“Listen for yourself. This interview took place about an hour after he was deposited outside the Walmart.”
“Deposited?” Mallory asked, raising an eyebrow.
Lewis nodded gravely. “We’re not sure who—or what—escorted him out. But he was ejected rather forcefully. He skidded along the parking lot for almost ten feet. He had to have three different skin grafts.” Lewis clicked the play button, and the microphone whirred to life. The speaker popped, and a scratched, faded version of Lewis’ own voice came through: “This is Dr. Lewis Burnish. The date is September 25, 1993, 10:37 pm.”
“1993?” Mallory asked, confused. “I thought you said ten years ago…” But Lewis shushed her with a wave of his hand, and the Lewis on the recorder continued:
“Post-trauma interview with Subject R, who entered the Walmart at approximately 8:45 pm and was ejected roughly 45 minutes later, at approximately 9:30 pm. Subject has severe lacerations extending from his neck to his ankles, caused by rough and prolonged scraping with asphalt. He also appears to be physically and mentally altered. His posture has slackened, and all hair seems to have been removed from his body. Not shaved; literally removed. Prior to this trauma, Subject R was articulate and roundly considered to be of high intelligence. His profession was medical surgeon at Anomaly General. I say ‘was’ because the subject no longer appears capable of performing complex medical procedures, or even simple ones. This is untested; however, his speech is slow, and he is having trouble connecting ideas. His movements and reactions are delayed. There is a five-inch scar running horizontally across his scalp along the frontal lobe. I don’t know if this existed prior to his experience inside the Walmart or not, but it appears to be a recently-healed incision. We will begin the interview now.
“Do you consent to the recording of our discussion here today?” the Lewis on the recorder asked someone on the other side of the microphone.
There was a long pause, then a second male voice said, “Yes.” He slurred his s a bit, so that it almost sounded like he ended the word with a slurp.
“Why did you go into the Walmart?”
Another long pause as the recorder hissed and popped. “Cheap beets,” Subject R finally said.
“And how often do you eat beets?” Lewis asked.
A third voice piped up from somewhere in the background, a female voice. “How is that relevant?” the voice snapped.
“I’m curious!” Lewis hissed back. “Who would risk Walmart for beets? Beets taste like dirt!”
“Some days I eat beets,” Subject R answered, seemingly heedless of the sniping back-and-forth going on around him. “Some days…not.”
“It’s just weird,” Lewis continued quietly, harping at the unseen woman who hovered in the background. “I’m trying to establish that it’s weird.”
“Just get on with it,” the woman hissed back.
Mallory gave Lewis a questioning look. The scientist shrugged. “I stand by it. It’s weird.”
“Who’s the woman?” Mallory hissed. She didn’t know why she was whispering. It wasn’t like she was going to interrupt the conversation in the recorder.
“The mayor,” Lewis replied.
“That’s the mayor?” Mallory asked. She thought for a second. “I like her,” she decided.
Lewis shook his head and motioned back down toward the microphone. His digital voice continued.
“Let the record show that Dr. Lewis Burnish advised Subject R against entering the Walmart, as did several other friends and acquaintances, but the subject went in anyway and is solely responsible for the effects of his decision.”
“I hardly think this is the time or the place—” the mayor cried, and tape-recorded Lewis acknowledged this with a quiet, agitated, “All right, all right! Now, then. Subject R. Tell us what happened when you entered the Walmart.”
The directive was followed by several long moments of silence. The other man seemed to be moaning, maybe in fear, or maybe in frustration, as if he were having trouble remembering the scene, or reliving it, or both. Finally, he said, “Bright. Lights…bright lights…on the ceiling. Made the produce look…real pretty. But it wasn’t pretty. It was…horrible. All the produce was horrible.”
“Yes, good. Go on,” recorded Lewis urged. “What else?”
