Forever never ends Page 18

  Jimmy grabbed One-Eye by the throat. The knot of the man's Adam's apple pumped feverishly under Jimmy’s palm.

  "And how's he going to find out?" Jimmy pulled the pale face next to his own. He could smell the old soldier's rotten gums, the stench blowing from his mouth like a graveyard wind.

  "Hold on, hold on. I ain't no squealer," the man wheezed. "Just want my piece of the pie, is all."

  Jimmy relaxed his grip on the man's throat. His fingers had made red prints in the flesh.

  "Costs fifty bucks, old man. More for extras." He looked dubiously at One-Eye's wrinkled and pallid face. "And there ain't no guarantees, in case you don't, uh… come through."

  "Fifty bucks," One-Eye yelped. "She been giving it to me for free."

  Howard must have heard them arguing, because the bed stopped squeaking. Or else he had finally clocked out.

  "Who's that, Jimmy?" Howard shouted from inside the room.

  "Oh God, not Sylvester, " Peggy said.

  "No, it ain't Sylvester,” Jimmy hollered back over his shoulder through the door. “Just another customer, Peg. Get on with it, now."

  My first try at flesh peddling ain't going as smooth as I'd hoped. And if Peggy's turned to this old geezer for companionship, then I must not have been keeping her satisfied. My feelings would be hurt, if I had any.

  But he might be able to turn the situation around yet. Maybe One-Eye still had enough of his government pension check left to at least sniff Jimmy's product. It was a classic case of supply and demand, and demand seemed to be high at the moment. And the supply wasn't going anywhere.

  He opened his mouth to tell the old fart the new facts of life, but his mouth kept dropping, his jaw nearly hinging down to his chest. Because of what he saw coming up the hall behind One-Eye.

  Sylvester had come home, or at least, part of Sylvester. Sylvester approached the back bedroom with stinging green eyes and ripe skin and arms stretched outward like a junkie sleepwalker. His mouth dripped with amber sap and opened to show the wiggling little fibers inside. His outstretched fingers hooked like crabapple sticks. He looked hungry and horny and happy and pissed off and long buried all at the same time.

  One-Eye turned at the marshy sound of Sylvester's footsteps, right into the creature’s- zombie, Jimmy's mind screamed, taking its first small swan dive into madness-widespread arms.

  One-Eye didn't even have time to register the horror and cry for mercy before Sylvester was upon him, embracing the frail, bone-covered parchment of the man’s skin and lowering his mouth to One-Eye's thin, cracked lips.

  Jimmy backed against the bedroom door, the only action he could inspire his lost muscles to produce. The Sylvester-zombie- zombie, the word flashed across the impossible gaps in his brain-slopped its mushy mouth across One-Eye's face, sucking and blowing.

  The old soldier's eye widened and swiveled in its socket, looking for a Grim Reaper or an escort to hell or maybe just a last earthly image to take to the grave-a light bulb or a paneling nail or a velvet Elvis painting-something sane and common to comfort him in the eternity of death.

  Except when Sylvester-zombie released One-Eye, the wrinkly bastard slumped to the floor, dead and smiling. Dead and happy about it. Dead and still flicking his rheumy blank eye at the world. Dead and back again, as if to prove, especially for Jimmy's benefit, that the good times kept right on rolling.

  Jimmy's mind collapsed like a wet house of shoe boxes, crawled into itself and curled into a fetal position as the Sylvester-zombiezombie, his last thought, will I be a zombie, too? — gave him the soul kiss, the magic, the glory and the power and the slippery tendril of its tongue as they shared a deep cosmic breath of stardust and stumpwater.

  Peggy looked over at the nightstand, at the money stacked between the overflowing ashtray and the dusty alarm clock. That was plenty enough payoff. She could worry about her own needs later, after she took care of the kids. They could have a square meal tonight for a change.

  Howard rolled off the mattress and the bed almost sprang up like a trampoline from the load reduction. She watched him wrestle his legs into his underwear, then bend over to get his pants. "How did you like it, handsome?"

  She could get the hang of this line of work. Lying was just another part of the job. Hell, this wasn’t much of a stretch from her usual day.

