The Night the Moon Made a Sound.
Walt Ferryman woke up around five in the evening. There wasn"t a need to put on his clothes since he"d apparently fallen asleep in them. He sat on the edge of his small single-sized bed without head or footboard, rubbed his rough hands together between his knees, and surveyed the chaos of the house in the dying sunlight. "House" really wasn"t the right word for it. "Room" best described it. From where he sat on the bed, he could see the entire place, even the bathroom, its door wide open just three feet from the foot of his bed. He smiled slightly to himself, deciding the situation was too sad to warrant a chuckle. That"s right, he remembered, I had to go to the bathroom to puke before I went to bed. Otherwise, he would have been too terrified to leave the door open. He knew that the squeaky things could only get through if the door was open. Even if it was just a crack. But the alcohol had taken the squeaky things to sleep with him.
Had there been blood in the puke?
You bet. He knew without looking. It was the same as his s.h.i.t. The blood seemed to be coming from all of his major orifices these days.
He bent down to grab his dusty brown work boots from underneath the bed, only slightly expecting a squeaky thing to graze his fingertips. When his hand hit nothing but cobwebby air, he realized he was still wearing his boots. And, best of all, his hand came away unscathed. He stood up and arched his back, crossing the littered floor to the kitchen area at the front of the room. Grabbing a speckled gla.s.s from the sink and some milk from the refrigerator, he filled the gla.s.s half full. Then he reached under the sink for the bottle of grape Mad Dog and poured that in with the milk. He turned a burner on atop the gas range, pulled a crumpled Pall Mall from his shirt pocket, placed it between his dry lips and lowered his head to the burner, inhaling greedily like he was sucking liquid through a straw. The first smoke of the day filled his lungs and he took the gla.s.s in his hand, relishing its coolness. He leaned against the counter and looked through the partially raised and seriously askew yellowed blinds at the steaming paper mill across the street.
He had stopped noticing the stink of it a long time ago.
Now he smelled different things. Unseen things. Unseen things that smelled like meaty decay. He smelled these odors on the breath of the squeaky things, pressing down on his chest and smiling down at him while he slept, leaving before he could open his eyes.
He took another drag from his cigarette and downed the gla.s.s. He was a firm believer in the hair of the dog. If he was a believer in doctors, or if he had the money to go see one, the doctor could have told him he was rotting from the inside and nothing could put him back together again. The milk and cheap wine hit his stomach, sending up a squall of pain from his gut and a peaceful white cloud in his head. Could the doctors tell him about the squeaky things?
"Gahd.a.m.n," he mumbled, raking a large hand across the grit of dried sweat on his face. With his callused middle finger, he sc.r.a.ped some sleep from his eyes.
He thought about cleaning up the room and decided he"d rather take a walk in the b.l.o.o.d.y diarrhea of the sunset first. He knew he could clean the room, make it spotless, and it would be a mirror image of its current disheveled state come tomorrow. That"s the nature of life, he thought. Every day was like being raped up the a.s.s with a hot poker p.r.i.c.k. Anger surged up through him, coming from some great nowhere. He turned and threw the gla.s.s toward the back of the room where it shattered, not nearly loud enough, against the wall. He would be gone by the time Ms. Davenport came over to ask him what the heck he was doing over here.
Sometimes it took this anger to get him moving. He dropped his cigarette into a coffee cup in the sink and headed out into the evening.
The coastal evening was usually, by turns, balmy or cold. Sometimes, like tonight, it was both. There was warmth in the air, a summer kind of smell pervaded by the ubiquitous odor of the sea"s brine. Yet, from within that comforting balm came a stabbing wind that made Walt think of the scary isolation deep out in the ocean, miles away from safety. It was an abstract notion. He had never been out to sea. He was, in fact, terrified to step foot into the ocean. He imagined all those hard-sh.e.l.led squeaky things, rolling under the unfeeling water, waiting for the meat to come. But Walt liked to go sit on the benches that sank into the sand on the beach. He liked to feel the sun at his back and wish he lived in the West, where the sun could scorch his eyes before drowning itself in the Pacific only to be resurrected as a ghostly moon. Maybe after scorching his eyes it would melt his brain. Melt it clean away until it ran out of his ears.
