Monstrous Affections

by David Nickle

  “Baaa-sterd!” she screamed, and as she did, she felt a gust of wind come down on her, pouncing like a tree-cat on a mouse. This high up from the waves, it was a drier wind, but it was cold all the same. She opened her mouth wide, and faced it this time, and when she yelled again the wind took it from her and she didn’t mind.

  “I’m hung-ry!” she hollered. And as the darkness came complete to the island, the wind hollered it too.

  Janie would get spells some days. That’s what Ernie’d call them, because that’s how they must have seemed to him, like magic witchy spells that made folks strange. She called them her hots, because that’s how they’d feel inside. She got hot, from her toe-tips up to her eyebrows, so hot she itched for things she couldn’t say and did things she barely knew. One time, she went out and smashed all the windows in Ernie’s pickup truck with his new axe-handle, then broke the axe-handle too somehow. Another time, she ran bare-naked out to the township road, and Ernie had to come after her with a rope and a stick to goad her back inside. Sometimes during her hots, she remembered seeing things. Folks dressed in black dancing jigs all across her roof so hard the ceiling started to wobble; or a lot of birds flying in a circle around her head and pecking at her sun hat so as to knock it off; or big old bugs crawling out of the cracks between the sidewalk stones outside the grocery carrying their grubs under their wings. Her momma used to think she saw into the spirit world, but Ernie called them dream-things and said for to pay them no attention. Like the wasps — let ’em have their sniff, and they’ll leave soon enough.

  When she woke up in the middle of the night, crooked up against a rock covered in dry white lichen, she thought she might have seen a dream-thing.

  He came up over the same way she had — up over the rock from where the lodge sat — but he wasn’t dressed for the cold wind. He wasn’t dressed at all in fact. He was a funny man: bare-naked, not even shoes and socks on, and even his privates dangled out for all to see.

  “Ain’t you cold?” Janie asked, but the funny man didn’t even look at her.

  Maybe the cold didn’t bother him. He had a lot of hair on him, looked like blue in the dark. It went all up his back and down his chest, and the hair on his head and chin was real long, and his beard came up near to his eyes. And it seemed like there was a fire in those eyes — Janie didn’t get to look at them directly, but she could see that everywhere the funny man looked got covered in a flickery orange light, like it was sitting near the firelight of the funny man’s eyeballs.

  So fired on the inside, furred on the outside, maybe clothes’d just heat the funny man up too much for his own good. Sometimes Janie felt that way too, particularly when her hots came on.

  The funny man was moving on feet and fingertips the whole time, and his face kept close to the rock, like he was snuffling it. He was saying something over and over — Janie thought it sounded like Yum-tum, yum-tum, yum-tum, which were no words that she knew. He crawled over the top of the rock, and face-first down the inside slope of it. It was a pretty good trick — Janie’d fallen on her behind when she tried to get over and then she’d had to stand on level ground and get her bearings. But the funny man didn’t even need to do that. He just turned around and started moving along the sides of those rocks, like he was a spider or an inchworm or some sticky-footed fly. When he’d come to a tree, he’d squeeze behind it if he could fit, and if he couldn’t just lift his arms over it and sort of jump-like with his long hairy legs, and keep on yum-tum-ing along the rocks like nothing had happened. Janie’d put her fist to her mouth and gasped at that — he was sure a good climber, the funny man was.

  And he kept at it, until he’d gone half-the-way around the rock circle and come up beside Janie where she leaned against it. For a minute, she thought he was going to crawl over her like she was another tree, rub his dangly privates all along her middle and then go on along the rock like he hadn’t rubbed nothing. But the funny man didn’t. The rock glowed next to her shoulder where he looked at it, and then his fire-filled eyes moved up to her yellow-clad shoulder and made it glow, and underneath the sweat oozed out of her skin like pus from a dirty cut. And then he said yum-tum again, and she knew it wasn’t words at all. It was the sound his tongue made when it licked against the rock, tongue-out-yum, tongue-in-tum, right next to her arm.

