by Graeme Hurry
We didn’t say anything to each other; I took point, he stayed behind me, watching our rear. It took a while to find the basement door; it was so dark in the house, we may as well have been in a cave. I jostled the ruins of a chair, stepped into what may once have been a coffee table. The basement door was in the kitchen; I knew what it was by logic—we were at the far corner of the house, there couldn’t be anything beyond that wall. And yet…and yet, I felt there could be. It was as with everything else I’d been sensing—there could be. The manifestation of the American dream: anything was possible.
I glanced out through the back doorway. Something moved in the trees. A lot of somethings. A whole whirlwind of motion. I signaled Bean and nodded towards the forest.
‘Shit,’ he said.
Deciding to leave the outside for later, I knocked on the door. ‘This is the Charleston County Sheriff’s Department. Identity yourselves.’
Nothing moved.
Bean was on the other side of the door now. He said, ‘This is bad, Aaron. You know it is.’
‘Bob? Jasper? Dr. Clemmens?’
‘Aaron, let’s don’t. You know we shouldn’t.’
I knew. I knew that whoever was down there wasn’t Bob or Jasper or Dr. Clemmens, and that they meant trouble. I knew that Bean and I were at a disadvantage, and that the odds of this ending well were slim. We’re conditioned not to believe in certain things—anything supernatural, anything unlikely. But we know it when we see it; we know we’re up against something we just can’t explain.
The things I knew.
‘Identify yourselves.’
‘Aaron. The smell. It’s stronger.’
I sniffed the air. Burnt. The air was burnt.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’re coming in on the count of three.’
I opened the door on ‘two.’
There was a row of stairs immediately before me, stretching down to what appeared to be a cement floor. No one was on the stairs, and no one was in the immediate range of the flashlights. Bean and I swung back, flicking the lights off. We waited, breathing through out mouths.
No one shot at us. No one said anything. Nothing moved. I turned back into the doorway and turned the light on. Then I glanced at Bean, who grimaced and nodded for me to go first.
The stairs creaked beneath us. Bean and I waved our lights around slowly, me to the right, him to the left. Tables. An old couch. Divots in the cement, as though someone had taken a pickaxe to it. The basement was square, covering a third of the house. By the time Bean and I reached the bottom step, we knew that we were alone.
‘Okay,’ he said. He mumbled something else to himself, then repeated, ‘Okay.’
‘You all right, Frank?’
‘Hell no, Aaron. You all right?’
‘No.’
‘Bob isn’t here.’
‘I heard something earlier. Tell me you did, too.’
‘I did. But whatever it was isn’t here now.’
‘No way out.’
‘Maybe we heard it wrong.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hey, Aaron?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Does it feel like we’re alone down here?’
I shined my light around for his benefit. ‘Looks like it.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
The feeling you get when you’re being watched—that’s bullshit. It only comes when you’re expecting somebody to be watching you. Or when you’re just being paranoid. What we felt down in that basement was different—like there was somebody with us, occupying the same space, somebody who didn’t want to speak or be acknowledged. Somebody, too, who was invisible, because we both canvassed the basement thoroughly before heading up. No one. And yet, when the door was closed, I swore I heard movement down there again. I glanced at Bean, but he was staring out into the trees.
The forest was closer. That’s all there was too it. The forest had previously been perhaps twenty feet away; now it was ten feet at best.
‘Tell me I’m hallucinating.’
‘Maybe we breathed something in that basement.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘No, Frank, I don’t.’
‘Something’s going on here.’
‘Something wrong.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Let’s get out front,’ I told him. ‘Find the others. Then get the hell out of here, and come back with more people.’
We meandered back through the house. I ignored him when he said, ‘It won’t matter.’
We went out to tell the others what we hadn’t seen. Except they weren’t there. Sunnydale Drive was empty.
‘Oh God.’
‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘Larry! Dennis!’ I couldn’t remember the paramedic’s name. ‘Kid!’
