Midnight Echo 8

by AHWA

  He looked around desperately. Nurse Osman was by the other wall and he tried to catch her eye, use his head to gesture from her to the girl. Maybe she could jump the girl. Maybe … But the nurse only stared at him blankly for a moment, then recoiled with sudden snarling refusal. She all but bared her teeth, no more sympathetic to his plight than she had ever been to any of the patients.

  The girl stood. In their opposite corners, both he and the nurse shied away. But it was not the nurse the girl turned towards.

  “What was …” he began, then had to swallow hard and try again to get the words out. “What was that?”

  The girl’s smile was sweet. A little melancholy.

  “There’s all sorts in the lonely dark, you know.” She waved his question away. “It’s filled with just so many wriggling things.”

  As she spoke, she reached up with her hands and held one eyelid open, carefully removing a contact lens. She repeated the procedure with the other eye, then held the lenses in one hand and patted her pockets with the other until she found what she was looking for. A small plastic case, which she flipped open with her thumb and put the lenses into. The case went back into her pocket.

  She turned her eyes back upon him. They were a fathomless black.

  “Are you alright, Doctor?”

  “What are you?” The brow above those black eyes crinkled.

  “I am Jane. I am your patient, Doctor,” she told him. “I have always been your patient. In a way, I am all your patients.”

  “But … but …”

  “I was your first patient.”

  She stepped forward. Stood tall above him. Cool, cold. She crouched and reached out to touch his cheek. He cried out and tried to shy away; her fingers were intensely cold. A frozen touch.

  She did not smile, she just brushed his skin with her own and, in that instant, he had a flash of memory, a recall unbidden. A dark haired girl, young and innocent. Crying. Bleeding from the mouth, from the gums. Teeth missing, clutching onto him. Pleading with him to stop, though whether it was to stop tormenting her, or stop walking out the door as he left her like that, he wasn’t sure. She’d been holding him back. Fun at first, but then tiring. Boring. Forgettable. He’d done all he could, she had no more teeth to plunder. That was twenty years ago. More. Thirty. His first patient. And lover. And victim.

  “Janey?” he whispered, staring up into the black, empty eyes. Her face, it was the same. He saw it now. Her hair, her clothes.

  “You left me so hollow, Doctor,” she said, peering into his eyes. “You left me gutted and empty. But nature, she abhors a vacuum.”

  “Please,” he whispered.

  “You want to kiss me, don’t you Doctor?”

  “No.” His breath came out in a rush. “No.”

  “You always did before.”

  Something moved behind her eyes, a flickering of the black. Like shifting clouds on sped-up film. It continued beyond her eye, a wriggling beneath her skin, down her cheek. Then it was gone. He would have screamed again, if he could, but no sound escaped his tightened throat. He tried to look anywhere but at her; anywhere but into those eternal eyes.

  He found the nurse against the other wall. He tried to call out to her, but she was looking to the door. While the girl was focussed on him, Nurse Osman was edging toward the exit.

  His eyes widened. She would leave him here. She would leave him to face this alone.

  He opened his mouth to cry out accusations of disloyalty, but ice-cold fingers clasped about his chin and forced his head back to her. Forced him to look into those aching, empty eyes.

  “Uhhh …” he uttered, a sound of fear that needed no words.

  The girl before him smiled. A row of perfect, perfect teeth. A smile that no longer seemed so innocent.

  “In my despair, I made the darkness a deal,” she said, leaning forward so her face, those eyes, was all he could see. “To fill the emptiness inside, to fill up the hollows. To give a home to all the wee, wriggling things.”

  Her lips touched his. The cold chilled him, froze him. He couldn’t move, not even as she pried open his clenched lips with her tongue, not even as she forced her way between his teeth, and his mouth opened to her against his will. He could feel her tongue enter his mouth, shoving inside him. It must be her tongue. He hoped it was her tongue. Only it kept on going, long and slim and forcing its way down. Moving in his mouth. Wriggling, shifting. Squirming. He tried to scream, but his mouth was full, his throat, full.

  Something began to slide irrevocably down.

  Big and thick and alive and choking him, forcing itself downwards, his throat clenching around it. He could feel himself swallowing, an automatic, instinctive, physical reaction.

  Swallowing it down.

  Swallowing the thing.

  She broke contact and stood.

  He continued to choke, tears dripping from his nose, struggling to breathe. He tried to reach out to her as she stepped away, but he only made it to his hands and knees as the coughing and gasping wracked his body. Something was lodged in his throat, forcing its way down inch by slow inch.

  Her black, empty eyes roamed the surgery. They fixed upon Nurse Osman crawling towards the doorway. The nurse froze in the face of that dreadful stare.

  “You should be careful when turning a blind eye to the dark deeds of others,” the girl told the nurse. “It can become a way of life.”

  The girl coughed a deliberate cough. Once. Twice. She used a hand to cover her mouth and when she took it away again, it was covered in little black things, tiny and scurrying, all legs and movement. The nurse squealed, a thin sound from behind closed lips. The girl only stepped over to her, holding her hand above where the older woman crouched and wriggled her fingers. Tiny black scurrying dots fell in clumps. Straight into Nurse Osman’s upturned face.

