SOMETHING WAITS (15 page)

Home.

Yes, it was all so clear now. He would never fear or want for anything again, as long as he stayed here. Here he was welcome. Here he would live, safe, secure, independent of anyone or anything. Protected. He laughed out loud and the sound of it rang through the endless caverns of twisted trees, echoing back to him until the entire hollow laughed with him, until he
was
the hollow. It was so good to be home.

In time, of course, he would have needs, grow hungry. But that was no problem. He need only wait patiently in the thicket at the edge of the meadow near the schoolhouse.

Wait quietly in the brush until the bell rang and the laughing children came out to play…

“
Here sighs, plaints, and deep wailings resounded through the starless air: it made me weep at first. Strange tongues, horrible outcries, words of pain, tones of anger, voices deep and hoarse, and sounds of hands amongst them, made a tumult, which turns itself unceasingly in that air for ever dyed, as sand when it eddies in a whirlwind.”

That was Dante. Specifically,
The Inferno (Canto III, 22-31)

Here is Roger Zelazny in his foreward to Harlan Ellison’s
From the Land of Fear
, Belmont Books, 1967:

“
What does it take to be a writer and why? The quotation from Dante…contains the answer. There are these sounds, this tumult, turning in that air for ever dyed, eddying in a neat simile and beginning with that all important word “Here.” Everybody hears the sounds, some people listen, and a writer, for some damfool reason, wants to put them down on paper and talk about them—here, right now. So that’s the answer to the question: “Some damfool reason.” It’s why Dante wrote too. My damfool thing, the thing inside me that makes me say what I have to say, is a thing that I don’t understand at all, and sometimes I curse because it keeps me awake at night…”

Now here is Bruce Jones, writing a foreward to his own short story and proving what it really takes to be a writer: the ability to steal from two other far better ones and create, essentially, three different introductions. More for your money! I was a naïve kid when first reading Harlan’s book of short stories. Him making a ton of dough out in La-La land writing for TV, me sitting on my Fort Leonard Wood barracks bunk with his paperback making 75 cents a day-- wondering if my platoon was next in line to be shipped to Viet Nam. Not having yet sold my first short story. Not having yet even braved the wailings and tumult of New York publishing. Not having yet met Harlan, let alone called him friend. And certainly, in my wildest dreams, not having the least inkling of something to be dubbed The Internet, an invention as wondrous strange as Dante’s Pit, which would soon threaten the printed page as avidly as Bradbury’s
Fahrenheit 451
’s book police-- allowing me to reformat, somewhat rewrite and pass along to thee the kind of personal bit of morbid mayhem like:

T
risha was killing her mother again—this time in the farmhouse kitchen with the old broken-handled steak knife—and in a little while killing her sister Dolce, who grunted like a pig when stabbed and bled liberally and long.

Then, free of them, free of the knife, free as the wind lashing her tawny locks, Trisha came running…came galloping fierce and proud, heedless and grinning over the rolling meadow, Shep nipping and barking delight at her bare heels—the fair-skinned girl and with the banner of summer hair and the bounding, yelping German shepherd, alive and free and safe at last among fields and more endless fields, undulant and sweetly perfumed with earth and grass.

Until the warm breeze shifted sour, grinning Mojo abruptly materialized, gold tooth contrasting midnight skin glistening now with the sweat of hate, rough, callused hand shocking sharp across her tender face, starting blood at her lip…and Shep—brave Shep, try as he might—could not sink eager teeth into skinny black legs which kept disappearing, winking in and out, which meant they weren’t real at all and neither was Shep, long dead now like this half-forgotten meadow…and this was
now
not then, and Mojo was her pimp and she, Trisha, was a hooker and these peeling walls could never be the lovely golden meadows… as she came up and up and finally out of the dream…to the dreary little room and the man asleep beside her.

Amazing
, she thought, yawning.

--not that she had dreamed of killing--that was old hat--but amazing she had fallen asleep here on the job next to her john.
They
did that sometimes—the johns—passed out and snored blissfully if she gave them an extra good ride, especially the fat ones, the smelly ones, though this one had been neither. This one had been quiet and gentle and strangely tender. Even nice-looking in his dark way.

Which is why Trisha was so startled there on the tired hotel sheets, turning in brassy afternoon sun to find what her john had
become
…to find the far darker, more terrifying form that had replaced him while she slept.

Not a man at all, this misshapen shadow that shared her bed, but a thing of black hair, cruel pointed muzzle, pink lolling tongue guarding bone-white incisors as deadly sharp and long—longer really—than Shep’s. So that for a moment Trisha actually thought the dream was real and it was her long dead pet there beside her on the pillow, Shep come to comfort and sleep with her while Momma was busy with the men.

But no. This creature was far bigger, far more terrifying than anything canine, or strictly human either—a savagely insane juncture of the two, a great, dark sleeping beast from childhood nightmare, midnight matinees, but all too real, all too here and close, its hot breath against her bare arm, its great shaggy head so near she could see the corona of coarse hairs along the sleek, swept-back ears.

The eyes, mercifully, were closed; had they been open, red (she was sure they must be red) and full of blood lust, Trisha Kincaid would doubtless be a dead whore, not a recently dreaming one.

