Rare Lansdale Page 25

  The car drove off.

  Mr. Vesty put his hand at the boy’s back, said, “Good, luck. And don’t come back here. No one will answer the door.”

  All about, boys were running wild, naked, with sticks and stones. Fighting each other. One child lay on the ground with his eye poked out, the stick that had done the deed was still in his face. He quivered and groaned, finally lay still.

  Smoke rose up in the distance.

  “But, I’m not a fighter,” the boy said.

  “You better try and be. This place is about survivors”

  Mr. Vesty stepped briskly behind the boy, and placing his foot to the seat of the child’s pants, shoved him face down into the dirt.

  Mr. Vesty stepped back inside the bunker, and closed the door.

  The boy rose up on hands and knees. His nose was bloody where it had scraped the ground. From his four point position, he saw a clutch of grinning, yelling boys, all of them carrying sticks and clubs, rushing right for him.

  Copyright (c) 2006 by Joe R. Lansdale. All rights reserved.

  IT WASHED UP

  In the moonlight, in the starlight, the churning waves seemed white with laundry soap. They crashed against the shore and the dark rocks there, and when they rolled back they left wads of seaweed and driftwood and all the tossed garbage and chunks of sewage that man had given the sea.

  All the early night and into the midnight hour, the junk washed up, and then, a minute past one, when the sea rolled out and took its laundry soap waves with it, a wad of seaweed from which clinging water dripped like shiny pearls, moved. It moved and it stood up and the shiny pearls of water rolled over the seaweed, and the sewage clung tight and the thing took shape, and the shape was that of a man, featureless and dark and loose as the wind.

  The seaweed and sewage man, gone shiny from the pearl drops of sea foam, walked toward town, and in the town it heard the clang and clatter of automobiles out on the brightly lit street, and it saw the street from its position in a dark alley, watched the cars zoom by and heard the people shout, and it chose to stick to the dark.

  It went along the dark alley and turned down an even more narrow and darker alley, and walked squishing along that path until it came to the back of a theater where an old man with a harmonica and a worn-out hat sat on a flattened cardboard box and played a bluesy tune until he saw the thing from the ocean shuffle up.

  The thing twisted its head when the music stopped, stood over the man, reached out and took the hat from the man's head and put it on its own. Startled, the man stood, and when he did, the thing from the ocean snatched his harmonica. The man broke and ran.

  The thing put the harmonica in its mouth and blew, and out came a toneless sound, and then it blew again, and it was a better sound this time; it was the crash of the sea and the howl of the wind. It started walking away, blowing a tune, moving its body to a boogie-woogie rhythm and a two-step slide, the moves belying the sound coming from the instrument, but soon sound and body fell in line, swaying to the music, blowing harder, blowing wilder. The notes swept through the city like bats in flight.

  And out into the light went the thing from the ocean, and it played and it played, and the sound was so loud cars slammed together and people quit yelling, and pretty soon they were lining up behind the thing from the ocean, and the thing played even louder, and those that fell in line behind it moved as it moved, with a boogie-woogie rhythm and a two-step slide.

  Those who could not walk pushed the wheels of their wheel chairs, or gave their electric throttles all the juice, and there were even cripples in alleyways who but minutes before had been begging for money, who bounced along on crutches, and there were some without crutches, and they began to crawl, and the dogs and the cats in the town followed suit, and soon all that was left in the town were those who could not move at all, the infants in their cribs, the terminally sick, and the deaf who couldn't hear the tune, and the thing from the ocean went on along and all of the townspeople managed after.

  It went out of the town and down to the shore, and over the rocks and into the sea, and with its head above water, it rode the waves out, still playing its tune, and the people and animals from the town went in after, and it took hours for them to enter the ocean and go under and drown, but still the head of the thing from the sea bobbed above the waves and the strange music wailed, and soon all that had come from the town were drowned. They washed up on the beach and on the rocks, water swollen, or rock cut, and lay there in the same way that the garbage from the sea had lain.

  And finally the thing from the sea was way out now and there was just the faint sound of the music it played, and in the houses the infants who had been left could hear it, and they didn't cry as the music played, and even those who could not move, and those in comas, heard or felt the music and were stirred internally. Only the deaf were immune. And then the music ceased.

  The thing from the sea had come apart from the blast of the waves and had been spread throughout the great, deep waters, and some of the thing would wash up on the beach, and some of it would be carried far out to sea, and the harmonica sunk toward the bottom and was swallowed by a large fish thinking it was prey.

  And in the town the infants died of starvation, and so did the sick ones who could not move, and the deaf, confused, ran away, and the lights of the town blared on through day and night and in some stores canned music played and TVs in houses talked, and so it would be for a very long time.

