THE SUB A Study In Witchcraft

by Thomas M. Disch

  The neighboring farms were careful with their garbage from a concern for raccoons and other scavengers, so Carl had no other recourse or resource than what nature and the highway provided. He found himself in competition with the crows for roadkill and kept his eye on the skies above County Road B, especially where it curved around the tip of Turtle Lake. The crows dining on wheel-burgers would scatter as a car approached and could be seen circling above their interrupted dinner. Once Carl lucked into a freshly killed yearling and was able to drag it into a ditch beside the road and eat till his gut was full. The crows were furious. Briefly he enjoyed the once familiar pleasure of a decisive social superiority, which he’d known as a C.O. “Eat shit!” he would have jeered at them—if pigs could talk.

  No one is ever lost in the woods, for they follow, like water, the course of least resistance, traversing the paths made smooth for them by the deer and other denizens of the wilderness. Those paths may not lead where they would like to go, of course. They will lead to some deeper, safer solitude, where fear may hide itself and they can risk sleep where peril is least. So it was that Carl often found himself by the rock that served as Bonnie Poupillier’s unmarked grave, having followed the tight northwestward meander of the trail first blazed by the unquiet spirit of Wes Kellog. Wes sniffed for evil; the deer followed where he led, and Carl did now as well, until he had reached that rock within its crescent of solid ground, moated round with bog. It was close by that he’d discovered the stand of water lilies whose roots had sustained him in the worst days of his long hunger. They were gone, but the rock itself, with its shadowing ledge, offered its own cool comfort. He would wriggle in under the ledge, where the soil was cool and moist, and rest with a sense of sanctuary, and there quietly long for oblivion. Not death, for he feared death as every animal must. He craved, like every other derelict, the peace that mimics death. A satiety that blots out the need to be ever on the move. An evening coolness and dimming of the light. A brief reprieve from the prison of daily life.

  Imagine, then, his dismay when he came to that sanctuary and saw Merle on top of that rock he’d thought his own, secure refuge, the man who’d twice tried to kill him. Carl froze, knowing he could be seen, fearing he would be heard if he tried to run away. Merle had only to turn his head.

  But Merle had other matters on his mind, and a pint bottle of whiskey in his hand. Perhaps he was drunk. Carl shared the local opinion concerning the Indians on the rez, all of them drunkards who couldn’t handle their booze like a white man. Whiskey was their fatal weakness, the reason so many wound up in New Ravensburg or at the bottom of Leech Lake.

  Slowly Carl moved back into the obscuring undergrowth of the woods. Merle had not heard him. He lifted the bottle once, and then a second time, draining it, and then lowered himself so that he lay supine on the rock, gazing up at the midafternoon sky, streaked with motionless wisps of cirrus.

  High up, no more than a fleck in the blue, a crow appeared. It neared, spiraling down toward the rock and Merle, to alight on the highest limb of a nearby spruce. For a while it gazed at Merle, then, of a sudden, cawed and flapped its wings spasmodically.

  The crow flew away, but Merle still lay atop the rock, motionless, and somehow Carl knew that Merle was not there, that he had left his body to become the crow. The human Carl would never have supposed such a thing, but being under an enchantment himself, he could sense magic when it was in the air.

  He approached the rock. Merle did not stir.

  He made a snuffling sound, to which there was no response, and when he raised himself, bracing his forelegs against the rock, and snorted as loudly as he could, Merle still lay there, inert, entranced—and wholly vulnerable.

  But out of reach.

  Carl circled the rock, looking for some natural terrace of steps by which he could mount it. But there was none. On its south side, opposite the declivity in which he took his naps, he could scramble up to within inches of Merle’s right hand, five little sausages pulsing with blood.

  Mere inches.

  Merle was safe from even the hungriest pig, but Carl was more than a pig. A human spark remained—enough to allow him to pause and consider what must be done.

