The Sick Stuff

by Ronald Kelly

  He started to get up, but when he turned his eyes to the double door of the emergency room, he found that they were no longer there. Only a wall of stark white cinderblock stretched before him, blocking his exit. He turned his gaze back toward the narrow corridor. It seemed to stretch to infinity. The nurse station was so far away that he could barely see it.

  "Next," called the nurse. Her voice echoed off the sterile walls of the clinic as if she were yelling from the pit of a deep canyon. "Andrew Abernathy."

  He saw a miniature clown stand up a short distance away. As the kid headed down the corridor, he turned and grinned broadly at his tormentor. A profusion of bloody razor blades sprouted from the chubby cheeks of the four-year-old.

  Stephen Zachary felt other small eyes, both living and dead, burning into him and he turned away, unable to meet their stares of gleeful accusation. He waited on pins and needles, knowing that an eternity of suffering lay between the letters of A and Z.

  OLD HACKER

  Ever since I was a barefoot young'un in these Tennessee hills, I regarded the old man with downright disgust. Or, rather, that particularly nauseating habit of his.

  His name was Jess Hedgecomb and he lived out in the West Piney Woods near Hortonburg. Folks said he was something of a hermit; just a lanky, old geezer who lived all by his lonesome in a two-room shack by Silver Creek and roamed the forest, trapping and hunting to make his meager living. He was harmless enough, I reckon. He had a sad way about him, but he was friendly enough in conversation and was known to flip a shiny nickel to any kid who happened to be standing at the candy counter when he sauntered

  into Dawes Market for his weekly groceries. Yeah, he was a harmless, well-meaning old man, I'll have to admit.

  But he still had that godawful habit.

  My papa called him Old Hacker, more out of amusement than anything else. See, whenever the old gent was standing around shooting the bull with the regulars on the porch of the general store, he would get this strange look on his face just before he was gonna clear his throat. The racket he made was kind of funny and kind of scary at the same time, especially for a young'un like me. Then, with a turn of his head, Old Hacker would send a great, gray-green glob of phlegm into the dirt road -- or a spittoon, if one was handy.

  Like I said, it was a nasty habit, one I wrinkled my nose at every time I laid witness to it. However, as I grew older, I began to notice something that gradually changed my revulsion into a strange fascination.

  ~ * ~

  It began during the summer of my sixteenth year. I was working for Mr. Dawes part-time; sweeping up the store, stocking shelves, and pumping gas out front whenever a customer pulled up.

  One sweltering July afternoon, I was helping load cement sacks into the back of Sam McNally's pickup when I suddenly heard that ugly sound. Old Hacker let loose with a glob of mucus that landed no more than a yard from the truck's left rear tire. I shook my head in disgust, glanced down at the ugly mess, and nearly fell clean off the store porch.

  That streamer of green spittle was a-twisting and a-wiggling in the clay dust like it was a danged mudpuppy! I looked over at Sam, wanting to call his attention to it, but thought better of it. When I glanced back down, the thing was gone. Not dried up by the scalding summer sun, though -- I mean it was plumb, lickety-split gone.

  It happened again a couple of weeks later. I was pumping unleaded into some out-of-towner's big Buick. Old Hacker was sitting on the porch, playing barrel-top checkers with Mr. Dawes. I just stood there, watching the old man, waiting for him to cough up a hefty lunger. Directly, he did just that, sending a glob to the side, so that it hit the white-washed porch post.

  Half in horror, half in awe, I watched as it inched its way up the post like some slimy green worm. When it reached the rain gutter, it stretched out and barely caught hold. I held my breath, sure that it was gonna drop to the ground with a splat. But, finally, it found its footing and disappeared over the slope of the corrugated tin roof.

  Almost afraid to, I looked back to the checker game. Much to Dawes' surprise, Old Hacker skipped the remaining three of his reds, winning the game. Then the old-timer turned and stared straight at me, flashing me a knowing wink. It spooked me so badly that I pumped two gallons over the amount the stranger wanted and had to pay for the mistake out of my own pocket.

  That weekend I hiked out to the West Piney. I had my .22 rifle and my hound dog, Bones, with me. But taking potshots at blue jays wasn't my only intention for walking the woods that day. I had half a mind to drop by Jess Hedgecomb's place. So I did.