“There was a…monster. At the door. A…mummy. Old, and…white. Chalk. Skeleton mummy. I could see…all his bones. I…pressed myself against the wall…closed my eyes and…went past. The skeleton mummy reached out…said, ‘Hello’…almost grabbed me…but I got away.”
“That was the greeter,” Lewis explained. “You were smart to keep your distance. What next?”
“I saw the peppers…and the broccoli…and the raw beets. I…wanted to…the beets…I wanted to buy them…not go to aisle 8, but…raw beets…were not on sale.”
“So you went past the produce section?”
Here, Subject R began to sniffle a little, and Mallory thought she could hear a gentle, muffled sob. “Yes,” the voice sniffled.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” the mayor asked gently.
“In the produce…by the cilantro…I was…I was…”
“Yes?” the mayor urged. “You were what?”
“I was…I was…”
“It’s okay,” Lewis said. “This is a safe space.”
“What happened?” the mayor asked.
There was more sniffling from the subject. “I was…misted.”
“Misted?” Lewis and the mayor asked in unison, both sounding equally confused.
“The sprayer,” Subject R sobbed. “It misted me.”
Lewis cleared his throat, and the mayor gave an unmistakable sigh. “Let’s…get back on track here, okay?” Lewis asked.
“I don’t like water,” the subject explained through his tears.
“Okay. So you made it through the produce section. Then what?”
“I…I went through the…through the…through the…make-up,” he finally said, sounding unsure.
“Cosmetics,” Lewis said helpfully. “You went through cosmetics.”
“I saw a woman…in a blue vest…I asked her where to find…canned beets.”
“What did this woman look like?” the mayor interrupted.
Subject R made some low, guttural noises as he struggled to remember. “Red hair,” he spat out, grasping for memories. “Curly. Nice. Cheap Trick tattoo on her arm.”
“My God,” the mayor breathed. “That was Sandy Sullivan. My former deputy assistant! We lost her to a Walmart job fair years ago.”
“Sounds like she’s still in there,” Lewis said. “Go on, what did she say?”
“She…she…pointed toward aisle 8. I went.”
“You went to aisle 8?”
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
There was more sniffling on the other end of the recorder. “It was…cold. Colder and colder. Aisle 2 was…warm. Aisle 4 got…colder. Aisle 8 was…like ice. So cold. So cold.”
“Listen to me,” Lewis said. “This is important. Okay?” There was some sort of muffled response from the subject. “Did you get a jacket from menswear?”
“Lewis,” the mayor snapped.
“What?”
“Who gives a shit if he got a jacket from menswear?”
“Science cares!”
There was a loud slam of hands against wood. When the mayor spoke again, her voice was louder, closer to the microphone: “What did you see in aisle 8?”
Subject R’s teeth chattered with the memory of the sub-zero temperatures. Speaking through the clattering took great effort. “C-C-C-Canned goods,” he finally managed. “So many…so many c-c-canned goods.”
“Good,” said the mayor. “That’s very good. What else did you see?”
�
��F-F-Fog. Mist. From the shelves. So thick…couldn’t see the Sun D-D-Drop.”
“According to the schematics, the soda is kept on the far wall after the end of the aisle,” Lewis explained to the mayor. “Okay, so. Cans, cold, and mist. This is all very good. Keep going. What else?”
“The beets. There was red.”
“The beets? The beets were red?” Lewis asked. There was a quiet shuffling sound, and then Lewis said, “The subject shook his head no.”
“Were the cans red?” the mayor asked.
“Red…b-b-behind the cans,” Subject R said. “Light…bright…”
“There was a red light coming from behind the cans,” Lewis said. Mallory could hear him scribbling notes on a pad of paper. “Good, good. Did you notice anything else?”
“B-B-Bugs. S-So many b-b-bugs. Bugs everywhere. Crawling on the cans. Dropping…Dropping from the ceiling. C-C-Crawling on my…skin. C-Crawling out…of the beets.”
“Ew,” Mallory said, disgusted. “No wonder they were on sale.” Lewis shushed her again and nodded at the recorder. His own recorded voice spoke next.
