Chapter 3
The Funeral of Jonathan Steele
Bobby
The weather was fair. Low humidity. Partially cloudy with a chance of precipitation later in the day. Perfect weather for a funeral in Houston, Texas. The summer had been uncommonly mild compared to most summers here. Breathing often felt like pulling in boiling water, hot water filling the lungs to the joints. The last few months was a nice reprieve. Nice…it was a horrible word to think at a funeral. But with so much loss and suffering, Bobby Weeks knew one had to count their blessings as they came, for whatever their worth.
Former Sergeant Jake Williams had been laid to rest two weeks ago, his parents had been there, among others, weeping, dressed in black. Veiled. His mother near fainted as one of the honor guard handed her a folded American flag. Many from his congregation showed, including some rather haggard looking elders. Maggie Smith was buried just last Friday, on what the Catholics call Sacred Heart. Her folks were there, just as Jake’s were, along with a few leftovers from her FRG days. And now, a sea of blank dressed mourners had gathered for yet another empty casket funeral, this one for Former Corporal Jonathan Steele. It was hard to get a good look through the crowd who massed together, all the black suits and dresses, but Bobby could see easily enough the brilliant American flag draped over the hollowed casket, readied to be lowered into the earth. The polyester cotton flapped in a sudden warm June breeze.
Children ought to be playing on a day like this.
But there was no sound of laugher in the graveyard.
Still lost in that sinkhole, Bobby mussed. How could they not find them? None of them. How? It was if the world swallowed them whole. Not a bone or shred of clothing. Nothing. Vanished. Missing. And now presumed dead.
Presumed…?
—Come on, Bobby. You know they’re gone.
You ain’t never seeing them again.
Bobby stumbled a bit in the breeze. His head felt chilled. He rested a hand on a nearby tombstone belonging to one Rudolf Barker, CPL U.S. Army. World War II. October 12, 1922 - December 7, 1999. Above the name was a plaque. An American flag cut from bronze and stamped with the stars and stripes. Hard. Polished. Cold.
Click. Click. Click.
He could still hear them, those horrible things with red bulbous compound eyes. Talking to him. They still did, in his dreams. There, he walked some abysmal plain of golden wheat. The horrid house from Jotham stood like some sentinel in the distance, watching him. Waiting. For what? He knew not. The house was gone. Everything was gone. His friends were gone. Luna was gone. And he had nothing left.
Bobby slumped to the ground, resting his back against the final resting place of CPL Barker. He watched the funeral from on top the hill at a distance he felt most comfortable. Rubbing his face, he traced the lines that’d started forming, the mark of hard paths and less traveled roads. Sun scorched and tanned. Malnutrition. Too much booze. He hadn’t shaved his head since Luna. His beard had grown as well, nearly touching his chest. The hairs bristled with red and grey.
A soldier in dress blues, those dark navy colored jackets with light blue pants and yellow stripes, medals and awards pinned to his chest, and white gloves began playing taps. The single bugle seemed to silence the wind, the world even. The note was lonely and sad and perhaps it was intended to be, ever since Harrison’s Landing. From the hill, Bobby could hear the sudden wailing of a woman. Young. Tired. His eyes stung thinking about her, thinking of poor Karen and her little girl Tabitha. No husband to comfort them. No father for her child. No sister. Maggie lost like the rest of them. Someone was holding on to her, her mother perhaps, Bobby couldn’t tell from where he sat, so very far away.
Oh, Karen. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
Below, at the funeral, a squad of dress blue soldiers appeared. Each carried a rifle. The old bolt action ones they used at ceremonies such as these. They marched in unison, single file. The squad leader called the action.
“Ready. Aim. Fire.”
A volley thundered in the air. Bobby jerked, knowing the gunshot was coming, but still shocked by how unpleasant the sound was. How many memories it ripped free.
“Ready. Aim. Fire.”
Another volley crackled into the summer wind.
Bobby jerked his head back, thudding the tombstone behind him. Images flashed behind his eyes. White and hot, the unwelcomed memories came like boiling steam. The vapors penetrated his senses like wispy snakes made of grey-ashen smoke. He could smell tar and trash and the horrible stench of decomposition.
“Ready. Aim. FIRE.”
