Necessary Monsters

by Richard A. Kirk

  He toppled more boxes out of the way to widen the opening. Walking back into the office, he felt for the gun in his coat pocket and ran his finger over the safety. More worrisome was the jagged awl. This he threw to the other side of the bridge. He considered his aching calf and tried not to imagine his legs breaking through the boards.

  Ignoring the rustling bats, he took a deep breath and sprinted. When he reached the bridge, the boards sagged beneath his feet. He jumped, causing the bats to panic. They raced around him, making for the hole in the floor. Moss twisted midair and landed awkwardly. Flying forward, he drove his palms into the floorboards. He lay winded as bats darted chaotically above him. Eventually they escaped, or settled. He sat up to assess the damage. His palms bled from a dozen nicks and punctures. A scrape ran the length of his left forearm. Beneath its dressing, his calf felt wet. He had lost another button from his coat. He could not help being pleased with himself as he stood and shook the guano from his clothes and hair. He picked up the awl. The bakery was open to him.

  The upper floors were deserted. He descended warily to the lower level, pausing periodically to listen for movement. He had been searching rooms for ten minutes when a rhythmic thump led him to Andrew in a long corridor. The boy kneeled, feet splayed to the side, his concentration fixed on a rubber ball. It bounced off the floor, struck the opposite wall and arced neatly to his waiting hands.

  "Andrew," said Moss in a low voice. The boy looked up, acknowledging Moss with wide eyes. He stood up and walked in the opposite direction. At the end of the hall, he looked over his shoulder before disappearing around the corner.

  "Andrew, wait," Moss said. Dead air absorbed the words. He reached the spot where Andrew had been playing. A trail of footsteps led through the dust and the ball rolled along the intersection of floor and wall. He pulled the gun from his pocket, clumsy with adrenaline. Lamb had to be nearby. He released the safety.

  Rounding the corner, he saw a swinging door and heard the boy's receding footsteps. He flattened himself against the wall. It would be foolish to blunder forward. Was Andrew leading him to Lamb, or into a trap? His breathing slowed. He was decided. He would place his trust in the boy.

  Moss pushed through the swinging door, leading with the barrel of the gun. He assumed the space beyond would be a continuation of the corridor. Instead, he found a lit, open area filled with worktables and blackened oven racks. It was larger than the kitchen he had been in during his previous visit. The walls opened into extensive galleries filled with vats and stacked equipment. Flour dusted every surface. Andrew's footprints led between towers of pans and trays, enormous mixers and paddles. Moss scanned for clues that would reveal his hiding spot. When the time came to shoot, he wanted to know Andrew's precise location.

  Moss sensed something large falling from overhead. It struck the table inches from where his hand rested. Flour filled the air. Two more strikes came in rapid succession. Moss looked up to see Croaker in the process of pushing a fourth sack of flour over the rail of a mezzanine. Andrew ran from under a nearby table coughing. Moss swept the gun overhead without aiming, squeezing off two shots before a sack hit him in the shoulder. It knocked him off his feet. His shoulder was seared with pain, but it was not broken or dislocated. The sound of the shots still rang in his ears. He looked up, as he tried to scuttle under the lip of a table, but there was no fifth bag to come. Moss found his footing in a blanket of flour and waved the gun in all directions. Had he killed Croaker? He had no time to investigate. Lamb had appeared in front of him, standing between two long tables. The fox pendant was entwined around the stumps of his fingers. Elizabeth was draped across his arms, unconscious. Her head lolled against his chest. Lamb was otherwise alone.

  "What have you brought with you, bastard?" shouted Lamb. Confused, Moss aimed the gun at his adversary's grotesque bared head. Lamb walked toward him, sniffing the air, heedless of the danger. He dropped Elizabeth to the ground, as though she had suddenly become of secondary importance. Moss hesitated on the trigger. Lamb seized the advantage. With uncanny accuracy, he leapt, striking Moss high in the chest with a knee. Both men were carried over. Moss worked to free the gun that had become tangled in the other man's clothing. The twisted material forced his fingers around the barrel until he thought the bones in his hands would snap. In desperation, he pulled the trigger as Lamb rained blows on his head. The man bellowed and disengaged from Moss. He lurched in a tight circle clutching at his stomach, his mouth agape and his tiny blind eyes rolling in agony.

