by Rick Hautala
“Finally found a good use for yah,“ he muttered as he raised his bottle of beer to his mouth and gulped it. “I’ll spread yah around the tomatoes. Prob’bly have a bumper crop this year.“ When he took another slug of beer, he snorted so hard it stung the back of his nose and made him sneeze.
From the gathering darkness, a buzzing squadron of mosquitoes strafed him. Waving one hand over his head to drive them away, Merit heaved himself up off the porch step to go inside. He was planning on having at least a couple more beers before retiring for the night. Maybe he should take a shower first, clean himself up, them sit by the open window in the living room, watch a bit of TV—whatever he wanted to watch, not friggin’ Jeopardy!—and then go to bed in a peaceful, quiet bedroom with no beached whale sagging down the other side of the bed, keeping him awake half the night with her infernal snoring.
That was his intention, but when he glanced over at the barn, his intentions suddenly changed.
“Goddamn!“ he muttered when he saw a small edge of the compost heap poking out from behind the barn. He tilted his head back, guzzled the last of his beer, and just stood there for a moment, staring at the compost heap. He was positive he had shoveled everything around back just so he wouldn’t have to look at it and be reminded of Lydia every time he saw it. But damned if there wasn’t just a bit of it he could see from the porch, even in the darkness.
“Well, gotta finish ’er off for good,“ he said to himself as he walked back to the barn and grabbed the shovel he had used earlier. Working by the faint light of the crescent moon, he quickly scooped the last remnants of the compost heap well back behind the barn, out of sight. When he was finally done, he wiped his hands clean on his coveralls, returned the shovel to inside the barn door, and went up to the house. He was satisfied, now, that Lydia was—finally...permanently—out of his life.
He awoke in his recliner to the sound of the TV blaring high-pitched static and a flickering, snowy pattern. Bleary-eyed, he rubbed his face with the heels of his hands and shifted up into a sitting position. For an instant, he looked in panic over at the couch, half expecting to see Lydia sitting there, glaring at him.
“Well, Honeybun... Aren’t you comin’ to bed?... You’re drunk on your fanny, you are.“
But then he remembered what he had accomplished earlier that evening, and he smiled to himself as he slowly stood up. His shoulders and the small of his back ached from the work, and his back cracked when he stretched his arms over his head and took a deep breath. After reaching over to turn off the TV, he closed his eyes and just stood there in the middle of the living room floor and listened to the absolute quiet of the house.
Goddamn, it was quiet! Even the whippoorwill in the distance had fallen silent. The only sound disturbing the summer night was the low buzzing of insects at the window screen. Merit tried to bend down to pick up his empties, but a twinge of pain from all that shoveling caught him like a knife blade under the ribs, so he just waved his hand at the bottles and turned to go upstairs to bed. He was halfway down the upstairs hallway to the bedroom when a soft sound just at the edge of hearing caught his attention.
“What the—“ he whispered, turning around slowly and trying to get a direction on the sound. He hurried back downstairs to the living room, his eyes flicking back and forth. When the sound came again, he realized that it was coming from outside.
Raccoons raiding the garden was his first thought, but as he leaned over the windowsill and put his good ear close to the screen, he knew it was no raccoon. Not unless it was one great big mother-fucking king of the raccoons out there because in the middle of the driveway he could see … something. The moon was already down, so all he could see was a huge slouched, black shape. It looked to be about the size of a cow or maybe a fat deer lying down out there in the yard, but damned if he could see a head of a tail on the blasted thing. It sure as shit didn’t look like anything living. As far as Merit could see, it was just a big, old...thing.
“Jesus H. Baldy-eyed Christ,“ Merit whispered when his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, and he realized that it was the compost heap, right smack dab in the middle of the driveway.
“How in the name of Christ...?“
His hands started shaking as he leaned on the windowsill, staring out into the night. Tiny prickles of cold danced up and down his back, and intensified with a sudden jolt when the sound that had first drawn his attention came again. It was a low, wet, sucking sound that made him think of someone’s boot, caught in deep mud and sucking back when they tried to lift it.
