Lightfall

by Paul Monette

  Straining, scrambling, bellowing her defiance—like pulling herself up a mountain—she drew them free of the water’s roar. A sudden lurch and they lay in a shallow eddy where the bank had crumbled. She clamped her mouth on his. She held him cradled and filled his lungs like sails, willing the life back into him. When at last his limbs began to twitch, he seemed to struggle against it, as if he was being asphyxiated. She doubled her grip. The queer unruly kiss went on and on. For a time it wasn’t certain who was there and who was not.…

  … and over the barren, leafless hill, the band of marauders dragged like zombies. They had no plans. An hour ago, they’d swarmed through a country store about ten miles south of Hartford, so they weren’t hungry. They’d left the old proprietor dead behind the counter and later strangled a group of girls playing jump rope in the park, so they weren’t especially crazed for blood. There was an all-points bulletin out for them, but they’d left the road at Saybrook and were heading overland through deep November woods. The cop cars shrilled in vain, going back and forth in the bloody street. They were used to their killers one-on-one, and driving mid-size Chevys.

  There were eight altogether, six men and two women. Till yesterday, they’d worked construction in the lower slopes of Vermont. They built ski shacks for the New York rich and managed, on account of the calluses, to keep in a country way, shaggy and uncorrupt. They called themselves a medieval guild. They lived eight strong in a reconstructed barn, with a greenhouse behind it in which they grew their dope.

  Nobody knew where the seeds came from. Wandering types with beards to the chest often dropped by for a day or two, and they tended to leave behind the butt ends of weeds from Nepalese temple gardens. Stories abounded, as the pipe went around, of natives flogging the plants on the high spine of Chile, to make the resin bleed. Buds had been smuggled like diamonds from the sides of Hawaiian volcanoes. The barn people planted pips of every sort, with blue lights all night long and a lot of Mozart to keep things calm. They’d just taken in a bumper crop. Dried it for weeks in the darkroom. Then, because it was Saturday night, they broke it out in coarse cigars, like old-Havana millionaires.

  By two A.M. they were in a van, careering south for no reason at all, singing ancient rock and roll. When at last they cracked up against a tree, about halfway down Connecticut, they stepped quite neatly onto the road, zipped their jackets and started walking. By dawn they were wandering east-southeast of Hartford, scanning the near horizon as if they were on the lookout for a half-finished Gothic spire. They had some vague idea they needed to get to a harbor. Not that they wished to sail away, or meet a ship from a mystic place. They merely wished to find a lonely bluff above the sea, to watch the sky for signs.

  The three people locked in the house on the snow-dusted hill ahead knew nothing of any of this. The rector had read his daily lesson and, finding it strangely wanting, laid his Bible aside on the kitchen counter. His fifteen-year-old son, across from him, was studying for a test in Ancient History. The ten-year-old was up in his room playing jungle games with his spotted snake. They held to what normal life they could. They didn’t cry. They watched the news at six and eleven, more and more aware that whatever it was was seeping through the world. But as no one had started saying so on the air, they kept it to themselves. To anyone who asked, they said the mother had gone to Cleveland to help her widowed sister close her life.

  The eight stood resting under a lifeless elm in the falling twilight. They watched the house impassively—touched, perhaps, by its isolation. With a billow of smoke in its chimney and a row of gnarled old apple trees in the yard, it appeared as snug and safe to them as the barn they only dimly recollected. It seemed they would presently move along, when all of a sudden a strangled cry croaked from the first one’s mouth. He groped the air and clawed at his throat, rather as if he were drowning. Before the others could turn and see, they were seized themselves. Their eyes bugged wide, and they gagged in pain. Some awful vision of godlessness had riven their quest with forks of flame. They were lost like souls, neither here nor there, and commenced to wilt like a bunch of flowers.

  And the cozy house on the hill beyond was their only chance to avenge themselves. They would go like a swarm of bees: stinging.

