by Unknown
The phone kept ringing.
He crossed the room, grabbed the handset. “What?”
“Hello, friend.” It was the reverend, Friend John Rawling.
Sam’s knees let go. He collapsed onto the bed, sitting on the folded clothes. “Rawling?”
“You see the news, friend?”
“Yeah, I—”
“Then you know what’s happened,” Rawling said. “What you don’t know is that the cops know who did it. They didn’t want to spill everything to the folks at Eyewitness News, but they filled me in, and that’s why we’ve got to talk.”
“No,” said Sam. “This is bullshit. There’s nothing to talk about. I only know what I saw on the news. I don’t know anything else, I swear!”
“Take it easy, friend. I know you’re in the dark on this, but you’re involved all the same. See—it was my delivery driver what murdered those two. What a sweet shame! They were his own wife and daughter?”
Sam felt the room spin about him. “The van driver?” He swallowed. “His wife and daughter?”
“Yeah,” Rawling said. “The police figure he’d been carting them around in that van for nearly an hour before dumping them on the road. That must have been right before he made our delivery. Darn fool drove up the road a few hundred feet, pitched the bodies out the back, and then circled around to make his delivery. It’s the strangest thing. You work with a guy for months and you never suspect he’s a psycho. Did you look in the box he gave you?”
“Oh Christ!”
“I guess you did,” Rawling said. “Look, friend. I’m sweetly sorry about all of this, but you got to do one thing for me.”
Someone knocked on the door.
“The cops are on their way to see you,” Rawling said. “They’ll be knocking on your door any minute. Figuring out who you were wasn’t tough. You’re the only man in that Days Inn who isn’t part of our Lias block.”
More knocking, harder now.
“You still there, friend. Still with me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“OK, then. Listen. The cops got a box of honey buns for you and your family. All you got to do is give them the box with the eyes. They need it for evidence. You got that, friend? You hear me?”
The fist on the door hammered louder.
“Oh Christ!” Sam said.
“I’m sorry as all get-out that you got mixed up in this, friend. I know it’s small consolation, but I’d like to put you and your family on the sweet list for tomorrow’s offering. All I need is names.”
“Names?”
“The people in your family,” Rawling said. “So I can put them on the sweet list.”
“Cloe and Lisa,” Sam said.
“Last name?”
“Fric.” He spelled it for Rawling while the fist hammered the door.
“Well I’ll be raptured,” Rawling said. “Don’t this beat all!”
“What?”
“Those names—Cloe, Lisa, and Fric. You realize those names make a perfect anagram for Circle of Lias. Sweet vision!”
The pounding on the door rose to a crescendo.
“Is that someone at your door?” Rawling said. “Better get it. Probably the police. Just give them the box of eyes. Good bye, friend. Sweet blessings!”
The line went dead.
Sam got up and faced the door. The cops would understand. Wouldn’t they? He threw back the bolt and turned the knob.
The door flew open.
Four angry brown eyes stared in.
“Jeez, Dad!” Lisa said. “Don’t lock us out or anything!” She wore a blue bathrobe over her nightgown. Her slippered feet stomped past Sam and entered the room. “Did you get my honey bunnies?”
Cloe stared at Sam. “Where the hell did you go?”
“I was looking for honey buns.”
“Where? Bangkok?” Cloe pushed past him, following Lisa into the room. “We got tired of waiting, so we went out to look around the hotel. Some organization’s having a reception in the ballroom. They have honey buns, but Lisa didn’t like them.”
“Too dinky!” shouted Lisa. She formed a tight loop with her thumb and index finger to show Sam how small the honey buns were. “Mommy said they looked like little turds, and she was right.” Lisa turned in place, scanning the room. “So where are they, Dad? Did you get my buns?”
Sam felt something snap inside him. “Pack up! We’re out of here.”
Cloe fixed him with a wide-eyed stare. “You can’t be serious.”
He crossed the room, grabbed the clothes on the bed, stuffed them into the open suitcase.
Lisa stared in disbelief. “Mommy,” she said, “I think Dad’s gone a little—” She twirled a finger near the side of her head. “You know?”
He closed the suitcase. “Come on.” He grabbed the handle. “We’re out of here.”
Chloe held her ground. “What about the stuff in the bathroom?”
Sam’s heart skipped a beat. He stumbled, looked back at her. “Excuse me?” he said. “What stuff in the bathroom? What the hell are you talking about?”
“My shampoo. My blow dryer. My curling iron, fercrysake!”
Oh, that stuff. “Leave it!”
To Lisa, Cloe said, “I think you’re right, honey. I think he’s flipped.”
The rain had stopped.
They piled into the car.
Sam gunned the engine. The radio, cranked up for highway driving, screamed to life: “—the brutal death of his wife and daughter—”
Sam turned it off.
“Why would anyone kill his wife and daughter?” Lisa asked.
Sam let out the clutch, spun the wheel, steered toward the exit.
“You didn’t return the room key!” Cloe said. “They’ll bill you, you know. Charge you extra.”
“They won’t!”
“Don’t sound so sure.”
“I am sure.” Sam hit the gas, swerving between the rows of parked cars. “It’s my life, Cloe. I’m in control!”
