SHARING
by
Miracle Jones
Published by Miracle Jones at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 Miracle Jones
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для Маши
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BREAK ONE
There were six of them at first: Cody, Brandy, Crystal, Hunter, Preston and little Charlotte, who was younger than the others and yet the least afraid. Charlotte was only almost a teenager, but she felt like she was a thousand years old.
They came up out of the Hole on the creature’s back, clutching each other’s waists and locking their legs around the creature’s barrel belly to keep from falling off. Wind and sand ripped through their hair and tugged at their pajamas, threatening to pull them off their mount and hurl them back down into the darkness.
All of them were shrieking, but only Charlotte was shrieking with joy.
At the Hole’s lip where the suction was strongest, the creature beat against the whistling currents with unflagging strength, his four legs pumping and the two long whips that were drilled into the scar tissue of his shoulders buzzing up and down so fast that they were a dangerous blur, like bicycle spokes.
Finally, the creature punched through the aperture and dug his hooves into the Hole’s rocky ledge, straining hard, pulling himself and all six of his passengers out of the ground like weeds. His whips stopped buzzing, went momentarily limp, and then shot out to grab the sides of the Hole like spider webs, helping to drag them over the edge.
The creature lay down in the bright orange sand and rolled sideways, throwing the youths off his back. They landed together in a shocked, terrified heap. Heaving and snorting, the creature rested, watching them with his glowing red eyes. His massive, shiny white chest glistened as if it were an oil slick on a pool of cream, and his long, thin features were fine-boned, cruel, and sensitive. The long black blade that had been drilled into his forehead was jagged and sharp, and was as long as the creature’s slender and sculptured face: a muscular snout that tapered into thick lips and thick, flat teeth. He was white all over, from his milky nostrils to the pendular genitalia that swung like a lazy monkey between his knees. The only parts of his body that weren’t covered in slick white fur were his black hooves, the black blade jutting from his forehead, and the tendrils as thick as garden hoses that sprouted from his shoulders and moved with as much gravity-defying grace as cat’s tails.
And those eyes. Those furious, cold red eyes.
Charlotte would always remember the first time she saw her new home with perfect clarity. She would remember the moment forever when her pink feet touched the fine, burning orange sand that rolled toward the Hole like a shaking carpet. The moment was cut into her brain like a face cut into a coin.
As the sand burned her toes, her fair face flushed with excitement, matching the deep red of her fiery hair. Her bare feet had been freezing. Now they were ablaze. This place was new. This place was wild and strange.
Crystal, on the other hand, was terrified and so she grabbed Charlotte and held her, digging her nails into Charlotte’s arms, asking if it was going to be okay. Crystal was stout and awkward with bad skin and glasses, but she was shivering, so Charlotte let Crystal cling to her and whimper. Usually Charlotte hated to be touched without asking. People were always trying to pick her up. Just because she was as petite as a doll and could be manhandled didn’t mean she liked it.
“This shit isn’t real,” said Cody, who was the oldest. “This shit can’t be real.”
“I want to go back,” said Crystal. “I want to go back IMMEDIATELY. Make him take us back, Charlotte.”
The sky here was dark purple, the color of a corpse’s tongue. Bright orange sand stretched out in every direction and there was no flora or fauna except for scatterings of strange grey trees that grew in groves hundreds of yards away from each other and moved as if they were alive, contorting into twisted shapes before Charlotte’s eyes like melting wax.
Why had the creature brought them here? When Charlotte saw him hovering outside the window of the girls’ dormitory, his whips buzzing as fast as helicopter blades, she had been convinced he was imaginary. She had been stargazing and watching the first snow of the season. She had still thought he was an illusion until she roused the others, all those older children from both the girls’ and boys’ dorm who also couldn’t sleep and who were either intrigued or skeptical enough to climb out of their beds and sneak to the roof with her to find him there, waiting for them. And then the creature had lowered himself down, inviting them to climb on board by pointing to his back with his whips, offering escape from St. Andrew’s Home for At-Risk Youth and inviting them to test the mirage.
“He’s like a combination of a bull, a preying mantis, and a fashion model,” Preston had said. “And the whips coming out of his shoulders let him fly like a dragonfly. I wonder what he’s called?”
“I’m going to ride him,” said Charlotte. “He wants us to ride him.”
“That knife looks sharp enough to perform surgery,” Cody had warned. “Be careful.”
“Do you think it is safe?” Brandy had asked.
“Of course it is safe,” Charlotte had said.
Five of them had climbed aboard behind Charlotte, thinking the creature would only take them for a ride. Instead, there had been a flash of light and a pop, and then they were rising out of the Hole through all the stinging wind.
As Charlotte and the others surveyed their surroundings and tried to get their balance on the burning sand that raged beneath their feet, the creature stood up to his full height next to them, as tall on all fours as Cody, who was the only one of them who could look the creature in the eye without craning his neck. The creature whinnied.
“Do you think this thing can talk?” Cody muttered. Cody waved his hand in the creature’s face. “Hey, we want to go home. Thank you for the trip, but we want to go home.”
The creature did not speak.
“He can’t talk,” said Brandy, drawing closer to Cody.
“But you can tell he understands,” said Charlotte. “He’s amazing.”
Though there was nothing but desert stretching out in all directions, there were two buildings beside the Hole.
The first was a massive cathedral, looming by the void like an elephant drinking from an oasis. Five cramped towers bloomed from the central nave like mushrooms. The towers were painted in lurid reds, greens, blues and yellows, and were topped with onion-domes that looked like dollops of sour cream. The cathedral looked organic, as if it were made from rotting vegetables or sour candy. While there were crosses embedded into the patterns of these towers, the looping spiral designs and intricate patterns of the onion-domes made these familiar symbols hard to see.
“That is the ugliest church I’ve ever seen,” said Cody. “I never thought I’d ever see an uglier church than the St. Andrew’s chapel, but there it is.”
