Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron (80 page)

While Ransom judged the crab capable of leaping the dry moat and clambering up the wire fence around the garden, it preferred to wait for him to set the plank over the trench, cross it, and unlock the front gate. Only then would it scuttle around him, up the rows of carrots and broccoli, the tomatoes caged in their conical frames, stopping on its rounds to inspect a leaf here, a stalk there, tilting its shell forward so that one of the limbs centered in its back could extend and take the object of its scrutiny in its claw. In general, Ransom attributed the crab’s study to simple curiosity, but there were moments he fancied that, prior to its arrival in his front yard the morning after Matt’s departure, in whatever strange place it had called home, the crab had tended a garden of its own.

Latching but not locking the gate behind him, Ransom said, “What about Bruce? That was what we called our dog…the only dog we ever had. Heather picked out the name. She was a huge Springsteen fan. The dog didn’t look like a Bruce, not in the slightest. He was some kind of weird mix, Great Dane and Greyhound, something like that. His body…it was as if the front of one dog had been sewed to the back of another. He had this enormous head—heavy jowls, brow, huge jaws—and these thick front legs, attached to a skinny trunk, back legs like pipe cleaners. His tail—I don’t know where that came from. It was so long it hung down almost to his feet. I kept expecting him to tip over, fall on his face. I wanted to call him Butch, that or something classical, Cerberus. Heather and Matt overruled me. Matt was all in favor of calling him Super Destroyer, or Fire Teeth, but Heather and I vetoed those. Somehow, this meant she got the final decision, and Bruce it was.”

The beer traps next to the lettuce were full of the large red slugs that had appeared in the last week. One near the top was still moving, swimming lazily around the PBR, the vent along its back expanding and contracting like a mouth attempting to speak. The traps could wait another day before emptying; he would have to remember to bring another can of beer with him, tomorrow. He said, “Heather found the dog wandering in the road out front. He was in pretty rough shape: his coat was caked with dirt, rubbed raw in places; he was so thin, you could’ve used his ribs as a toast rack. Heather was a sucker for any kind of hard case; she said it was why she’d gone out with me, in the first place. Very funny, right? By the time Matt stepped off the schoolbus, she’d lured the dog inside with a plateful of chicken scraps (which he devoured), coaxed him into the downstairs shower (after which, she said, he looked positively skeletal), and heaped a couple of old blankets into a bed for him. She tried to convince him to lie down there, and he did subject the blankets to extensive sniffing, but he refused to allow Heather out of his sight. She was…at that point, she tired easily—to be honest, it was pretty remarkable that she’d been able to do everything she had—so she went out to the front porch to rest on the rocking chair and wait for Matt’s bus. When she did, the dog—Bruce, I might as well call him that; she’d already settled on the name—Bruce insisted on accompanying her. He plopped down beside her, and remained there until Matt was climbing the front steps. I would have been worried…concerned about how Bruce would react to Matt, whether he’d be jealous of Heather, that kind of thing. Not my wife: when Matt reached the top of the stairs, the dog stood, but that was all. Heather didn’t have to speak to him, let alone grab his collar.”

The lettuces weren’t ready to pick, nor were the cabbages or broccoli. A few tomatoes, however, were sufficiently red to merit plucking from the plants and dropping into the canvas bag. The crab was roaming the top of the garden, where they’d planted Dan’s apple trees. Ransom glanced over the last of the tomatoes, checked the frames. “That collar,” he said. “It was the first thing I noticed about the dog. Okay, maybe not the first, but it wasn’t too long before it caught my eye. This was after Matt had met me in the driveway with the news that we had a guest. The look on his face…he had always been a moody kid—Heather and I used to ask one another,
How’s the weather in Mattsville?
—and adolescence, its spiking hormones, had not improved his temperament. In all fairness, Heather being sick didn’t help matters, any. This night, though, he was positively beaming, vibrating with nervous energy. When I saw him running up to the car, my heart jumped. I couldn’t conceive any reason for him to rush out the side door that wasn’t bad: at the very best, an argument with his mother over some school-related issue; at the very worst, another ambulance ride to the hospital for Heather.”

