Thrall

by Mary SanGiovanni

  Mia smiled. “Hello, Mr. Carpenter.”

  He turned to Caitlyn and shook her little hand, and although he looked right at her, Jesse got the distinct impression he was seeing someone else. “Hello there, little miss. You must be Miss Caitlyn. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “Pleased to meetchoo, Mr. Carpenter.” She smiled shyly, hiding behind her mother’s leg.

  “Carpenter, is everyone okay? We heard shots.”

  He pulled Jesse aside. “We just had a nasty run-in with the eyes of Thrall, if you can believe that.”

  “We can,” Jesse said grimly.

  “Tom and Miss Nadia are fine, but Murdock....” Carpenter indicated with a tiny nod in the direction of the crumpled form on the ground. “I need to draw potential sources of trouble away from us and to the woods.”

  Jesse nodded. “Need help?”

  “I can handle it.” He winked at Jesse. “You get those two inside. You have other delicate situations to attend to.”

  “I don’t know if going into the woods alone is a good idea, Carpenter.”

  Carpenter glanced back at Caitlyn, and that wistful look colored his expression. “Not into—just to the edge of the woods. Into is suicide. But what lives in the woods generally stays in the woods. Still, you can send Tom out, now that you’re back. We’ll go together.”

  Jesse nodded. “So I’ll stay with the girls, then.” The idea of being boxed in with Nadia, Mia, and Caitlyn terrified him more than the thought of going to the edge of the woods.

  Carpenter picked up on his apprehension and patted his shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”

  ***

  “Jesse!” Nadia leaped up and ran to the doorway, throwing her arms around his neck.

  Behind her, Tom was smiling broadly. When Nadia pulled away, he hugged Jesse too. “You made it, man! Welcome back,” he said around a mouthful of Granola bar.

  “Thanks. I’m glad to be—” He stopped when he noticed Nadia’s expression, and followed it to Mia’s face.

  Mia and Caitlyn hung behind him in the doorway, and Jesse ushered them in. “Gang, this is Mia. Mia, this is Nadia, and you remember Tom.”

  “Hey, Mia, how are ya?” Tom gave her a quick hug.

  “Tom, it’s been so long! You look great! Really great, it’s really....” She turned suddenly to Nadia. “It’s really nice to meet you, Nadia. Jesse’s told me a lot about you. I’m so glad he’s had you here with him on this trip.”

  Nadia’s tight smile relaxed a little. “I’m glad he trusted me enough to let me come.” Handing the remains of her own bag of chips to Tom, she shook Mia’s hand. “Seeing this place, I can’t imagine what it would have been like for him to come through here alone.”

  Mia’s smile faltered, but she recovered. “Alone. No, I’m glad he wasn’t alone.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed, which Tom broke. “Hey, Jesse, did you see Carpenter? He just walked out the door maybe thirty seconds before you walked in.”

  “Oh, yeah! He’s out there now, waiting for you. He wants your help with...you know.”

  “With what, Daddy?” Caitlyn piped up from the floor.

  “Mr. Carpenter just needs Uncle Tom to go help him move stuff, sweetie,” Tom said. “Okay, well, now that you’re back, I’ll go help him with...with the thing.” He leaned in and dropped his voice to a confidential whisper, “You going to be okay here?”

  Jesse nodded and forced a small smile. “No problem, man.”

  Tom studied his face a moment, gave a satisfied nod, then saluted him and swung out the door. Jesse heard him call out to Carpenter, and saw him jog to catch up to where the old man had dragged the body, before he closed the door and locked it.

  The girls sat down around the candle. Jesse hung back a moment, taking in the surrealism of seeing Mia again, of seeing her sit with Nadia, and of seeing his daughter—his daughter, for Chrissakes, he still couldn’t believe that—between them. Finally he sat across from them, his back to the door.

  “So,” Jesse said after a time, “did Carpenter tell you what he had us meet here for?”

  Nadia shook her head. “Not really. He said he’d explain when he got back. We didn’t really come up with much of a plan.”

  They lapsed into another awkward silence. Nadia and Mia looked everywhere but at each other. Jesse wished that Tom was still there. He was always good at breaking ice and putting people at ease.

