When Rabbit Howls

by Truddi Chase

  “You aren’t crazy. Tell me about the voice.”

  “It kept reciting something in my head: ‘Into the jaws of hell, into the valley of death, rode the six hundred.’ And don’t tell me it makes sense, because it doesn’t.”

  “That’s not an exact quote from the original verse but it probably makes sense to the others. Somehow ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ must have special meaning to one of them.”

  “The voice talked about danger, and then it said something about ‘Sister Mary Catherine.”’

  “Did the voice have a name?” Stanley asked, hoping.

  “‘I am the Seventh Horseman,’ is what the voice said.” The woman looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It sounds so ridiculous.”

  “There is one among you,” Stanley said, easing his voice into the more singsong style he used just prior to putting her under the light hypnosis, “who knows everything, who remembers it all. Would that person come forward?”

  No one spoke. The woman knelt on her knees, looking like a whipped dog. Stanley asked again for the one who knew everything, and the woman’s face shifted.

  The Seventh Horseman emerged with a quick flash of grey-green eyes in an angular face and body movements that almost hummed, as if she were possessed of hundreds of tiny, danger-sensitive antennae, all working at once. She used her hands like whips to accentuate her carefully enunciated, sandpapery words. She explained that another Troop member had paved the way for her as she herself at times paved the way for others, making the journey safe.

  “I asked,” Stanley said, because current documentation showed an established pattern among many multiples, “for the one who knows everything. Did you come forward because you are that person?”

  “You have a long journey before you reach that Troop member.”

  Stanley remembered getting the same answer from someone else, in reference to the cores. The Seventh Horseman told him that she never appeared in public. Her thoughts, she said, might “spill onto the woman” or whatever Troop member happened to be “out” at the moment. But after what she called her “tour of duty” at the second farmhouse, the Seventh Horseman had either been retired or had withdrawn of her own volition. It was just as well, Stanley thought. Her topics of conversation did not lend themselves to social outings.

  Stanley listened as she told him the balance of last night’s recall. She said that the woman, after they’d brought her the image of the cow, had been unable to absorb more and had “thrown the flicks away.”

  “She just couldn’t look,” the Seventh Horseman said. “But the stepfather had a number of dogs over the years. When he was finished with them, they were killed and buried. With what the stepfather taught the dogs, he had to kill them or the mother would become suspicious and wonder why they sniffed at us, at the stepfather—so constantly.”

  “He involved you with the dogs in a sexual way?”

  “Yes. One of them was a Great Dane, magnificent animal. But not as controllable as the others. When the stepfather began his instructions—with us and with the Great Dane, he tied it up on the hedgerow that led to the back orchards and the farm beyond, where the transient workers were. The hedgerow had been an escape route, the only one available because the field next to it got muddy in the spring, like a swampland, and in the summer, the grass was tall. The stepfather was taller, he could see us running through it, trying to hide, but we could not see him. We were frightened that saying no to the stepfather would be as dangerous to Sister Mary as it had been to the others before her. Among us, certain ones had died because they said no. We’ve attempted, in at least three drafts of the manuscript, to convey the concept of such a death to you without disturbing anyone here.”

  Because he could find no other words, he asked if such a death was a permanent one. She said yes, that life was cut off. Action by the dead ones now, if there was any at all, was only a “remainder,” a ghostly automation.

  Stanley’s mind was in a turmoil, clutching first at the memory of a severely damaged child describing how the stepfather had hung her down a well, and then at the visage he’d thought the woman herself showed occasionally—the blank, empty eyes and frozen features of someone less than alive; a visage with which he had not yet come to grips.

  “We couldn’t take any more chances. There was a need for me at the second farmhouse,” the Seventh Horseman said, “for a person who could warn of danger. The mother was no help, she purposely tried not to see. She’d say, ‘I don’t want to hear any more screaming from you.’ The stepfather took advantage of that. He lulled us into a false sense of security by smiling and making things look safe and then he pounced. Afterward, if anyone tried to shut him out, he goaded them into reaction, into screaming or cursing or hitting him.

  “Sister Mary was trapped in all of that long before she was ten years old. We couldn’t tell anyone, we didn’t have the words. Our memories were so fragmented among us that we’d start, but everyone wanted to speak at once and it confused people. They thought we were only ranting, exaggerating.

  “I had been present for a long time before my birth, but inactive. When the Great Dane arrived at the farmhouse, I ‘arrived,’ too. It was my job—not to find an escape, because there wasn’t one—but to warn beforehand of danger. The hedgerow leading to the orchards was Sister Mary’s biggest roadblock. She was so afraid to show fear in front of the dog because he sensed it and barked louder and lunged at her. He sounded ferocious and his teeth were very long. How many times I instructed the Sister, ‘Listen, fool, do not try to escape by the hedgerow. The dog will kill you. Go around,’ I would scream. ‘Crawl through the field!”’

  Strain had begun to show on the Seventh Horseman’s face and her tensely held body. He heard the occasional tones of a child leaking through the sandpaper rasp.

