Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz

by Tim Marquitz

The first batch of men left, laughing and making plans to meet up at a local sports bar.

  Ungrateful bastards.

  The next group punched out and departed, also laughing and discussing their evening’s plans and afternoon’s little league games.

  Go ahead. Laugh about it. Laugh about everything.

  It was time. Steve stuck his left foot out, noticing the ground felt unusually soft. He kept his left one in, noticing his co-workers looking around, trying to keep their footing.

  Oh, dear God ... please, help me.

  They began to drift upwards. At least that’s how it looked to Steve from the safety of the large doorway, which he held onto for stability. It was as if they were falling off a colossal ceiling. Their screams must’ve been heard by the boss, who came running outside, his own feet slowly leaving the ground.

  “What’s going on? Heyyyyyy … ”

  Steve started to float out of the doorway, then began falling fast. His co-workers were finally experiencing what some of them had made fun of him for.

  He saw his obese employer falling rapidly, passing up the rest of the crew. Within seconds, Steve figured, they would all be eaten up by the ozone layer or whatever waited for them beyond the blue sky.

  The time had finally come, but Steve, who had prepared most of his life for this moment in anxiety and continual stress, remained surprisingly calm. His heart raced upon the initial realization of what was happening, but something began to ease his fear. He could no longer see his boss or co-workers, and knew his rope was holding him to the earth, or at least keeping him from falling at their speed. He reveled in the beauty and irony of it all. He was supposed to be the one whom gravity would no longer accept. He was supposed to be the panic-infested agoraphobic. But now, like an astronaut outside a space shuttle, Steve Burke dangled from a long rope, still relaxed, not wondering what would happen next. Not caring. His world, as always feared, had turned upside down.

  The Silence was beyond serene. It was beautiful. And for some reason, the fading screams of his co-workers brought him comfort.

  Steve relaxed as the earth shrank underneath him.

  The blue sky turned dark. Breathing became more labored. The sky turned darker still. Darker than midnight.

  When Steve reached down to give a reassuring tug on his rope, he realized there was none. His stomach dropped as he frantically felt around, a life line nowhere to be found.

  The atmosphere became increasingly dark, as did the unheard of speed that distanced him from the planet.

  ~

  I’ve shown mercy to those who believed until the last possible moment, and grew tired of those who took me for granted.

  I am above you. I am sated. I leave with your light.

  I bring the darkness along.

  A Withering of Sorts

  Stephen McQuiggan

  The array of shops that passed for Main Street were shuttered and quiet. He spotted a bar, its door half open, and pulled close by, killing the engine.

  “We’ll ask here,” he said. “There’s bound to be a hotel or B&B around here somewhere.”

  “George,” she began, but stopped abruptly, not liking the scratch of her voice, or the way the silence stirred like something provoked.

  “This is the first town we’ve hit in miles. God knows how far it is to the next one. Besides, it’ll be dark soon.” He turned to face the little girl hugging her dolly in the backseat. “And you know what Emily’s like when she gets tired.”

  She smiled at her daughter, then at her husband; he was right of course. But something told her she would rather drive all night with a busload of cranky Emilys than remain here, wherever here was; there had been no signposts.

  Holding her daughter’s hand tightly, she followed him into the bar. It was dull inside. The faint glow of the pumps offered only token resistance against the gloom. She pulled down the sleeves of her sweater as the air grew chill. The heat lay at the door like a panting dog, refusing to enter.

  There were three figures by the bar, little more than silhouettes. One approached them from the murk of cigarette smoke and the little girl dropped her doll to cling to her mother’s skirt. The figure bent to pick it up, staring at it all the while as if he thought it might suddenly spring to life in his calloused hands. He stood that way for a long, awkward moment, then burst into tears.

  “My Beth had one,” he said to the little girl, wiping the snot from his nose on a thick plaid sleeve. “My Beth had one just like that.” He handed the doll to the mother and left, the thunder of his work boots on the wooden slats unable to mask his grief.

