Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  But it didn’t do anything and I was starting to get really

  afraid that I’d broken it somehow.

  The sky was beginning to go pink and purple. I picked

  the lump up again and took it over to the door and put it

  down close enough so the sunlight coming through the

  doorway would hit it soon. The door opened into the

  shed so I couldn’t put the lump right inside, it had to be

  back a bit so I could swing the door shut to keep it locked

  up inside if anything went wrong, so I had it maybe two

  feet back from the door. I tied a long piece of string to the

  door handle so I could stand outside away from the shed

  and pull the door shut without coming near the duck if I

  had to.

  About half an hour after the sun finally came up all the

  way the light coming through the doorway started to hit

  the duck, and after about ten more minutes it started to

  change again the way it’d changed that other time, just

  after I pulled it out of the water, only even slower this

  time. It humped itself in tighter and tighter, just like it

  had when it’d been changing from a log into a lump,

  until it was almost the same size as a real duck, maybe

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  just a little bigger, and sort of the shape of a duck, only it

  still didn’t have a head or a tail or any wings or feathers

  or legs. While it was doing this all the dry mud on it

  cracked and fell off so the whole thing was wet-looking

  and glistening like it had just come out of the water. That

  took almost another hour and it was starting to get late

  so I pulled the door shut with the string and then locked

  it and hid the rope and went back inside the house.

  Mother was already up and in the bathroom. I’d

  forgotten to close the curtains to keep anyone from

  seeing what I was doing out back and the bathroom had

  two big windows beside the skylight, but she hadn’t

  noticed me or she would have come out to find out what I

  was doing. I put her coffee on for her, then got Father up

  and helped him into his wheelchair and took him to the

  bathroom while she made French toast for all of us for

  breakfast. He was really dirty for some reason so I had to

  clean the bathroom up a bit before I took my own shower

  and finished getting ready.

  The phone rang while I was still in the shower. When I

  sat down to eat Mother told me she’d just gotten a phone

  call and that a lot of other cops had caught some sort of

  weird ten-day flu from a bunch of Australian wine

  growers here for a convention and that she was going to

  have to be filling in for all sorts of people and that

  everyone’s hours were going to be messed up even worse

  than usual for a long time and she wasn’t going to be able

  to come home very often for the next few weeks. I wasn’t

  sure but I thought she was lying to us and that she had

  somewhere else she wanted to go for a while, maybe up

  to Lake Tahoe again with her mess sergeant. I asked her

  whether she’d found out anything about James Patrick

  Dubic for me yet and she said she’d forgotten again and

  that she was sorry but she was going to be too busy to

  check for me for a while now, and why was I so interested

  all of a sudden? 1 told her I’d found all the old newspaper

  clippings while I was cleaning my room and she seemed

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  to think that answered her question because she didn’t

  ask me any more about it.

  Father said something about liberal judges and parole

  boards and how you sometimes had to exaggerate the

  truth a little because otherwise they’d ignore half of what

  a criminaPd really done and let him out when he was

  dangerous and should be kept in jail for a lot longer.

  Mother agreed with him and they talked about police

  work for a while. Then they talked a while about getting

  him a new TV, the kind with the videotape built into it, .

  so he could record his favorite programs and movies and

  stuff that was on after he wanted to go to sleep, and we all

  thought that was a good idea even though Mother said

  we’d have to wait a while to get enough money to pay for

  it because she already owed too much right now.

  She finished her coffee and we wheeled him into the

  living room in front of the TV, then I set up his reader so

  he could use it if he wanted to and made sure the switch

  to change from the TV to the reader was where he liked it

  on his shoulder and strapped on tight enough so it

  wouldn’t slip back where he couldn’t get at it if he

  nudged it too hard with his chin. I still had a little time

  before I had to go to school but I wanted to wait until

  dark before I opened the shed again so I could see if the

  duck had done any more changing or moving around in

  the dark after I’d shut the door. So what I did is I took

  the binoculars down to the lake and watched the ducks

  through them for a while to make sure there wasn’t

  another robot duck there already to replace the one I’d

  taken, and at the same time I checked to make sure there

  wasn’t anybody else down at the lake looking for the

  duck the same way I was, or anyone who looked like

  James Patrick Dubic. But there wasn’t anybody else

  looking and there didn’t seem to be anything special

  happening with the ducks on the lake, so I went to

  school. After school I checked again but there still wasn’t

  anything worth looking at happening.

