Creatures of Want and Ruin

by Molly Tanzer

  “We do?” Rocky was surprised by this.

  “Sure, up in the attic. I wasn’t just going to leave it at . . . at Gabriel’s house.” Our house, some voice said softly in her mind, but she really wasn’t sure if that was still the case. Between their bloodless farewell the other day and Gabriel’s coldness to her this afternoon, she wasn’t sure if there was a path back to ever being comfortable with one another again.

  Rocky seemed uncertain about this plan. “I don’t know, girls. Trifling with demons is always risky.”

  “But we need to know what’s really happening,” said Fin, surprising Ellie. “The island—our home is at stake here! If some clue to Hunter’s intentions—his specific intentions—could be revealed through the vision, we have to take advantage of that.”

  Fin and Rocky continued to discuss it, but Ellie scrambled up the rickety stair to the attic—Rocky could decline a tipple if he wanted. She grabbed a bottle out of the suspect case and came back brandishing it.

  Fin seemed to have convinced Rocky to go along with the plan in Ellie’s absence, so Ellie poured everyone a slug of Hunter’s booze. She wasn’t exactly eager to knock it back now that she was holding it; neither were Fin and Rocky, apparently. They all sat in silence for a bit; then they all seemed to come to their final decision at the same time.

  “Bottoms up,” said Rocky.

  It tasted like Ellie remembered, hot and greasy and earthy. It made her start sweating, but nothing else.

  “Maybe a little more?” she asked, but then Fin gasped. Her eyes blazed every color of the rainbow at once, and her skin took on a faint luminous sheen before she stiffened and fainted prettily onto Rocky. Rocky shook Fin’s shoulder for a moment, and then his eyes went funny too, and he fell back with a moan.

  Ellie watched them for a few minutes, unsure what to do while her lover and her friend lay insensate on the sofa, both gently glowing. Neither responded to Ellie’s gentle shakes or verbal calls to attention. Ellie shifted Fin into a more comfortable position and then pried open Rocky’s eye. The pupil was a mere pinprick, and the whites were still a neon rainbow of swirling, shifting colors.

  With a sigh, Ellie settled in, resigned to waiting out whatever was happening. Rocky’s house was full of books, but none of them appealed to her. Mostly she just missed Gabriel fiercely.

  She was just about to fix herself a snack when Fin screamed.

  Ellie dropped the block of cheese she’d been scraping mold off of and ran over to her. Fin was shaking, convulsing really. Ellie called her name and her friend’s eyes flew open, but it was obvious she wasn’t seeing what was before her.

  “The roots,” she said, staring into some unknown beyond. Not only were her eyes ablaze with every color Ellie could name and some she couldn’t—little tendrils of light extended outward from the whites, little boneless fingers searching for something unseen. Fin wasn’t just gently glowing now; she was practically phosphorescent, and tiny spores or motes drifted from her nose and mouth. “The root of it all!”

  “What’s at the root of it all?” asked Ellie. She didn’t know if Fin would hear her, but she thought it was worth a shot. “What do you see?”

  “From the center, they spread, and sprout . . . they grasp, and they tear!”

  Fin screamed again then and fell back with a whimper. Her luminous skin began to return to normal as Rocky stirred and then woke. He seemed more bleary than afraid.

  “I say,” he said, his accent much stronger than usual. “That was most unusual.”

  “What did you see?” asked Ellie, one eye on Fin, who was again out cold. She handed Rocky a cup of water; he drank it eagerly.

  “It was as Fin said. I saw Long Island . . . I saw it break apart and change. I saw something else emerge from the chaos, neither island nor animal. What’s to come . . . It isn’t a natural disaster, it’s . . . I suppose it’s an act of God, or a god, at least. There is will behind it, terrible will, not whim.”

  Ellie noted that Rocky, too, seemed completely, unquestionably certain of the truth of what he’d seen.

  Fin’s eyes opened. “Yes,” she said. “And not only that, but it’s happening soon. Sooner. It felt imminent this time.”

