Little Heaven

by Nick Cutter

  “I don’t know if I can leave without Nate,” Ellen said. She was looking directly at Micah. “I’m not expecting anything from you. I just wanted to say.”

  Micah said nothing. But he knew he would not leave Ellen. If he was not exactly a good man, he had always been a loyal one. If he took a job, he finished it. Unless something happened to him that prevented it.

  They traced a path through the trees. No sounds filtered out of the darkness: none of the little clicks and whistles and snapping twigs that should be there in a forest teeming with life. But the woods felt arid and lifeless—they could have been walking on the moon.

  The ground underfoot went from dark to light. The white of pulverized bone. Micah’s boots kicked through drifts of ash . . . except it wasn’t that. Nothing had been burned.

  “I know where we are,” said Ellen. “I saw it this afternoon.”

  Dead. Every tree and bush, every tuft of grass. The vegetation was decimated in a manner Micah had never seen: the bark peeled off trees in brittle shreds, the underlying wood gone a sick bile yellow. He saw no termite bore holes, no blight of any kind. It was as though they had died of old age—they had the look of wretchedly ill seniors at a cut-rate old folks’ home, wasted away with cancers that had rotted their bodies from the inside out.

  “It’s only right here,” said Ellen. “Ten, fifteen yards wide.”

  She reached out tremblingly. Her fingertips brushed a tree. She recoiled as though she had touched a dead body.

  “Do you think Eli would have come this way?”

  Micah scanned the route they had just walked. He felt something for just an instant. A presence—a delicate, quick-stepping movement he sensed not with his eye but rather a center of perception buried deep in his lizard brain, wed tightly to the fight-or-flight instinct the human species had developed back when we were as often prey as predator.

  Yet he saw nothing with his eye. Just the liquid shiftings of the night.

  Or—

  Fifty yards down the path. Peeking slyly between the ruined trees.

  Peekaboo, I see you.

  A face. It hovered ten feet off the ground, a tiny earthbound moon. Not a human face. It wasn’t round at all. More long and curved and vulpine. It was as pale as the moon, too—the jarring white of flesh that had never tasted daylight.

  Its eyes—were they eyes? was any of this real?—were black as buttons. It opened its mouth. Its face split in half, pulling its head apart; the top of its skull levered back like a Pez dispenser. Inkiness bled out of that slash, a blackness more profound than Micah had ever known.

  Ellen grabbed his hand. She had seen it, too.

  “Run,” she said.

  They sprinted through the woods, their feet flashing over the ground. Ellen veered sharply left, off the path of death. Micah spun around to see if the face—and the body it was attached to—was in pursuit. He tripped and dropped the torch. It fell sputtering into a patch of dry earth. He abandoned it. They followed Ellen’s flashlight. It bobbed against the trees, the beam occasionally skipping skyward when she stumbled. Micah wasn’t sure where they were going, but Ellen ran with a purpose. Already the image of what he had seen—that bloodless face staring at them amid the tree limbs—seemed absurd. What creature could be that tall?

  Unless it was up in the tree, he thought. Hugging it like a spider.

  He pictured a terrible arachnid-like thing hooked to the spine of a dead pine, its thick furred legs throttling the trunk . . .

  He grabbed her hand. “Stop.”

  She checked up. They stood panting.

  “We will get lost,” he said.

  She pointed to her left. “The compound is that way. I see the light of torches.”

  She shot a look behind him.

  “Micah, you did see—?”

  He nodded. “An animal. An owl.”

  He could tell she wanted to believe him. He wanted her to, too.

  They walked toward Little Heaven. Whatever the thing was, Micah could hear no breath of its pursuit. Had it even given chase? He wasn’t at all certain. He was becoming less certain of many things.

  Those creatures from last night, this one now—what if something unnatural was at play? In the army, some of his more superstitious barrack mates would talk about seeing things while out on patrol. Unearthly lights, distant figures that seemed to float above the earth. Spooks. Ghosties. Another man, a sniper named Groggins, used to claim Korean scientists were creating half-human, half-animal hybrids in underground labs. Super soldiers, ape-men and snake-men, which was what Groggins kept glimpsing through his scope during night watch: lab mutants who had escaped containment roaming no-man’s-land, feasting on rotting corpses sunk in the mud, too skittish to attack—yet.

