Jubal looked down to see that he was a good fifteen feet above the rocky channel of the creek bed. It would be a hard fall – high enough to break bones – but he knew he had to chance it. He reached above him and sawed at the sinewy vine. It finally parted with an anguished wail.
The farmer found himself flailing through mid-air, the hard ground rushing toward him. He tried to pitch his weight forward and managed to land halfway across a soft bed of moss. His other half, shoulders and head, landed in the coldwater stream, striking sharply against sandstone and flint.
"Hellfire and damnation!" cursed Jubal. Shakily, he rose to his feet, feeling a mite dizzy. He put a hand to the back of his head. The palm came away coated with blood. Tenderly, he prodded and probed, but determined that he had escaped a concussion. All he had suffered from his fall was a few cuts and abrasions.
He left that spot in the branch, putting as much distance between himself and the willow grove as possible. Soon, he found the footpath again and continued on his way.
It was mid-afternoon when Jubal came upon a clearing in the woods. Sunshine peeked through the leaves of a massive oak, dappling the clover and wildflowers with patterns of shadow and light. His heart pounded with a mixture of indignation and rage as he spotted a blanket rolled out beneath the tree. Beside it lay the jeans, shirt, and drawers of a man. On the other side were the garments of a girl. A pink blouse, black skirt, and white cotton panties. Jubal recognized them as belonging to his daughter.
The folds of the blanket were rumpled and askew. At one point, a dark oval of fresh blood stained the fabric.
At that moment, Eddie Goodman's pale white ass was the furthermost thing from Jubal's mind. If the boy had been standing before him at that instant, he would have probably shot him dead on the spot.
Jubal was about to leave, when he noticed a mound of freshly turned earth a few yards away. Curious, he walked over and found a naked foot protruding from the soil.
Tossing the shotgun aside, Jubal got down on his hands and knees. He clawed at the earth, afraid that it was his daughter that lay in the shallow grave, but knowing in the back of his mind that it wasn't.
It wasn't long before Jubal had unearthed enough to identify the remains as those of Eddie Goodman. The partially devoured remains, that was.
Something had torn out most of the boy's abdomen, feasting on his innards before concealing him in rich, dark sod.
Jubal rose to his feet, afraid. "Lenora!" he called out. "Girl, where are you?"
He received no response at first. Then a voice replied.
"Papa."
Muffled.
"I'm here."
Beneath the ground.
Jubal looked down, just as the clover surged upward. Raw earth boiled through the greenery and, with it, a pair of pale white hands laced with black fur. The fingers were twelve inches in length and tipped with curved nails the strength and color of gunmetal.
He stumbled backward as the hands grasped at him, searching. "Papa, where are you?" came the voice again, nearly obscured by dirt and stone.
Jubal scrambled across the clearing and found his shotgun. He stood and watched, horrified, as the mound of earth moved toward him, leaving a winding tunnel in its wake. "Lenora?" he croaked in disbelief.
It stopped at his feet. "It's so warm and cozy down here, Papa," she told him. "And I have friends. Oh, so many friends."
Jubal watched as the mound opened and Lenora appeared from the depths of a dark tunnel. Her pale body was covered with a coat of fine black hair and her teeth were jagged and sharp. At first he thought that her eyes had rolled back into her head until only the whites showed, but that was not the case. She had taken on the characteristics of the critter that had bitten her in the flowerbed. She was as blind as a mole.
"Oh, God… Lenora," was all that Jubal could say.
The girl smiled. Dark soil spilled from her open mouth, along with earthworms and fat white grubs. "I belong here, Papa," she said. "You were wrong. There is a better place."
Tears stung his eyes as he thumbed back the twin hammers of his double-barrel shotgun. "Lordy Mercy, child, I'm sorry…"
A hurt expression crossed Lenora's face as she heard the metallic clicks of the gun. "No, Papa… please."
Jubal lowered the shotgun, even as Lenora began to retreat into her earthen den. "I love you, daughter," he told her.
Then he fired.
That night, Jubal found it hard to sleep.
