Becoming

by Glenn Rolfe

  “So, whether you believe the tremors in this small town are earthquakes or something extraterrestrial related, one thing is for certain: something strange is happening below the surface in Eckert, Wisconsin. Suri Baker, CBS News.”

  “Thank you, Suri. In other news around the nation, a lawyer in Raleigh, North Carolina…”

  Alan Packard clicked the TV off. He smiled at his hometown making the CBS Evening News. The “booms”, as the locals referred to the “quake-like activity”, were the talk of the town. Now the boys down at Kasey’s were really gonna be buzzing. Especially after that slant-eyed professor had gone off about UFOs—nothing like an old Hollers Hill mention to stir up Gus Jackson’s and Nat Gallant’s wild imaginings.

  Alan grabbed the keys to his Ford and made for the door. He had to hear those two old fools’ rants and E.T. conspiracy theories for himself. Just one drink (well, maybe two) and then he would come back home to work on the thirty rack in his fridge and watch his wrestling tapes. His cousin Jarrett had dropped off a box of VHS cassettes for the store. Alan nabbed two old wrestling tapes out for himself. He was excited to watch WrestleMania III and figured he’d order a pie from Dom’s. Two drinks, he decided. Then straight back to watch the Hulkster take on the Eighth Wonder of the World.

  “Cheryl.” Kim knocked on her sister’s door. She didn’t want to (Bobby Colby was in there with her), but her father had just called to say he was on his way home. Cheryl had told Kim to let her know when he got home. It made her feel dirty playing lookout for her sister so that Cheryl could fool around or smoke cigarettes, but Kim wanted desperately to keep on her sister’s good side. Who else could she confide in about girl problems? She’d got her first period right after their mom left. Kim had been mortified, but Cheryl had been right there for her. God, she couldn’t imagine what would have happened if she’d had to go to her dad. She loved him, but that was a conversation she did not want to have.

  “Cheryl?” she repeated at the door.

  “Come on in, K; we’re all dressed.”

  Kim heard Bobby’s dorky snicker as she pushed the door open. Her sister and her long-haired boyfriend sat on the windowsill, each with a cigarette in hand. Cheryl took a drag from the smoke, crushed it out on her hand-painted Disney plate—a Christmas gift from their mom a couple years ago, they’d each gotten one—waved the smoke toward the open window and said, “What’s up?”

  “Dad just called. He’s on his way back from the gym.”

  Cheryl’s face scrunched up. “The gym? Since when does Dad go to the gym?”

  Kim was excited by her father’s new after-work routine and wasn’t the least bit surprised that Cheryl was clueless about it. He’d been three nights a week since the beginning of spring. Kim took her dad’s interest in his health and appearance as a good sign. Their mom wasn’t coming back. They all knew it, even Dad. “He’s been going for a few weeks now. A couple nights a week after he gets outta work.”

  “Cool. Good for him. Maybe he’ll meet a hot soccer mom there.” Cheryl handed the plate to Bobby.

  He took the plate and crushed his cigarette, stuck his tongue out and said, “I’d like to meet a hot soccer mom.”

  “I bet you would, man-whore,” Cheryl said, leaning over and meeting Bobby’s tongue with her own.

  Kim wanted to gag. “Well, on that note, I have homework to do.”

  She closed the door and left them to their…whatever they were doing. She’d done her duty, and she did have homework to finish. She walked down the hall to her room and stared at the orange binder and social studies textbook lying on her comforter. Her attention was grabbed by the Stephen King book Brady had lent her. She shivered thinking about it now. Brady, who said he’d found the book among his mother’s murder mystery books, had warned her that it was scary. He said he’d slept with the light on each night, but Kim Jenner was not so easily scared. Sure, she’d started reading it last night and stopped when she read about a guy hanging from a beam in an old house, but she’d slept like a baby after marking her place with her Harry Potter bookmark. She thought of the way Brady had smiled when he placed the book on her nightstand a few days ago. She grinned at the vision of him—his brown hair hanging slightly in his face, the way his pretty green eyes turned to hers after he tapped the cover of the book. She wondered what it’d be like to kiss him. Not like Cheryl kissed Bobby, but something nicer, sweeter. Warmth flooded her cheeks. She sat on the edge of her bed, pushed her orange binder to the side, grabbed the book with the scary house on its cover and began to read where she’d left off. She imagined herself as the girl named Susan and Brady as Ben Mears.

