by Chris Capps
Willard was there as a child, playing carnival games. And she was standing round and round on the carousel, murdering him with her eyes. A part of her had always been tethered to him - forced by love to watch over him. Protect him. The revelation came fast all at once. There was no place for her brother in this new world. The Icarin would have known that too.
The old man closed his briefcase and walked away in disgust. A thunderbolt split the sky, hitting the fox's heart. And as it bled it started to move. And the trees watched. The trees always watched until their hearts stopped and turned to wood.
Parugola.
Felix wrapped his arm around Molly's head and clasped her close as the nightmares took her. The twitching was worse now, making her whisper things to herself under her breath that he couldn't understand. Images, meaningless words. He looked up at Rosario, as if to stop him from reading. But the doctor's eyes were fastened to the text. He was reading it solemnly now, like an old priest reading a long forgotten prayer.
An hour passed in that tense rhythmic voice. Jessica was at the back door looking out into the fog and watching it turn orange. Soon it would be night again. Soon the Mollys would mobilize. And she knew in that moment that they wouldn't survive another night.
She pushed the back door of the building open with her shoulder, staring out into the white blanket. For a moment she wondered if the message she had sent to the rest of the town had worked. Would they show up now to the rescue? A black procession was quickly arriving from the fog.
They walked in a current of pale faces and thin upheld arms. Hundreds of them, each firing off their ecstatic language in tongues. They turned as each one passed, an excitement she could not feel rippling through the whole mass. They watched her with smiles.
"Kiss-kiss," Jessica said quietly as her fingers wrapped around the links of fence between them. A few of them heard her say it and laughed, waving and dancing as the sun went dim and the wind blew. Hundreds. She thought over and over that the flow of Mollys might stop. And it didn't. It kept coming. It spilled around the edge of the building, ran or jogged or trudged or danced up to the front door.
Chance Cooper was inside when he heard a loud rap at it. The windows at the front of the building were full of their image, some pressing hands excitedly over eyes and peering in while others craned their necks in solemn duty. Chance fished the .38 from the bag Dr. Rosario had left at the front and looked out at them. There was laughter, crying. Screams of every perfect flavor. He picked up the gun and placed the barrel in his mouth as the pounding at the door came again, thudding the door, making it jump on its hinges. One of the Mollys was staring at him from the window, right in the eyes as he placed the gun in his mouth. She was nodding.
Pop Thomas was screaming, sustained and throaty as he climbed the ladder. When Jessica returned inside the first thing she saw was the light of the hatch shut as Pop sealed himself up top. The hallway was dark now. She ran up, toward the front of the building where Chance and Frankie were watching. When she saw Chance, she placed her hand around his wrist and pulled the gun from his mouth.
"We're too late," Chance said, eyes red. She pointed to a large sofa resting against the wall.
"Not yet," she said. Together they pushed the sofa against the door. The laughter outside was telegraphing the futility of what they were trying to do. The sofa was large, but moved easily enough. Frankie flipped the desk up, rolling it onto its side and pressing it against two folding chairs. He remembered the sofa in the hallway.
"Help me with this," Jessica said as she pushed over a bookcase full of unwrapped records, letting them avalanche across the floor in front of the entrance. Chance and Frankie both leaned the bulk of their weight into the shelf, pressing it unconvincingly against the front door.
"The back door!" Frankie called out, "Is it locked?"
"I don't know," Jessica said.
Frankie turned back and sprinted into the darkened hallway, wrapping his hand around the doorknob to check it. It was locked. He turned, facing toward the front, looking up toward the light spilling from the windows. The hall had silhouettes in it. They were all lining the edges, spilling in between him and where the light was at the front.
"They're in the building!" he screamed.
There was a silent line of Mollys staring at him, closing in, speaking to one another with strange shortened breaths.
