by Nick Cutter
Thunder crashed overhead like massive two-by-fours being thwacked together. The hair at the nape of the boys’ necks stood at attention. A string of blood trailed under the closet door. The ventricles of Max’s heart ran with ice at the sight.
“You’re bleeding,” he whispered.
“Am I?” Tim did not sound surprised or alarmed. “I don’t know where it could be coming from. I don’t feel it at all. Now go on, Max. Get down to the cellar. Go, hurry.”
* * *
EVIDENCE LOG, CASE 518C
PIECE A-17 (Personal Effects)
Lab journal of Dr. Clive Edgerton [Original audio recording, pre-transcription]
Recovered from SITE A (220 Makepeace Road, Summerside, Prince Edward Island) by Officer Brian Skelly, badge #908
Test subject 13. Alpha series.
CHIMPANZEE (Marshall BioServices; breeding batch RD-489)
Age: 3 Years, 7 months. Female.
Subject’s pre-test weight: 105lbs
/Date: 09.22/
OBSERVING RESEARCHER: DR. CLIVE EDGERTON
09:00
I introduced the modified hydatid [Genetic Recombination Y8.9-0] via injection. Subject is alert and energetic. Enjoying the use of its large enclosure with swing bar, reflective steel mirror, and splash pool. Subject is evidencing no overt signs of distress or pain.
10:00
Subject state is unchanged.
11:00
Subject state is unchanged.
12:00
Subject state is unchanged.
01:00
Subject state is unchanged.
01:54
Subject displaying signs of agitation. Pacing its enclosure. It issues a series of vocalizations . . . shrill doglike yips.
02:13
Pacing continues. Vocalizations climb to a high and possibly pain-stricken pitch before softening. Subject is scratching its posterior aggressively. Blood observed in small quantities.
03:09
Subject has consumed all foodstuffs placed in its enclosure. Approximately 5lbs peeled and diced fruit, 1lb dried mealworms, 5lbs root vegetables. Equivalent to 10% of subject’s total body mass consumed in less than forty minutes [02:29-03:07]. Subject failed to masticate food fully. Subject choked on fibrous tubers. Subject regurgitated said tubers. Shortly thereafter subject consumed them again.
04:00
Subject continues to scratch its posterior aggressively. More blood. Half a pint lost? Possible risk of anal fissure.
05:00
Scratching has largely stopped. Prominent indentations under the ribs indicate rapid weight loss, although at perhaps a slightly slower rate than that registered in both rodent and feline test subjects. Weight loss still far too rapid to have any practical applications.
05:23
Visible folds of skin now gird the subject’s pelvic brim. Eyes sunken into skull. Tissue degradation evident. Subject’s demeanor placid and seemingly unconcerned. Hydatid has narcotizing effect? [post-edit note: see H. diminuta transfection case study]
05:45
A large hydatid has extruded from the subject’s anus. Approx seven inches long. Significant tissue damage, swelling, and redness evidenced at extrusion site. Possible anal prolapse. Subject appears to be in no evident physical pain. Hydatid now approx one foot long as of recording . . . two . . . now two and a half feet.
05:50
Subject paces enclosure. Movements sluggish and hesitant. The extruded worm—now five feet long—is trailing from subject’s anus. Hydatid is thicker toward midbody: diameter of a medium-gauge electrical cord.
05:52
Hydatid has fully extruded from subject. Approx ten feet in length. It lies in a cochlear coil on the bare cement. Subject seemingly unaware it has passed the worm. Eyes vacant and glazed. Bumping into walls. Visibly disoriented.
06:12
A bloody froth emits from subject’s mouth. Thick, creamy lather resembling milk foam. Subject evacuated froth with surprising force—hard enough that a copious quantity of blood simultaneously ejected from subject’s nose. [post-test update: investigation of froth showed it to be teeming with dwarf hydatids] Subject is seemingly unaware of trauma.
06:30
Definite prolapse of anus. Severely hemorrhaged fistlike section of lower colon plainly visible. Dark purple in color. Subject exhibiting no evident signs of distress.
