But he had to know, to get some sense of what they might do next. If they’d really already figured out how to find his family then moving was no guarantee anyway. Maybe there was some way to bring their fucked up game to an absolute end.
He walked to the end of his driveway, head on swivel, scanning for movement.
There was something in the mailbox: the photograph from his family album. Him and Julie. Father’s Day a few years back. Only the picture wasn’t the same anymore. Julie’s eyes were swirled out with purple-black ink. Above their heads was a note:
YOUR OFFERING HAS BEEN ACCEPTED
His phone vibrated. A new text: Home soon. Jules needed a few more things from the house and we couldn’t wait to see you.
The time signature on the message looked like it was sent forty-five minutes ago, which meant Claire would already be home.
How was that possible?
Is that even really from Claire?
Roger glanced back down at the vandalized photo and found he couldn’t bear the sight of what they’d done to his daughter’s eyes. He started to crumple the photo and that’s when he noticed the writing on the back.
HEY BIG GUY
WE HAVE THEM NOW
& THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL
& SO SOFT
The message fell from Roger’s hands.
NO.
He rushed into the house and grabbed the same massive kitchen knife he’d armed himself with on the night of the burglary. Within moments he was running down the street toward 17th with murder on his mind.
THE BACK DOOR WAS open.
There were many things about that house which might have stopped a reasonable man from entering. The off-putting smell. The disconcerting softness of the ground once you took a single step onto the property. But for Roger, the only time he hesitated was when the knob to the back door turned smoothly in his hand.
For only a moment he thought, “This is what they want,” but then the rage was back and it was all he could see, blinding him and driving him forward.
WE HAVE THEM NOW
No. This ends today. No matter what.
The back door opened on a staircase descending into a daylight basement. Roger stepped in and let the door glide shut behind him, keeping tension on the interior knob to ensure he gently slid it into place without any clicks. He descended the stairs, stepping slowly and lightly, waiting to hear a creak from the worn wooden steps.
Light fell through the basement from narrow rectangular windows above the too-soft soil. It was the same daylight Roger was used to, but down here it took on a liquid wavering—something was eating away at the light from its periphery.
He kept his eyes wide for motion, looking for white pants and black hoodies. Nothing. In the far corner of the basement there was a single plugged-in hot plate with a beaker sitting on it. The beaker housed a thick yellow fluid, though for one second Roger thought he saw a flash of something black unfurling against the surface of the glass, like a sea snake loosening its coils.
There was a set of carpeted stairs at the far end of the basement, next to some kind of primitive mural drawn mostly in black on the white-painted wood paneling. As he approached the stairs the image became clear: a great wolf floating in the blackness of space, head low as if approaching prey. In its line of sight was a small blue-green orb you’d be hard-pressed to see as anything but the planet Earth. Black drool hung from the maw of the beast.
The closer Roger got to the painting, the more eyes bloomed across the head of the wolf. When it was right by his side he could feel that it was nothing but endless sight and great hunger.
Something about the image transfixed him—he wasn’t sure he could escape it. It felt . . . alive. He walked slowly up the stairs with the corner of his eye pinned to the wolf, waiting for it to move beyond the wall. Only when he reached the top floor did he let his gaze drop.
Roger rounded the corner and found himself in a small kitchen. Dated 70s décor. Cross-stitched art on the wall—Bless This Mess. A low, insectile buzz came from the fridge, its door slightly open, the sickly-sweet smell of soured pork floating out into the room. Another smell too—salty ocean rot that reminded him of the imploded anglerfish his Uncle Dutch had dragged from the deep sea. Roger remembered asking why its seeping eyes had popped. Dutch told him, “It was never meant to live up here, with us. It can’t take the pressure.”
The thin light from the fridge started to expand across the cracked linoleum floor. Roger scrambled through the kitchen and into the adjacent hallway.