  He began to build a platform. From the deadwood that lay all about he dragged the likeliest branches and piled them, one on another, beside that part of the rock nearest the hand he sought to make his own. The branches would snap beneath his weight, but he would bring more branches and add them to the heap, and finally, by the simple, patient piling up of one layer on the next, he was able at last to catch Merle’s pinky in his teeth and then to tug the limp hand to where he could chomp down securely and pull Merle’s unresisting body off the rock.

  He dealt with his hand first, because it was already in his mouth, and because its small bones yielded to his jaws with such satisfying resistance. He chewed the hand to shreds before he paused—not for thought, but from pure satiety and satisfaction. In his famished state the blood was an elixir, altogether apart from the satisfaction of knowing it was Merle’s blood.

  How, now, to dispatch him? He was inclined, at first, to do for Merle what had been done for him. But Merle’s private parts were sheathed in Levi’s, and Carl had, in any case, a squeamish feeling about attacking Merle’s cock and balls with the only weapon he possessed.

  He went for the neck. It took three lunges and much shaking about before he finally was able to rip open the main vein. The dark blood spurted in a steadily diminishing rhythm into Carl’s face.

  He blinked, and licked his snout, and would have laughed, if pigs could laugh, and then he simply gorged.

  50

  Merle, meanwhile, aloft in the borrowed body of a crow, had no notion that he was, in effect, dead. Like an investor ruined in the bankruptcy of an S & L of which he is as yet unaware, he flew his private jet with his usual sense of sheer, soaring glory. Up, up, and through the blue ether, fueled by that glory but also, today, by a sense of sheer unmotivated evil, a devilishness that beat even the best drunken rage hollow. Because he was more or less sober the whole time and able to savor his cruelties as he piled them on.

  The idea had finally sunk in to Alan’s brain that Merle was his executioner and really did mean to kill him by slow degrees, that there was no exit from the basement where he lived, starving to death, amid a steady babble of television idiocies. Merle varied the programming from the dumbest cartoons in the morning to the shopping channel all through the afternoon and porn tapes after dinner, when Merle would often watch the performance with his victim. When Alan ventured to cuss him out or to beg for mercy or, in his fuzzy-headed, desperate way, to reason with him, Merle would let him go on for a while and then zap him with the cattle prod he kept handy for the purpose. But Merle didn’t punish him when he just blubbered quietly. He figured that was probably beyond the kid’s control at this point. Anyway, after almost a week with just a ration of water and other cocktails of Merle’s devising, his energy was on the wane for any kind of vocal display. Sometimes just to spice things up Merle would give him a little pick-me-up of crystal meth. Then he’d get him talking, asking all about him and Diana and her sister. The kid thought Merle was jealous and tried to reassure him that it was all over between him and Diana, that they’d never had sex, that she was Merle’s now, Alan had no claim, et cetera and so on till the meth wore off and he realized that Merle was just making him jump through hoops and it would dawn on the kid that the essential situation hadn’t changed: he was roadkill.

  Merle had never seen or heard a skylark, but he knew about them, how they rose up in the air, singing their guts out. And that was how he felt now, a skylark, except that instead of singing he cawed, and when he did, other crows took heed and headed in his direction. He was the leader of the pack.

  He speeded up, as though he were on his bike. They followed. He cawed, and they answered in a raucous chorus. And soon, ahead, there was the tower of the prison, and there were other crows already assembled there, swirling about like b
lack Ping-Pong balls in some ultimate lottery drawing.

  He did not consider why there would be a great convocation assembled before he’d led his own smaller throng there, for he was not, now, in a considering frame of mind. He was far from his dying body now; his human blood was draining into the dirt about the rock. But he was alert enough to notice that an ambulance had drawn up on the lawn near to the sweat lodge that had been erected on the prison grounds. The crows were whirling in a great gyre centered on the sweat lodge, outside of which Merle could see, with a crow’s keen vision, the familiar figure of the man he’d visited here twice before. Jim Cottonwood was stretched out on the sere grass beside the lodge, surrounded by several prison guards.

  Dead? he wondered. Was that why he’d felt such a powerful impulse to take to the air just now, so that he could be here for the fucker’s death?

