Tatterdemon

by Vernon, Steve

  A hundred?

  A thousand?

  He squeezed his Glock. A fat lot of good this expensive chunk of plastic did him. He thought briefly about what he should have brought with him, if he’d only known. What he’d left back at the station, stashed in his private locker.

  Even that might not be enough. Hell, out here in this field, a nuclear warhead might be seriously outgunned. He stared at an ant, standing on his eyelid, like one of them Lilliput fuckers calculating how best to carve and eat a million tons of freshly caught Gulliver meat.

  The ant semaphored a half-dozen curses.

  F-U-C-K-Y-O-U-A-S-S-H-O-L-E

  One of the ants crawled up onto Earl’s lip and started gnawing.

  “FUCK!” Earl shouted, still not moving.

  One of them crawled into his right nostril, the one closest to the ground.

  That did it.

  Earl jerked upright and jumped to his feet. He slapped and sniffed and pawed at his nose. He finally propped his knuckle against the ant-free nostril and blew with the other as hard as he could.

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Was it out?

  Christ, had he breathed the little bastard?

  He coughed, choked, certain that he could feel the ant crawling inside his right lung.

  He swatted and slapped and stomped furiously upon the ant hill. Fuck this Gulliver shit. To hell with giant crawling ants. It was time to introduce these suckers to Godzilla.

  “Yaaaah!” he shouted. “Take that Tokyo!”

  He started and stomping and stepping and if he’d had radioactive breath he would have let them have that, too. He was halfway into Tokyo Bay, and headed for the open sea, when he realized he was standing and a scarecrow demon had been quietly watching him the whole time.

  Maybe it couldn’t see him.

  It didn’t look to have much of a head.

  Fuck it.

  It was too late to lie down again, even if the ants would let him.

  So he ran.

  * 3 *

  Roland barreled around the corner, wondering just how he’d got so very far from off the main road.

  Stupid.

  He’d dodged that last weigh scale, and taken a wrong turn.

  “I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque,” he muttered. “Bugs Bunny always knew what he was talking about.”

  Damn it.

  This would play hell with his time.

  Then he saw someone, running like a bat out of thirteen hells, directly in his path.

  “Fuck!”

  An eighteen wheeler isn’t a car. You can’t just slam on the brakes. You’ve got to gear down through about a million shifted gears and slowly work the trailer load and ease yourself into inertia.

  Give him credit.

  Roland tried hard to nudge the truck safely past. He veered the cab over, working the gears down as fast as he could. Only he hadn’t the time to let the trailer know what he was up to. A ton of hay and metal did its level best to ream itself through Earl’s back window. The rig stood on its nose for a half-second and then tipped into a full-blown jackknife.

  CHAPTER 33

  Shapes in the Darkness

  * 1 *

  Earl Toad looked back over his shoulder, just the once.

  A shape followed closely.

  He saw it, silhouetted in the semi-dark dusk.

  He damned near laughed in his terror, watching it madly goose stepping, its legs stiff and straight, its arms swinging at impossible angles – and moving in the complete opposite direction.

  Hell.

  He’d thought it had seen him, but it was still only hunting.

  He watched it stalk blindly through the darkness of the field. Its head was covered with roots so red he could see the color even in the darkness. It was Helliard, although Earl wouldn’t know him from an ant hole in the ground. The scarecrow-redneck looked damn near laughable, swinging and stepping through the field. It kind of reminded Earl of that scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.

  “If I only had a brain,” he whispered.

  Just then a second scarecrow crashed out of the underbrush. This one was even uglier than the first. Its face looked to be half destroyed, like a doll half made of modeling clay by an impatient child.

  Earl did not know it but he was staring at what was left of Duane.

  Duane turned slowly, his arms twisting crossways like a pretzel crucifix.

  Then Duane saw him.

  Earl gauged the distance. There was a good ten yards between them. He still had a very small chance. He feinted to the left, faking Duane out.

  Then he ran to the right, trying to outflank the bastard.

  It almost worked.

  Duane lurched leftward in an abortive half step, and then came back onto Earl’s trail.

  Earl began to run.

  He could feel the woods behind him coming alive with the crashing of his pursuers.

  There must have been a hundred of the bastards.

  Damn!

  He careened off a tree trunk, blinking painful stars, not daring to let himself fall. He staggered like a half-crazed distance runner fighting to stay ahead of the pack. He was headed for the road. He saw headlights, something big by the looks of them, just ahead. Whoever was driving probably couldn’t even see Earl.

  Should he wait?

  He chanced a glance and saw nothing. He hopped from one foot to the other, like an anxious child outside a closed bathroom door. The headlights got closer. It was a truck of some sort – an eighteen wheeler. He tried to flag it down, dancing jumping jacks on the roadside until he sensed rather than saw something directly behind him.

  A scarecrow.

  Earl leaped in front of the onrushing eighteen wheeler, fully aware of what he was doing and the certain outcome. He was dead and he might as well go out in style. He stared in midair as the heavy chromed grill tipped and slid and slammed against his midsection, driving him down towards the roadway. He was reaching up, in a crazy attempt to vault the bastard.

  The hood ornament caught and shattered his wrist.

