Hungry Moon (40 page)

^{He snatched wildly at the grassy edge, too late. The moonlit landscape vanished, and he and Vera fell into the dark. His nightmare had caught up with him at last, and taken her with him. The sense of nothingness beneath him flew into Craig's throat, choking him until he was actually afraid of suffocating before the impact from which his body, his whole self was shrinking. As they fell, clinging desperately to each other, their hearts beating so violently that he could no longer tell which was which, Craig willed Vera to be praying: praying that by the time they hit bottom, the two of them would be together somewhere else.}

^{SIXTY FOUR}

^{When the car almost left the road at a sharp bend, Diana made herself slow down. They were out of sight of Moonwell, beyond the first ridge, and surely that counted for something. She had to reach the missile base as quickly as she could, but she mustn't risk wrecking the car.}

^{Her vision hadn't shown her exactly what would happen at the missile base. She'd seen the personnel stalking about in blind obedience, but she had to believe that the sight of their faces, the eyes turned into perfect miniatures of the moon that glowed in the sockets and shone through the surrounding flesh, was only a metaphor. Whatever happened would need the full moon, she told herself. The moon wasn't full yet, and that helped her fight off the compulsion to try to escape its one-eyed gaze. It was only the moon, she thought as hard as she could, only a moonlit night on the moor.}

^{Of course it was worse than that, though at first she couldn't quite see how. As she drove up the next slope, her throat tightened with fear of what might lie beyond. The car faltered at the top, for she'd lifted her foot inadvertently from the gas pedal. But there seemed to be nothing to make her falter. The moor stretched around her, whitened slopes splintering into grass, shadows sketching the outlines of heather; dim trees were bunched like clumps of fog against the sky. Everything was motionless as ice, and perhaps that was the trouble: the dead light seemed to have drained the landscape of all life - she might almost have been driving across the moon. Except that she wouldn't have been able to breathe, she mocked herself, then found she couldn't breathe as easily as she would have liked, for she was too tense.}

^{With an effortlessness that made her want to floor the pedal, the moon pursued her. Now that part of the sky was overcast, but that was no relief. A pale mass slithered behind the clouds, constantly changing shape, reaching out veinous tendrils of light wherever the clouds were thin. Whenever it reached a gap, it peered out at her, a giant, dead, incomplete face playing a game of hide-and-seek. Let it play; it wasn't really doing anything unnatural. But she couldn't help feeling that the longer she waited for whatever it or the moon thing might do to head her off, the worse it would be. Suddenly she'd had enough of brooding and silence. 'Tell us a joke, Eustace,' she blurted.}

^{He glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. 'I can't think of any good ones.'}

^{Nick turned in the passenger seat, which creaked metallically. 'I'd settle for a bad one right now.'}

^{'Probably all I ever used to tell. I can't remember any now. I don't know where they've gone.'}

^{'I don't know what the worst joke I ever heard was,' Nick said provocatively, 'but it must have been in a Laurel and Hardy film.'}

^{"That's a bit harsh, isn't it? I don't think anyone else in films came close to what they achieved.'}

^{'Wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, you mean. Laurel and Hardy are up before the judge for vagrancy and plead not guilty, right? "On what grounds?" the judge says, and one of them says, "We weren't on the ground, we were sleeping on a park bench." And that was one of their
good
jokes.'}

^{'That would have been Laurel. Hardy wouldn't say that,' Diana intervened. 'I do think they knew more about how children behave than maybe anyone else in the movies . . . ' Keep talking, she willed them all, and managed not to raise her foot from the gas pedal as the car sped over the next ridge.}

^{The sky was clearing, the moor was brightening, and the landscape was no longer entirely still. Perhaps these movements that she couldn't quite make out, movements she was always just too late to catch wherever she looked on the glowing slopes, were cast by the clouds, except that she could see their shadows plainly enough, fleeing across the moor. The car raced downhill, and she joined in the argument about Laurel and Hardy where she could, to keep off her undefined fears. Part of her mind found the spectacle of the three of them arguing about Laurel and Hardy as they drove across the dead land almost unbearably funny, but if she started laughing she might lose whatever control she had.}