A blue centipede the size of his hand trundled across the dirt in front of him. He considered spearing it, couldn’t remember if it controlled any of the other species in the garden. Better to err on the side of caution—even now. He stepped over it, moved on to the beans. He said, “Matt refused to answer any of my questions; all he would say was,
You’ll see
. It had been a long day at work; my patience was frayed to a couple of threads and they weren’t looking any too strong. I was on the verge of snapping at him, telling him to cut the crap, grow up, but something, that grin, maybe, made me hold my tongue. And once I was inside, there was Heather sitting on the couch, the dog sprawled out beside her, his head in her lap. He didn’t so much as open an eye to me.

“For the life of me, I could not figure out how Heather had gotten him. I assumed she had been to the pound, but we owned only the one car, which I’d had at work all day. She took the longest time telling me where the dog had come from. I had to keep guessing, and didn’t Matt think that was the funniest thing ever? It was kind of funny…my explanations grew increasingly bizarre, fanciful. Someone had delivered the dog in a steamer trunk. Heather had discovered him living in one of the trees out front. He’d been packed away in the attic. I think she and Matt wanted to hear my next story.”

Ransom had forgotten the name of the beans they had planted. Not green beans: these grew in dark purple; although Dan had assured him that they turned green once you cooked them. The beans had come in big, which Dan had predicted: each was easily six, seven inches long. Of the twenty-five or thirty that were ready to pick, however, four had split at the bottom, burst by gelid, inky coils that hung down as long again as the bean. The ends of the coils raised towards him, unfolding petals lined with tiny teeth.

“Shit.” He stepped back, lowering the spear. The coils swayed from side to side, their petals opening further. He studied their stalks. All four sprang from the same plant. He swept the blade of the spear through the beans dangling from the plants to either side of the affected one. They dinged faintly on the metal. The rest of the crop appeared untouched; that was something. He adjusted the canvas bag onto his shoulder. Taking the spear in both hands, he set the edge of the blade against the middle plant’s stem. His first cut drew viscous green liquid and the smell of spoiled eggs. While he sawed, the coils whipped this way and that, and another three beans shook frantically. The stem severed, he used the spear to loosen the plant from its wire supports, then to carry it to the compost pile at the top of the garden, in the corner opposite the apple trees. There was lighter fluid left in the bottle beside the fence; the dark coils continued to writhe as he sprayed them with it. The plant was too green to burn well, but Ransom reckoned the application of fire to it, however briefly, couldn’t hurt. He reached in his shirt pocket for the matches. The lighter fluid flared with a satisfying
whump
.

The crab was circling the apple trees. Eyes on the leaves curling in the flames, Ransom said, “By the time Heather finally told me how Bruce had arrived at the house, I’d been won over. Honestly, within a couple of minutes of watching her sitting there with the dog, I was ready for him to move in. Not because I was such a great dog person—I’d grown up with cats, and if I’d been inclined to adopt a pet, a kitten would have been my first choice. Heather was the one who’d been raised with a houseful of dogs. No, what decided me in Bruce’s favor was Heather, her…demeanor, I suppose. You could see it in the way she was seated. She didn’t look as if she were holding herself as still as possible, as if someone were pressing a knife against the small of her back. She wasn’t relaxed—that would be an overstatement—but she was calmer.

“The change in Matt didn’t hurt, either.” Ransom squeezed another jet of lighter fluid onto the fire, which leapt up in response. The gelid coils thrashed as if trying to tear themselves free of the plant. “How long had that boy wanted a dog…By now, we’d settled into a routine with Heather’s meds, her doctors’ visits—it had settled onto us, more like. I think we knew…I wouldn’t say we had given up hope; Heather’s latest tests had returned better than expected results. But we—the three of us were in a place we had been in for a long time and didn’t know when we were going to get out of. A dog was refreshing, new.”

