Ghouljaw and Other Stories (29 page)

The other one—
Blake
—shrugged. “Fine by me.” He looked over at his partner and flashed a grin, his teeth resembling irregular rows of infected corn kernels. “But I ain’t sharing none of the profit.” Roger snorted and stepped further into the clearing. The deer had slowed its flailing but was still mewling.

“Hurry up,” Roger said, glancing around the clearing. “I ain’t in the mood to run into a ranger.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Blake, resting the machine gun against a tree. He slipped off his backpack and began scrounging through it. After a few seconds he produced a tool. A rusty hacksaw.

Paul remained mentally and physically severed: still helplessly seeing
through
the jellyfish, while his brain—secure in his paralyzed body—continued
feeling,
adding voice to what he was watching.

Suddenly, a few of those long black tentacles hanging under the jellyfish’s gelatinous dome writhed and drifted out, extending to the hunters’ foreheads, and Paul was bombarded by awareness. It wasn’t quite omniscience, but what Paul sensed was intent—this was a kind of game or contest. The deer was a prize.
A piece of the deer
. He was gripped by the revelation of what they meant to do. A wild swirl of nausea flooded his unflinching body.

Paul watched helplessly as the jellyfish considered the deer’s black eyes.

A few times as a boy, Paul had gone night fishing with his father at a pond just outside of town. They both carried flashlights with them on the boat. Once, struggling to lure a worm, Paul had fumbled his flashlight, dropping it in the water. He watched as the light danced and wobbled, the glowing beam fading as it sank into the murk. It felt as if it had lasted an excruciating amount of time, the helplessness of it, but it had disappeared faster than Paul could hitch in a breath.

Paul could sense the deer’s life-light fading now, and he hoped the animal was far enough from the surface not to experience fully what was about to happen.

Blake approached the weakened buck cautiously, circling for a moment before savagely seizing a tangle of antlers and pressing a boot against its thick neck. The animal let out another shriek as Blake unceremoniously placed the hacksaw along the deer’s throat and began sawing, the hunter grunting with each clumsy stroke, the rust-mottled saw—steadily streaking with gore—roughly serrated through the deer’s neck, just under its jaw, as its black eyes continued to stare in hopeless astonishment.

Abruptly the jellyfish’s sight zoomed in to a torturous proximity, its vision magnified close enough to see green grime under Blake’s fingernails. It flashed over to Roger and watched the big man spit a viscous stream of tobacco juice, a string of spittle catching on his beard as he barked instructions at Blake, then it flashed back down to the deer, hovering inches from its face. Paul saw a few pearls of moisture racket off the animal’s glistening nostrils as Blake struggled to saw through bone and sinew.

Paul wanted to close his eyes, but it was the jellyfish that was observing, absorbing everything with detached avidity.

After ripping through a clinging portion of meat and skin, the deer’s head—along with its prized rack of antlers—was torn free. Blake let out a whooping cheer and hefted the spiky crown.

“All right, that’ll do,” Roger said listlessly and gestured toward the backpack. “Get it wrapped up so we can get the hell out of here.”

Blake obeyed, still showing his infected-corn grin. From the backpack he unfolded a murky tarp, along with a length of rope, and set to work on packaging the trophy rack.

The jellyfish scanned down to the deer’s body, and Paul was made to watch the deer’s dismembered form for several repulsive moments. Gouts of blood pulsed from the ragged wound on the deer’s neck. Only minutes before the deer had been standing twenty yards away, stoic, its deadly, umber-smudged antlers forked out like upturned talons. Now it was in two pieces—part of it being wrapped in filthy plastic, part of it lying on the ground, ejaculating blood. It looked like a botched autopsy, a madman’s tantrum.

The jellyfish shifted its attention from the dead animal and began drifting away, making a sleepy retreat from Roger and Blake and returning to the air above Paul, who was again
seeing
it and seeing
through
it to himself—the pale, lifeless thing lying on the ground that was called Paul Dawson.

The jellyfish began descending and its black, slender tentacles began merging, twining together conically, converging on Paul’s face. The twisted tendrils extended to his forehead and began corkscrewing, sinking in with drill-bit precision, but instead of pain Paul felt a washcloth coolness spread out over his brow as he watched the gelatinous form contracting and funneling. And just as the last of the jellyfish’s bell-shaped dome contorted and sank into his brow, Paul blinked, sucked in a stream of cold air, and had the fierce urge to . . .

