by T E. D Klein
The cone-shaped dirt-and-basalt structure has drawn geologists from all over the state – and some worried comments from townspeople. 'I don't want my children going near it,' says Hannelore Reid, a housewife and mother of six. 'Everybody knows the swamp around there is unsafe.'
Bert Steegler, manager of the Gilead Town Co-operative, is more blunt. 'The woods around there are haunted,' he maintains. 'They always were.'
BUBBLE IN THE EARTH?
Authorities, however, paint a less romantic picture. Describing the formation as the result of 'an immense bubble of methane' – commonly known as 'swamp gas' – Dr James Lewalski of Princeton University's department of geology, contacted by phone, noted that north central New Jersey lies over a recognized geological fault area, the so-called Ramapo Fault, and dismissed the mound as 'a perfectly explainable natural phenomenon,' although he admitted that few such mounds are created with such rapidity and suddenness…
There were other reports, too, that day, in the local press. The tombstone of one Rachel van Meer, who'd died in 1912, had been toppled by the quake and had rolled down the hill to the road, where John and Willy Baber, young men of the town, had hit it the next morning in their pickup truck. The nine-foot-tall granite monument to the Troet family had cracked in two, and a number of graves had been so shaken that at least three wooden coffins were actually left jutting above the ground. "Tis like the Day of Judgment,' remarked Jacob van Meer, whose house adjoined the cemetery.
A man in nearby Annandale had commented that it was 'lucky that the quake hit Gilead,' as it was the only town around without a steeple. A Lebanon man had added, 'It's a good thing those people don't have electricity.' A state legislator for the district had suggested, in a meeting at the local schoolhouse, that the town apply for federal disaster aid and had almost been run out on a rail.
And according to another item, a representative of the U.S. Geological Survey, after visiting the site, had concluded: 'Recent reports of unusual animal behavior in Gilead and the surrounding area may be attributable to preliminary earth tremors leading to this week's disturbances.'
But the people of Gilead didn't see it that way.
To Abram Sturtevant, whose German shepherd had gone wild and had had to be shot; to Klaus and Wilma Buckhalter, whose cow had miscarried; to Adam Verdock, checking the splint on his cow's rear leg, broken when, Wednesday, it had clambered out of its collapsed stall; to Hershel Reimer, repairing the stable door that his horse had kicked down; to Galen Trudel and his son, still searching through the swamp for their missing hogs; to Werner Klapp, burying thirty-seven chickens that had been pecked to death by their fellows on the night of the quake; to old Bethuel Reid, who refused to go outside now without a rake in his hands for fear of serpents; to all of them, the earthquake itself and the animals' unusual behavior were merely two symptoms of the same fundamental disturbance. The one was not the cause of the other; rather, both were portents, signals from above, warnings of divine displeasure. But what, they asked, was He displeased about?
Sunlight amp; grasshoppers: the woods are quiet now. Slept long into the morning, then walked up to the house, scratching groggily. Sounds of Sarr's axe echoing from across the stream. Kitchen deserted; splashed some cold water on my face in the bathroom, gazing longingly at the tub amp; thinking of Deborah's pale lovely body, almost mine for the asking. Over a solitary lunch – mostly store-bought cookies – thumbed through today's Home News. There's some kind of volcanic thing out there in the woods. Must visit.
Felt fat from lunch, amp; angry at the breakdown of my discipline. Ambled down to the stream. Deborah was kneeling in front of it, day-dreaming, amp; I was embarrassed because I'd come upon her talking to herself. I asked her if Sarr had shown any suspicion about yesterday. 'No,' she assured me, 'not even a hint.' She didn't dwell on the subject amp; went back to the house without mentioning it again. I suspect she feels guilty about the whole thing.
