Necessary Monsters

by Richard A. Kirk

  In the night, footsteps came through the creaking snow from behind. Imogene was too weak by this point to raise her head. She simply whimpered and lifted her ears. A boy came over the rise. He was bundled in a patched coat and scarf. He pulled a small sled where a selection of rabbits, a mink and another fox lay in a frozen heap. At the front of the sled was a lantern that threw wild shadows. His body language conveyed that he had not expected to find a living animal, even one so close to death. Moving stealthily, as though she might vanish on him, the boy released the sled and lifted a rifle to his shoulder. He aimed carefully and pulled the trigger.

  "Do you still love me?" asked Imogene.

  "Yes," answered Moss.

  MAPS AND LEGENDS

  A thaw came on the overnight wind out of the southwest. They woke to the sound of running water as the ice softened. Moss untangled himself from Imogene and left the warmth of the bed to look out the window. The path across the fields behind the house, snow-packed the previous day, was now a ribbon of red earth. A boy on a pony and a man walking to the side made their way toward the house.

  "Company," said Moss, pocketing the ocellus.

  "My name's Jansson. We are here to take you to May." The man was sandy haired. The nail on his left thumb was bruised a deep plum. He wore work clothes, farmer's clothes. His homemade sweater was full of unraveling holes and his boots were military issue. The gaze of the slight boy that accompanied him was fixed on the pony's mane. He had indoor skin and a blue vein that ran up from his jaw line to the corner of his mouth. On his head, hair like milkweed silk wafted in the breeze. He was blind. Jansson fixed a slipping blanket on the boy's shoulders as he spoke.

  "Come with us," said the boy.

  They all turned as Imogene came out of the house. Her hair was uncombed and her lids were still puffy from sleep. She had wrapped herself in a blanket. Jansson seemed to bristle as he took in these details. His inspection stopped at her long feet where the tip of a tattooed green tendril ended in a spiral.

  "Why?" asked Imogene.

  "It's easier to reach now that the snow is melting," said Jansson.

  "Where are we going?" asked Moss.

  "To the Oak Hall. It was decided at a meeting. Master Crow said no harm would come of it. They thought that you should come to see the maps." Jansson's eyes bored into Imogene.

  "Is everything all right, Mr. Jansson?" asked Imogene.

  "It's the boy. He asked to have a puppet. May said he might have one, for coming."

  "Puppets," said the boy.

  Imogene led the boy, Luther, on his speckled pony, while Moss and Jansson walked behind. Luther clutched a puppet under his blanket so that the wooden face with eyes made of black coral peeked out like a second rider. For Moss, the puppet's face bore an uncomfortable similarity to Lamb's. Moss and Imogene had packed everything they could into Moss's pack and shoulder bag. They would not be returning to the puppeteer's house.It took several hours to reach the village. During this time Luther talked to Imogene in an unending stream. Jansson said little. He seemed a practical man who commented that he sacrificed a good day's work to fetch strangers. His only wish was to dispense with the task and return to his field.

  "What's he saying?" asked Moss as they walked along a stony road. They had just passed through a deserted village that had been largely overrun by vegetation. Damaged walls showed signs of an armed conflict. Moss sought a distraction.

  "He's telling her fairytales. He's memorized all of those old stories."

  As the afternoon faded, they came to a small collection of buildings separated from the surrounding fields by dry stone walls. The air smelled of sweet wood smoke. Jansson led the group to a house significantly larger than the others. A sign on the door said Oak Hall. Inside was a rustic meeting place. The walls were covered with chore lists of names grouped under houses; blue house, yellow house, green house. Moss and Imogene stood in the hall, stamping off the cold, while Jansson took the pony to a barn. Luther vanished with his puppet.

  "Now what?" asked Imogene.

