Just North of Nowhere

by Lawrence Santoro

  Bunch didn't sit up, middle of the night, for just anything. But this storm! It tore the fog to tatters and played across the bluffs; made the whole river smell of old cast iron. He hugged his legs and for a long time, the blind lightning and the spine-cracking thunder came one on top the other. Then the tree across the river exploded. Pinecones popped like balloons, smoke spat at the sky and the tree vanished into its pieces. Pieces rained everywhere and the bole – that bole – came tumbling across the still-running water of the near-frozen river and rolled up the bank like a chicken head. Stopped just shy of Bunch's sleepy sack. For a second, in the crackling glow of the knotty trunk, eyes seemed to glare at Bunch. Then not.

  From then on, the sharp end of the thunder gave way to deep down boomers, dwindling, and the lightning crawled upriver, deeper into the Driftless.

  Bunch relaxed. When the damn thing was a distant flicker beyond the bends of the river above the town and the thunder was just deep vibrations against his chest, when the fog thickened around him, and that bole stopped looking at him, he slept.

  That had been last night, early, and he was pretty sure it had been real. The rest of the night? He didn't know, didn't want to think about. He wasn't at his best, thinking, anyway. Wasn't his suit.

  One thing Bunch did know: it was morning and he was hungry. Two things!

  After yesterday, he had a right being hungry, walking half-way to the bottom of the world and his stomach sucked dry.

  Okay! THREE things: his stomach had been sucked dry by them ghost critters! Nope! He didn't want to think about it. Thinking got him in trouble, slowed him down just when he needed to quicken up and move like/that!

  Bunch snapped his fingers in the morning air. Sounded good. He pulled on the decent clothes – pants, shirt, wooly jacket, everything – even shoes – and walked toward to town.

  Morning snow was pretty and quiet. He liked that. Passing the stock pens, the other side of the river, slaughterhouse cows stood chewing, breath and butts steaming in the cold. Damn, he was hungry!

  Down the way, smoke curled from Cristobel's chimney. Good, he figured, she's up, safe, moving around.

  By her place, he slowed to consider: He ought, maybe, to go ask. Even if it was a dream – which it was not! – Cristobel Chiaravino knew the places that lived in people's heads, knew the ways magics worked when you said the words and drank down the rotten tasting stuff she made. He'd smelled the stuff coming out her windows, summers. Must've been rotten-tasting.

  That was one hand.

  The other had figured he ought NOT bother Miss Chiaravino.

  He still hadn’t done anything she’d most likely consider ‘useful’ after giving him that bicycle. And there was that business about him doing what someone might call ‘peeping’ her, that was something else again. Bunch discussed it with himself as he walked and, as those things will, the discussion soon became an argument and the argument soon got pretty hot. As he gave consideration to these things, Bunch gave more and more of himself to the discussion and less and less to walking and, in a small while, there he was: dead in the road, staring at sky, staring at nothing, nothing at all.

  He concluded with the thought that it might be a bad idea, him to come knocking now. Too bad, he calculated further, agreeing with himself, Cristobel knew stuff.

  Then he remembered: he remembered falling asleep after the storm. Then he remembered morning. Early morning, still dark. And that was another think entirely. First, he'd thought the thunder had come back. A rumbling had bubbled up from the hard muddy ground his ear had lain upon and pounded his sleeping head bone. By the time he'd crawled awake, the whole world was shaking.

  A couple seconds and he realized: trucks! It was trucks. Heavy stuff, bigger, he reckoned, than the trucks as hauled meat animals in and out of the stockyards Doc Mouth called, “Cowschwitz,” whatever that meant.

  When the first of the Eelman Brothers' semis came bumping across Papoose Crick bridge, the bridge's half ton of sheath ice, chattered to piece. Shards of it rained over Bunch, his home and things beneath the bridge.

  In a second, Bunch was not among those things. He jumped, dodging falling sliver ice, and stood barefoot and sinking in cold mud. Yes! He did remember. The muck and mud of the Banks was still squeezing between his toes then!

  Big tires made wicked hums as the damn truck breezed by, organ pipes from up at the Lutheran's hitting too many notes at once! Damn thing growled along county H, down-shifting into Bluffton.

