The Sloan Men: Short Story

by David Nickle

  “It all suggests a power. I think it suggests talismanic power.” Here Mrs. Sloan paused, looking expectantly at Judith.

  Judith wasn’t sure what “talismanic” meant, but she thought she knew what Mrs. Sloan was driving at. “You think the source of their power is in that cellar?”

  “Good.” Mrs. Sloan nodded slowly. “Yes, Judith, that’s what I think. I’ve tried over and over to get close to that place, but I’ve never been able to even step inside those foundations. It’s a place of power, and it protects itself.”

  Judith looked down at the photographs. She felt cold in the pit of her stomach. “So you want me to go there with you, is that it?”

  Mrs. Sloan took one last look out the window then came back and sat down. She smiled with an awkward warmth. “Only once since I came here have I felt as strong as I do today. That day, I chopped these off with the wood-axe — ” she held up her three-fingered hand and waggled the stumps “ — thinking that, seeing me mutilated, Herman’s father would lose interest and let me go. I was stupid; it only made him angry, and I was . . . punished. But I didn’t know then what I know today. And,” she added after a brief pause, “today you are here.”

  The Sloan men had not said where they were going when they left in the pickup truck, so it was impossible to tell how much time the two women had. Mrs. Sloan found a flashlight, an axe and a shovel in the garage, and they set out immediately along a narrow path that snaked through the trees at the back of the yard. There were at least two hours of daylight left, and Judith was glad. She wouldn’t want to be trekking back through these woods after dark.

  In point of fact, she was barely sure she wanted to be in these woods in daylight. Mrs. Sloan moved through the underbrush like a crazy woman, not even bothering to move branches out of her way. But Judith was slower, perhaps more doubtful.

  Why was she doing this? Because of some grainy photographs in a family album? Because of what might as well have been a ghost story, told by a woman who had by her own admission chopped off two of her own fingers? Truth be told, Judith couldn’t be sure she was going anywhere but crazy following Mrs. Sloan through the wilderness.

  Finally, it was the memories that kept her moving. As Judith walked, they manifested with all the vividness of new experience.

  The scriptorium near Lisbon was deserted — the tour group had moved on, maybe up the big wooden staircase behind the podium, maybe down the black wrought-iron spiral staircase. Judith couldn’t tell; the touch on the back of her neck seemed to be interfering. It penetrated, through skin and muscle and bone, to the juicy centre of her spine. She turned around and the wet thing behind pulled her to the floor. She did not resist.

  “Hurry up!” Mrs. Sloan was well ahead, near the top of a ridge of rock in the centre of a large clearing. Blinking, Judith apologized and moved on.

  Judith was fired from her job at Joseph’s only a week after she returned from Portugal. It seemed she had been late every morning, and when she explained to her boss that she was in love, it only made things worse. Talia flew into a rage, and Judith was afraid that she would hit her. Herman waited outside in the mall.

  Mrs. Sloan helped Judith clamber up the smooth rock face. When she got to the top, Mrs. Sloan took her in her arms. Only then did Judith realize how badly she was shaking.

  “What is it?” Mrs. Sloan pulled back and studied Judith’s face with real concern.

  “I’m . . . remembering,” said Judith.

  “What do you remember?”

  Judith felt ill again, and she almost didn’t say.

  “Judith!” Mrs. Sloan shook her. “This could be important!”

  “All right!” Judith shook her off. She didn’t want to be touched, not by anyone.

  “The night before last, I brought Herman home to meet my parents. I thought it had gone well . . . until now.”

  “What do you remember?” Mrs. Sloan emphasized every syllable.

  “My father wouldn’t shake Herman’s hand when he came in the door. My mother . . . she turned white as a ghost. She backed up into the kitchen, and I think she knocked over some pots or something, because I heard clanging. My father asked my mother if she was all right. All she said was no. Over and over again.”

  “What did your father do?”

  “He excused himself, went to check on my mother. He left us alone in the vestibule, it must have been for less than a minute. And I . . .” Judith paused, then willed herself to finish. “I started . . . rubbing myself against Herman. All over. He didn’t even make a move. But I couldn’t stop myself. I don’t even remember wanting to stop. My parents had to pull me away, both of them.” Judith felt like crying.

