by Ray Wallace
Nobody moved for a moment, shocked by the sight of the reptilian monstrosity. As they watched, the snake reared up, its head high enough to touch the top of the entranceway, ready to strike. The rest of its body trailed away down the staircase that descended to the liquor store below. Thomas was paralyzed with terror. Here it was, the hideous serpent of his nightmares made flesh, a monster sent to squeeze the life from his body and devour him whole. Or maybe not. This one looked capable of simply burying its fangs into his heart or deep into his neck or torso, flooding his circulatory system with a poison so lethal he’d be dead before he even had time to collapse to the floor in a twitching heap.
It was Tanya’s cry that spurred her two male companions into action, a wordless, primal screech, an expression of horror torn from the depths of her being. As one, all three of them opened fire on the towering, menacing creature before them.
Bullets ripped into that scarlet flesh and the monster screamed as its body was chewed and shredded by the destructive power wielded by the humans it had come to destroy. The sound of gunfire was deafening in that enclosed space, so loud that Thomas could not hear himself shouting even as he felt the air escaping his throat. The snake fell backward, out through the doorway. Thomas experienced a wild joy at this victory but it was short lived as he saw the smaller but equally vicious looking serpents that came to take the place of their fallen brother. Some of them were as thick as Thomas’s arm, others as big around as his leg. Only a few came through at first; they were quickly dispatched with bursts of gunfire. Then there were more, so many more, a veritable flood of them pouring through the doorway. Thomas, Ron and Tanya backed away in unison, stepped up onto the bed where the two ex-soldiers continued to fire as Thomas ran out of ammunition. Dozens of snakes were torn apart but there were more to take their place, so many more. And eventually Ron and Tanya ran out of ammo too.
“Shit!” said Ron in the sudden, relative silence filled with the hissing of the snakes.
“What now?” asked Thomas as he contemplated turning and jumping through the window, maybe trying to go head first so he’d break his neck or skull on the sidewalk below. The sound of shattering glass made him turn and look toward the window and what he saw there did little to lift his spirits. Snakes were entering now through a large hole in the glass. How had they scaled the outside wall of the building? Thomas wondered. How had they broken the window? With their fangs? Had they slammed their heads against it? Obviously, much as the storm of two days past had been no ordinary storm, and as the bugs of the day before had been no ordinary bugs, these were no ordinary snakes. The sheer absurdity of it all nearly sent Thomas into a fit of laughter. But not quite. The fear was too thick, too real. He looked at Ron and Tanya, took in the grim expressions on their faces.
“Now we die,” said Ron.
The snakes continued to pour into the room. It wasn’t much longer before they slithered up onto the bed. Then Thomas was bitten once, twice, again and again through his jeans. The pain was an awful thing. What came next was even more awful still.
*
As I write this I have to force myself to breathe slowly and deeply in an attempt to calm my nerves. To this day, of all my experiences throughout that terrible season, these are some of the memories that stick with me the most vividly. There is little effort needed on my part to revisit them. I have already conveyed my deep and abiding fear of snakes and no doubt this has something to do with why these recollections are still so clear to me. Even as I try to suppress the images, they rise unbidden, hissing and writhing, often at the most inopportune moments. The act of putting these memories into words has caused a light sweat to break out under my hairline. I can feel my heart beating heavily in my chest. And when I think about it, what a miracle this seems, the fact that my heart is still beating. After all that I went through, all that I survived... A miracle, yes. Or maybe just pure, blind luck.
*
Thomas didn’t die. Not in the usual sense of the word. No, he was transformed.
As he stood there, snake venom racing through his arteries, burning throughout the length of his body, he tried to scream but all that emerged was a rattling, gurgling sound from somewhere down inside his throat. Already he was changing, he could feel it, a rearranging of what he was on a deep and fundamental level. Or was he only imagining it, hallucinating like he had the previous day when he was high on insect dust? He didn’t think so. What he was experiencing here seemed too real. He felt grounded in the here and now, was altogether convinced that it was reality warping around him this time.
Ron and Tanya were changing too. He could see it. The exposed skin of their faces and arms was changing color, darkening, turning gray then even darker shades, streaks of red and yellow and touches of blue making appearances. He looked at his own hands and saw the same thing happening there, a rapid shifting of colors that outwardly conveyed what it was he felt going on inside his body. Vital organs were rearranging themselves, he knew; he could feel them sliding past one another. He was afraid, of course he was afraid, but more than the fear there was the pain and the horror he felt at what was happening to him.
Suddenly it was too hot in that room, a veritable furnace that threatened to melt the flesh from his body. He tore at his clothes, saw that Ron and Tanya were doing the same. And the snakes… They had backed away, had retreated from the bed and down to the floor, were arranged in a rough circle around the three humans, seemingly content to just watch what was taking place, to await the final outcome.
