The Blood You Owe

by Ullery, D. S.

  She lifted the phone and stared at the screen. To her surprise, several tiny signal bars were still visible at the top of the display. She had reflexively assumed there would be some sort of horrible moment where she realized the phone was either broken or there was no signal. After all, the night had played out like something out of a horror film.

  This thought shattered her momentary reverie and she remembered the strange, scary sounds she had heard as she fled the field, as well as the bizarre tremors which had shaken the ground under her feet.

  Jessie bolted upright, her ankle complaining furiously at the sudden movement. She ignored it as best she could, and pressed her palms flat against the earth and pushing herself further away from the field. She continued like this for the next few minutes, using her arms to slide her body backward up the opposite embankment, keeping her legs extended in front of her as she dragged herself to the edge of the of road.

  Once her backside was firmly planted on asphalt, Jessie rested, keeping her eyes locked on the very spot where she had exited the sugarcane. Everything was quiet now, but so it had been when she had first ventured in to retrieve her phone.

  A quick scan of the area revealed she was absolutely correct to be alert. The small passage she had created had somehow healed itself. Cold fear wormed its way into the pit of Jessie’s stomach when she saw the unbroken wall of plants spanning the horizon in front of her. What she was looking at was impossible. Yet here it was in front of her, a stark reality she couldn’t dismiss.

  “What the hell are you?” she muttered at the crop. “Why the hell are you?”

  She decided she didn’t care. That was a question to be answered another time, if at all. All that mattered was she had gotten free and needed to call for help. Jessie swiped at the phone screen, bringing up the menu and searching for the tiny telephone icon. A small shudder crept along her spine when she noticed a thin streak of blood staining the display, no doubt courtesy of her injured hands. An unsettling confirmation of what she had endured.

  Jessie tapped the screen and the digital keypad appeared. She began to dial 9-1-1. She got as far as pressing the nine before the sound interrupted her.

  It was a low, rhythmic sound, like the pounding of a bass drum. It was distant at first, but seemed to grow louder with each passing second, as if it were drawing nearer. Oddly, even as the volume increased and the noise became more audible, it still seemed to Jessie to be muffled.

  Movement directly across the ditch captured Jessie’s attention. She couldn’t make out what exactly was happening; only that it was transpiring within the field. That was the only prompt she needed.

  Get your ass out of here! Jessie thought frantically. Crawl if you must, but just fucking GO!!

  She dragged herself into the middle of the road. As she pulled out of the culvert, the shaking of the sugarcane erupted into a terrible cacophony and she caught a glimpse of some terrible commotion at the bottom of the slope. In that moment, it looked as if the sugarcane stalks were dividing, making a passage for something tunneling toward her under the earth.

  Praying she hadn’t just seen what she thought she had, Jessie chose to brave the pain of a potentially broken ankle in favor of putting more space between her and whatever ungodly horror was happening here. She flipped over onto her stomach, wheezing as the unforgiving surface of the highway slammed against her chest. She pushed herself up, drawing her good leg underneath herself and using it to struggle to her feet.

  A dissonant slithering rattled behind her and her feet exploded into twin sons of excruciating pain. Jessie’s legs were forcefully yanked out from under her. She hit the ground hard, barely having time to throw her hands up to protect her head before she had the wind knocked out of her by the impact.

  Dazed, she found herself unable to struggle as she was dragged back toward the field. Jessie made a feeble attempt to clutch at the surface of the road, but she was too weak from her ordeal to offer any real resistance.

  She felt the blacktop transition to damp soil and grass beneath her. Now she was tumbling at an angle, sliding down the slope as whatever it had pulled her along. Jessie’s body struck the dip at the bottom of the culvert like a rag doll, spinning to one side, causing her to flip onto her back as she was yanked up and over the other side of the ditch.

  She summoned enough strength to lift her head, managing to stare down at her feet as she was dragged back into the sugarcane. What she saw killed even the dimmest hope that she might make it out of this alive.

  Hundreds of thin roots were returning her to the heart of the field. Not individually, but working in tandem, having wound themselves together into two long, serpentine appendages. The tips of these monstrosities had pierced each of her ankles, burrowing through bone until they erupted from the soles of her feet like bloodied hooks.

  Almost as malevolent was the unexplained presence of a narrow path, cut through the heart of the crop. The soil along this mysterious corridor was broken by a fresh fissure Jessie knew hadn’t been there earlier. This was how it had come for her. The crop. It wanted something from her and had reached out from under the earth to snatch her back.

  All movement abruptly stopped.

  It was that quick. One moment she was being unceremoniously pulled though the field, the next she was still, her body hurting so ferociously that she dared not move.

  Jessie lay there, staring up at the stars. Her breath expelled in short, shallow gasps. A thousand thoughts fought for some semblance of coherence behind her eyes, but only one took hold. It came in a single blast of absolute clarity, surprising her with its undeniable and inescapable truth: I love you Peter. I’m so, so sorry.

  Then whatever reasoning she was still capable of was reduced to mental static, crackling and dying as her psychological capacity for coping faltered and died.

