by Clint Smith
Flood stopped. I had never seen our calm-and-collected translator so hostile. For an instant, his expression suggested that—whether verbally or physically—he was going to lash out at me. But Flood finally blinked and licked his lips. “I’m not sure . . . exactly.” I opened my mouth to ask why but he cut me short. “The guy’s talking in some sort of mishmash of Pashto, Uzbek, and . . . something else I don’t recognize.”
I glanced over my shoulder. The other guys in the squad were holding their positions, while Strauss continued speaking with the elder, his contingent of black burka-clad women swaying around him. Again I appraised the translator. “What are we doing here?”
Flood grew more agitated. “We weren’t supposed to leave Deh Ravod—we weren’t supposed to split the squad. Ceghak wasn’t part of the plan.”
Strauss raised his voice, and Flood looked past me to see what the problem was. He was about walk away, but I grabbed his arm. “What is that guy saying to Strauss?”
Now, physically halted, Flood looked genuinely pissed. But he didn’t pull his arm away, not yet. Through clenched teeth he said, “I’m telling you—I . . . don’t . . . know.” Flood flicked a glance over at Strauss. “The old man’s not one of our informants. In fact . . . Strauss doesn’t seem interested in the Taliban at all.”
I didn’t have much time. “So what—”
“Goddamn it, Craft,” said Flood, yanking his arm from my grip. “The guy keeps saying something about . . . an exchange.”
Not unusual. Most of our intelligence resulted from one sort of symbiotic trade or another. “So what?”
Flood discreetly unholstered his Beretta, checked the clip, and reholstered the handgun. “He keeps using a word I can’t figure out.” Flood began to walk away, but stopped. “The closest thing I can figure is that he means”—he shook his head—“fish.”
Strauss called our unit over, ordering us to follow him deeper into the village. Sunlight, along with the purplish streaks of twilight residue, had completely disappeared. The village was a jumble of fire-pit painted stone and sharp-edged shadows.
The village elder did not budge as we marched past him and his entourage. Closer now, I found myself having difficulty even making eye contact with the black-clad figures. I’m about six feet tall, but these figures were at least two inches taller than me. I could hear the elder mumbling something. He seemed to be solemnly appraising us, examining each one of us. Maybe he was just doing a head count.
I peered directly at one of the faces of the burkha-covered sentinels, scrutinizing the thin-slitted opening in the mask. The eyes and skin were all wrong. Not only did they never blink (nor really look at anything, for that matter), but there was a waxy quality about the eyelids and surrounding flesh. I had the notion that, if touched, the whitish tissue would have the same fat-flimsy texture as uncooked bacon. And the eyes were cloudy and too bulgy, as if milky marbles had been hastily inserted in the sockets of a wax dummy. I looked away.
As we passed I noticed the smell—something nice, like lavender, mingled with something fetid, like sun-spoiled shellfish.
We were snaking our way between the shacks when something occurred to me: I hadn’t seen any kids. Children, in almost all our encounters, were always part of the backdrop. But here. But here, the absence of children was distracting.
Strauss stopped at a canvas-covered hut and again split-up our already meager team, ordering Flood and several others to stay behind. The rest of us followed the lieutenant into the hut. I gave Flood a lingering look as I passed, which he returned with a hard-to-read expression—something like reluctance, disgust, and (I like to think) a signal of vigilance. Watch your ass, Craft.
The interior of the fire-lit tent appeared as you’d imagine. Shadows. Clutter. Dust-grimed faces, but still none of them children. Because it was adjacent to the mountain, one of the walls was all stone. A large, intricate carpet was attached to the wall. Strauss silently regarded the few people in the hut before walking over to the rug and yanking it aside, revealing the large, open mouth of a cave.
Strauss ordered on our night-vision goggles. “Ricketts,” Strauss called out, waving the soldier forward to take point. Both men clicked on low-watt flashlights to provide faint ambient illumination. Single-file, we followed each other into the tunnel.
