When he reached the door, he twisted the knob, opening it.
The room was dark.
The stench came at him in waves of heat; it smelled like a compost pile.
He stepped inside and reached for the light switch.
The switch was low, as if made for someone in a wheelchair (her grandmother had been in a wheelchair, she’d said, and had left tracks all along the floor, he thought as if explaining away what bothered him).
The light came up, also red, from the solitary bulb dangling from its thin chain at the center of the room.
The room itself was small and its floor was covered with dark earth and wet leaves.
Maggie lay in mud just a few feet in front of him.
She was naked.
She stared at him, and he could see the vibrations of her lips as she hummed.
Bruises, too, all along her arms, stomach, breasts, legs.
Her humming increased to a shattering pitch.
There was a twitching, almost, no, a wriggling of skin along her arms and belly, too, and as he leaned forward to touch her…
As the humming seemed to vibrate the entire building …
He felt the edge of an antenna stroke featherlike down the back of his neck.
Celeste whispered in his ear, “Isn’t she beautiful?”
He turned around, and Celeste was dressed in a gown made entirely of wasps, all with wings twitching, diamond heads, their thousand legs clinging to her. “I am their chosen, Rob. For what my grandfather did for them, his many kindnesses, I got chosen as their midwife. They won’t hurt you, Rob, I wouldn’t let that happen, as long as you don’t try to hurt me, you’re gonna be fine.”
The wasps moved along her shoulders, over her breasts, her living clothes shimmering in the light.
He gasped, “What did you do? What in God’s name?”
“Nature is God,” Celeste said, “we only live to serve. People build cities like this, and what, you think it’s all for us? It ain’t. It’s for them. We’re just part of a big-ass colony, Rob. God’s a maggot, turns the flesh to earth. We’re less than maggots, don’t you get it?”
“What about Maggie? What did you do to her?”
Celeste shook her head, clearly disappointed that this was his interest. “It ain’t like she’s in any pain, you know, one of the mothers paralyzes her while they lay their eggs under her skin. I ain’t gonna make anybody go through pain. Not what’s not natural, anyways.”
The scream on the other side of the wall.
Maggie’s scream.
Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe it was Celeste, maybe she was mating with a wasp, maybe the scream was pleasure, maybe it’s her eggs inside Maggie’s body.
It was then that Rob felt his mind leaving his head, as if it were leaking out of his ears and drifting in a cloud of smoke, to dissipate in the hall. Something short-circuited for him; he could not easily remember words or how to make his arms or legs move right; for a moment, he wondered if he knew how to breathe.
Celeste reached out and took his hand in hers. He watched her do this and felt like an infant, unable to make sense out of the world in which he’d found himself. She stroked his hand. “If I want, they’ll choose you, too, to help. I want you to help. I feel like you’re a friend,” she said, drawing his hand to her bosom. “It’s so lonely sometimes, being chosen. It’s so lonely sometimes being the one to do this.”
He watched the wasps travel from her hand to his, then up his arm, sometimes biting, but it didn’t bother him, he didn’t mind, he didn’t mind. He felt them everywhere, all over his skin, and when he listened carefully he began to understand what they were saying, all of them at once, through their vibrations and feelers and bites.
8
The season was a hard one, for the earth needed turning, and there needed to be others; for, once these young came up, the mothers would need to lay more eggs after the mating time.
When it was over, he remembered the picture.
He remembered the picture when he looked at Maggie as they were coming out.
The caterpillar, its skin green and translucent and wet.
The bumps beneath the caterpillar’s skin.
Beauty beyond conscience.
The cruel face of nature.
But as he was watching it happen, Maggie’s eyes on him, her humming at a pitch, he knew it was the most glorious and selfless act that any human being could ever perform, and he wept with the intense and silent beauty as her shiny skin ruptured with conquering life.
Damned If You Do
Calhoun was sweating up a storm, and it was only ten, but this was La Mesa in summer, and he actually found the talk radio soothing while he worked.
He could hear, beyond the chattering radio, the children in the schoolyard across the street, all yelling and pounding the blacktop while they played dodge ball.
He could smell the jaw-aching sweet stink of the fat lemons in the trees that Patsy had planted when they’d first moved into the bungalow ten years before.
The old shepherd, Vix, was chawing on a lemon, which made the dog whine with sour hurt as the juice got into his gums—and still, he wouldn’t let go of a lemon once he got hold of it.
Cal’s beard itched, too, another annoyance on a particularly annoying day, and his shovel struck the flat rock again, or maybe it was a pipe this time—the sewage system ran this way and that across the back of the property, and who the hell knew why since the toilets were always backing up and the garbage disposal ran rusty brown nine times out of ten.
“Mother—” he began, then held his tongue, laughing because Patsy didn’t like strong language or strong drink in her house.
Her house.
It’s my house as well as yours.
He had been digging for twenty minutes—the ground was dry and hard, and there weren’t many places left.
Not that he’d left any markers, but he had a memory like a trap, and once he saw something, he always remembered it.
I remember you, you, and you, he thought, blinking his eyes in the sun, looking from one patch of garden to another, or there, in the mulch pile.
