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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 31: Brown 292
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 10
All that day of the eve of Halloween, and Halloween day, they practiced, except for the time the trio played at Missus Johnson’s. To save time, Derek bought food from her to eat for supper. Supper was fifteen cents each, and it was the dreaded red beans and rice and andouille sausage again. He made sure to get a lot of extra bread for himself. They used a pot from Mister Hunter’s place to carry the food back.
Practicing ‘Saints’, they had moved on to a new one that Derek had remembered, “What a Friend”. After this, he had led them through the more difficult “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Going back to Saints, he then had taught them “How Great Thou Art.” Maurice then taught them “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and they finished with “Amazing Grace”. This cycle went on, and on, until finally they were too tired to go on more. Derek had called a break, and after a couple hours brought them back to work. This ended with supper, and an early night.
The next day, Halloween, it was more practice, followed by lunch work at the restaurant, and more food brought home. Thankfully this time it was red beans and rice without any sausage, and Derek discovered what he suspected: it was quite delicious that way. All that afternoon they practiced until Derek called a halt before exhaustion set in.
“We might have visitors in the night, and we need to save our strength.” More rest and prayer was followed by supper. After supper, Maurice showed them something placed out of the way, not truly hidden, on top of the chiffarobe in their bedroom. It was a well-used shotgun with the blueing rubbed off on much of it. It was a .20 gauge shotgun, single barrel, made by Remington. The barrel could be released by a latch, and dropped to put the paper-walled shotgun shells into the barrel, and then snapped back together, and fired.
“I’ve got my laser rifle. And I don’t think Vashti is ready for a shotgun yet. I hear shotguns have a lot of kick. Can you handle this?” Derek asked Maurice, who after all was sixteen or seventeen. The lad smiled.
“I’se done it befoah. Sometimes when I was over gettin’ ‘bone lessons from Mistah Hunter, he’d ask me to go hunt a waterbird. It’s a light shotgun. Not even a twelve or a ten gauge. “
Derek nodded, and then asked Maurice to show him, so they went outside, set up a chunk of wood as a target, and Maurice took aim. He had two boxes of shotgun shells from the top of the wardrobe in his pockets. The first blast missed, and made Vashti wince, but Maurice quickly broke the shotgun apart, pulled out the remains of the shell with his left hand, and with his right slid in the next, then snapped the shotgun back together and threw it to his shoulder for another shot. The third attempt finally hit.
Derek evaluated. Maurice had a bit of nerves, but if he settled down, he would still not be as good a shot as Derek on his laser rifle. Of course, the shotgun was old, and while functional clearly inexpensive. It was a poor man’s weapon with nothing more than was necessary to work reliably.
“If it comes to you using the shotgun, just remember to keep calm. You clearly know how to handle your gun. Just don’t get jumpy.”
“Yes, sir.” Maurice nodded seriously. He came from a gun culture, and in this place and time guns were taken seriously. The two, apparently about the same age (although Derek was a good bit older with a far wider array of experiences to back him up), walked back to the porch. Vashti had already gone inside to get away from the loud booms.
“I’se usually sneak up closer to a bird.”
“You must be good at sneaking,” Derek said. Maurice shrugged.
“It’s patience.”
The two waited in patience in the living room for Vashti to call them in. They prayed and waited, and dozed. Suddenly, Derek jerked awake. He heard the cries of a child outside. Leaping to his feet, he raced to the front door. Heavy fog lay out front, and he heard another childish scream.
Blood running cold as he imagined what horrors something might be doing to a child, he still forced himself to grab his laser rifle and sling it on his back. Then he took his trumpet, and turned to see that Vashti was behind him, and Maurice was behind her. Both were armed and musicked. He led the way outside into the befogged night. Another scream led him away from the house, out toward the road. The scream then sounded to his right, and he went that way. Not reaching the road, he called out.
“Hey, child. We’re coming to help you.”
Words came back from the fog. Muted, and menacing, the sounds were, “Hey, child. We’re coming to help you.” Then, “Hey, child. We’re coming to kill you.”
Then “Hey, child. We’re coming to eat you. Hahahahaa!”
Derek shouted back, “No, child, don’t listen to the evil words. We will help you!”
Another scream, and he headed that way, surprised to find swamp. Had they gotten turned around in the fog? He could not see more than five feet in front of him, and looking back he barely could make out Maurice.
“Stay close, Maurice. You, too, Vashti.”
The scream came again, from closer, in front of him. He looked down. Going through the swamp in daylight by himself was one thing. Doing it at night in the increasingly heavy fog was a serious problem. He turned back. His wife was right on him, and Maurice was crowded right up to her with his eyes big as dinner plates. They had listened very enthusiastically to his advice to stay close, and all things considered, he did not mind.
“Derek,” Maurice interrupted his thoughts.
“Yes?”
“We can’t go walkin’ in the swamp like this.”
Derek sighed. The boy was right. It really was too dangerous. Suddenly the scream came off to his right, which ran along the swamp edge. He followed it, and came to see a dark figure lying on the ground like a wounded goat with a blood trail.
Maurice laughed in relief. “This is good. A goat, well they can sound like a child. Some like a man. We been chasin’ a goat.” Derek was relieved as well, and so he was a bit slow when Maurice went down to the goat. Suddenly it leapt up, and he saw a nightmare face like that of a man and a goat mixed together. It grabbed Maurice by the throat, and dragged him back. Derek readied his laser rifle in a trice, only to see a petrified Maurice lying on his back with some horrifying mismatch, an abomination against decency, which had latched its huge teeth onto his neck.
The creature was bent over, and possibly if fully standing would be three and a half feet tall. Spines ran down its back. Black sleek fur and eyes that glittered with a blue-green fire not of this world made Derek pause. He had seen many aliens in his last universe, but they had been creations of God, or of the Great Designer as someone had called Him. This one, he rather suspected, had more to do with dark forces than the King. It trailed a single claw down Maurice’s terrified face, even as it kept its large teeth on his throat. The stench from it made Derek and Vashti gag.
It was clearly waiting, and so when the fog spoke, Derek was not surprised.
“Put the trumpet down, verser, and we will give the child back his life. You and she and he may have the night in peace, but just lay the trumpet down on the grass.” The fogs dissipated a bit, and he began to see a path back to the house.
“Give us the trumpet!” the fogs shrieked, and faces appeared in the white strands, leering, demanding, angry, deceitful, outraged, falsely offended, mocking, blaspheming faces.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #502: Character Setbacks. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