But that wasn’t the only thing that gave him the jolt.
Even as the sickening sounds were vibrating in his ears, he saw—or thought he saw—the compost heap move. Like a wounded animal down on its belly, it seemed to heave forward toward the house.
“Just a trick o’ the eye,“ Merit said to himself, unable to tear his gaze away from the window. He was vaguely aware of his fingernails digging into the soft wood of the sill. The tendons on the backs of his hands stood out like pencils under his skin, and the stitch in his side came back sharper.
He held his breath until it was burning in his lungs as he waited for the sound to come again. All the while, he was wondering how in the hell the compost could have gotten out into the driveway.
Had some neighbor, passing by at just the wrong moment, seen him when he brought the shovel blade down on the back of Lydia’s neck? Maybe they had, and they had also seen how he had disposed of her body, so they had moved the compost heap out into the driveway as a way to torment him.
Or maybe, by some wild fluke, a wild dog or other animal had smelled Lydia’s remains and had dug down for the bones, spreading the compost all around. If that was the case, though, how had it all collected into a pile again in the middle of the driveway?
There had to be some reasonable, rational explanation, Merit knew, but he also knew what he had to do right now. He had to get that frigging pile back out behind the barn and make sure goddamned sure no part of Lydia was peeking out in case the cops or a nosey neighbor came poking around. He dashed into the kitchen, grabbed a flashlight, and then went out into the night, heading straight for the shovel and wheelbarrow in the barn.
The wheelbarrow rattled in the ruts of the dirt driveway as he pushed it over to the compost heap. For just a moment, he paused and played the flashlight beam over it, looking for some sign, some indication of how that damned thing had gotten there. He didn’t see any footprints in the dirt, and it didn’t look as though any animals had been snuffing around out here. The compost heap itself was as smooth and as pat as he had left it, only it was here in the driveway, not out back. Cursing softly under his breath, Merit doused the light so his neighbors wouldn’t see it, and began shoveling the compost into the wheelbarrow.
As he worked, Merit kept expecting to turn up some part or another of Lydia’s body. Certainly parts of her, especially the bones, must be here in the heap somewhere. He hadn’t thought to check to see if any her body pieces were still out behind the barn, but he braced himself, telling himself to be ready for that first glimpse of a hand or a foot or something. But shovelful after shovelful turned up nothing but rich-smelling, composted earth that was literally crawling with worms and grubs. Even though that didn’t account for how it had gotten here from behind the barn, it certainly explained the seething motion he had seen from the living room window that made it look like it was moving.
He wheeled the first load back out behind the barn, dumped it, and then went back for more. He was curious why he didn’t see even the tiniest trace of his dead wife in the black soil, and he guessed that either her skin had already turned black from rot and was lost to his sight in the night or else—maybe, thank God—she had already decomposed in the heat generated by the compost. Any way he looked at it, the only problem was getting the damned thing back out behind the barn so he could forget about it.
It took him more than an hour, and five more barrow’s full, but—finally—exhaust
ed and sweating, he was finished with the job. The compost was piled up and rounded off nice and neat back where it should be. Merit put the tools back into the barn and then dragged himself upstairs to his bed. He had to be to work at the paper mill in the morning, and he was already wondering how the hell he was going to make it through the workday with so little sleep.
Morning light filled the bedroom and woke Merit up earlier than usual. He chuckled when he realized that—as always—he had slept on “his“ side of the bed, which was approximately one-quarter of the whole thing. As he sat up and looked at his dirt-blackened sheets, the events came back to him, and his chuckle turned into a full-bellied laugh.
No more sleeping on the edge of the bed. No more listening to Lydia’s bitching and complaining and the irritating way she always called him “Honeybun“...like she really meant it. No more putting up and shutting up. A few dirty sheets were a small price to pay for the peace and quiet. He danced a little jig as he started down the hallway to the bathroom for a quick shave and shower before work.