  Micah never put any stock in it. Men’s minds went to strange places when put under pressure. And he knew that even if something strange was happening around Little Heaven, the worst thing to do would be to run half-cocked into the woods. No. They had a home base. Not a very hospitable one, but it would do. They were being fed and sheltered. There were weapons, even if they weren’t yet in Micah’s hands. He could get a gun, if push came to shove. So their best bet was to sit tight, assess the situation, and act only once all the information had come to light.

  They walked quickly. Ellen swept the fringing bushes with her flashlight. No sign of the boy. They spotted torchlight. Soon they encountered two searchers trudging back to the compound. Their clothes were dusty, their spirits low. The boy had not been found and it was nearing midnight.

  Virgil Swicker and Cyril Neeps idled at the front gates. They had not done much to look for the boy, as evidenced by their clean trousers. Neeps’s jaw tightened at the sight of them.

  “What’d I tell you?” he said to Micah.

  Neeps grabbed Micah’s sleeve. Micah swung round until they were facing. Neeps’s breath washed over him, hot and electric. Neeps waited until the Little Heavenites had passed from earshot before speaking.

  “The fuck are you up to, sonny boy? Told you to stay out of this.”

  Neeps’s fingers clawed into Micah’s forearm. If he wanted Micah to wince, he would be disappointed.

  “There’s a missing child,” said Ellen. “How could we not—?”

  “Wasn’t talking to you, bitch,” Neeps said casually. Swicker, who had been standing a ways off, pinched in at Ellen’s side. He could reach out and grab her if he wanted to.

  “You being a clever Clyde?” Neeps’s eyes drilled into Micah’s unpatched eye. “Lost hikers, uh? Nah, I’m thinking not. You’re gonna want to hit the dusty ole trail real soon. Skedaddle your asses.”

  Neeps picked a shred of boiled gray meat from between his teeth and flicked it at Micah’s chest. It stuck.

  “We are a long way from anything, son,” said Neeps. “Ain’t no rules, except what the good Reverend says.” A chuckle. “And even then . . . well, Virg and me ain’t never been much for godly matters. I get a sense you ain’t, neither. So go. Take your show on the road, Pontiac.”

  Neeps shoved him. Micah stumbled back, then calmly straightened the lapels on his duster. “You bet” was all he said in reply.

  He and Ellen walked back to the bunkhouse. Cyril said something to Virgil, which was followed by a donkey bray of laughter.

  Micah could tell Ellen was unnerved. Whether it was by the face in the woods or the confrontation with the hired guns, he could not tell. He wondered if he would have to kill Swicker and Neeps. He hoped to avoid it. It would be ideal if they were able to leave soon, just like Neeps wanted. As soon as Ebenezer was well enough to walk. But sometimes men like Neeps pushed a collision. And Micah always made a point of hitting first, and hitting harder.

  18

  EBENEZER AWOKE from a dreamless sleep. It was dawn. Frail sunlight leaked through the bunkhouse window.

  He sat up. The others were asleep on the spare cots that had been brought in last night. Sleeping, or playing at it. Ebenezer wasn’t sure Micah ever really slept�
��he got the sense the man merely closed his eyes and faked it for a few hours a night.

  Ebenezer put his feet down and tested his injured ankle. Dr. Lewis, the compound’s de facto sawbones—an old army meatball medic—had fashioned a splint to take the pressure off. He had given Ebenezer a few pills to help him rest. Ebenezer had taken them and dozed. When he had awoken for the first time, he’d noticed Minerva and Ellen bustling about, searching for a flashlight.

  “What’s happening?” he’d asked

  “Shut up.” Minerva tossed the pill bottle at him. “Take another pill, Phil.”