  With strength he did not know he possessed, Moss brought a boot up under Lamb's jaw. The other man staggered backwards and fell to the ground. Crazed with rage, Moss straddled Lamb and forced the barrel of the revolver between Lamb's jaws. Strands of blood smeared his teeth and ran down his chin. Even as Moss slammed the back of Lamb's head against the ground he felt detached, euphoric; free. It was no longer about the personal threat; it was for Memoria, Imogene, even Oliver. It was for everyone whose life Lamb had destroyed. Moss closed his eyes. Holding the gun with one hand, and covering Lamb's face with his forearm, he pulled the trigger.

  A familiar roar filled the air. Moss stood. Dazed and deafened, he stumbled backward and felt his way around tables. Echo's form materialized out of the haze of flour dust. So this was the source of Lamb's panic. Moss emptied the remainder of the cylinder into the creature's massive head, with no discernible effect. Echo's lumbering raised even more dust until its form was reduced to a swaying shadow. Moss hurled the empty gun at the creature, and tripped backward through the swinging door. As he struck the floor, he saw the creature open its cowl and send a fountain of sparks into the dispersed particles in the air. The flour exploded. The blast wave blew the door back and rolled Moss across the floor. Still conscious, he crawled on his hands and knees until he reached another door that opened into a storage room. He stood up in the dark among the brooms and mop handles, and peered through the door's tiny window. A heartbeat later, the creature passed, carrying Elizabeth's squirming body in its arms. She was now awake. She swiveled her head and caught Moss's eyes through the glass. He jumped back, nearly losing his balance, but his gaze never left the monster's retreating back.

  Echo's body had suffered from the explosion. Fibrous clumps hung from tendrils of a dried, vine-like material down the creature's left side. It moved along the hall, listing to the right while the body knit itself back together. String, small machine parts, bones, what appeared to be masses of smoldering animal nests, and even yellowed pages of an old book, twisted and folded into an emulation of muscle and sinew. The resulting forms burrowed into Echo like animals anxious to escape the light, releasing a miasma that made Moss dry heave behind the door. The release he had felt when venting his anger on Lamb was gone, replaced by an unexpected empathy for the man as a human being. He gripped the door handle, smearing it with Lamb's blood, but through some magic perpetrated by the monster in the corridor, he was unable to turn it so much as a degree. Cold sweat ran down the furrow of his back and something swept across his cheek causing the hair on his body to stand on end. Something was probing his ear canals, his nostrils and mouth. An invisible presence shared the tiny room with him, grotesque, intimate and terrifying. Moss looked down and found the fox pendant clutched in his other hand. He shoved it in his coat pocket with the ocellus Irridis had given him, not bothering to wipe away Lamb's blood. The presence abandoned Moss in the dark among the spiders and fusty rags. He pulled out the awl and smashed at the door handle until it fell to the floor leaving a circular hole.

  Echo and Elizabeth were gone. Outside the custodial closet the floor was littered with debris and a fine layer of flour. Moss realized that he was also covered. He shook it from his hair and clothing and made his way back to where he expected to find Lamb's body. The explosion had spent itself almost immediately, but it had still devastated the bakery's workroom. Tables were knocked on their sides. Bowls and pans littered the floor. The stone was blackened from smoke that remained in the air
. Lamb's body lay on the ground horribly contorted. Thankfully, he saw no sign of Andrew. Moss had no desire to check the mezzanine to see the results of his indiscriminate shooting. Standing amid the aftermath, he could only shake his head in disbelief.

  The street was empty. He left the bakery by the same door he had passed through with Oliver not so long ago. It was difficult to reconcile the utter chaos inside the bakery with the lack of police or even members of the Red Lamprey outside. Watchful, he began the long walk back to the Cloth Hall, favoring his injured leg. The effects of the explosion were still with him. He was lightheaded and half deaf. The road seemed to swell and roll beneath his feet, but his footsteps were deliberate and he managed to pass several doorways without stumbling. He worked through the facts. They were simple enough to relate, but how did one explain a living thing not made of flesh? Lamb's words, what have you brought with you? haunted him. The image of Echo's reconstituting form looped in his head.

