Dreams Underfoot

The Sacred Fire

There were ten thousand maniacs on the radio—the band, not a bunch of lunatics; playing their latest single, Natalie Merchant’s distinctive voice rising from the music like a soothing balm.

Trouble me ....

Sharing your problems ... sometimes talking a thing through was enough to ease the burden. You didn’t need to be a shrink to know it could work. You just had to find someone to listen to you.

Nicky Straw had tried talking. He’d try anything if it would work, but nothing did. There was only one way to deal with his problems and it took him a long time to accept that. But it was hard, because the job was never done. Every time he put one of them down, another of the freaks would come buzzing in his face like a fly on a corpse.

He was getting tired of fixing things. Tired of running. Tired of being on his own.

Trouble me ....

He could hear the music clearly from where he crouched in the bushes. The boom box pumped out the song from one corner of the blanket on which she was sitting, reading a paperback edition of Christy Riddell’s How to Make the Wind Blow. She even looked a little like Natalie Merchant. Same dark eyes, same dark hair; same slight build. Better taste in clothes, though. None of those thrift shop dresses and the like that made Merchant look like she was old before her time; just a nice white Butler U. Tshirt and a pair of bright yellow jogging shorts. White Reeboks with laces to match the shorts; a red headband.

The light was leaking from the sky. Be too dark to read soon. Maybe she’d get up and go.

Nicky sat back on his haunches. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

Maybe nothing would happen, but he didn’t see things working out that way. Not with how his luck was running.

All bad.

Trouble me ....

I did, he thought. I tried. But it didn’t work out, did it?

So now he was back to fixing things the only way he knew how.

Her name was Luann. Luann Somerson.

She’d picked him up in the Tombs—about as far from the green harbor of Fitzhenry Park as you could get in Newford. It was the lost part of the city—a wilderness of urban decay stolen back from the neon and glitter. Block on block of decaying tenements and rundown buildings. The kind of place to which the homeless gravitated, looking for squats; where the kids hung out to sneak beers and junkies made their deals, hands twitching as they exchanged rumpled bills for little packets of shortlived empyrean; where winos slept in doorways that reeked of puke and urine and the cops only went if they were on the take and meeting the moneyman.

It was also the kind of place where the freaks hid out, waiting for Lady Night to start her prowl.

Waiting for dark. The freaks liked her shadows and he did too, because he could hide in them as well as they could. Maybe better. He was still alive, wasn’t he?

He was looking for the freaks to show when Luann approached him, sitting with his back against the wall, right on the edge of the Tombs, watching the rush hour slow to a trickle on Gracie Street. He had his legs splayed out on the sidewalk in front of him, playing the drunk, the bum. Threedays’ stubble, hair getting ragged, scruffy clothes, two dimes in his pocket—it wasn’t hard to look the part. Commuters stepped over him or went around him, but nobody gave him a second glance. Their gazes just touched him, then slid on by. Until she showed up.

She stopped, then crouched down so that she wasn’t standing over him. She looked too healthy and clean to be hanging around this part of town.

“You look like you could use a meal,” she said.

“I suppose you’re buying?”

She nodded.

Nicky just shook his head. “What? You like to live dangerously or something, lady? I could be anybody.”

She nodded again, a half smile playing on her lips.

“Sure,” she said. “Anybody at all. Except you’re Nicky Straw. We used to take English 201

together, remember?”

He’d recognized her as well, just hoped she hadn’t. The guy she remembered didn’t exist anymore.

“I know about being down on your luck,” she added when he didn’t respond. “Believe me, I’ve been there.”

You haven’t been anywhere, he thought. You don’t want to know about the places I’ve been.

“You’re Luann Somerson,” he said finally.

Again that smile. “Let me buy you a meal, Nicky.”

He’d wanted to avoid this kind of a thing, but he supposed he’d known all along that he couldn’t.

