The Harvest Read online

  Nothing.

  It was even darker in the narrow stairwell. He strained his eyes at the murk above him. Something shuffled in the shadows.

  "Chester?" He wished he had brought a flashlight. He should have figured the power might be out when Chester’s phone call had gone dead. Chester had been nitching about all those falling trees and the crazy green glow, and that was plenty enough to get DeWalt out of his easy chair.

  Some pioneer you are, Oh Lodge Brother.

  I'm concerned, Mr. Chairman.

  To what do you attribute your accelerated pulse and the faint quiver of your limbs?

  The unknown.

  Brother, all is unknown. Except for your overly familiar testicular organs.

  Sir, I object. No need to get personal.

  The first tenet of the Royal Order of the Bleeding Hearts charter is "Know thyself." Perhaps that scares you more than anything else.

  Mr. Chairman, pardon me, but I've had enough of your Flower Power sloganeering and half-baked solipsism.

  Brother, do I detect mutiny in the ranks?

  Walk with me, Mr. Chairman. I dare you.

  DeWalt headed up the stairs, staggering on the narrow runners, his arms pressing against the walls for balance. The air was cooler up here, and he felt a draft as he stepped into the room. A shard of light cut between the curtains like a silver sword blade. The room, apparently Chester's bedroom, took up the entire floor. The moon glinted off the green brass of a bed railing.

  He moved to the bed, checking among the ragged quilts for Chester's parchment-covered bones. He uncovered nothing but the vinegary odor of stale sweat and piss dribbles. He was about to go downstairs when he heard a shuffling under the bed.

  That wasn't a dust bunny, Oh Lodge Brother.

  Shall we investigate, Mr. Chairman?

  It's your mutiny.

  DeWalt stooped, one of his knees popping. He put one hand on the metal bed frame, a stray mattress spring digging into the back of his wrist. He tilted his head so his eyes could collect enough light to see. He heard another shuffle and saw a thin dark rope quivering on the floor.

  The rope moved toward him, and he saw the shadowy body attached to it. Boomer. Chester's droopy-eared best friend and resident methane factory. The dog turned to him, and DeWalt saw a moist glistening dot that must have been the dog's nose.

  DeWalt wondered why the mangy beast hadn't barked upon his arrival. The dog knew his smell, and surely Boomer had heard the Pathfinder driving up. This was a hound dog, for Christ's sake.

  Chester usually took Boomer everywhere he went. Even in the truck, Chester would be behind the wheel and Boomer riding gassy shotgun, the worn pads of his paws splayed on the dashboard. But Chester's truck was out in the yard, so Boomer's master wasn't out for a solo spin.

  "Here, boy," said DeWalt in a soothing voice.

  Boomer wiggled on his belly, working the joints of his legs. DeWalt could hear the bones knocking on the pine floor as the hound scooted toward him.

  "That's a good Boomer," he said. He was about to reach out and stroke the dog when it lifted its heavy wrinkled head out of the shadows.

  DeWalt jumped back as if electrified.

  And he knew why the dog hadn’t barked.

  The thing on the dog's shoulders couldn't rightly be called a head. It was more like an inverted boot, with a long, dry, leathery tongue dangling toward the dusty floor. An eye shone on each side of the face like a radioactive green pea. The moistness DeWalt had seen was a blowhole that gaped in the slope of the skullbone like a Venus’s-flytrap, opening and closing with a faint, marshy sigh.

  The eyes lit up like twinkling Christmas lights, a limey neon decoration for a nightmare. Ears—no, cactus bulbs, DeWalt's horrified mind screamed—pinned themselves back as the head tilted toward him.

  DeWalt processed all this insane information in a heartbeat, but it was a long heartbeat, because his aortic chamber had frozen in fear. When his lungs resumed hammering oxygen into his bloodstream, he backed toward the stairs.

  The thing that had been Boomer crawled to the center of the room, its flytrap orifice gurgling. The creature had no fur, only bristles that flexed as the body stubbed toward DeWalt. Worst of all was the snakeroot of a tail thumping the floor, as if the mutated Boomer still wanted human affection.

