Fiends

by John Farris

  I don't know how to say it so anything makes sense. God, this letter is getting to be such a mess! It would be so much easier to talk to you.

  Try again. Maybe I'll do better if I go back to the beginning, put it all down, what I actually remember, what's just a lot of spooky shadows. Bear with me? That is, if I'm not already in the wastebasket after that remark about your doorstep.

  Hospitals. They give me the creeps, even nice modern ones like Wingo County Memorial. Which, of course, is where I woke up almost exactly seventy-two hours after we left my house for a Saturday picnic. Lucky to wake up at all, I guess, and not be a vegetable. I thought we'd all been in a car wreck or something. I might've freaked out, except for all that medication dripping into my veins: hypothermia, then high fevers, a convulsion or two, cardiac arrest, but you know what I'm talking about: I know you weren't in much better shape except I don't think your heart stopped until you got home and decided to stay away from Marjory Waller forever—there I go again. Maybe my brain is part freeze-dried turnip after all.

  Still paying attention? Okay, once they allowed I was well enough to sit up in bed and shuffle nine steps to the pottie by myself, and Ted and Enid and a couple of doctors answered my questions, like, where's Duane (parents had him transferred to that private hospital in Nashville because of all the satan-cult stuff in the papers) and Rita Sue (nothing bad ever happens to Rita Sue; I've always thought that hysterics were good for her complexion), and Boyce—I'll get back to Boyce—then they figured I was strong enough to answer some questions myself. The TBI guys came around (one of them was kind of cute, like Paul Newman with blackheads, but I digress), and I told them at least twenty times what I knew: that I got lost in a cave after looking for you and Puff, who were looking for Arne Horsfall, the Grundig radio thief. You found me, but we took a bath by accident in some very cold water, and both of us had to be rescued. Three dumb kids getting lost in a cave, and unlucky Puff is still lost, which I know is not your fault. And that's it.

  Except for getting scared purple-pissless that night at Wingo Memorial when those TV maniacs got into my room somehow and woke me up shining bright lights in my eyes and this woman with a microphone and porcelain teeth was smiling at me and asking me what I knew about the mass execution of the old-time folk of Dante's Mill and satan cults and ritual mutilation of animals like the one Boyce finished off with a golf club on the porch of the park lodge. How would I know anything about that? But it may have something to do with the case of the spooks I'm having lately, and Rita Sue and Boyce splitting up and the funk he's been in (he was intercepted five times the other night at Waynesboro, and they beat us 19-zip).

  Maybe I should digress again. They say now (they being adults with all kinds of impressive initials before and after their names, signifying how much more qualified they are to be idiots than the rest of us common people) that it was some kind of poor mutant albino bear cub that got into the lodge looking for food after its mother abandoned it. Good thinking on the part of the mother, I'd say, but you know something? It's fas. Nobody really knows what it was, and thanks to the incompetence of some other expert who took the thing away in a plastic tarp afterward and then "misplaced" it, we'll never know for sure, will we? Rita Sue says I ought to be glad I was somewhere else drowning in the dark at the time, and didn't see it.

  But I've got news for Rita Sue: I've seen worse since. And you're the first one I've told. Because somehow I have enough confidence left in you to hope you won't think I'm crazy.

  You know about Arne Horsfall and how Enid met him. How upset she was when he disappeared, like it was all her fault. What happened to him in the woods at Dante's Mill was horrible; I don't know how anybody, even devil-worshipers, or ordinary homicidal freaks stoned out of their skulls like the Manson gang, could have done what they did to Mr. Horsfall and that other guy, the hippie from Florida who was traveling with Puff. But Enid's determined to feel guilty about that too, maybe for the rest of her life. She held a memorial service for Mr. Horsfall at Cumberland State, then went into a funk that makes Boyce Bledsoe seem positively giddy. I have to make her talk to me at the supper table, force her to eat a few bites. She doesn't feel like going to work. From what shows up in the laundry basket, she's not changing her unmentionables very often. That is not like Enid!!!

