Dark Screams, Volume 1 (2 page)

He could remember the low, red-swollen moon casting dim fire on the broad green leaves, the jumbled scarecrow that fluttered and dangled on the fence like a horrid and grinning Halloween treasure, the sound of crickets. And that…that other sound. It had scared him then, although his daddy said it was perfectly natural. It had scared him plenty. But it hadn't scared him like this.

This sound was like an earthquake whispering deep down in the earth, working itself up through bedrock, shunting boulders aside, moving the ground, getting ready to make plates waltz off their shelves and coffee cups tap-dance from counters to shatter on the linoleum. It was at the same time the smallest and the biggest sound he had ever heard.

Jordy turned and ran back to his house.

Now, you can explain why a smart man will do something, because a smart man goes by the facts. If a smart man gets car trouble, he goes to a service station. If he gets wasps in his house, he calls the exterminator. And if a smart man gets sick somehow, he calls the doctor.

Jordy Verrill wasn't a smart man. He wasn't feeble or retarded, but he sure wasn't going to win any Quiz Kid award, either. When God hands out the smart pills, he gives some people placebos, and Jordy was one of those. And you can't predict what a man will do in a given situation after he reaches a certain degree of dumbness, because the man himself doesn't know if he's going to shit or put his fingers in the fan.

Jordy didn't call another doctor, not even after lunch when he looked into the mirror on the back of the closet door and saw the green stuff growing out of his right eye.

There was another doctor in Cleaves Mills besides Dr. Condon. But Jordy had never been to Dr. Oakley, because he had heard that Dr. Oakley was a son of a bitch. Dr. Condon never acted that way, and Jordy like him. Also, Oakley was reputed to be fond of giving shots, and Jordy still retained his childhood fear of being injected. Doc Condon was more of a pill man, and usually he would give you the pills free, from samples. Paying up, that was another thing. Jordy had heard that Doc Oakley had a little sign on his waiting room wall that said
IT IS CUSTOMARY TO PAY CASH UNLESS ARRANGEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE IN ADVANCE
. That was hard scripture for an odd-job man like Jordy Verrill, especially with the hay as poor as it had been this year. But Doc Condon sent out bills only when he remembered to, which was rarely.

None of these are smart reasons for not going to the doctor, but Jordy had one other, so deep he could never say it in words. He didn't really want to go to see
any
doctor, because he was afraid to find out what was wrong with him. And what if it was so bad that Doc Oakley decided to stick him in the hospital? He was deadly afraid of that place, because when you went in it was only a matter of time before they lugged you out in a canvas bag.

Still, he might have gone to Doc Oakley if the answering service had said Doc Condon wasn't going to be back for a week. But just until tomorrow, that wasn't so bad. He could call Doc Condon tomorrow and get him to come out
here,
and not have to sit in anybody's waiting room where everyone could see that revolting green stuff growing out of his eye.

“That's the ticket,” he whispered to himself. “That's what to do.”

He went back to the TV, a glass of rum in a water glass by his hand. Tiny green fuzz was visible, growing on the white of his right eye like moss on a stone. Limber tendrils hung over the lower lid. It itched something dreadful.

And so the eye, of course, resorted to its old tried-and-true method of cleansing itself, and that's why Jordy, had he been a smart man, would have gotten over to Doc Oakley's office just as fast as his old Dodge pickup could travel.

His right eye was watering. A regular little sprinkling can.

He fell asleep halfway through the afternoon soap operas. When he woke up at five o'clock he was blind in his right eye. He looked in the mirror and moaned. His faded-blue right eye was gone. What was in the socket now was a waving green jungle of weeds, and some of the little creepers hung halfway down his cheek.

He put one hand up to his face before he could stop himself. He couldn't just rip the stuff out, the way you would hoe up the witchgrass in your tomato sets. He couldn't do that because his eye was still in there someplace.

Wasn't it?

Jordy screamed.

The scream echoed through his house, but there was no one to hear it because he was alone. He had never been so dreadfully alone in his life. It was eight o'clock in the evening and he had drunk the whole bottle of Bacardi and he still wasn't schnockered. He wished he
was
schnockered. He had never wanted so badly to be out of sobriety.