  He struck the concrete with a roll, his head bouncing three times across the pavement to the accompaniment of squealing air brakes and screeching tires as the great red truck fishtailed across the straight white line.

  He lay there, seeing and feeling nothing, a deep pool of gray nothingness as he quietly bled his life away upon the stiffening dirt, the few ants that still stubbornly clung to his body already crawling back home to notify friends and family of the coming roadkill feast.

  He didn’t hear the door slam, the quick determined stride of work boots, the instinctive doffing of a Blue Jays baseball cap, the soft skritching of the driver’s grimy fingers through his age thinned scalp, and finally a voice.

  “What the hell?”

  Earl opened and closed his mouth trying to utter a warning. His voice croaked uselessly.

  The shadows moving in the field told Earl it was far too late.

  * 2 *

  The thing in front of Roland Friar looked like a goddamn mailman from hell.

  It was all wrapped in tattered blue rags.

  It still had a mail cap perched on his head.

  And stink? Jesus it reeked worse than wet dead dog.

  Goddamn.

  What kind of shit was this?

  He’d just pulled himself free of the wreck trying to help the little cop that he’d hit only to be attacked by this refugee from an Ozzy Osbourne video. Roland rose up like a riled grizzly, catching hold of the mailman’s stick arms, and tried to throw it to the ground. It was like trying to uproot a three-year-old maple sapling.

  He felt the mailman’s arms tearing at his skin. It felt like he was wrestling a belt sander with his face.

  Fuck that, buddy.

  Roland leaned into it, using his weight more than any fighting technique. He twisted and leaned until he heard a snap, like a gunshot. All right, he’d broken one of its arms off.

  He waved the arm like a
poorly made battle axe.

  “How’d you like that, Pinocchio?”

  The scarecrow just stood there. The poor fucking thing looked more baffled than hurt. Roland nearly laughed.

  “C’mon, splinters. I’ve cut bigger men than you down to size. Let me whittle on you some.”

  That did it.

  The scarecrow charged and knocked Roland to the ground like the trucker was nothing but a baby, spilling his lucky hat to the ground. Then the little cop climbed in to the fight. He had a gun in his hand, but when he tried to pistol whip the thing, he might as well have been waving a chunk of soggy lasagna.

  “C’mon, shoot the bastard,” Roland shouted, still trying to catch hold of the scarecrow’s legs.

  “I’m out of ammo,” the cop yelled back.

  He shifted the pistol and tried for another swing. Now Roland could see it was one of those plastic guns. The damn thing was probably light as a ghost. Light or not, the cop clipped the scarecrow on the back of its skull and it didn’t like that one bit. The mailman scarecrow hauled back and rammed the splintered end of its arm directly into the cop’s heart.

  “Sweet Jesus on the cross,” Roland shouted.

  The shattered arm may have been stuck in someone else’s chest, but Roland still felt phantom pain from when Carmen stuck the kitchen knife between his third and fourth rib. He felt the cool burning of blood pumping, the wound blossoming like a burning rose sprouted from out of his gut.

  Even in the darkness Roland saw how pale the other man’s face went. All of a sudden, like his blood was sucked into the scarecrow’s arm stump. It was shock or worse. The man dropped the gun, pressing his hand to his chest like he was swearing allegiance. The gun fell to the ground, right beside Roland’s lucky hat. Roland had a choice, hat or pistol.

  He grabbed the gun.

  He figured it’d be luckier than the hat.

  He snapped the trigger a half dozen times, like he hadn’t believed it was empty.

  “Help me,” the cop said.

  The scarecrow just stood there, arm still shoved to the hilt in the guy’s chest.

  Damn it.

  Roland wanted to help, but what the hell could he do?

  He shook his head. He picked up the guy’s walkie-talkie in his right hand and ran. The mailman scarecrow ignored the running man. He flung Earl over his shoulder like a sack of Christmas mail, and headed back into the field.

  Roland was glad to see him go.

  He kept on running, far enough to find a hole to go to gopher into. He crawled in, hunkered down, doing his best to drag his ass and ankles after him. He wiggled down in the dirt.

  The hole felt good, like a foxhole in a war movie.

  He yanked dead grass and twigs onto himself for camouflage.

  There was one good thing about being as small as he was.

  It made for a hell of a hider.

  He lay there in the dirt, staring at the walkie-talkie.

  Should he call someone?

  Just then the walkie-talkie squelched, three times.

  “Shh,” Roland admonished, but he knew what it meant.

  Three shots of a rifle, three blasts of an air horn, three squelches of a portable radio.

  A call of distress.

  SOS.

  Someone come save our sorry asses.

  “Save yourself, sucker,” Roland whispered.

  He pulled the dirt around him a little snugger and hunkered down to wait out the storm.

  CHAPTER 34

  Metamorphosis

  * 1 *

  Maddy figured it was Earl doing all the screaming.

  She didn’t blame him one damn bit.

  What the hell had brought him out here? Charging through the window like an action hero.

  Now he was out there in the darkness all alone, or worse yet not alone.

  Damn it.

  Those scarecrows would make short work of that little cop.

