Since Dr. Treves told him he would crave blood as an effect of his illness, he had hungered for little else. He remembered having no particular taste for it before Treves diagnosed him, and he wondered if he was merely being influenced by the suggestion. “You are suffering from an anemia,” Treves said, “and your body will naturally want to replace, from other sources, what it has lost.”
Days ago, he had left a lamb chop wrapped in brown paper in his ice box. The ice was nearly gone and the chop was no longer frozen. He removed it and placed it in his sink. When it reached room temperature he would eat it raw. There was a half-bottle of wine in his pantry. He found a clean coffee cup in his cupboard and filled it half full.
Sandor sat at his small kitchen table and thought about his friend. The pain in Sandor’s joints and mouth and skin was almost constant, yet he still thought mostly about the suffering of Viktor, loveless and alone in the world, except for their exasperating and one-sided friendship. Unlike Viktor, Sandor had experienced love. He knew what it meant to love another person completely, to the point of self-sacrifice and unquestioning immersion in the happiness of the other. When his wife Eva, finally died of her peritonitis a year before he left Hungary, though his loss was great, he was overwhelmed with gratitude that her suffering was done, and knew his relief was an expression of his love for her, and therefore right and just. He celebrated her passing with a high mass, followed in the evening by a glass of red wine and a special meal, a pörkölt, and he suspected that his neighbors on Hruza Street thought he was either insane or evil. He didn’t expect anyone else to understand how grateful he was. He kept his grief a private and moderate thing, as Eva would have wanted.
Viktor had only had two brief flirtations in all the years Sandor had known him. Each lasted until they became an inconvenience to him, and he stopped investing the little effort he was willing to attempt, and the women lost interest. Viktor was teaching King Lear in his last semester at the university, and Sandor told his wife it was a sad irony that Regan’s description of her aging father: “He hath always but slightly known himself,” did not inspire personal insight in his friend.
After the sun went down, Sandor stepped out onto his porch. In the twilight and in the dark, away from the sunlight that seared his festering skin, he felt a little more comfortable. He sat on his front step and sipped from his cup of red wine until his stomach started to burn. Tree frogs burred in the woods all around him and whippoorwills called to each other from the southwest and northeast. He thought how wonderful it was that these creatures could carry on their natural lives and tendencies in spite of human destruction and influence in the world. He felt he had entered a new phase of life: the last phase. His working years were over. He was destined to die in a strange land. Away from home, surrounded by unfriendly and disapproving strangers who resented him and his countrymen. He would live in this small wooden house, a hermit in the woods, until his health failed or his money ran out. Either or both would come soon enough. It made his heart ache to think of leaving his friend here alone.
He wondered what further suffering his disease would bring. Dr. Treves had given him no chance of recovery and he knew the longer he lived, the worse the pain would become. It would be bad for him to live too much longer. If he only had the strength to end his own life he could avoid a long and torturous decline. But he believed, he knew, as Hamlet did, that suicide is the gravest of mortal sins and if he committed such an act, he would never be reunited with his Eva in the next world. He felt a tear well painfully in his eye and suddenly he craved blood, the blood that seemed to calm him more and more as his disease progressed. He remembered the lamb he had left in his sink.
He went back into the house and tore the paper off the lamb chop. He bit into it, savoring its bloody piquancy. There was a hint of decay in its smell but he bit into it again and again until it was gone. He wiped the blood from his chin with a towel hanging over the back of his kitchen chair.
Sandor noticed that the black spot on his nose was no longer completely numb, but had begun to tingle a little. One of Eva’s small mirrors hung on his bedroom wall. He examined his face in the fading light. The edges of the spot were damp and pink, and as he twitched his facial muscles slightly to test for sensation, the entire black mass fell from his nose, revealing the pink, triangular holes and septum underneath.
