by Rain Oxford
Something was over his face, something huge, evil, with what might have been eyes behind a red glowing fog. Red fog seemed to surround his face, his world, his universe, growing darker and deeper until it was cold and black.
* * *
Patricia Sims sat in the truck. The windows were black, so black they seemed to be painted, and it irritated her like everything did. She wished Paul would hurry.
Over the pounding of the rain, she heard something scrape the metal of the door. “Paul, what are you doing? Is the truck ready for you to move it?” The scraping came again and she felt the truck shake slightly. “Are you trying to scare me, Paul? Stop it and get in here.” Whining, she fumbled for the overhead light switch. “There, damn you, Paul…”
Behind the glass the face was a grotesque leering mask of horror, its eyes red with hate and its teeth red with blood. Patricia slipped, screaming to the floor.
* * *
Derek stopped to say goodnight to Ann before he drug his weary body into his own room. He hadn’t told her very much of what was going on and it made him feel slightly guilty, but he guessed it was for the best. No reason to start frightening people until there was something definite to frighten them about.
He pulled off his boots and lay back, scrunching his pillow into a comfortable position. He lit a cigarette and reached to put the pack on the nightstand.
“Damn!” a thin tendril of blue fire snapped at his hand and he jerked it back, scattering cigarettes across the floor. He sat up. There was nothing on the stand but the lamp… and the piece of metal he had fished out of the river. He gingerly reached out and touched it, but nothing happened; it was just cold metal.
“Must have been static.” Derek’s voice seemed to come back to him from the walls. But isn’t it too wet for there to be static?
It was heavy in his hand. He turned it over slowly, examining the fine lines and etchings on its surface. That’s odd. It isn’t as rusty as it was. Derek rubbed it with his shirtsleeve for a minute before holding it under the light again. There was no question about it; it was less tarnished than before. Derek shrugged and set it back on the stand. It was a minor mystery that would keep. He turned off the lamp and sat smoking slowly in the dark room. It was going to be a long, wet day tomorrow. He was going with the sheriff to do some digging around, and he hoped they didn’t find anything they didn’t want to find.
Chapter 6
“Okay already! I’m up, give me a minute!” Mike rolled from his bed, groaning, peering in the dim light to see his watch. Six-thirty? I’m gonna die. Or throw up. The door to his office shook again with someone’s pounding and he could hear his name being called.
He pulled his boots on and tried to tuck his shirt in, but he had slept in his clothes and nothing seemed to fit. He gave up and went through the office. Spotting his cigarettes on his desk, he grabbed them and lit one while he opened the door.
“What’s wrong? At this time of the morning, it had better be good,” Mike growled.
“It’s Pat Sims, Paul’s wife, Mike. We found her this morning and thought we better tell you about it. I think she’s gone crazy.” The man talking was Ned Hannerlan, one of the farmers that lived near the Sim’s place. With him was his wife and two other farmers.
Mike shook his head, trying to clear it. “Wait, hold on, you found Pat? Where’s Paul?” He could feel something uncomfortable in his stomach. Like gravel.
“We don’t know where Paul is, nobody’s seen him this morning. His truck was over about a mile from their place, stuck tight as hell in the mud. That’s where we found Pat.” Ned took a long breath, looking at the others for support. “Couldn’t understand nothin’ she said, really. She kept talking about the devil and paying for sins. Never heard anything like it.”
Mike yanked his jacket from the rack by the door and put it on. “Where is she now?”
“We took her back to her house and put her to bed. There are two of the women with her now. She acted like she might do somethin’ crazy, so we didn’t want to leave her alone.”
“That’s good. Let’s go out there. I want to talk to her, and I want to find out where Paul is.”
* * *
It wasn’t unusual for Patricia Sims’s appearance to be somewhat on the poor side. It was often down right bad. But this morning she looked ghastly.
Her hair was spread out in snarls around her head and one hand, claw-like, worked its way through it, leaving more trails of tangles. Her face was empty, the muscles slack. A pool of spittle formed on the pillow and sheets, glistening on her neck and left cheek, small rivulets running from her open mouth. Her bowels had emptied in the bed. Now and then her face would change and her eyes would move searchingly around the room, and her mouth would let loose with an almost girlish giggle. Mike wanted to leave, to go outside where there was clean air to breath and a bush where he could puke, but he couldn’t; right now he had to be a goddam sheriff.
“That’s the way she was when we found her and brought her here, only she was talking then,” Ned said, looking at her. His face was starting to turn green. “I’d just as soon wait outside if you don’t mind. You can holler if you need something.” He backed towards the door, bumped into the wall, sidestepped, and disappeared into the living room.
There was a spindly wooden chair beside the nightstand, white paint peeling from its worn seat. Mike pulled it up next to the bed and sat down. He thought he should reach out and touch her, hold her hand or something, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. It would have been like touching a live corpse.
“Pat? It’s Mike,” he said softly. He leaned a little closer. “It’s all right, everything’s all right. We’re here and we’re going to take care of you.”
Another giggle.
“Do you remember what happened? Can you tell me?”
The old woman’s hand pawed through her hair, twisting it, and she giggled again.