  Old Hacker was reared back in a caneback rocker, his feet propped up on the porch railing and his nose buried in a dog-eared copy of the Farmers Almanac.

  "Mornin'" I called out. I had a nervous feeling in my belly, the kind you get while waiting in the dentist's office, listening to his drill at work.

  "Mornin' to you," acknowledged the old man. "You're Harry Dean's eldest boy, ain't you?"

  "Yes, sir," I replied.

  He stuck the almanac in the side pocket of his overalls and removed his store-bought reading glasses. "Well, come on and pull up a chair, young man." He grinned, looking his eighty years and then some. "I don't get a whole lot of company way out here in the sticks."

  "Yes, sir," I said politely. I sat down in a rocker identical to the one Mr. Hedgecomb occupied.

  We sat there in silence for a good long time. Then Old Hacker looked over at me, his eyes sparkling. "Just dropped by for a neighborly visit... that right, son?"

  I reached down to scratch behind Bones' droopy ears. "That's right."

  "Naw, I don't think so," he chuckled. "I seen you watching me over at Dawes Market. I figure it was more curiosity than good manners that brought you out here this fine morn."

  Then he leaned forward in his chair and started that noisy hacking cough that I had grown to loath so much. When he finally spat into the dry dust of the front yard, we both sat there and watched. Bones bared his teeth and growled as the gray-green glob slowly made a bee-line down the pathway, toward the thicket.

  "They always travel west," Old Hacker said, as if discussing the migration of birds. "No matter where I am in the county, whenever I cough up one of the little devils, they always head west -- straight for the piney woods."

  I held onto Bones' collar and watched the high grass part as the living lunger disappeared into deep forest. "Why is that?" I asked.

  "Oh, I know why," Jess Hedgecomb told me. "But maybe you shouldn't want to. Maybe you shouldn't want to know anything about me or my... affliction."

  Looking straight into that old man's haggard eyes, I said "Yes, I do." I knew that I really didn't, that I would probably be better off if I took my leave that instant and never returned. But it was kind of like standing in line for the freak show at the county fair. You have the creepy feeling that what you're about to see will be horrible, but you still want to see it all the same.

  The strange tale that Jess Hedgecomb told me that day was much worse than any freak show I could ever hope to attend, real or imagined.

  "I was born the son of a tobacco farmer," he began innocently enough. "So were my boyhood buddies, Lester Wills and Charlie Gooch. We worked the fields with our fathers. We planted, harvested, and hung the leaves in the barn for curing. But we were absolutely forbidden to partake of the stuff. 'I catch you smoking before you come of age and I'll tan your hide right good,' my papa would warn me. Of course, none of us listened. We'd do what most kids our age did; smoke corn silk or sneak old butts outta the ashtrays down at the train depot.

  "I'd say we were about twelve years old that summer we found our own little goldmine out in the dark hollows of West Piney Woods. We were walking home from skinny-dipping in Silver Creek, when we came upon a heavy patch of wild tobacco growing pretty as you please. What a stroke of luck, we thought. Now we could harvest our own little crop without anyone knowing about it. Lester and Charlie smuggled boards and tin from home and we built us a small curing barn
about the size of a doghouse. We stripped the leaves off the stalk, hung them up in that little shed, and smoked them with charcoal I filched from my papa's barn. We'd only cure them leaves for a couple of days before we couldn't stand it no longer. Sometimes the leaves would still be half green when we rolled them into cigars and set the match to them.

  "Well, towards the month of September, we were down by that patch of wild tobacco. We were shooting the breeze and cutting up, when Lester tore apart one of those leaves, like kids will do on a whim of the moment. And, Lordy Mercy, there was something alive in it! The juice that dripped out of the veins of that shredded leaf just twitched and squirmed like crazy. Lester threw the leaf down and we watched that tobacco sap crawl like tiny snakes through the thicket... straight for that wild tobacco patch. Me and the boys hightailed it outta that section of West Piney and never went back. But the damage was done. We'd already smoked a summer's worth of that horrid stuff into our lungs."