  “I’ll take Emily back out to the car and wait for you there,” she said to her husband, who nodded, heeding the unspoken order in her voice.

  He strolled over to the bar and saw the man at the far end hunch apprehensively as he drew near. The man’s face was in shadow, a baseball cap pulled all the way down over his eyes, and on his hands, slick black gloves creaked as he clenched and unclenched his fists. The barman, his bald head veined and wrinkled like a prehistoric egg, put down the glass he had been pretending to clean.

  “Bit of a ghost town you’ve got here,” said the stranger, the echo of his voice mocking his attempt at casualness.

  “Well,” said the barman, giving the throwaway line much credence, “if ghosts are memories, then this place is haunted sure enough.” Again, the creak and whine of leather as the gloves flexed in the corner. “You must forgive the welcome. We don’t like strangers here, and as for the child, well … ”

  “I was wondering if there was anywhere we could hole up for the night. We’ve been on the road all day. We’re heading to—”

  “Then I suggest you just keep on heading.” The man in the corner spoke for the first time. “This is no place for children.”

  The barman sighed, poured out a glass of whiskey for the stranger and pushed it toward him. “Maybe you should hear our story friend, then maybe you’ll forgive us our manners.”

  “Dwight—” began the man in the corner.

  “S’alright, Hector, he has a right to know if he’s planning to stick around. Hell, it might even do us some good to chew it over.” He took a large pull from the whiskey bottle, and then refilled the stranger’s glass. “It all began when a new face, just like yourself, dropped in one night. It was different then, swinging, jukebox up to the max and everyone dancing. Anyway, this guy just saunters up to me and introduces himself, says his name is … ”

  ~

  “ … Baird, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “Mutual, I’m sure. Name’s Dwight,” the barman cleaned his hands on his sodden apron, “I own this place. What can I get you?”

  “Coke. No ice.” Baird’s voice was little more than a whisper, yet it cut easily through the clamor. Dwight poured his drink and passed it over, careful not to touch him. Baird was almost unbearably thin, like a man stricken by some fatal illness. Dwight noticed how, even though the bar was filled to bursting, the others automatically gave him room, stepped out of his way as if he might break on contact.

  And yet, there was cunning in his hawkish face, a sense of strength in his eyes that belied his physical appearance. They suggested this invalid image was just a façade, a ploy that happened to suit his purpose. Dwight gingerly picked up the note that Baird had somehow managed to place on the bar without him seeing; the stranger kept his hands buried in his pockets as if he were ashamed of them. When Dwight returned with his change, Baird looked at him as if he found him amusing.

  “Just leave it on the bar … Dwight.”

  Maybe that was it, maybe it was his hands, maybe they were crippled and gnarled and the uneasiness that Dwight felt emanated from them. But, when he set the coins down on the counter, Baird’s right hand shot out, a predator at a watering hole, and scooped them up. In the lightning flash of their presence, the barman saw they were very white, very pale, and seemed to shine from within like porcelain. In the midst of the clouds of hot breath and smoke tha
t engulfed him, Dwight felt a chill at the sight of them.

  “So, you just passing through? We’re a bit off the beaten track so to speak. We don’t get a lot of visitors from the outside world.”

  “Cut off?” Again, that piercing whisper. “Sounds ideal for my work. I’ve bought the house out by the Lonewalk road, opposite the mill.”

  “Old Manny Robbins’ place? Why, I didn’t think anyone would ever buy that. I mean, I didn’t think anyone could afford it.”

  “Oh, money is of no concern to me … Dwight.”

  “You some fancy business type then? ’Scuse me for saying, but you don’t look it. No, not business. Don’t tell me … you’re one of those collectors, right?”

  Baird seemed pleased with this and laughed, revealing sharp little teeth. “Yes, a collector, I like that. How apt. You are really quite astute my friend.”

  “And will you be working here?”

  Baird’s smile faded, but not from his eyes. “Oh, I certainly hope so … Dwight.”

