The Fifth Day

by Gordon Bonnet

  Despite the fog of the painkillers still in her brain, her body tensed. “What was he saying?”

  “I didn’t catch all of it. But he was saying something about being ready. Not letting anyone get in the way. And then there was this long pause, like he was being given instructions, and he said, ‘I understand.’”

  She shivered. “I wonder what it was he understood.”

  Gareth nodded. “Then he said something like, ‘It’s almost here, then.’ And then he said the word ‘Ragnarok.’ Or something like that.”

  Ben perked up. “I saw that word. I remember seeing it in the mythology book. I don’t remember what it means, but I can look it up.”

  “But I haven’t told you the worst part. He frowned suddenly, and then said, really clearly, ‘Who?’ And then he turned and looked right at me.”

  “Holy Mother of God,” Lissa said. “What did you do?”

  “I froze. And then he smiled at me. This blank, empty smile, like he was looking right through me. Like I was there and not there.” He swallowed. “I freaked out, jumped up, and came inside. What the hell else could I do? I sat in the living room for a while trying to calm down. Then I thought, ‘I have to tell someone.’ But like I said, I never could find a time to talk to Z alone, and none of the others….”

  She nodded.

  “I’m a pediatric oncologist, not a psychologist,” Gareth said. “I’m not qualified to diagnose. But Lissa—we’ve all been seeing monsters of different kinds, and I think….” He paused, and then he shrugged. “I think Jackson is either schizophrenic, or he really is possessed by a demon.”

  4

  AT LENGTH THE blind woman’s severed hand came up the man’s neck, and onto his face, the fingers probing, prying open his mouth, touching his tongue and his eyelids, caressing his temples. His breaths came in thin whistles, and he was unable to utter a word.

  Then the hand dropped to the ground, and ran on its five legs back to its owner, who caught it up and reattached it to her arm.

  The blind woman smiled. Now you come to it, she said. You will be known whether you wish or not. Thus will you each be measured. You have said that you are fortunate to have made it this far; but that is not correct. It is not fortune, not luck, but strength. Each of you brings with you a strength that has carried you along, and a weakness that has held you back. Discovering and naming that strength is the only way you will be able to pass the second half of the forest. Discovering and naming your weakness is the only way you will avoid falling prey to it.

  Some of you will not reach the other side. Such is the fate of those who try the forest, but lack the resolve to cross it.

  —

  ZOLZAYA LAY IN bed staring at the ceiling. The pale light of a waning moon angled through the window, the patch slowly creeping its way up the wall. It had to be around one o’clock, but sleep was still as far away as it had been when she went to bed three hours earlier.

  Dinner that night was weird. Z and Jeff were on cooking detail that evening and had settled on pasta with sautéed spinach topped with olive oil, oregano, and basil from a pot growing in the kitchen window. She’d considered adding parmesan cheese—there was an unopened container in the now-warm fridge—but decided against it.

  Jeff held the can in his hand, seemingly unsure of what to do with it. “Doesn’t it keep for a long time even when it’s not refrigerated?”

  “I think so. But I don’t want to risk the lot of us getting food poisoning on the basis of ‘thinking so.’ Dairy products are going to be a thing of the past unless we stumble on some cows and figure out what to do with them.”

  They were cutting up fruit for dessert when there was the sound of the front door opening. A moment later, Olivia came in. Her eyes were red, and she looked upset, but she didn’t offer to say why, and Z didn’t ask.

  Volatile, that one. It’d be nice to find a way to help her, but Z had no idea how. She recognized that the other woman was near the breaking point. Even asking if she’d like to talk was as likely to cause a meltdown as to help.

  Olivia set out plates and silverware without being asked. Jeff gave Z a questioning look, and Z shrugged, so they both went back to cutting up fruit.

  A few minutes later, first Ben, then Gareth, peered into the kitchen and left without saying a word.

