Age of Blight (5 page)

He felt the dreaded, ever familiar tingling when he reached the end of the block where his two-story home stood. At his sides, his fingers began to quiver daintily as though they were hovering over piano keys and could not decide which particular note to strike.

He did not know when it happened exactly, but he was no longer afraid. Instead, he just felt angry. “I hope you won't ever rot, Gramps,” he said under his breath. He had never felt this angry before. His chest hitched, and he was out of breath. He stared at the glistening dragon kite tangled in the branches of the tree on the neighbor's front yard. He concentrated on the image so that his tears would not come out.

“I never did anything to you,” he whispered, as he realized the only answer to a curse was making a curse of one's own.

Martin blinked his tears away. His hands stopped moving, and they suddenly felt like they were his again. He would never understand how he did it, but he knew he had won.

And somewhere, an old man named Desmond Strang opened his eyes inside the coffin where he
was stretched out. He saw nothing but darkness. He was unable to move, yet he felt everything that reached out for him inside the cramped space six feet under the grass.

Jude and the Moonman

I
t wasn't our fault. You should understand that by now. But I don't expect you to understand the reason we did what we thought we had to do that summer of 1999, because people don't understand
order
as much as we do.

At first, there were only three of us: Mel Arlington, Judith Legold, and me. By the end of the semester, just before summer vacation, Billy Gambale, a fourth-grader who once helped Mel push my bicycle out of the ditch, joined our little group. I could never forget that day. It was humid, and the whole world was the Mighty Godzilla out to get us. The burly Bartman and his ferocious pack were chasing me and Mel riding double with me on my bike. I lost control of the handlebars when we reached the embankment, so we landed in the ditch near Mr. Carasco's farm. The Bartman and his gang were laughing their heads off as they walked away from us. Mel and I cursed silently. Easing our way out of the filthy mud bath, we understood that we had no choice but to endure the
treatment, because that was how the world worked. There was an infinite allowance for pain because the course of natural hierarchy—the taut demarcation line that separated predator from prey—had to be sustained. We knew that. We respected that.

“Want some help?” the freckled Billy Gambale called out from the embankment.

According to Judith, Billy spent most of his life playing inside the video arcade at Kingshoppe because he didn't have any friends. He flushed when we looked up at him, probably suddenly realizing that it would be a lot easier for him if we ignored him.

“Come on down if you want to,” Mel said, laughing and splashing mud on me. “You're Billy, right?”

“Yeah.”

He brightened instantly. I could swear I'd never seen happiness as profuse as that which shone from Billy Gambale's eyes. That afternoon at Judith's house, Billy joined us to watch
Flame of Recca
, a Japanese animated series. We ate chocolate cookies and drank all of the milk in the fridge. There were now four of us in the spacious living room of the Legolds, and the thought of us being friends for a lifetime suddenly dawned on me. I felt proud.

It was on the twenty-fifth of June when we first ventured into the vacant lot beside the Lares House to play baseball. It was Billy's turn to pitch.

Judith swung for the fences.

Crack.

I followed the ball's course across the sky although the sun hurt my eyes. For some reason, I felt like a
real man whenever I did that. It landed somewhere in the middle of the thick vegetation fifteen feet away from us.

Mel turned fast and went for the ball. He'd told us earlier that he only managed to snatch the ball from his older brother's bedroom because his brother had his head clamped with headphones. “The volume was turned up so high you'd hear the sound from the next room,” Mel said. “I think he'll need a hearing aid when he gets older. Maybe two.”

Mel was approaching the bushes when Judith screamed. I'd never heard her scream before; she was as tough as any kid I'd ever met in my life.

We all froze. Following the direction of Billy's frightened gaze, I saw it. It looked like a child, but its face resembled something of a white board cutout, with eyes made of buttons, a paper clip nose, and a piece of string shaped to form the lips. Then there were those terrible, hateful spots on his skin, miniature lunar craters.

Mel stepped back as the creature took one step forward. Its grotesque limbs cradled the ball, stretching awkwardly towards Mel. We huddled close, our eyes fixed on the creature as it set the ball on third base and scuttled back into the bushes. Judith was the one who picked it up for Mel.

“He's just a freak,” Mel declared, looking down at his dirty sneakers as we walked away from the Lares House.

“He must've gotten some radiation when he was a kid,” Billy added.

