Shivers 7 (26 page)

“Private Jackson Howard, SIR.” I saluted him – and then, while my hand was still on my forehead, I uncurled only my middle finger.

That got through, because Craig panicked and bolted.

He didn’t even make it off the dance floor before I caught up to him. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked him around, and for a split second my senses unscrambled, and I saw his face, his real face, at the same time as I saw his memory face, three years ago, as he stood over a dead family.

When my fist connected with Craig’s face, I smelled ozone and rank fear sweat, and he dropped to the floor as I tasted bile…but the image in my head of a shot-up kid wasn’t tainted with any sensation but horror, it was clear as yesterday, and it drove me to squat and hit him again. The music was still going, and they were playing my favorite song, but the release I was feeling was anything but sexual. It was knowing that the nightmares might end now, and that I might be able to get through a day without feeling/smelling my gut drop out whenever I thought about the war. It was knowing that the dark alleys in my dreams might be empty at last.

Then somebody – Kevin – was pulling me back, and I stumbled to my feet, and he shouted, “You got him, Jack. It’s done.”

I was panting and I knew there was blood on my knuckles, but I didn’t care. The music took me, then, and it was a victory dance and an orgasm and a giant jitter of joy and relief all together.

The noise had never felt so good.

Plant Life

Greg F. Gifune

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

—Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

1.

Unseen things began to move, slithering, growing and coming alive in ways he did not understand. Wrapping around him, they coiled like dozens of tiny snakes slowly tightening around his head and throat, over his eyes, across his nose and mouth, a jungle of them enveloping his face and body until they had come together to form a hideous cocoon. Though he attempted a scream and struggled to free himself, he knew it was all in vain. There was nothing he could do to shed this new skin, even as it blinded and choked him, and his body bucked with violent resistance. And as his final breath rasped free, barely audible beneath the networks of vines, he wished for death. But he understood even then, as these things pierced his flesh and moved deeper inside him, that he was changing instead. He was becoming something else, something horrible and hideous, but something still profanely
alive
.

Ed awakened gasping for air, his hands fumbling at his throat. As he lay atop the sheets, the ceiling fan overhead spun furiously but did little to decrease the humidity in the bedroom. As he escaped sleep, his vision focusing and his head clearing, he listened a moment, but all he could hear was the steady hum of the ceiling fan. He was alone—his wife Hannah had evidently gotten up ahead of him, which was her custom—but the house seemed unnaturally still. Theirs was the last house on a rural road, so they got little traffic, and their neighbors were mostly elderly. Generally, the area was quiet. But this was different, as on this day, the normally peaceful silence of their neighborhood left Ed instinctually uneasy. Still bleary-eyed, he rolled from bed and headed downstairs to see where everyone was.

That summer was their dog Corky’s second, and although he was nearly two, he was a lab, and labs have notoriously long puppy-hoods. Perhaps because he’d been raised in a household with cats (they outnumbered him three-to-one), Corky had become much like his feline brother and sisters, a creature of habit, and so, he’d get up every morning a bit earlier than Ed, and accompany Hannah downstairs. She’d let him out to do his business while she put the coffee on. Once Corky was back inside, he’d sit in the kitchen with Hannah until she became sufficiently distracted then he’d sneak away and creep back upstairs. While Ed slept (or sometimes only pretended to still be asleep), Corky would select one of his toys from the myriad littering their bedroom floor, and then furiously wagging not only his tail but his entire back end (a maneuver Ed had dubbed Corky’s “happy dance”), Corky would launch all eighty-five pounds of himself onto the bed and come crashing down on top of him. This had become the norm for Ed, to awaken to Corky wiggling about on top of him doing his happy dance. When he’d been a small puppy it was adorable, but the larger he got, the harder it became to survive unscathed. Ed didn’t mind though, as once he was fully awake, Corky would drop the toy, shower him with kisses then flop down next to him and stare at him with those big, dark, adoring eyes. It simply wasn’t possible to be upset or to wake up anything but happy when one’s day began with that level of unconditional love.

But there was no sign of Corky either.

Still suffering the ravages of vague but terrifying nightmares, as Ed stumbled down the stairs, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something horribly wrong.

