American Elsewhere

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN




Comes he walking windy-ways, wandering under spruces and through canyons and across shadowy glens, hands in his pockets and head bowed as if all the weight of the world lies teetering on his slumped shoulders. Which it is, in a way, and this is a change of pace for Mr. Macey, he who is so often the delight of Cockler Street, always there sweeping off his store’s front steps and waiting to favor passersby with a wink or a smile or a piece of bawdy flattery. The very idea of merry old Macey ever falling into a gloomy spell is preposterous, inconceivable, for Macey is indomitable, unchanging. Were the town ever washed away in a freak flood Macey would remain, still ready with a snippet of gossip or an idle joke. Yet here he is, making a lonely crossing through the desolate countryside, the pink moon lazily swimming through the purple skies above him, and though Macey may tell himself his midnight perambulations serve some deeper, more secret purpose, he cannot deny that partially they serve to relieve his mind of its many burdens.

As he winds around a staggered cliff side he glimpses a flash of lightning over his shoulder. He stops and watches the blue luminescence bloom in the clouds above the mesa, strobing the mountains, the pines, the red rocky flats beyond that seem

(so much like home)

queerly threatening recently. The lightning is soundless, but his ears imagine quiet thunder rolling across the countryside. It will gather at the mesa (it always gathers at the mesa) and disperse, trailing north and east to fade to nothing.

Then he cocks his head. His eyes go searching, curious, tracing over every line of dark on the mountain. He saw something, he’s sure of it, not the brilliant blue of lightning, no, but a flat box of dull white light, like a window. But what could lie yonder on the mesa save the remains of the lab, with its twisted tunnels and blackened antennae (all sticking up from the ground like barbecue spits)? And he is sure there is nothing else there,

(except the door)

nothing at all, for they would know about it, wouldn’t they?

He looks. Waits. Sees nothing. Then continues home.

His manner of walking is counterclockwise and peripheral, approaching the town always from the side, crossing empty playgrounds and parks and isolated intersections. It is good to move through the forbidden places, the halfway patches. He’s spent too much time in the havens at the center of Wink, far too much time puttering around his store and among his neighbors. Here at the edges, in the cracks and at the crossroads, stepping from shadow to shadow in the river of darkness that runs through the heart of Wink, he feels much more at home.

As he walks under one tree a harsh buzz sounds out from above. He stops, peers up. Though the tree is dark he can see the form of a man standing at the top, balanced perfectly on a single branch. The buzz increases, wheedling and reedy, as if telling him to clear off. It is not a sound any human could ever make.

Macey watches for a moment, but grows impatient. He has no time for such mannered gestures. “Oh, shut up,” he snaps.

The thing in the tree falls silent. Mr. Macey glares at it a moment longer, then continues on.

Mr. Macey can go anywhere he likes in Wink, anytime,

(but not beyond it)

and no one knows more about the town than he does. Except, perhaps, for Mr. Weringer. But Mr. Weringer is dead, dead as a doornail, dead as dead can be. Whatever that means.

And what does it mean, he wonders as he walks? What could it ever mean? Macey does not know. What a foreign concept it is: to die, to cough up what you are as if it is no more than mucus pooled at the back of your throat, and perish. Where is his friend now? What has happened to him? Where has he gone? Still he wonders.

It is this death—and the answers about it he so desperately desires—that has sent Macey on these midnight errands, visiting the hidden residents of Wink and telling them his news and thoughts: have you heard and what did you do, who knew before you and how and why, why? Why did they know, why did they not know, what has happened, what is happening? Do you know? Does anyone know?

No. They do not. They, like Macey, like the town, are now alone.

He misses Weringer as one would miss a limb. Weringer was always the stabilizing force in town, the rudder steering their little ship across dark, unsteady seas. It was his idea to use the names of the town’s residents. “And are we not residents of the town?” he said to them. “Are we not these people now? I feel that we are. We are part of a community. And so we should be named accordingly.”

Part of a community… Macey badly wishes this were the case.

