Redneck Eldritch

by Nathan Shumate

  Emmett glanced down at the shotgun in his hand. Maybe he could bring it up and shoot before Dan got him, or dive back into the mist. But Dan was holding the shotgun steady in his bloody hands. He tossed the gun to the ground.

  Dan grinned wider as he stood. “Good, good,” he said.

  “What have you done?” Emmett asked.

  Dan glanced back at Homer’s mutilated body before returning his gaze and tight grin to Emmett. “I need bones, Emmett, you know that. He was arguing with me about it.” He gave Homer another flicker of a glance, and his smile turned sly. “I think he mighta thought he was gonna get my bones.”

  “That was you last night, both of you snooping around.”

  “Yeah, where the heck were you?” Dan asked.

  “And Homer screaming.”

  Dan shrugged. “Yeah, like I said, we had a disagreement. But I gotta hand it to you, Parson. I didn’t realize what you had here, not really.” He barked a laugh. “Me and Homer just thought it was money.”

  “So did I,” Emmett replied.

  “That right? Huh.” Dan laughed again. “Well, we know better now, don’t we?” He gestured with the shotgun. “Come on over here.”

  Emmett took a few reluctant steps closer to the ruin that was Homer.

  “I gotta get on with this,” Dan said, one of his sticky red hands coming free of the stock of the shotgun with an audible sucking noise so he could gesture at Homer. “Need to get something built, right?”

  “Right,” Emmett said slowly. Involuntarily, he glanced over the low wall at the hole in the ground, though he couldn’t really see anything in the shadows.

  “Those Speakman boys were smarter than people gave ’em credit for, weren’t they?” Dan said. “Out here all these years just drinking that machine in. Extending it, kinda.”

  Emmett nodded. “I guess. But they never killed anyone.”

  “How do you know?” Dan asked. “They got those things built in a big circle around this thing, all using bones. Who says they’re all from cows? Besides, there at the end, what do you think they were up to? Amos and Uriah were all set to use the other two.”

  “Is that what you have planned for me?” Emmett asked.

  Dan grinned. “Well, Emmett, you gotta admit, it would be nice to get some use out of you.”

  “We used to be friends, Dan.”

  “That was a long time ago, before you killed the Wittington girl.”

  “That was Jake, not me!” Emmett snapped. He might have helped bury her ten feet deep with a backhoe, but Jake had done the killing, dammit. “Anyway, what did you care about her?”

  Dan shrugged. “I don’t care about her. But you all decided to leave town after that, bigger and better things. Didn’t invite me along, even though I did as much for your uncle as you did.”

  Emmett stared for a moment, then shook his head. “If you kill me, someone else will take over this land. You won’t be able to come around here.”

  Dan snorted a laugh. “That what you think? You think anyone’s gonna stop me from coming out here?”

  Emmett glanced at the ruin. “Look, why don’t we go back and talk at the house? It’s easier to think there. The machine—” He broke off, and stared up toward the house. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t see more than a dozen paces, but he could imagine the house and barn, and more importantly how they felt.

  “What?” Dan asked, his voice suspicious.

  We need the parts to fill in the gaps. You gotta keep workin’, Emmett, you want to stay ahead of it.

  “Hey,” Dan said, jerking the shotgun. “What is it?”

  “Dan, those things they built aren’t tributes to this machine, they’re protection from it.”

  “The fuck you talking about?”

  “Look around. None of the things they built are close to here. Most of them are back near the house, and there’s more up ahead. They circle around this place, like you said.”

  “So what?”

  “Those things, they block something. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel the difference between here and back at the house?”

  Dan shook his head. “That’s just because the house is too far away. The closer you get to the machine down there, the better.”

  “No, it’s—”

  “Shut up,” Dan said, raising the shotgun to his shoulder. “Time for you—”

  “Hey, Parson!” came a shout from up the slope.

  “Shit, is that JT?” Dan asked.

  It was JT, though Emmett was damned if he knew how she’d gotten out of the silo so fast.

  “Parson, get up here!” JT shouted. “Something you need to see.”

  “What the fuck?” Dan asked. “Is she that hard up for work? Came out on her own?”

