by Eric Ellert
She touched Rau's face, his skin so cold she almost expected him to turn blue.
A tall, thin, man much like Rau appeared out of the fog, shaking his head. "You rang, deary," he said, with an English-schooled accent.
Faudron looked down then up then down at his approaching feet, wanting to yell or ask what he did on this, her island, but there wasn't an answer in the world he could give that would ring softly in her ears so she smiled the way people in the movies smile when they meet the natives who look like they eat people.
He stood next to her. His clothes smelled of mothballs and his dark suit was so old-fashioned he might have stepped out of a carriage. He pulled a box out of his pocket, bent down, put his fingers in Rau's mouth and yanked, snapping Rau's head back and forth. He pulled out a mouthpiece and stuck a new one in its place. "Pure oxygen, can't abide it. He should have known." He sat on his haunches like an animal and smiled, though he stared at the water and not at Faudron. "Well, then."
He turned to go, pasty-faced, somehow alive and not alive.
"You're him, aren't you?" Faudron asked.
"I'll kill him one day, but not today."
"What are you?"
"A creature of the night," he whispered, "in the night, with the night."
Faudron stood and took a few steps after him. "Kau, whatever went on here is forgotten, over. Come in out of the cold. NASA people are good people. We owe you now."
"I've been to Jungle Habitat, it's not far. They never had the heart to tear it down. Or maybe you could come with me, and my people could put you in our version of Jungle Habitat. People could poke you and prod you and watch you and ask you the cutest little questions, hoping you'll die and they can dissect you. You want to know what we did? Phony experiments to hide the fact that I bit one of the children we borrowed and then they bit one another. Just for the hell of it. And not so long after this place is abandoned, someone will begin to wonder, and start to ask. They'll never forgive all the yellow feet on the floor. Go outside with you? No, thank you."
He took a few steps into the fog and paused.
Faudron was just about to whisper goodbye and thank you when Kau came back in a leap. He knocked her down and placed a foot on her neck. "I kill people when I can. Can't stop it. Would do it to but I saw you and I thought, she belongs here. Fair in the forest you seemed. What kind of monster would tear apart his daydream? But if I ever get off this island, I will. If you ever come back upon an evening, I'll have to, or the others will. Or worse, I'd make you one of us."
He leapt back into the fog, and broke through the brush until he was out of hearing.
From the fog behind where he'd stood, endless wolves growled, winged, and dug the ground, kicking leaves in the air that floated all around Faudron. One of the wolves followed the road, it's paws making a tap-scratch sound as it approached. It got on two legs, pawed Faudron, then ran backed off out of sight.
"You see why we have so few tourists?" Kau said from somewhere in the fog, then Faudron realized it was in her mind, and she felt sick, because she got a glimpse of what was in his – his teeth on her throat, her blood in his belly, a lupine life to follow with him and them on this awful island.
He appeared at the path's edge, smiled, waived and turned to go.
The barge's foghorn rang out and he ran away.
Faudron got up, rubbing her neck. The things moved so fast, she wondered if the Kau had really had his teeth against her flesh. There were monsters in the fog and she was helpless against them, so helpless she didn't fear them.
The horn blasted again and the barge smacked into the seawall. Someone disembarked and approached. Faudron ducked when she saw the size of him. As he came closer he looked like a thing made of Frankenstein's monster parts.
She covered Rau's chest with her hand, making sure he breathed but he was so cold, his breath so slow he was in something stranger than sleep.
"It's all right," Moren said. She hopped of the barge and stood next to Blue. She was dressed in baggy, yellow clothes, her hair falling in front of her face. Faudron couldn't help but think of painted, yellow feet on a concrete floor.
"You sure?" Faudron asked pointing at him. "Didn't stay home, did you?"
"No, Fau; it's OK now."
"Yes?" Faudron pointed back at the trees and listened for the sound of werewolves kicking leaves.
