Out spilled the baby clothes she’d gotten at her shower.
She remembered that morning, being caught off guard not because her few friends had surprised her, but because, in her superstitious family, no one ever threw a shower before the birth—it was considered bad luck. At first, she’d faked her glee; eventually, though, the tiny booties, burp cloths, and elephant-and-bunny patterned jumpers had assuaged her discomfort, and by the end of the day she’d been excited.
Now, however, she reacted to the pile of still-tagged clothes as she would a litter of dead kittens. She sank to her knees, her sobs bouncing off the pristine walls, shiny floors, polished countertops.
She’d calmed down and had just resolved to get a trash bag when a movement caught her eye.
Out on the lawn.
She stood, wiped her eyes, peered out the window.
Blinking back at her was a rabbit the size of an adult golden retriever.
An adult golden retriever with antlers.
She froze, fearful that it could leap at her and break through the glass.
Its expression seemed to change. As though it had emotion, as though it could read her mind and was thrilled that she felt threatened. It opened its mouth and snarled at her, baring several dagger-like teeth.
She bolted for the bathroom, yanked down the blinds, locked the door, and perched on the edge of the tub. For a moment, the flamingo and chili stick figures on the shower curtain seemed to move, but she wasn’t going back out there. She’d wait here until Reese came home—
She felt a gush between her legs.
She’d wet herself.
Well, I can’t sit here soaked.
She ventured into the hall and through every room, cautiously creeping up on each window from the side, in case it was waiting.
It wasn’t.
She recalled the jackrabbit outside the woods the day before. Silly. Your eyes are blurry with tears; those probably really weren’t antlers but sticks or something and you got confused.
She pulled fresh clothes and while she was showering decided not to mention the creature to Reese.
This became increasingly difficult over the next few days. At night, she’d startle awake and out the window spot what she’d swear were two or three of the beasts back by the line of trees, watching her. When she took out the garbage, she’d catch a fleeting swatch of fur ducking around the house. The thumping on the roof became frequent. And sometimes, when she was in the bathroom, she’d hear scratching on the other side of the wall.
Finally, one night at dinner, she said something.
“Jackalopes, huh?”
“Yes.” She focused on a piece of lettuce in her bowl. “I told you all about them at—”
“I know what you told me.” He set down his fork, wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Last time it was trolls, Kristina.”
“But—”
He reached across the table, set a hand on hers. “You want me to check around the house?”
She nodded.
~~**~~
He found nothing; he’d even waited up at night. The thumping continued, and each time they heard it, he’d gone to check and discovered only acorns. Yet during the day, she still saw jackalopes—more of them, even, and babies, too. Once, she pulled down every blind in the house, but all that yielded was the sight of their shadows, following her from room to room.
Reese became increasingly impatient.
“I checked everywhere. The garage. Back by the well. Even a few hundred feet into the woods. There’s nothing. It’s how pregnancy affects you, and I know you’re spooked, but maybe you could leave the TV on during the day to keep you company. Or go out.”
“It would help if I weren’t here alone all the time,” she argued. “They didn’t say you were going to be in that office seven days a week.”
He opened the fridge, grabbed a root beer, and cracked it open. “I have to be. The state’s in crisis. Everything’s burning. Hopefully it’s just for a bit longer.”
But she knew what she was seeing wasn’t caused by her pregnancy, and the next day she Googled Ways to Get Rid of Jackalopes.
She learned that the female’s milk was medicinal. That they only gave birth during lightning storms. That they were masters at mimicry, even of a person’s voice. That they were shy (my ass) unless approached (and then God help you). But all she had to do to capture them so she could kill them was put out bowls of whiskey and wait until they were too drunk to move.
Whiskey.
Jack Daniels, her old, comforting . . . dangerous friend.
She hadn’t drunk much during her last pregnancy—at least not that she remembered. At first, she’d only taken a couple of sips here and there because of that burning need she could neither ignore nor defeat. Then she’d down a glass at noon to get the edge off the loneliness, the fear of that call telling her Reese wasn’t coming home. She’d exchanged that for a couple just after he left for work, so she could focus on the household chores; later, she’d added just one glass after he was asleep, to knock herself out. It hadn’t added up to much. Not really.