  DeWalt half fell, half ran down the stairs, hurtling forward with his arms crossed in front of him. He stumbled through the living room, imagining that the clutter around his ankles was creeping myrtle vines and the table edge at his knee was a birch branch. A dry crash filled the farmhouse as the highboy toppled, and then DeWalt was at the screen door, flailing through the mesh. He scooted into the Pathfinder and was turning the key when he saw a dark form coming around the barn.

  The figure moved with a shambling gait, the way Chester did when the old fool was on a three-day drunk. DeWalt opened his door and got out, leaving the engine running.

  "Chester, what in God's name happened to Boomer?" DeWalt said, surprised that his vocal cords found room to vibrate in his tight throat.

  The figure shuffled closer, and DeWalt could smell him now. Chester had never been a chronic bather, but even he knew enough to at least stand in a rainstorm once in a while and let the worst odors wash away.

  DeWalt was about to call out again when he saw the eyes. Neon eyes that he shouldn't have been able to see from twenty feet away. The figure lifted its arms. “Shu-shaaa,” it said.

  DeWalt spun, slipped in a pile of Boomer's excrement, then got up and dashed to his vehicle.

  The Pathfinder cut twin dark curves in the grass as DeWalt sped away before the figure by the barn could shuffle out of the shadows and fully into the moonlight. DeWalt didn't want to see it. His imagination was painting mad enough nightmares without any more help from reality, and the Lodge Brothers in his head were, for the first time in years, speechless.

  ###

  James Wallace shouldn't have had that third beer down at the Hayloft Tavern. In fact, he shouldn't have gone there at all. The blue jeans, cowboy hats, and flannel shirts should have tipped him off, plus the name of the place wasn't exactly a drawing card for the yuppie generation. And he could have taken a cue from the band that was playing at one end of the huge old barn. "Big Willie and the Half-Watts."

  Yee-haw.

  But driving by, he'd seen that big-screen TV through the window, and March Madness was in full swing. He liked to watch the tournament even if the teams playing were Fleaspeck Valley State and Bumfield Tech.

  The people had been nice enough at first. The bartender had taken his money without drawing back his hand from the contact. Not a single overt response to James’s skin. Probably a few remarks slithered from the corner booths, but midway through the second beer, the edges of his awareness had tunneled considerably, and about the only white eye that bothered him was Dick Vitale's glass one.

  Then the girl had talked to him. She was two stools away, but that was close enough to make James uncomfortable. He could almost hear the rustle of the nooses tightening behind him.

  "You like basketball?" the redhead said, turning and smiling at him.

  "Yeah. I'm a Georgetown fan. Got my degree there."

  His tongue felt a little thick. Still, it was pleasant just to talk to someone. Aunt Mayzie was good company, but she sometimes got tired of having him around. Besides, this was different. A lot different.

  "Georgetown, huh? That's a tough school. I go to Westridge myself."

  "I've heard that's a good school. Pretty long drive, isn't it?"

  "I live up here, so it's cheaper than moving down to Barkersville or staying in a dorm."

  "What do you study?" James took another sip from his heavy mug of beer.

  "I’m a psych major."

  James nodded. Psychology, huh? She might have all kinds of games going on. Maybe this is some kind of black-white social experiment.

  "I'm in library sciences myself,” he said, licking the beer foam from his upper lip. “Us
ed to work at the Smithsonian."

  "Wow. That's a really cool place. I went there on a class trip a few years back. If you don't mind me asking," she said, rolling her blue eyes to indicate the town outside, "What brought you to Windshake? I mean, it's not exactly a happening place."

  "My aunt lives here. I'm keeping her company until her health improves." Or until she dies, whichever comes first.

  "Isn't that sweet?" the redhead said, smiling again. "I've seen you around town. I mean, it's not like you don't stand out or anything."

  James dipped his head and waited. We don't like darkies ‘round these parts. Spooks belong in the graveyard. Coons are fer huntin’.

  "I thought you'd be an interesting person to talk to," she said.

  What kind of a lily-white liberal was she? Takin' pity on the po' old suppressed African-American. That's NIGGER to you, ma'am. James stared into his beer at the salamander eyes of foam.

  "Well, am I right?" she said.

