Just North of Nowhere (27 page)

“Lock,” he said.

“Mani” she finished up.

“Dogs...that's what Doc Eelman said I had. Dogs. So I stopped worrying them with my thinking thoughts.

“What the hay's going on!?” is what Bunch said. He rubbed his face. He looked past the Eelmans, to the circled vaults, at the dark star-filled critter flapping, shivering by the edge of the woods. He looked behind him at the black pit.

“And who's going to fill that damn thing up!” he'd yelled.

“The Wailing Writher,” Doc said, still a little nervous.

The black thing wrinkled and for a second, a sound like a billion moths stirred.

“He better,” Bunch said.

The Einar-Eelman, leaned forward. “We are fishing,” he said. Doc was dragged forward at the shoulder. “You followed the sign of Koth. You are a dreamer. One who makes dreams real. You are our guide.”

Doc uncurled his arm. It unrolled like a rug-runner into a flat palm with one, two, three fingers.

“He didn't have any of them lines on it, like you read,” Bunch said.

“Yes, yes... What did he offer?”

“A bitty little bug,” he said. “Funny critter, but mostly bug. I never seen one like it; little guy kept winking like a sick firefly.”

She made that siren noise again. “The Jab'achar...” she said. “Most are terrified of the Jab'achar. It brings waking dreams.”

“Uh-huh, Bunch said. “'Bout what Doc told me. They seemed happy I wasn't scared. 'He’s the hunter, he’s the Fisher...' one of 'em said. Don't remember which. They were talking about me.”

“Fishers are not thinking men,” Doc had said. “A man of scholarship and high sensibilities would have fainted at the sight. A touch of the. . .” Bunch tried to say the name, “the Jabby-thing. The bug,” Bunch said, “'a touch of the Jabby would have driven a thinking man nuts.'“ Bunch was proud again. “Then he gives it to me.”

“What?” Cristobel said? “What was your task!” she damn near shouted it.

“Like I said: I was supposed to lead this group of Ghosts...”

“Ghasts!”

“Yeah. On a fishin' trip down that pit. Find the God they served, and that was that.”

“And they said the name of the God?”

“Yes they did!” Bunch was getting used to being proud. “It sounded like that stuff?” he was thinking. “They sell it over at the Wurst Haus...spoiled milk? Yogurt. And that other stuff with a name...peas, corn...?”

Cristobel shrieked a little bit. She said a name.

“Yep,” Bunch said. “That's the God I was supposed to take these Ghasts to see…” he tried again, “…Yogurt Succotash when he come rising from the pit.”

Cristobel sat back. She stared at Bunch, wide-eyed. Terror, abhorrence, mind-twisting horror and mad disbelief played on her pretty face. There was, maybe, a little envy on the side. “He is one of the Great Old ones,” she said, “the spawn of the Nameless Mist.” She thought a second. “Others say he's ALWAYS been; he shares the rule of the universe with,” and Cristobel said another of those names filled with sounds that didn't go together.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“And you said?”

What Bunch had said to the Eelmans was, “Uh-huh. Then you'll leave town, right?”

Both Eelmans nodded. Their smiles shone brightly in the dark of their mouths.

Bunch sat quiet in the kitchen.

“What?” Cristobel leaned to look at him. “You've gone dark,” she said.

He didn't like thinking about the ghasts, didn't like thinking about the fat woman.

“They had their daughter,” he said finally. His damn stomach was churning. He talked louder, drowning out the squirts and gurgles.

“Them Eelmans. They said their daughter would come with me. Us. Me and the ghosts.” He shivered a little.

The woman had stepped from behind the Eelmans. She was too of everything: Too short, too round, too bald, her bosoms too large, her feet too small; her skin, too white, too pale, and a bit too blue. Not to mention that every part of her face, eyes, mouth, nose holes – every part – was sewn shut. Big stitches, thick string. Too big, too thick. The too thick string pulled her too fat flesh, too much together. Bunch didn't ask whether the rest of her was sewed up too. He didn’t have to. She was also much too nude.

