Dark Side of the Moon

by Dia Reeves

  Downtown was unreal. The streets were jammed with cars honking at one another as though they were in some big city traffic jam, like New York or L.A. I’d never seen so many cars on the street at once—the car exhaust was like poison.

  I kept running though, dodging the cars, the mobs, the overturned garbage cans. Nothing stopped me. Not even the man sitting on the roof of his car shooting people at random. I thought he might shoot at me as I passed him, but he only threw a liquor bottle at me and yelled, “There’s wolves in the forest now, boy! Wolves!”

  I didn’t pay it any mind. Nothing I saw then touched me. I just ran.

  I ran. I don’t remember for how long, until the jerky up and down motion of my legs seemed to me as endless and natural as breathing. What finally stopped me was the railroad spike.

  I tripped over it and fell in a hard tangle in the weeds next to a rusty set of railroad tracks.

  I sat up and looked back and saw the town sloping slightly below me. It looked as though it were burning, because of the red light shining on it or because of the actual fires that had been set, I didn’t know. It didn’t seem to matter. I watched it burn for a while until I started to feel like Lot’s wife, so I hurriedly stood and turned my back to the town.

  Up ahead was darkness, only slightly tinted red. I was in the old factory district. Mostly all the buildings had been closed down years ago. Normally such a place would have frightened me, but after all I’d seen, the dark emptiness around me was more a haven than a threat. I had outrun all the screaming people, left them all behind. Maybe if I kept going I could find a quiet place for myself, a place no one could ever—

  My thoughts were cut short as I was driven face first into the ground. I turned over dazed and found myself staring up at the scaly underbelly of—the thing. The thing that had stolen Nora.

  Remembering how fast it could move, I twisted over and grabbed the railroad spike I’d tripped over. I didn’t bother trying to use it to defend myself. I just thought, if it was gonna eat me, the least I could do is make sure it got indigestion. Its head swooped at me, mouth widening as it roared closer. I held the spike in my aching hands, pointy end outward, eyes squeezed closed as I waited for the end. I waited and waited and then I heard a scream.

  I put one hand to my mouth to make sure the scream wasn’t coming from me and then I opened my eyes.

  The Rag Man was standing before me, before the thing standing above me. As I watched, the Rag Man whipped his rag at the monster, flinging droplets of the red stuff on the monster’s scales causing it to scream again. It jumped over the Rag Man’s head and zipped away toward the town.

  The Rag Man began to come toward me as I lay on the ground, wringing his rag, impassively.

  He seemed so tall and even taller the closer I got to him. His face was as smooth and hard and unmarked as a marble statue. He was dark and strangely pretty, despite his smelly clothes. The clothes were just a disguise anyway. He was no bum. He was a murderer.

  I thought of all I’d lost because of him and found myself rising to my feet. I stood before him, blocking his way and when he was close enough, I said:

  “Why didn’t you let it kill me? Isn’t that what you like? Killing?”

  But he didn’t even look at me. He brushed past me, still wringing his rag onto the ground. I ran in front of him and grabbed the front of his greasy jacket, even though it hurt to do so. “I know this is all your fault!”

  That got his attention. He fixed me with his eyes, speared me with them. He said, “It isn’t a question of fault. It is His will.”

  “Whose will?” But he’d already walked on, wringing, wringing. I raced alongside him, trying to keep up.

  “God’s will,” he said, when I repeated my question.

  “God told you to do all this?”

  “I am His servant.”

  “What do you mean?” I grabbed his coat again, but he didn’t stop, merely dragged me along when I wouldn’t let go. “Are you saying you’re an angel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Angels don’t hurt people.”

  “It is His will,” he repeated, “and you were told.”

  I knew immediately what he was talking about. “You mean the Last Days? Prophecies? The Bible? Yeah, Grandma told me all about that, and then she did this.” I let go and held up my ruined hands, but he didn’t look at them, just repeated:

  “You were told.”

  He walked ahead of me as I stood there in the empty street. I started to cry.

  He stopped and it was his turn to stare at me. “Why do you cry now? This is only the beginning, only a prelude to the beginning. Save your tears.”

  I didn’t. I sat on the curb and wasted all my tears into the gutter. I thought he would walk off, but he stooped beside me.

  “You should be rejoicing.”

  That made me laugh, even though I was still crying.

  “His day draws near. The Battle will be fought and won. And good will triumph.”

  It was almost as though he were trying to reassure me, but what did I care about Last Days and Battles, good and evil. “Everybody’s dead,” I told him.

  “Not everyone.” His eyes bored into mine just as they had at the roller rink. “There’s Nora.”

  I shook my head. “That thing that you ran off, it took her.”

  “The Beast.” He said it as though it meant something, but his tone was dismissive. “You can find her.”

  It had never occurred to me that it might have left her alive somewhere. “How?”

  “The same way you found me. By looking.”