‘They aren’t here, Aaron.’
‘No shit.’
‘No, I mean—’
He was interrupted by a scream.
We turned. It was coming from behind the house, and getting closer.
Both of our guns were up by the time he rounded the house. Pete. The paramedic’s name was Pete. Except now his white uniform was various shades of red and gray, and his eyes were rolled back in his head. His hair was mostly gone, torn out—his scalp was bleeding, which accounted for a good part of the blood on him, but you could tell just by the amount of it that it wasn’t all his.
‘Christ,’ Bean said. ‘Kid, hey—’
The kid kept screaming. Even when he tripped, as he reached the pavement and went down on his face, he kept screaming. I went to help him, grabbing his shoulder. His skin felt spongy, as though he were composed of ground beef. I staggered back as he lurched to his knees and screamed in my face. No recognition. Just sheer terror.
And then there was an answering roar from behind him.
I can’t describe it. It’s what Bean and Manning and Reinhardt heard on the radio, I’m sure of it. Something deep and guttural, yet high and almost taunting. It was big, though—that much was evident. Huge. And hungry. I couldn’t tell how I knew—but I did. You can hear hunger. You feel it inside you—you identify with it, no matter how alien a hunger it may be.
Pete recognized it. Bean and I hadn’t heard anything while we were in the house, but at this point, I wasn’t surprised by that. What did surprise me was the way Pete got to his feet and turned around. He didn’t run, just stood there, looking towards the back of the house.
Whatever it was didn’t show itself. Instead, something moved just inside the house. Something dark and wet. I almost didn’t see it; Bean noticed it first, and began firing before giving me any warning. I fired too. We emptied our clips into the house, and by the time we’d reloaded, I could tell we hadn’t done a bit of damage, except to the exterior of the house.
‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Let’s grab the kid and get the hell out of here.’
‘Larry and Dennis—’
‘Aren’t here. You said it yourself.’
Movement behind us. We spun. The forest was closer. And I don’t just mean physically, although it was that too—Sunnydale Drive had shrunk from a narrow two-lane to a space barely wide enough for a large pickup. There was something about the darkness between the trees, though, that defied the sunlight I could feel on the back of my neck. That darkness was impenetrable. And it only took a moment to realize why: the darkness was alive.
Bean began firing. Not toward where I was looking, but back in the direction of the house. The building itself was now half-swallowed by the forest. He was shooting into the trees, yelling, screaming. He wasn’t bothering to aim. There was nothing to aim at.
‘Come on,’ I said, grabbing the paramedic by his shoulder. ‘Kid. Pete. Come on. Frank!’
I yanked Pete towards me and turned around, back the way we’d come. I’d taken two steps before the kid was torn from my hands. I turned around, expecting to see him on the pavement—and instead saw him sliding into the forest. I just saw a glimpse of what had gotten him—a dark tentacle-shape, not
an octopus tentacle, but like that you see on pictures of amoebas. Pseudopod. A rippling, slimy, teeth-filled pseudopod.
I fired. I may have hit the kid, but at that point, I didn’t care. It didn’t change anything—he vanished into the trees, and I heard shredding noises, like meat going through a grinder. ‘Frank!’ I yelled, but he was reloading and firing towards the forest, which now fully encompassed the house.
I ran. I ran and I didn’t stop. I didn’t notice when Bean stopped firing. I didn’t notice when the forest entirely closed behind me. I remember something sliding against my arm—I have a scar there now, or will have if I live long enough. It’s long and jagged, as though made by a dull knife. What I remember the most was the slime I had to wipe off—thick, like saliva.
I reached the barricade and kept running. There were fewer people there now. State hadn’t arrived yet. Chief Righter tried to detain me, but I outran him. Tried my car, but it wouldn’t start. I found one far enough out that did. I drove and kept driving. Didn’t even bother stopping at my house. I was covered in blood, I was probably screaming and crying—but no one stopped me.
