by Ed Kurtz
Alice.
All of her shirts bore screened images of monsters and demons and nude women beneath emblazoned logos of loud metal groups with threatening names. Teenagers were nothing if not predicable.
“Mr. Blackmore?”
He fought back an exasperated sigh.
“Yes, Alice?”
“Can I ask you something?”
Walt clenched his jaw and checked his wristwatch. 3:45. If he left that instant, he might not get home until closer to five. And with that awful Jarod kid coming around at 5:30…
“Can it wait? It’s just, I’ve got this…meeting.”
Alice said, “Um.”
He forced a smile, trying to make it as genuine looking as possible.
“Tomorrow, okay?”
The girl nodded sadly. Her bob bounced slightly.
Walt grabbed the briefcase, patted Alice gently on the shoulder and then vanished into the hallway.
***
He pulled into his driveway at 4:40. He smiled at the digital clock built into the dash. Plenty of time. He grabbed his briefcase, locked the car and headed into the house.
She was lounging on the couch, completely naked. Walt had asked her not to constantly remain nude, but she consistently refused. He also requested she lay something down on the couch to keep her seeping scabs from staining the fabric, but that too fell on deaf ears. There was just no arguing with a woman like Gwyn.
But then again, there was no woman like Gwyn.
During the couple of months since she emerged from her place in the ceiling, Gwyn’s skin gradually began to grow in. But it was more like healing than growing—by November her entire body was encased in soft, leathery lesions. Now, two weeks to Christmas, the large, octagonal scabs were hard and flaky. And they leaked. They leaked everywhere and on everything she touched. Bed sheets could be washed, and he did not mind that much. Walt liked sleeping beside Gwyn at night. But the damn couch…
When she heard the front door creak open, she bolted upright and twisted so that she could face him. Several scabby chunks snapped off of her neck and shoulder with the rapid motion. They drifted down to the couch as the pink, freshly bared areas of raw flesh oozed whitish fluid.
“Walt!” she hungrily called out.
He smiled and set the briefcase down by the door. Her voice was so much nicer now. Feminine. Not scratchy like it had been. Maybe breathy, like Kathleen Turner. He guessed that her vocal cords had healed, too.
“Good news,” he said as he approached her on the couch. She arched her neck and lifted her chin. More scabs pulled apart wherever her skin stretched. Walt bent at the waist and pressed his lips firmly to hers. They were dry and scaly, but the kiss lingered for several long seconds before he came back up for air. “We’re having a guest tonight.”
Gwyn’s frosty eyes widened.
“Tonight?”
“That’s right.”
“Walt! Who?”
“The worst kid in school. A real piece of work.”
“What is he, a huge bruiser?” She licked her lips as she considered the possibilities.
He crooked his mouth to one side. “Well, no. He’s just a little guy. Looks like he stopped growing around sixth grade.”
Gwyn’s eyelids slid back down to their normal position, but her eager grin remained.
“That’s all right. That’s good. I didn’t expect… tonight!”
Walt checked his watch. “Pretty soon, actually. You might want to make yourself scarce before too long.”
Her lips contracted to cover her shiny white teeth.
“Oh, Walt…”
“Now don’t get like that. You know you can’t be seen when he’s here.”
“You are ashamed of me.”
“That’s not true, and you know it. But you’re my little secret, Gwyn. You’re special, beyond that even. You’re a miracle.”
“I am a monster.”
“Not at all. Out there—” He pointed vaguely at the bay window overlooking the porch. “—are where monsters be. Millions of them. But not in here. Never here.”
Gwyn’s smile gradually stretched back across her face.
“Kiss me, Walt.”
He sat down beside her on the couch and wrapped an arm around her coarse, scaly back. Tugging her close to him, Walt then pried Gwyn’s lips apart with his own and began exploring her mouth with his tongue. Softly moaning, she pulled back until she was lying down on the couch. She spread her arms out like wings. Then her legs. He ogled at her flaking, scabrous shell, how it completely encased her breasts and disappeared into a fine, dark line between her rusty brown legs.
