D.O.A. Extreme Horror Anthology (24 page)

It came away in a mix of black and red.

Clemet had only seen blackened blood once before in his young life, when Grandpa Jones was dying and the doctors said his bowels bled from the inside out. Before it was done, the man vomited what looked like a quarter ton of wet coffee grounds all over the living room carpet before he fell eternally still. They had to hold his wake in a neighbor’s house because the stench wouldn’t come out of the rug. Clemet never forgot that reek— it was the same smell that wafted from the wastepaper basket between his trembling hands.

Clemet fumbled with the phone, his blood soaked fingers slipping over the keys as his hands shook from dread. He wondered if it was too late to call Doc Pearson at home, or how long it would take an ambulance from the city to come all the way out to the boonies to rescue him. After a few misdials, he tossed the phone to the floor, scrambled to his feet, grabbed his keys and headed out the door with trashcan in hand.

The drive into the city was a fifty-mile nightmare of staggered gear shifts between spastic spewing. By the time he arrived at the hospital the right side of his truck was crimson coated from tipping the full bin out the window every few miles.

A cute little receptionist greeted Clemet at the front desk, explained there would be an hour’s wait, then stuck a passel of forms under his nose, which he promptly smothered in blood.

He went straight to an examining room after that, where the baffled medical staff fussed and mussed, prodded and poked, squawked and squealed for hours trying to discover the mysterious source of Clemet’s bloody vomiting. Some bright intern called Clemet’s home doctor, in hopes there was some past medical history involved that Clemet didn’t know enough about to share.

“What’s going on with you, Clem?” Doc Pearson asked. “Dragging an old man all the way out here in the middle of the night.”

Clemet pulled at the paper-thin gown, ensuring his privates weren’t being made public. “Nothing. Just not feeling good, is all.”

Doc Pearson flipped through Clemet’s chart before he spoke again. “Not feeling good? You call vomiting nearly five quarts of blood in the last hour alone just plain old not feeling good? Son, if this is your idea of not feeling good, I’d love to see your idea of feeling sick.”

“What’s wrong with me Doc? Is it like Gramp Jones?”

Doc Pearson shook his graying head at Clemet. “Nothing so simple.”

Clemet swallowed hard as his stomach lurched again. “Is it like momma?”

“No, son. It’s not cancer.” The doctor eyed Clemet’s chart again. “In fact, I never thought I’d say these words, but I kind of wished it was. Then at least we would know what we were dealing with.”

“Then what is it?”

“We don’t know.”

“But you’re my doctor.”

“And that’s why I’m here at three o’clock in the morning, because I’m your doctor, Clem. I just don’t know what’s going on with you.”

Clemet’s nostrils flared. “You guys poked more holes in me than a moth eaten curtain and took enough stuff from me to make a whole new man from. You took all manners of pictures of my insides with that x-ray machine. Then you ran that camera up both ends of me to get some colored photos, and after all that, you still don’t know?”

Doc Pearson shrugged.

Clemet winced as his stomach roiled. Doc Pearson pushed the tall, red trashcan marked “Bio-hazard” toward Clemet. The idea of using a normal basin was abandoned after he filled the first one in a few heaves.

As Clemet hovered over the can, readying himself for the next onslaught, Pearson said, “It just doesn’t make any sense. You show no signs of internal bleeding, no drop in hemoglobin or other blood levels. In fact all of your labs are perfect. If it weren’t for the vomiting, I’d say you were in the best shape of your life.”

“Doc,” Clemet said between heaves. “You gotta help me. I can’t live like this.” He pitched forward against the can as God squeezed his insides some more. “Surely I must be dying.”

“That’s the thing, Clem. You’re not. Whatever is happening, it’s not killing you. Sure, you can’t eat, but we can intravenously feed you if need be. But this blood, it isn’t coming from you. God only knows where it’s coming from, but you aren’t the source. At least that’s what science says.”

With nothing but his eyes, Clemet pleaded for help as a steady stream of black goop poured from his mouth into the can.

“I know,” Doc Pearson said. “I know, son, and I wished like hell I could help. But we really don’t know what to do for you. You aren’t responding to any of the usual anti-emetic treatments, neither the shots nor the suppositories.”

