Fiends

Trade Hardcover Edition ISBN 0-913165-16-6

FIENDS Copyright ©1990 by John Farris Illustrations Copyright ©1990 by Phil Parks

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblence to actual events or locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST EDITION

Dark Harvest / P.O. Box 941 / Arlington Heights, IL / 60006

The Publishers would like to express their gratitude to the following people. Thank you: Kathy Jo Camacho, Stan and Phyllis Mikol, Jan Babiarz, Wayne Sommers, Dr. Stan Gurnick PhD, Gary Fronk, Linda Solar, Fran Phillips, The people of the All American Print Center, Luis Trevino, Raymond, Teresa and Mark Stadalsky, Tom Pas, Tony Hodes, Lynda and Ken Fotos, and Ann Cameron Williams.

And, of course, special thanks to John Farris and Phil Parks.

For Robert Gleason

In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.

—The Book of Genesis

The following is taken from an article by Katherine B. Singerline, arts editor of the
Nashville Tennesse
a
n,
which appeared in that newspaper's edition of August 2, 1970.

* * *

Perhaps the most striking talent in evidence at the inaugural Patients' Fair and Art Show belongs to Mr. Arne Horsfall, whose age is "about 70" according to officials at Cumberland State. Mr. Horsfall is mute; he does not read or write, and thus is unable to provide information about himself. No one at the hospital is able to say for sure when he was admitted; all records of older patients were destroyed in the disastrous fire that claimed many lives in 1934. But psychiatric nurse Althea Tidball, who will retire this year after forty years' service at the hospital, says that Mr. Horsfall had already been in residence "several years" before she joined the staff in 1930. It seems reasonable to conclude that Mr. Horsfall has spent all of his adult life at Cumberland State. Where he came from, who his parents were, remains a mystery that may never be solved.

Nor do we have a clue as to the inspiration for his remarkable series of drawings, all of which, in an explosion of creativity, he has produced in the past two and a half years. He works exclusively with charcoal pencil and white shoe polish on pads of newsprint provided by the hospital. According to his art instructor, Vanderbilt graduate student Enid Waller, Mr
.

Horsfall's technique is largely "pure"; that is, he does not seem to have been influenced by or even to be aware of such modern masters as Klimt and Munch, some of whose paintings come to mind when we study the wintry compositions in dusky black and shocking white, the not-quite-earthly faces that haunt us long after we have left the exhibition. Mr. Horsfall paints only portraits—one in particular, the hairless woman or wraith who may dominate his dreams. Who is she? Did she ever exist? If only Arne Horsfall could speak, what a tale he might have to tell!

1

The boy awoke to familiar sounds: the morning songs of hooded warblers and ovenbirds, the crackle of new dry wood on the fire, the daily sharpening of the ax, the skinning knife. And the unfamiliar: his father weeping.

Arne flinched beneath his blanket, wishing he could go back to sleep, no matter how bad his dreams had been, how uncomfortable the ground he slept on. But the pointer dog lying heavy against his side raised his head and yawned; warm, stenchy breath, also familiar, and preferable to the reek of hot tar that stung Arne's nostrils and brought tears to his eyes before he could focus on his surroundings.

He was thinking what had been, until now, unpardonable to think:
crazy.
His father must be crazy. But Arne's point of reference was questionable, and he knew it: the only son of Luke and Elvira Slater ("Son" but full-grown, gray-haired in fact, hugely fat and slovenly in his overalls) sat with bare feet dangling from the tailgate of the Slaters' wagon on town days, swigging Coca-cola and crying out moon-eyed and rapturously when the mood was upon him, unable to speak intelligibly. "Born without brains," an older friend of Arne's had said, contemptuously, as if this were "Son" Slater's own fault.
Crazy.
Without a doubt, Arne's father was behaving more and more oddly—but unlike "Son" Slater he had brains, so how could he suddenly have gone crazy?

Yet there was no accounting for why they were here, with chores to do at home, a cow that needed milking. Maybe, Arne thought, some of the corn could still be saved, along with the apples and pears in their orchard. Instead of laboring at this salvage they roamed almost aimlessly by day, staying to the woods, and hid at night . . . no, that was wrong, his father didn't hide. He frequently left Arne and went off alone, never saying where or troubling to explain what was on his mind. He didn't answer questions. Often he seemed not to hear Arne because he was listening so keenly to something else—in his head, in the distance. Unenlightened, Arne felt smaller than he knew himself to be, not worthy of trust. Or love. How their relationship had changed, in so few days.

Propping himself on an elbow, Arne wiped his eyes. Hawkshaw rose and stretched. Arne's father was sitting with his back to a windfall on the other side of the fire, holding down the whetstone with one foot. Honing the handax blade. Through the heat waves and wood smoke Arne looked at his oblivious father and saw him in tears.
Men didn't cry.
Fear crowded the boy's heart—like crowding a small frog, throbbing and cold, in his cupped hands. His father was crying because he was in terrible pain.