He looked at himself in disbelief and horror for many moments. His eyes filled painfully with tears and he began to sob helplessly. Why was God testing him in this way? Was not losing his wife and living for two years in this strange land in service to a friend trial enough for any pious man?
A loud crash and a spray of glass behind him in the front room caused his legs to collapse. Looking through the bedroom door he saw a damp mossy rock on his front room floor surrounded by glass shards. He heard the laughter of children out in the dark. Sandor made his way unsteadily to his front door. Three boys stood thirty feet away at the edge of the cemetery.
“Vernon Hobbs died!” one of the boys called. “And everbody knows you did it!”
“Everbody knows!” the other two boys repeated.
“You little hooligans!” Sandor shouted. “I’ll get the sheriff on you! His wife is one of us!”
“You kilt Vernon,” the first boy continued, “and Boyer in Ste. Odile and them three kids in Lesterton, ‘cause you’re a vampire!”
“A vampire!” the other boys echoed.
It took Sandor a moment to realize he had heard the boys right. “What nonsense!” he said. “Who put such nonsense in your superstitious heads?”
“Everbody knows!” the first boy went on. “Vampires is from Hungry and you’re from Hungry. You’re pasty and long-toothed and you cain’t come out in the daylight. And kids is getting’ sick and dyin’.”
“You ignorant yokels,” Sandor interrupted. “Superstitious fools! You think you can cure sickness by putting knives under a bed or running chickens over people. You have to use medicine and go to the doctor!”
“Got a present for you!” the first boy said as he heaved a long string of bulbous shapes onto Sandor’s porch. It hit the dry boards with a dull thunk, and flakes of skin particles floated down, jarred loose by the impact. It was a bunch of garlic. The boys ran off laughing into the darkness, toward LaMotte.
Sandor kicked the bunch of garlic off the porch. He stood for a few moments looking in the direction the boys had run. He knew they were repeating things they had heard their parents saying. He had seen mob violence before, back in Budapest. He had seen a mob drive Jews out of the neighborhood, and later, hang a homosexual man who was suspected of killing a boy. Sandor knew that fearful, superstitious people need scapegoats for their problems, and now he had come into their focus. To defend himself against these suspicions would be futile. In the morning he would cover himself against the sun as best he could, and take the train to Ste. Odile to see the sheriff.
Sandor went back inside and swept up the broken glass. He sat on his single kitchen chair. The fearsome and painful but essentially peaceful death he foresaw for himself an hour ago, was impossible now. He knew these people would never leave him alone to die in the dignity of isolation. He thought again about taking his own life, but knew, for his late wife’s sake, it was out of the question. He suddenly craved the comfort of more raw, bloody meat. That would calm him down, but his icebox was empty.
A branch snapped outside in the dark. Sandor found his butcher knife in his sink and faced his front door. A footstep on his porch sent a stab of fear through his stomach, and he thought: “What will become of poor Viktor when I am gone?”
The front door opened slowly and Viktor stepped in, breathing heavily and out of breath. He was holding a large burlap sack.
“Viktor!” Sandor whispered. “What is it? What has happened?”
“The worst,” Viktor said quietly. He seemed to not notice the hole in Sandor’s face. “Mrs. Hobbs’ son died and she has ordered me out of her house.”
“I hea
rd. Some boys came here . . .”
“I have no home, but now none of us do. No Hungarian is safe here anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“In Burley’s Tavern in Lesterton today some Hungarians were drunk and boasting about how they could not be drafted into the army, how they would stay behind while the Americans went off to the war. They boasted they would stay behind and take all the mine jobs and take care of all the abandoned wives too.”
“Oh,” Sandor whispered. “Such stupidity in the world.”
“A fight broke out, then a riot,” Viktor sat on the kitchen chair and put the burlap sack on the table with a metallic clang. “They burned most of the Hungarian homes and loaded the families on a boxcar bound for St. Louis. Five Hungarians have been killed. So far. The word is they . . . the mob, will be heading out this way, to Ste. Odile, by morning. Maybe a hundred men. They want us all dead or gone.”