The echo of his scream faded. Lying on his back, concealed by the fallen tree, Paul could only hear curses being traded and the clack of a gun being cocked. And then there was something else: Now, with consciousness and corporeality reunited, Paul was consumed by radiant pain in his upper chest. He ran an uncoordinated hand over the wound, his palm coming away crimson.

In time there was the cautious crunching of underbrush. Blake appeared, emerging from over the top of the log, eyes wide and wild, his machine gun shakily trained on Paul.

“Please,” Paul gasped, raising his blood-coated hand. “Please . . . have to get . . . help.”

Blake continued staring, repeating the same expletive. Finally he called out over his shoulder. “Roger—get your ass over here.”

Roger ambled into view, sidling up next to Blake. They inspected Paul like two fishermen who’d reeled in an aquatic oddity.

“Where the fuck did he come from?” Roger said absently.

“Jesus,” Blake mumbled. “Some goddamn hiker.”

Roger leaned down over Paul and spoke slowly. “Where the fuck did you come from?”

Paul hooked his fingers over the bullet wound. “Please”—gasping—“losing blood . . . need to get . . .” but the words died away. Gauging Roger’s uninterested expression, Paul became icily aware that his pleas were drifting toward uselessness.

Roger exhaled and pivoted, scanning the clearing, whipping off his ball cap and wiping sweat from his forehead. Paul stared at the man, awestruck with the man’s bully-distilled features.

“Roger,” Blake said, gun still aimed at Paul, “what are we—”

“Shut up,” Roger said calmly, smoothly replacing the ball cap. He came forward and rested his boot on the log beside Paul. He said, “Now why are you all the way out here, fella?”

Paul again stared at Roger, trying to calculate how this was going to end. After a stretch of silence Roger began flicking his eyes around Paul, settling on something. “Blake,” Roger said, gesturing toward Paul’s unzipped duffel bag. “Go over there and fetch that bag.” Initially Blake didn’t move, only flinched a nervous glance at Roger. “Do it, boy,” Roger said. Blake cursed, lowered the gun, and tromped over to where Paul had dropped his bag. Paul and Roger continued staring at each other.

“The hell . . .” Blake was frowning as he lifted Paul’s plastic baggy full of personal information.

Roger said, “Give it here.” He slid his hand into the baggy and withdrew the driver’s license. “Paul . . . Dawson.” After reading quietly for a few seconds, Roger twitched a frown and said, “New Bethel. Hell, that’s forty miles or better.” He inspected Paul. “What are you doing this far south, Paul Dawson from New Bethel?” With his boot resting on the log, Roger’s posture, expression, and tone resembled a drowsy, small-town sheriff.

“Roger,” Blake said, and held up Paul’s revolver. The two shared a quiet moment before Roger glanced back at Paul.

“Well well,” Roger said. “Now what would a guy like you be doing with a sweet piece like that, Paul Dawson?” A bird gave up a throaty squawk high up in the trees. Roger snorted. “I’ll tell you something, Blake, this guy ain’t no hiker, and he sure as hell ain’t no hunter. So I’ll ask you again—what are you doing all the way out here?”

A rational part of Paul—a part that he had neglected in the years, months, and days leading up to his grim adventure—was overwhelmed by the alien urge to survive, the urge to formulate a cogent plea to these hunters.
No, not hunters,
Paul thought soberly.
Killers
. And with that, what prevailed within Paul was another foreign desire—the desire
not
to cooperate. Right now, the only thing more hateful to him than the disappointment of his own life was the horror of ending it on their terms—begging, helpless. He lingered on the jittery moving portrait of his girls on the beach, the sandcastle, the laughter, the lapping waves, his daughter crying after getting stung on the leg by a jellyfish.

“Came out here to . . .” Paul murmured. “Came out here to . . .”

“Came out here to what?” Blake blurted.

“Came out here to . . . collect fossils.” Silence.

Blake’s gaunt face screwed up. “What the fuck? Fossils?”

Paul mumbled, “Arrowheads,” and smiled, blood staining the front of his teeth. “Arrowheads and trilobites.”

Something passed over Roger’s face. “Quit your jawjacking, Blake.”

But Blake ignored him. “What the fuck is the gun for?”

