San Diego Lightfoot Sue

by Tom Reamy

  Robbie stood beside the lectern with papers in his hands. The silent, pinched faces stared back at him colored with hope, despair, fear, and confusion. Robbie shuffled the paper and cleared his throat. He looked tired and kept running his fingers through his tousled hair.

  “Yesterday evening and this morning,” he began slowly, “we contacted everybody in the valley, to tell them about this meeting and to get a head count so we would know how many people have… died and how many are missing. I have it here. Do you want me to read it or pin it on the board?”

  He lifted his eyes and surveyed the people pressed into the church, but there was no response. Doc Morgan, sitting in the front pew, looked around and said quietly, “Why don’t you read it, Robbie.”

  Robbie nodded. “Okay. These are the known dead. Orvie and Little Cleatus. They drowned when Orvie’s car ran off the road into the creek.” A woman began weeping softly somewhere in the rear of the room. Robbie looked up briefly and then continued. “Uh… Edith Beatty, Caroline Walker, and Joe Bob’s wife died this morning from infected wounds. Everyone bitten is sick but only those three have died. Doc can answer your questions about that. The Reverend Jarvis, Mavis Sizemore, Miss Proxmire, Betty Whitman, Bobby MacDonald were… killed by the children yesterday. We found the Whitman baby in the woods this morning. He had gone nearly a mile up the valley but was dead when we found him. We also found Danny Sizemore hanging from a rafter at Mavis’ place. He seems to have killed himself.”

  Robbie wiped the moisture from his upper lip with the side of his hand. “Pete and Prissy Morgan had been… were dead when we went by there this morning. They had six little kids—three of them not in school yet. Barbara Ann and Delton Reeves were killed when they attacked Joe Bob’s wife last night. The bodies weren’t there this morning but Pauly is sure they were dead. Pretty Walker was killed when she tried to kill Caroline. The Ellis baby died after falling from her crib. She apparently tried to climb out. That’s eighteen we know for sure are dead.” His voice was low and without emotion.

  Robbie shuffled the papers without looking up. “As for the missing… the best we can figure thirty-seven children were… affected. Two of those are eleven and the rest are ten or younger. Except for the five known dead, they’ve all disappeared. Seven of them are under two years old; one even younger than the Ellis baby. We don’t know how they managed.

  “Agnes Bledsoe and her husband went by his brother’s farm last night and didn’t find anyone there. Calvin Watson was gone this morning. Somebody had broken in. There was no one at my… my sister’s place this morning. And no one at Oss Morgan’s. Oss’s team came into town yesterday. There was blood on the wagon. Eloise Harper hasn’t been seen since she left the school house. Able Pritchard, Will and Pansy Reeves, Gil MacDonald, Sonny Morgan, and Carroll Gilmore didn’t come back last night after going to look for their kids. Counting the children, over fifty people are missing.”

  “What about the Sullivans?” someone asked.

  Doc snorted and Robbie shook his head. “I don’t know. We went up to the Hollow this morning but they wouldn’t let us in.”

  “Took a shot at us!” Doc said with indignation.

  “Must be a lotta kids up there,” the same man said.

  “Usta be.” Doc grimaced. “Them Sullivans been in-breedin’ up there in the Hollow like a bunch of pigs; ever since old Hiram Sullivan had a fallin’ out with Cleatus Morgan nearly two hundred years ago. I don’t know how many of ’em survived the diphtheria that went through there in twenty-seven. I tried to vaccinate ’em but they took a shot at me then too.”

  “We can’t worry about the Sullivans,” Leo Whitman said bitterly. “I lost my wife and baby. Nearly everybody here lost somebody. We gotta figure out what to do about it. Robbie’s been pussy-footin’ around, not sayin’ what needs to be said. Our kids have turned into wild animals, murderin’ and eatin’ human flesh. We need to go in and exterminate all of ’em. Like we would a pack of wolves!”

  A murmur swelled from the crowd. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing!” Mrs. Pritchard’s voice carried over the other sounds. “You’re talking about murdering our little children! My Mandy!”

