by James Newman
“I feel so stupid,” said George Heatherly, shaking his head. “I should’ve known it would come to this. Should’ve fucking known.”
“Why?” David asked, though his question was more rhetorical than anything. A mindless reaction to the gore that assaulted him everywhere he looked.
“Poor sonofabitch,” George mumbled out of one side of his mouth. “I’m sorry you had to get involved in this, Little. Jesus, I’m sorry.”
He shook his head again before turning to look past David.
“Martha?” He shouted down the hallway. “Martha, you call the cops now, honey, you hear?”
CHAPTER 6
“I’ve never seen a dead body before,” David said the next morning. His mouth watered at the aroma of bacon and eggs filling the kitchen, conflicting with the gory sights and smells he recalled from the night before. Dark bags underlined his eyes from lack of sleep.
David sat at the dining room table, sipping at a steaming cup of coffee (#1 DAD read the logo on the side, a gift from Becca last Father’s Day) while Kate toiled over the stove and Becca watched Saturday morning cartoons in the living room. Kate had been asleep when he returned from the Simms’ place at four a.m., so he had decided to wait until morning to tell her what happened.
“I’ve been to funerals before, I mean, but...God, Kate, I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“It must have been awful,” she said.
David sipped at his coffee, made a sour face.
“We’re about to eat, though,” she said. “So no more explicit details, please.”
“I didn’t tell you about the note, did I?” David mumbled, as if he had not heard her request. “That was pretty strange.”
“Note?”
“Guy left a suicide note. We didn’t touch anything, of course, but the sheriff told us about it afterward.” David looked in his wife’s direction as he spoke, though he seemed to stare right through her. “It said, ‘I can’t live with it anymore. Knowing I couldn’t help those kids.’”
“What did it mean?”
“Mr. Heatherly told me about it later, said there was a place a couple miles from here used to be a hospital for abused children or something. It burned down a few months back. Arson, apparently. A bunch of kids died, and Simms couldn’t handle it.”
Kate winced as she carried a pan full of hot grease from the stove to the sink. “What did Simms have to do with it?”
“Simms is the County Fire Chief. Was the fire chief. Heatherly said sixty people died in the fire. Maybe Simms felt guilty because he couldn’t save them, I don’t know.”
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah.”
“Those poor children. How could someone do such a thing?”
David shook his head. “Even worse, George said it was a kid who did it. Can you believe that? Some teenage punk. They’ve got the asshole locked up in the loony-bin now.”
“Language, sweetie.”
Several minutes passed before either of them spoke again. The sound of bacon sizzling upon the stove filled the kitchen, mingling with the din of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd duking it out in the living room. In the sunlight that bled through the window above the sink, dust motes danced like tiny punctuation marks upon the couple’s halted conversation.
“Did you see Joel?” Kate asked. “I’d assume he would have to be there last night.”
“I left before he got there,” David replied. “The place was a fucking madhouse.”
“I’ll bet,” Kate said. “Language.”
“You wanna hear the weirdest thing of all, though? About this guy, Simms?”
Kate’s eyebrows rose inquisitively as she set David’s plate before him. Quickly, before David could respond, she called out, “Becca! Breakfast is ready!”
“This is too creepy...in his suicide note, Simms claimed he could still hear them.”
“Them?” Kate’s eyes darted toward the hallway as Becca’s footsteps approached.
“He said he could still hear those children,” David said. “That’s why he blew his brains out. Because he couldn’t take their screams echoing through his head anymore.”
CHAPTER 7
Saturdays were still awesome, no doubt about that. Maybe not quite as awesome as they had been before, but any day that wasn’t a school day was pretty rad. Billy Dawson just no longer considered them magical days, the extra-special times they had been before what happened last August.
