by Paul Finch
At the end of this monologue, during which every topic from immigration policies to corporate tax evasion was alluded to with simplistically punitive solutions, the mechanic said, "Anyway, mate, back to business. A few of your pipes are also corroded. Might be worth getting them checked, too. And tell whoever works on it to look at your water pump-I spotted more rust down there. A compression test will check for other leaks and pray that comes back clean. You don't want a head-gasket leak, mate. Or worse, a cylinder head crack. Then you're looking at one K minimum, maybe more. Ah, right, that should do it."
Twenty minutes had elapsed since the engine had been left idling. The guy switched off the ignition and then filled the overflow tank with liquid from a drum he'd removed from his van. He started the car again, revving it with borderline aggression. Phil wondered whether this might cause further damage, especially if his engine block had more serious faults.
"If I do have a head-gasket or cylinder head problem, is it safe to drive?"
"Oh yeah," the mechanic replied, killing the ignition. "If you keep plenty of fluid running through, it's surprising how far a car can get even with serious engine faults. Hell, I've seen some vehicles still running with almost all their components on the fritz. But sometimes that's what we all do, isn't it? Just scrape by."
"Yeah," said Phil, now desperate for the toilet and feeling faint through lack of food and drink. "I guess that's true."
The guy turned and grinned, standing from under the bonnet. "There you go, mate. Temporary patch-up job. No leaks. But make sure you get it done properly. Otherwise your missus will be giving your dinner to the dog next time."
Phil thanked the guy and got back inside his ageing car. The moon shone down with all its mystical force and he sensed great events astir in the world, reshaping his thoughts, making slow sense of so many nebulous fears. Then he restarted his engine and drove on.
He arrived home within another ten minutes, at almost seven o'clock, much later than he'd returned in the past. And he'd failed to let his wife know the reason for his delay.
****
But it proved not to matter: as he'd suspected even before entering the property, Beatrice wasn't there.
Although the front door had been unlocked, Phil was unable to locate his wife inside. He checked the kitchen, but there was nothing on the table, no meal prepared after his long week at work. Moonlight spilled in through the uncurtained window, making shadows writhe in the back garden. He moved away, slapping on lights as he went, bringing illumination to the rest of the house. But the lounge was also empty, its TV deactivated. The same was true of all the upstairs rooms. He hurried back to the ground floor. His bladder felt fit to burst and his head reeled, but that was the least of his worries. Where was Beatrice?
The frightening truth was, however, that he knew precisely where to find her.
None of the houses in their street was occupied; the terrible recession had ensured that. But now Phil knew that these desirable dwellings were tenanted by something. And the worst thing was that his wife, at home alone on a daily basis, had surely discovered what dwelt there.
As Phil exited and headed towards the house with the large tree in its front garden, he recalled half-glimpsed images during the last week, slight entities skittering around, little more than bones sheathed in pale flesh. But this merely hinted at what lurked inside the property whose entrance he now approached, with no more intention of knocking than Beatrice would have had, after being drawn here by a need for communal contact, by a desire to get back into the world.
But what bogus entities had summoned her?
Phil entered and then paced quickly along its hallway, which was just like his and his wife's. He reached the lounge, and it was now, in light from a lamp burning in one corner, that he spotted Beatrice seated in a plump armchair fresh from some exclusive store. The rest of the lounge was similarly furnished with pricey goods, which didn't make any sense. Nobody lived here; all the buildings except Phil's were empty.
But then his gaze was drawn left, to a sofa situated opposite his wife, near the doorway to what must surely be the kitchen. A figure was sat there, face turned away from Phil. It had one arm rested on a pram with large wheels, which stood against the wall beside a crackling fireplace. The figure on the sofa was clearly female, her body-or rather, what little Phil could see from this angle-shapely and refined. She was clearly a respectable person, the kind of neighbour Phil had once hoped to entertain. But then, perhaps sensing his arrival, the woman turned his way.