And the women in her family had always spoken the truth, that there was a membrane that protected the baby, so she hadn’t been drinking enough to cause . . .
You swore to him you wouldn’t touch another drop.
She wouldn’t. This wasn’t for her.
This was for those damn jackalopes.
A round trip to the Rite Aid liquor aisle later, Mr. Jack Daniels was eyeing her.
She looked away. No. No. No.
She went to the cupboard, grabbed a Tupperware bowl for the bait, opened the bottle, and poured.
God, it smelled delicious. The cleansing sting of alcohol, charred wood . . . a hint of maple.
Have some. Just a sip, said a voice in her head.
No. She stopped pouring.
Come on, said the voice. You’ll feel so much better.
I said no. She opened the microwave, set the bowl inside, and slammed the door shut.
“Walk away,” she spoke aloud. “Walk away, pull yourself together, and then you can put the bait outside.”
But she didn’t walk away. She stood, staring at the open bottle.
And then she found herself rummaging in the cabinets for anything she could use as a rocks glass. Reese had tossed them long ago, so all she found was a Pyrex measuring cup. She looked back at Jack, then into the cup, which had markings: 2 OZ, 4 OZ, 6 OZ. She could have two ounces, just two.
Relief awaits you inside, a nice cold drink that understands you when no one else does . . .
She opened the freezer, seized the ice cubes, listened to their soothing music as they hit the glass.
Now, the voice had changed its opinion: You promised.
It’s no big deal, she argued back.
“It was no big deal last time either, was it? And look what happened,” Reese’s voice echoed from the empty foyer.
Shit! The one day he’d come home early! “I was getting a glass of—”
No one.
“Reese?”
No response.
“Reese? Are you home?”
Not a sound.
She rushed to the garage door. It was open, but there was no Jeep. He wasn’t around. No one else was in the house . . .
But the garage door had been open. Her eyes drifted to the pages she’d printed about the jackalope: masters of mimicry, including the human voice.
. . . except maybe one of them. In her house.
A flickering near the trash caught her eye, and she heard a low growl.
There.
A jackalope. A littler grayer than the one at the gas station, but one nonetheless. Staring, baring, snarling.
Another thump on the roof.
A second one appeared.
They upset the garbage cans, which shifted with hollow thuds—
—and then there were three. The one that appeared to lead the pack was the golden retriever-sized creature she’d seen around;
a thread of mucus dangled from the corner of its mouth.
They advanced.
She dove through the door and slammed it, backing against the wood, her chest aching as she struggled against what felt like an inflated balloon inside her.
She beheld the J.D. on the counter. Still. Absolutely still, quiet, as what she imagined an ash-buried landscape might be like.
Clink!
She jumped.
An ice cube in the Pyrex had melted, shifting.
Don’t drink any. You need every drop to get those fuckers drunk. There were three, they were big, and one fucking fifth of J.D. might not be enough.
But suppose it was. Once they were wasted, how would she slay them?
A knife.
There were knives in the house, somewhere. Reese had packed them away, hidden them in those dark weeks between the stillbirth and the new conception, forced them both to use plastic knives. But he wouldn’t have thrown them away, she knew that. They were probably in one of the kitchen boxes.
She eyed the first box he’d brought in; he’d placed it near the back slider, stacked others on top of it.
That’s the one.
Thump. Thump.
They were trying to get in.
The thumping became banging became shuddering, and she turned to the door, squeezed her eyes shut and pushed with everything—
“Are you kidding me?”
Reese’s voice.
She slowed her breathing, opened her eyes.
“I said, are you kidding me, Kristina? Are you fucking kidding me?”
She turned.
It was him. He was standing next to the counter, holding up the open bottle of J.D.
