by Jeff Long
Lightning stitched the horizon. There was no thunder. The storm was far away.
At last Rebecca went out onto the porch. “It’s time, you two,” she called.
Sam resisted. “Watch this, Mama.” She did a pirouette. Right on the edge.
“Come away from there,” Rebecca said.
“But Daddy said—”
“I don’t care, young lady. You’ve gone plenty close.”
“You worry too much, Mama.”
Jake laid aside his bag of weeds and grabbed her. “Let’s go, Junior.”
That was her new handle, self-selected. When they’d pointed out that Junior was a boy’s title, she had shrugged. She already went by a boy’s name. And wasn’t Daddy a room mom at school? If he could be a girl, she could be a boy. Or something like that.
Coming in, they smelled of grass and lemonade. “It’s bedtime,” Rebecca said.
Sam looked at her. She looked at her father. “Not yet,” she said.
“Yet,” said Rebecca.
“Please, Mama?”
“School starts next week, Sam. We have simply got to get you back on schedule.”
The girl glanced down the hall at her bedroom door and gave it a moment’s thought. She solemnly shook her head no.
“Not this again,” Rebecca sighed. “You’ve had Daddy three nights in a row. When do I get him?”
“When they go away,” Sam said.
Her monsters.
Jake thought it had to do with the recent and premature demise of Santa Claus, leprechauns, and the tooth fairy. The Baptist minister’s boy had ever so helpfully broken the news on the playground. And it had happened with the minister right there watching, not saying a word. Rooting out the heathen from man’s dark heart. Setting straight a child’s beliefs.
Jake held up a finger, as if suddenly remembering something. “What do we have here?”
With a magician’s flourish, he produced a small paper sack from the HEB store. Inside was a Disney mermaid night-light. “You won’t believe how pretty this is in the dark. I asked the lady at the store. She said her little girl still uses hers, and she’s off to college now.”
Sam looked at the night-light. She admired it. But she didn’t touch it. You couldn’t buy her off that cheaply. “They’re in my closet,” she said. It was becoming a broken record.
“I checked last night, baby. And the night before that. There’s nothing but clothes and shoes in there.”
“I can hear them in the crawl space.”
“I checked down there, too. Clean as an elephant’s ear.”
An elephant’s ear? But Sam was in no mood for distractions. “Underneath the crawl space, then,” she said. “They’re hiding.”
“Come on, Sam.”
“It’s true. I’m too young to lie. You said so.”
It was a test. Sam was up for some imagination if they were. No Santa, then no monsters. But if there could be monsters, then there might be a Santa. Meaning, maybe the fat elf had some mileage left in him after all. If Daddy would sleep with her again.
Jake looked at Rebecca, who nodded in a sort of happy resignation. Monsters it was.
“Okay, kid,” he said, and picked his girl up. “First the teeth, then the pillow. Do I get the outside of the bed again?” He headed down the hall with her slung over his shoulder. “I’m not sure we finished our story last night anyway.”
“Are you sure there’s no monsters?”
“There used to be, darlin’. In the old days.”
“What about now?”
“What do you think?”
“Yes,” she said. “There’s monsters all right. Lots and lots and lots of them. They’re just waiting, is all.”
ARTIFACTS
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
China’s Bare-Branch Policy Denounced
The secretary of the Interior Department today charged that China is waging a “shadow war” with the U.S. by flooding the Pacific underground with tens of thousands of its “surplus” adult males. This has created a “Chinese octopus,” said Secretary Tom Tancredo, with tentacles now reaching over a thousand miles out from the Chinese coast.
“China is emptying its prisons and ghettos into the Subterrain,” Tancredo said. “China offers financial incentives, pays for transportation, and provides housing and food for the criminals and gangsters going down. China is conducting a slow-motion conquest of international territory. This is a deliberate strategy aimed at destabilizing the entire sub-Pacific.” He labeled this strategy China’s “Bare Branches Policy.”
For centuries China has preferred sons over daughters, resulting in an imbalance of 120 (some claim 150) males for every 100 females. With too few women to go around, poor, unskilled, and illiterate men are increasingly unlikely to marry. These are the fruitless “bare branches” who historically form gangs or bandit armies, control crime, and fuel nationalistic wars.
