“It’s saying,” Justin began, then stopped and listened, staring at the ground all the while. There was no noticeable change to Ted when he became the conduit, only a slight parting of his lips, but the effect of seeing him used like that was very unsettling.
Presently, the faun became more verbose. Gaining momentum from Ted’s temporary passivity, it described its predicament in one flowing, uninterrupted sentence.
“The guy upstairs,” Justin explained, “is feeding off him.”
“Feeding? What do you—”
Justin silenced him with a wave. He pointed upward. “The fucker’s a junky. He’s impotent. He’s drinking this thing’s essence, slowly killing it.”
“Jesus. You mean he’s using this thing like Viagra?”
“This isn’t funny.”
“Trust me, I’m not laughing.”
The floorboards announced a presence moving above them. Ted and Justin screwed their eyes to the ceiling. The vegetation had burgeoned, spreading in disharmonious geometry over the ceiling, seemingly trying to burrow through the wood and concrete. The closer they were to the creature, the more it smelled of rain-damp soil and elms and inchoate memories of the wild.
They heard Martin distinctly, walking above them, pacing like a leisurely predator.
“You said you tied him up!” said Ted.
“Like a goddamn cocoon.”
“Obviously not that fucking well.”
“Fuck! He couldn’t—”
“Just . . . shut up, for Christ’s sake.”
Living mortal tasting god blood gaining god power stronger stronger.
“What?” said Ted.
Justin repeated what he understood of the phrase. Ted hefted the bowie knife, his expression solemn and contemplative.
“Ted, you’re not thinking you’ll . . .”
“Strike while the iron’s hot,” replied Ted, flashing his trademark grin. He shrugged off his jacket, relieving himself of the weight.
“Ted!” Justin caught his elbow.
Ted swung around, the humor evaporating suddenly from his grin. He raised his arm, and before Justin could deflect or parry, the blade nicked his cheek. A shallow cut, but it packed a vicious sting.
“Who the fuck is Ted?” screamed his assailant. “I’m myself—I’m fucking me, you goddamn prick. What’s my fucking name?”
It was no use telling him to lower his voice. Justin sighed. “Hector.”
Hector raged behind furious eyes, through choking panic. “That’s fucking right! Hector! Not fucking Ted or Tom or Dick. And who the fuck are you?”
Justin shook his head, mouth sealed.
“Don’t think of holding me back,” said Hector.
He turned. Neither of them had heard the approach. The light of the cellar had dimmed. The air was thicker, more pungently earthy than before.
Martin’s countenance far outweighed Hector’s in malice. He struck like an adder, grabbing the boy by the throat with one hand and clamping his wrist with the other.
Hector exhaled a curt gurgle of surprise and dropped the knife. Martin’s grip tightened. Hector began to kick and thrash, emitting amputated sounds of pain from his diminished larynx.
Justin clearly heard the bones crunch in Hector’s wrist. Then Martin grunted as the heel of Hector’s boot connected with his breast. His hold slackened, and they collapsed, continuing to fight.
Justin didn’t need to see or hear anything more. He ran in the other direction, the illumination ebbing by the minute. The shadows elongated. The vegetation thrived, expanding and exuding the scent of the woodland sheath. Justin’s heart palpitated in his throat. He hated the woods. Being lost among the trees at night was a very specific nightmare to him. To be segregated from civilization like that, bombarded by vines and bats and God knew what else, without a soul in earshot to hear you scream for help . . .
His chest burned. The ground had become uneven. Sweat blurred his vision, and eventually his coordination rebelled and he tripped, landing face first in the slop. He sat up, sputtering.
How long had he been running? Where the hell was he? He looked up. He couldn’t see clearly; he thought he saw a speckling of stars beyond the canopy.
