The Fifth Day

by Gordon Bonnet

  “What are you gonna do?” A desperate, hysterical laugh bubbled underneath the surface of her words. He could hear it.

  If she laughed at him, he might well kill her. He could take physical pain, but he would not be made ridiculous. He tried to think of something to say, but his mind would not engage, and he simply stared, mute.

  “Are you gonna feed me to your wolf creature, now that I know your secret? Huh? Tell me.”

  “It’s not my wolf creature,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “No? Well, I don’t know which of you is worse. It would tear me up with its teeth. Because, you know, that’s what predators do, right? But you—you would just use me until I wasn’t needed any more, like you fucked me the night we met….”

  “You’re the one who wanted it.”

  Now the laugh did escape, high and wild and jangling. “Yeah. I did. Because I thought you were a man. Not a frightened child in a man’s body who thinks that acting tough and smart and powerful will make the monsters go away.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Or what? Or what, Jackson? You’ll come over here and hurt me to get me to stop talking? Good luck taking on Lissa and Z, if a weakling like me can get you freaked out. I know that’s what you’re planning to do. But if me telling you the truth is getting to you, you better not try anything with them. They’re powerful. Can’t you feel it? You go after them, they’re gonna turn you into meatloaf.”

  The muscles in his jaw twitched. His gazed at her as if his eyes would bore holes into her, and his fists were clenched. “Shut up!”

  “No. No. What are you gonna do? Kill me? Go ahead. Go right the fuck ahead. I won’t fight you. It’s better than being alive in this stupid world, anyway.”

  Control. Get back in control. It’s not too late. The moment spun out into the silent room, and he forced his arms to relax.

  It was with some astonishment that he heard his own voice say, “Maybe you’re right.”

  She stared at him as if she weren’t sure she’d heard him correctly.

  “I’m—” She swallowed. “I wasn’t—”

  “No.” The control was back. His voice was back to its previous timbre, inflectionless, remote. “We’re all dealing with this the best way we know how. I’ve always needed to be in control when things got sketchy. That’s why I joined the Army. But maybe the rules are different, now. I’m sorry I got angry.”

  She’d let it drop then, not goaded him further, and they went together later that day to join the others for dinner. For a horrifying few minutes, it seemed like everything was coming unraveled, that the machine-like self he’d built up over the years had burst its mainspring, and was about to collapse in shambles. Then, through a sheer act of will, he’d stopped the worst from happening.

  But it had rattled him badly. Badly enough that he forgot his notebook and the boy had found it. That was a transgression the Voice would never forgive him for. Whatever punishment was in store for him that blunder would make the paddlings he’d received from his father seem like nothing at all.

  So he ran, naked, into the empty streets, away from the ocean. There was no escape west toward the sea, unless he plunged in and swam until he drowned. It was up into the hills, or give up now. He ran past wrecked cars and deserted business fronts, ran until the houses grew sparser and the manicured lawns gave way to rough fields. He couldn’t feel the cut on his heel. That ache had been replaced by a hundred others. The soles of his feet were torn and bleeding, and there was a fierce stitch in his side. But he could ignore that, keep running until he dropped dead, his heart burst inside his chest, until….

  He woke some time later, face down in the grass in a graveyard. The sky was turning an opalescent gray, the edges of the hills like fogged shadows in the light of the approaching dawn. He raised his head, frowning, and he heard again what had roused him from his stupor.

  “Jackson!”

  A desperate female voice called him. It was the same one he’d heard as he lay, nearly insensate, on the front lawn of the Acostas’ house, lying helpless and useless and weak there as he was here. Consciousness forced the desperate condition of his body into his awareness. He struggled to his knees, trying not to vomit or pass out. A silver curtain swirled across his eyes, and he knew he was near fainting, but he pushed it away and looked up, a stream of drool coming from the corner of his mouth.

  He reached up and wiped it away with the back of his hand, tried to stand, and failed.

  “My god, Jackson. What happened?”

  “Susan?”

