“Here’s the craziest thing though, he made a last minute change to his will a few nights prior. I’ve been running it through my head over and over again and I just can’t understand it.”
I pushed my plate away, all of my attention focused on Braham’s bearded face.
“He named me as his primary beneficiary. I ain’t the janitor down there anymore…”
All was quiet in our little kitchen, my father’s eyes lighting up just a bit, enough to tell us this was life-changing news.
“I own the whole damn bar.”
The hugs followed. Tears flowed. Surprise and happiness spread through the kitchen and hung over my folks like a warm, fluffy cloud. Only I saw the poison hidden within that cloud. Only I recognized the darkness hiding behind the light.
I couldn’t speak up about it though. My parents deserved this happiness. I’d have to swallow down this black, ugly secret and keep it locked away deep inside of me. That was the only option right now…
I thought that would be the end of it. I was wrong. A day later my mom mentioned that her muscle spasms were coming less and less frequently. A day after that she held her head perfectly high without any of the little tics that dystonia usually caused. She walked better than she had in years. She went to her neurologist and he was baffled by her condition. He’d never seen this kind of improvement in a dystonia patient in all of his time in the field.
He even used the word miracle to describe my mom’s improvement.
There were more tears, more hugs, and the happiness surrounding my family only grew. Helena’s pain was dissipating with each passing day. Braham finally had the career that he deserved. Everything seemed to be falling perfectly into place.
All of this had a price, though. No miracles here. God had no part in this work. These were the hands of M reaching up from the deep, many dirt-stained fingers from many long arms weaving together the things he had promised me.
He said my kin would prosper.
Through whatever dark powers he possessed, my kin were prospering.
The idea that M had this much influence over events occurring on the “surface” worried me greatly. It made me wonder just what else he might be capable of…
Most of all I worried about what he’d ask of me next
Chapter 34
Roman
I wanted to avoid the root cellar. It was the absolute last place in the world I wanted to visit right now. Even the promise of endless riches wasn’t enough to get me back down there. Something had changed within me when M took the cow. It finally dawned on me that I was dealing with a malevolence that surpassed all rational understanding. This was not a restless spirit seeking atonement. This wasn’t something I could even begin to wrap my head around.
M was the great unknown, a thing locked away in the dark depths below for longer than I’d even hazard to guess. M was voracious. M was manipulative. Above all else though, M wanted out. I was the key to that freedom. I was the skeleton key made up of flesh and sinew, the one man who could open the doorway of M’s prison of soil.
Perhaps that’s why M hasn’t destroyed me already. He needs me. His reach can only go so far beyond the confines of that root cellar, and if he doesn’t have someone to dig, someone to fetch him his supper…then he is lost. He needs a proxy to carry out his work on the surface. I remember M saying that it had been many years since someone had visited him last when I first stumbled across the crack in the earth. That was important. If there is no proxy then maybe M is powerless. Maybe he can only watch and wait and hope that someone else will come along and find him down there in the dirt.
I might still have a chance to end this before it gets worse.
I was feeling the pull. I knew he wanted me to visit soon. I would go. I had no choice but to go. It wasn’t the promises that commanded me now, it was the veiled threats. I’d experienced exactly what kind of damage M could do to mold a better life for me and mine. I’d hate to see what he could do if he wanted to bring the whole world crashing down on top of us. Something tells me that M is an expert in the art of human suffering.
It was extremely hard to deny him but I knew deep down that it wasn’t impossible. M could be resisted. If the willpower is there, M can even be defied.
It’s just a matter of facing up to the consequences that follow that defiance. I found myself thinking about those dreams again. The corpse in the dirty brown suit was trying to tell me something. Somehow he was connected to all of this. He was trying to reach me from beyond the grave, from behind the curtain of death…to tell me to stop digging. Stop feeding the beast. Stop all of this before it’s far too late.
I’d made my decision.
I would return to M tonight.
I cannot be a slave to this abomination anymore. I cannot wear these invisible shackles because my wrists are tearing and my mind is shattering. I have to find a way to end this. I must break this covenant; I must turn away from this hole full of promises.
M and I have one thing in common.
We both want to be free.
Chapter 35
Roman
I matched my breathing to each step, inhale and pause, exhale and move forward. I filled my lungs with icy night air and then spat it back out again in nervous gasps. My hand was on the door of the root cellar, just resting there. I was tracing across the pitted surface of the wood, letting my fingernails drag a bit. I was stalling, trying in vain to put off the inevitable.
I could sense M lurking in the hole beyond that door. I knew before even entering that he was alert and waiting. I even got the strong feeling that he’d become incredibly impatient with me.
