by Shock Totem
The other guy slid his hand smoothly up to his ear and pulled a cigarette out from behind it. “Gotta save this one,” he said matter of factly. “It’s a good one too.” The guy reached over to the bag on the seat next to him and opened the top and fiddled for a couple seconds. When he sat back down again, he had one cigarette between his lips and the other one back behind his ear again. “And these ones ain’t any good,” he said, trying to get a spark on a lighter. “They smoke all right, but they taste terrible.” He lit the cigarette and took a puff. “I’d offer you one,” he said, “but you gotta smoke ‘em fast.” He took another long draw, and then coughed into his hand. “Name’s Bates.”
Thompson just nodded.
“You got a name?” asked Bates.
Thompson wanted to look away or stand up and leave or smack the guy. But he couldn’t look suspicious. As long as there was a chance he’d get away, he had to sit there and take it. Thompson tried to think of a name.
“Hey, you!” came a call from the other side of the terminal. It was the guy at the ticket counter. “Bag man!” he shouted. “Bag man, there ain’t no smoking in here!”
Bates shrugged and dropped the cigarette. “Was about to go bad anyway,” he muttered, as he ground it out with his shoe. It left a sticky pink streak where he’d mashed it with his heel. Bates just giggled a little. “Oops.”
“Call me Custer,” said Thompson.
“All right,” said Bates. “You’re Custer.”
• • •
The bus to Charlotte was mostly empty. It had been dark a few hours by the time it pulled out, and Thompson felt dumber than ever not having any luggage with him. But it would have been even dumber to go back to his hotel to get his stuff.
The night was getting chilly, so Thompson hunted out a seat near a warm air vent and hunched down, hugging himself. He only had a thin jacket on, and he figured it was going to get a lot colder when they got to the mountains. The bus driver walked back down the aisle, checking every seat as he went. He stopped where Bates was sitting, a row ahead of Thompson. “You gotta put that bag up,” said the bus driver.
“Yes, sir,” Thompson heard Bates say. “Yes, I will surely do that in a minute.”
The bus driver walked to the back of the bus and back down toward the front. He stopped at Bates again. “I said you gotta put that bag up.”
“I will surely do it in just a minute,” said Bates.
“What you got in there, anyway?”
“Meteorite. Crashed right in my front yard.”
The bus driver grunted. “Just put it away,” he said. “Whatever it is, just put it away.”
“Yes, right away,” said Bates. He stood up in the aisle as the driver moved away, and suddenly shot Thompson a look. Thompson couldn’t tell why, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up as Bates winked. Then he sat down again, the bag still on the seat next to him.
• • •
Thompson woke a few hours later. He’d been sleeping with his forehead against the window, and now his nose was numb and his neck was stiff. Outside it was pitch black. The lights Thompson could see looked blurry and indistinct, and a couple seconds later he realized why. There was thick snow swirling in front of the window, coming down quiet and hard. It was then that Thompson realized the bus had stopped. One thing was sure, this wasn’t Charlotte.
The bus driver stood up and leaned over the back of his seat. “Well, folks,” he said. “You can see we got some snow here. My dispatcher is telling me it’s a lot worse up around Knoxville, and they are recommending we don’t head into the mountains until morning.” There was a general groaning from the other passengers at this. “We’re pulled into a truck stop here, and there’s a diner across the parking lot if you want to get anything to eat. There’s a motel a little bit further on, but otherwise I’m gonna be leaving the bus running all night. But if you got any blankets or coats, I’d suggest you get them out.”
Thompson shivered. He hugged himself tighter, and rolled up in a ball next to the window. He’d be even later getting into Charlotte and he still had no idea what he was going to do when he got there. They might even have his poster up on the board by then. It all depended on how late they were, and how soon the cops missed him, and—well, it just depended on so many things out of his control.
“Hey,” said somebody. “Hey, Custer!” Thompson didn’t remember at first that was supposed to be him. Somebody jogged his arm. “Hey, Custer.” It was Bates.
“What is it?”
