The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western (8 page)

His daughter found the door to the ice caves open and the professor gone. She went to the door and yelled down into the caves, “Daddy, are you in there? Come out!”

A horrible sound came from deep in the caves and started coming through the darkness of the caves toward the open door and Miss Hawkline.

The door was immediately locked and one of the sisters, dressed like and thinking she was an Indian, went to Portland to find men qualified to kill a monster but who also possessed discretion, for they wanted to undo the mistake their father had made without public attention and finish his experiment with The Chemicals in a way that he would have approved of for the benefit of all mankind.

But they did not know that the monster was an illusion created by a mutated light in The Chemicals, a light that had the power to work its will upon mind and matter and change the very nature of reality to fit its mischievous mind. The light was dependent upon The Chemicals for sustenance as an unborn baby relies upon the umbilical cord for supper.

The light could leave The Chemicals for brief periods of time but it had to return to The Chemicals to revitalize itself and to sleep. The Chemicals were like a restaurant and a hotel for the light.

The light could translate itself into small changeable forms and it had a shadow companion. The shadow was a buffoon mutation totally subservient to the light and quite unhappy in its role and often liked to remember back to the days when harmony reigned in The Chemicals and Professor Hawkline was there, singing popular songs of the day:

“Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey, won’t you come home?

She moans de whole day long;

I’ll do de cooking, darling, I’ll pay de rent;

I knows I’ve done you wrong.”

As he poured a drop of this and a drop of that into The Chemicals in hopes for a better world, little realizing that each drop led him closer and closer to the day when he would pass electricity through The Chemicals and suddenly evil mischief would be created and the harmony of The Chemicals would be lost forever and soon the mischief would be turned in all its diabolical possibilities upon himself and his lovely daughters.

A lot of the contents of The Chemicals were not happy with what had happened since the electricity had been passed through them and the mutation occurred that created evil.

One of the chemicals had managed to completely separate itself from the rest of the compound. The chemical was very unhappy with the recent turn of events and the disappearance of Professor Hawkline because it had wanted very much to help mankind and make people smile.

The chemical now cried a lot and kept to itself near the bottom of the jar.

There were of course chemicals who were basically evil in nature and glad to be free of the professor’s good-neighbor policy who exulted now in the goofy terror the light, which was the Hawkline Monster, inflicted upon its hosts, the Hawklines, and anybody who came near them.

The light possessed unlimited possibilities and took a special pride in using them. Its shadow was disgusted with the whole business and trailed, dragging its feet reluctantly behind.

Whenever the Hawkline Monster left the laboratory, drifting up the stairs and then slipping like melted butter under the iron door that separated the laboratory from the house, the shadow always felt as if it were going to throw up.

If only the professor were around, if only that terrible fate had not befallen him, he would still be singing:

“Me and Mamie O’Rorke,

Tripped the light fantastic,

On the sidewalks 0f New York.”

• The Hawkline Orchestra •

Greer and Cameron and the Hawkline women, who were still mystified by their behavior, returned clothes to their bodies and all joined together in a music room on the same floor as the bedrooms that they had just finished making love in.

Greer and Cameron put their guns down on the top of a piano. Miss Hawkline went downstairs and made some tea and brought it back up on a silver platter and they all sat in the music room surrounded by harpsichords, violins, cellos, pianos, drums, organs, etc. It was a very large music room.

To make tea Miss Hawkline had to step around the body of the giant butler in the hall downstairs.

Greer and Cameron had never had tea before but they decided to try it because what-the-hell with all the things that were going on in this huge yellow house that was so weird that it almost breathed, straddling some ice caves that penetrated like frozen teeth deep into the earth.

Greer and Cameron had wanted to do something with the dead body of the giant butler as soon as they were finished with the living bodies of the Hawkline women, but the women insisted that they all have tea first before getting onto the disposal of the butler who was still sprawled out like an island in the hall.

A freshly-started fire was burning in the music room fireplace.

“Do you like your tea?” Miss Hawkline said. She was sitting beside Greer on a couch next to a harp.

“It’s different,” Greer said.

“What do you think, Cameron?” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“It doesn’t taste like coffee,” Cameron said. He counted all the musical instruments in the room: 18. Then he said to the closest Miss Hawkline, “You have enough musical stuff here to start a band.”

“We’ve never thought about it in that way,” the Miss Hawkline said.

• The Butler Possibilities •

“What are we going to do with the butler’s body?” Cameron said.

“That is a problem,” Miss Hawkline said. “We’ll really miss him. He was like an uncle to us. Such a good man. Huge but gentle as a fly.”

“Why don’t we start by moving him out of the hall. It’s hard walking around him,” Cameron said.

“Yes, we should move him,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“Why didn’t we do that before we sat down here and started drinking this stuff?” Cameron said, looking disdainfully at his cup of tea. It was very apparent that Cameron was not going to be converted to the geniality of tea drinking. It was, you might say, not his cup of tea.

“I think we should bury him,” Miss Hawkline said, thinking for a few seconds.

“You have to get him out of the hall if you want to put him into the ground,” Cameron said.

“Precisely,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“I think we’ll need a coffin,” Miss Hawkline said.

“2 coffins,” Cameron said.

“Do you gentlemen know how to make a coffin?” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“Uh-uh,” Greer said. “We don’t make coffins. We fill them.”

“I think it would draw too much attention to us if we were to go into town and have one of the townspeople make us one,” Miss Hawkline said.

“Yes, we don’t want anybody coming out here and investigating into our business,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“Definitely not,” Miss Hawkline replied, taking a very lady-like sip of tea.

“Let’s plant him outside,” Greer said. “We’ll just dig a hole, put him in it, cover him up and it’ll all be taken care of.”

