by Dan Padavona
Then her face seemed to waver, as though a mirage. Her skin became parched and dilapidated. Grotesque sores and scabs covered her face and arms, as though she had been horribly burned. Donna Kingsley watched him through red, hateful eyes.
“Thissss! This is what happens when you lay with your little whore!”
She cocked a scalded finger at him, and a vile grin spread across her lips; lips that blistered and oozed a putrid substance that reminded him of burst acne. Her mouth opened to reveal two teeth at the top of her mouth, sharpened to points—fangs.
Tom thought he must be still asleep, lost in the worst of nightmares. He was still next to Jen on her living room couch, and at any moment she would shake him by the shoulder, and the horror would be over.
Water boiled over the edge of the pot, and the fire hissed like a cornered snake. The flame burst higher in an attempt to free itself of the burner's confines. It touched the metallic edge of a napkin holder before settling. Another inch, Tom thought, and the paper would catch. Then the wallpaper, then the entire kitchen.
“Loooook what you did to your mother, Thomassssss.”
The thing that once was Donna Kingsley stepped toward him. As his heart raced in his chest and pounded in his ears, his stomach lurched, and he vomited onto the linoleum.
She laughed and drew closer.
“I don't tolerate messes, Thomas. You. Will. Cleeeeaaan this messssss.”
She was one step away when he broke free of his paralysis. He spun left and lunged out of the kitchen, feeling bony fingers brush past his hair. As he slammed the door shut and wedged a door stop under the bottom, she cackled from the kitchen, like egg shells cracking. Her shadow shambled toward the door and cast darkness where light fled past the threshold.
He stood transfixed. The door knob turned slowly, and then it began to rattle as it was wrenched and twisted.
Donna Kingsley pounded the kitchen door, which bowed and buckled from her unnatural strength. The wood groaned, and flickering light poured out through its sides. The door would not hold for long.
Tom rushed up the staircase and reached the top landing as the wood splintered below. He turned into his bedroom as the kitchen door burst open and cracked against the side wall. He heard her feet shuffling across the hardwood.
Swishhhh swishhhh swishhhh.
He threw the bedroom door shut and turned the lock on the knob. He leaned his back against the door and looked for something...anything...that he could use to defend himself, but there was nothing.
The thick bough of the elm tree out his window beckoned him. He crossed the bedroom floor and wedged the window open. The warm, moist night overtook the stale air. His hands fumbled with the release locks on the screen as the sound of Donna Kingsley's footsteps climbing the staircase drew nearer.
“Time to take your punishment, Thomassss!”
The release locks clicked and the screen shot upward. In his panic he had forced the screen out of its tracks. It stood askew, with precious little room to squeeze his body through. He would never reach the bough without full mobility on the window ledge.
The top stair groaned. She was close.
An absurd thought crossed his mind: How do you kill a vampire?
The logical portion of his brain tried to suppress the thought, but the depths of his mind, the instinctual segment, poured forth like a dam burst. And then he was sifting through mythos.
A cross.
You are a pragmatic atheist. There are no crosses in your room.
Holy water.
Garlic.
A wooden stake through the heart.
Swishhhh swishhhh swishhhh.
She was outside the door. Tom's heart raced. Throwing open the top drawer of his dresser, he tugged against it until he ripped it off of its tracks. Clothing tumbled outward, and he smashed the drawer against the floor.
The wood cracked. He raised the drawer and smashed it again to the floor. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the door knob turning. He smashed the drawer again. The crack of the wood was louder this time.
“Mommies know what bad boys do behind locked doors. I'll cut it off and feed it to you, Thomassss!”
Tears streamed down his face. He slammed the drawer against the floor again, and it shattered into pieces. The door shook with insanity.
“I'll tear it off and feed it to your whore!”
Tom groped through the pieces until he found what he sought. A side joinery had split down the middle to a jagged point. He hefted it, and it felt sturdy in his hands. He hoped it was sturdy enough.