His thoughts kept returning to the awful thing he had done down in the foothills. After killing his own daughter, he had pulled her gunshot carcass from the mole hill and, along with the remains of Eddie Goodman, built a funeral pyre with dry brush and set it aflame. He had refrained from doing the simple thing and reburying them. There was too much of a chance of some animal or insect feeding upon their bodies and becoming… what? Something half human? The thought horrified him to no end.
Jubal had stood there and stared into the crackling flames. An urge had crossed his mind at one point… to dive into the fire himself and end it all. But he had Cassie and the boy to live for.
He thought about that as he lay awake in the darkness. The journey back to Hayes Ridge was the longest he had ever made in the forty-six years of his life. When he reached the cabin, he had found Cassie waiting for him. They hadn't exchanged words as he mounted the front porch. They simply fell into each other's arms and cried. He remembered burying his face in her shoulder. She had bathed while he was away, smelling of lye soap and powder.
It was a hard thing, lying there in the night, knowing you had murdered and disposed of your own child. The Burn had melted away the veneer of decency and goodness that had once divided the civilized from the uncivilized. In that clovered clearing in the foothills, Jubal knew he had crossed that awful line and joined the ranks of the latter.
He listened to the quiet sounds of the darkness. Cassie slept, exhausted, beside him. Across the room, Seth's breathing came in a shallow whistling sound.
What's to become of him, Lord? wondered Jubal. What's happening to my son?
An instant later, he found out.
Seth's breathing hitched violently, then stopped.
Jubal sat up in bed. "Seth?"
There was a long stretch of silence at first, then a noise that terrified Jubal to the depths of his soul. A horrible rending of flesh and crackling of brittle bones. Is something in here? he thought. Has something gotten in and torn into the boy?
But he knew that wasn't what was taking place.
The awful sounds echoed through the night for several minutes, then stopped.
"Seth?"
In the pitch darkness, the boy giggled.
"I can see you, Papa."
Cassie was suddenly awake. "What was that?"
Again, Seth giggled. It was a chilling sound, full of playful evil.
Hope sounded in Carrie's voice. "Seth? Baby… are you awake?"
"It ain't Seth," said Jubal. He reached across the nightstand for the kerosene lamp, fumbling to light it. It rested too close to the edge, however, and went crashing to the floor. The lamp shattered upon impact. Coal oil and shards of glass scattered across the floorboards.
Seth laughed at the sound. "Only darkness now. You can't see me… but I can see you."
Jubal leapt out of bed, cutting his feet on the glass of the lamp. He cursed as he groped through the darkness. He found the shotgun a moment later, leaning against the wall where he had left it.
A peculiar sound came then. Sort of like the whirl of a fishing reel when a catfish takes the bait and takes off into deep water. Jubal heard Cassie gasp and Seth began to giggle gleefully.
"Something's got a hold of me, Jubal!" his wife cried out.
Jubal reached across the bed. Sticky strands clung to Cassie like knitting yarn soaked in glue. Screaming, she grasped at the bedcovers as she was pulled toward the end.
"Come to me, Mama," Seth said in the darkness. "Come see your baby boy."
&nbs
p; Jubal thumbed back the hammers of the shotgun.
"No!" shrieked Cassie. "Don't shoot him!"
"I ain't gonna let him have you!" Jubal hollered back.
Jubal's eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, but still it was difficult to see. He could make out a dark form huddled on Seth's bed, but nothing like that of a ten-year-old boy. A slash of pale moonlight filtered through a crack between two shutters, reflecting off two glittering red eyes.
Cassie reached the end of the big brass bed. She clutched the railing tightly as the gummy cords pulled at her. Her knuckles grew white. Soon she would lose hold and be dragged across the floorboards… toward the thing on Seth's bed.
Jubal raised the shotgun to his shoulder and prepared to fire. The creature saw his intentions and, without warning, rose to the rafters, pulling itself upward with the same sticky substance that had snagged Cassie. What manner of creature has he become? wondered Jubal.
He peered into the darkness of the rafters, but could see nothing. Above his head, Seth snickered, scuttling across the rafters, clinging there like a…
Like a what?
