When they arrived at the still-burning spaceship, Smiley and the other pear people waited. Tied to the ship, Daniel screamed for help. The creatures’ speckled skin seemed alive with movement in the firelight. Earl thought for a second they all smiled at him, taunting him to come closer. They didn’t need to taunt.
Three humans stood against six pear people. Earl wouldn’t have backed down if there had been six hundred of those things, not if they had Daniel. His troops by his side, he stared the enemy down, using his pocketknife to sharpen the end of a wooden broomstick before setting the point on fire. Raising his weapon overhead and growling, he charged. He splashed into the puddle, running straight for smiley. The enemy met him halfway, but he struck first. He stabbed the flaming end into Smiley’s smile. The telescope eye gazed at him critically, as if it had hoped for more. The broomstick slid in soundlessly and the flames fizzled out immediately, leaving only the lightest caramelized crust between Smiley’s non-lips.
Around him, his troops met similar failures. Todd’s bullets did about as much damage as the gun itself when he gave up and threw it at his target. Still, he didn’t stop. He wrapped his massive arms around the pear and squeezed. Juice bubbled under his grip and the pear shrieked. It coiled its stem-leg around the trucker and the two locked together in a mutually destructive bear hug. More than juice came from Todd though. Vomit came first, followed by blood, which gave way to a choking flow of parts that should never have seen the moonlight.
Hula had better luck. Her rapid-fire baseball bat blows put Earl and Todd’s attacks to shame. But when she stopped to dramatically wipe pear meat from her face with the back of her hand, the creature’s stem-leg coiled like a spring and launched it into the night sky. She stared up after it, mouth opened in awe. On its way back down, it twisted its claws together to form a stake. It landed right between Hula’s hot pink lips, emerging brain-soaked from the back of her skull.
Earl realized he could not fight this enemy.
But maybe he could outrun them.
Desperately, he dashed to the ship to untie Daniel. Before he could even set his fingertips on the strange vines that bound his son, Smiley grabbed him from behind. The creature shoved Earl to the ground. He went under, pinned down by Smiley’s claw-foot on his chest. Splashing and slapping worthlessly, he sucked in puddle water, getting the earthy taste of it on his tongue. He pushed up as hard as he could, barely breaking the surface to take in air.
Smiley hovered over him and Earl saw his salvation: the movement on the pear’s skin was not merely the play of flames in the night. It was the play of insects feasting on rotting fruit. Even as he stared, the layer of bugs grew thicker and thicker, so thick he soon couldn’t see the creature’s skin at all.
Earl wasn’t going to let them have all the fun. He tore off pieces of his enemy’s flesh. Insects swarmed his hands, biting indiscriminately. He dug until he reached pockets of black ooze. Then he dug some more, the pear’s insides collecting under his nails like dirty oil.
Smiley’s grip loosened. It teetered backwards, allowing Earl to squirm away. The rest of the pears didn’t chase him. They too had all fallen, desperately using their claw-feet to scrape the bugs from their hides. They couldn’t move fast enough. As Earl untied his son, bugs sped past him. Some collided with his face, pausing for a moment to ponder the sweat on his skin before following their brethren to the ever-shrinking mounds of sweet fruit.
Earl carried Daniel to the blacktop. “Are you okay?”
His son responded with a hug. “You’ve got good dadness.” Words unsaid. Words that never needed to be said again, because they would always be there, etched into that action.
“What do you do when you find a spaceship in the ditch?” Daniel asked.
Earl responded wearily, “I don’t know. What?”
“Disap-pear.”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all night,” Earl said, carrying his son to the pickup as pear seeds floated to the surface of the water behind them.
GHOST GIRL, ZOMBIE BOY AND THE COUNT
CHRIS THORNDYCROFT
The leaves of fall sweep through suburban towns like the ghosts of summer. These are the dried and withered shadows of long months of sunshine and birdsong that have become little more than memories as the year turns to face the darkness one more time.