  He left then, without touching his drink or saying goodbye, the crowd parting before him. Dwight watched him go, pondering the man’s odd manner. His reverie was broken when the juke stopped abruptly and a torrent of blood gushed from his nose and down his white apron, freshly washed that morning.

  ~

  “Damnedest thing,” said the barman, “I must’ve lost a pint.”

  The stranger walked to the window and peered out through the blind at his wife and daughter. The man in the corner flexed his gloves, their creaks underlining the throbbing vein he knew was pulsing in his wife’s neck as she stared back at him.

  “Listen, if you could suggest some place, I’d best be moving on.”

  But the barman didn’t hear him, he was watching events unfold behind his eyes; he carried on accompanied by the relentless crackle of leather.

  “Now, let me see, all was quiet for a week or two, and I’d all but forgotten Baird, when Artie Hanlon comes running in as I’m calling time, screaming and a’hollering—”

  ~

  “—They’re dead! The whole herd, they’re all dead!”

  Old Peggy Veneer, seduced momentarily from her nightly stupor, knocked over her gin as she crossed herself. As the glass smashed on the wooden floor, so did the shocked calm.

  “Where there any marks, Artie? Any signs of … ” Dwight knew he was treading water, he knew nothing of farming, but he understood if there were a disease or virus abroad it would kill more than the cattle; the town would die a lingering death.

  “Nope. No marks, no nothing. They looked perfect, peaceful like … excepting they were dead.”

  “Poisoned!” shouted Jem French, “I guarantee it. They’ve all been poisoned! We’ll get the Landrovers and the shotguns. They can’t have got far.” He sounded hopeful, almost relieved. If Artie’s herd had been poisoned, his would be safe providing they caught the culprit. Jem liked those odds a whole lot better than the unmentionable ones of disease.

  “It won’t be my gun they’ll get if I catch them,” said Artie. “I’ll set my bloody dogs on them.”

  He didn’t know the dogs would be next.

  ~

  “And the cats, and the ferrets. Even little Amy Fisher’s budgie. Every pet in the whole damn town.” The barman rubbed the counter with a damp cloth in slow meandering circles. “Vet couldn’t find a single thing wrong with any of them.”

  “It was Baird, wasn’t it? He was poisoning them somehow.”

  “It was Baird, alright, but it wasn’t poison, leastways not any kind of poison you’d buy in a bottle. After a while, his name kept cropping up, people saying how this all started when he arrived. The talk got kinda crazy. I took it on myself to go and pay him a visit, warn him the town was itching for a scapegoat. I walked out to that big house of his, and he’s sitting on the porch like he’s expecting me, smiling like an invitation to Hell. In his hands he’s got a flute, a big—”

  ~

  —white flute that looked as if it had been carved from bone.

  “Hello … Dwight. What brings you here this balmy evening?” His thin voice threw Dwight. He had been wondering how to broach the subject without his warning sounding like a veiled threat, but now all he was left with was small-talk.

  “You a musician?”

  “To my ears it is sweet, but alas, to my ears only. Others avoid my symphonies like the plague.” Baird laughed at the expression on the barman’s face. “Sorry. A badly chosen phrase given your slight problem.”

  “Far from slight, Mister Baird. My bar’s filled with ruined men drinking away their anger, or fuelling it. They’ve been blaming everything from the moon to tea-leaves over this, and now—”

  “They’re blaming me. I’m used to it. I am a solitary man, and I’ve lived in many small towns. People can interpret solitude as arrogance and resent it. It’s quite natural.”

  “Natural’s not a word I’d use for what’s been going on around here lately.”

  Baird laughed. “I agree … Dwight. Listen, I plan to put on a show, for the children you understand. They’ve lost their little pets and mummy and daddy have other things to think about. It’ll take their minds off things awhile, and show the good folks I’m not a monster. Yes, it’s decided. It’s time I went to town.”

  ~

  “So this Baird put on a show? What was it? Punch and Judy? Clown act? Some sort of magic?”

