Job 3:5
by Axel Taiari

Elijah sits on his porch and watches the lake burn. Through distant trees, colored flames dance on the water surface, their glow staining the rolling clouds above a sickening shade of green. His father’s hunting rifle rests on his knees. The door creaks and Elijah says, stay inside, goddammit, and you don’t make a sound or come out until I return. The door closes, and locks slide into place. His wife had gone to a nearby settlement to tend to her dying cousin, and without her in the house the boys were getting restless. Elijah stands up, grips the rifle tight, and walks downhill toward the town’s main avenue, where the others wait.

The heartless dogs were the first omen. For seven days, frenzied barks and yelps of pain echoed from the nearby woods. The sounds kept the town awake during those few damp summer nights. They sent search parties into the woods, but could not locate the source. The men rose at dawn, fueling their sleep-starved bodies with coffee. They left their wives in bed and headed into town, only to find a fresh carcass awaiting them. Ripped out guts moonseed-bright unwrapped in rotting lassos across the streets. Maggots gorged on putrefying meat while bloated carrion flies droned above. The dead pets were never strays, never wild, never coyotes. They had owners. They were loved. They were family.

On the second day, they sent a rider to fetch the old Claibourne. He arrived on a mule so sickly it seemed to be nothing but ribs and scabs. Elijah had to help the retired doctor get off his mount. He kneeled with difficulty and dug his hands into the sun-cooked remains. Nobody had dared move them. He fished around the insides, grunting all the while. He got up and shrugged.

This ain’t fresh, the doc said through a row of wooden teeth and coal-black gums.

Found it this morning, replied Callahan, the sheriff. We all heard the noises last night.

Dog’s missing something, said the doc. The heart’s gone. Lungs too. Various other organs. Removed, not fed on.

The men studied each others.

Doc Claibourne scratched his beard, examined his blood-soaked forearms. Five, six days it’s been wasting. Maybe longer if it was in the shade. Whose bitch is it?

Mine, said a kid Elijah recognized as the youngest of the Lannocks.

The doc hid his hands behind his back and said, sorry ‘bout your dog.

But, said the boy, she was still here yesterday. I played with her. She ran off into the woods at dusk and no amount of hollerin’ made her come home. Figured she’d be back in the morning. She did that sometimes. It was okay to let her be on her own. Ma said so.

Doc Claibourne frowned. He eyeballed the corpse, then his open palms, trickling crimson on the sand. Someone bring me water, and soap. And we need to burn this. Right now.

The men hold torches and speak loud, whiskey boosting their temporary courage. They have been here for hours, arguing and making plans. They are all armed and reek of long days of wood chopping, metal smithing, gold digging. Elijah nods at them all and takes his place among the group. They want to put an end to this. The dogs were one thing. The families had grieved, weeks had passed. Murders and unexpected deaths, queer as they might be, were part of life and could be shelved away with enough ticks of the clock. But a lake on fire, that was something else. Something unnatural. Something unholy.

Sheriff Calahan says, we go there, and we get to the bottom of this.

The men look in the direction of the blaze, of the greenish streaks in the skyline.

The sheriff nods, and leads the way. The legion follows.

The signs had intensified. Two days before the fire, the breeze carried with it the choking stench of something long dead. When Elijah stepped out at dawn to smoke, the smell sparked off his gag reflex. He spent the day inspecting his home, hunting for dead rodents or a cat that may have crawled up somewhere and given up the ghost. He made his two sons sleep in the barn, though it smelled just as strong there. He cursed his wife for being gone. Later, when Elijah wandered downtown for drinks, he thought the fetor was clinging to his clothes. He entered O’Malley’s bar, and the men were drinking in silence.

O’Malley shook his head, poured Elijah a drink and said, something’s wrong with this world.

Elijah asked, where are the whores?

O’Malley let out a chortle. Retired for the night. Said they couldn’t work in these conditions. Not that any of ‘em smell any rosier. But I don’t think none of us are in the mood for their charms anyhow. So, join us in our despair.

As they get closer, the aroma of death sours into a putrid odor that forces the men to shroud half their faces with their shirts and inhale through their mouths. Some stop and bend over to empty their stomachs. Elijah follows Sheriff Calahan and feels the heat rising. The inferno burns loud in the distance and its light oozes through the trees. They struggle through bushes and shrubs and vines coiled around the decaying arms of ancient oaks, pushing aside the foliage in their path. They work through thick patches of leatherwood and stumble into the clearing that surrounds the lake. Calahan and Elijah gasp and stop dead in their track. Men following them come out of the bushes and they stop and stare, too.

Flames rage and clash on the surface. The water itself is boiling, the whole area cracking and popping dynamite-loud, threatening to break apart at any moment. Charred grass and black fumes, dense putrefaction, scorched earth, the cauterized skeletons of crows and squirrels littering the grime, scalded fishes washed ashore, cinder-flakes swirling and by the waterline, shadowed silhouettes dancing around a bonfire.

Elijah and the others proceed with caution and the dark forms in the distance turn to them. The men stagger through the pandemonium and as they approach the shapes, something clicks in Elijah’s mind.

Chloe, he shouts, is that you?

One of the women laughs.

Oh Christ.

The men understand, and they shout their wives’ names. The wives reply in the form of a collective cackle.

What is this, O’Malley shouts to his whores. Why aren’t ya’ll working? He raises his rifle and aims, screaming, what the hell is this?

Growls and barks break out from the woods behind them. Rumbles and howls, swift movements from the bushes. Elijah spins around just in time to see two dogs leap out of the thickets. They bite the air, drooling pus, their pelts drenched in blood and they jump on O’Malley, one grabbing him by the throat and slamming him to the ground while the other dog gnaws at his genitals. More barking and other dogs emerge from all over, attacking the group. Shots go off, men shriek and hurl insults. Elijah backs away then runs toward the women, all giggling and clapping. He doesn’t look back, tries to push away the sounds from the seven hellhounds feasting. Sheriff Callahan screams louder than any of them.

He reaches Chloe and falls to his knees, panting hard.

Why, he sobs, why?

Chloe puts a soothing hand on his shoulder and through tears he looks up at her. Her face has been mangled and her irises and pupils have turned the same color as the flames.

You were with your cousin, Elijah says, you...you...

I have no cousin, replies Chloe in a monotone. You don’t know that because you never asked before, so how could you know I was lying?

Elijah cries harder as he hears the hounds fighting for meat. The blaring blasts from the guns and rifles turned mute, leaving only the crunching of bones and the tearing of flesh. The women circle him, and their eyes are all the same. He looks at the bonfire and there are books burning inside. He knows the books.

What is this, he croaks, what is this.

This, Chloe replies, is our altar. This is where a few of us came to escape you. We came here during the mornings and afternoons. The rest of you were gone all day. And we found this place. Our place.

One of the hounds, carrying a bone and a piece of shredded shirt in its mouth, slinks up to Chloe and drops the token at her feet. Chloe strokes her and says, good girl, good girl.

Her husband stares at the dog, horrified. Is she...

We gave her a new life, replies Chloe. Most her old body was not pure. We created her anew, from her own heart. Not from a man’s rib.

The women laugh.

Elijah says, please let me live, please. And the kids.

It’s not our choice to make, replies Chloe, and she glances at the lake. The flames grow, and waves of fiery water dash across the surface. From below, far, far below, something stirs.

Oh God, says Elijah. What is this? What does he want?

Chloe sighs and says, what makes you think it’s a he?

The shadow rushes toward the surface, its deafening roar makes the very earth tremble and Elijah shuts his eyes and prays the lord will disentangle him from the cords of death as the women cheer for their rousing leviathan.