Exigencies

by Richard Thomas

  He heard the thunk of the hammer as it crashed to the floor, and as he fought the agony in his ruined legs he opened his eyes to a mess of wood splinters, tiny arms and legs. A small black face caved in by the head of a hammer. Its smile had fled. And in that moment, two things happened: a transference of power—and a payment extracted in full. What magic the doll had held took hold of the boy, all the while draining life from the man. Some prayers were answered, and some dark deeds finally punished.

  Elsewhere, in parts unknowable, Ezekiel’s mother at last found restful peace.

  “Daddy?” Zeke said, forgetting for a moment the evil his father had wrought on his mommy’s dancing toy. On his friend.

  His father stood silent, fingers empty and trembling; then he twisted at the waist and toppled to the floor in a violent wreck of shattered bone. Blood spurted from breaches in his calves and thighs, where knobby white was poking through, slick with flowing crimson.

  Zeke turned his eyes away from the ghastly sight, willed it to cease, to be nothing more than a nightmare of his corrupted mind. He clapped his hands to his ears in the hope that it might silence his father’s howling. This couldn’t be real.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” he chanted. “Oh, Daddy—I’m sorry!” Tears wet his face, and he wished with all his heart for his daddy to be all right. For everything to be all right.

  He watched as his daddy dialed frantically on his cell phone, listened to the muffled screaming go on and on for another minute or so. In the distance, he could hear the braying of an ambulance. Police sirens. All coming to help his daddy, he supposed. To get him all fixed up like new.

  To hell with his mommy’s toy, who had been reduced to wood shavings.

  To hell with him.

  Hide-and-seek, he thought. I’ll have to go hide, now. Then they’ll chase me, try to yell at me and ask me questions. Maybe even hurt me, like Daddy hurt the dancing man.

  But at least his father would be okay.

  Zeke rose to his feet, and without a second’s thought he thrust himself out the window, glass cutting away at his arms and cheeks, showering the segment of roof outside his bedroom. Blood warmed the left side of his face, and blades of glass wedged into his flesh. The moon hung low in the sky, its brilliance beckoning him into the night, and Zeke breathed deeply of the world’s lush air.

  As he made his way across the rooftop, headed toward the triangular peak at the front of the house, flashing red and blue lights drew near, whirling like eager phantoms through the neighborhood’s once-quiet streets. By the time they reached him, Zeke Buckner stood towering over the blackening sprawl of the town he scarcely knew, too late to try and make an escape. Police officers slammed car doors, paramedics paraded into the house. Sirens whooped. And to the rhythm of the great cacophony, he began to dance.

  alex kane

  lives in west-central illinois, where he works as a freelancer, plays too many first-person shooters, and blogs about culture and technology in his spare time. a graduate of the 2013 clarion west writers workshop, his stories have appeared in omni, spark, digital science fiction, and the ya anthology futuredaze, among other places. follow him on twitter @alexjkane.

  THE

  EYE LIARS

  SARAH READ

  Bending over the corpse, leaning against the cold steel table on which the body rested, Dan squeezed the black spots at the corner of the rotting eye. The blackness oozed out of the pores. It collected in the basin of the temple, pooling as it drained, then evaporating into a black mist. It rose into the air around us, circling the lamp hanging low over the workstation.

  “Don’t breathe, Greg,” Dan said.

  The swirling shadow dissipated as it rose, spreading to the dark corners of the ceiling, deepening the shadows. The air tasted sharp and bitter, like Dad’s batteries we used to lick in the garage when we were kids.

  Dan breathed first.

  Looking down at the dead man between us, there were more dark spots, pinprick-sized swellings, reservoirs of foul ink collected under the skin.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked.

  Dan turned to his tray of tools, waving his gloved hands over them, divining which to use.

  “I’m not really sure,” he said, rotating the scalpel in front of his face, examining an edge too fine to see. “My guess would be that it’s a waste product of some undocumented parasite. It’s always around the eyes, presents as liquid-filled black spots—but the substance vaporizes almost instantly. It’s organic, but I haven’t been able to collect enough to run any real substantive tests. Once it’s vapor, it doesn’t test as anything. Nothing.”

