So, this condition had a name. That was a bit of a relief.
“Um… consult a specialist?”
“And how many specialists do you think there are in the United States who treat this condition?” The reasonable voice was annoying.
“I’m guessing not many.”
“Exactly. And do you think it possible that Saint Germain has perhaps made certain that he would hear of any cases of sudden heterochromia? He is very wealthy and has ties to the medical community.”
“Saint Germain?” The penny dropped. “You are talking about the philanthropist. The one with all the clinics in the third world? The one on Oprah and Larry King?” I didn’t use any expressive nouns or adjectives like hunk or hot, but he was. Or had been ten years ago when I had last seen him interviewed. I hadn’t liked him though, not at a gut level, and that had left me feeling a little guilty. Who could not like a saint?
“Yes, though I should not call him a philanthropist. His free clinics are merely meat markets where he gets his raw materials for illegal experimentation.”
“Dear Jesus God.” And I wasn’t blaspheming. “But why would he care about me? Or you?”
“It is a long and complicated story. Believe me, Anna, you don’t want to attract his attention. To you or your sister.” He waited. The line hissed and popped as I tried to throttle back my alarm. “So you will say nothing until I am there and can explain more about the danger you face?”
“I won’t say anything,” I promised. But I was going to call my sister. I needed to hear her voice telling me all about what my nieces and nephews were doing. They were all I had left and I needed family. I needed normal.
“Good. I shall be there some time in the next two days. Be careful, Anna Peyton, and rest assured that I am capable of dealing with this threat. I will keep you safe,” he said and then hung up the phone.
Chapter 4
“It is difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his poem [The Raven] with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pains over it: the result hardly does credit to the method.”
—T. S. Eliot on Poe’s The Philosophy of Composition
As darkness fell, I drew the curtains and nudged the heat up a few degrees though I am usually not inclined to squander the propane because it is so expensive. After a while I realized that the overheated house had begun to smell like my Grandma Long’s place, spice smells blooming from the kitchen, overwhelming florals from the forgotten cupboard of my late mother-in-law’s ancient bath-salts in the spare bathroom, and the upholstery and drapes themselves perfuming the air with chemicals as they baked in the unaccustomed heat. I also understood that the cold was not in my body, but in my mind. My body had not felt physical cold since awakening in the cabin.
Across from me was Harrison’s chair, the one I never sat in. It had never seemed so empty and yet so immovable. It was no longer simply a piece of unused furniture; it was a symbol of my aloneness. I thought of moving it to another room but instead just turned my head away. I would do something about it tomorrow or next week. Maybe in the spring. Someone told me once that the dead leave heavy memories. That is true, but they also leave a lot of physical stuff. And it was Harrison’s things that I found most heart-breaking to look at. My memories of Harrison are happy. His orphaned possessions, neglected, dusty and faded were tangible reminders of his early death but I couldn’t make myself get rid of them.
I looked around the room for the hundredth time, ignoring the chair but finding no comfort in anything else. Everything in there had belonged to dead people. The reassurance of my sister’s voice was long gone and I could not call Clarice again without alarming her. Anyway she was probably not at home. Clarice does something painful to her body four nights a week at an expensive spa. Two of them involve running electrical current through her face and the other is the more standard muscular abuse at the gym.
I thought briefly about phoning my nearest neighbor, Dave Zeigenfuss, and asking if I could stop in with his over-developed muscles and guns, but I couldn’t make myself do it. He lived less than a mile away in one of those newer houses that are supposed to look like the Plantagenets built it, supposing they had ever done anything in peasant size. I had always thought that the house could be gorgeous at Christmas if only Dave would restrain himself, but his exterior decorating taste ran to Rudolph and Frosty and lots of cross-eyed elves. The interior was far worse. Dave likes nudes (of women) and has several hanging in his living room. He calls them art, but in those poses and without any fig-leaf covers I call it something else. No, nothing short of terrorist invasion would lure me back into his lair and another tour of his favorite Glories of Greece murals.
That left inviting him to my place. Though he’d be willing enough to come over, he was a terrible gossip and braggart as well as would-be lecher, perhaps because he had too much muscle to leave any room for anything like brain cells that would know about tact or reading body language. And it would mean a lot of effort to disguise myself, which I would have to do even for dim Dave— unless I used only candlelight while he was there. However candles would waken too many expectations in his broad but shallow chest and I wasn’t in the mood to deal with them. Again. Dave isn’t staggering under the weight of his family’s trove of gold and gems, but for our part of the world he is one of the heavy-laden. This makes him attractive to most women, and he would never believe that I wasn’t just playing hard to get if I invited him in after dark. It doesn’t matter how often or how colorfully I say that I do not care for the perpetual adolescents, stalled emotionally because they had enough money to avoid growing up. He doesn’t believe me. He thinks my stand-offishness is a game he can eventually win.
Dave had always seen himself as Harrison’s rival in high school and I think he still wanted me as some kind of prize to prove that he really was the better man. It was a waste of time on his part and everyone else knew it. As Clarice said, only someone completely infatuated would be willing to trade in a perfectly good name for a chance to be Mrs. David Zeigenfuss. And I had higher goals than being someone’s sexual trophy and labor-saving device. Not that I thought I was so wonderful that I should be pickier than anyone else. I did not expect to meet Saint Brad Pitt of Assisi and marry him. But I wanted more than Dave could offer.