07:00
Subject lies down heavily on nest of hay and sleeps.
08:00
Subject continues to sleep. Rapid aspiration of lungs.
09:00
Subject continues to sleep. [post-test update: upon consulting microphone rigged to pick up ambient sound inside the enclosure, a definite squirming sound could be heard between 09:13 and 09:16. Hypothesis: sounds emanating from within subject?]
10:10
Subject wakes suddenly. Eyes quite wide. The visible white portions are networked with burst blood vessels. Subject is in deeply agitated state. Clawing at face and body. Subject is gibbering uncontrollably.
10:12
Subject calm again. Hangs listlessly from play-swing.
10:14
Subject sits in play pool. Splashes water upon self apathetically. Water tinted red with blood from bodily wounds. Subject appears to be developing skin-surface lesions. Swellings noted on chest and arms and legs.
10:16
Subject pulling off hanks of fur. Subject staring at said hanks in a stunned and remote manner.
10:17
Subject is ingesting own fur. Subject is tearing off fur from arms and stomach and neck. Subject is ingesting more fur. There is blood . . . quite a lot of blood.
10:42
Subject steps out of pool. Moving with great difficulty. Ribs very prominent now. Outline of subject’s skull visible beneath thin skin. Much fur has been forcefully removed from body and face.
10:43
Subject staring into steel mirror. Subject appears to be examining itself. Subject is pawing the mirror gently.
10:45
Subject attacks mirror. Pounding it with great force. Subject leaves bloody prints on the steel. The subject is screeching and screeching and smashing fists into the mirror as if wishing to shatter it, shatter the reflection.
10:46
Subject moves away from mirror. Subject lies on concrete of enclosure. Subject emits low groaning sounds. Also hissing sounds.
11:00
[Dr. Edgerton exits observation booth. Dr. Nathan Erikson undertakes observational role]
11:15
Subject . . . suh-suh-subject is . . . Jesus. Jesus Christ . . . subject . . . subject is . . . subject is not a subject anymore. I mean, holy God, is she? How could she be? Subject is more bone than anything. Subject . . . Jesus, you poor thing. You poor fucking thing, you . . . I just . . . Clive, you bastard . . . this is . . . oh, Jesus. She’s trying to move. Subject—she is—she is trying to crawl over to something. I don’t know what . . . what the hell is that? Subject is—oh, Christ. Oh this can’t . . . subject clearly has a prolapsed anus. This is where the worm—I can now identify the coiled shape on the floor as a worm—where the worm must have exited her body. The subject is making her way toward the worm. The worm is long and white and greasy. The subject’s body and face are covered in lesions. They look like very large and terrible bee stings. Some are the size of golf balls. The subject’s mouth is opening and closing on nothing. Nothing. She’s bitten through her tongue. The subject is hissing—I do not believe she is making this noise herself. I believe the worms are making this noise somehow. The subject has made her way to the evacuated worm. The subject is toying with the worm . . . flicking at it with a finger . . . the subject . . . oh dear God, dear God don’t do that . . . oh . . . oh . . . the subject is—the subject is eating the worm. The subject is shoving the worm into her mouth. Force-feeding herself the worm. She’s eaten the worm. She’s eaten it all. It’s gone. The subject is mewling. Drowning-kitten sounds. She is mewling and lying stil
l. Her lesions are pulsating . . . I think I can see . . . fuck no . . . Jesus. Jesus Christ—CLIVE!
11:23
[Dr. Erikson exits examination booth. Dr. Edgerton reenters]
11:24
Lesions appear to be breaking open all over subject’s body. Hydatids must have escaped the intestinal walls. They entered seams between pockets of subject’s muscle strata. They are presently exiting from fissures eaten through the subject’s swollen skin. They are smaller than the worm that exited the subject’s anus. Threadlike specimens.
11:28
Several large-ish specimens are breaking through the flesh of subject’s cheeks.