“My friend, you must stay with me,” Sandor said. “We will make our way to Ste. Odile early tomorrow. The sheriff, his wife is Hungarian . . .”
“I am so sorry I brought you here,” Viktor interrupted. “For my own selfish reasons, I brought you here with me. A man so full of love as you are . . .” Viktor reached into the burlap sack and withdrew a straight razor, a bucket, and a heavy old revolver. He laid the things side by side on the tabletop.
“My God, Viktor!” Sandor said. “What is all this?”
“The gun is empty,” Viktor said. “As you know, the company store will not sell cartridges to Hungarians. Hold it in your hand when the mob comes. Hold it up and they will shoot you. Quick and painless. Over in an instant. I told Mrs. Hobbs, that yes, you were what they say you are, and you are responsible for the children. They will be here sometime tomorrow when the train comes, and your suffering will be over. I wanted to be certain your suffering would be over.”
“Viktor . . .”
“I would like to think I have learned something from you, though it may not seem so.” Viktor set the bucket on the floor under his left arm. In an instant, he took the razor and slashed his left wrist. Sandor shuddered in horror as his friend lowered his bleeding arm over the bucket.
“No Viktor! Let me bind it!”
“Leave it alone, Sandor.” Viktor smiled. “When Mrs. Hobbs threw me out of her house and told me the news, all I thought of was your wellbeing and how I could deliver you from this. It was a surprise to me, a revelation, that these were my thoughts at a time like this, but I of course knew it was only your influence. Only you! I thank you for that . . . that I hardly know myself at this moment. This will calm you as you wait for them. The blood will calm you, as you have said . . . as you wait for the mob.” Viktor looked down at the quickly filling bucket and smiled a fading smile. “Thank you for never abandoning me.”
Sandor felt his friend’s forehead. It was already cooling to the touch. Viktor’s expression had become bland and peaceful and unmistakably benevolent. Sandor smiled a mirthless, emotional smile, and was grateful to have deserved such charity, if he truly did deserve it: to have had such a friend, in a harsh and unwelcoming world.
THINGS
By Rick McQuiston
With great effort Chad heaved the corpse up onto the bumper and into the trunk, wincing at the heavy thud it made when it landed on the floor.
He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and took several deep breaths. He needed to calm down and reassess his plan. He still had to drive to the secluded location he'd selected (about fifty yards behind Melvindale Cemetery—a perfect spot because who in their right mind would trudge through such dense and mosquito-infested brush?), dig the grave, douse the body with acid, bury it, and then cover his tracks.
And all the while being sure that nothing escaped.
The thought sent a chill down his spine.
Chad looked at the still form wrapped in a blanket in his trunk. He felt a pang of guilt for having stolen the body, but what could he do? He was sure if he hadn't spirited it from the morgue slab something very bad would have happened. Something that would have expanded to engulf the town, and possibly, given enough time, the world.
He remembered the name on the toe tag: Joseph Delong; just an average guy who couldn't have been more than twenty years old at the time of his death.
How he wound up on a slab in the morgue didn't matter.
What happened to his body after he died did matter.
Chad closed the trunk and climbed into his car.
Dragging the body through the brush was not easy. Occasionally the blanket snagged a twig or stone and he would be forced to stop and dislodge it, all the while trying to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Fortunately, it hadn't rained lately or he really would have been in trouble.
At last he reached the spot he'd selected: a small clearing covered with desiccated leaves and sporting a natural depression that gave him a good head start with the digging. He gratefully dropped his burden and felt the burn in his muscles subside.
Chad doubted what he was doing. Was it really the right thing to do? Could he stop what would happen with some acid and a shovel?
He couldn't answer those questions but knew he had to try. The consequences if he didn't could be dire. Nobody believed him. Nobody cared. Not the authorities, or anyone at the University, or even his friends. Everyone said he was crazy.
