Moonbane

by Al Sarrantonio

  His half-mad, half-lucid eyes studied me. “You’re the poet, aren’t you? I knew who you were when you moved in. I’ve read your work.” A bare, distant, fleeting smile crossed his lips. “I remember the day I chased you from my front gate. I even thought of befriending you.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Again the fleeting, human smile. “Impossible. I had a reputation to keep. Besides, could I trust you any more than anyone else?”

  I saw a different and completely human form of madness hovering around his face; the madness that had kept him alone since 1938.

  My eyes were drawn to the paintings surrounding us. Beauty filled that tiny, damp room and demanded to be attended to.

  What surprised me was that there were no more portraits of The Woman. The rest were of natural things: odd, weather-twisted trees, waves of tall grass, the objects on a kitchen table made transcendent by the light and shadow and ingenious use of El Greco-like color he brought to their composition. These were nothing like the two works I had seen outside this little room; I could well understand their exclusion.

  My eyes were drawn back to the portrait of The Woman on the back wall. I had noticed the difference in the eyes immediately, but now, an examination of the entire portrait revealed the true differences. The second painting made an odd and chilling pair with the one on the easel. The formal beauty of the latter was mirrored in the waxen shapelessness of the former. The woman’s face had been pulled like taffy, the elongation of her features heightened to an unsettling degree, turning coltishness to monstrous animalism, the baring of the twisted soul, an almost—and this was ironic considering the present circumstances—wolfishness.

  “Looks a bit like a self-portrait now, doesn’t it?” Cave said. “But I would have thought you of all people could guess the truth about her,” he said, with a guttural laugh that sounded almost mad.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re an incurable romantic, it seems. You wanted to believe the stories. Bart, the grocery clerk, told me everything I ever needed in the way of gossip, you know. And you swallowed what you had heard from Briggs and the rest of them about my lovely Grace.”

  He laughed again, a sound like a file across metal, and his hands clenched and unclenched against his bonds. “I threw her out. My brother never touched her. He was a fool, but not that much of one. She was a beautiful but empty woman. I told her to leave in 1938. I was being sucked into her. I would either devote my life to Grace, and her constant happiness, or to my work. She was purely selfish, Blake. She would not let me have both. That was all there was to it.”

  Again, Cave studied me. Then he asked, in a curiously soft tone, “I want you to do something for me.”

  “What is it?”

  He pointed to the ax in my hand. “I want you to kill me.”

  I must have gasped. “I can’t do that.”

  “Two nights ago,” he said, “I was working when the sky lit up. I ignored what was happening. When the lights went out I lit a candle. Sometime before morning the thing in the doorway paid me a visit. I killed it, but not before it had clawed away a good bit of my shoulder.

  “I want you to understand what happened to me, Blake. I lay recovering from my wound and a curious thing happened. I felt the oddest sensations of my life.”

  His eyes blazed, yellow fire threatening to fill them. “It was as if my head had become twice its size. My mind was clearer than it had ever been. I could smell and see with perfect sharpness. And I had a craving for destruction that I could barely control. I had spent a great many years learning control, Blake. But these feelings were overpowering me.

  “And then it did overpower me. I found myself sucking blood from that thing in the doorway. I was becoming something else. Something powerful, and very hungry, and very disdainful of human beings.” His gaze never wavered from me. “They’re not mere animals, Blake. They know what they’re doing. When one of us is bitten, and joins them, he becomes part of their gestalt. They’re going to wipe us out, very quickly, and they know how to do it.” He smiled, a horrible, white-fanged mockery of a human smile. “It’s like Cortez all over again, Blake. Only, we’re the Aztecs.”

  His smile disappeared. “Each day it gets worse. You must realize the kind of control it took for me to thrust a woman like Grace from my life, to turn myself away from the world for my art. But I’m not strong enough to fight this. Soon this thing I’ve become will have me. I won’t let that happen to me, Blake. You must kill me.”

