Stories (2011) (28 page)

Something gleamed amongst the bones. A gold cigarette
lighter.

Through the doorway of the hut she saw Moon Face was halfway
down the trail. He had paused to nonchantly adjust the UPS man's clipboard. The
geek had made his own community here, his own family, people he could deal with
-- dead people -- and it was obvious he intended for her to be part of his
creation.

Ellen considered attacking straight-on with the frying pan
when Moon Face came through the doorway, but so far he had proven strong enough
to take a file in the cheek and a stick in the throat, and despite the severity
of the latter wound, he had kept on coming. Chances were he was strong enough
to handle her and her frying pan.

A back-up plan was necessary. Another one of Bruce's
pronouncements. She recalled a college friend, Carol, who used to use her
bikini panties to launch projectiles at a teddy bear propped on a chair. This
graduated to an apple on the bear's head. Eventually, Ellen and her dorm
sisters got into the act. Fresh panties with tight elastic and marbles for
ammunition were ever ready in a box by the door, the bear and an apple were in
constant position. In time, Ellen became the best shot of all. But that was ten
years ago. Expertise was long gone, even the occasional shot now and then was
no longer taken . . . still . . .

Ellen replaced the frying pan on the stove, hiked up her
dress and pulled her bikini panties down and stepped out of them and picked up
the lighter.

She put the lighter in the crotch of the panties and stuck
her fingers into the leg loops to form a fork and took hold of the lighter
through the panties and pulled it back, assured herself the elastic was strong
enough to launch the projectile.

All right. That was a start.

She removed her purse, so Moon Face couldn't grab it and
snare her, and tossed it aside. She grabbed the whiskey bottle from the
corpse's hand and turned and smashed the bottom of it against the cook stove.
Whiskey and glass flew. The result was a jagged weapon she could lunge with.
She placed the broken bottle on the stove next to the frying pan.

Outside, Moon Face was strolling toward the hut, like a shy
teenager about to call on his date.

There were only moments left. She glanced around the room,
hoping insanely at the last second she would find some escape route, but there
was none.

Sweat dripped from her forehead and ran into her eye and she
blinked it out and half-drew back the panty sling with its golden projectile.
She knew her makeshift weapon wasn't powerful enough to do much damage, but it
might give her a moment of distraction, a chance to attack him with the bottle.
If she went at him straight on with it, she felt certain he would disarm her
and make short work of her, but if she could get him off guard . . .

She lowered her arms, kept her makeshift slingshot in front
of her, ready to be cocked and shot.

Moon Face came through the door, ducking as he did, a sour
sweat smell entering with him. His neck wound whistled at her like a teapot
about to boil. She saw then that he was bigger than she first thought. Tall and
broad-shouldered and strong.

He looked at her and there was that peculiar expression
again. The moonlight from the hole in the roof hit his eyes and teeth, and it
was as if that light was his source of energy. He filled his chest with air and
seemed to stand a full two inches taller. He looked at the woman's corpse in
the chair, the man's corpse supported on wires, glanced at the playpen.

He smiled at Ellen, squeaked more than spoke, "Bubba's
home, Sissie."

I'm not Sissie yet, thought Ellen. Not yet.

Moon Face started to move around the card table and Ellen
let out a blood-curdling scream that caused him to bob his head high like a
rabbit surprised by headlights. Ellen jerked up the panties and pulled them
back and let loose the lighter. It shot out of the panties and fell to the
center of the card table with a clunk.

Moon Face looked down at it.

Ellen was temporarily gripped with paralysis, then she
stepped forward and kicked the card table as hard as she could. It went into
Moon Face, hitting him waist high, startling, but not hurting him.

Now! thought Ellen, grabbing her weapons. Now!

She rushed him, the broken bottle in one hand, the frying
pan in the other. She slashed out with the bottle and it struck him in the
center of the face and he let out a scream and the glass fractured and a splash
of blood burst from him and in that same instant Ellen saw that his nose was
cut half in two and she felt a tremendous throb in her hand. The bottle had
broken in her palm and cut her.

