The Strain

by Guillermo Del Toro

  No car in the driveway, no sound of an automobile engine pulling away.

  Was she alone? Where was her mother?

  “Emma,” he said.

  Gary got to his feet and led her inside, closing the front door, switching on the light. Em looked dazed. She wore the dress her mother had bought her for the trip, that made her look so grown up as she twirled around when she’d first tried it on for him. There was dirt on one sleeve—and perhaps blood. Gary spun her around, looking her over and finding more blood on her bare feet—no shoes?—and dirt all over, and scrapes on her palms and bruises on her neck.

  “What happened, Em?” he asked her, holding her face in his palms. “How did you…?”

  The wave of relief struck him again, nearly knocking him over, and he grasped her tight. He picked her up and carried her over to the sofa, sitting her there. She was traumatized, and oddly passive. So unlike his smiling, headstrong Emma.

  He felt her face, the way her mother always did when Emma acted strangely, and it was hot. So hot that her skin felt sticky, and she was terribly pale, nearly translucent. He saw veins beneath the surface, prominent red veins he had never seen before.

  The blue in her eyes seemed to have faded. A head wound, probably. She was in shock.

  Thoughts of hospitals ran through his head, but he wasn’t letting her out of this house now, never again.

  “You’re home now, Em,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.”

  He took her hand and tugged on it to get her to stand, leading her into the kitchen. Food. He installed her in her chair at the table, watching her from the counter as he toasted two chocolate chip waffles, her favorite. She sat there with her hands at her sides, watching him, not staring exactly, but not alive to the room either. No silly stories, no school-day chatter.

  The toaster jumped and he slathered the waffles with butter and syrup and set the plate down in front of her. He sat in his seat to watch. The third chair, Mommy’s place, was still empty. Maybe the doorbell would ring again…

  “Eat,” he told her. She hadn’t picked up her fork yet. He cut off a corner of the stack and held it before her mouth. She did not open it.

  “No?” he said. He showed her himself, putting the waffles in his mouth, chewing. He tried her again, but her response was the same. A tear slipped from Gary’s eye and rolled down his cheek. He knew by now that something was terribly wrong with his daughter. But he shoved all that aside.

  She was here now, she was back.

  “Come.”

  He walked her upstairs to her bedroom. Gary entered first, Emma stopping inside the doorway. Her eyes looked on the room with something akin to recognition, but more like distant memory. Like the eyes of an old woman returned miraculously to the bedroom of her youth.

  “You need sleep,” he said, rummaging through her chest of drawers for pajamas.

  She remained by the door, her hands at her sides.

  Gary turned with the pajamas in his hand. “Do you want me to change you?”

  He got down on his knees and lifted off her dress, and his very modest preteen daughter offered no protest. Gary found more scratches, and a big bruise on her chest. Her feet were filthy, the crevices of her toes crusted with blood. Her flesh hot to the touch.

  No hospital. He was never letting her out of his sight again.

  He ran a cool bath and sat her in it. He knelt by the edge and gently worked a soapy facecloth over her abrasions, and she did not even squirm. He shampooed and conditioned her dirty, flat hair.

  She looked at him with her dark eyes but there was no rapport. She was in some sort of trance. Shock. Trauma.

  He could make her better.

  He dressed her in her pajamas, taking the big comb from the straw basket in the corner and combing her blond hair down straight. The comb snagged in her hair and she did not flinch or utter a complaint.

  I am hallucinating her, Gary thought. I have lost my bearings on reality.

  And then, still combing her hair: I don’t goddamn care.

  He flipped back her sheets and quilted comforter and laid his daughter down in her bed, just as he used to when she was still a toddler. He pulled the covers up around her neck, tucking her in, Emma lying still and sleeplike but with her black eyes wide open.

  Gary hesitated before leaning over to kiss her still-hot forehead. She was little more than a ghost of his daughter. A ghost whose presence he welcomed. A ghost he could love.

