by Eric Ellert
Moren froze when she heard the sound of a second animal nearby. The rain echoed off everything, the water the houses, the hills. Faudron couldn't tell which direction the sounds came from at first.
Moren pointed at the water.
Something splashed in the reservoir; the sound of hoofs came from the dock.
Faudron and Moren made it to Raus' locked, front door, and pressed themselves flat against it. Moren shivered as the sick do, which made Faudron shiver.
The wolf ran past them, so close they smelled its breath as it made its way back to the woods. It slid on the muddy spot where the lawn tiles were missing and fell into the run off river the sprinkler's left, singeing a paw, sending smoke and steam into the air as it slowed and favored the bad paw trying to make it to the tree-line.
Before the wolf could make it, the lama came from the dock, closed on the wolf, leapt in the air and came down with its front hooves together and stamped its skull. It dragged the wolf back across the lawn and into the water and stepped back to watch it melt into a smoking pile of gray putty. Once underwater, it burned, sending gray smoke with the smell of burning hair into the night.
Moren walked to the edge of the road and kicked at the dirt the wolf had kicked over the run-off river surrounding Rau's front lawn. "Wow, I never would have thought of that. He's not so stupid after all."
"Who, Rau?"
"No, the wolf."
"You knew him?"
"Think so." She peered with her hands to her face as if she had a telescope, then tiptoed across the road to the woods.
"Get back her, please," Faudron said.
"It's all right." Moren came back carrying a leather jacket. "See. I didn't see two of these in town. Nice to know the werewolves take care of their clothing. Can I keep it? I can keep it."
Faudron bent down and swished her hand through the water. There wasn't anything unusual about it. "Hey, Moren, Moren." But she was gone.
Faudron went around the far side of Rau's house and caught Moren slipping into the basement window.
Faudron spun around to check behind her; the moon and stars shown clear as if the clouds were just smoke the mountain gave off.
"Down here," Moren said from the basement.
Faudron laughed nervously, looking around for cops or wolves or cops and wolves, or cops that were wolves. "Get out of there."
"No, wolves won't come here."
That was just perfect. Moren knew everything and didn't care that they lived in hell town. Why would she; she didn't have to go to school; she got to drive, and do pretty much as she pleased.
Faudron slipped into the window and put her foot on a shelf on the way down, but it couldn't hold her weight, snapped off the wall, spilling tools and dropping Faudron on the floor.
"Sorry," Moren said. "I should have told you about that." She held her hand to her face holding in wretches. "Blood. Bloody blood."
"You always get like that. I'm not bleeding."
"You're standing in it."
In the little silence, Faudron swore she heard the house settling, as if it had been built on a closing hinge pulling it slowly into the earth to swallow. She couldn't see it, and when she felt it, it could have been motor oil; it could have been anything, but it wasn't. Blood had a presence all its own and could not be mistaken for long. "Get the light, please."
"Lock the window."
"That's a good idea. It's still night, sort of," Faudron said, but when she locked the window, it wouldn't open again. The frame looked all rotted-out but when she picked up a hammer and pounded on it, the hammer bounced back and hit her on the cheek.
"You all right?" Moren asked.
"Of course I'm not all right and don't touch the hammer."
"Why not?"
"I don't know why, just don't," Faudron said.
Faudron needed to see light so badly she almost screamed at Moren to find the switch, but Moren started retching for the blood. Faudron went up the stairs in kiddie-steps, trying to touch the ceiling because there was no handrail. When she got to the top, she pulled on the doorknob and slapped her hand on the door when nothing happened. "Rau." She couldn't find the light switch and when she came down, she looked from Moren at the bottom of the stairs to her bloody hand print on the door and noticed the bloody footprints pointing down the stairs. She'd been standing in it. There was nothing else to stand on. "Where is he? You don't seem surprised. Why don't you seem surprised?"
Moren's voice shook as she spoke. "Cause he's in the brass tube under the stairs."
