Fiends (36 page)

3

By eleven o'clock Nannie Dell, an early-to-bed person and a sound sleeper even without her husband there, was no longer a problem to Duane.

In the kitchen he made another try at getting Marjory on the phone, although instinctively he was sure it would be no use. Hearing the phone ring and ring in their house in Sublimity just gave impetus to his panic. He hung up and went outside to his workroom in the detached garage.

Here he kept everything Nannie Dell wouldn't let into the house: live scorpions in their own terrarium, two tarantulas, more than two hundred specimens of butterflies and moths mounted on dark blue velvet in glass-topped cases he had made himself, various husks and cocoons and dried salamanders and rodent skulls, and an open-top box with smoked-glass panels that contained beetles. He was currently rejiggering the diurnal cycles of a few of the beetles. Over the two plywood-and-sawhorse tables which contained his collections several sunlamps were mounted on a grid. At one end of a table books were piled in two untidy stacks.

He rummaged under the table in a cardboard carton that contained several types of nets, killing jars, and a half-gallon can of carbon tetra chloride. In another area of the garage he located an old-fashioned plunger action squirt gun for killing garden pests. This he filled with the carbon tet.

He paused for a few moments, suddenly blank and remote, gazing at the leafy spread wings of two luna moths pinned side by side in one of his cases. Ruddy eyespots glowed in the light of a sunlamp overhead. Duane began to shudder, as if the temperature in the garage just out of the sunlamp's range had fallen precipitously.

Marjory hadn't said anything about the presence of real moths in her letter, so maybe he shouldn't—

Bullshit.
Pain smote him in the pit of his stomach; his mouth twisted from remorse and dismay. He didn't want, was mortally afraid to go, to expose himself again to the dreadful white floating creatures with pale, grim eyes, their stares that blighted the soul as frostbite withered skin. This time-

No.
This time he was prepared for them.
Marjory, whom he had told nothing, left defenseless, had no hope at all without him. Assuming he wasn't too late already.

Duane knew where the keys to the Buick Riviera would be: in the top drawer of his father's dresser. And he knew, without going near her door, that Nannie Dell had locked it tonight. He had scared her with his anger, and the other threat that had always been there, unacknowledged, his sexual desire for Nannie Dell. Waiting for her on her own bed, then shouting at her, profanely, it was a form of rape, although no more than Nannie Dell deserved and she had known it. He had read her guilt and shame in her eyes and weak gestures, read into abject helplessness that she cared more for him than his father, but this, instead of mollifying him, had made Duane feel all the more aggressive toward her—brutally, dangerously, aroused. A revelation more potent than Christ in both their lives.

He didn't need any goddamn keys! Taking his father's car without them, in effect stealing it, would be a final act of defiance, of resignation from the family. His father would kick him out of the house anyway once he got home and heard what Nannie Dell had to say. So he would travel to Sublimity, and by morning, if he lived to see another sunrise, he would be well on his way beyond Tennessee.

It took him about ninety seconds to strip the ignition wires and start the Buick. At five after eleven he was traveling north on 31 toward Brentwood and Nashville, staying off the Interstate because he urgently wanted to push it, knowing that the last thing he needed tonight was to be pulled over and hauled off to jail again.

4

The cavers had distributed kneepads to Ted Lufford and his party. They had marked the passages below, knew where they were going, and had brought equipment appropriate to the rugged underground terrain, including rope ladders, which made their descent into the byways of the Dante's Mill cavern easier for the novices.

Pausing to rest and grab a smoke on a ledge partway down a 110-foot cliff, Bill Whipkey looked around a stark cave which Rex had already named The Dragon's Mouth on his map. Every time one of them changed his position on the ledge or turned his head, their far-flung shadows leaped or receded on the gnarled walls and curiously slanted stalactites, like jagged teeth, that had earned the cave its name.

"Never saw anything like this in Nam. Heard there was some such caves up around the boundary with Laos. Haunted, they said."

"You looking for haunts, you ain't gonna be disappointed," Alvy informed him.

"Just what do these boogers resemble? Bats?"

"Mummies," Ted replied. "Nigger mummies."

"Oh. Well, that ain't nothing. Maybe that particular cave's just where a Indian tribe did their burying a long time ago."

"You won't think it's nothing when they get up and walk at you," Wayne Buck Vedders said, his perfectly round eyes giving him a look of intense credulity. "Except they don't walk. They creep along upside down on the ceiling."