He had gone into the bathroom to piss off some of the rum, and that green stuff was growing out of his penis. Of course it was. It was wet down there, wasn't it? Almost always a little bit wet.

Jordy went just the same, but it itched and hurt so much that he couldn't tell which was worse. And maybe next time he wouldn't be able to go at all.

That wasn't what had made him scream. The thought of having that stuff
inside
him, that had made him scream. It was a million times worse than the time he had gotten the bat caught in his hair while he was insulating old Missus Carver's attic. Somehow the green plants had picked the two best parts of him, his eyes and his pecker. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair at all. It seemed like Jordy's luck was always in, and you spelled that kind of luck B-A-D.

He started to cry and made himself stop because that would only make it grow the faster.

He had no more hard liquor, but there was half a bottle of Ripple in the icebox so he filled his tumbler with that and sat down again, dully watching the TV with his good eye. He glanced down at his right hand and saw green tendrils had wriggled out from underneath the cotton…and some stalks had pushed right up through it.

“I'm growin',” he said emptily, and moaned again.

The wine made Jordy sleepy and he dozed off. When he woke up it was ten-thirty and at first he was so muzzy from everything he had drunk that he didn't remember what had happened to him. All he was sure of was that his mouth tasted funny, as if he had been chewing grass. Awful taste. It was like—

Jordy bolted for the mirror. Ran his tongue out. And screamed again.

His tongue was covered with the fuzzy green growth, the insides of his cheeks were downy with it, and even his teeth looked greenish, as if they were rotting.

And he itched. Itched like fire, all over. He remembered once when he had been deer hunting and he had to take a squat right that minute, or else. And he had gone and done it right in a patch of poison sumac—Jordy's luck was always in. That had been a bad itch, the rash he had gotten from that, but this was worse. This was a nightmare. His fingers, his eye, his pecker, and now his mouth.

Cold water!

The thought was so focused, so steely, that it didn't seem like his own at all. Commanding, it came again:
Cold water!

He had a vision of filling up the old claw-foot bathtub upstairs with cold water, then ripping off all his clothes and jumping in, drowning the itch forever.

Madness. If he did that it would grow all over him, he would come out looking like a swamp log covered with moss. And yet the thought of cold water wouldn't go away; it was crazy, all right, but it would be so
good,
so
good
to just soak in cold water until the itch was all gone.

He started back to his chair and stopped.

Green stuff was sprouting from its overstuffed right arm. It was all over the worn and stringy brown fabric. On the table beside it, where there had been a ring of moisture from his glass, there was now a ring of green stalks and tendrils.

He went out into the kitchen and looked into the trash bag. More of the green stuff was growing all over the Bacardi bottle he had dropped in earlier. And a Del Monte pineapple chunks can next to the Bacardi bottle. And an empty Heinz ketchup bottle next to the Del Monte can. Even his garbage was being overrun.

Jordy ran for the phone, picked it up, then banged it back down. Who could he call? Did he really want anyone to see him like this?

He looked at his arms and saw that his own sweat glands were betraying him. Among the reddish-gold hairs on his forearms, a new growth was sprouting. It was green.

“I'm turnin' into a weed,” he said distractedly, and looked around as if the walls would tell him what to do. They didn't, and he sat down in front of the TV again.

It was his eye—what had been his eye—that finally broke him down. The itching just seemed to be going deeper and deeper into his head, and creeping down his nose at the same time.

“I can't help it,” he groaned. “Oh my Jesus, I can't!”

He went upstairs, a grotesque, shambling figure with green arms and a forest growing out of one eye socket. He lurched into the bathroom, jammed the plug into the bathtub drain, and turned the cold water faucet on full. His jury-rigged plumbing thumped and groaned and clanked. The sound of cool water splashing into the tub made him tremble all over with eagerness. He tore his shirt off and was not much revolted by the new growth sprouting from his navel. He kicked his boots off, shoved his pants and thermals and skivvies down all at once. His upper thighs were forested with the growth and his pubic hair was twined with the limber green tendrils that sprouted from the plants' central stalks. When the tub was three-quarters full, Jordy could no longer control himself. He jumped in.

It was heaven.

He rolled and flopped in the tub like some clumsy, greenish porpoise, sending water sheeting onto the floor. He ducked his head and sloshed water over the back of his neck. He shoved his face under and came up blowing water.

