Finally it was free.
The traveling salesman met the farmer’s daughter. Or was it his sister?
Fingers in eye sockets.
The skull he held in his hands was one of the few things on this farm that wasn’t taken over by mold.
Flud knelt and gently set it down on the floor, then thrust his hands into the bin again. Compulsively. Again and again. More smooth, solid objects, long and short, curved and straight.
When he was done Flud gazed at the pile of her for a moment, then ran. Ran crazily, this way and that, like a chopping-block chicken, back to the house.
“She’s dead! She’s dead!” Flud screamed as he tore up the stone walk and arrived at the greater door, to the farmer, whose red visor was missing. “There’s nothing left, you old fool! She’s been dead for years! There aren’t any voices, no cries for help, nothing, she’s dead, dead, do you hear me dead!”
The farmer, eyes bulging now, looked at Flud plainly and said in a calm voice, “Don’t you hear it?”
Flud gaped at him.
The farmer shut his eyes and his face got all twisted up, just twisted and not plain at all.
“Listen to me, Platzanweiser,” said Flud. “It’s over. Adeline is dead. She’s been dead a long time. Just bones in there, I saw them with my own eyes.”
The farmer’s eyes suddenly opened wide. He was looking at Flud, really seeing him, fixed on him, for the first time since he arrived. “There’s only two of us here so it must be you. It isn’t cows or sheep or pigs making that sound, must be you, stop it, stop saying help me, help me, stop screaming for your life, yes I fixed it so the grain would bury you in that bin, you shouldn’t have tried to leave, we can never leave, we were born on our land and we will die on our land, we are bonded together forever, brother and sister, husband and wife, father and daughter forever, it was you all along, the voices have to be coming from somewhere, no cows and sheep or pigs, quiet, quiet, quiet, no more voices!”
The farmer grabbed Flud by the shoulders and shoved him backwards, down the steps, down, down, the back of the salesman’s head thudding heavily against the stone walk, a heavy darkness taking him down, down, down.
* * * *
There were no sounds, too many smells.
Up, the traveling salesman woke. Dizzy, swimming in a semiconscious state, hurt in his limbs, his head, his throat.
Especially his throat.
He felt like he was being watched.
Opened his eyes.
Chickens stared at him in the dim space, eye-to-eye. A filthy floor. The smell burned his nostrils.
He tried moving away, but something snatched his ankle and wouldn’t let go. His bound hands traveled along his bare leg, knee, shin, ankle, the chain. Heavy chain. Thick enough for farm work. Wound around a beam on the back wall, chained to the building itself.
The traveling salesman felt cold. He wondered what happened to his clothes.
Dirty floor, dirty chickens. Still dressed.
Foul sunshine filtered through the dollhouse-like windows.
A noise at last.
From out there, beyond the chicken wire door.
A car door, slamming.
Through the chicken wire, the salesman could see the farmyard, the circle.
A car, not his own. The DeSoto had departed.
Two men standing at the end of a stone walk.
The farmer, no longer wearing his red visor.
Another man, bald, gesticulating with a green bottle. His face was animated.
Klimm’s Wonder Elixir.
Cures everything.
From eczema to excessive nervous agitation.
The knowledge of a thousand encyclopedias is contained within.
Nicholas Klimm, my friend!
He would help; they were brothers in the art of selling, fellow travelers. They would have a beer and a good laugh at Heaven and Hell after this day was over.
My friend.
The farmer appeared to shake off the sales pitch with a smile, as if indicating his excessive nervous agitation had already been cured.
The traveling salesman smiled, too, as he opened his mouth to call out to his friend...
S is for sin.
For silence.
Mouths opening.
And closing.
After the elixir salesman left, the farmer strode over to the chicken coop, bucket in hand.
He went inside. As he gathered the eggs, he noticed that several members of his quiet brood had become non-productive, not laying a single egg, due to illness or... injury. He still had to pay for their feed, so that was money out of his pocket.
Tonight, there would have to be a culling.
My first encounter with Mr. Poe came on a Halloween afternoon at a grade school in Bloomington, Minnesota, back in the 1960s. One of the teachers led us without explanation into a dark room and shut the door. Strangely, the only light came from a small blue bulb in the corner. The teacher began to read to us, his face illuminated by that dim blue light, the presence of which I soon began to understand. This wasn’t the usual Little House on the Prairie milk-and-cookies story time, this was “The Tell-Tale Heart,” in all its lurid glory.