She had only one eye. What little remained of the skin on her face clung to a cheekbone, providing only modest support to a capsized nose and lips which dipped to one side. Her torso was similarly bereft of its full complement of features, bearing only a single arm that moved away from the pram and fell towards her solitary leg. The lower limb's flesh was visible below her dress, a loose red garment doing what little it could to conceal her physical absences, her pitiably depleted frame.
There's just enough of you left for me to befriend, Phil heard his wife murmur in memory. But before he could turn to address Beatrice, who remained seated in the chair with absolute calmness, Phil spotted someone else enter the room.
If the woman was the unseen child's mother, this must be its father. He entered from the kitchen, carrying a beaker full of milk, but it was a wonder how he'd managed to do so. His body almost wasn't there, being merely a haphazard combination of internal organs held together by tenuous stretches of skin. Beyond ill-fitting clothes his skeleton was visible, and beneath that Phil observed only a single lung, a solitary kidney and coils of intestinal tubing, with few other items-neither an appendix nor a gall bladder-among them. Higher up, half his skull was missing, and so was half his brain.
Phil twisted away from this couple, revulsion almost causing him to collapse. At that moment, he heard a sound from outside. Profoundly troubled, he hurried to the window, away from the travesties behind him, and glanced out into the street.
Two vehicles scraped by, heading for the next house in the row. One was a removal van, its bodywork reduced to only essential parts: chassis, engine, wheels. A mass of furniture was stacked in its rear, with only thin ropes holding it all in place. A figure sat behind the steering wheel, displaying a toothy grin; there was, after all, little skin around his mouth to offer much more, while the same was true of his scrawny frame.
Behind this stripped-down removal van, a smaller car followed, whose features were similarly diminished. A family of three-including a child seated in the rear, clearly a boy-bore as little skin and bone as their vehicle boasted exterior panels. An errant part of the car had dropped out of position and scraped on the road, causing the noise which had drawn Phil's attention. The sound made him realise that this was no hallucination. New people-or rather, just enough of them to warrant the description-were moving into the street.
He turned back to his wife, eager to direct them both away. But she'd now risen from the armchair and crossed to the far side of the room, where the pitiable couple waited. As silently as her half-formed companions remained, she beckoned Phil towards her, one arm leading him to the pram against the wall.
And so this was what had attracted Beatrice here, a surrogate child from which she could derive maternal pleasure. But as Phil strayed across the lounge with bewildered obedience, he remembered more of her words after she'd fallen asleep last night: Let's see how much more there is on the little one.
Phil glanced again at the couple who had just enough about them to sustain life, at the mother's lack of limbs and father's minimal internal organs. He recalled the new arrivals outside, each lacking physically what their vehicles were short of mechanically. He thought again of clients at the bank, mortgaging houses way beyond their lifespans, inflicting debt even on offspring.
Then, as his wife reached for the pram to tilt his way, Phil didn't wish to see what lay-more than bone but less than flesh-beneath the shawl inside.
WHERE THE FOREST ENDS
Sean Logan
This was supposed to be the fun part.
Dahl pulled off the narrow snaking road, the moving truck's tyres crunching gravel as he rolled up the long driveway. He stopped in front of the garage, a weathered, unprotected structure standing in isolation from the house. He stepped out onto his property for the first time as owner. Buck leapt down beside him and went straight into a sniffing frenzy, following his nose in a manic zigzag toward the back yard. Dahl didn't need to put his nose to the ground to be struck by the smell of the place, rain soaked and earthy, the scent of the pines not far off. It seemed to cling to him like mud in the tread of his boots.
Mia got out on her side and they met at the back of the truck. Dahl hauled open the rollup door with a dry metallic clattering.
"That's a lot of stuff," Mia said.
"It is a lot of stuff. But there's nothing too big. Aside from the bed."
"We've got movers tomorrow? Please tell me we do."
"We do. I'm not going to make you carry the washer and dryer."
"That's very kind of you."
She smiled at him, but he didn't return it. That would have felt like he was enjoying himself. It wouldn't have been appropriate. Instead he dropped his eyes and pulled out the long metal ramp from just above the truck's bumper.
