Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  “Lord, no. There’s so much to do, so little time to make things right.”

  “Whatever does that mean? Right for what?” she asked, absently sucking the tip of her index finger she’d poked with the needle.

  “Him,” he said. “Them.”

  Vesta didn’t really hear this, she’d looked over at him as he slumped in the chair. It had been his chair, Cyrus’s, and to see Shug in it—slumped there, his shirt rucked up displaying his smooth, tight belly—caused her a moment of cognitive dissonance.

  A man—and oh, Lord, what a beautiful one—slumped half-dressed in her husband’s chair. What if he were to return right now, stumble through the door, back from whatever dark forest (or even darker grave) in the wilds of Germany? How would he react? What would he think? The scandal. The gossip.

  But Cyrus wasn’t coming back. She knew that, all the way down to the thick of her marrow and the recently defrosted heart of her heart. He also hadn’t left her with any children, children who might have stared at her accusingly with his eyes for doing what she was now considering.

  No, Cyrus wasn’t coming back, now or ever, and here was someone else, a man, sitting in her parlor, working her fields, eating her food.

  And sleeping on hay bales in the barn for the last two weeks.

  What a waste, is probably what most would say, perhaps even poor, dead Cyrus and his imaginary children.

  Vesta took a shaky breath, tore her eyes from him.

  “Can’t be comfortable out there in the barn, what with the weather turning and the nights getting colder. I expect it’ll frost soon.”

  Shug stirred, pulled himself up in his seat.

  “Probably. The air has that edge on it.”

  “Well, we certainly can’t have you sleeping out in the barn anymore, can we?”

  Shug fixed her with a measuring look. “Do you have… other arrangements?”

  Her mouth had gone dry as a dead well, her heart racing.

  “As a matter of fact, I do. Right here, in the house…”

  “You have a second room?”

  “…with me.”

  Her breathing caught, and he stood from the chair, came to her, reached out with one of his hands, one of the hands she’d dreamt about every night since he’d arrived. How it would touch her, how it would delight her.

  Something, some small voice within her shouted in a kind of moralistic panic.

  What the hell are you doing? You’re a married woman!

  But she wasn’t… not now, not really.

  You needed a husband for that, and she hadn’t had a husband, hadn’t had anyone to share her bed, stroke her hair, whisper with hot breath in her ear for nearly a decade.

  She took his hand, and he pulled her to him, lifted her face, kissed her, fully, deeply.

  Vesta dropped the sewing, almost collapsed into him.

  They kissed there for a while, losing track of time.

  He tasted of cloves and allspice, tobacco.

  She rolled the taste of him around in her mouth as he led her upstairs to her bedroom.

  Not thinking once of the lights they’d left on, the radio, the door they’d left unlocked.

  —

  When she awoke the next morning, soft, lemony light came through the open bedroom window, stirred the sheers. The air that came in was a little chilly, and she rose to close the window.

  She was surprised to find herself naked, totally naked. For a moment, she wondered how that came to be, since she’d always slept in her nightgown, flannel in the fall and winter, cotton in the spring and summer. She never slept naked, never even when Cyrus still shared her bed, never even after they’d…

  She remembered the previous evening, being led upstairs by Shug, removing her housedress, her bra and panties.

  She remembered stepping away from him as he undressed, to watch as his shirt came away, his pants fell. He wasn’t wearing any underclothes, and he’d stood revealed in the silver light of the moon.

  His body was like marble, something carved by one of those Italian men she’d read about in school. Flawlessly, fluidly muscled, skin that seemed soft and smooth on its surface, yet covered something firm and unyielding.

  Shug faced her there in the moonlight, arms at his sides, palms spread wide, as if he were aware of her need to take him in, approved of it.

  Vesta crept to him, slowly, hands out, fingertips tracing delicate trails across his skin.

  Shug covered her mouth with his, trailed kisses from her lips, down her throat to her breasts.

  As she gasped, he picked her up, wrapping her legs around his hips, carried her to the bed.

