A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Was that a sound? From below?

  I hold still, listening. For an instant there I could have sworn I heard the faintest rustle directly below my dangling feet. But throughout my frozen, breathless silence, I hear nothing.

  Rats.

  The realization strikes me like a blow. Of course! I’ve been throwing food down there for weeks. I’d be surprised if there weren’t a rat or two about.

  I don’t like the idea but I’m not put off. Not for a minute. I’m wearing sturdy prison shoes and stiff, tough prison pants. And I’m bigger than they are.

  Just like I was bigger than Marion . . .

  I slip my hips through the opening, lower my waist through, but my chest and shoulders won’t go, at least not both shoulders at once. And there’s no way to slip an arm through ahead of me.

  I can see only one solution. I’m not comfortable with it but there’s no way around it: I’m going to have to go down headfirst.

  I pull myself out and swivel. I slip my left arm and shoulder through, then it’s time for my head. I’m tempted to hold my breath but why bother? I’m going to have to get used to that stench. I squeeze my head through the opening.

  The air is warm and moist and the odor presses against my face like a shroud freshly torn from a moldering corpse. I try to mouth-breathe but the odor worms its way into my nose anyway.

  And then I hear that sound again, a rustle of movement directly below—a wet rustle. The odor grows stronger, rising like a dark cloud, gagging me. Something has to be behind that movement of stinking air, propelling it. Something larger than a rat!

  I try to back up out of the opening but I’m stuck. Wedged! The side of my head won’t clear the edge. And the odor’s stronger, oh god, it’s sucking the breath right out of me. Something’s near! I can’t see it but I can hear it, sense it! And it wants me, it hungers for me! It’s so close now, it’s—

  Something wet and indescribably foul slides across my cheek and lips. The taste makes me retch. If there were anything in my stomach it would be spewing in all directions. But the retching spasms force my head back out of the hole. I tear my arm and shoulder free of the opening and roll away toward the bars, toward the corridor. Who would have thought the air of a prison cell could smell so sweet, or a single sixty-watt bulb a hundred feet away be so bright.

  I begin to scream. Unashamed, unabashed, I lay on my belly, reach through the bars and claw the concrete floor as wails of abject terror rip from my throat. I let them go on in a continuous stream until somebody comes, and even then I keep it up. I plead, sob, beg them to let me out of this cell. Finally they do. And only when I feel the corridor floor against my knees and hear the barred door clang shut behind me does the terror begin to leach away.

  “Doctor Hurst!” I tell them. “Get Doctor Hurst!”

  “He ain’t here, creep.”

  I look up and see Hugo hovering over me with two other guards from the third shift. A circle of faces completely devoid of pity or compassion.

  “Call him! Get him!”

  “We ain’t disturbin’ him for the likes o’ you. But we got his resident on the way. Now what’s this all—?”

  “In there!” I say, pointing to the rear of the cell. “In that hole in the back! Something’s down there!”

  Hugo jerks his head toward the cell. “See what he’s yapping about.”

  A young blond guard steps into my cell and searches around with his flash-light.

  “In the back!” I tell him. “The right rear corner!”

  The guard returns, shaking his head. “No hole in there.”

  “It must have pulled the tile back into place! Please! Listen to me!”

  “The kid killer’s doing a crazy act,” Hugo says with a snarl. “Trying to get off on a Section Eight.”

  “No-no!” I pull at his trousers as I look up at him. “Back there, under one of the tiles—”

  Hugo looks away, down the corridor. “Hey, Doc! Can you do something to shut this creep up?”

  A man in a white coat appears, a syringe in his hand.

  “Got just the thing here. Doctor Hurst left a standing order in the event he started acting up.”

  Despite my screams of protest, my desperate, violent struggles, they hold me down while the resident jabs a needle into my right buttock. There’s burning pain, then the needle is withdrawn and they loosen their grip.

  I’m weak from lack of food, and spent from the night’s exertions. The drug acts quickly, sapping what little strength remains in my limbs. I go with it. There’s no more fight left in me.

