Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror

by et al. Ramsey Campbell

  My last resort was the police. But if they really were gone, what would happen to Jessica? Would they send her to Judy’s mother? Or leave her with me since I was a relative living in the house? Or foster care? Who knew? If that happened, she’d no longer be my problem, and let me tell you, this was one problem I did not need. At the same time, none of this was her fault. I didn’t want to punish her any more than she already had been just because her parents couldn’t deal anymore.

  After a week, the doubts I’d been having about their return were stronger than my hope. By the end of the second week, I knew they weren’t coming back. It was slim pickings in the kitchen and my savings were about gone. I had to get a job. For real this time.

  I saw a commercial on television for school bus drivers and one of the selling points was how it allowed one driver to be home with her daughter. That was the job for me. It only kept me out of the house for a couple hours each day, in the morning and later in the afternoon, and the rest of the time I was home with Jessica.

  I bought a monitor and put it in her room. I still slept in the basement; I couldn’t bring myself to take over Judy and Jeff’s bedroom, it felt lifeless in there and cold. But if Jessica needed me in the night, the monitor solved that problem. She refused to come with me on the bus, insisting she could manage those couple hours on her own, as long as the tv remote lay on her tray and she’d gone to the bathroom before I left.

  Caring for Jessica felt strange. I’d dated girls with kids before, but didn’t have any of my own. The less attention they needed, the better, as far as I was concerned. But she would always need this kind of care, wouldn’t she?

  I just wanted to go down to Jerry’s, get wasted and talk about good times.

  My dreams of contributing to his business plan were still in the back of my mind and I thought if the business picked up and we started making some real money, I could hire a nurse to take care of her. I didn’t mind making her breakfast and parking her in front of the television, but baths were a problem, and Joon still scared the piss out of me.

  I lay downstairs, stretched out on the couch, listening to the white noise from the monitor, drifting off. I heard bedsprings screech, and then a thump. I knew what it was, but exhaustion said if Jessica was hurt, she’d cry out.

  I did hear something, a moan or a groan, but still I was too beat to react to anything other than “Help!” What I heard didn’t sound like pain, she was probably dreaming.

  Then I heard the skittering.

  Something moved across the floor above me, very fast, and I sat up, thinking something had gotten in, a raccoon or squirrel. I leapt off the couch and tried to cross the room in the dark. A strand of spider web brushed my face and I jerked, stubbed my toe, got the web out of my eye, and ran up the stairs. I flipped on the kitchen light and looked around, listening for whatever was in the house.

  My heartbeat pounded and my breath in my ears made it hard to hear, so I stood a second, trying to calm myself down. I scanned the living room and the hallway, but my eyes felt so heavy, I couldn’t make out anything. Then I heard it again, a scritch in the dark by the television. I looked and waited, but nothing moved, so I went across the living room and flipped on the lamp.

  Jessica lay on the floor there, her blank face staring up at nothing through closed lids. My first thought was how did she get out here, but then she moved. Her body scooted forward, like she was floating, moving toward the hall. As she got closer, I saw what had been lying under her by the television: a candy bar wrapper. I’d bought it earlier at a gas station, then forgot it, had tossed it on the table by the door with my keys. The candy bar was gone, but the wrapper lay torn open. Then Jessica scurried around the corner and down the hall, on her back, and I knew that wasn’t possible, so what the fuck?

  I followed her, silently, and watched her enter her room again, then climb up the cover to the mattress and lay down again. I didn’t turn her over, but I saw as she sat up to get back into bed, Joon’s short, half-formed arms reaching out and pulling herself up. I thought if I went in there and looked, Jessica’s face would be clean and sleeping, but if I turned her over, I might see a smear of chocolate on Joon’s tiny, misshapen mouth. For a moment I couldn’t breathe.

  I wondered if that was the real reason her parents had taken off and, I hate to admit it, I didn’t blame them at all.

