Terror Incognita

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “Oh, yeah...that’s terrible. Grotesque, maybe, but not disgusting. Or hideous. Had to be one of those uptight Victorian naturalists, huh?”

  Nat had turned his head to watch the hundred-pound male pluck some fruit from his bowl. “I think they’re beautiful.”

  “Why the bright faces?”

  Nat gave her his attention once more, smiling mischievously. “It’s a mimicry of his genital region.”

  “Say what?”

  “It serves as a threat. His...um...”

  “Go on.”

  “His penis is bright red and his scrotal patches are bright blue. Just like his face.”

  “So calling a mandrill dick-face is no big insult, just telling it like it is, huh?”

  “Exactly. Other monkeys mimic their genital regions, though usually with their chests. And what about us?”

  “Us?”

  “A human woman’s breasts and buttocks resemble each-other quite closely. More or less, of course, depending on the woman. But it’s been suggested that there’s significance.”

  “Oh, come on. Breasts and asses are purely functional.”

  “Not so much asses. We had asses before we had chairs. Asses didn’t adapt to us, we adapted to them.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nat. Nat Tower. Gonna report me to my boss for suggestive lecturing?”

  “No. I’m Molly. Molly Hanson.”

  “Big-time yuppie name, Molly. Sorry.”

  “Former yuppie. I was laid off this week.”

  “Ouch. Sorry again. I know how you feel. You may have heard about PlayTime.”

  “No—what?”

  “We’re closing. This is our last summer.”

  “Oh my God...I’m so sorry. That’s so weird. I came here as a kid, I haven’t been back until today and now the place is closing. That’s sad.”

  “Mm.”

  “I thought only cretins fed fruit to Old World monkeys but I can see I was wrong. When do you get off work, Nat? I think you and me could both use a drink. And I need to hear you explain to me why my breasts can’t mimic my ass or my ass mimic my breasts just a little bit better.”

  Nat grinned. He hadn’t grinned in a long time.

  * * *

  They ordered sandwiches and beer at a PlayTime restaurant with a tacky-nostalgic Western motif which just added poignancy to Molly’s knowledge that PlayTime was doomed. Nat was explaining why.

  “PlayTime’s amusement rides were always geared for younger kids, not teenagers, but today all but the very youngest kids would find our rides lame and wimpy. And kids would rather hang around in malls than look at animals.”

  “So what becomes of the animals?” Molly asked, truly concerned by now. It felt good to be concerned about something other than herself after this hellish week.

  “They’ll be going to zoos throughout the country; some into Canada. A few will go to nearby zoos—the gorillas are going to a place in Massachusetts, but it’s small and I’m concerned. Some will end up in private collections. In fact, Michael Jackson is taking our wallabies.”

  “That upset you?”

  “Not so long as they’re alive and well. How many people get to see them is of little or no importance to me.”

  “And your mandrills?”

  “Washington Zoo. Where the politicians can come and throw them peanuts.”

  Molly smiled at him sadly, impressed with his compassion. He wasn’t bad-looking, either. His nose a little big...but if it were mimicking his genital region...

  “The mandrills are endangered. But what isn’t? They’re hunted for food. That’s akin to cannibalism, to me. It tears me up inside, Molly. You can’t know.”

  “People need to eat, too—it isn’t easy. Try to explain conservation to a starving tribesman.”

  “We have to try. And if education fails, we’ve got to take action. Look at the rain forests...burned to plant crops in soil that’s no good after a couple of plantings. We have to get together...all the world...and go in there and tell them, yes, they’re your trees, but it’s our air. The whole world’s air. Now let us help you do it the right way.”

  “That’s scary talk, Nat...going in and taking over.”

  “The alternative is scarier. It’s such a fine, delicate balance. All the gorgeous life being sacrificed. It kills me.” Nat was staring off at a booth crowded to bursting like a too full stomach with an overweight father, overweight mother and two corpulent children. Wolfing down hamburgers. Nat’s stomach rumbled and he nudged his own burger away guiltily. “Sometimes I feel like I carry the whole burden of the world.”

