Gene Wolfe - The Land Across

If I poked her in the ribs she might not stop. And if it really woke her up she was going to be mad. She had a gun, and anytime she wanted to she could send me back to prison. So even worse.

Well, suppose I was to sneak out of her bed and go to bed in my room? If I made it and got back to sleep it would probably not be too bad and something I could smooth over. Great. But if she caught me while I was sneaking, she might think I was giving her the slip. From then on I’d spend my nights in the steel-bar Sheraton.

I had just about settled on trying to roll her over when something like a rat ran across my chest. I froze.

Next thing was that Naala’s snore sounded more like gagging and then it went silent. She sat up fast, but not before her elbow had socked me in the face.

Maybe I should have known right off. Maybe I should have done something else even if I did not know, Heimlich maneuver or something.

Maybe a lot of things. What I really did was jump out of bed, run to the doorway, and switch on the light.

Something gray had Naala by the throat, and she was trying to pull it off. I had rats on the brain and figured it was a rat and would bite the hell out of me if I grabbed it. I grabbed it anyway, squeezing it as hard as I could, jerked it off and threw it against the wall, all in one motion. It landed on its back and for maybe a quarter of a second had trouble turning over. It looked to me like a big spider then, and I tried to stomp on it.

That was when Naala started yelling. I looked at her and looked back quick, but by the time I looked back it was gone.

So that was a mess. I tried to quiet Naala down, and it did not work. Then all of a sudden she shut up and went for her gun. I had not known where she kept it, but it was hanging from a hook in her closet behind some clothes.

“There was a woman who strangles me. Where is she?”

I said there was not, that at first I thought it was a rat, but it was really just a big spider or something like that.

“A woman! Her I see! Her I remember! Where she is?”

I wanted to say I thought she had crawled under the bed, but I did not. I got the broom instead and swung it back and forth underneath the bed without finding anything except dust bunnies. To put the broom back next to the stove, I had to walk across the living room. That was where I saw it. It was climbing back into its box, which was on a little end table there. Only when I saw it, it seemed like it saw me. It must have gone over the edge of the table on the far side. That is how I thought then and how I think now.

When I brought the empty box to Naala she wanted to know what I had done with it. I had seen that one coming a mile and should have had an answer all ready, but I had not been able to think of one. “It isn’t really a cut-off hand, like we thought,” I told her. “It’s more like some kind of animal somebody has fixed up to look like a hand.”

“Rotting garbage,” she said. (It is one word in their language.) “It is a hand, and if you do not in this box have it the woman who chokes me has taken it.”

So after that we searched the apartment, and I mean we searched it good. I did, particularly. That was because Naala was looking for a person, but I was looking for the hand, which could hide in a pretty small space. I did not find it and neither did Naala. Finally we had a couple of drinks and she went back to bed and made me lie down beside her. It must have been about two-thirty by then. Maybe three. This time she put her gun under her pillow.

Right here I probably ought to say something about that gun. It was pretty small, but not the smallest I have ever seen. It was also pretty light, but there are lighter ones. On the side of the slide it said, “CAL 9 BROWNING COURT,” which I had never heard of. Naala told me not to touch it, and I said I would not. Later I got one pretty much like it.

She had some bad scratches on her neck, which I should have talked about before. She had put iodine on them and I had put little strips of some kind of surgical tape on a couple of the worst ones, and I figured they would keep her awake. Wrong. She went right to sleep, but I did not.

To tell the truth, I was too scared. First and mainly I was scared of the hand. I knew it had been just a hand and not a whole woman. It was not some kind of animal that looked like one, either. It was a hand, and somehow somebody had found out how to keep a hand alive after it had been cut off. It could probably jump using all five fingers and it would jump up on the bed, and this time it would go for me.

Or else it would grab the bedspread where it hung down and pull itself up. Then it would crawl really quietly, crawling up toward me until it could grab my neck.

Second, I was scared about the gun. I was not afraid Naala would panic and shoot me. I was pretty sure that was not going to happen. I was afraid I would sneak it out from under her pillow and shoot her.

Then I would be on the loose, with no way out, a gun, and no place to hide. I could see how that might start looking like a swell idea when I got sleepy. That was one thing. The other one was that I do not trust myself when I have had much of anything to drink. Generally two beers are my limit for the night, especially if I am going to have to drive, which I generally do. That night I had drunk two stiff shots of some dark stuff that was probably local whiskey. It tasted so bad it had been hard not to gag, and the first one just about knocked my head off. I felt like I was falling-down drunk and might do anything. Pretty soon I got up and puked in the bathroom.

The funny thing was it made me feel better. I was still drunk, but I knew I was and knew I was getting over it. Also I got some ice out of the refrigerator and made ice water. I must have done for five or six glasses of that, just sitting at the little table, staring at the door, and sipping water.

I was thinking about the hand. What I had told Naala was bullshit, and I knew it. It was a hand, and it was still alive. It did not matter how it was done, that was the fact. If it had gotten out of the apartment, how had it done it? If it had not, where was it? Those questions went round and round in my head, and I kept telling myself that if I thought of a way it could have gotten out, or a place where it could be hiding, I would go and look there.

Only I never had to stand up.

There was only one door, and it was bolted on the inside. Maybe the hand could have climbed up and unbolted it. Maybe it could have turned the doorknob somehow. But how the heck could it have bolted that door again after it went out?

And I had looked everywhere. In the fridge. In the stove. In every closet. In the bedclothes on both beds. Under both beds. I had even looked in the flush tanks of the toilets, and eventually I went back to bed.

Next morning Naala did not want to talk about it. That was fine with me, because I had a headache and knew I did not have anything useful to say. So instead of that we argued about what I was going to wear. She wanted me to put on the wool sport jacket, which I knew was going to be too warm. Eventually we went out for breakfast, and I said maybe it would be better to pick up Rosalee first so she could eat breakfast with us. Naala said no and it was her money, so we did not.

On the way to the prison I had another brainstorm. I said how about this? What we really need is to know who Russ’s other customers here were. So we send somebody to America. He contacts the new owners and finds out. I am here, I am American, I know the case, and I knew Russ, so I would be the perfect person.

I saw that one go down the drain before I had even gotten through speaking. I will not tell you what she said.

After that I had another idea. I would go to the American embassy and talk them into finding that stuff out for us through the Department of Commerce. But I knew if I sprung that idea on Naala right after my last one, it would be a goner, too. So I did not.