by Ronald Kelly
Behind him came the crack of gunfire and a searing pain blossomed at the junction of his upper and lower left leg. The rifle bullet burrowed through flesh and cartilage, lodging just behind the kneecap. Fletcher collapsed and fell face forward. His right cheek and temple grated against coarse stone, bringing blood. Disoriented, he rolled onto his back, agony gripping his entire leg from groin to toes. He stared at the boiling grayness of the clouds above him. Why, Lord? He wondered in defeat. Why are you letting this happen to me?
Up the pathway, came the ka-klump, ka-klump of his pursuer, growing closer.
Fletcher craned his neck and found Wes Scott nearly upon him. The man took one final swig of amber liquid from the whiskey bottle, then tossed it aside. “After you get your fill of me, boy, I might just go back down the mountain and have a go at your ma. Wouldn’t think she’d put up much of a fight, the way she is now.”
“You stay away from her, you son of a bitch!” warned Fletcher, his mouth full of blood from where the fall had cut his inner cheek.
Wes leaned the Winchester against a boulder and began to unbuckle his belt. “I’ll do whatever I damn well please.”
With little strength left, Fletcher scrambled up the pathway. Wes laughed at the futility of the boy’s actions and came for him.
Right when the boy thought that his luck had run out, the unexpected happened.
The lovely white roses began to weave back and forth on their pale, pink stems. They burst into a frenzy of brittle crackling and each one unfolded, their blooms sprouting feathered appendages and long pink bills hooked at the end. Soon, they had left their moorings and took to flight. Before he could react, Wes Scott found himself amid a flock of swarming seagulls. The birds fluttered about him en masse, bumping into him, their beaks repeatedly piercing his skin and making him lose his balance on the sharp shale. He fell hard tearing his flesh and embedding jagged pieces of rock into his face. He stood shrieking and, locating his rifle, began to work the Winchester’s lever and fire. He took down a couple of the gulls, but a dozen more took their place. Wes batted at the airborne flock with the rifle, blood filling his eyes, his nerves flayed open. His skin hung in ragged flaps…either from his raw muscles or the bills of the swarming birds.
Wes Scott staggered, nearly falling. His body screamed with pain, but still he held fast to the repeating rifle. His vision was blurred by blood, but he found the boy lying on the stone path and he smiled. He lifted the gun to his shoulder and sighted down on the boy’s forehead.
That was when the second—and last—wave took place.
A flash of dark motion drew his attention and his eyes lifted from the child to the mouth of the cave at the end of the pathway. At first, Wes thought he was imagining things. From out of the opening, emerged a tall, rawboned form. He looked to be a sea-faring man, dressed in the long-coat of a ship’s captain, suspendered trousers and one knee-length boot. The other leg, strangely enough, made Wes laugh at the absurdity of it all. The dark sea captain, too, was missing a leg, but his replacement limb was not fashioned of wood, but the sturdy bone of a whale. The man’s weathered face, as gray as the stone he had emerged from, was heavily bearded and his black, pupilless eyes had a wild, maniacal look to them. He looked like a man with an obsession…one that might drive himself and his entire crew to the depths of Hell and back if need be.
Another thing about the seaman bothered Wes Scott. He held a long, black harpoon in his hand. One that looked to be constructed of bone and sinew, rather than seasoned hickory and iron.
Wes wasn’t ignorant. He’d had enough schooling to know precisely who stood before him. How this thing had come to be was not what concerned him now, but rather how to stop it. He flipped a flap of scalp out of his eyes, raised the rifle into line, and fired.
The round struck the dark captain between the eyes, but it didn’t stop his advance. Instead, the lead slug ricocheted off the man’s hard, gray skin and returned in the direction from which it came. The bullet punched through Wes Scott’s left shoulder, ripping through bone and muscle, and exiting just above his shoulder blade.
Wes stumbled backward, dropping his rifle in the process. Angered by the injury, he reached beneath his coat with his right hand and drew a government-issue .45 semi-automatic pistol; one he had brought home with him from the war. He thumbed off the safety and emptied the magazine, one round at a time. The slugs flattened against the sea captain’s broad chest. It was more like firing at a brick wall than a thing of flesh and blood.
