by Aaron French
Looking at the other end of the mattress away from the awful panties that might have been like his mother’s, he saw light glint off a curve of a beer bottle and something smaller.
Mack flexed his hands on the shaft of the arrow and the thicker handle of the mug. He shuffled his feet along the side of the mattress, avoiding the wet material with his toes and the grass with his legs.
As he knelt, the knuckles of the fingers holding the arrow brushed against the bottle. Still cold. Mack paused and rolled the bottle to see the label. He could not read the words, but it was always the shapes he recognized anyway. When his father asked him to get a new one from the refrigerator, he knew which one to grab by the shapes on the label even when the other bottles blocked the small bulb hidden in the top of the appliance.
A thick syrup of fresh spit and old beer leaked from the mouth of the bottle. As he waited for the backwash to soak into the cloth, he realized the water in the mattress filled it to the point that the thicker goo from the bottle just sat pearled on top.
Mack looked back toward the house, but only saw the screen of grass. “That’s too far.”
Three clicks inside the grasses answered him. He thought about the click of the bottle against the railing of the deck, but the sound struck him as more animal. A warm breeze brought a mist into his face, causing him to blink. The warmer moisture on the cool, night air reminded him of the smells of dirty laundry and unbrushed teeth.
He exhaled slowly and lifted his hand away from the bottle. “You’ve had a lot of practice throwing things.”
The breeze whispered, “Watch your tone, boy.”
The glint off the smaller object caught Mack’s attention again.
He set the mug down on the mattress watching moisture rise up around it. His free fingers closed on the shape and felt a sharp point bite one of the tips. Mack drew back and stuck his finger in his mouth out of reflex. It tasted as dirty as the moist air smelled and as filthy as the wet mattress looked.
Mack stared down at the object he had dropped back on the mattress next to the mug and heard the growl and swish travel around him in the dark grass.
He imagined terrible things happening on that mattress hidden inside the tiny rectangle of the clearing that the bed made. He thought no one could ever sleep out there. He pictured a hobo sneaking back behind his house to sleep. In his mind, the man had a painted-on beard and carried his possessions in a red polka dotted handkerchief on a stick, like in an old cartoon.
He thought people did bad things on this mattress hidden not far from where he slept inside the house. He thought about murder and remembered the stain that might have been blood on the inside-out panties.
He gagged again and forced himself not to look.
“There would be more blood.” He moaned over his finger between his teeth as he held his stomach with his other hand and the arrow.
A hiss from out in front of him vibrated the grass on the other side of the mattress. “There is more than one way to skin a cat, boy.”
Mack swallowed and looked down into the mug he had made for his father. He knew there were things he did not understand about the world. Older boys used words he did not understand and could not remember. They laughed when he didn’t get their jokes, but he pretended he did. They always knew he was pretending.
Adults whispered behind their hands and cut their eyes at him to be sure he had that look of ignorance in his eyes, which the other boys laughed at.
“Those are the things that happen on this mattress,” Mack whispered over his finger. “The laughing, whispering things.”
The slithering movement in the bushes whispered back, “Little pitchers have big ears, kiddo. You don’t want to know yet. Trust me.”
Looking away from the mug, he made out the shape of the thing that bit him. He saw the circle and the diamond held in a cage of prongs. Mack took his nasty-tasting finger out of his mouth and picked up the loop of what he now realized was a ring.
He held it close to his eyes and felt the delicate loop of gold between his fingers. It looked a lot like his mother’s ring that she was always dropping in drains or losing on some counter when she cleaned. His father yelled when he had to take apart the pipe under the sink or help her look for it.
Mack lowered the diamond away from his face and thought about his parents sleeping on the wet mattress out in the field using the dirty panties as a pillow case. He gagged again and shook his head.
It could have been someone else’s ring, he supposed. He had little point of comparison and he thought they might all look the same.
“This would be a long way to lose it, even for Mom.”
The breeze whistled to him, “You know your mother.”
Mack looked between the mug and the ring. The ring seemed important to take and his father must not have wanted the crappy mug Mack had made him. Mack could have put the ring in the pockets of his shorts, but things always fell out and if he dropped it in the grass, he was sure to never find it again, even in the bright sunlight when the bees were out.
He did not want to see the slithering thing that whispered with his father’s words; the thing might be a gator or a giant, gray, heel-biting serpent; but Mack feared bees in the daylight the most.
“I need to find the second one tonight.”
He held the orange finned arrow and the diamond ring that might be his mother’s as he skirted all the way around the mattress. He looked at the panties one more time without gagging before he pushed back into the tall grass of the field.
He bumped his bare knee against a thin, jagged stump and cried out.
The slithery thing’s voice breathed, “Baby.”
Mack gritted his teeth and stepped around the stump to keep going.
He felt the sting from the broken skin and tiny seeds from the grass stuck to the blood on his knee. He thought about the panties on the mattress where he found his mother’s ring and had left the mug and beer bottle his father hadn’t wanted.
The grass off to his right crunched and crackled under what must have been feet.
