Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (19 page)

Lisa pushed a button on the cash register to open the drawer. “You don’t know a damn thing about women, do you, Scott?”

“Probably not. Anyway, you want some?”

She reached beneath the drawer and scooped out the twenties, gathering them into a little stack. “No.”

Dean watched her count for a few seconds, then said, “You didn’t take a break for supper.”

“So?”

“So you’ve been here as long as the rest of us. And you’re not starving?”

“No. Mind your own business. No, I’m not starving.”

She went back to her counting, and made a point of not paying any further attention to either of the other closers. When she wrapped up the drawer’s contents, she put a rubber band around them and slipped them into a zippered bag that she then deposited into the safe.

“Aren’t you jumping the gun a tad with that?” Dean asked, but she shrugged back at him.

“There’s nobody here. Who cares? Turn off the sign. Let’s close up.”

“Where are you going?”

“Bathroom, to change clothes. I’m not walking home smelling like this. It’s gross.”

Dean took a rag and started wiping down the pizza line. “Smelling like food? It’s not the grossest thing in the world, not by a long shot.”

“I don’t like it,” she said. She lifted up the counter blocker that kept customers from wandering back into the kitchen and it almost looked like too much effort for those bird-frail arms. She shuddered when it dropped it back down behind her, when it fell back to its slot with a clang.

“Lisa?” Dean asked, thinking maybe he’d follow her or ask more questions, but she saw it coming and she waved him away.

“Don’t,” she ordered. “Just . . . don’t.”

“Stick around a few minutes, I’ll drive you home when we’re finished eating. I’ll give you a lift—I mean, you really don’t look like you’re in any shape to walk back to the ’burbs.”

“I’m in plenty good shape to walk anywhere I want. Thanks, though.” She added the last part as she rounded the corner, taking a backpack with her. The bathroom door clicked itself shut behind her.

Dean jerked his hands into the air. “I give up,” he declared.

“It’s about time,” Scott said. The words were already muffled around a mouth full of pizza. “Come and get it. More for us.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay.”

The back door was open, propped that way for the sake of air flow. Dean went back through the kitchen, back beside the refrigerator, and back to that open door that looked out over the empty lot—and the woods beyond it.

Scott was right. They needed a lamp.

The dumpster loomed black before the lot. It stank of rust, rot, and the decay of uneaten things that should’ve long ago been picked up. Trash service was spotty out there sometimes, and the bin was starting to fill. Maybe the collectors would come by before the morning.

It was as good an excuse as any not to take out the trash.

A clatter popped, loud beside his head.

Dean jerked—staring around and trying not to look too frantic, in case it was just Scott being an asshole. But Scott was inside, he could hear him. He’d turned up the radio past the point of ambient noise; and he’d tuned it to a louder station than Pete ever subjected the customers to. Inside, Scott was singing along to Skinny Puppy with his mouth full.

The clatter wasn’t Scott.

It was hard to place, like before—hard to tell exactly where the sound was, or exactly what it sounded like. It sounded so close to so many things, but not precisely like any of them. The clicking was loud but muffled. Next to his head, between the building and the dumpster, and high. Up higher, he thought, higher than the edge of the window sill were the pattering knocks when they sounded again.

“Is somebody out here?” Dean asked, not loud enough to even pretend he wanted a response.

The clattering continued, high and muffled, and rhythmic—there was a balance to it, a swinging, swaying, like the pendulum on a large clock moving back and forth. Or like hips, loosely jointed and walking in lanky-legged steps.

“I . . . ” There should’ve been more to say, but the noise—all rounded edges and heavy bones—was only coming closer.

He retreated back into the doorway, still seeing nothing except, maybe, at the edge of his sight something pale in a jagged flash. Whatever it was, he wanted no more of it; he tumbled over himself to get back inside, and he shut the door fast—hard. He drew the bolt back and stepped away, staring down at the door’s lever handle, waiting for it to wiggle or slide.

“Dude?” Scott called. “Something wrong? You’re panting like a sick dog in here; I can hear you all the way in the kitchen.”

“I’m not panting!” Dean all but shouted, and as he objected he could hear his own breath dragging unevenly from his chest and out his mouth. “I’m not—there was something outside. Don’t look at me like that, I’m serious. There’s something out there and it’s not a goddamn
bear
.”

