Scowler

by Daniel Kraus

  Marvin was coughing, orienting himself, and Sarah was frozen.

  “Here!” Jo Beth screamed. “Here!”

  Sarah wiggled through the small opening. Her bare feet danced right over Marvin’s empty left hand, which shot up by instinct, the fingers scratching at her ankle, fumbling with her dirty skin. But she was too speedy and she tripped out of his clutches and went pirouetting.

  Jo Beth caught her. They spun for a moment with the girl’s momentum and by the time they found their footing, Marvin was sitting up and pulling on the chain and finding it difficult to slide past the bones of his ankle. He began to tussle with his shoe to remove it before registering the heaving breaths of his wife and daughter. He twisted himself around on the dirt patch and brought up the shotgun. The muzzle caught a tuft of grass and gave Marvin a moment’s trouble.

  Jo Beth pushed Sarah at the house. One second later she was carrying her by the armpits. They hit the steps with their shins and elbows, and though pain was everywhere she somehow flung the screen door wide, putting an obstruction between them and Marvin that would at least make it harder for him to aim, but then it didn’t matter because the two of them were rolling into the enclosed back porch, Sarah smothered into her mother’s chest, Jo Beth choking on her daughter’s hair, and they were alive—they could feel it and taste it—at least for a few more wonderful seconds.

  22 HRS., 49 MINS. AFTER IMPACT

  Ry knew that every piece of advice his mother had ever received regarding these ugly, squalid, shameful dolls had been the same: Destroy them. Yet she had not. It was as if she had known that one day Ry would need them again and so secreted them here in the attic. Up here was so much more than was offered by the endless, laggard suspense of the farm’s soil. Packed away in these boxes, and now haphazardly spilled, were his very memories, emotions, hopes, and fears. They were here for the choosing.

  Ry withdrew Mr. Furrington. He was gray with filth and small enough to sit in the palm of a nineteen-year-old boy. Next he removed Jesus Christ, a crusty nub of rubber whose edges looked gnawed upon—by attic mice or by a nervous boy nine years earlier? At the very bottom of the box was a hollow of sharp white teeth. Ry addressed the scurvy ogre with utmost caution. His fingertips sunk into the grubby cloth and made indents into the cornmeal belly, while the stiff outer layer of skin segmented like a hardened glaze of mucus. The exposed metal leg had acquired a dull brown sheen and Ry could not help but appreciate how this frosting of rust made it all the more lethal.

  Scowler was still tiny, still eyeless, still starving.

  The doll convulsed hard enough to shake Ry’s entire body. No, it was the door beneath him rattling. Beneath his tailbone he felt the hammering of fists and he heard his mother shouting all kinds of demands: Open up, hurry! He’s going to get free and we have to leave! Beneath that was Sarah’s voice, crying her brother’s name over and over. Jo Beth gave a valiant shove and Ry lifted an inch, but then he readjusted and pushed downward. He needed a moment; he needed to think.

  The amazing thing was that he could. His mind had shifted into a more fluid gear, shuttling ideas around with a clarity that was astounding after so many years in the fog. Troublesome tasks became easy. For example, he plucked an umbrella from a nearby pile, jammed the pointed end beneath a heavy crate, and brought the hooked end across the attic door. Like that, Jo Beth’s leverage was gone. She withdrew with a weepy moan. Courage, long absent, flooded Ry’s body, stirring to a froth other long-lost stimulants: creativity, intelligence, ruthlessness.

  Scowler wormed. He wanted out. He wanted big. That’s what Ry wanted, too, though from within the bones of the house came the ghostly protests of whatever remained of Furrington and Jesus Christ. Their whining instructions were all too familiar: Find your family and run. Yet again, run. It appealed to Ry in a way, the idea of flight, the return once more to the Black Glade of his youth.

  But the vibration of the doll’s razored metal was as strong as the electric fences Ry had taken hold of a half-dozen times in his stupid life. He unwrapped his fingers to find the beast huge-mouthed and laughing, because this was exactly the point that Scowler wanted to make: There were certain things you could not run from.