Things are rotting. Damp earth festers beneath its armor of crisp leaves and worms wriggle through the filth devouring the remains of plants and the occasional dead bird or small mammal. The only other things that thrive during this time are the various types of fungi and of course the pumpkins that grow fat and swollen on the juices of the dying earth. But even these have been torn from their umbilical cords and left to die on the front porches of people’s houses; grotesque and demonic visages carved into their flesh.
From inside the houses comes the sound of laughter as preparations are made. Ichabod Crane gallops across black and white television screens with the Headless Horseman on his trail, half watched by dozens of children as they metamorphose into witches, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monsters and other icons of black and white horror movies, movies that Zacherley will present as part of Shock Theatre later in the evening. Parents laugh at their transformed darlings and photographs are taken; snapshots of childhood that will inevitably curl and fade into sepia-tinted memories of innocence.
From a small house at the end of the street a girl emerges shrouded in a white sheet with eyeholes cut into it. Whatever name she goes by during the rest of the year is irrelevant for tonight, like millions of other children across the country, she is something else; a playful, ghoulish alter ego. Tonight she has only one name and that is “Ghost Girl”.
She swings her orange plastic candy bucket from side to side while she whistles Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You” and her small black shoes skip a dainty, almost noiseless rhythm on the asphalt. A blue ‘52 Chevy with four teenagers inside and a loose fender swings round the corner and roars off down the street. The drive-in is running a bug movie double feature tonight which means that most of the town’s older kids are heading out for an evening of popcorn fights, hiding friends in car trunks and making out on vinyl upholstery while their younger siblings embark on the sweet-smelling annual escapade of trick or treat.
The streetlamp ahead illuminates two small figures standing on the corner. These are Ghost Girl’s friends; Zombie Boy and the one known only as “The Count.”
“You’re l-late,” says the Count through his long white canines.
“Like you have anywhere better to be,” snaps Ghost Girl.
“We need to get going or all the good candy will be gone,” says Zombie Boy.
“Relax,” replies Ghost Girl. “We’ll start down there, past the grocery store.”
“But that’s miles away!” complains the Count, his young mind overestimating the distance.
“Why don’t we start with this house here,” says Zombie Boy. “It’s much nearer and I bet they’ve got good candy.”
The Count happily concurs and they set off at an excited trot towards the bright yellow light spilling out from its windows and the decorations of Indian corn that festoon its porch.
“No!” says Ghost Girl in a tone that halts them in their tracks.
They have forgotten themselves. Ghost Girl is the eldest and the strongest by far, making her the natural leader of the trio.
“We start where I say,” she continues, her face unreadable beneath the white sheet. She turns and heads down the street towards a row of houses less inviting and decidedly further away. The other two hurry to catch up and they move on silently, largely ignored by the other trick-or-treaters that caper about and run from house to house.
There is a party several doors down. Somebody’s folks are away and Sonny Burgess—The Arkansas Wild Man himself—hammers out “Red Headed Woman” on a crackling four-speed player while teenagers swing each other around in the living room.
A lonely figure on the oth
er side of the street catches Ghost Girl’s eye.
“Oh, look who it is!” she exclaims. “Hey, Mummy’s Boy! Surprised you’re allowed out so late at night!”
The other two snigger at the nickname thought up by their leader and silently thank the fates that they are on this side of the street, with her.
The one called Mummy’s Boy hurries on, his bandages trailing along behind him as he does his best to ignore the taunt.
Ghost Girl stops. They look up at the house. A small, shriveled pumpkin sits on the doorstep with a flickering candle inside causing sad little shadows to waver about on the wooden decking. This is the only attempt on the part of the residents at getting into the seasonal spirit.
They ring the doorbell.
An elderly woman answers, opening the door a crack at first and then wider upon seeing the costumed children on her doorstep.
“Goodness me!” she exclaims. “What have we here? A ghost, a vampire and...what are you, dear?”
“A rotting corpse reanimated with the spark of life,” replies Zombie Boy.
“How lovely.”
The door opens wider and a man—presumably the husband—appears.
“I guess you’ll be wanting some candy then,” he says in a friendly voice. “Come and get it.”
