Flesh Wounds

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I don’t understand, what has this to –’

  ‘Just mark what I’m saying.’ She raised her head for a moment and listened. Outside the wind was growing again, hammering the window frames. From behind her fortress of cushions, Julie released a squeak of terror.

  ‘The townspeople was all God-fearing Baptists, so they covered up the site and acted like it had never been there. They couldn’t have pagan worshippers laying claim to their town, this was where they was going to raise their kids an’ build their churches, so they plastered over the remains of the settlement, then later they concreted it into the highway.’

  ‘What happened to the artifacts?’

  ‘Maybe they found their way to museums, who knows? Problem was, the Baptists couldn’t reconsecrate the site. They didn’t know how to go about doing such a thing, so they came up with a special service of their own. They held a big prayer meetin’, and then they hammered a spike into the freshly covered ground, right in the centre of the settlers’ camp. It was a foot-long iron spike like the ones the railroaders drove into the land to break new territory. On its flat head they engraved the whole of the Lord’s Prayer, and they surrounded it with holy symbols. I guess everyone forgot about the site after that. The thing was barely noticeable, and as it weren’t near any big roads, no one had reason to go by it. Wasn’t until the fifties, just before the highway department was due to lay the new interstate, someone came and stole it, dug the blasted thing right out of the ground. Just think, all that time it’d been in the soil, holding back trouble and protecting the town. It was dug up by Otis Dagg’s no-good father who thought it might be worth somethin’. He tore it out of the site and damned us all.’ She pointed up at the ceiling, illuminating cracked plaster as pale as bone. ‘I been up there all this time. I watched from my window and seen the changes in this place as it went from good to wicked, and I knew about the spike ’cause Otis inherited it when his pa died. I tried to tell people that the town started goin’ bad the day the spike was pulled, but nobody believed me. They just carried on buildin’ their fancy homes.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ David whispered, but even as he spoke he acknowledged the truth.

  ‘I know it’s true,’ the old lady was saying, ‘because the spike is right here, down in the storeroom, where it’s been for the past forty years.’

  Now he remembered seeing the spike as a kid, even recalled turning it over in his hands. It lay somewhere in the back of the store, among the hundreds of boxes of toys and tools, just another childhood plaything.

  ‘But why tonight?’ he asked. ‘Why would they return after all this time?’

  ‘They been waiting to gather their strength, until they was strong enough to take the whole town back in one go.’

  ‘And you believe all this?’

  She narrowed her ice-blue eyes at him. ‘Don’t you?’

  David took the stairs two at a time, reaching the depository just as a cry from outside brought his father running to the windows. He could see his roommate’s Camaro parked outside, at a sharp angle to the road. Then he caught sight of Brett himself, spinning and shoving at something formless as his coat was pulled up about him and the wind plucked at his legs. He was trying to reach the front of the store but was being pushed back, shoved and grabbed at until he screamed and lashed at the swirling darkness in the air. There were slashes of blood across his face and chest. As David ran toward the door, passing the scene from window to window, he saw the boy outside lifted from the ground, pulled and stretched and finally ripped in half by figures barely visible in the raging turbulence.

  ‘We have to find the spike and put it back in place,’ he shouted to his father.

  Together they tore the cluttered old depository apart. On the floor above them, David’s mother forced a chair against the door that led down to the store and fearfully waited with her daughter and the old woman.

  The task ahead of them seemed hopeless. There was no way of knowing where the spike could be. They heaved aside spider-filled cases of linen and crockery, gate-leg tables and tea chests smothered with termite eggs, decades of untouched bric-a-brac. David wanted to call his brother, but with the telephone lines dead there was no way of contacting him. He forced himself to think, to try and remember those rainy afternoons passed in the back of the store, playing complex solitary games of make believe – cowboys and spacemen, firemen and sheriffs, werewolves and vamp-

  Dracula.

  He had always used the spike for Dracula. It looked just like a stake, and it had religious stuff all over the head. Christ, he hadn’t thought about the horror games for years and now here were the memories as vivid as the fantasy had once been, waiting to be dusted off and relived. He set off through the maze of furniture, sure of himself.

  ‘Give me a hand with this.’ Thousands of issues of National Geographic, standing in stacks and glued together with mildew. They weighed a ton. Behind them were dozens of hat stands, clumped together like a winter forest. And at the foot of these was a box, a big old tea chest filled with black curtains – vampire cloaks – that had stood in for a coffin until he had grown too tall to fit it any more. The spike still lay there, wrapped in rotting folds of fabric. Although the years had tarnished it, the Lord’s Prayer was still completely legible. Perhaps that was why these pioneer spirits or whatever the hell they were hadn’t returned earlier to take the town. The spike had been removed from the site, but it was still here at the crossroads, still protecting, even if it only retained a fraction of its power after being uprooted. He lifted it in his right hand, slowly rotating its octagonal stem, and could feel the angry winds suddenly changing direction around the house, as though the ancient settlers could sense that this most hated of religious artifacts had been rediscovered.

