by Graeme Hurry
Travis sighed. “You know I applied, right?”
“No,” was all I could manage. Something heavy lodged in my throat.
“Yeah, they turned me down on account of my eye-sight. There might come a time when they don’t care about that, but that time ain’t now.” Travis picked up his Rager and leaned it against his chair. “I’d do it, too, Jack. Even if … “
Yeah, even if.
“I know you would, Travis. You ain’t got a cowardly bone in your body.” That was a lie. All of us have a primal chunk of brain-matter that does nothing but worry about our self-preservation. No sane person can shout it down. It’s as natural as breathing.
Travis removed his glasses and wiped red-rimmed eyes with a forearm. “I left her, Jack. I ran.”
“‘Course you did,” I said, as soothing as I could. “You’re smart. Only an idiot would have stayed behind and died for no good reason. We needed you then, we need you now, and I think you know that.” I hefted the Rager. “When I die, Travis, it’s gonna be on my terms and I’m gonna go out blazing.”
“I miss her so bad, and I feel like a coward.” He took a shuddery breath and hooked his glasses back over his ears.
“We all miss, Lucy. She was a good one. Still is, if you believe the pastor.” The words had barely left my damn fool mouth before I cursed them. For his sake, I could’ve just said she was waiting for him in Heaven.
Travis was quiet for a time while I fumbled through one thought after another, trying to find some way to fix it.
He broke the silence, as always. “You don’t believe?”
“I believe.”
“You and I have a pact, remember? We agreed not to lie to one another, but you’re lying now.”
That stung a little. “Fine. I got my doubts, but what do I know?”
Travis glanced up at me. I hadn’t noticed before, but dark circles ringed his eyes, like he hadn’t been sleeping. Can’t blame him, really. “I think it’s a test,” he said in a quiet voice.
“That’s what they always say. You think the Jews at Auschwitz thought it was a test?” I know I shouldn’t have gone there, but I had this festering core of resentment burning in me, and I didn’t know who or what to be angry at. God seemed like the right person.
“I don’t know, Jack. If it ain’t hard, if it don’t push you to the brink, is it really a test?”
Travis was a good man. Smart. When he says shit like that, he yanks the simpleton words out of my mouth. I’m never angry with him when he does it either. All I feel is pride. He’s my little brother and I love him. “Maybe you got a point.”
We sat in silence for a minute or two.
“Is your tank full?” Travis asked. He hates the quiet. Always wants to fill it up.
“‘Course it is,” I replied, but checked anyway. “This ain’t my first rodeo, Tex.”
“You ain’t never been to a rodeo.”
“That’s true,” I admitted. “But I did stand up to Betty Kershaw when she found out I’d slept with Shelly.” Shelly had been her best friend, back when we were all teen-agers. Not so much after that Saturday night.
Travis chuckled. “Betty would’ve had a future in the boxing ring. She hit you high then low, then high again. Ain’t never seen nothing like it. She was a natural.”
The word ‘was’ took the air out of me. For just a moment, I’d been able to ignore the approaching Crab, forget what I’d seen each summer solstice for the past eight years. But that ‘was’ hit me every bit as hard as Betty. She was dead now. Lost early on. Her and her drunkard husband.
Travis rolled a helmet over to me. It bumped into my leg, and rocked back and forth. “That one’s yours this year,” he said. The old motorcycle helmet dated back before the Crabs started visiting us once a year. Back when I dreamed of cruising I-80 on a refurbished Harley-Davidson.
That lump I had earlier settled in my stomach. Sweat beaded on my neck and slithered down my back, beneath my suit. The CDC would have laughed their collectives asses off at our homemade HAZMAT suits. They were made of heavy-duty, blue-gray plastic material. The feel of it reminded me of Hefty trash bags, but they were much tougher. We secured the suits with silvery duct tape.
As if on cue, the unmistakable rumble of the Crab shook the ground with its eerie, reverberating roar. Every year it loosened my bladder and shook me down to my marrow. It sounded like a tortured air conditioner on its last legs, the motor cranking twice as hard, except the roar echoed as if it were in an empty warehouse. Sound waves crashed into one another, morphing into a deep metallic howl.
