Flesh Wounds

by Christopher Fowler

  It began with a tingling in the pit of his stomach, the kind of feeling you get when you realise you’re about to have a terrible fight with someone. Brett had gone ahead, and he was left walking alone toward the club, a low brick building blocking off the end of the road. It had been built away from residential properties so that they could keep the music cranked up until 2 am without getting complaints. The night winds were wild, thumping at the ground in smudges of dust, and the neon flickered through the trees, tall beaten pines with top branches that thrashed in the turbulent darkness and sounded like TV static. For a moment it seemed that someone was following him. David stopped and turned around, half expecting to find something dark and heavy descending from the sky, but there was nothing to be seen. The highway was deserted for miles. It was a clear night, and a chain of cross-street lights wound all the way across town, swinging green bulbs that made it look as if the earth was moving.

  Every Saturday the club found an excuse to have some kind of theme party, and tonight’s was billed as ‘erotica’, presumably because the DJ remembered that Madonna had once chosen the title for an album. In the car park, among the chopped hogs and tinted-glass RVs, there were plenty of new Datsuns and Mazdas, a sure sign that the Greymeadow yups had ventured over for the evening. The building’s entrance corridor was designed like a space-shuttle ramp, a reminder of the club’s previous incarnation as a Trekkie hangout called the Final Frontier Disco. David caught up with Brett and they paid ten bucks apiece, for which they were each given an indelible-ink hand stamp and a drink ticket.

  They never had much to say to each other. Like a lot of the people in town, Brett wore an expression of perpetual dissatisfaction, because he was pissed off with his job, his folks and his life but didn’t seem capable of changing anything. Although he was technically an executive he wasn’t a business graduate and was aware that he had no real skills or qualifications. He’d once considered moving away, until he realised that the money he’d make in San Francisco or Los Angeles wouldn’t leave him enough for an apartment, so why swap a solid, predictable existence for a set of unknowns? Plaster City had become enough of an urban area to stop them from feeling like hayseeds. There was a mall and a multiplex; it wasn’t like they were homeboys or anything and yet – there were those who left. Guys you went to school with who couldn’t wait to get out, girls whose idea of heaven was Plaster City in their rear-view mirror. Sometimes David envied them, in the summer when the store was empty and the streets were hot and still, and there was only enough air to breathe if you stirred it yourself. Other times he was happy in the knowledge that his life was unlikely to hold many surprises, either good or bad ones.

  David could see his roommate on the other side of the dance floor with a girl called Kathy who sold condos on the Greymeadow estate. She dressed like an anchor-person, pastel suits and big gold earrings, and drank spritzers with a bunch of man-hungry women in property sales, and he was surprised to see the two of them talking.

  The main dance area was illuminated by a large rotating silver light bank, another remnant of the building’s former Star Trek theme, and crimson velveteen banquettes were arranged in horseshoes all the way around the room. At one time the place must have been a movie house because there was still a stage area separated by heavy black drapes, from which the heady aroma of dope billowed constantly.

  The guys David and his brother had gone to school with still came here at the weekend because this was the closest they could find to any place fashionable or disreputable. Just lately, some of the girls from Greymeadow had been spotted slumming, mainly because the promised Greymeadow Leisure Center never got built and there was nowhere else for them to go at night. There were also the ageing Lotharios, overtanned men in silk shirts and cream suits, Wayne Newton lookalikes who shot each other finger .45s and drank bourbon like it was tap water. The music wanted to be West Coast fresh but was a little too far from LA to stay current, so the DJs opted for a loud nondescript techno drone with a bass beat you could feel pulsing in your belt buckle.

  David checked his watch and made it nearly midnight. On the suspended screens above him were endless MTV clips and Nike ads. The place was full but uninteresting, as if everyone wanted a good time but couldn’t be bothered to help create it. Brett came over and stood nearby, something he usually did when he’d run out of drink money.