  He spent time going over every inch of her body with his hands, with his mouth, as if learning it, mapping it, committing its routes and byways to his memory in a way that no man, certainly not Cyrus, ever had.

  By the time he entered her, she was stunned, dizzy, her head swirling, her body overcome with sensations she’d never before experienced.

  But she wasn’t so far gone that, her hands splayed against the taut muscles of his back, she couldn’t feel something shift inside him, as if his very bones weren’t connected to each other.

  Not so far gone she couldn’t feel him move inside her, twist and turn as if his member were prehensile, possessed of a mind of its own.

  Not so far gone she couldn’t feel that it wasn’t just something inside of her, but somethings, each moving independently, curling and twisting and writhing until she was carried away on wave after wave of brutal, pummeling pleasure that swept all thought aside, effaced the night in an explosion of blue, blue light…

  —

  The season progressed, and soon Vesta and Shug had fallen into a rhythm of sorts, much the same rhythm that she’d had with Cyrus. They’d rise from their bed early, before the sun was up, naked, curled into each other under the quilts. They’d dress quietly, make their way downstairs where she would cook eggs and bacon, brew coffee in the blue enamel percolator as the radio played Hank Williams or Lefty Frizzell or Moon Mullican.

  Then, Shug would hitch up his overalls and head out into the field. The first frost had occurred, and she’d dug through some of Cyrus’s stuff still packed away in the attic to find his old flannel-lined field coat.

  As Shug left the house the first time in that coat, his back to her, Vesta had shivered violently. It could have been Cyrus leaving the house, Cyrus in that coat, Cyrus out in the fields.

  But Cyrus was dead, gone, lost in some forgotten woods in some war-ravaged country far from here…

  She’d asked several times to follow Shug, help him in the fields with whatever he was doing, but he always shrugged her off. It was “too hard for a gal” or “too boring for a gal” or “too dirty for a gal.” Then, he’d wink, kiss her, and leave.

  After a few days of this, her annoyance and curiosity got the better of her, so she gave him a few minutes head start, then followed him into the fields.

  The air was brittle that October morning, edged with the coming cold like a knife about to be drawn. The sky was striated blue and white, the clouds high and wispy, the sun brilliant. She crunched through the fallen leaves the old maple had dropped in the backyard, went quickly through the gate and around the barn.

  Up a slight rise, and there was the last of Cyrus’s 100 acres spread below her, curling like a cat’s tail against the brown ribbon of Bodner’s Creek that formed the acreage’s natural northern and eastern boundaries. Around the part not bordering the river was the fencing Shug had repaired.

  For a moment, she didn’t bother looking for Shug, seeing what he was doing, caring if he saw she’d followed him.

  Because there was something planted in those hundred acres.

  More than that. Something already grown that looked to some extent like corn, rows and rows of long stalks and dead, dried leaves. Something with two or three fleshy, bulging pods each, like ears of corn, except these drooped as if weighted.

  The closest seemed to glisten disturbingly
, veiny and pulsing a cool, subtle blue in the morning light.

  But even her focus on that was fleeting.

  Carved into the field of these tightly packed plants was a huge, sprawling, spiraling pattern that she could absorb in its entirety from her vantage atop the hill.

  It was enormous, a picture cut into the crop, of the crop; a looping thing of curlicues and corkscrews and what looked like the pattern of the inside of a seashell she’d seen in a book when she was a little girl. The design filled the field, wound to its edges, then twisted back into itself.

  Looking at the thing, attempting to take it all in, made Vesta’s head thrum, her eyes water. It seemed to move, to spin on a central axis, with great, coiling arms that reached out, then folded together in a way that made no sense, should not have been possible.

  But none of this was possible. It was just an illusion.

  She did see movement, then, toward the center of the pattern, was able to discern a person, presumably Shug, walking through the dense growth.

  Vesta stooped, walked a little ways back down the hill toward the barn, then knelt on the dirt path so Shug wouldn’t see her.

