Fiends

by John Farris

  "That stone . . . so heavy. Can you lift it, Marjory?"

  "Don't . . . know. Trying. Leg . . . broken?"

  "No. I can move it. A little more—there! Give me your hand."

  "What happened . . . to your pretty dress?"

  "I don't know. I don't care. Let's get out of here. We'll go to your house. I want to take a bath. You'll lend me a dress, won't you?"

  "Sure. Birka . . . I saw you flying. How . . .?"

  "Marjory, don't be ridiculous. Which way?"

  "I don't know. I'm . . . lost."

  "Well, then. There must be a road. We'll have to walk until we find it."

  "Walk until we find it."

  "We'll tell each other stories. Keep our spirits up. It can't rain forever."

  "You're so cold."

  "But I like being cold, Marjory."

  21

  The girl called Smidge had looked in Puffs luggage twice for the gasoline card, but she couldn't find it. Sorting angrily through raunchy underpants and other items of clothing sprinkled with reefer dust and Johnson's baby powder, paperback copies of The Origins and History of Consciousness and the poems of Shelley, autographed photos of trash gods and already obsolete rock icons of the fast-diminishing Love Generation, and beaucoup empty containers for Tuinal and Quaaludes, she found, the second time around, wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed in the toe of a lizard-skin shoe, the only thing of value Puff owned that was immediately accessible to them: some jewelry that looked old enough to be genuine gold. It might, Smidge estimated, be worth a fast hundred bucks at the right place, a pawn shop or jewelry store that specialized in such stuff. So she took the jewelry without telling either of their male traveling companions, Wiley and Deke. Smidge had, after an initial infatuation on the beaches of Sanibel, just about given up on Puff, who wouldn't let Smidge fuck her unless she was so high she didn't know what was going on anyway.

  In Smidge's opinion Puff had, at some point during their last few hours in the backwoods of Tennessee, come across a guy with a good-looking bike or something who appeared to be a better deal than she had with them: maybe she'd met up with her very own "exterminating angel," which she claimed a fortune-teller in Europe had told her she was destined to meet. Smidge had thought Puff was so cute, she'd just hung on every word there for a while until it came to her that most of Puffs philosophy was rock-hipster bullshit right out of Crawdaddy. Because the woody wasn't acting right, burning gallons and gallons but getting no significant mileage, Puff probably figured they'd have to camp out for a while, and she could spin by and pick up her things in a day or two once she was comfortably relocated.

  Smidge was still reeling a little from the after effects of a mescaline high two days ago, feeling mean as a dog with a thorn in its paw. They had no money and nothing to drink. Wiley had thrown up in the woody while she and Deke were out scouring the countryside for the treacherous Puff. The rain had been bad and she could only crack the windows and try to get used to the rotten smell—not that it had been smelling all that good in there before he chucked his guts. Wiley, conscious now but not much help, was huddled under the canvas the two guys had pitched above the popped hood of the woody while Deke tried to get the carburetor cleaned out, or whatever, so they wouldn't be stalling every thirty feet and jerking along at twenty miles an hour. Deke was a whiz at electronics: he could take apart a malfunctioning guitar amp and reassemble it in the dark onstage while fifteen thousand teenyboppers were screaming at a concert. But he wasn't much with cars. Wiley was no fucking good with anything but a cocktail lounge piano and Puffs pussy, at least to hear her tell it.

  Both of them had vetoed ditching Puff the first time she brought it up. Give me one good reason, Smidge demanded, and Wiley, the asshole, racked his putrefying brains and said with a smeary grin, "She knows how to have some fun," putting Smidge down again and shoving her farther to the outside of their little group than before. Smidge was of a mind to out-boogie both of them. Her little romantic schemes involving Puff having collapsed like the castles on the sand they'd built together while they were still friends, what was the point of hanging out any longer? She didn't mind hiking with her backpack through a little rain, once the lightning abated. She was scared silly of lightning, those flashes that lit up her skull like-X-rays, followed by a crack that seem to jolt the heart loose from its moorings.