Rex laughed and then had a coughing fit. "You seen that, did you?"

"Damn right we did, me and Lufford. It was like a five- or-six-year-old kid. He was just full of sass, too."

"Oh, he talked to you?" Alvy said. "Did you paddle his britches for him, Deputy?"

"No, I shot him in the head. It didn't even slow him down."

Nobody said anything for several seconds.

Rex stubbed his cigarette out, and put the butt into a pocket of his vest. "Where did he go then?"

"Can't say for certain. I allow he's still around."

"Wonder why I never heard none of this before me and Alvy volunteered to come down here?"

Alvy snorted and said to Vedders, "Reckon you got a right to jerk off all you want to, don't make me no neverminds. Just don't splash none of it on me when you're fixin' to come."

Vedders smiled and opened his jacket and drew an enormous revolver from a shoulder holster. "This here's all I jerk off with."

"Lordy, Lordy," Rex said in a jesting tone, "we're all friends here."

"Shoot that thing off inside, hoss, and we'll all be deaf," Alvy said.

"Naw, I learned my lesson last time. Pulled some of the powder, and changed the cartridges. These here are full mercury loads."

"What does that do?"

"I tried them loads on a couple of four-pound rabbits at thirty yards, and there wasn't nothing left of either of 'em but paws and the tips of their ears."

Rex yawned and got up from his crouch. "Gen'mens, it's been purely delightful. But we got us a ways to go yet."

5

Duane couldn't remember the way to Marjory's house and had to ask directions at a Gulf station when he reached Sublimity.

It was seven minutes to twelve when he drove slowly down Old Forge Road and turned into the long gravel drive. A porch light was burning, which made him feel a little better, and Marjory's old car, the rustbucket '62 Plymouth, was parked at the end of the drive near the back porch. He didn't see Enid's car.

He stopped at the edge of the front porch and got out, looking at the house. Except for the porch light, the house was dark in front. They had to be asleep. One of the cats, he didn't know which, looked at him with liquid blazing eyes and slipped under the railing as he approached the steps. Ears of dried corn and a crepe-paper Halloween black cat decorated the front door. He opened the screen and twisted the handle of the manual bell, hearing it ring inside. The porch light glazed the floor of the foyer and showed him the first couple of steps, but the rest of the staircase was dark. He was jittery and had a headache from driving at night; his glasses needed changing again. He needed to go to the bathroom. Should have used the men's room at the Gulf station.
Hi, Marjory, how've you been, I really need to take a piss.

Hoping for a light to go on in the upstairs hall, Marjory or Enid calling down, everything okay then, he'd stay a few minutes, hit the road, come
on,
Marj. He twisted the bell-pull again, his breath fogging the outside of the glass. The house so still. Cold. Cold seemed to radiate from within, penetrating his buttoned-up denim jacket. Duane shuddered. His hand dropped from the bell-pull to the doorknob, jerked away. Very
cold.
He tried again. The door was locked.

He walked along the porch, cupping his hands, peering in at the windows. Saw only the shapes of furniture in the parlor and dining room, the low gloss on polished wood from the porch light. Silence. Duane retreated, slowly, back down the steps. The corner room on the right, upstairs, was Enid's room. Marjory's bedroom was on the back, overlooking the gazebo and pond.

Duane, gritting his teeth against the midnight shudders and the urgent warnings from his bladder, walked around the house toward the back porch, paused where he couldn't be seen from the road (but no one had come by in the last five minutes, and only the roof of Crudup's barn was visible against the radiant sky from where he stood). He gushed on flowers already frost-killed, wondering what he was going to do next, as if he had a choice: his criminal career would be well advanced before the night was over.

Marjory could be anywhere, spending the night with Rita Sue, for instance. Or she could be sound asleep upstairs and oblivious of the bell. But why was the house so cold? He sensed it was below freezing in there, while the temperature outside was only about 45 degrees.

Duane zipped up and started toward the back porch, remembered something and returned to his father's Buick. He had left the engine running. As he opened a back door a shadow swooped behind him and was repeated on the flash of moving glass in the window. Duane ducked, throwing up an arm.

It grazed the back of his hand, a cold burning sensation, and winged gracefully away, pale green in the moonlight, the eyespots aglow. Luna moth. There seemed to be more of them, flaky silhouettes in the moonlight above the woods on one side of the property, where the weedy show-horse ring and unused stables were located.

