The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (6 page)

“I think you’d better tell us all about that monster right now,” Cameron said. He looked grim. He didn’t like his mind fucked around with by anybody, including monsters.

• The Chemicals •

The parlor was exquisitely furnished in an expensive and tasteful manner. They were all sitting down in beautiful chairs facing each other except for Cameron who was sitting on a couch by himself.

There was a generous coal fire burning in the fireplace and the room was warm and cozy, far different from the kitchen and they all could remember what they were talking about.

“Where’s your father?” Greer said.

“He disappeared into the ice caves,” Miss Hawkline said. “He went down there looking for the monster. He didn’t come back. We think the monster got him.”

“How do we figure into this?” Greer said. “Why didn’t you go for the marshal and have him come out here and take a look into this? He seems to be a good man and he has a lot of interest in one of you.”

“There are too many things to explain and we’re sure that our father is dead. That the monster killed him,” Miss Hawkline said.

Cameron listened carefully from the couch. His gray eyes looked almost metallic.

“We were instructed to complete our father’s experiment with The Chemicals,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “He told us that if anything ever happened to him that we were to complete The Chemicals. It was his last important experiment and we are following his instructions.”

“We cannot stand the idea of our father having wasted his life,” Miss Hawkline said. “The Chemicals meant so much to him. We consider it our duty to complete what he started. That’s why we didn’t get the marshal. We don’t want people knowing what we are doing out here. That’s why we got you to help us. We cannot concentrate fully on The Chemicals until the monster is dead. It’s distracting having that thing down there, trying to get out of the ice caves and into the house to kill us. So if you kill it for us, it will make everything a lot simpler.”

“What happened there in the kitchen?” Cameron said. “Why were we talking so strangely to each other? Why did we forget what we were talking about? Has that ever happened here before?”

There was a slight pause while the two Miss Hawklines looked at each other. Then one of them said, “Yes. Things like that have been happening ever since our father added a few more things to The Chemicals and then passed electricity through The Chemicals. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to correct the balance of The Chemicals and complete the experiment. We’ve been following the notes that our father left behind.”

“I like the way you say, ‘behind,’” Greer said. “Behind meaning that some God-damn monster ate him in the basement.”

“Not the basement, the ice caves!” Miss Hawkline said. “The laboratory is in the basement!”

Cameron looked at the two Miss Hawklines. Everybody stopped talking because they could see that Cameron was going to say something.

“You girls don’t seem to have much grief about your father’s disappearance,” Cameron said, finally. “I mean, you’re not exactly in mourning.”

“Our father brought us up a special way. Mother died years ago,” Miss Hawkline said. “Grief doesn’t figure into it that much. We loved our father a great deal and that’s why we are going to finish his experiment with The Chemicals.”

She was a little mad about this time. She wanted to get onto the killing of the monster and away from superfluous conversations about things that she wasn’t really that much interested in: like mortal grief.

“Tell us more about what happened in the kitchen,” Cameron said.

“Things like that happen,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “They’re always strange occurrences and they seldom duplicate themselves. We never know what’s going to happen next.”

“Once we found green feathers in all of our shoes,” Miss Hawkline said. “Another time we were sitting in a parlor upstairs talking about something when suddenly we were nude. Our clothes just disappeared off our bodies. We never saw them again.”

“Yes,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “That made me so fucking mad. I really liked that dress. I bought it in New York City and it was my favorite dress.”

Greer and Cameron had never heard an elegant lady use the word fuck before. They would get used to it, though, because the Hawkline women swore a lot. It was something they had learned from their father who had always been very liberal with his language, to the point of being a legend at Harvard.

Anyway: on with the story…

“Has anything bad ever happened?” Cameron said.

“No, all the things that happen are like children’s pranks except the child has supernatural powers.”

“What does supernatural mean?” Cameron said.

The Miss Hawklines looked at each other. Cameron didn’t like the way they looked at each other. All the fuck they had to do was to tell him what it meant. That was no big deal.

“It means out of the ordinary,” Miss Hawkline said.