  The guards lift me off the floor and begin to carry me. I close my eyes. At least I won’t have to spend the night in the cell. I’ll be safe in the infirmary.

  Abruptly I’m dropped onto a cot. My eyes snap open as I hear my cell door clang shut, hear the lock snap closed.

  No! They’ve put me back in the cell!

  I open my lips to scream but the inside of my mouth is dry and sticky. My howl emerges as a whimper. Footsteps echo away down the corridor and the overheads go out.

  I’m alone . . . for a while.

  And then I hear the sound I knew would come. The tile moves. A gentle rattle at first, then a long slow sliding rasp of tile upon tile. The stinking miasma from below insinuates its way into my cell, permeating my air, making it its own.

  Then a soft scraping sound, like a molting snake sliding between two rocks. Followed by another sound, a hesitant, crippled shuffle, edging closer.

  I try to get away, to roll off the cot, but I can’t move. My body won’t respond.

  And then I see it. Or rather I see a faint outline, greater darkness against lesser darkness: slim, between four and five feet high. It leans over the bed and reaches out to me. Tiny fingers—cold, damp, ragged fingers—flutter over my face like blind spiders, searching. And then they pause, hovering over my mouth and nose. My God, I can’t stand the odor. I want to retch but the drug in my system won’t let me.

  And then the fingers move. Quickly. Two of them slip wetly into my nostrils, clogging them, sealing them like corks in the necks of wine bottles. The other little hand darts past my gasping lips, forces its way between my teeth, and crawls down my throat.

  The unspeakable obscenity of the taste is swept away by the hunger for air. Air! I can’t breathe! I need air! My body begins to buck as my muscles spasm and cry for oxygen.

  It speaks then. In Marion’s little voice.

  Marion’s . . . yet changed, dried and stiff like a fallen leaf blown by autumn gusts from bright October into lifeless November.

  “Daddy . . .”

  PLEASE DON'T HURT ME

  “Real nice place you’ve got here.”

  “It’s a dump. You can say it—it’s okay. Sure you don’t want a beer or something?”

  “Honey, all I want is you. C’mon and sit next to me. Right over here on the couch.”

  “Okay. But you won’t hurt me, will you?”

  “Now, honey—Tammy’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “Tammy Johnson. I told you that at least three times in the bar.”

  “That’s right. Tammy. I don’t remember things too good after I’ve had a few.”

  “I’ve had a few too and I remember your name. Bob. Right?”

  “Right, right. Bob. But now why would someone want to hurt a sweet young thing like you, Tammy? I told you back there in the bar you look just like that actress with the funny name. The one in Ghost.”

  “Whoopi Goldberg?”

  “Oh, I swear, you’re a funny one. Funny and beautiful. No, the other one.”

  “Demi Moore.”

  “Yeah. Demi Moore. Why would I want to hurt someone who looks like Demi Moore? Especially after you were nice enough to invite me back to your place.”

  “I don’t know why. I never know why. But it just seems that men always wind up hurting me.”

  “Not me, Tammy. No way. That’s not my style at all. I’m a lover not a fighter.”

  “How
come you’re a sailor, then? Didn’t you tell me you were in that Gulf War?”

  “But I didn’t see battle. Don’t let the uniform scare you. Like I said, I’m really a lover at heart.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “If you’ll let me.”

  “My father used to say he loved me.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’m talking about that kinda love.”

  “Good. Because I didn’t like that. He’d say he loved me and then he’d hurt me.”

  “Sometimes a kid needs a whack once in a while. I know my pop loved me, but every once in a while I’d get too far out of line—like a nail that starts working itself loose from a fence post?—and so he’d have to come along every so often and whack me back into place. I don’t think I’m any the worse for it.”

  “Ain’t talking about getting ‘whacked,’ sailor man. If I’d wanted to talk about getting ‘whacked’ I woulda said so. I’m talking ’bout getting hurt. My daddy hurt me lotsa times. And he did it for a long, long time.”

  “Yeah? Like what he do to hurt you?”

