I spotted my father and sister next to each other at the far end of the pond. Everyone looked possessed; their eyes and ears bled and their hair stood on end as their skin began to molt as a bug’s would. My eyes locked on the sight and another chill claimed my body. I heard something move behind me and, instinctively, I turned. Stomping down the dirt path was Sam in his tighty-whities ready to join the morbid circle. Thankfully, he didn’t spot me hiding behind the tree trunk.
What was I supposed to do now? It seemed like the whole town went crazy. First my blood soaking into the ground and the quakes, then my stepbrother freaking out, and now this?
Now that my breathing settled down, I realized that my head still spun from my earlier misfortune. I reached up and felt the craters and bumps under all the dried blood. With all the craziness happening, I completely forgot to—
Snap!
I must have shifted or moved and stepped on a branch. The sound echoed across the water. The swaying stopped. I cringed. “Oh, shit!“ I looked up at the crowd. Even though their moving stopped, they didn’t seem to notice.
Something started rising out of the middle of the pond, something puke green and covered in bumps. The reddish water cascaded off it as it broke the surface. It reminded me of a toad, but only about a thousand times bigger. In the center of the thing, folds of skin squirmed and parted, revealing a huge, glossy black eyeball.
As it continued to rise up, with its boil-like bumps and rotten-looking skin, I saw these long tongue-like things slither across the surface towards my motionless neighbors on the shoreline. They started swaying again as they held hands and looked up to the sky, with mouths wide open. A foul stink wafted off the pond up to me, creating a thick fog. My nose crinkled at the smell and my eyes started watering.
The tongue-things made their way to land and began wrapping around everyone’s legs. I scanned the scene, still unable to make my brain compute what it saw. My eyes landed on my father at the far side of the pond. His own eyes were completely white like they had rolled back into his head. I strained my neck around the tree for a better look, mesmerized by the whole thing. In my curiosity, I slipped and fell forward into a bush.
My eyes shot up to my father. He looked right back and his mouth opened so wide I thought his jaw dislocated from his skull. I hopped to my feet, aware of my deadly mistake. A harsh, shrilling scream erupted out of his mouth as his raised hand pointed right at me.
The water-tongues released their hold. Everyone else turned to me with mouths wide open and pointed. They released the same horrible sound. In the center of it all, the bumpy frog-thing’s big black eye rolled lazily in my direction, staring me down . . . or sizing me up.
I started running, pretty sure that my life did depend on it. Through the woods and brush, I plowed, forging my own path. Just run! Run as fast as you can! I heard the screeching getting closer as they gave chase.
I ran. Ran faster than I did when Toby Gillis and his band of goons chased me across Ram’s Field to steal my paper route money. Faster than I did when my father chased me through the house for ruining his work papers with my crayons. This time if he caught me, I bet I’d be getting more than a size ten to the tailbone.
In an effort to gain as much distance as possible, I shot a beeline through my next-door neighbor’s yard, through my backyard, and right into my step mom’s nice clean sheets drying on the clothesline. Instantly looking like a cheap ghost on Halloween, I flailed wildly to free myself from their tendrils of crisp, spring freshness.
Their bizarre shrieks echoed behind me, closing the gap. I skidded to a stop in my driveway and scooped up my bike. “Damn!“ Busted tires wouldn’t get me anywhere. I spied little Cara’s two wheel ride sitting over in my other neighbor’s yard. Without a second thought, I grabbed it and hopped on, not caring the slightest that it was a hot pink girls’ bike. At least she had already moved on from training wheels. “Sorry, Cara.“
I pedaled my legs off, so happy not to be on the ten-speed. I blazed down my street, creating a generous amount of space between the horde and me. No sooner than I’d turned onto Texas Heights Road did everybody bust open their front doors. On both sides of the street, people popped out of their houses, all screaming with their gigantic mouths and pointing their fingers. The ground started rumbling again. “Oh, great!“
Something in my head told me, begged me, not to turn around and look behind me, but I couldn’t resist. The horrible, bumpy pond-thing rose up above the treetops, its disgusting eye searching the streets. I switched back into speed mode and pumped the pedals just as the townspeople started coming forward to join the chase.
