The Thing Too Hideous to Describe
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DAVID J. SCHOW
Every once in a while we'll both decide we like a story enough to include in this series; hut discover we like it for totally different reasons. Dave Schow's story is a great example of this-while one of us found it to be a subtle, inverted parody of the dear, old Fifties monster movies, the other loved its ability to pin down and lay bare the best and worst aspects of our humanity.
... slapped a pseudopod across the SNOOZE button on Its alarm clock. It liked to be half-awake when midnight actually clicked over, so Its alarm was habitually set to 11:59 P.M. The blue glow of the numerals pleased It, reminded It of some of the biogenous hues It could produce in Its tentacled extremities when satisfied or amused, so It had appropriated the device during some pre-dawn wander or other, from one of the townies who had been imbued in sufficient fear to abandon her bedroom in the middle of the night.
Its carapace was running red-glowing softly, from worry, taken to bed and slept on. It was not as young as It used to be (what on Earth was?); slithering to the sink was becoming a chore. It tried not to make the grunts and huffs the elderly use to punctuate every movement. It yawned wide instead, freeing a few flying insects who had invested sleeptime (Its own, not theirs) in the determined consumption of tartar flecks from Its back molars. The little monsters never drowned, they never suffocated, they were a nuisance, they were pestilent, riddled with germs, yet perfectly suited to their scavenging purpose.
Salve, for the burns. The Thing applied an herbal poultice to the gelid patches of still-healing flesh, repellantly smooth and tender to the touch, like a bubo swollen with dead antibodies. Fire had purged detail from Its cratered brown exodermis, the way a child might use an eraser to obliterate portions of a photograph of the Moon's natural topography. It had lost a sucker from the tip of one of Its retractile protrusions. The wounds would scab thickly, then re-armor. They always did. Last night's close call had been nothing new.
Outside, the tarn beckoned. The Thing always felt better after a wake-up rinse and a bit of a roil in the sludge. It furled its feelers for the downhill roll, eyestalks whipping around and causing a rollercoaster sort of dizziness. It flattened Itself to a glistening membrane on the surface of the brackish water, soaking up some lunar rays, and letting the tidal influences provide inspiration. When It rolled out, nearly all the water sluiced free. Its skin was not absorbent.
It was time to go find some teenagers.
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Maysville was one of those antique, rural Kentucky bergs that rolled up the sidewalks promptly at dusk, and whose church steeple still constituted its highest structural elevation. The bell tower therein had been tolling the hour, and half hour, for more than fifty years without breakdown or incident. The church itself-alabaster, roofed in green shingles-glowered over the town square, where rustic benches and litter baskets were em-placed with the precision of chess pieces. The manicured, triangular greensward it faced was a sort of local picnic spot for those unimaginative enough to venture into the woods. It was near the business district at the intersection of Main and Center Streets, where local merchants closed shop promptly at five in the afternoon.
At quitting time, the locals did familial rituals, talking ceaselessly about food or the weather, sitting on porches in rockers or swinging loveseats on creaking chains. Then they started drinking-most alarmingly, at a watering hole whose neon sign proclaimed it as BAR. If you telephoned the place, the proprietor, a burly ex-boxer with a buzzing, dysfunctional voice and only the vaguest grasp of the world beyond his batwing doors, would answer "Tommy's." The Thing had never called Tommy's; the Thing had no use for telephones, although It recognized that when one human or another grabbed one, it usually meant trouble.
Generally, the residents of Maysville kept to their homes (the better to service the exponential care and feeding of town gossip) and, at night, banded into drunken groups to hunt down the Thing once and for all. Maysville needed a monster, apparently, to rationalize its hidebound prejudices, its oddball religion, its social dynamic, and to unify the townsfolk against some common enemy ... mostly so they did not tear each other apart.
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe did not know of any monsters in the vicinity; that was one of the reasons It had chosen the area for Its semi-retirement. No werewolves or incubi, no demonic apparitions or defrocked Indian burial tracts. No real estate hauntings, no unspeakable, lowering molochs, and practically no children possessed by devils, although sometimes the Thing was not so sure. The kids here had inherited their progenitors' sense of superstitious paranoia and hidebound, inbred fear, and frequently they acted monstrously, but the Thing was capable of appreciating the difference. No real monsters...