The ambient sounds of the house dropped away, leaving Roger alone in the long corridor with only the sound of his thundering heart and short, sharp breaths. He pushed forward, knife held before him, wondering if he’d walked twenty steps, or two. The hallway seemed to have no end. He continued on, trying to ignore the sickening way time was stretching, wondering if his heart was beating too slowly or too quickly, until he suddenly had the sensation of pushing through a thin invisible membrane into sound and heat.
His vision blurred, then refocused: he was in a cozy, if poorly-lit, living room. The shades were drawn. There was a couch facing a wall with a grand fireplace, and his own TV, the one they’d stolen, mounted above it.
There was a man in the corner, seated in a plush tan recliner, his face barely illuminated by the glowing screen of Roger’s laptop.
“Hey, Rog.” The man looked up, bringing his empty blacked-out eye-pools to meet his gaze.
“WHERE ARE THEY?”
“Easy, killer! Easy. They are exactly where they should be, as are you. If you want to see them again, you need to set down that knife and have a seat and listen.”
“Fuck you.”
“Okay, sure. Fuck me. We can take that path. Honestly, I’m just happy you’re here. I mean, I can’t believe you showed. I actually bet against you. Clem’s been on a hot streak lately. I think people take him more seriously now that he’s so fucking old. Gives more gravity to his little story about ‘poor old Judge Schumacher.’ He still telling that gem? Didn’t work on me, obviously, but he’s gotten better since then.”
Roger’s vision blurred again. Something about this house, the man’s voice . . . he could barely focus. He pictured Julie and Claire, bound and crying somewhere in this nest of devils, turning away from the empty-eyed men staring at them.
THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL
His vision returned. He pushed the knife out ahead of him and stepped toward the man in the chair. “My wife. My daughter. NOW!”
“You’ll be with them soon enough, though I’m not sure how happy they’ll be to see you. But slow your roll, Roger, and listen to me. All I’ve been trying to say is that I’m glad you’re here. We’ve definitely got some work for you.”
“What?”
“Yeah, that’s your go-to, isn’t it? Just confusion. What I’m saying is: We . . . have . . . work . . . for . . . you. It’s pretty clear. The pill angle is starting to play. It’s such an easy ritual—they buy, they swallow, we’re in—and I think they’re finally manufacturing that shit properly. We need somebody local to help with distribution. Somebody who knows how to keep product moving. Keep people interested. Somebody who’ll push a condom full of toxic chemicals up their ass for a few extra bucks. That kind of guy. And a gentleman we used to know in prison down south told us you’re exactly who we’re looking for.”
Oakland. I was never clean.
“Obviously you’re not quite ready to work for us yet, which is why we have to go through all these old steps to bring you into the fold. All this ceremony. Speaking of which, I suppose we should get on with it.”
“I’ll never fucking work for you guys. You’re insane. Now give me my fucking family before I chop off your goddamned head.”
“Yeah, yeah. Heard it before, bud, and from scarier guys than you. But you’re the one who’s here now and I can tell from your face that it’s time to begin. So I was hoping you’d take a look at this with me.”
The man rotated the
laptop around on his lap and grinned.
On the screen: a photo of Claire and Julie. Christmas last year, smiling in front of the tree.
THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL
& SO SOFT
“Maybe, Dad, you can help me figure out which one of these dumb cunts I’m going to fuck first, once you set them to our frequency.”
And then Roger broke at last, and the ritual played out as it always had.
Reason was destroyed.
Hatred was ascendant.
And the man in the chair began to laugh even as Roger brought the knife down into his neck and his face and his jet-black eyes over and over again.
VI.
CLEM FOLLOWED ROGER HOME. He might have misted up a little as he trailed the man, but he held back the tears—that wasn’t what a man did, and this wasn’t his first time at the rodeo. But he really thought Roger had heard him, damn it all . . .
