by Eric Ellert
She wanted to howl but they must not know she was here, man or beast. She felt like her self and could think clearly but wanted other things, things that are found in the night, things no human admits they want, the chase the hunt, the kill, the fresh meat torn off the carcass, eaten without fire.
When she got downstairs, she heard the mouse and opened the top of the tank. She so wanted to pick it up by one of its tails, dangle it over her mouth and swallow it whole and knew the urge would grow but she couldn't. Faudron would never forgive her. It would be bad silver, even the words sounded just right in describing herself.
She found a pair of gloves in the kitchen drawer, went back upstairs and retrieved the silver loving cup from under her bed. She crossed the hall into her parents' bedroom, forced open the window, stood on the ledge and leapt across the lawn, landing on the Mrs. Rochambeau's roof. She of all people would surely understand. She of all people could destroy her before she destroyed.
The front door opened. Moren climbed down and stood on the front step.
Chapter 24
It took an hour to open the bathyscaph and twenty minutes to figure out how to move the water. "Stop farting, you miserable, blue fish," Faudron said. "And stop puking up that stuff, that floam. I'm not making my own perfume, thank you. Thank you."
She took off her windbreaker and slipped it around the whale. It let her. "You must have seen Jacques Cousteau. Animals always try to be nice on tv. Then when the camera's off you go back to eating each other...live."
She heard something garbled, and realized if she kept talking, the thing couldn't look into her mind or talk to her in that fashion. "OK, just like on tv, one-two-three. Viva la France. I miss France, don't you? And Paris before it got all melted?"
Faudron lifted the whale out of the sphere and carefully brought it downstairs. It felt so squishy, and looked amphibious. Faudron kept her balance, though it was harder than it had seemed when she'd made up her plan, and the whale heavier than it looked.
When she got to the sloping edge of Rau's lawn, the Astroturf gave out on her. She slipped and slid toward the dock and when she fell, she held both arms out and landed on her chest, dropping the whale into the water. "Please tell me I didn't kill it." She had a picture in her mind of old Mr. Spock looking over her shoulder with that insufferable I told you so look on his mug, and new Mr. Spock crying, sissy-mary. Vulcans thought who they were.
She swished the frosty water but couldn't see the whale. "Hey." She almost jumped in after it, afraid it might be Rau's childhood pet or something, but bubbles reached the surface –plop, plop. She followed them around the dock to the far end. "Why'd they stop?"
"Hey, whale." She kicked at the water and whale rose, now two feet long and rolled a big eye at her. It swam in a circle, turned and pressed its ahead against the dock trying to get her attention. She touched its forehead and pictured its thoughts. It was here and not here and now was as it was and then wasn't and it wasn't a whale at all; it was a person with DNA who's switches had been toyed-with so often, they could open and close at will.
She understood something it didn't though; those switches could be turned too often, each shape-shift knocking something of the original person away, until it was cold and heartless, willing to live inside a bubble, just to hide.
Faudron smiled as a new picture formed in her mind. She understood what this thing was for. It was a kind of navigation aid, when they traveled the stars at speed, a kind of thinking radio transmitter, watching bright, distant quasar's three at a time as some Nordic ship flew faster than light, and strangely enough, it was the last of its kind.
The whale pointed its head at Faudron. In her mind she saw her father sitting hopeless on the ruined Orion that had been Rau's home, weeping by the Mercury-type Capsule that could not get home without help and then she saw her mother in some type of hospital, Nords giving her shots, black circles under her yes, quarantine curtains around her bed.
She saw the town flooded and ruined, the buildings buried and forgotten and she saw Rau ruined as well, lying on a green field, blood and blood and blood and blood pouring from his chest. The picture disappeared from her mind and she coughed for the damp, feeling so week, one arm slipped and she fell, dousing her head in the water. She got a grip before she fell in and pulled herself back on the dock.
Was it true? She couldn't be sure, but she felt all the spite the whale felt towards her.
The whale backed away, kicking its tale to keep its head high. "He goes where he can't go."
