Quarrel with the Moon (8 page)

Years of hard living had caught up with Gracie. The last time Harry had seen her she was beginning to show the strain of her lifestyle. Her skin was as pale as skimmed milk and her hair was dull, dry, and lusterless. She had begun to lose weight. She was no longer the voluptuous, well-rounded Southern belle who, after thirty years in New York, hung onto her accent as tenaciously as a drink. Still they had a good time together.

The next time, when Harry returned from a long stay in Mexico, he found that Gracie had died during his long absence. Her liver had fallen apart like so many of her booze-soaked dreams. Sometimes when Harry was out in the field, he would suddenly think, "When this stint's over, I'm going to go back to New York, look up Gracie and marry her. But wait, I forgot, Gracie's dead." Funny how the mind worked to block out the pain of those things you couldn't face.

Harry lifted the bottle and took several long, hard swallows. The drink caused memories to buzz in his head. He closed his eyes and smiled. It was 1972, New York City. O'Lunney's Bar and Grill. Gracie had just played her favorite song on the jukebox and she was waving to him, urging him to come and dance with her. The stray tune tickled his memory. He moved his lips and tried to find the words to fit it. He found the words he was searching for and began singing to himself. "After ... you've ... gone ..." His eyes filled with tears which rolled down his dusty cheeks, leaving trails like transparent ribbons. "And ... left ... me ... cryin' ..." A stray breeze picked up Harry's words and carried them across the treetops, then cast them upon the waters of the river.

From their vantage point on the mountainside they watched. They lifted their heads to sniff the air. It was pungent with the smell of the humans. They milled about, shifting their weight, touching and drawing strength from one another. It would be needed later. They began to grow anxious and lightly snapped at the air.

A short time later their dark forms moved with stealth down the mountainside, stopping at the edge of the clearing, across from the campsite. The human scent was stronger now, and they savored the sweet warmth of it. Saliva rose in their mouths and dripped from their tongues. They watched the tent and the shifting silhouettes. In the distance, outlined against the furtive moon, another human dozed, his legs drawn up under his chin.

Their leader, his ears pricked forward, detached himself from the confusion of the shadows. There was no sound except the river and the wind. Suddenly the tent went dark and the leader gave the awaited signal. He lowered himself to the ground and the others followed. They began moving forward. Slowly at first, and then with more urgency.

Ted had fallen asleep first. Amy cradled his head against her breast and listened to the night. Only after a moment she realized there wasn't anything to listen to. No serenading crickets, no rustling leaves, no tiny animals scurrying around the tent.

Amy was suddenly frightened. She tried to conquer her wild excess of imagination, but she could not. The ominous silence covered her like a cold sweat. "Ted," she whispered sharply.

"Mmmm," he answered in his sleep.

Amy stretched out her arm and turned up the dim camping light. Shadows skittered about the interior of the tent like dark and illusive imps. As the light grew stronger, the shadows scampered away. The bright glare made Ted groan. Shielding his face with the back of his hand, he turned over.

"This is silly," Amy told herself and turned off the lamp. "I'll just try to think of something pleasant." She closed her eyes and, despite the pounding of her heart, forced herself to lie back on the sleeping bag and pretend sleep. Perhaps if she did that it would eventually come to her.

A sound as soft and insinuating as a malicious rumor disturbed her manufactured dreams. Amy sucked in her breath, lifted her head and listened. Nothing. It was just her fertile, as Ted called it, imagination. Still, she held her breath. There was another sound, then another, and another. Breathing? Footfalls? She shook Ted violently. "Ted, for God's sake, wake up!"

Dark forms suddenly filled the, tent. Amy screamed, not only with the horror of surprise, but with disbelief in what she was seeing. Strange humped shapes, their outlines undefined, amorphous like an underdeveloped print. An odor as pungent as decay permeated the interior of the tent. Amy struggled to get out of the sleeping bag, but the zipper jammed. Ted, unsure whether or not what was happening was real or the remnants of a nightmare, began flailing around.

They were caught, caught like two butterflies in a cocoon.

Amy lifted herself to her elbows. She felt something brush against her bare shoulder. It was furry and stank of the alluvial earth. She twisted her head and shrieked with mortal dread. The tent was swarming with
things!

