Zod Wallop (14 page)

“Raymond—” Harry began, but he wasn’t sure what he intended to say. Indeed, Raymond Story was at his best when engineering the changing of a tire. He brought to the task an enthusiasm that was perhaps unwarranted, as though it were a moon launch he was supervising, but he did get the job done, with surprising efficiency considering the high rhetoric with which he surrounded the task. The monkey contributed positive energy by jumping up and down on the roof of the car.

“Voilà!” Raymond was saying in no time, waving them forward, and Harry was wheeling Emily back into the sunlight when two things occurred.

Something fluttered to the dust and weeds at his feet, and he bent down to pick it up. It appeared to be a piece of white cardboard, bent in the middle, but as he rose with it, it turned over in his hand, opening to reveal the satiny finish of the photograph. It was the postcard he had purchased from a dead—
leave it!
—a postcard of a large, pink hotel, perched gloriously close to the ocean, white sand and sea grass in the foreground, a confettilike celebration of seagulls falling toward the earth, pulling the eye with them, drawn by the small, fearless girl in a green bathing suit, holding her hand high with bread crumbs for the winged multitudes.

Amy.

He looked closer. No mistake. Amy. The way she stood, all her weight on one foot, her body bowed forward as though she were a human sail: Amy. And why not? Hadn’t he snatched this card from that rack, there, amid the
AMY SOUVENIRS
? It made perfect sense.

He turned the card over and read:
St. Petersburg Arms,
St. Petersburg, Florida. This hotel, built in 1918 by millionaire playboy Andrew Mallon, is a landmark for… Raymond had just been speaking of the St. Petersburg Arms. Yes. The mysterious Duke lived there.

Amy had never been to St. Petersburg, Florida. What did this mean?

A shadow darkened the blank surface of the postcard, as though mirroring Harry’s own clouded thoughts.

“Look!” someone shouted, and Harry turned in the direction of the shout—it had been Rene—and followed her gaze upward.

The cloudless sky was infinity blue, and a great, black dropcloth flapped across it, a shape-changing hole in the sky that made Harry’s soul cower before he even identified the monstrous form, before it lay, illogically but perfectly, over the image of the creature that did not exist, the dream he had dreamt at the bottom of despair: the Ralewing.

“It’s a fucking monster,” Rene said. “I didn’t know they got that big.”

They don’t
, Harry thought. But what did he know? He had never seen one the size of an eighteen-wheeler before—but then, outside of
Zod Wallop
, he’d never seen one at all.

He heard Raymond then, his voice commanding but not, oddly, panicked. “Better get back in the car,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if its destination is the same as ours.”

Ada stood, clutching her handbag as though preparing to wring it, a ritualized stance that all Story women assumed before doing battle with clerks, salesman, tax assessors, any sort of authoritarian impediment to their will. She was a woman who did not anger easily, but she had listened to this Peake long enough. Ada spoke. “When my Raymond returns, I am taking him home,” she said. “I can tell you right now that he will not want to go into any institution. He doesn’t like such places, and judging from what you’ve just told me I can see he has been right all along. I might also remind you that he is on his honeymoon. He and his bride are not going anywhere for observation. I don’t know if you have ever been married, Dr. Peake, but I can tell you that the newly married are shy and shun close scrutiny. I’m sure Raymond will be glad, at some later date, to fill out any questionnaires you might find appropriate, but he will not be shuffling around in any more hospital gowns, not while my husband and I draw a breath.” She extended a hand toward her husband, who moved quickly to her side and hugged her in a show of solidarity.

One of Peake’s colleagues, standing by the door, snorted. “We wouldn’t want to upset them newlyweds, would we?”

Ada glared at him as he rocked back on his heels. He was a grinning man with a crew cut and small teeth—
lizard teeth
, Ada thought.

