On them.
The snaking bodies crushed below his feet, he could feel them whipping around as he smashed them. Pops sounded through the room as their exoskeletons burst under his weight, and the tickle of hundreds of legs on the sides and backs of his feet made vomit rise in his throat.
Then the burning came. The tickle disappeared, replaced by what felt like pins pricking the arches of his feet. The pricking moved to the balls and heels of his feet. Then the pricking became hot coals. Not like he was walking on them, but like someone had surgically inserted them into his feet and legs.
He almost screamed. It was only Mal that stopped him. Only Mal's own screams, and the knowledge that seeing his Daddy shrieking in pain might be the final straw that broke his sanity.
Blake bit back his screams. Bit down the pain. Stepped forward on feet that felt like they had seared off at the ankles. On what must be mere stumps.
He stumbled, righted himself. Fell.
Mal caught him. Still screaming. "Save me, save me!"
Blake would have laughed. Because it was the boy who had saved him in that moment. The boy who had provided an anchor that kept him from careening bodily into the carpet of centipedes.
He swept Mal into his arms. A flood of the insects fell from the ceiling as he pulled his boy off the bed, and now Batman and Robin and all the Caped Crusader's friends and foes were covered by centipedes. There was no more bed, just as there was no floor, no ceiling, no walls. No nothing. Just the bugs.
Blake turned. His ears were ringing, panic driving blood through his temples in such quantities that the sound of it in his ears was all he could make out. No more screaming, no more popping. Just blood. Just fear.
"Close your eyes! Close your eyes, bud!" he screamed. Thought he screamed. He couldn't be sure. All he heard was the blood-sound. Hopefully Mal heard the encouragement. Hopefully Mal felt like his Daddy was there to save him.
Blake ran. Three large steps on ever-burning stumps, legs that had been amputated by the bites of tiny monsters and now were being cauterized over and over and over again.
And then they were out of the room.
POSTPARTUM PAIN
Alyssa didn't know which was worse: the sounds she heard Ruthie making in the hospital, or the sounds her son was making right now in the safety of their home.
And neither was within a mile of the pain she felt as she hobbled down the stairs after her husband, following him and the trail of screams that Mal was leaving, like sonic breadcrumbs to some unspeakable place in the dark forest their house had suddenly become.
She was halfway down the stairs when Blake began screaming as well. Halfway down, and try as she might she couldn't push her body to go any faster. The pains left behind by the birth were too great. The only reason she wasn't doubled over on the side of the steps was that Mal – her baby, her other baby, her only baby boy – was in some kind of terrible pain, terrible trouble.
So she moved as fast as she could. A fast hobble that would have made any centenarian jealous. Shooting for the kind of speed that would win a footrace with a ninety-year-old. Feeling herself failing.
She made it off the steps. Rounded into the hall. The empty hall.
Partway down.
She saw that the door to Mal's room was open. Screams coming from inside. Her heart stopped.
What's happening? What can I do?
The answer came instantly. Not the answer she wanted. It was an answer that felt like it pulled out everything the birth had left intact, and burned it to ash.
Nothing. You can't do anything. Useless.
The doorway exploded.
Her heart nearly exploded with it. Mal. Mal, held in his father's arms.
Blake nearly threw their son to the floor. "Run!" he screamed at Mal. "Get to the living room!"
Mal didn't move, struck motionless and dumb by whatever had happened in the room. Blake's face turned to something frightening. A thing unkown, very much a stranger. For a moment she wondered if she was seeing a shadow of the man Blake lived in terror of, the man Blake both feared and feared becoming.
"RUN!" he shouted.
Mal did. He spun and sprinted down the hall, tearing past Alyssa on his way. She reached for him, wanting to hold him, to assure herself that he was all right. But he ducked under her hands. She didn't know if he was running because he was afraid of what had happened in the room, or because he was afraid of Blake. Neither was a good alternative.
Blake locked eyes with her. "Get some towels!" he yelled.
"What?" Confusion ripped through her, created small earthquakes in her brain that made her thoughts go jittery. What could he need towels for? "What do you –?"
"Just get them!"
She turned a quick circle, momentarily unsure whether to get the towels from the kitchen or from the linen closet upstairs. She realized in the next instant what a stupid question that was. Turned back to the kitchen.
Stopped.
Blake was gone again.
HAMMER FIST
Blake threw Mal down. Screamed something at him. It barely registered what the words were. What his tone of voice might be, or its effect on an already-frightened child.
Who he might be becoming.
All that registered: the centipedes. The tens, hundreds of thousands of them. And, more important, the several dozen or so that had ventured over the invisible dividing line between Mal's room and the hall.
He had to get the door closed.
They were coming out.
Blake reached for the door. It had originally opened outward, but he had re-hung it when he realized that anyone opening it would have a good chance at killing anyone passing by in the narrow hall on the way to the kitchen.
He regretted that choice now. Now, with the door seemingly miles away, the knob on the other side embedded deep in the drywall of Mal's room.