A bowl filled with chocolate crisp balls, Candy Corn, Tootsie Rolls and boiled sweets is offered.
The Count always goes first. He is the youngest and the shortest. The other two don’t mind and they watch him step forward to claim his stake of the candy prize.
Zombie Boy always goes second. He is greedy and often takes more than he should. But the candy-givers never seem to mind too much, he is after all a very persuasive little boy.
Ghost Girl always goes last. She gives her two friends this courtesy and this only. After all, she is their leader and shouldn’t leaders always see to the wellbeing of their troops before their own? She heard something like that somewhere.
They walk away from the house and cross the street. Zombie Boy and the Count wipe at their lips which are sticky with candy. Ghost Girl does not. She always saves her candy for later, keeping it in her little orange bucket, safe and sound.
~ ~ ~
Several doors down lives Mr. Lindholm. He sits in his darkened living room and sucks hard on his cigarette, drawing the smoke in through yellowed teeth, drawing it deep into his blackened lungs. He imagines that each drag adds to the cancer that is eating him up from the inside; quickening his departure from this world.
There is no television. Mr. Lindholm sits in his armchair and listens to the crackle of Boris Karloff’s Tales of the Frightened on the old wireless that stands on a dusty shelf. The wallpaper is yellowed and floral. Black and white portraits of family members—long since passed away—peer out from behind glass panes. Some more recent photographs stand on the mantle showing Mr. Lindholm in an army uniform somewhere in the South Pacific. His mother had insisted on displaying these. It was not so much pride in her little boy, but proof that he had finally done something with his worthless life, got out on his own even if it was only for a few brief years.
These are the photographs that are on show for anybody interested enough to pay Mr. Lindholm a visit, which is nobody. He has other photographs, but they are kept in his mother’s old dresser upstairs and are for his perusal alone.
Soon the trick-or-treaters will be here, ringing his doorbell with their soft, delicate fingers, their wide, innocent eyes expectant for treats. Will he be able to control himself this time or will he give in to one of his urges?
Creeps. That’s what they had called him in the army. All because of that business with the little Jap girl. Hypocrites. They were all at it out there. And the girls were only too happy to accept American dollars. So what if she had been a little young?
But he knows that he is just trying to kid himself. He often wishes that a bolt of lightning would stream down from the heavens and destroy him utterly so that nobody else will be hurt. But then he thinks of their smooth young bodies and their angular, prepubescent lines unswollen by adolescence and his ears begin to ring with a numbing pain and his mind gives way to the black cloud that boils inside of him.
One more time.
He deserves it.
He walks into the kitchen and looks out the window at his back yard while he makes himself a cup of coffee. It is a neat garden. His mother liked it that way and his father had worked hard to keep it in shape. Now Mr. Lindholm mows the lawn once a week and rakes up the dead leaves into tidy piles, just as Pop had done. Just as Mom had liked. The only thing that bothers him is the two small mounds of earth that sit in the shade of the elm tree. Grass has covered them now, making them all but invisible, and yet, whenever he looks out his kitchen window, there they are, winking at him.
He tried so hard to make them flat but for some reason they always rise up from the ground like boils on clean, smooth skin. It is almost as if the things buried down there are pushing upwards, forcing the earth up into little bulges as a way of taunting him, reminding him of what is down there and threatening to burst forth and reveal their contents to the world.
But that’s silly.
Several weeks after he dug the holes, a neighbor’s dog came sniffing round. A third bulge, much smaller than the other two was quickly added to his garden.
The doorbell rings. The coffee cup tumbles from Mr. Lindholm’s nervous hands and shatters on the kitchen floor; its steaming contents sweeping across the linoleum like hot blood. He goes into the hallway and answers it.
“My goodness,” he says, knowing that he is repeating a cliché that these three children must have been hearing all night long. “What do we have here? What wonderful costumes!”
His eyes dart to the street. It is empty. Good. No parents with these ones.