Peake raised a hand. “Quiet, Karl. Mrs. Story does not understand the gravity of the situation. There are people, unscrupulous people, rivals of mine, who are interested in the Ecknazine research and its subjects. I’m afraid that the spies Gabriel alluded to do exist in this business, and despite the most rigorous security measures I have reason to believe that there may be other interested parties in the vicinity. If they find Raymond and his friends before we do…well, their desire for knowledge would no doubt outweigh any other considerations. Your son and his companions could get hurt.”

“It is high time we called the police,” Helen Kurtis said, pushing herself out of the armchair and marching to the phone.

A muffled explosion shook the cabin; the windowpane rattled in its frame.

The man called Karl turned and ran out the door. Everyone followed him.

They stood on the lawn and stared down at the lake, at what remained of the burning helicopter (black metal wrestling with yellow flames), at the black column of smoke that probed the blue sky like a leprous tentacle, at the man running up the hill, his leather jacket identifying him as the pilot.

Ada noticed—with no surprise—that Karl had produced a handgun. The other man who had accompanied Peake came around the corner of the cabin, a rifle cradled in his arms.

There was fire on the lake itself, lines of fire that stretched on across the muddy bank. It was as though a giant hand had raked the ground, each finger-carved furrow sprouting flames.

The paths of flames ran past the helicopter and up the far hill into the trees. The top of a pine tree emitted a dirty thread of smoke. Ada leaned into her husband’s strong embrace. A smoldering-tar stink surrounded them, and she felt stained by a foulness in the air, impaled by a curious, wild panic that was unwarranted. Whatever had happened, she was witnessing its aftermath; nothing immediately threatening was to be seen.

“What?” she asked—more exclamation than interrogative as her husband suddenly squeezed her sharply, and she saw the black shape unfold above the pines and sail, like a funereal kite, down from the mountains, toward them.

“Dear God!” she heard Helen Kurtis exclaim. The old woman’s gravel voice broke. “It can’t be.”

Ah
, Ada thought, no less frightened but suddenly certain of the phenomenon.
It can be
.

It came toward them, moving with an uncanny, sinister shimmer. It uttered a piercing cry that made her heart race. The long stalk of its neck unfurled, stretched, as though it were attempting to sniff them out, bird-dog fashion, and then it twisted violently in the air and plummeted earthward.

They screamed as one (Peake and his minions, Gabriel, Helen, Ada, John) and fled toward the cabin.

Its shadow fell over Ada, a shroud. The reek of terror filled her lungs, and she thought she might explode, but then the sunlight came again, and she fell, breaking her fall with her hands, and blinked at the running shadow on the ground before her and watched it climb the cabin porch and disappear.

She stood up in time to see it dwindle on the horizon, an undulating black shape gliding over the mountains, easily mistaken at this distance for a plastic trash bag dragged heavenward by hungry winds.

The day was still and cloudless, however, and Ada knew what she’d seen. The Ralewing’s spewed vomit still burned on the land—the flames were now gone from the lake—and the helicopter shimmered in near invisible fire, a skeletal mirage.

“I wonder if I could talk to you a minute,” Ada said. Helen Kurtis turned and smiled tentatively.

Ada’s husband whispered in her ear. “Ada,” he said, loading her name with caution and doubt.

Ada looked at her husband. “I have to tell someone, John. I don’t trust that Peake fellow. This woman is a close friend of Harry Gainesborough’s, and she’s no fool. She knows what she saw today. I hardly think she’ll be shocked by what we have to show her.”

Helen smiled tentatively. “Well, I hardly know what I saw.”

“You see,” John said, looking hard at his wife.

Ada took a deep breath. “You saw one of those creatures from Mr. Gainesborough’s book
Zod Wallop
. Nasty things. Raymond had an unholy fear of them.”

“I don’t know, really,
what
I saw.”

“Ada,” John Story said, “I don’t believe Mrs. Kurtis cares to hear about all this. We’ve all had a shock. We just need to find Raymond and—”

Ada inclined her head toward the cabin where Peake had gone to make telephone calls, accompanied by Gabriel and the others.  “He knows. It’s clear enough. He’s so excited he’s about to burst. He wants to get my Raymond and find out how it’s done and cause all manner of trouble.” Ada thought her anger would override her fear, her sense of helplessness, but suddenly the momentum failed her. She faltered, and then, like a hiccup, tears surprised and embarrassed her. She staggered, instantly wretched, and assaulted by tears, she fled down to the lake, her husband’s shouts behind her.

