The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (7 page)

“That’s where we are going to
be digging. I hired a dirt crew to come in and they’ve already got it cleaned
out. It was a big mud hole when they started, and now it’s dry. Just a big oily
pool at the bottom, but we’ll get that drained out Monday, I guess.”

“Did you notice anything weird
down there when they were cleaning it out?”

“Well, that’s odd. B.J. found a
frog he’d run over with the track hoe. Thing was big around as a dinner plate
and had five eyes. Damnest thing I ever saw.” He paused, then added, “how did
you know that?”

I gave no reason and got off
the phone. It was a five-minute drive to the county impound lot where the truck
B.J. and Owen had been killed in was being kept. The big red Ford diesel was
still on the back of a long flat bed hauler, chained down to the deck. It was
obvious that the truck had rolled several times. The cab was crushed down to
the level of the dash and the whole body appeared twisted. That those two had
wrecked didn’t surprise me; hardly a day ended that they hadn’t consumed a case
of beer apiece before heading home from the job. What was unaccountable was
that both doors were missing, and along the crushed holes where they should
have been hanging were deep gouges in the red body that left jagged rents in
the metal. I turned to leave, noticing off in the distance, thirty miles or so
to the west, a vast black cloud drifting up from the ground. Paradise. The old
coal plant had its environmental scrubbers off. They never ran them unless the
EPA was going to do a fly through, and the smoke was as dark as the coal they
burned, our coal, full of heat, full of something else. I thought about all the
millions of tiny particles of the bones and black glass that must be rising up
in that midnight plume, drifting up and up to rain steadily back down across
the earth.

I raced home and started
looking up numbers. Curtis Ward, no answer. Jay and Eric Ingram, answering
machine. I called what cell phones I had numbers for, but nobody picked up.
Finally I even called Johnny Lindsey, why the mute had a phone had always been
a point of humor for all of us at the mine, but as he answered with his back
throat squeal. I was glad of the fact.

“Johnny, listen. It’s Tom
Phelps. Listen to me now. I think something’s wrong with Zan. I think, well, it
doesn’t matter. You get yourself out of the house and come over to my place.
Bring a gun with you and you don’t stop.”

He started to make the
affirmative squeal, then, halfway through, cut off. I heard a loud banging in
the background, like someone beating a door down. Johnny made a low, suspicious
moan.

“Johnny, Johnny! Don’t answer
it! Get your gun.” I screamed into the receiver. In answer I heard the sliding
clunk of a shotgun pump. There was another sound then as Johnny’s door must
have exploded, followed by a shotgun blast.

I have to ask you if you’ve
ever heard a mute scream. I think it was worse than normal screams. Maybe they
save ‘em up for really important moments. The noise that came from Johnny’s
throat was like nothing I had ever heard, primal and utterly free of restraint.
It rose and rose, higher in pitch and volume, then, suddenly, seemed to fill
with gurgling liquid. Then all was silent. I listened, not daring to breathe.
Seconds stretched out unbearably and I strained to hear. A slippery sound
finally came across the line, a sound like wet rubber being pushed across
metal. The phone popped and a voice came over it. “Hiiiiiii Tommmmy.” It was a
whisper made through wet leaves, “Caaann Iiii cooomme oooverrrr?” I dropped the
phone, then scrambled to pick it back up.

“Zan! Zan, is that you?” But
there was no one there.

Mr. Snodgrass didn’t answer the
phone when I called. Everyone that had worked the Lindsey seam was away from
their phones and their cell phones. So were their families. I sat on the couch
staring at my burned hands. Every bit of exposed skin I had was cooked by the
black substance and I had been around it for less than half an hour. Zan
probably experimented with the shard for hours. Did he notice what was
happening? Did he feel himself changing? I wondered what would happen if he’d
tried to taste the thing? He had been desperate to keep our find a secret. How
much more did that matter after he’d realized what was occurring to him? Did he
take the shard and flee into the woods? Bury himself in the cold dead ground
like some grub, shedding skin and hair, coming out changed into something new,
something mean and repellant?