  ‘We have to return this to the settlement fast,’ said Taylor, shining his torch down into the crate. ‘I don’t like the sound the timbers are making.’

  ‘It’s all highway out there now,’ said David. ‘How are we gonna find the right spot?’

  ‘We’ve got the co-ordinates,’ his father replied. ‘They blacktopped the crossroads over the exact centre of the site. We just have to follow the centre lines.’

  In the front of the store they found a pair of heavy steel sledgehammers. Taylor waited for a moment, thinking, then ran back into the depository. He returned with a handful of cheap Mexican-gold crucifixes and threw some to David, who slipped them over his head.

  ‘I don’t know if this’ll make much of a difference, but it might keep them away long enough to reach the site. I mean, if the Lord’s Prayer has such a strong effect.’

  The crossroads were a good hundred-and-fifty-yard sprint from the store. Between the porch and their goal, David could make out several hunched black figures picking at the remains of his butchered roommate.

  ‘The longer we leave it, the worse it’s gonna get,’ said Taylor, pulling open the front door. Instantly, the air was filled with the shrill squealing of the dead. Father and son ran out into the storm, the wind almost lifting them from their feet. They had barely descended the steps and reached the forecourt before the dark creatures fell about them in a fast-closing ring. Instantly, David could see that they had no chance of reaching their destination before being brought down. The things were scuttling toward them on blackened spindles, their fleshless arms pumping back and forth as they flexed and clasped their fingers. They moved at great speed, like clustering insects. David skidded to a halt as he realised the path ahead was already blocked. Taylor was behind him, preparing to swing the mallet as the first of the settlers approached.

  Just as the ring seemed about to collapse on top of them, a shaft of bright light fell across the ground and the circle suddenly widened amidst much hissing and crying. David looked back at the house, where Mrs Marco and his mother had turned on the lights of the main store, the first floor and the attic. Thank God his mother had followed his lead and had finally listened to the old woman; the illuminated rooms formed a pe
rfect cross. Seizing their chance, David and his father ran upwards along the lengthy path of light to the top of the crucifix, then on into renewed darkness and the hard tarmac of the highway.

  David knew they had only a matter of seconds to spare. Out of the protecting light, they were prey once more to the rallying creatures. His trainers pounded along the central markers leading to the crossroads. Taylor arrived moments after, wheezing badly. He fell on his knees at the spot, barely able to catch his breath.

  ‘Give me the spike.’ Taylor held out his hand. ‘I’m stronger than you.’

  Together they set the tip of the iron rod at the exact point where the road lines crossed. David steadied it as Taylor raised his mallet for the first blow. Behind his father, one of the creatures was already dropping down to attack. He threw his own mallet at the figure with all the strength he could muster. The steel head smashed through its skull as if the bone was just a shell, like the head of a burnt match. Taylor slammed his hammer down on the spike, sinking it two inches into the tarmac. The noise around them became insane, a raging storm of death.

  David gripped the spike as his father swung again. The blow connected, thrusting it deeper into the blacktop. Taylor had raised the shaft for a third time when the creatures reached out their melanistic arms and grabbed him, wrenching his head back until the neck broke with a sound that could be heard above the maelstrom. David screamed into the gale, starting toward his fallen father, but the malformed spirits dragged the body back and fell upon it in a frenzy. Grabbing the fallen mallet, David swung at the spike again and again, hammering it deep into the crossroads until the head was flush with the surrounding tarmac surface.

  Sweating, he fell back onto the highway and dropped the sledgehammer. The banshee shrieks that had accompanied the first of the blows had died away now. The worst was over. He raised his face to the night sky and felt the wind in his hair as it began to lessen.

  And rise again.

  Puzzled, he looked back at the highway. His father’s body lay eviscerated and ignored as the pagan spirits now advanced on him in a ragged line, stalking forward like shore crabs avoiding the surf. He crawled back to the glistening stud set in the highway and examined it as the air pulsed in a wild roar, and the rocks themselves were unanchored from the surrounding hillside.

  In his determination to slam the spike back in place, he had completely flattened its head with the mallet, obliterating the protective prayer. Instead of revealing a statement of faith, the smooth, shiny surface of the spike blankly reflected an idolatrous moon.

  In the moments that followed, David’s short life shifted before his eyes, the events of the night recurring as if they had taken place an age ago. He cried now, unleashing his anger in a wail of sorrow not for himself but for his family and the terrified, helpless inhabitants of a town about to be reclaimed by an apostate enemy in the eternal war of the gods.

  WELCOME TO PLASTER city says the twisted tin sign, but there’s no town to be seen any more, just dusty brush and broken concrete, summer scorpions and flies. Stray from the highway, though, and you’ll catch a glimpse of something that once existed, the bleached awning of a corner store, a shattered backboard from a basketball court, a piece of kerbstone, now the rubble of history. Who knows what terrors the inhabitants of Plaster City endured that night? None who saw the tragedy remain alive to tell.

