by Lee Goldberg
“What’s happening to you?” Matt said. “I’ve got to get you help.”
Her head snapped forward with the speed of a crane. Her eyes flashed open. “You were sent here for me,” she said. “They promised I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore.” Her voice cragged and croaked; Matthew could almost feel the tumor growing in her throat.
“I wasn’t sent,” Matt stuttered, the absurdity of his words ringing in his ears. “I just came here.”
The tumors were multiplying, new archipelagos of cancer spreading under her skin, joining to form solid masses. And they were moving. Rippling like a weightlifter’s muscles.
“Join me,” she whispered.
She reached out a hand to him, although it was barely recognizable as human anymore. There was a pinprick of a tumor pulsing under the nail of her ring finger. Matt watched in horror as the growth pounded against the nail and then retreated to pound again. Then the nail popped off and it was free. It oozed out across her flesh. A string of moles grew up wherever it touched.
She took a step toward him, both hands extended. Matt shrunk back in horror. He wanted to scream, wanted to run from the room, jump on his motorcycle and get away from this house as fast as he could. But underneath that pulsating mound of diseased flesh he could still see traces of the woman who had taken him into her home.
“Stay away from me,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to help, but please don’t touch me.”
She didn’t move, but somehow her hands were closer to him. They were growing. The tumors were pushing forward, boneless talons of flesh. And they reeked of death.
“You are mine,” she sighed. “They told me you would come. I’ve been waiting for so long.”
One of her shapeless hands reached out for his. Before he could pull back, a tendril of the tumorous slime dripped from her nail-less finger onto his wrist. It burned into his skin; he could feel it fighting for purchase, trying to send down roots into his flesh. And as it grew under his skin, he felt a rage, blacker than he’d ever known, building in his mind. He slapped at his wrist with his other hand, and the thing flew off onto the floor. The rage passed as quickly as it had come.
“Don’t fight it,” she whispered. “We can rule together. I will love and obey you forever.”
He needed to get out, but she was blocking the door. He couldn’t risk pushing her aside; putting his hands on that festering mass of tumors could engulf him in her cancer.
He took a step backward and another. Then he nearly fell as his bare feet hit something. His pack. He’d left it on the floor by the bed.
The thing that had been Joan Delaney was nearly on him. There was black slime dripping from all its fingers now, the nails all gone. It reached a hand toward his throat.
Matt ducked and swiveled, grabbing his pack and letting its weight pull him around. He released it and heard glass shattering as it smashed through the window.
He couldn’t remember what was outside that window, only knew it couldn’t be any worse than what he faced in here. He took two long steps and hurled himself through the air, praying he wouldn’t miss his target.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Matt flew through the empty window frame and landed hard on the pile of wood he’d chopped an eternity ago. The logs skittered out from under him as he tried to get to his feet, sending him sprawling. He caught himself on one hand, and then that arm plunged through into the hole that served to cache the animal bones. He stifled a scream of pain as a jagged bone fragment slashed through his palm and tried to pull free. But the pile of logs had collapsed in on itself, and his arm was trapped under the weight of the wood.
As he struggled to free himself, he caught a glimpse of movement coming around the side of the house. How did she get here so fast? he thought. How can she even move?
Her legs were gone, swallowed by a mass of tumors. All over her body the growths had burst through the skin, which peeled and rotted around them. Blood and pus oozed out from the open wounds, leaving a trail of slime behind her. What had been a beautiful woman was now a quivering mound of rotting flesh.
And it was coming toward him.
He could still hear her voice. “You have to join me,” she said, although he could see no mouth to utter the words, no throat to shape the air into sounds. “This is why you were sent here. You’re mine.”
The thing that had been Joan didn’t have arms, but as it got closer he could see it was sending out something that looked like a limb, a pulsating cancerous growth that reached out for him.
He scrambled back as far as he could, but he couldn’t get his arm free. With his other hand he felt desperately for some kind of weapon. There were the small logs he had split, but he was certain they’d disappear into that pulsating mass with no effect at all.
And then his fingers brushed against something cool and smooth. His body recognized it before his mind did and his hand closed greedily around the axe handle. It was swinging through the air before Matt realized what he was doing. The blade flashed in the moonlight, and then came down on the Joan-thing’s outstretched tentacle.
The axe cut through the tumors like butter and thunked into the dirt. The Joan-thing let out a scream of pain and rage and pulled her dripping stump back into the pulsating mound of her body. The severed piece flopped on the ground twice and then began to decay into a black ooze.
The Joan-thing was coming for him again. Matt tried to pull his arm free, but it was still held fast by the weight of the wood. He yanked the axe out of the dirt and swung it backhand as hard as he could, aiming for where the thing’s throat should have been. There was a flash of light as the blade caught the moon again, and then it was gone as the axe-head buried itself into the shambling pile of flesh.
Matt tried to pull the axe back for another swing, but he couldn’t get it loose. And then it came free, sending chunks of diseased flesh flying into the night. Matt swung again, landing a solid blow on what should have been the crown of its head.
