The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (11 page)

• Whiskey •

Everybody started to leave the parlor to go downstairs and pour out the Hawkline Monster but just as they reached the door and one of the Hawkline women had her hand on the knob, Cameron said, “Hold it for a second. I want to get myself a little whiskey.” He walked over to the table where the liquor was in various cut-glass decanters. He paused, trying to figure out which bottle was the whiskey. Then one of the Hawkline sisters said, “It’s the bottle with the blue top.”

That Miss Hawkline was carrying a lamp.

Cameron took a glass and poured himself a big slug of whiskey. Greer thought that this was strange because Cameron never took a drop before a job and certainly the destruction of the monster was a job.

Cameron held the glass of whiskey up to his nose. “Sure smells like the good stuff.”

Greer in sudden anticipation of killing the monster did not notice that Cameron, though he had poured himself a big glass of whiskey, did not take a drink from it. When they left the room, he was carrying the glass in his hand.

• Searching for a Container •

Then a parlor door opened to the hall and one of the Hawkline sisters stepped into the hall, followed by another sister and Greer and Cameron who had a glass of whiskey in his hand.

The shadow could not see over the Hawkline Monster but the shadow heard the door opening and the people coming out into the hall. It wondered what was up, why the monster was so interested in the people at this time. Then the shadow shrugged. It was useless to continue with this line of thought for there was nothing that the shadow could do about it. The shadow could only follow the Hawkline Monster which it hated.

The Hawkline Monster watched them come down the hall toward the laboratory door. It waited, contemplating what form of action to follow next. It tried to realize a container, a shape to put its magic and its spells in and then to evoke that container upon these people who threatened its existence.

The shadow by now had given up trying to figure out what was happening. The shadow just didn’t give a fuck anymore.

• To Kill a Jar •

“Do you think we need a gun?” Greer said to Cameron.

There was no reply.

Greer thought that perhaps Cameron hadn’t heard him, so he repeated the question.

“To kill a jar?” Cameron said.

The Hawkline women smiled.

Greer did not get the joke. He also did not notice that Cameron still had the glass of whiskey in his hand. Greer was unusually excited by the prospect of direct confrontation with the Hawkline Monster.

Cameron was carrying the glass of whiskey the same way he carried a pistol, casual but professional, waiting to be supereffective without any impression of menace.

Even the monster watching from underneath the laboratory door paid no attention to the glass of whiskey in Cameron’s hand.

The Hawkline Monster had by now formulated a plan to take care of the threat to its life. The monster smiled at its own cunning. It liked the plan because it was so fiendish.

The monster suddenly backed its ass up and moved down a step toward the laboratory floor and knocked the unsuspecting shadow down two steps.

Fuck!
the shadow thought and tried to regain some of its nonexistent dignity while keeping a close watch now on the Hawkline Monster, so that it could follow what the monster did next because that is the business of shadows.

• The Elephant Foot Umbrella Stand •

As they walked down the hall, they passed the elephant foot umbrella stand and Cameron could not but count the umbrellas in the stand.

…
7, 8, 9
.

Nine umbrellas.

Miss Hawkline paused beside the stand. There was something very familiar about it but she could not figure out what it was. There was just something very familiar. She wondered what it was.

“What is it?” Greer said.

Miss Hawkline was standing there staring at the umbrella stand. She thought that she had paused there for just a few seconds but it was longer than that and she did not realize it because she was lost in total curiosity.

She was holding up the possible demise of the Hawkline Monster.

“This elephant foot umbrella stand is very familiar,” she said, addressing her sister. “Is it familiar to you?”

Her sister, who was also Miss Hawkline, took a look at it. Her gaze was suddenly equally intent. “Yes, it is familiar but I don’t know what it is about it that is familiar. It almost reminds me of a person but I can’t quite figure out who it is. It’s somebody I’ve met, though.”

Greer and Cameron looked at each other and then carefully around the hall. They were looking for the monster but they didn’t see it. This conversation about the elephant foot umbrella stand had all the markings of the kind of stuff the monster would pull off.

But the monster was nowhere in sight, so they mentally put aside this Hawkline sister concentration as mere eccentricity.

“It certainly does remind me of somebody,” Miss Hawkline said.

“Why don’t you think about it later after we’ve finished off the monster? There’ll be plenty of time for you to figure out who it is, then,” Cameron said.

• The Hawkline Monster in 4/4 Beat •

The Hawkline Monster backed down the stairs to the laboratory, causing a shimmering flow of light like an ungodly waterfall. It also caused a confused inept shadow to bungle along in front of it.

The Hawkline Monster was now very confident. It knew how to handle things and looked forward in anticipation to the results of its power.

The Hawkline Monster had conceived of a diabolical fate for Greer, Cameron and the Hawkline women. It considered the plan one of the best things that it had ever come up with. It was the true amalgamation of mischief and evil.

The Hawkline Monster almost laughed as it strategically retreated down into the laboratory with its shadow scrambling awkwardly, tumbling goofily and carrying on in a demeaning, laughable manner as it tried to perform the perfunctory tasks of a shadow.

The Hawkline Monster was basking in confidence as it drifted and flowed down the stairs. What did it need to worry about because after all, did it not have the power to change objects and thoughts into whatever form amused it?

• Daddy •

Miss Hawkline opened the iron door to the laboratory. She pulled back the two bolts and took the key from her pocket which soon released the huge padlock. All the time that she was opening the door, her mind was fixed on the elephant foot umbrella stand trying to figure out what person it reminded her of. The recognition of that person hovered right on the edge of her mind.

She pulled back the first bolt on the door. It was a little hard to get back, so she had to give it a good tug.

That umbrella stand was so familiar.

Who was it?

