The Becoming - a novella (7 page)

She had heard the
stories, and she had scoffed at them. This was the twenty-first century, a time
of reason, with instantaneous worldwide electronic communication and
earth-shattering scientific advances being made almost daily. Nobody believed
in ghosts and boogiemen anymore; at least no one with half a serving of common
sense.

But that was two days
ago, back when things
made
sense. That was before her trustworthy young
son lied to her face, faking illness so he could go traipsing into a
long-abandoned pit hundreds, if not thousands, of feet deep in the earth, abandoning
his flashlight before entering the tunnel.

That was before seeing
tough, burly outdoorsmen filing into the mine shaft, faces pale and drawn, packing
weapons along with water and survival gear while searching for her little boy.

Seeing these
things made the possibility of ghosts and boogiemen seem, if not likely, at
least possible, to Julie McKenna. Because she knew one thing as surely as she
knew her own name: Tim would not have entered that mine shaft without his
flashlight.

So she paced in
front of the mine’s entrance—back and forth, back and forth—just as she done
inside her kitchen. Trying to stay out of the way, not wanting to be a
distraction but unable to force herself to move more than fifteen or twenty
feet from that awful black gaping maw, that hole in the earth with the smashed
concrete and the grim-faced men filing in and out.

Finally, after
several endless hours with no clue as to her son’s whereabouts, the search and
rescue leader had prevailed upon her to go home. “We’re going to find him,” the
man had said—Julie was so stressed and upset she never even asked him his
name—“and when we find him, you’re going to have to be able to take care of
him. You won’t be able to do that if you’re exhausted. Go get some rest; we’ll
call you the minute we know anything.”

And Julie had
allowed Matt to walk her to the Jeep and drive away from the old Tonopah Mine
without her son. She wanted to scream at them all, to tell them there was no
way in holy hell she was going to be able to rest until Tim was back home where
he belonged. She wouldn’t be able to sleep, she wouldn’t be able to rest, she
wouldn’t be able to eat. She just simply would not be able to do it.

But she didn’t
scream at them, didn’t do much of anything, in fact. Matt strapped her into the
passenger’s seat and drove home, the Jeep bouncing and jolting along the old
rutted path just as it had done on the way in.

She walked into
the house, her insides simultaneously empty and filled with fear. What if the
searchers never found Tim? What if her son simply disappeared, just as those
miners supposedly had a hundred years ago, lost forever without a trace? What
if that happened?

***

The moment she entered the house,
Julie crossed the living room and walked straight down the short hallway to
Tim’s room. She had to sit on his bed, to smell his pillow, hold one of his
T-shirts in her hands. She had to. It was a visceral need. She
needed
to
feel her son’s presence and convince herself of his existence and that she really
was going to see him again.

She opened his
bedroom door and her breath caught in her throat.

Lying unmoving on
the bed, staring up at her with unblinking eyes, was Tim McKenna.

***

He was filthy. Dirt and dust
covered his clothing. It was smeared through his hair and on every inch of
exposed skin. His sneakers, formerly white, were now a dull brown. The pillow
behind his head had morphed from white to brown as well, and so had the bed
covers under Tim’s prone body.

Julie crossed the
room to his bed, sobbing without realizing she was doing so, and leaned down to
hug her son. He stiffened slightly but otherwise did not move. He didn’t cry or
laugh or return her hug. He lay on the bed, staring at nothing.

Julie leaned back,
her eyes wet with tears, and gazed into the face of her son. “Thank God you’re
okay,” she said. “What were you thinking going out to that awful mine,
especially all by yourself?”

He didn’t respond.

Julie turned and
saw Matt standing in the doorway. He was watching with a look on his face that
Julie could not decipher. “We need to let the searchers know he’s okay . . .”

He nodded. “I’ll
make the call,” he said, and retreated down the hallway toward the phone in the
kitchen.

“Look at you,” she
fretted. “Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?”

“I’m fine,” Tim
answered, and his voice sounded somehow . . . muted. Unlike his normal voice.
Almost
inhuman,
she thought, and quickly pushed the notion away. Where had that
come from?

