Midnight Grinding

by Ronald Kelly

  And, with that, he split the shell in half and swallowed the fetus in a single, savory gulp.

  ***

  Existence in the gator’s lair drew on, changing the shape of Rube Traugott’s life, twisting it into something less than that of a human being.

  By his estimate—which was distorted and imprecise given the circumstances—he had been holed up there for nearly four days. He had set his broken leg the best he could, using the discarded bones of Ma Gator’s victims as splints and strips of cloth from his shirt to bind them with. The limb was crooked and stiff, but the sickening pain had reduced considerably, leaving only dull throbbing.

  He found himself sleeping often, like an animal burrowed into hibernation. He had plenty of water to sustain him and outside air filtered from the narrow crack at the rear of the cave. While awake, he kept a fire burning using the Zippo and dry tinder from the nest. Sometimes he sang the old songs and told the corny jokes that he and Lem had traded around campfires during their youth. But his was the only voice that rang through the cramped cave. Lem simply sat there, silent in his slow but steady decomposition.

  Sustenance was the biggest problem. He had finished off the last of the gator eggs, as well as any slugs, insects, or leeches he could find in the cave. Despite the severity of his broken leg, he had tried several times to reach freedom. Each attempt, however, had proven futile. Ma Gator was always somewhere around, either laying on the muddy bottom near the entrance or swimming along the bayou surface, always aware of what stirred above and below her. Each time he would regain the safety of the cave, he would find his brother sitting there waiting for his return. And, as his hunger grew from nagging urge to cramping pain, Rube began to regard Lem not as a silent cellmate, but more and more as a side of meat that was rotting needlessly before his feverish eyes.

  Once, Ma Gator had come visiting, gathering the nerve to return to the lair after the sound beating she had received at the end of a leg bone. Rube had been napping, when a great splash and a hoarse bellow shocked him from his slumber. He awoke just as Ma’s massive jaws shot forward and clamped down. But it wasn’t he who suffered the gator’s attack, but his brother. The reptile snagged Lem’s left arm and began to drag the corpse toward the mouth of the cave. With a scream of angry defiance, Rube reached for his brother’s half-body, grabbing it around the neck. Man and gator fought for a solid minute, subjecting the carcass to a grisly tug-o-war. Finally the rope gave out. Lem’s arm tore away at the shoulder with a moist rip. Satisfied for the time being, Ma Gator slipped back into the watery darkness, taking the limb with her.

  Rube sat there, cradling his rescued brother before the smoldering fire. He held him close and sobbed with the abandon of a frightened youngster. Rube tried desperately to recall memories of him and Lem in the years past, the happy times they had shared along the mossy banks of Black Bayou. But no such recollections surfaced. There was nothing but the encroaching of primitive emotion, eroding away the remaining layers of civilized behavior from his weary mind. Soon, he feared, those dark emotions would grow so powerful that they would drive him toward total madness.

  He hugged his brother’s body closer, snuggling against it like a child to a battered teddy bear. As his tears began to play out and he drifted to sleep, Rube noticed that the awful stench didn’t bother him nearly as much as it had before.

  ***

  Rube knew that he must try for freedom once more—before the fine black worms of insanity burrowed too deeply into the tender meat of his brain and gained complete control.

  “Farewell, my brother,” he said, eyeing the pale form at the rear of the cave with genuine affection. Then he took the folding knife from his pocket and extended the longest and sharpest of the bunch. He would have much rather had a harpoon to defend himself with, but the lock blade would have to do. Taking a deep breath of stagnant air, Rube plunged into the dark waters and began his slow journey to the surface.

  Halfway there, he met up with his nemesis. Ma Gator emerged from out of the murky darkness. She swept past and struck him a powerful wallop with a swipe of her tail. He felt ribs crack beneath the force of the blow. The impact and pain drove the reserve of air from his tortured lungs and he felt nasty water begin to snake its way into his nostrils and down his throat.

