Just the night, the moon, and the stars.
About Joe R. Lansdale
Joe R. Lansdale is the multi-award-winning author of thirty novels and over two hundred short stories, articles and essays. He has written screenplays, teleplays, comic book scripts, and occasionally teaches creative writing and screenplay writing at Stephen F. Austin State University. He has received The Edgar Award, The Grinzani Prize for Literature, seven Bram Stoker Awards, and many others.
His stories Bubba Ho-Tep and Incident On and Off a Mountain Road were both filmed. He is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan, and has been in the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame four times. He lives in East Texas with his wife, Karen.
http://www.joerlansdale.com
METHODS OF DIVORCE
by Philip Roberts
Before the darkness nearly tore away the front of their car and sent both Steven and Candice Lane tumbling into the high weeds along the side of the road, the two had been arguing.
Steve had been in the middle of shouting something when the shriek of metal cut his words off just a split second before the windshield splintered and nearly tore inward. Steve realized that his hands were gone from the wheel as he brought them up to protect his face.
When the car came to a halt, Steve could hear Candice beside him, hyperventilating, her fingers held tightly over her eyes. She looked old and tired to him, all the years they'd trudged through together suddenly accumulated in her face, in her skin, and in her very being. Steve wondered why he was thinking such thoughts now, when he had just been in a car accident.
But then reality returned. The true Candice, who he suddenly realized was the false Candice, took her hands off of her eyes.
"My God, what did you do?" Candice shrieked.
I'm fine, thank you, Steve thought, even though he didn't bother to ask Candice if she was all right or to answer her question.
He couldn't get the seatbelt unlocked, so he opened the console and retrieved a knife, cutting cleanly through the tight material. He handed the knife to Candice in the darkness rather than bother to cut hers as well, and did his best to push open the bent driver's side door.
The moon provided the light he needed to see the damage. He could hear Candice as she struggled to get her door open, but Steve's attention was focused on the amount of destruction to the front of his car.
There was no blood visible within the tangle of metal, and no sign of the animal he must have hit. Even on the road, he could see no carcass, or any streaks of blood to mark where the animal might have been flung.
"There's a house over there," Candice called out to him, and Steve's gaze shifted toward the faint lights in the distance, further in the field, where a lone house stood.
Immediately a slight chill ran through him. "We get smashed by something almost directly in front of what looks to be the only house around for miles," Steve said.
"Well, in case you forgot," Candice hissed at him, her face flushing red, visible even in the dim moonlight, "you were the one who said we shouldn't take our cell phones along. You wouldn't even let me take my Blackberry or my laptop! A quiet night with just the two of us to patch things up, get over all our problems. That's what you said, Mr. Big Ideas. So now what's your next big idea, huh? What are we supposed to do? Stand here all night and hope another car comes by?"
"I'm just saying..." He trailed off because it didn't matter what he was saying. From behind him, from the other side of the road, he heard the sound of something moving.
Steve saw the faint rustling in the grass, saw the light wash over a very large form, hunched but still appearing to walk on two legs. And ever so briefly its head turned toward him, light reflecting in two massive eyes embedded into a grotesque face, mouth starting to split open to reveal an abyss that somehow became even darker than the night surrounding it.
Oh my god, Steve thought. Was that what I hit? Did I mangle it? It must be hurt; I have to help it.
And then he went into action. Steve ran past the vehicle and through the field, chasing the creature that was running away. Candice, who hadn't managed to get sight of the monstrosity, lingered for just a second before following after him. Steven only knew she was following because of her cry of surprise and by the soft crackling of her feet stamping down on the grass.
He hadn't run this fast or this hard in twenty years, and already his side was burning, his lungs rubbing like sandpaper. He could feel sweat soaking into his shirt.
And then he lost sight of the creature, and a helpless sense of panic and anger overcame him. There was nowhere else to go but to the house. It was the only house around for miles.
"What...did you...see?" Candice cried out through gasps for air as she caught up to him.
Steve didn't answer. They soon realized that it wasn't a house, but a barn that loomed ahead of them, nearly in front of them, and they came to a stop.
They stared at the large barn. The house was a little farther past, and much smaller than the larger structure before them. Inside the barn, a lone light shined through a window on the second floor.
"Anyone there?" Steve called.
Candice interrupted him. Tears sent streaks of make-up down her face. "Please tell me what you saw."
But he ignored her because both of them heard the movement, and both of them saw the hulking shape come from out of the tree-line. This thing, just like the other one Steve had seen, stood on two feet, but it was so hunched over that its massive upper body hung down to its knees, making it appear as though it walked on all fours.
And that was when Steve realized it wasn't the impact of his car that made the creature look this way.
Two large eyes watched them, and then the thing's mouth pulled open to reveal a void darker than anything Steve had ever seen. One massive claw-like hand slapped the ground and sent dirt spraying up into the air as the creature lumbered toward them.
"Oh my god!" Candice screamed, and Steve rushed to the barn, not even taking the time to make sure his wife was following. As soon as he was through the door, he glanced over his shoulder to see the creature reaching the barn as well.
