by Scott Hale
“Go back, Mayor. There has to be more of these children. It’s no coincidence so many have gone missing.”
“Something has changed them?” Mayor Covert’s eyes were wide and watering.
“They may be marionettes. Something might’ve hitched a ride in these kids and is making them carry out its will. Fuck, I don’t know! I’m just guessing here. Listen… go back, get everyone to a safe place. Keep the kids separated. Use the rooms in the inn. One for each kid—”
Seth interrupted: “Herbert, we have to go. Mayor, treat this like an illness. We’ll be back when we’re finished.”
Mayor Covert nodded, and with a look of relief, he turned on his heels and went wheezing into the woods.
“You ready?” Seth went to where the land sloped and stood peering over the edge. “See the ripples?”
Herbert held the torch out as far as he could; across the swamp, black, oily waves were rolling outward. Slowly, he slid down the slope until he was up to his waist in the water. In a matter of seconds, he found himself swarmed by beetles and gnats, as though they were eager to welcome him into their decaying domain. He waved the torch back and forth, but the insects were unfazed. There were worse things to fear in the swamp than fire.
“There she is,” Seth whispered, swimming beside Herbert. “Where the inlet is, just beyond. Another part of the swamp, I think.”
“This is the sloppiest investigation we’ve ever conducted.” Herbert picked out a mush of bugs that had flown into his ear.
“We were a little hasty,” Seth admitted. “I just wanted to get this over with. We’d be out here for weeks trying to track this thing down.”
“Where’d the sheriff go?”
“It was morning when we got here. How did it…?” Seth pushed a piece of driftwood out of his way. “I think Sheriff Boone knows exactly what’s going on.”
“Why didn’t he stop us?” Herbert paused. “We need to get out of the water.”
Several frogs leapt from their lily pads as something slithered past, dipping beneath the surface before the investigator could see it.
“We go where the monsters go. It’s the only way to be sure.” Seth sped up and reached for the inlet. He grasped the roots there and lifted himself out of the water.
“I think he wants us to find whatever he and his wife have done and put an end to it. Too afraid to do it himself.” Herbert handed his friend the torch and followed his example. “I swear to god if there’s a leech on my—”
“Shut up, Herbert,” Seth said, giving back the torch and crouching down. “What is that?”
He had to strain himself to hear it, but they were there: dark words in the inky night. At first, they seemed so familiar, as though he could make out what was being said; but then the words became heavier, thicker, like they’d been torn open by some eldritch incantation and left to scab over. Herbert’s ears began to burn, to itch; the words became scratchy, harsh, like someone was sawing through his skull with a thick piece of rope.
“The white island,” Seth murmured, his finger pointing to the pale plot between two weeping willows. “That’s where it’s coming from. That’s where the little girl went.”
Herbert North lowered himself into the swamp and slowly waded forward. Boney trees twisted out of the roiling murk, their flesh the leaves that now blanketed the black waters. Mosquitoes washed over him in blood-swollen waves, taking what they could, when they could, because he was in no position to swat them away. He’d brought the torch, but then left it behind, as the dead things ahead had their own light, and he didn’t want them to see him coming.
Joy
Joy parted her legs and pulled out the snakes that had crawled inside her. Being dead had its perks, but too often it meant that things tried to take up residence in places they had no right to be. Since Boone had left, her body had become a writhing temple for all things scaled and skittering. Her children enjoyed it—they seemed to take great pleasure in probing around inside her for a small snack—but truth be told, it was an annoyance she could do without.
Cali and Ethan were standing over Joy when Abernathy finally returned with her offering. She had considered renaming the children, but they looked too much like their older selves, so it would’ve only made things more confusing. Sure, they hadn’t come out perfectly—Maribel had Jessica’s eyes; Ethan had Joseph’s fingers; Abernathy had absorbed Brian entirely—but she had long since come to accept the brutal beauty of imperfection.
