Hornets and Others

by Al Sarrantonio

  Lanois was a petite man, but handsome. He kept his beard trimmed tightly against his sharp chin, and his eyes were intelligent and moist behind his spectacles. He worked figures at his job, and looked like such a man. He was reserved and women took this for character.

  He pushed himself down the street, toward the closing town. A deep bell somewhere announced ten o'clock. The grocer, also a small man, nodded to him knowingly, pocketing his key and hurrying away into the swallowing fog.

  Lanois pushed onward, and encountered the girl.

  "Ah! The accountant!" she said, smiling, stopping him as he sought to move away from her with a strangling cry in his throat. "What's the matter—won't you buy a girl a drink?"

  He looked at her, and nodded, his voice still a croak. "All right," he said.

  She took him to the expensive place, because she knew he had money. "You have a nice house," she said, and smiled again. Her lips were wet.

  "Yes," he said, trying not to look at her, but listening to the loud chatter in the café. He felt oily, as if the night were adhering to him.

  "Take me home with you," she said, pressing against him and pushing her drink away.

  He trembled, and said, "All right."

  Outside, the night had thickened. The fog pressed toward the ground, a green vapor. She led him, holding his arm because he seemed either drunk or unwilling.

  "Here it is!" she said, pushing open the moaning gate.

  Inside, she slammed the door and pushed him away. Her eyes looked full of tears, but her warmth reached him. She undid her top and let it fall to the floor, as an almost ripe odor assailed him from her breasts.

  "Take me here," she said, pulling him down toward her as she lowered and stepped out of her blouse, kicking her shoes expertly off in the same motion.

  Lanois, mewling, drew his knives crosswise from his pockets as he fell toward her, and, with both of the blades, crying out deeply, cut his own throat.

  A deep winter day. Snow had fallen in abundance, and there was a cold smell in the air that topped the redolence of the radiators. Lanois moved from his bed, scratching himself and yawning. His feet missed their slippers, and he returned groggily to his bedside, slipping the footwear on where they lay by the bed's foot. He put his robe on over his gown and yawned again.

  Saturday?

  No. But a holiday!

  He retrieved his rolled paper from outside the front door, thankful for the robe but still shivering. The day was suffused with light, the white snow only more blinding than the now-sapphire sky. The air smelled cold and clear in the aftermath of the storm.

  He retreated to his kitchen and brewed coffee, the rich hot smell soon filling the room.

  Opening the paper, he scanned the columns, noting the day's international events, another African war, the troubles in the colonies. Idly, he looked for news of his own death, and, finding none, was relieved.

  Of course it was a dream, he thought.

  The girl's murder was on page two.

  Gasping, reading closely, he learned that she had been beheaded; that her head had been found in the gathering snow at the edge of the town park, the body nearby in an obscene position.

  "The force of beheading was gargantuan," the pathologist was quoted as saying. "I doubt one man could have done this."

  Lanois's coffee turned cold, and he laid the paper down.

  Dressed in his working clothes, Lanois entered the prefect's office and was met by the prefect himself.

  "Lanois!" the man said, smiling. "What brings you out on a holiday in such weather!" He advanced, holding out his hand.

  Lanois did not take it. "The murder," he said. "I have something to report."

  "Oh?"

  Lanois pushed ahead, toward the prefect's office. "Please," he said.

  His brow furrowed, the prefect followed.

  "But this is preposterous!" the prefect said, after Lanois had told his story. "In the first place, in your dream, you were with her in the summertime, not the dead of winter. And you said yourself, you cut your own throat."

  "Nevertheless. And this has happened before, other murders..."

  The prefect traded his scowl for a smile. "Lanois, go home! You've been working too hard! Today is a holiday, and I suggest you use it as such. And I expect to see you at our weekly card game tomorrow evening!"

  "Perhaps..." Lanois said.

  The prefect's hand was on his shoulder, and Lanois looked up into the man's wide, kind face. "You had a dream," the prefect said, his hand squeezing Lanois's shoulder. "You didn't kill anyone. Anyhow, you are not capable of such an act. If you were, I would catch you!" The prefect laughed. "Now go home, and rest yourself. At the most, you had a strange dream. Leave it at that."