“That’s good to know,” Cameron said. He did not say it in a pleasant way.

“Are you ever afraid of what those chemicals might come up with next?” Greer said, taking over the conversation from Cameron and trying to put it on a more comfortable level.

The Miss Hawklines were relieved. They hadn’t meant to hurt Cameron’s feelings with the word supernatural. They knew it was a dumb thing that they had done, looking at each other, wishing they hadn’t done it.

“They’re never evil things,” Miss Hawkline said. She was going to say malicious, but she changed her mind. “Just very annoying sometimes like my favorite dress disappearing off my body.”

“What are those chemicals supposed to do when they’re finished?” Greer said. “And is this the same stuff that ate the dog?”

“We don’t know what it’s supposed to do,” Miss Hawkline said. “Our father told us when The Chemicals were completed that the answer to the ultimate problem facing mankind would be solved.”

“What’s that?” Cameron said.

“He didn’t tell us,” Miss Hawkline said.

• The Dog •

“You didn’t answer the question about the dog,” Cameron said.

“No, it wasn’t The Chemicals,” Miss Hawkline said. “They haven’t eaten anything. They’re just mischievous.”

“Then what ate the dog?” Cameron said. He really wanted to know what ate the dog.

“It was an earlier batch of some stuff that Daddy had mixed up,” Miss Hawkline said.

“Did it have anything to do with The Chemicals?” Cameron said. He had just picked up the habit of calling Professor Hawkline’s last experiment The Chemicals.

Miss Hawkline did not want to say what she was about to say. Cameron was watching carefully the expression on her face just before she spoke. She looked like a guilty child about to speak.

“Yes, it was an earlier stage of The Chemicals that ate the dog but Daddy took the stuff and flushed it right down the toilet.”

Miss Hawkline was blushing now and staring down at the floor.

• Venice •

Miss Hawkline got up from the chair she was sitting gravely in like a captured child and went over to the fireplace to poke the coal.

Everybody waited for her to finish and come back to the conversation about The Chemicals, the dog being eaten, etc., and what other topics that might be of interest on July 13, 1902.

While they waited Cameron counted the lamps in the room, 7, the chairs, 6, the pictures on the walls, 5. The pictures were of things that Cameron had never seen before. One of the pictures was of a street lined with buildings. The street was filled with water. There were boats on the water.

Cameron had never seen a street with boats on it instead of horses.

“What in the hell is that?” he said, pointing to the picture.

“Venice,” Miss Hawkline said.

Having finished with the fireplace Miss Hawkline sat back down and the conversation was resumed. Actually, something they had talked about earlier was repeated and then they went onto something else.

• Parrot •

“If The Chemicals can change your thoughts around in your head and also steal the clothes right off your body, I think you’ve got something there that could be dangerous,” Greer said.

“It’s the monster we’re worried about,” Miss Hawkline said.

“Which one?” Greer said. “I think you might have two of them here. And the one behind the iron door down there in the ice caves might be the one that will give us the least trouble.”

“Let’s go down and kill that fucker right now,” Cameron said. “Let’s be done with it and then we can think about other things if you want to think about them. I’m bored with all this talking. It’s getting us nowhere. I’ll go get the guns and then let’s go down there and do the killing. Do you know what it looks like or how big it is or what the fuck it is, anyway?”

“No, we’ve never seen it,” Miss Hawkline said. “It just howls and pounds on the iron door that’s between the ice caves and the laboratory. We’ve kept the door locked ever since our father disappeared.”

“What does it sound like?” Cameron said.

“It sounds like the combination of water being poured into a glass,” Miss Hawkline said. “A dog barking and the muttering of a drunk parrot. And very, very loud.”

“I think we’re going to need the shotgun for this one,” Cameron said.

• The Butler •

Just then there was a knock at the front door. The knock echoed through the house and brought silence upon everybody in the parlor.

“What’s that?” Greer said.

“It’s somebody knocking at the door,” Cameron said.