  Janie pulled away from him a little — she sure didn’t want that long, knobbly old tongue licking her next, any more than she wanted those privates on her middle — and quick as she did, the funny man yum-tum-licked the rock where she’d been leaning. A big strip of lichen came away when he did.

  Janie put her hand to her mouth again, and let out a little squeal. Of course! That’s what the funny man was doing — she followed the path he’d taken around the rocks, and the whole way she found a dotted strip as wide as a tongue, like the passing line on the highway.

  “Hey!” she said, turning back to him. “That lichen any good to eat?”

  But the funny man was already gone. Or so Janie recalled as she sat up in the middle of the night, and looked at the rock beside her.

  The funny man must have been a dream-thing, because the lichen on the rock face hadn’t been touched. He’d just given it a sniff, and made on his way.

  Janie ran her fingers across it — it was rough and dry and flaked under her thumb, and it was blue like the funny man’s hair. It didn’t seem much better than mustard and butter, but then Janie didn’t see any harm in giving it a try either. She leaned close to the rock — so close she could feel the match-flame heat of her breath bounce back at her.

  “Yum-tum,” she said, and swallowed.

  Outside the rock circle, the wind had been roaring and splashing and rattling things all night. But by the time Janie was done eating, it stopped making all that racket and went quiet. The lichen meal didn’t quiet Janie’s stomach any, however. It was twisting and yelping up at her like a colicky baby. Her aches elsewhere weren’t so bad, but her belly . . .

  Her belly would need quieting.

  Janie peeled off some more lichen — just a little, a strip not much bigger than a postage stamp — and put it on her tongue. It was dry and tasted like dirt, and seemed like even the wet in her mouth wouldn’t go near it. She shut her mouth, and made herself swallow, but the dry lichen gritted up in her throat like she was swallowing sand. She didn’t let herself cough, though. Just kept swallowing and swallowing until the last of it was down.

  Then she got up, and looked over the rock.

  The water was still now, and the sky was clear. There was a tiny bit of moon up there. It was just a little crescent, like the cut on her head, like a bite mark, and it didn’t give off very much light. There were a lot of stars, though, and the dim moon let them shine all the brighter. Janie could see a long swath of them across the middle of the sky. Stars had names, each and every one — but Janie didn’t know any of them.

  She cast her eyes down, and looked instead at the rock-face she’d near licked clean. She was pretty stupid, she guessed — couldn’t even find something good to eat when her belly needed it. Not but butter and mustard and dry old lichen from the side of a rock.

  Stupid dumb hoo-er! hollered her stomach. If it were a bear it’d have bitchya!

  “Quiet, stomach,” said Janie. She leaned closer to the rock, squinted at it now instead of the sky.

  There was something written on it where she’d cleared away the lichen. No, she thought as she looked closer. Not written.

  Drawn.

  It was a picture — of some kind of animal it looked like. But it was no animal she’d ever seen, not altogether. There was a snout, and a big twisty horn coming out the middle, like the horn had come out of the middle of the horse’s head in the story magazine. But there were wings too — open wide like it was flying, or pinned, like on the cover from ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! THE DEAD BIRD — and a snaky tail that turned around twice coming out its behind. There was someone reaching for that tail, but below the wrist was covered up in lichen still.


  For just a second, Janie wondered what else she’d find, when she licked off the rest of the lichen.

  But her belly wouldn’t have any more lichen, it’d had more than its fill of that dry old awful stuff. And her mouth wasn’t about to make no spit to soften it, neither. So she would just have to keep wondering.

  Maybe, she thought then, that butter and mustard wouldn’t be so bad to eat after all. Her stomach didn’t complain much at the thought of it, so she got up from the rock and clambered up over the lip of the circle.

  It took her hardly no time to get down this time. It must, she thought at the bottom, be the lack of a breeze.

  Janie didn’t go straight to the lodge, though. Because now that it was clear and the water was still, she got a good view of the dock. And she could see a canoe there.

