The Influence (29 page)

Apparently, he did. “You’ve never seen it, have you?” she asked. 

He shook his head. 

“And you’re not exactly sure what it is, are you?” 

He shook his head again. 

Jill smiled, patting his hand as they strolled back to the shack. “You’re in for a treat.” 

She was right. The movie was long and epic, but it moved, and he sat through the entire thing, spellbound. He was fascinated especially by Elizabeth Taylor. He knew her only through red carpet appearances and television interviews he’d seen before her death, and it was impossible to reconcile the cloying phoniness of that latter-day media monster with the beautiful, totally believable actress in the film. 

Halfway through, there was an intermission, just as there’d been when the movie was shown theatrically, and Jill took a bathroom break while Ross went over to the kitchen area to get a drink of water. On the way, he saw her drawings where he’d put them on the table next to his computer, and he turned them over, not wanting to think about the monster any more tonight.  

It was dark outside, but the drapes were still open, and he closed them before Jill returned from the bathroom. It felt weird having her stay here when Lita and Dave were just across the yard, like having a girl sleep overnight in his bedroom while his parents were home. There was the same awkwardness and the same forbidden thrill, and he hoped she wouldn’t be too loud. Later.  

Jill came back from the bathroom just as the intermission was ending, and they watched the second half of the movie, which he didn’t like quite as much. The film ended, and as the TCM host began talking about the making of
Giant
, Jill scooted closer to him on the couch. They kissed, their bodies pressing together. 

Several minutes passed before she pulled away, sliding off the couch, kneeling on the floor and smiling. “I know what you want,” she said, and started unbuckling his pants. 

He half-heartedly pushed her hands away. “You don’t have to…” 

“I
want
to,” she told him, and took out his growing penis, holding it in her hand and lowering her head to meet it. He closed his eyes as she teased him with her tongue, flicking it lightly around the tip before taking him all the way in. The soft warm wetness of her mouth engulfed him completely, and she began sucking greedily, hungrily, speeding up to bring him almost to the brink of climax, then slowing down or stopping when she sensed it was about to happen, allowing him to grow soft again before resuming her efforts. It was an excruciating tease, and it ended when, instead of slowing down, she sped up, and he came in her mouth, spurting jet after jet of semen down her throat. She held him there, waiting patiently until he was finished, then slid her mouth up and off, licking the last drop from the tip. 

“Wow,” he said breathlessly. 

She smiled up at him. 

His penis shrank, but not as much as it usually did, and it began to stiffen again almost immediately when she stood, taking off her clothes. That had never happened to him before, especially after such a powerful orgasm, and he took his clothes off as well, both of them moving over to the bed. 

She lay down on the mattress, on her side in a classic cheesecake pose.  

“I want you to lick my hole,” she said. 

He’d fully intended to reciprocate, and he nodded happily. “Of course, madame.” 

“My
ass
hole,” she whispered.  

He’d never done that before, and the idea made him a little uncomfortable, but he met her eyes, and she rolled onto her stomach, inviting him. His gaze moved down to the rounded curves of her buttocks. He was still hard, was growing harder, and he knelt down behind her, nosing into the crack of her soft bottom. His tongue found the tightly clenched opening, and he began working it, feeling her stiffen beneath him, her breathing growing harsher the longer he licked. Pushing herself back against his open mouth, her butt cheeks tightening on the sides of his face, she let out a small cry before finally pulling away, gasping.  

Jill was breathing heavily. “Do you think you can…?”  

He rose to his knees, looked down at his quivering erection. “Yeah.” 

She got up on all fours, and he saw a wet spot on the bedspread where she’d been lying.  

She screamed as he entered her from behind, and he put his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet as he plunged forcefully into her, feeling the hard exhalation of air on his palm after each vigorous thrust. She came, bucking against him, then came again. And again. And again… 

After they were done, they took a shower together. Giggling, Jill peed on his hand as he washed her well-used vagina. She was as playful in the water as she was intense in bed, and he thought about how lucky he was to have found someone so fun and uninhibited with whom he could actually see himself having a long-term relationship. They were compatible emotionally, intellectually
and
sexually, and in his experience that was a rare thing. 

