Red Delicious(29)
"We have not come to bargain with you," said Thing Number One. "Nor have we come to accept no for an answer. Your compliance is not optional."
Which is when the cramps hit, pretty much in every muscle I have, all at once. When my control slipped. When these two idiotic shitbirds distracted me just enough the Beast snapped the lock and came bounding out of its cage. I had, at best, a minute before my mind was no longer mine. Probably less.
Two se'irim against one starving, pissed-off loup bitch? How would that round of psycho kaiju throw-down turn out? Damned if I knew. But I had a feeling I'd drawn the short straw.
The pain doubled, redoubled, washing the whole world in a kaleidoscope of reds, oranges, and yellows.
"Guys, this really isn't a good time. Take my word-"
"Not for you to say, half-breed," Thing Number Two snarled into my left ear. "You'll come with us, and you'll do it now and without any further argument."
The curtain came down hard and impenetrable as a million pounds of midnight. I didn't fight it. It wasn't a battle I could have won, anyway.
CHAPTER SIX
A FINE LOT OF LOLLIPOPS
You know, sometimes it's easier to set up the next part of the story you're telling by recourse to another story. Yeah, like I did back there with "The Maltese Unicorn" (even if Harpootlian did end up telling me it wasn't all gospel). And what came next, after the two se'irim squared off with me that night and me going loup and blacking out, frankly it'll be easier to move on to what came next if I tell you another little tale first.
Those of you who find this annoying, go read another book, instead. I won't mind.
One October, a few years after all this business with the unicorn cluster fuck had blown over and was resigned to history's trash heap-Oh, wait. Don't you dare whine or kvetch about my having just "spoiled" this story, because if I hadn't lived through it, I wouldn't be writing this, now, would I? Seriously. Get a clue. Anyway, once upon a time I was up in New Hampshire, bored as hell-because, hello, it was goddamn New Hampshire. I was tooling along I-202 somewhere between Peterborough and Antrim, which is to say the corner of "no" and "where." Round about twilight, I drove by one of the innumerable fruit stands that pepper New England roadsides. Only it wasn't just another fruit stand. There was a sign out front that declared in huge red letters FREAKS! NATURE'S MISTAKES! FIENDS OF HELL! Like I said, New Hampshire, boredom, so I turned around and went back to have a look-see.
Out front, there was just the usual heaps of apples, gourds, some mealy-looking corn, lopsided pumpkins, dried bundles of Indian corn, quart bottles of cider, and plastic jugs of maple syrup, presided over by a couple of swamp Yankees who gave off a serious Harvest Home/Wicker Man vibe. You just knew these two sacrificed sheep and virginal maidens to Shub-Niggurath or some corn king or who the fuck ever. I asked about the sign, and one of the swamp Yankees-a woman with a hairy mole the size of a hairy Junior Mint above her left eye-jabbed a thumb at a listing wooden shed behind the fruit stand, half hidden behind a couple of huge red oaks.
"Ten dollars," she said.
"Yup. Ten dollars," said the other swamp Yankee, a fellow in overalls and a John Deere cap.
I didn't haggle with Mr. and Ms. Creepsome Backwoods. Ten bucks for Fiends of Hell. Sounded like a bargain to me. Speaking as a fiend myself. I paid her, and I headed for the shed. Neither of them followed me. That was sorta a relief. Little unnerving when plain old human types can unnerve me. Oh, and I bought an apple, just to keep up appearances.
There was a narrow dirt path between the trees and the weeds. The shack wasn't locked, though there was an elaborate assortment of chains, hasps, Yale padlocks, and a thick wooden plank that could be lowered to bar the door. A big pentagram and one of the hex signs you see on barns in Pennsylvania Dutch country had been neatly painted on the door with the same shade of red paint used for that sign out front. Clearly whatever was inside, the swamp Yankees wanted to stay inside. Which raises the question of why they'd left the door unlocked. But that's not a mystery germane to my weird little anecdote.
