by Curran, Tim
The first thing he saw was that there were lights on in his house. Sure, the big Cape Cod on the corner with the high, hand-crafted iron fence around it. His old man’s Lincoln Navigator in the driveway. Not electric lights, of course, because those were history now. Wavering, yellow-orange lights like the kind thrown by candles. He should have felt welcomed by this, by the idea that someone was home waiting up for him.
But he did not feel welcomed.
In fact, he felt almost threatened.
His old man worked long hours and Chuck just couldn’t imagine him waiting up. Even with the fact that his son was missing in a school bus somewhere. Not that dad was selfish or insensitive really, but as he always said himself, he worked long hours.
So who had lit the candles?
Chuck stepped through the gate, the rain just coursing down now, running down his face and down the back of his shirt in rivers. He caught a glimpse of someone watching him from the oval window on the stairs. But as soon as he looked, they darted away.
It wasn’t his old man.
Dad was short and round. Dad wore so much gold jewelry around his neck it would have flashed in the candlelight. So it wasn’t dad. Then who? The figure had been tall and thin, almost like mom…but it couldn’t have been mom. Mom had divorced dad years ago. Besides, last month, last month…
Last month she died. She died and that’s that. You never saw her anymore, you didn’t even know what she was doing these days. Was she with one man after another like dad said? Or had it been worse? When she slit her wrists had it been because of her drinking and drugging or something more?
Something like loneliness?
Chuck wasn’t going there. There was pain there and bad feelings and he could not face them. After she’d died, he’d spent a lot of nights going over it all. It was true that he had not really seen her in three years. But she always sent cards and sometimes she called. But Chuck had not acknowledged those cards or returned those calls. He knew why, of course. It was because his old man had encouraged him to blot out the memory of his mother. And he had done so. His mother had left. He lived with his father. That made him feel bitter at her and made him want to do just about anything to please dad.
Well, he never left, did he? He didn’t abandon me. He took care of me.
As dad always said, “It’s just you and me, kid. Your mother wasn’t much to begin with and now she’s gone. It’s just us. You know you can count on me, right? That you can always count on me?”
And Chuck did.
Even though dad had little time for him, he knew he could count on him. At least, he thought he could.
And mom?
She was dead and that was that.
God, where was all this coming from? This sudden concern for others? He’d never cared about anybody before.
Sucking in a damp wind, Chuck opened the front door.
Right away. He could smell something cooking. Something like bacon frying. It had that same unmistakable odor…almost. But not a good smell like bacon in the morning, but something else. Something that smelled like salted meat on top and something almost rancid beneath.
He walked slowly towards the kitchen, certain now what he was going to see. But driven. Pushed in that direction. Needing to see the very worst thing that this night could offer up to him. Something much more personal than that clown or the old witch. Something he could not walk away from unchanged.
The cooking smell was stronger.
It was gagging even.
At the archway leading into the kitchen, he stopped. Stopped, took a breath, found his voice and pulled it up where it might be heard. “Mom?” he said.
There was a wet, smacking sound like an old lady moistening her lips. Then a voice, very dry and cracked: “Come in, dear.”
It was Chuck’s legs that almost mechanically brought him through the archway. Because the rest of him was tensed and crawling and needing badly to run. But his legs brought him in there and he got to see. See what, somehow, through wind and storm and driving rain, he’d been drawn back home to see.
There were perhaps a dozen candles glowing, throwing wavering shadows against the wall like something from a spookshow. And that was appropriate because mom was standing before the stove. The gas stove. The electric ignition was out, but mom was resourceful: she’d used a kitchen match. Mom had always been resourceful that way. Even after six weeks in the grave.
“Are you hungry, baby?” she asked.
Chuck wanted to fall to the tile floor. He wanted to fly apart or drag himself under the table like a sick dog. Mom just stood there, smiling at him as she cooked things in a frying pan. She was entirely naked, a moldering thing with deflated breasts hung with green moss. Her left eye was missing and her right was huge and glistening black, a grayish mucus running from it. The flesh had been eaten away from her ribs as if by animals and her skin was white and lumpy with strange sucker-like growths that looked oddly like barnacles.
