Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

managing to twist to his side before landing. The airwhooshed out of his lungs and tears sprang into his eyes.

  Gingerly, he touched his head. His fingers came away wet. Kurt wasshouting something, but he couldn't hear it. Something moved in thebushes, moved into his line of sight. Moved deliberately into his lineof sight.

  Danny. He had another rock in his hand and he wound up and pitchedit. It hit Alan in the forehead and his head snapped back and hegrunted.

  Kurt's feet landed in the dirt a few inches from his eyes, big bootsa-jangle with chains. Davey flitted out of the bushes and onto theplastic rocking-horses, jumping from the horse to the duck to thechicken, leaving the big springs beneath them to rock and creak. Kurttook two steps toward him, but Davey was away, under the chain linkfence and over the edge of the hill leading down to Dupont Street.

  "You okay?" Kurt said, crouching down beside him, putting a hand on hisshoulder. "Need a doctor?"

  "No doctors," Alan said. "No doctors. I'll be okay."

  They inched their way back to the car, the world spinning aroundthem. The hard-hats met them on the way out of the Vesta Lunch and theireyes went to Alan's bloodied face. They looked away. Alan felt hiskinship with the woken world around him slip away and knew he'd never betruly a part of it.

  #

  He wouldn't let Kurt walk him up the steps and put him to bed, soinstead Kurt watched from the curb until Alan went inside, then gunnedthe engine and pulled away. It was still morning rush hour, and theMarket-dwellers were clacking toward work on hard leather shoes orpiling their offspring into minivans.

  Alan washed the blood off his scalp and face and took a gingerlyshower. When he turned off the water, he heard muffled sounds comingthrough the open windows. A wailing electric guitar. He went to thewindow and stuck his head out and saw Krishna sitting on an unmade bedin the unsoundproofed bedroom, in a grimy housecoat, guitar on his lap,eyes closed, concentrating on the screams he was wringing from theinstrument's long neck.

  Alan wanted to sleep, but the noise and the throb of his head -- goingin counterpoint -- and the sight of Davey, flicking from climber to bushto hillside, scuttling so quickly Alan was scarce sure he'd seen him, itall conspired to keep him awake.

  He bought coffees at the Donut Time on College -- the Greek's wouldn'tbe open for hours -- and brought it over to Kurt's storefront, but thelights were out, so he wandered slowly home, sucking back the coffee.

  #

  Benny had another seizure halfway up the mountain, stiffening up andfalling down before they could catch him.

  As Billy lay supine in the dirt, Alan heard a distant howl, not like awolf, but like a thing that a wolf had caught and is savaging with itsjaws. The sound made his neck prickle and when he looked at the littleones, he saw that their eyes were rolling crazily.

  "Got to get him home," Alan said, lifting Benny up with a grunt. Thelittle ones tried to help, but they just got tangled up in Benny's longloose limbs and so Alan shooed them off, telling them to keep a lookoutbehind him, look for Davey lurking on an outcropping or in a branch,rock held at the ready.

  When they came to the cave mouth again, he heard another one of thescreams. Brendan stirred over his shoulders and Alan set him down, heartthundering, looking every way for Davey, who had come back.

  "He's gone away for the night," Burt said conversationally. He sat upand then gingerly got to his feet. "He'll be back in the morning,though."

  The cave was destroyed. Alan's books, Ern-Felix-Grad's toys weresmashed. Their clothes were bubbling in the hot spring in rags andtatters. Brian's carvings were broken and smashed. Schoolbooks wereruined.

  "You all right?" Alan said.

  Brian dusted himself off and stretched his arms and legs out. "I'll befine," he said. "It's not me he's after."

  Alan stared blankly as the brothers tidied up the cave and made piles oftheir belongings. The little ones looked scared, without any of thehardness he remembered from that day when they'd fought it out on thehillside.

  Benny retreated to his perch, but before the sun set and the cavedarkened, he brought a couple blankets down and dropped them beside thenook where Alan slept. He had his baseball bat with him, and it made agood, solid aluminum sound when he leaned it against the wall.

