by Unknown
“What’s a diddy, exactly?” I said.
Rodney suddenly looks much older, the bags under his eyes like fleshy welts. He’s angry. “He was my father. FA-THER.”
“Oh,” I say. “Daddy. Now I get it.”
“After I finish this Coke, I want you to take me home,” he says.
***
I don’t like driving in the mountains in the dark when I don’t know where I’m going. Add the fact that Rodney is extremely odd – and I’m being generous here – and that he lives far away, and you might understand why I’m anxious.
“There’s one other thing,” he says after staring out the window for a long time, studying the darkness on his side of the car. He turns to me with the smile that lands somewhere between mischievous and addled. “The animal I tried to feed that one time. . .”
“At the burn barrel,” I say.
“It wasn’t really a wolf.”
“It was a dog. I figured.”
“No. It was a person.”
The county road is dark. If it was a temperature, it would be absolute zero. I can barely see Rodney sitting next to me.
“This thing that you found outside, this . . . animal that slept under your house, was a human being? Is that what you’re telling me? What happened to the goddamn wolf?”
“I didn’t say it was a human being,” he says, ignoring my profanity. “I said it was a person. It had the face of an old child and human-like hands and feet, but the body and back of a gray wolf. I don’t know what it was. It took some comfort from me. That’s all I know for sure.”
“What were you doing in that cave” I say, trying to process everything, failing. “What were you looking for when they took that picture?”
“I was looking for him, or for some sign of him. I went there a lot”
“This changes the story some.”
“I never told anyone before. Not sure why I told you.”
“Did you ever find him?” I ask. “In that cave or anywhere?”
“If you’re asking if I ever saw him again, then the answer is no. He’s around though.”
“What makes you so sure?” I say.
When Rodney turns, the car’s interior lighting reflects off his face. He looks absolutely unholy. “You got a thing for Edie?” he says.
“I thought you had a wife.” I say, trying to be equally nimble in shifting subjects.
“Dead. Like diddy.” His voice is flat.
“Who do you spend your time with?”
“On Wednesdays and Saturdays, with Edie and Dick at the library. Sometimes my boy stops by.”
I stay quiet a long time. Rodney points at a bend in the road up ahead. I guess that’s where we’ll be turning.
“You’d better stay clear of her,” he says.
***
I miss my driveway and pass by my cabin. I can’t blame the darkness. It’s my brain chewing over the last hour with Rodney, the horny-punchy-jealous hunchback.
He never spoke another word after warning me to stay away from the librarian. And when he got out of my car, he slammed the door hard. He didn’t bother to thank me for the ride or even look back. He ambled uneasily into the darkness toward what I suspected was a double-wide trailer at the end of the dirt drive.
One light shines through my cabin window, guiding the way. Crunching gravel is the only sound. It seems to reinforce my solitude.
Christ, it’s dark.
I shut off the engine and fumble for the key fob, which contains a small flashlight. I won’t find the front door without it. And, yeah, I know everybody supposedly leaves their doors unlocked in the country, but I’m not there yet.
A skittering noise.
It’s not the sound of a squirrel. This is something bigger, heavier. And on the porch.
I squint toward the cabin. The light coming from the cabin is just bright enough to interfere with my night vision. I look toward my bedroom window and the rocker on the far end of the porch. It’s darkest there. More movement. Then a thumping sound. Then silence.
I open the car door and slam it hard, listening for a new noise. Is something big running off into the brush?
Nothing.
The car dome light fades into darkness like a long sigh. I feel naked, my heart thumping madly.
“Hello?” I say.
Why do people say that when they’re scared? Do I really want a greeting from someone with a voice who is hiding from me?
“I won’t hurt you.” Stupid. This is probably what terrified people bleat to stalkers everywhere. If there is any hurting to be done, it’s unlikely I’ll be the one doing it.