“How’s my baby boy?” she said. “Did my baby boy miss his mommy?”
Chuck was repelled, certainly, but more than that he was wounded on a much deeper level. Something inside him, something he imagined to be like boiling red blood, was bubbling to the surface. Coming from a room inside him he’d kept locked and bolted for years. It was the place he’d kept the memories of his mother. The way she’d been before she left and his hopeless childhood fantasies of what things would be like when she came home again. But she never did come home, so Chuck had thrown everything into that room: all the emotional flotsam and jetsam that had collected in his soul over the years, all the love and hate, joy and heartbreak, remembrance and disillusion and pain, dear God all that biting, cutting awful pain, and here it comes, here it all comes
Chuck began to whimper as all those repressed emotions broke through the levy and flooded him, running wet from his eyes and filling his belly with heat and making something in his chest constrict.
“Tears, Chuck? Are those tears and sobs for your poor neglected mother?” she said. “No, no, no, we can’t have that. Mommy can’t have her big boy crying like a little girl. You let mommy make it better. You let mommy make you something yummy to eat.”
And as Chuck stood there, floored with too many conflicting emotions, mom flipped dark, burning things in the pan with her spatula. A sickening odor wafted from them, almost overpowering her own stink which was that of mildewed, rotting things. As she worked that spatula, he could see where the pathologist had sutured her wrists back up in the morgue. The flesh of her fingers hung in loops like cobwebs. Her knuckles had burst through the skin and he could see red gristle beneath. She hummed some melancholy dirge under her breath and Chuck was certain that she’d hummed him to sleep with it when he was a baby.
He took one step backward.
“Where are you going, baby? Don’t you like mommy’s cooking?”
As she said this, a flap of something fell from her cheek and landed in the pan, sizzling away in the hot oil. And that was what she was cooking up. That’s what she was offering to her son: herself. Didn’t mothers always give their children their own flesh and blood? She had brought him to being within her own body and now she was giving him another helping of that. She wanted to fill him with herself and that’s why the flesh from her ribcage was missing: she’d filleted herself for her only child.
She stood there, humming and flipping the meat, an absolute horror. He could recognize that figure as his mother…but just barely. Most of the hair was gone from her scalp, save a few locks at the back of her skull. And these were not the lustrous red he remembered, but a dry tangle of pale orange hairs like dried reeds or straw. Her lips had shriveled away from her blackened gums and her teeth seemed narrow, rodent-like, just gray with filth caked between them as if she’d chewed her way up out of the grave. The entire left side of her face was enormously swollen, just a great sac of pus and quivering larva.
“Why don’t you talk to mommy, Chuck?” she said, a couple of graveworms
dropping from her mouth and frying up in the pan.
“Your dead,” he said and was surprised at how calm his voice was. “You…you shouldn’t be here. You’re dead.”
Mom fixed him with that single black, juicy eye. “That’s what your father said, Chuck. That’s exactly what he said. Right before his heart gave out and he hit the floor. Don’t worry, baby, I didn’t let your father die alone and unloved. I laid on top of him. He didn’t like it much. Especially when I told him how all his partners are robbing him blind and how his mother tried to abort him and”
“Stop it!” Chuck said, more emotions rioting in him, filling his head with explosions like fireworks. Grief and pain and guilt and anger and horror, oh yes, lots of that.
Mom laughed and it was an awful, screeching sound like grinding metal. “Hungry, Chuck? Hungry? She reached into the pan and her fingers sizzled in the oil, black smoke coming off them. She snatched a piece of meat and placed it between her teeth. She did not chew as a human chewed, but like an animal, a dog or even a shark maybe, snapping her teeth down on it and pulling it whole into her mouth and down her throat. “Yummy. Now, Chuck, it’s time we spoke the truth about your father.”