Walt also liked the company of Janey, who was six.
Walking down Factory Road toward the beach, past the flumpingly noisy paper mill, he wondered if the factories contained thinking men who operated unthinking machines or if the machines had turned the men into mindless drones. He thought about his callused hands and melting intestines and wondered if he still had a brain. Maybe so, he thought. But what was the use of a brain if he tried to shoot it out every night? What was the use of a brain if it couldn"t tell him the squeaky things didn"t exist?
He hoped Janey would be there.
It took him about twenty minutes to get down to the beach and when he did, the sun was gone. All the gold had left the beach and the ocean and everything around it was twilit and spectral. The sun had taken its heat with it and there was now only the persistent, unrelenting wind and the crash of the gray waves, each one slightly colder than the last, Walt was sure.
No Janey.
Not yet, anyway.
He sat down on a bench and lit up a cigarette. It took him a couple of tries to get it lit all the way. He finally got it by cupping his hand over the flame and hunching down until his head was nearly buried between his knees. He pulled his thin jacket around him, crossed his legs and sat back on the bench, lost in his thoughts. His thoughts mostly consisted of thinking about not thinking.
The sky darkened like beaten flesh. The ocean, darkening with the sky, went from the color of ash to the color of oil. His cigarette burnt itself out in the yellowed tips of his fingers and he didn"t bother tossing it off to the side.
The sand crunched behind him and he turned to his left.
"Hi there," Janey said.
"Whoa, ya scared me." Janey wore a plastic gray and white wolf mask. "I thought it was aa"
"Wolf, huh?" Janey said before growling at him.
Besides the mask, Janey wore a blue dress and no shoes. The mask was new to Walt, but the blue dress and absence of shoes were constants.
"How ya doin?"
"Great!"
"Ain"t ya cold?"
"Why should I be cold, Mr. Silly?"
"It"s windy anda cold."
"I guess I can"t feel it. Feels good to me." She spread her arms out and ran in a tight circle around the sand, making a sound like she was enjoying a fine summer day.
"Hey, Mr. Silly," she said. "You know what I am?"
"A big b.u.mblebee?"
"No, silly, a wolf." She growled again. "Know what?"
"Whut?"
"I"m six."
"Really?"
"Honest." She growled and moved closer to Walt. "You smell funny."
"Jeez, that ain"t a nice thing to say."
"You smell like the poison."
He chuckled. "Yeah, girly, guess I prob"ly do." He reached out to pat the top of her sandy brown hair and quickly withdrew his hand.
He had touched her once before, helping her up after she had fallen down in the sand, and it had sent a wave of nausea through him with enough strength to make him run to the water"s edge and vomit until it felt like the next thing to come up would be his stomach.
There had been something else, too. Something besides the nausea. There had been an image. But it was too fleeting to tell what it was.
"That"s okay," she said. "My dad drank the poison sometimes too. But I don"t think he drank it quite as much as you do. And I don"t think it was the same kind of poison."
"He stop drinkin it?" He tried to make visual contact with the sparkling blue eyes behind the mask but she looked up at the sky.
"I dunno," she said.
"Why"nt ya know?"
"I don"t see him much, anymore. Boy, the moon sure is big."
Walt looked up at the sky. "It sure is," he said. "Why"nt ya see your dad much? Don"t he live with you and your mom?"
"He lives with my mom, but I think he"s getting ready to move out."
"Don"t you live with em? Your mom and dad?"
Janey skipped off into the darkness and then skipped back. "Sometimes, I guess."
"Whaddya mean, *sometimes"?"
"Well, sometimes, I"m in the house. I can see Mom and Dad, but I don"t think they can see me." Janey growled and raised her right hand like an injurious paw.
"Why"nt ya think they can see ya?"
