One woman thrust a brass urn toward Sean. “Save my dad!”
“No, my Sprinkles!” another woman said, nudging the first aside. She held a photograph of a very fat, very fluffy cat. “I need my Sprinkles Baby back! Please!”
“My dad outranks your flea bitten cat!”
A shoving match started and Sean skirted around them to let Mindy out of the car. “Go. Save yourself,” he said, pressing the house keys into her hand even as the throng of desperate mourners surrounded him.
Chapter Thirteen
Happily pooped after playing with the neighbor kids, Mindy wandered into Sean’s studio and watched him draw what looked like a rotting corpse leaping through a breaking window.
She waited until he lifted his pencil and asked, “Can I use the computer again?”
“Sure,” he said, shrugging as he put that pencil in a cup and grabbed a different one.
She sat and took a breath before opening Chrome.
A quick search in Google confirmed what Dani had said. Jeff had sued Toyota for the faulty Prius and collected not only millions in damages from the car company, but from insurance as well.
Mindy sat staring at Jeff’s smug face on the screen, her hands pressed between her thighs. At first she wanted to run across the hall and vomit, but anger took root, making her huff out one furious breath after another.
He didn’t love me, loathed touching me, and treated me like a dog, but I was worth insuring for one point eight million dollars.
You think I’m gonna let that pass, Jeffy?
Oh hell no.
Phone still off, Sean cycled through the messages on the machine as he cooked supper. Any mention of a threat, plea, or request for an interview earned a press of the delete button. Only one message remained, from Deputy Todd.
Hey, Sean. Just wanted to touch base and let you know that some fuzzy cell-phone pics of the slime hit Tumblr this afternoon. We’re hoping no one will believe it’s real, but you know how these internet things go. Anyway, you’re off the hook.
Sean returned to sautéing chicken and peppers.
Finally some good news, not that I had any intention of sharing the pics.
Movement caught the corner of his eye and he muttered a curse. Someone was in the backyard. Again.
“Mindy!” he called as he walked to the back door. “Can you keep an eye on supper?”
He didn’t wait for her reply, but walked outside, blinking away sudden sweat. “Hey!” he barked at a crisp young couple who looked like they’d walked out of a JCrew ad, if those ads included skulking around with a shiny spade. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I, um,” the girl said, clutching a gilded urn to her chest, while the boy merely narrowed his eyes and clenched the spade, its blue Lowe’s price tag fluttering in the slight breeze.
“This is private property,” Sean said, walking straight toward them. “You do not have permission to dig here.”
“It’s my mom,” the girl said, cringing. “We heard you bring people back, and we just thought—“
“You just thought you’d trespass and vandalize my yard?” Sean snapped, looming over them. “I can’t bring your mom back, okay? And even if I could—which I can’t—whatever’s going on didn’t happen here, but at the cemetery,” he said, pointing. “It’s over there, on the other side of the tree farm.”
The young man glared at him, defiant. “We’ve been there. Cops are guarding nothing but mud, tombstones, and flowers. Here, though,” he said, pointing with the spade, “are several fresh holes.”
Sean took in his yard and cringed. Lots of holes. Some big, some small, most scattered near the edge of the puddle at the back edge of his property.
Thanks, Mindy, for giving folks this idea.
“I didn’t give permission for them, or for you,” he said, not without pity. “Besides, if she’s cremated I don’t think it’ll work anyway.”
“What? Why?” the girl asked, cradling the urn as if to soothe it.
“I think you need a body, not ashes.” Sean pointed toward his driveway. “Now go on. Go home.”
“You
think
?” the boy snapped, looking Sean over top to bottom. “Who are you to make a decision based upon a mere thought? You’re just a long-haired, low-rent freak.”
“Actually, I’m the long-haired, low-rent freak who owns this yard and I’m not going to allow snotty assholes to dig it up without at least a please and thank you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re trespassing. Want me to ask the cops out front if they agree?”