  She sleeps, this is no lie, fifteen or sixteen hours a day. When she's not sleeping, she stays in her room with the door shut, drawing. She's had me bring her a couple dozen charcoal pencils and five bottles of white shoe polish from K Mart— but I'll get to that, what she's been doing with all the shoe polish. Poor Ted, he tried and tried to snap Enid out of it, but he's been at his wit's end all week. Yesterday he gave up and said he was going on a hunting trip, good-bye! I thought deer season started in November. But I don't blame Ted. The last few years us Wallers have been poor as churchmice, but if I hadn't lucked into that job at the Toddler Shop, we wouldn't have a dime in the house. Or electricity. Does Enid care? I know I must be boring you with all this. The point is, I'm worried sick she's had a nervous breakdown. It's getting chilly now with fall around the comer, but she sleeps on top of the covers in a flimsy nightgown, if she bothers with a nightgown at all, and with the windows wide open. I tiptoe in and shut them, an hour later they're all open again. Her complexion's bad and her hair's starting to fall out—found a hunk of it under the washbasin today. Until a month ago, my sister was Miss America material! And it's not just her looks. Two nights ago I woke up (not that I've been doing much sleeping myself) and checked on Enid, which I do three or four times a night. She wasn't in her room. You probably noticed there was a full moon yesterday. So it was as bright as twilight on the lawn at one in the morning. And there she was, not a stitch on, ribs sticking out, hair like a mare's nest, just wandering around with the cats and looking up at the sky like she'd totally flipped! Maybe I'm not doing the right thing, waiting and hoping she'll come out of it by herself. Oh, God. Maybe what she needs is a stay at Cumberland State. Maybe you'll think we both do, when I tell you what happened, what I saw, last night.

  I don't think I ever showed you a portrait that Arne Horsfall did for one of Enid's art classes at the funny farm. "Portrait" is probably not the word. It's a woman, I assume, but she has no hair—no eyebrows, either. Her face is white, like liquid shoe polish, which is what he used for paint, and her eyes are pale blue, the only spots of color in the picture. She's holding her head with both hands, and screaming, I guess—it looks like she's totally wigged out. That's all. No, I forgot one detail. The little finger on one hand is black and pointed, like a thorn. I hate that picture!!! The first time I saw it, I told Enid she'd better throw it away. But it's still in her room, and Enid's painted maybe sixteen more that are like it, only better than Mr. Horsfall could hope to do: naked, hairless shoe-polish people, surrounded by (I hope you're ready for this) hundreds of luna moths!! Remember that night we prowled around the yard looking for cocoons? I guess I shouldn't be surprised that we've got lunas again, if only for decoration, or whatever reason Enid had for drawing them.

  What I have is bad dreams: of caves, and shoe-polish people who glow in the dark, and other shoe-polish people, lying on the floor in one of those caves with a lot of holes in the walls. Only this time they're black instead of white, blacker than any negro I've ever seen! Black, I guess, because they've been burned to death, like Mama and Daddy Lee in the train accident. I wake up shaking, Duane, and I swear I can't calm down for at least an hour after one of those. I've probably had the cave dreams six times in the past two weeks, and I had them when I was in the hospital, too.

  Last night I dreamed something else, for a change. It's embarrassing, but I need to tell you.

  When I finally doze off after feeling so awful about Janis, I'm dreaming about being naked too, and flying in some strange place where there are volcanos and glaciers but no trees, flying with a bunch of shoe-polish people who are friends of mine. The white ones. Not such a bad dream, at first: flying's a lot of fun. The tro
uble is, God doesn't like us. I don't know why. But he's angry, and the weather gets rough. There's lightning all around the sky, and suddenly I'm up there alone, my flying friends are gone. Then I simply forget how to fly. Falling is not fun!!! The volcanoes were gone, nothing but trees below, and I crash through one of them to the ground. I don't die. You can't die in dreams, can you? But it's real hairy anyway. Knocks the breath out of me. The next thing I know, there you are! Good old Duane. It's kind of a tropical place, palm trees and Africa critters. Giraffes. Spotted cats hiding in the long grass. The sun's very bright; I don't know why, but I'm afraid of the sun.

  Afraid of being burned. But I'm in the shade, lying flat on my back. I can see perfectly well, I just can't move. I'm frozen. My toes, fingers, bubbies, everything. Frozen solid, can't draw a breath. There's something around my neck too, choking me, but you untie it and pull it off. It's a big green vine, Duane, which you put in your pants pocket just as it's turning into a snake. You don't want me to see that, but I do see it—

  And then I woke up in a corner of my bed against the wall. . . and I was . . . I just decided not to tell you the most embarrassing part.