  "Now, you eat," said an unfamiliar voice. It belonged to a man in his thirties with long brown hair. He looked like a recipient of Jansson's hand-me-downs. "I'm Grove. The others are in the back." Jansson returned and seemed content to hang back after the two men exchanged what seemed to Moss to be significant looks. At the far end of the hall they passed through a door to a second, smaller room. Approximately thirty people sat at long tables eating, while other men and women served food from steaming bowls. The air was filled with the fug of boiled vegetables. At the far end there was a kitchen where mealtime activities were in full swing. Grove directed them to an empty section of table. Moss felt surreptitious glances on him but when he looked at the others he was greeted with noncommittal nods or the occasional, tentative smile.

  "Visitors are rare here. They have a natural curiosity about you," said Grove.

  "That's one word for it," muttered Imogene.

  They sat down and were immediately served. The walk had made them ravenous and they ate without speaking. Halfway through their meal, chairs scraped the floor as others rose to leave the room or pitch in with cleanup. It was not long before they were nearly alone. Grove produced a pot of coffee from the kitchen. When everyone had been served, he turned to Jansson.

  "Thanks for getting them," he said. Jansson nodded and left the table, leaving his coffee untouched.

  Grove turned his attention to Moss and Imogene. "You should be aware that there was a very loud meeting in this room. Many of the people eating in here tonight were of the mind that you should have been driven away. May and Master Crow were successful, just, in convincing them that you should be brought here."

  "That's not very comforting," said Moss. "We won't be staying."

  "They are frightened. There is a rumor that the witch known as Elizabeth has returned. These people believe this is attributable to your presence. To put it bluntly, your presence at the puppeteer's house was seen as a bad omen. Infant mortality is extremely high in our village and in lieu of a scientific explanation there are some, less educated, who fall back on superstition. It's a small subgroup but despite their beliefs, these people are our friends and family and we must respect what they believe."

  "Then why invite us for dinner?" asked Imogene, shaking her head.

  "The reason you have been asked here," said Grove patiently, "is to be given what you need to continue your journey. In other words, we will supply you. We are not bad people, merely cautious. In exchange, we ask that you never return, or mention our existence. You cannot settle here or in the puppet maker's house."

  "What gives you the right to be here? Nightjar Island is forbidden territory," said Moss.

  "These people are survivors of a dirty war. The soil is contaminated with chemical agents, but it is their homeland. Their families farmed here for generations. They have nowhere else to go."

  "How did they survive the Purge?" asked Moss.

  "That, I'm not prepared to tell you," said Grove. "You never know what the future holds."

  "Fair enough. It must be a hard life," said Moss.

  "People don't live long here," said Grove. "There are far more females born than men. There is a sickness that claims most in their early adulthood. I won't lie, it can be hard." He turned to Imogene. Although till now his demeanor had been calm, resignation passed over his face. "Some of the people believe you to be like Elizabeth."

  "Why?" asked Imogene. She looked at Moss, frightened.

  "A combination of things. The fact that you were drawn, the tattoos—"

  "This is bullshit. We don't need your help," said Moss. He stood up. "We'll leave now. It was never our intention to stay."

  "Wait," said Grove. He turned toward the door. "Okay, come in."

  A large man with grey hair, who Moss had seen at dinner, came through the door holding a rifle.

  "Damn," said Moss, looking at Imogene.

  Luther rushed around the man in a nightshirt. In one ar
m was the puppet and in the other a cookie tin and a cardboard chessboard. He sat down opposite Imogene. Moss was amazed by the familiarity with which he did this. This was truly Luther's home.

  "Imogene will stay here and play chess with Luther," said Grove. "You will come with me. In less than an hour, you can both be on your way. You will be provisioned."

  "I won't leave Imogene here," said Moss.

  "It's okay, Moss," said Imogene. "I'll play chess with Luther. Go see what they want."

  "Okay," said Moss to Grove. "Let's go." The man with the rifle sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. Imogene took the cookie tin from Luther. She took a different colored pawn in each hand.

  "Pick a hand," she said.