Cassie wailed. She was no longer being pulled at, but was still entwined in the sticky mess that originated from the thing that had occupied Seth's bed. "Get it off me! Get it off!"
Jubal remembered Lenora's candle. He rushed to the kitchen table, found a sulfur match, and lit the wick. Pale light cast shadows throughout the room. He lifted it overhead, toward the ceiling. There was a shrill wrenching as one of the tin panels was torn from its moorings and cast aside. Jubal caught a fleeting glimpse of a gray-furred monstrosity pulling itself through into the night. Those mirrored eyes gleamed down at him in the candlelight. Then there was a child-like giggle and the thing was gone.
Shaken, Jubal ran to see about Cassie. He helped her shed the gummy strands, which were difficult to remove. Leaving her, Jubal approached Seth's bed.
The linens were soaked with blood. Several objects had been discarded and abandoned on the bed sheets. Things that had once been a part of their youngest son – the shriveled remains of his arms and legs, as well as his other eye, now rejected in favor of the one that had grown, unseen, in the cavity of his right eye socket.
"My children!" moaned Cassie. She curled up on the foot of the brass bed, her knees pulled tightly to her chest. "My poor babies!"
Outside, the thing laughed and skipped playfully around the front yard. And from the sound of it, with more feet than Jubal would have believed possible.
They sat at the kitchen table, drinking strong black coffee that Cassie had brewed earlier.
"You know I've gotta do it," he said.
Cassie said nothing. She simply stared into the dark depths of her china cup.
"I can't allow him to exist the way he is," he told her. "It… it ain't natural."
Cassie laughed. It was an ugly sound. "Natural? What is natural these days, Jubal?" She stared out the front door into the sunlight of early morning. "Maybe the Creator has started over. A new Genesis. Maybe in the scheme of things, we are the unnatural ones."
He didn't know what to say to her. Maybe she was right.
Jubal took his last swallow of coffee and got up. "I'm sorry… but it's got to be done." He picked up his shotgun and started for the door.
"You've killed our daughter," Cassie told him. "If you kill our son, then you've slain the love between us. I'll not cook your meals nor share your bed ever again."
The thought of Cassie's ultimatum disturbed him, but the thought of that thing outside – the thing that was partly Seth – disturbed him even more.
"I'm sorry," he said, then left the cabin.
He paused in the yard long enough to study the earth. The prints from the creature's joyful romp lay scattered in the dust. They were not the footprints of a young boy. In fact, he couldn't identify them at all.
From the direction of the barn and its outbuildings, echoed the sound of laughter.
Jubal clutched his gun and started forward, eyes keen, heart pounding. He passed the outhouse and the chicken coop, which had been empty since their laying hens had shed their feathers and grown shiny, blue scales and teeth like tenpenny nails. Jubal had killed the lot, then crushed the charcoal-gray eggs they had left in their nests. He still remembered the horrid smell of those inky black yolks as they leaked upon the hay-strewn ground, sizzling like a caustic acid.
He was nearing the smokehouse, when the giggling came again. So that was where it had made its lair. Cautiously, Jubal unlatched the door and swung it open.
Squinting against the darkness, he stepped inside, the muzzles of the shotgun entering ahead of him. He stood on the threshold for a moment.
Slashes of sunlight came from the uneven cracks between the boards of the walls and, within them, dust motes drifted lazily. With the exception of the salt troughs and the curing poles overhead, the structure was normally empty. But now its hollow was occupied by interlacing strands of that peculiar substance that had ensnared Cassie the night before.
It was a massive nest spun of silky fiber. A cobweb that stretched from walls to ceiling to earthen floor. And inside its spiral hung various victims. A tree squirrel, a jackrabbit, a couple of barn swallows. All stared at him with dead eyes. They appeared stiff and dried out, as though their life's fluids had been sucked out.
"Howdy, Papa," came a voice from a far corner of the structure.
"Seth," said Jubal. His hands tightened around the walnut stock and foregrip of the shotgun.
"Yes… and no," said the thing on the web.
