by Tim Waggoner
The spot behind Aaron’s left ear itched, and without thinking he reached up to scratch it. When he lowered his hand, he saw that it was full of his hair. Clumps of it, all smeared with goo from the bottom of the slim pit. Caroline had said the shit could dissolve clothing in a short time. What effect might the gunk have on living flesh? He glanced over at Gerald’s scab-dotted head and wondered if the man might’ve lost his hair in a similar fashion. The thought made Aaron shiver, and he dropped his hair to floor of the car, watching the strands drift down to settled amidst crumpled fast-food sandwich wrappers and bags.
Gerald turned to Aaron and grinned. At first, Aaron thought the lunatic was going to comment on his sudden hair loss, but instead he said, “We’re here.” He brought the Beetle to a stop midway between the house and the barn, parked, and killed the engine.
“Ready to meet the others?” Gerald asked.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose.” The itching had grown worse, and now Aaron’s scalp felt as if it were being nibbled on by thousands of fire ants. He started to reach up to scratch, thought of Gerald’s nervous gesture, then put his hand back down on the seat beside him.
“Before we go meet your friends, do you have a hose or something you can use to wash this crap off of me?”
“Sure,” Gerald said. “I’ll be glad to help — provided you let me save as much as I can in a bucket.”
Aaron’s stomach did a flip at the thought of what use Gerald and his fellow dements might put the salvaged slime to. But he wanted to get the crud off him before he lost a nose, an ear, his eyes, his lips …
“Sure, whatever.”
True to Gerald’s words, there was a hose coiled on the ground at the side of the farmhouse. The house itself was in a terrible state of disrepair — paint flaking, porch subsiding, windows cracked if they still had panes at all. Aaron doubted anyone had lived there in the last thirty years. But then, maybe that’s the way the Forsaken wanted it to look so they could remain hidden.
The house still had running water, though, for when Gerald turned the valve, spray blasted out of the hose’s nozzle. Gerald quickly showered him off, the water cold and sharp as ice-needles, and then turned the water off.
“Better?” Gerald asked before peering into the metal bucket he’d placed by Aaron’s right leg to catch some of the slime.
Aaron gritted his teeth to keep them from chattering. “I might be if I hadn’t been so dazed that I left my shirt back at the pit.”
“You’ll dry soon enough. Let’s go. The others are waiting.” Gerald left the bucket of slime and water where it was and started walking toward the barn.
Ignoring the bucket — and doing his best not to imagine what Gerald might do with the leftover slime — Aaron reached up to probe the matted hair plastered to his scalp. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he’d lost a bit more hair thanks to the hose’s water pressure. Then he realized something — this was it! Gerald had left him alone. He could make a break for it. His muscles tensed as he prepared to run.
“Don’t bother,” Gerald called back over his shoulder as he rubbed his scalp yet again. “We’ll just track you down.”
Aaron hesitated for a moment. Then, still shivering, he crossed his arms over his chest in a futile attempt to seek warmth and followed Gerald to the barn. The building was just as worn and battered as the farmhouse. It might’ve been red once, but time and the elements had leeched all color from the wood, leaving it an almost white gray. The structure leaned slightly to the left, as if it were being pushed by silent winds. The ground in front of the large sliding door was bare, as if it had been tainted by some blight and vegetation now refused to grow there.
Gerald walked up to the door, gripped a rusted metal handle bolted to the gray wood, and pulled. Aaron expected it to make a grinding-groaning sound, but the door moved smoothly along its track, as if it were the only object on the farm that was regularly maintained. Before the door was even halfway open, the smell rolled out like a wall of rancid fog. Aaron’s nasal passages burned and his eyes watered, and he found himself stepping backward in vain attempt to escape the olfactory assault. He’d thought the slime in the bottom of the pit where he’d thrown Bryan was awful, but it was nothing compared to this stink. It was almost a living vapor wafting outward from the interior of the barn, reaching toward him, hoping to enter his body through nostrils, mouth, pores …
When the door was open all the way, Gerald walked over to Aaron, gripped him by the elbow and steered him toward the barn. Aaron wanted to resist, but he allowed Gerald to lead him forward. Maybe he had slipped back into a state of shock, or maybe he’d experienced so many strange and awful things in the last few days that he was beginning to become numb to them. Whatever the reason, he accompanied Gerald through the large open doorway and into the barn — and immediately wished he hadn’t.
