Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (5 page)

“They buried the children in a single service, in
one of Sam Warner’s pastures, in the shadow of his barn. He
lost four girls, did Sam. They lined them all up one Sunday, all the
kids in their little white coffins. Ah, you’d have been a hard
man not to shed a tear that day. All lined up like … ”

… a row of tiny teeth, the holes in the earth
before them the rotten gums from which they had been plucked. A
cloudless day, the slightest movement forming a sheen of sweat on
those gathered. Later, as they covered their grief with caked morsels
of dry soil, there was barely enough moisture for tears.

As expected, the Reverend Hewitt did not arrive. His
faltering voice on the phone, although full of divine reassurance,
suggested he would not set foot in the town unless it had been
quarantined until the Second coming. It was Molly Saunders who led
the service, standing atop a tractor, a vantage point that allowed
her to address the mourners without having to look directly into
their empty eyes.

“Dear friends, we are gathered here to bury our
children; our future. We are gathered here to bury a little piece of
ourselves, to bury hope itself.” There was a chorus of
strangled sobs from the crowd below, swaying slightly, cooking in
heavy black. “But I beg you not to lose your faith. We must
believe, we
have
to
believe, there is some purpose here that we are too small to
understand. We must believe—”

Molly stopped abruptly, her head jerked to one side, her
eyes bulging as a rictus grin stretched her pale lips.

“—that He will send forth a
redeemer
!”

The voice was not hers. It was cold, hoarse, and though
it was barely more than a whisper, it cut across the thick, static
air and cast a shadow upon their hearts.

“Behold! Your Redeemer draws nigh!” She
pointed a finger toward the field, and the mourners, clasped together
like the children they’d lost, turned as one to see the arrival
of Baird.

He dressed in white, which only added to the sense of
infection that imbued him. He floated down to them, his hands pressed
together in an attitude of prayer. Although the day was stifling, his
breath was visible before him, a carrion shimmer, which snaked from
his mouth as he chanted inaudibly.

As he passed each grave, there arose a distant beating,
as of a tiny fist pummeling upon a coffin lid, followed by a childish
cry. The noise grew deafening in the still air by the time he reached
the end of the row. The cacophony of pain broke the mourners’
spell. They hurried to free their children, digging frantically,
breaking their nails, their fingers, breaking their hearts. By the
time they had exhumed their babies, they had died once more.

They stared at the tiny, contorted bodies, unable to
comprehend, their understanding as blurred as Baird who was just a
vague white dot on the horizon, floating in the non-wind.

“The children were wrinkled like prunes, their
eyes and hair white, like old men, old women. Like the life had been
sucked right out of them. I know you find that hard to believe.
You’re thinking grief and loss do strange things. I only tell
you what I saw. What we all saw.”

“Did you go after Baird?”

“We went straight home and grabbed every weapon,
every holy object we could lay our hands to. We marched up to that
big sprawling house of his within the hour.”

Hector got up and walked slowly out of the bar. As he
opened the door the sunlight fell in like an eavesdropper, and the
stranger could see that the barman was crying. For a moment, he
almost believed him.

“You’ll have to forgive Hector. He lost
three fine boys. I guess hearing it all over again was too much. Too
much to hear an old fool like me talking as if I was some big shot
hero marching up the Lonewalk Road that day. You see, truth is, when
we’d ripped the house apart we found nothing. The only place
left was the attic. There weren’t too many volunteers. There
were noises, you see, and we all got to remembering how he’d
looked, and Molly, and the kids … put it this way, no one was
boiling their water to get up there. But Hector did. Halfway up he
stopped, glared and called us all—”

“—yellow bellied whores! Damn you all to
Hell!” Then he was gone, disappearing through the little square
of midnight at the top of the ladder.

The others waited, hardly daring to breathe because the
place smelt so bad. Damp, rot, and cobwebs, the usual houseguests of
neglect, had taken up permanent residence. It looked like no one had
lived there since Manny Robbins died. Hector was taking his time.
They hadn’t heard the heavy clump of his boots in quite a
while. Should they go up? What if something had happened to him up
there in the dark? What if Baird … but there he was, climbing
stiffly down, his face gaunt and pale.

