"But what if it is?" Jason asked.
"Is what?" A flash of lightning beyond the windows dimmed the lights for an instant.
"Is alive." Jason gave a strange giggle. He was rubbing the scratch on his neck again. "What if everything you said is really true?"
"That's crazy. And you're crazy to believe it." Molly wished she had closed the drapes, but she didn't feel, somehow, like walking to the end of the room to do it. "The monkey belonged to Mrs. Welles's own children. She wouldn't give an evil thing to her own children."
"Those weren't her own children. She was their stepmother, and they didn't like each other when she first came to their house," Jason said. "She told me so."
And those children had all died as children. How they had died no one remembered anymore; it had happened such a long time ago. Molly had heard Mrs. Stark, the organist at church, telling her mother the old story just yesterday. One child had died from falling downstairs in a fit, Mrs. Stark thought. But nobody was still living who really knew, except Mrs. Welles, and she seemed to go on from generation to generation, never growing any older or getting any younger. Were the patches on the monkey from those stepchildren's clothes? Their clothes and no others?
"Anyway," Molly said a little too loudly, "the monkey's shut away. He can't—"
A roll of thunder stopped her. It started as a rumble that grew and grew until the house trembled. In the midst of it there was a click in the hall. Molly's neck muscles went stiff. She couldn't turn her head to look. But she didn't have to. She knew that the closet door had jarred open. "It's true," Jason whispered into the silence that followed the thunder. "True, what you said."
"No!" Molly cried. "Don't believe it. Don't."
But they both heard the thud of something falling—or jumping—to the floor from the closet shelf. They both heard the jingle of brass bells.
Molly shot a glance at the living room door. It was still empty. "Run," she said, and she hurled herself toward the opening just as the lights flickered and went out.
Something bumped into her and knocked her down. "Jason!" she yelled.
"Molly! Molly, help!"
He was behind her somewhere, lost in the dark. There were scuffling noises and a crash. He kept crying to her, but his voice seemed to come from first one direction and then another.
Molly was lost, too. A wall met her reaching hands where the doorway should have been. She turned to the right and stumbled against the armchair. Jason was no longer in it. The chair arm and the cushion were warm with a sticky wetness. In the corner of the chair her fingers slid across a glass ashtray like the ones she had set the cocoa mugs in.
"Jason," she called. "Where are you?"
This time there was no answer, no sound anywhere except the lashing of rain against the window.
A flare of lightning showed her the living room doorway. She ran for it and into the blackness of the hall. The edge of the closet door struck her head full force as though someone had pushed it. She went down in a heap on the floor.
When her spinning wits cleared and she could bear to lift her aching head, all the lights were on again. A woman on television was talking cheerily about toilet bowl cleaners.
Neither Jason nor the patchwork monkey were anywhere to be seen.
"Jason?" she tried waveringly.
"Up here. In my room." The voice was muffled a bit, but it was Jason's sure enough, and he wasn't crying.
He came out of his bedroom fully dressed as Molly gained the top of the stairs. His eyes were round and black in a very white face, but he was smiling.
"Where are your pajamas?" she asked. He ducked his head, avoiding her eyes as he tucked his shirt inside his faded blue denim jeans. "I changed them. They got—messed up."
His rumpled hair stood up like tufts of brown yarn. The shirt he had on was the patchwork one their grandmother had given him for his birthday. Molly hadn't ever noticed before that one of the patches was a triangle of blue gingham on the left shoulder. Or that at the throat there was a square of yellow the exact same shade as Jason's pajamas.
"What happened to you? How did you get up here?" She was groping behind her for the stair rail, but she couldn't find it.
"Don't you know?" Jason stretched out a hand still half-covered in a pink candy-striped cuff. "Come on. I'll show you."
"No." Molly raised her arm to ward him off. "Stay there. Stop it. Stop fooling."
He started toward her, his smile growing wider and thinner until it was a red line of yarn across his flat face. He laughed in a silly falsetto that wasn't Jason's laugh at all. "I'm not fooling," the monkey said.
Molly shrank away from the blazing yellow of his eyes.