  The memory swept in like a fetid gust: Ry toting the tidy package of sewing from his mom and Esther Crowley taking it from him and letting him inside and pouring them both tall glasses of iced tea. Ry’s revulsion was instant. Why was Scowler screening this horror film at the very moment he was feeling, for the first time in a decade, the stirrings of strength? Scowler’s giggle was a million children’s fingernails tickling an infinite chalkboard. More details than Ry had ever cared to remember came into focus. He heard Esther’s small talk, stuff about teachers and classes. He saw her body stretch to open the refrigerator and then, a few minutes later, the living room door, how her summer clothes made no secret of the plump lavishness of her legs, the drama of her waist.

  Next came the comfortable music cues, hick narration, and car-chase blurs of The Dukes of Hazzard and Esther declaring how she liked Luke but not Bo and Ry saying he agreed and Esther just about dying with laughter. Wait—was that Scowler behind the TV, laughing too? He wanted out of that room, out of this memory, and so was thankful when Esther invited him upstairs to see her room. They had yet to touch. It was only when he was seated on her bed did she lean over and do everything at once: matched her lips to his, swiped her tongue across his teeth, scrunched his hair with one hand, found an exposed stretch of his back with the other, and drew up her left knee so that it hooked over his right hip. Everything was in motion. He held on.

  The kissing was fast and resolute; when she moved her lips to his neck or ear it felt to Ry as if she were crossing off items from a checklist. Ry followed suit and ran his thumbs over those swooped hips until she wiggled in a way that made him think he was rubbing her raw. It turned out she was just pulling her legs out from under her so that she could take off her pants and panties. Unsure if it was custom or what, he paused to take off his own jeans and underwear and then, as if by legal agreement, they both moved to recumbent positions.

  Uncoiled, everything was in reach. His hands grew brave. She sat up to wrestle her arms out of her shirtsleeves and he saw moles on her back, a dozen of them, and he looked away, feeling as if he had seen something even more private than what had already been revealed. She helped him take off his own shirt. There were no moles on his torso and he felt unexpectedly perfect. She sealed her bare skin to his. They had not looked into each other’s eyes since about the time that Luke Duke was telling Daisy how they had to go help Bo.

  He was marveling at the spice of unfamiliar sweat when she lodged her hands in his armpits and began to raise him into position for penetration. She did it with an effortless savvy. Their sexes nudged. Something felt wrong. He checked the point of contact. The organs themselves became abstract shapes, and then it was all over. What he saw down there was the red bat—his mom had always said that someday the true ownership of it would revert to him.

  Ry tried to push himself away but one palm ended up crushing her stomach and the subsequent groan of pain made it worse: The bat that had done things to Jo Beth Burke was now taking aim at Esther Crowley. Ry paddled to get out of the way. Textures crossed his palms that might have been nose, lips, or nipple, and the next thing he knew he was bent over the edge of the bed and gasping for air. He waited for tea, no longer iced, to come pouring out of his gullet, but he got all mixed up and felt the expansion of wetness around his crotch. The wrong stuff, the wrong time—he had wet himself.

  He moved from the bed on arms and legs and found he was still peeing. His hands got trapped in her inside-out jeans and down he went. Her hot skin sidled up next to his and she set a tentative hand at his back. He coughed and felt pinpoints of tears jab the corners of his eyes. She was already whispering soothing things, she was being wonderful, and it sliced like hemming pins into Ry’s skull. Boys didn’t usually urinate at the sight of her nudity; Esther knew sure as
shit that this was the handiwork of Marvin Burke. Ry found his underwear, wet and stinking. But his pants and shirt were dry and he gathered them on his way to the door. She was apologizing. He was apologizing too, not for his sexual failure but because of the bat. It was his. His own mother had sworn it.

  Ry exited the Crowley house with laughter ringing from the dark worlds of the barns and sheds, from the hidden parts of the trees. It followed him all the way home, into his bed where he cowered beneath the covers and cried for hours. He would not recognize that laughter for years, until right this second alone in the attic. It came from none other than Scowler, the one friend who never shrank from dispensing the toughest of love.