Tears on one cheek, the other a ruin. Three greenish bruises there, like putrescent fingerprints. Arne's eyes went to his father's left hand. All he could see of it was a big lump of bandages stiff from ichor. Arne didn't want to think of what the hand must look like by now.

(It froze)

That was all his father had been willing to explain, when Arne questioned him.
It froze.
In high summer, in baking heat, the hand had frozen.

Will it get better?

No.

How did you do it?

I don't know!

Crazy . . .

Arne got up clutching his blanket around him Indian-fashion and without another glance at his father walked to the edge of their campsite. The sun wasn't yet above the treeline, but most of the frost had vanished, although the bright night had glittered from it. A hard white frost, in the middle of August. But it wasn't everywhere. It seemed to follow them, from camp to camp in the remote hollows where they had been living since they left their farm—no (Arne corrected himself severely), they'd
run away,
with the clothes on their backs and not much else . . . Arne was shivering and fumbling, and he nearly started peeing in his pants before he managed to get them unbuttoned.

He wet down the furze which the mysterious frost had blighted or killed. The leaves of a nearby redbud were brown at the edges, and many had fallen. He heard his father muttering, then a loud sob. Arne shut his eyes tightly, trying to stop his own tears. He'd lost two suspender buttons, and his denim pants were low on his hips. His bare arms and ankles were covered with the festering bites of deerfly and chigger. Full-faced tow-headed boy, small eyes, like a blond hedgehog. He was dirtier than he'd ever been in his life, and hungrier. Last night, when his father returned well after dark to their camp, he had no food with him, not even a red squirrel to fry in the last of their cornmeal. He was in such a daze, so pale, nearly stumbling into the fire as he dragged more wood to it, that the boy was afraid to complain.

Hawkshaw, who must be hungry too, was already foraging among the shrubs and understory trees that grew in the moist creek bottom. But

Hawkshaw was trained to silently hunt and retrieve, not kill; he had to be fed or he would die.

His mother missing, his father hurt, his dog dying—it was too much for Arne. Trembling from anxiety and anger, the boy approached his father, who had slumped, mouth open, the ax gripped loosely in his right hand. He was far gone from fatigue. He had stood watch the remainder of the night while the fog clung to the trees like spider shrouding and the chill deepened, the moon a weak gazer, stone giant's eye.

"We're hungry!" the boy protested, and almost started to cry again. His face itched from shame, but he was scared. Scared of lies, scared of truth-whatever the truth might be. He glanced at the liquid tar in the iron pot over the fire. A bubble swelled fatly on the surface. He was puzzled; what was it for?

"Where did you come by that pitch?"

His father opened and closed his mouth, momentarily unable to speak. He was a young man, not yet thirty, strongly built. Only his youthful strength had carried him this far. He hadn't shaved for more than a week. Nor changed his clothes.

"Dante's Mill," said his father.

"Is that where you went last night?"

"Yes."

Arne felt a surge of excitement; now he was going to find out something, for sure.

"Who all did you see?"

"Nobody."

"You didn't?"

"Wasn't. . . nobody there." His father looked down at his left hand. His lips tightened. He looked at his son, ignoring the disappointment, the disbelief in Arne's eyes.

"You can go. It's safe for you now. You'll find food. You know what to pick, what to dig."

"Can I take the rifle?"

"No. Almost out of . . . ca'tridges." Arne's father shook his head slightly, annoyed by his forgetfulness. "Don't know why I didn't remember that last night. Could've helped myself to all I wanted. But bullets. . . ain't no good."

"They're good for shooting squirrel," Arne said, almost belligerently.

"Go do you some fishing. I need to . . . sleep now."

"When can we go home?" Arne fidgeted at his father's blank stare. There was the odor of wood smoke, and of tar. Corruption too, from the swollen, absurdly dying hand. "Don't you know you need a doctor?"

"I do know that. Promise you, boy, we'll go home soon. Tomorrow, when it's done."

"But what are you going to do? Can't we go home now? 1 want to see mother!"

Groaning, growling, his father stroked the blade of his ax against the whetstone again, as if unsatisfied with what was already the sharpest edge the steel could take. There was such a look of despair in his face that Arne had to dig his fingers into the bones of his chest to keep from screaming.

"Where
is
she? Where did mother go?"

His father lay back against the windfall, eyes closing. A log popped on the fire, showering sparks across the boy's bare feet. He danced wrathfully.

"Not so far that . . . God be willing . . . I can't bring her back."

The putrescent marks on his face shimmered as he turned his face into a shaft of sun. He looked at Arne. He was able to smile, for the first time in days. A strong man, who always made jokes, sang, was happy. At 18 and still growing he had knocked down a fractious stallion with his fist, earning him the nickname Horsekiller.

"Green vine," he said softly. "Strangler fig." His mind seemed to wander then; his eyes looked vague, reddened by the wood smoke and glare of flames. Before he could say anything else he fell asleep. He was so inert that for a few dreadful seconds the boy thought he had died. Then the big chest shuddered, his father snored. Arne covered him with his own blanket.