"And he's big-enough to lift Rau. His name's blue. You'd be too if you lived on this island. What's wrong with you coming here? He likes me. I'm not too sure he likes you, but he likes me. You should be nicer to people."
Chapter 19
1948:
"Doctor. Kau. The children are waiting," the orderly said.
Kau laid out a row of shots on a metal tray and handed them to the orderly. "Not now. You do it." He went to the wall and pulled down a shotgun from a glass cabinet.
The orderly looked at the newspaper clipping on Kau's desk. "Jersey werewolf? You don't believe in that do you?"
"Someone's killing our deer."
"NASA won't like it. You hunting and all."
NASA ain't nothing. Didn't they tell you that? Bunch of monkeys run this world. Not for long. Besides. I liked my deer. They were mine and I liked them. I've wanted to shoot a hunter since we arrived."
***
Kau made a circuit of the reservoir island but didn't have any luck tracking his prey, so he doubled-back and went to the spot where they'd found the latest deer carcass. He hadn't told the orderly, but there were hunters missing as well.
He had a feeling about this part of the woods. When he got to the edge of the clearing, he checked his rifle. Up ahead, someone hummed a song. He stepped into the clearing expecting a hunter but found a woman painting picture. She had a good easel setup and a professional set of paints. He knew; he'd been checking up on hobbies to chase the boredom of this endless assignment among the big-ears of earth. "What the hell are you doing here?"
She finished a brush stroke before answering. "Minding my own business," Mrs. Rochambeau said. "And painting a picture."
"You can't do that here."
"So shoot me."
He put the rifle down. "All right. At least let me see what your painting. If it's any good at all, you can stay."
Mrs. Rochambeau turned the easel towards him.
It showed a ghastly picture of Kau hanging on to the edge of a roof, floodwaters rising around his throat, clearly about to drown in a whirlpool. "How did you do this?" He took a step towards the rifle. It wasn't a legend at all. She was the lady the others had brought here from France so many years ago, the woman with the undying blood, but he'd been told that she had died. "You should not be here. It is not possible."
"Come closer."
Kau did, really wanting to get the rifle but for some reason he couldn't.
Mrs. Rochambeau leaned forward and nipped him on the neck.
She pushed him away.
She turned into a werewolf and grabbed his neck in her jaws breaking the skin. The pain was terrible but he couldn't move or break free as the blood of life dribbled out of his neck.
Mrs. Rochambeau pulled away and spit. "Sour blood, bad blood. You're not even good-enough for the hunt." She sat back in the grass and kicked the painting over. "Now, get out of here. Get out of here before I kill you."
Kau grabbed his bleeding neck and ran back through the woods, not daring to stop until he got to his office. Luckily, no one was around. He reached into a medicine cabinet on the wall and pulled out a bandage. With the proper equipment, stanching the blood wouldn't be a problem, but when he took his hand off the wound, it was healed. He had a sore throat, something deep as if he'd been infected, but not even a scar.
He sat in a chair for two hours, almost in a trance, debating what he might do with this new find. He made his decision. He got a hypodermic needle from the medicine cabinet, drew blood from his neck and injected the blood into six vials.
He stared at the vials on his desk, tempted to throw them into the ga
rbage, but pressed the buzzer on his desk instead.
Soon the orderly arrive.
"How did the children react to the rabbis shots?" Kau asked.
"As you'd expect."
He pushed the vials across his desk. "Shoot them full of this. Tell the parents, both their's and ours , it's another round. Normal procedure."
"What is it"?" the orderly asked, holding the vials up. "Looks like blood, but it's blue and red all swirled together."
"It is the future, the future of man," Doctor Kau said.
"And why is that?"
"Because I said so. Get lost."
Kau put his feet on his desk in the relaxed manner his human compatriots did. They were rubbing off on him. It would be a very long assignment, but some good might come of it. If he had to stay on this island, he might as well live a very long time. Who knows, things might change at home and he could return.