Hunter and Preston laughed.
The other building was much different. Across the Hole from the cathedral was a long, sheet-steel building with curved edges and plate glass windows that were covered in thick layers of mossy grime. On the front of the building was a neon sign twisted into the word “Diner,” but the neon did not glow and the dark windows of the diner were transparent enough to show that the diner was empty -- bereft of both customers and employees -- and had been for a long time.
Perhaps it had always been empty, thought Charlotte. The diner’s red door hung open like a waving hand, and the empty restaurant looked cool and inviting in contrast to the monstrous cathedral and the howling sand that crept along the ground like an undertow toward the hungry Hole. Charlotte wanted to go into the diner, slide into one of the booths, and demand some eggs and juice.
“I want to check out that diner,” said Charlotte.
“No,” said Cody. “We’d better stick together. What if this thing leaves without us and then we’re stuck here?”
“I like it better here than St. Andrew’s,” said Charlotte. “Much better.”
“She’s got a point,” said Brandy.
The creature walked toward the cathedral. Cody shrugged and followed the creature, leading the others.
“I’m scared,” said Crystal. “I don’t want to go in there.”
“Come on,” cooed Charlotte. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Charlotte let Crystal hold her hand. Crystal’s rheumy, bespectacled eyes dried quickly in the parching air, but she was still shivering. When the creature reached the cathedral doors, he lowered the jagged blade that grew from his forehead and pointed through the threshold. The children worked together to heave open the massive bronze doors, pinning them back against the stone as the creature nimbly stepped inside.
The cathedral was covered from floor to ceiling in looping graffiti and bright glyphs, and all the pews had been removed and replaced with a thick layer of fresh yellow straw. In the back of the cathedral, where an altar should have been, was a steaming pile of ordure, each turd the size of a dinner plate. The smell blew through the cathedral like a flock of leprous birds and made the children cover their noses, retching and spitting.
Directly to the left of the open doors was a sunken black pit where a sacristy or crying room would be. Inside the pit, there had been a massacre. Red blood, pink guts, and bright blue tissue (wrinkled like brains) was piled up in mounds on the floor and also covered the walls in violent spatters. There were sconces here that once held candles, but were now empty.
“What is this place?” Cody asked the creature. “Is this your home? Is this where you live?” Cody crinkled his freckled nose and ran one clammy hand through his blonde shock of hair, cut short and shaved along the sides. He was in St. Andrew’s for the same reason as most of the boys: drugs.
The creature did not answer. Instead the creature peeled his lips back, revealing his brown teeth and black gums, fixing Cody with a cold, malevolent stare.
“Okay,” said Cody. “What do you want from us? What’s going on here? What are you? Where are we?”
“Don’t piss him off,” said Charlotte.
The creature turned around slowly and cantered across the straw floor to an alcove beneath a dark and filthy mural. The whips that hung from the creature’s scarred shoulders made whispering noises as they snaked along the ground.
Inside the alcove was a bucket and a mop. The creature picked up the bucket in his teeth and shook his head, splashing water against the mural, causing wet streaks to crawl down the wall toward the thick straw floor. The creature dropped the bucket and then picked up the mop in his teeth, wielding it as awkwardly as a paintbrush in the hands of a novice. The creature smeared the mop against the mural, sloshing water against it until he made a clean spot, revealing a faded fresco of a bearded man with ecstatic eyes being pierced with hundreds of arrows. The saint held an apple in one hand and a key in the other.
The creature stepped backward from the mural. Then he cantered to where the children were gathered and dropped the mop in front of them, bending down to nudge the mop towards Cody with his nose. Cody uncrossed his arms and picked up the mop.
“You want us to clean?” Cody asked. The creature reared on its hind legs and whinnied, pawing the air and shaking his mane back and forth. Cody threw his arms out, shielding the other children. The creature landed with his front legs splayed, pointing its jagged black blade at Cody’s heart and holding the position while the children drew closer together, staring at the creature with wide, terrified eyes. Only Charlotte thought the creature was smiling.
Finally, the creature turned around and galloped away, bursting through the cathedral doors, nickering as it passed the doorsill.
“I don’t clean for nobody!” shouted Cody at the creature, raising his pajama sleeve to reveal the crude snake he had burned into his own forearm with a red-hot paperclip.
The creature ran for the Hole, and his shoulder-whips started to flap up and down so fast at his sides that they blurred like insect wings. The creature leaped up into the air and was swallowed by the Hole as the children huddled in the cathedral’s doorway and Crystal begged the creature to come back, to take them home, to explain.
Charlotte didn’t remember much about that first month. She remembered exploring the cathedral with sensitive Preston and surly Hunter as the older children -- Cody, Brandy, and Crystal -- debated what to do. Charlotte remembered climbing to the very top of one of the onion-domes and staring out over the orange wasteland, seeing nothing but flat sand in every direction. The sand pulsed into the Hole, converging in front of the cathedral like a swarm of ants disappearing into a mound. There was nothing but sand, the purple sky, and those strange trees that slowly warped into sharp new shapes before her eyes, restlessly changing form along with the suck of the burning ground.
Although there was plenty of light, the sky here held neither sun nor stars nor clouds. Instead of a sun, the sky itself glowed, as if it were a purple sheet illuminated by a bonfire. The air was cool and pleasant, even though the sand below was like smoldering coals.
She remembered their first hunt through the rooms of the cathedral, looking for an adult or another creature like the one that had taken them from St. Andrew’s in the middle of the night. She remembered roaming the cathedral -- finally, simply -- looking for food.
She remembered crossing the sand to the diner with the other children and discovering the deep freezer there -- the freezer that mysteriously had electric power. The lights and water in the empty diner also worked. Miraculously, the freezer, refrigerator, and pantries were fully stocked with food. The diner was also fully stocked with pots, pans, and a complete assortment of cooking equipment.