All that was a week ago. Only a week. I’m just outside Denver now. I’d be farther, but the stress and exhaustion caught up with me, and I drove off the Interstate. They’re saying I hit someone, and that this person may not survive. I’m being detained indefinitely.
It’s given me time to write this down, though. And catch up on the news. It was the news that prompted me to write this in the first place. Because now I know that whoever reads this will understand. They won’t think I’m some nut.
But of course you know. I don’t have to tell you how Charleston County was wiped off the map. It’s in Missouri, now. Whatever it is. They still don’t know. They can’t possibly know; I understand that now, why everything seemed so strange, why I could never grasp exactly what things were. When something is so alien, so unnatural to our existence, we just can’t fathom it. It’s too big to wrap our heads around. We’ll never possibly understand it—we just aren’t equipped to deal with something so unearthly.
My doctor says its hogwash. His word. The nurses think aliens have invaded. They ask me my opinion. They don’t know.
I’m writing this and leaving it behind. I’m skipping out. I’m a cop; they keep forgetting that. I can easily overpower the guard they’ve stationed outside my door. Bob Hoagland knew how to train his deputies. I’ll take a car, or hop a bus, and get the hell out of here. But I don’t think it’ll do much good. Sunnydale Drive is one road that is truly endless, and it’ll catch up to you no matter how far you run.
TAKING CHANCES
by Michael Haynes
The night of July 5th was hot and humid. Sweat ran down Arlene’s face as she retrieved a shovel from its dusty resting place in her garage. This was the shovel she used to nurture decades of gardens. It was the shovel she used to plant the trees in her front yard. Arlene and her late husband Frank had also used it to dig the tiny graves for their daughter’s childhood pets when they died. The grave it would dig tonight would be much larger.
She knew she was doing what had to be done. This was necessary to protect her way of life. Still, she couldn’t help reliving the events which led her to this moment…
The neighbor boy sped down the road on his bicycle. Arlene Morris sighed and shook her head at his wild pedaling. Every day, it seemed, she saw him at some reckless endeavor. Not that anyone else appeared to care. His parents took as little notice of him as they could manage. Since his two much older siblings had moved away to college, he was unsupervised more often than not.
She took a sip of her coffee and grimaced. How she hated instant coffee. There was a time when she wouldn’t touch it but now the mess and bother of a coffeemaker was too much. She’d dropped a pot several years ago, scalded one of her legs, and cut her hands cleaning up the glass. That was it for Arlene and coffeemakers.
A slight breeze did little to make the June evening more comfortable. The boy, Luke, whizzed back along the edge of her property. She could hear his parents as they laughed and cavorted in their pool. Arlene was disgusted with them, with her coffee, with her old bones and muscles. She slowly stood up and went inside to pour the remaining brown liquid down the drain.
Her cup rinsed, Arlene went into the living room and flipped through channels on TV. Most of what she saw didn’t interest her. Eventually, she settled on a repeat of Law and Order. One of the early ones, when the show was more likely to deal with street crime than with kinky teenagers. During some commercials she drifted off to sleep. When the phone woke her, a movie was showing. 10:30, the clock said. The phone rang again, jangling Arlene’s nerves as she recalled other late-night calls and the bad news they almost always conveyed.
‘Hello?’
‘Grandma, it’s Kyle. Hope I’m not calling you too late.’
Her pulse slowed fractionally. At least no one was dead or in the hospital. Still, Kyle’s calls were rarely pleasant. ‘It’s just as well that you woke me. I’d fallen asleep in my chair, with the television on.’
‘Oh, well, that’s good, then.’
‘What’s on your mind, Kyle?’
A few seconds of dead air passed. ‘The car insurance is due tomorrow. Normally, I’d let it go a few days until I get paid. But the last time I did that I got this nasty letter from them saying they’d cancel my policy if I was late again.’
