Tatterdemon

by Vernon, Steve

  Earl cradled Wilfred’s body. It felt oddly smaller, as if there was something missing. He knew that Wilfred was dying. He could feel the life force slipping away. He saw that blank, middle-ground stare that men grow just before they let go.

  He closed the shields of his eyes.

  He let his mind dwindle down into nothing but a compass needle.

  Then all at once he knew what to do.

  He carried Wilfred out to the abandoned squad car. It was easy, opening the door. His new hands were strong. With a mother’s tenderness, Earl lowered Wilfred’s body into the squad car and parked him behind the steering wheel. He’d been Earl’s co-pilot in life. It seemed only proper to grant him this one last dignity.

  Wilfred moaned when Earl moved him.

  No doubt the big man was busted all to hell inside. Earl twisted the tightly about the man’s ribs, hoping it would work as kind of a mechanical, high-caliber splint.

  Then he stood and wondered if maybe he shouldn’t just kill the big man outright.

  Hell, it might be a mercy.

  Wilfred moaned slightly.

  No.

  Let him die here, on his own.

  This was where the big man belonged.

  Earl threw a few more bales of hay over the car.

  With luck, no one would find it.

  He turned and headed back to the house.

  Halfway there he knew something had changed.

  The screaming had stopped.

  * 5 *

  The Tatterdemon knelt in front of Marvin, touching the splintered remains of the mailman’s legs, now torn and strewn upon the ground.

  He pushed his power through them.

  Hell.

  The best he could create was a mess of twigs and straw and bones, twisting aimlessly in the dirt like a handful of tiny blind snakes.

  “Damnation.”

  He caught Maddy by her hair with one hand, and Marvin by the arm with the other. He dragged the two of them from the barn and out to the field, to the burying ground, where he laid their bodies side by side.

  Marvin gamely tried to grab for Maddy’s tit with one remaining limb.

  The Tatterdemon gently slapped the mailman’s hand away.

  “You had your chance and you fucked it up,” the Tatterdemon told him. “There’ll be no do-overs today.”

  Even though he’d given her to Marvin, he was still pissed at the mailman for having the nerve to take him up on his offer. He rolled Maddy a little further from the mailman’s reach and surveyed the two.

  She moved slightly, in her unconscious state.

  “Still moving. You’re a gamer, Maddy. You always were. But how the hell am I going to tie you down, hey?”

  He could always bury her. The field would be glad to have her, but he still wanted her to be different, not like one of them. He watched her body breathing. The tendrils of grass that he’d planted in her, twined up from her stomach and chest.

  Then all at once it hit him.

  “I know what to do,” the Tatterdemon said.

  He reached down and strummed Maddy’s straw tenderly. It seemed almost like foreplay, like he was juicing her up for a good hard fuck. With each movement the straw coaxed out a little longer, like the Tatterdemon was making clay spaghetti.

  When it was long enough he used the straw to root Maddy to the ground.

  “There,” he said. “You can ride the border for now. Part earth and part air, until I decide where I’m going to put you.”

  He stood up.

  “Sleep tight,” he said.

  The straw sucked itself in tighter, binding her like a thousand tiny tent pegs.

  He turned, cocking his head towards what was left of the mailman.

  “Now what the hell do I do with you?”

  The big stallion, King, whickered softly from the dirt where he was growing.

  And then it hit him.

  The Tatterdemon had a hell of an idea.

  “Waste not, want not,” he said with a hungry grin. “You horse around with my wife and I’ll horse around with you.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Vic Grows Himself a Cavalry

  * 1 *

  Night fell like a meat axe.

  Maddy woke up slowly.

  Her lungs felt like they didn’t want to bother breathing. She tried to raise herself, only she couldn’t.

  She was pinned to the ground like a staked-out tarp.

  What the hell?

  She struggled, but the rooted straw tightened its grip. She twisted her head as much as she could. She saw she was buried in a small forest of strangely carved horse legs.

