The Devils Harvest: The End of All Flesh.

by Glen Johnson

  “Yes Babel, they were great days.” Long sigh. “But it can wait until tomorrow sonny.” She then gave one last vile smile and her head simply lulled to one side. Like the others she was now dead.

  8

  Put the Lotion in the Basket

  The ground outside was mushy the snow was melting fast. Faster than I thought it would. No longer was it crunching loudly under my thick rubber boots.

  I stumbled as I dragged the old lady’s body around to the back of the farmhouse. I had every outside light shining brightly. I even turned all the lights on in all the rooms hoping the light would spill outside. I lived so far away from anywhere it was so dark at night, being that there was no light pollution around.

  The sky was clear, no more heavy-laden clouds; instead stars shined brightly, like a billion crushed diamonds twinkling far above. But it was also making the air freezing. Patches of ice were everywhere. Once or twice I slipped almost landing on top of the old woman. With that image in my mind’s eye I made sure I was looking where I was going, moving much more carefully.

  I lay the almost round body in a neat line with the others, placing her bag beside her. I just stood there for a few moments staring down at the three other mounds and the new body resting next to them, and wondering who they really were.

  Strange how that question was soon to be answered.

  Then turning I headed back into the warmth. My drink was already waiting for me.

  I was going to go through the tape from the previous nights, but for some reason – that I can’t explain – I turned the television on instead.

  Television doesn’t appeal to me much. You sit motionless for hours, your brain registering millions of images over and over. Thousands of adverts for things you would never need, or want. Pointless programs about redecorating your home, or shoving a large group of people into a locked up house or on an island and watching how they react. Why, is all I can ask?

  The only channels I watch are the Discovery Channels, National Geographic and the news channels, Fox and CNN. On some rare occasions if I have writer’s block or I am feeling under the weather I might flick to HBO and see what films are showing. Now soap operas never appealed to me. Why watch a program about an imaginary group of people’s lives? Wasn’t our own life interesting enough? Busy enough?

  The first thing that gave me a shock when moving to England was finding out that some television shows have been running for years: Eastenders – a show about a group of people in London – has being showing for twenty-five years. That, as far as I could determine from the few times I tried to watch it (when my curiosity got the better of me) was about people who continually complain they have no money, but always seem to be in the Queen Victoria pub drinking. Also there was Coronation Street – same theme, which has been on since the 1960’s, a staggering fifty years! Some people have grown up watching these same programs two nights a week – with the repeated omnibus on the weekends – their whole life.

  You found that they even referred to the characters as if they were real people. Getting all worked up when so-and-so was about to get married, and how proud they were that it was with a particular person and not so-and-so who was a nasty bit of work. A while back one of the characters was going to be sent to prison, for some reason or other, in the program, as part of the story. People actually protested outside the British Parliament, to have her released. Unbelievable.

  No that wasn’t the kind of person I was. Now a documentary about interesting facts, or even people who were real and had done something with their lives, was worth watching. But that was as far as I went. The main channels, as I said, were Fox and CNN even CNBC every now and then. Catching up with what had, and was, happening in the real world. Things that do affect us in someway, and not trying to hide in someone else’s life through make believe.

  I flicked through the channels ignoring the mindless dribble until I found Fox, the best news channel in my opinion. Normally it was talking about major incidents that were happening around America or the far reaches of Europe or the Middle East. But tonight it was a local event. A breaking story here in sleepy Devon.

  Several people had disappeared, believing it to be foul play.

  I sat engrossed as they described the collection of corpses outside.

  The reporter was standing outside an old people’s retirement home, with the bright halogen light of the cameraman’s bulb lighting up the night. Old people’s faces were peering out the numerous windows, wondering what the fuss was all about, and who was shining that bloody strong light into their small room?

  He was a young up and coming reporter with a little acne on his face, which the makeup poorly covered. His voice was an emotionless monotone. I personally wondered how he had chosen reporting as a career and wondered even harder how he had managed to achieve it with his boring flat voice. Possibly they didn’t have anyone else in the area, or his father had something to do with television, getting him the job.

  His flat monolog reported, “…disappearance. Similar to others that had vanished into seemingly thin air.

  “First, Peter Wallace Blackburn, who’s abandoned blue Ford Fiesta was found almost six miles from his Kingsteignton home, in the town of Bovey Tracey. There has been no trace of him, and there didn’t seem to be any sign of a struggle in the car.

  “His wife stated he was having chest problems. Did he have a heart attack and stumble from his vehicle? His body has yet to be discovered. Feral searches of the surrounding woods that run along both sides of the Bovey straights road, have yet to yield anything.”

  Bovey Tracey, or otherwise know as the Gateway to the Moors. Only a few miles away from my home.

