by Spain, Laura
Harlow glanced at his brother.
“What’s he saying?”
Will cocked his head.
“Run.”
The bearded man hooked his fingers into his mouth and whistled. The plentaple leapt out of its tidal pool, hovered a moment in the air, and started back across the beach, running along on its tentacles with amazing speed. The giant adjusted his course for the bearded man, moving even faster now as he came out of the shallows and stepped onto the beach. Harlow and Will stayed frozen where they were, wide-eyed and slack jawed in the giant’s shadow.
The bearded man held out his right arm as the plentaple came toward him, opening its mouth. Harlow couldn’t see any teeth—just a dark, widening spot that replaced the creature’s entire face as the top of its head flipped back, like the head of a puppet, and suddenly the plentaple was leaping across the sand and swallowing the bearded man’s arm whole, all the way to the socket, while its tentacles wrapped around his chest and shoulders.
Instead of screaming, the bearded man smiled. A ball of white light appeared at the end of his plentaple/arm, so bright it was hard to look at, even in the wash of daylight.
“Holy shit,” Will said. “What the—”
The giant, who’d been moving fast already, closed the distance between himself and the bearded man in three bounds. He drew his arm back, ready to throw a punch, and the bearded man raised his plentaple/arm in front of him. A ray of white, luminous light shot into the sky, vaporizing the giant’s hand just as he was about to land the punch. The giant howled and swiped blindly at the bearded man with his other arm, knocking the bearded man off his feet and flinging him far, very far, until his flapping body smashed into the cliff and slid down near the entrance to the secret cave.
Will and Harlow staggered backward in the sand, the ghostly afterimage of the beam seared into their minds. The giant lifted his head and howled at the sky, putting every seagull in Breakneck Cove to flight in screeching unison. A charred, smoldering stump had appeared just above his right elbow—no more hand.
“Harlow.”
The gulls swirled above the cove like a white feathery tornado.
“Harlow, we need to hide. Now.”
The giant began to lumber toward the incoming tide. Will dropped his hand on Harlow’s shoulder, making him jump.
“He won’t be distracted long. We need to hide.”
Harlow winced, remembering the sight of the bearded man flying through the air like a toy doll.
“Where?”
Will pointed toward the cliffs.
“The cave.”
Harlow nodded and they started to run. He’d cut his bare feet on the rocky shoreline, but felt the pain only as a sharp stinging that prodded him to run faster, to run beyond the stinging and the screeching gulls and the wind roaring dull and steady in his ears. He could not remember ever being either this afraid or this excited, not in his entire nine-year-old life.
Will, who’d always been the fastest, gained ground easily and made it to the base of the cliff first. By the time Harlow caught up, his older brother was standing over the bearded man and prodding him with his foot.
“Is he alive?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Harlow glanced back at the giant, who’d waded into the ocean and dropped to his knees. The giant dipped the charred stump of his right arm into the water and bellowed thunderously, his head thrown back to the sky. The gulls, still circling cautiously above the cove, replied to bellowing with renewed screeching frenzy.
Harlow squatted above the unconscious man and eyed the dark red...thing attached to his arm. The thing that had once been the plentaple.
“He was trying to warn us, wasn’t he?
Will laced his hands behind his head, breathing hard.
“I think so.”
“Then we need to hide him, too.”
“But—”
Harlow grabbed the man’s feet and lifted.
“C’mon. Hurry.”
* * * * *
They half-carried, half-dragged the bearded man behind the cave’s hidden entrance and propped him against a rock. Sweat dripped into Harlow’s eyes and matched the stinging in his feet. He stuck his head around the entrance and peeked out at the giant, who was still seated on the ocean’s edge, head lowered in thought as the tide washed over him. He looked smaller now, somehow. More like a regular person.
Harlow drew his head back.
“He’s still sitting there.”
“Good. Maybe he’ll decide to swim away.”
Will bent over the bearded man. He touched the plentaple’s rubbery hide and stroked it with his fingers. Something inside it beeped and Will jumped back.
“Dude! Did you hear that?”
Harlow nodded, wiping the sweat from his eyes. He could still see the beam of white light tearing through the air and rising into the atmosphere. He bet it had been visible from space.
“Let’s go further, Will. All the way into the cave.”
“All right.”
They picked up the bearded man again and brought him into the cave’s narrow entrance. Harlow noticed blood trickling from one of the man’s ears and wondered if that meant he was going to die or what. It took some scraping, but they made it through the narrow tunnel and into the little room at the back of the cave. The tin washtub was still there, though it’d been overturned and the seaweed inside of it was all over the floor, stinking the place up. They set the bearded man down and sat with their backs against the cave wall. Wind whistled down the tunnel.
“He’ll find us,” Harlow said. “I bet he saw us running toward here.”
“Maybe. He’s too big for the tunnel, though. He’ll get wedged in if he tries coming in here.”
“Yeah.”
Harlow raised his knees to his chest and considered his feet. No way would he be able to hide these cuts—if they survived this, their mother would know for sure he’d forgotten his sandals. She might even make him go to the doctor and sit in that stupid exam room, waiting on that crinkly paper….