Jessica stood stoically next to Chance Cooper as the pilot nodded, watching them pour through the windows, ignoring long glass cuts in hands and arms. Dozens crowded the room, beat down doors and surrounded everyone there. Jessica considered letting loose on the crowd, but almost immediately realized the futility of it. The pistol lowered, and she watched the crowd move forward.
In the office, Molly was beginning to twitch visibly now.
"Doctor," Felix said looking up and breaking the rhythmic tone of the old doctor's voice, "How much further do you have to read?"
"A lot," Dr. Rosario said, bathed in the light of an oil lamp, holding the book up, "We're not even at the midway point."
"Let's wake her up," Felix said, "They're in the building."
Molly's eyes opened almost immediately as Felix spoke, and they were painted with such terror that Felix's heart sank, and he squeezed her in his arms.
"Shh," he said, "You're okay."
"No," she whispered, eyes gazing up into Felix's, "This is where the world ends."
And she stood, walking to the door where the Mollys were banging fists and kicking. She opened the door and walked into the crowd, whispering to herself. The Mollys parted, as if blown by a wind back, reeling as she emerged. They let her pass as she moved to the lobby where Jessica and Chance were standing and pushed her way to its front. She pointed, her finger stretching as it crossed over to Jessica's face. Tracing to the side, it passed by and pointed to the quaking Chance Cooper. She turned, addressing the suddenly silent crowd.
"I have heard a word, and it is Parugola," she said, eliciting a scream from one of the Mollys at the back of the room, "These two have seen the white horse. They have spoken with the Crow Faced man. And he, my lovelies, is the great deceiver. We stand in this field of unreason and the white horse wanders the plains far away."
The faces on the crowd turned, looked to one another in confusion. There was a ripple of whispers flowing backward down the hallway into the darkness. Jessica and Chance stood uncertainly as the whispers grew and erupted into tears.
"The Icarin's book," she said, raising her voice until it was a powerful belt on all ears around her, "The red book. I've heard its secrets. And I had a dream. Of all the monsters in the void, of all the untold pleasures of thought, I dreamed of myself sitting in the Icarin's eyes, murdering my own brother. And when I woke I saw it, the blood that grew out of my hands and stained everything I touched. We killed Willard, our own flesh. We are the crow faced man. We are the seekers of the white horse. All times are here. Follow the footfalls in your mind. Explore that dark country of memory - not of what was, but what might have been. Open the door where Willard dies. In all that we are, all that we have become, all that brought us here, there is a knife in my brother's heart. Or is it lower? In his guts so that we, the others, may watch him die? When he was dying, was he speaking? Did you hear him? Or were you screaming to shut out his words - close that door on what you knew? Know yourself. You are the murderers of Willard Nayfack. Flee from the punishment that you will soon visit on one another. I am your harvest, and my name is Wrath."
Her eyes, unafraid, burned with an intensity that held all of the world in her closing hand.
The crowd seemed to ripple. Hands braced and then dropped a hundred knives. And the same sound was made in every quizzical throat. It wasn't immediate, how they dispersed. They evaporated from the room like water in the hot sun. It was slow at first. But then, those that remained, their single shattered voice cried out as they filed away wave by wave, whispering beneath their breaths through clenched teeth. Not to each other - to themselves
. Alone.
And then the crowd exploded into movement, dancing and throttling, clawing over one another as they forced themselves out the doors, trampling one another and breaking everything as they ran.
"Molly!" Felix called out over the crowd as screams passed between them. Molly was shaking her hands, gripping them in on themselves, clenching her eyes and shaking as she lowered to her knees. There was such rage in her. Such rage that she held inside herself. Her eyes filled with the revelation as realization worked its way through her. It had worked. But what that meant wounded her. She had killed Willard. If they had turned on her, told her it was impossible, she would have died feeling foolish. But she was right. The dream was not a lie. She had always had something inside her, wanting to sever herself from her loving brother.