Seeing the kitchen and all the food, Crystal finally relaxed and stopped squeezing Charlotte’s hand as if it were a wet sponge. Crystal took over and put them all to work, chopping, stirring, and seasoning a meal.
Charlotte remembered burning her hand on the stove and being yelled at by Brandy for being careless. Brandy was elfin and beautiful, with glossy black hair and green cat eyes that sloped upward into long lashes. She had been sent to St. Andrews for shoplifting. As soon as the creature had left them, Brandy had broken down sobbing and Cody had comforted her, telling her that this was fun, this was magic.
“What if we have to stay here forever?” said Brandy.
“I told you,” said Cody. “This shit isn’t real.”
He kissed her.
“See?” he said.
Even though she had a boyfriend back at St. Andrews, after Cody’s embrace Brandy followed him around like a dopy puppy and did everything he said, though she was still just as shrill and condescending to the rest of them.
Charlotte remembered having their first big feast in the diner’s bright electric light. Pea soup, collard greens, chopped steak. Charlotte also remembered sitting for hours on the diner floor, so bored that she made a whole city out of empty food cans, while Hunter sulked, picking his nose, and while dreamy Preston constructed a scale model of the empty cathedral that loomed before them right outside the diner’s grimy windows.
It WAS better here than St. Andrew’s, though. Nobody denied that. There was plenty of food. Enough for everyone. And variety! They could talk to each other without getting cuffed, pinched, or slapped. There were no heavy-fingered old wardens here, looking down their shirts or trying to coax them into dark rooms alone. They could spread out. They could relax. But even Charlotte couldn’t shake the feeling that they didn’t belong in this place.
When they finally slept, they slept in the booths on the green plastic diner cushions. They told each other that it would only be one night here. They told each other that soon they would be rescued. Only Charlotte didn’t want to be rescued. Cody and Brandy slept in one another’s arms in a diner booth by themselves.
Crystal asked over and over again if Charlotte was warm and comfortable and wouldn’t stop fondling her and telling her not to worry.
“I’m not worried,” said Charlotte.
After their first sleep (it never got dark here or turned into night), they stopped exploring the cathedral. They were disgusted by the foul smells of the creature’s spore, they were disturbed by the sunken black pit that dripped with dark signs of murder, and they were terrified of the dark drawings and hieroglyphs that covered every square inch of the blasphemous, lurid church. There was no reason to be inside the cathedral and so they left it alone, enjoying the cool, bright diner instead, making elaborate meals under Crystal’s direction, and gorging themselves on greasy food while playing games and telling stories.
It had been so long since they had enough to eat. They tried not to question anything, though they knew the vacation couldn’t last and soon the creature would return for them to take them back to St. Andrew’s Home.
“We are going to be in so much trouble when we get back,” said Crystal.
“What else could they possibly do to us?” said Cody. “Relax; maybe we died and this is heaven.”
“That would explain the church,” said Preston.
Nothing felt real here and it was so easy to drift. There was no sense of passing time or of obligation. It was so quiet and peaceful. Everything they needed was provided for them. The droning quiescence was like a narcotic and it made their minds slow and calm. It was easy to do nothing but eat and sleep. Nothing mattered. Had anything ever mattered?
After five sleeps, Cody woke up and made a mark on one of the steel doors in the deep freeze.
“We have to do this every time we sleep,” he said. “It’s our calendar. Otherwise we will forget.”
The days passed without incident and it was difficult to tell them apart without the notches on the deep freeze door. Nothing happened here. They ate; they slept; they goofed around and relaxed. What else could they do?
After twenty-five more scratches, the creature came back.
He pulled himself out of the Hole easily this time, no longer burdened by six screaming adolescents clinging to his shiny white back.
The creature snorted, bared his teeth, and shook sand from his fetlocks. The kids ran out of the diner to meet him by the Hole.
“I am ready to go home now please,” said Crystal.
The creature looked at her, narrowed his eyes, and cantered toward the cathedral, holding his head high. The children followed. They opened the doors for the creature again and followed the creature inside. It was the first time they had been inside the cathedral since their first sleep and if anything, the stench was stronger now and even more revolting.
The creature walked to the mop that lay on the straw where he had left it. The creature looked at the pile of shit and at the black room filled with blood and carnage. The creature snorted and whirled on the children in a dark fury, flaring his nostrils and widening his enormous red eyes. The whips at his shoulders flew out like tentacles and caught Cody by surprise, wrapping around Cody’s neck and feet, trussing him, holding him fast.
“Stop it!” shouted Charlotte, but Preston grabbed her and held her.
“He’ll trample you,” said Preston. “Let Cody deal with it.”
“We don’t know what you want!” shouted Cody, trying to pull the whip off his neck. “You brought us here and left us! We don’t know what is happening or why!”
“We want to go home!” shouted Crystal.
The creature bared his teeth and dragged Cody across the floor while the other children huddled together and screamed. The creature lifted Cody off the ground and then plunged the inky blade that jutted from his forehead deep into Cody’s chest, sending blood up in a dark spray that arced over the creature’s shoulders, dotting his pristine white coat with blood-mist, and splashing the cathedral wall behind him, covering the ecstatic saints and arcane cuneiform in grisly red.
Cody’s screams were brief compared to the screams of the other children, screams that lasted long after the creature knelt to point his jagged blade at Brandy’s heart this time and then to vanish again down the Hole.
Only Charlotte did not scream. She was too mad to scream.
BREAK TWO
There was no good place to bury Cody in all the hot and shifting sand, so they stuck him in the deep freeze in the back of the diner. They kept making marks on the deep freeze door just like he had said to do. For twenty sleeps, Brandy hardly ever left the kitchen, whispering and crying with her face pressed against the deep freeze door, while the others -- numb and horrified -- set to work cleaning the cathedral.
Charlotte argued, saying they ought to arm themselves and fight. But she was outvoted.