And he could feel the new growth spurt, could feel the weeds that had taken root in his body moving forward with amazing, terrifying speed.

Shortly after midnight, a slumped, slowly moving figure topped the rise between Jordy Verrill's farm and Bluebird Creek. It stood looking down at the place where a meteor had impacted less than thirty hours before.

Jordy's east pasture was a sea of growing green weeds. The hay was gone for a distance of a hundred and sixty yards in every direction. Already the growth nearest the creek was more than a foot and a half high, and the tendrils that sprouted from the stalks moved with a twisting, writhing movement that was almost sentient. At one point the Bluebird itself was gone; it flowed into a green marsh and came out four feet farther downstream. A peninsula of green had already marched ten feet up the bank of Arlen McGinty's land.

The figure that stood looking down on this was really not Jordy Verrill anymore. It was hard to say what it might be. It was vaguely humanoid, the way a snowman that had begun to melt is humanoid. The shoulders were rounded. The head was a fuzzy green ball with no sign of a neck between it and the shoulders. Deep down in all that green, one faded-blue iris gleamed like a pale sapphire.

In the field, tendrils suddenly waved in the air like a thousand snakes coming out of a thousand Hindu fakirs' baskets, and pointed, trembling, at the figure standing on the knoll. And on the figure, tendrils suddenly pointed back. Momentarily Jordy had a semblance of humanity again: He looked like a man with his hair standing on end.

Jordy, his thoughts dimming with the tide of greenness that now grew from the very meat of his brain, understood that a kind of telepathy was going on.

Is the food good?

Yes, very good. Rich.

Is he the only food?

No, much food. His thoughts say so.

Does the food have a name?

Two names. Sometimes it is called Jordy-food. Sometimes it is called Cleaves Mills–food.

Jordy-food. Cleaves Mills–food. Rich. Good.

His thoughts say he wants to bang. Can he do that?

Don't know. Some Jordy-thing.

Good. Rich. Let him do what he wants.

The figure, like a badly controlled puppet on frayed strings, turned and lurched back toward the house.

In the glow of the kitchen light, Jordy was a monster. A monster in the true sense, nearly as ludicrous as it was terrifying. He looked like a walking privet hedge.

The hedge was crying.

It had no tears to cry, because the growth was mercilessly absorbing every bit of moisture that Jordy's failing systems could produce. But it cried just the same, in its fashion, as it pulled the .410 Remington from its hooks over the shed door.

It put the gun to what had been Jordy Verrill's head. It could not pull the trigger by itself, but the tendrils helped, perhaps curious to see if the bang would make the Jordy-food more tasty. They curled around the trigger and tightened until the hammer dropped.

A dry click.

Jordy's luck was always in.

Somehow it got the shells from the desk drawer in the living room. The tendrils curled around one of them, lifted it, dropped it into the chamber, and closed the slide mechanism. Again they helped to pull the trigger.

The gun banged. And Jordy Verrill's last thought was:
Oh, thank God, lucky at last!

The weeds reached the edge of the highway by dawn and began to grow around a signpost that said
CLEAVES MILLS, TWO MILES.
The round stalks whispered and rubbed against each other in a light dawn breeze. There was a heavy dew and the weeds sucked it up greedily.

Jordy-food.

A fine planet, a wet planet. A ripe planet.

Cleaves Mills–food.

The weeds began to grow toward town.

As Kara wobbled from the tavern, she reflected that being drunk wasn't nearly as much fun as she remembered. It'd been nearly two years since she'd had even a sip of alcohol. That wasn't in response to any problem—not unless you considered getting pregnant a problem. Kara certainly did not. Having Melody was the best thing that ever happened to her. Given her life so far, the bar of comparison wasn't set very high, but still, motherhood was amazing, and well worth a few years of sobriety.

“Which way's the car?” Ingrid slurred beside her.

“Over there.” Kara pointed to the taxi stand. “It's that yellow vehicle with the nice man who will take us home.”

“I'm not leaving my car here overnight.”

“Yes, you are, because I promised Gavin you wouldn't drive.”

Ingrid rolled her blue eyes. “When did you get so old?”

