Fossil Lake: An Anthology of the Aberrant (6 page)

No, that wasn’t correct . . .

Its teeth
were
icicles!

Matthew pulled at Sharon’s arm but she wouldn’t move. Maybe she couldn’t move. He kept the lamp on the creature’s eyes, hoping to blind it long enough for them to get away.

“We can’t stay, Sharon. We can’t –”

She wouldn’t budge. Her lips formed unintelligible gibberish while a whisper escaped her throat. The predator shambled through the drifts toward them, cavernous mouth opening wide, black eyes fixed on its quarry.

“ . . . love . . . you . . .”

“Sharon, come on, dammit! We have to - - I can’t . . .”

She seemed a dead weight immersed in the snow, impossible to extract. Matthew left her there, panicked flight propelling him through the thick snow. Behind him, Sharon shrieked. Slamming fists to his ears did not deafen the sound reverberating inside his head. He turned, aimed the high intensity light.

The creature must have seen him but selected the easier prey, spilling over Sharon like some cascading polar waterfall. Icy mandibles punctured her throat, reducing her screams to weak gurgles. She was a fighter, Matthew always knew that about her. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked, but she proved no match for this thing. She had fallen into some mutating frozen pond that kept reshaping and moving around her, swallowing her whole. In the wash of light, Matthew saw Sharon’s flesh go blue, as if she had been refrigerated inside her own casket. Masticated in thick blood-drenched clumps, her flesh shredded like slabs of raw meat inside a blender.

Matthew fled. His lungs felt about to blow a hole through his chest, but he would not stop until he found a way out of here or until he was dead. If the road had not become completely hidden beneath the snow he knew it lay somewhere ahead. He slogged through the freezing drifts for what seemed hours, but it could have been only minutes. Matthew no longer could tell.

He heard the familiar sound before he noticed the lights. There was no mistaking the thick growl of that machine. A Snowcat was plowing its way just up the ridge from where he stood. He climbed towards the road and snapped on the high beam of his lamp, swinging it wildly over his head. The bright lamps of the Snowcat illuminated the landscape like a Christmas tree, and the tank-like behemoth came to a squealing stop.

“Had an accident?” the bearded man shouted from behind the large wheel. “You’re not the first tonight. Been picking up stranded folks all around here the past twelve hours.”

A man half conscious, Matthew climbed on board. He pulled off his wet gloves, wiped thick chunks of ice from his face. He warmed his hands near the blowing defroster.

“People, they get lost in these parts every winter,” the driver said. “Blizzards, they just sneak up on folks all the time. Hell, you’re one of the lucky ones. Sometimes we never find ‘em.”

“Thank Christ you’re here. I thought I was a dead man for sure.”

“Anyone else in your party?”

The question came like a sucker punch. Matthew managed to feign a momentary disorientation that fortunately required little acting.

“No . . . Just me. I was headed home to my wife. My SUV ran off the road.”

The bearded man started the Snowcat moving. “Here’s not a real good place to be wandering alone at this hour in this mess, let me tell you. I’ll get you to the lodge at Hagerman Pass. In the morning, if this bastard storm lets up, you can call for a tow for your car. It’s maybe an hour down the ridge.”

The driver’s attention remained focused on the road.

That was good.

*     *     *

Later, in a room at the lodge, Matthew lit a fire and sat by it, his mind racing. Then he made the call.

“Andrea? Sorry, honey, I didn’t mean to wake you. Listen, I had a little accident coming back. No, nothing serious, but I have to be here in the morning to find a tow and I may have to stay a few days. I’ll call tomorrow when everything’s a little more settled, okay? No, I’m not hurt, just tired. Go back to bed. Love you.”

He did love Andrea, he loved her very much, and Sharon must have known that. But he always tried to be fair with Sharon, had even tried loving her. What happened tonight was terrible, but it was over. Now he needed to get a grip, he had to think. There was Andrea to consider now.

Tomorrow, he would retrieve Sharon’s bag from the SUV, then burn everything. It might be touch and go for a while, a hairy situation when Sharon did not show up and the media posted her photo everywhere. If he were somehow linked to her, people would have questions. But they had covered their tracks for months, telling nobody about their stolen weekends.

In a few days, he would go to his office at the Denver Post. He would pour himself a hot cup of coffee, then phone to arrange the Carmelo Anthony interview, ask the Nuggets’ offensive how Rick Camela managed to wipe the court with him for 33 points when his team played Minnesota. Business as usual, no hurt, no foul.

He could get through this because he loved Andrea, beautiful, loving Andrea, the mother of his child.