  “They killed your husband,” Leo pointed out.

  “We don’t know that Able is dead!” she cried. Frances took her mother’s arm and tried to calm her. Doc stood and held up his hands. When they quieted he said, “Maybe Leo’s right and maybe not. That’s why we’re havin’ this meetin’—to decide what to do. We need to find out what’s going on. Maybe it will pass. Maybe it will pass and they’ll come home.”

  “Could you shoot one of your grandkids, Doc?”

  Doc looked at the floor for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t know. Joe Bob’s wife wouldn’t have been able to.”

  “We need to keep anything like that from happening again,” Robbie said. “Some of you live pretty far out. You have to take care of your fields and your stock. They’ve already wiped out three families.”

  “I’ll keep my shotgun with me.”

  “The ones who didn’t come back last night had guns.”

  “What are we supposed to do? Lock ourselves in our houses?”

  “I don’t know.” Robbie leaned against the lectern and wished he could sit down. He had been on horseback since dawn. “Everybody has to be aware of the situation so we can come up with something.”

  “I think the first thing we have to do,” Doc said quietly, “is capture one of them. Ask them why they’re doing this. Ask them what has happened to them.”

  “Capture?”

  “You’re talkin’ about ’em as if they were animals!”

  “No.” Doc shook his head. “They’re not animals. Animals don’t think and plan. Animals can’t open doors and windows and pretend to be your children so they can get close enough to kill you. If we can’t stop thinking of them as our children, we may not have a chance.”

  —14—

  Ludie Morgan put more wood in the stove and checked the gauge on the pressure cooker. She scalded Mason jars and sliced cucumbers to soak in lime water, humming to herself all the time.

  Meridee sat at the kitchen table watching her. “You don’t need to do all this, Aunt Ludie,” she said with considerable awe.

  “Gotta get your cannin’ done. Don’t want to let the garden go to waste. When those green beans and pickles are done, I’ll pick a bunch of nice green tomatoes and make chow-chow.”

  “I wasn’t really planning to can this year. I’ve got enough left over from last year to feed the whole town.”

  “Then why plant a garden?”

  “Force of habit, I guess.” She looked out the window but couldn’t see the church from where she sat. “How long do you think the meeting will last?”

  “Lord knows. Folks get to jawin’, never know when to quit. I coulda told ’em bad trouble was a comin’.”

  Meridee knew she shouldn’t say anything, but she did. “How did you know?”

  Ludie moved air across her shiny face with a paper fan. “I know the signs. I didn’t just come to town on a wagonload of watermelons. Only last week I heard a goatsucker two nights runnin’. I even found a crow’s feather on my front stoop. And for the last three nights the lightnin’ bugs have been so thick you could sew by the light. Them two old dogs of mine been layin’ in the yard pantin’ like lizards and the weather barely warm.”

  “What do your dogs have to do with it?”

  “They could feel the evil in the air pressin’ in on ’em, that’s what. It’s the Devil’s work. You notice how the Reverend Mr. Jarvis was one of the first to go. I know the signs.” Meridee sighed but didn’t argue. She looked at the pot of chicken and dumplings keeping warm on the back of the stove. She was starving. Ever since yesterday afternoon she couldn’t seem to get enough to eat.

  —15—

  Robbie sat on the davenport looking up at the quilting frame suspended just below the ceiling. Meridee started on it five months ago, but hadn’t work
ed on it lately. “My belly gets in the way,” she had said. There were about a dozen people in the parlor: a few of his relatives but mostly assorted Morgans. Some were sitting anxiously and some paced nervously while others talked quietly. He hadn’t been listening until he heard his name.

  “What?”

  “I asked how many it is now,” said his seventeen-year-old cousin Travis.

  “How many what?”

  “How many they’ve killed.” It wasn’t necessary to explain who “they” were.

  “Oh. Uh… forty-two, I think, known dead and missing.”

  Travis turned back to Meridee’s father. “That’s almost a fifth of the population.”

