The Reality Conspiracy (23 page)

Although theirs had been a childless marriage, they had been a heaven-matched pair. They'd got on well and always without complaint. They had devoted themselves to each other, their garden, their livestock, and their God. Even when Stuart took sick back in '71, while Daisy'd had to run the farm alone, they'd held Christian services every Sunday in Stuart's sickroom. She'd light the pretty-smelling candles and he'd sit up in bed—pillows steadying him, holding him upright—and read passages from the Bible, often in a voice too weak for Daisy to hear. At those times she'd kneel at his bedside and pray, fearing she'd never again hear his powerful tenor voice singing the hymns they both loved, beautiful Christian songs that brought tears to the eyes of their tiny congregation.

The Good Lord had pulled him through that time. But now the loss of Stuart's music made her sad.
Dear Lord
, she thought again,
what's happened to him?

Every other Wednesday, back in the old days, Father Mosely had made the trip up the hill for an evening visit. "I enjoy the hike," he always said. Some folks might have thought it odd that the priest should take such a long walk to see a couple of Baptists. But Stuart hadn't seen it as strange: "The Good Lord never said a Protestant and a Catholic can't be friends."

Now smiling at the recollection, Daisy stared into the starless sky beyond her parlor window. She rocked in her creaky wooden chair, the faded carpet below worn threadbare in two spots, one beneath each shoe. "So many mem'ries," she whispered to no one. "Oh, me, so awful many mem'ries."

Even after Stuart . . . left . . . that new Baptist preacher never looked in on Daisy. Once he had dispatched the town's interdenominational church social worker to see if Daisy was all right and to find out what assistance the congregation could provide. Silly. Both were questions old Father Mosely would have known better than to ask.

Of course she was all right, thank you very much. And there was nothing she needed that she couldn't make for herself, or buy outright when Al Barnes, or somebody, drove her into town. Come to think of it, those trips to town were getting more than a little bit off schedule. She hoped Alton was all right. Truth be known, in his own way, he had probably loved Stuart just as much as she did.

Daisy had just started reminiscing about that church social worker—a nice young girl who seemed awfully nervous, spoke too quickly, and acted as though she didn't want to touch anything in the house—when she heard the distant sound of an automobile engine.

"Hummm," she said, "can't be Alton at this hour."

Standing, looking out the window, she failed to spot the source of the noise. Moonlight cast a pale silvery brilliance over the hilltop. For a moment Daisy was captivated by moon shadows and the playful flirtation of a trillion blinking fireflies against the rich blackness of the forest.

She took the kerosene lamp from the kitchen table and stepped out onto the porch where she waited to meet whoever might be coming up the driveway. One of her cats, the fat one, Bertha, pushed open the screen door and sat between Daisy's feet.

"Looks like us old gals is getting some callers," Daisy said to the cat. "Wonder who's comin' up the hill at this time a night? Nobody with no good news to bring, an' that's for certain."

Moths surrounded the burning lamp as Daisy set it on the porch table. Their shadows looked like bats flickering across the clapboarding and the peeling newel posts.

Daisy thought about the shotgun she kept just inside the doorway.

"Awful thing the way a person has to be afraid all the time nowadays," she said. "Wasn't never that way in the old days. Used to be you'd know who was trouble and who wasn't. Not no more."

Bertha rubbed her sleek side against Daisy's ankle and uttered a tight raspy cry.

The automobile engine grew louder as it approached. Now Daisy could hear its tires grinding against the gravel drive. Pretty quick she began to make out its bright headlights dancing among the lush shadows and towering trunks of thick evergreens.

"Awful late to come calling," Daisy said, her eyes narrow, peering into the night. "Why, I believe it must be nearly eleven o'clock. Maybe a little after."

Then the car did something strange. As it reached the last stretch of driveway—that exposed area between the woods and the open dooryard—it turned its headlights off. Yet it continued to move toward the house like a fat black beast, crouching, growling, inching forward in the shadows.

"This don't look right to me," said Daisy. She looked around for Bertha, but Bertha was gone. "Don't look right to you neither, does it, Mama Cat?"

Daisy stepped back and opened the screen door just enough to get her hand inside. Without taking her eyes from the car—now she could see it was a station wagon—she reached around the door frame, moist fingers wriggling, until she touched the cold metal barrel of Stuart's twelve-gauge shotgun.

The station wagon ground to a stop about ten feet from Daisy's front steps. The engine continued to run, and for a moment no one got out. Daisy noted several things at once: her mob of curious cats didn't swarm silently into the driveway as they normally would when investigating a new arrival; even fat old Bertha, the nosiest of all, stayed out of sight. The scores of fireflies held their light, returning the landscape to utter darkness.

Daisy noticed something else, too: the air was full of noise. Dogs and coyotes far in the distance howled into the black sky; chickens in the coop beside the barn raised holy heck, squawking and flapping as if a fox had come a-calling.

