“Of course, Mr. Makeweather,” Lance said, lowering his hand and dying to shove it down his pants, the skin of his crotch crawling and tickling.
He turned to Grammy, dressed up in an old lacy blue dress, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders even though it was eighty degrees out. Her wig was even worse than Gramp-Gramps’ toupee. It had big looping curls and looked like something a medieval prosecutor might wear. Her pasty, make-up caked face looked tiny and shriveled under all those dull gray curlicues.
Lance grabbed her cold plasticy hand. “So this must be Sally-Ann’s sister,” he said, charmingly.
“What?!” she yelled, turning to Gramp-Gramps. “What did he say?!”
“Oh, good God, son, are you insane?” Gramp-Gramps said. “This is Sally-Ann’s grandmother. Her grandmother! For crying out loud.”
“I’m, uh, sorry,” Lance said, taken aback. He looked over at Sally-Ann for help, but she was trying to signal to him, pointing down below his waist. He looked down and saw a big pink handprint on his crotch from when he’d squeezed before opening the door. “Uh, come in everyone, please, and, uh, excuse me for a moment.”
He race-walked to his bedroom, yanked off his pants and scratched like he was trying to dig himself out of a premature grave. He washed his hands, put on a new pair of jeans and returned to the living room.
“So, can I get anyone a glass of wine,” Lance said. “I’ve got a nice Bordeaux and a very nice Viognier from the Rhône valley.”
“I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” Gramp-Gramps said, slumped on the couch, his feet dangling half a foot from the floor. “Get me a Scotch. Single malt.”
Shit, he didn’t have any Scotch. What liquor did he have? Jaegermeister, tequila, melon liqueur. “How about some Southern Comfort? That’s sort of like Scotch.”
“Fine,” the old man said, waving him off.
“I’ll have some white wine if you’ve got some,” Sally-Ann said brightly. She was either putting on a good act or she hadn’t realized that five minutes into this little get together it was already a disaster.
“What can I get you, Mrs. Makeweather?” Lance said.
“What?!” she said, looking around at Sally-Ann and Gramp-Gramps. “What did he say?!”
“You really have to speak up with her,” Sally-Ann said.
Lance leaned in closer, raising his voice. “What can I get you to drink, Mrs. Makeweather?!”
“What?!” She looked at Sally-Ann. “I can’t hear what he’s saying.”
“You really do have to speak loudly, Lance. She doesn’t hear so good anymore.”
“Mrs. Makeweather …”
Sally-Ann made a lifting motion, mouthing the word “louder.”
Lance leaned in right next to the old lady’s ear and yelled as loud as he could, “WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DRINK?!”
She covered her ears in pain.
“Holy Christ!” the old man yelled. “What’s the matter with you? Are you trying to make her completely deaf?”
“Why don’t you just bring her a glass of white wine,” Sally-Ann said, putting a consoling arm around the old lady.
Lance slinked off to the kitchen and shoved his hands down his pants. He shouldn’t have gotten that manicure yesterday—he couldn’t scratch hard enough. He snatched a fork off the counter, shoved it down his pants and dragged it hard across his skin. It hurt like hell, but it felt so damn good he didn’t want to stop. But he did. He didn’t want to whip out his junk with everyone in the other room, but it felt like the rash was spreading down his thighs, around to his hips and up his belly. And it itched worse than before, which he didn’t think was possible. It felt like bugs were crawling under his skin.
He poured the drinks and returned to the living room. He gave Gramp-Gramps his glass. The old man took a sip and his wrinkled face got even more contorted. “What the hell did you just give me? Is this cough syrup?”
“Be nice, Gramp-Gramps,” Sally-Ann said, taking her glass of wine.
Lance started to hand the other glass to Grammy when he felt the horrible, sickly sensation of an insect running down his inner thigh, making him jerk, kicking Sally-Ann in the shin and throwing the wine in Grammy’s face.
Suddenly, everyone was on their feet, Sally-Ann hopping on one foot, Grammy stunned, blinking the wine out of her eyes, Lance diving in, dabbing at her face with his shirtsleeve, smearing the thick make-up, Gramp-Gramps shoving him out of the way, looking like he wanted to fight.
