by Jean Rabe
“We do,” they said in unison.
“But what about this neighborhood?” Junior asked. “If one bad bunch tried to take it over, others will, too.”
“Might. But I gave your two neighbors something they can use.”
“What’s that?” Little asked suspiciously.
“My phone number. Now, let’s get packing. This has been a fun little holiday, but I’d like to be home before the new moon. Got a skillet to return and my first grand-son to induct into the Neighborhood.”
MARFA
Anton Strout
Fantasy author Anton Strout writes the popular Simon Canderous urban fantasy series, which includes Dead To Me, Deader Still, and Dead Matter. He was born in the Berkshire Hills, mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, and currently lives in scenic New Jersey (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you). In his scant spare time, he is a writer, a sometimes actor, sometimes musician, occasional RPGer, and the world’s most casual and controller-smashing video gamer. He currently works in the exciting world of publishing and yes, it is as glamorous as it sounds.
Stay awake, I thought to myself as I jerked my rental back onto the dark stretch of lonely Texas highway. Stay awake or you’ll crash in the goddamn desert and no one will find you for months and months. I reached for the giant cup of coffee in my cup holder. It was barely warm now, since my folks had brewed it for me before saying our goodbyes back at their restaurant, but it was still delicious.
I pulled out my cell and hit the first number in my speed dial. As I waited, I settled back into my seat and focused on the road. It stretched out into infinity through a landscape of small hunched brush shrubs that dotted the roadside, looking like a massive army of tiny sleeping hedgehogs.
“Monsieur Beckett’s,” the heavy French accent answered when someone finally picked up the line. “Paris’ finest bistro this side of the Atlantic.”
“Jean-Paul,” I said. “Please, Johnny, drop the accent. You’re killing me here.”
“Christ, boss,” he said, his accent replaced with the Brooklyn coming into his voice. “It’s an hour after closing here. You’re lucky I even answered.”
“Good thing you did,” I said. “Listen, next time you head over to Chelsea Market I’m coming with you.”
“What’s up with that?” he asked. I could hear the wariness creeping into his voice.
“I’m drinking a cup of my old man’s coffee here,” I said, “and I have to wonder why the hell it tastes eight times better than what we grind in New York City.”
“That hurts, boss,” John-Paul said.
“Tough,” I said, “but despite my parents opening this place in the middle of freaking nowhere, they still know how to run a restaurant. Maybe there’s something their West Texas lifestyle could teach us city boys about flavor. God knows our restaurant doesn’t brew anything close to this.”
“I was planning on heading over to the market tomorrow morning,” he said, “but I guess I can hold off until you’re back . . .”
“Don’t postpone anything,” I said. “I’ll be there if I don’t crash. If I make my flight, I mean.”
“Rough ride?”
I reached up and rubbed my eyes as I steered with my knees for a second.
“Not so much rough,” I said, “as it is boring. The roads out here go on forever. They never end. I’ve been in the middle of nowhere for an hour or two and the only indicator that I’ve moved at all is a slight shift of the mountains off in the distance. It’s creepy . . . like I’m in The Twilight Zone or something.”
“Sorry, boss,” he said, but I was already lowering my phone, looking to kill the call.
“All right,” I said. “Just wanted to get that into your ear before I forgot it. I’ll talk to you in the morning, but for now I need to keep my attention on the—”
I caught a blur of something streaking across the pools of light coming from my high beams. Something big. There was a flash off dull pupils as whatever it was turned towards the car, but I was powerless to do anything with so little time for reaction. Immediately I dropped the phone, my hands grasping for the wheel, and I hit the brakes hard. If this had been a movie, there would have been much screeching of tires and spinning out of control, but the reality of the car’s antilock braking system refused to let that happen. The car decelerated quickly, but not fast enough to avoid a collision. A solid thump caught the car’s front bumper, followed by the feel and sound of something passing underneath the vehicle with a series of sickening hits.
