“He did.
“He said, ‘May the road rise to meet ya.’ And he was carrying a set of these.”
Moort looked down at the two misshapen bags of liquid in each of his palms.
“Redheaded feller did the same thing I gotta do.”
I looked down over Zeke’s arm, desperate to understand those throbbing globs. My breathing was uneven and my heart was beating in my ears. My head hurt. I couldn’t imagine what Frank Moort meant. What did the redheaded man do to him?
Frank Moort brought the smaller blob to his mouth with the mangled look of a boy who was told he had to eat his stewed tomatoes whether he liked them or not. But instead of down the hatch, he used his side teeth to bite open the pouch. There was a sucking sound as air met the sac’s contents. Opaque creamy goo splashed his lips and down his chin. After the guck dribbled away, Frank Moort was left with a black worm wriggling in his hand. Gleaming against the light, the little critter had no discernible head or tail. I immediately thought of the ringed bodies of red blood worms fishermen use for bait.
Zeke’s grip tightened on me, one arm at my throat, my own clutching it defensively, still straining to bust free. His other arm was around my gut and I pushed on my heels against his weight. I tried to back away from the little worm in Frank Moort’s hand as far as I could but he inched his open palm closer to my face. Then I saw the tiny red opening at one end of the worm, glistening like the sparkly surface of a Christmas ribbon, not tiny eyes, but a flower bloom.
But Frank Moort didn’t intend the worm for me. He reached over and palmed my brother Mac’s face, like what we used to do at Christmas the odd time that Dovetail saw snow. You’d get a handful of the slushy, icy crystals and blast it into your brother’s face. Mac had done it to me a bunch of times. Face wash, they called it when we were kids.
And that’s what Frank Moort did to Mac with the worm. I heard Mac let out a grunt of surprise against the doc’s arm at his windpipe. We’d been watching Frank gut the goat and had been held rapt. The surprise now was likely as shocking as the ice of a snow-filled face wash.
I heard myself calling out. “No, no no no no no.”
And then Mac was moaning. “Uhnnnnnnn. Uhnnnnnn.”
Moort took his hand from Mac’s face, turned and sauntered away. The black worm clung to the bridge of Mac’s nose. His eyes crossed and his head fell back, mouth open. The little worm had sprung a half dozen tiny, thread-like black legs. In a swoop, the critter dove under the lower lid of Mac’s left eyeball. Mac shivered. In a moment, the worm reappeared. As if it was swimming under water, I saw it bubble up from the white of his eye like a tiny killer whale breaching the surface of a bay. Rivulets of red broke out across his eyes and his body convulsed, like he’d been fed electrical current. His arms and legs jigged.
Mac screamed and blinked fast. I let out a gasp and realized I was moaning now too, unable to keep quiet at the discomfort of seeing this foreign object enter my brother.
Mac shut his eyes against what must have been agony. He kept shouting.
No blood. Only the flailing of Mac’s arms and legs against the girth and strength of his captor. If the doc held him as solidly as Zeke had me—which I didn’t doubt—Mac wouldn’t be able to slip free.
But then Mac’s arms relaxed. Either he was dead or unconscious.
With hesitation, the black-eyed Doc relaxed his grip and let Mac fall to the floor. Most of the white crickets had vanished now, maybe back to whatever lair had produced them. The red-brown brick was only scattered with old wrappers and take-out packages. The dead goat lay in a stinking pile of its own insides.
Oh God, I thought. This is what the redheaded man did to you? Who was he?
The doc got down on his hands and knees and scooped my brother’s limp body into a pile. He got Mac up onto his hands and knees and held him in a makeshift wrestling hold that immobilized his legs and arms. But it didn’t look like Mac was conscious enough to try any escape anyway.
I struggled against Zeke’s hold on me. He squeezed me tighter and sharp pains shot across my field of vision. They brought flower-bursts of colour.
Frank Moort had been standing with his back to us. Doc looked up at him and I saw the profile of Moort as he sighed, then reached the other sac up to his mouth and bit it open. Goosh. Liquid poured out. He turned and ambled over to Doc and Mac crouched in their huddle, Mac on all fours like a dog.
