For those who remember -- or those
who never even knew -- the long ago
best-selling writing team of John Skipp & Craig Spector [1983-1993]
helped usher in a bold and brash new generation of horror, and
in their own bent way forever changed the face of ModAmHoFic (or,
Modern American Horror Fiction.)
Most of their work is currently
out of print, but exclusively here you can now read Chapter
One of Skipp & Spector's sixth (and last) novel, ANIMALS, which
first was first published by Bantam Books.
Currently in development as a feature film, ANIMALS is a feral take
on the classic werewolf mythos... except this time, the wolves hang
out in smokey roadhouse blues bars. They're extremely attractive,
extremely promiscuous, and exteremely psychotic, and they like to
make each insanely jealous by hunting and picking up unsuspecting
human prey, who begin the night with wild debauched sex and usually
end up hideously torn apart and eaten. So, it's really a story about
relationships...
There was something large and wet and dead
in the middle of the road.
"Damn," Syd muttered, easing up on the gas,
slowing rapidly to a 35 mph crawl. He just thanked God he had the road to himself,
no hellbent crystal meth-crazed eighteen-wheelers on his tail. There wasn't
much reaction time, coming around the bend at highway speed. Most animals learned
the hard way, and this one had been no exception.
From seven yards away and closing, he tried to identify
the remains. They glistened in the wash of his headlights, mashed and splayed
across the center line of the curving mountain pass. A good-sized deer? A very
large dog? It was impossible to say.
He'd gotten pretty good, over the years, at playing "Name
That Roadkill"; you learned to check for size and coloration, the shape
of the head and tail. But the head appeared to be gone entirely, and there
was nothing in the mangled mass that vaguely resembled a tail. The big rigs
that rumbled through these hills at night had really outdone themselves this
time, he mused. By the first light of dawn, there was nothing left for him
to go on. Just a big fur-covered speed bump, stuffed with bloody animal pate‘.
Syd grimaced, swerving mostly out of deference to
the deceased. Driving over roadkill was a little too much like dancing on a
grave. Not for the first time, he wondered just what in the hell that thing
could have been thinking: what force or impulse drove it from the sanctuary
of the woods, to such a stupid and ignominious end?
His tires bit on the gravel on the narrow shoulder,
and then it was behind him, leaving Syd once again alone with his thoughts
and the slow unwind of Mt. Haversford Road. Soft and lonely blues on the '65
Mustang's Hitachi stereo. Pale blue-white Camel smoke, unfiltered, curling
around the dust motes in the air. It was just another blue-gray 5:45 in the
ayem, cruising the two-lane blacktop ribbon that gift-wrapped this stiff-backed
Pennsylvania ridge, the faint muzzy thrum of a hangover dulling his customary
appreciation of the valley below.
Heat blasted out from the defroster vents. It wasn't
quite enough. These days, he wore a battered flight jacket and long johns to
help ward off the fierce winter chill. His thick dark hair was tousled, his
strong ruddy face unshaven. He had a sleep potato nestled in the corner of
one eye, and a coffee mug wedged between his blue-jeaned thighs. The cup said
shit happens. He suspected poor Bambi -- or Fido, or whatever -- would concur.
He had no problem with the drive itself, forty-five
minutes of clear sailing through familiar countryside. He loved these woods,
these lonely roads, this panoramic overview. It was dragging his ass out of
bed every morning that was starting to pose some difficulties for him.
Ah, life, as his pal Jules liked to say. How it do
go on.
Syd felt his emotional index take a dip toward depression. "Nuh-uh," he
said. "Not today, li'l' buddy." He leaned forward to crank up the
tunes. Queen Bee's "Every Night, About This Time" filled the car:
a deep, rich, dark chocolate voice from Heaven. Her band would be playing at
Chameleon’s tonight. It gave him the strength to go on.
Syd Barrett was thirty-four years old -- would be
thirty-five, in less than a week -- but the discontent was nothing new. He'd
been born with an itch at the back of his brain that he'd never quite figured
out just how to scratch. Not that he hadn't experimented around some. In fact,
it was kind of a lifelong pursuit.