  But almost as though in answer to that thought, he heard a caw among the other cawings of crows about him, and he knew Jim Cottonwood was not dead. The body that was even now being carried into the ambulance was like his own (as he supposed) on the rock, unoccupied, and Jim Cottonwood was part of the commotion around him. He had escaped the prison. How, Merle didn’t know, but he had heard his voice.

  He tried to rise, but he could not find an updraft. His wings seemed leaden, as though he’d tried to press too heavy a weight too many times. The ambulance was leaving the prison grounds, and the crows were dispersing, not as a single flock but randomly.

  Merle alighted on a telephone wire and tried to take stock. He was not thinking clearly. He wanted to be with Diana. He needed her strength. But to do that he must return to his own body.

  Wearily he lifted off and winged his way homeward. It seemed a long journey. He was not the leader of the pack now. No one followed where he led. Several times he had to interrupt his flight from sheer weariness.

  But when he arrived, there was already a flock assembled. When he saw them, when he saw himself, his crow nature asserted its primacy, and his last act, as the Merle who’d been but had ceased to be, was to join the crows assembled at their feast and to dine on his own corpse.

  51

  Vegetarians who blame the bad behavior of the meat-eating majority on their diet are being simplistic. Hitler, after all, was a vegetarian. Squeamishness in prospect of a rare T-bone is no more a virtue than a tendency to constipation. However, in some ways the old saw is true that diet is destiny and we are what we eat, especially in the spiritual realm. There, indeed, every molecule is encoded with its own arcane significance, so that the process of digestion is a kind of alchemy, transmuting the roots of turnips into the tissues of our lungs, the insect residues in our breakfast food into big biceps and rippling abs—and the blood of quick-witted, wicked Merle Two Moons into duller, porcine neurons and dendrites in the brain of Carl Kellog. Without an ongoing supply of Merle-ness in his bloodstream Carl would have been his usual metamorphic self, but while he could still taste Merle’s blood Carl was a much brighter pig.

  When, in his widening search for something to eat, Carl had first come upon Merle’s cabin, set well back from the main road, he hadn’t thought whose place it might be. He’d noted only that the lid was off the garbage can, which contained only some beer cans and glass bottles. Now, with his mind quickened, he remembered the motorcycle on the dirt drive beside the cabin. He remembered, as well, the roar of the revving engine that he’d heard occasionally in his last days in the sty when Merle had appeared on the scene. This cabin was near the rock where he’d found Merle and murdered him. It seemed to compute that the place might have been Merle’s. If so, it belonged to no one now, and any food that might be found inside was up for grabs.

  He found his way back to the cabin with no difficulty. Merle had virtually blazed a trail through the woods. And there was the motorcycle, its kickstand braced against a steel plate planted in the dirt. Carl knocked the bike over on its side for spite, as a vengeful cat might piss on a piece of furniture, but he wasted no more effort vandalizing the machine. Its owner would never get the message.

  The door to the cabin was closed, but Carl doubted it would be locked. He didn’t bother trying to manipulate the doorknob with his snout. He simply rammed into it, linebacker-style, and the latch popped at his first assault.

  He found himself in a typical backwoods bachelor pad: a single open space with separate areas for sleeping, watching TV, cooking, and eating. Spartan but a cut above plain trash. He’d known C.O.’s who lived worse. The bed, for instance, had been made; the linoleum on the floor was reasonably clean; the tabletop wasn’t littered with a week’s food scraps and empty beer cans. Merle seemed to look after himself pretty well, so Carl was hopeful as to what the refrigerator might contain.

  He was able to get the door open easily enough by propping himself against the side of the refrigerator and clamping his teeth about the handle. One backward jerk and the door swung open.

  Even from the perspective of a human thief the pickings would have been slim. Two six-packs of Bud on the lowest shelf, some bottled condiments, a tub of margarine. But nothing in the way of fresh fruits or veggies, no leftover takeout, no bakery or deli treats. No cheese. No cartons of milk or cream. Merle was clearly more redneck than yuppie. His home was not his own private 7-Eleven.