  Gibbering now and wild, they frenzied down the slope to the split rail fence. Three or four vaulted over and kept advancing. A couple more crouched to pick up clubs from the woodpile. Another lagged back to smash the gate to smithereens. Though the three in the house went suddenly still and cocked their heads at the sound, it wasn’t much more, in that one moment, than the raccoons made on a moonlit night when they knocked the garbage over.

  “Jenny’ll get ’em,” said Michael, grinning across at his father. He meant the puckish dog.

  Then everything fell apart. The door was knocked so hard that the panels splintered. The fanlight cracked and shivered. They must have hit the knob with a karate chop, for it fell in on the floor with a feeble thud. A finger wormed into the hollow, jiggling at the latch. All over the house windows broke at random, with stones whizzing through like a meteor shower. The rector leaped from his chair just as Michael was struck in the forehead. Shouting the younger boy downstairs, Tim dragged his bleeding son across the kitchen, out of the line of fire. He threw open the door to the cellar. As Gene came tearing around the corner, Tim saw the first one lunge through the dining room window, bathed in blood as the glass sank in its teeth.

  “Hurry!” Tim shrieked at his frightened son. A second later, he tumbled both boys down the stairs, pulling the thin door shut behind. He threw two flimsy bolts and staggered back, for the thunder of armies was in his house.

  “What is it?” whimpered Gene. “Is it Mom?”

  “No!” cried Tim, in a lonely anguish.

  They didn’t have thirty seconds left. Upstairs, the furniture broke like matchsticks. The dishes exploded against the walls. The mason jars were all spilled out and trampled underfoot. Already the first of the mob was mauling the cellar door.

  “The dog” wept Michael, one hand clamped on the blood that matted his hair.

  Oh, but they had the dog. They tore it limb from limb in the yard, and it howled till its voice went out. Somebody tied the snake in a double knot. The first lock gave on the door with a spray of sawdust. Tim shrank away to the corner, where the two boys huddled by the washer-dryer. “Get him behind you,” he yelled at Michael. And when the boy had done so, shielding his brother and whispering comfort, then Tim knelt himself, trying to hold them both. They stood no chance at all, but he laid his final bet on mercy.

  The door ripped open. They crashed downstairs. There were two—a man and a woman. They lurched to the corner and dragged Tim off his sons. They hardly knew where to begin, it seemed. In a rage of impatience, they cast about for tools. The man grabbed a hoe, the woman a scythe. More lunatics were pouring down the stairs. Tim saw the two blades swing over their heads—

  Then everything stopped.

  For the longest moment they all stood frozen. Then a deafening clatter, as the hoe and scythe fell harmless from their slackened hands. The intruders hardly looked at Tim. Their shoulders sagged like cavemen as they clumped back up the stairs. They drifted out to the yard and made for the road to town. Tim and the boys could hear them singing, could hear the weird harmony fade on the bright fall air, but still for a while they didn’t move.…

  … he lay in her arms, panting. Though he still wouldn’t open his eyes or speak, she knew from the beat of her own heart that the horror was safely passed. The nightmare died inside her so fast it almost made her sad. Already she couldn’t say who they were, these men she had just dreamed out of danger. The zing of the insects, the call of an owl, the crack of branches across the stream—everything brought her back here.

  Idly, she brushed the damp hair from the forehead of the man she couldn’t kill. She felt nothing. Their legs were still in the water, and she was shivering. She looked down at his hairless chest, his baby-fat belly, his little penis li
mp against his thigh. If he didn’t wake soon, she’d leave him here and go tell one of his people where to find him. He’d ceased to be her responsibility. If he wanted to die on his own, then let him.

  But even as she eased his head from the pillow of her arm, she heard him moan. His lids fluttered open. Immediately she looked away, as if he could cast a spell by the merest glance. Now that he was back in the world she didn’t have to be gentle anymore. Before he could grab her she pushed him off her lap and clambered away along the bank. Shutting her ears with her hands she stepped out into the stream.