  Lanois nodded briskly, and rose.

  "Perhaps," he said.

  "Good! And remember—you will lose money to me tomorrow night!"

  Lanois managed a slight smile. "I'm sure I will," he said.

  A week later Lanois packed for a trip. The snow had melted as if by magic, leaving the February streets clean and clear. Spring could almost be tasted, though not yet arrived. Trees in Lanois's yard, pear and peach, had begun to show faint buds, and the air was unaccustomedly mild and sweet.

  The clock in the hail struck eight, and Lanois looked up from his valise, knowing he would be late if he didn't hurry.

  He snapped the valise closed and his eye was drawn to the window. The Green Face was hovering there.

  In an instant, it was gone. As Lanois's heart skipped a beat, the window as once again clear, half-raised, letting in the oddly warm air.

  Lanois stared at it, waiting for a reoccurrence, and then quickly crossed the room to shut and lock it.

  Outside, in his backyard, a blue jay sat on the branch of the nearest fruit tree and cocked its head at him.

  Lanois finished packing, pressing two knives into his open suitcase before closing it, and left.

  The trip was as uneventful as all trips were. The weather turned toward winter again, a cold front driving cold air and flurries into the northern city he was visiting, and leaving the sill of his hotel window covered in snow dust. Lanois pulled the shade and sought to nap until the night's meeting.

  He closed his eyes, and almost immediately opened them as a knock came upon the door.

  "Valet, sir!" a voice called.

  Lanois rose, and, sighing, opened the door to reveal a young man with his bagged suit, pressed and ready.

  The young man entered, and Lanois took the suit, realizing that his wallet had been moved to the dresser.

  "Come in, please, and wait a moment," he said.

  The young man, not more than seventeen and smiling, obeyed and entered the room, stopping a discreet distance inside the door.

  Lanois retreated to the dresser, opened the top drawer and withdrew the two knives from where they lay atop his folded underclothes. "Close the door, please," he said.

  The young man obeyed.

  Lanois was instantly upon him, driving him against the door. He registered the terror in the young man's eyes.

  Lanois raised the two knives and crossed them, driving deep, into his own neck.

  The next morning, in his hotel room, Lanois read of the murder of the valet, whose bisected body had been found in the hotel's laundry chute.

  This he read before he opened the window.

  Bright sunshine assaulted him, and the day was already warm, heading toward the heat of spring. The trees in the hotel's courtyard were in full bloom, filled with robins, and squirrels chased one another from bole to bole.

  The green face was there, a stringless balloon, three dimensional, perfectly formed.

  His face.

  "It doesn't matter if you're dreaming, does it?" the face said. It even had the fussily straight part of his hair, in bright green. "It doesn't matter if you dream of winter or spring, or if robins chirp or squirrels play. If you see me, you will then dream, and they will die." The face smiled. "Is this not so?"
<
br />   "Yes," Lanois said, "it is so. You have proved it. The murders are real, and you have caused them to happen."

  "Don't you want to know where I come from, Lanois? If I am a creature of your own mind, or a monster from the deep of cold space or roasting hell itself, come to feast on you?"

  "It doesn't matter. You exist. I'm sure now."

  The face laughed again. "Quite so. Next you will dream of the Prefect's wife, who you admire greatly. She is a handsome woman. They will find her legs cut off, and her tongue and hands."

  Lanois turned his back on the face.

  "Don't you approve?" the green face laughed. It moved in closer to the open window, hovering above the sill, tilting slightly to stare at him in amusement.

  "Of course I do," Lanois said, turning back with both of the knives, crossed with immense tension at the blades, in his hands.

  He lunged at the green face, and thrust both of the sharp weapons deep into his own throat.

  His green throat.

  White Lightning

  We'd been talking about drinking the white lightning the whole week, but when it finally got to this morning, and we stood in the woods near Pisser Johnson's busted still with a jar of it in our hands, Billy didn't want to do it.