With liquid pops, the four coils burst one after the other. The trio of suspect beans followed close behind. “That collar, though…” Bringing the lighter fluid with him, Ransom left the fire for the spot where the affected plant had been rooted. Emerald fluid thick as honey topped the stump, slid down its sides in slow fingers. He should dig it out, he knew, and probably the plants to either side of it, for good measure, but without the protection of a pair of gloves, he was reluctant to expose his bare skin to it. He reversed the spear and drove its point into the stump. Leaving the blade in, he twisted the handle around to widen the cut, then poured lighter fluid into and around it. He wasn’t about to risk dropping a match over here, but he guessed the accelerant should, at a minimum, prove sufficiently toxic to hinder the plant from regrowing until he could return suitably protected and with a shovel.

There was still the question of whether to harvest the plants to either side. Fresh vegetables would be nice, but prudence was the rule of the day. Before they’d set out for the polar city with Matt, his neighbors had moved their various stores to his basement, for safe keeping; it wasn’t as if he were going to run out of canned food anytime soon. Ransom withdrew the spear and returned to the compost, where the fire had not yet subsided. Its business with the apple trees completed, the crab crouched at a safe remove from the flames. Ransom said, “It was a new collar, this blue, fibrous stuff, and there was a round metal tag hanging from it. The tag was incised with a name, ‘Noble,’ and a number to call in case this dog was found. It was a Wiltwyck number. I said,
What about the owner? Shouldn’t we call them?

“Heather must have been preparing her answer all day, from the moment she read the tag.
Do you see the condition this animal is in?
she said.
Either his owner is dead, or they don’t deserve him.
As far as Heather was concerned, that was that. I didn’t argue, but shortly thereafter, I unbuckled the collar and threw it in a drawer in the laundry room. Given Bruce’s state, I didn’t imagine his owner would be sorry to find him gone, but you never know.

“For five days, Bruce lived with us. We took turns walking him. Matt actually woke up half an hour early to take him out for his morning stroll, then Heather gave him a shorter walk around lunchtime, then I took him for another long wander before bed. The dog tolerated me well enough, but he loved Matt, who couldn’t spend enough time with him. And Heather…except for his walks, he couldn’t bear to be away from her; even when we had passed a slow half-hour making our way up Main Street, Bruce diligently investigating the borders of the lawns on the way, there would come a moment he would decide it was time to return to Heather, and he would leave whatever he’d had his nose in and turn home, tugging me along behind him. Once we were inside and I had his leash off, he would bolt for wherever Heather was—usually in bed, asleep—and settle next to her.”

He snapped the lighter fluid’s cap shut and replaced it beside the fence. The crab sidled away along the rows of carrots and potatoes on the other side of the beans and tomatoes. Ransom watched it examine the feathery green tops of the carrots, prod the potato blossoms. It would be another couple of weeks until they were ready to unearth; though after what had happened to the beans, a quick check was in order. “On the morning of the sixth day, Bruce’s owner arrived, came walking up the street the same way his dog had. William Harrow: that was the way he introduced himself. It was a Saturday. I was cooking brunch; Matt was watching TV; Heather was sitting on the front porch, reading. Of course, Bruce was with her. September was a couple of weeks old, but summer was slow in leaving. The sky was clear, the air was warm, and I was thinking that maybe I’d load the four of us into the car and drive up to the Reservoir for an afternoon out.”

On the far side of the house, the near curtain of light, on which he had watched the sunken island rise for the twentieth, the thirtieth time, settled, dimmed. With the slow spiral of food coloring dropped into water, dark pink and burnt orange spread across its upper reaches, a gaudy sunset display that was as close as the actual sky came to night, anymore. A broad concrete rectangle took up the image’s lower half. At its other end, the plane was bordered by four giant steel and glass boxes, each one open at the top. To the right, a single skyscraper was crowned by an enormous shape whose margins hung over and partway down its upper storeys. Something about the form, a handful of scattered details, suggested an impossibly large toad.

The first time Ransom had viewed this particular scene, a couple of weeks after Matt and their neighbors had embarked north, a couple of days after he had awakened to the greater part of Main Street and its houses gone, scoured to gray rock, he had not recognized its location.
The polar city?
Only once it was over and he was seated on the couch, unable to process what he had been shown, did he think,
That was Albany. The Empire State Plaza. Those weren’t boxes: they were the bases of the office buildings that stood there. Fifty miles. That’s as far as they got.