The low rumble of the voice said, “Come here and I’ll kiss it for you, Baby Macky.”
“Shut up,” Mack replied.
“Watch your words, boy,” the voice growled.
“You are hurting my feelings.”
“That’s what a baby would say. Or a girl. Are you the Girly Mack?”
“Shut up and leave me alone.”
Mack turned around and took a step back toward the house.
“You giving up already?”
Mack dropped his chin to his chest and sighed. “The arrow could not have come this far. I must have missed it back closer to the house. It is probably near where I found the orange one.”
A hiss and a click preceded the breathy voice this time. “Do you really believe that, or do you only want to believe it?”
“You tell me where the arrow is then?” Mack stomped one foot.
The voice laughed and Mack felt the vibration in the ground. “When I fire, I hit the target, buck-a-roo.”
Mack turned his back on the house and ignored the itch and the pain from the rough edges of the grass.
He parted the tall growth around another pine and found himself staring at his father’s Buick. The windows all sat shattered out of their frames with the glass shards sparkling across the upholstery that Mack wasn’t allowed to put his feet on. The windshield was intact except for a single crack that traveled from the lower passenger’s side to the upper driver’s side.
Mack looked around the field at a path of crushed grass marked with pieces off the car. One whole taillight assembly sat in the path the car had cut before coming to a stop.
Mack swallowed and said, “What happened?”
“You know I was always a drinker,” the voice breathed behind Mack’s neck.
“Why did you just leave it sitting here?”
“You should have seen it before they flipped it back up. Being upside down absolutely rui
ns an engine, Son.”
With the point of the arrow, Mack reached in the passenger’s window and lifted the black dice off the rearview mirror. He took the loop of the string off the arrow to stare at them a while.
“A real man takes the keys, boy.”
Mack’s lip quivered. “Was Mom in the car?”
“No, Sherlock, Jesus was my copilot and we brought a couple hookers in the back for later.”
Mack dropped the arrow through the broken window onto the glass of the passenger’s seat. After he stared at the car for another beat, he walked around with the dice dangling in one hand and the ring pinched between his thumb and forefinger in the other hand.
He followed the path the car had left through the smashed grass.
“I didn’t send you to get dice and jewelry, sweetheart.”
Mack didn’t answer as he walked in the direction of where the road should have been.
As the grasses fell away, Mack saw a swing set rusting with vines tangled up through the chains.
The laughter behind him sounded faint and deeper back in the taller grass. “Did you build that? It reminds me of your handiwork, boy.”
“You never built one for me like you promised.”
“I fed you like I promised and worked my whole life doing it. You’re welcome very much.”
“Well, I kept all my promises.”
“Sure you did.”
Mack dropped the dice at the bottom of the rusted slide and kept walking holding just the ring.
“Oh, that’s real mature, boy. Cut off your nose to spite your face just like your mother.”
He lowered his head and kept walking.
The voice gave one more chuckle and said, “Be careful. There are gators out this far. They like little boys the best, I hear. Come on now. That’s funny no matter who you are.”
He stepped out into the floodlights of the backyard and walked up the five steps of the deck. He skipped the fourth step that was still cracked and in need of repair. Stopping to lean on the rail, he felt his bloody knee and all the fear of being eight years old. He could not hear the voice from the field any longer, but he remembered all its words.
Another eight-year-old boy who looked a lot like Mack and a lot like Mack’s mother stepped out, letting the screen door slam. Mack winced at the noise he had told the boy a hundred times not to make. He sighed and let it go without comment.
The boy held out an open beer bottle and Mack took it by the neck in his eight-year-old hand. “Did you open it yourself?”
“Mom did,” the boy said. “She used her bare hands to get the cap off instead of the opener. It was cool.”
Mack smiled. “Your mother is tough as nails.”
He held the bottle without drinking it and reached out to the boy with his open palm. The boy took the ring out of Mack’s tiny hand.
“How did you find it?”
Mack sighed. “I used what light I had and kept looking. She must have just dropped it in the grass this time.”
“Mom will be happy.”
“We can always hope.” Mack closed both hands around the cold bottle. “Take it to her for me.”
The boy ran across the deck. As the hinges creaked, Mack opened his mouth, but the door slammed before he could speak.
He sighed and shook his head. Then he stared out into the grass at the very edge of the darkness waiting for an old familiar voice that never stayed silent for long. He clunked the full bottle against the railing under his eight-year-old arms. The music of the full bottle wasn’t exactly the same as the tune he had learned from the empties.
Mack blinked at his tears and waited for the voice to say something to him about it. No words came from the grass this time.
After a moment, he turned the beer bottle up and poured the entire thing out over the side of the deck railing without taking a sip.
About the author: Jay Wilburn lives with his wife and two sons in the coastal swamps of South Carolina. He taught school for sixteen years before quitting to take care of the health needs of his younger son and to pursue full-time writing. His novels include LOOSE ENDS and TIME EATERS. He has a piece in BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR vol. 5. He also has a story in ZOMBIES: MORE RECENT DEAD with Prime Books and FAT ZOMBIE with Permuted Press. Follow his many dark thoughts at JayWilburn.com and @AmongTheZombies on Twitter.
