The Orangefield Cycle Omnibus

by Al Sarrantonio

  “Please go.”

  She quickly left the room, the hallway, the house, hearing the monstrously loud creak of the front door slamming behind her.

  At the street, as if a switch had been thrown, the day was still bright, blue-skied, chilly-warm with early autumn. She looked back, and the Reynolds house looked even darker, lost in its night trees.

  She hurried home, enjoying the late warmth of the day.

  In her room, sitting at her desk, she drew out the mass of paper, which had already been printed in proof pages, awaiting only corrections and return to the printer. She paged quickly past the title page, feeling a thrill at the words VOLUME TWO, 1941-THE PRESENT, and scanned the copyright page. It looked similar to that of the first volume: date of (proposed) publication, ISBN number, copyright information, author information for library cataloging purposes—

  Her eyes locked on the author information, which she had, indeed, looked over in the first volume but which had not come back to strike her as odd today.

  The date of birth for T.R. Reynolds was listed, making him only twenty-eight years old.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I still have my doubts.

  The girl will be fine. The two men I am already sure of.

  I’ve told you before, this way is the trickiest. There are other ways.

  But none as direct.

  You’ve failed with this before—

  1941 was an experiment. I learned from it.

  And 1981?

  A failure, I admit. But I learned from that, too. It is the unpredictability of these creatures that astounds me. It always has. You assume you know them —

  One would think that Death would know them well.

  One would think that the opposite of creation would know them better, Dark One. Death is only part of what they are. Sometimes they almost interest me. That Grant almost interests me.

  As long as you say ‘almost.’ What I found interesting was the way you moved him aside. When these humans truly start to interest you I will wonder about you. It is still the girl I have questions about.

  As I said, she will be fine. All will be fine. And, as I said, we have insurance. My time of the year is coming, and all will be ready.

  I hope so, my friend. For your sake.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The Pumpkin Tender was in desolation.

  It had begun to rain the day after the end of Pumpkin Days, and it continued to rain for four days after that. Cold, damp rain, the precursor to winter snow, a slate gray sky, the ground sodden with water. His fields, empty as they were, had gone quickly to ruin, furrows filling with mud, some turning to sodden shallow lakes of brown water. The pumpkins in his special field had begun to rot; normally he would have built a shelter for them, tended them until well past Thanksgiving, ensuring that the few that remained planted in the ground were nourished, their stalks bright green as long as possible before coming Winter. Now they lay, picked and unpicked alike, in a slurry mess, the ripest of them rotting from within, bursting along their seams, ruined, smelling of decay.

  For three days he had waited for the large pumpkin with two lobes to speak to him again, huddled beneath his wet blanket, shivering, eyes glue to the fruit — but nothing had happened. Finally, when he ventured close enough to inspect it, he saw that its stem had dropped away from its top, and worms were crawling into the soggy opening, feasting on the grayish-yellow pulp within.

  After that he moved farther away from his fields, limping up into the low hills surrounding Orangefield, where no one could find him.

  There was a cave set into one of the hills, and he spent one night in it until what looked like a wolf, but might have been a feral dog, chased him out, teeth bared, growling. After that there was nowhere completely dry for him to stay, and after a second night under the rain his skin was wrinkled as a prune, splotched purple.

  He was afraid of his own dreams, and slept little.

  He ate nothing for the first day, but then, his stomach screaming with hunger, he foraged for roots and whatever else looked edible. In this he made one great mistake, and spent one entire night groaning in a squat, his sodden pants around his ankles, as his bowels sought to tear themselves from his body.

  The next morning he awoke, after barely an hour of sleep, shivering and with fever. His leg ached like fire.

  It was then that the wolf, or feral dog, tracked him and began to circle as he lay on the ground.

  He prayed that the beast might attack him, and tear out his throat, and be done with it. Everything would be over then. All the dreams, the bad memories, the shattered bits of his life, everything he didn’t want put together again.

  He actually fell asleep, in the rain, and waited, almost soothed, for the worst.

  But nothing happened, and when he woke up the rain had stopped, and the cold clouds were pulling away. Behind them was a measure of blue sky, and then the sun came back and the temperature rose.

  He was almost dry, covered in his Army blanket, which had, miraculously, become dry itself. He no longer trembled, and his fever was gone.

  His leg was free of pain.

  He sat up on dry ground, on a little rise which fell away to dry woods in front and in back of him.

  The dog which had followed him was a few yards away, torn to shreds, its own throat ripped open, its mouth open, teeth bared, in a silent cry of agony.

  The Pumpkin Tender began to rock back and forth, making weeping sounds.

  There, there, the voice in his head came, didn’t I tell you everything would be all right?

  His rocking became more frantic, his mewling sounds more frightened.

  The thing in the black cape melted out of the woods in front of him. In sunlight, there was still no face visible, only a dark, shaped void beneath the cowl. There was no physical form visible beneath the folds of the garment — it was as if the garment itself was the creature.

  Aaron, the thing said, in a soothing voice, if I’d known you’d be so upset by what I told you, I never would have said it. Do you think I want to hurt you? I only want to help you. I thought remembering would help you.