  The nurse screamed. The little things began running. Dozens of them. Hundreds. All over her face, her head. Across her cheeks. Up her nose. Through her meticulous hair. Into her eyes, worming their way beneath the lids. Nurse Osman thrashed about, slapping at her skin, scratching at her face. Pulling out that severe hold on her hair, yanking the strands, shaking her head.

  Clawing at her eyes.

  He only had time to glimpse her face once before the screaming woman threw herself at the doorway, staggering hard against the frame before she finally made it out. Blood dripped from where she had torn at her skin, strands of hair sticking to it.

  Blood ran more profusely from her eyes.

  He tried to reach out to the girl who could stop this. Tried a desperate plea.

  “Ja … Janey …”

  It was the only word he could force out, after swallowing and swallowing. On his hands and knees, reaching out to her.

  The girl just stood in the doorway, looking around as if to check she had forgotten nothing. Then she pulled her handbag over her shoulder and fished inside it. She pulled out a pair of dark sunglasses, which she put to her face.

  “Janeeeey!”

  “Sorry, Doctor, but I made a deal. And you were it.”

  The glasses went over her black eyes. The corner of her lip turned up in a twisted smile. Then she turned and walked out. Leaving him there alone, all alone, coughing and retching and shivering on the floor.

  His stomach heaved. Something came back up, through his throat. A foreign object his body was trying to reject, his stomach in spasms, forcing it out of him. Coughing and coughing until it landed with a splat on the floor.

  A tiny black wriggling thing.

  He tried to scream, but his throat was blocked again, and choking took hold now as his body fought, and failed, to rid itself of all that twisted inside him. He could feel it in his gut, squirming, worming, coiling away. Pushing and tearing, finding the hollows inside him and nesting. Now nibbling,
now biting. In his chest. Beneath his skin. He tried to crawl forward, but his elbows gave way, his hips, his knees. His bones were being gnawed upon. His bowels released themselves in one final fully-functional act and he barely noticed.

  There was no-one to help. He was alone. Alone in his surgery.

  Alone except for the things inside. Eating his inside, twisting and wriggling and making room for themselves. Then he looked down and saw his hand and choked on one last impossible scream.

  His finger. The bitten finger. It was black. Beneath the pierced latex glove, it was the black of darkness, the black of death, and it was spreading. A creeping darkness taking him, hollowing him out.

  Making a home for all the wee, wriggling things.

  Coming Home

  Marge Simon + Sandy DeLuca

  The sidewalks empty with

  the setting sun as snow flurries

  dust the pavement, christen the

  street lights with frost.

  Shadows move across rooftops

  of a brownstone, my destination.

  Next door, neon lights from

  the House of Chong flicker off and on.

  In a booth by the window, Asian men

  sip sake, steam wafting from their plates.

  They turn to gaze my way, faces

  inscrutable, eyes blank as death.

  One of them slowly closes the blinds,

  his gaze fastened on me.

  I’m drawn into the dark history

  behind the secrets of this block.

  A light goes out in the brownstone.

  Someone peeks through the curtains,

  beckons me to the door.

  A woman stands in twilight,

  black velvet dress touching

  the tips of her ankle boots.

  Brass bracelets jingle,

  blonde hair tousled.

  “You didn’t forget. Welcome back.”

  Her icy lips brush my cheek.

  Taking her hand, I climb the stairs,

  “You got my card I see.”

  I nod, wondering what sort of spell

  she’d put upon the card, yet knowing

  it didn’t matter anymore—if I’d been

  here before, it was not in human form.

  At last, I’d come home.

  Pigroot Flat

  Jason Fischer

  The flies should have given fair warning to Hazel. That, or Codger straining at his leash and barking like an idiot. But the dog was asleep, his feet twitching in a dream. Hazel was wool-gathering in the garden, turning pigshit into the red earth and wondering if anything would grow. A dozen flies became a hundred, then the tin-cans began to rattle.

  Dropping the shovel, Hazel ran.

  Swearing at the useless dog, she knocked him in the ribs with her boot. Codger barked then, barked for all he was worth. Hazel hauled him along by the collar, and the stupid mutt yipped excitedly, doing his best to wriggle out of her grip.

  Hazel had done a turn or two as a roustabout, and years spent throwing sheep and feed gave her ropy arms strength. More cans rattled, and she dragged the pig-dog up the ladder, even as he yipped and gagged and choked on his collar.

  Early on she’d spent a whole day on the roof, and nightfall saw her sunburnt and thirsty. She had a camp up there now, slept there most nights. A beach umbrella, food and water, a swag and some chairs. The old rifle and the CB, for all either were worth. Codger couldn’t be trusted not to fall off the bloody roof, and so he was tied to the TV antenna.

  He barked enough to do himself an injury. Hazel sighed, and watched as her visitors ran around the yard, buggering everything up. Dozens of them today, tripping over the ankle-high fencing wire, rattling the tin cans and cowbells she’d attached every few feet.