Its arm stretched through the door a second before Steven could slam it shut, but the wood was thick, and a faint, oddly subdued howl wailed into the night before the creature's arm pulled back and the door closed completely.
The moment Steve turned, a slap caught him across the face.
He stared into Candice's wet, bloodshot eyes. "You didn't even look back to see if I was behind you before you slammed that door shut!" she screamed.
There was no surprise at her accusation, and Steve's attention was already turning to the surroundings. He saw that they were in an old, wooden room.
Very little light managed to make it into the small room, though to their right they could see a hallway that led into the rest of the barn. Outside, something scratched the wood, and then hammered a muscular hand against it.
"It's going to get in and kill us," Candice whispered.
"I'm not going to die that way," Steve said as he moved down the hall.
The hallway curved to the right, and opened into a much larger room that had at one point been filled with hay, he figured, but times had changed and given it a new purpose. Now the centerpiece of this room appeared to be the platform ten feet up from the ground, acting as a loft. And above that platform a single light bulb burned with life. So this was the light they had seen from the outside.
And then the pounding at the door grew louder. A deep, low wail made Steve shiver. How many of those things were out there now?
And then, through the attempts by the creatures to get in, Steve heard another sound. It was the sound of a person breathing heavily. He ran toward the ladder that connected the first floor to the loft, Candice still trailing behind him.
His arms felt weak and distant, with barely enough strength to pull himself up the ladder, but finally his head peeked over the edge and he could see a man laying on the floor of the loft, h
is chest covered in blood, and a gun gripped firmly in his hand. His eyes were closed, but his chest kept rising and falling, the movements ragged.
Steve pulled himself completely onto the platform and saw there was no hay up here anymore either, but a bare, wooden floor. Black, circular shapes were painted on the floor, and contained several lines drawn out from the epicenter.
When his attention turned back to the stranger, Steve saw the man watching him, and the gun was now pointed at him. With a surprising instinct for survival, Steve lunged at the stranger and attempted to pull the gun out of his hand, but not before it discharged. Steve heard both the shot and Candice's scream at the same time. Pain stabbed through his arm. He fell on top of the wounded man and managed to deflect another shot before it could get him, this second bullet digging harmlessly into the ceiling.
And then he used what little strength he had left to yank the gun out of the stranger's hand. Steve rose, clutching the gun, his chest heaving with exhaustion.
In the glow of the light bulb, he could see that the man who had nearly killed him was older than himself by a good ten years, the man's hair already graying, and a bundle of wrinkles playing around the edges of his eyes. More wrinkles lined the middle of the man's forehead, and his teeth were dark and rotting. Judging from his clothes, the stranger looked more like a farmer than anything else.
"Why'd you try to kill me?" Steve demanded.
"I thought you were, you know..." the man trailed off, then refocused his gaze and asked, "Who are you?" His right hand clutched tightly at a cloth that he held against his wounded chest.
"We had an accident on the road," Steve explained, and noticed Candice step up beside him. For the first time he realized the bullet that had clipped him might've hit her, but he saw no wound. He repeated, "Why did you try to kill me?"
The stranger's eyes shifted to the floor, and his left hand was shaking as it rose to point at the markings. "Need blood to seal it," the man said. "Couldn't be my blood to seal it, because my blood opened it."
"Seal what? And what are those things outside?"
"They are what you think they are. They'll keep coming out of the rift if no one seals it back up. I shouldn't have done it. Shouldn't have opened the rift. Now it's too late. They're here, and more will always keep coming."
Steve moved past the man and toward the window in the side of the barn to see the outpouring of shapes running from the dark house beyond. But he could also see humans strewn near the door of the house, most of them torn to nothing, wet redness splashed along the porch.
"Whose blood, then?" he asked, finding his normally practical logic momentarily thrown away in the face of the impossible.
"Life's blood," the man whispered. His breathing was becoming shallow. Candice knelt beside him, and extended a shaking hand toward his wound.
"That gash is deep," she said, speaking to Steve. "He's going to bleed to death unless we can get an ambulance." Then she added, "There won't be any ambulance, will there? No help is going to come."
Steve fell to his knees in front of the man whose eyes began to grow distant. "Are you telling me that one of us has to bleed in order to stop this?"
"Not just bleed," the man rasped, "but one of you has to die. And it has to happen here in this barn."
"You can't be serious!" Candice blurted.
The man managed a weak nod before his eyes closed. His chest kept moving, but Steve had a feeling the man wasn't about to wake up again. Outside, the cracking sounds grew louder, the claws digging into the wood.
"Do you believe it?" Steve asked his wife.
"You're asking me?" Candice said, her own eyes fixed on the still-moving chest of the stranger. "I guess a life and death situation is finally enough to get my opinion requested."
"If you believe it's true, then one of us has to die, and I figured you might want to have a say in that one."