  I rubbed my forehead. The film of sweat had started to cool in the damp basement. I shivered.

  “It’s just . . . dark air,” he said.

  He bent back over the body. His face tensed. He always looked ten years older when he cut, like the focus drained the life from him. He looked more like Dad than me, then, but maybe that was the grey lab coat, him holding Dad’s tools, bent over Dad’s table.

  He removed an eye and placed it on a small steel tray. His hand barely moved, but when he straightened, the eye laid open, unfolded between us. A cloudy marble nested in layers of waxy wet tissue. He looked up at me, smiling.

  My tongue curled inside my mouth and my throat tightened. The muscles at the back of my knees turned to turbulent water. I tasted bile, felt it burning through my chest, at the back of my throat.

  “You don’t have to look,” he said. He always said that. I never wanted to look but I always did, always watched, first Dad, then Dan. He held the tray out, tapping the bottom of my chin with its cold edge, the eyes sliding across its stained surface.

  “Why did you need me here for this?”

  “I want you to know what to look for. I need research subjects.”

  “Dan, that’s not really okay. I can’t just do that—there are rules.”

  “Check the dementia patients first—anyone who might be exhibiting visual hallucinations or delusions. Ones who reach a crisis in their condition, then present a few hours of lucidity right before death. The spots start appearing then—during that brief lucid state. I need you to watch them. And bring me the bodies.”

  He pulled the caps off of glass vials and lined them up, rattling them against the tray, drowning out my protestations.

  “Dan, I don’t get to decide where—”

  “Hold your breath.”

  I slapped a hand to my mouth. I tasted the powdery residue of the latex gloves I’d been wearing.

  He squeezed a black spot against the rim of a vial, collecting the trickle of ink and ramming the cap in place before the plasma turned to smoke.

  He exhaled. I didn’t.

  He held the vial up between our faces. The dark liquid inside sucked light from the room. He swirled the glass tube. The ooze coated the glass, sliding back down it in writhing swirls.

  “Whatever this is, it’s killing people, Greg. I can’t stop it if I can’t research it.”

  “Dad didn’t leave you this place so you could play mad scientist.”

  “Dad didn’t leave you this place at all,” he said, picking up an eye and rolling it in his palm.

  “You’re supposed to be taking care of these people, for their loved ones. And you’re supposed to be taking care of the business.” I swept my hand toward a section of crumbling wall, groundwater seeping in through the cracks in the cinderblocks.

  “Greg, this stuff’s contagious. I don’t know how, yet, but it is. Who gives a shit about upselling casket hardware when people are seeing things that aren’t there? People are hallucinating, tearing each other apart, dropping dead, and you don’t want to help?” He tossed the eye back onto the steel tray. It splashed and rolled, leaving a trail of humor.

  “Well, talk to their doctors, put it in your reports.”

  “No one is going to look twice if I don’t bring examples. I need data before I can make a claim like this.”

 
“Your data are people, Dan.”

  “Dead people. And if you don’t bring me what bodies you do have, we’ll end up with more data than we’ll know what to do with.” His eyes narrowed like the tip of his scalpel, cutting into me.

  I sighed and stared at the ooze. “Where does it come from?”

  “How should I know? That’s the point. Where do fleas come from, or rats? It’s just the fucking circle of life.” He picked up the corpse’s arm and shook the limp hand at me.

  I stepped back, stumbling over my foot. “Well someone else has to have seen it; it can’t just be here.”

  “Some old anthropologists in Asia mention something like it, and in other places where they don’t embalm or bury or burn the dead. They called them evil spirits, and started burning the people alive at the faintest hint of hallucination. We soak our dead in chemicals, infuse them with toxins, and stick them in the ground—hardly ever get to see what grows when we leave well enough alone.” He squeezed the man’s jaw and pulled down on his chin. The scent of raw meat and blood rose from the pale mouth.