Unless… 

Unless this relationship was a result of that creature in the smokehouse.  

It occurred to him that he had not met Jill until after New Year’s, and his love life had been on a downward trajectory for the past half-decade before meeting her. If it was true, as everyone was saying, that the monster (he
refused
to think of it as an angel) had changed everyone’s luck, making the rich poor and the poor rich, the miserable content and the happy unhappy, then maybe it was responsible for whatever he had with Jill. 

The idea depressed him, but he could not dismiss it, and though he was not suspicious of her, he was suddenly suspicious of what they had, and, a little too abruptly, he told her he was tired and suggested they go to sleep. 

He dreamed, and it was a nightmare he had had before. Once again, he was on a flat featureless plain that stretched endlessly in all directions. There were monsters in the air, monsters on the ground, all of them after him, and he was running as fast as he could, trying desperately to stay alive in this hellish world. 

He had just flattened on the ground to avoid the clutches of a swooping vulture-like creature when he was awakened by Jill, pushing his shoulder and whispering frantically in his ear. “Wake up! Ross! Wake up!” 

Sitting quickly up in bed, he tried to open his eyes, which seemed stuck together. He pulled his eyelids apart. It was dark out, he saw, and he was aware of an odd whistling sound. “Huh?” he mumbled groggily.  

“Do you hear that? That whistling? That song?” 

He heard the fear in her voice, and that helped wake him up. 

“What is it?” she whispered, huddling close. 

There was indeed something eerie about the sound, which seemed to be coming not just from outside but through a specific window, the one on the east wall. Getting out of bed, he walked uneasily to the window, hesitating a moment before pulling the curtain aside. 

The chickens were lined up in the yard, and they were whistling.  

Dave had told him that he and Lita had a hundred chickens on the ranch, and most, if not all of them, were standing next to each other, wing to wing, in rows that stretched back dozens deep, staring at his window and whistling in unison. The sight was not merely unnatural but genuinely frightening, and, instantly, Ross let the curtain drop, his heart pounding. 

The whistling continued unabated. It was a tune he thought he’d heard before, though he couldn’t say where, and while thankfully he could not see through the curtains, the image of the perfectly aligned hens remained imprinted on his mind. He could still see their stiff and unmoving necks, their partially open beaks, their eyes glittering in the moonlight. 

“What are they doing?” Jill whispered in his ear. She was right behind him, and he could feel her trembling body against his own. 

“I don’t know,” he admitted. 

“Should we call Dave and Lita?” 

He shook his head. “Let them sleep. The chickens aren’t actually
doing
anything, they’re—” 

“They’re whistling!”  

“But they’re not causing any harm…” 

“Ross, we don’t know
what
they’re doing. And you saw them. It’s creepy. I can’t get that tune out of my head, either.” 

His plan had been to ignore the birds, go back to sleep and hope they would be dispersed by morning. The windows were closed, the door was locked, and they were safe inside the shack. It might be hard to fall asleep again with all of the noise, but even if the chickens remained where they were, they would definitely seem a lot less scary in the light of day. Jill wasn’t about to let him do that, though. So, gathering his courage and casting about for something to throw at the birds, he made his way toward the front door. In the wastebasket, he found a broken surge protector that he’d thrown away two days ago, and he picked it up, letting it dangle by the cord. It wouldn’t do much damage, not to that many chickens, but it would startle them, and maybe that would be enough to get them to stop. 

Afraid of being heard, he soundlessly opened the wooden door, then carefully opened the screen and, in bare feet and underwear, stepped out into the chill night air. It was all he could do not to loudly suck in his breath as he encountered the sudden drop in temperature, but he remained quiet as he padded over to the corner of the shack and peeked around the side.  

The chickens were not looking at the window. 

They were looking at him. 

And they were still whistling. 