  She couldn’t -didn’t want- to move. An eerie peace had overcome her. She was content to stay where she was and fade out. Even when Jessie heard footsteps approaching, each step sending the crackle of dead stalks and dried leaves echoing through the field, she refused to move. At some point over the past few minutes, she had drifted from terror to tranquility.

  A figure appeared above her, slowly leaning into view, blocking out most of the stars. Deep blue eyes framed by angular ebony features regarded her coldly. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Jessie was tired and struggling to keep her eyes open.

  She slipped into oblivion, carried on one last breath.

  THE MAN STANDING OVER the dead woman watched with a combination of contempt and satisfaction as her body was drained. The multitude of roots fed her to the ground, serving as a conduit, pulling the fluids out and delivering them to the rest of the field. The magic at work was dark and terrifying, but he always found it fascinating.

  And rewarding, he thought, his eyes lighting with the old anger as he stared at the woman’s corpse. Memories of seeing his father and uncle cornered in a tool shed as it was set afire arose and his jaw clenched. He had been a boy when so-called “civilized” people like this woman and her boyfriend had murdered the two men and scores of others. He felt nothing but disdain for her even as her body withered, flesh and bone sucked dry as the plants fed.

  “Enough now,” he spoke. “Finish what remains. The other one will be returning soon.” He turned without pause, striding along the path the way he had come, directly into the heart of the field

  The sugarcane seemed to speak, the leaves of the plants trembling in unison. Reeds rubbed together across the field, producing a mournful sigh which lifted to the heavens. The snakelike appendages appeared, sending clumps of soil splattering across the dead husk of Jessie’s body.

  As they wriggled out of the earth and wrapped themselves around her remains, proceeding to pull them down into the earth.

  ***

  PETER WAS SCARED.

  As the Grenada rolled south, he peered into the overgrown field to his right. He was trying to pinpoint the spot where the car had gone off road earl
ier. In six passes, he hadn’t managed to locate it.

  The sugarcane tapered off, dwindling to flat fields of grass, seas of emptiness beneath the moonlight which filled him with a deep sense of isolation. With a grim sigh, he slowed the vehicle to a crawl and spun the wheel, turning back for drive-by number seven.

  Examining the tangled crop as he drifted north again, Peter thought of Jessie. A shiver ran through him. He couldn’t understand what had happened. He had been furious when he had driven away, the last thought spared for his fiancée being a silent hope she would get lost and die out here. His mind had been occupied with dark imaginings concerning how he would slowly torture his ex-best friend Tim before killing him.

  This homicidal inclination had continued until he had cleared the crops, arriving at the outskirts of the little town. The sight of the darkened, shuttered buildings holding court on what Peter assumed to be the main avenue of the tiny community just north of here had snapped him out of his angry delirium. He hadn’t known there was a village out here. Curiosity had intruded on his fury.

  As he had driven down the street, guilt had slipped in in place of his rage. After the guilt came the fear.

  Jessie was out here alone. He had caused her harm and abandoned her to the night, in the middle of nowhere. Images of her had swum behind his eyes, no longer the vile creature he had beheld inside the car, but the intelligent, affectionate companion whose wit and natural beauty had attracted him to begin with.

  There, as he sat behind the wheel of the Grenada, driving through some unknown hamlet, Peter had realized he could forgive her for what she had done. It would be easier to work through it than try to spend his life without her.

  But would she forgive him?

  His only thought from that moment was of finding her. He had to go back.

  As he drove along the same stretch of highway now, Peter found himself questioning where all that rage had come from and why it had dissipated so rapidly. It hadn’t only been him, either. In their entire relationship, Jessie- though strong willed and by no means submissive enough to ever back down from a perceived threat- had never struck him in anger. True, the circumstances had been extraordinary, but she had been acting peculiar prior to the accident. Her earlier behavior, when she had seemed so uncomfortable and fidgety, was the moment it all seemed to start.

  No, Peter corrected himself, that’s not quite accurate. It was when you pulled off to the side of the road to ride out the storm.

  Before he could follow this line of thinking further, a flicker of light glittered peripherally. Peter hit the brakes; peering through the window in the direction he had seen the flash. He stared into the field, not quite believing what he was seeing.

  Directly across the drainage culvert from where he had stopped, a narrow path split the sugarcane. It was symmetrical, not ragged, as if someone had deliberately cleared the way. The passage extended east, culminating at the door of what appeared to be a tiny shack. The soft, yellow glow of artificial light poured through a single window.

  Peter was bewildered as to how he could have missed the clearing after having driven past this same stretch so many times. Had anyone else been present and of a mind to ask, he would have sworn on his life it hadn’t been there before. He was positive he hadn’t seen any lights shining in the field, either.

  He supposed he might have overlooked the opening if the lights in that building had been off. There were no street lamps out here and he hadn’t packed a flashlight, forced to rely upon his eyes and the moonlight. Even under the lunar glow, there were still many shadows. Add that he had been preoccupied with the question of why they had both gotten so angry and it was as good an explanation as he could come up with.

  Besides, he told himself, it doesn’t matter. Jessie likely found that shack. Even if she didn’t, whoever is in there might have seen her. You must check it out either way.