In the kitchen, he fried up almost half a pound of bacon—real bacon, not that vegetarian non-meat shit Lydia’d been buying—and he did three eggs, sunny-side up, the way he liked ’em. Lydia’s constant nagging about his cholesterol level be dammed! Along with orange juice, coffee, and toast, he had a rip-snorting breakfast. He even picked up his plate and licked it clean just because he knew it used to irritate her when he did that. He couldn’t help but smirk when he didn’t hear the sharp reprimand to “mind his table manners.“ As if manners mattered anymore!
Oh, sure. He still had a ball-busting job at the I.P.P. Paper mill, and there was never enough money, really, to make ends meet. But at least—praise be to God—he wasn’t ever going to hear that shrill voice, nagging him to do this and not do that. Those days were gone...dead and buried out behind the barn.
After breakfast, he piled his dirty dishes into the sink, intending to wash them along with the supper dishes this evening. With his second cup of coffee in hand, he sat back down and considered what he should do about explaining to people around town where Lydia had gone. She certainly didn’t have many—if any—friends who would miss her, but Hilton was a small town. After a while, people were going to notice when she wasn’t around anymore, and then they might start asking questions. And if the questions got serious enough, they might catch the attention of the police.
As he sipped his coffee, Merit went over several options. For one thing, he could call the police and tell them that his wife had taken off last night and not come home. He could tell them he thinks she ran off to God-knows-where. What were the chances they would go snooping around the compost heap? On the other hand, he could just let the whole thing slide. If—and that was a big if—anyone asked him where Lydia was, he could say she gone to visit her sister in upstate New York who was sick with “the cancer.“ Finally, though, Merit decided that mentioning anything about Lydia to anyone would raise suspicion, so he opted just to let it rest...for now, anyway. At least until she was good and rotted away behind the barn. He’d handle whatever came up when and if it came up.
So with that decision firmly in mind, Merit slapped together a sandwich for lunch, threw it along with an apple and soda into his lunch pail, and grabbed his truck keys from the counter. He was halfway to the back door when something—he wasn’t sure what—struck him as odd. He paused in the hallway and shook his head, unable to put his finger on what was wrong, but something definitely was wrong. The instant he swung open the back door, he saw the problem. The window curtain on the back door had been too dark, and now—looking outside onto the porch—he saw why. The compost heap was piled up on the porch, halfway to the door. It was blocking the morning light that usually came in through the back door window.
“Mary Mother of Christ!“ Merit shouted. He took a couple of involuntary steps back and bumped into the opened hall closet door, hitting the edge of the door so hard he dropped his lunch, and it spilled out onto the floor. The apple bounced as it rolled away, but Merit barely noticed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
It was...impossible!
How could the compost have gotten there?
More precisely, who could have put it there?
If this was someone’s idea of a practical joke, he wasn’t laughing. Even as he stood there staring in amazement at the compost heap, he saw that it was moving. The thick, rich soil heaved and seethed with a churning action that made soft sucking sounds. A stench like an open cesspool rose from the heap and wafted into the house on the morning breeze. The muck steamed in the morning sun, and the air around it was buzzing with the sounds of hundreds of flies.
“No fuckin’ way!... This can’t be happening!“ Merit stammered as he took a few hesitant steps forward, leaning close to inspect the pile. It appeared much larger that normal, framed in the doorway, but Merit concluded that it looked so much bigger because he wasn’t used to seeing it on the porch. Its size had nothing to do with his dead wife’s body parts he had added to it.
But how had it gotten up onto the porch in the night? That was a serious question, and even more seriously—what was he going to do about it? Merit groaned softly as he ran his hand over his mouth, vaguely aware that his freshly-shaved upper lip was slick with sweat. If he left for work right now, he’d get there just about on time. But he had to deal with this. There was no way he could leave it here on the porch all day, rotting away.