Sat by some rocks on the bank of the stream, throwing blades of grass into the water amp; playing word games with myself. The shrill twitter of the birds, I would say, the white birds singing in the sun
… And inexorably I'd continue with the sun dying in the moonlight, the moonlight falling on the floor… The sun's heat on my head felt almost painful, as if my brain were growing too large for my skull. The floor sagging to the cellar, the cellar filling with water, the water seeping into the ground… I turned amp; looked at the farmhouse. In the distance it looked like a picture at the other end of a large room; the carpet was grass, the ceiling was an endless great blue sky. Deborah, in the distance, was stroking one of the cats, then seemed to grow angry when it struggled from her arms; I could hear the screen door slam as she went into the kitchen, but the sound reached me so long after the visual image that the whole scene struck me as somehow fake. The ground twisting into smoke, the smoke staining the sky… I gazed up at the oaks behind me amp; they seemed trees out of a cheap postcard, the kind in which thinly colored paint is dabbed over a black- amp;-white photograph; if you looked closely at them you could see that the green was not merely in the leaves, but rather floated as a vapor over leaves, branches, parts of the sky.. . The sky b urning in the sun, the sun dying in the moonlight, the moonlight falling on the floor… endless progressions that held my mind like a whirlpool. The trees behind me seemed the production of a poor painter, the color amp; shape not quite meshing. Parts of the sky were green, amp; pieces of it kept floating away from my vision, no matter how hard I tried to follow them.
Reality hangs by a thread…
Far down the stream I could see something small amp; kicking, a black beetle, legs in the air, borne swiftly along in the current. Then it was swept around a bend amp; was gone.
By a thread…
Sarr woke me for dinner; I had dozed off, there by the water, amp; my clothes were damp from the grass. I saw scratches on his cheek. As we walked up to the house together he whispered that, earlier in the day, he'd come upon his wife bending over me, peering into my sleeping face. 'Her eyes were wide,' he said. 'Like Bwada's. Like the moon.'
Could he be drinking? No, he didn't smell of alcohol. I said I didn't understand why he was telling me this.
'Because,' he recited in a whisper, gripping my arm,' "the heart is deceitful above all things, amp; desperately wicked: who can know it?" '
Dinner was especially uncomfortable; the two of them sat picking at their food, occasionally raising their eyes to one another like children in a staring contest. I longed for the conversations of our early days, inconsequential though they must have been, amp; wondered where things had first gone wrong.
The meal was dry amp; unappetizing, but the dessert looked delicious – chocolate mousse, a rather fancy dish for people like the Poroths, but which Deborah considers one of her specialties. She took none for herself, explaining that her stomach was upset.
'Then we'll not eat any!' Sarr shouted, amp; with that he snatched my dish from in front of me, grabbed his own, amp; hurled them both against the wall, where they splattered like mud balls.
Deborah was very still; she said nothing, just sat there watching us. She didn't look particularly afraid of this madman – but I was. He may have read my thoughts, because as I got up from my seat he said much more gently, in the normal soft voice he has, 'Sorry,
Jeremy. I know you hate scenes. We'll pray for each other, all right?'
'Are you okay?' I asked, turning to Deborah. 'I'm going out now, but I'll stay if you think you'll be needing me.' She stared at me with a slight smile amp; shook her head; when I glanced pointedly at her husband, she just shrugged.
'Things will work out,' she said. I could hear Sarr mumbling one of his insane prayers as I shut the door.
I walked back here through a cloud of fireflies, like stars, the stars themselves frosting the sky like bubbles in a water glass. Inside here the bubbles in my water glass, left unemptied by my bed all week, were like the stars…
I realized I was shaking. If I
have to tangle with him, big as he is, I'm ready. I took off my shirt amp; stood in front of the little mirror. How could Deborah have allowed me to touch her yesterday? How can I face Carol tomorrow? It has been days since I've bathed, amp; I've become used to the smell of my body. My hair has wound itself into greasy brown curls, my beard is at least a week old, amp; my eyes… well, the eyes that stared back at me were those of an old man, the whites turning yellow as rotten teeth. I looked at my chest amp; arms, plump amp; flabby at thirty, amp; I thought of the frightening alterations in Sarr, amp; I thought, What the hell is going on? I smoothed back my hair amp; got out my roll of dental floss amp; began running the thread through my teeth, but it had been so long since I'd done it that my gums began to bleed, amp; when I looked back into the mirror I had blood dripping down my lips like a vampire.