“Good Christ in heaven, what’s gotten into you?!” Gramp-Gramps yelled.
“I’m so sorry, I, uh, had a muscle spasm. Are you all right, Sally-Ann?”
“I’m fine,” she said, grimacing.
“Should I get a towel?” Lance said.
“Of course you should get a towel, you imbecile.” Gramp-Gramps might have been snarling, but it was impossible to tell behind his massive mustache.
Lance ran to the bathroom, kicked off his shoes and jumped out of his jeans. He looked for the bug that had run down his leg but didn’t see it. Then he felt a tickle on the back of his right knee. He reached back and felt a lump. He picked at it and the lump darted up the back of his leg—under the skin!
Lance shrieked.
“What the hell are you doing to yourself in there?” the old man called from the other room.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Lance called back, feeling a light tingling in his head and a gurgling queasiness in his stomach. He felt around for the lump but it seemed to have disappeared. He pulled up his pants. He didn’t even want to think about where the lump had gone.
Jesus, there’s some sort of bug under my skin, he thought, but pushed the idea out of his head before he passed out. Let’s just get through this quickly. Shove some food down their crotchety old throats, get their wrinkled asses the hell out of here and get to the hospital.
Lance brought Grammy a towel. She dried off, knocking her wig askew and leaving half her face on the fabric.
“So what do you guys say we have some dinner?” Lance said.
“I think that sounds like a fine idea,” Sally-Ann said, staring Gramp-Gramps in the eye and nodding insistently.
The old man grumbled, leading a dazed Grammy into the adjacent dinning room.
Everything between Lance’s waist and his knees was achieving a supernatural degree of itchiness. It was hard to think of anything other than the creepy-crawly heebie-jeebieness in his pants. He walked behind the others with his knees together, thighs scraping, both hands in his pockets scratching at anything he could reach like a cat wrapped in a pillowcase.
Once everyone was seated around the dining room table, Lance excused himself and ran to the kitchen. He took his chances and dropped his pants. His thighs and waist and groin were a throbbing, glowing red and lumpy. He raked the area over fast and hard with the fork, leaving bloody corn rows. The tines hit a set of lumps on his lower belly, and sweetjesuslordinheavengodalmightly the lumps ran up his stomach, three of them, Lance stabbing at his stomach and chest, chasing them up toward his shoulders where they seemed to disappear.
Lance stood there, breathing heavy, the fork stuck in his upper chest through the shirt, the end of the fork bobbing with each breath. Where the hell did they go? he asked himself, then replied, I don’t want to know. There was nothing there and it didn’t go anywhere.
He yanked the fork out of his skin and filled four bowls with soup. He loaded them onto a serving tray and brought them out to the dining room, praying one of those cursed subcutaneous bugs didn’t start running around inside him, making him toss scalding soup onto his elderly guests.
He made it. Everyone got their soup and started slurping.
“Honey,” Sally-Ann said. “Are you all right?” She pointed at his chest. Half a dozen bloody splotches were soaking through his white shirt where he’d stabbed himself with the fork.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, almost whimpering. “I guess I should change this.”
Lance stood
, and as he did, he felt a hideous scrambling of bugs around his lower back.
“Oh, oh, oh!” he yelped, thrusting his hips out three times in quick succession, smacking his pelvis hard against the table, scooting it across the dining room floor, Grammy chasing after her soup with her spoon as it slid across the table.
“Baby, are you sure you’re all right?”
“Oh, you bet, honey, I’m …”
Suddenly, there was an explosion of crawling and squirming and scurrying under his skin. He felt the bugs scrambling through him, up his back, down his legs, his arms, across his chest. He ripped open his shirt and saw dozens of lumps, hundreds, the size of wide, flat jelly beans crisscrossing beneath his flesh. He grabbed one on his stomach, isolating it with his thumb and index finger, just able to make out a crab-like shape, like a boney spider. It vibrated and wiggled under his grasp.
