Through Dark Angles: Works Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft (11 page)

Nat didn’t like thinking about that. But you couldn’t think otherwise. He looked at poor white Jesus. Poor bastard, even being white doesn’t save you now.

Nat was rich right now; he had made a run into Austin with Jesús’ truck. He had found an HEB that wasn’t looted. Dried pinto beans, jalapeños, canned ham, tangerine jello, soup, flour (without too many weevils), and a large can of fruit cocktail. Mama invited the MacLeods from next door. Dr. MacLeod had taught classes in chemistry at the University of Texas. His wife had taught painting classes for adults at the community college here in Doublesign. They had been great neighbors since before the Rising. They were Mormons, so they had over a year’s supply of food saved up. They loved Mama; even when Nat and Jesús and Juan were sowing wild oats, they took her applesauce bread and had her over for “Mormon Beans” back when ground meat was available. Dr. MacLeod had been so helpful when the Rising happened. He knew all about the Masons and the Illuminati. He spoke at one of the last town meetings, and everyone agreed to crucify the old men in the Mason Lodge. It was easy to catch them, not one was under eighty—besides, they died quick, which everyone says is a Good Thing these days. Dr. MacLeod explained how the One World Government was really about Cthulhu. After the moon opened its Eye, it was clear what the “All-Seeing Eye” on the dollar bill had been about.

Mama didn’t have electricity, of course. But Nat had driven to Barton Creek Mall the day after one of the Shining Waves had passed through Austin. It had paused at the Mall, breaking it into three big pieces. Nat and Juan had loaded up their trucks two times each with the stock of a Wicks and Sticks. At first (before Victoria had walked into the sky) Nat kept all the candles at his place. But when his wife was Called by the Thing Behind the Winds, he had moved everything (including Stephanie) to Mama’s. They lit candles everywhere, and only once had the house caught fire by one burning too low.

Dr. MacLeod was explaining the world as usual. “What we didn’t understand is that it is all personal. I never understood that the many nights I researched stuff on the Web. All the scholars said it was impersonal.”

Mama just smiled. It was not that she lacked intelligence, but like so many Something had shut down in her. She never left the house except to get water at
el rito.
By day she read old
fotonovelas
and copies of
Reader’s Digest.
At night she prayed in her
sala
. She would not go with Nat to church. Safety was here, in her home. She was happy when she could serve food to other people and when people brought her things.

“What do you mean, Dr. MacLeod?” asked Nat.

“It isn’t about what happened in the Pacific or the Arctic,” he said. “It’s your brother. It’s my son. Some Thing out there interfaced with us.”

Mrs. MacLeod said, “Is it because we were bad? Because the world was bad?”

“No, honey. We weren’t bad. We were just good food.”

“We weren’t the ones that were eaten or,” she said looking at Nat, “Called.”

“Our suffering feeds them. When they take poor Stephanie there,” he began.

The child looked up, frightened.

Nat yelled, “They are not taking Stephanie!”

Mama began to cry, Stephanie looked down at her knees, afraid to move.

“Come on, Nat, face facts. Everything we’ve heard tells us it runs in bloodlines,” said Dr. MacLeod.

“Shut up, honey, this isn’t the place,” said Mrs. MacLeod.

“They just need to face facts. The Others have a fix on their family, just like they got our Billy for meditation. Something was wrong with Theresa. She belonged to Them, and They Called her.”

Stephanie had put her hands over her ears. She sobbed.

“You go away, you bastard. We know what you are. Maybe they got your Billy because you had us nail up those old men. You go away and don’t come back.”

“Nat, you’re being emotional. You know they won’t let her in the church building now. We just have to face facts.”

Mrs. MacLeod got up and was pulling her husband by the short ecru sleeve of his shirt. “Shut up, Bob. Nobody needs to face anything. We’ve all faced enough. Don’t ruin another night.”

He pulled his arm away from her. He drew back his arm as though he might hit her, and then just started sobbing.

“Come home, hon,” she said very gently. “I am so sorry. So, so sorry.”