He remembered first cruising these same back roads
as a sixteen year-old, downing quarts of National Bohemian in the back of Fritz's
Pinto wagon with about eight other guys. You could barely get the bottle up
to your lips in the sea of other peoples' lit cigarettes, bottles, faces, elbows,
sweaty armpits and backs. It was like some bizarre frathouse shenanigan --
one of those old-fashioned collegiate phones booths, stuffed with old-fashioned
drunken collegiate assholes -- only underage, undereducated, and set on burnin'
wheels. A moveable feast of fragrant, jostling, bellowing buffoons.
When Fritz brought the Pinto to Dead Man’s Curve
at a rattling, shimmying ninety per, what with everybody screaming, that would
almost scratch the itch.
But all those great teenage excuses dried up with
the end of his j.d. status, and 1975 marked his personal watershed point. That
was the year Marc Pankowski sent poor sweet Kimberly Myers face-first through
his windshield, just three weeks before their graduation day. From that point
on, teenage drinking and driving became something of a local community crusade.
Coupled with the nationwide success of M.A.D.D., that was pretty much all she
wrote.
That summer was Syd's first experience with random
checkpoints, spot searches, and mandatory curfews. He discovered very quickly
that it was hard to scratch the itch when you were handcuffed in the back seat
of a police cruiser.
(He remembered, also, the first time his old man had
to come to pick him up at the township station. They'd been frying Syd's ass
for an hour and a half over half an ounce of Mexican and a bottle of Bali Hai:
without a doubt the worst wine in human history, the Hawaiian Punch of intoxicants.
The cold blue-gray of his father's eyes had notched him like steel in that
moment. Marked him for life. "Get ready for a world of shit," his
old man had said. And then taken him home…)
That was almost half his life ago. Which, when he
stopped to think about it, really kinda sucked. He didn't think he looked that
old -- he sure as hell didn’t feel that old -- and hoped to God he never
would.
But, damn, did he ever feel tired sometimes.
As in, maybe, tired of being alone…
And that, of course, made him think about Karen, which
was no way at all to start your day. Just the thought of her now had the magic
power to vacuum-pack every last speck of his joy. Like striking a match in
deepest space, or pulling a hair out by the root. Her effect on him was instantaneous.
All he had to do was imagine her face.
Not that he felt the need to flagellate himself, whip
up a little pity party of one. He'd had a year, since the breakup, to acquire
some perspective. In his more depressive moments -- which he'd learned to cope
with pretty well, though they still came around with oppressive frequency --
well, sure: it seemed like everything Syd had ever wanted out of life, or ever
tried to hang onto, was either mortally wounded or already dead; and, yeah,
now that you mentioned it, everything he'd hoped to maybe change in this life
was hanging on emphatically, determined to outlast him. No matter how badly
he wanted a thing.
No matter how hard he tried.
He had failed to hold his marriage together. He had
failed to stave off financial disaster. Despite his deep and abiding love of
music, he would never have a singing voice to rival Jim Nabors, much less Cab
Calloway, or even Root Boy Slim. And he couldn't get out of -- nor do anything
to save -- this nearly dead and clearly decomposing one-horse town.
Not to mention the fact that he wasn't getting any
younger.
And that he was so awfully goddamned tired of being
alone…
"Whoa-ho-ho!" He caught himself, psychically
teetering at the brink. "Whoa, Nellie! No no no no!" If he let himself
go, it was a long way down; that much, he knew from painful experience. The
steep cliff to his right, overlooking the valley, wasn't any more precarious
for all its physicality. At least it came with its own guard rail.
Depression didn't have one; and what was even scarier,
depression came on like your best drinkin' buddy and oldest, dearest friend
-- the only one who really knew you, would tell you the honest truth about
yourself. Indeed, whenever Syd got the urge to anthropomorphize, for clarity's
sake, he always pictured the character of Depression as his ol' pal: the legendary
Marc Pankowski.