Duane reached into the backseat and snatched up the spray gun that reeked of carbon tetrachloride. He didn't take his eyes off the sky, expecting more, perhaps the largest nightflyers of them all with their mock-wings made from human skin. His throat had dried up, his heart was a stone, his fingers, his face, felt numbed and bloodless.

He had forgotten about breaking into the house; he was certain now that it was empty. His eyes were on the graceful moths, the frost-white roof of the stable by the shining pond. He walked slowly toward the low building. Halfway there his feet began to crunch in frozen grass, to leave sharply etched prints. His breath condensed hugely in the windless air, surrounding him, accompanying him like ghosts.

Suddenly there were other footprints in the grass, converging from a dirt path that led to the house, going toward the stables. Duane paused.

He could distinguish at least two sets of prints, one of them made by a child. The other foot was small too, more like a woman's. Neither of I hem wore shoes.

And in the midst of the welter of footprints there was a swath, as if something heavy had been dragged from the house to the stables by the barefoot woman and the child.

His shuddering was like spasms, like a seizure; cold as he was, Duane still felt a sharp tingling shock at the top of his spine. There was a soft sifting noise in the windless night, the wings of many moths fluttering. From far off he heard the mournful horn of a diesel engine. He heard the soft slap of a screen door fifty yards behind him. He whirled.

She was standing there on the lower steps of the back porch, staring at him. Wearing dark clothing, a jacket with a hood pulled up. He couldn't see her eyes or face in the dark, but he thought he knew her anyway.

"Enid!"

His voice, carrying a long way on this still night, prompted a dog to bark across the pond. Duane started toward the house but stumbled, his toes numbed in the moccasins he wore. He went down on one knee, a sudden jabbing pain, and got up awkwardly, hobbled, looking for Enid again.

He saw her running, not to him but to the Buick he'd left in the driveway with the engine running. It looked to Duane as if her feet were bare, but he couldn't be sure.

"Enid, wait! Where's—"

She got into the Buick as he began to run, too. She didn't hesitate. The headlights came on, the car began backing, tentatively at first, veering toward the front porch as if she didn't know how to drive, or because without shoes she couldn't control the car very well. Duane, ignoring the pain in his knee, raced after her.

For a few moments the Buick paused, as if she'd stalled it, back end off the drive and in a bed of yellow chrysanthemums, headlights full in his face. He couldn't see her behind the wheel until he reached the edge of the gravel. Her eyes were large and somber and blackened, as if by an excess of mascara. Her face, what he could see of it within the loose-fitting hood of the jacket, was barely recognizable, looking pale and artificial, as fragile and white as eggshell, as if she'd made herself up for an early Halloween party. Or something more sinister than partying.

"Hey, no!" Duane shouted witlessly. "That's my dad's car, I stole it!"

Enid stepped on the gas. The back wheels spun, the car rocked back and nudged against the foundation of the house, then shot forward, straight at him.

Duane threw himself out of the way and rolled as the Buick skidded by him, made a wide turn, missed a fig tree by inches and roared on down the drive, slewing from one side to the other until it reached Old Forge Road. By the time he was on his feet, still clutching the spray gun in one hand, all he could see of his father's car were the taillights. She was going west.

Duane limped to the house and inside by way of the back porch, shouting for Marjory, looking for a light switch that didn't work when he tried it. The house was freezing cold, illuminated only by the moon.

"Marrrrjorrryyyy!"

Even in his frenzy something made him stop, reconsider. Instead of roving through the dismal house he retreated, hurried down the back steps and headed for the walking-horse stables again until he picked up the dragged path through frosted grass, the footprints.

They led him straight to a wide stable door that seemed stuck or locked when he pulled on the handle. Touching it was as painful as putting his hand in a fire. He was able to open the door an inch. Duane stuffed the bulky spray gun inside his denim jacket. Whining in fright and frustration, he dug in his heels and seized the edge of the door, yanking furiously, dragging it across the frozen ground.

The door yawned open, rusted old hinges screeching.

Inside it was like Christmas, as Christmas might be celebrated in hell. Moonlight shone through a construct of spun silk as finely wrought as frozen breath in which trapped luna moths fluttered and glowed, bleeding their soft pastel colors down the delicate strands. All the myriad strands seemed to converge, like the cables of a fabulous suspension bridge, on a lumpy object near the center of the stable floor between the dark and long-deserted stalls. It took Duane a couple of moments to realize he was looking at a flayed human body: red shinbones and feet sticking out of the faery maze, skinned hillock of rib cage as if gnawed over by rats. But it was too cold for rats in this hideaway of fiends, almost too cold for Duane to think and move; unfortunately he could still feel and be shattered.

