Helix: Plague of Ghouls

by Pat Flewwelling

  Devil in the lake.

  “Jay left. Everything went wrong.” It was a young man’s voice, one of the jungle punks. “He took one look at Sydney and laughed and ran off.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s fine now,” the young man said. “Back to human, mostly, but before that, she . . . She . . .”

  “Stop—just tell me later. Get him over there. No, in the middle. Use the floor chains, where we had Sydney the last time.”

  “She didn’t turn out the way she was supposed to,” the young man said. “Everything was going exactly the way Jay said it would, and then it didn’t. Just all of a sudden—”

  “Tell me later. Get that one chained before he wakes up, damn it.”

  Two-Trees muttered to Buckle, “It’s Maurelli.”

  “Both of them,” Buckle agreed, in a whisper.

  “No,” she said, not having heard her prisoners’ conversation. “Leave them for now. Focus on what you’re doing.”

  One of the two pale young men was kicking under the surface of the water until his boot hit iron. He hauled up a chain. It sounded like a ship weighing anchor. They manacled the newcomer to the floor, but made sure that when he drowsed, he did so bowing over his lap. If he tipped too far one way or the other, he could drown in four inches of water.

  “Good,” Maurelli rasped. “Get the process started.”

  The young man gave Two-Trees the once-over with his eyes. He snorted. “Looks like someone already started with him.”

  “Not him. Take the skinny one.” She pointed at Buckle. “Besides, Jay said they already scanned the fat one. He’s not a good candidate. Get the skinny one fattened up, and we’ll take our chances. Lock him in the change room. Get this process started quickly.”

  “But what about Jay?” asked another of the jungle punks. “He said he was going to be here. He said he was going to take us away with him, join the rest of the Bone Tribe—”

  “I don’t care where Jay’s run off to. We stick to the original plan. My plan. We blow this whole thing out of the water. We make the world see what Wyrd has done to us.”

  This sounds bad.

  “But it’s too soon!” the young man whined. “Jay said we have to wait until we’re at full strength, and then—”

  “I don’t care what Jay says. This ends now. It’s getting out of hand, and we’re running out of places to hide the bodies. We can’t keep up with the needs of the tribe, not without blowing our cover. So to hell with his plans. We finish this. And we start with him.”

  “You think there’s enough light in here?” the younger Maurelli said, conceding defeat.

  “No. Get the others to help you. Set up as many lamps as possible.”

  “I still think—”

  “Because I said so, that’s why!” Maurelli snapped. “Damn it, now look what you made me do.” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a pot of cream and smeared it on her face. “Stop asking questions and do what I told you.”

  With that, the young men left. After checking on the dazed brown-haired man and tugging on his manacles, Maurelli followed the boys out the creaking door. She slammed it shut. A padlock clicked and rattled against the door.

  “Hector!” Buckle cried. “What the hell—”

  “Paper mill,” Two-Trees said. “Upstairs, they used to stamp, roll, and ship the paper. Downstairs, the chippers. Kettles. Boil the pulp.” His head thumped, and his right eye felt bigger than his left. “All the heavy equipment moved out . . . copper, sold and recycled. We used to smoke up down here. Everyone thought the place was underwater, but the basement is more or less dry behind the dam spillway.”

  “Not for long,” Buckle said. He tried to stand but only managed to splash around.

  Two-Trees waded through the thoughtless, reddish-black fog inside his head. Help me, Obi- Wenabozho, you’re my only hope. It was Holly’s voice that he heard. Help me destroy this evil dancing creature. He is eating the spirits of all my family, the White Haired People. Except, in his delirium, the name White Haired translated automatically into Objiwe: Waabishkindibed.

  broken“Reid, is that you?” Buckle asked. “Wake up, buddy.”

  The final battle had been set in Pouch Lake at the bottom of the rapids, Two-Trees remembered. Pouch Lake, the body of water now leaking into the mill. Wenabozho the Trickster had trapped the demon of hunger in the same lake beyond the far fieldstone wall.

  “Padre,” Buckle said, louder.

  The metal door opened again. Three young men with feathery wigs and tribal paint came in and began to light kerosene lamps and hang them from the ceiling, all around the body on the floor. The brown-haired man was too big to be the Padre.

  “It’s Ishmael,” Two-Trees said.