  They were in the garden now, knocking over stakes and squashing the seedlings. The sound of breaking glass came from the green-house, and they even tried the doors on the four-wheel drive, chattering excitedly as they pounded on the windows.

  “Ba Ba Ba!” they shouted gleefully. HAZEL’S ECO TOURS, a dusty decal read on the driver’s side door. The tires were flat, the engine out and in pieces.

  “Stupid bastards,” Hazel said, wincing as they clattered around on the porch, ran through the house underneath her. It got that it wasn’t even worth fixing up the doors and windows, so she just left everything open now. That way, they’d go through the house with a minimum of damage, and pour out into the backyard when they got bored.

  Hazel had set up a playground to draw them out. Toys, bikes, footballs, even a swing-set. She’d visited the Halletts recently, her neighbours from ten clicks up the road. They’d had kids, probably all dead now. Their farm was silent, and she never cared to linger long.

  The ladder scraped along the guttering, and Hazel swore. She dropped her half-rolled cigarette, and slid across the hot tiles, grabbing at the top rung. There was resistance at the other end, and she peered over the side. A rotten face stared up at her.

  A woman, a few days on the wrong side of dead. She should have been so much rotten meat, but here she was, smiling up at Hazel, hauling on the ladder for all she was worth. The stink was enough to make Hazel gag, and almost every inch of the walking corpse was covered in flies.

  “Play?” the dead woman said, rotten slug of a tongue still working in her mouth. In time, she would become like her idiot friends, speaking in an autistic babble, finally communicating with nothing but the click of teeth, the excited wheeze of maggoty lungs. The fresh ones liked to have a chat.

  Hazel let go of the ladder, watched as it clattered to the red earth. The dead woman tried to raise it up again, couldn’t quite work out the angle. She gave up the attempt to reach the roof and stood underneath Hazel, waving cheerfully. Fetching up another cigarette with shaking hands, Hazel looked down at the corpse, tried to recognize who it was. Probably someone from town, or hiding out on one of the stations. Underneath the shroud of flies, the dead woman wore dusty jeans and a flanno, torn to strips now.

  Near as she could tell, the dead woman had been beautiful once. Maybe a tourist, or some fool from the coast, looking to snag a rich farmer. Hazel felt angry at the thought, and then weird, the way she remembered when she saw someone prettier than her. Jealous, wanting to belong to their world.

  Now, the pretty girl was just dead meat. Hazel shook her head, vanished the dark thoughts. Everything was different now, and Hazel needed to get used to it.

  Codger was going nuts. He stretched out as far as the leash would allow, snarling along the gutter’s edge. The TV antennae strained, and bent with a worrying creak.

  “Doggy!” the dead woman shrieked with delight, pointing. “Dog doggy. Doggy. Play.”

  Hazel looked over at her campsite, wondered if it was worth fetching Gilbo’s gun. A big .303, it would drop anything worth dropping as he’d often reminded her after a few beers.

  “Play!” the dead woman insisted, reaching upwards as if in benediction. Codger yipped and hauled at his collar till he was bug-eyed, teeth and scrap of tongue dancing along the edge of the gutter.

  They were like something out of the old science-fiction movies, like at the picture theatre when Gilbo was courting her. The recently-deceased, risen from death and come for the living. But in none of the B-grade horror flicks had the ghouls been like this.

  Idiots. Cheerful monsters, who came calling like the Sandlot Kids. When they caught something living, they’d swarm in, babbling and chatting, smearing their rotten fingers all over the poor bugger, slobbering and kissing them.

  That was all it took. You’d be dead in an hour, and up and walking by sunset. They didn’t need to bite you, not these idiot dead things. They killed you with love, doomed you with a toddler’s affection.

&nb
sp; Hazel considered their affliction, and decided that she understood them all too well. She had a grudging respect for these lost souls, exasperation rather than anger as they wrecked the place. Turned out it was hard to hate something that loved you back.

  The dead woman was caught up in a stream of corpses that poured out of the house. A man who was almost rotted down to bone carried Hazel’s toaster. Another an old record. The walking corpses made for the impromptu playground, and the dead woman waved at Hazel.

  “Bye!” she called. “Bye doggy!”

  Hazel watched the corpses at play, and realised that her distraction worked too well. They clambered over the swingset, and lined up patiently behind the slippery dip. Normally, they’d have lost interest and moved on by now.

  There was a pattern to these visits—gangs of the friendly dead visited all these old holdings at least once a month, and back again on their way to town. She’d seen groups heading north to Darwin, others south and maybe all the way down to Alice.

  She picked up the rifle. Grimaced. Set it down by the water container. Codger looked up from his paws, whimpered with something that might have been boredom or frustration.

  Only a dozen or so of the idiot dead, but she couldn’t bring herself to shoot them. They were dangerous, she reasoned, the way that a snake or a dingo could be dangerous. Just part of their nature, and they couldn’t help the way they were put together.

  They were dead once, but the rules for death had changed.

  Even as she watched the joyful corpses, she found her eyes drawn to the dam. A broken tractor lurked by the water, jerry-rigged with a digging bucket. The metal teeth rested on a bank of cracked earth, mud once.