Naturally. God knew the boy had been given all the opportunities her daughter and son-in-law could have provided him. And yet he persisted in living day-to-day, always on the edge. Irritation got the best of Arlene and her reply was curt. ‘They can’t be too fond of their customers who’ve been caught driving drunk.’
‘That wasn’t … No, I guess you’re right, Grandma.’
‘Of course I am. So you need me to pay this bill of yours?’
‘Yes, please. If you can manage it. If not, I’m sure I can figure something out. I can get part of it selling plasma and …’
‘Stop. How much is the bill?’
‘Ninety-six dollars.’
‘If you can come out in the morning I’ll write you a check. Will that get you by?’
‘Yes, Grandma. Thank you. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it out before about eleven or so. Will that work?’
‘I’ll be here.’
‘I’m really sorry I’ve had to ask for help again.’
‘We can talk about that later. You drive carefully coming in here. Some of the families around here don’t mind their kids half.’
Kyle promised to be careful and they said their goodbyes. Arlene slowly stood up and walked down the hall to her bedroom, turning off lights as she went.
‘Honestly, Jeffrey, I don’t know what should be done with the boy. Not that I should call him a boy, at his age. He’s twenty-seven and that’s old enough to stand on your own two feet.’
Jeffrey Lawson carefully placed one coffee cup in front of Arlene and another across the table from her. Just as carefully, he lowered himself into the empty seat on the other side of the booth.
‘We had some of this with one of our granddaughters. She tried studying hairdressing after high school but that didn’t go anywhere. Since her parents were strapped sending the twins to college, Irma and I sent her fifty dollars every now and then. We thought it would just be a temporary thing, but it went on for a few years.’
‘Did you have to put an end to it?’ She took a tentative drink from her cup. Real coffee — a fine treat.
‘No, she met an accountant and they got married pretty quickly. They’ve got a little house out in Hendersonville. I’m glad Irma got to see the place before she passed.’
‘If Kyle ever bothers to get married it will be to someone else who hangs out in his little group. They’d just end up living in his ‘artistic garret’ together.’
‘You should have more faith, Arlene. You never know what will happen one day that could turn his life around.’
‘I’ll settle fo
r it not taking a turn for the worse.’
Using the plastic knife the counter girl had given her, Arlene cut their donut precisely in half. She picked up her portion and took a small bite.
‘His parents stopped sending him money after he got in that trouble with the drunk driving. I think he’d counted on them not finding out, since they’re still abroad. Maybe I should have cut him off, too. I guess I hoped that incident would make him shape up.’
‘You know what they say. You can’t make anyone do anything.’
‘This time, I’ll give him the money. But I’m going to have to let him know it can’t go on.’
They finished their coffee and donut, cleaned up their dishes, and headed outside. A few drops of rain fell and clouds promised more to come. Jeffrey looked into the gray spring morning and grimaced. ‘Another perfect day, here in Tennessee.’
‘At least we have our health.’
‘Speak for yourself. I’m going to be feeling this rain all day.’
‘Well, I’m glad it’s not so bad that you had to stay home. Coming here to get a good cup of coffee just makes my day.’
He unlocked the doors of his Buick LaCrosse with the remote and opened the passenger door. Once Arlene had gotten situated, he closed the door and let himself into the car.
He turned her way and smiled. ‘Where to, milady?’
‘Somewhere warm and dry. Got enough gas to get us to Phoenix?’
‘For you, of course. Shall we depart?’
She sighed. ‘Yes, but not for Phoenix. I’ve got to have that talk with Kyle. Thanks for the thought, anyway.’
He started the car and drove her home — a little too slowly on the freeway, a little too quickly on some of the side roads. They arrived and Arlene found Kyle’s rusting Hyundai Excel parked in her driveway and Kyle pacing on her porch. Arlene frowned at the sight of his worn jeans and the crew t-shirt from an old play, flecked with paint. Jeffrey stopped behind the Excel and wished Arlene good luck before she climbed out of the car.
