Ashes (24 page)

He closed his eyes and waited for the bite,
the tearing of his blue jeans and shin meat, the rattle of tooth on
bone. He stiffened in anticipation of cold claws to belly, hot
saliva on rib cage, rough tongue to that soft place just underneath
the chin.

Clickety-sloosh.

His heart skipped a beat and restarted. He
was still alive. No pain yet. He tried to breathe. The air tasted
like rusty meat.

Maybe it had disappeared. But he could hear
it, panting through moist nostrils. Just beneath him. Close enough
so that he could feel the wind of its mewling against his leg.

Savoring the kill? Just as Dexter had done,
all those afternoons and Saturday mornings spent kneeling in the
forest, with his pocket knife and his pets and his frightened
lonely tears? He knew that fear was the worst part, the part that
made your belly all puke-shivery.

He had to show his fear.
That was only fair. He owed them that much. And if he looked scared
enough, maybe the thing would have mercy, just rip open that big
vein in his neck so he could die fast. Then the thing could
clickety-sloosh
on back
into the woods, drag its pieces to the grave and bury its own
bones.

Dexter tried to open his eyes but couldn't.
Still the thing mewled and gargled. Waiting was the worst part. You
could hold your breath, pray, scream, run. They always get you
anyway.

Still he waited.

He blinked. The world was nothing but
streaks, a gash of light, a fuzz of gray that was the house, a
bigger fuzz of black night. Something nudged against his kneecap.
He looked down, his chest hot as a brick oven.

It hadn't disappeared.

Two eyes met his. One round and dark, without
a white, hooded by an exotic flap of skin. The other eye was
heavy-lidded, yellow and reptilian.

Behind the eyes, lumps of meat sloping into a
forehead. Ragged pink where the pieces met, leaking a thin jelly.
Part fur, part feather, part scale, part exposed bone. A raw
rooster comb dangled behind one misshapen ear.

Beneath the crushed persimmon of a nose were
whiskers and wide lips, the lips parted to show teeth of all kinds.
Puppy teeth, kitty fangs, fishy nubs of cartilage, orange bits of
beak like candy corn.

Hulking out behind the massive dripping head
were more slabs of tenderloin, breast and wing, fin and shell. The
horrible coalition rippled with maggots and rot and magic.

The lump of head nuzzled against his leg. The
juice soaked through his jeans.

Oh God.

He wanted the end to come quickly now,
because he had given the thing his fear and that was all he had. He
had paid what he owed. But he knew in the dark hutch of his heart
that the thing wasn't finished. He opened his eyes again.

The strange eyes stared up into his. Twin
beggars.

You had to let them feed. On fear or whatever
else they needed.

Again the thing nuzzled, mewling wetly.
Behind the shape, something slithered rhythmically against the
leaves.

A rope of gray and black and tan fur. A
broken tail.

Wagging.

Wagging.

Waiting and wanting.

Forgiving.

Dexter wept without shame. When the thing
nuzzled the third time, he reached down with a trembling hand and
stroked between the putrid arching ears.

Riley's voice came to him, unbidden, as if
from some burning bush or darkening cloud: "Gotta tell 'em that you
love 'em."

Dexter knelt, trembling. The thing licked
under the soft part of his chin. It didn't matter that the tongue
was scaly and flecked with forest dirt. And cold, grave cold, long
winter cold.

When you let them love you, you owe them
something in return.

He hugged the beast, even as it shuddered
toward him, clickety-sloosh with chunks dribbling down. And still
the tail whipped the ground, faster now, drumming out its
affection.

Suddenly the yard exploded with light.

The back door opened. Mom stood on the porch,
one hand on the light switch, the other holding her worn flannel
robe closed across her chest. "What the hell's going on out
here?"

Dexter looked up from where he was kneeling
at the bottom of the steps. His arms were empty and dry.

"Don't just stand there with your jaw hanging
down. You was supposed to be here an hour ago." Her voice went up a
notch, both louder and higher. "Why, I've got a good mind to—"

She stopped herself, looking across the lawn
at the houses down the street. Dexter glanced under the porch. He
saw nothing in the thick shadows.

