Dean joined her. “I’ve been wanting to ask you,” he started, but she cut him off.
“Thanks for covering for me the other night. I appreciated it. I wasn’t feeling good, is all.”
“That’s cool. No big deal. I wanted to ask you, though, if something’s wrong. I mean, really wrong. I know we’re not that tight or anything, but if you need something, all you have to do is say so.”
Lisa took a short drag on the cigarette, one that couldn’t have earned her much nicotine. “What are you trying to ask me? You talking your way around something?”
He studied her closely, trying to think of how to ask what he meant. She was shaky—not in a hard way like she was shivering, but in a low-grade hum that meant her whole body was moving, very slightly.
When her fingers squeezed themselves around the cigarette, her chipped pearl nail polish looked ill and yellow against the paper. She glared out at the dumpster, and out past it. She glared into the coming dark like it might tell her important things, but she didn’t really expect it to.
“Are you sick? I can’t ask it any better than that. You’ve looked, I mean, you haven’t looked good the last few times you’ve been here. Like you’re weak, or like you’ve got a fever. I was wondering if maybe there wasn’t something really wrong and you hadn’t felt like telling us.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know. Cancer or something.” He didn’t mention Scott’s meth theory because it seemed even ruder than telling a girl she looked terrible. He rolled on his shoulder to face her. “Look, you—you look like you’re wasting away. You’ve been losing weight, enough weight that Scott even noticed, and he didn’t notice it when you cut your hair off and dyed it black last year. It’s pretty dramatic.”
It was strange and not at all pleasant, the small smile that lifted a corner of her mouth beside the cigarette. “Bless your heart,” she breathed. Then, a little louder, “You think I’m shrinking? You didn’t have to say it like you were asking if I was dying. Most women like it if you point out they’re losing weight.”
“Yeah, but . . . ” He couldn’t figure out a tactful way to phrase the obvious rest.
“It’s been good, lately. I’ve been getting into clothes I haven’t worn since junior high.”
“That’s good?”
“It might be. I think it’s good. I could still stand to—” she stopped herself, and changed her mind. “It’s not the end of the world, dropping a few pounds. It’s a good thing. I don’t mind it, and I wish I could take another few down, so stop worrying. That’s all it is. I’m on a diet.”
“What kind of diet? Like a starvation diet, or what? You got some kind of eating disorder now, is that how it is?”
“There’s nothing disordered about it. It’s the most orderly thing I’ve ever done.” She crushed the lit end of the cigarette against the wall, leaving a black streak on the brick and a mangled butt on the ground as she went back inside.
There’s a Chinaman here in camp, a small fellow who looks like he might be a thousand years old. Someone told me he came from out west, out across the frontier—someone said he’d come east from California, but I can’t imagine why.
He says he’s no Chinaman, and he seems to get offended if you call him one, even though I don’t think he understands one word of English out of three.
I don’t know his name or what he’s doing here, except that he runs errands between the officers. He washes pots and clothes for the Confederates when there’s water to wash them, and I guess that’s not strange since there aren’t any women around.
The little old fellow is mostly quiet. He mostly listens and keeps his head low, not wanting to draw any attention to himself. Henry says he looks strange and wise, and I don’t know if that’s right or not, but the Chinaman sure has these black, sharp eyes that always seem to know something.
He came up on us, the other night while we were talking about the thing that eats the bones out back. Like I told it, I don’t know how much of our talk he understands—but he got the idea. He saw our fear, and he watched the way we pointed and whispered at the sheds out back.
One of the guards heard us too, and he told us to shut ourselves up and be quiet, we were just trying to start trouble. He was complaining how we didn’t need any more trouble than we’d already got, and he was right, but that didn’t change anything.
When he was gone, the Chinaman approached us with small steps and a hunched back that bowed when he tiptoed forward. He nodded, yes. He nodded like he understood. He pointed one long, wrinkled finger towards the sheds where the dead are stored and where they wait to be buried.