Frank reached down and tore Mac’s pants from him, exposing his white skin, and the mounds of his rump. Frank Moort flashed me a salacious smile and a lifted eyebrow. He whistled a cat call and showed me what was in his hand, as if it was our little secret. A crustacean-like creature about the size of a cue ball and the same shiny white. It could have been a water-faring cousin to the albino crickets. It had tentacles that reached out and reminded me of those on a lobster. The animal had large-to-small body plates and multiple hard, scaly limbs. It made a snikkity-snik-snik sound and I saw its tiny fang-like teeth. Frank Moort bent down once more and set the critter on top of my brother’s bare rump.
It probed the air with its feelers a moment, then on tiny, hard legs, it scaled down to Mac’s crack.
I shouted and Zeke cut off my air, stifling my words to nothing but empty choking noises. Silence all around. Not even the vile crickets chirped.
The crustacean prodded Mac’s skin with a series of jabs from extremities that ended in what looked like a dental needles.
With a start, Mac pulled his legs apart, and the crustacean traversed his pale skin and seeped into the dark nether region between them. Mac let out a hurt roar. From my angle, I couldn’t see his face but I could hear his anguish. Whatever that thing was, it was navigating its way inside him. And it hurt like hell.
Doc let Mac go and sat back, blinking his black eyes like he was exhausted.
I realized I was crying. A tiny, helpless whimper came from the back of my throat.
Frank Moort walked over to me and Zeke, wiping his soiled leathery hands on his pant legs then one back hand across his mouth.
“The black one brings the King’s signal,” he said to me, as if I cared, as if I could bring myself to even look at his face. “…And the white one rebuilds the insides.”
Then he added, “That’s all I know.”
Looking spent, Frank Moort went over and collapsed into his recliner.
12.
And just like that, Zeke’s arms gave way. He let me go and the hot, heavy weight of his sweaty overalls faded away from me. I threw my head each way, startled, glancing to see what he was up to, what kind of blow would be coming my way. My periphery showed me nothing so I turned around, shielding my eyes. He closed his and took a few steps, backing up against the wall and banging into it. His eyes stayed shut and he slid down the brick wall to the floor. I looked over at Frank Moort, who had his hand up over his eyes as though he was nursing a migraine and waiting for the aspirin to kick in.
I stepped farther away from Zeke. I needed to keep my eye on him, on Moort and on Doc at the same time. I started to shake again. My hands struggled against violent tremors and I couldn’t stop them. I was sobbing. I screamed and bawled. “What the hell is going on heeeeerrre?” I shouted at no one. Mac fell over, doubled himself up and hugged his knees to his chest. Like Doc and Zeke, he shut his eyes tight against pain or realization or, I don’t know what.
I went to him. Still sobbing, still convulsing like the cold of the world had gotten deep into my bones. I’ve shivered like this out at sea, certain I’d never get warm again, but this was different. This was my brain cracking my nervous system with energy I couldn’t contain. Moort looked spent. And I knew I had nothing left. I’d seen a lot in my thirty-four years on earth, but I couldn’t make heads or tails. The blasphemous physiology of these creatures, of Frank Moort’s puppeteering, none of this seemed real. It was madness that had claimed me. That had to be it. I was mad. I was insane. Batshit crazy, Da might have said when he used to talk to Ma about goings-on at work. Who knows
? Maybe I was in a locked room and muttering this whole thing to myself.
Snot and spit hung from my mouth and nose and I couldn’t see my way through my heavy, wet eyes. But I got to Mac.
“Mac,” I said with no weight behind my voice. “Mac?”
Nothing from him.
I said, “You...okay?”
His eyes blew open. Solid black, like the others. And angry. He lunged at me. My own brother came at me. Shocked, I fell back. One foot came out from under me completely and the only way I can explain it is that I fell sideways. He brushed against me with his forearms but missed getting a grip because of this awkward fall. I pulled myself backwards, getting out from under him, moving only on raw instinct.