The bells around his neck jingled as he moved closer. "No," she cried once more. "I don't believe you. You're not real."
And she stepped backward off the stairstep—into space. . ..
The Yamadan
by LYNNE GESSNER
The digital clock on the nightstand showed exactly midnight when Steve Glimson sat up in bed, wondering what had wakened him. He couldn't remember hearing a noise.
He didn't have a stomachache. And nobody had turned on a light. Yet here he was, sitting bolt upright in a pitch-dark room—waiting. For what?
Though the summer night air was balmy, he shivered.
As though sleepwalking, he slid from the upper bunk and dropped silently to the floor. Beyond the open window only blackness met his gaze. Yet he knew something was out there.
"Phew!" he gasped, clapping his hand over his nose and mouth as he caught a whiff of a musty odor—like rotten garbage.
At the sound of his low exclamation, two lights flickered in the darkness just outside his window. He felt his skin crawl as he stared, convinced somehow that these
two glowing lights were eyes staring at him. Yet how could they be? He had seen many wild animals in the woods surrounding the farm, but always their eyes reflected light, they never generated the light themselves. But on this moonless night there was no light to be reflected, and the house was in total darkness.
"What's up, Steve?" came a sleepy voice from the lower bunk.
"Nothing," he managed to say without a quiver. When he slammed shut the window, the two points of light disappeared. Only then did he turn to face his younger brother, Irwin. "Just closing the window because of the stink."
"What stink?" Irwin mumbled. "I don't smell anything."
"You couldn't smell cow dung if you fell in it."
"Sorry," Irwin said into his pillow, and immediately Steve regretted snapping at his brother. It wasn't fun having stopped-up sinuses like Irwin did, and the kid was sensitive about his allergy.
Steve climbed back into bed, but sleep was a long time coming. He kept seeing those two glowing lights. Finally he fell into restless sleep.
The sound of Irwin opening the window woke him, and he struggled off the bunk bed, feeling strangely tired. He looked at the eight-year-old boy, five years younger than himself. Maybe it was because Irwin was small for his age, or because he was a slow learner—not really mentally retarded, Steve insisted to himself, but slow in grasping new ideas. Anyway, it always made Steve feel protective about his brother—a protectiveness he didn't feel for his eight-year-old cousin, Emmy, who was spending the summer with them, or for Adele, his fifteen-year-old sister. He only felt that way about Irwin. But then, everyone in the family had a special feeling for Irwin. The two boys raced to see who would be the first one dressed, and Steve deliberately put his shirt on inside out, so he had to take it off and put it on again. Irwin's gleeful "I won!" made Steve feel better after the way he had spoken last night.
Steve went with Irwin out to the chicken house to gather the eggs, Irwin's before-breakfast job. On their way back to the house, Steve stopped in mid-stride, staring at several huge footprints in the dirt outside his window. His dark hair felt stiff at the roots, and his body was suddenly clammy. Automatically he wiped his hands on his jeans. Through his mind flashed thoughts o
f the terrible creature the local Indians called the Yamadan, the monster that lived in the forest. He glanced around, expecting to see the burning eyes, but all he saw were Adele's two horses rounding the house at full gallop. Adele was on one, Emmy was on the other.
Dodging, he leaped up on the back porch step and yanked Irwin up with him, yelling at his sister for being so reckless. Irwin found the momentary excitement amusing, but Steve's thoughts were still on the footprints. They had been obliterated.
"Are you okay?" Mom asked when Steve came into the kitchen. "You look pale." She touched her hand to his forehead, but felt no fever.
"You'd be pale if you had two dumb girls galloping their horses right at you," he snapped. "They could've run over Irwin."
Mom clucked, as she usually did when her children bickered, but she didn't seem concerned.
When they were all gathered around the breakfast table, Steve looked at his square-faced father. "Dad," he began, feeling a little uncertain. His father wasn't one to put up with ghost stories and such. "Have there been any bears around here lately?" Those footprints probably had a very logical explanation.
"Bears?" Dad said, looking up while he nibbled a strip of bacon. "No—not in the last few years."
"You sure?"