  “That’s something I just can’t do, Cave,” I said.

  He smiled, the most human and friendly gesture he had made yet. “You really are an incurable romantic, Blake.” He continued as if he had thought all this out far in advance. “I assume you would defend yourself.”

  Before I could answer, Cave was gone. Yellow filled his eyes like two bright vicious lamps. He thrashed wildly at his bonds; though Cave had set them tight, he apparently had known that if he acquiesced to the thing that fought for control of his being he would be able to break them.

  “Cave,” I shouted, “for God’s sake!”

  I turned and ran for the stairs.

  Near the top, one of the rotted boards gave way, and I nearly tumbled back. It was then I heard Cave break his bonds. A great ruckus arose from the workshop; I heard the sound of tearing canvas. I scrambled upward.

  Cave howled as I reached the front door. I heard him bounding up the stairs behind me.

  The front screen unaccountably stuck in its jamb. I fought with it, dropping my ax. I turned to see Cave as he stepped into the front hallway. There was no longer anything recognizably human about him; his eyes were filled with blind hatred.

  I desperately pushed against the screen. He loped toward me on all fours, remarkably graceful. He leaped. I threw myself to the floor. He crashed over me through the screen door, knocking it and himself out onto the porch.

  I fumbled for my ax, my hand finding the stock of Cave’s shotgun as Cave tumbled down the front steps into the sunlight.

  His howls were of a different sort now, pained and angry. The light obviously bothered him. He turned his head up and stared into the sun. His eyes mirrored the sun’s color and intensity. Then his eyes locked onto mine. He leaped nimbly onto the porch and then at me.

  I pulled the shotgun up, firing both barrels. Most of Cave’s chest exploded in an outward splash of blood and matted fur. He screeched, rolling over me to the floor. He began to lap voraciously at his own blood, thrusting his paws into what had been his chest and then bringing them hungrily to his mouth.

  But the wound had been deep. He tried to rise but could not, and as he fell back he turned his head to me.

  His eyes were dimming. But suddenly life flowed into them, thrust there by the force of Cave’s will, and he opened his mouth.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  He fell back and, after a moment, was still.

  I rose, gathering my ax and Cave’s box of shotgun shells into my pack. Before I moved on, I went back to his cellar, to look at his paintings once more.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Visitant

  Daylight is a precious thing. It was even more precious to me because when I ran out of it I had to be in a place that was safe. When I left Cave’s house it was nearly eleven o’clock in the morning. I headed due west on Route 20, hoping to make Hopkinsville, the nearest town, by five or six.

  Sunlight was precious, but, though this was December, it was also hot. I was now in true desert, and besides the occasional rogue cottonwood, live oak, or cool highway overpass (the first of these contained three neat piles of bones, and I spent an anxious few minutes checking every corner of the dark concrete tunnel for unfriendly inhabitants) there was little but open road. We had had late rains this year, and for a while purple sage, along with tiny desert flowers of orange, yellow and blue, kept me company. But even these gave up after I crossed the Valparto River, which, my overpass view confirmed, had turned to two sloping sand
y banks sandwiching a trickle of silty water.

  At two o’clock I rested in the shade of a roadside barbecue and smoker shack. A thorough inspection revealed one pile of bones and a crater hole only fifteen yards from the smoker. The smoker itself had been torn to bits—whatever had hung in there had been eaten, or destroyed in rage.

  I emptied my canteen, refilling it with cold water from an outside pump. There was no canned food. The electricity was dead here, too; opening the refrigerator revealed a three-day-old spoil of brisket and sauce.

  The shack was as hot as an oven, so I returned to the relative cool of the shade outside. I ate some of my cereal and drank some water. I estimated I would reach Hopkinsville by five at the latest. Sundown was at six or so. I would have plenty of time.

  I topped my canteen from the well water and moved on.

