croatoanbooks.com/caon_chapter_001.htm
Chaos and Old Night
Chapter 1
(Preceded in the book by a prologue.)
33 Agnus Close, Shepherd’s Hill
Monday, August 5, 9:49 pm
“Hey, Gulliver!”
Frank Falahey was calling down into the darkness beyond his backyard lights.
“Here, cat, cat, cat!”
At 74, the retired professor of literature believed he was too old to shout anything involving “kitty.”
“C’mon, Gull, dammit! Fancy Feast is served!”
Gulliver was probably serving himself, down in the woods. The orange tom was a roamer, a scrapper, swaggering about with scarred ears and nose, still fully equipped because Frank wouldn’t have him cut. He wouldn’t keep him in the house all the time, either. Not practical, and not right. Might as well deball him, declaw him, tie a pink ribbon around his neck, and brain him with a hammer.
A six-hour roam was unusual, though. Falahey had declared the animal AWOL tonight, so he was going to do more than stand on his back deck and yell for him. At least it would be good exercise, if he didn’t break his neck.
Falahey had acquired Gulliver three years ago, after his wife Maddy died. With just himself drifting around in it, the house was little more than a tomb wired for cable. The neighbors disliked the cat because when out and about, he sometimes picked fights with the neighborhood menagerie, and he also kept tabs on whatever bird-feeders he could reach. Falahey’s nighttime shouting after him wasn’t popular, either. Not the sawt of thing we expect heah on Agnus Close, he imagined them saying in posh English accents, even though they talked Suburban Midwestern same as he did.
He’d left the deck and was invading the backyard of the property next door now, where the slope down to the woods was easier, holding his blackthorn stick in one hand, a flashlight in the other. “Gulliver! Let’s go!” He could give it a lungful tonight, because he was sure no one was home here. Two or three lights periodically clicked on and off in the house, day and night, but on a schedule that betrayed timers.
Those poor, poor people, he thought. What had happened was so terrible. Yeah, lawyer husband and lawyer wife been a little snooty toward him — they resented his family money, apparently — but now all of that was nothing. Nothing.
Some lines of a prayer floated up:
May holy Mary, the angels, and all the saints welcome you now that you have gone forth from this life.
May Christ who was crucified for you, bring you freedom and peace.
May Christ who died for you admit you into his garden of paradise.
May Christ, the true Shepherd, embrace you as one of his flock.
He murmured, “Amen,” touching the crucifix under his shirt, where it hung alongside the metal tube with his nitro tabs.
That sweet little one. Oh, my. What she’d done. With all that life ahead of her. But the Lord knew her heart. He would know that she couldn’t have been thinking straight. He knew all.
They’d put her in the ground as soon as the coroner had released her, and without any ceremony that Falahey knew about. But it wasn’t because she’d killed herself. She would have a memorial Mass eventually, thank God: everything was just on hold because of her father’s nervous collapse, or whatever it was.
Starting down into the woods, using his stick, Falahey had lost heart for shouting. He’d get in among the trees before disturbing the night again.
Tomorrow he ought to go see Patrick in the hospital, if they were allowing him visitors. Terri, he’d been told, was with her sister across the river, way out in Rouen, shell-shocked. Just as long as the boy, Cliff, didn’t show up. Falahey didn’t want any part of him. Talk about the sort of thing we don’t expect here on the Close!
Goodness, it was dark as Dante’s hell down here, and a great deal hotter. Actually he could use a little of that chilly air from the Ninth Circle right now. He was sweating. And puffing when he breathed. It was close, airless.
“Gulliver, Gulliver, Gulliver, you ignorant primitive beast,” Frank muttered, swinging the flashlight beam across the base of maples, ash, buckeyes, and pin oaks. He’d grown up on another side of the woods, in an old neighborhood of Shepherd’s Hill back when it was a puny town linked only by tendrils with the blob of metro Buckingham. He’d wandered through his personal Sherwood Forest countless times, playing with his pals or just sitting for a while on a fallen trunk beside Agnus Creek, his head bent over some sci-fi paperback, typically a Ballantine original, 35 cents a pop. Look at book prices now. How had he gotten to be such an old guy, living here in the future?