We shuffled through a warren of twists and turns for over thirty minutes. The cave floor throughout was dusted with sand, making the downward-sloping path easy to distinguish. Meadows was a few paces in front of me. Gradually, the cave grew colder and the walls began to glisten with moisture. I caught the mineral whiff of water.
Up ahead came a sudden rustling of equipment and a rush of whispers. Instinctively, I crouched and braced my weapon. Strauss, his coarse voice echoing through the cave, said, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Nothing happened for a few long moments. Then, through the green-glowing screen of my goggles, I saw them.
Three of the towering, burkha-covered figures were moving toward us. Moving isn’t the right word—gliding, almost floating. Strauss barked out another order to hold fire as the black-caped shapes silently swept past. In the green glow, I watched them—their masks, that narrow strip exposing that flimsy skin and unblinking, milk-murky eyes. As the final cloaked figure drifted by, I noticed something on the cave floor, some sort of dark liquid streaking a trail behind the retreating figures. When they disappeared I again paused on the lines of the inky, foul-smelling excretion. I nearly let go of my weapon in favor of clutching my nose and mouth.
In a few seconds we were moving again. The ceiling and body of the cave opened up into a wide passage. Strauss called for us to stop and ordered Harper to the front. Again: traded whispers. Harper nodded, hefted his weapon, and hunched low, moving quickly around a ragged crook of cave wall.
I imagined Meadows up there—our squad’s hero, grip tight on his carbine, molars clenched like vices, eyes narrowed on the point of attack. I, on the other hand, continuously had to coax myself into action to avoid being court-martialed for disobeying a direct order.
The screaming started without any sort of preceding commotion. There was a sporadic cadence of gunfire, but it was brief. My heart surged and my stomach lurched when I heard Harper begin to articulate the word help.
But Strauss remained silent and unmoving. At one point I saw Ricketts try to stand from his crouched position, and Strauss turned around and growled something at him. Ricketts lowered himself again.
Harper’s cried for help deteriorated into tormented, inarticulate shrieks. I had the nauseous notion that he was caught in some sort of spiderweb.
We all tensed as faint light blossomed up ahead, a pulsing glow that seemed to grow in intensity along with Harper’s insane screams. As the light grew brighter, I pulled off my goggles. The greenish-blue light soon swelled strong enough for me to see the detail of my teammates’ faces. So it was the screaming. I know that now. Some sort of connection between the ferocity of the screams and the brilliance of the light.
Meadows was looking back at me, staring at me over his shoulder. There was something in the angle of his neck, a small shift of his chin, an unspoken question: If I make a move, will you back me up?
Meadows was also asking to get court-martialed or possibly shot. I meant to give my friend some sort of response, but I stayed still. Eventually Meadows took his eyes away from me.
I was expecting a delay, but Meadows simply sprang forward, gun trained in front of him, defiantly sprinting ahead down the tunnel, the blue-green light casting his swift-moving shadow against the walls. “Goddamn it, Meadows,” growled Strauss as the insubordinate soldier ran past, disappearing around the rocky elbow of cave wall. Strauss, gesticulating with his handgun, spun on the rest of us. “No one move—no matter what you hear, no one move. Stick with the plan and hold your positions.”
Mercifully, Harper’s screams were drowned out by the resumption of gunfire. Meadows. Even at this distance I could hear the jingle of fired casings bouncing off the r
ock. The sound of machine-gun fire blended with my racing heart. Meadows had asked for my help. He’d asked me to be something other than a coward.
I shoved myself from the cave wall and lurched forward, racing past my comrades and the screaming and cursing Strauss. I can’t be certain, but I believe I heard our lieutenant shout, “You’re not part of the plan!”
Not slowing, I rounded the corner and hunkered into my weapon. The machine-gun fire suddenly ceased along with the pain-laced soundtrack of Harper’s screaming. But I could hear the lapping and sloshing of water now. The flickering, algae-tinted light throbbed within the narrow corridor.
Another sharp turn, and I drew up on an open space and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Positioned in a shadowed alcove was part of an Army MLRS—a multiple rocket launcher system. It was just the loader module, twelve square compartments that usually contained M270 rockets. There must have been another entrance somewhere big enough to haul this thing in here. I didn’t care about logistics at the time, I don’t care now. I crept closer, trying to get a better look at the rockets inside.
