Little Heaven

by Nick Cutter

  But after Missus Hughes left, the playtime sessions turned strange. The older kids, led by Eli and the Redhill brothers, started playing nasty games. One was called Doctor Psycho. They would chase someone around until they caught him; then they pinned that poor kid down. Eli would pretend to put on rubber gloves and say, “This operation is in session.” He would slice his captive’s belly open with an imaginary scalpel and start pulling out the insides. Each would be examined for a second before he said, “Nope, not good enough,” and threw it over his shoulder and reached in for more. If the captive knew what was good for him, he would scream and gasp, “No! No, please!” Eli took it easier on you if you played along instead of sitting there like a dead fish.

  Nate . . . you are starting to piss me off. You don’t want to piss me off . . .

  Nate was only a few feet from the window now. The wind fluttered the plastic in the frame. There was nothing at the window. Maybe there was nothing at all. Was he dreaming? Nate’s fists clenched, nails digging into his palms. Maybe he would wake up and this would all be—

  He saw it then. At the outer limits of his sight, past the edge of the window on the right-hand side. Standing there silently, tucked tight to the bunkhouse wall.

  Eli’s playtime games had become more and more nasty. Little Heaven used to have an ant problem. There were five or six big hills scattered around the compound. The ants were of the stinging variety. One afternoon, not too long ago, Nate had come upon Eli, one of the Redhill boys, Jane Weagel, and Betsy Whitt crouched around one of the hills. Eli had a bottle of lemon juice. He was squeezing juice down the ant hole. Drip, drip, drip. The ants scurried around crazily. The other kids held the busted bottoms of Coke bottles. They focused the sun through them, sizzling the ants as they rushed about. Zzzzssssstap!

  “The acid in the juice screws with their brains,” Eli told Nate with a vacant smile. “They don’t know up from down.”

  The other kids barely noticed Nate. Betsy Whitt’s eyes were glazed and moony. She was the sort of person the phrase wouldn’t hurt a fly was coined to describe. Nate had actually seen her open a door and shoo a fly outside so it wouldn’t get swatted.

  “Move,” she said, shoving Nate. “You’re blocking the sunlight.”

  Later that same day Nate had found Betsy behind the warehouse. She was crying. Tears streaked her cheeks.

  “I didn’t want to hurt those ants,” she sobbed. “I don’t want to hurt anything. If you hurt another living thing, God sees it. He judges. But I couldn’t help myself.” Her face scrunched up. “Do you ever feel that way, Nate?”

  Nate hadn’t known what to say. But yes, he felt it. The feeling was getting stronger each day. Sometimes he wanted to hurt things, too. Anything would do. Whatever was weakest, and easiest, and nearest at hand . . . He’d never felt that way back home.

  It wasn’t just the kids, either. One night Nate awoke to find his father standing in the corner. He was naked and sweaty and muttering, “Kill you kill you fucking kill you.” Nate had never heard his father swear. His hands were clenched as though he was choking someone. He was sound asleep. But he rose happily the next morning, claiming to be hungry as a horse.

  Nate . . . ole buddy ole pal-o-mine . . .

  Nate was only a foot from the window now. He could make out the shape in profile. Thin and grisly white, hunching next to the bunkhouse. He caught a mad buzz, a sound like flies bouncing around inside an empty jar of Gerber baby food.

  “Eli?” he said tremblingly.

  The figure swung round to the window like a door blown closed by a stiff wind.

  Thwap! A face hit the plastic.

  Nate took a step back. A great big one.

  It was Eli Rathbone. And Eli looked . . . not good.

  Eli was white as tallow, white as the flame in the deepest part of a fire. His hair, clown-red before, was now old man’s hair. It was bone white, as if some follicular vampire had sucked all the color out of it. He was thinner than Nate ever could have conceived a person should be—his ribs poked out, his nipples stretched and elongated, his flesh threadbare.

  Eli’s face was the worst. A leering Hollywood idol, pure plastic. His eyes bulged, and his teeth pushed past his lips like blunt discolored tusks. He looked unspeakably lonely and lost . . . but also very, very hungry. His face and frame radiated a yearning that pinned Nate where he stood, a moth skewered in a specimen case.