  She tried to walk straight across with a proud demeanor, but the current had other ideas. She pitched to the side and floundered. She swam with a curious helplessness. By the time she reached the opposite shore she was choking. Only then did she dare to turn. He was where she’d left him, slumped like a puppet. His legs in the eddy were white with the cold. He said no word of reproof—scarcely seemed to focus on her. She could see that he was crying.

  “I’ll see you after it’s over,” Iris called out sharply.

  Over the rush of the water she heard his sobbing. She spun around and scrambled up the bank. At first she almost laughed, he seemed so harmless. Tears didn’t get him anywhere; she knew those tricks by heart. She’d won this round. He hadn’t caught her. She pulled herself up to level ground and came to her feet, as if she had put the sea between them.

  And there in the ferns was the rearing zebra, beating the air with its hooves. The whole earth quaked when it landed. Iris staggered back. It meant to crush her—to drive her into the water. She must have panicked, for her right foot tripped on a rabbit hole, and suddenly she was down. The front hooves thundered on the leafy ground, not three feet off. The next time would crack her in two.

  Once more she held her tongue. Her last clear thought was not to beg.

  “No!” cried the voice of the prophet.

  And that was all it needed. The zebra stopped mid-leap and shied, whinnying like a pony. She could have sworn it waited once again to bear her on its back. She got up quickly and walked away. She would not thank her savior. Needles and wood chips clung to her skin. Her hair was a tangle of briars. Unconsciously, she folded her arms across her breasts as she crashed through the lonely underbrush.

  She was stung with shame. She’d lost the power all over again, till she had no claim on his pity. She shouldered her way past fallen limbs. The poison sumac stroked her. She was seized by a horror of snakes, but what it really was was this: she’d thrown her people away for the sake of pride. If she’d groveled, she might have saved them. He ought to have woken up from death and found himself inside her.

  She broke free of the final web of vines, and the sun beat down on her nakedness. Still, she could hear the faintest sound of sobbing. The long and sunlit hill was a waste of green. The cobalt span of the ocean shrugged its lazy tide. She simply hadn’t loved him enough—he was right about that. Across the meadow a few of his people were loading sod. They smiled when they saw her stripped at last. She wondered now if she’d ever loved at all.

  Of course it was all irrational, but deep down she feared she had tried to murder God. Tears sprang out on her cheeks. She could not recall what made it all so sad.

  No wonder the world was going to end.

  VIII

  MONDAY HARDLY DAWNED at all, the sky was so black and low. A rain like this could last a couple of weeks. Sheets of it were already visible far out at sea, as if the storm had stopped to swamp a helpless fleet of ships. But as of midmorning, not a drop had fallen on the cliffs. It only made the moiling of the clouds more dreadful. The ground never lost the drench of the dew and the midnight fog. The trees were chilly, and the bare wood shingles on the final buildings were mossy to the touch.

  There was no one about for hours. It wouldn’t have been so odd, except there were only a half-dozen houses where a body could still curl up under the covers. What were they doing in church? Didn’t they know it was their last day? They ought to be out in the weather, taking a look at their wild green island.

  They didn’t know a blessed thing. They huddled in rows in the old stone church like refugees in a depot. Their eyes were hollow. They were cold to the bone. A few wept openly—one was rolling in fits on the altar stairs—but mostly they were numb. And all from the loss of one day’s sun. If Monday had only risen bright and red, and limpid breezes had blown through the firs, they would have been out like kids, playing. Their work was mostly done, after all. They were free to do what they liked. And here they sat in a sullen pout, like someone was keeping them in.

  Michael lay in the meadow grass at the top of the rise, cradling his head in the crook of his arm and looking out through the tall wet stalks. He stared at the church as if he would bomb it, or seal it up like a tomb by an act of purest concentration. The cold didn’t bother him. He liked this weather more than the sun.

  Ever since he’d risen from the stream he had found the sunlight threatening. He squinted and shaded his eyes, even deep in the woods. The pools and spots of dappled light were like gunfire. Night, when it finally came, was a hundred times more perfect. He danced among the animals—cavorting, nuzzling, wishing in their ears. The gray and the mist of the creeping day circled him like the breath of heaven. He greeted the winter morning as if he had commanded it.

