The Best of Subterranean

by William Schafer

  “But it’s not just Special Forces on this,” Dunn said. “The Secretary of Defense signed off on it. So did the Secretary of Colonization. So did you.”

  “Yes, I did,” Rybicki said. “I sure did. And I will tell you that when I did, I suddenly got religion. At that moment, Colonel, I became convinced there an afterlife, because I became stone cold aware that I was going to Hell.”

  “General,” Dunn began.

  “Thank you, Colonel, that will be all,” Rybicki said. “You’re dismissed. Go away.”

  Colonel Dunn left. Rybicki turned his attention back to the display and watched the stars wheel around an arbitrary central axis.

  “Goddamn Enrico Fermi,” Rybicki said, after a while. “Why couldn’t you have been right.”

  The Screams of Dragons

  by Kelley Armstrong

  “And the second plague that is in thy dominion, behold it is a dragon. And another dragon of a foreign race is fighting with it, and striving to overcome it. And therefore does your dragon make a fearful outcry.”

  —Cyfranc Lludd a Llefelys, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest

  When he was young, other children talked of their dreams, of candyfloss mountains and puppies that talked and long-lost relatives bearing new bicycles and purses filled with crisp dollar bills. He did not have those dreams. His nights were filled with golden castles and endless meadows and the screams of dragons.

  The castles and the meadows came unbidden, beginning when he was too young to know what a castle or a meadow was, but in his dreams he’d race through them, endlessly playing, endlessly laughing. And then he’d wake to his cold, dark room, stinking of piss and sour milk, and he’d roar with rage and frustration. Even when he stopped, the cries were replaced by sulking, aggrieved silence. Never laughter. He only laughed in his dreams. Only played in his dreams. Only was happy in his dreams.

  The dragons came later.

  He presumed he’d first heard the story of the dragons in Cainsville.

  Visits to family there were the high points of his young life. While Cainsville had no golden castles or endless meadows, the fields and the forests, the spires and the gargoyles reminded him of his dreams, and calmed him and made him, if not happy, at least content.

  They treated him differently in Cainsville, too. He was special there. A pampered little prince, his mother would say, shaking her head. The local elders paid attention to him, listened to him, sought him out. Better still, they did not do the same to his sister, Natalie. The Gnat, he called her—constantly buzzing about, useless and pestering. At home, she was the pampered one. His parents never seemed to know what to make of him, his discontent and his silences, and so they showered his bouncing, giggling little sister with double the love, double the attention.

  In Cainsville the old people told him stories. Of King Arthur’s court, they said, but when he looked up their tales later, they were not quite the same. Theirs were stories of knights and magic, but lions too and giants and faeries and, sometimes, dragons. That was why he was certain they’d told him this particular tale, even if he could not remember the exact circumstances. It was about another king, beset by three plagues. One was a race of people who could hear everything he said. The third was disappearing foodstuffs and impending starvation. The second was a terrible scream that turned out to be two dragons, fighting. And that was when he began to dream of the screams of dragons.

  He did not actually hear the screams. He could not imagine such a thing, because he had no idea what a dragon’s scream would sound like. He asked his parents and his grandmother and even his Sunday school teacher, but they didn’t seem to understand the question. Even at night, his sleep was often filled with nothing but his small self, racing here and there, searching for the screams of dragons. He would ask and he would ask, but no one could ever tell him.

  When he was almost eight, his grandmother noticed his sleepless nights. When she asked what was wrong, he knew better than to talk about the dragons, but he began to think maybe he should tell her of the other dreams, the ones of golden palaces and endless meadows. One night, when his parents were out, he waited until the Gnat fell asleep. Then he padded into the living room, the feet on his sleeper whispering against the floor. His grandmother didn’t notice at first—she was too busy watching “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” He couldn’t understand the fascination with television. The moving pictures were dull gray, the laughter harsh and fake. He supposed they were for those who didn’t dream of gold and green, of sunlight and music.

  He walked up beside her. He did not sneak or creep, but she was so absorbed in her show that when he appeared at her shoulder, she shrieked and in her face, he saw something he’d never seen before. Fear. It fascinated him, and he stared at it, even as she relaxed and said, “Bobby? You gave me quite a start. What’s wrong, dear?”

  “I can’t sleep,” he said. “I have dreams.”

  “Bad dreams?”

  He shook his head. “Good ones.”

  Her old face creased in a frown. “And they keep you awake?”

  “No,” he said. “They make me sad.”

  She clucked and pulled him onto the chair, tucking him in beside her.

  “Tell Gran all about them.”

  He did, and as he talked, he saw that look return. The fear. He decided he must be mistaken. He hadn’t mentioned the dragons. The rest was wondrous and good. Yet the more he talked, the more frightened she became, until finally she pushed him from the chair and said, “It’s time for bed.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  She said, “Nothing,” but her look said there was something very, very wrong.

  * * *

  For the next few weeks, his grandmother was a hawk, circling him endlessly, occasionally swooping down and snatching him up in her claws. Most times, she avoided him directly, though he’d catch her watching him. Studying him. Scrutinizing him. Once they were alone in the house, she’d swoop. She’d interrogate him about the dreams, unearthing every last detail, even the ones he thought he’d forgotten.