Ten-year-old Billy Dawson had always enjoyed playing in the vast meadow behind Heller Home, and before the hospital burned down he had forged great friendships with many of the children whose health allowed them to venture outside. At times, such friendships could meet a rather depressing end, as Billy found himself growing close to this or that child only to never see him or her again once the patient was released from the hospital. Such had been the case with Jason Bayne and Randy Musser. Billy had hated to see them go, but of course was very happy to see them get well. Even worse, though, were those patients whose health quickly plummeted after a period of hope and recovery. That had happened with Sarah Smith, same for Gary Cho and the Plemmons kid, Robby.
Sometimes, Billy thought, God could be so freaking unfair.
Most of all, Billy would never forget Anthony. Anthony Leoni. Man, they laughed until their sides hurt whenever Billy would nudge his friend, call him “Tony-Leoni-All-Skin-And-Bony.” Anthony had been a ward of the state, a temporary patient of Heller Home until the powers-that-be could find a suitable foster family for the boy. He used to tell Billy stories of his abusive father, of smoldering cigars pressed to his shoulder blades as punishment for the slightest disobedience, of black eyes and broken arms that were the consequences of forgetting to take out the trash or clean up poop when the dog messed on the floor. Anthony had been his best friend. So many times that summer, they had played Cowboys and Indians—along with Susan Brown, Brian Ritter, and the Dolsenberry twins, Cody and Colby—frolicking through the high grass behind Heller Home as if it had swallowed them whole.
Billy remembered that awful day, one of the last Saturdays before the school year began anew, when his mother and stepfather awakened him with the terrible news. He and Anthony had planned a tadpole-hunting expedition that morning, down in the creek along the far edge of the Heller property.
Instead, Billy woke to find that his friends were dead. All of them.
Billy wiped his eyes with the back of one hand as he walked, refusing to cry. Anthony wouldn’t want that. Anthony would want him to be happy, to remember the great times they had shared together. Even with his fading yellow bruises and various scars he carried to remind him of hateful old Anthony Leoni Sr., “Tony Leoni” was never one to feel sorry for himself.
As Billy wandered now across his next-door neighbor’s property, sneaking from tree to tree like some short, stealthy ninja (didn’t take much for that old Rude heifer to call parents and complain about a child’s slightest infraction against her, and trespassing on her precious property might as well have been a capital crime as far as she was concerned) he wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. He could see in the distance where Heller Home once stood, and it resembled little more than a dilapidated graveyard now. Billy’s tennis shoes scuffed at the gravel as he crossed Pellham Road, his windbreaker making gentle whisk-whisk noises in the day’s pleasant breeze. Morganville’s mourning citizens had placed flowery wreaths all about the old Heller property, their radiant colors drained away by the elements months ago, along with dozens of stuffed animals that now lay soggy and dirt-caked. Numerous weathered, off-white crosses were also erected in memory of the children whose lives were lost in the fire.
But none of it could hide the ugliness that would forever remind Morganville of what transpired on these grounds: the charred ruins of Heller Home. Like rotten teeth, dozens of jagged, blackened boards pointed skyward from the debris. Half of one wall still stood on the old west wing of the site, but that was all that remained of the original structure. It
almost seemed as if Heller Home had never even existed here. Even that stubborn wall which had somehow made it through the blaze partially intact appeared ready to crash to the ground at any moment should a strong wind come along to finish it off. Broken glass littered the ground everywhere Billy Dawson looked. Splintered crossbeams straddled broken bricks, concrete blocks, and unidentifiable hunks of warped metal like refuse in some post-apocalyptic wasteland. High weeds had usurped the property since Heller Home’s demise, and now it was their domain. Huge piles of ashes swelled above the ground like memories reduced to thin gray flakes and scattered to Mother Nature’s mercy; scraggly tufts of crabgrass stabbed through those grave-mounds of soot and crumbling black embers.
“I miss you, Tony Leoni,” Billy said as he stared at the debris. He sneezed, the smell of soot and ash tickling his nostrils. Even after all this time, that smoky odor still lingered over the place. It was not an unpleasant smell, really—it reminded Billy of the rare camping trips he had taken with his father in summers past, before Fred Dawson quit coming around anymore. But here, now, it brought visions of different memories to mind.