I could see the tops of their heads. The corpses of children—the youngest probably around seven years old—were fit snugly within the dozen rocket compartments. Their pale faces were quite distinct in the diffuse glow. Some of their eyes were open. Some had died with agonized expressions.
I staggered backward, trying to stay on my feet. I was seized with the need to cry, to weep openly, to sink down onto the sandy floor and cover my face. Strauss’s shouts echoed down the corridor. I tore off my helmet and flung it at the rocket module, steeling myself with a scream before running toward the light.
The tunnel dead-ended in some sort of grotto. The concave wall was textured with large, polished rocks, like cobblestones, and their slickness glistened with reflected light pulsing from within a wide pool. Harper was on the narrow shore. Still alive, he clawed at the sand as he tried to pull himself away from the water. His lower legs were missing and his hips and pelvis were connected to something. I followed the ropy line of gore to the shallow pool.
My first thought was that I was looking at a large, bobbing black raft. But then my mind reconciled the true contour of the presence in that shallow pool.
I have privately described it as an enormous octopus, but that’s not quite right. I’ve spent countless nights searching images on the Internet, trying to capture the anatomy of this thing. The giant creature in the grotto was nearly identical to a cephalopod called the vampire squid.
The thing’s head was shaped like a bulbous helmet skirted with writhing tentacles connected by glistening webs of black flesh. Its huge round eyes glowed beneath the surface of the water like two blue-green lanterns.
I shook out of that semi-trance and reached down to grab Harper, but the sucker-studded tentacles spasmed and recoiled, pulling the still-mumbling soldier into the pool. The luminescent glow grew more intense as water sloshed and Harper’s body disappeared.
A furtive movement to the left pulled my attention from the creature. About fifteen yards away lay Meadows, face down near the muddy rim of the grotto pond. A dark, cloak-covered shape was draped over him, squirming over his throat and torso.
I raised my weapon and strode forward. “Get the fuck away from him!” I screamed, my voice ricocheting around the cave. As I closed in, the black-robed figure slid off my friend’s upper body and stood, rising up to full height. The thing raised some sort of appendages beneath the fabric, though too snaky to be actual arms. The narrow slit of its mask exposed the emotionless eyes and pale, pickled skin. I aimed the machine gun at its chest and squeezed the trigger, not releasing until I’d depleted the clip.
I stumbled forward and grabbed Meadows’s vest, dragging him away from the bank, his nose was bleeding, his face and mouth streaked with some sort of black liquid. But he was breathing.
And then my friend opened his eyes. He no longer had pupils or white sclera—they were glassy and black. Meadows took in a sharp breath, his open mouth exposing the black stub of tentacle where his tongue should be.
Then came an explosion, and my world swirled to darkness.
Everything that followed exists in my mind as a slashed, hastily edited reel-to-reel film: Flashlight beams. Smoke. Ricketts and Strauss screaming . . . someone dragging me by the collar of my uniform . . . the maze of the cave. And then I hear Flood, our translator, shouting at Strauss. The village . . . soldiers firing on burkha-covered figures . . . vibrations and thrumming from a helicopter . . . a spotlight casting brilliant light throughout the village. (I realize it was the witnesses, perhaps even Flood—along with my insistence that I remembered nothing—that saved my life.)
I feel my body being loaded into the chopper. My eyelids flutter as I struggle to remain conscious. And just as the pilot begins to take off, I look over and see Meadows being hauled on a stretcher by two soldiers. Both of us are on our backs, and even at this distance I can see that he’s staring directly at me. His eyes are normal again, but his features are all wrong. Hollow. At the last moment, just as I lose sight of him, a malignant grin stretches across my friend’s pale face, and I see his sharp teeth begin to part in what was certainly a laugh.
While this confession is a manifestation of my coping, it is also, like most of my earnest scribblings, an exercise in futility. If Meadows is in your school, it’s too late. And if you’re still reading this, it’s too late for me. I plan on pressing the SEND button seconds before lifting this 9mm and punctuating this whole thing with a worthwhile gunshot.