The wife of his bosom.

The cunt.

His wife had spent this entire weekend without him, never once complaining. She didn’t protest the other weekends when he had decided to pick up and go skiing, or fishing, or whatever other horse crap he told her. She was the ideal wife who never nagged or bitched. Who said nothing when he left her alone for days with the baby, while he was off plowing Sharon six ways from Sunday. Normally, a man would think that was strange, but Matthew didn’t consider it strange at all.

. . . not since the night last winter when he’d stolen a peek at his wife’s e-mail and discovered that his good neighbor and golfing buddy, Dick Habersham, had been fucking Andrea’s eyeballs out for months. The bastard even wrote something about wanting to stick it into her ass their next time together. Andrea probably had been riding Habersham’s cock this entire weekend while Derek slept in his crib in the next room.

Thinking more clearly now, Matthew smiled. Suddenly the night’s events made perfect sense. Even an ice monster roaming Fossil Lake’s snow covered woods made sense, an insatiably hungry beast hunting those poor fools who found themselves lost among the fir trees and white pines on a cold and blustery winter’s night. Those lost souls must have proved such easy prey.

“Easy prey.” Matthew said the words aloud.

[“Sometimes we never find ‘em.”]

He stoked the fire, sipped his coffee.

He would wait a respectable amount of time. Maybe a month or two, when questions regarding Sharon had died down and the media moved on to other stories. Plenty of winter remained, and the mountains along Fossil Lake got hit with blizzards well into the spring.

“The iceman cometh,” he muttered.

He climbed into the bed, pulling blankets over him and savoring their warmth. Speaking to Andrea had cleared his head. His world again had righted itself, again had meaning. He understood what to do now. Tonight he would sleep well after all.

Because there was no telling when another blizzard might hit these Rocky Mountains.

And because he knew that, unlike Sharon, his wife Andrea loved to ski.

WHAT’S YOUR BEEF?

Mark Orr

It wasn’t the first ride Bert Granchi took in a car trunk, but it was the longest. 

The car bounced, driving the rim of the flat spare tire into his ribs. Bert grunted behind the duct tape gag. How far out into the country was the asshat going to take him before turning him loose and letting him walk back to town? They must be halfway to Fossil Lake by now, if not beyond it.

That she-male bitch Connie Maxon! This was all her fault!

So he sent her a few e-mails calling her a cunt for her bad reviews of the stories he scattered online like brilliant, beautiful stars across the skies. So he posted nasty things about her and her sicko lesbian lovers all over his blogs. So he called her house and cussed her out, and her asshole mother, too.

So what? She didn’t have to go and sic her uncle-fucking brother on him –

A sharp turn rammed Bert’s head into the tire well. He tugged at the ropes holding his hands behind his back and lashed to his ankles. No use. Jerry Maxon must have been a fucking Boy Scout. Bert usually got loose before getting dumped in the fucking middle of nowhere, but not this time. It would serve Maxon right to have to lift him bodily out of the trunk before cutting him free.

From the sound transmitted through the tires to the chassis, they were on gravel now. Bert didn’t know there were still roads left in Illinois that weren’t paved. Maybe they were in Indiana, or Michigan, or even Wisconsin. How would he get back from there? He thrashed around, but only tightened the knots.

Even the gravel gave out eventually, and dust from a dirt road drifted into the trunk. Bert sneezed, and waited. There was nothing else to do, except plan the story he would write about redneck cock-suckers who kidnapped darkly Gothic writers for ridiculously long joyrides.

He would call it “The Dark Ride,” and have Jerry Maxon get devoured by a creature from the Outer Darkness. Or maybe have him swallowed whole by the huge cunt of his lesbian sister. Then she would drink bleach and die, and Bert’s revenge would be complete. He would publish it in one of the fifty or sixty blogs and online journals he kept, and his fans would know of the horrors inflicted upon him by his enemies. That would be a sweet revenge, indeed.

Let her give
that
story a bad review, if she dared. He would show her he was capable of writing a truly frightening tale, worthy of his literary heroes. Not even Lovecraft or Poe could describe such a horrifying end for the asshat and the cunt.

Who cared about grammar or spelling, or the restrictive conventions of so-called literature? His work was unbound by the formulas of lesser writers, a new style that was beyond the petty concerns of plot, characterization, or theme. Only Bert Granchi was the true successor of the masters of his genre, and only he could tell the terrifying tale of his unearthly vengeance.