"So this might not be?" Faudron asked, thinking of her father and her mother more than Rau.
"But it probably will, you being what and how you are?"
"I can change," Faudron said.
"Saying that proves you can't."
"Help him."
It didn't answer and before she knew, it grew small like a fish and dove and she heard a click like a door slamming shut. It must have swum into that flying craft Moren had told her about and into the Back-Beyond. She thought for a moment, and then it came to her. They had nowhere to go. There world was like New York, covered in brown dust, people following clicking Geiger counters as if mowing a brown lawn until the Geiger counters grew so hot, the people holding them had to leave.
Faudron shook away the images with the strange feeling there might be cookies in her mind. Maybe those earless, nasty-faced people she'd seen on the screen in Rau's basement were closer than she'd thought. Maybe this really was Jungle Habitat, and they'd actually just turned it off, pretending to neglect it just to see what kind of monsters the beasts within became when the food ran out.
She shook her head. "Cookies, file delete." The pictures of Orion that had formed in her mind, or wherever it is they really came from must be all lies; everyone in his town manipulated everyone else for some strange, silly, dangerous reasons a normal person wouldn't even bother with.
Then again, maybe they were just adalpated. Adalpated aliens lost among the stars.
No wonder Rau watched NASA footage. Now there was a ratings grabber. The astronauts watched moths mate in boxes up there and Faudron didn't want to get started on the grammar school experiments they let kids send up. Lots of trouble for nothing, flying back and forth to the Winebego in the sky, sticking bad science in, getting bad results out when the universe beckoned. If alone, to be claimed, if not alone, and it was now the case, then to befriend or scout-out and defend from those persons that stared back through telescopes and windows, and there were so very many stars and telescopes and windows up above the night sky.
***
Faudron went home, her eyes on Rau's house, grabbed a couple of frozen dinners and went back to look in on Moren, but she was gone. Faudron felt so sick, not sure if it was her or this place, but everything was moving too fast; she couldn't make the correct decision.
Faudron touched the bits of fur at the edges of the hole Moren had torn out of the wall. What, she dare not wonder, could be that strong?
She ran downstairs and searched the grounds. She looked for the Lincoln but it was gone. That was something. Maybe the bad, old Moren was back and not the bad new Moren.
Faudron went back to Rau's house, drank a Coke she'd forgotten to bring to Moren and tore the tapestry away from the wall. She opened the closet and grabbed a spear. He wouldn't need the extra one.
She found keys in one of the kitchen drawers after she'd dumped them all out on the floor, got outside, started Rau's Escape and headed down the road without headlights, barley able to see the road for the rain through the intermittent-wipers. She sweated and shivered at once, and her foot kept slipping off the gas pedal as she slammed the car side into the stone wall at the roadside like a slalom racer, her eyes mesmerized by the rhythm of the wipers. They'd actually made a movie about windshield wipers, not one about the Space Station. A murder mystery would be good up there. No, too easy to solve unless of course one of the foreigner astronauts were possessed by some alien life force, but that had been done to death. Or
, she thought, maybe a big ugly cloud could come and sweep it away, like this fog swept away the road.
She passed the Country Store, lit brightly in floodlights. She could barely see the road with the bright, over-spill from the store's lights. Something darted onto road and she heard a thump, thump as first the front then the rear wheels hit it.
Faudron stopped the car and got out. It was a wolf, something out of a ghost story, with a broad chest and shaggy hair. It got up and staggered toward her, blood dripping from its mouth as if something inside it had gotten squished so hard it leaked.
Faudron reached into the back seat for the spear, her hands so wet from perspiration she had a hard time getting a grip. She pulled it out, having to back up to get it out of the car and smacked it across the car's hood. sthartere
The wolf stopped, preternaturally catching a scent on the air as it sniffed and spit blood and sniffed again. It crept forward. Faudron lowered the spear, trying to brace it against the inside of the open car door.
