The Hoard

by Alan Ryker

  CHAPTER 10

  For decades, Victor had visited Anna in her dreams. He was always ten years old. Her little boy. Her first miracle. They’d said that she wouldn’t be able to have children. Then at thirty-one she’d found herself vomiting every morning, and after getting fed up with her worrywart husband’s pleadings, she went to the doctor and they told her that she was pregnant.

  The world shifted, and everything became right. All the tension between herself and her husband Wiktor evaporated. She’d long felt like a mean-spirited person, even though she didn’t want to be. She discovered that it was just unspent maternal energy, and when it finally had an object, she felt complete. But that energy, that protective spirit, turned out to have not been enough.

  Still, Victor Junior turned out to be made from the best of her and her husband. Because even though her son died alone in a hole because his mother did not do enough to protect him, Victor still came down to her from heaven and tried to make things right again, in her dreams.

  “Mom, we have to go home.”

  Anna opened an eye. Though the curtains were drawn against the afternoon light, the room wasn’t dark. Victor always came at night, as she slept. And yet, there he sat, beside her on the clown bed.

  “I made a mistake, honey. I don’t think we can go home. I let things get too bad.”

  “You didn’t do wrong. Home is safe. We can’t let them take it from us.”

  Anna understood then that if they destroyed her home as they planned to that Victor would leave her and never return.

  She didn’t need much in life. She wasn’t wasteful. She’d always made do with what she had. But she needed her dreams of Victor.

  He stood, and Anna got out of bed. She went for the door.

  “No. Katherine will stop you. Go out the window.”

  Anna opened the window as quietly as she could, removed the screen and then stopped and listened. She couldn’t hear anyone coming. The boys had the television turned up loud. They watched that thing too much. It wasn’t healthy…

  “Mom,” Victor said.

  Anna slid out of the window. She looked back into the room. Victor wasn’t there. She looked around. She was alone.

  It was the sun. He didn’t like the sun. She stared up at the hateful thing. Its heat struck her in pulses, as if it were beating down on her with a hammer, trying to pound her into the ground. And she wanted to go into the ground.

  Victor couldn’t live in that blasted landscape. He needed their home. She’d kept it for him all that time. Part of her had always known that.

  She ran.

  * * *

  Anna tore down the Condemned notice on the door and stepped inside. She could almost feel her skin rehydrating, pulling moisture from the damp air. A calm filled her as well, even though her house was very different from the way it had been when she’d last seen it.

  There had been intruders.

  “Where are our friends?” Victor asked. He’d always liked cats. That was one reason she had so many, though they seemed to multiply as they liked.

  “Most are still here. Animal Control tried to take them, but they couldn’t.” They’d brought over a whole stack of documents charging her fines. She didn’t bother looking at them. They warned her that she needed to collect her cats, because it wasn’t safe for them to do so with the house in the condition it was in. She laughed at them. They were idiots if they thought she’d help the government kick her out of her home and steal her beloved cats, and she told them so. Katherine had apologized for her.

  Animal Control had torn up the front room as best they could. Anna wondered how many they’d gotten. It couldn’t have been many, because felines began streaming out of the piles. They weren’t hungry. The intruders had poured dry food out in the clearer places in the room.

  The cats had come out to greet her.

  They knew she was one of them now. And Anna knew it too, though she didn’t know exactly what it meant. She only knew they all belonged together. There, in that house.

  All of her carefully built piles had toppled. Good. With no more illusions that she controlled the hoard, she gave into it.

  Anna crawled over the piles of junk until she reached her bedroom. Animal Control hadn’t made it that far. She found what she was looking for: an old GI Joe action doll. It had been Victor’s favorite. She clawed through piles of clothes and blankets until she could slide beneath her bed. Beside her, Victor held his doll and slept. Having finally found peace, she closed her eyes and slept, too.

