by Eric Ellert
"No, should I?"
"You screamed."
They held hands, but she couldn't remember. She couldn't tell if his hands were cold or hers, but blood couldn't flow at that temperature, not human blood.
She held the phone out as it beeped again, making the lock click open and shut fast. "Why did it do that? Redial?"
Before Rau could answer, Faudron figured it out; family plan. "We got the same phones in the house, me, dad, mom, Moren. He was here?"
"Not lately."
"That's makes me feel no better. Say something nice."
"Screams. Did you know they put up with certain things?"
"They?" Faudron started to cry. "Don't tell me any more. Promise me when the two days are up, you get Moren out of here."
"I promise."
But if he was from ...there? How would she know if he was lying, though he did seem surprised about the capsule? Faudron crossed the room, leaned her weight against the door and opened it. Beyond, the next room was empty but for a square pool of yellow-colored water in the center that was lit from within. She took a few steps closer but couldn't see the light source. It seemed to come out of the water itself. "That for dipping big bird's Easter eggs?"
"I didn't believe in Mr. Snufelopugos, either."
"You do watch other things on tv...other than me"
He spun, scanning the room then looked at the door. "I hear something. Where's blue?" he asked as if Faudron wasn't present.
Padded-feet walked on the stones outside; paws scratched at the door and wolves howled. People liked wolves. They were cute when they howled at the moon on tv, but the hunting howl was different. The sound made Faudron hold a quick breath and wish for a place to duck. "You don't seem worried."
"Good, solid door," Rau said.
Faudron heard the footsteps of a two-legged creature; the wolf howls turned into language and the keypad outside the door beeped.
Faudron tiptoed to the door and peered through the peephole. Before her, stood six werewolves, tall and lean, their long, snouty faces as expressive as a person's. They dressed themselves in suits and ties they pulled from a saddlebag on the ground, seeming very vain, though the suits were so old-fashioned looking they must have come from the dead and these things were monsters inside as well. She pictured them haunting one of those forgotten settler cemeteries you pass on a lonely twist of highway. The must have dug and stolen, no one noticing, nor caring, the wind, rain, seasons and plants hiding the evidence.
The Werewolf at the peephole came closer. "Rau," it whispered, with drool dripping from its jaws like a dog on a hot day. "Why do you torment us?"
Each time it slapped a paw against the door, the door shook as if made of paint over rust.
Beep-3, beep-7, beep-7. The thing beyond the door tapped the keypad.
Rau pulled Faudron from the door and they ran into the other room. "What's it made of; what's it made of?" he shouted as much to himself as to Faudron as he ran his fingers along her spacesuit's seems.
"Not enough of much," Faudron said, picturing the long, sharp claws at the end of the wolf's hands.
Rau panicked for a second, panting, but when the fifth digit beeped and the door flew open, he pulled Faudron into the liquid and they sank.
Faudron looked up for a second then tumbled but the bubble at the top of her neck righted her, the collar digging into her shoulders, the fabric leaking at the seems. Through her soapy visor, she saw the smart, pained expression on the face of the wolf that had followed her, then it burst into flames.
She fell for twenty feet through a rectangular, concrete-chambered ocean. As the pressure built and her air felt stale, Faudron's feet fell into emptiness. The water disappeared and she hit solid ground. Her upper body fell out of the water and she landed on her back, Rau on top of her, shielding her chest, the water on the ceiling held aloft by perhaps magic.
She looked up and touched the hanging water. Above her, the burning wolf sank, until its carcass fell next to them.
It looked over. Its fur had melted away, revealing a gray-haired Nord. It turned as if to claw them, cursed, melted like putty, dried out and crumbled, leaving an outline of a man made of dust.
Faudron fell down, kicked back like a crab, pulling Rau with her until she got to the far wall and struggled to pull her helmet off, then struggled to breathe, the air saturated with the dope they used on old, electric wiring.