Again Billy wiped his eyes, trying not to cry. His voice sounded oddly hollow inside his own head as he whispered into the day’s gentle breeze, “That guy who did this got put away, Anthony. I want you to know that. They put him in Fleetwood, and he ain’t never getting out.”
The only reply came from the weeds, the brown crabgrass whispering as if in agreement: Yes, Billy, he was a really bad person. But they locked him up and threw away the key, didn’t they?
Billy picked up a rock from the side of the road, tossed it as far as he could. It sailed high above the remains of Heller Home before dropping to the ground in a thick gray cloud of disturbed ash and soot somewhere in the center of it all.
“It’s not fair,” Billy said, gazing at the sky. “Why?”
Once again, only the weeds cared to answer. As Billy made his way closer to the ravages of Heller Home, they licked and lapped at the legs of his jeans as if warning him to turn back.
He didn’t listen. He made his way through those hungry weeds now, past where the front door of Heller Home once stood and into the heart of the debris. The cloying after-stench of the blaze again forced a harsh sneeze from him, but Billy did not stop. Even when his foot struck a blackened teddy bear halfway through his trek—the thing’s plastic eyes were melted across the length of its furry face, hardened into long taffy strands—he did not stop. He felt as if he were walking some strange gauntlet, and would only succeed in properly saying goodbye to Anthony when he had ventured through the entire ruins of what had once been Heller Home. As he made his trek through the ruins, Billy was careful to take long, high-stepping strides instead of lazily shuffling through the debris, so as not to kick ashes all over his pants and onto his shoes. Mom would kill him if he ruined his new Nikes. Plus, she would know where he’d been. She had warned him to stay away from here.
Suddenly Billy stopped when he spotted a multitude of strange golden-brown objects scattered behind Heller Home’s charred foundation. In the weeds, ten feet or so from the pile of ash and broken two-by-fours farthest from the road.
“What the heck?” Billy wondered aloud, making his way past the black ruins and into the weed-choked property beyond.
His breath caught in his throat. His eyes grew wide and he blinked stupidly, unable to believe what lay there in the trampled weeds.
Carcasses...
At least thirty of them, scattered haphazardly throughout the meadow.
They were the color of dead autumn leaves, and resembled some unnatural hybrid of insect and human infant. Curled into tight fetal positions where they lay, none of the things were more than three feet in length. Their alien heads were what caused Billy to think of babies, round and enlarged, their texture sort of a bark-like material with huge eyes slit in death. No ears, no noses. Those puckered brown faces reminded Billy of the Egyptian mummies he had seen on the History Channel this past Halloween. Tiny beards dangled from their thick brown chins like miniature goatees. The hair there looked very soft, and Billy oddly enough found himself wanting to reach out and stroke it. He refrained, but just barely. Their vestigial wings were veiny and transparent, bee-like and closed flat against their bodies. Their limbless, segmented bodies appeared chitinous, like the hard shells of beetles, tapering off into hard, fat points the color of fresh shit.
Billy did not know why, but he found himself thanking God that these alien creatures were no longer alive. He didn’t think he would want to be around if these things had been stirring about.
What had happened to them, he wondered?
Somewhere in the woods that bordered the property, a cicada began its high-pitched chitter, the sound echoing through the meadow as if there were a million more out there. Billy jumped backward. His hand went to his chest. He knew why the sound had startled him so, because such was the song these creatures would sing in life. He knew this to be true, although he did not know how he knew.
Billy turned, glanced about the ruins of Heller Home. Looking for something...
A rusty pipe. That would do.
Pipe in hand, he slowly approached the creatures in the weeds, his makeshift probe spilling copper-colored water onto the ground. He didn’t know what he planned to do, really—perhaps he wanted to make sure the things were truly dead, so he could take one to school for Show-and-Tell. Wouldn’t that be a heck of a prize? He’d be willing to bet that none of his fellow students in Ms. Ellis’s fourth-grade class had ever seen anything like this.
