Midian Unmade (27 page)

Okay, okay, who am I to hesitate when it comes to Them.

I took off from the bedroom window and slowly gained altitude, my breath coming hard, my wings redlining it, what with the goddamn low humidity. At a couple of hundred feet, I leveled off and circled the lake, let the wind do its work. The gawkers were gone, so I didn't have to pretend I was a Canada goose or an overweight seagull.

Finally, I saw Brian's SUV turning on East Lakeshore. Before Gale's house, there was a sharp curve and a twenty-foot drop to the lake, and he was going way too fast. Perfect.

Wings flapping, I climbed higher, then banked and dove. I was going to come in straight for him at eye level, figuring he'd react instinctively, jerk to the right and drive off the cliff as I veered over the top of his car, home free, but I fucked up and came in too low.

He didn't even see me. I hit the ground ten feet in front of his Expedition, and he ran over me. If I'd been a human, I'd be dead. Instead, I got up, brushed myself off, and trudged for the house, humiliated by the tire tracks on my wings. They looked like something a tattoo artist on meth would do.

When I got back to the house, Brian was already inside his apartment. Jazz was mewling from his entertainment center, and I imagined him kicked back with a vodka martini. Pissed off, I went in the house, banging the kitchen door.

“Joe?” said Mrs. Jordan.

“No,” I replied, “not exactly.”

She shrieked at my angel body and beat-up wings, her hand going to her mouth. I figured she was dumbfounded that I didn't have rosy cheeks, as well.

I brushed past her and went to the sofa, swept the cat off, my wings feeling surprisingly strong. Annoyed, Leroy hissed at me, but I ignored his puff-ball threat and kicked his ass out the kitchen door.

He paused and blinked at the late-afternoon sun, but finally seemed to get what I had in mind. Tail switching, he trotted down the steps, stretched at the bottom, shook himself, and was ready. He looked up at me: What
did
you have in mind, anyway? Consider Brian King a two-legged rodent or a cockroach, whatever you're in the mood for, I responded.

I knocked on Brian's door with my head.

He opened it and was surprised. “What the hell?” He stepped back. “Ain't no costume party here, kid. You got the wrong address.”

Leroy bolted in the apartment.

“Hey!”

The cat leaped on top of the entertainment cabinet, a good seven feet off the carpet. (Well, goddamn, the cat can fly, too.) Centered on it was Brian's huge seventy-five-inch Samsung TV.

“Hey, get outta here!”

He went for the cat, and using the old two-against-one maneuver, I dropped on my hands and knees behind Brian.

Leroy dropped on Brian's head and dug in his claws. Brian shouted in pain, stepped back, tripped over me. The cat sprang off, and I was up fast and used my wings to push the TV off its shelf. All seventy-five inches of screen and plastic came crashing down on Brian, pinning his arms.

Leroy sprang onto his face, and in the seconds that it took Brian to free his arms, the cat ripped out one eye, was digging at the other when finally Brian pulled him off and threw him across the room.

Blood poured from his face. He got up screaming and staggered after the cat, cornered him under the cabinet and started kicking him. The cat yowled in pain.

I figured it was as good a day as any to die—or at least get seriously hurt—so I threw myself between Brian and Leroy. He swung. I ducked and head-butted him in the balls. He yelped and doubled over. I was laughing triumphantly when his second swing caught me full-on in the face, slammed me against the wall. Out cold, I crumpled to the floor.

A gunshot woke me up. I lifted up on one wing just in time to see Mr. Jordan switch the AK-47 to full auto and empty it into Brian's back. Like a puppet cut loose from his strings, Brian flailed and jerked, then fell into the cabinet, dead.

As Mr. Jordan absorbed what he'd done, I automatically looked around for Leroy. Not seriously hurt, his attitude back, he remained under the cabinet, chewing on Brian's eyeball. Damn cat will eat anything.

Time for me to bail. (Avoidance therapy.) I jumped on the kitchen counter and went out the window. I lifted off and flew up blindly, but didn't see the power lines until the last second. A quick and desperate maneuver: I backstroked, did a somersault intending to glide under the high voltage, and almost made it except for the oak tree.

