FEAST OF THE FEAR (5 page)

Mitch stepped closer to the abomination. He was shaking his head as tears of emotion coursed down his cheeks. “No, I
don’t
see.”

“
Have you not felt my pain and my torment?”

Mitch gave his head a nod. He could not deny these truths. He’d felt everything as if he had been inside his brother’s body, seen through his eyes, shared his heart and his soul. But of course he still didn’t understand. He might never understand, nevertheless a twisted species of curiosity made him probe deeper into the mystery. “I want to know why?” he demanded.

“
Why?”

“
Why . . . everything?” Mitch sobbed. “Why were you born? Why didn’t you die? Why did you have to be my brother?”

The creature stared at Mitch, its sulfurous eyes burning. “Mitch,” it said. “Why must there always be simple answers? Nothing is simple.”

“
I know, but still, there has to be some
reason
to things.”

“
You want reason, Mitch. Okay, I’ll give you reason. It all happened because I was pissed off. There, how’s that? You feel better?”

“
No,” Mitch said, giving his head an angry shake. “There’s more to it than that.”

“
Jesus, Mitch, what do you want me to say? That I hung around because it was fun? Because I enjoy being like this? Because I get off on butchering people?”

Mitch stood motionless, staring. He felt he’d hit upon something. As preposterous as it was, this seemed the most obvious answer. Even if there was more to it, what difference did it make? He’d never get the truth from this godless creature. He was kidding himself if he thought he could.

Only now did Mitch realize he still carried the murder weapon, his grip so strong his hand hurt. In a sudden flash of inspiration he knew what he had to do. He wanted a life of his own, a life free of nightmares and monsters, free of the terrible incumbencies of pain that had wracked his existence for so long. The scar on his side was dragging him down, threatening to take him to his knees, further evidence of his suffering, and his need to be free. It would all end here, Mitch vowed. This would be his brother’s swan song.

Without the luxury of further thought, his right hand moved forward at lightening speed. Moonlight glinted sharply off the knife’s blade in the instant before Mitch buried it to the hilt in his brother’s bulbous head. A searing wall of pain slammed into Mitch’s own head, nearly strong enough to blind him. He screamed, pulled the knife free and staggered back, understanding only too well what fruit the consequences of his actions might bear. He and his brother were linked in some incomprehensible way, and by killing him, well . . . the ramifications were obvious. Mitch stepped forward, however, and again buried the knife into the abomination, ripped it free and plunged it in again, and again, and again. Each time the blade did its dirty business Mitch howled into the echoing night like the tortured soul that he was, both writhing in agony and exulting in triumph, as if life and death were part of the same blurred purpose. Eventually all emotion receded, only to be replaced by its antithesis: oblivion. Numb, Mitch continued silently on with his slaughter, the abomination spitting and writhing beneath his assault, but not offering a single hand in retaliation. This only fueled the ambition inside of Mitch, spurring him on to even greater heights of brutality. If he never forgot the crimes his brother had hung around his neck, then so be it. If he survived this night he would have to live with them. This was an incontestable truth. With this slaughter he’d become the killer he’d convinced himself he’d been all along,
The Fear
born out to its inevitable conclusion.

Vile smelling sewage jetted from the wounds he was opening up in the now motionless carcass, soaking Mitch with its poisons. After a very long time, the feeling gone from his body and the sanity from his mind, Mitch pulled the knife free for the final time and staggered back, inspecting his handiwork. He wiped the sewage from his face with the sleeve of his shirt, staring down at the mutilated form. He leaned over and wretched, puking muck from his mouth and nose. Unable to hold onto his consciousness a moment longer, Mitch collapsed in the sand beside his mutilated brother and slept.

Sometime toward morning the corpse, now reanimated, opened its sulfurous eyes and rolled over. Reaching out with a small, palsied claw, it pried the butcher knife from Mitch’s hand. Turning its gaze toward the east, in the direction of the town, it said, “Mother, I’m coming for you.” With its other hand it caressed its sleeping brother gently on the cheek and said, “I’ll never leave you, Mitch.”

THE RESURRECTION PIT

I like peanut butter and maggot sandwiches
.

Christian didn’t care if his little brother did like peanut butter and maggot sandwiches, as long as he came back to him.

The first time Christian was consciously aware of the resurrection pit he was twelve years old and it was three days after Stevie disappeared.

He knew folks died. He knew they went away. That was life in Somerville. Everybody went away eventually. And he knew about wakes and funerals and folks hanging out in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes crying and eating bland food and toasting the dead with cheap wine and stale beer. Hell, he’d been to enough of them, too many to count.

What he didn’t understand was why they came back.

And why they were never quite the same after they did.

And nobody could ever give him a good answer about any of it.
Shhh, you’re not supposed to talk about these things.

And so he stopped talking about it, but he could never stop thinking about it. They could not make him do that.

His little brother Stevie was ten. They shared a room. They were close.

One night he heard footsteps and loud whispers out in the hallway and Stevie crying, and then it was silent and he knew.

And in the morning Stevie was gone.

Waylon, their father, was making a racket over breakfast, banging pots and pans together. Like he was angry.

Christian’s mother took off when he was five and Stevie was three. Nobody ever said why but Christian thought he knew. When she went away she wanted to stay gone.

Christian carefully searched the house but found no trace of his little brother. Returning finally to the kitchen he stood and watched his father.

“
Where is he?”

“
Gone,” Waylon said.