“Gashadokuro,” he said. It was a funny, long word filled with sharp edges.
We stared up at him, blank faces not comprehending very well. He looked back at us, frustrated that he could not make us comprehend. “Gashadokuro,” he said again, pointing harder.
And then I nodded, trying to repeat the piece of foreign tongue and probably mangling it past recognition. I tried to convey my realization, that yes—the thing was there, and yes—it had a name, and it was a foreign name from across the country, and across the ocean, because white men like us wouldn’t know what to call it.
Gashadokuro.
We can’t even say it.
After Lisa was gone, Dean kept smoking and he said to the empty back lot, “You don’t eat with us anymore. We all used to eat together after shift.”
A creak answered him, with a twisting squeal of metal and a gentle knocking.
He jumped, and settled. The dumpster again. Something inside it. No, something behind it. Dean held his dwindling cigarette out like a weapon, or a pointer.
“Scram,” he said, but he didn’t say it loud. “Scram, you goddamn rats. Raccoons.” It wasn’t worth adding “bears” to the list, because he still thought Scott was full of shit.
But it was dark enough, and the woods were a black line of soldier-straight trees, hiding everything beyond or past them. He stepped forward, just a pace or two. Towards the dumpster, and the rattling shuffle that came from behind it, or beside it—somewhere near it.
“Get lost,” he said with a touch more volume as another possibility occurred to him. Plains didn’t have too many homeless people; it didn’t have too many people of any sort, truth to tell. But there was always the chance of a passing human scavenger. You never knew, in this day and age.
The noise was louder as he got closer—tracking it with his ears to a spot behind the dumpster, close to the trees. It wasn’t all scratching, either. It was something muffled and banging together—something like pool balls clattering in felt, or inside a leather bag. He couldn’t pinpoint it, no matter how hard he listened.
Scott’s head popped into the doorway, casting a giant round shadow against Dean’s back. “Who’re you talking to out here? Yourself again?”
“Sure.” He turned and squinted at the doorway, where the world suddenly looked much brighter within that rectangle.
“I’ve got to make another run out to my favorite spot in all of Georgia. You coming back inside or what? I can’t leave until someone takes the ovens, and baby, that needs to be you.”
Dean looked back into the woods, past the dumpster where the noise had stopped as soon as Scott appeared. “Back towards the old prison camp?”
“Of course. Why can’t that guy always call during the day, huh? Why’s he got to wait until the creeps come out?”
“Why would you put it that way?” Dean asked, a hint of petulance framing the words. “There aren’t any creeps. There’s just the old camp, and there’s nothing there anymore.”
“Then why don’t you drive it, if you’re so fucking unperturbable. I hate going out there, it’s—”
“It’s not even two miles, you chickenshit. You could practically walk them the pizza in the time you’ve stood here complaining about it.”
“Practically, but never. I’m serious. You do it, if that’s what it’s about. I’ll take the ovens and
the onion-smelling hands for a few minutes. You go brave the ghosts from the old camp.”
“I will, then. Fine. Give me the address.” He pulled himself back inside and swiped the sheet of paper out of Scott’s hand.
The gash-beast is hungry; it is as hungry as we are. As it grows, so does its appetite. As it grows, and we diminish, it becomes ravenous. It outpaces us.
For us, the hunger comes and goes—and comes again.
It’s when it comes again that we know, we know that it won’t be dysentery or cholera or pneumonia that takes us. We know it will be the hunger. When first we go without food the days drag and stretch, and the belly is all we can think of. But in a few days, after a week or so, the hunger fades. The body adjusts. The stomach shrinks and thoughts of food are sharply sweet, but no longer dire.
It when the hunger comes again that we know.
It takes some time—maybe a month, maybe less. But when the weeks have slid by and there’s nothing yet to fill us, when the hunger returns it returns with a message: “Now,” it says, “you are dying. Now your body consumes itself from the inside, out. This is what will kill you.”
