No Light in August: Tales From Carcosa & the Borderland (Digital Horror Fiction Author Collection) (4 page)

“I was
telling her to wait,” she said, flicking her eyes to Janna. “That she should be
standing for someone to come.” She spoke better than I would’ve credited a
woman of her age. I wondered what she might have been in a former life to have
picked up English like she had.

“Did you
know the family upstairs?”

“Such and
much.” I was tired and fought the urge to correct her. She was trying, which
was more than most of her neighbors did. “Good persons.”

“You’re
not from the same country?” She shook her head. “Czechoslovakia.” “Did you hear
anything? See anything?”

She looked
down at Janna, who was busy playing with a doll she’d picked up from under the
table. I got the sense the old woman didn’t want her there, but kept her in
case her English failed.

I dug out
my notebook and showed her the drawing I’d made of the carving from the table —
the strange cross. When she saw it, she gave no reaction, but she stared, which
was reaction enough.

“You know
what this is?” “Yes.”

“Really,
anything you can tell me will be useful.” Truthfully, I was more curious why it
frightened her.

“Witch’s
foot, or broken cross, it is called by others.” “What does it mean? Was this a
religious thing?”

“No, no,
nothing like that.” She stopped playing with Janna’s hair and laid the notebook
on the table, making a show of pushing it slowly away with both hands. “Older.”

“Someone
there was up,” she said, pointing to the ceiling, and I realized her apartment
was almost directly under the other one. “They were walking, but soft. I almost
could not hear.”

“A guest?”

“Not one
they wanted.”

“Did you
see him?” She crossed herself when I said it. “Do you know who it was?” “What
it was…Kožkar,” she said, looking for the word with her eyes before reluctantly

playing
with Janna’s hair again to get her attention. She spoke something quickly, and
the little girl pulled her attention away from the doll.

“A man who
takes the skin from animals,” she said, not affected in the same way as the old
woman was. Cut free from her old home, it was only a word to her, but it
clearly pained her grandmother to hear her describe it.

“Can you
write it?”

She nodded
and wrote it next to the drawing. I stood and offered her a smile before I
left, but she was having none of it. Leaving Janna with her toy, the old woman
followed me to the door and came so close it made me nervous for a moment.

“Please to
care, this is old, and do not to be seen by it. It follows.” She crossed
herself again and touched my arm.

I smiled
at her; I know now it was the kind of smile one would give to a child or a
demented person. At the time, I thought she was a bit of both.

The
medical examiner arrived as night came on, though there wasn’t much she could
do except take the bodies away. Sam and I watched from the sidelines, smoking
to give our hands something to do.

Grace
joined us a moment later, tapping out a cigarette of her own. I offered her a
light and the three of us stood in silence, a small cloud of smoke wreathing
us. The wind was picking up again; could have meant another storm, or nothing
at all. None of us thought about it.

“You
helping out with this, Jim?” she asked.

“Pretty
much.” I’d known Grace since moving to this part of the country. She’d had a
practice back east, or been involved in one, at any rate. It said something
about people around here that they didn’t have much trouble with a woman
holding a stethoscope. No troubles they’d give voice to, anyway.

“Any other
family I need to notify?” this to Sam.

“A couple
of cousins and an uncle.” He slipped his little black book from his pocket,
tore out some pages, and handed them to her. “It’s all there.”

Grace
folded them and dropped her half-finished cigarette to the ground, crushing it
out under one heel. “I don’t know what I’ll be able to tell you; it looks open
and shut.”

If Sam
wanted to say anything about what I’d told him, he gave no sign.

Grace
smiled and walked to the waiting car, one of the few luxuries that came with
her job, if you could call carting around the dead a luxury. I suppose you take
what you can in life; part of me always wondered how people in her profession
coped with what they did. It was a question for another time.

We watched
as the cars pulled away, one after another. Another car pulled up, one of Sam’s
ever-dwindling number of deputies; most folks took whatever chance they could
to head further west to California.

The deputy
climbed out and walked up to the porch, where he spoke quickly and softly into
Sam’s ear. Despite being close to them both, I couldn’t catch what he said, but
Sam’s face changed. It was doing a lot of that lately, going through
unaccustomed forms.

“What is
it?”

The deputy
finished speaking and hopped down, making his way back to the Ford.

“Steve
Coleman’s house is empty,” he said, thumbing at the retreating car. “Deputy
noticed the lights out and door open; when he went in, he found nothing, except
some blood.”

I didn’t
know Coleman, though I’d heard his name a couple of times — I think maybe when
Iris and I went to town, back before things got really bad and I couldn’t keep
my hands from the bottle or from landing on her face.

“You think
he’s capable of something like this?”

Sam rubbed
his jaw. “I’d say not, but then, I wouldn’t have said Michael could do
something of this sort either.”

He was
still thinking in a rational way about everything I’d told him. Sam thought it
was some kind of mania, brought on by the dust darkening the sky like it was
the End Times the preachers liked to shout about from the pulpit. It wasn’t
impossible that two men could come to the same conclusion.

I couldn’t
hold it against Sam; it meant I would have to tell him more and see where that
got us.

It was
just after ten. “We should head over and see what’s there to find,” Sam said as
he

unbuckled
the holster on his belt and handed the revolver to me.

I stared
at it for what felt like a long time. “You don’t want to give me that.” “I
think I do, Jim.”