  “Damn,” Dan said, “He didn’t just bite his tongue off, he chewed it. Look.” He wrenched the neck, aiming the blank face at me. A thin black line of old blood trailed from the corner of the mouth, running over Dan’s thumb and dripping onto the table.

  I drove back to The Village, hands shaking on the wheel, pressing my chin to my chest to get a better view through the narrow tunnel of my vision. My scrubs stuck to the sweat on my back and legs. My skin secreted a slippery puddle into the vinyl seat of the van. The plan to stop for lunch on my way back was trashed. I couldn’t get out of the van like this. It’d look like I’d wet myself.

  The van’s parking space sat close to the back entrance of the clinic. I could sneak into the locker room and change, grabbing lunch in the dining room with Miss Bessley, who would tell me again about the dog she’d had when she was eight.

  As my sneakers squeaked across the white tile threshold, Tracy walked by, her slate hair pulled back in a braid, the edge of her clipboard pressed against her stomach as she read and walked. The walkie-talkie velcroed to the shoulder of her scrub jacket crackled and beeped, her left eye flinching each time, deepening the grooves that branched across her temple.

  “Tracy.” She stopped and looked up. Looked me over. I’d forgotten about the wet. “Do you know when those school kids are coming back—the ones with the dogs? Do you remember if they have a collie, like Mrs. Bessley’s?”

  “Who? What are you talking about?” She looked back to her notes, scribbling across charts.

  “The group with the therapy animals, are they coming back soon? Miss Bessley’s been lonely, and I thought—” I picked at the damp fabric clinging to my chest, chaffing my neck.

  “I wouldn’t know, ask the desk.” She drew her eyebrows down, “But change your clothes first.” She hurried away, her braid swaying, slapping each hip in turn.

  In the locker room, I stripped off my damp scrubs and dropped them in the canvas laundry bag and held my underwear under the blow dryer.

  There were no XL scrubs left. Stuffing my legs into an L, my balance wavered when the floor nurse called a code grey over the intercom. I pulled on my shoes, grabbed my badge lanyard, and sprinted for the stairwell door.

  Floor 3, suite H—Mr. Brunner.

  The ruckus echoed down the yellow painted brick stairwell. I scanned my ID at the top landing, and pushed the bar, leaning against the heavy door.

  A breeze whipped against my exposed ankles and the scrub seams strained against my thighs as I ran past the row of closed doors to the source of the noise.

  “I’ll kill you for this, you bitch!” Mr. Brunner had Tracy by her braid, feebly swinging it, “Give it back!”

  My hand covered Mr. Brunner’s, prying his fingers from Tracy’s hair. His hand came away webbed with extracted strands.

  “Can I help you find something, Mr. Brunner?” I asked, pushing his wrists down.

  “That whore took my lamp. I can’t read here in the dark without my lamp!” Sweat collected in the deep lines of his face, beading and dripping from his hairless pate. The loose skin at his neck shook, scattering droplets.

  Holding his wrists to his sides, I nodded toward the bedside table. “Is your lamp blue, Mr. Brunner? I see a blue lamp over there—maybe we moved it when we cleaned? Or let me get you settled by that nice bright window.”

  “No—the leather one, with the brass. It was my father’s, from the war. It’s very valuable, and she took it.” He threw himself against me. I wrapped my long arms around him, careful not to squeeze.

  The nurse raced into the room, blue gloves in place, flipping a syringe. I tightened my grip as she came up behind the old man and gave him the Ativan.

  He writhed against my chest. My shirt split between my shoulders. He went limp. Squatting to scoop up his legs, the seams on my pants gave.

  “For chrissakes,” Tracy said.

  I carried Mr. Brunner to his bed and laid him down.

  “Go home and do some laundry. Come back for second shift to make up the hours.” Tracy straightened her hair and picked up her clipboard. Her left eye twitched, her cheeks flushed. She flipped to a fresh incident report sheet and turned her back.

  Back in the locker room I pulled on my street clothes. I grabbed the canvas laundry bag on my way out.

  The tattered too-small scrubs fluttered into the dumpster in the parking lot. No need to fill out a material damage report—Tracy would mention it in hers.

