Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True Part 17

Beyond the inexplicable cleanliness of their attire, given the environment, there was about them a summoning grimness that called to mind the gossiping biddies who had so plagued his and the family's life back in Zanesville-the sharp-tongued shrews who hid behind hoopskirts, complaining shawls, and what pa.s.sed for women's stovepipe hats in those days, matronly old skullcaps tied with ribbons under the chin, only frilly and without color. The instant he was conscious of them, they filled him with a new kind of malice and unease. Abhorrence. Aversion.

No ensemble could have been less intimidating at a glance, not relative to the night thugs he had faced off against with the Eye. But that was not what his instinct told him. It screamed out to him a very contrary message.

These were ones who did not fear the Eye. These were one.

They stood not just in a line but in a plane of vision, or at least perception. There was a dimensionality to them that both seeped forward toward him and receded backward, making it seem that the very depth of field of reality-the essential fabric and framework of the street-had been fundamentally altered.

The second he thought that-as he looked closer-he saw to his unspeakable and unreasonable, shrinking apprehension that they all had the exact same face. It was not a mask, in any sense of abstraction or caricature, but it was not eccentric, individual, and animate, either. It was a face like none he had seen before, even on the nags of Zanesville-repeated, separate yet combined. Blurred. Merged.

Yes, that was what the impression was like. Six figures sharing a single face, so that it was impossible to determine if there were six figures or one.

But he heard a multiplicity of voices. Not, just six-oh, no.

They did not move-they did not have to. He heard them calling to him inside his own head. Beat him Beat him, they called. Beat him! Release your hatred... Beat him! Release your hatred...

"That's enough!" f.a.n.n.y cried, and fired one of the revolvers into the air, as the storm broke and people scattered.

Lloyd dropped the cane, leaving Joshua Breed groveling in the mud, bleeding and soiled, whimpering like the dog the day before.

The six white women with the single face were gone, dissolved in the downpour as if they had never been.

CHAPTER 7.

Something in Between THE SIGHT OF L LLOYD MERCILESSLY WHIPPING THE WOUNDED rouster at last spurred Rapture to action. She raised her skirt hem and dashed through the deluge to wrench her son out of his trance. The few items they had purchased she left behind in the streaming rain, dragging the boy along the mud-strewn boardwalk in a huffing flurry of anger and alarm until they reached the relative safety of the Clutters' once more. rouster at last spurred Rapture to action. She raised her skirt hem and dashed through the deluge to wrench her son out of his trance. The few items they had purchased she left behind in the streaming rain, dragging the boy along the mud-strewn boardwalk in a huffing flurry of anger and alarm until they reached the relative safety of the Clutters' once more.

She did not look behind her to see the gun-toting f.a.n.n.y Ockleman shaking her head at the boy's performance. She did not see the sharpshooter stow her revolvers, adjust her hat, and stride over to retrieve the cane as if the sun were shining brightly and the most extraordinary event that had transpired had been the boy's vented fury. Rapture was too busy trying to master the shame and chagrin that had replaced her pride and concern when her son stepped forward.

Lloyd, meanwhile, was beside himself with fascination and embarra.s.sment. The excitation that had arisen inside him was like no other he had ever experienced-a sickening, insatiable l.u.s.t and release beyond any he had known before. The entire world had been eclipsed in the heat of it. There was only his hunger, his will being fulfilled to the grotesque exclusion of all other senses. And the disquietude of the six watchers.

Were these what the Vardogers looked like? Or had it been a projection of their insidious science?

I wonder if I saw what I did because they wanted me to see it or because of how I felt? he thought.

Strangely enough, the very brutality of his performance drew a very different response from what his mother had antic.i.p.ated. Racing back to the Clutters' soaking wet, struggling with what she could carry and still mind Lloyd, Rapture a.s.sumed that all the items they had abandoned would either be stolen or spoiled by the rain. Not so. What she had not counted on was that the Breed gang, and s...o...b..sh Josh in particular, had long been a source of fear and local hatred. While the Bushrod Rangers comprised members who were respected at least in quarters of the community, no one would have spoken in favor of Portion Breed and his son's confederates if they could avoid it, and for once it seemed they could. Perhaps things were going to change for the better around Independence.

