of Want and Ruin

by Molly Tanzer

  As he shook his head, spraying water like a wet dog, Ellie cast around to see if there was anything she could use to defend herself. Two oars were nestled along the edges of his boat. She grabbed one.

  “Hey!” she shouted as she brandished it at him. “I was trying to help you!”

  Maybe he couldn’t hear her; maybe he was past caring. All she knew for certain was that Greene had a bottle in his hand, and while at first Ellie thought he might use it as a weapon, instead he flipped the swing-top with one strong thumb.

  He drank deeply of it as Ellie watched, oar in hand. She couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing; it seemed like when he swallowed, his eyes glowed brighter, and when he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, it left a rainbow smear behind. His tongue too was coated in something bright, though the liquid in the bottle remained clear. But that was impossible . . .

  Regardless, Ellie had no time to marvel. Greene cast the bottle aside and came at her, his footfalls rocking the boat hard enough that Ellie could barely keep her heavy oar up, much less swing the makeshift weapon at him.

  Greene grabbed the paddle with both hands and ripped it out of her grasp. She fell to one knee, barking it sharply as he hurled the oar to the deck. She flung her hands up again; Greene had the high ground now, and once again he pressed her down onto the deck and got his hand around her throat.

  The night seemed to contract around Ellie as the clouds beyond Greene’s head turned impossible colors like the coral of a sunset, egg yolk yellow, robin’s egg blue. The rain felt colder as it struck her skin, but his hand burned like a fire around her neck, another torment as he tightened his grip. She thought it was just her imagination, but no—the skin of Greene’s face and neck had turned red as a boiled lobster, and the rainwater dripping down his forehead and cheeks turned to steam and billowed away into the night. The spittle that flecked his lips and bared teeth was rainbow-hued, and in his eyes she saw writhing fire and boiling earth. Ellie went limp in wonder, unsure if what she saw was real or she was merely dreaming as she died.

  The air grew thick and electric as she gave up struggling to breathe. Ellie wondered if they’d been struck by lightning, but when another flash revealed his face, Greene looked confused, as if something he’d expected to happen hadn’t, and his grip on her neck relaxed a little.

  Ellie got some air back into her lungs, and drawing from some deep well within her, she slung herself off the deck and into his midsection, grabbing him around his waist. He slipped, and when he fell backwards, he fell hard. Ellie heard the sickening crack of his head as it hit the deck, even over the rain. She scrambled off him. Greene did not stir as his bright eyes dimmed and a black stain spread out from the back of his head all over the deck, thinning at the edges to a sickly gray as it mixed with all the rainwater.

  She sat still for a moment, getting her wind back, waiting to see if Greene moved. He did not. Her gut said he was dead, but she made herself get up and check; she didn’t want him waking up again with her on board. This time, his pulse faded under her touch.

  She retrieved her handkerchief and dabbed at her nose—it was still bleeding. Her ribs were on fire; her throat was sore; her knee throbbed. Ellie sat down again, thinking about Greene’s burning hand on her neck, his eyes, the steam clouds surrounding him like a horrible halo as he spat impossible color onto her. One sob escaped her before she bit it off. Long ago she’d vowed she was done with crying, and she wasn’t going to start now—not for him. Not for anyone.

  Reason reasserted herself as she rested. What she’d seen . . . That had all just been a fever-dream as he’d cut off her air. People could not suddenly become hot enough that rainwater would steam off their skin; people’s eyes couldn’t contain visions of the end of the world. And yet, it hadn’t felt like a dream . . . It had felt real.

  Furious, Ellie pulled herself to her feet and kicked Greene’s corpse in the side with her good leg, once, and then she couldn’t stop kicking him. Eventually, she calmed down. After wiping yet more blood from her nose, Ellie stepped over the dead man. Her foot nearly came down on the bottle he’d drunk from. She picked it up and sniffed it.

  All this for some moonshine. How stupid.