Holding the surge protector by the plug and swinging it once in a circle above his head, he threw the object, letting it fly. It landed in the middle of the flock, and, as though a spell had been broken, the hens scattered, flying up, clucking wildly. Ross breathed a sigh of relief and hurried back inside, closing and locking the door behind him. Jill was already at the window, peeking out, and he moved next to her.  

The moon must have gone behind a cloud, because the yard seemed darker, but even in the gloom he could tell that there was something off about many of the birds. Some were huge, some were peculiarly shaped, and some did not look like chickens at all. He knew Jill had to be seeing it, too, but neither of them said anything, and he pulled the curtains shut and walked over to the bed. 

“It’s over,” he said. “Let’s get some sleep.”  

**** 

Ross awoke in the morning to the smell of smoke. The windows in the shack were closed, but the burning odor was almost overpowering and made him cough when he breathed in too deeply. Leaping out of bed, his first thought that the Big House was on fire, but when he yanked aside the curtains and looked outside, he saw Lita and Dave standing before a pyre in the yard. 

A burning pile of dead chickens. 

His coughing and movement had awakened Jill, and, instantly alert, she asked what was going on as they both pulled on their pants. 

“Hurry up,” he said, and quickly slipped his sockless feet into a pair of tennis shoes, not bothering to tie them before hurrying outside. 

She was in a shirt and her own shoes, only seconds behind him. 

Dave was standing before the fire, leaning on a rake. His face was obscured by the thick black smoke given off by the burning bodies, but Lita, a few steps back and holding a gas can, could be seen clearly, and her expression was one of grim determination. There were dozens of chickens burning in the pile, but there were dozens more scattered about the yard, their bodies unmoving. Dave reached for one with his rake, pulled it across the dirt into the fire. 

“What happened?” Ross asked. 

Dave answered. “We found one in our bedroom when we woke up—” 

“In our
bed!”
Lita corrected him. 

“It was down by our feet, all dead and bloody, kind of a
Godfather
thing. I don’t know how it got into the house; the doors were locked and the windows were closed.” 

“You didn’t hear me scream?” Lita asked. 

Both Ross and Jill shook their heads.  

“I got a plastic bag, and picked it up and brought it outside,” Dave said, “And all these other ones were dead. Except for one weird big giant one I’d never seen before that was kind of walking around in circles making strange noises.” 

“I’ve seen that one,” Ross told him. 

“I got the rake and killed it, and then I scooped all of these into a pile, got out the gasoline, told Lita to get some matches, and…” He trailed off. “Honestly, you didn’t hear any of this?” 

“We were tired,” Ross said. “From last night.” Before they got the wrong impression, he added quickly, “The chickens woke us up around—” He looked over at Jill. “What time was it? I didn’t even notice.” 

“Two-thirty.” 

“Two-thirty. They were all lined up in rows, like some sort of military brigade, right outside my window there, and they were whistling. A song. You didn’t hear
that?” 

Confused, both Lita and Dave shook their heads. 

Jill began humming the song the chickens had been whistling, and just hearing the tune again caused gooseflesh to ripple over Ross’ skin. “Yeah. That’s it.” 

Lita was frowning. “I think I might’ve heard that before. Somewhere.” 

Ross coughed, the smoke starting to get to him. He and Lita both moved around the pyre to the opposite side, closer to Dave and Lita. “Are all the hens dead?” Ross asked. 

“I don’t know,” Dave said. “This doesn’t look like all of them, but I don’t see any others around. Maybe they’re hiding. Or maybe they ran away.” He was silent for a moment, staring into the pile of burning bird bodies. “I’ll tell you one thing. If I
do
find any more of them—” 

“You’re going to…?” 

“Yeah.” 

No one objected, not even animal-loving Lita, and Ross found that he was relieved that there would be no more chickens on the ranch. They’d made him feel uneasy for some time, and though Lita and Dave were probably planning to buy more with their newfound money, at least these ones would be gone.  

They were all coughing now, as an erratic morning breeze pushed the smoke in first one direction then another. The stench was disgusting, and Jill, gagging, had to spit so she wouldn’t throw up.