Dugan perked up. “Whaddya mean?”
“Killin’ a bunch of ‘em the way you did. Once you’ve… changed, it’s like you’re part of something bigger, there’s some kind of ESP bond or somethin’. Every one of ‘em you killed today weakened the Colonel in some way, ‘cause he’s the one that made ‘em, and that’s about all I know about it.”
The two sat quietly for a while before Dugan remembered to ask the one question that had always bugged him about Harris.
“What was up with all them haircuts?”
After a moment, Harris said, “Whaddya mean?” Dugan smiled to see that at least the question had perked him up a bit.
“Every year, you go through like this three day haircut routine. It takes you three friggin’ days to get a haircut! What’s up with that?”
Harris began to laugh and it sounded almost human. Dugan watched the silhouette of Harris’ arm reach up to wipe away tears from his yellow eyes. It took another moment, but Dugan finally got his answer.
“I’m a wrestler. Every year, coach makes everyone get a haircut. Every year, he and I disagree on how long my hair should be. And every year, he sends me back to the barber for a coupla days inna row.”
Dugan smiled to think that at least that mystery was solved. The two remained quiet a while before Dugan remembered something else.
“By the way, I been meanin’ to thank you for…looking out for my mother the way you did…you know, that night in the cemetery? I know it was you that watched out for her and…you have no idea how much I appreciated it and all and…I just wantcha to know it didn’t go unnoticed.”
Although Dugan watched the silhouette of an arm wave its dismissal, he was glad he’d said it. A moment later, Harris began looking around. Dugan heard him sniff the air.
“I gotta get going now, I think,” Harris said.
Dugan blinked and then the chair was empty. As he sat up, from somewhere in the room Dugan heard a disembodied voice say, “I brought ya somethin’. Left it on the couch.”
The rank smell got stronger for a moment and then began to dissipate and Dugan knew he was alone. After a moment, he threw his covers off and left his room, but as he walked down the stairs his steps slowed. He wasn’t at all certain he wanted to know just exactly what it might be that Harris had left him.
After creeping along the darkened hallway, he stood listening outside the sunroom for a moment and then heard breathing. He gathered his courage, then poked his head around the corner and looked toward the couch. When he did, his knees buckled. He collapsed to the floor, where he bent over and began to weep.
Getting control of himself after a while, he managed to crawl over to the couch. He looked into the beautiful and peaceful face reflected in the moonlight drifting in through the windows. Dugan raised one hand and began running it gently through the shaggy blond hair. He ran the back of his other hand against the dirty, but otherwise still human face. The sleeping figure stirred for a moment, before opening one eye to smile and say, “Do-o-o-gan,” and drifting back off to sleep.
After a while, Dugan got up on his knees and leaned back. It seemed a shame to disturb him. Harris had him all tucked in underneath the old comforter his father used…used to use. But it was past time for the boy to be getting home. Dugan picked him up as carefully as he could and began carrying him, still wrapped up in the old comforter, across the street and home to his own warm bed.
7
Boy God
After dropping Alex off at Andy’s house, Dugan walked through his eerily silent neighborhood, heading back to Moon’s. She had been the one who answered his knock, and when Andy saw the two of them she began to sob. Dugan waited for it to pass. After she opened the screen door for him to transfer her sleeping brother into her arms, she turned her back on him and closed the door. He stayed outside to listen for a while. He heard footsteps walk up the stairs and then Andy’s mom scream with joy. He heard her father begin to weep. Dugan hadn’t seen forgiveness in her eyes, but he hadn’t expected it and knew he didn’t deserve it. It was enough for him to have been allowed to carry her brother home to safety. In his head, he silently thanked Harris again for that.
