Just North of Nowhere (26 page)

She blinked. “Come in.” She said.

Over hot coffee Bunch told the tale.

His bare feet had made floppy slaps on cold damp asphalt. Without thinking, Bunch had gone off at a trot, coatless, shirtless, trailing the spoor of the caravan and the track of the star-eating critter down the silver corridor of frost-rimmed trees toward town. The five trailers had left a stinkhole in the night; easy tracking for hound or man. Like a hound, Bunch had no idea what he was chasing, but there were things he didn’t like coming to town. He wouldn’t have it.

Somewhere in the night, a dog barked three times, then was still. The empty stockyards looked cold, each shed whispering sad bellows of all the cattle who’d waited there to die. The sounds were in his head, but Bunch shivered anyway. He'd never thought of ghost cow. Well, too bad for them, he loved a good burger.

“Just remembered that part,” he said to Cristobel, sucking boiling coffee in a slurp. “Not important, I guess.”

In her warm kitchen, Cristobel sipped her tea.
Pretty smile
, Bunch thought.
Even if she ain’t naked
. He didn't say that.

After the stockyards, it had been a hundred running paces to Cristobel's house. He had also remembered a single light flickering in the top floor of her house that night and he remembered hoping her safe in bed. He didn’t mention it.

He’d followed the stink down Slaughterhouse, turned onto Commonwealth and trotted the center of the main street through town. Near the edge, the Sons of Norway Lodge and Hall bounced back the falling water roar from the spillway at the old electric dam. The stony gray block stood solid against the dark trees of the deep woods, far side of Elysium.

Ought to go back someday soon and finish that roofing job, Sons of Norway,
he said to himself, running past.

“Spring, maybe, huh?” he said to Cristobel in her kitchen

“What?” she said.

“Just thinking somethin’ I ought do,” he said.

She nodded quickly, wiggled her head, urging him on. She licked her lip.

“Yep. I'll do her. This Spring.” he said.

The dam's roar filled the dark. The cool push of air from the spilling water stirred up the dead-fish and something-more stink left by the trucks. The smell mixed with the cold thin winter breath of the Rolling River. An owl swooped low over the roadway. It arrowed toward the meadow, far end of the trees across the river. A couple of seconds later Bunch heard the dying-baby scream of a rabbit torn aloft beneath the bird's talons.

Bunch had just remembered that, too.

Doc Mouth’s place, Einar's – Bluffton went by quick – and the town was behind him. Ahead, the road curved up and cut through a rocky spur. The night glowed. Around the bend was Karl's Bad Kabins; a joke everyone said.

“I never got it,” he said to Cristobel.

“It is a play on words: Carlsbad Caverns.”

He stared.

“A tourist place somewhere else, go on...” at her sink, Cristobel poured another mug.

He was nearing the heart of it. As he told, he remembered. As he remembered, he shuddered. Cristobel cocked her head at his shudder and listened.

Karl's Bad Kabins was gone. Years gone! The Kampground, just a wide muddy spot by the side of the road. Summers, the place filled with terrorists, Bunch called them, folks from the cities in their vans, r.v.s with names, people with red and yellow tents, electric lights and little teevees, all the folks looking for a bathroom in the woods. The overflow from Elysium.

This time of year the place should have been empty. As Bunch topped the rise, saw the trucks. They were nose to nose in a circle, headlight blazing across the freezing mud of the Kampground. Where the lights crossed, the dark flying thing hunkered down, folded upon itself, breathing like a couple dozen winter bear. The light seemed not quite to touch it but slipped off the black flesh. Inside, tiny stars still flickered, like a million sick goldfish in a sack of ink.

His run still throbbed Bunch’s ears and the macadam pounded like a ghost through his body. He was breathing heavy like the black thing.

“Figured I was getting old,” Bunch figured aloud to Cristobel.

She leaned toward him across the wooden table. The kitchen windows sweated. Her eyes blazed. Her lower teeth nibbled her upper lip.