Again, Bobby was pulled into the remembrance what he cared little to remember. But at the summoning of the volley, his senses had a will all their own, showing him as some demon Marley’s Ghost, his past. He smelled them before he saw them. The unmistakable aroma of rotting fruit; of death. He was laying in some factory, far away from the funeral of Jonathan Steele. The cement was cold, but his neck felt as if it were burning. Burning hot and wet. Blood stained his hands. He watched the Wolf of Kurdistan rip into Murdock, his old squad medic, like some half-eaten piece of meat. And then it ate on Johnson and Bobby felt himself move without thinking, he was simply playing the part of his memory, he aimed and fired his pistol, wounding the nightmarish beast. He killed the wolf-like man and watched as it reverted back to human form, spasming, jerking, and then still and silent. Some brown skinned Iraqi. Some Kurdish local. A shop owner he’d seen before without really seeing. Now forever sleeping in a dark crimson pool. Free, or so he dreamt.
How did I kill it?
“Ready. Aim. Fire.”
Another jerk. Spasm. Flashes of more recent memory. Jake found him. The house in Jotham, leering over them on the drive like some ancient silent behemoth, hungry. It was hungry for us. Those thing wanted to eat us. Consume us, but not just that…that wanted our sorrow and suffering. They craved it. Like nectar.
Another spasm. Another jolt of hot white memory. Maggie stood before him, but she wasn’t really Maggie. It was something else. One of Them. Something old and insectile, reeking of greenish bacteria and mold. Smiling at him. Handing him the revolver.
“Do it,” they hissed…and I did it. I shot myself. And here I am. Alive. How did I not die? How did I kill the Kurdish wolf?
He was back in the factory again. Bobby watched as time crawled. He was aiming at the creature with the yellow eyes. There was a blurred red line as he fired his pistol.
A red line?
Tracer? Tracers have magnesium, phosphorus…they have silver tips.
Jesus…silver bullets…really? This all sounds so surreal, like some story in one of those horror movies Ricky made us watch when we were kids.
Below at the funeral, the honor guard continued with the ceremony. The flag was being folded in a tight neat triangle. One of the dress-uniformed soldiers marched the folded flag to Karen, dressed in black, seated with her loved ones, her parents, friends, and her daughter. A veil covered her face, but Bobby knew, even from his position on the hill, Karen was always so beautiful. Jonathan’s widow. His widow…? God…why did this happen? The soldier handed her the flag. She took it, trembling.
I’m so sorry, Karen.
Bobby wept.
He wanted to be down there. To offer some kind of comfort, even if said comfort was just in passing information, of what little he knew. He could say, they were all together again. Maybe even happy…though he doubted such emotions existed in that house or the underground place.
Bobby didn’t move.
He watched as the funeral came to an end. People were walking away, back to their cars, back to their lives, back to living and walking in the sunlight, never fearing the shadows in the dark unseen places. Never fearing the full moon or what horrors it could bring.
He watched until everyone had left. Mostly, he waited for Karen to leave. Carefully, Bobby got to his feet. Standing firm on his worn out boots, he trotted down the hill. The casket, oddly enough, was still above ground. Not a single cre
wman in site.
Are they going to leave him sitting out? he wondered.
With a pale hand, he touched Jonathan’s coffin. The wood was cold, hard, and polished. His eyes stung again. Tears, hot and molten, ran down his grizzled cheeks.
“Bobby…?” A memory surfaced? He could hear his friends calling, pleading with him in that cave under Maggie’s house. As he pressed the revolver against his temple, they called his name, over and over.
“Don’t do it, Bobby!”
Shouts and pleads.
But he had to save them. The wolf, with those devil eyes was coming. Skin crawling, biting, kneading flesh like soft dough. The beast wouldn’t differentiate friend from foe. Everything; everyone was foe. He had to save them by…killing himself.
