V

Grant walked through an underworld of shady, jagged forms.

He had made himself turn away from the dazzle of the four-way stop, back toward the houses lining the street. He had checked the number of each house, and as he did so, his internal engine cooled down. The gears gradually slowed, house by house. His pupils had expanded, and the red vital blood of his memories had faded to the silver and orange of the Mooncrash, colors not even of dead things but of inanimate ones.

The number he had been given appeared, at last, not on the visible facade of a house but on a high looming fence, a wooden fence, made of rough planks that looked like they could give you splinters. A part of the fence had been made to swing open on hinges, and he had stepped through into a dark place. Furtive glances had revealed a tangle of vine and bramble on either side, knotting together above to form a canopy which partially shut out the moon.

There was a narrow path below, made of flat but irregularly shaped stones. Grant moved step by careful step. It was so dark that, unless he stopped to look closely at anything, he could not fully make out distinct objects, only a confusion of jagged patches which loomed and then receded. Branches scraped his arms, and several times he felt the prick of what he could only assume were thorns.

The path continued for what seemed like an unreasonable distance, but then it was difficult to tell how far he had really travelled, with his steps so slow and careful, and with no signposts to divide the gloom. At last, abruptly, the tunnel ended. Grant’s hands, which he had held before him the whole way, found themselves touching smooth painted wood. And now that he had stopped, his eyes could assemble something definite from the moon-colored glints before him: a door. The same number, 1566, appeared beside the door on what revealed itself to be brick.

He found the handle, and tried it. The door swung open before him.

He saw several distorted rectangles of moonlight, suspended in a void. Their shapes, their angles, made him feel immediately at ease. He was in a house now, yes—and like the house, it had windows, which channelled the moonlight into patterns of illumination on floor, wall, table. What did we have here? A large, bare room, with a floor made of long undisguised wooden boards. Light entering through windows high above—too high to be blocked by the canopy—and making shapes on the floor’s far end. The floor was visibly dusty. To his right, a staircase rose into blackness. The place, to put it mildly, did not look lived-in.

Grant took an experimental step into the room. Something crunched under his foot. He put his back to the wall, and edged his way along, planning to crab-walk to the corner between him and the stairway, and then to the stairway itself.

There were arms around him, then, suddenly, arms reaching under his own and pulling them from behind. This was impossible, Grant realized. His back had been flat against the wall. Where had the assailant come from? But they were definitely here now, reaching, pinning, rendering his arms useless. He raised a leg and kicked back, hoping for a vulnerable groin.

His adversary cried out and quickly let him go. He fell forward, caught himself, and whirled.

Before him, against the wall, was a short, emaciated, oldish man. Late fifties or early sixties, Grant guessed. The man wore baggy jeans and a wifebeater, and was oddly easy to see, as if his skin were ever so slightly aglow.

Grant closed the gap between him and the man. He had at least a foot on him, and was far bulkier; he wondered how the man, with his little arms, had been able to restrain him so well. His hands, acting on reflexes from another life, rushed into place around the man’s neck.

“Who are you?” Grant rasped.

“No,” the man said.

“What?”

The man raised a hand to touch Grant’s left shoulder. The touch was almost gentle.

A supernova of pain burst through Grant’s shoulder. He staggered back. The pain had spikes, spines, it was a star, a starfish, a forking river of magma, a root system, branches, brambles, thorns. Grant bellowed and gripped his shoulder with his right hand. What his hand found was nothing like a shoulder. He pulled it away and saw, under the moonbeams, the color of his pulsing memories. Blood red. The slick fluid flowed from his hand in several streams.

“It won’t bleed out,” said the man. “No death. Just a gash.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Grant glimpsed a horrible shape. An arm meeting a cavity. The absence of a shoulder. The pain-star beat along with his heart, now, and it was strangely tolerable, perhaps from shock.

“What the fuck,” Grant said. He was panting, and the words tumbled out in a single breath: what-the-fuck-(inhale).

“You’re a man of gashes, aren’t you, Grant? I thought that you were a man of gashes.”

I-don’t-und-(inhale). Und-er-stand-(inhale).

“You move to make violent tearing gashes in flesh. And your sign-trains make violent tearing gashes toward the motions of your body which make violent tearing gashes in flesh. And towards the motions too of bullets, which too tear flesh.”

Where’s-the-box-(inhale).

“Your friend Azad formed a sign-train which lurched toward a box.”

