Deathbird Stories

by Harlan Ellison

  And then he went home to Kansas.

  Between Syracuse and Garden City, sitting close to the coach window, staring out through the film of roadbed filth, Lestig watched the ghost image of the train he rode superimposed over flatland Kansas slipping past outside. The mud-swollen Arkansas River was a thick, brown underline to the horizon.

  “Hey, you Corporal Lestig?”

  Vernon Lestig refocused his eyes and saw the wraith in the window. He turned and the sandwich butcher with his tray of candy bars, soft drinks, ham&cheeses on white or rye, newspapers and Reader’s Digests, suspended from his chest by a strap around the neck, was looking at him.

  “No thanks,” Lestig said, refusing the merchandise.

  “No, hey, really, aren’t you that Corporal Lestig–” He uncurled a newspaper from the roll in the tray and opened it quickly. “Yeah, sure, here you are. See?”

  Lestig had seen most of the newspaper coverage, but this was local, Wichita. He fumbled for change. “How much?”

  “Ten cents.” There was a surprised look on the butcher’s face, but it washed down into a smile as he said, understanding it, “You been out of touch in the service, didn’t even remember what a paper cost, huh?”

  Lestig gave him two nickels and turned abruptly to the window, folding the paper back. He read the article. It was a stone. There was a note referring to an editorial, and he turned to that page and read it. People were outraged, it said. Enough secret trials, it said. We must face up to our war crimes, it said. The effrontery of the military and the government, it said. Coddling, even ennobling traitors and killers, it said. He let the newspaper slide out of his hands. It clung to his lap for a moment and then fell apart to the floor.

  “I didn’t say it before, but they should of shot you, you want my opinion!” The butcher said it, going fast, fast through the aisle, coming back the other way, gaining the end of the car and gone. Lestig did not turn around. Even wearing the smoked glasses to protect his damaged eyes, he could see too clearly. He thought about the months of blindness, and wondered again what had happened in that hooch, and considered how much better off he might be if he were still blind.

  The Rock Island Line was a mighty good road, the Rock Island Line was the way to go. To go home. The land outside dimmed for him, as things frequently dimmed, as though the repairwork to his eyes was only temporary, a reserve generator cut in from time to time to sustain the power-feed to his vision, and dimming as the drain drank too deep. Then light seeped back in and he could see again. But there was a mist over his eyes, over the land.

  Somewhere else, through another mist, a great beast sat haunch-back, dripping chromatic fire from jeweled hide, nibbling at something soft in its paw, talons extended from around blackmoon pads. Watching, breathing, waiting for Lestig’s vision to clear.

  He had rented the car in Wichita, and driven back the sixty-five miles to Grafton. The Rock Island Line no longer stopped there. Passenger trains were almost a thing of the past in Kansas.

  Lestig drove silently. No radio sounds accompanied him. He did not hum, he did not cough, he drove with his eyes straight ahead, not seeing the hills and valleys through which he passed, features of the land that gave the lie to the myth of totally flat Kansas. He drove like a man who, had he the power of images, thought of himself as a turtle drawn straight to the salt sea.

  He paralleled the belt of sand hills on the south side of the Arkansas, turned off Route 96 at Elmer, below Hutchinson, due south onto 17. He had not driven these roads in three years, but then, neither had he swum or ridden a bicycle in all that time. Once learned, there was no forgetting.

  Or Teresa.

  Or home. No forgetting.

  Or the hooch.

  Or the smell of it. No forgetting.

  He crossed the North Fork at the western tip of Cheney Reservoir and turned west off 17 above Pretty Prairie. He pulled into Grafton just before dusk, the immense running sore of the sun draining itself off behind the hills. The deserted buildings of the zinc mine–closed now for twelve years–stood against the sky like black fingers of a giant hand opened and raised behind the nearest hill.

  He drove once around the town mall, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the crumbling band shell its only ornaments. There was an American flag flying at half-mast from the City Hall. And another from the Post Office.