  Mr. Hedgecomb paused, a pained expression on his ancient face, then continued. "I've been to many a doctor in my time, trying to find one who could rid me of this confounded stuff I carry around inside. They all look at me like I'm batty and tell me maybe I should see a psychiatrist. But I ain't crazy. I know the damned things are inside of me. When I lay in my bed at night, I can feel the little buggers stirring around, boiling in my lungs, trying to find a way out. They never find it on their own. I have to cough up the slimy bastards little by little, but there never seems to be an end to it. I truly believe that I'll be cursed with this awful infestation until my dying day. Then maybe we'll both be able to find the release we've been searching for all these years."

  Me and that old man sat there in stone cold silence for a long time afterwards. I was wondering if his tale was true and, at the same time, knowing it was. Old Hacker looked like he was having second thoughts, like maybe he shouldn't have bared his soul like he had. "I reckon you'll be wanting to get the hell outta here now," Hedgecomb uttered bitterly. "Well, I can't say I blame you. It ain't none of your concern anyhow."

  I looked over at Jess Hedgecomb and, in those rheumy old eyes of his, I saw a loneliness so dark and empty that it made my heart ache. I knew then the true reason why Jess, Lester, and Charlie had been lifelong bachelors. It wasn't because they were queer for each other, like some folks in town thought. No, they never married for fear that a single kiss might have infected their spouses with that awful thing living inside their bodies. For nearly seventy years they had endured the horror and had endured it alone.

  I just settled back in that rocking chair and propped my feet up on the railing. "Naw, I reckon I'll sit a spell longer," I told him.

  Old Hacker smiled. Not that sad, little half-grin that I had seen all my life, but an honest-to-goodness, heartfelt smile.

  We grew to be close friends during the months that followed.

  Every day after school, I would do the old man's chores for him, then spend the evening playing checkers and talking. My parents thought it was a fine thing, a young fellow like me taking interest in a lonely old man like that. I do believe those last eight months of Jess Hedgecomb's life were his happiest, simply because he had someone there in that drafty cabin to pass the time with.

  But the happy days didn't last for long and, by wintertime, both Old Hacker's health and his outlook on life hit rock bottom.

  I must admit, there were times during his long bout with pneumonia when I felt like leaving that place for good. But I didn't . There were times when his congestion and coughing spells became so frequent that the old coffee can beside his bed nearly overflowed with living phlegm... times when writhing, green lungers crawled the bedroom floor until finally finding escape through the cracks in the boards. But I didn't lose my nerve. I stayed. I sat right there in the chair beside his bed, doing whatever I could for him. I just didn't have the heart to abandon him... not at a time like that.

  It was a snowy day in early February when I found the old man dead.

  I walked into his dark room, a cold dread heavy in the pit of my gut. The pneumonia had taken its toll, drowning him in his own bodily fluids. His skin was icy to the touch. I was just about to pull the blanket up over his head, when his chest hitched violently. Stepping back, I watched in horror as his chest rose and fell, his throat emitting a wet wheezing sound. The old man was dead, yet he was breathing. I could hear the mucus within his lungs churning and sloshing of its own accord.

  Then his ribs began to snap... one by one.

  I fled from that dark house, but lingered on the front porch, torn between going and staying. From within the house I could hear a terrible racket; the ugly sound of splintering bone and ripping flesh. I stood on that porch for what seemed an eternity, my hands clutching the frozen railing, my attention focused on the tranquil snowscape of the West Piney Woods. Then I was aware of a shuffling, liquid sound behind me... the sound of ragged breathing from the open doorway. I made a mistake, I tried to convince myself. The old man's not really dead.

  I turned around and screamed.

  On the bare boards of the front porch, trailing a gory residue of fresh blood and slime, was Jess Hedgecomb's lungs. They heaved and deflated like a pair of gruesome bellows, pulling themselves across the porch with a life of their own. Then they paused, as if my screaming had drawn their attention.

  The gory windpipe, weaving like the head of a serpent, turned my way and regarded me blindly, the hollow of the gullet staring like a deep, eyeless socket. I pulled my own eyes away, hearing the wet clump, clump, clump of the thing making its way down the porch steps.