  Twice already he’d gone around peeking in all the windows, and no one saw him. Most of those still left in houses slept upstairs. He caught one couple in a three-room cottage: Polly and Dr. Upton. They lay like spoons in her spinster’s bed, with their clothes all neatly folded in separate piles on the faded chaise. He watched them sleep for a good half hour, till he laughed so hard the woman’s eyes shot open, and he ducked and spidered off.

  He tiptoed around the church three times, to get the crowd from every different angle. It almost seemed he was doing an incantation, as if the building were meant to rise up in the air. Nobody saw him here, either, though perhaps it was that nobody cared. He deliberately hadn’t fed them their last night’s dose of fungus. They were due for another at dawn, and he came up empty-handed. He knew what he was supposed to do—he just ignored it. After all, there was nothing the forces could do to him now. Not this late. He only wanted some leeway, to see what shape this thing was taking. He wasn’t out to defy the darker powers. He simply wanted to know up close how hopeless these people were. He needed some tangible proof they’d all be happier dead.

  No doubt about it, he felt more pity this time. When the tower clock chimed ten, he came to his feet and stretched his tawny muscles. Before they went off to marry the night, his people deserved a final slug of paradise. Besides, it would make him almost happy to watch them one last time at play. Not that he felt sorry, but he didn’t really wish them harm.

  As for the rest, it was almost a game with Iris. Oh, he loved her and all, he thought as he pissed on a rosebush. He would live with her here as he said he would, and gladly build her a cabin and cut her wood and haul her water. It was just that the whole arrangement was more formal this time. He didn’t plan on being with her, not the way he once did. Then he’d suffered the throes of hell if she even left his sight. He wanted the world ravaged if he couldn’t have her. He moaned with pain in the starry nights. Couldn’t leave himself alone. He shot so many times, nothing came out at all.

  Now he raced downhill, buoyed by the rush of the wind till he almost flew, and could not help but laugh at the agonies of youth. He had to swallow it fast, of course, the moment he stopped to catch his breath at the cliff edge. He must not overstep too far. Today was his day to pine and waste away for the sake of Iris. And so, like a monk at prayer, he stood with folded arms in a bed of heather and sighed as if his heart would rend in two. On the stroke of the first tear, the rain came down in a deluge.

  He was only a hundred feet from the church. A bare few seconds later, he’d run in under the porch. He was drenched. His hair streamed in his eyes. His teeth chattered happily as he looked out into the seething air
. He put his mind on Iris now like a hand on a leper he meant to heal. He basked in the pangs of unrequited love. He savored each rejection like a station of the Cross. The storm blew darker and darker. When he reached for the door, he was gaily weeping. He stood determined to step inside and haul them out to see. If only they knew they could do it too. There wasn’t any end now to what the heart could summon.

  Maybeth lay on her side and watched the rain come down. She didn’t dare move for fear she’d wake Felix. His sleeping arm was slung across her shoulder, and his fingers brushed her nipple through the threadbare lace of her nightgown. It had been a thousand years, it seemed, since she’d held still half a morning so as not to stir a man. She was lighthearted with simplicity, as if there were nothing more important now than keeping watch while the loved one slumbered. In fact it hadn’t been this way since thirty years ago, in a whitewashed town in Illinois. Not since the night her husband died, and she had no place to go but here.

  At last he rolled away, so he lay on his back and whistled softly through his teeth. Light as a deer, she sat up and glided off the bed. As she fished for slippers with her feet, as she drew the robe from the bedpost, she allowed herself a naked look at Felix, deep asleep and smiling in a dream. She blushed at the sight of his thick-haired chest. The thought went through her head that, back in Illinois, when a man left his wife, he usually went with a girl young as his oldest daughter. Maybeth laughed and covered her mouth. She couldn’t think, in the old world, of anyone who needed a woman her age.