  Howard nodded and grunted.

  "You let me know when you want a second helping," she said. This was no worse than playing Sleeping Beauty.

  But there was no magic, no redemption. All she had was emptiness.

  And fifty bucks. Don’t forget the fifty bucks.

  She reached for a cigarette and lit it as she looked at the clock. Little Mack would be home in about fifteen minutes and Junior might be home in an hour, if he bothered to make it home before dinner. Junior was becoming as unpredictable as the man he'd been named after.

  "My kids will be home soon, Howard. Maybe you'd better just hit the road. But you come on back sometime, when you have the money," she said, running her tongue over her lips. She winked at him and he almost blushed. He was getting excited again.

  "But not right now. You’re broke." She laughed and pulled the sheet over her body. She didn't feel tired, but she wanted to straighten up the trailer before Little Mack got home.

  She would wash the dishes and pretend that everything was normal. Maybe even mop the kitchen. A regular housewife.

  Howard nodded dumbly. "You're purty," he said, putting on his pants. He draped his shirt over his shoulder and headed for the door.

  "Glad you think so, big man. Tell Jimmy to get his scrawny hind end back here on your way out, will you?" She stubbed out her smoke and the ashtray spilled over. Brown tarry butts rolled off the night stand to the vinyl flooring.

  She locked her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling, at the little swirls she had studied while the men sampled the goods. She had seen faces up there and wondered if she would see them now. The door opened and Howard grunted again. She looked at the doorway, expecting to see Jimmy's scraggly grin.

  Instead, she saw her husband of twelve years standing there like a sick stranger. Howard screamed in a girlish voice, fell, and crawled on his hands and knees down the hallway, the sleeve of his shirt caught on his foot and trailing behind him. Sylvester stepped past him toward Peggy, but something was wrong. His eyes were like radioactive marbles. Sylvester had changed, turned like a sweet potato that had fallen behind the stove and gone rotten.

  Her mind was a Popsicle, cold and sweet and hard, as she watched her husband slog to the bed and stand over her with his ragged jack-o’-lantern smile and his moist, impossible flesh, as he slid onto the bed with a noise like sixty pounds of earthworms. Sylvester pulled the blanket away and she crossed her arms over her breasts, feeling shy in the face of this insane homecoming. He touched her bare thigh and his finger was slick with pulpy rot. The jack-o’-lantern gaped and she thought he was trying to speak, to perhaps whisper her name or tell her that she looked good enough to eat.

  Then she saw that Sylvester had no tongue, only wiggly things that flickered out in the direction of her face. She smelled her husband as his swamp gas fog overwhelmed her and then she was in the grasp and surrendered without a fight because it was her husband, after all, and this was his rightful place between her legs and she embraced his neck and pulled his impossible swollen head to her lips because she was staring deeply into his eyes and seeing the Magic Land and she was Frenching him with a fierce desperation because she wanted to feel the Magic and shu-shaaa throbbed in time to her last heartbeat as the cosmos puked magic into her throat and she at last became Sleeping Beauty again, this time forever.

  She had never felt so loved.

  Little Mack was scared.

  He heard the noises in the trailer and didn't want to go inside, even though the door was open. The truck with the big tires wasn't here, so maybe that mean, skinny man wasn't with his Mommy. But somebody was in there. And it sounded like a whole lot of somebod
ies.

  He ducked down by the steps and looked into the living room. He couldn't see because his eyes were full of sun. But he heard people moaning like the ghosts did in those scary movies that Junior made him watch when Mommy was out late at night. Or else when she and Daddy went to bed early and Junior turned the television up real loud.

  He wished, wished, wished Daddy was home, but Daddy didn't come home much these days. Little Mack thought it might have something to do with the skinny man. Little Mack didn't like the skinny man, even though the man fluffed Mack's hair and gave him a nickel once. Mack didn't like him because he smelled like those green pellets that the janitor put on the floor when some kid threw up at school.

  He didn't see the skinny man and he didn't see Mommy, but he heard people moving around in the back of the trailer. He almost yelled for Mommy but all of a sudden he was afraid, because he saw the one-eyed old man from next door who looked like he was two hundred years old, except right now he looked like he was four hundred, because his skin was the color of art paste and something that looked like rubber cement poured out of his nose and mouth.