There came the sickening clamor of wood splitting and nails ripping out of the wall, as Donna Kingsley tore the door off its hinges. She stood in partial silhouette between the hall light and the darkened room.
As she stepped into the bluish moon glow and doddered toward him, her vile cackle sent gooseflesh crawling up his back.
He brandished the joinery piece. Her eyes centered on the makeshift weapon, filled with disdain.
“What a messsss you've made of your room. Mommy's here to clean it now.”
He swung the board and hit her flush across the shoulder. He heard the sickening sound of brittle bones cracking, like stepping on peanut shells. Part of him just wanted to back her off and to find a preposterous reconciliation, as though she were in a drunken rage, and the next morning would bring sanity and forgiveness.
She was unaffected by his impotent swing.
“Tsktsk”, she hissed, as if he was a young boy who had spilled his milk.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
The tears came harder and rendered his mother in multiple blurs before him.
“YOU did this to ME!”
She lunged.
He reacted on instinct and thrust the jagged edge forward. She impaled herself on the tip. It ripped through sinew and plunged out of her back in a grotesque geyser of blood. She thrashed on the stake, her insides tearing apart.
Donna Kingsley's shriek was inhuman and malevolent, something between a wolf's howl and a baby's scream. Tom tried not to think about the sound and concentrated on holding his grip on the joinery as she writhed like a fish out of water.
Warm ichor poured down the stake, and the thrashing gradually lessened.
It took two minutes before she went still, and when she did she uttered a cry...a human cry...that reminded him of the woman who had held him when he was frightened and sang him to sleep when he was sick.
When he released the stake, she dropped to her side with the wood hideously wedged through her heart. She gazed up at him, and her eyes showed shock and a lack of understanding. He tried to wipe the gore from his hands onto his shirt and collapsed against the remnants of the bedroom dresser.
Her eyes faded from bright red to her natural brown. They begged him for forgiveness. As her mouth moved silently, her breath came in wheezing gasps. He urged her to close her eyes and rest.
“It's okay, Mom. It's okay,” he said.
His voice cracked. His shoulders convulsed, and he wept.
“It's over now.”
Then her chest stopped moving, and her eyes froze on his. The desk clock read 12:36 am when Donna Kingsley passed.
Nine
Jen Barrows screamed in the doorway to Tom's bedroom, and then she ran to him and hugged his shoulders, trying not to look at the macabre scene before her. His eyes were dazed, and he appeared to look through her at another life in a different time.
“My God, Tom, what—”
She saw the pool of blood and gristle that oozed out of Donna Kingsley, like an animal that had been spit out the back of a thresher. Steam rose off the gore, and it produced a stench that reminded her of decaying fish in brackish water.
She nearly regurgitated before she saw Donna Kingsley's face, all scabbed, blistered, and only vaguely human. The shock froze her stomach into a block of ice. She saw the razor-like fangs between Donna's parted lips, and the world as she knew it lost all sensibility.
She t
urned to him in the hope that he could somehow explain the incomprehensible, that he could convince her again that the sun would rise in the east, that there was still a wall, crumbling though it may be, between reality and the realm of nightmares. But there were no answers in Tom's eyes. He struggled to awake from his own night terror.
They sat in silence until remembrance pulled him back from the threshold.
The kitchen. The fire.
He grabbed her by the hand and rushed her down the staircase. The sweet smell of burning paper met him at the lower landing, and wisps of smoke drifted along the ceiling. The kitchen door hung off its hinges, while the queer odor of cooked meat mixed with the burning smell. Tom wondered again what his mother would have been cooking at midnight.
“Wait here,” he said to her at the kitchen entrance.
The flames had browned the edges of the napkins, which billowed acrid smoke. He reached for the napkin holder and cursed when it scalded his hands. He rushed to the sink and ran a dish towel under the faucet, then snatched the napkin holder with the soaked towel and dropped it into the sink. It hissed on impact with the wet chrome.