  Not all the booze had spilled out of the bottle when he’d cast it aside. Ellie toasted Greene’s body and then took a long pull. It was raw, harsher than SJ’s potato spirit, and had a strange flavor Ellie couldn’t place. Musty, earthy, greasy.

  Whatever it was, it did the job. Her aches eased a bit; her muscles loosened up. She felt the power of motion returning to her limbs, and took another swig for good measure.

  She peered into his smuggler’s hold. There she discovered two items nestled in the darkness: a burlap sack, and a crate of bottles with one missing. She dragged both out onto the deck to look at them more closely.

  The sack was full of soil. Ellie sifted through it with her fingers and found a dark chunk of something spongy and unpleasantly oily to the touch. What little light there was shone strangely on it, playing with Ellie’s eyes. She couldn’t tell if it was round like a ball or indented like a bowl. Running her fingers over its slick surface just made her feel nauseated. She hurled it into the bay, and out of spite tossed the rest of the sack overboard too.

  It was so senseless. Greene had attacked her while she was trying to help him, and for a few bottles of rotgut and some nasty dirt.

  She knew well enough she’d been defending herself; knew her intention had been to help. It didn’t make her feel better about how it had ended. He’d frightened her, hurt her, and she’d killed him—or at least, he’d died.

  Ellie replaced the loose board that hid the smuggler’s hold. Of course it was at that moment that the rain chose to let up; it was barely drizzling after she got the rest of Greene’s booze onto her skiff and untied her craft from the other. The moon even came out a bit as she sped away, leaving him and his boat to drift where they would.

  The stupidest part was, she didn’t even have very far to go to get home.

  No, the stupidest part was if she’d stayed with Rocky for an hour longer, she wouldn’t have needed to pull into the cove at all.

  She’d killed a man. And robbed him, too. The second crime didn’t weigh too heavily on her heart, but the first . . . It was terrifying. At least the consequences were. The act itself had been necessary.

  And then there was what she’d seen, what she’d felt . . . Even though she knew she’d been deprived of air and hallucinating, it nagged her. It had all felt so real.

  She wondered if she should tell someone.

  No. If she did—if she told anyone what she’d seen and done—they’d send her to jail, or to the Long Island Home for some “much needed rest.” She couldn’t let that happen. Her family depended on her, on the fish she brought them to eat and the cash she earned.

  And, of course, there was Gabriel.

  He’d waited up for her. A light burned in a window of the colonial saltbox he was restoring for them both to live in one day. It looked so snug as Ellie pulled up to the dock, the clean straight lines of the house contrasting with the muslin curtains that twisted as if they were alive as the cool, wet breeze blew in through the windows. When the house was done, they would be married. By then, hopefully Ellie’s younger brother Lester would have gone off to school, and Ellie could move out of her parents’ house with a clear conscience.

  Exhaustion set in as she tied up. She tried to lift the crate of moonshine out of the hold, but her arms failed her. She couldn’t even shift the remaining few bottles of SJ’s hooch. Well, it had to come in. She’d just have to ask for her fiancé’s help. She couldn’t leave it outside overnight.

  Weaving and stumbling, she picked her way up to the house and fell against the back door. Her hands were now shaking too badly to turn the knob, but after a minute or so of fumbling with it, it opened. She swooned into Gabriel’s strong arms, looking up at his wide, handsome face; the bright blue eyes behind the thick lenses of his tortoiseshell glasses. She’d
never seen anything so wonderful in all her life.

  “Ellie!” he said, touching the crusted blood on her face. “What happened?”

  Ellie chose to focus on her immediate concerns, rather than her esoteric ones. “I think my nose is broken,” she said. Her voice was so scratchy it barely sounded like her own.

  “Jesus Christ.” He was so strong he just picked her up and carried her inside. His broad chest and powerful arms warmed her better than any blanket or fire.

  “Will you please bring my things in?” she rasped as he set her down on the sofa.

  “Your things can wait.”

  “No,” she said, her throat burning. “Really!”