Wayne Wilkinson has read enough. With an expression of contempt, the principal nudges the keyboard away and scoots his chair back, swiveling around to search for solace in his aquarium. Though the message is obviously indicative of some post-traumatic stress, Wilkinson feels foolish for allowing this young man, Craft, to occupy so much of his time and attention with this bitter nonsense. Wilkinson nods to himself absently—he’ll contact the police department and notify them of a threatening e-mail he’d received from a former soldier, quite likely suffering from PTSD. Hopefully, someone will be able to get Will Craft the help he needs.
Still, something lingers.
The secretary is on the phone as Wilkinson approaches the counter. “Brenda,” he says.
The interruption, along with the rare use of her first name, causes the secretary to place the caller on hold. Twitching a frown, Mrs. Welch says, “Yes?”
“I’d like to see the sign-in sheet from this morning.”
Still frowning, the secretary reaches over and retrieves a clipboard. “Certainly. Is there a problem?”
Wilkinson flashes an unsteady grin. “No, no,” he says, sliding the clipboard closer and inspecting the names there. “Just curious about something is all.” The principal squints at the list, his eyes hanging on the names Noble and Santana.
“Are you looking for one of the recruiters?”
Wilkinson raises an eyebrow, answering her question with a question. “Funny you should ask. Did either one of them act strange to you?”
Mrs. Welch exhales and casually crosses her arms. “Well, which one? The blond one or the one with the tattoos?”
Wilkinson feels a rill of ice trickle down his spine. Tattoos. His eyes dart down to the clipboard and search for the room number to which the recruiters had been assigned.
“Mr. Wilkinson, is there a problem?” repeats the secretary, but he ignores her as he rushes out of the office.
And then he’s jogging down the hallway, his polished loafers squelching over the high-gloss floor.
Principal Wilkinson reaches the classroom door just as the first screams issue forth.
He falters for a split-second before yanking open the door.
Most of the students are running toward him, others are on the floor, clawing at the carpet as they attempt to escape the thing at the front of the class. Unblinking, his mouth hanging open, Wilkinson steps into the room even as students bump and rush past him. He absently notes
the blond recruiter, Noble, slung over one of the desks, thick cords of his insides snaking out from beneath him. But it is the thing that had once been a soldier named Lonnie Meadows that occupies his attention now.
It’s covered in Army fatigues, but most of the flesh, as if a castoff cloak of skin, is sloughing away in sinewy clumps. Barely recognizable are the tattoos on the outstretched arm. Branches of slender tentacles have escaped through the lacerated and split tissue there, and several of those oily appendages have wrapped around the legs and torsos of several screaming teenagers.
Surrounded by shrieks and pleas, Principal Wilkinson shuffles to a stop, paralyzed by the glowing eyes of the thing that was Lonnie Meadows. Blue-green light begins escaping through the thing’s slowly opening mouth.
With a graceful, almost erotic uncoiling, one of the glistening tentacles slithers across the floor and wraps around the principal’s calf. Wilkinson tries to scream, but instead feels himself fall to the floor, collapsing not with a bang, but a whimper.
The Day of the Earwig
This. Is not. A ghost story. Although the town of Deacon’s Creek, despite having evolved in more insidious varieties, is a sort of ghost when compared to the vistas of our collective zeitgeist. No, this is not a ghost story. What you are receiving is more like a transmission—static-lashed and insubstantial.
According to the bucolic bylaws of this community—which mechanically championed earnest work, conservative values, and a pious terror of the Old Testament omnipresence—Luther Hume, at his age, should have already graduated from an upstanding university, should have moved out of his dad’s house, and should be honorably maintaining a job that could lead to a reputable career that, in turn, could in time sustain a steadfast marriage and support a nuclear family. You know the script: the children here would then be instilled with the regional litany of previously listed values, and the cycle would begin again, again. And if you deviated from the Deacon’s Creek conformation (as so few had)—well, that was yet another sort of story.