In days past, they would lie together in his basement bedroom, alone in their underworld and not giving a shit what happened above. She soothed his soul like none other, and best part was, she would always know how to come up with money for dope. Nobody could shoot a move or pull some tricks and get some heroin like Tara.
Loud bangs blasted from the basement door. Bang bang bang bang. His mother was pounding and it felt like a hammer to his brain. STOP, Jervis wanted to scream back, but had no energy, so instead just shut his eyes. The banging kept on, and he couldn’t help but let Neil Young lyrics slip into his thoughts.
I caught you knockin’ at my cellar door…I love you baby, can I have some more…
Neil understood how the ugliness of life can only be lifted by the beauty of a heroin high, and Jervis had plenty of ugliness but not a scrap of heroin to shoot it away. Times like these he blamed his mom, he hated his dad, and God did he need his Tara.
Tara never talked about her family, not her dad, not her mom. She pretended she had no life before him, but she listened when Jervis talked about his own devil of a dad who’d dished out generous beatings. Growing up, Jervis always felt safest when his dad was nodding out from dope or in prison. Jervis felt like a huge burden was lifted after his dad died in prison and his ashes were sent home in a box.
“He died and left me with nothing but his junky kid. You take him with you in the basement,” his mom had said and handed him the urn. “Both of you stay buried down there.”
His dad must have shot a million dollars of smack into his arm. Now all of it was burnt into ashes and held inside the gold-colored urn on his dresser. Jervis was a disappointment to his famous dad, the legendary wizard of smack, cause there he was, no dope money, muscles bubbling and boiling, each cell being tortured inside. God he needed a fix but was out of options. Way too sick to rip someone off, no credit with the dealers...nothing. If only Tara could help him out.
Lyrics from Neil Young kept playing in his mind…I know that some of you don’t understand: Milk-Blood to keep from running out...
Milk-Blood. He needed to learn how to milk-blood–leaving some blood in the needle with just a trace of heroin inside for moments like these. If only he had a bit of Tara’s dope-filled blood with him, but he didn’t have shit. The chamber was empty.
His mom was his only hope. Just two days before, he’d hit up her gold jewelry locked in the cabinet. Dug deep for that one. Unscrewed the locks on the hinges and grabbed jewelry that hadn’t been worn in years. He tightened the screws back on good enough so she’d never know. The pawn shop gave him a hundred and twenty bucks for the gold.
He needed to shoot a move just like that. Or maybe if he promised her he’d go to detox, the way Tara always talked about, but first he needed twenty bucks, or fifty bucks, just a little to get him through. And when Tara came back they would go to detox together.
He dragged his weight up the stairs. His sweaty hands tried to twist the doorknob but could not. It was stuck solid. Didn’t turn. What the hell is that? He twisted harder and palms spun around the knob, and yes, the damn thing was locked.
He made a fist and pounded, three times solid. Bamm, Bamm, Bammm.
“Mom, what happened? Mom! Mooommmm...what is this? Unlock the door!”
Then he noticed tiny nail points splintering the door jam. They had been hammered through the wood, angled from the door into the frame. The door wasn’t just locked, it was nailed shut.
“Mom! What the fuck is this?” Jervis screamed. He pounded harder, and with each pound noticed another nail. He smashed his body into the door, but it wouldn’t give.
“Mom, come on. Please. I know, Mom, you’re right. I’m hurt, Mom. I really am... I’m hurt bad.”
Silence.
The tears started to come. Real tears. This was so unfair and he wanted to kill her right then and there. Why would she do this to me? How can she make me suffer?
As if to answer, his mother spoke from the other side of the door.
“You think you’ll steal from me? You think you’re slick? I went through this with your father, so I know how to handle you. That gold was your grandmother’s, you little piece of crap. You should have shoved it up your ass instead of your veins. Now look at you. I’ll open up in three days. Three days you can stay down there, and you can come up when you’re no longer full of poison. You got a toilet and you got water. You’re fine.”