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  Father was asleep in his chair. I closed all the curtains

  so he couldn’t see out to the backyard, then went back

  and tied my string to the shed door again and unlocked it

  and pushed it open.

  The duck had changed in the dark this time, but just a

  little. It was still in almost the same place but something

  had started to push out where its neck and tail were going

  to be and it looked a little different where its wings were

  going to be. It was starting to look like a real duck or one

  of those wooden decoys, but all covered with mud. But it

  was too late in the day and the sun wasn’t coming

  directly in through the door anymore so it didn’t do any

  more changing.

  I heard the telephone ringing and yanked the door to

  the shed shut by pulling on the string real hard but didn’t

  have time to lock it before I ran back into the house. It

  was Mother, saying she wasn’t going to be home that

  night or all the next day and asking me if I had everything I needed and if there was enough food in the refrigerator and freezer. I checked and told her there was

  and she said if I ran out of anything or needed help to

  come down to the station and one of her friends there

  would take care of it for me, she’d tell them I might be

  coming in so it would be all right. I said OK and she hung

  up.

  I was really tired because I’d been getting up so early

&nb
sp; for so long so I set the alarm clock to wake me up in time

  to fix dinner for Father and took a nap. When I got up I

  made him macaroni and cheese with tuna fish in it then

  stayed up and watched television with him until it was

  time to put him to bed. He said it was a good thing I was

  superstrong for my age and not just tall and skinny when

  I was getting him into the tub, because even though he

  was still mainly skinny he was awful flabby and he’d be

  getting fat pretty soon, so moving him would be getting

  to be a lot of work before I was much older. I told him the

  exercise was good for me and anyway all I had to do was

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  wheel his chair from one room to another every now and

  then and then help him in and out of the bath and

  anyway I was used to it. He said, thank you for saying

  that Julie, but I know how hard it is on you and your

  Mother with me like this, and then he started talking

  about how wonderful Mother had been before the accident, when she hadn’t had to take care of him all the time, and that made me feel bad for him again and at the

  same time like Mother a little more, even though I knew

  that half the reason he was telling me all this was because

  even though he knew it was true he wanted me to tell him

  it wasn’t so he could pretend to himself it wasn’t his

  fault.

  Wednesday morning when the sun came in through the

  door and hit the thing and its lily pads it finally finished

  changing all the way back into a duck. The head and the

  tail and the wings pushed their way out from inside until

  the duck was the right shape, even though it still didn’t

  have any legs and was all smooth and brown, like one of

  those pottery ducks people use for sugar bowls.

  It started reeling the lily pads in. The stems got shorter

  and shorter and at the same time the lily pads themselves

  were closing up like flowers that had been open going

  back to being buds, only they were even tighter than that,

  like rolled up pieces of paper, so that by the time the

  stems had been reeled all the way back into the duck they

  weren’t any bigger around than the stems had been and

  they just followed them into the duck.

  And while the duck had been reeling in the stems its

  skin had been changing. First all over its surface a lot of

  things like tiny doors had opened, only none of them

  were much bigger than the lead in a pencil and they were

  all over the surface, everywhere, so it was like the whole

  duck was a Venetian blind that somebody had opened.

  Then the doors all closed again, but on the other side, so

  what had been on the back of them and hidden inside the

  duck before was now on the outside where you could see

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  it and you could see that the duck had what looked like

  feathers again.

  And then the orange legs came pushing out from the

  bottom of the duck and it started to try to swim. It

  wasn’t trying to stand up or anything like a real duck on

  land, it was trying to swim like it thought it was underwater and had to get to the surface.

  A few seconds later it stopped making swimming

  motions, either because it thought it had made it to the

  surface or because it had figured out it wasn’t in the

  water. I couldn’t tell which. But it still wasn’t standing or

  lying like a duck on land, it had its feet sticking out

  backwards under it so it was tilted forward a bit with its

  tail in the air. That didn’t seem to bother it, though, and

  it started preening itself like it always did after it came

  up out of the mud in the morning even though there

  wasn’t any mud on it.

  When it finished preening itself it looked all around

  just like a real duck deciding what direction it wanted to

  swim in, only it was still tilted forward like a wheelbarrow. It kept looking around for a long time and I wondered what it thought about being in the shed, if it

  knew there was anything wrong or what to do about it.

