Monstrous Affections (7 page)

Stupid dumb hoo-er! hollered her stomach. If it were a bear it’d
have bitchya!

“Quiet, stomach,” said Janie. She leaned closer to the rock,
squinted at it now instead of the sky.

There was something written on it where she’d cleared away the
lichen. No, she thought as she looked closer. Not written.

Drawn.

It was a picture — of some kind of animal it looked like. But it was
no animal she’d ever seen, not altogether. There was a snout, and a
big twisty horn coming out the middle, like the horn had come out
of the middle of the horse’s head in the story magazine. But there
were wings too — open wide like it was flying, or pinned, like on the
cover from ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! THE DEAD BIRD — and
a snaky tail that turned around twice coming out its behind. There
was someone reaching for that tail, but below the wrist was covered
up in lichen still.

For just a second, Janie wondered what else she’d find, when she
licked off the rest of the lichen.

But her belly wouldn’t have any more lichen, it’d had more than its
fill of that dry old awful stuff. And her mouth wasn’t about to make no
spit to soften it, neither. So she would just have to keep wondering.

Maybe, she thought then, that butter and mustard wouldn’t be
so bad to eat after all. Her stomach didn’t complain much at the
thought of it, so she got up from the rock and clambered up over the
lip of the circle.

It took her hardly no time to get down this time. It must, she
thought at the bottom, be the lack of a breeze.

Janie didn’t go straight to the lodge, though. Because now that it
was clear and the water was still, she got a good view of the dock.
And she could see a canoe there.

It was a pretty big canoe — near to three times as long as the ones
she’d seen folks using in the lakes near Fenlan. Whoever’d brought
it had hauled it up onto the rock rather than leave it in the water,
and turned it over on its top — to keep any rainwater out of it, Janie
guessed.

Janie tromped down the side of the rock to look at the canoe
a little bit closer. It was bark — made out of birch-bark, like those
little souvenir toy canoes you could get for ten dollars at the
Indian Trading Post on the highway. But those canoes’d break like
matchsticks and paper if you squeezed them too hard, and Janie
didn’t think that this one would give in that easily.

Lordy, breaking this canoe’d bring down a beating like she’d
never felt before.

If Ernie were here to give it, that was.

Janie felt herself grinning.

Ernie ain’t here. I’m on my own now. Just me and my hungry old
belly.

Janie bent over and picked up the end of the canoe. It was pretty
heavy, but Janie could lift cinderblocks all day and not complain.
The wood at the other end complained some, as it scraped against
the wet rock. Janie lifted it over her head, then stepped back and let
go, and the canoe-end landed at her feet with a bang.

She walked around to the side of it. She kicked it, and it rocked
back and forth. She kicked it again, harder, and it nearly rolled over
upright before it fell back down in its old spot. It rolled, but it didn’t
break. That is some strong birch-bark, thought Janie.

Save it, said her belly.

“Who are you,” said Janie, “to tell me what to do?”

She kicked the canoe again. This time, however, rather than
kicking out, she raised up her foot and brought it down with her
weight behind it. And that seemed to do the trick. The canoe didn’t
roll this time — it stayed put, and there was a great crack as one of
the wooden ribs underneath the bark gave way. When she lifted her
foot to look, there was a dandy-looking dent in the bark, although
she hadn’t holed it yet.

Don’t break it, said her belly. I’m warning you, Janie . . .

And to make its point, Janie’s stomach spewed a little acid, and
some of the lichen that wasn’t digested yet along with it, in a thin
stream back up her throat.

“Yech!” Janie spat and swallowed and did it again and again
until the taste was nearly gone. But her throat still burned when she
stopped, and she felt all out of breath.

“Goddamn stomach,” she said — daring it to try it again. Nothing
happened, though; if Ernie didn’t like swear-words, her belly didn’t
seem to mind.

Janie looked at the canoe and stepped back from it. Ernie’d
always said she could use some self-discipline. She wondered if this
was what he’d meant.

Janie turned away from the lake — she didn’t feel as much like
making mischief on the canoe anyhow. She went up the steps to the
lodge, and as she went, she wondered just who it was who’d bring
that canoe. Could have been the funny man, but he was a dream-thing, and that canoe was pretty real, so it probably wasn’t the
funny man.