For now the unthinkable has happened: one of them has died. No, more than that—he has been murdered. How can such a thing occur? Do the seas sometimes float away into the sky? Do the planets crash into one another in their orbits? Can one hold the stars in the palm of one’s hand?

No, no. And so they cannot die.

But Macey has a few ideas about how this happened. He knows those men at the truck stop had something to do with it, such weaselly little things with small eyes and cautious movements. He can smell it on them, a heady, reeking perfume of guilt and malice. It’s as if they went rolling in it, like dogs. Macey’s scared a few out of town, and oh how he’s enjoyed doing that, especially the last one. He’s never toyed with the natives like some of the others do, but how fun it was to rouse one of the slumbering ones to join him in his little jest. And that was all he wanted

(kill them)

to do, really. Just a joke.

Yet how often has he said they should blockade the Roadhouse entirely, even detain its employees? It is a threat, a taint to their peaceful way of life. Especially since they started bringing in that drug, the heroin. But it was Weringer who always talked him out of it. “Let them be,” he would say. “They’re little people making little fortunes off of little vices. They’re no concern of ours. And were we to do anything about them, I’m certain it would attract attention, and that we do not need.” How ironic that those he defended should be the very ones who took his life.

And that is the crux of it, the howling, snarling, silly old crux of it. How could men—and poor, stupid, foolish ones at that—ever manage to kill one of them? Hasn’t it been said from the start, even decreed, that they are not to die? That they could never harm another or perish

(oh Mother where are you)

so long as they waited here?

Of course, the answer came from the very last person Macey wanted it to. Nearly all the hidden residents of Wink reacted the same way to the news: they trembled, quaked, asked many questions themselves, before finally admitting they knew nothing, and begging Macey to please let them know once an answer was found.

(Yet how troubling were those he visited who did not answer his call, those caves and canyons and old dry wells he came to and spoke into, and remained silent though he expected them to emerge—with the sound of rustling scales, or the burbling of deep waters underground—and turn their attention to his being and join him in parley? He now wonders—were they gone? Had they fled? Or were they too terrified by what had happened to even poke their heads out of their makeshift domiciles?)

And Macey expected old Parson to cower like the rest or perhaps he wanted him to, for Macey has never liked old Parson, so contemptuous of everything they try to accomplish in Wink.

But to his chagrin, Parson did none of those things. Instead he went still, thought, and said, It’s true that none of us is allowed to kill any other. Or, rather, we promised so before we came here. But did we all make that promise, Macey?

Macey said, Of course we did. We wouldn’t have been allowed to come if we didn’t. We would have been left behind. So every one of us did.

And Parson said, But what if there was someone in Wink who… what is the word… stowed away with us when we came? Someone who’s been living here in secret, or who’s unable to get out of wherever it is they are?

Macey said, That can’t be. There’s no one else besides us. There’s always been us, only us, and no one else.

Parson said, But that’s not so. There was another. Before all of us. Even me and Mr. First. Wasn’t there?

Mr. Macey was confused at first. What jabbering was this? Silly old fruit, the loneliness and isolation has gotten to him.

But then he realized what the old man was getting at, and as the thought trickled into his brain he turned white as a sheet. And Macey said, No… no, you’ve got to be wrong.

Parson only shrugged.

Macey said, You have to be wrong. It can’t be here. It just can’t be.

Parson said, Many things that couldn’t be have happened recently. But if it is here, wouldn’t it have a very good reason to want to hurt us? And I don’t think She would have ever extracted a promise from it. I doubt She even knew it came with us. That is, if I’m right. It is only one possibility.

Yet the idea resonates in some dark, awful corner of Mr. Macey’s heart. It would confirm so many of his worst suspicions that it must be true. What can one do against such a

(woodwose, wayward and wild)

thing? They would be helpless. Such a being is beyond comprehension, even for them, and they comprehend a great deal.

Macey looks up as he walks, and is a bit surprised to see what he has come to.

