Alex Adams: White Horse

She listens. “No.”

“Wait here,” I say. Someone needs to protect what we’ve already got.

The bell barely trembles as I ease the door open like I’m handling dynamite. I’m standing in what passes for a 7-Eleven in this part of the world. Or maybe it’s a souvenir shop. That would explain all the woven baskets and cross-stitchings clinging to the walls inside cheap frames. I fill two baskets with preserves: strawberry, peach, cherry. The other shops are useless. A butcher and a produce store, both with rotted wares. There’s no medicine here—not even an antacid. The houses are just as selfish: they give me nothing I can use to heal. What these people had is long gone.

Against one wall I find a broom resting, waiting to be of use. So I grant it that wish, twist its head from its neck, assign it a new occupation.

Outside, Lisa is scuffing her boot on the stone steps leading up to the door. Her mouth droops at the edges as though she’s sinking into darker thoughts.

“Jam,” I announce as loud as I dare, and imbue the word with what I hope is a smile rather than a grimace. “Who needs bread? We can pretend we’re kids and eat it straight out of the jar.”

“Can we go? I don’t like it here. It’s too quiet, if that makes sense.”

A year ago this village would have teemed with life. Tourists oohing and ahhing over the postcard-perfect scenery as they spent too much money for a commemorative trinket that would wind up in a drawer the moment their suitcases were unpacked. Locals smiling at their heavier purses, grateful the road through their village was more heavily traveled, thanks to a popular movie and a spate of wall calendars. Even in her dark world, Lisa would have loved it then. I would have, too. I used to have one of those calendars, and the movie went great with a quart of Ben and Jerry’s.

“Soon.”

I hang the baskets on the handlebars before curling Lisa’s fingers around the broom handle.

“It’s a cane,” she says, lightly tapping the tip on the foot-worn paving stones. “So sticks and stones won’t break my bones. Thanks.”

My gaze fixates on the church at the village’s eastern edge. Doors bolted. To keep something out. Or maybe in? There could be supplies in there, a makeshift sanctuary.

“Did you find medicine?” she says.

I stark walking. “There wasn’t any,” I throw over my shoulder. “I want to check out the church.”

“I’m coming, too.”

“Someone needs to guard the food.”

“I’m blind,” she says. “Not useless.”

“Okay. But if anything happens, run in the quietest direction and hide.”

In. Definitely in. Because a heavy beam has been dropped into brackets attached to the door’s frame. What is this village hiding? Who sealed the doors and where did they go?

I suck in as much air as I can. I already know I’m going to throw them wide, because what we need might be inside, and because I can’t help myself. Knowledge is power. Or maybe it will lead to capitulation. Best-case scenario I get to talk to God. Because we need to have a talk, He and I, though we haven’t done so in some months. And there’s a good reason for that.

Don’t do it, Zoe .

Do it .

Remember the jar .

Coincidence .

Words written on a bathroom wall: There is no such thing as a coincidence .

Curiosity killed the cat. Then it killed the world .

The thoughts swirl until they’re swept away by my determination. I reach for the makeshift lock that reminds me of the Middle Ages. I wasn’t paying attention in class the day they discussed the history of doors.

“Tell me what to do,” Lisa says.

I guide her hand toward the problem.

“We’re going to push up, okay?”

“Okay.”

Constant dampness keeps the wood swollen; it bulges in a mockery of gestation. My fingers pull from above, then push from below to no result. Lisa’s shoving, too, her face screwed up and intense—the same expression I feel on my face.

The beam shifts, groans, shoots straight up like a rocket, and we both stumble in its wake.

“Thanks,” I whisper. Lisa smiles and dusts her hands together, wipes them on her jeans and does a little Voilà! move like she’s a gymnast. I can’t help it, I join in. We spin, twirl, pose, like we have an audience of millions. This is Italy and my inner child is at the helm. I want to throw my coins in the fountain, meet my prince, spend my last dime on a villa, lose myself in the grandeur of Brunelleschi’s dome, be kissed between the legs of Titus’s arch. I want to live here, not die.

Then just like that, our performance stops and we’re ground down by the journey once more.

“What do you think is inside?”

Lisa looks flushed from our silliness. I probably do, too. Tugging the elastic band from my hair, I finger comb the damp strands, then smooth everything back into place and fasten the thick bundle.

Decomposition has its own smell. It’s the mugger of scents, slapping your face, kicking you in the gut then bolting with your wallet while you’re busy staggering and recoiling from the stench. Every so often I catch a whiff of that rotting meat smell. But also… something else I can’t define.

“There’s only one way to find out. Could be something, could be nothing.”

“Whatever it is, you have to tell me.”

“I will. I’m going in.”

She backs up fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I wrench the doors open wide.

My mind goes into overload. Acid bubbles up into my mouth and I wrestle to force it down.

Detach or go crazy.

Holiday snapshots from rainy Italy: corpses, mutilation, rotting flesh. Atop the priest’s corpse a rat died nibbling at what was left of his face. DNA gone so far wrong that even the bones are so gnarled, so anomalous, they’ve ripped through his skin from the inside. What looks like a tailbone. Not just the nub people have, but a lengthy ladder of bones that hangs past the knees. Horny protrusions jutting from what used to be faces. Bodies, unrecognizable as human but too similar to be alien. Italy has made grisly art from the Reaper’s work.

There is a wet sucking sound. I know it. I don’t dare close my eyes to think, and I can’t focus on single pieces long enough to isolate its meaning. It’s a cat’s tongue dragging along a meat chunk, keratin hooks stripping away the flesh. It’s the slurping of noodles from a foam bowl. It’s the sucking of marrow from freshly snapped bones.

Something is feeding. A monster who would be man were it not for a madman’s experiment. Its inhuman lapping is both a whisper and deafening, and my eardrums clang with the sound.

Someone shut them in here. Someone locked them in this place before abandoning this living tomb, and I cannot fault them for that decision.

My hands can barely hold the wooden beam steady. With Parkinson’s-esque control I tamp it down into the brackets with my fists so that thing inside can never get out. I walk away, back to Lisa, fists tight at my side.

“What was it?” she wants to know, but I don’t know what to tell her. That thing used to be human once, but now it’s a new link on the food chain.

I shake my head. I can’t speak. If I do, I’m going to lose the beans.

We’re maybe a half mileaway. The rain is lighter now and tickles my wet face before rolling under my rounded shirt collar. Lisa is chattering and I welcome the way in which she throws around words in any which order, because at least it takes my mind off the church.

Another mile. The compass indicateswe’re still headed east with a slight jag south, which is exactly where I want to be. The sky feels low enough to reach down and touch my head. The clouds are congealing into a solid dark mass. The world is sucking in its breath, but for what?