  “Ellie, I’ll get everything inside, I promise, but I’ll get to it after I help you out of these wet clothes.”

  Gabriel was always so mild in his ways; his firm tone brought Ellie up short. He was right, too; it had been so hot earlier, but she was shivering now; her clothes gave her gooseflesh where they clung to her skin. He helped her out of her boots and socks and then peeled off her coveralls; that felt good. The dry blanket he wrapped around her felt even better.

  “I’m going to put some water on to heat—yes, first,” he said, in that tone that brooked no argument, “and then I will unload your boat. You just sit still.” When she tried to sit up, he gently pushed her back down onto the sofa, where her body welcomed the comfort and rest even if her spirit rebelled against it.

  “There are two cases,” she croaked. “A full one and a partial.”

  “I know you don’t think I’m ready for the responsibility, but I’ll take care of it.” Gabriel sounded amused, but Ellie took the hint.

  She stretched out after moving aside the latest issue of Weird Tales that Gabriel had left open on the couch. She studied the garish cover of her fiancé’s favorite magazine for a moment but then set it aside, feeling sick. The image of a terrified girl, presumably the advertised “Bride of Osiris,” being loomed over by a shadowy figure reminded her too much of what had happened to her that night.

  There were so many things Ellie loved about Gabriel, and his ability to let her talk in her own time was one of them. He asked her no questions after bringing in the booze and helping her into their small tub; instead, he made gentle small talk with her while cleaning up her face. She’d missed the fight between Jack Dempsey and Jack Sharkey, but he’d listened for her and gave her a bit of play-by-play of what he’d heard on his beloved wireless. Normally, Ellie appreciated his recaps; tonight, however, the idea of punching people for sport made her feel queasy. Thankfully her injuries gave her license to just close her eyes and listen to the sound of his voice instead of responding to the details of what he was saying.

  After Gabriel had finished his ministrations he said it didn’t look like her nose needed to be set—that was good news. Then he washed her hair and wrapped her in a clean towel before concluding his doctoring by dotting her cuts with some iodine and helping her into bed.

  “So what happened?” he asked as he slid into bed beside her.

  She didn’t want to tell him the truth. Ellie loved Gabriel, and she didn’t want him to see her as a killer; didn’t want him to look at her any differently because of something that wasn’t her fault. And while her fiancé was a fan of the works of H. P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and similar, she didn’t want to talk to him about whether she could have seen something supernatural. He just liked to read about that stuff. He didn’t believe in it.

  “It was the storm,” she rasped. “I shouldn’t have risked crossing the bay. I got tossed around bad, and fell on my face.” She considered what else she needed to explain away. “I got tangled in a rope; it got around my neck as I struggled.”

  “Poor thing,” said Gabriel, and wrapped her gently in his arms. She melted into his embrace, softening against him like butter on warm bread. “Well, all’s well that ends well.”

  She shuddered, overwhelmed with the sensation of being warm and cared for. He told her it would all be all right—that she’d feel better in a few days. That she’d be sore, but she’d heal. That she was safe, and it was all over now.

  Ellie wondered if that would really turn out to be the case.

  2

  Gabriel had grown up on a duck farm forty miles east of Amityville, in Center Moriches, and a childhood spent alongside flocks of those quacking, stinking birds had left him with a lifelong aversion to duck meat and the inability to sleep past five in the morning. When she stayed over, Ellie usually got up with him so they could enjoy a cup of coffee or tea together as the sun rose, sitting on the porch in good weather, or in front of the little woodstove when it was cool.

  The morning following her misadventure, however, Ellie did not get up. She tried, but she was so sore she could not make herself move, and she fell back asleep after he tiptoed out of the bedroom.

  Her dreams were unpleasant. A dark figure gripped her with bruising fingers so hot they burned her skin. She pushed him away, but they were at the edge of a cliff and he fell, screaming, off the edge into a dark abyss full of fire and water. She crawled to the edge and peered over only to have two hands grab her and pull her down, too.

