by Weston Ochse
Danny returned his gaze to the window. Within seconds, another face appeared, this one all smiles. Danny decided that the other face must have belonged to a cat person. He replayed his routine, and with a snap of a lock, the door opened.
“I know what he said, Emily, but look at it. So cute. And awwww, someone’s been hurting it. Come in girl. Come in. Let Annie take care of you.”
Danny was so happy to finally be allowed inside that he didn’t mind being called a girl. When the door was shut behind him, however, he halted. His human mind had difficulty processing what he saw. At least a dozen girls stood or reclined, their gazes on him. All wore shapeless white gowns and all of them were bald.
“Look at this,” came a voice from behind him. “There’s a message attached to the collar. Elaina, it has your name on it.”
Excitement surged through him at the mention of his sister’s name. He felt his tail wag furiously. A voice he recognized like no other sent it into wild revolutions of joy.
“A note for me? Isn’t that the strangest thing?”
Danny spun and spied his sister. Like the others she was bald. So strange for her hair to be gone. Still, he was so happy that he launched himself. Landing on her chest, he allowed the dog to lick her.
He missed the tingling sensation that began at the base of his skull as he touched her. He didn’t know anything was amiss until suddenly he found himself in The Land of Inside-Out with no way to return to the animal.
* * *
The Scarecrow Gods
Danny tried to return to the dog’s life pad. He saw it below him, just as he saw the life pad of his sister and the other women. Some of these were very dim. But he couldn’t get past a screen of luminescence that was between him and his goal. It was as if someone had placed a sheet of impenetrable glass between him and the dormitory. Try as he might, he always came up against it.
Finally, he slowed, his panic flowing from him as he took a moment to think. His sister was alive—she had the letter and would read it. There wasn’t much he could do in the form of a dog, anyway. He’d had notions of writing in the dirt or scratching words on the wall, but those had just been notions. This wasn’t some Disney movie—if an animal started doing something like that in real life, it would scare someone to death. After all, he’d experienced the very same thing.
Reluctantly, Danny turned away from his sister and headed back towards the Scarecrow Gods. The nexus glowed brightly in the distance. As he drew nearer, he noticed that the Chill Blaines that had been huddling hungrily at the edge were gone. He sent a prayer out for the crazy rocket scientist, Billy Bones. Within the nexus he saw four life pads. Four was the wrong number. He merged with his own and arrived in the midst of screams, blood and bestial fury.
“Jesus Christ give me strength!” screamed Simon standing over him. “Beast, you shall not have the boy.”
The mesquite cross was bent and broken. Blood and tan fur clung to its length. Brother Simon’s clothes were ripped. The sleeve had been snatched from his left arm. Claw marks ran its length, inch deep furrows in the skin. Danny felt a stickiness on his head. He reached up and his hand came away with blood.
An animal scream like he’d never heard before came from several feet away. Part growl, part shriek, it filled the air and sent chills through his body. Danny twisted to a sitting position and saw the mountain lion that had made the sound. One eye was missing. The side of its face was horribly lacerated. A deep gouge ran down one side of its six-foot length, blood leaking across the already matted fur and onto the ground.
As Danny watched, the owl piloted by Maxom, dove like a fighter jet, finger-long talons raking grooves along the cat’s flank. The mountain lion spun and swatted at the owl, missing by only inches as the owl soared again into the air.
“Danny, thank God. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold the thing off. Get behind me! See if you can find something to protect yourself.”
Danny scrambled back behind the Brother.
“It’s not normal. It just keeps coming like it’s controlled.”
The owl shrieked as it dove again. This time the mountain lion was ready. At the last second it dodged and brought a paw up in a deadly swipe. Tail feathers danced in the air, the only casualty of the cat’s offensive. The owl shrieked as it soared up and into the night.
Danny found himself being pushed backwards as Simon backed up. The brother’s right hand gripped the mesquite cross, white knuckles banded with red pinstripes of blood.