“What sort of bugs?”
“Centipedes…mostly. Beetles…and centipedes.”
“Good, good.” There was more scribbling. “What did you do? Did you kill any of the bugs?”
“No. Too many. Too…cold. I…grabbed a can. Of beets.” The subject began sobbing uncontrollably. “His voice,” the man choked out through his tears. “Filled me with…his voice.”
“Whose voice?” the mayor demanded. “What did it say?”
“It said…it said…‘Free me.’”
“Where was the voice coming from?” Lewis asked. “It came from behind the beets?”
“C-C-Came from…everywhere. Came from…aisle 8.”
“Do you know who it was?” Lewis asked. “Do you know who the voice belonged to?” A moment of silence, then, “The subject is nodding his head. Who was it? Who told you to free him?”
“It was…it was…an ancient…evil.”
There was a pause on the other end of the microphone, a shuffling of papers, and an uneasy clearing of throats. “An…ancient evil?” Lewis asked.
“It…wanted to be…free,” Subject R said, sounding resolute through his tears.
“How the fuck did an ancient evil get trapped behind the canned beets?” the mayor demanded, slapping her hands on the table.
“Marcy—” Lewis began.
“No! This is my town, and I want to know how an ancient evil got trapped behind the goddamn canned beets!”
“Not…just beets,” Subject R said. “Canned corn…canned green beans…canned corn beef hash…all…of aisle 8.”
“This is unacceptable!” the mayor screamed.
Recorded Lewis shushed her, then returned his focus to Subject R. “What happened next? After you touched the can of beets and the voice filled your head. What happened then?”
“I…dropped the beets. They…they were so cheap.” The subject lapsed into a fit of sobbing once more. “They were so cheap, but I…I left them behind.”
“Good,” Lewis said, his voice soothing. “Good. That was a good thing to do. We can get you canned beets at the Aldi.”
“Not as cheap,” the man pointed out through his sniffles.
“But still very inexpensive. And the town will pay the difference.” The mayor began to object, but something—probably Lewis—silenced her. “What happened after you put down the beets?”
“I…tried to walk…but the bugs…attacked by the bugs. They…chewed me from…the inside…out. Hollowed me out…crawled in through my mouth and…chewed me away.”
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” the mayor soured.
“Then what?” Lewis said, ignoring her.
“Tried…to run. But the floor…went down. Sucked me down. The evil said…‘Free me…I’ll make you richer than…Queen of England.’ But…I don’t…like foreigners. I…told him so. Then everything went…red. Pain in my head. Then black. Then I woke up…here. In this room.”
“Is there anything else? Can you remember anything else at all?”
Subject R paused. Then he said, “The devil lives in aisle 8.”
Lewis clicked off the recorder and set it on the plywood table. “That’s what we’re up against, Mallory. That’s what makes the clone so dangerous. If we don’t stop him, he’s going to release the ancient evil that lives behind the canned goods in aisle 8. And yes, I know how absurd that sounds, but it’s the truth, and it’s not a joke. If he succeeds, it will mean the unspeakable destruction of Anomaly Flats. And almost certainly beyond.”
“What unspeakable destruction?” Mallory asked. This whole thing, the very notion that an evil creature was locked up in the canned foods aisle of the Walmart, was beyond insane. But so was a creek filled with plasma, and so was a bed and breakfast that encouraged you lock the door with a chalk spell, and so was a cornfield that whispered you into insanity—and those were all plenty real, here in this place. Was an ancient evil any less likely? Mallory discovered she could actually wrap her head around it a bit, if she didn’t try too hard. “What would this evil thing do?”
Lewis gave her a grim frown. “Let me show you.” He hopped off his stool and retrieved a thin, blue binder from a pile of books and papers near the back corner of the barn. Then he flopped it down on the table and slid it in front of Mallory. “I have to warn you, it’s…not easy to look at.”