She pulled back the second bolt. It came back much easier than the first one did. She barely had to pull on it.

I’ve seen that umbrella stand thousands of times before but not as an umbrella stand
, she thought,
but as somebody I know
.

She took a large key from the pocket of her dress and inserted the key into the huge padlock on the door and she turned the key and the lock fell open like a clenched fist and she took the lock off the door and hung it on the hasp.

Then she yelled, “DADDY!” and turned and ran down the hall to the elephant foot umbrella stand.

• A Harem of Shadows •

The Hawkline Monster had found itself a good position of concealment in the laboratory and now just waited for Greer, Cameron and the Hawkline women to come into its domain.

The Hawkline Monster was so confident of their future that it was not even curious when it heard one of the Hawkline sisters scream and run back down the hall away from the laboratory door, followed by everybody else.

What difference did it make what they did up there for soon they would return and come down that flight of stairs and the Hawkline Monster would play with them a little bit. Then it would change them all into shadows and the monster would have five shadows following after it instead of one incompetent shadow.

Perhaps, these four new shadows would be skillful at playing the role the Hawkline Monster had devised for them.
Yes
, the monster thought,
it could stand a little competence in the shadow line
.

The Hawkline Monster had concealed itself behind some test tubes full of chemicals which were a rejected possibility of de-eviling The Chemicals that the professor had worked on for months before abandoning them as failures.

The shadow had concealed itself behind a clock on the table beside the test tubes. As soon as there was light in the laboratory the incompetence of its concealment would be revealed.

The shadow could not do anything right.

“Soon you will have playmates,” the Hawkline Monster said to the shadow.

The shadow didn’t know what the fuck the Hawkline Monster was talking about.

• Father and Daughters Reunited (Sort of •

Miss Hawkline was on her knees and she had thrown her arms around the elephant foot umbrella stand and she was sobbing uncontrollably and saying over and over again, “Daddy! Daddy!”

The other Miss Hawkline stood there looking down at her sister, trying to figure out what was happening.

Greer and Cameron were busy looking around for the Hawkline Monster. Had they missed seeing it when they had looked for it before? Or had it come up behind them in the hall? They looked all over but they cou1dn’t find the monster anywhere.

Then the other Miss Hawkline bent forward and looked very hard at the elephant foot umbrella stand.

Suddenly a huge flush flash of emotion exploded itself across her face and she fell to her knees beside her sister and said, “Oh, Father! It’s our father! Daddy!”

The Hawkline sisters were not as emotionless as they thought they were.

Greer and Cameron stood there watching the Hawkline sisters hugging and calling an elephant foot umbrella stand Daddy.

• Marriage •

Greer and Cameron left the Hawkline women with the elephant foot umbrella stand and walked back down the hall to the laboratory door. It was time to do something about the Hawkline Monster and right now. Greer and Cameron had had enough of its antics.

Greer was now carrying the lamp.

Cameron had a glass of whiskey in his hand.

Greer still had not noticed anything different about Cameron carrying the glass of whiskey. His mind was really someplace else because under any other conditions, he would have noticed the glass of whiskey. This was a first for him. Perhaps it was time that he should start thinking about retiring, about hanging it up and finding a good woman to settle down with.

Yes, that was probably a good idea. Maybe one of the Hawkline women. He of course had no way of knowing that the Hawkline Monster had already planned a sort of group marriage for them, anyway.

• Dream Residence •

Greer went first. He opened the laboratory door and the light from the lamp in his hand illuminated the stairs and part of the laboratory. It was a very complicated place. Greer had never seen anything like it before. There were tables covered with thousands of bottles. There were machines that would have been at home in a dream.

“Go on, Greer. Let’s go down and look around,” Cameron said.

“OK.”

The Hawkline Monster was watching them. The monster was amused by their helplessness. The women were not with them but the monster would take care of them after it had finished with Greer and Cameron. There was plenty of time for everybody.

The monster was so gleeful about the horrors that it was about to perform that it did not notice that a strangeness was being generated inside the shadow.

The shadow had been watching Greer and Cameron as they came down the stairs and then went over and lit three or four lamps, so they could see better, but then the shadow turned its attention to the Hawkline Monster and was staring at it and a strange for-the-first-time feeling was being born in the shadow as it continued to stare harder and harder at the Hawkline Monster.

A unique thought was now in the shadow’s mind and the thought was linking itself up with a plan of direct action to take place when next the monster chose to move.

“This sure is a weird place,” Greer said.

“It ain’t any weirder than Hawaii,” Cameron said.

• The Battle •

Cameron had spotted the hiding place of the Hawkline Monster when he and Greer were halfway down the stairs. He saw strange sparks of light on a bench behind some funny-looking bottles. He didn’t know what a test tube was.

“Why don’t you light those lamps over there?” he said, motioning Greer over to a bench on the far side of the laboratory.

The Hawkline Monster was amused as it watched them. The monster was deriving so much pleasure from this that it decided to wait a few minutes before changing Greer and Cameron into shadows.

This was real fun for the monster.

Meanwhile, its current and only shadow waited for the monster to move so that it could put into action a plan of its own.

Cameron had also spotted a large leaded-crystal jar on a table in the opposite direction that he had sent Greer to light some lamps.

From the description that the Hawkline women had given him, he knew that this was the source of the Hawkline Monster… The Chemicals. He was standing about ten feet away from the jar. And the monster was “hiding” about five feet away from the jar.

Suddenly Cameron yelled, “It’s over there! I see it!”

Greer turned toward where Cameron was yelling and pointing. He couldn’t figure out what was happening. Why Cameron was yelling. This was not like Cameron but he turned anyway to the direction.

The Hawkline Monster was curious, too. What in the hell was happening? What was over there if it was over here?