by Various
Abruptly he laughed. For a minute he had been afraid of her, what she might reveal about him. "Right," he said. "Tell that to Ruthie Jenson."
Mary Beth shrugged. "You give poor little Ruthie exactly what she craves—mistreatment. She takes it home and nurtures it. And then she feels guilty. The Boland kid you intended to rescue. You would have had her, her sister, and their mother all feeling guilty. Truman Cox. How many free drinks you let him give you, Eddie? Not even one, I bet. Stuart Winkle? You run his paper for him. You ever use that key to his cabin? He really wants you to use it, Eddie. A token repayment. George Allmann. Harriet Davies . . . it's a long list, Eddie, the people you've done little things for. The people who go through life owing you, feeling guilty about not liking you, not sure why they don't. I was on that list, too, Eddie, but not now. I just paid you in full."
"Okay," he said heavily. "Now that we've cleared up the mystery about me, what about her?" He pointed past Mary Beth at the girl on his bed.
"It, Eddie. It. First the video, and make some copies, get them into a safe place, and then announce. How does that sound?"
He shrugged. "Whatever you want."
She grinned her crooked smile and shook her head at him. "Forget it, Eddie. I'm paid up for years to come. Look, I've got to get back to the office. I'll keep my eyes on the wires, anything coming in, and as soon as Homer shows, we'll be back. Are you okay? Can you hold out for the next few hours?"
"Yeah, I'm okay." He watched her pull on her coat and walked to the porch with her. Before she left, he said, "One thing, Mary Beth. Did it even occur to you that some people like to help out? No ulterior motive or anything, but a little human regard for others?"
She laughed. "I'll give it some thought, Eddie. And you give some thought to having perfected a method to make sure people leave you alone, keep their distance. Okay? See you later." He
stood on the porch, taking deep breaths. The air was mild; maybe the sun would come out later on. Right now the world smelled good, scoured clean, fresh. No other house was visible. He had let the trees and shrubbery grow wild, screening everything from view. It was like being the last man on Earth, he thought suddenly. The heavy growth even screened out the noise from the little town. If he listened intently, he could make out engine sounds, but no voices, no one else's music that he usually detested, no one else's cries or laughter.
Mary Beth never had been ugly, he thought then. She was good-looking in her own way even now, going on middle age. She must have been a real looker as a younger woman. Besides, he thought, if anyone ever mocked her, called her names, she would slug the guy. That would be her way. And he had found his way, he added, then turned brusquely and went inside and locked the door after him.
He took a kitchen chair to the bedroom and sat down by her. She was shivering again. He reached over to pull the covers more tightly about her, then stopped his motion and stared. The black mantle thing did not cover her head as completely as it had before. He was sure it now started farther back. And more of her cheeks was exposed. Slowly he drew away the cover and then turned her over. The mantle was looser, with folds where it had been taut before. She reacted violently to being uncovered, shuddering long spasmlike movements.
He replaced the cover.
"What the hell are you?" he whispered. "What's happening to you?"
He rubbed his eyes hard and sat down, regarding her with a frown. "You know what's going to happen, don't you? They'll take you somewhere and study you, try to make you talk, if you can, find out where you're from, what you want, where there are others. . . . They might hurt you. Even kill you."
He thought again of the great golden pools that were her eyes, of how her skin felt like silk over a firm substance, of the insubstantiality of her body, the lightness when he carried her.
"What do you want here?" he whispered. "Why did you come?"
After a few minutes of silent watching, he got up and found his dry shoes in the closet and pulled them on. He put on a plaid shirt that was very warm, and then he wrapped the sleeping girl in the blanket and carried her to his car and placed her on the backseat. He went back inside for another blanket and put that over her, too.
