He peered over her shoulder, and Nettie was struck with the notion that he was sniffing her hair. Then he straightened up and crossed his arms. "I'm sure there were administrative fees and that sort of thing. And a lot of that money is earmarked for little things, like helping out widows and buying refreshments for church socials. It's hard to keep track of every little dollar. And it all comes out in the wash, anyway. The bottom line is that we're a growing enterprise. It's the Lord's will for us to flourish and share the church's blessings."
Nettie's head itched, as if the preacher's breath had deposited nits and fleas in her hair. She turned and looked up at him.
The preacher spread his hands in supplication. "I used to do the books before we hired you. I'm not too good with numbers. The Lord didn't bless me that way. I'm sure I made some errors along the way. But as it's written in St. Matthews, ‘When thou dost give alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee.’"
"But so much is unaccounted for."
"Worry not, my child. I'm sure you'll get everything straightened out." He lowered his eyes. "Well, I believe I'd better go say my prayers and get some sleep. Might have a big congregation this weekend, what with Blossomfest and all, plus Easter's coming up."
He yawned and tilted his head back, his pungent exhalation rising beneath his beaver teeth.
"Preacher, can I ask you something?"
"Certainly, honey."
"When I got hired as church secretary, whose decision was that? I mean, was it the Board of Deacons’s?" She prayed that Bill hadn't been involved.
"Well, they made recommendations, but the decision was entirely mine."
Nettie sagged in relief.
The preacher must have noticed. "Why do you ask?"
"Just curious, is all."
The preacher stepped toward her, hovering, and put his hand on her shoulder and gave it another squeeze. "I think I made a good decision, don't you?" he asked, and again he lowered his eyes.
Nettie felt them roving over her skin as if they were tongues. No, just her imagination. She had been working too long, that’s all, stooped over the church accounts until her guts were tied in knots. All this needless worry had put her on edge.
"Good night, Nettie," Preacher Blevins said, giving her a final pat on the head. "Lock up when you leave."
Nettie nodded at his flashing light-bulb smile and began clearing her desk. "See you tomorrow, Preacher."
"May God keep you and watch over your sleep, my precious child."
"Thank you. Same to you."
She listened for his footsteps as he left, but he was as silent as a mouse, as if he were walking on air. After a couple of minutes tucking papers in drawers, she switched off the light and headed into the worship hall.
A dark church is kind of spooky. She stepped under the hushed arches and walked down the aisle.
"Police Department."
"Listen, I want to report…" What the hell did James want to report?
"Yes, sir?"
"Uh-downtown, I saw… I was nearly attacked."
"In Windshake?"
"Yeah. On the back street, behind the hardware store." He tried to muffle his voice. Not sure just how black I sound.
"ID the perp?"
"What’s that?"
"Identification. Did you see the perpetrator's face?"
Oh, yes. Unfortunately, I got up close and personal. "Yes, Officer, only… I'm not sure what it was."
"Sir, have you been drinking? You're starting to slur a little."
"I'm fine. Listen, could you just take a look?" Because I need to know that I'm not losing my mind.
"We have an officer on patrol. I'll give him a call."
"Thank you." And you, too, sweet Lord.
"Do you want to come down to the station and file charges?"
Wasn't there something in the U.S. Constitution about the criminal getting to face his accuser? "No, I'm okay. I just thought you might want to check it out."
"You were nearly attacked, you say? Were you threatened in any way? It's not against the law for someone to be out at night, I'm afraid."
Oh, Officer, this thing was definitely breaking some laws. Maybe not the laws of humankind, but certainly the laws of nature. "Well, just check it out, okay?"
"I need your name for my report."
James hung up. The sweat from his frantic run had dried but the fear still clung like salt. Fortunately, Aunt Mayzie had already been asleep when he got home. At least he didn’t have to offer her any explanations of things he didn’t understand himself.
James checked the locks on the doors and windows and went to bed, praying that Aunt Mayzie would be safe. His sleep was shallow and restless, disturbed by animated cauliflower nightmares.
