Borderlands 4

by Unknown

By Bentley Little

  Only one writer has appeared in all four volumes of this anthology—Bentley Little. There are two reasons for this: he is prolific (he sends us at least four or five stories per mailing) and he is simply a wonderful writer. He won a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement First Novel and has published his short fiction in just about every magazine and anthology in existence. He writes from a place that is unknown to the rest of us, a place where everything seems normal, but nothing is. (We know that sounds like England, but it is actually the real Borderlands … )

  Selena looked from the red line of the thermometer to the pale skin of her son’s face. A hundred and one. She set the thermometer down on the dresser and put one hand on Bobby’s forehead, one hand on her own. There was a marked difference between the two. She looked at him sympathetically. “How do you feel?”

  He leaned back on the bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. “Cold,” he said. His voice was shaky, weak.

  “What else is wrong? Do you have a headache? A stomachache? Feel like throwing up?”

  “My stomach hurts a little.”

  “Well, you’re not going to school today. I want you to stay home. I’ll call the office and tell them you’re sick.” She took the thermometer off the dresser and placed it in the small plastic carrying case, snapping the case shut. “Do you want anything to eat? Toast? Juice? Tea and honey?”

  He shook his head.

  “You get some rest then. I’ll be in the kitchen.” She tucked in the sides of his blanket and kissed his warm cheek. “Call me if you need anything.”

  He cleared his throat “Mom?”

  She turned around. “What?”

  “Can I watch TV?”

  She smiled at him, shaking her head in mock-disapproval. “Television in the daytime,” she said. “What’s this world coming to?”

  Bobby was about to say something in reply when his eyes suddenly widened and he clapped a hand over his mouth, jumping out of bed. He ran down the short hall to the bathroom and Selena; following immediately after, heard him vomiting loudly into the toilet. She rushed into the tiny bathroom, an expression of worried concern etched on her features. Bobby was still vomiting heavily, and she put a reassuring hand on his back. The stench was powerful and almost overwhelming within this confined space, and she took a deep breath before peeking over his shoulder into the toilet.

  She screamed.

  Floating amidst the orangish brown mixture of half-digested bits of food and thick gloppy liquid was the severed head of a rat. He heaved again, and she saw in the vomit several black beetles and what looked like a furry gray cat’s paw. Breathing heavily, his eyes closed, he spit into the bowl several times and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Selena grabbed his shoulders and jerked him to his feet. “What is that?” she screamed, pointing into the toilet. “What have you been eating?”

  “Nothing,” Bobby said, holding onto his still aching stomach.

  “That’s not nothing!” she shook him hard.

  “I don’t know!” he cried. Tears streamed down his cheeks, washing clean his face.

  “What the hell have you been eating?”

  He said nothing, staring down at the ground, and she angrily wiped his mouth with a towel before taking him back to bed. She did not flush the toilet. She would wait until Wade came home and then have him look at it. He could decide what to do.

  Bobby crawled back into bed and, shivering, pulled the covers up to his chin. She looked down at him, saying nothing. She was angry with him, but she was concerned for him as well. She would call a doctor and find out if he needed to get any shots or take any medicine, if it was likely that he’d contract any diseases.

  What had he been doing?

  Bobby’s eyes were now closed, and he appeared to have already fallen asleep. He looked so clean, so wholesome, so innocent. It was hard to believe that those disgusting insects and animal parts had come spewing forth from his mouth.

  School, Selena thought. It had to be school He had spent all day Sunday home with them, and on Monday he had gone only to school.

  She walked down the hallway to call Wade, to tell him to come home immediately.

  She purposely looked away from the open doorway of the bathroom as she passed by.

  With Wade sitting home with Bobby, Selena drove to the elementary school. The checkup had gone well, and the doctor had given the boy only a general antibiotic to combat possible infection. Now he was home, resting, and Wade was watching over him.

  Selena pulled into the narrow parking lot of the school and stopped in front of the office. It was late afternoon, and two older students were solemnly taking down the flag from the flagpole. She got out of the car, locking the door, and strode purposefully up to the office.

  The secretary looked up from her typewriter as Selena pushed open the door. “Hello, may I help you?”

  “I’m Mrs. Donaldson. I’m here to see the principal and Miss Banks.”

  The secretary’s face reddened, and she grew suddenly flustered. “Uh, right away, Mrs. Donaldson. They’re already waiting for you in the principal’s office.” She almost tripped over the typewriter cord as she led the way past a row of desks to the principal’s door. She knocked timidly. “Mrs. Donaldson’s here,” she said.

  Selena was escorted into a rather small office where the principal, a short bald man, and Bobby’s teacher were seated on comfortable chairs. Both of them looked nervous and ill-at-ease. The principal stood up and gestured for her to take a seat. “Hello, Mrs. Donaldson,” he said. “Nice to see you.”

  “Well, it’s not nice to see you. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d ever be here for this reason.”

  The principal smiled uncomfortably. “I must assure you, Mrs. Donaldson—”

  “My son puked up a dead rat, a cat’s paw and several beetles” she said. Her hard, angry gaze swept from the principal to Miss Banks. “I know damn well that he didn’t eat those things at my house. What I want to know is, where and how did he eat them.”

