That had seemed enough.
It wasn't.
She skidded on something. When she looked down she saw something brown and red and black. Bits of fur and bone, soft things that she had ground underfoot. Rot that had found its way aboveground in this place where such was supposed to be safely buried. Just a dead squirrel. It seemed profane. It seemed portentous.
In the daylight this place was cozy, charming. Now, in the in-between time of sunset, the charm gave way to something else. Threat, a sense of malaise that might be her own fear imposed on her surroundings.
But what if it was real?
Ralph dropped his bike next to a ledger marker. The flat slab was inscribed at one end, though the letters were so worn she couldn't see them in the dim light.
"Pull up a shair," he said.
She looked around. The trees seemed to reach for them. "This is a safe place?" she said.
Ralph shook his head. "No place is safe. But some are safer than others." She noticed he had stopped looking around like he was aware of an invisible mob – an attacking horde that only he could see. Some of the tension had left his wiry shoulders.
Still, she didn't believe that a graveyard, of all places, would be a place of refuge.
Ralph saw her disbelief. "Forget what you've seen on TV. It's all crap. The least likely place you're going to be bugged by a spirit is at its grave."
Alyssa looked around, a large part of her expecting to see a green specter rise out of the ground in front of one of the tilting headstones. But nothing rose, nothing lurked. "Why?" she said.
"It's all hallowed," said Ralph. He took his pack off, dropping it on the flat gravestone. "By prayers, by tears, by love." He chuckled. "Plus, would you want to stick around in a place like this for hundreds of years?"
Alyssa looked around. "No, I guess not."
"It'd get boring."
That wasn't what she had been thinking, but she let it go. "So what are we doing here?"
"I'm going to tell you what I know, and we're going to find out what we can find out." He sat on the edge of the stone. It was fairly low, only about a foot above ground, but the grass looked too damp to sit on and Alyssa realized that every part of her body ached. She dropped down near Ralph, the kid's pack between them.
"When I delivered that first package, to the other house, I saw a boy," said Ralph. He looked hard at her, gauging her reaction to his next words. "That mean anything to you?"
She shook her head. "He's my son, he's just –"
Ralph cut her off. He shook his head so hard she thought it might fly off his neck. "Not unless your son dresses like an extra from Anne of Green Gables. And he has a slit throat. And is very dead."
Alyssa felt the blood drain from her face, from her whole body. She weaved a bit, and gripped the edges of the tombstone to keep from pitching forward. "He was haunting that house? But what about what's happening now? What –"
Ralph shook his head again. She was already hating when he did that. It meant things were going bad to worse, or worse to worst. "Definitely not. He wasn't tied to the house, he was following you. Your family." He leaned in close. "Any ideas why?"
Now it was Alyssa's turn to shake her head. "No."
Ralph sighed. "That's too bad."
"Why?"
"Because you're dealing with some big nasties." His gaze flicked to the cemetery entrance. A bit of that desperate look returned to his eyes. "And the only way to deal with them is to know what they want. If you don't…."
He was quiet. She knew he wouldn't finish. But she needed him to.
"Then what? If you don't, what?"
He looked at her. His eyes were empty. "I don't really know. I think you'll probably die."
APPEARANCES AND BECOMINGS
Struggle and death.
The legs moved like waves, a writhing motion so perfectly organized as to seem impossible. Sickening. Beautiful.
The centipedes rolled over one another in a squirming mass. They could see, but they moved as if blind. Groping in all directions, tearing at brothers and sisters with venom-filled fangs.
And consuming. Consuming everything. Carnivorous, cannibalistic.
Lovely.
Blake would have watched them forever if he could. He would have sat among them on the floor that had disappeared under a carpet of their bodies, alive and dead, whole and half-eaten, and watched until death claimed him and then he fell and they ate him as well.
But he couldn't. He had work to do. Games –
(C'mere, kid. Daddy's gonna play a game.)
– to play.
The centipedes were everywhere. Ceiling, walls, window, floor. Covering what had been, and Blake sensed they were doing more than just tearing at each other. They were also finishing the job he had begun.
And now it was time. Now it was ready. He didn't know how, but he knew it was his turn in this great work.
He raised his hand. It had changed. There were no longer five fingers, but three.
Blake shuddered. He sensed – understood – for the first time what was happening –
(You can't escape what you are.)
– and what was going to happen.
"Please," he said. His mouth seemed like a stranger, something faraway and not under his control. He wanted to scream, but all that came was a whisper. A sound swallowed by the susurration of the millions of feet, the soughing of millions of fangs plunging through exoskeletons and into soft flesh beyond. "Please, don't –"
The words ended in a gurgle. A strangled noise that ended his awareness.
No, not ended, made whole. A voice whispered to him, and it was familiar. Like his father's voice, but kind. Loving. One that would never hurt him, because it was him. His own voice, and being his own he had to trust it.
This is you. This is me. This is us and who we are.