  “…Similarly,” the reporters voice continued, “Cathy Sarah McNain, a mother of three disappeared from Torquay after not returning home from work. Her worried oldest daughter phoned police…”

  Nothing mentioned about that fact she was a prostitute. And Torquay was not too far away either, only about twelve miles along the coastline.

  I was now sat on the edge of the seat.

  “…Thirdly, James Andrew Clark aged nine, who seemed to disappear right from under his family’s nose from their home in Milber, Newton Abbot. His mother noticed he was missing the next morning when she went to wake him for school…”

  Nine, I knew it.

  Newton Abbot, being this side of Torquay and just after Bovey Tracey.

  “…Finally tonight Mary Ann Catsworth, an elderly woman who like young James Clark, seemed to disappear from her Newton Abbots Ford Park old people’s retirement home without a trace. Are all these disappearances related? The police today stated…”

  Catsworth. She certainly did smell of cat piss.

  Newton Abbot again. Or as some of my friends referred to it as, Hell’s Gate. But that’s another story altogether and could fill a book in itself, and I had already decided never to write another horror book. So that story would have to be told by someone else.

  The reporter was now making his way through the main door. The nurses were standing to one side. This was the most attention this little home has had in years. The camera panned around as the spotty reporter waffled on in his dull voice. A long assortment of chairs lined the walls, all filled with twisted rocking forms of old people. Coronation Street blaring out from the new flat screen television that was positioned in front them. All so engrossed that none turned to see what the fuss was all about. They were more interested in what was made up, rather than something that was actually accruing in real life right in front of them.

  I slumped back on to my couch, switching the television off and in the process I dropped the remote to the floor with a clatter. I think the batteries must have fallen out. One long swig emptied my glass, it burned going down my throat, my eyes watered. Or was that from the fact that now I knew these peoples names. No longer simply unnamed empty shells, their life force long gone. I now saw them as real people. Wasn’t that always the first rule, never to get too close, never to
know their names?

  Or that seemed to be the way the FBI portrayed the situation in the classic horror movie The Silence of the Lambs. Trying to get the hostage taker to see the person as an individual and not just an object. They were continually placing pictures of the girl’s life on the television, repeating her name over and over.

  I knew this situation was completely different. I hadn’t killed them. I didn’t have any say as to who would be next to walk through my door. And there was no way I could return them to life.

  Even though that was the case, all I kept hearing was: “Now it places the lotion in the basket,” being said in the husky voice of the kidnapper staring down the well. Knowing that it was in my power to put these people’s relatives’ minds at rest.

  I ignored the questions that were on my mind. Was I in some way responsible? Why wasn’t I trying to get in contact with the police? Was I using the weather as an excuse?

  I started rubbing my already red burning eyes. Just a short nap. Just ten minutes; I said to myself. I leant back to be swallowed by the large overstuffed cushions on my hefty wide German couch, and simply closed my eyes and shut the world out. Shutting out the images of the people they were looking for. Now simply maggot food on my back lawn. The last thing I remember was that line again, that the kidnapper Buffalo Bill shouted: “Put the fucking lotion in the basket!”

  9

  Rutting Season

  I awoke in my warm bed, taking a few minutes – while I lay there – to slowly come to my senses, to realize that I thought I was just taking a nap on the couch. I just brushed the thought aside. I was obviously more tired than I realized and at some point had made my way to bed. And I knew I had been using that excuse for too long now. It was my way of not facing up to the facts.

  I once had a psychiatrist who kept scolding me every time I used that very line. Telling me she didn’t know why she kept seeing me if I wasn’t willing to face up to the facts. But it didn’t stop her from charging me almost two hundred pound an hour.

  Strange how things turned out. That very head doctor knew my emotional problems, but she still became wife number two. I still remember the arguments with her. How do you win an argument with someone saying, “Good, good. Now doesn’t that feel better out than in?” She used to drive me fucking crazy with her psychological bullshit.

  A few times after arguments – which she seemed way to calm – I even wrote her a check for the price she used to charge me and leave in next to her purse. Now that did piss her off. Near the end of the marriage she actually started cashing them.

  I realized things in my life at the moment were not making sense, but I didn’t have any idea as to why. So in summary, I’m just over tired. Too much drink. Drinking, I thought, can be a real bitch. Or as the old saying goes: Life’s a bitch and then you marry one. Or in my case, three.

  I rolled over on to my back. The sun streamed through the thick beige curtains. Dust particles wafted around the hazy room after being stirred airborne by my moving body.

  Looking across to my alarm clock I noticed it read 3:46 P.M.

  I bolted upright in bed, with the sheets still wrapped a round my neck. Shit! I kept doing this. I never slept past eight. Not until after he started visiting me. Maybe he was in someway causing a drain of my energies? I had no idea. But there had to be an answer. It wasn’t as if I was over doing it. I simply wait around all day until he arrived. Most of the time I couldn’t even remember what I had been doing, but something always seemed to come along to draw my attention away from that fact.