Julie realized
with a start that those were the first words her normally gregarious son had
spoken since she walked into his room.
Well, of course he’s a little off.
He’s been through a terrible ordeal. He’ll be okay. He just needs some rest and
then he’ll be himself again.

4

Matt watched as Tim McKenna sat in
the stuffed chair in front of the big-screen TV in the living room, answering
questions from Tonopah Police detectives while his mother hovered protectively
a few feet away. The chair was normally reserved for Matt, but this afternoon
Julie had commandeered it for Tim to use during the police interview. The boy
was small and the chair was large; it looked as though he was in the process of
being devoured by the thing.

Matt tried to stay
out of the way, standing in the background watching the interaction, an indefinable
uneasiness eating away at him. He had struggled to make a connection with his
girlfriend’s son in the year since the two of them had moved from Harrisburg to
Tonopah, there was no question about that, so he was used to awkward
conversations and stilted silences. They were par for the course where Tim was
concerned, especially when his mother wasn’t around.

But this was
different. Every time he was asked a question—by the investigators or by his
mom—he answered in almost exactly the same way.

“Why in the world
did you go out to that old abandoned mine?

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you
realize it could be dangerous?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did you
manage to fall into the mine shaft? Did you slip and fall?”

“I don’t
remember.”

And then the
biggie, the question Matt himself was struggling with: “How did you get out of
the shaft all by yourself?” He had seen the tunnel while waiting with Julie at
the old mining camp, and it sloped dangerously downward just a few feet inside
the entrance, becoming almost vertical. It didn’t seem possible that a twelve
year old boy, alone and with no equipment, could fall into it and manage to get
himself back out again.

That question,
like all the others, was answered the same way: “I don’t remember.”

It wasn’t just the
words Tim was speaking; the whole vibe he gave off was disturbing: Body posture
rigid, eyes unfocused and staring into the distance. It was as if the spark of
life had disappeared from the kid’s face. The worst part wasn’t even something
the police officers would notice. The worst part, well, Matt couldn’t even be
sure he was seeing it himself.

Tim seemed to be .
. . changing, physically. Becoming somehow bulkier, like he had started working
out, only the changes were happening too fast to be from some workout regimen.
Besides, Tim wasn’t working out, he knew that. And his hands looked bigger,
fingernails longer, almost . . . claw-like. Matt blinked twice and stared at
Julie’s son, shaking his head almost imperceptibly. He was almost certain.

Matt could sense
the frustration of the officers. He knew they would give up soon. After issuing
a stern warning to the boy to stay away from the old mine, they would look at
each other, shrug their shoulders and go home, chalking the entire incident up
to childish foolishness, thanking their lucky stars they had recovered the kid
alive.

Maybe that was
what they believed. Maybe that was even what Julie believed. And maybe that was
how it had started. But Matt Hardiman had lived in Tonopah, Pennsylvania his
whole life. He had heard all the stories about the Tonopah Mine. Hell, he even
knew a couple of guys who’d had relatives—great-grandfathers, he thought it
was—vanish without a trace way back around 1900.

So Matt knew
better. Tim had gone into the Tonopah Mine and somehow come out a changed
person. And that scared the shit out of him.

***

The bedroom felt stuffy and hot; Matt
tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Julie had sat up with Tim for a couple of
hours after his usual bedtime, trying to comfort him or maybe just trying to
get a handle on what the hell had happened to her son. She kept talking about
how Tim had undergone such a horrible trauma and would be himself soon, just
wait and see, but to Matt it sounded like so much wishful thinking. In his
opinion she was whistling past the graveyard.

Matt had stayed up
for a while, too, but he had to work in the morning—trauma or no trauma, bills
still had to be paid—so eventually he said goodnight and shuffled off to bed.
Julie had offered up a wan smile and Tim seemed not to notice when Matt tousled
his hair. He stared straight ahead, body stiff and unmoving, as had become his
habit since returning from the mine.

Later, Matt had no
idea what time it was, Julie slid in beside him, mumbling something about Tim
finally falling asleep. She had gone on to say there was no way she way she
would be able to get any rest tonight, but a few minutes later had dropped off
into what seemed to be a deep sleep.