“Okay, calm down. What, then? Another raccoon or rat?”

“Fuck off, man. I don’t know what. I don’t know what, but I’m not going back to look.”

“Let me see,” he said but it was less a request than an announcement that he was going to look outside.

“Don’t,” Dean commanded, stepping between his coworker and the bolted metal door. “Don’t. Whatever it was, we don’t want it in here. It was, it was
big—
and I don’t know what. Just leave it shut. It’ll go away, later.”

“You’re actually scared?”

“Yes, I’m scared. What is there—there’s rabies and shit, man. And big things with big teeth in the woods. Fine, a bear, if you want to call it that—if you want to wonder or worry about that.”

Scott snorted. “Puss.”

“Less a puss than
you
, motherfucker. At least I’m afraid of actual
things
, and not ghosts, like dead people from the Civil War. That ain’t a ghost out there, whatever it is. It’s something that came in from the woods, is what. And I’d just as soon not get eaten on the way home from work, so leave the door closed or you’ll let it in.”

“Fine,” Scott held out his hands in surrender. “Fine, Christ. If it’s that big a deal to you. Calm down, already. Don’t get crazy.”

“I’m not crazy, I think I’ve heard it out there before,” he said, and he realized as the words came out that he was serious—he
had
heard it before, but not so loud and not so close.

It had been working itself up, working itself close. Homing in.

Dean shuddered, and peeled his apron off. He tossed it at the pegs where the coats were usually kept and it stuck, then straggled itself down to the floor. “Forget it. I’m not hungry anymore. I’m going home.”

“With the monster outside? Ooh, you’re
brave
.”

“I’m going out the front,” Dean growled. “Where there’s a nice open parking lot and a big ol’ streetlamp.”

“Before you go—are you giving Lisa a ride? I think she needs one.”

“What? She said no. She said she didn’t want one.”

Scott cocked his head towards the front of the restaurant, in the vague, general direction of the bathrooms. “She’s still in the bathroom. Don’t leave her with me; she’s not my problem.”

“Not mine either.”

“You care more than I do. Go knock on the door or something.”

Dean stood still and scowled, weighing the options and his own worry. “Fine. I’ll go get her.”

If nothing else, it gave him something else to think about; it gave him a few more seconds to calm his heartbeat and another problem to think about. He grabbed his light coat and shifted his shoulders into it, then pulled his keys out of his jeans pocket and went to the door of the ladies room.

He pressed his head against it, listening for any signs of life within. He rapped the back of his knuckles against the wood, lightly—politely. “Hey Lisa. You in there, still?”

She didn’t answer, so he knocked again.

“You in there? Hey, I’m going home now. I’m tired and I’m not as hungry as I thought I was. Open up. I’ll give you a ride home. Hey. Are you in there?” He knew she must be, but there was no hint of life. No water running, no toilets flushing. Again he knocked, but there wasn’t any answer. “Do you need help? You’d better say something, or else I’m going to come in there. Do you hear me?”

Nothing.

Until there was the crash.

The sound of splintering, shattering glass rang out behind the closed door, jolting Dean so badly he leaped away. “Lisa?” he shouted, and he reached for the knob. It moved a click left and right, but didn’t open. “Lisa?”

Scott came tearing around through the dining area. “Did you hear that? What was that?”

“In there—” Dean pointed at the locked door. “It came from inside the bathroom. The thing outside, I think it’s gotten in—that’s all I can think of,” he trailed off, kicking at the door. Glass wasn’t breaking anymore, but it was being pushed around—scraped around, and yes, there was that tell-tale knocking, rattling, clapping together of hard things with worn edges. He could hear it through the door.

“What’s that sound in there?”

“Same sound I heard outside.”

“Well, what is it?” Scott’s voice was rising, creeping up towards shrill as the ruckus in the bathroom continued and the clacking rattles filled more and more of the space inside the restaurant. “What’s that crazy sound?”

“I told you, I don’t know!” Dean retreated a few feet and slammed himself forward, hip against the door. Something splintered, but nothing broke. He did it again, and motioned for Scott to join him. “Lisa, what’s going on in there?
Lisa
?”

