Ghouljaw and Other Stories

by Clint Smith

  His grandma Gladys had used jute twine to bind the thick stack of drawings and sketches together. Luther had never seen the envelope in the drawer before, and its mere existence now was a crystal-clear transmission that connected with gut-wrenching resonance. She knew.

  Inside the envelope was one last thing, an index card with a single scrawled line, Glory be to God for dappled things, along with the initials GMH. He’d automatically assumed they were his grandmother’s initials. Luther had dismissed it, slid the contents back into the envelope, and hid the homemade booklet in his bedroom, thinking about the situation as little as possible during the following year. Liberal quantities of pot helped. Drinking proved to be a useful distraction. And Misty’s kinky physical allowances occupied the remaining space of his hollow conscience.

  Now, Luther was recollectively yanked away from his grandmother’s empty room and back into Irene Crawley’s living room.

  The old woman gave a ragged cough into her liver-spotted fist. After a while: “I know it may be difficult for you to discuss, but I understand you were with your grandmother when she passed on.”

  From far away, Luther heard the echo of that boggy noise in grandmother’s throat, heard the panic in his own voice as he called his father, incapable of knowing how to help. He looked down at the dog tags. “Yes,” he said, “that’s true.” The ensuing silence urged Luther to add, “I couldn’t get her to wake up.”

  The old woman’s voice sounded weird now. “She thought you were something speckled,” said Crawley, and then corrected herself. “I mean special. She thought you were something special. Did you know that?”

  Again Luther wondered if the old woman was having some sort of health event, and he was about to ask if she was feeling all right when the old woman teetered, barely clinging to the fireplace mantel. Luther rushed forward, scooping one arm up under the woman’s armpit before she collapsed with too much momentum. She weighed very little. “Are you okay?” Of course she was not, but it was all he could think of saying.

  Irene Crawley’s breathing had grown staticky with congestion. She let go of the mantel and sagged against Luther’s chest. “Not . . . feeling . . . as spry . . . as I used to.”

  Something flared in Luther then—a lukewarm anger at Irene’s son for replanting her here in Deacon’s Creek and leaving her alone so that his family could go on some sort of trip. Why had he brought her home to fend for herself? The small old woman rested her scrambled white hair against Luther’s sternum. “You mustn’t . . musn’t . . . take your family for granted . . . no matter how small or insignificant it may seem . . .”

  “No,” agreed Luther. “No, you can’t.” He began edging away from the fireplace with the intent of settling her on the sofa, the awareness was very real that he needed to call his dad or an ambulance or something. “You might feel better if you sit down.” His attention grazed the dog tags, but he just as quickly dismissed them. “We probably need to call somebody.”

  Irene’s body sagged but, somehow, grew strangely heavier. Her voice quavered. “Someone’s calling right now,” she said. “Can’t you hear them? They’re talking about you and me this very instant . . . how you’re carrying a sick old woman to a sofa.” Luther didn’t respond as he continued carrying the sick old woman to the sofa. There was a moist clicking in her throat before she said, “Did you ever . . . pay me back?”

  Though still hoisting the woman, Luther froze. “Pardon?”

  Something else was in Irene’s voice now—something like mischief stitched with meanness—“Did you ever pay me back?”

  Luther kept his eyes on the cushions of the sofa. A dizzying thought poured into him: She’s been here the entire time—she’s been in the house while Misty and I . . . “Pay you back”—he licked his lips—“for what?”

  And then Luther angled his face down as Irene Crawley simultaneously looked up at him.

  It was not Irene Crawley. Instead it was the exaggerated, gray-and-waxy deathbed face of his grandma Gladys—eyes rheumy and sunken in purple-rimmed sockets, her semi-translucent skin riddled with branches of dark-colored veins. Her lips were curved up in a giddy rictus, exposing glistening teeth, their stunted size and blunt shape resembling perverse, oversized baby teeth.