  It was a cold, efficient truth. Peter sighed, killing the ignition and opening the door. He began to climb out of the car when an idea occurred to him. He slid back behind the wheel, closed the door and started the Grenada.

  He reversed, swinging the car around so the front grill was pointing in the direction of the shack. He turned the key half way, shutting down the motor and switching on the headlights. He hit the high beams. The twin lamps blazed to life, dispelling the gloom enveloping the path ahead.

  Stepping out of the vehicle, Peter took a small leap across the ditch, easily clearing the depression. Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves (headlights or not, he hated the idea of walking around in this field at night), he began to approach the tiny structure.

  As he walked, Peter took note of his surroundings. The soil was tightly packed, lacking any substantial degree of give beneath his weight. The sugarcane plants were all neatly trimmed back along the edges where the crop met the vacant spoil, standing at attention in lines that could not possibly be natural. The entire area had the look of something carefully tended to.

  Yet he found himself unable to shake the feeling this had not been here only a few minutes earlier. Even with the undeniable reality of it exposed beneath the glare of the headlights, Peter was having difficulty accepting he had missed this during all those previous passes.

  The small structure loomed before him, the golden light pouring through the window striking the ground at a skewed angle, creating oblong patterns. His time for pondering the oddity of the circumstances was over.

  An aging door with chipped, white paint and hairline cracks stretching across its face in spider web patterns was set to the left of the window. Hoping whoever was inside would be willing to open it to a stranger in the middle of the night, Peter stepped forward and knocked.

  Nothing happened.

  Peter waited for what he felt was long enough to not seem intrusive, then knocked again.

  The interior light blinked off, the solitary window going dark.

  Peter stood there, staring at the exterior of the shack blankly in the glare of the headlights. He had absolutely no idea how to react. He hadn’t heard anyone moving around inside, not had he seen any shadows move past the window.

  He was weighing out whether he should knock a third time or force the door open and check inside, when shadows began to twist and elongate across the face of the tiny structure. A brilliant flash illuminated the surface of the window, momentarily causing it to blaze like a flash of lightning. A low rumble growled across the field from somewhere behind him.

  Peter slowly turned his head, staring over his shoulder, the twin swords of the Grenada’s brights briefly capturing the expression of terror creeping across his face as the headlamps shifted direction, pushed at a sharp angle into the night sky.

  A sea of tangled sugarcane had begun to replace the path between where he was standing and his car. As he watched, the empty area was filled by plants groping for one another, pulling themselves together by root and reed, the sound of their movements in the gloom a chilling verification that Peter was being cut off.

  Out by the culvert, the familiar, pale squares of the headlights lurched toward the sky. They had risen several feet and were beaming at an angle into the clouds. The lights abruptly tilted to one side, as if the car itself had been turned over and were lying with the driver’s side door pressed against the ground.

  The grumbling he had heard earlier returned. It was deeper and more vibrant now, equal parts sensation and sound. The car continued to move in concert with the increased intensity of the noise. The dual beams of light rose even higher, suggesting the vehicle was now balanced on its rear bumper.

  Peter stumbled back, unintentionally colliding with the door to the shack, mesmerized by the unnatural display unfolding in front of him. Raw fear – deeper than any he had ever known- took command as the realization of what was happening sank in.

  The car was being swallowed. He didn’t know how or why, but the earth had opened beneath the automobile and was consuming it. Even as this clarity came to him, Peter could hear the c
rack and grind of metal being twisted and broken in the distance. There was a sharp report as first the rear axle snapped, then the front. With each new sound, the headlights- now firing straight up into the sky like a pair of spotlights- dropped another foot.

  The sound of glass shattering ricocheted down the lonely highway as the windows caved in. Moments later, the transmission collapsed with a thick crumpling and a high-pitched expulsion of steam from the decimated radiator. The headlights snuffed out before the sound had subsided.

  On ominous silence descended on the area. Even the hideous rustling had ceased.

  Peter was so frightened he could not bring himself to move. His back was still pressed against the door of the shack as he cowered beneath the full moon. He was unable to take his eyes off the crop, nor erase what he had just seen.

  The door opened behind him and he stumbled. Catching his footing, Peter spun around; startled to discover a tall, thin Haitian man staring back at him. Frightened by this unexpected apparition, a sharp, terrified bleat escaped him and he scrambled back a step.

  Peter scarcely had time to register the icy eyes regarding him in the moonlight before the rustling began again. This time it rose to a crescendo as it raced toward him.

  His arms and legs exploded in pain as he was mercilessly pierced by a thousand writhing roots. They forced their way beneath his skin, carving trenches through muscle as they burrowed along the length of this body.

  All Peter knew was pain. There was no sense of his own doom, no longer any capacity for comprehending the horrifying nature of his death. All he could do now was suffer.

  The combined force of the tendrils winding underneath his skin lifted his body off the ground. Peter hung suspended like a marionette, his flesh rippling as the intruders greedily drank from him.

  A thick, wet tearing sound filled the air and his arms separated from their sockets, revealing hundreds of roots wriggling from the exposed meat of the shoulder like worms. Seconds later, his midsection ruptured, his legs dropping to the earth as if they were made of rubber.