The Gulp

by Alan Baxter

“Fuck you,” she spat at her mother’s bedroom door as she went past.

  A hissing came from the other side.

  Maddy jumped and stopped, turned to look back at the closed door. Another hiss, like a snake under a rock disturbed by movement. She reached out, put a hand to the door handle, then shook her head and walked away.

  She was surprised when Zack scuffed into the kitchen a few minutes later, eyes bleary. “It’s smaller.”

  “What?”

  “Come and look.”

  Reluctantly she got up and followed her brother back to their mother’s room. The fungus was as smooth and white and rounded as ever, and there was no trace whatsoever of the social worker. But Zack was right. While the pale thing covering the bed was about the same shape, it was smaller. Shrunk back away from the light fitting, the bulbous edges a little off the floor.

  “Maybe it’ll shrink away to nothing soon, yeah?”

  “Maybe.” What was the hissing she’d heard? Was the thing deflating somehow?

  The curtains shifted in the soft breeze, a little cooler today as autumn approached. Maddy watched the soft undulations for a moment, mesmerised by it, then shook herself and closed the door.

  “I have to go to work. Don’t be late for school, Zack.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  When Maddy stepped out the front door, grumpy Jack Parsons was shuffling along his driveway towards the letter box, a grubby dressing gown hanging on his skeletal frame, tatty ugg boots on his feet.

  He glanced up and Maddy forced a smile, and a nod.

  “Social worker, was it?” Parsons said.

  Maddy’s heart pulsed once extra hard. “What’s that?”

  “Yesterday. Nice looking lady came by, hadn’t seen her before. Didn’t see her leave though.”

  “You didn’t see her leave?”

  “Went to see my sister across town. I still drive, you know.”

  Maddy nodded. “Right. You went out.”

  “That’s what I said, are you deaf? I’m the old one. She come to see about your mother, did she?” The old man gave a crooked half-smile as he asked, something glinted in his eye.

  You fucker! Maddy thought. You called DoCS on us. “Just routine, I guess,” she said. “I wasn’t in, but she had a chat to Mum then left again.”

  “Don’t see your mum much these days. Used to chat over the fence quite often, good to have a yarn, eh?”

  “She’s sick. Doesn’t like to go outside any more, not even the garden.”

  Parsons nodded, mouth hanging slightly open. Maddy heard his rasping breath as he stared at her. She quickly patted her pockets, then said, “Damn it, forgot my phone.”

  “You young people and those things!” Parsons said.

  She flashed him a forced smile and ran back inside. She hadn’t forgotten her phone at all, but it was the first excuse that came to mind. “Zack, for fuck’s sake!”

  He looked up from his bowl of cereal, milk dripping off the spoon. “What?”

  “Jack Parsons saw the social worker arrive!”

  Zack’s eyebrows climbed into his hair. “Oh yeah! Nosey bastard was getting in his car.”

  “You have to be more careful. If he saw her arrive, maybe others did. Are you sure no one saw you get into her car and drive it away?”

  “Pretty sure, yeah.”

  “Pretty sure?”

  “I’m sure!” Zack’s eyebrows slammed back down, drawing together. “What are you, the fucking police?”

  Maddy took a deep breath, decided to calm things down. “No, but they might come around. More importantly, we can’t say she never came here. We’ll have to say she came in, had a chat with Mum, then left again. That’s what I just told Parsons.”

  “Okay. That’s what I was going to say in the first place. Easy as.”

  She stared at him. Easy as. Was he really so blasé about the whole thing? Maybe it was a defence mechanism. The phone on the kitchen counter rang. Their mother’s phone. Maddy always left it plugged in there. She went over and looked at it, but didn’t recognise the number.

  “Might be DoCS,” Zack said.

  She glared at him.

  He shrugged. “Might be. Answer it. You be Mum. Put them off.”

  “Fuck!” She snatched up the phone and answered. “Hello?” She made her voice a little weak, a little croaky. This was far from the first time she’d impersonated her mother. But it was the first time she’d impersonated her dead mother.