“The lion came out of nowhere. One minute everything was quiet, the next I was fighting for my life. Thank God your friend arrived when he did, or else I would have—duck!”
Danny felt himself shoved to the ground. He watched in horror as the mountain lion took Brother Simon full in the chest, both of them disappearing from view as they rolled and tumbled coming to a stop at the base of one of the Scarecrow Gods, rattling the great saguaro to its roots.
Both the brother and the animal screamed. Danny joined them as he realized that the man was being eaten alive. Scrambling to his feet, he added his own shouts to the chorus of pain as the creature sank its fangs into Simon again and again. It was the most terrifying sight he’d ever encountered—to watch someone mauled, eaten, consumed. The mountain lion had a hold of Simon’s left arm, its head shook twice, and it came away with a chunk of flesh.
“Oh my God!” screamed Danny. “Oh my God!”
The sight was almost too much. Adrenaline hit him as he spied the mesquite cross lying on the ground. He scooped it up and charged towards the mountain lion. Danny swung with every ounce of his newfound strength, aiming for the cat’s head.
When the cross hit, it snapped. The upper half lodged in the animal’s fur, thumb-sized thorns digging in as the mountain lion spun and Danny stared into the face of death. A single yellow eye pulsed with exertion. The other was a jellied mess of crushed orb. Blood and saliva dripped from the animal’s great jaws.
The cross had wrapped itself around the cat’s neck and hung down so that the beast stumbled with each step. It crouched as if to jump, then faltered as it got caught in the thorns.
Danny backpedaled furiously, barely able to stay out of the animal’s reach.
His only chance was to climb one of the Scarecrow Gods. Although the thorns looked wicked, he knew that their tines were nothing compared to the claws and jaws of the mountain lion. He gripped the saguaro with both hands and hauled himself up, too scared to feel any pain. He was halfway up, when his foot slipped. He tried to throw his arms around the Scarecrow God, but was too late. He fell in a twisted tangle of thrashing limbs.
He screamed hysterically as he saw that he’d landed within a foot of the mountain lion. He pushed himself to a sitting position, his back against the saguaro. The great cat grinned as it crept closer. Then his scream was matched and multiplied by the sound of the Great Horned Owl as it returned, hurtling downward from the heavens, a bolt of taloned vengeance.
It struck the cat as it leapt. Instead of landing on Danny, the cat tumbled sideways in mid-air. Screeching and yowling filled the circle of saguaro. Feathers and blood flew amidst the roiling dust.
Hyperventilating as he screamed, Danny pulled himself to his feet. He tried to climb the Scarecrow God once more, but his hands were too slick with blood. Instead, he hid behind it.
Somehow Simon was still alive. He struggled to his feet. His left arm was in shreds. Flesh hung like torn paper showing the whiteness of bone in several places. Blood ran freely, his entire left side sodden with the sticky liquid.
“Help me,” Simon gasped, his face white. The presence of the man calmed Danny enough so that his breathing returned to a semblance of normality. He tried to help him, but was pushed away. “No. The Gods. We must use them. We must invoke them!” Simon hobbled towards the backside of the saguaro next to him. “Help me,” he said as he slid around the unforgiving skin of the cactus.
Although Danny was sure that Simon was babbling, he obeyed. Simon sat
down hard, his back to the saguaro. He found purchase with his feet and began to press backwards, stress making his neck muscles bulge. Blood continued to pour from his ruined arm. Danny leaned a shoulder to the same great trunk and pushed. He felt the saguaro begin to give as the towering ton of cactus overwhelmed the shallow root system.
The screams of the owl and the mountain lion came less and less now as each creature was weakened by the other. Their battle was lost to Danny, his vision obscured; yet it sounded as if the mountain lion was winning.
“Come on and push!” screamed Simon, his voice bare and ragged. “It’s our only chance. Give it all you’ve got!”