The axe might have been cutting through water, it moved so easily through the thing, splitting it in two. Matt pulled out the axe and for a moment expected the sides of the gaping wound to come together, bind themselves back into one. Instead, they both wavered for a moment, and then collapsed on the ground.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Matt stayed absolutely still, axe poised to strike, for a minute, then two, then five. It didn’t move, except for the steady decay of the fleshy mound into a black, evil ooze. At first he had decided to stay no longer than it took to dig his arm out of the pile of logs. Once he was free, he told himself he was waiting to make sure it didn’t rise back to life. But he knew that was a lie. He was watching in dread, fearing that, like the werewolf at the end of so many horror movies he’d seen as a kid, it would in death regain its original human form. Its beautiful, haunted form.
He needed to know that what he’d killed hadn’t been a human being. That it had been some kind of monster, not a needy, lonely woman stricken by a terrible disease.
Matt had killed before. He murdered his own best friend when Andy, possessed by evil from the Dark Man’s touch, had gone on a murder spree. But that had been his duty, his responsibility. He did it to save lives. This time he was just protecting his own ass.
The thought of Andy brought up images of his face, rotted and decaying as Mr. Dark’s evil consumed his soul. He tried to push the picture out of his head, but it kept pounding back. Finally Matt realized why.
There had been tumors in Andy’s rotting face. Maybe they’d been the agent that caused the decay. They were small… but they were the same things that had devoured Joan.
Matt realized that it didn’t matter if Joan had been human or not. There was evil in her, evil so massive it dwarfed the hate that had sent Andy to murder everyone who got in his way.
And it was contagious. He brushed at the back of his hand where the droplet of cancer had tried to send its roots deep into his skin, knowing that if it had gained purchase he would have turned into som
ething as horrible as she had. That rage he had felt, that burning hate for everyone and everything, that must have been what Andy felt when he pushed some kid’s face into a deep fryer.
If that was the case, then what about the other people in Heaven? Were they all possessed the same way Joan had been? Joan might easily have infected them all. But if so, what had infected her? Could it have been Mr. Dark? Or was there a greater force that controlled both of the monsters?
Since the moment he’d come back to life on the coroner’s slab, Matt had found nothing but questions. And here he had more puzzles, and still not a single answer. Especially to the most pressing one in his head-what had brought him to Heaven? He’d assumed he’d been acting on his own whim. But the Joan-thing claimed he’d been sent to her. And as he thought through the events of the night, he realized that she had never had a son. That was all a ruse to soften him up before the invitation to become something like her.
That welcome banner was for him.
That thought was enough to propel Matt to his feet. This was one welcome he was going to decline.
The thing on the ground-the two things, since his axe had split it completely into halves-was never going to change back to a person. Whatever humanity might once have been inside that ball of cancer was long gone. The remaining lumps of flesh were turning black, and then sloughing off into a watery ooze, soaking into the ground.
Matt grabbed his axe and yanked it out of the ground. The blade dripped black slime, and he knew he should take the time to clean if off. But that could wait. Everything could wait. The only thing that mattered now was to get the hell out of Heaven.
He picked up his pack and brushed off the shards of glass, then strapped it across the back of his Buell Blast. Lashing the axe across the top of the pack, he swung onto the seat and kicked the bike into life.
Matt slipped the bike into gear and rode slowly over the decaying tarmac of the side street. He allowed himself a little more gas and sped up. Matt had never felt anything so glorious as the fresh wind blowing in his face. He twisted the throttle and let the bike take off. He leaned into a curve and saw the most beautiful sight he’d ever come across in his life.
The long black ribbon of road.
It was the road that ran through Heaven. The road back to the highway. To reality.
Matt gunned the engine and let the bike fly. One hundred yards, fifty, ten. He was almost there.
He screamed up to the intersection, leaning hard right to take the turn onto the blessed road.
Then heard the blasting horn and screaming engine before he could turn his head left to see where the sound was coming from.
The logging truck, tearing down the one-lane road at ninety miles per hour.
The logging truck that was feet away from him.
There was no room to get over. The truck filled every inch of the roadway. The shoulder was a steep berm of dirt and rocks.
Matt could see the grillwork bearing down on him. Count the bugs splattered over the H symbol.
H for Harvester? Or for Heaven?
Matt twisted the handlebars sharply to the right. The bike’s front tire cut into the rubble of the berm, and for a moment he thought he’d make it over the top.
Then he hit a rock.
Matt threw himself off the bike, wrenching himself sideways before the momentum could hurl him into the truck’s path.
Matt rose in the air for so long he felt he’d learned to fly. Then he realized he wasn’t soaring. He was falling. He slammed into the hard earth with a whoompf as the air was pounded out of his lungs. His head came down on a rock and everything went black.
Then there was a shriek of tearing metal as the truck slammed into the Buell Blast, smashing it into fragments.
But Matt didn’t hear it.
CHAPTER NINE
And I awoke and found me here on this cold hill’s side.
