The more he thought about it, the more at ease he became. There had to be a logical explanation, but just in case, he’d check on Cooper.
A walk by his office offered a window with a clear view of the lighted yard; no booger-monster with a honeycomb eye, and although he considered it, he didn’t look closer for slime tracks on the glass. Got to have faith, he reasoned.
As Brandon had hoped, Cooper was sleeping, but evidently restless. He was now upside-down with his head near to the footboard. The SpongeBob nightlight was aglow with six-watt splendor, and Kevin the Minion had found his way into his arms.
FLUMP!
The sound was muted, not distinct, yet startled Cooper, who sprang into a sitting position, looking frantically around the room. It had come from the first floor, in the direction of the front of the house, sounding as if something had hit the floor, as his father used to say, like a sack of wet shite.
Or a two-hundred-pound jellyfish, thought Brandon.
“It’s okay, Bub. It’s nothing,” he quietly said, the lie sounding feeble to his own ears. The look in Cooper’s eyes said he wasn’t convinced, either.
He was certain that whatever had created the impact was the same thing that had adhered itself to his office window, but he was torn: should he confront the vile thing, which he knew nothing about, or grab his son and run? Instead, he repositioned Cooper correctly in the bed. “Go back to sleep, son.”
The most important thing was to keep Cooper safe at all costs, and at the moment, inside appeared safer than out. He’d have to assess the situation. Maybe the thing was harmless, but maybe…. What was that Sun Tzu quote? If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear… something like that.
He gently closed his son’s door and headed downstairs to find the source of the sound. Only a short hallway ran from the base of the stairway to the front of the house, so it didn’t leave many possibilities. From the entryway into the foyer he looked through the front-door window onto a screen-lined, three-season veranda which opened onto the farmer’s porch. To the left of the porch, the gentle glow of the outdoor lighting made it just bright enough to settle everything in obscure shadow. He neither saw nor heard anything out of the ordinary so he switched on the porch lights. Nothing reacted to the sudden flare that, although not considerably bright, seemed dazzling to him until his eyes adjusted.
After a small eternity, Brandon unlocked the front door and stepped into the confines of the screened veranda. He looked onto the front lawn, which had been relinquished into darkness outside the reaches of the porch lights. He reached inside the doorway and flicked the lights off, which returned the yard to its previous ambient glow and made visible the long ropes of viscous slime that trailed along the farmer’s porch and disappeared around the corner. His office window was located around that same corner, but what concerned him most was that his son’s room was directly above it. Whatever that hellish creature was, it would only have to traverse the underside of the porch roof to get to Cooper’s window.
And it can climb! He had witnessed that through his office window.
And what had fallen and made that sound?
Brandon approached the screened wall and tried to peer around the corner without leaving the enclosure of the three-season veranda. He was met by the slurping, squishing sound of the creature’s movements, and he became aware of a briny odor with the underlying hint of sulfur that was pushed toward him by a mild breeze. It reminded him of the salt marshes of Cape Cod, where his family had vacationed in his childhood. It was not entirely unpleasant, but a foreign smell for Adelphi, Maryland.
Shaking, he fumbled at the screen door-lock until it hooked into the eyelet, and then he backed away just as a putrescent yellow flap of the gelatinous substance breached the corner of the house like a huge infected tongue and sloshed onto the screened wall. It paused as if in contemplation, and then the black honeycomb emerged from within the ghastly organism and pressed to the screen. Sensing the strange, mesmerizing magnetism he had felt earlier, Brandon feared that if he didn’t look away immediately, he never would.
A hissing, not unlike the sound of sizzling meat in a frying pan, started emanating from the entity, which instantly traversed to the inside of the enclosed porch, still latched onto the screen and still intact. It had somehow sieved through the screen’s mesh unharmed.
“What the fuck?” Brandon blurted, shocked by his own use of the expletive. One that would have surely raised a few eyebrows in his congregation, yet one that was so appropriate for the situation. He said it again. “What-the-ever-loving-fuck?”