“We have to clean,” said Crystal, taking charge in the wake of Brandy’s breakdown. “If we don’t clean, Brandy is next. If we clean, he will take us home.”
“We don’t know that,” said Charlotte. “It’s crazy to assume that.”
“Did you see those whips?” said Preston. “What are we supposed to do?”
Crystal set Charlotte to work scrubbing the walls at knee-level where a taller child would have to stoop. Charlotte did as she was told, but all she could think about was revenge. She hated the creature that had killed Cody almost as much as she now hated this desert.
She had loved it here at first. The possibility! The space! The magic and mystery! And now it was ruined. There was nothing here but madness and misery.
“Don’t worry,” said Crystal. “I understand.”
“I’m not worried,” said Charlotte. “I’m angry.”
“Do you know why they put me in St. Andrews?” said Crystal.
“No,” said Charlotte.
“Because I had a baby,” said Crystal. “A little baby. They said I was too young to have a baby, but I’m not. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
Fantastic, thought Charlotte.
Though the diner had running water, there was no soap. Preston and Hunter took turns carrying the water bucket back and forth between the diner and the cathedral, and after they mucked out the pile of stinking feces from the altar, it was much easier to work in the enclosed space without feeling sick. While Charlotte fumed, the other children actually found the work pleasant in comparison to thinking about what had happened and wondering what it all meant. The work took their minds off the look on Cody’s face as the creature’s blade split his chest and plunged into his beating heart, leaving his skinny, hairless body behind for them to deal with -- blonde, broken, stiff, and stinking.
There was no longer any doubt about the stains and splatters in the dark sacristy. They avoided going in there for as long as possible. Charlotte steeled herself, creeping in there once with the intent to clean it, but instead she was overwhelmed with dizziness and threw up all over the floor. She ran from the pit, weeping angry tears. She climbed to the top of one of the towers and screamed as loud as she could until she regained her composure in the fresh air, berating herself for being as childish and weak as Brandy.
“I couldn’t handle the smell,” said Charlotte later in a hoarse voice, pitching in again to scrub the altar. “It won’t happen again.”
They found a ladder upstairs in one of the cathedral’s many balconies, and they washed the walls of the nave until the walls gleamed, revealing rows and rows of more strange hieroglyphs painted over more frescoes of murdered saints who were all looking to heaven in bliss.
They took all the straw up into the towers and then they cleaned the floor. Then they replaced the straw, tossing it like a salad to make it fresh. They cleaned the stairs all the way to the towers and the tower rooms. In one of the towers they found an old cracked copper bell that was hanging from a thin chain, and they washed the bell until they could see their reflections in the curving sides, scrubbing it with scraps of old vellum that they found piled high in a dusty closet along with a silver chasuble, a censor, a miter, and an aspergillum. After they were finished polishing the bell, they dusted the dusty closet.
Crystal kept them to a firm routine: they worked until they were exhausted and then they went back to the diner to make food for themselves. These meals were silent, grim affairs during which they all tried to ignore Brandy’s blubbering. They took turns ducking into the deep freeze to get food to cook, shutting their eyes in order not to see Cody’s shocked, frozen face.
“What are we going to say about Cody when we get back to the Home?” asked Hunter once over dinner.
“We’ll have to tell them the truth,” said Crystal.
“They won’t believe us,” said Hunter. “We should say he ran away.”
“What about Brandy?” said Charlotte. “How do we explain her?”
Nobody knew.
They ate well. Breaded chicken thighs. Creamed corn. Fried shrimp. In addition to food, the diner was also fully stocked with condiments. Oil, salt, pepper, lemons, garlic, relish, and many other sundries they’d never seen before.
The regular refrigerator was filled with fresh fruit, breads, and cheeses, and the pantries were stocked with grains, chips, crackers, and canned goods. While they didn’t know how long the supplies would last, they didn’t bother conserving them. What did it matter? Food was a small salvation, and they were ravenous from their days spent in strenuous toil.
Inside the cathedral, they cleaned everything but the stinking, black pit covered in candy-colored gore. The days went by, rolling into one another with undivided intensity, lit by the glow of the deep purple sky and the burning orange sand.
When Crystal was satisfied by their work inside of the cathedral, they moved to the outside and began cleaning the door and the walls, slopping water onto the sides of the building in a bucket brigade, using pots and pans from the diner’s kitchen. They cleaned all around the cathedral as high as they could reach and then they brought the ladder outside and cleaned even higher.
Once, Preston asked Charlotte if it would be okay to sleep next to her the way Cody and Brandy had slept together. Charlotte politely told him no, and he didn’t bother her about it again, though she could tell he was disappointed.
They learned much about cleaning that first month. After accidentally tracking filth upstairs on their shoes and having to clean several towers twice, they learned to clean from top to bottom. They learned to clean from inside to out. They learned to bathe after they were done cleaning so as not to spread the mess into the diner where they slept and ate. They took long shuddering baths outside by the Hole, pouring water over each other that they heated on the diner’s stove and letting the water trickle into the Hole’s gaping maw.
Finally, as the month was drawing to a close, they realized that someone was going to have to clean the creature’s reeking sacristy pit.
“It’s the biggest mess,” said Crystal. “If we don’t clean it, then all our work will have been for nothing when that thing returns.”
They stood in the cathedral and argued about who would go in there this time. No one wanted to do it, especially now that the floor was also covered by Charlotte’s crusted, molding vomit.
“I’ll do it,” said Charlotte. “I can handle the smell now. Plus, it’s my puke.”
“You’ll just freak out again,” said Crystal. “No, it has to be somebody else.”
Charlotte didn’t want to start another argument, so she went out into the sand to lie down. The sand was becoming normal to her. It was becoming comfortable. She was learning to let the heat warm her tired bones and massage her sore muscles.
