by Jean Rabe
“Do they now?” the woman asked, with a cracked maniacal grin. She left her donkey at the side of the road and shuffled toward me. Her feet scuffed loudly across the old worn pavement, and now that she was in motion, I noticed the strange quality of her clothes. Her body was hidden in a massive accumulation of rags, fragments of hundreds of unmatched tatters. Some, I noticed, were even chunks of what looked like matted animal fur. She stopped a few feet from where I still stood with my back against the trunk of my car. “Tell me, what do these people say?”
A foul stench rose off her, one that I had experienced before from working in several downscale New York kitchens over the years. It was rotting meat. With that scent in my nose, my mind went blank. All Christmas vacation I had listened to my mother go on and on about this crazy stuff, and now that I actually needed to recall what she had said, I couldn’t.
I took a deep breath, counted to five, and then let it out as it all came flooding back to me. “The details of the story change,” I said, trying to remember. “From what I’ve heard, most say you’re an old rich lady gone crazy, wandering the highways with her donkey and a saddlebag full of money with a gun to protect it. Others say you’re the spirit of an old jilted prospector.”
She laughed at that, a dry ragged sound rising from her chest. I found it unsettling, and so did the dying creature lying nearby. It let out a long pained howl that shivered my spine with the sheer sorrow in it. The woman turned away from me and approached it.
I pushed myself away from the car and stepped forward, but only a step. “What the hell is that thing?” I asked.
“You’re in Marfa now, son,” the woman snapped, making me jump. “Relax.”
My entire stay in town people had been telling me that, “You’re in Marfa.” Coming out of the old woman’s mouth, though, the familiar phrase was tainted with a bit of terror to it. There wasn’t a witness for miles out here and God only knew what an old desert survivalist like her was capable of. I tightened my grip on the cleaver but let out a long slow breath to calm my nerves.
The woman circled around the injured creature, turning her head this way and that as she went, sniffling and snorting. She looked up at me. “You’re really not from around here, are you, kid?” she asked.
I shook my head as I stood there feeling the chill of the desert slowly settling into my bones. “No, ma’am,” I said with as much politeness as I could muster. Somehow using manners kept the surreal craziness running around in my head at bay.
The old woman stopped and smiled at that. “Polite. I like that. Anyway, this here is a javelina. More hippo than pig, really. Can’t go but five goddamn feet in any direction out here without trippin’ over one of these things.”
I couldn’t look at the suffering creature any longer. I turned away from it and instead looked at the woman’s poor bedraggled donkey still standing at the side of the road. As comical as these creatures normally were, there was an eerie stillness to it. It was absolutely silent, its tail swishing gently back and forth as it stared at me with that goofy grin and sorrowful look that all donkeys seemed capable of.
“Fine-lookin’ beast, ain’t he?” she asked.
“I really wouldn’t know,” I said. “Only other ones I’ve seen up close are the ones on display over at Jack-assic Park.”
With an agility that did not fit her age, the old woman disengaged herself from the animal and was suddenly mere inches from my face. The hot stink of her meaty breath was instantly in my nostrils and I had to fight back a sudden wave of nausea that mixed with my fear.
“Those rutting crooked-tooth beasts have nothing on my animal!” she screamed. “Nothing, you hear me?”
I wanted to get away, but I felt rooted in place, unable even TO raise the cleaver. Everything my family had told me came back to me. I shouldn’t have stopped, my mother was right to have been worried, and all I could imagine was how the police would find me, years from now, half decomposed in an unmarked grave somewhere just off the side of the highway. The momentary idea that I might have to take my cleaver to this crazy woman in defense entered my head, but I pushed it aside as my rational mind tried to take control.
As quickly as the woman had erupted, her wild anger was gone and replaced by the quizzical old lady once more. “So you’ve been to Jack-assic Park?” she asked with good humor in her voice.
I nodded, finding her sudden shift in personality more unsettling that her angry outbursts. Back in New York, nothing frightened me more than the unpredictability of people and their mood swings.
“Tourist trap,” she scoffed. “I suppose you went and saw the museum there, too?”
I nodded again and this time I almost laughed as the memory hit me. The whole setup at Jack-assic Park had been surreal: from the donkeys you could have your pictures taken with, to the gift shop, and finally the back-room which was a tribute to all things alien, including an X-Files-ish tribute to the Marfa Mystery Lights. My mother even had several bobble-headed aliens back home from her many pilgrimages there.
“Goddamn place even has the mayor going on record’bout the lights,” she muttered. “Goddamn spacemen. As if the people around here know a rutting thing about them!”
I wondered how much she knew when it came to the Marfa Lights. For all I could tell, this wild woman had been dropped from the mothership herself, but even that didn’t seem quite right in trying to explain her away in my rational mind. There was something remarkably earthy about her, but I didn’t dare ask the question. Instead, I clung to my cleaver and watched her shuffle closer to the animal.
The old woman crouched down next to it, inspecting its broken body.
“It’s a goddamn shame what happens to these animals,” she said. “That big ol’ bitch of a highway don’t care, though. Just takes what life she can. Brings a little more suffering to this world.”