  The two horses.

  Vic must have put them down too. He’d made them into whatever the hell he’d become.

  A Tatterdemon.

  Just where was he going to stop?

  Bluedaddy sat beside her, whistling a slow, soft, tuneless pucker. If he was going to do anything besides sit and watch, he gave no sign. The undead hooves clattered restlessly.

  What if one of them should uproot and accidentally step on her?

  Would it kill her?

  Could it?

  “Are you awake sunshine?”

  It was the Tatterdemon talking.

  “My eyes are open,” she said. “I ain’t so sure about the rest of me.”

  They were all out there. Headless Harold and his nameless wife. Helliard and his brother Duane. Poor Earl. There was no sign of Marvin.

  Maybe he didn’t grow back.

  Maybe they could be killed.

  She didn’t see any sign of Zigger, either. Maybe they ate him. Did they need to eat anything?

  How human were they?

  She couldn’t tell.

  “There’s a lot of us, isn’t there? I grow them fast. In another week we’ll own the state. A month after that every adjoining state. Every graveyard will give me fresh reinforcements, every morgue another boost of buddies.”

  “Are you fixing on ruling the world, Vic?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s a hell of a lot of planting to do,” she pointed out. “The field will only hold so much.”

  He looked at her.

  “Just where do you figure this field ends, Maddy? At the fence? At the forest? At the Atlantic Ocean? I don’t really think so. I think that this field is a part of everything. I believe I can grow these suckers anywhere I care to plant them.”

  His eyes bored into her, and for the first time since she’d woke up, she felt honest-to-God fear.

  “So what do you think, hey?”

  What’d she think? It sounded like a pocket-sized Fuehrer scheme, but when he grinned she still saw the asshole she’d fallen in love with and married. Hell, she still kind of liked the bastard, in a poor, halfwit-cousin kind of way. A fry-pan concussion doesn’t go far enough in burying familiarity, but she sure wasn’t letting him know that.

  “What do I think? I think you need to take a crap, because the shit’s starting to run out of your mouth and ears.”

  The Tatterdemon grinned at that.

  “You can crack wise all you want,” he said. “Just so long as you don’t go anywhere.”

  “How the hell can I? You’ve got me trussed out like a fresh-shot deer.”

  “Funny you should mention that. The boys been hunting, and look what they dragged in.”

  She twisted her neck as best she could. She saw now that Helliard and Duane were standing over a white-tailed stag.

  She wondered if the beast had heard them coming. If it had even smelled them. It might be to a deer that these Tatterdemons smelled like nothing more than a heap of tasty moss.

  “Look at the points on that bastard,” the Tatterdemon said. “Damn shame it ain’t hunting season, hey?”

  He seized the deer and slammed it into the ground, like a tight end spiking a successful touchdown.

  “Hell, Vic. Are you going to grow yourself a zombie Bambi? You’re getting to be a bit greedy, aren’t you?”

  “Why no
t?” he snapped. “I’m the Tatterdemon. I’m the Straw King.”

  Then he grinned. He was feeling good and she figured he didn’t really mind cutting her a little slack.

  “You just have to be creative, is all,” he went on. “Hey, I bet you this is how God started out.”

  She laughed at that. Hell, it was funny in a sacrilegious kind of style. But she turned it around so she was laughing at him, instead of with him.

  “Vic, you are so full of shit the flies must love you. We ought to spread you on the lawn to help the grass grow green.”

  It was true enough.

  The flies buzzed about him like a walking dung heap.

  “DON’T CALL ME THAT.”

  He raised the stump of his hand high above her.

  Had she gone too far?

  “If you’re going to finish me, get it over with quick.”

  He slammed his fist into the dirt beside her. She felt it through the grass, like he’d yanked on her hair. She winced. He seemed to have trouble pulling himself free.

  “Looks like the dirt wants you back, Vic,” she said. “Maybe you ain’t really back from the dead forever, hey?”

