Nightmare Ballad

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  He decided to make a quick stop at the plant and, if Johnny wasn’t there, call the whole outing a wash. He’d made a couple wrong turns en route—that song had begun to scratch its claws into the back of his head again, and though he couldn’t recall the rhythm, he sensed echoes of the notes rebounding off this part of town. It got more resonant as he neared the plant. A disgusting sensation absorbed him: he shouldn’t be here; this wasn’t his place; this wasn’t his territory; this wasn’t his dream. His fatigued eyes may have been working on him, but the air shimmered around the plant, all the way to the fields and the black curtain.

  He looked around again.

  Shimmered, it did.

  Like diamonds bleeding golden silhouettes of the sun and stars. It was a field before him, a vertical mirage.

  He drove through the mirage, and at once it disappeared. The atmosphere got heavier, and his mind relaxed, accepted every jagged shape, line, and fissure in the universe.

  He slipped out of the Volt, shut the door, and walked the severely cracked sidewalk to the treatment plant’s front office. Shadows cooked off the trailer and slipped down, splashing with hisses on the burnt brown grass outside. It had been a while since he’d stopped by here, probably since GeoGreen wrapped up the centrifuge and equalization tank project for the city. The structure housing the centrifuge and the new tank had to be the only modern construction onsite. Everything else was circa 1970 and every inch looked it. None of the administration buildings were kept up—the pair of simple rectangular military-style huts had slowly become warehouses for operators, sewer collection crews and mechanics. A series of trailers had been brought in at some point, probably when the city realized how much it would cost to retrofit the original buildings. Despite the smell and the crumbling infrastructure, Luke had always felt the sewer treatment plant had a homey, down-to-earth vibe, but it seemed off now, as if turning over a few stones would let loose something volatile.

  Luke stepped up the iron steps to the trailer and took the door handle. Paused. He shouldn’t be doing this. He involuntary gasped—what if I remember the song right now, while it’s already playing for someone else?

  Who was it playing for?

  Hard to tell. But two layers of that hateful, splendid music? What would that do?

  He didn’t want to entertain that thought. He had to just concentrate, find Johnny, make sure he was okay, and then get the hell home for his scolding.

  Right.

  Like Petunia had said…he was an alien here, an invader of another’s personal world.

  The door swung open before Luke reached it.

  Petunia’s grandmother was there. Right there.

  “Have you seen her?” the old woman asked, her eyes terror-drawn.

  Luke shook his head.

  “She came out here without telling me. Good God, we just needed to collect her dad’s things and get out. I can’t take this anymore.”

  Mouse Stedding…yes, he was gone. Because that’s what frogmen do.

  “She’s going to do something horrible.” The old woman clasped her hands to her face like an awful bone breathing apparatus.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get her back. Just stay here.” Luke headed around the trailer, up the concrete stairs fixed inside the hill. They led to the headworks, the first place the city’s sewage went to be treated. He could hear the mechanical bar-screen shuttering above, catching all the solid matter. This normally was the most awful-smelling place in the entire plant, but it smelled different today.

  Flowers?

  When he got to the top of the hill, he took in a big breath, like roses and orange blossoms married. Luke actually enjoyed the scent for a moment. It reminded him of the perfume Johnny’s wife Lisa used to wear sometimes. Poor woman died so young. The scent was a nice memory of her though.

  Then Luke noticed the wastewater superintendent, Fabian Rove. On his knees, the man hunkered before the passing river of sewage, his head entirely submerged.

  Luke hurried over to grab him around the stomach.

  “Leave him be,” said a cigarette-scarred voice.

  The plant manager, Jack Portiere, leaned against a stanchion to the screener. His American Spirit filterless had jaundiced his hand. In fact, all his flesh had yellowed, including the whites of his eyes. It was a lot worse than Luke remembered.

  Rove jerked his head up from the sewage and gasped. “Thought I saw it this time!”

  Luke flinched in revulsion. Something that looked like spinach clung to Rove’s jaw, and his face was speckled in pieces of brown.