I walk to the porch steps, feel in the dark for the handrail, and climb to the porch like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I’m going inside now,” I say, continuing the play-by-play. I punch the keychain flash light. “Unlocking the door . . . .”
Eventually the patter has to stop. Going inside . . . walking to the kitchen . . .peeing in the crapper.
Standing at the front door and hearing nothing else, I become temporarily emboldened.
Why am I the one afraid?
Although I don’t feel comfortable enough to walk over there, I aim a beam from my little flashlight toward the end of the porch by the rocker.
The darkness swallows most of the light, but I can tell something’s there. Something not normally there.
In the short time I’ve owned the cabin, I discover my mind can fabricate recognizable objects out of amorphous shadows. This happens mostly after dark, but even during the daytime, a low knot hole in a white oak becomes the face of a startled fawn, brambles growing out of a rhododendron look like a fat, solitary turkey.
Then my eye adjusts, my brain kicks in, and I see the truth of things.
But I haven’t reached that point yet. This is why the un-normal thing at the end of the porch looks to me like a bear rug tossed over a big terra cotta planter. It’s low and furry, but the fur appears stiff.
“It’s okay,” I say, feeling irrationally braver. I unlock the cabin door, but don’t open it. I step toward the end of the porch. “It’s just us.”
The bear rug seems to gather itself into a dumpy fur ball, but doesn’t move from the spot. The outside wall of the bedroom blocks movement on one side. The porch railing blocks the object on two other sides.
The remaining escape route is blocked by me.
“I talked to your buddy, Rodney tonight,” I say. “He wonders what you’ve been up to.”
One more step. Now I can hear movement, like feet – or paws – unable to back up any farther. The thing is beginning to slide against the porch floor, seemingly panicking, trapped.
That’s when I hear the first low growl, sounding like a cough in the chest of a really big man. It has a wet and rolling aspect to it but, oddly, does not seem threatening.
I’m letting you know I’m here. No reason to come any closer.
I stop and back off. As I do, the growling abruptly stops. When I step forward, it begins again. When I back all the way to the door, the upright shape spreads out once more.
I open the cabin door, reach my hand in and flick on the porch light.
For the first time I see a barely visible paw. It’s not exactly wolflike or even doglike, but it’s definitely feral. I can only see the left front leg. It’s heavily muscled, more so than any canine beast I’ve ever known. I can see five toes on the paw, but the claws are wider and flatter than the claws I imagine on a wolf or, certainly, on a dog. The porch light also reveals bristly gray-black fur laying flat on an unnaturally curved back. The face remains hidden.
In the dark, in the quiet, I feel a strange kinship with this beast. I sense no threat.
“What are we doing in this odd place?” I ask. I can hear the ticking of my cooling car engine. I throw my head back and take a deep breath. The cold night air is sweet.
“Is this just some pit the two of us have fallen into?”
I can see the paw more clearl
y now. It’s big and broad, the claws – really they look more like fingernails – are long and shovel-shaped like those on an ape. Or a man. The animal makes no discernible sound. It slowly rolls the powerful left leg on the porch floor the way a shy, but playful kitten might.
I go inside the cabin and drink a tall glass of water. It’s cold like the night air and tastes a little woodsy. Then I brush my teeth, get into bed and shut off the light. I wait while the stillness settles over me like a quilt on a cold night.
I smile to myself. I hear the easy slide of the rocker on the front porch and after a few moments, I reach over and move the drapes away from the window.
The animal is sitting in the chair in the way a priest must sit in a confessional, hunched over, face close to the window. It’s much larger than I expected. Front legs crossed. Paw-hands resting on top of each other.
Now it turns to look up at me, as I knew it would. The head is that of a large wolf, but it’s not a wolf. It is, I realize, some other animal thing, the eyes soulful and weary like a tired old man’s, but innocent and vulnerable, like the wide-open eyes of a crippled lamb. When it moves its mouth – the teeth even and straight, the snout protruding far less than a wolf’s – there is an air of resignation in the gesture.
