“Because immediately ahead, undoubtedly stands a man; a naked man with one foot on the asphalt, one on the shoulder. His face is slightly turned away, obscuring his features but not the large, dangling meat hook hanging between his legs. Wet, red and dripping, festooned with shiny, sharp objects running its length, it hangs savagely, and the face, now turning toward her is in no way that of her husband’s. It can scarcely, in fact, even be called human. The bones and tissues are grotesquely mutated and scarred as if from the effects of extreme temperature and pressure. And the eyes give absolute, demonic proof she’s stepped over some invisible line, for they are alive and raging within the pin-slashed slits ripped through the rubbery face. Then, as the car steadily slows due to her surprise and indecision, the huge, mushroom-shaped head explodes in a mess of grayish/red spray and bone fragments that plaster the front and passenger-side windows of the car.
“Momentarily blinded, flinging the wheel in desperation as Allan screams and is ripped away, the road is suddenly lost beneath them as the car tears over a slight incline and then violently down through a nest of small pine trees, reducing them to pulp as it goes. Donna slams down hard on the brake pedal, riding out the sickening slide as the tires bite uselessly at the grass. When the car finally comes to a stop she fights desperately with the Washer/Wiper switch, trying to clear the smeared windshield. At first the gore simply smears like runny eggs, creating little visibility through and around the many squirming, twisting things embedded in the matter which only moments before was inside the abomination’s head. Only a long, sustained spray of cleaner fluid succeeds in breaking the gore, and during this time she tends her son. Allan is still on the seat next to her, his frail body ticking with tremors as his eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling. His skin is so pale as to be almost transparent. Time has stopped for her also even though the squeaking wipers assuredly calls her back. Because now, she can see through.
“Directly ahead, down a smooth chute of green much like a golf course fairway, stand several monstrosities. Most are clothed in the semblance of normal attire; the frilled dress of a young school girl; a man in green, greasy overalls; a nurse replete in scrub garb; but, far more disturbing, the prone, naked body of a woman writhing in the grass, masturbating frantically. The only sound is the idling engine in the cool, surreal grove.
“The closest, the little school girl, steps viciously forward, the top of her head rolling back to an impossible razor-wire sprawl of gnashing metal which grows from her previously small mouth. Throwing her arms above her head, they unhinge and unfold insect-like, clicking meticulously wider and higher. The fingers at the ends are flimsy, wet lumps at first, before quickly gaining tubular proportion as if from air blowing them from within. Allan, now sitting, stares through the gore on the windshield, saying nothing. The moment the ‘thump’ comes at the rear of the vehicle, Donna punches down on the accelerator, fish-tailing down the rectangular clearing, the old car’s tires peeling away at the grass as she desperately tries to put distance between them and the headless, naked body rolling away from the trunk.
“She flings the steering wheel left and right, trying to avoid the others. Even so, the nurse-thing in her path spins deftly around, vibrating madly in staccato laughter as she tosses a red, biological waste bag their direction. It strikes the driver’s side door, splitting open and losing something vaguely human that sticks only momentarily before falling away. The mechanic hulks down on them from the right, windmilling a long length of heavy-gauge chain over his head. There is no room to maneuver; they have to go through. Donna barely misses the man but his chain blows out the windshield, showering glass everywhere and catching Allan a glancing blow as it uncoils through the backseat and out the window amid an equally loud explosion of glass and sound. The car dove-tails left, momentarily out of control. Donna, helpless, watches as they bear down on the masturbator, now sitting bolt upright, her legs spread impossibly wide. Her head wrenches back in agony or ecstasy as both hands work frantically at her gaping vagina. With mere yards to spare she reaches inside, pulling free a bloody, reptilian embryo. There appears no end to the beast. Then the car is upon and past them, snapping through a curtain of several small poplar trees before gunning through a shallow ditch and coming upon another smooth, highway grade. Smoke rises lightly off the roadway.
“The engine squeals in misery. Smoke billows from the exhaust. Donna mechanically presses down on the accelerator and the engine cries loudly, shuddering as it creeps from ten to twenty, finally, grindingly, to thirty-five miles an hour after which the needle refuses to breech. Allan’s fingernails raise trails of blood through Donna’s white shirt.
