Tales from the Crossroad, Volume 1 Page 2

  The hawk dropped suddenly, folding his wings sleekly against his body as if in attack.

  The ground, he noted with disinterest, was covered in this spot with fallen acorns.

  He landed in a bare spot, folded his wings, and waited.

  Not for long: almost immediately the black cape swirled into his razor-sharp vision and settled in front of him.

  The paste-white face with its black hollows where eyes should be, regarded him with amusement, and the red slit of a mouth smiled thinly.

  “Of all the creatures on Earth,” Samhain, the Lord of the Dead, said, his thin voice filled with a kind of mirth, “I enjoy the company of your own species only next to that of the humans. Like them you kill with impunity, but yours is a pure lust for death. It is as built into your little brain as if you were a machine.”

  The hawk’s black eyes stared unblinking, and he rustled his feathers – perhaps in pleasure at the remark?

  “Here,” Samhain said, “is who you must help me kill.”

  Tom Winters hated his name, and he hated Orangefield.

  Damned woman, he thought, if only your damned family had been born somewhere else. Anywhere else.

  He lifted his axe, pretending for the twentieth time that he was bringing it down on his wife’s skull instead of a chunk of firewood.

  The axe hit square, split the log in half; Winters immediately picked up one of the fallen halves and split it again.

  Thwwwwwack!

  Again he thought of his wife’s head.

  Damned woman¼

  Something blotted out the sun and he looked up, dropping the axe to his side and wiping at his brow with his other hand.

  A hawk?

  The thing came down at him like a bullet – and a moment later he was screaming, dropping the axe and holding both hands over his eyes, abruptly blind, and the thing was now on his face, all claws and beak, driving at him like a piston, pecking deep into his ears and tearing at his cheeks and chin and then he felt the beast’s entire head, beak-first, driving into his mouth and he was suddenly choking and the thing, the beak, was down into his throat and he fought for breath which he no longer had.

  Cathy Berrins was looking forward to the Pumpkin Days festival. Her fifth grade class had done a banner: WELCOME AUTUMN! outlined in orange crepe paper, and she herself had painted, at home, a beautiful pumpkin in finger paints, swirls of black and of course orange, with glowing yellow in the triangular eye holes and, for a change, a round nose and straight mouth with no teeth. She thought it looked grand.

  I wish I’d always lived in Orangefield! she thought as she closed the front door of her home, adjusting the rolled-up poster board with the painted pumpkin on it under the crook of her left arm. The day was bright steel blue, a perfect autumn morning, with no clouds except for the clouds of breath that came out of her mouth when she breathed.

  She turned right, waving to her friend Pat Wiggins, who had lived here all her life and was already standing at the bus stop, a half block ahead.

  There came a sound and Cathy turned to see the bus, a little early, just braking with a squeal around the corner behind her.

  She broke into a run, ducking beneath the branches of the low-hanging oaks that lined the street.

  “Hurry! You’ll miss the bus!” Pat shouted in encouragement.

  There was a sudden sharp sting at the back of Cathy’s head.

  She turned to see something large and covered in feathers just alighting on her shoulder.

  Its claws felt like knives driving into her.

  “Ohhh!” she breathed, dropping her poster board, which opened, face-up, on the sidewalk.

  She fell on her back, and saw the huge bird hovering above her, its black, blank eyes unreadable.

  There were screams in her ears, perhaps her own.

  And then nothing.

  Jerry Reese wiped sweat from his brow, even though the day was chilly. He was thinking not of Halloween or Orangefield or anything else, just getting to his next beer.

  The cooler next to him was empty, had been for a half hour. But he had another fourteen fence posts to put up before he could take a break, and knew old man Matheson was watching him, one way or another.

  Old fucker’s got radar in his head, Jerry thought.

  Good day, for the middle of Autumn. Sun was warm, and the wash of air through the trees made it much more pleasant than August.

  Not a bad place to be, for an itinerant worker who hated to be anyplace very long.