Screams came from down the hall. He tapped the buzzer. The orderly was so efficient, he deserved a couple of days off and on his way to the ferry, perhaps he could retrieve the painting.
Chapter 20
Faudron and Moren got Rau aboard and crossed the water.
Faudron knew it was unkind of her, but when she noticed all the gear aboard, she wondered why her parents couldn't have just started out with a saw and those boots you use to climb big trees. She sat outside; the big blue man in the cabin stared straight ahead. Rau lay on the deck, placed atop some life preservers, looking a lot better.
"Hey," Faudron whispered, poking Moren's shoulder. "How come wolves don't bother him?"
Moren brushed her hand away. "The details might be too technical for me to explain to you. He's big and blue and scary, how's that?" She leaned forward. "Oh, and I think he hates Rau's guts. Not that he's like a smoke monster or anything. Matter of fact, he's pretty all right and I'm not just saying that because he can hear me."
Faudron looked at Blue's misshapen back, but if he'd heard them, he gave no indication.
"I think," Moren said, "that if you leave your window open, he can hear the stuff you say in the house from way out across the water."
"Stop it," Faudron said.
***
When they docked, the house looked so run-down, as if it had been abandoned a long time and re-inhabited by squatters. The reservoir smelled like dead eels on this end. Something about the constant fog made Faudron want to tiptoe and whisper. She tried to pick Rau up, but that was impossible. "You think we need a stretcher?"
Blue ignored her and picked Rau up in a fireman's carry.
"Should you do that?" Faudron asked. "On tv, the Australian life guards seem so worried about injuring someone's neck they get like twenty people to lift a person out of the surf."
"Go away," Blue said.
Faudron had to tie the boat up as Moren and Blue headed to Rau's house. She managed to get the bow secure and let the stern swing out into the current. A second after she hopped on the dock, the line came undone and the boat drifted away. "Good riddance."
***
When Faudron climbed down to Rau's basement; they'd already put him in the cylinder.
Blue had to duck not to hit the ceiling. He scanned the room, taking a brief interest in all the computer equipment then went to the stairs, holding the hat on his head to protect it from the rafters.
"Thanks, Blue," Moren said.
He didn't answer and Faudron felt a lot better when she heard the outside door open and close.
The barge's engine's started.
"It should work out well for him," Faudron said. "He doesn't look like he needs the crane to pluck the trees. We could send it back."
"He's nice." Moren turned her back on Faudron, crossed the room, bumping into one of the monitors, knocking it over. She caressed the brass sarcophagus. "He's in there an awful lot. Doesn't seem to do him much good."
"Shut up," Faudron said.
"I know. I'll be next door." She got to the top of the stairs and flicked the light on and off. "It's nice and all but it's not like you're married."
"Shut up," Faudron said.
"It's not possible, that's all. He's gonna die here."
"Don't you dare tell me he wants to."
"Just saying." Moren flicked the lights on and off. "I liked you better before you came home."
Chapter 21
Faudron watched over Rau but couldn't stand the electric clock noises coming from the sarcophagus and when it filled with liquid like a washing machine she had to cover the clear faceplate with a paper towel.
She was tempted to mess around with the computers and tell the ear-heads they ought to get here. How hard could it be? We didn't send anyone out there without a way to get them back. Then again, maybe they were there just to make Rau feel at ease. Maybe Rau was like this town, forgotten, out of budget, a nuisance from the troubled-Cold War past they had closed the lights on. And was she damaged goods to them? Might there not be a place off this miserable mountain for them? Could you just start over, no questions asked? Splinter had said he'd get them out, but them hadn't included Rau.