"Sure as I am that hens lay eggs. Not a farm around here has seen a bear—or even a bear print for that matter, since . . ." He paused to think, ". . . since the rangers moved the last of them to the national parks. That's been seven or eight years at least."
Steve's heart seemed to stop for a moment. No bears. His logical explanation dissolved.
"W-what about a Yamadan? They—" Dad slammed a fist on the table so hard that the dishes clattered, and Irwin timidly shrank in his chair. Automatically, without being fully aware that he was doing it, Steve put a hand over Irwin's. His younger brother smiled and resumed his silent eating.
"Yamadan! Yamadan!" Dad growled. "A lot of Indian gobbledygook. Horned beasts that walk like man, mysterious disappearances, moss-draped forest—utter nonsense!" He glared at Steve. "Look for yourself. Do you see moss hanging from the trees in our woods?"
Steve shook his head. All of the surrounding woodland was filled with oaks, birches, and other more delicate trees. Yet Indian legends said that these very woods, the home of the Yamadan, were dark, dank, and draped in ghostly moss.
"What brought this subject up?" Adele asked in the imperious tone she had been using lately.
"Steve's trying to scare us because we scared him," Emmy suggested, and she grinned tauntingly, showing a mouthful of braces. Steve ignored her.
"I'll have no more talk about the Yamadans," Dad said sternly, nodding toward Irwin who was busy eating his oatmeal. Then in a gentle voice he added, "I won't and concentrated on his breakfast.
When the meal was over, Steve went out to do his chores. Theirs was known as a truck farm, growing mostly corn, melons, and squashes. And back toward the woods was open pasture land for their cows.
"When you finish your chores around the house," Dad said, "I could sure use some help. How about harvesting the ripe corn?"
Steve nodded as an idea formed in his mind. When he finally got to the cornfield, he hurriedly filled his big bags with the ripened ears, and then left them, darting off beyond the pumpkin patch to the clump of trees where old Nobara lived in his log cabin. Nobara claimed he was an Indian chief, but there wasn't much left to be chief over. Only six Indians, the remnants of what was once a proud tribe, still lived in this grove, and Dad didn't like Steve to hang around them. He said they made up stories that frightened the neighboring children, and that it was only at the sheriff's insistence, that they kept quiet. But today Steve needed information.
The old chief sat on the stoop of his cabin by the front door. Though Nobara wore the conventional jeans and plaid shirt of his neighbors, he still preferred moccasins to shoes, and he tied a red silk band around his gray hair. His dark face was all lines as he smiled a welcome, but his eyes held the usual deep sadness. Steve had often wondered what tragic event in the old man's life had brought such grief to him. As far as he knew, Nobara had never fought in any wars, nor had any of his immediate family been massacred. Yet he must have known some great sorrow.
Today, as usual, the old man seemed pleased to see Steve, and he talked of the little squirrels he was trying to lure closer to eat the acorns he had gathered for them.
"Nobara," Steve said when there was a moment of like a bear?" He tried to steady his voice.
"Big tracks," Nobara said, nodding, "but two—not four like the bear."
"What kind of . . ." Steve hesitated, shivering despite the heat. He wanted to know, yet he was afraid to find out. "What are its eyes like?"
For a moment Nobara looked startled. "Eyes? Why do you ask about its eyes?"
Steve shrugged. "Oh, I don't know," he said carelessly. "I just wondered, I guess. I've heard that the Yamadan is big and hairy, and that it has horns, and claws for hands. But I never heard about its eyes, and eyes are important. You can tell a lot by eyes."
"Like fire," Nobara said in a low voice. "Eyes like fire." "Have you ever seen a Yamadan?" Steve asked, remembering the red glowing lights of last night.
The old Indian shook his head. "If I had, I would not be here to talk with you now. To see it is to die. In all time, only one man ever saw it and lived. That is why I know how it looks."
"Who saw it?" Steve's voice cracked. Nobara, looking uneasy, shuffled his moccasined feet. "My father's brother."
Steve's eyes widened in surprise. "Tell me about it," he pleaded.
