ABSTRACT CARAVAN PASSES: STORIES by Geoffrey Girard Caravan Passes is a collection of short stories in which “ordinary” persons are put in extraordinary situations via the settings and devices of speculative fiction. Each tale – whether of dark fantasy, science fiction, historical, or horror -- engages fanciful situations and settings to more-openly explore themes and issues concerning modern man. Several arguments run through each story, including issues of violence, the assault on individuality and spiritual searching. In each, the individual faces a crises of defending self, in ever-increasing ripples of societal ferocity and otherworldly/spiritual reckoning. CARAVAN PASSES: STORIES A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English by Geoffrey Girard Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2013 Advisor________________________ Dr. Brian Roley Reader_________________________ Dr. Joseph Bates Reader_________________________ Dr. Kay Sloan © Geoffrey Girard 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Translatio 1 Collecting James 10 First Communions 16 Where the Shadow Ended 26 Psychomachia 31 Dark Harvest 38 Universal Adaptor 49 H. E. Double Hockey Stick 57 For Restful Death I Cry 64 The Spider Field 70 ii TRANSLATIO It hung in the grey sunless sky like an enormous black balloon, bloated and dull, with a dozen rutted tendrils dangling loosely just beneath. Had Watkins not been looking for one, he probably would have missed it completely. It would have become only another dark cloud or treetop lurking at the far corner of his eye. Every city had them by now. Hundreds. Some no bigger than a minivan. Others, he’d heard, were as large as stadiums. The creatures hovered in one spot for hours, days sometimes, drifting almost imperceptibly on some terrible unseen current. As if they were only sleeping. Watching. Waiting. Every so often, they “woke” and someone was killed. No one knew what they were. Or where, exactly, they would next appear or for how long. No one knew where they’d first come from. Or why? No one really wanted to know. Watkins knew. Still, he’d been careful to cross slowly to the opposite side of the street. Just in case. He’d not allowed himself to become too confident. One day, the rules would change. Or, he would simply learn that he’d been wrong all these long years. His own house was only another half block away, and he stayed close to the shadows. Most of the homes were already abandoned – boarded up, burned out – But a few still scurried with life. When he reached his porch, he glanced back, half expecting to see that it had followed him. That, even now, the tendrils were snaking down toward him. One day... No. It remained in the exact same position. Watching or sleeping. Waiting. Watkins stared at it from afar. He shuddered. When they’d first appeared, everyone had stayed inside. But weeks sometimes passed between their attacks, or months. Eventually, life had to go on again. People adapted. As they had long before to death, and the floods, plagues, famine, polio, wars, cancer, AIDS... Life went on. In more recent times, there’d been the swarmings, drought, more war, birth defects... Large-scale. Global. Disease, The Madness, the Long Night, the earth splitting apart... Life went on. And now these things. He remembered the first time he’d watched one sweep suddenly down upon a small crowd of people who’d risked its proximity for some food. One fleshy tentacle had shot out, snatched some middle-aged mother and an old Mexican man into the air. One of the woman’s shoes had flung out over an adjacent roof. Then, the balloon creature had fed, and drops of blood rained again from the dark sky. Almost the same as he’d imagined months before. Almost as he’d written it down. Like he’d been told to. It was closer over the Lopinto house now. It had moved after all. Just enough... Watkins rapped on the door, their secret knock, and soon heard movement inside. The door opened enough and he slipped into the waiting darkness. Inside the house, he handed his 1 son the small bundle. “Store these,” he said. “Picked up half-a-dozen, and some powdered milk.” The boy nodded. Or trembled. Watkins couldn’t tell which anymore. Alex was only thirteen but he already looked sixty. Gaunt, with dark sunken eyes against pale skin. He should be out playing basketball with friends, Watkins thought. He should be at some mall drinking a Coke and looking at girls. But, most of his son’s friends were dead now. And, the mall had been leveled more than a year ago. The boy looked like something that had clawed out from its grave. “Where’s Mom?” The boy stiffened. He hardly ever spoke anymore. “I’ll be upstairs,” Watkins said, and finished re-securing the door bracings. “If you need me.” He moved past his son and up the stairs to the second floor. Opened another door leading to the attic room. There, more steps, and he moved slowly up each, absently counting the individual squeaks and creaks. Eight steps. He hated the next more than the last. Like walking up to the gallows or his very own stations of the cross. But here, he’d been promised no end, and no Resurrection, at the top. So, each step took effort. And at each, he thought of simply stopping and turning around. For good. For ever. Never again. What will be will be. I simply can’t do this anymore. The muted light from the vaulted attic windows cast his own shadow against the wall behind him. It, too, looked like something from the grave. Too thin, too crooked. It was a fairly empty room, with only a cheap desk against the far wall. A chair and half- empty bookshelf. The computer and its monitor lay in a heap in one of the corners, black cords snaked over it like wild ivy. There hadn’t been any electricity for more than a year now. Watkins sat at the desk and felt the weight of the chair against his back. He stared ahead, at nothing in particular. It could have been hours. Eventually, his eyes drifted down to the journal. It was a simple 8½ x 11 black-covered notepad he’d picked up a few months before at Walgreens. He’d filled more than a dozen over the years. Fourteen, in fact, and he’d stored each in the squat cheap bookshelf beside his desk like a trite serial killer in some movie. He had never been a writer, but he could certainly write down what he’d seen, what he’d heard. Felt. Most of it, anyway. He knew his words always failed to truly capture what he was supposed to express. But, as he had not yet been punished, it seemed he was always close enough. Watkins allowed his fingers to touch the corner of the notepad. It remained closed. He thought again of simply leaving it closed, of standing up and escaping the room forever. But the new dreams had become more vivid. More demanding. 2 If he didn’t obey soon, he would surely go mad. Or worse... Yes, worse. That had certainly been made clear. There was worse. And, he believed it. Watkins closed his eyes to the memory of everything he’d seen in the past weeks. Nightmares that followed him ever longer into his waking world. Horrific tableaus newly burned into his eyes. He could picture the black-stained fog rolling swiftly down some street. Hundreds of faces and hands roiled and swirled within... Is this the Angel of Death then? The same who’d struck Egypt long before? Ghastly faces. Some were half-rotted away, the exposed bones shining brightly, others still dripping wet with fresh blood... And he recognized every one. Co-workers, neighbors, old lovers and classmates. The blackness now moving with them all over the first house... He opened his eyes. “Please, he said aloud. “Please, I can’t...” There was no one there to answer him. If I don’t... His right hand had grabbed hold of the pen. He suddenly recalled the look on the nurse’s face when Emily was born. In the same year when almost every baby in the world was delivered deformed, misshapen, perverted somehow by Nature, Science or God, Emily had been born perfectly normal. An ordinary, beautiful, baby girl. The nurse had not looked relieved or thankful. She’d looked completely horrified. Later, when they were not touched by “Captain Trips” or the floods or the war or the Madness... Or the things floating outside... He understood. He knew absolutely what his role had been. Was to be. And his reward. Please, God. No. With trembling fingers, he pushed the notebook away across the desk. He brought his hands to his face and cried again. He sobbed. An enormous shadow moved slowly past his window. Watkins did not look and told himself it was only a cloud. —§— It had taken many years before Andrew Watkins realized he was killing people. And by then, he’d already killed thousands. There was the tsunami in 2004. The meltdowns in Civaux and Chooz, in Palo Verde. Flooding in Europe. Sun flares over lower China (more than forty million killed in that one alone). He remembered where he was the first time he’d heard about the swarmings, the bees in western Africa. The news footage was all so terrible. And so terribly familiar. One night he couldn’t elude the obvious any longer and reread his notebooks.