by Tom Reamy
Then, unbelievably, Gant rose from the junk and started toward us again. His face and hands were solid with welts that grew redder and larger by the second. One eye was almost closed, but he came at us, staggering and stumbling, entangling himself in the clutter. He warded off the collapsing debris with one hand and held the knife in the other.
Professor Weatherly groaned. Then the knife in Gant’s hand flowed a cherry red. Gant sucked air through his teeth and dropped it, clutching his hand with the other. The knife clattered to the floor. A curl of smoke rose from it. But, before another fire could get started, Weatherly did something to it and it was cold once more.
Dad kept the flashlight on Gant. He backed away, still hunched over his burned hand. We moved toward him. His eye was now completely closed, and the other didn’t look too good. He still hadn’t given up. He grabbed the base of the piano stool with his good hand and drew back to throw it.
Then he froze. The piano stool slipped from limp fingers and bounced off a three-legged table. Gant sucked in air like a fish. He clutched at his chest. I looked at Weatherly, then back at Gant. He breathed in great, roaring gasps, tearing at his shirt. He dropped to one knee, then doubled up and fell sideways into a rusty birdcage. He didn’t move. We went to him. He was unconscious but breathing evenly.
I looked at Weatherly. “You could have killed him.”
“Yes.”
“What do we do with him now?” Dad asked softly.
The professor didn’t answer for a moment, then looked up. “The closet in the upstairs hall has a strong lock on it.”
So, we wrestled Gant down the steep, narrow stairs and locked him in the empty closet. The lock didn’t seem to me any stronger than any of the others, but it worked and wasn’t loose. The door opened outward, but there wasn’t enough room for Gant to get much of a run at battering it down. If he tried, we would hear him. We propped a chair under the knob just in case and stood there looking at each other.
“Now what?” Poe finally said, plucking stray cobwebs from the hair on his chest.
“Everyone should go back to bed. There’s nothing more to be done,” the professor said.
Dad brushed dust from his robe. “How long do you plan to wait before you attempt to send your monster back where it came from?”
Weatherly glanced at me, then looked morosely at Dad. “I don’t know,” he sighed. “Tomorrow, in the daylight, after everyone’s rested… I don’t know.” He glanced at me again. “We must make sure everything is right. I doubt if we’ll have a second chance.” He looked at the floor then at Dad. “I’m terribly sorry all of you were involved in this, Mr. Henderson. Mr. McNeal. Terribly sorry.” He turned and walked slowly toward the stairs.
“Clare and Linda will be very curious about all this commotion,” Dad observed.
“Don’t tell Linda until the morning… about Jud,” Poe said in a strained voice. “She needs sleep.”
“Ann has already satisfied their curiosity,” I explained.
We moved Jud’s body downstairs to the dining room and covered it with a sheet. None of us could think of anything else to do. Then we went back to bed.
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep. I’m not at my most lucid when suddenly awakened. I found myself sitting in the middle of the bed wondering what woke me. Then I knew.
I ran into the hall, barefooted and in my underwear. The closet door was wide open. I never found out how Gant got it open without waking someone. I should have known his determination wouldn’t have been dampered by a simple locked door.
I burst into Ann’s room without slowing and skidded to a halt. Gant had his arm around her throat so she couldn’t cry out. They stood near the foot of the bed. Ann was fighting with him but he was too strong for her. He had gone back to the attic for the knife and held it at her breast. His face and hands looked like raw hamburger. He didn’t even look at me, though I imagine he could barely see. His good eye was almost swollen shut. But he was lost in some fantasy of his own, and I thought I could detect an expression of rapture on his swollen face. He wasn’t holding Ann as a shield or a hostage, but as a sacrifice.
I stood petrified in the middle of the room as he drew back the knife. My face contorted in rage and hate and I screamed a silent mental scream. I don’t know exactly what I did, and I’ve never tried to repeat it. I drew on something I hope never emerges again.
My mind raged at Gant, blasted him with primal hate. Synapses opened like floodgates. The knife froze in the air. My fingernails dug into my palms. My body trembled uncontrollably. Sweat popped out on my face. My eyes locked on his. The arm around Ann’s neck fell away. The knife slipped from his upraised hand. He took a step backward, staring at me uncomprehendingly with his red slit of an eye, his mouth slack. Ann stumbled away from him and got behind me.
I didn’t stop because Ann was free. The vision of the knife buried in her breast was too vivid. I could have rationalized it as the only way, but I wasn’t thinking at the time, only hating.
Gant backed against the wall, but his legs kept moving, trying to get him farther away. His head jerked back and forth, as if he wanted to loosen something clinging to his face. He put his red, puffy hands over his ears and breathed through his mouth. A low moan began deep in his throat. The moan grew slowly in volume and pitch until it was a shrill keening, ending only when his lungs were empty.
I hammered at the bright mirror surrounding him, beat at it, battered against it until it shattered, and I plunged through into his mind.
I thought I screamed, but Ann said later it was a whimper.
I threw up my shields and fought my way out, ripping and tearing, clawing my way free, slashing through the bright chaos and blinding disorder of Gant’s mind. As I broke free I felt his mind dim and go black.