Janie’d just started to wonder if maybe the owner of that canoe
wasn’t hiding up in the lodge waiting for her, thinking to do
her
some mischief, when she heard the shaking. It sounded like the
wind had sounded outside when she woke up — like the bone rattle
where it shook the eaves on the outside, with a crack! when it broke
something and a bong! when it knocked down a drum.

But now, she was on the outside. And it sounded like the wind
was on the inside. “Isn’t that something?” she said, and hurried up
the weather-worn steps to the front of the lodge.

She peered in through the big front window, and sure enough,
that seemed to be what was happening. There was a fierce Georgian
Bay blow whirling around the rooms of the lodge. As she watched,
maybe three paperback novels bounced off the window as the
wind drove them across the room. Some of the pages of the story
magazine Janie’d been looking at were stuck to the window, and if
they weren’t all upside down she might have read them. Mr. Swayze
had a little iron hanging light, and it was swaying back and forth in
the breeze — occasionally swinging so high that the side of it hit the
ceiling with a thunk! noise.

Janie pressed her ear to the glass. Oh, it was cold! Seemed like the
wind had taken all the cold it’d brought with it outside, and moved
it inside. As she listened, she could hear the yowl it’d brought with it
too. And she could hear something else. It sounded like —

— a chopping.

Janie closed her eyes, and caught the rhythm. Thunk! Then a
moment while the axe-head pulled out of whatever it was cutting.
Then thunk! again. And the same all over. It was just like Ernie
would get, when he was cutting wood for the stove.

“Yep,” she said. “Someone’s chopping.”

Then there came a crack! and Janie jumped back and held her
ear. She hadn’t been looking, and it had taken her by surprise.

Something had hit the glass hard, hard enough to crack it. She
glared at the glass, and the little spider-web of cracks in it. Something
else hit the glass, in the same spot, and the cracks spread.

It was one of Mr. Swayze’s books. BOTTOM OF THE WELL — the
back cover, the part that contained a little summary of the story
and what the
Philadelphia Enquirer
had said about THE HAND —
“First-class chills! Hookerman writes like he’s lived it!” — and what
Publisher’s Weekly
had said about THE CLOUD — “Richly detailed
and un-put-downable!”

Janie giggled. It was like the wind inside was showing it to her —
like it’d hit the glass once to get her attention, then put this here for
her to read it.

The glass shook a bit under the pressure, and Janie could hear
it moan as the cracks spread further. Janie read the summary, out
loud: “When . . . they dug for . . . water, they didn’t expect . . . to find a
more . . .” she struggled, turning her head as the book slid and shifted
along the glass “. . .
an-ci-ent
. . . ancient!” She clapped her hands
together and smiled.
Ancient
. That meant
old
. “Ancient hunger,” she
finished. “Now . . . it’s . . .” She frowned. Lost? No. “Loose! An’ . . .
And . . . they’ll . . . never be . . . the same!”

And that was as far as she got, because the book flipped over
and she was looking in the eye of that snake-head coming out of the
pump-spout. Then she wasn’t looking at anything, because the wind-pressure finally got too great, and the glass exploded outward.

The wind must’ve knocked Janie off her feet, and knocked her out
for awhile too. She woke up in the lodge’s main bedroom, where
she and Ernie had been sleeping — all warm and covered up in a big
quilted blanket. She looked under the covers and saw that she didn’t
have clothes on underneath.

That wasn’t the only thing that changed. She felt her rib, and her
elbow, then the little crescent-cut over her ear. They all felt better;
like they’d been mending a few days, not just a couple more hours.
Her hair was tied back, like she liked it, and she smelled all clean and
pretty, like she had a bath.

The only thing that didn’t change was how hungry she was. It was
like a wound in her middle, all the more nagging, because of the smell
that was coming in through the doorway. It was the smell of cooking —
the salty-greasy smell of frying meat, with some spices maybe.

Janie got up out of bed. She didn’t see clothes, but that didn’t
matter — she just wanted some of that food. She threw the comforter
over her shoulders and opened the door to the living room.

