Could some dog have hauled something out of the septic ditch? Darrell wondered. That would explain the claw marks. Some dog scratching around the hole’s rim as it tried to paw out whatever it had found, then carrying it into the woods to eat or bury.
The anguished howls of the neighbor’s neglected pet resounded in the distance, lending credence to this theory. Seen through the lens of this rationalization, the markings appeared innocuous, the obvious investigations of a wandering dog or vile varmint, of which there were plenty around. Darrell blew out a gust of pent up air and returned to the house.
He called work to explain that he needed the day off. A couple, maybe. Unless they wanted to catch a whiff of his new cologne: the alluring scent of sewage residue.
Now, with the whole day to indulge his every whim, Darrell couldn’t think of a single thing to do. Were it the weekend, he would drive out to his favorite fishing hole, but his only weekday routine was work. He drummed his fingers on the arms of the chair as he considered his lack of options, his forced introversion, his reclusive life.
They had won, it seemed. Locked him away after all. In an isolated cell of self-loathing, ever since the accident. Nobody had suffered April’s loss more than him. And guilt, in this case, lay only with God.
He pushed back, sulking into the tattered padding of his La-Z-boy recliner, chin sinking into the folds of his jowls. His quarrelsome mind chiseled away at his fractured psyche, until it finally shut off.
Darrell awoke to a world engulfed in noise. The same wet, warbling he had heard drifting from the drain, only now it was amplified to the pitch of an ambulance siren. Darrell sat up and looked wildly about the room. Electric pulses of panic streaked through his extremities.
The sound – the screaming? – was coming from the back of the house. He stood and shuffled towards the noise, his chest clenching as it intensified. So much like the cries of an injured animal, he thought, though aquatic and alien. A phlegmy, underwater gurgle of breath with a buzzing, insectile scream. The closer he went, the louder it grew, piercing his ears, resonating in his head.
Darrell tried to shake off the fug of fear and regain control of his imagination, which insisted on exotic sources for the sound. He realized the cries were coming from just on the other side of the back door – a flimsy piece of rattling wood separating him from the reverberating wails.
He exhaled a shuddering breath and placed a hand on the doorknob, preparing to fling open the door, but he couldn’t force himself to turn the knob. Instead, he sidled towards the adjacent window, pulling aside the curtain with palsied hands and peeking out, attempting to see what it was from the side. There was a recessed landing before the back entryway, however, which blocked his line of sight. He could only see the concrete path leading up to the door, which was covered in a shiny film of slime. Clumps of hardened jelly textured the greasy sheen.
Darrell let the curtain fall back in place, eyes glazed, heart thudding in his ears, blackness closing in on the edges of sight.
He stumbled back to the living room, trying to process the situation and decide what to do. He turned on the TV, maxing the volume, just to drown out the incessant wailing for a minute. He plugged his fingers deep into his ears, curled himself into a ball, and began to hum like an immature child defying a stern lecture. He prayed for reprieve as the TV shouted slogans for tampons and online college degrees.
Finally, drained and delirious, Darrell unplugged his ears and carefully opened his eyes. He turned off the blaring TV set and sat in the sudden silence, a cacophony of noise echoing in his mind. He stood, walked to the back door, reached for the handle and threw it open.
Nothing.
Well, almost nothing. The slimy film had evaporated, leaving a chalky residue, as after the recession of salt water. Darrell was reaching out to touch it when the rabid barking of the distant dog startled him, causing him to recoil and close the door.
His heart was fluttering, nerves thrumming. He struggled to control his racing breath and wrangle his irrational mind, which kept wandering into alien territory. The cumulative stress of this strange, disrupted day descended, carrying with it a suffocating weight. He decided to cut the day short, wading through his evening routine, skipping supper, skipping prime time TV. Depleted, he carried himself to the bedroom and undressed, falling face first into bed.
It was late morning when the sound of rattling glass aroused him from his sleep.
It came from the rectangular window above his bed - the sound of something challenging the windowpane. This side of the house was recessed underground so that the window was level with the garden, the room subterranean. He flipped over onto his back and squinted through the brightness of the room, the morning sun shining in overhead.
Cast against the far wall was the jiggling shadow of a figure, something standing just a couple of feet above him, a vantage point from where it could peer down on his supine body.
The rattling had stopped when he flipped onto his back. Now the shadow was still. It was a humanoid shape – starfish body, bulbous head. It shuffled slightly, a wet, squeegee sound coming from the windowpane, followed by a melancholy mewling.
Darrell directed his eyes upward, but the window was directly overhead and he could only see its edges. The shadow continued to ripple as the figure above shuffled for better position, the mewling becoming more urgent. Then the assault on the window returned, this time with increased intensity. The window cracked, and Darrell scrambled to the floor, covering himself.
