Forever Never Ends (16 page)

Yeah, like that, except this fungus thing used to be your drinking buddy.

Chester tongued his chaw and flexed his arthritic joints, grateful that the Lord had seen fit to throw down a sunny day. If it had been raining, Chester probably would have laid in the hay till the storm passed, his muscles cramped up like a pine knot. He tiptoed down the stairs, grimacing at every squeak of the dry chestnut.

He pulled the twine strap that lifted the corncrib latch from the inside. If Mushbrains was outside the door, Chester knew he was done for. He kicked open the door and bounced out onto the packed matted dirt of the barn floor, arms up like a karate fighter. Nothing stirred but a scrawny rooster that hobbled out of a stall, its red comb quivering as it swiveled its head.

Chester clung to the wall as he edged toward the barn opening. He didn't know what was safer, the cool dark shadows or the sterile exposure of daylight. He was debating a run for the farmhouse when the decision was made for him. Swampy breathing came from the far side of the barn.

He bolted across the yard, his limbs flailing like a crippled hay rake. Forty feet of fiery lung pain later, he was on the porch, kicking aside the broken screen door. He staggered into the living room, blind from sunshine, and bumped into the splintery carnage that DeWalt had strewn. He felt along the wall for his thirty-caliber, then decided on the shotgun.

He wanted whatever corpse old Mushbrains left behind to be unrecognizable.

He thumbed back the triggers, comforted by the feel of the cold steel. Mushbrains was easy meat now, if "meat" was the right word.

"Old Mushy ain't moving too swift lately," he said, his spirit soaring now that he was armed. He peered through the door, waiting for Mushbrains to slog within range. Toenails clicked on the floor behind him. He turned and saw Boomer.

Good old Boomer
.

Good old Boomer, his fur now bristles, his spine bowed from the weight of whatever roiled in his bloated belly. His old stringy eyes had flowered into purple hyacinths, and the nose resembled a moldy peach. The drooping leathery tongue was veined like a maple leaf. Stinkweed thorns crowned the forehead and his grapevine tail wagged in stupid joy.

Chester jerked one trigger and his hound dog shredded like a December jack-o’-lantern. Chester wiped at his eyes, eyes that were too dry and tired to make tears. He opened a bureau drawer and filled his overall pockets with twenty-gauge shells. It was time to deal with the mushbrained monster that had pissed on his corn flakes and crammed grit in his craw.

Chester walked into the sunlight, feeling like Bruce Willis in "Die Hard." Mushbrains sloughed toward him, leaving behind glistening clumps of itself as it closed. Chester looked into the glowing, scallop-edged eyes to make certain there was nothing of Don Oscar left inside.

The thing tried to lift its arms, limbs that were like a wet scarecrow's. The moist flap in the middle of Mushbrains's face lifted. Milky bubbles spewed into the air.

"
Shu-shaaa
," it was saying, but a fistful of number ten shot peppered into its pulpy flesh and made its own sibilant splash.

The soggy stump of the creature remained upright, and Chester reloaded and gave it another double helping of hot pellets. Still it stood, a fungus leeched onto the earth and quivering like a windblown cornstalk.

Chester flipped out the spent shells, the acrid tang of gunpowder suffocating the scents of spring. He was sighting down the barrel again when he heard a revving engine. Somebody was coming around the bend toward the farmhouse.

DeWalt's Pathfinder came roaring out of the pines and down the red dirt road. At the same time, a loping hunk of something that might once have been a buck leaped out of the woods and cut in the path of the sport utility vehicle. The sport utility vehicle swerved, then its front left wheel dipped into a rut. The bumper glanced the deer-thing and caused an explosion of foul green fluid. The Pathfinder bounced once before going over on its side.

The fallen beast shook itself, shedding the antlers that sprouted like dead shrubs from its head. The back end of its body had disintegrated from the impact of the vehicle, but the deer-thing rose unsteadily on its front legs. Then it skittered into the woods on the other side of the road, pieces of its spongy flesh and organs dribbling out behind. Chester glanced at Mushbrains and saw that it wasn't going anywhere, so he jogged painfully up the road to the Pathfinder, his gun at his hip.