Chuck was breathing very hard, part of him certain that none of this was even happening, that perhaps he was still in Mrs. Crowley’s apartment. “Your dead,” he said. “Go…go back to your grave.”
“I don’t want to, Chuck. I’ve been resurrected and I like it.” She ate another piece of meat with that same chomping, gulping action. “Your father liked men, Chucky. He liked the feel of a cock in his mouth. He liked to put his own up men’s asses. But you knew that, didn’t you?”
“Mom…”
“Oh, it’s true, Chuck. I should have known. All the while we were married, he was playing with other men. That explains why he always wanted to fuck me in the ass. I didn’t like it at first. But then later, yes, I liked it. When I was drunk I liked the feel of it. That was why I left, baby. Because your father was a queen and I like the feel of cocks in me. I liked to be fucked by men. Any men. I liked to be fucked by two or three men at the same time. I loved the feel of it.”
Chuck was crying now, tears running down his face.
Mom turned away from her fry pan. “Don’t be so weak, Chuck. Don’t be so fucking weak. You’re like him! You’re like your father! Soft and weak and gutless! I’d hoped there’d be more of me in you! I’d hoped you’d be strong! Strong like me!”
Chuck shook his head. “You weren’t strong! You…you killed yourself!”
Mom stopped, cocked her head to one side. She looked momentarily confused. That single black eye jittered in its socked, pulled in and pushed out, pulsing like a macabre slug. More mucus ran from it. The swollen bulge at her cheek trembled. It split open and a trickle of black blood ran from it. A plump, white worm emerged and dropped free, followed by another and another.
“Yes, Chuck, I did kill myself,” she said, examining the black surgical lacing that held her wrists closed. “Do you know what that was like? The loneliness and hopelessness and stark pain of it all? Alone, alone, alone! Lying on that floor, vomiting my guts out and thinking about my baby boy who did not love me anymore! Who would not even return my calls or send me cards on Mother’s Day! Do you know what that was like? To die alone, alone, alone?”
“Get out of this house!” Chuck shouted at her. “You’re not my mother!”
“Come here,” she said, holding her arms out to him.
“No!”
“Come here!”
“No!”
And he wouldn’t so she started coming to him, a green worm slinking from the ruined cavity of her nose. “You do as mother says or I’ll do something awful to you! I’ll call the clown, Chucky-fucky! I’ll call the clown here! Grimshanks will come and, oh, the terrible things he’ll do to you!”
Chuck just stood there, infinitely more disgusted by this thing that pretended to be his mother than he had been by Mrs. Crowley or even that clown. “You’re not my mother,” he said again. He did not say it in a whining, sobbing voice, but in a voice that was strong and sure. “You’re not my mother.”
Mom stopped for a moment. She did not seem to like what was happening here. This was not how it worked. Chuck was supposed to be terrified, on his knees, broken and sobbing. His willpower shattered by the horrors she so freely offered up.
Time for a new tactic. Time for something worse. Time for something that would strip his gears and lay him low.
Mom grinned, dripping and crumbling and raining worms. “Well, Chucky-fucky! Long time, no see! How did that old witch Mrs. Crowley treat you, eh? Tricks and treats and gobs and goodies?” The voice was that of the clown now. A sing-song voice of dementia from some slimy gutter in hell. “And you ran off, ran off, ran off, and left your friends! Tsk! Tsk! Do you know what she’ll do to them? Cut them and carve them and serve them up sweet! Boil their blood to broth and pickle their naughty underparts in dusty jars! Nibble, nibble, like a mouse! Who’s that nibbling at my house? Hee, hee, hee! Oh, they’ll suffer and they’ll whine and they’ll cry boo-hoo! And it’ll all be your fault! YOUR FUCKING FAULT!”