  Oh, hello, Nate. May I come in? Mother, may I?

  A drowsy terror settled upon Nate—it wasn’t a heart spiker, the kind of fear that shot adrenaline through your body; no, this was a lazy and drifting fright that bobbed like a kite on a string, dipping and ascending without ever settling.

  “I don’t think so,” Nate whispered. “You look sick, Eli.”

  The buzz grew louder. Nate noticed an emptiness under Eli’s armpit. Things were moving in there. Nate could see stuff crawling and stuttering about.

  Oh no, Nate thought. Oh no no no no—

  Nate’s eyes were riveted to the spot under Eli’s armpit. Things were coming out of it. Flies. Or things that looked like flies—

  Eli lifted his arm. A deep hole was sunk into his flesh, all pulpy and black. Things squirmed in it. White things. Darker things.

  “Go away, Eli.” Nate was amazed at how calm he sounded.

  Eli leaned forward until his nose touched the window again. The plastic dimpled with the pressure. Eli’s eyes switched back and forth like a metronome set to a hi-hat beat. Tick-tock-tick-tock, back and forth, tick-tock.

  He gave Nate a chummy wave. His hand was misshapen, the fingers fused into a mangled hook. Flies now boiled out of his armpit and pelted the plastic. Puk! Puk! Puk! They were larger than common bluebottles, with gas mask faces. A few tried to squirm through the plastic at the window’s edges; they buzzed frantically, a gleeful note.

  Eli smiled. His lips peeled back from his dirty yellow teeth, the buckteeth of a rat. Flies crawled between them—they were coming from inside Eli’s mouth, their bodies wet with saliva. They flew at the window and hit, leaving moist blots on the plastic.

  You will come with us, Eli said. His lips were not moving, but Nate heard his voice all the same. All the sweet boys and girls. You are good meat.

  His teeth clicked animatedly, the sound of bone castanets. Nate lunged forward, moaning, and yanked the flimsy curtains shut. Eli Rathbone stood in front of the window for a few moments before his shape drifted away.

  Shivering, Nate retreated to bed. He pulled the covers over himself and shook until he was sure his body would rattle to pieces.

  24

  MINERVA JOLTED AWAKE. Firelight played through the gap between the tent’s canvas flaps. Micah was supposed to be keeping watch outside.

  She got up. Grabbed Ellen’s gun. Crawled to the flap.

  Micah stood outside with his back to her. He was staring at something across the fire. He held the Tarpley rifle at port arms.

  “Shug?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Saw her. Turned to face the woods again.

  Minny’s eyes were adjusting. Inky darkness pooled past the glow of the fire. She couldn’t tell what Micah was looking at.

  “Get Otis’s bow,” he said carefully.

  Otis’s compound bow lay outside the other tent. Neither Charlie nor Otis had stirred. Minerva crossed to the tent quickly and brought the bow and the arrows to Micah.

  “What the hell?” she whispered.

  Micah chucked his chin toward something lurking in the first cut of trees. Minerva couldn’t see anything. Her vision was all staticky as her eyes adjusted.

  “There is a flare in my pack,” Micah said. “And tape. Tape the flare to an arrow. Quickly.”

  Minerva located the flare and a roll of duct tape. She peeled a strip of gray tape and paused. “Near the arrowhead or further back?”

  “A few inches from the head,” Micah said calmly.

  “We could burn the whole forest down,” said Minny.

  After a m
oment, Micah replied with: “Good.”

  Minerva became aware of a series of sounds coming from not far away: clicks and wheezes and peeps and other animal noises. It was like listening to a disjointed sound loop from David Attenborough’s Zoo Quest, the voices of a dozen beasts all blurred together.

  “What is that?” she said.

  But she knew. It was one of those things that had chased them the other night. The things Otis and Charlie had tried to capture in the pit that had caught them instead.

  She taped the flare to the shaft of an arrow. “Can you shoot a bow?”

  Micah indicated his eye patch. “Not so well.”

  Otis poked his head out of the tent. “What is it?”

  “Come here,” Micah told him.

  Otis came over at a low crouch. “It a bear?” he whispered.

  “Or something,” said Micah.