  Then it started swimming for the door, out into the light,

  only it wasn’t using its wings to help it and it wasn’t

  walking, just paddling its legs, but even so that pushed it

  slowly across the floor so that maybe ten minutes later it

  came to the doorsill and then it hopped over the sill just

  like a duck in the water hopping over something even

  though it went back to trying to swim as soon as it was

  outside in the backyard.

  It looked around again as soon as it was out of the shed

  and then changed its direction, paddling across the grass

  to the center of the yard as far away from the fence and

  the shed and the house as it could get, with its chest still

  pointing down and its legs sticking out behind it and its

  tail up, so it looked more like it was trying to dig its way

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  into the lawn than like it was walking. But it got to the

  center of the yard finally and stayed there, all stiff and

  fake-looking now that it was out of the water.

  I was way back at the other end of the yard, maybe

  thirty feet away from it, but since the sun was shining

  bright I knew it wouldn’t attack me if I got closer to it, so

  I came forward a bit, until I was maybe twenty feet away

  from it, and then a little more, until I was fifteen feet

  away from it, then ten, but I was afraid to get any closer

  right then and I went back to the toolshed and closed the

  door, then went in and got Father up and fixed his

  breakfast for him, then put him in the living room with

  the TV and his detective novel. I had him facing away

  from the window and I had the curtains closed anyway,

  so there was no way he could see what I was doing in the

  backyard.

  I told him I wasn’t feeling Very well and didn’t want to

  go to school today and he said, OK, if the school called

  just give him the phone and he’d say I was sick and he

  wouldn’t tell Mother. It was the only thing he was really

  ever able to do for me and he did it whenever he could,

  even though Mother sometimes got real mad at him for it

  and yelled at him and even hit him.

  It was still bright out so I went back out into the yard

  and tried coming close to the duck again. I came up

  behind it and got maybe ten feet away from it again but it

  still didn’t seem to notice me, even when I circled

  around so I was beside it and then in front of it where a

  real duck would have been able to see me.

  Then I thought about those old men and women you

  see with their metal detectors looking for money

  people’ve dropped on beaches so I went back into the

  shed and got the hoe out and came at the duck with the

  metal end, real slowly. I got a lot closer than fifteen feet,

  maybe even less than a foot away from it before it started

  to try to get away, and then I spent a while just chasing it

  around the yard, but always making sure I kept it out of

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  the bright sunlight and away from the shade near the

  house and fence and under the trees, even though it

  looked so clumsy and pompous and stupid, even stupider than a real duck. When I finally quit chasing it it worked its way back into the middle of the yard.

  Only that wasn’t good enough because out in the lake

  I’d watched it go away from two or three rowboats made

  out of wood. So maybe it had two systems, some sort of

  metal detector and some sort of thing to keep it away

  from wood. (And a third system, too, to find the ducks

  and swans with.) I tried it with the wooden end of the

  hoe and it wouldn’t do anything until I actually touched

  it with the wooden end of the hoe, and then it just tried

  to move a few feet away before it stopped, just far enough

  so that if the hoe’d been a branch the duck wouldn’t have

  gotten snagged on it.

  Maybe it had some sort of radar or sonar system to

  keep it from getting too close to big objects, like boats or

  piers. So I tried to use the metal end of the hoe to herd it

  close to the side of the fence that was still in the sun, but

  it wouldn’t go close to the fence, when it was maybe ten

  feet away from it the duck would start to go off at an

  angle sideways so it never got any closer.

  The phone rang. I ran inside and got it and took it into

  the living room and held it up to Father’s ear and mouth

  without saying anything. It was the school, asking why I

  wasn’t there. But we had an agreement, even though we’d

  never come right out and talked about it. He said I was

  sick, some sort of flu, that it probably wasn’t serious but

  that even so I wouldn’t be able to come in until at least

  tomorrow or maybe the day after and that, no, I hadn’t

  been to a doctor and I wouldn’t have a doctor’s excuse

  because he was my father and it was his decision to make

  whether or not he let me go to school, he knew perfectly

  well what a flu was like and what you had to do to get

  better from one and he wasn’t going to pay a doctor just

  to write me a note and say that there was a lot of that

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  going around so not to worry, and, no, he wasn’t going to

  write a note for me either, because my mother was away

  working for a few days and he happened to be paralyzed