I want M to hear me. I want him to know I’m coming for him.
I can see heavy machinery through the fog, the construction equipment standing out like hulking dinosaurs frozen in place. I walk past rock trucks; I circle around a looming bulldozer that rests on gritty tracks. The king of this machine menagerie stands tall just a few feet away from the root cellar’s door. It’s a Komatsu PC400 excavator. The hydraulic arm snakes downward and the big steel bucket reminds me of a bowing head with ragged teeth. Braham taught me how to operate an excavator years ago when he was still in the construction business. I was counting on this machine being here the moment James mentioned that M was bringing in the heavy artillery. It’s the most important part of what comes next. The key to M’s downfall.
There’s a comforting weight in my right hand. A red can filled to the brim with gasoline, the flammable liquid sloshing around with each step that I take. I stand before that familiar little door. It’s a door that might take me to my death. I’ve accepted that. It’s also a door that might lead me towards redemption, and that makes all of this worth the risk. I take my last breath of the cool, frigid air with the morning sun still hiding somewhere low on the horizon. I slam my boot into the door with every bit of strength I have and it explodes inward, the old, rotten wood flying right off the hinges.
There is no fear in me as I stomp through the threshold. Only obligation. Only a sense of responsibility to make my final stand.
I venture into the house of M to I confront the Old Glutton King in the Dirt.
Chapter 58
Roman
The first thing I notice is Rose Crimshire curled up in the corner. The sound of the door crashing inward awakens her and she rubs bleary sleep out of her eyes.
She sees me, really sees me, and her gaze widens.
“Ro?”
She turns her attention back to the pit in the center of the root cellar’s dirt floor. It’s so much bigger than the last time I saw it, gaping open like a slit that leads down to unclean earth. The stench of M is overpowering. It makes my nostrils sting.
“You didn’t tell me he was awake, M! This is a wonderful surprise!”
What happens next happens very fast. I sense tremendous rage boiling up out of the pit. The ground shakes so violently that I stumble in place. One of the root cellar’s support beams splinters and a whole section of ceiling caves downward.
I feel something like a giant unseen hand slam into my chest and I’m thrown backward against one of the walls, boards flying outward from the impact. The gas can flies out of my hand and lands in the dirt. M bellows from the deep, his voice so loud and warped I feel my very eardrums vibrate at the sound of it.
“YOU STUPID FUCKING MEAT PUPPET…I TOLD YOU TO STAY AWAY!”
I feel long invisible fingers tightening around my throat and pressing me up against the wall of the root cellar. My feet actually leave the floor. I’m choking, my face turning a dark shade of purple. Spittle runs down past my bottom lip.
The world is turning gray.
“NOW YOU DIE…NOW I EAT YOU…NOW I SWALLOW YOUR MINISCULE LIFE, YOU INTERFERING AMOEBA. I’LL SLURP DOWN YOUR GUTS AND I WILL MAKE YOU WATCH.”
My vision is fading fast. I can hear a rumbling and scraping from the burrow that snakes down into the deep. M is ascending. M is coming up to feed.
“You’re hurting him.”
My head cranes weakly around to see Thorny Rose. Her cool gray eyes look incredibly cold and incredibly detached. She is walking towards the pit. She’s pulling something from her back pocket. She flicks it open in the darkness of the root cellar. It’s shiny and it glimmers. Her expression flickers and contorts.
There’s madness and murder in her face.
“You’re hurting my Ro.”
My head is forced backwards, my airway restricted even more. I can’t bear much more of this. Every small thimble of oxygen I get into my lungs becomes a struggle. My entire throat burns with effort. Everything is turning black.
Chapter 59
Thorny Rose
Everything changes the moment M assaults Roman. I don’t care about being a queen anymore. I don’t care about fame or the adoration of the masses. All those promises wash away in a river of cold hatred and my mind becomes a hornet’s nest.
None of it matters now.
The covenant is shattered. M is not my friend anymore. He is a betrayer and a liar and a big bad bully. I hate bullies. Bullies have to bleed. They have to be cut.
My grip tightens on the straight razor in my hand. I stand there above the pit and I gaze down into the darkened depths. M is coming, the whole root cellar shaking violently with the sounds of his ascension.
I guess I’m going to die now.
But before I go…I have a few thorns left specifically for M. There’s a lot of ugliness inside of M. I’ll cut as much of it out as I can before he gobbles me up.
I dive down into the pit, falling and falling, picking up speed with the straight razor in hand. M ascends, I descend.
Nobody hurts my Ro.
Chapter 60
M
That defiant, ignorant boy. I will choke him until he spits up chunks of his own lungs. He dares to defy the eternal? His life is a mere blink of the eyes when compared to my own. I will squash him and fuck the remnants of his corpse until he’s nothing but a little red smear across my pronged cock. I’m full of anger, nearly bubbling with it. I’m ascending as fast as I can along the earthen walls, crawling and scraping my way up through the tunnel.