  "Left," said Luther. He sat the puppet beside the board, a silent witness.

  Moss was uncomfortable leaving Imogene, but he followed Grove through the kitchen knowing that the alternative would force a confrontation. He wanted to learn more, and in his gut did not believe she was in danger with Luther present. At the back of the kitchen they passed through a door to the outside. A path lined by weak electric lights led to an adjacent building. It was smaller and much older than the other building. The walls were built of fieldstone and its roof edge was covered with grass. It looked one with the landscape.

  In the confined space of the corridor Grove asked Moss to remove his boots. At first Moss thought this was to prevent him from running, but then he saw six other pairs of boots along the wainscoted wall. Grove removed his footwear and waited while Moss unlaced. In socked feet, both men entered the main room. An aged boardroom table dominated the space. Most of the chairs were empty. Five seated people turned their heads. The sixth, May, sat at the end of the table knitting, counting stitches. Master Crow was at the opposite end. He nodded at Moss. Two women and two men comprised the remainder of the group. In the center of the table sat a black, aerodynamic object. Its fire-blackened form reminded Moss of a ray. Copper wires protruded from the region that would have been the gills. The object had been mounted on a circular wooden base. Between the spreading "wings" there was a deep hole, just wide enough that if Moss had wished, he could have inserted his finger.

  "No one knows," said one of the men, seeing his curiosity. "A scavenging party brought it back from the island's interior."

  Moss remained standing. The group waited patiently until May had finished her row. Moss marveled at this but realized that it was a show of respect. May finally sighed and put her knitting on the table.

  "Cable stitch patterns will be the end of me," she said to nobody in particular. She suddenly focused as though only now realizing there were seven other people in the room shifting uncomfortably. "Dr. Grove, thank you for bringing our visitor to the meeting. You have explained the predicament that we find ourselves in?"

  The doctor nodded. "Somewhat."

  May turned to the four people Moss had not met. "This is Jason, Adrian, Susan and Sara." Moss acknowledged them each in turn. "Mr. Moss and Dr. Grove, please make yourselves comfortable." When they were settled, May pushed her knitting to one side and clasped her hands on the table. "Our group is made up of determined people, and they are bound together by hardship." Moss looked at the faces around the table and wondered what their individual stories were.

  "How many are you?" asked Moss.

  "What you saw at dinner," said May, "plus a few more who are foraging in the city. This number is half what it was five years ago."

  "The doctor mentioned an illness," said Moss.

  "That is correct. Adrian will explain."

  Adrian was a melancholic-looking man with sharp features and mechanic's hands.

  "Thank you, May. The group was fairly stable up until fifteen years ago. Just the usual illnesses you'd expect in any small, closed community."

  "What happened?" asked Moss.

  "On a day not unlike this one," said Adrian, "one of our foraging parties went to a region at the center of the island. Typically, we keep to the coastal areas, as travel is easier and things are not so overgrown. A few of the younger members were keen to see the remains of a crashed aircraft known as the Crucible. We had heard that the Crucible contained functional communications technology that we might make use of. Well, they did find it after many days in the dense forest. In the end nothing workable was salvaged. They brought this as a kind of souvenir of their adventure." Adrian indicated the artifact on the table. "It's what it looks like, a relic of technology, which we can never hope to understand. Anyway, the party went further into the forest, to a large flooded region. At an abandoned monastery known as Little Eye, they came upon something extraordinary. A boy, lying in a shallow hollow in the ground, covered in leaves and soil. He was curled up in a ball, like a hibernating animal, with roots entwined around his limbs as though he had been there for years. When they freed his body, he woke up."

  "What did he look like?" asked Moss, heart pounding.