  The morning was quiet, no insects buzzing this late in the year, just a few bird calls here and there. She heard him singing as he stepped through each row, brushing the plants, touching the pods gently as he passed.

  But clearly singing, she could hear it on the still air… air that seemed all the more still for what he sang.

  She cocked her head to hear it more clearly.

  It was a strange, lilting tune, discordant at first, but the notes finally coming back around and beginning again, almost like the strange pattern formed in the field.

  Vesta could not make out the words, though. They were rough, guttural, filled with oddly placed consonants and glottals. She wondered if he were speaking German, but could not place any sound or word like any German she’d ever heard before.

  Like the pattern, Shug’s singing made her skull hurt, seemed to vibrate her teeth.

  More than that, though, it made her mind hurt, as if her consciousness was cringing from this tune, these words, her brain scrunched against the back of her skull in fear of the wrongness of it.

  Vesta duck-walked back down the hill.

  When she was sure she was out of sight, she stood, smoothed her dress, swatted at the dust at its hem, returned home.

  She sat for a long while on the porch, swaddled in her winter coat yet still shivering, before she went in to make lunch.

  —

  “What’s for lunch, beautiful?”

  Shug stomped his feet at the back door to clear the dirt from his boots before he came in.

  “Pea soup with ham,” Vesta replied, her back to him as she ladled it into a bowl. “For dinner, too. I made a lot of it.”

  “That’s fine by me,” he said shrugging from Cyrus’s old coat, hanging it on the peg by the door. “I love pea soup.”

  He stepped behind her, embraced her, kissed her bare neck.

  That kiss spread tendrils of warmth down her spine, but she shrugged it off.

  “Sit and eat before it gets cold,” she said, putting some of the thick, green soup into her own bowl.

  Shug sat, grabbed bread from the small plate in the center of the table, tore off a hunk and dipped it into his bowl as Vesta took her seat. They ate for a few minutes in silence, just the clinking of spoons against china, Shug slurping.

  Vesta kept her eyes down, unsure of what to say, how to ask about what exactly was going on in the fields, what he was up to.

  Knowing full certain that she’d get nothing but evasion to any question she’d ask, whether that would be verbal or something else. She began to think that perhaps everything with him was evasion, from his carefully constructed, mysterious demeanor right down to his attention to her… those artful kisses, those knowing hands, that sinful mouth.

  “Would you like to go with me into the fields after lunch?” he said, draining his milk glass and setting it empty beside the soup bowl. “See the work I’ve accomplished?”

  Vesta jumped a little, at his voice in the quiet room but also because he seemed to know what she was thinking, where she’d been earlier.

  “Why, yes,” she said. “Mayhap I can help you somehow.”

  Shug nodded slowly.

  “Oh, I’m sure you can, my dear. Very sure.”

  —

  The walk to the fields was quiet. They held hands loosely, and at least before they got there, it was sweet, almost normal. The sky had closed a bit, grey clouds moving in, pushing against each other, bunching against the horizon as if it were a barrier. The air smelled of dead leaves and ozone, and Vesta thought it might rain soon, tonight or tomorrow.

  Until they reached the crest of the hill, she held his hand, perhaps a little more loosely than before, but still feeling its warmth, its essential strength. His chapped skin, calloused fingers, the bunch of the muscles in his palm.

  When he turned to her, he smiled, but now it seemed… not exactly strained or worried, but tinged with something. Rue? Regret? Perhaps nothing so dire, but certainly something that felt as if their relationship, whatever that was, was on the cusp of change.

  For the better? For the worse? Vesta was unclear about which it was, all the more so because he seemed to be unclear, too.

  They walked to the top of the hill, paused.

  She looked out over the sea of the field, dark and filled with that swooping, gyrating pattern that made her scalp itch.

  He turned to her, said nothing, but seemed to note her reaction before leading them down.

  As they approached the edge of the field, Vesta could see the individual plants more clearly. They looked nothing like cornstalks, this close. The main stem looked almost tree-like, hard and solid like bamboo. The leaves that grew from this were blade-shaped, serrated and appeared sharp enough to actually cut flesh.