A high pitched squeal filled the air. Pigs? People said they made an almost human-like noise when they killed them in the slaughter houses, but that was one at a time, she thought. Pig after pig squealed from the direction of the town.
The Werewolf heard the screaming, checked its wounds, then, as if it decided it would be next, unable to defend itself, it lay on the tarmac, its steamy breath dancing in the tail lights.
Faudron picked the spear up. The thing lying in the road seemed to know what she was about and rolled over.
Faudron took two quick steps, then two long steps, leaned over and plunged the spear into the wolf's heart, pressing it in with all her weight as it twitched, knocking her this way and that until the spear fell from her hands and she fell into the loam at the side of the road, a runoff river pouring down the road's edge.
It gave out a yelp, burst into flames, then dust, and the dust washed into the runoff. Faudron picked her feet up to avoid it.
In the night she could not see, somewhere between the graveyard and the town, wolves went silent, one after another. She could hear the breath of the closer ones. When she made it into the car, they howled again in a different town, their town, the sounds drawing together and getting on the same key as if they gathered.
She grabbed the steering wheel as hard as she could to stop from trembling. For some reason she thought of a story dad had told her, of a pilot coming in for landing after landing on an aircraft carrier, missing it again and again as if something didn't want him to land, finally going in his suit to get it off his mind. She leaned over the passenger seat and threw up on the floor. She knocked the glove compartment open and Don Bravo tacos spilled all over the floor.
It made her think of Jungle Habitat and the clever baboons, who pulled at car door handles trying to get in. She couldn't do this alone. As much as she hated it, she had to find Splinter. Wolves were up on the hill, but the SUV should hold against them.
She put the radio on, fiddling with the dial until she found Art Bell.
"This cloud in space, you say it didn't steal all our satellites."
"No. Oddly enough, they disappeared, or fell off the radar if you will, and came back."
"What about the guys on the space station?"
"Well." The guest coughed, ruffled papers and read off all their names.
"William Falkirk," Faudron said pounding the radio.
"They're all safe at home."
"One name's missing though, isn't it?" Art asked.
"Yes it is. Falkirik."
"You knew him."
"We'd met, once or twice. Not the most pleasant man you'd ever meet," the guest said.
"And all the families are in Florida waiting for the quarantine to end?"
"Yes. Dade county's planning a nice parade."
Faudron found herself talking to the radio. Something was missing. She rolled the window down a crack and let in the night.
The radio went to static; a bush moved and something landed on the roof. Faudron fumbled for the ignition as other werewolves filled the headlight's scope, their faces so smart. She closed her eyes. "Please don't let Moren be out there." She hit the gas.
She made a quick circuit of the town, but the werewolves must have scattered when they recognized the sound of Rau's SUV.
Faudron did a U-turn and headed out of town, but when she got past the Country Store, she noticed a turn-off with a slim, chain fence. She drove over it. "Sorry about the undercarriage, old Rau."
A mile ahead she stopped when she saw a shimmering-light before her, as if a ghost was leaking out and dying in the night. She rolled down the window just a crack to hear the person who carried it. They had to speak. Something had to speak in this awful night.
She drove further on the pine-needle-covered road and up the hill until she came to the road's end, covered by a much thicker chain and a warning -- Cliffs.
Faudron imagined it must have been part of the old mine. The glow went on from below, beyond the crack in the earth that stood before her. Rock, mud and the roots of trees stuck out on the far side.
She got out and leaned over the edge. Old-fashioned, narrow, tombstones many of which looked new, leaned this way and that as if caught in a bad wind.
The person holding the flashlight stood by a grave and waited while Faudron climbed down.
"Hi, Faudron, my name's Karen."
"Are you dead?" It sounded like the stupidest thing in the world to say but she just had to ask
"No, don't be silly; you are."
"Are you that Karen? You are, aren't you? I'm going to strangle you. You know what you put my sister through?"
When Faudron tried to walk, the thick mud came up to her ankles and she froze for a second, terrified that her feet might sink further until she broke through a rotted-out coffin.