"Okay," he said. "Let's do this."
They each grabbed a box and crossed the rutty yard to the back of the house. Because it was built on an incline, they had to climb stairs to reach the back patio of the main floor.
"Okay, if we're going to be doing this all day, my thighs are going to be killing me," Mia said, clomping up the worn wooden steps. "I'll be looking like an Olympic bodybuilder from the waist down."
When they reached the back door, Mia set down her box and tried the key without success. "I guess this only works on the front. I'll go around."
Dahl set his box on top of hers and surveyed the property, leaning against the patio railing. Before, he would have thought, this is all ours, but he didn't think that now, not in any real way. It wouldn't have given him any pleasure. And if it did, he wouldn't have wanted it to. Instead, he looked down, watched Buck traverse the rough slope of the yard and thought, that's where the skateboard ramp would have gone. But looking at it now, the yard probably was too steep. Mia said it would be, but Dahl told her he could make it work. And if not the ramp, then something else, a jungle gym. And if not that, then there was always the woods, stretching out to infinity right at the edge of their own back yard. What kid didn't like to play in the woods? Mia said the woods were dangerous and so did his ex-wife. You could get lost. They had mountain lions. Hunters. He reminded them both that kids had been playing in the woods for thousands of years, since long before any of them were ever around. He said he used to play in the woods as a kid. He said it teaches kids about nature and the real world.
He said a lot of things.
Dahl looked at the woods now, lining the property, a tall spiny wall. It was like a wall with nothing on the other side but more wall.
He heard the patio door open behind him, but he didn't turn around. Mia joined him, arms crossed along the top of the railing, looking out at the yard and the woods beyond it.
"He would have loved it, huh?" she said.
"Yeah," he said. But he was lying. Chase would have hated it, and that made it all worse.
"Come on, let's go inside," she said. "Let's take a look at your new house."
Before he turned away, he felt a crawling tingle along his spine, a vague chill of dislocation. It was something about the pines, the way they swayed with the breeze. It seemed almost deliberate.
As if to underline the sensation, Buck stopped twenty feet from the tree line and barked, the same territorial yawp he gave the pizza delivery person when the doorbell rang.
Dahl called him and Buck didn't need to be told twice. A second later Dahl heard the clicking of his nails as he scrambled up the steps and then the three of them were stepping into the empty shell that would soon contain their lives. It was built in 1912. It still had its original hardwood floors and Dahl thought that centuried oak gave the house its distinctive smell. A month ago, when their real estate agent had brought them here, he breathed the air and thought of a time when things were built up from the earth, dense and permanent, forged with big knuckled hands. The house seemed infused with history. Now it made him think of old age and neglect. He could taste the dust on his tongue.
"You've got to admit," Mia said, her voice reverberating in the bare space, "it's not too shabby."
"I'm just thinking about all the upkeep."
"I'm sure there'll be plenty to keep you busy." There was a note of sympathy in her voice. There will be plenty to distract you, it said. There will be plenty to take your mind off the sad spectacle your life has become.
"I guess we better start filling this place up," he said.
"I'm going to get the heater going. It's like a meat locker in here."
Dahl returned to the truck where boxes and bins and small units of furniture were stacked with alarming disorganization. Many items were labelled- KITCH or HALL BATH or MAST BATH. One cardboard box was not labelled, other than the Windex Foaming Glass Cleaner logo printed on the side. The top wasn't taped; the four flaps were overlapped to hold it closed. Dahl pulled them apart to look at the contents and see which room he would need to carry it to. A little pair of jeans. A little Tony Hawk T-shirt. A little Colin Kaepernick jersey, the one Chase wore every other Sunday when they watched the 49ers.
Dahl mashed the flaps closed and snatched up another box. It felt like a hot shot of sulfuric acid had been pumped into his blood stream.
Mia was heading for the truck as he stomped down the metal ramp. There were folds between her eyebrows, worried by whatever she saw on his face.
"One of those boxes in there," he spat, "it's for you." He stared her down with venom in his eyes as he passed her, as if anything was her fault. He looked at her with hatred, as if that made any goddamn sense at all.