Will set his hand on Harlow’s shoulder.
“It’ll be okay, Harley. We’ll be fine.”
Harlow wiped the snot from his nose. He watched the bearded man’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall.
“Where do you think he’s from?”
Will frowned.
“The F.B.I., probably. That laser canon is some cool shit.”
“I think he’s from space. Outer space.”
“Like, an alien?”
“Or something.”
Will leaned over and looked closely at the bearded man’s face, until his forehead almost touched the man’s nose.
“He doesn’t look like an alien to me.”
“I don’t know,” Harlow said, standing up. “He doesn’t really seem to fit in around here.”
“Fit in? Like Oregon?”
Harlow held out his arms.
“Just…here.”
Will straightened and gave Harlow a funny look. Harlow shrugged and tapped the bearded man’s side with his bare toe.
“Whoever he is, I wish he’d wake up.”
* * * * *
The ground started to shake, but they thought that might have been their imaginations. The seagulls started a fresh round of screeching, though, and that definitely wasn’t their imaginations. Both boys could easily imagine the giant striding up the beach and eyeing the cliffs for the smallest opening. He’d had enough time to recover from losing his hand and he’d be looking for revenge—he’d want to finish off the bearded man and then, for the fun of it, he’d finish them off, too.
A fine rain of sand filtered down from the cave’s ceiling and dusted their heads.
“We should go check and see what he’s doing,” Will whispered, standing in the small room’s entrance and peering down the narrow tunnel. “I think I see shadows moving out there.”
“Then we should stay right here, duh.”
Will ducked his head and went a
few steps down the tunnel. Harlow watched him go, his small face bunched in worry.
“Don’t.”
“Wait here, Harlow. I won’t go far.”
Harlow waited, watching his brother’s outline grow smaller against the light beyond the cave’s entrance. He heard a faint, dry snap and suddenly the tunnel was nearly dark except for a few spots of light. He heard his brother’s labored breath as he came fumbling back out of the near dark.
“He’s blocked it. He’s blocked up the cave.”
Harlow stared down the tunnel as his brother pushed past him.
“What is it?”
“Driftwood. A whole pile of driftwood.”
Harlow squinted until the pattern of dark and light formed something like branches—his brother was right. Harlow closed his eyes and rubbed them until floating colors appeared. When he opened them again, one color remained: a drifting, reddish-orange red.
“He’s going to bury us in here,” Will said, slumping to the ground and leaning back against the cave wall. “Mom and Dad won’t ever find us.”
Harlow rubbed his eyes again. Instead of getting smaller, the reddish-orange was actually growing.
“Will.”
“What?”
“Come look.”
His brother got to his feet again and stood beside Harlow. He watched for a few seconds, then swore and dropped his head.
“He’s started a fire. We have to run now, Harley.”
“But—”
“The smoke will kill us in five minutes. I’ll go first and try to distract him. You run up and get Mom and Dad. Tell Dad to call the cops and bring his shotgun.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“I don’t care. I’m the oldest, and I’m in charge.”
Will turned his back and started down the tunnel again. Harlow could already smell smoke. The tunnel’s opening was growing bright with the fire. Harlow turned around, gave the unconscious bearded man a hard kick for one last wakeup call, and started after his brother. A few feet down the tunnel they both had to drop to the ground so they could breathe, the heat growing fiercer every second. Finally, when neither of them could bear it any longer, the boys sprung up like startled rabbits and ran along the edges of the fire.
Will went right, Harlow went left.
Twenty feet later Harlow, singed but okay, turned to see his brother dangling in the air, his shoes kicking at nothing.
The giant had him by the throat.
The giant had him by the throat and Will was looking out at the ocean, where the waves were crashing over the breakers and the spray flew in all directions. Harlow found himself screaming, screaming and waving, but Will did not seem to notice him standing there across the beach. The giant noticed, though. He turned to Harlow and smiled, raising Will even higher in the air before dashing him against the slate gray cliff, headfirst, filling the air with a spray of red.
Harlow gasped.
That was his brother, spraying blood like that.
His brother’s head—
A beam of white light shot through the air, slicing through the giant’s torso. The bearded man had appeared outside the cave and was standing in front of the driftwood fire, his pea coat black with soot, the plentaple still on the end of his arm. The giant raised his hands in the air, bellowed once, and dropped facedown onto the beach while his severed legs remained standing. Harlow fell to his knees and pitched forward, dropping into oblivion while the gulls of Breakneck Cove screeched anew.
6
When Harlow came to, he’d been delirious for a week and they’d already buried his brother. He recalled fragments of what’d happened—the plentaple washing ashore, the bearded man, the giant bellowing as he looked at the smoking stump on the end of his arm—but he couldn’t remember anything past coughing beside Will in the secret cave as it filled with smoke. The police interviewed him several times and Harlow told them everything he could remember, though he knew they didn’t believe him and thought he’d lost his marbles. They’d found no traces of the giant or the bearded man. Just a charred pile of driftwood piled outside their cave and his brother lying on the beach with his head smashed and some of his blood splattered high up on the side of the cliff.