So what if little Lloyd had whacked the tar out of Josh? The younger Breed had had it coming since he was that size and then some. The target that had apparently been chosen by chance gave the Sitt.u.r.d whelp a line of credit to draw upon, and, ironically, the same child and his family who had been hounded out of Zanesville for using the native powers of his brain was now applauded and even lionized by the townsfolk of this Missouri outpost for unleashing some inner force of almost meditative violence. Rapture could only shake her head in wonder as, one by one, the items she had cast behind them returned, supplemented with more store-bought things, handmade items, food stocks, and provisions of all kinds. No one asked any questions about where the family was headed; it was just a.s.sumed somewhere west. People gave in the way that no t.i.thing box had ever known, and when Hephaestus hobbled home after his first partial but still honest day's work in as long as he could remember, he was startled to find his young son a hero again, his wife speechless, and the coffin-crowded shop front of the lackl.u.s.ter carpenter and rather keen embalmer Othimiel Clutter and his wife overflowing with things that the Sitt.u.r.ds would desperately need to reach their destination.

It was several minutes before Rapture could find the words to suggest more than explain what had transpired, and even then her limping husband limped far behind in his comprehension. The rain had cleared off again, the sun was near set, and the hint of a slow damp that would later rise from the ground could be smelled like distant cookstoves and the still prevalent atmosphere of the previous night's questionable repast. With all the purchased and donated booty, they went inside the residential part of the shop front to reunite with their idiosyncratic and previously debilitated hosts-and then had an even greater shock.

Rapture, when she had been able to get past the family's trials of the day, had thought it not out of the question that the older couple might remain in bed all day, and that perhaps their behavior of the morning had its explanation not in inebriation but in some illness, perhaps even some emerging disease of the mind-a mutual senility, for that was what it had so resembled.

When she courteously knocked on the humble door that separated the shop front and business premises from the living area in the rear of the building, it gave her a queasy reminder of Mr. Clutter manically tapping on his coffin lids. There was still the strong presence of last night's dinner oozing under the door, but there was something else, too. A scent of premonition. When she got no response, she eventually opened the door-and then the horror was there for all the family to see.

The kitchen, which Rapture had left so neat and tidy, was a shambles of destruction, as if racc.o.o.ns had broken in and torn the place apart. Pots and pans had been flung everywhere, the hearth piled with smashed crockery. What was more, every single music box had not just been swept from its resting place on the shelves but slammed to the floor and cracked open, their inner workings gouged out. The Sitt.u.r.ds croaked as one-and then discovered the couple.

"Dear G.o.d!" Hephaestus cried.

Mr. and Mrs. Clutter had indeed managed to rise from bed, and apparently had done much more. Inside what pa.s.sed for their little bedroom, the bed had been demolished, their simple nightstands collapsed, candles snapped, pillows ripped to shreds. The devastation could not have been more complete, except for one old stick-back chair, which the couple still occupied. Both bodies were naked and entwined together in an obscene contortion. Any fear the Sitt.u.r.ds had that the couple had been the victims of some intruder's violence was incontrovertibly dispelled by the fact that the Clutters-still s.e.xually connected, or so it seemed-both had their teeth and jaws locked deep in the blood-soaked throat of the other. The frozen expression on their dead, stained faces was beyond all words.

The Sitt.u.r.d adults were so stricken with sickness and terror that they forgot to try to cover Lloyd's eyes. It was just as well, for Lloyd alone remained cool enough to examine the scene. That was what Hattie would have done.

Hephaestus, as hardened as he was to normal farm life and the facts of death that presented themselves in slaughtering and butchering, felt the food that Petrie had offered him earlier in the day roar up his pipes and onto the floor. Rapture, meanwhile, was certain the room was rife with evil "sperits" and flittered about like a wounded animal.

Lloyd, on the other hand, as revolted as he was, and as agitated as he was, was also enlivened, his senses brought to full attention. Beat him, beat him. Release your hatred Beat him, beat him. Release your hatred.

There was something very important about this scene, he knew. Although the natural first thought was to shudder and look if not run away, his instincts told him to look more deeply, to savor and consider every detail that presented itself. There was a meaning to all this, and perhaps he was the only one to discover it.

The obvious fact that the Clutters had been the cause of each other's death suggested that there had not been any dread invasion. There were no signs of forced entry. The back door remained secure. The front shop was undisturbed and all the Sitt.u.r.ds' possessions were unmolested. Whatever had happened, it seemed, had been confined to the back area of the premises and had, at least to the eye, involved the old people alone. Who else had been present, if no one else had arrived?