  One of the wigged boys turned on the balls of his feet.

  “Oh Holy God!” Buckle said.

  The boy had white bands of flesh, like tendons, where his cheeks should have been. Even in that low light, Two-Trees could see two rows of shark’s teeth instead of molars. An ear flicked out from under the wig. The ear was the length of a man’s hand and the shape of a bay leaf, and white as ivory. He snarled, pulling back fleshless lips to reveal curved tusks where fangs should have been.

  Like kabuki masks. Like Japanese demons.

  One of the other white-faced punks smacked the snarling one on the chest and pointed to the door. Skin bubbled up from inside the skeletal pockets of the boy’s face, and wherever the bubbles burst, the skin smoothed out, covering up his deformities and giving his profile a human configuration again.

  That’s why they can pass in public. They’re constantly regenerating skin. That’s why the pheromones.

  “No, it’s not him,” another punk said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Get rid of him. We don’t need him now.”

  One after the other, they shook out matches and headed upstairs. One of them put on a pair of black gloves as he left.

  “Two-Trees, get up,” Buckle insisted. “We’ve got to get out of here, before they come back.”

  “This is where they were kept,” Two-Trees said. “In the mill. Downstairs. Out of sight.”

  “Who? The dead kids?”

  “This is a slaughterhouse. That’s why the chains. To feed them until they were fat, and keep them in place while they were eaten.”

  “Shit,” Buckle said, jerking his chains. “Don’t just say that and be calm about it! Get off your ass and do something. Are you a Two-Trees or not, damn it?”

  It is this town. He looked up at his arms. He’d kept his fists clenched, so, like the greedy monkey with the cookie jar, he couldn’t pull his hand free. It’s the whole town.

  He remembered now: almost forty young people on bicycles and on foot, some armed with baseball bats, some with knives. All their faces had been as white as raw halibut, except for the tribal paints—tattoos that writhed under the skin like black worms. And Laura Maurelli had been with them, face painted a darker shade, with holes in her thin skin.

  Hemorrhoid medication. Stretch mark cream. Two medicines that would help skin relax and regain its elasticity, preventing it from splitting in the middle of a good laugh.

  “Buckle,” Two-Trees said. He didn’t want to move his head too quickly, but a concussion wasn’t a death sentence. He had to get a sense of his environment and find a way out. “Palmer was here, right outside the mill. He has to know what’s been going on.”

  “He’s the one who said the mill was flooded and discounted it as a possible crime scene,” Buckle said. “He’s the one who dismissed CSI and the responding cops from here two days ago.”

  Two-Trees opened his hand and tried to fold his thumb toward his pinkie finger. “And he’s the one who’s got access to OPP records. He’s the one who’s been altering your reports.”

  Ishmael lurched on the floor. He was trying to get onto his hands and knees.

  “Ishmael,” Two-Trees said. “You all right?”

  Ishmael didn’t answer. His chest
was heaving.

  “Damn it,” Two-Trees said. He pulled his hand down, but he couldn’t slip through the manacles. “Where the hell do people buy these things?”

  “I don’t know,” Buckle replied. “The Purple Horn?” He was trying to pull free, too.

  The white-faced boys came in again with the same rusted racket as before. This time, the lamps were already lit, and they were surprised and frightened to see Ishmael working his way up to his knees.

  “Shit,” one of them said. “Is he getting ready to—”

  “Do we cut his clothes off him?”

  “Leave him that way,” the third one said. “Let him tear out of them.”

  “You think it’ll work?”

  “Look at him,” the brave one said. “He’s the real deal. You seen what happens after she eats processed food. Imagine what’s gonna happen after she eats whole food.”

  “Yeah, I seen what happens,” said the one nearest the door. He opened it and went through, followed by his two buddies. “Like, nearly as tall as the—”

  The door slid through the water and banged shut a third time.

  Two-Trees looked up. With this much light, he could see Ishmael trembling and clutching at his ribs. Strips of cloth floated around his knees. Ishmael tried to work his way off the floor, but he stumbled and fell with a splash.

  “What did they do to you?” Two-Trees asked Ishmael.

  “Drugs, you think?” Buckle said. He gasped and sneezed.

  “They’d have had to. He’d have torn his way through these punks by now. Even Bridget gets worried when he’s in fur, and she’s no pushover.”

