Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [141]
These were ones who did not fear the Eye. These were one.
They stood not just in a line but in a plane of vision, or at least perception. There was a dimensionality to them that both seeped forward toward him and receded backward, making it seem that the very depth of field of reality—the essential fabric and framework of the street—had been fundamentally altered.
The second he thought that—as he looked closer—he saw to his unspeakable and unreasonable, shrinking apprehension that they all had the exact same face. It was not a mask, in any sense of abstraction or caricature, but it was not eccentric, individual, and animate, either. It was a face like none he had seen before, even on the nags of Zanesville—repeated, separate yet combined. Blurred. Merged.
Yes, that was what the impression was like. Six figures sharing a single face, so that it was impossible to determine if there were six figures or one.
But he heard a multiplicity of voices. Not, just six—oh, no.
They did not move—they did not have to. He heard them calling to him inside his own head. Beat him, they called. Beat him! Release your hatred …
“That’s enough!” Fanny cried, and fired one of the revolvers into the air, as the storm broke and people scattered.
Lloyd dropped the cane, leaving Joshua Breed groveling in the mud, bleeding and soiled, whimpering like the dog the day before.
The six white women with the single face were gone, dissolved in the downpour as if they had never been.
CHAPTER 7
Something in Between
THE SIGHT OF LLOYD MERCILESSLY WHIPPING THE WOUNDED rouster at last spurred Rapture to action. She raised her skirt hem and dashed through the deluge to wrench her son out of his trance. The few items they had purchased she left behind in the streaming rain, dragging the boy along the mud-strewn boardwalk in a huffing flurry of anger and alarm until they reached the relative safety of the Clutters’ once more.
She did not look behind her to see the gun-toting Fanny Ockleman shaking her head at the boy’s performance. She did not see the sharpshooter stow her revolvers, adjust her hat, and stride over to retrieve the cane as if the sun were shining brightly and the most extraordinary event that had transpired had been the boy’s vented fury. Rapture was too busy trying to master the shame and chagrin that had replaced her pride and concern when her son stepped forward.
Lloyd, meanwhile, was beside himself with fascination and embarrassment. The excitation that had arisen inside him was like no other he had ever experienced—a sickening, insatiable lust and release beyond any he had known before. The entire world had been eclipsed in the heat of it. There was only his hunger, his will being fulfilled to the grotesque exclusion of all other senses. And the disquietude of the six watchers.
Were these what the Vardogers looked like? Or had it been a projection of their insidious science?
I wonder if I saw what I did because they wanted me to see it or because of how I felt? he thought.
Strangely enough, the very brutality of his performance drew a very different response from what his mother had anticipated. Racing back to the Clutters’ soaking wet, struggling with what she could carry and still mind Lloyd, Rapture assumed that all the items they had abandoned would either be stolen or spoiled by the rain. Not so. What she had not counted on was that the Breed gang, and slobbish Josh in particular, had long been a source of fear and local hatred. While the Bushrod Rangers comprised members who were respected at least in quarters of the community, no one would have spoken in favor of Portion Breed and his son’s confederates if they could avoid it, and for once it seemed they could. Perhaps things were going to change for the better around Independence.
So what if little Lloyd had whacked the tar out of Josh? The younger Breed