by Simon Wood
“Let me see what I can find out,” Oracle said.
Oracle scanned. The creature breathed in and out, much more deeply than when it communicated with Clelland. It inflated, pushing Clelland back, then deflated. The creature expanded by at least ten percent when in deep thought. Its mouth opened and closed in time with its swelling and contracting bulk.
After several minutes, Oracle responded. “I have the information you need.”
“Good.” Clelland wasn’t overjoyed. He didn’t much care for the information. The price was too high.
Oracle relayed the information and Clelland made shorthand notes for his superiors.
“Will London be pleased?” Oracle asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m their best agent, aren’t I?”
“Yes. Yes, you are, Oracle.”
“My information has the best mission success rate in the Allied forces, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Eighty percent.”
Always eighty percent.” Oracle exhaled and its spout opened then closed. “I wish it could be more.”
Clelland was shaking. Oracle was tearing him apart. It was hard to hold back the tears. He insisted on showing Oracle was a brave front every time it teased him. It was a futile gesture. Oracle knew exactly how Clelland felt. How much it all hurt. How much he hated himself for being the one who had to deal with the informant. Clelland covered his nose and mouth with his hand, holding in a cry.
“When do we arrive at Wotje Atoll?”
“Thirty-six hours.” Clelland wiped away a tear and sniffed.
“Wasn’t Wotje Atoll one of my bad predictions?”
Clelland nodded to a creature that couldn’t see.
“Have they fought yet?”
“No. Oh-five-hundred hours.”
“Do you think many will be killed?”
“You know it will be slaughter.” Clelland’s words crawled out on barbed wire. He fought the urge to scream.
“Do you blame me?”
“Does it matter?”
“Because London is happy with my successes and not to bothered by my failures? Because nobody’s perfect? Because no one can be right all of the time?”
Clelland was already walking away. He had what he came for. He didn’t have to listen to Oracle. He wasn’t the creature’s friend or nursemaid. He was just the message boy.
“I’ll relay your information to London.”
“I’ve given you five missions there. One has to fail, to maintain my eighty percent success rate. I’ll let you choose which one.”
“Bastard,” Clelland hissed under his breath. He didn’t care that Oracle heard his thought before the word was out.
“Remember, Clelland. We have a bargain.”
Clelland slammed the cargo hatch. The resulting clang rebounded off the hull and bulkheads.
How could he forget? The bargain came after a string of successes at the expense of Oracle’s health. In the Vulture’s hold, the creature had been dying. London told him to keep Oracle alive at any cost…any cost. The problem was its diet. The food they fed it, the cows, pigs and sheep, were killing it. It needed what it had always needed, what it had survived on in the volcano’s crater and what it needed to thrive to read the enemy’s minds—people.
London wasn’t about to sacrifice people to the creature, but they did have plenty of dead. Clelland fed Oracle the carcasses of soldiers that fell in battle. The families of the dead didn’t need to know the final sacrifice their loved ones had to make for King and country.
Nobody was perfect, except Oracle. But the creature had to be wrong, or it would never eat. The flow of dead was drying up. London had told Clelland to do whatever it took to keep the information coming. Oracle and Clelland made a deal. Every fifth mission, Clelland sent London the wrong time, location or position. Thousands of soldiers died unnecessarily, just so Oracle could eat.
He never shared their secret. Who could he tell? The Lord Mayor’s Bucket Boys would have hacked him and Oracle to pieces. London would have turned a blind eye, uninterested. The cost was small compared to the ten of thousands that lived. Acceptable losses, as they liked to say.
“Our bargain, captain,” Oracle reminded Clelland, as the officer headed for the radio room.
Not that its reminder mattered. Oracle was finished. The Pacific theater was at an end. The Yanks had the bomb and intended using it. And Clelland had his transfer papers. He was an artilleryman again. His destination was number three on Oracle’s list. He circled it as the mission to fail.