Ada could not stop sobbing. She stared into the sun-smeared water, saw her own stout reflection, the fuzzy halo of her hair; saw then the shape loom up behind her, thought it was her husband and was prepared to be irritated with the hand upon her shoulder.

“It was a Ralewing,” Helen said, and Ada turned and smiled through her tears. “A Ralewing the size of a house.”

Ada nodded. “That’s exactly what it was.”

Ada took the proffered handkerchief and blew her nose. She looked up. “Would you come with me? I’ve got something to show you in the car.”

“Certainly.”

Ada had her husband drive them to the other side of the lake. With the cabin (and Dr. Peake) safely behind them, she had her husband unlock the trunk. Ada reached into the darkness of the rising trunk lid and retrieved the wooden box, rectangular, no bigger than a shoe box. She looked behind her furtively.

Her husband closed the trunk, and Ada placed the box on the trunk and unlocked the tiny padlock. She looked at Helen, who had climbed out of the car’s backseat and lumbered slowly to join them.

“Bad back,” she said, explaining her labored progress.

Ada made a face of sympathy. “I have some Excedrin if it would help,” she said.

The older woman smiled wanly. “Thanks, but I’ve got better drugs, stuff that would make an elephant woozy. I’m looking forward to taking them when all this excitement dies down.”

Ada nodded. “Well.” They both looked at the box. Ada decided that some background was in order before the unveiling: “Raymond is a great student of Mr. Gainesborough’s books. He has read those books to tatters. Before and after his accident. He almost drowned in a swimming pool, you know, and he has all sorts of ideas about that, and when he met Mr. Gainesborough at Harwood…well, I have been unable to follow my son’s very elaborate and strongly felt explanations of what it all means, but it certainly is fraught with meaning because nothing, absolutely nothing in Raymond’s world happens by accident. I’m told that this is a function of his schizophrenia, but I think I know better.” Ada smiled. Then, realizing that she had imparted no actual information, shed no light on the darkness, she continued: “You are, of course, familiar with Mr. Gainesborough’s book,
Biff Bertram and the Rudeness from the Rim of Space
?”

Helen nodded. “
Biff
is one of my favorites, although at the time I thought parts of it were a little raw for young ears.”

Ada nodded. “Me too.”

“Children consider it immensely funny.”

“Yes. Well.” Ada didn’t know how to proceed. She sighed. “Oh, here, see for yourself.” She opened the lid to the box, unwrapped tissue paper. “There.”

Helen leaned forward. She leaned closer then, pushed tissue paper away. It was a small, doll-like creature, or rather the remains of such a creature. White bone and some bits of dried skin remained, as though it were some desert roadkill, sterilized by pounding sun and wind and rain and the scavenging of crows and beetles. It looked piglike, part armadillo perhaps, with a gourdlike head, great empty eye sockets, and small, human-child hands (but three-fingered, no thumb). It suggested a number of other animals, but there was really no need to shop around for comparisons since it looked exactly like what it was.

“Well?” Ada said.

Helen looked up. “Is it real?”

Ada nodded. “It cried and cried—like a lost kitten—and couldn’t be comforted. Then it died.” And then, seeing this creature he had conjured die, Raymond had a sort of breakdown—that was his first hospitalization—and the doctors came back to tell Ada and her husband that their son appeared to have certain abilities that he was having difficulty integrating and that there was a place that could help him: Simpec, in Baltimore. Ada and John didn’t know what to do, so they let him go, but the Simpec people were like Dr. Peake, they just wanted to poke and pinch, they didn’t want to help Raymond, and one day Raymond ran away. Simpec didn’t try to get him back. He was, if Ada was reading properly between the lines, something of a disappointment to them. The wild talents that had attracted their notice were gone.