  Luke caught his gagging mouth. “Eh… saw what?”

  “Alberto Cruz’s heart. The fat fuck! Gonna use it to make a monster.” Rove slammed his face back down and wiggled his body like a bear hunting for a trout, splashing sewage back and forth.

  Jack Portiere chuckled dryly and took a deep drag of his cigarette. “Won’t find Johnny’s heart down there…I keep telling him. Nope. Johnny Cruz’s heart is down in the field with those foxy ladies. They’re playing with all his squishy parts right about now.”

  Luke shook off the obvious question. “Right. So, hey, have you seen a teenage girl around here?”

  Portiere moved his head back. “Down by the new tank. Told her not to go. There’s still construction equipment yonder.”

  “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  The man lifted an eyebrow that stretched the yellow flesh of his eyelid into a translucent film. “Not my job.”

  Luke didn’t have time for this. Petunia and Johnny were both in trouble now. “This way? The scaffold still the best way to get down?”

  The man blew out an unnaturally dense cloud of hazel smoke that surrounded his body, hiding everything about him save for the sparkling red cherry at the end of the cigarette. “So you choose to save the girl before the friend…the foxy ladies win, again. You are sooooo brave.”

  Whatever…. Luke went to the galvanized scaffold and descended the first ramp. As he proceeded, the underground hiss of gravity-fed sewer pipes deafened him. The fire-escape-like scaffold was familiar; he’d gone up and down it for months. The descent felt endless now. Through the hissing came a loud banging, steel on steel.

  The equalization tank holding nearly a million gallons of untreated sewage had a construction flaw in its secondary containment, and though it probably would be okay, Luke had cautioned the city. In case an earthquake struck, they should consider reinforcing the outer containment at very least. That had been so much pissing in the wind. The city was too happy to be at the finish line of a large project, so one of their engineers signed off on it.

  It wasn’t for Luke to question the client if they defined a big earthquake as a rare occurrence.

  A track hoe, however, breaking through the side of the tank’s containment wall, should have been equally rare. But halfway down the scaffold, Luke’s stomach twisted.

  Grover Franklin sat behind the controls of the track hoe, frantically throwing levers, prolific sweat running down his face.

  “Franklin! What the hell! Ease off!” Luke yelled.

  The pounding of the track hoe’s bucket slamming into the wall drowned his words.

  Sprays of sewage escaped through radiating cracks.

  “Oh god….” Luke’s feet thundered down another ramp. He had seen Grover use the machine in the sludge beds on more than one occasion and seemed to have a deft hand at its operation. Now the young guy acted possessed, out of control? What was with these people today?

  Down another ramp, Luke spotted a small figure emerging from the gray shadow over the aerator basin.

  “Petunia!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Go back up! Get out of there!”

  The girl was sobbing. He could hear her, though she couldn’t hear him. “Daddy!” she shouted. “Daddy! I know why this is happening now. Where’s the curtain? Where’s the fucking curtain?”

  The track hoe stopped. Luke halted as well and let out a quivering breath. Grover Franklin, appearing to finally
come to his senses, leaned out the side and looked down. “Hey! You’re Mouse’s daughter, aren’t ya? Let me just stop this thing. One of these levers….”

  The steel bucket bashed into the wall again and a steady stream of wastewater cascaded down the side. Several large cracks expanded from the impact. Luke flew around another ramp but somebody caught him from behind.

  Female hands over his eyes.

  Guess who? Love ya stud. Multiple pairs of arms cinched around him.

  Bodies pressed against him. Some naked. Some clothed.

  He fought to get through them. We’re all yours…men like you need more…Dara wasn’t enough, was she? No. You cannot love. You cannot feel shame. Leave no cunt unfucked.

  “GET OFF ME!” Luke thrashed about. The nameless women brought him down. His chin struck the grated floor with a metallic phwung! They dog-piled over his body. He squirmed. They were suffocating him. In the background, above the intermittent banging of the track hoe bucket, he heard the swelling and buckling of the equalization tank’s supports. It was giving out.

