The Owl God

“Don’t worry,” Cecily said as the old van rattled along the country road. “We’ll get you fixed up in a jiffy. No need to worry, love. Almost there.”

Andrew stared morosely up at the corrugated metal on the van roof. He was in terrible pain.

“Don’t take me to him,” was all Andrew could mutter feverishly. “I’m not ready, don’t take me to him.”

“There there, love,” Cecily stroked his hair. “You’re safe with us. We’re going to fix your leg up, good as new.”

“It looks like sepsis,” Gary said from beside Andrew’s feet. He had cut away Andrew’s jean legging to reveal a gangrenous mound of flesh with a disturbingly black center.

“He is burning up,” Cecily admitted, feeling the back of his head.

“Hopefully he goes unconscious before the surgery. We’ll need to amputate. Poor guy.”

The both looked pityingly at Andrew. He stared back at them in furious rage.

“I know what you are,” he said, his vision blurring. “I know what you people do.”

Gary was starting to speak again but Andrew’s mind was now too faded to understand. Unconsciousness crowded in at the edges of his brain and extinguished thought like a cathode television.

He was not a fighter.

He came-to in fits, eyes opening suddenly, sometimes bolting upright in his bed. At first, he was alone in a basement somewhere, with a single ominous-looking lightbulb dangling from the ceiling like in a horror movie. He still had his right leg then. The next time he came around it had been cut off just above the knee. Then there were blurred memories of an IV, and people gathered around him, and once someone shined a flashlight in his eye. When he finally awoke, totally lucid, he was in a bed with soft linen sheets on the second floor of some building. Light streamed in through giant windows on his right-hand side. The panes were strangely clean.

If it weren’t for the fact that his leg was still missing he would have believed he was in heaven. There were bright flowers in a vase on the dresser across from his bed. This didn’t make sense given it was the middle of winter. A stereo played a gentle cantata from somewhere down the hall. Also confusing. There had been no electricity for years.

Andrew was not an optimist. He took stock of the strange circumstances around him and assumed the worst. He shrunk down in his bed and thought of what he would do next, but there was nowhere to go: he had no leg and no crutch. He gazed out the window until it was dark.

When Cecily entered his room she seemed genuinely delighted to find him awake.

“Andrew!” she cried, wrapping her arms around him like they were old friends. “How good it is to see you’ve recovered!”

Andrew looked at her solemnly and said nothing.

“You remember me, don’t you? I’m Cecily Krauss. Gary and I found you in the woods with that terrible bear-trap around your leg. Don’t you remember, Andrew? The springs had rusted shut and you couldn’t pry them open. You were there for six days before we found you!”

Andrew continued to say nothing. She rubbed his hand.

“Well, to bring you up to speed, we freed you from the trap and took you home. You had gangrene and sepsis so Gary had to operate… and then we got you on some antibiotics and you weathered most of the storm, and here you are!” She laughed incredulously. “Alive and conscious!”

He did not like how she intoned that last word.

“How long was I asleep?” Andrew asked.

“Hmm? About two weeks. It was a coma, for sure. We ran out of IV bags so we’ve been tube feeding you syrup and electrolytes.”

Andrew could not believe it. Had he really been asleep for two weeks? It would be February, then, at the latest. How to explain the flowers and verdant landscape he had seen outside the window? He turned his head away.

“I’ll have Maurice bring you some soup,” Cecily said gently.

The food was good, and fresh. Despite his suspicions, he could not stop himself from taking bowl after bowl. Andouille sausage. Where had they found a pig? All sorts of herbs and spices. Fresh, fragrant bread made with white flour. How?

“I’m afraid that’s the limit big fella,” Maurice said sadly when Andrew stuck out his bowl for his fourth refill. “You gotta take it easy, your stomach can’t handle it.”

It was true.

That night he had terrible cramps and wondered if he had been poisoned. Why keep him alive this long just to poison him now? But it passed, and the next morning Maurice helped him to the toilet to take a shit. Balancing on his single spindly leg, he felt totally helpless.

It was French toast and orange juice for breakfast, the kind he would have found at a hotel before the world had changed. All morning he heard excited chatter outside the door and many pairs of feet running up and down the hall. A couple of times people poked their heads into his room and gave him a glowing smile. Strange faces.

“Why do you all wear that necklace?” Andrew asked.

Maurice sat beside him in a chair, and turned his head, surprised. Andrew had been silent all day long, staring angrily out the window at a brilliant blue sky. Now he was gazing at the crude carving of a barn owl that Maurice wore on the outside of his shirt.

“It’s an amulet,” Maurice said.

“What does it protect you against?”

Maurice gave a stilted smile. He was a young man, not much older than 20, but he looked strong. “Oh, all sorts of things.”

Andrew scowled at the vague answer and rubbed the long stubble on his chin.