In Silence
K. Trap Jones
Omnibus Exclusive
Silence is what the human population gifts me now. A society plagued with its own existence; driven by something beyond my recognition. Within a deer stand I reside, high above the sea of madness that stares back up at me. The whole town is down there; almost every single resident. They are thoughtless and respond only to sound. They are asleep but their ears are always on guard. They seek to find those untouched and communicate the whereabouts to the sky. It is only a matter of time before I become like them. No thought; no questions, just a faceless stare. Their free will and mind have been stolen; mine will soon be taken as well. All hope is lost for me.
Deep within the woods is where I set up camp late last night. With the sun sinking behind the mountains, I gathered wood after a long day of hunting buck. Each year I spent my vacation not far from town. I wasn’t one to spend my free time traveling to other states. I was at peace when surrounded by nature and with a large deer in my sights.
The mountains overlooked the small town that I call home. A peaceful place; just the right population size where everyone knew each another. It was far enough away from the highway, which made traveling strangers a rarity. On the eve of my vacation, I stocked up on ammunition and camping supplies just like I did every year. The next morning at dawn, I set out on foot into the mountains.
I had a special spot that I had carved out of the thick underbrush, which was isolated and difficult to find. It served as my Eden; a sanctuary against the daily grind of life. After my first kill shot on a large antlered buck, I would forget about my responsibilities back home. The amount of stress released along with that single bullet soothed the torment of hearing the plumbing problems from my complaining customers. I had fallen asleep listening to the wind toying with the leaves, and the fire crackling. If I had known what was to come, I would have prepared better. But there was no way to foresee these events.
I rattled awake from a loud disturbance. I thought I was dreaming, but a trembling ground destroyed that thought. The idea of an earthquake pushed its way forward in my mind, as I stood next to a large oak for support. Within moments the ground stood still and the wind quickened its pace. Twisting through the trees, the swirling wind picked up everything not rooted. Leaves, sticks and dirt coated the environment, making it difficult to see. I dared not open my eyes and kept them hidden behind the bark of the massive trunk. The wind was so strong that I heard the tree moan as it battled back. I felt the roots underneath my feet grip the earth in defense.
As the intensity of the wind decreased, I climbed up the tree in hopes of seeing above the canopy. I had no rational thought as to what happened. I was hoping my eyes would portray something to ease my mind.
The slope of the mountain allowed me a slight visual of the town, or at least where it should have been. A thickened, dark cloud consumed the lower valley. I did not want to believe my eyes, but I had no choice once they started to focus. My mind wrestled to stay afloat as fear tried to drown it. Clinging to the branches and riding their swaying motion, I noticed the cloud expanding in a full radius, engulfing the surrounding woods. I had climbed up and down many trees in my time, but I had never climbed down one as fast as I did. Collecting anything I could carry, I quickly fled deeper into the woods and further up the embankment of the mountain.
My breath was getting heavy; my heart rate was quickly accelerating. I had no idea of what I was trying to outrun, nor did I have a clear path of escape. Something deep within my heart told me that I needed to run. I felt the beast at my back, bending the trees. The sloped terrain burned my thighs and calves, but I
ran as long as I could until the cloud engulfed me. I dropped to the ground and buried my face in the mud, as thoughts of a nuclear explosion clenched my beating heart.
With the wind no longer barreling over me, and the idea of still being alive, I dislodged my face from the mud, keeping my eyes closed. From what I could tell, I had no sensation of burning flesh; I remained in one piece. My eyes slowly opened, tears exiting without control. The gray environment concealed the once green terrain with a thick blanket of dust. Insanity crept up my spine like a demon seeking prey. The rifle trembled in my hands as my whole existence bled effortlessly within the gray atmosphere.
Clean air had become a gift Mother Nature was not offering anymore. Slicing off one of my sleeves, I was able to wrap my nose and mouth to help siphon the air. Sunglasses also helped shield my eyes from the dust. I was hesitant to travel back to the town, but my curiosity tempted me. Every step I took added an additional cloud of dust into the air. Reaching an embankment, I could see the town through a clearing in the woods. A dark cloud hovered above it and churned like a hurricane. Small flashes of light streaked up and down. Not sure what I was witnessing, I crept forward through the woods, rifle in hand. I controlled my breathing and tried to focus my eyes, but the fog was too thick. I began to feel claustrophobic. Everything was gray and I could no longer see the barrel of my gun as I held it before me. Chaos flowed through my veins.
I noticed myself constantly checking to see if the safety was off on the rifle and whether it was indeed loaded. I was no longer hunting deer; I was in a state of self-preservation against something I knew nothing about. My legs plowed through the mass of soot piling up that concealed the field just before town.
I stood on the outskirts, observing the surroundings. I did not want to be there; I would have been perfectly content running the opposite direction until I was in the next state. But the unanswered questions lingering in my mind kept me on the path—the dust, the cloud, the lights; what the hell was it?