  “Maybe Mr. Carpenter will know what to do?” Mia asked no one in particular.

  “I hope so,” Jesse said. “I really hope so.” He was tired of thinking and deciding what to do next. He was just plain tired. His eyes burned with drowsiness and his body was sore. Most of all, he just wanted to go home.

  He ignored the little soundless voice in the back of his thoughts which pointed out But Jesse, you are home.

  ***

  “How ya holdin’ up, son?”

  Tom grunted. “Okay. He’s heavier than I thought he’d be.”

  “Dead weight, that’s what it is.”

  “Hey Carpenter, I was thinking.”

  “Hmm?”

  Tom put his end of Murdock’s body down gently and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Don’t get me wrong. I think moving Murdock is a good idea. I mean, we really don’t need any more surprises if we can help it, and this may buy us some peace for a while. But still, I think we’re going to have to ditch the guardhouse. One of the last things Murdock told us was that he could see pictures in his head. You know, mental pictures from what the eye-things were saying? He said he saw Thrall’s organs on Ridgeville Road and Poulter Circuit. Now Ridgeville isn’t close to here, but Poulter is, and he said that they were using the eyes to find us. I just have this feeling that we’re not going to be able to stay long at the guardhouse.”

  Carpenter recognized Tom’s Thrall-brand of concern—not for himself, but for his friends. It was a fearless look in the eyes, a grace of movement coordinated by sheer reckless luck. It was a kind of desperation, driven not by foolishness but by single-minded purpose to protect. Carpenter knew all too well how Thrall took people away, and it didn’t often give them back. He had no doubt that Tom knew this personally, too. It was written in his eyes and his mouth, a faint echo in his laughter. So when Thrall did drop other people in one’s lap, that instinct (it was hardly anything but instinct) to keep others safe grew sharper. He thought of Jesse and that little blond-haired cherub (such a beautiful child, delicate, like a doll), and wanted nothing so much at that moment as to see the boy get the whole lot of them the hell out of there. His own instincts, dull throbs of almost-pain in his back and knees, confirmed Tom’s. There was a turnover going on, charging the air with electric movement like the onset of a storm. He had to get her—them—out of Thrall, and quickly.

  Caitlyn deserved a chance at a real life, a normal life. Celeste’s chance. And Jesse deserved Ryan’s chance, and Mia and Nadia, they deserved Melody’s and Annie’s chances. And Tom.... He frowned.

  “Carpenter, man, you okay?”

  “Fine, just fine. I agree, though, that we won’t be able to stay there the rest of the night. You’re right. We’ll have to move them.” With a groan, he leaned over and together they hoisted Murdock’s body between them like a hammock. The blood had dried on the sweater and made it hard and crusty. On his hands the blood had grown sticky, and smelled of old cold cuts gone very bad. Meaty smell, like raw hamburger. “When we get back, we’ll get—watch his leg—get what we came for and head for the tunnel.”

  “What did we come for, exactly? What’s in that guardhouse, Carpenter?”

  “A potential weakness. I didn’t want to say anything more to you folks until I could see it again for myself. Careful, there’s a big root here.” Carpenter stepped over the gnarled arc of dead wood and thought of those kids and of all the countless branches and degrees of love and friendship and familiarity that had been broken off of them by that wasteland of a town. “But if I’m right, we’re going to give it a taste of its own ha
te, my boy.”

  Behind them, the guardhouse was an inky peak against the sky. Ahead, the boundary breathed slanting shades onto a nearby picnic area. There was no fence between the quasi-safety of the park and the edge of the woods, but they knew where the boundary was just the same. It was something they felt as much as saw, the old instinct kicking in again. The moonlight following them overhead was insubstantial, a battered thing stretched thin and bent into terribly wrong shapes. Its cast and hue deceived, insinuating sickness and distortion before petering out at the first of the thick gray trunks.

  They were in the deep park now, and Murdock’s body had grown very heavy. When he reached the nearest of the trees, Carpenter set the body down beneath it, his breath now coming in clipped huffs. Beyond the tree trunks, unseen life hummed and throbbed. He squinted, but could make out nothing.