... unless you counted the townsfolk, who got incredibly intolerant when they got liquored up at Tommy's. The formula was always the same: they complained, and drank, and groused, and drank, and started stamping then-feet, while drinking some more, and before you could say boo, you had a gang of violent alcoholics storming up your nether port-drunk, deluded, waving torches and pointy farm implements, screaming with bloodlust in a democracy of madness and mob unreason.
There were already plenty of frightening things in the world, thought the Thing. Circus clowns, for example. Cartoonists and writers-creatures who invented the kind of lurid pulp that could inflame the basest frenzies of unthinking, potentially dangerous crowds. Such artisans of corruption sat in their high places, and distorted form, and made a mockery of all life, and did not care that their exploitative claptrap sank fear into the souls of the ignorant. The Thing had once seen a photograph of one of their minor gods. The portrait depicted some gloomy Gus, all hangdog and horrific and mostly hairless, his eyes broadcasting doom and cosmic apocalypse, hinting at a near-blasphemous tunnel vision that hated all it saw, and saw only that which could kindle the otherworldly passions resident in the fetid lobes of the man's dark and hateful brain.
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe spooked a couple of smooching high-schoolers, about a block from the town square, against a fence, behind some trees near the cemetery, where these nascent fornicators had assumed they might swap fluids and DNA unnoticed. It was a transient thrill. The humans emitted high, squealing noises and took clumsy flight, colliding with trees and each other in their haste to escape. That buoyed the spirits of the Thing only momentarily. Now the offspring would hurriedly report an extravagant exaggeration of what they had seen, amplifying the disgust factor in order to hide their own guilt in the shadow of the more sensational. Then the local authorities, the town leaders, and their parents would all use that as an excuse to partake of more abundantly-available booze, and soon enough the whole process would culminate in smoking torches and riot behavior.
The mob would never cross the tarn, however-none of them would ever be that brave. There were too many hazards not governed by hysteria: bloodsuckers, quick-mud, venomous reptiles; no streetlights or convenience markets. Beyond that, a treacherous maze of rocks and switchbacks, where precipitous heights waited to plummet the curious to broken-boned death on sharp rocks, or the lack of geographical benchmarks threatened starvation within a labyrinth. No, the mob would never manage to seek out the lair of the Thing Too Hideous to Describe, because indigenous legend had it that once you went in, you never came out.
Yet upon its return for lunch break, the Thing Too Hideous to Describe saw light. Human light, the artificial light of a battery-operated beam. Once, a group of be-smocked know-it-alls in helicopters had buzzed unnerv-ingly close, convinced that the Thing might be some sort of alien invader from another planet. They had given up and retreated to the safety of their grandiose theorizing. They always gave up, when it came to actually learning something. It was more profitable to fall back on whatever make-believe they were selling unwary consumers, this week.
Whomever had chanced upon the Thing's home did not look like a scientist, nor did he appear to be a representative of the military. He looked like a clerk. He was wearing a bulky down jacket and hiking boots. He wore spectacles and had a hairless face (the way humans scraped off their pelts had always made the Thing a bit queasy). It was comical to watch him feel around the edges of the nondescript cave that led down to the Thing's home. He did not appear repulsed by the slime coating the ingress. He sniffed it, from the tips of his gloves. His flashlight beam strayed wild again, as he consulted a big metal notebook he held crooked into one arm.
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe held steady and watched, as this Outsider-for that was definitely what the man was, not from around here-stiffened, the way humans always did when they felt there was some creepy lurker, monitoring them. Now would be an excellent opportunity to pull the old stalk-and-scare, making the guy look toward the most likely source of monsterishness, then drop tentacles down on him, from above. But before the Thing could indulge Itself, the flashlight ray crossed Its big, ebony orbs, causing a stab of pain like a migraine. Before the Thing could rally, the man-creature in the bulky coat spoke to It;
"Oh! Hi there. . . sorry, I hope I'm not intruding or anything..."
This struck the Thing as very odd. Usually, they ran away by now, or started shooting. Instead, this manling checked his book again-a book! Another damned book! Oh, cursed item! thought the Thing, steeling for the worst. But this did not appear to be a book-book, of the sort It reviled. No, it was a ring-binder sort of affair, its pages containing not hated text, and certainly not the most loathsome print of all, fiction, but graphs and charts.