Joy smiled while Abernathy laid the bundle of intestines at her feet. Then, like a bird feeding its young, the little girl stretched out her neck and coughed until she vomited up a heart and some toes.
You could’ve just used your pockets, Joy thought as Abernathy nodded and joined her siblings. Silly children.
Still in her white satin dress, Joy sat up and ran her fingers over the already fly-infested remains. The island shuddered. The fabric rippled and swirled, and where there had been nothing, there was now a body, or at least an attempt at one. Beginning with a severed head and ending in two detached feet, the makeshift man was a combination of stolen parts that had been brought here by her children. With a flick of her wrist, Joy picked up the intestines and dropped them where the stomach would be. With a snap of her finger, the heart lodged itself into a hollowed-out torso; then the toes were attached to the places where Cali had gnawed the last ones off.
“Daddy,” Abernathy said, her voice boyish, like Brian’s had been.
Joy nodded and lay back down. She tired easily, because it took everything she had to keep from leaving this world. “Yes, soon, my love.”
“People are coming,” Ethan said, his voice unenthused.
Joy cocked her head. “Hide, children. Abernathy may have brought us visitors.”
Abernathy’s lip quivered, and she started to weep tears of dirt.
“Hush, now,” Joy said, calling the girl over with a wave of her arm. “Hush. They may be the last things we need before…”
Joy’s eyes widened. Boone rose out of the darkness, his revolver pointed directly at her head. He was covered in sweat, and tens of ticks and leeches were attached to his skin. He was bleeding from the nose, and pieces of a thorn bush were still stuck to his pant leg.
“You’ve gone through hell to get here,” Joy said. “It’s up to you how you get out.”
Boone pulled back the hammer on his gun. He took a quick look at the abominations huddled beside his wife. “I knew it was you.”
“What took you so long?” Joy could feel the fear in her children, and it sickened her. They were connected to each other, and they reflected one another’s pain. “Did you think if you pretended this wasn’t your fault, god wouldn’t find out? You don’t have to worry about that, Boone. The only God in these parts is fast asleep, and he doesn’t much mind murder.”
As though he were processing each detail one at a time, Boone suddenly became aware of the half-completed corpse and stumbled backward. “What… what are you doing?”
“Children need a father, Boone. I told them you’d come, but if you don’t want the job, I’ll make someone who will.”
“Fuck you. I’m going to kill—”
Joy smiled and started to chant. At first, the words were familiar, but as she spoke and hummed, they became heavy and thick. The eldritch incantation welled inside her chest, and with every syllable uttered, the pressure from the ancient speech pushed against her bones. In heated shouts, the words split apart and the larva of hate and malice pushed through and bore its way into Boone’s mind.
The sheriff started to spasm. When he dropped the gun, the children swarmed.
“Only the best parts of him, my loves,” Joy said as her son and daughters tore into her husband. “But leave enough so he can find his way back. It’s time for Marrow to become the mindless mass it’s always aspired to be.”
Herbert
When Herbert finally found Sheriff Boone, the children had already torn him to bits. Like ants at a picnic, the gi
rls and the lone boy were carrying off pieces of tribute to their pale queen. At the center, a woman lay panting. As she panted, the island shook, for it was covered in the dress she wore.
Gripping the powders in his pocket, Hebert backed away slowly, bumping into Seth as he did so.
“We can’t stand here.” Herbert’s voice was so weak it was as though he’d mouthed the words. With Seth, he looked down upon the dress, where the satin threads had become porous, dilated.
“Don’t go,” the woman said, sitting up.
She let the strap of her dress fall down past her shoulder, exposing her breast. The little girl they’d followed here crawled over to her. The woman’s nipple began to drip blood, and then the little girl fed.
“Let me introduce you to our happy family.”
Oh god, I’m going to be sick.