  "Could be bad stuff," he said. "Could make us blind, or go crazy. I heard from Jodie McAfrey that Pisser's whiskey drove a man crazy in Dobbinsville a couple years ago. That's why Sheriff Mapes had to finally let the feds get at 'im. I heard the man got himself a gun and shot up the town, killed most of his family, then himself. I heard—"

  "You a pussy?" I finally said, sick of his whining.

  "I ain't no pussy," he said, getting red in the face. That's about as far as he ever went in anger, getting red in the face. Soon he would look at the ground, then give in to me, just like always.

  "Well, only pussies won't drink," I said. "You're tired of stealing your old man's bottle beer, ain't you? Here we got a whole box of jars, just to ourself. Remember the special beating my old man gave me 'time he found me watering his gin after we drank half of it?" I was yelling pretty loud, and Billy was looking at the ground.

  "I ain't no pussy," he repeated.

  I held the jar out. "Then drink. Chances are, it'll only make us feel real good."

  "Or kill us," he said, still looking at the ground.

  "You are a pussy," I said.

  So I drank from the jar first, closing my eyes, holding my breath, and felt the hot stuff go down my throat, then shoot up into my head.

  I opened my eyes, and for a second I saw only stars, and thought I was blind. But then I saw Billy and the woods around him real bright, like they were lit up all around, and knew everything was just fine.

  "Holy shit," I said, and Billy looked at me kind of scared, but then I gave a whoop and took another long drink. The world flashed brighter, and I felt warm all through, like the Sun was inside me.

  "Even pussies've got to try this!" I laughed, and handed him the jar, and he laughed and took a big swallow.

  So we drank the rest of the jar, and took another with us, and hid the rest away in Pisser's storm cellar where we'd found them, where the stupid feds had missed them, and set off back to town to get Billy's old man's gun.

  It was two o'clock by the time we got back, which meant Billy's old man was drunk, so we had to sneak around back. We heard Billy's old man raving around in front, yelling at the television, kicking the furniture.

  "Let's get it," I said, whispering.

  The gun was in the back of the closet shelf in Billy's old man's room. We had to move some stuff aside; we'd had it down to play with a couple of times and knew exactly where everything was and where it had to go back. Billy's old man was a drunk, and drunks know where things should be and are always looking out for people doing them wrong.

  The shoe box was there, along with the cardboard box full of clips. We brought them down, took everything out. I hefted the gun, pushed a 9mm clip into it.

  "Feels good," I said, smiling.

  "Ought to," Billy said. His head looked bigger, brighter, than it was supposed to. Everything he said came out large, like it was written in balloons above his head. "My old man took it from the cop's body they found down by the Housack River last year."

  I kept smiling. "Time we put it to some good use. Let's kill your old man."

  Billy started to protest, so I said, "Why not?"

  "He's my old man."

  "So what," I said. "He beat you this week?"

  "He beats me every week."

  "So I'll kill him."

  I stared at him while he got red in the face, stared hard at the ground, then finally said, "Go ahead."

  "Take the rest of the clips," I said, and Billy emptied them into his jeans pockets.

  We walked down the hall, me in front, smiling, to the living room. Billy's old man was up at the TV, fiddling with the knobs on the back, cursing at the wavy-lined picture on the screen. "Fuckin' shit," he said, and then he said it again. I held the gun up in front of me, two hands, the way they do it on TV. I know I was smiling. I kept walking, the gun in front of me, until he put his head up to get his beer can on top of the TV and saw me.

  "What the shit—" he said, but then I pointed the gun up at his head and pulled the trigger, and it kicked me back but it made a hole in his forehead just like I wanted it to. It was a neat round hole, and then blood started to come out of it like a red waterfall, and Billy's old man fell back down behind the television, his hand out trying to catch the bullet already in his head; and it was funny because when he went down he hit the TV, and the picture went clear.

  "Fuckin' shit," I said, and then I put a slug into the TV to watch the screen bust, and we walked outside.

