Cecil saw the face at the same time and he shifted back, his hand going automatically to the push down lock on the door.
“Jesusjumpedup!” he said and slammed the lock, even as the face registered in his mind. The cashier from inside.
She was small, no more than five feet, maybe even less, deeply bronzed with wrinkles more like fissures in her forehead and cheeks. A plain apron seemed incongruous over her equally incongruous flower-print dress. Her tiny hand came up, a brown claw, and she tapped on the window with one thick yellow nail.
Tap, tap, tap.
Cecil breathed out a long, slow breath and a shaky grin surfaced on his face. “Aw, it’s just the old Indian,” he said and chuffed out a laugh. He glanced at Frank. “Just the old Indian woman from inside, Frank, that’s all,” he said as if reassuring someone.
“I can see that for myself,” Frank said. He was glad that he’d not screamed and glad that he’d recovered himself before Cecil saw his panic. He was slightly cheered, actually. Maybe she’d want to buy the ba…skeleton. “Roll down the winda, you damn fool, and stop that grinning. You’ll scare her off.”
Cecil cranked the window down, his grin gone sheepish, but the old woman’s eyes never left Frank. He felt hypnotized by them, immobilized and frightened. Her eyes were so dark they were almost obsidian, and her pupils bled into the whites, making her gaze inhuman.
Frank’s anger reared in his gut and tried to climb into his throat, hot and acidic.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice brusque. “What do you want?”
Without blinking, without moving, the old woman’s strange eyes went from Frank to what sat next to him, snugged up against his hip like a child. To Frank it seemed that under the old woman’s gaze, the baby skeleton (it’s NOT a baby!) began to gain weight and heat.
“What do you want?” Frank said, nearly shouting.
Cecil’s head jerked nervously from Frank to the woman, as though he feared what she might do.
“You should put it back,” the woman said. Her lips were thin and lined and her voice somehow dusty. Her hair, as black as her eyes, shone in the afternoon sun. “Put the Nimerigar back where you found it.” Her eyes held Frank again. “It might already be too late.”
“Nimerigar?” Frank asked. He twisted contempt into his voice but only to camouflage the fear. “What the hell is that?”
Without moving anything else, she brought up her shaky old hands and skipped her fingers, slow and creaking, across the door jamb where the window was sunk out of sight. Her fingernails tap, tap, tapped.
“It’s the little ones…the little ones who bite and fight and make nothing right,” she said, almost chanting. “They track you and rack you, and still they will kill you, if you don’t…make it…right.”
Frank blew out a long breath and his anger decided what his fear could not: the old woman was crazy. Nothing to be afraid of. He leaned across the seat and the skeleton shifted against him as if gripping on for protection.
“Listen, do you want this damn injun baby or not? I’ll sell it to you. Then you can put it back.”
The woman’s hands snapped together with a small, muffled clap. She stepped back with a stomp of one small, booted foot.
“That’s not a baby sitting next to you, fool,” she said. Her speech pattern was odd, accented strangely. Frank had never heard this particular cadence before. She fluttered her hands in front of her own eyes, her heart, her bosom. Then she wiped them off and towards the truck as though wiping away something nasty. “That’s a demon, a bad thing. The little ones are the bad things. I have pity for you.” She turned and stamped again then started off to the Exchange. Without turning around, she said: “Best put it back. It might already be too late.”
***
Frank rolled into the dooryard of his rented shanty shack after dropping Cecil off. Cecil was in a shanty, too, right down the road, but it wasn’t quite as shanty as Frank’s. Ceec had a wife that wouldn’t have allowed it. Not for a red hot minute.
He left the skeleton in the truck. He locked the door and then, after hesitating on the rickety step of the shack, he went back and made sure the Ford was locked. He didn’t want anything getting in (out) and taking the baby skeleton (it’s not a baby, but now his mind’s voice was the dusty voice of the old woman).
It was dark by now, the sky big and wide, wide open. He peered at the small, shadowed bundle. He had a sudden and irrational urge to tap on the glass (tap, tap, tap), but he quelled it by making a fist.