“You want to split some dinner and a room?” Bates had pulled on a flannel jacket from somewhere, and was standing in the aisle with his bag hanging down his back.
“I don’t got that much cash,” said Thompson. “I wasn’t expecting to have to stay overnight.”
“You got twenty bucks?” asked Bates. “You got twenty bucks, or ten bucks? That’s all we need. Just trust me.”
Thompson tried to wave him off. “I just want to get some sleep.”
“Get some in a bed,” said Bates. “Come on, just trust me. It won’t cost you anything.”
• • •
“So where you come from?” asked Bates, between bites of his hamburger. “You ain’t from Tennessee.”
Thompson was picking the tomatoes off his club sandwich. “I don’t like to talk about myself.”
Bates cackled. “A man buys you dinner, the least you can do is answer a question.”
“You haven’t bought it yet.”
“Don’t you worry about it,” said Bates. “Just trust me.”
Thompson smashed a triangle of toast back down on a tomato-free sandwich. A spurt of mayonnaise dribbled out the side and down the stack of turkey. “I should have stayed on the bus,” he said. “I feel like you’re mixing me up in something.”
Bates spread his hands, holding out a shoestring fry in one of them. “I ain’t getting you mixed up in anything. I’m just buying a man dinner.” Bates bent over and started loosening the laces on his bag.
“I’m from up north,” said Thompson.
Bates giggled again. “I can tell that. What are you doing down here?”
Thompson shoved a couple of fries in his mouth and grunted. “Leaving.”
Bates had the bag open now and dropped a fry down inside. He tried to do it nonchalant, but the casual air only made Thompson take all the more notice of it. Bates followed the first fry with a couple more.
“What are you doing? Saving them for later?”
Bates stowed the bag under the table again. “Something like that.”
“What’s in there?” asked Thompson.
“A leprechaun. Found him wriggling in a raccoon trap in my front yard.”
Thompson chewed a strip of bacon from his club sandwich. “All right then,” he said. “You got your secrets, and I got mine.”
“Sure, sure,” said Bates. He drained the last of his milkshake and picked up the check. “I’m gonna get a few biscuits to go and take care of this.” Thompson just nodded as he chewed. Bates held out his hand. “You got that twenty dollar bill?”
“I thought you were buying.”
Bates picked up his bag and hugged it under his arm. “You’ll get it back. Trust me.”
“I’ll be watching you,” said Thompson. Much as he felt like a chump, he wanted to see what Bates’s game was. Maybe he’d even learn some new angle. “Don’t forget we’re gonna be on the same bus again in the morning.”
Bates walked up to the register in front and set the bag down on the floor. He wasn’t so close anymore, but Thompson almost thought he could see something moving in the bottom of that bag, and for the second time his hair stood on end. Whatever was in there, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like Bates much either.
Thompson could see Bates talking up the girl at the register, and then getting a couple of biscuits wrapped to go. Then Bates bent down and seemed to slip the twenty dollar bill into the bag. It only took a second, and then he stood up again and handed it over to the
girl. Thompson swore under his breath. The only angle he’d learned was not to give money to strangers from the Greyhound. He thought about jumping up before Bates could get out the door, but instead he just seethed. He couldn’t afford to make a scene, and he had eaten the dinner. He was just a chump, that was all.
But then Bates cinched up the bag and strolled back to the table, waving the twenty dollar bill in the air with a pleased grin on his face. Thompson sat up, his mouth wide. What had that been about? Some kind of sleight of hand? Wouldn’t the girl at the register have noticed? Bates sure didn’t seem to be any big hurry to get out.
“I’ll give it back when we get to the motel,” said Bates. “I’ll probably need it there.” Thompson kept his eye on the girl at the register as he followed Bates out, but she didn’t do anything except wave as they stepped out into the snowy night. If she was missing twenty bucks, she sure hadn’t noticed yet.