  Luther was paralyzed, still cradling the thing in his arms when it started talking again, its mock-infantile voice twined with a vibrating buzz. “You should have paid me back when you had the chance.” A puff of compost-fetid breath escaped its chapped, rapidly moving lips. The corpse’s long-fingered grip tightened around Luther’s waist as he began to struggle. “I knew you were stealing from me, boy . . . boy . . . grandboy . . . I could have told your father, but no no no . . . I didn’t . . . I was charitable . . .” The thing’s voice began deteriorating into something high-pitched and keening, but its spoiled face and bugged-out eyes were still trained on Luther. “Your little talisman won’t help you now . . .” Luther didn’t care about the damn dog tags. “And your whore is in for a pleasant surprise she finds what we’ve left of you . . .” As a punctuation to this Luther felt the elderly thing’s arms constrict with scream-worthy strength, but the cry was stifled by the sensation of additional appendages coiling around his midsection. The septic tank smell worsened. The thing imitating his grandmother began to convulse and shiver as the bad-transmission flickering of her body resumed. But this time Luther could see what was underneath.

  The rattle-shock sight of segmented legs momentarily slowed his struggling—caramel-colored appendages had extended through the grafted image of flesh and fabric along either side of her—her?—ribcage. But it really wasn’t a ribcage, was it? Luther saw now that there had never really been clothing or flesh. Luther continued a futile fight with the shiny, brown-shingled exoskeleton of the insect wrapped around his waist.

  Still towering over the thing, Luther spotted a pronounced set of pincers at the ass-end of its pill-shaped abdomen, each curved pincer the size and shape of a large farming scythe. But that was not the worst.

  Glory be to God . . .

  His grandmother’s face remained as it was in its deathbed defilement, as if something had impishly undone all the work of her coffin presentation. That wasted mask—the bulbous, eager eyes, the sharp, incisor-stunted teeth—was fixed on Luther at a hungry angle, and an aroused cicada buzz swelled within the room.

  . . . for dappled things . . .

  As if pressing against aquatic resistance, Luther felt himself lift his leg and kick out toward the fireplace, solidly connecting with the stone hearth and heaving his weight backward.

  The insect cleaving to Luther with its gray-grafted skin was still holding fast, and the momentum of the kick sent both of them to the floor, the hybrid horror of bug-and-grandma landing on top of him. Luther’s panic included everything except a scream as he wriggled and flung his arms—his knuckles struck the leg of the coffee table, he arched his back to stretch out toward it. In a desperate, wrestler’s lurch, Luther ground down his shoulder and pivoted his upper body to caterpillar-crawl away from the thing.

  The dog tags slid off the coffee table, falling to the carpet with an aluminum jingle. Luther’s fingers clawed at the necklace, and with jittery coordination he got the ball chain wrapped around his fist, the sharp-edged plates protruding between his knuckles.

  A well-placed punch may have done the trick, but a punch punctuated with a dull-razor laceration had a more pronounced effect. Clenching his teeth and again facing the exaggerated death mask of his grandmother, Luther struck out with several mad slashes, the thin blades connecting, one swipe in particular opening a ragged, diagonal gash from eyebrow across the nose and down to its lower lip and chin.

  The noise it emitted was either pain or surprise, but it was not human—a sub-audible keening that filled Luther with images of lightless tunnels choked with oily, carapaced profusions of skittering, chattering, beetle bodies trampling one another along with the black soundtrack of clacking communication.

  The thing rose up
just enough for Luther to get his palm under its chin. He pivoted and shoved the thing off of him, sliding out and pushing himself up to all fours, his sneakers finding traction on the carpet as he raced out of the living room in an unsteady, headlong sprint, racing through the darkened corridor. But as he propelled himself across the hardwood floor of the kitchen, Luther slipped, his sneakers catching with a yelping squelch, flailing his arms to hold his balance and teetering toward the lip of the sink to steady himself. It only took a half-second glimpse, but it was sufficient. As though regurgitated from the garbage disposal, the sink contained a blossom-shaped stain and a dark streak of viscous liquid, as though a wide-bristled brush had been used to paint a single bar of foul-smelling, coffee-colored slime.