  Emmett shrugged.

  “Guess we better see what she wants,” Dan said. He grinned. “Maybe her bones’ll make better machinery than yours. Her being a mechanic and all.”

  “Yeah,” Emmett said, starting to turn.

  “Hang on,” Dan said. He stepped forward and, holding the shotgun in his right hand, he patted Emmett’s side with his bloody left hand. “Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” he said, pulling the Glock out of Emmett’s pocket. He tucked the pistol into his waistband and shoved the barrel of the shotgun into Emmett’s back. “Let’s go.”

  They walked through the mist for a few minutes, and Emmett considered diving into it. Even if he got out of sight, though, Dan could bring him down blind with a spray of buckshot. He kept walking.

  One moment, there was nothing but mist ahead of them, then a dim shape appeared, and in another moment it resolved itself into JT, standing next to one of the strange devices. She had her sledgehammer thrown over one shoulder.

  “Hey,” said Dan, and Emmett saw a look of surprise cross JT’s face.

  “Well, shit,” she said. “I shoulda known.”

  “You really need this job, huh, JT?” Dan said. “Driving out here on your own on a Saturday.”

  JT looked over at Emmett. “There’s work to do.”

  Dan nodded. “There is, JT. There is.”

  JT sighed. “You parked your truck somewhere else. I thought I was alone here.”

  “Yep,” Dan said. “Came in last night. Gotta get up pretty early to fool old Dan Ryan.”

  “I also thought you could hold it together for a few more days.”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed. “The fuck does that mean?”

  JT shook her head. “Never mind.” She looked over at Emmett again. “I had to bust a hole in your fucking silo, Parson.”

  “Uh huh,” Emmett said, eyeing the sledgehammer.

  “You really don’t know what’s going on here, do you?” she asked.

  “I’m starting to figure it out.”

  JT nodded.

  “Well, JT,” Dan said, looking over at Emmett himself. “It don’t really matter what he—”

  He broke off as JT moved. He swung the shotgun to cover her, but she didn’t even move toward him, just brought the sledgehammer off her shoulder and swung it in a wide arc over her head. It connected on the device where a cow femur was bolted to a leaf spring, a solid blow that shattered the bone and knocked the whole thing over.

  “What the fuck, JT?” Dan said, taking a step closer.

  “You’ll want to save your ammo, Dan,” she said, dropping the head of the sledgehammer to the ground.

  Dan’s eyes narrowed over the shotgun barrel. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  JT tipped her head down the slope, and Emmett heard a clicking noise in the fog. It was the noise he’d heard the night before, but faster, somehow more purposeful.

  “What the fuck is that?” Dan asked, shuffling back a step.

  JT didn’t answer, just took a step back herself. Dan still had the shotgun trained on her, but before he could fire, it was there.

  Emmett wanted to think that what he saw coming across the pasture was a trick of the fog and his lack of sleep. He couldn’t quite fix it in his
mind anyway—it seemed put together wrong, in a way that should have been impossible. But it advanced, in a stuttering way—now creeping a few inches, now crossing several yards in a blink—and the closer it got, the harder it was for Emmett to convince himself it was an illusion. It was short, he thought, then immediately dismissed the idea—this thing wasn’t human, so how could he say whether it was short or tall? But it walked on two legs, possibly three—Emmett rubbed eyes gone watery from looking at it and the way it didn’t seem to fit the world.

  The one thing he was sure of was the gears—gears and cables acting as joints and tendons. He could see them because so much of the innards of the creature were exposed, like it had been flayed. Gray skin gave way to bone, and cogs made of bone, and tendon-like cables. Several of those cables ran outside the thing’s legs, yanking the limbs up and down in its jerky stride that made a bony, grinding, clicking sound. It had at least two arms ending in jagged bone, with more cable-tendons ready to yank them, and a mouth made of two bone gears, meshing so they’d drag anything that got near into its wide maw.

  Dan swung the shotgun toward it and fired. Emmett was pretty sure he’d managed to miss, despite the close range and the wide spray of shot. He pumped the shotgun as the thing turned toward him, and fired again. This time he hit it—Emmett could see chips of exposed bone and pieces of gray flesh fly off the thing. But it didn’t seem to slow it down much, because it came forward in a convulsive, twitchy leap.