This was what happened when the hunt took you into your hometown. You didn’t disappear into the background like all the other bums. Someone was always there to remember.

Hey, Nicky. How’s it going? How’s the wife and that kid ofyours?

Like they cared. Maybe he should just tell the truth for a change. You know those things we used to think were hiding in the closet when we were too young to know any better? Well, surprise. One night one of those monsters came out of the closet and chewed off their faces ....

“C’mon,” Luann was saying.

She stood up, waiting for him. He gave it a heartbeat, then another. When he saw she wasn’t going without him, he finally got to his feet.

“You do this a lot?” he asked.

She shook her head. “First time,” she said.

All it took was one time ....

“I’m like everyone else,” she said. “I pretend there’s no one there, lying halfstarved in the gutter, you know? But when I recognized you, I couldn’t just walk by.”

You should have, he thought.

His silence was making her nervous and she began to chatter as they headed slowly down Yoors Street.

“Why don’t we just go back to my place?” she said. “It’ll give you a chance to clean up.

Chad—that’s my ex—left some clothes behind that might fit you ....”

Her voice trailed off. She was embarrassed now, finally realizing how he must feel, having her see him like this.

“Uh ...”

“That’d be great,” he said, relenting.

He got that smile of hers as a reward. A man could get lost in its warmth, he thought. It’d feed a freak for a month.

“So this guy,” he said. “Chad. He been gone long?” The smile faltered.

“Three and a half weeks now,” she said.

That explained a lot. Nothing made you forget your own troubles so much as running into someone who had them worse. “Not too bright a guy, I guess,” he said.

“That’s ... Thank you, Nicky. I guess I need to hear that kind of thing.”

“Hey, I’m a bum. We’ve got nothing better to do than to think up nice things to say.”

“You were never a bum, Nicky.”

“Yeah. Well, things change.”

She took the hint. As they walked on, she talked about the book she’d started reading last night instead.

It took them fifteen minutes or so to reach her apartment on McKennitt, right in the heart of Lower Crowsea. It was a walkup with its own stairwell—a narrow, winding affair that started on the pavement by the entrance of a small Lebanese groceteria and then deposited you on a balcony overlooking the street.

Inside, the apartment had the look of a recent splitup. There was an amplifier on a wooden orange crate by the front window, but no turntable or speakers. The bookcase to the right of the window had gaps where apparently random volumes had been removed. A pair of rattan chairs with bright slipcovers stood in the middle of the room, but there were no end tables to go with them, nor a coffee table. She was making do with another orange crate, this one cluttered with magazines, a couple of plates stacked on top of each other and what looked like every coffee mug she owned squeezed into the remaining space. A small portable blackand-white Zenith TV stood at the base of the bookcase, alongside a portable cassette deck. There were a couple of rectangles on the wall where paintings had obviously been removed. A couple of weeks’ worth of newspapers were in a pile on the floor by one of the chairs.

She started to apologize for the mess, then smiled and shrugged. Nicky had to smile with her. Like he was going to complain about the place, looking like he did.

She showed him to the bathroom. By the time he came out again, showered and shaved, dressed in a pair of Chad’s corduroys and a white linen shirt, both of which were at least a size too big, she had a salad on the tiny table in the kitchen, wine glasses out, the bottle waiting for him to open it, breaded pork chops and potatoes on the stove, still cooking.

Nicky’s stomach grumbled at the rich smell that filled the air.

She talked a little about her failed marriage over dinner—sounding sad rather than bitter—but more about old times at the university. As she spoke, Nicky realized that the only thing they had shared back then had been that English class; still he let her ramble on about campus events he only halfremembered and people who’d meant nothing to him then and even less now.

But at least they hadn’t been freaks.

He corrected himself. He hadn’t been able to recognize the freaks among them back then.

“God, listen to me,” Luann said suddenly.

They were finished their meal and sitting in her living room having coffee. He’d been wrong; there were still two clean mugs in her cupboard.