When had I
last carried a gun, never mind used one? Time and drink made things crowd in a
bit before I guessed it must have been more or less five years. Slowly, I
raised my hand and took the gun from Sam. Its weight was both familiar and
alien, and in no way reassuring. Sam giving me one meant something bad was
growing in his mind, to trust a juicer with a gun on a night like this.

He must’ve
thought it would take a bad, or perhaps broken, man to deal with what was
walking around.

Looking at
a Czechoslovak dictionary gave me the word, but nothing connected with what the
old woman told me. No one else wanted the case, and I couldn’t dump it. The
wall loomed in front of me, one I felt I couldn’t climb no matter how hard I
tried. There was nothing to purchase here — no handholds to grip, no steps
where I could plant my feet.

The symbol
got me precious little more. I skimmed books from a library and only found the
names it went by, but giving a name to something doesn’t always ground it in
place. The broken cross, or witch’s foot — I read that when constructed in
life, it was used to crucify people.

“A
religious slant…might be,” the sergeant offered. “You know what folk from the
old countries are like.”

“Maybe.” I
tried to feel it out, but it didn’t fit. Nothing about the family suggested
anything other than quiet people trying to make a living in a foreign country,
but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

What I
couldn’t figure out was the man the old woman spoke about. It was clear the
father pulled the trigger, but the eyes were a mystery. The only solution that
presented itself was that whoever had been in the room took them after the
fact.

The whole
thing put me in mind of a preacher, only I couldn’t imagine what he might have
said to make the man murder his family. It was something other, something that
felt dark and old, like a kind of psychosis I’d never understand.

Old and
dark.
It made me think about the
cross and what the old woman said. Something older; irreligious perhaps, so it
seemed the preacher comparison didn’t fit.

I smoked
and drank coffee in the station for most of the night, pouring over what I
found and what I could remember from the scene and the old woman. I cursed
myself for not writing it down, but I was tired and my mind was only halfway
into it.

Iris was
waiting for me at home. She’d look like she was asleep in bed, but she never
managed if I wasn’t there. Glancing at my watch and the notes on my desk, I
knew there was no way of getting home anytime soon.

I never
claimed to be a good detective. I was steady, with moments of insight that got
me a reputation. Most of it was undeserved; anyone can have insight if they try
hard enough to understand the other person. Most of the men I worked with
preferred using their fists rather than their heads; they thought I was odd,
not that I was above raising my hands.

Drink was
only just presenting itself as a way out of the more horrible aspects from that
part of the job, though it didn’t really take anything away. A crutch supports
you, and drink takes more and more of your weight if you let it, until there is
no way you can stand on your own.

It crept
up on me, sliding under my arm; by the time I noticed, it was too late.

The house
looked desolate, there’s no other word for it. As we pulled up, light from the
car’s lamps reflected from the darkened windows. The night air was still and
unmoving, as though it was holding its breath as we passed through the front
door.

The scene
matched what the deputy had told Sam, except for the blood. I wouldn’t have
used the word ‘some’ to describe it. There was more here than any single person
could lose, but the furniture was upright. Whatever happened, only the blood
gave any indication of the violence that must have surely happened here.

“Jesus,”
Sam said, looking hard at what lay before us, perhaps unable to take it in.
Both of us knew violence, but nothing like this; it was on a different level.
It felt older, barbaric — and not at all impersonal.

I thought
of that family and a case file somewhere in the archive still unsolved. The
wall I’d never been able to climb and the dead now unremembered, save by a few.
At the time, I didn’t realize what it took from me. The infection set in,
poisoning and burning me up from the inside, until it left me standing in a
dark house with a man out of his depth. I wondered if I was either.

It wasn’t
hard to imagine what might have happened here, even if I didn’t want to.

“No drag
marks,” I said as I pointed to the dust-covered floor. “No boot prints, except
ours.” “Same thing in your last case?”

“No, this
is different.” And it was the same, too, but I didn’t need to say it.

“Why would
he come here?”

“It’s not
a he.” The truth I’d never wanted to acknowledge.

Back then,
the idea was fanciful, and I put the old woman’s words out of my mind. When I
looked into the empty eyes of those dead men, it never occurred to me that
something could be staring back.

“This is
old, and do not to be seen by it. It follows.” Her warning came too late, and I
had finally begun to understand why things went the way they did with me. You
might think it’s just bullshit and a drunkard’s rationality, and you might be
right. You’ll just have to take my word for it and decide for yourself.

“Someone’s
out there,” Sam said, looking through the kitchen and out the windows.

He drew
his gun and backed out the way we came while I jogged towards the back door. I
don’t remember pulling the gun; it was just there in my hand where it was empty
before. From the back step, I saw Sam following a figure heading towards
Coleman’s small barn at the back of the property.

The clouds
gusted overhead, a warning sign that could mean more dust on the way.

Moonlight revealed
enough to tell me he was chasing a man. There was something strange about the
way he was running, as though he didn’t quite understand how to shift his body
in such a way.

I ran
after Sam, but couldn’t make it to him in time. He was already well inside by
the time I reached the barn door.

There was
no light inside, just a darkness as black as pitch; the kind that swallows men
whole if they give it the chance. Like the gun in my hand, it felt familiar in
so many ways, though the feeling came from within even as I stepped into it.

My foot
caught something, and it clattered away towards the back of the barn with a
metallic rattle. Sam’s gun; even if I couldn’t see it, I knew. Stopping, I
raised my own weapon and panned it slowly left and right. My own breathing
seemed to drown out the wind picking up outside.