  ‘What’s the deal with Kathy?’ asked David. ‘I didn’t know you guys even knew each other.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ Brett dismissed the idea and held his friend’s beer up between two fingers to see how long he would have to wait before David offered to buy him one. ‘All she ever talks about is real estate, like she’s had a character bypass or something.’

  ‘Maybe she’s offering you a piece of her property.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not proud,’ Brett admitted with a shrug. ‘I’d take her up on the offer. It’s your turn to go to the bar.’

  ‘It’s always my turn.’ David pulled a squashed ten from his pocket and stuck it in Brett’s hand. ‘You go.’

  The music had become a series of modulated thuds offering no hint of a tune. David walked toward the dance floor and studied the stage beyond. The black velvet drapes were slowly undulating back and forth. It looked like the wall was gently tipping, as though they were all on board a ship. A sharp tingling ran across the ends of his fingers, and tiny, painfully bright lights spackled the edges of his vision, causing the room to shift. In the middle of so much movement he felt more than mere alarm. He was suddenly disturbed that he was alone. No one else seemed to notice him. Perhaps they could no longer see him. It was as if for a moment he had slipped into an entirely new realm of existence. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the tingling and the lights receded. The music, the cigarette smoke and the fake painted-marble walls of the Hot Spot closed in around him once more.

  When Brett returned with the beers David asked, ‘Did you feel anything just now?’ and Brett just screwed up his face.

  ‘What, you mean like an earth tremor or something?’ After all, the town was near a couple of dormant fault lines.

  ‘No, it was more … I don’t know. Something shifted.’ David shook his head and squinted around, hoping to see some remaining effect.

  ‘You sure you didn’t smoke a joint before you came out?’ To Brett, getting stoned could explain most of life’s confusions.

  ‘You know that stuff makes me sick. This was – different. Skip it.’

  He stayed watching the dancers for a while, but the evening’s experience had unsettled him, and he soon decided to leave. Brett was nowhere to be seen, so he walked back to his car alone. He rounded the mud-splashed hood of the old blue Chrysler, and his heart thudded hard in his chest as a figure lolled forward from the shadows.

  ‘Jesus, Stick, you nearly gave me a fuckin’ heart attack. Ain’t you in the wrong end of town?’

  The old tramp thought for a moment, then remembered. ‘I just heard the news. You best get back to your daddy’s store, boy, an’ be quick about it.’ Stick heard voices all the time. They were always telling him to warn people about the devil’s return to earth, or some damned thing. Stick was mostly harmless. People liked him and often left food packages by his dumpster.

  David checked his pockets for the car keys, making conversation. ‘Why, what’s happening this time?’

  ‘Bad things comin’, the worst you ever saw. Worst since – since – hell, I can’t remember when.’ That wasn’t surprising. Stick couldn’t remember anything, not even where he lived.

  ‘You’ve been drinking, haven’t you, Stick? My pa leave you out a little drop of whisky tonight?’

  The old man threw his hands wide and nearly fell backwards into the rustling hedgerow. ‘No, I swear! It’s the people from inside the ground, coming to take back the town. Didn’t you feel ’em arriving a few minutes ago? I sure as hell did.’

  David stopped halfway into his car and stared back at Stick, who was trying to look as serious as a man c
ould be wearing a floor-length raincoat and a back-to-front truck cap.

  ‘I felt something, yeah. You’re trying to tell me that was a train coming in?’

  ‘Jeez, you think these people travel by train? They don’t catch no trains, and they don’t drive here neither! They just – just –’ he gestured drunkenly at the night sky, ‘open up th’ air and step through. That’s what you felt. The air tearing open to let ’em in.’

  ‘I thought you just said they lived in the ground.’

  ‘They do – that is, that’s where we nailed ’em. Jest ask your daddy if you don’ believe me!’

  This had gone far enough. David climbed into the car and tried to close the door, but the old man moved with surprising agility, catching him by the wrist. ‘You get back to your store, boy, an’ you look after your family. They’re gonna try and take down Plaster City tonight, you just watch an’ see!’

