Dark Forces

by McCauley, Kirby

  That afternoon—yesterday afternoon—passed in a kind of slow motion. Darkness crept in, turning the fog to that dull chrome color again. What world was left outside slowly dissolved to black by eight-thirty.

  The pink bugs returned, then the bird-things, swooping into the windows and scooping them up. Something roared occasionally from the dark, and once, shortly before midnight, there was a long, drawn-out Aaaaa-roooooo! that caused people to turn toward the blackness with frightened, searching faces. It was the sort of sound you’d imagine a bull alligator might make in a swamp.

  It went pretty much as Miller had predicted. By the small hours, Mrs. Carmody had gained another half a dozen souls. Mr. McVey the butcher was among them, standing with his arms folded, watching her.

  She was totally wound up. She seemed to need no sleep. Her sermon, a steady stream of horrors out of Doré, Bosch, and Jonathan Edwards, went on and on, building toward some climax. Her group began to murmur with her, to rock back and forth unconsciously, like true believers at a tent revival. Their eyes were shiny and blank. They were under her spell.

  Around 3:00 a.m. (the sermon went on relentlessly, and the people who were not interested had retreated to the back to try and get some sleep) I saw Ollie put a bag of groceries on a shelf under the checkout nearest the OUT door. Half an hour later he put another bag beside it. No one appeared to notice him but me. Billy, Amanda, and Mrs. Turman slept together by the denuded coldcuts section. I joined them and fell into an uneasy doze.

  At four-fifteen by my wristwatch, Ollie shook me awake. Cornell was with him, his eyes gleaming brightly from behind his spectacles. “It’s time, David,” Ollie said.

  A nervous cramp hit my belly and then passed. I shook Amanda awake. The question of what might happen with both Amanda and Stephanie in the car together passed into my mind, and then passed right out again. Today it would be best to take things just as they came.

  Those remarkable green eyes opened and looked into mine. “David?”

  “We’re going to take a stab at getting out of here. Do you want to come?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I started to explain, then woke up Mrs. Turman so I would only have to go through it the once.

  “Your theory about scent,” Amanda said. “It’s really only an educated guess at this point, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” Hattie said. Her face was white and in spite of the sleep she’d gotten there were large, discolored patches under her eyes. “I would do anything—take any chance—just to see the sun again.”

  Just to see the sun again. A little shiver coursed through me. She had put her finger on a spot that was very close to the center of my own fears, on the sense of almost foregone doom that had gripped me since I had seen Norm dragged out through the loading door. You could only see the sun briefly through the mist as a little silver coin. It was like being on Venus.

  It wasn’t so much the monstrous creatures that lurked in the mist; my shot with the pinchbar had shown me they were no Lovecraftian horrors with immortal life but only organic creatures with their own vulnerabilities. It was the mist itself that sapped the strength and robbed the will. Just to see the sun again. She was right. That alone would be worth going through a hell of a lot.

  I smiled at Hattie and she smiled tentatively back.

  “Yes,” Amanda said. “Me too.”

  I began to shake Billy awake, as gently as I could.

  “I’m with you,” Mrs. Reppler said briefly.

  We were all together by the meat counter, all but Bud Brown. He had thanked us for the invitation and then declined it. He would not leave his place in the market, he said, but added in a remarkably gentle tone of voice that he didn’t blame Ollie for doing so.

  An unpleasant, sweetish aroma was beginning to drift up from the white enamel case now, a smell that reminded me of the time our freezer went on the fritz while we were spending a week on the Cape. Perhaps, I thought, it was the smell of spoiling meat that had driven Mr. McVey over to Mrs. Carmody’s team.

  “—expiation! It’s expiation we want to think about now! We have been scourged with whips and scorpions! We have been punished for delving into secrets forbidden by God of old! We have seen the lips of the earth open! We have seen the obscenities of nightmare! The rock will not hide them, the dead tree gives no shelter! And how will it end? What will stop it?”

  “Expiation!” shouted good old Myron LaFleur.

  “Expiation… expiation…” they whispered it uncertainly.