  Of course there was still the freezer compartment, but that was at the top of the refrigerator, its handle tantalizingly out of reach. Carl looked about the room for something that would serve as a stepladder to extend the reach of his snout by the few extra inches he needed. The two chairs by the kitchen table seemed too rickety, the recliner facing the TV too bulky and hard to maneuver. But over beyond the potbellied stove was just what he needed, a big old army surplus footlocker. And just to make it easier to handle, it was sitting on top of a rag rug. Carl sank his teeth into the fringed end of the rug and started tugging it and the footlocker toward the refrigerator. His progress was inchmeal, but hunger is a great motivator, and his brain was revving now at an almost human rpm. Maybe he could find work as the first pig furniture mover.

  And then he froze. For he could hear a voice, faint but not that far away. “Hello,” at first, and then another, “Hello, is someone up there?”

  Carl peered at the door and then, stupidly, at the raftered ceiling, festooned with dusty cobwebs. Why “up there”? Because (it dawned on him) this shack had a basement. In fact, the footlocker on its rug had been covering the trapdoor that was its entrance.

  “Please! I’m down here. I need help. Please…”

  It was a man’s voice, and somehow familiar. But very weak. Carl decided it posed no danger, and returned to the task of opening the freezer compartment. He had to reposition the footlocker back from the refrigerator so that he could prop his forefeet on the upper inside shelf, and then, with a quick tug, he had the freezer open—and here was a whole trailer-trash Thanksgiving dinner. Pizzas. A half-gallon of Hershey’s maple walnut ice cream. Two Hungry Man meatloaf dinners. What looked like a whole lot of sunfish in a big plastic Baggie. Something wrapped up in aluminum foil, and something else in a plastic tub. He took hold of the shelf with his teeth and pulled it loose. The pizzas and ice cream and four ice cube trays avalanched to the floor. Carl cleared out the rest of the freezer’s contents with two swipes of his snout and then, not very gracefully, dismounted from the footlocker. Mission accomplished.

  Then the voice started in again. “Please, I know you’re up there. I can hear you. I need help. I’m…” The voice fell silent, and when he tried to start again, it was like turning the ignition key on a battery that’s gone dead. “I’m… please…”

  Carl recognized the voice. It was the kid who’d worked as Diana’s gofer, who’d slopped the pigs in the sty—and sat down outside the fence and talked to Carl. He couldn’t remember what he’d talked about, but he’d been friendly in his way, as friendly as anyone is ever going to be to a pig.

  Somehow that kid was trapped down in Merle’s cellar and begging for help.


  Even as a pig Carl had a conscience, not to mention curiosity. The spoils of the freezer were scattered all about the floor of the cabin. But they wouldn’t go away. In fact, all that stuff would be tastier if it thawed a while.

  He would do the right thing.

  The trapdoor to the cellar posed a much bigger problem than the refrigerator had. It had to be lifted up, and it was not easy to get a purchase on the brass handle with his teeth. Again and again it slipped loose after he’d succeeded in raising it an inch or two, but at last he was able to slip his foot into the crack before the thing slammed down again. It hurt like a motherfucker, but with the proverbial foot in the door he got the thing tilted back against the wall.

  Except for the light that spilled down the stairs, the cellar was dark, but Carl, without even having to puzzle it out, looked where a light switch should be, on the wall of the stairwell, and sure enough there it was. He nuzzled the switch, and the cellar was filled with light. And his mind felt the same way, electrified. The refrain came back to him from the storybook he’d read so often to Kelly: I think I can, I think I can.

  He took the stairs too eagerly and too fast, and halfway down, one of the rotted steps broke beneath his weight and he tumbled the rest of the way down with a squeal of pain.

  The boy who’d been his jailer—and it was him, Carl had not mistaken the voice—lay atop a crude platform of pine planks on the cellar’s dirt floor, directly beneath the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. His wrists and ankles were fastened to the planks with chains, and his face, turned sideways toward Carl, was a sorry sight, sores and scabs and a two-week scruff of beard.