Xeno Sapiens (54 page)

“I didn't come here for pity.”

“And pity you won't get. I meant no slight,
'Scilla. I didn't realize you would take it that way.” Ricky put on
his most penitent expression. “Forgive?”

“Of course.” Staying mad at Ricky would be
like staying mad at a kitten in a ball of your best crewel
work.

“Might I ask you how you came to pick
Brighton as your homeplace?”

“It sounded like a nice place,” 'Scilla said
in half truth. She didn't want to tell him that she had simply
opened a map and picked the first place her finger had landed on.
But it was turning out right, more so than she would ever have
believed in the days of tunnel vision after George's and Jenny's
deaths.

Ricky didn't seem to want to press her on
the matter. He clasped his hands across his belly and leaned back
like a duke in his home, lord of all he surveyed. 'Scilla was
struck by the simple
ruralness
of the gesture.

“I think I'd better be on my way,” 'Scilla
said. “I want to thank you for your hospitality.”

“You don't have to go,” Margie said. “We're
happy to have you.”

“I don't want to wear out my welcome on the
first day.”

“No danger of that,” Ricky said, standing up
with effort. “We don't want you to be a stranger.” 'Scilla thought
Ricky said this last with a slight emphasis. “We're just down the
street.”

“
Everyone
is just down the street in
Brighton,” Lisa said.

“I won't be a stranger,” 'Scilla said.
“Count on it.”

She said her goodbyes and walked down the
street to her house. Lisa chatted with her for a few moments before
going on to her own house. It wasn't cold enough for frost yet, but
the dew that fell on her arms as she talked to Lisa was like
pinpoints of ice.

She had gotten used to lying awake at night
until the loneliness abated, but by the time she lay down that
night on a makeshift pallet in place of a bed that had yet to
arrive, she had almost forgotten about Let To Day. Ricky had made a
half-assed effort to shrug it off, but she knew there was more to
the story than Ricky had told her. She had often thought that, in
her shattered life before this bucolic time, she and her family had
been haunted by some stalking terror. But now her family was gone
and, she hoped, the stalking terror with it. Even so, as she lay
down to sleep, she wondered what it was that Willie Morgan had seen
in the water lace shroud of silently spinning fog.

**********

George Walburn has found no comfort beneath
fate's umbrella. His life has been one of being gut-kicked and
back-stabbed, and the only thing that he anticipates with any
eagerness is death. But whatever gods there might be will not be
denied their fun. The old voodoo witch doctor, Unk Maum, had told
him so. Not even in the supposed serenity of the grave can George
find solace. Find out why in We Are the Dead...

Available at
www.wandilland.com

by

Victor Allen

Copyright © 2006 all rights reserved

From
Katerina Cheplik...

“
I went home to visit one
weekend after you had left for Colorado,” Sharon began. “I wouldn't
have told you then, but I was terrified. You had been the only
friend I could count on. I didn't have many of those
left.

“
Mama and I were so far
apart and we had always been so close. I had lost Vince, I had lost
you, and I was close to losing my family. And when you've lost
everything, you belong to the devil.

“
Oh, I know people won't
believe me when I tell them, but I came face to face with the devil
one night. He came into my room, through the window and stood by
the end of my bed. He was huge, Bernie, and red with a kind of
black sheen to him, like someone who has been badly burned. His
eyes were dark, oh, awful dark, like gargoyle's eyes. I wasn't even
scared, as if I had expected it all along. He taunted me, told me I
belonged to him. He looked down at me with those black eyes and
called me his child.

“
I told him to leave and
he laughed at me. He was, I don't know,
liquid
in the dark, the way he moved and the way the
moonlight shone off his skin. I argued and moaned and cried for at
least an hour, but nobody ever came to my room. Not mama, or daddy,
or my brother Kevin. It was like something kept them away. I told
him I would never be his.

