The Return

by Bentley Little

  "Fuck it," she said. "Let's make a clean break."

  Glen didn't know why, but it made him feel better. They might not know what was going on, might be caught up in something far bigger than themselves, but they were still free to make their own decisions. That had to count for something.

  "Let's go," he said.

  They started toward the car.

  "So should we tell someone about this place?" Melanie asked. "Should we call the state police?"

  "I don't know," he admitted.

  "It doesn't look like any crime's been committed, but . . ." She gestured around. "This town's abandoned. Everyone's disappeared."

  He felt as though he were in one of those 1970s TV movies, where the intrepid hero and his girl find themselves in an empty city only to discover that the population of the entire world has suddenly disappeared. It was stupid, he knew, but he experienced a mild case of panic, a sudden need to drive to another town, make sure there were people left in the world. What if, he thought, the next town was abandoned? And the next? And the next? What if they drove back to Albuquerque and the entire city was deserted, riderless cars left on the freeway, unattended burgers sizzling on the grills of fast-food joints, hoses still running on empty lawns?

  A plane buzzed high overhead.

  Glen felt an irrational sense of relief--and a need to get away from this village as fast as humanly possible. They increased their pace and reached the highway just as a pickup truck rattled past. The driver honked and waved.

  They walked past the Mexican restaurant and across the highway to the gas station. Out here, back on an artery connecting them with civilization, the dread engendered by the church paintings and Melanie's changing piece of pottery seemed less pervasive, less immediate. The gloom and sense of hopelessness that had stolen over him at the end of that dirt road now seemed once removed, and he was filled with an almost irrational exuberance, a feeling that he could do anything, that there was no way any unseen force or power could impose its will on him.

  "We're not going to get to Chaco Canyon by dark," Melanie said as they reached the car, "and if your map's right, there aren't any towns or any place for us to stay on the way. I sure as hell don't want to spend the night in the car parked outside some closed visitor's center. Why don't we head back to Albuquerque for the night, give Al a call and head over in the morning?"

  "He's not going to be happy. You know how anxious he was to get the ball rolling on this."

  "We have no choice."

  "All right," Glen said. "But forget Albuquerque. How about Santa Fe? I want to see your famous governor's mansion."

  Melanie grinned. "Santa Fe sounds great!" She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss.

  "Then Santa Fe it is."

  The sun was going down by the time Glen pulled into the hotel parking lot. They'd called from the road and made reservations, picking a place randomly out of the AAA book. It turned out to be a pretty good choice, a two-story inn with faux Indian architecture, only three streets down from the historic plaza. He sat there for a moment, then looked over at Melanie, clearing his throat. "Uh, where are we--?"

  "Same room, same bed," she said.

  He smiled. "I was hoping you'd say that."

  It was the best night of his entire life. They bought Subway sandwiches and ate them in their room, lay next to each other on the bed watching reruns of Seinfield, and took a long slow bath together before making love. Despite everything that had happened, the evening was perfect. It was as though they were suspended in a bubble protecting them from the real world, and he found that he could forget about the day, pretend that they hadn't come across a deserted town where a three hundred-year-old church had murals of himself, and where they'd left Melanie's haunted pottery shard.

  She'd brought a book with her, a Phillip Emmons novel, and while she read he thumbed through the complimentary copy of Santa Fe Style that had been left on their nightstand. They were cozy, comfortable, and he was filled with an uncharacteristic sense of well-being. This was what he'd been searching for when he set off from Automated Interface that day.

  He put down his magazine and watched her for a while, admiring the still way she sat, the graceful way she turned a page, her smooth pretty face that managed to look both kind and intelligent, even in repose.

  "You look kind of like a baby-sitter I had," Glen told her.

  Melanie laughed, glancing over at him. "What?"