The inside of the barn was illuminated by harsh bright work lights set atop metal poles. Three people were present, one woman and two men, all of them obviously dements like Gerald. They were filthy and dressed in stained, tattered clothes. The woman’s gray hair was twisted into long braids with sharp bits of what looked like bone threaded into them. One man had thick black hair, no eyebrows, and a toothless grin, while the second was older, perhaps in his sixties, his face a ruined, puckered mask of scar tissue. None of the three looked in Aaron and Gerald’s direction, for they were too focused on their work. The toothless man held a severed arm — a young woman’s from the look of it — while Bone-Braids ran a needle and thread through the ragged stump where the limb had once been attached to its owner’s body. Scar-Face stood back several paces, watching as they worked, offering critiques and suggestions as needed. But as awful as that scene was, it might as well have been a tableau of three preschoolers collaborating on a construction-paper-and-paste craft compared to the gigantic patchwork grotesquerie that rose into the air behind them. It nearly filled the entire barn, wall to wall, ceiling to floor, held in place by a criss-crossing network of chains and hooks.
“Isn’t it marvelous?” Gerald spoke in a hushed, reverent voice. “We call it the Tapestry.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It appeared black at first, but then Aaron became aware of a low buzzing noise, and he realized that the black was moving, rippling like an ebon wave. The dements’ creation was covered with flies. And the reason for this became clear once Aaron’s traumatized mind finally allowed him to comprehend the full reality of what he was seeing. The Forsaken had used severed body parts — hand, feet, torsos, heads — to make their Tapestry. The pieces were sewed, lashed, and wired together in seemingly random fashion, an ear stapled to the back of a hand, four heads sewed to the stumps where a torso’s limbs had once been, a foot emerging from a ragged neck stump … Not all of the body parts were fresh. Many were in various states of decomposition, flesh mottled, gray-green, bloated and maggot-infested. Quite a few were little more than bone, testifying to how long the dements had been assembling their grisly work of art.
“It’s an offering,” Gerald said. “To prove to the Overshadow that we’re worthy of standing in its presence once more.”
Aaron tried to estimate how many people had been killed to provide the raw material to build the reeking, fly-covered abomination that hung in the barn. A hundred? More? It was impossible to tell simply by looking. Maybe if he tried counting the heads …
Toothless and Bone-Braids continued working to attach the latest addition to the Tapestry, but Scar-Face turned to look at Aaron and Gerald and he came shuffling over to them. He looked Aaron over, then said, “So you’re my daughter’s latest toy.” His puffy, distorted lips twisted into a shape that might have been a smile.
Aaron stared at the ruined face of the old man standing before him, feeling as if a cold sliver of steel had been rammed into his sternum. He remembered what Caroline had told him on the drive to the pit.
He told me he had a neat trick to show me. He led me into the kitchen, where he’d put on a l
arge pot of water to boil. As I watched, he walked over to the stove and submerged his entire head in the boiling water. Sometimes, late at night, I can still hear his screams.
Aaron had assumed that Caroline’s father — the man who’d founded Penumbra — had died. But he realized that Caroline had never said her father was dead. The man was here and very much alive. And judging from the number of body parts that had gone into the creation of the Tapestry, he’d been keeping quite busy over the years since sticking his face into a boiling pot of water.
“What do you think of it, boy?” Caroline’s father made a sweeping gesture toward the Tapestry. And though he didn’t touch it, the breeze stirred up by his hand’s passage through the air disturbed the flies crawling on the nearest portion of the Tapestry. They took to the air, buzzing furiously, their movement setting off still more groups of flies, one after the other, like a chain of tumbling dominos. Within seconds all the flies had taken flight and were circling the Tapestry, filling the barn with their angry, confused droning.