“I am,” he said.

She gave him that smile of hers again—this time it had a wistfulness about it.

“I know you are,” she said. “It’s just that all I’ve been talking about is myself. What about you, Nicky? What happened to you?”

“I .. 4

11

Where did he start? Which lie did he give her?

That was the one good thing about street people. They didn’t ask questions. Whatever put you there, that was your business. But citizens always wanted whys and hows and wherefores.

As he hesitated, she seemed to realize her faux pas.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If you don’t want to talk about it ...”

“It’s not that,” Nicky told her. “It’s just ...”

“Hard to open up?”

Try impossible. But oddly enough, Nicky found himself wanting to talk to her about it. To explain. To ease the burden. Even to warn her, because she was just the kind of person the freaks went for.

The fire inside her shimmered off her skin like a high voltage aura, sending shadows skittering. It was a bright shatter of light and a deep golden glow like honey, all at the same time. It sparked in her eyes; blazed when she smiled. Sooner or later it was going to draw a nest of the freaks to her, just as surely as a junkie could sniff out a fix.

“There’s these ... things,” he said slowly. “They look enough like you or me to walk among us—especially at night—but they’re ... they’re not human.”

She got a puzzled look on her face which didn’t surprise him in the least.

“They’re freaks,” he said. “I don’t know what they are, or where they came from, but they’re not natural. They feed on us, on our hopes and our dreams, on our vitality. They’re like ... I guess the best analogy would be that they’re like vampires. Once they’re on to you, you can’t shake them. They’ll keep after you until they’ve bled you dry.”

Her puzzlement was turning to a mild alarm, but now that he’d started, Nicky was determined to tell it all through, right to the end. “What,” she began.

“What I do,” he said, interrupting her, “is hunt them down.”

The song by 10,000 Maniacs ended and the boom box’s speakers offered up another to the fading day. Nicky couldn’t name the band this time, but he was familiar with the song’s punchy rhythm. The lead singer was talking about burning beds ....

Beside the machine, Luann put down her book and stretched.

Do it, Nicky thought. Get out of here. Now. While you still can.

Instead, she lay down on the blanket, hands behind her head, and looked up into the darkening sky, listening to the music. Maybe she was looking for the first star of the night.

Something to wish upon.

The fire burned in her brighter than any star. Flaring and ebbing to the pulse of her thoughts.

Calling to the freaks.

Nicky’s fingers clenched into fists. He made himself look away. But even closing his eyes, he couldn’t ignore the fire. Its heat sparked the distance between them as though he lay beside her on the blanket, skin pressed to skin. His pulse drummed, twinning her heartbeat.

This was how the freaks felt. This was what they wanted, what they hungered for, what they fed on.

This was what he denied them. The spark of life.

The sacred fire.

He couldn’t look away any longer. He had to see her one more time, her fire burning, burning ...

He opened his eyes to find that the twilight had finally found Fitzhenry Park. And Luann—she was blazing like a bonfire in its dusky shadows.

“What do you mean, you hunt them down?” she asked. “I kill them,” Nicky told her.

“But—”

“Understand, they’re not human. They just look like us, but their faces don’t fit quite right and they wear our kind of a body like they’ve put on an unfamiliar suit of loose clothing.”

He touched his borrowed shirt as he spoke. She just stared at him—all trace of that earlier smile gone. Fear lived in her eyes now.

That’s it, he told himself. You’ve done enough. Get out of here.

But once started, he didn’t seem to be able to stop. All the lonely years of the endless hunt came spilling out of him.

“They’re out there in the night,” he said. “That’s when they can get away with moving among us.

When their shambling walk makes you think of drunks or some feeble old homeless bag lady—not of monsters. They’re freaks and they live on the fire that makes us human.”

“The ... the fire ... ?

He touched his chest.

“The one in here,” he said. “They’re drawn to the ones whose fires burn the brightest,” he added.