She stood up and stared at him, but her face contained no hostility, no malice, and from what Steve could tell, no fear of any kind. Candice had always been able to grab onto a form of faith Steve himself couldn't help but deny, and he had to admit a certain envious feeling at seeing her so composed.
"It seems we only have two real options here," she said. "If we believe him, then one of us dies. If we choose not to believe him, then we wait for those things to get in and kill us anyway. I don't think either one of us really has a say in the matter, Steve."
Perhaps her choice of words was meant as a jab at him, or perhaps he was too nervous and paranoid to think of anything else, but her final statement just briefly made him snap his head toward the ground in an effort to drive away the fury at his inability to control the situation.
"So, what are we going to do?" Candice asked, still composed, still accepting whatever fate had in store while Steve himself tried not to vomit.
A much louder crack shook through the barn. Steve stared down below at the creature's claws moving through a hole in the barn's wall below.
And then the answer came to him. They had to try to seal it, and he could decide who died.
"We seal this with my life," he said, and saw the surprise on Candice's face.
"We could...we could leave it up to chance," Candice said, reaching out to him.
His features were firmly set when he moved toward her. "There's no reason for you to end your life. Try to live on and make something better than what the two of us had. Remember that...I...I love you," he said, and felt the smallest pang of guilt as he saw the look spreading across Candice's face. How long had it been since he'd said that? He couldn't remember, but he could remember the moment, nearly seven years ago, when he'd first realized that he didn't love her anymore, and no horrifying situation such as this could make that change.
Still, he liked the idea of leaving her with a moment of sentiment, and it made him feel as though within the relationship, he was still able to maintain control to the very end.
He stepped wordlessly into the middle of the circle and brought the gun up to his temple. He was about to close his eyes when Candice shoved him back, catching him by surprise, and making him drop the gun.
As Steve fell onto the floor of the loft, his ears filled with the howling cries of the creatures and the sharp snapping of wood giving way. He saw Candice on her knees in the middle of the pentagram with the gun below her chin and her eyes filled with tears.
A huge BOOM thundered, and in a split second, it took Candice's life and drowned out the sound of the monsters pouring in through the hole they had made in the barn's wall. Steve had to look away from the grotesque thing that Candice had become as she tumbled back, sprawled in the middle of the pentagram.
Behind him, the ladder shook as something tried to pull itself up, and Steve managed to regain sense enough to kick the ladder back from the edge of the loft. It left him stranded, yet protected, on the second floor.
He stood up in a daze. He walked past Candice's headless body. He walked past the now-dead body of the man who had started this. He stared through the window toward the dark house, and saw no more monstrosities pass through its door. Whatever rift had been opened appeared now to be shut, so there would be no more new creatures pouring out of the gateway from hell. But the things that had managed to make their way out of it before the rift was sealed still remained.
He realized that for the last twenty years, he had been making decisions for his wife, and none for himself. He wasn't sure he knew how to live for himself anymore. These thoughts amazed him because he had always been so certain that Candice was the problem, not himself.
Steve suddenly wanted to die with his wife. He didn't want her to leave this world without him because he didn't know what to do with himself if she did. Could it be that he still had feelings for her and hadn't realized it until now? If so, he had wasted so much time in both of their lives by all the needless resentments he had harbored.
He knelt down and pulled the gun from his wife's fingers without looking at the remains of her head. He p
ressed the still-warm barrel against the side of his own head and pulled the trigger again and again, but only hollow clicks sounded in his ear.
So there would be no easy way out for him. He threw the gun over the edge of the barn loft toward the scrambling mass of creatures trying to get to him. He reached into his pocket for his knife. There was nothing there. In his mind he could see himself toss it to Candice rather than cut her seatbelt for her.
Standing on the edge of the platform, Steve stared down at the mass of squirming, black shapes below; they looked like cockroaches scurrying over each other, their massive, clawed hands pointed upward, groping toward him. He leaned out, trying to decide his next move, as the turbulence below became more urgent with anticipation.
Forty-three years of good grades, hard work, fast promotions, and always wanting to be right had led me to this, he thought, but the idea only reignited his anger. He turned from the creatures, his eyes so wide with anger they hurt, his foot swinging out to connect with the man who had started it all. He couldn't make himself stop kicking at this stranger, his foot swinging repeatedly until the man's jaw had shattered and four of his teeth skidded across the wooden floor.
"I'm not dying that easily!" Steve cried, his face hot with pumping blood, his fingernails digging sharply into his palms. He even found himself smiling through clenched teeth as he told the creatures, "You're going to have to work for this kill."
He stared at the window in the loft and at the house beyond it. If he could gather his courage, he figured he might be able to jump out the window. But first he needed to distract the monsters below.
He knelt in front of the dead man and started rolling the corpse toward the edge of the platform. He didn't know if the creatures merely wanted food, or something else, but he hoped even a corpse would divert them for a little while. When he had the body by the edge, he turned toward Candice's remains, knelt to begin pushing her as well, but found himself pausing instead.
What Fears Become: An Anthology from The Horror Zine Page 14