The Midnight Country

Chapter 15

As it turned out, finding the portal wasn’t hard—there were smatterings of blood half in and half out of it, human blood, I knew. Finding Ghost, on the other hand, would be a different matter, one I wasn’t sure I was up to—even as I stepped over the transom into his world. And yet that too proved unfounded when I sensed something moving almost immediately, something big, something bipedal, crashing through the cycad fronds like an earth mover, vibrating the ground like a tiny earthquake.

“Ghost? Is that you?”

The fact was, I couldn’t be sure, and began backing away—back through the portal to our fishing spot near the Mohawk River, back to what I perceived to be safety—though I should have known by then there was no such thing. Until at last a great, grayish snout emerged and was followed by an equally great neck and trunk, and I knew, as his large feet sunk into the silt before me, that I had found him, even if he’d doubled in size and was no longer pure white (after all, I’d grown too, nor was my hair as light as it used to be). Still, it wasn’t until I looked into his dark pink eyes, eyes that had become so dark as to be almost red, that I truly saw the face of my friend—older, yes, and frightening in a way that he hadn’t been before, more robust, but, well, still the creature that had saved my life on that rainy day in May of 1979. Still something more than just a dinosaur—at least to me. Still Ghost.

I fumbled for Dad’s gun—which I had found in Shad’s dresser, as I knew I would—and carefully removed it from my coat pocket, loathing its black, bloated weight, wondering if I would have the strength to pull its trigger (and wondering, too, if it would even be enough, now that Ghost had grown).

Ghost, meanwhile, only c****d his head, his red eyes blinking, his fore-claws opening and closing, his cracked and rutted throat grumbling: Magrawww ...

I lifted the pistol and steadied it, wishing he would just turn and go away; that he would just forget me and the portal forever: forget he ever tasted human flesh—forget the world which lie next to his own. It was magical thinking, I knew.

Magrawww ...

I may have trained the weapon on one of his eyes, I don’t know, figuring that was the most direct path to his brain. All I know is that he sniffed at the barrel of the gun as I aimed and promptly began licking it—thinking it was a fish, I suppose. Thinking I was feeding him.

“I’ve missed you, Ghost. I really have,” I said, finding the gun heavier than expected, wanting to just lower it and forget the whole thing—to run home to my room (my real room, at Mom and Dad’s, not the fake one in Grandma’s mausoleum), to run and never stop.

And then he was throwing back his head and roaring—wondering where the fish went, I suppose, wanting to be fed as before—and I was lowering the gun (knowing, I think, I could never really do it; that I couldn’t even bonk a fish), when there was a rumbling up the road and I turned to see Shad getting out of the GTO—at which instant Ghost crouched like a tiger and leapt: flashing past me like a phantom, bounding for the car.

And then I did do it—fire, that is—not just once but multiple times, hitting Ghost in the head and back, hitting him in the legs, until at last he stumbled and skidded onto his belly in the rocks—all the way into the river—where I like to think he died before ever touching the water. Where I liked to think he died without ever knowing pain.

And then it was over and Shad just held me (for I’d collapsed by the river), gripping me tighter than I’d ever been gripped before—even by Mom—rocking me like a baby; saying “It’s okay” and “Let them go” and that he loved me over and over (and that Grandma did to, in her own peculiar way), comforting me as I cried. Until a considerable time had passed and we stood, watching as Ghost drifted further out—gurgling beneath the dark surface, vanishing without a trace—and I found I was able to say goodbye. To Ghost, yes—whom I had loved as only a boy can; but also to my parents, whom I knew I’d never see again. Also to the life I had known—which was as gone as Ghost and his victims. I accepted it and it was good—because it was the only thing to do. There, with my brother, standing side by side, in the fading, funereal light of the day.

PECK

“So what’s your secret?”

That’s how it all started, to the best of my recollection, just me posing a question to the big man in the coveralls—who’s chickens had just won the coveted Champion Rosette purple ribbon. It was an innocent enough question, directed at someone I thought would be delighted—he was an expert chicken farmer, after all, it said so right there on his placard.

“Humph,” he said, not so much as looking up; he and what I presumed to be his wife had set up a portable table near the enclosure and were playing cards.

“They’re so big!” said Trang, her face lit up like a child’s, “What you feed them to grow so high?”

The man only frowned. It was funny, because until that day I’d never met a stranger who hadn’t taken to her—with her thick South Vietnamese accent and innocent, carefree demeanor—right away.

At last he said, “Vegetable peels, bananas, apple cores—'bout what you’d expect.” He looked up for the first time, to where Trang was leaning against the enclosure. “Please don’ lean on’a pen. Upsets the chickens.”

“Oh, they’ll eat anything,” said his presumed wife, who was possibly the homeliest woman I’d ever seen. “Corn, broccoli, mealworms, yogurt. They love table scraps. Why, just the other night—”

“That’s enough,” said the man—peevishly, it seemed. “These city folks don’ care nothin’ about that. They’re just making small talk—aren’t you, city folk?”

Jesus, but the guy really talked like that.

“Well—no, actually,” I said. “I was genuinely curious. I mean, chickens don’t exactly grow that big eating grain pellets, do they? What’s your secret?”

He paused, turning a card over and over in his dirty fingers (the tips of which were blistered), locking eyes with the woman. “Just that. A secret. And it’s goin’ stay that way. Now if you don’t mind, there’s others waiting to see the chickens— them’s children right there, for an instance. Yes, sir. People come from all aroun’ to see my chickens, all the counties—not just city folk.”

And that was that, we’d been unceremoniously dismissed—nor was I in a position to complain; I was, after all, due for work at those same fairgrounds that very night, which would have been January 12, 2020. The night I learned the awful truth about the “expert” chicken farmer whose name I would later learn was Jud Farmington. The night of the blowing snow and the Kensington Station Blackout—which effected not just the suburbs but the entire east side of Brighton. The night Jud Farmington’s chickens finally came home to roost.

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