Faudron moved her eyes slowly; her neck wouldn't obey. She saw the edge of it in the corner, sticking out from the empty space beneath the garage. "RIP?" Faudron whispered.
Moren came up the stairs so slowly she appeared to float and took Faudron's hand. "Don't worry; it's not the first time. He'll be all right."
"N,n,n, not the first?"
The stick was lying on the floor, just touching the last step but it wasn't a stick, as she'd convinced herself. It really was a spear with two curved blades. Faudron hadn't noticed before but a faint electric hum filled the room and when she got to the sarcophagus, and that's what it had to be, it gave her a light shock when she touched it. She touched the small, square glass at the top again because Rau's peaceful face sat within. "Why are his lips twitching?" she asked.
A faint glow came from the glass face-screen in the tube. Moren leaned on it briefly as if she might lean on it forever until he woke, then she tiptoed from it as if any disturbance in the room might turn the sarcophagus off. "They nearly got him once before but not on this side of the reservoir."
"Help me get him out."
Moren pushed Faudron away. "It's healing him."
"Just like that?"
Moren ran a hand along the brass lid. "If he wants you to know, he'll tell you in the morning."
"Tell me what?"
"That he loves you. I think he always did."
Her heart felt lighter for a second, but Moren never said anything that was really on the mark. Faudron remembered her lighter and fumbled in her pocket. She lit it, and Moren huddled close as if lighting herself. Faudron wondered why life was so cruel; she'd just lost Moren, by the dull look in her eye when she looked into hers, and won Rau, but she didn't want Rau; it was all too strange.
She held Moren's hand. "I didn't do this."
"I know you didn't do this."
"And how can that be; we've just met?" Faudron asked.
"I seen paintings about how things are going to be."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"And this," Moren said, moving the lighter closer to the sarcophagus thing and coughing for the scent of blood, "Is why he was born."
"And he told you this?" Faudron asked.
"He tells me everything, cause he has no one else to tell. You can't stay here; it doesn't do any good. Let's go, big sister."
"But he's in a c, c, coffin."
Moren put her hand on her hips as if waiting for Faudron to grow up. "Oh, ok." She went to the computer in the corner and tapped the spacebar, turning it on but the software on the screen showed strange hieroglyphic-style characters instead of Windows.
Moren's eyes glowed in the reddish-light from the screen. She started to speak, then motioned with both hands as if Faudron should get out of the line of sight.
Faudron took a step to the left.
"Over, over, no behind the column. Go." Moren took a breath. "E-T phone home." She giggled. "It doesn't matter what you say. It's sort of like with Word discs, they give you a code, but if you type in all zeros it works just as well."
An e-mail-like screen came up, then a photo of a man who looked like Rau. He spoke in some ugly language, harsh and commanding and when he got no answer, he approached his desk.
When Moren reached over to tap the keyboard, he pointed at her hand and cursed. It had to be curses by the expression on his face. Faudron was glad some things were universal.
Before Moren tapped the spacebar, the man
turned to someone else in the room. She came on-camera and handed him a piece of paper. In profile, neither of them had any ears.
Moren gave Faudron one of her, ain't this something looks and approached the monitor from the side as if hiding, scratched the letters ok with her fingernail on the e-mail window and pressed send. She tapped the space bar again.
He didn't seem to like that. His picture disappeared.
"He's from up there," Moren said. "Isn't that great?"
"No, it isn't." Rau had kissed her, space germs, space germs and secrets. You were supposed to call someone in a situation like this, or maybe you weren't supposed to call anybody. Rau was like Doctor Zaius, no he was Doctor Zais, no he was that guy in the gorilla suit with the fish-bowl on his head in the Roger Coreman film on Creature Features. "What about the others?"
"No. They're just like us; they don't know what the heck is going on. Couple on the island. Dunno how many." Moren bent down and unplugged the computer. "Just to make him mad. I don't like that one at all."