“Like yours does.”

She edged her chair back from the table, ready to bolt. Then he saw her realize that there was no place to bolt to. The knowledge sat there in her eyes, fanning the fear into an evermore debilitating panic. Where was she going to go that he couldn’t get to her first?

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “If someone had come to me with this story before I ... found out about them—”

(“Momma! Daddy!” he could hear his daughter crying. “The monsters are coming for me!”

Soothing her. Showing her that the closet was empty. But never thinking about the window and the fire escape outside it. Never thinking for a minute that the freaks would come in through the window and take them both when he was at work.

But that was before he’d known about the freaks, wasn’t it?)

He looked down at the table and cleared his throat. There was pain in his eyes when his gaze lifted to meet hers again—pain as intense as her fear.

“If someone had told me,” he went on, “I’d have recommended him for the Zeb, too—just lock him up in a padded cell and throw away the key. But I don’t think that way now. Because I can see them. I can recognize them. All it takes is one time and you’ll never disbelieve again.

“And you’ll never forget.”

“You ... you just kill these people ... ?” she asked.

Her voice was tiny—no more than a whisper. Her mind was tape looped around the one fact. She wasn’t hearing anything else.

“I told you—they’re not people,” he began, then shook his head.

What was the point? What had he thought was going to happen? She’d go, yeah, right, and jump in to help him? Here, honey, let me hold the stake. Would you like another garlic clove in your lunch?

But they weren’t vampires. He didn’t know what they were, just that they were dangerous.

Freaks.

“They know about me,” he said. “They’ve been hunting me for as long as I’ve been hunting them, but I move too fast for them. One day, though, I’ll make a mistake and then they’ll have me. It’s that, or the cops’ll pick me up and I wouldn’t last the night in a cell. The freaks’d be on me so fast ...”

He let his voice trail off Her lower lip was trembling. Her eyes looked like those of some small panicked creature, caught in a trap, the hunter almost upon her.

“Maybe I should go,” he said.

He rose from the table, pretending he didn’t see the astonished relief in her eyes. He paused at the door that would let him out onto the balcony.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

“I ... you ...”

He shook his head. “I should never have come.”

She still couldn’t string two words together. Still didn’t believe that she was getting out of this alive.

He felt bad for unsettling her the way he had, but maybe it was for the best. Maybe she wouldn’t bring any more strays home the way she had him. Maybe the freaks’d never get to her.

“Just think about this,” he said, before he left. “What if I’m right?”

Then he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

He could move fast when he had to—it was what had kept him alive through all these years. By the time she reached her living room window, he was down the stairs and across the street, looking back at her from the darkened mouth of an alleyway nestled between a yuppie restaurant and a bookstore, both of which were closed. He could see her, studying the street, looking for him.

But she couldn’t see him.

And that was the way he’d keep it.

He came out of the bushes, the mask of his face shifting and unsettled in the poor light. Luann was sitting up, fiddling with the dial on her boom box, flipping through the channels. She didn’t hear him until he was almost upon her. When she turned, her face drained of color. She sprawled backwards in her attempt to escape and then could only lie there and stare, mouth working, but no sound coming out. He lunged for her

But then Nicky was there. The hunting knife that he carried in a sheath under his shirt was in his hand, cutting edge up. He grabbed the freak by the back of his collar and hauled him around. Before the freak could make a move, Nicky rammed the knife home in the freak’s stomach and ripped it up. Blood sprayed, showering them both.

He could hear Luann screaming. He could feel the freak jerking in his grip as he died. He could taste the freak’s blood on his lips. But his mind was years and miles away, falling back and back to a small apartment where his wife and daughter had fallen prey to the monsters his daughter told him were living in the closet ....

The freak slipped from his grip and sprawled on the grass. The knife fell from Nicky’s hand. He looked at Luann, finally focusing on her. She was on her knees, staring at him and the freak like they were both aliens.