The den was empty, as was the kitchen. The coffee pot beckoned from his peripheral vision, but he ignored it and shuffled over to the sliders overlooking the backyard instead. They’d had a fence installed around the entire yard when they got Corky, so they could let him out and he could run and play out back safely. Ed looked to the gate. It was closed, so he turned his attention beyond the deck to a modest raised-bed garden Hannah had planted earlier that year. She’d been laid off from her job several months before, and though she’d always been interested in gardening, until recently, she’d never had time to pursue it. In many ways her garden had become a saving grace, as it gave her something enjoyable to focus her time and energy on when she wasn’t searching the online job sites or going on interviews, neither of which had yet amounted to much.

When Ed stepped out onto the deck, the first thing he saw was Corky sitting a few feet from the garden. The dog seemed oddly docile, just sitting there and staring straight ahead. Nearby, Hannah stood gazing at the garden as well. Although he felt better the moment he saw them, Ed moved to the edge of the deck, and without saying anything, watched his wife and dog awhile, his eyes darting between them and the garden. What were they both staring at so intently?

“Honey?” he said.

“Morning,” Hannah said softly, without turning around.

Ed slowed his stride long enough to give Corky a quick pat on the head before sidling up next to Hannah. He slid an arm around her waist, leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. “Why are you guys staring at the garden?”

The word
garden
seemed to snap her out of her trance. Hannah blinked a few times, wiped away some perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand then returned the kiss. “Trying to figure out what happened,” she finally said.

Ed knew nothing about gardening, and did his best to just stay out of Hannah’s way when it came to such things, but when she pointed to a specific area of her garden he saw that one section of large-leaf squash plants had all been yanked free and left flattened in the soil. They looked as if someone had pulled them up then stomped them down.

“With the fence, some small critters can get through underneath—maybe a bunny or even a raccoon—but whatever did this had to have some weight behind it,” she explained. “It’d have to be something…
big
.”

“Was the gate locked when you got up?”

Hannah nodded, the perplexed look on her otherwise pretty face growing worse. “Yeah, so I can’t figure out how anything that size could’ve gotten into the yard.”

“I suppose some kids could’ve scaled the fence, maybe, but—”

“What kids? And why would kids take the time to climb a six-foot fence in the middle of the night just to pull up and stomp some squash plants? Besides, Corky would’ve heard them. He hears everything, especially at night.”

Not this time,
Ed thought. “Are there any footprints?”

“Nope, and that’s bizarre too.”

“What do you think, pal?” Ed slapped his leg, which usually resulted in the dog bounding over to him joyfully. This time Corky slowly strode toward him and sat at Ed’s feet, but the dog’s eyes remained trained on the garden. “It wasn’t you was it, buddy?”

“No,” Hannah answered. “When I let him out before we went to bed last night I was out here with him and I checked on the garden. It was fine and Corky never went anywhere near it.”

Ed squatted down and petted the dog. “You feeling all right, puppy?”

“I think he’s a little spooked.” Hannah pushed her bottom lip out and blew a renegade strand of her short brown hair away from her eyes. “I am too.”

“I really don’t think it’s anything to be frightened of.”

“Someone came into our yard in the middle of the night and did this while we were sleeping, Ed.”

“Honey, listen, nobody came into the yard. It could’ve been raccoons, maybe a whole family or something. A bunch of good-sized ones could’ve tried to eat them by pulling them loose like that and trampled them in the process.”

She thought about it a moment. “It’s possible, but where are
their
prints then?”

“Who knows? Faded overnight, maybe, or—I don’t know—but doesn’t that seem more likely? Besides, why would anyone want to hurt your garden?”

“I don’t know.” Hannah shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I’m just pissed.”

But there was more to it than that. Ed could tell she felt something deeper because he felt it too, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, an instinctual sensation that crawled up the back of his neck and whispered in his ear that despite what common sense dictated, there was more to this than raccoons or other critters. He’d felt it even before he knew about the vegetable garden. Memories of his nightmare flickered through his mind in blinking segments. Still, Ed forced a smile and did his best to mask his own feelings, to calm Hannah and to defuse the situation as best he could. “Let’s go in and have some breakfast,” he said.

Together, they strolled back toward the house.

Corky remained where he was, watching the garden. After a moment, there emanated from deep within him a barely audible sound somewhere between a growl and a whimper.

2.