  “I know, but...”

  Nat winced, gripped the table edge and leaned forward against his hands. “Christ...”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sorry. Gas.”

  “Oh God,” Molly chuckled nervously. “You scared me.” He was leaning back now but his face had yet to uncrumple. What a character. She liked him. She just hoped he didn’t take his burden of the world stuff too seriously. There was only so much one person could do.

  * * *

  Molly cocked her head to read the spines of Nat’s books. The Little Flowers of St. Francis. Joseph Campbell. Several by Desmond Morris. But there were also titles by Colin Wilson, and more obscure volumes on mysterious phenomena and faculties. A good-sized collection of these, in fact. One title was The Transmigration of Souls.

  Straightening up, wine in hand, she called into the adjacent kitchen, “I wouldn’t have thought a scientific pundit like you would be into the occult.”

  Aproned Nat leaned into view. “The supernatural is just the natural that science hasn’t legitimized yet.”

  “Your quote?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds rehearsed.”

  “Admittedly.”

  It was their third non-PlayTime date. Nat’s house was a two-story on a shady but somewhat crowded suburban street in a town a half hour’s ride from his work. The house was a bit neglected, a dozen projects half started, but his disorder was as fascinating as his tastes were eclectic. A print by Magritte and an art deco lamp and an African mask all in one corner. Molly lightly touched the mask. Looked old, not some tacky import store piece.

  “Been to Africa?”

  “Yes. Three years ago, when PlayTime changed hands and looked like it had a future.”

  “Wow...you’ll have to tell me.” Molly spied on him for several moments as he worked at the counter. He was almost too interesting. It was a foolish feeling, ridiculous to be somewhat wary of him, suddenly...but then, despite all the highly touted individualism of Americans, Molly knew that what they really expected of each other was conformity. Colorful people, complex individuals, even true heroes, too often, were best admired in the movies. Well, she shouldn’t let herself think like that. Look at him, working in there so intensely. Listen to the Irish folk music he was playing. What was she worrying about? She allowed herself to smile at him, and lifted her glass.

  * * *

  A troll-like thing, hunched and dark-skinned, crouched naked at the foot of the bed, staring at Molly with small glittering eyes when she awoke. A shroud of a curtain billowed in slow motion behind the creature.

  The troll barked a laugh. It was Nat’s voice. “Sorry...couldn’t sleep. I just like looking at you.”

  “You scared me. Man.” Molly pulled herself up into a sitting position but held the sheet across her breasts. A cool breeze was coming through the window. “You looked just like that painting with the monster sitting on the woman’s chest, and the white horse in the background?”

  “Fuseli. Lord Byron owned that painting.”

  Molly fumbled for her cigarettes, then a lamp. Nat was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, not crouching as he’d appeared, and now his flesh was pallid. While she lit her smoke, Molly let shreds of their lovemaking flutter back to her like dream fragments.

  It had been tender and mellow for quite a while...they hadn’t rushed anything. Nat savo
red her as he had his meal, with that intense concentration of his. But toward the end he had become more passionate, had ridden her without restraint. Rough, could she call it? She didn’t want to use that word, but why was she feeling slightly distant from him now? Toward the end he had propped himself up over her, staring down at her fiercely...lunging into her with abandon, and making deep grunts. Maybe it was just the contrast with his foreplay. Maybe it was just her anxiety about work, her former boyfriend, all she had lost previously, doing its best to prevent her from feeling secure now. Still, there had been a weird energy in the air toward their climaxes. Something... uncontrolled. And it had unsettled her.

  “Uh,” Nat grunted. Molly glanced up at him. His face was pinched, and he was gazing out the window where the breeze had lifted the vaporous curtain. Hand on his chest.

  “Maybe you’re getting an ulcer,” Molly suggested.

  She thought he said, then, “I’ve got one of them.” But what he had actually said was, “They got one of them.”

  * * *

  Summer proceeded, taking PlayTime closer to extinction.