He will die slow; I’ll start with the legs, I’ll…what the fuck?
What is this little black speck falling towards me? I see something sharp and shiny in a tiny hand. The form is plummeting, getting closer and closer. I have a mere millisecond to see Rose. Her little eyes are very gray and very cold. They remind me of that miserable ice age.
She is slicing at me through the air. She is cutting little rivets into me. She stabs a keen blade through the gelatinous orb of one of my largest eyes and I scream in a mixture of shock and pain. This crazy little bitch is trying to blind me! I’m so surprised by the ferocity of the attack that my ascension is momentarily halted.
Finally she falls against my enormous body and I manage to desperately stab a finger upwards and skewer her with one of my fingernails. She remains impaled there on my talon, her little fishnet-clad legs kicking.
How did it all go so wrong?
Black blood and yellow pus drips down from my mangled eye. I can still only fit a portion of my body out of the hole and this was my best eye for seeing above the surface. It’s blinded now, showing me nothing but murky shadows.
I resume my ascension.
I’m going to torture Roman Merrick extra slow for this.
Chapter 61
Roman
I watch Rose leap down into the pit through half-lidded eyes. Moments later the invisible hands around my throat fall away. I fall forward onto my hands and knees, coughing and sputtering for breath. I tear fresh oxygen into my chest and already I’m stumbling up to my feet and moving. I don’t have much time. I grab the can of gasoline and I spill the contents down into the pit, splashing the walls as much as I can.
Having done that I race out the open door and I climb into the cage of the big PC400 excavator. I turn the key in the ignition and start the engine just as M bursts up out of the pit. He starts bashing and tearing at the weak walls around him and the root cellar is literally torn to shreds in the wake of his wrath. All that remains is the pit surrounded by splintered rubble and M’s hideous segmented body emerging out of it.
The part of M that I can see turns my stomach. He’s horribly pale, almost albinistic. Deep blue varicose veins cover his engorged flesh and weeping sores mar just about every inch of him. He has multitudes of questing arms that end in long, clawed fingers. There’s not much of a head to be seen, just a lump of flesh that has a long slit across it. That slit opens to hundreds of sharp and yellowed teeth. They spin in the motion of a
circular saw. It’s like staring into the maws of a whole legion of lampreys. There are eyes all over him, blinking and wet with white ooze. The largest of these eyes appears to be mutilated and dripping with a mixture of noxious internal fluids.
A weak whisper invades my ears and I turn my head to see Thorny Rose just a few inches away from my face. Her black clothes are saturated in blood and a crusty fingernail juts out of her chest. Her little hands grip the talon that impales her. Plasma pours down past her lips and drips off her chin.
“Ro…”
It’s just a dying croak. My heart breaks for my friend. I know she’s done awful things in service of M, but I can’t help but feel sorry for her. She reaches out with trembling hands and holds my cheeks.
“Just one kiss…”
She presses her bloody, quivering lips against my own. I taste her coppery blood. I taste the madness and the obsession swirling inside of her. I taste death as it comes to take her. She’s immediately pulled away as M flicks his hand backwards.
Rose’s torn body slides off the fingernail and tumbles down past M’s segmented form and right back into the pit. She vanishes beyond M’s girth. Poor, broken creature. M cranes backwards and howls at the overcast sky, his shriek shattering the entire foundation of the house. The old building crumbles and falls, ruined by the vibrations from the deep. I clamp my hands over my ears and struggle to endure.
M moves incredibly fast, his body snapping forward and one of his long fingers extending into the cage of the excavator to stab into the flesh of my shoulder. The pain is hot and immediate and the blood starts to run down past the wound.
M tries to press his mouth up against the cab of the excavator now, his teeth spinning erratically as he endeavors to devour me. A long, rough tongue snakes out to lap across my face, leaving stinking saliva across my features. I can smell so many lives rotting down in M’s guts.
I reach desperately for a lever and manage to yank it to the side with my good arm. The hydraulic arm swings around and the steel bucket slams into M’s segmented body and knocks him away from the cab. The fingernail exits my shoulder and fresh blood drips down. M actually falls down against the ground, his many arms trying to support his weight.
I reach down into my pocket with shivering hands and I retrieve my battered zippo. My face feels very wet and my heart is hammering. I have only one chance at this. I have to make it count. I flick the flint wheel and a tiny flame appears. I narrow my eyes. I imagine where I want the lighter to go. My aim has to be true.
I whip my hand backwards and throw the lighter with every bit of force I can muster. It bounces off a section of M’s body and then lands right across the edge of the pit. The gasoline ignites and flames burst into life all around M. The voracious one hisses in anguish and begins to flop from side to side, his arms flailing. Sections of his segmented body start to blacken and char.