Bert shaped the gruesome demise of the Maxons in his mind as the big Ford Crown Victoria hurtled on through the night. He had gotten to the point where Jerry was being engulfed by the vast vagina when the car slewed around and stopped suddenly, slamming him against the back of the trunk, jolting the exquisite prose out of his mind and replacing it with the fear of what would come next.

Bert Granchi, heir to the grand tradition of Lovecraft and Poe, wet his pants.

The lid opened, framing his tormentor in the light of the full moon behind and above his rangy frame. Bert blinked until his eyes adjusted. Two other figures moved into view, one of them holding a flashlight. The hands of these others reached in, dragging him over the edge and dumping him on the grass, where his nose was assaulted by a horrific stench. He gagged behind the duct tape, and thrashed against his bonds.

Maxon reached down and wrenched the gag away from Bert’s mouth. Bert screamed at the pain of losing a healthy portion of his skimpy mustache and beard to the adhesive.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Bert,” Maxon said. “Did you enjoy the ride?”

“Fuck you, asshat,” Bert said. One of the others kicked Bert in the ribs. He sucked in a big lungful of putrid air, then retched on the ground.

“I don’t think he cares for the way old Bossie smells, Jerry,” a voice said.

Bert wriggled away from his vomit. He saw a dark mass on the ground ten feet from where he lay. It looked like the carcass of some large animal. He spit the last of the puke from his mouth and said, “What is that? A cow?”

Jerry Maxon laughed. “Of course, you idiot. Why do you think we call her ‘old Bossie’?”

“She stinks.”

“Well, naturally. Bossie’s been dead for, oh, a week or so.”

“All right, fucker. I’ve smelled your fucking cow. Cut me loose and go away.”

“Cut you loose? Why would we do that?”

“Because you have to, asshat. You can’t just leave me tied up out here in the fucking country, next to a dead cow!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Bert, old pal. We’ve got something a little more interesting in mind.”

Laughing, Jerry’s friends picked Bert up by his elbows and dragged him closer to the rotting carcass. He tried to puke again, but there was nothing left.

“Don’t you hate the dry heaves?” the man on his right said. “I know I do.”

The other one agreed. They stopped beside the cow. Maxon reached down and pulled on its ribcage. It opened up like a giant clamshell.

“We cleaned your new home out as much as we could,” Maxon said. “You won’t have to move in with a bunch of guts and such. Just well-seasoned beef. Does that suit you?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, you cock-sucking uncle-fucker?”

Maxon grabbed Bert by the face. “I’m talking about sewing you up in the corpse of this fucking cow, you son-of-a-bitch. I’m talking about protecting my sister from your shit. I’m talking about making sure you keep your fucking mouth shut from here on. Is that clear enough, asswipe?”

Darkly Gothic writer Bert Granchi shit himself.

Maxon wrinkled his nose. “That doesn’t help the aroma around here any.”

“You can’t do this! Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just being, you know, who I am.”

“Yeah, I know you were, Bert. You think you’re the bad boy of the new Gothic revival, and you’ve just naturally got to piss off anyone you feel like, and they don’t get to say squat about it. Fuck that. It’s time you learned that there are some people you just don’t go around pissing off. I’m one of them. Drop him boys.”

Bert hit the ground hard.

“Okay, let’s get this over with.” Maxon said.

Bert heard the snick of a switchblade opening. The rope holding his bound hands to his ankles was severed.

“Can’t stuff you inside all bunched up like that,” they told him. “That wouldn’t be very comfortable, now would it?”

Next he felt his clothes being cut off. “Hey, what are you guys, faggots?”

“You wish, mother-fucker,” Maxon said. “We’re just concerned about your health. It’s going to get mighty warm in that cow tonight. We wouldn’t want you to get heat-stroke, or something.”

“We ain’t gonna wipe you ass for you, though,” one of the others said. “You’re just gonna have to lie there in your own shit.”

“Fuck you, you cuntboy faggot!”

Someone kicked him in the crotch, doubling him up.

“That wasn’t very nice, Bert,” Maxon said. “In fact, I don’t think I care to hear anything else come out of your pie-hole.” He tore loose a long piece of duct tape and wrapped it several times around Bert’s face and the back of his neck, not being very careful about Bert’s long, greasy hair. Some wound up taped into his mouth.

That chore done, Maxon held the cow’s body open while the others picked Bert up and placed him inside the corpse.

“I wouldn’t wiggle around too much in there,” Maxon said. “The ribs are exposed. You might impale yourself on one, if you get too frisky.”

Bert tried to scream.

“Sorry? I didn’t quite catch that. If you want out, you just say so and we’ll pull you free right away.”

