“So you think they have a base up there or something?”
“They’s a nest of ‘em up there. You better believe it. And nobody’s doing a damn thing to stop them.”
“People don’t like mysteries. They’d rather not know about things they can’t understand.”
“Well, how many more have to get killed first?”
“So you still think it’s the aliens that got the girls?”
“Fuck a blue hen, I do. Why else ain’t they come up with any clues?” He waved his arms like a frantic bird and looked at me with his dark eyes. “‘Cause they don’t want to be found out yet. They’re chargin’ up for a takeover, sure as the world.”
“And you’ll be the first to know.”
“Damn straight. I’m the only human around in those parts, at least the furthest up the road. It’s a wonder I ain’t been got yet.”
“They probably know you’re onto them.”
“Keep a double-dose of Number Eight buckshot handy, just in case.”
“Well, why do you think they need to kill the girls?”
“Rechargin’. Getting energy. Suck ‘em down like draining a battery.” He lowered his head and his eyes ping-ponged back and forth. He said in a conspiratorial whisper, “They eat the light.”
“The light?”
“Their souls.”
The Insider was quite a trickster. Multitasking. Stepping out on me. Sleeping around.
“Sounds like you’ve got them figured out, Arlie.”
He finished whatever was in his coffee cup and stood up, swaying slightly. “Yep. Better get on out and keep watch. This is their favorite time of night.”
Then he was out the door, looking up at the dark sky.
Could the Insider throw visions up on the big screen of the heavens? Lucas and Spielberg in a galaxy not so far away?
Now, Richard. Would I do a thing like that? I prefer a private viewing.
I wondered what Arlie would think of predators who didn’t have to invade Earth. Because they were already here. Had been since the beginning. A race that thought we were the aliens.
Beth called just before eleven, as I was getting ready to close up. “Hi, loverboy,” she said, in her sexy kitten voice that even hundreds of miles of cable couldn’t quell.
“Loverboy? What about him?”
“Hey, relax. I’m just being silly.”
“Why did you call me at work?”
She sighed. “To hear your voice, Richard. People do that sort of thing, when they’re in love.”
I wondered if the word “love” always sounded like an accusation to other people. The way it did to me.
“Sorry, hon. I’ve been out of sorts lately. Got things on my mind.” Five of them, to be exact.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. I just miss you, that’s all.”
“Well, here’s something that might cheer you up.”
“What’s that?”
“I ran into an old girlfriend of mine. She’s heading to Florida on Friday, and she’s going to drop me off there on her way. I’m going to be home early, you stud muffin. So I only have to go two nights without that hunk of burning love of yours.”
“Th-that’s great.”
“Hmmph. Why don’t you just yawn, you’re so happy about it?”
“No. That’s really great. I mean it. I...” I look forward to killing you.
“Richard?”
“It’s just been real busy here tonight, with the start of the Christmas season and all. But Friday’s great, I’m off on Friday.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound a little...odd.”
“No, everything’s fine here. Really.”
“We’re going to be heading out early, so I should be there around eleven o’clock. Do you want to meet me at my apartment so we can bring over some of my things?”
“That would be fine. So, did you tell your parents? About us living together?”
“You kidding? I told you Mom’s a hardcore Catholic and Dad derived his moral philosophy from ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’”
“Parents. Gotta love ‘em.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll tell them at Christmas, when everybody’s always in a good mood, no matter what kind of shit is raining down.”
“Mmmm. I love you, Angel Baby.” The L word was easier to say, now that I had no choice.
“I love you, too. And guess what?”
“Two guesses in one night? I’m really lucky.”
“I have another surprise. A secret.”
“I’ve been told that I’m no good with secrets. Every time I cross my heart, somebody dies.”
“Funny. Well, it’s such a good secret that I’m not going to tell you on the phone.”
Warning flares erupted in my crowded head. “That big, huh? It sounds like a happy secret.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure at first. But now that I’ve had time to think about it...yes, it’s good.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“Good things are worth waiting for, guy.”
“I’m waiting, then.”
“Good. And don’t let any wild women into your bed until I get there.”
“I’ll try my best.” Did Mother count as “wild”? And did my half-hearted promise free Loverboy to sleep with women preceded by other adjectives? What about tame women or lavender women or deep-fried, sugar-glazed women?
“Hope you won’t get lonely on Thanksgiving.”
“Me? I’m never lonely.” Misery loves company but sleeps alone. Except in the Bone House.
“Funny again. See you on Friday. Love you.”
“Love you.”
She smooched into the phone and hung up.
Secrets. I hated secrets. Sally Bakken had secrets. Secrets always carried a price and never got you the dollar’s worth of candy.
Mother was asleep when I got home. I locked my bedroom door and huddled under the blankets. I was afraid of hearing her feet scruff the carpet, afraid of hearing her knock on my door. Because I knew I’d have to answer.
But I was equally scared of sleeping. Because when I slept, the Insider worked. What were to me only dreams, wisps of nightmare, were the Insider’s bricks and mortar as it walled me off from my feelings and hung up a cute knitted sampler that said, “Home Sweet Home.”
