by Lorn, Edward
If that was, in fact, their purpose, Bobby knew they were done for. How on earth were they supposed to hide from hundreds of phosphorescent bugs?
Go somewhere where the bugs can’t follow, that’s how.
“Tony!” Bobby yelled between great intakes of breath. “Tony, stop!”
“Fuck...fuck you!” Tony returned. Even from ten feet away, Bobby could hear his friend wheezing. And even though Tony didn’t seem to want to stop, Bobby could see his shoulders slumping. Tony’s running steps became heavier and farther apart, as if he were forcing himself forward now instead of being carried along by his fear.
“I…I can’t…can’t do any…anymore.” Tony stumbled forward.
Bobby, not a bit tired, only worn down by fear more than activity, made it to his friend just as Tony, falling as if someone had snatched the skeleton from his body, hit the ground.
Beyond the glow of the bugs lighting the surrounding trees, the rattling drew closer.
“Get up, man.” Bobby tugged on Tony’s arm.
“My heart…is…fucking done. I…I can’t breathe.” Tony huffed and puffed, his red face looking purple in the eerie green glow.
“You don’t have to run anymore, but we gotta go. We can’t stop here. We have to find a way back to the waterfall.”
“The fuck…Why?” Tony asked between inhalations.
“Because these things, these fireflies or whatever they are, are telling that big thing where we are. We need to get under water.”
“How’s…how’s that gonna work?” Tony already seemed to be breathing better, for he cut Bobby off before he could answer. “It can swim, man. It came…it came from the water.”
“Fuck!” Bobby barked.
Tony laughed nervously. “I can die happy now. Bobby cusses for the first time, and all is right with the world.”
“THIS ISN’T FUNNY!” Bobby screamed into Tony’s face. Tony sobered instantly, looked shocked to the point of wetting himself.
Bobby, on the verge of tears, his voice shaking, continued: “Nothing—nothing about this is funny. You hear that rattling? It’s coming. It’s coming and I don’t intend to be here when it gets here. We have to try the pool? It’s our only choice. So are you coming, or not?”
Tony nodded in quick jerky movements.
“Good. Now come on.”
Locating the waterfall without the path wasn’t near as hard as Bobby thought it would be. They simply cut through the tree and followed the sound of water hitting water. All the time keeping the rattling to their right. The fireflies accompanied them, lighting the way.
Bobby thought that whatever that thing had been that had come out of the water, it must be terrifically slow to have allowed them to put so much distance between it and them. Its legs were almost as tall as Bobby himself, but those heavy breasts and that pumpkin-sized belly would be a hassle to drag around. Besides, why should it have to move quickly? Bobby figured its little flying friends with the glowing butts were just as good as any GPS locating device. No matter where they went, the bugs followed.
Followed…
Had that gray thing on the trail today actually been one of these fireflies? Bobby was convinced at this point that it had been.
How long had they been stalking them? All day? Had these things been hunting them since they left the campsite? If so, why had the creature waited so long to attack? Had it been waiting for nightfall? Possibly. Or, perhaps it had been busy elsewhere.
No…
And now that the thought was there, Bobby couldn’t extricate the insidious idea that Tony’s mother had met up with the creature at some point. That’s why she hadn’t answered them. That’s why she hadn’t come to the rescue. The rattling thing had killed her in some horrible way. And if it had killed Brenda that meant help was not on its way. He and Tony were all alone, and would stay that way until they found help.
Hopelessness enveloped him.
But should he tell Tony? Should he tell Tony that he assumed his mother had been the creature’s first victim of the day? That his mother was very likely resting inside that seemingly pregnant belly?
Best not. Best to leave that info for Tony to figure out on his own, or for a point where his anger could be used to combat the monster. Yeah, that was best.
The creature rattled in the distance, and the boys pressed on.
9
Pauma Valley PD sent one officer. That was it. A single officer. And he was a pudgy fucker at that, with a stomach like an overinflated tire and an ass flatter than a griddle at a roadside diner. Why was it that most fat men had zero to show in the posterior region? One of life’s great mysteries, Lucy thought with an inward smile.