The alien felt the mist of its spores scatter in the night. A tingle of air pressure altered its surface chemistry, took shape, and imprinted sound vibration on the creature’s skin. The symbol throbbed against its heart-brain, causing a disturbance in the pacific state of healing.
May-zee.
The creature analyzed the symbol, and compared it to the “shu-shaaa.” No connection. No pattern. No hint of higher intelligence.
The creature fed and rested.
CHAPTER TEN
"What do you make of it?"
"I ain't touching it."
"Looks like some kind of jelly to me," Chief Crosley said. "When did you find it?"
"This morning. Dispatch got a call last night, some drunk said he was nearly attacked back here." Arnie McFall ran his sleeve across the sweating bone of his forehead. The sun glinted off the car windows into his eyes. "Sent Matheson out, but Matheson didn't see nothing. I figured I'd poke around this morning, in case we had a bum hanging out back here. A bum could live in style, what with Sonny's dumpsters and all."
Crosley looked down on the milky pool of slime that even now was congealing and crusting under the warm sun. Ordinarily, he would have figured it for a chemical spill or some kind of underground leak, nothing that would hurt anybody. But it was the clothes splayed out in the middle of the foamy gom that was the mystery.
He didn't like mysteries. Mysteries were for those cop shows on TV, the kind that you watched while you put up your feet and killed a cold one or two. He didn't need any mysteries in Windshake, because he didn't have any snoopy writers or doctors or priests who could solve them like they did on TV.
"Maybe somebody just put these clothes here for a joke,” Crosley said. “When I was a kid, when we went to the beach, I'd sneak off at night and make weird tracks coming up out of the surf, twisting my hands and feet and crawling on my belly. So whoever saw it in the morning would think a monster had crawled out."
"Might be shenanigans, Chief. But it looks kind of natural."
The Chief had to admit that the clothes covered the ground in the shape of an actual person. The angles of the knees and elbows were curved instead of bent like a stick figure's. Dingy white socks jutted from the cuffs of the jeans, their bottoms worn completely through. A Red Man baseball cap had rolled a few feet away, where it leaned against a rusty transaxle.
Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble for a prank. And who'd want to waste a good pair of Levi's like that?
"Looks like whoever it was came down the tracks there into these old junk cars.”
"You're calling it a ‘who,’ Arnie. I don't like the sound of that."
"Sorry, Chief."
"I don't see no shoes nowhere."
"I've looked all over the back street. Nothing out of the ordinary. Besides this, I mean." Arnie pointed to the imprint.
Crosley rubbed his belly the way he always did when he was uneasy. He looked around the car lot, at the water tower and the weedy train tracks. The backs of the buildings were streaked with tarry runoff and fire escapes clung to the bricks like giant broken spiders. Traffic echoed off the storefronts from the jams of people pouring in for Blossomfest
.
"You want me to scrape up a sample to send to the SBI boys down in Raleigh?" Arnie asked.
"No, let’s just keep this to ourselves until we know more. Run a missing persons check and that sort of thing."
"The way this is drying out, it looks like it'll flake off in the breeze. Won't be much left soon."
Good, thought Crosley. He said, "Who called in that report last night?"
"Didn't give his name. Like I said, Dispatch thought it was a drunk."
"The Virgin Queen is going to love this," Crosley said, referring to Mayor Speerhorn by her departmental nickname. "Especially right here at Blossomfest and all. She's going to shit a silver teapot."
Crosley resumed rubbing his ample stomach.
***
Chester didn't see Don Oscar out in the farmyard.
It ain't Don Oscar, Chester told himself. Let's just call it ‘Mushbrains’ from now on.
Because the last time Chester saw Mushbrains, about an hour ago, it was looking kind of milky and droopy, like a mushroom did after the steamy sun had worked it over. Sort of wilted from rot and turning to gooey liquid.
Yeah, like that, except this fungus thing used to be your drinking buddy.
Chester tongued his chaw and flexed his arthritic joints, grateful that the Lord had seen fit to throw down a sunny day. If it had been raining, Chester probably would have laid in the hay till the storm passed, his muscles cramped up like a pine knot. He tiptoed down the stairs, grimacing at every squeak of the dry chestnut.