I had to get Annie out of the
house. She refused to go to her parents until I gave her a good reason. I know
she thought I was hiding something, drugs probably. In a last desperate bid to
get her out of the house, I slapped her. Whoever finds this tape, make sure she
knows I didn’t mean it. I just wanted her to be safe for as long as possible. I
know that nobody will be safe for long. Whoever you are, don’t let the Lindsey
mine open back up. I hope to God that the coal price drops. As long as it’s
running high, some fool will try and open up that godforsaken pit.

I can hear him. He’s on the
roof. I know what feet sound like on our roof. The neighbors kid cleans my
gutters and I know the sound of feet. That’s not what I’m hearing. I’m not
hearing feet. I can’t tell you if I am hearing limbs. The bugs and frogs have gone
quiet. Even the mosquitoes have stopped buzzing in my ears. I hear its breath,
like a hot-air balloon inflating.

The Nature of Blood

George Mann

I fell in love with a red-head
on the bus.

Her eyes were sparkling windows
of blue, glassy and serene. Her hair was a shock of amber that fell in waves
about her shoulders. Sometimes she wore it tied back in a taut ponytail. When I
think of her, I see a pair of skinny trousers, cut short, in black and white
pinstripe, and an old cream jumper wrapped around her body, pulled up
underneath her chin. It was winter. Our breaths made steaming clouds in the
night air; fogged up the windows on the inside of the old Leyland bus. We
watched each other with cautious eyes.

Her name was Isabella.

She spent her time making
blood. Later, she would talk to me about the nature of blood; show me her
little laboratory that smelled of formaldehyde. She would hunch for hours over
her enormous electronic microscope, rearranging plasma, synthesizing the fluid
of life. She would smile to herself at little triumphs; rub the back of her
aching neck with her left hand. I never quite grasped the complexities of those
hours, the nuances that made the blood of one person so different from that of
another. Still, now, I have difficulty understanding the allure, the reasons
she did what she did. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, I think she
saw it as a failure on my part, this lack of comprehension, and it undermined
our relationship from the very start. But at the time we were full of hope and
optimism, and all things were new. If I showed my ignorance she would simply
smile at me knowingly, and then kiss me brightly on the forehead, her lips
leaving a cool, damp impression on my skin.

When I first saw her she was
poring over the pages of a scientific journal, her lips carefully following the
words of some difficult passage, silently committing them to memory. The bus
shelter curved in a protective arc over her head, its dirty plastic barrier
holding off the snowflakes of yet another miserable English night. They tumbled
gently around me, catching every now and then on my cuff or sleeve, only to
wink silently out of existence like tiny stars.

I smiled.

She didn’t even notice me.

I took my place under the
shelter and willed the bus to come around the corner.

Beside me, an ancient, careworn
woman was standing hunched over the figure of an elderly man, lecturing him on
the benefits of having turned up the sleeves of her cardigan.

“I just cut them off about
here,” she said, indicating with her finger, “and then turned them up to here.
I did one the same for little Violet, you know.”

“They just come down to me
knuckles, these do, these sleeves.” He looked up at her plaintively.

“Just pop round one afternoon
Tom, I’ll do anything, me.” A pause. “I’m up at the cemetery tomorrow mind,
about twelve o’clock. Shan’t stay long, be home for quarter-to.”

“Aye. I’ll be at the bookie’s,
meself.” He looked up at me and winked.

I turned away quickly,
embarrassed. Two eyes peered up from the pages of the journal, momentarily
lost, as if the sudden segue-way between theory and reality had left her
disorientated, out-of-sorts. She looked over. I held her gaze. She smiled. I
smiled back. The bus came around the corner.