• • •
Thompson eyed Bates’s long, prone form on the bed in the motel room and listened. It was a tiny room with just a single bed—that would be an interesting argument come lights out—but it had cost them sixty bucks just the same. Bates had done the same weird sleight of hand at the motel check in, and even though Thompson had watched him closely, he still couldn’t figure it out. He swore he saw three twenties come out of the bag, and then after they’d locked the room door, Bates had given him back his twenty. It looked the same. Thompson couldn’t figure the angle—either that bag was full of terrible cigarettes and twenty dollar bills, or it really was a leprechaun.
It looked like Bates was asleep, but Thompson waited to hear a hitch in his breathing to be sure. He doubted that Bates had meant to sleep yet—he’d just lain down after taking off his shoes and had seemed to drift off suddenly. But Thompson wasn’t really interested in Bates exactly. He was interested in the bag, now lying on the floor against the bed.
Suddenly, Bates murmured and brushed his mouth with his hand. He was fully gone now. Thompson carefully picked up the bag and moved it over to the room’s tiny table. He didn’t dare turn on the light. He didn’t dare leave the room either—which would have been the safer course—in case Bates were to wake and miss his precious bag.
This was the first time that Thompson had touched the bag, and a wave of revulsion came over him as he handled it. It felt ropey and a little spongy, like a bag full of sausages. But worse. It was a little warm and oddly heavy. Thompson remembered playing games when he was a kid—sticking his hand into a box and somebody telling him it was guts or eyeballs, but really it was just spaghetti or grapes. Handling the bag he felt almost the same way, and had to work hard not to throw it back down again.
Just before setting it down on the table, Thompson could have sworn it jerked in his hands. He stood back and watched it for a minute, but it didn’t move again. He sneaked a glance at Bates. Still asleep, so far as he could tell. If he wanted to look inside, this was the time.
The contents were about the size of a basketball, and were all down at the very bottom of the bag. Thompson had to reach down past a lot of canvas before he got to the thing inside. The first time he put his hand in to pull it out, he instantly lost his nerve. So he pulled it back out again and opened the top wider. He wanted to have a look at the thing.
A sweet smell wafted out of the bag, tinged with a bit of sourness. It was like the smell of apples going bad. Or maybe apples and ground beef. Thompson covered his mouth and looked away until the smell dissipated a bit. He picked up a pen from the table and started lifting aside the folds of the bag. Finally he spied something down in the dark, but couldn’t quite make out what it was. What he could see of it was red and purple, and was like something out of a person—something like guts or brains. Thompson was sure he could see it slowly throbbing. He reached in with the pen and prodded it.
The point of the pen made a little depression in the thing, but when he pulled it back it started to fill in again. Suddenly something tumbled out of the bag, and Thompson stepped back swiftly, jamming his knuckle in between his teeth to keep from shouting. But when the object dropped to the floor, he could see it was just another pen. Thompson looked at the pen, at the thing in the bag, and at Bates. He didn’t dare move an inch. But then Bates murmured again and let out a long half-snoring sigh. Thompson exhaled slowly.
Thompson inched the pen forward with the toe of his shoe, and it rolled across the carpet into the light. It looked exactly like the pen from the motel. Thompson bent down and picked it up with his sleeve covering his fingers, then set it down on the table. It felt like a pen, and moved like a pen when he poked it. When he touched it with his fingers, it had the same cool metal feel as a pen. He picked it up and clicked the button. A tip protruded. Thompson looked for a piece of paper and scribbled a bit. It wrote like a pen too.
Thompson reached into his pocket and dug around for some change. When he found a quarter, he reached that down into the bag and touched it to the thing. It gave a little spasm, and a second later, a quarter rolled out of the bag. Thompson tried a couple more times, and soon he had three quarters in addition to the one he’d taken out of his pocket. He jingled them quietly in his cupped hands, and it felt the same as jingling quarters always felt. The right weight, the right coolness, the right clink as they hit each other. The only odd thing was that they all looked exactly the same—same date on the obverse, same scratch on the back. Perfect copies.
