Christopher Buehlman - Those Across the River

“Eudora?”

No answer.

I turned my gaze back to the window. A rosy glow appeared through a stand of sycamores and I knew I would see it soon. It would crest through the trees red and lovely, older than love, neither cruel nor kind.

“Eudora?”

My fingers tightened on the sill and my breath came faster, pluming out into the cold air. There would be frost on the ground in the morning.

It came.

Just the lip of it, glowing through the branches.

She screamed.

“Dora!”

She screamed again.

The scream broke the word in me, my given word not to look. The part in me that responded to that sound was older and stronger than the part that made promises, even stronger than the fear of injury and death. I ran to the bathroom door and fumbled for the key. Dropped it three times before I got the key in, but I didn’t turn it.

I heard another noise then, so deep and threatening it stopped my hand. I felt the sound as much as heard it, felt it in the fingertips that rested against the doorjamb and in the ones that held the key.

I pulled the key out.

I looked through the keyhole.

I never should have done that.

She was in the tub.

She was halfway through it.

Her body had become long and canine. Her breasts were still hers, and they had multiplied. Her skin kept splitting and re-forming itself, so blood and tissue dropped from her. The worst part was her face. Because it was still her face, only her mouth was full of horrid, sharp, outsized teeth.

How like a Sphinx.

Then she spoke, only it wasn’t her voice at all.

She could barely speak through those teeth.

She panted between the words.

“You let me out… You let me out NOW.”

I mouthed the word “no” but no voice came out of me.

She looked into the keyhole.

Blood was welling in her eyes.

Still a woman’s face on a monstrous body.

“I hate you. Everything. You’re afraid I liked… I liked. Let me out and I’ll tell you… about it. You let me out… you sorry fuck. You sorry, sad FUCK.”

“No,” I said.

“You… can’t keep me here. You’re not. Strong. Strong enough.”

Then her mouth changed and she couldn’t talk anymore.

She banged the wall and went into a fit.

Saliva poured from her mouth. She shook her head and her snout got longer. She shook it again and her ears grew. She turned her eyes up to the keyhole again and they were like lamps, both greenish, one more grey than the other. She bared those wicked teeth and snarled, utterly without recognition. I backed away from the door.

I went to my car and got the .45.

I peeked through the keyhole again just in time to see her rear up and swat the overhead bulb. It exploded. It was dark in there now.

The front door knocked.

“Y’alright in there?”

“Yes! Thank you!” I yelled.

“I heard screamin, so I thought I’d ask.”

I hid the gun behind my leg and opened the door a crack.

A man in red and black flannel. The neighbor from five.

I don’t know how I said this so calmly, hoping another god-awful sound wouldn’t come from the bathroom, but I did.

“I appreciate your concern,” I said, my voice cracking, my heart racing, “but we need to be alone right now. I’m afraid my wife’s about to lose another baby.”

“Lordy, Mister, I’m sorry. I got a car if you want a lift to the hospital in Somerset,” he offered.

“They can’t do anything. She’s just going to have to get through this. I’m sorry about the noise.”

“No, I’m sorry. Y’all take care. God bless.”

“God bless,” I said.

Nearly as soon as I shut the front door, the bathroom door banged again, so hard that a little bit of plaster fell from the ceiling. I turned the radio on and mostly got fuzz. One preacher talking about rum. Then jazz. I couldn’t believe it. Good jazz in Nowhere, Kentucky.

I latched what was left of my sanity onto that.

I turned it up.

I sat on the bed.

The noises from the bathroom seemed to get more infrequent, and eventually stopped. My vigil began to relax. I probably lasted until ten o’clock before pure exhaustion overtook me and I fell asleep.

Night.

Cold.

I was lying on my side on a strange bed in clothes that weren’t mine.

My crooked, spare glasses were on my head.

My gun was in my hand.

A radio was on, just playing static.

I reached beside me but Dora wasn’t next to me.

Everything started coming back to me, and I sat up with a start.

Jesus.

I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly three a.m.

Dora.

Was she sleeping?

I got up quietly and peeked through the keyhole.

There was a breeze coming from it.

I realized then that the bathroom was empty.

“Goddamnit,” I said, really frightened, and grabbed the key. I opened the door. Moonlight and cold air were coming through the window, which had been knocked completely out of its frame. The curtain rod was still hanging by one support and the flimsy curtain blew in the night wind. Glass and plaster were everywhere. One piece of glass reflected the full moon at me like a trapezoid eye.

“Goddamnit,” I said again, watching my breath curl potently out of my mouth.

I went and sat down on the bed again, running my hands through my hair, feeling insane, feeling worse, if possible, than I felt in the cage. There, at least, there was nothing to be done except to endure. Now I had to do something, but I couldn’t imagine what, and lives hung in the balance. I briefly considered shooting myself. I decided not to, but gave myself permission to reconsider the question later.

At last I gathered my reserves, wrapped the blanket around me, and set off into the night to find my Eudora. My adulteress. My leper.

This was coal mining country. Small shotgun shacks sat well removed from one another. I saw tire swings and fences and cows and I got lost. Good and lost. I kept the gun under the folds of the blanket. I wandered by the highway, looking, no doubt, like just another vagrant on his way from one hard-luck situation to another. I laughed, because I supposed that was in fact what I was.

“Get out of the road, ya idjit!” someone yelled at me.

I was pretty sure this was US 27, but I didn’t know. I was pretty sure I was going in the right direction. But the sun came up on me and I still had not found the Sycamore Village Tourist cabins. My feet were bare and I couldn’t feel them anymore. I might lose toes! That struck me funny. Frost glittered on the grass by the side of the highway, achingly beautiful in the peach-colored dawn.

A sheriff’s car pulled up to me. The officer inside was young, maybe twenty-five.

“Mornin to ya,” he said.

“Good morning,” I said, grinning.

“You doin alright, mister?” he asked, pushing back his hat in a gesture of effortless dash and goodwill.

“I’ll be doing better if I can find my hotel. This US 27?”

“Yessir. Have you been drinkin, sir?”

“No,” I said, “I’m an opium fiend.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“I have never seen an opium fiend in this county, but I do allow that you look like what I might imagine one to look like. Do you need a lift somewhere?”

“Sure,” I said, “that’s very kind of you.”

I have a gun in this blanket!

I told him where I was staying and showed him the key.

He took me there without saying anything. I didn’t blame him; I wouldn’t want to say anything to me either. I’m sure I looked like a lunatic. I kept a shit-eating grin on my face and a white-knuckled grip on the gun so it wouldn’t bounce out during the drive.

We pulled over at Sycamore Village and he reached across me to open my door.