  Its limbs jerked forward, yanked by exposed tendons winding over bone pulleys, and Dan fell in a spray of blood. One bone spur had slashed across his throat, nearly lopping off his head, and the other sent the shotgun flying.

  The creature paused, bending to poke at Dan’s corpse with what looked like curiosity. Then, with a jerk, its head snapped up to look at Emmett. Emmett stumbled back a step, seeing the thing’s limbs tense as tendons pulled taut.

  JT appeared behind it, swinging the sledgehammer in a wide arc as she came. She took the hammer on a full circle of a swing over her head before turning a graceful pirouette on one work boot and bringing it around again to slam into the creature’s leg. There was a loud crack of exposed bone and Emmett thought he saw a cog soaring away as the thing fell.

  It was up almost immediately, spinning and lunging clumsily at JT, who backpedaled away. One leg hung at an angle and Emmett could see a bone cog turning uselessly, a cable-tendon gone slack. That slowed it down, but it seemed to feel no pain as it went after JT. She held the sledgehammer up as she backed away, and Emmett saw a splinter of wood fly off the shaft as she blocked its swing. Another swing hit the sledgehammer again, and JT staggered and nearly fell.

  Emmett wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten to Dan’s body, but before he was sure what was happening he’d yanked the Glock out of Dan’s waistband. It was like he’d just stepped out of the academy, and was working a drill, on one knee with the Glock held in the two-hand grip.

  He wasn’t sure how many shots went home, since the thing didn’t really seem bothered by them. A few must have hit, because he saw chips of bone and spurts of black liquid flying off it. The shots didn’t seem to do much more than get the thing’s attention, though, and it turned from JT and began to lurch toward him. Emmett staggered to his feet, still firing. In mid-step, the thing seemed to figure out a new way to move, one that worked better with the broken leg. It somehow jumped off its good leg in a convulsive motion, clearing four feet in one twitching leap. It staggered as it landed on the broken leg, then gathered itself for another jump. Emmett stumbled backward, tripped and sprawled on his back, sending a shot straight into the air.

  It jumped, landing where he’d been standing just as Emmett realized he’d used his last shot. The action of the Glock was racked open, and for a moment he just looked at it stupidly. The creature loomed over him, bony arms swinging wide.

  There was a boom, and it twitched violently in a spray of buckshot.

  JT, just a few feet away, pumped Dan’s shotgun. “Come on, sunshine,” she said, and fired again. It began to speak as it jumped toward her, in a horrible language that could somehow pass over cog-teeth. The words made Emmett’s knees feel weak, made him want to puke, even though he couldn’t quite understand the meaning.

  JT felt the words too, judging from the grimace on her face. “None of that, you motherfucker,” she said, and stepped forward, right up in its face. Its arm came up, but before it could grab her she fired into its mouth from about a foot away. That shut it up, but it had already started a jerky leap, and it slammed into her, bearing her to the ground.

  If the thing had possessed more normal joints, it would have carved her up in a few seconds, but it had a hard time bringing the long limbs yanked around by cable-tendons to bear. For a moment, both sharp bone spurs hacked at the ground near JT, and she threw her head back and forth to avoid them.

  She was pinned, and while the thing’s mouth was ruined from the shotgun blast, the cogs still ground together, skipping now and again as they hit missing teeth. Its gray flesh, what there was of it, had been torn apart in several places as well, and was dripping a thick black liquid onto JT.

  JT grunted as she grabbed one of the tendons operating the thing’s arm and yanked it to one side. The arm folded up as the creature tried to brace itself and it rolled to the side, off JT. She sat up and pumped the shotgun as it turned and lunged, gears on its head turning, trying to get hold of something. JT gave it the barrel of the shotgun.

  There was a grinding noise as its maw drew the barrel in, then she fired. This time, its head was blown almost free of the body, and JT scrambled to her feet, covered in the black gunk that had sprayed from it. She staggered over, pumped the shotgun again, and fired down at it.