  “After the stepfather had trained the Great Dane, it wasn’t only Sister Mary who became terrified of it. Other Troop members were terrified, too. The dog was so big . . . the stepfather decided to get rid of it by starving it to death. The cruelty of that pleased him.”

  The tension in the Seventh Horseman’s face grew. She seemed to be listening to her own words while straining to hear those being spoken in another room.

  Stanley had wanted more recall and he was getting it. His fingers ached from gripping the pen and holding the clipboard propped on his knees. He didn’t dare look over at Tony in the control booth. He was remembering the miniature cassette tape the woman had given him the other day. She’d simply handed it to him, saying the flicks were worse than ever. When he’d played it back later that night, the words had been garbled through the static. It had been apparent by the hysteria in her taped voice that things were escalating rapidly. He’d called her then, warning her not to push too fast.

  Stanley heard a whisper of brogue in some of the words.

  “Sister Mary refuses the flicks even though she recognises them, as the woman does not, because the recall is a reminder of failure on her part. If she’d listened to my signals a long time ago, she wouldn’t be suffering now. We all do our jobs here, and no room for miscalculation exists. Our component parts function; the machinery is finely calibrated, if you will, to an infinite degree. But if one of us slipped, we would all go down for a time. On such occasions, the Front Runner keeps us going while the Foot Soldiers carry the wounded.”

  The faint brogue vanished. As she continued, it was easy for Stanley to imagine her reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade” in her sandpapery and dramatic voice.

  “The woman, or at least the seed of her, has been with us since the first-born child was two years old. The woman’s actual birth took place much later. Her construction allowed her to operate in the world—no different before her birth than after it. She was empty then, she’s empty now. We operate through her when we need to, otherwise we act on our own. Please try to understand,” she continued, “that except for the woman and a few of the
others, the period of time from our ‘inception’ to actual birth is a learning time. But even with years of observation beforehand, it is no simple task, orienting ourselves after we are born, to the things going on around us.”

  “I imagine a lot was going on at the second farmhouse in particular,” Stanley said. “It had to be painful for the Troops.”

  “For most, yes.” The Seventh Horseman stared straight ahead. “You’ve met the Zombie? Her name is Grace, as in ‘Grace Under Pressure,’ but ‘Zombie’ suits her better. When the woman’s strength wanes drastically, the Zombie steps in and moves for her, one foot ahead of the other. She is one of those who were immune, impervious, deadened, removed from it all.”

  “But still the Zombie operates, for herself and others, in that deadened fashion?”

  “Some of us are ‘deadened,’ not ‘dead.’ There is a difference. The Zombie serves her required function, she’s alert enough to receive signals and respond. Sometimes, like the rest of us, she even ‘listens in,’ on purpose. Up until a short time ago, we couldn’t listen in to each other. Now at times we do, those of us who are currently aware of each other, if we choose and are allowed.”

  “How do you know,” Stanley asked, “when the woman is listening, as you call it?”

  “We allow it or we do not,” the Seventh Horseman said. “This is a complicated process for you, isn’t it?”

  Stanley told her he was learning. He asked the meaning of her name.

  “It pleases me,” she said. “Just as the Collector’s pleases him. Or the Recorder or the Renegade. Some of us choose names as I did; other names are given to us by each other and some names simply arrive, unbidden, as it were.”

  “You don’t mind that I know your name?”

  “I did not give it to you. I mentioned the Collector; I am inextricably bound to him for all time. The Collector will never speak to you. He saw too much on the farms and has closed his eyes against everything. He spends his time discovering and hoarding words and other precious things which he happens to find appealing. For him I am like the blind man’s seeing-eye dog. I go where the Collector cannot go; I recite for him his favourite poetry and the snatches of literary wisdom which he has gathered over the years. That shores up morale within the Troop Formation, just as Elvira’s relating anything unpleasant to one song or another wipes out the sadness we feel.”

  Stanley wanted to ask if the Seventh Horseman had been building morale for the woman last night by reciting “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Perhaps without the distraction of it, the recall of last night might have been even more terrifying for his client.

  “Nothing,” the Seventh Horseman was saying, “is ever passed to the woman except through another of us. It is difficult for her to make sense of some of our conversations, or even to know to whom each voice belongs, especially since she hears only shreds. Most of the time the woman thinks of it as her own voice speaking. At other times she hears nothing because she is not present. These days, Sister Mary, due to the nature of the latest recall and her part in it, is doing most of the passing. The woman heard Sister Mary speaking clearly last night and yet she cannot believe it, cannot accept it.”

  “Bestiality,” Stanley said, “wouldn’t be easy for anyone to accept, child or adult.”

  “Accepted or not, that’s what the stepfather trained the dogs for. As to the cow, the stepfather stood on a crate so that his penis would be level with the cow’s vulva. The child saw him one day, tried to run away. He decided to make her part of the activity. He wanted her to stand there fondling him while he copulated with the cow.”

  Tony did not know what to say at break time. Stanley told him that what they’d heard today was only the tip of the iceberg. Tony then muttered something about being embarrassed to face the woman.

  “Don’t worry,’ Stanley told him. “She didn’t hear a thing.”