  There was the sound of voices coming from the first-floor study, ending with a high-pitched giggle and “…when they’re all asleep.” Gary and Mikiko came into the kitchen, both barefoot, Gary with his hands in the pockets of his jeans in an unsuccessful attempt to hide an erection.

  Mikiko clapped her hands. “Oh, yay! I’m starving! What’s for dinner?” She pilfered a piece of fruit from the bowl, and sat down at a place Olivia had just set. Olivia gave the girl a glare of barely-disguised loathing, which Mikiko either didn’t see or else ignored entirely.

  Ten minutes later, Lissa came in, walking carefully, with Ben at one elbow and Gareth at the other. Maybe Gareth had decided to check her condition after all? At least the three of them weren’t obviously upset, furious, flirtatious, or lustful—but they all had a wary look that struck Z from the moment they came through the door.

  “How are you feeling, Lissa?”

  “Still logy from the drugs. But at least not hurting much at the moment. I don’t like the way oxycodone makes me feel. One more tonight, so I can sleep, then I think tomorrow I’m switching to ibuprofen.”

  The front door opened again and Jackson came in, looking at each of them in turn as if he were ticking them off on a list. “Where’s Margo?”

  “Hi, everyone.” Margo entered just behind him. From the tone of her voice, she was the only cheerful one in the room.

  There were now too many of them for the dining room. Mikiko and Gary sat at the table. Z was bringing her own plate to the living room and saw Mikiko’s hand running up the inside of his leg. She rolled her eyes. Whatever those two had planned for after everyone was asleep, it was gonna get cut short if Mikiko made him come in his pants before they’d even finished eating dinner.

  Olivia sat at the table, as well. She gave Jackson the evil eye when he filled his plate and left the room without so much as acknowledging her existence, even though there was an empty chair next to her. Jeff took the seat opposite her, but he seemed to have something on his mind. He’d barely said anything but a soft, distracted “Please pass the salt” since the others arrived.

  As for Lissa, Ben and Gareth were still at her side, but none of the three were speaking, either. Even Ben had seemed to run out of scientific topics to discuss for the moment.

  So, it passed. Margo made a few abortive attempts to engage Z in conversation, but the tension in the room was so high that even she soon gave up. Only Jackson made no attempt at all to interact—he sat on the piano bench, pulled up to the window, and ate with his plate balanced in his lap, his eyes focused on the rapidly-dimming front yard, never saying a word.

  Afterwards they all dispersed by ones and twos.

  Jackson turned to Olivia. “We should go over together before the light’s completely gone”—the first words he’d spoken that evening other than “Where’s Margo?” She gave him a tight-lipped look, nodded, and they left, Jackson making sure to draw his Glock again before opening the door.

  The others drifted away until it was only Z and Margo left in the darkening living room.

  “What the hell is wrong with everyone?” Z set her plate down on the end table, her voice pitched low—almost a whisper.

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t this bad before.”

  “It’s not only the new people. Jackson and Olivia and Gareth. Everyone’s acting weird. It feels like—I don’t know. Like a storm’s brewing.”

  Margo gave her a questioning smile. “I wonder what the cards would have to say?”

  “Still believe in them, do you?”

  “More than ever. Look around you.”

  “I still have a hard time understanding why all of a sudden Tarot cards work. I can
vouch for the fact that they didn’t work before.”

  “A lot of things have changed since before.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” She shrugged. “Okay, I guess it couldn’t hurt.”

  The deck sat on a bookshelf, where they’d been left after the casts she’d done for all of them two days earlier. She took out the cards, shuffling them as she walked back to sit next to Margo on the couch.

  “Who should I cast for?”

  Margo’s eyes looked wide behind her thick glasses. “All of us.”

  “I’ve never done a cast for nine people at the same time before.” She gave the deck another thorough shuffle, and then set the stack on the coffee table. “Cut them into three stacks, then put them back in whatever order you want to.”