He pulled the twine strap that lifted the corncrib latch from the inside. If Mushbrains was outside the door, Chester knew he was done for. He kicked open the door and bounced out onto the packed matted dirt of the barn floor, arms up like a karate fighter. Nothing stirred but a scrawny rooster that hobbled out of a stall, its red comb quivering as it swiveled its head.
Chester clung to the wall as he edged toward the barn opening. He didn't know what was safer, the cool dark shadows or the sterile exposure of daylight. He was debating a run for the farmhouse when the decision was made for him. Swampy breathing came from the far side of the barn.
He bolted across the yard, his limbs flailing like a crippled hay rake. Forty feet of fiery lung pain later, he was on the porch, kicking aside the broken screen door. He staggered into the living room, blind from sunshine, and bumped into the splintery carnage that DeWalt had strewn. He felt along the wall for his thirty-caliber, then decided on the shotgun.
He wanted whatever corpse old Mushbrains left behind to be unrecognizable.
He thumbed back the triggers, comforted by the feel of the cold steel. Mushbrains was easy meat now, if "meat" was the right word.
"Old Mushy ain't moving too swift lately," he said, his spirit soaring now that he was armed. He peered through the door, waiting for Mushbrains to slog within range. Toenails clicked on the floor behind him. He turned and saw Boomer.
Good old Boomer.
Good old Boomer, his fur now bristles, his spine bowed from the weight of whatever roiled in his bloated belly. His old stringy eyes had flowered into purple hyacinths, and the nose resembled a moldy peach. The drooping leathery tongue was veined like a maple leaf. Stinkweed thorns crowned the forehead and his grapevine tail wagged in stupid joy.
Chester jerked one trigger and his hound dog shredded like a December jack-o’-lantern. Chester wiped at his eyes, eyes that were too dry and tired to make tears. He opened a bureau drawer and filled his overall pockets with twenty-gauge shells. It was time to deal with the mushbrained monster that had pissed on his corn flakes and crammed grit in his craw.
Chester walked into the sunlight, feeling like Bruce Willis in "Die Hard." Mushbrains sloughed toward him, leaving behind glistening clumps of itself as it closed. Chester looked into the glowing, scallop-edged eyes to make certain there was nothing of Don Oscar left inside.
The thing tried to lift its arms, limbs that were like a wet scarecrow's. The moist flap in the middle of Mushbrains's face lifted. Milky bubbles spewed into the air.
" Shu-shaaa," it was saying, but a fistful of number ten shot peppered into its pulpy flesh and made its own sibilant splash.
The soggy stump of the creature remained upright, and Chester reloaded and gave it another double helping of hot pellets. Still it stood, a fungus leeched onto the earth and quivering like a windblown cornstalk.
Chester flipped out the spent shells, the acrid tang of gunpowder suffocating the scents of spring. He was sighting down the barrel again when he heard a revving engine. Somebody was coming around the bend toward the farmhouse.
DeWalt's Pathfinder came roaring out of the pines and down the red dirt road. At the same time, a loping hunk of something that might once have been a buck leaped out of the woods and cut in the path of the sport utility vehicle. The sport utility vehicle swerved, then its front left wheel dipped into a rut. The bumper glanced the deer-thing and caused an explosion of foul green fluid. The Pathfinder bounced once before going over on its side.
The fallen beast shook itself, shedding the antlers that sprouted like dead shrubs from its head. The back end of its body had disintegrated from the impact of the vehicle, but the deer-thing rose unsteadily on its front legs. Then it skittered into the woods on the other side of the road, pieces of its spongy flesh and organs dribbling out behind. Chester glanced at Mushbrains and saw that it wasn't going anywhere, so he jogged painfully up the road to the Pathfinder, his gun at his hip.
The left tires on the SUV were still spinning, trying to grab traction in the air. DeWalt crawled out of the cracked sunroof. He was halfway free when Chester reached him. DeWalt's head had a gash in it, and Chester was relieved to see that the man’s California Yankee blood was red.