  Robbie was amazed at how calmly it was discussed now after the hysteria of those first few days. He stood up and rubbed his palms on his thighs. Doc had been in there for an hour. He went to the window, protected by bars made from wheel rims by the blacksmith, and looked out. There must be fifty people in the yard, he thought.

  They had been gathering since Meridee went into labor. Her worries about the baby had spread. The entire valley wanted to know if the baby would be normal or like “them.”

  “Only way we could do it,” Meridee’s father said. “We work in groups of at least ten and half of ’em do nothin’ but stand guard. It works out pretty good, but while you’re helping’ someone else, your own crops ruin in the fields and they kill and eat your animals. There just aren’t enough people to go around. Nearly half the farms are abandoned now, with relatives movin’ in with each other for protection.”

  “Leo thinks the only way is to hunt ’em down and kill em.

  “I agree, but there aren’t enough men to do that and the work too. Besides, he’s been out half a dozen times and hasn’t seen a thing.”

  “They found those burrows in the creek bank.”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t find any kids. They tried to smoke ’em out and nothin’ happened. Even sent one of the dogs in but the burrow collapsed and smothered him. Doc thinks they musta moved somewhere else. What beats me is how they can eat so much.”

  Robbie went to the bedroom door and listened but could hear nothing. He fidgeted for a moment, then went to the kitchen for a drink of water. He had thought several times of suggesting they seek outside help, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good. The people in the valley had been self-sufficient for two hundred years. It would never occur to them that they couldn’t handle this alone. Also, there was a certain shame involved. How could they admit to outsiders that they were unable to handle their own little children?

  Robbie stepped back into the parlor when he heard the bedroom door open. Ludie stood in the doorway, her face gray. She kept rubbing her arms and not looking at them. Everyone in the room was tensely silent.

  He ran into the bedroom. Doc leaned against the bassinet. He turned to Robbie and shook his head. The sheet was pulled over Meridee’s face. Robbie felt the bottom of his stomach drop away. He walked slowly to the bassinet and looked in.

  His daughter looked back at him and bared her teeth.

  —16—

  Leo Whitman hunkered down behind the mill wheel watching the creek. He held the deer rifle lightly across his knees. He particularly watched a clump of hemlock hugging the water on the opposite side. He thought he saw a movement there a few minutes ago but he wasn’t sure. His eyes burned from too many hours of trying to see in the dark. He wanted to point out the movement to the others, but he was afraid to make a sound.

  He shifted his position slightly to keep his leg from going to sleep again and then had to move a stone that dug into his hip.

  There it was again: a less dark flicker among the hemlock branches. Leo raised his rifle to his shoulder and sighted on the bush. After several minutes his vision began to blur. He lowered the rifle slightly and blinked his eyes.

  Then one of them stepped from behind the hemlock and into the water. It was naked but he couldn’t tell from this distance whether it was a boy or girl. It began wading slowly across the stream, looking around as if smelling the air. It stopped in midstream, the water up to its chest, and stood motionless. Did it suspect it was walking into a trap?

  Leo sighted on the figure and hoped none of the others would go off half-cocked. Then the child moved forward again. Others slipped silently into the water. God, Leo thought, how quietly they move. He counted eight of them, all naked. Okay, everybody, he said under his breath, wait until they all reach the bank.

  But someone didn’t. A rifle shot rattled through the night as the first one stepped out of the water. It was a boy, he could see now. The naked child jerked and flopped in the grass. Leo sighted on another and fired. It threshed in the water then floated face down. Other shots peppered the water with little geysers, but there was nothing to shoot at. The children had vanished; submerged in the creek and invisible.

  “Damn!” Leo yelled and ran toward the stream. He waded into the water and hurriedly dragged out the floating corpse. The others joined him. They carried the two dead children quickly away from the creek, looking anxiously over their shoulders. But there was nothing to see, not a vagrant ripple where the children had been.

  “Hurry up,” Leo growled. “I don’t trust ’em.”