  * * * *

  It shouldn’t even be an issue to mention I stayed awake the rest of the night. The questions stormed my brain, pounding around inside my skull like steel-toed boots. In the morning, I climbed the stairs and went into Jessica’s room to help her get up. All I could think of was Joon climbing back into bed. I wanted to ask her about it, but couldn’t think of the words. I didn’t even know if Jessica knew about it. She’d been sleeping, that was plain to see at the time, but this couldn’t have been the first time, obviously.

  I sat at the kitchen table and watched her dip her face toward a bowl of dry Fruit Loops, take a mouthful, then drink milk from the straw in the glass next to her bowl.

  Her unborn twin’s stubby limbs bulged at the back of her T-shirt, a white cotton one with Hannah Montana across the front. She wasn’t a monster. She wasn’t someone I should be cringing from. She was just a little girl, one who’d had her life fucked up before she was even born.

  I sighed and stood up then; time to go to work. I asked once about her own school, but Jessica said her parents had home schooled her because it was easier than dealing with parents, teachers, other students who wouldn’t understand why she was born the way she was. That made sense. But with her parents gone, there was no one to teach her. I barely graduated high school.

  “Do you have to go to the bathroom before I leave?” She shook her head and smiled and said, “See you soon.”

  I nodded, grabbed my keys, didn’t look at the torn open candy bar wrapper I hadn’t been able to make myself pick up yet, then left.

  I came home for the afternoon, then back out again on the return run, then home to make dinner and put Jessica to bed. We adopted this routine for the next couple of weeks.

  Our interaction was limited. I knew nothing about kids, and after what I saw the night before, like it or not, she freaked me out.

  Another two weeks passed and still no word from Jeff and Judy. I started to hate them and I sometimes regretted moving back now. I’m not going to go into a big riff on how I’d been alone all my life and Jessica showed me what it was to live, she wasn’t the missing piece to my life and she didn’t fill my heart with joy. She was a helpless kid. As much as I hate the responsibility, if I didn’t take care of her, who would? And I still wasn’t letting her go to strangers; I’ve heard plenty of stories of how those kids are treated and she’s defenseless enough without adding that kind of pressure. But still, every day there, knowing what I knew now about Joon, it got harder and harder to keep going.

  That tiny body scurrying around on those stumpy limbs like a giant spider, and Jessica’s sleeping half dead to the world, her face calm and empty while her body is hijacked by a fluke of nature.

  Even after two weeks, I shivered every time I thought of it. And eventually I found out Jessica knew.

  We sat at the table one night. I’d ordered pizza, then cut up Jessica’s into smaller bite-sized pieces and I was staring out the kitchen window when she said, “You don’t have to be afraid of her.”

  “What?” because I hadn’t been paying attention in the first place.

  “Joon,” she said. “She can’t hurt you. She just gets hungry sometimes, but she didn’t mean to freak you out so bad.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know why you’ve been acting so different, because you saw her that night, and now you’re scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said. But maybe I was. And maybe part of me felt ashamed that she knew it.

  “You didn’t tell me about that,” I said, trying not to sound accusatory, but feeling it a bit anyway. “I thought she was just a defo
rmity.”

  “I didn’t want you to get scared and go away like they did.” She teared up. “Nobody likes me,” she said and started bawling.

  Christ.

  I got up and went over to her and sat in the next chair. I wanted to hug her, but, honestly, the thought of touching Joon’s arms … I can’t tell you how careful I was when I had to move Jessica to keep from touching any part of Joon. Instead I put my hand on her side and said, “That’s not true and you know it.”

  “Oh yeah?” she yelled back at me. Her lips were wet and spittle flew off them to land on the table. “Who else is there? I only know three people and two of them left. Now you hate me, too!”

  “Jess, come on,” I tried calming her down. “I don’t hate you. And I’m not going anywhere, I promise you.”

  “You don’t even want to be here!” she cried.

  “You can’t say that. I didn’t ask for this situation, I’ll be honest, but I’m not about to up and leave.”

  “Why didn’t they love me enough?” she asked me, and at that I was speechless.