Nat put Stephanie to bed. She was ten and would be in fourth grade if there was any school left. For a while Miss Farmer and Mrs. Martinez tried to do classes, but as it sank into people’s minds that man’s time as the earth’s master was over, classes ended. Nat and the people on the block raided Bowie Elementary School for books and globes and scissors and glue and colored paper. He had raided Terra Toys in Austin. There were still people or things like people in Austin then; that was before the Shining Waves passed through. The empty houses across the way were stuffed with stuffed animals. He thought it would make the world less scary for Stephanie if she saw windows full of white bears and blue horses.

He usually slept in the hall between Stephanie’s and Mama’s rooms. There had only been one incident. One night a little crack opened in the air about six inches below the ceiling and a black slime had
dripped
down into another crack about six inches above the age-dulled hardwood floor. He had sat up for hours watching it, hoping it would go away, praying that neither of the females would wake up and see it. It faded away before dawn. Some people thought the whole process was driven by dreams. Others thought dreams were driven by the process.

He couldn’t sleep tonight. Dr. MacLeod’s words had slipped under his skin. He thought about his little girl all the time. He played with her every day, not for the joy of play but to keep her focused on human things. Other parents wouldn’t let their kids play with her, not after her Mother . . .

She liked the swing sets in Robert E. Lee Park. That was only two blocks away. He carried her on his shoulders, as if she were a much younger girl. They would swing, and he would spin her around on the roundelay. Then one morning he found that something had taken a
bite
out of it in the night. After that he kept her at Mama’s. Nat wanted beyond all things to be able to take her to the church, which he figured was the only sanctuary. Father Murphy had said no. He didn’t think the girl was Marked, but you know how everyone is these days.

Dawn came and he made breakfast for himself and Stephanie. Grits with a little molasses. She looked cute rubbing the sleep out of her black eyes. She wore her pale blue shorts and her little yellow top. She was growing out of the top, beginning to have the buds of breasts. Nat doubted that she would grow up to become a woman. There was no future for humans anymore. He wondered for an instant if she would “marry” one of the gray-skinned ghouls in Austin, and the thought turned his stomach. Fortunately he did not loose his breakfast—food was rare.

“Hey, I need to go to work now.”

“You don’t need to work.
Abuelia
dreamed we won the lottery.”

“There is no more lottery, my little bluebonnet.”

“Sometimes grandma says strange things.”

“She is just playing my little orchid.”

“What’s an orchid?”

“It’s a pretty flower like you.”

“I’m not a flower. I’m a girl.”

“Then I will call you ‘flower-girl’ because you smell so sweet.”

“The next time you go to ATX can you bring back some perfume so I really can smell sweet?”

“I will, Flower-Girl. Chanel Number Five.”

Today he was going to work in his cousin Tony’s field. Tony was bringing in a crop of corn, some tomatoes, and
yerba de manso
for sore throats. Even before the Rising weather was hot in Texas by April, and smart people didn’t work at midday. He woke up
mamacita—
“I am going to Tony’s today. I will bring you some tomatoes and a little oregano, OK?”

“You are a good boy, Juan.”

“I’m Nat, not Juan.”

“Be careful, Juan, bring us some chicken from that place on Goliad Street.”

He kissed Mama’s brown forehead. The light went out a little each day. He remembered that poem from Mrs. Phillips’s class, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Poetry made sense these days, history not so much.

At the edge of the village stood walls made of galvanized iron and plywood. Two men were watching the road. Doublesign had been a tiny town, hence its name. “The sign that says Entering and the sign that says Leaving are on the same pole.” It was a couple of miles to the fields. He drove. As long as they could get gas out of the tanks, they wouldn’t walk. It made for too easy a target. The guards were Father Murphy, a gray crewcut and a stained priest’s collar, and Nick Flores, a light brown man with a big gold tooth. Nick had a 512 tat and a People’s Nation star. They drank out of thermos, rifles by their sides.

They got off their lawn chairs and began to swing the gate open. Father Murphy waved him over. Nat rolled down his window.

“Nativiad Moreno—just the
hombre
I needed to see.” The Father’s Irish accent had not died away after twenty years in Texas. Nor had his potbelly shrunk in the last three years. He was the only fat man left in Doublesign.

“What can I do for you, Father?” asked Nat.

“You can do something for our little town.” The Father’s gray eyes were about to shoot out the guilt trip ray that only priests, nuns, and mothers can use. It could turn Nat into a teenager, into someone half his age.