Billy grinned mischievously. He poked at one of those bizarre insect/baby things with the end of the pipe, flakes of rust snowing down on its prone form as he did so. He could already imagine the wide eyes, the amazed gasps that would emit from boys like Nathan Guice and Scotty Hogan when he stood before the class and showed off his newfound trophy. Perhaps even the class bully, Carl Bowen, might want to be his friend when he witnessed Billy’s discovery!
Billy wondered if these things were from some other planet. They sure didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen that might have been born here on Earth. As he poked with the pipe at one of the creatures’ infant-like skulls, its dead flesh made a crinkly sound that reminded Billy of a brown paper bag being stepped upon. Its skin was tough. It gave a bit but did not burst beneath Billy’s curious probe.
“Weird,” Billy said, jabbing at the thing’s sharp butt. The tip was gooey, covered in a gray, mucous-like substance.
“Yuck.”
Billy let out a surprised yelp as the thing moved.
As all of them moved.
He stumbled backward, barely catching himself from falling flat on his ass, as the creature closest to him rose into the air. Its alien brethren immediately followed, as if on strings attached to the one he’d been prodding. Together they moved, like a single entity.
Before Billy had time to run, they were upon him.
The sounds they made as they lit upon the boy were not unlike that cicada he had heard in the meadow minutes ago, but beneath that high-pitched chirp their wings cut the air around him in a horrific sort of non-rhythm, a low choral droning like furious bumblebees. Billy flailed about, swinging at them with his rusty pipe. He struck two of them, but they only bounced back for a second, bobbing jerkily in the air, before rejoining the fray. The sun shined golden on each of their hard carapaces as they surrounded him. Their eyes were huge, encompassing the entire width of their infant non-faces now, but were completely black, like obsidian pits reflecting Billy’s own aghast features as he fell beneath them. They blinked curiously at the boy as they swarmed around him, almost human-like; otherwise, those alien eyes hinted of no life, no clear comprehension of anything but their own hunger. Their long gray goatees swished in the air with their movements, dancing upon the breeze created by their frantically vibrating wings. Billy squealed as those wings batted his face, his arms, his legs. He could see nothing but those terrible things blurring about on
all sides of him in a dark cloud.
Billy’s screams grew louder as the things suddenly exposed their stingers. Bursting forth with sprays of thick mucus, those horrible barbs burst from the creatures’ insectoid rears in a grotesque sort of emerging that made Billy think of birth.
Their chittering song grew louder as they drew closer.
Billy shrieked when the first one stung him in the side of his neck, in the crook of flesh between his throat and collarbone, its barb plunging into him and then ripping back out just as quickly. He batted that one away, but four more came at him in its place.
Another sting, and another. One fleshy hook in his cheek, another near his left nipple, and before his body registered the pain two more plunged violently into him, one in the soft web of skin between his left thumb and forefinger, another deep into his right buttock.
Billy screamed for help. But none came.
The pain from their stings was at first little more than a pins-and-needles tingle, a numb sensation no worse than that of a limb falling asleep. But then that sleepy-limb sensation soon morphed into jabbing needles of white-hot pain, agony beyond anything Billy could have imagined before today.
Billy screamed. Screamed until his throat grew sore and his voice was hoarse. He tried to run, but fell beneath their assault. He tried to stand again, rolling about in a pile of ashes, but they stung him again and again, on the palm of his hand and behind his left ear and on his chin and in his thigh, brushing wetly across his right testicle. Billy cried, begged for them to stopstoppleaseGodnostop, and still they came, plunging their needle-sharp hooks into him again and again and again.
“Please,” Billy pleaded. He swatted at one of them with a limp right hand, the only remaining part of himself that he could truly feel now, but the thing just landed upon his hand, slamming it down onto the ashy soil. It sat there for a moment, seemed to watch him almost sympathetically with those coal-black eyes before bringing its stinger around and plunging it through the boy’s skinny wrist.