(A sample from Crawlspace.)
© 2009 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
8:40
Briggsville Woods
TOMMY loped up through the trees, his right arm dangling, still trailing tentacles and oddly-jointed insectoid limbs.
He reached the top of the hill. He leaned on a tree. He looked back. He had lost track of them. Maybe he’d given them the slip. Maybe not. He ran on.
He staggered down the thinning trees. From up ahead he could hear the sound of drumming.
He pushed on until he could see down the woods into a small cemetery, hemmed in by trees on three sides.
Far below him, through the trees, candles and hurricane lamps illuminated a bare patch of ground at one corner of the cemetery. A few figures clustered there – some teachers, parents, and the cast of the high school production of Oedipus Tyrannos.
A priest stood before a new headstone. Behind him the boy from the Drum Chorus beat on his drum.
The priest concluded the ceremony. ‘Ashes to ashes…’
Agnes stood at the edge of the grave. She wore a white dress and a white veil. She held a white rose in one hand. The other mourners all wore black. Agnes looked more a woman now. Sadness had ripened her beauty and dulled the edge of her tomboy spirits.
She sprinkled dirt into the grave.
‘Dust to dust… Good-bye, Andrew.’
The priest droned on: ‘Resquiat in pace, rest in peace, Andrew Renfield, amen.’
Agnes repeated, ‘Amen.’
And the others sounded, ‘Amen.’
A shovel bit into the pile of dirt and strewed it into the grave. The mourners started to drift away.
Agnes brought a handful of dirt to her mother. She held it out. ‘Mom.’
Mrs Renfield made no move to take it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’
Mrs Renfield’s face was blank and clean of tears. The veteran cocktail waitress choked back all her grief.
Agnes took her mother’s hand and pressed the dirt into it. ‘Here, Mom. You should throw some dirt in.’
‘I guess I wasn’t too good a mother to you kids,’ Mrs Renfield said. ‘I guess I should have stayed home and not gone working three different jobs at once. Only then who would we have gotten the money for apples and milk and those oatmeal cookies he had to have all the time?’
‘Mom, you should throw some dirt in.’
Agnes held out her mother’s hand and turned it over. She shook the dirt at the grave.
‘Oatmeal cookies. I guess I shouldn’t have kicked David out. I guess I should have just put up with his shit.’
Mrs Renfield shook her head and turned way. A man in a black cowboy hat and expensive suit came up. He bared his head and took Agnes by the hand.
‘Agnes, I’m so sorry.’
‘Thanks, Mr Gianni. Could you – I don’t know what to do with Mom—’
‘That’s all right. I’ll take her home. I’ve got Bruno watching the club tonight.’
‘Thanks, Mr Gianni.’
The man took Mrs Renfield away. The gravedigger finished filling the grave. He went away after the Priest.
Only Agnes and a few of the high school kids remained. The drummer carried on drumming. One of the girls lit another candle.
Agnes knelt in the dirt. She rubbed the snot from her nose and left a dirt smear there but she didn’t try to clean it off. She said in a low voice, her words in rhythm to the drum:
But no – already had his deathbell rung
The joys of all his life were said and sung:
His was harsh penance on St. Agnes’ Eve.
MISS QUINN emerged from the dark woods. She was the picture of necrophile chic, a black widow spider in veils and velvet. She stroked Agnes’ shoulder and cooed in her ear.
‘It’s fine, baby, it’s okay, girl. We’ll stay just as long as you need.’
She stared down at Agnes’ hands. The thorns of the white rose had cut Agnes’ palm, drawing blood. A drop of red stained the breast of her white dress.
Even from up the slope and through the trees, Tommy could see Miss Quinn’s hand rippling with small, insistent bumps.
HE KNEW he had to stop her somehow. Even from up here he could smell the essence of Miss Quinn dripping out of her pores. It was funny how he focused on that smell, and on the prickling feeling she gave him. It still hurt, but it was pain he needed now, pain he couldn’t do without. Shit, he had to admit it, he was getting drugged and addicted to the stink and prickling the Things made.
He brought his right hand in front of his face. He managed to move his fingers a little. But the skin was still dark, oozing Jelly, and a few vestigial tentacles dangled from his wrist. He shoved the hand into his pocket and headed down toward the cemetery.