The faun rattled his chains, a feeble noise, but enough to catch Justin’s attention. He stood, trudged forward. The dimensions of the cellar had completely altered. The distance from the foot of the steps to the faun had increased exponentially. Where he was . . . was an uncertainty; an eclectic environment that appeared to exist in two places simultaneously, the intangible coupling with the tangible. The “how” was beyond his understanding—or so he assumed before he gazed down at himself. His hands and legs were covered in the creature’s shimmering blood. The blood was responsible, creating a splintered reality wherein one world bled into another.
This was all vague extrapolation on Justin’s part. Metaphysics wasn’t his strong suit. He gleaned one simple fact of the matter: the blood was copious, which meant the creature didn’t have long to live.
The faun lifted its head, the simple exertion causing a ripple of pain to cross its hairy visage. It gazed at Justin with those forlorn orbs and parted its mouth, but no sound came out. Perhaps it now spoke without words, but Justin’s mind was unreceptive to that mode of communication.
“You want me to release you?” he asked.
The faun nodded, an almost imperceptible response.
Justin tested the shackles, but the knots held like glue. “I can’t do it even if I tried,” he said. “What do you want from me?”
Slowly, painstakingly, the faun turned its head to the left. From that direction, in the distant depths of a veld darkness that Justin didn’t even want to fathom, the soft lament of reeds could be heard. A song of mourning, and a beacon besides.
“I can’t,” said the boy. “I just can’t,” said the youth who’d been called Justin.
But the faun no longer stirred, and the pipes played on, beguiling and irresistible.
Unmixed Wine
By John “JAM” Arthur Miller
Gladys drove her yellow Humvee through the countryside, marveling at the orange rock that dominated the Ozarks. Although she’d been to her grandfather’s farm many times in the past, the orange rock always made her feel as if she were entering a new world, standing on the threshold of luminescence. Stones the color of pale carrots surrounded the gravel road, triggering memories of childhood journeys along the same route.
Decades ago, vacationing with her parents had turned into ginger chasms of imagination. She remembered arriving at her grandfather’s farm and playing tag with the calves in the fields, a little eight-year-old girl running with four-legged friends through fertile pastures. Cows were dull and unremarkable when fully grown, but as calves they were playful. They’d sneak up on Gladys while her back was turned, running away when she gave a surprised yelp.
Don’t go off by yourself, Sissy, Grandpa always told her. There’s a lot of critters on this property, things that would drive city folks crazy if they saw ’em.
Now a successful marketer for Hasbro Clemons Inc., one of the largest toy companies in America, Gladys wondered why she’d come back. Was she driving to something or away from something?
She felt her past reaching for her with promises of adventure; at the same time she felt the pressures of corporate America and the need for escape.
Thinking of the deadlines and commitments awaiting her return depressed her. Her smile faded. She glimpsed her reflection in the rearview mirror while backing up after missing the turn, her frown deepening. Sometimes she hated herself, loathed who she had become.
After her divorce, she’d put herself through school, holding two jobs, telling her friends it was all so her daughter could go to college. But the truth was, Gladys had been chasing the American Dream, trying to become someone, trying to be somebody. Anybody other than a poor, divorced single mother.
She paused to gaze at her reflection, wondering where the years had gone. What separ
ated her from that little girl who had run with the calves thirty years earlier? Where had that sense of exhilarating freedom gone? She was still pretty, despite the crow’s-feet. She brushed the wisp of hair from her brow and checked her lipstick, as if she were about to enter into a meeting with her account manager.
“Relax,” she told her reflection. “This vacation is for you, Gladys.”
She always talked herself up like this—positive thinking—but it wasn’t helping. The only thing that seemed to matter was the freedom she’d felt as a little girl in this wide open space, that playful sense of liberation while exploring the three ponds hidden among the farmland’s crooks and crannies.
This is your land, Sissy. That’s what Grandpa used to tell her. Eventually, the land claims its own.
Thick clumps of trees grew alongside the entire stretch of gravel; beyond sprawled a great green cornfield. The road she’d missed cut through these trees and bisected the cornfield.