The animal’s breathing changed, becoming more and more labored. The woman leaned over the creature, moving herself entirely over the animal until the rags of her outfit enveloped it like a sleeping bag. She lowered her head down into the bundle of rags and her body erupted into a violent fray of feral action like a pack of sharks in a feeding frenzy. The rags of her outfit flapped into such a blur of motion that I lost track of the woman within them. The crunching of bone and a sickly wet slurping rose into the night air. Fear and horror kept me pressed in place against the trunk of my car. I couldn’t move. I could only watch in dark fascination.
Soon—but not soon enough—the sounds died down and the old woman rose to her feet once again. I looked down at the ground. Not a trace of the wounded animal remained except for a dark stain against the pavement, but that wasn’t what worried me most.
The woman had transformed into something otherworldly. Her face was like dried leather stretched over broken glass, twisted and distorted with a maw of teeth that still had bits of the animal’s flesh and bone hanging from them. As she turned her head back to me, an inhuman growl rose up. Her legs drew down into a crouch before she sprung toward me. Blood pounded in my ears as my heart raced and I raised my cleaver to protect myself from the monstrosity she was.
I brought the blade down as hard as I could, but I was too slow. The creature had already landed in front of me a few seconds sooner with a meaty thud and brought her left arm up as mine came down. It knocked the blade from my hand, and it clattered on the pavement a heartbeat later. I kept my eyes on the monstrosity that was about to tear into me.
The stink of the dying creature was thick as she lunged for me, but just as she reared back to strike, she stopped. Her breathing changed from wet and animalistic to something calmer, and within seconds she transformed back into the old woman. There was still a wild anger in her eyes which had settled on a spot along my neck.
“Someone’s looking out for you, I see,” she said with anger and disappointment in her voice.
My mind was still wrapped up in fear, and I had no idea what she was talking about. I reached up and felt my neck. My fingers
followed along a thin cord lying against my chest—the bag my mother had given me earlier for good luck. My hand instinctively wrapped around it and the woman shrunk away from me.
“No matter,” she continued. “I suppose you’re no concern of mine . . .”
I felt a little more powerful holding the bag now, and I was finally able to push myself away from the car. “I’m not?” I asked.
The woman’s eyes remained on the bag around my neck. They were black, unblinking, and wouldn’t look away from it. It didn’t take a fancy city boy chef to realize that there was hunger in those eyes.
“I think it’s best you be on your way,” she said, frustrated. “You best count yourself lucky that you didn’t end up all over the old Texas highway yourself.”
I wasn’t going to argue. I nodded and backed myself around to the driver’s side, keeping my eyes on the old woman the whole time. As soon as I was in the car, I locked the door, hit the gas and was off as fast as the squeal of my tires could take me. I didn’t need the last of my now-cold coffee to help keep my eyes open any more. As long as I could keep the car in one piece, I wasn’t stopping for anything. God help any poor gophers, javelinas, Texans, or aliens that accidentally darted out in front of me at this point. I could only hope that anything I might hit now was covered in the insurance I’d signed off on.
“How was the flight?” my mother asked me. “You couldn’t call me any sooner than LaGuardia?”
“Sorry, mom,” I said, already feeling more relaxed just by being in New York once again. “I was in a rush to get home. I even got them to bump my flight up when I got to El Paso.”
“Couldn’t get away from us fast enough, eh?” she said. She was being cute, but I could feel a little sting of motherly guilt thrown in for good measure.
I ignored it. “I just wanted you to know I was OK,” I said. Surrounded by the comforts of my chosen home, the madness of a few hours back was already fading and part of me wondered if it had even really happened at all. I debated whether to tell her about what I had seen in the darkness of the desert, but I decided against it. I’m not sure I could have described it if I had wanted to.
“Mom?”
“Yes, honey,” she said. “I’m still here.”
“That bag you gave me,” I said. “The good luck charm?”
“Yes?” she said, her voice sounding wary. “What about it?”
“What did you call it?”
“A talisman,” she said. “They’re supposed to protect you from the supernatural . . . evil spirits, that kind of thing.”
“Do you think they work anywhere?” I asked. “Like, do you think one made in West Texas works in the big city too?”
My mother laughed, but there was nervousness in it. “Of course it works there. It works everywhere.” There was a long pause on the line. “Honey, did you see something?”
“No, mom,” I said. “Just wanted you to know that my flight went real smooth and I thought maybe this little bag of yours might have factored into that.” I hated lying to her, but it was better than worrying her. She had her superstitions, and it was enough to let her keep them without confirmation from me. We said our goodbyes and I caught the first cab I could to get out of the airport, heading to my restaurant. I was short a cleaver now, but the price of my life was certainly worth that loss. Nothing I couldn’t pick up at Chelsea Market with Jean-Paul during my quest to perfect my dad’s home-brew coffee. Maybe I’d pick up a little something heftier too for my next trip down Texas way. How does the saying go? “Don’t Mess with Texas”? I wasn’t going to mess with it, unless it messed with me . . . and next time, I was sure to at least be properly armed.