THE HEAD
As the image of her mother’s burning head seared Tammy’s mind, she laughed. Her laughter contained no joy, only hysteria. A squirrel quivered on a tree branch. She studied the creature. It knew better than to mess with her. She looked away and the squirrel darted into the woods and to safety.
Tammy raced after the animal, but she wasn’t chasing it. It just happened to be going her way. The bridge was where she wanted to be. The bridge was where it had all started and where it all had to end…
***
She always came to the bridge when life was too much, and tonight was no exception. The moon overhead was bright and full. The wind lacked the strength to tousle the green hair of the trees. Tammy stood in the middle of the time-ravaged bridge, the wood so old it was no longer brown but a bone-gray. She leaned over the edge and stared at her shimmering reflection in the flowing water.
Sometimes, she thought, parents suck. Her mother was her special self again—the drama queen. She was the downtrodden one, the oppressed one, the unappreciated one and everyone else was to blame. If she hated her life so much why didn’t she just leave? Tammy wished she would.
Moonlight reflected off something floating in the water, riding the current towards the bridge. Tammy followed its path towards her, finding the activity soothing, taking her away from her frustrations. The object crept closer and in a second it would be under the bridge and out of her life. But she didn’t want it out of her life. She needed the curiosity—the complication. She darted down to the riverbank and launched herself into the freezing water, not caring how wet she got. For a second, she thought her foolhardiness had caused her to lose the object, but then she saw it bobbing on the surface and plucked it from the water.
***
Tammy dried her find with a hairdryer and placed it on her dresser. Sitting cross-legged on her bed, she stared at it. It stared back. An ordinary girl would have tossed the thing back in the water, but not Tammy, she was different.
Someone could have mistaken her discovery for a doll’s head. But one touch of its leathery surface said otherwise. It was a human head. Its features were adult, possessing all the definition of maturity, but its extensive aging made it impossible to tell if it was male or female. The eyes and mouth had been sewn shut. She recognized it as a shrunken head similar to one she’d seen on PBS.
Her mother knocked and came in without waiting for an answer. Tammy reacted quickly and threw a towel over the head.
“Where have you been?” Nothing in her tone convinced Tammy that she cared at all about the answer.
Tammy could have hit back with a smart remark, but it would have started a fight, which wouldn’t get her what she wanted—her mother out of the room. So, Tammy responded with a shrug and said, “Nowhere.”
“Your room is a mess. Why do you insist on making my life so difficult?”
“Why do you care what my room looks like? You don’t live in here. Just…just let me worry about my own things, okay?”
Her mother sighed.
“Leave,” her mother commanded. “I’ll clean it. I’m the only one who knows how to put things back around here.” With that, her mother descended into a world of dirty laundry and a yet-to-be-organized CD collection strewn about the floor.
Tammy swiped the head before her mother noticed it and stuffed it under her tee shirt. “If you hate it here so much here, why don’t you just leave?”
Without looking up, h
er mother said, “If only it were that easy.”
Tammy tore through the house and flew out the front door. She ran, heedless of the darkening clouds, not hearing the thunderheads warming up. She knew only that she had to get away, to escape. She went to her cave, a small crevice in a hillside above her neighborhood and the world that confined her. She pushed aside the bramble she used to hide the opening. She finally worked her way through the underbrush and crawled to the back of her hiding place. She grabbed her lighter from a mud carved shelf and lit four church candles hidden in the corners. The candles cast light and warmth. She wouldn’t be disturbed here and let the heat seep into her.
Tammy took the shrunken head and set it on a makeshift altar of wood and dirt. The head looked at home in the cave. It had an earthen quality, as if it had been spawned from the ground.
Fumes from the candles collected at the cave’s roof, inches above her head. Nausea crept up and took a sideswipe at her senses. Bile made a dash for her throat but she managed to fight it back. The candles hadn’t caused this problem before. She went to snuff them out, but unconsciousness stopped her. As she struck the ground, the shrunken head seemed to be smiling.