“‘
But you already are, my
child,’ he said. ‘Once you've let me in, I never go away.’ His
voice was horrible, a deep, rumbling bass like an underwater
earthquake. Then he left, going out the window. I watched him go,
so huge and scary, sort of skipping away toward the road on those
cloven hooves. Sparks jumped on the pavement before he vanished
into the woods. I listened to the sounds of branches snapping and
crashing for a long time before it stopped. The next day, I went
out and looked in the road and the hoof prints were still there,
struck into the pavement like the hoof prints at Bath. They were
still there the last time I went home, and probably will be until
the town paves the road over.”

Bernie said nothing. Sharon wasn't scared,
but very intense, as if reliving the episode. He had no choice but
to believe her. The devil didn't waste his time on sinners. He went
after the pure at heart.

“
I had a long talk with
mama that morning. Besides you and Father O'Donovan, she's the only
other person I've ever told about it. Mama and I came to a
reconciliation. I had put my faith in earthly things, the princes
of the world, not where it belonged. Not with you and my family and
the people that really cared about me. I did what you did. I
redefined myself and brought back the little girl I didn't see in
the mirror anymore.”

Bernie's heart broke when he realized she
was crying.

“
I'm just so afraid he'll
come back, that he'll never leave me alone, that I'll have to fight
him again and again, every single day of my life. That he'll take
everything I love just to get to me.

“
So when you ask if I want
anything for myself, I can say yes. All I want is to love and be
loved. Is that so much to ask?”

“
Shh, baby,” Bernie said.
He stroked her hair, feeling warm tears on his shoulder. “It's not
so much at all.”

“
All I want is for you to
hold me tonight. Will you do that? Just hold me?”

“
Yes, “ he said in a
trembling voice. “For as long as you want.”

And he did.

And now my soul is poured out upon me; the
days of affliction have taken hold...

Mother and child had fled their home in the
late hours of the night. The little boy was crying, half-asleep,
not knowing why his mother had spirited him away from his daddy. He
was cold, only slightly comforted by his mother's warmth. The gamin
smiles of the stars were blurred through his tears. His head
bounced painfully with every half-running step his mother took.

The rushing cold stung Carolyn Table's eyes,
burning and raw from sobbing. Her feet and nose hurt. Jeremy was
heavy, but she couldn't put him down to walk for himself. Even with
her stumbling, he wouldn't be able to keep up. She glanced
fretfully behind her from time to time, as if some fearful fiend in
the person of her drunken, bullying husband close behind her trod.
But Frank had passed out an hour before, drunk and abusive to her
for the last time.

Frank kept his utility hatchet on top of the
kitchen cabinets, and she had spent the better part of that hour
with it in her hands, debating murder or flight.

I'll kill you if you ever leave
me
, he had said, a shotgun held unsteadily in
his hands. His eyes were black slashes, puffy and glassy as those
of a barfly. His sweat stank yellowly of alcohol. He had hit her
three times by then, the last blow bloodying her nose and making
stars burst through her head. He had grabbed her roughly and hauled
her to her feet, pawing at her blouse. She had jerked away from
him.

Get away from me, you bastard,
she had hissed.
I'm calling the police.
You've hurt me for the last time.

He had stalked her, hitting her again. The
heavy class ring he wore plowed a bloody gorge high on her
cheekbone. He yanked the phone cord out of the wall. The plastic
connector popped out and shattered into winter icicle shapes. She
stayed still on the floor while he kicked her in the belly,
stifling a grunt of pain that would only further enrage him. He
kicked her again, rolling her over. He cursed and roared and drank,
tipping a bottle of Vodka, draining it. A few minutes later he
toppled over with a titanic crash.

She had pulled herself painfully up, wincing
at the fiery stab of a broken rib. She glared murderously at the
man she had once loved. Her hatred was blacker than an ocean abyss.
It would be so easy to take the shotgun from him, hold it against
his throat, and pull both triggers. She had reached for it,
intending to pull it from beneath him. He had stirred slightly and
she had yanked her hand back. It would have to be some other way.
She couldn't risk his waking up.