  For a half a slow heartbeat, nobody spoke.

  “Maddy, you always did think you were so shit-hot smart. Maybe I ought to give you back to him,” he gestured behind him.

  She twisted around, hurting herself, trying to look at what he was pointing at.

  “He’s got a real set of equipment now, doesn’t he?” the Tatterdemon said.

  Maddy got herself a good look.

  It was Marvin.

  Horse’s ass that he was, Vic made him all horse. Like some goddamn mismatched centaur. Marvin’s torso was rooted atop the gelding’s zombified carcass like the turret on a tank. Only it wasn’t a gelding anymore. Vic had added a grotesque dick of firewood, roughly the size of a baker’s rolling pin.

  Marvin gnashed his teeth.

  The wooden dick flexed threateningly.

  “How’d you like another go-round with him, hey?”

  Maddy said nothing.

  The Tatterdemon turned to his followers.

  “You are my army,” the Tatterdemon said. “My holy cavalry.”

  He turned to the field.

  “But I need more.”

  He raised his arm like he could call lightning.

  “I need more, old woman. Do you hear me? I need more!”

  And from out of the field they came.

  All the men and women who’d died screaming in that hell-field so long ago. All those men and women who’d tried to teach death to a witch who couldn’t die.

  They rose from the dirt, their bodies dank with age, tatters of moss and filth dangling from their stick-like bones.

  “This is my army!” the Tatterdemon shouted. “This is my army!”

  They gathered about him like a maypole, trailing bits of straw and root, tangling it about their dead dark lord. Maddy couldn’t believe the stink. It was like every single one of the tombs of the entire world had simultaneously opened up and cut one thunderous fart.

  But Vic wanted more.

  “We need more bodies. We need reinforcements. We need replacements. We need a goddamn second-string team here, folks. And you’re going to have to go get them. Bring them back to me. We’ll plant them all in the field.”

  He sent them all out to hunt.

  The scarecrow army slowly shambled towards Crossfall.

  All except for Earl, who had somewhere else to go.

  CHAPTER 40

  Decorating the Church

  * 1 *

  Wendy Joe and Momma Clavis worked through the night, clambering up ladders and passing up long strings of Christmas lights. By the time they were done, the old church was gaudy enough to have been thrown out of Las Vegas.

  Ivan grudgingly worked beside them. He didn’t like being here. He didn’t like using his stock up. He didn’t like being held at gunpoint, losing sleep, and he sure as hell wasn’t crazy about the company he was keeping.

  He sensed something coming.

  He kept looking at his watch like he was late for a date. He didn’t know it, but the part of him that remembered what it was like to run from thunder could smell the scent of death on the wind.

  Ivan was a hard man, grown harder through years of loneliness and a life wrapped around a ten dollar bill. Some called him tight. Some said he was mean enough to skin a louse for its hide and tallow. Some swore he was cheap enough to steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.

  But mean or not, he smelled blood on the moon.

  “This ain’t right.”

  “What ain’t right?” Wendy Joe asked.

  Ivan looked about, with a quick nervous weasel darting movement of his head.

  “What we’re doing. Desecrating a church like this.”

  “We’re not desecrating,” Momma Clavis chimed in. “We’re illuminating. Like them books the old monks painted. We’re making it bright enough to draw the good spirits in.”

  She stared into the dark corners, and for a moment Ivan swore he heard the whisper of a soft sweeping broom.

  “The good ones, and the bad,” Momma Clavis softly continued.

  “And we got you for the ugly,” Ivan said. “But that still doesn’t make this right.”

  Wendy Joe waggled the gun his way.

  “Doesn’t seem to me you got much say in the matter, Ivan.”

  He blew his breath out in half a laugh.

  “I don’t think you’d kill me, Wendy Joe,” he said. “I don’t think you’d even shoot me. The fact is, you’re no murderer.”