  “Things. And he was all the time making me do things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Just . . . things. Doin’ things to him. Things he said made him feel good. Then he’d do things to me that he said would make me feel good but they never did. They made me feel crummy and rotten and dirty.”

  “Oh. Well, uh, gee . . . didn’t you tell your mom?”

  “Sure I did. Plenty of times. But she never believed me. She always told me to stop talking dirty and then she’d whack me and wash my mouth out with soap.”

  “That’s terrible. You poor thing. But let’s forget about all that. Here . . . snuggle up against me now. How’s that?”

  “Fine, I guess, but what was worse, my momma’d tell Daddy and then he’d get mad and really hurt me. Sometimes it got so bad I thought ’bout killing myself. But I didn’t.”

  “I can see that. And I’m sure glad you didn’t. What a waste that would’ve been.”

  “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Daddy. He’s gone and I don’t hardly think about him anymore.”

  “Ran off?”

  “No. He’s dead. And good riddance. He had a accident on our farm, oh, some seven years ago. Back when I was twelve or so.”

  “That’s too bad . . . I think.”

  “People said it was the strangest thing. This big old tractor tire he had stored up in the barn for years just rolled out of the loft and landed right on his head. Broke his neck in three places.”

  “Imagine that. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Yeah. My momma thought somebody musta pushed it, but I remember hearing the insurance man saying how there’s so many accidents on farms. Bad accidents. Anyway, Daddy lived for a few weeks in the hospital, then he died.”

  “How about that. But about you and me. Why don’t we—?”

  “Nobody could explain it. The machine that was breathing for him somehow got shut off. The plug just worked its way out of the wall all by itself. I saw him when he was just fresh dead—I was first one in the room, in fact.”

  “That sounds pretty scary.”

  “It was. Here, let me unzip this. Yeah, his face was purple-blue and his eyes were all red and bulgy from trying to suck wind. My momma was sad for a while, but she got over it. Do you like it when I do you like this?”

  “Oh, honey, that feels good. That feels wonderful.”

  “That’s what Daddy used to say. Ooh, look how big and hard you got. My momma’s Joe used to get big and hard like this.”

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah. Pretty soon after Daddy died my momma made friends with this man named Joe and after a time they started living together. Like I said, I was twelve or so at the time and Joe used to make me do this to him. And then he’d hurt me with it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Don’t stop. Don’t . . . stop.”

  “I won’t. Yours is a pretty one. Not like Joe’s. His was crooked. Maybe that’s why his hurt me even more than Daddy’s.”

  “Hey, don’t squeeze so hard.”

  “Sorry. Joe liked me to—”

  “Do we have to talk about this Joe?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Hey, don’t stop.”

  “But I feel like talking about him.”

  “Okay, okay. So how’d you finally get away from him?”

  “Oh, I didn’t. He got hurt.”

  “Really? Another farm accident?”

  “Nah. We weren’t even on the farm no more. We was livin’ in this dumpy old house up Lottery Canyon way. My momma still worked but all Joe did was fiddle on this big old Cadillac of his—you know, the kind with the fins?”

  “Yeah. A fifty-nine?”

  “Who knows. Anyways, he was always fiddlin’ with it. And he always made me help him—you know, stand around and watch what he was doin’ and hand him tools and stuff when he asked for them. He taught me a lot about cars, but if I didn’t do everything just right, he’d hurt me.”

  “And I’ll bet you hardly ever did everything ‘just right.’ ”

  “Nope. Never. Not even once. How on earth did you know?”

  “Lucky guess. What finally happened to him?”

  “Those old brakes on that old Caddy just up and failed on him one night when he was making one of his trips down the canyon road to the liquor store. Went off the edge and dropped about a hundred feet.”

  “Killed?”

  “Yeah, but not right away. He got tossed from the car and then the car rolled over on him. Broke his legs in about thirty places. Took a while before anybody even realized he was missing, and took almost an hour for the rescue squad to get to him. And they say he was screamin’ like a stuck pig the whole time.”

  “Oh.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Uh, no. Not really. I guess he deserved it.”