He walked into Moon’s backyard and down the steps into the darkened basement. Loud snores came from the two couches. Looking over, he saw Mike and Moon passed out on one couch while Mark stretched out on the other. When he glanced into the corner, Dugan saw that someone had ransacked the sporting goods store. Piled there were dozens of brand new knapsacks and backpacks, anything that could carry the foot long wooden stakes. Some of those knapsacks bulged heavily and Dugan knew that Tony and Artie had done well. There was also camping gear, flashlights, tents, and other survivalist stuff piled high at the foot of Moon’s stairs, as if they were going to be in for a long siege. Not if Dugan could help it. He walked over to the ping-pong table.
From the slivers of moonlight able to make their way through the narrow windows into the basement, Dugan saw that a long extension cord dangled over the tableau. Reaching up, he felt along the cord and found a switch. He clicked it and electric moonlight suddenly appeared in the form of a series of dim bulbs placed strategically above the diorama. Once again, Mike’s work astounded him. He felt like the God of Grantham looking down upon a corner of his small town.
It was all there: the quarry, the abandoned granite railway, and the tower up on Lookout Hill. Straightening to his full height, Dugan looked down and saw the huge sheets of granite overlooking the quarry, the same ones that he and his friends lay upon every summer to bask in the sun. He wanted to reach over and touch them, to see if Mike had in fact used real granite to make them, but he stopped halfway, fearing it might spoil the illusion. He stared at it for a while, seeing rocks where rocks should be, the huge trees that dominated the hillside and blocked out the noontime sun.
He looked down at his own street, and for a moment, he looked into his own bedroom window and saw the weak light from the hallway drifting across his unmade bed. They’d even gotten the narrowed top of the street almost perfect. Dugan had to squint a little to read the small sign, on an overgrown but once landscaped plot of land: “Applewood.” When he saw the tiny little bas-relief apples on it, Dugan felt wetness on his cheeks and reached up with his shoulder to wipe it away. Tearing his eyes away to look up at the clock, he saw it was 3:30 in the morning. There was still plenty of time.
Quietly pulling over an old bar stool, he placed it next to the diorama and sat down on the high perch to immerse himself in the illusion. He looked into the top of the tower where he, Andy, and all his friends had watched the fireworks and remembered how much fun he’d had that day. As he looked back on it, he was stunned to realize that it had been the best day of his life. He set aside the emotion that began welling up, because he couldn’t allow himself to dwell on the past. Still, while he watched and waited his eyes blurred sometimes, and he wiped them with his shoulder. When the first hint of the morning sun began drifting into the dingy windows of Moon’s basement, the scale model world began to brighten as well. It was as the morning began to brighten further, just after 5:00, that he saw them.
They appeared at first only as tiny shadows. Dugan blinked hard and watched them begin drifting into the woods that surrounded his neighborhood. He saw them walking through the now empty field where cows once grazed, and shivered when they moved boldly through Andy’s backyard. Then they crossed the street and went into his own backyard on their way into the woods. He remembered that back when he was a kid, every summer like clockwork, a trail of ants would appear on his kitchen floor on their way to God knows where. The ants never varied their path. As he watched these creatures move, Dugan began to suspect that they too followed some sort of similar homing instinct. He watched them climb over Mike’s tiny recreations of ancient New England stone walls, and then cross the abandoned granite railway in the dozens. They climbed Lookout Hill and then about halfway up they disappeared. Dugan squeezed his eyes shut and looked again.
T
here was a small, circular outcrop of boulders about halfway up the hill surrounded by large bushes and brush. He and his friends had hiked by it a thousand times and never given the area a passing thought. Dugan was certain now that he would find the entrance to a cave in that spot. He watched them all, each of the tiny shadows, walk into the brush and vanish. As the morning got brighter still, he smiled to see one or two stragglers appear out of nowhere. They began running toward the stony outcrop as if their lives depended on it. A moment later, Dugan felt the first real rays of the morning sun come through the windows and shine over Mike’s handiwork.