  The sky opened, sending down a cold rain that darkened the bricks and completed his misery. Entranced by the rivulets moving between the cobbles, he did not notice the girl until he was mere feet away from her. She stood on the hump in the road. The red velvet dress, now soaked through, was the color of dark venous blood. She seemed oblivious of the sheeting rain. Though to appearances a girl of nine or perhaps ten years of age, her wry expression was mature and superior. Her skin was pallid. Strands of black hair moved across her face, animated by the downpour. Her lips were blue.

  "What do you want?" asked Moss, stopping.

  "So direct." She twisted a strand of hair around a finger, in an eerie gesture reminiscent of Imogene in the tunnel. The pupils of her eyes were like keyholes.

  "What do you want?" He wiped rain from his face with his sleeve. "What the hell do you want with me?"

  "I'm here to give you the only warning you will ever get from me, Lumsden Moss. You no longer have a part to play. Memoria is long gone, and Irridis soon will be. I have no ill will towards you, however if you persist you will suffer for it."

  Moss snorted. "Part to play in what?"

  "Retribution." A stream of soft clicks came from her throat.

  Moss spat. "You're talking in riddles."

  "Irridis is searching for meaning, but he will find only torment. He will look for the truth about himself, but I'll be waiting for him, to finish what should have been done long ago."

  "Fuck you," said Moss. His voice was almost swallowed by the roar of the rain.

  Elizabeth laughed. "What a curiosity you are! And who are you to speak up for him, a friend of five minutes, a fugitive? The differences between you are not superficial, Lumsden. Your friendship isn't sufficient to hold his attention. He cannot form relationships. He cannot love you." She tilted her head, mockingly. "Are you angry? Cheer up! He is lost to you. It would have happened sooner or later anyway." The girl shook her head as though stating what should have been obvious. "Life is a string of dark beads. We spend our lives adding to them, one by one, stringing them together, our little beads of torment. Then one day the string dissolves and they all roll back to the shadows. That's when you realize how futile it all was."

  He became aware of the dog sitting in a doorway observing the discussion. The girl clucked her tongue without taking her eyes off Moss. The dog ambled into the rain toward her. Moss fervently wished he still had the gun. She opened her small fist and a firefly crawled over her knuckles and took to the air, flashing before it vanished.

  "Remember what I said, one warning. Let them go."

  "Never," he said.

  The girl laughed and climbed onto the dog as though it were a pony. She turned the animal away from Moss and trotted through the fog that had begun to drift into the street, from over the rooftops and out of the mouths of alleyways.

  "Never," shouted Moss hoarsely at the disappearing monstrosity. "Never! Fuck you."

  RHINO BUILDING

  The rain had a ferocious intensity. A pair of headlights exposed Moss in the middle of a single-lane bridge. There was no escape. It was a drop of thirty feet to the railway below. He shrank against a metal truss. An antiquated military cargo truck braked, sending vibrations through the bridge deck. Moss coughed in a cloud of diesel exhaust. He edged along the truss to the cab and read Museum of Natural History in letters stenciled over a painted-out military insignia. The passenger door swung open, almost hitting him in the head.

  "You getting in, or not?" Imogene shouted. She leaned across the seat, using the steering column for support. Moss climbed onto the running board and pulled himself into the truck. He slammed the door and dropped into the seat. The cushion was hard and split down the middle but it felt good to sit after an hour of walking. A heater blasted hot air and diesel aromatics. His soaking clothes lay over him like a lead blanket.

  "What are you doing here?" Moss shouted over the engine.

  "I took a chance you'd be coming back this way. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't. We have to leave the city. We can't stay here now." The truck started rolling.

  "Where's Irridis?"

  "Gone," said Imogene.

  "Gone? Where?"