The ceiling fan
moved the hot air around the room. Matt listened to Julie’s steady breathing
next to him and tried to sleep. Eventually he nodded off.

***

Someone was in the room with them. Matt
didn’t know how he knew, he just knew. He awoke with a start, confused and
disoriented from a nightmare, a collage of jagged edges and blood-red colors
and unrelenting terror.

His eyes flew open
and there was Tim. The kid stood motionless next to the bed in the hazy predawn
half-light. It was too dark to tell whether his eyes were open or closed. Matt bolted
upright, the covers twisting around his waist. Tim seemed not to notice.

Matt rubbed his
eyes and tried to comprehend what was happening and out of the corner of his
eye he thought he saw what looked like a thick rope or perhaps a long snake
slip off Julie’s face. It slid away like a hose being reeled in, and he would
have sworn he saw the rope-snake-thing disappear into Tim’s open mouth. A
stealthy slithering sound accompanied the movement that Matt was even now
beginning to doubt he saw.

Shaken, he leaned
to the side, fumbling with the switch on the lamp next to the bed. It snapped
on and sixty watts of blessed light flooded the room and Tim was still standing
there, he hadn’t moved at all as far as Matt could see, but there was no rope
and no snake and Matt wondered whether he had imagined the whole thing.

Then Julie’s eyes
fluttered open and Matt looked down at her face and felt a chill flood his body
all the way down to his bones. She had been sleeping on her back, and outlined
on the porcelain skin of her face were a pair of red splotches roughly the
circumference of a decent-sized rope. Or snake. Or whatever the hell Matt had (maybe)
seen slither into Tim’s mouth.

Julie blinked sleepily
and sat up in bed. “What’s the matter, baby, did you have a nightmare?” She
reached for Tim and as she did, Matt inspected her face more closely. The
splotchy marks ran from the sides of her mouth across each cheek. They looked
as though they had been made by . . . something . . . trying to force her mouth
open and slither inside it.

Just as he thought
he had seen happen to Tim.

What the hell was
going on here?

Julie pulled her
son close and Tim tumbled awkwardly into their bed, eyes wide, saying nothing. Julie
refused to meet Matt’s gaze.

He kicked off the tangled
blankets and eased out of bed, padding into the kitchen to make coffee. There
was no way he would get any more sleep tonight. And he had to get away from
Tim; the kid was seriously creeping him out.

***

“He’s been through a lot, give him
a break!” Julie’s face was a mask of stress and barely controlled anger as she
glared at Matt, but he thought he could detect a trace of desperation in her
eyes as well. She was confused and frightened about what was happening to her
boy. They were sitting at the dinner table, the dishes having been picked up
and rinsed, Tim having trudged down the hall and into his room like a freaking
zombie after picking at his food and eating basically nothing.

“I understand he’s
been through a lot, but the way he’s acting is not normal.” Matt had been
thinking about the bizarre scene he had woken up to all day at work and knew he
had to broach the subject to his girlfriend. As expected, Julie did not want to
hear it.

“Oh, okay,” she
said acidly. “Not normal. And I’m supposed to believe . . . what? That some
alien life form entered Tim’s body while he was down in that mine and is trying
to . . . what? Expand into other bodies, too? Like mine?”

“I know how it
sounds,” Matt said. “But I also know what I saw.”

“Really? You know
what you saw for a split-second in the dark after being awakened from a deep
sleep? In the middle of a nightmare? You don’t think it’s more likely you awoke
disoriented and just saw Timmy yawning? You don’t think that’s more likely than
your stupid alien theory, or monsters, or whatever?”

Matt knew it was
pointless to argue—Julie simply was not going to see his side of things, not
now, at least—but he couldn’t help himself. He had to admit it sounded
ridiculous when he heard the words come out of her mouth, but he also had to
admit that, yes, that “stupid alien theory” was exactly what he thought. Maybe it
wasn’t aliens that had invaded Tim’s body, maybe it was just some weird mutated
virus or something, but whatever it was, Matt feared it. And if Julie had any
sense, she would fear it, too.