Herbert covered his mouth. He looked at the other girl and boy who were hard at work on a second corpse, a ravaged corpse, using Sheriff Boone’s tongue, flesh, and veins to fill it in, fill it out.
I can’t do this.
His hand began to shake; his skin began to prickle. He felt a warm wave of malaise wash over him, pour into him; it pushed under his eyelids, coalesced in his stomach. His vision became dotted with red, as though the world had been rendered in pointillism. He felt his heart pumping in his ears, his vomit sitting lodged in his throat.
I can’t show her weakness, he thought, grabbing Seth’s wrist and finding it just as clammy as his hand.
“No offense to you boys, but men are shit. I’ve tried and I’ve tried, but there isn’t anyone in this world for me. Not yet, at least.”
“Joy,” Seth guessed.
“I’ve never been happier,” Joy said as the little girl, greedy in her drinking, started to cough up blood onto her mother’s chest. “Just stay still and take pride in knowing you’ll be reborn better—”
Seth raised his revolver and fired three shots; each bullet whizzed through the air and caught a child in the head. The little boy and the little girl flew backward, their gangly, grotesque bodies falling into the swamp. The breastfeeding child crashed into Joy with the force of the impact, drenching her mother’s face in arterial spray. Herbert, not wasting any time, emptied his gun into Joy.
Joy
Joy lay there a moment to let the men think they’d won. She could feel pieces of her face dripping down around her, but that was an easy fix. With the eye still attached to its nerves, she looked at Abernathy and the bodies of the girl’s brother and sister in the water. She’d expected something like this to happen the moment they’d left the nest. They hadn’t been her children, not entirely, so she wasn’t wracked with grief. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt to watch them die.
The men stood over her now and saw that she was still alive. No matter, she thought as she started to speak the dark words that had birthed her babies and killed her husband. But they came out wrong; they came out weak and limp, without impact and power. She’d spent too much energy on the children, on Boone; she’d used everything up just to buy a little extra time on this secret, special island. She willed her dress to dig deeper for sustenance, but the soil had long since been stripped.
The men knew what they were doing, and they knew there was nothing she could do about it. Joy refused to resort to baser behaviors, so as they cut through her arms and legs with their knives, she laughed instead.
Weak men, she thought, just like the rest of them.
With one of the men holding onto her hair, the other chopped through her neck until her head was severed from her body.
“Not enough,” Joy taunted, her head sideways on the satin.
I knew this was going to happen. Why did I bother?
“Going to have to try harder,” she said, snickering.
I should’ve listened to you.
“You’re not going to like it when you find out what Joseph, Jessica, and Maribel have done.”
The one the other called Seth reached into his pocket and sprinkled what Joy quickly identified as Damnation Dust across her dress.
She’s going to want to hear about this.
His friend, still nameless, did similarly, except he was throwing handfuls of Rapture. As soon as the materials mixed, green flames erupted over the dress and began to consume it. Joy then felt something like panic as the fire crept closer to her head.
How do they know so much?
“Grab them and throw them in,” Seth said to his friend, who went into the waters and retrieved Ethan and Cali.
Joy watched as her white satin dress cracked and flaked, and knew that this was the end. As soon as it was gone, she would be, too. She closed her eyes, and in the darkness, Joy saw her sister. Though she would never admit it, there was no denying that it felt nice to be going home. Sure, her sister would scold her, make fun of her, but in the end, they’d laugh, and once Joy had rested, they’d have their revenge, too.
After all, they already had Seth’s name, and that’s all they needed.
Herbert
After they had burned and buried the bodies, they returned to Marrow. Beneath a cloudless sky, the town moaned with the sounds of the dead and dying. Exhausted, Herbert and Seth sprinted sluggishly through the woods, until they were on the edge of Marrow and could see what had become of it.
In the hazy, moth-mobbed gas lamp light, the people of Marrow had lost their minds. In huge crowds, the gory remains of things that should not be shuffled and swarmed towards the nearest sounds. They behaved much like Eddy had, like Marie supposedly had; mindless, yet persistent, the human shells shook with spasms of violence, but never attacked one another. Their hate, or hunger, was directed towards the living.