She had held the hatchet in an upraised
hand, even testing her aim once or twice against his head, knowing
all she had to do was follow through once with all her strength and
cave his skull in.

But in the end she had chosen flight with
her son. The car keys were in Frank's pocket, but she dared not
roll him over to get at them. They lived in a tumble down shack on
a backwoods lot that belonged to Frank's father. They had running
water and electricity, but not much more than that. The nearest pay
phone was a half a mile away. She would call the police from there,
then take a cab to the bus station. She had hoarded her last three
measly paychecks for the month for just such an occasion. She
handled the finances and Frank had been too drunk over the past
month to even notice it.

Cold, wet grass slashed at her bare ankles.
She inhaled through her mouth, parching her tongue and palate.
Jeremy wept, but she didn't mind that as long as he was safe.

She reached the end of the long, dirt
driveway and struck asphalt at a secondary road. The glow of Red
River's city lights pushed up into the night sky over a wall of
pines. She set Jeremy down. An automobile swooped down the hill
behind her, lighting up the road with cold, white brilliance. She
waved her arms wildly at the approaching vehicle, thinking she must
look like a scarecrow version of Sylvester Stallone from the Rocky
movies with her swollen nose and disheveled hair. The car eased to
the left and flashed by her, never slowing. She turned after it
passed, watching its red taillights recede over the top of the
upcoming hill.

She hoisted Jeremy up and started walking
again. She would have welcomed a good Samaritan, would have sold
her soul for someone to help her for just these few minutes. But
the chances of happening on someone on this backwoods road late at
night were almost nil. Oh, there might be a couple necking in a
car, or some teenagers on a ‘ghost hunt’, but of someone with a
kind heart and a car, she felt was a futile hope.

So she was surprised instead of afraid when
she saw the man stumbling down the road just at the top of the
rise. Hopeful and a little fearful, she hailed him, crying out like
a charwoman begging for alms.

The shadowy figure of the man crossed the
road to her side, moving closer. The figure appeared to be a
teenager rather than a full grown man. His face was a pale bone in
the moonlight, his eyes unfocused. He walked slowly, not as if
drunk, but very, very weak. Carolyn felt the sturdy weight of the
hatchet in her purse. Jeremy stirred fitfully in her arms.

“
Do you have a car,”
Carolyn asked when the boy got close enough to hear her rasping,
blood-clogged voice.

“
A car,” the boy said
weakly. “No, no car. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Carolyn reeled away from the man's voice.
His breath was foul beyond description, like someone suffering from
a bad throat infection.

“
I have to get to a
phone,” she said uneasily. “If you don't have a car, I need to get
going.”

“
No, wait,” the boy said
in that deathbed voice. “I've been sick with the flu. I felt a
little better tonight so I decided to go out. Can your boy walk?
Are you okay to walk?”

“
Jeremy? Do you feel awake
enough to walk by yourself?”

“
I guess so.”

“
I'll walk with you to a
phone,” the boy said. “I need to get back. I'm weaker than I
thought. If you need a place to stay for the night, I'll call some
of the girls' dorms and see if they can put you up.”

He turned and Carolyn saw him in profile,
handsome despite his pallor. His thick hair was pulled back from
his forehead very much unlike the way teenage boys wore their hair
today. She judged him to be eighteen or nineteen. His nose was a
sloping protrusion between cheekbones as sharp as arrow points.
Moonlight fell over him in a cold glow. She felt safe with this
wan, weak fellow.

They started walking, a cozy trio with a
tiny boy between the two adults. No cars passed as they moved up
the hill. They had reached the top before the man introduced
himself as Tommy Hopson, grinning at her madly with long, sharp
canines surrounded by thick, liver-colored lips.

State street was dark an hour later when
Tommy walked down to Katerina's house with a duffel bag slung over
his shoulder. He looked like a typical college student going to
wash a load of late night laundry.