  The second semi came a hundred yards later; a rush of blackness, burning eyes bouncing in the mist. Crossing the bridge, the thing howled like Injuns warring. The whole span heaved up and down like a too-fat bird on a too-thin branch.

  Around then, Bunch decided this entire night was a sun-dry cocklebur up his ass-pipe. Without thinking, he hauled tail up the bank to the road.

  Bunch was at his best not thinking. Hell, a thinking man wouldn't have been under the bridge in the middle of the night in the middle of winter in first place. A thinking man probably wouldn't have jumped to, all pissy, like Bunch had in the second place but he felt like he owed the town something. Don't ask him what, that was the way he felt and he didn't think about it. Barefoot, shirtless, he hit the road in three steps and a couple snatches of turf and reached the road in time for the third and fourth trucks to roar by like rolling thunder.

  Now, in the THIRD place, a man using his head most likely wouldn't have run out into the middle of the roadway to shake fists at a caravan of dusty black and streaming light-sprayed thunder that was rumbling the roads, middle of that winter night.

  Bunch did. He shook his fist and cussed until he felt stupid. Then he started thinking and it’s been mentioned that Bunch was not at his best, thinking. That was when the fifth black truck snuck up, behind. It came in a whisper and a sigh, and caught him thinking. The horn shot hot diesel electric juice up his spine, a thousand steel-cutting saws tearing down a tin roof about his ears.

  Before he had a chance to give it a thought, he back-peddled off the road and onto the gravel where he fell, whomp, flat on his ass and the black thing passed. Passing, it wrapped Bunch in a swift-flowing moonshadow, deeper than any black of night, darker than any of the bluff caves Bunch had ever crawled into. The damned whispery thing froze him dead-still, a Bunch-sized slab of pissed-offedness, lying like a road turtle, leg-up and spinning in the breeze.

  Bunch sat up. A snowstorm of lights – red, green, orange, all these, others, colors he didn't know the names of, colors he'd never seen – surrounded the truck's black ass-end disappearing down the way. In its center was a symbol.

  Bunch could read. He'd read lots of things. He just wasn't much for it. Beside, what was spread in black-green-gray (and some colors he didn't know what), across the back of the dwindling truck wasn't reading, it was a picture, a swirly thing, a spinning Fourth of July fire wheel, a grinning mouth with two curly horns.

  The picture dwindled slower than the truck was leaving. Then they were both gone.

  Despite what had just happened, and without thinking, Bunch arose and stepped into the roadway. All Bunch knew was he wanted more of that damned picture thing. And, the damned picture thing was gone.

  A third thing he knew: the world stank like high summer at the deep end of the Elysium campground cesspool. That was one stink: all the bad wieners and curdled macaroni salads of summer! This one left a lot of itself hang, but it went to ground quick. With the stench the rumbles in the earth faded as the last trailer rounded the curve in the treelined corridor toward town. Night was still again, but like thunder’s echo, a word settled in Bunch's head. The word rolled inside along with the memory of that picture thing. The word said: “Eelman!”

  “What the hell,” he said to the distance. “What the hell's an Eelman?” he yelled.

  A thin layer of mist had re-gathered above the roadway after the trucks' passage; a fine mist, the surety of night’s calm stillness. Suddenly it moved. One second it hung knee-high. The next, it drew its
elf to Bunch's gut, then, shoved to his ankles, dissolved in a swirl. A cold downwash of air made his ears pop.

  Overhead, the stars shone prettier than Bunch had ever seen. His ears popped again and something passed between him and heaven, a thing darker than space that ate the familiar stars as it swam. The darkness followed the curve of County H as it banked toward Bluffton to feed. Bunch had no idea how high the thing was, but it took a while to pass.

  Then it was gone.

  Bunch leaned on the bridge’s guardrail – making sure it was still there. Doggone steel was hot!

  A diesel horn nearly kicked Bunch’s spine through the back of his head and out his ass. For a half-second he flashed on last night, but this was morning and there he was: a doofus in the middle of Slaughterhouse Way, thinking! Him!

  At the wheel of his stock truck, a pissed-off Andre Trois-Coeur LeMais shook a hamhock-fist and hung a line of Frog-Injun cusses his way.