His parents didn’t believe him, either. They thought the bearded man in the pea coat was a child molester and that he’d murdered Will. They didn’t believe in the giant or the plentaple at all. They said Harlow was traumatized and that being traumatized scrambled your brains and made you remember things that never happened. They said he was coping. Coping with the trauma.
Which maybe he was, but still. Harlow could remember most of what had happened clearly and he even saw a beam of light when he closed his eyes to go to sleep.
A light so bright it crackled.
* * * * *
School started and it was different without Will. Everybody gawked at Harlow and whispered about him and he had a hard time paying attention in class. He felt like he was visiting an alien planet. When he came home in the afternoon, he’d run down to the cove. He’d stand in the Pacific surf and let his feet and ankles go numb as he watched the foamy blue horizon. What worried Harlow most of all was that nothing would come next. That his family’s small part in bigger events was over and that he would never understand why, or to what purpose.
The waves kept rolling in, restless and cold, and Harlow knew he’d need to harden his heart from this point on.
The Tangletown Tailor
by Gary Gray
Luna sat on an old crate by the window, looking into the thick fog. Her gray hair was long and full and thick. She lifted her front paw to her mouth. She licked in between her claws, took wide swipes across the top of her paw and rubbed her paw across her gray face. Her collar was pink and hidden in the depths of her fur. Her tail was long and elegant and plumed.
In the back of the shop, among racks of coats and sweaters, down aisles of old boxes, sat an old small desk with a small lamp. Pincushions, pinking shears, seam rippers, tracing paper, stitching awls, thimbles, tape measures, and needles littered the desk. She was tall and thin with long brown hair and wore black slacks and a white blouse and she sat next to the old man.
“I still can’t believe you don’t have a computer,” she said.
“It’s all right here,” he said. “I’ve always kept good records.”
His head was bald. He wore a black shirt and gray wool pants. Reading glasses sat on the tip of his nose. He had been a small man most of his life, but old age was not kind. As his joints weakened, weight arrived. Moving around was more difficult. Simple tasks were not so simple.
“I know you have,” she said, turning the pages of a ledger full of tiny hand-written numbers. He sat back and took the glasses from his nose, setting them on the old desk. He straightened his back, letting out a low moan.
“It is what it is,” he said.
“I know it’s hard, but it’ll do you good. You’ve worked too long.”
He hid years of experience behind an insincere smile. She closed the ledger. “No more orders?”
“None,” he said.
“Good.” She stood. She walked to the corner and picked up a heavy black coat and put her arm through it and pulled it around her body. She grabbed a white scarf and wrapped it around her neck. From her pocket, she pulled out two thin black gloves and pulled them over her thin fingers. She walked back to the desk. She put her hand on the man’s back and kissed his head.
“I love you, dad.”
“I love you, dear.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
He smiled.
She walked among the old boxes and racks to the front of the shop. She reached out to pet Luna. Like a flash of light, Luna swatted at the hand.
“Bitchy cat,” she said. She pulled open the front door. The rusty bell dinged as the door opened and dinged as the door shut. Luna watched her walk down the sidewalk and into the fog. She licked her paw. The Tailor stood in the shop alone. He looked at the fra
med pictures on the wall, old pictures of customers, pictures of Judy when she was just walking, a framed dollar bill, and his business license turning brown at the edges.
Luna dropped down from the box, arched her back, and extended her front paws for a long stretch. She walked to where the Tailor stood. She rubbed the side of her small gray head against his leg and began to purr. He squatted. She smelled his hand and then he rubbed just behind her ear. “Luna bella,” he said softly and she purred. And then he saw the large figure at the front window. A man stood facing into the store. The Tailor couldn’t make out a face. A shadow in the fog. The Tailor stood frozen a moment and then moved toward the front door. His foot bumped into Luna. He stumbled and reached out for the desk to steady himself. Luna darted off between boxes. He regained his balance and looked up. The figure was gone.
He placed the ledger in a drawer and put his pencil in a mug on the desk. “I have to leave,” he said to Luna. She jumped onto the desk, rubbing her head on the lamp. The Tailor pulled a heavy gray coat from the coat rack. He wrapped a scarf around his neck and put leather gloves over his aging hands. He rubbed Luna’s head and flipped off the light. Darkness. He walked to the front door pulling keys from his pocket. He pulled open the door. The bell rang. The door closed behind him. The bell rang. He stood looking into the fog for a moment, feeling the heavy moisture of the air fill his nose and his mouth. He turned and put the key in the door, turning it until the door was locked. He turned around and the figure was back.
He was tall and thin. His shoulders were broad. He wore a black wool pea coat. The collar stood up tall, shielding the man’s face. His coat was unbuttoned. Something was stuffed inside it.
“Good evening,” the figure said.
“Evening,” the Tailor said, his heart skipping a beat, trying to regain his bearings.