I got up to my feet and scrambled away from him. In the corner of my eye, Frank Moort had stood up. “Better run, piggy!” he shouted. “Better run, run, run!”
And I did. The doc and Zeke blocked an escape through the metal door that led to the breakwater tunnel. I didn’t think. I just ran to the other metal door, yanked it and bolted up the stairs.
From behind me, a not-too-distant echo, I heard heavy footfalls on the stairs that weren’t my own. And I heard Frank Moort’s hollering.
“Get ‘im. Get that l’il piggy and make ‘im squeal!”
13.
I blasted through a third heavy metal door, out of breath, used up and searching, hunting. Hundreds of winding metal stairs straight up. No breath. No thoughts. Wavering eyesight and the sound of my own chuffing breath in my ears. How high up was I? Two hundred and fifty feet? Three hundred? And that was above the breakwater. There would be another seventy-five down to the roiling grey pit of seawater bashing us on three sides.
There had to be another way out of this lighthouse. Even with the main door welded shut and the basement passage blockaded.
Now I was at the top, inside the light room, which was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of black sky, ridges of cloud only a shade lighter. Arctic wind tore into me. The light room’s glass was gone and the rusted old lantern hung lifeless with only a few dirty old shards clinging to its outer rim. I snagged one of them, ended up slicing my hand in my furor to get it and get out onto the outer walkway.
I thought I remembered a metal-runged ladder on the outside. If I could find my way onto the outer rim of brick before Frank Moort and my brother finished their climb to the dizzy peak behind me, I might have a chance at finding that ladder—if my memory of it was tangible.
Carrying the glass shard—my makeshift weapon—I crawled out of one of the wide empty window panes and ran across the expanse of wet, mossy brick, directly to the stone edge. Rain pelted me immediately and I was soaked through to my skin. I leaned over to catch sight of the world below. Two storeys of the tower’s wall straight down, then nothingness. More empty black. I couldn’t see the rocks but a rushing wave startled me, coming up out of the vacuum like a giant, fluid hand and slamming into the lighthouse. The tower shuddered and vertigo swept through me, threatening to pitch me over. But the icy rainwater alerted my senses, brought vigour to my thoughts. I grabbed hold of the edge and stabilized my stance. I darted my eyes back to the centre of the light house, expecting to see my brother and Frank Moort. I started moving along the edge, looking for the metal ladder. When I found it, I’d climb down and get back to the car. That would have to be what I’d do. I’d get clear of this place and drive to town to wake Chief Birkhead. Get him out here and figure this out. Why didn’t we tell him we were headed out here, I thought, as I searched for the ladder every few steps of the lighthouse perimeter.
Because, my mind blared at me like a bleating car horn. The simplest answer is usually the right one.
I was just coming out here to find Mac. He had a nightmare. Simple as that.
No way any of this could have been rattling around in my head.
This is all just—impossible.
No simple answers here.
Another wave shook the floor under me.
The rain was a torrent. It poured down on me, freezing my skin and cascading off my arms and my chin in waves.
There. The ladder.
I was sure it was the ladder I remembered seeing from the ground in childhood. Could I trust that memory? I had to. It had to be it but I could never be a hundred percent. It was dark and the rain was playing havoc with my senses. I couldn’t hear anything but the roar of the downpour mixed with wind. And I couldn’t see more than thirty feet out into nothingness. I started to climb over the low rock wall and one of the stones was dislodged. Slick with water, the stone slipped away. My grip faltered. The stone fell away to the distance below and was swallowed by the black vacuum before the rocks and the top of the seawall, neither of which I could see. I managed to get a grip on another piece of stone. That’s when Mac came through a gaping pane of glass in the light room and moved deftly toward me with his shoulders hunched and his black eyes locked on me.