Daisy pulled the shotgun onto the porch. Holding it by the barrel, she let it stand beside her, its butt on the porch floor. She knew the people in the station wagon would see it, but they'd see, too, that it wasn't shouldered and ready.

When the passenger-side door opened, Daisy was surprised to see a child get out. It was a girl, a grimy little girl, with filthy hair and a dirt-smeared face. She looked like some poor street urchin, dressed in a tattered jumper. The girl slammed the car door, but it had been open long enough for the interior light to reveal a man behind the wheel.

The little girl stood beside the car, looking up at Daisy. "Pweef, miffif," she began, but she was awful hard to understand. Daisy squinted at her, a signal that she should try again.

"Please, missus," she said, more slowly and carefully this time. "Can you please help us?"

Now, with difficulty, Daisy could make out what the child was saying. "We got lost on the way to the hospital. My grandfather's in the back, and he's awful sick."

The child's voice was sure odd. Why did she pronounce her words so strangely? Daisy stared at the little waif, studied her, not at all sure of what she was going to do. "There ain't too much I can do for you, honey. I 'spect I can give you directions—"

"Can we phone, ma'am? Can we phone for an ambulance?"

"No, honey, I'm sorry. I got no phone, I got no way to call for the doctor."

She froze, immobilized by terror's icy touch. It was as if a blast of arctic air had suddenly filled her, freezing up her insides. Silently, heart beating faster, she cursed herself.
Stupid!
she thought,
stupid old woman!
What had made her say a stupid thing like that? Why had she given away that information? When her slippery fingers tightened on the barrel of the shotgun she knew how badly she was sweating.

Ah well, what's done is done. Maybe there was still some way she could maintain control of the situation. It was her house after all. And she did have a shotgun. She lifted the weapon and held it across her chest. "Whyn't you come up here little closer to the light, so I can get a look at you."

The girl took a tiny step forward. "How come you wanna have a gun, lady?"

"'Cause I don't know ya, that's how come. Now who's that fella behind the wheel?"

"My pa." The little girl inched a bit closer to the porch steps. Now Daisy could see the peculiar deformation of the child's mouth. Her lips hung low, slack like the limp bodies of dead snakes.

Poor thing
, Daisy thought, but she knew better than to drop her guard. "Why don't you tell your pa to come on out where I can lay my eyes on him, too."

With that the driver's door opened and the interior light revealed the face of a redheaded man with very short hair.

He was smiling.

". . . this workaday actuality of ours—with its bricks, its streets, its woods, its hills, its waters—may have queer and possibly, terrifying holes in it."

—Walter de la Mare

Excerpt from

The Reality Conspiracy:

An Anecdotal Reconstruction of the Events at Hobston, Vermont

O
n Saturday, June 25, Jerry Finny was ten minutes late for Bible School.

He had dallied and dreamed and dragged his feet all the way from home. His only stop had been at Gorman's Drugstore where he'd unloaded part of this week's five-dollar allowance. Gorman's was the only place in town that still carried packs of Marvel Universe cards. They also had a super selection of comic books.

As he walked, Jerry hugged his purchases to his chest.
Jeez
, he thought,
this business of going to Bible School on Saturday is for the birds. It's ruining the whole morning!

He glanced at his watch.
Almost ten. Gotta hurry!

Next year he wouldn't have to rush. Next year, when he'd be twelve years old, his parents wouldn't make his allowance dependent on Bible School attendance. At least that's what his dad said, and Dad didn't lie. Usually.

Jerry took a minute to hide the cards and his Punisher comic amid the pages of
Bible Stories and Christian Tales
; they'd give him something to think about during class.

Pausing in front of the old brick Baptist church, Jerry looked up at the steeple and watched puffy white clouds drift across the blue morning sky. In Jerry's mind that pointed spire was not a church steeple at all; it was a rocket ship aimed at Europa, one of the moons of the planet Jupiter.

He checked his watch again. No sweat. So what if Captain Finny was a few minutes late for boarding. The passengers would already be in their seats. The mission could get under way the moment he took his place at the control panel. He hoped.

Jerry walked up the huge stone steps to the church doors, confident that he walked in silence. Slowly, carefully, he opened one side of the heavy double doors and looked inside. The scent of burning candles was the odor of rocket fuel, and the vacant interior of the church told him his fellow travelers were already assembled in the seating rooms below.

If Miss Beth Damon, otherwise known as Deathdemon, wasn't teaching today, he might just get away with this late arrival. If the Deathdemon was aboard, he'd get away with nothing. Deathdemon, that three-legged monster, had been around forever. Even when Jerry's mom and dad were kids in Baptist Bible School, Miss Damon had been there, waving her cane, insisting on punctuality. And she'd always said the same thing: "You young ones better learn to keep your appointments with the Lord. Learn it now, and you'll be better prepared for that one appointment nobody misses."

The Lord, of course, had manufactured the Deathdemon way back in the days He was kicking Satan and the boys out of Heaven. That important bit of history meant two things: first, that she was about a million years old; and second, that the Lord could still control her behavior.