  They ran down the dark street toward Doc’s office. They could see him standing in the lighted window watching for them. He had the door open when they got there. Doc slammed the door and lowered the bar across it as they crowded in.

  “How many did you get?” Doc asked quickly.

  “Two,” Leo grimaced. “Some idiot fired too soon and the rest of them ducked under water and disappeared.”

  “Put ’em on the table.” Doc carried the lamp and held it over the bodies. There was a stunned silence as the men got their first clear look. Water puddled on the table then dripped through the cracks to drip on the floor with soft thumps. “My God,” someone whispered.

  “It’s Mandy Pritchard and Wayne Williams,” Leo said with dull voice. “I’m glad Joe Bob isn’t here.”

  “Is she…?”

  “Yes,” Doc said slowly.

  Mandy’s body lay loosely on its back. The bullet had destroyed one of her breasts, but the other was large and full. Her hair was matted and grimy and showed a bald spot where Mrs. Beatty had kicked her. Her skin was darkly tanned and her abdomen swelled hugely.

  “But, she’s only… What? Ten?” Leo asked.

  “By our reckoning, she is,” Doc answered peering close, “but I doubt if that’s valid anymore. You’ll notice they both have a full growth of pubic hair.”

  “That’s not all Wayne’s got a full growth of,” someone sniggered. “Most full-grown men wouldn’t be ashamed of a pecker like that.”

  Doc fingered the boy’s genitals. “He’s fully developed all right.”

  “You think he’s the father?”

  “I don’t know. He could easily be.” Doc ran his hand over Wayne’s stomach, pinching the cool damp skin. Then he felt Mandy’s leg. “Feel their skin. It’s as tough as leather. And look at their bodies. There’s been a subtle change. They aren’t the bodies of children any more—and Wayne seems taller, don’t you think?”

  There was a murmur of assent. “Now we know why they needed so much food,” Doc continued.

  “Why?”

  “Because their bodies have been undergoing tremendous changes. Tremendous and rapid. They needed a lot of fuel for all that cell activity.” He put his hand on Mandy’s stomach. “I’d say she was very close to delivery.”

  “That’s impossible,” Leo blurted. “It’s only been three months.”

  “No more impossible than the rest of it,” Doc answered calmly. “But it’s logical when you consider the acceleration of everything else. I imagine the baby would have been even more developed than Meri’s. Probably able to take care of itself in a few weeks—maybe less.”

  “Then,” Leo said dazed, “there’ll be hundreds of them in a couple of years. In three months we’ve only managed to kill four. They
’ve killed… What? Fifty or sixty of us?”

  “I think that number can be increased considerably,” Doc said, turning away from the bodies. “A bunch of us went by the Hollow this morning. There wasn’t a soul around, nor any stock. Looked as if it had been deserted over a month. And the bluffs around the Hollow were riddled with burrows. We got outta there in a hurry.”

  “Do you think it’s hopeless, Doc?”

  “I can give you a better answer in seven and a half months.”

  “What?”

  “Frances Pritchard is pregnant. She’s the first I know of to conceive after that day.”

  “But Frances isn’t married. Who…?”

  “She moved in with Robbie after Meri died. There was no one to marry them and, I don’t know, it didn’t seem to matter.”

  Second Interlude

  Not far from Asheville, North Carolina, a road leaves the state highway and wanders upward into the Blue Ridge. It’s paved now and has been since the middle Fifties. It still follows the path of least resistance although the square turns have been rounded off and the more treacherous twists have been straightened. The many bridges across Indian Creek are new—made of steel and concrete rather than splintering timbers.

  There hasn’t been much change in forty years. The logging camps are gone. Camp grounds and motels with cable television have sprung up with increasing frequency. The road enjoys a great deal of traffic because it eventually ends up in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

  The villages along the way have revived with surprising vigor after the near death of the Depression. They were quick to discover that tourists pay much better than cows, pigs, crops, or logs. They found, rather astonishingly, the very things they were eager to cast off after the coming of electricity, television, and stereophonic sound, were just as eagerly sought by the tourists.