“Now, Walt.”
Swallowing a mouthful of saliva, he shook his head.
“Can’t. Not just yet.”
“Now.”
“That kid, he’ll be here any minute. Besides, I’ve got to do the pit.”
“There’s time.”
“There’s not.”
“NOW!”
Gwyn’s mouth twisted into a cruel and threatening sneer.
Her eyes bulged, the pale blue of her irises framed by wildly branching bloodshot veins. Walt stiffened.
“Darling, if he sees you as soon as he comes in, you won’t get any supper. You’ll go hungry, see? Can’t we wait, and have it both ways?”
She let out a low, guttural growl. Her old voice, raspy and more than a little unsettling.
“There is meat upstairs,” she grumbled.
“No, Gwyn. No. Not her.”
“In the attic…”
“She’s my sister, darling.”
“So tender. So succulent.”
Gwyn’s pink tongue darted out, licked her scab encrusted lips.
“No! The kid will be here. Just a little longer, and then you can feed.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. She bared her teeth like an angry mongrel dog.
“I will have him,” she hissed.
He nodded vigorously. She pulled her legs up and dropped them to the floor. Then she hopped up and made for the back of the house, her fingers splayed out like talons.
“And then I will have you,” she snarled as she vanished from view.
39
“It can’t be this far,” Clem grumbled.
“It’s gotta be,” Jarod argued. “Directions say ten miles down Highway 5. We haven’t gone six, yet.”
“Why the hell’s he wanna live out here, anyway? This is hillbilly country. Sheepfuckers and shit.”
Jarod chortled.
“Sheepfuckers,” he mimicked.
“It’s true. Knew a guy in eighth grade lived out this way. Swear to God his name was Elvis. Everybody knew him because it got out he boned a sheep on his uncle’s farm.”
“That’s nasty.”
“Of course it’s nasty. But there it is. This is sheepfucker country.”
“Well, we’ll just have to wait and see if Blackmore’s got any sheep.”
“Nah,” Clem protested. “Teach’s no hucklebuck.” He steadied the wheel with his left hand while he fished a joint of his shirt pocket with the other. “But dollars to doughnuts he fucks his sister.”
“Hah!”
Jarod burst into phlegmy laughter.
“Bet they got kids together!” Clem went on. “They all got one eye each and no hair. Fuckin’ incest babies.”
“You’re gross, man.”
“And they got babies with the babies, too.”
“Stop it! You’re going to make me barf, dude.”
“Just calling ‘em like I see ‘em.”
“Gross.”
Clem chuckled. He delighted in appalling people, especially Jarod. He was the hardest one to gross out, but he almost never failed. Now he grinned triumphantly as he fired up his jay with the car lighter. Jarod flipped on the dome light and peered at the directions he’d printed out.
“Turn that shit off,” Clem grumbled.
“Just a sec. In a few minutes there’s a left turn, on Hawthorne. It’s not too muc
h farther up there before we hit Blackmore’s pad, so we gotta take it slow. I’ll get out before we’re too close so you can circle around and hang tight.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. Jesus, you think I’m stupid?”
“Pretty goddamn stupid, sure.”
“Fuck you, man.”
“In your dreams, faggot.”
Clem slammed down on the brake pad and the car shuddered to a sudden stop. Jarod lurched forward, narrowly missing a collision with the dashboard because, for once, he had his seatbelt on.
“The hell, man?”
“What’d you say to me?”
“Nothing, Clem. Shit—it was a joke. I was joking.”
“Take it back.”
“What do you mean, take it back? I was just ribbing you, man. Fuck’s sake, can’t you take a joke?”
“I dunno, can you take a mouthful of broken teeth?”
Jarod stared, shaken but not too surprised. Clem could take a joke, most of the time, but not when it came to the gay stuff. He drew the line there. Jarod never knew why, and he usually forgot all about it, but at times like these it all came crashing back down on him. Don’t make fag jokes with Clem Lundeen.
