For a second, Adam didn’t know what to say. He just sat there, gazing into the darkness, trying to convince himself that he wasn’t sleeping. There was something out there after all, and it was lumbering through the moonlight not fifty yards away.
“What the hell…?”
The figure walked with a pronounced limp, its right leg dragging behind it like a wet noodle. Every now and then it would stop, scratch its overly developed pectorals, and gaze into the crescent moon as if monitoring its position in the sky. Then its shoulders would sag and it would amble further down the street, one… step… at… a… time.
“What is it?” Alex murmured.
“I… I don’t know,” was Adam’s only response. “Maybe someone got into a car accident.”
“And burned all the skin off their body?”
Alex was right. The figure really didn’t have a layer of protective tissue covering his muscles. It was like all his skin had been burned off his body, leaving a twisted, mangled knot of muscle tissue behind. Adam swallowed. There were certain spots on the creature’s thigh and calves where you could see his bones, encased in gooey, dripping mounds of muscle and fat. It was repulsive. Simply and completely repulsive.
“I told you there was something out there.”
Alex pressed his face against the glass. Never once did his eyes leave the mangled apparition, following its progress with a mixture of shock and horror. Until a second figure appeared, that is. And this time it was closer, passing right in front of their motel window.
Adam eased away from the glass. He didn’t know if the creature could see them, but he didn’t want to take any chances. This one was different from the first. It didn’t possess the same gross muscle mass, but it was equally as hideous. Where its eyes should have been were empty sockets, and tongues of juicy pink flesh hung from the hollows. It wore a pink cowboy hat and broken aviator sunglasses.
“Alex, get away from the glass.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
Adam pulled his son onto the bed just as the creature looked their direction. He didn’t think it could sense them, but he didn’t want to take that chance.
For a moment the creature didn’t move. It just stood there, twitching its ruined, bloody nose. Then it turned away and shambled into the darkness, taking refuge in the solitary autumn night.
“What were those things?” Alex whispered.
“I don’t know,” Adam whispered back. “But I sure as hell don’t want to find out.”
Chapter 11
Adam didn’t sleep much that night. His waking mind wouldn’t let him. The images of those horrible, desiccated creatures kept coming back, repulsive in their clarity. He tried to forget the naked muscles and the bloody eye stalks, but of course that was impossible. No one could forget such a terrible sight. Not for a good fifty years, at least.
The room was bright when he opened his eyes. Bright red, that is. The billowing smog gave the sunlight an eerie crimson tinge. Adam wondered if there was any place in town not affected by the toxic residue. He sure hadn’t seen any when he drove through yesterday.
Alex twitched in the bed beside him. His son had fallen asleep with his headphones clamped over his ears. Music had always helped him sleep better.
Adam sighed. Even though he couldn’t see how incessant guitar solos and pounding snare drums could possibly aid a good night’s sleep, he’d decided not to argue. The kid had been through a lot over the past few days. First he’d been pulled out of his school, his home, his native city, and then dragged halfway across the United States to a town roughly the size of an acorn.
Talk about a sudden change.
Adam slunk across the room, trying not to rouse his son. The doorknob was cold, and the bathroom door squeaked when he opened it, but otherwise his mission was a success. Leaning over the outdated ceramic sink, he tried to rouse his weary mind. The guilt of running away from Chicago was bad enough, but now he had to worry about misshapen, primordial beings wandering the streets.
God, what a mess.
Maybe he should pack up and leave right now. But there had to be a logical explanation for those things. There had to. Besides, he didn’t want to give up so soon. Not after he’d sacrificed his career and his marriage to start a new life—a better life—for his son. No. This time he was going to stay put. He was going to plant his feet and draw a line in the dust.
This time, he was going to face his fears. No more running.
The sound of hot water squealing stirred Alex from his dreamless sleep. His mp3 must have run out of batteries during the night; the sound of that ragged Swedish rock band no longer rang in his ears.