"God . . .
Marjory."

Alastor looked up, the bloody juices of the skin he was rapidly chewing dripping from his chin, running down his skinny white torso. Apparently he'd been chewing up luna moths too, blending them with the opaque human skin that already had an iridescent sheen. He was half crouched, half sitting on the unseen head. His eyes blazed with the same obscene lividity as the flesh of—

"You little . . . s-ssson of a bitch."

Alastor chortled.

"Birka said I could! Said I was old enough to make my own robe. She'll help me when she gets here. They're all coming tonight, she said!"

"You s-sssson of a
bitch!"
Duane almost lost sight of him through the cloud of expelled breath that instantly froze in front of his face. "She's not coming. S-s-she drowned. I s-sssaw her drown."

"Ho-ho," said the pint-sized monster, "that's what you think!
Huldufólk
cain't drown. She just crawled and crawled on the bottom of the pool till she could crawl up the side and get out. See? You cain't never hurt none of us!" Alastor stirred, lowering the piece of macerated skin he was working on, licking his lips. He began to rise on bowed legs, grinning at Duane. Every tooth in his head glowed like radium. "But we can hurt
you."

"N-no you w-won't," Duane said, knowing he had to run and aware that he couldn't. He no longer could feel his feet in the flimsy moccasins he'd been dumb enough to wear without socks. His face was so stiff it felt crystallized. Only his hands, thrust inside his denim jacket, had much feeling. He stared at the remains on the floor, the pale blur of the soles of Marjory's feet, untouched in the skinning. Alastor continued to rise, setting aside his handiwork on a skein of silk mobbed with little jewels of frost.

"I need you," he said. "Need you before you get too cold and I can't flay you. I need your sssskin!"

"D-don't t-t-touch me. I'm w-w-warning—"

Alastor sprang up from the stable floor, into the midst of the spun cocoon, and traveled through it like a spider responding to a signal from the edge of its web. He was so skittishly quick that all Duane glimpsed of him were the glittery little eyes and the gap-toothed radiant smile, the needle-tipped curve of Alastor's fledgling thorn. He heard Alastor's high-pitched excited laughter.

Duane took a bumbling step backward and was hung up in clinging, stubborn silk. He sagged close to the floor, knees not quite touching, and opened his jacket. He didn't need to raise his head to know that Alastor was almost on top of him. His nose was stopped up with crystals of ice. He breathed through his mouth, searing the back of his throat.

"What's
that?"
Alastor growled as Duane brought both hands up, holding the spray gun. They were less than two feet apart, Alastor reaching out with his thorny hand.

Duane shoved the handle of the gun home, and showered Alastor with carbon tetrachloride.

The little fiend reacted like a normal child thrown into a scalding bath, except he couldn't scream: there was no air in his lungs to scream with. But he writhed, vomiting, in the strands of the cocoon, his dead white flesh toning to an almost-human pink, then shading again, swiftly, giving off a noxious vapor worse than the chemical smell of carbon tet, turning several shades darker, to the greenish-black of tainted meat, the purple of deep bruises. He tried to reach Duane again with the deadly point of his little finger but stabbed ineffectually. The horrible retching continued. There was nothing in Alastor's stomach; he was vomiting up the stomach itself, the esophagus, then the unused lungs in liquefying handfuls. As he flung himself about the steel-strong cocoon his body seemed to be collapsing on its skeleton, the babyish sticking-out bones.

Duane held his breath and sprayed Alastor again, full in the face, and saw the eyes melt in their sockets, his little radium teeth fall like the dimming sprinkle of suffocated moths throughout the stable. Then he had to turn away to vomit himself while the strands of the cocoon vibrated in concert with Alastor's violent throes. Kicking, flailing, Alastor unjointed himself and literally came apart, nearly all melted down to gleaming bones, the emerging skull with its skull-like grin. Duane couldn't look away, he saw it all, but he didn't see—

The hollow black thorn. Where was the thorn?

All chilling silence inside the stable now, except for Duane's ragged breathing. The dangerous inhalation of carbon tetrachloride was making him woozy.

The thorn, the thorn! Find the thorn . . .

But he was fainting from lack of air, he couldn't remain in the stable any longer.

Duane was almost out the door, staggering, gulping a clean lungful of air, when he heard, from somewhere inside the stable, a muffled cry for help.