“All right, I’m sorry. Okay?”
Clem glared at him, the dome light creating weirdly long shadows across his face. It made him seem more menacing than usual.
“I said I take it back.”
“You’d goddamn better.”
“I said I did!”
Clem grunted. Then, after a few awkward seconds of silence, he switched off the dome light and gently tapped the gas. The car rolled on down Highway 5, and neither of the teenage boys inside said another word.
***
After making sure that the backyard security light was off, Walt quietly slipped outside. He shone the flashlight in his hand around the back of the house until he located the dusty blue tarp. Pulling it down, he exposed the wheelbarrow and shovel he kept hidden underneath. Then he turned and shone the light across the dry, brown lawn where another large blue tarp was laid out. He placed the shovel on top of the dusty white mound in the wheelbarrow and pushed it over to the second tarp. He’d neglected to put on his dust mask, but there was hardly time to go back for it now. He resolved to try not to breathe it in. The last thing he wanted was a lungful of quicklime.
With his lips clenched tight and his breath held in his chest, Walt yanked the tarp to the side and revealed the pit.
The sour, acerbic odor slammed his senses right away. There was nothing like putrid human tissue being slowly dissolved in calcium oxide to wake someone up, and quick.
When he got re-acclimated to the shock of the pit’s offensive stench, Walt pointed the flashlight down into it. The lime was doing its job, albeit very gradually. There was little more than porous bone left now, nothing compared to the gruesome horror that once lay in there.
When Amanda passed away, her remains were of little use to Gwyn. The gangrene had spread throughout her right leg, ruining all of it and tainting much of the surrounding flesh. The blood was no good, either. Walt doubted if Gwyn had managed to eat a quarter of Amanda’s meat. The rest got tossed into the pit and covered up with the quicklime he bought at the hardware store in town. Then went Margaret’s remains, which were reduced to nothing but the bones. Gwyn had a feast for herself with that one.
Margaret elicited no tears from Walt. He barely knew her and never much liked the austere woman. For Amanda, contrarily, he cried at the edge of the pit more often than not. Although lately, that had begun to taper off. He was moving on, getting used to his new situation.
Life without Amanda.
Life with Gwyn.
He did not cry now as he scooped a shovelful of lime over the decaying skeletons in his backyard corpse pit. Not for Amanda, certainly not for Margaret, and not for the two stray dogs he’d lured into his yard with the promise of fresh red meat. They got crushed skulls for their trouble. Gwyn complained about the flavor and texture. Naturally, she demanded only the best—it had to be human.
When Walt was satisfied that the pit was in good shape, he re-covered it with the tarp, replaced the shovel in the wheelbarrow and pushed it back to the house. He almost groaned knowing he was going to have to repeat the process in a few short hours, but he was thankful that it was all for a good cause. Gwyn could finally—if only temporarily—be sated, and satiation meant comparative sanity. Sarah could live another day without having to worry about Gwyn’s ever-growing lust for the hot blood in her veins. And Walt would finally be rid of one of the nastiest thorns in his paw: that bile-inducing rotten apple, Jarod.
That was enough to slow his thudding heart, and even induce a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth, as he wiped his hands on his slacks and went back inside.
***
Sarah wanted to turn on her side, but she was afraid of reopening the cuts on her back. They were only just beginning to heal up, so she was willing to sacrifice a modicum of comfort in favor of not worsening the wounds. Besides, ever since Walt hauled the twin mattress up to the attic—soiled and smelly though it was—resting was a considerably simpler task for her. It certainly beat stretching out over itchy fiberglass and hard, splintery beams.
Not that this eased the raging hatred she felt for her brother. One stinky mattress for an unwilling captive and blood donor hardly amounted to warm feelings. She doubted she could ever stop loathing him even if the son of a bitch killed that disgusting beast and set her free.