  On the nights when his parents were gone, she insisted on drawing his baths, adding in some liquid from a bottle and making the baths so hot they scalded him and when he cried, she seemed satisfied. Satisfied and a little frightened.

  The strangest of all came nearly a month after he’d told her of the dreams. She’d made stew for dinner and she served it in eggshells. When she brought them to the table, the Gnat laughed in delight.

  “That’s funny,” she said. “They’re so cute, Gran.”

  His grandmother only nodded absently at the Gnat. Her watery blue eyes were fixed on him.

  “What do you think of it, Bobby?” she asked.

  “I…” He stared at the egg, propped up in a little juice glass, the brown stew steaming inside the shell. “I don’t understand. Why is it in an egg?”

  “For fun, dummy.” His sister shook her head at their grandmother. “Bobby’s never fun.” She pulled a face at him. “Boring Bobby.”

  His grandmother shushed her, gaze still on him. “You think it’s strange.”

  “It is,” he said.

  “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  “No.”

  She waited, as if expecting more. Then she prompted, “You would say, then, that you’ve never, in all your years, seen something like this.”

  It seemed an odd way to word it, but he nodded.

  And with that, finally, she seemed satisfied. She plunked down into her chair, exhaling, before turning to him and saying, “Go to your room. I don’t want to see you until morning.”

  He glanced up, startled. “What did I—?”

  “To your room. You aren’t one of us. I’ll not have you eat with us. Now off with you.”

  He pushed his chair back and slowly rose to his feet.

  The Gnat stuck out her tongue when their grandmother wasn’t looking. “Can I have his egg?”

  “Of course, dear,” Gran said as he shuffled fr
om the kitchen.

  * * *

  The next morning, instead of going to school, his grandmother took him to church. It was not Sunday. It was not even Friday. As soon as he saw the spires of the cathedral, he began to shake. He’d done something wrong, horribly wrong. He’d lain awake half the night trying to figure out what he could have done to deserve bed without dinner, but there was nothing. She’d fed him stew in an eggshell and, while perplexed, he had still been very polite and respectful about it.

  The trouble had started with telling her about the dreams, but who could find fault with tales of castles and meadows, music and laughter?

  Perhaps she was going senile. It had happened to an old man down the street. They’d found him in their yard, wearing a diaper and asking about his wife, who’d died years ago. If that had happened to his grandmother, Father Joseph would see it.

  Certainly, he seemed to, given the expression on Father Joseph’s face after Gran talked to him alone in the priest’s office. Father Joseph emerged as if in a trance, and Gran had to direct him to the pew where Bobby waited.

  “See?” she said, waving her hand at Bobby.

  The priest looked straight at him, but seemed lost in his thoughts. “No, I’m afraid I don’t, Mrs. Sheehan.”

  Gran’s voice snapped with impatience. “It’s obvious he’s not ours. Neither his mother nor his father nor any of his grandparents have blond hair. Or dark eyes.”

  Sweat beaded on the priest’s forehead and he tugged his collar. “True, but children do not always resemble their parents, for a variety of reasons, none of them laying any blame at the foot of the child.”

  “Are you suggesting my daughter-in-law was unfaithful?”

  Father Joseph’s eyes widened. “No, of course not. But the ways of genetics—like the ways of God—are not always knowable. Your daughterin-law does have light hair, and I believe she has a brother who is blond. If my recollection of science is correct, dark eyes are the dominant type, and I’m quite certain if you searched the family tree beyond parents and grandparents you would find your answer.”

  “I have my answer,” she said, straightening. “He is a changeling.”

  Two drops of sweat burst simultaneously and dribbled down the priest’s face. “I…I do not wish to question your beliefs, Mrs. Sheehan. I know such folk wisdom is common in the…more rural regions of your homeland—”

  “Because it is wisdom. Forgotten wisdom. I’ve tested him, Father. I gave him dinner in an eggshell, as I explained.”

  “Yes, but…” The priest snuck a glance around, as if hoping for divine intervention—or a needy parishioner to stumble in, requiring his immediate attention. “I know that is the custom, but I cannot say I rightly understand it.”

  “What is there to understand?” She put her hands on her narrow hips. “It’s a test. I gave him stew in eggshells, and he said he’d never seen anything like it. That’s what a changeling will say.”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but I believe that’s what anyone would say, given their meal served in an egg.”

  She glowered at him. “I put him in a tub with foxglove, too, and he became ill.”

  “Foxglove?” The priest’s eyes rounded again. “Is that not a poison?”

  “It is if you’re a changeling. I also gave him one of my heart pills, because it’s made from digitalis, which is also foxglove. My pill made him sick.”

  “You gave…” For the first time since he’d come in, Father Joseph looked at Bobby, really looked at him. “You gave your grandson your heart medication? That could kill a boy—”

  “He isn’t a boy. He’s one of the Fair Folk.” Gran met Bobby’s gaze. “An abomination.”

