Mark let out a heavy breath, looked around, then followed him down.
Chad was directing the man to a long, empty table; he wordlessly moved beside it, and at Chad’s order, crouched beside it and half-slid, half-shrugged the case onto its surface. Under the fluorescent bulbs set along the middle of the ceiling, Mark could see that the case was made of dark wood, its surface a mottled blend of sheens and worn, water- and dirt-stained blemishes. He instantly recognized the blackened metal handles on its sides and its arched upper surface, although its size was curiously small.
It was a child’s coffin.
“Uh…” Mark said, and beside him, the man straightened and turned to him. “This— This is it? This is from Constance?” Mark expected silence in response, and that was exactly what he got.
Mark’s hand moved alongside the gun as he watched the man reached inside his jacket pocket, but he relaxed when a thick envelope appeared. The man silently held it out, and Mark gingerly took it from him. “Thanks.” It was all he could think to say.
The man didn’t nod, didn’t smile; he simply turned and walked back to the stairway.
Mark and Chad exchanged another look, then followed him up the stairs, back along the house and stopped as the man returned to the minivan. They watched him climb inside and reverse down their driveway. Then he was gone.
* * *
“Wanna tell me what the actual fuck that was?” Chad said.
Mark shook his head, puffing his cheeks out as he looked down at the coffin. “I know as much as you do.”
“How much is in there?” Chad said, and Mark realized that he was still clutching the envelope in his hand. “That is money in there, right?”
Mark was briefly nauseous as he lifted the metal fasteners on the top of the envelope and pulled it open, then sighed with a slight chuckle as he saw the sandwiched lines of greenish-grey inside. “Whoo, yeah it is.” He frowned, lifted the envelope closer, and saw a folded white sheet inside, as well.
“How much?” Chad repeated.
“Hold on,” Mark said, pulling the paper out and unfolding it. Chad snatched the envelope from his hand, and Mark glared at him, then began to read the typed letter.
“Ho, lee, shit,” Chad said, leafing through the wad of bills he’d removed from the envelope. “There’s gotta be…” He began counting, but Mark didn’t look up, wasn’t even listening, as he read the letter.
Hello, boys.
As promised, here is your resource commandée. I do think you’ll find it rather perfectly meets the requirements of your methods, (Mark, hadn’t you said something about “quality and quantity?”), and I think that it shall more than adequately provide the desired effects. But of course, please don’t hesitate to reach me if there are any problems with it—I would be happy to provide a different resource for your fascinating production.
Sincerely,
Constance
Mark didn’t move, didn’t even lower the letter; instead, his eyes darted up over its edge to glance at the coffin on the table.
“Did you hear—?” Chad fell silent as he looked at Mark. “What?”
“I’m…not sure if I like the sound of this.”
“Why?”
Mark handed him the letter and waited while he read it. When he was done, he was frowning, too, and they both turned to the coffin.
“So what’s in there?” Chad asked.
“Well, we’re about to find out.” Mark approached a cabinet on the wall nearby and started pulling down gloves, face masks, and tools. He and Chad geared up, then set to work opening the coffin. It was unmarked, but it looked a bit like one that they’d unearthed several months before from a Westport, Rhode Island house which had dated back to the 1870’s; so if this was even remotely similar, it would be easy enough to open.
As Mark tapped a chisel and hammer along the dirt-lined seam of the coffin’s lid, Chad wheeled over a large, re-purposed aquarium tank on a small cart.
A series of ticks and creaks came from the coffin as Mark loosened the lid, and then planting his fingers into its edge, he gave it a cursory tug. Its hinges worked with a squealing groan. Even through his mask, he thought he could smell the unsealed air that wafted out. As Chad came over, Mark pulled the lid up—then dropped it back in place with a hollow thud.
“Oh, what in the Christly fuck?” Chad cried, backing up, and Mark found himself doing the same.
“The fuck was that?” Mark whispered
“That— That—”
“That’s not a fucking dead kid!”
“That’s not a fucking person!”
Mark’s jaw was stretching wide beneath his mask, which threatened to slip down off the bridge of his nose as he shook his head. “So— What? Did Constance pull a fast one on us or something?”
“A ten grand fast one?”
Mark’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Yes,” Chad spat, then pointed at the coffin. “But that… I mean, who the hell would want to trip the ghost on that?”
“Okay, okay. Hold on.” Mark turned away, taking a deep breath and almost pressing his hand to his head before remembering where it had just been. “So…whatever that is, that’s what she wants us to work with. Assuming it does work, and the spores do take… Well, who the hell would want…?” He shook his head, feeling an itch in his shoulder erupt into a full-body shiver.
“Got me, man. I mean, —”
“No!” Mark shook his head. “Seriously?”
Chad shrugged. “You want to make the other five or what?”
Mark looked back at the coffin, then sighed heavily. “Alright, alright. Let’s give it a shot. Worse comes to worst—”
…I would be happy to provide a different resource…
Mark suppressed another shiver.
Chad stepped forward and tugged the lid up and threw it against the wall, and Mark slowly moved over and gave the thing in the coffin a good, long look.