  Wiley was holding a flashlight over Deke's shoulder while Deke worked, and the smell of gasoline in the station wagon was almost enough to overcome the stench of beer puke. Smidge concealed the stolen jewelry in her backpack, put on her Seminole poncho, and opened the tailgate of the woody. Wiley was jiving and making jokes under the square of tarp that sagged in the middle from accumulated rainwater. What's the difference between a clever midget and a venereal disease? Do you know the difference between a genealogist and a gynecologist? That kind of joke. Good old Wiley. You could dress him up, but you couldn't take him anywhere. Smidge decided to say good-bye to the fellas after all.

  "Where you goin', babe?" Wiley said, when she had their attention.

  "Find a place to sleep tonight. Get myself a bath. My hair smells pukey."

  "Hey, yeh, listen, I'm sorry about that, it was just an accident." He was flicking the flashlight on and off in her face.

  "Yeh, well, sure. Anyway, I'm gone."

  Deke said, "What do you want us to tell Puff?"

  "Tell her I'll be around the old campground," Smidge said vaguely. "Wiley, don't shine the damn light in my eyes like that."

  "I'll get this thing going in a little while," Deke promised. "We'll drive over in the morning and pick you up."

  "Do that." Rain was running down her neck. Smidge felt an unexpected pang, thinking about Puff. A clever midget is a cunning runt, and Puffs a runny— She said to Deke, "Which way did we walk to get to that town?"

  "Just pick up the trail over there and follow it," Deke said. "Then you come to the road we drove in on, and it's all downhill."

  Smidge looked over her shoulder and saw nothing, and shuddered.

  "How the hell am I going to get there in the dark?"

  "I thought maybe you noticed that already. It's dark, and it's raining."

  "Well, I could use the flashlight."

  "Well, we only got one and we need it here." The wrench he was using slipped from Deke's hand and fell to the ground underneath the woody. Deke uttered a blasphemy.

  "Can't you swear and leave Jesus out of it?"

  Wiley laughed. "Preacher's daughter," he said.

  Smidge said, "There's some things I'm sensitive about, believe it or not."

  Deke grabbed the flashlight out of Wiley's hand and got down to look for the wrench.

  "Wiley could walk me as far as the road, there's probably some lights on in the town. Okay, Deke?"

  "Yeah, hell. Go on. I'm sick of this shit anyway." Deke came up with the wrench in his hand and scowled a: it, then banged the hood down as Wiley jumped back with a laugh and did a little of his Jamaican dance, the one he said appeased the crocodile gods. "We got anything left to eat?"

  "There's some Cokes, and peanut brittle."

  "Peanut brittle! Whose idea was it to boost five pounds of fucking peanut brittle?"

  Wiley said, "There wasn't much else to boost, except all that shit made out of seashells, and postcards and stuff. But that's a good idea. Maybe I can get us a couple six-packs in this town. Smidge, we'll work it the way we did at that convenience store, you know, where the old lady looked like Granny on Beverly Hillbillies? I could've walked out with half the store, and she—"

  Wiley abruptly stopped talking and licked his lips and looked off with a slow sideways movement of his head. He was doing that a lot lately. The flashlight in his hand dipped, shining on the bumper of the woody and the faded sticker that read We Want the World and We Want It Now! Smidge reached out and took the flashlight from his hand. Five seconds later Wiley came around, eyes blinking rapidly, and said, "Beverly Hillbillies. That show fucking cracks me up. You g
oing somewhere, Smidge?"

  "We're taking ^ hike down to the town. Except it's not a real town, Wiley. Nobody lives there any more. It's an exhibit. Come on if you're coming."

  "Right on, babe. Back before you know it, Deke."

  "Yeh, swell. I'm gonna crash."

  "Smidge, you know the difference between a genealogist and a gynecologist?"

  "No, and I don't care," Smidge said, shining the light up the wide firebreak they had followed off the road and into the woods, staying far enough from the road so the occasional park ranger wouldn't come across them and make them leave. Two days already. They could've been in Chicago. There were friends of friends in Chicago, at the university, who she knew she could put up with.