I tap on the window glass with a fingernail and the eyes light with a silver fire only briefly, then return to something I can only call questioning.
Why was I called here?
I let the drapes fall over the window again.
***
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to be dry and sunny. It will be a good day to pull the leaves away from the foundation.
I wonder if my son, Mike, will like it up here. It’s easy to imagine him running through the woods. He likes collecting leaves and we can have a picnic at DeSoto Park and watch the waterfall. I smile. Then I lean back against the wrought iron headboard.
The icemaker is finished with its work and has retired for the evening. The refrigerator has stopped cycling. It isn’t long before the mountain quiet falls over me like sleep. I wait.
At last, I hear it: the regular thrum, thrum, thrum of my beating heart, the sole sound in this wilderness retreat. It was once my only companion.
Each throb in my chest is mirrored by the roll of the hickory rocker on my front porch and the strange animal or being that animates it. I understand now that it has always been there. Why could I not hear it before?
My eyes swim through the dark and I look at my chest. I am able to see the barely perceptible pulsing of the skin over my heart.
And I feel a kind of umbilical tying me to the beast outside.
I close my eyes, but I imagine the cord running through the animal to Rodney and to Edie the librarian and to the rhododendron that looks like a turkey in my backyard and to every kind of oak and hickory and pine and sweetgum tree that grows on the property. It ties me to the pretty shrink in Birmingham, to the divorcee with the beautiful complexion who finally found a boyfriend, and even to my ex-wife, Susan. And it connects me to my son Mike, too.
I am more tired than I’ve been in a long, long time, and feel a good sleep coming. I know it will be well past noon before the other sounds of the woods finally awaken me.
###
Dennis Anthony has been a newspaper reporter, sailor, military officer, television news producer, public relations executive and publishing company owner. He and his wife live in Pensacola, Florida, but try to spend as much time as possible at their cabin on Lookout Mountain in Alabama. He is author of Debunker: Independence Day, recipient of a 2014 B.R.A.G. Medallion.
Website: http://www.dennis-anthony.com
Twitter: @DennisAuthor
The New Beauty
by Magenta Nero
The two large screens in my office are always on, streaming footage of runway shows, and my desk is sprawled with high end fashion magazines, hot off the press. I can spot them at a glance, those waif like nymphs about to snap like taut elastic, who will soon be delivered hush hush by frantic agents to my door. My favourite thing in the office is my desk chair, custom made for me by a Swedish designer. It is upholstered in Italian calf leather as I very much dislike the squeakiness and slippery texture of coarse leathers. I have done my most important thinking in this chair; my research is soaring to new heights. I like to nestle in the supple leather and look out of the large windows, down at the gardens below. I enjoy watching the clients practising Tai Chi in the mornings. They stand in rows, forming a large chequered pattern in silent symphony. Grasp the Swallows Tail. White Crane Spreads Its Wings. And in the afternoons I watch them jog incessant circles, they fall into a singular rhythm. You see, there is beauty in every little thing; beauty is intrinsic to our existence.
I have been the Director of this Institute since its foundation ten years ago. This wonderful 1930s building was restored to my specifications and I oversaw its interior design myself. Beauty is both functional and decorative. We do not have patients here, we have clients. Elite and very famous clients who pay in the millions to receive the kind of rehabilitation only we can provide. The most notorious fashion models have lingered within these walls, as well as quite a few A list actresses who have been admitted as special cases. We have a long waiting list and we do not accept every client who applies otherwise I would have an Institute overflowing with rehashed celebrities and drug addicted teenage pop stars. I have a very strict selection policy and application procedure in place to screen potential clients. After all, this is more than just a state of the art facility, and I have paid my dues, nipping and tucking the wives and mistresses of diplomats and corporate moguls the world over. I have worked long and hard to earn the credentials, the professional reputation, the contact network, the right to research grants. Finally it seems, my dream is within reach, my vision so close, I can see it trembling as I breathe my own life force into it.