Nothing and no one answered, so the guys pushed together and then, when both their bodies met the wood at once, the door caved in and they caved in after it—tumbling forward and slipping on cool tiles.

“Lisa?” they said together.

“Lisa?” Dean asked again, but the bathroom was empty and there was no sound at all—not even the running of a commode out of order, or the whistle of warm January wind through the broken glass of the small square window.

“Could she—could she have gotten through there? Through that?” Scott asked, now as breathless as Dean and just as confused. He meant the window, all smashed and hanging open. It wasn’t meant for escaping, or anything half so glamorous. It was installed for ventilation, or for light. It was too small for a normal-sized woman to fit through, or climb through.

But Dean could still hear, in his head more than in the night, the smattering beats of the knobby creature that crouched in the dark beyond the dumpster.

He climbed up onto counter, stepping past the sink and prying himself up high to see out the window. A hulking shape all corners and shadows was walking, retreating, removing itself from the restaurant.

It stopped.

It halted like it had snagged itself on something. It swiveled an oversized head on a twig-thin neck, and it lifted its face to gaze at the window from which Dean watched.

Not one head, but many together. Not one thing, but parts of a hundred—a thousand others. A skull made of skulls, ribs made of ribs, it was fleshless and breathless. Its ivory limbs quivered together, chattering a low-frequency buzz of bone on bone, dangling loose from unfinished joints.

Dean’s breath caught in his throat.

The thing turned away. It loped slowly towards the trees, into the woods. It wandered into the sheltering darkness of the park, towards the old camp at Andersonville.

The Hollow Man
Norman Partridge

Four. Yes, that’s how many there were. Come to my home. Come to my home in the hills. Come in the middle of feast, when the skin had been peeled back and I was ready to sup. Interrupting, disrupting. Stealing the comfortable bloat of a full belly, the black scent of clean bones burning dry on glowing embers. Four.

Yes. That’s how many there were. I watched them through the stretched-skin window, saw them standing cold in the snow with their guns at their sides.

The hollow man saw them too. He heard the ice dogs bark and raised his sunken face, peering at the men through the blue-veined window. He gasped, expectant, and I had to draw my claws from their fleshy sheaths and jab deep into his blackened muscles to keep him from saying words that weren’t mine. Outside, they shouted,
Hullo! Hullo in the cabin!
and the hollow man sprang for the door. I jumped on his back and tugged the metal rings pinned into his neck. He jerked and whirled away from the latch, but I was left with the sickening sound of his hopeful moans.

Once again, control was mine, but not like before. The hollow man was full of strength that he hadn’t possessed in weeks, and the feast was ruined.

They had ruined it.

“Hullo! We’re tired and need food!”

The hollow man strained forward, his fingers groping for the door latch. My scaled legs flexed hard around his middle. His sweaty stomach sizzled and he cried at the heat of me. A rib snapped. Another. He sank backward and, with a dry flutter of wings, I pulled him away from the window, back into the dark.

“Could we share your fire? It’s so damn cold!”

“We’d give you money, but we ain’t got any. There ain’t a nickel in a thousand miles of here. . . . ”

Small screams tore the hollow man’s beaten lips. There was blood. I cursed the waste and twisted a handful of metal rings. He sank to his knees and quieted.

“We’ll leave our guns. We don’t mean no harm!”

I jerked one ring, then another. I cooed against the hollow man’s skinless shoulder and made him pick up his rifle. When he had it loaded, cocked, and aimed through a slot in the door, I whispered in his ear and made him laugh.

And then I screamed out at them, “You dirty bastards! You stay away! You ain’t comin’ in here!”

Gunshots exploded. We only got one of them, not clean but bad enough. The others pulled him into the forest, where the dense trees muffled his screams and kept us from getting another clear shot.

The rifle clattered to the floor, smoking faintly, smelling good. We walked to the window. I jingled his neck rings and the hollow man squinted through the tangle of veins, to the spot where a red streak was freezing in the snow.

I made the hollow man smile.

So four. Still four, when night came and moonlight dripped like melting wax over the snow-capped ridges to the west. Four to make me forget the one nearly drained. Four to make me impatient while soft time crept toward the leaden hour, grain by grain, breath by breath . . .

The hour descended. I twisted rings and plucked black muscles, and the hollow man fed the fire and barred the door. I released him and he huddled in a corner, exhausted.