He tried again, choking on strands of hair, breathing rotten cow-stink and his own shit-stink above piss and sweat and other indescribable odors.

“How’s that? Still not getting a clear signal. Well, boys, doesn’t look like Bert minds too much. Let’s sew him up.”

Bert thrashed around, poking himself on the cow’s ribs.

Maxon leaned over him. “If you’re worried about air? Not a problem.” He pointed. “Good thing cows come equipped with assholes, isn’t it? You’ll get all the air you need through old Bossie’s butt. Considerate of us, wasn’t it?” Maxon glanced around at the others. “You guys got the sewing kit ready?”

The taller of the other men held up a spool of fishing line and a large needle. “Ready when you are.”

Maxon smiled down into Bert’s face. “You just relax, and we’ll have you all nice and cozy in a few minutes.” He dropped the clamshell side of beef closed.

The corpse jerked and twitched as the men sewed the halves together. It took a while, but eventually they had old Bossie back in one piece again. Bert heard the big Ford engine fire up, and the car drove away.

He lay still a long time, willing his pulse to slow down. He stared out of Bossie’s ass. The moon illuminated the small opening, not that there was anything to see but a few weeds just beyond. Bert flexed his arms and legs, unable to loosen the ropes.

They’ll come back in a while,
he thought.
This is just a big joke, and they’ll get me out of here soon. I’ve just got to be calm until they do. Ha-ha, very funny, Maxon. We’ll see how funny the law thinks this is.

Bert felt a tickle along his side and belly. Something was moving around inside the cow, something that wasn’t Bert Granchi. Or maybe a lot of little somethings.

How long had the cow been dead? Maxon said a week. Bert shivered. Something dropped onto his face from the decaying meat above, something small and wiggly. More fell on him, and still more. Had he been able to scream, he would have, for Bert knew what he shared his new abode with.

Maggots. Thousands and thousands of maggots. Above him, below him, all around him, the wriggling larvae of a thousand flies were slowly devouring the carcass. How long until they started in on his very much living flesh?

Bert writhed and pushed his feet against what had been old Bossie’s shoulders. The only way out was through that very small hole, but he might be able to force himself far enough through to get someone’s attention.

If there was anyone around. If he could get the duct tape off of his mouth.

He looked up at the narrow circle of moonlight just as something partially blocked it, and he froze, forgetting all about the maggots.

A large rat stared in at him through Bossie’s bung hole, nose twitching at the unexpected scent of very frightened human inside the rotting corpse. Bert’s fingers dug into the slimy, decaying flesh above him as he tried to pull himself back with his fingertips, away from the open anus.

The rat crept in after him.

Another followed.

Bert lay very still as the vermin twitched their nasty little noses around his. One crawled up into his hair, while the other checked out the duct tape gag.

That’s it, little friend,
Bert thought.
Gnaw the tape away, and I’ll be able to get someone to come get me out of this.

But the rat decided there was nothing edible there. He felt it slither down his arm to where his hands were tied over his ass. It nipped at a fingertip. Bert jerked his fists closed, but the rat backed out before he could get a grasp. It sank sharp little rodent teeth into the meat at the base of his thumb. Bert twitched and wriggled, unable to voice the scream clogging his throat. The rat slipped down his hip, and he felt it poking around his groin, trying to get underneath him.

The uncle-fucker is trying to get to my balls!
Bert turned his head to look down, hoping to glare the rodent away from his genitals.

The rat on his head, which he had forgotten about, slipped off and dangled in front of his eyes, one little paw tangled in his matted mane. Bert’s eyes crossed as he focused on the rat. Puffs of air from his nostrils ruffled the vermin’s fur. Its mouth opened wide, and sank its teeth into Bert’s nose.

Oh, God!
he screamed internally.
Rats carry rabies, don’t they? I’m gonna get fucking rabies! Oh, Jesus, get me the fuck out of this!

If Jesus heard, He did nothing.

Bert shook his head, dislodging the one rat, but in the process tilted his lower body up enough for the explorer down south to slip into his loin area. He bucked his hips, trying to smash the monster before it ate his balls.

It didn’t eat his balls, but it did take a healthy bite from his penis. Bert arched his back and shivered with the exquisite pain. His scalp scraped across the upper ribs and parted like the Red Sea. A wave of blood flowed down into his eyes, and nose. He snorted, blowing red snot and tears out of Old Bossie’s asshole.

His wet nasal assault connected with the snout of a creature much larger than his tormentors, lurking just beyond his air hole. It hissed, and turned, and lifted a brushy tail.