—And a lot good that did, he mused, kicking at the dirt underneath Jonathan’s coffin. He still transformed into that…thing. Put his friends in danger. For all he knew, he was the one that killed them. Not those Things. Those clicking Things in the cave. Under the house. Whispering in his head. The next he remembered, he was in a field. Cows chewing cud and staring blankly with those mute brown glass bulbs. He was covered in dirty grime and sweat and blood, much as he always was the morning after a turn. But who’s blood? His own? And intermixed was some kind of gelatin, some green smelling mucus. Did this belong to Them? Those Things? He did not know. Nor would he ever know. When he returned to Maggie’s, they were gone. They. The house. And Them…but not all of Them…there were shadows near the wheat stalks, right? No. No. A trick of light. Or maybe…oh God, do such things exist? In his mind, those dark shapes looked like his friends. Reflections, maybe. And as his heart skipped with warm hope, they saluted and crumbled into a swarm of red eyed fluttering things.
A last, “Fuck you,” from those foul temperate beings.
How can I explain what I saw to the police?
To Karen?
To Tabitha?
No. No. No one would believe me. And why should they? Nonsense, all of it.
Bobby pressed his forehead against the coffin. He closed his eyes. If he knew how to pray, this was the best he could do.
“Bobby Weeks.”
I know that voice, Bobby thought. He turned and nearly fainted. His skin drained of color. His knees buckled.
“Jake?” he whispered.
“Good to see you, Bobby.” Jake Williams had always been tall and sort of lanky, a real poindexter, especially among the graphic tees and tattered jean folk of Suicide Squad. But now those enduring polo wearing features made him seem even more grotesque and cruel. Like a skeleton with strings of blue flesh still stubbornly clinging to bone. He stood, somewhat hunched forward and gleaming at Bobby with his unmistakably once handsome features. His limbs and neck seemed elongated. In places his skin hung, in others it was pulled tight, exposing jagged broken ribs. His color was moldy, of something buried and unearthed for some kind of foul purpose, or something told in lonesome tales and shown in a necromancer’s banquet or beneath the bed of small children too terrified to expose their toes from under the safe warm blanket. His eyes reminded Bobby of the inside material of jellyfish; jelly with beads of glowing white in an otherwise dark cosmic expanse. He wore a navy blue polo and a pair of khakis, not untouched by decay. Small slithering things crawled out of gaping holes and burrowed into newly chewed pockets. The smell…the godawful smell was overpowering. There was a strange sweetness to it, like fruit exposed to the sun, compiled with the odor of long dead and ashen vegetation.
“Bobby, what’s the matter? I thought you’d be happy to see me.” Jake smiled, freeing a mound of earthworms from his broken black teeth. They pelted the dirt, squirming.
“Jake? Are you…”
“Dead?”
“Are you?”
“What do you think?” Jake looked at himself. Turning back to Bobby, his eyes seemed sad.
“What happened? I woke in a field…Did I…don’t remember…?”
If there were tears left in those milky otherworldly eyes, they seemed to glimmer. Jake reached to touch Bobby on the shoulder, but Bobby flinched, pressing up against Jonathan’s empty casket.
“Jeez, Bobby. I’m not going to hurt you. I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
“Happy?”
“Yeah. Don’t you miss me, Bobby?”
Bobby turned away. He closed his eyes. Focused.
Hallucinating. Have to be. Greif. This is grief. Extreme as it is, this is grief.
“Don’t turn your back on me, Bobby.” Jake rattled as he spoke, as if talking through a filter filled with teeth or dice.
“You’re not real.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Can’t be.”
“Yes.” The word was commandment.
Bobby lay nearly prostrate on his friend’s coffin. Back turned to his standing rotting dead friend. Before him there were pictures he hadn’t noticed before. Pictures from Jonathan’s life. Partially his life too, when they were kids. Cut out photos pasted on cardboard frames. Flowers in wreaths and vases sat beside them. There were pictures from their youth. From the military. Deployments. Basic. And after. There was even one of the Blockbuster Jonathan and Ricky had worked at before they signed up for service. It was closed now, abandoned, but the skeleton is still there off Route 146.
“Bobby, we need to talk.” Jake sounded closer, nearly whispering in his ear. His breath, if it had such a thing, was humid and stank of curdled milk.
“Go away,” Bobby whimpered, throwing his arms out like some spoiled child. Clinging to the coffer box.
“Don’t go, Bobby. You hear me? Listen. Don’t go back.” Jake sounded farther away now, as if his voice were being dragged away by some unseen force. He refused to look. Instead, he wept. Sobbing bitterly on the casket, his tears pooled and rolled down the slick polished wood.