Thompson took one of the new quarters and impulsively bit it. It felt hard like metal, but tasted terrible—the same sweet and sour pungency he’d smelled when he first opened the bag. Trying not to gag, Thompson bit it hard again. This time he could feel his teeth sink a little into the coin. When he took the quarter out of his mouth again, he could see little teeth marks in a neat semi-circle across both sides. Underneath the bite marks, pale pink showed through. Not a perfect copy, then. A good copy. Good enough to get them dinner and a motel room at least.
Thompson set the coins all down on the table and glanced toward Bates with a different look in his eyes. That bag would be a useful thing to have—especially until the heat blew over. Thompson looked thoughtfully around the room. Bed, table, lamp, clock, television. This wasn’t the kind of place to have an iron. Thompson lifted the lamp, tested it in his hand. That would have to do. He put it back down and unplugged it.
Bates murmured and stirred on the bed as Thompson leaned over him. Then suddenly he gave a single loud snort and his eyelids popped open, those watery irises staring up in surprise. Bates sat up swiftly in bed, but Thompson and his lamp moved just as swiftly to stop him.
• • •
Thompson dabbed at the cut above his eye with wet toilet paper. It didn’t look too deep, but it would probably swell up by morning. That would look suspicious on the bus. Especially if he left with Bates and then came back alone. Well, he just wouldn’t get on the bus again. Now that he had that thing—whatever it was—he didn’t need to go to Charlotte at all. He’d go someplace else entirely. But first—first he had to get rid of Bates’s bag.
The thing was still sitting on the tabletop where Thompson had left it. It didn’t seem to move much—it just sat there, pulsing or twitching occasionally. Thompson reached for the pen again, but then pulled his hand away as it dissolved into pink goo at his touch. That must have been the fake. The copy. The quarters were disintegrating too—so it seemed that ten minutes or so was about the limit of how long these copies would last.
Thompson wiped his fingers off on his jeans and then picked up the real pen. Carefully, he lifted the last fold of the bag off the thing and saw that the rest of it was just as repulsive as the part he’d already seen. Thompson grimaced as he looked it over. He wondered just where exactly Bates had gotten an ugly thing like that.
Remembering how Bates had fed the thing French fries, Thompson unwrapped one of the biscuits they’d brought over from the restaurant. It had mimicked a few twenty dollar bills, a pen, and some change since then—if the thing really did eat,
then it might be hungry now. Thompson broke off a bit of biscuit and tossed it at the thing.
At first, nothing happened. The biscuit crumbs fell onto it and seemed to start soaking up some of the moisture from the thing’s skin, but otherwise that was it. It was only gradually that Thompson realized the crumbs weren’t soaking up moisture—the thing was soaking up the crumbs, pulling them in through its skin. By the time Thompson understood what was happening, they were almost entirely consumed.
Thompson broke off a bigger chunk of biscuit and held it out to the thing. When he got close, the thing’s skin distended and reached out a little, sucking at the biscuit. Thompson pulled back, and the biscuit came apart in his fingers, half of it sucked away. Watching the biscuit fade into the guts of the thing, Thompson thought it was odd how it didn’t mimic the food and how it didn’t suck on the pen or the coins.
By way of experiment, Thompson poked it with the pen again and for the first time could see clearly the replica pen budding off the side of the thing. A bump rose up like a submarine rising from the ocean depths and then seemed to swirl in on itself—growing longer and thinner. It lifted out quickly and then hardened into the pen again and dropped off onto the tabletop. Instead of picking it up, Thompson just pushed it back into the thing with his finger and felt the suction start.
Then suddenly Thompson was caught by a movement in the corner of his eye. Rising up out of the back of the thing, furthest from him, was a wiggling appendage about four inches long, waving back and forth like a tiny pink snake. Thompson felt his blood run cold, and then suddenly he laughed.
His own finger had pushed the pen all the way back inside, and was now touching the skin of the thing itself. He poked the thing again with his finger, and another wiggling finger rose up at the back of it. It was creepy and disgusting, those disembodied fingers, but it struck Thompson funny too.