  Minerva could see it now. Its shape seemed impossible. She had seen bears before—not in the wild, but in photographs. This did not echo her understanding of a bear. It stood fifty yards away, motionless between the trees. Its body pooled upward from a wide base like a bell laid on the ground. It did not have legs, or if it did, they were stubby and deformed—or else it had a multitude of them and moved in the scuttling manner of a crab. Minerva could perceive a host of strange protrusions all over its body. Shortened limbs, bulbous growths. It looked to be covered in huge, throbbing lesions.

  Otis saw it, too. “That’s no bear,” he said in a voice full of dread.

  The sounds it was making were equally senseless. Syrupy exhalations, ticks and whirrs and chirps and growls and hoots. A cacophony of noise as if an entire menagerie were speaking through a single organism.

  “Can you hit it?” Micah said.

  Otis nodded shakily. “If it stays put.”

  Micah said, “It has not moved since I saw it.”

  Otis took the bow from Minerva and notched the flare-weighted arrow on the bowstring. Minerva pulled the strike strip. The flare popped alight.

  Otis drew back the arrow and let it fly. It arced through the night, the flare fraying in the wind, and struck the thing. It did not move.

  The glow of the flare spread, bringing the shape into sharper relief. It made no sense. It was not one identifiable thing. It was many, or parts of many.

  “What am I seeing?” Minerva said.

  The thing was never at rest. It twitched and jerked. Parts of it opened; other parts closed. A stew of parts. Heads, snouts, tails, limbs. It was enormous. A seething hillock of flesh. It was nothing God’s light had ever shone upon.

  At last it shambled forward. Micah shouldered the Tarpley. Minerva cocked Ellen’s .38. Her hands shook.

  A random strip of fur ignited down the thing’s side. The hair went up like a fuse. The thing shuffled toward them. It undulated, seemingly legless, hovercrafting across the ground. It shrieked and gibbered and emitted phlegmy dog-panting sounds. Watching it, Minerva was reminded of Play-Doh. Little shreds of Play-Doh, red and blue and yellow and green, scattered on a table after arts and crafts class. She imagined rolling all those bits into a ball. Squashing everything into a solid mass while still being able to see the individual components: streaks of yellow, blots of red, veins of blue. But instead of Play-Doh, this thing was made of animals, all compressed and crushed together—

  Micah fired. The bullet tore a chunk off. The thing squealed in a half dozen pitches with as many mouths. It continued toward them, faster now.

  “Oh God,” said Otis. “Let’s go go oh no oh no let’s goooo—”

  Minerva aimed and fired. Four shots, each one finding its mark. Gouts of blood—or whatever the thing was full of—spurted wildly. It did not stop. She could smell it now. The reek of spoiled meat and fricasseed hair.

  The fire licked downward to spread around the belled shape of its body. It looked like the grass skirt of a hula dancer that had leapt up in flame.

  Micah picked up the lantern and tossed it thirty feet ahead of them, directly in the thing’s path. “Shoot it,” he told Minerva. “The kerosene tank.”

  Minerva steadied herself and fired. The bullet raised a burr of dirt six inches left of the lantern.

  The thing neared the lantern. Eight yards, seven, six . . .

  She fired again. The slug struck a half-buried rock and whined off target.

  She fired again. A dry click. The gun was empty. She glanced at Micah, stricken.

  He unloaded with the Tarpley, firing from the hip. The carbine boomed. The lantern flipped end over end, spraying kerosene onto the thing. It went up with a roar. Flames rose along the tortured slag heap of its body as flesh melted off in thick gobbets. It made noises that should be heard only in hell. Its many mouths screamed and bleated as its limbs swung spastically.

  Charlie clambered out of the tent. He watched with numb horror as the thing toppled onto its side and lay there, squealing and hissing. Nobody could tell if the noises it made were the product of its mouths or the sound of its untold organs rupturing and popping from the heat. In time, it stopped moving.

  Micah approached the creature. Minerva clenched her jaw and followed him. She couldn’t believe she had missed the lantern . . . twice. She had made shots like that a thousand times. She could pick tin cans off a fence post at forty yards. But it’s different when your back’s up against it. Your cool crumbles. You fuck-up.

