Monstrosity

by Edward Lee

  Jesus, Clare thought. Some Spanish moss from a low tamarind branch obscured part of the sign. But I should’ve seen it anyway, she remanded herself. I should’ve been more observant. If I had been, then I wouldn’t be waist-deep in QUICKSAND looking like a perfect IDIOT!

  “Yeah, I obviously missed it,” she said. “Had my mind on that damn boat. Help me out of this now, will you?”

  “Sure, Clare,” Adam said a bit too casually, still grinning.

  Clare reached out, expecting Adam to do the same, but instead…

  snap!

  He lit a cigarette.

  Clare was mortified. For the first time now, she truly was scared. “This is serious, Adam! I’m sinking! I’m about to drown in this stuff!”

  He spewed smoke. “Naw. Fit gal like you? Ex-Air Force and all that? You’ll be able to get yourself out.”

  Clare used all her might, churned her hips and legs and was able to move aside slightly, but the effort only sank her another inch with each churn.

  “You heard that old wives’ tale? The more you struggle, the faster you sink?” Adam held the grin. “It’s true.”

  Now Clare was up to the middle of her abdomen. To hell with it. He’s crazy or something— She raised her revolver again. Four shots in the air. And if that psychopath doesn’t help me—two shots in him.

  The gesture wiped the grin off his face and suddenly he was rushing forward. “Whoa! Hold up there! Don’t fire! It’s a joke!”

  “A JOKE?” Clare bellowed back.

  “I’m sorry—it’s a bad joke,” he was saying now, reaching down. “It’s only a little more than a yard deep.”

  Clare gaped at him. When she extended her feet in the quicksand, she felt something solid against her tiptoes.

  “The ravine’s brick-lined,” Adam explained, trying to resist laughter. “It overflows with quicksand in the summer.”

  “You ASSHOLE!” Clare bellowed. The gun still heavy in her hand, she didn’t actually contemplate shooting him but…the idea sounded kind of sweet.

  A great, wet sucking sound ensued when Adam pulled her out. At one moment, her grimace lengthened when the viscid friction came close to pulling her pants down. Wouldn’t that have been great! When her wrist began to slip from his grasp, Adam was left with no choice but to slip his other hand behind her thigh so that he wouldn’t lose her. She didn’t fall back in but the action left his hand clenching one side of her buttocks and a few fingers pressed against her pubis.

  “Get your hand off of my ASS!”

  “Sorry, I—”

  Back out on the road, Clare stomped up and down, flops of the quicksand peeling off of her. She looked ridiculous.

  “Look, Clare, I’m really sorry. It was just a joke. There was no way you could’ve been hurt.”

  Clare rarely exhibited outbursts that could be called explosive but in this instance…she exploded. “Shut UP, you unbelievable PRICK! You BASTARD! You SON OF A BITCH!”

  “I said I was sorry, Clare. Jeez. And, come on, what were you doing in that stuff anyway?”

  All she could do was continue to rage at him. “I was trying to get that damn boat into the back of my damn truck ’cos it was hidden in the damn ravine! Then I sunk in the damn QUICKSAND and then YOU come along and aren’t any damn help AT ALL! DAMN you!”

  He stammered more apologies as Clare used the edges of her hands to scrape the quicksand off her legs. “Here, let me help you,” he offered, but she yelled “Don’t you even come NEAR me!” She bulled right past him, deliberately bumping his shoulder, heading back to the ravine. “I’m gonna get this damn boat back to the office, then I’m going to call the U.S. Park Service and file a complaint!”

  “Aw, come on. That’s a little excessive, isn’t it?”

  “No!”

  “I could get transferred or even fired.”

  “You should’ve thought of that before you fucked with me!”

  “Look, I’ll make it up to ya. I’ll—”

  Something snapped the sentence off in Adam’s mouth. When Clare’s gaze jerked around, Adam’s had too.

  Something—a noise, a thrashing—seemed to be approaching them.

  “You hear that?” he asked.