  For a moment, he saw her, smiling, holding out one hand toward him, her long, blonde hair clipped back with the silver clasp she always wore, the one that he would unfasten so he could run his hands through its silkiness….

  But the vision shifted, and before him was Olivia Carr. Her face was twisted with fear. Why? Of the many things that she feared, he was one of them. She was afraid, too, of the monsters in the night. But even so, she had followed him. Maybe being alone frightened her worst of all.

  Or maybe, improbably, she actually cared about him.

  “What happened?” Her voice trembled. “I heard you yell. I ran down the stairs, and you were lying in the yard. I thought you were dead, but you got up—and ran—” She clasped her arms around her, shivering. She was dressed in a light bathrobe, and had slipped on a pair of shoes.

  Smart. It would be some time before he could walk without being in agony. At the time, retrieving clothes and shoes and his gun had not even occurred to him. The only thought was escape.

  But escape had proven impossible. She’d found him, and now she would bring him back to face the others. Would they give him a trial by jury? He pictured himself standing, bound hand and foot, as Z and Lissa pronounced the death sentence. No more than he deserved. Mistakes were prohibited, and the punishment was execution.

  “Olivia… I— I don’t want you to—”

  He gagged, his gorge rising.

  Olivia was gone.

  He saw, as clearly as if it were before him in the dawn light, the others marching him toward a noose hanging from the big sycamore tree across the street from Ben’s house. Jeff, dressed like a preacher in a black suit, held his Bible open, and was intoning the words, “Yea, though I should walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for thou art with me.” Jackson was pushed to climb onto a chair—one of the kitchen chairs from Ben’s house—and the rough hemp of the noose was slipped over his head, the knot cinched up behind his left ear. Gareth stood by with his stethoscope, ready to confirm that his heart had stopped beating.

  Z, dressed in the robes of a high priestess, said, “Your crime is that you failed. In everything. You were a failure from the beginning. For this, you have been sentenced to be hanged by your neck until you are dead.”

  Margo stood behind Jeff, weeping openly, but she met Jackson’s eyes, and gave a shake of her head. Even she would not intercede for him, and he knew at that moment that he was lost.

  “It was your neck broken, or ours.” Lissa’s voice was strange, almost otherworldly. “The equation is simple enough.”

  Gary and Mikiko were there, but weren’t watching him. They were kissing passionately, her hand inside his shirt. She pulled away long enough to look up into Gary’s eyes and say, “Did you know that when guys are hanged, at the moment their neck breaks, they come in their pants?” and then she gave a wild peal of laughter and raised her mouth to Gary’s again.

  “Any last words?” Z’s voice was solemn.

  “It wasn’t my fault.” Jackson’s voice whined in his ears. “None of it was my fault. I didn’t want it to go this way.”

  Lissa, standing next to him, gave a scornful snort. “Who will you blame? Your father for beating you? Your girlfriend for dying young? All of the rest of us for wanting to direct our own path through the world? You chose every step, and at every step you could have turned aside, and did not.”

  The Voice from the Place Where The Answ
ers Are spoke, ringing in the air like a struck bell. “Do it. Carry out the sentence.”

  Lissa looked over toward where Ben, wide-eyed, was watching, holding the notebook to his chest. “Turn away, child. You don’t want to see this.”

  Ben turned slowly away, closing his eyes, as Lissa yanked the chair from under Jackson’s feet, and the rough rope noose snapped tight around his throat—

  —and now he did vomit, his belly cramping to purge himself of everything. But all that came up was a thin and bitter liquid, and he coughed and fell over onto his side, his shoulder scraping a marble grave marker as he fell. He was back where he had been, a live man, naked and bleeding, in a field filled with the monuments of the dead.

  Olivia knelt next to him, and her cool hands touched his face. “You need to come back. I’ll help you….”

  He opened his eyes. “I can’t.” His mouth didn’t want to shape the words. “I can’t go back.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they know. They know who I am.”

  “It’s okay. Talk to them. Everyone isn’t going to judge you if you show them you’re human.”