  Soon, though, she felt vibrations through the floor. Someone had entered her den. No one respected her. They thought they could treat her as a child, and that she’d passively accept that role. This person hadn’t even bothered to knock.

  Heavy boots trampled her belongings. She followed the sound into the kitchen, turning her head as if she could see the intruder. She felt she almost could. Her senses were so sharp. She could hear fresh, crinkly plastic, and smell that it had recently been doused in disinfectant. The smell struck at something deep within her, releasing a flood of adrenaline that spilled through her veins, leaving her gasping for breath.

  “He’s here to take this away from us. They’ll pin us down in the sun and dry us into husks!” Victor said.

  “He won’t,” she hissed.

  Anna clawed out with long, reaching grasps, pulling herself forward. She crawled through her den, staying low, stalking.

  Peering around the corner and into the kitchen, she saw a man in a spaceman suit crouched down, scooping things up with a strange plastic cup.

  “Stop him!” Victor shrieked. Anna couldn’t remember when she’d heard her little boy so upset. It jolted her, and she almost went sliding down into the kitchen. Papers toppled as she managed to scramble back out of sight.

  Conspiratorially, a cat jumped past the doorway.

  “Creepy damn cats…” the spaceman muttered from the kitchen.

  Victor stared at Anna with a terrified expression that sent rage spilling through her veins. Electric shocks burst in her brain, galvanizing her into motion. She slid around the corner and into the kitchen, dentures bared, but silent, then jumped, kicked off the counter and landed with both hands on the man’s plastic-hooded head, which she rode down until it smashed on the floor.

  When she lifted his head again, his eyes were rolled back. His nose smashed flat. Teeth that had split his lips rattled inside his plastic facemask.

  Anna ripped his hood off, then gently took a handful of filth and red grubs and smeared it onto his bloody face.

  He wasn’t conscious when she dragged him beneath the heap in the hallway. She perched atop the pile.

  Soon, the rage passed. The wardrum of her heart stopped beating behind her temples. What had she done?

  “You did what needed to be done, Momma. You protected me.” Victor took her hand, and warmth exploded from the base of her skull and wrapped lazy fingers around her brain. The last time she’d hurt her back, they gave her oxycodone. This felt like that, only better. For one thing, a son’s love wasn’t something you fought becoming addicted to.

  With the keys Anna had taken from the spaceman’s pockets, she started the car parked in front of her house. It had been a very long time since she’d driven. She found the seat controls and slid the seat all the way forward. Still, she had to sit very straight to see over the dashboard.

  She turned the keys and the vehicle roared to life. She ran her hands tentatively over the various levers before finally putting the car into gear.

  It scared her by jumping into motion, and she stomped down on the brakes and bounced off the steering wheel.

  It had been a very long time.

  She slowly pressed down on the accelerator and drove the sedan farther into her yard, then carefully steered the big vehicle through the gate and into the longer grasses of the cattle pasture. The cattle barely gave her a glance as she passed by, bouncing over the slight ridges of the mostly-flat prairie land. Before long, she came
to the creek that crossed a corner of their land. The cattle drank there in spring and fall, but just then, at the height of summer and a drought, it was dry. Anna very carefully drove the car through low branches, where she judged there were no trunks. She guessed right, and the car suddenly went nose-down and raced to the bottom of the dry creek bed and a sudden stop. Luckily, after the first jolt on the steering wheel Anna had put her seatbelt on.

  She climbed out of the car and up the bank, then arranged the limbs she’d driven through. Only a few had broken, and the rest created a solid screen. The tire tracks through the grass were apparent, but the grass had been cropped down by the cattle and would bounce back after the morning dew. And the pasture began fifty feet from the house, anyway. It would take some hard looking to find that vehicle.

  Anna almost started back toward the house, but then turned and went along the creek.

  It had been a long time. She didn’t want to see it again, but she felt compelled. She walked along the tree line until she came to a spot that looked no different from the rest, but which she would never forget or mistake, and she turned in toward the creek.