The quaking of the ground as the thing skulked made it hard to keep my balance. I glanced over my shoulder to see that it, too, followed me now. As it crept along like a legless slab of amphibian meat, helped by its hundreds of slimy tongues, it rolled right over my neighbors, violently crushing and absorbing them into its body. The sick sound of pulverized and devoured skin and bones tortured my ears.
Once I got to the top of Water Street, my heart sank. The river had risen. Murky, bloody, dirt-colored water flooded the streets below and raged against the bridge that separated me from the rest of town. I psyched myself up; I needed to cross that bridge. While sucking in a deep breath, I dropped all my weight on to the flimsy pedals, hoping that they wouldn’t fail me as I tried to hit warp speed down the small hill.
Sparks erupted out of the welding shop on the far side of the bridge, setting the building ablaze. Sheets of fiery metal careened down the rapids, where even the flowing water failed to extinguish them. As I sped towards the chaos, I plotted my course through the burning rubble and wild flooding like a killer game of Zaxxon. Fire and smoke licked the air as the windows of the welding shop imploded.
You only get one chance at this, my brain yelled.
The river hadn’t completely submerged the bridge as the wheels of my stolen, pink bicycle sloshed through the bloody water. I gave myself a well-deserved victory shout and fist pump once safely on the other side. With that out of the way, I set my attention back to the ever growing and slimy monstrosity cruising through Central Village. Its tentacle tongues latched on to trees and utility poles, using them to pull its hulking mass forward. As it gobbled up my neighbors, they didn’t seem to care in the slightest; they looked to almost welcome the painful death as, one after another, the thing abruptly snuffed out their moans and chanting.
I finally made it to the top of Water Street. With each thrust of my legs, I felt my lungs hating me more than I hated Brussels sprouts, but I couldn’t stop or slow down. If that thing had possessed (or killed and eaten for that matter) my family and everyone else I knew, I had nowhere to go . . . except out of this loony bin that Central Village had become.
I scanned left and right, back and forth. Streets looked empty in both directions, but I knew better. Pick one! With that nightmare cruising down the street towards me gaining ground, staying still was not an option. To the right, I saw movement coming across Main Street and that made my decision for me. Okay, School Street, don’t kill me. Maybe there were some normals down at the field watching the game that could help me; in the least, I’d be able to warn them of what was coming.
The ground shook again.
I lost my balance on the bike and almost revisited the face plant scenario. The quake didn’t stop; the rumbling and grinding of stone and earth vibrated the air around me. Help. I had to find help. As the road beneath me jiggled like jelly, I pushed onward to the football field, hoping with all my might that things hadn’t gone completely crazy there yet. Not too much farther! Just past the playground and around the bend.
From behind the trees that circled the field, came an explosion, not like the one at the welding shop, but more like the one the time my dad put some dynamite he had “laying around“ between some rocks and concrete blocks. I skidded to a stop on the shaking ground when chunks of dirt and grass erupted high into the air. In one massive clump, as it flew acr
oss the sky, casting a shadow over the playground, I spotted the painted Rams team logo on the end zone.
Under the weight of heaved earth, the playground equipment exploded into pieces of colorful shrapnel. Mangled and uprooted trees now gave me view to the field beyond. All around the hole that used to be the end zone, a crater billowed red smoke; it puffed out in waves in rhythm with the rumbling ground. People circled the hole, just as they had at the pond, holding hands and staring up into the sky. Between ground trembles, their moaning, or chanting—or whatever the hell they were doing—persisted. My brain felt like it was on fire from all the craziness.
Oh shit!