He drove up his street, avoiding the town, using a back road that wound higher and higher up the mountain. Stuart Winkle's cabin, he thought. An open invitation to use it any time he wanted. He drove carefully, taking the curves slowly, not wanting to jar her, to roll her off the backseat. The woods pressed in closer when he left the road for a log road. From time to time he could see the ocean, then he turned and lost it again. The road clung to the steep mountainside, climbing, always climbing; there was no other traffic on it. The loggers had finished with this area; this was state land, untouchable, for now anyway. He stopped at one of the places where the ocean spread out below him and watched the waves rolling in forever and ever, unchanging, unknowable. Then he drove on. The cabin was high on the mountain. Up here the trees were mature growth, mammoth and silent, with deep shadows beneath them, little understory growth in the dense shade. The cabin was redwood, rough, heated with a wood stove, no running water, no electricity. There was oil for a lamp, and plenty of dry wood stacked under a shed, and a store of food that Stuart had said he should consider his own. There were twin beds in the single bedroom and a couch that opened to a double bed in the living room. Those two rooms and the kitchen made up the cabin.
He carried the girl inside and put her on one of the beds; she was entirely enclosed in blankets like a cocoon. Hurriedly he made a fire in the stove and brought in a good supply of logs. Like a hothouse orchid, he thought; she needed plenty of heat. After the cabin started to heat up, he took off his outer clothing and lay down beside her, the way he had done before, and as before, she conformed to his body, melted into him, absorbed his warmth. Sometimes he dozed, then he lay quietly thinking of his childhood, of the heat that descended on Indiana like a physical substance, of the tornadoes that sometimes came, murderous funnels that sucked life away, shredded everything. He dozed and dreamed and awakened and dreamed in that state also.
He got up to feed the fire and tossed in the film Mary Beth had given him to guard. He got a drink of water at the pump in the kitchen and lay down by her again. His fatigue increased, but pleasurably. His weariness was without pain, a floating sensation that was between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes he talked quietly to her, but not much, and what he said he forgot as soon as the words formed. It was better to lie without sound, without motion. Now and then she shook convulsively and then subsided again. Twilight came, darkness, then twilight again. Several times he aroused enough to build up the fire.
When it was daylight once more, he got up, reeling as if drunken; he pulled on his clothes and went to the kitchen to make instant coffee. He sensed her presence behind him. She was standing up, nearly as tall as he was, but incredibly insubstantial, not thin, but as slender as a straw. Her golden eyes were wide open. He could not read the expression on her face.
"Can you eat anything?" he asked. "Drink water?"
She looked at him. The black mantle was gone from her head; he could not see it anywhere on her as she faced him. The strange folds of skin at her groin, the boneless appearance of her body, the lack of hair, breasts, the very color of her skin looked right now, not alien, not repellent. The skin was like cool silk, he knew. He also knew this was not a woman, not a she, but something that should not be here, a creature, an it.
"Can you speak? Can you understand me at all?"
Her expression was as unreadable as that of a wild creature, a forest animal, aware, intelligent, unknowable.
Helplessly he said, "Please, if you can understand me, nod. Like this." He showed her, and in a moment she nodded. "And like this for no," he said. She mimicked him again.
"Do you understand that people are looking for you?"
She nodded slowly. Then very deliberately she turned around, and instead of the black mantle that had grown on her head, down her back, there was an irid
escence, a rainbow of pastel colors that shimmered and gleamed. Eddie sucked in his breath as the new growth moved, opened slightly more.
There wasn't enough room in the cabin for her to open the wings all the way. She stretched them from wall to wall. They looked like gauze, filmy, filled with light that was alive. Not realizing he was moving, Eddie was drawn to one of the wings, reached out to touch it. It was as hard as steel and cool. She turned her golden liquid eyes to him and drew her wings in again.
"We'll go someplace where it's warm," Eddie said hoarsely. "I'll hide you. I'll smuggle you somehow. They can't have you!" She walked through the living room to the door and studied the handle for a moment. As she reached for it, he lumbered after her, lunged toward her, but already she was opening the door, slipping out.
"Stop! You'll freeze. You'll die!"
