Enough.
I turned to head back down the ramp.
Saw the first door closing behind us, rushed to catch it and failed.
It slammed shut, refused to yield.
Trapped in the ramp.
Ensnared.
Moreland's thin face appeared in my head. Long, loose limbs, fleshy snout, pouchy eyes, loping walk- arachnid walk.
Not a camel or a flamingo.
Robin put her hand to her mouth. I stopped breathing; panic became a tight necktie.
Then light appeared behind the web, letting in a draft of very cool air.
The same chill I'd felt coming over the walls from the banyan forest.
The webbed door swung open. I saw walls of hewn stone, then blackness.
A cave.
The choice was to stay there and risk another entrapment or step through and take our chances with whatever was on the other end.
I stepped through.
A hand settled lightly on my shoulder.
I spun around. 'Damn you, Bill!'
But the eyes that stared back weren't Moreland's.
Dark slits- at least, the left one was. Its mate was a wide-open, milky-white crescent, drooping heavily, tugging at a ragged lid.
No iris. The white was shot through with capillaries.
The face around the orb was white, too.
The eyes lower than mine, set into an elliptical, neckless head that rested on meager, sloping shoulders.
Misshapen and hairless except for three patches of colorless down.
Ridges of skin in place of ears.
A mouth opened. Less than a dozen teeth, some of them no more than yellow buds. Framing them was a pouchlike, puckered aperture: no lower lip, the upper one thick, cracked, liverish- a smile? Why wasn't I screaming?
I smiled back. The hand so light on my shoulder… an inch of downy skin separated the mouth from a nose that was two black holes under a nub of pink-white flesh, twisted like a pig's tail.
Wens and scabs, keloid tracks, and crater scars danced across the face, a moonscape in closeup. A sharp smell fumed from the skin. Familiar smell… hospital corridors- antibiotic ointment.
The hand on my shoulder sat so delicately, I barely felt it.
I looked at it.
Four stumpy, broad-tipped fingers, the thumb clubbish and spatulate, no nail on the index finger. More of that soft, downy hair. Dimpled knuckles.
The wrist thin and frail, laced with baby-blue veins and scabbed heavily, disappearing into the cuff of a white shirt.
Clean, white oxford button-down.
Khaki trousers cinched tight around a thin waist, the cuffs rolled thick.
A man, I supposed… protruding from under the cuffs, brown loafers that looked new.
A boy-sized man- five feet tall if that, maybe eighty pounds.
'Hhh,' he said.
Whispery rasp. I'd heard voices like that before: burn victims, the larynx and vocal cords seared, learning to talk from the gut.
The pouch-mouth stayed open, as if struggling for speech. More medicinal smell- mouthwash. The single eye watched my face. The pouch twisted upward in what might have been a smile.
'Hi,' I said.
The eye studied me some more. Blinked- winked? No eyebrows, but the skin above the sockets creased into deep dual crescents that simulated brows.
Neckless, chinless, that congealed-fat complexion. But soft… I thought of the baby octopus in the lagoon.
The hand slid off my shoulder.
The mouth closed and pouted- sad?
Had I done something wrong?
I tried smiling again.
The arm hung loosely.
Very loosely. An invertebrate grace.
Fingers curling in ways that normal fingers couldn't.
Serpentine- no, even a snake had more firmness.
White and flaccid-
Wormlike.
35
He scratched a thigh, a cuff rode up, and I saw something shiny atop a loafer. Brand-new penny.
He saw something behind me and his head lowered shyly.
'Hi,' I heard Robin say.
Then I saw something behind
Another man emerging from the shadows, even smaller, so severely hunchbacked his head seemed to protrude from his chest.
Red-and-black plaid button-down, blue jeans, high-top sneakers.
Two good eyes. One ear. The eyes soft.
Innocent.
Curling a finger, he turned his back on us and stepped further into the cave.
The first man's forehead creased again and he followed.
We tagged along, tripping and stumbling as our feet snagged on bits of rock.
The little soft men had no trouble at all.
Gradually, the cave turned from black to charcoal to dove-gray to gold as we stepped out into a huge, domed cavern lit by several more of the caged fixtures.
Rock formations too blunt to be stalagmites rose from the floor. A bank of refrigerators filled one wall. Ten of them, smallish, a random assortment of colors and brands. Avocado. Gold. Hues fashionable thirty years ago. The wires met at a junction box attached to a thick black cable that ran behind a crag and out of the room.
In the center of the cavern were two wooden picnic tables and a dozen chairs. Shag area rugs were scattered over a spotless stone floor. A whirring, humming noise came from behind the junction box- a generator.
The rain slightly audible, now. A tinkle. But everything was dry.
Moreland came in and sat at the head of the table, behind a large bowl of fresh fruit. He wore his usual white shirt and his bald head looked oiled. His hands took hold of a grapefruit.
Four more small, soft people filed in and sat around him. Two wore cotton dresses and had finer features. Women. The others were dressed in plaid shirts and jeans or khakis.
One of the men had no eyes at all, just tight drums of shiny skin stretched across the sockets. One of the women was especially tiny, no larger than a seven-year-old.
They looked at us, then back at Moreland, their ruined faces even whiter in the full light.