FLUMP!
It fell to the porch floor like a pus-filled balloon, hitting and spreading out, splattering against the walls and oozing between the decking. Brandon’s gorge rose, yet he could only watch, morbidly fascinated, as it started to gather itself, pooling together but for the three extended splashes nearest him, which merged to form a smooth proboscis that elongated in his direction, reaching for him. Brandon backed away, but the creature compensated by sending more mass into its stretching tentacle.
Don’t let it touch you! Brandon didn’t know what would happen if it did, but it seemed intent and he felt it was imperative that it not touch him—not even the slightest brush.
Would it steal his soul, farm his blood, or just melt him into its next meal? He backed into the house, slammed the door, and twisted the deadbolt lock. Wildly contemplating his next move—if he even had one—he back-stepped to the foot of the stairs.
What do I do now?
How would he protect them from this thing…this profanity that could flow unfazed through a screen like water? He looked up the stairway toward Cooper’s bedroom and then the cellphone in his pants pocket vibrated and rang simultaneously.
“Fuck!” he yelped, nearly sprinting for the kitchen.
Third F-bomb in less than five minutes. Appropriate, he reminded himself, and pulled the phone from his pocket to see his wife’s pretty, smiling face on the screen.
“Hello?” he answered in a hushed voice, his heart slamming.
“Hi, baby! How’s it going?” Her voice was so normal it nearly brought him to tears.
Should I say anything? Should I have her call the cops…the National Guard? No, I could do that. What could she possibly do, except worry?
“Good, good,” he said, forcing a cheerful but tentative voice. Now I’m lying, but it’s a good lie—a compassionate lie, he reasoned.
He heard movement at the door and then the door lever quivered ever so slightly.
“Are you okay? You sound out of breath,” said Sylvia, ever observant.
“I’m fine. Just doing some chores.”
“Chores at ten-thirty at night?”
“Yeah. Wide awake and Cooper’s asleep, so I figured…” Brandon stopped talking when he saw that a thin, phlegmy strand had started seeping through the keyhole of the old door. The skeleton keys were long gone, but the locks remained, long unused until now. “Uh…” he said.
“How’s our little guy?” Sylvia asked. “Was he very upset that I wasn’t there for his birthday?”
“He’s…good…uh, honey? Listen. Can I call you right back? I left the door, the cellar door open, and I don’t want anything getting in.”
The pool of slime in front of the door was now a foot across and quickly expanding.
“Oh, okay,” she said hesitantly. “Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Scout’s honor,” Brandon lied again as two thin appendages grew from the mass like antennae. “I just slapped a couple mosquitos and I want to get ahead of it before they get really bad, okay? Love you. Call right back.”
He disconnected the call before Sylvia could reply and slipped his phone into his pocket. The feelers extended, twisted, coiled, and extended again, blindly searching for Brandon as he cautiously diverted away from the stairway, hoping to lure it to the kitchen and distance its access to Cooper’s room. The feelers rose in unison, like twin cobras preparing to stri
ke, and then those damned black honeycombs formed at the tip of each one, swinging and swaying back and forth while its malignant, popping suckers gripped and released the floor as it advanced on him.
“Daddy?” Cooper called suddenly, from the top of the stairs.
The heinous blob immediately stopped and its soulless honeycomb eyes turned to the sound of the boy’s voice. Time stood still, as if all three were at an impasse, waiting for the other to make a move.
Oh shit—oh shit—oh shit! It can hear? How can it hear? It has no fucking ears!
“Daddy? What’s that noise?”
“It’s nothing, sweetie!” Brandon said, alertly watching the slimy creature’s movements. “Go back to bed. I’ll be up there in a few minutes.”
The black-tipped probes appeared intently locked in the direction of Cooper’s voice.