  THE LAST OF THE HOPEFUL

  High up, on the edge of the cliff, green wings strained, gathered the wind and held it. But the breeze-bloated device did not lift the girl who wore it aloft. Two men, one old, one young, stood on either side of her, held her, served as an anchor for her lithe, brown body. They were her father and brother.

  "Will I fly like a bird, father?" the young girl asked. Her voice was weak with fear. The wind seemed to clutch the words from her mouth and toss them out over the glistening green land of Oahu.

  "No," her father said, "you will not fly like a bird and you must not try. Do not flap the wings. Let the wind rule and take you where it wants you to go. Glide. Do you understand?"

  "Yes father," she said, "I understand."

  "Good. Now tell me one more time what you know."

  "I know all the songs of our people. I know all the hulas. I know where we lived and how it was when we lived our own way and were not controlled by others. I know all of this. I know of all the things before the coming of Kamehameha."

  "You are the last of us, daughter. You are the last of our hope. I have long expected this day, dreamed once that we would be driven here and forced over the side, down to death on the rocks. But in the dream we did not scream, and we will not scream this day."

  "And the bird, father," the young boy said.

  "Yes, and there was a great bird in the sky, green and brown, and I came to understand what it meant. This day could not be avoided, but there was still hope for our people. That is why I built the wings and taught you all these things, some are things that women have never been taught before."

  "But maybe," the young girl said, "it was only a bird in your dream-a real bird."

  The old man shook his head. "No."

  "Perhaps it was my brother?"

  "No. You are the lightest, you are our hope. If the wings bear anyone, it is you, the daughter of the king."

  "Maybe we will win this day and there will be no need."

  The old man smiled grimly. "Then you will not fly and things will be as they were, but I do not expect that. The time of our people has come to an end, but you will carry our thoughts, our dreams, our hopes with you."

  The young girl’s long black hair whipped in the wind. "Oh father, let me die with you. I do not want to be the only one left, the only one of us still alive."

  "While you live," her brother said softly, "while you hold all the old songs and stories to your heart, we all live and we will never die. Somehow, someway, you must pass these things on."
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  "But there are none left to pass them to," the young girl said.

  "The war will end this day," her father said. "You must make a boat in the manner I have taught you, sail to one of the other islands and wait until the hate and fear have died. Then return. You will find a young man among them, one too young to know their hate, and he will give you children and you will teach them the ways of our people. Not so that these things will rule again, for that time is passed, but so that the memory of us will not die."

  "Hold me," she said.

  Brother and father pulled closer.

  Down below, moving up toward the cliff, came the sound of battle, the cries of men, the smashing of clubs against clubs and clubs against flesh.

  "These wings," the old man said, "they will make you a goddess in the sun. You will soar over the valley and turn with the wind toward the sea, and down there, far from them, you can hide."

  "Yes father." The wind strained at the wings, tried to lift the girl up.

  "Lift the wings," her father said.

  She did as he asked.

  The sound of yelling warriors was very close.

  From where they stood, the trio could see a fine line of brown warriors falling back, being forced toward the edge of the cliff.

  "Soon," the old man said, "we go over the cliff with the others."

  "But not before we fight," said the boy. He looked into the face of his sister. "You are the last of the hopeful. Carry our hope far and wide."

  Tears were in her eyes. "I will."

  The warriors were very close now. You could smell the sweat of battle, feel the heat of hate and anger.

  "Ride the wind," the old man said.

  She turned to look out over the beautiful green valley. She spread the wings. The wind billowed them.

  "You must go now," her brother said.

  "Our hopes go with you," her father said.

  And they released her into the wind.

  It was a powerful wind. It caught the great green wings and pulled her up and out over the valley. For a moment her father and brother watched, then, picking up their war clubs, they turned to join the last of the battle.

  A moment later, along with the rest of the warriors, the old man, who was known to his people as King Kalanikupule, went over the cliff and down into the green valley without a scream.

  And moving out over the valley, slave to the wind, went his daughter.

  Kamehameha, the sweat and blood of war coating his body, watched her soar.

  Clubs were tossed at her, but all fell short.

  The wind whipped her up high again, and then seemed to let go.

  She plummeted like a stone.

  But only for a moment, an updraft caught her, took her up again, and even as the victorious forces of Kamehameha stood on the cliff’s edge and watched in awe, the slim brown girl glided down and over the tree tops, around their edge toward the shore line, shining in the sun like a great, green and brown bird before coasting behind tall trees and out of sight.

  On the wind, for a brief instant, there floated the sound of her sweet, hopeful laughter.

  © 1997 Joe R. Lansdale.

  "The Last of the Hopeful" was originally published in The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent, a collection of Lansdale’s short stories published by Subterranean Press.

  LISTEN

  The psychiatrist wore blue, the color of Merguson’s mood.