I was annoyed by the way that they blatantly referred
to the creature as a he. It wasn't human to me. And I hated it, had to hate it more for what it represented. It was completely dislodged from my concept of primal order. The creature was a pure abomination.

“What's radiation?” Judith asked.

“It causes things to mutate,” Billy said. “Like if I give it to you, you'll change into a rat or something.”

“Shit,” Mel said, horrified. “How do you get it?”

“I don't know,” Billy answered. “It's everywhere. The government puts it on our food so we don't get past fifty. And there's this one time—”

“I think it's an alien invader,” I said. I was not smiling. “I think it wants to take over the world. We have to stop it.”

“Us?” Mel gasped. His face was ashen with fear.

“Shouldn't we call the police, or something?” Judith said.

“They won't believe us. Not grown-ups. They won't believe a thing like that. They'd laugh their heads off and then stick us in the loony bin, like what happened to Karl's dad.”

“You're right, Jude,” Billy agreed.

“Not if we take a picture of him,” Judith suggested.

I noticed that Mel was looking around nervously.

“How?” I said. “Say ‘hey, Mr. Moonman, we'd like you to pose and say cheese so we can prove your existence and get you destroyed?'”

“Why don't we just forget about him, okay?” Mel said. He was perspiring and taking shallow breaths. Crybaby.

We were silent for a while.

“Come back here tomorrow,” I said when we reached
my house. Something important was happening. I would take the responsibility if I had to. “We'll talk about what we're supposed to do.”

I turned and walked across the yard, feeling their eyes on my back. I did not wait for them to respond because I knew they would stick with me no matter what happened.

In the end, everyone agreed to join me in hunting the Moonman. Mel, anxious about the idea, finally gave in when he saw Judith's enthusiastic response.

We tracked the Moonman for three days without success. On the fourth day, we had some luck, spotting it near the stream. It was playing, forming a mound of sand with its bulbous fingers. The scene disturbed me; it was a blasphemy. The creature was building what appeared to be a sandcastle.

It did not have a right to do that. The Moonman had corrupted my innocence, my sense of order and I was convinced I had nothing to lose. I pegged my first rock with such murderous force my right arm ached in its socket for days after. One shot was all it took. The rock hit the creature squarely on the forehead, and it collapsed against the stream bank.
Yes, close your eyes now, Moonman
, my mind screamed triumphantly.
Close your eyes and seal those lunar craters on your skin forever. Let the earth feed on you and leave us in peace
.

Then I saw red stuff ooze out of its hairless head. I
could not believe what I saw but I knew it was blood.

Mel wailed, and all three of his rocks fell out of his shirt.
Clack, clack, clack
. Colder than the earth, the rocks whispered a rhythmic chant as they hit the ground.

Billy and Mel quickly found their way out of the dense undergrowth we used as a hiding place. They ran. They ran away. They never talked to me after that. Judith cried on our way home, and I never heard a word from her again. But I knew everyone would keep the secret. It was a pact none of us needed to talk about.

A month later, I overheard my father talking to my mother about a rotting carcass near the stream two miles from the Lares House. According to my father, the police swore they never thought the remains could be human until it was autopsied.

But I knew better.

Dominic & Dominic

W
hen at last six-year-old Dominic finally learned to trim his fingernails without accidentally cutting himself, he grasped the clipper's tiny lever and brought the blade down expertly against his nail, the sharp click-clack of stainless steel striking keratin satisfying him. He gathered the nail clippings on his lap, unceremoniously deposited them in a shallow hole in the backyard, and sealed them underground by toeing loose soil into it. Burying his fingernail clippings was a move that wasn't at all symbolic to Dominic. In fact, he did not even think why he chose to do so instead of tossing the clippings in the trashcan in the bathroom or the one under the kitchen sink. If asked why he buried the nail clippings in the backyard, he would probably shrug and say he didn't know.

The morning of the next day, Dominic happened upon the same spot in the backyard and noticed the tip of a finger. It was small enough to be inconspicuous
but pale enough to stand out against the dark brown of the loam. Dominic, who was curious at first because fear would only come later, knelt to inspect more closely the odd flesh-colored protrusion.

He retreated to the screen door where his mother was going through the motions of domesticity, and asked her whether or not it was possible for a fingernail to grow back into a finger.