A sprawling Mid-Century Modern mansion is laid out against the hillside before him. It is done in the style of a Case Study House, with broad, overhanging flat roofs, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a sparkling blue pool dangling over the mountain slope. Though the house is currently dark, he can see white globe lamps hanging from the ribbed steel roofing, and white womb chairs lined up against an elegant Japanese wall screen. It is a house that has absolutely no business being in Wink; it is more suited to Palm Springs or the Palisades than a sleepy little town in northern New Mexico.

And Macey says, with a slight sigh, “Home again, home again, jiggity-jig.”

He pulls a set of keys from his pocket, takes a winding path through the perfectly manicured cypress trees (each paired with its own spotlight), walks up to the front door, unlocks it, and enters his home.

The entry hall is white, white, terribly white. White marble walls, white marble floors, and what few unwhite spots there are (tables, pictures) are simple black. This is because Macey does not care to see color when he comes home; he is unused to the sensation, and it aggravates him so.

Yet there is color, he realizes. There is a splash of color at his feet, screamingly bright. They are the colors called pink and yellow, and once Macey gets past this irritation he realizes he is staring at a gift-wrapped present sitting in the center of his entry hall. It also features an extremely large pink bow, and attached to this is a white tag. Upon examination, he finds it reads BE THERE SOON!—M

Macey scratches his head. This, like the sudden intrusion of color, is a new experience for him: he has never received a present before. He wonders what to do with it. Though his familiarity with this process is limited, he knows there is really only one thing you do with a present: open it.

So he does. He lifts off the top, and inside are heaps and heaps of pink tissue paper. He prods his way through the top layer yet finds no gift inside, so he reaches in, arm up to the elbow in pink paper, and he wonders: why would the present not fit its box? Or (and even he knows this is absurd) does the box contain nothing but pink tissue paper?

Yet then his fingers brush against something small and dry and rough, some item nestled among all the tissue paper. He jerks back, and as he does he cannot help but notice all the lights in the house flickered a bit just now, almost exactly when his fingers touched that hidden little… whatever it is.

Curious, Macey starts pawing through the paper, digging past its layers until he grasps the hard little object. He rips it out, stuck in its own ball of paper, and begins to peel away each pink sheath.

And as he does, the form of the object becomes clear (and the lights flicker more and more and more) until finally the last layer is gone and his disbelief is confirmed:

He holds in his hands a small rabbit skull, its eyes empty and its teeth like little pearls. He turns it over in his hands,

(and does he feel a door opening somewhere in the house, invisible and tiny, a perforation in the skin of the world through which black aether comes rushing?)

examining it and thinking what a bizarre little gift this is, but his examination is interrupted.

There is a clicking sound in his hallway. He looks up, searching for its source, and he tracks it to the little (black, of course) table at the end of the hall. There is a plate of decorative black marble balls on it, and they are all clacking against one another as if someone is shaking the plate.

And then something happens that even Macey finds strange: slowly, one by one, the marble balls lift from the plate and begin floating into the air.

Macey stares at this, astonished, his eyes beginning to hurt from the flickering lights. He turns and looks at the window at the end of the hall. He can see the reflection of the living room there, and he sees that all his belongings in that room are floating, too: the womb chairs dangle in nothing as if hanging from invisible string, the copies of Southwestern Steppes Outdoorsman drift by with pages fluttering.

Then he feels it, a sensation he has not felt in a long, long time.

The world is bending. Something from elsewhere—something from the other side—is making its way through.

Macey rises, and walks to his open front door.

There is a man standing on the front walk.

(you know this man)

His figure is pale and somewhat translucent, as if his image were rendered in the blue flame of a dying candle, but Macey can see two long horns or maybe ears rising up from the sides of his skull…

(Brother Brother do you see me)

Macey stares at him, and whispers, “No, no. It can’t be you, it can’t be.”

Yet the figure remains, watching him impassively. Macey does not wait: he throws the door shut, locks it, and sprints down the hallway.

All around him his possessions are leaving the ground to hang in the air. The floor and walls shake as if the mountain were threatening to cut the house loose and send it sliding down into the valley. And each room begins to flood with an awful smell, a scent of horrific rot and hay and shit…

“No, no!” screams Macey. “Not you, not here! I didn’t do anything to you! Leave me alone, please!”