“Dad?”
Alex sat up but his father was nowhere to be found. He was hungry, very hungry. He had been ever since they arrived. The scent of fresh bacon wafted into his nostrils and made his head spin. He hadn’t tasted warm bacon since last summer. His mom used to make it all the time. She would fry up a pan of eggs and bacon before he went to school, and kiss him goodbye as he ran out the door. How he missed those days. Back then his mom and dad had gotten along just fine. Why did everything have to change?
Alex yawned and rubbed his eyes. That delicious bacon smell was making his mouth water. He didn’t want to wait for his dad to get out of the shower, so he decided to go investigate by himself. Hey, the man had said they were entitled to free meals, right?
Opening the door carefully, he crept out into the hall. The scent was stronger now, and he could almost taste the greasy meat in his mouth.
He was so famished.
Wandering through the lobby, he finally found what he was looking for. There was a silver door marked kitchen in bold black print. That word had never sounded so sweet before in his short life. He wanted to throw the door open and ransack the place like a Viking warrior, but considering he stood little taller than the average gnome, he decided that wasn’t a good idea.
Inside the kitchen, Mr. Albert stood over the stove, frying pan in hand. There were strips of frozen bacon on the counter and broken egg shells in the trash. Alex’s eyes grew wide as dinner plates. The man must have read his mind.
“Why, hello there. What are you doing up so early?”
Albert addressed him without even turning around.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Alex replied. “There was something outside last night.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes.”
Alex slipped into the room and sat down at a long bar. The stools were tall, and he had to struggle to get on top of them, but his stomach was the one running the show. It would do anything to get its meal.
“I’m sorry. I have no idea who would be wandering the streets at such an ungodly hour.”
Albert moved the frying pan over the burner, and the luscious sound of butter and fat and egg yolks sizzling crackled in his ears. He still hadn’t turned around, and Alex was beginning to wonder whether he had eyes on the back of his head.
“How old are you?” Albert asked. His voice carried a slight Southern accent.
“Nine and three quarters,” Alex said. “I’ll be ten next month.”
“How nice. I had a boy who was your age once.”
“Really? What happened to him?”
Albert’s back stiffened. “He… he died,” he said finally. “There was cancer. In his brain. He died a week from his eleventh birthday.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex murmured. “But at least he’s in heaven now. Isn’t he?”
The man laughed. “Heaven? There is no heaven. Only death. That is the nature of mankind, to suffer. And when it is time for the suffering to end, we die.”
“My dad says when we die, our souls go to heaven.”
“Indeed. I suppose we shall all find out one day.”
Albert turned from the stove. He held two plates, one overflowing with eggs and the other with bacon. The two aromas mixed together and created a scent that God himself could not equal.
“Are you ready for your break
fast, or should I serve it to the dogs?” he smiled.
But Alex didn’t have a chance to respond. His father burst through the door, hair wet, wearing a blue towel around his waist.
“Alex? Alex, thank God I found you. I was so worried.”
“Oh don’t worry, Mr. Pritchard. Your son and I were just having a friendly conversation,” Albert intoned, setting the two plates on the bar. “Would you care for some breakfast?”
Alex didn’t wait for a response. He dug his fork into the heap of bacon and shoveled it into his mouth, chewing as fast as he could. His stomach had a mind of its own.
“Your son has quite an appetite, Mr. Pritchard. If you want, I have some fresh fruit in the back. I could slice up some cantaloupe and watermelon for you.”
Adam just stood there for a moment, regaining his breath. When he’d jumped out of the shower and found Alex missing, he’d gone into panic mode, his parental instincts overruling whatever common sense he had. Now he felt ridiculous, running through a motel in a bath towel, fretting for no reason.
“No, no I’m okay,” he said. “You two can eat. I’m going to go dry off and put on some clean clothes.”
