by Bryan Hall
I ignored him and continued. “If they happen to be in the right part of the woods…well…”
“They end up under the ground before they even have time to figure out they’ve found what they were looking for.” Ralph finished for me.
“And come back out dead. And with those things inside ‘em like that fella we just met.” Walt added.
“So if we don’t kill it…”
“We’re only out here to clean up after it, Will. That’s the most we can do.”
Will started to reply, but before he could speak he froze and cocked his head to one side. We all stared at him expectantly. Tony had rejoined us, leaning against a tree with his gun at the ready.
Finally the youngster spoke. “You guys hear that? It’s like…scratching or something.”
Just as he finished the sentence a small patch of leaves shifted on the ground behind him and a human hand clawed its way into the daylight. None of us shouted a warning to Will; the crunching of the leaves had already done that. The kid whirled around and leveled the barrel of his gun at the hand, firing two rapid shots that sent plumes of dirt and disintegrated leaves flying into the air. Both shots missed the hand, and instead of vanishing it was joined by its companion.
As the rest of us moved forward to try and get a clear shot on the corpse climbing out of the ground, Will stumbled backwards with a burst of profanity trailing him. He’d only managed a few steps when he lost his footing a fell onto his back, gun bouncing across the ground and hitting one of the tentacles.
The grotesque arm sprang to life, whipping towards the gun in a flash. It missed the rifle completely, instead finding Will’s right arm and wrapping around it like a python suffocating its prey. The boy began to scream, panic flooding his face.
“Goddamn it, no!” Walt screamed as we all instinctively turned our attention from the surfacing hiker to Walt and his grandson as the old man charged towards the teen.
As Ralph followed Walt towards the trapped boy, Tony fired off a round from his shotgun, tearing a grapefruit sized hole in the tentacle and coating the dead leaves with thick black blood. The arm convulsed violently for a second before it continued to retract into the ground, pulling Will with it. With the gunshot, the other arms sprang to life in an instant, whipping from side to side across the forest floor. One slammed into Walt at full force, sending the old man backwards through the air.
Before he had even hit the ground, another of the tentacles found the old man and wrapped around his waist, retreating into its hole and dragging him through the leaves towards whatever unknown Hell the earth below held. He screamed, cursing the thing that held him while firing his gun towards the one that had his grandson.
One of the stray bullets tore through Ralph’s knee just as he reached Will, knocking his leg from under him and dropping him to the ground in an instant. He fell without a sound, blood painting the leaves around him as the teenager he was trying to save carried on with his high-pitched, wordless wailing.
Both grandson and grandfather disappeared into the earth at the same time, screams and cries and curses twisting together and echoing up from below for a moment before vanishing into an unknown oblivion.
The remaining tentacles dropped to the ground and lay still. Ralph was silent, staring wide-eyed at one of the arms that had fallen to rest a few feet from him. Aside from raising his gun and shooting the beast that had taken Will, Tony hadn’t moved an inch during the chaos.
Neither had I.
As soon as the beast was still and the screams had fallen silent, I could hear a wheezing, gurgling sound behind me, and I remembered in an instant what my attention had been focused on moments before.
The hiker had freed himself from the waist up and was finishing his escape from the earth, staring directly at me with white, milky, dead eyes. Dirt was caked in his hair, on what was left of his clothes, even in and around his mouth. His skin crawled.
I raised my gun and fired one shot, hitting the corpse above its eye and snapping its head backwards, shifting the cloudy gaze skywards. The body collapsed.
“Fucking shit…” Ralph moaned the words as he crawled out of the reach of the scaled monstrosities, leaving a small trail of crimson on the leaves like a soldier wounded in some ungodly battle in some heathen land.
Tony helped Ralph stand, supporting him with his free hand while keeping the gun aimed at the closest tentacle.
The tentacles held our attention until finally Ralph broke the silence. “Now what?”
It was a simple enough question, one we all knew the answers to.
“One of us has gotta tell Walt’s wife,” I said. “And Will’s Dad.”
Tony grunted in agreement.
“What the hell do we say to ’em?” Ralph asked.
“The truth. Goddamn arms took ’em under.” Tony said the words quietly, eyes still fixed on the holes our two companions had vanished into. “And somebody’s gotta stay here, too. Wait for 'em.”
I was choking back tears. My entire life, I’d heard stories of people getting pulled under by the arms. I’d seen and shot those who came back from below. But this was the first time that I had ever witnessed a friend be claimed by the secret our town has kept for as long as anyone can remember.
It sat heavy on my soul.
Walt had been a family friend since my father was a kid. He’d practically helped raise me. Will…he was just a kid.
For the first time in my life, I seriously wondered just what would happen if someone important ever found out about the tentacles. About our town’s secret. About our sins.
“I can stay, wait for ‘em to come back,” Tony said flatly, interrupting my thoughts. I looked at him for a moment, studying his face. If he shared my feelings, he hid it well.