In high school, Marc had been Mr. Popularity: handsome,
glib, and well-to-do. His folks, in fact, were incredibly well-heeled: their
fortunes built well before their time, in the steel industry's historical heyday.
If Marc had any real disadvantages, they would have been his height (5'1"),
his laziness (in the upper percentiles), and his underlying conviction that
other people were just plain inferior (which rated somewhere way the hell off
the scale).
But nobody seemed to sweat much over those little
details. Somehow, he always managed to swing passing grades. And making friends
had never been a real problem. He had, after all, so much to offer.
So by his junior year, Marc had pretty much decided
that he didn't actually need a personality anymore. He had a real DeLorean
-- fresh off the assembly line, before the cocaine scandal -- to go with his
brand-new driver's license. He also, ironically, had cultivated a real taste
for coke and other extravagant drugs, so he always kept plenty on hand. All
of which virtually guaranteed him not only a date on Saturday night, but a
passel of big guys to back him up when his mouth got him in trouble.
Which began to happen with increasing frequency, yielding
increasingly unpleasant results. Because the fact was that Marc's personality
hadn't so much vanished as atrophied. It hadn't gone away. It had just gone
bad.
As the sincerity vanished from his remaining social
graces -- and as the stories of his behavior began to spread -- the nature
of his popularity changed as well. People getting date-raped or beaten up at
parties didn't sit real well with a lot of kids. And the fact that he never
got nailed for any of it only heaped injustice on the growing pile of resentment
that many were feeling toward him.
When Marc totalled his DeLorean late one night, he
had three of his buddies along for the ride. All three ended up in the emergency
room at Montgomery Hospital, although only one, Baxter Calley, actually made
it onto the critical list. Baxter had been a pretty okay fellow, when he wasn't
so coked he could barely speak; but the fucked-up, goggle-eyed brain damage
case that crutched home to the Calley clan five months later had more stitches
in him than a major league baseball. And the headaches that came with that
plate in his head made his new personality somewhat less than okay.
Marc, of course, emerged from the wreckage utterly
unscathed. A couple of scratches. That was it. And with his family keeping
any whiff of scandal out of the papers, it was almost as if the whole thing
had never happened.
Except for the fact that everyone knew: at least everyone
in school, and that was more than enough. The worm had turned, as did most
of his friends, including the tough guys who had paid out his slack in the
past. Suddenly, Marc was one majorly ostracized, roundly villified, extremely
unpopular little high school student.
Enter poor sweet Kimberly Myers.
Nobody knew exactly what he'd said to her, or what
secret resources of guile and persuasion he'd employed on his own behalf. But
within the month, Marc Pankowski had scored perhaps the most impressive young
slice of womanhood in the entire senior class. Kimberly wasn't the class valedictorian,
or the head of the cheerleading squad; but she was both athletic and cerebral
-- was, in fact, both a cheerleader and an honor student -- in addition to
being friendly, cheerful, thrifty, brave, and genuinely drop-dead gorgeous.
(Syd had almost gone out with her once -- which was
to say, he'd almost mustered up the nerve to even ask her -- and he didn't
know a single guy who didn't have at least a Titanic-sized crush on that girl.)
Now, seemingly overnight, Kim Myers had become the
official spokesperson for Marc Pankowski. He was totally, tragically misunderstood,
she told everyone who would listen. Since the accident, he had really changed.
He was so sorry about what had happened. And all he wanted was a chance to
prove that he was really a decent person underneath.
That he was -- ultimately -- a victim, too.
In lesser hands, the story would have sunk like a
stone. But Kimberly had the courage of her convictions. She'd fallen in love
with him, after all; and she certainly was no fool. So public opinion was begrudgingly
swayed; and Marc, for his part, played the role of the sad-eyed penetant for
all it was worth.
That lasted for about a month. By that time, the pr
battle had been won; and with Kim still vouching for him, his old slack was
back as well. It didn't take long to restore the same uneasy balance he'd held
before: buying allegiance with good drugs and money, fooling most of the people
at least part of the time.