The Great Horned Owl shrieked one last time and went silent.
Danny groaned, adjusted his stance, and heaved with every ounce of strength he could muster.
The Scarecrow God gave way.
Slowly at first, it gathered speed, coke-bottle lips whistling through the air. Danny felt himself knocked to the ground by the roots as they shot free from the earth. And with a whoompf, the great cactus crashed onto the mountain lion.
Simon lay atop the trunk, his arms splayed to the sides. His wide eyes stared sightlessly at Danny, determination curving the lips into a half-smile.
A wind came from nowhere as the other Gods spoke, air sheering across their glass lips like a desert lament. Then just as suddenly, the wind was gone. Everything was still. The only sound in the circle was Danny’s own whimpers as he stared back at Simon.
* * *
Paradise Valley, Arizona
Billy Bones had crawled through the darkness on elbows and knees, willing himself to remain unseen until he made it to the dirty room. Allowing the voices to guide him, he opened the door and strode straight through, oblivious to the screams of the girls surrounding him. Several of the girls tried to stop him in his holy mission, but he gently pushed them aside.
He had some violence to commit, but it was not for them. They’d been victims just as he had been, each of them used and held at the ready to be used again. He saw Bingo being held by a young girl. That was good, for this was not Bingo’s time, it was his. He knew this because the voices told him so.
Reaching the end of the dirty room, Billy Bones came to a door and twisted the knob. Locked. He found a chair, brought it over his head and slammed it against the face of the door. After three attempts, both the chair and the door splintered.
Billy Bones stepped into the room. He hovered over the sleeping figure for a moment, before he slipped a knife from his belt and raised it before him in a double-fisted grip.
The man’s eyes snapped open. Not human, they were the eyes of a beast. The man growled, low and deep.
“Evil’s agent in dirty room. Is no amity. A rope ends it. Time for real fun.”
The knife pierced the man’s heart just as humanity began returning to his eyes.
“Time for real fun.” Time for funeral.
Billy Bones left the knife sticking in the cult leader’s chest, as he turned and stalked out of the dormitory. He only dimly registered the screams behind him, the sounds of running, crying. He ignored all of this and, instead, listened to the voices within his head. He’d learn to live with them instead of fighting them. In exchange for their help in his revenge he’d promised them a life of their own.
Billy headed off into the desert in search of a place where he’d fit in.
* * *
Danny tore through the hip-high weeds, his legs churning as fast as they’d go. Tears flew from his face, his sobs intermingling with his own desperate gasps for air as he ran. He dodged the ocotillo and mesquite trees, but plowed through lesser bushes. He leapt over a yucca plant, the nasty tines almost finding his backside. Everywhere it seemed as if the land was conspiring against him, trying to keep him from his sister, from the end of this terrible tale.
He had to find her. He had to make sure she was still alive. Things had become so chaotic, he didn’t know what to expect.
Brother Simon was dead. He’d been mortally wounded by the mountain lion. His arm had been all but ripped away. Great grooved lacerations banded the man’s legs and abdomen where the cat had scratched.
Danny had never been witness to death at this close of a range. He’d never been a part of the drama. He’d never actually seen someone eaten alive. Once again, bile rose in his throat and he stumbled, then stopped, dry heaving into the high desert weeds.
The memory of his terror made him sick.
He’d felt so afraid. Now more than ever he wished that Maxom were here. Danny glanced towards the sky, searching for a circling bird. Turning around, he appraised the land around him, hunting for a rabbit or a kangaroo mouse that appeared a little too intelligent. Nothing. For all he knew, his friend was dead.
Don’t think that! He screamed to himself.
He couldn’t take any more death. As it stood, he’d been forced to stare at the dead eyes of Brother Simon. Even as the flies landed and began to feast, Danny waited, hoping that the man was just resting, his little boy mind unwilling to believe the evidence before his eyes.