  Alan was right. Gus and Nat were on fire tonight. When he arrived at Kasey’s Cave, the bar and grille over on Wilson Street, they were parked at the bar, sitting in front of the television, still going off about Hollers Hill and alien probes.

  “Up his ass. That’s where,” Gus said. He stopped as Nat leaned to look past him.

  “Hey, Alan, did ya hear?” Nat thumbed in the direction of the TV on the wall at his back. “Fella on the news says the booms are aliens from Hollers Hill.”

  Gus turned to get in his piece. “Yes, sir. Those were his exact words, eh, Nat?”

  “Well, those weren’t his exact words, but he did mention Hollers Hill and some soil…what’d he say they were?”

  “Anomalies,” Gus said.

  Alan took the stool next to Gus. He put up a finger to pause the dynamic duo’s lecture and ordered his first drink. “Stella, can I get a shot of Jameson and a Pabst?”

  “Sure thing, Mr. P.,” she said. Stella was a good-looking girl: nice brown eyes, black ponytail hanging down her back, freckles to count for days over a friendly smile, and she always wore those dang miniskirts.

  Alan accepted his shot and his beer with a grin before turning to his reason for coming. “Okay, you guys were sayin’?”

  “That’s it,” Gus said.

  “Well, that, uh, Asian fella.” Nat took a sweep of the bar before continuing. “He seems to think the aliens put something in the hill and that’s what’s causing the boom.”

  “Gus, you buyin’ into this?” Alan said. He picked up his shot and downed it. He stared at a wild-eyed Gus Jackson. The man’s gray hairs curled up around his dirty John Deere cap, just as frazzled as the look on his face. He fidgeted on his stool. Alan watched his knee bop up and down as he picked at the skin next to his thumbnail.

  “Yeah, yeah, I do. And I tell you what: I think it’s a mite bit worse than just them booms.”

  “Oh, yeah? How’s that?”

  Gus looked at Nat. Nat stroked his bushy brown-and-gray beard and nodded. Gus looked deep into Alan’s eyes. “Well, ya know Lyle Everson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he lives on Thompson Street, ya know, over where the first boom hit last week. He ain’t been out since.”

  Alan took a swig of his beer. “So?”

  Gus wiped his hands on his pants. Alan couldn’t ever recall seeing the guy so nervous. “So, he ain’t been outside. He ain’t been to work.”

  “Maybe he’s sick.”

  Nat leaned across Gus, so close that Alan could smell his dog breath. “I’ve worked with the man for twenty years down at the yard. He never missed a day of work, far as I can remember.”

  “Did you go check on him?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. He didn’t answer.”

  Nat leaned back and raised his forefinger. Stella scampered toward him.

  “Whatcha need, hon?” she said.

  “’Nother whiskey sour, please, dear,” Nat said. He stroked his beard again and looked at Alan, his brown eyes squinted, his bottom lip tight against his teeth. He accepted his drink from Stella with a nod before throwing half of the drink down his gullet.

  Alan looked from one to the other. “You guys puttin’ me on, eh?”

  “No,” Gus said. “Nat went over there and no one answered.”

  Nat leaned in again. “He was there. I could hea
r him, breathin’ heavy on the other side of the door. Could smell him too. Like something wet and rotten.”

  Nat leaned back and drank the rest of his whiskey.