  “My father actually hit me. He said I made him sick. Then he called me . . . a little whore.”

  Mrs. Sloan made a sympathetic noise. “It’s not far to the ruins,” she said softly. “We’d better go, before they get back.”

  It felt like an hour had passed before they emerged from the forest and looked down on the ruins that Judith had seen in the Polaroids. In the setting sun, they seemed almost mythic — like Stonehenge, or the Aztec temples Judith had toured once on a trip to Cancun. The stones here had obviously once been the foundation of a farmhouse. Judith could make out the outline of what would have been a woodshed extending off the nearest side, and another tumble of stonework in the distance was surely the remains of a barn — but now they were something else entirely. Judith didn’t want to go any closer. If she turned back now, she might make it home before dark.

  “Do you feel it?” Mrs. Sloan gripped the axe-handle with white knuckles. Judith must have been holding the shovel almost as tightly. Although it was quite warm outside, her teeth began to chatter.

  “If either of us had come alone, we wouldn’t be able to stand it,” said Mrs. Sloan, her voice trembling. “We’d better keep moving.”

  Judith followed Herman’s stepmother down the rocky slope to the ruins. Her breaths grew shorter the closer they got. She used the shovel as a walking stick until they reached level ground, then held it up in both hands, like a weapon.

  They stopped again at the edge of the foundation. The door to the root cellar lay maybe thirty feet beyond. It was made of sturdy, fresh-painted wood, in sharp contrast to the overgrown wreckage around it, and it was embedded in the ground at an angle. Tall, thick weeds sprouting galaxies of tiny white flowers grew in a dense cluster on top of the mound. They waved rhythmically back and forth, as though in a breeze.

  But it was wrong, thought Judith. There was no breeze, the air was still. She looked back on their trail and confirmed it — the tree branches weren’t even rustling.

  “I know,” said Mrs. Sloan, her voice flat. “I see it too. They’re moving on their own.”

  Without another word, Mrs. Sloan stepped across the stone boundary. Judith followed, and together they approached the shifting mound.

  As they drew closer, Judith half-expected the weeds to attack, to shoot forward and grapple their legs, or to lash across their eyes and throats with prickly venom.

  In fact, the stalks didn’t even register the two women’s presence as they stepped up to the mound. Still, Judith held the shovel ready as Mrs. Sloan smashed the padlock on the root cellar door. She pried it away with a painful-sounding rending.

  “Help me lift this,” said Mrs. Sloan.

  The door was heavy, and earth had clotted along its top, but with only a little difficulty they managed to heave it open. A thick, milky smell wafted up from the darkness.

  Mrs. Sloan switched on the flashlight and aimed it down. Judith peered along its beam — it caught nothing but dust motes, and the uncertain-looking steps of a wooden ladder.

  “Don’t worry, Judith,” breathed Mrs. Sloan, “I’ll go first.” Setting the flashlight on the ground for a moment, she turned around and set a foot on one of the upper rungs. She climbed down a few steps, then picked up the flashlight and gave Judith a little smile.

&nb
sp; “You can pass down the axe and shovel when I get to the bottom,” she said, and then her head was below the ground. Judith swallowed with a dry click and shut her eyes.

  “All right,” Mrs. Sloan finally called, her voice improbably small. “It’s too far down here for you to pass the tools to me by hand. I’ll stand back — drop them both through the hole then come down yourself.”

  Judith did as she was told. At the bottom of the darkness she could make out a flickering of light, just bright enough for her to see where the axe and shovel fell. They were very tiny at the bottom of the hole. Holding her breath, Judith mounted the top rung of the ladder and began her own descent.

  Despite its depth, the root cellar was warm. And the smell was overpowering. Judith took only a moment to identify it. It was Herman’s smell, but magnified a thousandfold — and exuding from the very walls of this place.

  Mrs. Sloan had thoroughly explored the area at the base of the ladder by the time Judith reached her.