Lance panicked, grabbed Gramp-Gramps by both shoulders, put his face right up against the old man’s and screamed, “AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!” He tried to ask the old man to help him, to do something, but all that came out was a deafening shriek that made the old man’s eyes bulge and his mouth hang so low it was visible beneath the curtain of his mustache.
The old man wasn’t helping, so Lance flew to the other side of the table and shoved his face right up against Sally-Ann’s.
“AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!”
She started screaming too, the two of them wailing in stereo.
“AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!”
“You two keep it down over there, I’m trying to enjoy my soup,” Grammy said without raising her head from the bowl of creamed asparagus.
“Zip it, you bald cunt!” Lance screeched. “I’m being eaten alive over here!”
“All right,” Gramp-Gramps said, throwing down his spoon and stomping his feet as he stood, “I think I’ve had just about enough of this young man’s disgraceful behavior. Come along, Sally-Ann.”
Sally-Ann dragged Grammy away from her soup, and the three of them headed for the door.
“Wait, you can’t leave,” Lance said, dizzy and frozen in place, watching the frantic activity transpiring beneath his outer layer.
“We can and we will,” Gramp-Gramps declared.
Sally-Ann narrowed her eyes at him. “You really shouldn’t have yelled at poor Grammy.”
They left and Lance was alone. He didn’t know what to do. He grabbed a steak knife from the dinning room table, zeroed in on the slowest moving lump on his forearm. He stabbed and missed, the knife sticking in a half inch, sending a sharp jolt of pain up his arm. He yanked the knife out and aimed more carefully. He jabbed, got it, and the hideous subdermal insect started vibrating violently on the tip of the blade like it was being electrocuted, sending a teeth-rattling shiver through every bone in his body.
He ran through the house screaming—through the living room, into the kitchen, the dining room again, back into the living room, the knife dangling from his arm. He plucked it out and all the little creatures seemed to gather at the site of hole, crawling over each other, making the skin swell, creating such an overwhelming agitation that he barely felt the knife as he laid it across his skin, pressed down and dragged it hard over his forearm, splitting the skin. He had to get those tiny monsters out. He pushed down on the wriggling mound and three of them slid out of the open wound. They were as big around as quarters and looked like thick bone-white spiders, trailing blood as they scurried across his forearm and down to his fingers. He flicked them off onto the floor.
They were followed by about two dozen others.
Lance felt his head going light, spots popping off in the corners of his vision.
And then a funny thing happened. Lance was standing in the center of the living room, facing the south wall and the stairway that lead up to Albert’s room. But this section of the room slipped down toward his feet as the ceiling slid forward in front of him, and the floor came up from behind, smacking him on the back of his head.
The world righted itself and he realized that he was lying on his back, watching the room grow dark around him.
Albert attached the CO2 cartridge to the grappling hook launcher on his wrist. It stuck out awkwardly, but it should throw that line like nobody’s business. And the wrist mount wouldn’t give him a wedgie like the belt attachment.
He put a handful of diversionary smoke bombs and a few throwing stars in the secret interior pockets of his trench coat. He wanted to bring his two-handed broad sword, but it was too heavy and made his coat pull off one shoulder.
He saw Sally-Ann and her grandparents leave, so now that he was adequately equipped, it was time to talk to Lance about letting him stay here. He may be excited about the idea—after all, Lance had called him “a breath of fresh air”— or he may be upset about the lengths Albert had to go to in order to make it happen—he did seem to be in excruciating discomfort. It was impossible to tell, but in either case he was prepared.
Albert cracked the door and peeked out. Clear. In a crouch, he crept downstairs to the living room, where Lance lay unconscious, bleeding from his arm.
Albert nudged his leg with the toe of his clawed ninja grappling boot.
Lance opened his eyes and started choking. He sat up and coughed out a mouthful of wriggling white insects. Then Albert noticed the bulges on his face, other insects moving under the skin across his cheeks, several making his upper lip bulge. One was under his left eye. It crawled out from under his lower eyelid and across his eyeball.
He passed out again.