  “Let me hear you say it like you mean it!” Mrs. Carmody shouted. The veins stood out on her neck in bulging cords. Her voice was cracking and hoarse now, but still full of a terrible power. And it occurred to me that it was the mist that had given her that power—the power to cloud men’s minds, to make a particularly apt pun—just as it had taken away the sun’s power from the rest of us. Before, she had been nothing but a mildly eccentric old woman with an antiques store in a town that was lousy with antiques stores. Nothing but an old woman with a few stuffed animals in the back room and a reputation for

  (That witch . . . that cunt)

  folk medicine. It was said she could find water with an applewood stick, that she could charm warts, and sell you a cream that would fade freckles to shadows of their former selves. I had even heard—was it from old Bill Giosti?—that Mrs. Carmody could be seen (in total confidence) about your lovelife; that if you were having the bedroom miseries, she could give you a drink that would put the ram back in your ramrod.

  “EXPIATION!” they all cried together.

  “Expiation, that’s right!” she shouted deliriously. “It’s expiation gonna clear away this fog! Expiation gonna clear off these monsters and abominations! Expiation gonna drop the scales of mist from our eyes and let us see!” Her voice dropped a notch. “And what does the Bible say expiation is? What is the only cleanser for sin in the Eye and Mind of God?”

  “Blood.”

  This time the chill shuddered up through my entire body, cresting at the nape of my neck and making the hairs there stiffen. Mr. McVey had spoken that word, Mr. McVey the butcher who had been cutting meat in Bridgton ever since I was a kid holding my father’s talented hand. Mr. McVey taking orders and cutting meat in his stained whites, Mr. McVey, whose acquaintanceship with the knife was long—yes, and with the saw and cleaver as well. Mr. McVey, who would understand better than anyone else that the cleanser of the soul flows from the wounds of the body.

  “Blood…” they whispered.

  “Daddy, I’m scared,” Billy said. He was clutching my hand tightly, his small face strained and pale.

  “Ollie,” I said, “why don’t we get out of this loonybin?”

  “Right on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  We started down the second aisle in a loose group—Ollie, Amanda, Cornell, Mrs. Turman, Mrs. Reppler, Billy, and I. It was quarter to five in the morning and the mist was beginning to lighten again.

  “You and Cornell take the grocery bags,” Ollie said to me.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll go first. Your Scout a four-door, is it?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “Okay, I’ll open the driver’s door and the back door on the same side. Mrs. Dumfries, can you carry Billy?”

  She picked him up in her arms.

  “Am I too heavy?” Billy asked.

  “No, hon.”

  “Good.”

  “You and Billy get in front,” Ollie went on. “Shove way over. Mrs. Turman in front, in the middle. David, you behind the wheel. The rest of us will—”

  “Where did you think you were going?”

  It was Mrs. Carmody.

  She stood at the head of the check-out lane where Ollie had hidden the bags of groceries. Her pantsuit was a yellow scream in the gloom. Her hair frizzed out wildly in all directions, reminding me momentarily of Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein. Her eyes blazed. Ten or fifteen p
eople stood behind her, blocking the IN and OUT doors. They had the look of people who had been in car accidents, or who had seen a UFO land, or who had seen a tree pull its roots up and walk.

  Billy cringed against Amanda and buried his face against her neck. “Going out now, Mrs. Carmody,” Ollie said. His voice was curiously gentle. “Stand away, please.”

  “You can’t go out. That way is death. Don’t you know that by now?”

  “No one has interfered with you,” I said. “All we want is the same privilege.”

  She bent and found the bags of groceries unerringly. She must have known what we were planning all along. She pulled them out from the shelf where Ollie had placed them. One ripped open, spilling cans across the floor. She threw the other and it smashed open with the sound of breaking glass. Soda ran fizzing every whichway and sprayed off the chrome facing of the next check-out lane.

  “These are the sort of people who brought it on!” she shouted. “People who will not bend to the will of the Almighty! Sinners in pride, haughty they are, and stiffnecked! It is from their number that the sacrifice must come! From their number the blood of expiation!”