“What? What are you talking about? Mom, come on, open up and show me. I didn’t steal a goddamn thing. Maybe it was Tara. She maybe did that, she does those things. Damn Tara, she’s in jail, Mom. Come on.”
“Oh, she ain’t in jail, that girl’s better than you and hopefully will leave you for good this time.”
“You stupid bitch! Open this thing up before I smack the shit out of you.”
He knew that wasn’t going to work, but still pounded an exclamation point on the door. The solid wood now hurt his hand. God he needed some dope.
For an hour he sat there, giving the door a bang with his fist every few minutes. Boom, like a deathly drum beat. Boom, but nothing, boom. Screams went unanswered. His brain was being scattered. His insides quivered. It was all so crazy and he needed to get out soon—and where the hell was Tara?
Revenge fantasies filled the mush in his head and he went back downstairs to search through his arsenal. The room had already been scoured for dope. No Vicodins, no Percocets. No weed. No liquor. No nothing.
He needed something. Something to make her sad enough, or angry enough, or scared enough to open the door.
Dad. There was Dad and what was left of him.
He went to the urn and opened the top. More than once, he had taken the ashes out and sifted through the grey matter. It was chunky, sooty, meatier than a cigarette ash; like the stuff that fell onto the bottom of a grill over time. He had become familiar with the ashes. Time to let Dad out of the urn again, maybe blow the ashes under the door. Maybe that.
His shaky fingers poured out the contents, and he dabbed at their dryness. So rich, so delicate, hypnotizing. The flakes became a haze, brain matter and ash became one, and then–the voices.
JUST SHOOT IT.
What?
BOIL IT UP AND SHOOT IT.
Woozy. He needed water. He needed Tara. He needed something to stop the voices, but only dope would do that.
Command audio hallucinations was what the doctors had called the voices after he’d been in and out of hospitals as a teenager. Psychiatrists pushed lithium and Zyprexa, but thank God he stumbled upon heroin. It was the only medicine that put the evil to rest and opened up the gates of heaven.
SON, YOU NEED SOMETHING TO FIX WITH NOW. SHOOT SOME. A LITTLE PART OF IT IN EVERYONE.
The voice flickered like a candle in his dark head. It was time to curl back up in bed and turn off the world, but the voices kept coming.
MILK-BLOOD TO KEEP FROM RUNNING OUT.
He grabbed the metal spoon within reach, blackened from so many days of flame, and used it to push the ashes into shapes. He mixed them around as if they were a bowl of Cheerios. Tiny piles, little mountains, rivers in between, a small land where his father was God. Eyes transfixed at the gray nothingness pile for who knows how long, until he finally scooped some up on his spoon.
ASHES OF BURNT UP SMACK. GO AHEAD, BOIL IT AND FIX UP.
Bullshit.
BOIL IT AND FIX UP.
Memories flashed before him of crushing, boiling and shooting up Vicodin, of shooting up cocaine, of hitting his veins with whatever got him high. Fixing up was as automatic and involuntary as breathing, and soon water was in the spoon. The ashy matter soaked in the water until the mixture became a dark pool of liquid.
There’s got to be dope left in there, he told himself.
THERE IS. THERE IS.
Where else would it go?
IT’S HERE.
No time for cotton filter. This is Dad. Fuck you, Mom. Fuck you.
The syringe tip was old and used, but it dre
w the chunky liquid. He held the needle in the air, snapped it for bubbles, and felt his blood start to warm in anticipation.
The pinprick hit its mark, the needle puncture was bliss. He drew back and saw red blood swirl in the dark oily liquid of the barrel. Yes… ahhh. Angelic music filled his ears when he pushed the plunger in. He felt the warmth spread through his back. Like an army it fought back the evil sickness that had invaded his body. His back loosened as if sprouting wings and ready to fly.