Did I want Emerson James, for instance? I am one of those animals that likes to travel through life two by two. Poe had been too. But was Emerson? I could manage being alone better than being with someone who wasn’t a good emotional fit, but given my druthers, I prefer company. However, I stopped that line of thought almost immediately. Though Emerson was intriguing, I wasn’t ready to be wanting anyone. I had other problems and he apparently came with some heavy baggage.
Instead of phoning anyone, I drummed my fingers and thought longingly of the tavern on Main and old timers who would be there even in this weather, playing darts and listening to Patsy Cline on the jukebox. Vera and her brother, Dr. Stearn, would likely be at the tavern. She’d be flirting with ‘the guys’ and wearing one of her three polyester pantsuits circa 1970 and bright enough to make a blind man flinch. And they always contrasted with her wig which was such a preposterous shade of red that it would never be allowed on a house controlled by a home owners association. She had joked once that thanks to polyesters durability she would never need to buy new clothes or hair, and why go to the expense since it would be like laying down new carpet and shingles in a condemned building.
Usually I would be there, too, and I could go if I screwed up the courage to face the dark. The snow wasn’t bad enough to stop me. I had hiked out through the storm earlier that afternoon to visit the optometrist and I had my new contacts. They were more chocolate than whisky, but they were what Vera found in stock. I also had found some self-tanner and had a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos which were sitting on the dining room in a shopping bag table waiting for my attention.
Snow fell on the roof, sounding a bit like furtive footsteps. If
Gus, the family Rottweiler, were still alive he would have been able to tell me if it was just snow dripping from the trees.
Or a raccoon, I thought. It could be a real animal out on some nocturnal errand that took him over my roof.
There came a scratching in the chimney shortly after, a secretive and alarming sound.
Branches, I told myself. The wind is rubbing the old oak up against the river rock.
But even as I reassured myself, the inner choreographer who looks at things with more than the five normal senses, was taking action. I pulled down the hurricane lamp from the mantel and dumped the oil on the waiting kindling, recklessly splashing some on the chimney’s blackened rock wall. I reached for the long matches and set the wadded newspaper in the grate ablaze. The flames leapt high and I hoped the entire chimney flue did not catch fire.
I sat there for several seconds, feeling stupid at my panicked reaction to a small noise, until I heard a grunt and then a snarl from in the flue. Rocking back in horror, I only just missed being struck by what I can only think of as a flaming monkey as it scrambled out of the firebox, scattering embers on the hearth. It swung around to face me and gave an ear-bleeding scream that made me yell back defensively as I tried to drown out the sound.
Those of us who live in forests fear fire more than anything, even clawed monkeys, so my first impulse was to throw the afghan over the thing, open the front door and fling it out into the snow before it lit my drapes or rugs on fire.
The thing was fast and strong, but it had the disadvantage of being eaten up with flames. And in my panic I was far stronger and faster than I had ever anticipated being. Out in the snow it went, though only barely because it clawed through the old yarn of the afghan with what looked like raptor claws and nearly opened the veins in my arm as it sliced through my sweater and a couple layers of skin. My blood felt unusually hot on my hands.
I slammed the door on it. It slammed into the door— hard— and I ran for the kitchen, unsure what to grab first, my late husband’s shotgun or a fire extinguisher. A breaking window made my decision for me, though I looked longing at the fire extinguisher as I pulled out the shotgun from the tall cupboard near the refrigerator. Oddly calm, I did as my grandmother had shown me all those years ago. I loaded the gun and then swung around to face my target. I knelt, aimed low, exhaled slowly. The thing was only about three feet tall. It careened into the room, its legs barely functioning and its front limbs curled tight as fire shriveled the muscle. Like the thing in Baltimore, it burned merrily. Its lips were pulled back in a grimace that showed shark-like teeth. Not a monkey then— not any animal I knew at all.
And all around the cobbler’s bench, the monkey chased the weasel….
I ignored the tune in my head and shot it at nearly point blank range.
“Pop goes the weasel,” I said.
For a moment, I thought that the blast which had ruined my wallpaper with splotches of black ichor and buckshot wouldn’t be enough to slow it down, but the thing finally dropped to the floor though it wouldn’t stop twitching and still tried to claw its way toward me, sinking talons into the old planks and leaving scratches and gouges in the wood.
The part of your brain that saves your life when you are in mortal danger is called the amygdale. That’s where you get your adrenaline. Like everything about me, it was working faster and better than it ever had before. The thing touched my shoe and I was up on the counter in a single bound, feeling like one of those screechy women who jump on a chair whenever a mouse gets in their kitchen, but unable to stop the gut level repulsion which told me to get away from the corpse that wouldn’t die.