“Jack,” Travis’s voice shook. “Shut the viewport.”
“No, I wanna see it.”
“Don’t wait too long.”
I reached up and patted the lever. “I got this under control.”
It appeared on the horizon. Enormous and black, with hundreds of sharp metallic limbs poking from the sides like spines, the alien spacecraft cruised over our cornfields. A misty haze of brown rained from the ships underbelly, spreading out in all directions, choking the life out of our crops.
I shut the viewport and busied myself with the motorcycle helmet, hoping Travis couldn’t see my fear. We didn’t speak, but Travis mumbled to himself. I caught a word here and there, and realized he was praying. By the time, I secured a tank to his back and connected the fuel line to his Rager, hard rain splattered against the roof of our shelter.
Travis choked on his prayer, and I purposely put my back to him so he could save some face. He attached my fuel tank while his shuddering breath mixed with the clatter above our heads.
A familiar numbness came over me, like it did each year. Jessica called it a defense mechanism. Said I couldn’t lose it if I didn’t feel nothing. Made sense.
Travis turned me around and gave a thumbs up. With our helmets on we’d have to shout to communicate, but that got old in a hurry. We used gestures instead. Thick leather gloves protected our hands. I tucked the cuffs under my suit and let Travis duct tape them closed. Fumbling like a fool, I did the same for him. By the time we finished, the alien rain had stopped.
It was time.
I led, my thick boots squelching through brown goo, as I gazed up into the sky. The impossibly huge shadow of the spaceship had moved further west, allowing the summer sun to shine on us again. My helmet allowed only the faintest echo of the roar lingering in my ears.
Travis put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. He nodded and I nodded back, but I felt very little. The numbness had spread through my body and I felt like I was controlling myself from a distance. The sharp, acidic tang of bile rose in my throat.
I motioned for Travis to take the north fields, while I took the south. We separated, and some buried voice in my mind kept telling me I should have told him that I loved him. Just in case.
White, glistening pods grew in our fields. Bulbous and shot through with bluish veins, they undulated in the sun. Scientists on TV told us these growths were both plant and animal. Foot-long aliens hatched themselves from the pods. They’d crawl out of their cocoons, slimy and ravenous. Given time, we were told, they’d grow to the size of a mid-sized sedan.
Best not let them. I found a large patch and let loose with the flame thrower. Fire scorched the ruins of my crops and burned the alien pods to ash within seconds. I imagined their agonized wails and felt a twinge of vindictive pleasure.
How long I kept that up, I don’t know. Hours, at least. The pods grew much faster than in years past. I didn’t know why. One burst open and a pale leg stuck out into the fading sun. I raised my Rager, arms burning with fatigue, and pressed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Three more pods grew ahead of me and all of them looked primed to open.
I glanced down at the Rager’s control screen. It read, “Error, Malfunction 272, please contact the manufacturer.” ‘Please’. That was a nice touch.
The crab-like alien flopped onto the mud, tiny legs scrabbling for purchase. It began to feast on the la
yer of brown goo while its bluish veins pulsed. I smashed a heel down on its carapace. The alien baby shot a low hiss at me, like an angry cat, and squirmed away.
Movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention. The other pods had given birth, their spawn wriggling in the mud.
My hands shook as I dropped the flame thrower. I flicked the latch holding the fuel tank and let it fall. That lump of brain matter in my skull, the one that knew only fear, babbled at me like a patient in an insane asylum.
I rushed back toward the bunker, but without a weapon I had little hope. I thought of my wife and children, seeing their past, imagining their future.
I’ve managed to sneak back to the shed, but I’m trapped. I’ve shut everything down, and am hiding in the near dark. My tablet glows, pale and fragile, a remnant of a normal life. I can’t stop shaking.
There’s no sign of Travis.
I hear aliens outside, hissing and clicking. By now they must be huge. Something is scraping at the door.
My heart belongs to my wife and kids. Everything I’ve done is for them.
If anyone finds this, tell our story.