  Partway down the bank sat a pile of flat, wide boulders. They were completely out of place, being the sort of stones you found falling out of the side of a highway-gouged hill, not sitting on a creek bank. Anna placed a hand on one. There under the shade of the large trees, the surface of the shaded stone was cool.

  The pile was there for a practical purpose: it covered the dangerous hole in which her Victor had died. But that also made it a sort of grave marker. One that she hadn’t visited for many years.

  Victor was dead. He was not waiting for her in her house. She’d knocked a stranger unconscious and buried him in trash, then hidden his car. Her behavior made no sense.

  Electricity filled her brain, and the world became hazy and distorted. She fell to her knees on the bank.

  Anna found herself in the doorway to her bedroom. She was so tired. She must have gone there to rest.

  Victor beckoned her from beneath a pile of his old things. She slid into the pile, curled up beside him and went to sleep. Hours passed.

  “Mom!”

  It was Peter. She looked to Victor. He nodded. “Soon you’ll come back for good.”

  She nodded, glad that Victor understood. She didn’t want to upset either of her boys.

  Anna crawled easily over the piles of clothes and bedclothes and then slid down some loose boxes from the hallway into the front room.

  “What the hell are you doing here? You know it isn’t safe for you to be here.”

  She almost snapped at him, but she let him get away with his tone just once, because it came from the right place.

  “I needed to get some things. Some clothes.”

  “Well? Where are they?”

  She turned and scurried back into her bedroom. Victor was gone. She grabbed an armful of clothing, then went back.

  Peter stared at her with a dumbfounded expression.

  “You shouldn’t worry so much,” Anna said. “I took care of myself just fine for a few decades before you were even born.”

  “But you can’t wander off. I would have come here with you to get your clothes. You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck crawling over all that stuff.”

  But the expression on his face showed that, while he spoke with confidence, he hadn’t been able to process what he saw. She moved easily about her den, because that’s where she belonged. The question was, when would he accept that?

  In the truck, she watched Peter’s face as he drove. He looked tired, and sad. She didn’t like being the cause of his pain. He was too tender of a boy. He was like his father: a big, gentle workhorse. Wiktor Grzych had been a caring, hardworking man, but his nature was both a strength and a flaw. When faced with adversity, he put his head down and worked until other men would have fallen over dead. But the flaw was that he had to keep his head down. He couldn’t think too much about his troubles. He just plodded ahead, hoping that the same strength that had gotten him that far would take him farther.

  With squinted eyes, Anna looked at the scorched, sun-bleached landscape that would sometimes let a man eke out an existence, and would other times desiccate his soul until it blew away on the sharp breeze, and didn’t give a lick either way. If there was anything worthwhile to be wrung from that soil, her son would get it. But if there wasn’t…Her type could live on spite alone. When the sun last tried to blast her family from the land, they dug in. They dug down. They nourished themselves on their own venom.

  While Wiktor’s kind sometimes prospered, it also sometimes disappeared. To some degree, Peter relied on a compassionate universe that didn’t exist. But the Earth could never be rid of her kind, because her kind could live just the same on poison as honey.

  She wished she’d pushed harder for him to go to college. He could have been an academic. He would have flourished under the protection of tenure.

  Peter stopped the truck in front of the house to let her out, but she shook her head no and rode with him to the garage. As they walked back, she stopped and turned toward his workshop. Something there called to her. A smell. An atmosphere.

  “Mom? Why don’t we go get some supper?”

  “Show me your shop.”

  She could see his brain trying to work out an excuse as to why they shouldn’t, but he looked at her and sighed in resignation. “Okay.”

  Peter walked past the huge garage door and opened a small door.

  As the air wafted out, something in her brain and in her veins stirred, and she felt a bit of the drunken warmth she’d felt earlier. Peter’s shop was a good place. She wouldn’t have thought Peter capable of surprising her, but she hadn’t expected this. Perhaps they were more alike than she’d assumed.