Dugan leaned back, surprised at how cramped his muscles had become, and took a long stretch before getting off the stool. Looking around the room a moment, he found a blank piece of paper and pen. He wrote a brief note of apology and goodbye, and as an afterthought he added his uncle’s phone number. When he placed it next to the diorama, he spied one of the small, blank tags that Artie had used on the garlic strands. He picked it up and wrote on it, then reached over to find a discarded toothpick. Using some spit, he made a small flag by wrapping the tag around the toothpick, then reached over and inserted the toothpick next to the outcrop. Smiling, he read his own addition to Mike’s masterpiece, a tiny flag that read, “Here there be monsters.” He hoped his friends might find it good for a laugh anyway.
With the rays of the morning sun beginning to fully sweep away the darkness of the night, Dugan walked out of Moon’s basement laden with two of the large knapsacks, careful to be as silent as possible. He had seen only a few dozen of the creatures running through the darkness, confirming a theory he’d held for a while. There was some kind of hierarchy among them and the Colonel probably surrounded himself with only his closest confidants. Or maybe it was just that he stayed closest to the first of them he made.
Some of them, like Mrs. Skin, seemed to be kept around only as a food source, before they too changed into some kind of weaker version of the nighttime creature. Dugan wished he’d had more time to ask Harris some of this stuff as he walked through his own backyard and on into the woods.
8
Endgame
There were dozens of places within the woods where large boulders had randomly dropped from the melting glaciers that retreated from New England fifty thousand years ago. Perhaps it was because they were so common, Dugan and his friends had never given any one of them much thought. He tried remembering whether they had ever used this specific one in the endless games of army they had played out here in the woods, but set that thought aside when it occurred to him that it didn’t matter anymore. He dropped his heavy load beside one of the larger boulders and hauled out the long flashlight he had found in the cache of sporting goods. Concerned about the jostling it had taken on the journey, he verified one last time that the batteries were good and the flashlight still worked.
After that, he walked in a semi-circle around the outcrop before he saw the narrow passageway between two of the larger boulders. Overgrown bushes surrounded the opening that would have provided excellent natural cover in the not so distant past. But now, Dugan saw broken and tattered branches, evidence of heavy foot traffic in the area recently. When he looked closer and saw a torn piece of blue flannel hanging from a broken stem, he knew he was in the right place. He went back and grabbed his knapsacks, but paused a moment to look up at the sky. There were patches of clear blue still visible through the tall trees. The high puffy clouds looked to him like huge cotton balls. Even in the shade of the woods, Dugan could feel the temperature climbing. It would be a beautiful and warm spring day.
Glancing off to his right, he saw a single small patch of earth not shadowed by the sheltering trees and illuminated by the rays of the early morning sun. He walked the few yards and stood in that spot for a moment, turning his face up and to the east, closing his eyes to feel and take comfort in the life-giving beams of sunlight. He opened his eyes before too long, steeling himself for what he had to do, and when he did, he saw a body dangling high up in the trees. He jumped back a little bit and emitted a grunt of surprise. He watched it carefully for another moment, and when he was absolutely certain that it wasn’t moving, he stepped closer.
Shielding his eyes from the bright sky, he realized suddenly both what and who it was. They had impaled him on one of the high branches, perhaps as a warning to others of what becomes of consorting with humans, or maybe one of them had learned that it was he who had saved Alex from the Colonel. Whatever the reason, it didn’t stop Dugan from bending his head for a moment to say a silent prayer in memory of Michael Harris, a kid who never had a chance. When he was finished, he moved back over to the outcrop.
Once again donning the heavy knapsacks, he turned on the flashlight and began moving into the narrow crevice between the bushes. He was only about halfway through when he began to smell it again, this time more powerfully than ever. He’d smelled it the first time that night at the cemetery just outside Pope’s tomb. He’d smelled an undercurrent of it in all of the houses that he and Jimmy had visited yesterday, and again last night when Harris had come to visit. Dugan smiled for a moment to think that if it ever happened to him, he would probably miss hygiene the most. He tried to stifle his laugh, but couldn’t, so he just let it happen. He was still laughing as he entered the almost perfectly circular and clear area behind and underneath the outcrop. When he was all the way in, through the gloomy darkness he saw the blackness of a narrow opening underneath one of the boulders and knew that this was the place.