He looked at his flesh and imagined he could see the new ash-blood traveling dark and fast through his body. No, he wasn’t imagining it–he could really see it, couldn’t he? Lifeblood was going through his veins to the center of his brain. He was being reborn.
The surge was ecstatic, and as it coursed through his body, the pile spoke to him over and over, summoning him to consume the flesh of his father into his veins.
Music filled the basement for the days he was down there. His soul hummed on fire. Instruments played from inside of him as if using his veins as strings. Cramping gave way to strength, sweat and shakes left and precision and laser focus grew. Ages seem to pass through him along with the ashes. Unlived memories built in his brain, unfelt sensations of a history larger than his years. Blue veins were being filled with shades of gray and black. Old skin was discarded and new skin grew.
The basement was no longer a dungeon, but a new kind of heaven.
The sun rose and fell three times while he filled himself up with Daddy-smack. The pile was near gone when the banging noises from his mom returned from upstairs. Boom, boom, boom.
I caught you knockin’ at my cellar door, I love you baby can I have some more…
The noise didn’t make him flinch, not this time. His body was powerful and ready. Ready for the footsteps that were coming down the stairs.
“Jervis, come on up now. Damn it, you must be hungry. Come on up, the door is open. Let’s talk about this.”
He said nothing. He felt so large standing there and she had become so small.
“Jervis. Jervis,” she said his name with each step. “What is going on? Don’t you want to come up?”
She turned the corner from the stairs and whatever she saw shocked her silent. Jervis felt a voice rise from deep within his gut that he didn’t recognize as his own:
“THE GOLD JEWELRY. IT WAS NEVER YOURS. IT CAME FROM ME AND BELONGED TO THE BOY. IT WAS HIS BIRTHRIGHT.”
The words came out with power and rage. His flesh gleamed with a pulsating redness from the blood boiling beneath. His muscles ripped and he cocked back a fist ready to strike.
She fell to the ground with the first punch, and then he beat on her face until it could be beaten no more. Her eyes were swollen shut, her body limp on the floor, and Jervis stood over her, waiting for her next move, but nothing. Her life couldn’t be over. Could it? She’d always been there, always had something to say, but now her blood was set free and running like a red river on the floor.
A voice came from up the stairs. Somebody was calling his name. It was Tara. Her feet pitter-pattered on each step, and soon he was looking into her eyes. She seemed fresh, more alive—younger even—but terrified. Neither of them could speak at first. The air of death in the basement gagged them both.
“Jervis? Is that you? What happened? You don’t look right. And what the fuck did you do?”
“I…I… didn’t do anything. I was trapped. I had to get out. Where were you?”
“Detox, like I told you. Me first, you second. We agreed. You don’t remember?”
“You never said that.”
“I did too. I did say that. I did and you agreed. I left you voicemails every day to come get me. But when you didn’t, I knew that meant you loved me and wanted me to stay.”
Tara bent down to the body on the ground.
“Your mom… she’s… what did you do, Jervis?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, Tara. I don’t know what’s happening to me. What’s happening to me?”
The strength had left him. He put his arms to his side and pleaded. He wanted a hug, but she looked at him too scared to get close. Cramps flooded back into his muscles. The army of strength retreated out of his blood. The implosion of cramping cells was returning and nausea spread from his gut up his spine. He needed to be held. He needed the warmth of his mother or his girlfriend or his heroin.
He fell into her arms.
Detox. Now he remembered. She went there like they had planned. But he had lied. He never planned on going. He thought she was full of shit, that she wasn’t going, that she’d be back to get high. But she did go get clean. She was something different now.
The black strings of her spikey hair seemed to have grown softer. Her skin against his own more pure. Three days clean but the history of shooting smack was still there and couldn’t be erased. He sniffed at the base of her neck and it came out of her pores. He felt the dope in her flesh. It was there in each and every cell, and always in her soul. So much money and so many years of smack. No detox could get that out of her.
JERVIS. YOU KNOW WHAT TARA HAS IN HER BLOOD DON’T YOU?