I opened the door. I passed through the threshold, the cobwebs catching in my hair, the splinters from the doorframe falling down against my shoulders like shredded snowflakes. I sniffed the air and almost choked on it, the drying blood and clotted bits of meat still littering M’s lair from his last feeding.
I barely took a step forward before something like invisible hands took hold of me and propelled me forward like a human doll, the toes of my shoes dragging against the earth as I was literally pulled towards the gaping hole in the center of the root cellar. This was something new. Something I hadn’t expected, a wholly awful sensation. I dangled a few inches like a marionette over the edge of the abyss, gazing down into the darkened burrows of M’s prison.
I could still move my limbs, but M had me in his grasp regardless. It was like he was utilizing some form of telekinesis, just strong enough to keep me from placing my heels back down onto the ground.
So I hovered, helpless and at the mercy of the monster in the chasm. My eyes rolled in my head and took in the gore-decorated walls of this hidden, lonely place. This was a bad place to die. Not a place where the dead would be allowed to rest. I didn’t want to die here. Anywhere but here…
“I’m not a big fan of waiting, Roman. I’ve been waiting for centuries and it’s taken a bit of a toll on my patience. You understand that, don’t you?”
M’s voice washed over me, forcing little cold drops of sweat to burst out of almost every visible pore.
“Everyone should have priorities in life. I am your priority, child of flesh and sinew. I am the first thing you should think about when you wake and the last thing you should think about when you sleep. I am your full time job. I am your life.”
M’s voice changes in tone, becoming like thunder from the bowels of the earth, dust rattling and puffing up from below. The unseen grip on me tightens, my body starting to spasm just a bit.
“I am the reason you take breath into your fucking mouth and I am the reason that you are not a pile of blood and shit squashed into this dirt. You exist because I let you. You exist to SERVE. Say it with me, kiddo! I…exist…to serve.”
My mouth is moving against my will, my lips trembling, my vocal cords forming words that fall out like sharp little razorblades against the tip of my tongue.
“I exist to serve, M.”
“Glad we’v
e established that! Keep me waiting again, Roman…and you will die slow. You will die knowing that your family is rotting. I will fuck up your entire little world, and I will do it with ease because you are like an aphid to me. That is all your life amounts to when compared to my own.”
I feel something like a needle pointed blade digging down across my throat, not enough to pierce flesh but enough to sting and drive M’s point even deeper.
“All life screams when it’s being digested in the juices of my stomachs, Roman. If you go to that dark, wet place…you will scream too, loudest of all. Remember that.”
The unseen hands vanished and suddenly my body was my own again. My feet dropped back to the floor and I began wheeling my arms for balance dangerously close to the edge of the pit. Finally I gained it, stepping back and breathing deeply, trying hard to swallow back the fear.
I was afraid, there was no denying that. But I was also angry. I felt that anger throbbing in the back of my head and threatening to burst out of my skull.
“What more do you want from me?” I asked, my fists clenching at my sides.
“The million dollar question! Here’s the thing, Roman. I’m starting to get my strength back, starting to finally feel like my old self again. I need meat to keep that process moving forward. Think of it as fuel for the machine. I have powers that your little monkey mind wouldn’t even be able to comprehend…but they all have their price. I need to take in sustenance if I want to expend energy. The stronger I become, the more sustenance I need.”
My fingernails were biting down into the flesh of my palms, my fists becoming tighter and tighter. I focused on that pain. I gathered my rage into the little rivets that were forming there.
“I expended quite a bit of energy getting your daddy that promotion and sucking some of the sickness out of your mommy. That energy needs to be replaced. The machine needs fuel. The bovine was enough to get me going again, but it’s not what something like me really needs. I have very specific tastes.”
“Something bigger than the cow? Sorry to break it to you, M, but I don’t think I’ll be able to get my hands on an elephant here in West Virginia. Rust Valley isn’t really their natural habitat…” I surprised myself, the sarcastic venom in my voice unmistakable. M responded with a gurgling little titter.
“Such spirit! That’s why I like you, child of flesh and sinew. Laughter feeds the soul just as meat feeds the belly. It’s not a larger beast that I’m craving. It’s a beast higher up on the evolutionary chain. They walk on two legs, drive metal tubes with wheels, reproduce constantly and taste a little like broiled pork.”
My eyes widened, my nostrils flared. I knew where M was going with this but just hearing it aloud seemed to make it all the more real.
“Maybe you’ve heard of them before? They’re called human beings. Delicious little parasites that are abundant in numbers. That’s what I’m hungry for. That’s what I need to put the pep into my step again! Just one will suffice to start. Only one, Roman…you’ll just need to bring me one…”
My face was a portrait of horrors. I was already stepping back from the hole, slowly and carefully.
“You are asking me…to bring you a person?”