To say that time and the elements had been kind to the body was a bit of an understatement; but then, perhaps they had taken pity upon the deformed entity inside the coffin—pity, or fearful avoidance. The jumble of too-too-many twisted limbs reminded Mark of gnarled tree roots and overgrown vines, yet were punctuated with angled joints—unmistakably limbs. The shrunken skin was a pale brownish-grey, almost moist-looking. Each limb ended in uneven appendages; some were fully-formed fingers, and others were little more than a cluster of lumps. Between what may or may not have been a couple of legs, a dark, shrunken mass offered no suggestion of a sex. And the head…
Mark looked away, knowing full well that that twisted, forever-silenced scream would never leave his mind in even the most restful slumbers. He turned to Chad, but all they could do was stare at each other.
No amount of waiting could prepare them for what they had to do next. They moved the tank beside the table and reached inside the coffin. Mark wriggled his fingers beneath a few of the more heavily-layered groups of limbs, and Chad its tiny shoulders. Chad counted to three, and they gingerly pulled it up and out.
The body was surprisingly light, no more than fifty pounds; it took all of Mark’s resolve to avoid gagging as he felt the squishy give of thing’s impossibly-spongy flesh in his gloved hands. They carefully maneuvered the body above the rim of the coffin and over the tank, and began lowering it in—
“FUCK!” Chad shrieked, dropping his end of the body. Cursing, Mark followed suit, and it fell into the tank, landing with a sickening cacophony of thumps.
“What the fuck was that?” Mark snapped.
“It fucking moved!”
“What?”
“I swear to God, man, the fucking thing moved a couple of its arms!”
“That was probably me holding it, jerk!”
“I fucking saw it, man!”
Mark’s jaw worked, but he looked down at the thing in the tank. “Whatever,” he said weakly. “Let’s— just get it sealed and ready.”
And then get some fucking questions r
eady for Mrs. Constance.
* * *
After they sealed the tank, they brought it over to the stairwell and began hoisting the cart up on sheets of plywood. Once it was upstairs, Mark slammed the basement door shut. They’d not bothered to do anything with the coffin; it was their unspoken agreement to leave that for the next day.
Wheeling the coffin into the converted living room of the old house, Mark couldn’t help but appreciate—even find comfort in—all the other tanks that they passed. So much routine, so much normalcy, so much sanity, lay in each tank. They were moving through the central aisle of what they called the Garden.
Mark and Chad turned the corner and moved to the empty row of tables on the far wall. They stopped at the far end, then stooped to grab either end of the tank, grateful to have a quarter of an inch of acrylic between them and the thing inside as they moved it onto a table.
While Chad went to fetch an extension cord, Mark turned to the refrigerator—then stopped and looked quickly back at the tank.
It didn’t move, he told himself, staring a snarl of tangled limbs for a long, breathless moment. Not then, and not now.
Ignoring a chill, Mark stepped to the other side of the room and opened the refrigerator. Inside, bottles of water crowded the top shelf, and beneath, rows of small, foil-sealed containers filled the remaining shelves beneath. He took an open bottle and one of the containers back to the tank, then removed a small cork that crowned a hollow pin in the middle of a socket on the top of the tank.
Chad returned then, carrying an extension cord. Plugging it in, Mark reached for a switch on the top of the tank cover, and bright lights flicked on. Ignoring what they illuminated, he turned on the vents, then uncapped the water and poured some into a small tube. Upending the foil-topped container, he pushed it onto the pin, hearing it puncture the foil as he screwed the container’s mouth into the socket.
“Let there be…something,” Chad muttered. Mark waited to make sure that the aeration process began, and when a fine, faint fog of greenish-grey began to puff into the tank, they walked away.
In the nearest row of tanks, the most recent acquisition had finally begun to take. It had been a bit of an older specimen, and had taken nearly a week to grow, but yesterday, the incomplete stack of shins, femurs, and vertebra had finally sprouted a grey coating. Earlier that morning, a few buttons had begun to form. Chad had been especially curious as to what results it would yield; the bones had once belonged to a man whose house still sometimes smelled of the fire that had killed him over twenty years before.
The specimens in the next row were much farther along; skulls, shins, pelvises, and rib cages had begun to lose their familiar shapes under blankets of young fruiting bodies. The newest ones were still weeks away from cultivation, but judging from their sheer numbers, they would make for a good harvest.
The ones in the last row were at their most advanced stages of necrosynthetic myceliation, the bones literally falling apart under the mere weight of the fruiting bodies that sprouted thick and moist above them. Two of the tanks were nearly empty, the cultivated mushrooms leaving only anonymous piles of wrinkled, shrunken, crumbling remains of old bones.
Mark had been planning to check on a few crops that he’d gathered earlier, but after everything that they’d dealt with tonight, all his energy was spent. He and Chad locked up, muttered superficial wishes of good nights that both knew they’d not be getting, and got in their cars and went home.
* * *
Chad couldn’t help but grin as he stared into the tank. “Look at you,” he said.
The strange body had proved to be unique in more ways than one; only three days after they’d prepared it, a grey mold began to form a blanket that mercifully obscured the revolting shapes beneath. The very next day, buttons had sprouted. And now, not even a full week later, the fruiting bodies were growing perfectly.