^{The road curved, and she was driving toward the moon. The last clouds drowned it, reduced it to a shapeless, sluggish pallor, crawling, growing clearer. The clouds inched back inexorably, and Diana could hardly breathe. The crumbling rim of the moon peeked around the clouds, which seemed to shrink away from it. Before she was able to brace herself, Diana was face to face with the moon.}

^{It was dead, she told herself: dead as a hatched egg. Indeed, it resembled one, the incomplete side of the face gaping darkly. But*it didn't seem quite dead enough, that one-eyed, lipless, grinning mask tilted coyly in the black sky. The thing that had given it life might be back in Moonwell, but the moon stood above the landscape like a symbol of its power, no longer simply a reflection of the sun. The colourless light spread unchecked over the moor, draining it of every hint of colour, and she was almost able to see the movements all around her on the slopes, a furtive swarming. She pressed the pedal as hard as she dared.}

^{The argument was petering out, the men falling silent. She wasn't sure how much they could see of what she was seeing out there, nor did she want to ask. She wanted desperately to keep them talking, but she couldn't think of anything to say: it took all her concentration to drive along the twisting road, the blackly gleaming worm almost buried in the white landscape it squirmed through. She kept to the middle of the road, away from the ditch, the yawning dark which bordered the road and which looked far too deep now, capable of hiding far too much.}

^{The road swung over a ridge and away from the moon, which paced the car, grinning lifelessly. Not having to confront it seemed to revive Eustace, who said 'On the ground' as if he still found it funny, or wanted to.}

^{Nick forced a laugh. 'Laurel wrote that, didn't he? Wrote a lot of their gags, anyway. Took the music hall to Hollywood instead of letting it die a natural death.'}

^{'On the ground,' Eustace muttered. 'No,
in
the ground, Mr Gloom. The deeper you go, the more jokes there are.'}

^{'What's that?' Nick demanded, then relaxed ostentatiously and squeezed Diana's shoulder. 'Eustace is going to do one of his routines. You're sure of an appreciative audience here, Eustace.'}

^{Diana hoped he was right: she could do with some distraction from her surroundings to help her concentrate on the road, their only means of escape, if it was. She had just noticed that apart from the moon and the retreating tatters of cloud, the sky was utterly black -there were no stars above the moor. Somewhere out there was the sight of stars in a clear sky, she promised herself, and if they could reach that, she was sure they had a chance. 'Don't stop now, Eustace,' she said.}

^{'Down they go, Mr Despondency. Feels like they'll never hit bottom. They'll be together all right, but they won't like what they're with. No such thing as a natural death under the moon of Moonwell.'}

^{Nick cleared his throat. 'Bit close to the bone, Eustace.'}

^{'Aye, we're all close to the bone. It's part of us all, eh, Mr Gloom? He'll have it out in no time, Harry Moony will.'}

^{'Come on, Eustace.' Nick glanced at Diana to see how the distorted voices were affecting her. She reached for his hand and gripped it hard, steered one-handed, glared at the road that wasn't really squirming, only meandering over the restless slopes. Surely the restlessness everywhere might just be the effect of breezes high up here on the moor. For some reason the stiff, almost inhuman voices from the back seat made her avoid looking in the rear-view mirror. 'You're trying to cheer us up, take our mind off things,' Nick reminded Eustace. 'That's what comedy should do, at least here and now.'}

^{'Losing our audience, are we, Mr Despondency?'}

^{'Not a bit of it, Mr Gloom. He's right here with us, or at any rate his face is, out there over the moor. He's sent his face to share a laugh with us.'}

^{'Look, Eustace, spare a thought for Diana, will you? After all she's been thr -' Nick's voice trailed off as he turned in his seat. He stayed like that, his body twisted, his hands gripping the leather of the seat so violently that it creaked. 'My God,' he whispered.}

^{Diana had to look in the mirror then, and her hands jerked on the steering wheel, the car veered toward the ditch. She swung it back into the middle of the road, a moment's distraction from the sight in the mirror, but then she had to look again. They were still there, the two white faces flanking Eustace's. Except for their chattering mouths, they were blanker than the moon.}

^{Eustace was huddled between them, crouched down as far as he could go, his eyes flickering from side to side as if he wanted to leap from the car. Diana was dismayed to realize that he hadn't opened his mouth for a while; his fleshless companions had been doing all the talking. Her eyes met his in the mirror, but she couldn't express all the pity and horror she felt. She could only stop the car, though she had no idea what she and Nick would be able to do to help him.}

