Creatures of Want and Ruin

by Molly Tanzer

  They started unloading his pickup into her skiff in uncomfortable silence, sifting through it all to make sure she had everything she and Lester might need immediately.

  “I’ll bring the rest by soon,” he said as they repacked the remainder.

  “I’ll just come by and—”

  “It’s no trouble,” he said. “I was planning to drop by anyway. I have something of yours—the booze I salvaged from that party. I ought not to give it to you, given that some of it’s tainted . . .”

  “I know which bottles they’d be.”

  “I figured you would. Well, it’s yours. I’ll bring it by sometime later this week . . . and see how you’re settling in.”

  “Why, Officer Jones, are you finding excuses to check up on me?” Ellie jumped aboard. Cleo barked at her, and she waved at the dog. “You might as well eat if you’re stopping by—name a day and I’ll tell Gabriel to make pierogi.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just drop everything off some evening after work.” The coolness of his tone surprised her, until he winked at her from the shore. “Don’t worry; it’ll be soon. If the feds get a wild hair to conduct a raid, I’d rather it all be in your basement than mine.”

  Ellie’s skiff sat low in the water and her heart low in her chest as she made her way home. Then the bungalow came into view, and Gabriel came out as she tied up, and she leaped onto the dock to embrace him.

  “I’m moving in, if that’s all right with you,” she said, and kissed him. He kissed her back, and in that moment, everything felt like it would be all right. His touch was so familiar, so understandable and human and urgent and normal, that Ellie was quite certain that nothing strange or uncanny could ever trouble them while they were together.

  3

  The arrow hit inside the gold circle at the center of the target, but the moment it sank into the straw Fin felt the vision lapping at the edges of her mind like an oily sea on some incomprehensible shore. She practiced the breathing she’d learned in school, tried to clear her mind as she nocked another out of the handful she held as she ran, focusing on her body, on her target, but she could not fully push away the memory of what she’d seen. Even so, she kept at it; the familiar feel of her shoulders sliding down away from her ears, the tension across her chest as she drew, the feel of the string against her thumb, the twang of the release were all that she could count on since that night.

  A few more arrows in her hand, Fin hopped up onto a bale of hay, trying to stay light on her feet. The breeze kicked up, making the grass of the lawn rustle like crinoline; she corrected her angle and let go. This time she hit even closer to the center of the gold, but she didn’t pause to admire it. She had more arrows in her hand, and far too many thoughts to keep from her mind.

  Fin had moved her archery range right into the center of the back lawn, and set it up with hay bales and other obstacles in order to do dynamic, combat-focused target practice. The light was better there anyway, and the space broad enough that she could work up a sweat running between targets. Simple archery practice had not been enough to keep her mind empty; she needed the extra bulwarks of where to put her feet, how to maneuver around obstacles, the changing angle of the sun.

  Plus, she had set it all up while the rest of her entourage were away somewhere, and it had been hilarious when they’d returned. She’d actually laughed at the confusion on Jimmy’s face, the annoyance and exasperation on Bobbie’s . . . Edgar’s amusement had been surprising, but she’d drunk it all in, thirsty for it. It wasn’t that she wanted to inconvenience them. She just wanted to be seen.

  Bobbie hadn’t spoken to her since the night of the party. She blamed Fin for its chaotic, premature, and embarrassing ending—and also for being the cause of the problem to begin with. After all, Fin had been the one who’d bought the moonshine, who had insisted they should have it at the party at all. That made it all her fault, to Bobbie’s mind, and of course Lily and Duke had agreed. While it was true that neither of them had ever had much to say to Fin, the silent treatment was exhausting even from people she’d rather not talk to.

  Fin, for her part, had apologized—profusely—for inadvertently procuring the liquor that had induced the hallucinations, but she would not agree that the liquor itself had been tainted. At least not with methanol or some other poison.

  What she’d seen hadn’t been a hallucination.

  It had been a vision.

  Fin’s companions wouldn’t even consider the idea that something other than bad booze could have caused the fits experienced by a handful of their guests and one very unhappy ukulele player. They were more worried about what the neighbors were saying now that it was known that they were the sorts of cheapskates who would bring in a live musical act, but wouldn’t spring for quality hooch.

  Not Fin. She could tell the difference between dreams and reality—and what she’d seen had been real. She was sure of that—more sure than she was about the viability of her marriage to Jimmy, or why on earth she was staying in a house where her presence was barely tolerated by people who disliked her.

  It bothered her that they didn’t believe her. None of them had seen what she had, true, but their doubt was nevertheless an insult. Even if the other partygoers subscribed to the theory that poor-quality liquor had been the source of their troubles, there was no reason for Fin to lie about what had happened to her; at least, not as regards to it feeling—no, being—real.

  She ducked behind a lawn chair she’d set up as an obstacle, crouching low and angling carefully, but her concentration had slipped. The bow twanged as she fumbled her shot; the arrow hit next to her foot. Fin sucked her teeth in annoyance.

  Ever since that night she’d felt like a cracked vase that someone had turned to the wall to hide the damage; like a tree chopped nearly through and then abandoned, alone and in danger from every gust of wind. In the absence of support she’d had to turn inward.