Distractedly, his mother explained that fingernails were dead. “That's why you don't feel a thing when you trim them,” she said. “They're like our hair. They're made of a type of protein called keratin. And no, there's no way for nail clippings to grow into fingers. What's dead stays dead.”

So, armed with the newfound certainty of the dead supposedly staying dead, Dominic headed to the backyard, scrutinized the spot where he buried his nail clippings, and gently touched the finger growing therein, the finger that was now exposed down to the proximal phalanx, the finger pointing skyward with the surliness of a person whose belief system was based on self-importance. Dominic carefully, almost reverently, disturbed the earth around the jutting finger. He recognized the tips of three more fingers close to it. The thumb, not yet visible, would be down there along with the rest of the hand. Dominic, who was still curious because fear would only come later, replaced the soil to cover the three fingers he had exposed and left the partially buried finger pretty much how he found it. He rushed to the kitchen. Breathless and excited, he told his mother that fingers
were growing in the spot where he had buried his fingernail clippings.

“They're what?” she asked, wearing the harried look of a single mother on a Monday before the morning rush hour. She scanned the notepaper sheet attached to the fridge door with a watermelon-shaped magnetic holder. “Not now, honey, I'm busy.”

“But you have to see them. They're really fingers, I swear. What if there's a whole hand in there? We have to do something.”

She waved him away with a stern expression, grabbing the yellow pages from a shelf under the telephone stand. “The hand will be fine. There's nothing you and I can do for it. Now, you can play in the backyard as long as you want after you've had your breakfast. Aunt Nancy will be here any minute.”

“Okay, okay.”

“I'll be home early tonight. Then we can look at those fingers you say are growing in the backyard.”

Of course, Dominic's mother was exhausted when she got home that night and retired to her bedroom after dinner. As for Nancy, her mother's cousin, she fiddled with her laptop the rest of the time, memorizing coursework aloud and calling out to Dominic once in a while to check if he needed anything. He said over and over that he didn't need anything. He just needed her to come to the backyard and to check out the fingers that had grown out of his fingernail clippings. She replied with either a “not now” or a “later.”

By the time Dominic was eating dinner, the fingers were twitching for the first time, feeling the air of the
small fenced backyard that was silent in the stifling late-summer heat. The fingers were fully exposed, the wrist visible.

The first thing that Dominic did a few minutes after waking up was to check up on the fingers in the backyard. Sensing Dominic, the thing stirred—no, no, waved—as it was visible to the elbow now. Dominic, who remained curious because fear was still far off, grasped the hand sprouting from the ground. That was when he noticed that the hand was exactly as big as his own. And upon closer inspection, he could say for sure that it was a duplicate of his left hand—complete with the scab from a scratch he sustained when he hit the pavement while learning to balance a bicycle. “What are you?” he muttered.

So, for days turning to weeks—while the other Dominic grew in the backyard—six-year-old, real-life Dominic went through his usual dealings with the adults in his household. There's his mother repeatedly promising to see what had become of the fingernail clippings and then forgetting what she promised afterward, what with the bills coming in at the end of the month and the office politics with her new supervisor at Station Tower Mutual. And Nancy, the burned-out and exhausted Aunt Nancy, who worked night shifts as a part-time nurse while studying for med school, crashed out on the couch every afternoon, snoring, snoring this life away—this
suburban life with so much to do and so much to become. Outside real-life Dominic's little house, beyond the small backyard where fingernail clippings could grow into human beings, people frittered away too, their life stories being read both as allegories and as cautionary tales. Everywhere, the dirty rooms of unaired small homes, the porches growing rickety with the trampings of the desperate.

School would start next month, and Dominic hoped that the other Dominic in the backyard would hurry up and finish growing. He was excited and scared, not knowing what the other Dominic wanted (because of course, the Other would want something, for if there is one thing a six-year-old knows, it's that there is nothing that exists without wanting). The not-knowing gnawed at the real-life Dominic. He wished that the other Dominic would talk. Upper torso visible now, the other Dominic had yet to open his eyes, although his hands would twitch, would respond to touch, would grasp back when clutched. The signs of life of this Other were all there—steady pulse, slow intakes of breath, the sheen of sweat on the forehead, the occasional twitching.

Once, Dominic's mother had gone to the backyard to replace the bottom of the barbecue grill, which was propped right next to the spot where the Other was slowly emerging. Holding his breath with anticipation, or possibly even pride for the Other he had brought into the world, Dominic asked his mother if she had seen the other Dominic.

