Fiends
Page 37
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Duane heard the telephone ringing and rose through depths of sleep, only gradually becoming aware that he wasn't at home, in his own bed.
Marjory's arms were around him, but she was sound asleep, breathing against his neck. She hadn't heard the phone. Duane began to shiver as he woke up. They had piled all the quilts and comforters they could find on her bed, but he was still cold.
He disentangled himself and Marjory rolled over complainingly, took up a pillow in her arms instead. He caressed her bare bottom, teeth chattering, and slipped out of the bed, plucked a quilt from the layer of bedclothes and wrapped himself in it.
Pain in his right foot when he put his weight on it. He hobbled in the direction the telephone was ringing, for a good three minutes since it had awakened him, and found the phone in Enid's room. A window was open; cold air poured in. It was dark outside, except for a distant streetlight. He thought of teeth that glowed like radium, bones in the stable, a corpse. His stomach contracted painfully. His foot was sore and throbbing.
"Hello?"
"Who's that?" Ted's voice.
Duane felt a rush of relief. "Ted. This's Duane."
"Duane? You need to speak louder, I'm partial deaf from—what're you doing there? Is Marjory—"
"She's all right! I think! Sleeping! Tonight we—listen. He was here! Alastor, I mean. I told you about him."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, Big 'un. What happened?"
"I got him. Carbon tetrachloride, I used carbon tet. Sprayed him like a moth. Awful. But he's—" Duane coughed, and it turned into retching. "I don't want to think about it. He killed somebody. Marjory's neighbor. Mr. Crudup. Body's in the stable. Alastor skinned him before I—you better get over here."
"Can't right now. I've been sure enough busy myself. I'll tell you later."
"Ted! Enid stole my—my dad's car. Something wrong with her, you've got to find—”
"I've got her, Duane. Enid's with me. She's all right. I'll bring her home in the morning. You stay there until I come, hear?"
"Yeah. Wait! Ted, what if there's more of them around?"
"There won't be. I took care of it tonight. They're all buried, Duane, under fifty-sixty feet of rock."
"How—?"
"Can't talk about it now. I'll see you."
"Got to get my dad's car back."
"Don't worry, Duane. You will. Take care of Marjory."
When Duane got off the bed after hanging up, the pain in his foot was intense; he saw stars and thought, The thorn.
A cold clutching in his stomach. He couldn't breathe properly. A good lungful of air was a precious thing. His fear was more intense than the pain in his throbbing foot.
The thorn.
In the bathroom he went through the contents of the medicine chest and found a pair of cuticle scissors, a straight pin with a little green knob on it. He ran hot water in the basin, soaped the scissors and washed them off, then sat trembling on the edge of the tub where earlier he had tried to soak the cold from their bones. He cocked his right leg across his other knee and touched the spot on the arch of his foot, swollen the size of a pigeon's egg. Not soft, like a bulging blister. It was a hard white cyst, enclosing something uniquely poisonous, life-threatening. Duane gasped when he touched it. Then he ground his teeth and with his left hand stabbed the center of the cyst with a blade of the scissors, and screamed.
Marjory found him sitting naked on the bathroom floor, holding his bloodied foot and sobbing. She didn't speak but kneeled slowly beside him, took his fist in her hands, opened it. Blood in the palm, and the ragged black remnant of a wicked thorn.
She took it from him, and flushed it down the toilet.
"Did you get all of it?"
"I don't know."
Marjory sat next to him, and tenderly lifted his bloodied foot. She bent her head and put her mouth to the wound. Sucked gently. He put an arm around her, and his head on her shoulder. Marjory sucked harder, spat onto the tiles, sucked again. After a minute or so she rose and went to the wash basin, rinsed her mouth. She came back and settled down between his knees with her back to him and bent to the wounded foot again, licking gently, saying nothing. When all the tremors in his body ceased she straightened, turned slowly so as not to disturb him. Knees on either side of his thighs, she leaned to kiss him. The taste of his own blood on her lips completed his arousal. He put his hands on her waist.
Marjory brushed his lips again with her own, back and forth a few times, lastly with the tip of her tongue.
"Oh, Marjory! I'm still so cold."
"Come on, Duane. I want to go back to bed."
Her body, her embrace, her continuing slow kisses proved to be more of a sedative than an aphrodisiac. A creeping warmth; he dreamed, although he was not asleep. Rocked on her breast, lulled by the animal heartbeat, the surging pulse in her throat, he dreamed of wild places, a hot noon sea. The throbbing pain in his foot had diminished to a dull ache. In napping green, within a shaded thorny place, she sighed beneath him, thrillingly; there was a stillness of depletion.
At dawn he was awake, sitting beside her sleeping form, looking at the frost-rimmed windows, dappled gold by the rising sun, magical as first fruit.
He touched Marjory's shoulder, he touched a peeping nipple, she stirred and smiled without awakening. He wanted, not to be happy, that was asking too much, but to comfort and be comforted. The thorn, Duane thought.
the thorn the thorn
the
thorn
This day there were two less children in Eden.
Table of Contents
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August, 1970: The Sunday Dinner Guest
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June, 1906: Horsfall Farm
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August, 1970: Looking for Arne Horsfall
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August, 1906: Big Enoch's Tale
August, 1970: Hulduf�lk
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October, 1970: Alastor and Enid
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