  And the eye that didn't have a patch moved funny, like it couldn't see anything but still wanted to look.

  The old man tried to stand, but his legs didn't work right. He rolled over on the floor and he must have seen Little Mack, because he smiled real funny. Smiling like he had a secret. A bad secret.

  Little Mack turned and ran, hoping that his Mommy wasn't in there with that bad man, that she wasn't part of the secret. He ran into the woods where he always hid, ducking under the blackberry briars and clamping his hands over his ears because he didn't want to hear the scary things that were in his head. He was afraid that the dark might get here before the scary things left.

  He hoped Daddy would come home soon and make everything all right again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Tamara turned up the old dirt road and started to climb the winding grade. The Toyota's engine whined in protest as she downshifted. The steep slopes of Bear Claw rose before her, taunting her, solid and ancient. The car juddered as it fought over the ruts and granite humps.

  This was the mountain in her dream. And she trusted her dream. If she didn't trust her dream, something bad might happen. Or something bad might happen no matter what she did.

  The Gloomies are up there somewhere, not in my head this time. They're real. They're here.

  She considered turning back, running away from the thing that had haunted her for the past few days, the feelings that had gripped her heart, the unease that lingered in the base of her skull like a hibernating snake. But she knew these Gloomies were different. They wouldn't let her hide. They had secret spy lights.

  They wouldn't be satisfied until they had her. And she wouldn't be satisfied until she had faced the enemy.

  Because, in the dream, it had taken her family.

  The Gloomies had already taken her father.

  No way in hell would she lose anyone else.

  Chester leaned against a locust tree and waited for DeWalt to catch up. DeWalt was slowing him down plenty, even more than the age and arthritis and fear that had leadened his legs. Twenty years ago, Chester would have covered twice as much territory in the last hour. But, twenty years ago, he hadn't been looking for neon-eyed freaks or strange green lights.

  He glanced up at the treetops as he fumbled for a refresher hunk of Beechnut. The trees looked like October witches, with long arms and sharp elbows and dark skirts. He could hear himself wheezing through his nose. He was glad he had never taken up smoking. Maybe that was what was causing his Yankee sidekick's ass dragging.

  Chester looked down the slope at DeWalt, whose face was plum colored and whose jawbone was hanging like an over-chased fox's. DeWalt's eyes were fixed on the ground as he stepped over stumps and fallen logs, shuffling over the brown carpet of leaves as if his high-dollar boots were filled with mud.

  A lonely crow swooped over, landing in the top of an old sycamore tree. The bird cawed a couple of times, and the sound was swallowed by the sickly blooming treetops. Chester worked his fresh tobacco into the old, enjoying the sting of nicotine against his gums. The moonshine jar in his pocket was half empty. He thought about taking a swig but decided against it.

  Hell, must be getting religion or something. Next thing you know, I'll be blaming the devil for what happened to old Don Oscar. Maybe the easy answer is the best. Then at least it would all be God’s fault and the rest of us could go on home.

  He swiveled his head, looking around the ridge. They were getting close to Don Oscar's property. If there were green lights, they should be able to see them from this rise. The sun was just now falling into the fingers of the trees and would soon crawl behind the mountains and die for the day. Chester was reconsidering his newfound abstinence when he first saw the opening.

  "Well, I'll be dee-double-dipped in dog shit," he muttered. Then, loud enough for DeWalt to hear, he called through the trees.

  "What's that… Chester? Did you… say something?" DeWalt yelled, between gasps.

  "Get your flatlander ass up here and pinch me. Just so's I can be sure I'm not dreaming."

  "Coming… you flannel-wearing… bastard," DeWalt said, breaking into a tortured trot. "Don't.. let your long johns… ride up your rump.”

  Chester's thumb trembled on the twin hammers of the twenty-gauge. Not that buckshot would do a whole hell of a lot against that.

  Then DeWalt was at his side, saying "Good God" in a hoarse, weak voice.

  "It ain't nothing to do with God,” Chester said. “More like the garden gate to hell, if you ask me."

