Harlan Ellison - Deathbird Stories

He had driven to her parents’ home, but it had been dark. He could not—or would not—break in to wait, but there had been a note taped to the mailbox advising the mailman to forward all letters to Teresa McCausland to this house.

He drummed the steering wheel with his fingers. His right leg ached from the fall. His shirtsleeve had been ripped and his left forearm bore a long, shallow gash from the mulberry bush. But it had stopped bleeding.

Finally, he crawled out of the car, dropped his shoulder into the crutch’s padded curve, and rolled like a man with sea legs, up to the front door.

The white plastic button in the baroque backing was lit by a tiny nameplate bearing the word HOWARD. He pressed the button and a chime sounded somewhere on the other side of the door.

She answered the door wearing blue denim shorts and a man’s white shirt, buttondown and frayed; a husband’s castoff.

“Vern…” Her voice cut off the sentence before she could say oh or what are you or they said or no!

“Can I come in?”

“Go away, Vern. My husband’s—”

A voice from inside called, “Who is it, Terry?”

“Please go away,” she whispered.

“I want to know where Mom and Dad and Neola went.”

“Terry?”

“I can’t talk to you…go away!”

“What the hell’s going on around here, I have to know.”

“Terry? Someone there?”

“Goodbye, Vern. I’m…” She slammed the door and did not say the word sorry.

He turned to go. Somewhere great corded muscles flexed, a serpentine throat lifted, talons flashed against the stars. His vision fogged, cleared for a moment, and in that moment rage sluiced through him. He turned back to the door, and leaned against the wall and banged on the frame with the crutch.

There was the sound of movement from inside, he heard Teresa arguing, pleading, trying to stop someone from going to answer the noise, but a second later the door flew open and Gary Howard stood in the doorway, older and thicker across the shoulders and angrier than Lestig had remembered him from senior year in high school, the last time they’d seen each other. The annoyance look of expecting Bible salesman, heart fund solicitor, girl scout cookie dealer, evening doorbell prankster changed into a smirk.

Howard leaned against the jamb, folded his arms across his chest so the off-tackle pectorals bunched against his Sherwood green tank top.

“Evening, Vern. When’d you get back?”

Lestig straightened, crutch jammed back into armpit. “I want to talk to Terry.”

“Didn’t know just when you’d come rolling in, Vern, but we knew you’d show. How was the war, old buddy?”

“You going to let me talk to her?”

“Nothing’s stopping her, old buddy. My wife is a free agent when it comes to talking to ex-boyfriends. My wife, that is. You get the word…old buddy?”

“Terry?” He leaned forward and yelled past Howard.

Gary Howard smiled a ladies’ choice dance smile and put one hand flat against Lestig’s chest. “Don’t make a nuisance of yourself, Vern.”

“I’m talking to her, Howard. Right now, even if I have to go through you.”

Howard straightened, hand still flat against Lestig’s chest. “You miserable cowardly sonofabitch,” he said, very gently, and shoved. Lestig flailed backward, the crutch going out from under him, and he tumbled off the front step.

Howard looked down at him, and the president of the senior class smile vanished. “Don’t come back, Vern. The next time I’ll punch out your fucking heart.”

The door slammed and there were voices inside. High voices, and then the sound of Howard slapping her.

Lestig crawled to the crutch, and using the wall stood up. He thought of breaking in through the door, but he was Lestig, track…once…and Howard had been football. Still was. Would be, on Sunday afternoons with the children he’d made on cool Saturday nights in a bed with Teresa.

He went back to the car and sat in the darkness. He didn’t know he’d been sitting there for some time, till the shadow moved up to the window and his head came around sharply.

“Vern…?”

“You’d better go back in. I don’t want to cause you any more trouble.”

“He’s upstairs doing some sales reports. He got a very nice job as a salesman for Shoop Motors when he got out of the Air Force. We live nice, Vern. He’s really very good to me….Oh, Vern… why? Why’d you do it?”

“You’d better go back in.”

“I waited, God you know I waited, Vern. But then all that terrible thing happened….Vern, why did you do it?”

“Come on, Terry. I’m tired, leave me alone.”

“The whole town, Vern. They were so ashamed. There were reporters and TV people, they came in and talked to everyone. Your mother and father, Neola, they couldn’t stay here any more.”

“Where are they, Terry?”

“They moved away, Vern. Kansas City, I think.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Neola’s living closer.”

“Where?”

“She doesn’t want you to know, Vern. I think she got married. I know she changed her name….Lestig isn’t such a good name around here any more.”

“I’ve got to talk to her, Terry. Please. You’ve got to tell me where she is.”

“I can’t, Vern. I promised.”

“Then call her. Do you have her number? Can you get in touch with her?”

“Yes, I think so. Oh, Vern…”

“Call her. Tell her I’ll stay here in town till I can talk to her. Tonight. Please, Terry!”

She stood silently. Then said, “All right, Vern. Do you want her to meet you at your house?”

He thought of the hard-lined shapes in the glare of headlamps, and of the thing that had run screaming as he lay beside the mulberry bush. “No. Tell her I’ll meet her in the church.”

“St. Matthew’s?”

“No. The Harvest Baptist.”

“But it’s closed, it has been for years.”

“I know. It closed down before I left. I know a way in. She’ll remember. Tell her I’ll be waiting.”

Light erupted through the front door, and Teresa Howard’s face came up as she stared across the roof of the stolen car. She didn’t even say goodbye, but her hand touched his face, cool and quick; and she ran back.

Knowing it was time once again to travel, the dragon-breath deathbeast eased sinuously to its feet and began treading down carefully through the fogs of limitless forevers. A soft, expectant purring came from its throat, and its terrible eyes burned with joy.

He was lying full out in one of the pews when the loose boards in the vestry wall creaked, and Lestig knew she had come. He sat up, wiping sleep from his fogged eyes, and replaced the smoked glasses. Somehow, they helped.

She came through the darkness in the aisle in front of the altar, and stopped. “Vernon?”

“I’m here, Sis.”

She came toward the pew, but stopped three rows away. “Why did you come back?”

His mouth was dry. He would have liked a beer. “Where else should I have gone?”

“Haven’t you made enough trouble for Mom and Dad and me?” He wanted to say things about his right foot and his eyesight, left somewhere in Southeast Asia. But even the light smear of skin he could see in the darkness told him her face was older, wearier, changed, and he could not do that to her.

“It was terrible, Vernon. Terrible. They came and talked to us and they wouldn’t let us alone. And they set up television cameras and made movies of the house and we couldn’t even go out. And when they went away the people from town came, and they were even worse, oh God, Vern, you can’t believe what they did. One night they came to break things, and they cut down the tree and Dad tried to stop them and they beat him up so bad, Vern. You should have seen him. It would have made you cry, Vern.”