For a long time Nobara said nothing. When he finally spoke, his voice shook with dread. "The Yamadans—there are two, both males—they are necessary to each other. When one dies, the other must get a new companion."
"How?" Steve murmured, feeling goose bumps. "It steals a man ... or a boy. It changes him into a Yamadan."
"It stole your uncle?" Steve asked in awe. Nobara nodded. "When I was only a boy, my uncle so disappeared. He came back a few days later and told about the Yamadan—said it lives in a wet, gloomy forest with much moss. He said he began to change—to grow horns and hair on his body—and he begged the Yamadan to let him go home. Uncle talked to animals. The Yamadan understood and let him go."
"Do you really believe that?" Steve asked, terrified, but remembering his father's scorn.
"Before my uncle disappeared, he told us he saw the Yamadan's footprints, and eyes like fire." A shiver ran through the old man. "Then he disappeared."
Nobara looked up. His face was suddenly closed. "I will tell you no more. The sheriff-man says I should not talk. But I know the Yamadan lives in the woods. I know. I know."
Though Steve pleaded, Nobara refused to say any more. So he returned to the field and dragged his bags of corn to the wagon Dad had left nearby.
After a quick lunch, Steve was so busy helping Dad that he had little time to think about legendary creatures. Maybe it was the influence of his very practical, hardworking father, but as the day wore on, Steve began to feel that both the footprints and the lights must have logical explanations, even though he might not know what they were.
That afternoon, after the work was finished, he and Adele rode the two horses out to the pasture to round up the cows. "Let's take a quick ride along the edge of the woods," Adele suggested with a mischievous grin.
"Race you," Steve challenged, and off they went, heading toward the beautiful, flower-decked woods. In and out among the scattered trees and shrubs they dashed, yelling and cheering their horses on.
Suddenly Steve's horse skidded to an abrupt stop, almost unseating him. Then it reared on its hind legs, pawing the air and screeching in terror. It reared and danced, backing away as though afraid to pass an invisible barrier. When Steve tried to heel it forward, it suddenly bucked, and Steve went sailing over its head.
"Steve!" came Adele's wail. That was the last he heard as his body seemed to crash through a solid wall.
When Stev
e opened his eyes, he stared in bewilderment, wondering where he was. Catching a whiff of the rotten garbage smell, he sat up. The surrounding gloomy forest was almost choked with underbrush and junglelike growth. Long whiskers of gray-green moss hung like shrouds from the trees.
Turning to find the source of the smell, Steve stifled a scream. Out of the shadows came a big, hairy creature with goatlike horns projecting out of a melon-shaped head. Beneath eyes like live coals were a flat nose and a big slit of a mouth.
"The Yamadan!" Steve leaped to his feet and turned to run, but something knocked him down. He glanced back but the Yamadan had not moved. Once more Steve tried to run, but again he toppled backward, feeling as though he had slammed headlong into a brick wall.
A wall—a barrier—something the horse wouldn't cross but that he had crashed through. Instead of panic, his father's sensible calmness settled over him. He tried to figure out what had happened. Had he somehow been thrown through an unseen barrier? Where was this jungle? Only one explanation—not one Dad would arrive at—came to mind. Somehow he had crossed a time barrier. He had no idea what time period he was in, but it certainly contained a strange creature.
More curious than afraid, Steve glanced back at the Yamadan. It was ugly with its big round head, its blazing eyes, its clawed hands, and its immense feet, but it didn't seem vicious—at least not at the moment of relief. It was normal. "Well, what happens now?" he said.
The Yamadan responded with a wheeze. The creature turned and slowly walked away, looking back, beckoning Steve. Curious, Steve followed, scrambling, tumbling, and climbing over the tangled logs and underbrush. Because he couldn't travel fast, they didn't go far, and to Steve the heat and humidity were oppressive.
He heard a commotion, and as if he were up on a mountain, he watched Dad, Mom, and Adele ride up to the edge of the woods, hunting for him. Adele was almost hysterical, insisting that Steve had fallen unconscious at this very spot.
"But now he's gone," she cried.
Norton, Andre - Anthology Page 2