WHEN IT’S AJAR
by G.A. Rozen
These nameless woods, these small towns with names taken from Indian tribes and high schools that graduate twenty kids at a time, these are the real bread and butter parts of the country, and we’ve always been here. Sure, might be you never heard of us out in D.C. or Chicago or wherever it is you’re from, but you ask anyone, and I mean anyone, in Dowagiac or Decatur about the old Forrest Door B&B and they’ll be thrilled to point you in our direction.
Place has been in my family for centuries. Since before the civil war, when my great, great, great, great grand daddy came over from the Fatherland. We were trash on that side of the pond, a superstitious brood known more for foggy legends of witchcraft and monsters than pulling our weight, but when Erik Stenger stepped off the train in Detroit and wandered off into the wilds to the west, he left the squalor behind and built the two-story house with his own hands. He made us respectable.
Pull off the highway and explore the open farmlands and lakeside towns and the road might just bring you to us. With one lane each way, vast fields of crops, golden wheat, and titanic metal equipment stretching out to either side, you can find yourself hypnotized, lulled into an altered state. Times like that, something might go wrong, pop a tire on a shattered liquor bottle or break an axle. Hell, one time we had ourselves a couple whose station wagon just up and lost power. No warning, just dead. Things like that, they’re how we survive. Busted cars. Stalled bikes. Sick or injured horses before that. Road’s good to us here at Forrest Door.
When you’re satisfied that the damage to your chariot is beyond your abilities as a repairman, you call up a tow and ride over to the local garage. You ask the gear-head if he knows of a place to stay, and he tells you about our humble place, just down the road. Even gives you a ride, seeing as you’re stranded, and all. Turning onto Country Road Nine, the pick-up he’s driving smells like cigarettes and beer. It disappears into a tunnel of overhanging trees, which stretch out above where the leaf-covered branches meet like interlocking fingers, blocking out the sun.
Then, all at once, you’re here, the red-brick house just suddenly there, on the side of the road, the trees around it so dense it’s like the forest is trying to swallow it. It’s a classic looking place, all ornate trim and right angles, with a short gravel driveway and a separate garage. When the mechanic pulls in, you get your first glimpse of the path in back. Behind the house, just past the porch with its grill and lawn furniture, there’s a hole in the tree-line, the ground covered with manicured dirt and wood chips. You ask about it, but he just leads you to the front door where we’re waiting.
My wife takes your coat. “Look how handsome,” she coos, and even though you know she’s just playing a role, you feel your cheeks glow red.
“I don’t want to trouble you any more than I have to,” you say.
“Now you just shut your mouth right this instant,” my wife replies, gently pushing you towards the dining room as I smile behind her. “Get on in there and we’ll serve you somethin’ t’eat.”
Soon you’re drowning in stews, or steaks, or legs of lamb, until you’re ready to burst. Only then does she let you wander off, let you sleep, presenting the guest bedroom like a car-show girl, with its creaking wooden floors and lights so yellow they glow like candles. The bed is big and soft, and as your tired bones beg you to toss yourself amongst the cloud-like pillows and warm blanket, you don’t even notice me stealthily snagging a stranger’s fine watch, gold faced with a leather band, from the bedside table and stuffing it into my pocket.
We tell you the mechanic called. Your car will take a few days, but why not stay here? There’s a stable nearby where you can ride and golf just down the road, and we’ll take such good care of you. Great food and good company. Oh, and before you leave, we can take you to see the door. Not surprised you haven’t heard of it, city boy like yourself, but it’s a bit of a legend around here. You’ll never see anything like it, I promise you that.
It’s the bed that wins you over. Sinking deep into a sleep so warm, so peaceful, so dense, and your mind settles into a fluffy, safe place where worries melt away. You never think this is anything but normal. They never do.
The next day you wake up late. The smell of cooking meat and pancakes pulls you from the bed to the kitchen table, where my lovely wife stuffs you full. You ask where I am.
“Running errands,” she says, which you accept without question. Somewhere nearby, I’m meeting with the mechanic about your car, negotiating my price.