  She enjoyed him. She really did. But there was that tension when night came, and they were alone in the dark. Was it her, she still wondered? Some neurotic fear she was superimposing over him? She entertained this idea because the feeling was so unsubstantial.

  On the seventh time they copulated, the tension broke outward. She let it, without holding it inside to turn over and pick at any longer. He had asked her to present her rear to him, on all fours...something he had never asked before. She wasn’t surprised—as if she had been expecting it.

  “I don’t like it that way,” she snapped, drawing away from him. “It’s humiliating...it’s like you don’t want to see my face.”

  Nat seemed stunned that she should react so strongly. Had she misunderstood about where he intended to enter when she reversed herself for him? He didn’t think so. “Hey, you keep your eyes closed most of the time anyway...you aren’t looking at my face, but I don’t accuse you of trying to humiliate me.”

  “Doing it ‘doggie’ doesn’t appeal to me, okay? It’s bestial.”

  “Oh, listen to you! Where is this coming from? What hidden pocket of religious guilt did I break into just now? Bestial is suddenly sinful, and let’s keep the natives in the missionary position. Christ, Molly, this isn’t like you.”

  “I don’t like it, okay? I don’t have to explain myself to you.” And she slid out of bed, slapped barefoot off for the bathroom. Moments later he heard a bath running, signaling an end to their lovemaking.

  He sat there on the bed...more hurt than angry. She didn’t understand him. How could he have hoped her to be different? He was alone. It had to be that way. Alone with his burden.

  In the steaming, purgative water, Molly finally wondered at her reaction. Particularly since she had never minded being entered from behind with her previous boyfriends...

  It’s me, she decided at last. Yes, definitely. She felt insecure, humiliated at having been laid off, abandoned by her last lover. She was afraid that Nat would degrade her, too...but she could see, rationally, that he meant her no harm. He was an extremely concerned man. Yes. It was her. She felt guilty, rose with steaming pink flesh from her bath of contemplation. She would apologize to him...entreat him to be patient with her...

  Wrapping a huge white towel around herself, Molly padded out into the dark house to find him, her bare footfalls soft and gentle this time. She peeked into the bedroom; he wasn’t there. Downstairs, no doubt. She descended the carpeted, silent steps.

  A slight rustling of noise toward his cluttered study, just off the living room: no more than the air being disturbed. Molly followed it. Something made her want to call out to him, let him know she was coming as she extended her hand for the knob. Something in her wanted her to remain stealthy, and poised for retreat. It was the electric energy which had been unsettling her all along that she suddenly seemed to be homing in on, but it was too late to steal back upstairs. Her hand was on the knob, his name freed from her mouth.

  The door swung open, the study was in gloom, a hunched small figure whirled to face her... its head pointed, its features dark and hideous. Molly screamed, stepped back, screamed again. The hunched creature lurched toward her.

  “Molly, shh, please!” Nat rasped, pulling away the tribal African mask he’d been wearing...the one from the living room wall. He was naked, otherwise. “Please!”

  “What are you doing? Don’t come near me—don’t!”

  Nat held his ground, straightened up. Chuckled uncomfortably. “I know this looks strange...”

  “I’m going now, Nat. I won’t talk about this...I just want to go and I want it to be over...”

  “Please let me explain, if I can. I’m not crazy. It has a reason, what I was doing.”

  “I’m sure it does, to you, but I’m going...”

  “Molly, please.” Tears came into his eyes. The agony in his face was childlike, and pierced her, against her better judgment. She had to get out...he might kill her. He was insane. But his pain riveted her. He could see she was waiting for him to explain, now...

  “I ache for these animals, Molly...I can’t even express it. Their beautiful souls, that energy, wasted...spent...by humans who have no souls. Where does it go? Heaven should only exist for animals...”

  Molly’s eyes dropped to a heavy bookend on a desk against the wall between them. A good weapon if she needed it. And it was an ape holding a human skull in contemplation, appropriately enough.

