'So, are you excited about Blossomfest?'
'I'm agonna buy me a Rebel flag ashtray, and maybe one of ‘em little wooden outhouses, you know the kind, what's got the hillbilly with the corncob pecker.'
She laughed, surprised that she was surprised by it. Laughter sounded strangely out of place, the way their bedroom had been lately.
Robert spooned against the warm flannel of her nightgown. The night was a little damp and chilly, but she mostly wore the gown so that Robert could take it off. She hoped.
'Listen, honey. I know I've been a little distant lately,” he said. 'Been worried about work and stuff, wondering if we did the right thing moving here.'
'Robert, we've been over that enough. You like the station. I know it's not as demanding as a big-market FM, but it's just as important to the audience. And the kids really love it here.'
'But what about you? I just feel so selfish, pulling you away from Carolina just when things were starting to happen for you.'
'Things can happen at Westridge, too.'
'Are you sure you're happy?'
She turned to him, close enough to feel his breath in her hair. Twin sparkles were all she could see of his eyes.
'Honey, I'm doing fine,' she said. 'I told you that. And you know I'm honest with you, and I trust that you're always honest with me.'
There was a long heavy pause. Tamara was afraid that Robert still didn't believe her.
'Honey,' he said. 'There's something I've been meaning to tell you-”
SHU-SHAAA.
The Gloomies washed over her in a gray-red tide, pounding the cliffs of her mind. She sat bolt upright and listened to the dark world outside.
Crickets. A chuckling chipmunk. A dog barking down the street. There-a snapping twig.
'Something's outside, Robert.'
'Honey, it's the middle of the night. Things don't move at this time of night in Windshake. It's against the laws of nature up here.'
'Robert, you know me.'
Robert sighed heavily and rolled out of bed. He leaned his face against the window and looked out into the woods that lined the backyard.
Robert turned and Tamara saw the black outline of his arms raise against the dim moonlit backdrop.
'Nothing there, honey,' he said, the mattress squeaking as he slid under the covers.
'The Gloomies are back.'
'I know,' Robert muttered. 'Do the bastards ever leave?'
Tamara was stung. Tears welled in her eyes. Then her pain turned to anger. The son of a bitch would not make her cry.
'You could be a little more sympathetic,' she said. Her voice was cold. Her body was cold. Her heart was cold, like a shriveled dead star collapsing under the tired weight of its own gravity.
'I've been sympathetic,” Robert said. “For years. Your father's dead and you can't bring him back.”
'But it was my fault.'
'No. You just had a dream. You happened to have a dream that he was hurtling through the dark in a metal tube and then it exploded into fire.' Robert’s voice was flat, as if reciting an overly familiar line.
'But nobody believed me.'
'It was just a dream.'
'But see what happened?'
'Your father died in a car crash the next morning.'
The tears tried to come back. She fought them and lost. 'I tried to make him stay home,' she said, her throat aching. 'But he just tweaked one of my pigtails and laughed and said that he'd be fine. Only he wasn't fine. He was dead, ripped to pieces by metal and glass.'
'And by bad luck. Fate. Coincidence. God's will, or whatever. It could have happened on any day, or never at all.'
'But the dream.'
'Premonition. You know it's fairly common. You're the psychologist, after all.'
Tamara thought he said 'psychologist' with the trace of a sneer.
'But what about the other times? When Kevin broke his leg?'
'We can't stop living every time you have a bad dream.'
Tamara pressed her face into the pillow, drying her tears. She was afraid that the tethers were broken, that whatever connected her to Robert had snapped its mooring, that she and he were tumbling apart like lost astronauts, drifting into a nebulous gray territory. She was alone, at the mercy of the Gloomies.
The inside of her brain tingled, an itch that was beyond scratching. She wasn’t sure whether she had slipped into sleep and suffered a bad dream or if shu-shaaa was talking to her again. All she knew was that the noise was loud, a scream, as if the source of the signal had been turned up to ten and a half.
She wrapped the pillow around her head, thinking of the kids, psychological theories, her failing marriage, anything but the vibrations that shook the walls of her skull.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sylvester staggered against a garbage can, spilling refuse on the sidewalk. He couldn’t flow as quickly without sunlight, but he was determined. He left the paved street for the quieter glory of the forest.
The oaks throbbed, their mighty limbs rich with sap. He merged with the ash and poplar, the hickory and laurel, and reveled in the generous sharing of the thorns and nettles as they tore at his flesh. In the jungle of his mind, among his tangled synapses where the seratonin oozed, he was aware of the parent channeling nature’s energy through him. He was a vessel.
Something in the house stirred. His fingers found the Earth, his dead heart hummed a night song. The air hung thick around his head. He swatted away the confusion, but the vibration tickled and pricked him.
Tah-mah-raa.
Sound.
Meant.
Nothing.
He passed the dark, hushed house with its sleeping bioenergy units. He would return for them, or other children would follow and do the work. All would be harvested for the greater good of the parent. First he had an ache, a longing, an inner instinct that compelled him forward, just as a sapling’s leaves were driven to reach for the brilliance of the sun.
A dim shape stirred within him, an image, a memory. The memory became a symbol in the swampy nitrate soup of his brain. The human remnant of Sylvester recognized the symbol.
He tried the symbol on his fibrous tongue:
Peg-gheeee.
At first, Chester had thought it was old Don Oscar, walking out of the woods like he sometimes did when he got a wild hair up his ass, coming out of the evening shadows like a cow at feeding time. Chester's old failing eyes followed Don Oscar as the figure rolled over the fence into the sow's lot.
He wondered why the hell Don Oscar wanted to mess around in that black swampy gom. Then the sow had started squealing like somebody had clipped its ears. Chester pulled his bony hind end out of the rocker and peered into the hog pen. He saw Don Oscar wrestling with the sow.
Then the sow went quiet and Don Oscar climbed over the fence and went after the chickens. But the chickens high-stepped across the matted grass as if the flames of hell were licking at their tail feathers. Don Oscar