11:32
Subject drags itself to a standing position. Subject is reeling around clawing at self. Subject is tearing off swathes of infected flesh. Stark bone visible at subject’s left elbow. Subject seems largely unaware of bodily devastation.
11:36
Subject is tearing a long strip of flesh off forehead. Eyes nearly white. Cataracts? Ocular occlusion? Blood running freely. Subject making no sounds to indicate pain or suffering. Methodically peeling flesh. Several white threads can be seen wriggling in mangled tissue of forehead.
11:40
Two large hydatids break through the lens sacs of subject’s eyes. Worms infested the corneal vaults. Three-inch hydatids, quite thick, protrude from subject’s eye sockets, wriggling rather animatedly.
11:42
Subject blindly consuming own stripped flesh.
11:47
Subject immobile. Worms braiding into each other on exterior of subject’s body. Engaging in procreation?
11:50
Subject exhales heavily. Chest does not rise again.
11:55
Subject assumed deceased. Worms continue to exhibit movement, although not so energetic.
12:15
Exterior worm movement has ceased. Subject’s lower abdomen continues to pulse faintly.
12:33
Large quantity of worms evacuated from subject via anus and mouth.
12:40
All organisms deceased. Bio-decontamination and disposal processes initiated. Test concludes.
Test duration: 15 hours 40 minutes
Subject’s post-test weight: 44.3lbs
Total weight loss: 60.7lbs
* * *
21
BEFORE THE boys entered the cellar, a fight broke out.
Ephraim ransacked the cabin cupboards for candles and a pack of matches. He picked nimbly around the dead man, whose limbs had stiffened at tragic angles and whose body now shimmered with fruit flies.
Newton dashed down to the fire pit and grabbed their sleeping bags. He cast a fearful glance at the ocean. The water was in complete turmoil. With the wind whipping about, Newton’s feet didn’t feel entirely moored to the earth anymore.
He raced around the side of the cabin to meet the others. Ephraim had thrown the cellar doors open, the plywood trembling in the wind. Snapped spiderwebs blew like the flimsiest lace over the yawning entryway. The fermented smell of the earth rose up. The sky had gone the color of a blood blister—only a weak sickle of light shone into the cellar. The first few dusty wooden steps were visible, but the remainder of the staircase was overtaken in pooling shadows.
Ephraim pointed at Kent. “Sorry, man. You aren’t coming down with us.”
Kent’s face somersaulted from shock to rage to speechless terror at the prospect of being left alone outside.
“You can’t . . .” He offered his hands in a wordless plea. “You can’t just—”
Ephraim crossed his arms. “You did it to the Scoutmaster.”
Max saw the strange electricity running behind Ephraim’s face: cruel voltages quivered his skin.
“That was different,” Kent said feebly.
“I don’t think so. I think it was smart.” Ephraim’s hands spanked together in a polite golf-clap. “Very smart.”
“We can’t just leave him out here, Eef.”
Ephraim wheeled on Newton. “You want to get sick next? Want to be sneaking off in the middle of the night to eat everyone’s food?”
“I’m sorry,” Kent whispered.
Ephraim cupped a hand to his ear. “What’s that? Can’t hear you.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears brimmed in the cups of Kent’s eyelids. “Just let me come down with you. Please. Don’t leave me out here.”
“No can do,” Ephraim said coldly.
“What are we going to do, Eef?” Max said, gesturing to the storm set to make landfall. “Just leave him?”
“He can go back inside the cabin,” said Eef. “It doesn’t matter n—”
Which was when Kent tried to bull past Ephraim into the cellar. Yesterday that confrontation would have been a coin flip. Now it was pitifully one-sided.
Ephraim pushed Kent—an instinctual move. His face wrenched with quick revulsion as he shoved Kent aside as one might a squirming sack of beetles. Kent went sprawling.
Newton said: “Eef, come on . . .”
Ephraim’s lips curled back. “Stay out of this, you fat shit.”