Clemet grunted at the memory. “And it’ll be a cold day in hell before I put anything up there again. After those darned things and that camera, I’d be surprised if I even make a noise when I fart.”

Doc Pearson laughed, clapping Clemet on the back. “I can sympathize, son. Wait till you get my age. You won’t believe the stuff they want you to do.”

Rolling away from the can, Clemet grinned as best he could. He knew the doctor meant well.

“Let’s talk about your diet,” Doc Pearson said.

“I ain’t on a diet,” Clemet said.

“I mean your eating habits. What did you have for supper last night?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t stop puking.”

“The night before?”

Clemet turned away, unable to meet the doctor’s gaze after such an awkward question. “You know. The usual stuff.”

“Such as?”

Clemet narrowed his eyes at the doctor. “Don’t you recall? It was Paul Baxter’s wake.”

The doctor dropped his pen and his smile. “I’m sorry, Clem. I nearly forgot about that.”

The men fell quiet for a few moments, a silence punctuated by the occasional belch from Clemet’s ever rumbling belly.

At length, Pearson asked, “Does this mean you’re still eating folk’s sins?”

Clemet winced, this time from weight of the doctor’s question. Everyone knew what Clemet did, who he was, but Doc Pearson was one of the few people in the small mountain community who didn’t subscribe to the age old practice of sin eating. He was also one of the few folks who would look Clemet straight in the eye, not to mention calling him by name.

“We shouldn’t talk about that,” Clemet whispered.

“You’re sick, Clem. Maybe something you ate at the Baxter’s has something to do with all of this.”

“I told you, it was the same old, same old. Chicken and biscuits. Pie. Lots of pie.” Clemet burped again with the thought of all that pie.

“Clemet, I’m not talking about the chicken, or the pie.”

Lost in confusion, Clemet furrowed his brow.

Pearson heaved a tired sigh. “Look, you know I don’t get into all of this backwoods mumbo-jumbo, so far be it from me to try and piece it together for you. But as I understand it, after the wake these people leave out food on the casket in hopes that it soaks up whatever sins the recently deceased person had lingering about, right?”

“Sounds right,” Clemet said.

“Then the eater—that’s you—comes up in the night, sight unseen, and eats as much of it as he can, in the family’s hopes that you’ll consume these left over sins.” Raising an eyebrow, the doctor looked over his glasses at Clemet.

Clemet nodded.

Exhaling another long sigh, Pearson finished with, “Then you take the rest of the food, along with as much cash as the family can spare, in payment for your kind deed. Is that all?”

The way Doc Pearson put it made Clemet feel sort of foolish. There was so much more to it than that. Like the pressure put on him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Or the way he spent his whole life being treated like a leper by the very same folks who depended on him to save their immortal souls. Not to mention the hours upon hours Clemet spent in prayer after each sin eating session.

He held his rumbling belly as he hung his head. “Yeah. That’s all.”

“And nothing about that seems remotely connected to this?” The doctor waved a hand at the nearly full trashcan.

“I thought you didn’t believe in backwoods voodoo.”

“I don’t. And I didn’t call it voodoo.”

“Then what are you getting at?”

“If the problem isn’t physical, and it isn’t, then what’s left?”

Clemet narrowed his eyes at Doc Pearson. “You saying I’m crazy?”

“No. I’m saying it’s awfully coincidental that the night after you think you’ve eaten the mistakes of a dead man, you start vomiting blood as black as sin itself.”

Clemet never claimed to be smart. He knew his limits better than most, and tried to live his life accordingly. Yet no sooner had the last word left the doctor’s mouth, Clemet made a connection that would have left his mother proud. The vomiting began after he ate Paul Baxter’s sins. Not just the widow’s food, because that wasn’t what was on the casket by the time Clemet arrived. No. Clemet consumed the man’s actual sins. There was only one question left. What in God’s name had he eaten? Clemet eyed the bloody black insides of the trashcan, trying to imagine what kind of trouble an old fart like Paul Baxter could have possibly gotten up to.

“Clemet,” the doctor said. “I’m gonna get a specialist to come talk to you.”

“You mean like a gut doctor?”

Doc Pearson shook his head, then tapped his temple with one finger.

“I ain’t crazy,” Clemet said, before he leaned over the can to vomit again.