“What is it?” she asked, flipping open the cover. She gasped when she saw the image on the first page…then she scrunched up her face and brought her nose closer to the page, inspecting it closely with a sort of macabre pleasure. “What the hell is this?”
“They’re woodcuttings. Or mimeographs of woodcuttings, to be exact.”
The picture before Mallory showed a line of men, naked and in obvious anguish. Each man was bound by the wrists to a log that was suspended horizontally a few feet over the ground. They appeared to be perched atop long iron stakes stuck into the ground. As Mallory looked closer, she realized the men weren’t perched; they were impaled. They had been lowered down onto the iron poles from above.
“But…what is this?” Mallory repeated. She pointed down at the line of naked men, in case that helped clarify the question.
The scientist shifted uneasily on his stool. “That…ah…well…that is a group of men being impaled. Through the—” He cleared his throat uncomfortably and shifted again. “Through the rectum.”
“And what is this?” Mallory asked, pointing at the base of one of the poles. She was experiencing a grotesque wonder like nothing she’d ever known before. This woodcutting was thrilling and horrible and the living embodiment of everything she’d ever wanted to do to her own gallery of asshole exes. “What’s this down here?”
“That…ah…appears to be fire. The flames, you see, they, ah…they heat up the metal rods and…well…cauterize the…anus.” Lewis’ face burned a brighter shade of red than hot iron could ever hope to achieve. He untied his bow tie and loosened the collar of his shirt. Little beads of sweat bubbled up on his brow, and he wiped them away nervously.
“But…why?” Mallory asked, her eyes wide with wonder.
The scientist pointed to a dark figure standing alone near the top of the image. The resolution was terrible, but she could see clearly enough that the figure had only a smooth, white surface where his eyes, ears, and nose should be. “This is the ancient evil. As best we can tell, he has impaled these men for…” He cleared his throat once more. “…sport.”
“Where’s his face?” Mallory demanded.
“I don’t know why he’s pictured that way. But it’s the same on all the pages.” He scooted his stool closer to Mallory’s and began to leaf through the pages. There was a tableau of women being stewed alive in a large caul
dron with feral badgers being dropped into the boiling soup; a depiction of several men wearing their own torso skin loosely around their waists like skirts; a scene with young children with feathers streaming out of their mouths marching along a river of fire holding decapitated heads atop little pikes. And on every page, the darkly-dressed figure looked on from afar, his face a smooth, white, impassive surface.
“How many of these things are there?” Mallory asked, amazed, flipping through the binder.
“Seventeen. They were unearthed by an archeologist working in Anomaly Flats in the ’60s. He found them inside a petrified bison carcass he dug up from the parking lot of the old Blockbuster south of town. It was pretty widely known that the Blockbuster was built on top of the ancient Anomalians’ sacrificial killing fields—”
“On top of what?” Mallory cried.
“—but this was something different,” Lewis said, ignoring her outburst. “The archeologist had found plenty of elk and raccoon and small bird skeletons, all with the traditional sacrificial intestines wrapped around their necks, but he’d never found a fully preserved carcass before, and never a bison. And certainly never a bison with a series of complex and horrible woodcuttings foretelling the grotesque and agonizing end of Anomaly Flats stuffed down its throat.” He took a breath. “They’re in the town archives now. In case you want a better look.”
Mallory found that she did want a better look; she’d never seen anything so grotesque in real life. But she sensed that her fascination with these torturous wood carvings might be looked upon as socially unacceptable, or at the very least socially concerning, so she said, “No, I think this is fine.” She flipped the page and examined a mimeograph of deer with their own heads replaced with the detached heads of humans. The men-deer were leaping through a field and munching on dandelions. “How do you know this is the ancient evil? And not just some William Blake knockoff?” Lewis gave her a surprised look, and Mallory rolled her eyes. “I’ve been to a museum, Lewis.”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—just…look. Here.” He pointed to a block of text that ran along the bottom border of the mimeograph. It was printed in a language Mallory didn’t recognize, much less understand.
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