  Silently, the small ones crossed the cave with a pile of their ownblankets, George bringing up the rear with a torn T-shirt stuffed withsharp stones.

  Alan looked at them and listened to the mountain breathe around them. Ithad been years since his father had had anything to say to them. It hadbeen years since their mother had done anything except wash theclothes. Was there a voice in the cave now? A wind? A smell?

  He couldn't smell anything. He couldn't hear anything. Benny proppedhimself up against the cave wall with a blanket around his shoulders andthe baseball bat held loose and ready between his knees.

  A smell then, on the wind. Sewage and sulfur. A stink of fear.

  Alan looked to his brothers, then he got up and left the cave without alook back. He wasn't going to wait for Davey to come to him.

  The night had come up warm, and the highway sounds down at the bottom ofthe hill mingled with the spring breeze in the new buds on the trees andthe new needles on the pines, the small sounds of birds and bugsforaging in the new year. Alan slipped out the cave mouth and lookedaround into the twilight, hoping for a glimpse of something out of theordinary, but apart from an early owl and a handful of firefliessparking off like distant stars, he saw nothing amiss.

  He padded around the mountainside, stooped down low, stopping every fewsteps to listen for footfalls. At the high, small entrance to thegolems' cave, he paused, lay on his belly, and slowly peered around thefissure.

  It had been years since Alvin had come up to the golems' cave, yearssince one had appeared in their father's cave. They had long ago ceasedbringing their kills to the threshold of the boys' cave, ceased leavingpelts in neat piles on the eve of the waning moon.

  The view from the outcropping was stunning. The village had grown to atown, fast on its way to being a city. A million lights twinkled. Thehighway cut a glistening ribbon of streetlamps through the night, astraight line slicing the hills and curves. There were thousands ofpeople down there, all connected by a humming net-work -- a work ofnets, cunning knots tied in a cunning grid -- of wire and radio andcivilization.

  Slowly, he looked back into the golems' cave. He remembered it as beinglined with ranks of bones, a barbarian cathedral whose arches weredecorated with ranked skulls and interlocked, tiny animal tibia. Nowthose bones were scattered and broken, the ossified wainscoting renderedgap-toothed by missing and tumbled bones.

  Alan wondered how the golems had reacted when Darl had ruined theircenturies of careful work. Then, looking more closely, he realized thatthe bones were dusty and grimed, cobwebbed and moldering. They'd beenlying around for a lot longer than a couple hours.

  Alan crept into the cave now, eyes open, ears straining. Puffs of dustrose with his footfalls, illuminated in the moonlight and city lightstreaming in from the cave mouth. Another set of feet had crossed thisfloor: small, boyish feet that took slow, arthritic steps. They'd comein, circled the cave, and gone out again.

  Alan listened for the golems and heard nothing. He did his own slowcircle of the cave, peering into the shadows. Where had they gone?

  There. A streak of red clay, leading to a mound. Alan drew up alongsideof it and made out the runny outlines of the legs and arms, the torsoand the head. The golem had dragged itself into this corner and hadfallen to mud. The dust on the floor was red. Dried mud. Golem-dust.

  How long since he'd been in this cave? How long since he'd come aroundthis side of the mountain? Two months. Three? Four? Longer. How long hadthe golems lain dead and dust in this cave?

  They'd carved his cradle. Fed him. Taught him to talk and to walk. Insome sense, they were his fathers, as much as the mountain was.

  He fished around inside himself for emotion and found none. Relief,maybe. Relief.

  The go
lems were an embodiment of his strangeness, as weird as hissmooth, navelless belly, an element of his secret waiting to surface and-- what? What had he been afraid of? Contempt? Vivisection? He didn'tknow anymore, but knew that he wanted to fit in and that the golems'absence made that more possible.

  There was a smell on the wind in here, the death and corruption smellhe'd noticed in the sleeping cave. Father was worried.

  No. Davey was inside. That was his smell, the smell of Davey long deadand back from the grave.

  Alan walked deeper into the tunnels, following his nose.

  #

  Davey dropped down onto his shoulders from a ledge in an opening wherethe ceiling stretched far over their heads. He was so light, at firstAlan thought someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders.

