As we sat there now, huddled in the dark, we knew that same thing I had seen climbing out of the cistern in the water shed, was back to finish what had begun decades ago. We heard the lock rattle again, more insistent this time, the scratching against the door more aggressive. The sound of wood breaking was a gunshot in the dark.
“We have to get out of here,” I whispered.
“How?” John asked.
“Through the windows.”
“But the storm…”
“To hell with the storm, it’s better than whatever is out there trying to get in.”
We stood up and leaned boxes against the wall, moving as quickly and silently as we could while outside the door the thing picked apart the wooden planks. We propped the window open and Larry was the first one to go through, being the strongest. John was next, then me.
Behind me I expected the door to come crashing down into the room and the thing beyond to tear me apart. But I slid through the window and removed the brick, letting it fall to the floor before silently closing the glass.
The sky swirled above us, and I could see more funnel clouds forming around the eye of the storm. We had to head back up the hill, I realized. It was where we had parked.
We scaled the hill in a rush, passing by the water shed as we raced the storm. When we reached the flattened parking area, my stomach lurched. The cars were gone. In their places were masses of twisted metal torn apart by the tornado that had touched down. I glared at the field, at the split apple tree and the untouched planks of the water shed.
“What the hell are we going to do?” John screamed.
Larry frowned down at us. “Come with me.”
He led us up the slope toward the water shed and John balked. He shook his head and began backing toward the tree line.
“Get back here!”
“No! I’m not going near that thing. I saw what Sam saw!”
Larry pursed his lips and took a swing at our younger cousin. The blow connected with the side of John’s head and he went sprawling into the grass. Larry looked at me and arched an eyebrow.
“You coming, or do I need to calm you down, too?”
“Why are you doing this?” My mouth had gone dry, and my mind was running in a million directions as I tried to figure out a way to save John and escape.
“We were never supposed to leave that day,” he told me as he dragged John through the field. As if sensing my own impending flight, he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me with him as he made his way up the hill. “The marks on the shed? I could read them after I touched them, and they showed me…”
“What did they show you?”
“That we were supposed to die that day.” He nodded toward the water shed and his eyes were glazed with rapture. “In there... down deep, in the darkwater.”
“No we weren’t, that’s crazy.” I tugged my arm free and shoved Larry.
He stumbled over John’s unconscious form as I ran back down the slope. I almost made it to where the cars had been when he tackled me to the ground.
“This is for your own good, Sam.”
I stared up at him in disbelief, at the rock held in his hand. The darkness was quick and all-encompassing as he brought it down on the side of my head.
—
There was a splash and I woke with a start. I had no idea how much time had passed, but the storm was beginning to blow again as the eye moved over us. Cold water tasting of a wet basement and rotting flesh filled my mouth and I flapped against it, sputtering. There was a second splash next to me and in the dim light I could see the shape was human.
“John?”
No answer. I looked up and saw a square of light fifteen feet above with the dark outline of a head and shoulders cutting into the lines. I pulled John’s head out of the water, but he wasn’t breathing, and there was no pulse at his throat.
“Larry! Pull us out! I think John’s…”
Larry’s mad laughter, as it echoed off the cistern walls, left me cold. There was a loud scratching noise I could make out even over the wind. It came from the walls of the cistern as I sensed something climb up out of the water next to me.
Larry’s silhouette was jerked away from the edge of the well and then he was screaming. The sound was abruptly cut off seconds later, leaving me alone with the storm and the thing that had risen out of the depths. I held onto John’s body and used it as a float. I wasn’t sure how deep the cistern was, but I knew it was enough to drown me.
The click of claws on concrete drew my attention upward. Blackness filled the fading square of light and I was pushed beneath the murky water as something splashed down on top of me. I kicked and shoved my way free from it, escaping heavy limbs and teeth as it sank, then bobbed back to the surface. I heard the creature above me as it moved around the cistern, its steps quick and eager.
I reached out to the thing bobbing next to me in the water and felt the remnants of a silk tie. I reached up toward the face and could feel the gash at Larry’s throat, the open scream still stretching wide his dead mouth. In my head I could hear Larry’s voice, taunting, Dare you to touch it.
Above me, I could hear the sound of something scraping over the edge of the cistern as the last of the light faded, leaving me in darkness. The stench of the cistern and the thing that lived in it was unbearable, and as it bore down on me I reached out a hand to touch its wretched form. As my fingers slid across the slimy flesh, a phone rang beneath the water.
DISINTEGRATION IS QUITE PAINLESS
Max Booth III
1.
The sheriff dangled from a streetlight in the center of town. What had once projected light now cast a sinister shadow. Nathan watched from across the street, mesmerized by the mayhem he’d witnessed—the total destruction of one little town. A town he’d once considered home—now nothing more than an above-ground cemetery. A landfill for the dead.
The wind pushed the sheriff’s lifeless body back and forth, animating his shadow on the hot, bloodstained cement. Nothing could kill a shadow. Shadows were infinite. Until the darkness came, at least. Then all realities fell into a free-for-all.