  Archery helped, but she could only do it so much. Reading, which had always been her other retreat, was of no use. Now that she’d drowned, at least in her mind, her collection of books about the sea were anathema to her, and none of the rest of what she’d brought with her could hold her attention for long. The words blurred together, forming roiling mounds of fur, waves of dull scales, and pools of liquid iridescent light that flowed like lava.

  That wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was the terrible desire she’d felt emanating from that thing in the woods, the determination to destroy—no, to remake the world into something else entirely, something fecund and feral, more alien than the moon.

  The man in the robe hadn’t been dropping a bomb.

  He’d been serving a master.

  It had been a mistake to tell Jimmy about the vision, but she’d been frightened, and had wanted to feel like someone was on her side as she sat, shivering, wrapped in a blanket, disoriented by the trails bright lights left in her vision as she waited to be questioned by the rather mercurial local police officer who had shown up on the scene. She should have known Jimmy couldn’t offer her any such solace.

  Her next arrow hit well outside the blue border of the target. Two arrows left, she headed back across the range toward the stand to grab some more.

  Chatting with Officer Jones had been more comforting than speaking with her husband, though Jones’s dog had played a large part in that. The prick-eared mongrel with a fox’s face had sniffed her hands before submitting to being petted, but eventually the dog had settled in, and so had Fin.

  It wasn’t such a bad conversation, either, even if Jones had laughed in her face when she claimed she hadn’t been drinking alcohol and had no idea where any booze at the party might have come from. Eventually he revealed Bobbie had already given him Ellie’s name, but when Fin went pale and started to stammer, all he’d done was commend her for protecting a friend. “Shows a good deal of loyalty,” he’d said, while scribbling in a little book.

  Her next arrow, though she fired while jumping down
off the seat of a lawn chair, hit dead center within the gold circle.

  “Kid?”

  Fin fired her final arrow, hitting the gold again. Only then did she look at her husband. He was standing off to the side of the range, his hands behind his back. He didn’t look particularly at his ease, but his tone when he spoke was horribly jovial.

  “Hey,” he said. “What’cha doing out here?”

  If it hadn’t been Jimmy Fin would have suspected him of asking her some sort of trick question. She stared at him, unsure what to say. She was sweating; she could feel it trickling down her body from under her arms and breasts, and she was still holding her bow, if not her arrows.

  “I mean, I can see what you’re doing, but . . .” He produced from behind him a cocktail shaker, its metal exterior frosted and dewy in the heat, and a small picnic basket with a blindingly white cloth peeking out invitingly. “Wanna take a break for a minute? I’ve got gin in the shaker with some ice, and a bottle of tonic . . . some caviar and dill cream and some sandwiches, and I think maybe a piece of cake?”

  In The Ginger-Eaters, the girl made her pact with the demon willingly, and having been advised of the consequences of her choice. Even so, she failed to predict all the ways it would change her—one being a massive and overwhelming sense of alienation. Her secret knowledge made her view the world differently. What secrets did other people keep? What else was not as it seemed?

  Fin understood that better now that she’d experienced something that had changed her relationship to the world. It seemed impossible that her husband could come out with a picnic basket and invite her to eat caviar and cake and drink cold gin as she struggled to keep a vision of the nightmare apocalypse from her mind.

  Caviar did sound nice, though. Fin’s stomach rumbled.

  She retrieved her arrows before joining Jimmy at the edge of the lawn, where he’d spread out a blanket. It was undeniably sweet of him to bring out a picnic so they could eat a meal together, alone. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d done anything so pleasant, just the two of them.

  He didn’t say much at first, just poured her a drink to sip as they tucked into the light meal. The cool, salty caviar and sweet white cake were both delicious, but Fin was hungry for more than food. The unforced, quiet companionship was nourishing her soul.

  “Fin—kid—I’ve been worried about you.” Jimmy took a pull on his second gin and tonic as Fin continued to nibble at her cake. “I think you’re really taking it a little hard, what happened at the party.”

  His words spoiled the illusion. She looked at him coolly but just kept chewing. She had seen a vision of Long Island destroyed incomprehensibly at the behest of some unknowable monstrosity, and he felt she was taking that a little hard?

  “I know it’s embarrassing, and that article in the paper didn’t help.” He had the decency to blush as he made reference to that trash reporter who had not just exposed them, but described Fin as Jimmy’s sister, not his wife. “But clinging to this wild story about some kind of volcano, and—”

  “Not a volcano.”

  “Well, whatever it was, you have to see how sticking to your guns is just making it worse for you, right?”

  It was making it worse for her; that was true. More than once Fin had wondered if she should apologize, say it had all been a big story . . . but she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

  “The only thing I’m clinging to is the truth,” she said evenly.

  Jimmy looked really worried. “Fin, people think you’ve cracked up.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I dunno. Do you wanna talk to a psychoanalyst, maybe? One of our neighbors sees some Jew in the city, says it does him a lot of good ever since his wife, uh . . .” Jimmy trailed off.

  “His wife . . . ?”

  “Oh, she left him.”

  The silence after he said this was louder than the buzzing cicadas.