Faudron stared at the sarcophagus, then at the window. She tiptoed on the blood then climbed over the fallen shelving and tried to get to the window.
"I know what you're thinking," Moren said, "And you shouldn't be thinking it. It's why we're all here, everybody. And he's the only friend we've got." Moren shook her head as she got on her hands and knees and plugged the computer back in. "You better not have broken it." She stepped back and smiled when it came on. "I like that. You don't need that startup. It just turns on." She tapped the spacebar; the click of a deadbolt sounded and the window opened, letting in the sound of rain hitting the horse barn's tin roof and the constant smell of low tide, swamp and Katydids chirping in trees.
All of it had been kept out; how could the windows be that sound-proof? Faudron wanted to scream. Someone should have given her at least a head's up.
She imagined mom and dad at the hospital when she was born. 'Yeah, Doc, by the way, in nineteen years we have to go live in wolf town, but it's worth it. I get to be an Astronaut.' She kept an eye on Moren so she wouldn't touch anything and crossed the room to the sarcophagus.
Inside, Rau breathed easily. She should have noticed before; he had been too right and too wrong at the same time, just what she had wanted to hear.
"He can take care of himself," Moren said.
"Don't say anything, no wisecracks."
"Yeah, well?"
"I'll never speak to you again if you do," Faudron said.
"What I do?"
"Why is he here? Next door, I mean."
Moren played with her hair little-girlishly. "Mom said he's supposed to take care of you."
"Why?" Faudron asked.
"Cause they hate you in this town."
"Why?"
"Because whatever they did to them on the island, it didn't work and whatever they did to you...did."
"Is that all?" Faudron asked.
"Sure, sis."
"That good?"
Moren smiled. "Dad thinks so. Watch." She tapped the computer but nothing happened. "Hey." She ran her fingers all over it, up and down the keyboard.
An alarm went off, the sound so loud, Faudron felt her insides quiver. In a moment, she'd evacuate. She'd seen it happen on tv. They had sound alarms that could knock you to the ground and empty all ten miles of intestines.
She climbed the broken shelves and squeezed out the open window, grabbing a rock from outside and jamming it against the doorframe, afraid the window would lock Moren in. She took her by the hand and pulled her out. They lay on the lawn for a moment, trembling in the chilly rain.
"It's morning, big sister."
"That's supposed to help."
"You really should be happier," Moren said.
"We're going to look."
"They want you to be ok," Moren said.
"I'm guessing space people are...ok, little sister."
"It was bound to happen."
"Not to me," Faudron said.
"But of course to us. Dad asked for it."
"No," Faudron said.
Moren took her by the hands and stared into her eyes. "We can go with them when the time comes."
"And why would I want to?"
"That so, Faudron?" She stood, started to help Faudron up then let her fingers slide and drop her. "You can go; I can't; something about the lack of gravity would make me sick."
"You talk to them on that machine?"
"Sure. People like me, Faudron. You should be friendlier."
Faudron felt so angry, she'd say anything but all she could do was shout, "No, no, no." Moren did this all the time. She took the car and someone got her out of it. She got tossed out of school and she didn't have to go back and face it or go anywhere else. If dad were here he'd put her in kiddie-rehab, but no, mom would cover for her and everybody would just call it the growing pains of a wild spirit.
Moren leaned on her stomach, shimmied to the window, leaned in and pulled out a cigarette from a toolbelt hanging from the inner wall. "Hides 'em there when he's trying to quit." Moren tried to light it, but the rain didn't like that and she wasted five matches. When she did get it lit, she coughed which was something because if it wasn't her first cigarette, it wasn't much more than her second.
"Are you going to get all mad and go no, no, no again? I liked that. I saw that movie. The Gandi guy in Sexy Beast. Doesn't scare me when you do it. And he can't act, either." She took another puff, then stared at the cigarette as the rain melted it into paper and parts. "You watch too much television, it's no good for you."