“It’s a shitty ass yard,” the boy muttered as he stomped off, the girl trotting to keep up.
Beyond the rhubarb, Earl Simmons stood in his own back yard with his vile mutt, Peaches, panting beside him. Earl clapped slowly until Sean turned to glare at the portly old puke. “He’s right. It is a shitty ass yard.”
Sean flipped him the bird and trudged back to the house.
And you’re a shitty ass human being.
“We’ve started a petition!” Earl yelled. “Get you and your sign-carrying freaks kicked the hell out of this neighborhood.”
“At this point, I don’t give a fuck,” Sean muttered to himself, “as long as I get the comic done.” Without looking at Simmons or his awful dog, Sean walked into the house to find Mindy humming at the stove and two more messages on the machine.
While Mindy called her sister from the kitchen, Sean grasped the chance to get online. He dug several pages into Google but found no mention of an American company called Lotus Lab.
He stared at the screen, thinking.
Does that mean they pre-date the internet? If so, they closed before 1995.
He held the sign fragment, turning it in his hands.
It’s definitely old,
he thought, thumb running along one cracked and chipped edge.
More searching brought him few options for fungus labs in Iowa, other than the ag testing center in Ames. Close to Pinell, but likely too far away to pollute their creeks. Another dead end.
He scowled and leaned back, fingertips tapping on the mouse.
How about the property?
he thought, then brought up the county assessor’s site.
Barronsen’s Poultry was bought by cash transaction in June, 1998, and the barns were built, appraised, and properly tax-filed in 1998 and 1999. The property had been previously seized in a 1996 foreclosure, after being passed between family members several times from 1991 to 1994. The online records stopped there.
He Googled every name on that short list of real estate transactions and found only a poultry farmer with several farms scattered across three counties, two old women who’d already died, and a man arrested three times since 1994 for tax evasion, swindling, or money laundering. He was serving out his current sentence in Newton.
That’s a couple of hours drive,
Sean thought, glancing at the clock.
Maybe he’d know who owned Lotus Lab. Or maybe it’s just another dead end. Since whatever I’m looking for is obviously pre-internet, maybe I’d have better luck with newspaper archives?
Mindy walked past, sniffling. Sean asked, “You all right?”
“I guess so. My sister barely talked to me. She just said Jeff kept or destroyed all my other stuff. If I want my license or whatever so I could maybe get a job, if I want to know what happened in court, if I want to know
anything
, I should talk to Jeff, not bother her because between mom and her kid and her marriage, she could not deal with having an undead sister. Then she hung up. My own sister hung up on me.” She gave Sean a pitiful glance then continued to Jam’s room, closing the door behind her.
He winced, uncertain what to do.
Do I try to comfort her or would that be too intrusive? Too forward? Would someone like Mindy think I was trying to make a pass at her? But if I do nothing, is that too cold and uncaring? Is—
Someone pounded on the front door.
Saved by a stranger,
Sean thought, standing. He rapped lightly on Mindy’s door. “I gotta answer that,” he said, “but are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
She didn’t sound fine, but Sean said, “Okay,” and went to see who waited on the stoop this time.
Another reporter stood there, with a cameraman busily filming the various protestors, now spilling onto the street. Several mourners in the driveway clamored for his attention, and zombie hunters posed for the camera.
The reporter waited expectantly.
“I’m not answering any more questions,” Sean said. “It’s a miracle, and that’s all I’m going to say.” He held the reporter’s gaze as Mindy walked past, muttering on her way to the kitchen. “Please leave.”
“But Mr. Casey, surely you have an opinion on the toxins the chicken farm spilled in the creek east of your home. Could they be the cause of your unorthodox opinions?”
Sean rolled his eyes and slammed the door in the reporter’s face.