  Alan wondered how much these two had had to drink tonight. He wanted to believe it was the booze mixed with their overactive, small-town imaginations, but he’d never seen either one so on edge before. He didn’t know Lyle Everson personally, but knew his cousin Phil. Phil was a regular at the store. Maybe he’d ask Phil about Lyle this weekend.

  “Well, fellas, I think I’m gonna run. I just stopped in to grab a quick drink and catch a smile from Stella. I got me some wrastlin’ tapes to watch.”

  Gus and Nat looked at one another, and then back to Alan. “Something weird’s happenin’ ’round here, Alan. Keep your eyes open,” Nat said. Gus’s knee still bebopped to its own tune. He sat silent and nodded.

  Alan put a ten on the bar. “Will do, fellas. G’night, Stella.”

  He thought about that nervousness in Gus Jackson and the paranoid words of Nat Gallant all the way home. Keep your eyes open.

  Chapter Two

  Lyle Everson stared down at the thing that used to be a pretty nineteen-year-old girl. Her perfect skin and nubile body sat deteriorating before his eyes, all of her youth shriveled like a dried-up cornhusk, encased in the blue slime that covered everything in his house and whispered to him. The voices had ordered him to seek out and take the girl. He’d listened. Take them. Bring them. Ascend. He picked her up hitchhiking just outside of town. He’d never harmed a living creature in all of his forty-two years on this planet. The voices made him do this, and he liked it: thumping her in the back of the head with the hammer, carrying her limp body into his house under the shade of night, laying her on top of the pulsating slime that commanded him.

  At the moment, his breaths came in short gasps. The slime was everywhere. The gel covered the carpet, the furniture and his body—inside and out. He could feel it moving through his lungs and his throat, behind his eyes and in his ears. His own skin was wet, jellified, something that kept him from going back out and finding more, like he was being told. He wanted to. He’d even tried to open the door last night, but his deforming hands couldn’t grip the knob. He’d seen a movie once where a man exposed to radiation began to melt. Right now, he was the incredible melting man.

  He dropped to his knees next to the encased body; his head swayed with the voices. Take them. Bring them. Ascend. Take them. Bring them. Ascend. They would have to find someone else to do their bidding. He was dying. It felt like there was a car engine sitting on his chest. He stared at the girl. No remorse. No thought other than the echo of the directive: Take them. Bring them. Ascend. He raised his hands. The slime and melted skin dripped from them as he slapped his slick palms against the girl’s mucus capsule, felt the tingling sensation one last time and watched the stars fade from his sight as a blue glow lit up the darkened room. Lyle Everson’s flesh slid from his face into a pile on the floor.

  Lyle gasped his last breath and prepared to ascend.

  Chapter Three

  Brady Carmichael finished his hot dogs and set his plate down at the end of his bed. He stared at the closed door across the hall from his room. Bryce’s room. It’d been two years since his dad and his brother had died. Brady had been home with the flu when they went on their snowmobile trip. It had been unusually warm that January, and the ice on the lake wasn’t frozen solid. The snowmobile broke through and took them with it. Rod Cameron and his son Jesse were there, but they couldn’t save them. Rod tried and came away with a bad case of hypothermia.

  Bryce’s room was empty, but his mom still kept the door shut. She said the bare room was harder to look at than it had been when all his things were still sitting in there, waiting for him to come home. Brady had been ten when the accident happened. Time seemed to have numbed him to the loss. He still had his sad moments, like now, staring across the hall, but most days he chose to look ahead, not back.

  He broke his trance-like state and finished the glass of Coke he’d taken with supper. His mother would be calling up any minute for his dishes, but he had to take a leak first. He slid off the bed and moved down the hall. His mother’s mini-library of mystery thrillers stacked on the bookshelf by the bathroom made him think of Kim. He wondered if she’d started reading the Stephen King book he’d brought her. He remembered how she’d looked at him in her bedroom. Her green eyes staring into his, he’d wanted to kiss her. He’d brought the book (a grown-up book) to her after reading it himself. It was a scary book about vampires in a small town in Maine, but there was also a love story in there. He’d been in Kim’s room a zillion times before. They’d been friends since first grade, but things were different. They were different. He was going to be thirteen in June. She would be too, in August. His dad used to listen to a song that asked, “Why must I be-ee a teenager in love?” Brady wondered the same thing.