But, yes, he was an old guy, and this was not a groomed forest, so he’d better take care. Plenty of uneven ground, broken ground, lay in wait for him to lurch into, hidden by tall weeds, and plenty of debris, including dead limbs, along with it. He could impale himself on a jagged stump, stumbling around on a moonless night, old fool.
Well, he wasn’t about to do a whole tour. A few minutes down here would have to suffice. He still hadn’t quite caught his breath. He’d probably tip over in shock if Gulliver did come trotting impassively out of the trees. Here I am, decrepit servitor. Let us ascend. I require a supplementary repast this fine evening.
Falahey walked a little farther, panning the flashlight beam through the trunks and brush. Maybe he’d catch a reflection from Gulliver’s eyes. If the damn cat wasn’t a mile away. Which was probably — hunh. He realized he no longer wanted to make a lot of noise, even if he had the breath for it. The friendly forest of his boyhood was more than airless tonight. It was silent. It’s quiet — too quiet. That dead cliché squirmed with ghastly new life when your own heinie was propelled into some doubtful scene. Put down the popcorn, fella. You’re no longer in the La-Z-Boy.
Gulliver’s haunting may have prompted smaller creatures to vacate, but it was more than that. Something was wrong here, down in these woods. Time, past time, to turn around and get back up that slope. Lord, deliver me from evil ... Never a bad prayer, though excessive at the moment, surely. Almost surely.
As Falahey turned, his light swept across a space of short scrubby growth and wild flowers, and he saw odd lumps scattered, partly obscured by the vegetation. Gray, brown, black, they were; and he caught a glimpse of orange, too. Ohhh ... no, that was more wrong.
He shivered despite the heat. Focusing on the orange patch, Falahey approached. It was the tomcat, lying on his side. Falahey saw blood smeared and matted about his neck. No, no. “Gulliver,” he whispered.
An odor sour and penetrating — bad meat — hung in the air.
He knelt, wincing as he came down on rocks, and laid his blackthorn in the weeds. Gulliver was limp and still. No rigor yet. It was remarkable that an animal should feel cool in death even when the ambient temperature was so high. A trick of the senses having to do with expectations, of course. He was being very analytical.
His pet’s collar was gone. On Gulliver’s neck were two small wounds, side by side, dark punctures in the reddened fur. Falahey’s vision blurred. He wiped his eyes with his hand. Angry at some weeds drooping over the body, he pulled them up and cast them away.
Breathe deep, Frank, deep, slow, and regular. Grief had closed its stone fingers around him, in him — he could feel them in his chest — but he must not let this turn into anything worse. If he didn’t pull the reins on himself he could end up lying beside Gulliver down here, with his tongue hanging out.
Still on his knees, Falahey swept the flashlight over the surrounding forms in the weeds. Those he could make out were squirrels, mostly. Chipmunks also, tinier prey. Over there lay a raccoon. And a dog. Lord, it was the Adkinses’ terrier, Pokey, from up the street. Blood streaked and spotted all the animals. Not all had been bitten on the neck. Falahey saw that the fatal epicenter was on the shoulder or leg of some. Fatal epicenter, word guy Frank, that’s a good one. Scavengers had been working away at some of the animals.
He’d have to report this to somebody. But not right now, even though his phone was in his pocket. Right now he needed to retreat. Get back up to the house and pour himself some Tullamore Dew. Falahey hated to leave poor Gulliver lie through the night, but how could he carry him and the flashlight and the stick? How could he manage over the rough ground and up the slope? In his trembly state?
Propping himself on his stick, he started to rise.
A wavering voice broke the stillness, close behind him: “I am damned, but I’m not in hell. Am I?”
Falahey shouted without words, losing his balance and going down on his side. No words no words now word guy no words ...