  Beer he thought.

  He could almost taste the Budweiser on his lips, down his throat.

  That’s what I do, live from Bud to Bud.

  He laughed, rammed the fence post digger into the ground, striking a rock.

  Shit.

  Then the ground shifted slightly to the left, freed the digger, and his hole was complete.

  Good day! he thought.

  A shadow passed over the sun – he looked up and saw nothing but a black streak in his peripheral vision.

  There was a thumping sound to his right, and he looked down.

  Holy shit!

  A huge bird was sitting on his empty cooler, regarding him with cold black eyes.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Jerry said, the first words he had uttered out loud all day.

  The gigantic bird folded its wings tight against its flanks, continuing to look at him.

  Without thinking, half-drunk, Jerry swung his post hole digger at the creature, miraculously catching it on the side of the head.

  The bird fell off the cooler and lay inert.

  Jerry hit it again, a high arcing shot from above.

  “One dead bird!” Jerry said out loud, and barked a short laugh. “Teach you to fuck with my beer cooler.”

  The hawk’s crushed head looked up at him with one ebony eye, popped from its socket, still cold.

  Jerry slid the toe of his boot under the carcass, and flipped the dead creature away from the cooler.

  He opened the cooler, reached into the cold ice water, and drew out a last beer, miraculously hidden under the ice, popped the top and drank half of it down.

  He belched.

  He picked up the post hole digger and continued working.

  Like I said: one dead bird.

  Samhain waited impatiently in his woods. Overhead, through a gap in the nude-fingered branches, the October moon, nearly full, danced whitely among scudding clouds. A breeze had risen, and the air was colder, just as it should be on Halloween.

  Samhain’s cape moved open, closed, as his black eyes stared unblinking at the spot where the bird should have returned by now with its prizes.

  He knew, suddenly, that letting the hawk do his work was a mistake.

  After all, he thought, it’s only an animal. A mostly sentient and interesting one – but, still, not human.

  And now it was too late to recruit a human to finish the job.

  He would have to do it himself.

  He nearly sighed with displeasure – he had long since hoped to relinquish this part of his job to others.

  As if reading his mind, The Dark One’s thoughts entered his own.

  “Where is my tribute?” the Dark One said. “Three lives every Halloween?”

  “Soon,” Samhain answered.

  “Lazy, are we?” the Dark One replied. There was no humor in the voice, only an immensity of cold emptiness.

  “There are two, and one yet to go,” Samhain said.

  “Before midnight, Samhain. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “Have I ever?”

  In answer there was instant, frigid silence, and Samhain smiled grimly.

  The beer cooler was now completely empty.

  Jerry hadn’t even remembered passing out – he was supposed to be in Finnegan’s Bar by now, continuing the evening’s drinking. He angled his watch up at the moon – and at that point it went behind a cloud. But he thought he saw the small hand pointed between the eleven and twelve.

  Late, he thought. Damm
it. The bastards’ll drink up all the beer without me.

  He dropped the lid of the cooler and something freezing brushed across his face – the fabric of a coat.

  A cape.

  Someone was standing there in front of him.

  “What the f–?” Jerry said.

  “You killed the hawk?” a low voice said. It sounded hollow, like it was not used to speaking.

  “You bet your ass I did,” Jerry said, backing away from the caped thing, which had a funny pale face and thin lips that looked like they were a red line of lipstick. “Got in my way, and was fucking with my beer.”

  And the eyes looked hollow.

  He kept backing away, and tripped over something – the post hole digger. He went down but moved his hand around and took hold of the tool.

  The cape moved up and over him, and he brandished the digger like a weapon in front of him.

  “I killed that goddamned bird and I’ll kill you too!”

  The cape moved up and over him, and drew very close.

  It became the night, the world.

  Jerry dropped the post hole digger and gave a single muffled scream.

  This time, Samhain did sigh.

  The night moved quietly from October 31st to November 1st.