Chester checked the woods to make sure the deer-thing was gone. He heard some boughs snapping, but it was just another tree falling.
He leveled the shotgun at DeWalt, who was still on his hands and knees, shaken by the crash. "Let's see your eyes.”
"Let me see yours."
They looked at each other, Chester's brown rheumy eyes gazing into DeWalt's blue-ringed pupils.
"Okay, then," Chester said, leaning the shotgun against the bent hood of the SUV and stooping to help his friend. DeWalt stood with a groan.
"Anything broken?" Chester worked his chaw rapidly.
"I don't think so. Couple of dings, that's all." DeWalt touched his head and examined the blood on his fingers.
Chester nodded toward the Pathfinder. "Told you that was an uppity piece of shit. Shoulda got a Ford." Chester shot a brown stream of saliva onto the cracked windshield.
"I'm glad to see you, Chester. After last night-"
"Yeah, I know. I wondered if you had turned, too. That’s why I didn’t try to warn you. But that don’t explain why you boot-scooted the hell out of here so fast. I mighta been sick or trapped in there, for all you knew."
“Hell, Chester, I was scared.”
Chester nodded. Couldn’t argue with that. “Me, too, a little.”
"What the hell's going on?"
"I ain't rightly sure, but why don't we go up on the porch and talk about it? Can you walk okay?"
DeWalt nodded and took a step, pain creasing his face.
"Have a seat in the rocker. I'll be up in a minute. And watch out for the chickens."
"Chickens?"
"They move slow, but the little peckerheads might have caught whatever it is. Me, I got some unfinished business.”
Chester walked toward the barn to finish off Mushbrains. Then he would have to put whatever was rolling around in the hog pen out of its misery. After that, he planned on rounding up his guns and twisting the cap off a smooth jar of moonshine. Times like these, a man needed to be fortified.
They were running through a jungle. Only the jungle was actual size and they were tiny, like in a Honey, I Shrunk The Kids movie. Rick Moranis was Robert. Huge pollen motes rolled after them like tumbleweeds, and hairy clover stems were bending down to swat at
their bodies as they ran.
Ginger tripped over a pine needle and she bent to help her up and looked right into the jaws of a fallen dandelion that was a bright yellow lion. The lion opened its mouth but they ran away. Now Robert and Kevin were lost somewhere in the green-wire black-shadow twig alleys.
She heard them call, but when she tried to run with Ginger in her arms, she sank into moss. Its fingers clutched at her bones as she saw Robert and Kevin run inside a long pale hallway. The hallway unfolded like a parachute, so she followed with Ginger and then they were inside the throat of the lily.
The throat shook and vibrated, and a great roar rose from deep in the thing’s belly: SHU-SHAAAAA.
Then the throat of the lily was closing and the kids were wallowing in amber nectar. She tried to scream but the honeydew filled her mouth and she was suffocating Then she woke up on Robert's side of the bed, a pillow over her face.
Tamara glanced at the red eye of the clock. Nearly nine. The high sun pierced the shutters.
Friday was her day to sleep late, since she had no classes. Robert had gotten the kids off to school. Her tongue was dry and starchy, as if the Russian army had camped in her mouth. She tried to raise herself and head for the bathroom, but she was heavy with sleep, confused by the dream.
At least this one can't come true.
Unlike the death of her father, which had been vividly pre-created in a dream, this particular subconscious brain flick wasn't filmed in an earthly setting. Well, at least not a natural-sized one.
But the time she had dreamed of Kevin soaring over a canyon like a bird, with his wings failing in mid-flight, he had broken his hip the next day while jumping a gully. So maybe it was all symbolism.
Robert had been wonderful while Kevin was healing. Kevin's cast came up to his waist to keep his pelvis immobile. There was a bar slung between his legs, and Robert had to carry him like that, with one hand on the bar and the other under Kevin's back. Robert insisted that the family keep up their routine, and since Tamara had her hands full with Ginger, Robert hauled Kevin everywhere they went, to the zoo, the circus, basketball games, or Tamara's academic functions.
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