  “I can’t save them all. I’m not sure why the mandrills, specifically, but...I wanted to help them so badly, but I can only reach so far to them, and even my three will be out of my reach and my care soon! That need to reach to them...to save them forever...I...I came upon a way to capture that spent energy. To catch their souls before they dissipate, and are lost forever. It’s long and complicated, but it involves my occult studies, and this ritual you just caught me performing. Every time a mandrill dies...is murdered...its soul comes into me. Since I’ve begun, forty-eight of their spirits have entered me.” He laughed in sad irony. “Every mandrill that’s eaten, I eat its soul.”

  “Nat. Your...commitment to help these animals has become an obsession with you. Okay? It’s...”

  “Not healthy? No kidding. Yes—it is an obsession. But it has to be...I have to make up for the apathy and selfishness of everybody else! No one else has room for them, so I’ve committed myself to them. You see? I’m their new home. I’m their jungle. The mind is that infinite a place, isn’t it?”

  Yes, thought Molly, staring at Nathan A. Tower. It is.

  “I told you I had a burden...”

  “You do have a burden, Nat. But I still have to leave now. I’m sorry.”

  She expected him to lunge at her then, as she began to back steadily away from him. Lunge and seize her with a bestial cry. But instead he crumpled, lost some of his height. “I understand,” he sobbed. “I knew it couldn’t last. This work has to be done alone. It’s a sacrifice...”

  “I’m sorry, Nat. I’m sorry.” Molly made it to the stairs, and flew up them. The first thing she did was find a pair of scissors, but he didn’t follow her. As she dressed she listened for him at the open door and could hear him softly sobbing down there. Her chest suddenly ached as if torn inside, and she wanted to go to him. But she couldn’t risk it. She would write him a letter tonight at home, mail it tomorrow. Thank him for their time together. Express her sympathy for his burden. Urge him to get help. And insist that he never try to contact her again...

  Molly crept downstairs, to the door, out to her car...still expecting him to leap out at her from the study, from behind a bush. Wearing that mask again. He didn’t. She drove away.

  * * *

  The jungle was on fire.

  Molly lay in bed, naked, without sheets, while the trees burned all around her...but there was a clear protective shield surrounding the bed, its walls flush to the sides of
it. Molly knew there was a shield because not only didn’t she feel the heat of the inferno, but maddened tropical birds were occasionally plummeting blindly out of the forest, their wings in flames, only to smash against the invisible walls and rebound dead.

  The screams from the depths of the burning jungle were horrifying; a cacophony of shrieks, screeches, wails. Rising up on one elbow, she watched a hippo...or so it appeared...lumber along within the line of approaching flame, moaning forlornly with head thrown back, its heavy body burning, charring, a raft of fire in an ocean of fire. Monkeys leapt aflame from one torch of a tree to another. The fire was closing in on all sides of her simultaneously, at the same rate. It was like looking into an aquarium full of hell on each side...or being lowered by bathysphere into hell itself.

  The first mandrill fell against the glass, its tormented face only inches from hers, just as the fire reached the barrier on all four sides, and then the mandrill fell away. But across the bed, fists pounded on the glass. Behind her now. Cries of agony lanced into her head from all sides. Molly saw black hunched shapes inside the fire, just shadows, clawing at her walls, jumping up against them and bouncing off, piling over each other in desperation. Frantic black figures all around her now. And she wanted to reach out to them, draw them in, but of course it was too late. She couldn’t let the fire in...and besides, there wasn’t enough room in here anyway...

  * * *

  The phone woke her; she went up on one elbow, her heart punching. She clawed at the light. Third ring. She made no move to get out of bed yet, waited to hear her answering machine’s message, then the voice of the caller. While her own voice played, a glance at her clock. Only 1:15, but she had work tomorrow...

  She knew who it would be, even before she heard his voice. It had been over a week and he hadn’t replied to her letter. Now as she heard him the first thing she thought was that she should have called the police that first night, just to let them know about him in case anything happened to her. How could she have begun to think it was so easily over?

  His voice was pained...hoarse. Weak. “Molly...”

  She shivered, made no move to get out of bed. His voice was a croak, barely human...