While the others debated and swore, their voices getting louder and louder, Charlotte saw Brandy come out of the diner with a determined expression on her face. For the first time since the creature had murdered Cody, Brandy’s cheeks were dry and she was no longer babbling.
Charlotte yelled for Crystal. Crystal -- worried and expectant -- ran out of the cathedral to gawk at Brandy. Brandy stood there with her slender arms crossed, and then she took her long silky black hair and tied it up in a bun.
“I’ll clean the pit,” said Brandy. “I don’t mind. I want to do it.”
The other children followed Brandy into the cathedral, showing her the makeshift cleaning equipment they had constructed from mops, vellum, pots, scraps, and food cans. They showed her how they dipped fruit rinds into boiling water to make the water corrosive against stains and to kill smells.
For a few hours, they watched Brandy clean the pit by herself, staining the mop bucket over and over again with brown water which she would then take outside and toss in the Hole with an angry curse and then refill at the diner. They watched Brandy work herself into frenzy, her face and knuckles red and her teeth gritting so hard that they could hear her jaw squeak from outside.
Charlotte started helping, and then, one by one, guiltily, the others joined her, soaking rags with pastel blood and scooping gritty shards of bone and entrails from the floor of the pit that were all the colors of the rainbow.
“What kind of animal has a bright blue heart the size of a beach ball that pumps yellow blood,” Preston wondered.
“A big one,” said Hunter, fingering the teeth marks on the tough cerulean muscle.
After two full sleeps of scrubbing and washing, taking many breaks to clear their minds and to tell each other that the creature would take them home now that they had done what he wanted, the children finally managed to clean the pit well enough so that the deep stains faded into the dark wood like old scars and the whole room smelled like lemons and oranges.
Using a taper from the diner stove, Charlotte lit candles that she found in a room behind the altar. She brought the candles into the newly-sanitized pit so they could inspect their handiwork. The pit was clean.
Afterward, Crystal sniffled and hugged each of them.
“The worst is over,” said Crystal.
Again, Charlotte tried to convince them to fight back against the creature, but only Brandy seemed to listen, though she didn’t say anything and wouldn’t help Charlotte make firm plans.
The next day, the creature returned. This time, as soon as they saw him, Crystal led them behind the diner to hide, making them hold hands and pray.
Only little Charlotte ran to the diner’s edge to peer at the creature as he lifted himself up out of the Hole, shook his mane, and sniffed the air.
The creature trotted into the cathedral and was gone for a long time.
“You didn’t clean good enough,” Hunter said to Preston. “I know you missed some spots on the stairs.”
“Hush,” said Crystal. “We all did our best.”
Eventually, the creature came out of the cathedral, stepping lightly with his head held high, his lips pulled tight in something like a smile.
The creature sniffed the air and galloped across the sand, circling around behind the diner to find them with their backs pressed up against the diner’s sheet steel walls, all of them but Charlotte cowering with tears streaming down their faces.
“We did what you wanted,” whimpered Crystal. “We cleaned everything. Now you can take us home. We won’t tell anyone about Cody.”
The creature didn’t look at her. He only had eyes for Charlotte. She refused to cower.
Charlotte spat at the creature, but the creature only hissed at her. To Charlotte, it sounded like laughter.
The creature was carrying two burlap sacks across his massive shoulders. He let them slip into the sand. Finally, Brandy stood up next to Charlotte. She walked over to the creature and stared at him with burning hate, her face wet with tears. The creature didn’t move or blink. Finally, Brandy kicked open the back door into the diner kitchen. The door swung shut behind her, closing with a loud bang. Inside, they could hear Brandy sweep all the hanging pots onto the floor, and pull out drawers full of silverware.
“What are you doing?” Crystal screamed after her. “You’ll ruin everything!”
The creature followed Brandy, popping open the back door with one sharp black hoof and stepping into the kitchen. The other children heard Brandy scream. They crowded into the doorway to look. Brandy had dragged Cody’s corpse out from the deep freeze and was hovering over him, brandishing a huge butcher knife, waving it back and forth like a scorpion’s tail.
“I’m gonna kill you,” said Brandy. The creature stepped toward her. The kitchen was too small for the creature’s massive body, and the sharp black blade that grew out of the creature’s forehead grazed the ceiling and left a snaky scratch as the creature advanced.
“Look what you done,” said Brandy, holding Cody up by his collar. Cody’s face was still frozen stiff in the same shocked expression as when the creature’s blade had first pierced his heart. “I’m gonna kill you for what you done.”
“Don’t, Brandy!” shouted Crystal. “You are only going to make him mad!”
“Look out!” shouted Charlotte, trying to warn Brandy about the whips that hung from the creature’s shoulders, the whips that skittered along the sides of the shotgun kitchen and coiled behind Brandy like riled-up snakes.
Brandy saw the whips and her poise faltered. The creature advanced toward her with light footsteps, his lips still pulled back in a smile. Brandy lowered the knife to her side and raised her palm in a gesture of supplication. That was when the creature’s whips sprang up like the steel bar of a mousetrap, punching into Brandy’s knees from behind and tripping her. She fell onto Cody’s cold corpse, grunting. The creature pounced.
The creature gored her over and over again with his jagged black blade until she stopped moving. Charlotte tried to run into the kitchen to help her, but again Preston grabbed Charlotte off the ground and lifted her, holding her arms tight at her sides.
When it was done, the creature whinnied and sucked in heavy breaths. Charlotte finally wriggled free from Preston’s grasp, but it was too late.
Charlotte was boxed out of the kitchen by the creature’s massive backside, but she attacked him anyway, punching the creature in the haunches over and over again as the creature backed out of the kitchen. The creature shoved Charlotte out of his way as he dragged Brandy’s lifeless, bloody body outside. He dragged Brandy by her hair with his teeth.
The creature dumped the body on the sand and then returned into the diner, hissing at Charlotte’s feeble punches. Charlotte slipped and fell. Her mouth filled with sand.