  He wet her brow with his grateful tears. “Good night,” he said, to no response. Emma lay still in the pinkish spray of her night-light, staring at the ceiling now. Not acknowledging him. Not closing her eyes. Not waiting for sleep. Waiting…for something else.

  Gary walked down the hallway to his bedroom. He changed and climbed into bed alone. He did not sleep either. He was waiting also, though he didn’t know what for.

  Not until he heard it.

  A soft creak on the threshold of his bedroom. He rolled his head and saw Emma’s silhouette. His daughter standing there. She came to him, out of the shadows, a small figure in the night-darkened room. She paused near his bed, opening her mouth wide, as though for a gusty yawn.

  His Emma had returned to him. That was all that mattered.

  Zack had trouble sleeping. It was true what everyone said: he was very much like his father. Obviously too young to have an ulcer, but already with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was an intense boy, an earnest boy, and he suffered for it.

  He had always been that way, Eph had told him. He would stare back from the crib with a little grimace of worry, his intense dark eyes always making contact. And his little worried expression made Eph laugh—for he reminded him of himself so much—the worried baby in the crib.

  For the last few years, Zack had felt the burden of the separation, divorce, and custody battle. It took some time to convince himself that all that was happening was not his fault. Still, his heart knew better: knew that somehow, if he dug deep enough, all the anger would connect with him. Years of angry whispers behind his back…the echoes of arguments late at night…being awakened by the muffled pounding on walls…It had all taken its toll. And Zack was now, at the ripe old age of eleven, an insomniac.

  Some nights he would quiet the house noises with his iPod and stare out his bedroom window. Other nights he would crack open his window and listen to every little noise the night had to offer, listening so hard his ears buzzed as the blood rushed in.

  He enacted that age-old hope of many a boy, that his street, at night, when it believed itself unwatched, would yield its mysteries. Ghosts, murder, lust. But all he ever saw, until the sun rose again on the horizon, was the hypnotic blue flicker of the distant TV in the house across the street.

  The world was devoid of heroes or monsters, though in his imagination Zack sought both. A lack of sleep took its toll on the boy, and he kept dozing off during the daytime. He zoned out at school, and the other kids, never kind enough to let a difference go unnoticed, immediately found nicknames for him. They ranged from the common “Dickwad” to the more inscrutable “Necro-boy,” every social clique choosing its favorite.

  And Zack faded through the days of humiliation until the time came for his dad to visit him again.

  With Eph he felt comfortable. Even in silence—especially in silence. His mom was too perfect, too observant, too kind—her silent standards, all for his “own good,” were impossible to meet, and he knew, in a strange way, that from the moment he was born, he had disappointed her. By being a boy—by being too much like his dad.

  With Eph he felt alive. He would tell his dad the things Mom always wanted to know about: out-of-boundaries things that she was eager to learn. Nothing critical—just private. Important enough not to reveal. Important enough to save for his father, and that was what Zack did.

  Now, lying awake on the top of his bedcovers, Zack thought of the future. He was certain now that they would never again be together as a family. No chance. But he wondered how
much worse it would get. That was Zack in a nutshell. Always wondering: how much worse can it get?

  Much worse was always the answer.

  At least, he hoped, now the army of concerned adults would finally screw out of his life. Therapists, judges, social workers, his mother’s boyfriend. All of them keeping him hostage to their own needs and stupid goals. All of them “caring” for him, for his well-being, and none of them really giving a shit.

  My Bloody Valentine grew quiet in the iPod and Zack popped the earphones out. The sky was still not yet brightening outside, but he finally felt tired. He loved feeling tired now. He loved not thinking.

  So he readied himself for sleep. But as soon as he got settled, he heard the footsteps.

  Flap-flap-flap. Like bare feet out on the asphalt. Zack looked out his window and saw a guy. A naked guy.

  Walking down the street, skin pale as moonlight, shining stretch marks glowing in the night, crisscrossing the deflated belly. Obvious that the man had been fat once—but had since lost so much weight that now his skin folded in all different ways and different directions, so much so that it was almost impossible to figure out his exact silhouette.