Now! Brandon thought, forcing his fear aside, and with two long strides he leapt over the abomination, clearing its reaching probes by mere inches. With a celebratory whoop, Brandon landed in the hallway just outside the kitchen threshold, both feet landing squarely on the floor in a patch of slime. His feet cherry-pitted from beneath him, sending him hurtling across the floor in an involuntary backflip. He hit the bottom of the stairway with bone-jarring impact, sending a lightning bolt of pain through him by way of his elbow.
With a succession of sopping slurps and pops, the gurgling form immediately reversed direction, its probing appendages seeming to slide front-to-back like the barrels on a tank turret. Without stopping to assess his injuries, Brandon scrambled to his feet and mounted the stairs, taking two at a time.
Cooper stood at the head of the stairway, watching wide-eyed and uncomprehending. “What is that, Daddy?”
“Get in your room, quick!” Brandon ordered.
The boy stood frozen as the undulating form seemed to contemplate the stairs.
“Go! Quick!”
“But…”
“Go!” Brandon yelled, giving his son a push.
Shocked by the unfamiliar urgency of his father’s voice, Cooper darted for his room, wailing in fear. Brandon quickly glanced over his shoulder and then followed his son down the hallway, thinking that never before in his life had he seen something pour up the stairs.
Inside Cooper’s room, he slammed the door, tore the sheets from the bed, and started jamming them against the base of the door, trying to seal the opening. Cooper stood in the center of the room, mouth agape, hands clasping and unclasping as he silently wept. Anger and self-disgust swept through Brandon at his failure to keep his son safe from such trauma and ugliness.
As he worked the fabric into the gap, Cooper started a terrified, high-pitched keening. Brandon looked at him and saw movement in his peripheral, feeling the slightest shifting in the air near his head as a tentacle swayed from the keyhole like a long, infected worm, hovering frighteningly close to his son’s face. Brandon sprang away from the door, landing on his back at Cooper’s feet, pulling the boy down on top of him.
Rising, Brandon tucked Cooper behind him and backed away from the searching probe. Again, a honeycomb eye formed and locked first onto Brandon, who was busy opening the bedroom window, and then refocused on the little boy.
“Get on the porch roof and go to my bedroom window,” Brandon said, lifting his son to the lip of the window.
“Noooo!” Cooper cried, seeming more scared by the thought of climbing onto the roof than the atrocity behind them.
“Cooper, listen to me! Go! I’ll meet you there.”
Brandon pushed his unwilling son through the window opening and onto the roof. He closed the window and twisted the latch, hoping the hellish beast couldn’t sprout fingers, although it wouldn’t have surprised him. He stood at the foot of the bed and watched until the last of the slime secreted from the keyhole, and waited for the slime bag to round the bed with eye-tipped appendages flailing, but it didn’t show.
Brandon leaned forward to see over the bed when it occurred to him that it could easily move beneath it. He leapt onto the bed just as an infected-looking arm-like extension shot out, swiping where his feet had just been. Sparing no time, Brandon bounced to the floor and raced to the doorway, halting just outside. Inside the room, the oozing obscenity ignored him and began climbing the wall toward the window.
It doesn’t give a shit about me, Brandon realized. It only wants Cooper!
“Hey!” he yelled at it. “Hey, pus-bag!”
Still it ignored him and continued to climb, spreading its semi-fluid malignance over the window. To his horror, Brandon could see his son’s distorted image through the creature, inches away on the outside of the glass. Fortunately, it appeared that the abomination couldn’t manipulate the window hardware or penetrate the seams.
“Cooper! Get away from there!” he yelled, and started for the stairs.
He stopped halfway down when he heard the familiar Flump!
Had it given up trying to breach the window? He started back up the stairs when he heard the approaching sound of its movement and watched it ooze through the doorway and past his and Sylvia’s bedroom, intent on him. Brandon descended the remaining stairs, grateful that the creature was as slow as it was abhorrent, and wondering if he had unconsciously said something offensive to God during a service, and that The Almighty was exacting vengeance.