  "Where did you say Puffs got to?" Wiley asked her as they trudged up the path in the rain. Lightning off to the north, or what she thought might be north, not close enough to be really scary. The flashlight had a good strong beam, like a headlight almost. She was wearing her muleskinner's hat, which kept the rain off her face. Wiley, as usual, was barefoot. His striped railroad pants were sodden and muddy, his vest of unborn pony hide gleamed wetly when she swung the flash toward him. He'd been a husky guy, well-built, but beer was turning him to a pile of suet. He couldn't be more than thirty, but there was gray in his scimitar sideburns. Well, he was better than no company at all.

  "I didn't say. I don't know. She took off about four o'clock, I think, and didn't come back."

  Wiley was silent about that, and then he began singing "Lovely Bunch of Coconuts," jumping around on the path, behind her, in front of her, leaping into the air and holding his balls. Inevitably he slipped and crashed down and lay there on the trail, muddy and with a look of pain in his triangular eyes.

  "Wiley, get up."

  "Can't," he said, wincing.

  "Knock the breath out of you?"

  ". . . Yeh."

  "What you get for being such a—" Smidge offered a hand. Wiley grasped it and raised his head slowly, but then he was deadweight.

  "Don't think I can get up yet."

  "What'd you do?"

  "Back, feels like."

  "Oh, great."

  Wiley slowly inched to a sitting position.

  "You gonna be okay?"

  "I think so. You can go on if you want to. Maybe I better go back to the woody."

  "Can you walk?"

  "Yeh, sure. In a minute."

  "Look, I'm gonna take the flashlight, because—"

  "That's okay. No problema. I'll get back okay. See you in the morning, huh?"

  "I feel like a shit, man, leaving you here."

  "No sweat."

  "Okay, then."

  Smidge actually did feel, at least momentarily, bad about leaving him sitting there, but on the other hand you could never tell about Wiley. Maybe he was faking it. Maybe he only wanted attention. She felt better about his situation when he started humming "Malaguena." His back couldn't be hurting all that much. She resumed walking uphill along the firebreak, averting her face when lightning streaked low off to the left. The trees were a dark oceanic blue, rolling like combers in a surge of wind that hadn't reached her yet. The rain quickened, or else it was just runoff from the drenched boughs overhead. Smidge paused to adjust the straps of her backpack.

  She heard Wiley call out then, full-throated, "Smidge!" His voice sounding hoarse and high, and as she whipped around awkwardly another bolt fired off at tree-top level, dazzling her. Thunder came at her like a jet flying six feet off the ground, breaking the sound barrier; she grabbed her ears with both hands and the flashlight slipped, glancing off her hip on the way down. Smidge bent over to pick it up. Something about the tone of his voice. Scared. Wiley scared? He had the trust of a two-year-old that nothing bad could ever happen to him. A true moon-in-Aquarius. Maybe he'd tried to walk, and slipped again, and was just sitting around spaced-out in the mud.

  Smidge aimed the light down the firebreak but didn't see him. She didn't think she'd come very far, but in the dark and rain she didn't have her bearings. She walked back slowly, following her own boot prints.

  "Wiley?"

  Smidge looked right, then to her left at the undergrowth ten feet on either side of her, thinking Wiley might have become bored and was going to—well, if he tried anything cute, she'd give him a fat lip to go with his lame back. The rain was beginning to make her miserable. Goddamn Wiley! Lightning. Cringe. Thunder. Cringe again. Flashing her own light around. Boot print, boot print, she couldn't have passed him by, boot prints, footprints, yeh, Wiley's big feet, size twelve or better but he hated shoes, this was where they—

  But whose footprints were those?