The banging stopped. The shadow remained still against the wall, then slowly slid sideways until it vanished. Darrell remained folded over with his hands hugging his head, staring at the blank wall, listening to his own ragged breathing.
After a minute, he relaxed his arms just a bit. Another, and he uncoiled slightly from his fetal curl. He held his breath, listening for any signs from outside the window.
Hearing nothing, he slowly got to his feet, staring intently at the window. He crawled onto the bed, then stood and approached the window. It was smeared with the same murky film he had seen before, first on the grass, then on the back porch. A thin line of this gelatinous liquid had oozed through the fractured glass and was sliding down the inside of the pane. Darrell sensed movement on his periphery – a blurry flash, a glint of shimmering light. Then, before he could react, the figure stepped into view.
Darrell’s mouth sprang open, emitting a strangled croak. He stood, planted in place, paralyzed by shock, gaping at the creature before him. The creature was short – maybe four feet tall – its flesh wet and translucent, throbbing as it shifted and molded its form. It appeared to be shedding an opaque cocoon-like shell, which clung to its lower torso and upper legs, dripping in gooey clumps from its dangling, arm-like appendages. Its face and upper chest were completely clear, however, covered only in a residual slime.
Darrell struggled to turn and run, but felt captivated by the creature’s eyes, the only aspect of its face that wasn’t shifting, and a strange calm enveloped him; a warmth that spread out from his core. An ecstasy. A certain and primal understanding. An intuition that kept him rooted in place.
The creature’s creamy, unblemished skin continued to warp and pulsate. A nose emerged, then washed back into the roiling mass. Hair sprouted, then retreated. Lips blossomed then blanched. Only its eyes remained steady, holding Darrell’s infatuated stare.
Finally, as Darrell was drawn deeper into the creature’s gaze, its features emerged fully and took form, the resemblance unmistakable, almost a mirror image. Darrell placed both hands against the windowpane, stifling a sudden urge to cry.
The creature moved closer. They each stared into the other’s face. His mind went to April, then to his morning ritual; the shower, and later, the wailing…
Then calm overcame contemplation, and he simply smiled. The offspring attempted to mimic the expression, but its newly formed features were mostly immobile. Instead, it hopped up and down, emitting a series of birdlike squaw
ks. More of the ectoplasmic shell fell away with each jump. Then it quieted, and through its adoring eyes expressed a look of unconditional love.
Darrell tried the window, but it was jammed. He considered shattering the glass, but didn’t want to risk injuring the creature. He took off towards the back door. Racing around the side of the house, he almost collided with the loping figure coming around the corner from the opposite direction.
It almost came up to his abdomen. When it raised its ropy arms, they reached his neck. Darrell bent and let it grasp around so that he could lift it up. He adjusted it on his hip, where he could better leverage its deceptive weight, and waddled back to the house, staring reverently into his offspring’s eyes.
He didn’t notice the rattle of tree limbs from the forest’s edge as he lumbered back to the house. He didn’t see the hulking shape peeking out through the dense foliage. His attention was fully consumed by the inexplicably familiar face before him, and paid no mind to anything else. He hefted the child higher on his hip as he entered the house.
The creature watched the door close. Its body vibrated, producing a hum as from a tuning fork – its compassionate core content. Then a shocking pain coursed through its center, accompanied by an acute sense of anguish. Not for the loss of its spawn – it cared only for the void it had filled – but for the source of the distant weeping. It released the tree limbs and turned back into the woods, heading towards the sounds of suffering, towards the lonesome howls of the attention-starved hound.
THE BAYSIDE INCIDENT
by M. Scott Carter
Old man Withers was the first to die.
A mean, ornery bastard with a craggy, rough face and the temper of blind sewer rat, the old man hadn’t lived in Bayside very long - two, maybe three years.
The boys at the VFW hall had warned him about Bayside. They’d told him the stories, and the legends, but old man Withers didn’t care. He was the type of crank who’d sue a ten-year-old kid for laughing. He spent his days spying on his neighbors, complaining and making life miserable for the rest of the residents of Bayside.
And old man Withers didn’t believe in legends or spooks. So he gave the boys the finger and moved into the big white house on the hill that looked out over the bay.
Old man Withers should have listened to the VFW boys.
Barbara Chaney, the slender, brunette postmistress, first noticed that the old man had disappeared.
“Have you seen Mr. Withers?” she asked Bayside’s sheriff, Pete Jacobs. “His post office box is stuffed with mail. I haven’t seen him in almost a week.”
“Nope, I ain’t,” Pete said. “But if you want, I’ll stop by there this afternoon and check on the old grump.”
Pete was sweet on Barbara, so he didn’t mind driving the few miles to the big white house.
Built like a wrestler, Pete could just as easily toss a scowl as a smile. He understood most of the people who lived in Bayside. The people liked Pete and most of the criminals stayed out of his way.