The gash-monster knows. It hovers close, a clattering angel of death that follows the weakest ones after dark. It hums and taps, drumming its bone-fingers against the walls and waiting by the doors. It is impatient. And we are all afraid, even those of us whose stomachs have balled themselves into tight little knots that don’t cry out just yet—we are all afraid that the gash-monster’s impatience will get the better of it.
We are all afraid that the time will come when the dead aren’t quite enough, and it comes to chase the living, starving, withering souls whose hearts still beat with a feeble persistence.
We are all afraid that the time will come when it pulls our still-living limbs apart, and peels our skin away, and eats our bones while we bleed and cry on the ground.
We keep ourselves quiet when the hunger returns.
We do not want it to hear us.
When Dean returned, he reclaimed his apron and went back to the pizza line. “Hey look,” he told Scott. “Nothing snuck up and ate me.”
“Bite me, big boy. Speaking of eating, we’re shutting down in ten—no, eight minutes, and there are two large leftovers with our names on ’em. Pete said they’re ours if we want them.”
“Good to know. What’s on them?”
“Gross shit. Pineapples and onion on the one, and sausage, chicken and anchovy on the other—that’s your three major meat groups, right there. Three of the four, anyway. It’d need hamburger too, to make a good square meal of meat.”
“Jesus.” Dean made a face.
Scott mirrored the grimace and put the pizzas on the outside edge of the oven to stay warm. “Yeah. If I weren’t so hungry, I’d leave them out back for the bears, but I’ve been here since before lunch and I’m either going to eat one of these fuckers, or my own hand—whichever holds still first and longest. Lisa—hey string bean there—we’ll save some for you, baby. You could stand a little grease on those bones. It’ll fatten you up. Put hair on your chest.”
Lisa pushed a button on the cash register to open the drawer. “You don’t know a damn thing about women, do you, Scott?”
“Probably not. Anyway, you want some?”
She reached beneath the drawer and scooped out the twenties, gathering them into a little stack. “No.”
Dean watched her count for a few seconds, then said, “You didn’t take a break for supper.”
“So?”
“So you’ve been here as long as the rest of us. And you’re not starving?”
“No. Mind your own business. No, I’m not starving.”
She went back to her counting, and made a point of not paying any further attention to either of the other closers. When she wrapped up the drawer’s contents, she put a rubber band around them and slipped them into a zippered bag that she then deposited into the safe.
“Aren’t you jumping the gun a tad with that?” Dean asked, but she shrugged back at him.
“There’s nobody here. Who cares? Turn off the sign. Let’s close up.”
“Where are you going?”
“Bathroom, to change clothes. I’m not walking home smelling like this. It’s gross.”
Dean took a rag and started wiping down the pizza line. “Smelling like food? It’s not the grossest thing in the world, not by a long shot.”
“I don’t like it,” she said. She lifted up the counter blocker that kept customers from wandering back into the kitchen and it almost looked like too much effort for those bird-frail arms. She shuddered when it dropped it back down behind her, when it fell back to its slot with a clang.
“Lisa?” Dean asked, thinking maybe he’d follow her or ask more questions, but she saw it coming and she waved him away.
“Don’t,” she ordered. “Just . . . don’t.”
“Stick around a few minutes, I’ll drive you home when we’re finished eating. I’ll give you a lift—I mean, you really don’t look like you’re in any shape to walk back to the ’burbs.”
“I’m in plenty good shape to walk anywhere I want. Thanks, though.” She added the last part as she rounded the corner, taking a backpack with her. The bathroom door clicked itself shut behind her.
Dean jerked his hands into the air. “I give up,” he declared.
“It’s about time,” Scott said. The words were already muffled around a mouth full of pizza. “Come and get it. More for us.”
“Okay. Yeah, okay.”
The back door was open, propped that way for the sake of air flow. Dean went back through the kitchen, back beside the refrigerator, and back to that open door that looked out over the empty lot—and the woods beyond it.