Jubal watched as the thing slowly crept along the silky strands and into the hub of the nest. The only way he could describe it was as a hellish hybrid of boy and spider. The body and head seemed to belong to Seth; the torso and face were gray-skinned but still included the familiar freckles and moles he had once possessed. But that was where the resemblance ended. Its skull and back were covered with a coat of soft gray fur, as well as the eight gangly legs that had replaced his human limbs. As it swayed to and fro in the cradle of its massive web, the thing leered at Jubal. Insectile eyes revolved beneath contorted brows and curved incisors jutted sharply where Seth's youthful overbite had once been.
"I've been hunting, Papa," said the spider-thing. A gelatinous fluid, thick and yellow, dripped from its fangs, settling in poisonous beads on the heavy strands of the cobweb. "Look at all I've caught, just this morning. And I could catch more… much more."
Jubal wanted nothing more than to run from the smokehouse and leave the creature to its sordid doings. But he knew he couldn't. Not for his or Cassie's sake. And, especially, for the sake of poor Seth.
"I hunger, Papa," the thing said, slowly working its way down the web toward him. "Come, feed me."
Jubal centered the twin muzzles on the hideous face, wanting to see only the monster and not the child underneath. "I love you, boy," he whispered, then let loose with both loads.
As the husk of the dying creature sighed amid its web, Jubal stepped outside and secured the door. He went to the barn, took the five-gallon can of kerosene, and splashed some upon the graywood walls. Then he set the smokehouse on fire.
He was walking back to the cabin, his footsteps heavy and his heart broken, when Cassie met him midway in the yard. He opened his mouth to say something, when his wife slapped him savagely across the face. "We're finished, Jubal Hayes," she said with a finality that sounded like the thunderous clang of a burial vault sealed into place.
Behind them, amid the crackling of flames, came a pitiful voice. "Mama! Mama, help me… I'm burning!"
"Oh, God!" wailed Cassie. "He's still alive!"
Jubal grabbed her as she tried to run past him. "No… let it go."
"Mama! I'm hurting, Mama." The voice began to grow shrill and subhuman in nature; like a mixture of a cicada's reedy call and the high pitched chirring of a cricket. "Come to me, Mama. Please!"
But no matter how she struggled, Jubal would not release her.
"Damn you, Jubal!" screamed Cassie. She clawed at him, battered his face with her fists, bringing blood and bruises.
Inside the flaming smokehouse, the thing that was Seth screamed and, eventually, grew silent.
And still, despite her struggling, Jubal refused to let go.
After the deaths of the children, Jubal and Cassie existed apart.
They no longer lived as husband and wife, but as separate entities, treating one another with neither love nor hatred… only indifference. They occupied the mountain cabin like two ghosts haunting the same house, scarcely aware of each other's presence.
The summer passed and autumn arrived. The mountains rang with muted cries and a sad moaning as the leaves of the mutated trees turned color, then died. The changing of the season was no longer a natural thing for the vegetation on Hayes Ridge, but a mournful time of loss.
Jubal and Cassie no longer seemed to fret about their altered surroundings as they once had. The tragedies of Seth and Lenora had forced a grim acceptance upon them and they lived among the beasts of the forest, no longer fearing what the Burn had done to them, but merely taking it as fact. Even the monstrosities that their offspring had changed into no longer held the terror that it once had.
They spent their days in their own separate worlds. Cassie passed her time praying and fasting, huddled on the porch swing, reading her Bible. She took to wearing a heavy woolen coat and a knit cap over her head, not only to ward away the coolness of the season, but to conceal her own changing state as well. Her skin lost its leathery texture and its sun-baked bronze hue. In its place, the flesh smoothed and grew as pale as snow, and the pupils of her eyes changed from brown to a brilliant pink, like those of an albino.
Jubal spent his time outdoors, away from the farmstead. He roamed the Ridge, walking the deer paths and climbing the rocky cliffs unafraid, toting nary a gun or knife when he went. He had grown dark and sullen, neglecting to shave until he was bushy and bearded. His skin had grown coarse. The epidermis of his face and hands began to wrinkle and peel, the way flesh did following a severe sunburn. His eyes yellowed and the pupils seemed to narrow in a sinister, almost reptilian way. When he walked the mountains, the animals scurried away and avoided him.
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