She was still panting but managed, “Oh, no, I’m not drinking—”
“I can’t believe you’re pulling this shit again!” He brought the bottle down against the marble counter. Glass and brown liquid fountained to the tile, but he’d only broken the bottle’s neck. He slammed it down, chest heaving.
Her face burned. “But I’m not! I’m not! I swear, it’s—”
“It’s what, Kristina? What?”
Still shaky, she swiped the printouts from the counter, thrust them at him. “Here!”
He rolled his eyes. “We’ve been through this, Kristina. Last time—”
She couldn’t stand it anymore; her flesh crawled. “That’s because I was drinking last time, okay? I admit it, I was a drunk, but this time I’m not! The kid at the gas station said these things are real and vicious and they imitate people’s voices and I heard you talking when you weren’t here and there’s been growling, and banging, and I see them all the time in the yard and they stalk—”
“Stop!”
For a moment, there was only the sound of her breathing.
He said, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the whiskey for?”
She cleared her throat, read: “It is believed a jackalope can be caught by putting whiskey outside. It will drink and become intoxicated, and then you can capture it without it mauling you to death.” She turned the text to face him. “Wikipedia, see?”
He crossed his arms. “A fifth.”
“They’re really big. But they’re so big I don’t think even a fifth’s going to be enough.”
He nodded, pressing his lips together. “And what are you going to do when you catch them?”
“Kill them.” She felt a pain in her lower back, rubbed it. “They could kill the baby, Reese. We can’t have this.”
He just stood, and she was relieved: he believed her.
Then his expression darkened. He grabbed the broken bottle, marched to the sink, and poured the booze down the drain.
She panicked. “No! Don’t! We need—”
He smashed the bottle against the porcelain basin and glowered at her. “Do you think I’m an asshole?”
The phrase felt like a slap. “No—”
“You. Promised.”
“I—”
“I. Nothing. You think I wanted to stop fighting fires? You think I wanted to move all the way down here?”
“You—”
“Bullshit, Kristina! I gave up doing something I loved to get the pressure off you so you wouldn’t drink and our baby might have a brain!”
The words hit her full in the stomach. “What?”
“Our baby had anencephaly. No brain, no spinal cord. Whatever was there looked like raw giblets. Thank God it was born dead!”
She fought the bile rising in the back of her throat, succeeded when she stopped trying to picture it. She took a deep breath, could barely eke: “But you said you didn’t remember eith—”
“I fucking remember! Of course I fucking remember, I hadn’t spent the previous nine months drunk off my ass! It was horrifying, Kristina! It’s burned into my brain! Right here!” He pressed his thumb to his forehead. “I see it when I sleep! I see it all day long! And I see it when I look at you!”
He stormed from the room, slamming their bedroom door so hard the house shimmied.
She collapsed to her knees and threw up.
When her head cleared, she desperately wanted J.D., and lamented its loss.
Then she remembered the bowl in the microwave, and for the first time, something else: her baby’s swollen, misshapen head (aliens in Close Encounters): one eye lidless, the other the size of a tangerine; a bulging, plum-colored cheek and the smell of rancid meat and alcohol.
She set her hand on her stomach. No. Not this time.
She toed into the bathroom and curled in the tub.
The creepy Caribbean stick figures felt like old friends.
~~**~~
She woke up in their bed, and from the light, she could tell it was afternoon; the glowing red letters on the clock confirmed nearly four. She called for Reese, but there was no answer; she padded into the kitchen, dimly recalling it was Sunday of Labor Day weekend but glad, for once, he was at work.
The broken J.D. bottle was gone, the spilled whiskey had been wiped away, the Pyrex was upside down in the dish drainer.
Thump.
Scratch, scratch.
Had Reese found the bowl?
She opened the microwave door, relieved for the sweet whiff of burnt maple. The bowl was there. Still half full.
She reached for it, set it down on the counter.
Her cell phone. Ringing.
Reese.
“Listen to me. There’s a brand new fire, like an hour ago. Just north of the state park, not far from the house. This one’s a storm, and it’s moving fast. We’re being evacuated.”