Sean slouched at the computer as eleven PM rolled around, clicking on ‘get mail’ while scanning in the day’s drawings. Seven pages of detailed pencils, done and ready to send to Murph for any changes before inking. Sean put another stiff illustration bristol sheet into the scanner and stretched.
Fifteen pages to go, but plenty of time to get them done before deadline. Another eight or so tomorrow and, with luck, the rest on Wednesday. Hopefully Murph will get his notes and corrections back before this weekend. So I can get ‘em inked, colored, and out the door.
11:03, still no email from Mare.
Behind him, Mindy flipped through a box of drawings and pulled one out every now and then to examine it closer. “Wow,” she said, squinting at the original black and white inked illustration for a center spread. “This is amazing. How’d you get so good?”
Sean pulled out the bristol for page five and put in the next. “Been drawing almost my whole life as a way to deal with the nightmares after I was kidnapped,” he said, hitting the scan button before checking email again. 11:05. Nothing.
“You were kidnapped?” Mindy asked.
“Yeah, when I was a kid,” Sean said, shrugging. It was so long ago and he had long tired of rehashing the few memories he had. “I was gone a couple of weeks and came back not remembering much of anything about it, no matter how the cops and psychologists tried to pry details out of me.”
“Oh my God! I’m glad you’re all right!”
“Yeah, well, that’s questionable some days,” he said with a wry chuckle. “My therapist finally decided I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and one of the ways she had me cope was to draw or paint out my anger and fear. Turned out I liked it, and was pretty good at it, so I took all the art classes I could at school, even some summer program things.”
Still no email and the phone, with the battery reinstalled, remained silent. “I took illustration and graphic design in college, then an online course thing for pro comic art…” He switched out the illustration again to the day’s final scan. “That’s really about it. Drawing’s all I know how to do.” 11:06. Still nothing.
Goddammit, Mare. Where are you?
“This is seriously cool. Making comic books.”
The scan finished and Sean pulled the bristol out and set it on the stack before squinting at the images in PhotoShop. They looked all right, straight and intact with adequate detail, so he sent his pre-set adjustment filters to tweak polished pencil drawings. While the image auto-processed, he checked email again.
Mare!
Just a short note asking how things were at home, but Sean grinned as he replied,
Crazy, but all good. Come on home. Love you!
After processing, the first scan looked awesome, a nice, crisp pencil sketch. He was about to process the next image when Mindy said from close behind, “What about these?”
Sean turned to see her holding his discarded drawings of terrified children. The rumpled vellum made them more pitiful, more horrifying, more desperate to escape their fate in the dark.
“They’re nothing,” he said. “Just a bad dream.”
Chapter Fourteen
Mindy flew forward, tumbling, while Jeff whispered, “This is all your fault, Minders,” as if his voice alone flung her into the ether. She spun through the swirling haze like a ball thrown into a frigid wind.
Helpless. Cold. Toppling forever without end.
Trap me, Minders? Serves you right. Serves you fucking right!
Her eyes bolted open and she lay in bed, gasping, sweat icy on her skin as she raised a hand to her throat. She smelled snow and frost and a car heater, heard the rush of her blood in her ears and her own desperate breath. Heart hammering, she pushed herself up to sit.
Just a dream,
she told herself, closing her eyes and opening them again.
I’m okay. It’s just a dream.
She took a deep breath, then another, forcing herself to calm.
Movement caught her attention, maybe a breath, more felt than heard or seen. She turned her head to see a man standing in the open doorway, an inky shadow against the dark hall.
I closed that door, I know I did,
she thought, gasping as thunder rumbled from far away and sudden rain splattered against the window.
Sean went to bed with Mare, right after she came home. Why would he be here, watching me?
Mindy’s heart slammed hard, terrified, and she choked out, “Sean?”
Her door still stood open, but the shadow was gone.
Ghoulie woke to darkness, his skinny-kid arms bound behind him and something tight around his face. Despite agony pounding from his feet, he managed to roll to his side and sit.