  These days the nearest town is Greymeadow, smart and fashionable, growing fast, sporting a finally completed leisure centre, one of the finest golf courses in the country, and churches – you never saw so many churches. Although Greymeadow is becoming increasingly popular with God-fearing young families, they would do well to examine the ruined site five miles down the road and learn from the mistakes of their old neighbours.

  They should find a way to plug the fissure and seal off the pagan terrors of the past. Because Greymeadow will soon be crossing city limits, to where an unforgiving hunger waits. And the acolytes of a disrespectful god will once again appear in Plaster City.

  The Young Executives

  * * *

  For young and old, the ageing process involves a growing impatience between differing generations. The young can’t understand why the old must be so slow and set in their ways, while through older eyes the attitudes of the young often seem derivative and ill informed. That’s only natural; but now we have the profit motive preventing either side from learning about the other. If it isn’t a conspiracy, it certainly feels like one.

  I WAS WATCHING television the other day, one of those black and white science fiction films. Aliens had landed in the Nevada Desert, and a young man (I assume he was young – a trilby puts years on anyone) saw this humming silver spaceship land. When he took the town sheriff back to the site, the ship was gone and no one believed it had ever been there. At the end of the film the hero was left running about in the street trying to warn people that they were being taken over, but everyone thought he was crazy.

  I know now how he must have felt.

  When my husband finally died of lung cancer, I was relieved. It had been a long illness and he had suffered greatly, as much from the treatment as the disease. During the last few weeks of his life I nursed him at home. The doctors knew there was nothing more that could be done, and I wanted the hospital bed to be used by someone for whom there was still at least the hope of recovery.

  William had very much wanted to live. Some people let go easily, but not my husband. Most of all, he worried how I would manage without him. I told him that everything would be fine and refused to discuss financial arrangements. It was impractical of me, I know, but I felt it was unseemly to speak of money with a dying man, even a man to whom I had been married for thirty-three years. I had been raised to believe that such talk was vulgar and quite avoidable. My mother always said that money was a subject best discussed at a racetrack. All in all, I’m glad she didn’t live to see our modern world; she would have been simply unbearable.

  I tried not to consider what would happen after William died. Our savings were gone and the house was mortgaged to a level that would necessitate its immediate sale. We owned little of value, certainly nothing that could be sold for a profit. I could see there were difficult times ahead and knew that I would have to face them by myself. William was not an articulate man, and his state of partial sedation hampered our conversation. In our final hours together I knew there was much he wanted to say, important questions we had never managed to answer, but we contented ourselves by joining our hands on the bedspread and sitting quietly, waiting for the time to arrive, as if death had made an appointment.

  Well, the appointment was kept that October afternoon. William’s departure was as imperceptible as the autumn sun slipping into the trees, and I was left alone in a darkening bedroom. During the funeral I made a vow to carry on in strong spirits. I was determined not to be one of those weak wives who throw themselves on the mercy of disinterested relatives. I moved into the spare room because our old bedroom held too many memories, but apart from that I tried to continue my life with as few disruptions as possible.

  It didn’t really seem that William had gone until I sold the house and moved into a modern flat nearer town. I took very little of our old furniture with me, knowing that it would be harder to imagine him walking around a corner with his newspaper tucked under his arm in such different, new surroundings. He would not have approved of the flat anyway, too expensive, too much glass, too bright and sunny, but it lightened my mood when I looked from the windows and saw people crossing the street below, and looking from the windows was unavoidable because they covered one entire wall of the lounge.

  A lady from the council came to see how I was coping, and although I suppose she was trying to help, I did find her rather patronising. A neighbour had arranged her visit. She wanted to leave leaflets and told me that I could still lead a useful life, as if I had suddenly ceased to do so. I was polite but firm, even when she suggested that counselling could show me how to visualise my ‘
lost one’ in order to minimise the effects of bereavement. I told her I considered it healthier to try and gently release one’s grip on the past. Hold on too tight and you make a ghost. She gave me a look of utter confusion.

  Shortly after moving into the flat I spent an evening with our remaining accounts and made a decision to return to work. Some silly creatures are content to live through their TV sets and follow the affairs of fictitious television characters as if they were real. I have never been like that. I have no trouble filling the hours of the day – but the narrow margin of my finances demanded that I return to work.

  I had done so once before, after our boy was old enough to be left alone, and had trained as a medical secretary. My excellent shorthand was largely redundant now, and like many people of my age I was a little daunted by the prospect of learning to handle new technology. Peter, my son, is a victim of this fast-changing business world. He lives with his wife and daughter in Melbourne and found himself jobless after the aerospace company for whom he worked had been bankrupted by changes in the development of computer hardware.

  Peter was unable to attend William’s funeral. He offered me money that I knew he could ill afford, and I refused it. However, I accepted his kind offer to attend a company course in word processing here in London, and I found the lessons easier and more enjoyable than I had anticipated.

  After finishing the course I applied to an agency for work and was encouraged to find that older women were welcomed into certain areas of the workforce because they weren’t likely to run off and have babies. Decent medical positions were still hard to find, so I accepted a job typing letters for the head of a worldwide delivery-service company. I started on a bitter Monday morning exactly three months to the day of William’s death.