He didn't say that. He blushed.

“What is it?” Cristobel said. She covered his hand with hers. It was warm, hard.

“She was fat. Fatter'n Vinnie Erickson.” That's all he was going to say and he said it.

The fat woman’s face wrinkled, the smile stretched her stitches.

“Turn round,” the Einar said.

Bunch faced the pit. First, he didn't like knowing that fat woman was at his back. Then her too fat fingers slid onto his right shoulder. Her touch tingled.

At that, the trucks…the vaults…began hissing a different song. They clanked, rumbled. Big doors boomed open, like distant thunder, the kind that makes you say, “That thunder out there?”

When the fat woman put another hand on his left shoulder his back muscles wiggled under her touch. Fingers like roots grew inside his flesh.

“Go forth,” the Eelmans said.

Without thinking, Bunch headed for the hole in the world, the Jabby bug clenched in his hand. Wet sounds, one, two, three, four, splashed behind him.

“Sounds that maybe a three-, four-hundred pound trout would make flopping on a flat rock.” Bunch said to Cristobel, happy to be off the subject of the fat woman. “Ain't no four-hundred pound trout anywhere I know,” he said. “But I know how a good 14-inch rainbow sounds, slapped down for gutting. These plops were like that, just bigger.”

Without turning, he shouted back to the Eelmans. “Then you'll leave town, right?”

“Yes,” both said. Now go...”

“When I take these folk here,” he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, “down there fishing...” he pointed to the hole, “Then you'll get out of town. Right?”

“Yes,” the voices said. “Go forth...”

“And you'll leave? Go away? Never come back? That right?”

“Yes,” they said. “We have promised it.”

Bunch went forth.

“When the God's been served...” Einar added.

Bunch didn't mention his last thought before the hole shut down behind them. It was, “...and you'll leave Cristobel Chiaravino up there on Slaughterhouse Street alone!” He never said that, to Cristobel.

“You led the Ghasts? And the Daughter of the...” and she said that word again.

“The Eelmans girl? Yep.”

“Bearing the Jab'achar?”

He nodded.

“Into the pit of...?”

“Yogurt. Yeah,” he growled. “Will you let me tell it?” He said, louder than he needed, but his stomach! He hated sitting with her and making noises. Like stomachs do.

They walked downward for hours. He had no idea where they were. Some guide! They could have been damn-near Cruxton, for all he knew. He followed his gut. When his gut strayed, the Jabby buzzed and nudged his hand until he got right, then it went to sleep again. Dark as it was, he could see. Sort of. Like a bad picture on the TV over to the Wagon Wheel – dim, but you knew which team had the field. Figured the Jabby was doing that. Didn't know how, Bunch just figured!

First couple hours was boring. And stinky! Those ghasts slurping along, making sucking wet sounds like they did, the fat woman probably adding to it. Bunch made a point of saying “ghast” correctly.

First it was the usual critters – cave crickets, spiders, worms and zillion-leggers. In a while, the bugs started sprouting light, like light-up bugs above. Long-whiskered crickets hopped and glow-slugs wriggled in their own green light bulbs. Pretty.

He had no one to say that to, at the time, so he kept his mouth shut. He told Cristobel in her kitchen.

She smiled.

Soon, even these little lights faded and it was dark again and they moved through that mental bad TV picture. On the walls and floor, just out of reach, Bunch could hear things; things creeping in the black, working at whatever it was they did.

Then even these noises went away. Either there were no critters this far down in the world, or the critters that were shut up when Bunch, the fat woman and the ghasts came slopping down the path.

“God be doggoned, woman!” he shouted suddenly.

“What?” Cristobel screamed. She twitched right out of the story.

“I could eat a house,” he shouted. “I haven't eaten since... Well, I get to that.” He was tired of shouting his gut down.