  The gator made a sluggish U-turn and, again, came for him. He knew that there was nothing to do now but kill the monster, or die trying. Motionlessly, he floated there, playing possum, lulling Ma Gator into a false sense of triumph. Then, as the gator’s mouth opened to receive its prize, Rube surged up and over the lengthy snout. He found his intended target—the creature’s left eye—and, with both hands, drove the blade of the pocketknife downward. The honed blade slid smoothly and without error into the gator’s orb. Ma thrashed and snapped, but to no avail. Rube wasn’t about to withdraw the knife from the fatal wound. Instead, he pushed harder, bearing down with all his strength, sending the blade past the occipital bone and into the brain.

  Ma Gator jerked in a final, rolling spasm, then grew limp and still. Slowly, she began to sink downward toward the murky depths of Black Bayou.

  Free! thought Rube Traugott. Free from the fiend who imprisoned me!

  He began to work his way upward, toward the surface of the bayou and the bright warmth of daylight beyond. There life reigned eternal, full of love, hope, and laughter. Birds sang from leafy branches, hounds bayed and barked joyfully as they chased fox and coon, old men joked and gossiped on the porch of the general store, and young men asked demure ladies to share a dance at the tune of a Cajun fiddle and squeezebox accordion.

  Reuben Traugott would go back to his family and fish and trap and live the remainder of his years as a happy and contented man.

  But the closer he grew to the shimmering surface, the more that idyllic life seemed impossible, even perversely absurd, in nature. His life beyond Black Bayou had ended in the depths of the gator’s lair. It had come to a close with insanity’s dark victory and the hideous acts he had performed by the light of a tiny fire.

  Rube’s heart pounded with panic, his brain swelling with horror as he came within a foot of bursting through. He swam there for a long moment, then began to ease back down into the comforting black depths. As the light of day faded into memory, he drifted to the soft mud bottom, letting the cold currents engulf him, letting the blind catfish and slithering swamp snakes caress his doubts and fears away.

  Letting the loving embrace of Black Bayou welcome him home once again.

  ***

  Emery DeBossier set off into the swamp in search of the Traugott brothers. He took his john-boat with the big 75-horsepower outboard, his Winchester .30-30, and a Coleman lantern. He had no great expectations of finding Reuben or Lemuel, however. He knew Black Bayou and its reputation well enough to have his doubts.

  Unlike most men in Point Bleau, though, Emery was not one who feared the twilight hours. He searched throughout the day and, when dusk passed into night, he didn’t seek the safety of the locked door or the comfort of the woodstove. Rather, he ventured further into the far reaches of the dreaded backwater bayou.

  It was well after midnight when he made his discovery. Fragments of both brothers’ boats laid scattered upon a sandbar, like a graveyard of ships that had chanced a perilous reef and fallen victim to its hidden dangers.

  He lit the lantern and steered his john-boat closer to the wreckage.

  Suddenly, a gorge of water broke to his right and a long, leathery tail arched through the night air. It hit the glass chimney of the lantern, shattering it. Flaming kerosene splashed across Emery’s face and hands. Quickly and without a second thought, he plunged into the cold waters of the bayou, dousing the burning flames before they could do much damage.

  The shock of the sudden dive cleared his head, bringing him to the realization that he was in a very dangerous situation. He was about to climb back into the boat, when something grabbed his right foot. He fought the best he could, but he was an old man and not as str
ong as he had once been. He felt his fingers slipping from the smooth fiberglass hull, betraying him, surrendering him to the thing that grappled with him from below.

  The cold black water rushed up to swallow him. He kicked and flailed as the creature pulled him under. His knife! He had nearly forgotten about it! Emery reached for the eight-inch skinner he carried on his right hip. But it wasn’t there. It had been—only moments ago. It was as if someone had grasped the staghorn handle and pulled it from the sheath mere seconds before he could get to it.

  Deeper into the depths of Black Bayou he sank, the smothering cloud of watery darkness engulfing him. Soon, he could fight it no longer and found himself blacking out.

  Emery DeBossier didn’t expect to awaken, but he did. He lay there for a while, disoriented and confused. He seemed to be in some sort of cave—a cramped and dank cave underwater. But, strangely enough, it didn’t seem like the lair of some marauding reptile. A small fire burned in the corner, casting an eerie glow upon the slimy walls of the cave, upon his shuddering and soaked form, and on the thing that sat nearby.