  It was old but appeared ageless. The balding head with badly tinted hair and varicose veins on the legs pinned him at around seventy, but there was a vigor to his step and a tone to his walk that made you think of a young man. Zack thought all these things, noticed all these things, because he was so much like Eph. His mother would have told him to move away from the window and called 911, while Eph would have pointed out all the details that formed the picture of that strange man.

  The pale creature circled the house across the street. Zack heard a soft moan, and then the rattle of a backyard fence. The man came back and moved toward the neighbor’s front door. Zack thought of calling the police, but that would raise all sorts of questions for him with Mom: he’d had to hide his insomnia from her, or else suffer days and weeks of doctor’s appointments and tests, never mind her worrying.

  The man walked out into the middle of the street and then stopped. Flabby arms hanging at his side, his chest deflated—was he even breathing?—hair ruffling in the soft night wind. Exposing the roots to a bad “Just for Men” reddish brown.

  It looked up toward Zack’s window, and for one weird moment they locked eyes. Zack’s heart raced. This was the first time he saw the guy frontally. During the whole time, he had been able to see only a flank or the man’s skin-draped back, but now he saw his full thorax—and the pale Y-shaped scar that crossed it whole.

  And his eyes—they were dead tissue, glazed over, opaque even in the gentle moonlight. But worst of all, they had a frenzied energy, darting back and forth and then fixing on him—looking up at him with a feeling that was hard to pinpoint.

  Zack shrank back, peeling away from the window, scared to death by the scar and those vacant eyes that had looked back at him. What was that expression…?

  He knew that scar, knew what it meant. An autopsy scar. But how could that be?

  He risked another peek over the window’s edge, so carefully, but the street was empty now. He sat up to see better, and the man was gone.

  Had he ever even been there? Maybe the lack of sleep was really getting to him now. Seeing naked male corpses walking in the street: not something a child of divorce wants to share with a therapist.

  And then it came to him: hunger. That was it. The dead eyes looked at him with intense hunger…

  Zack dove into his sheets and buried his face in his pillow. The man’s absence did not ease his mind, but instead did the contrary. The man was gone, but he was everywhere now. He could be downstairs, breaking in through the kitchen window. Soon it would be on the steps, climbing ever so slowly—could he hear his footsteps already?—and then in the corridor outside his door. Softly rattling his lock—the busted lock that would not catch. And soon it would reach Zack’s bed and then—what? He feared the man’s voice and its dead stare. Because he had the horrible certainty that, even though it moved, the man was no longer alive.

  Zombies…

  Zack hid under his pillow, mind and heart racing, full of fear and praying for dawn to come and save him. Much as he dreaded school, he begged the morning to come.

  Across the street, in the neighboring house, window glass was broken and the TV light snapped off.

  Ansel Barbour whispered to himself as he wandered about the second floor of his house. He wore the same T-shirt and boxer shorts he had tried to sleep in, and his hair darted up at odd angles from continuous squeezing and pulling. He didn’t know what was happening to him. Ann-Marie suspected a fever, but when she came to him with the thermometer, he could not bear to think of that steel-tipped probe being stuck in under his inflamed tongue. They had an ear thermometer, for the kids, but he couldn’t even sit still long enough to get an accurate reading. Ann-Marie’s practiced palm against his forehead detected heat—lots of heat—but then, he could have told her that.

  She was petrified, he could tell. She made no effort to hide it. To her, any illness whatsoever was an assault on the sanctity of their family unit. The kids’ throw-up bugs were met with the same dark-eyed fear another might reserve for, say, a bad blood test or the appearance of an unexplained lump. This is it. The beginning of the terrible tragedy she was certain would one day befall her.

  His tolerance for Ann-Marie’s eccentricities was at low ebb. He was dealing with something serious here, and he needed her help, not her added stress. Now he couldn’t be the strong one. He needed her to take charge.