  Ebenezer thought that a fine idea; he took another one. He slept for hours and swam out of unconsciousness in the early hours of morning. Perhaps it was the effects of the medication or a dream he couldn’t shake off, but he swore he had seen something at the window. The face of a child. But it was bleached white apart from the eyes, which were black, as if the pupils had been pricked like the yolk of an egg, the darkness spreading across each eyeball—

  He had slept again and woken up only minutes ago. He stood. The pain was definitely there, a sharp spike radiating up his shin, but it was manageable. He was starving. He was always hungriest after he had been hurt—his body worked so hard at repairing itself that it drained its energy reserves.

  He limped out of the bunkhouse. Dawn was streaming through the trees. He saw lights moving in the woods and heard the occasional cry of a boy’s name. Eli. It made him think of the boy he might have spotted at the window last night—the boy who had been nothing but a figment of his pill-addled mind.

  He spied a man clocking his progress. A fellow with straggly white-boy hair—the hair belonging to a particular breed of man you’d call a reb—and a pistol holstered at his waist. This man watched him limp across the square with a flat, jeering expression on his face.

  “Bit early for your kind to be up, ain’t it?” he called over.

  Ebenezer stopped and stared at the man. “Early for a nigger—is that what you mean, my good man?”

  “Nope,” the man said chummily. “I meant early for a faggot. You ain’t gonna find a hairdresser for that flowsy hair out here, boy.”

  Ebenezer nodded impassively. “Good to know.”

  “Get better quick,” the man said dismissively. “Then get your ass out of Dodge.”

  Ebenezer found the encounter quaint yet crass. Faggot? The bastard should be so lucky. Eb vowed to slit the hayseed goober’s throat if the opportunity ever presented itself.

  He limped into the mess. Begrudgingly, the cook gave him a bowl of porridge. Ebenezer dumped brown sugar on the porridge and ate it and asked for more. The cook groused.

  “It’s for the kids’ breakfasts, and the people out looking for poor Eli.”

  The cook was about fifty, with a potbelly and a nose that begged for a punch. Ebenezer would have happily kicked him down a flight of stairs, but there were none of those around, and anyway his ankle hurt too much.

  “Whensoever you come across a man in need, you shall freely open your arms to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.” Ebenezer showed the cook his outspread palms. “Book of Ephesians, my friend . . . my friend in Christ.”

  The cook gave him another bowl. Ebenezer was delighted. He had just made that shit up! When he was finished, he burped and said, “My compliments to you, chef; I’ll be sure to mention you in my review for Bon Appétit magazine.”

  He departed on the chef’s scowl. Fah, to the devil with him. To the devil with this whole miserable encampment. If he were healthy, he would leave this minute with only the clothes on his back. The others could come or not; he wouldn’t care.

  Ebenezer could not say what bothered him about Little Heaven, aside from the obvious—that it was a dismal enclave run by a short-assed Bible thumper with a discount Elvis haircut. It was more the smaller details, like how the sunlight seemed shabbier over the compound, leeched of its heat and vibrancy. Or how everyone was stooped like trees struggling to survive on a windswept mountain peak.

  He stood in the parade square, watching people come in from the woods. They were exhausted and dirty, carrying torches that had burnt down like enormous wooden matches. What had the cook said? Out looking for poor Eli . . . Had a boy run off? If so, a missing child was Little Heaven’s concern, not his own. Concern was not and had never been a quality of Ebenezer’s nature. While that counted as a failing in him as a human being, it held many benefits in respect to his chosen profession.

  THE MORNING WORE ON. The search continued. Ebenezer overheard Minerva and Micah strategizing while Ellen was out of earshot. Minerva spoke loud enough for Ebenezer to hear—she wanted him to hear, Eb figured. Why couldn’t they just leave? she reasoned. Let Ellen keep her money. If Ebenezer couldn’t make it on his bum ankle, tough shit. Micah shook his head. Ebenezer didn’t hear what he had to say, but it probably had something to do with not wishing to leave Eb behind. Micah was a dutiful fool, though there was a strong possibility that he wished to linger on Ellen’s behalf. He was sweet on her, as even Helen Keller could’ve sniffed out.

  “What about the guns back at the camp?” Minerva said. “We could use those.”

  “Yes,” Micah admitted, but their conversation stopped there.