  “Yeah. It’s coming from the woods, isn’t it?”

  Yes, something thrashing rapidly, a large animal running through the woods. But Clare didn’t think it was an animal. With the thrashing came a thin wheezing noise that sounded—

  Human, she realized.

  “Don’t know what that is, but it sure doesn’t sound right,” Adam said, clearly disturbed. He shined his light into the woods, and drew his gun. Their row over the quicksand escapade was long dead. Something about that sound was very wrong.

  Then the sound stopped.

  “Hate to say this, but I could’ve sworn I saw someone looking back at us,” Adam said.

  The scarier part was, Clare thought she had too.

  They both stood there for at least a minute, staring out. But it was just too dark.

  “I’m going to bring the truck around, get the highbeams out there.”

  “Good idea…”

  Clare went back to the Blazer, opened the door, and in less time than it took for her to even think about screaming, two long bony hands shot out of the Blazer and grabbed her throat.

  (II)

  After dinner, Mrs. Grable’s husband, Derrick, fell asleep on the couch. She smiled at him, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She didn’t have the heart to wake him and get him into bed. He just looked so peaceful there.

  At least I still have him, she thought with some contentment. We still have each other.

  That fact, the wonderful proof of love, made the other things tolerable.

  Yes.

  The other things.

  She left the television on for him. It was the medications that made him sleepy at odd times. She wanted his favorite station on for when he woke up, the Travel Channel, with all those beach shows. She knew how he dreamed of going to the beach, going into the water, into the waves… He had his dreams but what of Mrs. Grable?

  Day by day, that’s all. That’s all I can ask.

  It had been Harry who’d gotten her into rehab all those years ago. He gave her this wonderful place to live, a job, a way to take care of her husband. Oh, sure, sometimes she hated him, because there was a price to pay. But it was only two or three times a week that she had to pay it.

  And it was better than being dead.

  She’d be dead for sure by now, if it hadn’t been for Harry. It was ten years ago, before Derrick’s accident, and it had been the fourth time that the black tar heroin had taken over her soul and forced her to abandon her marriage. Derrick had spent weeks trying to find her, and when he did, he called Harry. Harry had pulled some strings, got an investigative team out there. They found her in Seattle, in the 3rd-and-James District, turning bum-tricks and back up to slamming six quarter-gram hits a day right into her arm. The things she’d done, sometimes for as little as five dollars, didn’t even revolt her at the time. She just needed to cop, anything to cop a quarter gram of tar. She’d lived like an animal, scrounging in dumpsters and doing repugnant things with abominable people.

  Yes, she’d be dead for sure by now if it hadn’t been for Harry. He just kept forgiving her and forgiving her—and so had Derrick. As it turned out, the last rehab had worked, and she had a life again.

  So. Looking at it that way, that thing she had to do, two or three times a week, when the buzzer went off?

  It’s a small price to pay.

  It would probably be tonight so she knew she should get ready. She downed two stiff shots of whiskey from the bottle she kept hidden in the laundry room. The blossom of heat they left in her belly always helped her cope, and they numbed her a little. The swelling on her lip had gone down to next to nothing; she guessed that he’d been told not to hit her much in the face. The tenants would wonder, ask questions. Sometimes it was quite a task hiding the bruises and swell
ings. The marks on the other parts of her body could be hidden with clothing, but her face?

  God, I hope he doesn’t hit me in the face tonight…

  Her private area was another story. Sometimes she’d limp for a full day afterward, from what he did to her there, and then there was always the biting and choking. She didn’t even dare think about it, couldn’t.

  When she got mad, when those inner rages began to grow and she began to hate Harry again, all it took was a stray image of her past life to flit back—shooting up under the Aurora Bridge or fellating winos in Pioneer Square—and the hatred and rage blew away like a wisp of steam.

  Things could be a lot worse.