While his parents comforted each other and tried to regain control of themselves, and rein in their mixed distaste and grief for their hosts and their now runaway panic about what this catastrophe might mean for them, Lloyd circulated through the establishment searching for clues. There was no mud at the entry to the shop, and the place looked as if it had not been open for business all day, which was probably not an unusual occurrence. If the back door was still bolted and all the windows were unopened, he thought it likely that no one else had intervened. And why would someone come to call with such intentions, and arrive in either calm or stealth and then wreak such destruction? Given the dismantled state of the rear interior, it seemed a telling point that the opportunities of exit and entry were still intact.

Then there was the inescapable matter of the two old folk having bitten each other's throat out! Even the most ruthless and bloodthirsty of invaders would not have been able to force the couple into the position in which they were found. What threat could have been used that would have been worse than the result? It was not as if the Clutters had been bludgeoned or even tortured in some conventionally murderous way. On every level, this seemed to him an intimate matter and, however demented and b.e.s.t.i.a.l, there was some dark, inner logic at work.

The more he looked around, the more immune to the horror Lloyd became. Patterns began to form. He saw that the crockery and the kitchenware had not been piled or pounded apart for their own sake. It looked...

"It looks like the plates and pots were used...as weapons," he said to himself.

That suggested that the Clutters had had been attacked-whether from without, in some as yet unknown way, or in the form of some delusion that had taken hold of them. been attacked-whether from without, in some as yet unknown way, or in the form of some delusion that had taken hold of them.

An intruder of the mind had been floating in his thoughts ever since the family returned. After all, the couple had been strongly affected by their exposure to the music box. And the white-dressed women in the street...

Lloyd started pawing through the wreckage, searching for the Vardogers' box. It was altogether possible, he granted, that some malevolent presence had chosen this particular moment to return and retrieve this strange treasure. But no, it, too, was on the floor. Alone of all the music boxes, it was unopened and on the surface unharmed. He knew what he had to do.

Very quietly, so that his parents could not hear, he spoke the pa.s.sword and waited, steeled to snap the lid shut before the sinister, enchanting music could start. To his amazement, when the lid opened no music began and he saw that the tiny artificial musicians were all gone. The box was as bare as one of the Clutters' overturned kitchen drawers. He ran his right index finger along the edges and across the floor of it just to make sure there were no tricks-but the box was empty.

It was possible, he reasoned, that some external agent had come in and absconded with the miniature mechanical orchestra, but he felt that anyone who would have known about the contents of the box would not have needed or bothered to violate all the others. And why would they leave the box? Still more curiously, such a robbery-if that was how it could be described-did not explain the barbaric fate the old people had endured. Nothing he could think of did. He had half-formed theories and intuitions, but nothing that would stay fixed.

"We must separate and examine the bodies," he said, more to himself than to his parents.

Hephaestus felt his partially digested food rise into his throat again. It was discomfiting enough to have their young son witness such depravity-there was, of course, no way to keep it from him now-but to have him so rationally investigating the matter was almost more than he could take. Then something in the wayward blacksmith's mind clicked over. It was in the boy's tone of native authority, but it was also an internal conviction of his own. His son knew and understood things he did not. There could be no pretending anymore. All his life since the boy's birth had been in some way spent denying his offspring's special intelligence, fearing it, resenting it, feeling proud about it-or worrying where it would lead. Hephaestus saw that, if nothing else, it had led to this. This This was where they all were, still together as a family, still alive-and, with any luck, able to extricate themselves from this gruesome predicament and get back on their way. If Lloyd's intellect was a means to that end, then so be it. As peculiar as he was, he was flesh and blood. was where they all were, still together as a family, still alive-and, with any luck, able to extricate themselves from this gruesome predicament and get back on their way. If Lloyd's intellect was a means to that end, then so be it. As peculiar as he was, he was flesh and blood.

The lame blacksmith found a new personal strength with this recognition and, without any sense of humbling himself or taking an order from his own son, he did just as the boy instructed. He rose and respectfully but firmly wrenched the two rigor forms apart, laying them down on the floor beside the chair for further investigation. That pieces of the bodies burst apart at this maneuver was not pleasant to observe, but still he kept his tongue, even as the Clutters lost theirs.

Then something happened that even Lloyd was not prepared for. Portions of flesh peeled away to reveal not only organ and bone-not even organ and bone-but something truly unexpected. The inner anatomy the separation of the corpses revealed was not human. It was not animal. It was not organic. Nor was it mechanical-or like any machine he had ever seen.