Late that night, in the deep, dark well of no-time between midnight and three, Frank rolled over on his stingy bed, coming awake all at once. Had he heard something? Thunder maybe? His eyes went to the one small window cut recklessly into the plyboard wall. The sky was clear and full of stars.
But dark. Very dark.
It reminded him of the old woman’s eyes.
He shivered and brought the blanket up over his shoulder and closed his eyes with a frown. She’d spooked him, that’s all. Gotten to him with all her nonsense about–
There. There it was again. It sounded like…laughter. But muffled, secretive. Giggles behind little hands held tight to little mouths. Evil little lips, gasping with mean-spirited humor.
A clammy chill crawled up Frank’s back as though his blanket had turned to spring-cold worms. He shivered and the metal coils on the old bed frame screamed anxiously.
The laughter stopped.
In the depths of his fear, Frank peered hard into the dark of the two-room shack. This room and then the room with the kitchen. Only the two rooms. He watched the doorway between the two, frozen to his bed, and listened. He thought about reaching down, turning on the lantern…but it seemed unsafe, somehow, his bare hand hanging in that dark space. So he shivered in the dark and waited.
The laughter didn’t come again and after some time, exhausted by the tension, he fell into a heavy, uncomfortable sleep that was like sliding into mud.
In his dim kitchen, something scraped across the floor.
***
“Think we’ll need the sluice today, Frank?” Cecil asked without his normal cheeriness.
Frank had been more morose than ever and when Cecil questioned him on it, asking if he felt all right, Frank had cut him low. Now Cecil was all caution and reserve.
“How the hell should I know?” Frank asked. He was grading the shale, running it through the screens. He kept his head down, his eyes on his work. Which was well and good and the way you screened, but there was still something off.
For instance, he’d told Cecil to bring the shale out in buckets. Most often, they’d screen inside the cave but today Frank had said he wanted to try something different.
Cecil shrugged and began to turn away but then caught sight of a ragged bandage on Frank’s wrist, tucked up under his sleeve. There was blood dried in a brown bloom into the weave of the cotton.
“What happened to your arm, Frank?”
Frank froze and the whispering of the shuffled shale died away. “Cut my wrist,” he explained without looking up. His voice was strained and odd.
“Well, how’d you do that, boss?” Cecil asked. His concern was genuine.
“Must have…must have caught it on one of the bed springs,” Frank said. Cecil noticed the hitch in his voice but couldn’t account for it.
“Want to come by and let Mary take a look at it?”
He shook his head and shrugged further into his coat. The shale began to whisper again, scandalized, as Frank shook the screen.
***
That night, Frank sat quietly in one of the kitchen chairs, waiting. The lantern sat next to him, flickering and yellow. He kept his shotgun across his lap and stared hard into the darkness. The shack ticked and creaked around him. Tormenting him. Cecil had the electric…but not Frank.
A shuffle from near the bedroom door caused him to gasp and swing in that direction, shotgun up. Tittering from behind him. Somewhere near the pantry. He swung that way with a ‘huh!’ that
seemed pushed up his throat. Nothing moved.
shhhhh…
From behind him, near the bedroom again. He swung the gun back toward the bedroom and stood up. One of his battered old boots stood sentinel in the open doorway. It hadn’t been there before.
“Come out!” he said. A small sob in his tone caused a chill to pinch at his neck, pulling on the small hairs. “Show yourself!”
The laughter again, from behind him. He swung wildly, almost losing his balance. “Damn you! Come out!”
shhhh…
A sound like a snake, like something low and tied to the dirt. Born in the dirt. Raised in it.
shhhh…
He swung again and now both boots stood in the doorway. Tears burned at the corners of his eyes. The lamp flicked and guttered, pitching the room into black. He screamed. Then the light caught hold of itself and bloomed back up.
The boots were gone.
“Jeeeesuus,” he said and it was a moan. Behind him, a faint click and he jumped again. All four cabinet doors were open.
This cursed dark! It hid them!