  She awoke with a gasp. Gabriel was standing there in a halo of bright sunlight, holding a cup of coffee that steamed in the warm morning air. The smell of it brought her to her senses.

  “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  “I had a bad dream,” she said, and with a groan she pushed herself up to lean back against the headboard of their bed to accept the mug. “That’s all.” Her voice sounded even worse than it had the previous night.

  Gabriel sat down on the edge of the mattress. “You look better,” he said. Ellie was sure that was not the case.

  “Did you put the booze down in the cellar?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am,” answered Gabriel, with a faint smile.

  “Don’t you ‘Yes ma’am’ me,” she said irritably.

  “Yes ma’am.” Gabriel’s smile deepened, and she felt her annoyance melt away.

  With that fair hair and jawline, Gabriel had missed his calling—he ought to have posed for army recruiting posters instead of restoring houses. The photographers could have taken pictures without him having to wear the glasses that had kept him out of the service.

  “Looks like you came back with more booze than usual. People not show up because of the weather?”

  Ellie frowned, displeased to have to come up with another alibi. “Nah, SJ had more than she needed.”

  “Nobody wanted to buy it?”

  “Maybe next week,” she said, though truth be told, she wasn’t sure if she ought to sell it at all. SJ might run an illegal still, but she did things the right way; other operations couldn’t be counted on to do the same. Selling unknown moonshine could mean a quick profit and then a big loss if something went wrong and word got out she was selling liquor that made people sick, or blind. Sure, she’d had a sip or two, but that didn’t mean much. Consistency was one of the main issues with moonshining, and there might be two or even three different batches present in that one case.

  Gabriel pushed his glasses up his nose and peered at her. “We could always keep it for the wedding . . . or even better, after the wedding, once we send everyone home . . .”

  Even worse than selling questionable moonshine would be serving it to her guests. “It’ll be better to get rid of it, if I can. I’ll need every penny I can make if I’m going to be able to send Lester off to college this fall.” Seeing her fiancé’s expression, she added, “And I already had SJ hold back some of her private reserve for our wedding. You know, the stuff she actually ages. I paid through the nose for it, but I figured it was worth it.”

  Gabriel’s good humor was restored by this, but Ellie’s mind strayed to the dead man to whom the liquor in question had belonged in life. She imagined Greene’s corpse staring up at the same sun that streamed in through the glass of her bedroom window; saw him in her mind,
adrift, undiscovered. She wondered if the body had begun to smell yet. How long did that take?

  She also wondered if Greene could be traced back to her. She had no idea what would be better—for her to confess before that happened or wait to see if her crime was discovered.

  “Ellie?”

  “Sorry.” She tried to play off her momentary inattention like nothing was wrong, but her smile turned to a wince when the motion made her nose ache. “Got lost in my own thoughts.”

  Gabriel took her coffee away and set it down on the nightstand—he’d built that, along with the bedstead and any number of chairs about the place, all out of scraps he’d sanded and stained—and kissed her. “Let’s turn your mind to other matters,” he said.

  It was as if she’d been holding her breath ever since last night, as if her heart had stopped—and then the feel of his lips on her made her blood started to flow again, and she got her first taste of air. She started pulling off Gabriel’s shirt, her aches and pains be damned. She was alive. She’d won. No one would connect her to Greene—how could they? Even more important, why would they?

  She was safe, Gabriel was here, and he wanted her.

  She could have eaten a steak right then, a whole one, with extra horseradish. Could have drunk an entire bottle of champagne, and one of real Scotch whiskey. She would have agreed to satisfy an entire roomful of men. She was alive; she wanted to celebrate that—wanted to appreciate her body, to live in it.

  Once Gabriel had shed his clothes, he joined her beneath the thin coverlet. His big hands roved over her, mindful of her bruises but still eager. She gasped as he slid a finger inside her.

  “Did you stop at Rocky’s last night?” he asked, working her as she writhed.