But he knew better. He had seen things, things that shouldn't be possible but were.
After he caught his breath Chad raced back to his car to fetch the shovel and acid. Time wasn't on his side, and not because of the approaching dawn. He still had hours before morning broke. If he didn't hurry and dispose of the body it might. . . .
Pushing aside the thought, Chad grabbed his shovel from the trunk and the bottle of acid from the backseat floor. He held the acid up, studying the corrosive liquid in the moonlight.
"I hope you do the trick," he said to himself.
He then followed the same path he'd made earlier back to the clearing.
Wasting no time, he carefully set the acid down next to a large stone and began digging the grave. The blade slid into the soil easily, and within a short time he had a four-foot-deep hole dug.
Movement caught his eye.
Chad spun around and stared at the lump beneath the blanket. He watched it for a moment, its uneven contours creating shadows in the moonlight, but saw nothing.
"Chad, you need to get acid on that thing and bury it."
Heeding his own words, he continued digging.
When he was satisfied with the hole Chad tossed the shovel to the ground and turned to face the corpse. It lay there, right where he had put it, unmoving, inanimate.
He heard something growl in the distance.
He turned toward the sound, half expecting to see something charging at him, but there were only the tombstones jutting out of the cemetery grounds to be seen.
Chad stared at the markers. They reflected the moonlight back at him, casting an eerie glow on the scene.
Maybe I shouldn't have picked a spot so close to a cemetery.
A rustling noise behind him arrested Chad's thoughts and he turned to see the body moving away from the grave. The blanket it was wrapped in still covered it, but had become snagged on a rock and was slowly revealing its grisly contents.
But Chad was not surprised. In fact, although dreading it, he expected the body to become animated. It was only a matter of time before the things inside wanted out.
He only wished he could have used the acid and buried it first.
Mr. Joseph DeLong glared at the despoiler of his corpse with unseeing eyes. He sat up and the remainder of the blanket fell to the side, exposing his zombielike form to the night. His skin gave off a ghostly pallor and his arms twitched at his sides.
Chad recoiled from the sight. He could see the things squirming just below the flesh. They were innumerable, hundreds, perhaps thousands of the creatures using the corpse, somehow manipulating it like a marionette.
DeLong'
s mouth opened. Instantly dozens of writhing little beasts, multi-legged things with gnashing pincers where heads should have been, dribbled out of the grisly orifice and rolled down the chin, the neck, the chest, each and every one coated in putrefied fluids.
Then the torso split open. A veritable wave of movement spilled forth onto the ground. It gushed forward like an army of blind, leaderless predators, somehow working together to achieve its goal of securing prey.
Chad backed away from the horde, and reaching behind, managed to grab the bottle of acid. He then unscrewed the lid and flung the contents at the advancing mass. The caustic liquid splashed across the monsters, vaporizing hundreds in an instant.
But more poured out of the body. They spread far too rapidly to become contained, quickly oozing over the ground in an expanding perimeter that doubled in size every few seconds.
DeLong sagged more and more as the things emptied out of him. He became limp before finally collapsing to the ground, an empty husk, discarded after serving as a sanctuary for the creatures.
And under the cold glare of the moon the things engulfed the sole living person nearby, flooding into his body in a nauseous wave of unrelenting suffocation. They preferred dead tissue to incubate in, somehow reveling in the cold environment as opposed to a warm living one, but sensed many lifeless bodies close by, so instead focused on a means to reach those vessels.
Chad's body stood, and after grabbing the shovel, stumbled in the direction of Melvindale Cemetery.
THE FLESH GARDENER
By Jeremy Megargee
You’ve heard of bug chasers, haven’t you? Those odd ducks that engage in unprotected sex in the hopes of catching HIV. Offering up eager bodies and watering at the mouth, hoping a gift giver will plant that biological bomb inside of them.
Year's Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology Page 28