Even with her perfect, blue glove, meant to keep out the very stars, Faudron couldn't bear to touch the wolf's shadow, for that's what it must be, but she reached out and touched it anyway. "Rau is this what's going to happen to me?"
"I'm so sorry." He pulled off a glove, caressed her face and helped her up, showing her his watch with the blank, green, liquid face that flashed strange lettering on and off like a beacon every three or four seconds. "What day is it?"
"9/18."
He grimaced but smiled to show a good front. "It can't be the triple moon. At home our moons and yours align three times a year and then they are werewolves one and all from daylight to daylight."
"Well, darling, we're all right."
He nodded at the word darling. "They lied to me. We've only one day to settle this, and get out."
"If they lied to you."
"They want to drown the town and us in it."
Faudron gripped his shoulder harder than she'd ever held on to anything before. "Me...that's not going to happen to me? If it does, make it quick before I hurt someone. Before I say the things they say, or think the things they must think, or run into the night and dig as they do. Do you know where they must dig and scatter about what they dig?"
"No."
She was sure it would happen to her, sure that Rau would have to slay her, sure her mind would become like their's even if she could escape. "You promise."
Rau picked up a stone from the floor. "We're in the silver mine. It would have effected you already. I hate to do this to you."
"People always say that when they're going to do something rotten to you, anyway."
Rau paused as if to let her vent.
"And don't patronize me," Faudron said.
"I want to explore. You can stay here."
"Could that thing put itself back together?"
"No, that's vampires and there's no such thing. Didn't I tell you?"
"I'm supposed to believe that now?" Faudron asked.
"Come on."
***
They left their helmets and tiptoed to the black tunnels, Rau's penlight the only light in this nether-world.
Faudron touched the smooth walls that were too surely cut to have been nothing but an old silver mine. They looked as if they'd been drilled-out by one of those earth diggers. "This NASA?"
"Not hardly."
"Why they bring me to this place?"
"When your parents were little, they did things to them. Your grandparents wanted them to become Astronauts." Rau said the word Astronaut with such a mixture of awe and condescension, the way someone might say those men on Clipper Ships, bragging of their silly, antique speed, yet liking their daring do.
"Bad things? The screams?"
He stopped, stretched and looked almost like a sergeant about to say take five, smoke 'em if you got 'em then his expression became sad. "Please forgive me for my part. Your government had people working on a portion of the Manhattan project here. They built a little bity city in the valley. When the war was over, well it wasn't over because our ships were snooping about and that radar dish outside downed one of them, accidentally, I think but they each had something the other needed. Your people wanted to go to space but your bodies couldn't handle the zero gravity and we wanted to stay here, but the air isn't good for us over time. So they played doctor on each other."
"That sounds kind of dirty."
He laughed bitterly. "It was and I was the last."
"Rau?" But she couldn't get a word out of him as he walked away from her. She tried movies. It's all he seemed to like. "Hey,
Rau. Fix. Arnold's second movie, The Long Good Night. Elliot Gould starred. He ran into the guy who played Bennie in the supermarket, then in Arnold's Mar's movie, Arnold killed Bennie in a tunnel like this with a big drill."
He ran back to her, his face all twisted up as if he wanted to shout, but he whispered, "I didn't see those movies. The movies I make are real."
"You don't make sense. Why don't you ever make sense?"
Chapter 15
There really wasn't so much to do and Moren had done it before -- no metal-toed boots; don't unplug anything; call in a problem or if you were adventurous, like mom, go down and fix it. Moren had changed, borrowing some of Faudron's clothes; they hadn't all been in the basement. She wore an old pair of Khakis rolled-up at the cuffs and tied off with a boot blouse for the eels, which didn't make sense, being saltwater, disgusting creatures, that crawled up your leg if you didn't wear a boot blouse in the ocean.
She tapped the bridge computer's touch screen, chose last week's coordinates and sat back for the ride, a high tech babysitter until something went wrong and it had, for mom, but as the land disappeared and the world became fog, she kept hearing a rat-tat sound that stopped each time she cut the engine, and there it was again. Forget it. The square bridge sat at the rear of the barge. The swimming-submersible sat on the front beneath a crane and tether that dropped into the water.
