Fiends (8 page)

11

The girls stayed out later than Marjory had reckoned; it was almost dark when Rita Sue drove her home. Daylight had faded to a gossamer pink over the steely pond; hoot owls were starting up in the tall trees near the house. The gazebo was deserted. Enid was alone on the front porch. She came down to the car to ask Rita Sue to lower the volume of her radio; they had a guest, Enid explained, and she didn't want him to be disturbed.

"What happened to Mr. Horsfall?" Marjory asked.

"He got very tired early and went on upstairs. I heard him snoring a little while ago." Enid yawned. "I think I'll go to bed myself. Are you coming in, Marjory?"

"I guess so. Want to watch TV, Rita Sue?"

"No, I need to be getting along home." But they continued to sit in the car for a few minutes longer, listening to the radio, until it was full dark. Rita Sue began an anecdote about one of her redneck cousins. A cat jumped up on the porch railing. Another cat, the one-eyed torn named Zombie, climbed halfway up the screen door after a moth.

Rita Sue broke off the story she'd been telling and said, "That's a big one."

"Huh?" Marjory said. She had been trying out pet names for Tim McCarver to call her, in the most intimate moments of their phantom relationship.

"That moth that's flying around on your porch, see it? There it goes, up by the light."

"Oh, yeh. Luna moth. Pretty."

"There's another one."

"That makes two," Marjory said disinterestedly.

"Anyway, what I was telling you, there's a saying in the family that Aunt Alma is so tight she can squeeze a half dollar until the eagle moults—"

"I always thought it was, 'She can squeeze a penny until the President poops.'"

"That must be one of your relatives, Marjory. Anyway—oh, look, isn't that
pretty?"

A luna moth had touched down on the windshield of Rita Sue's convertible. They stared through the glass at it. The pale green and lavender moth trembled with a delicate energy. There were four prominent spots, like eyes, on the diaphanous wings, darker than the purple margins.

"They're sort of human, aren't they?" Rita Sue said. "You can almost make out a face if you look long enough—there's another one! Where in the world are they all coming from?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen so many lunas in—" Marjory flinched as a moth flew into the car, fluttering an inch from the tip of her nose.

"They don't bite, do they?" Rita Sue asked her.

"Not that I know of."

"Just the same, I think I'm going to put the top up."

Marjory stared at the porch of her house, where the cats were leaping and batting their paws in a blizzard of moths, so many that they had changed the color of the light from the single bulb beside the door to a dismal, stormy green. The moths were flocking around the car, too. Marjory shuddered. She liked her insects small or not at all, and the lunas were enormous, some as big as the spread of her hand. The evening had been humid and there was no wind, but suddenly she felt as chilly as if she had opened a refrigerator door and stuck her head inside.

Rita Sue turned the key in the ignition and pressed the button that raised the convertible top. A moth was fluttering in her lap, and she wore another in her pale, bouffant hair. She glanced up as the convertible top rose over them, and threw up her hands in a gesture of panic.

Marjory had only a glimpse of the dark shape soaring down through the moth cloud, picking off dinner, but she knew what it was and grabbed Rita Sue.

"It's okay, that's an owl."

"Marjory, I don't like this!" Rita Sue complained. "Roll up your window!" The edge of the convertible top nudged against the windshield frame and Rita Sue locked it down. No longer enamored of the moths, she batted at one of them that fluttered too close. Then with a look of shock she pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. "I thought you said they didn't bite!"

There was an edge of hysteria in her voice, and Marjory was concerned; very seldom did Rita Sue lose her poise.

"Rita Sue, why don't we just—"

But Rita Sue had started the engine and was backing away from the house and the moths seething around it. She almost hit the oak at the foot of the driveway but veered off into the street, where the car stalled.

"Hey, c'mon, where're you going?"

"Home! It
bit
me, Marjory, I swear! Are there any more in here?" She got the engine started again.

"Let me see your hand," Marjory said calmly.

Rita Sue held out her left hand, which was trembling. In the light from the dashboard Marjory couldn't see a wound. But a minute icily gray spot was discernible on the deeply tanned skin near the base of Rita Sue's thumb.

"I don't think that's a bite."