As she watched from the threshold with horror and incomprehension in her eyes, he turned off the burner and the roiling water eased.
He ran the faucet on its highest output until the smoldering was doused.
It wasn't until then that he looked in the pot.
At first his mind tried to convince himself that he was seeing a bloated cabbage, or an overcooked slab of meat. Then he saw strands of skin peeling off the object, floating to the bubbling surface in repulsive tendrils. The hair could have been corn cob silk if he wasn't sure it was human.
It bobbed and twisted in the slow boil. Its bloated face turned to meet his with sunken eyes. He collapsed to the floor, and she ran to him.
His lips moved soundlessly. He wanted to tell her not to look, not to go to the stove, but the words would not form for him.
It was too late. She already screamed in repulsion.
Within the steaming water floated the severed head of Chuck Kingsley.
Ten
Benny Marks yawned from the backseat of Rory Dickson's truck. He was wedged between Renee and Randy, his head laid against Renee's shoulder. Evan rode shotgun alongside Mary, who was cramped in the middle with Rory driving.
As the truck followed a funhouse maze of obstacles along Standish Road, whole trees lay across the pavement, their roots exposed like dirt-crusted tentacles. Shingles lay scattered across the road, and rusted nails stuck into the air, daring the soft tires to test them. On more than one occasion Rory had to take the truck over the sidewalk to pass the obstructions.
When he radioed Greg Madsen with the walkie-talkie and gave the police chief a synopsis of the street debris, Madsen told him that the damage was even worse on the south and east sides of town. Standish would remain a minefield until tomorrow afternoon, when the chainsaws were expected to work their way across town.
The power still operated on the west end of Standish, indicated by the scattered glow of incandescent lighting that dotted the street and produced evidence of life continuing. Yet most of the streetlamps were dark, shattered by airborne debris, as though the wind had dive bombed the light sources with strategic strikes. When Rory's memory drifted oddly to the cemetery, he remembered the seeds helicoptering down from the trees like enemy aircraft breaking out of the canopy. The connected thoughts quickened his pulse.
The truck was a half mile from Randolph Road when Rory pulled over to the right and stopped in a parking place marked by a white rectangle. He threw the truck into park but kept the motor running. The engine produced a low rumble that vibrated through the seat cushions. His hands gripped the steering wheel as he studied the darkened roadside.
“Why are we stopping?” Renee asked, leaning forward in the cab.
“I thought I saw something,” Rory said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
There were fewer residences on the west end of Standish. They were parked directly across from a white one-story house obscured by trees. Just ahead on opposite sides of the street were two parking lots. The right lot housed the unlit windows of a drug store and video rental outlet, while the left lot held a modest strip mall anchored by a grocery store.
Maples and hundred-year oaks towered to either side of the road, blocking the light which tried to seep out of the strip mall.
“I didn't see anything,” Evan said, his vision centered on the shadows spilling across the front yard.
Mary's calm slipped away silently, like water through cupped hands. Remembering the heavy footfalls moving up her basement stairs. Her eyes grew wide, and she relived the terrible chase.
“Where?” asked Renee.
“I saw someone move behind the trees,” Rory said. “I'll be damned if it didn't look like one of my neighbors—Bill Barrister.”
“What would he be doing out in the dark this far from home?”
“Hell if I know. Shit, it probably wasn't him.”
A hedgerow lined the sidewalk fronting the house. As pools of blackness spilled down from the trees and along the hedges, Rory cranked his window open. A light breeze whispered through young leaves. He could smell residual smoke from the fires, but it had lessened considerably in the last two hours. It seemed the emergency crews had the situation under control.
“Greg, you there?” Rory asked into the radio.
Soft static followed for a few moments, and then Greg Madsen's voice replied.
“I'm here, Rory. Over.”