He went back in for a soda pop and one last piece of apple pie—she had baked it the night before, and he had had one too many pieces, but he loved her pies. The radio was louder in the kitchen, echoing, and a man was on it talking about his problems with his wife, and how he wanted to leave but couldn’t because he loved her.
The call-in DJ, who claimed to be a therapist, although she doled out advice about as bad as any Cal had ever heard said, “Love is not just a state of being, but an active, everyday thing, you know—know what I mean? Like you maintain your house and your car, you also have to every day maintain your relationship, like a tune-up…”
Patsy always had that thing blaring, always talk radio, from morning till night till morning.
The Radio Lady jabbering, nattering, bantering.
He wanted to turn it off, but if he did then they’d know.
The neighbors.
They’d know.
Old Fat Broad over the high wall with her arms of beef and face of jug, always leaning over and saying, “Whatcha doin’?”
Or that brat of hers trying to get over to pick lemons, looking in the windows, trying to slide through the casement windows into his wood shop.
Mr. Erickson, whom Patsy called Ear-Ache, complaining about the volume of the radio, wouldn’t he think it strange when the radio went off? Ear-Ache once came over to be neighborly, and asked Cal, “So, you’re retired now, what was your business, anyway?”
And Cal had told the truth, although he sometimes lied because he hated when people pried. “I used to be a principal of a school down in Dauber’s Mill, back before they consolidated. I liked teaching better, more hands-on work, but they needed a principal more than they needed a wood shop teacher, so I had at it for a good fifteen years.”
Ear-Ache and Fat Broad, eyes, ears and mind on him all the time, wondering if they
were looking, if they were watching.
He never did his work at midnight or in the wee morning hours, because he had learned in his sixty-three years that you could do anything you wanted in life as long as you did it in broad daylight, when nobody believed what they saw anyway.
He took a bite of pie and a swig of soda, and looked out across the lawn at the shallow trench he had begun.
Maybe I’ll just put her with that pig-tailly girl, in the mulch.
The problem with the mulch pile, or with any mulch pile, is you couldn’t put anything salty in it or you’d ruin it for sure. No bacon drippings, no skin, nothing that had a high salt content. The pig-tailly girl was easy enough to scrape, and even though she still had plenty of salt in her, he just had to bury her deep and hope for the best.
Dead mice you could put on the mulch, and even dead birds, but nothing too much larger or you had a pile of shit that was just a pile of shit.
Cal set the can of soda down, stroked his walrus mustache, scratched his chest through his sweat-stained T-shirt.
Can’t scrape Patsy, though. Can’t do it
Take much too long, and then I’d have to flush too much scrapings. More backup in the toilets, maybe too much, and maybe they’d have to come out and dig up the lawn to check on the sewage pipes, and then what?
“No more woodshop, for sure,” he said aloud.
He whistled for Vix to come inside, then he turned and went down the narrow hallway with its family pictures tattooed on the wall, all the kids they’d had in all those years.
The radio noise got louder, this time just a commercial. He hated the way on TV and radio, how they made the commercials louder than the shows.
They were advertising for Squeaky Kleen, a deodorant. Cal didn’t use deodorants, although he made an excellent natural soap in his wood shop, using an old recipe he’d found in a book from the turn of the century. It was a little bit of lye and a little bit of animal fat, and it got skin so clean it practically took the hair right off, with a fresh smell, like children on their birthdays.
He went into Patsy’s room—they had separate rooms, ever since he’d retired, because she wouldn’t put up with his night fears anymore. So he had the little guest room, what used to be the nursery off the second bathroom, and she kept the master bedroom, which looked out over the backyard. She was simple in her tastes, which is what he always liked about her anyway, and difficult in her emotions.
She had a bed, a table with a reading light, her mother’s rocking chair, and the radio. It was an old one, a big jobbie that she’d had since the fifties, hell, it took four big fat batteries to run it, and like his old Royal typewriter she had it repaired constantly rather than replace it with something newer and easier to use.
On the radio, a woman began crying, and the DJ lady said, ‘It’s all right, it’s good to cry, hey, I’d cry, too, if that happened to me. But you do have a choice, sweetie, you can walk right out that door and get a life! It’s the thing to do, get…a…life. It’s easy. When you do it, you’ll see. You’ll call a friend, or a family member, and see if you can’t stay with them for a while, until you’ve got your feet on the ground, and then you’ll get a life. Sound good?”
The woman on the line said, “I guess. I thought this was my life.”
“What you described is not a life. I know it hurts to hear this, but it’s why you called in, isn’t it? It’s not a life, I repeat. A life is something you participate in and draw some satisfaction from. All right?”
Cal wanted to shut that damn radio off more than anything, but he knew if he did, someone somewhere nearby would think something, would wonder about something, might even look in a window somewhere.
Patsy’s eyes were wide, but the tape had held on her mouth. The wire around her ankles had cut into the flesh, but not too far, and they held well, strung around the frame of the rocker.
She’d exhausted herself all night rocking back and forth, trying to get over to the window; he’d had to pick her up twice between eleven and two when she’d spilled forward and slammed her head into the parquet.