“I’m sorry, Dr. Falahey. Are you all right?” A pause, then: “Are you really alive?”
What? What?
He twisted around and pointed his light at the apparition standing over him, a pale girl, in a dark gown. Pretty dress, honey — his mind was spinning — but filthy. How did it get so filthy? Bloody, too ... but the blood, he feared he could account for. In her tangled hair he saw grass, bits of leaves, twigs. Her eyes shone as Gulliver’s had when struck by light in the dark. Bright blank circles.
“I hoped this was a dream. A nightmare.” Her voice spun upward. “But it’s been, like, two days.” She sobbed. “It won’t end!”
He thought he recognized her, under the dirt on her face, and even as he rejected the notion it weakened him. Voice rasping, he asked, “Who are you?”
An appalling giggle cut off the sobs. “Oh, I’ve changed. I guess you don’t know me anymore.” Nodding like a child sure of her lessons, she said, “I know why I’m like this. The red monster did this to me. But I also ... I also did it.”
The girl was no longer standing but, in a twinkling, beside him on her knees. She batted the flashlight out of his hand, but Falahey had already seen enough close up, and he gasped. He did know her. He was able to see now that her eyes were green. A vivid green, and somehow blazing. The invisible stone fingers squeezed hard, inside both his chest and his left arm, and breathing came hard. This was not just the pain of grief or fear.
He was feeble, as if chained in a dream of demons. Was he hallucinating? Unconscious? Was he dead? Were they both in hell?
“I’m sorry about little Gulliver. I didn’t want to kill him,” the girl said. She had started to speak indistinctly, as if her mouth were deformed. “I’m sorry about everything. But I have to do it.” She bent to his neck, and through his building agony he felt the hot stabbing. He couldn’t lift his stick. Dropping it, he groped at his throat, brushing the girl’s cold face with his knuckles, finally snaring the thin neck-chains and dragging out their pendants. The nitro container wasn’t what he was seeking. It was irrelevant now. He gripped his crucifix and laid it on her lip, groaning, “God help me!”
The girl broke off and looked up, the blood on her mouth and chin black in the gloom. Fishing about her collar, she pulled out her own crucifix. “I have one, too. Can you see?” Her voice was still blurry. “It should burn me. But it doesn’t.”
Yes, he could see, thanks to the diffused glow of the flashlight, off in the weeds. He could see her fangs, also. Two inches long. Distorting her speech ...
As if a film had jump-cut, she was at his throat once more.
She heard the stuttering of his heart; her sharpened senses communicated his distress; but the smell and taste of blood overwhelmed all.
Falahey knew he would have no priest, that he would die unshriven. But his mind cast up words that he struggled to utter through his pain: “O my God, I am heartily sorry ... for having offended Thee, and I detest ... all my sins, because ... ’cause ... oh ...”
The moment his attacker heard his heart stop, she ceased feeding. “Holy Mary!” she cried. “No! My God, I am sorry! But I know I’m damned! I can’t be forgiven!”
Again she wept, beating the ground with her fists. Rocks shattered with the impact.
The girl had been unmentored upon entering second life, and it didn’t occur to her that there was one thing she could do for her lifetime neighbor Dr. Falahey who had given her a boxed set of Anne of Green Gables on her twelfth birthday.
Frank Falahey was unconscious but his brain was intact, and he dwelt still, as people do for a time despite the stopping of their heart. But maybe Dr. Falahey, if he could have offered an opinion, would have chosen this death over the other thing.
Soon his life in the world did end, as she knelt weeping; and he flew wherever souls fly.
The girl stood and used the cloth of her burial gown to wipe tears and blood from her face.
She vanished. The air moved, in a momentary breath that lifted fallen leaves and caused blossoms to nod.
If anyone living had remained at the space of weeds and wild flowers and dead creatures, he would have heard her crying out, her voice diminishing fast across Agnus Wood. “Unforgivable! ... Unforgivable!”
© 2021 S.V. Florian