  All Saints’ Day, Samhain considered. Followed by All Souls’ Day. The day of the faithful departed.

  The moon was clear of clouds suddenly, and gave a silver-white sheen to the field, which was dotted with a neat line of empty fence post holes.

  Samhain hovered over the dead hawk, and something like pity rose in his hollow breast.

  He reached a pale, long-fingered white hand down and cradled the bird.

  It felt light, insubstantial.

  He sought to lift it, then let it drop.

  “Faithful departed,” he whispered.

  PREVIEW FROM:

  The Boy With Penny Eyes

  EDITOR'S NOTE: The Following is an excerpt from the novel The Boy With Penny Eyes by Al Sarrantonio. This is Chapter Thirteen.

  13

  In the cold of an orange dawn, Potty Johnson whistled "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." He always started the day with that, or some other Christmas carol, "Joy to the World," or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," or, sometimes, "Silver Bells." The fact that the holiday was nearly three months away didn't matter; it could be the Fourth of July and he'd still start the hot muggy morning with "White Christmas" or "The Christmas Song" or whatever else came into his head.

  It was the clink of milk bottles that made him think of Christmas. They sounded like sleigh bells. That and the fact that he started working when the sun was not yet up, at the time he always used to get up on Christmas morning with his brother and sister when he was a kid. Every morning when he loaded the cages of bottles into the truck and they began to jingle, in the hour before dawn, no matter what day it was, winter or summer, it was cold outside, and he could close his eyes at that magic moment and pretend that he was back there in his childhood skin, with his brother and sister, in his father and mother's house, and that the tree was waiting -in shadow downstairs, with dark outlines of presents all around, in neatly stacked piles, the smell of balsam hitting their nostrils—he in front, Bobby and Marian butting up against him from behind, whispering to him to hurry up. But he would take only one step down at a time, knowing that this was the only time during the whole year you could do this—that an hour from now it wouldn't be the same, all the presents would be opened, and Mother and Father would be yawning their way into the kitchen to make coffee (that alone, the coffee, would dull the balsam smell), the lights would be on, the sun coming up. (Was there snow this year? Yes!) In short, it would all be over. This was the moment to kiss, the moment when it was all still ahead, each step a step closer in anticipation, the rising excitement, the glowing single moment of each year just ahead, a step closer, step closer . . .

  "Come on, Potty!" Marian would finally say, moving past him followed by their brother. But still he would linger, not wanting this moment to end, wanting it to go on forever. He would leave all the rest—the presents and the hugs and the thank you's and Father opening a box with the same ties in it—he would give it all up—the presents, even, for this supreme moment to last always. Another step down, he heard Bobby and Marian around the corner in the hallway, themselves lingering, waiting for him to catch up, not wanting to go in just yet, maybe afraid to go in without him, afraid that somehow the spell would be broken since this was the way they always did it. Another step, hand on the railing near the bottom, brushing past the three long barber-pole-striped stockings that hung between the iron of the railing, something heavy at the bottom of the first one (it had to be an orange in the toe—there was always an orange in the toe), then a light brush of the other two stockings—which would wait till the end for exploration, since they were always of secondary importance to what waited in the living room.

  "Potty, come on!" Bobby whisper-shouted to him. And with a sigh he suddenly found that his unslippered foot was off the carpet of the stairs and on the cool-cold floor of the tiled hallway.

  "Coming," he whispered back.

  Still he lingered at the bottom of the stairs, his hand on the railing, looking up at the darkness above from which they had descended. He almost wanted to go back up, start all over again . . .

  Hearing the impatient groans of his brother and sister, he let go of the railing and followed them into the mouth of the kitchen.