Miss Hawkline got up and started toward the parlor door that led into the front hall.

“It’s the butler,” the other Miss Hawkline said, remaining in her chair.

“The butler?” Greer said.

“Yes, the butler,” the other Miss Hawkline said. “He’s been up in Brooks getting some things we ordered from
back
East for The Chemicals.”

They heard Miss Hawkline open the front door and then her voice and another voice talking.

“Hello, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Did you have a good trip?”

Her voice was very formal.

“Yes, madam. I got all the things that you requested.”

The butler answered her with the voice of an old man.

“You look a little tired, Mr. Morgan. Why don’t you go freshen yourself up and then go to the kitchen and have a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee will make you feel better.”

“Thank you, madam. I could stand to get some of this dust off me and a cup of coffee would be most refreshing after my journey.”

“How was Brooks?” Miss Hawkline said.

“Dusty and depressing as always,” Mr. Morgan said.

“Was everything we ordered there?” Miss Hawkline said.

“Yes,” Mr. Morgan said.

“Good,” Miss Hawkline said. “Oh, before you go, Mr. Morgan. My sister is back from Portland and she brought some guests with her who will be staying here with us for a while.”

She brought Mr. Morgan into the parlor.

He ducked his head when he stepped through the door and into the room.

Mr. Morgan was 7 feet, 2 inches tall and weighed over 300 pounds. He was sixty-eight years old and had white hair and a carefully trimmed white mustache. He was an old giant.

“Mr. Morgan, this is Mr. Greer and Mr. Cameron. They have come all the way from Portland and have graciously agreed to kill the monster in the ice caves.”

“I’m pleased to meet you both,” the old giant butler said.

Greer and Cameron told the giant they were glad to meet him, too. The Miss Hawklines stood there watching the meeting, looking quite beautiful.

“This is truly good news,” Mr. Morgan said. “That thing down there is a regular nuisance, pounding on the door and making such terrible noises. Sometimes it’s hard to get a good night’s sleep around here. The demise of that beast would greatly help in making this house a bit more tolerable to live in.”

Mr. Morgan had never really approved of Professor Hawkline’s move from Boston to the Dead Hills of Eastern Oregon. He also did not like the site that the professor had chosen to build the house on.

He excused himself and left very slowly, because he was so old, ducking his head again to get through the door. They could hear him walking slowly down the hall to his room. The heavy sound of his footsteps was very tired.

“Mr. Morgan has been with our family for thirty-five years,” Miss Hawkline said.

“His previous employment involved working with a circus,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

• Getting Ready to Go to Work •

“Let’s go kill the monster and be done with it.” Cameron said. “I’ll get the guns.”

“As soon as you get the equipment that you need, we’ll take you down there,” Miss Hawkline said.

Cameron went out into the hall and got the long narrow trunk full of guns that was beside the elephant foot umbrella stand. He came back into the parlor and put the trunk down on a couch and opened it.

“We’ll need the shotgun for certain,” Cameron said. He took out the sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun and a box full of shells. They were 00 buckshot. He loaded the gun and then he put a handful of shells in his coat pocket.

Greer reached into the trunk and took out a .38 revolver. He loaded the pistol and put it into his belt.

Cameron took out the .38 caliber automatic pistol that had previously been used to kill Filipino insurgents. He put a clip of bullets in the butt of the gun and then he snapped back and pushed forward the receiver sending a shell into the chamber. He put the gun on safety and slipped it into his belt.

“How big are those caves?” Greer said to the nearest Miss Hawkline.

“Some of them are big,” she said.

Cameron put an extra clip of bullets for the automatic in his coat pocket.

“Let’s take a rifle with us,” Greer said, reaching down into the trunk for the Krag. “We’ve never tried to stop a monster before. He might give us some extra work, so let’s be prepared for it.”

He loaded the box magazine of the Krag with shells and then he pulled the bolt back and slammed a shell into the chamber with a very quick motion. It surprised the Hawkline women and then it pleased them, knowing that Greer and Cameron were very experienced at their work.