Mom continued, lower, with more menace. "I've
got a good mind to take the belt to you."

Dexter stood and rubbed the dirt off his
pants.

"Now get your ass in here, and don't make me
have to tell you twice."

Dexter looked around quickly at the perimeter
of forest, at the black thickets where the thing would hide until
Mom was gone. He went up the steps and through the door, past her
hot drunken glare and stale breath. He shuffled straight to his
room and closed the door. The beating would come or it wouldn't. It
didn't matter.

That night, when he heard the scratching at
the windowsill and the bump against the glass, he opened the
window. The thing crawled inside and onto the bed. It had brought
him a gift. Riley’s bloody boot. When you loved something, it owed
you in return. Maybe it had carried the other one to Tammy Lynn’s
house, where it might have delivered her lost shoe on Halloween,
the night of its birth. To thank her for the gift of blood.

The nightmare creature curled at Dexter’s
feet, licking at the boot. The thing’s stench filled the room, bits
of its rotted flesh staining the blankets. Dexter didn’t sleep that
night, listening to the mewling rasp of the creature’s breathing,
wondering where the mouth was, knowing that he’d found a friend for
life.

And tomorrow, when he got off the bus, the
thing would greet him. It would wait until the bus rolled out of
sight, then drag itself from the woods and rub against his leg,
begging to be stroked. It would lick his face and wait for his
hug.

And together they would run deep between the
trees, Dexter at one end of the leash, struggling to keep up while
the thing clickety-slooshed about and buried its dripping nose in
the dirt, first here, then there. Once in a while into the creek,
to wet its dangling gills. Stopping only to gaze lovingly at its
master, showing those teeth that had done something bad to Riley
and could probably do it again.

Maybe if Dexter fed its hunger for affection,
it wouldn’t have a hunger for other things.

Dexter would give it what it needed, he would
feed it all he had. Through autumn’s fog and into the December
snows, through long spring evenings and into summer's flies. A
master and its pet.

You owe them that much.

That’s just the way love is.

They always get you anyway.

###

YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE

Daddy said them that eat human flesh will
suffer under Hell.

I ain’t figured that out yet, how there can
be a place under Hell. Daddy couldn’t hardly describe it hisself.
It’s just a real bad place, hotter than the regular Hell and
probably lonelier, too, since Hell’s about full up and nobody’s a
stranger. Been so much sinning the Devil had to build a basement
for the gray people.

It was Saturday when we heard about them. I
was watching cartoons and eating a bowl of corn flakes. I like
cereal with lots of sugar, so when the flakes are done you can
drink down that thick milk at the bottom of the bowl. It come up
like a commercial, some square-headed man in a suit sitting at a
desk, with that beeping sound like when they tell you a bad storm’s
coming. Daddy was drinking coffee with his boots off, and he said
they wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the wind was lazy as a cut cat.
So he figured it was just another thing about the Aye-rabs and who
cared if they blew each other to Kingdom Come, except then they
showed some of that TV that looks like them cop shows, the camera
wiggly so you can’t half see what they’re trying to show you.

Daddy kept the cartoons turned down low
because he said the music hurt his ears, but this time he took the
remote from beside my cereal bowl and punched it three or four
times with his thumb. The square-headed man was talking faster than
they usually do, like a flatlander, acting like he deserved a pat
on the head because he was doing such a good job telling about
something bad. Then the TV showed somebody in rags moving toward
the camera and Daddy said, Lordy, looked like something walked out
of one of them suicide bombs, because its face was gray and looked
like the meat had melted off the bone.

But the square-headed man said the picture
was live from Winston-Salem, that’s about two hours from us here in
the mountains. The man said it was happening all over, the
hospitals was crowded and the governor done called out the National
Guard. Then the television switched and it was the President
standing at a bunch of microphones, saying something about a new
terror threat but how everybody ought to stay calm because you
never show fear in the face of the enemy.

Daddy said them damned ragheads must have
finally let the bugs out of the bottle. I don’t see how bugs could
tear up a man’s skin that way, to where it looked like he’d stuck
his head in a lawn mower and then washed his face with battery acid
and grease rags. I saw a dead raccoon once, in the ditch when I was
walking home from school, and maggots was squirming in its eye
holes and them shiny green dookie flies was swarming around its
tail. I reckon that’s what kind of bugs Daddy meant, only worse,
because these ones get you while you’re still breathing.