The left tires on the SUV were still spinning, trying to grab traction in the air. DeWalt crawled out of the cracked sunroof. He was halfway free when Chester reached him. DeWalt's head had a gash in it, and Chester was relieved to see that the man’s California Yankee blood was red.

Chester checked the woods to make sure the deer-thing was gone. He heard some boughs snapping, but it was just another tree falling.

He leveled the shotgun at DeWalt, who was still on his hands and knees, shaken by the crash. "Let's see your eyes.”

"Let me see yours."

They looked at each other, Chester's brown rheumy eyes gazing into DeWalt's blue-ringed pupils.

"Okay, then," Chester said, leaning the shotgun against the bent hood of the SUV and stooping to help his friend. DeWalt stood with a groan.

"Anything broken?" Chester worked his chaw rapidly.

"I don't think so. Couple of dings, that's all." DeWalt touched his head and examined the blood on his fingers.

Chester nodded toward the Pathfinder. "Told you that was an uppity piece of shit. Shoulda got a Ford." Chester shot a brown stream of saliva onto the cracked windshield.

"I'm glad to see you, Chester. After last night—"

"Yeah, I know. I wondered if you had turned, too. That’s why I didn’t try to warn you. But that don’t explain why you boot-scooted the hell out of here so fast. I mighta been sick or trapped in there, for all you knew."

“Hell, Chester, I was scared.”

Chester nodded. Couldn’t argue with that. “Me, too, a little.”

"What the hell's going on?"

"I ain't rightly sure, but why don't we go up on the porch and talk about it? Can you walk okay?"

DeWalt nodded and took a step, pain creasing his face.

"Have a seat in the rocker. I'll be up in a minute. And watch out for the chickens."

"Chickens?"

"They move slow, but the little peckerheads might have caught whatever it is. Me, I got some unfinished business.”

Chester walked toward the barn to finish off Mushbrains. Then he would have to put whatever was rolling around in the hog pen out of its misery. After that, he planned on rounding up his guns and twisting the cap off a smooth jar of moonshine. Times like these, a man needed to be fortified.

***

They were running through a jungle. Only the jungle was actual size and they were tiny, like in a
Honey, I Shrunk The Kids
movie. Rick Moranis was Robert. Huge pollen motes rolled after them like tumbleweeds, and hairy clover stems were bending down to swat at their bodies as they ran.

Ginger tripped over a pine needle and she bent to help her up and looked right into the jaws of a fallen dandelion that was a bright yellow lion. The lion opened its mouth but they ran away. Now Robert and Kevin were lost somewhere in the green-wire black-shadow twig alleys.

She heard them call, but when she tried to run with Ginger in her arms, she sank into moss. Its fingers clutched at her bones as she saw Robert and Kevin run inside a long pale hallway. The hallway unfolded like a parachute, so she followed with Ginger and then they were inside the throat of the lily.

The throat shook and vibrated, and a great roar rose from deep in the thing’s belly:
SHU-SHAAAAA.

Then the throat of the lily was closing and the kids were wallowing in amber nectar. She tried to scream but the honeydew filled her mouth and she was suffocating—

Then she woke up on Robert's side of the bed, a pillow over her face.

Tamara glanced at the red eye of the clock. Nearly nine. The high sun pierced the shutters.

Friday was her day to sleep late, since she had no classes. Robert had gotten the kids off to school. Her tongue was dry and starchy, as if the Russian army had camped in her mouth. She tried to raise herself and head for the bathroom, but she was heavy with sleep, confused by the dream.

At least this one can't come true.

Unlike the death of her father, which had been vividly pre-created in a dream, this particular subconscious brain flick wasn't filmed in an earthly setting. Well, at least not a natural-sized one.

But the time she had dreamed of Kevin soaring over a canyon like a bird, with his wings failing in mid-flight, he had broken his hip the next day while jumping a gully. So maybe it was all symbolism.

Robert had been wonderful while Kevin was healing. Kevin's cast came up to his waist to keep his pelvis immobile. There was a bar slung between his legs, and Robert had to carry him like that, with one hand on the bar and the other under Kevin's back. Robert insisted that the family keep up their routine, and since Tamara had her hands full with Ginger, Robert hauled Kevin everywhere they went, to the zoo, the circus, basketball games, or Tamara's academic functions.