  “Damn right he did. Never made it to the hospital though. Went into shock when they rolled the car off him and he saw what was left of his legs. Died in the ambulance. But here . . . let me do this to you. Hmmmmmmm. You like that?”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “You’d better believe that means yes!”

  “My boyfriend used to love this.”

  “Boyfriend? Hey, now wait a minute—”

  “Don’t get all uptight now. You just lie back there and relax. My ex-boyfriend. Very ex.”

  “He’d better be. I’m not falling for any kind of scam here.”

  “Scam? What do you mean?”

  “You know—you and me get started here and your boyfriend busts in and rips me off.”

  “Tommy Lee? Bust in here? Oh, hey, I don’t mean to laugh, but Tommy Lee Hampton will not be bustin’ in here or anywheres else.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s dead too.”

  “No-no. Tommy Lee’s still alive. Still lives right here in town, as a matter of fact. But I betcha he wishes he didn’t. And I betcha he wishes he’d been nicer to me.”

  “I’ll be nice to you.”

  “I hope so. Tommy and Tammy—seemed like we was made for each other, don’t it? Sometimes Tommy Lee was real nice to me. A lot of times he was real nice to me. But only when I was doin’ what he wanted me to do. Like this . . . like what I’m doin’ to you now. He taught me this and he wanted me to do it to him all the time.”

  “I can see why.”

  “Yeah, but he’d want me to do him in public. Or do other things. Like when we’d be driving along in the car he’d want me to—here, I’ll show you . . .”

  “Oh . . . my . . . God!”

  “That’s what he’d always say. But he’d want me to do it while we was drivin’ beside one of those big trucks so the driver could see us. Or alongside a Greyhound bus. Or at a stoplight. Or in an elevator—I mean, who knew when it was going to stop and who’d be standing there when the doors open? I’m a real lovable girl, y’know? But I�
�m not that kind of a girl. Not ay-tall.”

  “He sounds like a sicko.”

  “I think he was. Because if I wouldn’t do it when he wanted me to, he’d get mad and then he’d get drunk, and then he’d hurt me.”

  “Not another one.”

  “Yeah. Can you believe it? I swear I got the absolute worst luck. He was into drugs too. Always snorting something or popping one pill or another, always trying to get me to do drugs with him. I mean, I drink some, as you know—”

  “Yeah, you sure can put those margaritas away.”

  “I like the salt, but drugs is just something I’m not into. And he’d get mad at me for sayin’ no—called me Nancy Reagan, can you believe it?—and hurt me something terrible.”

  “Well, at least you dumped him.”

  “Actually, he sort of dumped himself.”

  “Found himself someone else, huh?”

  “Not exactly. He took some ’ludes and got real drunk one night and fell asleep in bed with a cigarette. He was so drunk and downered he got burned over most of his body before he finally woke up.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Jesus didn’t have nothin’ to do with it—except maybe with him survivin’. Third degree burns over ninety percent of Tommy Lee’s body, the doctors at the burn center said. They say it’s a miracle he’s still alive. If you can call what he’s doing livin’.”

  “But what—?”

  “Oh, there ain’t much left to him. He’s like a livin’ lump of scar tissue. Looks like he melted. Can’t walk no more. Can barely talk. Can’t move but two or three fingers on his left hand, and them just a teensie-weensie bit. Some folks that knew him say it serves him right. And that’s just what I say. In fact I do say it—right to his face—a couple of times a week when I visit him at the nursing home.”

  “You . . . visit him?”

  “Sure. He can’t feed himself and the nurses there are glad for any help they can get. So I come every so often and spoon-feed him. Oh, does he hate it!”

  “I’ll bet he does, especially after the way he treated you.”

  “Oh, that’s not it. I make sure he hates it. You see, I put things in his food and make him eat it. Just yesterday I stuck a live cockroach into a big spoonful of his mashed potatoes. Forced it into his mouth and made him chew. Crunch-crunch, wiggle-wiggle, crunch-crunch. You should have seen the tears—just like a big baby. And then I—