In the clearing of the forest, with sunlight slanting through the giant trees, she spun around, lifted her face upward, and then opened her wings all the way. As effortlessly as a butterfly, or a bird, she drew herself up into the air, her wings flashing light, now gleaming, now appearing to vanish as the light reflected one way and another.
"Stop!" Eddie cried again. "Please! Oh, God, stop! Come back!"
She rose higher and looked down at him with her golden eyes. Suddenly the air seemed to tremble with sound, trills and arpeggios and flutings. Her mouth did not open as the sounds increased until Eddie fell to his knees and clapped his hands over his ears, moaning. When he looked again, she was still rising, shining, invisible, shining again. Then she was gone. Eddie pitched forward into the thick layer of fir needles and forest humus and lay still. He felt a tugging on his arm and heard Mary Beth's furious curses but as if from a great distance. He moaned and tried to go to sleep again. She would not let him.
"You goddamn bastard! You filthy son of a bitch! You let it go! Didn't you? You turned it loose!"
He tried to push her hands away.
"You scum! Get up! You hear me? Don't think for a minute,
Buster, that I'll let you die out here! That's too good for you, you lousy tub of lard. Get up!"
Against his will he was crawling, then stumbling, leaning on her, being steadied by her. She kept cursing all the way back inside the cabin, until he was on the couch, and she stood over him, arms akimbo, glaring at him.
"Why? Just tell me why. For God's sake, tell me Eddie, why?" Then she screamed at him, "Don't you dare pass out on me again. Open those damn eyes and keep them open!"
She savaged him and nagged him, made him drink whiskey that she had brought along, then made him drink coffee. She got him to his feet and made him walk around the cabin a little, let him sit down again, drink again. She did not let him go to sleep, or even lie down, and the night passed.
A fine rain had started to fall by dawn. Eddie felt as if he had been away a long time, to a very distant place that had left few memories. He listened to the soft rain and at first thought he was in his own small house, but then he realized he was in a strange cabin and that Mary Beth was there, asleep in a chair. He regarded her curiously and shook his head, trying to clear it. His movement brought her sharply awake.
"Eddie, are you awake?"
"I think so. Where is this place?"
"Don't you remember?"
He started to say no, checked himself, and suddenly he was remembering. He stood up and looked about almost wildly.
"It's gone, Eddie. It went away and left you to die. You would have died out there if I hadn't come, Eddie. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
He sat down again and lowered his head into his hands. He knew she was telling the truth.
"It's going to be light soon," she said. "I'll make us something to eat, and then we'll go back to town. I' 11 drive you. We'll come back in a day or so to pick up your car." She stood up and groaned. "My God, I feel like I've been wrestling bears all night. I hurt all over."
She passed close enough to put her hand on his shoulder briefly. "What the hell, Eddie. Just what the hell."
In a minute he got up also and went to the bedroom, looked at the bed where he had lain with her all through the night. He approached it slowly and saw the remains of the mantle. When he tried to pick it up, it crumbled to dust in his hand.
Grave Angels
by
Richard Kearns
A former editor of the SFWA Bulletin, Richard Kearns has published stories in Orbit 21, Dragons of Light, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. He lives in Beverly Hills, California.
Here he offers us a poignant and eloquent exploration of the ambiguous borderland between life and death . . .
I first met Mr. Beauchamps when he dug Aunt Fannie's grave, the day before she died. I can remember it very clearly.
School was over, the heat of summer had finally settled in, withering the last of spring's magnolia blossoms, and I had just turned ten. Bobby, my older brother, and his friends had gone to the swimming hole down by the Dalton place, but I hadn't gone with them—not because I didn't want to. The last time I'd gone, they'd stolen my clothes. I figured it'd be at least another week before it'd be safe to go with them.
So I'd gone to the Evans Cemetery instead.