“China’s population disaster is spreading disease, corruption, Han supremacy, and a culture of superviolence through the Pacific Subterrain,” Tancredo said.
China’s ambassador to the U.S. calls such language “inflammatory and counterproductive.” The bare branches are “floaters,” said Ambassador Yao Deng. “If they wish to leave the motherland to better their lives, we cannot prevent them. Freedom of travel is a human right, yes?”
6
DIALOGUES WITH THE ANGEL, NUMBER 1
The angel and his disciple are walking along a path. They come to a colony of ants. The angel stops and picks up one of the ants.
“You came to kill me,” the angel muses to the disciple. His voice rings against veins of metal in the stone.
“I came to learn, Lord,” says the disciple.
“To learn how to kill me.”
“To learn how to kill evil, Rinpoche. But that was before.”
“Before?”
“Before I realized that ignorance is the evil. Before I understood that you cannot die, Teacher. Before you taught me to renounce all violence.”
The angel is amused. “And so I am no longer the source of all evil?”
“You are the diamond, Messiah.”
The ant struggles in those marble white fingers. Hold it too hard, and the angel would crush it. Too lightly, and it would escape.
It is a lesson. Every motion, every step, every breath he takes is another lesson. The disciple watches everything. Nothing the angel does is accidental.
“Do you know how many assassins have come to me over the eons?” says the angel.
“Many, Lord.” The disciple has seen the Collection.
“Do you know what I have done with them?”
“Destroyed them one by one, Ocean of Wisdom.”
The angel places the ant to one side of their path, safely on its feet. “I offer myself to them. I try to overcome their unawareness, and in the process I recall all the things I know about the universe.”
“Yes, Lord.” But the disciple has seen the Collection.
“Some I trained and sent back into the light of day. Some I dressed in my powers and let them pretend to be me, so that I could shape my legend. Others, like you, I keep with me in my solitude.”
The disciple bows his head respectfully. But he does not lower his eyes from the angel’s face. The angel has warned him. Never look away. I am a hungry god.
“Let us continue on your path to knowledge,” says the angel.
“Lord, lead me on.”
The angel turns. He goes on. The disciple watches as he crushes the rest of the ant colony beneath one foot. The disciple learns the lesson. Many are called. Few are spared.
ARTIFACTS
Diary Notes for a Symphony Subterranea by Gregorio Montaña
As a boy I was spellbound by the discovery of the Neanderthal flute in 1995 by Dr. Ivan Turk of the Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SAZU). It was made from the femur of a cave bear and dated to forty-five thousand years old. Also by the discovery of the flutes (from the wing bones of the red-c
rowned crane) and tortoiseshell drums at Jiahu, China (7000 to 5800 bc), and a triangular-shaped lyre on a statue at Keros in the Aegean Sea (2700 bc). That was when I first thought of a prehistoric symphony. I made versions of the instruments and learned to play them.
The oldest known song was recorded on Assyrian cuneiform tablets (2000 bc) and used harmony and the diatonic scale (do, re, mi, etc.).
Then the inside of the earth was discovered, and I began to see instruments of every kind. Now, with my own lips, I have played notes from Subterranean flutes twenty-five thousand years old (standard diatonic to heptatonic, including a flatted la and a neutral third for mi, i.e., a blue note). I have translated fragments of hadal songs. I have listened to recordings of recaptured slaves singing. One woman has heard the hadals sing their own songs. After my doctorate I must get to America and meet her. Her name is Alexandra Von Schade.
What does music have to do with the underworld? My professors mock me. I don’t know the answer to my own question. It is like a riddle God has planted in my hands. The connection eludes me, but I feel it in the middle of the night, when everyone else is asleep. Somehow music is our salvation.
Dr. Von Schade wrote back to me! Suddenly I am not alone. Now there is someone to discuss what came first, music or words. She is a linguist, and feels strongly for words. We argue in our e-mail. We have passion for what we believe. I feel drunken on this. Someday I will finish my symphony and dedicate it to her.
