The Bighead

by Edward Lee

  What the hell…

  She noticed that the back wall to the closet wasn’t a wall at all but…an opening…

  An open wall panel…

  A passageway.

  She pulled her aunt into the opening, closed the secret panel. She couldn’t imagine why this would be here, and she didn’t care. It was an escape! But now, in total darkness, she fumbled forward. There seemed to be a narrow corridor behind the wall. Where did it lead? “Come on, Aunt Annie! Come on!” her hot whispers ensued. “Move forward!”

  They did so in absolute clumsiness, Charity biting her lower lip at the sounds they must be making. But only then did she notice—

  Spires? White lines?

  Yes, lines of white light, thread-thin, seemed to perforate the passageway’s gloom. They were holes—

  Holes in the wall.

  Again, the why did not even occur to her. But she knew this: they were peepholes. And she could still hear the monstrous thunking.

  The footfalls, she guessed, had circled Goop’s bedroom, then made their exit. THUNK! THUNK! THUNK!

  Then they wound around to the next room.

  Charity put her eye to the bright hole.

  The priest’s room, it must be, she thought. A simple piece of luggage. Black slacks and shirts in the closet. A Bible and prayer book on the night stand. And—

  Charity’s heart skipped a beat.

  The vantage point of what she could see was very limited: the sidewall of the priest’s bedroom. But something, suddenly, was moving there—

  A shadow.

  A huge shadow.

  It washed across the wall, the great, heavy footfalls resounding in accompaniment. It seemed to waver, a hulking silhouette, and Charity, even through the tiny peephole, could smell the earthy, rotten-meat stench. Then—

  The figure came into view.

  Just its back…

  It stood what must’ve been over seven feet tall. It was wearing overalls, vermiculated with rot, shoulder muscles so large and defined they looked like tumors beneath the dark-tan skin.

  Then…it turned…

  Charity fainted dead-away when she saw the thing’s face…

  (VIII)

  “What did you think? What did you think? You think it’d be pretty?”

  Now it was Annie, slapping Charity awake.

  My God. This is all my fault, Annie thought. I shoulda knowed it’d all come back ta me someday…

  And come back it did, with a vengeance.

  Far as she knew now, though, the thing’d left. Crouched back there behind in the wall, she’d seen it thunk its way out of the room, then out of the house.

  The Bighead.

  Yeah, I shoulda knowed, Annie realized.

  She pulled Charity back into Goop’s room. Goop—Christ—it had been Goop who’d done this, finding the walkways behind the walls, drillin’ holes so’s he could peep on guests. So help me, I’ll tan his hide next time I see him…

  “Charity? Charity?” Annie shook her niece fierce.

  No response.

  “Come on, sweetie! We gotta get outa here!”

  Nothing.

  One look was all it took, and was Annie surprised? No. No. She’d never seen it fer herself, ’cept fer that one time, but she could imagine what it looked like now.

  A shudder traveled through her at the thought.

  “What—was—that…thing?” Charity finally roused, murmuring up through a fallow face. Her eyes were shock-white.

  “You know.” Annie patted her niece’s forehead with a handkerchief. “You know now. It was The Bighead. Come back after all these years.”

  — | — | —

  TWENTY

  (I)

  “I just don’t understand,” Charity nearly wept. Exit was their priority now, escape. The only thing that would keep them alive was getting as far away from Luntville as quickly as possible. Once Charity had recovered from her faint of shock, Annie had gotten her out of the house and into the pickup truck. There was no time to look for Goop. There was no time to do anything but leave.

  Annie spun wheels out of the front lot, peeling away. The right rear fender banged against a tree when she turned off onto the Route and accelerated.

  Charity’s consciousness seemed to sift back into some semblance of accordance, like the focusing ring on a lens. But again, instantly, too many images and questions delved into her at once. “Those scars,” she said, a hand to her brow as she sat slumped in the pickup’s bench seat. “Those awful scars on your nipples and thighs… What happened?”

  Annie’s determined face remained locked on the road as she drove. “Punishment, honey. Sometimes ya just cain’t live with things unless ya hurt yerself. I been punishin’ myself fer a long time now.”

  Punishment? “Why?”

  When her aunt refrained from answering, Charity’s mouth opened to ask the next of a flurry of questions, but the query stalled when she remembered…

  When she remembered exactly what she’d seen in that peephole.

  Hideous. Huge. And, yes, a monster.

  A great shiny bald head, elongated like some strange, warped squash. Hands the size of packing hooks. But when the thing had turned, she was able to glimpse its face, and the recollection, now, nearly caused her to pass out again.

  Its face…

  Lop-sided, bundled ears. A squashed nose like two dried figs pressed together. One eye large as a tennis ball, the other tiny as a cherry tomato. But the mouth…

  Charity shuddered again, her stomach captured by a sudden series of convulsions so intense she thought she might vomit out the truck window—

  A huge stone jaw underpinned a mouth akin to a chasm, full of teeth like carpet needles.

  Oh, God… What is going on here?

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “Out of here. Anyplace that isn’t here,” Aunt Annie said.