  Below them, in an outcrop of mossy granite boulders, the light radiated green, fuzzy, and dismal. Chester thought it looked like the bonus light on that pinball machine down at the GasNGo over on Caney Fork. You had to knock a ball into the caved-out belly button of a painted Vegas showgirl to get the bonus. But this light looked like the jackpot for a game that had no score.

  There must have been a springhead in the rocks, because a sluggish trickle of fluid roped down the gully. But it was no clean, pure mountain stream. It sparkled like rancid grapes, as if only part of the light were reflected, and the rest was swallowed and absorbed into the oozing green tongue that wound its way through the trees toward Stony Creek. The mud of the gully banks was veined with stringy white roots, as if a thousand giant spiders had spun sick webs.

  The trees that bordered the outcrop were stunted and gnarled, darkened as if lightning-struck. Chester had the fleeting notion that they had grown heads and had bent low to eat their own trunks. No animals stirred in the heavy, still air of the ridge slope. It was almost as if the source of the green light had swallowed the atoms of the atmosphere.

  Swallowed was the word that came to mind, because the thing definitely gave Chester the impression of a mouth. It was a grotto, a jagged opening under the rocks. Soil was spilled around the edge of the opening as if around a woodchuck's hole. Chester could clearly see inside the grotto because the fluorescence was coming from somewhere within the earthen throat.

  Along the walls of the cave, which angled downward toward the base of the mountain, yellowish tendrils and umbels dangled like tiny slick stalactites, as long as arms. They writhed and curled like eyeless maggots searching for dead food.

  The mouth of the grotto was large enough to hold a dozen people. Paste-colored stones huddled inside like teeth that were impatient for something to grind. In the throat, ribbed bands of unnatural color shimmered in chartreuse, electric lemon, and cadmium yellow, greasy glow-in-the-dark colors. Deeper inside, leathery pedicels quivered like thirsty taproots.

  "Is that your government conspiracy?" Chester said, after they'd both seen more than enough. They had reflexively crouched behind the locust, as if the cave-thing had eyes and would spot them.

  "What in heaven's name is it?" DeWalt said, still struggling to catch his breath.

  Chester almost said, "Oh, just one of those Earth Mouths
you hear about, like the ones in those old folk stories. No big deal. Hills are covered with them."

  Because he was afraid that he was becoming used to the idea of mushbrained people and a world where the unreal was commonplace.

  Instead, he took a serious bite into his chaw and said, "You're the man with the book-learning, why don't you tell me?"

  "You can only be taught what is already known. And I don't think this falls into the category of ‘natural phenomena.’"

  "What the hell do we do now? We've hunted down the bastard-and pardon me for giving it credence by calling it an ‘it’-but it ain't the kind of thing you shoot between the eyes and field dress and carry back home to the dinner table."

  Chester was relieved to see that DeWalt's color had faded from beet red back to pink. Maybe the Yankee wouldn’t up and die on him just yet.

  "That creek might explain the green rain I saw," DeWalt said. "It's like that cave is spewing the stuff out. Those roots are spreading out, whatever it is. And the mouth-"

  Chester looked over his shoulder and met DeWalt's eyes. There, DeWalt said it first.

  "Yeah, the mouth," DeWalt repeated. "The mouth goes into the mountain, but it feeds here. Can't you feel it?"

  Chester nodded. He supposed he'd always had what DeWalt called a "kinship with nature," but he didn't want to be kin to whatever this thing was. He had enough fucked-up kin already, with his worthless sons Sylvester and Johnny Mack. Not to mention that liquor-pinching grandson of his, Junior. Now this mouth had squatted on his land, just crawled into the belly of Bear Claw and made itself at home with no respect for property lines.

  "I can sure feel something, DeWalt. Like when you're standing under one of those transfer stations with all the electric cables crisscrossed over your head. Something invisible but strong enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and make your innards tingle. And if you listen close," Chester said, realizing for the first time that they had been whispering, as if the knotholes of the tainted trees were ears, "you can hear a little murmur inside the mouth. Almost like an ass-backward birdsong with a hard wind thrown in for good measure."