Crystal and the boys gathered around Brandy’s limp body and tried to revive her. But it was useless. She was dead and there was nothing they could do. The creature returned from the kitchen, carrying a giant copper pot in his mouth, the biggest pot in the kitchen, a pot big enough to hold a whole pig or a side of beef. The creature dropped the pot in the sand next to Brandy.
Seeing the creature again, Charlotte grabbed the butcher knife out of Brandy’s hand and leaped at him, but Preston caught her again and this time he put his hand over her mouth.
“We did what you wanted, Mister!” shouted Crystal. “We cleaned everything!”
The creature lowered his head and planted his feet, turning his head to the side in a mocking bow.
“We didn’t mean to make you mad,” said Crystal.
The creature lifted a hoof and pointed to the butcher knife that Charlotte still clutched in her skinny white hand. Preston squeezed her hand and made her drop it.
“Charlotte is crazy!” said Crystal. “And Brandy was crazy because you killed Cody!”
The creature bent down and lifted Brandy up by her hair again. He lifted her straight up in the air, and then dropped her into the copper pot, doubling her at the waist, leaving her ankles and head sticking out. Then the creature picked the pot up by the handle and carried the whole thing -- pot and girl -- into the kitchen. Crystal followed.
The creature gently set the pot on the stove. And then he pointed to the burner knob with his blood-smeared head blade.
“What do you want?” asked Crystal. “What do you want from me?”
The creature pointed to the knob again, more emphatically. The creature tried to turn the knob with his blade, and then with his hoof, but he only succeeded in gouging the knob’s plastic sleeve. He tried once more to turn the knob with one of his shoulder whips, but the whip couldn’t curl around the flat dial.
“You want me to cook her?” shouted Crystal with dawning horror. “Is that what you want? You want me to cook her so you can eat her?”
The creature neighed, pawing the kitchen’s piss-yellow linoleum floor.
“Well, I won’t,” shouted Crystal. “I won’t do it, you hear? It’s wrong to do it. It’s wrong. I had a baby. I won’t do it. It’s wrong.”
Crystal crossed her arms and held up her head defiantly. The other children watched through the kitchen door. Charlotte bit Preston’s hand. He squealed, but he didn’t let her go.
The creature’s eyes blazed and he lowered his blade, pointing at Crystal’s heart.
“We won’t cook Brandy, you hear!” shouted Crystal, lowering her hands and crying now. “You just go away! Go back into your Hole and let us be!”
The creature lunged, piercing Crystal in the throat and slashing sideways, ripping the jugular out of her neck as easy as removing the purple vein of a shrimp.
Crystal fell sideways and brained herself against the deep freeze door. Preston squeezed Charlotte harder, burying his face in her hair. Charlotte‘s vision clouded with red hate as she watched, enraged but impotent. The creature licked his fat, prehensile lips.
Hunter stepped forward. His whole face was twitching and he couldn’t stop sucking in ragged breaths and blinking.
“We don’t know much about cooking, Mister,” said Hunter. “And we don’t know how you like your food prepared. But we’ll try the best we can.”
The creature clomped his hoof on the ground. Once. Twice. Three times.
“Three?” said Hunter.
The creature pointed with his head blade to each of the bodies.
“You want us to cook all three of them?” said Hunter.
The creature whinnied and bowed.
“Yes, Mister,” said Hunter. “We’ll do what you say.”
The creature clomped out of the diner once again and headed for the cathedral to wait. Preston finally let Charlotte go. She fell into the sand and curled up around the knife she had dropped there, cradling the blade like a dog favors an injured paw. Preston and Hunter looked at one another and they both saw that they had glistening wet stains down the fronts of their pajama pants, the only pants they had.
BREAK THREE
After they cleaned themselves up, the two boys cooked the two girls while Charlotte sat in one of the diner’s shiny plastic booths, staring into space and holding the butcher knife she had pried out of Brandy’s fingers.
“First we have to cut all the heads off,” she heard Hunter tell Preston in the kitchen. “I can’t do this if they are looking at me.”
“What should we do about Cody?” Preston asked. “He’s still mostly frozen. He’s hard as a rock and purple all over.”
“We cut him at the joints where he’s the softest and bake him till he’s all charred up,” said Hunter. “If he’s already started to rot, maybe that horsey bastard will die from tainted meat when he eats him.”
“What if he only gets sick and then kills us for it?” asked Preston.
“Then I guess you’re in trouble,” said Hunter.
“Why me?” Preston cried. “You’re the one who ought to watch out.”
“Why?” said Hunter.
“Because you’re older,” suggested Preston. “And he’s killing us in order.”
“You just shut your damn mouth,” said Hunter.
Charlotte heard the boys shuffling pans in the kitchen and she heard grunts, strains and soft thunks as Brandy was skinned, sliced into pieces, and then tossed into the big pot for boiling.
There wasn’t another pot big enough to boil Crystal, so Crystal was covered in oil and cooked in pieces -- flash fried fast, like a duck -- on the diner stove, which was a big hot sheet where a cook could fry up two dozen eggs at once.
As soon as Cody’s body was thawed enough to cut, they severed his arms, legs, and head from his torso, and put him in the oven, turning the heat all the way up to five hundred degrees. Cody’s skinny body filled up both oven racks.
If Preston and Hunter had been older, it would have been much more difficult for them to cook the other children. They would have had a much harder time processing the trauma. But they were scared, they were alone, and Crystal had been teaching them to cook meals for a month. Cooking was new knowledge to them and they felt an irresistible urge to put their new kitchen skills to work.
With Crystal’s culinary instincts echoing in their ears, they prepared the older children with the same gusto and care that Crystal would have used to cook a full five-course meal. They didn’t think about it. They acted.