I felt like jelly and slumped to my knees. I couldn’t get my breath. My arms hung limp and immovable. Gant was in a crumpled heap against the wall. Ann was beside me, kneeling beside me, her arms around me, feeling me.
A heartbeat began.
Oh, Ben.
Yes. My God! Do you know what I did?
I felt it. Part of it reflected off his shield.
Are you all right? Did he hurt you?
No. I was only frightened. You came.
We can do it now.
No. Not now. Later.
Yes.
The heartbeat continued.
They’re all still asleep.
Yes. I never thought it could be so…
I know. I know.
I keep forgetting. Ann…
I know. Don’t be sad.
We’ve lost something.
But we’ve gained more, so very much more.
The heartbeat ended.
I put my arm around her. She leaned her head against mine and we went to my room. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it, looking at her. She stepped toward me. I met her halfway. We kissed, melded in mind and body. We undressed and moved to the bed, touching and loving. It wasn’t only physical love, but I wasn’t reading her. It was no longer necessary.
I was me.
I was Ann.
We were us.
When the sun came up we got out of bed and dressed. I went to my parents’ room. Ann went to Poe’s and Linda’s. “Dad. Mom,” we said. “Poe. Linda,” we said. “Wake up. Get dressed and ready to leave. Pack everything and go out on the porch.”
“Ben?” Mom said.
“Ann?” Linda said.
“Everything’s okay,” we said. “We’re ready to help the professor get rid of his monster. Hurry.”
Ann and I met in the hall and went downstairs. Professor Weatherly was asleep on the couch, tired and gray, slipping into despair.
“Professor,” we said with my voice.
“What?” He sat up suddenly, confused. “Oh. Ben. Is it morning?”
“Yes.”
“We’re ready,” the Ann part of me said.
“What?” He stood up, rubbing his eyes.
He looked at us. “Something has happened.”
“Yes. Ann and I are telepathically linked. It’s permanent.”
“Describe it to me.”
“I’m not sure I can. I know everything Ben’s thinking; I remember; I feel everything he feels.”
“But there’s more than that,” I said. “I’m both of us and we’re one of us. We’re… well, essentially we’re one person in two bodies. Yet we still retain our separate egos. Perhaps a better explanation would be we’re two people cohabiting two bodies. I don’t know how it would be with two men, or two women, but with us, it’s… it’s love.”
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes. It would have to be, wouldn’t it? Total love or… total loathing. There could be no other way.”
“There’s no way to really know what it’s like without experiencing it,” Ann said. “People who know only physical love are missing so much.” We grinned. “Though, I guess there is something faintly masturbatory about it.”
“This is absolutely marvelous.” He beamed like a child on Christmas morning. “Will you allow me to study this further?”
We smiled at him. “Of course, Professor,” I said. “As soon as the others are ready to leave, we can contact your monster. Your mother will not leave. Mr. Gant is dead.”
“Dead?” He blinked.
“I killed him,” I said. I locked my muscles to stop the trembling I could feel about to begin. “I willed him dead and he died,” I said numbly.
Ann put her hand on my shoulder. “We’re ready,” she said. Vocalizing was slow and clumsy, but it was an old habit.
“Wait here,” I told him and went to the entry hall. They came down the stairs with their suitcases and uncertain expressions, Linda crying, but trying to stop. Poe had told her about Jud. I herded them unresisting onto the porch. Mom and Dad turned and looked at me, frightened. I smiled. “Don’t worry,” I said. Tannie peeked back at me, saucereyed and solemn. I winked at her. She grinned and went out. I closed the door and went back to the parlor.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Weatherly nodded.
“I hope what you find out justifies everything, Professor.” We concentrated. A brilliant flash. A sheet of energy swirled around us, held away by the professor, and died out. “Take it easy,” I said softly, “take it easy. It’s almost insane with fright.”
We touched that alien mind. Not entered, only touched.
We would have been lost if we had entered. Its alienness was indescribable. There was no point of reference to human thought. We stared in awe at its great, shining, immature mind. Its alienness made details, even large details, impossible to grasp; but basic emotions, which must be common to all intelligent life, were clear to read. It was aware of our minds, but did not fear them. It feared only what was alien to it: Weatherly’s physical assault.
A smile came involuntarily to our lips. “I’ll be damned,” I said aloud. “Do you know what we’ve got, Professor? It’s a baby… a baby, if that’s the right word. Its memory goes back millions, billions of years; so far it can’t remember its origin, but it knows it’s immature. The reason it’s never left this house is because it’s basically a frightened child. It only wants to go home. Send it back, Professor, while I try to keep it calm.”
Another flash and another swirl of energy. “It’s too frightened,” I said anxiously. “I’m having trouble. It wants to go home more than anything, but you’ll have to force it. It’s irrational with fear. It’s only been here a moment by its time-scale.”
Ann left to get the others to the cars, away from the house. I waited until they were at a safe distance.
“Now. Force it, Professor.”
Energy whirled around us like a tornado. The walls, the ceilings, the floors, the furniture, all were burning fiercely, except for the bubble in which we stood.