As repugnant as it was, couldn’t God have come up with something more menacing than a slow-moving bag of pus? Maybe God only wanted to scare him, or maybe it wasn’t God’s doing at all. He liked that thought better. He had always been so careful not to offend his maker. It seemed more befitting—or at least he hoped it was—that Satan was attacking him, and that God was protecting him by making Satan’s underling a bumbling blob of booger. Wouldn’t Beelzebub likely be responsible for creating something so repulsive?
“Come on, you snot sausage,” Brandon coaxed, while opening the front door.
He stepped out onto the veranda just as the glugging and slewing mess tumbled down the stairway leaving an explosion of viscous debris in its wake. It quivered at the foot of the stairs as its gungy remnants amalgamated, and then followed him across the porch and onto the lawn.
Brandon jogged across the lawn toward the garage as the oversized globule rippled over the edge of the walkway and across the grass, rolling toward the garage like a malignant water-baby.
Brandon looked up to see his son sitting on the roof, his forehead on his knees and his back against the wall near his parents’ bedroom window. “Stay right there,” Brandon ordered, and then ducked inside the doorway on the side of the garage.
Somehow comprehending that Brandon was talking to his son, the hideous being reversed direction in one fluid shift, again intent on Cooper. When it was halfway across the lawn, Brandon leapt out from behind the doorway of the garage with a plastic three-gallon gas container raised high in his arms and started splashing the pungent liquid all over the creature. It recoiled when the gasoline hit it, all its extremities folding within its central mass.
Cooper had scooted closer to the edge of the roof and was shaking his head and yelling. Encouraged by his son’s reaction, Brandon released a shout that sounded as if it was treading the fine line between victory and insanity. He poured the remaining contents of the gas can over the huddled mass and ran a small gasoline trail to the edge of driveway.
Let’s put an end to this, he thought, drawing a long butane grill striker from his rear pocket. He flicked the wheel and touched the tip to the small track of fuel, which instantly ignited, engulfing the recoiling mass with a whoomp!
The piercing shriek that emanated from the undulating ball of slime was unlike anything Brandon had heard before, and one he hoped never to hear again. It was the sound of a million souls wailing and it carried on as the creature twisted and writhed, its bulk sizzling and splattering. Its cry was so loud and long that Brandon felt a growing sense of sadness, and when it finally stopped moving, he felt an inexplicable sorrow for the remains of the being before him.
Brandon stared at what looked like a large pile of blackened Vaseline for a long time, unaware of the cries of his son. Its demise seemed anticlimactic. He had been expecting more of a fight, or for it to spill a million deadly insectile offspring to the ground. The monstrous thing’s cries had been so mournful that it confused him. He looked at his son sitting on the lip of the roof; the little boy’s tear-streaked face was drawn in profound grief.
Brandon hurried back to his son’s bedroom and brought Cooper inside.
“I’m sorry you had to see something like that,” Brandon told his son, sitting on the bed with him. “But it’s okay, now. It’s dead.”
“You killed her, Dad,” the little boy stammered. “Why’d you kill her?” He brushed his forearm against his eyes, spreading tears and mucus across his face.
Cooper’s tone surprised Brandon. His words were thick with accusation, and although he’d seen his son angry before, he had never seen him enraged. It seemed out of place for a child his age, and especially for one as…mild as Cooper. It was unsettling. Brandon looked at his son curiously.
“Why are you calling it her?”
“I know her. She likes me. She cares, like mom is s’posed to.”
“Cooper, what are you talking about?” Brandon asked. Maybe it was too much for the kid. He was clearly distressed and surely traumatized.
“She looks different here, but she told me it was her when she touched me tonight,” he said, raising a hand to his cheek. “She said she changed when she came here, but she’s pretty. Prettier than mommy. They all are.”
It sounded like babble to Brandon. It didn’t make sense, but then again, that thing smoldering in the front yard didn’t make sense, either.
A Variable Darkness: 13 Tales Page 8