He looked at his three-fingered hand. Now the change did not seem strange, it seemed right. A maiming, but Blake felt more whole this way than he had before.
He felt a phantom hand across his cheek. The last beating his father had given him.
(You can't escape what you are.)
His father had been right. And it was finally happening. Blake was becoming. Finishing the transformation he had begun those long years ago, when he turned away from the pain inflicted and instead inflicted pain of his own. The day he ducked his father's drunken strike, knocked his old man down, kicked him, kicked him, punched him.
The social workers, the police – they didn't tell Blake if he killed his old man. But Blake knew. He'd always known. You couldn't be alive when your head was shaped like a new moon and blood came out of the one eye you had left and your throat was flat as a tire with the air left out.
So much blood. So much warm, delicious blood.
Blake had started to become on that day.
And on this day, he would finish. The three fingers on his hand showed him that.
He brought the hand forward, slamming it against the wall of centipedes directly in front of him. The insects split apart like the Red Sea, so not a one was crushed below his palm. There was only the wall beneath his skin.
And when he touched that wall… it was like a sonic boom went off in the room.
The centipedes poured off the wall in a tidal wave. Millions of creatures with tens of millions of legs, crashing against him, washing over him so that he was baptized by their bodies. He opened his mouth, spread his hands – one whole, one with three fingers. His eyes stayed open. They fell against him, and some pinched and bit as they passed over him.
It was beautiful, all so beautiful.
He was becoming who he must be. Becoming who he truly was.
He heard the millions and billions of tiny clicks behind him and knew that the centipedes on the other walls and on the ceiling were pouring down as well. Falling from the work they had done. Some dead, some alive. They had come to do this, to help him change and to give him a place. The place.
The place that was, the plac
e that now is.
(I'm back!)
For a moment Blake felt fear. There was someone else in his mind. Someone else in his head.
Then fear disappeared. Wonder replaced it.
Where the centipedes had been, the walls were now unmarred. And they were no longer covered in planes and parachutes, the funny images of childhood. Now the walls, like Blake –
(and the other)
– had become. Had become what they were, and what they should be. The drywall was gone, and now the wall was plaster, painted bright yellow. A dado circled the room about six feet above the floor, and above that the wall was painted dull red. Many of Blake's peers had wallpaper done in the latest styles of the Orient –
(no that's not right what's –?)
– but he couldn't afford that. Not with all his money going into his hobbies, his obsessions.
Still, modest though the walls might be, they were his again. The way they had been. Should be. His place of repose, and where he could do his work.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
He smiled. Didn't turn yet, savoring the sound before the sight. The clock was a gift from his father-in-law, given on his wedding day. "As long as you keep it wound, your marriage will not wind down," said the old man.
Blake kept it wound. And the old man had been right – his marriage didn't wind down. It simply stopped, the day Laura died. The day his son was born. He supposed he should have hated the clock, just as he supposed he should have hated his boy. But he loved them both. Adored them both.
"My son…."
(Mal's my son, isn't he?)
(No.)
He turned. A slow turn that let him see the room that had come back to him. The wallpaper was not all that had disappeared. The window was gone; now four blank walls enclosed the room: perfect for his purposes.
He kept turning. The clock was there. So tall it nearly touched the ceiling, dark wood that matched the dark numbers on its ivory face. A moon dial that he had broken on the day of Laura's death, so always it was midnight. Always the count of his life was dark, at least in part.
Next to the clock was the music box. Another gift from his father-in-law. "So that you will dance with my daughter, because a marriage must be play as well as work."
They had danced. Had danced many times. And though the dances had ended, he still played the music. Played it at his happiest times, his times when he felt the greatest love.
And that was when she died. When the music played and she came from her bed, newly bled from birth and found you. Found you and what you were doing….
He didn't like that thought. Didn't like what he had done. But he had had to do it. He had seen the look on Laura's face and knew she didn’t understand and never would. So he had to stop her from telling others about it.
He couldn't not do his work. It was too important. Too beautiful. More beautiful than him, than her. She had to be stopped, and she was.
She left him alone that day. Alone with a son.
Blake –
(Am I even Blake anymore? I don't think….)
– kept turning. Walls, clock, music box. All his. Just as the chair was his. The chair with its beautifully scrolled legs, its rich, red upholstery. This had not been a gift. This was something that Blake had saved for himself. Saved penny by penny from his earnings clerking for Mister Mason. It was one of his two most prized possessions. It was the reason for his existence.
His son sat on the chair. And for a moment he didn't understand what was going on, because the boy was his son, and wasn't his son.
It was his boy. That beautiful mouth, that tousled hair.
But it wasn't Matthew Jr. So how could it be his boy?
And who was the little baby? The infant with the bright red outfit?
(Ruthie)
Blake stared at both of them. The boy who was his son –
(Mal)
– had his legs pulled up high, away from the centipedes that had fallen from ceiling and walls but still obscured the floor. The little baby started sliding off his lap, toward the insects. He hauled her higher on his lap. She was shaking, twitching, and now she started to wail. To scream.