Kent crawled up and came again. For an instant, it looked as though Ephraim would step aside—this tormented expression came over him, stuck between confrontation and flight—but his rage took over. He punched Kent in the belly. His fist sunk into Kent’s gut in some terrifying way: it was as if Kent’s body shaped itself around Ephraim’s fist, welcoming it. Kent’s breath came out in a gust.
“Stay down,” Ephraim told him.
Instead Kent dragged himself up. He looked like some bloodless creature risen from his grave. His face had the pallid sheen of a dengue fever victim. The other boys ranged into a silent ring around Ephraim and Kent, the same ring that seems to form organically in school yards whenever a fight’s brewing. Rain now pelted down to soak them through to their skivvies.
Ephraim struck out impulsively at Kent. If his mother had seen him, she’d have noticed the quick, reckless anger in his eyes—so much like his father.
Eef’s fists zipped out and back rapidly, as if repelled by Kent’s yellowed flesh. In short order, he’d raised a goose-egg on Kent’s forehead and bloodied his nose and smacked him squarely in the left eye—a wound that would blacken nicely before long. Kent held his arms out, fingers squeezing and opening convulsively. His skin tore like crepe paper, stretched too tight over the flinty outcroppings of his face. Blood leaked out of his wounds only to be rinsed away by the heavy rain.
Kent kept trying to speak as Ephraim’s fists peppered him. “I’m sorry,” he said penitently, his voice unheard amid the peals of thunder. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry . . .”
Ephraim’s fist sheared off Kent’s jaw. Blood leapt through the electrified air. Ephraim’s knuckles had split open. It went on forever, and then it stopped. Ephraim’s eyes remained wild, his nostrils dilated.
“You can stay out here with him,” he told Newton. “Your choice. But he’s not coming down.”
The hardest-hearted part of the boys realized that Kent had earned this. If you call the tune, you also have to pay the piper when he begs his due.
“We can’t just leave him, Eef.”
Ephraim rounded on Newton. “We can, and we’re gonna. Or I’m gonna—and Max, too. And Shelley, I guess.”
Shelley was already halfway down the cellar stairs. The other boys remained in the pelting rain, lightning spearing over the trees. Ephraim turned to Max.
“Come on, man. Let’s go.”
Max fell in behind Ephraim . . . then he checked up. Dark clouds massed overhead, throwing them into a sudden night. Lightning lit the twitching contours of their faces.
“Eef, man,” Max said. “Can’t we at least find someplace safer for him?”
The two boys stood face-to-face, shirts rain-stuck to their chests, heartbeats shivering their skin. Something passed between them—a subtle split, an inelegant falling away. Maybe it was necessary, maybe not, but it happened. Both boys felt it.
&nb
sp; Eef said: “Do you have any idea how stupid you are, Max?”
“Don’t lock the door,” Max said, holding Ephraim’s gaze. “We’re coming back. Come on, Kent.”
THREE BOYS skirted the cabin’s edge. The wind blew with such gale force that it elicited shrieks from everything it touched. The logs shrieked as it lashed at their unflexing angles; the trees shrieked as gusts threatened to uproot them from the ground; even the grass shrieked—a thin and razor-fine whistle—as the wind danced between every blade. Rain needled down so hard that they felt as though their faces and arms would be sliced open: like walking through a storm of paper cuts.
Kent stumbled, arms outflung. Max reached impulsively—Newton’s hand manacled his wrist. Newton shook his head and mouthed: You can’t touch him.
Kent dragged himself out of the muddy stew, his boots slipping—they looked too big all of a sudden, his feet swimming in them—and followed Newton to the woodpile. It was rung by stacked cinder blocks and edged by trees; the wind wasn’t quite so bad.
“Stay here!” Newton had to holler to make himself heard.
Kent knelt, too tired to argue. The boys folded the woodpile tarp and settled it over Kent’s shivering shoulders. Earwigs and millipedes and wood lice and deer ticks squirmed from the dead logs, startled by the storm. Crawling and twitching through the mud, they skittered up the tarp. Max reached out to brush them away, revolted at the thought of touching them but even more revolted at the possibility they’d alight on Kent’s skin and hair. Newt grabbed his hand again.