  “Maybe something happened on the way home from school,” the principal suggested.

  “I pick him up every day,” she said shortly.

  “The children here are always strictly supervised,” Miss Banks offered. “Bobby is in my class at all times, and during lunch and recess there are monitors who—”

  The principal stood up once again. “Perhaps we should take a tour of the classroom and playground area.”

  “I think that would be a good idea,” Selena said coldly.

  There had been nothing unusual or out of the ordinary in either Bobby’s classroom or the playground. The janitors questioned had not seen any children eating bugs or animals or anything strange, and one of the lunch monitors, coming back to pick up her check, claimed to have seen Bobby playing tether ball with two of his friends on Monday.

  Selena left the school feeling both angry and ineffectual. She drove home quickly, taking her frustrations out on the road. She believed Miss Banks when she said that nothing peculiar had happened in her class recently, and she believed the janitors and the lunch monitor.

  So what had happened?

  She pulled into the driveway and put the car into Park, switching off the ignition. She thought of Bobby, bending over the toilet, throwing up the cat’s paw and the beetles, and she shivered. She had been thinking of her son as a victim, as the butt end of some perverse conspiracy, but in the dim light of dusk he seemed far more culpable. She saw in her mind his innocent eyes, his angelic mouth, and she was suddenly afraid of him.

  What is wrong with my son?

  She glanced at the clock on the dashboard and was shocked to see that it was already a quarter to seven. She shook her head. That wasn’t possible. She had gone to the school just before three, had spent little more than an hour there, and had driven straight home.

  But the clock said she had been gone over three hours.

  She got out of the car, feeling slightly disori
ented. She walked up the front steps, opened the door and stepped into the living room. Immediately, her stomach revolted, and she felt a powerful nausea well up within her. She dashed down the hall to the bathroom and barely had time to drop to her knees and pull up the toilet seat before she vomited.

  Wade, behind her, watched as a dog’s tongue and several worms were ejected from her mouth into the water of the bowl.

  Selena awoke with a splitting headache and a painfully upset stomach. The drapes were drawn, but bright morning light spilled through a crack in the curtains. She sat up slowly, leaning against the headboard. Wade was conked out in a chair he had pulled next to the bed, his head resting at an uncomfortable angle on his shoulder. “Wade?” she said softly. “Dear?”

  He jerked instantly awake. His eyes quickly scanned the room. “What?”

  She smiled at him, and her head throbbed, “Nothing. It’s just me.”

  He leaned forward, grasping her hand in his. “How are you? How do you feel?”

  “I’m fine.” She pressed a hand to her abdomen. “My stomach still hurts a little, and I have a headache, but other than that … nothing.”

  His eyes held hers. “What happened? Where did you go yesterday? How did you”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you realize what you ate?”

  She squeezed his hand reassuringly. “I’m fine. How’s Bobby?”

  He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again she saw the red lines. He was tired, she realized, and he had probably slept only an hour or so last night. “Bobby seems okay. He still won’t tell me anything, though. He says he can’t remember.”

  “He probably can’t,” she said. “I can’t.”

  Wade ran a hand through her hair, letting his fingers gently trace the outline of her face. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

  “We’re going to let him go to school,” she said.

  “What?” He stared at her, shocked.

  “We’re going to let him go to school and spy on him.”

  They sat in the car for the better part of the morning, across the street from the school. They had a good view of both Bobby’s classroom and the playground. No matter where he went, they would be able to see him.

  Nothing happened during the first recess, and afterward, Wade went to McDonald’s to grab some food for an early lunch. Selena stayed across the street from the school, watching carefully from behind a large oak tree. Wade returned, and they ate their fries and hamburgers silently. At precisely eleven-thirty, a bell rang loudly, and the kids came out for lunch. They ate on the rows of wooden tables and benches adjacent to the classrooms, then moved to the playground.

  Nothing happened.

  Bobby ate quickly, then joined his friends in a game of kickball. The bell rang again, and the students filed into their classrooms.

  “What are we going to do?” Wade asked after Bobby had gone into his class.

  Selena closed her eyes. Her stomach hurt. She shouldn’t have eaten that hamburger. “I don’t know,” she said.

  The bell rang for afternoon recess at one-forty-five.

  The students did not head for the playground.

  They marched, single file, into the auditorium.

  Wade woke up Selena, who had been dozing. “Come on” he said excitedly. “We’ve caught em!”

  They got out of the car and walked across the street, not bothering to remain concealed. They hurried across the playground and reached the auditorium just as the last student shuffled inside. Selena, her heart pounding in her chest, looked at Wade, then threw open the door.

  The walls of the auditorium were white and padded, made from some ballooning cushiony material. The floor was yellow tile, unbroken by either chairs or tables. The 350 students, unnaturally silent for elementary school children, were lined up in six parallel rows, facing the side wall, where hundreds of dogs, cats and other small animals were crammed into a wire mesh enclosure.

  In the front of the auditorium, on a raised stage, was a quivering mass of shapeless translucent flesh the size of a small car.