Chad scribbled some notes in his notebook. If this was any indication of how bountiful this new specimen was going to be…
He licked his lips and looked back in the tank.
Most of the fruiting bodies were still young and small, but a few larger ones were sprouting up from the middle of the cadaver, their caps nearly at full width. It was far too soon to pick them, Chad knew—but then again, it was also far too soon for them to even be growing, and yet here they were.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and then put it back. Mark was over in Providence, picking up a fresh batch of spores from his supplier—something that always got Mark really tense and distracted; not that Chad could blame him, because the supplier was an absolute creep. So, why stress him out even more? Chad thought, smirking and setting his notebook and pen down beside the tank.
He fetched a pair of gloves and a small knife from the supply cabinets, then carefully removed the lid of the tank and set it aside. Reaching in with his free hand, he grabbed the largest cap and gingerly tugged it. It was, of course, still firmly rooted in the body, and so he brought the knife in and began to slowly cut around its base, the spongy matter between fungus and flesh splitting moistly around the blade. He gave the mushroom another tug—and frowned when it still refused to separate. “C’mon…,” Chad said softly, pulling with a little more force, and it finally obliged.
He lifted the mushroom out and held it up in the light, but as he examined it, his grin withered into a frown.
Green liquid, so dark it was nearly black, glittered on the base of the mushroom, swelling into a bead which then dripped down onto his jeans. Cursing, Chad held the mushroom away from himself, glanced into the tank—then gasped.
The spot that he’d cut the mushroom from was now a glistening pool of that same dark liquid.
Groaning in disgust, Chad set the mushroom down on the table and forcefully shoved the lid of the tank back in place. He tore his gloves off and tossed them aside, cursing again as he realized he still had to pick up the mushroom.
He grabbed his pen and notebook, jotted down a few quick lines, then gingerly carried the mushroom into the kitchen. While he fired up the oven, he cut off a few slices and threw them into onto a pan, which he then shoved into the oven.
When their distinctly acrid odor hit his nostrils, he took them out, grabbed a bag of half-stale bread and removed a slice, then placed the cooling, dried mushroom slices onto it. He took some more notes, then dumped the soft, tan coins onto the bread, folded it over, and gingerly took a bite.
“Eurrrmph,” he groaned, forcing himself to chew and swallow the rancid-tasting sandwich. He poured himself some water from the sink and started to down it when he heard a soft thump. He lowered the glass and listened.
It didn’t repeat.
Chad suppressed a shiver, remembering their first weeks in the house. They’d seen no specters nor heard any wails or clanking chains, but there had seemed to be some kind of draft bringing cool air into rooms during those long, hot, summer days. Of course, all that had come to an end when they’d found the overgrown grave in the backyard, but—
There, again. It hadn’t been from the front door, nor the back; it was hard to tell where it came from.
He doubted that it was an effect of the mushrooms; the trip hadn’t started yet.
Chad found himself thinking of the strange body again, of how its arms had twitched as he and Mark had lifted it out of its coffin. He’d known what he’d seen that night, what he’d felt…
…and yet now, he could only hope that that thing wasn’t causing the sounds he was hearing now.
He went back to the Garden and straight to the tank, his breath held.
The body was still there.
It hadn’t moved.
It was exactly as he’d left it earlier.
Letting out his breath, he shook his head, then gasped. Little black spots had begun to appear in his vision.
Grinning, he ran back into the kitchen, fetched his notebook and pen, and went down into the basement where a chair and a lamp stood in a corner for exactly this purpose. Flippin
g open his notebook to a blank page, he poised his pen over the paper. As the black spots began to multiply and swell, crowding his vision, he thought he heard that thumping sound again, much louder now; but then the black spots coalesced, and he could only stare straight into the opening window of darkness, and smile.
* * *
Mark tapped his finger harder and faster on his phone, lowered it from his ear and hung up. Chad wasn’t picking up; Mark knew the majority of their conversation would have to wait until he got back, but he still had a lot to get off his chest, and the sooner he could vent, the better.
He had gotten rather alarming news back in Providence. Apparently, recent construction work posed a threat to the unique conditions under which the source mushrooms grew in their secluded crop; his supplier had hinted that there was a good chance that his rates were going to go up—considerably.
Mark had considered telling Constance; perhaps she could talk to his supplier and make a more affordable trade—and then immediately dismissed the thought. If that bizarre body she’d commissioned them with was any indication of her idea of business, then this was the last he wanted to deal with her.
Crossing into Massachusetts, he turned off the highway and proceeded down several long, winding roads. Pulling into their driveway, he parked behind Chad’s car and hauled out the tub of freshly-picked mushrooms and went inside.
“Yo,” he called out, wrinkling his nose at the immediately familiar, acrid, burnt-smelling odor on the air.
He walked into the kitchen to find, as expected, a half-sliced mushroom lying on the counter beside an empty pan. “Shit,” he cursed, his patience evaporating as he raised his voice. “Chad?”
Wicked Haunted: An Anthology of the New England Horror Writers Page 26