  “My god,” Tony said, “it’s her life that’s being taken apart in there.”

  “No. I think it’s theirs. More than forty of them that I’ve counted so far. That’s what it took to deal with it.”

  After the break, Stanley offered to put the woman under light hypnosis. He wanted to help her see what was behind the Seventh Horseman who had frightened her so badly. He told her to concentrate on the hedgerow and sent her under. Nothing happened. After five minutes of silence by Tony’s wall clock, the sandpaper tones of the Seventh Horseman returned.

  “There is something in front of me that I do not understand,” the Seventh Horseman said faintly. “What is it?” Her hands went out in front of herself, like a blind man seeking landmarks. “It’s tall and rusty, like an old iron pole. It’s the pole the stepfather tied the dog to on the hedgerow. I don’t know what it’s doing here and something else is wrong!”

  Stanley figured out the reason for the Seventh Horseman’s confusion. He’d put the woman under light hypnosis and the Seventh Horseman had surfaced almost at the moment of her own “birth” as a full-fledged self. On the farm, she had until her own birth existed only in the background as a very “detached” observer. She was describing now her shock after birth, her unfamiliarity with things around her.

  Her composure had shredded so quickly and she had become agitated, dropping whole syllables of her last sentence. She now yanked frantically at her hair and broke the yoga position. She fought to retain her balance but her tones grew faint again.

  “Wait,” she whispered, “there is something here; I am very old, but this is like a bud, a new green bud on an old tree.”

  Stanley knew she referred to a child. He felt a coldness and realised that he always did when certain young Troop members evidenced.

  The Seventh Horseman’s composure threatened to collapse entirely as she glanced to her right three times in quick succession, exclaiming that she was lost and that the other selves were moving in on her. Stanley, watching the face before him, saw the cheekbones resurface, the eyes slant.

  The woman had somehow joined the Seventh Horseman. They were together, sharing the same vision; the woman smiled in wonder and the Seventh Horseman charted in a far-away voice the emergence of the long-awaited third presence on their right.

  The emergence was that of a child-essence, closer than anyone to the first-born, and enveloped in this moment with what amounted to awe on the part of more than one Troop member. It was that awe which swept through the woman’s mind.

  Still hypnotised, the woman stared at what she perceived to be a small child sitting at her elbow. The woman began to paint a verbal picture of a very tiny, silent person, with a head of pale gold curls and a brown dress.

  “Sticky,” the woman said. “The little one is sticky.”

  The Seventh Horseman’s raspy voice broke in; she was viewing something with shock and abhorrence. What she saw meant danger to the woman and, unbeknownst to Stanley, she chose to exert her own powers. For this session and for weeks to come, the woman would hear the word “child,” and at times, even see this particular one. Immediately, she would receive, as today, the word “doll,” and a like image, being superimposed over it.

  The Seventh Horseman’s sandpaper voice ground in Stanley’s ear, as she described not a child, but a doll, with its head pointed toward her, with a cap of golden curls and no clothes. She described the stepfather standing before her, standing at the doll’s feet; how he was reaching out and pulling its legs apart. She held back and was silent as the woman cried aloud.

  “But he couldn’t do that, could he?”

  The Seventh Horseman bore down, with all that she was, and evidenced to the woman. The woman began to scream that she saw her; she described the figure, “a long way off, leading a battalion mounted on horseback.” The uniforms were grey and there was something red on the front of their hats. She said they carried long spears or poles and that it was raining. The raindrops, the woman told Stanley, hit the road on which they were traveling and shot up like geysers.
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  “Dear sweet jesus, Stanley,” she screamed as if witnessing the parting of the red sea, “what is it?”

  Stanley could only surmise that the woman might be “receiving” the Seventh Horseman’s “essence” in the therapy today, just as she had received without hypnosis the essence of Mean Joe and Miss Wonderful that day in her car.

  The woman sobbed, straining to see what the Seventh Horseman had supplanted. Because that particular danger had passed and because a second of vision wouldn’t hurt, the Seventh Horseman relented.

  “I see the child.” The woman wept, rubbing her arms and shaking with a cold that Stanley felt, too. “I see her plain as day, but I don’t know what her name is.”

  The image faded and suddenly, the woman and the Seventh Horseman were seeing jointly the image of the rusted flatbed car. It sat innocently enough to one side of the hedgerow leading up to the orchards. The panic in their two voices escalated. The voices grew in number and were joined by others, all distinctly different. The panic became full-blown. Stanley threw out post-hypnotic suggestions at what he hoped were all of them, but they came and went too quickly.

  The Seventh Horseman, grasping things the woman did not, asked in her raspy voice, “How do you put the skin and the fur back on Rabbit?” The woman continued to complain that the child they were seeing again to her right was sticky with an unknown substance.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  SHE had killed her stepfather, sometime during her teens. Nothing supported the suspicion, except a constant guilt that mounted daily and resisted all other explanations.

  “I have to pay,” she said to Stanley over the phone.

  “It was twenty-five years ago,” Stanley said. “Believe me, whether you did it or not, you’ve paid.”