The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (52 page)

Adding to that, the Brothers’ eyeballs widened till they almost popped out of their heads at whatever it was they saw coming up behind me. Then those holy cowards turned on their four heels and ran. Me too. Not that I expected to get very far. I knew how that giant could run. I’d felt its weight pressing down on my back. Now I knew any second it’d be on me again doing a lot worse than before.

I’m running and know I’ll be caught but I’ll fight back. What else could I do? For the first sprint I ran looking at the ground. That’s how I always ran fastest as a kid. No distractions, just watch the ground straight in front of you and move like lightning in front of thunder.

But eventually I realized even through all the fear that nothing had caught or eaten me yet. So I looked up, wondering why not? The Brothers were a hundred feet ahead, standing still now and facing me. Why had they stopped when a moment ago they were so scared? And where was that Posafega?

I looked over my shoulder cringing because it might just be waiting to give me a nasty shock. But the only surprise was that that dog wasn’t there. “What is going on?”

“We were afraid we wouldn’t be able to get you out of there, sir. That would have been big trouble for all concerned. But here you are—you made it!”

Zin Zan looked like he was about to kiss me, he was so happy.

Instead of answering, I looked at Rolfe’s house again to make sure we were talking about the same thing. Only when I was bringing my eyes back around to the Brothers did I see a street sign: Pilot Hill. That’s where we’d been planning to go in the first place before all this other shit started happening.

“Is this what you wanted to show me? Rolfe’s house? Is that what this is all about?”

“No sir, actually it was someone else’s house we wanted to show you up here. But I don’t think you need to see it now to believe what we were saying before.”

“True. So who else lost their house on this street?”

They looked at each other to see which of them was going to drop the next bad news bomb. Zin Zan said, “Everyone.”

“What?”

“That’s right.” Brooks moved his arm in a way that took in the whole area. “Every house on Pilot Hill has been taken over.”

“I don’t believe it.” I looked around again to make sure that dog wasn’t sneaking up on me from some secret angle.

“It’s true, Mr. Gallatin. If you’d like, go look in anyone’s window here and you’ll see.”

“I will do exactly that.” I crossed the street to my friend Carl Hull’s house and looked in his window because I knew exactly what it looked like inside. What I noticed first was everything was black and white in there. Or I should say
in
black and white. I knew Carl’s house and this wasn’t it. I stepped back and looked at the façade. This was Hull’s house, all right. So I looked in the window again. Carl’s wife Naomi loves yellow things—furniture, pillows, rugs. But there wasn’t an inch of yellow anything in there. No couch, curtains, nothing—only black and white.

The living room was full of old fat furniture; most of it covered in some thick material like velvet. Like your Grandma’s house. Pure old people’s furniture. The Hull house I knew had a few pieces of cheap yellow furniture, a round “Garfield” rug in front of a TV set as big as you could get. That machine was Carl’s pride and you had to give the man credit—he didn’t scrimp when it came to home entertainment. But where was that big Sony screen today?

“Sherlock Holmes.”

I jumped. “Don’t
do
that, Brooks! Don’t sneak up on me. My eggs have been scrambled enough for one day. Besides, what are you talking about?”

“This house—The woman who moved in here chose the décor of the first Sherlock Holmes film. Starring Clive Brook, Ernest Torrence—”

“Where’s Carl and Naomi?”

“At Lake of the Ozarks on vacation. They’ll be coming back soon to this ugly surprise.”

“Where’s their stuff? Their belongings?”

“The new tenant had it hauled away this morning.”

“Why is everything in black and white in there?”

Brooks seemed surprised at my question. “Because that film was in black and white. The new occupant wanted things to look exactly like the film.”

“Well,
Casablanca
was black and white too. But Mel’s house was in color. You saw it.”

Brooks nodded. “He chose the colorized version. He’s not a purist. I hope you don’t mind me saying this, Mr. Gallatin, but it would be very good if we got a move on.”

“Where to now?”

“Back to your house.”

“What’s at my house that wasn’t there an hour ago?”

“A moving van.”

Three sets of eyes bounced back and forth, back and forth like “Flubber” for a while before any of the mouths connected to them had more to say.