  A rising rumble of agreement spurred her on. She was in a frenzy now. Spittle flew from her lips as she screamed at the people crowding up behind her: “It’s the boy we want! Grab him! Take him! It’s the boy we want!”

  They surged forward, Myron LaFleur in the lead, his eyes blankly joyous. Mr. McVey was directly behind him, his face blank and stolid.

  Amanda faltered backward, holding Billy more tightly. His arms were wrapped around her neck. She looked at me, terrified. “David, what do I—”

  “Get them both!” Mrs. Carmody screamed. “Get his whore, too!” She was an apocalypse of yellow and dark joy. Her purse was still over her arm. She began to jump clumsily up and down. “Get the boy, get the whore, get them both, get them all, get—”

  A single sharp report rang out.

  Everything froze, as if we were a classroom full of unruly children and the teacher had just stepped back in and shut the door sharply. Myron LaFleur and Mr. McVey stopped where they were, about ten paces away. Myron looked uncertainly at the butcher. He didn’t look back or even seem to realize that LaFleur was there. Mr. McVey had a look I had seen on too many other faces in the last two days. He had gone over. His mind had snapped.

  Myron backed up, staring at Ollie Weeks with widening, fearful eyes. His backing-up became a run. He turned the corner of the aisle, skidded on a can, fell down, scrambled up again, and was gone.

  Ollie stood in the classic target shooter’s position, Amanda’s gun in his right hand. Mrs. Carmody still stood at the head of the check-out lane. Both of her liver-spotted hands were clasped over her stomach. Blood poured out between her fingers and splashed her yellow slacks.

  Her mouth opened and closed. Once. Twice. She was trying to talk. At last she made it.

  “You will all die out there,” she said, and then she pitched slowly forward. Her purse slithered off her arm, struck the floor, and spilled its contents. A tube of pills rolled across the distance between us and struck one of my shoes. Without thinking, I bent over and picked it up. It was a half-used package of Certs breath-mints. I threw it down again. I didn’t want to touch anything that belonged to her.

  The “congregation” was backing away, spreading out, their focus broken. None of them took their eyes from the fallen figure and the dark blood spreading out from beneath her body. “You murdered her!” someone cried out in fear and anger. But no one pointed out that she had been planning something similar for my son.

  Ollie was still frozen in his shooter’s position, but now his mouth was trembling. I touched him gently. “Ollie, let’s go. And thank you.”

  “I killed her,” he said hoarsely. “Damn if I didn’t kill her.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s why I thanked you. Now let’s go.”

  We began to move again.

  With no grocery bags to carry—thanks to Mrs. Carmody—I was able to take Billy. We paused for a moment at the door, and Ollie said in a low, strained voice, “I wouldn’t have shot her, David. Not if there had been any other way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You believe it?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  We went out.

  XI.

  The End.

  Ollie moved fast, the pistol in his right hand. Before Billy and I were more than out the door he was at my Scout, an insubstantial Ollie, like a ghost in a television movie. He opened the driver’s door. Then the back door. Then something came out of the mist and cut him nearly in half.

  I never got a good look at it, and for that I think I’m grateful. It appeared to be red, the angry color of a cooked lobster. It had claws. It was making a low grunting sound, not much different from the sound we had heard after Norton and his little band of Flat-Earthers went out.

  Ollie got off one shot, and then the thing’s claws scissored forward and Ollie’s body seemed to unhinge in a terrible glut of blood. Amanda’s gun fell out of his hand, struck the pavement, and discharged. I caught a nightmare glimpse of huge black lusterless eyes, the size of giant handfuls of sea grapes, and then the thing lurched back into the mist with what remained of Ollie Weeks in its grip. A long, multisegmented body dragged harshly on the paving.

  There was an instant of choice. Maybe there always is, no matter how short. Half of me wanted to run back into the market with Billy hugged against my chest. The other half was racing for the Scout, throwing Billy inside, lunging after him. Then Amanda screamed. It was a high, rising sound that seemed to spiral up and up until it was nearly ultrasonic. Billy cringed against me, digging his face against my chest.

