VACANCY & ARIEL

Still groggy, until this point I’d been unable to gather what I was seeing into a frame, but as Isha disappeared inside the cabin, the urgency of the situation hit home. I struggled to my feet and caught a glimpse of a coffin-shaped lozenge of dark red metal standing off among the trees, its lid open to reveal a shallow concavity within. It seemed so out of place against the backdrop of spruce and pine, it stopped me for a moment. I swayed and blotches swam before my eyes. Ariel began to cry out in panic, each shriek stabbing into me, and I started toward the door, but before I had covered half the distance between the patch of ground where I had fallen and the cabin, Isha emerged with Ariel in tow. She screamed, clawed ineffectually at his hand, which engulfed her upper right arm. There was no time to go for a weapon. I threw myself in a shoulder block at his knees, thinking his joints would be a weakness. It was like tackling an iron bar—an iron bar that had the stench of a rotting carcass. I grasped an ankle, locked my other arm about his calf, but he flicked me off as easily as I might have dislodged a leg-humping terrier, sending me tumbling through the air. Blinky and shaken, lying crumpled on my side, I had an unobstructed view of his face. It was even uglier than those Ariel had drawn. Long hollow cheeks marked by vertical ridges—whether they were scars or some sensory apparatus, I cannot say. Eyes close together, almond-shaped surfaces concealed by membranes that appeared to have a yellowish crackling glaze. A scalp twigged with twists of black hair; a broad forehead and a tapered chin forming an inverted triangle that enclosed his features. The seat of his ugliness, however, was the area occupied by the mouth and nose. It appeared that something shaped like the base of a tripod had taken out a chunk of flesh, leaving tattered flaps of skin that only partly concealed a glistening mauve depth. The flaps palpitated as with an erratic gush of breath. The idea of his hands on Ariel sickened and enraged me. She screamed again. I picked myself up and charged Isha, eluded his defensive blow and jammed my fist into that central ugliness, into the glutinous heat of his throat. My fingers caught the flaps surrounding the maw as he jerked back his head. I clutched at them, tore at the loose skin. Letting out a high-pitched gurgling, he swatted me away. I went rolling on the ground and when I glanced up Isha was holding his mouth, blood leaking between nearly foot-long fingers that looked like dirty bones. Ariel had broken free and was running directly toward Isha’s vehicle, running full out, pumping her arms, her hair flying. Isha saw her, too, and I expect my sinking feeling mirrored his, for we both called after her at the same moment, our voices blending in a duet of pleading. It had no appreciable effect. She fitted herself into the vehicle, staring out at us; her hand went to a panel and the door began to swing shut.

I think she looked at me before the door sealed her from view, and I later told myself that in her look was a measure of regret, of longing. But I know her mind was arrowing ahead to some distant landing where she would change and forget not only me, but everything she knew. That was, I believe now, the reason she buried the cylinders after arriving on our shore. She wanted surcease and only forgetfulness would bring it to her. And this time, once she succeeded in forgetting, she would find a safe harbor and there build a new life. Until Isha found her. The Isha of that place, alien in form and speech, doting, obsessed, mad for her. I know this now, but at the time I knew only that she was gone beyond me.

A roaring came to my ears. It seemed to arise from every surface, not the issue of one mouth but the consensus of a trillion. The nausea I was feeling doubled and redoubled in force, cramping me, and through slitted eyes I watched the forest ripple, the entire landscape rippling about the solid dark red object at its midst. Isha, I realized, had distanced himself from the vehicle. Trusting to his instincts, I made for the cabin, glancing back as I passed through the door. The vehicle appeared to be shrinking, receding into instability, still solid itself, but inset into an opaque turbulence that stretched tunnel-like into an unreal distance. Needles lifted from the ground, yet there was no wind to speak of and the motion of that airborne debris did not seem the product of a current, but a vibration I could not feel. Then I felt it. A hot pressure on my face—it was as if the molecules of the air had knitted together, forming a second, too-tight skin. Everything looked to have brightened. Metal glinted, rocks glowed. Even the darkness held a shine. The vehicle continued to dwindle, becoming no bigger than a red splinter at the heart of a vortex. My own heart felt the same size, drained of blood and warmth.