  It was a skeleton. Or, rather, half a skeleton. Its bones were stark white and clean, as if it had hung in some college biology lab instead of moldering in the depths of a dark and muddy cave. Something about it disturbed Emery to no end. It was too clean. No animal could have done that. No animal could have picked the bones of flesh so meticulously and with such cunning precision.

  Then, abruptly, the emphasis of Emery’s terror shifted. The water at the mouth of the cave began to ripple and churn as his captor arrived. He cringed against the far wall as the great, toothy head poked its way into the cave. Emery could only watch, mortified, as the alligator crammed itself into the limited space. There was something vaguely strange about the way the gator moved, about the way its pebbled skin hung loosely on its body. But the Cajun did not give much thought to such things. All that concerned him at that moment was the dead-meat stench of the creature’s breath and the mixture of malice and hunger that gleamed in its single, reptilian eye.

  “Ma Gator!” he gasped as the horrid thing shambled closer.

  “No,” a familiar voice rasped in reply. “But you may call me Pa.”

  A hand appeared from a slit in the reptile’s belly, an undeniably human hand, and in its grasp was the old man’s missing knife.

  It was then that Emery DeBossier looked into the gator’s open maw and, from the innermost darkness, saw a grin within a grin.

  EXIT 85

  When traveling, I sometimes get an uneasy feeling whenever I get off an unfamiliar exit on the interstate. Not the exits with a dozen fast food restaurants and an outlet mall, but those that seem utterly desolate, offering only a rundown gas station and a mom-and-pop diner, if even that.

  Often, the folks there act like they really don’t want you there in the first place. Or, if they do, it could be for a particularly nasty reason…

  Brian glanced down at the gas gauge again. The needle was angled downward, dangerously close to the E mark.

  He sighed and stared through the windshield. Interstate 75 stretched ahead, the flat black pavement illuminated by the van’s headlights and nothing more. There was no moon to speak of that night. The swampy Florida terrain on either side of the interstate was cloaked in darkness. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a single streetlight in sight, or even the lighted window of a distant house. There was only the pale swath of the Windstar’s headlights and the bright reflective markers that separated the two northbound lanes of I-75.

  Brian tried to keep his annoyance to a minimum and glanced around at the other members of the Reid family. His wife, Jenny, was asleep in the passenger seat, her pretty face turned away from him. In the back, his two children also slept. Five-year-old Kendall was dozing beneath the restraints of his seatbelt, his Mickey Mouse ears cocked haphazardly over his eyes. The baby, Anne, who was barely over a year old, slept peacefully in her car seat, still wearing the Winnie the Pooh bib they had purchased at one of the Magic Kingdom souvenir shops.

  He began to regret his decision to leave Florida that evening. Looking back, he knew they should have stayed the night in Orlando and gotten a fresh start the following morning. But after a week at Disney World, they had all pretty much been burnt out and were more than ready to get back home to Illinois.

  The one thing Brian Reid hadn’t bargained for was the long stretches of desolation between the interstate exits. It hadn’t seemed so bad during the drive down, in broad daylight. But in the dead of night, the remote areas seemed to go on endlessly. He had driven for nearly fifteen miles since passing Exit 84, and now he wished he had stopped at the Amoco station there, like Jenny had suggested. Now his gas tank was almost dry and there wasn’t a gas station in sight.

  Brian reached for the radio and flipped the dial from one station to another, an annoying habit his wife had tried to break him of during their six years of marriage. A minute later he came upon a fuzzy classic rock station. Pink Floyd drifted softly through the van’s speaker system as he continued down the road.

  He was about to give up hope, when he spotted the reflective green rectangle of an exit sign up ahead. He was nearly upon the sign before he could read what was written on it.

  EXIT 85—JASPER—SUWANNEE SPRINGS—½ MILE

  “Finally,” he murmured beneath his breath. He spotted the exit ramp ahead and, switching on his turn signal, veered into the far right lane.