So lost in the confusion, I forgot about the gigantic Weeble Wobble from the pond hot on my tail. I spun around, hoping that the path to some other, any other, street was clear. I no longer saw the pond creature, but I listened to it as it sloshed around in the flooded river near the burning welding shop. In its place, another mob of local lunatics had marched up Main Street and now followed me. I guess they made the choice for me.
The ground shifted once more. An earsplitting crack toppled lampposts and shattered windows. I fell off the bike again and onto my blood crusted knee. The weirdoes chasing me also tumbled over like sacks of bricks. Underneath me, the road broke open, releasing a hiss of foul steam. I jumped for safety, but the crevice made my neighbor’s bicycle its first victim.
As the ground lurched about, I felt my balance slipping and my good sense wriggling free from the already feeble grasp I had on it. My heart and mind raced as I began to panic. Through labored gasps for air, I sensed the onset of another bout of hyperventilation.
A gas main exploded and part of it rocketed out of the ground and into a two family house, setting it on fire. Trees creaked and groaned as they swayed like a troupe of used car lot inflatable dancers. More steam shot up through the cracks; manhole covers blew sky high from the pressure building underground.
I turned to face the football field as I fought to regulate my breathing. This vile, molten sludge, indescribable in color, bubbled up from the end zone crater. The people that circled around it stood like statues with that same twisted open-mouthed expression on their faces as they slowly melted into the ooze.
As soon as they vanished beneath the mire, the earthquakes stopped. I nervously scoped the streets—unable to see another person. The sudden quiet hurt my ears as the cloud-covered sky overhead turned a terrible reddish gray.
I slowly walked toward the field, stepping over the cracked and uneven ground with care. The disappearance of everything, except the bubbling sludge, frightened me worse than anything else had so far today. Not a bird flew across the sky. Not a squirrel ran across the grass. Nothing but the silence and the evil stench rising from the pit.
And then came the voices.
As if every soul that had inhabited Central Village started talking at once, the voices chased all my thoughts away. They called out to me, chanting my name amidst indecipherable murmurs. I finally broke and fell on my ass. I began to cry, holding my hands over my ears in a pointless attempt to block out the voices. What had happened here remained far beyond my understanding. Did I do something to cause this or was it inevitable, waiting for the perfect time to sock it to us?
The lake of slime drew closer. Its revolting stench almost corroded my nostrils. I shuffled backwards on my butt, trying to escape its reach. In the center of the pool, a huge bubble from deep within the pit surfaced followed by one after another, popping and spitting up more stink, turning into a sudsy foam. I moved back farther until I bumped into the boulder that held the Ram’s memorial placard given to them by the Kiwanis Club for their undefeated season a few years ago.
Too scared, too petrified, my body refused to move anywhere else, so I just pulled my trembling knees up to my chest and continued to cry against the monument. The ground vibrated and the foamy flood of slop receded back into the massive pit, leaving nothing but scorched earth in its wake.
Was it over? Am I dead? Dare I even move?
Curiosity (and borderline bat-shit craziness) overpowered rational thought and common sense. I had to see - no, needed to see - what lay over the edge of the crater, what further madness awaited below.
I peered over an outcropping of jagged rock into the blackness. My hobbled brain had lost all ability to find words to describe, to classify, the kind of darkness swirling in the depths. The pit seemed to go on forever, swallowing every bit of light in an unforgiving binge. I saw movement, different from the tricks the dark played on my eyes. Something moved, rising back up to the surface—something big.
I lost control, wetting myself. Warm streams of piss streamed down my leg into a puddle under my feet. I began to shake as sweat poured out of my skin.
It continued rising, getting closer and closer. I heard a deep, wet-sounding groan or growl coming up with it. To my accosted senses, it sounded like the bellow of a buffalo played full blast at half-speed. Unnatural and hungry: very, very hungry.
I stepped back until my legs gave out and I collapsed.