  When I finally did gather the nerve to look, it was gone, leaving an ugly trail of crimson slime across the virgin snow. I could hear it thrashing through the dead tangle of thicket, huffing and puffing, could see plumes of frosty breath rise as it headed into the wooded hollow.

  As far as I know, the thing never returned to the dilapidated shack beside Silver Creek again... and neither did I .

  I mostly keep to myself these days, preferring not to involve myself in other people's affairs. Every now and then, I can't help it, though, especially where the old man's childhood buddies are concerned. Lately there's beenalot of talk going around about them and the grisly death of Jess Hedgecomb. Whenever some busybody asks me about those last days with Old Hacker, I politely tell them to mind their own damn business.

  Lester Wills died the other day over in McMinnville. There was a big ruckus in the newspaper about it. Seems that a wild animal got into the nursing home somehow and tore out poor Lester's throat and lungs right there on his deathbed. Of course, I know that ain't what happened... and so does Charlie Gooch, the last remaining of the three. Charlie ain't looking so hot these days, either. Every time I see him in town, his face is pale and worried. And when he has one of his bad coughing spells, I turn my head, afraid to look.

  Sometimes when I'm out squirrel hunting in the West Piney Woods, I can hear something crawling through the honeysuckle. Something just a-puffing and a-wheezing as it makes its way through the shadowy hollows along Silver Creek. Sometimes it sounds as though there might be more than one.

  My twelve-gauge is hanging in the window rack of my pickup truck, cleaned and loaded with double-aught buckshot. I hang around the general store and the courthouse in the evenings, waiting, listening for word that old Charlie has finally kicked the bucket.

  And, when I do, I'll take my gun and a pack of hounds, and I'll go hunting.

  THE ABDUCTION

  He remembered the night of Tanya's fury.

  He remembered the night of her laughter, of the delicate glint of honed steel and the sting of thin-edged pain. He remembered the quick pulsating of blood released... his blood.

  But, most of all, Nelson Trulane remembered the moment of his awakening. The moment that he had realized the true extent of his horrible loss.

  The only link between that moment and now was the letter he held in his trembling hands. Fear blossomed in Nelson's gut like the dark bloom
of some poisonous flower the instant he saw the handwriting on the envelope. It was Tanya's feminine script, there was no mistaking that. He ripped open the envelope like a madman and unfolded the message within. The words assaulted his fragile, ill-balanced psyche, threatening to destroy the composure he had fought to maintain throughout that awful ordeal.

  LEAVE TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS IN A PLAIN ENVELOPE UNDERNEATH THE BANDSTAND AT CENTENNIAL PARK AT EIGHT O'CLOCK PM, THURSDAY NIGHT. X MARKS THE SPOT. PLAY IT BY THE BOOK AND WITH NO POLICE, OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR PRECIOUS BUDDY AGAIN.

  It wasn't signed, but it didn't need to be. He had been expecting the ransom note from Tanya for a number of days now.

  Nelson checked the postmark. The letter had been mailed the previous day and from right there in Nashville. Nelson thought that was pretty funny, since the police assumed that Tanya had left the state with Buddy. That was the most common modus operandi for a kidnapper. But, then, Tanya was too twisted to adhere to the ways of the common criminal.

  Nelson stared at the phone. He debated on whether or not he should call the authorities, then thought better of it and left the house. He climbed into his car and drove across town to the bank. He withdrew ten thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills from his savings account, then drove down the busy thoroughfare of West End Avenue. Centennial Park stretched to the right with its stately gardens and majestic replica of the Greek Parthenon.

  He found a parking spot across the street from the park and fed some change into the meter. Then he took a window booth in a little diner that catered to the faculty and students of nearby Vanderbilt University. The place was familiar to Nelson; he had eaten there many times before. In the past fifteen years he had made the transition from student to teacher at the college, and had feasted on the restaurant's greasy cheeseburgers and limp french fries during many a lunchtime, over both text books and exam papers. But that life of academic stability seemed to be only a sour memory now. It was ironic that Tanya had picked such a spot for the transaction. But, then, Tanya knew exactly what she was doing choosing Centennial Park. She wanted to make this experience as painful and humiliating as she possibly could.