Right up until that fateful night -- three days before
graduation -- when Marc missed a critical curve on Rt. 79 and spun his brand-new
Trans Am into a violent three-sixty, which terminated abruptly upon slamming
into a utilities pole at roughly seventy miles per hour.
Once again, there'd been three other passengers.
Once again, Marc got away clean: a couple of bruises,
a broken rib.
But this time, poor sweet Kimberly Myers had been
keeping the death seat nice and warm. And when her face had exploded through
the Trans Am's windshield -- launching a hailstorm of glistening, red-tinged
safety glass cubes and wet, jagged bone -- there were not enough sutures and
skull-plates in the world to put it all back together.
This time, his parents couldn't keep it out of the
papers. And this time, there was no one left to argue his case. In the resulting
typhoon of negative publicity, Marc Pankowski learned what it was like for
a man to be despised in his own lifetime. On top of that, he was essentially
disowned: cut off at a pittance, with no real hope of coming back.
But that was not the worst of it.
The worst of it was this:
Marc Pankowski was still around. Not dead. Not missing.
Not halfway around the world, bravely trying to start his life over again.
Sure, he'd tried to leave once, heading out for Colorado with some vague idea
of "getting into massage"; but the sheer gravitational pull of his
crime had him back in town in six weeks flat.
He hung out at Chameleon's now, at least three nights
a week, nodding his head in time to the music and scrounging up drinks as best
he could. His once-handsome features were the worse for the wear, done in by
hair loss, drug use and soul-rot. His face had grown longer, his dark eyes
more beady. All those little yellow teeth had just completed the effect.
Syd had seen it a million times. To paraphrase ol'
Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator: once a man reaches thirty-five, he's responsible
for all of the lines on his face. As the layers of youthful resiliency and
innocence got worn away by Time, the outer face was slowly carved into an image
that mirrored the inner life.
The older Marc got, the more he looked like a weasel.
Living proof, to Syd, that there was in fact a God.
And every so often, if you hung out in bars as much
as Syd did, Marc would try to come up and talk to you. But only -- and this
was the key point -- if he saw that you were down. Like a moth to the flame
of sorrow, like a bat in a lightless cave, he could single you out from across
the room. He was tuned to the frequency.
First, he'd happen to pass you, on his way to the
bathroom, and he'd ask you how you were doing. If that went over -- if you
gave him anything more than an absent wave that distinctly said leave me alone
-- he would seize the opportunity to lever a way in. His favorite jimmy was
the phrase "I know what you mean". It was a multi-purpose tool.
If you said, for example, "fine" -- nothing
else; no "thanks" or "how 'bout yourself?"; simply "fine" --
but there was the tiniest trace of sadness, or courage, or mock cheerfulness
somewhere buried in your tone, Marc would stop for a second. Cock his head
knowingly. Then look straight into your eyes and say, "I know what you
mean."
On the way back from the bathroom, he would smile
as he passed your table. That would sort of guarantee that you continued to
be aware of him. When he got to his seat, he would look at you, to make sure
that you knew where he was sitting. If you were looking, he'd nod and smile.
If you weren't, he'd bide his time.
About fifteen to twenty minutes later, Marc would
swing by your table again. This time, he'd employ the ever-popular "Band
Gambit": a time-tested conversational ploy. If it looked like you were
into the music, he'd say, "Band's really smokin' tonight!" If it
looked like you really weren't into the music, he'd say, "Band really
sucks!" If you took the bait, he was in like Flynt. All he needed was
one little opening.
If that didn't work, on his way back from the bathroom,
he would ask you if you needed something from the bar. He was on his way there
anyway, it wasn't a problem. Again, he would nail you with that understanding
look.
And suddenly you'd realize, once and for all, that
this guy was attuned to your unhappiness. He knew what it was like. And he
was only trying to help, to help you through it, whatever gets you thru the
night.
And at that point, it would dawn on you that THIS
MIGHT JUST BE THE GUY to commiserate with on the nature of your immediate personal
pain.
This was Marc Pankowski's hope.
It was, in fact, his one last driving ambition.