That afternoon, Hannah pulled the ruined plants from the garden and planted some new ones. She figured it was early enough in the season where if she got them into the ground now they’d still be ripe and ready to be picked at some point late in the summer. But as she worked beneath a brilliant sun, down in the dirt of her garden on her hands and knees, she couldn’t seem to stop running various scenarios in her head.
What could’ve done this?
She wondered. The work done, she sat back on her heels, wiped some sweat from her brow then looked around. Behind the garden was fence. To the right was open yard, to the left a series of wild plants growing along the fence. Mostly weeds and a few leafy plants, but they were all fine. Beyond them were several birdfeeders and a cement birdbath. Hannah stood and inspected the area to see if any additional damage had been done. Though the birdbath needed to be filled, otherwise, far as she could tell, nothing else had been disturbed or looked in any way out of the ordinary. She plucked a bottle of water from the pocket of her shorts and took a long drink. As she screwed the plastic cap back on the bottle she suddenly felt lightheaded. The world swayed a bit, tilting one way then the next, until she nearly fell.

Corky must’ve sensed something was wrong, because he vaulted from his step on the deck and ran to her immediately, placing himself between Hannah and the garden and nuzzling her thigh with his nose in an attempt to push her back toward the deck and away from…
Away from
what,
she wondered,
the garden?

“It’s OK, boy,” she said, suddenly breathless. Nausea had joined the wooziness. She carefully lowered herself down onto the grass and sat there a moment. After a few deep breaths the feeling left her, but the dog continued to gently push his nose into the side of her shoulder. “Corky, stop, baby, I’m fine,” Hannah told him. “I think I just got overheated. I should really wear a hat if I’m going to be out here in direct sunlight so long. Mommy should know better.”

Corky moved directly in front of her, blocking her view of the garden. Though his tail wagged, his face continued to register not only concern, but anxiety.

Hannah looked to the garden. Was she missing something?

A dark blur slipped quickly along the very edge of her peripheral vision.

She snapped her head in that direction, but the black form she would’ve sworn had just glided right by her was nowhere in sight. “Christ,” she said softly, running a hand over her forehead and across her hair. “What the hell?”

Again, Corky’s nose pressed into her shoulder, this time harder than before.

“You don’t want me anywhere near that garden, do you, Cork?”

He gave a single high-pitched bark, as if to say, “Duh!” then ran toward the deck and looked back like he’d expected her to follow.

Strange,
she thought.
Even the dog senses something’s not right.

Hannah struggled to her feet. Her tank top was stuck to her like a second skin, matted down against her body with sweat. As she and Corky went inside, she tried to convince herself that it was simply the sun that had gotten to her just then.

She failed.

3.

That night, heavy summer winds blew in off the nearby Atlantic, bringing with them torrential rains that soaked everything down and lashed the house with a steady drumming sound. Ed lay awake in bed, watching the ceiling fan spin through the darkness overhead. He wanted to sleep, had every intention of it when he and Hannah had gone to bed earlier, but so far it had eluded him. Instead, he lay there wondering about the garden, about the strange way he’d felt since that morning, and how oddly Hannah and Corky had behaved since. Something was wrong. He knew this—knew it on an instinctual level—but he had no idea what. Earlier, while Hannah had taken a quick shower, he and Corky had gone outside. Ed had walked the garden, inspecting it and searching for…for what? He still wasn’t sure. The dog had kept his distance, refusing to accompany Ed beyond a certain point. That had never happened before. None of this made any goddamn sense. Hannah had removed the damaged plants and planted new ones. Nothing else in the garden had changed or seemed out of the ordinary. He even went so far as to check the wild lilac bushes along the fence nearby and behind the garden. All were in place and undisturbed. But not long after he’d started back for the house he’d found himself lightheaded and nauseous to the point that he had to sit down for a spell.

Now, hours later, those symptoms had left him, but he still felt…
strange
…unsure of himself and his surroundings. He reached over for Hannah, his hand coming to rest against her bare thigh. She was sound asleep, partially wrapped in a sheet.

Ed swung his feet around to the floor. The window next to their bed was open, the screen soaked with rain. Beyond, nothing but a stormy night…why then did he have the sudden overwhelming feeling that he and his wife were not alone?

A quick glance to the foot of the bed revealed Corky, asleep and snoring quietly. Odd, he always came awake whenever Ed or Hannah did. In fact, Ed could not recall a time when he’d gotten up and Corky hadn’t woken up as well.

He rose from the bed, padded quietly in his bare feet across the carpeted floor and to the stairs. Hesitating, he looked back at the bed. Neither Hannah nor Corky had moved.
Something’s wrong,
a voice in his head whispered.
There’s someone or something here
.
Not in the house but…close…nearby…