I made a resolution as I stood there. When Carol and Rosie leave after this weekend, I'm going back with them.
Poroth stood on the back porch, lost in imaginary arguments with himself as he stared out at the night, the cats miaowing plaintively at his feet. He felt an angel perched on his right shoulder, a demon on his left. Lord, he whispered from time to time, give me strength. He had erred, losing his temper like that over dinner; he'd been a fool. He had yielded to despair, and that, his mother had always said, was the devil's oldest weapon. But he hadn't lost his faith, he reminded himself; God watched and loved him, just as before; there was still hope. If only he wouldn't tremble so…
He regretted that he'd ever lent an ear to his mother's bizarre notions about dragons and ceremonies and intruders from outside, and that he'd ever allowed her to show him those hellish pictures: that small black shapeless thing like the one he had seen on the cards, and that black face peering from the tree, and the squat unnatural contours of that mound… The myth was just too alien to take seriously, of course; it conflicted with everything he'd been brought up to believe. And yet its power was undeniable.
By rights these visions should have meant no more to him than a half-heard fairy tale from some country far away. His mother's gods and demons were, after all, not his; her virgin was nothing like the Virgin. To think that poor prim red-haired Carol, who'd be here from the city tomorrow, could have any mythological significance! And that her cosmically decreed counterpart might be right here on this farm in the person of Jeremy Freirs! Preposterous! He would have laughed – and someday, perhaps, he might be able to. He gazed out over the lawn, where the light was on in Freirs' room. He could see the plump little figure scribbling away at his studies or meditations or letters or whatever they were. Well, God would set his mother right soon enough. ..
A jet passed overhead, the customary Friday night visitation, a memento of the modern world he'd rejected. Straightening his shoulders, he turned and walked back into the house.
The house was silent, except for the ticking of the clock. Shutting the kitchen door, he paused after turning down the lamp. He hated to think about going upstairs. Up there was Deborah, with whom he'd taken holy vows to share his life, and if the devil was hiding in her somewhere – his devil, Satan, the devil he knew – well, one didn't flee, one stood and fought, cleansing the woman the way he'd seen his house and barn cleansed last Sunday.
Why, then, did he hesitate? Had his mother's stories really gotten to him: her talk of eggs and dragons, and beings that changed shape? Had those pictures of hers had their intended effect? Maybe not; but he knew he wasn't ready to face his wife yet, not after that scene tonight in the kitchen. To lie so close to someone and know that in her heart she was your enemy… It took more courage than he had right now. Lord, he said again, give me strength.
If only he could prove his mother wrong. If only she'd said something that might actually be verified. There was one thing, perhaps…
In the living room he lit the lamp and crouched before his little cache of books. Byfield's almanac was still on the top of the pile from the evening Freirs had asked him about Lammas. Sure enough, in the back of the volume was a section of lunar tables, page after page of spidery fine print. Taking both book and lamp over to the rocker, he settled back to read.
His mother had said yesterday that there'd be two full moons this month; well, that much he'd known already, as any farmer would-any farmer, at least, here in Gilead. But she'd also said that the occurrence was a rare one, at least when the second moon in question turned full on Lammas Eve. This happened more seldom, she had hinted, than mere chance might have led one to expect.
Running his finger down the columns, he squinted at the listings for July thirty-first. The tables were difficult to follow; there were footnotes to refer to, quantities for leap years to be added or subtracted, and rows of tiny figures that seemed to swim together in the flickering light. But as near as he could make out, his mother had been right. In fact, he saw now, if the tables were correct, in the past hundred years there'd been only two occurrences of the full moon on the final night of July: in 1890 and again in 1939…
The wide plank floorboards echoed as he paced back and forth. He was still reluctant to go upstairs – more so than ever, in fact, considering how his mother's words had just found some small measure of scientific support. And those crudely drawn images she'd shown him were still buzzing around in his head like a horde of insects that, once inside his skull, had no way of ever getting out. The luridly colored figures seemed less alien now, the more he thought about them, and no longer quite so impossible: the rose with lips and teeth; the black shape called the Dhol; the odd two-ringed design…
If only he could turn his mind to some passage from the Bible, he would be comforted, he was sure. But the Bible was upstairs, next to Deborah, and though he knew all the words in it perfectly, he needed before him the reality of print.