When the Colt reached its last round, it was the seaman’s turn. He hurled the black harpoon, which looked to be physically connected to him by a cord of dark tendon. Before he could react, the razor edge of the harpoon struck Wes across the right wrist, severing it from his forearm. The hand holding the pistol dropped to the ground, reflexively pulling the impotent trigger again and again.
He knew then that he could not fight the thing. He also knew what the hellish duplication of the fictional sea captain actually was. Since childhood, he had heard the old wives’ tales of a dark being who stalked Pale Dove Mountain; a creature that could change into a man’s worst nightmare by merely willing itself to do so. The thing folks in East Tennessee called the Dark’Un.
Clutching the spurting stump of his wrist, Wesley Allen Scott left the stone-laced trail at the top of the mountain and lurched through the trees, heading toward the foothills. Fletcher Brice watched as the dark captain stepped over him, faced the steep grade of the mountainside, and began to change. If he hadn’t been accustomed to seeing the transformation in action, the boy could have very well lost his mind attempting to comprehend the form that the Dark’Un now built from its own iron-hard flesh and bone. But, since he understood what was taking place, he could only smile at the irony of it all.
The Dark’Un was transforming into a massive gray whale. Its bulk spilled past the edges of the trail as a deafening crackling like mortar rounds filled the air. One of the giant sea creature’s shiny black eyes rolled and winked at the boy who laid, gunshot, in the pathway. Then it began to slide down the mountainside, propelling itself by its broad tail.
Wes Scott was several hundred yards down the slope when he heard something that sounded like a freight train coming up fast behind him. He looked over his shoulder long enough to see the hellish whale sliding down the mountainside, flattening trees in its wake. Wes tried to run faster, but his wooden leg and his loss of blood hindered him. He felt the thing’s fetid breath upon him and was abruptly engulfed by darkness as he was swallowed whole by the vengeful whale. Unlike Jonah, however, the child molester would never see the light of day again.
Fletcher Brice watched, amazed, as the whale scooped his attacker up into its maw and then immediately began to transform once again. It began to grow smaller and, as it did, the boy could hear a snapping and popping that had nothing to do with the changing itself. Rather, it was the breaking down and digestion of the Dark’Un’s victim that was taking place, accommodating its bulk with the creature’s new shape and size.
Soon, the dark being sprouted massive wings and, lifting upward, took flight. Fletcher couldn’t believe his eyes. The creature that soared through the turbulent sky possessed the lower body of a lion and the head, wings, and talons of a bald eagle. It was a mythological beast that the boy had read about mere days ago…a griffin, in the flesh!
As he watched the thing in the sky, he sensed someone standing just behind him. He looked around and was startled to find a pale incarnation of Elijah Brice staring down at him. But, unlike his father, with his stern demeanor, this creature’s brilliant, pink eyes gleamed with compassion and concern. It crouched next to him, motioning silently toward the ugly wound in the back of his knee. Then Fletcher watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as the man transformed amidst loud crackling sounds, becoming a slender white centipede. The insect snaked its way into the bullet hole and the boy flinched as a spike of intense pain seized his leg. But the agony only lasted a moment. When
the centipede withdrew, it held the bloody rifle bullet tightly in its forelegs. The creature transformed back into the pale doppelganger of his father again, and he went to work, bandaging the wound with strips taken from the twelve-year-old’s flannel shirt. It wasn’t long before the bleeding stopped and the burning pain in the joint of his leg diminished to a dull throbbing.
The next thing he knew, the black and gray griffin descended and, hooking its talons gently beneath his armpits, rose into the air with the boy in tow. Fletcher clinched his eyes tightly at first, afraid to look as they gathered speed and altitude. Then he gathered his nerve and opened them. He was surprised to find that they were hundreds of feet above the peak of the mountain. Far below, he saw the Brice cabin. It was so small from that height that it looked no bigger than a matchbox.
I’m flying! He thought to himself. I’m actually flying!
If he had tried to make it back home on his injured leg, it would have taken him hours. Instead, he found himself back at the cabin in less than a minute. The dark griffin lowered him to the ground and then took to the air again. The boy watched as it made a sweeping loop in the sky and finally lit atop a large oak a hundred feet from the cabin’s front porch. Sitting there, perched on nearly every branch of the gnarled tree, were dozens of snow-white doves.
