or from another primate. It was covered in matted fur not unlike that of
a rhesus, with long arms and hunched shoulders that were definitely
simian, although it appeared to be stronger than any mere monkey, as
formidable as a gorilla though otherwise nothing like one.
You wouldn’t have required my hyperactive imagination to wonder if, in
certain aspects of the creature, you were glimpsing a spectrum of
species so broad that the genetic sampling had extended beyond the
warm-blooded classes of vertebrates to include reptilian trait sand
worse.
“Extreme geek-a-mo, ” Bobby said as he edged back to the Jeep.
“Major geekster, ” I agreed.
On the roof, Big Head turned its face skyward, as if studying the stars,
still concealing its features behind the mask of its arms.
Suddenly I found myself identifying with this creature. Its posture, its
very attitude, told me that it was covering its face out of
embarrassment or shame, that it didn’t want us to see what it looked
like because it knew we would find it repulsive, which meant that it
must feel repulsive. Perhaps I was able to interpret its behavior and
intuit its feelings because I’d lived twenty-eight years as an outsider.
I’d never felt the need to hide my face, but as a small child I’d known
the pain of being an outcast when cruel kids called me Nightcrawler,
Dracula, Ghoul Boy, and worse.
Echoing in my mind was my own voice from a moment ago major geeksterand I
winced. Our pursuit of this creature reminded me of the way bullies had
chased me when I’d been a boy. Even when I had learned to defend myself
and fight back, they were sometimes not dissuaded, willing to risk a
drubbing merely for the chance to harass and torment me. Of course, with
Orson and Jimmy in peril, Bobby and I had good reason to follow any
lead. We hadn’t been motivated by meanness, but what troubled me, in
retrospect, was the strange dark wild delight with which we had mounted
the chase.
The stargazer shifted its attention from the heavens and peered down at
us again, still hiding its face.
I directed the spotlight onto the asphalt shingles near the creature’s
feet, letting the backwash illuminate it rather than directly assaulting
it with the beam.
My discretion didn’t encourage Big Head to lower its arms. It did,
however, issue a sound unlike the previous screams, one at odds with its
fierce appearance, a cross between the cooing of pigeons and the more
guttural purr of a cat.
Bobby tore his attention away from the beast long enough to conduct a
three-hundred-sixty-degree sweep of the neighborhood around us.
I, too, had been stricken by the nape-crinkling feeling that Big Head
might be distracting us from a more immediate threat.
“Super placid, ” Bobby reported.
“For now.” Big Head’s cooing-purring grew louder and then became a
fluent series of exotic sounds, simple and rhythmic and patterned, but
not like mere animal noises. These were modulated groups of syllables,
full of inflection, delivered with urgency and emotion, and it was no
stretch to think of them as words. If this speech wasn’t complex enough
to be defined as a language in the sense that English, French, or
Spanish is a language, it was at least a primitive attempt to convey
meaning, a language in the making.
“What’s it want? ” Bobby asked.
His question, whether he realized it or not, arose from the perception
that the creature was not just chattering at us but speaking to us.
“No clue, ” I said.
Big Head’s voice was neither deep nor menacing. Although as strange as a
bagpipe employed by a reggae band, it was pitched like that of a child
of nine or ten, not entirely human but halfway there, edgy, eerily
lilting without being musical, with a pleading note that aroused
sympathy in spite of the source.
“Poor sonofabitch, ” I said, as it fell silent again.
“You serious? ”
“Sorrowful damn thing.” Bobby studied this Quasimodo in search of a bell
tower and finally allowed, “Maybe.”
“Certified sorrowful.”
“You want to go up on the roof, give it a big hug? “