  I soon came across another car wreck, involving two flatbeds and two sedans. One of the truck’s headlights still glowed weakly.

  No drivers, no bones. I found a Cabbage Patch doll sprawled fatly over the edge of the seat in one of the cars.

  By three-thirty I began to curse the sun. What I really cursed was my own stupidity in not bringing suntan lotion. My first priority in Hopkinsville would be to break into a drugstore and supply myself with cold cream.

  I wiped my brow with my sleeve and looked out into the desert.

  Someone was following me.

  There was a figure in the distance to my left. It was veiled in heat haze, about a mile or so away. It crouched when I stopped to look. I stared, and suddenly there was a cactus in pallid bloom where the figure had been.

  I wiped my brow again, blinking at the cactus, but it remained a cactus.

  I shook my head and walked on.

  Almost immediately, I saw the figure again, melting out of the haze and pacing me. This time I kept walking.

  I used what astronomers call averted vision, tracking the figure with the periphery of my sight, where the retinas are more sensitive.

  If it was a cactus it was a walking cactus. It was following me steadily, at about a half-mile distance.

  As I walked, I casually pulled out the shotgun and loaded it, then slipped it loosely back into my pack. The figure did not slow, attempt to edge behind me, or slew toward me. It was content to follow on a parallel course.

  I came upon an abandoned school bus, surrounded by piles of blood-licked bones. It was empty, the door eerily open in dead invitation.

  I walked; my specter companion walked.

  At a little after four-thirty, Hopkinsville rose into hazy view. There was not much to rise; one three-story office building, a couple of gas stations, a small hotel, a few bars and grocery stores, and whatever else a town of seven hundred perched on the desert needs. There was a McDonald’s, of course.

  In studying the skyline of the town I had taken my eyes from my silent companion. When I looked for him he had disappeared.

  A hard knot tied itself in my stomach. As I walked, I kept my right hand near the stock of the shotgun.

  Hopkinsville looked like an abandoned movie set. I walked beneath a string of unlit Christmas lights supporting a tinseled noel sign; every other lamppost sported a cluster of red-ribboned bells, surrounded by circles of bulbs. There was some evidence of chaos; few cars were parked at the curb, most angled into storefronts or telephone poles or each other. There were signs of struggle. Parts of the street were littered with pieces of wood; rolled against one curb was a baseball bat with Jim Rice’s autograph stamped on it. One Custer-like area on the opposite side of the street was peppered with spent rifle shells. A neatly ironic cone of white bones lay near each pile of shells.

  As the line of houses and stores enclosed me, my uneasiness grew over the disappearance of my desert companion. Now my averted vision deceived me: a figure crouched on the flat roof of the hardware store turned out to be a corner post anchoring telephone and electrical wires. On the opposite side of the street I saw someone regarding me coyly through the closed drapes of a store window. It was a mannequin dressed to the nines in top hat and tails; a sign next to it said order early! new year’s eve is coming!

  I walked on, my right hand hovering over the shotgun.

  I passed more bones. I wondered if the population of Hopkinsville could be censused by seven hundred piles of human skeleton.

  Halfway up the street was a drugstore. I stopped in front of it. The front door was held open by a doorstop. The druggist must have opened it that last night to let in the cool desert air. The shade of his awning felt good. The interior of the store would feel even better. But I hesitated to go in.

  The red burn on my arms and on the back of my neck helped change my mind. I unhitched my shotgun and cautiously entered.

  It was dark inside. There were three aisles. I checked them one by one, my heart pounding. At the end of the third I nearly fired into a life-size cardboard cutout of Vanna White. She held a tub of tanning cream.

  I went to Vanna White’s aisle and found a good sunscreen and a tube of ointment for sunburn.

  I thought fleetingly of leaving money on the counter, remembering all the last-man-on-Earth movies I’ve seen, but good sense overcame cinematic convention and I hurried from the store, shotgun poised. Only outside, safe, under the drugstore awning, did I take a full breath.