  Margo did so.

  Z flipped over the top card.

  It was the Nine of Swords.

  She let out a long breath. “Fuck.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Okay, I will not accept that.” Z shook her head. “I am not going to be told by a bunch of stupid drawings on a piece of paper that we’re all doomed.” She shuffled them again, cut them, put them back together, flipped over the top card.

  Nine of Swords.

  “Z, What’s going on here?”

  Moving like an automaton, Z did it twice more. When she got the Nine of Swords a third, and then a fourth time, she picked up the deck of cards and threw it across the room. They made dry little clicking noises as they hit the wall, the piano, the bookshelves.

  Margo looked like she was about to be sick. “I’m scared.”

  “Yeah, that kind of terrified the shit out of me, too.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “What can we do? It’s not like this is specific information. ‘You’re going to be attacked by a dragon at eleven-thirty tonight.’”

  “Maybe they would if we asked them.”

  Z shook her head. “Fuck that. I’m not touching those things again. Maybe ever again.”

  “Me, either. I’m sorry I suggested it. Maybe we should go to bed.”

  “You’re right. It’s better than sitting here in the dark scaring ourselves silly. Look, Margo, you and I started out this thing as a team, and we’ve held ourselves together pretty well thus far. I’m not letting Tarot cards freak me out. You’re still sleeping in the same room with Lissa, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you won’t be alone, and I’m two doors away. Come and get me if you get scared.”

  Which sounded like she was talking to a child. But in this situation, maybe they were all children, trying like mad not to believe there were monsters under the bed.

  “Okay. Can we—can we go upstairs together?”

  “Of course.”

  They tiptoed up the stairs, trying not to break the silence.

  Trying not to alert the monsters that they were coming.

  Now Z lay in bed, unable to sleep, trying to parse the new weird geometry their band of nine survivors had taken.

  The death card. Four times in a row. Up til that evening, she still hadn’t been convinced the cards were doing anything supernatural, and placed herself with Lissa amongst the doubters despite the peculiar string of hits she’d had. But tonight?

  That wasn’t coincidence. There was something, something external, doing all of this, and it had given her a warning.

  But a warning about what?

  She’d said it earlier. There were never any specifics. It was always vague, generalized presentiments of doom, never concrete information of the kind that would allow you to prepare, to guard yourself against what was to come.

  No use worrying about it. There was nothing to be done in any case. She took a deep breath and stretched, trying to release some of the tension in her muscles, and closed her eyes.

  That was when the moaning started.

  She stiffened, eyelids snapping open. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled erect.

  The noises weren’t coming from close by. Either outside, or in some far-removed part of the house. But they continued—low, guttural.

  Shit, what now? What new creature from Ben’s book of mythology was about to attack?

  She got out of bed, pulled on her clothes as silently as she could manage, then picked up a flashlight and turned it on. She tiptoed to the bedroom door and opened it. The well-made hinges turned without a sound.

  It was louder out here. Clearly the noises originated from inside the house, from the sound of it somewhere on the first floor. Who was sleeping down there? Ben said that Gareth could take the room he was in, and he’d find another place to sleep. She hadn’t noticed when he’d slipped off for the night. Most of the others were upstairs. But who knew where Gary and Mikiko had gone?

  Was there something down there, now, stalking one of them?

  Descending the stairs into the darkened first floor felt absolutely necessary, and at the same time unutterably foolish. This was always how people got caught in horror movies—going, alone, into some dangerous place.

  But Ben could be down there, in danger.

  Z kept walking, her bare feet making no noise on the carpeted steps.

  She turned the corner at the bottom of the staircase, then went down the hallway, lit with ghostly moonlight, toward the living room. The sounds were louder, a breathless, rough groan, coupled with a rhythmic noise she couldn’t place at first.

  With an effort, she stepped into the living room, and then almost laughed out loud.