Where they stood talking in the Ranger’s trailer, Lucy could see the right side of the officer’s forehead was dented, as if he’d taken a softball to the temple during his skull’s formative years, and spotted with blackheads—zits that looked as if someone had stabbed him repeatedly with a graphite pencil. His shiny obsidian hair was combed straight back, but stuck up in the rear like a patch of black grass growing from a field of onyx. His nose resembled a ball of dough kneaded and set aside to rise. The eyes bracketing that mountainous sniffer were green and uncannily beautiful considering the pool of ugly they swam in. He was unlike any other human being Lucy had ever met. The unfinished work of an amateur sculptor. A true California original.
He introduced himself as Patrolman Juan Vincenti—“Vincenti with an I and not a Y”—and The Godfather instantly came to Lucy’s mind. This was a problem of hers. All Italians were part of the mafia. It was the one prejudice she allowed herself. Mainly because one of her daughters had married a black man, and the other one an Asian. Lucy assumed, having seen the grandchildren she’d been blessed with, that mixing races couldn’t be too terribly bad for society. Mixed kids, in her opinion, were perfectly gorgeous.
After Lucy finished telling him about the blood she’d seen on Charlie’s truck’s door handle, Vincenti asked: “You wan’ ride out there wi’ me?”—there came out as dare—“Show me wha’ you found? Jus’ make sure I don’ get los’?” Officer Vincenti seemed incapable of pronouncing the letter T.
“I don’t have a gun.” Although it was a complete non sequitur, it nonetheless spilled from her mouth without hesitation.
“Wha?”
“I don’t have any way of protecting myself, you know, should the need arise. All we get are rifles with tranq darts, and they take a second or two to work. Someone comes at us wearing a mask made of someone’s butt cheeks and swinging an axe, we’d be screwed.” She was rambling. She shut up.
Vincenti shook his flabby neck as if trying to clear her stupid from his mind. “Gun’s no problem. I have a gun. Look, it’s dark, and I don’ know the location. You comin’ would make things so much easier.”
I retract my previous assumption, Lucy thought. Vincenti or not, this guy’s obviously not Italian. Mexican? Maybe si, maybe no. Either way, he doesn’t speak like any Italian I’ve ever heard.
“You ever use that thing?” Lucy pointed to the handgun sticking out from under the lower left quadrant of the officer’s belly. With the size of Vincenti’s gut, she was shocked she could see it at all.
“I fail to see—”
“Never mind, Jose. Lemme get my jacket.”
“My name’s Juan,” he corrected her.
“The right Juan, or the wrong Juan?”
He did not answer. He didn’t look amused, either.
Lucy sighed. “Lookit here, Juan. I had a scare tonight, and when I get scared or nervous, I talk out my ass. You ever been scared? Ever talk out your ass?”
He cracked a smile. Somehow, it dulled the ugly edge of his features. “Oh yeah. All the time. My wife says, ‘Juan tiene la cabeza por el culo’.”
“What’s that mean?” Lucy asked.
“Something abou’ my head and my ass. I’m not sure. Don’ really speak much Spanish.”
To that, Lucy had no response.
10
The land had grown quiet. The creature’s rattling disappeared, as did the drone of the fireflies. The only thing Tony could hear was the rush of the falls, and that sounded far away. Too far away. As if they’d been moving away from them instead of toward them. The thought made Tony’s guts somersault.
“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” he asked Bobby.
Bobby didn’t answer, kept walking through the insects’ alien glow.
“Hey!” Tony hissed. “I asked—”
“And I heard you!” Bobby barked. “I just…I just don’t have an answer. Everything sounded right for a while. But now that that thing shut up, I…I don’t know, Tone.”
“Did you get us fucking lost?” Tony erupted, all caution toward being heard abandoned.
Bobby spun on him. “Don’t! Don’t you even lay the blame on me. You dragged me out here. You and your mother. Now we’re stuck in the middle of the woods, being hunted by a ten foot tall monster that looks like Jack Skellington’s hand!”