"Cause, that"s why I think Dad"s leavin Mom. He always cries and talks about how much he misses me. I keep wantin to tell him that I"m right there. But he"s a big sillyhead. He can"t hear me."
Clarity wasn"t something Walt really thought too much about. Most of his life had been spent trying to dull that clarity a little bit. But, that night, talking to Janey, he felt completely invaded with clarity. It wasn"t something he welcomed. No, it was like a knife to the back, something cold and real and very much there.
On previous visits, Walt had thought of Janey as an adventurous girl with slightly irresponsible parents. Now he saw her as something else. Like maybe there was something she was trying to tell him but couldn"t becausea Because she doesn"t know what happened herself.
Maybe there was some other way of finding out.
The time you touched her.
That nauseous feeling and that other thing. Something indescribable. A vision. Was it a vision?
No. No. Just a flash of red. Something else. Something sickening. The squeaky things.
That blade of clarity again, running down his back right alongside his spine. He pulled his jacket around himself and that"s when he first heard the moon make a sound. Walt looked up at its unwavering, luminous placidity. There it was again. A low, s...o...b..ry sound like a dog that wants in some place and presses its muzzle to the crack in the door, slowly panting a pant infused with just enough brainless desperation for you to feel sorry for it.
"s.h.i.t," Walt thought, maybe even mumbled, and dropped a hand across his face.
He took out another cigarette and lit up. The wind had died down and it was a little easier this time.
Janey, who had been lightly skipping around the bench, trying to capture Walt"s attention, stopped and tapped him on the shoulder with a small finger. Walt flinched.
"Christ, don"t do that!"
"Did I scare ya?"
"No." It"s that feeling, he thought. "Yeah, maybe a little. Old man like me. You gotta be careful. Heart could pop like a firecracker."
"Bam!" Janey shouted.
"Yeah. Bam"s right."
There was a trace of that feeling when Janey had tapped him on the shoulder. Of course, it was very brief contact and he felt it through two shirts and a jacket. When he had helped her up, he had pulled her up by her sweaty little hand.
"You wanna take a walk, Mr. Silly?"
"Not just yet. You let me set here for a minute or two. Finish this here smoke."
"You really shouldn"t smoke. Mom says it"ll give ya cancer."
"She"s right, of course. I find it enjoyable. I don"t really care bout cancer."
"If you get cancer, you"ll die."
"Only if G.o.d wants me to. Some people live with cancer all their life. Sometimes, the cancer just up and goes someplace else."
"I don"t think you got cancer yet. But I think you"re sick."
"Me too, Janey. Me too. I think I"m pretty bad sick."
"I hope you don"t die."
"We all die someday. Got to. It"s G.o.d"s will."
"Why do you think G.o.d does that?"
"Don"t rightly know, I guess. Maybe he needs the comp"ny."
"Maybe," Janey laughed. "Seems kinda mean."
"Maybe. At least there ain"t so many people to deal with."
"You think it"s scary to be dead?"
"Don"t rightly know. Guess it would be if there wun"t no one there with ya. Like if ya just died and poof, that was it, you was all alone."
Again, the knife of clarity entered his skin, snaking in at the base of his skull.
The moon made another sound. There was no mistaking this with the sound of the ocean.
"Yeah. I get lonely sometimes," Janey said.
"Me, too."
He tossed the cigarette out toward the water and hopped up. He took off his jacket and tossed it onto the empty bench.
"You ever play Tag, Janey?"
"Of course, big silly." She reached out and smacked his forearm. "Tag! You"re it!"
He winced. He felt a squeaky thing take off up his arm. He looked for it but it was gone. Janey took off running in the darkness. A vision rushed through Walt"s head. He tried to retain the vision as he took off racing after Janey. It was hard to run on the sand, a task he hadn"t tried since he was a kid. In his head, he saw an empty street filled with ominous black snake alleyways.
He wouldn"t have reached her to tag her if she hadn"t doubled back toward him, trying to jaunt past.