Free Fiction Monday: When The Stars Are Right

 

Originally published in Blaze Ward Presents: After the Fall

As they did every night, Zack Jepson and his family huddled near the fire and listened to the monsters.

It started as a few low moans at first, then grew louder, more insistent. Something flew past the boarded-up window on heavy, leathern wings. Then there was a low, mournful piping over a wide range. It made Zack’s younger brother Toby’s shiver to hear them, feel them crawling around out there in the night.

They could move around during the day, but they still had to be careful. Everyone remembered what happened to Uncle Eddie and Grandpa Joe last year. They were up early checking their traut line when a wet, tentacle reached out of the cold water and grabbed them both. They never came back up.

They went out in pairs, one of them performing some essential task while the other covered them with the rifle and watched for monsters.

Everyone remembered where they were and what they were doing the day the monsters came. The sky opened like a yawning black mirror and swallowed the world. Then the monsters appeared, with unpronounceable names and strange, barrel-shaped bodies and tentacles and too many mouths. Some flew. Some swam. Some slid along the ground like one of Aunt Tilly’s jello molds, only full of eyes instead of imprisoned chunks of fruit.

What upset Zack’s mother, Ruth, most of all about the monsters was that there was no protection, no ward against them. Vampires, it was said, could be scared off by a crucifix, a clove of garlic. But that didn’t budge these monsters. They slithered over churches and nested in vestibules and turned baptismal fonts into foul-smelling cauldrons of acid. Nothing worked on them. Not a crucifix, cross, or any symbol of any religion on the planet. Zack’s father, Walter, said it was because they predated mankind. He’d heard some smart man on the radio say, right after this first happened, that these monsters had been here before, that they were just reclaiming their territory. As if it was the most natural thing in the world. The only thing that gave the monsters any pause, any hesitation whatsoever, was fire. And the symbols.

Five-pointed stars they were, with an oval in the center. And in the midst of that oval, a little squiggle like a flame dancing. The oldest boy, Zack, taught all the kids how to draw one real quick should it be needed in a hurry. Mama didn’t like it because it wasn’t a crucifix, but she let it slide because she knew it worked. Zack had taken some college courses before the monsters came. History and Biology. And he had long ago decided that all that Jesus stuff was just bunk even before the monsters came, but he knew better than to say that to his mother. He had his doubts about the symbol too, though it seemed to keep the bigger ones away.

Zack found the symbol in a book he had taken from the library the day classes were canceled for good. It was a copy of the Necronomicon, written by some guy named Abdul Al-Hazred. It told of the monsters they were seeing, and he thought it might offer some insight into what was going on. His mother almost burned it the first time she saw it, before they fled to the cabin in the woods. Zack kept it hidden after that.

Uncle Stevie died as they were on their way to the cabin. Stevie was driving. Zack’s dad Walter and his uncle Eddie were going to meet them there. The roads were choked with cars. They had hit someone who came off a side road, cutting them off, and Zack’s uncle got out to check on them. That’s when these slick, black bat-winged humanoid terrors appeared, descending from a swirling black sky filled with strange stars. They had no faces, their smooth heads topped with curving black horns. They snatched him off the ground inches from where the rest of the Jepson family cowered inside the truck and carried him off. Everyone watched as he was ripped apart by two of the winged creatures, like dogs fighting over a carcass.

“Night gaunts,” Zack said as he climbed into the driver’s seat, backed the truck a little, and then sent them around the stalled vehicle and away from the carnage. They drove in silence the rest of the way to the cabin.

Walter met them at the cabin just before nightfall, Grandpa Joe and Uncle Eddie in tow. When they told him what happened to his younger brother he just stared sadly into the fire, and he, Grandpa Joe and Eddie passed around a little silver flask he kept for “medicinal purposes.” They did so all that first night, as they kept a drunken vigil for the monsters.

There were just six of them left now: Walter, Ruth, Zack, Tobias, and the twins, Macie and Lacie. They had turned the tiny family fishing cabin on Lake Lanier into a fortress as best they could. The windows were boarded, the door could be barricaded, and they had created lots of obstacles outside to alert them should the monsters come near. The twins called them monster traps. But the the thing that kept them safe the most were the symbols. They drew them everywhere. On the ground. On the sides of the cabin in Sharpie. They were carved into trees and etched into slices of wood with a wood-burning kit Zack got for Christmas when he was nine and hung from branches with little bits of string. Again, Mama didn’t like it, but there was nothing she could do.

She read to them every night in those first days after the monsters came. The Bible mostly, even though it didn’t keep the monsters at bay. Zack pointed out once that reading the Torah, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita or the Upanishads didn’t either, but this was little comfort to her, and she continued reading. Her favorite verse was Isaiah 27:1: In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.