As whatever hideous atrocity now funneled up from the bowels of what I only assumed was Hell, it squeezed its hulking mass through the ruptured earth. In slow motion, a monstrous column of unidentifiable flesh grew out of the pit. Its staggering size matched the width of the football field and climbed to dizzying heights. Opaque eyes, the size of truck tires, blinked in and out of focus under putrid, undulating skin. Its alien surface texture, covered in slime, rippled and stretched, making sickening pops and squishing sounds.
I didn’t realize screams had erupted out of my mouth until my throat went raw and sore. My hands gripped my hair as they squeezed my skull like a powerful vise.
One of the milky, off-white eyes, roughly about my height, stared at me. Baseball sized irises of varying shades of the worst kind of green ever seen floated around the vitreous gel within. It blinked; a gooey, flaccid flap of skin unrolled from within misshapen rolls of rotten looking meat. The smell of the thing, far worse than the sludge that preceded it, made me woozy to the point of almost passing out.
My brain couldn’t handle anymore, wouldn’t square what it saw before it. I felt it throbbing, pressing on my skull. I shut my eyes tight and plopped down on my back, ready for either this nightmare to kill me or for my body to shut down from shock.
I squinted through my half shut lids for just one more peek at it, one last look at its grotesque enormity. I thought that I had witnessed all the horrendous things one should ever be unfortunate enough to see, but what I saw looming before me, more than likely preparing to devour me whole, was a horror beyond all other horrors, beyond understanding and description.
In my acceptance of the end, I heard the pillar of roiling and dripping flesh tearing and shredding. From top down, it began to separate, to peel like a banana, each new slice of it like a tentacle. These horrid appendages moved independently from each other as they spread out from their origin point and caressed the decimated field. They fanned out like leaves of a flower while, from the center, a single eye, like a hellish nucleus, rose to the surface.
One of the tentacles slithered towards me and attached itself to my leg like a leech. I laid there and let it happen. I just wanted this to be all over, so I clenched my eyes tightly and let it do its thing. Up my leg the tendril crept. Its slimy coldness nauseated me, but I held still, ready to let go. Vomit climbed up from my stomach, its bitterness burning and stinging the back of my throat as I choked it back down.
All my memories rushed back to me in that final second: recollections of my dad failing miserably to teach me about the birds and the bees, my little sister’s first dance recital, winning the Pinewood Derby, and my first kiss with my secret crush, Maryanne, as we walked along the river. My tears faded and I forced a smile one last time.
I’m ready . . . Just get it over with.
FOREST OF BORTH
Claire Smith
The sea has feasted on Cardigan Bay for weeks:
; A battered, water-beaten and fragile landscape.
The ocean’s greed to eat its fill of a fresh meal
Dished up by storms come across from the Atlantic
To satisfy its never ending appetite for this coastline.
It dines on slate, sandstone, and crustacean fossils.
It chews on rock-cake food, spits out peat-bits;
And it leaves a black swamp of scraps when it’s stuffed full.
Its leftovers – pieces of gristle, the bones, and the fatty bits –
Are all discarded on its sand-dune platter.
These rounded coves burst forth with nature’s relics.
Trees that have been dead these six thousand years,
Black stumps from pines, alders, oaks and birches
All grew and flourished in ancient forests once upon a time.
Ancient woodland surrounding a lost Kingdom,
Cantre’r Gwaelod, drowned below the tides all these centuries.
It became a hiding hole for sea urchins to feed on and roam;
A place for shoals of fish to hide in; and somewhere seaweed grew.
The ocean’s victim, its quarry, its prey, they found fossil footprints –
Marks left on the exposed, mustard, beaches –
And walk-ways people ran over to escape
Those starving-hungry waves. The ocean feeds on the coast
All through these winter months. Through the season’s flash storms:
The lightning, high winds and the thunder filled sky.
The residues of a long and a lost past are thrown up,
Regurgitated, and spat out by the poison-waves –
The historical riches of Cardigan Bay – a priceless trove
Fossil Lake II: The Refossiling Page 22