Scott was right. They needed a lamp.
The dumpster loomed black before the lot. It stank of rust, rot, and the decay of uneaten things that should’ve long ago been picked up. Trash service was spotty out there sometimes, and the bin was starting to fill. Maybe the collectors would come by before the morning.
It was as good an excuse as any not to take out the trash.
A clatter popped, loud beside his head.
Dean jerked—staring around and trying not to look too frantic, in case it was just Scott being an asshole. But Scott was inside, he could hear him. He’d turned up the radio past the point of ambient noise; and he’d tuned it to a louder station than Pete ever subjected the customers to. Inside, Scott was singing along to Skinny Puppy with his mouth full.
The clatter wasn’t Scott.
It was hard to place, like before—hard to tell exactly where the sound was, or exactly what it sounded like. It sounded so close to so many things, but not precisely like any of them. The clicking was loud but muffled. Next to his head, between the building and the dumpster, and high. Up higher, he thought, higher than the edge of the window sill were the pattering knocks when they sounded again.
“Is somebody out here?” Dean asked, not loud enough to even pretend he wanted a response.
The clattering continued, high and muffled, and rhythmic—there was a balance to it, a swinging, swaying, like the pendulum on a large clock moving back and forth. Or like hips, loosely jointed and walking in lanky-legged steps.
“I . . . ” There should’ve been more to say, but the noise—all rounded edges and heavy bones—was only coming closer.
He retreated back into the doorway, still seeing nothing except, maybe, at the edge of his sight something pale in a jagged flash. Whatever it was, he wanted no more of it; he tumbled over himself to get back inside, and he shut the door fast—hard. He drew the bolt back and stepped away, staring down at the door’s lever handle, waiting for it to wiggle or slide.
“Dude?” Scott called. “Something wrong? You’re panting like a sick dog in here; I can hear you all the way in the kitchen.”
“I’m not panting!” Dean all but shouted, and as he objected he could hear his own breath dragging unevenly from his chest and out his mouth
. “I’m not—there was something outside. Don’t look at me like that, I’m serious. There’s something out there and it’s not a goddamn bear.”
“Okay, calm down. What, then? Another raccoon or rat?”
“Fuck off, man. I don’t know what. I don’t know what, but I’m not going back to look.”
“Let me see,” he said but it was less a request than an announcement that he was going to look outside.
“Don’t,” Dean commanded, stepping between his coworker and the bolted metal door. “Don’t. Whatever it was, we don’t want it in here. It was, it was big—and I don’t know what. Just leave it shut. It’ll go away, later.”
“You’re actually scared?”
“Yes, I’m scared. What is there—there’s rabies and shit, man. And big things with big teeth in the woods. Fine, a bear, if you want to call it that—if you want to wonder or worry about that.”
Scott snorted. “Puss.”
“Less a puss than you, motherfucker. At least I’m afraid of actual things, and not ghosts, like dead people from the Civil War. That ain’t a ghost out there, whatever it is. It’s something that came in from the woods, is what. And I’d just as soon not get eaten on the way home from work, so leave the door closed or you’ll let it in.”
“Fine,” Scott held out his hands in surrender. “Fine, Christ. If it’s that big a deal to you. Calm down, already. Don’t get crazy.”
“I’m not crazy, I think I’ve heard it out there before,” he said, and he realized as the words came out that he was serious—he had heard it before, but not so loud and not so close.
It had been working itself up, working itself close. Homing in.
Dean shuddered, and peeled his apron off. He tossed it at the pegs where the coats were usually kept and it stuck, then straggled itself down to the floor. “Forget it. I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going home.”
“With the monster outside? Ooh, you’re brave.”
“I’m going out the front,” Dean growled. “Where there’s a nice open parking lot and a big ol’ streetlamp.”
“Before you go—are you giving Lisa a ride? I think she needs one.”
“What? She said no. She said she didn’t want one.”
Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters Page 16