“Well,” asked Artie, “was he up
there?”

“No,” said Hector. “Just rats and
pigeons. He’s long gone.” He surveyed the ruins of the
house. “If he was ever here at all.”

Hector pulled the baseball cap further down over his
eyes, and watched the woman play catch with her daughter. She was a
fine woman, full of zest, full of life; nothing like the broken
creatures left here. As he watched them, he opened and closed his
fists, the leather of his gloves crackling, crackling. Crackling like
Baird’s breath when he found him in the attic.

He had been lying in the corner, white suit luminous in
the murk. He had seen what Baird really was, or rather the thing that
had used Baird’s body, and now outgrown it, really was. When it
surged toward him and entered his eyes, when it washed over his very
soul, he had welcomed it.

Soon, he would be strong enough to leave here. The
little girl would see to that. He would find another small town where
he could feast unhindered.

He was
so
hungry.

In the morning, the girl would be dead, as would the
part of Hector that would mourn her passing. Her parents would die,
too, a little at a time, a withering of sorts that would take years.

The ball bounced before him and came to rest at his
feet. The girl looked up, a question in her eyes. Hector took off his
sleek black gloves and picked it up. It looked ungainly in his white,
porcelain hands. He gave it to the little girl and patted her on the
forehead.

“Say thank you,” he said.

In the moment the stars vanished, Amita Prasad was
neither sober nor drunk.

She could walk—carefully—and felt only a
little nauseous. When the wave rushed through everything she could
see, and then through her, she wondered if she’d more to drink
than she thought. Then she realized the stars were gone.

What was left was a silvery haze that was not quite
night, catching the rising light from downtown Detroit. Amita could
not focus on what the change meant. She sat down hard on the curb in
front of the nightclub. It was a warm summer night on Woodward
Avenue, and she did not care what those walking and driving by
thought. She tried to focus on the stars she knew
had
to be
there.

“Amita!” someone called. “There you
... Amita!”

She saw Craig Marston threading his way through the
crowd smoking outside the club. For a moment, she thought him as
buzzed as she was, but decided he couldn’t be. She hadn’t
seen him drink anything, even while telling her he was abandoning
their partnership for a job in New York—the partnership that,
only a year ago, he had convinced her to pour her savings into.

“M’okay,” Amita told him. “Called
a cab.” She could imagine how she looked to him. Her black
dress was her favorite for how it made the most of her underwhelming
curves. Her shoulder-length black hair was a mess, and the tears from
her eyes made her dark brown cheeks glisten. “A beautiful heap
of miserable,” as her mother used to say.

Craig nearly tumbled to the curb, righting himself at
the last moment. His short brown hair was disheveled and his glasses
were missing, but otherwise he seemed impeccable in his all-black
suit jacket, shirt, tie, and slacks. His left hand folded over her
smaller right, just above her knee. The touch made her think of how
he’d tried to make their partnership personal, and how only an
hour ago, he had intimated the possibility of turning down New York
if she would reconsider her rejection of him. He hadn’t been
happy when she told him she preferred bankruptcy.

“Something happened,” he said, with a note
of unease. “When I was coming out of the club ... it felt like
being ... it felt like a wave.”

“I thought I was the only one of us with sorrows
to drown,” Amita said, unwilling to admit she’d felt the
same thing. “Why don’t you—”

“It’s not just me,” Craig protested.
“Look.”

He gestured to the club. A blond man in an oversized
baseball jersey was on his knees by the door, staring up. Two women
in expensive-looking gold dresses helped another in a red dress
having a seizure. The bouncer at the door looked ready to vomit.

“What ... what happened to the sky?” Craig
asked, his voice now small and scared.