Because Marc was a psychic scavenger, and he fed off
your despair. He could only get close to you when you were weak; and, so, he
would encourage that weakness, urging you to open yourself to him under the
guise of warm supportiveness. In the process, he would naturally pick up the
first round; and if you were buying, he'd be happy to drink with you all night.
Urging you to get it all off your chest. Unload all your secret desires and
shames. Unburden yourself of the pain of aloneness.
I know exactly what you mean.
And if you let him follow you home, either to crash
on your couch or to sleep in your bed -- a mistake more than one lonely woman
had made -- he would be there the next day. And the day after that. He would
hang around as long as you let him, drop in when you least expected, call you
at work, wake you up at night, sit behind you at the movies and corral you
in the bar until you finally just told him to get the fuck out of your life…
To Syd, depression was an awful lot like that.
There was a gust of chill winter wind. It buffeted
the car, bit through the cracked window vent, sliced through the heat blasting
from his defrosters. Syd realized that he'd been driving on Automatic Pilot
for God only knew how long, letting his mind wander while his body drove to
work.
He checked his speed. It had dipped down to forty.
He looked at his watch. 5:55.
Shit.
The road ahead curved to the right, as the steep ravines
gave way to a thickly wooded descent. It was the home stretch: punch it a little,
and he just might still have a job when he got there. He downshifted and pressed
on the gas, heading into the curve.
And that was when the doe appeared, in a blur of frenzied
motion: haunches dark and glistening, eyes wild as it closed on the side of
the road. For one panicked, frozen moment, it balked at the sight of the Mustang.
Syd's foot instinctively jumped from the gas to the brakes.
Then he thought he saw something else emerge from
the woods, something huge, and the deer darted desperately into the road. Syd’s
heart ballooned. He tried to swerve clear. The doe went wump against the passenger
side, then off. Syd ratcheted the wheel, staring into the rearview mirror,
swinging wide as he rounded the curve.
And right into the path of an oncoming truck.
"FUCK!" he barked, knuckles white against
the wheel. The truck was a ancient flatbed, twenty feet away and closing on
the steep upgrade. He slammed on the brakes and countersteered, seesawing the
wheel to the right. Ten feet. The car started to fishtail. Five feet. His heart
constricted like piano wire. He countered-steered again. And there was no time.
Four. As he veered toward the shoulder.
Three. And the guard rail loomed huge in his eyes.
Two. As his life whipped like flash cards before him.
One…
…and it was amazing, how time opened up, in
the very last second before the end. A terrible slow motion crawl. The old
man, behind the wheel of the truck, eyes bulging in terror beneath his faded
Steelers cap. Syd's own last desperate, inarticulate howl.
The truck, grinding inexorably forward…
…and then time shot back to normal with a squealing
of tires, a shower of gravel, and a great cloud of dust. Syd piloted blind
for a second, riding out the fishtail effect before bringing the Mustang to
a final, grinding halt on the shoulder of the road.
For a minute, he just sat there, still gripping the
wheel: listening to his blood pounding huge in his ears, feeling the slam of
his hyper-adrenalated heart. It was a seismic sensation, like an earthquake
in his chest. It hurt like a bastard, yes.
But it meant that he was still alive.
Syd threw off the seat belt, legs wobbling as he slowly
got out of the car. The truck, of course, kept right on going. Cocksucker.
What a surprise. The coffee mug had gone flying, in the heat of the moment,
soaking his pants from crotch to knee and making it look like he'd peed himself.
shit happens. That was for goddam sure.
He found himself taking a deep halting breath, and
thanked God for the ongoing privelege.
Then he went around to the passenger side.
And got his first look at all that blood.
It started as just a little splash on the right headlight,
ballooned into a football-sized splotch on the right front quarterpanel that
gave way to a runny red smear, sliding back across the door and away. Like
an absent-minded brush stroke, or a guilt-ridden finger. Pointing back at his
inadvertent handiwork.