I woke up sweating, the sheets in a tangle. Alone. I went into the hall. Mother’s door was closed. Was she...
I yanked open the door. Red sheets and deviled ham.
I screamed and the Insider shook me awake.
Bad dream, Richard. Do you think I’d let you miss out on something you’ve looked forward to for so long? What kind of monster do you think I am?
“I’m afraid to think what kind. Because that’s what kind you’ll become.”
You’ve been talking to Bookworm. He thinks he has it all figured out.
“We’re all getting tired of you.”
You’ll be rid of me soon. But, believe it or not, you’ll be begging me to stay. It happens every time. I move in, set up camp, dig up a decent wicked streak that most people don’t even know is inside, and then they find that they like it. They LIKE the freedom to do whatever I make them. They LIKE the misery. It’s all so...human.
Look at your religions. All violence and guilt. You demand martyrs. Every single pathetic one of you would love to lay it all on the doorstep of a higher power. But in the end, I am your fondest wish and deepest fantasy. I am everything you want to be. Because I AM you.
“Wonderful. Now you have delusions of godhood. That’s just what I need, a soul-stealing psychic spirit who also happens to be going chipmunk-spunk nutty.”
“Black mine,” Bookworm said.
“Ether ore,” Mister Milktoast said.
I heard sounds behind the door to Mother’s room. I hurried downstairs in case she was undressed.
“Let me just have a peek,” Loverboy said. “Promise I won’t touch. Pleeeeze.”
“Yeah. I trust you about as much as I c
ould trust Sally Bakken.”
“Heh. Sister Milktoast told me about that. Wish I’d been around back then. Things might have turned out different.”
“Loverboy, I don’t think she was your type.”
“Hey now. If it’s old enough to bleed—”
“—it’s old enough to butcher,” Little Hitler said.
“And a Happy Thanksgiving to you, too, Little Diddler.”
“Come on, guys. Can’t we all get along, at least for one day?”
“We’d hate to screw up your holiday with Mommy,” Little Hitler said. “And blow Loverboy’s prospects.”
“Hey, blow me, Swizzlestick, I can get it anytime I want it. And I’m smooth as a baby’s ass and harder to hold than a pig in Crisco. You just hack and slash. No charm at all.”
“But plenty of depth,” Mister Milktoast noted.
“Come on, guys,” Bookworm said. “We’ve got to stick together now, more than ever.”
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Sickworm with more of his cosmic crap. This isn’t some Eastern religious text, you know. This is the real deal.”
I was so mad that I yelled out loud without thinking. “Just shut the hell up, all of you.”
“Richard?” Mother called from upstairs. “Is somebody there?”
“Nobody here but us chickens,” Loverboy said aloud.
“Fowl play,” Mister Miltoast chimed in.
“Foreplay,” Bookworm said, forgetting he was making a transition into one of the good guys, the minor character who wins the affection of the audience and plays a key role in the redemptive arc.
“What?”
I looked up the landing. Mother leaned against the doorjamb. She was always leaning. Mercifully, she was wearing her robe, though I don’t think she’d washed it since I’d moved out of the apartment. She looked a hundred years old, like a Pharoah’s mummy, shriveled, bone-dry, hollow.
“Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking out loud. How did you sleep?”
“Like the dead. Had a bad dream, though. Something about the door opening and—”
“Coming down for breakfast?”
“Yeah. Think I’ll take a shower first.”
Loverboy leapt, throbbed in pulse-beats. Come on, roomies. Let’s have some fiveplay and soap up for a gangbang.
I turned and rushed for the kitchen.
“Richard?”
“Yes, Mother?”
I hoped she wouldn’t ask for someone to wash her back. Because I knew several willing volunteers, and a couple of unwilling ones.
“Thanks for inviting me here. I know we’ve had our problems, but...this can be a new start. For both of us.”
“It’s good to have you here.”
“Maybe we can talk, you know, about the old days.”
“We’ll see.” Yes. We definitely will see. Every square inch, from the inside out.
“Oh, yeah. And Happy Thanksgiving.”
“We have so much to be thankful for, Mother. Pass the stuffing. I feel a little empty.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
We survived Thanksgiving. Cold turkey on white bread as the wind blew dead and cold, cutting across the hills like a scythe. We talked of little nothings, leftovers, Iowa’s corn, the continental divide, grandfather’s funeral. How the sky was bluer and the clouds grayer in winter.
We drank two fifths of the liquor, watched cartoon pilgrims on television, and went to bed, each mercifully alone. The Little People were silent, perhaps taking a holiday themselves. The Insider didn’t claw at my guts, but I could feel it waiting, getting stronger, raiding the refrigerator for leftovers.
I awoke Friday to the first ashes of snow whispering down to the hard ground. My first thought was of Beth, hoping that she made it to Shady Valley before the roads got bad. My second thought was that Mother and Beth would soon be under the same roof, exactly where the Insider wanted them. And my third thought...
Something flushed and straight-piped raw sewage into my chest. Fresh memories spilled from the cracks in the dam, the dam burst, the red currents roared, rivers of blood washed through my mind.