  "Mr.... uh?" the psychiatrist asked.

  "Merguson. Floyd Merguson."

  "Sure, Mr...."

  "Merguson."

  "Right. Come into the office."

  It was a sleek office full of sleek black chairs the texture of a lizard’s underbelly. The walls were decorated with paintings of explosive color; a metal-drip sculpture resided on the large walnut desk. And there was the couch, of course, just like in the movies. It was a chocolate-brown with throw-pillows at each end. It looked as if you could drift down into it and disappear in its softness.

  They sat in chairs, however. The psychiatrist on his side of the desk, Merguson on the client’s side. The psychiatrist was a youngish man with a fine touch of premature white at the temples. He looked every inch the intelligent professional. "Now" the psychiatrist said, "what exactly is your problem?"

  Merguson fiddled his fingers, licked his lips, and looked away.

  "Come on, now. You came here for help, so let’s get started."

  "Well," Merguson said cautiously. "No one takes me seriously."

  "Tell me about it."

  "No one listens to me. I can’t take it anymore. Not another moment. I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t get help. Sometimes I just want to yell out, Listen to me! "

  Merguson leaned forward and said confidentially, "Actually, I think it’s a disease. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but I believe it is, and I believe I’m approaching the terminal stage of the illness. I got this theory that there are people others don’t notice, that they’re almost invisible. There’s just something genetically wrong with them that causes them to go unnoticed. Like a little clock that ticks inside them, and the closer it gets to the hour hand the more unnoticed these people become.

  "I’ve always had the problem of being shy and introverted–and that’s the first sign of the disease. You either shake it early or you don’t. If you don’t, it just grows like cancer and consumes you. With me the problem gets worse every year, and lately by the moment.

  "My wife, she used to tell me it’s all in my head, but lately she doesn’t bother. But let me start at the first, when I finally decided I was ill, that the illness was getting worse and that it wasn’t just in my head, not some sort of complex.

  "Just last week I went to the butcher, the butcher I been going to for ten years. We were never chummy, no one has ever been chummy to me but my wife, and she married me for my money. I was at least visible then; I mean you had to go to at least some effort to ignore me, but my God, it’s gotten worse...

  "I’m off the track. I went to the butcher, asked him for some choice cuts of meat. Another man comes in while I’m talking to him and asks for a pound of hamburger. Talks right over me, mind you. What happens? You guessed it. The butcher starts shooting the breeze with the guy, wraps up a pound of hamburger and hands it over to him!

  "I ask him about my order and he says, ‘Oh, I forgot.’"

  Merguson lit a cigarette and held it between unsteady fingers after a long deep puff. "I tell you, he waited on three other people before he finally got to me, and then he got my order wrong, and I must have told him three times, at least.

  "It’s more than I can stand, Doc. Day after day people not noticing me, and it’s getting worse all the time. Yesterday I went to a movie and I asked for a ticket and it happened. I mean I went out completely, went transparent, invisible. I mean completely. This was the first time. The guy just sits there behind the glass, like he’s looking right through me. I asked him for a ticket again. Nothing. I was angry, I’ll tell you. I just walked right on toward the door. Things had been getting me down bad enough without not being about to take off and go to a movie and relax. I thought I’d show him. Just walk right in. Then they’d sell me a ticket.

  "No one tried to stop me. No one seemed to know I was there. I didn’t bother with the concession stand. No one would have waited on me anyway.

  "Well, that was the first time of the complete fadeouts. And I remember when I was leaving the movie, I got this funny idea. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I swear to you, Doc, on my mother’s grave, there wasn’t an image in the mirror. I gripped the sink to keep upright, and when I looked up again I was fading in, slowly. Well, I didn’t stick around to see my face come into view. I left there and went straight home.

  "That afternoon was the corker. My wife, Connie, I know she’s been seeing another man. Why not? She can’t see me. And when she can I don’t have the presence of a one-watt bulb. I came home from the movie and she’s all dressed up and talking on the phone.


  "I say, ‘Who you talking to?’"

  Merguson crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the psychiatrist’s desk. "Doesn’t say doodly squat, Doc. Not a word. I’m mad as hell. I go upstairs and listen on the extension. It’s a man, and they’re planning a date.

  "I broke in over the line and started yelling at them. Guess what? The guy says, ‘Do you hear a buzzing or something or other?’ ‘No,’ she says. And they go right on with their plans.

  "I was in a homicidal rage. I went downstairs and snatched the phone out of her hand and threw it across the room. I wrecked furniture and busted up some lamps and expensive pottery. Just made a general wreck out of the place.

  "She screamed then, Doc. I tell you she screamed good. But then she says the thing that makes me come here. ‘Oh God,’ she says. ‘Ghost! Ghost in this house!’