  “What does him being a Jew have to do with it?” she asked.

  “Oh, come off it,” said Jimmy, finally snapping. “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure I do. All I know is that this doctor is a Jew, but that doesn’t seem to be your point. Are you trying to say you’re thinking of leaving me?”

  “Leaving you?” Jimmy stared at her. He looked confused, but also guilty. “Why would you think that?”

  Fin refrained from saying anything sarcastic, a herculean effort with the gin in her system. Instead, she said, “Regardless, I don’t think I need to see a psychoanalyst.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Unless they put me in shock therapy to zap out my brains, no amount of talking is going to convince me you’re right and I’m wrong. I know what I saw.”

  “Jesus Christ, what a thing to say,” said Jimmy. “Is that really the way you feel?”

  She nodded, and Jimmy stood up, suddenly agitated.

  “Everybody’s been saying we should move. I wasn’t sure at first, with you being so . . . so . . . disturbed and all, but I’m starting to see their point,” said Jimmy. “A change of scenery might be good for us all.”

  This brought Fin up short. “Move?”

  “Yeah.” Jimmy’s eyes darted to the hay bales and then back to Fin. “We were already talking about going to Lisbon in the fall. Why not beat the crowd and go now?”

  Fin had spent the last few days doing her best to avoid thinking about what she’d seen—what it meant. For whatever reason, the idea of moving made it clear to her that she couldn’t just sit around, avoiding the problem.

  She had to do something about it.

  “No,” she said. “I want to stay.”

  He stared at her. “But why?” He seemed astonished. “There’s nothing for us here anymore, not after . . . well . . .” He looked embarrassed again. “After the party. We haven’t been invited anywhere since, and there’s no reason for anyone to come visit us. We’re pariahs, and none of us came to Long Island to sit at home all the damn time.”

  “There’s plenty to do here. It’s not all parties . . . We could go camping on Shelter Island, or—”

  “You want us to stay here to go camping? Have you ever even been camping?”

  “Not since I was a girl, no . . .”

  “You know, Fin, ever since we moved out here, you’ve been different. And not in a good way.” Jimmy’s voice was low, intense.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that you used to be a pretty fun girl, but out here you’ve been . . . distant, withdrawn. Either you’ve got your nose stuck in some stupid book of poetry by a guy nobody ever heard of, or you’re sneaking out to take the Ford to places nobody would ever want to go. I was wondering if you had a lover there for a while, but when the chauffeur mentioned that the car’s undercarriage was muddy all the time, I just got real confused. You don’t seem the type to carry on with some Irish hunter-trapper.”

  Fin thought about poor Koa. “I wasn’t having an affair when I took the car,” she said truthfully. “This place, this island—it’s just so beautiful. Not the people or the houses, though I do mean them too, after a fashion, but what I mean is more the shoreline and the woods and the fields, the different birds, and the insects and the . . .”

  “When did you become such a naturalist?” demanded Jimmy. “You’ve never in your life cared about birds and the shoreline and all that crap. Is this some new cause of yours, since this isn’t really the place to host charity events?”

  “No—there’s just something about this place,” she murmured, all the fight going out of her as the memory of the vision loomed large in her mind. She had seen a lot of Long Island in a relatively short time, it was true, but she felt she could spend years here and never truly appreciate the magnitude of its beauty. It was all going to go away, too, unless somebody did something. Unless she did something.

  “There’ll be some kind of something about other places, too.”

  “But this one’s in danger, and I have to try to do something about it.”

&n
bsp; Jimmy scoffed at her, and Fin felt it like a slap. “Come on, Fin! We were finally getting somewhere in this conversation, and you had to go and bring up that nonsense again.”

  “It’s not nonsense, Jimmy. Look, ask yourself this: What purpose would it serve to tell you that I’d had a vision if I hadn’t? You think I should be locked up in a loony bin because of it, so why would I keep saying I saw a vision unless I really and truly believed it?”

  Jimmy apparently didn’t have an answer to that, so he shrugged irritably, as if there must be some sort of explanation they simply weren’t considering.

  “I have to stay because I have to try to figure out what I saw,” she said. “Ignoring this won’t make it go away.” She realized the same could be said about their marriage, but before she could say that, he sighed.

  “I don’t know, kid.”

  “You don’t know what?”

  “I don’t know . . . Jesus! You always did like to make things difficult, didn’t you?” He said it bitterly, and stalked up to the house without another word. Fin watched him go, but didn’t call to him.

  She began to clean up her archery gear. More practice didn’t excite her now that she’d realized that distraction wasn’t enough. She needed to act—to look at this enormous, impossible problem head-on.

  The problem was, she had no real understanding of what had happened to her, much less how to stop what she’d seen from coming true. No one even believed her.

  At least, no one she’d told . . . yet. There might be someone who would.

  Fin thought over who she might possibly confide in. She didn’t like the idea of going straight to the police. She might end up institutionalized if she went to a cop, even that cop with the dog who’d interrogated her. No, she needed to talk to someone local . . . and the more she thought about it, the more she realized the person she should talk to about it all was the last person in the world who’d want to have another conversation with her.