Clem had an unmarked pistol holstered on his right hip—enough to take care of Roger—and another gun tucked against his calf, its cool yellow plastic loaded with bright blue rounds in case those fuckers from the house tried to run interference. This was his mess to clean up, and he always did his job, no matter how much it was starting to hurt.
Though he did have half a mind to call HQ tonight and let her know he was ready to take out the house. The war was getting nastier—they’d come for Roger in the middle of the damn day, when Clem had least expected. He was ready to be done with the mission and its daily tragedies. Shoot, he had the explosives. It’d be an easy vest rig, maybe strap on a few extra pipe bombs and gasoline-filled balloons for maximum burn. Charge in head first, yell, “Vaya con dios!” and then send the whole nasty hive back to hell on a ball of fire. Cops would figure it for a meth lab explosion. A great plan. Maybe it was time to push for it.
But for now, Clem stayed in pursuit. Roger—or whatever it was that now lived inside him—was clearly still learning how to walk, given the change in his vision. Clem never could figure how those bastards could see through all that blackness. Definitely made ’em slow moving at first.
When they were a few houses out, Clem spotted the wife’s car in the driveway.
Shit.
Execution would have been easy if he could’ve dropped Rog inside that house. Now he’d have to drag the poor bastard back to his own place and take him out in the sound-proof basement. That or risk losing the whole family. If Roger even got his arms around them . . .
Clem pulled a syringe full of sedative and got in tight, but Roger sensed him somehow, was already more perceptive than the others had been this early on.
Curse these slow old bones.
Roger had a reach on him, on top of his speed, and he managed to wrest Clem’s gun from his holster.
Holy lord, is this how it ends? Gunned down in the street by a brand new convert. And he’ll head in and switch the wife. And the kid. The kid. And the darkness will keep on spreading.
But Roger didn’t point the pistol at Clem. Instead he looked down at the gun, then back up at the old man. His face contorted as something awful broke inside whatever remained of his mind.
“Tell them . . . I’m sorry.”
And then Roger swung the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger and blasted the back of his sorry skull clean off.
Hell.
Clem had never seen a convert manage such a task. But that’s how these bastards were, always changing the way things worked.
There was no solid ground anymore, not so far as Clem could see.
He set to dragging the body home for disposal. The black blood on the asphalt behind him was already melting into the road.
Author’s Notes
The League of Zeroes
This is the direction I thought reality TV was headed, and briefly, with the debut of “The Swan”—in which beauty contest competitors first underwent radical plastic surgery—I thought I might have been prescient. However, viewers found the concept repellent and eventually decided they were much happier watching rich people make whining noises at each other. Still, very happy that this story reached so many folks, finding publication in Colombia, Spain, Italy, and France (where someone plagiarized the thing and got it included in an anthology at the Sorbonne [although they changed SaladMan to CheeseMan, which is as French an edit as possible]). Rumor has it that someone adapted the story as a one-act play in Australia, too, though I’ve never seen evidence. Most of the characters in the story re-appear, some much worse for wear and some with far more malicious goals, in the novel Skullcrack City.
Persistence Hunting
It’s strange now, living in the same hills our narrator burglarizes in the story, especially since someone broke into my place a year back. If I found out our burglar used the old running-and-prowling gambit, I almost wouldn’t be mad anymore. Almost.
The Oarsman
There was a stretch of time where my wife would read books about Buddhism aloud, just before we’d pass out for the night. Some nights I’d find the ideas compelling and comforting. Other nights, when the focus would be ego death and universal oneness, I found myself sweating, tossing and turning, filled with existential dread. It led to me thinking about the idea of weaponized empathy, and what kind of people might be left once that weapon had worked.
The Gravity of Benham Falls
Stephen Gammell’s illustration of an eyeless, emaciated specter in the story “The Haunted House” (included in the original run of Alvin Schwartz’ Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark anthology) has a long echo. When I first received the book as a kid, I was so shocked by that illustration that I asked my mother to tape a thick piece of paper over the grim visage so I could continue enjoying the book. I have no doubt the image was somewhere in my mind when I decided I was going to try my hand at a traditional ghost story.