  Even the kids were staying away from him, startled by the not-there look in their father’s eyes, or perhaps—he was vaguely aware of this—the odor of his sickness, which to his nose resembled the smell of congealed cooking grease stored too long in a tin can rusting beneath the sink. He saw them from time to time hiding behind the balusters at the bottom of the staircase, watching him cross the second-floor landing. He wanted to allay their fears, but worried he might lose his temper trying to explain this to them, and in doing so make things worse. The surest way to set their minds at ease was to get better. To outlast this surge of disorientation and pain.

  He stopped inside his daughter’s bedroom, found the purple walls too purple, then doubled back into the hallway. He stood very still on the landing—as still as he could—until he could hear it again. That thumping. A beating—quiet and close. Wholly separate from the headache pounding in his skull. Almost…like in small-town movie theaters, where you can hear, during quiet moments in movies, the clicking of the film running through the projector in the back. Which distracts you, and keeps pulling you back to the reality that this is not real, as though you and you alone realize this truth.

  He shook his head hard, grimacing from the pain that went with it…trying to use that pain like bleach, to clean his thoughts…but the thumping. The throbbing. It was everywhere, all around him.

  The dogs too. Acting strange around him. Pap and Gertie, the big, bumbling Saint Bernards. Growling as they would when some strange animal came into the yard.

  Ann-Marie came up later, alone, finding him sitting at the foot of their bed, his head in his hands like a fragile egg. “You should sleep,” she said.

  He gripped his hair like the reins of a mad horse and fought down the urge to berate her. Something was wrong in his throat, and whenever he lay down for any length of time, his epiglottis seized up, cutting off his airway, suffocating him until he choked himself back to breathing. He was terrified now of dying in his sleep.

  “What do I do?” she asked, remaining in the doorway, her palm and fingers pressing against her own forehead.

  “Get me some water,” he said. His voice hissed through his raw throat, burning like steam. “Lukewarm. Dissolve some Advil in it, ibuprofen—anything.”

  She didn’t move. She stood there staring, worrying. “Aren’t you even a little better…?”

  Her timidity, which normally aroused strong protective instincts in him, now moved hi
m only to rage. “Ann-Marie, get me some goddamn water, and then take the kids outside or something but keep them the hell away from me!”

  She scurried away in tears.

  When Ansel heard them go outside into the darkened backyard, he ventured downstairs, walking with one hand clamped on the handrail. She had left the glass on the counter next to the sink, set on a folded napkin, dissolved pills clouding the water. He brought the glass to his lips two-handedly and forced himself to drink. He poured the water into his mouth, giving his throat no choice but to swallow. He got some of it down before gagging on the rest of the contents, coughing onto the sink window overlooking the backyard. He gasped as he watched the splatter drip down the glass pane, distorting his view of Ann-Marie standing behind the kids on the swings, staring off into the darkened sky, breaking her crossed arms only occasionally to push low-swinging Haily.

  The glass slipped from his hand, spilling into the sink. He left the kitchen for the living room, dropping onto the sofa there in a kind of a stupor. His throat was engorged and he felt sicker than ever.

  He had to return to the hospital. Ann-Marie would just have to make it on her own for a little while. She could do it if she had no choice. Maybe it would even end up being good for her…

  He tried to focus, to determine what needed to be done before he left. Gertie came into the doorway, panting softly. Pap entered behind her, stopping near the fireplace, settling down into a crouch. Pap started a low, even growl, and the thumping noise surged in Ansel’s ears. And Ansel realized: the noise was coming from them.

  Or was it? He got down off the sofa, moving over toward Pap on his hands and knees, getting closer to hear. Gertie whimpered and retreated to the wall, but Pap held his unrelaxed crouch. The growl intensified in the dog’s throat, Ansel grasping his collar just as the dog tried to back up onto its feet and get away.

  Thrum…Thrum…Thrum…

  It was in them. Somehow. Somewhere. Something.

  Pap was pulling and whimpering, but Ansel, a big man who rarely had to use his strength, curled his free arm around the Saint Bernard’s neck, holding him in a canine headlock. He pressed his ear to the dog’s neck, the hair of its fur tickling the inside of his auditory canal.