  I shrugged and hugged her anyway. I brushed one stubby arm and moved my hand to the middle of her back, but I held her and ssshhhhhhh’d in her ear until she stopped crying. I kissed her cheek and went to get something to wipe her nose.

  “You wanna watch Nickelodeon or something?” I asked. She nodded, looking up at me with big wet eyes. I moved her into the living room and put her pizza on the tray in front of her. She ate and watched SUITE LIFE for a while. Later I put her to bed, turned on the monitor, and went downstairs to shower. Afterward I stretched out on the couch, thinking about how much I hated my cousin and her piece of shit husband right then.

  The weekend came and I realized part of what made Jessica so miserable may be that her parents kept her cooped up in the house most of the time. So I put her in the car and we drove. The sun shone and I bought her a pair of green plastic sunglasses because green was her favorite color, and we drove around the streets, through the parks, around the boulevards and avenues with the radio blasting Carrie Underwood, another of her favorites, and not thinking about anything. I asked if she wanted to get out at the park and swing, but she only looked down at where her lap wasn’t and said, “No, thanks. Maybe when we get home.”

  My instinct was to tell her nonsense and take her anyway, but if she wasn’t comfortable with it, I wouldn’t force her. In time, I figured.

  We drove home then, going through McDonald’s first because they were giving away brain teasers in their Happy Meals and Jessica loved being able to solve those. She got Chicken McNuggets, which she ate whole from the box, taking them in her mouth, dipping them in honey mustard, and chewing the entire thing with her cheeks bulging and trying not to laugh.

  It felt good to see her being a kid and enjoying some time in the sun.

  I put her to bed not long after; she said she’d never been so worn out which I thought strange considering pretty much all she did was sit there, but what do I know? She slept on her side and now that I knew about Joon, I knew why. I kissed her goodnight on the cheek, then went out to the living room. I wasn’t tired just yet and I turned on the television, but kept the volume down.

  Nothing much on TV, so I watched some countdown on VH1, flipping between that and some investigation thing on one of those crime channels. I’d spent about an hour at this when I heard Jessica coughing.

  I muted the tv and sat quiet, listening for her to call for me. She never did, though, but I left the sound off a little longer just in case. After about five minutes, she coughed again and this time I went in to ask if she was okay, did she need a drink?

  Jessica was asleep. But the coughing continued and I realized it was Joon.

  I leaned over to check her. Her tiny crooked mouth worked, opening and coughing. Something in her throat. If she had a throat. Her little eye crinkled shut and the mouth opened wider and another cough shot out, along with something else.

  I figured it to be a piece of food. I found it on the edge of the mattress. It was crawling back toward Joon. Without thinking, I swatted it away, off the bed and into the dark. She coughed again, hard, hacking something up, and another one shot out, this time hitting my arm before falling back to the mattress. I looked down at it, trying to see in the dark with what little light came in from the hall. It was a spider. Tiny, but definitely a spider. And it was alive and crawling toward Joon.

  I swatted this one away as well, but she coughed up another, then another, and a fifth. I stared down at her and watched two more spiders crawl from her mouth, up over her face, vanishing into the tangle of hair that fell over Joon’s face. Jessica moaned in her sleep and moved her head around as if trying to scratch it against the pillow.

  The spiders kept crawling, up Jessica’s head, down to the pillow, and over the side of the bed, disappearing to wherever spiders go. The coughing stopped and nothing else came from Joon’s mouth. They were both fast asleep again.

  I felt my heart about to plummet into my stomach and my knees almost refused to hold me upright. I returned to the living room wondering what in the holy fuck I had gotten myself into.

  I somehow managed to doze off back on the couch and awakened again late into the night—I think the clock read 2:00 AM—to Jessica’s voice. I jumped up and ran halfway down the hall when I realized she wasn’t calling for me. She was screaming at Joon.