I’m in a cellar,
he thought as he felt cool dirt under his knuckles.
It stinks. Something died down here.
He heard movement in the dark, low, almost silent, a rustle of grit to the left. Ghoulie turned, sucking in deep, scared breaths. “Who’s there?” he called out, voice cracking.
No answer, but, as he strained to hear, the floor-level grit shifted again and, much higher, he heard a soft scrape. Something breathed, something big, its movement lost behind a peal of thunder and a woman’s sudden shriek.
Startled, Sean bolted upright and out of bed, blinking and naked, while Mare screeched and scrambled back against the headboard.
“What happened?” he asked, ready to pounce, to rend, to shred. Mare had never woken up screaming before, not once in their years together.
She pointed toward the corner, and Sean saw it. A man. Lurking in a shadow beside the open bedroom door.
Sean lunged, growling, and the shadow shifted but Sean hit him anyway, shoulder into the guy’s gut. The man let out a huff of air, but didn’t fall. They grappled, wrestling into the kitchen, and Sean barely heard Mindy’s startled gasp from the archway as the man flung him onto the floor.
“I wasn’t doing nothing, but you had to start a fight,” the shadow muttered, edges of his body gilded by the light from the open bathroom door beyond the bed, but his features lost to the dark. He knelt and pulled back for a punch, mountainous rises of his knuckles gleaming.
Aw, shit,
Sean thought, ready to turn his head aside so his nose wouldn’t get shattered.
Then as another shadow blocked the bathroom light and extinguished his attacker’s glow, Sean heard a loud click.
“Okay, fuckface,” Mare said. “You’re gonna put your hands on your head right now, or I’m gonna blow a big goddamn hole in it. And don’t even try to think you can get the drop on me. Your cranium will be hamburger before you turn halfway around.”
The man remained motionless as Sean crawled to his feet.
The shadow’s head nudged forward as Mare shoved the gun against it. “Hands on your head, asshole. Right fucking now. Or you’re a splatter.”
He complied.
“On your knees,” Mare said as Sean staggered to the kitchen light.
He fumbled for the switch and flicked it on to see Mare, nude and furious, holding their .38 to the back of his Uncle Paul’s head as Paul settled onto his knees.
Sean gaped.
What the fucking hell?!
Paul looked at Sean with a shrug and an aw-shucks grin. “So. Naked fighting and guns, eh? I musta crashed a helluva party.”
“It’s the middle of the night and we were asleep!” Sean snapped as Mare gave him a confused frown. Head swimming, he took a step forward to spit blood into the sink. “And what the hell are you doing breaking into our house?”
“I want to know who this asshole is!” Mare said, gun still pointed at Paul’s head.
Sean stared into Paul’s eyes, so like the ones he saw in the mirror every morning. “My Uncle Paul. He spored about the same time as Mindy.”
“He’s
family
? Aw, piss.” Mare fled to their bedroom and slammed the door.
Paul stood, grinning. “Dude. You fight like a pussy, but you married a bad ass bitch.”
“What are you doing here?” Sean asked, his heart rate easing closer to normal.
“My buddies couldn’t let me keep crashing at their place, so I thought I’d just come home.”
Sean crossed his arms over his chest. “This isn’t your home.”
“Used to be, though,” Paul said, holding Sean’s gaze, just a regular-looking guy in a muddy workshirt and faded jeans. “And you still keep the back door key under that same paver.”
“What key and what paver?” Sean asked, confused. They’d never needed to lock the back door until the news crews and picketers arrived. “We’ve never had a key for that door.”
Eyebrow raised, Paul pulled a key and fob from his pocket and jiggled it at Sean. “This one. I obviously know a lot more about your house than you do.”
Sean narrowed his eyes and glared as his hands clenched beside his armpits.
Don’t you dare try to take my house. Don’t you fucking dare.