He hits the stairwell, grabs the post, swings himself around, and leaps down the black marble steps, knees protesting with each bound. The lights in the floor above him are dying out, leaving each room dark, and he feels he can hear something rushing through the house after him, moving with the sound of a thousand dead leaves striking pavement…

The floor below is no different. The filament of each bulb sputters, and everything—chairs, tables, lamps—hangs suspended in the air. Macey dodges these obstacles and throws himself toward a large black door tucked away under the stairs. He opens it, falls through, and slams it behind him.

The other side is dark. Macey, breathing hard, fumbles for the switches on the wall beside him. When his fingers finally find them he slaps them all on, and the room fills with light.

The room is huge, nearly two hundred feet on each side, and the ceiling is lined with bright fluorescent lamps. Ordinarily this room would be the garage, filled with expensive, fancy cars that would suit the taste of the house’s owner. But Mr. Macey’s garage is totally empty, nothing but blank gray surfaces on all sides except the ceiling.

This room has one advantage, however: none of its doors have ever been unlocked or used except the one Mr. Macey has just run through. It is completely barricaded off.

How could it be here, he wonders? Such a thing is impossible. Yet then he thinks of the

(invitation)

skull in the box… and he begins to realize that there are many more machinations operating within Wink than he ever suspected, and he has just stumbled into one.

He puts his ear to the door. He cannot hear anything on the other side, nor can he see any hint of flickering lights through the crack at the bottom. He wonders what this could mean… yet just as he does the lights above flicker, just a little, and he begins to smell a horrible odor pervading the room, the smell of an untended barn, stables and coops of livestock lying dead and rotting in the hay…

“No,” he whispers.

He sits up and looks around. And he sees he is not alone.

There is a man standing in the exact center of the garage. He is very tall, and he stands motionless with his arms stiff at his sides. He wears a filthy blue canvas suit, streaked with mud in a thousand places, and sewn into the surface of this suit are dozens and dozens of tiny wooden rabbit heads, all with huge, staring eyes and long, tapered ears. On his face he wears a wooden helmet—or perhaps it is a tribal mask—whose crude, chiseled features suggest the blank, terrified face of a rabbit, complete with curving, badly carved ears. Where its eyes should be are two long rectangular holes. Somewhere behind these, presumably, are the eyes of the mask’s wearer, yet only darkness can be seen.

Mr. Macey falls to his knees. “No,” he whispers. “No, no.”

The figure does not move, yet when the lights flicker out and come back on he is suddenly closer, just yards away.

“You can’t be here,” says Macey. He hugs his chest and wilts before the intruder. “You can’t have followed us. You can’t have been here all along…”

The lights flicker again and the figure in the rabbit suit is closer, standing only a few feet in front of Mr. Macey. He stares up into that blank wooden face, and those dark, rectangular eyes, and he sees…

(a cracked plain, red stars, and a huge black pyramid rising from the horizon, and all around it are thousands of broken, ancient columns, a place where a people once worshipped things that departed long ago)

(a scar-pocked hill, at the top of which is a twisted white tree, and from the tree’s branches are many swollen, putrid fruits, un-plucked and untended for centuries)

(endless darkness, stars flickering through the ether, and then empty, sunless cities made of black stone, each leaning, warped structure abandoned eons ago)

(falling, falling through the black, forever)

(a mesa, sharp and hard against the starlit sky, and clouds gather around its tip and lightning begins to leap from cumulus to cumulus, staircases of light waiting to be lowered to the ground)

And though the figure does not speak, Mr. Macey knows what it is trying to say, and he thinks he sees eyes behind the mask now. They are wild and mad, filled with an incomprehensible fury. The figure’s hands, fingers thick and scarred and filthy, are bunched into fists. And slowly, bending at the waist, the figure leans down to him.

Mr. Macey begins screaming. And the last thought that enters his mind is: he was right. Parson was right. The wildling is in Wink. It has been in Wink all along.