A wake of vultures circled the lynched lawman. They took turns swooping down upon him, clawing his eye sockets bare, leaving behind empty, dry holes. His sight now belonged to the nevermore.
At eleven years old, Nathan had seen people lynched before, but never a white man. Especially never a white man of the law. The urge to approach him and touch the lawman’s feet hit him hard, but the fear of interrupting the vultures’ feast hit him harder.
Nathan broke away from the sheriff’s dead, hypnotic trance and continued down Main Street. A chorus of corpses joined the sheriff’s Christmas-ornament approach to decomposing. He waded through a concert of shadows, fighting off the suburban rot.
His mother greeted him a few blocks down, mouth slung open, tongue missing. Maggots dripped from her mouth onto the pavement. Had they always been inside her, waiting for the right opportunity to make their escape?
Nathan rubbed his own stomach, wondering if there were maggots in him, as well.
2.
Some kids used the summer as an opportunity to take advantage of extra sleep. Other boys—boys like Nathan—spent the whole season outside, and only returned inside well past curfew, completely disregarding the universal streetlight rule. They longed for great adventures, for explorations into the unknown.
Today, however, was not meant to be one of those days. It was simply too damn hot.
After breakfast, Nathan rendezvoused with his friends at the corner of the drug store and they all unanimously agreed to grant the forest a vacation for the day. They could climb trees and dig holes some other time. So, Nathan, Bobby, Carl, and Henry climbed on their bikes and pedaled across town to one of the easier-accessed spots of the lake. They hid their bikes behind bushes, stripped to their underwear, and dived into the startling cold water. They howled and splashed each other under the cruel sun, laughing and shivering and flexing th
eir prepubescent muscles.
If Nathan had had his way, he would have stayed in the lake for the rest of the summer. This was how you were supposed to live. Calm, at peace, completely satisfied with your surroundings. He could never be satisfied at home. Not while his parents still lived there. Not while they did the things they did, said the things they said.
The boys might have stayed like that all day, too, if not for the rogue tire that floated down their way, unnoticed until it bumped into the back of Carl’s head, inspiring a scream equivalent to a thousand embarrassing baby stories. The other boys flinched and gasped at the sound of his voice, but upon discovery of the scream’s source, all erupted into fits of laughter.
“Every nightmare Carl has ever had just came true at once,” Bobby said.
“Ah, that classic tire-monster-in-a-lake nightmare,” Henry said.
Carl swiped his hand down and splashed them. “Fuck you guys. That thing nearly decapitated me.”
Henry laughed. “‘Decapitated’? Where’d you learn such a big word?”
Carl grinned. “Your mother.”
Henry narrowed his eyes on Carl and lunged at him. “You’re dead!”
They wrestled and pretended to drown each other for a few minutes, until noticing Nathan climbing on top of the tire.
Nathan smiled. “This is great!”
At the sight of his happiness, the other boys immediately decided they wanted a turn on the tire, and started fighting and pushing each other off it. It was an aquatic version of king of the hill that eventually ended when Henry swallowed a bug in the water and started choking. The boys guided him to land and took turns slugging him on the back until Henry vomited up lake water and told them all to fuck off.
“You’re not supposed to punch someone when they’re choking,” Henry said, wheezing and attempting to maintain a normal heartbeat.
“Hey, we saved your life,” Carl said. “You owe each of us a million bucks.”
“I’d rather burn a million bucks than give it to any of you.” Henry smiled and flipped them off.
“I’d take a million bucks even if it were burnt,” Bobby said. “A million bucks is a million bucks.
“Dumbass, you can’t spend money if it’s all burnt up,” Henry said.
“I don’t know,” Nathan said. “Once my dad had a twenty dollar bill with a bunch of blood on it. The grocery store took it just fine. I think burnt money would be okay, too, probably just depends how burnt it is, I guess.”
“Why was there blood on the money?” Henry asked.
Nathan shrugged, blushing. “Sometimes people bleed.”
They were preparing to return to the lake when the sound of laughter erupted within the trees. They turned and spotted a group of teenaged boys approaching, smoking cigarettes and cradling beer bottles. Nathan recognized the majority of them from the high school. The one boy, Conner Trivet, easily ranked as one of the meanest people he’d ever laid eyes on, except perhaps for Nathan’s own father. A rumor around town claimed Connor had once broken a kid’s arm for bumping into him in the hallway. There were many rumors about Connor. Judging by the cruel smirk across his face, they were probably all true.
The teenagers stopped when they saw Nathan and his friends. Connor smiled and pointed at them. “I think we just interrupted a circle jerk.”
They made sounds of disgust and amusement. Nathan gulped. He wasn’t even sure what that meant, but it sounded offensive. He turned to his friends, who had all turned white. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
Nathan attempted to walk away, but a hand grabbed his shoulder and turned him back around. Connor stood in front of him, sneering.
How did he get to me so fast? Nathan wondered, shivering. “Leave us alone.”
Connor cocked his head. “What the hell did you just say, faggot?”
“I said to leave us—”
Connor punched Nathan in the face and he fell down, hard.
Blood oozed out of his nose and his face burned. He waited a moment, hoping his friends would jump Connor and defend him, but when he finally opened his eyes, he realized his friends were gone.