The car finally stopped, but my mind kept racing, an unbidden nonsensical thought filling it. Please let whatever I hit be of this earth. Damn my mother for even putting that thought in my head. I could chastise myself about it later, but for now, I killed the engine and reached for the door with a shaking hand.
“Don’t let the aliens get you,” my mother had moaned eerily. Well, as eerily as a fifty-something woman with big blonde Texas hair can at five in the morning. It was still two hours before opening and she and my father were busy prepping for the morning rush of mustachioed locals, migrant workers, and the few business folks who walked the sleepy streets of Marfa, Texas. Marfa, the sign leading into town read, the way the West was.
“Right, ma,” I said. The sleepiness in my voice made me sound more like seven than twenty-seven.
My mother was in the middle of dicing potatoes for hash browns, but stopped to look at me from behind the service counter of the restaurant. “You sure you’re awake enough to drive?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” I just rarely see the waking side of five in the morning. Sure, I’ve seen it occasionally returning home after a hellish night at the restaurant, but I’m still not used to early rising.
“Maybe you should stay another night,” she offered.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll rally and be off in no time. I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for the Marfa Mystery Lights.” I couldn’t help ribbing my mother about the local fascination with aliens around these parts that bordered on a near Roswellian proportion. Not that my mother limited herself to just extraterrestrial oddities, mind you. “I’ll make sure to stop by the Lights observation area on my way out of town with Sasquatch, Nessie, and the Donkey Lady, too. Maybe I can catch a lift from the mothership.”
“Now don’t sass your mother,” my father said with a laugh from the food prep counter. He was almost always laughing these days since they had moved. Western living agreed with him. “You just mind yourself on the road.” I watched him cutting thick slices of bacon from a chunk of pork belly, using the same technique he had taught me years ago.
Although it was early, my father was dressed as if they were already open. He wore his restaurant whites underneath his apron, his collar buttoned to the top and the knot of his black tie perfectly square and centered. As usual, my dad was overdressed for their simple mom and pop operation, which consisted of slinging hash and runny eggs. Years as a cook in the military—a job he had taken very seriously—had led him to fastidiousness.
“You want to be careful on that road this time of morning,” he continued. “Sun won’t be up for another three or four hours.”
“Are you sure you can’t push back your flight?” my mother asked, unwilling to give up on keeping me a few more days.
“Well, I could have left yesterday,” I said, “but I really didn’t think running off on Christmas Day was going to make anyone happy. And, besides, I have to work tonight.”
“Couldn’t you call in sick?” she asked. I could hear the hope in her voice, and it killed me. I hated to deny the woman anything, but I had little choice in the matter.
I shook my head and she frowned. “It’s my restaurant. I can only force Carlos and Jean-Paul to cover for me so much before their families come after me. I have to go back today. Without me, they won’t be serving food at all. I have to be there.”
She gave me an all too familiar I-don
’t-buy-it-for-asecond-buster look. I withered under it and gave up any attempt to explain myself further. Instead, I walked over and laid down in one of the booths nearest the open kitchen area.
Overhead, the holiday tinsel twinkled in the darkness like a thousand stars and I began to wonder how many meals over the holidays had been returned with tinsel in them. My folks were freaks for holiday decoration and the restaurant looked like a Santa piñata had been knocked senseless in here. The steady thump thump thump of my mother’s dicing rung out repeatedly and my mind began to drift off to sleep once again.
“Don’t you dare fall back asleep,” my mother warned. I sat bolt upright in an effort to seem like I hadn’t been about to doze off, but after nearly three decades of knowing me and my ploys, I knew my mother wouldn’t buy it. “You do that on the road and you won’t have to worry about hitting an animal. You’ll drive off into a field and wrap yourself around a fence post.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’m just not used to being up at the asscrack of dawn.”
“Hey,” my father said sternly, “Enough of that talk.”