Moren had been so afraid to watch the security footage, she almost forgot why she was here, but it could wait just a moment. "OK, Nautilus, get mom a tree." She felt so happy for a moment; it had been such a good summer on the reservoir with her mother.
She pulled up a screen showing an outline of a W.W.II sub, standing in for her boxy Nautilus and a picture of a tree. She tapped the picture of the tree and the screen showed a fish tank cut-away view of the depth of the lake and the forest they'd left standing there when they'd flooded the valley to make the reservoir.
After a few more commands, the Naut sank quickly and Moren watched its camera pan across the bottom. It stopped its thrusters as if thinking, floating over a forest of hardwoods, free to hunt. The town was glad to be rid of the trees, because breakaway logs threatened the damn and dynamo at the far end of the reservoir.
And all the buildings down there, preserved like Pompeii. Moren thought it much more interesting than the trees, though her mom hadn't paid the town any attention at all.
The Naut dove deeper, its rotator arm more like a big pair of pliers than an arm. It reached out and grabbed a tree. A drill on the arm popped out and stuck a spike into the tree; the spike was tethered to a Kevlar balloon in a bin on the front of the Naut. The balloon inflated and when the arm's wrenched-teeth bit the tree trunk free, it floated to the surface. Something about the years underwater had weakened the breakaway branches and the tree would broke the surface clean as a log. It would drift down to the dam on the gentle current where the lumber company guys, after she called them, would hall them onto a flat bed truck and pay her, she hoped, more money than she could count. She shook her head, imagining the smell of new wrapped bills. "Growin' up money."
***
When the twentieth tree floated to the surface, Moren said, "We are in the red...I mean the black. " And she was talking to a computer. She looked around, half-expecting someone out there to laugh but there was nothing in the world but fog that smelled of swamp.
Time to look at mom. She brought up the security-cam footage, closed her eyes a moment and pressed the onscreen play cue.
It showed a view of the bridge, Mom going about her business, then, after an hour, by the time print on the bottom of the screen, mom dropped anchor, put her scuba gear on and dove into the water.
Moren stared at the reservoir as if the stark tape was playing in real time. Mom hadn't let her dive because sometimes the trees popped up unexpectedly or sometimes a balloon slipped and they sank. Dad had no idea how dangerous this job could be, especially alone.
"Don't," she whispered.
It took a moment to switch to the underwater footage, and Moren had to remind herself that it wasn't happening in real time, but something in the water beneath the camera glowed and mom went deeper and pounded on the hatch of an egg-shaped, silvery, flying saucer, sticking out of the sheer, rocky side of the reservoir. Some Roswell kind of thing. It came as no surprise, dad had spoken of such things that flew in the air of his sky, as he liked to call it. But this was here, here with mom just a few weeks ago and she hadn't said anything. No, Moren thought as she double-checked the date on the screen and counted backwards. Mom hadn't come back. She was supposed to have left in a car service that day.
Moren hated this place more than ever, sure that there had been a really old Deliverance town down there, a school, a church, a graveyard, and no one had thought to carry them away, the dead having impermanent friends. And this silver thing they tried to hide had seeped out of the mountainside, like the soggy dead.
Mom managed to get the hatch open and shined her flashlight inside. Then the Naut must have moved, because Moren lost sight of her. A moment later, the camera found mom again. The NAUT's arm reached out, grabbed the air tank and pulled her mother deep among the trees, then the screen went blank.
"Don't dive alone," Moren whispered, mimicking her mother's constant chant.
She heard the hollow tap-tap on the hull again.
"Stop. Stop." Moren searched for the extra tank she knew wasn't there and dove into the water. She found mom's air tank floating against the corrugated-hull. She pulled at it and got it to the surface, floating on it with no purchase because the straps had been cut.