“Now, them trucks weren't trucks!” He blurted out. “I was looking on them, now they were lighting each other up...” Bunch shook his head. He struggled for a word. “I know trucks, for cripes' sake, now, and these weren't trucks!”

His and Cristobel's eyes met. They spoke at the same time: “Vaults,” they said together.

“. . .is what they were,” He said. “Yeah! That's it,” he said.

“. . .is that what they were,” she asked, “'Vaults?'“

“Damn,” he said. “Just like the word like, 'Eelman,' that’s the word! 'Vaults.' Word popped right into my head meaning what those trucks were. And this,” he dipped his finger in coffee and traced a few lines on the dry wood of the table. “This was on the sides, the back...” He drew the sign that had drawn him toward the – the vaults – and the Eelmans in the night.

For a second Cristobel said nothing. Then she shrieked like a girly fire siren!

Bunch jumped.

“The Sign of Koth,” she breathed quietly. Her breath smelled like tea and pine trees. “The sign drew you to it. It is a very old thing, a potent. It sends dreamers on a quest. Dreamers...” She looked at Bunch with something new. Something Bunch had never seen before. The moment passed.

“Yes, yes, yes...” she said, leaning closer, so close, Bunch could smell sleep on her, feel the heat of her. “Tell the rest! In the Vaults. There were ghasts? Yes? Tell me, quick! There were ghasts in the vaults?”

“Yeah, yeah, they said that! Them Eelmans. Ghasts, in the vaults. One in each.” He cocked his head at her. “Or ghosts, I ain’t sure.”

She sat back, her mouth open. “Ghasts! You have seen ghasts? The Devourers? Eaters of Dreams? You...”

Bunch felt itchy. “I wasn't to look on them, Eelmans said. I was to lead, not look.” He smiled at Cristobel. “I peeked. Later. Big rat-things. Legs going the wrong ways. About like...” He tried to show the size of the critters that had bunny-hopped, flopping after him along the way. “Maybe, the size of a garage? Yeah.” He didn't want to say the damn things looked more like a barn-sized cow stomach with bad teeth. Women didn't like hearing that stuff.

“You have seen a ghast?” Cristobel was still shaking her head. “And have lived!”

“Pretty sure,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah...I saw! But lemme tell her in her own time, woman! Damn it.” Bunch was cranky when he was hungry. “And I seen FOUR of them!”

She was impressed.

“Same time I came over the hill and seen them. . .them vault things, I started hearing. Just like that!” He snapped his fingers.

The light that oozed from the vaults felt greasy, it soaked Bunch like a half-warm shower. The same time, the flying darkness squatting at the center of Karl's Kampground flapped upward, hovered a second, then settled by the edge of the forest. As it flew, voices filled the air like Lutherans and Catholics singing something different all at once, the stars inside the thing twirled like snow in a ball, and the stink of dead critter nearly blew Bunch over.

“Why the hell,” Bunch shouted to Cristobel, “Why the hell, these guys have to stink so much?” It wasn't meant to be answered.

She answered. “They are from elsewhere,” she answered, eyes half shut.

Milwaukee
, popped into Bunch’s head. He’d never been there, but he figured it wasn’t Eelman territory so he never said it.

“They are not of this world, of this time, perhaps...” She leaned forward, “Perhaps the Great Old Ones are not of this creation! In the presence of the Old Great Ones, we feel…” Her lip curled. “…a natural revulsion.”

“They stink,” Bunch said, not looking where Cristobel's flannel shirt had opened on soft nut-brown skin.

“Continue,” she said, still leaning forward.

A black spot remained where the thing had squatted. “Like it let a huge turd.” Bunch said.

Two men waited on the far side of the hole. Taller than most, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Their suits – whiter than anything Bunch had ever seen – kicked so much light he had to squint between his fingers to see their faces.

“Eelmans,” Bunch said.

They looked at him.

“We wait,” one said. Maybe the one on the right, Bunch couldn't tell. It was three, maybe four-hundred feet to the clearing, and the voice had come from –
criminies
– from inside his damn head.