  Maddy fingered her wound. She felt the hay working patiently into her blood and nerves like the roots of a thirsty willow.

  What the fuck was she becoming?

  She tried to say it out aloud, what the fuck, but the words felt awkward, like her mouth was forgetting how to speak. Maybe it was; maybe whatever she was becoming communicated through thought or gesture. Maybe she was turning like flower petals, toward the whim of sun and rain.

  She tried again.

  “Fuck you, Vic.”

  He didn’t bother telling her to shut up.

  Not in so many words.

  “Save your strength, Maddy,” he ordered. “You’re going to need it for the growing ahead of you.”

  He turned his back, ignoring her completely. She couldn’t say she blamed him. Hell, she couldn’t say much at all. Given the facts, her complaints were pretty weak. She was integrating into the new master race, quicker than cabbages grow slugs.

  “Hey,” she said weakly. “Here come your first casualties, General Tatterdemon.”

  Mailman Marvin limped towards them, dragging Earl.

  The mailman had lost an arm, somewhere along the way.

  No.

  There it was.

  The remainder of Marvin’s missing arm was jammed into Earl’s chest, and it was twitching and jumping like a crazy snake.

  Marvin had already got even.

  He’d torn both of Earl’s hands off.

  The little police officer had nothing left on the end of his wrists but a pair of mangled stumps.

  * 2 *

  Marvin never knew such pain in his entire short, new life.

  Not in his old life, either.

  The fact was, he couldn’t remember a time he’d felt anything hurt like this.

  He yanked his arm out of Earl’s chest. Even that hurt. He held the severed arm out like an offering to the Tatterdemon who took the arm in the stumps of his hands and tacked the broken ends together. He closed his eyes and brought the yellow glow to life, hoping to patch the pieces together, only nothing happened.

  Maddy watched with careful interest.

  The Tatterdemon had limits to his power, it seemed.

  It wasn’t much, but it was good to know.

  For a moment he was Vic again, and Vic was never good at fixing things.

  He even turned to her, like he always did when he couldn’t think of what else to do. She would have laughed, but her mouth still didn’t know how to work itself around all of those complicated ha-ha moves that a good belly laugh required.

  “Marvin’s hurt, damn it,” the Tatterdemon said.

  “Can he feel it?” Maddy asked. “The way he is, I mean.”

  “He’s human, isn’t he?”

  Maddy looked dubious.

  “I’m not sure he ever qualified,” she answered truthfully. “Matter of fact, I’m not certain any of you are even in the running.”

  The Tatteredemon backhanded her.

  “Hit me again,” she snarled. “You did it before, and look where it got you.”

  “Yeah, but I came back.”

  “So does mildew, that don’t make it human.”

  “He’s hurt, damn it.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” she asked, just staring at him and waiting for an answer.

  “There’s glue in the workshop,” the Tatterdemon said. “I want you to fix up his arm.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

  Vic held his stick arms up.

  “My hands are too clumsy. No thumbs.”

  “Ha!” she managed to blurt out.

  “Please,” the Tatterdemon said. “He’s in pain.”

  Damn it.

  He was almost begging. It was kind of sad. She wanted to help him, just out of habit. After all, they’d been married a long time, and this was the first time he’d ever acted like he really needed her.

  Hell.

  What was she thinking?

  “That’s proof you’re not human, right there,” she said.

  Vic raised his arm to strike he
r. He stared at the stump where his hands should have been.

  “Hmmm.”

  She could see he was thinking about something.

  “Snap a couple of branches off that old dogwood tree,” he told her. “Good gnarly ones.”

  She did so.

  It was easier than defying him.

  “Now shove them into Earl’s wrist stumps.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “I’m not strong enough.”

  He touched her.

  She felt that yellow glow, burning in her veins. She felt herself growing stronger. She felt as if she could uproot the entire dogwood tree with one good yank. The power of the straw was burning deep inside her. By now she just wanted to see what she was capable of. The branches slid into Earl’s wrists just as easily as passing a warm knife through a block of butter.

  “Let’s see what that does. It ought to fix this whole hand problem.”

  Without another word he slammed Earl’s body into the dirt.

  Then he turned to Marvin.

  “Take her to the workshop and get yourself fixed up.”

  Maddy was strong enough to fight back, but she allowed Marvin to guide her. It didn’t hurt for Vic to think she was still beaten.

  Vic placed Marvin’s arm in Maddy’s hands. She stared at Marvin the scarecrow, standing pathetically in front of her. She wondered just how in hell God would go about managing a patch job like this.

  Only God wasn’t talking that much -- so Maddy went to the workshop to figure things out for herself.

  * 3 *

  Keep moving, Roland told himself.

  Think nice thoughts.

  He hated crawling. He was too used to the high road and high cabs. This felt like he’d devolved into a state of primeval wormhood. It reminded him too much of Carmen. It reminded him of the way she used to knock him down and laugh at him and call him loser, and worse.

  Keep moving.

  His belt buckle plowed into the dirt, shoveling wads of gray leafy mulch into his trousers.

  He’d never feel clean again.

  Ha.

  Now that was a hell of thing to worry about. Crazy killer scarecrows, dead men walking, and he was wondering about his laundry.