Sweat poured from Thomas’s body. He felt like he might spontaneously combust at any moment. Falling to his knees, he was compelled to wrap his arms around his torso and after he did so he realized that he could not pull them away. The skin there had adhered together. The same was happening to his legs where they were pressed one against the other. He fell onto his side, nearly tumbled from the bed. Tanya lay next to him, facing him, undergoing a similar metamorphosis. She seemed to be growing thinner as he watched. Taller. Her neck was elongating and he could feel the vertebrae in his own neck starting to pop. Tanya’s hair, though, was becoming shorter, pulling back into her scalp. Her nose was disappearing into her face, leaving only a pair of holes there. And her breasts were shrinking as her torso grew longer and more emaciated. Grey and black diamond-like patterns were now visible across the canvas of her skin. Her legs fused into a single leg which grew longer until the tips of her feet, now devoid of toes, hung down over the edge of the bed out of Thomas’s field of vision.
Snakes, Thomas knew, his mind reeling. That’s what we’re turning into.
It was the last coherent thought he had as he flopped off the bed and felt the cool, dry flesh of his gathered, myriad brethren as they encircled him, embraced him, welcomed his now totally-unrecognizable-as-human form into their midst. Almost immediately, any feelings of fear or panic dissipated. There was nothing to be afraid of here. He was among friends, after all. Family. The hissing coming from all around him held no sense of threat or menace. Quite the opposite, in fact. He felt wanted. Loved. It was like going home.
And then he was crawling, slithering across the floor toward the doorway and the stairs beyond. He could sense that Ron and Tanya were following. Down the stairs he went, joined by the throng of his new family. Then he was passing through a doorway behind the counter of the liquor store. It was only a short distance to the day-lit, afternoon world outside.
The sun felt good on his body as did the heat emanating from the sidewalk that fronted the liquor store and the asphalt of the street beyond. Thoughts of what it was like to be human were already fading from his consciousness. There was a strange scent upon the air, a thick odor that stirred a longing deep within him. He flicked out his tongue and tasted it, his attention now turning to the writhing knots of serpents he saw in all directions. The snakes were mating, he knew. For the moment, none of the creatures seemed remotely concerned about possible predators or the need to search for food or even reveling in the glorious, hot w
eather. They were lost in an orgy of twisting and quivering, limbless forms. The sight of it, the taste of it on the air was intoxicating and completely overpowering. The crawling thing that had once been Thomas Wright approached one of the wriggling masses. And within its dark and hissing folds he lost himself completely.
*
Nighttime. And Thomas was cold. Naked. He lay there shivering for a time, curled in upon himself. He couldn’t help but wonder at the bizarre turn his life had taken, the inexplicable things he had recently seen and done. And, of course, he thought about Julia and the kids. He started to weep. Above, the sky rumbled with thunder. He hurt all over, no doubt due to his recent transformation to and from the animal form he had occupied. His joints felt loose like they were sewn together with inadequate amounts of thread. He imagine that if he stood and tried to walk he’d simply fall apart, a foot here, a piece of leg there, arms falling from shoulder sockets, his head bouncing off the ground and rolling away. So he decided that he would stay right where he was, that he wouldn’t even attempt to stand, to seek shelter. He was alright where he was for now. None of the snakes had come to bother him. Maybe they had dried up and drifted away much as the bugs had done the previous day, like Ron said they would.
He squeezed his eyes closed as tight as he could, tried to clear his mind of all thoughts. Silence, that’s what he wanted. A silence of the soul. Of the world around him. An emptiness deep and pervasive and cleansing. But there were images that refused to vacate his mind no matter how hard he pushed them away. Vague, blurry images of long, thin, twisting bodies, flickering tongues, yellow eyes, and the remembered sensations of smooth, dry skin and taught muscles surrounding and entangling him.
And there was the thunder. Louder now. And the glow of lightning alleviating the darkness behind his eyelids. Then the rain started to fall, dotted his flesh with a demanding persistence. Again, ordinary rainfall. A summer thunderstorm like the ones he used to sit by the window and watch on occasion with his wife in his arms or his children snuggled up close against him on the couch. Sometimes they’d whisper stories to each other, silly little tales that gave the storm outside some magical purpose, that filled the darkness with fantastic possibilities, changing the mundane world beyond that window into a place where witches and were-rabbits and all manner of lovable and terrible monsters might tread. At least for a little while. It had all been for fun, of course, because they knew that inside the house they were safe, that monsters didn’t really exist, that they never would.
Sobbing, Thomas forced himself to his feet. It was a slow and ponderous process, like the Earth’s gravity had decided to strengthen its pull against him. It was also a painful undertaking as all of his muscles protested the action. He was pleased and just a little surprised to discover that he did not fall apart as a result of it. The rain was really coming down now and the sky was filled with clouds but there was still enough light for him to take in his surroundings. He was standing in the street in front of the liquor store. Empty snake skins littered the area which were shredded by the pounding rain as he watched. Soon they were washed away as if they had never been there at all. Thomas vaguely recalled shedding his own skin, how wonderful it had felt. He shook the image from his mind. There was his car, just where he had left it. Ron and Tanya were nowhere to be seen. He needed to dry himself, to get dressed and find his keys. He needed to get away from this place. Home. He wanted to go home.