“Then a backfire, and nothing.
“The car squats heavy on the pavement as if the wheels have gone out from underneath. A cloud of thick, black smoke blankets the road behind them as they roll to a rusty-sounding stop near the shoulder. A branch from an overhanging tree runs a bony edge along the hood, cutting an angry crisscross through the gore and filth. Donna screams nakedly, once, surprised by the sound before realizing it is really Allan she is screaming to. The bitter rank of urine hangs pelt-like in the air. She manages to pull her arm free of his superhuman grip.
“And then another loud, hysterical scream rips along the asphalt, independent of anyone in the car. Allan’s eyes roll back in his head and Donna lets him curl down to the seat as she looks into the rear-view mirror, scanning the dirty, smoke-filled shadows behind them, all the while frantically twisting the key in the ignition. The car suddenly, miraculously, coughs, then comes to slow resurrection. But amid the groaning, repetitive knocks she hears the steady slap of meat hitting pavement. Getting faster, closer. When her eyes catch upon the figure breaking through the wall of swirling, black, parting smoke, she knows her ears weren’t wrong.
“Running down from behind is a long, lanky shadow of a man, stretched to ghastly limits with his lunatic strides. His arms dangle wildly in their sockets, as if defying their owner rightful privilege. But their erratic movement does not affect the pounding legs as he comes on unerringly toward them. His ragged wardrobe flies in strips around and behind him, rippling and bestially alive with wild shapes, dazzling colors. It leaves a wet, luminescent trail on the sweating road.
“Donna slams down hard on the accelerator, smoke belching from the exhaust to cloud the view behind. However, she can now hear laughter, the slapping of running feet closing distance. The car coughs again, the whole frame seeming to shake loose as it settles into a lopsided, oil-dripping crouch. Pumping the accelerator gently at first and then with a mindless hysteria, Donna gets the car straightened out along the road and moving. First to ten, then twenty, finally twenty-five as the car lurches and burps. The dreaded attack doesn’t come. Their speed continues climbing; the grinding gears within finally reaching some sort of workable configuration
“Soon they’re weaving a semi-sober line down the middle stripe at close to 45 miles an hour. No mad, running figure has assaulted the trunk. There is a pall of quiet hysteria inside the car, broken only by the irregular whistle of air through Allan’s nose. And at that moment, at the very second that Donna has allowed herself to breathe again, the daylight curls to black as quickly and completely as a heavy blind being drawn. Donna tries to click the lights on, managing only to break the lever in the process. And at her speed, in the utter blackness, when the cone of light reaches her from somewhere in the distance, she can do nothing except make for it like a moth.
“Allan emerges from shock for a last, brutal moment as they head toward the light. His fingernails are streaked with his mother’s blood. He screams into her stony face but she’s past the point of hearing. She stares straight ahead, her eyes opaque, long rivulets of drool dancing from her chin to the beat of the disintegrating car. Alan sees a whisper of movement in the rear-view mirror (still dangling there precariously) the instant he feels the many small fingers at his back.
“Turning, he finds the rear seat filled with children, a deformed a
nd monstrous assembly fighting and rolling on itself like fish caught in a tide pool. A noxious stench of mud and feces rises off just shy of physical form. All are naked, their skins blackened and diseased. Pus and yellow bile seem to provide the necessary lubricant needed for their exertions. But horribly, some have separated themselves from the writhing mass. One has a gnarled hand twisting through his mother’s long hair. Another has found the meat of Allan’s tiny left shoulder. The mass in the backseat shifts and when the bodies go over the seat it is as a wave.
“The car hauls to a creaking stop in the General Store parking lot. There is no wind, no sound. And there are no witnesses when the back door of the General Store bursts open, smashing itself against the tired, whitewashed wall with enough force to shake the side of the building. No one is there to see the mess that had been Allan’s father brutally spewed in a soup of bone, tissue, and blood through the door, in the general direction of a dumpster a few feet away. It paints the whole area in gore.