  Buckle was watching him through his off-kilter glasses.

  “Ishmael, you with us?” Two-Trees asked. He wondered what happened to Bridget. He wondered if the Padre and Holly were out looking for them.

  “You’re right,” Buckle said. “This is where the kids died.”

  The water wasn’t clean. Globules of fat coagulated on the surface. The floor itself was prickly with bone shards, and beside his right knee, Two-Trees could see that under the water, the concrete had been scratched deeply by claws.

  Ishmael was trying again to stand. He curled one arm toward his chest, testing the tension and weight of the chains. He wavered on the spot, unable to get off his knees. He shook his head.

  Come on, Ishmael . . .

  “Hey,” Ishmael said. He sounded as groggy as he looked. “Two-Trees.”

  “I’m here.”

  “How does the story end?”

  “Badly, unless you get yourself straightened out.”

  “I mean the book. The one you helped to write.” Ishmael tugged the chains again, and touched his scarred shoulder. “I never got past the part where Sister Whitehair arrives at the lakeshore.”

  Laura Maurelli returned with her son and two of his friends. “Get him upstairs. Get Sydney out, lock the skinny one in her room. Start the process.”

  Her son didn’t question this time. Instead, he gave her a zipped-up bag, which she handed off to the boy who’d hung up the lamps. Her son jangled keys until he found the one that would fit Buckle’s chains. The lamp boy opened the bag and drew out a small video camera.

  Great! That’s just freaking fantastic! That’s what this is all about? Shit! Damn it! Shit!

  “You,” she said to Two-Trees, “can be the appetizer before the main course.” When she narrowed her eyes, skin peeled away from her temples. Dust drifted from her face like the finest snow, and Two-Trees’ eyes watered. Buckle sneezed.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing,” Buckle said, sniffing. “I’m a god damned officer of the law. People are going to be looking for me. People with a hell of a lot of guns and dogs and—”

  Maurelli sputtered a laugh. “People? You mean like Palmer?”

  Buckle didn’t reply.

  “What happened to your son, Laura?” Two-Trees asked. “Did you do this to him?”

  Maurelli turned on stiff legs.

  Two-Trees licked his bruised lips, thinking as fast as the contusion on his brain would allow. He had to distract them, make them change their minds about filming. “You claim to give such a shit about these kids—look what you’re making them do.”

  “I’m doing this for their own good. Mine and theirs.”

  “And Sydney? Is that where your infection came from? You pick something up from Sydney?”

  Maurelli curled a lip and tore more coconut-smelling skin. “Sydney’s just a means to an end.” She turned to her son. “Get Skinny-Ass moving. Drug him if you have to, I don’t care. Just get him upstairs and get the process started. We’ll need to feed before we can move.”

  “But Jay—” her son began to say.

  “Ask me if I give a shit about Jay!” Maurelli said. She wrenched the keys from her son’s hand. Skin turned to dust and fell off the back of her hands, off her face, off her neck, leaving tendons and blanched muscles exposed to the air. “Try it, Buckle. Please.” Her voice was changing, as if someone was punching holes in her larynx to let in more air. “Just try something. Because I’m starving and I might not wait long enough for the process to take, you get me?”

  Behind her, Ishmael shouted in pain and collapsed again. Maurelli watched him fall, grinning with all her shark teeth. “Go! Get that camera going,” she said, unlocking Buckle’s right manacle without watching what she was doing.

  The instant his hand was free, Buckle rabbit punched the back of Maurelli’s head. She reeled, and Buckle wrapped his legs around her waist, pulling her close enough to reach for her keys. When she spun in his grip to fight back, he drove a finger into her eye, making her scream—a hissing, white-hot scream—and he pulled the key ring from her hands as if he meant to break all her fingers in the process. Maurelli’s son caught Buckle by the throat and hoisted him bodily and awkwardly, slamming him against the wall. The boy squeezed Buckle’s throat between thumb and forefinger. Buckle’s face turned red and purple, while the younger Maurelli shed skin. His eyes widened and turned the colour of separated milk. The boy’s hand squeezed Buckle’s throat up into second, third, and fourth chins. Buckle scraped at the boy’s wrist. Maurelli reached in and enveloped Buckle’s hand with her own. She bared her teeth. Two-Trees heard something crunch, as if she’d crushed a crystal goblet under her heel. Tears sprang from Buckle’s reddening eyes when he tried to scream. The boy let him go, and Buckle fell to his knees, with one chained arm dangling above him to keep him from curling up on the floor. His broken fingers twitched like the legs of a dying bug. He gagged for breath and tried to hold his throat, but the digits of his free hand were bent the wrong way.