And so he stumbled back into the liquor store, made his way upstairs where he found his clothes and his keys still in his pants pocket. He also found his flashlight next to the bed. Ron or Tanya must have grabbed it when they brought him in from where he’d been sleeping out front. Once he was dressed, he took an energy bar and a drink from the duffle bag that still lay open in the middle of the floor. Then he grabbed his gun from where he’d dropped it—there was more ammunition back at the house—and left everything else in case Ron and Tanya came back. As he exited the building he had to ignore the urge to grab a bottle or two along the way, recalling the promise he made to himself.
In his car once again, he headed back toward his neighborhood. The rain beat down on the roof and he had to put his windshield wipers on high. Along the road that he followed nothing else moved. It wasn’t long before he was pulling up in front of his house.
Maybe they’re here, maybe they’ve returned, a part of him couldn’t help but hope. It proved to be an empty wish, however, as he knew it would be. No one was there to greet him as he walked through the front door and into the living room. The only sound was that of the storm outside, and the wind blowing in over the shards of broken glass sticking out like mangled teeth from the window frame.
He was tired. And afraid. No booze in him. No drugs, mood enhancing or otherwise. He wanted companionship and wished that Dana was there. Or Gerald, the old man he had only known so briefly. The old man that he had killed. Quite inadvertently, of course, but killed nonetheless. Just another burden upon his psyche, one he wasn’t sure he could carry.
A general fatigue consumed him, physically and mentally. Spiritually? Was such a thing possible? He didn’t know, but if so then he was exhausted in that way too, as tired as a person could be. And he hurt, pretty much everywhere he could hurt. Something for the pain, he would take that and nothing else. He made his way through the dark house, flashlight in hand, went upstairs to the bedroom he and Julia had so recently shared, stood in the doorway, afraid to even look inside. But he had to. He needed blankets and pillows, not to mention somewhere safe to pass the remainder of the dark hours. A change of clothes would be nice. He shined the light into the room, over toward the open closet door, was relieved to see that Gerald’s body was no longer there. Gone, just like the bugs and the snakes, he supposed. There were the old man’s clothes, lying in a dark and crumpled heap on the floor. Exactly where the man himself had been lying the last time Thomas had seen him. And there was the broken bedroom window with the wind swirling in through it. Easy enough to picture Gerald’s remains carried away on that wind once they had dried up and crumbled to dust.
With a sigh Thomas entered the room. He changed into fresh socks and underwear, a gray t-shirt and matching sweatpants as quickly as his aching body would let him. In the closet he found the box with the ammunition in it and reloaded the gun. Then he pulled the blankets and pillows from the bed and made his way into the bathroom. There he tossed the objects pilfered from the bed into the bathtub, went out and grabbed a chair which he used to prop underneath the bathroom’s door handle. After swallowing a couple of Ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet, he climbed into the tub, set his handgun on the closed toilet lid and turned off the flashlight. As he lay there Thomas thought about his parents, wondered how they were doing up there in Pittsburgh. Had they been taken too? Was the house where they had lived for all these years sitting there empty, now nothing more than a museum filled with all the artifacts of the life they had shared together? With no way of contacting them, he couldn’t know for sure. He tried to picture them sitting in the living room, watching some evening television show, making the occasional good natured comment to one another. But the image wouldn’t hold, faded into a vision of a dark and lifeless room within a dark and lifeless home. So thinking, he fell asleep. He did not dream.
CHAPTER 4
Thursday, June 24
I remember as a child going through a brief phase when I was quite fascinated with “the unexplained.” I found myself perusing books covering such topics as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, El Chupacabra, UFO’s, shadow creatures and the like. Horror comics and movies—many of which I was too young to be viewing so my friends and I would sneak into the local theater to see them—introduced me to such creatures as vampires, werewolves, and mummies. The Creature Feature shown on Saturday afternoons, starring such actors as Vincent Price and Christopher Lee, only fueled the fires of my adolescent imagination. I couldn’t get enough. I remember begging my mother to please get me the Time Life series on the Unexplained a
nd when she finally relented and the first issue arrived in the mail, I spent the evening reading it from cover to cover and then endured another all-too-common night where I slept very little if at all.
I was particularly drawn to tales of hauntings and disembodied spirits. For here, surely, was proof that there was a soul and that it lived beyond the death of the material body it inhabited. And all of the pictures—the vaguely humanoid shapes, the circles of light, the glowing, amorphous blobs—they couldn’t all be fakes, could they? When I grew older and the realities of teenage life and then adulthood claimed more and more of my thought processes, my interest in such otherworldly concepts began to fade as I’m sure it does for most individuals. But even as an adult, I must confess, I’ve found myself dreaming on occasion of those terrible creatures that so thrilled me in younger days, my sleeping mind convinced that they roam the world seeking out innocent victims to either kill or bend to their evil ways. There have been times when I’ve awakened in the darkness, sure that there was something else in the room, something lurking near the bed I shared with my wife. Something not of this world. Or no longer of this world. A ghost wandering the realms of man, trapped between Earth and Heaven—or possibly Hell—unsure of where it belonged. Just an arm’s length away, there in the darkness. Close enough to touch—if it was possible to touch such a thing.
At those moments, during those small hours of the night, anything seemed possible.