“I do a lot for our little town. No one else makes the run into Austin since the flying things came.”

“You are a brave man, Nat. That’s why I thought of you. I need you to bring me something powerful. In Comesee there is a used bookstore. Eligio Mondragon told me that it has a
curandero’s
Bible. It has some of his charms and recipes written in it. As our supply of medicine runs out we need to know about oshá and Alamo tea. Some of the charms may be helpful against things.”

“Why don’t you go get it?” asked Nat. He knew the answer was because the priest is important and you are some peon, but he wondered how the priest would say it.

“Because I am afraid,” said Father Murphy.

“You think I am not?” asked Nat. “Fear and bravery are not enemies. But isn’t the book of a
curandero
taking from what you used to call the ‘other side’?”

“I am not making rash judgments these days. If I thought I could get the leprechauns to help us, I would be calling for them, my son.”

“Why is Eligio remembering this now? Wouldn’t this have been a good thing last year or the year before?”

“Psychology is not my forte.”

“I am not going to risk my life for a book.”

“If you bring me the book, I will make your life much sweeter.”

“How?”

“My son, I will allow Stephanie back into the church. I will let her stay there during the days, be in the storm shelter when needed. Your mother will not have to watch her during the day.”

This had been the first good news in so long that it almost puzzled Nat, as though he had lost his hearing and was suddenly greeted by the cry of a mourning dove.

He tried hard not to let his voice break. “You would do this for us?”

“The book is important.”

Jesús’ old Chevy Custom 10 dated from the Reagan administration; it had belonged to Dr. Chainey, that ran the cancer clinic. Nat could have got a new pickup after the Dying in Austin, but he didn’t like to steal from the dead. Comesee lay twenty miles to the south. No one drove there, because it lacked large grocery stores to loot; besides, as a small town it might still have people.

The sun looked like the sun today, which Nat always felt was a good sign. He left on FM 1193. The first three miles held no surprises. About four miles on he saw one of the webbing cities. Roaches, the kind called palmetto bugs in Texas, had increased in size after the Rising. They were about as big as his fist and their shiny black carapaces were marked with bright green angular signs. They built cities. On the last day CNN had been on the air, there had been some remarks about them as the “Great Race.” Nat couldn’t see anything great about oversized bugs. People knew that they weren’t a thing of nature because their web cities were illuminated at night. The city took up the better part of what used to be a cotton field, so Nat knew it was at least forty acres in size.

He couldn’t see any of the bugs, which made him feel better. One time a couple of them flew into town and seemed to be checking everything out. Mr. Franks had run inside his house and grabbed a bottle of Raid and ran after them spraying the air. They stopped and sort of hovered. The poison seemed to do no harm, but after thirty seconds Mr. Franks just sank to the ground. His skin showed angry red blotches in the shape of the angular designs on the bugs’ wings. He never came to and passed on a few hours later. Now when a bug flew by, people ran indoors.

As he continued south the sky changed from blue to the color of lead. Comesee was a little Anglo town; in the old days (which seemed so far gone) it survived by its junktique stores that sold to the Austin tourists on weekends. Nat hadn’t thought about the town since the Rising, even though it was just a few miles away. You just assumed anything that could be bad was. The billboards still welcomed folks in the name of the Lions. Historic Denton’s BBQ still promised the best Elgin sausages and brisket. Even the Dairy Queen was up ahead nine blocks on the left. A few burned-out cars were on the highway, but the passage into town looked clear. Nat glanced at the pair of loaded Glock 37s on his passenger seat. Bullets worked against most things. If it didn’t hurt your eyes to look at it, generally bullets would hit it. He slowed up as he came into town, waiting for signs of humans or of the Change.

It was the latter.

The Chevy dealership was covered with gray mucus. Nat could see angular things of metal that jerked inside. He gave it a wide berth and drove on into the center of town, the corner of 2nd and Main.
Calabazas—
what do they call them? Jack-o’-lanterns stood in front of every business on Main. It was spring, no place for fresh pumpkins. At least it was spring back in Doublesign. Father Murphy said he had to look for Two Guys From Texas Books. Time was pretty leaky these days.