Dissociative Skills
There’s that hoary old joke: Alcoholism doesn’t just run in my family, it gallops! It’s the kind of thing you can laugh at because there aren’t a lot of other options that keep you sane. For a very long time I was that person in an addiction-prone family who managed to beat back his own troubles and then became angry and self-righteous about everyone else’s chronic fuck-ups. And so I’ve written about a decade’s-worth of stories like this, and that kept me from completely losing my mind. I think. I hope.
Snowfall
This story has been optioned for film three times now, and once made it quite a distance into pre-production, including a solid script, storyboards, and a classical cellist committed to the score. In that case the director broke up with his girlfriend, who also happened to be the producer/financier, and that was that. On a totally unrelated note, when this story appeared in Spanish the translator had to include an addendum explaining that Tootsie Rolls are a North American candy. Which is to say that next time you’re headed to South America, you’d be well-advised to bring your own Tootsie Rolls, if that’s your thing.
When Susurrus Stirs
If you would have told me a few years ago that this, out of everything I’ve written, would be the first story adapted for film, I’d have laughed. Nobody is crazy enough to try to put such a thing on film. That being said, an utterly faithful and disturbing film adaptation from Pandemic Pictures and Outpost 31 Productions premiers at FilmQuest next month. And yes, they retained the “meat sprout” sequence, because director Anthony Cousins and FX wizard Ryan Schaddelee are very troubled men.
Luminary
My mother told me that as a child she used to catch fireflies, twist them in half, and then use their leaking fluids to adhere the glowing remainder to her fingers. She’d wave her hands back and forth in the night air and pretend she was wearing beautiful diamond rings. Years later she gave birth to me in the high desert of central Oregon and there were no fireflies so I just ended up turning over rocks and dodging scorpions. Maybe whacking junebugs out of the air with a stick. It wasn’t as beautifully gruesome as my mother’s memory.
Trigger Variation
&nb
sp; For a brief while, based on my personal interest in not driving myself into an early drug-addled grave, I got really into straight edge. I needed a very stern ideology and some compatriots around who’d help hold me to it. Plus I really liked Gorilla Biscuits. But after a while I noticed that some of these guys, sober though they may have been, were absolutely getting high on violence, whether that meant randomly rumbling at shows or actively hunting the streets of Olympia looking for Neo-Nazis to jump. It was an eye-opener. After that I understood: everybody’s looking for a way out of their day-to-day reality.
Cathedral Mother
Once, during a road trip to southern California, my mother decided we’d take the scenic route down and roll through the redwood forest. See some of the largest living things on earth, drive through a tree, all that. However, the majesty of the redwoods had some stern competition in the form of Skipp and Spector’s gonzo horror novel The Scream. I was so enraptured by the heavy metal insanity of it all, I barely glanced at the forest. Since then I’ve read Richard Preston’s wonderful non-fiction book about the region, The Wild Trees, and now I long to return. Maybe I’ll take my kid, give him a chance to ignore the miracle.
Swimming in the House of the Sea
A few years back there was a (now-famous) film director who wanted to expand this story into a feature film. He had an excellent young actor attached, a producer excited about the project, and some outstanding ideas about how to turn the tale into an indie take on Rain Man with some Midnight Cowboy grit in the mix. There was a possibility that one of my top three favorite cinematographers would shoot. Naturally, I was over the fucking moon about the whole venture. Then, two weeks out from the first production meeting, the director was given a shot at directing an adaptation of a New York Times bestseller. He took the gig, nailed it, and the film earned more than the GDP of several small countries. Now he’s attached to three different tentpole movies and has his own production company. I do not believe I own a computer powerful enough to calculate how small the odds of him ever returning to “Swimming” might be, but it’s fun to hold fast to hope.
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