  Another day almost wasted. And what about the strange dreams I’ve been having, waking up covered in a cold sticky sweat with my hair plastered to my face.

  I threw the sheets to one side and just sat there dumfounded, my eyes wide staring in horror. The inside of the sheets were saturated in blood! My head was now spinning. I swallowed back the bile, stopping myself from vomiting. The room started to spin. I felt like my head was inside a washing machine. I snapped my eyes open only to see that my clothes were soaked, too. My hands wet and sticky, hair plastered to my ashen face, but this time it was blood not sweat.

  I rolled to the side. Too late. I vomited loudly over the side of the bed, hitting my bedside table and smothering my alarm clock.

  Jumping out of bed I moved across to my bathroom, pulling my clothes off and throwing them to the floor. I vomited once again into the toilet. I leant there, naked, one hand resting on the sink to steady myself, the other running over my stubble covered face. More vomit. Then a dry retch that made pains shoot through my abdomen. There was nothing left to come up.

  I fell to my knees on to the cold tiled floor. Another dry retch followed by several more in quick succession, each longer and more painful than the last. I turned the tap on next to my head and tipped the toothbrush and toothpaste into the sink, then filled the dirty glass with water. I had to drink it. I had to put something into my stomach to stop the retching, just to put something in there so it could come back out.

  My head was swimming, not being able to make sense of everything that was happening.

  Where had the blood come from? And more importantly whose blood?

  My eyes pealed open and I was rewarded with the sight staring back up at me from down the toilet. I went to close them again. The last thing I needed to see was what I had recently eaten. But looking down I didn’t see cooked chewed meat, rather, I saw ripped chucks of pinky raw flesh, small red tubes and thick purple veins. I retched again; cloudy water pouring from me faster than it came from the tap. I looked like the girl from The Exorcist. More retching. Eyes closed. Strange animalistic cries rising from my gut, trying to force something out that wasn’t there. I sounded like a moose in rutting season.

  I couldn’t look back down the toilet. I reached up and pulled the flush. Hoping that if I flushed it away I could also flush away the memory of it. I sat with my head forward; splashes from the flushing water sprinkled my hot face. But the image remained, like a blown up still freeze-frame photo.

  I rolled back onto my heels; sweat now covering my body, running into my eyes stinging them. I spat bile into the toilet and tried to raise myself to my unsteady feet. Stomach aching, as if I had been hit in the gut several times by a heavy weight boxer.

  Bloody smears were now everywhere. On the floor – making the tiles slippery – on the tap and flush handle and splattered all up the wall were I had thrown my sodden clothes.

  I ignored it all and climbed into the shower. Fast piping hot water scolding my body, as I sat curled up in a ball in the bath, holding my knees tight against my pounding chest and aching stomach.

  I had no idea how long I sat there, head down, eyes closed tight. But it felt like an eternity before I could bring myself to clean up the mess around me.

  I bundled all the bed sheets together as well as my clothes and towels that I had used to clean the floor.

  It was so messy. So much blood.

  I knew the average body held eight pints of blood. And I also knew that it always looked more than it was. Like spilling a glass of water on a tiled floor. While cleaning it up you would have sworn the mess was made by a bucket.

  After I had shoved all the stuff into the washing machine I had to return upstairs to have another shower.

  This time I lay in the bath with the powerful spray bouncing off my body.

  I closed my eyes, not daring to think what had happened. My brain doing its usual job of blocking everything out. So unhealthy my shrink – turned wife – used to say.

  Funny, I had heard not too long ago from one of my American friends via e-mail, that she was entangled in a lawsuit; by a patient that followed her advise. She had told him to vent his anger in a controlled manner. He had then returned home and bludgeoned his wife and two daughters, and even his dog, to death with a broken chair leg. She is also facing criminal charges as well as disbarment by the Control Board over her unusual methods, because the man claimed she had told him to do it.

&n
bsp; The next thing I knew I was still laid out in the bath, but the water coming from the showerhead was stone cold, having been laying there for so long I had run the hot water tank dry. I shook the cold water from my body.

  I had fallen asleep in the shower. Shit, I’m becoming a wreck.

  I towelled down. With the towel wrapped tightly around my head I made my way back to the bedroom. I rubbed my hair dry, looking out through the small gaps as the towel swam over my face.

  No it can’t be! The towel drop from my hands to the carpet. My bed had been made. The sheets were the way I had left them this morning. No blood, it had all been cleaned up. Hadn’t I put them in the washing machine? How long had I been in the shower? Had I gone back down stairs and removed the sheets from the machine – that was set to dry after it had completed the washing cycle – and remade the bed?