But, of course, all that blood-chilling moaning and growling that filled the otherwise quiet night air did anything but suggest an end to this nightmare. What it did suggest was that Walt was having sex with that thing. As far as she could determine, that meant he was lost to her forever. She was on her own going forward.
Why don’t they just kill me and get it over with? Why keep me alive?
She hated herself for asking that question, mainly because she knew the horrifying answer from the lips of the creature itself. One of the first times it crept up into the attic on its own, while Walt was away, it peeled Sarah’s scabs off and split the skin apart. Then, when it was done lapping at the blood that oozed from Sarah’s hot, painful wounds, it hissed at her.
“My tasty…little…bloooood cowww...”
She shuddered at the memory. It was then that it dawned on her that she was going to be kept as a sanguinary reserve until further notice, or until the monster grew too hungry to wait for the next poor bastard her psychotic brother brought along for it.
So those were her options. Her future. Either she’d be torn asunder by a flesh-eating monstrosity or bled in the attic until her body just gave up.
She forsook her prior decision and rolled over onto her side. Nearly a dozen two- and three-inch scabs ripped apart from the small of her back to the tops of her shoulders. And as they began to bleed anew, Sarah wept.
Mitch, you lazy son of a bitch, she thought. Haven’t you even fucking noticed I’m gone?
40
“Out.”
Clem didn’t look at Jarod when he barked the order. Jarod sneered, ready to lay into his friend, but thought better of it. Clem was no great fighter, but he had an easy eighty pounds on Jarod. Little guys like him needed to choose their fights carefully, and this one just wasn’t worth it.
So, he complied. He gently opened the passenger side door, climbed out the car, and gently shut it again. Almost instantly Clem rolled slowly away, leaving Jarod in the near total darkness of the outlying country road. The only light he could make out apart from the dim sliver of moon and the few stars uncovered by threatening black clouds was the yellow porch light in the distance. Blackmore’s house.
He started walking.
***
At the hesitant knock, Walt turned from the snack he was preparing in the kitchen and went to the front door. He unlocked the deadbolt and opened it to reveal the small fourteen-year-old boy on his porch. Jarod gazed up at him with dead, emotionless eyes. The kid was shivering; his thi
n tan jacket insufficient protection from the frigid December air.
“Come in, Jarod.”
The boy hurried into the warmth of the foyer without a word. Walt locked the door behind him.
“I was just putting a snack together. Do you like crackers and cheese? I’m fairly sure there’s a summer sausage around here someplace.”
Jarod frowned.
“Not really hungry.”
“No? Well, more for me, then. I’m going to put some coffee on, too, but I guess you’re probably too young to like that.”
“Got any beer?”
Walt snickered.
“Nice try, Jarod.”
“What? My dad lets me drink beer all the time.”
Walt wanted to say, I don’t doubt that at all, but he held his tongue. Instead, he silently returned to the kitchen and began preparing the coffee. Once it started to sputter and drip, Walt leaned against the counter and smiled at Jarod. The kid was still frowning.
“Sure you don’t want that snack?”
“Said I’m not hungry,” Jarod grouchily replied.
“Okay. Then I guess we should get started. When are your folks picking you up? Are they here?”
“I took a cab.”
“A cab? What for? That must’ve cost fifty dollars or more.”
“No skin off my ass.”
Walt narrowed his eyes with a small laugh.
“All right, then. Do you have any questions before we begin?”
Jarod crooked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow.
“About what?”
“The play. Romeo and Juliet?”
“Sure—I got a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Why do I gotta read dumb shit like this anyways? I mean, what good is it? I’m never going to be like you. I’ll probably just sign up with the Army or the Marines soon as I’m outta school. Think this faggy Shakespeare crap’s gonna get me out of a firefight in Fallujah or some place?”
“No,” Walt admitted. “I don’t suppose that it would.”
“I mean, the world needs ditch diggers too, right?”
“That it does. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be one, Jarod.”