“He ... his face ... he ...”

She could barely speak.

“I can’t do it anymore,” he told her.

He was empty inside. Couldn’t feel a thing. It was as though all those years of hunting down the freaks had finally extinguished his own fire.

In the distance he could hear a siren. Someone must have seen what went down. Had to have been a citizen, because street people minded their own business, didn’t matter what they saw.

“It ends here,” he said.

He sat down beside the freak’s corpse to wait for the police to arrive.

“For me, it ends here.”

Late the following day, Luann was still in shock.

She’d finally escaped the endless barrage of questions from both the police and the press, only to find that being alone brought no relief. She kept seeing the face of the man who had attacked her. Had it really seemed to shift about like an illfitting mask, or had that just been something she’d seen as a result of the poor light and what Nicky had told her?

Their faces don’t fit quite right ....

She couldn’t get it out of her mind. The face. The blood. The police dragging Nicky away. And all those things he’d told her last night.

They’re freaks ....

Crazy things.

They live on the fire that makes us human.

Words that seemed to well up out of some great pain he was carrying around inside him.

They’re not human ... they just look like us ....

A thump on her balcony had her jumping nervously out of her chair until she realized that it was just the paperboy tossing up today’s newspaper. She didn’t want to look at what The Daily Journal had to say, but couldn’t seem to stop herself from going out to get it. She took the paper back inside and spread it out on her lap.

Naturally enough, the story had made the front page. There was a picture of her, looking washed out and stunned. A shot of the corpse being taking away in a body bag. A head and shoulders shot of Nicky

...

She stopped, her pulse doubling its tempo as the headline under Nicky’s picture sank in.

“KILLER FOUND DEAD IN CELLPOLICE BAFFLED.”

“No,” she said.

They know about me.

She pushed the paper away from her until it fell to the floor. But Nicky’s picture continued to look up at her from where the paper lay.

They’ve been hunting me.

None of what he’d told her could be true. It had just been the pitiful ravings of a very disturbed man.

I wouldn’t last the night in a cell. The freaks’d be on me so fast ...

But she’d known him once—a long time ago—and he’d been as normal as anybody then. Still, people changed ....

She picked up the paper and quickly scanned the story, looking for a reasonable explanation to put to rest the irrational fears that were reawakening her panic. But the police knew nothing. Nobody knew a thing.

“I suppose that at this point, only Nicky Straw knows what really happened,” the police spokesman was quoted as saying.

Nicky and you, a small worried voice said in the back of Luann’s mind.

She shook her head, unwilling to accept it.

They’re drawn to the ones whose fires burn the brightest.

She looked to her window. Beyond its smudged panes, the night was gathering. Soon it would be dark. Soon it would be night. Light showed a long way in the dark; a bright light would show further.

The ones whose fires burn the brightest ... like yours does.

“It ... it wasn’t true,” she said, her voice ringing hollowly in the room. “None of it. Tell me it wasn’t true, Nicky.”

But Nicky was dead.

She let the paper fall again and rose to her feet, drifting across the room to the window like a ghost.

She just didn’t seem to feel connected to anything anymore.

It seemed oddly quiet on the street below. Less traffic than usual—both vehicular and pedestrian.

There was a figure standing in front of the bookstore across the street, back to the window display, leaning against the glass. He seemed to be looking up at her window, but it was hard to tell because the brim of his hat cast a shadow on his face.

Once they’re on to you, you can’t shake them.

That man in the park. His face. Shifting. The skin seeming too loose.

They’ll keep after you until they bleed you dry.

It wasn’t real.

She turned from the window and shivered, hugging her arms around herself as she remembered what Nicky had said when he’d left the apartment last night.

What if I’m right?

She couldn’t accept that. She looked back across the street, but the figure was gone. She listened for a footstep on the narrow, winding stairwell that led up to her balcony. Waited for the movement of a shadow across the window.