  Alan Packard watched an old VHS tape of WrestleMania III, from back when the WWE was still called the WWF. He polished off what was left of his thirty rack of Budweiser and waited for the Huey kid to bring him his pizza. On the television, Hulk Hogan body slammed Andre the Giant when, for the first time, Alan thought he felt the actual impact. When the walls and floor continued to shake, Alan realized it wasn’t Hulkamania rumbling the earth; it was another ground boom. His living room shook, rattled and rolled. Decorations fell like people from the Titanic: his framed photo of Cindy Crawford from the wall behind his Zenith floor-model television; a neon OPEN sign that had stopped working six years ago dropped to his RCA dual cassette-deck stereo below; his collection of pint glasses stolen over the years from dive bars up and down Wisconsin—Schlitz, Coors and Pabst Blue Ribbon glasses—tap-danced to the edge of their four-foot shelf before committing hari kari. He’d felt the previous booms, but this was the first to hit his side of town.

  Alan had read about the city’s other booms in the paper, and had seen Suri Baker report about them on the local CBS affiliate. From eavesdropping on conversations between shoppers in his flea market, he picked up all kinds of wild theories (like Gus and Nat’s Hollers Hill alien story). He’d overheard Mrs. Bunker’s underground dwellers theory, and Denny Carlson’s take about it being a malfunction in the government’s secret oil line (built after 9/11 to stash black gold in case the sand niggers in the Middle East decided to try and fuck us royally). None of it made any sense to him. He figured they were less to do with alien entities and Al-Qaeda and more from the global warming thing that Al Gore and the liberals were always raving about.

  The shake and tumble continued. Alan clutched his ratty recliner like a kid during a horror flick. He heard things falling, banging and clanging to the ground in the store below. He lived above his flea market. The building was old. The wooden floors were land-mined with soft spots. The inventory consisted of numerous pieces of ancient garbage amassed from closed discount stores and liquidation centers around the state. He hated the flea market business, but it was what his father had handed down to him, and all he’d ever known. “You give what you get,” his father had always said.

  The final reverberation caused its last windowpane to shudder and took the electricity with it. Alan rose to assess the damage as best he could in the dark, and fumbled his way to the bathroom to relieve his strained bladder. He flushed the toilet, but nothing happened. The water pipes had been compromised as well. He resigned himself to finishing off the night with his last three beers in the gloom, and passed out in his recliner.

  The next morning, it was as though nothing had happened.

  The power was back on, as was the water, although the water now held a slight bluish hue and an odd mildew smell. He wasn’t about to drink it, but at least he didn’t have to call Rick Fischer to come out and fix his pipes. The flea market made him enough cash to keep him fed and make his light and water payments, which was about it. He lived day-to-day, praying that his thirty-year-old Ford pickup stayed healthy, and that his house maintained its po
or but stable condition.

  Alan gobbled down a couple pieces of peanut butter toast and a leftover Miller Light that had survived in the back of his fridge. Then he noticed the wet spot on his recliner. He’d pissed himself in his sleep. He’d slept through to the afternoon. Hell, he was still a little buzzed.

  He made his way back to the tiny bathroom, started the shower, and dropped his soiled pants and underwear. He caught a hint of the mildew scent again and noticed a little bit of blue slime had already begun to gather around the shower drain.

  Fuck it. He climbed in anyway.

  His skin felt slicker than normal as he got out and dried off using the closest towel from the floor. Finished, he dropped the towel back to the cracked linoleum and moved down the hall to throw on something that would pass as clean. He stopped two steps down the slim corridor. A wet suction noise caught his ear. He turned back to the bathroom and stared at the blue slime that clung to the wet towel. It was moving.