“
Like Mama?”

“
No.”

“
Where then?”

Waylon did not answer him. He smiled at the boy but Christian saw that it was a false smile, that his eyes were somewhere else, like they had turned over in his head and only seemed to be looking inward, as if they had been forced to gaze upon something too terrible to confide. Waylon wobbled around the kitchen, whistling tunelessly to himself and making small talk, but Christian was no fool. He knew what had happened to his little brother and he hated his father for not telling him.

“
When’s he coming back?”

“
Oh, a day or two.”

Christian had friends whose mothers and fathers had died, and he knew kids who’d died in car crashes. They all came back eventually. He had a friend named Leroy Starks who had fallen off a tractor into the blades of a corn harvester. He didn’t see Leroy’s body but those who did said it was a mess. Three days later Leroy was back at school. His skin looked different; yellow, like puss, and he talked slower, and he walked slower, like he had shit in his pants, and his eyes were dull, like they weren’t really seeing you, and he dug around in his nostrils all the time as if he was trying to scratch an itch in his brain. And he would say stupid things such as: I like peanut butter and maggot sandwiches? Or: I’m gonna play with my dead puppy when I get home?

Christian supposed it was good to have Leroy back, even if he did say stupid things.

Three days passed and Stevie still hadn’t returned. When he asked his father about it Waylon said, “There must have been a problem. Be patient. Things will play out eventually.”

“
What sort of things?” Christian asked.

Waylon looked long and hard at his son before answering. “I suppose it’s time you knew about it,” he said. “You’re old enough.”

“
Knew about what?”

“
The resurrection pit.”

Christian nodded in understanding. He knew. Somehow he’d always known.

“
During the nineteenth century something happened in the woods out behind old man Doggett’s farm,” Waylon explained. “Something hit the ground, made a pretty big crater. Nobody knows what it was but it burned away part of the forest and it never grew back. Couple years later, Doggett’s wife died and he buried her out in the pit. No one knows why he did it and I guess it’s not important. The point is, two days later she came back. She wasn’t exactly the same but she was good enough for old Doggett. She cooked his meals and cleaned his house. So before Doggett died he left instructions to be buried in the pit.” Waylon paused, looking in his son’s eyes. “That was more than a hundred years ago and . . . well . . . you know . . .”

“
Yeah,” Christian said, “The Doggett’s are still around.” Christian knew them from church; they both had puss-yellow skin, dull eyes, frozen smiles and blackened teeth. Just like half the people in Somerville. And at school more and more kids were going away and coming back changed. Some ate rotten apples for lunch. Still others dined on insects and dead frogs. Some wore their clothes horribly soiled, inside out; few handed in homework and the teachers seemed not to care.

I like peanut butter and maggot sandwiches.

Waylon hung his head.

“
Well why hasn’t anybody come here from away, see why it’s happening?” Christian asked.

“
Oh they have,” Waylon said. “You bet they have.”

“
Well?”

“
They go away and never come back.”

“
But what about Stevie?” Christian insisted. “Stevie didn’t just die, did he?”

“
No, son, he didn’t. But he’s gone and there are rules.”

“
What rules?”

“
We’re living longer these days,” Waylon explained. “There’s better medicine, safer cars. If natural attrition doesn’t accomplish the goal then we have to be . . . creative.”

“
I hate you,” Christian said. He got up and left the room, knowing what his father had done.

Six days and nights passed and Stevie still hadn’t returned. And Christian began having dreams; Stevie sidling up to his bed, whispering in his ear, his breath dank, like grave dirt. “I need you, Christian,” his brother implored. “I can’t come home without your help.” But Christian knew that wasn’t the way it worked. Something was wrong.

The dreams continued for nearly a month and when Christian mentioned them to his father, Waylon would just stare blankly at him. When he tried to stay awake, Stevie’s voice went silent.  It was only on those nights where, bested by exhaustion, he would fall into bed only to awaken at the sound of creaking floorboards as something crawled toward his room.  A shape would slither past the doorway and the smell of grave dirt would assault his senses.

“
Please, Christian.”

I don’t know what to do, Stevie.

“
Yes you do.”

Dad should do it.

“
Dad can’t”

Why not?

“
Because Mama says you have to.”

Mama?
Christian thought.

In a near-trance state, Christian climbed out of bed and, barefoot, followed the dark shape through the fields of autumn-dry corn stalks to the woods behind Doggett’s farm. It wasn’t until Christian reached the crater did he realize his brother had disappeared.

The pit was just as his father had described, a deep bowl-shaped indentation in the earth where vegetation refused to grow. Christian stood on the rim looking down into it. With the harvest moon clear and bright he had no trouble seeing the hundreds of holes where citizens had been buried and resurrected. But why had Stevie been denied? And what did Mama have to do with it?

Christian moved down into the pit until he came to an untouched mound. Something about the look of it troubled him.

He went to his knees and started to dig, thinking of his brother and Waylon’s blank stare, thinking of the kids at school.

I like peanut butter and maggot sandwiches
.

He dug in the ground until his fingers bled.
In the end, he found only an empty hole in the earth. And in the morning, despite the filth on his feet and the blood on his hands, he wondered if it had all been a dream.

That night the dark shape was back, slithering across the floorboards, beckoning, pleading.

“
I need you, Christian.”

I tried last night, Stevie.

“
Mama wasn’t ready.”

No! Mama went away a long time ago and didn’t come back. She went away because she didn’t want to come back.