American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,187

venture out halfway as well, and meet you.

Then she sees it: something is moving over her shoulder, like a portion of the rounded stone wall is rippling liquid. She does not want to look, she does not, but she cannot help but see a form begin to emerge, tall and thin, and when she sees what appears to be a face (a face carved of wood?) then everything begins to…

Change.

She first sees a man, standing quite still and wearing a curious blue canvas suit that is covered in tiny wooden rabbit heads. On his face he wears a primitive wooden mask, suggesting the face of a rabbit, but its features are spare and simple, giving it a blank, furious look.

But this is only an image. Behind it, in a deeper way, is something else.

She does not want to look. But she cannot help it.

She sees

(a figure, tall and ropy)

(an arched back and bony shoulders)

(covered in hair)

(arms like needles, stretching for miles)

(how does it stand)

(on such thin legs)

(and its face)

(so, so long)

(and its eyes)

(so terribly)

(huge)

(don’t look)

(don’t)

Just as with Parson and Mrs. Benjamin, this vision threatens to overwhelm her. But Mona has been figuring out a few things since she’s been here in Wink. In Weringer’s bedroom she was able to avoid the deep places, the places on the other side. Why couldn’t she do the same here?

So she focuses, and breathes, and relaxes… and with a simple push, she picks up this horrible image and packages it away, pushing it in one direction and her own mind in another, until all she can see is the man in the filthy rabbit costume…

Yet as she does so, she understands that whatever this man is—whatever he really is—is much, much more powerful than Parson or Mrs. Benjamin. The man in the blue rabbit suit is not a simple vessel, like those used by so many “people” in Wink. Rather, whatever is in this jail cell with her just chooses to manifest as this odd sight, a filthy man in a filthy rabbit suit. She supposes it could manifest as whatever it wished: in this place, the difference between it and a god is too small to matter.

She breathes deeply, and focuses. “Who are you?” she asks.

The man stares at her. She cannot see any eyes through the holes in his mask.

“Am I meant to be here?” asks Mona. “Did I come here by accident?”

The man cocks his head, like a curious dog. Mona finds the sight repulsive. Then the man raises an arm and reaches out to her, but stops, fingers trembling. It is an oddly sentimental gesture, as if he wishes to touch her face and yet adores her too much to bring himself to do so.

Mona withdraws a little. “What do you want?” she asks.

The man slowly drops his arm. He cocks his head one way, then the other. Then he appears to come to some decision, and reaches up to take off his mask.

Mona wonders if she should turn away. The horrors that reside in this town seem to possess many secrets too large for her mind, and whatever lies behind that mask should surely be one of them. But as he removes the wooden mask, she sees something she never expected.

“Oh, my God,” she says, surprised.

At first she thinks it is her own face—because those are most certainly her eyes, deep and rounded and charcoal-brown, and her lips, so dark and thin—but it is a male face, with sharp, hard cheekbones, and many lines, as if this face has been exposed to brutal conditions day in and day out for decades. The man looks at her in a manner both wary and full of longing, as if he wishes for her to accept him, even come to love him, but cannot bring himself to believe she ever would.

He looks so much like me, thinks Mona. He could even be my brother.

“What is this?” she asks him.

The man slumps forward a little. He looks away as if her response has deeply disappointed him.

“What do you mean by this?” Mona asks him.

He shakes his head. He suddenly looks terribly distraught. He buries his face in his hands.

“Wait,” says Mona, “are you trying to say that—”

But then things begin to swim around her, and she hears someone saying her name.

“—ight? Miss Bright?”

It’s dark again. Mona realizes she has her eyes shut. She opens them, and sees the lights of Wink just below her. She is back in the forest: in one hand