“Won’t you come in? We don’t get many trick-or-treaters at this end of the street and I am a little unprepared. But do come in and I shall fetch something from the kitchen.”
The children shamble in and Mr. Lindholm casts one more cautious glance at the street before closing the door behind them.
“Do sit down. I won’t be a minute.” He hurries off to the kitchen and nearly slips on the spilled coffee, dizzy at the thought of the three children placing their young bottoms on his sofa. “How would you like something to drink?” he calls from the kitchen as he rummages through cupboards. “I don’t have any real candy but are you thirsty? Trick-or-treating must be thirsty work.”
Slow down, he chides himself. He is talking too much.
He emerges with three glasses of cola; each with a dollop of vanilla ice cream in them to make them fizz and froth. The children take them and drink deeply, the froth giving them yellow moustaches.
“This tastes funny,” says the boy dressed as a zombie.
“It’s a special recipe I made myself,” replies Mr. Lindholm. “Witches Brew. Drink up!”
They finish the drinks and sit staring at Mr. Lindholm.
Mr. Lindholm stares back.
The clock in the kitchen ticks away.
Mr. Lindholm frowns.
What’s taking so long? The children should be looking sleepy by now. He gets up.
“I do believe that I have some candy after all,” he says. “Just give me a minute.”
He leaves the living room and begins rummaging around in the cupboard under the stairs.
A dirty rag.
A bottle of chloroform.
He pokes his head into the living room, his yellowed teeth splitting into a cheerful, if ugly, grin. “Won’t you come out here, children—one at a time now—and let me give you your candy.”
The Count looks to Ghost Girl and she nods at him. He rises from the sofa and makes his way out into the hall.
Mr. Lindholm makes a grab and smothers his mouth with the cloth. The boy struggles weakly and Mr. Lindholm presses harder, enjoying the small writhings against his body.
“I don’t believe that you are a very nice man,” says
a near voice, almost in his ear and Mr. Lindholm jumps about a foot in the air.
Ghost Girl stares at him from the doorway, her eyes invisible through the holes in her sheet.
“I told you to come out one by one,” snaps Mr. Lindholm. “Now the surprise is ruined.”
He feels a sharp pain in his hand. He looks down. The boy he is holding has sunk his teeth deep into his wrist and a trickle of blood wells up between those young lips.
“Wha...what are you doing?” Mr. Lindholm exclaims, wincing with the pain.
“Not a very nice man at all,” says Ghost Girl in a voice that suggests she is smiling behind that white sheet.
The Count always goes first.
Mr. Lindholm begins to feel drowsy as his blood is sucked out of him. He struggles, just as the boy had so recently struggled against him.
“Save me some juicy bits,” says Zombie Boy as he joins his friends in the hallway.
The Count releases Mr. Lindholm and he staggers away, clutching his bleeding wrist. He grips at the doorframe to the kitchen and looks on in terror as Zombie Boy advances.
Zombie Boy always goes second.
Mr. Lindholm gurgles out a scream as blunt teeth tear into his body and rip loose chunks of flesh. He beats at the boy’s head with his fists but it does no good. The two of them crash to the kitchen floor, limbs flailing and slipping in the wet blood. Mr. Lindholm’s screams are cut short as his throat is torn out.
Zombie Boy stands back and admires his work, wiping the blood from his mouth. Ghost Girl shoulders him aside and swoops down on the twitching man whose eyes roll about uselessly in their sockets at the sight of the girl in the white sheet.
Ghost Girl always goes last.
It is the same order every year. The Count takes the blood. Zombie Boy devours the flesh. And Ghost Girl snatches the soul. To do this she lifts up her sheet and reveals her face. And for Mr. Lindholm, that is the most terrifying part of all.
In the back yard, two pale figures stand beneath the old elm tree and stare through the kitchen window. The boy and girl wear the trappings of Halloween outfits several years old. Their feet are rooted to the earthen mounds that have been their homes since they went missing. A third figure—that of a dog—sniffs and wags its tail from his small mound nearby. The light seems to shine through them, as if they were made of vapor.
American Nightmare Page 8