I struggled to even get the words out. The anger was back again, racing through my veins and hardening my expression. My jaw was set, my muscles becoming like steel beneath my skin.
“I won’t do that.”
This didn’t seem enough, so I strove to hammer the point home even more.
“I will never do that.”
M was coming now. The ground was shaking and the dust was pluming and I heard those hideous scrabbling sounds on the walls of the burrow. I could feel his rage ascending with him. It was caustic and hot, acid in the air around me. Those unseen hands settled across me again, struggling to hold me in place.
I reached deep down into myself, into the iron in my guts and whatever courage I had to draw from…and I fought those invisible bands clamping against my limbs. I fought them hard. I felt them first loosening, and then falling away completely. I felt M’s surprise when I managed to do that. His ascent was halted for just a moment. I imagined him shocked down there in the hole, in complete disbelief that I had that much fight in me.
I was already turning to run for the door. M was ascending again, much faster than before, the walls rattling all around me. I dove for the door just as dirt exploded up into the air from behind me, that horribly twisted shadow falling across me and darkening everything in the root cellar.
I sensed multiple hands scraping and seeking across the dirt.
One of those hands even brushed against the back of my boot before I threw open the door and slammed it closed behind me. I kept running until my lungs felt like they were full of fire. I didn’t stop until I’d reached the old Buick parked in front of the house.
I had escaped. I was alive and still breathing.
I was free.
Chapter 36
Roman
I found myself behind the wheel of the Buick and tearing out of the driveway, bits of gravel flying out behind the tires as I hammered down on the gas pedal. I just needed to drive as far away from M’s lair as possible. I needed time to think, time to plan my next step. I’d defied him. I’d blatantly told him no, and I even managed to resist the beguiling pull of his presence. Consequences would be coming.
I can’t let this thing destroy my family. I have to find a way to stop him. Just like the dead man in the dirty brown suit said, it was time to bury M deep and salt the earth. Could I do that? Could I seal up that root cellar and fill that hole in forever? M told me himself that he’s lacking on energy and needs to refuel. He might only have a little power left in the tank. If ever he was weak, it was now. The fact that I’d managed to escape him proved that to me. This was my opportunity, and if I missed it now, it might not come round again.
I drive down lonely mountain roads, the forest encroaching on either side of the cracked asphalt. My headlights pierce through the darkness ahead. I keep one hand on the wheel and the other I use to massage my temple. I don’t bother with the radio, music won’t help right now. I need silence. I need to figure this out.
If I close M’s opening to the surface I think it’s highly possible that he’ll be defeated. That is his window into the world of mankind. He works his machinations from the depths of that hole and if that hole is blocked off, his passage is severed. No more proxies. No more food. Nothing but the blackness and the worms to keep M company down there.
I’d need heavy machinery to do it, probably an excavator. My dad used to work general labor for a construction company in the outskirts of Rust Valley so I knew the perfect place to rent one. I still had enough money to do that, and if all else fails I still have that ruby socked away too. I’d tell the operator that we’re remodeling the house and we want that root cellar buried and rolled over, obliterated into nothing but forgotten dirt and lost whispers in the ground.
It’s still early, maybe the foreman will still be at the field office if I get there quick. This is my glimmer of hope. This is the pathway to lasting freedom, not the panicked respite that I’ve been granted now. A happy ending might not be too far out of reach after all…
These are the thoughts that circle through my head as the deer crosses in front of the Buick. I have enough time to notice that it’s a young six-point buck. It stands there, frozen in place, eyes seeming glazed over and unseeing. The headlights illuminate everything, like the buck is the star of the show and he’s standing in his very own spotlight on a cracked asphalt stage. In these precious moments before everything goes to shit, I see the buck in incredibly vivid detail. The inky eyes, the soft fur, the planted hooves. Something is off about the deer though. There’s a spindly little thing perched on the tip of one antler. I squint even as I’m struggling to turn the wheel and swerve.
It’s a house centipede.
Possibly the same one I shook from my hand when I went down to get the candles in the root ce
llar seemingly a lifetime ago. It regards me with many eyes, seems almost to wave at me with numerous twitching legs. The strangest thing about it is that the little insectivore seems almost to be mocking me in those final moments.
I’m pulling at the wheel so hard my arms are becoming sore. The tires screech and the stink of burnt rubber fills my nostrils. The bumper clips the deer’s hindquarters and the animal is flung out of my view. I feel suddenly weightless and I don’t understand why at first. It’s because gravity has turned upside down as the car flips and rolls in midair, the seatbelt biting deeply into my torso.
I see sparks. Something splashes my thigh and I realize it’s water from the radiator. I’m locked in a womb of twisting metal and the first time my head hits the steering wheel I see stars, the second time I see those same stars fading.
Dirt Lullabies Page 9