"Well, it hurts, it stings me! Marjory, what are you going to
do?"

"What do you mean, what am I—"

"Just look at your house! Look at all those moths! Some of them are probably getting in."

Marjory looked, and her throat dried up. Now the lines of the house were indistinct within the nimbus of the luna moths; they stained the moon with their shimmering, unearthly greenness.

"Good Lord," Marjory moaned. "I wonder if Enid—"

She opened the car door before Rita Sue could put her foot to the accelerator.

"Marjory, where do you think you're going, hon?"

"I live here, remember? You can leave if you want to."

"Marjory, those moths bite, that's not a lie! It feels like somebody put dry ice on my hand!"

Marjory got back in the car and slammed the door.

"What do you think we should do?"

"I don't know," Marjory said, breathing hard, studying the moth circus around her house.
If it wasn't for bad luck,
she thought,
we wouldn't have any luck at all.
"What are they doing here? What the hell do they
want?"

"It's probably just a freak of nature, and they'll go away after a while— don't you think? Look at all the owls!"

"Something weird's going on," Marjory muttered, in her anxiety rocking on the seat. "I need to get in the house. Rita Sue, drive around back, and maybe I'll go in that way."

"My car is going to get so stuck up with bugs—"

"Enid's in the house! She could be—I don't know—will you get
going,
Rita Sue!"

Rita Sue backed up and turned cautiously into the driveway.

"Put on your lights!"

Moths appeared by the dithering score in the headlight beams; they flew erratically toward the windshield, then veered off into the dark. Rita

Sue drove around to the back porch, stopping five feet from the steps. The porch light was off and there seemed to be fewer moths here, although the Fairlane's headlights had begun to attract them. Rita Sue cut off the lights and the two girls sat in the dark.

"Okay, I'm going in now."

"I don't want to sit her in the car by myself!"

"We'll both go."

Marjory breathed deep, opened the door and ran up the porch steps where earlier she had broken off the heel of one of her good dress shoes. Moths fluttered coldly against her face like enormous snowflakes. Rita Sue was right behind her, gasping. Marjory flung open the screen door, waited until Rita Sue ducked inside, then followed.

"There's one!" Rita Sue said, pointing to the inside of the screen.

"Go on in the house" Marjory told her. She snatched a broom leaning against the washing machine. Another moth was higher than her head, difficult to make out on the unlighted porch. Marjory brought it down with one hard swing of the broom, then bolted into the kitchen behind Rita Sue. Only when she was inside with the door closed did she pay attention to how cold she felt. The girls clung to each other, hearing only the faint music of Enid's stereo upstairs.

"I got bit again," Rita Sue said forlornly. "On my cheek."

"You're right; it doesn't exactly feel like a bite," Marjory acknowledged, rubbing the back of a leg beneath her shorts.

"Do you suppose there's any more of them in here?"

"Let's go upstairs. But don't turn on any lights."

"What happens to moths if they don't have a light to attract them?"

"I hope they'll go away," Marjory said, moving out of the kitchen into the hall. Through the front-door screen she could see plenty of moths; they were, at a distance, spectacular. She didn't know what had happened to the cats. Probably when they began to feel overwhelmed they had crept into the darkness beneath the house. She flipped off the front porch light and went running up the stairs.

"Enid! Hey, Enid!"

"Marjory, what on earth?" Enid said, sitting up on her bed bleary-eyed as Marjory burst into her room. She had dozed off reading a book, which fell from her lap.

"Luna moths!" Now their occurrence was merely bizarre and exhilarating to Marjory, nothing to be frightened of. "Must be a billion of them—they're all around the house."

"Oh," Enid said, yawning and then smiling. "Those are the real pretty ones. Let me see."

"They bite," Rita Sue said glumly. She was behind Marjory in the doorway.

"Moths? I never have heard of—"

She was looking for her flats to slip into when they heard Arne Horsfall scream, more shocking than a boulder falling through the roof.

Enid looked up with a galvanized jerk of her head, mouth opening. Marjory stepped back hard into Rita Sue, turning to stare down the hallway at the door of the room in which their guest had gone to bed. She was, instantly, a mass of gooseflesh, her nipples standing out like round drawer-pulls. Rita Sue, knock-kneed, had Marjory by one arm, and her nails hurt.