She takes you out to the stables, where you spend the morning riding Bridget, our dark-brown mare with a temper. It’s not your first time on a horse, and you test her, bringing her from a steady walk to a bouncing trot, then a brisk, skipping canter. You drive her towards low jumps, crisscrossing bars arranged between wooden beams, but she doesn’t feel like following directions, and over and again pulls off to the side.
“That’s our Idget,” my wife laughs, “stubborn as the lord.”
You ask to take her outside the corral, and of course the woman obliges. Moments later you’ve got the horse running through the open field, wind cool and pleasant on your face, drunk on speed.
The tree line draws close. You pull on the reins, but Bridget, surprise surprise, won’t listen; she just keeps running, all out, towards the woods, and before you have time to think, you’re there, and the world get’s dark as the shade swallows you. You’re not steering anymore, you’re just holding on, keeping low. Branches and bushes scratch and tear as you blow by, opening cuts on your forearms and your cheeks. You don’t even see the last one, the thick one that catches your shoulder and hits like a linebacker, a sudden giant-fisted punch, and you fall. When everything slows down, and the world becomes still, you’re in the mud. Your shoulder throbs, and you can hear my wife calling out behind you.
Later, my wife tells me you how you looked, vacant and starry eyed as a deer, as you stumbled out of the forest, ten minutes later. She wanted to go after you, she tells me, but she was afraid.
“Ain’t nothin’ to be scared of,” I tell her, “we got an agreement, us and It. An arrangement. It takes care of us.”
She says she’s worried you saw the cows. Maybe you did. If you did, you wondered, I’m sure, why we keep them isolated in the forest, away from both the house and the stables. You probably noticed they were gaunt, unfed, uncared for. They don’t get feed. They are feed. You might have even heard the buzzing of flies, seen them in the sentient cloud in a distant spot in the clearing, hovering over something, something dead and rotting. Whatever happened, when you escaped from the trees, covered in bleeding scratches, clothes caked in mud, it all faded into haze, forgotten like a dream you don’t have time to write down. Whatever you saw, it’s gone, just like that. It’s part of the arrangement.
The wife treats your cuts, gives y
ou ice for your bruises. She forces you into the massive recliner in the library, wraps you in a blanket, and leaves to make you soup, like you were a kid home from school with the flu. You ask about your car.
“Kenny says it’ll be ready tomorrow,” I say, “‘round noon.”
You rise to your feet as you thank me.
“Maybe, before you leave,” I continue, “you’ll come out to see the door. Down the path.” I point out the window at the wood-chip covered walkway that leads into the trees. You haven’t forgotten about it. It’s been stuck in your brain like an annoying song, always there. It vibrates, you see. Down the path, through the yard and into the house, it sings.
You nod, walking over to a bookshelf and running a finger along the spines. Everyone’s there. Shakespeare. Homer. Poe. Most of the tomes are quite old, faded reds and browns with cracked gold lettering. My family’s been collecting since before the New World. You pick one that’s up high, sitting by itself, wedged against the end of the shelf by a potted plant. It’s a heavy, leather-bound book that feels different from the others. The cover and the pages, they both are covered by a sort of film. They’re almost moist. Inside you find a drawing of a door, wooden and solid. The centuries-old image, scratched into the page by a manic, shaking hand, is surrounded by pictures of creatures. Vaguely squid-like in shape, the things look like masses of soap-bubbles, constantly popping and reforming, rolling around each other, with long, flaccid tentacle-legs hanging underneath. Other beasts, like barrel shaped vegetables with wings, writhe as they are being pulled into the bubbling center, stuck forever in those images, half-consumed. You’re suddenly very ready to leave.
But by the time the sun is down, and your head hits the pillow upstairs, all of your fears, all your worries, they all melt away. Sleep wraps you in its numbing arms and the tattoos the book had cut into your brain fade into shimmering after-images. All that’s left is the void, and somewhere, obscure and unformed in the future, the door, waiting for you.
You’re up bright and early. You eat bacon an eggs, steaming from the wife’s skillet, in heaping, shoveling fork fulls.