  Luther sprang away from the sink and advanced through the threshold of the back porch just seconds before he heard the maniacal typewriter clacking of skittering legs on the kitchen floor. He was through the French doors and in several strides had reached the screen door, when he felt the pill-shaped form strike him low on his back, slender appendages wrapping around his torso. The momentous impact sent Luther hurdling forward, the unlocked rickety screen swinging open in a wide swipe. Luther careened off the porch steps and clattered to the concrete walkway surrounding the pool. He felt the metallic sourness of blood on his lower lip where he’d struck the concrete, his arms shot out to grab anything, and he succeeded only in knocking over the stack of chemicals and cleaning supplies, toppling them into the pool as he struggled to free himself from the segment-slender legs.

  The thing on his back loosened its grip long enough for Luther to roll on his side.

  The broadcasted illusion had ceased entirely, and now the thing attacking him was simply a slick-plated bug reeking of rot and clinging to his midsection.

  The false flesh of his grandmother’s face had disappeared and was replaced by features honoring the insectile aspect of the rest of its body—the whirring antennae, the bulbous, obsidian eyes, the fine filaments and shivering feelers quivering within its moistly moving mandibles.

  Luther made a final pivot-yank with his upper body and felt himself falling, registering descent a millisecond before being enveloped by water. The insect unclasped Luther, who bobbed out from the water with a violent swipe at his eyes, gasping for air and steering toward the edge of the pool, hauling himself out and ass-scooting away from the water.

  With fluid fury the insect writhed to find purchase on something, but struggled too long where the chemical spill had been most potent. Finally, one of its numerous legs caught hold of the ladder, and it clattered out of the pool. Now—still catching his breath in sharp hitches—Luther saw the entire insect. About four feet long, the oily segments and caramel-colored plates of its exoskeleton reflected the summer sunshine with an almost hypnotizing luridness as it made a skittering retreat from the pool.

  He pushed himself off his rear end and sprinted toward the tall gate of the privacy fence, looking over his shoulder to see the insect scuttling toward the bushes, disappearing near the crawlspaced foundation of the home.

  Luther felt the self-preservative compulsion to run, sprint, scream, and swing his fists, but he faltered on the sidewalk outside the house, the lacy awning of overarching tree limbs shading him. He could still taste chemicals on his lips, smell them soaked in his clothes.

  Luther skimmed the exterior house, looking from window to window; but his appraisal finally settled on the lower skirt of the home where the decorative shrubs surrounded the structure. He heard something rustling in the shrubs—heard something twitching the leaves in the trees all around him: normally he would have disregarded it as a squirrel or a bird, but he was now uncertain about the true source of the sounds. The thought of overlarge insects smoothly creeping along the limbs of the elms and sycamores urged Luther to keep moving.

  Suddenly there was dull pain in his hand. Luther looked down—his dad’s dog tags were wound around the knuckles of his clenched fist, a small rill of blood dripping between the seams of his fingers and freckling the unflawed sidewalk.

  His car was parked down the street around the corner, and Luther started off in that direction, his sneakers squelching with moisture. But once the urge to run had ebbed, what flowed in to replace it was the simple need to tell someone—to ask for help, to confide in a companion. Luther shuffled to a stop and turned to examine the house from a distance, and considered the icy emergence of the sobering realization: Who the hell do I have to tell?

  Later that afternoon Luther will work up the courage to return to the house. Of course he won’t enter it—he watches the house with the dread of a self-conscious matador eyeing an unblinking, red-eye rabid bull—but will simply clean up the mess of spilled chemicals, finally retrieving and disposing of the discarded condom just before the scheduled house showing. Before he leaves, he steels himself to check on the screen door, which is still rickety but sturdy along its hinges, and locks the French doors from the outside.

  That same evening at his own house, Luther walks down the hall, cranes his neck into his dad’s den, and clears his throat. “Hey.”