You-know-Azad-(inhale).

“Your friend Azad is also a man of gashes.”

The pain had nearly gone, somehow. In its place was a rising tide of indignation and bile.

“Why the fuck did you just do that to me?” (Inhale.)

“You are a man of gashes, doubly violent: your violent sign-trains aim towards violence. You came to this place and did violence, and I do not want gashes in my flesh.”

“I’m violent? You just tore off my fucking shoulder!”

 

---

 

The Dialogue of Grant and the Old Man

Dramatis personae

Grant—a bilateral.

The old man—a shade.

 

The old man: “You are saying that there is a path which begins in my violent tearing action upon your shoulder, and ends with me as a man of gashes, a man violent.”

Grant: “I just walked in here and you tried to tackle me.”

The old man: “The path which ends in me as a man of gashes, a man violent, passes too through other motions of mine, then?”

Grant: “Look, what the fuck is your deal? Do you want something from me?”

The old man: “I want nothing. I am merely here, as your friend Azad knew, feeling me here by the fleshrending onrush of his sign-train.”

Grant: “Azad told me to come here and find a box. You have the box?”

The old man: “Box? Why would I have a box?”

Grant: “Azad told me there was a box here. And, uh. You’re here.”

The old man: “Show me the path.”

Grant: “What path?”

The old man: “Do you see it? You are a man of gashes. You do violence as you spin your sign-train, which finds no path, yet contrives to move without one.”

Grant: “I don’t understand.”

The old man: “You do not understand because you are violent, a man of gashes. The bilateral bears the spoils of its violence on its body: it has torn flesh to make an imitation-path, a gross blood-soaked parody-path, from the one arm to the other, the one leg to the other, the one brainpiece to the other. In its shape it bellows of its awful tearing rending claws.”

Grant: “Bilateral? That’s what the anomalings called us, in Azad’s translations, right?”

The old man: “That is a sign-train which was crashed, and is crashed no more. Your capacity for violence grows, now, as the crash weakens.”

Grant: “Are you an anomaling?”

The old man: “I am a shade, the shadow made by an anomaling upon the abominable realm, by which it forms sign-trains in bilaterals.”

Grant: “You don’t want the Mooncrash to end.”

The old man: “It is ending.”

Grant: “Azad said I had to come here, find the box, that the box would make it end, somehow.”

The old man: “Your friend Azad is a man of sign-trains. With his sign-trains he makes tears and gashes and seems to touch many things. But without a true path, where can one truly go? Almost nowhere.”

Grant: “Will you kill us, when it ends?”

The old man: “There are those who would kill you, if you moved uncrashed. Surely, if you moved without guidance, as your friend Azad would have you do, you would soon meet them, and you would die.”

Grant: “Unguided?”

The old man: “There are those who have moved before you, uncrashed, among us. If they are not guided in their motions, they move with violence, and do not live long. If one of us serves as their guide, they may survive. Some live still, guided.”

Grant: “And . . . will we be guided?”

[The shoulder doesn’t hurt at all, anymore.]

The old man: “I am here to be your guide, Grant.”

Grant: “What about Azad?”

The old man: “Your friend Azad is exceptionally dangerous. I have said, truly, that you are a man of gashes, but you are a man of gashes by motion only. Your friend Azad is a man of gashes by sign-train, and that is a greater abomination. He makes lurid etchings on the skin of everything dear and precious. His reach is wide and his claws wanton. One more generous might guide him, but I will not.”

Grant: “You think I’m just going to leave Azad? When he’s probably going to die?”

The old man: “You do not know the marks your friend Azad has made. You would have wept, to see the damage.”

Grant: [edging toward the door] “I’m not going to leave Azad.”

The old man: [smiling] “I did not expect this behavior! Fascinating! Bilaterals can surprise, and that brings joy, even if they only surprise for the worse. But it is too late. Grant, do you remember Serena?”

Grant: “My mom? What does she have to do with any of this crap?”

The old man: “Good, good. Now Grant. Did you miss her, these last few years, in the house? Serena?”

Grant: [. . .]

The old man: “Good. Stick with me, Grant. Remember your breathing. Remember what the nice men told you, deep steady breaths, not too deep, make sure not to stop whatever you do?”

Grant: “There are too many (inhale). Tubes-in-my-(inhale).”

The old man: “Breathing, Grant!”

Grant: “(Inhale)-(exhale)-(inhale)-(exhale)—”