I no longer play much of a hand in the running of Level 1. My senior administration staff and my team of psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists are more than capable of the day to day management and I leave them to it. I sign off on documents. I nod my head to the unenlightened recommendations of the Board. Frankly, I am not too interested in the nervous breakdowns of twenty something models. It is Level 2 that occupies my mind like a new lover. It is the cool, gleaming rooms of that underground sanctuary that I itch to return to everyday.
Chronic fatigue, drug and alcohol addiction, eating disorders of course, suicidal tendencies, usually cases of above average to extreme mental distress. Several interesting cases of obsessive-compulsive disorders. Most of them are able to wander the Institute freely, our unprecedented security technology ensures safety at all times. Usually they prefer to sprawl about like bored insects, thin long limbs curled on iconic pieces of modernist furniture. Striking cheekbones and startled faces. Draped in locks of wispy tresses or sporting short blunt cuts, oddly shaved. Only a few are true high needs cases, on the brink of psychosis, and thus confined to their luxurious rooms where they are monitored by a therapist and waited upon by a personal assistant.
Most of them are simply fatigued and depressed and need a break from their stressful careers, a place where they can be anonymous. A regime of manicures, pedicures, massage and facials does wonders to quell their symptoms and ease their delusional states. The comforting familiarity of beauty rituals are like a balm to their troubled minds. Beauty heals us because it is what we most deeply desire.
Level 1 is styled much like a large hotel lobby with fluffy rugs, leather sofas, and sparse, simple abstract art on the walls. Clients have access to a library, a cafe and restaurant which caters for all meals, and, pending psychological assessment, may be able to utilise the swimming pool, sauna and fully equipped gym. In consultation with their doctor they may choose from a diversity of complimentary healing therapies and a creative arts curriculum.
A young British landscape architect was commissioned to design the beautiful gardens that surround the Institute. The stone labyrin
th was my idea. Some argued that a labyrinth in the grounds of what is, after all, a mental institute, was rather ironic if not ludicrous, but I feel it has been one of my great strokes of insight. And the labyrinth is where I stumbled upon Lisa. Lisa, my dear Lisa, I knew you would be my first success. I knew you would not fail me like the others had.
Often I stroll the halls and recesses of Level 1, observing the clients more closely for potential Level 2 candidates. This is not easy to do as models are reclusive creatures. They come here and shun personal contact with anyone besides their therapist and personal assistant. Usually they are quite antagonistic towards each other. It is the predictable and understandable behaviour of those who have lived all their young lives in the harsh spotlight of fame and fortune, in the bitter crossfire of adoration and criticism. I walk among them, exchanging a greeting here and there, sometimes pausing for a light hearted chat. I like to wear my crisp white doctor’s coat whenever I leave my office, usually over a well cut pair of black woollen pants and high neck sweater, a simple but elegant and professional look. Fitting for a woman of my age and status. It is important that I command respect and a certain amount of awe. Generally I am very well liked by the clients; they think I am warm, friendly, genuinely caring. But in fact most of them are of no interest to me. What I am seeking is that extraordinary spark, that flash deep within the eyes that signals the spirit of a true gem, one who is willing to transcend norms, and be totally broken so they can be remade.
From a young age I knew my calling was to bring beauty into the world. I have always been a high achiever. My family was an average middle class family, without any striking talent or ambition. I myself was intensely passionate about life, about art and science. I studied psychology and medicine and slowly my path became evident to me, I was to become a cosmetic surgeon. It combines my varied interests wonderfully. It is tactile and moulds the flesh into beautiful forms but it also has a more ephemeral element. I realised early in my work that as I sculpted bodies, I also sculpted minds. That we can perfect the human form, that we can change the body as we desire, even as it is ravaged by the passage of time, and thus changing how we feel and think about ourselves, that is the gift of cosmetic surgery.