  “We…can’t,” Charity insisted, letting her senses surface further. “Jerrica and the priest. They’re still at the abbey. We can’t just drive away and forget about them. That thing… If it cut across the ridge—it could be at the abbey in less than a half hour. We have to go pick up Jerrica and Father Alexander.”

  Annie seemed stricken by this suggestion, though she didn’t outright object. “We could die, hon, you know that, don’t you?”

  Charity’s teeth ground. “We’re not leaving them! We have to at least warn them!”

  “All right.” Annie’s voice grated like rusted metal abrading. “We’ll go by the abbey. But don’t blame me if we never make it out of there.”

  “Fine.” But Charity’s mind swirled in more queries. “You have to explain something to me. That…thing—that thing I saw through the peephole. It was The Bighead, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Annie answered, heading down the dark road.

  “But I saw the grave. Someone had dug it up. And someone had scratched on the coffin top, BIGHEAD, BURN IN HELL. If The Bighead was dead and buried as an infant, how on earth could we have just seen it?”

  (II)

  It was a question Annie should’ve expected. By now? After what poor Charity had seen?

  The steering wheel felt like slick bone on her hand. “I’ll tell you, Charity. Only ’cos you gotta right to know.”

  “What!”

  And Annie’s mind fogged away.

  Back, back…

  Back to that day thirty years ago…

  (III)

  The townsmen had taken care of the thing, nine months previous. But it hadn’t mattered, not for Annie’s sister. The men had shot it, killed it. Taken care of it, she thought.

  But that still left Sissy, didn’t it?

  Annie was the town midwife, never could have a child’a her own on account of some problem in her belly. But her sister…

  Her sister lay before her now, on the table, her legs spread wide. Her face flushed with the pain of labor, her vagina distending. Large, ripe breasts sweated out a sheen of milk.

&nb
sp; Annie continued with her ministrations, her hands outspread below her sister’s parted thighs. It’s coming, it’s coming, she thought.

  But what would it be?

  “My GOD!”

  It wasn’t coming out right. It was coming out…through the belly…

  It was eating its way out of her sister’s womb…

  (IV)

  “What ya have ta understand is that this all happened a year after you were born, Charity. What I told ya about yer mama committin’ suicide with the shotgun—that was just a fib. She died during childbirth. My darlin’ sister Sissy, yer wonderful mama,” Annie stoically related. She drove the pickup steadfast, through town, toward the far ridge where the abbey was.

  “Yeah, a year or so after yer mama had you,” Annie continued. “Somethin’ happened, that next winter… It was yer mama who gave birth to The Bighead. And when she was done havin’ him, she was dead…”

  (V)

  It shredded its way out.

  It ate its way out of Sissy’s bloated stomach.

  Gnawing, swallowing, teeth glinting…

  “We knows what it really is!” one of the townsmen shouted. “It ain’t natt-trull! It gotta be kilt!”

  And it was then that the thing shouldered its way out of the front of her sister’s abdomen…

  (VI)

  “It was yer mama…who gave birth to The Bighead,” Annie admitted.

  Charity glared forward. “But I just saw The Bighead’s grave! It was dug up! It had obviously died as an infant!”

  Something so large sunk down Annie’s throat. For a moment she couldn’t speak. What could she say? How could she admit such a thing?

  She felt made of stone when she said, “It wasn’t The Bighead that was in that grave you saw dug up at the cemetery. It was…some other child.”

  “Some other child! What are you talking about!”

  “It was a stillborn,” Annie went on. “It was Geraldine’s. Larkins’…”

  (VI)

  Annie’d already heard about it. Poor Geraldine Larkins had wanted a baby so bad…

  But it was stillborn.

  Too much inbreedin’, they’d said. Too much moonshine-drinkin’ and bad-livin’. Geraldine’d given birth to a beautiful baby boy—

  But it was a dead baby boy.

  They’d buried it shallow in the woods, and Annie’d seen ’em on one’a her walks. She’d seen ’em buryin’ that poor li’l dead baby.

  So what she done was—

  (VIII)

  “I dug it up,” Annie confessed. “I dug Geraldine Larkins’ poor dead baby boy up…and I switched it…”

  “You…switched it?

  “I switched it. ’cos I just didn’t have the heart to do what them townsmen said. They knew where The Bighead come from, and they wanted to kill it. But I told ’em I would.”

  Charity’s face bloomed in question, like a night flower. “You told them you would do what?”

  “I told ’em I would kill it. I told ’em I would kill Sissy’s baby, The Bighead. But what I done instead was switch The Bighead with Geraldine’s stillborn critter. And what I did then was I…I crushed that dead baby’s head with a skillet, and all’a them townsmen seen it. And they believed it…”

  “You switched babies,” Charity realized. “You switched a live baby for a dead one—”

  “That’s right!” Annie shrieked, her guilt finally pounding down on her. “I made ’em think it was The Bighead whose head I crushed, but it was really a baby who were already dead!”

  “Calm down, calm down,” Charity attempted to console. But—

  “Annie,” Charity said. “I need to know what happened to the live baby. I need to know what happened to the real Bighead—”

  (IX)

  She’d had to hurry. Before the men came back, she had to stow the living child that had eaten its way out of her sister’s womb. But it wasn’t the child’s fault, was it? How could it be? How could any newborn child, forbearance notwithstanding, be held responsible for its deeds?