“I’m not saying you are. But we have to rule out every possible problem, and as much as I hate to say it, this is looking more psychosomatic with each full can.”

Clemet could see there was no use arguing. Wiping a trail of dark red from his chin, he said, “Go get your psycho doctor then. Let’s do this.”

The doctor left the room.

Clemet left shortly after.

It didn’t take near as long to get to the Baxter farm once Clemet got the hang of shifting between heaves. He climbed out of the truck, empting his plastic bin along the drive as he approached the house, not wanting to carry the filthy thing at all, much less full of puke. Clemet took his time approaching the house, working out how to ask a widow for her dead husband’s deepest secrets.

As he set foot on the first step, the porch lit up and the door flew open. A frail, elderly woman stood in the doorway, staring down the length of the steps in surprise.

“You?” Mrs. Baxter asked. Once she realized who he was, she dropped her head, refusing to look up at him again. “What are you doing back here?”

“I hate to bother you ma’am,” he said. “I just need to ask you about a few things.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

As Clemet reached the porch proper, he got a good look at the widow Baxter. She was in an awful state, as nearly ragged as her old, worn gown. Her eyes were swollen with grief, huge and red, probably from hours of crying.

“I’m sorry,” Clemet said, backing away. “I think I made a mistake. I’m sorry for troubling you.”

“I still don’t—oh, my! Are you all right?”

Clemet was far from all right. He doubled over his bucket again, vomiting up what he swore was his own intestines this time. Slick chucks of black tar slid from his mouth, filling the pail in wet slops.

To Clemet’s surprise, the widow grabbed him by the elbow, guiding him into the house. “Come on, you shouldn’t be out in this kind of state.”

Clemet could only nod in agreement. She led him to the living room, sitting him on the edge of a plastic covered couch, while she dashed away into what he assumed was the kitchen.

“I’ll just get you a glass of water and a towel,” she said as she left the room.

Holding his bucket between his legs, Clemet looked around the room to distract himself from his seizing guts. Although he had been here only last night, it was by the backdoor to the parlor, where the body and his meal waited for him. The whole affair lasted a meager twenty minutes. Eat and run, that was his dad’s motto. Now it was Clemet’s.

A roaring fireplace gave the room a warm glow, almost too warm as far as Clemet was concerned. He stood to move to the far end of the couch, when he caught a distinct smell in the air overpowering the pungent odor of his bloody bucket—the char of burning paper. A foot or so in front of the open fireplace laid a thick photo album. A few sparks from the crackling fire had leapt to the cover of the album, setting it to a slow burn. His nausea forgotten, Clemet dropped his bucket to the floor, kicked the album away from the flames, then stomped on the smoldering cover until it was out. He picked up the hefty album in time to hear the widow return.

“I thought you might like some tea instead—” she started, but paused when she spied the album. “Where did you find that?”

“Near the fire,” Clemet said. “It was almost in flames.”

“Put it back.”

“What?”

“Put it back,” the widow said as she placed her tray on the coffee table. “It’s full of bad memories. Please, just toss it on the fire.”

Clemet understood where she was coming from. When his momma died, Clemet nearly sold the house, stopping only when he realized it was all he had left of her. “Mrs. Baxter, I know this ain’t my place to say, but you don’t want to burn up all your memories of Mr. Baxter. You’ll even miss the bad ones one day.”

Mrs. Baxter pursed her thin lips as she shook her head. “Burn it, Clemet.”

Clemet started at the sound. He hadn’t heard his own name from a local woman’s mouth since before momma passed on. He couldn’t imagine what had the woman so fired up about the picture book that she would let her just push a lifetime of traditions aside like that.

Clemet cracked the album open, in hopes of showing her some photo that might lure her into reason. “But why would you want to burn…” was all he could say before he laid eyes on the pages of the book and the nausea took him again.

While the photographs featured Mr. Baxter, they didn’t include his widow.

“Give it to me!” the widow shouted as she lunged forward, attempting to snatch the photos away.

At least a foot taller than the elderly woman, Clemet held the album at arms length while he flipped from page to page. The first picture was in black and white, showing a young Mr. Baxter, and an even younger girl, perhaps seven or so. But the thing Mr. Baxter was doing to the child was something God never intended to be done.