And the man-creature was walking toward It, the tone of voice spewing from his mouth-hole not scared at all, but apologetic.
"Sorry to bother you, like i said, but my name is Steve Brackeen. I was going to leave you a note. Um .... is this a bad time? I was hoping maybe we could talk a little..."
Worse, as the man-creature came closer to the Thing, his aura read decidedly cool, not a nimbus of red-hot fright or hatred. He pulled off one glove to expose his hand, that simian tool depending grotesquely from the end of his arm with its upsettingly snake-like five digits, pink and hairless. No slime.
It had been ages since the Thing Too Hideous to Describe had risked vocal contact with a human, and Its works seemed rusty. A lot of bug-infested mucus glopped out of Its face, plus bits of a turkey club sandwich It had enjoyed two days ago, but the man-creature broadcast no distress at this.
"I'm-I'm not a census taker or anything like that. I came here to talk to you, actually, if-if you think you could spare-"
He was flashing a laminated card that featured an inaccurate photograph of him, and his name, spelled out in modern English.
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe did not wish to shake hands with the man-creature, primarily because It disliked that sort of actual physical contact, but also because It had nothing a human could reasonably call a hand.
"Like I said, my name is-"
The Thing was perplexed. This was most assuredly outside the normal playbook. What could It do? It invited the guy inside.
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"I'm a little grubby," said the man-creature named Steve. "You'll have to excuse that. This is a lot better than stomping all over Europe, lemme tell you." He spread a disposable paper towel over the glistening hump of rock near the Thing's firepit, then sat down, extending his booted leg appendages to compensate for the elevation of the rock. "Nice place. The fire is nice, too."
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe had to pause to ponder the word, one It had almost never heard. Nice?
"You know-homey. Anyway, I've been working on this big doctoral thesis. That's what all this hoodoo in the notebook is about. I've been documenting the weird crowd behavior of group insanity in small, isolated towns and villages, you know-the kind of places the world always seems to pass by? And some of the stuff I found out is pretty upsetting. Like in the Black Forest-rampant alcoholism, leading to berserk, antisocial group action. Apparently a lot of those villagers have nothing better to do with their time than invent wild stories about their betters, and use those stories to justify blowing up every castle in a hundred-mile radius. No, sir or madame, your hamlet is not being victimized by one of your own retarded halfwits... it must be a vampire! That's the way these kooks think. No, your cemeteries aren't being vandalized by teen punks or necrophiles ... it must be that mean old professor up on the hill, who has more money and pedigree than you could ever imagine, why, he must be stitching all those corpses together to make a big stupid monster, yeah, that must be it!"
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe was forced to concur. Humans almost never behaved logically, or compassionately. They did bray a lot about tolerance, which exercise for their vocal cords was probably more economical than actual practice.
"I mean, you've seen some of those movies, right?" said the Steve-creature. "Who really makes out, every time the besotted Burgomeister decides, you know, to blow up another dam? Local contractors, funeral directors, hardware stores, the makers of pitchforks and rope, gun dealers and the distributors of ammunition, hell... monsters are great for their economy. They all get shitfaced at the inn until they're fizzed enough to see monsters, then they start grabbing for the dynamite. And who do you think gets first crack at developing the destroyed real estate? I mean, where's the real problem, here?"
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe had to nod in agreement, at that one.
"I guess the fundamental question is: what are these imbeciles smoking ... and where can I get some?" The Steve-creature cracked a smile that bisected his misshapen round face into a leer, showing teeth. "Did you hear about the lunatics running the asylum over in Maple-ton, USA? They think they're plagued by some mummy guy who crawls out of a bog every quarter-century or so to pick on the descendants of some heat-stroked, hallucinating Egyptologist who drank himself into a coronary before the Second World War! I mean, accounts vary, but the story stays the same: These people refuse to accept responsibility for their own lives. Nah, we were all abject failures in life because we were cursed by monsters, not because we're all so inebriated all the time we can barely tie our shoes!"
The Steve-creature flipped open his notebook. The Thing Too Hideous to Describe leaned forward to peruse the data in better light.