  Never, ever again.

  Ry realized he was muttering these words aloud, over and over.

  This was the lesson Scowler was teaching: Ry might be able to outrun his past but the episode with Esther Crowley represented his miserable future. Life would be a series of heinous failures, an endless procession of beds to be pissed, if he did not stand up, right now, bare his teeth, and bite.

  All Ry had to do was provide Scowler an exit.

  Ideas flowed with such ease! He knew just how to do it. His proximity to the meteorite had hastened the arrival of Furrington and Jesus Christ. But he could not forget the beatings that had directly preceded each of their appearances in the real world: Marvin striking him with the owl lamp and the drowning attempt in the crater water. It was just the recipe Ry required to bring forth Scowler—a little space dust and just the right kind of physical trauma. A tall order, except for what Ry found lying only a few feet away.

  It was the shard of meteorite. Marvin must have dropped it when he had fumbled the shotgun on his way out. Ry shoved aside a broken sewing machine, kicked away a rubber-banded roll of Sarah’s kindergarten drawings, and carefully removed a ruffle that had once graced the most beautiful dress in the world. Uncovered, the shard gleamed in the bulb light like a starry night sky across a still pond.

  Ry took a moment to consider the best place on his body to do it, but it was a silly debate. There was only one spot. He lifted the dagger with both hands and fit the point into the starburst scar between his eyebrows. It slotted into the crevice like a screwdriver into a screw, as if this were what it had been built for eons ago. He felt the sharpened edge squish through flesh and chip against solid bone. His fist settled upon the opposite end as he tried to remember the hundreds of nails he had pounded in his lifetime. Often he’d sunk them in a single blow. It was possible that he’d get that lucky this time, too, though he was prepared for this nail to be much more stubborn.

  Scowler waited on his lap, mouth wide to catch the delicious blood.

  Ry hesitated. He prayed. He told his family to hold on, just one more minute.

  What Monsters Did

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 1981

  22 HRS., 50 MINS. AFTER IMPACT

  If he were flexible enough to gnaw off his own foot, he’d do it.

  So much had gone right: the impact event at Bluefeather; his skyward escape; his journey through backyards and alleys and ditches, cropland and timber; finding the Winchester 1200 and a box of shells right behind the generator where he’d left them in 1972; and the meteorite, that thing from the Jaekel Belt if the girl was to be believed, a gift for which he had no satisfactory words of thanks. It was a new life served up to him on one hell of a silver platter.

  So much since then had gone wrong. There was the killing of a man and the loss of control over his family, but those failings did not measure up to being chained by a child to the doghouse. The doghouse. Fates did not get more wretched. Marvin had tried to uproot the post to which the chain was affixed, but he himself had set that post in cement seventeen years ago and his work, as always, was impressive. There was no way out except for unlocking the padlock and none of the keys on Jo Beth’s keychain matched.

  Sniggety sat next to him, his tail whipping contentedly, delighted about his surprise guest. Marvin looked away in disgust. Hardly any time had passed since his wife and daughter had disappeared inside and already he felt a despair the likes of which he hadn’t felt since entering his first cell at Pennington. He was stuck here, either to be arrested when the cops got wise or to starve to death if they didn’t.

  From inside the house he heard his wife’s shouts, the little girl’s screams. They were trying to gather the worthless boy. Marvin throttled the gun. He knew his son was mentally deranged; he knew the little girl was genuinely sick; he knew Jo Beth suffered from the same debilitating headaches that were afflicting her children. Marvin knew this because he had them too. He had not admitted this to Jo Beth because what good did it ever do to admit weakness? But the truth was that his spine rang with a throb nearly musical; the chord it struck was true all the way down to his toes. It troubled his vision and impaired his judgment. But what it agitated most was his desire. That rock was his because this land was his, no matter what that woman said. He made another futile check of his pockets for the meteorite shard and his palms throbbed with loneliness.