  It’s not the baby’s fault…

  She meant to leave the living baby in the woods and pick it up later. But that’s when the old rattling truck had come down the road. It stopped. And it’s driver had seen her. The driver had seen what she was doing: dumping a baby in the woods…

  A crackly old cracker, an old creeker. Inbred. Only had one full arm—the other wasn’t nothin’ but a little stem’a flesh with fingers wrigglin’ out.

  “It’s prover-dence,” the man said. “Here I is, drivin’ away from the world without the one thing I’se wanted most, an’ heres you are, dumpin’ the same thing.”

  “I—I wasn’t dumping it!” a young Annie tried to explain. “I was going to come back for it later!”

  “Ands do what, hon?”

  “Well, I—I—” Annie blinked at the inbred man. “I don’t rightly know, but I shore’s hail wasn’t gonna let it sit ta die!”

  “Give me that baby, hon,” the inbred man said. “I’ll’se raise it like God planned. Ain’t had nothin’ in my life work right so’s far. But I’se kin swear to ya, I’ll’se raise that baby so fine…”

  Annie stood stock still, staring at the man’s eyes. What would she do with the baby? Honestly, how could she possibly raise such a hideous child without any of the townsmen knowing?

  So maybe it was God. Maybe this was God’s way’a makin’ a miracle.

  “Take good care’a this child, I beg ya,” Annie said. “It’s ugly, but it ain’t its fault. So…please. Take good care’a it, and raise it proper.”

  The man in the truck was crying at the gift. “I’se will! I’se will! I’se promise ya!”

  Annie, then, not thirty years old herself, handed the monstrous infant over to the stranger.

  And watched him drive away with it.

  (X)

  “I gave it to a man—”

  “A man! What man!”

  “Some ole inbred fella, said he was dyin’ ta raise a kid hisself. There was nothin’ else I could do.”

  Charity’s throat made audible clicks. “You substituted a dead baby for The Bighead, and you gave the real Bighead to some man driving down that road?”

  Annie’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “When the men come back an’ looked in, they saw Geraldine’s stillborn baby on the kitchen table, with its head crushed. They thought it were The Bighead. I told ’em I drugged the baby’s broth and done it, smacked its head with the skillet, smashed it flat, ands they believed it was The Bighead. And then I went out’n buried it. But the real Bighead was already bein’ droved off by that inbred fella. And that’s when I stopped thinkin’ ’bout it…an’ started punishin’ myself fer it. Burnin’ myself. Hatin’ myself for the fact that maybe I done the wrong thing.” Annie, then, her cheeks wet, looked over at her niece. “I couldn’t think’a nothin’ else ta do.”

  (XI)

  But what then?

  There was more, wasn’t there?

  God Almighty have mercy on me fer what I done! Annie thought to herself.

  There was still more to tell—

  About the abbey.

  (XII)

  “That’s why I ain’t too keen ’bout going back ta the abbey, to pick up the priest and yer friend,” Annie continued.

  “I don’t get it,” Charity said.

  “‘Cos that’s shorely where The Bighead’s headed right now.”

  “They abbey? Why would he specifically be heading for the abbey?”

  She couldn’t tell it all, could she? No! But she could at least tell some.

  “It weren’t like Father Alexander said,” she explained. “The abbey never closed because the nuns were sent ta Africa. The abbey closed ’cos the nuns died.”

  “Died? How?”

  “They was all murdered. By The Bighead. It was twenty years ago, just a few years after the Church reopened the abbey ta take care’a dying priests. Before that, it was closed fer years’n years, since the fifties. It was
, I don’t know, early seventies maybe that the nuns moved in ta make the hospice. Couple years after that, though, The Bighead came back. Couldn’t’a been more’n ten years old when he done so. Ands he kilt all them poor nuns and the dyin’ priests ta boot. The young boy must’a wandered off from where the inbred ol’ man raised him, and that’s what The Bighead done when he returned to the abbey.”

  “But I don’t understand, Aunt Annie.” Charity’s expression was flushed with inconguenty. “Returned to the abbey? What do you mean? What was he returning to?”

  (XIII)

  Charity stared through the windshield; the heat lightning throbbed, so far away it scarcely looked real. But Charity’s life didn’t seem real either. Her mother hadn’t committed suicide at all; she’d died giving birth to that thing, a year after Charity herself had been born. But what had happened in that year? Something horrible. Something that had to do with the abbey.

  What was it? she tensely wondered, numb now in all that had been related to her. What happened?

  “Yer mama, dear—” Annie was choking on stifled sobs. “You weren’t probably but three months old at the time. Yer mama an’ I, we’d go fer long walks through the woods, and one night when we were doin’ so we found that we’d moseyed on up to the abbey. We didn’t go in, a’corse, ’cos at the time the building was sealed up, had been for years. It wasn’t fer ten years after that the nuns moved in and got ta runnin’ their hospice fer priests dyin’a cancer and such. But—”