“The what?” she probed. “What are you talking about?”

“The other Dominic, the one who grew out of my fingernail clippings. I've been telling you about him for weeks now.”

“Oh,” she said, uneasiness sinking into her voice. “Well, I haven't seen anything. Do you mean the mound of soil near the grill? Have you been digging around in that dirt all this time?”

“You mean you didn't see the other me?”

“No, honey, I didn't. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes, yes, I'm fine,” Dominic said, weighing the possibility that his mother's inattention was the reason for her not noticing what was so clearly growing in the ground. But it was a small yard, he thought, and the grill was just a few feet away from the area where his double was situated. Perhaps the reason nobody else could see the Other was that it was rightfully his. That night he mulled over the incident in bed, and when his thoughts strayed into deducing what his Other wanted, he finally began to grow afraid. When at last it was morning and it was time to check up again on the Other's progress, Dominic saw that his double was completely exposed down to the knees. The Other's eyes were still closed, the posture sentinel-like, feigning inattention. For the first time, Dominic felt very alone in all of this.

Later that day, he lured the barely-awake Nancy to the backyard by faking an emergency. Dominic positioned himself right next to the Other and then screamed as hard as he could. Nancy, scrambling out of her stupor in the couch and steadying herself by holding on to the screen door that led out to the small,
fenced backyard, found Dominic with an expectant expression on his face.

“Oh God, Dominic! You gave me quite a scare there,” she said. “I thought you were hurt.”

“Don't you see
him
, Aunt Nancy?”

“What, what?”

“Him?”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

That was when Dominic realized the Other was definitely not visible to other people. “Nah, I'm just, I'm just kidding,” he mumbled. “Sorry, sorry. It was a spider—it's gone now.”

“Okay,” Nancy said. She was vaguely aware of the boy hiding something from her, but she was too tired and sleepy to protest. She made a mental note to talk to his mother when she got home tonight. “I'll be in the living room if you need anything.”

“Sure, Aunt Nancy.” He glanced at the Other next to him, the silent, unmoving one, the invisible one who was still anchored to the ground. When Nancy retreated back to the house, Dominic once again marveled at his double's resemblance to him. How he wished it would say something.

That night, Dominic's mother carefully treaded around the subject of her son's imaginary playmate. Gently, she tried to make him understand the absurdity of his fingernails growing into another Dominic. “Now, do you want to know why your Aunt Nancy and I can't see it? It's because it's not real.”

“Then how come I can see it? I can touch it. Come, let me show you.”

“No,” she tried to be firm, not wanting to encourage him, and recognizing the adult world's hypocrisy at the same time. Kids weren't expected to question the existence of Santa Claus. “Finish your dinner and then wash up. Let's read something tonight.”

Dominic brightened up instantly with the prospect of a bedtime story. It was the last time his mother would see her six-year-old smile like that.

At eight the next morning he remembered to check up on his double's progress in the backyard. As he neared the kitchen screen door that opened out to the backyard, he heard Aunt Nancy happily talking on the phone, the approaching ice cream truck's melodic tones, the muffled swish of shrubbery whose tops were being trimmed by the neighbor's hedge cutters.

The scene did not register at first, but when it did, Dominic was overcome with awe. His double was completely free of the earth, standing on the loose soil that once held him back. The ground underneath his feet was stomped flat. He wore exactly what the real-life Dominic wore—a yellow cotton T-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. And the eyes, those same Dominic eyes, were open. When at last Dominic met his double's gaze, he felt a strong yet painless tug, as if he were a prone weight being forcibly lifted, and a flood of warmth along the extremities. Then there was a momentary blur. Dominic found himself standing on the spot where he first buried his fingernail clippings. He couldn't move. Soil covered his feet up to the ankles. What was once curiosity quickly turned to panic. Then later fear, the only real fear
Dominic would ever have the chance to know, and finally, understanding. The last thing Dominic saw before his eyes grew heavy and he had to close them was the back of his double's yellow T-shirt heading to the kitchen screen door. The Other entered his house where his Aunt Nancy was still happily talking on the phone, the house around which he last heard the ice cream truck's melodic tones fading as the vehicle neared the bend and the muffled swish of shrubbery whose tops were being trimmed by the neighbor's hedge cutters.