  "I'm just a regular guy." James shrugged, and let his shrug continue into a hunch, as if he could duck his head into his shirt like a turtle.

  The redhead moved to the stool next to his. James felt the white eyes crawl out of the rough-cut woodwork. Fuck them, James decided. It isn't against the law for me to talk, even to a local white girl.

  "My name's Sarah. What's yours?"

  "James."

  "Look, I'm not on the make or anything. I like to dance. And I get tired of the same old guys around here. All they want to talk about is bow hunting and tractor pulls and big tires."

  At last James smiled, a slightly beery grin that was warm and relaxed. And he had to admit it felt damn good. He hadn't smiled in a coon's age, to coin a local phrase. “At least you're up-front. Can I buy you a beer?"

  "I'm underage, plus my Daddy's a Baptist preacher. He doesn't even approve of me dancing. But thanks, anyway."

  Holy hell. He was messing around with a preacher's daughter? He could practically hear the gasoline splashing onto the wooden crosses.

  Still, she was pretty cute. Her company was worth a little risk.

  They talked and watched the game and James learned that Sarah wanted to move to Oregon after graduation. And though she had been raised a Baptist, she had started hanging around with a Ba'hai group on campus and thought they had some good ideas.

  World unity and all that. Brotherhood of man. Sisterhood of woman. Peoplehood of people. Sounded pretty hip to James.

  But then she asked him to dance.

  James looked at the stage at the far end of the converted barn. Hay bales propped up the amplifiers and Big Willie was twanging on a jaw harp. A fat boy who looked like that old Shoney's restaurant statue was thumping a stand-up bass, and the other Half-Watts were sawing on fiddles and plucking banjoes. A group of middle-aged cowboys and cowgirls were galloping around in a square dance, hoeing on down like there was no tomorrow.

  He could dance with a white girl. Sure, and he could even do that "change-yer-partner" bit and get belly to belly with a buckskinned belle. But he was positive the next dance would be a dozen white men doing the Tennessee Two-Step across his hide.

  "No, thank you,” he said. “Contrary to stereotype, not all blacks are good dancers."

  The corners of her mouth sagged in disappointment. She talked a few minutes more and then mumbled that she had classes tomorrow and better be getting home. He watched her leave, and the tension died in the bar as if the power had been cut.

  James had been so nervous talking to Sarah that he couldn't resist that extra beer. So there was no way in hell he was going to slide behind the seat of his Accord and drive through the tight streets of Windshake, where white cops blossomed like popcorn whenever James was at the wheel. Nothing to do but hoof it the ten blocks home.

  He didn’t like walking the streets of Windshake at night. His fuzzy brain conjured voices from stale old radio dramas.

  Who knew what evil lurked in the brick alleys and shadows of Windshake? Probably redneck evil. Yokel vampires with buck fangs and Oshkoshbegosh overalls.

  He walked with his head down, not that there were many white eyes to avoid at this hour. He passed Luther's Hardware, glancing into the window at the wheelbarrows and birdhouses, and noticed that there was a special on snow shovels. Then he turned the corner onto the darkened back street. It looked kind of spooky at night, with the ragged awnings hanging over like big hands and the fence-top shadows resembling black teeth. Broken glass glittered under the streetlight like tiny hungry eyes in a dark forest. A loose piece of guttering flapped in the night breeze.

  He wished he had talked to Sarah longer. She was really nice, and gorgeous to boot. He wasn't sure how he felt about interracial dating, though it might be time to find out. But maybe she was just being kind. She hadn't given him a phone number or anything to indicate any real interest. The summery aroma of her perfume wisped across his nostrils in memory, but the back street odors of rotten asphalt and spilled kerosene drove it away.

  James climbed onto the abandoned railroad track and headed home. He stretched his legs to keep rhythm to the spacing of the creosote timbers that passed under his feet. Then he tried to walk on the rail, but his coordination was too impaired. He was passing the rusty, corrugated water tower when he heard a sound in the dark gridwork underneath it.

  Stray mutt? James took a step, his sneaker sending a chunk of gravel skipping down the tracks. The noise came again, louder. A rasping, wheezing sound.

  He wouldn't look. He told himself to keep the old head down, submissive-like.