It was a powerful, thrilling experience, and either later that year or the next I wrote a pair of ghastly horror stories for Parents Visitation Night, and dutifully taped them to the wall outside my classroom with the other artwork. One had the creative title, “Midnight Horrors.” They were, in fact, “inspired by Poe,” as only a young boy can be inspired.
A bit older now, and we come to “The Heaven and Hell of Robert Flud.” More inspiration, thanks to “The Fall of the House of Usher,” my favorite of all his tales. Going from Gothic to American Gothic. I have some rural roots, and Usher always reminded me of the occasional odd duck you find in America’s tucked away places. Isolated, a bit weird, peculiar family relationships, possibly never traveled more fifty miles from the place he was born. Just a general sense of slow suffocation. More sad than horrible in reality.
Hopefully teachers are still reading Poe to grade schoolers, and aren’t put off by overprotective parents with their intellectual bicycle helmets in hand. Read Poe aloud, preferably in a dark room, the more wide-eyed kids present the better. It would make a nice birthday present for him.
<
* * * *
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a Hugo-winning science fiction writer. Under pen names, she also writes mysteries, romance, and mainstream fiction. What people often forget is that she got her start writing horror, first with Kevin J. Anderson, and then on her own, for Dell Abyss. She has been nominated for every major award in all the different genres and has even won a few. Her latest science fiction novel isThe Recovery Manfrom Roc. To find out more, check out her website at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com
* * * *
Flitting Away
By Kristine Kathryn Rusch
i
In the end, it was his hands she vowed to remember—if, indeed, she would be able to remember anything. His hands—reaching, grabbing, pinching, pulling, clutching her neck so tightly she couldn’t pry them free. She’d read somewhere that she shouldn’t struggle, that she had to let him think she was dead.
But not struggling was dying. Her body fought on its own, her own hands tugging his fingers, trying to pull them away, while her feet kicked at nothing.
He was everywhere and nowhere, his legs not where they should be, his hands on her throat, but ripping her clothes too, and his face too close. She should have been remembering his face, sweat-covered, eyes too bright— avid—his mouth slightly open, sending onion breath across her skin.
He was strong—too strong—and in the end, blackness dotting her vision, her chest burning for air, her neck hurting so badly that she wondered if he’d broken it, in that last moment of consciousness, she realized she’d been doing it wrong.
She should have kneed him in the balls, shoved her hands into his stomach, gouged his eyes. Instead,
she held his wrist as he killed her, and she knew if she survived, she would have nightmares about this moment forever.
God, she thought as she slipped into the darkness. I wanted it to mean something.
But even in that moment—the moment just before death, when all humans were supposed to achieve perfect clarity—she wasn’t sure if she had been thinking of her death or her life.
* * * *
ii
She was only thirty. She had never really thought about her death before, at least not consciously. Oh, maybe fleetingly, when she’d stepped off a curb and a car, coming around the corner, had to swerve to miss her. She’d put a hand to her rapidly beating heart and think,That was close.
And then she’d finish crossing the street, the incident forgotten the moment her shoe touched the other curb.
She was a cautious woman, though. She always told friends when she would arrive some place and she rarely missed. If she was going to be late, she called ahead.
Before she moved to New York City, she took a self defense class, and after she arrived, she took a course on urban living that focused on survival tactics for dangerous situations.
The door on her apartment had three locks, and the building had a state-of-the-art security system.
Which was why it was odd that she was here, now, with a man’s hands on her throat and her life squeezed out of her.
Although she was having trouble defining here. She wasn’t far from home near her favorite jogging trail by the Hudson. It had gotten dark early, although it was never really dark in the city. Usually she saw half a dozen other joggers, but on this night she’d seen none.
Not that it mattered. She had been with Bryan.
Bryan.
Her mind flitted away from contemplation of him. Instead, she worried about her definition of “here.” Since she could no longer feel his hands around her throat, no longer felt the urge to fight.
Instead, she was floating above the path, looking at the water which reflected a thousand street lights, and seemed murky all the same.
She had read somewhere—oh, she had read countless things: the mark of someone who really had no life—that during severe trauma the mind separated from the body, leaving a feeling of dislocation.
Only she didn’t feel dislocated. She felt lost.
She made herself go back to her last real thought—at least the last one she could remember: that she was a cautious woman. Which made it sadder, then, that she was here, dying, at the hands of the man she had chosen to keep her safe.
Jogging partners, she’d said to him. That’s all.