She jumped to her feet. “I'll feed you. Talk, keep talking!” she shouted as she wrapped an apron around herself.

Knowing grub was coming, relaxed Bunch. The room was warm and already smelled good from Cristobel and the smell of the firewood he'd chopped for her and stacked in the pantry porch two weeks ago. Soon the place sizzled and smelled like food.

That begun, he started in on the tail end.

Something. A hair, a cobweb, tickled his face. Without thinking, he stopped. The stinky things behind him also stopped. They slurped against the stone path. The fat woman came up, bump, against his back and for a second Bunch felt crawly where her gut pressed his skin. She backed off, but his hairs still prickled.

“Wait,” he said, and inched forward. Now it was truly dark. Even his TV eyes were off. Every few steps, small things touched him, tiny claws scrabbled over his feet, a spook breathed on his face, hands, arms. He didn't like the feel. When he felt them, he inched another way. After three, four steps, he couldn't move, not a bit, no matter where he shifted, where he turned, the little touches found his skin.

Without thinking, he opened his hand, the hand that held the Jabby. Cold fire lit out of the little bug's tail. At first, Bunch saw his hand in the glow. A thread, slim as spider silk, lay across his palm. When the light caught it, green brilliance filled the strand and squirted into the darkness. The tail-glow from the Jabby bug spread, riding the threads, streaming like bat-piss in a moony night. Where one glowing string crossed another, the light split and spread. In a blink, the dark world filled with a glowing network, a rainfallen spider web catching star light.

He saw where they were.

They'd emerged from the long cave and now stood near the wall of a vast cavern. Behind him and his stinking train, the wall rose to a dome of black rock. The walls arched up and away, maybe forever but probably not. The spreading web of light disappeared into a million tiny caves that dotted the inside of this vast honeyhive. All around, the air was shot through with the threads that sucked light from the tail of the Jabby-bug in Bunch's hand.

They had stopped when they should have. Bunch's bare toes hung over the end of the world. A black hole, miles across and who knew how deep, spread before them. None of the glowing threads plunged into that darkness, no light brightened that hole. . .but from it something rose. A big breathing was rising to join them. Below, invisible lungs sucked, and all the world's air rushed past; the wind at his back shoved Bunch toward the pit, closer to the night that rose at his feet.

The slopping, farting mess behind, chirped and purred like kitties tearing fish guts. The fat woman rooted deeper into one shoulder, then the other.

The Jabby-Bug giggled. Then, it said something made him tear his eyes from the rising blackness. He looked at the bug, saw it clearly now. Not a bug, the Jabby was covered in a fine, fine fur, its body white, soft, not shell-hard like a bug ought to. The damn thing was covered with flesh. Its feelers reached out three, four feet, and like little hands, they felt the wind.

Ugliest thing about the little bastard was its head. It had no bug face: Its eyes were like a man's, its lips looked as though they could smile, scream, talk. Worse, the mouth had a tongue. The tongue licked the light.
Tasting it
, Bunch figured. Then it turned and looked at Bunch.

“Your dream awakens.” The Jabby said. “Now eat!”

Cristobel's kitchen sizzled. Heat poured off the stove carrying good smells with it. “Yes,” she said. “And...”

“Then,” Bunch said, getting hungrier by the minute. “Then them damn Ghost things...”

“The Four Ghasts? Yes?”

“They started hooting.”

“Yes?”

“Then that fat woman. She up and started flying. Flying straight up...”

Cristobel stared.

“...me attached. Her dug into my arms!”

Cristobel stared.

He pulled his shirt collar down. A single ring of bruise-blue flesh circled the muscles at his shoulder. “Other side's the same.”

She touched the mark.

He didn't want to interrupt her warm touch, but he reckoned he'd have to finish the story to get fed. “That damn Jabby flew, too. Left my hand and buzzed up and up. Soon's it did, them glowing threads started dying. Slow. The fat lady took me…”