His eye fell on the ornate binding of the poetry collection Freirs had been reading, still lying out upon his desk. Sighing, he sat back in the rocking chair and opened the book. He remembered how he'd struggled through it years ago, underlining passages, writing comments in the margins, as if these words of mere men deserved the scrutiny he'd given to the words of God.
Still, there was a kind of comfort here in the old familiar religion of his childhood. The volume fell open to a poem he'd studied at the Bible school in town. Christmas meditation, he'd written in careful schoolboy script at the top. It was Milton, he saw, good, dark, steady, pious Milton: 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity,' a celebration of the birth of the Savior. He read it through, lips moving with the words, barely thinking about what they said, soothed just as he'd hoped to be – until with a jolt he saw what he'd been reading. He went through the stanza a second time.
… from this happy day
Th'old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wrath to see his Kingdom fail,
Swinges the scaly Horror of his folded tail.
Why was he trembling so again? The poem, at least, was perfectly confident: Christ had banished the dragon, the ancient evil kingdom had been overthrown… But still, something told him, still it waits – waits, like that other poet had said, for the cycle to come round again; waits for another Christmas, maybe thousands of years hence, when it will find release once more.
He closed the book and sat there bolt upright, the planks creaking beneath him as he rocked back and forth. But as fast as he rocked and as hard as he tried, he couldn't shake off the feeling, the terrible conviction that had suddenly seized him. God's Lord now, he said to himself, but the Other waits below. And sooner or later, his turn will come.
She came to him that night, long after the moon had gone down and the fireflies had vanished from the fields. He awoke to find her crouching over him like a succubus, gazing urgently into his face.
Blinking up at her groggily, trying to understand, he began to form a question, but she pressed a hand over his mouth and shook her head. Her eyes burned into his as she sat herself beside him on the be
d. She was in her nightgown, her nipples prominent beneath the cloth. Instinctively he embraced her; he was naked and already aroused, the aftermath of a dream now forgotten, as he pushed the sheets away with his foot and drew her down beside him. She wriggled like a cat as he ran his hand down her body, slipping the nightgown up over her hips. He felt her own hands on his penis, guiding him into her as she lay beside him. She was bone-dry; he could not go in. He slipped his hand down to touch the thick patch of hair that, yesterday, had been dripping from the bath, and found it dry as brambles.
'Wait,' she hissed, pushing his hand away, 'let me.' She brought her fingers to her mouth. 'Damn it to hell, I haven't any spit!'
'No need for hurry-'
She hushed him by cupping her hand over his mouth, but kept it there.
'Wet me with your tongue.'
Obediently he licked her hand, then felt it withdrawn, leaving a smear of saliva on his chin. She stared into her hand with what seemed, at first, a grimace of distaste, but then he saw her mouth working fiercely, cheeks sucking inward, and with a harsh little sound she spat into her palm. Once more he felt her hands on his penis, moistening it. He raised himself on one elbow, preparing to mount her from above, but she shook her head and pushed his shoulder flat against the bed. Straddling him, she slipped him inside her. She was dry inside as well, he could feel it, but she spread herself wider and settled farther down, her nightgown slipping back below her waist, concealing the place where the two of them were joined. Tensing her leg muscles, she slowly moved herself up and down. He felt himself gripped as by a fist; there was a roughness in her, something that abraded. God, he thought, she's so dry.
'Don't rush it,' he whispered, drawing her mouth down to his and covering it with his lips. Her own lips remained clamped shut, and moments later he felt her resist. He held her tightly. Without warning her mouth opened under his, but barely, and she got out the name 'Sarr' before his tongue had found its way between her lips.
The name jolted him back to his senses. He felt a twinge of guilt, felt himself shrink and withdraw from her; but it hadn't just been the name, he'd felt something, too, with the tip of his tongue: a roughness at the back of her mouth, a lump of flesh he'd never felt before.