  It was getting dark. He turned on his headlights. The mist over his eyes was strangely reassuring, as if it separated him from a land at once familiar and alien.

  The stores on Fitch Street were closed, but the Utopia Theater’s marquee was flashing and a small crowd was gathered waiting for the ticket booth to open. He slowed to see if he recognized anyone, and people stared back at him. A teenaged boy he didn’t know pointed and then turned to his friends. In the rearview mirror Lestig saw two of them leave the queue and head for the candy shop beside the movie house. He drove through the business section and headed for his home.

  He stepped on the headlight brightener but it did little to dissipate the dimness through which he marked his progress. Had he been a man of images, he might have fantasized that he now saw the world through the eyes of some special beast. But he was not a man of images.

  The house in which his family had lived for sixteen years was empty.

  There was a realtor’s FOR SALE sign on the unmowed front lawn. Gramas and buffalo grass were taking over. Someone had taken a chain saw to the oak tree that had grown in the front yard. When it had fallen, the top branches had torn away part of the side porch of the house.

  He forced an entrance through the coal chute at the rear of the house, and through the sooty remains of his vision he searched every room, both upstairs, and down. It was slow work: he walked with an aluminum crutch.

  They had left hurriedly, mother and father and Neola. Coat hangers clumped together in the closets like frightened creatures huddling for comfort. Empty cartons from a market littered the kitchen floor and in one of them a tea cup without a handle lay upside down. The fireplace flue had been left open and rain had reduced the ashes in the grate to a black paste. Mold grew in an open jar of blackberry preserves left on a kitchen cabinet shelf. There was dust.

  He was touching the ripped shade hanging in a living room window when he saw the headlights of the cars turning into the driveway. Three of them pulled in, bumper to bumper. Two more slewed in at the curb, their headlights flooding the living room with a dim glow. Doors slammed.

  Lestig crutched back and to the side.

  Hard-lined shapes moved in front of the headlights, seemed to be grouping, talking. One of them moved away from the pack and an arm came up, and something shone for a moment in the light, then a Stillson wrench came crashing through the front window in an explosion of glass.

  “Lestig, you motherfuckin’ bastard, come on out of there!”

  He moved awkwardly but silently through the living room, into the kitchen and down the basement stairs. He was careful opening the coal chute window from the bin, and through the narrow slit he saw someone moving out there. They were all around the house. Coal shifted under his foot.

  He let the window fall back smoothly and turned to go back upstairs. He didn’t want to be trapped in the basement. From upstairs he heard the sounds of windows being smashed.

  He took the stairs clumsily, clinging to the banister, his crutch useless, but moved quickly through the house and climbed the stairs to the upper floor. The top porch doorway was in what had been his parents’ room; he unlocked and opened it. The screen door was hanging off at an angle, leaning against the outer wall by one hinge. He stepped out onto the porch, careful to avoid any places where the falling tree had weakened the structure. He looked down, back flat to the wall, but could see no one. He crutched to the railing, dropped the aluminum prop into the darkness, climbed over and began shinnying down one of the porch posts, clinging tightly with his thighs,
as he had when he’d been a small boy, sneaking out to play after he’d been sent to bed.

  It happened so quickly, he had no idea, even later, what had actually transpired. Before his foot touched the ground, someone grabbed him from behind. He fought to stay on the post, like a monkey on a stick, and even tried to kick out with his good foot; but he was pulled loose from the post and thrown down violently. He tried to roll, but he came up against a mulberry bush. Then he tried to dummyup, fold into a bundle, but a foot caught him in the side and he fell over onto his back. His smoked glasses fell off, and through the sooty fog he could just make out someone dropping down to sit on his chest, something thick and long being raised above the head of the shape…he strained to see…strained…

  And then the shape screamed, and the weapon fell out of the hand and both hands clawed at the head, and the someone staggered to its feet and stumbled away, crashing through the mulberry bushes, still screaming.