Zack didn’t know about all that, but he fell asleep in the ratty old armchair in the front room, nearest the crackling fire, as he often did, and dreamed of a world without monsters. He also dreamed of mad old Abdul, writer of the Necronomicon, who had supposedly died of being hauled into the air and getting pulled apart by invisible demons. In his dreams it was usually Uncle Stevie clad in ancient Arab robes, being yanked into pieces by the Night Gaunts. And outside, a wall of sound that had replaced the once pleasant night sounds of crickets and tree frogs, the monsters, with their terrible screeching, piping, flapping, and tearing.

The Jepsons were careful. They survived. But food was scarce, in large part due to the monsters. The Jepsons were hunters, and could live off the land if need be, but food was getting hard to find. The monsters, when not out hunting humans, amused themselves by wiping out the population of woodland creatures that lived in and around the lake. Soon there were no fish, no deer, no birds, not even a single squirrel left for the beleaguered Jepsons, and Walter knew they must take their leave of this place, go someplace else, preferably with other people.

“We can’t hold out here much longer,” he told Ruth after the kids were supposed to be in bed. But Zack, Tobias and the twins all heard them fighting. Mama wanted to stay, wanted to make their last stand against the monsters there, but Walter told her that would be impossible without food.

They set out early the next morning. There was still plenty of gas in the truck for another trip, this time toward the city, toward people. Zack imagined people were able to barricade themselves in houses, apartment buildings. Pool their resources. There would be food, guns, ammunition. People besides his family to talk to. He was looking forward to seeing other people again. He loved his family, but the strain was getting to all of them. They weren’t sleeping. Ruth had bags under her eyes, and she was pale and sad-looking, as if the monsters had latched onto her and drained her will to live. Walter Jepson looked angry all the time, as if he could fix everything with his fists or his gun. They had power in the old world. It made sense to them. They knew it and their place in it. Prayer worked. When you shot something it died, and stayed dead. Now nothing made any sense. The monsters hadn’t gotten them yet, hadn’t killed them. But they were dead just the same.

They left a month after their arrival. Toby was crossing the short distance from the cabin’s rickety porch to the rear passenger side of the truck. It dropped from the trees like a black parachute, a fleshy umbrella of mottled red and green, the underside ringed with teeth, radial symmetry like a starfish. In any other context it would have been beautiful. It closed on Toby, and they heard his muffled screams from inside it as he struggled, hopping back and forth.

Walter Jepson ran toward his son, screaming. Lifting his shotgun, thinking only of killing the monster, he blasted it, blowing away bits of black flesh and strangely-colored, foul-smelling fluids. Toby’s screams stopped and he toppled over, the entity that enveloped him relaxing as more viscous fluid poured out from around Toby’s feet, dissolving the dead leaves that littered the ground.

“Don’t let it touch you,” Zack said, backing away. He held one arm in front of his mother, a barrier to prevent her from running to her son and getting the creature’s acid on her. In his other hand he clutched the twins, who stared fearfully and whimpered, their pale blue eyes brimming with tears.

“You killed him,” his mother said.

“No,” said Zack. “He saved him. Toby was already dead. The acid—”

Walter Jepson pumped the shotgun, sending the spent shell flying. “Get in the truck.”

“But Toby—”

“Get in the goddamned truck!”

Zack hustled the twins into the back seat, eyes on the sky, wary for more parachute forms. A few danced in the thermals high above the trees, but no more descended to menace the Jepsons.

Zack’s father staggered, circling the truck. He went to where Toby lay, still wrapped in the leathery embrace of the parachute creature. He seemed to be considering something. Then he turned and yelled up at the sky, emptying his shotgun into the trees as he tried to hit the other parachute creatures that drifted on the breeze like bits of burned flesh.

Zack’s mother cranked down the window to yell at him. “Get in, Walter. Let’s get out of here.”

But Zack’s father ignored her. He tossed the empty shotgun and pulling out the Ruger he wore on his hip. He turned toward them one final time, a look of grim sadness but also determination his face, and in an instant Zack and his mother knew what he was going to do.

“Walter, no!” Ruth shouted, but he was already walking away from them, around the other side of the cabin. What followed was a single gunshot that sent more of those parachute things wheeling up and into the sky.

* * *

Zack drove. Ruth was white as a sheet, what life remained within her had fled. The twins cried themselves to sleep, occasionally whimpering at some remembered trauma, some unseen nightmare.