“Oh really?”
“I’m kneading my reality!”
“You ask me, you’re needing a psychiatrist.”
Sam glared at her. Their defiant gazes met and locked.
Lisa shoved her head between their seats. “You guys fighting again or—” Her eyes went wide. “Dad!” Her hand shot forward, pointing. “Dad! You’ll hit him!”
Sam turned toward the windshield as his Escort slammed a policeman who had just stepped from a row of parked cars.
WHUMP-thump!
The man rolled across the hood and down the left fender. The look on his face, as his cheek skidded across the windshield, was one of total surprise. He simply hadn’t seen the Escort coming.
“Sam, you idiot!” Cloe said. “Your lights aren’t on!”
A white box slid from the policeman’s grip. The lid flew open, its contents pelting the windshield like tiny turds.
“Honey buns!” Lisa shrieked.
Sam floored the gas and sped from the parking lot while Cloe looked toward the back window. “Damnit, Sam! Stop the car!”
“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I’m in control. I can fix it. I can make it like it never happened.”
The imprints of a dozen honey buns glazed his windshield. The swirled outlines looked like eyes. Sam squeezed the lever that activated the washer fluid. Then he snapped on the wipers. The glazed eyes vanished as he spun onto Route 322. Up ahead, the highway stretched like a clean slate.
“I feel very good about this,” Sam said.
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” Cloe said.
Sam turned on his headlights and flicked his high beams. “I feel my life-loaf rising. I feel like I’m driving ’neath the sweet gaze of Lias.”
Watching the Soldiers
By Dirk Strasser
We next offer a tale of universal truth and heartfelt emotion. It also serves very nicely as a timeless fable. Dirk Strasser is an Australian writer who has captured the ambiance of Eastern Europe in a story of e
xtraordinary power.
They first appeared at the time of the golden skies. Mikhael saw them marching across the cloudless heavens: bright skins glinting like frosted glass, feet flashing in buoyant rhythm with each step, and hair flowing like filaments of sunlight. And by their sides marched great beasts with scales of rich leather and eyes like soft golden flames, beasts with powerfully muscled bodies and gentle faces. Although the marchers seemed as impossibly distant as stars, Mikhael felt the soft breeze of their breaths on his face, and he heard their strange, incomprehensible call filtering through the air.
“Who are they?” Mikhael cried. Adam would know. Adam was, after all, his older brother, and he had been working a man’s day in the fields for as long as Mikhael could remember.
“Soldiers,” said Adam, pulling back on the plough reins so that the horse would stop. “There is war, and the enemy threatens our border.”
“Where is the border?” asked Mikhael, shielding his eyes so that he could see the soldiers more clearly.
“I don’t know,” said Adam. “A long way away. Father has been there. He will tell you.”
“And the enemy—who are the enemy?”
“Little brother, they are not men like us.”
“But I am not a man,” interrupted Mikhael.
“No,” said Adam, thinking for a moment, “but you will grow into one; and when you do, you will be different to the enemy.”
“How?”
“Mikhael, you ask too many questions sometimes. The soldiers are there above us, and all you can do is ask questions. Isn’t it enough that they are there?”
Mikhael held his breath until he became giddy. He knew it was the only way he could stop himself from asking something else. Adam didn’t like too many questions. He preferred to work quietly in the fields, to show their father at the end of a long day what he had achieved, and to sleep soundly at night. Mikhael liked to spend the early mornings in his mother’s kitchen and his afternoons roaming his father’s farm: the creaky old barns, the rust-colored haystacks. Most of all he liked exploring the pockets of woodland which surrounded the farm, climbing the gnarled ancient trees, and finding dark places to hide and to think about new questions. He knew he was different to his older brother. At nights, when Mikhael tossed and turned, when thoughts and unanswered questions pitched and roiled inside his head, he often wished he could sleep as peacefully as Adam.
The soldiers marched past for the rest of that golden afternoon. Adam finally tore himself away because he knew he had work to do; but Mikhael continued watching, and he could see his brother stop every now and then, look up, and cock his head as if straining to hear a whisper, only to suddenly shake his head when he realized what he was doing.
Mikhael’s neck eventually became sore, and he found a soft patch of moss to lie on and stare at the sky. Tiny cloud wisps blew across the faces of some of the soldiers, and Mikhael wondered why they didn’t brush them away with their hands like one did to an annoying insect. But they never flinched as the seemingly unending procession continued. It was only when dusk came that their ranks thinned and the soldiers began to fade from the sky …
“Mikhael!” His mother’s voice had the shrill tone that told him she had been calling him for a long time.
He slowly got to his feet and walked towards the light of the farmhouse.
“I was watching the soldiers,” he said as he stepped inside. He noticed that his mother was looking at him strangely.
“Do you see what’s happening?” she asked, and Mikhael was about to answer when he realized she was talking to his father.
“Elika,” said his father, “you’re worrying too much.”
“You’re just as bad as he is, Pavl,” she said. “How much work did you get done today?”
Mikhael shook his head as he went to wash, and to shake the burrs and seeds from his hair before the evening meal. It was the first time he had heard his parents use each other’s first names.