“They’re taking over my house now?”

“Yes sir. That’s why we came to warn you this morning.”

“You knew about this? You knew it would happen?” We started walking—fast.

“We always know it’ll happen—Just not when. We didn’t think it would be so soon and in such large numbers. That’s why we go door to door. The problem is no one ever believes what we say until it’s too late. So Beeflow decided to change the way we do things because the situation is now getting critical.”

“Was that really Beeflow who talked to me back in the truck?”

“Yes sir. Was Cyrus there too?”

“How do you know about that? I thought it was
my
soul!”

“It is. Did it lick your hand in the dark?” He smiled and shook his head like he’d just found a fond memory in his pocket. “That’s its way of greeting you, telling you it’s there. It happens that way to us all. But ‘Cyrus’ is only Beeflow’s nickname for it. The real name of the human soul is Kopum, pronounced Coe-poom. You’ll learn all about that later.”

“Then why does he call it Cyrus?”

“It’s easier to accept in the beginning. The name sounds a lot less strange than Kopum. People like feeling safe, especially when it comes to their souls.”

We hurried back and only when we were halfway home did I think about what I was doing or the fact I had accepted everything they’d told me as cold hard fact. The name of my soul was Cyrus, but not really because it’s actually Kopum. Okay. Dead people were moving into my house? If you say so. The craziness of it all made me slow some but not stop. I’d seen and heard enough in the last hour to know parts of my world had suddenly gone seriously damned wobbly, but
this!
Could it really be true?

“Look at that.”

I was so deep into thinking about all of this that my brain didn’t click until my eyes saw the scene in front of us. And then the first thing I did was burst out laughing. There’s this guy I know and work with named Eric Dickey. Just saying that name makes my lips squinch up like I ate something bad. I hate that son of a bitch. You don’t want to get me started on him because I’ve got a whole alphabet of reasons why I do not wish him well—in this life or any other. It’s enough to say that we started disliking each other in ninth grade and only got better at it as the years passed.

Anyway, Eric Dickey and his stumpy wife Sue live in a nice house a few blocks from ours. And I’ve got to admit it is a handsome place. Eric is a foreman at my company who knows how to kiss ass well enough to get promotions while the rest of us are worrying half the time about what will happen if there are layoffs. But the fact of the matter is the Dickeys do have a really nice house and at work Eric is always bragging about the new this or new that they bought for their place. They don’t have any kids so they go all-out buying top of the line air conditioners, lawnmowers, gas grills ... the kind of expensive things that can be seen from the street and coveted by the rest of us slobs. A real asshole.

So anyway I’m laughing now because what do you know—old Dickey’s stuff is piled on the street in front of his beautiful house. This time seeing a pile like that doesn’t surprise me so much as make my heart throw a fist in the air and yell ALL RIGHT! Maybe this Hell business isn’t so bad after all. But that feeling was short lived because just as I was relishing seeing kiss-ass Dickey’s stuff dumped out on the street, who should walk around from the back of his house but a caveman!

So help me God. That sounds totally nuts but it is the truth. And you’ve seen him before in every caveman movie you ever watched. The fucker is hunched over in a sort of monkey scrunch and has got so much hair growing on his body that you can’t really make out where the head ends and the rest begins. I mean this fellow is ALL hair and even when he looks at you, his face is hard to make out because everything is so completely covered in fur.

Now if that wasn’t enough, this whatever it is, this
creature
looks at us and growls like a monster. No, he more like roars like a lion and it’s one loud ugly sound. Then he threw up two furry arms that looked like a couple of tree trunks with brown moss growing off them. I was sure he was going to come charging at us because he thought we were going to steal his place from him. But as far as I was concerned, he was the best neighbor in town if he had evicted Eric Dickey on his bragging ass.

When I thought for sure Mr. Caveman was coming for us, I put up my hand—palm out. I was even about to say “How!” like cowboys do to Indians when they meet up on the prairie. Where that idea came from in my brain I do not know, except maybe I thought you greeted dinosaur eaters the same way you did Commanches. Even though the two groups were only about a few million years apart on the time line.

When he roared again I thought it was time to get out of there so I started off.

“Wait, don’t run. He can’t bother you.” Zin Zan called out.