I rose through the chimney and thrust myself away from the cabin. My wings fought the biting wind as I climbed high, searching the black forest below. I soared the length of a high mountain glacier and dove away, banking back toward the heart of the valley. Shadows that stretched forever, and then, deep in a jagged ravine that stabbed at a river, a sputtering glimmer of orange. A campfire.

So bold. So typical of their kind. I extended my wings and drifted down like a bat, corning to rest in the branches of a giant redwood. Its live green stench nearly made me retch. Huddling in my wings for warmth, I clawed through the bark with a wish to make the ancient monster scream. The tree quivered against the icy wind. Grinning, satisfied, I looked down.

Two strong, but different. One weak. One as good as dead.

Three.

Grizzly sat in silence, his black face as motionless as a tombstone. Instantly, I liked him best. Mammoth, wrapped in a bristling grizzly coat he looked even bigger, almost as big as a grizzly. He sat by the fire, staring at his reflection in a gleaming ax blade. He made me anxious. He could last for months.

Across from Grizzly, Redbeard turned a pot and boiled coffee. He straightened his fox-head cap and stroked his beard, clearing it of ice. I didn’t like him. His milky squint was too much like my own. But any fool could see that he hated Grizzly, and that made me smile.

Away from them both, crouching under a tree with the whimpering ice dogs, Rabbit wept through swollen eyes. He dug deep in his plastic coat and produced a crucifix. I almost laughed out loud.

And in a tent, wrapped in sweat-damp wool and expensive eiderdown that couldn’t keep him warm anymore, still clinging to life, was the dead man, who didn’t matter.

But maybe I could make him matter.

And then there would only be two.

When the clouds came, when they suffocated the unblinking moon and brought sleep to the camp, I swept down to the dying fire and rolled comfortably in the crab-colored coals. The hush of the river crept over me as I decided what to do.

To make three into two.

Three men, and the dead man. Two tents: Grizzly and Redbeard in one, Rabbit and the dead man in the other. Easy. No worries, except for the dogs. (For ice dogs are wise. Their beast hearts hide simple secrets. . . . )

The packed snow sizzled beneath my feet as I crept toward Rabbit’s tent. The dead man’s face pressed against one corner of the tent, molding his swollen features in yellow plastic. Each rattling breath gently puffed the thin material away from his face, and each weak gasp slowly drew it back. It was a steady, pleasant sound I concentrated on it until it was mine.

No time for metal rings. No time for naked muscle and feast. Slowly, I reached out and took hold of Rabbit’s mind, digging deep until I found his darkest nightmare. I pulled it loose and let it breathe. At first it frightened him, but I tugged its midnight corners straight and banished its monsters, and soon Rabbit was full of bliss, awake without even knowing it.

I circled the tent and pushed against the other side. The dead man rolled across, cold against the warmth of Rabbit’s unbridled nightmare.

“Jesus, you’re freezin’, Charlie,” whispered Rabbit as he moved closer. “But don’t worry. I’ll keep you warm, buddy. I’ve gotta keep you warm.”

But in the safety of his nightmare, that wasn’t what Rabbit wanted at all.

I waited in the tree until Grizzly found them the next morning, wrapped together in the dead man’s bag. He shot Rabbit in the head and left him for the ice dogs.

Redbeard buried the dead man in a silky snowdrift.

That day was nothing. Grizzly and Redbeard sat at the edge of the clearing and wasted their only chance. Grizzly stared hungrily at the cabin, seeing only what I wanted him to see. Thick, safe walls. A puffing chimney. A home. But Redbeard, damned Redbeard, wise with fear and full of caution, sensed other things. The dead man’s fevered rattle whispering through the trees. An ice dog gnawing a fresh, gristly bone. And bear traps, rusty with blood.

Redbeard rose and walked away. Soon Grizzly followed.

And then there was only the hollow man, rocking gently in his chair. The soles of his boots buffed the splintery floor and his legs swung back and forth, back and forth.

Two. Now two, as the second night was born, a silent twin to the first. Only two, as again I twisted rings and plucked muscles and put the hollow man to sleep. Just two, as my wings beat the night and I flew once more from the sooty chimney to the ravine that stabbed a river.