She went upstairs and ran the vacum, hoping the noise might disturb Rau and the sarcophagus would speed up a bit. When she was done, she looked around the strange living room and kitchen so built to please company, so unlived in, everything showroom new, though reeking of the past. Maybe their telescope was late or their budget short and they'd furnished the house modern as they had seen it but a couple of decades late, thinking it a small point that didn't matter. Maybe they had a scanner down there. Faudron could scan in an Ikea catalog and tell 'em not to buy crap like this next time, buy crap like that. Just take a picture of someone's house and copy it. It'd be much simpler.
She opened the fridge, looking for a soda, then saw the eels dodging in and out of the cans and shut the door. She opened and closed the old-fashioned car door handle on the fridge. Parents still warned kids not to play inside a thrown-out one, though they stopped making them with locks decades ago. She tried not to think about eels slithering in and out of all the food, but then again, what did it matter? What she might get she'd surely have gotten already and it couldn't be any worse than what might happen to her in a couple of hours. She opened the door fast, pulled out a soda and washed it under hot water in the sink.
An eel had fallen out on the floor and tried to wiggle under the refrigerator but ran into the grate. Faudron looked around, hoping the house might have a cat or something. "All right," she said. She picked the eel up by the tail, opened the refrigerator door and tossed it inside.
She washed her hands in the sink, but couldn't get the gummy stuff the eel had left on her hand off. Maybe there was some cleaner in the upstairs bathroom. She'd wanted an excuse to go up and snoop. It must be a mess.
She ran up the stairs, but when she got to the landing, there was nothing there, but clean, white walls and four mid-sized rooms as if Rau had never lived here. No, the walls had been newly patched as if he was preparing to move. "Good boy, not to leave a mess," Faudron murmured, thinking of all the base housing she'd arrived in that the evacuees had left with bad paintjobs and junk in the garage.
She checked out all the rooms. In the corner of one sat a bathyscaph, one of those brass balls from the thirties they dropped down on a ship's cable to see how deep they could go. Astronauts, after a fashion, though she thought they'd called themselves Argonauts.
She wiped the frosty glass from the cold water within and peered inside. A whale looked back. Faudron backed away so fast she fell, shaking the cheaply built house. The whale turned and backed away into the murky water.
Santa had once asked her what she wanted most. That might have been it. If Moren came up here, maybe she'd see something else. She pressed against the bathyscaph but couldn't budge it. She wondered how the floor carried all that weight. No, they would have considered that. She almost laughed; they tried to make things reasonably normal looking but couldn't get anything quite right. The whale was an illusion, like those glass-w
avy things that try to look like a rough sea. The bathyscaph wasn't that convincing, but it leaked, just a tiny pinprick. The water shot out so forcefully, it stung her fingers when she touched it.
She checked her watch, her new nervous habit. Nothing Rau owned made any sense. If it was an illusion, why did it need pressurized water? She pressed her hand on the glass. "Talk to me."
The whale cursed like a lama which kind of made sense. Faudron backed-up, then stepped sideways to get out of its range of vision. "Hey, hey fish? What do you eat? Is it in the fridge? I could get it. I'm not touching the eels. If you eat eels you'll have to wait, or starve. And while I'm here, where'd that two-tailed mouse come from? Same place as you?"
Chapter 22
The barge came back. Moren ran outside and hopped aboard looking for Blue, but he wasn't there. He must have figured out how to send it back by the computer.
Moren got the pups and the box, brought them up to her room and fed them a can of tuna. She put a wind-up clock in the box, a lamp over it and placed some torn-up strips of newspaper inside. "Got to name you two." She patted one; the other nipped her with teething teeth. "Stop that."
Moren checked her fingers. It had broken the skin. She got the dry heaves from the smell of blood. She held it in and went into the bathroom. She ran her hand under the faucet to wash the cut off but the hot water cut out. It always did at the wrong time.
She went in her bedroom and dressed in green shorts the designer had run past the army and an orange t-shirt that might have been her's or Faudron's, she wasn't sure which. She ought to apologize to Faudron. When they'd put her boxes downstairs, Moren had noticed the lines on the wall left by the last flood, but figured good for her for not calling.