  Folding myself into my Civic, I headed home, rubbing at the dark shapes floating across my tired eyes.

  The new scrubs were itchy, starched for store-freshness and smelling like dust. I sat in the dark clinic room, watching the blipping lights of Mr. Brunner’s monitors, feeling the “do not resuscitate” orders clipped to the foot of the bed stare back at me. The new lamp I’d picked up sat in its box at my feet.

  Rubbing my neck, trying to push the soreness out, warm blood rushed into the muscle behind the pressure of my fingers. Thirty minutes left. Then home, sleep for six hours, and come back.

  I squeezed a tight muscle in my shoulder. Bright lights flashed in front of my eyes, then the negative, dark spots filling my vision. I pressed my fists to my eyes, opening them to solid dark. Undulating, freezing black clouds rolled around me, and a sharp ringing lanced my ears. Shrill sounds drove through me like knives as the dark wave turned me upside down.

  My face hit the cold tile floor jarring my vision back with a white-hot burst of light. Shoes pounded in front of my eyes, smelling like wet rubber and disinfectant. My hands slipped in my sweat as I pushed myself off the floor.

  People filled the room, their backs to me. Above their heads, the monitor broadcasted Mr. Brunner’s distress signal, emitting the shrill alarms that had cut through me. Squeezing my eyes shut, I rubbed my hands over my face, painting it with salty wet that stung my dry lips. I backed out, watching them do next to nothing, making him comfortable as he passed.

  At home, I spent the rest of the night apologizing to the shadow whispering behind my bedroom door.

  I studied Mr. Brunner’s face. Leaning over him, staring closely at his temples and the bridge of his nose, I reached out and smoothed the cold wrinkles, inspecting the depths of the crow’s-feet. There was one, two—another on the other side. I texted Dan and then zipped up the bag and rolled Mr. Brunner to the parking lot.

  I strapped him down and loaded him up, securing the gurney to the van. Climbing into the driver’s seat, my coffee sloshed out of the spout of my travel mug.

  Dan’s funeral home sat just down the road. Built close enough to The Village for convenience, but not so close as to be suggestive. Dan waited for me outside, wringing his hands. A cigarette butt smoked on the crumbling pavement at his feet, torching the parched weeds growing up from the cracks.

  “What took you so long?” He tugged at the back door, pulling the gurney down as I got out. “Hurry, get him downstairs.”


  In the dark basement lab, leaning in, shining a light in Mr. Brunner’s face, we counted spots. Dan pushed and pulled at the skin.

  “Gentle,” I said.

  “What?” The corner of Dan’s mouth twitched. “Why, exactly?”

  “I know him,” I said

  “Not anymore.” Dan prepared his vials and blades.

  I smoothed the sheet over Mr. Brunner’s chest, brushed his hair back from his cool forehead. I could hear his voice, whispering about the things his dad had done in the war, asking if I could sneak him another Bond DVD from the office, promising he wouldn’t tell Tracy if I watched it with him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Dan pushed my hand away and moved in with a vial.

  “He doesn’t have as many spots as Alan did.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy from yesterday.”

  “Oh, no. He hasn’t been dead as long. There will be more tomorrow. This is good, really good—I can watch them develop.”

  I looked away and held my breath as Dan held the vial to Mr. Brunner’s eye.

  Another body lay stretched out on the next table: a young woman, naked, her eyes removed, barely visible through the darkness. Walking closer, I saw her eyes sitting on a tray next to her head, milky black. The skin around the eye sockets swelled with black pustules.

  My breath forced itself out with a moan.

  “That’s after five days,” Dan said. He had sealed his vial.

  “She’s been lying here for five days?” Her hair fell around her empty face, dark and soft, dry leaves caught in its tangles. The bruises on her throat and thighs were as dark as the shadows where her eyes should have been. The skin along her jaw was red and blue, distended around a small oval with a cross in it.

  “No one is waiting for her. I can take my time and get the data I need. I haven’t had the chance to observe them this long before—to see what they do when left alone.”