  “They’ll kill me. They know too much.”

  “No one’s going to kill you. Lissa and Z….”

  He struggled up onto his elbows. “No. They’re the ones who will insist on it. I fucked up. I fucked it all up, and if I’m taken back, they’ll kill me for it. There’s no way out. They’ll kill me, or the monsters will. Those mistakes demand a life in payment.”

  Olivia’s eyes narrowed in confusion, and she shook her head. “You poor man. I thought I was scared, but what I’m afraid of is nothing. You poor, poor man, to spend your whole life in such terror….”

  She caressed his cheek, and tears filled his eyes, the first tears he had spilled since he was in Susan’s arms, weeping over his childhood and despising himself for doing it. He had learned not to cry when he was a little child and he sat in his room in the dark, smarting from a spanking, and made the decision that he would never cry again, never let his father or anyone else have that satisfaction.

  Maybe the mistake was listening to the Voice in the first place.

  Maybe he could still find redemption.

  Maybe….

  There was a roar, and Olivia half turned, but a dark paw struck her in the face, swatting her out of the way as easily as a fly. Then it was upon him, the Loup Garou, the creature who had scented him at the moment of its creation. It was time. The chase was over. It would taste his blood before the sun rose. It leaned over, snarling hot triumph into his face.

  It might have been the only thing that could have galvanized Jackson to defend himself. Animal instinct took over. He rolled to the side, and the thing’s teeth snapped shut on air, millimeters from where his throat had been. The pain of the hundred lacerations, the bruises on the soles of his torn feet, the ache of his overused muscles, all were gone in an instant. It was no longer a chase, it was one naked beast against another.

  It gave another swing. Talons drew ragged cuts across his belly, talons that if he had been only a few inches nearer would have laid open his gut. He leaped across a gravestone, looking for anything he could use to defend himself. Humans, with their delicate skin and weaponless hands and poor, blunt teeth, were ill-equipped to fight. Their advantage was in their mind, with its infinite creative power, and little good would that do him here.

  A fallen branch of a craggy oak tree lay by his feet. He picked it up. It felt woefully light in his hand, a dry and brittle twig. The Loup Garou lunged at him. He swung the branch, raking the rough ends across its snout. It gave a coughing snarl and its paw wrapped around the end of the branch, locking them for a moment in a tug-of-war.

  The branch snapped in two. The monster tossed the useless piece aside. It turned its muzzle from side to side. Where was its prey?

  Jackson had darted around behind it, and in its moment of confusion he leapt on the thing’s hairy back, his legs wrapping around its middle. He crooked one arm across its throat, pulled, his muscles as hard as iron bands.

  Do you have any last words?

  The noose snaps tight

  Yea, though I should walk through the valley of the shadow of death

  You have been sentenced to be hanged by the neck until you are dead

  Turn away, you don’t want to see this

  Its paws grabbed onto Jackson’s forearm. Claws dug into flesh, biting deep. Jackson closed his eyes, every tendon straining, pulling back on the monster’s throat with everything he had.

  It fell to its knees, its chest heaving in an effort to breathe. Its grip weakened, first one and then the other paw falling away. He did not allow himself to slacken his own grip, and cried out with the effort.

  At the moment their neck breaks, they come

  The monster pitched forward, face first onto the ground. Jackson rolled free and for a moment lay there senseless, looking up into a sky stained scarlet with sunrise. Then he turned away from the dead hulk of the Loup Garou, and crawled toward where Olivia Carr still lay.

  Her head was against a marble gravestone, twisted to one side at an unnatural angle, her eyes wide open in an expression of surprise.

  It was your neck broken, or ours. The equation is simple enough.

  Jackson laid his head on Olivia’s chest, and sobbed like a child.

  9

  THOSE CHILDREN GREW to be adults, the adults grew to be old. Some died and were left by the side of the path; there was no making a grave in the tangle of tree roots. Couples made love in the dim shadows, and their children were born and grew until they walked on their own along with the rest, ever forward, even though none there could remember why they did.