Karen must have noticed because she looked kindly at Faudron and motioned her towards a slim, wooden walkway that jutted out of the hillside.
As Faudron walked, each step echoed up the cliff. She would have been afraid but she had Rau's scent on her from the car and she thought it should be enough to keep the werewolves away, Karen as well, whatever she was.
"They don't come here, not ever, not even in daylight.
"Why not?"
"They're guilty, for letting them get eaten in the hunt," Karen said.
"Did you say eaten?"
"That's what werewolves do to their dead when they have a mind to and around midnight they get really wild and have no mind at all," she said, then giggled.
Faudron didn't want to talk to someone who could giggle in a place like this but couldn't help herself. "Why didn't they get you?"
Karen bit her lip for a moment as if she had a secret she wanted to tell but shouldn't. "Mrs. Rochambeau won't let them. She's the big bad wolf around here. And she says that Meybele St. Savour should play you in the movie, if you live long-enough for them to make the movie."
"I see. Poor Rau. Why'd you bring me here?"
Karen stuck her hand out when Faudron drew near. "Karen Kalter, pleased to meet you."
"You said that."
"But not my last name. See?"
Faudron grabbed her hand and shook it after a moment. Karen was such a brat, she wasn't worth talking to. What could she know? Faudron turned to go, but she felt a chill as if the door to Hades itself had been opened and shut and this thing pretending to be Karen had leapt in and out. "This is your tombstone?" Faudron asked.
"No, silly." Karen bent down and moved aside the brass covering from the tombstone's picture locket.
Faudron hated them and swore she'd never have one or ever open one that did. Faudron slapped Karen's hand away, didn't look, but then had to look. The brass cover made a jingling noise as it swung back and forth. Beneath it lay a picture of girl that looked something like her but the girl was obviously a Nord. "I don't understand."
When she wiped the loam from the tombstone, she read the letters F-A-U-D-R-O-N -- Falkirk and a date etched in stone bel
ow it. She covered the date with both hands. She looked up and Karen was already running away. Faudron followed, trudging past the endless tombstones as the chasm narrowed.
Karen stepped on the last tombstone, using it like a ladder to grab a foothold in the wall and pulled herself up.
Faudron had no sense of direction now and when she got to the top, Karen was facing the fence, just a few yards away, so close to it, half a breath would send her into it and electrocute her.
"Like this," Karen said. She picked up a piece of wood that looked like it had been broken off of a park bench and pulled aside a corner of the chain link then stuck the piece of wood into the ground, holding the corner of the fence back, coming very close to singing heir fingers. With the strange smile on her face, she looked as if she'd like to. "This way"
Faudron shimmied in and followed Karen down a hill, some familiar scent in the air. When they had traveled perhaps five blocks, she noticed a number of beat-up buildings with a kind of Solomon's Mine's theme, no one remembered the Steward Granger movie, but everyone knew the look, maybe even straight out of the African Queen if they'd seen the village in the uncut version. Near the entrance to the village stood a big fiberglass statue of Bugs Bunny.
"Bugs?" The Jersey swamp had reclaimed the roads and torn down the fences where they had had the camel rides. Near the rear fence, the gift shop, visitors center and the snack bar had held up pretty well as if they had been repaired over the years.
Faudron took a few steps towards them, then changed her mind and ran down the road to the first fenced-in animal area.
"Hey," Karen yelled. "That's not why we're here."
"Shut up. You're dead." Faudron felt as if she was six-years-old again, visiting the park with her parents.
She got to the fence, grabbed onto it, hoping it was still electrified so she wouldn't see what she knew she'd see on the other side.
Her parents had taken her here just before it had closed, right after hurricane Agnes. The storm had washed out large chunks of the tarmac and you had to crawl through the park at five MPH and even then everyone got stuck when the odd car dropped a wheel into a sinkhole. If you stayed too long in the baboon cage, they took it as a threat and attacked the car. They sat on the hoods, like little, angry men, or tore at the tires while the ostriches came to the open windows and spit.