She ignored the pain and as Moon Face bellowed and lashed
out with the knife, cutting the front of her dress but not her flesh, she
brought the frying pan around and caught him on the elbow, and the knife went
soaring across the room and behind the roll-away bed.

Moon Face froze, glanced in the direction the knife had
taken. He seemed empty and confused without it.

Ellen swung the pan again. Moon Face caught her wrist and
jerked her around and she lost the pan and was sent hurtling toward the bed,
where she collapsed on the mattress. The bed slid down and smashed through the
thin wall of sticks and a foot of the bed stuck out into blackness and the
great drop below. The bed tottered slightly, and Ellen rolled off of it,
directly into the legs of Moon Face. As his knees bent, and he reached for her,
she rolled backwards and went under the bed and her hand came to rest on the
knife. She grabbed it, rolled back toward Moon Face's feet, reached out quickly
and brought the knife down on one of his shoes and drove it in as hard as she
could.

A bellow from Moon Face. His foot leaped back and it took
the knife with it. Moon Face screamed, "Sissie! You're hurting me!"

Moon Face reached down and pulled the knife out, and Ellen
saw his foot come forward, and then he was grabbing the bed and effortlessly
jerking it off of her and back, smashing it into the crib, causing the child to
topple out of it and roll across the floor, the rattle clattering behind it. He
grabbed Ellen by the back of her dress and jerked her up and spun her around to
face him, clutched her throat in one hand and held the knife close to her face
with the other, as if for inspection; the blade caught the moonlight and
winked.

Beyond the knife, she saw his face, pathetic and pained and
white. His breath, sharp as the knife, practically wilted her. His neck wound
whistled softly. The remnants of his nose dangled wet and red against his upper
lip and cheek and his teeth grinned a moon-lit, metal good-bye.

It was all over, and she knew it, but then Bruce's words
came back to her in a rush. "When it looks as if you're defeated, and
there's nothing left, try anything."

She twisted and jabbed out at his eyes with her fingers and
caught him solid enough that he thrust her away and stumbled backwards. But
only for an instant. He bolted forward, and Ellen stooped and grabbed the dead
child by the ankle and struck Moon Face with it as if it were a club. Once in
the face, once in the mid-section. The rotting child burst into a spray of
desiccated flesh and innards and she hurled the leg at Moon Face and then she
was circling around the roll-away bed, trying to make the door. Moon Face, at
the other end of the bed, saw this, and when she moved for the door, he lunged
in that direction, causing her to jump back to the end of the bed. Smiling, he
returned to his end, waited for her next attempt.

She lurched for the door again, and Moon Face deep-stepped
that way, and when she jerked back, Moon Face jerked back too, but this time
Ellen bent and grabbed the end of the bed and hurled herself against it. The
bed hit Moon Face in the knees, and as he fell, the bed rolled over him and he
let go of the knife and tried to put out his hands to stop the bed's momentum.
The impetus of the roll-away carried him across the short length of the dirt
floor and his head hit the far wall and the sticks cracked and hurtled out into
blackness, and Moon Face followed and the bed followed him, then caught on the
edge of the drop and the wheels buried up in the dirt and hung there.

Ellen had shoved so hard she fell face down, and when she
looked up, she saw the bed was dangling, shaking, the mattress slipping loose,
about to glide off into nothingness.

Moon Face's hands flicked into sight, clawing at the sides
of the bed's frame. Ellen gasped. He was going to make it up. The bed's wheels
were going to hold.

She pulled a knee under her, cocking herself, then sprang
forward, thrusting both palms savagely against the bed. The wheels popped free
and the roll-away shot out into the dark emptiness.

Ellen scooted forward on her knees and looked over the edge.
There was blackness, a glimpse of the mattress falling free, and a pale object,
like a white-washed planet with a great vein of silver in it, jetting through
the cold expanse of space. Then the mattress and the face were gone and there
was just the darkness and a distant sound like a water balloon exploding.