“They’re dead,” Seth said, his breath hot and sticky on Herbert’s cheek. “Joy’s children did this. Joseph, Jessica, and—”
“Maribel,” Herbert finished. He watched as the creatures ambled through the alleys, searching for openings to slide their decomposing selves into. “They’re the undead.”
“This isn’t Vodoun.” Seth pulled Herbert aside, and they pressed themselves against the back of the nearest house.
“I don’t know what that woman did or what she had her kids do, but those are fucking zombies.” Herbert cringed as he heard one of the creatures scraping its nails across stone just around the corner.
“How did we miss this?” Seth reloaded his revolver and gripped his knife.
“Given the circumstances, I think we did the best we could. Not everything has to follow the rules.”
Seth nodded and leaned out from their hiding place. “Get to the inn, get our things. We have to find those kids before they turn anyone else.”
“The kids didn’t turn them all. It’s not possible.”
Seth pulled back and said, “Then don’t let any of them touch you. I don’t know how it spreads, but if she still has a hold on them—”
An old man hobbled into view. He looked at them pleadingly as the bones in his legs burst through his flesh, their broken ends sharper than any blade. The old man’s hands flexed, and his jaws started to tremble. And then in the blink of an eye, faster than he had any right to be, he lunged.
“Now,” Seth shouted, checking the old man with his shoulder.
They fell to the ground in a whirlwind of skin. As Seth held the zombie’s neck and pushed it outward, Herbert drove his knife through the base of the man’s skull and twisted until Death came for what It’d been owed.
“Herbert…” Seth said as his friend helped him up.
Herbert turned around; tens of zombies were pouring through the alleyway, each pushing past the others to be the first in line.
“Meet me at the inn!” Seth darted off into the dark, and several zombies followed after.
When is splitting up ever a good idea? Herbert gave the creatures the middle finger and ran to the right, where a house sat elevated off the ground. He jumped, caught the supports, and hoisted himself up to the porch. Herbert pushed through the back door into t
he house. Inside, a fire blazed on a table from a fallen candle. Covering his mouth, he hurried through several rooms, until he found the front door and went through it.
Outside, the main street of Marrow had become a river of blood. A horde of zombies were shuffling back and forth in its crimson waters. Screams rode in on the coppery wind, as townspeople were ripped from their homes and eaten.
Herbert caught sight of Seth near where they’d first snuck into town. But before he could do something irrational, like trying to beat his friend to the inn, someone jumped on his back. He dropped hard to his knees.
“Daddy, Daddy,” the little girl—Jessica, Herbert realized—whispered as her nails dug into his skin.
He reached around. Feeling her wet teeth on his neck, he yanked her over his shoulders and threw her into the street. Jessica slid in the stream of blood, her eyes, too large for their sockets, blinking out the gore that got in them. She started to speak, perhaps to beg, but before she could, Herbert put a bullet in her head.
He had the horde’s full attention now, which, if he were lying to himself, which at this moment he was, had been his intention all along. He jumped to his feet and ran directly at the creatures.
Twenty, thirty… Christ, how many people live here?
The horde picked up its pace, causing some to slip in the blood and be trampled by their blighted brethren. Hebert fired five shots into the crowd and sent three to the ground. When they were close enough to grab him, he ducked and made a sharp turn, causing the horde to overextend itself and topple over one another.
“Herbert North!”
Herbert paused for a moment, his attention fixed on the ten zombies by the carriage ahead, and listened again for what had been Mayor Covert’s voice.
“God damn it, man! Up here!”
Herbert looked to the second floor of one of the larger houses in Marrow—must be the mayor’s—and saw Roger Covert standing there with a hunting rifle. He waved to Herbert, and then fired into the group of ten.