There they sat, as before, grizzly and fox. And there I watched, waiting, with nothing left to do but listen for the sweet arrival of the leaden hour.

Grizzly chopped wood and fed the fire. Redbeard positioned blackened pots and watched them boil. Both planned silently while they ate, and afterwards their mute desperation grew, knotting their minds into coils of anger. Grizzly charged the dying embers with whole branches and did not smile until the flames leaped wildly. The heat slapped at Redbeard in waves, harsh against the pleasant brandy-warmth that swam in his gut and slowed his racing thoughts.

“Tomorrow mornin’,” blurted Redbeard, “we’re gettin’ away from here. I’m not dealin’ with no crazy hermit.”

Grizzly stared at his ax-blade reflection and smiled. “We’re gonna kill us a crazy hermit,” he said. “Tomorrow mornin’.”

Soon the old words came, taut and cold, and then Grizzly sprang through the leaping flames, his black coat billowing, and Redbeard’s fox-head cap flew from his head as he whirled around. Ax rang against knife. A white fist tore open a black lip, and the teeth below ripped into a pale knuckle. Knife split ebony cheek. Blood hissed through the flames and sizzled against burning embers. A sharp crack as the ax sank home in a tangle of ribs. Redbeard coughed a misty breath past Grizzly’s ear, and the bigger man spun the smaller around, freed his ax, and watched his opponent stumble into the fire.

I laughed above the crackling roar. The ice dogs scattered into the forest, barking, wild with fear and the sour smell of death.

So Grizzly had survived. He stood still, his singed coat smoking, his cut cheek oozing blood. His mind was empty—there was no remorse, only a feeling that he was the strongest, he was the best.

Knowing that, I flew home happy.

There was not much in the cabin that I could use. I found only a single whalebone needle, yellow with age, and no thread at all. I watched the veined window as I searched impatiently for a substitute, and at last I discovered a spool of fishing line in a rusty metal box. Humming, I went about my work. First I drew strips of the hollow man’s pallid skin over his shrunken shoulder muscles, fastening them along his backbone with a cross stitch. Then I bunched the flabby tissue at the base of his skull and made the final secret passes with my needle.

Now he was nothing. I tore the metal rings out of his neck and the hollow man twitched as if shocked.

A bullet ripped through the cabin door. “I’m gonna get you, you bastard,” cried Grizzly, his voice loud but worn. “You hear me? I’m gonna
get
you!”

The hollow man sprang from the rocker; his withered legs betrayed him and he fell to the floor. I balanced on the back of the chair and hissed at him, spreading my wings in mock menace. With a laughable scream, he flung himself at the door.

Grizzly must have been confused by the hollow man’s ravings, for he didn’t fire again until the fool was nearly upon him. An instant of pain, another of relief, and the hollow man crumpled, finished.

And then Grizzly just sat in the snow, his eyes fixed on the open cabin door. I watched him from a corner of the veined window, afraid to move. He took out his ax and stared at his reflection in the glistening blade. After a time Grizzly pocketed the ax, and then he pulled his great coat around him, disappearing into its bristling black folds.

In the afternoon I grew fearful. While the redwoods stretched their heavy shadows over the cabin, Grizzly rose and followed the waning sun up a slight ridge. He cleaned his gun. He even slept for a few moments. Then he slapped his numb face awake and rubbed snow over his sliced cheek.

Grizzly came home.

I hid above the doorway. Grizzly sighed as he crossed the threshold, and I bit back my laughter. The door swung shut. Grizzly stooped and tossed a thick log onto the dying embers. He grinned as it crackled aflame.

I pushed off hard and dove from the ceiling. My claws ripped through grizzly hide and then into human hide. Grizzly bucked awfully, even tried to smash me against the hearth, but the heat only gave me power and as my legs burned into his stomach Grizzly screamed. I drove my claws into a shivering bulge of muscle and brought him to his knees.

The metal rings came next. I pinned them into his neck: one, two, three, four.

After I had supped, I sat the hollow man in the rocker and whispered to him as we looked through the veined window. A storm was rising in the west. We watched it come for a long time. Soon, a fresh dusting of snow covered the husk of man lying out on the ridge.

I told Grizzly that he had been my favorite. I told him that he would last a long time.