AWARE
C.J. Henderson
C.J. Henderson is the creator of both the Piers Knight supernatural investigator series and the Teddy London occult detective series. Author of some seventy novels and/or books, including such diverse titles as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies, Black Sabbath: the Ozzy Osbourne Years, and Baby’s First Mythos, as well as hundreds of short stories and comics and thousands of non-fiction pieces, this staggering talent is currently celebrating the fact he has now been published in some thirteen languages. For more facts on this truly unusual creator, the man to whom the Dalai Lama once said, “Don’t stand in the doorway, fat boy, you’re blocking the sun,” feel free to head over to www.cjhenderson.com where you can comment on this story or even read more if you’re so inclined.
“You can’t go home again.”
—Thomas Wolfe
Three nights ago
“Run for the trees!”
It was, of course, possibly the most spectacularly bad advice the running man had ever been given. Shouting such a suggestion during a lightning storm is bad advice, but an order to try to evade incredibly sophisticated search-and-capture technology with only a cloaking screen of branches, leaves and bird nests is much worse. The fellow attempting to avoid the massive metallic sphere moving silently through the airspace over Tim Bradley’s field, however, sadly seemed no more aware of this than his flawed-suggestion-shouting friend.
The running man redoubled his efforts, slipping on the wet grass, but still managing to reach the timber beyond the open space. Hunkered beneath the false security of a scraggly, but tall elm, the fellow paused to catch his breath. He had not run far, and he had managed to do so only through the aid of an adrenaline rush which had left him white-faced and sweating.
Close to collapse, the no-longer-running man was gasping so heavily he could not even lift his head to see what had become of the ominously lit craft that had chased him. Which was mostly likely all for the best, for at that moment the decidedly alien craft was hovering directly above him.
It hovered for a few seconds more, then for the first time, it emitted a noise. It was only a muted humming, but the sound threw a chill into both the men present in Bradley’s field that night. The low throbbing was accompanied by the sliding open of a sizable rectangle in the ship’s underside. After that, a small surge of pink and yellow lights surrounded the no-longer-running man for an instant, after which he disappeared.
His friend, concealed between two hay rolls, felt his jaw dropping. Indeed, so long did he stare at the spot where his friend had been, by the time he looked up once more he found the ship had gone from the sky.
Vanished without a trace.
Scratching his head, remembering the light that had appeared around his friend for a moment, the observer said to himself: “Jeez, damnation, just like Star Trek.”
And then he realized that he had never snapped a single photo with the camera he had brought, and that not only had his friend driven them, it was almost guaranteed that he had the keys to his truck in his pocket when whisked away. The not-whisked-away fellow sighed bitterly, then began to make his way back to the dirt road that led to the county road that would eventually take him back to Biglet, Kansas, where he had enough troubles already without having to explain any of that evening’s particular dose of strangeness.
This Morning
“Oh, you are going to love me today.”
Lora Dean walked into her boss’s office with a smile on her lips. She had been given an assignment by Mr. Marvin Richards mainly so he could tell those above him that such an assignment had been made. He had been given an impossible order by a hated vice-president, Carl Binghamton, a clueless weasel of a man hoping, as usual, to look industrious to his particularly clueless weasel of a boss without actually having to do anything. To be able to look equally industrious while not increasing his own workload, Richards had done the same.
“I love you every day,” answered the producer/anchorman, not quite certain what his executive assistant meant. “You’re just that kind of person.”
What Marvin Richards produced was a news show, the one most heavily vilified by the intelligentsia, and yet most beloved by the viewing public. It did not cover wars, famines, or which celebrities were getting divorces, unless those wars, famines, or marital co
nflicts involved vampires, werewolves, or the walking dead. His show was the only weekly reality programming dedicated to uncovering haunted houses, sewer gators, bartending vampires, or any other unlikely things from beyond. Its name was Challenge of the Unknown, and all the buck-passing rampaging through its corridors was the result of its sponsors. They were, as a group, demanding something new—something different.
Something, in other words, to help them sell more of their cars, soap, and soda.
“Yes, true enough,” answered Lora, “but the love I speak of doesn’t involve your eyes playing ping-pong as they try to decide whether they want to focus on my breasts or my butt.”
“It is an eternal, but enjoyable struggle,” said Richards off-handedly. “But, if I must add a delightful third point of interest to create some sort of triangle of insensitivity, never let it be said that—”
And, in that moment, the producer’s mind suddenly moved beyond his usual comfortable zone of self-centered security and focused on that which he was being told. Looking up over his computer screen, his eyes locking with his assistant’s delightful third point of interest, he said: “You wondrous creature, you—you’ve got something for me.”
Her head nodded coolly.
“Something big . . .”
Her head nodded enthusiastically.
“Something that will get Binghamton’s teeth out of my ass . . .”
Lora touched the tip of her nose with her forefinger, a gesture Richards knew she made only when she was sitting on something not only big, but positively Brobdingnagian. Replacing the automatic work-smile he was wearing with one of honest joy, he said: “And there you have it. This is why I kept you on after your breakdown, when personnel insisted I find some way to screw you out of your contract.”