She pulled herself aboard the expensive barge. That awful, near-constant rain had started again and though her hands were wet, she brought up the sec-cam again and on screen. In the footage, Mrs. C and the mayor stood on the bridge with guns drawn, fooling with the controls, waiting for mom to surface.
It happened so fast. She was coming to the surface and the crane was grabbing her, squeezing the oxygen tank, picking her out of the water and pressing her down, then the film cut off.
Moren smacked the computer. "Come on, come on." She looked around but there was only fog, a town made of cogs, filled with liars like Mrs. C, tattooed with fog and they could do this and say, 'Good morning, Moren, you're late for class. Your mother's dead because we know she's dead. We killed her.''
The underwater cam came on. Her mother, swam down to the egg-shaped craft, entered it and closed the hatch. For a horrible moment, she sucked her own air bubbles by the window, gulping like a fish. You couldn't do that for long before the stupid kicked in an you did things like swim down, thinking it was up, until it was too late.
"Get out of there," Moren said.
The craft glowed and the water inside drained down to the level of mom's neck and she breathed. And Moren breathed.
The Naut moved towards her, its cutting drill extending and scratching against the glowing saucer's hull, sending sparks and smoke out, but before it reached her, the front hatch opened and she was pulled off into a bright light and the ship went dark.
The Naut's long arm gripped the edge of the craft and squeezed, then, as if realizing it couldn't crush it, the Naut shot to the surface and the computer screen flashed the words Sec-Def-Tape-Erased: Contact Manufacturer.
Moren let out a long breath. Mom was down there safe, far in the dark or the light, but somewhere with people. She grabbed the oxygen tank, thinking to dive down and join her, but the hose assembly had been torn off.
She held it in the air, not remembering how heavy it was and dropped it on her toe. She let out a yell that echoed forever and the tape came on showing Mrs. C. and the Mayor on deck like Ivan and Natasha in a Bullwinkle cartoon. She looked around, but with this fog, if she stayed quiet, no one could ever find her.
Maybe someone on the island would know? She'd been told not to go but not why. You didn't lose a flying saucer, could you, no matter who you were? Someone must be there and know.
There on the island of t
wo tailed mice, Moren thought. Who could resist? She hit the ignition switch and didn't bother with coordinates; it did no good with the clouds, so she manually gunned the throttle and set the tiller east. She ought to go home and warn Faudron but the werewolves were afraid of Rau. Faudron would be safe. Moren had time and she wanted to think. She though of the security tape and the Mrs. C with the tattooed-neck, gun in hand, tapping at the computer screen. Moren imagined the scene over and over again in her mind until her mind hurt and she opened her eyes. -- Mrs. C can see, everywhere, everything from that room at school. No, not through the clouds, maybe. Her camera must be on top of the cell-phone tower, maybe up along the road lights.
She'd wait in the fog until she saw lights in her house and she could call out to Rau. He'd know what to do. Faudron was lost in this place. She wasn't grown up enough; she just had a cash card and a driver's license and her own car, the one dad had bought for her and she'd wrecked. Dad did like her best; she didn't talk back.
Moren knew it would hurt but she couldn't help watching the footage over and over again and didn't notice she'd been traveling in a wide circle. She pulled up the steering screen but the computer decided it didn't like being wet. She'd leave the computer alone for five minutes, but when she pressed the ignition off switch, nothing happened and the outboards kept chugging along closer to the dark shore.
She hurried to the stern and tried to turn the choke valve on the fuel line but she needed a wrench to turn it and by the time she found one in the toolbox on the bridge she ran aground and fell on the deck.
The quiet, the fog, the strange salt water smell, made her reach for one of the shark sticks in the tool box. Why mom carried them for freshwater diving, Moren could never figure out until today. It must have been for the neighbors.
Something told her nothing lived here; nothing ever did; nothing ever could, then a wolf howled, the sound so speech-like, she could almost understand what it meant and she knew that nothing good lived here at all, or ever had, or ever could.