Shards of pink and mauve sunlight streaked the air the day the soldiers appeared again. They were clearer this time, closer to the ground, and their call wafted to the ground like falling leaves. Mikhael could see now that what he had thought was glistening skin was in fact a bright metallic armor. There seemed to be fewer beasts than before, and their eyes were striated with red and their skins mottled. The soldiers themselves marched as before, their jaws locked in place, their eyes never turning left or right. In their hands Mikhael could see flashes of silver.
“What are they?” asked Mikhael.
“The soldiers,” said Adam. “There is a war at the border. You know that.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, although summer had long passed and it was no longer hot.
“No. I remember that. I mean the silver in their hands.”
“Little brother, they are weapons. Soldiers always carry weapons.”
Mikhael looked confused. “I don’t remember the weapons from last time.”
Adam grew impatient. “They carried weapons last time,” he said. “You didn’t see them because the soldiers were further away.”
“And what are the weapons for?” asked Mikhael.
Adam threw his hoe to the ground. His face was flushed as he looked up into the sky.
“The weapons,” repeated Mikhael. “Tell me what they are for.”
Adam took a deep breath. “They protect us,” he said. “They help us defeat the enemy.”
After the meal that evening, Mikhael was sent to bed early, and Adam and his parents spoke in hushed tones.
Later that night Mikhael’s mind raced. The soldiers seemed to be marching just outside his room. He pushed his blanket aside and walked over to the window. He stared outside into the moonlit darkness. A wind had sprung up, and the branches of the trees creaked and groaned to a strange rhythm. The sky was flecked with stars, blotted out by fleeting half-shadows.
“Are they still marching?” asked Adam, who was suddenly at Mikhael’s side.
“Why are you awake, Adam? You always sleep so soundly.”
“That’s true, little brother, but for once I cannot sleep.” Adam’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I can hear the soldiers.”
“So can I, but I don’t understand what they’re saying.”
“I can.”
“What are … ?” Mikhael felt Adam’s hand squeeze his arm tightly, and he knew his brother didn’t want him to finish his question. He hesitated for a moment, then said, “They didn’t stop at dusk this time.”
“No.”
“Why not, Adam?” Mikhael turned to look at his brother. His face wore an expression he had never seen before: a hardening, a firmness of the jaw.
“Don’t ask so many questions,” he said. “Questions can be dangerous.”
“Tell me and I will no longer ask.”
Adam sighed. “The enemy that threatens our border grows. More soldiers are needed.”
Mikhael looked out at the stars, and something silver flashed in the sky for a moment, and then was gone.
He held his breath.
After Adam left for the border, Mikhael had to work a full day in the fields even though he was not yet of age. He was no longer able to spend the mornings in the kitchen with his mother, but this suited him because she now spent too much of her time crying for there to be any real joy in their conversations.
He quickly tired of the tedium of field work, though, and took to wandering deeper into the woods around the farm. The trees became more ancient and gnarled as every day he ventured a little further.
“Tell me how old you are,” he asked of one massive oak.
A soft rustling was the only answer, but he imagined it to be an old man’s whisper: “I am older than your soldiers. I am older than your soldiers.”
“I don’t understand you,” cried Mikhael, and the leaves of the giant oak laughed at him.
But Mikhael knew one thing: he wanted to walk above the ground as he had seen the soldiers do. He started climbing up
the knotted trunk of the tree. Muffled laughter fluttered around him as he scaled into the highest branches where the leaves enveloped him and brushed and tickled his face with every gust of wind.
“I want to walk in the sky like the soldiers,” he said, and the leaves stopped whispering.
“Speak to me, tree,” he cried. “Tell me how to march in the sky.”
There was no answer.
Slowly Mikhael edged his way out along the branch until it began to bend under his weight. He looked up at the sky that peered at him from leaves above his head.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said when the silence became too much. “I think I know.”
Without looking down, he pushed off from the branch.
“You are a fool.” It was the voice of his father. “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
“Leave him be, Pavl. He needs his rest now. He’s too young to be working a full day in the fields anyway.”
The first thing Mikhael saw when he managed to focus was his mother’s watery, red-rimmed eyes. Then he saw his father’s face, flushed and angry.
“You should be working,” said Pavl, “not falling out of trees.”
Mikhael could feel a pain shooting up his right hip as he shifted in the bed. “But, father, I want to walk in the sky.”
“What? What’s that you say?” Pavl glared at his son.
“Let’s leave him now, Pavl. He’ll want to sleep.”
“Wait …” cried Mikhael, “please … tell me where Adam has gone.”
Pavl shook his head. “The boy’s confused, but he’s still asking questions.”
“He’s gone to the border,” said Elika. “You know that.”
“Yes,” said Mikhael, “I know. But, the border - where is it?”
“A long way away,” said Pavl, still shaking his head, “but it’s getting closer.”
“Why?”
Pavl laughed a short, grim laugh. “That’s what happens to borders, Mikhael. They are always moving.”
“And what happens there?”
Pavl seemed to smiling as he ushered Elika out the door. “Pretty much what happens here,” he said. “There’s a lot of crying, and people fall out of trees.”