Hunter had been sent to St. Andrew’s Home for torturing neighborhood cats to death, and so he did most of the dirty work, keeping Preston in line by cursing and slapping him when he started to space out or lose it. Hunter liked controlling and hurting animals, but he didn’t much care for dead bodies, though he tried his best to stay numb to what he was doing
Preston was much worse off, but the bodies were heavy and Hunter needed help, and so Hunter bullied Preston into assisting him.
Even so, the smell of bubbling human fat was unbearably sweet, and the boys took turns being sick in the diner’s restroom while Charlotte stared at the floor between her knees. She was boiling mad, but she also felt confused and paralyzed.
Finally, Charlotte got up and went into the kitchen.
“We don’t have to do this, you know,” said Charlotte. “We could fight him. None of us alone could take him, but if we worked together and had a plan, maybe…”
“If you aren’t going to help, then just stay away,” said Hunter. “Stay away if you don’t want to get your hands dirty.”
Beaten, Charlotte returned to her booth. There was so much blood.
Preston and Hunter salted and peppered the meat and loaded it into covered pots. They garnished the dishes with fresh fruit the way Crystal had showed them. They also garnished the dishes with the uncooked severed heads, putting each one on top so that the creature would know who was who. Then they took the dishes over to the cathedral steps and opened up the big cathedral doors so that the creature could get a whiff.
The creature came outside, sniffed the meat, and then bowed low, smiling. The two boys returned the bow, terrified, but relieved. They were glad they had done a good job. They were glad the creature was happy and wasn’t going to kill them.
“Thank you, Mister,” croaked Hunter. “I’m glad you like it.” He clapped both hands over his mouth, shocked at what he had said. He looked at Preston, but Preston only nodded and shut his eyes for a moment, feeling elated at their survival but also feeling incredibly guilty for what they had done.
The creature gestured for them to bring the dishes inside the cathedral. They complied, carrying the covered pots to the black pit where the creature fed. The creature immediately began to eat, but he didn’t insist that the children stay to watch. They left as fast they could, fleeing to the diner. They were exhausted.
Once more Preston asked if Charlotte would sleep next to him, but once more she politely refused. He understood. He smelled like human death.
Charlotte watched them sleep and wished that Crystal was there to tell her not to worry and to rub her shoulders. But Crystal was food for Mister. She was gone forever.
While the boys slept, Charlotte remembered the burlap sacks that the creature had hauled out of the Hole and dropped behind the diner. She opened them to see what was inside. The creature had brought them more provisions: canned tamales, canned vegetables, chicken and beef in crunchy frozen bags that were now turning slimy, melted ice cream, salt, pepper, garlic, sugar, coffee, and lemons. She hauled the sacks into the diner kitchen and unloaded them.
Charlotte drank melted cookie dough ice cream while sitting cross-legged on the diner floor in a pool of blood, wanting to weep but unable to force the tears out of her eyes. She now understood how it was going to be. They would cook and clean for the creature and he would feed them and let them live.
“Where do you think he goes?” asked Preston later as they were scrubbing the blood stains out of the linoleum. They had been mopping for hours. “Where do you think Mister goes when he goes into that Hole? Back to St. Andy’s?”
“I guess Mister could go anywhere,” said Hunter.
“Do you think anybody is looking for us?” asked Preston. “Maybe the Hole is a portal between here and the Home and we could get out of here if we wanted.”
“Not a damn chance,” said Hunter.
“Maybe we could just jump in the Hole and then we could…”
“You just forget about that.”
Preston had been sent to St. Andrew’s because he had tried to kill himself by tying an extension cord around his neck and jumping off the roof of his carport, attempting to break his own neck. Instead of dying, he had only torn an exhaust vent out of the attic and knocked the gutter off the side of his house.
For three sleeps the creature gorged and rested in the cathedral while the children hid in the diner. Finally, the creature stumbled outside, lazy and sated, and crossed the sand to the Hole. He buzzed his whips, took a flying leap, and disappeared. As soon as he was gone, Preston and Hunter let out huge gasps of relief. They had been holding their breath.
“He’ll be back,” warned Charlotte.
“So we clean again,” said Hunter. “We know what we are supposed to do.”
“No,” said Preston. “Charlotte’s right. We should try to escape. We’ve got a full month.”
“I never said we should try and escape,” said Charlotte. “I said we should fight back.”
Hunter and Preston couldn’t have been more different. Hunter had a fierce blond brow that beetled down over his hard blue eyes. He had long eyelashes and long furry arms covered with freckles. He never stopped moving, and had a tendency to kick anything in front of him, whether a can, a chair, or a girl. He never laughed and he had no patience for useless conversation or for stories. Back at the Home, he had been a loner and people had been afraid of him.
Yet he was a hard worker and fearless here. Charlotte respected him. He had dangled from the towers by his feet in order to clean the grime from the tower coronas, and he was always the first one at the top of the ladder, trying to reach higher and higher, jouncing the rickety ladder side-to-side on unsteady legs while the rest of them fretted below. He was practical, cold, and unpredictable.
Preston, on the other hand, was a dreamy, passive boy, the closest in age to Charlotte and the most shy and awkward person she had ever met. She had been shocked when he had climbed aboard the creature behind her on the snowy roof of St. Andrew’s. He was sensitive and fearful: simply being inside the cathedral made him tremble. He did not sleep much and he claimed that his dreams were full of devils, witches, skeletons, and phantoms that hunted him across the nightmare desert, pursuing him like a rabbit hunted by hounds. It was hard to get him to do any work at all.
They often found him huddled in corners, muttering gibberish. He spent one whole day staring at the hieroglyphs in the creature’s cathedral, making sketches in the dust on the floor with a piece of straw, attempting to decipher the code. The creature terrified him and yet he was in awe.
“We have to run away,” Preston said. “We can’t stay here any longer.”
“Where will we go?” said Hunter. “Where can we possibly go in all this sand?”
“We could go into the Hole,” Preston suggested for the second time.