  It was a pretty big canoe — near to three times as long as the ones she’d seen folks using in the lakes near Fenlan. Whoever’d brought it had hauled it up onto the rock rather than leave it in the water, and turned it over on its top — to keep any rainwater out of it, Janie guessed.

  Janie tromped down the side of the rock to look at the canoe a little bit closer. It was bark — made out of birch-bark, like those little souvenir toy canoes you could get for ten dollars at the Indian Trading Post on the highway. But those canoes’d break like matchsticks and paper if you squeezed them too hard, and Janie didn’t think that this one would give in that easily.

  Lordy, breaking this canoe’d bring down a beating like she’d never felt before.

  If Ernie were here to give it, that was.

  Janie felt herself grinning.

  Ernie ain’t here. I’m on my own now. Just me and my hungry old belly.

  Janie bent over and picked up the end of the canoe. It was pretty heavy, but Janie could lift cinderblocks all day and not complain. The wood at the other end complained some, as it scraped against the wet rock. Janie lifted it over her head, then stepped back and let go, and the canoe-end landed at her feet with a bang.

  She walked around to the side of it. She kicked it, and it rocked back and forth. She kicked it again, harder, and it nearly rolled over upright before it fell back down in its old spot. It rolled, but it didn’t break. That is some strong birch-bark, thought Janie.

  Save it, said her belly.

  “Who are you,” said Janie, “to tell me what to do?”

  She kicked the canoe again. This time, however, rather than kicking out, she raised up her foot and brought it down with her weight behind it. And that seemed to do the trick. The canoe didn’t roll this time — it stayed put, and there was a great crack as one of the wooden ribs underneath the bark gave way. When she lifted her foot to look, there was a dandy-looking dent in the bark, although she hadn’t holed it yet.

  Don’t break it, said her belly. I’m warning you, Janie . . .

  And to make its point, Janie’s stomach spewed a little acid, and some of the lichen that wasn’t digested yet along with it, in a thin stream back up her throat.

  “Yech!” Janie spat and swallowed and did it again and again until the taste was nearly gone. But her throat still burned when she stopped, and she felt all out of breath.

  “Goddamn stomach,” she said — daring it to try it again. Nothing happened, though; if Ernie didn’t like swear-words, her belly didn’t seem to mind.

  Janie looked at the canoe and stepped back from it. Ernie’d always said she could use some self-discipline. She wondered if this was what he’d meant.

  Janie turned away from the lake — she didn’t feel as much like making mischief on the canoe anyhow. She went up the steps to the lodge, and as she went, she wondered just who it was who’d bring that canoe. Could have been the funny man, but he was a dream-thing, and that canoe was pretty real, so it probably wasn’t the funny man.

  Janie’d just started to wonder if maybe the owner of that canoe wasn’t hiding up in the lodge waiting for her, thinking to do her some mischief, when she heard the shaking. It sounded like the wind had sounded outside when she woke up — like the bone rattle where it shook the eaves on the outside, with a crack! when it broke something and a bong! when it knocked down a drum.

  But now, she was on the outside. And it sounded like the wind was on the inside. “Isn’t that something?” she said, and hurried up the weather-worn steps to the front of the lodge.

  She peered in through the big front window, and sure enough, that seemed to be what was happening. There was a fierce Georgian Bay blow whirling around the rooms of the lodge. As she watched, maybe three paperback novels bounced off the window as the wind drove them across the room. Some of the pages of the story magazine Janie’d been looking at were stuck to the window, and if they weren’t all upside down she might have read them. Mr. Swayze had a little iron hanging light, and it was swaying back and forth in the breeze — occasionally swinging so high that the side of it hit the ceiling with a thunk! noise.

  Janie pressed her ear to the glass. Oh, it was cold! Seemed like the wind had taken all the cold it’d brought with it outside, and moved it inside. As she listened, she could hear the yowl it’d brought with it too. And she could hear something else. It sounded like —

  — a chopping.

  Janie closed her eyes, and caught the rhythm. Thunk! Then a moment while the axe-head pulled out of whatever it was cutting. Then thunk! again. And the same all over. It was just like Ernie would get, when he was cutting wood for the stove.