Aaron’s knees threatened to buckle, and swirls of darkness appeared before his eyes, obscuring his vision. He knew he was on the verge of losing consciousness, and the only thing that kept him from doing so was the fear that once he’d blacked out, the dements might vivisect him and add his parts to the Tapestry.
A cry of disgust tore its way out of his throat, and he turned and fled the barn. He ran wildly, blindly, without thought or direction of destination. But as he passed directly beneath the fluorescent light in the yard, he remembered: the farmhouse. Maybe he could barricade himself inside, hide, maybe even find a weapon to protect himself. He didn’t care, just as long as he could put some solid walls between himself and those lunatics with their obscene sculpture of dead flesh.
Aaron started running toward the house, doing his best to ignore the sounds of pursuit that followed him.
Kristen opened her eyes. Only half-awake, she looked at the digital clock radio. It was 4:10 in the morning. She rolled in the opposite direction and reached out for Aaron, but her hand found only covers that hadn’t been disturbed. Aaron wasn’t there, and it seemed he hadn’t been to bed at all.
Kristen sat up, fully awake now. She had a bad feeling that something was wrong, but she wasn’t sure what. She often had a nightmare that some unknown person was trying to break into their house, and when she woke up, she always made Aaron go check to make sure everything was okay. She knew it was a just a dream, most likely caused by simple anxiety, but she still couldn’t get back to sleep unless Aaron make a quick patrol of the house. She didn’t remember having that dream tonight, but she knew she would have difficulty returning to sleep. Maybe some soothing Sleepytime Tea would help. Besides, she wanted to find Aaron and reassure herself that everything was all right between them.
She got out of bed, put on her robe and slippers, and walked out into the hallway. She made her way quietly toward the stairs, not wishing to disturb Colin or Lindsay. Just because both of their parents were having trouble sleeping was no reason why their rest should be interrupted.
As Kristen descended the stairs, she expected to hear the sound of the TV playing at low volume. It wasn’t uncommon for Aaron to fall asleep in front of the television, and he’d remain on the couch the entire night if she didn’t come down to wake him. But the house was silent, and when she went into the living room, she found it dark, the TV off, the couch unoccupied. Kristen felt the first faint stirrings of worry upon seeing the empty couch, but she told herself not to get worked up yet. Maybe Aaron was in the kitchen. When she couldn’t sleep, she drank tea, but Aaron preferred a mug of warm milk to help him get drowsy again.
She passed through the living room and the dining room, then into the kitchen. The light above the sink was on, the only illumination. But it was enough for her to see that Aaron wasn’t here either.
Now she began to worry in earnest. She couldn’t imagine where else in the house Aaron might be at this time of night. He didn’t have a home office, and though he sometimes puttered in the basement, it wasn’t like he had a workbench down there or anything. Aaron wasn’t the hobby type.
Her worry began edging over into fear.
She was aware of Aaron’s … restlessness was as good a word for it as any, she supposed. After all, she was his wife. How could she not know? She felt confident that part of it was simply due to his age. There was a reason why the cliché of the middle-aged man suffering through a midlife crisis had become a cliché in the first place. Everything she’d read about it — and all of the friends she’d talked to who were dealing with husbands displaying similar symptoms — advised being understanding, tolerant, sympathetic, and patient. Most male mid-life crises ran their course without doing any serious damage to a marriage, provided there were no other problems in the relationship. But if there were other problems, the midlife crisis could make them worse until the marriage was beyond repair.
She and Aaron’s relationship had such a problem: they weren’t sexually compatible. She loved Aaron and believed he loved her as well, but their sex drives were almost diametrically opposed. She enjoyed sex and had no trouble climaxing, but she didn’t need sex very often. The urge came over her once a month, if that often. She wasn’t averse to sex at other times, though, but while she did her best to respond to Aaron’s overtures, it wasn’t always possible for her to accommodate his stronger sexual desires. She was often too busy, too stressed, too tired. Take this morning, for example. She’d meant what she’d said when she told Aaron that they could make love tonight, but when the evening rolled around and the chores were done and the kids in bed, she’d felt drained of energy. She’d hoped Aaron wouldn’t remind her of her earlier promise — though she felt guilty for feeling that way. He’d seemed to be tired too, and he hadn’t said anything. Kristen had told herself that they could try again tomorrow.