Weatherly opened a path through the inferno, a path from us to the door. “Go with the others, Ben,” he said. I started to protest, but he shut me up. “You can do just as much from outside as you can in here. And I can do more if I don’t have you to worry about.”
He was right. I had no protection from the thing’s physical energy, energy which I suspected was manifesting itself physically because it was here, not where it came from. I ran through the tunnel he opened and turned at the door. The tunnel closed and I couldn’t see him anymore.
I hurried down the hill to the others, still in contact with the professor’s monster. The just-risen sun gleamed on the still damp house, turning the weathered gray to copper, but flames poured from the parlor windows. Smoke billowed from other openings, the gray clouds also gilded by the sun. Flames suddenly spurted from under the eaves. The fire had gotten upstairs. Energy popped like lightning bolts.
All this I saw with my eyes and heard with my ears. What I saw and heard with my mind was different.
I caught a thought from the professor’s monster, but shut it out quickly, unable to bear it. The monster thrashed in the professor’s grip, frightened out of its mind, screaming pitifully.
I watched Professor Weatherly in the parlor but not with my eyes. He stood in a clear island surrounded by raging flames and energy. It began. The inferno cycloned away on one side of him and a tunnel opened, an endless, gleaming tunnel. He stood still, hunched in concentration.
I knew, suddenly, what was about to happen, but the professor was caught completely by surprise. There was nothing I could do to help him. I slammed shields around Ann. She jerked out of her trance and looked wildly about. She screamed at me, “No! Ben! Don’t block me out!”
More energy popped. Everyone’s clothing clung to their skin. I could feel my hair standing up, charged with static electricity. Helplessly I watched the professor force his monster into the tunnel.
He hadn’t moved. He stood before the tunnel, surrounded by an inferno, hunched in concentration. Then, gradually, slowly, his body smudged outward, toward the tunnel. He felt it. He looked up. He strained away from the tunnel, held out his arms, warding it away. The distortion, the stretching outward continued. His arms were caught in it, extending to half again their former length, blurring toward the tunnel.
Then a particle of his little finger broke away and streamed down the tunnel like a shooting star. More particles broke free. The tunnel was filled with shooting stars, streaking to infinity.
I threw up my shield. Weatherly’s terror was too great. But, in that last split second, I saw a comet roar away down the tunnel, and he was gone. The tunnel was closing.
I was aware of physical sensations only. I stood swaying, trying to keep from toppling over. Ann threw her arms around me. Dad put his hand on the back of my neck, not saying anything. I dropped the shields. Ann and I were one again.
“He did it,” I said on an exhaustion high. “It’s gone home. He sent it back. But it dragged him back with it. I was with him for a moment.”
The energy was gone but the fire wasn’t. The old wood of the house burned ferociously. Dad propelled us away, to the bottom of the hill, where the others waited numbly. We stood for a long time, saying nothing, watching the house burn.
Tannie had come to me and stood watching the house with her arm clutching my thigh. I had my arm on her shoulder. “What about you, Ann?” Dad asked.
“With me,” I said.
“Yes,” she smiled.
Tannie peeked around me, staring at Ann. Ann smiled at her and winked the same way I would. Tannie grinned like a supernova. She launched herself at Ann and hugged her.
The sheriff’s car pulled up as we were about to leave. He was a nice person named Robin Walker. We told him a simplified version of what happened, a version he would believe. Ann and I made sure he believed it.
Dad backed the station wagon out of the ditch. I got in the yellow VW with Ann, and we went on to Wichita.
Waiting for Billy Star
Out here the wind is almost always blowing of
f the caprock. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter, whipping sheets of sand like torn veils across the black asphalt of the highway. People out here don’t have much time for the gentle things; the sun is too hot and the land is too dry and stingy. But they all remember Susanne Delacourt, even after ten years.
The record is still on the jukebox. I don’t know why I left it there, but I wouldn’t take it off now. It’s just a recording of a hokey old song that was popular back then called “The Tennessee Waltz.” Occasionally someone will play it; then a quiet will settle over the place, weather-worn faces will soften, ranchers and oilfield workers will gaze into their beer lost in remembering. Even the travelers who never heard of Susanne Delacourt will sense something and fall silent.
When the record is over, they’ll look at each other and smile, sharing a sweet memory. Then a waitress will rattle some dishes and the talk will start and the moment is gone.
I’m no different from the rest of them—the ones who knew Susanne Delacourt. The wind was blowing that evening too, a cold norther coming off the caprock, working itself into a full-scale sandstorm. The sun wasn’t quite down; an orange blur in the, dust haze to the west, but the cars going through town already had their headlights on. The cars barreling down the flatland highway slowed reluctantly when they came to Caprock, Texas. It wasn’t large enough to be much more than a hindrance to those hurrying on to Snyder or Lamesa.
The jukebox finished a record and, in the momentary quiet before the next one began, I could hear the sand flicking softly against the window. Harley Boone put his ticket and quarter beside the cash register and slapped the toothpick dispenser. I rang up the dime for the cup of coffee he’d been nursing for half an hour talking to the other loafers and gave him his change.
Harley stuck the toothpick in his mouth. “You wanta change jobs with me tonight, Wade?”