  Lestig fumbled around and found his glasses, pushed them onto his face. He was lying on the aluminum crutch. He got to his foot with the aid of the prop, like a skier righting himself after a spill.

  He limped away behind the house next door, circled and came up on the empty cars still headed-in at the curb, their headlights splashing the house with dirty light. He slid in behind the wheel, saw it was a stick shift and knew with one foot he could not manage it. He slid out, moved to the second car, saw it was an automatic, and quietly opened the door. He slid behind the wheel and turned the key hard. The car thrummed to life and a mass of shapes erupted from the side of the house.

  But he was gone before they reached the street.

  He sat in the darkness, he sat in the sooty fog that obscured is sight, he sat in the stolen car. Outside Teresa’s home. Not the house in which she’d lived when he’d left three years ago, but in the house of the man she’d married six months before, when Lestig’s name had been first splashed across newspaper front pages.

  He had driven to her parents’ home, but it had been dark. He could not–or would not–break in to wait, but there had been a note taped to the mailbox advising the mailman to forward all letters addressed to Teresa McCausland to this house.

  He drummed the steering wheel with his fingers. His right leg ached from the fall. His shirtsleeve had been ripped and his left forearm bore a long, shallow gash from the mulberry bush. But it had stopped bleeding.

  Finally, he crawled out of the car, dropped his shoulder into the crutch’s padded curve, and rolled like a man with sea legs, up to the front door.

  The white plastic button in the baroque backing was lit by a tiny nameplate bearing the word HOWARD. He pressed the button and a chime sounded somewhere on the other side of the door.

  She answered the door wearing blue denim shorts and a man’s white shirt, buttondown and frayed; a husband’s castoff.

  “Vern…” Her voice cut off the sentence before she could say oh or what are you or they said or no!

  “Can I come in?”

  “Go away, Vern. My husband’s–”

  A voice from inside called, “Who is it, Terry?”

  “Please go away,” she whispered.

  “I want to know where Mom and Dad and Neola went.”

  “Terry?”

  “I can’t talk to you…go away!”

  “What the hell’s going on around here, I have to know.”

  “Terry? Someone there?”

  “Goodbye, Vern. I’m…” She slammed the door and did not say the word sorry.

  He turned to go. Somewhere great corded muscles flexed, a serpentine throat lifted, talons flashed against the stars. His vision fogged, cleared for a moment, and in that moment rage sluiced through him. He turned back to the door, and leaned against the wall and banged on the frame with the crutch.

  There was the sound of movement from inside, he heard Teresa arguing, pleading, trying to stop someone from going to answer the noise, but a second later the door flew open and Gary Howard stood in the doorway, older and thicker across the shoulders and angrier that Lestig had remembered him from senior year in high school, the last time they’d seen each other. The annoyance look of expecting Bible salesman, heart fund solicitor, girl scout cookie dealer, evening doorbell prankster changed into a smirk.

  Howard leaned against the jamb, folded his arms across his chest so the off-tackle pectorals bunched against his Sherwood green tank top.

  “Evening, Vern. When’d you get back?”

  Lestig straightened, crutch jammed back into armpit. “I want to talk to Terry.”

  “Didn’t know just when you’d come rolling in, Vern, but we knew you’d show. How was the war, old buddy?”

  “You going to let me talk to her?”

  “Nothing’s stopping her, old buddy. My wife is a free agent when it comes to talking to ex-boy friends. My wife, that is. You get the word…old buddy?”

  “Terry?” He leaned forward and yelled past Howard.

  Gary Howard smiled a ladies’ choice dance smile and put one hand flat against Lestig’s chest. “Don’t make a nuisance of yourself, Vern.”

  “I’m talking to her, Howard. Right now, even if I have to go through you.”

  Howard straightened, hand still flat against Lestig’s chest. “You miserable cowardly sonofabitch,” he said, very gently, and shoved. Lestig flailed backward, the crutch going out from under him, and he tumbled off the front step.