Ted balled his hands into fists and raised them. "Amy," he rasped. "The zipper! Work on the zipper!"

Mouths snarling, they sidled closer to the terrified couple. The zipper sprang free and Ted and Amy started to crawl out of the sleeping bag. But they were too late. The leader sprang at Ted, plunging his teeth into the young man's wrist and snapping it like a twig. The pain was crushing; Ted fell to his side, struggling to free his arm. To the left another dark shadow sprang. Amy shrieked as great jaws yawned in front of her face. Sharp fangs tore away her nose and part of her cheek. Another dark mouth closed on the top of her head and ripped off her scalp.

Ted had managed to wiggle out of the sleeping bag as far as his knees, but then they were all over him. He heard his ribs cracking apart. Then his stomach was opened up, and his entrails were pulled from their resting place. Ted was dying when another attacked his throat, crushing his larynx, taking his life.

Amy was still alive, but barely. She was wrapped in paralyzing agony. Her small breasts had been torn from her and carried away. The younger ones licked her body with long, wet lavings of their tongues. Amy's consciousness faded, and with it her life.

The tent became filled with the sound of bones being crushed and flesh rent as the predators devoured their prey.

***

Harry Evers was dead to the world.

The empty bottle lay next to his foot. His snores were loud and uneven and punctuated the night air like a faulty motor. A chilling gust of wind attacked him from the left. Harry rolled over, and his foot nudged the bottle. It went skitting down over the crest of the burial mound and fell onto a pile of rocks below.

He pulled himself to his feet and looked over the edge of the mound. The glinting shards of the glass on the rock pile told him what had happened. He grunted, then strained his eyes toward the tent. The light was out. He could imagine Ted and Amy snuggled together in the arms of sweet Morpheus. That's one thing he had liked so much about Gracie. It wasn't just the sex, it was the cuddling. When they had slept together they slept close, almost as one. He hoisted an imaginary glass in the air. "Here's to you, kiddo, wherever you are."

The moon was swallowed by a bank of clouds. The wind shifted and brought with it a scent so wretched that Harry gagged. It was an odor he recognized instantly. He had been in Korea. It was the overpowering stench of death. Despite the alcohol, he was suddenly alert. He turned in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree angle, his eyes wide and staring at the blanket of darkness which surrounded him. He picked up his lamp and a pickaxe and carefully made his way across the boards which served as walkways over the dome of the mound, heading for the rickety wooden ladder which Ted had made from tree branches.

As he descended, Harry cursed the ladder's hurried construction. Halfway down it began to shudder and Harry jumped. He landed on his heels and fell on his buttocks with a grunt. The lantern flew out of his hand, its wavering beam highlighting a set of strange prints at the base of the mound. There were four toe prints and the form of a large, soft pad. But they were too large to belong to a dog, or even to a wolf. The hairs stood on the back of his neck.

Harry scrambled to his feet, grabbed the light and looked for more prints. He found them. They were fresh. No doubt about it. And they were circling the mound. He felt a clammy, wet fear crawl across his skin. His head was buzzing and he was having trouble keeping his eyes in focus, and he was completely unaware that he was whimpering.

Gripping the pickaxe, Harry began following the prints around the mound. Each step was like an eternity, and the only sound he heard was his own ragged breathing. He was halfway around when he thought he heard a movement in the nearby underbrush. He flashed the light against a clump of rhododendron. The leaves were shivering. Was it the wind, or something else? Harry stood there transfixed, trying to see between the graceful waxen leaves. Suddenly he swung around. He hadn't been thinking. What if the ... animal ... had circled all the way around the mound and was behind him? He took several steps backward, flashing the light wildly from left to right. He saw nothing but his own footprints. And the others.

He continued following the path dictated by the prints. Within minutes he had completely circled the mound. The prints continued on from where they had started. Was he stalking it, or was it stalking him?

Harry grabbed the makeshift ladder and steadied it, then quickly climbed back up onto the mound. At least there he could see if something were coming after him. Some parts of the mound had been weakened by the digging. On the edge of the mound, flanking the forest, there was a deep wedge cut into the structure where he and Ted had been working to gain access to the third vault. Harry gingerly made his way across the board back to the center and stood there staring at the ladder, knees trembling, sweat trickling down his arms.