"See here? No matter how many times they wipe out these supposed monsters, those monsters always come back, even if they're, you know, utterly purged from the planet. See? It allows for the maintenance of a consistent level of mass psychosis. Pretty soon, your toilet doesn't flush, and voila-it must be the Mad Doktor's fault, or some monster that conveniently runs contrary to whatever religious derangement governs the town. Not only does it maintain the status quo and help the local economy, but it severely limits the employment opportunities for bona fide monsters. Look at this graph-see? Monster jobs and mean income level, down every year. I'm thinking of presenting some of my findings to Affirmative Action."
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe flipped to another page of facts and figures, using one of Its secondary pseudopods, the stumpy, more articulate ones. Yes, the bald information in black and white certainly seemed conclusive enough.
The Steve-creature reached into his shoulder bag. Here it comes, thought the Thing. It's a trap. He's going to whip out a weapon and try to bushwhack me. Or worse, this has all been a setup, and he's going to try to sell me something.
No, it was merely a little tape recorder.
"I just want to get some of your thoughts," said Steve. "Your angle on the whole phenomenon, and maybe ask you a few questions about your relationship with the population of Maysville, if that's not too intrusive or presumptuous of me. You'll be speaking on behalf of a very broad monster demographic-what you say may affect hundreds of others in the same position as yourself."
The Thing's eyes blinked in incomprehension, fluttering at the ends of their stalks. Not only had It not anticipated company, but there was nothing around that could qualify as refreshment, especially for this iron-blooded, bipedal air-breather. It sighed, making a congested, bubbly sound. It really needed to work on Its hosting skills.
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Ominously pleasant, this talk in the dark. An exchange of ideas, seductive in its invitation ... and almost promising some manner of betrayal as the final course. But I can smell human lies, the way I can sense deceit hidden beneath their too-thin, fragile skins. This one is compassionate and educated. If they were all like this one, never would I have to salve burns from the night before. If they were all like this one, the structure of our universe would not exist. I kind of like him.
But holy Peter, is he ugly! That jackstraw corpus, with its gangly, meatless limbs. Only two eyes, both the limpid color of poison. The rictus mouth with its nasty, square teeth. The absolute wrongness of his geometry brands him as an abomination, something the sane gaze instinc-tually rejects from view. I think that, were our stations reversed, I might derive pleasure from his extinction. I hope not, for that would make us both, as races, equally uncivilized.
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Commotion, in the calm of night. The Thing Too Hideous to Describe was accustomed to such uproar, but this night, It was not the catalyst.
The Thing scuttled up a high tree in the woods and spread his pods out, spider-like, for stability. From here, Its vision, tuned to nonhuman frequencies, Could perfectly make out, from this distance, the church steeple and town square. The sounds were familiar-inebriated raving, the crackle of firebrands, the hyperactive jostle of sweaty bodies lusting for a kill. All the trappings of a conventional Maysville monster hunt, with their preferred monster as absentee.
A large phone-pole crucifix jutted from a pyre of smashed furniture, the kindling provided by the rent bodies of those few books in town that had not been banned or burned already. Spiked to the pole, his wrists and throat engirded by barbed wire, was the Steve-creature, the human who had called himself Brackeen. The goodfolk of Maysville pelted him with rotten fruit and broken glass, from the bottles they had drained. His shredded notebook was utilized to ignite the fire. The lynch chaos of Maysville's drunken residents would not be denied.
He had been found out. He had ventured into the town to do interviews and take notes, and the innkeeper had poked into his guest's luggage, or, more likely, someone had just peered over his shoulder at an opportune moment. He had been damned by his own research. Maysville, ever on the lookout for mutants, would obliterate any aberration... especially when they could find no other one to torment.
The Steve-creature hollered protest, at first. Then screamed curses. Then, merely screamed, before he fell silent and continued to cook. His unholy book was consumed by righteous fire. His head sagged and his hair vanished in a puff of greasy smoke.
The Thing Too Hideous to Describe averted Its gaze, with something like pity. They were not all alike, these humans. The Steve-creature had resembled those executing him (hell, they all looked alike anyway), but in no way was he the same as them.
With a measure of melancholy, the Thing Too Hideous to Describe slithered down from the tree and trundled wearily homeward. Tomorrow night, It really should sortie into town, to do what It did best, but It knew the task would come without verve or enthusiasm.
The human conceit of vengeance, however, might be adapted to fruitful use, on some other midnight, soon to come.