“Christ on a crutch,“ he muttered as he eyed the heaving mound of black dirt and decay. He stared at it for several minutes in fascination as the squirming, wiggling stuff seethed in the shade of the porch, and he couldn’t stop wondering what had happened—what was happening right now to the pieces of Lydia that were buried in there. He shook his head when he remembered that he had to be at work. Tearing his gaze away, he rushed back into the living room to the phone and hurriedly dialed the number for the mill. He got the switchboard and asked to speak to his foreman, Bo Hoskins. Fighting hard to control a rush of nerves, he told his boss that he was having trouble getting his truck started, and that he’d be a little late. When Hoskins offered to send someone out to pick him up, Merit insisted that it was just a bad sparkplug, and that he could have it changed in no time and be at the mill within the hour. Once he had Hoskins’ permission to be late, Merit hung up and went back out onto the porch.
Even in the short time he’d been on the phone, the compost heap seemed to have had shifted a little closer to the door. Black strands of mulch seeped out across the floorboards like slowly melting ice cream. Merit studied it for a moment, trying to figure out if the thing was really moving or not. If it had gotten this far, why couldn’t it keep coming?
“Well, by Jesus. I’ll take care of you once and for all,“ he whispered harshly.
Being careful to stay as far away from it as he could, he edged over to the back steps. Once he was clear of the heap, he jumped down to the lawn and ran over to the barn. He was out of breath by the time he grabbed the shovel and wheelbarrow from inside the doorway. A sharp pain slid between his ribs on the left side of his chest, but he ignored it as he pushed the barrow over to the porch and began shoveling the rich compost into it. He grumbled as he carted the first load back out behind the barn.
It wasn’t long before he broke a sweat as he worked, and the pain in his chest intensified, but he knew he had to work fast. He only less than an hour. Still, he couldn’t help but pause every now and then, and inspect the compost, wondering with morbid curiosity if, now that it was daylight, he might be able to find a piece or two of his wife mixed in with the muck. All he saw, though, was rich compost, crawling with worms and other creepy, crawly things.
It took him nine trips with the wheelbarrow to get it all back out behind the barn. He recalled that it had taken only six trips last night, and he wondered why there was so much more. Could the thing be growing somehow? Hell, compost was supposed to be the best thing to make gardens grow, but Merit had never heard of comp
ost itself growing.
He worked fast, and by the time he’d dumped the last barrowful, his clothes were dirty and drenched with sweat. The pain in his side hadn’t gone away, but it was definitely lessening. Flooded with relief, Merit put the tools back into the barn and went back into the house to shower and change before heading off to work. He realized that he was almost an hour and a half late, but Hoskins never mentioned a thing about it when Merit finally showed up. Merit didn’t give it another thought. He had plenty of other things on his mind...like how, when he was driving out of the driveway, he had glanced into the rearview mirror and was pretty sure he had seen a small strip of the compost reaching out from behind the barn. More than that, though, he couldn’t stop wondering how in the hell that pile had gotten up onto the porch overnight.
By the time he left work and headed home that evening, Merit was a physical and emotional wreck. Working as hard as he had last night and then again this morning had taken its toll on him. Hell, he wasn’t twenty-five anymore... He wasn’t even fifty-five anymore, and that much shoveling and lugging on top of his usual shift at the paper mill had taken everything he had and then some. The pain in his side hadn’t really gone away all day, and he was sure it was going to get worse tonight unless he took some pain reliever when he got home.
But the mental strain was much worse than the physical exhaustion. No matter what angle he thought about it from, he simply couldn’t come up with a rational explanation for how the Christ that compost heap had ended up on the back porch. Was it moving on its own power? Or was someone moving it—someone who had seen what he’d done to Lydia and was tormenting him, trying to drive him insane so he’d confess? A more frightening thought was that maybe he felt some deep-seated, subconscious guilt about what he had done and, without being consciously aware of it, was carting the compost out into the open where it couldn’t remain hidden. If that was the case, it meant he had moved it four times, not two. After giving that thought a bit of consideration, though, he rejected it, figuring he was just going to have to deal with this problem no matter what. Somehow, the compost heap had gotten there, and all he had to do was make sure it—and Lydia—stayed out back where they were supposed to stay.