  But the pods, two or three to a plant, were disturbingly animal-looking. The bluish outer covering looked fleshy; a veiny, pulsing sack that resembled nothing so much as a scrotum, heavy with fluid.

  Shug went to one, cupped it gently in the palm of his hand, hefted it.

  Vesta shook her head against images of Shug in her bed, kneeling above her, naked in the darkness of the bedroom, cupping his own balls in much the same way, right before he parted the night, parted her thighs, slid into her…

  She watched, mesmerized, as he fished in his pocket, brought out a pocketknife. He slid the blade delicately over the pod’s taut skin, and a gush of indigo fluid, like the blood of night itself, gushed from the wound. One of his fingers entered this slit, and Vesta shifted uncomfortably.

  Shug fished out a small, slimy, bluish thing, about the size of a cicada, which writhed in the pool of amniotic fluid formed by the cup of his hand. It was thick as a big toe, segmented, glimmering in its slick coating of mucous. It seemed to have no tail, no head, no mouth or features, either, simply tapered away on each end.

  Yet it made a tiny sound, a small, barely heard mewling that simultaneously aroused Vesta’s maternal instinct, but also made her shiver in disgust and fear.

  Shug handed it to her, and she held out her palm with some trepidation. It slid into her hand, and she felt the tickle of its frantic movements against her skin.

  It felt curiously warm, the fluid a little sticky.

  Its mewling continued, like a kitten or the tiniest of babies.

  “Taste it,” he said, pantomiming the act of bringing it to his mouth and chewing.

  “What? No!”

  “Yes, that’s what they’re for. Eating,” he replied, placing his hand under hers and lifting it gently. “You’ll thank me. They’re the food of the gods.”

  Vesta’s eyes widened, her stomach contracted as her hand bearing this thing approached. But she didn’t resist.

  It smelled of almonds and some barely remembered, but savory spice, and her mouth watered despite her best efforts to deny it.

  “What
is it?” was the last thing she said before her lips closed, teeth squelched into it.

  “They’re shuggoth,” he said, but the word tangled itself on the air between his tongue and her ear, deforming her ability to hear it correctly. “At least, their larval form.”

  Shug…?

  The tiny thing burst between her teeth, and its gentle cries became a sharp, brief shriek in her brain before being silenced. Thick liquid ruptured from it, flowed against her tongue, like some strange jelly, sweet and ethereal in taste.

  The husk of its skin seemed to dissolve on her tongue, and she swallowed it. It left a musky, though not unpleasant, taste, redolent of that dimly recalled spice.

  “Tricky to try and grow them, you know,” Shug continued conversationally. “Never been tried before here, in the new world. Took a lot of convincing to get the gardeners over there to let loose of the seeds, the secret to growing them. Tastes great, right? So sweet.”

  Vesta nodded, closing her eyes and savoring the taste of it.

  “Happy that they grew so well, because we’re gonna need a lot of them to feed him when he gets here. And he’ll be here soon. Then, the world will change. We thought that winning those two wars would do it, would change the world. Protect us. But that didn’t happen, did it? We’re no different than we were before, are we? Not really. Still scurrying around, fighting each other. Still so afraid of everything. And maybe we’re right to be afraid…”

  Against the darkness of the insides of her eyelids, the universe opened before Vesta, burst into being in a flash of nauseous violet light. She stood there, knees shaking, as clouds of cosmic gas ignited before her, expanded to envelop planets, moons, stars, whole systems. Fire moved between the stars, slithering like an intelligent serpent, winding from world to world, snuffing them out.

  “But he’ll change that when he arrives. He’ll usher in real change, and people will get what they deserve, finally, the good and the bad. He’ll make us great, truly great. Again.”

  Then she realized that it was not a snake, but snakes, each winding in a hundred, a million different directions against the black velvet of space, seeking, destroying…

  “We’ll bring him here, you and me, baby. We’ll help him save us.”