The Collection

Her body stiffened and was still. Jenny reached down to check for a pulse. She put a hand around Elena's forearm and shook her head at me. Her face was white with shock.

I felt confused, bewildered, but I told Jenny to take the car up to the house and call the police while I stayed with Elena. She hopped in the car and took off in a cloud of dust, tires sliding. I stared down at the girl. I half expected her to float, to break apart before my eyes, to do something strange and terrifying, but her dead form lay unmoving on the dirt.

The police came, and the coroner, and we had her body cremated. We could find no family or friends, nor could the police, and we scattered her ashes on the hill in back of the barn, where she had liked to lie and stare up at the clouds.

Jenny was right, I knew. It would not stop with the veg­etables. It never did. I too was filled with a sense of dread and terror, but I did my best to conceal it. Jenny needed my support.

The first time it had happened was a few years after Elena's death. That day, we could see the wind. It was clear but visible, and it swirled in the sky following billowy paths to nowhere. We sat outside, watching the wind with amaze­ment. The few clouds above us moved quickly, propelled by the visible wind, converging.

They formed a shape. A face. Elena's face.

I saw it but did not comment on it, my mind noting the fact but not accepting it. The wind dissipated, died, the clouds floated on. We sat there awhile longer, then went into the house. We made dinner together, ate, read our respective books, and went into the bedroom.

The sheets and bedspread had been twisted and molded into the shape of a young woman in the throes of a convul­sive fit.

We both saw this manifestation, and we both screamed. Jenny ran out of the room, panicked, and I grabbed a corner of the bedspread and pulled. The cloth sculpture fell into in­stant disarray.

It went on from there.

For a while, the bad time came every year. One season, we decided to leave the farm, go on vacation, get away from it. We hoped to be gone when the occurrences escalated and to come back after everything had settled back down. When Jenny saw Elena's face in the pattern of autumn leaves that had fallen from one of our trees-a relatively benign mani­festation-we packed our belongings and left, before the real horrors started. We were gone for two weeks, but when we came back the occurrences continued as if we had never left.

We thought of moving the next year, had even gone so far as to look for another place. We found a smaller farm up­state, but when the realtor showed us around the property, we saw Elena's silhouette in the convergence of bushes on the hill above the house. And we knew we could never es­cape.

The bad time did not come for several years after that. But then it came twice one fall. It has come sporadically in the succeeding years, but it has never gone away. The last time it happened, Jenny was almost killed, and as I looked at her now I could tell that she was terrified. I felt helpless and afraid myself. I didn't know what we could do.

We ate frozen pizza that night, not daring to look down at our food, afraid of seeing unnatural patterns in the place­ment of the pepperoni. The noises around us grew, and we ate with the television on. Beneath Dan Rather's voice, I heard scratchings on the roof and arrhythmic knockings f from the basement. Once, I thought I heard high staccato screaming from the barn. I glanced over at Jenny, but she seemed not to have noticed it and I didn't say a thing.

Neither of us took a shower after what had happened the last time.

'What does she want with us?' Jenny whispered fear­fully after we had crawled into bed. 'What did we ever do to her? We only tried to help her.'

'I don't know,' I said, my standard answer.

'What was she?' Jenny snuggled closer. 'What is she?'

I looked at Jay Leno on the TV at the foot of our bed. I usually turned the television off after the news, but I didn't want to lie there in silence that night. I didn't want to hear the sounds. Leno asked the audience how many people had taken the NBC tour before getting in line for the show, and there was a scattering of hands. Leno suddenly fell to the floor, jerking spasmodically, his eyes rolling wildly. His twisting, flailing body began to float, and the cameraman cut to a closeup of his face. 'I'll get you, you bastard,' Leno said, and his voice was Jenny's dying hiss. 'I'll get all of you assholes!'

'Shut it off!' Jenny screamed. 'Shut the damn thing off!'

I lurched across the bed and reached over to flip off the TV. The screen went blank, but there was a faded white after­image of Elena grinning, her crooked smile seeming to pro­ject outward from the television. I held Jenny close, and we closed our eyes to block out the horror. I'm not sure what she was thinking. I was pray­ing.

I was awakened the next morning by the sound of a car coming up the drive. I reached over Jenny's still sleeping form and opened the curtains. A silver BMW was pulling to a stop next to the barn. I quickly got out of bed, pulled on my jeans, and went to the door. I opened it just as the man started knocking. 'Yes?' I said.

He was a youngish man, late twenties or early thirties, and he was dressed neatly and fashionably. His hair was short and stylish, and he was holding a briefcase in his hand. 'I think maybe you can help me,' he said. He smiled.

I said nothing, only stared, the blood pulsing in my tem­ples, racing through my veins.

His smile was that of Elena.

I killed him with the baseball bat I kept next to the door for just such emergencies. I beat his head to a bloody pulp, and the thick redness splattered all over his neat and trendy clothes. I stepped back, satisfied, waiting to see his form wiggle into the ground the way the others had done, but his inert body lay there, dead and whole and unmoving.

I swallowed hard, the realization dawning on me. This had been a real person, not a manifestation. I felt cold then hot, and I looked again at his bloody form and vomited.

Jenny came out from the bedroom, wide-eyed and fright­ened. 'What is it?' she asked. 'What happened?' She saw the body and screamed.

I did not call the police but, forcing down my nausea, dragged the dead man to the trash furnace next to the barn, doused him with kerosine, and lit him on fire.The smoke which billowed upward from the furnace's stack was black and smelled horrible.

I returned to the house, where Jenny was already looking through the briefcase. She looked up at me, scared, and held up several photographs of Elena. I sat down next to her, dig­ging through the pile of pictures, There were photos of men and women I had never seen before. All of them bore a strong resemblance to Elena and the young man I had just killed.

There was a crash from the kitchen.

'Oh God,' Jenny cried. 'Oh God, I can't take much more of this.'

Outside, through the window, I saw two forms wave at us from inside the BMW. A male and a female. My skin be­came a field of goose bumps, and I looked at Jenny. Her lips were pale and dry, her cheeks streaked with tears.

What were these people? I wondered.

The throw rug next to the couch moved into the air until it was upright. The corners folded in on themselves and be­neath the shag Elena's face pushed outward. The lips moved silently, then began twitching in hideous convulsions.

The standing lamp next to the recliner fell to the floor, and the white shade colored red, taking on the features of the young man I had murdered.

Both the rug and the lamp smiled crooked smiles.

'What do they want?' Jenny screamed, jumping to her feet. 'What the hell do they want from us?'

The car outside started, there were screams from the barn.

'I don't know,' I said, holding her. 'I don't know.'

It went on from there.

Against the Pale Sand

One of my favorite movies of all time is Eraserhead. It's- strange, slow moving, and essentially plotless. 'Against the Pale Sand' is a story in that fine tradi­tion.