  “Whose dream has come here today?” he heard Petunia say. “It doesn’t sound like yours Mr. Rhodes? Who heard the song? Where are they? Somebody help me. It’s burning through my mind.”

  Luke managed to pull partially free of the women and grabbed a support beam. He towed himself, bucking his body under the mass of weight. Making progress, he hauled him and them, and the force upon him somehow relented. Luke dragged himself out of the pile-up and dared to look over his shoulder. Behind him stood a four-foot-high hill of used condoms. He shook his head at the sight. Held his head, and marveled, grotesquely.

  He stumbled up, sick to his stomach. His body felt hot and inappropriately sticky.

  At that same moment, the track hoe bucket delivered a fatal blow to the containment wall. An unholy rainbow-arch downpour exploded from the top of the tank. Petunia’s body was swept away in boiling brown seconds.

  Luke blinked, not believing his eyes, but in a sense believing everything, maybe even acknowledging it as commonplace. Through the wastewater rainbow, frogmen slipped into the ever-growing pool of sewage below. Their wetsuits and air-tanks had the same pea-green color as the sewage. Luke watched as they dived in and swam about like abnormally fast human tadpoles.

  From the filth and waste, a red toy duck surfaced, bobbing merrily. It traveled around the aerator basin on a swift current. Luke jumped down to an embankment and used a block wall to make his way to the other side of the aerator, where he hoped dry land still existed. On the other side, he saw a stream about three feet wide traveling down a culvert toward the street. He spotted the red duck as it skidded along a thin tributary that took it down an opposing road. He made it down to the sidewalk and hurried along.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered to himself. The smell of rotten eggs, flowers, and shit made his stomach launch into his throat. He turned away from the wet-well, which had been left open and now overflowed.

  A thrashing in the water got him looking again. An oblong glowing white cranium poked through the bubbling shell, brown fluid cascading over the sides. Huge charcoal eyes stared up at him. He couldn’t move; he could only watch. The alien pulled itself up on the side of the pond and onto the scaffold.

  “Pet-pet-petunia,” he stuttered.

  Sewage fell from its mouth. “Take back what is yours.”

  The alien rushed after him, long fingers wagging like a dying spider’s legs. Luke thundered down the sidewalk. His blistered feet no longer hurt. He ran faster than he had since his high school days.

  But the alien was already ahead of him, apparently hours ahead of him.

  Across the concrete path back to the digesters, the alien grasped the face of a plant worker Luke had never met. The man convulsed, arms out, gray foam issuing from his mouth. The alien let go, and he fell to the ground, bursting into a mound of maggots.

  “Mr. Rhodes,” the alien called out, turning and leering at him.

  “What do you want?”

  The alien broke out running for him, large jelly-black bug eyes joyful to infect him.

  Luke picked up a garbage can and heaved it at the thing.

  He couldn’t see the alien anymore.

  Ran off?

  Vanished?

  His mind shifted gears with ease. The trash that spilled out of the can was more interesting now.

  Next to a half-crumpled McDonald’s coffee cup was his note from Maribel.

  Luke picked it up. In this letter, yes, everything would be explained. How Maribel was leaving them. How she couldn’t take it anymore. Living with a bad man like him. He would self-destruct without her. So would Dara. So would they together. The thought made his lungs seize up.

  He had to see what it said.

  The end of the envelope came apart in small shreds, one after the other. After a bit of cajoling, he got the thin slip of Maribel-scented paper out.

  Unfolded it.

  His eyes read the words, but not really. The letters reached into each other with thin veins traveling through the translucent paper. The words began to beat, steadily, then loudly, growing in size, the whole sight of it driving him insane.

  It throbbed right out of his hand. He stepped forward to grab it, but it beat again and jumped like animated origami. Three bounds, and the piece of paper had made it across the street, Luke following it, feeling like a happy idiot, knowing that when at last he captured it, perhaps the pounding, beating words would finally make sense.

  His hand poised over it, he dove—the letter blasted out from under his fingertips and zipped into a storm drain in the curb.