  The midmorning sermon was short, only fifteen minutes. His holiness Reverend Flesher was committed to organizing the search for Eli Rathbone, but he refrained from setting foot in the woods. Probably didn’t want a bird to shit on his head, Ebenezer figured.

  Someone should tell him bird shit makes an A-1 hair conditioner, he thought. That would get him out to shake a few trees.

  Ebenezer and the rest of them had been banned from the search, according to Micah. The Reverend’s hired men made the decree. Big deal. Hobbled as he was, Eb would be useless in any search even if he wanted to take part—which he did not. The four of them passed the afternoon watching the Little Heavenites come in from the woods. The worshippers would eat, pray, head out again. The Reverend beseeched God for the safe return of young Eli, who was without sin.

  Ebenezer did not spot the missing boy’s parents. Evidently they had been in the woods since yesterday afternoon, when they first suspected their child had run away. They could be ten or fifteen miles from the compound by now—together, though maybe separate—delusional with grief, wandering aimlessly, calling out for their lost son.

  The Reverend prayed for Eli’s parents, too. Helluva guy, that Reverend.

  Flesher’s hired goons, the rifleman and the other one with a stupid bovine face—Ellen gave their names as Cyril and Virgil, respectively—supervised. They did so with a bored and vaguely hostile air, like ranch hands herding cattle. Ebenezer assumed they were overjoyed at the work: they got to keep the flock in line, following the orders the Reverend doled out, and at such time as Little Heaven came apart—and it would, as the cracks were already showing—they could take what they wanted and escape while the place went to hell.

  At six o’clock, dinner was served. The mess was sparsely occupied. Those who were there spoke in whispers.

  Should we head to the outside, talk to the police, and organize a proper search party? . . .

  The Reverend, sensing the winds of dissent, stood and addressed the gathering.

  “It is at times such as these, when we are at our greatest need, that we must band more closely together,” he said. “Did I not bring you here so that you could hear the word of God more clearly? And now, at the first sign of trial, you talk of fleeing back to the godless heathens who compelled our departure?”

  The Reverend’s hands tightened on the table, twisting into claws.

  “Do you want to be cast out of the Eden we have made? Do you? The boy will be found. God will bring him back. God is merciful until His works are questioned. Eli must wander the desert as Moses did until God brings him back, and He will. He will.”

  Silence from the congregation—until a tremulous voice spoke up from the back.

  �
��Are you sure this was the first sign, Reverend?”

  Amos Flesher scoured the room until his gaze fell on a woman dressed in a plain smock. She sat with a man, equally plain, obviously her husband.

  “What did you say, Sister Conkwright?”

  “The first sign of trial.” The woman struggled to hold the Reverend’s gaze. “Because Sister Hughes broke her leg, remember? And . . . yes, a few other things.”

  “Such as?”

  Sister Conkwright’s hands knotted in her lap. Her husband set his hands over her own. She put her head down.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled. “God is good.”

  The Reverend let a few seconds tick past. His gaze settled on Ebenezer and the others for a moment—the flat, dead gaze of a viper—before flicking away.

  “Sister Conkwright, if you or anyone here so gathered wishes to leave Little Heaven, you may. With my blessings.”

  But the way the Reverend spoke, it was like he was inviting her to step off a cliff.

  “Cyril and Virgil will escort you out. But once you are gone—just as it was with Adam and Eve from Eden—you are . . . gone.”

  The congregation filed out. Sister Conkwright required her husband’s assistance, as she was shaking badly. The men and women of Little Heaven returned to the square to fashion more torches. The search continued.

  19

  THE CONKWRIGHT BITCH. She would ruin everything.

  Amos Flesher paced his quarters. His heart bappity-bapped in his chest. Every so often, he slammed his fist into his palm. The meaty slap of skin was soothing.

  To hurt is to love.

  Who had said that? One of the nuns at the San Francisco Catholic Orphanage? He had been left on its steps as a toddler. It happened a lot in that city. A city of whores. Amos barely remembered his mother. His father was unknown—but Amos knew he must have been a great man. A man of God who had been called away to follow the same voice that Amos himself could hear.