  Then the fingers dug into his eyes. Then the fingers fishhooked thecorner of his mouth.

  Then the screech, thick as a desiccated tongue, dry as the dust of agolem, like no sound and like all the sounds at once.

  The smell of corruption was everywhere, filling his nostrils like hisface has been ground into a pile of rotten meat. He tugged at the dry,thin hands tangled in his face, and found them strong as iron bands, andthen he screamed.

  Then they were both screeching and rolling on the ground, and he hadDanny's thumb in his hand, bending it back painfully, until *snap*, itcame off clean with a sound like dry wood cracking.

  Doug was off him then, crawling off toward the shadows. Alan got to hisknees, still holding the thumb, and made ready to charge him, holdinghis sore face with one hand, when he heard the slap of running footfallsbehind him and then Bill was streaking past him, baseball bat at ready,and he swung it like a polo-mallet and connected with a hollow crunch ofaluminum on chitinous leathery skin.

  The sound shocked Alan to his feet, wet sick rising in his gorge. Bennywas winding up for a second blow, aiming for Darren's head this time, anout-of-the park *smack* that would have knocked that shrunken head offthe skinny, blackened neck, and Alan shouted, "NO!" and roared at Bennyand leapt for him. As he sailed through the air, he thought he wassaving *Benny* from the feeling he'd carried with him for a decade, butas he connected with Benny, he felt a biting-down feeling, clean andhard, and he knew he was defending *Drew*, saving him for once insteadof hurting him.

  He was still holding on to the thumb, and Davey was inches from hisface, and he was atop Benny, and they breathed together, chestsheaving. Alan wobbled slowly to his feet and dropped the thumb ontoDrew's chest, then he helped Billy to his feet and they limped off totheir beds. Behind them, they heard the dry sounds of Davey getting tohis feet, coughing and hacking with a crunch of thin, cracked ribs.

  #

  He was sitting on their mother the next morning. He was naked andunsexed by desiccation -- all the brothers, even little George, hadceased going about in the nude when they'd passed through puberty --sullen and silent atop the white, chipped finish of her enamel top, soworn and ground down that it resembled a collection of beach-China. Ithad been a long time since any of them had sought solace in theirmother's gentle rocking, since, indeed, they had spared her a thoughtbeyond filling her belly with clothes and emptying her out an hourlater.

  The little ones woke first and saw him, taking cover behind astalagmite, peering around, each holding a sharp, flat rock, each withhis pockets full of more. Danny looked at each in turn with eyes goneyellow and congealed, and bared his mouthful of broken and blackenedteeth in a rictus that was equal parts humor and threat.

  Bradley was the next to wake, his bat in his hand and his eyelidsfluttering open as he sprang to his feet, and then Alan was up as well,a hand on his shoulder.

  He crouched down and walked slowly to Davey. He had the knife, handlewound with cord, once-keen edge gone back to rust and still reddenedwith ten-year-old blood, but its sharpness mattered less than itshistory.

  "Welcome me home," Davey rasped as Alan drew closer. "Welcome me home,mother*fucker*. Welcome me home, *brother*."

  "You're welcome in this home," Alan said, but Davey wasn't welcome. Justlast week, Alan had seen a nice-looking bedroom set that he suspected hecould afford -- the golems had left him a goodly supply of gold flake,though with the golems gone he supposed that the sacks were the end ofthe family's no-longer-bottomless fortune. But with the bedroom setwould come a kitchen table, and then a bookcase, and a cooker and afridge, and when they were ready, he could send each brother on his waywith the skills and socialization necessary to survive in the wideworld, to find women and love and raise families of their own. Then hecould go and find himself a skinny redheaded girl with a Scots accent,and in due time her belly would swell up and there would be a child.

  It was all planned out, practically preordained, but now here they were,with the embodied shame sitting on their mother, his torn thumb gleamingwith the wire he'd used to attach it back to his hand.

  "That's very generous, *brother*," Danny said. "You're a prince among*men*."

  "Let's go," Alan said. "Breakfast in town. I'm buying."