When Kara didn't answer, Ingrid's voice took on a hint of a whine. “I need to move my car. It's brand-new and a lease, and if they tow it, they'll scratch it. I'll have to pay—”

“Where are you going to move it to?”

Ingrid pointed an unsteady finger toward a sign advertising all-night parking for $100. Kara presumed it really said $10, despite what the blurry numerals suggested.

Damn, why'd she let Ingrid talk her into this?

Because you've been letting her talk you into crazy shit for almost twenty years.

True. They'd met in preschool, and had been inseparable for most of their lives. Eighteen months ago, Kara married Gavin and moved to Seattle. Then Ingrid came west and stayed. So they were together again, getting in trouble again.

Kara hadn't wanted to come out drinking, but Ingrid had insisted. It was Kara's twenty-first birthday and time for her first drinking party. First
legal
drinking party, that is. She'd taken her first drink at thirteen. Got drunk for the first time at fourteen. Not surprisingly, Ingrid had been there both times.

“Go move the car,” Kara said.

“Come with.”

“I'll walk and meet you over there.”

Ingrid giggled. “You can barely stand, Kare-Bear. It's a hundred feet. Come on.”

Kara sighed and followed Ingrid to the car. They got in. Ingrid pulled onto the road and shot away from the paid lot.

“Hey!” Kara said.

“I'm looking for a cheaper one. I don't have ten bucks.”

Kara slapped a twenty on the console.

“You need that for diapers and shit. Stop being such an old lady and let me drive you home. It's all country roads, anyway. Nothing to hit.”

“Except deer, coyotes, bears, the occasional hitchhiker…”

“I'll avoid the animals. If the hitchhiker is cute, I'll pick him up.” She grinned over at Kara. “Give you a proper birthday party.”

Kara flipped her the finger and fastened her seat belt.

“Yep, it's an engine.” Kara peered under the car hood. At least she was no longer seeing double. She was also, unfortunately, not seeing the problem that had them pulled over on an empty wooded road. “I have no idea what's wrong, but Gavin will be here in fifteen minutes. If he can't fix it, he'll give you a lift. Gavin—”

“Gavin, Gavin, Gavin,” Ingrid huffed. “Do you know how sick I am of hearing his name? How many times have you brought him up tonight?”

“Um, twice? First when I said you shouldn't drive and second when you proved it, leaving us stranded by the side of a very creepy road.”

“The
car
left us stranded.”

“I thought you said it was new?”

“It is. This is the first problem I've had with it, unlike that rust bucket you're stuck with because you married
Gavin.
”

“I like my car just fine.” Kara slammed the hood shut and perched on it. “And my husband.”

Ingrid sniffed. “He's not your husband, he's your jailer. He'll get here and be all, ‘I told you not to go out.' I'm surprised he let you.”

“Actually, he's the one who talked me into it. He thought I could use the break, and he knows you're going through a rough time—”

Ingrid's head snapped up. “You told him about the phone calls?”

“I don't keep secrets from my husband, but no, since you're the only one getting them, I haven't told him. I just said you've been having a rough time adjusting to the new job and new state—”

“You still don't believe me about the calls, do you?”

Kara exhaled and leaned back on her hands. “Why just call you? Why not me, too? He thinks we both did it.”

“But only one of us has a hulking construction worker for a husband. The other lives alone in a crappy apartment with zero security and a so-called best friend who won't take the threat seriously and let her move in—”

Kara hopped off the car. “Bring me proof and you can move in.”

“Proof? I'm your best friend, and I'm telling you we're both in danger. Serious danger. He's going to make us pay—”

“We already did.” Kara walked toward the forest. “It'll be another ten minutes before the guy I dare not name gets here. I need to pee.”

“Now?”

“Wait in the car and lock the doors. I'll be back in—”

“You're not going anywhere without me.”

“Story of my life,” Kara muttered under her breath, and waved for Ingrid to follow.

Kara walked about fifty yards into the forest. Ingrid stopped after twenty and began whining about why Kara had to go so far. Because she wanted a clearing, so she didn't get a sapling up her ass when she squatted. She didn't tell Ingrid that. It wouldn't stop her complaining. Nothing did.