  “The walls are earthen, shorn up with bare timber,” she said, shining the light along the nearest wall to illustrate. “The ceiling here tapers up along the length of the ladder — I’d guess we’re nearly forty feet underground.”

  Judith picked up the shovel, trying not to imagine the weight of the earth above them.

  “There’s another chamber, through that tunnel.” Mrs. Sloan swung the flashlight beam down and to their right. The light extended into a dark hole in the wall, not more than five feet in diameter and rimmed with fieldstone. “That’s where the smell is strongest.”

  Mrs. Sloan stooped and grabbed the axe in her good hand. Still bent over, she approached the hole and shone the light inside.

  “The end’s still farther than the flashlight beam will carry,” she called over her shoulder. “I think that’s where we’ll have to go.”

  Judith noticed then that the tremor was gone from Mrs. Sloan’s voice. Far from sounding frightened, Herman’s mother actually seemed excited. It wasn’t hard to see why — this day might finish with the spell broken, with their freedom assured. Why wouldn’t she be excited?

  But Judith couldn’t shake her own sense of foreboding so easily. She wondered where Herman was now, what he would be thinking. And what was Judith thinking, on the verge of her freedom? Judith couldn’t put it to words, but the thought twisted through her stomach and made her stop in the dark chamber behind Mrs. Sloan. A little whore, her father had called her. Then he’d hit her, hard enough to bring up a swelling. Right in front of Herman, like he wasn’t even there! Judith clenched her jaw around a rage that was maddeningly faceless.

  “I’m not a whore,” she whispered through her teeth.

  Mrs. Sloan disappeared into the hole, and it was only when the chamber was dark that Judith followed.

  The tunnel widened as they went, its walls changing from wood-shorn earth to fieldstone and finally to actual rock. Within sixty feet the tunnel ended, and Mrs. Sloan began to laugh. Judith felt ill — the smell was so strong she could barely breath. Even as she stepped into the second chamber of the root cellar, the last thing she wanted to do was laugh.

  “Roots!” gasped Mrs. Sloan, her voice shrill and echoing in the dark. “Of course there would be — ” she broke into another fit of giggles “ — roots, here in the root cellar!” The light jagged across the cellar’s surfaces as Mrs. Sloan slipped to the floor and fell into another fit of laughter.

  Judith bent down and pried the flashlight from Mrs. Sloan’s hand — she made a face as she brushed the scratchy tips of the two bare finger-bones. She swept the beam slowly across the ceiling.

  It was a living thing. Pulsing intestinal ropes drooped from huge bulbs and broad orange phalluses clotted with earth and juices thick as semen. Between them, fingerlike tree roots bent and groped in knotted black lines. One actually penetrated a bulb, as though to feed on the sticky yellow water inside. Silvery droplets formed like beading mercury on the surface of an ample, purple sac directly above the chamber’s centre.

  Mrs. Sloan’s laughter began to slow. “Oh my,” she finally chuckled, sniffing loudly, “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “This is the place.” Judith had intended it as a question, but it came out as a statement of fact. This was the place. She could feel Herman, his father, God knew how many others like them — all of them here, an indisputable presence.

  Mrs. Sloan stood, using the axe-handle as a support. “It is,” she agreed. “We’d better get to work on it.”

  Mrs. Sloan hefted the axe in both hands and swung it around her shoulders. Judith stood back and watched as the blade bit into one of the drooping ropes, not quite severing it but sending a spray of green sap down on Mrs. Sloan’s shoulders. She pulled the axe out and swung again. This time the tube broke. Its two ends twitched like live electrical wires; its sap spewed like bile. Droplets struck Judith, and where they touched skin they burned like vinegar.

  “Doesn’t it feel better?” shouted Mrs. Sloan, grinning fiercely at Judith through the wash of slime on her face. “Don’t you feel free? Put down the flashlight, girl, pick up the shovel! There’s work to be done!”

  Judith set the flashlight down on its end, so that it illuminated the roots in a wide yellow circle. She hefted the shovel and, picking the nearest bulb, swung it up with all her strength. The yellow juices sprayed out in an umbrella over Judith, soaking her. She began to laugh.