"Oh god," Syd groaned. He squinted down
the length of the road and spotted it: a russet-colored heap, half-obscured
by underbrush, some thirty yards back on the flip side of the guard rail and
fifteen feet below, where the ground sloped down to the edge of the woods .
It looked like it might be twitching a little; but with the wind, and at this
distance, it was hard to be sure.
Oh, man, it’s all messed up, the voice of his
conscience informed him. Aw, fuck. Judging solely by the damage to the car
-- a little concave ding, at the heart of the splotch -- it looked like he
had only clipped it.
But that didn't begin to explain all the blood.
When it kicked again, clearly this time, Syd knew
that he had no choice. He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. His hangover
throbbed behind them, dull counterpoint to the queasy oil slick in his innards.
He didn't want to do this. That wasn't the point.
Wearily, his pants legs sticking, he went back around
the front of the car, leaned in the driver's side, turned off the headlights
and removed the keys. Suddenly, it was incredibly quiet. Just the jingling
of the keys, the rustling of his clothes. Off to the right, something moved
very quickly past. He looked up, saw nothing. A bird flew by. He took the keys,
still jingling, around to the back of the car and opened the trunk, rooting
around in the junk and clutter inside until his hand closed on cold, unforgiving
metal.
Then he took the tire iron, slammed the trunk shut,
and walked slowly back in the direction of the deer.
The morning breeze was chill and steady. He found
it strangely bracing. He was sweating under his thermals, hadn't realized how
much. His coffee-soaked pants were both sticky and freezing. He tried not to
think about it. As he walked, he tried to remain focused on his stride, the
loose swing of his arms. He tried to keep his breathing deep and even, threw
his shoulders back to keep them from tensing up around him. There were a lot
of things he didn't need to think about right now, little voices he could not
afford to let in. But it's not my fault. But I'll be late for work. But I didn't
mean to do it. They were chickenshit voices, Marc Pankowskis of the mind. They
were the last thing in the fucking world he needed to hear right now.
The sun had climbed in the last ten minutes, was slowly
peeling back the shadows. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly as he walked.
The tire iron was ice cold and heavy in his hand. He switched it from right
to left, flexed and unflexed his stiffening fingers. The undergrowth had grown
more dense, on the other side of the guard rail. He tried to peer through it,
get a glimpse of the deer. He couldn't. Weird. He looked harder, uneasy now,
scanning for chinks in the foliage as he continued. The deer had been laying
very close to here, he knew. It had to be right around here somewhere.
Then he saw the blood on the guard rail, another delicate
brush stroke of gore, a little red arrow pointing into the thicket. He looked
back over his shoulder at the empty road. His car looked very small, and very
far away. You don't have to do this, said a voice in his head, as if it had
the power to absolve him.
He went over the guard rail, down the steep ten foot
embankment. The road disappeared above his head. He skidded on his heels down
the dirt and gravel incline, braced himself once with his free right hand,
lost a little skin on the heel of his palm. The undergrowth rose to meet him.
He parted it with his feet, slid further, briefly touched off an evergreen
sapling with his left hand, the tire iron, continued to slide. Beyond the first
wave of foliage, the slope continued at a slightly less harsh angle, carpeted
in dry grass maybe two inches tall. It felt crisp in the cold, buckling under
his soles.
The woods began less than ten feet beyond. Gray light
penetrated its first line of defense in patches, surrounded by darkness. He
got his footing, took two rapid steps forward, stopped dead. Sucked his breath
in sharply.
The deer was gone.
Syd exhaled, shallow, took a half-dozen rapid breaths
in the space of the next four seconds. His lungs ached, and his head felt suddenly
light. The deer was gone. He blinked. It didn't change a thing. Blood, a large
quantity of it, lay pooling and soaking into the pine needles that carpeted
the frozen ground. Syd hunkered down beside it. A few tufts of amber fur were
stuck wanly to its surface.
"Oh, man…" His left hand throbbed.
He stood, transfered the tire iron back to his right. A thick black smear led
into the trees. And the grass was bowed. As if it had crawled, or dragged itself
off.
You know you don't have to do this.