If the Sitt.u.r.ds had gasped before, they swooned together now, for what they beheld was absolutely alien to everything they knew and counted on. The dithery older couple they had met the previous night, who seemed incapable of normal conversation and had such unusual notions about food-who had, in the time the family was gone, undergone such a dramatic transformation, becoming both mindlessly violent and l.u.s.tful-were not people at all.

Rapture cawed. Hephaestus reached up to seize locks of hair on his head that were fifteen years gone. Even Lloyd's mouth dropped.

"They're...some kind of..." his father tried.

"They're music boxes," Lloyd replied, after a moment's aching silence. "They looked like people. They acted like people-to a point. But they were really music boxes in disguise."

"Music boxes!" his mother moaned. "How ya bee speaken that?"

"I don't mean like the others." Lloyd waved, indicating the mess of combs and needles pouring forth from the ruptured boxes on the floor. "I mean more like the one that so confused us last night."

"Which one was that?" his father huffed.

Lloyd's right eyebrow rose at this.

"The one it may be fortunate that you don't remember. What I mean is that they were-or are-machines. Not like machines we have ever seen. But not human. See those fibers there? What are they? Gla.s.s, spun very fine? And what of that there? That's no organ that we know. It's not quite meat and it's not quite metal. It's something in between. And that's what they were. Something in between."

"But how can it be?" Hephaestus gurgled, clasping his head in his hands for comfort.

"I don't know," Lloyd conceded. "But I am certain these...folk...were not born. They were made. Made to look like people and pa.s.s for people."

"B-but Petrie!" Hephaestus stammered. "They're his kin!"

"He may have had kin. He may think these are still his kin. But they aren't," Lloyd answered. "Unless he's like this, too."

"No!" his father insisted. "I worked with the man all day. He was straight, he was quick. He was-"

"Normal?"

"Y-yes." Hephaestus nodded, working through in his own mind a host of a.s.sociations and perceptions. "N-normal."

"Then that raises the proposition that he doesn't know about this," Lloyd reasoned. "Which is supported by the fact that he recommended we try to stay here. Did he say anything about them? Anything that might hint at a change in them and their lives?"

Hephaestus had to turn and stroke his chin at this.

"Well, now that you mention it...he did let on something. Once he saw I could do a good day's work for him, honest and expert-like, he did say something at the end. What was it? Ah...he said he was glad that we were about to keep a fresh eye on them. That's what he said-a fresh eye."

"What did you take that to mean?" Lloyd asked.

"I'm not sure," his father mused. "He'd said earlier that there'd been a change in them-the both of them. But he didn't say how or what."

"Did he say when?"

"Hmm. Not directly. At least I don't think. I was busy working then. I got the impression it was about a year or so ago. I don't know why."

"That would put it sometime around when the man with the music boxes and the child he wanted embalmed came past," Lloyd put forth.

"What that mean ya be speaken now?" his mother demanded.

"I don't know," Lloyd admitted, shaking his young head. "But I know we must leave here as soon as we can. Within the hour. Whatever the Clutters were, they weren't done in by men with masks and cudgels. But they were attacked, whether from without or within." He deeply regretted that there would not be time to circulate through town and remove the reward posters for Hattie.

"But if they were just machines-" His father sighed.

"I don't think we should ever use the word 'just' about machines anymore," Lloyd replied. "They are-or were-not machines we understand, and there were other machines here that are not here now. The two issues must be connected."

"What othern maysheens?" his mother asked, sobbing now.

"Don't trouble about them now," Lloyd consoled her. "We need to be on the move. As you said, Farruh, we need to look alive-to stay alive."

"Is they after you-dem folks from St. Louis?"

This was the first time any such thing had been mentioned in Hephaestus's sober presence, and his faced showed it. Lloyd spoke his mind.

"It may be, and it may not. I think not. If they were to come, whoever they are, I believe there would be no mistaking it-and they would come for me. This is something else. It may be connected by chance, if there is such a thing. But..." and then he could not think.

"What yer sperit voice say?" his mother asked at last, putting into her old and often suppressed family speech the same suddenly accepted confidence that Hephaestus had arrived at in his own way.

Lloyd felt the momentousness of the change in the family dynamic and paused to weigh his words in respect for the new weight that had been openly placed upon his young shoulders. His rarefied mind rummaged through the shattered dishware and gaping flesh for some answer that would satisfy his own flesh and blood enough to get them all out of there. Fast.