It skidded to a stop about
three feet from the shelter, causing a wave of dirty water to slop up onto the
curb. The doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss. We clambered on board.
Noisily, the driver gunned the engine and we headed off into the night,
surrounded by the odd, uncomfortable bustle of disparate strangers trying to
make their way home.

The next day I was surprised to
find her take a seat beside me. I shuffled up to make room and pulled my
headphones away from my ears, unsure of her intentions. I glanced over. She was
smiling at me expectantly, wanting to talk.

“What are
you listening to?” Her voice was soft and sugary, perfect.

“The Throwing Muses.”

“I love their
University
album.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it at home
somewhere. Haven’t listened to it in years though. Too busy with, well...” She
indicated her reading.

I smiled. “I know that
feeling.” I rubbed my hand over my chin, the rough, unshaven bristles like
sandpaper against my palm.

“Sometimes it just feels like
the whole world is conspiring against you, and you only wish you could step
back for a moment to take a breath.”

I stared at her for what seemed
like an age. “Do you fancy a drink?”

The pub was cozy and out of the
way. Snowflakes spattered on the windowpanes, rolling across the wet glass like
tiny beads. An open fire flickered in the grate, casting dark shadows across
the faces of the other patrons, exposing their sinister sides to anyone who
cared to look. Couples whispered to one another in hushed tones. I spilt her
drink.

“I’m so sorry. I’ll just get
you another.”

“No, please, let me.”

“No, really.”

We laughed at our awkwardness.
I bought the drink.

Later, when I thought she
wouldn’t notice, I watched her breathing, the little bird-like fluttering in
her chest as she formed her words, the gentle pursing of her lips as she
exhaled. I was exhilarated. She caught me watching and smiled at me
inquisitively. I looked away, embarrassed. Her blue eyes flashed with
amusement.

It wasn’t long before we found
ourselves back at my place.

I never got past putting the
kettle on. We tugged at each other’s clothes, awkward and still unfamiliar. She
wrestled me to the ground amongst a pile of magazines and old wrappers,
planting kisses over my face and hands. I followed the contours of her delicate
body with my fingertips, enjoying the curve of her hips, cupping her small,
round breasts in my palms. Her skin was warm and soft and smooth.

Quietly, gently, her lower lip
clasped tightly between her teeth, she reached down and pulled me inside her.

In the morning I woke to find
she had gone. A little yellow Post-it note was stuck to the alarm clock,
flapping gently in the draught from the half-open window. Light filtered
through in hazy streams, picking out the dust motes that swirled and danced in
the air all around me. I reached over and tugged at the message. It came away
in my hand.

Tomorrow night, 56
Westbrook Ave, 8pm

Isabella xxx

I smiled to myself and
clambered out of bed. I could hardly wait.

Fifty-six Westbrook Avenue was
a crumbling old Victorian townhouse; enormous, with large red steps leading up
to the front door and a little iron railing that ran parallel to the road.
Inside the front yard, huge leaves flapped like elephant’s ears in the cold
breeze and moss poked up inquisitively through the cracks between the paving
slabs. A lamp glowed dimly from behind the curtains in the downstairs living
room. I rapped the knocker briskly and drew my coat up around my neck to fight
off the chill.

After a few moments the door
creaked open and Isabella was smiling at me from within. The sight of her face
filled me with a sudden sense of well-being and relief.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

I handed her my coat and
struggled to find something to say as she hung it over the banister. A tall
grandfather clock ticked ominously in the corner. “Nice place. How was your day?
Isn’t it cold tonight?” I mumbled incoherently.

Isabella laughed, and, stepping
closer, touched her finger against my lips. I relented. Her face gleamed in the
low light of the hallway. I took that face in my hands and kissed it. Twice.

Afterwards, she clasped my hand
tightly between her own and led the way to the dining room. Candles spluttered,
arranged in a random fashion upon the large table. The flickering shadows they
cast on the walls and ceiling reminded me of tiny butterflies darting to and fro,
dancing in myriad patterns and shapes.