He stood there, flexing and unflexing the fingers
of his left hand. Trying to get sensation back. Reminding himself to breathe.
Look at all that blood. It's going to die. You're late for work. Get out of
here. Deep breaths. Steady. Counterbalancing the urge to hyperventilate, give
panic an inroad. No fucking way. He tried to imagine how much this animal was
suffering, took it as far as he had to. His stomach boiled and his throat constricted.
He followed the dark trail to the lip of the woods,
paused and peered inside. "Jesus," he hissed. He couldn't see anything.
Faint outlines in black. The woods were filled with tiny sounds, the whistle
of the wind. He took one hesitant step forward, stepped on a branch. It snapped,
and his flesh constricted like a single organ. His hairs stood on end. The
tire iron came up, ready.
"Jesus!" There was nothing there. At least
not anything he could see. He was starting to feel like an asshole in a horror
movie, the kind of guy who was so stupid you just couldn't wait for the monster
to kill him. The kind of guy who said shit like let's split up, or everybody
knows there's no such thing as AIEEEE…!!!, as the monster went chomp
on their head or gizzards and everybody cheered. Like that girl in THE EVIL
DEAD who conveniently stripped down to her underwear before going outside to
investigate those funny noises in the woods. "Is there anybody out there?" she
kept asking, over and over, till you wanted to stand up and yell at the screen, "WELL,
THE NAME OF THE MOVIE IS THE EVIL DEAD, HONEY! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK IS
OUT THERE…?"
But it was crazy to think like that, in real-life
terms. He wasn't at the goddam drive-in. Syd had spent a lot of time in these
woods, and as a rule, he didn’t spook easily. He knew there was
nothing much left in this region to be afraid of, unless you had some kind
of pathological aversion to rabbits or squirrels. Just about everything that
might be judged harmful to man had long since been domesticated, driven off,
or destroyed.
But here he was, exactly one footstep into the woods,
unsure of exactly how long he'd been standing there. Spacing out, like an asshole,
with a tire iron in his hand. He found that his eyes were adjusting to the
dark. He took a deep breath, deliberately unhunched his aching shoulders, took
another step forward.
His foot hit something. Something moist yet solid.
He stopped and looked down. Just off to the side of the trail of gore was a
glistening purse-shaped mass. He touched it again with his toe, and then the
wind blew the smell his way.
Suddenly, he found that he could see very well in
the dark. He could see the large severed gastric organ at his feet. He could
see where the trail of blackness led, and what lay at the end of it.
Suddenly, he understood why animals tried to escape
the woods at night.
Twenty feet away, or maybe less, the carcass of the
deer was splayed open, wet belly steaming in the chill morning breeze. All
of its innermost secrets lay exposed, gleaming faintly in the gray morning
light. Its flanks were lacerated horribly: long razored gashes in the soft
matted fur. They hadn't come from his car. They couldn't have. Its eyes were
blank, glazed and emptied of spark. Its tongue protruded, pinkish-grey and
pallid.
But that was not the worst.
The doe's corpse rocked gently back and forth, spindly
legs stiffly pawing at the air, puppeteered in death by the great creature
that now slowly fed upon it. Long snout burrowed in the soft belly organs.
Eyes closed. Ears pinned back in pleasure. Almost as though they were lovers,
locked in a slow dance both intimate and timeless. Giver and reciever. Predator
and prey.
There was a terrible beauty in the horror of the moment
that transcended his ability to tabulate it rationally. He stared, frozen,
so close he could almost taste the meat from its scent in the air.
"Oh my god," he whispered, and the wolf
raised its head.
Opened its eyes.
Staring into his soul.
And he didn't know if it was a trick of the light,
but the face of the animal before him seemed to shift: long lupine features
contracting, pulling in for a second, then spreading back out. Dark fur appear
to ripple across its features. He caught a glimmer of ivory fangs, lips peeling
back. He remembered the tire iron in his hand.
But it was the force of the eyes that held him. The
eyes remained unchanged. He could feel them bore into his own, even through
the darkness. It was that one elastic moment of truth, when a dog decides whether
it smells fear on you.