Go back? Why would I ever go back?
“I’m so sorry. I killed you all. I’m sorry…” Bobby wept
And wept. And he wept until all the sorrow seemed numb. His muscles worn. Tired. So very tired of this world. Of all the pain and loss and guilt. Would death not bring relief for all this horrible mess?
The graveyard seem quieter. Still. Eerily so.
Bobby glanced behind him.
Not a soul.
No Jake.
Nothing.
The wood beneath his hands vibrated. The coffin rumbled. Bobby backed away. Tripping on his own feet, he fell on to the ground. He watched, unsure if he’d slipped off the reservation and into a full mental breakdown. Was this really happening?
The silence was broken by the sound of humming. A thousand humming, no, buzzing voices, swarming inside Jonathan’s coffin.
The horrible buzz grew and grew, nearly deafening. Swallowing the song of the world. The traffic, the patter of feet, conversations far away, and the billowing of wind. Gone. All of it.
Bobby crawled away, like some crab evading a trap, but his gaze never fell from the casket. The rumbling, quivering casket rocked back and forth violently.
The quake stopped.
The buzzing ceased.
Bobby held his breath.
The coffin lid flung open belching a river of black fluttering bodies with red eyes.
“Jesus!” Bobby screamed.
The swarming cloud licked the air, doing a hoop, and pausing above the trembling Bobby, blotting out the sun. The world felt darker. And while he expected coldness, the temperature was hot, sticky and humid. Worse than a thousand summers. Worse than a hundred days in the desert. The swarm rushed over him. Biting. Tearing. Nibbling at his flesh.
Bobby rolled and sprung to his feet. Running full tilt, he batted away the tiny red-eyed thing. He dared a glance behind him. His heart dropped into his stomach. He filled his pants, bowels undone. His legs stiffened like coagulated mush. He tripped and fell and rolled on the ground.
He watched in horror as the larger cicadas-like things came at him. Floating above him on monstrous skeletal wings covered in burr
of some eldritch birth. Large, massive, nearly covering their entire head. Mandibles stretching outward, exposing a toothy-worm like mouth. Though their features were insectile, their expression seemed human and full of glee.
“Get away. Go!” Bobby swatted the air.
“There is no escape, Mr. Weeks.”
“Go.”
“No escape.”
***
He awoke soiled, laying in muddy grass, or of what little remained inside the old batting cage. Birds were chirping above him, miserably sunny. Light trickled down from the separated sections of green lush canopy. A mosquito buzzed annoyingly around his ear.
Bobby swatted it. He pushed himself off the ground. Naked and covered in grime.
A dream…? One hell of a dream…
At the cage door, he entered the lock combination, the one he memorized and had tattooed on the inside of his wrist, just in case he ever forgot. The towel-robe sat in a Rubbermaid just outside the mesh fence. He put it on, exhaling and pulling the thick fabric to his cold clammy skin.
Glancing at the cage, he eyed the newly made gashes to the fence. Damages that would need repair. There were no holes dug by the wolf, this time.
Small favors, he thought grimly, and stumbled off to the modest country home up the path, Luna’s home. Now his home, for now.
Until she returns.
Chapter 4
Working Man
The low gurgling rumble consumed all the sound from the outside world. It was impossible to hear anything other than the roaring rumble and the wind, like church hymnals, or as close as Bobby Weeks would ever get to such religious ritual. Or maybe this was something more ancient than religion, something primal and pure, like Bastian riding on top of Falkor in Neverending Story, or the rouge Westley doing battle with Inigo Montoya on the mountain peak, or when Elliot rode his bicycle over the moon in E.T. or when Alex Rogan became The Last Starfighter. Those stories kids eat up. Mimicking the best of life told in fairy tales igniting imagination and fervor, taking shape in the breath of The Secret of NIMH or Labyrinth perhaps, now roaring on two large black rubber wheels and rattling chrome pipes down Interstate 45 towards Galveston Island. Timeless and free from the concern of ordinary life. Dreams and woes forgotten in the warm cusp of the wind as it whipped and worked to pull him from the thrumming motorcycle.
Conceiving (Subdue Book 3) Page 3