Albert had to shake him by the shoulder to rouse him this time. When his eyes opened, Albert said, “Hey, Lance? This may not be the best time, but now that Sally-Ann’s not moving in, do you think I can stay?”
“Albert? Oh my God, you’ve got to get me to the hospital.”
“Right. Sure. But what do you think about me staying?”
Lance coughed up another bug, which scurried across the laminate floor and under the couch. “Now’s not the time for that. You’ve got to get me to the hospital.”
“Oh, of course. But I was thinking that now that we’ve gotten rid your girlfriend, there’s no reason I should …”
“What do you mean ‘we got rid of?’”
“Well I guess you could say that I got rid of her since you didn’t know about my plan up front, but you did play a crucial part and deserve a lot of the credit.”
Lance pushed himself up to a sitting position and started to stand. “What plan?”
“The itching powder I put in your underpants to scare off your girlfriend. It obviously worked, so should I just assume I can stay then?”
“You did this to me?” Lance said, looking irrationally angry, his eyes wide, lip curled up in a sneer. He bent down and grabbed a steak knife from the floor next to where he’d been lying. “I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna kill you dead right where you stand, you sick fucking freak.”
This is why Albert came prepared. “You can’t kill me,” he said, waving one hand slowly across his face as he reached into his coat pocket with the other, “because I’m not even here.”
Albert threw a handful of the diversionary smoke bombs on the floor in front of him. They were the professional kind that magicians use, but all these produced was a faint pop and a tiny wisp of smoke, like he’d lit a few sticks of incense.
“You’re dead,” Lance said, lunging at him. Albert needed to get to his room to get his two-handed broad sword, but Lance had gotten between him and the stairs.
This is where all of Albert’s hard work paid off. He ran to the side of the stairs, underneath the banister. He pulled back his sleeve, revealing the grappling hook launcher on his wrist. He pressed the release button. The CO2 cartridge hissed out cold air, freezing the hairs on Albert’s forearm, but it didn’t throw the line.
Lance moved toward him, stopping after each step to itch frantically at a different part of his body.
Albert pulled the full line out of the launcher. He threw it
up toward the banister, but it was too short. He threw it again, this time jumping as high as he could.
The hook caught on the banister!
And Albert came down with a jerk, the line on his wrist nearly yanking his arm out of the socket, leaving him dangling a foot and half from the floor like a piñata.
Albert tried to pull himself up and climb to the second floor, but he didn’t have the upper body strength to raise himself more than a couple of inches. He tried to move but could only flail his arm and legs helplessly, suspended in midair.
Lance raised his knife.
This is it, Albert thought, all of my good deeds and hard work keeping this country safe, and this is what it comes down to.
Lance moved in, ready to stab, then stopped. He doubled over. “Ah, Jesus! Holy mother of Satan!”
He ripped open his pants to reveal a misshapen lump of flesh that Albert barely recognized as part of the human anatomy. There was a penis, but it was grotesque, bulging and changing shape, the white crab-like insects spilling from the end like some evil ejaculate. There seemed to be an incredible amount of roiling activity concentrated in the groin area, making it expand and swell like the tinfoil trays of popcorn you heat over the stove until they burst open.
Looking down at this, a strange calm seemed to fall over Lance. He turned serenely away from Albert, walked over to the coffee table, knelt down, placed his penis on top of it, raised the knife over his head and brought it slashing down, chopping the penis clean off, insects spilling from the dismembered organ and the stump from which it had been removed. Lance flopped back, the bugs continuing to pour from the hole in his groin.
It took Albert nearly half an hour to unstrap the wristband, sending him crumpling to the floor, his hand so numb it felt like an inanimate piece of rubber. He went over to Lance and tried to shake him awake—he’d never said explicitly whether or not Albert could stay in the house—but he was cold and lifeless, and in all probability dead.
So that meant the house belonged to Albert now. It was never his intention to kill Lance, but now that he was dead, it really was the best possible outcome. He took a look around. That sleek modern couch, that widescreen TV, that bloody coffee table, it was all his now. And he could probably keep the checks his father sent each month, which meant he could really beef up the surveillance equipment around here.
Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror Page 5