No. Maxom wasn’t dead. Only the owl was dead. Maxom was fine. He was probably sitting on his couch in the cool Tennessee gloom, rubbing his nubs and dreaming of disco dancing. Danny smiled as an image of his friend dressed in a white suit like John Travolta intruded across his mind. Ladies grasped each of Maxom’s arms as he propelled them around a lighted dance floor.
Danny straightened and wiped his hands on the sides of his pants. With his forearms, he wiped his tears away.
He heard sirens far off in the twilight. He turned towards the sounds which were in the same direction he’d been running. Now a little less spastic with fear, he began running, his long loping strides eating up the distance.
Five minutes later he crossed the road and entered into a melee of reporters, police officers and bald girls dressed in shapeless white gowns being treated by paramedics. The entire highway had been blocked off in front of the compound. He’d barely registered the presence of the police when he’d visited the compound earlier, but now they were overwhelming.
A short man in a suit reached out and grabbed his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.
Instead of answering, Danny jerked his arm free and dashed into the crowd. The man yelled after him, but Danny didn’t care. His attention was only for one person. He looked past the policemen who were trying to reign in the havoc. He dodged around paramedics who checked the vitals of the poor girls who’d been lured into the compound. Each of their head’s had been shorn of hair. The sight would have been laughable, had it not been so sad.
The compound was bathed in light in the distance. Men in uniforms and business suits swarmed in and out of the doors. One shouted and the others followed into the dorm where his sister had been. Danny readied to run, but a voice stopped him.
“Who does this one belong to?” asked a voice struggling to be heard over the chaos and confusion.
Danny whirled around and found himself face-to-face with the sallow slip of a girl that had once been his sister. Bloody red droplets splattered her cleanly shaven head and the left side of her face. Her expression was void of emotion, gravity rather than her mind controlling the muscles. Her wide eyes stared into the distance, past the compound to a private place. She clutched the collar of a ratty looking dog.
Danny’s heart stopped hard, then restarted. “She’s mine,” he whispered to the man who held her hand.
“What?”
Danny cleared his throat of the emotions that had been dammed within. “I said she’s mine. That’s my sister.”
The man nodded, but doubt still carved his features. He examined Danny for several long heartbeats then turned and searched the crowd. Abruptly, he turned back, the eyes hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses, lenses reflecting the brightness of the arc-lights.
“Where are your parents?” he asked.
“Tennessee, Sir. They’re in Tennessee,” said Danny.
“You here all by yourself?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Danny.
“Well, ain’t you the little hero,” the man said as he held the girl’s hand out to Danny.
“No sir,” replied Danny.
The man frowned. “What did you say?”
“I said I’m not a hero. I’m just her brother.”
Danny took his sister’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He stared into her eyes, searching for that spark that was her. It took a few moments, but after a while, her focus changed and she looked at him. He smiled and held it there until she started to cry. He couldn’t help himself. He cried too.
He pulled her to the edge of the crowd and leaned his forehead into hers. Before the summer had begun, she’d seemed so big, but now they stood eye to eye. He stroked her hair as she sobbed, telling him about the math teacher who’d touched her, and the fear and self-loathing that had twisted her heart and sent her running.
Danny pulled her closer and gazed at the compound. Relief like he’d never felt suffused him. Everything, every hope and dream, every crazy idea had paid off. He couldn’t wait to get back and tell Maxom. He couldn’t wait to tell Bergen. He owed a lot of people a lot of things, not the least being his mother…and his father.
* * *
The Land of Inside-Out
Maxom opened his eyes and inhaled a savage breath.
He’d won. Even as the owl and the cat had died, crushed beneath the mighty weight of a Scarecrow God, Maxom and the other had slipped back into the Land of Inside-Out. There seemed a moment when he’d thought perhaps that they’d fight, but instead the other had shot back towards its corporeal form. Somehow it had known of the danger to its physical self. By the time Maxom had followed, the spark of light that had represented John had already begun to fade.