It was like nothing had happened. The books were all up on
their shelf, and the pages of the story magazine were nowhere to
be seen . . . And there was no blood on the floor either, although
she didn’t remember cleaning up any of it. She’d almost say that the
whole thing was just one of her dream-things, but the room was still
freezing cold, on account of the broken front window. Some of the
glass from it was sitting in a little garbage can by the fireplace.

“Janie!”

She almost jumped out of her skin. Mr. Swayze was standing
in the doorway to the kitchen. He was wearing a dirty apron, and
held a spatula in one hand, and a screwdriver in the other. He was
smiling, but he looked a bit worried too.

“H-hello, Mr. Swayze.” Janie clutched the blanket around her
shoulders.

“It’s good to see you up and around,” he said. “You look like you’ve
been through a lot.”

Janie looked down at her feet, which were thick and bare, and
her toes were pointing together. She straightened them. “E-Ernie,
he took — ”

Mr. Swayze put up his hand, and his face went all serious. “I know
about Ernie,” he said. “Don’t worry, Janie. I found him before he got
far. Ernie’s in hand. Everything’s taken care of. See?” He held up the
screwdriver. “I even fixed the shelf.”

Janie felt drool ridging over her lips.

“Hungry,” she said, and looked over Mr. Swayze’s shoulder into
the kitchen.

At that, Mr. Swayze grinned again — a big toothy grin — and he
laughed. “I bet you are, Janie,” he said, and laughed again.

“Lichen doesn’t take you very far, does it?”

Janie’s stomach twisted like a hand-wrung facecloth — oh, it
wanted that food
bad
— but Janie stood her ground for a minute.

“Lichen,” she said, frowning. “How’d you know about lichen?”

“Why Janie,” he said, and his grin widened some more. “If it
weren’t for the lichen, you and I wouldn’t be here, having this
conversation now. That’s how he gets in, Janie.” And then Mr.
Swayze shut his eyes, and opened his mouth real wide. “Yum-tum,”
he said, and his tongue flicked out and back, like it was a frog’s or
something. He opened his eyes again, and as he did Janie had to look
away. They were too bright.

“You’re a quick study, Janie — a lot quicker than Ernie, which I
wouldn’t have expected.” Mr. Swayze stepped over to her, but she
still wouldn’t look at him. He put his hand under the blanket and
rested it on the bare flesh of her shoulder. It was hot.

“I wouldn’t have expected it,” said Mr. Swayze, “but I have to say,
I’m glad.”

Janie took hold of Mr. Swayze’s hand on her shoulder, tried to lift
it away. “Don’t go touching me,” she said. But he wouldn’t move.

Her stomach bent around behind itself, it felt like.
Hungry! Food!
And Mr. Swayze let out a breath of hot, stinking air. “The spirit’s fed
me,” he said. His voice trembled, like from hunger. “It’s the wind and
the sky and the cold, but oh Janie, it’s fed me. Done me well. Do you
know what I’m talking about?”

“Let me go,” she said.

“You know — you just can’t say yet. It’s the spirit of the land
here. It’s the wind-walker — and it’s the spirit of you too, Janie. You
were always close to it — but you’ve never been closer than today.”
He squeezed hard on her shoulder. “This is like the property at
Fenlan — another special place, Janie. You saw the drawings on the
rocks, didn’t you?”

“Like your book covers,” said Janie. She thought about the twisted
horn, and the hand and the snake, and the wings of the DEAD BIRD,
all there on the rock face where she’d licked the lichen away.

“Right,” he said. “Very good. And all that, my Janie . . .” His
tongue came out, and caressed the sharp tips of his front teeth. “All
that’s just a
yum-tum
lick and a bite away.” His smile went broader,
and his nose twitched, like it was catching the smell of the cooking
in the other room.

“Food,” said Janie. “You take the food from here and stomp on
that blueberry patch, Mr. Swayze?”

“
Wendigo
.” He whispered it like a dirty word in church. “That’s
what they call me, Janie. And that old food was no good for you.
It wasn’t what you needed, any more than that butter and that
mustard’d do the trick. And forget about blueberries! You’re not
a blueberry girl anymore, Janie. Now you come on with me to the
kitchen — and eat some
meat
.” His eyes went all yellow with the heat
in him.

“You may be
Wen-digo
, but you ain’t Ernie,” she said flatly. “I don’t
got to do nothing.”