With some effort, Fletcher Brice hobbled up onto the porch. He found the discarded broom and used it for a makeshift crutch. When he walked through the doorway, he found his feeble mother sitting up in bed, looking scared half out of her wits.
“Fletcher! Thank God!” she said in relief. “But…but where is Wesley Scott?”
“Dead,” the boy told her. “But I didn’t do it.”
His mother nodded grimly. “Then it was…”
“Yes, it was.”
Fletcher sighed and fought to keep his balance. “Sit down, son,” the woman urged. “You’re badly hurt.”
“I will…but first I must do something.” He limped over to his small bed in the far corner of the cabin’s main room. Fletcher rummaged beneath his goose down mattress until he found what he was looking for. He withdrew a bundle of loose papers, the drawings of foreign places he had sketched from his imagination. Places he had once hoped to see for himself.
He walked to the potbelly stove and, opening the grate, tossed the drawings into the flames.
His mother gasped. “What are you doing, son? Those were your hopes…your dreams.”
“I’ll never leave this mountain, mama,” he told her flatly. Mattie Brice looked into her son’s blue eyes and saw a maturity and grim acceptance that hadn’t been there before. “I have an obligation to them,” he told her, pointing through the cabin’s open doorway.
The ailing woman looked toward the oak and saw that the doves were gone. In their place were dozens of white apes, chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. They clung to the limbs of the ancient oaks and stared toward the house, almost expectantly.
“And to it,” he added. Amid the pale primates, standing erect and tall at the top of the tree, was a gray-skinned man with long black hair, dressed only a leopard skin loincloth. “To the Dark’Un.”
The magnificent ape-man regarded the twelve-year-old, his black eyes shining with respect. Then, motioning to his colorless minions, he left, leaping lithely from one limb to another. Together the changelings swung, hand over hand, through the trees, heading back toward the upper reaches of Pale Dove Mountain.
It wasn’t long before they were out of sight…but certainly not out of mind.
A Shiny Can of Whup-Ass
It was a picture-perfect Fourth of July.
Sam Wheeler opened his fix-it shop as he did every morning at six o’clock, rain or shine, holiday or no holiday. Not that he got much business. Today’s throw-away society had made his skills as a handyman dismally obsolete. It was cheaper to simply go out and buy a new radio or phone or television than it was to have someone repair the thing. Besides, a lot of these new-fangled, high definition, laser-driven gadgets were far beyond Sam’s expertise. If it didn’t have tubes or a rotary dial, the old man pretty much passed on even trying to figure it out.
Sam’s Fix-It Shop only remained open in the rural town of Watkins Glen, Alabama for one reason and one reason only – because it was an extension of Sam Wheeler himself. Like an arm or a leg, or an ugly birthmark you couldn’t erase. Sam had been up to his elbows in repair jobs when he opened the shop in ’46. Back then he’d been a twenty-year-old soldier with a new wife, a house financed on the G.I. bill, and a chance for a successful business. Now, at eighty-four, all he had left was his fluctuating health, a rat-hole of a shop full of dusty junk, and a marble stone in the Baxter County Graveyard with his name chiseled on one end, while on the opposite end was another, complete with a somber date of passage.
Sam – a long, lanky old man with eyeglasses and a shock of snow-white hair, forever decked out in a long-sleeved blue chambray shirt and bibbed overalls – opened the shop from the inside. He lived there now, instead of in the house on Marigold Lane. Stretching, Sam sauntered outside to take his place in his favorite rocking chair. He groaned as he sat down and something in his hip popped, but he merely grimaced and paid it no mind. The rocker next to him was empty. It had been for eight years now. He also paid it no mind… although some days he found it hard to do so.