Not many steps behind my brother was the unmistakable figure of Frank Moort. How he had turned all of these men on me, I didn’t understand. He had put those creepy-crawlies into them and now the little bugs dug into their brains, making them what? Robots? Like out of a science fiction movie? Automatons who had no true thoughts of their own anymore? Frank Moort had been talking nonsense. Talking about signals. Were they getting wires crossed in their heads that made them short-circuit and act like animals?
Mac covered the distance between us. He threw himself at me. The force caused me to lose my finger hold on the blade of glass I had. It followed the old brick down to the depths of rock. Mac grabbed hold of the scruff of my collar and I felt the weight of him nearly knock me backwards and over the edge like that shard and the loose stone. His strength seemed tenfold to what I knew of my brother. And that was saying a lot for a man his size.
“Mac!” I screamed at him. “Mac! Don’t do this!” Water sluiced down my face. And his too. I could barely see my brother, just this replacement thing. The rainwater poured into my mouth as I hollered over its noise. I gagged on it and spat as much out as I could. We struggled with each other. “It’s me, Mac. It’s David!”
I got one foot onto a rung of the ladder. Still we grappled, teetering on the eroded rock edge of the lighthouse wall. I nearly toppled over but my frigid fingers locked on Mac’s shirt. If I went, he would come with me. I had one leg over the edge and the toe of my shoe up under one of the top rungs of the metal ladder, which must have been concreted into the structure of the lighthouse.
In the black pool of Mac’s eye, I saw a bulge: the breach of that tiny worm still swimming around inside my big brother’s skull. I thought of Frank Moort’s words again.
The black one brings the King’s signal.
Our struggling stopped. And it was because we heard it at the same time.
It’s Da. He shouted over the torrent of the rain.
“Boys, come on now. Stop this fighting.”
Mac loosened his grip and turned to Frank Moort who was...not Frank Moort anymore. He was our Da. Standing in the rain with his palms open in a gentle pleading gesture. Is this how our sister saw him before he threw Ma down the hardwood stairs or was it how he looked an hour later when the Deputy shot him once in the chest downtown?
“Come on in outta the rain, boys, let’s talk about this. It’s no one’s fault,” Da said.
But Mac’s reprieve was short-lived. It occurred to me in that tiny fraction of a moment that it might have been a trick. Collusion between Moort and Mac to get my guard lowered.
My boot flexed under the rung of the ladder.
Mac’s hand moved on my collar, a tiny, telling gesture that most would have missed. But it was enough to tip me off. His tensile strength was about to flick back on as if by a light switch. And when it did, I shifted. This time it was a purposeful version of my clumsy fall in that stone and brick room under the lighthouse.
But it meant that Mac pushed forward, not at me, but at the place where my chest and shoulder had been a moment befor
e. His forward foot lost grip because the mortar between the stones was old and crumbling. It was slick with rain. He blew past me...and out into the nothingness. Another giant hand of a wave reached out of the dark and absorbed him. I heard Mac holler and that faded into the noise of the rain and the receding ocean.
I remained clinging to the roof of the lighthouse only because my leg and foot wove behind one rung and in front of the next.
My exhausted mind stuttered on processing the information. This was surely a trick of the rain in my eyes. I did not just see my brother go over the edge. I couldn’t have.
I stood like a statue, contorted and wet under the never-ending downpour.
Something—or someone—grabbed at me. I felt like I would slip away, just let go, unthread my leg from the ladder and fall after my brother. But then someone was hauling me off the shoddy rock wall, pulling me back to the roof of the lighthouse with its deep puddles and thick moss.
It was Frank Moort.
Not Da. Frank Moort.
“Come on, son,” he hollered over the wind and rain. “Let’s get you back inside. Got a load o' work to git through.” I was in shock. He grabbed me and pulled me in. Even if I hadn’t been drained, I’d have been no match in strength. “Looks like our choice has been made.” I said nothing, just let my mouth hang open. Zeke wasn’t the town’s dummy. I was. How could this all go so badly? It had to be some kind of a mad hallucination.
We cowered from the rain inside the light room now, and I stumbled on unsure legs. Moort let me fall. I was never meant to be off the sea. I needed the tide under me.
Dread Page 12