“Huh? What looked like a hand?”
“It looked like a hand. It had these things coming out of its back, and all together it looked like a hand. Never mind. It’s hard to explain.”
Bobby turned and started walking again.
“I’m worried about my mom. What if that thing got her? The thought crossed Tony’s mind well before now, but this was the first time he’d had to broach the subject. Truth was, he was more scared for his mother than he was for himself, which was saying something.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now, aside from the fact that we need to find our way back to—”
All at once and without warning, the bugs seemingly blinked out of existence. Tony thought it seemed as if something had swallowed them whole, like Jonah in that Bible story.
“What now?” Bobby asked, sounding uncharacteristically annoyed more than frightened by the new darkness.
“They turned themselves off, I guess. Maybe they can only go for so long before they—I don’t know—before they have to recharge.”
“I doubt they’re battery operated, dude.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, and you know it. Stop treating me like I’m some fucking idiot. It’s not cool.”
Silence. Then: “Sorry.”
Tony wished he could see his friend’s face. He wanted to know whether or not Bobby was joshing him or if the apology was heartfelt. Although, something in Bobby’s voice told Tony he meant it.
Bobby said, “I guess you could be right. I mean, they’d need to run on something. Like we run on food. Yeah…yeah, good call, Tone.”
“What about those slugs we learned about in chemistry. What were they called?”
“Bioluminescent slugs? Those ones that live in the ocean? You remember that lesson? That was, like, two years ago.”
“Yeah. It interested me. I like shit that glows in the dark. Anyway, stop changing the subject. What about those things? What do they run on?”
“Heck if I know, man. I barely remember that day.”
“Damn it. So much for you being the smart one, huh?”
“Funny.”
“I thought so.” Tony liked that they were seemingly back to normal. That they were no longer fighting made him very happy. “Do you hear it anymore?”
“No. Do you?”
“Nope.”
“Now what?” Bobby asked.
“Find the waterfall, I guess. Hole up there until daylight or…I guess just that. We don’t have any other choice, really.”
“Right. But which way? Now that the rattling has stopped, I can’t make out the direction of the falls.”
“How does that work, exactly? One less noise and suddenly the falls sound like they’re coming from everywhere.”
“No idea. But I’m sure there’s a perfectly science-y reason for it. Wanna take a guess and start walking in that direction?”
Tony barked nervous laughter. “Not really, dude. We’re already lost. Don’t feel like being more lost.”
“Is that possible? Being more lost? I mean, if you’re already lost, you can’t be—”
“I getcha, I getcha. Just shut up.”
Bobby laughed softly. Tony liked the sound of his friend’s laughter over the encroaching silence.
One moment, Tony could feel the earth under his feet, and the next moment, he could not. His sudden weightlessness didn’t scare him. Not at first. It was a totally pleasant experience in those seconds before he realized what was happening to him. Once he was up in the trees and dangling by his wrist from the monster’s firmly clutched fist, Tony began to scream. He didn’t scream because he feared for his life or because his wrist was a ball of white-hot agony where the creature squeezed it in its vice-like grip, although both of those things were truths.
He screamed because he finally saw what Bobby had seen earlier.
The thing did look like a hand, after all. And at the end of every one of the four fingers, a dim green bulb glowed. The light these small green orbs gave off illuminated the creature perfectly, seemed to be made to do just that—to showcase the ferocity of this predator. To bring to light the horrible reality of it. To make real the impossibility of monsters.
The face was uncannily human. But the skin was loose. Terribly loose. So loose that the pale flesh looked like a mask when juxtaposed against the rest of the creature’s leathery skin.
Flat white eyes without irises studied Tony as he wailed and kicked and swung in its grasp. The round head cocked, lending a quizzical aspect to the monster’s face.
Bobby called Tony’s name. But Bobby was forever away. Perhaps at the bottom of a well.