As Kara crouched, Ingrid's mutterings tapered off. Then her friend gasped, the sound sudden and harsh in the silent forest. Kara leaped up, yanking her jeans over her hips.

“Ingrid?”

No answer.

Kara spun. Hands grabbed her from behind. Strong hands. She opened her mouth. A cloth slapped over her mouth and nose, a damp cloth, stinking of chemicals, and she crumpled, unconscious, to the ground.

Kara woke to music playing so softly it sounded like a voice whispering in her ear, and she scrambled to sit up, thinking it was Gavin and—

She felt something cold and hard under her legs, and her brain stuttered, throwing her back five years, waking on a cold metal slab of a bed, no mattress, no sheets, no pillow. She shivered convulsively, her brain screaming no, that that was over, long over, that she'd paid the price, paid the goddamn price.

Her hands clenched, fingers pressing not into a metal bed frame but against cold cement. She opened her eyes—

My eyes are already open. But I can't see anything. Oh my God, I can't see—

Then she made out the shadow of her knee. She was lying on a cement floor. She moved one leg. Metal scraped against the concrete. She reached down and touched iron on her ankle, and it all rushed back, and she doubled over, stomach clenching.

Don't panic. Don't panic. That'll only make it worse. You're okay. It'll be okay. Just stay calm.

She took a deep breath. The clogging scent of must and mildew filled her nostrils. Stale air, chill and damp. A basement. She was in a basement.

That's when she heard the music again, the faint strains wafting around her.

I know that song.

She closed her eyes and focused, and the voice and words came clear. Leonard Cohen. “Everybody Knows.”

Her gut clenched and she tried to leap up, the chain yanking tight, iron band digging into her ankle.

Across the room, a door creaked open. The figure of a man filled it. Kara crawled back as far as the chain would allow, her back brushing a cold wall as the man advanced. He bent in front of her. A balaclava covered his face, only brown eyes and pale lips visible.

“Not everybody knows, Kara,” he said. “But I do.”

She opened her mouth to scream. And that's when the beating began.

Two days before Kara's fifteenth birthday, and life was perfect. Her mother was happy, having found a new job and a new boyfriend, the latter working at the former. When Mom was happy, life was good, but it was more than that. For the first time in Kara's life, her teachers weren't chiding her with “we know you can do better,” because she was getting straight B's and even a few A's. She'd made the volleyball team, and while it wasn't as good as the cheerleading squad, Ingrid had promised to keep training her until she made that, too.

To be honest, Kara wasn't that keen on cheerleading. But it would make Mom and Ingrid happy, so she'd do it. Mom said Eddie might also like it if she was a cheerleader, though when Kara suggested that, he said he'd rather date a volleyball player any day.

Eddie Molloy. Fifteen. Football player. Second string, but she'd told him she'd rather date a second-stringer any day, and he'd laughed. Laughed and kissed her.

Eddie Molloy. Her first boyfriend. They'd been going together for five months. Five wonderful months. He was nice and cute and funny and everything she'd dreamed of in a boyfriend, and now, two days before her birthday, they were sitting in the abandoned treehouse behind her apartment complex, kissing. That's all they'd done so far, kissing, and he never pushed her to do more, even though Ingrid insisted he would, warning he was going slow only until Kara lowered her guard.

“They're all like that,” Ingrid would say with a knowing roll of her eyes. “Boys.”

“Not Eddie.”

A bigger eye roll. “How would you know? He's your first boyfriend.”

Maybe the boys Ingrid dated were like that, but Eddie was different. He was wonderful, and after everything that had happened in her life, Kara felt she deserved a little bit of wonderful. Now she sat in the treehouse, kissing him and thinking how lucky she was.

“Kara?” It was Ingrid, her distant voice odd—squeaky and breathless at the same time. “Kara!”

Eddie sighed.

“I know,” Kara said. “Sorry. Let me get rid of her.”

“Nah, it's okay. She's your friend. I just wish…” He made a face and shook his head. “Never mind. Come on. If she wants to hang with you for a while, I'll cut a few lawns and we'll meet up tonight. Watch the sunset from up here.” He grinned at her. “Or that's what we'll tell your mom.”

They climbed down. Kara made it almost to the ground before she caught sight of Ingrid and missed the last rung. Eddie grabbed her before she fell.