“Pat, this is Mike, do you understand?” Oh, God, why did Doc have to go and get killed? Then I wouldn’t have to… “Pat, where is Paul? Do you know where Paul is?”
Her eyes stirred and focused on his face as if she were peering through a fog. The hand stopped twisting for a moment, then started again. “Paul? Where’s Paul? I know where he is,” she said with a whisper that made Mike’s skin want to crawl off his body.
“Where is he? Where is Paul?” Mike whispered back.
“He’s in hell!” It wasn’t a scream; her voice was still quiet. But she had spit the words out with such violence that Mike jerked back in the chair, almost breaking it. Her hand shot out, grabbing his wrist. “He’s in hell just like I told him he would be! And I saw Satan, and he talked to me, and he told me I wouldn’t be taken, not yet. Oh, no, not yet! It wasn’t time, but the time is soon. For all of us it is soon, and he would be ready. He would be ready for us soon, for all of us! So soon, so soon…”
Her hand fell away from his wrist and found its way back to her hair. Her face went slack again, and her eyes wandered from his face to the far corner of the room. She giggled, a horrible, bubbling sound. “He’s almost ready, he’s almost ready…” she whispered.
Mike stood, watching her for a moment, then shoved the chair back and went into the living room. Ned and his wife were waiting, and Ned gestured with his head for Mike to join him. They went out onto the porch. It was surrounded with the old style metal screening to keep out the pesky summer bugs. Mike stood by it and watched the drizzling rain. The air was damp and cold, and he drew it deep into his lungs. It felt good, but he still had the gravel in his stomach.
“I heard. She was talking like that when we found her.” Ned came over and stood by Mike to watch the rain. “Gives me the creeps. Got any idea what she was talking about?”
“No I don’t.” At least, I hope to hell I don’t. Mike reached for his cigarettes, paused, and decided he wanted fresh air more. He looked at Ned. “No, I don’t, because I’m not a doctor or a psychiatrist or whatever it is she needs. I just don’t k
now.”
“You think she’s really crazy?”
Mike looked toward where the old woman lay, shrugged, and then turned back to the rain. “Can you take me out to the truck where you found her? I ought to see what’s there, if there’s anything to see.”
“Yeah, sure. Give me a sec.” Ned stepped into the house, then came out with his coat. “You got any suggestions about what we should do with her?”
“Have somebody stay with her and… and just take care of her.”
* * *
Ned and Mike had stopped at Paul’s truck and looked around for a few wet minutes, but had found nothing to indicate what might have happened. If there had been anything earlier, it had been long since washed away by the heavy rain. They drove slowly back to town.
Mike sat in the diner, staring morosely into his coffee, waiting. Ernie was doing the best he could to repair the mangled holes in the hood of the patrol car. He glanced up from his coffee just in time to see Parker stomping in through the doorway. He sat down next to Mike and ordered coffee.
“You know, Mike, I’ve been calling you ‘bloodhound’ for quite a while, but now you’re starting to look the par. You’re sagging around the edges.”
“Thanks. Makes my day, hearing that, but you’re probably right. Here it is only nine in the morning, and I feel like I haven’t slept in a month. You hear about Pat Sims yet?”
“Of course. Ned was by the store a bit ago. Won’t be an hour before everybody in the county will have heard. Would have already if the phones were working.” Parker cradled his coffee cup in both hands. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “Mike, a lot of the folks around here are getting scared. You know as well as I do that these are good, down to earth folks, and they don’t scare easy, but there’s just too much going on. All of a sudden there’re some of us dying and a lot more just plain missing, and nobody’s got any answers that make sense. They need to know something.”
Mike took a long time before answering. “I wish I could tell them something that would do them some good, but I can’t. There’s nothing to tell. Derek and I saw something last night, before we had that meeting, but we don’t know what it was. I can’t say for sure that what we saw has anything to do with what’s going on, but my guess is that it has.”
“And you don’t want everybody getting shook up over what you ain’t sure about.”
“You got it. That’s why you’re not going to mention to anyone what we’ve been talking about. Right?”
Parker had a pained expression on his face. “You know I wouldn’t, Mike. I got a big mouth, maybe, sometimes, but I know how to keep it shut when I should.”
Mike clapped a hand on Parker’s skinny shoulder. “I didn’t mean it that way, you old buzzard. I’ll let you know anything I find out. Jumping Jesus, I need all the help I can get right now, but I want you to keep all this under your coat for the mean time. You understand.”
“Yeah, Mike, I do. Have you seen Derek yet this morning?”
“No, I haven’t. He and I plan to do some running around this afternoon to see if we can come up with anything. I gave him a gun.”
Parker frowned. “I take it you figure you two might run into some trouble, then?”
“I don’t know, but there is that possibility. It’s good to know you got somebody to back you up if you need it, and I think Derek would be a good man to have.”
“I do believe you’re right about that.” Parker fondled his cup in both hands, savoring its warmth. The rain and cold weather wasn’t doing his arthritis any good. “Mike, I know I ain’t much, just an old man, but if you need any more help…”
“Shit. You’re not old, just well-seasoned. A man gets tougher the longer he hangs around in this world.” Mike grinned. “So you keep your ears open, because if I get in a bind, I’m gonna holler my socks off.”