As she put the Humvee in gear, something moved through the brush to her right. She saw a flitting shadow in the trees. Breaking branches indicated massive weight. The scent of greenery and moss crept through the open window, along with the musky scent of a large animal.
Don’t get too close to the bull, Grandpa had perennially warned. And stay out of the corn.
Then the shadow was gone, just as quickly as it had come.
A shiver raced down her spine, and she let out a nervous laugh.
“God, I need this vacation.”
The animal had been in her imagination, the thoughts of a little girl coming back to haunt her. Perhaps something had been there . . . But her inner child had exaggerated the moment, pulling her into the past.
Stress melted off her in waves.
As she drove through the clumps of trees into the cornfield, she failed to notice the movement beside the road. She didn’t see the large silhouette within the shadows of cornstalks. She was so intent on the farmland spread out before her that she didn’t see the figure step out behind her ride.
Before Gladys lay the cornfields, pastures, and the old farmhouse set atop the hill. Behind her wafted a cloud of corporate-world dust and a set of purple eyes glowing in cornstalk shadows beside the road.
The Humvee’s tracking system turned into four-wheel drive and clung to the hill, her eyes remaining fixed on the farmhouse.
Welcome home, Sissy. Even though she lived three hundred miles away, Grandpa always told her, This is your home. We have a bond with the land, don’t we?
“Grandpa,” she whispered.
***
She passed through the gate and into the farmyard, saddened to see how useless it had become; with no cattle there was nothing to keep in or out. The wooden barn leaned precariously to the right, as if it might drop from exhaustion.
At the farmhouse Gladys backed up her Humvee near the side door leading to the breezeway. She lowered the tailgate and removed a suitcase, a cell phone pressed between shoulder and ear.
“I’m supposed to be on vacation, Bob.”
“Of course you are,” Bob said. “But this won’t take a minute of your time, sweetie.”
She cringed at the word. Sweetie. Bob had been buttering her up for months, trying to charm his way into her pants. He’d already bedded down two other marketers, young coeds fresh out of college. His reputation as a shark was growing, and not just in business. Gladys didn’t want to be counted among his burgeoning list of conquests.
“Bob, I’m forty years old.”
“Yeah, turns me on.”
“Very funny.” She laughed despite herself. “Listen, why did you call? Is this so important that it can’t wait?”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .” Bob spoke slowly, measuring his words. “There is a nice restaurant down the block from where we work.”
“Bob, you’re not asking me out on a date, are you?” She entered the farmhouse, letting the screen door slam loudly behind her, emphasizing her words. “Because if you’re calling me during my vacation for something so frivolous . . .”
“No, no,” Bob said. “It’s just that the restaurant would be a nice setting to meet with clients, to schmooze them.”
Bob always used the word schmooze when discussing clients. To Bob it was a “salesperson approach” to run clients over and fast-talk them into a corner. This was the exact opposite of Gladys’s approach and the reason Hasbro Clemons had hired her. Gladys formed symbiotic long-term relationships with clients, while Bob’s sales approach usually just irritated them.
“I’ll check the restaurant out.” Gladys glanced at the clock and groaned. “Listen, Bob, can’t this wait until I return?”
“I guess so,” he admitted with a sigh. “It’s just that . . .”
“Bob, I’m not going out with you, if that’s what you’re getting at.” She looked around the kitchen, wondering where to set her suitcase. “You’re the accounts manager on my team, and you know the rules about dating fellow team members.”
He cleared his throat.
Some men are like roosters, Sissy, Grandpa had warned her when she became a teenager. They act like the entire world’s a chicken coop full of hens.
“Bob, you there?”
“Of course, Gladys. And I agree wholeheartedly.” Before she could respond, Bob quickly added, “I’ll see you when you get back.”
He hung up.
She sighed and shut her flip phone, wondering where the towers were, wondering how she was receiving a signal this far in the sticks. Even out here the stress of the corporate world was trying to get her.
“I’m here, Grandpa,” she whispered. “I’m here.”