The voice of his dad came back in a wave of black nausea. He needed to do something. Now. Get high and stop the evil and swing the gates of heaven back open.
Tara wasn’t going to get high with him anymore, he could feel it. But she would get him high. All of her. Every last cell. He was more worried about how he could burn her up into ashes than how he was going to kill her. That part would be easy. Just thinking of her flesh boiled up into ashes made his blood warm.
His hands clutched around her neck. How soft her flesh was. His thumbs pressed against her windpipe. How easy to crack. He began to squeeze.
The color of her skin changed. She tried to gag so he squeezed tighter and closed her windpipe. Her body finally collapsed to the floor right next to his mom.
WE NEED TO GET HIGH JERVIS. MILK-BLOOD TO KEEP FROM RUNNING OUT.
He picked up her wrist. It was still warm with blood running in her veins. He read her tattoo. The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes was inked across her underarm. He gathered the needle from the bed stand and poked her vein to draw some blood the way she had done a thousand times in this basement bedroom. Then he injected her blood into his own. Ahhhhh, yes. He felt like an explorer blasting into new lands when he spiked Tara’s blood into his vein. His dad spoke with approval.
AHHHHHH. JERVIS, YOU ARE WORTHY OF BEING MY SON. I’M WITH YOU. ALWAYS.
Tara may still be alive, but her life and her body was all his. He would never run out of dope again. Never.
WE NEED MORE, JERVIS, YOU RED DEVIL. YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. ALWAYS.
Voice of his dad or his own thoughts, it all hurt to figure out which, all of it just a pile of gray matter ash, but it was true. He had tasted her blood and needed more. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
An axe. There was one in the garage. He’d lop off one of her limbs, chop her up, torch up the flesh, scrape off the ash, and shoot it.
The sound of paws pattered down the stairs. It was Tara’s old dog. It sniffed at her cheek and then licked as if cleaning a wound. Tara’s eyes fluttered, the kaleidoscope colors inside awoke and looked up at him. She was waking up. Time to get the axe.
Read more about Jervis and Tara in MILK-BLOOD, ALL SMOKE RISES, and GARDEN OF FIENDS: TALES OF ADDICTION HORROR
Acknowledgements
I want to thank those who will never read this, who were so instrumental in my recovery from addiction. Huge thanks to my wife and kids for living with my obsessions. Thanks to my brother Kevin, passed well before his time, who introduced me to horror. We shared a common burden. Thanks to Uncle John FD Taff, who really inspired me to reach big and bold with both this collection and Garden of Fiends. Thanks to Andi Rawson for such solid council, to Julie Hutchings for support and editing and her wings of a Harpy, to Jason Parent Michael Fowler, for their assistance, and to Dean Samed for his magnificent cover. Thanks to the authors on the table of cont
ents and also a shout-out to the authors in the initial collection, Jack Ketchum, Jessica McHugh, Glen Krisch, Johan Thorson, Max Booth. Without Garden of Fiends there would be no Lullaby. Thanks to the defacto street team of dark fiction bloggers for their incredible support. Mostly, thanks to you, dear reader. You are appreciated. (Please stay to the end, where a post-credit short story awaits)
~Mark Matthews
Also from Wicked Run Press
Garden of Fiends: Tales of Addiction Horror
“What fertile ground for horror. Every story comes from a dark, personal place”
—Josh Malerman, New York Times Best Selling author of Bird Box
On the Lips of Children
“A sprint down a path of high adrenaline terror. A must read.”
—Bracken MacLeod, Shirley Jackson Award nominated author of Stranded.
Milk-Blood
“An urban legend in the making. You will not be disappointed.”
—Bookie-Monster.com
All Smoke Rises
“Intense, imaginative, and empathic. Matthews is a damn good writer, and make no mistake, he will hurt you.”
—Jack Ketchum, Bram Stoker Award winning author of The Girl Next Door.
Lullabies For Suffering: Tales of Addiction Horror Page 29