  “You said something about roots,” said Ellie.

  “The mushrooms,” said Fin, glancing almost fearfully at the bottle of tainted moonshine, “or whatever they are . . . they’re part of all of this. Their roots form a network beneath the earth. Eventually it will be strong enough to break the island into pieces. When they’re mature, the transformation will begin.”

  Fin and Rocky began to discuss their visions, swapping theories about what they’d seen. Mixed feelings aside, Ellie couldn’t help but smile as she watched them. It was nice to see how they were just so instantly enchanted with one another. Ellie had never seen Rocky like this—they’d always had a very casual relationship, fueled by desire; this was different. And Fin, too, was clearly quite taken with him—she was smiling more, and looked relaxed and comfortable in spite of the topic of conversation.

  For Ellie, however, all this talk of Long Island’s destruction had gotten under her skin. They were both so certain it was real, and she believed them even though for whatever reason she had not been able to see what they’d seen. It seemed impossible, and yet it wasn’t as if this was the first time she’d felt the sense that her island was changing without her understanding how or why. It had been too easy for too long to pretend that it was just her family that had changed; then Jones had told her about the attacks, and now . . . now the earth itself was no longer familiar. The idea of a silent network of spreading fungal bodies bent on tearing apart her home terrified Ellie even more than the sub-rosa cult of diabolists who were helping it. She knew that the authorities—well, one authority—had been attempting to investigate and curtail Hunter and his cohort. But now she knew that even if they stopped Hunter there was still something else, something yet more insidious, helped by man but independent of man, living and growing beneath the earth, the physical manifestation of the will of something beyond her understanding.

  Rocky’s shack by the sea suddenly felt a little small for all three of them. Ellie stood, drawing their attention.

  “I need a little air,” she said. “Forgive me. I think I’m going to go for a little cruise. It’s a nice night.”

  “Do you want company?”

  Ellie was grateful to Fin for asking, especially as she was getting on so well with Rocky. She shook her head.

  “It’s just a lot,” she said, “all of this.” Fin seemed to understand. Rocky nodded his head, too, but he had that look about him as he so often did, of only half listening. “But would you walk me out, Fin?”

  “Sure,” said the other woman, rising immediately. Ellie shut the door behind them and took Fin’s hands in hers.

  “Go for it,” she said, squeezing them.

  Fin had the decency not to pretend ignorance. “Ellie, I can’t pretend I don’t like him, but I would never—”

  “Go for it,” she repeated. She meant it. “Rocky and I, we were never exclusive. Obviously. I’m engaged.” At least, she hoped she still was.

  “I don’t want to queer things between us. That’s more important to me than having him for a lover.”

  “I’m telling you it won’t queer anything,” said Ellie, “and the end of the world is nigh. It’s time to do what we want.”

  Fin hugged her. “I do like him,” she whispered. “A lot. He’s different than I imagined.”

  Ellie managed not to say “I agree,” and instead nodded back at the house. “Go on,” she said. “I need to get out on the bay and think my thoughts.”

  “Be safe,” said Fin.

  Ellie nodded and headed down the beach, toward the path that would take her to her skiff. She hadn’t said what was in her heart: that, given what they’d just pieced together, Fin’s wish for her—or anyone—to be safe seemed absurd.

  8

  Ellie wasn’t really thinking as she
steered her skiff away from Rocky’s, but eventually she realized habit had her heading toward Gabriel’s house. Their house. Whatever house it was, she wondered for a moment if she ought to chart a different course, but then she decided that if it really was their house she could go there even if things were currently awkward.

  Maybe Gabriel would still be up. It wasn’t all that late. It would be nice to talk to him—who would understand her feelings about Long Island better? Especially about it feeling unfamiliar, unlike home anymore.

  She knew she could hardly just walk through the door and talk to him about all of that. They needed to settle things between them, make things right.

  That sounded good to her. If Amityville no longer felt like home, she’d like her fiancé at least to feel like her fiancé. She’d longed for him every moment she’d been apart from him.