“Now what?” I asked the room and then recalled how my rescuer in Baltimore had chopped up the last creature that attacked me and burned the pieces in the fire. Feeling ill and still inclined to go for the fire extinguished and put the fire out, I made myself jump down on the far side of the counter, detour around the thrashing thing and fetch the fire tongs instead. Though it made a mess of the old wood floors, I was able to drag the twitching thing to the fireplace in the living room and roll it inside the makeshift crematorium. I had to hold it in place with a poker as it thrashed. Mercifully it made no more noise as the flames consumed it, though it fought to the last. In defense I found myself humming Pop! Goes the Weasel as loudly as I could while I looked at the ceiling and cried and cried as the horror of what I was doing overflowed my eyes.
Finally finished and relieved that the grim business was done, I belatedly checked for fire in the kitchen and on the porch, but though scorched in places, nothing in the kitchen or living room had caught fire. Besides the ape thing. The only casualty was a picture window it had jumped through and I could do nothing about it except empty a bookcase and slide it in front of the shattered glass. It blocked most of the wind that had risen without warning and screamed like the damned when I would not allow it inside.
It was only when this was accomplished that I realized I had done all this without the aid of electric lights. I didn’t need them. My weird black eyes could see in the dark.
Fetching the shotgun from the kitchen, I checked that the back door was locked and then returned to the living room. Curling up by the fire in my dad’s old chair— but not too close to the chimney— I prepared to wait for morning. Sleep wasn’t on the limited menu of options. Nor was calling Sheriff Murphy or even Dave. Rational people don’t do well when confronted with irrational situations. I was barely coping and I had already encountered a monster. Involving someone else was unthinkable; I could easily get someone killed if something else was lying in wait out there in the storm.
Though I tried not to think about the killing of the creature, it was impossible not to ruminate on what had happened. My vision wasn’t the only thing that was different about me. I had felt my hands burn when I carried the melting afghan to the front door. But they showed no signs of injury now. Nor was there a cut on my arm though the fabric of my sleeve was torn and bloody. The pain had still been pain, but I knew while it was happening that somehow I was capable of greater sensation, and had a similarly enlarged capacity to endure or enjoy the new feelings my body could bring me.
That was odd. More than odd. More than human.
And that creature—whatever the hell it was—it was odd too. It had kept coming at me even after the hair was gone and its skull and bones were carbonized and its eyes char. Only when it had been reduced to ashes did it stop thrashing and trying to crawl toward me. Like the thing in Baltimore. How could there be life in a body when there was no flesh and blood? That went against everything we had been taught in science.
And how had it found me? Why had it found me? Was it the smoke from my burned clothes I’d toasted in the backyard? Or was it just laying around waiting for someone to trip over it and I had somehow woken it up from its long winter nap? Like the thing in Baltimore had been waiting— and what the hell had it been doing in that weird chair anyway? Had Emerson been torturing it? I should have asked Emerson. That now seemed a very important question.
I exhaled to a slow five count and made myself let go of the building hysteria think calmly.
The how of it locating me—well, logic said that Emerson James could have told someone about me. But I didn’t believe it. The how was probably something much more arcane and unpleasant. We were, after all, dealing with something not just monstrous but also supernatural. Had I left something behind at that cabin that had my scent on it? Could that be how the thing tracked me?
I didn’t think I had left anything. Except blood. There had been a small amount of blood on the floor. I know it was mine because the other thing had bled black. According to my more lurid reading material— pursued as I tried to understand my own peculiar gift— lore had it that a wizard could track me through my blood or hair. And my burning the last of the bloody clothes out back might have been the final clue, a beacon for anyone who was looking.
As for the why— not for my own sake surely. Probably it was someone wanti
ng to get at Emerson and thinking that I was a handy tool.
A little more detail about who and why someone would do this would be my first questions for him when he arrived. I had a hard time believing that someone as important as Saint Germain would care about me, but someone certainly did and he seemed a likely candidate.
Suddenly starved, I went to the kitchen and got the Doritos and a bottle of blood orange soda from the fridge. The mess in there bothered me but I wasn’t in the mood to clean up the plaster chips and blood and ash. My vacuum was old, asthmatic and filled with cranky self-pity that caused it to belch holes in its paper liners anytime I asked it to pick up more than dust. And it was going to take some patching and painting to cover the cracks in the plaster that spider-webbed the wall in the kitchen. That task could wait for morning. No way was I going out to the shed for tools before dawn.
“Sorry, Harrison,” I whispered as I ripped open the chips. It was his family’s home— four generations had lived and died there— and usually I was very careful of it since I still feel like a guest. “I’ll get to it tomorrow. Promise.”
Chapter 5
“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
—Edgar Allen Poe
I remain vigilant through the night and was still awake when just after sunrise when a four wheel drive in snow chains pulled into the yard. Holding the shotgun, I stepped onto the porch and waited for Emerson to alight. The feeling of being jacked up on some kind of psychic PCP was gone, but I was still feeling abnormally strong and alert in spite of the lack of sleep.
The porch was icy, framed by sagging, thorny cane which I avoided by ducking. Harrison’s mother had grown prize-winning roses that made everyone else in the garden society want to turn in their pruning shears and drink bug-spray while wearing ribbons of shame. The roses were still prolific, but rangy and overgrown now. Stripped on their summer foliage, the neglect of the encroaching canes was plain.
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