***
Birdsong saturated the air, perfectly complementing the blue sky. It was as if the birds were performing a fanfare in honor of the perfect day—even though it was a school day. Tammy didn’t mind the two-mile walk home. She was enjoying the sun, bathing her in its heat.
All too quickly, Tammy was home. She ran a stick across the white picket fence, making a rat-a-tat-tat sound. She flipped open the gate and skipped down the path to the front door. No need for a door key—there was no reason to lock a door in her neighborhood.
From the hallway, Tammy heard her mother singing in the kitchen. The Reverend Johnson’s church was lucky to have such a voice in their choir. Sundays wouldn’t be Sundays without one of Ginny Testaverde’s solos.
Tammy followed the voice and a fresh baked scent into the kitchen. Her mother was adding the finishing touches to a chocolate cake.
“Hello, dear. Good day at school?”
“Yes, mother. Perfect, as usual. Thursdays is always double Latin,” Tammy added enthusiastically. “Who’s the cake for?”
“You, silly.”
“But it isn’t my birthday.”
“I know it isn’t. But it’s Thursday and I thought it should be chocolate cake day. How’s that sound?”
“Perfect.”
“Good, then I’ll cut you a slice.”
“Let me do my homework first.”
“Homework!” Tammy’s father announced, opening the back door. “Before chocolate cake? Have you been out in the sun too long?”
He slipped an arm around his wife’s waist and gave her a peck on the cheek. He radiated success and strength, only equal to her mother’s love and beauty. Tammy felt blessed to have such wonderful parents. Their family was so well adjusted. Her mother looked enchanting as always, as did Tammy. Her father was a handsome man with chiseled features and a confident air. His white, short-sleeved shirt had crisp edges even after a full day’s work. Any corporation would be proud to have an employee such as her father. Tammy couldn’t help beaming.
In the same moment, Tammy’s smile dissolved. The tableau was fake. It was a sick diorama, made from candy wrappers and lies. Lighting flashed, searing the lie to the bone and exposing the truth. Tammy was back in her cave, as she had been all along. The storm outside meant she would be soaked through before she got home.
And what a home, she thought bitterly. Her mother would nag and bitch. Her father, no captain of industry, just a Kragen Auto Parts clerk, would let it all happen. If he didn’t interfere, he didn’t get moaned at.
“What a crock,” Tammy spat.
“It doesn’t have to be,” a voice said softly.
Tammy spun around, her hair whipping her face. No one was there.
“I can make things happen for you, Tammy.”
She couldn’t work out where the voice had come from. It was behind her, in front of her, and more disturbingly, inside her. With chilling realization, Tammy knew who was talking. She turned towards the voice.
“Would you like me to help you?” the shrunken head asked. Its sewn mouth couldn’t speak but the words slipped between still lips. “Would you?”
Tammy picked up the head. It was warm.
***
Ginny squeezed the laundry basket full of warm, clean clothes through the kitchen doorway. New laundry stood on the front porch. Tammy was drenched. Rain dripped from every square inch of her. A puddle formed at her feet, darkening the doormat from red to crimson. The stupid child had to be freezing but she didn’t show it. This wasn’t the first time she had come home in this state. No wonder she was penitent, with her head down and her hands behind her back.
Probably been playing in her little hide-e-hole, Ginny thought. Bet she doesn’t know her nasty, old mom knows all about that one. She chose not to bring it up. That was the kind of ammo to be used at a more opportune time.
“Tammy, where the hell have you-”
Tammy looked up. Ginny expected the whipped puppy look, but instead, her daughter’s eyes brimmed with stone-cold hatred. And those eyes were aimed directly at her.
Ginny couldn’t speak. Fear anesthetized her vocal cords and slithered down her throat, consuming her pounding heart. Her spine stiffened as if turning to stone. Her bladder insisted on being emptied. “Tammy?” she croaked.