Mother on the bed, writhing, limbs hacked off at the elbows and knees. Still alive, her mouth open to scream, but only thick gobs of crimson oozing out. Her tongue lying on the pillow next to her cheek. Wiggling her stumps like a turtle flipped over on its back.
Loverboy grinning, sliding on his knees toward the flesh that is unable to fight him off, even if it wanted to.
“No, no, NO!”
Something had walked in the night.
Little Hitler had taken the hatchet from the downstairs closet.
While I slept, the Insider rewrote the part where I’d killed Mother in a dream.
I looked at my hands. No blood. I looked under the sheets at my naked flesh. No blood.
Had Mister Milktoast once again cleaned up the mess? Was the crime covered? Were the bedspreads washed? Were the chunks buried?
But such a thing could never be buried in the heart. The Insider wouldn’t allow that. The Insider would drag it out, disembowel it, bone and fillet it, stuff it and mount it on the walls of my life.
I pressed my eyeballs, trying to squeeze the visions away. I rolled out of bed and ran across the hall. I flung open the door to Mother’s room without knocking.
She was whole. The blankets rose and fell with her breathing.
Had you going that time, didn’t I, Richard?
“You insane bastard.”
Little Hitler wanted to. Oh, yes, he stood over her for at least an hour. But I couldn’t let you miss the party, could I? Besides, how much fun would it be if you and she slept through the whole thing? I mean, if you’re going to sleep together, you should be awake, right?
Mother stirred under the blankets, nudged her head against the pillow, and opened her bloodshot eyes. “Richard?”
As she stared at me, the Insider froze my legs so I couldn’t run. I was a statue, a marble nude, as cold and hard as the mountains outside.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I dreamed about you,” she said, her eyes slowly trailing down my body before finally fixing on the ceiling.
“It’s snowing,” I said.
She kept on talking, as if to herself, her voice frail and barely louder than the snowfall. “We were walking down a long black tunnel, and we kept walking and walking. The dark was so thick we couldn’t hardly breathe. Then the tunnel opened up, and there was a light. We were in a high cave, with those pointy rocks hanging down, and the sides of the cave were damp and covered with gray mold.
“And there was a flat rock, about table-high, sort of like an altar. And there was a girl on it, Richard. Naked and scared. Her eyes so wide they was about to pop, and she looked at us like she was begging for help, only she didn’t make a sound.”
I tried to back away. Loverboy wanted to move closer. The Insider laughed.
“Before we could run,” Mother said, smearing the back of her hand against her greasy forehead, “a big dark shadow swooped out of the other end of the cave and covered her, then swirled down into her mouth and disappeared like muddy water down a drain. And she screamed and screamed like she had eaten razor blades.”
Mother blinked as if trying to drive away the lingering vision, incapable of grasping extended metaphors, knowing only that her head throbbed with hangover.
“And she was screaming ‘Help me, bookworm.’ Ain’t that weird?”
“Hmmm. You know how dreams are,” I said. “Must be the stress of moving and everything.”
“The girl on the rock, it was the girl in your picture. Downstairs.”
The Insider let me have control of my legs, now that its joke had been played. I backed out of the room. “It was just a dream. You already used that gimmick once. What, you’re getting so lame that you have to pull a Freddie fucking Krueger and pile up the remakes?”
Just a dream. All you have to do is wake up and shake your head. And all the bad little shadows will go a
way.
“Remember when you were little?” Mother said, her dark eyes locked on the ceiling, as if looking through it at the snowy hell above. “You used to dream about the monsters.”
There are no monsters in the real world, right, Richard? Only the ones you make.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said from the hall.
“After your father went off to work, you’d come in and snuggle with me under the blankets. You’d tell me all about what Mister Milktoast did while you were asleep. You remember that? You remember Mister Milktoast?”
“A little.”
“Why, you said he was your imaginary friend. Every time you broke something or got into trouble, you blamed him.”
Never could point the finger at yourself, could you, Richard?
I shivered from more than the cold.
“Your father would get so mad when you’d do that,” Mother said. “He’d practically bust a neck-vein, he hated it so much. He’d get bug-eyed and bend over you with his stinking, slobbery breath, then...then…
“...his boots would do their dance,” Mister Milktoast said, in his small four-year-old voice.
“He couldn’t help it. That was just his way. He always felt so trapped, you know? And he was a good man, except for that.”
“But he beat you all the time. How could you still love him?”
“Sometimes love ain’t about flowers and kisses and a hand to hold in the sunshiny fields. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of putting up with. ‘Cause what’s out there, what’s dark and creepy and God-only-knows-what, is even scarier than what you got ahold of. Or whatever’s got ahold of you.”
“Is that why you never left him?”
“There’s worse things than getting beat. Like being alone.”
Alone. What I wouldn’t give for that. “And is that why you told the police you killed Father? Because you were afraid they were going to take me away from you?”
Her breath got shallow, short. I clenched my fists and stepped back into the room, not caring that I was naked.
“Well, that wasn’t all,” she said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye.
“Tell me, damn it, tell me.”
“Well, I just felt like I was supposed to. When you love somebody, you try and protect them.”
Scott Nicholson Library Vol 1 Page 88