  The body still smoked. It was already softening into the earth. Its configuration was lunatic. It was made out of different animals, a mishmash of species. Fish, fowl, insects, beasts of the woods. All melted together. Every one of its faces—fox and deer and pheasant and coyote and otter—was wrenched into an expression of tortured despair. Everywhere Minerva looked, some awful horror greeted her. Here, a clutch of bats’ heads sprouting from the mouth of a gray wolf. There, a naked rib cage housing the flayed remains of a squirrel, its innards studded with a half dozen eyeballs that had burst in the flame. A blackened ball of ants compressed to the density of a baseball hanging on a strip of organ meat.

  Minerva saw the melted remains of what looked to be a dog collar. Had this thing eaten one of Little Heaven’s dogs?

  Micah lifted the flap of skin that shielded its means of locomotion. Minerva gagged. How could he stand to touch the thing? The stinking flap rose to reveal dozens of legs. This was how it moved, trundling about with its limbs hidden as though beneath a hoop skirt.

  Micah let the flap fall. There came a rude farting noise as a bladder let go inside the thing. The shock was so profound that nobody could speak for some time.

  “This is the devil’s work,” Otis finally said. His arms wouldn’t stop shaking.

  Minerva checked her watch. It was coming up on five o’clock. The light of dawn was flirting through the trees.

  “We have to go back to Little Heaven,” said Otis. “Warn the others.”

  Micah and Minerva shared a look. Do we? But they did. She cared nothing for the Englishman, but Ellen and the others did not deserve to be abandoned.

  She gazed down the path that led to their car. It looked wide and safe—a hop, skip, and a jump and they would be back at the main road.

  But then something stirred. Her breath grated in her lungs.

  She pointed. “Look.”

  They were out there. Strung all through the woods. Shapes. Some big, others more compact. Some shaggy, others sleek. All unmoving as sentinels.

  Micah said, “Grab what you can. Quickly.”

  25

  EARLY IN THE MORNING, before anyone else was up, Reverend Amos Flesher crossed the square to the bunkhouse where the boy was being kept.

  Virgil was asleep on a chair outside. Both he and Cyril refused to be inside the windowless bunkhouse with the boy—not together, and certainly not alone.

  Amos kicked Virgil’s foot. The man cracked one eyelid open.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you hear anything out of him?”

  Virgil licked his lips, which were cracked because he sucked
air through his mouth when he slept. Mouth-breathers was what Sister Muriel called the children who did that.

  “He must have slept like a baby,” said Virgil. “I didn’t hear a peep.”

  Amos nodded. “Wait here.”

  “You’re fucking-A right. I sure as hell ain’t going in there.”

  Virgil spoke flippantly, but the whites of his eyes quivered like undercooked eggs. Amos set his hand on the doorknob and took a breath.

  The Lord love me, save me, and preserve me. Amen.

  The bunkhouse was a single room. Eli Rathbone lay in bed. Uncovered in only his underwear. He looked to have not shifted an inch since Amos had last seen him. But his feet were filthy. Covered in dirt and pine needles. They had been clean the last time Amos had seen them—the Reverend was positive of that.

  Amos moved cautiously, not wanting to wake the boy. Eli’s chest barely moved. Had he died in his sleep? Perhaps that would be for the best. Yes, all things considered, it just might be. The Lord’s will be done.

  Eli’s chest hitched and fell. A ghost of a smile graced his lips.

  Amos’s jaw clenched. Adrenaline flared in him. He did not like being near this boy. There was something unseemly about his wasted frame and ashen hair.

  Dr. Lewis refused to tend to him any more than he already had. It was all Amos could do to prevent the simpering boob from fleeing into the square in fright after . . . the earlier unpleasantness. The man was supposed to be a doctor, wasn’t he? A healer of men. He couldn’t even hack the sight of a sick boy.

  Granted, the boy was sick in a peculiar way. And granted, Amos wasn’t entirely comfortable around him, either.

  There was a stain on the floor a few feet from the bed. Amos gave it a wide berth. Silly. It was only the boy’s blood. The same blood that pumped through the veins of every man, woman, and child at Little Heaven. Except it hadn’t looked like blood when it had come out of the boy the other night. At that time, it had been black and thick as ichor.