Fat tears rolled down Tony’s cheeks and lips. Cold fingers wrapped around his neck. Squeezed. Something broke in his throat and he could no longer scream.
The creature drew him closer.
Sniffed him.
“Please,” Tony mouthed.
The creature released his throat and Tony swayed outward, away from it.
His shoulder burned where the joint strained and threatened to separate. Every nerve below his elbow crackled like lit fireworks. The thumb of that hand twitched as bone-deep bolts of heat lightning coursed through it. The pain in his wrist and throat became a memory by comparison.
“Tony!” Bobby screamed from below. Tony tried to answer him, but something was still wrong with his throat. Though Tony could breathe just fine, he couldn’t make a sound.
He was flung violently over the thing’s shoulder, where he slammed into its bony back. He was only vaguely aware of the creature’s spindly green-tipped appendages bending and wrapping around him as if in a lover’s embrace.
The lights at the end of the extra appendages dimmed and then winked out completely. The temperature seemed to drop. Tony felt as if he’d stumbled inside a walk-in freezer. It was preternaturally quiet. Not a single night sound could be heard: no crickets, no frogs, not even the rustle of the breeze through the trees. Tony couldn’t even hear himself breathing.
Was he breathing? Oh God, was he breathing?
From far away and growing slowly closer, the rattling noise returned, accompanied by a slight vibrating that grew ever stronger. The louder the rattling became, the more intensely the creature quaked.
In the dark of the wood, Tony had no idea what was going on. He couldn’t see a thing. Even after a full minute of the rattling and vibrating, his eyes hadn’t adjusted.
Then everything brightened in an explosion of light, and it was all too much. He squeezed his eyes shut to block out the blinding green of his surroundings. The four thin arms holding him opened and he tumbled down. Tony, certain he would plummet dozens of feet to the forest floor below, screeched as he went sprawling on cold rock.
Black dots and rainbow bands scrolled in his vision. It was several minutes before he could see again, and when he could, it didn’t help his confusion.
He was in a large chamber. In the center of the chamber and reaching all the way to th
e back wall was what looked to be a large pool of antifreeze. A few feet away, something gray slithered into the liquid and out of sight.
Where am I? Tony asked of himself. He had no answers. Confusion and fear weakened him, and he wept under their assault.
11
A blinding flash of green light, an explosion that seemed both gaseous and liquid at the same time, and Tony vanished into thin air.
Bobby had been looking upward, had seen it happen. He’d seen it happen and he still couldn’t believe his eyes. He continued to call Tony’s name long after he realized his friend was gone.
What else could he do? Stand around and let it sink in that he was now all alone? Should he ruminate on the very real possibility that he’d witnessed his friend’s vaporization? Because those were truths, at least they were truths in his mind. Tony had been there, dangling from that creature’s thin arm, and then it had tossed Tony onto its back and…and…and what? Exploded? That’s what it had looked like, anyway.
Bobby swiped his forearm across his leaking face, streaking his arm with snot and tears and bubbling saliva.
Tony’s gone.
Stop thinking about it. You have to clear your mind. You have to survive.
My best friend’s dead.
You don’t know that.
What else could have happened? This isn’t Star Trek. Scottie didn’t teleport him onto the Enterprise. He vanished. He’s gone!
Well…
Exactly!
Bobby’s eyes flicked left, right, left, right. He couldn’t focus on any one thing because everything seemed suddenly mercurial, unstable. He felt that at any moment the monster would come back and snatch him away too.
Any moment…
Any moment now…
Right now…
But nothing happened.
Bobby was not sure how long he stood there, head snapping back and forth, his feet refusing to move, before fear and weariness dropped him to his knees. He lowered his head, like a condemned man praying, and cried. He cried for his missing and more-than-likely dead friend and Tony’s possibly-eaten mother. He cried for the father and mother he’d likely never see again. Mostly for his father though, who had been right from the beginning. The stupid white kid had gotten him in trouble of the life-threatening variety after all. Even though Bobby had been careful and smart and had done nothing to escalate a bad situation, his life had been ruined.