"Don't you dare go back to the cemetery."
Moren stuck her tongue out at her. "That guy on the computer. He and the others did stuff to mom and dad." She pointed at the water. "Right on that island, long time ago, I guess. That's why you're the way you are and me, maybe. See, werewolves live a long, long time, but the trouble is, you got to be a werewolf to enjoy it. Hardly seems worth it."
"Moren, did that strange guy in the computer tell you that?"
"No, the lama told me."
Faudron stared at the barn. The lama belonged in a zoo. Maybe it was already in a zoo. "Remember Jungle Habitat?"
"No. I think I was two or something."
"That's where you got the stuffed Bugs Bunny from. They went belly up and they left all the animals there for months and months till some hunter stumbled across the place. The lions ate some lions; the baboons ate some baboons, and the ostriches kicked some ostriches to death over grass. Is that what they eat?"
"Are you saying this is like Jungle Habitat?" Moren asked.
"No, I'm saying stay away from that computer until Rau comes clean."
"If he lives."
"That too. Get his cigarettes will you. And you can't have any. Give 'em."
Chapter 9
Faudron would never call this house home, but it was better, for now, than being anywhere else, though it smelled moldy. People worried about mold now. Every house Faudron had ever moved into had that smell and it hadn't harmed anybody, but the damp here never ended. Faudron coughed, sat back down on the living room couch and pulled the quilt hanging over the couch's back up around her neck.
"When was the last time you slept?" Moren asked.
"Since the day before the night before my flight. Forty-eight hours, maybe. How long can you go without sleep, anyway?"
"Until you die. I could go to the cemetery and..."
"And sea dead people?" Faudron asked. "Don't you dare. You forgot about the nice wolves out there. Somewhere."
"I'll just take the car."
"To the cemetery drive through window?" Faudron asked.
"They don't have a brain in their heads when the sun goes down. They aren't after us; they're just out for the hunt, and that's taken care of pretty much. Dumb as can be." Moren paused as if she didn't want to say the wrong thing. "Have you never been to town? Most nights it's just the little ones that don't come home. Then all the beat up guys. Me and Karen used to watch them."
<
br /> "She your friend?"
"I don't think she was really ready for the wild hour."
"And you?"
"No, not me, you. The lama told me. But I think you'll be all right and we can go. Sure, I've got it all planned. You join up after college, marry him, get killed in Iran then by then I'll be old-enough to marry him and I'll be so sad and really grateful for the insurance policy you left me. We'll name each of our kids after you."
"Won't mom have to sign something."
"She's dead," Moren said.
"So's dad."
"I hate you."
Faudron looked at the TreePros bill on the table. Moren had spilled juice or soda on it and it was partially stuck to the tablecloth. She wondered if any of the aunts and uncles would want their things. Dad had a rack of bad ties, though he mostly wore the same two. But someone might want them.
Moren crossed the room, sideways, step by step so Faudron would have to look at her. Faudron kept shifting her glance, foot by foot towards the kitchen until she noticed the soapy windows. All that bullet-proof glass and they got 'em anyway.
"Sorry I told you like that," they said at the same time.
Faudron noticed pencil marks on the hallway doorway. Not their's, some kids, some kids who'd left this place? That would be something. On the wall above the marks, the Elvis clock's legs had stopped moving.
Everything smelled of that reservoir and a leak had started just above the kitchen window. She thought of Rau. He'd be no help. He might even just disappear into that thing and reappear at the far end of some video call connection to his basement. Faudron tried to think, but no plan would come to her. She tossed off the blanket, grabbed the keys off the kitchen table and ran to the door. "We skate."
"Me first," Moren said.
They got outside and ran for the driver's side door at the same time.
"Just next door. Just let me drive next door," Moren said.
They struggled to get in first. Faudron let Moren win to so she'd have an excuse to check on Rau one more time. She got in the passenger seat and held a finger in the air to ask Moren to wait and reached for the door handle.