I flew into its top branches, flailed mightily, but fell anyway, ricocheting between the limbs, wishing I was a shroud again. I hit the ground hard, was down and out for the second time in minutes.

This time I woke up to the cat licking dirt off my face. Instinctively, I rolled away in case he'd developed a taste for eyes. He purred and rubbed against my wings, which I guess was his way of saying thank you, brother, even though he'd been the point man in the assault and Mr. Jordan, the artillery.

The Jordans were gone the next day. Mrs. Jordan had wanted to take the cat, but Leroy made himself scarce, and eventually they left without him, which made Mr. Jordan happy. He blamed the cat for the flea bites on his ankles. Later, when the balm had done its work, he would wonder why he was staying up late and didn't like to go outside in the daylight when he'd always been a morning person. He would blame it on the decadence of Costa Rica.

And me? Oh, so proud, I put out the call on the wind, and the Nightbreed answered, their tom-toms beating in my brain. Since I know they've always been more comfortable beneath something, I've left the door to the crawl space open. Once in that dank and musty darkness, they will pick their spots, huddle, and wait for further instructions.

 

WRETCHED

Edward Brauer

“You keep looking over my shoulder, Chuckles. Getting me edgy.” Owen shoved a lightly seared piece of bonito into his mouth.

“Don't nitpick him, darling,” said Lydia, tapping Owen on his arm. “Charlie can look wherever he wants,” she said, emphasizing my name.

“Just keeping an eye on our old mate over there.” I pointed across the bay to the rocks, where the fisherman I'd been watching danced with his rod. Owen, Lydia, and Shannon twisted in their seats for a look.

Our boat was a good distance away, but we could see that there was something wrong with him. He wore a black raincoat with the hood drawn over—covering his face—but occasionally he'd twist toward us as he cast his line and we'd get a flash of something pink and haggard hiding in the veil.

We watched him move for a minute. There was a romance to it, like a martial art. He stood unshifting as the ocean drew back its strength and came at him, again and again.

Owen scoffed and turned back. “It's his own fault if a wave gets him,” he said. His fork was pointed at me and he shook it for a moment, twiddling his fingers on his chin. Then he shrugged and returned to his fish.

The three of us adults were very hungover and slumped about in our seats, the sun and the white of the deck glaring off our sunglasses.

“Dad, you know I hate fish,” said Shannon, arms crossed over her lunch.

“Just eat it, it's good for you,” grunted Owen.

“No! I swear I'll vomit if I do!”

“Then that's your problem!”

“Sweetie, go and make yourself a Vegemite sandwich,” said Lydia, trying to fix Owen a stern look.

“Yeah great,” said Shannon, slinking off to her bunk bed, which was right beneath my own.

We'd each had it rough the night before. Owen and Lydia, full of booze and holiday fervor, had gone at each other in the bedroom like they were getting paid for it. I'd escaped to the farthest edge of the boat and sat there with my legs over the edge, strangling the neck of a port bottle. Poor Shannon—too young to drink—had run out of batteries on her iPad and could only lie there and wait for it all to end.

“I tell you, Chuckles, if you ever have kids you should raise them in a tougher part of the world. That little sh…” He glanced at Lydia. “That kid has no idea what doing it hard is like. She's just like this damn country. Young and spoiled.”

I grunted. Owen was a painful a man to debate with.

I'd traveled the world when he and Lydia first became an item, disappearing for five years in the hope that it would all blow over by the time I got back. All through Europe and Asia, civilization was inescapable, its roads and buildings dotting the continents like a pepper spill.

People thought of Rome or the Taj Mahal as ancient places, tiptoeing about them with this puppy-dumb sanctity in their eyes. But what's a few hundred years of human civilization, compared to the millions of years of jungle that came before? Only when I got away from all the people and the concrete and deep into the beastly wild could I feel in the presence of something truly ancient.

I realized, riding a train somewhere between Berlin and Madrid, that most of the country I came from was still enveloped by that oldest of kingdoms. It still breathed, rustled, and screeched all around us. Even the Illawarra coast that sat as the backdrop to our brunch—not a hundred kilometers from Sydney—was a looming entanglement that could contain all manner of creatures in its gums and ferns. It was anything but young.