  It was a low, aluminum-colored cloud day. Warm and cold at the same time. The block was empty.

  Then it wasn't. The mailman was coming down the street. Billy looked at me and I smiled, and I said, "You do him," and handed him the gun.

  "But—"

  I opened the jar and handed it to him. "Drink."

  He tilted it up, took a swallow.

  "More," I said.

  He took another swallow, closed his eyes.

  "That's enough," I said.

  He opened his eyes, handed the jar back to me.

  "Do it," I said.

  The mailman was heading for us, rolling his funny cart to an angle stop in front of Mrs. Welsh's gate and flipping through his handful of letters, peeling a couple off and then pushing through the gate to the front of the house.

  The dog came at him then, but the mailman was already in position for it, snugged to the right of the walk, and the dog's chain went taut and he couldn't get at the mailman.

  I was staring at Billy, seeing him all shiny-bright, watching him looking at the ground, and then finally he said, "Okay."

  "Good." I put the jar into the front pocket of my pants, and by then the mailman, whose name was Mr. Masters, and had a big Adam's apple in his long neck that was always bobbing up and down, was coming back down Mrs. Welsh's walk, and Billy walked up to meet him.

  "H-Howdy," Billy stammered, holding the gun up.

  Masters just looked at the gun, kind of frozen in place, and then the gun began to shake in Billy's hand. Finally Masters smiled a little and said, "Howdy, yourself. Got a new toy for your eleventh birthday, Billy?"

  "Sure did," I said, stepping up beside Billy, taking the gun from his hand, aiming it and pulling the trigger.

  I hit ole Mr. Masters right in the Adam's apple. Sounded like a bone crack but there was plenty of blood, and Mr. Masters said "Oh, my God," and threw his hands up at his neck, and I popped him one right in the eye.

  Billy looked at me, but by then I was pushing through the gate of Mrs. Welsh's house.

  The dog was on me, but I didn't care. I kept to the middle of the walk and timed it perfect so that when the dog jumped, just reaching me at the end of its chain, I let the dog's teeth close around the gun barrel and then pulled off two quick
shots.

  The dog's head sort of went cloudy red and split into two parts. The top part with the eyes still wide fell off and landed on the sidewalk.

  I waved for Billy to follow.

  I saw Mrs. Welsh staring out at me through the curtains, frozen like a statue, a black phone to her ear. I heard her start screaming, saw her drop the phone and amble away as I mounted the creaky porch steps. "Need fixin' ," I said, and then I laughed because Mrs. Welsh was there at the front door, behind the faded door-window curtains, fumbling with the lock.

  I took a quick step and planted my foot on the door, knee-jerking it in.

  Mrs. Welsh fell back and started to squawk like a chicken before Sunday dinner. "Get in," I said to Billy, and as he stepped in I shut the door.

  Mrs. Welsh was laying on the ground, shaking, saying, "No no!" in a high voice, covering her face with her hands, which was good because I started shooting in a line through the floor at her shaking feet and all the way up her body till I split a good shot between her hands and blood pumped out.

  I turned to leave as her hands fell away from her face, but then there came a sound from the back of the house.

  "You hear that?" I said. "Sounded like a splash. Come on."

  We searched until we heard a sound coming from the kitchen, which we'd just looked in. We turned back, and there on the counter under a window was a fish tank, with a goldfish the size of a small carp in it. The water was rocking, and the fish took a jump and popped through the surface, then fell back in again. Next to the tank was a big cardboard canister of fish food.

  "Watch," I said, and when the fish made its next leap I shot it through its middle. I shot the fish-food canister for good measure, then turned and walked out of the kitchen.

  Way off in the distance, I heard the whine of a police siren.

  "Time to go," I said.

  As we passed the living room, there was a faint sound coming from the telephone receiver Mrs. Welsh had dropped. I stopped to pick it up and said into it, laughing, "See you soon!"

  We went out through the back of Mrs. Welsh's house. There was a fence, easy to climb, which brought us out onto the next block.