Carefully then, not breathing, moving in a slow-motion haze of terror, she pushed herself up gently, hitching breath as the ancient bed sagged creaking resentment, lowered her legs over the edge of the mattress, found the cold floor, turned to see if the thing had awakened, was watching. It was not. Though now, at this angle, she could glimpse more of it in the dying ochre light—the broad matted chest, massive arms, muscular sweep of thigh, placid but fearsome phallus. This too was swathed in hair, as were the testes, fat and shiny as a seed bull’s. It was the power there, between the thing’s legs, that was perhaps the most fearfully awesome of all.

Heart and knees knocking, Trisha just made it to the formless lump of her skirt and blouse, just made it to the old cut glass doorknob, twisting it carefully, silently… the voice behind her spinning her about, gasping.

“You’re leaving?”

Her back against the door, throat constricted, heart slamming painful ripples, Trisha faced not the terrible dark beast, but the pale naked man of before. Only his eyes and the hair of his head were dark now, as a sad wistful smile tugged tender, remembered lips. He caught her look, returned a knowing one of his own, and nodded, sadder still. “You saw…”

Trisha, rigid against the weathered door, could only nod terror.

He came to her, tall and looming but reproachful only to himself. “I’m sorry. It happens sometimes, when I sleep.” An old accent, slightly English? Gentlemanly anyway. Which was shock enough for Trisha. “You’ve nothing to fear from me,” he told her gently. “I am sorry, truly.”

And twice amazed this day, Trisha found herself wholly unafraid…so much so she wondered absently if it was the creature itself she had truly feared, or something else. “You won’t…kill me?”

His smile was as disarming as his winsome, weary expression. “Never. Never in daylight.” Young eyes hollow, haunted by dark memories, perhaps decades of them.

Trisha, marveling, dropped her own eyes to find further changes. The naked man stepped back, his smile rueful now, regretful? “Yes…that goes back to normal too. All of me back to quite ordinary and normal.” He looked up again. “Will you keep my secret?”

Trisha, her mind on other things, slipped thoughtfully into her Wal-Mart blouse, all trembling gone now. “Have you ever…while you’re that way, I mean?”

This made him assess her with new eyes, searching eyes. “No. That would bring death. I change to feed, not for love.”

Then he turned, showing her his pale buttocks, and retreated to the bed, to his own clothes. Retrieving the little automatic she’d thought she’d hidden so well beneath her pillow, he placed it to his own chest, smiled into her eyes, and fired—the slug knocking him back violently but not penetrating, falling flattened as a dime to the threadbare rug. “I can’t be harmed in the normal way, you see.” He smiled that sad, nearly defenseless smile again, then asked reflectively: “Will you betray me, Trisha?”

A sudden pounding at the door—anxious, muffled cries.

The tall figure strode past her to the ancient knob, twisted it.

A beefy red face peered through the crack anxiously: Pudler, the bouncer. “Everything all right in there? Heard a shot!”

“Yes,” the tall man offered easily, “we were wondering about that too. Perhaps down the hall…”

The beefy face glanced once Trisha’s way, then retreated, mumbling.

The tall figure closed the door, turned back to Trisha, smiled again softly.

“How did you know my name?” she whispered, heart thumping again.

“Will you betray me?”

She turned from him, came back to the bed, ran a hand absently across the still warm sheets, head cocked in reflection. “Will I see you again?”

Which made his smile falter curiously. “Whatever for?”

* * *

At home—a refurbished Ninth Street penthouse—Mojo slapped her hard for falling asleep on the job—diamond ring cutting her cheek--slapped her again for forgetting his money. Took her silver automatic, Trisha on her knees, stuck it in her pretty mouth and made her suck, suck hard until she’d summoned the weapon’s load, the slug crashing through the back of her skull…except Mojo, laughing and gold-toothed, jerked free before this last, making her only imagine it, warning that the next whore in his stable who showed without money was a dead whore. He and Angela (Mojo’s current pump, a pretty Mex who had recently usurped Trisha in that dubious honor) both getting a good long laugh from this.

Trisha killed her mother again that morning, threw her off a cliff—forgot about killing sister Dolce and ran once more wild and free with Shep, yellow grass whipping her ankles.

That night, having made up her mind, she hit the streets searching. It took her most of the evening but she finally found his big dark car, sauntered over and leaned down to the window. “Hello again. You forgot to pay me.”

“Yes, I’ve been looking for you. Here…” The tall man paid her double her usual, triple on account of her warm smile.

All of which Trisha returned to him, then stayed his hand before he could pull from the curb. “What’s your name?”

“Franklyn.”

“That’s a nice name. Old fashioned. I’m Trisha. Not old fashion at all.”

They shook hands.

“Franklyn, I have a…well, proposition. Will you be in town for a while?”

“I rather tend to keep moving, Trisha.”

“Stay another night. One more night…”

* * *

Trisha had read little in her life, movies being most of her education, and these proved enough.

She had exercised caution all her life, had come this far because of it. She exercised it now; melted down the silver crucifix at her neck, took the glistening lump to Fat Freddie who owned a gun shop on Third and Ike. Freddie grinned a toothless ex-Hell’s Angel grin and asked, “What you up to now, woman?” but asked no more. He turned the lump in his hand and told her to come back on Thursday. When she did, with fifty bucks, Fat Freddie had the newly molded silver rounds all ready for her in a clean red handkerchief. “They soft, but they work,” he told her. Trisha loaded them into the shiny automatic herself. Then sought out Angela.