  It does feel better, she thought. A lot better. Judith swung the shovel up again and again. The blade cut through tubes, burst bulbs, lodged in the thick round carrot-roots deep enough so Judith could pry them apart with only a savage little twist of her shoulders. The mess of her destruction was everywhere. She could taste it every time she grinned.

  After a time, she noticed that Mrs. Sloan had stopped and was leaning on the axe-handle, watching her. Judith yanked the shovel from a root. Brown milk splattered across her back.

  “What are you stopping for?” she asked. “There’s still more to cut!”

  Mrs. Sloan smiled in the dimming light — the flashlight, miraculously enough, was still working, but its light now had to fight its way through several layers of ooze.

  “I was just watching you, dear,” she said softly.

  Judith turned her ankle impatiently. The chamber was suddenly very quiet. “Come on,” said Judith. “We can’t stop until we’re finished.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Sloan stood straight and swung the axe up again. It crunched into a wooden root very near the ceiling, and Mrs. Sloan pried it loose. “I think that we’re very nearly done, though. At least, that’s the feeling I get.”

  Judith didn’t smile — she suddenly felt very cold inside.

  “No, we’re not,” she said in a low voice, “we’re not done for a long time yet. Keep working.”

  Mrs. Sloan had been right, though. There were only a half-dozen intact roots on the cellar ceiling, and it took less than a minute for the two women to cut them down. When they stopped, the mess was up to their ankles and neither felt like laughing. Judith shivered, the juices at once burning and chilling against her skin.

  “Let’s get out of this place,” said Mrs. Sloan. “There’s dry clothes back at the house.”

  The flashlight died at the base of the ladder, its beam flickering out like a dampened candle flame. It didn’t matter, though. The sky was a square of deepening purple above them, and while they might finish the walk back in the dark they came out of the root cellar in time to bask in at least a sliver of the remaining daylight. The weeds atop the mound were still as the first evening stars emerged and the line of orange to the west sucked itself back over the treetops.

  Mrs. Sloan talked all the way back, her continual chatter almost but not quite drowning out Judith’s recollections. She mostly talked about what she would do with her new freedom: first, she’d take the pickup and drive it back to the city where she would sell it. She would take the money, get a place to live and start looking
for a job. As they crested the ridge of bedrock, Mrs. Sloan asked Judith if there was much call for three-fingered manicurists in the finer Toronto salons, then laughed in such a girlish way that Judith wondered if she weren’t walking with someone other than Mrs. Sloan.

  “What are you going to do, now that you’re free?” asked Mrs. Sloan.

  “I don’t know,” Judith replied honestly.

  The black pickup was parked near the end of the driveway. Its headlights were on, but when they checked, the cab was empty.

  “They may be inside,” Mrs. Sloan whispered. “You were right, Judith. We’re not done yet.”

  Mrs. Sloan led Judith to the kitchen door around the side of the house. It wasn’t locked, and together they stepped into the kitchen. The only light came from the half-open refrigerator door. Judith wrinkled her nose. A carton of milk lay on its side, and milk dripped from the countertop to a huge puddle on the floor. Cutlery was strewn everywhere.

  Coming from somewhere in the house, Judith thought she recognized Herman’s voice. It was soft, barely a whimper. It sounded as though it were coming from the living room.

  Mrs. Sloan heard it too. She hefted the axe in her good hand and motioned to Judith to follow as she stepped silently around the spilled milk. She clutched the doorknob to the living room in a three-fingered grip, and stepped out of the kitchen.

  Herman and his father were on the couch, and they were in bad shape. Both were bathed in a viscous sweat, and they had bloated so much that several of the buttons on Herman’s shirt had popped and Mr. Sloan’s eyes were swollen shut.

  And where were their noses?

  Judith shuddered. Their noses had apparently receded into their skulls. Halting breaths passed through chaffed-red slits with a wet buzzing sound.

  Herman looked at Judith. She rested the shovel’s blade against the carpet. His eyes were moist, as though he’d been crying.

  “You bastard,” whispered Mrs. Sloan. “You took away my life. Nobody can do that, but you did. You took away everything.”

  Mr. Sloan quivered, like gelatin dropped from a mould.