  “But everything’s so dangerous; people are crazy now, shooting each other—”

  “You did not care before about the danger. Would you risk these dangers for me alone?” He looked back toward the town. “And the world is no more dangerous now than it was two days ago. It is only that now, the danger is more easily seen.”

  He took his rag from his pocket and shook the red away, shook it white, so white that it gleamed in the growing darkness. He wrapped the rag around my hands. It was warm and had a texture almost like flesh—living flesh. The Rag Man held my hands through rag and seeing him that way, in extreme close-up, made me realize that his face was not expressionless. His face was suffused with feeling, feelings I had no words for, even now. Emotion that was beyond emotion, almost tangible. The Rag Man touched my hands and I understood the flavor of elation.

  When he removed the rag, my hands were no longer burnt and peeling, but smooth, whole.

  I was silent a long time, relishing my new hands, reveling in the bliss of feeling no pain. I had a sudden happy thought. “You said you’re an angel.”

  “Yes.”

  “That means you have powers, right? That means—”

  “I cannot bring them back for you. It is not my place.” He stood, abruptly, and I began to wonder if what I’d seen in his face had been only in my imagination. “God will raise them up. His time is near. Perhaps, as you search for Nora, you can explain this to others.”

  I huddled against the ground. “Tell or get swallowed by a fish? Or a Beast? I know this story.”

  “People are afraid. Perhaps you can make them less afraid. Or do you wish to continue to do nothing while others suffer?”

  I started crying again, shamed. The way he looked at me, I knew he knew what had happened in the dining room, knew how useless and cowardly I was.

  And then I remembered Nora, her defiant stance against the Beast, throwing that gravy boat at him, then the knife, refusing to let fear cripple her, the way it had crippled me. I knew that wherever she was at this moment, she wasn’t sniveling and puling. Wherever she was, she had her claws out.

  Because that was Nora’s way.

  I looked up from my hands, half-expecting the Rag Man to be gone, but he was still standing there, watching me. I wiped the wet from my eyes; I was done with all that. “What am I supposed to tell people?”

  “The truth,” he sai
d.

  “And then I’ll find Nora?”

  “Yes.”

  “You promise.”

  “It is not my promise to give, but yes. You will find her.” He let the white rag fall to the ground and pulled another from inside his greasy jacket, dripping and red. He turned and strode up the street, wringing, wringing.

  I stood there staring after him until he was gone, shivering in my Christmas clothes. I picked up the discarded rag; I don’t know why. I was sure the magic had gone from it.

  I looked down the slope toward town. I could hear screaming, even from here, gun fire, helicopters. I would have to go back there, into that chaos. I would have to find some people to preach to.

  I dreaded the thought of having to approach anyone, but I had to do it. For Nora. So I moved forward toward the screams, the sirens, the crackle of fire, twitching at every shadow and there were so many; shadows seemed to have taken over the world.

  But there was one bright spot, one shining hope waiting for me in the dark days ahead, days of secret meetings and near misses with maddened disbelievers among the ruins of the world.

  I would see her again; knowing that was the only thing that kept me alive. The only thing that still keeps me alive.

  About the Stories

  Chickie Hill’s Badass Ride

  Originally published in the steampunk anthology, Corsets & Clockwork, I’m the first to admit this isn’t even slightly steampunk. I meant it to be. I was going to have the “steam” technology replaced by the hot rods of the fifties, and the “punk” was going to be embodied by the Civil Rights movement. It’s all there. The problem is that when the story took a Lovecraftian turn, I did nothing to stop it. Apologies to all steampunk fans everywhere.

  The Dark Side of the Moon

  I wrote this for an anthology called Defy the Dark, where all stories centered on darkness. I took that literally and set my story at night. I liked the idea of a country boy trying to impress his—to him at least—rich girlfriend. I also like trolleys and hideous monsters. In this story all three likes came together and went on a rampage.

  Take Your Dead Ass Home

  This story was written sometime after watching MST3K’s Pumaman episode. That’s why Benni keeps singing “There’s only you in my life.” This is also where I decided that, in the Portero universe, ghosts would look blobby. Not sure why I made that decision, but it was a fun decision.

  The Voyeur of Utter Destruction

  Not a Portero story. This one is ground zero, the first complete short story I’d ever written, back when I was eighteen or nineteen. Someone told me once that it read more like the first chapter of a novel than a short story, and maybe he’s right, but I like it just the way it is, warts and all. Everybody has to start somewhere, right? I’d originally titled it “Rag Man”, but figured I’d rename it after one of my favorite David Bowie songs.

  That’s it. Hope you enjoyed the stories. If you did, please leave a review. Leave one even if you didn’t like them. Critiques can be helpful too. Also, if you’d like to keep up-to-date on new releases, go here to sign up for my newsletter. Thanks.

  Also by Dia Reeves

  Miscreated