  Smaller, narrower, a feminine foot. They came from the left, down from the woods, two, then almost three feet apart as if she'd been running, running to this big mud wallow in the middle of the firebreak. Depressions filling with rainwater, a big churned-up area as if they, there'd been—

  And then sort of a fresh path going off diagonally the opposite way toward the fullness of woods on the other side, and alongside that dragged path the womanly footprints began again, all the way to—

  Smidge was starting to turn to stone. Interesting reaction. She'd heard of people petrified by fear and had never thought that much about it, yet it was exactly what happened, beginning with her knees. They turned to stone, they wouldn't work. Then she was stone up the back and across the shoulders and the throat, yes, the tongue too . . . she could still feel her heart beating, though, and the rain dripping from the brim of her hat onto the hand that held the jittery flashlight. Smidge was making noises like a blind kitten trying to find its mother when something came crashing in a panic out of the brush twenty feet away with a deep sob of anguish, and stopped dead in the beam of the light.

  Not that he could see it. What was left of the pulp of his eyes was running down his cheeks. And what was left of the skin of his torso hung off the pegs of rib bones, the keel of his breastbone, like a yellowish, bloodstained toga. Blobs of fat undulated at his flayed midsection. His hands rose and fell uselessly in the streaming light spread out across the mass of understory shrubs behind him.

  That's when the coldly, unnaturally white, hairless, naked woman with the shimmering blue eyes stepped calmly from concealment, glanced Smidge's way, then seized Wiley by his abundant hair and, uncovering the nape of his neck, stuck him there with something in her other hand. Hard to tell what it was. Not a knife. Just a weapon of some kind, about three inches long, slender and black and jutting at a slight angle from her fist.

  God, she had to be strong, because without much effort she jerked Wiley, a two-hundred-pound guy, backward by the hair and off his feet and into the brush that, almost instantly, swallowed them both.

  Smidge blinked once and her lip curled as adrenaline-laced blood went pounding up into her head and through all the stone parts; she ran without feeling a thing—the ground, the rain—ran back up the firebreak with hell going off like fireworks behind her, thunder smothering her cries. She was a good runner and at top stride just as someone came leaping out at her from the underbrush, knocking her muleskinner's hat off and grabbing her by the arm.

  "Got you!" Smidge heard, words and then breathless laughter, but her right hand was already in motion as her momentum was slowed; she came spinning around with the flashlight in a hard chop to the side of the head and heard a good solid thock even as the girl's grip loosened. But Smidge was unbalanced by the force of her swing and the weight of the backpack; she fell down on top of her assailant, swinging again with intent to kill but missing. For several seconds they were both motionless, Smidge on top with a knee on the girl's considerable chest, her breath searing her throat, unable to get away because the girl, her nose bleeding, hung on to Smidge with both hands.

  Smidge flashed the light in her eyes. Blue eyes, like those of the apparition glimpsed in the woods below, but filled with pain and bewilderment.

  "Owww, God, get off me!" Marjory cried.

  "Who're you
?"

  "Who are you?"

  "Smidge. If you don't want that maniac to get hold of us, you'd better hop up and get running for your life and I mean . . . right now, asshole!"

  "What maniac?"

  "I said run!"

  Smidge lurched up with a quick look behind her, the abused flashlight putting out a splintered beam in the rain. She had a lump in her throat that wouldn't go down, a blaze of terror in her breast. Marjory ran a hand across her bloody nose and cried out, but she was so quick getting to her feet that Smidge, in the way, nearly was upended.

  "What am I doing here?"

  "Later," Smidge snarled at her, and without knowing why—maybe it had been the totally bewildered tone of her voice—grabbed Marjory by a lapel of her dirty wet shirt and dragged her a couple of feet uphill. "Will you run?"

  Marjory didn't need further coaxing. Before Smidge got going again even half as fast as she wished she could run, fleet Marjory was nearly out of sight; Smidge would have lost track of her, except for the lightning. What the hell had she been doing out here by herself? Stoned, Smidge thought, just stoned out of her gourd. Got you. Pleased with herself, playing some kind of stupid game while less than a hundred yards away Wiley was getting dressed out like a deer slaughtered in the woods.

  Or maybe Wiley was part of the same game. And there were a lot of other players, all over the place.