  "I had a crush on her. I was about ten or eleven, maybe. Usually, this old lady from across the street, Mrs. Garson, was my baby-sitter when my parents went out. But sometimes she was busy baby-sitting other kids, and my parents had to find someone else. High school girls mostly, although I don't know where they found them--a service maybe, or word of mouth from one of my friends' moms. Anyway, there was this one girl, very pretty, very nice, and I remember she let me stay up past my bedtime and taught me how to make chocolate milkshakes. She had long blond hair parted in the middle and John Lennon glasses and she wore one of those hippie peasant skirts--you know, down to her ankles and pink with little flowers on it.

  "She only watched me once, but I never forgot her. She was the best baby-sitter I ever had." He smiled. "And she looked a little like you."

  Melanie sat up and kissed him. "Glen Ridgeway, I think I have a crush on you." She switched off the lamp on the nightstand, and seconds later she was on top of him.

  Six

  1

  "Dude!"

  Standing next to Jay and Stu, Cameron stared at the cat. It sat in Stu's backyard, in the middle of the lawn, looking up at them, and on its face was the freakiest expression he had ever seen. It sent cold shivers through his body, made his balls tighten.

  "You weren't lying," Jay said, awe in his voice.

  "No," Stu said, but there was no satisfaction in the acknowledgment.

  Cameron didn't know what was going on. All he knew was that Stu's pet was making him feel the same way he had at the scout camp--

  The Mogollon Monster

  --and at this moment he wanted to be anywhere but here. He thought of the figure he'd seen in the rain, and he had no doubt that this was connected. The truth was that nothing had seemed right since that afternoon. Everything since had had a malevolent tinge, like he was seeing the skull beneath the skin, the dark truth beneath the happy world that everyone else experienced. He'd tried explaining it to Dr. Jeifetz, but he could tell that the shrink didn't believe him, was putting it all down to stress from seeing what had happened to Scoutmaster Anderson.

  The cat twisted its head around, then snapped it back, simultaneously jumping into the air, legs flailing.

  As one, the three boys turned and fled, running around the side of the house and not stopping until they reached the street.

  "Holy shit!" Jay said, stopping to catch his breath. "What was that?"

  "I told you!" Stu said. "I told you!"

  Cameron looked back toward the house, half expecting to see the freakish cat leaping through the side yard after them, but there was no sign of the animal. His heart was thumping crazily, and if anyone had tapped his shoulder at that moment, he probably would have jumped a mile. He wanted to tell his friends about the figure he'd seen in the rain, but he didn't know how to describe it and had no idea how to explain its relation to the cat. Hell, he didn't even know himself. Not really. All he knew was that all of this weird stuff was somehow tied together.

  "So he's been like that since this morning?" Jay asked.

  "I don't know. Usually Trix comes in for Friskies at breakfast, but there was no sign of him. I found him in the backyard about ten minutes ago, and I came to get you guys."

  "What'd your parents say about it?" Jay asked.

  "My old man isn't home. He went to Home Depot, and . . ." He shuffled his feet, looked down. "I didn't tell my mom."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. I just . . . I don't know. Scared to, I guess."

  Cameron knew exactly how his friend felt, th
at unfamiliar jumble of fear and confusion, and it further cemented his belief that everything was connected.

  Jay looked over at him. "What do you think it is?"

  Here was his chance. He could say what he thought, explain what he'd seen. But instead he found himself shaking his head. "I don't know," he mumbled.

  "I don't think it's rabid. It's more like it's . . . possessed." Jay looked around for confirmation.

  "Yeah," Cameron said, able to get out that much. Stu just looked scared and unhappy.

  From down at the end of the block came a strange wail, a hackle-raising cry that sounded like a cross between a baby's scream and a lion's growl. The gooseflesh that had been starting to recede on Cameron's arms returned again in full force. An animal was walking down the sidewalk toward them. Well, not exactly walking. It was more of a limping, lurching skip, a freakishly unsettling movement that made them freeze in their tracks. Cameron wasn't sure what it was at first. It was unlike any animal he had ever seen, more like something out of a nightmare, but as it drew closer, he saw that, like Stu's cat, it was a twisted version of a normal pet. Only this one was a dog.