I know, Sissy.
Tears sprang to her eyes. The wind picked up outside, strong enough to blow the living room’s gossamer-thin curtains. They seemed to be reaching for her. She watched them until the wind died down.
“Very funny, Grandpa.”
She could almost hear him chuckling.
She wasn’t sure whether she believed Grandpa had actually made the wind blow or not, wasn’t sure of anything anymore. All she knew was that she belonged.
It felt like destiny.
***
In the morning, she awoke to the sensation of fresh country air blowing through the open bedroom window. A rooster crowed in the distance, not near enough to be annoying. She smiled, remembering Champ—Grandpa’s old rooster that used to fly straight at her father whenever they visited, landing on his head.
It’s because of your red hair, junior, Grandpa said. He sees you as just another cock in the coop.
Dad hated that damned rooster, but Champ followed Gladys wherever she went, sometimes running her father off to protect her when she got in trouble for missing dinner. Always because of too much time spent with the calves.
After Champ died he became a favorite story handed down through the years like a family heirloom. Until her parents passed away in that two-car accident two months ago. Now there was no one left to enjoy the tale.
That’s why she was here: to examine her inheritance, to make painful decisions. Should she let Grandpa’s farm go or hang on to the past? She desperately wanted to recapture the land’s magic.
Gladys got out of bed and started toward the kitchen where the coffee maker was pumping liquid caffeine into a pot. She felt groggy even though she hadn’t slept this good in years.
A cool breeze wafted through the kitchen window. With the breeze came a strange odor.
“What the hell?”
She went to the window and opened the screen, leaning out while sniffing. Beneath the sill were several large hoof prints. Same animal’s scent she’d gotten a whiff of in the cornfield yesterday. She wondered if the neighbors had lost a cow.
Stay away from the bull!
“Thanks, Grandpa!”
She slammed the window shut and went to the kitchen table. Her cell phone lay on the counter, light blinking. She had set it on silent after talking to Bob. Upon seeing it, she groaned and che
cked the Caller I.D.
“Shit.” Sure enough: Bob. “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
She’d return his call later, after her morning coffee, and after sprucing up the place. One of the treasures of staying on her grandfather’s farm was the fresh country air that flowed in through the windows. Gladys just wanted a warm mug in hand and to relish the sweet country breeze.
But it wasn’t just the fresh air; it was waking to the sounds and feel of the country. She tried explaining it to her city friends, but it was impossible. Even the feel of this place was peaceful, able to lull Gladys into daydreams, like fishing at one of Grandpa’s three ponds. You can’t buy that kind of feeling, she’d tell her friends.
Though she was certain others enjoyed peace of mind from living in the country, there was something different about Grandpa’s land, something mystical and pure, as if the land called to her, as if it seeped into her bones with cozy warmth.
The land had always had a hold on her, even while she was three hundred miles away. She sometimes dreamed of being a little girl again, eight or ten, running with the skipping calves, playing tag while dull-eyed cows looked on. Occasionally, a dangerous bull with long horns appeared in her dreams, stamping its hooves as it approached, as if to say, “This is my pasture, damn it!”
In a few of her stranger dreams, people with purple eyes pranced over the land.
She poured herself a mug of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, turning her cell phone over so that she wouldn’t have to watch it blink. Gladys let out a hesitant sigh. She used to be able to sigh without restraint, one smooth exhalation, but not for many years now. Lately it was as though her lungs held on to the breath, as if her body was trying to prevent any oxygen from escaping. And so her sighs flowed out in broken spurts.
“If only I could relax, Grandpa.”
Have a seat, stay a while.
She giggled.
***
Grandpa’s land undulated with hills that ended before three valleys, where the ponds were hidden by tree groves. Gladys headed for the pond by the willow tree. She drove Grandpa’s four-wheeler through a mile stretch of corn, then bobbed through bumpy pasture that had once served as grazing ground for over five hundred head of Holstein cattle. The pasture gave way to woods and groves.
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