Inside, it was dark, and the air was close and almost chilly, dank; it smelled like straw and animal shit and dust. At first, I had no idea how anyone who wasn't a nasty with dark-adapted eyes could have seen their way around in there. Then I noticed a milking stool with three flashlights. Of course, I didn't need one, but there you go. As for what was inside the shed, mostly it was just rows of big jars filled with formalin or alcohol. They made up what is referred to in carnie slang as a "pickled punk show." They were all bleached a cheesy white, and it was pretty much impossible to make out what those dozen or so misshapen stillbirths and genetic mishaps might have been. Except the three-headed corn snake. There were a couple of shelves crammed with a random assortment of bones-including a couple of human skulls-and some examples of creative taxidermy: a pair of jackalopes, a gopher with duck feet, the shriveled marriage of monkey and fish sometimes known as a Jenny Haniver, Siamese chickens, etc., etc., etc. All of them were moth-eaten, and some had split seams leaking sawdust. And I'm thinking, Yeah. Sure. Ten dollars for this nonsense. I ought'a go back and eat the both of them. Or I was thinking something of the sort.
Then, past a yellowed, swaybacked moose skeleton, there was this big cage. Iron bars spaced so close together I couldn't have gotten an arm in between them. And inside the cage, crouched in a filthy scatter of straw, was a monster. Now, usually, when I use that word, I do so without much in the way of sympathy. As the years go by, my capacity for sympathy and empathy has dwindled. That's just the way it goes on this side of the fence. You can't fucking cry over every unfortunate soul you eat. But what I saw locked inside that cage, it hurt to look at. It made my stomach lurch, and it hurt to see. For a moment, I actually turned away. Unlike everything else in the shack, the occupant of that iron cage was alive and breathing, and whatever pain I felt at the sight of it, the agony that racked its body-and that had for fuck only knows how long-made my discomfort seem . . . well, I might just as well have complained about a mosquito bite.
It ain't easy to freeze a loup midway between one shape and another. Takes some big-time finesse with the black arts, and a willingness to sink to the very asshole of sadism and depravity.
But that's what was inside that cage. She had been frozen either partway to her wolfish form or partway back to a naked twenty-something girl. Hardly mattered which. She crouched there, blazing amber eyes peering hatefully out at me, eyes burning with spite and pain. The black mane along her spine bristled, and she curled mottled lips back to expose canines long and sharp as paring knives. She titled her head to one side and dug her long, clawed fingers into the straw. She uttered a low warning growl, and I took a step backwards. She rose up on her knees then, and I could see the six teats and bulging rib cage.
"You," she said, and she made a sound that was maybe supposed to be a laugh. "I know what you are, sister."
"How did they-?" I began, and then stopped myself, because I'd been about to ask the most idiotic question imaginable then and there. I gagged, if you can believe it.
"Ever seen a low red moon?" she asked. "Ever seen the moon fall down and bleed? Ever run wild and free beneath the wide carnivorous sky?"
The thing in the cage was insane, and she'd probably been that way since the second or third day the inbred fucks out there at the fruit stand had turned their wizard's trick against her.
"Ever talked to the night's cunt and heard it talk right back?" she asked.
Which is when I snapped the padlock. It was sort of like grabbing hold of a live electrical cable, the bright sizzle that surged up my arm as I shattered the spell preventing the loup woman from breaking free. For a moment or two, the bitch didn't move. She looked confused and frightened, as if she had no idea what she was supposed to do next, as if she'd been in there so long the thought of stepping out of her prison was inconceivable.
"You tear them apart," I said, "or I'll do it myself."
She went down on all fours and crawled past me and out of the shed. There was no gratitude in her eyes, and I hadn't expected any. Less than a minute later I heard Wilbur and Lavinia Whateley begin to scream. There was a gunshot, and then more screams. I smiled at the sound, then took out my Zippo and set fire to the shack. While the loup took her pound of flesh, I sat beneath one of the oaks, smoked a couple of cigarettes, waiting for the sirens, and watched that hellhole burn to the ground.
• • •
So, there you go. After the face-off with Drusneth's pair of se'irim thugs, I oh so very slowly rose up and up and up from the merciful blackout that comes when the Beast comes. Midnight became false dawn. False dawn became the violet-gray smudge of dawn. And I felt as if there was ground glass in every joint of my body, hydrochloric acid searing muscles and flesh, salt in my eyes. Bit by bit, I came back to myself. The waking from loup oblivion had never been slow before; it had never been any different from jolting suddenly wide awake after the deepest sleep. As consciousness returned to me by these slow degrees, I only wanted to crawl back down to that place where there was nothing at all. Because, Jesus, anything would have been better. I was a diver come to the surface much too fast, and the bends were wrapping round me like an iron fist. I would have screamed but couldn't remember how. Dawn became the goddamn scalding fire of daylight, and it should have blinded me, but it didn't. It only seared into my skull.