  At least her return to normalcy had been kind to her body. Not just for her age but considering the rigors of heroin addiction, she looked quite good. Exercise and a good diet kept her toned. No cellulite yet, and no sagging breasts, thank God. She still had pleasures to offer Derrick, even in spite of his condition. She knew he loved her high, ample breasts. That’s why she hated it all the more when she had to make love to him with her bra on. She cupped her breast now in the bathroom mirror and winced at the ache from that last bite. It still looked awful, that ragged bite mark puffed out around her tender nipple.

  Sick bastard…

  But there was no use in that, no use in hating. She’d learned that long ago. This was her lot. It was an odd way to help Harry but she owed Harry her life.

  So don’t complain about a few little bites.

  She stood there looking at herself in the mirror as dusk began to claim the brilliant sky. The inside of the house turned blue, then orange, then darker and darker. Mrs. Grable watched herself turn into a shadow.

  Sometime later, just as she’d predicted, the buzzer went off. Her body jolted as if she’d just suffered an electric shock. The house seemed to rattle.

  It’s time, she thought.

  Mrs. Grable took off her clothes, turned in the dusk-tinted darkness, and padded softly for the steps that would take her down to the basement.

  (III)

  It saw them.

  It saw the lights so then it hid.

  It was upset, it was mad and sad at the same time.

  It had been just about to get its hands back on the little skinny dirty girl but then those lights came on.

  The little skinny dirty girl.

  It liked playing with her. It liked hearing her scream when it was doing it to her. It was supposed to take her back to the place—it knew that—and it also knew that taking her back to the place was very important.

  But it knew now that it had done bad.

  It shouldn’t have played with her so much; it should’ve taken her back to the place right away.

  Now there was a big problem, and it knew that it was its fault.

  Now there was this man and this other woman. They had the little skinny dirty girl now. Its first impulse was to go out to them. First it would claw out the man’s throat and watch all his blood come out, and then it would rip open his stomach and pull out all those warm wet things that were inside. It liked doing that. And the woman? It would drag her down and do it to her hard. It would do it to her a lot. But this time it would be smart. This time the first thing it would do was break her legs. So she couldn’t run away like the little skinny dirty girl. It would break the little skinny dirty girl’s legs too, which it should have done in the first place. And then it would do it to her again too and probably just kill her this time because it was mad at the little skinny dirty girl.

  Yes, it wanted to go out when it had first seen this man and woman but then it had seen that the man and the woman both had those gun-things.

  It knew that the gun-things could hurt it.

  It sat huddled behind a tree now; it was very upset. How could everything have gone so wrong?

  Soon there were more people, more lights, funny flashing red and white lights, and then some men were putting the little skinny dirty girl on this long thing and then they put her in the thing with the flashing red and white lights and were going away, taking the little dirty skinny girl with them. Then the man and woman with the gun-things went away too. Now all it could do was sit by itself in the dark woods.

  It had let the little skinny dirty girl get away.

  They would not be happy.

  (IV)

  “Jesus.” Clare sat at the table, and for a moment she covered her face with her hands.

  “Yeah, that was sure something,” Adam said.

  After the ambulance had left, Clare and Adam had driven back to the security office, Clare’s rage over the quicksand “joke” long forgotten. The first thing she’d done was brief Rick on what had happened, ordered him to suspend normal rounds, and spend the rest of his shift patrolling the lake spur.

  Maybe someone else was out there too.

  It had been almost an hour ago, but she still felt rattled, and the caffeine from several iced coffees only made her feel more wired up. The whole thing had been terrifying.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I just can’t get that image out of my head. That poor girl.”

  Clare and Adam had heard the thrashing sounds from the woods, had even thought they’d seen something. That’s when Clare had gone back to her Blazer to turn on the highbeams and—

  God! she thought, thinking back.

  Those long thin arms had shot out of the Blazer, the grimy hands pawing at Clare’s throat, not to hurt her but to grab onto her.

  “Help holy Jesus please help me he’s still out there trying to kill me I’m begging you please to help me!” the inhumanly high voice had erupted.