Blake reached for the doorknob. He heard Alyssa moving behind him. Hoped – prayed, begged – that she was doing what he told her to. Her footsteps were uneven, ragged. The awkward dance of a woman torn.
And for a moment he hated her. Hated Ruthie. Because Ruthie was the reason Alyssa couldn't move faster. And if Alyssa didn't move fast enough, the things were going to get out.
He couldn't let that happen.
(why not? why not just… let it…?)
The words stopped him. Not long, but long enough that another segmented thing slithered by him, into the hall.
The voice seemed like it was coming from far away. So far away the speaker might be on the other side of the world, the other side of Time itself.
Or just in Hell.
The voice sounded like Blake's father.
(just let go….)
Blake gritted his teeth. Not just against what he had to do – again – but against the words. So light, almost playful.
(C'mere, kid. Daddy's gonna play a game.)
This time the words were different. Memory. Before they had seemed farther, but more present. More… now.
(Don't you run from me, you little bastard! Little shit!)
Blake closed his eyes. He ran forward, grabbing blindly for Mal's door, the doorknob. Feeling once more the slithering/grabbing/biting/popping of a thousand insects under his feet.
(don't do it, son, don't
run from me, you'll regret it, you
can't escape this, won't escape
what you are!)
And then he had the knob under his hand. But couldn't move.
(don't, please, don't you know
I never meant to hurt you, never meant to hurt
those others, to hurt
your mother.)
The voices drove through him. He felt the hand on his face. The belt on his back. The ping-pong paddle landing on his thighs, his groin.
He couldn't move.
A scream sounded behind him. Not the sound of a man long-dead and long-burning in places somehow both ablaze and dark as truest Death. It was Alyssa. She must have returned with
the towels. Must have looked in. Must have seen.
"What's that? What's THAT?"
He hated her before. He loved her now. Because her scream seemed to battle the voices – the same-different-same-different voices – that had come so close to driving him to his knees.
Blake's hand tightened around the knob. He yanked it back. Crackling as the other side detached from the drywall. More crackling as he took a last step through the centipedes.
The door swung shut. Sweeping along the floor, sweeping dozens, maybe hundreds of the insects into the hall. But leaving a thousand thousand times that trapped in the room.
Where did they all come from?
Doesn't matter. Stop more from getting out. Deal with the closest problem first.
Blake grabbed towels from his motionless wife. Started stuffing them under the door. But the centipedes seemed to be made of rubber, twisting and turning through the smallest cracks in the cloth.
Alyssa ran away.
He felt another spear-jab of anger. An unsettling moment of wishing he could have locked her in the room.
Then it passed. He hoped she had gone to Mal. Was taking comfort in their son, letting him take comfort in her.
Then she was back. Something cold dripped on his back. The temperature and the surprise combined to create a white-hot trail down his spine. He spun around, still in a crouch, centipedes pushing through the towels wadded at the base of Mal's door.
Alyssa was holding more towels. These were sopping wet. She moved him away.
"These'll work better," she said. She began pushing the sodden cloths under the door. And sure enough, each spot blocked with a wet towel proved impenetrable to the centipedes. Soon there were no gaps.
But Blake knew the job wasn't done. His feet ached. Burned. The things had been venomous, and there were easily a hundred of them in the hall, squiggling and crawling on the floor, the walls.
He wrapped one of the dry towels around his hand.
Began hobbling after them. Each step pain, each footfall agony.
They had cracked, popped when he stepped on them.
They did the same as he brought his towel-covered fist on them. One at a time, time after time.
Pop….
Pop….
Pop….
Alyssa gestured. He nodded. No words needed to be said. They both knew that there was a boy who needed tending. Two jobs. One was hers. One was his.
Pop….
Pop….
Pop….
Each sound a tiny explosion in his skull, a blast that he prayed would destroy whatever part of his mind had conjured up the voice so long-gone, so nearly forgotten.
And what about the other voice, Blake?.
He ignored that. Yes, it had sounded almost like two voices in his mind. But that was memory for you: a strange thing that gave halos to so many dead, and transformed imps to demons and demons into Lucifer himself.
No, just one voice. Just Dad. Just a sad old man who died knowing how pitiful he was. How weak.
He smashed the bugs. Working down the hall, toward his family. Away from Mal's room.
Away from his past.
Pop….
Pop….
Pop….
SINGING SOUNDS
The house is no longer silent.
After so long mute, so long asleep, it has at last been given its tongue. It has spoken, and it will not be quieted again.
The hall on the first floor sits empty. But not silent, not still.
Many bodies lay in the passageway. The first fingers, eyes, tongues of the house and its owner. Its real owner.
Now the bodies are nothing. Just crushed carapaces, feelers mashed into wood planking, legs that were once quick and strong now mangled into single, undefined masses whose only value is grotesquerie.
Centipedes are vicious, eating anything small enough – including each other. Many are venomous, and their poison comes not from mouth but from modified feet/hands behind their heads.
They are nocturnal.
All this and more makes them fitting messengers for the house's owner. It makes them appropriate servants, slaves, to the darkness that begat them.