He lived just down the hall in her building. She’d seen him dozens of times before she talked to him, wearing a suit and tie or an NYPD t-shirt with well-loved blue jeans. He’d looked safe enough.
She’d even Googled him, and found nothing. Then she used a service— one of those $50 find-everything-in-the-public-records services—and made sure he didn’t have a restraining order or some kind of criminal past.
He had a degree from Johns Hopkins. He was an attorney, for God’s sake. He had been married once, divorced now, no children—his ex having relocated to Nebraska.
Clean. Spotless. Safe.
Until he choked the life out of her.
She blinked, made herself float down, saw the body—her body—crumpled on the path. He was trying to drag her, but it wasn’t working. Finally he used those muscles of his, the ones she’d admired so in his NYPD t-shirt, and picked her up.
Then he tossed her into the river.
* * * *
iii
The cold greasy water brought her back into herself. She sank, already breathless from the way he had crushed her neck.
Think.
Think.
Think.
Let out one small bubble of air and follow it upwards.
She did, surfacing, splashing, suddenly afraid he was there, looking for her. What could he do? He didn’t have a gun and it was too far for him to try to get her.
She didn’t look up, didn’t want to see him.
She tried to yell for help and couldn’t—only a strange, painful wheeze came from her throat. She tried to remember from the jogs where the land met the river, and she couldn’t. She never really looked, never really noticed.
Her breath whistled. It was shallow, barely enough to survive on.
He could be waiting at that spot where the land met the river. He could get her.
She rolled on her back so she could float, listening to her breath whistle, deciding that was reassuring enough. As long as she heard the rasp, felt the burn, she was still alive.
The river had eddies and currents and they would take her away from here.
She didn’t know where or how, but away.
Somewhere safe.
* * * *
iv
Of course, there was nowhere safe. Not really.
The cold was making her teeth chatter. She had to get out soon, but she couldn’t—not yet. She just looked up at the night sky. Or what she could see of the night sky, hidden as it was by the lights of the city.
Once upon a time, people came to the edge of the river to stargaze.
Long ago and far away.
The city’d been dangerous then, too. She’d read about it. She’d studied the entire place before she came. She was afraid of it, but she figured a woman had to face her fears or they would overtake her.
Make her into someone she was not.
Her first memory of this place was the news coverage of the Central Park Jogger—a woman who had been jogging alone (shouldn’t have done that, the newsmen said) through a dangerous part of the Park (she should have known it wasn’t safe, the newsmen said) when four boys attacked her, raped her, and beat her nearly to death.
At least, they thought it was four boys. Then. She had a vague memory that later someone proved it wasn’t those boys, but she wasn’t sure.
It didn’t matter, really.
Because the only thing that separated the Central Park Jogger from all the other victims of rapes and beatings that year was that she was some kind of upscale investment banker or doctor or something—the kind of woman who shouldn’t have gotten hurt. The kind that should have been left alone.
Like her.
Only a stranger didn’t assault her.
Bryan did.
Bryan.
Her mind flitted away.
The chances are that you will get threatened, her urban living instructor said. Be the strong one. Do not threaten in return. Walk away. Laugh. Pretend you have a friend nearby. If none of that works, then give the mugger your purse. If he wants more, fight. Fight with everything you have. Fight to the death if you have to. He won’t fight that hard. You’re the one with something at stake.
She had fought. She had fought and she had done it wrong. Forgotten all her training in her wish to take a breath.
Like now.
Rasp in.
Whistle out.
And float.
Float away...
* * * *
v
“Christ on a crutch.”
A voice above her, male. She tried to hide, but couldn’t move. Her body— she couldn’t feel it. Numb? Gone? Had she separated out of it again?
No. That whistle. That rasp. Still in it.
“She’s alive.”
“Call 911.” Another voice. Also male.
God, a gang of them. In the river? No. She heard rustling, not like clothing, but like feet in sand or dirt. Then a car not far away, horns even farther away.
The city, going on.
Three beeps, and the second male, voice moving away from her. “Yeah. Look, I found a woman...”
Her eyes were gummed shut. It hurt to swallow. That was the only pain she felt, in her throat. And it smelled. Fish and rot and oil.
Hands touching her. Moving her. Wrapping her in something.
This time, she wouldn’t go without a fight. She flattened her hand, jerked
it upwards, trying to hit him with the heel.
“Jesus, lady, I’m just trying to help.”
The exertion made her cough. Try to cough. Wish she could cough. She tasted blood.
That hand, that hand of hers that could move. She had to will it to pry her own eyes open.
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