  He’d seen Stick drunk plenty of times before, but the wino’s urgency was beginning to rattle him. ‘Why would anyone want to take over Plaster City?’ he asked, pulling the car door shut. ‘There’s nothing here worth having.’

  ‘I didn’t say take it over, I said take it down – down into the ground. Plaster City’s time just ran out. Tonight we’re all gonna burn in hell!’

  The engine turned over first time. David gently edged the Chrysler forward around Stick, who was twisting his head into the wind, listening. David knew he had to ask as he passed.

  ‘Why, Stick? If that’s gonna happen, why this town? There’s plenty of other crummy places this side of the state line that no one would ever miss.’

  ‘Talk to your old man ’bout what they’re doing here – he knows the reason good enough. And so does that old deaf bitch your ma takes care of.’ As David pulled away into the road, Stick stumbled after him. ‘Ask Taylor about the spike! But you’d better do it quick ’cause I hear ’em coming, right around the next hill!’

  David cruised up through the speed limit as he hit the empty highway. Behind him the stars were blotted out by the encroaching black outline of the hillside. He could feel it now, the change in air density, the faint humming that didn’t come from the telephone wires. Something had been displaced. A coldness spread across his chest, filling him with panic. Something terrible really was coming; he could feel it inside himself – and outside the car.

  The crosswinds were whipping his radio antenna so much he couldn’t get a fix on any station, not even WX-GOD, the twenty-four-hour evangelical hotline run by the indefatigable Reverend Lowe, who tub-thumped the coming battle with Satan night and day, interspersing his sermons with depressing country and western songs no one had ever heard of. David hit the Plaster City turn-off at forty plus, wheels barely locking on the dirt-covered shoulder. Sloping away in the distance, the town looked as if everyone in it had died or simply vanished. Only the swinging green lights gave any suggestion of life.

  He reached the crossroads where the fitful buzzing of the VALURAMA sign had drawn him home, the only light in a row of glass and concrete boxes, and wondered what he was going to tell his parents once he had managed to wake them. He hadn’t brought his keys to the store, and the front bell hadn’t worked for years.

  The problem of entry was solved when he saw the flashlight skittering through the ground-floor windows. Either his father was still up or the place was being burgled. He pulled into the customer car park and turned off the engine, vaulting the door and running lightly past the faded backboard of the basketball court. As his trainers touched the ground the soles grew warm, as if the earth itself was changing. Beside a low hedge he saw a body sprawled face down on the concrete. The fawn pants and navy-blue shirt identified him as one of the sheriff’s men. A black pool of blood several feet long blossomed from his crushed head. Fighting his fear, David ran on. The porch steps groaned as he climbed them, but the sound was lost in the rising wind. Taylor was moving around inside the store, but he hadn’t turned on the overhead panel lights. David pushed against the front door, and it swung open to his touch. As he entered, the smell of fresh wood and packing cardboard brought back a thousand childhood memories. His father was standing at the rear of the room, by the entrance of the depository, his torch beam slowly traversing the floor.

  ‘Dad?’ he called softly, ‘What the hell is going on? There’s somebody dead outside.’

  ‘David? That you?’ The beam came up into his face, forcing him to shield his eyes. ‘You shouldn’t be here, son.’ He knew. David could hear it in his voice. He knew what was going to happen to the town. ‘Close that door quick and come over here.’

  David obeyed the command and joined his father. Taylor looked wearier than he had ever seen him before. He swung the torch beam back and forth as if looking for something but not knowing where to begin.

  ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ David studied his father’s face. Taylor was anxious to talk to someone, even if he would have preferred it not to be his son.

  ‘That kind of depends how much you believe, David.’ He flicked his hand nervously across his forehead. ‘But you can feel the bad energy, can’t you?’