  “I’m after Mrs Claire Taylor.” The woman on the other end was kind-sounding, her voice soft with a slight accent Maddy couldn’t place.

  “Speaking.”

  “Ah, good morning, Mrs Taylor. I’m Hilary Wong from the Department of Communities and Justice.”

  That’s right, Maddy thought. That’s what they’re calling the welfare these days. “We just saw you lot yesterday,” she said, in her mother’s snappy tone.

  “That’s what I was ringing about, actually. You say you saw someone yesterday?”

  Zack held up his phone, where he’d typed stefanee belcher into a text message.

  “That’s right,” Maddy said. “Woman called Stephanie something-or-other. Beacher? Beacham?”

  “Stephanie Belcher.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Yes, right. So she came to see you?”

  “Yes. Unusual to come on a weekend, I thought.”

  “Well, our staff tend to try to find times best suited to families,” Wong said. “So she came about what time?”

  What time? Maddy mouthed at Zack.

  “Lunchtime,” he whispered. “About twelve?”

  “Sometime in the middle of the day,” Maddy croaked, then turned her head only slightly from the phone and coughed raucously. She imagined poor Hilary Wong wincing at the other end, but it was the kind of awful thing her mother did all the time. Zack grinned.

  “And you all had a chat and then she left again?” Wong asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t invite her to stay the night or anything. Honestly, why even send her when you can just email or call or something? It’s an invasion of privacy, you know!”

  “What time did Ms Belcher leave, Mrs Taylor?”

  “She was here half an hour or something before I was finally able to shoo her out.”

  “Did she mention where she was going next?”

  “No. Why would I care?”

  There was a moment’s pause and then Wong said, “Okay, thank you, Mrs Taylor. Sorry to bother your morning.”

  “Right-o.” Maddy hung up the call, then blew out a breath, leaning back against the counter.

  “You do such a good Mum!” Zack said.

  “Fuck, Zack, that was awful. I have to go to work. You know, it’s entirely possible they’ll report the woman missing now and then we’ll have the police around here too.”

  “We’ll just tell them the same thing, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. And if anyone else does come asking about anything, Mum has gone to see her cousins in Bega and we don’t know when she’s coming back. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I have to go to work.”

  The whole time Maddy was home, Zack had tried to ignore his mother’s wheedling voice. It drilled into his brain, but he managed to tune it out most of the time. When Maddy left again, finally going to work at last, he finished his breakfast, then went and got dressed. He put on his school uniform but had no intention of going to class yet. First he forged a note, signed by his mother, explaining he’d had a dental appointment. He’d use that at the office to get a late note when he finally went in. He tucked it into the side pocket of his backpack, then went around next door and rang Jack Parson’s bell.

  His mother still cajoled in his ears, even from this far away, telling him what to do. It took a few minutes, but he finally saw movement behind the frosted glass panes in Parsons’s door. The door opened, then thunked against the chain. The old man scowled out at him.

  “What?”

  “
Good morning, Mr Parsons.” Zack gave his warmest smile.

  “Er... morning. What do you want?”

  “Do you think you could come around? My mum wanted to have a chat with you. She said she knows you used to enjoy a chat over the fence, but she’s too scared to go out any more. Do you know what agoraphobia is?”

  “Of course I do, I’m not an imbecile.” Parsons paused, brows creasing. “Is that it? Why I haven’t seen her for a while?”

  “Yeah, she barely even leaves her room these days. But she was asking after you. I don’t know, I think she wants to give you something.”

  “Give me something?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Parsons stared a moment longer, then nodded once. “Wait a minute.”

  He shuffled away and through the gap Zack saw him sit on chair by the door and grunt and wheeze as he pulled his shoes on. Then the door closed, the chain snicked free, and it opened again. Parsons gestured for Zack to lead the way.

  They went into the house and Parsons looked around, eyes narrowed. He seemed to be assessing the place, maybe judging their cleanliness. Clearly he thought little enough of them that he’d called the welfare.