  “I’ve been so busy. I really haven’t had time to clean up.”

  She ignored him and stepped through the door. Far back, she heard small creatures scurrying about in panic at their unwelcome presence.

  Behind her, Peter flipped on the lights. They came halfway on and buzzed, then a few moments later, clicked and brightened, filling the large shop with fluorescent light.

  He’d kept all of his father’s old, outdated equipment. The drill press, the table saw, the lathe…Pete had new versions, too, but he still had his father’s.

  “Do these still work?”

  “Some of it does. The lathe doesn’t work too bad. I can fix the rest. Just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  She remembered Wiktor working with those tools in his own shop. Each one had been an investment, paid for with money scrimped here and there. Tears threatened to fill Anna’s eyes as she imagined his hulking, Polack form bent over the equipment.

  “They’re antiques. And they were Dad’s,” Peter said. “I couldn’t just get rid of them.”

  Anna walked farther into the shop. Although the lighting should have been the same, it seemed to dim as she went. She ran her fingers along the tops of bureaus and hutches, taking thick pads of dust away with her fingertips. It was lovely hardwood furniture, made back when people cared to fill their homes with quality goods.

  “I get those at estate sales. I figured when I had a free minute I’d refinish them and sell them, make an extra buck or two. As bad as the drought is, those could turn out to have been some good investments.”

  “Katherine doesn’t think so, does she?”

  “No. But she doesn’t make too much noise as long as I don’t try to bring them inside. Hey, don’t you think we should get out of this heat? Kathy picked up some Crystal Light at the store. That sounds pretty good.”

  As she went farther back into the shop, as the darkness and dankness increased, so did the warmth at the base of Anna’s skull. She felt wriggling in her veins. She fought the urge to crawl into the refuse pile, and instead sat on an old couch.

  It wasn’t an investment purchase. The couch was old, dusty and mouse-eaten, and a horrible shade of green. She ran her hands along the co
arse polyester weave.

  “Mom, come on. That’s not clean.”

  “Why do you have it?”

  “I told you.” He sounded petulant, and like he’d had this conversation before, probably with Katherine. “I’ve been too busy to clean up.”

  She rose, passed Peter and headed for the door. The sun burned with such white heat that nothing beyond the door was even visible. It was the hatch to a burning furnace. As she drew closer, her heart pounded in her neck. Electric jolts replaced the gentle warmth in her skull, and her veins jumped and twitched.

  She wanted to stay, but pushed ahead. It wasn’t yet time.

  * * *

  Katherine hadn’t finished cooking supper yet. She was pressing pizza dough across cookie sheets, working it an inch at a time so as to not tear it. Anna offered to help, but was refused. Katherine suggested that there was time to get cleaned up. Pete pleaded with Anna with his eyes, and she bit her tongue and went to take a shower.

  After she got out, Junior brought her a book about a boy superhero. There was still time before supper, so she sat down on the couch between Teddy and Junior and read them the adventurous tale. Teddy squirmed and nearly performed gymnastics on his end of the couch, but Peter Junior leaned against Anna and listened intently.

  When she’d finished, he asked, “Is there time for another?”

  “I don’t think so, Victor, but maybe at bedtime.”

  He looked at her with a confused expression. “I’m Junior.”

  “Of course you are. That’s what I meant. Let’s go see if supper’s ready.”

  “It’s pizza!” Victor exclaimed. Anna watched and smiled as he ran on ahead.

  CHAPTER 11

  It had been a week since his mother had moved in with them, and Pete felt ready to flip his lid. As far as he knew, for the past couple of days she’d been staying close to the house, but he could tell that something wasn’t quite right with her. She had a visit coming up with a dementia specialist in Wichita, but he didn’t feel like his mother had dementia. She seemed so healthy, and he thought a physical decline should accompany the mental decline. But what else could explain her behavior, and the fact that she’d almost entirely stopped talking?