  "Oh, my God," Jay said. "That's Bear!"

  He was right. Cameron recognized Jay's dog even before his friend finished speaking. For a brief wild second he thought that maybe all of the pets on earth had undergone this metamorphosis simultaneously, that this was the beginning of some global role reversal like Planet of the Apes, where other animals would take over for humans. But then reason reasserted itself and he thought that it was probably some disease or something that had been passed from one animal to another in the neighborhood.

  No, that wasn't true. That's not what he thought.

  The Mogollon Monster.

  Whatever it was might be very well confined to this neighborhood, but it was not a disease, and it had nothing to do with germs or bacteria or science. It had to do with the figure he had seen in the rain and the way that he had been frozen and the air had been heavy and reality had shifted.

  "Fuck," Stu breathed. "It happened to your dog, too."

  Bear stopped.

  Then lurched-hopped-skipped forward.

  Then stopped.

  Then yowled and lurched before stopping again.

  Behind them, Stu's dad's pickup pulled into the driveway, having driven in from the opposite direction. Cameron felt a welcome rush of relief. An adult! Someone who could take over and handle the situation.

  Stu's dad got out of the cab and slammed the door, walking back to open the tailgate. "How's it going, boys?" When none of them responded, he frowned and came over. "What is it? Anything wrong?" He followed their eyes and pointing fingers, and a funny look crossed his face when he saw Bear. The dog was now one house away and walking in circles, its head cocked at an almost impossible angle. Its teeth were bared, its lips turned up in what could only be called a smile.

  "What the . . . ?" Stu's dad took a step toward the animal, then turned back toward them. "That's your dog, isn't it, Jay? That's Bear."

  Jay nodded.

  "You boys better step back. Why don't you get behind the truck there?" He started forward.

  "Dad?" Stu called out.

  "What?"

  "Shouldn't you have, like, a weapon or something, just in case?"

  "Hey!" Jay said, but his protest was halfhearted. This wasn't his dog anymore and he knew it.

  "I'm just going to take a look. I'm not going to do anything."

  "Mr. Haynes?" Jay cleared his throat. "Maybe you should stay back, too. Or call someone. Like the police or something. Bear's . . . he's not right. There's something wrong with him."

  "Just like Trix!" Stu called out. "Trix is the same way! The same thing happened to him!"

  Other people were coming out of their houses now: Mr. Green, Mrs. Dilbay, Mr. Finch. They'd obviously seen the dog's bizarre antics through their windows and were coming out to investigate. Cameron hoped that somebody was calling the police or someone did have a weapon. Stu's dad, even all the dads in the neighborhood, couldn't fight something like this. The brief sense of relief that he'd felt dissipated as he realized that no adult, no matter how strong, no matter how much authority he had, would be able to go up against something that could do this to Bear.

  Mr. Haynes approached the dog cautiously. "Hey, buddy," he said softly, keeping up a stream of calm, comforting chatter. "Hey, Bear. How are you, sport? How's a boy?"

  Without any warning, the dog leaped in the air the way Stu's cat had, legs flailing. Only he didn't fall back down. He shot forward, through the space above the sidewalk, flying, hitting Mr. Haynes full in the chest, knocking him over. Before anyone could react, before anyone even knew what was going on, the animal's smiling, twisted mouth was snapping crazily and biting through skin, through flesh, through rib, burrowing into Stu's dad's chest. The three boys started screaming, along with all the other men and women on the street, but Mr. Haynes didn't have a chance to scream. He was dead before his brain even had time to tell his mouth to cry out. Bear grunted and snuffled through the bloody viscera, twitching periodically in a jerky, unnatural manner and letting out that eerie wail.

  Gary, the Spenglers' oldest son who was in the army and back home on leave for a few days, heard all the yelling and came running out of their house. When he saw Mr. Haynes on the ground and Bear tearing into him, Gary automatically grabbed two bricks from the low wall bordering his mom's flower garden and came running across the lawn.