Between six and eight was a quiet time for Sam. He pretty much had the town to himself, except for commuters to Birmingham and the local paper boy. It was even quieter that morning, since everyone was off from work. It was then, during those early hours, that Sam liked to take inventory of his hometown. Never mind that the inventory never changed – except for that one shop on the corner that continuously transformed from video store to tanning booth shop to sub sandwich joint, and then back again. The main street – named Maple Avenue for the tall sugar and red maples that stood sentry along the thoroughfare – featured various storefronts that had been there for generations; Millie’s Pet Shop, Mercher’s Shop-Rite, Pendergast’s True-Value Hardware, the Watkins Glen Five & Dime (yes, there were still some of those antiquated variety stores around) and Sam’s Fix-It Shop. Further on to the south were the post office and two churches – a Baptist and a Methodist – and the little circular park with its picturesque white wood gazebo, playground, and duck pond. Even further southward was a residential area with street upon street of pretty two-story and ranch-style houses. And beyond that lay the railroad tracks, the junkyard, and the county landfill, along with Baxter County’s one-and-only beer joint, The Little Brown Jug.
But today was not about taking inventory. Today was about observing.
Observing Independence Day and its freedoms. Observing his friends and neighbors and how they would celebrate it.
Given his age, observing was about all Sam Wheeler was up to these days.
Around eight-thirty folks began to show up at Maple Avenue to decorate. Red, white, and blue ribbons, American flags, balloons, the works.
Draped from the storefronts, from the lamp posts, from the gazebo. By eleven, the thick scent of charcoal grills firing up in the park drifted down the street, getting ready for the big barbeque around noon.
Around ten-thirty, Sam fell asleep in his chair and napped. He was awakened by George Pendergast from the hardware store. “You eating?” he demanded, more than asked.
“Hell, yeah!” said Sam. He pried himself out of the rocker and sauntered down the street to the big picnic in the park. About all he could manage to do these days was saunter, which, to Southerners, meant a cross between a walk and a snail-paced creep.
Oh, what a spread the town ladies had laid out! All manner of casserole imaginable, homemade yeast rolls and cornbread, battered squash, fried okra, macaroni and cheese, seven kinds of potatoes, and corn on the cob (which Sam’s aged teeth could no longer abide). Gallon upon gallon of sweet tea and lemonade. And the desserts! Pecan pie, peach cobbler, pineapple upside-down cake, banana pudding, fried apple pies, and red velvet cake.
> The townsmen were manning the grills with authority and pride. Babyback ribs, barbecued brisket, Black Angus burgers, foot long hotdogs, rib eye steaks, broasted chicken. Some had ten-gallon deep-fryers. Catfish and hush puppies galore.
By the time Sam had eaten his fill, he had to hitch a ride back downtown. Soon, the old man was back in his rocker. The parade started at three and he had the best seat in the house.
And what a parade it was. The Baxter County High School marching band playing Queen’s “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions.” Baton-twirling, somersaulting cheerleaders with miniscule skirts and maroon-and-white pom-poms. The local chapter of the Lion’s Club dressed up like clowns riding unicycles and mini-bikes. A procession of John Deere and American Harvester tractors pulling wagonloads of excited grandchildren. Horseback riders, camouflaged four-wheeler drivers, the volunteer fire engine, Jimmy Joe Spencer and his bumper-to-bumper, true-to-the-TV-show replica of the Dukes’ General Lee, blaring “Dixie” on the horn until you got plumb sick and tired of it.
Then came the patriotic portion of the parade. Lanky Tom Hardy on stilts, dressed like Uncle Sam, followed by Boy Scout Troop #343. The Veterans of Foreign Wars. Iraq, Afghanistan, Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea, World War Two. There was even Alabama’s last surviving soldier of the First World War, John Harper Millberry, dressed in his vintage uniform, unaware and unconcerned at the ripe old age of 110, pushed in a flag-draped wheelchair by his great-great-great-grandson. Sam had once joined them in the annual march, but he stopped when his knees and hip had gone out on him. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let someone haul him around in a damn wheelchair like a prized pumpkin in a wheelbarrow.
After the parade, Sam sort of drifted off again. He awoke after dark to the pop and crack of fireworks. They lit up the sky in a myriad of colors against a black velvet backdrop. Pinwheels, roman candles, slithering snakes, hummers, horsetails, glow worms, whistle rockets. And, on the playground, the kids shooting off Black Cats, bottle rockets, and cherry bombs. Some running around with sputtering sparklers in hand.