  “Shit!”

  He got down on his hands and knees. It was reachable; he just had to stick his arm through the bars and grab it. His arm went through, all the way to his shoulder. He searched down there on the dusty bottom of the drain, his fingers touching damp, dead leaves and rat droppings. Not feeling the letter, he pulled back to get another look.

  There it was. Only now, in close proximity, so was the red rubber ducky.

  “You again,” he spluttered. “I should bring you home to Dara.”

  Luke swept his hand down there, hoping to get lucky. He turned his head, hoping that the alien wouldn’t—

  Across the street stood the creature, bleach white, with disproportionately elongated arms and wide telescope lenses for eyes. “You gave this to me,” it said with Petunia’s voice. “Take it all back.”

  Grover came bumbling up the way with a pile of manila folders. “Hiya, Mr. Rhodes! That was tricky getting around that spill. Hey, did you lose your wedding ring? Want some help?”

  Luke tried to pull his arm out, but it was firmly jammed between the bars.

  From behind, a white hand came down on Grover’s head and locked there like a starving albino spider. Seizures overtook the man; his shirt opened, and his body split apart at the stomach, dropping red and black clusters from within that struck the ground in maggot confetti.

  Luke turned away. His outstretched fingers brushed the rubber ducky.

  That was all it took.

  “I’m dreaming,” he said and laughed. “I must have taken that nap with Dara and Maribel after. Oh, thank god!”

  “You know now. But you aren’t sleeping. You’re really here.” The alien stared at him with murderous stoicism. “I still have plenty of your song left inside me. I must share it with you.”

  Luke tugged to free his arm. “Petunia, get away!”

  “This isn’t your storm, Mr. Rhodes. You can’t control it.” The gummy white fingertips lengthened for him.

  “Johnny!” he cried. It had to be. This was his friend’s dream.

  How in God’s name was he in Johnny Cruz’s dream? “Wake up man! Wake up!”

  “Stupid…he isn’t asleep either.” The fingers clamped around his head. His eyes turned out to the dirt field beyond the plant, to the flowing black curtain. It’s the exit. Dara was on to something! Johnny has to go through!

 
“Unless he dies before he reaches the curtain,” the Petunia-alien answered his thoughts. “Then everybody here dies with him.”

  “Let me go.”

  “No, I don’t want this connection anymore. The balladeer’s lips will press into your ears from now on. If there is a now on for you.”

  Luke jerked again at his arm, but the alien’s grip of his forehead tightened and dark electricity shot through to his spinal column to the base of his spirit.

  At once Luke heard those foundations split and crack.

  Chapter 15

  Dara couldn’t let this occur.

  This was the final straw. Luke had taken a drive to look for Johnny and that was fine. Dummy forgot his phone, but fine. With all her constant prodding to get him to wake up to the nightmares, she’d put him on that path, after all. So that wasn’t unexpected, but right behind him, out sneaks Maribel. No goodbye either. Dara was sick of this. She knew she and Luke didn’t have the collective balls to confront their wife, and maybe they never would, but the woman was up to something. Ever since the music class, Maribel hadn’t said much of anything. The moods. The letters. What in the hell was going on? Another point of consideration: it was pretty damned convenient that she started behaving funny once all these nightmares began coming to life.

  Dara had to know more about this.

  After losing her cell eight billion times, Maribel had a phone finder GPS set up, for which they all knew the password. It took a matter of moments on Google Maps and Dara found her. After that, calling a cab and giving an address, simple as that. The stalking part Dara had done well.

  It was the discovering part she executed less gracefully. Through a combination block wall and wood-board fence she found Maribel with two strangers, a man and a woman, sitting under a yellow umbrella canopy at a patio table. The woman had her hand on Maribel’s. So intensely did Dara react to this, that the scowl she wore spawned an immediate headache.

  There had to be a reasonable excuse, but how could Dara ask without giving herself up? There had to be more evidence beyond snooping. This wasn’t what it looked like. Dara couldn’t have set herself up to be cheated on all over again.