In the large apartment up in the second floor of the hut, in which Murphy and Audrey had used to live together and where Murphy now vegetates on his own, the timber shutters are closed. Resembling me like the blind eyes of a dead person they render the hut a look of neglect and forfeit.
I abandon the Pick-up by the roadside, take the gun and browse to all sides. The world is still silent, nothing moves. It’s like regarding a colorless photography.
I slowly move down the narrow drive leading to the hut. Above my head I can hear the birch trees whispering just like desperately begging the sky for help. Apart from that there is only this eerie silence that belongs to the new world.
As I approach the house I desperately try to bear down the flood of memories that seem to evade the hut’s every slot. I concentrate on the shut windows of the apartment. The house looks abandoned. There is no sign of life inside of it.
The cold and weight of the gun sooth me a bit; nevertheless I can’t prevent a grim fear from settling inside my body and its cold claws from entangling all my organs. If Sarah knew what I was doing here she would have called me a complete fool.
One look at Murphy’s house is enough to know that my friend no longer lives here. But then I have a look at his shaky Ford with the heaps of brown leaves around its tires. It’s not until now that I realize that the long engine hood is covered by scores of branches and brittles that begin to cover the stained wind shield, too. I never before had felt so torn from inside. I never had felt so lonely…
Being unable to make a decision I keep standing at the edge of the little parking lot and gaze over the familiar but still terrifyingly strange scene.
No memories, I think, feeling a bitter lump inside my throat. Suddenly I wish I was far from the hut, just anywhere else on this earth that kept turning. I wish I was perhaps in Devon, inside one of the bars at its outskirts, which got a bad reputation but would be the perfect place for me to be right now. I oddly imagine me sitting in a dimly lit corner, my face being wrapped up in shadows, while the glow of a red lantern wanders over my hands on the table, wrapping the bottle of whiskey I hold on to with them inside a golden glance. I’m even able to smell the air that is full of cigarette smoke and sweat. Damn, I begin to lose my mind. How can I think of a dirty den of thieves, while the only place in the world I would like to be right now is Sarah’s bedroom?
But I don’t want to think of her.
Not at this place.
How often we might have climbed the timber stairs leading up towards the entrance of the store? We had done it laughing and accompanying each other. Afterwards we had descended them, with some of Murphy’s brown bags inside our hands, the taste of hot tea on our tongue and with Murphy’s time-worn stories, which he had used to tell us each time from anew but most times a bit changed so that we shouldn’t notice, in our ears.
Sarah is wearing her beige coat and …
“Murphy!”
My voice resembles me like a monster shouting inside a small room. I duck down in fear, observing the edge of the wood behind the house. The darkness between the black trunks is threatening me like a dunning wall. I over there believe to recognize shadows, which scamper nimbly between the bushes and the trunks.
“Murphy! It’s me … Harv!”
This time I shout in a slightly lower voice. My hands clench the butt. My thoughts are wandering back towards the dark front of trees behind the shop. There is no bird’s tune. There is no noise of some brittles clicking under the weight of a hoof, no rustling amongst the grasses and bushes. Someone had unplugged the world. The wood looks threatening, as if all the dark and depraved shadows out of hell were mounting up behind the cabin.
As I look up to the second floor I believe to see a wan light shining between the gaps of one of the timber shutters. I stare at the grey, rotten wood as if just by pure endeavor being able to look into the room behind it.
“Damn, Murphy …”
My words are suffocated by a cold fear that attacks me as something shining appears between the timber shutters and reflects the dreary daylight. The window shutter opens just a little bit, a shadow covering the flickering light behind it. I mechanically take a step back.
What do you want, Harv?” Murphy shouts. It’s nut until now that in the blinking reflections I recognize the muzzle of a gun, which is obviously aimed on me.
I never had been aimed at with a weapon before. During the war I had served in sick bay, so that I had been spared of any dramatic decisions about whether to kill or being killed. The lower part of my body is tightening to a cold little chunk of ice
“I wanted to see for the well!” I shout back at him. My voice resembles me to be a bit shrill, almost as piercing as the voice of an exited girl.
The muzzle stays insistently aimed at me.
“Damn, take down the gun!” I shout. Though trying hard to let my voice sound as strong and faintly sagging as usual, I don’t manage to do so.
“Who guarantees it’s you, Harv”, Murphy’s voice echoes through the silence.
I can’t deny myself a bitter laugh.
“What?”
“How can I be sure that it’s you, Harv Jennings?”
I again happen to look at the gray painting of the wood behind the house. Something between the dark trunks arrests my attention.
“That I stand here, you damned idiot!” I shout and stretch out my arms, in doing so involuntarily aiming my gun at the house.
“Take your gun down, Harv, or I’ll blow the guts out of you!”
I pause in my movement, staring disbelievingly at the dark steel of Murphy’s weapon. The air around seems to tighten, making it hard for me to breath. The hut, the parking lot and Murphy’s old Ford blur before my eyes like asphalt flickering in the sun.
It’s hard for me to understand what’s going on. I am part of an abnormal picture that the devil himself had painted out of the blood of his sinners. There is nothing that would still seem familiar to me. Even Murphy’s voice sounds like an old man in despair. My friend the same as me doesn’t understand what’s going on. Or he utterly lost his mind.