* * *
By six-thirty that evening, the hand of darkness had covered the country side, crushing out any sign of light. There was no comfort in this darkness. No young couples drove over the back roads or to the river to get better acquainted. No old couples sat on their front porches in comfortable rocking chairs, watching the universe spinning overhead.
Many of the houses were empty, vacated by men and women seeking the security and shelter of others, who received them with open arms, because they were also afraid. All of man’s technology and civilization and politics meant very little when men were afraid. Before a man ever had those, he sat huddled in caves and around fires with as many of his own kind as he could. Man’s natural fear of darkness, or rather, his fear of what might be in it, remained with him no matter how far he wandered down the road of progress.
Mike had borrowed a four-wheel-drive Scout from Ernie; the dirt roads that he had to cover had deteriorated to the point that his patrol car was useless. He and Derek drove over back roads using the spotlight to comb the edges of fields and ditches. Several times they left the warmth of the Scout to rummage through old abandoned shacks and buildings. There were dozens of them that, at one time or another had been used for road side storage of farm equipment or makeshift barns or such, but had long since been left to rot and fall apart. Fortunately most of them had collapsed over the years, becoming the home of mice and spiders, and saving the two tired men the trouble of having to bother exploring them. Neither one of them could have imagined what it was that they might find crouched in one of the old buildings. Each had his own fears.
They stopped at all of the houses on their route that had lights on. Fear was the general theme they encountered wherever they went, and they were greeted with an almost pitiful show of welcome. Families were glad to have the two added to their numbers, if even for a few minutes, and it was at least some measure of security to have two armed men patrolling and watching the area.
After two and a half hours, they were both exhausted. It had turned into a routine; peer through the rain, searching for anything, getting soaked, then drive to another place and peer through the rain and search and get soaked.
Mike swung the Scout onto a gravel side road that ran between two iron posts. As they drew closer, Derek made out the outlines of a large house ahead of them. It looked familiar.
“This is the place you found that book, isn’t it? The one you call the Jarman place?”
“Yeah, this is it. The Jarmans were some of the first people to turn up missing.” Mike pulled the Scout to a stop in front of the house and killed the engine. Flipping on the search light, he ran its cone of light across the face of the house. It looked dead and broken. “See what a mess it is? That’s how I found it when I was out here the other day. Like it got hit with its own private hurricane.”
Mike switched off the spotlight and lit a cigarette, looking at Derek. “These Jarmans are, or were, one strange lot. You heard much about them while you’ve been here?”
“No, not much. Mostly from Ann. She made it sound like they were insane. Raised monsters for pets and things like that.”
“I’d believe it. What do you say we grab our flashlights and give this place a once over?”
“Sure. And look for pet monsters.”
The two men reluctantly climbed out of the warm Scout and spent a few moments gouging holes in darkness in front of the house with their flashlights. Overgrown with huge shrubs and weeds, the area around the base of the house presented an almost impenetrable mess neither man really cared to explore. As the two neared the entrance, Derek noticed an odor that grew from unpleasant to nauseating. It was coming from the house itself.
“Damn. This place stinks!” It was an understatement. Derek wanted to stop breathing.
“I know. Forgot to mention it.” Mike almost, but not quite, grinned. “That’s the way it smelled when I was here before, but I think it was worse then. I don’t know what it’s from; I never did find anything. It just stinks.”
They stepped cautiously through the open front door and into the main room of the house. To Derek, it seemed much larger than he would have
thought from outside. He ran his light up the staircase to where it formed a balcony on the far side, then back down to the walls and floor. There was trash, broken glass, and pools of water everywhere. It was as if it had been deserted for years instead of just a few days.
Mike pointed with his light toward the base of the stairs. An empty doorway gaped beneath it, and Derek followed Mike as he crossed the room. “This room’s something else. It’s demolished.” Mike shined his light on the floor and walls to make his point. “I found the book here. Make anything of it?” He nodded his head when Derek shook his. “Me neither, unless they got careless with some kind of explosives in here. No, scratch that; makes me sound stupid. Nobody plays with dynamite in their house.”
“Some people do some strange things, stranger than blowing themselves up. And something happened here.”
They left that room and climbed the stairs, going from room to room in much the same order as Mike had in his earlier search, but there was nothing to find. The last room upstairs was near the top of the staircase, one that Mike had only given a short glance. Derek felt his stomach turn over violently when he entered.
Mike saw Derek flinch and stepped in behind him, his hand on his gun. He didn’t see anything disturbing enough to cause a reaction. “Just a bunch of books and stuff, Derek. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that I get a feeling sometimes, and I just got one. A strong one.” There were books in the room, a lot of them. A small desk sat at the far end, cluttered with papers, and an old, heavy wooden chest was on the floor beside it. “Used to happen a lot a few years back, usually when something bad was about to come down.”
“You mean ESP, or being able to see what is going to happen before it does? That kind of thing?” The edges of Mike’s mouth twitched upward. He read about that stuff, but it wasn’t real.