The stars were still gone and the gleaming haze was
there, Amita saw, but what was beyond did not look as simple as
darkness. Something twisted and rolled deep in that abyss. Amita’s
chest grew tight.

“I—”

“Amitaaaa!”

She tumbled away from Craig’s sudden scream. He
clutched at his head and yelled her name again. His body shook with
intense spasms.

Adrenaline gave her the sharpness she needed to get to
her feet. If her name was anywhere in what he bellowed next, it was
lost in the flow of noise and pain. He writhed on the sidewalk, his
eyes shut tight.

It wasn’t only Craig, she realized. The woman
having a seizure was now clawing at her friends. From across the
street, she heard more cries.

Craig’s groans stopped when he clamped his hands
over his mouth. His body shook, and Amita heard several loud cracking
sounds.

“Craig!” she yelled. “I’m going
to call 9-1-1! Stay—”

The words died on her lips as Craig let his hands drop
from his mouth, which was open in the shape of a scream. No sound
came out. His mouth was filled with a massive eyeball.

Amita fell back onto the street. A car swerved to miss
her, but she could not look away. Craig’s face grew red, as if
he was gagging. More people screamed around them.

The visible parts of Craig’s eyes were all-white.
What looked like tears streaked his cheeks, though the liquid was as
white as his eyes. The black iris of the massive eye in his mouth
expanded, then shifted to her. His teeth and gums came down without
pulling his lips, clicking in a gross imitation of a blink.

“Ammmmmita,” he gurgled, though she could
not see how he could still talk. “Ru...runnnnnn ... ”

Behind him, something sharp and black punctured one of
the gold dress-wearing women. She screamed once before being silenced
by the blood that choked her. Her companion shrieked and stumbled
before another black lance sliced her throat.

The confusion of the people in the street shot into
panic. Through the running forms, Amita saw the seizure woman rise.
The lances of her arms retracted, pulling her victims toward her.
With a series of snapping sounds, her chest split, revealing a dark
red cavity where there should have been organs. What had been ribs
were now teeth. They dug into the women, shredding flesh and snapping
bones.

“Ammmiiiiiitaaaaaaa!” Craig roared. She
realized the voice was coming from his chest. His eye sockets were
empty, his liquefied eyes streaking his cheeks. The one growing in
his mouth was on the verge of breaking his jaw. Blood dripped from
where it pushed against his teeth.

She moved back, trying to keep Craig, the transformed
woman, and oncoming traffic in her field of vision. She knew what she
saw was impossible, and there was no reason she should not be like
the ones yelling and running, but a heavy numbness settled over her—something more
than her drinking could account for.

It was then she realized her feet were no longer on the
ground.

“
Goldilocks … ”

“
What?”

“
Goldilocks zone. We come through the soft
places.”

Amita heard the voice slur in her head. She could not
give it a name, nor see its source. Everything now was empty —

“
Goldilocks zone,” the voice repeated.
The darkness parted, revealing three cartoon bears and a
golden-haired girl. It was an image she had seen long ago in her
niece’s children’s book—not that she, or anyone
she knew, needed words for the story. The short version was that
Goldilocks, the serial porridge-thief, nearly ended up getting a lot
closer to the bears than she wanted. For all she knew, in the
earliest versions, the bears succeeded in making a meal of her. What
it had to do with whoever was talking to her, she had no idea.

“
What are you?” she asked.

“
We make the soft places,” the voice
answered.

“
What do you mean?” she demanded. From
within her numb heart, anger erupted. “What the hell is all
this?”

The voice did not answer. The cartoon image
dissolved, swallowed by the darkness. She cast rage into the void,
her words no longer comprehendible, even to herself.

The children standing over Amita Prasad had gray skin
and sharp smiles. Their clothes seemed fused to their bodies. Amita
felt pinned to the ground, though nothing was on her.

Seeing she was awake, two of the children hissed. A
third, whom she guessed to be a girl because of the shirt that
proclaimed her to be a Disney Princess, stayed quiet as she knelt
over Amita. The other two knelt as well.