  Bunch backpedaled and LeMais' cow truck growled by, gears grinding, brakes hissing, engine farting with effort. Even the cows – nothing better for them to do today but die – hollered at Bunch for holding things up.

  Then, in morning’s swirling snowdust, Andre Trois-Coeur LeMais, life-long citizen of the driftless, gave Bunch the finger! Bunch, also a life-long citizen, fingered, like a terrorist at Elysium Field!

  When the truck had passed and the little whirlywinds of snow had settled at Bunch's feet, there was Cristobel Chiaravino. She stood on her stoop staring from across the street. She had a broom in hand and was full-dressed plus a down parka, her hair tucked under the hood so Bunch couldn't see the pretty streak. Even with her eyes like a shotgun’s holes, Bunch figured he'd better go ask. A man could take just so much of this thinking.

  “Morning.” he said, crossing.

  She nodded. The shotgun eyes stayed trained.

  “Pretty morning,” he said, looking.

  She nodded.

  “Funny old storm last night,” he said.

  She squinted.

  “Dry thunder ‘n all.”

  She cocked her head.

  “Thunder. No rain. No snow.”

  She didn't move.

  He said, “You see anything last night?”

  She cocked her head another inch.

  “Big trucks?”

  She turned toward Cowshwitz and Andre’s rig.

  “Bigger. Blacker.

  Her attention returned to him.

  “And maybe a big black flying thing?” He showed with his hands.

  Her eyes widened.

  “Lots of sparkles, like stars living down inside?”

  She blinked. “Come in.” She said.

  Over hot coffee Bunch told the tale.

  His bare feet had made floppy slaps on cold damp asphalt. Without thinking, Bunch had gone off at a trot, coatless, shirtless, trailing the spoor of the caravan and the track of the star-eating critter down the silver corridor of frost-rimmed trees toward town. The five trailers had left a stinkhole in the night; easy tracking for hound or man. Like a hound, Bunch had no idea what he was chasing, but there were things he didn’t like coming to town. He wouldn’t have it.

  Somewhere in the night, a dog barked three times, then was still. The empty stockyards looked cold, each shed whispering sad bellows of all the cattle who’d waited there to die. The sounds were in his head, but Bunch shivered anyway. He'd never thought of ghost cow. Well, too bad for them, he loved a good burger.

  “Just remembered that part,” he said to Cristobel, sucking boiling coffee in a slurp. “Not important, I guess.”

  In her warm kitchen, Cristobel sipped her tea. Pretty smile, Bunch thought. Even if she ain’t naked. He didn't say that.

  After the stockyards, it had been a hundred running paces to Cristobel's house. He had also remembered a single light flickering in the top floor of her house that night and he remembered hoping her safe in bed. He didn’t mention it.

  He’d followed the stink down Slaughterhouse, turned onto Commonwealth and trotted the center of the main street through town. Near the edge, the Sons of Norway Lodge and Hall bounced back the falling water roar from the spillway at the old electric dam. The stony gray block stood solid against the dark trees of the deep woods, far side of Elysium.

  Ought to go back someday soon and finish that roofing job, Sons of Norway, he said to himself, running past.

  “Spring, maybe, huh?” he said to Cristobel in her kitchen

  “What?” she said.

  “Just thinking somethin’ I ought do,” he said.

  She nodded quickly, wiggled her head, urging him on. She licked her lip.

  “Yep. I'll do her. This Spring.” he said.

  The dam's roar filled the dark. The cool push of air from the spilling water stirred up the dead-fish and something-more stink left by the trucks. The smell mixed with the cold thin winter breath of the Rolling River. An owl swooped low over the roadway. It arrowed toward the meadow, far end of the trees across the river. A couple of seconds later Bunch heard the dying-baby scream of a rabbit torn aloft beneath the bird's talons.

  Bunch had just remembered that, too.

  Doc Mouth’s place, Einar's – Bluffton went by quick – and the town was behind him. Ahead, the road curved up and cut through a rocky spur. The night glowed. Around the bend was Karl's Bad Kabins; a joke everyone said.

  “I never got it,” he said to Cristobel.

  “It is a play on words: Carlsbad Caverns.”

  He stared.

  “A tourist place somewhere else, go on...” at her sink, Cristobel poured another mug.