  He threw the first brick, which hit Bear in the head, tearing off a chunk of flesh. Even in his altered state, the dog knew enough to back off. Then Gary was upon the animal, and he drew back his arm and brought the second brick down with all of his might, again and again. The brick hit Bear at an angle, a corner imploding the dog's eyeball, sinking into fur and tissue, cracking skull. Cameron was relieved to learn that Bear could be killed, thrilled to see the animal crumple on the spot, slumping onto the cement sidewalk in a pool of still-spilling blood.

  Maybe there was hope.

  Stu ran up the driveway and into his house in tears, screaming for his mom. The adults gathered around the fallen bodies. And as the sirens started up at the fire station down the street, Cameron pulled Jay behind the pickup and tried to describe what he'd seen on that rainy day, starting from the beginning.

  2

  Arthur Wessington saw it for himself, then quickly grabbed the nearest wall phone and ordered Kuhn to close the museum. Then he placed another call to Clarke. The security guards began smoothly and efficiently herding patrons out of the building, informing them that there was a gas leak and that the museum would be closed for the remainder of the day while the problem was fixed.

  Only there was no gas leak.

  A fetish in the Anasazi exhibit, a nasty little thing with an enormous phallus and a scowling face made out of bear bone, had somehow come to life.

  Arthur watched the hideous figure lurch across the enclosed display case, its oversize organ tipping over another smaller figurine and tapping loudly against the clear Plexiglas. The expression on its face had not changed, could not change, but it looked angrier somehow, as though frustrated by its inability to escape imprisonment.

  Sergio, Tress, and Patrick were huddled together, watching, standing close but not too close. Tress was the one who had called him, and at first he'd thought it was a practical joke. But the joke went on too long, and he could tell from her tone of voice that she was deadly serious. When he came downstairs, he had seen that it was true.

  He was not as shocked as he would have been a few months back. He'd heard through the grapevine that similar episodes had taken place in museums throughout the Southwest: Tucson, Santa Fe, Denver, Salt Lake City. Artifacts were supposed to have moved on their own.

  He hadn't believed any of these stories, but he believed them now. The first thing he was going to do after they got this situation under control was call some of his colleagues at those institutions and get hard reports, find out exactly what had
happened and where. The fact that this was not an isolated event, was part of something much larger, made it much more frightening.

  He was not even sure whether he would be able to get the situation under control.

  "This is probably on the security video already," Patrick said, "but maybe we should film this so we have some proof, so it's not just our word." He cleared his throat. "You know, after the fact."

  Of course. Arthur mentally kicked himself. "Get the camera from my office," he told Patrick. "Not the one we use for inventory, but my personal one. It's in the bag behind my desk."

  The assistant curator hurried off.

  Arthur turned his attention back to the fetish. It seemed even angrier now. It wasn't the face--or wasn't entirely the face, for the expression carved into the bear bone was indeed fierce--it was more the movement, the harsh, purposeful jerks that propelled the figure across its display case, kept it knocking hard against the sides.

  The Plexiglas was shatterproof, so he shouldn't have been worried that the fetish could break out . . . but he was. In his mind, he saw it smashing through the display case, tumbling onto the floor, righting itself, and lurching toward him. It was small, its legs were stationary, and it couldn't move fast--he could easily outdistance it--but he saw himself running away, getting in his car, and frantically driving home while the thing slowly and inexorably came after him, not stopping, no matter what obstacles were in its way, no matter how long it took.

  Someone shouted from somewhere toward the back of the museum, and almost simultaneously the phone started to ring. Arthur looked over at Tress and Sergio, and after a split-second of hesitation, he ran out of the permanent exhibits gallery and down the wide corridor toward the source of the panicky shouting, which appeared to be the cataloging room. His heart was pounding like a kettle drum in his chest. Already he could see the security guards clustered around the open door, sense the terror in their postures.