M has no choice. He has to withdraw back into the pit in an effort to escape the flames. His girth slithers and pulls back down into the hole. The inferno becomes even stronger now, the old wood of the root cellar feeding it. The last image I see of M is a few long fingers descending as the flames rise higher.
I’m not done yet. I work the lever again and start to dig and scrape the steel bucket of the excavator against the soil. I fill the bucket to the max and I bring the hydraulic arm up higher, the first bucket hanging ominously overtop the pit.
I let the dirt fall into the burning abyss.
Chapter 62
M
I can smell myself burning. I am singed and raw. I’m reminded of the asteroid that fell such a very long time ago. It scorched the earth. Now I’m the one scorched. I have to descend lower and lower to snuff the flames from my body. The smoke curls all around me and I see nothing. Rose’s corpse is snagged on a root and a permanent grin is fixed on her dead face as I descend down past her.
She seems to ridicule me even from the jaws of death.
This boy cannot defeat the likes of me. I am Unknowable. I’ve always been here and this world is just my dinner plate. I am deathless and forever. How can he overcome the eternal? His existence is nothing but a little flickering candle flame while my endless life burns with the fury of Tartarus.
I want to rise, but I’m weak and burnt and I cannot rise. Something is happening up there. Dirt is falling down against my eyes. I am being buried. I am being sealed in the deep. The passageway is being severed. I watch as the hole vanishes and the silence of my prison becomes unbearable.
There is only darkness now.
Much like myself, I think this darkness is forever.
Chapter 63
Roman
I keep filling the excavator’s steel bucket full of dirt and piling it down on top of the hole over and over again. I don’t stop shoveling soil down into the hole until I’ve made a large man-made hill where the root cellar once stood. A fitting burial mound for the thing that dwells beneath.
Finally I stop myself and scrub the sweat from my brow. Everything is quiet. The earth no longer quakes and there are no vibrations from below. My shoulder throbs but at least the blood seems to have stopped flowing for the moment.
I carefully climb down from the excavator. There’s a piece of something black sticking up out of the dirt. I pull at it and unearth a heavy backpack. I take a look inside and marvel at the various precious stones contained within. I sling the backpack over my good shoulder and I take one last look at the burial mound I’ve created. I hope Rose finds peace in whatever lies beyond this life.
As for M?
Let him rot.
I limp my way over to the Dodge Charger and toss the backpack into the passenger seat. I slide gingerly behind the wheel and I drive away from Legion Lane just as the sun blazes into view from behind the mountains. I drive until I’ve passed beyond the town limits of Rust Valley and then I keep on driving.
I’ve never looked back.
Chapter 64
Epilogue
Three years later.
My family and I live in the Bahamas now. Helena spends her time drinking cold lemonade on white sand beaches. Her dystonia gradually abated until all symptoms vanished completely. That was one gift M never got to take back.
Braham owns a small chain of tiki bars on the islands and business is good. Money problems are a thing of the past for us. I guess M kept that promise too, whether he wanted to or not.
I take long walks when the tide comes in and I let the waters of the Atlantic wash across my ankles. I think about Rust Valley sometimes. I think about holes in the dirt and holes inside of people and the old, hungry thing that lived beneath the house on Legion Lane. I doubt he’s dead. I don’t think something like him can ever really die. He’s buried and forgotten though, and that’s good enough for me.
Rose Crimshire is still listed as missing. The only crime she was ever connected to was the suspected murder of her mother Rebecca, also missing. The case is dead in the water and no new evidence has come to light. It never will.
Any plans for a quarry to be dug on the property died with Rose. Greystone Construction took their equipment and abandoned the site shortly after learning that she lied about owning the land. There wasn’t any money to keep them there either, so I’m sure that played into it. The collapse of the house was blamed on a small earthquake. Rare for that part of West Virginia, but the seismic readings couldn’t be denied.
The house was bulldozed completely and demolished shortly after. I haven’t been back since but I understand all that stands there now is a vacant lot surrounded by chain link fencing. There are no plans to do much of anything with the land that remains there.
I still drive the fastest 1968 Dodge Charger this world has ever known. I like to drive it down Western Road with the windows down and gaze out at the clear waters of Old Fort Bay. The radio has a mind of its own and only ever plays one song, but I’ve always liked Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper” so I don’t mind that so much.
One eve
ning I was driving and saw two figures standing out there on a tiny deserted island in the bay. The man was tall and handsome and his hair was slicked back from his forehead. He wore the finest brown suede suit I’ve ever seen. He had a little blonde girl with him in a pretty yellow dress. Her left hand was holding the man’s hand and her right was holding a little bouquet of daffodils.
They waved at me as I passed. I waved back. When I looked into the rear view mirror to get another glimpse of them they were already gone.
Nights are beautiful in the Bahamas. Sometimes I sit on a pristine beach during high tide and I just stare up at the stars. They’re so bright I’m often tempted to reach out and try to touch them.
Dirt Lullabies Page 16