The white veils and dress blew around Agnes’ face and body in the nightwind. Miss Quinn hovered by her. The drummer beat his drum.
Tommy staggered into the candle light. He went to Agnes. She moved from Miss Quinn and shrank into him.
‘Tommy…’
‘I’m here, Little Aggie. I’m here.’
‘Tommy, I’m cursed. First Andy. Now Angeline. She’s gone, Tommy – since last night. Where is she, Tommy? Do you know?’
Tommy looked at Miss Quinn. ‘No, Agnes. I don’t know what happened to Angeline,’ he said. God how easy it was to lie.
‘And you won’t go away with the Professor?’
He stroked her hair. He breathed in her scent. She hadn’t put on any perfume today. He could smell only the scent of the bath soaps and her shampoo and the flowering essence of her girl-flesh. ‘No, I won’t go with him. Not any more.’
She moaned a little and her body settled in closer to his. ‘Tommy… I’m glad you’re here…’
But something tore at his awareness and made him look away. At the edge of the light the Kid, Eddie, appeared. He pointed at Tommy.
‘There it is! There! There’s the Thing!’
Tommy pulled back. But Agnes whimpered and clung to him. He couldn’t leave her.
Behind the Kid the Team stepped out of the woods. The Professor walked up to Tommy and yanked his right hand out of his pocket. The hand, scaly and dark, trailed tentacles – a thing not human at all.
Something else tumbled out of his pocket too, almost lost in the twilight: a pair of silk lace underpants.
Agnes saw only the monstrosity that had been his hand. Her face crumpled up in disgust and shock and horror. ‘Oh, God! Tommy!’
‘Agnes,’ he said – ‘you got to believe me—’
But the Kid shrieked, ‘Get it! Kill it!’
The Professor twisted Tommy’s arm in a crushing grip. He drove Tommy to his knees.
The Professor spoke in a calm and deadly voice. ‘Papers. The ampules.’
Papers took out the small leather case. He removed one orange ampule and the modified needle. He pumped the substance into the needle and handed it to the Professor.
‘I’ll do it,’ the Professor said.
‘Stop it,’ Agnes cried. ‘What are you doing to him?’
‘Quiet, girl,’ the Professor said.
He plunged the needle into Tommy’s forearm.
Tommy pleaded with Agnes. He wanted to explain so much to her, to tell her everything. ‘Agnes – I never wanted to hurt anybody…’
The night swirled round and round and the candles sputtered and went out.
The Professor let Tommy fall to the ground.
In his eyes she looked like she was standing on the side of a motel pool and he was pinned to the bottom. She was rippling and waving and getting dimmer. ‘Agnes,’ he called, but his voice sounded small and faint even in his own ears. ‘Agnes … Little Aggie…’
‘Tommy!’
‘Shut up,’ said the Professor in his hard flat voice. ‘This Thing here killed your brother. It killed your friend Angeline, too. They found her body in the dumpster, Tommy. Can you still hear me? And we murdered an innocent man. Because of you. Trickman. Get the Burners.’
‘Puh, please, Professor,’ Papers said. ‘It still has some value. As a spuh, specimen.’
Tommy writhed on the ground, trying to stay conscious.
The Professor shook off Papers’ arm. ‘Do you realize what you’re saying?’
‘It’s been duh, done before.’
‘I know, but…’
‘Puh, please. Professor. For science.’
Tommy felt himself being lifted. He felt two strong arms cradling him. And then the Professor’s voice, but bitter, so bitter, with only a dying trace of compassion or of pity.
‘Come on, son.’
Behind him, as the Professor bore him away, Miss Quinn stooped and caught up her underpants. She slipped them into her bag and let Agnes lean against her.
He heard Miss Quinn saying in her sweetest lying tones, ‘It’s all right, girl. We hardly knew him. And if it’s true – if he really did kill Andrew—’
‘I need him, Miss Quinn! He didn’t do it, he isn’t bad, not really, not in his heart. He can’t be!’
He mustered all his strength to shout back to her, to warn her. ‘Agnes…’ It was only a moan that the nightwind stole away.
That was all he could manage. The grave, the candles, and Agnes drifted into darkness. It was only in his imagination or his mind’s eye that he could see Miss Quinn cradle Agnes and gaze back at him, her eyes grinning and leering.