  Curt Hume is at his desk, his back to Luther, his broad shoulders blocking the monitor that throws a blue glow against the wall and ceiling. He doesn’t miss a beat with whatever he’s working on and continues pecking at the keyboard without turning around. “Hm?”

  “I . . .” Luther edges across the threshold, “I . . . was just curious how the showing went today.”

  Curt stops typing now and rotates his head a degree or two. After an uncertain moment, he says, “I don’t think they’re going to make an offer. Said they were looking for something with more warmth, can you believe that?” The steady typing resumes. “Why the sudden interest?”

  Luther makes a clueless gesture. “Like I said, just curious.”

  His dad slowly swivels partway around to look at Luther, giving his son a crooked smirk. “Looks like you still have a job.”

  Luther blurts a nervous laugh. “Yeah.” He turns to leave but hesitates. He licks his lips. “Thanks, Dad.”

  Luther walks down the hall, the quiet corridor catching the clack-clack echo of his father’s fingers on the keyboard. Clack-click . . . clack-clack-clack . . .

  A few nights after the incident at the Crawley house, Luther is in his bedroom at home. Driven by a complicated urge of remorse and motivation—the latter having gone into almost absolute atrophy over the past few years—and with the snaky haze of chemical influence beginning to dissipate, Luther finally grows ambitious enough to investigate the source of the scrawled line that had been haunting him for a dozen months—for dappled things . . .

  At his computer, Luther types the phrase into the search engine, seconds later retrieving several responses that connect to the initials GMH. It’s a poem, something titled “Pied Beauty” by a guy with the last name Hopkins. Luther opens up another tab to look up what the hell pied means before reading the poem in its entirety.

  Glory be to God for dappled things—

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

  For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

  Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

  And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

  All things counter, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

  With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

  He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

  Praise him.

  It doesn’t mean a damn thing to him. Though he has the sense, an uneasy tickle—am I a dappled thing?—that there is a riddle in here. But more than anything, he feels as if it were a final, forgiving embrace from his grandma. Hesitating, the next thing he types is “earwig.” After a long time he shuts down the computer. He thinks he’ll read more about this Hopkins guy and earwigs tomorrow. He has to start somewhere.

  Yet o
utside Luther’s immediate perception—on a similar, overlapping frequency in which this narrative is being transmitted—and yet not so far away from the double-exposure reality in what Luther has so often imagined a life that may have been—staticky snatches of voices briefly emerge: moments of formal clarity: fleeting threads of thought ( . . . I was drowning in the ocean under a bone-toned moon . . .), conversation—a broadcasted news report, perhaps . . . it’s difficult to hone in on the context . . . but there are words, voices . . . or rather a mystical concatenation—fleeting as it may be—of conveyance . . . of mechanisms by which these parasites are commanding . . . hosts . . . remain unsolved mysteries . . . it’s co-opting pre-existing behavior . . . modified organisms are more complex than we had previously believed . . . Ampluex Compressa . . . in at least some of the cases . . . these parasites produce neurotransmitters or hormones that mimic host hormones . . . example of external control . . . Plesiometa Argyra . . . a different species . . . able to control . . . Hymenoepimecis Argyraphaga . . . via injection into its brain . . . and force it to enter its nest to become food and shelter . . . Leucochloridium Paradoxum . . . for insect’s larvae . . .

  And in that dark concert on the black plane of all-inclusive consciousness, the transmission fades, ebbs from perception, deteriorates into the mandible-chatter of insectile clicking and clacking, where the white static of this hissing transmission transitions into the seething sustention of white, inkless space . . .

  About the Author

  Clint Smith is a winner of the annual Scare the Dickens Out of Us ghost story contest (for “Dirt on Vicky,” in this collection). His fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including the Weird Fiction Review and the British Fantasy Society Journal. Clint lives in the Midwest, along with his wife and two children.

  Ghouljaw: The Soundtrack, by Allen Kell of Shadeland, is available for purchase on iTunes, cdbaby, Spotify, and other sites.