Mare opened the bedroom door fully dressed and took a breath before walking through to the kitchen. She held Sean’s jeans and a pair of boxers. “Mindy, can you give us a moment?”
Mindy, her face bright and flushed, nodded once then bolted.
Paul grinned at Mare. “See? You like me too!”
“Shut up,” she snapped, then tossed the clothes to Sean. “Babe, you wanna take care of that?”
Oh, Christ. Mindy,
Sean thought, eyes closing as embarrassment crawled down his body. But he was already yanking on the jeans and wondering why his uncle had decided to cause trouble on a rainy night.
“After I split at the hospital, I went right to my buddy’s place, just a couple of blocks away,” Paul said, gripping a glass of water. “He was sitting on his front porch and recognized me right off, said he couldn’t believe his eyes.” Paul took a drink and sighed, apparently unaware that Sean was staring at his forearm as if cockroaches swarmed over it instead of a dark, lumpy mole. “He’s pushing sixty now and has liver cancer. Terminal. He’s so doped up on OxyContin it’s a wonder he saw me at all. Maybe he thought I was a spirit or hallucination.”
Sean squeezed Mare’s hand before she could start yelling again. She usually had the patience of a boulder, but between the spores, the picketers, and Paul’s violent entrance, fury had edged into her eyes and voice.
Sean managed to hold his temper tight in his throat. “Sorry about your friend, but it still doesn’t explain why you came here, in the middle of the goddamn night, and broke in.”
“He wasn’t the only friend,” Paul sighed, rubbing his mole as if it itched. “I tried several. One’s dead, another’s in jail for kiddy porn, a couple have moved who knows where, and one’s wife ran me off with a shotgun.”
Glancing at Mare, he muttered, “You’d like her.”
Mare started to speak, then rolled her eyes and looked away.
Silence hung awkward in the air as Paul rotated the glass in his hands. Sean hid his grimace, wondering why the simple action made his belly lurch as if his uncle were twisting the head off a bunny instead of merely toying with a glass of water.
“The last…” Paul said, “Well, let’s just say after spending one night listening to him talk to his imaginary friends about beasts rising from the depths to serve their awakening tentacled master, I got the hell outta there.”
“Ah, a Cthulhu-ite,” Sean said, relishing his horror geekdom. “They’re an interesting bunch. I drew a series, oh, two years ago, about—“
“Let’s skip that for now, babe,” Mare grumbled, glancing at Mindy. “Maybe when it’s daylight.”
“Sure,” Sean said. That three-parter had been especially creepy and Mindy already appeared flustered and pale.
“Right, Ass-a-thought-something.” Paul shuddered. “I dunno, whatever it was, it was creepy as hell. He was the last one I could find. Everything’s gone or dead or rotted away. There’s a froo-froo coffee shop where Smokey’s garage used to be, and, shit, the guys I did find are all old men.”
“It has been twenty years.”
For both of us.
Sean felt his palms sweat as the nightmare flickered in his mind.
“No, it hasn’t,” Paul said, staring him in the eye. “It’s been two damned days. That’s it. Two days. Now all of my surviving friends are beat to hell or batshit crazy.” He sighed and sipped his water. “Or both.”
Mindy nodded and stared at her hands. “Yeah. It’s all changed. They’ve moved on without us.”
“Look, I have nowhere else to go,” Paul pled, shifting his gaze to Mare. “I wandered around awhile, looking at this or that, hungry as hell, bored out of my mind, and I finally decided I just wanted to go
home
.” He leaned forward and touched Mare’s hand. “Can’t you understand that? Wanting to go home?”
Mare held firm, she didn’t speak or pull her hand away, but she tensed beside Sean.
Paul drew back his hand. “I’m sorry I scared you. The front door was locked, so I came around back, checked the paver and, right there, the key, you know? So I let myself in. I figured Sean would have the big bedroom I expanded off the kitchen, so I tried the little ones first and hoped one would have a spare bed or cot or something. No luck. Artsy crap in one, and she was in the other,” he said, nodding toward Mindy.