Randy jumped back at the tinny voice of the police chief, as though he had touched an exposed wire. He had a desperate urge to sink into the seat, fearing Madsen could peer through the radio and see the guilt on his face.
“I almost hate to ask this question. But have there been any reports of looting in town?”
“In Storberry? I doubt it. No reports have come my way, but then again we've been swamped.”
“Any general mischief? Break-ins?”
“Negative. There are a lot of gun owners in those houses. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. That's a pretty good deterrent for someone looking to take advantage of our situation. Why do you ask? Have you seen anything? Over.”
“Probably nothing, Greg. I thought I saw someone run into the trees on Standish near the grocery store when our headlights approached. I'm probably just getting jumpy. Over.”
“I'm sure there are a few folks out there that shouldn't be. Looky-loos and the type. I wouldn't worry about it. But if you see any trouble, let me know. Over.”
“I'm headed out to Randolph to check on the Giovanni place. There may have been an intruder earlier.”
“Oh shit. She didn't get hurt, did she?”
“No. She's with us right now. Shaken up, as you might imagine. We're going to check things out.”
“Thanks, Rory. I can't get a black-and-white out there right now. Every resource is working OT. But I want to know what you find, okay?”
“Will do. Over and out.”
Rory searched the shadows, a feeling of disquiet building in his chest. Anyone could be hiding within the trees or beyond the hedgerow. There was a shotgun under the seat, but he knew better than to walk blindly into concealment. He called out.
“Hey, you there! We've got debris all over this area. It isn't safe to be on the streets.”
The wind whistled through the treetops and blew leaves across his vision.
“By order of the Storberry Police, you need to get yourself into a place of shelter and stay there until morning!”
There was no response.
As the hedges rustled in the breeze, the shadows seemed to stir around the home. Rory didn't like it. Not one bit.
“I think we should go,” said Benny from the back seat.
“I think you're right, Benny. I think you're right.”
Rory shifted into drive and the truck lurched ahead toward Randolph Road.
Eleven
Greg Madsen's police truck bucked on a small elm splayed across the intersection of Jensen and Spruce. A block north on Spruce, away from the freight train of winds which had rumbled west to east down Jensen, the damage decreased markedly.
The road stretched away before him, a tree-lined tunnel into darkness. The truck's headlights swept across the sentries lining the road, their branches intertwined.
The power was on, confirmed by lit windows which made the houses seem like Halloween pumpkins. Just one car moved beyond him, crawling along like a pill bug half a mile ahead. This was good—the majority of the town knew enough to stay off the streets and let the emergency crews do their work.
As the truck meandered northward, the quality of housing deteriorated stealthily. Initially, he encountered well-kept homes with inviting yards, some with white picket fences and blooming cherry trees. Then there was a paint-chipped colonial with a front porch that sagged like a broken jaw. This was followed by a few more pristine homes and then a gray two-story with a caved in roof. Soon the states of disrepair outnumbered the picturesque examples of southern living.
He hung a right onto East Avenue, where the housing quality dropped through the floor. He didn't like East Avenue. It wasn't for the number of calls his department responded to here. It was for the lack of them.
Violent crime was only whispered about within Storberry. Its streets were safe, provided, of course, that you avoided East Avenue. It seemed all of society's ills had merged here, like moths drawn to a flame. There had only been one murder case under his tenure, a knifing two years prior, and it had occurred on East Avenue.
He remembered an elderly woman had been carrying a bag of groceries down Spruce after nightfall, when she made a wrong turn onto East. She had become increasingly confused in recent years, so nobody was surprised to hear that she had wandered into the wrong neighborhood.
A truck driver on Spruce passing the juncture of East had spotted her body, a broken mannequin splayed across the sidewalk in the moonlight. Greg wasn't sure what disturbed him more: the woman's lifeless eyes staring at him as her blood pooled beneath her, or the fact that nobody within the decrepit bordering parcels had cared enough to report it. No witnesses, no murder weapon. Murder unsolved.