  “Oh God,” Maurelli said, breathless with erotic anticipation. “Do that again.” Her voice was like the whistle of storm winds through the pines. Buckle coughed sickly. Seeing that everyone’s attention was on Buckle, she panted. “Get that camera going!” she shouted.

  People moved. Buckle was coughing and his teeth were chattering. Maurelli unlocked his other manacle. Buckle didn’t try to fight this time.

  “God, how you people are going to pay,” she said to Ishmael. She laughed and slobbered clear saliva. “Look at what you’ve done to us.” She daubed at the corners of her nearly skinless mouth with her sleeve. “You promise to cure us of cancer and disease? You promise our children power and strength, and this is what you give us instead? And then you abandon us?” She kicked Ishmael in the ribs.

  One of the bonewalkers had the video camera pointed at Ishmael.

  Shit . . . no . . . No no no!

  Maurelli pulled open the screeching door and swore at her band of jungle punks to get them started on moving Buckle up the stairs. She went with them.

  Ishmael shook his head, grunting, keeping his face averted from the camera. The boy crouched down, trying to aim the lens into Ishmael’s face for an extreme close-up.

  “Too dim in here for a shot that close, dumbass,” Two-Trees said. Fight it, Ishmael. Fight it, damn it, or we’re all toast. “You’
re going to need more light or a better camera.” The punk flipped him the bird without looking up from his work.

  “Tell me,” Ishmael grunted. His voice rose and fell like he was going through puberty all over again. “How it ends.”

  Blood trickled down the side of Two-Trees’ face. Badly. This ends badly.

  “She went to the lakeshore,” Ishmael began.

  “She went to the shore with all the weapons the chief had given her,” Two-Trees said. “She knew she could destroy the monster, because Wenabozho said she could. But she didn’t know how. She said, ‘I don’t know how to fight with bow and arrow,’ so she put down her bow and arrow.”

  Joints popped, and Ishmael groaned—out of relief or out of pain, Two-Trees couldn’t tell.

  “Then she said, ‘I’m not strong like Bear, I’m not fast like Wolf, and I have no talons like Hawk.’ So she dropped her club and axe. She said, ‘I’m only a little girl who likes to paint.’”

  Ishmael coughed up blood and spat it on the floor. Two-Trees made a mental note to avoid that spot, if he ever got free. The problem was, the blood was leeching into the water and spreading in all directions.

  “Are you getting all this okay there, son?” Two-Trees asked. “I’ve been thinking of vlogging all of Grandfather’s stories, so send me a copy, will you?”

  The boy didn’t acknowledge him. He only pushed Ishmael’s shoulder back with the prod of his knee. Ishmael rolled with it, smiling up at the camera with a very bloody but very human face.

  Brown had crept into Ishmael’s black hair, like he’d walked under a torrent of coffee-coloured paint. “Go on,” Ishmael said. “It’s a good story.”

  Two-Trees continued. “The Trickster tells her, ‘This is a hungry spirit. That’s why it eats your people’s food. The more he eats, the hungrier he gets. So give him something to eat!’ And she said, ‘But all I have are my magic paints.’ He said, ‘And you have Pouch Lake.’ So then she began to paint thousands of trout and pike in the water, big and fat every one of them, and as soon as the last stroke on the last fin of the last fish was painted, they all came to life, splashing and jumping out of the water. Then she sang to the evil spirit, saying that there were so many fish you could walk across Pouch Lake without getting your feet wet. The evil spirit saw all the fish, so he dove in and tried to eat them. But they were only illusions painted on water, so all he did was drink and drink and drink until his belly was ready to burst. Then the Trickster went up the rapids to Steeper Lake, and he asked Beaver to move his lodges. As soon as the dam was broken, all the water of Steeper Lake fell down the rapids and crushed the evil spirit at the bottom of Pouch Lake, where he lives today, eating all the magical, painted fish.”