  “Stop it, I won’t let you!” and “I don’t care, I’m still bigger than you!” There were other noises coming from the bedroom, things being knocked over, thumping. I got in and flipped on the light and found Jessica on the floor—or rather, Joon on the floor, Jessica was a helpless passenger. Or maybe not so helpless anymore because as Joon tried to move around, Jessica, who had most of the control of her torso, threw her center of gravity around, knocking Joon off balance, causing her to stumble. But she still tried to crawl around, despite Jessica’s best attempts.

  “What?”

  It was all I could get out. The rest of the question was pointless.

  They didn’t seem to notice me anyway.

  “Joon, stop it!” Jessica yelled. “I don’t care, no! We’re going to be fine, you have to listen to me!”

  She threw her head to the right and that knocked Joon over, then Jessica hurried to scramble onto her stomach so Joon’s stubby limbs would have no purchase.

  “Get downstairs,” Jessica yelled up at me. “She’ll get tired soon, just go.”

  That stumped me even more than watching them fight. Why was she warning me?

  “What the hell’s going on?” I asked, then stooped to pick her up.

  “Don’t touch me!” Jessica shrieked. “Stay away from us!”

  I jumped back and stared at her, asked again, “Jessica, what’s going on?”

  “She thinks you’re going to leave,” she said. One of Joon’s misshapen arms came up and grabbed a chunk of Jessica’s hair, pulling until she screamed. Acting on instinct, Jessica bucked against the tugging, and that helped Joon gain some momentum and flip herself back over. She let go of Jessica’s hair and scurried toward me across the floor.

  I backed away and, without thinking, yanked the bedroom door shut before she could reach me. I heard her head thump when she hit it.

  Through the door I called, “Jessica, what is she doing?”

  “She thinks you’re gonna leave because of her.”

  “Why does she think that?”

  “Joon, stop it!” she screamed again. “Stop it right now!”

  I heard a grunt and another thump, then a moment of quiet. Jessica panted as she spoke. “Before they left us, our parents started being nicer to us. They bought us stuff, cds and cartoon dvds. Then they left. Joon thinks you’re going to leave because you were so nice today.”

  “That’s not the same,” I told her, told both of them. “I’m not your parents.”

  “I know that,” she said. Then the struggles picked up again. They knocked over what sounded like the small white wicker table
beside the bed. Then another question occurred to me.

  “Jessica, how did she plan to keep me here?”

  She didn’t answer. And she didn’t have to. I saw them when I looked up.

  The spiders. I’d only seen her cough up seven, but who knew what she’d done before, or after that. I didn’t even try to count the spiders on the ceiling in the hall. Nor did I need to; their work spoke for itself. They moved about as if it had been choreographed, covering the walls and ceiling in the hall with an intricate web of thick strands, then across, from wall to wall, and if I’d been distracted long enough, the web would have blocked my path. I don’t think it would have held me, but maybe that wasn’t the point. I don’t know everything there is to know about Joon, but what I’d seen already told me not to underestimate her. The web only had to slow me down. Whatever she was going to do to me, she would do herself.

  I slunk back away from the hall and the spiders, and stayed close to Jessica’s bedroom door. It wasn’t like they could reach the handle and open it. Then again, Joon coughed up spiders. Anything felt possible at that moment.

  I heard another crash from the bedroom, and Jessica kept screaming at her twin.

  The spiders continued working their trap while the battle went on inside the bedroom, and I stood outside in the dark, helpless and in shock. It sounded like they’d knocked over the dresser and I wondered what the fuck they could be doing in there. They weren’t big girls.

  I heard the spiders clacking back and forth over the walls and ceiling, watched them drop on the webs, spinning and weaving. I had nowhere to go. I almost burst back into the room, and I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t because Joon scared me more than ever.

  I yelled through the door, “Joon, I’m not going anywhere, I’m right here, I’m not leaving you. Do you hear me?” It was the first time I’d addressed her.

  Something shattered in the bedroom and I knew it was serious, threw open the door and ran in despite what I may find. Jessica lay on the floor at the foot of her bed, bleeding, and I rushed over.