  “Yep,” she said. “Someone’s chopping.”

  Then there came a crack! and Janie jumped back and held her ear. She hadn’t been looking, and it had taken her by surprise.

  Something had hit the glass hard, hard enough to crack it. She glared at the glass, and the little spider-web of cracks in it. Something else hit the glass, in the same spot, and the cracks spread.

  It was one of Mr. Swayze’s books. BOTTOM OF THE WELL — the back cover, the part that contained a little summary of the story and what the Philadelphia Enquirer had said about THE HAND — “First-class chills! Hookerman writes like he’s lived it!” — and what Publisher’s Weekly had said about THE CLOUD — “Richly detailed and un-put-downable!”

  Janie giggled. It was like the wind inside was showing it to her — like it’d hit the glass once to get her attention, then put this here for her to read it.

  The glass shook a bit under the pressure, and Janie could hear it moan as the cracks spread further. Janie read the summary, out loud: “When . . . they dug for . . . water, they didn’t expect . . . to find a more . . .” she struggled, turning her head as the book slid and shifted along the glass “. . . an-ci-ent . . . ancient!” She clapped her hands together and smiled. Ancient. That meant old. “Ancient hunger,” she finished. “Now . . . it’s . . .” She frowned. Lost? No. “Loose! An’ . . . And . . . they’ll . . . never be . . . the same!”

  And that was as far as she got, because the book flipped over and she was looking in the eye of that snake-head coming out of the pump-spout. Then she wasn’t looking at anything, because the wind-pressure finally got too great, and the glass exploded outward.

  The wind must’ve knocked Janie off her feet, and knocked her out for awhile too. She woke up in the lodge’s main bedroom, where she and Ernie had been sleeping — all warm and covered up in a big quilted blanket. She looked under the covers and saw that she didn’t have clothes on underneath.

  That wasn’t the only thing that changed. She felt her rib, and her elbow, then the little crescent-cut over her ear. They all felt better; like they’d been mending a few days, not just a couple more hours. Her hair was tied back, like she liked it, and she smelled all clean and pretty, like she had a bath.

  The only thing that didn’t change was how hungry she was. It was like a wound in her middle, all the more nagging, because of the smell that was coming in through the doorway. It was the smell of cooking — the salty-greasy smell of frying meat, with some spices maybe.

  Janie got up out of bed. She didn’t
see clothes, but that didn’t matter — she just wanted some of that food. She threw the comforter over her shoulders and opened the door to the living room.

  It was like nothing had happened. The books were all up on their shelf, and the pages of the story magazine were nowhere to be seen . . . And there was no blood on the floor either, although she didn’t remember cleaning up any of it. She’d almost say that the whole thing was just one of her dream-things, but the room was still freezing cold, on account of the broken front window. Some of the glass from it was sitting in a little garbage can by the fireplace.

  “Janie!”

  She almost jumped out of her skin. Mr. Swayze was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He was wearing a dirty apron, and held a spatula in one hand, and a screwdriver in the other. He was smiling, but he looked a bit worried too.

  “H-hello, Mr. Swayze.” Janie clutched the blanket around her shoulders.

  “It’s good to see you up and around,” he said. “You look like you’ve been through a lot.”

  Janie looked down at her feet, which were thick and bare, and her toes were pointing together. She straightened them. “E-Ernie, he took — ”

  Mr. Swayze put up his hand, and his face went all serious. “I know about Ernie,” he said. “Don’t worry, Janie. I found him before he got far. Ernie’s in hand. Everything’s taken care of. See?” He held up the screwdriver. “I even fixed the shelf.”

  Janie felt drool ridging over her lips.

  “Hungry,” she said, and looked over Mr. Swayze’s shoulder into the kitchen.

  At that, Mr. Swayze grinned again — a big toothy grin — and he laughed. “I bet you are, Janie,” he said, and laughed again.

  “Lichen doesn’t take you very far, does it?”

  Janie’s stomach twisted like a hand-wrung facecloth — oh, it wanted that food bad — but Janie stood her ground for a minute.