  One of the spiders had Hattie Turman. It was big. It had knocked her down. Her dress had pulled up over her scrawny knees as it crouched over her, its bristly, spiny legs caressing her shoulders. It began to spin its web.

  Mrs. Carmody was right, I thought. We’re going to die out here, we are really going to die out here.

  “Amanda!” I yelled.

  No response. She was totally gone. The spider straddled what remained of Billy’s babysitter, Mrs. Turman, who had enjoyed jigsaw puzzles and those damned Double-Crostics that no normal person can do without going nuts. Its threads crisscrossed her body, the white strands already turning red as the acid coating sank into her.

  Cornell was backing slowly toward the market, his eyes as big as dinner plates behind his specs. Abruptly he turned and ran. He clawed the IN door open and ran inside.

  The split in my mind closed as Mrs. Reppler stepped briskly forward and slapped Amanda, first forehand, then backhand. Amanda stopped screaming. I went to her, spun her around to face the Scout and screamed “GO!” into her face.

  She went. Mrs. Reppler brushed past me. She pushed Amanda into the Scout’s backseat, got in after her, and slammed the door shut.

  I yanked Billy loose and threw him in. As I climbed in myself, one of those spider threads drifted down and lit on my ankle. It burned the way a fishing line pulled rapidly through your closed fist will burn. And it was strong. I gave my foot a hard yank and it broke. I slipped in behind the wheel.

  “Shut it, oh shut the door, dear God!” Amanda screamed.

  I shut the door. A bare instant later, one of the spiders thumped softly against it. I was only inches from its red, viciously-stupid eyes. Its legs, each as thick as my wrist, slipped back and forth across the square bonnet. Amanda screamed ceaselessly, like a firebell.

  “Woman, shut your head,” Mrs. Reppler told her.

  The spider gave up. It could not smell us, ergo we were no longer there. It strutted back into the mist on its unsettling number of legs, became a phantasm, and then was gone.

  I looked out the window to make sure it was gone and then opened the door.

  “What are you doing?” Amanda screamed, but I knew what I was doing. I like to think Ollie would have done exactly the same thing. I
half-stepped, half-leaned out, and got the gun. Something came rapidly toward me, but I never saw it. I pulled back in and slammed the door shut.

  Amanda began to sob. Mrs. Reppler put an arm around her and comforted her briskly.

  Billy said, “Are we going home, Daddy?”

  “Big Bill, we’re gonna try.”

  “Okay,” he said quietly.

  I checked the gun and then put it into the glove compartment. Ollie had reloaded it after the expedition to the drugstore. The rest of the shells had disappeared with him, but that was all right. He had fired at Mrs. Carmody, he had fired once at the clawed thing, and the gun had discharged once when it hit the ground. There were four of us in the Scout, but if push came right down to shove, I’d find some other way out for myself.

  I had a terrible moment when I couldn’t find my keyring. I checked all my pockets, came up empty, and then checked them all again, forcing myself to go slowly and calmly. They were in my jeans pocket; they had gotten down under the coins, as keys sometimes will. The Scout started easily. At the confident roar of the engine, Amanda burst into fresh tears.

  I sat there, letting it idle, waiting to see what was going to be drawn by the sound of the engine or the smell of the exhaust. Five minutes, the longest five of my life, drifted by. Nothing happened.

  “Are we going to sit here or are we going to go?” Mrs. Reppler asked at last.

  “Go,” I said. I backed out of the slot and put on the low beams.

  Some urge—probably a base one—made me cruise past the Federal Market as close as I could get. The Scout’s right bumper bunted the trash barrel to one side. It was impossible to see in except through the loopholes—all those fertilizer and lawn-food bags made the place look as if it were in the throes of some mad garden sale—but at each loophole there were two or three pale faces, staring out at us.

  Then I swung to the left, and the mist closed impenetrably behind us. And what has become of those people I do not know.

  I drove back down Kansas Road at five miles an hour, feeling my way. Even with the Scout’s headlights and running lights on, it was impossible to see more than seven or ten feet ahead.