“The next morning there are three derelict cars resting in the swirl of dust outside the General Store as the old, cursed building pops and cracks, grumbling uneasily from the night’s feast.”
*
By the time Billy finished his voice was filed to a rasp. His throat was sandpaper. He found the beer between his legs, luke warm now, but enough. He slugged it down, feeling the fierce beat in his chest of adrenaline and nerves. Silently he stood up to open the blinds.
“Wait!” Ebenezer practically yelled. Billy stopped quickly, his hand freezing six inches from the French doors as he looked over his shoulder, half-expecting to find the old man apoplectic on the couch. He was not. Ebenezer sat bolt upright, both feet on the floor, one hand out as if attempting to stop traffic. His eyes were glazed and distant. Billy began to be afraid.
“What is it?” he asked.
The frantic, wavering hand began a gradual descent. “No light now, Billy. Not right now. I can see it, boy. Don’t do nothin yet…” and even as he said this his eyes never found the younger man standing scant feet away. Billy turned back to the chair and sat down again. He rocked once, the hinges squeaked loudly, and he quit.
He didn’t know how long they sat there in their fraternity of silence. The old man’s eyes found a spot in the distance and no amount of returning glances from Billy could bring him from it. When the darkness and silence became crushing, Billy could stand no more. “You didn’t like it?” he asked.
Ebenezer ran a hand across his forehead and leaned back on the couch. In the soft, twilight glow Billy could not be sure if the old man’s hand wasn’t shaking as it came down. Ebenezer’s face was partially obscured in the dark, behind the beard, but his voice was not when he finally broke his silence. “Fuckin’ amazin. Really.”
Billy glanced down at his watch, putting definition to the twilight. A large chunk of time had vanished. The daylight had receded to only a faint memory struggling weakly against the blinds. Billy reached over and clicked on the reading lamp, then pushed it back on its swivel so it came from behind the chair. Ebenezer’s sage presence slowly returned as Billy watched the old man slick his hair back with a quick run-through of his fingers. “Damn good story, m’boy!” he said again, whistling through his teeth. “Goddamn! Gonna have ta go way back ta best that one….if I can, that is.” He put an elbow on his knee and then his head in his hand. His eyes tried to speak what his mouth couldn’t.
Again, an uncomfortable silence followed. Billy was suddenly restless and really needed to call Elizabeth, had intended to do it well before now. Only the time had slipped….Clearing his throat, he said, “I need to use your phone, Ebenezer. I gotta call Liz…”
Reality crept back into Ebenezer’s haunted eyes. He waved a hand as if in response to a bothersome fly. “Yeah, yeah….by all means. Use the one in the kitchen. Call ya sister.” Billy stood up, glad to leave the room to Ebenezer’s privacy. Billy knew the effect of some moments, and he also understood the need to share them in silence, in solitude. While he dialed he considered how well he remembered the digits and how seldom he used them. The familiar voice that answered reminded him all too well of why the latter was true. Nora Stockton’s ‘hello’ always sounded forced, like she was forever being pulled away from something infinitely more important.
Billy’s grimace came involuntarily, bred from years of discomfort. “Hello, Mother. How are you?”
A second’s hesitation followed his inquiry, and when she did speak his question was, of course, ignored. “Billy. Have you seen Elizabeth?”
He sat down at the kitchen table, dimly aware of the television clicking on in the next room. The voices remained muted in deference. “No,” he said. “I’m calling to see if she wants to go somewhere tonight.” His fingers toyed unconsciously with the loosely coiled phone cord.
“She’s not here, Billy. I haven’t seen her all day. She didn’t leave a note or anything.”
“Uh huh,” he replied, letting go the cord. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her today. I’m out right now so I don’t know if she’s called my place,” he finished, waiting for the expected challenge that, oddly, never came. He chewed his lip nervously.
“When I got home from church she wasn’t here and I haven’t heard anything since.” Nora voice was unnaturally subdued, strangely inoffensive even to Billy’s trained ear. Their fresh silence rooted immediately.