“We don’t want to bury him close to the house,” Cameron said. “The ground’s frozen hard around this place and I’ll be fucked if I’m going to dig a hole that big in frozen ground.”

“We’ll dig a hole outside of the frozen ground and then drag him out of the hall and put him into the hole,” Greer said.

“It’s sad to think of our beloved butler Mr. Morgan in these terms,” Miss Hawkline said. “I knew he was getting along in years and that someday he would die because, as we all know, death is inevitable, but I had never thought about what a problem the hugeness of his body would make. It’s just something you don’t think about.”

“You didn’t think he was going to turn into a dwarf when he died, did you?” Cameron said.

• On the Way to a Butler Possibility •

As they started downstairs to take care of the butler which meant guiding him to his eternal resting place, a hole in the ground, they passed the open door of a room that had a pool table in it. It was a beautiful table with a crystal chandelier hanging above it.

The door had been closed when Greer and Cameron came upstairs to fuck the Hawkline women.

“Look, a pool table,” Cameron said, carrying a shotgun. He stopped momentarily to admire the pool table. “Sure is 1 fine-looking table. Maybe we can play some pool after we bury the butler and kill the monster.”

“Yeah, some pool would be nice after we finish our work,” Greer said, with a 30:40 Krag slung over his shoulder and an automatic pistol in his belt.

“That’s a pretty lamp, too,” Cameron said, looking at the chandelier.

The room was illuminated by sunlight coming in the windows. Light from the windows gathered in the chandelier which reflected delicate green flowers from the pool table.

But there was also another light in the flowery pieces of glass that hung like a complicated garden above the table. The light moved very subtly through the pieces of glass and it was followed by a trailing, bumbling child-like shadow.

Greer, for a second, thought he saw something moving in the chandelier. He looked up from the pool table to stare at the chandelier and sure enough there was a light moving across the pieces of crystal. The light was followed by an awkward dark motion.

He wondered what could cause the light to move in the chandelier. None of the pieces of crystal were moving. They were absolutely still.

“There’s a light moving in the chandelier,” he said, walking into the room to investigate. “It must be reflecting off something outside.”

He went over to a window and looked out. He saw the frost around the house circling out for a hundred yards and then stopping as summer took over the grass and the Dead Hills beyond.

Greer could see nothing moving outside that could cause a light to reflect in the chandelier. He turned back around and the light was gone.

“It’s gone now,” he said. “That’s funny. There was nothing outside to start it.”

“Why all this attention to a reflection?” Miss Hawkline said. “We have a dead butler lying in the hall. Let’s do something about that.”

“Just curiosity,” Greer said. “The only reason that I’m still alive is because I’m a very curious person. It pays to keep on your toes.”

He looked again at the chandelier but the strange light was gone. He did not know that the light was hiding on the pool table, near a side pocket, and there was a shadow hiding there, too.

“That light seemed familiar,” Greer said. “I’ve seen it someplace before.”

The light and the shadow held their breath, waiting for Greer to leave the room.

• A Surprise •

As they descended the spiral staircase to the main floor of the house, Miss Hawkline said to her sister, “The funniest thing happened a little while ago.”

“What was that?”

“It’s really strange,” she said.

“Well, what was it?”

Greer and Cameron were trailing behind the Hawkline sisters. They moved so gracefully that Greer and Cameron were almost spellbound. The sisters moved without making a sound on the stairs. They moved in the same manner as two birds gliding slowly on the wind.

Their voices delicately punctuated the air like the invisible movement of peacock fans.

“l found some Indian clothes hanging in my closet. I didn’t put them there,” Miss Hawkline said. “Do you have any idea where they came from?”

“No.” her sister said. “I’ve never seen any Indian clothes around here.”

“It’s really strange,” Miss Hawkline said. “They’re our size.”

“I wonder where they came from,” the other Miss Hawkline said.

“A lot of very strange things have been happening around here.” Miss Hawkline answered.

Greer and Cameron looked at each other and they had something more to think about.

• The Butler Conclusion •

When they finally arrived at the body of the dead butler, they really had a surprise waiting for them. One of the Hawkline women put her hand up to her mouth as if to stifle a scream. The other Miss Hawkline turned white as a ghost. Greer sighed. Cameron put his finger in his ear and scratched it. “What the fuck next?” he said.

Then they just stood there staring at the butler’s body. They stared at it for a long time.

“Well,” Greer said, finally. “It’s going to make burying him a lot easier.”

Lying on the floor in front of them was the body of the butler but it was only thirty-one inches long and weighed less than fifty pounds. The dead body of the giant butler had been changed into the body of a dwarf. It was almost lost in folds of giant clothes. The pant legs were barely occupied and the coat was like a tent wrapped around the corpse of the butler.

At the end of a huge pile of clothes, there was a small head sticking out of a shirt. The collar of the shirt surrounded the head like a hoop.

The expression, which was of quiet repose, gone to meet his Maker, as they say, on the butler’s face had remained unaltered in his transformation from a giant into a dwarf but of course the expression was much smaller.

• Mr. Morgan, Requiescat in Pace •

It did make burying the butler simpler. While Greer dug a small grave outside the house, just beyond the influence of frost, Miss Hawkline went upstairs and got a suitcase.

• Prints •

After the funeral with appropriate words of bereavement over a very small grave and a little cross, everybody went back into the house and gathered in a front parlor.

Greer and Cameron no longer had their guns with them. They had put them away in the long narrow trunk which was back beside the elephant foot umbrella stand. They only carried a gun when they were going to use one. The rest of the time the guns stayed in the trunk.

Cameron put some coal on the fire.

The two Miss Hawklines were sitting next to each other on a love seat. Greer sat across from them in a huge easy chair with a bear’s head carved on the end of each armrest.