Christopher Golden - The Monster’s Corner - Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

“Let me take you home,” he said, putting a hand on my arm, daring to initiate touching for the first time, to thrill at the feel of my skin, of my warm flesh, of the roundness of my arm. He loved me. He really did. “You need some sleep, and you’ll be fine.”

I jerked away from his grip. “Are you my friend or aren’t you?”

“You know I am,” he said.

“Then come with me. Help me, and if you want, you can join me.”

“Join you?”

“Take my hand. You can be like I am.”

He stared at me. “Are you quoting Blue Oyster Cult?”

“I’m alluding to Blue Oyster Cult,” I said. “It’s not the same thing. But I am also offering us a way to be together.”

“Why me?” he said. “Why did you choose me?”

We all have our blind spots and our weaknesses, and this was mine. This was the question to which I’d never formulated a response, and I should have known it was coming. I should have seen it as inevitable, but I slipped up, and now I had to think on my feet. I could not hesitate. I could not appear to be fabricating something, and so I told him the truth. “I saw you at school, picking up Neil, and you were what I wanted. I knew you were. You were like a perfectly ripe piece of fruit ready for picking. And so I picked you. Now you are mine, if you want to be.”

He stared at me, daring to hope that what I said was true, that I could somehow make him something else, that he could walk away from his life and have a reason, a necessity, to become something else. Even if it meant becoming a monster, was it worth it? Was becoming something unspeakable too high a price to pay for becoming something new? Pete had already had a taste of what it would be like to live outside the realm of the acceptable, he had desired the forbidden, he had flirted with becoming an outcast, and all of those things had seemed wonderful and welcoming and sweet, and that was why he followed me into the graveyard.

I stared at him hard, daring him to turn away from me. “You said you’d do anything for me. You said that. Did you mean it?”

He nodded.

“Then it’s time to show me.”

Of all the things he did that night, following me inside was the hardest. To enter a graveyard at night was a thing so strange, so against every instinct, that it made the rest that much easier. We trudged across the vast expanse of markers and monuments. The air was warm and pleasant, and the half-moon provided us with just enough light. Somewhere in the far distance, the cemetery’s lone security guard sat in his little room, watching his little television, oblivious to our trespass.

I’d scouted ahead, so I knew where to find the fresh grave with its loose soil and the shovel sticking out like a toothpick in a plate of hors d’oeuvres.

“Dig,” I told him.

He stared at me. “You want me to dig up a grave? Why?”

I smiled. “Because you want to know what’s at the bottom. You’ve always wanted to know, haven’t you? What do I want with you? What am I after? There’s only one way to find out.”

He looked at me, unable to believe he was here, in this graveyard, truly considering something so insane as digging up a dead body. “You could simply tell me,” he said.

I shook my head, sympathetically, not at all unkindly. “No,” I said. “That’s not how it works. There’s only one way to find out. You can dig, or you can never know.”

That was why he picked up the shovel and thrust the blade into the loose soil. That was why he worked with calm, steady, untiring effort while I sat on a nearby gravestone and painted my fingernails black.

When the grave was dug and the coffin was open, it was his turn to watch, and he did watch. He looked on while I ate. I did not need to remove my clothes, but I did that for him, to give him something to consider, to ponder, to enjoy while I engaged in an activity that he must at first find revolting, and later find something else entirely. And when I’d had my fill, I took the shovel and removed the top of the corpse’s skull and handed him a beautiful cut of the freshly dead and yeasty-smelling brain. I stood before him naked, my breasts streaked with dirt and blood, holding the flesh out to him like a supplicant making an offering to her god, and he took it and bit into it and his knees became weak.

“Wow,” he said, dropping down onto the grass as he chewed thoughtfully. “It’s amazing. I can — I know what she was feeling, I know what she thought, how she made sense of things. I know what it was to be her.”

I stood there and looked at him and smiled. “I know,” I said, “that’s how it works. You just know.”

I watched. I watched him know what it was like to be that deep inside someone’s head, to understand a stranger’s life with intimate certainty. I looked at him and smiled, and wiped my mouth with the back of my naked arm. Pete had been amusing, and he’d been useful, but I could see it might get tiring soon enough. And when it did, well, something might happen to Pete, and then it would be time for me to find out what he’d been thinking all this time …

SAINT JOHN WALKED through cinders that fell like slow rain, and he found twenty-seven angels hiding behind the altar of a burning cathedral.

AN HOUR BEFORE that he found a crushed and soiled rose.

He stole a wheelbarrow from a hardware store and filled it with the weapons he had collected since the plague began and wheeled it to the cathedral. Saint John sang songs in his head while he worked. He did not sing them aloud, of course. God had told him years ago to sing all of his songs of praise in the temple inside his head. He left the barrow by the curb and walked up the stone stairs. The door was ajar, the lock chopped clumsily out of the wood by an axe.

There was an explosion behind the far row of buildings, and Saint John turned and stood on the top step as golden embers fell. He tilted his head face upward, eyes closed, tongue out, smiling as he waited for a piece of ash to find him. When it did he pulled it in with the tip of his tongue and savored it. The strongest flavor was the uninspired taste of charcoal that had to melt before he could enjoy the other tastes. Ghosts of flavors. There was sweetness there, like meat. A sharpness like ammonia. The tang of acid sourness. He did not know what this ash had been. Something alive, that much was certain, but that could be as true of a tree as of a dog, a pigeon, or the postman. He wished that he could discern which, but a learned palate was an acquired thing, its subtle perceptions honed through practice, observation, consideration, and repetition. Saint John did not believe that he would have the time to sample and catalogue the many flavors and combinations of flavors of this apocalyptic feast. The fires would not last as long as his appetites.

Pity.

There was an explosion off to his left. He cocked his head and replayed the boom in his memory and then listened to the echoes as they banged off the building that surrounded the stone library. He smiled faintly. This was something he knew well. The blast was ordinary, not military ordnance. Probably a car gas tank rupturing from superheated gases as the vehicle burned. Semtex or C-4 each had its own unique blast signature, much like the calibers of bullets, weights of loads, and makes of guns. Each possessed a unique voice that whispered its secrets to him.

As if to reaffirm this, there was a rattle of automatic gunfire followed by three spaced shots. A military M-4 and a Glock nine. Unique in their way, but commonplace since the Fall.

The Fall …

The concept of it was old in his mind. Saint John had expected it, prepared for it, known that it was coming ever since that day when he was reborn in the blood that flowed from the thousand cuts on his father’s flesh. That’s when the Voice began speaking to him in his mind, telling him of the Fall that would come. That was years ago, and it was old and sacred knowledge to him. However, to the people around him, the panicked masses dwindling down to a scattered few, the Fall was immediate. It was their All, and in their panic they probably did not remember the world as it was before. Saint John was sure of that. He could see it in the eyes of everyone he met.