“Suit yourself.” Albert sat down beside Alex, pushing a strip of bacon between his teeth. “In fact, if you would like to explore the town further, I could be your guide. There are a couple homes for sale just outside of town, and I dare say you haven’t explored the shops along Main Street yet.”
Adam opened his mouth to kindly reject the offer, but the look on Alex’s face made him stop.
“Please, dad?” Alex said between mouthfuls of egg. “This motel is boring. I want to go out and explore. Please?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Adam began. He didn’t completely trust the upstart motel owner, and he didn’t want to spend a whole day with him. Let alone half an hour. Then he remembered everything Alex had been through. The kid deserved a fun day for once; a day to forget all his problems and recline in childhood bliss.
After a moment of contemplation, Adam conceded. “Fine,” he said with his arms crossed. “We can go on a tour of the town, but only on one condition.”
“What’s that?” Alex said excitedly.
“That you will take a shower before we leave. You’re starting to smell like a life-size Tina Tinkle doll.”
“Deal.”
“Good. Now I’m going to go put some clothes on. You two enjoy your breakfast.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Albert called after him. “I have everything under control.”
~*~
“Wow,” Alex breathed as he waltzed down Main Street, soaking up the sights like a sponge deprived of water. His eyes flicked left and right, through filmy shop windows and past decrepit bike racks. He was so overwhelmed by the town’s rustic, if somewhat dilapidated, beauty that he overlooked the gentle wash of hills behind them.
Adam, on the other hand, was not so enchanted. The horror of the past night was still fresh in his mind, and even the cleansing massage of warm water could not purge their effects. He felt on edge, like a cat backed into a corner, surrounded by vicious, salivating dogs.
“See that, dad? Do you see it?” Alex chortled, springing to his father’s side like a bungee jumper on only so much rope. “It’s a hardware store, dad! A hardware store! Now we can build that tree house I’ve been wanting!”
“Hold your horses, cowboy,” Adam said, shielding his eyes from the harsh golden sun. “It looks abandoned to me. The windows are dark and there’s a closed sign on the door.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Albert murmured. “The owner, Mr. Hanson, is getting old. He can’t take care of the place like he used to, and sometimes he forgets to open shop. I’m sure he won’t mind if we take a look inside.”
“Awesome!” Alex whispered, doing a little dance in front of the wood-and-brick storefront. His youthful life and vigor stood out in sharp contrast to the dead, lifeless windows that gazed out at him, and the lethargic, almost depressing breeze that yawned through the rafters.
“Are you sure it’s okay?” Adam asked, aware that he was starting to become the embodiment of Professor Killjoy, the evil scientist who sucked the excitement out of everything he touched. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“It’s perfectly all right,” Albert reassured him. “We have been close friends for a long, long time. In fact, you could say that we share a bond closer than friendship. Or so to speak.”
Adam nodded. Although what he was nodding at, he couldn’t be sure. Maybe he was nodding because he was still uncomfortable, because the images of that terrifying, deformed man kept crawling into his subconscious and poisoning his every thought.
“Is there something wrong?” Albert asked, as if reading his thoughts. He stood next to the shop, fingers curled around the brass doorknob, with a look that fell somewhere between sympathy and indifference, the boundaries of which Adam could not tell.
“It’s nothing,” he said dismissively. “I keep thinking about last night. That’s all.”
Albert frowned, letting his fingers slip off the battered handle. “I’ve encountered this before,” he said. “Out-of-towners show up, spend a night, and then start seeing things, feeling strange. It’s called altitude sickness, and it can play tricks on your mind. The good news is that it will clear up in a couple days, after your body adjusts to the elevation.”
“Altitude sickness, huh?” Adam murmured, trying to decide whether that explained the ghastly things he’d seen. “That would explain the lightheadedness, I guess. But can it really… spark hallucinations?”
At that, Albert’s eyes grew very sober. “The human mind is a complex organ,” he said quietly. “It can be twisted, manipulated, to achieve… unorthodox results. Who can say what is possible in that little head of yours.”