“For protection,” Paul said, still smiling.

“From what?” Blake said.

Now Roger was shouting. “Shut the fuck up, Blake.”

“Protection from . . .” Paul said thinly, and his smile faded as he blinked back and forth between the two men. “Animals.”

Roger’s expression grew vacant, unimpressed; but Blake still looked confused. “Roger, this guy—”

“Shut your mouth,” Roger said with dangerous finality. He took a deep breath and then leaned in on Paul, his voice a hangman’s whisper. “You’re going to fucking bleed to death out here, pal.” Paul stared. “But I figure that’s what you came out here to do in the first place. Isn’t that right?” Paul said nothing. “Well, don’t you worry. I have a feeling you’re going to get your wish.”

Paul blinked and licked his lips. “Maybe,” he said, extending a finger toward Roger’s young partner. “But I know Blake’s name.”

Blake bristled, hugging his gun close. “What’s he talking about?”

Roger sneered. “He’s saying that if somebody finds him they’d know about us because of the goddamned slug in his chest.”

Paul, lucidity wobbling momentarily, wondered about how much blood he’d been losing. Again, he suffocated the urge to ask for help. He pointed at Blake and said, “Grave . . . robber.”

Tearing his boot away from the log, Roger said, “Blake, hand me that revolver.” Blake did so. Roger flicked open the cylinder, which he eyed briefly before slapping it shut. As he stomped over to Paul and trained the revolver on his face, the husky man’s expression seemed to say,
Come on, fella, beg for it
. He wondered:
Beg for what, my life or the end?
Accepting the end—whatever that meant—was easy. Paul had been dwelling on it, had been inwardly practicing it, for so many months. But the difficult part now was accepting that these two men would continue doing what they do, would continue
being
. Paul wanted to deny them one more thing, wanted to deny them another trophy.

Everything slowed. Paul grinned as Roger thumbed the hammer and braced his arm. “So long, asshole.”

Paul closed his eyes, but in the interminable blackness beneath his lids he saw a flicker and was overcome with the inexorable urge to
push
. Since the jellyfish had pinwheeled into his mind, it had excavated something. Fertilized something. The jellyfish hadn’t just appeared, it had emerged, had awakened. He pushed. Memories seized him—
sick in bed as a kid
. He let out a wheezy breath and pushed again.
Molly in the hospital, Paul telling her to
—push.
His daughters, the sandcastle, the ocean, the jellyfish
. Paul clenched his teeth and
pushed
.

The jellyfish propelled itself from Paul’s forehead, stretching out long and black, reacquiring its enormous form as it floated back out into the clearing.

Roger, gun still bearing down on Paul, blinked and hesitated.

“What is it?” Blake said.

Roger glanced around uneasily. “Nothing. Just thought—” he trailed off. “Thought he . . . did something.”

Paul saw the jellyfish as a solid thing—vivid—sharp and crisp as Kodachrome, rapt by the inky beauty of it. He watched it drift into the clearing, hanging eight feet from the ground.

In one shaky movement Paul reached over and scrabbled at the side of the moss-covered log, hauling himself up, getting an elbow on top of the log. Clearly startled by the erratic movement, Roger braced the revolver with both hands and stumbled a few steps backwards, while Blake retrained his gun in Paul’s direction.

The jellyfish had sailed over to the other side of the clearing, making a bobbing descent to where the deer’s corpse lay in a pool of blood.

The jellyfish sank, its slender tendrils converging on the deer’s torso, the thread-fine tentacles swiveling and corkscrewing, disappearing into the body. As it had done with Paul, the obsidian dome began contorting, shrinking, and sinking into the ginger-coarse fur of the deer. Then it was gone.

Paul was hunched over the log, wheezing. Roger spoke up. “All right.” He strode forward. “Enough pissing around.” He took aim at the back of Paul’s head.

A thickly moist gurgle issued from across the clearing.

Whereas Roger and Blake hadn’t
seen
the manifestation of the jellyfish, they had unmistakably
heard
this.

Going rigid, Blake said, “The hell was that?”

Roger jerked his face toward the sound as it erupted again. Another wet, lurching sound, and this time Paul watched as the deer’s body twitched. Roger and Blake were staring in the same direction. Another violent shake from the carcass, which grew into a convulsive shudder. “Roger . . .” Blake began, but his voice died away.