He sank into the chair and let the tears come. Unmanning, they tore at his pride. He should go down the road to Cecil’s…he would. In a minute, he would. But he had to get a hold of himself, first. Can’t let anyone see him like this. He rubbed his hand over his eyes and sighed heavily. Okay. Okay he was getting it together, he was…
A sudden pain in the back of his ankle – white hot and disorienting in its intensity – caused him to stagger up. The chair crashed over and he tumbled onto his hands and knees with a yell. He looked back at his ankle and his gray sock was already half covered in blood. Fresh laughter slithered along the floor and Frank yelled again. He grabbed the lantern and the shotgun and scooted across the kitchen on his ass, dragging his hurt leg behind him, trying to see in all directions. The lantern swayed and chattered, bumping on the floor and almost went out. Frank righted it at the last second, the breath tearing through his lungs in high-pitched gasps.
Through it all the laughter went on. Quiet, secretive, evil.
Frank planted his back to the wall and peered into the darkness. Nothing. Dead silence.
He pulled his ankle up and peeled the sock down, all the while keeping his eyes on the cabinets, the pantry…the dark, dark recesses of the kitchen. Then he snuck a quick glance at his ankle. His Achilles tendon was cut partway through. The little monsters had tried to ham-string him.
***
“Frank, why are you limping?”
Frank was more morose than Cecil had ever seen him before. His face was a dead, cheesy yellow-white. He hadn’t yet spoken, only rolled his eyes from Cecil to the cave mouth like a horse scenting fire. And he looked like that, too, just as crazy. Just as scared.
“Frank, what’s eating you?”
“Ceec…I want you to do something…I can’t.” Frank rolled his eyes from Cecil to the cave again. Then he pulled a bundle from beneath his big coat and thrust it toward Cecil. “Put the baby back.”
“It’s not a baby, Frank,” Cecil said and dipped to get a hold of the hastily extended roll of tarp. It jumbled and twisted in his hands. And it was heavy.
“Just put it back, okay? Do it for me, Ceec, would you?”
The begging, pleading quality of Frank’s voice made Cecil cringe inside. Who was this shaky ghost? Where had belligerent Frank gone?
“We’re gonna sell it, Frank,” Cecil said. “It’s worth a lot and we…we need the money.”
“You need it,” Frank hissed, a bit of his old self rising like a corpse under ice. “That wife of yours needs it! But I don’t! And don’t want it, neither! Now, please…put the goddamned thing back in its hole!”
He turned abruptly and stumbled down the rocky trail. Cecil shook his head and shrugged. “Okay, Frank!” Cecil called after him. “’I’ll put it back!”
***
That night, Frank rested easier despite the dark. He was husked out, clean and unburdened. He sighed like a lover and curled in toward the wall. He pulled the blanket up over his shoulder and his thoughts turned to warm, honeyed liquid as he drifted.
He’d done the right thing. Everything was fixed. He’d put it back (it might already be too late, the old Indian woman whispered). His shoulder twitched but then relaxed again, curling down over his chest. He drifted. He smiled. That little Indian baby deserved its rest (it’s not a baby, Frank, and now the voice was Cecil’s). Frank’s face contracted and then smoothed out.
Everything was fine.
He slept.
In the kitchen, a faint metallic clang was followed by a chorus of held-in, whispery laughter. Then the dragging sounds began.
***
“Frank! Come on!” Cecil pounded at the shanty shack door. “We’re gonna put the sluice up today! Frank?”
Cecil pulled off his glasses to polish them with his shirt. Was the old guy sick, maybe? Might account for some of his strange behavior. He slipped his glasses back on and turned to go, then hesitated. He should probably check on him. Just to be sure.
The shack’s door had no lock but a slight weight on the inside meant Cecil had to use his own weight to push the door open. The small kitchen was dim and Cecil gave his eyes a second to adjust. It was a shambles. What little Frank owned – handful of plates, few pieces of silverware, and jelly jar glasses – was strewn across the floor, the small table upended, the one chair toppled. A shiver went done Cecil’s back. Something drip, drip, dripped in the dark.