  Bring him!

  “Mum’s in her room,” Zack said, pointing. “This way.” He went along the hall and opened the door. “Hey, Mum. Mr Parsons from next door is here.” He stepped back and smiled at the old man.

  Parsons nodded and turned into the room. “Good morn– What the hell is that?”

  Zack stepped in behind and put one hand on the old man’s shoulder, the other on his opposite hip, and walked him hard into the bulging fungus. Parsons cried out as he staggered forward, then screamed as his hands and face planted into the soft white mass and began to immediately hiss and bubble. That acrid smoke rose up again and Parsons vibrated, his scuffed shoes rattling against the floor. His scream became a gargled, strangled sound, then a muffled coughing, then Zack had slammed the door and staggered back to lean against the opposite wall. He stood there, breathing hard, swallowing down bile, waiting for his hammering heart to calm.

  Then he pushed himself up, grabbed his school bag, and went out, locking the front door behind himself.

  “You did fucking WHAT?” Maddy screamed. Her heart seemed to almost block her throat and her hands shook in rage.

  “He would have called again! He would have called welfare again, that’s what Mum said!”

  “And what about when people report him missing?” Maddy asked, trying to swallow her anger enough to talk. “What about when the police start asking the neighbours what happened?”

  “We tell them we have no idea, haven’t seen him for a few days.”

  “Jesus, Zack.”

  “I would have told you last night, but you didn’t come home.”

  “I went to Dylan’s. I texted you.”

  “I know, but I wanted to tell you in person.”

  Maddy nodded, swallowed. “You were already in bed when I got back.”

  “Come and see.”

  Zack pulled at Maddy’s arm where she sat at the kitchen table. To think she’d been feeling a little better about things. She finished work, Dylan was waiting outside and she’d given in. Went to his place, smoked some weed, had a shag, it was all pretty good. She’d got home and Zack was sleeping, and it felt like they were moving forward. Then he gets up and tells her he fed the old neighbour to the mother-fungus whatever the fuck it was thing in there? “Come and see what?” she asked.

  “Just come.”

  She trailed him down the hall and looked in when he opened their mother’s bedroom door. The great swollen thing, pale in the bed, had shrunk again.

  “It’s going down, see?”

  Maddy nodded. “Thank fuck for that. Zack, this has to stop. We need to leave it, let it disappear, whatever. Can you do that?”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand?”

  “She needs more. Just one or two, she says.”

  “What?” Maddy stared at him, her stomach water.

  “Just one or two more and that’ll be it, she’ll have finished her cycle.”

  “Zack. Fuck, no. You’ve killed two people! You can’t kill any more!”

  Zack licked his lips, looked at the white fungus, then back at Maddy. “We have to. I promised. This is how it works. Then she’ll be gone. It will be gone, all of it. And the house will be ours.”

  Maddy ran shaking hands through her hair. “You’ll get caught. We’ll get caught!”

  “I promised Mum.”

  “It’s not Mum!” Maddy yelled. “Whatever the fuck is going on, whatever you think you’re hearing, it’s not Mum! How can it be? You saw her die. You saw her body.”

  Zack stared at her, tears in his eyes. He looked lost, haunted.

  “We got away with the Belcher woman, for now, at least. Parsons next door was just some shrivelled old cunt. His sister might miss him or something, but whatever. He was close to dead anyway, I expect. But who’s next, Zack? Hmm? Who are you planning to give to it?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what we need to talk about.”

  “There’s no we in this, bro! It’s you. It’s all you.”

  Zack shook his head and his eyes hardened. “You’re in on it too. If something happens to me, you think anyone will believe you knew nothing about it? You may not have pushed them, but you’re part of this too.”

  “Oh, Zack, what the hell is going on?”

  “One or two more, that’s all. That what she said. Then it’s done. We have to figure out who.”

  Maddy’s head spun, dizziness edging her vision. She pulled the bedroom door closed and pushed Zack back towards the kitchen. “Go to school. I have to go to work. We need to think about this.”