“Who do you think I am?” I ask, while aiming the muzzle of my gun downwards.
For a long time there isn’t any answer.
It’s only the trembling muzzle that shows me Murphy is still watching me through the gap in the timber shutter.
“Perhaps you are one of them”, he finally says in a voice resembling a resigned sigh.
“I’m not stupid, Harv. I have seen them. It was by night. They came up to the porch.”
“Who are they?”
There’s only silence.
Then Murphy answers in such a low voice that I hardly understand: “These hideous monsters. They came with the quakes. Something must have rinsed them out of the soil.”
From of his words I can hear a deep-routed fear and suddenly imagine the picture of the Shoggothen I had seen at the meadow behind my house.
“There are no monsters”, I shout and at the same time feel very guilty. It is an acid feeling, which all of my lifetime had come over me whenever I had to lie.
“Don’t tell me some bullshit. You might easily be one of the monsters, only using Harv’s body.” Murphy’s voice flips over, so that I have difficulties to understand the last words.
“Did you go mad?” I ask, at the same instant regretting my words. I think that to antagonize Murphy in this situation would be the most stupid thing to do.
“What’s the name of your wife?”
Murphy’s voice suddenly sounds serious and focused. I nearly can see his narrowed eyes examining me through the gaps of the timber shutter.
“Sarah!” I scream. And to myself: “you damned idiot!”
The dry leaves beyond the Ford begin to rustle as a blast is running through them. I automatically wince and take a step aside.
Brown and black leaves are dancing in small pirouettes over the brittle asphalt and fall down dead at my feet. One of the branches falls onto th
e roof of the car, which in the bone-crushing silence around resembles a hammer rumbling on a detonator cap. When I look at Murphy again I am relieved to find that he had lowered the muzzle of his gun.
“What do you want here, Harv?”
Had it been normal circumstances this question had made me laugh, anyway my friend had been running a small grocer’s shop in the hillside for decades. Only the fewest of the people, who live up here are best customers of his. Though Murphy’s best turnover is from bugged out parents and adventurous teenagers on their way between Devon and Kagan’s Creek.
While the former try to sweeten their children the tiring ride through the hills with all kinds of sweets and cheap toys the young are nearly unfailing in their efforts to get some alcohol in spite of being underage. To Murphy both categories are prospective sources of income, even if he knows that he with the youngsters frequently widens the provisions of national law up to the pain barrier.
“I need some stock”, I answer, wishfully gazing at the nailed up entrance of the shop.
“There’s not a thing I could give you.”
Suddenly the muzzle gets aimed at me again. Standing here is like being caught inside the darkest dream one can imagine and while Murphy speaks I feel a burning hunger rising inside of me.
The thought of lifting my own weapon and cook the bullhead bastard’s goose with one well-directed shot is so inviting to me that I shortly give up on myself.
“Come on. Sarah and I need something to eat. Open your damned shop”, I say instead. It takes me some effort not to lose my temper.
“The shop’s closed. For God’s sake, Harv … Didn’t you notice what happened?”
Murphy resembles me of the men, who had been preaching hatred, I had seen in various films about the apocalypse
“The world has gone to the dogs”, he continues. “The bombs released something; germs or viruses … or something of that kind.”
The muzzle begins to shake and I’m nearly able to see my friend sinking down onto a chair.
“There is no life any more. Nobody survived”, the voice behind the timber shutter sobs.
“Only these damned critter.”
The gun disappears. The ray of light between the gaps inside the shutters gets unsteady.
“Then why am I standing here?” I ask and stretch out my arms again, in doing so trying not to aim accidently at the hut again.
My friend’s nerves seem to be on the ropes and any provocation from my side – as rash it might ever be and how chummy we might be – could be fatal.
Damn, I had thought about simply zapping Murphy just one minute before.
Aside of the cold silence of the morning nothing answers to my question. Some leaves are rustling over the parking lot. I tinker with the idea of simply going up to the font of the shop, breaking its door open and helping myself to “Murphy’s delicatessen”. I just too well imagine Sarah’s sunken cheeks as cenotaph to me. In addition to that I imagine how the shelves of our small larder behind the kitchen gradually get empty, which resembles me to scenes out of a bad movie.
While I am trying to ban these ghostly pictures from my head I remember Murphy’s words he had used to say each time Sarah and I had entered the shop: “Just help yourself. I think you know the ropes in here.”
It had always been my friend’s philosophy to serve his clients face-to-face.
This had not been an act of pure courtesy, as many strangers might have thought it to be, but just a way to prevent potential shopliftings. So while Sarah and I helped ourselves, because we knew the ropes, we had been able to watch Murphy scampering through the shelves with some of his brown paper bags to cater for other people’s wishes.
Before I even get aware of what I’m doing, I take one step after the other, moving with caution towards the timber steps of the porch. But only a second later I sort of freeze to ice, when I hear the metallic clicking of the trigger above me. The sound oddly reminds me of a rusty key turning in an evenly rusty lock.
“Back off, Harv. The shop is closed.”