  The Pumpkin Tender continued to rock, shaking his head violently.

  Do you believe I want to help you?

  Again Aaron shook his head violently.

  How can I prove it to you? Would you like to forget again?

  Now the Pumpkin Tender nodded, making a choking noise. He tried closing his eyes but the image of the caped thing was still there, as if his lids didn’t exist. He made a louder choked crying sound.

  The shape advanced on him. Suddenly it put its hand, a pale white, shapeless thing, on Aaron’s head. It was colder than ice. A feeling more numbing than any he had ever felt went down through Aaron’s head along his back, spreading like expanding cracks in a frozen pond.

  I can let you forget again, Aaron, the shape whispered. I can take the memories away from you.

  Frantically, he nodded, in fear and need.

  But tell me first: do the memories hurt you?

  A quick nod.

  Do they make you want to hurt yourself?

  Another nod.

  Do they?

  He cried out, yanking his head away from the creature’s touch, and fell shivering to the ground. Over and over he mouthed in silent agony the word, “Yes…”

  Good, then. Remember them one more time, and I will take them from you…

  The creature’s hand reached out, impossibly long, and its hand once more rested on the Pumpkin Tender’s head…

  He wasn’t the Pumpkin Tender, or Frankenstein. He was Aaron Peters, Private First Class, and he had a letter in his pocket from his sweetheart. Peggy hadn’t written in a week, and he was afraid the mail had been held up, or censored out of existence, or maybe in the crashed C-47 cargo plane that had gone down ten days before after being hit by a rebel rocket.

  But now he finally had a letter from her in his breast pocket, next to his heart, and the world was right again.<
br />
  “Hey, dog shit, you gonna read that thing or what?” Kip Berger kidded him. They had started out on a reconnaissance sweep an hour ago, the two of them on the ground with a truck fifty yards behind, just after chow and just after mail call, which had come at the last minute.

  Aaron grinned and patted his heart. “Got it right here, numb-nuts. I always put her letters here before I do the day’s work. Keeps me safe.”

  “She must be one helluva bang.”

  Aaron’s grin disappeared, and he turned to Berger, balling his fists. “I’d take that back—”

  But Berger’s big smile calmed him down. “I’m just jealous, is all. I’ve been married to my fist so long; it makes me crazy when I see a guy with a real girl waiting for him.”

  Aaron relaxed. For the next five minutes they walked on silently, inspecting the bushes in front of them, the dry horizon ahead of them.

  Finally Berger, who couldn’t be quiet for long, said, “I hate this job. The shit heels with the minesweepers go through ahead of us, and then we get to hope they did their fucking job and cleared out all the fragmentation stake mines, the Claymores —”

  “You know how it is — some of these bastards are homemade, or minimum metal jobs, and don’t have enough metal parts for the clearance robots or detectors to pick them up. You can thank the Russians for selling some of them to these warlord assholes.”

  “Yeah, well, I still think it sucks —”

  Suddenly Berger stopped dead. His face went white. “Hey, Aaron—”

  Aaron stood still, and looked to where Berger was pointing: at his right boot, frozen in place.

  Berger said in a measured voice, “I think I stepped one of the fuckers we just talked about, bud.”

  “Don’t move.”

  “No shit.”

  Aaron studied the ground around Berger’s boot, looking for another slight depression or suspicious turn in the soil.

  “Looks like there’s only one,” Aaron said. “No trip wire, or your leg would be gone by now. It’s a wooden plate. It’ll go off if you lift your foot.”

  “That’s the good news, right?”

  “There’s only good news today, Kip.”

  “Tell it to the Marines. My foot is starting to fall asleep.”

  “Just hang on, pal.”

  Berger managed a faint smile, and pointed to his crotch. “Hang onto this.”

  “I’ll get the C.O.”

  “Well hurry it up, then!” Berger’s voice had taken on a note of urgency.

  Aaron quickly covered the ground they had cleared, breaking into a trot. The C.O.’s truck was stopped fifty yards back, and he reached it, saluted, and reported what had happened.

  “Shit,” the C.O., a small, swarthy man with a two-day stubble and tired eyes, said. “It sounds home made, and it’s probably got a big charge in it. Last time we tried to move a weight over one of those mines to transfer the pressure, it still blew. Cut the poor bastard in half.”

  “Is there something else we can do?”

  The C.O. shook his head. “S.O.P., Peters, which means they haven’t come up with anything better. I know they tried just about everything else you could think of — foam, debris containment, you name it. Weight transfer is still the only thing that might work.”

  He gave an order, and the sergeant sitting next to him jumped out and went to the back of the truck. Aaron followed him.

  “How much does Berger weigh?” the Sergeant asked.

  “I’d say about one-seventy. Maybe one-seventy-five.”

  The sergeant pulled a box out and began to fill it with measured weights. “That means we need about sixty pounds. You think you can handle this alone?”

  “Sure.”

  The sergeant finished with the box, closed and latched it, and handed it to Peters, along with three five-foot sections of metal pole. He explained exactly what had to be done.

  “Tell the poor bastard we’re praying for him.”

  “Right.”