But nothing happened to explain the scream. The bedroom door remained closed. Arne Horsfall didn't appear, as Marjory anticipated, berserk, with a blunt instrument or sharp object in his hand to make corpses of them all.

Enid reacted quickly, trying to unblock her doorway by pulling Marjory in a direction opposite the one in which Rita Sue had her going.

"Get out of the way!"

Marjory shifted her weight and shoved Enid back a couple of steps.

"Oh, no! Don't you
dare
go near that room!"

"Marjory, something—he—"

"Call Ted!" Marjory demanded, her voice getting squeaky.

"Marjory—"

Marjory bit her lip so hard a drop of blood ran down her chin.

"Get Ted over here and let
him
go in there!"

They stared at each other for a couple of seconds. Then Enid nodded distractedly and went to sit on the edge of her bed, picking up the telephone and placing it in her lap. She dialed the number of the sheriffs substation while Marjory, holding fast to Rita Sue, stared at the door of Arne Horsfall's room—as if willpower alone could keep it from opening until help arrived.

Rita Sue found her voice and whispered, "Marjory, who
is
that man?"

"A mental patient," Marjory said grimly. She pulled Rita Sue into Enid's room, shut the door, and began pushing the high oak dresser past the door frame. "I could use a little help here," she panted. Rita Sue lent herself to the effort and together they budged the dresser a few more inches while Enid spoke urgently on the phone.

Ted Lufford was there in six minutes, shouting for Enid as two more units from the sheriffs department rolled up right behind him. Red lights washed around the walls of Enid's room. She raised her window and called down to Ted. Marjory, sitting with her back to the dresser, felt too winded and inept to move it back again, but the three of them managed so Ted could get the door open. He had a hand on the butt of the revolver in its holster and a flashlight with a foot-long barrel in the other hand. The upstairs hall was filled with deputies.

Marjory and Enid tried to talk at the same time. Enid said, calmly enough, "Shut up, Marj," then explained, "Ted, we heard Mr. Horsfall scream. I—we were afraid to go and open the door."

"Charley," Ted said over his shoulder, and one of the deputies moved quickly to the door of the spare bedroom. He rattled the knob. The door was locked. Ted joined him. "Mr. Horsfall?" He knocked sharply twice, then glanced at Enid. "Sorry, but I better do this." Then he kicked hard beneath the latch and the door flew open. Ted went in, followed by two deputies. Marjory and Enid advanced slowly down the hall. Rita Sue stayed behind to call her mother.

Ted came out of the spare room shaking his head.

"Is he dead?" Enid said softly, and Marjory's scalp crawled; Enid had tried so hard for Arne Horsfall.

"You heard him scream?"

"We all did. It was—"

"Bloody murder," Marjory finished.

"He's not in there, Nuggins. The door was locked, and the windows are shut—maybe he was someplace else in the house?"

"Go look," Enid said, leaning against the hall railing. Two deputies hustled down the stairs. Ted went into Marjory's room, flipping on the overhead light. The bathroom door had been standing open all along.

The deputy named Charley appeared at the foot of the stairs and called, "He's not nowhere in the house."

"Let's have a look around outside," Ted suggested.

"I don't think so," Marjory said.

They all looked at her.

"He's gone. That's all. Enid, I don't know how I know, but he's gone. We won't find him."

"He has a hard time walking, his arthritis is so bad."

"Enid,
listen!
I'm telling you he is nowhere around, and—"

Enid said angrily, "I'm
responsible
for Mr. Horsfall, we have got to find him!"

"It's a big waste of time. You'll never—"

"Well, he didn't just vanish into thin air!" Enid shouted, focusing her anger on Marjory, as if Arne Horsfall's disappearance were all her fault.

Marjory sighed. "Something like that," she said, aware of how ridiculous she sounded. But she couldn't shut up; she felt as she had once at a brush arbor meeting, when she'd caught the Spirit and just had to testify, "I don't know where all the luna moths are now either; but wherever it is they came from—that's where Mr. Horsfall went."