“What do you say, Chuckles? It's past midday.” Owen was brandishing two bottles of draft, their tops already popped off. It was the last thing I was craving, but I accepted.

My one job for the entire trip was to be Owen's friend—the guy he could bitch and moan to when his wife and daughter got him hot under the collar. Lydia had begged me to come along so that it would be someone she knew instead of one of Owen's regular asshole mates, and I'd agreed as a favor to her.

It was a simple enough gig. It just needed a lot of booze.

*   *   *

“Come play Uno, sweetie,” Lydia said, giving Shannon a hopeful smile. The kid rolled her eyes and went back to staring at the roof of her bunk bed. I was impressed by how long she could do that.

“She thinks we're lame, sitting here enjoying ourselves the way we do,” said Owen, taking a big slug of beer and placing it between his knees so it didn't go flying off with the next wave.

The sky had darkened as the afternoon wore on, accompanied by an angry swell. Our vessel rode harmlessly over the lumps of ocean that moved underneath it, but below deck was chaos. We'd stumbled all over the place in a half-drunk tidying frenzy, getting everything strapped down and behind a cupboard door before the rocking of the vessel sent more crockery and food flying everywhere.

I'd watched Lydia grabbing for the Vegemite jar Shannon had used earlier, a plate held against her small breasts, laughing so hard she had to sit against a wall and regain herself. A moment before I could turn away she'd noticed me staring.

We'd tidied the rest of the cabin in silence.

“Draw two, bubble-butt,” said Owen, dumping a blue card onto the pile and leering at his wife.

“Sorry, Charlie,” she said, biting her bottom lip and putting another draw two on top of his.

“Ah…” I began as I took four cards from the pile, not really knowing what witty thing I hoped to spit out—but not having to in the end, because we heard screaming coming from outside.

Owen and I exchanged a glance before I was on my feet and pulling myself up the stairs to the deck. Behind me I heard him swear as he dragged himself out of his seat to follow.

Rain spotted my shirt as I ducked outside and made for the bow railing, securing it in my hands as the boat rolled over a large wave and tilted, pulling me backward.

Again I heard someone cry out; the beginning of the word “help,” muted by submergence. I looked to the choppy water but couldn't see anything.

The boat tilted as a wave picked it up again, pushing me against the railing and sending Owen crashing into it, his hands scrabbling for grip until we hit the next crest and evened out. It was then that we saw a human arm rising up out of the water, the body it belonged to instantly recognizable.

It was the fisherman I'd been watching earlier that day, garbed still in his black raincoat. Only a strong current could have dragged him this far out, and it looked as though he was on the verge of succumbing to his misfortune. His motions were feeble and his head—a pink spot in the dark blue—gulped just above the water.

Owen looked to me with wide eyes, his mouth puckered and eyebrows wrinkled.

“Life jackets?” I said. “Where are your life jackets?”

His frown suggested that he couldn't remember. Lydia, though, had had greater foresight than either of us, appearing at the stairs with three of them tucked under her arm as another wave tilted the boat.

“Charlie!” she called out to me, bowling the life jackets across the deck.

I was struck for a moment then, by her pathological tragedy. With no time to think she'd known exactly who the better of us was. But in the day-to-day world of boredom and festering neurosis, she'd been compelled by her dumb blood to choose Owen.

I slid my arms into the life jacket's holes and didn't bother to clip it up, grabbing the second one that Lydia had tossed me and leaping over the railing into the surf.

My vision was blurred as I came up, the veil of salt water burning my eyes. I was already swimming overarm as I hit the surface, my clothes dragging in the water and the second life jacket clamped in my teeth. The sea splashed my face and I could scarcely make out a thing.

I almost ran into him, disguised as he was by that black raincoat. He responded to my presence in a manner contrary to the typical thrashings of a drowning man, relaxing and allowing me to take his wrist and guide it toward the life jacket I'd been carrying. He nodded when he felt it and hugged it to his chest.

“Swim with me!” I yelled, grabbing him by the scruff of his raincoat and turning my back to the boat.

Getting back to the boat was an arduous journey. My kicks were blunted by the joggers I was still wearing and the waves remained fast and frequent. Despite the buoyancy of our jackets we went through them instead of over, coming up with stinging eyes and salty mouths.