  It went still and seemed to start rotting almost immediately, going soft and losing all the sharp, geometric outlines.

  Emmett and JT looked down at it for a few moments. Finally, JT let out a breath and looked at the mangled end of the shotgun barrel, shiny with gouged metal. “Shit,” she muttered, and handed it to Emmett. She hauled her filthy sweatshirt off over her head and used it to wipe the black gunk off her face.

  Emmett stared at her sleeve of tats for a few seconds. “I don’t think I noticed that tattoo before,” he said, gesturing to a small blue candle with a red flame on her wrist. “Kind of hidden by all the other ones.”

  JT showed her teeth in something like a smile.

  “It wasn’t an accident, you coming out to this job, was it?”

  JT shrugged. “Not hard to fuck up Dan’s truck. Barely rolls as it is.”

  “So, that thing,” Emmett said, looking over to where the creature had been. It had rotted completely away, which was unsettling. “That thing. The Speakman brothers were keeping that penned in all these years?”

  JT shook her head. “That’s just something that came over when they finally tried to fuck with the engine, I figure. What they were trying to box in was an engine, not that I’ve figured out where the fuck that is.”

  “It’s in the old silo, down there,” Emmett said, gesturing down the slope.

  “Well, shit,” JT replied. “Come on. Work to do.”

  He expected her to head for the ruins, but she went back up the slope toward the barn. After a moment, he knelt next to Dan’s body and gingerly fished his keys and cell phone out of his pockets, then jogged after her.

  “Those Speakmans were tough bastards, I’ll give ’em that,” JT said over her shoulder as he caught up. “I don’t know when the hole opened up, but it’s been a while, right?”

  “I’m not sure,” Emmett replied. “But it may have been a few years since something started leaking out of it.”

  JT shook her head. “I couldn’t have held out that long. Fuck, Dan Ryan back there couldn’t last a goddamn week, and he was only here a few hours a day. Guess it’s a good thing those boys were handy with scrap. Sounds like they kept making the best of things even after our little friend back there showed up and got a couple of the
m.”

  “So all of these… totems kept it contained?” Emmett asked.

  “More like they kept things distracted,” JT replied. “Fucking weird way to deal with it, but I guess it worked, sort of. You can see how they’d want to make machines that reminded them of the thing back there. Kinda dumb luck that they distracted the engine, too.”

  They arrived at the silo, and Emmett could see the hole JT had busted through the concrete. It would have been a tight squeeze between the iron bands.

  “You thought there was something up with this silo, too,” Emmett said.

  JT glanced back at him. “We got someone in the sheriff’s department,” she said. “He thought it might have been important to the Speakmans. We only started asking after we finally figured out what was going on down here. Not that anyone told me about the other damned silo.” She grabbed the wheelbarrow and started back down the slope. “Where’s my fucking shotgun, by the way?” she asked.

  “Back down near the old silo. Uh, Homer’s there. Dead.”

  JT nodded as if she wasn’t surprised. Neither of them spoke as they walked, and in a few minutes they were back at the ruined structure. JT looked over Homer’s corpse for a few seconds, and shook her head. “Danny always was an asshole,” she muttered.

  Emmett barely heard her. He could feel the machine below his feet—working, grinding away to do… something. He wanted to know what that was. He wanted to look at it again, do something for it.

  “Hey,” JT said loudly. He looked up, realizing she’d been trying to get his attention for a while. She tossed him a plastic five-gallon bucket that had been in the wheelbarrow. “Go fill that up.”

  Emmett stared at her for a few seconds, then slid the Glock into his jacket pocket, dropped the shotgun, and took the bucket. He walked to the creek and held the bucket in the water. He could hear the sound of metal on metal as he filled the bucket, and when he returned, JT was inside the structure, pounding rebar into the ground to anchor a wooden frame around the cracked stone. The wheelbarrow was next to her, with nothing but a bag of concrete mix left in it. JT crouched next to the hole in the rock, now surrounded by the framework. Emmett watched as she draped the hole with a piece of fine metal mesh, and anchored it to the edges of the wooden framework with a staple gun.