  Howard looked down at him, and the president of the senior class smile vanished. “Don’t come back, Vern. The next time I’ll punch out your fucking heart.”

  The door slammed and there were voices inside. High voices, and then the sound of Howard slapping her.

  Lestig crawled to the crutch, and using the wall stood up. He thought of breaking in through the door, but he was Lestig, track…once…and Howard had been football. Still was. Would be, on Sunday afternoons with the children he’d made on cool Saturday nights in a bed with Teresa.

  He went back to the car and sat in the darkness. He didn’t know he’d been sitting there for some time, till the shadow moved up to the window and his head came around sharply.

  “Vern…”

  “You’d better go back in. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble.”

  “He’s upstairs doing some sales reports. He got a very nice job as a salesman for Shoop Motors when he got out of the Air Force. We live nice, Vern. He’s really very good to me…Oh, Vern…why? Why’d you do it?”

  “You’d better go back in.”

  “I waited, God you know I waited, Vern. But then all that terrible thing happened…Vern, why did you do it?”

  “Come on, Terry. I’m tired, leave me alone.”

  “The whole town, Vern. They were so ashamed. There were reporters and tv people, they came in and talked to everyone. Your mother and father, Neola, they couldn’t stay here any more.”

  “Where are they, Terry?”

  “They moved away, Vern. Kansas City, I think.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Neola’s living closer.”

  “Where?”

  “She doesn’t want you to know, Vern. I think she got married. I know she changed her name…Lestig isn’t such a good name around here any more.”

  “I’ve got to talk to her, Terry. Please. You’ve got to tell me where she is.”

  “I can’t, Vern. I promised.”

  “Then call her. Do you have her number? Can you get in touch with her?”

  “Yes, I think so. Oh, Vern…”

  “Call her. Tell her I’ll stay here in town till I can talk to her. Tonight. Please, Terry!”

  She stood silently. Then said, “All right, Vern. Do you want her to meet you at your house?”

  He thought of the hard-lined shapes in the glare of headlamps, and of the thing that had run screaming as he lay beside the
mulberry bush. “No. Tell her I’ll meet her in the church.”

  “St. Matthew’s?”

  “No. The Harvest Baptist.”

  “But it’s closed, it has been for years.”

  “I know. It closed down before I left. I know a way in. She’ll remember. Tell her I’ll be waiting.”

  Light erupted through the front door, and Teresa Howard’s face came up as she stared across the roof of the stolen car. She didn’t even say goodbye, but her hand touched his face, cool and quick; and she ran back.

  Knowing it was time once again to travel, the dragon-breath death-beast eased sinuously to its feet and began treading down carefully through the fogs of limitless forevers. A soft, expectant purring came from its throat, and its terrible eyes burned with joy.

  He was lying full out in one of the pews when the loose boards in the vestry wall creaked, and Lestig knew she had come. He sat up, wiping sleep from his fogged eyes, and replaced the smoked glasses. Somehow, they helped.

  She came through the darkness in the aisle in front of the altar, and stopped. “Vernon?”

  “I’m here, Sis.”

  She came toward the pew, but stopped three rows away. “Why did you come back?”

  His mouth was dry. He would have liked a beer. “Where else should I have gone?”

  “Haven’t you made enough trouble for Mom and Dad and me?”

  He wanted to say things about his right foot and his eyesight, left somewhere in Southeast Asia. But even the light smear of skin he could see in the darkness told him her face was older, wearier, changed, and he could not do that to her.

  “It was terrible, Vernon. Terrible. They came and talked to us and they wouldn’t let us alone. And they set up television cameras and made movies of the house and we couldn’t even go out. And when they went away the people from town came, and they were even worse, oh God, Vern, you can’t believe what they did. One night they came to break things, and they cut down the tree and Dad tried to stop them and they beat him up so bad, Vern. You should have seen him. It would have made you cry, Vern.”