  Ellie had first noticed Gabriel across the ballroom of the Terry-Ketcham Inn in Center Moriches, and after a while he’d noticed her looking. Later, he’d claimed it was her big mouth that had caught his eye that night; Ellie was convinced it had been that she was the only woman in the room wearing slacks, and Gabriel had recently been kicked out of the house for being found in a compromising situation with another boy.

  They’d woken up early the following morning, straw in their hair from having had an actual roll in the hay, only to discover they were both in need of a ride back to Amityville. Convenience was never the most romantic reason for seeing a lover a second time—but it didn’t hurt, either. And of course, there’d been something else there . . . Ellie smiled to herself as she killed the motor and pulled up to the dock.

  Pure chemistry, as SJ would say.

  She could hear the sound of Gabriel’s wireless through the open windows of the living room. He had tuned in to a fight, and she wished she was in there with him, listening along. Just the same, Ellie hesitated before walking in the back door. She didn’t quite feel like barging in, but neither did it please her to knock and beg an entrance.

  Ellie’s warm feelings faded as she recalled just why she was worrying. She’d not made Gabriel happy—not recently, at least. And maybe not ever, in a few important ways. She recalled his complaints about her refusing to let him help her; her independence made him feel he had no real role in her life beyond the everyday: eating meals together, sleeping together, talking over this and that, making love. That’s the sort of support she thought was important, but he clearly saw it as incidental.

  Ellie sighed and turned away from the house, retreating down the back porch steps, taking care to avoid the middle one that creaked. Instead, she crept around to the side of the house, where Lester’s window was still illuminated.

  Talking to Gabriel was just too complicated right now, but things were never complicated between her and her brother. She guiltily realized that they’d not talked about what had happened the other night, when he’d so bravely defended her and Gabriel from the men in those masks. She’d just left him on his own . . . or rather, with Gabriel. It was time to atone for that.

  She found a convenient pebble and tossed it up at his window, wincing as it rapped the glass hard. When there was no response she tried again, this time with a clod of earth. That summoned her brother to the casement.

  He didn’t seem surprised to see her when he opened the window. After nodding at the finger she held to her lips he shut it, and appeared as silently as an owl on the back porch, so quickly Ellie briefly wondered if he’d had other late-night rendezvous while she slept, entirely unaware of that side of his life.

  “What are you doing, sneaking around this place?” he murmured. “You live here.”

  “Only sort of,” she replied unhappily. Her earlier musings had really gotten her down.

  “No, definitely. The two of you are absolutely ridiculous and you should be ashamed. You, plural. He’s been mooning around the place like a sick dog, and here you are throwing rocks at my window to avoid him. You’re both crazy about each other. Just admit it and reconcile.”

  “I wish it were that easy,” she said.

  “It is that easy,” he said, folding his slender arms. “Go up there, knock.” Ellie must have had a look on her face, because he scoffed at her, which was not his way. “I won’t do it for you—if you called me down here to have me deliver a message for you, I—”

  “No,” said Ellie. “I called you down here to see if you’d like to go for a cruise out on the bay.”

  “Oh.” When he smiled he looked so much like their father, back in happier days. “I’d love to.”

  “Need a sweater from inside?”

  Lester shook his head. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “I’m not worried about you,” said Ellie. When he gave her a skeptical look, she clarified her statement, saying, “I’m no more worried about you than usual.”

  “There’s the honesty I’m used to,” said Lester. “Anyway, let’s just go. I’m sure I’ll be all right.”

  Just then, the back door swung open again, revealing Gabriel’s silhouette against the lights from within. Ellie wondered if she’d ever really appreciated just how broad his shoulders were, or how narrow his waist.

  “Ellie?” he asked, peering into the darkness. “Is that you?”

  “Yeah.” She approached him, but walked only to the base of the stairs. There was so much she wanted to say, but so little she could actually explain. He hadn’t believed her about Hunter; why would he believe her about Rocky and Fin drinking some tainted hooch and having visions? “Just out for a late-night cruise . . . Thought I’d take Lester with me.”