The words, dragged up from some high school English class, flashed through his mind before he could open his eyes and realize where he was. Then came the pain. It shot through his body, every muscle screaming as he pulled himself back into consciousness.
The ground was hard under his back. Small rocks dug into his skin. In his rush to get away from Heaven, he hadn’t bothered with his helmet, and it was a miracle that the stone that left the goose egg on his head hadn’t split his skull open.
Whatever had happened to his body was nothing to compare with the damage to his bike. The sun was just cresting the mountains as Matt managed to force his eyes open, and in the gentle, golden light of dawn the roadway twinkled like a sea of stars. It was tiny shards of metal that had once been a motorcycle now reflecting the new day.
Matt pulled himself to his feet and staggered down the berm to the road, staring at the wreckage and realizing what would have happened to him if he’d been a second slower. Did the driver even stop? Or had he decided that what he’d hit had been just one more bug to smear his grillwork?
Where the hell did that thing come from? Matt wondered. This road isn’t long enough for a truck to build up that much speed.
Except, he realized, he had no idea how long the road was or where it went. The person who’d told him it ended right after the Heaven town limit had been Joan. It hardly seemed like the most egregious of the untruths she had told him.
There were scraps of metal and plastic scattered along the roadway over the length of three football fields. That was what was left of the Blast, which had gone out in a way that suited its name. A shred of nylon told him his pack had met the same fate.
How far was it back to the highway? Matt tried to remember how long the ride had taken him. He hadn’t been paying attention as he enjoyed the scenery, but it had been hours, certainly. Even if he’d been taking the curves as slowly as thirty miles per, walking back would take days. Days without food, water and shelter. All his supplies had been in his pack; now they were atoms.
And that was days of walking if he was in perfect shape. But as Matt took the step from the berm onto the asphalt, every inch of his body screamed out in pain. He’d twisted his right ankle severely-at least he hoped it was only a twist. His left wrist throbbed where he had slammed it into a rock on his landing. And he was pretty sure he’d cracked a couple of ribs.
He could start walking-limping, really-and hope for a ride, of course. Somebody could come along.
But the truck that had smashed his bike had been the only vehicle he’d seen on this road. Even if there were other loggers heading to the highway, if they drove like this one, they’d never stop to pick up a hitchhiker.
He couldn’t fault them. If he had to drive through Heaven, Washington, on a regular basis, he’d go as fast as his wheels would take him, too.
If Matt tried to walk back to the highway, he might well die on the way. Even if he made it, he’d be so hungry and thirsty and freezing by the time he got there he wouldn’t be able to do anything more than pray someone would pick him up and drop him off at the next motel. But Labor Day was long gone, and traffic was thin through the mountains. He might make it to the intersection only to die there.
That left him only one choice.
One terrible, hateful choice.
The sun broke free of the mountain and as it poured its light on the road, Matt could see it burning back up even more brightly. He staggered down the tarmac and kicked away a piece of fender. His axe lay underneath, astonishingly untouched by the crash. There was still some black ooze on the edge of the blade, but the rest of the head shone brightly in the new day’s sun.
Matt picked up the axe and hefted it in his hand. Then he turned around. A hundred yards in front of him he could see the first houses that marked Heaven’s boundary. And the bright, cheery banner that hung over Main Street:
Welcome home, Matt.
CHAPTER TEN
The main street was as deserted as it had been when he’d ridden in yesterday. Matt stood in the middle of the road, the axe dangling from one hand, and wondered what he should
do next.
He didn’t have to wait long. The front door of the general store cracked open and a pair of dark eyes peered out. Then it was flung open. The same little girl who had led the procession the day before ran out into the street.
“It’s Matt!” she shouted, twirling in a circle to make sure her voice penetrated the buildings on both sides of the street. “He’s back.”
Matt stared at the little girl, as if hoping to see through her skin and learn if there were tumors there waiting to take her over. The axe was comfortable in his hand, but he would have used it on himself before he could raise it against a child.
“You know me?” he said.
“Know you?” she squealed. “I’ve been praying for you to come.” She turned back to the general store, to the door that had swung closed after her. “Everybody come out! It’s Matt! He’s come, just like I dreamed he would!”
The general store’s door fluttered as if it was trying to make up its mind. Then it opened slowly. An old woman appeared in the doorway. She was dressed like one of the town’s men, dirty jeans and a flannel shirt, but she wore a faded calico bonnet over her gray hair. Her skin was sun-browned and leathered; Matt thought she looked like a walnut in a hat. But her eyes were coal-black and diamond hard, and as she stepped out into the center of the street she never took them off his face.
“No one gave you permission to leave the store, girl,” the woman said in a voice as weathered as her skin. “Get back in. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to come out.”
“But he’s here,” the girl said. “He left with Joan and he came back whole. You know what that means.”
“Could mean a lot of things,” the woman said, her eyes still fixed on Matt’s face. “Could mean he had a night of whoopee with that thing and came here to help out with the dirty work. Could be the bitch queen’s found herself a stud.”