  One day, they saw that the path did have an end. There was a light glimmering in the distance, so faint that many thought it was an imagining, or another cheat like the clearing where they met the Blind Woman. But days passed, and there could be no mistaking. Forward there was the clear light of day, a ray piercing along the path toward them, as if it was itself a path they must follow.

  —

  BEN OPENED HIS eyes into near-darkness.

  He was lying on a hard surface, rough like hewn wood. He had been laid out on his back, covered with a blanket, hands folded across his chest as if he had been arrayed for burial.

  He sat up, the blanket slipping down to his waist. He was in some sort of cabin. He could make out nearby the shadowed outline of a table and chair, a counter, a bed. It appeared empty except for him.

  He stood and kicked aside the blanket, walking, feeling his way forward. The room was sparsely furnished, the walls bare. He found a window, pulled aside the curtains to let in the cold half-light of dawn. At least now he could see his surroundings better, although where he was and how he’d gotten there was still a mystery.

  There was a door in the far wall. Locked. Likewise, the windows wouldn’t open. The walls were made of thin planking, and air flowed through the gaps between them, but without a crowbar, or at least a hammer, there was no getting out by tearing a hole in the wall.

  In the corner something gleaming caught his eye, and he turned that way, frowning. Incongruous in the dingy cabin there stood a full-length, gilt-edged mirror. He stepped up to it, drawn despite the fact that a mirror was of no use to him. He saw his reflection approaching, recoiled with horror, then leaned forward again, curiosity winning over fear.

  The reflection wasn’t Ben. Or, at least, it wasn’t the Ben he knew, the face that looked back at him from the bathroom mirror as he brushed his teeth in the morning. It was a boy, blond-haired and blue-eyed, with the same narrow face and straight nose, but there was something about the expression that was different. This boy was like an evil doppelgänger of the real Ben Ingersoll. He leered back at Ben, his face in a haughty smirk, as if he knew a dreadful secret that made him superior to everyone around him. This boy would use his knowledge to hurt others, to spread vicious rumors, to ridicule those weaker than him. He didn’t only do bad thi
ngs, he reveled in them. You could tell by the expression in his crystalline blue eyes that he would lie without hesitation, steal when he thought he could get away with it. This was a boy who would pull the wings off of butterflies to watch them writhe on the ground, flightless, as they died.

  Nauseated, Ben turned away, and stepped on the tail of a black cat that had slunk up silently behind him. The cat yowled and hissed at him, scurried under the bed, and sat glaring at him, yellow eyes glowing in the dark.

  “I didn’t mean to step on you,” Ben said, aggrieved. “I like cats.”

  The cat did not move, but continued to glower.

  “Fine. Be that way.”

  There was a rustling noise outside, then the click of a key unlocking a door, followed by a creak. Blocking the door was a heavy figure, vague in the dim light.

  The old woman. The old woman in the checkered scarf who had kidnapped him. What had the book of mythology called her?

  Baba Yaga.

  She relocked the door, then dropped the key into her pocket. She looked at Ben with an inscrutable expression and said nothing, but began to putter around, picking up one object then setting it down, all the time chattering in a rhythmic, guttural singsong. He couldn’t understand any words.

  Suddenly there was a sharp clicking sound, the flash of a spark from a flint, and an oil lamp was lit and held up high in a wrinkled hand with long fingernails. He got his first good look at her.

  The old woman’s face was leathery and deeply creased. She had a beaky nose, a protruding chin, and fleshless lips that formed a gash of a mouth. Her black-bead eyes glittered with a malign intelligence. She opened the metal door of a potbellied stove that stood near the bed, and fumbled around with the lamp and some tinder until she had a little fire going. Then she peered back at Ben, smiling and muttering to herself.

  Once she had the fire going, she stood and went to a table where there lay a long knife.

  It’d have been nice if he’d seen that before she came back. At least he’d have a weapon. Instead, he’d wasted his time looking into uglifying mirrors and stepping on cats.