And that part of her nature had won, outside of her body, in some other Molly's heart. It had robbed her of the duty she honored, held sacred. The duty of protecting Willard. The terrified faces had passed and faded into the distance. He ran to her, holding her as she leaned heavily into his arms,
"What does that mean? What did you see?"
"They're gone," Molly said, turning toward the shattered window to hide a tear that rolled down her cheek.
The Mollys sprinted into the burned field and further, beyond the clear cut line into the woods beyond. They ran for hours, their diaspora thinning as minutes of sprinting turned to hours. Every direction they ran, avoiding the others as they saw them. Soon they would be hungry, and they knew it. Hunger would overcome terror in time. They would need to eat soon enough. They broke their limbs under one another's feet and crawled when muscles failed. But they left Cairo. And though their wild picked skeletons would be found for years to come, the Allflesh dissolved in those hours of pain and fear. And with it, as night turned to morning, so too did their memories of Cairo. The crow faced man was the great deceiver - the knower. That was what they dreamed that first night. And every night after that.
Refugees from Cairo, seeing the crowd of screams rushing into the woods saw the Mollys as they sprinted and ran, leaving a trail of their dead behind them. And the reaction was much the same everywhere - a scene much like the one shared between Harry Tanhauser and Old Lady MacReady.
"What happened?" Tanhauser asked the old lady as her grandchildren huddled around her waist, frightened eyes watching the wild screaming spill around them through the woods, "What are they running from?"
"I don't know," the old woman said, leaning down and rolling her hand across young Bobby MacReady's head, "But I think we can go home."
Chapter 21
In the weeks following the death of the allflesh, the slow and arduous process of cleanup began. Upon returning to Cairo, Harry Tanhauser found himself in high demand. So much so, in those days, that he soon was able to add respect to the growing list of fees he charged. Jessica Myers was officially declared Sherriff by the town's voting body, carrying the majority of the votes and beating Deputy Frankie by a wide margin. Frankie, who scored heavy political points by exaggerating his exploits while fighting the allflesh, would find himself elected chief fire marshal two years later.
The Daily Sentinel summarized everyone's general feelings on that week in November when it published a paper written by Jack Thorn, entitled "Our War with Molly Nayfack" in which he expressed concern over the ease with which some dissolved under pressure, leaving others like Jessica Myers and 'various hoodlums around town' to face the emerging crisis. He still couldn't, however, convince his wife to let him smoke indoors.
Andrea and Steven Ritzer were wed on Christmas day, and the following November Andrea gave birth to a healthy pair of twins. Both Steven and Andrea were in attendance the night Melissa Novak made her debut on stage, where she played the part of Delilah, a woman with a beautiful singing voice. The Daily Sentinel reviewed it, stating that the script was at best a "fair if not amateurish attempt," by a small theater company, but Gale MacReady of the Daily Finger summarized Melissa's performance specifically with two words, "a triumph." That review is now enshrined at Tabitha's Diner.
Of the 219 deaths in Cairo during November of '82, few are more curiously investigated than that of Willard Nayfack. Theories abound about where Willard might have gone, but it is to this day largely a thing of folklore more than an official explanation. Willard Nayfack's headstone rests in Oak Lawn cemetery next to a larger memorial dedicated to those who visited the island and subsequently died as "victims of a force we may never understand."
Mike McCarthy returned to town the same day that the Mollys spread into the woods with rifle in hand ready to help with the war effort, and was pleasantly surprised to find that hostilities had ceased. In an interview with the Daily Sentinel, McCarthy introduced Mr. Hades to the rest of the town as a 'gentle curiosity,' a title Hades himself didn't seem to mind.
Mayor Sugarhill was mourned alongside the others who died during the War with Molly Nayfack, and is currently enshrined alongside the others as a hero. The cause of his death is still officially "gunshot wound by unknown assailant." That particular copy of Sherriff Rind is likewise buried with the same explanation.