She pulled up the blinds. A thin haze of gray smoke filtered the sun. At least it’s not so bright anymore.
“Honey?”
“I’m here.”
“Pack. Essentials, grab only essentials. I’m on my way, I’m coming to get you out of there, okay?”
At the edge of the woods, there were seven pairs of eyes. Their owners were hopping furiously toward the house.
You won’t have time to get them drunk, now. You’re going to have to do this the hard way.
She went to the kitchen.
The hard way.
With a little lube to help.
No.
“Honey?”
Yes. You have no choice. Just a little bit. It won’t hurt anything. Not just this once.
“Kristina?”
“Yup.” She balanced the phone between her shoulder and ear and lifted the bowl to her lips.
“I’m sorry about last night. What I said.”
She took a long swallow. And another. God, it was like hot honey on a sore throat. “I know.”
“Just pack.”
“I will.”
She hung up. The smell of fire was in the air, all right, but she felt calm.
She returned to the living room. The jackalopes had multiplied; a raft of them was gaining ground.
The knives. Find them.
From the kitchen pile she hurled one box after another aside until she got to the last one. She s
truggled with the tape, destroyed the box cover; inside, stacks of Bubble-Wrapped packages.
Thump, thump, thump
She glanced into the living room. Outside, clouds of smoke blacked the sun.
The fire was coming. And so were they.
She started to cough, grabbing bundle after bundle, tearing into the plastic with her untrimmed nails: soap dish, pitcher, cutting board—
At last. The expensive boning knife. She was getting somewhere. Where was the chef’s knife—
She heard the shattering of glass in the living room. The jackalopes funneled through the window and swarmed her.
The big one poised on her stomach. She felt its asthmatic breathing and low growling, like the purr of a rabid cat, in her body. A bloody thread of mucus dripped from the corner of its mouth onto her shirt.
Her hands trembled. Do it, thrust the knife into it right now and this will all be over . . .
The thing snarled savagely. She felt its pressure on her belly, on her baby, smelled something like mold—
It was about to go for her throat.
She raised the knife as high as she could and came down on it.
Labor-like pain splintered her innards. She opened her eyes.
There was no jackalope.
There was only the knife thrust deep into her rounded belly, blood geysering to the shiny floors.
DECONSTRUCTING FIREFLIES
Co-written with Nathan D. Schoonover
M y son likes to take things apart, and perhaps before The Shortage mothers would’ve written this off as the typical penchant of boys. But mothers before The Shortage did not live on farms populated by Barn Boys who camped out in the old cement milk house, doing dickens with the whiskey. Mothers before The Shortage did not have to listen to the Barn Boys howling at night as they rewire the chickens and make bets on how fast they can get them to lay eggs before the birds’ hard ruby eyes roll back in their heads and their feather coverings catch fire in a rain of sparks. Mothers before The Shortage did not have to worry about husbands with byrotechnic degrees teaching their sons that harming the animals is okay—not only do we just breed more in the laboratory, but the metal they’re made from prevents them from feeling pain.
Jigger, Hap, and Lair are not the worst my husband could’ve found for Barn Boys, despite the influence they’ve had on little Nate. They spend their days doing useful things: oiling the pigs’ joints when the mud seeps through their skin; feeding the cows and fine-tuning the chickens’ groins so there’s enough eggs down the market shelves, which keeps us out of trouble with the government. They fix the tractors and keep the plumbing running smoothly. They till the fields every day without having to be told, and they know which chemicals enhance the growth rate of which plants. All of that’s good: there’s little time for policing. We’re responsible for feeding all of Cleghern. Have been ever since the Collier farm over in Newton burned to the ground last year. Collier had such lazy Barn Boys, you see, that the man himself had to waste his afternoons baling hay and shearing the meat off the cow frames. He could only keep up with his lab production late in the p.m., and one November midnight he passed out from exhaustion and knocked into the AutoWeld. When it tipped over, the whole place went up.
The Shadows Behind Page 20