I’m going to die here, he thought to himself.

It continued in this dreamy manner for a couple of days: sunlight, flowers, and rich food that he ate ravenously. Maurice had tried several times to start a conversation with no success. Andrew only ever asked to go explore the rest of the building.

“It’s a house, actually.” Maurice had said. “And not today. Maybe another day. Doctor’s orders.”

Andrew allowed himself to be read to from some of the slim novellas that Maurice carried with him. It was a distraction from his thoughts. Occasionally he drifted into naps with strange dreams.

Then one night Cecily brought his dinner in, followed by about twelve other people. They all smiled warmly at Andrew. He recognized Gary amongst the crowd.

“Andrew,” she said, holding the tray of food like a gift she was about to bestow. “We just wanted to thank you so much for your visit with us. Though you may not be staying here very long, your presence is a great comfort. It’s been an honor to serve you.”

With this she placed the food on his lap: real steak, from a cow, with braised asparagus. Beside it, brandy in a crystal glass.

Andrew looked up at Cecily warily. She was an older woman, about 50, who kept her hair in a long gray braid.

“Where do you get this nice food?” Andrew asked. “Cows have been dead for years.”

A few awkward laughs from the gathering.

“Well not all of them, I suppose!” Cecily smiled.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Andrew growled.

Cecily sighed and looked over her shoulder at the gathering. She asked if she could be alone with their guest for a moment.

“But you stay, Maurice.”

The crowd obliged to clear out and she was left standing over Andrew, looking at him with the same pitying gaze she had given in the van.

“Oh Andrew,” she said, reaching out to stroke his hair. He slapped her hand away violently and she looked shocked for a moment. Then her lip began to quiver and tears welled in her eyes.

“You know, Andrew, I really do care about you. I can tell you hate me but I do want you to be happy. We worked so hard to save you.”

“Oh, yeah? For what?”

Cecily made an impatient noise. “Does it really matter? Aren’t you happy now? You’re listening to music all day, you sit in the sun. You’re eating excellent food…”

Andrew was silent.

“You would have had none of this if we hadn’t found you. You would have spent a few more short, miserable years trying to keep yourself alive in that wasteland, and died without ever tasting real brandy again.”

Andrew’s mouth had pressed into a thin line. He quivered with anger, and it shook the little tray on his lap.

“This isn’t natural. It isn’t right.”

Cecily shook her head exasperatedly. “It is natural. It’s the most natural thing in the world. You don’t know, Andrew. You have no idea what goes on here.”

“I’ve heard things,” Andrew said, trying to keep the frantic pitch from his voice. “I know that he lives here… I know that you keep that thing in here and you… you…” he trailed off, at a loss. Andrew didn’t know exactly what happened to the people who mysteriously vanished here. The couple who had escaped this place would not say. “Where is he? In the basement?”

Cecily turned her back on him, flustered.

“Where is he, Cecily?” Andrew shouted, and slammed his hand loud enough on the bedside table to make her jump. “I deserve to know about him. Why even keep me alive for this long?”

For a moment Cecily lowered her shoulders, as if relenting to his request. Her back was still turned to him.

“We call him the Owl God,” she began. “He wanted you to be awake when… when...” she hesitated, fumbling to get the words out, but then abandoned them completely.

“That’s all you need to know, I guess. Enjoy your steak, Andrew. Good night.”

Then she drifted out of the room.

Andrew sat for a moment, feeling deflated. He didn’t call after her. He didn’t throw his brandy against the wall in a fit of rage. He had already spent his passion. Instead he ate his meal in silence and asked Maurice to turn out the light.

He was not a fighter.

The next morning he awoke to shades of gray. Outside, the sky was covered in slate-colored clouds that made for weird lighting on the trees. His room was somber and alien. Maurice was gone, and the house was silent.

“I guess this is it,” Andrew said a little sadly.

He eased his way onto the ground and tried to crawl towards the open door, but it was a futile effort. His muscles had completely evaporated. His arms gave out after a couple of feet.

“Fuck,” he said.

Lying on the floor, he thought back to when he had first seen Cecily and Gary while stuck in the bear trap. How excited he had been. He was saved! He told them everything about the ordeal. It was only when they had freed him and carried him down to the road that he had seen the idling van and knew it was over.

Cars had stopped running years ago.

“I should have never tried to sniff around.”

It wasn’t long before he heard the thing coming up the stairs. From his position on the ground he could feel every pound on the floorboards. It was giant, and it walked like a man taking his time. If Andrew was a fighter he might have taken this moment to arm himself, to get ready. Instead he felt surprisingly grateful to Cecily for at least having given him the brandy last night.

The thing made its way down the hall, casting a shadow before it, something magnificently tall. It stopped in the doorway to peer down curiously at Andrew.

Andrew let out a short, incredulous laugh.

“Oh my God.”