  The girl in the truck—naked, delirious, and insect-bitten—passed out only minutes after she latched onto Clare. Long hair hung in slimy strings, her skin scratched, abraded, and smeared in muck. She’d obviously been mauled by an attacker, had spent a considerable amount of time fleeing through the forest and salt marshes.

  Running from someone, Clare thought. From someone who’s still out there.

  The safety, now, of the security office seemed counterfeit. Clare looked up to Adam. “I guess the state police will seal off the island and dragnet the area. We better get back out there and help them.”

  Adam sat down, laxed back in the chair and without much class plopped his boots up on the table. There was an air about him now: that what Clare had said was naive and he was trying to find an inoffensive way of telling her that. “Well, see, I hate to tell you this, but there won’t be any dragnet and there’s no way the state police will do anything about this.”

  “A girl was raped!”

  “Pardon my French but she was probably gang-banged by her friends—of her own free will—then got lost in the swamps ’cos she was all screwed up on drugs. That’s Kari Ann Wells we’re talking about, not Martha Stewart. That girl is infamous on the local crime blotter.”

  Clare held back on her next objection. Back out on the road, Adam had been able to identify the girl at once, claiming to have seen her around town many times. “Local tramp, bigtime drugger. Kari Ann Wells is her name. Ask any beach cop from here to Clearwater—that girl is well-known.”

  “I can understand your concern, Clare,” he was saying now in the office, “but all that wild stuff she was talking? It’s bullshit. She wasn’t raped, she wasn’t attacked or held against her will by anyone. She’s a meth-head, that’s all. All the white trash around here are into that stuff. They come out here to the island at night to poach, they smoke their meth, and get all screwed up. Long-time users get their brains fried, and believe me, Kari Ann Wells is a long-time user. The stuff makes you delirious, makes you hallucinate, makes you crazy. It can even make you see monsters.”

  Clare did have to consider that her own emotions might be clouding her judgment here, from the moment she’d heard the word rape. When they’d been on the road, the EMT’s had put Kari Ann on a stretcher and covered her up, and that’s when she’d regained consciousness for a few moments. Clare ha
d time to ask a few questions:

  “Kari Ann? You’re going to be all right now, so don’t worry. But we need to know about the man who did this to you. Do you know his name? Do you remember what he looked like?”

  The girl’s expression looked absolutely skeletal, and her voice was a grating rasp. “It raped me all night long…” Her face shriveled up like a white prune at the recollection. “It just kept doing it…”

  The mere mention of rape only caused Clare to feel worse for the girl. She wanted to continue questioning her but— I better leave well enough alone, she determined. She’s in shock, she’s incoherent. “Just get some rest, Kari Ann.”

  Clare was about to leave, but the girl’s bony hand grabbed her shirt. Somehow she grinned, even though the girl looked insane. “I hurt it, though. I hurt it bad.”

  “What, Kari?”

  She extended her other hand, whose fingers seemed wrapped around something—

  Something bloody.

  Clare took it. Yuck. What is— She thought of a large skinned tomato. It was wet, hot in her hand. Was it really blood covering it, or just swamp muck?

  “Ripped one of the bastard’s balls right off…”

  Yeah, she’s out of her mind right now, which is understandable. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Clare knew that the slimy thing in her hand couldn’t possibly be a testicle. It was much too large.

  But in knowing what it wasn’t only heightened the mystery.

  What IS this thing?

  Kari Ann hadn’t let go of Clare’s shirt. Rivulets of tears cleaned lines of mud off her face. “It wasn’t a man. It was a monster.”

  The hand slipped off; the woman lapsed back into unconsciousness. Then the EMT’s drove her away, the ambulance lights flooding the woods with red and white light.

  Now that Clare thought of it, Adam’s explanation made the most sense. Drug-induced delirium and hallucinations. But then there was always—

  “I agree with you, Adam. But answer me one question. What’s that thing I put in the fridge?”

  Indeed, when they’d come back to the office, Clare had put the “testicle” in a plastic bag and stuck it in the refrigerator to preserve it as evidence. Initially, she thought the police might want it properly analyzed.