Full Dark, No Stars

I took Henry’s arm and hauled him, stumbling, back to the house. I pushed him down on Arlette’s mail-order sofa and ordered him to stay there until I came back to get him. “And remember, this is

almost over.”

“It’l never be over,” he said, and turned facedown on the sofa. He put his hands over his ears, even though Elphis couldn’t be heard from in here. Except Henry stil was hearing her, and so was I.

I got my varmint gun from the high shelf in the pantry. It was only a .22, but it would do the job. And if Harlan heard shots rol ing across the acres between his place and mine? That would fit our story, too. If Henry could keep his wits long enough to tel it, that was.

Here is something I learned in 1922: there are always worse things waiting. You think you have seen the most terrible thing, the one that coalesces al your nightmares into a freakish horror that

actual y exists, and the only consolation is that there can be nothing worse. Even if there is, your mind wil snap at the sight of it, and you wil know no more. But there is worse, your mind does not snap, and somehow you carry on. You might understand that al the joy has gone out of the world for you, that what you did has put al you hoped to gain out of your reach, you might wish you were the one who was dead—but you go on. You realize that you are in a hel of your own making, but you go on nevertheless. Because there is nothing else to do.

Elphis had landed on top of my wife’s body, but Arlette’s grinning face was stil perfectly visible, stil tilted up to the sunlit world above, stil seeming to look at me. And the rats had come back. The cow fal ing into their world had doubtless caused them to retreat into the pipe I would eventual y come to think of as Rat Boulevard, but then they had smel ed fresh meat, and had come hurrying out to investigate. They were already nibbling at poor old Elphis as she lowed and kicked (more feebly now), and one sat on top of my dead wife’s head like an eldritch crown. It had picked a hole in the burlap sack and pul ed a tuft of her hair out with its clever claws. Arlette’s cheeks, once so round and pretty, hung in shreds.

Nothing can be any worse than this, I thought. Surely I’ve reached the end of horror.

But yes, there are always worse things waiting. As I peered down, frozen with shock and revulsion, Elphis kicked out again, and one of her hoofs connected with what remained of Arlette’s face. There

was a snap as my wife’s jaw broke, and everything below her nose shifted to the left, as if on a hinge. Stil the ear-to-ear grin remained. That it was no longer aligned with her eyes made it even worse. It was as if she now had two faces to haunt me with instead of just one. Her body shifted against the mattress, making it slide. The rat on her head scurried down behind it. Elphis lowed again. I thought that if Henry came back now, and looked into the wel , he would kil me for making him a part of this. I probably deserved kil ing. But that would leave him alone, and alone he would be defenseless.

Part of the cap had fal en into the wel ; part of it was stil hanging down. I loaded my rifle, rested it on this slope, and aimed at Elphis, who lay with her neck broken and her head cocked against the rock wal . I waited for my hands to steady, then pul ed the trigger.

One shot was enough.

Back in the house, I found that Henry had gone to sleep on the couch. I was too shocked myself to consider this strange. At that moment, he seemed to me like the only truly hopeful thing in the world:

soiled, but not so filthy he could never be clean again. I bent and kissed his cheek. He moaned and turned his head away. I left him there and went to the barn for my tools. When he joined me three hours later, I had pul ed the broken and hanging piece of the wel -cap out of the hole and had begun to fil it in.

“I’l help,” he said in a flat and dreary voice.

“Good. Get the truck and drive it out to the dirtpile at West Fence—”

“By myself ?” The disbelief in his voice was only faint, but I was encouraged to hear any emotion at al .

“You know al the forward gears, and you can find reverse, can’t you?”

“Yes—”

“Then you’l be fine. I’ve got enough to be going on with in the meantime, and when you come back, the worst wil be over.”

I waited for him to tel me again that the worst would never be over, but he didn’t. I recommenced shoveling. I could stil see the top of Arlette’s head and the burlap with that terrible picked-over tuft sticking out of it. There might already be a litter of newborn ratlings down there in the cradle of my dead wife’s thighs.

I heard the truck cough once, then twice. I hoped the crank wouldn’t kick back and break Henry’s arm.