^{As she trod on the brake, Eustace seemed to come back to himself. His head lifted, and he blinked at the landscape. 'Don't stop,' he said rapidly. 'I know these bastards, I can deal with them. I don't need them and they know it. I never did.'}

^{Diana's foot left the brake, hovered over the gas pedal. The faceless heads nodded toward Eustace, open-mouthed. 'Please,' he said to Diana, desperation in his eyes. 'Don't let them stop you. If I can't deal with them, nobody can.'}

^{'How am I going to drive,' Diana said, her voice shaky with a distressing kind of laughter, 'with those in the back?'}

^{'Just don't look. Please, you too, Nick. For all our sakes.'}

^{Nick stared incredulously at him, then flung himself round in his seat and glared at the road ahead, the speeding patch of lit tarmac that seemed the only safe place to look. He was clenching his fists, and Diana didn't know how long he would be able to bear his inaction. Perhaps she should have let him drive, though she'd believed she was better prepared for whatever might happen on the journey, but it was too late to change places with him. She was sure Eustace was right that they shouldn't stop on the moor.}

^{'Go on, then,' Eustace was muttering. 'Do your worst, it's all you can do. You aren't funny, you're just a joke.'}

^{'He won't be so ready to poke fun at us soon, will he, Mr Despondency?'}

^{'Won't have much to poke it with, Mr Gloom. You can't joke when you haven't got a head.'}

^{'I can raise more laughs without a head than you've ever been able to raise with two,' Eustace cried. 'My God, look at you both. When I'm dead I won't look as pitiful as you.'}

^{He sounded close to hysteria. 'I should know what I'm talking about, I've died often enough,' he said, with as much of a laugh as he seemed to think that deserved. 'That's what comes of thinking you two were worth inventing,' he said through his teeth. Then his seatmates began to sing.}

^{'The priest's in the well and the night's in the sun, and nobody leaves till Harry Moony is done . . . ' Hearing them speak had been dreadful enough, their low misshapen voices never quite getting the cadences right, inhuman voices that had been taught to speak like people, but hearing them sing was worse. She resisted looking in the mirror for as long as she could, until they sang gleefully, 'Everybody here is Harry Moony's fun,' and then she risked a glance. They had their scrawny arms around Eustace's shoulders, and were swaying their blank heads back and forth, their white mouths gaping wider and wider as they sang. They were swaying Eustace in time to the song. His mouth was shaking too badly to let him speak.}

^{'Don't let them, Eustace,' Diana murmured, and grabbed Nick's arm to prevent him from turning. She forced her gaze back to the road as it began to climb. 'Every body and every head,' the voices chanted, and lapsed into patter. 'Wait until he mixes them up for fun, her head on his body. That'll be good for a laugh.'}

^{'No,' Eustace said, so coldly and clearly that Diana's heart raced. 'I'll tell you what's good for a laugh -1 am. I never knew how much until this very moment. Listen to this, Nick and Diana. This'll shut them up.'}

^{There was a flurry of movement in the rear-view mirror. Eustace had a hand on each slug-belly face and was pushing them away from him. The thought of touching them made Diana's hands sweat so much she almost lost her grip on the wheel. 'We're listening, Eustace,' she said.}

^{Eustace swallowed audibly, then began to talk very fast. 'Ladies and gentlemen and whatever you call things with big mouths and no faces, let me introduce myself. Just an ordinary fellow really, except I was born with someone else's feet and a pair of legs that came from stock, or maybe it's just that we disagree sometimes about whether I want to fall over in the street or trip over someone's dog or stand still while I'm talking to people. And oh, yes, I had a couple of heads inside mine that liked to do a bit of talking, especially when I was trying to. Or that was how it felt, anyway. So I gave them names and started letting them out so I could pretend they weren't me, that I couldn't be such a dead loss as they were, which was pretty empty-headed of me, don't you think? And that was only on stage, you understand, that was nothing to the way they carried on when there was only me to hear. Except that was me too, trying to pretend I didn't loathe humanity at large sometimes and loathe myself, the way everyone feels now and then if they'll only admit to it.'}