Billy broke it. “Well…I don’t know? Strange of her not to leave a note.”
“Yes, it is. I’m a little worried, and, uh…” the conversation ground to a stop like a rusty wheel. There seemed nowhere else to go and Time suddenly seemed very large.
Billy coughed and cleared his throat before speaking. He didn’t want her to start again. “Uh, look Mother. I’m kinda in a hurry to get home. I need a shower and fresh clothes. When Elizabeth comes in, tell her to call me. I’ll be at my place waiting.”
“Okay, Billy.” In the pause following the simple reply, Nora’s mind spun dizzily, randomly negotiating how to revive the body of this conversation, how to devise some way to express her undoubted worry over Elizabeth’s whereabouts. But the moment imploded in a squeeze of vague possibilities, all of them out of the realm of her character. She helplessly balled her left hand into a fist and witnessed the opportunity vanish. “I’ll tell her when I see her,” she managed lamely.
“Okay Mother. Goodbye.” As Billy brought the phone away from his ear he heard the tell-tale buzz of a dead line on the other end. He stood up from the kitchen table, replaced the phone in its dirty cradle atop the monstrously outdated microwave, and walked back to the gloomy living room. Ebenezer had switched places. He rested with his bare feet kicked up on the footrest of the Teller’s Chair, watching an old rerun of Sanford and Son.
“Got hold a ya sister?” he asked, clicking the Mute button to cancel out a Redd Foxx rant to Bubba about Lamont’s choice of friends.
Billy paused by the couch and dug his hands deeply into his pockets. “No, not yet. She wasn’t home. But I’ve gotta go anyway to get showered up. She’ll call.” He chose not to mention the disconcerting premonition-like disquiet that had crept up his spine during the telephone conversation. He didn’t want to think about it; he’d had enough of the macabre for one afternoon. “She should be back any time so I guess I’d better bug out,” he added in loo of something meaningful.
Ebenezer nodded his head vigorously ‘yes’. “By all means. Don’t leave the lady waitin!” Then he looked on quietly as Billy crossed to the foyer. “Billy,” he said when the young man was almost to the door. “It was a damn fine story. Scared the hell outta me.” Ebenezer put a finger to his lips as if pondering a secret that’d just come back to him. He smacked his lips and said, “I b’lieve ya got somethin, kid. Ya gotta knack. Prob’ly won’t sleep much tonight thanks ta you.”
“Aw, come on Ebenezer—“
“No goddammit, I’m tellin ya! That one really curled my hair.” His smile broke behind the moustache and beard. “Ya gotta
gift.”
“Gift, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, some gift.”
“We take what we get. And that’s all we get, Billy.”
“I appreciate that Ebenezer.” Billy paused. “See you soon,” he said.
“Make sure ya do,” the old man called before Billy closed the door.
Chapter 53
At seven o’clock that evening, while Billy showered and Nora paced a nervous line back and forth in her kitchen, the phone rang in Thomas’ bedroom. He’d just made it back from the corner QuickStop with a quart of Gatorade and a refrigerated sandwich. He quickly plunked down the bag containing chump change and the sandwich on his dresser, the old piece of furniture thickly laden with science fiction novels, clean underwear, a scattering of more loose change. He threw the UNO baseball cap that had been perched on the antenna of the upright portable across the room and snatched the receiver up before the answering machine kicked on. “Hello,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of Gatorade. The voice on the other end was faint enough to issue from the bottom of a well or deep within the recesses of a tunnel. “Hello?” he repeated, not sure if he’d heard anything, actually. He sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Billy?” It was clearly a female’s voice, although so heavy with either sleep or alcohol there was no pinning a name to it. An undertone of pure desperation painted the slurred inflection. “I gotta see you…”
He held the phone away from his ear and looked at it as if it would tell him itself. “Who is this?”
“Billy, come get me…”
Billy? Who the fuck was Billy?
“There’s no Billy here. Can I help you?” His palms had begun to sweat, suddenly connected to an otherworldly being, this phantom.
“Thomas?” the voice asked. The speaker was hoarse, out of breath.