  This was last night, or today I guess. About three in the morning. When I say I woke up, it wasn't all the way awake. I was really groggy, out of it. I went to the bathroom to get a drink of water. Then I heard Enid. Talking in her room. Or someone else talking: kind of a childish voice. I walked down the hall and the closer I came to Enid's room, the colder I was. I could see my breath. When I opened the door I swear it must have been below freezing inside. Sort of foggy, like the inside of a big meat locker. The windows were wide open, as usual. Enid was on the bed and she looked unconscious, not asleep. I saw something move; it leaped off the floor on the other side of Enid's bed, tangled in a sheet, and hopped twice. God, it scared me! It jumped up on a windows///, leaving the sheet behind. I saw it hanging from the sill for a couple of seconds with both hands, or paws—I couldn't tell which. It looked a little like one of Enid's portraits she has stuck up all over her walls, but much smaller. Then it jumped into the tree there in front; it was just a quick white blur in the dark. Another albino mutant bear cub? Or something that might be even worse? I know I was wide awake by then, but Lord, I sure hope I was hallucinating!!! I'm so used to looking at those creepy people Enid draws, seeing them again in my dreams, it's probably affected my mind. I just can't be sure what I saw was real. I know I had a heck of a time waking Enid up. She's. . . it's as if she's slipping away from us, a little more every day. Duane, what's happening to us is so awful! We don't deserve this. Beginning tonight, I'm going to take my sleeping bag to Enid's room, and stay with her. I'll make sure the windows stay closed. When Ted gets back from his hunting trip, if she isn't better then we'll drive her straight to Cumberland State Hospital. There must be a doctor smart enough to figure out what's happening to her, who can make her well.

  This letter is getting too long. My hand's cramped from writing. I need to get some homework done. Almost seven o'clock, and nearly dark out already. I'd better try to get Enid to eat something. Don't have any appetite myself. Duane, I wish Oh, never mind.

  Your friend, Marjory

  1

  Three days after Marjory mailed her last letter to Duane, he found it, by accident, and read it.

  He was baby-sitting, on a Friday night, for his four-year-old half sister Raybeth and another little girl from next door, Emmy McClure. Duane's stepmother, Nannie Dell, a civic-minded woman, had gone to a Williamson County Planning Board hearing that had to do with traffic on their street and the need for four-way stop signs. The two girls were at that age where they could be a real handful. Now that it was getting dark and also pretty cold by seven in the evening, Duane couldn't keep them outdoors on the swings and in the sandbox, and there was nothing on TV that interested them. So they chased around the house and he tried to keep track of them while reading a couple of chapters of Moby Dick, a novel he found nearly impenetrable but had to do a lengthy report on over the weekend.

  After a prolonged silence that made him uneasy, Duane called from the living room, "Raybeth, where are you?"

  "Inna kitchen."

  "What're you doing in the kitchen?"

  "Cookies."

  Emmy giggled. Raybeth whispered something. Duane put the novel down on the living room couch and strolled to the kitchen. The girls had opened a box of cinnamon graham crackers and poured glasses of milk for themselves, but somebody's hand wasn't too steady; milk was dripping off the dinette table to the floor. They were trying to clean up the puddles with dish towels.

  "Was a accident," Raybeth said. She had a way of looking at him with her lower lip stuck out that made him want to laugh, but Raybeth had in > sense of humor and if he laughed or even smiled at her when he had the guilts, she would kick him in the shins. Then he would hang her upside down by the ankles and threaten to shake her until her blue eyes dropped out of her head like marbles. When Duane did that, it always got back to Nannie Dell, who would then give him a well-reasoned, patient lecture on all the damage that might result from blood rushing to Raybeth's teeny brain. He didn't enjoy the lectures, but there was no arguing with Nannie Dell. There was no arguing with Patience and Virtue. Besides, she always defended him in conflicts with his father, when John Wesley Eggleston was in one of his prickly, hypercritical moods.

  "I'll do that," Duane said. "Eat your cookies."