  “It’s getting a little cool . . .”

  “I’ll be fine,” said Lester, exasperated.

  Ellie thought to extend the invite to her fiancé as well; it was on the tip of her tongue when he said, “Well, enjoy yourselves,” and went back inside.

  Ellie stared after him, despairing.

  “Go talk to him,” urged Lester. “We can go for a cruise any old night.”

  “Nah,” said Ellie, trying not to let her emotions show in her voice. “When’s the last time just you and me did something? Let’s go.”

  They clambered into the boat and cruised west, the Great South Bay smooth as glass as Ellie’s skiff carried them along. The night was quiet and so peaceful; Ellie looked at Lester and was grateful to feel that familiar understanding between them, powerful and complete. He understood why she’d left; she understood he’d been hurt that she’d done it without talking to him. It was all there, between them, too deep for speech.

  “I’ll miss you,” she said. “I know the city isn’t so far by train, but it sure feels like a long way when I’m used to having you so close.”

  “I’ll visit,” he said.

  “I know. I’ll visit too. But it won’t be the same.”

  “I’m sure I’ll move back after I’m done,” said Lester.

  “Don’t be,” said Ellie. “Who knows what will happen to you once you go? You might end up anywhere—a big-deal doctor in the city, or maybe you’ll go off to . . . to, I don’t know, Chicago or San Francisco!” She didn’t know how to say what needed to be said—that she was unsure there would be a home for him to come back to.

  Ellie was just wondering if she could save Lester at least, spiriting him away to the mainland and then coming back to deal with the problem at hand, when Lester interrupted her thoughts.

  “What’s that?” He was pointing in the distance at a red glow. It looked like fire.

  “That’s over by SJ’s place,” she said.

  She looked at her brother. She felt like they had an obligation to check on her and see what was happening, but she wanted to know his feelings on the matter. He nodded grimly.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Ellie killed her motor even earlier than she usually did and rowed up to the concealed dock by her friend’s house, wincing every time her oars splished. She didn’t want to hurry, but the worrying glow was only
getting brighter.

  After tying up, she and Lester creeped up the slight hill to see SJ’s shack surrounded by several all-too-familiar fires. They shimmered in the night, a halo of colors like an oil smear shimmering around each blaze. Staying in the shadows of the tree line they saw several cloaked figures were lurking outside the ring of firelight, their shaped masks making their heads look large and strange; SJ and Aaron stood in the center of them, their backs to the door of the shack. SJ was balancing her large, heavy-looking crossbow on one arm, training it on the man in the circular mask; her free hand grasped her brother’s. Ellie found Lester’s in the darkness and she squeezed it, hard.

  Aaron had a crowbar. Ellie wished she and Lester were armed, even with makeshift weapons; she wasn’t sure what exactly they could do about the situation, given that they were unarmed. And outnumbered even with Aaron and SJ: a man stood behind each of the fires as far as she could tell, plus the man in the circular mask.

  Ellie couldn’t hear what the man in the mask was saying, but SJ didn’t seem too entertained by it. Ellie would have bet Lester’s college fund that it was a good deal worse than anything they’d said to her or Gabriel.

  SJ’s crossbow was intimidating, certainly capable of killing one of her assailants . . . but only one, unless she chose to swing it around like a club after. They’d fall upon her before she could get it reloaded. It was more effective as a threat than a weapon.

  “Lester,” whispered Ellie, “go back to the boat. I’m going to try to help, and—”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t run away from these men last time, and I won’t now.”

  “You had a shotgun then,” she hissed.

  “Yeah, well.” Lester let go her hand, and after casting around for a moment, found a stout-looking stick that would make a decent club.

  “You’ll just get yourself killed,” she said angrily.

  “I won’t sit idly by,” said Lester. “Aaron is my friend, SJ is his sister, and they wouldn’t hesitate if it was us.”

  Ellie saw in his eyes that she couldn’t stop him, and nodded. “If we can sneak up on them and each take out one of them from behind, it’ll cause a distraction and increase our odds,” she said.