I knew the reality I was born into. No matter how many doubts I had, or how guilty I felt for hiding what lived in the woods, in the end it wasn’t just about me. Hundreds of people lived in and around Blanton. Small and secluded as it was, they all called it home. I was one of them, always would be, and would never put their homes in jeopardy.
“I’ll do it,” I said after a short silence.
“You sure?” Ralph asked.
“Yep. And I hate to mention it to ya, but we’ve still got that girl back at Tony’s to deal with. No telling when she’ll be waking up and wanting answers. I’d ten times rather stay here than go back and handle that.”
“I’ll deal with her when I get home. If Bobby ain‘t already,” Tony said.
“What are the chances Walt left the keys in his truck?” Ralph asked.
“Pretty damn good, I’d say,” I replied.
We stood another moment, eyeing the tentacles. “Well…you guys better get a move on,” I said.
“Yeah,” Ralph said. “Don’t get near those goddamn arms while we’re gone.”
I managed a slight smile. “Ain’t gotta tell me twice.”
Tony looked me up and down before shooting a quick glance back to the beast. “You’ll be alright alone?”
I nodded.
“What about getting back to my place?”
“I’ll walk. It ain’t that far.”
“Two miles by my count. And there ain‘t no telling how long you could be up here waiting.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Tony shook his head. “I’ll be back with my truck before dark.”
That gave him five hours or so. “Alright,” I said, watching as they made their way back out through the woods the way we came.
I sat down on an uprooted tree and surveyed the area once more, my eyes settling on the motionless tentacles as I turned the events I’d just witnessed over in my mind.
I thought about Walt, and Will. I thought about my father and his father before him, and just what they had done and lived with; what they’d seen in these woods and never spoken about.
I thought about the secrets we all keep.
And I cried. Jesus Christ, how I cried.
I was still crying w
hen Walt’s dirt and blood crusted hand broke through the ground a dozen yards from where he disappeared a few hours earlier, followed from the earth a couple of minutes later by Will.
I was still crying when I shot them each in the head.
PUDDLES
Thank God for the drought. It keeps their appearances to a minimum and doesn’t let them grow large enough to do too much serious damage.
I saw three of them just last Monday, swimming and thrashing around in a puddle in the Target parking lot. A fat woman with a cart full of shit she didn’t need stared at me staring at the puddle and gave me a look of disgust. But I kept her from passing through the water.
It’s been a strange kind of drought. It rains a couple of times a week, but it only lasts for an hour or so at the most. Then the sun reemerges like a conquering warrior and evaporates all the puddles and all the squirming little grotesque things inside them.
The first time I noticed them had been the second rain of the summer, after a storm that appeared in the middle of a sunny day, dumped sheets of water on the earth, and vanished before anyone had time to even grab an umbrella or get inside out of the weather.
I had been in the park, enjoying the day. On a weekday, the place is fairly empty, so nobody was around to see the splashing coming from the small pool of water that had gathered in a low spot on the sidewalk.
Nobody except for me.
It had only been one of them, gnashing its razor teeth and glaring at me with pure hatred through its pearl white eye while the sun reflected rainbows off its silvery flesh.
The little bastard had my full attention, and I didn’t see the jogger until she was a mere step from the puddle.
She screamed as soon as her foot broke through the surface of the water.
I couldn’t move; fear had paralyzed me.
The jogger fought, screaming in agony and staring at me in wide-eyed horror as she was slowly sucked down into the pool. The water turned crimson, then black, and then she was gone.
Devoured.
I collapsed to the grass, trembling.
Within twenty minutes the summer heat had returned the water to the atmosphere, leaving only the pale, hard pavement.
Two days passed before I managed to sleep again.
A week went by and the rain came again. I ran through the downpour, peering into every gathering pool for one of them.
I’m sure I looked like a madman.
Just as the rain stopped, I found four swimming together on the basketball court across the street from my apartment.
All I could do was stand guard until the water was no more. I couldn’t let another person fall victim to them. Luckily, no kids came to play basketball that day.
Two weeks later and a man pushed me down and called me a “fucking weirdo”.
A puddle had accumulated underneath the door to his truck. I swear I tried my best to convince him to stay away - to wait for the water to evaporate. He told me I was crazy; that there was nothing in the rainwater except our reflections.
He never even managed to open his door.
I’ve spent the entire summer trying to warn people, keeping them away from any of the dangerous puddles. For my troubles I usually get cussed, sometimes ignored. Once I was punched in the jaw. Four more people have been consumed by the one-eyed monsters, always in places where no one but me is around to see it happen. Just my luck, of course.
I’ve had time to watch the ugly little things, too. I’ve noticed that the bigger the puddle, the larger the creatures. And the longer the water survives the summer sun, the stronger the beasts seem to get.
I think they want to escape from the puddles and I think that if they have enough time, that if it wasn’t for that wonderful jolly old sun, they just might manage to do it.
But I’m getting nervous.
Summer’s ending, the days are growing cooler.
Next week’s weather forecast calls for rain every day.