"We were not the intended victims of this-if it be a crime," he said. "But there is something about our presence here, and our (and he really meant his own) ability to see this as something outside experience, that must be heeded. How, I'm not yet sure. There is something larger happening in this country than we ever imagined back in Zanesville. Whether we can run from it, and truly get away, or come to understand it remains to be seen. But we can't ignore it, and more than ever I feel we must get to our destination in Texas as quickly as we can. Uncle Micah has already warned and inspired us that something out of the ordinary awaits us there. It was our leaving Zanesville and our old lives that set in motion the wheels that have brought us here-to both this place and this new, unlikely world. We can but go forward, and now we have to do so with the greatest haste."

"So you think we are in danger, real danger?" Hephaestus queried.

"I think," Lloyd said, with a face on him that was far too old for his years, "that just as we must put behind us old ideas about machines-even my ideas about machines (and this remark completed the familial acknowledgment of the change that had occurred)-we need to be prepared for danger wherever we look. From now on, danger is always real. Even unreal danger. Especially the unreal."

CHAPTER 8.

Dead of Night HEPHAESTUS HAD NO IDEA WHAT L LLOYD WAS SAYING, AND YET HE understood that what was called for now was belief in his son. The failed inventor had sobered up inside himself at the deepest level. understood that what was called for now was belief in his son. The failed inventor had sobered up inside himself at the deepest level.

"The Clutters have two horses and a wagon they used as a hea.r.s.e," he announced. "Petrie told me. I think I heard them out back. They may not get us all the way to Texas, but they'll get us out of here. When any kind of word gets out about this, we'll be in strife. People will think somehow we done this. Whether these be the real Clutters or no, locals will need to make sense of things."

Lloyd nodded.

"These are the Clutters that Petrie knew. And what happened to them may have something to do with our arrival. But we aren't to blame and we won't be burned for it if we keep our heads."

"We takem wib us and give 'em proper beerial," Rapture said.

"That's right," Lloyd agreed. "We take everything with us, we get a head start. Then anyone who wants to know more has got to find us, and they have no proof of anything being wrong."

"Let's load up the coffin first," Hephaestus suggested. "The way these folk lived, we might get a couple of days or even more before they're missed. Even Petrie said he hadn't had a meal or a jaw with them in weeks."

Over the course of the next hour the Sitt.u.r.d family worked in a frenzy of divided labor. Once Lloyd had indicated that he was finished examining the wreckage in the back area, Rapture set about gathering up all the broken, scattered bits into a neat pile. Hephaestus went out to inspect the wagon and the horses. "These animals have got to be real," he said to himself when he found them and had lit a lantern. "If they were machines, they'd look better." Both animals were desperately skinny, which seemed to fit in with everything the family had learned about the couple. "Perhaps they didn't know any better," Hephaestus reasoned.

While his mother was cleaning up and his father was giving the horses a feed and preparing the hea.r.s.e, Lloyd completed his a.n.a.lysis of the bodies. In addition to the obvious mortal indignity they appeared to have inflicted on each other, he noted odd puncture wounds and gouges in their feet and legs, as well as on their hands. A couple of samples of their innards, some of which seemed organic and were already decomposing as the black dog in the street had, as well as some pieces of what were clearly manufactured workings of an intricate, complex nature, he placed in a bag that he found in the kitchen. Along with the now empty Vardogers' music box, he tucked all his findings away with the Eye, the Amba.s.sadors' box, Hattie's fetish, and his uncle's map and letter.

Beyond the fatal wounds, the aspect of the corpses that he found most puzzling was discovered only when he pried open their mouths to find shards of comb and bent metal, as if in their delusional fever the couple had taken to eating the contents of the music boxes they snapped open. How very curious, Lloyd thought, remembering the ravenous hunger that had overtaken them all before.

When he combined this phenomenon with the ravaged interior of the living quarters and the position and unmistakable nature of the activity the bodies had been engaged in, he was forced to conclude that the Clutters had undergone some rabid confluence of animal cravings and instinctive behavior. Gluttony, fear, violence, l.u.s.t, bloodl.u.s.t. That machines of any kind could experience these states and needs was startling. But all at once? "Perhaps that's just the way it would be," Lloyd mused, not at all sure he knew what he was thinking.

Once Hephaestus had the horses. .h.i.tched and the wagon ready, he returned to help Rapture and Lloyd load the two bodies and the miscellany of demolished kitchenware, music boxes, and household items into one of the larger coffins. It was only because the bodies were beginning to soften and break apart that they were able to stuff everything that needed to be disposed of in the one box. All three Sitt.u.r.ds helped lug the coffin out back and onto the hea.r.s.e.