The boy's face was miserable. "Please, Daddy," he said. "Ruthie needs to go to the doctor."
Blake – barely Blake at all, nearly become who he must be – felt something prickle at his neck. Felt something new enter the room. He saw something fade into the world, standing beside the clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Soon the music box would play. Soon the dance would begin.
He turned to the boy, recognizing him at last. Not his son, but something greater. Something far more important.
He tousled the boy's hair with his three-fingered hand.
This was not his son.
It was his subject.
His model.
FUN AND GAMES
Ralph could tell Alyssa was on the verge of wigging out. He couldn't blame her. He wasn't far from that himself.
Getting here had been awful. He had never been to New York, but he'd seen plenty of movies and television shows. Images of walking along crowded sidewalks or through subway stations during rush hour were as much as part of his visual lexicon as they were anyone else's. And until the last blocks he'd experienced pretty much just that walking to the cemetery. Only instead of lawyers and secretaries and housewives and homeless, all the pressing bodies had been bloodless corpses, gray and grasping.
It hadn't been too bad at first. Just one or two of them leering at him from the shadows when he first dropped off the package at Alyssa's place. That was the fewest of the creepies he'd seen in days. He wondered if they were afraid of whatever was going on in that place. If they had been drawn out by whatever evil was about to occur, but at the same time didn't want to get too close.
As they walked toward the graveyard, more and more of them started showing up. Some just walked toward them – toward him. Like idle pedestrians who had seen someone they know, they just kind of shifted their angle of passage until they were walking right alongside.
Others… others just appeared. Those were always the worst. To be walking alone one moment, then have someone with a knife sticking out of her face right in front of you, or maybe a kid whose torso has been mangled by a car tire strutting alongside you all of a sudden. It was enough to give Ralph a series of heart attacks every time it happened. He figured each time took a week or two off his life.
And what happens when I reach T-minus zero? Just poof and I'm gone? Or do I become one of them?
By the time they got to the cemetery he was afraid to take a step. He didn't want to touch the things, didn't want to be touched by them. But it was going to happen, and maybe worse.
At least they didn't follow him and Alyssa into the cemetery. It must have been a good one. Full of good people, full of people whose families loved them. That's what Ralph thought, at least. He wasn't sure that was what actually what kept the ghosts at bay. He wasn't sure about very many things. Just lots of guesses. It could have been that the spooks were simply allergic to moss.
But it made him happy to think they couldn't stand hallowed ground. Not like churches hallowed by ritual prayers and holy water, but ground hallowed by love and good feelings. His mom had always talked about good feelings, especially when she had him strapped down on the board and was covering him with the tattoos. He screamed a lot – hard not to when you were four and five and six – but he still heard her talk about love. She screamed about it so he always heard, no matter how bad he hurt.
Not sorry to see the last of her. But her words remained. Some of them were even good, no matter how bad she might have been.
"We're wasting time," said Alyssa. Her voice pulled his eyes back to hers, his thoughts back to the present. "I need to find my kids."
He sympathized. He almost told her to go ahead; to run back. After all, what did he know? What did he really know?
But something stopped him. Sometimes he had to tell someone somet
hing – a lottery ticket or a heart about to fall to pieces in someone's chest. And sometimes he had to not tell them something. So he didn't tell Alyssa to go back home. Instead he said, "Again: run home and you'll die." He chewed his lip for a second and added, "So will they."
She blanched like he had just hit her. "How do you know?"
"Whatever is behind this isn't just here to bother you. It wants to kill you all." He reached for his bag. Grabbed the zipper for the main pouch.
"Then what do I do? I have to do something."
He opened the bag. Pulled something out. It was night now, but there was enough of a moon to see what it was. A long box, about sixteen inches by six inches, maybe two inches deep.
"Now we play," he said, and set the Scrabble board on the stone marker between them. He scattered the tiles, turning them all face-down, and chose seven for himself.
He had to try not to shrink back: Alyssa looked like she was going to take a poke at him. "What? You say something wants to kill my kids, then you –"
"Relax." He saw she wasn't going to take any tiles, so he chose for her, not looking as he put seven tiles in one of the racks. "Some people use runes, but they're too iffy. Some people use dice, but they're too limited." He pushed the rack in front of her. "This way gets results: a mixture of what we know and what we're given."
Ralph could tell that Alyssa didn't really understand what he was talking about. And truth was, like everything else, he didn't fully understand it himself. He had done this a few times, to mixed results, and it always scared the crap out of him. But they needed answers. Both of them. Whatever was happening to her was pulling the dead like a magnet. And they were the worst kind of dead.
"You first," he said.
She looked numb, but chose two tiles and placed them in the middle of the board: IT.
"Interesting," he said.
"What? What does it mean?" asked Alyssa.
He shrugged. "Beats me." He put THANKS down, working off her "T."
They played. He could tell she was agitated, and getting more so. Again, nothing he blamed her for. And nothing he could do about it.
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