  Thirty seconds later, he was off the interstate and crossing an overpass to a gathering of unlit buildings with equally dark signs. He saw the round, star-emblazoned sign of an old Texaco station and headed toward it, keeping his fingers crossed on the steering wheel.

  Brian pulled off the road and studied the station as he braked to a halt. There was a pale light in the station office, as well as lights shining through the small, greasy windows of the two auto repair bays. Was someone on duty, or was he just being overly optimistic?

  “Aw, come on,” he grumbled quietly. “I’m desperate here.” He sighed again, then cut the van’s engine to conserve what little fuel he had left. Jenny and the kids seemed oblivious to the stop. They continued to sleep soundly.

  Brian climbed out of the van and stretched, feeling the bones of his lower spine crackle. He closed the door quietly and looked around. The Texaco station was the only building on the left side of the road. On the opposite side were two other businesses; a greasy spoon café and a convenience store…both closed. Further down the road was a large billboard lit by a couple of spotlights. It read: BOB’S GATOR FARM—LIVE ALLIGATORS & REPTILES—SWAMP CURIOSITIES & SOUVENIRS—FLORIDA ORANGES & SALT WATER TAFFY—3 MILES AHEAD.

  He turned back to the gas station. Brian was still uncertain whether the business was open or closed. He walked to the office and tried the door. It was locked. “I guess that answers my question.”

  He was passing the gas pumps and starting back to the van, when he heard a noise echo from the far side of the station. He turned and caught a glimpse of someone rounding the corner, merging with the darkness beyond.

  Maybe he wasn’t wasting his time after all.

  He walked toward the end of the building. The night was muggy and his sport shirt clung damply to his back and beneath his armpits. An unpleasant smell hung in the air, a gassy odor like rotting vegetation.

  A moment later, he was peering around the corner. At the rear of the station, a single sixty-watt bulb glowed in the darkness. A cloud of candleflies and mosquitoes swarmed around the dull, yellow light.

  “Hello?” he called out. “Is anyone back there?”

  At first, he heard only the reedy chirring of crickets in the tall grass. Then a coarse voice answered him. “Come on back,” it invited.

  Brian stepped around several old car batteries and bent wheel rims as he made his way toward the rear of the building. When he got there, he found the station’s back lot to be just as junky as the side was. Crushed heaps of wrecked cars stretched off into the inky
darkness and, closer to the station, stood stacks of bald tires and large hunks of busted concrete with rusty lengths of steel reinforcement protruding from them. There were also plenty of aluminum soda cans and beer bottles lying around.

  For a moment, he couldn’t locate the one who had spoken. “Where are you?” he asked, a little louder than before.

  Movement came again, this time from the shadows between two stacks of retreads.

  “Over here.”

  Brian suddenly felt as though he had made a mistake. He watched as the tall, lanky man stepped into the pale glow of the back door light. He was unshaven, with dirty blond hair and an even dirtier Atlanta Braves baseball cap. He was dressed in a ragged white undershirt, faded jeans, and a pair of Reeboks that looked on the verge of falling apart at the seams.

  “Uh, do you work here?” Brian asked.

  “Hell naw,” said the man, eyeing the tourist carefully. “I was just camped out back here when I heard you pull up.”

  “Well, then, I’m sorry I woke you,” apologized Brian.

  He was about to leave, when the man reached into the back pocket of his jeans and took out a worn leather wallet. “Come here.”

  “What?”

  “I said come here,” the man said. “I got something to show you.”

  “I really have to go—”

  A peculiar expression crossed the man’s stubbled face. “I said for you to come here and look.”

  Brian’s uneasiness suddenly changed into fear. He wanted to turn and run, but he wasn’t sure that was a wise thing to do. The man continued to watch him, as though studying the expression on his face and gauging every little move he made.

  “Are you coming?”

  “Yeah,” said Brian nervously. “Sure.”

  Cautiously, he walked over to the man. The strong stench of sweat and unwashed clothing was nearly overpowering. But he gave no indication that the man’s lack of cleanliness was offensive to him. He sensed he would be making a bad mistake if he did.