  They filed out and Alan spared Davey a look over his shoulder as theyslipped away, head down on his knees, rocking in time with their mother.

  #

  Krishna grinned at him from the front porch as he staggered home fromKurt's storefront. He was dressed in a hoodie and huge, outsized raverpants that dangled with straps and reflectors meant to add kineticreflections on the dance floor.

  "Hello, neighbor," he said as Alan came up the walkway. "Good evening?"

  Alan stopped and put his hands on his hips, straightened his head out onhis neck so that he was standing tall. "I understand what he gets out of*you*," Alan said. "I understand that perfectly well. Who couldn't use alittle servant and errand boy?

  "But what I don't understand, what I can't understand, what I'd like tounderstand is: What can you get out of the arrangement?"

  Krishna shrugged elaborately. "I have no idea what you're talkingabout."

  "We had gold, in the old days. Is that what's bought you? Maybe youshould ask me for a counteroffer. I'm not poor."

  "I'd never take a penny that *you* offered -- voluntarily." Krishna lita nonchalant cig and flicked the match toward his dry, xeroscapedlawn. There were little burnt patches among the wild grasses there, fromother thrown matches, and that was one mystery-let solved, then, wasn'tit?

  "You think I'm a monster," Alan said.

  Krishna nodded. "Yup. Not a scary monster, but a monster still."

  Alan nodded. "Probably," he said. "Probably I am. Not a human, maybe nota person. Not a real person. But if I'm bad, he's a thousand timesworse, you know. He's a scary monster."

  Krishna dragged at his cigarette.

  "You know a lot of monsters, don't you?" Alan said. He jerked his headtoward the house. "You share a bed with one."

  Krishna narrowed his eyes. "She's not scary, either."

  "You cut off her wings, but it doesn't make her any less monstrous.

  "One thing I can tell you, you're pretty special: Most real people neversee us. You saw me right off. It's like *Dracula*, where most of thehumans couldn't tell that there was a vampire in their midst."

  "Van Helsing could tell," Krishna said. "He hunted Dracula. You can'thunt what you can't see," he said. "So your kind has been getting a safefree ride for God-knows-how-long. Centuries. Living off of us. Passingamong us. Passing for us."

  "Van Helsing got killed," Alan said. "Didn't he? And besides that, therewas someone else who could see the vampires: Renfield. The pathetic petand errand boy. Remember Renfield in his cage in the asylum, eatingflies? Trying to be a monster? Von Helsing recognized the monster, butso did Renfield."

  "I'm no one's Renfield," Krishna said, and spat onto Alan's lawn. Firstfire, then water. He was leaving his mark on Alan's land, that wascertain.

  "You're no Van Helsing, either," Alan said. "What's the differencebetween you and a racist, Krishna? You call me a monster, why shouldn'tI call you a paki?"

  He stiffened at the slur, and so
did Alan. He'd never used the wordbefore, but it had sprung readily from his lips, as though it had lurkedthere all along, waiting to be uttered.

  "Racists say that there's such a thing as 'races' within the human race,that blacks and whites and Chinese and Indians are all members ofdifferent 'races,'" Krishna said. "Which is bullshit. On the other hand,you --"

  He broke off, left the thought to hang. He didn't need to finishit. Alan's hand went to his smooth belly, the spot where real people hadnavels, old scarred remnants of their connections to real, humanmothers.

  "So you hate monsters, Krishna, all except for the ones you sleep withand the ones you work for?"

  "I don't work for anyone," he said. "Except me."

  Alan said, "I'm going to pour myself a glass of wine. Would you likeone?"

  Krishna grinned hard and mirthless. "Sure, neighbor, that soundslovely."

  Alan went inside and took out two glasses, got a bottle of somethingcheap and serviceable from Niagara wine country out of the fridge,worked the corkscrew, all on automatic. His hands shook a little, so heheld them under the cold tap. Stuck to the wall over his work surfacewas a magnetic bar, and stuck to it was a set of very sharp chef'sknives that were each forged from a single piece of steel. He reachedfor one and felt its comfort in his hand, seductive and glinting.

  It was approximately the same size as the one he'd used on Davey, aknife that he'd held again and