  He was nearing the heart of it. As he told, he remembered. As he remembered, he shuddered. Cristobel cocked her head at his shudder and listened.

  Karl's Bad Kabins was gone. Years gone! The Kampground, just a wide muddy spot by the side of the road. Summers, the place filled with terrorists, Bunch called them, folks from the cities in their vans, r.v.s with names, people with red and yellow tents, electric lights and little teevees, all the folks looking for a bathroom in the woods. The overflow from Elysium.

  This time of year the place should have been empty. As Bunch topped the rise, saw the trucks. They were nose to nose in a circle, headlight blazing across the freezing mud of the Kampground. Where the lights crossed, the dark flying thing hunkered down, folded upon itself, breathing like a couple dozen winter bear. The light seemed not quite to touch it but slipped off the black flesh. Inside, tiny stars still flickered, like a million sick goldfish in a sack of ink.

  His run still throbbed Bunch’s ears and the macadam pounded like a ghost through his body. He was breathing heavy like the black thing.

  “Figured I was getting old,” Bunch figured aloud to Cristobel.

  She leaned toward him across the wooden table. The kitchen windows sweated. Her eyes blazed. Her lower teeth nibbled her upper lip.

  “Now, them trucks weren't trucks!” He blurted out. “I was looking on them, now they were lighting each other up...” Bunch shook his head. He struggled for a word. “I know trucks, for cripes' sake, now, and these weren't trucks!”

  His and Cristobel's eyes met. They spoke at the same time: “Vaults,” they said together.

  “. . .is what they were,” He said. “Yeah! That's it,” he said.

  “. . .is that what they were,” she asked, “'Vaults?'“

  “Damn,” he said. “Just like the word like, 'Eelman,' that’s the word! 'Vaults.' Word popped right into my head meaning what those trucks were. And this,” he dipped his finger in coffee and traced a few lines on the dry wood of the table. “This was on the sides, the back...” He drew the sign that had drawn him toward the – the vaults – and the Eelmans in the night.

  For a second Cristobel said nothing. Then she shrieked like a girly fire siren!

  Bunch jumped.

  “The Sign of Koth,” she breathed quietly. Her breath smelled like tea and pine trees. “The sign drew you to it. It is a very old thing, a potent. It sends dream
ers on a quest. Dreamers...” She looked at Bunch with something new. Something Bunch had never seen before. The moment passed.

  “Yes, yes, yes...” she said, leaning closer, so close, Bunch could smell sleep on her, feel the heat of her. “Tell the rest! In the Vaults. There were ghasts? Yes? Tell me, quick! There were ghasts in the vaults?”

  “Yeah, yeah, they said that! Them Eelmans. Ghasts, in the vaults. One in each.” He cocked his head at her. “Or ghosts, I ain’t sure.”

  She sat back, her mouth open. “Ghasts! You have seen ghasts? The Devourers? Eaters of Dreams? You...”

  Bunch felt itchy. “I wasn't to look on them, Eelmans said. I was to lead, not look.” He smiled at Cristobel. “I peeked. Later. Big rat-things. Legs going the wrong ways. About like...” He tried to show the size of the critters that had bunny-hopped, flopping after him along the way. “Maybe, the size of a garage? Yeah.” He didn't want to say the damn things looked more like a barn-sized cow stomach with bad teeth. Women didn't like hearing that stuff.

  “You have seen a ghast?” Cristobel was still shaking her head. “And have lived!”

  “Pretty sure,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah...I saw! But lemme tell her in her own time, woman! Damn it.” Bunch was cranky when he was hungry. “And I seen FOUR of them!”

  She was impressed.

  “Same time I came over the hill and seen them. . .them vault things, I started hearing. Just like that!” He snapped his fingers.

  The light that oozed from the vaults felt greasy, it soaked Bunch like a half-warm shower. The same time, the flying darkness squatting at the center of Karl's Kampground flapped upward, hovered a second, then settled by the edge of the forest. As it flew, voices filled the air like Lutherans and Catholics singing something different all at once, the stars inside the thing twirled like snow in a ball, and the stink of dead critter nearly blew Bunch over.

  “Why the hell,” Bunch shouted to Cristobel, “Why the hell, these guys have to stink so much?” It wasn't meant to be answered.