“We don’t have wings and we don’t know what’s in there,” said Hunter. “We might jump in that Hole and fall forever till we starve to death. You just forget about that Hole. I’ll kill you myself before I let you jump in there like a damn fool.”
“We could go off into the sand,” said Preston. “We could walk until we find someone to help us.”
“Mister’ll track us down,” said Hunter. “He can smell us. And what makes you think there’s anything out there? Here, we’ve got food and shelter. What makes you think there aren’t things out there even worse than Mister?”
“We have to try to get away,” said Preston.
“We should fight,” said Charlotte, but the two boys ignored her.
“If we don’t stay here and clean, Mister’ll kill us when he gets back,” Hunter said.
“Then why don’t we split up?” suggested Preston. “Why don’t I go into the sand and see what I can find while you and Charlotte stay here and clean the church? If I find help, I’ll come back for you.”
“You’ll get lost,” said Hunter. “You’ll run out of water.”
“I’ll take food and water with me,” said Preston. “I have to try. I can’t just stay here waiting for that monster to come back. And besides, it’s impossible to get lost! All I have to do is follow the sand back to the Hole.”
“Go then, if you want to go so bad,” said Hunter. “You don’t work good anyway.”
Now that he had permission, Preston wasn’t so sure. He wanted them to tell him to stay. But neither Hunter nor Charlotte said anything.
After a few more sleeps, Preston woke up screaming and said it was time to go. When Charlotte asked him what he had been dreaming about, he told her that he dreamed he had fallen down the tower stairs. He felt like he was falling forever, but then he suddenly reached the bottom and broke his neck on the hard tile. In the moment that he knew he was dead, he snapped awake. He said if he didn’t go now, he would jump in that Hole no matter what Hunter said.
Preston filled one of the burlap sacks with canned meat and vegetables and he took one of the kitchen knives with him to open the cans because Hunter wouldn’t let him take the can opener. He filled up every empty plastic bottle he could find with water, and he punched two holes in the sack and made two sashes with strips of Brandy’s salvaged pajama pants so that he could carry the sack like a backpack. He filled the sack until it strained at the seams.
Preston hugged Charlotte and shook Hunter’s hand. Then he set off into the sand, promising not to get lost, promising to return before the creature did, even if he didn’t find anyone to help them.
When he was gone, Hunter patted Charlotte on the shoulder and said Preston would be back in a few hours. That he was only bluffing. Charlotte wasn’t so sure. She was tired of being hugged and patted.
In the meantime, Charlotte and Hunter returned to the cathedral to clean again, getting rid of the mess from Mister’s latest visit. There were only three cakes of shit this time, which they promptly pried loose from the altar floor and tossed into the Hole. Together, Hunter and Charlotte emptied the gnawed human bones from the feeding pit, but after thinking about it, Charlotte wouldn’t let Hunter toss the skulls.
It didn’t feel right, she said. There was no place to bury them here, and so Charlotte said she would hold onto them.
“I never want to see them,” said Hunter. “You can keep them, but I never want to be in the same room, you hear? I don’t want them looking at me.”
She put the skulls in the other burlap sack and took the sack up into one of the towers. She and Hunter finished tossing the other leftover bones, innards, and skins into the Hole. Charlotte tried to be as impassive as Hunter, and Hunter praised Charlotte for being so tough, for not being like those other girls who had broken down and who had not been able to accept things as they were.
“We could fight him, you know,” said Charlotte. “If we caught him by surprise or set a trap, then we could…”
“Don’t think like that,” said Hunter. “Think about survival.”
It didn’t take nearly as long to clean up after the creature this time, even though there were only two of them. Working together, they were able to return the cathedral to pristine form in ten sleeps, and then they retired to the diner to cook and lounge.
Now they focused on cleaning the diner. They cleaned the pots, pans, and dishes until they shined, in addition to sweeping the floor and wiping down the tables.
As they cleaned, Charlotte didn’t let up about attacking Mister. She talked about ways to surprise Mister and ways to kill him. She talked about learning how to fight, learning how to kick, and punch, and use a sword. When Hunter said there weren’t any swords around here, Charlotte said she would learn how to make one. Hunter only laughed and squeezed her little bicep.
“I could pick you up with one hand,” he said.
Hunter was terrible company, so whenever she got lonesome, Charlotte would climb to the top of the cathedral tower to talk to the bag full of skulls, telling them about her day and telling them what Hunter had said and done. She spent hours up there babbling to herself and staring out over the shifting orange waste, waiting for Preston to return.
In addition to scrubbing the diner, they continued to clean the cathedral after every sleep, making sure that it was always in the best condition possible. They scrubbed and polished a little bit every day until the cathedral positively reeked of citrus.
Now Hunter took to staring at the strange glyphs, trying to decipher their meanings, tracing them like an alphabet in the sand, attempting to gain their power.
After thirty notches on the deep freeze door, the creature returned, climbing out of the Hole with heavy black garbage bags across his shoulders in addition to more provisions. There was still no sign of Preston.
BREAK FOUR
Mister only brought one burlap sack full of food for them this time. It made sense. There weren’t as many mouths to feed now.
The other two black plastic garbage sacks were each filled with a telltale lump that made Charlotte’s mouth go dry. Mister shrugged the bags into the sand. From the diner window the children could make out the stiff lines of two corpses beneath the shiny plastic.
“Not again,” said Hunter.
The bags rolled off Mister’s shoulders with a lurching crumple. The floppy limbs cut pinwheel scrapes into the orange powder like snow angels.
Mister whinnied and scratched at the ground until Hunter and Charlotte came outside to greet him.
They stood in front of him stoically as Mister inspected the outside of the cathedral. He took his time. Finally, he appeared satisfied with their cleaning job.
Yet he was still agitated about something.
He squinted at them with his furious, electric red eyes. Mister cocked his head to the side and pawed the sand three times: once in front of Hunter, once in front of Charlotte, and then once in front of no one. It was a question.
Where was Preston?
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