Adam nodded, unable to break away from the man’s mesmerizing gaze. He felt naked beneath it, as if his innermost being had been stripped away and laid bare, leaving a wrinkled, dry husk of a man behind. Just when he thought he could bear it no longer, Alex spoke up.
“Hey, are we going to go in there or what? I’m frying out here.”
Adam smiled, finally able to regain some semblance of intellectual control. “He’s right,” he said. “What are we doing, standing around out here, when we could be inside in the shade?”
“As you wish.” Albert eased the door open like a magician peddling his wares.
Almost immediately the scent of sawdust and mildew rushed into their nostrils. It was a pungent odor, thick and damp, like no scent Adam had ever encountered. It clung in his nose and latched onto the roof of his mouth as if it were a cave-dwelling spider, the kind with spindly legs and hairy, white bodies.
“Potent, isn’t it?” Albert intoned, making his way toward the front desk.
An old-style cash register sat on the counter, but it was surrounded by dust. Heaps and heaps of thick, cottony dust. And it was open, to boot. A stack of sun-bleached five dollar bills languished inside, quietly moldering in their makeshift graves.
“Wicked!” Alex exclaimed from the next aisle. Somehow he’d managed to slip into the store, past Albert, and into the paint supply section without Adam noticing. Then again, he was a wily nine-year-old boy, so that wasn’t too unexpected.
Once, when he’d been seven, he’d gotten lost at the zoo and it had taken Adam almost an hour to find him. Alex had wandered off because he’d wanted to see the penguin exhibit, and his mom and dad had been “taking too long” at the gift shop.
The thought almost brought a smile to Adam’s lips, but then he stopped. That was back when he and Saundra were still together, back when they were still a family. Before she’d gone and slept with another man, before she whored herself out to a stranger and turned her back on her little son.
Before she walked out of their lives.
Adam took a deep breath—one he instantly regretted—and walked toward the back of the store.
The flooring consisted of black and white ti
les, all scarred and battered and ravaged by time, and a curious red liquid that seemed to be spread haphazardly across them. The entire store was in a similar state of disarray. Tools were thrown this way and that, nails were spread in the corners, and long wreaths of cobweb dangled from a ceiling littered with broken fluorescent lights.
“This place is a mess,” he heard Alex say from a couple of rows down.
“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” Albert replied. “It looks like old Hanson hasn’t been taking very good care of it.”
“Maybe he should hire help,” Alex said matter-of-factly. “Someone to clean up and get everything organized.”
“That’s a fabulous idea,” Albert chuckled. “The only problem is that he’s an independent old goat, and he doesn’t think he needs help. He thinks he can take care of everything on his own.”
“Oh,” Alex intoned, even though Adam had a sneaking suspicion that he didn’t know the meaning of the word independent.
To tell the truth, Alex and Albert got along quite well. They seemed to share a kind of mutual understanding that Adam couldn’t comprehend; a kind of platonic bond that he’d severed from humanity a long time ago.
After he’d been betrayed by the love of his life.
Adam shook his head and leaned against a rack of sandpaper, trying to banish the uncomfortable memories. It was an effort that ultimately failed. While he leaned against the cold, steel frame massaging his forehead, he heard something, a sound that appeared to originate from a dark aisle at the very back of the store.
“Hello?” he said, abandoning his post to investigate the phenomena more closely. “Is anyone there?”
Between a box of wood screws and several cans of WD-40, he spotted a figure, or what he thought was a figure, to be more precise. It was bathed in shadow, and scuttled erratically down the aisle as if propelled by a pair of crab legs.
“Alex?” he called. “Is that you? If it is, you better come out of there. This isn’t funny anymore.”
His inquiry was met by silence. Whatever was back there, sheathed in darkness, obviously didn’t want to be disturbed.
Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation Page 12