Zack thought about his father. So hard. So resolute. He realized he had done the only thing he knew how to do once he realized he could no longer take care of his family. These creatures had done more than driven them from their home. They had taken their sanity. And Zack wondered how much longer his mother, or him for that matter, would be able to hold out.

The truck ran out of gas the next day. There was a house nearby, on the shores of a shallow cove. They ran to the house, Ruth and Zack covering the twins while sweeping the area, Ruth with a shotgun and Zack with his trusty old .22.

The house was empty, and had seen violence. Zack bade his mother stay on the porch with the twins while he checked the place. It was a nice house. Probably someone’s vacation home—there were many such dwellings on this end of the lake. There were smears of dried blood everywhere, and a child’s shoe with a foot still inside it. There were no monsters, but there was a pale, iridescent substance climbing up the walls of the hallway beside the bathroom. It looked like oozing honeycomb and smelled like nail polish remover. It flashed colors at him as he grew near. He didn’t touch it, not even with the barrel of his rifle.

That’s when he heard his mother scream.

Zack ran outside to see his mother being dragged by her right leg across the small yard into the thick forest surrounding the northeastern side of the lake lot. She had lost her grip on the rifle, her fingers clutching dirt, making drag marks as she was hauled into the woods and out of sight. Her eyes were huge white marbles, shooters, Uncle Steve had called them. Those eyes pleaded silently. Help me. Save me. Then, as reality dawned: kill me.

Their mother whipped around a pine tree and was gone. Dead tree limbs thrashed. And that was the last anyone saw of Ruth Jepson.

The twins whimpered, shaking at Zack’s feet. It was up to him now.

He looked around. There wasn’t another vehicle in sight. No full gas can with which to refill the truck. That’s when he saw the tiny dock with the canoe tied to it with white nylon rope. He hoisted the .22 over his shoulder by the ratty green strap, then picked up the shotgun where their mother had dropped it. He gently shoved at the twins, ushering them toward the lake. He remembered what happened to Grandpa Joe and Uncle Eddie, but they had no choice. They wouldn’t survive another ten minutes in the woods. On the lake they could at least see something coming. Beside, the cove was really shallow, not more than six feet in spots. That meant no monsters. At least none that could be a problem. It also meant lots of things for the canoe to get hung up on, but that was a chance he was willing to take.

He got the twins inside, still whimpering, placed the rifle and shotgun near the bow, and untied the boat. Then he jumped in and started paddling. If they could just get across the cove. Find another house. They would be safe. At least for another day.

As Zack paddled he found it easier just to keep going. On the open water they could see what was coming. On the brush-choked banks there were hidden terrors. So he turned the boat and kept going, up the channel to where the lake opened up wide, the waters deeper.

The air was still, the sun low in the sky. The twins slept in the boat, hunched over each other, like discarded dolls. Zack saw a large, thick mass suspended like a gigantic spider’s web between two trees along the shore. It was the color of spit, and waved in the gentle breeze like a lace curtain. The monsters had taken to hunting and feeding upon each other, their own ecosystem. Zack wondered if they knew or cared that humans were here at all. They were indifferent, nesting in their buildings, feeding on any they encountered, but otherwise oblivious to mankind’s presence.

In his studies, Zack had read about early mammals, sucking on dinosaur eggs, scampering under their enormous feet. Man was like that now, hiding where he could, taking what he can to survive. Zack found an oddly comforting symmetry in that.

The twins began to stir. He knew they would be getting hungry, but he had no food. He had ran so quickly, he did not even think about getting the meager provisions they had in the truck. He doubted anything that could be fished out of the lake would be edible, and might turn the tables by eating them.

The sun was low in the sky, and the first strange stars began to twinkle, challenging Zack with their wrongness. He remembered a passage from the Necronomicon. “When the stars are right,” he muttered.

The book spoke of strange creatures returning to Earth when the stars are right. That must be the case now. But when would the stars be right for man’s return?

“When the stars are right,” he said again, adding, “the monsters will go away, and we’ll return to our homes and our cities and our jobs. We’ll play video games, and get married, and read books. The reign of the monsters will be over.”

The twins smiled at this, inspiring Zack to continue.

“We’ll find other people to stay with,” he said, feeling like his mother as she read from her Bible. “We’ll make ourselves safe, and we’ll wait for the stars to be right.”

As he said these words, he didn’t know if they were true, but they felt right. Maybe that’s how his mother had felt when reading scripture. Maybe that was the whole point. He no longer wanted to hide. He wanted to live, to face the new dawn with a renewed sense of purpose, and wait for the time when the stars would be right for them.

He aimed the boat toward the distant shore and paddled faster.

When The Stars Are Right

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