  Zack picked up his school bag and headed for the front door. “What about Dylan?”

  “Jesus, Zack! Go to school! We’ll talk when I get back from work. I’ll be home by six.”

  After he left, Maddy went and sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee. She had to end this. By the time the mug was empty, she’d decided to kill the thing. She went out into the back garden and the small tin shed in the corner, and then came back with a square-bladed shovel.

  She pushed open the bedroom door and stepped into the room, raised the shovel high overhead, planning to chop it to mincemeat. The fungus began vibrating violently, shaking the whole bed, making it skitter slightly against the floor.

  “Fuck!” Maddy brought the shovel down hard into the nearest swollen curve of the thing.

  It split open and hissed, and it screamed. Dark brown ichor leaked thickly from the slash she’d put in its tough skin, and the thing wailed in her mind. It seemed to bypass her ears completely, and drill deep into her brain. Maddy dropped the shovel and clapped both palms to either side of her head, crying out in pain. She felt as though her eyes were about to burst. The thing shook and screamed and Maddy’s knees weakened. She staggered back from the room and then half ran, half fell down the hallway. The noise from the bedroom slowly eased until the house had sunk back into a tense, eerie silence.

  Don’t do that again, her mother’s voice said, directly into her mind. Feed me and it’ll be done.

  “You’re not her!” Maddy shouted back down the hall.

  Just feed me!

  There was no way Maddy ever wanted to feel pain like that again. Her head throbbed, her muscles were weak, her eyes had sharp spikes of sensation through them, repeating every few seconds.

  “Okay,” she said at last. “You’ll really go? Really leave us be?”

  If you feed me.

  “One more.”

  Maybe two.

  Maddy began to cry, despite herself. She hated being reduced to tears for any reason but couldn’t stop it. “Okay,” she said again. She grabbed her bag and left for work.

  When Maddy got home, her nerves were frayed. She’d spent all day with her head buzzing about who they could give to the white thing in
the bed. How could they make a choice like that? It was straight up murder. She’d considered a few options, like the homeless guy who always hung around near the beach. Or that weird guy without a nose she saw around town all the time. There was the old woman at the harbour everyone called the sea witch, but Maddy kind of liked her. Maybe someone from work, plenty of choices there. Wendy Callow, perhaps, no one liked her anyway. She even thought about Dylan or one of his stoner mates. But every time she considered anyone, the thought would progress to how she would entice the person around, and how she would give them to the fungus, and at that point her bile rose and panic gripped her chest. She derailed the thought again and again, tried to work, until the same process rose in her mind and repeated. Over and over, all day.

  The house was still and quiet when she got in. Suspiciously so. Where was Zack? She badly needed a shower and decided if he wasn’t back by the time she got out, she’d call him. Ten minutes later she was towelling herself off when the front door clicked and she heard voices.

  “Thanks so much for coming over, Mr Brady.”

  That was Zack’s voice. Mr Brady? Josh’s dad? Why the hell had Zack brought him over?

  “It’s no problem,” Brady said. “I can’t believe you forgot Josh was going to his grandparents for a couple of nights though.”

  “Oh, I remembered, only I thought it was tomorrow, not today. And I promised Mum I’d help shift this furniture and figured Josh could help. But I really appreciate you stepping in.”

  “I’m glad you feel you can ask us for help, Zack. This way, is it?”

  Maddy had stood frozen in panic for a moment, then she lunged for the door. She had to stop him. Then she realised she was naked, holding a towel. She dragged on her work pants and shirt again and pulled open the bathroom door just as Mr Brady said, “What the hell is that?”

  Then a metallic clang rang out. Maddy ran down the hall to see Zack in the doorway to their mother’s room, the shovel she’d dropped earlier in his hands. Mr Brady was face down on the floor, blood pooling from his ear and a gash on the back of his head.

  “What the fuck, Zack!”

  “Help me get him up. Onto Mum.”

  “It’s not our mum!”

  Zack flashed her an angry look. “Whatever it is, help me get him onto it.”