Chuck felt like he was going to fall right over. He felt dizzy and wobbly. No blood in his veins and no air in his lungs. Dear God, it was too much. It was like being back in that flooded street in Bethany with Tara and Brian and Jacob and the others. Once again, he could smell an eternity of circuses and carnivals and county fairs that had been stored up in some musty trunk. The cotton candy and hot dogs and popcorn. Yes, everything sweet and greasy and salty. The stink of elephant shit and hay and garbage. He could hear whistles and sirens and calliope music. It was coming from every direction, overloading his senses. And mom…Jesus, but the mom-thing was even starting to look like the clown. It could not be, but he was seeing it happen before his staring eyes. Green pom poms were erupting from her chest and a bright red ruffled collar thrust out from her throat. Her hands became oversized white gloves, the wrists still sutured.
It was happening.
It was really happening.
“Yes, they’ll suffer, all your friends will suffer,” the mom/clown-thing was telling him, her eyes lost in black diamonds, great red painted spheres of rouge appearing at her white, rounded cheeks. Except it wasn’t rouge, but the spilled blood of children. “But their suffering will be nothing in comparison to YOURS, you drooling, dick-licking, spineless little mama’s boy! Because I’m going to show you what old Grimshanks does with tasty little boys! I’ll show you all the vile, obscene things I make them do! I’ll show you what it’s like to beg for mommy and daddy! I’ll show you what I make them lick and suck and touch! Oh, you won’t be the same when I take your cherry, little boy! You’ll never be the same! You’ll beg me slit your throat just like all the others”
Chuck knew he was defeated.
He could not fight against this thing. It would have him. It would take him and touch him and destroy him, make him beg for death, beg for it. You could not live after what this thing would do to you.
Beaten.
Violated.
Deflowered and soiled.
The clown advanced on him and a voice in his head said: Fight him. It’s all part of the game. The fear, the intimidation. That’s how it starts. And like a bully in the schoolyard, if you give into it, you’re done. When you weaken, it gets stronger. Fight! Fight! Fight! Do something! Anything!
Chuck stumbled into the kitchen, got the table between himself and that evil clown. How could he fight it? How could he honestly fight it? He did not know, but his hand reached out onto the counter by the sink. It found a glass jar filled with sugar and pelted it at the clown’s face. Chuck was a good athlete. Not just an exceptional soccer player, but a Little League pitcher that had, last summer, gotten his team into the state finals. He threw that heavy jar at the clown and it hit him dead center. The clown made a barking sound and fell backward. One of those white hands pressed against his face and blood ran between the f
ingers.
You hurt it! See? You hurt it!
Chuck did not really believe that he did. At least, not physically. His defiance was what hurt the clown.
The hand pulled away from the face and beneath there was just a black cavity filled with maggots. “Oh, Chucky-fucky, you ruined my good looks!”
But Chuck was not listening. He threw a can of coffee. A bag of flour. A rolling pin. And then he grabbed a canister of salt. He paused before throwing this. The others items the clown had merely batted from the air, but now he backed away and those clown features began to run like wax. Beneath them was mom. She was shaking her head, that single black eye looking concerned.
“Chuck,” she said. “Baby, put that down…don’t hurt mommy…”
What was happening here? Whatever this thing was, mom or monster or demon clown, it seemed suddenly afraid. Was it just the defiance? The fact that he’d fought back? Or was it what he was holding? The salt? He remembered in history class that when the Romans sacked a city, they would tear it down, salt the earth so nothing would grow…was there an analogy here?
Holding the salt, Chuck stepped forward.
The mom-thing stepped back quickly, bumping into the refrigerator door, pressing herself tight against it with outstretched hands like one of those people that got knives thrown at them.
“Baby,” she said, rasping her breath now, more worms and fluids dropping from her. “Baby…”
“You’re afraid of salt,” he said.
She shook her head, that eye darting about. “No, Chuck, no…”
“You’re afraid of it!”
He popped the lid and grabbed a handful. Yes, fighting back had been the trick. They did not like it when you fought back. They played their games and you were supposed to be paralyzed by fear. But when you fought back, it unsettled them. And especially when you discovered their aversion to salt.