I keep my head set downcast and stare up to the muzzle, which again had been shifted through the gap between the timber shutters.”
“Murphy …,” I begin to say, but the voice of my former best friend lets me fall silent.
“I’m serious about it, Harv! Back off! Or Sarah from now on will be alone at home, just to kick the bucket soon!”
In favor of adding Sarah into play I suddenly feel a burning hatred coming up inside of me that nearly drives me into a hasty action. The thought of killing someone never before had been as appealing to me as at that moment.
“One …,” Murphy begins to count down.
“Okay, okay.”
I with my arms stretched out to the sides slowly walk back towards the street, in doing so never letting the hut get out of my sight. The further I come the more the house looks as it was ducking into the shadow of the trees. Some time I can only recognize the closed timber shutter of Murphy’s room as a black spot. Even the flickering candle light had died away. Suddenly it seems to me that all life had worn off the cabin, which now again looks as abandoned as I had found it first.
Had my conversation with Murphy in the end been mere imagination?
My trembling knees and the icy cold inside my stomach convince me of the contrary. I wonder what predominates: the fear that my old fellow might still come to the conclusion to me, the “Harv-Thing”, some lead shots to take with me, or the painful certainty that a wonderful and memorable friendship, which had been lasting for decades this morning had found its end?
As I reach my Pick-up I stand still and lean my back against the cold sheet of the car. I let my gun powerlessly droop down at my side.
Down below, where the old, rusty Ford stands at the parking lot, his tires getting caressed by withered leaves and where is the by innumerous years and shoes worn to threads timber porch, on which I had used to sit with Sarah, Murphy and Audrey over a glass of cold lemonade, and where a man whose friendship and loyalty I had been able to count on for nearly half of my life lay himself down to die in his lonely room…all that is left down there are deep, silent shadows. I just like by some breakers of a dark sea rolling over me at night am assailed by a feeling as if I was looking down onto an old, weather-beaten grave.
As I get into the car I am welcomed by coldness and silence. I put the gun back at the passenger’s seat, turn the ignition key and wait for the engine to come to a stuttering life.
Without throwing any further glance onto the lifeless parking lot of the cabin, that lies in deep darkness, I turn the Pick-up around and drive it slowly back onto the street and up into the hills.
Staring with blank eyes through the front shield that is filthy with flies and streaks of dirt and propping myself against the armrest of the driver’s seat I try to break free from the terrible claws of that dream. When I get to know that I can’t manage to I begin to cry. Salty tears before the y hit my lips make the landscape around me melt to a washed-out grey.
I am crying for Murphy and for the olden times we had had together, before they this morning had come to an end.
And I cry for myself.
What is a bullheaded old fool like me in a world gone to the dogs – as Murphy would have put it – good for?
For what on earth am I still living for?
On a grey, silent earth, that kept turning …
Humphrey
I
I can’t remember how I had got home. When I had departed from Murphy’s shop the world around me had turned itself into a swirl of grey and black shadows that developed in front of my eyes like a haze. Everything had seemed so unreal. As if I was watching a bad film that had neither a plot nor a meaning. The feeling to be thrown into a world, which had been conceived by a morbid mind, had become so strong that my heart began to beat fast and my fast-paced breath was steaming up the wind shield.
While the Pick-up squeaking and knocking struggled up the hills I tried to convince m
yself that I had been caught in an extremely intensive and ill-natured dream. I just couldn’t think of a different explanation. Or better: I didn’t want to accept a different explanation.
I had used to be fanciful before, often finding myself amidst dreams, of which I later couldn’t define which parts out of them were real and which were not.
I apparently was about to sink into a bubbling quagmire out of a fear that was boiling deeply down in my consciousness and to run the risk of losing even the last leftovers of my mind, which I had been trying to preserve up till now. With my thoughts chasing too fast for my consciousness to be able to verify them as real I now sit in my armchair in the living room and stare at the dark TV screen. Everything is silent. There is only the regular, monotonous ticking of the clock.
I can see my reflection mirrored inside the tube. I see an old man. I see a grey man with a haggard and furrowed face. My arms are rested on the chair-backs; my eyes set rigidly at the TV. Among the thoughts that stir up my mind from time to time appears the pretty face of the young anchorwoman with the erotic voice, just like it was the climax of an extremely surreal dream. Her visage begins to show like an apparition on the black TV screen.
But this time her in other respects friendly and – as far as it comes to me – intoxicating face resembles an absurd mask out of fear and disgust. She stares into the camera with a frantic gaze, her pupils uncontrolledly jerking from the left to the right side while she at the same time is snarling and her cheeks are trembling. Her blonde hair, which she had used to wear tied up to an attractive bun now hangs down onto her shoulders in a mess, reminding me of an old hag’s loose, dull strands of hair. She speaks into the camera with a somewhat feverish voice but I’m not able to hear a word of it. I’m only able to see her lips moving hectically.
Then her disgusting mask disappears from the TV screen and I can see Murphy house instead. The little shop is still wrapped inside the deep shadows of the trees. Through the leaves that form a baldachin above the roof a shaky, grey sunlight is falling over haggled wood and flaking paint.
A World of Darkness Page 5