One of the insects in the hall is not dead. Its rear portion smashed, but its head whips back and forth. Not in pain, for it lacks the nociceptors, the spine, the brain to feel such. But it does feel stimulus. And it does not understand why it cannot move.
Then, suddenly, the creature's few undamaged segments straighten. They stretch upright.
And then the insect tears in two. As though a sadistic boy in a playground had found it and pulled it limb from limb.
The head and upper segments fall on the floor. It thrashes once, then is motionless, as is all else in the hall.
But that is not to say silence reigns. Sound fills the space. A rasping, writhing, creaking.
The door in the middle of the hall leads to the boy's room. Wet towels have been driven deep in the centimeter between the floor and the base of the door. Dull silver duct tape wraps around the sides and top of the door, binding door to jamb. There are no breaks in the seals.
But the noise still steals through.
The chittering. The rasping.
A million feet sliding over wood and cloth and plaster and plastic. What was once a place where a child slept and read and played is now a place where the mindless beasts have dominion.
Those beasts can be heard throughout the empty hall.
And, soon, they will move beyond the room, and their sound will hold sway through all the house.
The doorknob suddenly twists. Just a quarter-turn. The kind of thing someone might do to check if the lock is engaged. A child, getting ready to creep out of his room unnoticed. Or a sneak-thief, readying himself to creep in and steal all that he can find.
Even life.
The house is awake. The house's true owner is present once more.
And he will not be contained.
THREE:
UNFAMILIAR DEVELOPMENTS
One may ask (with all sincerity) why a prestigious educational institution would devote time and money to the study of this "barbaric" remnant of the past. The answer is that the question itself is strictly inapposite. The adjudged "barbarism" is a construct of present-day relativism. We cannot view the past through the lens of present morality, for one constant of civilization is the inevitable change of what the masses may term "eternal righteousness." In truth, there is no such thing. There is only what we are used to.
Once again, our primary subject provides an able statement applicable to the matter (and note that even his spelling changes, entry to entry: another perfect metaphor for the ebb and flow of human nature):
Mye room is betr then other rooms for the pykchers. But any room wil do. The onlee thing I need is my camera, sum lite, a chair for sitting, and THE CHYLD.
- Silver, Charles M.
(afterword by Dr. Charlotte Bongiovi),
(2003) Berkeley, California,
Memento Mori, Notes of a Dead Man,
Western University Press, Inc.
NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
Ruthie slept in a corner of the living room, dead-center in the portable playpen, her mobile clipped to one side like they were just on a trip to a friend's house and not hiding from invaders in their own home. Alyssa kept glancing at her, almost as though to assure herself that her baby hadn't disappeared.
Or been carried off by a legion of bugs.
She shivered. Terror and revulsion kept fighting for control of her system, and she truly didn't know which was worse.
Blake hissed suddenly. His feet were propped on an ottoman. It was a second-hand thing that they bought at a Salvation Army store when they were first married, and it had followed them through their time together. House to house, year by year. An ugly bit of furniture, but it had the beauty of a thing that meant Beginnings.
And it wasn't as ugly as Blake's feet. They were red, swollen. What looked like hundreds of tiny red spots do
tted the bottoms and sides, seeping blood and yellow fluid.
She dabbed at another spot, using some of the cotton and hydrogen peroxide she had grabbed from their bathroom when she hurried upstairs to get Ruthie. The trip had been near-agony, but she wasn't about to leave her baby alone, and she wasn't about to let Blake suffer longer than he had to or perhaps get an infection. Not after what he had done.
So… cotton balls, hydrogen peroxide. Ruthie and a playpen.
Mal wanted to come, but she told him to stay with Blake. To help his father, to comfort him.
Mostly, she didn't want him leaving the living room. Because she was fairly certain that if he saw any more of those horrid bugs, those centipedes from Hell, he'd go immediately comatose. The kid was tough, but she could tell he was at the end of his rope.
That was why, when Blake hissed again, she looked over at Mal to make sure he was okay.
He wasn’t, of course. His eyes were wide but unfocused. His face white as a summer cloud, dots of sweat on his forehead that mirrored the dots of blood on his father's feet.
She almost asked, "You okay, Mal?" but bit it back at the last second. It was the kind of question that wouldn't help. He'd answer in the positive, and then she would have done nothing but draw attention to his state of mind. That vicious circle of self-feedback again.
Instead she looked at Blake. Rolled her eyes toward Mal and dabbed his feet again. She said, "Easy. The 'net said you wouldn't die," in the kind of tone reserved for crybabies in a ballgame.
Blake got it. He spotted Mal's face, figured out his state of mind, and glued a smile over the pain. "Then it must be true," he said. "I read about a guy who gave birth to a three-headed monkey who is an expert at video games, and I'm pretty sure I saw the thing at Best Buy last week, playing three console games at once."
He glanced at Mal. So did Alyssa. The little guy still had that faraway stare on his face. Like he was looking for something on the horizon. Somewhere distant that he could run to and be safe.
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