It was about three feet wide and a foot and a half high, not much larger than the opening of the catch basin at the top of his street. He took the two knapsacks from his back and got down on his knees. He flattened the packs to fit into the opening before dropping them one at a time through the hole. He heard them hit the ground not long after he let go, and figured that was a good thing, anyway. He dropped the croquet mallet next before stuffing the flashlight into the front of his pants. He thought that if Larry were here, he would ask if that was a flashlight in his pants or was he just glad to see him. He smiled as he turned around and began crawling backwards through the opening, legs first. Getting down on his belly, he began to slide the rest of the way in, mindful not to break the flashlight. Halfway in, he felt his legs dangle over the thin air. He clutched the cold ground in front of him to keep himself from falling backwards. When everything was in except his arms, he braced himself and then let go.
He had prepared himself for a rock landing, but the ground he fell upon was soft and squishy. He lost his balance when his feet hit the earth, falling backwards into the few inches of water that covered the ground. Opening his eyes to near total darkness, he pulled the flashlight out of his pants. He turned it on. Nothing. He shook it gently once or twice. Nothing. Squelching his own rising panic, he felt around in the dark to find that the cover had become unseated from the jostling it had taken. He took a few deep breaths before untwisting the top from the grooves, reseating it, and tightening it once again. He said a silent prayer and muttered, “Let there be light,” under his breath. He flicked the switch with his thumb and there was light. And the light was good, he thought, smiling and standing up. He was in an underground passageway. When he shined the flashlight around in a circle, he saw there were three directions he could go.
Looking up at the narrow gap that he had climbed through, he oriented himself to the direction of the quarry and began to move. He was surprised to see that the passageway was made of earth and not granite, and wondered exactly what it might have been for. Maybe it was just a disused underground river or stream, or maybe it too had been left over from the age of glaciers. He was thinking that it might have been part of the Praying Indian village that Professor Skunk had written about in his book, when the smell began to get stronger, and he knew he was getting closer.
He kept his flashlight pointed to the ground in front of him as he walked. As he neared the place where he was almost certain they were, he saw trash beginning to pile up: discar
ded clothing and soda cans, mounds and mounds of the plastic and cardboard remains from Hostess Twinkies and Ding Dong’s and Suzy Q’s. He thought it strange and somehow comforting that a vampire could still have a sweet tooth. When he turned a corner, he was surprised to see light ahead. As he walked further in, he saw it was quite literally a light at the end of the tunnel. Surprised, he crouched down and pressed himself against the wall, pausing a moment before moving slowly toward the opening of a large cave.
A single torch burned in one corner. Beneath its flickering light, Dugan saw a few of them splayed out randomly, apparently where they had fallen when the sun had first risen. It was another moment before he figured out that these were probably the same stragglers he had watched that morning, because elsewhere in the cave, in dozens of natural nooks and crannies, they slept. He turned his head away, back toward the tunnel down which he had come, in a desperate search for clean air. Never in his short life had Dugan smelled anything so bad as the air in that cave, reeking as it did of inhuman sweat mingled with the coppery scent of blood and the sickly sweetness of a Hostess treat. He felt his eyes water and he raised his arm to his mouth, to breathe through his shirt for a moment, before turning around again, dropping his arm, and stepping into the cave.
Ahead of him, on an apparently natural raised dais of some sort, was what could only be the Colonel’s coffin. It was an old fashioned and simple box. Dugan knew enough about the Colonel now to know he would choose nothing pretentious for an old soldier like himself. Dugan dropped the heavy knapsacks he’d been carrying and turned off his flashlight, stuffing that back into his pants. Crouching down, he opened one of the knapsacks and grabbed a stake. Hefting his trusty mallet, he walked over to the first of them he saw, one of those who had apparently fallen asleep where he had dropped. Dugan dispatched him and then went on to the next, and the next, and the next.
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