THE DARK
“You don’t care at all if there’s nothing after we die?” Bill asked with disbelief.
Robert shrugged. “Not worth thinking about.” He cracked open another beer, his tenth of the evening. His words were starting to slur somewhat now.
“I mean like it was before you were born. Nothingness. Thinking about that doesn’t bother you at all?”
“I don’t think about. It’s easier that way.”
“You’re a lucky fucker, then.”
“I think most people don’t think about it, man. Hell, you just started worrying about it so much since…” Robert’s voice trailed off.
“Since my Mom died,” Bill finished for him, nodding. “I know.”
It was true. One week after his mother died of cancer it had started. He’d been watching an old horror movie and started imagining himself as the teenager who was being murdered. Religion had always been hard for him to swallow; heaven and hell and reincarnation all seemed like wishful thinking.
It was far more likely that there was nothing. Pure darkness; no consciousness or awareness. Trying to wrap his mind around what that would be like, Bill had thrown himself into the grip of one hell of a panic attack.
“Maybe that’s why you don’t give a shit,” Bill said. “You’ve never lost anybody.”
Robert shook his head. “Nope. That's not it at all. I’m just more concerned with living my life than I am with dying.”
“Afterlife or no?”
“Look: It’s fifty-fifty. It’ll be great if there is something. I hope there is, for that matter,” Robert said.
“And if there isn’t? If it’s just blackness…nothingness?” Bill queried.
Robert took a long pull of his beer and turned the question around in his mind for a moment before answering. “It won’t matter. I mean… if it’s nothing, we won’t know. Hell, it’s probably not that bad once you’re in it. Darkness, I mean. At least we don’t have to work and pay taxes.”
Bill rose from his seat, shaking his head. “I wish it was that easy for me. I gotta piss, then we’re gonna finish this conversation.” He made his way down the hallway and into the bathroom.
As he stood over the toilet Bill fought hard to push the thoughts of death from his mind. Talking about it was fine, but whenever he was alone he inevitably ended up trying to envision what it would be like to vanish into nothingness. He turned his attention to the Rolling Stone cover in the floor, reading the headlines to occupy his mind until he was finished.
He returned to the room to find Robert slumped over on the arm of the sofa, a thin ribbon of drool glistening in the corner of his mouth and his beer still in his hand.
Bill shook his head and chuckled. “So much for finishing the goddamn conversation.”
Grabbing another beer from the fridge, Bill switched off the overhead lights and sat down behind the computer in the corner of the living area of his small rental house.
He began to mindlessly surf through news sites, eyes flittering across the various bad news headlines and celebrity gossip stories before settling on a fluff piece about a beagle named Ringo who had woken up its owners in time for them to escape the fire that had engulfed their home.
“Ringo was his name-o,” Bill whispered.
Behind him, Robert started to snore softly.
Bill started scanning the headlines again when an instant messaging window popped up onto the computer screen, the dinging sound that accompanied it startling him.
hello
Was the only word in the window. No screen name in front of it, no title at the top, nothing. Just
hello
Bill stared at the word for a moment. There were only a few people who had his screen name, and all of them opened their conversations with more than just a simple hello.
Onscreen three question marks appeared underneath the single word.
Curiosity claimed Bill as a casualty, and he typed:hi
Almost immediately, a response came.
how’s it going?
who is this? Bill typed.
how’s it going?
fine, I guess…who do you think I am?
been watching you awhile.
what?
i like you. you’re…interesting.
what?
who is this?
nobody
Bill sighed and closed the window. “Modern day prank calling,” he whispered as he took a swig from his beer.
The window appeared again on the screen along with a new message.
don’t do that again, bill
Bill’s heart fluttered at the sight of his name on the computer monitor. Whoever it was knew his name. His first thought was Tori. She’d spent the last couple of weeks flirting with him in their advanced biology class, neither of them mustering enough to courage to ask the other out. Maybe she’d gotten his screen name from one of their mutual friends and was now setting out to woo him in cyberspace.
Bill smiled at the thought. He’d had enough alcohol tonight to take the simple flirting to the next realm and perhaps ask her on a date. He set the beer down and began to type a reply, doing his best to remain coy.
how do you know my name?
i know a lot
did you hack my PC?
no
you said you’ve been watching me.
yes
where?
everywhere
school?
everywhere
Everywhere? Something about that caused a disconcerting feeling to settle over Bill. He wrote:who are you?
nobody everybody I AM
“I am.”
Bill heard the last two words come from behind him, a barely audible whisper creeping across the room at the exact same moment the words materialized onscreen. He looked quickly over his shoulder and checked the room. Other than him and Robert, it was empty.
He looked back to the computer, unease creeping through him. Another quick glance over his shoulder reaffirmed his safety. He was hearing things, thanks to the beer and the uneasy conversation he‘d just had with Robert.
He was no longer so certain it was Tori. She didn’t seem the type to spend her evenings behind a computer playing strange and slightly creepy games.