  Dwight laughed ruefully, and the man in the corner looked at his gloved hands as if the answer lay there.

  “Oh, it was some sort of magic, alright.”

  ~

  Dwight’s Bar was dressed up for a party. A crude stage had been erected using apple boxes draped with a few curtains. The decorations served only to make the place appear more miserable; the contrast between the sparkling tinsel and the dour faces beneath was unsettling. The funereal atmosphere swallowed the slightest sound.

  Baird mounted the stage and kicked off with a few basic tricks bereft of skill and applause, working his way up to a ventriloquist act with a sock that made a few of the children cry. Dwight almost felt sorry for him. They would lynch him out of sheer boredom now.

  “Could I have a volunteer from the audience?”

  Sandra Warner pushed her youngest, Janet, forward. She alone seemed to be enjoying this diversion, and like all optimists, felt the need to inflict her hopefulness on everyone else.

  “And what is your name, child?”

  Janet merely stared, confused. This was exactly the type of man her mother had warned her never to speak to. Undeterred, Baird reached his long white hand under the table and produced a toy cat, stuffed and stiff, its eyes as indifferent as Janet’s. “This is for you.”

  The little girl took it gingerly, pouted. “But it’s not as nice as Captain.”

  “Was Captain your cat?” She nodded her head, shaking warm tears down her cheeks. “Well, this little fellow is called Earl. Why don’t you give him a stroke, and then tell me what you think.”

  Janet rubbed her hand delicately along the synthetic fur and Earl sprang to life, licking frantically at her shocked but ecstatic face. For a moment, the bar grew even quieter, then a rumbling of voices came hurtling down on Baird, who smiled and whispered “Who’s next?”, and the bar was filled with noise, with laughter, with life.

  He handed out rabbits and ducks, puppies and parrots, an endless menagerie of cloth. After a while, as the bar reverberated with the scrape of claws and the flutter of wings, it didn’t seem like a miracle anymore. It seemed a necessity.

  As each child grasped their gift, gaping wide mouthed as it lurched to flesh and bone, Baird laid one cold hand on their forehead and whispered, “Say thank you.”

  ~

  “Next morning, all the kids were dead. Dead in their beds, hugging the animals he’d given them, but the only life left in those furry critters was the maggots devouring them.”

  The man in the corner, the one the barman had called Hector, coughed out a pitiful sob.

/>   “All of them?” asked the stranger, looking anxiously toward the door. “My God, is the virus or whatever it was—”

  “No, friend, whatever it was has left us. Used us up and moved on.”

  “So, this Baird, he was carrying some disease after all?”

  “Yeah, he was diseased. Riddled with it. Riddled with evil itself.”

  Hector flexed his gloves in the gloom. The stranger made to leave, an apology forming on his lips, but the barman hadn’t finished.

  “They buried the children in a single service, in one of Sam Warner’s pastures, in the shadow of his barn. He lost four girls, did Sam. They lined them all up one Sunday, all the kids in their little white coffins. Ah, you’d have been a hard man not to shed a tear that day. All lined up like … ”

  ~

  … a row of tiny teeth, the holes in the earth before them the rotten gums from which they had been plucked. A cloudless day, the slightest movement forming a sheen of sweat on those gathered. Later, as they covered their grief with caked morsels of dry soil, there was barely enough moisture for tears.

  As expected, the Reverend Hewitt did not arrive. His faltering voice on the phone, although full of divine reassurance, suggested he would not set foot in the town unless it had been quarantined until the Second coming. It was Molly Saunders who led the service, standing atop a tractor, a vantage point that allowed her to address the mourners without having to look directly into their empty eyes.

  “Dear friends, we are gathered here to bury our children; our future. We are gathered here to bury a little piece of ourselves, to bury hope itself.” There was a chorus of strangled sobs from the crowd below, swaying slightly, cooking in heavy black. “But I beg you not to lose your faith. We must believe, we have to believe, there is some purpose here that we are too small to understand. We must believe—”