There were two cemeteries inside the Evans city limits—one for whites and one for blacks. It's still that way, as a matter of fact. But the white cemetery—the Evans Cemetery proper—had sixteen of the biggest oak trees in all of Long County, growing close enough together so you could move from one tree to the next without having to get down again. I liked to go there, especially on hot days, and climb the trees, read, watch the motorcars hurry in and out of Evans like big black bugs. There was always a, breeze in the oaks, and I was sure it never touched the earth.
I used to sit in those branches for hours at a time, like a meadowlark or a squirrel, listening to that breeze. Underneath me, I could feel the trees bend and sway, creaking and rattling and bumping into one another, as if they were all alive and talking among themselves, elbowing each other and laughing sometimes.
I remember it was a Saturday, and I remember I'd brought Robinson Crusoe with me to read. I'd read it before, but it was a story I enjoyed—I liked pretending that I was entirely alone, free to do whatever I wanted.
I had just gotten comfortable on my branch when I heard someone humming down underneath me, and the sound of wood being tossed into a pile on the ground. Quietly, I closed my book and turned around to spy.
There was an old black man standing with his back to me, maybe thirty feet away from the tree I was in. He was dressed in blue and white striped overalls and a white long-sleeved shirt. On his head was an engineer's cap like the men wore down in the railway yard—it had blue and white stripes in it too. Next to him was a wheelbarrow—old, rust- and dirt-encrusted, its contents spilled on the ground: several two-by-fours of different lengths, painted white; a big tan canvas, all folded up; and digging tools.
He took his cap .off, mopped his head with a big red bandanna handkerchief—he was partly bald—put the hat back on, stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket, and studied the graves for a moment, fists on his hips.
Then he sighed, shook his head, and, mumbling and grunting, squatted and scooped up the pieces of lumber in his arms. Their ends flailed the air every which way as he stood again.
He made his way over by Great-Great-Grandpa Evans's grave—the one with the angel sculpted in red granite—where, after deciding on a spot, he spent a couple of minutes meticulously arranging the two-by-fours so they formed a . perfect white rectangle against the green grass. He then retrieved the canvas, spread it next to the area he'd staked out, rolled up his sleeves, took out a shovel, and started digging up the sod.
I was fascinated. He worked all morning without a stop, carefully placing shovelfuls of the caramel brown earth on top of the canvas, making sure that as he dug, the sides of the hole were straight, swinging the pickax in big arcs over his head, or chiseling at the sides with it in tin
y hammerlike strokes, slow and steady. He hummed to himself, sang songs I'd never heard before, grunted a lot, talked to himself whenever he thought there was a problem
keeping the sides straight up and down, chuckling more and more as he got deeper.
He stopped when the sun was overhead and he had dug up to his thighs. I could tell he was hot.
He crawled out, put the pickax and shovel in the wheelbarrow, and then spent a couple of minutes inspecting his work. After that, he walked straight toward the oaks, pulling the wheelbarrow behind him.
I had been pleased with my spying. I had hardly moved all morning, even when I got bored watching him, and watched the cars on Route 85 instead, or the lazy crows circle overhead. I hadn't made a sound.
But he walked right to the tree I was hiding in, parked the wheelbarrow, looked up through the leaves like he knew I was there the whole time, cupped his hands over his mouth, and called out: "Timothy Evans, you come down from there right now!"
I was so scared I dropped Robinson Crusoe. I watched it fall, sickeningly, right into his wheelbarrow. It took a long time to get there.
I didn't move, hoping he'd go away. He didn't.
"Timothy!"
"What makes you think Timothy Evans is up here?" I yelled back, trying to disguise my voice.
"Well, now, I know who's up there and who ain't, so you get your rear down here, Timothy Evans. No games!"
I slithered down a couple of levels, where we could see each other better, and changed tactics. "Why?"
"It's lunchtime."
"I have mine," I countered, showing him my brown bag.
"Mine's better," he said, pulling a tan wicker basket out from under his wheelbarrow. "Besides, I do believe I'll go home with your book if you don't come and get it."
"How'd you do that?"
"Do what?"