  "No idea. He didn't tell me that. He just told me to tell you that he couldn't wait. Your things are in the back. A cab company delivered the trunk after you left. Irridis had arranged it beforehand. There are some clothes. The traveling bookcase is back there too, along with your bag and the bird book." Imogene gestured behind her without taking her eyes from the road. There was a tarp-covered opening leading into the cargo area. Moss nodded but stayed seated. Imogene glanced at him. "I went down to the market to look around. There were Red Lamprey guys hanging around. Irridis was gone by the time I got back to the attic. I gathered up some things and cleared out. Then I mailed a letter to the museum and told them I was finished, and that I was heading south to visit family. By the time they figure out that it's bullshit, and that I stole this truck, we'll be long gone in the opposite direction."

  "You seem quite restored," said Moss.

  "Don't sound so disappointed."

  Moss watched the road. The state of mind that had led him to murder Lamb had not returned. The image of his arm over Lamb's eyes was burned into his mind. He replayed the sensation of his finger's pressure on the trigger; the sudden collapse of Lamb's skull beneath his palm; Oliver in the aquarium, floating like a deformity in formaldehyde. His anger exploded. He punched the dashboard, swore, and elbowed the side window while Imogene withdrew against her door. She stopped the truck. He pulled his arms to his sides with his fists clenched, white-knuckled, and screamed a profanity at the windshield. He felt her hand on his arm, but he could not look at her. Instead, he turned toward the passenger side window and stared into the darkness.

  Imogene pushed the clutch pedal down and moved the transfer case shift lever forward. She released the hand brake lever and the truck moved forward. For several minutes they traveled in the direction he had just come from and then swerved north. Moss was numb. His forehead bumped against the glass. Imogene divided her attention between the gearshift lever and the wheel, casting periodic glances at the oil pressure gauge on the instrument panel. After several miles they turned left onto a wider road and headed inland. The built-up city core gave way to mansions on tree-covered estates where woodlots grew to the edge of the road. Moss fell into a dreamless sleep.

  A sudden loud noise woke him. He rubbed his hands over his beard and eyes. His clothing was dry and stiff over the front of his legs and torso, but still damp against the seat. Although his lower back and calf throbbed, he felt somewhat rested. Patches of light sky appeared through breaks in the cloud. He looked at Imogene. She stared straight ahead, biting her bottom lip as she avoided the worst potholes. Her hair was a tangled mess, and there were smudges under her eyes. She leaned across the steering wheel and swerved around the hump of a dead animal.

  "Where are you going?" he asked. His voice sounded unrecognizable to his own ears.

  "Somewhere where
we can catch our breath. Sort of." There was peevishness in her tone, so he did not pursue his question. "I thought we were being followed for a while, a black car."

  Moss looked in the large side mirror, but could not see a thing.

  "They're gone, if they were ever really following us. It might have been a coincidence," said Imogene.

  He gripped an overhead strap as the truck heaved on its suspension. They pulled into a neglected gravel drive. Imogene eased the truck to a stop in front of a tall iron gate.

  "This damn truck is killing me." Imogene stretched with her hands in the small of her back.

  "Let me drive," said Moss.

  "We're here."

  "Where's here?"

  "The City Zoo. This is their back door. Nobody uses this access road." She leaned forward without further explanation and fished in the pocket of her leather jacket, producing a ring of keys. She sorted through them. "This one."

  Moss took the ring by the key she had separated out. The open door of the truck cab let in a pungent odor of wet hay and manure. He jumped out of the truck and unlocked the gate. Imogene nosed the vehicle through and Moss jumped back in. Ten minutes later, she slowed the truck to a crawl, skillfully guiding it down a rutted road to an area at the back of a building. She stopped the truck on the dry side of a partially flooded yard.

  "Tell me what happened," said Imogene. "I want to hear all of it."

  "I'll be right back," she said. Leaving the engine running, she climbed down and ran through the rain. Moss watched her enter the building. She had remained mostly silent as he recounted Lamb's death, the explosion and Echo leaving with Elizabeth. He told her about the ocellus Irridis had given to him to protect. At the end, she folded her arms and made him describe Echo in every detail. If she felt one way or the other at the news of Lamb's demise she concealed it well. Two large doors opened from within and Imogene emerged. He allowed himself a smile when she bowed. Mission accomplished. Back behind the wheel, she steered the truck through the opening. The engine rumbled like a locomotive in the large bay before she killed the engine.