Even though I lived with a seventeen hundred mile buffer between us, I was surprised to find myself still feeling like a teenager at his scolding. It had less power now, but the fact that I had in some way disappointed my father still stung me in a way I thought it couldn’t anymore.
“Sorry, sir,” I said.
“Must be that city living,” my father said, easing the tension with a fresh bout of laughter. He finished with the bacon and laid it out neatly in a shallow pan with a film of plastic wrap over it before walking it over to the cooler. When he returned, he wiped his hands and looked out through the service window at me. “You know, son, you could always open up your own place right here in town. You know that, don’t you? Give your mom and me some competition. Heck, we do all right here. I’d even front you the money for the space. There’s a spot that would be perfect for an upscale hotshot from New York City, right up by the Palace.”
I smiled politely but shook my head. “I don’t think so, Dad, but thanks. I’m doing OK in the city, and besides, I’d hate to pit myself against your culinary talents’round these parts.”
“I see,” he said, and I could see the tiniest hint of hurt in his eyes. I sighed. It wouldn’t be the holidays without making someone feel bad on some level now, would it? It seemed to be my second greatest skill outside of the culinary arts.
“I know you love it out here,” I said, “but honestly, small town life doesn’t really do it for me. Nice place to get away from it all for a while, but with the nearest movie theater thirty miles away and the closest four-star restaurant three hours, I’m pretty happy with my life in New York City.”
He nodded, but remained silent for a few moments before checking his watch. “Well,” he said, pouring me a tall cup of coffee to go, “You should probably get on the road. It’s three hours to Midland, plus returning the rental and check-in, and like your mother said, you want to take it easy on the road until the sun comes up. Lot of . . . critters out there.”
“The Marfa Lights,” my mother reminded me. “Be mindful of the Lights.”
I rolled my eyes at the mention of the local extraterrestrial phenomenon. “It’s touching that your greatest fear is that I’m going to be abducted by aliens, mom. Why didn’t you guys just throw in for the big show and move to Roswell?”
“Son,” my father said, warning in his voice. He looked at me, then at my mother with concern on his face. “We don’t mention New Mexico in these parts. It’s bad form.”
“Fine,” I said, getting a little testy. Sometimes I didn’t understand why he humored her obsession with life’s woo-woo oddities. I kicked myself for not having left earlier to avoid all this. I loved my mother, but her interest in otherworldly things drove me crazy. It was cute when I was ten, this weak spot for mysteries of the unknown. Hell, I had even bought her the entire Time-Life series about it for Christmas one year, but that was long ago and since then at least one of us had grown up. “I promise I’ll be more than cordial if I run into the Moth Man, a chupacabra, the Donkey Lady, or your close personal friends the Marfa Mystery Light aliens, OK?”
My mother put down her knife and crossed over to where I stood, pulling something from her pocket. It was a small knit pouch on a leather strap, which she hung around my neck without waiting for my approval.
I grabbed a hold of it. The bag itself felt heavy for its tiny size and was a mix of red, yellow, and green threads that were woven into an intricate design I was unfamiliar with. “And this would be?”
“Humor an old woman, won’t you?” she said with a smile as she helped me on with my jacket.
“Is it a snack for the road?” I asked with a smirk.
“It’s a talisman,” she said, clearly disturbed that her own son didn’t know better. “I had one of the Mexican women who comes into town make it up for me. It’s to protect you on the road lest any harm come to you.”
I wondered if the TSA would even let me carry it onto the plane.
My father handed me the coffee. He put his arm on my mother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry the boy, honey. He’s got enough on his mind what with driving and making his flight. Son, you just keep your eyes on the road, and you keep driving if you wanna make it on time, y’hear? You don’t let nothing distract you, got it?”
I nodded and gave him a firm handshake. I hugged my mother and headed out the front door of the restaurant and into the night chill of air to my rental car, all the while listening to my father give me one last run through of directions.
“Take a left out of town on 67, over through Alpine, and keep going till you see 1776, follow that up through the oil fields . . .”