Robert's forearm was rubbed raw from the plaster, but he never uttered one word of complaint. He bore whatever pain was necessary to keep the family together. He was always ready to make time for the kids. In fact, she sometimes suspected that might be the reason he'd never made the kind of selfish sacrifices it took to become a radio star.

What had changed? Why is he so cruel about my Gloomies? What has happened to us?

She kicked away the covers and stood, peeling off her nightgown. She walked to the window and raised the shade, letting the sun warm her. The woods that bordered the back of their lot were airy and calm and full of songbirds. The new buds seemed to have swollen and exploded almost overnight.

The forest could be a symbol for unknown danger, or it could just be a bunch of trees.

Either way, she was going to do her thirty sit-ups, take a shower, and go down to Barkersville to do some shopping. Maybe she would buy Ginger a yellow Easter dress. Then she'd go for a drive, just for the hell of it. Stay out late just to bug Robert. Let
him
worry, for a change. She flipped on the radio and heard Robert talking over the fade of a
Beyoncé
song.

“This is Bobby Lee with you, stick around, Dennis Thorne's going to have a Blossomfest preview and the rest of WRNC's High Country News, coming your way right after these messages.”

Why did she love that insensitive bastard so much?

She looked out the window at the top of Bear Claw, preparing herself for the expected flash of light. The ridge was golden in the sun, the striations of its slopes like waves in an ocean of soil and stone. No strange beacons signaled her, no meaningless syllables pierced her skull. The clouds brushed the mountains as if scrubbing away the nonsense of telepathy and an overactive imagination.

Maybe Robert was right. Gloomies didn’t exist.

***

Eggs . . . shish
.

The alien collected the symbol, added it to the others that had drifted into the cave. It had received more input from its roots and tendrils, but the symbols made no discernible patterns. After the symbols passed through its filters and reached its center, they were digested along with the bright energy of the forests. The alien fed on the information, but could not focus on all the new signals that flooded its raw senses.

The creature pulsed against the granite, heated by the solar rays that leaked from the mouth of the cave. It was growing stronger from the sustenance. Soon it would be able to move, to crawl from the darkness and expand its search for food. In the meantime, it would rest and analyze.

***

James dropped a plate, sending thick ceramic shards across the concrete floor. Buddy appeared in the serving window, his face purpling like a plum above his stained apron. "That's the second one you dropped today, boy. What's going on?"

"It's a little steamy back here, that's all.” James felt the invisible white eyes burning from the counter and booths right through the wall. "Makes things slippery."

"Well, you watch it now, or those plates are coming out of your paycheck."

"Yes, sir."

James swept the dish-room floor, the
slushhh
of the wet broom straws reminding him of last night's encounter. But then, everything was reminding him of last night's encounter: the boiled Brussels sprouts, the day's vegetable side that everybody ignored; the pallid green of the creamed broccoli crusting around the edges of bowls; the parsley garnishes pasted to the plates by Buddy's award-winning gravy; even the zucchini he had sliced, making him think of green fibrous fingers with every stroke of the knife.

"We're in a quandary, Mr. Tin Man," he said quietly. "What you might call a smorgasbord of problems."

The Hobart didn't answer, only opened its dewy steel jaws in hunger for more dirty dishes.

"On the one hand, you've got a creature running loose in Windshake, something that might be dangerous to other people. But on the other, you've got me as the only witness, and what am I but a crazy drunken nigger, probably freaked on angel dust and spouting voodoo Zulu nonsense?

"And on another hand—and let's hope you never get three hands, because then you'll be as creeped-up as that hothouse nightmare I saw last night—I've got Aunt Mayzie to worry over and protect, so I can't hop in the Honda and rediscover the Underground Railroad. Because she's not going to budge, even if the devil himself and his skinhead hordes come to stake their rightful claim to this sorry town."

The Hobart stared, uncomprehending. James lifted his eyes to the food-specked ceiling of the dish room.

"Lord, I hope you're listening, because I have a feeling we're going to need some help. I take back all that stuff about asking you to give Mayzie her angel's wings early because you needed a black face to spice up Your choir. And I take back that ‘White makes right’ guilt trip that I used to lay on you. And I'm sorry for—hell, Lord, this could take the rest of eternity, and I don't have that long. Just get Your white ass in gear. If you really want to save us the way the preachers claim, now's your chance."