7
AMERICA
It was Halloween, the one night of every year that American parents can be depended on to send their children out into the darkness like eager sacrifices. The sun had barely set. Costumes were just appearing, a nation’s little nightmares on parade.
With so many disguises that night, the task of distinguishing the missing from the dead would be all the more difficult come morning.
A dad—this one’s name was Dave—was walking behind his little gypsy on her Schwinn. He’d taken off the training wheels that very morning. Growing up. Too fast. “Slow down, Jen.” Of course she only pedaled faster. Got to make more time for the munchkin.
Down the path she wobbled, beyond the reach of the park’s vapor lights. She gave Dad one glance over her shoulder. A smile. He was there. All was safe. Onward she went, into the darkening woods.
The orange-lit plastic pumpkin on her handlebars dipped out of sight.
“Jen.”
Silence.
Louder. “Jenny.”
A deeper silence.
Dave’s dad alarm went off. Boogeymen sprang to mind, the gangs, the crackheads, the unregistered sex offenders, the homeless. Who knew what all lived in these shadows? They were legion.
He wasn’t in the best of shape. Too many Dairy Queens on summer nights. Too much grazing in Costco. Memo: Cut down, Dave. Huffing and puffing, Dave pounded along the pathway.
It smelled of loam and rotting leaves among the trees. Water was trickling in hidden veins. Shadows loomed, a bony web of branches. The pale moon watched.
“Jennifer.” Again. Strictly. They were going to have to have a talk. There is a time and place for games, but not in dark and dangerous woods. “Jennifer.”
Animals skittered. Leaves stirred. He was getting a little scared, but had not the slightest doubt that everything was fine. He would find her around the next bend. They would have a story to share. Remember that time in the park…
Four kids—two Spidermen, one Jason, one Ring girl—crouched behind a swaybacked picket fence. Their target was an old ranch-style tract home. The lights were out. They were never on. The lawn hadn’t been mowed for years. A Re/Max sign waggled in the breeze, long forgotten by its neglectful realtor.
Spiderman One: “There’s two of them living in there.”
Spiderman Two: “Three’s what I heard.”
Jason: “My dad says they’re lesbians. Or Democrats.”
Ring Girl: “That’s mean.”
Jason: “The country needs some spine. That’s what my dad says.”
Spiderman Two: “They’re witches is what they are.”
Spiderman One: “Vampires.”
Jason: “They never come out. They don’t have kids. My dad says they don’t even own a car. Vegetarian dike atheists.”
Spiderman One: “No car? So how do they eat?”
Jason: “Pets. Stray cats. Remember the Browns’ dalmation?”
Spiderman Two: “You don’t know that.”
Jason: “Roadkill. And mushrooms.”
Spiderman One: “I say we TP their trees.”
Ring Girl: “Like they’d care. Look at the yard.”
Jason: “Rock their windows then.”
Ring Girl: “You’re getting psycho, Billy. Again. They’re just old ladies.”
Spiderman Two: “Nan’s right, man. What’d they ever do to you?”
Jason: “They don’t belong. That’s enough.”
Ring Girl: “They could be your grandma.”
Jason: “Or your mom.”
Spiderman Two: “Whatever, Billy.”
Ring Girl: “I’m going up there.”
Jason: “Forget that, Nan.”
Ring Girl: “I’m going to ring their doorbell. I’m going to say hi.”
Spiderman One: “No you’re not.”
Ring Girl: “Watch me.”
Spiderman Two: “Awesome. She’s doing it!”
Spiderman One: “Nan, get back here.”
Spiderman Two: “Now what?”
Jason: “What do you think? She’ll tell everybody we were pussies. We have to go with her.”
Spiderman One: “I’m not going up there.”
Jason: “Pussy.”
Spiderman One: “Take it back, Billy.”
Jason: “Or what?”
Spiderman Two: “Hey, look. The door’s opening.”
Spiderman One: “She’s waving to us.”
Spiderman Two: “Nice, Nan. Now they know we’re out hiding in the grass.”
Jason: “Come on, you guys. Maybe they’ll have some good stuff. Like poison apples.”
Spiderman One: “Or eyeball soup.”