Pete drove up the gravel drive, parked his Jeep, and walked up to old man Withers’ porch. He knocked on the door and looked around. The house was empty.
Doesn’t look like anything’s wrong, Pete thought. He’s probably off somewhere trying to sue someone.
Pete walked around the house to the back yard; everything - the small, overgrown vegetable garden, the haphazard pile of firewood, and several strange-looking oak trees with willow leaves - was normal.
Then he saw the back fence.
There, under the bright Maine sun, Pete found what was left of old man Withers -tossed over the barbed wire like a well-used rag doll.
The old man’s face was smeared and twisted like a bad charcoal drawing.
The body was naked; swollen and distorted in the heat. Portions of the old man’s scrawny, chicken-like legs were puffed full of fluid like some macabre balloon. Large sections of the trunk had been torn away, and there were places where the flesh had been eaten.
Pete vomited. He wiped his mouth and willed his stomach not to turn over again. He pulled out his camera. He took photos of how the old man had been torn apart and he photographed the purple, quarter-sized knot on the back side of the old man’s skull, right where the neck and the skull joined together. Then he took out his notebook, and tried to describe the old man’s smeared, rotting face.
He also made notes about the strange, sickeningly sweet smell that drifted on the air, and the tiny wood chips scattered inside the raw, jagged wounds.
Pete wrote everything down. Then he stretched some plastic yellow crime scene tape in a large triangle behind the old white house, drove back into town, and called Race Holder, the county’s medical examiner.
But by the time Race finished the autopsy, and the undertaker cremated what was left of old man Withers, word had gotten around town that people were being killed again in Bayside.
Jeff Currier jumped into his convertible. He redlined the motor. Then he stomped on the clutch and shoved the shifter into first gear.
A senior, Jeff wasn’t much on high school. Instead he lived for football. Tall, solid and muscled, Jeff believed that the world was filled with two types of people: fighters and losers.
Jeff was a fighter, and that gimp, Mr. Manguel, he was the loser.
Manguel kept him after class - all the time - and Jeff was sick of it. Today he’d had to stay after because of the Parker kid. Hell, didn’t Manguel know it was just a joke?
It wasn’t Jeff’s fault that the Parker kid was such a retard. Kids like that, freaks that drooled and pissed themselves, needed to be taken out.
His coach had taught him that. “Only the strong survive,” Coach said. “Strength rules.”
Jeff Currier was one of the strong.
Jeff had learned those lessons early, from the rough end of his step-dad’s fist. The weak just slowed things down; the gimps just got in the way.
Neither of ‘em deserved to live.
The convertible whined as Jeff shifted into third. He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and jerked the wheel to the right. The small car skidded around the curve to where Highway 61 made a big “Y”.
One stretch went south - the long way - around Bayside. Most folks took this exit, even though it took longer and the road twisted and curved. Going south, traffic was always heavy.
The other way, to the left, was faster; but few people traveled The Old North Road. Even though it was a straight shot to Rusville and eventually the Interstate, The Old North Road was hardly ever used - and no one went there at night. Rumor was, the road was haunted. A few folks, the weird ones like that crazy preacher, Reverend Allgood, said the dead still traveled The Old North Road.
Plus, the big trees grew there. The trees just made things worse.
Tall and straight, the trees looked like oaks, but their leaves - long and sinewy - hung down like slender, wooden ribbons, more like willow leaves.
The trees lined both sides of The Old North Road, overhanging it like a canopy. During the summer, the growth was so dense the trees blocked the sun, making the road dark and menacing, even in the early afternoon.
Few people went that way anymore; anyone who did prayed they didn’t break down.
Jeff Currier didn’t care. He wasn’t afraid. Right now he was late for a party. A few of the guys from the team had stolen some beer and Jeff was invited.
Jeff pushed the accelerator to the floor. It was getting dark and he had to make up lost time.
“Stupid Mr. Manguel,” he cussed. “If I ever catch that gimp bastard in the parking lot, I’ll fix him.”
Jeff imagined slamming his car into Mr. Manguel’s wheelchair. In his head, he heard the teacher scream. He heard the screech of metal as it snapped fragile bones. He saw the blood spray. The image made Jeff laugh.
Jeff didn’t laugh very long.
Instead, he pissed himself when he took a curve too fast and his convertible skidded off The Old North Road into the ditch.
Jeff jumped
out of the car and kicked it, hard. He didn’t have time for this. He flipped open his phone - no service. His friends were waiting for him and the party was supposed to be huge. He couldn’t go like this.
Jeff walked to the back of the car. Maybe there was a spare pair of sweats in the trunk. He opened it - nothing. He slammed it shut and kicked the car.
Right after Jeff kicked the car, he started to scream. And once Jeff Currier started to scream, he was the second to die.
Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One Page 11