  "Like no boy we'd ever seen," said Adrian. "He was beautiful, intelligent and as transparent as a jellyfish. Two members of the party took him for something supernatural and attempted to kill him on the spot. They died immediately, pierced in a dozen places by the glowing stones, which floated around this boy's head and appeared to do his bidding. Terrified, the remainder of the men retreated. The next day they attempted to return but try as they might, they could not find their way." Adrian put his hands into his lap. "The boy appeared in their camp and told them that he could guide them out of the forest. He was true to his word but on the way back to the village, several of the men died of a hemorrhagic fever."

  "What's a pity is that they didn't all die before they got here," snapped the woman named Sara.

  "Forgive the outburst, Mr. Moss," said May. "Sara lost her son last week."

  "After the remaining men returned to the community, many more people died of the sickness. It was believed that the boy had brought the illness with him, maybe deliberately."

  Jason, the man who had first spoken to Moss, continued. "Weeks later, someone in the village took it upon themselves to lead the boy to the sea during a gale. He took the boy on to a flat promontory in the night. The boy was washed into the ocean by the violent surf and never seen again."

  "If you don't know who did it, how do you know what happened?" asked Moss.

  "I witnessed it," said Master Crow. "But the night was such that it was impossible to make out the man's face."

  "Then how do we know it wasn't you?" sniped Sara.

  "Silence," said May. "What's done is done. We all have our suspicions who it was."

  "Jansson?" Moss did not know why the farmer's name came to him so readily. The others did not respond, but glances were traded.

  "Shortly before the boy appeared in our midst," said Adrian, "there was an accident. Jansson's daughter Elizabeth fell into a well and drowned. She was a beautiful girl and her loss was sorely felt. She was laid out in the Oak Hall awaiting burial when something horrible happened." The man paused and gave a nervous laugh. "Everyone in there felt a presence in the room. It passed from person to person. Each time it left someone, they fainted to the floor."

  "It moved like an invisible wave," said May. "Until it reached the dead girl. Only those grieving behind the table were unaffected. When it reached the child, she became animated. She climbed down from the table and walked out of here into the woods as calmly as a princess."

  "Jansson was devastated. We believe that when Jansson saw this boy, and the destruction he purportedly brought upon us, he believed it to be connected with what happened to his daughter.

  "I can't tell you if that is true, or not."

  "It doesn't matter what is true. What matters is what people believe," said Grove. "You and Imogene were seen long before you reached the puppeteer's house. We know you also possess one of the strange stones. This is reason enough to banish you, given our history." Moss looked sharply at Master Crow, but the man was staring at the machine on the table. Was he friend or foe?

  May sa
id calmly, "These people are probably doomed, most of them anyway, but unless they think the group is of a like mind it will be impossible to maintain cohesion. People like Jansson must not be given the means to tear the group apart. You must sleep for a few hours, and then leave before morning, or I cannot assure your safety. I am sorry. Adrian, be a dear and collect the maps from the other room."

  THE SILO

  "I'll walk with you," said Jansson. "My farm is up on the rise." He stood by the door in a coat that smelled of tobacco, and a hat with earflaps. It was not yet dawn. A single bright star shone through a gap in the clouds. Moss did not answer, too busy jamming last-minute items into his pack. Imogene was also silent as she hugged herself in a warm, patched coat and stared off into the fanned-ink darkness of the distant tree line. A few minutes earlier, Moss had noticed the man looking at Imogene. He could not tell if it had been a look of reproach, or something else. Jansson moved away and busied himself with his pipe.

  "Do you hear me?"

  "Thanks, but it's not necessary, Mr. Jansson. We'll manage," said Moss. "I'm sure you have better things to do." He cinched the drawstring on the pack and then hoisted it over his shoulders.

  "I'm going up there anyway. There's a shorter path that will save you slogging through a cow pasture full of mud and horse shit."

  "Imogene," said Moss. She turned and, seeing Moss ready to depart, picked up her own pack. "Fine, Mr. Jansson, lead the way." There were no others in the yard.

  They followed a track that led them away from the buildings to the scrubland behind. Moss and Jansson walked in front, while Imogene fell in behind. She had also been aware of Jansson's attention.