The island itself has become a key component to the survival of Cairo. A small industry has emerged from the duplication of much needed goods in town.
***
After a moment, Felix slowly crept toward the edge of the hole looking down. It was dark, soundless. He shuddered and began to walk back. He knew he had to get back to the others. The helicopter he had seen earlier would take them back to town soon enough. But as he reached the spot where the corpse of Chance Cooper had been resting in the cockpit of his helicopter, ready to hide the body and bring the others back here to fly back to town, he saw only a white H. No helicopter. He was certain he had seen it here.
Uneasily, Felix walked down to the shore where the canoe was resting against the bank, sloshing and bobbing with each moment. On the way, he could see a shadow in the distance, picking up a box and hoisting it onto a thin shoulder, before walking away.
"Hey!" he called out, but it vanished into the fog. Uneasy, he stepped into the canoe and pushed with the oars out into the lake, rowing. The rhythmic sloshing of his oars in the water pushed him, carried him out toward where he knew his friends were waiting. He'd take the red book to them, bring it all back to town in the helicopter. Maybe they'd survive this thing after all.
Up ahead, swinging from side to side in the gentle ripples his oars left in the lake, he caught sight of another canoe drifting straight ahead. He turned, swinging his own alongside it and reached out to grab it. The boat had its right oar guard slightly stained. It was simple, primitive even, much like the one he was rowing in. He held onto the canoe drifting next to his own and furrowed his brow.
"No," he whispered.
His gaze extended into the fog ahead, where he became aware of more canoes drifting around one another, twisting and swinging from side to side as the water from his boat displaced around itself. He pushed the canoe past its duplicate and toward the silent gently dancing mass of others all around him, pushing into the crowd, pressing his oar against the other boats. There had to be hundreds, stretching as far as the dense fog would let him see. As he pushed through them, still more drifted out toward him.
Silently, he paddled through the crowd, his mind still as he glanced at each boat that passed by him. He tried to think, tried to gauge how much time must have passed with the number of boats he saw. It could easily have been years. He wondered how quickly the boats duplicated themselves. Maybe this was still his first visit. Maybe it was just an anomaly he hadn't noticed on the way out. Every one of them had only one oar inside. He had two.
"I'm the original," he whispered, "These boats aren't mine."
He whispered that same thought over and over until the dock came into view up ahead. On it, Molly Nayfack was standing wearing a long blue and white dress. She leaned down toward him, a gentleness on her face that could banish any fear.
"You're in good ha
nds, Felix," she said as her hand reached down. He took it. The words were perfect for him, for that moment. Exact. Not just the choice, the tone. He couldn't help it as he approached, and he reached up to take her hand. She squeezed his hand as fingers entwined with one another, "You're safe. You did it."
He rose from the canoe, his knee knocking into the right oar and slipping into the water. It sank like a stone, disappearing from view almost instantly and rolling down the muddy water to a pile of others precisely like it. Felix stepped his foot over the canoe and stood next to Molly as she brushed her fingertips down the side of his neck.
"You only get one first kiss," she said leaning in gently and placing her lips against his. In every way it was perfect, tender, electric. She eased away, and he felt her hand wrap around his, and they started walking.
The moss path leading back toward what had once been the Icarin's house was surrounded by flowers. Purple tulips and red roses. Felix had never thought much about flowers, but as he watched them drifting in the breeze, the scent of them brought a feeling unlike any other he had felt. And yet somehow, it was so familiar he tried to remember if these two had always been his favorite. She fiddled at the front door with a key she had in her pocket, smiling and looking back at him.
His gaze drifted to a decanter of water. She knew he would be thirsty in this moment. It was cool, refreshing. He drank deeply, and Molly opened the door.
Inside, the house had a warm fireplace already burning, two large stuffed chairs, and a gently swaying hula girl lamp on the dining table. Molly leaned in and kissed Felix again on the cheek before sitting at the chair across from him next to the fireplace.