As I pulled away, my dad still spouting directions, I waved for a moment before rolling up the window to keep the chill out as I passed a row of thrift shops. While I didn’t want to move here, there was no denying that the old saying “Home is where the heart is” meant that a part of me would always be where my family was, even if that home’s inhabitants were waiting for Bigfoot to take them away on the mothership. Still, I left with a warm feeling that kept me going until the car’s heater kicked in.
I turned off my car and stepped out. My heart pounded in my chest, part adrenaline from the accident and part all the crazy shit my mother talked about racing through my head. Alone in the middle of nowhere, my mind couldn’t help but entertain the possibilities of the impossible. A bout of fear and uncertainty grabbed me out on that lone dark stretch of highway and I leaned into the back seat to open my suitcase. I fished around inside for my knife roll. I unfolded the thick black material before sliding out the weightiest knife I had with me—my stainless steel meat cleaver. Its heaviness felt reassuring and gave me the courage I needed to step out onto the pavement.
Despite my blood pumping wildly, I was freezing out here in the desert. Having to dress warmly was the last thing I had expected to do in Texas, but thankfully I had smartened up and wore flannels underneath my one purchase from town, a T-shirt reading “Where The Heck is Marfa?” on the front with “West Texas, of course!” on the back. I stepped away from the car and shut the door.
I heard something chuffing and wheezing from behind the car, but the rear taillights were not enough for me to identify the shadowy shape from where I stood. With caution, I made my way toward it, feeling along the side of the vehicle for support as I went, not relishing the notion of putting whatever it was out of its misery. I had hated live butchering from cooking school years ago and the idea of ending this creature’s life had me sick to my stomach. The only thing I feared more was rolling it over to find one of those black eyed aliens that were all over the souvenir shops out here. Normally it was a laughable idea, but not after all the fool thoughts my mother had put in my head.
I stared down at the dying animal, not having any idea what the hell I was looking at. My mother’s voice filled my head. An alien? Had it looked like it had been wai
ting for the mothership, my mind might have snapped right then, but no. It was vaguely pig-like, but not like any variety I had ever seen when I was shopping for fresh cuts over in the meatpacking district. Chupacabra? I wasn’t even sure what one exactly was. I seemed to recall a piggish creature from my mother’s Time-Life series that might have been one, but was this one of them? Its head was large with a long snout and its entire body was covered in thick, bristly hair. A ring of white fur ran across its shoulders, tusks protruded from its somewhat broken face, and it gurgled blood as it lie there panting frantically.
“That’s a shame, really,” a woman’s voice spoke from off to my right. Had I not been so distracted by this strange creature lying before me, I might have noticed the old woman standing by the side of the road before I screamed, but some things you simply don’t expect out in the middle of nowhere.
“Holy Christ!” I yelled, falling back against the trunk of my car.
“You ought not to be throwing that name out lightly in these parts, mister,” she croaked out quietly.
In the red glow of the taillights, this woman looked absolutely terrifying. Her face was a mass of road-weary dips and crags topped by a wild tangle of white hair. She was old, but there was no frailness to this figure, just a calm stillness. I tried to meet her eyes, but it was no use. They were hidden in the shadow of her pronounced brow. At her side stood a slack faced donkey, silent and carrying a burdening pile of saddlebags.
“My God,” I said, tensing. “You’re her. You’re the one my mother told me about.”
The old woman seemed to be amused at that and let out a cackle as dry as the desert itself. “I suspect I’m the one a lot of mommas in these parts tell their younguns about.”
The cleaver was shaking in my hand. I didn’t want to drop it, but I couldn’t steady myself. As I watched the woman checking me over from the side of the road, I couldn’t help but babble, as if somehow talking would improve the fear I was feeling. “My mom goes on about you,” I said. “Among a lot of things, really, but she’s mentioned the Donkey Lady. She goes on about you. People talk about you almost as much as they talk about the Mystery Lights out on 67.”