  Aaron lugged the box back to Berger, and set it on the ground with a grunt.

  “You weigh about one-seventy, right?”

  “One eighty-five.”

  “Shit.”

  Berger looked at him, the strain evident on his features. “Whatever you’ve got in the box, use it. I can’t wait too much longer. There are pins and needles up and down my leg, and I can’t feel it anymore.”

  “Fine.” Aaron shuffled the box along the ground toward Berger’s frozen foot, stopping about six inches away.

  “You ready?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Berger looked at him with frightened eyes. “What the hell do you mean, what’s the matter? I’m scared shitless! And don’t tell me this works every time, because I know it hardly ever works. I was at the same briefing you were. I was sitting right next to you when they said say goodbye to your ass if you get in this jam.”

  To his embarrassment, Aaron noticed that Berger had wet himself.

  “Maybe they were wrong.” Aaron was fitting the first section of the pole to a catch on the box; then he would fit subsequent sections into the rear of the one in front of it, until he was fifteen feet away. Then he would push the box forward to replace Berger’s weight on the mine. “You set?”

  “Not yet, bud. I want you to do me a big favor.”

  Peters snapped the last section of pole into place. He looked up quizzically.

  Berger said, “I want you to read me that letter from your girl.”

  Aaron straightened. “Jeez.”

  Berger pleaded, “Please, bud. For luck. Maybe some of the luck you always get will fall on me.”

  “You got it.” Aaron put down the pole and pulled the letter out from its place near his heart. He ripped open one edge and pulled the single sheet out, waiting for the whiff of perfume that always accompanied Peggy’s letters to him.

  There was no perfume.

  He flipped open the letter.

  “Read it,” Berger demanded. “Out loud.”

  Aaron was scanning the letter, his eyes starting at the signature on the bottom, which read Yours sincerely, instead of All my love, to the top, which started: Dear Aaron, things have happened in the last few weeks…

  “Read it, dammit!” Berger begged.

  The world drew away from Aaron Peters; suddenly he didn’t see the dusty road, or Berger, or the thin blue sky of Mogadishu, or anything. A hissing came into his head, and the spot next to his heart where the letter had been began to burn as if it was on fire. His hand holding the letter dropped to his side, and the words no longer, and wish you well in the future drained out of him as if a stopcock had been opened on his life. He was suddenly dry, and light as air. The letter floated to earth. He was standing next to Berger, but didn’t see him, or hear his shouting voice.

  Then suddenly he did. “What the hell—!” he heard as he put his hands on Berger and pushed, and slid his boots forward to replace himself on the mine, which then went off.

  He heard the explosion from far away, and saw Berger cut into parts in front of him, as if drawn and quartered in mid-air — the bottom parts, which had been his legs and thighs, suddenly red, flying one way while the top parts, bloody as well, a severed arm, and the rest of the torso, with something heaving in the open chest and with the other arm still reaching for him and the face still asking “What the hell” flew impossibly the other way. And then as Berger receded everything faded from his face, all emotion and questions, and he turned white and dead. And then there was a burn up Aaron’s own leg and sound came back in a rush like a turned up volume knob and he heard that tearing sound, of meat being ripped off a bone, his own meat and Berger’s, and then another louder sound of all the screams, his own impossibly high screams until something slammed into his chin and up through his mouth….

  The impossibly cold hand on the Pumpkin Tender’s head slid away in a retreating caress.

  Suddenly the memories were gone.

  A
ll of them, as if a switch had clicked off the lights in his head.

  He was the Pumpkin Tender, and Frankenstein.

  He was no longer Aaron Peters, Private First Class, who had murdered his buddy and tried, unsuccessfully, to murder himself.

  He was nothing now, only a mess of a former man — a man who remembered little if anything and took care of pumpkins.

  Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of you? Haven’t I always taken care of you?

  The touch of the freezing hand came back, and with it one more memory, which flared briefly in his head before dissipating like smoke:

  When he came back from Somalia, and after all the time in the V.A. hospital, and then the discharge, an honorable one because the administration didn’t want any more blots on the Somalia campaign, especially not after losing all those men, and those helicopters, when they went after that warlord — after all that time, there was nothing wrong with his memory. He could remember what he had done perfectly well. He had begun to limp around Orangefield, keeping his horrible secret to himself, from his family, from his friends, because he couldn’t live with it.

  And then he decided not to live with it.

  So one night the first October after he returned, when the moon looked Halloween orange as it rose off the horizon and it was cold, he had gone out to one of the empty pumpkin fields on the outskirts of Orangefield, a field owned by a man named Froelich, and he had stood in that almost empty, almost picked-clean pumpkin field, smelling rotting sweet pumpkin carcasses around him, and facing the moon, and he put his service revolver to his head.

  Only, something had risen out of that field in front of him, something like a black cape which blotted the moon from view, and he had lowered the service revolver while the thing made promises.

  You already belong to me, the thing said, reasonably. You should have died in Somalia, the way you intended, so you are already mine. You’re living on borrowed time, and in agony, but I will protect you. I will make you forget. Isn’t forgetfulness what you really want, Aaron? Isn’t that why you came out here tonight — to forget?