  Somebody stepped out of the shadows. At first, James thought it might be one of the rednecks from the Hayloft Tavern, come to share a little two-fisted Southern hospitality with him.

  But whoever it was staggered like a bum on a sterno binge. Only, Windshake didn't have any homeless that he'd ever seen.

  James aimed his foot for the next cross tie, but came up short because his eyes had shifted toward the person in the shadows. He stumbled and nearly fell down the gravel bank. One of his feet had lodged under a track coupling.

  Fucker's got one of those glo-tubes, like they sell in the dime stores at Halloween. No, TWO of them.

  The person wobbled out of the shadows.

  A good Southern boy, all right. Regulation-wear Levi's and ball cap. And he's coming this way.

  Only his goddamned legs aren't moving.

  The man oozed into the streetlight, and James saw that the glo-tubes were eyes stuck inside the lump on the man's shoulder's. Only now he could see that it definitely wasn't a man.

  Glistening ropes clung to the thing like poison sumac, slick and fuzzy. The thing moved like a slug, the lower part of it leaving a trail of mucus. The tall weeds wilted under its passage.

  The wheezing sound was coming from the thing's shoulder-lump. A gummy flap opened, and James looked with fascinated horror into the fluorescent green throat. Tonsils dripping with foul nectar wiggled in the back of the dark opening. Gray thorns rimmed the edge of the flap and it clamped shut with a sigh of longing.

  No. James, you are not making this up. Four beers don't make you hallucinate. A HUNDRED beers couldn't summon this out of your imagination.

  James was frozen, his synapses hot-wiring his reflexes, beaming an urgent message through the hellish insanity that his visual perception had cursed him with. The message was: haul ass and don't spare the gas.

  Except his foot was caught in the godforsaken railroad trestle, hooked in a hollow place in the timber where a coupling joined two rails. He almost snapped his ankle trying to lurch away.

  The thing slugged closer, its arms jutting ahead like gnarled tree branches, pungent foliage pluming from their tips. While James worked to free his foot, he got a close look at the thing's head. Closer than he wanted, close enough to guarantee him a lifetime's supply of nightmares. If he even had a lifetime left.

  He could see the gill-like ridges in the thing's throat as the thorny flap opened again. Inside was a pulpy mass that looked
like a cow's well-chewed cud. Then the flap worked again, and swampy steam rose from the mouth. Worst of all was the Red Man cap perched atop the bristled lump, because it made the horror all too human.

  The thing was oozing noise, spraying sibilants into the night air like the blowholes on those whales James had seen on The Discovery Channel. Only this thing was trying to form syllables.

  James knelt, tugging at his foot, feeling the skin scrape from his ankle as he twisted. Gravel dug into his flesh, but he barely noticed the pain.

  "Shu-shaaa . . ."

  The fucker is NOT talking to me. Please, Lord, don't let it be talking to me.

  And now it was close enough that James could smell its tainted raspberry breath, an acrid minty fog. Suddenly his foot came free from his shoe and he rolled over, then was hobbling down the tracks, one white sock flopping in the darkness. He dared a look back to make sure the vegetative nightmare wasn't gaining on him. The thing wasn't fast, but it sure as hell looked determined.

  The thing in the Red Man cap misted a final plaintive call after him, like a child left all alone on a playground.

  "Shu-shaaa . . ."

  CHAPTER NINE

  "Working late tonight?"

  Nettie jumped. Preacher Blevins had crept up behind her without her hearing. She thought he had left hours ago.

  Her heartbeat pulsed against her eardrums. The preacher always moved with meek, reverent steps, as if noise brought chaos to the House of God. Still, he could have at least knocked on the vestry door.

  "Oh, I didn't startle you, did I?" he said, the filament of his smile beaming from the lower portion of his pale light-bulb head.

  She put a hand to her chest in exaggerated fear. "I thought it was the devil himself."

  "The devil will never touch one as pure as you," the preacher said, resting a hand on her shoulder. He bent over her, his necktie curling out and brushing her hair as he looked at the papers covering her desk. "I was watching television over in the rectory when I looked out the window and saw the lights on. What's so important that it's got you working this late?"