  Now Father Joseph’s face flushed, his eyes snapping. “No, he is a child. You will not speak of him that way, certainly not in front of him. I’m trying to be respectful, Mrs. Sheehan. You are entitled to your superstitions and folksy tales, but not if they involve poisoning an innocent child.” He knelt in front of Bobby. “You’re going to come into my office now, son, and we’ll call your parents. Is your mother at work?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know the number?”

  He nodded again.

  The priest took Bobby’s hand and, without another word, led him away as his grandmother watched, her eyes narrowing.

  * * *

  That was the beginning of “the bad time,” as his parents called it, whispered words, even years later, their eyes downcast, as if in shame. The situation did not end with that visit to the priest. His grandmother would not drop the accusation. He was a changeling. A faerie child dropped into their care, her real grandson spirited away by the Fair Folk. Finally, his parents broke down and asked the priest to perform some ritual—any ritual—to calm his grandmother’s nerves. The priest refused. To do so would be to lend credence to the preposterous accusation and could permanently scar the child’s psyche.

  The fight continued. He heard his parents talking late at night about the shame, the great shame of it all. They were intelligent, educated people. His father was a scientist, his mother the lead secretary in her firm. They were not ignorant peasants, and it angered them that Father Joseph didn’t understand what they were asking—not to “fix” their son but simply to pretend to, for the harmony of the household.

  They took their request to a second priest, and somehow—for years afterward, everyone would blame someone else for this—a journalist got hold of the story. It made one of the Chicago newspapers, in an article mocking the family and their “Old World” ways. His family was so humiliated they moved. His grandmother grumbled that his parents made too big a fuss out of the whole thing. It didn’t matter. They moved, and they were all forbidden to speak of it again.

  That did not mean no one spoke of it. The Gnat did. When she was in a good mood, she’d settle for mocking him, calling him a faerie child, asking him where he kept his wings, pinching his back to see if she could find them. When she was in a rare foul temper, she’d tell him their grandmother was right, he was a monster and didn’t belong, that their parents only had one real child. And even if it was all nonsense, as his mother and father claimed, that part was true—he no longer felt part of the family. They might not think him a changeling, but they all, in their own ways, blamed him. His parents blamed him for their humiliation. The Gnat blamed him for having to leave her friends and move. And his grandmother blamed him for whatever slight she could pin at his feet, and then she punished him for it.

  He came to realize that the punishments were the purpose of the accusations rather than the result. His grandmother wanted an excuse to strap him or send him to bed without dinner. At first, he presumed she was upset because no one believed her story. That did not anger him. Nothing really angered him. Like happiness, the emotion was too intense, too uncomfortable. He looked at his sister, dancing about, chattering and giggling, and he thought her a fool. He looked at his grandmother, raging and snapping against him, and thought her the same. Foolish and weak, easily overcome by emotion.

  He did not accept the punishments stoically, though. While he never complained, with each hungry night or sore bottom, something inside him hardened a bit more. He saw his grandmother, fumbling in her frustration, venting it on him, and he did not pity her. He hated her. He hated his parents, too, for pretending not to see the welts or the unfinished dinners. Most of all, he hated the Gnat, because she saw it all and delighted in it. She would watch him beaten to near tears with the strap, and then tell their grandmother that he’d broken her doll the week before, earning him three more lashes.

  While there was certainly vindictiveness in the punishments, it seemed his grandmother actually had a greater plan. He realized this when she decided, one Sunday, that the two of them should take a trip to Cainsville. He even got to sit in the front seat of the station wagon, for the first time ever.

  “Do you think I’ve mistreated you lately?” she asked as she drove. It seemed a question not deserving a reply, so he di
dn’t give one. “Have you earned those punishments?” she said. “Did you do everything I said you did? That Natalie said you did?”

  He sensed a trick, and again he didn’t answer. She reached over and pinched his thigh hard enough to bring tears to his eyes.

  “I asked you a question, parasite.”

  He glanced over.

  “You know what that means, don’t you?” she said. “Parasite?”

  “I know many words.”

  Her lips twisted. “You do. Far more than a child should know. Because you are not a child. You are a parasite, put into our house to eat our food and sleep in our beds.”

  “There’s no such thing as faeries.”

  She pinched him again, twisting the skin. He only glanced over with a look that had her releasing him fast, hand snapping back onto the steering wheel.

  “You’re a monster,” she said. “Do you know that?”

  No, you are, he thought, but he said nothing, staring instead at the passing scenery as they left the city. She drove onto the highway before she spoke again.

  “You don’t think you deserve to be punished, do you? You think I’m accusing you of things you didn’t do, and your little sister is joining in, and your parents are turning a blind eye. Is that what you think?”

  He shrugged.

  “If it is, then you should tell someone,” she said. “Someone who can help you.”

  He stayed quiet. There was a trick here, a dangerous one, and he might be smart for a little boy, as everyone told him, but he was not smart enough for this. So he kept his mouth shut. She drove a while longer before speaking again.

  “You like the folks in Cainsville, don’t you? The town elders.”

  Finally, something he could safely answer. She could find no fault in him liking old people. With relief, he nodded.