  He wrung out both towels in the sink, rinsed them, and finished wiping the table. They'd emptied the half-gallon milk carton, so he carried it to the flip-top garbage can by the back door. The garbage can was lined with a brown paper sack from Kroger's, and it was full. Might as well carry the sack outside to the galvanized garbage cans by the garage. When he picked it up the bottom of the paper sack, which was soggy, opened, and three days' worth of garbage dumped on the floor.

  The girls shrieked with laughter.

  "Duane made a mess!"

  The back of Duane's neck got red, but he didn't say anything. Eggshells, coffee grounds, sparerib bones, grease, shit. A fat white envelope, sealed with Scotch tape, that looked as if it hadn't been opened. Curious, he picked it up, pulled off a teabag that was sticking to the flap, and turned it over. The letter, dated the fifteenth, was from Marjory. Duane was jolted. What was his letter doing in the garbage? Had Nannie Dell thrown it out accidentally? No way, she paid the household bills and kept meticulous files. She never threw away any legitimate piece of correspondence. If the letter was in the garbage, it was there on purpose.

  He put the letter on the sink counter and got out the dust pan, loaded a fresh paper bag with the garbage and carried it outside, frowning, pulses tingling in his wrist.

  "Read us a story!" Raybeth demanded when he returned. Four was a very demanding age.

  "When I get ready, badbreath," Duane said sulkily.

  "Mommy said don't ever call me that!"

  "Put a lid on it, Raybeth. Go up to your room and pick out a storybook and I'll be there in a minute."

  When the girls were out of the kitchen Duane slit the envelope and read the letter standing up against the sink. He was incredulous at first, then angry. Then so frightened he couldn't breathe right.

  "Duane! You said!"

  "Raybeth, I'm coming. Just wait a minute! Play with your Play-doh or something."

  There was a telephone in the kitchen. Duane looked in his wallet for Marjory's phone number. His hands were trembling, he had to dial twice.

  It rang nineteen times before he gave up. Duane chewed his lip. His face was hot. He picked up the receiver again, glancing at the wall clock. It was a quarter to nine. He was supposed to have put the girls down for the night at eight-thirty. He dialed information for Sublimity, Tennessee, and eventually was connected to the sheriffs department.

  "I need to get hold of one of your deputies, Ted Lufford."

  "Deputy Lufford is off this week."

  "Can I call him at home? What's the number?"

  "Son, we
don't give out that information."

  "Well, could you call him for me, and ask him to get back to me? My name's Duane Eggleston, and I live in Franklin, Tennessee. Look, this is very, very important."

  While he waited to hear from Ted, Duane went upstairs, still tingling from apprehension.

  "We want to take a bath."

  "All right, I'll run your bathwater."

  The phone rang while the girls were splashing in the tub with thirty-nine plastic toys. Duane ran down the hall to his parents' room and took the call there.

  "Mr. Eggleston? This is Deputy Purloe of the Caskey County Sheriffs Department. You asked me to relay a message that you wanted to get in touch with Deputy Lufford? I'm sorry, but we're told he's out of town and won't be back until Sunday night."

  "Thank you," Duane said, swallowing hard. He hung up and thought, Boyce.

  "Duane, we're ready to get out of the tub now!"

  "Yeah, hold on, I'm coming."

  It was nine-thirty by the time he had them in bed in Raybeth's room. She held him to his promise to read a storybook.

  "You're reading too fast."

  Duane took a breath and read more slowly, fussed with their blankets, left a nightlight on, and said as he closed the door, "No talking." He ran back down the hall to the telephone.

  "'Lo?"

  "Hey, Boyce, this's Duane!"

  "This isn't Boyce, it's Lamar."

  "Oh, yeah, hey, how're you doing, Lamar? Your voice change since I saw you last? Is he home, I really need to talk to—"

  "Naw, the football team's in Lebanon, they won't none of 'em be back until after midnight."

  "Oh, football game, must be where everybody is tonight, I couldn't get hold of—”

  "I'd be there to, but I'm grounded."

  "Yeah, well, good talking to you, Lamar, have Boyce call me. I don't care what time he gets in."

  Duane hung up. The furnace was on but he felt chilly, a little nauseated. He tried Marjory's house again, with no results.