  Then there was a rush of air in the woods. They heard the snapping of twigs and the chewing of leaves. Something bore down on them from beyond the boundary. There was no time to run. Tom drew his shotgun.

  The rush became a roar and then it was on them before Tom could fire. Carpenter flinched in anticipation, squeezing his eyes shut.

  Whatever it was, it stopped short mere inches from him, its hot, rotten hamburger breath dewy on his cheek. He opened his eyes but he couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see anything. But he felt it, oh yes, hot damn, he felt it. Carpenter imagined its long teeth glistening beneath a sheen of sticky saliva. He pictured its claws tracing his shape, grazing the air just beyond the fine hairs of his face without ever touching him. His skin prickled first with fear, then with flushing heat, then finally with sweat. Hot damn was right. It was very close.

  And a real biter, he didn’t doubt that, either. But what lived in the woods generally stayed in the woods. Generally.

  “Carpenter,” Tom whispered, his shotgun trained on the darkness above Murdock. “I can’t see it. Whatever it is, I can’t see it.” He didn’t have to. Carpenter suspected he felt it, too, and knew by sensations where to point the shotgun, if such a weapon could make a dent at all.

  He didn’t think it would.

  With his foot, Carpenter carefully nudged Murdock’s leg. A little prodding and it skittered just beyond the boundary. The tip of the shoe disappeared into shadow. There was a moment where even the gloom seemed to hold its breath, and then the body jerked forward. There was a low, baleful sound like a loon and the body shot over the boundary and instantly out of view.

  “Go,” Carpenter said, backing away. “Go!”

  The two took off down the hill and were halfway back to the guardhouse before the crunching and the ripping, distorted by the membrane between the surrealism of Thrall and the grotesque menagerie of its outer limits, broke through from inside the woods.

  ***

  Jesse leaned against the doorway, scanning the darkness for signs of life. So far, nothing. The sky above the trees was changing color. A purplish hue lilted into green, then flickered to gold, then to burgundy, then back to midnight blue. It wasn’t the sun coming up, he didn’t think. The colors were changing too fast. But something was definitely happening up there.

  The silence inside had been stifling, and he’d felt the sudden urge to check on the guys’ progress. Unlocking the door, he’d inched it open and peered out. Caitlyn slept with her head in her mother’s lap. Mia stroked her hair. Nadia avoided looking at them.

  But suddenly, Mia broke the ice. “Nadia, I wish you guys could have known more about Thrall.”

  Jesse thought that what Mia really meant was “I wish Jesse had told you about me and Caitlyn.” Nadia either didn’t get her meaning or chose to pretend she didn’t.

  “Tell me about it. I would have worn more comfortable shoes.”

  Mia giggled.

  Nadia stretched her legs out gingerly and smiled. Rubbing her injured knee, she said, “Want to talk about uncomfy shoes? Jesse invited a bunch of us camping one time. Camping, right? He told me there’d be warm fires, plumbing, beautiful surroundings, the works. So I’m figuring cozy fireplaces, sipping cocoa under blankets in a nice cabin some place—you know, real camping.”

  Mia laughed and this time, Nadia joined her.

  “Turns out he meant roughing it in the woods. We had to hike three miles to a campsite that had one long public log cabin restroom for everyone on the site to share. And I brought leather boots. Leather with suede patches and three-inch heels! Spent most of that weekend cold and barefoot.”

  Jesse turned away from their girl-talk. Behind him he heard Mia say, “He’s not always great with full disclosure.”

  “No, he’s not.” The giggling faded. “No,” Nadia repeated. “He’s not.”

  An uncomfortable silence followed. Jesse squinted into the darkness and saw two figures there on the hill, hauling ass back to the guardhouse. Thank God. Jesse exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “They’re back,” he said. “Tom and Carpenter.”

  “Thank God,” Nadia echoed his thoughts. She winced as she rose to greet them, favoring her bad knee.

  Tom crossed the threshold first and Nadia gave him a hug. He grinned, surprised, but not so surprised as Carpenter, who was also greeted with a warm hug as he passed through. Caitlyn stirred in her mother’s lap and the voices dropped to a whisper.