I stopped but my feet weren’t convinced. They kept going up and down, sort of running in place just in case he was wrong. “How do you know that?”

“Because we’re with you. We know how to keep him away. You’re protected so long as you don’t go into his house. That’s why it was so dangerous when you went into that other man’s place.”

“But where’s Dickey and his wife?”

“Hiding in their basement.”

“No shit?” Ear to ear I was grinning. Ear to ear.

“You’re going to have to stop using that kind of language, Mr. Gallatin. It just won’t do.”

I wanted to say fuck you, but the picture of Eric hiding in his basement from a furry caveman, while all his high-priced possessions sat in a heap on the curb ... that was happiness enough for the moment to keep my dirty words in my mouth. “So dead people from all the different ages are being sent back here? Not just recent ones like Mel?”

Brooks shook his head and frowned. “That is correct. It’s totally chaotic but only part of the problem we face. Look! That is exactly what I’m talking about!” From behind the house smoke and flame started coming around the corner. And not just “too many burgers on the barbecue” stuff—these were big impressive clouds of brown smoke and some yellow flame coming fast and scary towards us.

“What’s happening?”

Zin Zan pointed at the caveman. “He probably started a fire back there. He can’t help it—guys like him don’t know any better.”

“Should we do something about it?”

From the distance came faint siren sounds.

“No, someone’s obviously called it in already. We’ve got to get to your house now.”

“Yeah, but what’s going to happen when the firetrucks get here and have to deal with Mr. One Million B.C.?” I pointed at you-know-who.

“That’s their problem, not ours. Right now we’ve got to get you back home.”

We started walking again but I kept turning around to look at that hairy guy standing in front of Eric’s house. He didn’t move. Smoke was coming thick and fast behind him but he didn’t move. The sirens got louder, nearer. Were those voices coming from inside the house? Was someone shouting in there?

“Come on, Mr. Gallatin. There’s no time.”

I looked at the Brothers. I looked at the caveman. I looked at the house, the smoke behind him. I knew I was about to do something really stupid and probably unnecessary.

“We can’t just go.”

Both Brothers turned towards the siren sounds and gestured toward them. “They’re coming now. They’ll be here any minute.”

“But what happens in the meantime? Maybe they’ll die down there of smoke inhalation or whatever. Don’t you watch those emergency rescue shows on TV? Every minute counts.”

“Every minute counts for you too. You have to save your home! Do you understand that?
They are taking your house
!”

I lowered my head and started walking in the wrong direction. One of them touched my arm. I shook him off. Eric Dickey was a turd but I wasn’t going to let him die. Maybe I was being stupid because he probably would have been saved just fine without my help. But I don’t want ugly things on my conscience. I don’t want to live the rest of my life with a picture pinned to the inside of my brain of a man and his weasel eyed wife lying face down forever in a smoky basement because I needed to get home.

“We won’t be able to help if you go in there. We can’t go with you!”

“Then just wait out here. I’ll be right back.” I kept walking. The caveman saw me but seemed to have his mind on other things. He lifted his head and sniffed the air like an animal—nose up high, making these little up and down jerks every now and again. Sniff—jerk-sniff-jerk. Then he turned and ran around the house to the back.

Which was just fine with me because it gave me free access to the front door. The moment B.C. disappeared from sight, I ran for it. Behind me the Brothers were hollering now “Don’t!” and “Please come back!” But I was already there. The bad news was that door was locked. The good news? An aluminum baseball bat was leaning against the house. Without a second’s hesitation I picked it up. Not a second too soon because I heard a rough animal grunt behind me. Not too close but close enough to have me bringing that bat up to ‘play ball!’ height by the time I’d swiveled around to face that grunt. In shock I almost dropped the damned thing seeing what I did.

The caveman was about ten feet away. In his hands was the charred body of what could only have been a dog. In fact it was definitely a dog because the head wasn’t as grilled as the rest of the black still-smoking body. I could make out that it was once upon a time a beagle or some such. That’s what the fire behind the house probably started off being: He was cooking some poor sucker’s Lassie or Snoopy. Rest in Peace, Snoop. Bet you never thought you’d end up lunch.