  He sat up against the doghouse, extended his legs perfectly straight, and laid the shotgun along his thigh. He squinted past the action bar, straight down the muzzle, and lined the bead with the knob of his left ankle. If he could keep his hands steady, a single shot ought to turn his foot into ground meat. The chain would slip off as easily as one of those dandelion bracelets he saw little girls giving their dads in prison visiting rooms. He grinned. He tasted salt. Was he crying? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t even remember what the hell tears tasted like. He tried to laugh and heard his jaws squeal as he braced for pain.

  A shadow fell over his leg, making his target go dark.

  Marvin sputtered. He was trying to get a clean shot here! He pulled his eyes into focus and found himself looking at a pair of bare feet twice the size of his own and so strong that they did not bother with details like ankles or toes. Marvin’s eyes crept over the tree-trunk legs, the loinclothed groin, the vast chest, the hawkish face, the anaconda arm with its trademark tomahawk. Each of these features was blunt to the point of ambiguity, but that’s what you got when carving a man from wood.

  “Scalper Jim,” Marvin said. “Good to see you.”

  The Indian’s brow loomed over the triangular notches of his eyes.

  “I know,” Marvin said. “I take full responsibility. But I’m going to get out. Just give me one second to show you.” Marvin flashed a desperate grin and displayed his left leg. “I’m going to shoot the damn thing off. How’s that, huh? It’ll make a mess.” Marvin laughed, a strange yipping bark. “Oh, it’ll make a mess all right.”

  Scalper Jim glowered from his foothill shoulders.

  “What? This chain? I put it here for Old Snig.”

  Hearing his name brought into it, Sniggety withdrew on his belly.

  Scalper Jim’s boulder fist tightened around the tomahawk.

  “A key?” Marvin shrugged. “Sure, there was a key, but no one’s used it for—huh? Well, yes. Yes, in fact. I do recall. I put the key right inside the doghouse here, up on a little ledge. That’s how you keep a farm: You put things in their logical places. I put it there, what, twenty years ago? And I’m proud, Jim, to still remember it. Why, I could tell you—”

  Scalper Jim asserted all ten feet of his height.

  Marvin lowered his head like the mutt he was. “I … I don’t know, Jim. It could be that you’re right. Now that you mention it, it makes a lot of sense. Why would they move it? Why would they even know it’s there?” Marvin laughed. “You’re smart, Jim. I always believed that. Much smarter than me. I couldn’t have—look, Jim, this is the God’s honest truth. I could not have done half of what I’ve done in my life without you.”

  No response came so Marvin bowed and scuffled away on all fours until he could reach an arm inside the doghouse. He explored thick cobweb and tore past what felt like a wasp’s nest until he found the familiar beam and the tiny piece of metal. Years of corrosion had glued the ke
y to the wood and Marvin set to ripping it free. One of his fingernails bent back. A moment later, another split down the center. Marvin grinned—this was progress. A moment later he reined in his arm. There it was, the padlock key, and he displayed it proudly.

  Scalper Jim indicated the new sun, the minutes that were passing.

  “Right, yes,” Marvin said, nodding, jamming the key at the padlock, then filing it against concrete when the rust proved prohibitive. “What’s that? Ha! You’re right about that, Jim. You’re always right. The best hunting, it is always at daybreak.”

  23 HRS., 1 MIN. AFTER IMPACT

  White Special Dress did not launch a new life as they all had hoped, but it did save one. Ry would have bled to death if not for the proximity of its soft white folds. Tugging himself back from a dangerous void of total silence, he found his clothes tarred with the blood that was still slurping from his face, and so he crawled on his belly until he was able to take two handfuls of the shredded dress. Smaller bits were used to plug the hole, while longer strips were wrapped around his forehead, tighter and tighter, to staunch the flow. The cloth heavied almost at once but held heroically. Just a little while longer, he urged it.

  Scowler was born. He popped his head from beneath what remained of the skirt’s hem, his underdeveloped limbs wriggling, his fetal face split wide. He took his first steps on wobbly legs, one bestial, one sharpened steel, two feet tall at the tallest. His head, that cone of flaking rot, tipped back and the white seashell teeth, accented with Ry’s red blood, filed past one another with the sound of shifting cutlery.