  Beneath the stage, in the tile, was an open pit in which a greenish fire blazed smokelessly.

  Selena felt a hand touch her back, and she jumped. She whirled around to see the principal smiling at her. “I’m glad you came back,” he said. “Every little bit helps.”

  Selena grabbed Wade’s hand and held tight as the principal made his way toward the front of the auditorium. He climbed onto the stage, grabbed a microphone and tapped it to make sure it was working. “Listen up,” he said, and his voice echoed from several hidden speakers.

  All eyes turned toward the principal.

  “I know we’ve been asking a lot of you lately,” he said. “But this school needs your help.” He gestured toward the mass of gelatinous flesh behind him. “We need more school spirit. So come on, all of you, I want you to do your best for your school.”

  He put the microphone down and jumped off the stage. Ten or fifteen students had lined up in front of the fire, each holding an animal. Selena watched in horror as the first child, a young girl, held forth an orange cat. The principal looked at the animal, said something to the girl, and she bit off the cat’s tail, swallowing the tail whole.

  She then dropped the screeching cat into the fire, which flared brightly.

  The boy behind her bit off his dog’s nose before sacrificing it to the fire, and the boy behind him ate a gerbil’s body, dropping its head into the flames.

  Selena, watching this spectacle in shocked paralysis, holding Wade’s hand in a vise-like grip, noticed that the quivering form on the stage grew more substantial, less translucent, as the sacrifices increased. It also seemed to expand slightly in size.

  Bobby stepped forward, chomped the head of a sparrow and dropped the bird’s body into the fire.

  “We need all the help we can get,” Miss Banks said from behind them. She handed Wade a puppy and Selena a small monkey, pushing them toward the front of the auditorium. “Come on. You’ll set a bad example for the children. That’s why we have such a hard time drumming up school spirit. People are too apathetic these days.”

  “School spirit” Wade repeated. He glanced up at the mass of flesh on the stage. Its quivering had slowed to a gentle pulse. It looked fuller, less shapeless.

  “Come on.” The teacher led them to the front of the hall.

  “Mrs. Donaldson,” the principal said, nodding at her. He looked at the monkey. “The right front paw,” he said. “Our school can’t use the paw.”

  Aware of what she was doing but unable to stop herself, powerless to resist, she raised the animal to her lips and bit hard. The dry hairy paw and a flood of warm blood spilled into her mouth. She swallowed and dropped the screaming creature into the fire.

  Wade ate the puppy’s ears and dropped the squealing animal into the flames.

  Most of the children were gone now, and both Selena and Wade allowed themselves to be taken to a side door. Three large barrels flanked the open doorway, and Miss Banks said they had a choice. Wade took several butterflies and put them in his mouth, chewing them before swallowing. Selena chose a handful of crunchy beetles.

  Outside, they blinked in the harsh afternoon sunlight. Selena turned to her husband, confused. “Where’s Bobby?”

  He shook his head. “In class, I guess.” He looked around, puzzled. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get back to the car before anyone sees us. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

  She followed him across the playground. “Maybe it happened on Saturday,” she said. “He was over at Carl’s house on Saturday. He might have eaten something there.”

  “But what about you? You certainly didn’t go to Carl’s.”

  “That’s true,” she said. “I forgot.”

  They waited in the car until the final bell rang at three o’clock. Bobby saw their car immediately and ran across the street, getting in the back seat. He handed his mother a sheet of paper. “We’re
having spirit week next week,” he said. “Everyone’s supposed to wear a costume.”

  Selena looked at him. “We’ll see.” She put one hand on his forehead, one hand on her own. There was no difference. “How do you feel?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “My stomach hurts a little.”

  Wade started the car. “We’d better get you home.”

  That night, Selena vomited up a monkey’s paw and several beetles. Wade threw up puppies’ ears and butterflies. Bobby regurgitated a sparrow’s head and some worms.

  None of them knew why.

  The next day, the principal called Selena up to thank her for all she and her family had done to strengthen the school spirit. The school spirit was strong this year, and he hoped it would be equally strong next year, when Bobby was in fourth grade.

  Selena began to sew Bobby a costume for spirit day.

  The Late Mr. Havel’s Apartment

  By David Herter

  Well-drawn characters and the ability to evoke a sincere emotional response are two qualities we always look for in a story for this anthology series. The following tale is reminiscent of Rod Serling at the top of his game. After selling us this piece, David Herter went on to write several novels.

  Robin Myers was twenty-nine, employed as a secretary at a roofing firm, and single. These were the general facts, available to anyone.

  She wanted a child, and a husband, but her relationships never lasted longer than a few months. She was behind on her car payment and usually missed the rent deadline by a day or two. She was a hypochondriac: every stomach pain was sinister, every chest ache put thoughts of death into her head. She collected china figurines of horses; she didn’t know how to swim. These facts were more particular. Some were secret, some were never spoken aloud.

  And the old man upstairs had known none of this, she was sure. Until the night he died, she’d only seen him once, in the lobby. He stood outside, struggling to hold onto a huge grocery bag and pull keys out of his pocket.