“So I walked into your bedroom and scared you. I didn’t mean to, just wanted to ask Sean if I could crash here. I didn’t expect anyone else to be in there.”
“What about the couch?” Mare asked, her voice tight. “It’s right there in the living room, and it’s empty. Don’t you think finding you sleeping on the couch might have been less of a hassle than you scaring the shit out of us in the middle of the night?”
“I didn’t, I didn’t think…”
“Yeah, you didn’t think,” Mare muttered. “Fucking asshole.”
Paul frowned but said nothing, and Sean wondered if he remained silent to accept guilt and appease Mare, or to merely keep his true thoughts to himself.
Mare still held Sean’s hand and glowered with constrained fury but, beside her, Mindy had curled into herself and stared silently at her clasped hands.
“I think the three of us need to talk,” Sean said, hating the coppery taste of the lie. As far as he was concerned, no discussion was needed. “We’ll decide what to do with you, if anything.”
“Fair enough,” Paul said, standing. He took a breath then sighed it out again before saying to Mare, “I am sorry I woke you, sorry I scared you.” Then he turned and walked to the living room.
Breathing easier once Paul had left, Sean nodded toward their door and whispered, “Come on to the bedroom with us, Mindy.”
Mindy looked up, surprised, as Mare stood. “Me? Why me?”
“Cause you’re part of this, too.” Sean stepped aside to let Mindy pass then he followed the women into the bedroom and closed the door.
Mare sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t trust him. His friends got old, and his life evaporated. Whoopty fucking hoo.”
“Yeah, cry me a river,” Sean said, wanting Paul out of the house and as far away as possible. Just looking at his uncle made his belly clench. “That still doesn’t explain why he didn’t knock, or call out, or just come by during the day. Why scare the crap out of us like that?”
“Exactly,” Mare said, looking up at Mindy who’d remained quiet and withdrawn over by the dresser. “Do you have any comments? Any concerns?”
Mindy raised her gaze to them and shrugged. “Kind of. I guess. When he was here with the rest of us that morning, he didn’t hardly speak at all. Just sat on the couch and frowned at everyone. But when we were all in the van…” She shrugged again.
“What happened in the van?” Sean asked.
Give me an excuse, any excuse, to toss him out on his ass.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mindy said. “He just wasn’t very friendly. But I wasn’t friendly either, I guess. I was scared and confused. We all were. I wonder if, maybe, that’s part of this, part of the fungal infection that brought us back. How we’re not really ourselves at first, but as we get better, we become ourselves? I dunno. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sure it does,” Mare said. “I see it every day. The nicest people can be real pissy if they’re sick or in pain. Once it gets properly managed, they’re themselves again.”
“Right,” Mindy said, then she took a breath and raised her head. “I didn’t like him then and honestly, I don’t know if I like him now, but I do know what he means, what he’s going through. And, since you want my honest opinion, I guess I have to say it doesn’t seem right or fair to take me in like you did, but cast him, family, out into the rain.”
She paused to chew her lip. “I know what that’s like, and it sucks. My own sister did it to me. She threw me away. I can’t step back and just let it happen to someone else, even if I don’t like him much. It’s not right.”
Sean and Mare stared at each other until Sean muttered, “Fuck,” under his breath.
Family was family, and fair was fair. Goddamn it and our principles all to hell.
“You’re right,” Mare said, shoulders sagging with begrudging acceptance. “I guess he could have the basement or something. But only ‘til he can find another place.” She took a breath and sat a little straighter. “He needs to find another place. Soon.”
“Piss. Okay. Guess I get to tell him then,” Sean said, reaching for the door with a sweaty hand.
Don’t, don’t do it,
his mind whispered, but he opened the door anyway and entered the kitchen. As he walked to the living room he cursed himself for agreeing to let his uncle stay.