  “Good to see you, Miss Nadia. Good indeed.”

  “I’m glad you guys are back safe,” she purred with a warm smile. “Gang’s all here now.”

  “So,” Jesse said, maybe a little more abruptly than he’d intended, “what do we do now?”

  The old man nodded, locking the door behind him. “Right. A plan. Well, if that feeling in the air is any indication, and Murdock’s last few words were correct that the organs really are coming for us, then we can’t stay here. But,” he said, crossing the room and crouching beneath the grimy window, “I think we can weaken its line of defense before we go.”

  He sat with his knees tented as he worked his fingers under a floorboard whose corner was loose. “Did you happen to notice the sky?”

  “Yeah,” Jesse answered slowly. “What’s going on?”

  “My guess is the masquerade is over and the actor is about to remove its mask. But we don’t want it leaving any party favors behind, do we?” Carpenter freed the board of its weak nails and pulled it up. From the space in the floor, a faint pulse of bluish-purple light glowed. From time to time, little flares of white escaped around Carpenter’s bent knee. The others crowded around the hole. Mia placed Caitlyn gently down on the floor and joined them.

  In the hole, Jesse saw what looked like an oil spill, a base greasy colorlessness infused with a rainbow of continually swirling threads of colors, including shades and hues that he didn’t think he’d ever seen before. Colors he was sure did not exist on Earth, but in some ugly alien spectrum that was part of....

  “The flesh of Thrall,” Carpenter said. “The alien beast itself, the actor behind the mask.”

  “I don’t get it,” Tom said. “Why one patch of flesh it didn’t bother to change with the rest?”

  “Not that it didn’t bother,” Carpenter said. “It can’t, because of that.”

  They followed his finger to the oily patch beneath the floorboard, and for a moment, the pattern seemed to settle and grass sprouted around it in a closing circle of green. Then it rippled color outward, and with a tiny rumble it coughed up an amorphous black sack, slick and wet with the dripping colors. Every time the sack trembled, the oilflesh around it would shudder and eat up the grass again.

  “Holy shit.” Jesse shook his head. “What the hell is it?”

  “At first I thought it was a tumor,” Carpenter said, scratching his chin. “To some small extent, it seems to keep Thrall from making full use of its acting abilities. And there is a perverse pleasure for me in knowing that when it acts up, it seems to give Thrall pain. It could have been a cavity or an ulcer or even a wart. But based on something I’d almost overlooked in the museum, I’m fairly sure it’s something much mo
re valuable than any of those things. Scion, The Universe is Yours. I hadn’t made the connection until after we’d left the museum that I’d seen the subject of that painting before, once, long ago, in this very guardhouse. And I had to see it again, one more time, to be sure.”

  Carpenter looked up, eyes shining. “I really think it’s the one weakness Thrall has. We’re on the verge of change, here. It’s eaten its fill of this world, and will move on. But not before this. It’s the reason the eyes came after you now and not before. It’s the reason the organs are looking for us as we speak. Two in particular, I’m guessing. And my theory—this is a theory, now, but I think it’s a solid one—is that if this little piece can be fleshed out, if this little Achilles’ heel is vulnerable, then it’s just possible that there will be a small window, just before things fall into place, where other parts of the town—the organs, in particular—may have to be fleshy and vulnerable, too. I think it needs to make the complete, if somewhat slow, change back to whatever its original fleshy form is, and I imagine it must expend a lot of energy to do so, possibly weakening it. It may cast off its mask just long enough for us to see its real face, its exposed and animal face. And all animals can be killed. During these momentary weaknesses, it may be the only way to take these things down.

  “To get back to the first step of the plan, though, we have a major weakness of the town right here. Thrall saw us coming this way, to this one place it had kept safe and hidden until there wasn’t really anyone to keep it safe and hidden from. The eyes, the organs—they’re in a panic now, because we found it. Its soft spot, so to speak.” He glanced at Caitlyn, and then at each of them in turn. “The one thing any one of us would fight to protect.”

  Tom got it first. “Oh holy shit, man. No way.”

  Carpenter nodded. “Its spawn. Its heir to Earth. This black mess is a death-town waiting to happen. A developing embryonic town.”