  I looked up to see the figure that had followed me in the desert regarding me from across the street.

  I could not see him clearly. He stood in the porch shadow of a gem store called The Sleeping Lion, and, when I looked up, he retreated into the open door and shut it behind him.

  I could not tell if it was man or beast.

  I noticed how long the shadows were.

  I checked my watch; it was now seven-thirty. The sun would be down in less than an hour. I had sixty minutes to find a safe place, barricade myself in, and wait out the night.

  Keeping my eyes on the front of the gem store, I moved up the street. A grocery was ahead. I thought of the meat locker. It would have a good, strong door. It would also have a good, strong odor, but the natural coolness of the enclosure probably would have prevented rotting of the meat stored in there thus far, and I should be able to spend the night in reasonable comfort. It would be easy to defend, and the residual coolness certainly wouldn’t hurt my sunburn.

  I stopped in front of the market, waiting unthinking for the automatic doors to open for me. Finally I realized my foolishness and pushed the ungiving door inward. I looked back to the gem store and saw nothing.

  It was stuffy inside. The tall front windows gave good illumination, but the back of the store withered into dim shadow. There were ten numbered aisles, including a center-divided frozen-food case that ran from front to rear.

  I checked the aisles one by one: bread aisle, canned fruits and vegetables, baking goods, paper products.

  The meat case would be in the back, through the swinging white doors.

  I started down the beer and soda aisle, picking out a six-pack of Coors and putting it under my arm.

  I heard the front doors of the store whisper open behind me.

  In front of me, at the end of the dim back of the store, something rushed at me.

  I dropped the beer. I dropped the shotgun at the same time. A long, dark sleekness was in the air over me, angling down. It resolved from dim shadow to sharp angles: teeth and red mouth, huge yellow eyes.

  Behind me came two loud rapid blasts.

  The wolf dropped in front of me.

  I turned to discover my rescuer, but he had vanished behind a paper towel display at the front of the aisle. I heard quick steps, another loud gunshot, followed by two more. There was a scream of animal rage. I heard claws running on linoleum, then another shot. Growling segued to agonized rasping, mingled with a tearing sound I knew to be the mindless lapping of blood.

  Two gunshots sounded.

  There was silence.

  I recovered my shotgun and stood. One of the Coors had burst open, fizzing beer against its pack
mates. There was a scuffle in the back of the store, a pause, then sounds of pursuit up the front. I stood frozen between the two ends of the aisle, trying to follow the battle with my ears.

  “Are you sure it’s loaded?”

  I jerked the shotgun toward the form standing at the front of the aisle. It was backlit by the store windows and I couldn’t make out the features.

  “It’s loaded,” I said, holding the shotgun steady.

  “Know how to use it?”

  “I do.”

  The form walked slowly toward me. “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He was perhaps a yard and a half from me now, and he thrust his hand out and had my shotgun before I could react. He laughed and gave it back to me stock first. I noticed he held his own rifle loosely in his other hand.

  “Where you from?” he asked.

  “Emory,” I told him, and he looked at me questioningly. He had a lean face and body, hair cut short. He looked to be forty.

  He said, “I know New England when I hear it.”

  “My name is Jason Blake. I’m a writer from Connecticut.”

  His manner unaccountably softened. “Well, that’s all right,” he said. He reached down to take one of the unopened Coors from the floor, wincing at the warmth as it went down his throat. “I liked the way you followed me with your eyes out there in the desert.” He gestured at the dead wolf at my feet. “You kill any yet?”

  I told him about Cave.

  He seemed to approve. “Bastard did the right thing.” He measured a short distance between two of his fingers. “I came this close to getting cut by one of them yesterday. Would have done the same thing myself, only not trusted anybody else to do the shooting.” He turned away from me, then abruptly turned back and thrust his hand out for me to shake. His eyes were clear light blue. “I’m Pettis,” he said. “We could use your gun.”