Had Frank done this?
“Frank?” he said, calling cautiously. His hand went to the pistol on his hip. “You in here?”
No answer.
He crunched over the debris to get to Frank’s bedroom and he peered in, expecting another mess. But the bedroom was clean. Frank lay in the bed, his back to the room, huddled under a blanket.
Must have gone on a drunken tear last night, Cecil thought. Now he’s sleeping it off.
“Frank? You hung-over?” He shuffled into the room, unaware that his hand was still on the butt of his gun. “Frank?”
No answer.
He reached across and laid a hand on Frank’s shoulder. He shook it.
“Frank?”
No answer.
He shook a little harder but still no response. “You sick, Frank? Were you drinking last night?”
He shook Frank’s shoulder again and Frank rolled toward him, seeming somehow both heavy but lighter than he should be. Cecil stepped back, disoriented, horrified on a purely instinctual level. And then it registered:
Frank’s body rolled over, but his head stayed where it was, trembling delicately on the pillow. His neck was a blackish red horror of torn flesh, dripping gore, yellow bits of fat, and stained bone.
Cecil threw his hand over his mouth as his gorge tried to rise. Blood had spread under Frank’s body. It dripped steadily through the mattress and onto the floor, into the blood already pooled there. Drip, drip, drip.
Cecil swallowed a scream and bolted.
***
Cecil bent to the steering wheel and rubbed his eyes hard. He was exhausted. The Sherriff and coroner had just left, taking Frank’s pieces away with them.
Cecil was numb but also terribly, terribly sad.
Who would have killed old Frank? And in such a way?
He straightened and sighed. He had to get home to Mary. She would be mad when she heard he’d not gone to the claim today, but at least he had a good excuse. Hell, she’d still be mad. They hadn’t been able to pay the electric this month and it had been shut off. The shack was awful dark and filled as it was with an angry wife, it was awful cold, too.
But Cecil was going to do something about that. He was going to fix that right up.
He glanced at the bundled tarp on the passenger seat and smiled.
O Is For Onokentaura
Tim Dry
It tilted its head slowly downwards from the relentless sun inching a fiery path across the blank, blue sky above it, thrust back a lock
of thick, greasy hair from its face and cast its eyes forward to focus on its destination. Its magnificent shadow unfurled before it across the ripples of the sand. It wouldn't be long now and the thought of what it was about to instigate caused its penis to rapidly become engorged with anticipation.
Resisting the almost overwhelming urge to paw the ground in its excitement, it silently approached the outer edge of the large thicket of tall yellow grass that lined the banks of the river. Gently brushing aside the feathery branches, it entered invisible as a wraith into its cool shade. Once safely inside, it moved incrementally further forward and deeper, its pale and sweating torso dappled by shadows cast from the diffused sunlight.
It watched and waited for the moment, its stained and bulbous club clutched in its right hand as it breathed slowly and silently in and out through flared nostrils to quell the excited beating of its heart. Its pupils began to dilate and the blood started to quicken within its veins. And in the azure void above it, the carrion birds now ceased their flight, time shifted to a crepuscular motion and in this moment it knew it was ready. Even the ever-circling flies were disturbed by the rank odour issuing from its armpits and its genitals and refused to land anywhere upon its ashen skin to drink its sweat.
From where it stood in hiding, it could hear the trio of young females as they bent forward naked from the waist in the brown, indolent water and scrubbed their threadbare clothing upon the large stones. It could smell and almost taste the musky and pungent aroma of their newly flowered femininity. They laughed and made small, mindless gossip with each other, unaware of the shadowed presence of their nemesis waiting patiently mere yards away. For a second it wavered in its intent. Some better ingredient of its soul struggled briefly for attention in the lustful, violent and instinctive clamour, but then it was all gone as the base instinct bludgeoned it away. It's time. It's NOW!
The Bestiarum Vocabulum (TRES LIBRORUM PROHIBITUM) Page 21