Tammy took two steps forward and brought a hand from behind her back. A tiny head dangled from her daughter’s grasp. At first, Ginny confused it with a toy, but the features were too human and at the same time, inhuman. It was no doll’s head. The lips moved under the constraints of the stitches binding them.
“This is for you, mother,” Tammy growled, thrusting the head in Ginny’s face.
Ginny tore the head from her daughter’s grip. The monstrosity was hot in her hands. Its mouth broke the stitches. Piercing light burst from the orifice, blinding her. The head spoke, its voice inside her head. She screamed, but unconsciousness throttled her cry.
***
Tammy awoke cold, wet and wrapped in her bedclothes. She didn’t know how she had ended up in bed. The last thing she remembered she was being somewhere else—her cave maybe?
Cobwebs clogged her memory but the longer she was awake, the more the world came into focus. She’d had a dream—no, not a dream, more like a nightmare. She remembered that much. It had something to do with her mother.
“Tammy, Tammy, come quick. It’s your mom,” her father shouted.
Tammy leapt from the bed, the comforter coming with her. She fought against it and something struck the floor. It was the shrunken head.
She remembered. Information fast-forwarded through her brain—the river, the cave, the deal. The head had made her an offer and she had accepted. Dread pulsed through her veins as she recalled her mother was the bargain.
***
Tammy’s mother looked at rest in the hospital bed, even with the tubes and wires hanging from her like ectoplasm. It was a damn sight better than the contorted knot Tammy and her father had discovered writhing on the hallway floor. The paramedics had arrived within minutes, reeling off a quick fire language that meant nothing to Tammy.
“She’ll be okay.” Tammy’s father gave her hand a squeeze. He smiled as best he could while holding back the tears. “Do you want to sit?”
The private room had only one seat and neither Tammy nor her father chose to take it. It seemed irreverent to do so. They stood with their backs to the window, the night air cool on their flesh. They kept a healthy distance from Tammy’s mother. The agony carved into her face only hours ago made her so fragile now that Tammy felt her breath would break her.
A nurse finished making her patient comfortable. She studied Tammy and her father then smiled. “No need to look so worried. She’s stable now. She’ll be telling you to pick up after yourselves before you know it.”
/> Tammy’s father squeezed his daughter’s hand again. “Thanks, nurse.”
“It’ll be okay to go home if you like. When she wakens, someone will call you.”
“No. I think we’d prefer to stay. Wouldn’t we, Tammy?”
Yes, should have been Tammy’s instantaneous reply. Instead, the shrunken head’s influence was upon her. She had said yes to the head, agreed to its terms, given something of herself in return for…what? She knew it was something to do with her mother but she still couldn’t remember. It couldn’t be coincidence that had struck her mother down. She had to stay. “We’re not leaving.”
“I could make up a cot for you and your daughter, if you’d like?”
“That would be good. Tammy, why don’t you go with the nurse and get some sleep. I’ll call if your mom wakes.”
“Dad, I don’t wanna go.”
“Don’t be daft. No sense in both of us having a sleepless night. Now say goodnight to your mom.”
Did he know something she didn’t? Was her mother’s condition worse than everyone was letting on? Adults were being adults and no one was going to tell the kid what was happening. Reluctantly, Tammy agreed.
She went to her mother’s bedside. “I love you, mom.” She patted her mother’s hand.
Ginny recoiled from her daughter’s touch. She babbled gibberish. But with every disturbing word the inaudible became the audible, soon verging on a scream. The convulsing and spasming that bled into the attack threatened to rip the tubes and wires from her body. The nurse launched into the fray.
Tammy shrank back from her mother’s bedside, staring at her hand—the hand that had caused this. It didn’t look like it had the power to inflict this hurt.
While the nurse fought to hold Ginny down, she managed to hit the emergency call button. Tammy’s father rushed to his wife’s side to help the nurse. Ginny exhibited a strength that belied her size. Both the nurse and Tammy’s father were bucked like bull riders. Ginny wasn’t going anywhere without a fight.