He’d wiped the blood from her nose, and kissed at her tears, and used his heart to try and unscramble a message to her, to help explain what he was doing and why he had to, but she was too busy listening to talk radio.
She never got the messages he sent from his heart, but he always followed his heart and tried to get her to understand the direction it took him.
It was no use talking to her, because she only understood normal everyday problems and emotions, not the kind that made a man do what he had to do, a place beyond words, a territory of pure obligation.
Maybe if she still went to her job downtown, she wouldn’t have even noticed.
But she, too, had retired; the retirement party had taken place at the Sportsman’s Lodge down on Edison and Fourth the previous Friday night. He was going to wait until she went to run some errands—and maybe if she hadn’t given up liquor so suddenly, and gotten religion in one lightning bolt of revelation, maybe she would’ve missed what he did.
What he’d been doing for twenty-five years.
He remembered his mother’s words, so many years back, on her deathbed. Her advice, her comfort. He repeated them, whispering, although Patsy would not hear them, she would hear the radio, radio, nothing but radio. “I know it’s terrible to watch your mother die like this, Cal. But far worse is it for me to go to my glory without knowing that you are taken care of. I want you to be happy, but I know the pain life brings. We’ve all had it visited upon us. Happy is the man who buries his own children, for in his pain, in his burden, is the care and comfort that he laid them to rest before their spirits could be crushed.”
The sunlight burned the windowsill, beneath the translucent shade, and he heard old Vix whining from the kitchen—still chewing that lemon.
Patsy smelled, and her face glowed with sweat.
Nine children in twenty-five years.
Someone was bound to find out, one day, but he never imagined it would be his wife. She had used the soap, she had used the candles, she had blown on the whistle he made out of bone, the whistle with the little sparrow carved into the side, the whistle like ivory.
She had stood by him when he spoke with the police about each one running away, about the troubles boys and girls like that faced, not feeling that their biological parents had claimed them, not feeling at home, not feeling safe.
Not feeling cared for.
On the radio, a teenaged girl giggled and talked about not having her first period until she was sixteen.
He had promised Patsy, too, that he would care for her until death. Perhaps this was Providence stepping in and making sure he was as good as his word, although he didn’t believe in fate or God or karma.
Soon, he’d have to stop old Vix’s breath, too, for what would a dog do if his master were to die?
I’ve been dying for years, Patsy, his heart said, and I’ve cared for my own.
It wasn’t fun, never, he wasn’t one of those who enjoyed doing his duty. It was like being a soldier, shooting his brother, but the weight of his obligation was great.
His mother, too, he had taken care of her in her last moments.
He had no choice back then, when he was sixteen, because she had been the one with the gun in her hand, and it had taken a good half hour to wrestle it from her.
Mother was trying to take care of him, but Cal had known, even then, that it was a man’s job. He knew he was damned, but it was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t sort of proposition when you came into this world.
Patsy’s eyes were bulging, and he never liked to see her worried or in pain, but he had wanted to give her time to think it over and make her peace. Life is meant to work out the way it works itself out, and maybe Patsy, maybe she would die within the next decade anyway, and if something happened to him, who would care for her?
The weight of duty was heavy, for sure.
The Radio Lady said, “We are gi
ven free choice when it comes to our own behavior, and we can only change someone else insofar as we can change ourselves, you know?”
He looked around for her needles, the long thick ones.
He didn’t like to prolong pain, and he remembered how peaceful his mother had been, how the gasp from her bosom, and the stench, and the relief in the act itself, were like opening a sewer pipe of flesh to release gas and what was trapped inside the gutter of the body.
It was noon before her heart stopped, and nearly one when he’d taken her down to his wood shop. He laid her across the bench, her neck in a vise because it helped keep the rest of the body stable if the spine held.
Then he went to work, and he cried, as he always did, and he drowned out the sound of talk radio with his instruments.
The sky clouded over by two-thirty. The children were let out of school, and he had to wait until the last yellow bus took off, and the last child had finished walking home, peeking over the wall to taunt Vix into barking, before he could go out and dig some more. He went to the mulch pile, which was still moist and humid with dead grass and sour milk and the fish heads from Tuesday’s supper. Vix lay down beside him and let a lemon roll from his mouth. The old dog looked at the lemon and pawed it. Cal noticed there were ants crawling across it. He bent over, his back hurt, picked it up, was about to toss the rotting, chewed, ant-cursed lemon into Fat Broad’s yard, when he figured, what the hell, and dumped it down beside him. Then he pitched the shovel in deep, trying to keep in mind where he’d buried the pig-tailly girl from two years back. When he felt he had dug down far enough, he went and got several of Patsy’s parcels, and plopped them in, and then checked the wall for a spy, saw no one, and went and got the rest.
Vix sniffed the hole he’d dug, but the dog was more attached to lemons than anything else out in the yard. “Find another one, Vix, this one,” Cal nudged the rotting lemon by his foot, “this one’s all wormy. Good boy.”
Halloween Chillers: A Box Set of Three Books of Horror & Suspense Page 49