The moon reappeared and lent a sinister light to the semi-darkness. The tips of the ladder were trembling. The way they did beneath someone's or something's weight. He turned his face to the indigo sky and squeezed his eyes shut. "Oh, God, please, please."

The figure sprang into full view. Harry gulped and nearly swallowed his tongue. It threw back its head and howled, then hurtled forward across the boards. Others, clawing away the dirt at the sides of the mound, found footage. Harry saw them materialize over the edge of the dome. He was surrounded.

Growling and snarling, they advanced. Harry was only aware of teeth and slathering open mouths. One crept closer than the rest and bit deep into Harry's thigh. He screamed, yanked himself free and rushed across the mound toward an open space. The dirt gave way beneath his feet, and Harry felt himself falling into the wedge-shaped hole. The dirt poured in around him, filling his eyes and nostrils and choking his throat. He almost smiled when he realized that they weren't going to get him after all. He was going to be buried alive. The fine earth, burned dry by the hot August sun, rained over him in powdery brown rivulets. Harry looked up and saw that the beasts were pawing the earth, helping to cover him up. Just before the dirt filled his nostrils, Harry muttered, "I've got news for you, Gracie. Dying is no big deal, kiddo."

When the hole had been filled in, the males urinated on the earth, marking their ground. At some later date, when the human had begun to decay and they were hungry, they would return.

Josh stood staring for a long time, not wanting to stay and yet not willing to leave. The house he had lived in as a child was in shambles. Part of the roof had caved in, and the rest was practically barren of shingles. The paint had long since peeled away and the boards had weathered to a dull brownish-gray - the color of a dead sparrow's wing. The front porch had completely collapsed. All that was left of it was a single wooden post and a broken-down swing seat, testifying to what it once had been. Weeds as high as his waist grew in profusion around the stone foundation, and in some places tufts of greenery sprouted from the house itself. The windows sagged, only a few jagged shards of glass remained. Josh lowered his head and stifled his urge to cry.

Cresta came up behind him and touched his shoulder, and without looking at her Josh said, "It was such a good house. Why didn't somebody live in it and care for it?"

"Josh, don't."

He pulled away from Cresta. "I want to go inside."

Cresta sighed and watched him cross the front yard. Suddenly she called out, "Josh, be careful. Don't fall through the floor." Then she went back to the camper to wait.

The front door was grown over with morning glory vines. The hinges creaked loudly as Josh forced it open. The hall had become a nesting place for birds and sprouting flowers. The main part of the floor remained, stubbornly refusing to give way to the encroaching vines. The narrow stairway, once leading to the attic, rose to nowhere. Its banisters were covered with greenery, as if decorated for a party. The wallpaper, faded and yellowed, hung in strips from the wall like loose bandages. A group of fieldmice scurried to safety. The sudden movement across the floor sent balls of dust scattering.

He turned right and walked into the parlor, where he found the remnants of several fires built in the middle of the floor, probably by hobos. Nearby lay the bleached bones of several dead animals: squirrels, rabbits, or groundhogs. Josh turned right again and entered his parents' bedroom. It was completely empty except for a lazy black snake sunning himself on the window sill. The black snake lifted his head and, sensing that there was no danger, went back to sleep. Josh stared at the wall above the space once occupied by his parents' four-poster bed. A bleached pattern as distinct as if it had been painted there testified to the past presence of a cross. Josh pressed his cheek against the wall and traced the outline with his finger. His father had carved the cross from a piece of hickory and had presented it to his mother at a Christmas long ago. The memory of those almost-forgotten times caused him to weep.

Next, Josh revisited his own bedroom, which was laced with extravagant cobwebs. It was smaller, but now it seemed larger because it was empty. He glanced at the doorframe and smiled in fond remembrance. Nicks had been carved into the wood denoting his height for each year of his life. Josh estimated that he must have been four foot, ten or eleven inches tall when they moved from Jericho Falls. He squatted next to the window as he had often done as a child and stared up at the mountainside. It seemed much closer than he'd remembered. Perhaps it was. Soil washed down by the heavy rains must have brought the mountain closer and closer. In time, if the house lasted, the mountain would completely consume it. Perhaps that's why the house remained empty.