Ellen sat back and took a breather. When she felt strong
again and felt certain her heart wouldn't tear through her chest, she stood up
and looked around the room. She thought a long time about what she saw.

She found her purse and panties, went out of the hut and up
the trail, and after a few wrong turns, she found the proper trail that wound
its way up the mountain side to where her car was parked. When she climbed over
the railing, she was exhausted.

Everything was as it was. She wondered if anyone had seen
the cars, if anyone had stopped, then decided it didn't matter. There was no one
here now, and that's what was important.

She took the keys from her purse and tried the engine. It
turned over. That was a relief.

She killed the engine, got out and went around and opened
the trunk of the Chevy and looked down at Bruce's body. His face looked like
one big bruise, his lips were as large as sausages. It made her happy to look
at him.

A new energy came to her. She got him under the arms and
pulled him out and managed him over to the rail and grabbed his legs and
flipped him over the railing and onto the trail. She got one of his hands and
started pulling him down the path, letting the momentum help her. She felt
good. She felt strong. First Bruce had tried to dominate her, had threatened
her, had thought she was weak because she was a woman, and one night, after
slapping her, after raping her, while he slept a drunken sleep, she had pulled
the blankets up tight around him and looped rope over and under the bed and
used the knots he had taught her, and secured him.

Then she took a stick of stove wood and had beat him until
she was so weak she fell to her knees. She hadn't meant to kill him, just
punish him for slapping her around, but when she got started she couldn't stop
until she was too worn out to go on, and when she was finished, she discovered
he was dead.

That didn't disturb her much. The thing then was to get rid
of the body somewhere, drive on back to the city and say he had abandoned her
and not come back. It was weak, but all she had.

Until now.

After several stops for breath, a chance to lie on her back
and look up at the stars, Ellen managed Bruce to the hut and got her arms under
his and got him seated in one of the empty chairs. She straightened things up
as best as she could. She put the larger pieces of the baby back in the crib.
She picked Moon Face's knife up off the floor and looked at it and looked at
Bruce, his eyes wide open, the moonlight from the roof striking them, showing
them to be dull as scratched glass.

Bending over his face, she went to work on his eyes. When she
finished with them, she pushed his head forward and used the blade like a
drill. She worked until the holes satisfied her. Now if the police found the
Buick up there and came down the trail to investigate, and found the trail
leading here, saw what was in the shack, Bruce would fit in with the rest of
Moon Face's victims. The police would probably conclude Moon Face, sleeping
here with his "family," had put his bed too close to the cliff and it
had broken through the thin wall and he had tumbled to his death.

She liked it.

She held Bruce's chin, lifted it, examined her work.

"You can be Uncle Brucey," she said, and gave
Bruce a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for all your advice and help, Uncle
Brucey. It's what got me through." She gave him another pat.

She found a shirt -- possibly Moon Face's, possibly a
victim's -- on the opposite side of the shack, next to a little box of
Harlequin Romances, and she used it to wipe the knife, pan, all she had
touched, clean of her prints, then she went out of there, back up to her car.

My dead dog, Bobby, doesn’t do tricks anymore. In fact, to
look that sucker in the eye I either have to get down on my knees and put my
head to the ground or prop him up with a stick.

I've thought of nailing his head to the shed out back, that
way maybe the ants won't be so bad. But as my Old Man says, "ants can
climb." So, maybe that isn't such a good idea after all.

He was such a good dog, though, and I hate to see him rot
away. But I'm also tired of carrying him around with me in a sack, lugging him
into the freezer morning and night.

One thing though. Getting killed broke him from chasing
cars, which is how he got mashed in the first place. Now, to get him to play
with cars, I have to go out to the edge of the Interstate and throw him and his
sack at them, and when he gets caught under the tires and bounced up, I have to
use my foot to push on one end of him to make the other end fill up with guts
again. I get so I really kind of hate to look in the sack at the end of the
day, and I have to admit giving him his good night kiss on the lips is not
nearly as fun as it used to be. He has a smell and the teeth that have been
smashed through his snout are sharp and stick out every which way and sometimes
cut my face.