I was scared then, but it was the kind where
you just sort of feel like the ashes in the pan at the bottom of
the woodstove. Where you don’t know what to be afraid of. At least
when you hear something moving in the dark woods, your hands get
sweaty and your heart jumps a mite faster and you know which way to
run. But looking at the TV, all I could think of was the time I
woke up and Momma wasn’t making breakfast, and Momma didn’t come
home from work, and Momma didn’t make supper. A kind of scared that
fills you up belly first, and you can’t figure it out, and you
can’t take a stick to it like you can that thing in the dark woods.
And then there was the next day when Momma still didn’t come home,
and that’s how I felt about the bugs out of the bottle, because it
seems like you can’t do nothing to stop it. Then I felt bad because
the President would probably say I was showing fear in the face of
the enemy, and Daddy voted for the President because it was high
time for a change.

I asked Daddy what we was going to do, and he
said the Lord would show the way. Said he was loading the shotgun
just in case, because the Lord helped those that helped themselves.
Said he didn’t know whether them things could drive a car or not.
If they had to walk all the way from the big city, they probably
wouldn’t get here for three days. If they come here at all.

Daddy told me to go put up the cows. Said the
TV man said they liked living flesh, but you can’t trust what the
TV says half the time because they want to sell you something. I
didn’t figure how they could sell anything by scaring people like
that. But I was awful glad we lived a mile up a dirt road in a
little notch in the mountains. It was cold for March, maybe too
cold for them bugs. But I wasn’t too happy about fetching the cows,
because they tend to wander in the mornings and not come in ‘til
dark. Cows like to spend their days all the same. If you do
something new, they stomp and stir and start in with the moos, and
I was afraid the moos might bring the bugs or them gray people that
eat living flesh.

I about told Daddy I was too scared to fetch
them by myself, but he might have got mad because of what the
President said and all. Besides, he was busy putting on his boots.
So I took my hickory stick from by the door and called Shep. He was
probably digging for groundhogs up by the creek and couldn’t hear
me. I walked out to the fields on the north side, where the grass
grows slow and we don’t put cows except early spring. Some of the
trees was starting to get new leaves, but the woods was mostly
brown rot and granite stone. That made me feel a little better,
because a bug-bit gray person would have a harder time sneaking up
on me.

We was down to only four cows because of the
long drought and we had to cull some steers last year or else buy
hay. Four is easy to round up, because all you got to do is get one
of them moving and the rest will follow. Cows in a herd almost
always point their heads in the same direction, like they all know
they’re bound for the same place sooner or later. Most people think
cows are dumb but some things they got a lot of sense about. You
hardly ever see a cow in a hurry. I figure they don’t worry much,
and they probably don’t know about being scared, except when you
take them to the barn in the middle of the day. Then maybe they
remember the blood on the walls and the steaming guts and the smell
of raw meat and the jingle of the slaughter chains.

By the time I got them penned up, Shep had
come in from wherever and gave out a bark like he’d been helping
the whole time. I took him into the house with me. I don’t ever do
that unless it’s come a big snow or when icicles hang from his fur.
Daddy was dressed and the shotgun was laying on the kitchen table.
I gave Shep the last of my cereal milk. Daddy said the TV said the
gray people was walking all over, even in the little towns, but
said some of the telephone wires was down so nobody could tell much
what was going on where.

I asked Daddy if these was like the End Times
of the Bible, like what Preacher Danny Lee Aldridge talked about
when the sermon was almost over and the time had come to pass the
plate. I always got scared about the End Times, even sitting in the
church with all the wood and candles and that soft red cloth on the
back of the pews. The End Times was the same as Hell to me. But
Preacher Aldridge always wrapped up by saying that the way out of
Hell was to walk through the house of the Lord, climb them stairs
and let the loving light burn ever little shred of sin out of you.
All you had to do was ask, but you had to do it alone. Nobody else
could do it for you.