  ‘Sure, it’s coming from outside, like it’s in the air or under the ground or something. You feel it?’

  ‘Yeah, and I guess a lot of other folks do too, but they’re staying indoors, too frightened to come out into the street. I got through to the sheriff’s department, told them they’re a man down. Last call I managed before the lines went dead.’

  ‘I came past there a few minutes ago. The place is dark.’

  ‘Listen, you can see for yourself something terrible is goin’ on, David. They’re gonna take Plaster City back, unless we can stop them.’

  ‘Who? No one can take a whole town anywhere.’

  ‘Listen to me.’ Taylor pulled him over the step of the depository. ‘I would never involve you in anything dangerous, you know that. But I need your help.’

  ‘Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’

  Taylor pointed back at the stairs to the first floor. ‘Go on up and look after the women. The wind is frightenin’ them. Keep ’em away from the windows.’

  ‘I want to be down here with you. What are you doing?’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you. Now go on upstairs.’

  David wasn’t happy about it, but obeyed his father. Deaf old Betty Marco had been brought down to the lounge that overlooked the main street. Julie was sitting motionless with her feet pulled up under her, watching TV from behind a stack of cushions. His mother came from the kitchen and threw her arms around him.

  ‘David, I’ve been so worried. The lines are down. I couldn’t get through to you or your brother.’

  There was no point in telling her what had already happened. He prayed she wouldn’t see the shattered body lying at the rear of the house. ‘I haven’t heard from Joey,’ he admitted. ‘Everyone else okay?’

  ‘Julie’s acting strangely. She hasn’t said a word for the past hour. Nobody knows what’s happening. Taylor won’t tell me anything. I looked out of the window a few minutes ago and you know what I saw? Rats! Thousands of them, like a brown carpet, running across the highway. Do you suppose there’s an electrical storm coming? Aren’t animals able to sense these things first?’

  Behind them, the television signal fuzzed and flared, the picture alternately glowing and dying.

  ‘I don’t know, Ma. Dad says Mrs Marco can explain all this.’

  His mother was fretfully twisting a dishcloth around her hand. He had never seen her looking so frightened. ‘What could he mean?’ she asked, confused. ‘She talks all the time but she never makes any sense, hasn’t done for years.’

  ‘Let me try.’ David walked across the room and knelt before the old woman. She had been staring out of the window, listening to the rising wind just as Stick had done, but as she turned he sensed a sharp intelligence behind the cold blue eyes that watched him. Slowly, she reached down a thin, freckled hand and slipped it into her
bed jacket, twisting a dial, raising the volume of her hearing aid. Her deafness varied according to what she was prepared to hear.

  ‘You know what happened, don’t you, Mrs Marco?’ Either she had told his father, or it was something Taylor already knew about.

  ‘Nobody ever listens to me,’ Betty Marco began, clearly relishing the notion of being in demand. ‘Nobody ever wants to hear what I have to say.’

  ‘I do, Mrs Marco, I want to hear. Tell me.’

  Her hand snaked out and seized his shoulder, pulling him closer. ‘Then you better listen good,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you what I told your pa long ago, see if you believe me any more than he did then. It was back in the nineteen twenties. A government brush clearance scheme uncovered a settlement out here at the crossroads. Wasn’t much left of it, just a few old bits and pieces, rags and bones and burned rocks. Archaeological value, they said. The town was tiny then, barely more than a few shacks. The local people examined the site and decided that the settlers were bad. They’d been without religion – or perhaps they’d chosen to follow some older religion of their own. Early settlers was free to choose back then. It wasn’t all damned Baptists, like now. Anyway, there was artifacts, unholy symbols, and weapons, like the stuff you’d use for animal sacrifice. I don’t know what else. But the settlers had claimed the area for themselves.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘I have no idea – I guess nobody will ever know. Maybe they got drove out, maybe they just died off. All that was left was these signs that they’d once occupied the site for a while. Perhaps they moved on, further west.’