For some time now, she’d been concerned that Aaron was getting tired of her putting him off, though she tried her best not to. He’d become more emotionally distant and short on patience, especially when it came to dealing with Colin. She was afraid he was coming to resent her and that he might end up turning to another woman to get what Kristen wasn’t giving him. A younger woman who, besides giving him sex, could also make Aaron feel young again. Someone like Patti, who worked in Aaron’s office as his vet tech. Kristen was glad that Diane was there to keep an eye on the two of them. Or maybe that little tramp Caroline Langdon down the street. Kristen had seen how Aaron looked at Caroline sometimes when he thought she wasn’t paying attention to him.
Though the thought of Aaron sleeping with another woman tore her up inside, she might be able to look the other way if the affair didn’t last too long, and if it was a one-time thing. In the end, it might even be good for their marriage. Aaron could sow a few wild oats, get a last taste of his lost youth, and then they could go on together afterward, their relationship all the stronger for having been tested. But what scared her more than the thought of Aaron straying was the possibility of his leaving her for good. What if he found someone who satisfied him both sexually and emotionally? What if he decided to divorce her? What would she do? What would the kids do?
Kristen stood in the kitchen and thought. She wanted to go back upstairs, crawl in bed, pull the cover up to her chin and cry until she fell asleep once more. But she knew she should go take a look in the garage and see if Aaron’s prized Lexus was there. If it was, then that could mean he went for a walk. When they’d first moved here, he’d sometimes gone out on a night walk, especially when the weather was nice, though admittedly he’d never gone out this late. Still, the possibility would give her at least a little hope to cling to. But if his car was gone …
She thought of another cliché, that of the husband who says he’s going out for cigarettes one night and never comes home. Aaron didn’t smoke, but he might well have decided he’d had enough of not getting enough and left her and the kids.
Even if the Lexus isn’t there, that do
esn’t necessarily mean he’s gone forever, she told himself.
She looked at the door that led to the garage and stood there debating for a good five minutes. In the end, she made her choice and started toward the door. She unlocked and opened it, turned on the light, then stepped into the garage. Their Ford Sierra van was there — what Aaron sometimes derisively referred to as their kiddie-mover — but the Lexus was gone. Now she couldn’t even pretend that he’d gone out for a walk. She stood there, not wanting to go back inside, because if she did, she’d have to admit that something was seriously wrong and try to think of what she should do next. She wasn’t ready for that yet. She didn’t think she’d ever be ready.
Oh, Aaron …
She jumped when the garage-door opener activated. She almost ran inside so Aaron wouldn’t see her when he pulled in, wouldn’t know that she was aware he’d left and was worried about him. But she needed to see him so badly, and while she wasn’t a big believer in fate, perhaps she’d come out here now, when Aaron was returning home, because she was meant to. Whatever was threatening their marriage, it would only get worse if she continued to act as if it wasn’t happening. For better or worse, she and Aaron needed to deal with the situation.
So Kristen stood with her arms crossed as the garage door slowly rose, revealing the Lexus’ bright headlight beams. She grimaced and put a hand to her face to shield her eyes from the light as the Lexus rolled into the garage. The sound of its finely tuned engine rose in volume, amplified in the garage’s confined space. When the car had pulled all the way in the engine cut out, though the headlights remained on. Several seconds passed, and then the garage door began lowering.
Kristen continued to stand by the open kitchen door, shielding her eyes and trying her best to keep a neutral expression on her face. She didn’t want to appear either scared or angry, at least not until she had a chance to gauge Aaron’s mood. But she couldn’t do that until he got out of the damned car. Why was he taking so long? Was he afraid to confront her or maybe working furiously on coming up with a believable lie? She tried to see past the headlights’ glare, but all she could make out was a dim silhouette behind the driver’s wheel … and another in the front passenger seat.