  No coffee yet. There was only the smell of a kitchen cleaned the night before in anticipation of a holiday. There was the clean odor of Comet in the sink, and the faint smell of fruit. That was from Mr. Antonela's basket, the one he came over with every Christmas Eve from his own fruit market. There were things in there they never ate any other time: dates and figs, golden raisins as big as knuckles, damson plums from the Mideast, oranges so huge they wouldn't fit in the toe of any stocking, apples shined so red they hurt the eyes, two kinds of pears—skinny pale and fat green—figs on strings like necklaces, grapefruit ready to explode.

  They stuck their heads in a little farther, past the kitchen smells, past the fruit . . .

  There. From the family room just to the left, an odor that slapped at them, made them dizzy. Their fingers buzzed with anticipation at the smell of . . .

  The tree. There, in the darkness, it looked like a sentinel over Christmas, with a smell like nothing else, grabbing the nose like outdoors, indoors. Outside, a balsam was a tree; inside, it was Christmas.

  "Can you see anything?" Bobby said anxiously. He was behind his two older siblings, pushing against them, trying to peer into the room.

  "Wow," Potty said, still lost in the smell of the tree. But his eyes were beginning to adjust to the outlines of what lay in the treasure room.

  Outlines. Silhouettes, piles of dark boxes set against the barely dawning sky that leaked through the big windows. His eyes ran over this mountain range of Christmas presents: odd angles of the unknown, the faintly made-out profile of an asked-for gift, a contour that might be the sled Potty had asked for, or the wagon Bobby wanted, or might be something else entirely, wonderful on its own.

  They stood in the entranceway, three short steps down into Wonderland—three abreast with their eyes straining, noses still sniffing tree smell. Still, they wouldn't take that step. Still, Potty wanted it all to go on.

  Dawn grew a little bit lighter, sent the mysterious mountains into almost three dimensions, made faint letters appear on boxes, gave corners to others, made the sled into what had to be a sled, runner nearly visible.

  "That one's mine!" Bobby cried suddenly, running past the other two, jumping down the short steps to run across the room to where his presents lay stacked on a stuffed chair.

  "That's for me!" Marian shouted a moment later, then she, too, was down into the room, slippered feet hurrying her to another stack on the couch and to a neighboring rocking chair, with recognizable Marian-type things on it.

  Still, Potty hesitated. Wh
y does it have to end!

  He stepped down.

  And then the sun came up, and the coffee went on, and sleepy Mom and Dad were there, and everything was opened, and . . .

  The magic bled away.

  Bottles chimed one against the other.

  Potty smiled. He pulled his wire rack from the truck, thinking about how lucky he was to be a milkman, one of the few left. Milkmen coming with glass bottles was something else he remembered from his youth. He knew he was a romantic. Actually, being a milkman was pretty tedious, but the fact that he worked at a time of day when he could think about all these things, and was not bothered with other people, made it bearable.

  He felt something cold and wet on his neck. He looked up, and it was . . .

  Snowing.

  "Holy cats." This was not just a chance dusting. There were big fat flakes coming down, dancing around one another and laying themselves like sleepers on the ground around his feet. And suddenly there was a smell in the air like snow—not like the first snow of the year but as of a particular snowfall, a special one, and suddenly it smelled like . . .

  Christmas.

  "Jumping cats," Potty said. The sky was now filled with snow. It was building up around his feet. Unbelieving, he stepped back and sat on the bumper of the truck, putting the milk bottles down. They clinked. He watched as snowflakes clung to the sides of the milk bottles, white against white. A few melted, running down the glass, but the others kissed the bottles, sticking to them.

  There was a lot of snow falling, and Potty tried to remember if the sky had been clear when he'd set out on his rounds. After all, it was only the beginning of October. It wasn't even Halloween yet. Had they ever had a snow this early? He couldn't remember it ever happening. Usually the first snow came around Thanksgiving, and usually it was a powdering that he would watch from his schoolroom window. It would remind him of the coming holiday, with the parades on TV with Santa at the end, which meant that Christmas was on the way. Heck, hadn't the stars been out when he left the plant? Hadn't he watched the first orange of dawn push up at the horizon after he'd made his first couple of stops?