  Gary and Mikiko, both completely naked, were on the floor in the middle of the room, clothes strewn around them. Mikiko was on all fours, legs spread, Gary behind her in the final throes of a fast-approaching orgasm. The girl was pushing back into his driving hips, while he had his eyes fast shut, head back, the tendons of his neck standing out.

  Z hung her head. “Oh, for god’s sake, get a room.”

  The girl turned her face toward the sound. It caught the spectral white light, and Z’s breath stopped in her throat in a strangled gasp. She backed up until she bumped into the wall.

  Mikiko had the long-snouted face of a fox, the mouth stretched in a rictus of pleasure, showing long white canines and a trickle of drool from the corner. She hissed laughter.

  Gary thrust one last time, and his whole body arched like a bow as he climaxed. His eyes flew open, and he cried out, not in ecstasy this time but in fear.

  His body began to change.

  There was a ripple along his backbone, and a ridge of fur sprouted from his smooth skin. His head jerked back as if someone had grabbed him by the hair, and his skull molded like melting wax. The face extended, the eyes grew smaller, the ears longer. He reached up hands—paws?—to touch a chest now covered with long hair, and with another cry fell forward onto all fours. His spine arrowed backwards, dragging skin and rapidly-growing fur with it into a long tail.

  Mikiko, or whatever she was, slid out from beneath him. By this point, she was also more fox-like than human, her entire body covered with silky reddish hair with a white stripe down her chest, her ears stretched into points. She gave one more hissing laugh at Z’s horrorstruck face. Then she slipped out an open window into the night, leaving behind only a rank, animal odor hanging in the air.

  The fox who had once been Gary Suarez looked around, panicked. His glittering eyes met Z’s. There was a glimmer of recognition, and his mouth worked, but it was only capable of making pitiful gawping noises. Then anything human left in it winked out like a snuffed candle flame, replaced by a purely animal fear and desire for escape.

  “Gary.” Her voice trembled in her own ears. “Gary?”

  The fox, backed up, snarling, and its hindquarters struck the coffee table, upsetting a stack of magazines. Then it, too, leapt for the open window and disappeared.

  That’s when she screamed.

  —

  “ARE YOU SURE about what you saw?” Lissa’s voice held a hint of incredulity, but not the snide dismissal that would have been likely on
ly a day ago.

  “I know it sounds like I was dreaming, and sleepwalking, or whatever. But look. The clothes. And it still smells like a cross between skunk and wet dog in here. I didn’t imagine it.”

  “At this point, I shouldn’t question you. It’s no crazier than any of the other things we’ve experienced.”

  “Kitsune.” Margo still sounded groggy from having been awakened out of a sound sleep by Z’s screams.

  “What?”

  “Kitsune. Mikiko must be a Kitsune. They’re fox spirits. I remember my grandmother telling me stories about them. They try and trap you, using whatever means they think will work. Sometimes it’s the lure of food, sometimes they come to you pretending to need help, sometimes it’s only a strange, melancholy sound from the forest. If you follow it, you’re never seen again.”

  “She had Gary by the willy five minutes after they met,” Lissa said. “She knew what he wanted.”

  Z snorted. “That didn’t take any supernatural awareness.”

  “I thought from the beginning she was way more perceptive than we gave her credit for,” Lissa said. “The weird manga get-up made it easy to dismiss her as a teenage airhead, which is exactly what she wanted.”

  “And I think she was aware that I might give away the game.” Margo said. “She avoided me, ever since I woke up. Never made eye contact, and never spoke directly to me. The funny thing is, I had no idea. Just because I’m Japanese doesn’t mean I can see spirits.”

  “She propositioned me earlier.” Z’s cheeks warmed.

  “Seriously?” Lissa’s face was a study in incredulity.

  Z nodded. “It was while you and the others were out trying to get guns. She came up to me and said, ‘Have you ever had sex with a girl?’ I said no, and she asked me if I wanted to. I said no. Fortunately.”