“A nice old voice, though,” Bunch told Cristobel. “Smooth. Like Doc Mouth.”

She nodded.

“Come on. Quick, quickly!” Whoever talked first, this was the other. The one to the left was waving him to hurry. Bunch reckoned it was that one, hurrying him along. His voice was a shrill noise blasting over the rumbling trucks – vaults. “Time is wasting, time is!” he howled like a saw blade biting metal.

“Like Einar when he gets to yelling customers? You know.” Bunch wanted Cristobel to understand.

She nodded.

“Yes. Come quickly,” the voice that sounded like Doc’s said inside his own damn head. “Quickly. The God waits...”

The black thing flickered like it'd just been introduced.

Cripes, I'm coming
, Bunch had said inside his own head. He took a step forward and the ground wrinkled, the world flickered through a whole mess of colors and. . .

. . .there he was: in the middle of the light, in the middle of the night, the Eelman brothers right in front of him, the blackness – which he now realized was a gaping pit – behind. Without thinking, Bunch blurted out, “well
that
never happens! Not to me, anyway. What the hell you doing here? Why am I here. And what're you doing. . .”

The Eelman on the left – the Einar-sounding one – reached out and gripped Bunch's face with cold damp fingertips. Pinched him shut.

“Do not fear us!” the one sounded like Doc said.

“'kay.” Bunch grunted, his teeth chewing his own cheeks.

“My brother has high sensibilities. Such as they are, they are easily assaulted.

“'ahal’ed?” Bunch said.

“He believes you are attacking. Tormenting with your hounds...

“Hnds?” Bunch said.

“Hounds. The creatures at play on the surface of your thoughts. Angry, angry thoughts!”

Bunch tried looked at the Einar guy pinching his face. He was curling like a salted snail but managed to hang on.

“'Kay,” Bunch said.

The Doc said. “Would you mind?”

Bunch was truly pissed. Squeezed face or not, second this Eelman lets go, he figured to go for him. Go for good! “Uh-hmm,” he said, pleasantly as he could while considering the wide and varied hurts he would unleash on the pinching Eelman, hell! Both of them!

Then the guy let up, the two, howling in Bunch's head. They twitched, turned, and hopped. Still squinting down on Bunch the buzzy-voiced Eelman half tried running the direction opposite to his brother.

“That’s when I realized,” Bunch said to Cristobel, “there weren't but one of them.” He was feeling smug. “Just most of two guys and one suit. They must've been hooked arm to hips.” Bunch was proud. “From there down, they were two guys again...maybe part of a third.” He was thinking slower, trying to remember. “Yeah. The suit seemed to have more legs than two guys and one suit would need.”

Well, who knew about suits and, besides, there were wiggles inside that white cloth that nobody, not Bunch, anyway, wanted to – or should – know about. Especially not a lady.

“Stop thinking so loud...?” Doc had yelped.

“Like this...?” Bunch gave one more shot of murderous urges and the Eelmans danced some more.

“Then, I stopped,” he told Cristobel. He sat back and smiled.

She leaned closer, her breath licked Bunch’s cheek. “You assaulted. They feared you as a master of the Hounds of Tindalos.”

“Uh-huh,” Bunch said.

“The Tind'losi Beasts, Hounds of foulness,” she said. “They lust after…”

“Uh-huh,” Bunch said.

“They are creatures of the distant past…” She thought for a moment. “Or from a different dimension,” she added. “To this Eah'lachmani – the which is the proper way this 'Eelman' name is spoken – the hounds would have been visible; your anger, given tooth and claw. The Eah'lachmani would have seen your wrath as green dogs with blue tongues, fangs of cold fire...”

“Uh-hunh!” he said, pushing out the sound. He wanted to get going!

“But continue,” she said. She licked both lips.

“Well, that was about what Doc Eelman...how do you say that?

“Eee-AHCH,” she began.

“Eee- Ah.” he said.

“Lach,” she continued.