David Nickle - Monstrous Affections

Just as true — true as any other memory, like the silk touch of golden skin in the early, cool hours of a late-August Sunday…

…the hard impact of fist in gut…

…the hot memory of accusation…

…the trajectory of a gun, set loose from sweat-slicked hand — through sky —

—to dirt.

The gun lay nested in the grass at his feet. Rupert let his breath out and bent down — behind him, someone said: “You found it?” — and wrapped his fingers around the barrel. He lifted it first, like a hammer or an axe, then took the handle in his other hand — wonderingly put his finger through the trigger guard — and turned around.

The three of them stood close together — Wallace next to Joan, who held his arm. Nancy, clutching Joan’s skirt hem. The gun was heavy, and big for his hands — but finally, words returned to him, and he thought:

I could almost hit him. Miss the sisters. But hit him. Almost.

“I’ve got it,” said Rupert, and lifted the gun above his head. Wallace nodded, and held out his hand: “Give it here.”

Rupert took a breath, and looked at Wallace. “Not yet,” he said.

Wallace looked back at Rupert. “What do you mean? Come on.”

Rupert shook his head. “You said there was a body in there,” he said. “I want to see.” He beckoned with the gun and turned away from them, to face the house.

“What about the dog?” said a Waite sister — which one, Rupert could not say. He took hold of the gun by its stock, holding it in both hands and climbed the steps to the porch.

The house consumed Rupert.

That was how it looked to Wallace, watching from the property’s edge with the Waite sisters at his side. The brilliant morning sunlight shone off the roof of the house, making dark shade under the eaves of the porch. Rupert stepped beneath them, and he faded in shadow. One step further, and he vanished into the black.

“What about the dog?” said Joan Waite.

“It’s got to be there,” said Wallace, and Nancy said, “I don’t hear anything.”

The house was indeed silent. Wallace thought this strange. There should be barking and shouting — a gunshot, maybe, as Rupert tried to shoot the thing coming at him in the dark sitting room, up from the cellar…

What was Rupert getting up to in there? Wallace held his hurt arm close to him. He thought about the other door… across the hall from his room at the house…

Rupert had stepped through that one too, just as sure of himself.

“That house looks haunted,” said Nancy, finally.

“Is there really a body?” asked Joan.

“Wallace saw it,” said Nancy.

“I saw it,” said Wallace, but he didn’t look at either of them as he spoke. Wallace had not seen a body when he looked through the door of that house — not then, not the day before either. He thought he might have seen something. But as he thought about it, the thing he saw twisted and bent into all sorts of things.

“Rupert’s really brave,” said Nancy, “to go in there by himself.”

“Not that brave,” said Wallace.

“He fought you,” said Joan. “Even though you’re stronger.”

Wallace looked at both of them now — first Joan, then Nancy — and he tried to make a fist using his hurt arm, but the fingers wouldn’t close. Joan had a little smile; Nancy was shading her eyes with her hands as she peered at the quiet house.

“He touches girls when they’re sleeping,” Wallace said. “How brave is that?”

Nancy’s hand came down and she looked at Wallace. Joan’s smile broadened and she laughed, and her voice went high. “He what ?” she asked.

“That’s why we fought.”

“Who—”

“My sister.”

“Helen?”

“She’s really pretty.”

“Helen.”

“When?”

“Last Saturday of the summer,” said Wallace. “I let him sleep over at my house. We talked about stuff and went to sleep. And in the middle of the night — when he thinks I’m asleep — he gets up from the floor and sneaks out the door into the hall. So I followed him. He went across the hall to my sister’s room. And that’s where I found him.”

“Touching her?” Joan’s voice stayed high, but her smile turned into a grimace, and Nancy said: “Ewww!”

“Yeah,” said Wallace. “She was sleeping. He put his hands all over her leg. All up and down. While she slept .” Wallace paused, and looked at each Waite girl in turn.

“He likes you two, you know. Can’t decide which one he likes best.”

“Eww!” said Joan, and Nancy’s eyes went wide.

“Rupert Storey ain’t brave.” Wallace winced, and pushed, and his swollen fingers closed into a fist.

“He’s just a degenerate. He had it coming.”

Rupert pinched his nose, but it didn’t do much good. The stench in here was foul enough to taste: of piss and shit, and something sweet, and of smoke.

It was dark. The windows in the front room had blinds drawn down, and they glowed a sick yellow with the sunlight. There were three things that could have been the dog — a body — but as Rupert’s eyes adjusted, he fathomed that none of them were, that he was pointing the Webley at a rocking chair on its side… a barrel… a stuffed sitting chair, now bleeding its straw onto the floor.

And there was a sound. Of breathing.

Rupert uncovered his nose and lifted the Webley with both hands. The breathing was slow and wheezing. There was no rhythm to it; each breath was its own task. As Rupert moved further into the house, it seemed to grow louder, as if the house itself were a great lung drawing those unsteady breaths. Like Rupert was a bone, caught in its throat.

There were two rooms at the back of the house — a door on either side of a woodstove. The first was filled with rags and a broken bed frame. A pane of its window was broken, but the glass wasn’t cleared. A cloud of flies tickled against Rupert’s face, and drove him back. He let them. The breathing was quieter in this room. The cause of it was in the second room if anywhere.

If the dog was anywhere in here, that’s where he would be.

And as for Wallace’s dead body—

The door was half-open. Rupert stepped around the woodstove, and pushed it the rest of the way. This room was darker still. There was a bed underneath the window. Someone was in it.

Rupert stumbled — the floor here was wet with something — and he gagged. The smell here was terrible — it was like stepping inside a shallow privy.

The breathing stopped, and there came a hard wet cough.

“Let me stay!”

The voice was reedy and high, straining as though shouting but not much louder than a whisper. Something in it made Rupert decide it was a man’s. As he stepped further into the room, his eyes confirmed it — a long beard like nettles trembled against the pale light of the blind, as the fellow tried to sit up.

“I won’t be here long,” the man continued. “I ain’t well.”

Rupert kept the gun up, all the same. There were other things in this room. At the foot of the bed was what looked like a long duffel bag. On the floor, scattered here and there, were empty cans; along the windowsill, the silhouette of three more cans.

It was dark on the floor beside the bed. The man looked down there, and the darkness moved.

“My dog,” said the man. “Jack. Named him after my brother. Jack’s been on the road with me five year now.” A cough. “He ain’t doing well either. Came in hurt today.” The man shifted onto his side. “That a gun you have?”

Rupert squinted. The dog began to resolve itself from the shadow. It was lying on its side. It was breathing fast and shallow — as he looked, Rupert could make out the twitching of its rib cage. Its head was down, and there was a little shine from its eyes — and a bloody glistening, on the raw side of its head. Where, Rupert was sure, the rock he’d thrown had hit it this morning.