****
Night had settled over them, making the house feel tiny and vulnerable, ostentatiously remote.
Dahl slouched on a pile of cushions from the couch that wouldn't be arriving until tomorrow. Mia called to him from the kitchen, "I'm going to open a bottle of wine. Do you want a glass?"
He didn't. He wanted alcohol, but wine was too sensual, too romantic. This wasn't a candle lit dinner. He didn't know what marketing firm had implanted that bullshit in his head, but there it was. He wanted medicinal, with a punitive burn. "Could I get a glass of bourbon instead?"
"Ice?"
"No ice."
She brought him his glass and put a hand on his shoulder. He flinched like she'd given him a static charge. She kept her hand there and he could feel himself recoiling beneath her palm. He didn't want to, willed himself to stop, to relax, just calm down and let his girlfriend touch him like a goddamn human being.
Mia must have sensed it. She took her hand away. "Come on, let's get to bed. You must be exhausted."
"Who me? I'm great. But I'm sure you're exhausted."
"Not at all," she said, "but then I am much, much younger than you."
"Right, and two years from now when you're all growed up like me, maybe you'll have my stamina and fortitude."
"There's no shame in being super old. You did very well today. You did very well for your age."
Mia helped him to his feet and they took their drinks to the bedroom. She was smiling now and Dahl told himself, See, that wasn't so hard. You can be more than a self-absorbed asshole if you really put your mind to it.
Mia got into a nightshirt and slid into bed. "Okay, I admit it. Bringing the mattress today was a genius move."
"I like it when you call me a genius." The playful banter was already starting to sour in his gut. This was too much. It almost sounded flirtatious, which sickened him. "I'm going to bring in Buck."
He stepped out onto the back porch and was gripped by the
chill air. The charcoal fog clotted the sky, choking off the glow of the moon. The bedroom light barely touched the outermost skin of the forest and it was nothing but living blackness beyond. He felt a different energy coming off it than he had during the day. It seemed to be crawling with life.
Buck was barking somewhere in the darkness. Dahl called to him and he came running, bounding up the stairs, tail whipping side to side, smile so big he might swallow his own head. This place may seem like Siberia to a six-year-old boy, but it was Disneyland for a two-year-old lab.
Dahl tossed Buck's stinky, fur covered bed in the corner of the living room and Buck knew what to do. He flopped onto it, perfectly content, tail slapping the hardwood floor. Dahl envied him. Buck had no use for guilt. No capacity for regret. God bless that dumb beast.
****
Dahl lay in bed, concentrating on not thinking too hard. If tonight was like most nights, he'd be more clear and alert than he had been all day, one thought tripping over the next, until the first hint of morning light coloured the sky outside the bedroom window. Then he'd shut down, get two, maybe three hours of deep, viscid sleep until he woke feeling queasy and haggard. This would carry on for a few days until he collapsed and got fourteen hours straight. At least if the recent past was any indication. Not that he was complaining. Lord knew there were worse things to complain about.
The silence was shattered with one big murderous bark from Buck, then three more. Mia groaned but didn't seem to wake. Dahl slid out of bed to calm Buck down before she did. He heard skittering on the back deck, Buck's bowl skidding across the wooden planks. It sounded like some small animal, probably a raccoon getting into Buck's food. That's something they'll have to deal with now, wild animals.
Buck was low over his front paws, nose at the crack beneath the back door, growling and huffing at the frantic activity on the deck.
Dahl caught just the last of it, the animals scurrying away, disappearing down the stairs. But what he saw was enough to make him feel momentarily untethered. In that brief glimpse, what he saw were not raccoons. Nor did they look like anything he recognised. It was just a quick glance. In the darkness. Who knew what they would look like, how different, in the daylight? But the animals he thought he saw looked simian. In that second, they appeared to be running on their hind legs and the knuckles of their long arms. They were like little apes, barely more than a foot tall, but fleshier. Big round heads. And hairless, pale and glowing in the moonlight. The moonlight that was still behind the occluding fog.