Connor stood over him. The other teenagers hung out in the background, taking drags off their cigarettes and sipping their beers. “Your little faggot friends done ditched you. So it looks like it’s just you and us. What say we have some fun, huh?”
Nathan felt his nose again, wet and sticky, the pain was so intense he couldn’t prevent tears from leaving his eyes and streaming down his cheeks.
Connor laughed. “Ah shit, the little pussy’s crying.”
The teenagers laughed on cue. “Kick his ass!”
Nathan lifted his leg up and shot it forward. His foot crushed Connor’s balls and the boy screamed, doubling over and falling down beside him. Nathan did not hesitate. He jumped up and took off in a dead sprint before the other teenagers were able to react. He ran and ran, through the trees, through the mud, ran faster than he ever ran in his life. The pain in his nose no longer existed. He didn’t know if they were chasing him but he wasn’t about to find out.
3.
Nathan continued down Main Street. He thought maybe after a while he would become accustomed to the smell of rotting bodies hanging from streetlights, but he’d been wrong. Every new decaying corpse gut-punched him with nausea.
Desperate, bloody footprints littered the sidewalks. Some made by humans fleeing town, attempting to avoid their inevitable deaths, other prints more paws than feet. The marks of the Discovered. The marks of the hitherto buried.
Nathan followed the bloody prints until he ran out of sidewalk. He climbed over a small wooden fence and landed in his backyard. He paused in the grass and stared at the back of his house. Last month, his father had cooked out in this backyard. He grilled hotdogs and hamburgers and got drunk with his friends while he made Nathan pull weeds. When he’d asked his father for a hotdog, he was told not until the backyard chores were finished. After he finished his chores, his father told him he was too fat for hotdogs, and to go inside for water and carrots, instead.
Now, nobody would ever grill in this backyard again. No one would ever pull these weeds or mow the lawn. Nature would continue, uninterrupted by man, just as it was always meant to be.
Nathan entered through the backdoor. The house was so silent it made his heart race. It’d never been this quiet. There was always a football game or something playing on the TV. His father was always yelling about one thing or another. His mother was almost always crying, and if she wasn’t crying, then she was yelling at Nathan about upsetting his father.
Now the house was silent. But it was not empty.
He moved down the hallway and opened the basement door. The creaking of the hinges sliced through the silence like a knife through butter. He flipped the light on and walked down the stairs, never taking his eyes off the grotesque display in the center of the basement.
He had to walk very slowly, careful not to slip on all the blood.
4.
Henry, Carl, and Bobby were halfway down Main Street when Nathan caught up with them, wheezing and gagging, on the verge of heatstroke. Before he doubled over he managed to get one good whack against Henry’s arm.
“Ow!” Henry cried out. “What the hell was that for?”
“You all ditched me. You left me alone with those jerks to get my butt kicked.”
Carl shook his head. “We were on our way to get help.”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “We were gonna get Sheriff Spooner.”
Nathan spotted the police station a few blocks ahead. He sighed. “It’s okay, I got away by myself.”
“What did you do?” Bobby asked.
Nathan smiled. “I kicked him in the nuts and ran.”
Henry laughed. “No way.”
Nathan nodded.
Everybody was quiet for a moment.
Then Carl said, “Well shit, man. He’s gonna kill you.”
“Yeah,” Nathan said. “Probably so.”
Henry pointed at his face. “Your nose looks awful. We should take you home. Go to the hospital. Is it broken?”
Nathan shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t want to go home.”
“Well, what do you want to do?” Bobby asked.
“I don’t care. Anywhere but home.”
“Let’s go to my place, then,” Henry said. “We can read comics or something.”
They headed toward Henry’s house, every few minutes looking over their shoulders, fearing Connor and his gang would be on their trail. Fortunately, they made it without incident. Henry’s parents were out for the day, so they didn’t have to bother with excuses concerning Nathan’s injuries. His nose had stopped bleeding, but there was still plenty of blood dried on his face and shirt. Henry gave him a new T-shirt and guided him toward the bathroom to wash up and change.
Nathan pulled his bloodied shirt off and ran a wet washcloth over his face, letting the warm water soak his skin. He’d taken one hell of a punch, and he did not expect the pain to go away any time soon. When he removed the washcloth, there was a girl standing in the doorway, staring at him. Henry’s older sister—Elizabeth.
He jumped, almost yelling out a swear word, but managed to catch himself.
She smirked. “Hi.”
“Uh… hey.”
“What happened to you?” She gestured to his face.
“I got punched.”
“By who?”
“Some jerk.”
She nodded, as if that was enough explanation. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes.”
She reached out and touched his cheek, softly caressing it. “You poor thing.”
He felt grateful for all the blood on his face. It was covering up his blushing. Besides his mother, no girl had ever touched him like this.
“I’m okay, thank you. Uh, I gotta go.”
Not knowing what else to say, he threw on the new T-shirt and fled to Henry’s bedroom, finding them all sitting on the floor, going through stacks of comic books.
“Your sister’s home,” Nathan said, joining them.
Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2 Page 13