“Inge?” Kara said, staring as her friend staggered toward them. Ingrid's T-shirt was ripped, her lip split, dried blood on her chin, her blond hair half out of its ponytail. The worst, though, were her eyes, round and empty. Then Ingrid stopped walking and teetered there, staring at Eddie.

“You…” Ingrid said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“What happened?” He started toward Ingrid, but as her chin rose, eyes blazing, he stopped short. “Inge?”

“Don't call me that,” she spat. “And don't you
dare
ask me what happened, as if you don't know.” She turned to Kara. “He came to my house.”

Eddie blinked. “Sure. I was there this morning after football practice. You invited me—”

“—to talk about Kara's birthday. Not to—to—”

“Wh-what?” Eddie stared at Ingrid. “Are you saying I…” He trailed off, as if he couldn't find words to finish.

“You know what you did, you bastard.”

Eddie wheeled on Kara, his eyes as wide as Ingrid's had been. “I have no idea what she's talking about. She asked me to come over, and we talked about your birthday, and when I left, she was fine.” He reached for Kara. “I swear—”

“Don't you touch her,” Ingrid said, her voice a growl now.

He looked at Ingrid. “It was the Vitamin R, wasn't it?” Back to Kara. “She offered me some, but I said no, and that's when I left. She must have taken some after and…” He looked at Ingrid, blinking as if trying to figure it out. “I don't know. Fallen down the steps? Hit her head and got confused and—”

“You
bastard,
” Ingrid spat the words. “You know what happened to me. I kept telling you to stop, and you wouldn't. Not until you got what you wanted.”

Eddie's eyes looked ready to pop as he spun to face Kara. “I-I would never—ever—ever—” He reached out again as Kara stood there, frozen.

“I said, don't touch her.”

Ingrid pulled something from her back pocket. Kara saw what it was. Saw and didn't believe it, her brain stuttering, certain she was mistaken. Eddie had his back to Ingrid, his fingers wrapping around Kara's arm as he begged her to believe him. Ingrid's arm swung up. The
gun
swung up.

“No!” Kara grabbed for Eddie, to push him out of the way, but he misinterpreted the move, letting go of her fast, stepping away and saying, “It's okay. I'd never hurt—”

Ingrid fired.

Kara woke on the basement floor. Chained to the basement floor. The music had stopped, replaced now by sobs. At first, still dazed from the beating and the drugs, Kara thought they came from her. But as she focused, blinking past the pain throbbing through her skull, she realized the sound came through the wall.

Kara tried lifting her head, but it hurt so much she gasped and lay down again.

“Inge?” she said, as loud as she dared.

The crying stopped. “Kara?” Then, before Kara could say another word, “Now do you believe me? Do you finally believe me?”

“I—”

“I told you.
I told you.
” Her friend's voice turned harsh. “It's Eddie's brother. He found me out here, and he said he's going to make me pay for what I did.” A choked sob. “But I did. I paid. Isn't that enough?”

“No,” Kara whispered. “It never is.”

Kara lost consciousness again shortly after that. When she woke, the pain had subsided, but she could barely keep her eyes open. Not just beaten but drugged. Injected with something. She started drifting off again, but kept feeling that she'd woken for a reason.

That's when she heard his voice, in the next room, lowered to a whisper, punctuated by Ingrid's sniffs and snivels.

“Tell me about Kara's stepfather,” he was saying.

“I told you,” Ingrid said. “I don't know—”

“I won't ask again. Tell me what you did, and remember, I already know, so don't lie.”

“I didn't do anything.
Anything.
”

A smack, like leather hitting flesh, and Ingrid screamed. Kara squeezed her eyes shut, scrunched into a ball on the floor, and tried to block the sounds. He didn't ask another question. He just kept hitting Ingrid over and over until her screams turned to horrible, animal-like wails.

Then, “It wasn't me! I swear! It was Kara. Kara did it!”

Kara jerked her head up. The smack of the belt had stopped. Ingrid keened in pain as footsteps crossed her room. Then Kara's door opened and she scrambled up as the figure filled the entrance. He shut the door behind him and walked toward her, a thick leather strap hanging from his hand.

“Tell me about your stepfather,” he said.