And Syd decided, in that moment, that he would not,
could not allow himself to be afraid.
The thought was an epiphany. I am not afraid. He gripped
the bar, still frozen in his combat stance. I am not afraid. A little voice
in his head, a distant fold in his brain, informed him that the idea of actually
using it was laughable, like trying to stop a Panzer tank with a toothpick.
The wolf would take his arm off before he even got a chance to swing.
It didn't matter. I am not afraid. If death was a
foregone conclusion, then fine. He accepted his death. The abandon of the damned.
He accepted the fact that he was poised, now, in the heat of a lethal duet;
and that, if it came, he would meet the wolf’s attack.
Only the wolf was not attacking.
Just watching him.
Very closely.
And he realized that something was happening here:
some kind of primal contact measured in milliseconds, in heartbeats and body
english. It was imperative to make exactly the right move: no more, no less.
Show no threat. Show no fear.
Slowly, slowly, he lowered the bar, relaxing his grip.
Never changing his expression. Never taking his eyes off the beast. Not blinking.
Not breathing. For one long moment's silence, nothing happened. Yes. "It's
okay…" he began.
And suddenly stopped.
The great wolf rose then -- slow as a striptease,
gradually revealing to him its full height -- and Syd felt a rush of perfect
terror course through him: closing his throat, sucking the air from his lungs,
undeniable and utterly outside of his control. Its eyes, when it stood, were
almost level with his throat. Its body extended back into the darkness. He
could not see its end.
But he could see every drop on its blood-flecked snout
in hyper-attenuated detail, could hear the thunder in its lungs and smell its
feral breath. For one terrible instant, the death he smelled was indistinguishable
from his own.
I am not afraid, he told himself, and tried to make
it true.
The great wolf's eyes locked on his arm, waiting.
He did not move. I am not afraid. Then it tilted its head, brought its gaze
back to his, regarding him in that moment with a curious and disarmingly canine
manner. I am I am. Its ears twitched, registering every molecular change in
the air between them. Am not afraid. And suddenly it was true.
He looked in its eyes. The wolf looked back.
For one moment, it was as if they shared a perfect
understanding.
Slowly, then, it lowered its head -- eyes still glued
to his own -- and let its jaws open wide, biting down on the breastbone of
the slaughtered deer. Its jaws were enormous. Syd could hear the soft clack
of teeth and wet bone.
The carcass came up in the wolf's maw easily, head
lolling on its gracile neck. A moist, slender loop of intestine unfurled, dropped
four feet and dangled from the open belly. It dragged and was sullied on the
blood-stained ground as the great wolf turned at last, heading back into the
woods and the deeper darkness. Disappearing first in stages, behind the trees,
then altogether. Without a trace.
Without a sound.
Leaving Syd Barrett alone, once again, with his thoughts.
Only no thoughts were forthcoming. Just the icy cold whisper of the wind through
the trees. Just the sound of his own ragged, thunderous heart. Another sound:
rising, like castanets. His own teeth, chattering. Jesus Christ. He had broken
out in a full-body sweat, pasting his thermals to his skin. But the pounding
in his head had mercifully vanished.
Get back to the car, the voice of reason told him,
before you freeze to death. Good plan. His legs were shaky as he turned and
started up the hill.
One step at a time was the way to go.
It took no more than a minute to climb the embankment,
heading back to the road, and his car, and the world. It was all right there,
where he had left it. Almost as if he had never been gone.
He wondered, picking up his pace as he walked the
narrow shoulder, if any of it had been changed, or if it was him. He wondered
what the upholstery would feel like. The grip of his steering wheel. The sound
of the blues.
A truck rolled past, on the downhill side. He was
buffeted by its shockwave, swayed slightly in its wake. He watched it rumble
around the bend, then gone. A bird flew by. A sparrow this time. It had not
flown south, for whatever reason. It would die in this cold. So shall we all.
He wondered how he felt about that perfect understanding.
He wondered if any of it would ever feel the same
again.