  “No, but I might let on to Wilfred what you did to his wife.”

  That hit home.

  “He’d shoot you for sure,” Wendy Joe assured him.

  Then the clerk in Ivan’s soul resumed negotiations.

  ”I don’t think you’ll do that. Not with what I know about you now. About the way you feel towards Wilfred.”

  “There’s no law against loving a man, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t. But it might make it awfully hard to keep working at the station, with Wilfred knowing how you felt. He’s old school, our Wilfred is. He wouldn’t put up with no hanky-panky funny business. Not to mention all this voodoo hoodoo hen crap. Nope, I think you’re buffaloed. So I’m walking out of here. There ain’t nothing you can do about it.”

  He turned to the door.

  Wendy Joe didn’t like to see him go.

  There was darkness out there tonight. She wasn’t sure how much of it her conjuring had brought, and how much of it had just been waiting for the right moment in time. Either way, she didn’t want Ivan going out in that darkness alone. He was a shithead, but a human shithead, and she owed him that.

  “You ain’t gonna like what you find out there, Ivan Barrand,” Momma Clavis warned. “There’s lots of things coming back that should’ve stayed down dead. Your sins are gonna come back at you and haunt you. You won’t like it, once you find them.”

  Barrand laughed.

  He was scared enough to shit silver dollars, but he kept on going.

  He opened the door and walked out of church.

  “Now there’s a man walking straight up fool hill, if I ever seen one,” Momma Clavis said.

  Wendy Joe nodded.

  “It doesn’t matter, Momma,” she said. “We don’t need him anymore. We’re pretty near done around here.”

  Momma Clavis opened her mouth to answer. Then she stopped. She set down the hammer she was holding, looking as pale as ten dead ghosts.

  “What’s the matter, Momma?”

  Momma Clavis waited a long moment before she spoke.

  “They’re coming now,” she said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  “You aren’t even wearing your bones, Momma. How are you going to know what they feel like? All you’re feeling is the heebie-jeebies.”

  “I’m wearing them, I own them girl. Possession is nine-tenths of creation -- and if you’re Momma
says they’re coming, then they’re coming like flies to meat.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “Them. The critters of the night. The ones who have died and the ones who don’t know how to stay dead. They’re coming, and we ain’t halfway ready.”

  She turned to her daughter.

  “We got to buckle to, Wendy Joe. I got to get my spells ready, and you got to slow them down, honey. There ain’t no other choice. This town is laid out before them like an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Well, first off, I need you to fetch me some liquor from the basement. I can smell a case of it.”

  “This ain’t the time for drinking, Momma.”

  “The liquor ain’t for drinking, believe you me,” Momma Clavis said. “And secondly, I think you’re gonna need a bigger gun.”

  * 2 *

  Roland stared from the heart of the field.

  He was waiting.

  His mind told him what he waited for.

  His memory told him what he’d see.

  Anything else was a bald lie.

  “Carmen?” he whispered.

  From out of the darkness a horse trampled past him, bony and formless, like Gumby’s pal Pokey. Only Pokey was made out of friendly orange clay. This horse looked to be made out of Popsicle sticks and moldy meat -- kind of like something Ed Gein might have built, if he’d had a streak of Andy Warhol flowing through his brain.

  Roland pushed himself down deeper into the dirt, seeking what cover he could find as an army of dead nightmares shambled past. It was like being caught in an all-night zombie drive-in movie house.

  He longed for an intermission, but it kept on coming.

  He felt like the lone survivor of a massacre. There was nobody left alive out there. Not a dog. Not a mosquito. Not even a maggot.

  Certainly nothing human.

  All that were out there were the straw men.

  And he heard them coming closer.

  He pushed down farther into the dirt.

  He heard voices down there in the dirt. Like a woman, calling from far away. He heard the voice of a woman, and a booming like thunder behind her. The voice of something even more powerful than her.

  Powerful and angry.