Spiderman Two: “Or dalmatian burgers.”
Spiderman One: “Hey, Nan, wait for us.”
“Ten dollars a head,” Reverend Robbins said to the couple.
“But I’ve got a coupon.”
The reverend smiled. Joe Quarterback was trying to Jew him. Like Robbins was born yesterday. Like he couldn’t take the musclehead down in a heartbeat. Pop his knee out, stomp his head. In one Rocky Mountain heartbeat.
“That coupon’s from last year, son,” he said.
“There’s no expiration date. It says seven bucks. So here’s fourteen for me and her.”
“Twenty dollars, friend.”
“I don’t have twenty.”
The girlfriend started pulling at the hero’s big arm, like, let’s go make babies in the parental SUV. Just then a bloodcurdling scream ripped from the mouth of hell. Robbins calmly kept his back to the maze entrance. He watched the effect on his two young customers. It sent a shudder through them. It made them think. It made them want.
The girlfriend quit trying to leave. She looked at the entrance to the maze. Oh, joy, her eyes seemed to say. Another scream—and these were real screams, that was the beauty of it, real teenage terror, nothing canned—and the deal was swung. “Fifteen dollars and twenty cents,” said the golden boy. “That’s all I’ve got.”
Robbins looked out across the parking lot. More customers were approaching, all clean-cut Jesus types, the guys in Dockers, the girls prim, with long sleeves and buttons all the way to the throat, with little crucifixes on chains, like they were peasants in Transylvania or something. Lots of hormones in motion tonight. Not much T & A, though. A pity, some of these gals. But the upside of all the sanctity was no dopers, no inner-city gorilla eyes, no guns or blades, no trouble. Robbins didn’t need trouble. Just lots and lots of clean green pouring in.
“Fifteen,”
said Robbins. “Keep the change. Just don’t tell anybody I caved in for you.”
Joe Quarterback brightened. He looked at Suzy Q like he’d just won state or something.
An hour went by.
Robbins sat there taking money, counting it up, listening to the kids scream their heads off. This year’s “hell house” had cost him an extra fourteen hundred in lumber, paint, and accessories. It was a lot of money, but you had to keep up with the competition. An hour and a half up I-25, two Denver preachers—one a reformed felon like Robbins—were running their own hell houses.
There was good money to be made scaring the secular crap out of nice young Christians, and every year demanded new refinements to the art. Not so long ago you could get away with a few gory dioramas of the punishments awaiting the needle fiends, glue sniffers, drunks, sluts, queers, Hollywood blasphemers, and other fuel for the evangelical flames. Anymore, though, you had to be Cecil B. DeMille.
This year, for instance, Robbins got a Toyota car body from the junkyard, and hung it in midflight as it careened off a fake cliff…with a horrified drunk driver at the wheel. Farther on, a wax figurine of the filmmaker Michael Moore was getting the radical fat roasted off him in a lake of red cellophane “fire.” A perennial favorite was the evil abortionist, played by Robbins’s brother Ted this year, who slowly turned from the metal gynecology stirrups (a pair of horseshoes spot-welded to poles) and held up a bloody fetus (a Wet Baby with the cry voice dismantled). In a nod to current events, the abortionist then sold the fetus to a stem-cell scientist. Another crowd-pleaser was the human vegetable, played by Ted’s wife, who begged for her life while the atheists yanked out her tubes one by one. Farther on, a teacher was beating the snot out of a child for reading a Bible in biology class.
But the real scream machine, this year’s big moneymaker, was the climactic “Inferno” display. Word about the exhibit had spread far and wide. Kids were driving from as far away as Cheyenne to take the plunge—down a plastic slide from Target—into the pit of hell.
Robbins had gone all out making this one, truly his masterpiece. It had pools of darkness, strobe lights, dry-ice fog, and “Sympathy for the Devil” playing really loud. And ghastly fiends that sprang from nowhere. Besides brother Ted and his wife, several more of the Robbins clan had driven all the way from Eugene to dress up as demons and jump out, grab hair, run around on all fours, moan, howl, bark, and generally terrify the sinners half out of their wits. Judging by the screams, Team Robbins was doing a damn good job in there.