Forever never ends Page 25

  But LISTEN.

  And she shut the flap of her own clamoring inner voice, closed up shop and concentrated. She heard DeWalt thinking something about lodge brothers and how the moon looked like a bad rind of cheese and how that reminded him of when he and his friends used to camp in the backyard up in Oregon and how he wished he were a child again so he could live his life all over Then she was out of him, her mind swimming with those extra thoughts.

  She stopped walking and set the can of Roundup on the damp leaves.

  "You okay, Tamara?" DeWalt asked from under the shadows ahead.

  "Fine," she replied, thinking she would never be fine again. "Just resting for a sec. Be right along."

  "Chester and Emerland are taking a breather, too. Chester says we're nearly there."

  That made Tamara curious. Could she?

  She opened her mind and sent her new telepathic ears tenderly into the night, swiveled her psychic antenna.

  And she touched Chester's mind briefly, shared his thought that he was sure going to miss old Don Oscar's moonshine, but he was going to enjoy it while it lasted. She absorbed his bright fear, felt the raw spot where the overall strap’s buckle dug into his shoulder, tasted the sting of corn liquor, and smelled sweat-stained long johns. Then she pulled back.

  She was either reading minds or else she'd finally shattered into a thousand schizophrenic splinters. It had to be shu-shaaa, the pulsing alien that had brought her Gloomies back from their hibernation. The creature had amplified her sensitivity, maybe from an overload of its own hot cosmic power spilling over, maybe from some undiscovered wavelength that operated beyond the scope of human understanding, maybe a final boon granted by an omnipotent conqueror to the ants it was about to crush. Who could know such things?

  A stray thread of thought spiraled up from her crowded subconsciousness, in Chester's thin brain-voice, a sound byte that had probably slipped in randomly during the telepathic exchange.

  "Curiosity killed the cat and never did no good for the mouse, neither."

  Maybe it was best not to understand. All Tamara knew was that her head was full, brimming with not only her own fears and worries, not only the shu-shaaa blaring its presence in a bright invisible beacon, not only the Gloomies making a comeback that would rival that of John Travolta's, but now she had other brains to wonder and worry and ache over.

  She picked up the five-gallon can and carried it into a small clearing where the others were talking and resting. She instinctively shut off her third ear and listened to their words instead of their brainwaves. She didn't know if she could handle all of their thoughts at once.

  She didn't want to try.

  "Oh, my God. Daddy! "

  Nettie heard Sarah screaming from the open door, at the same moment that the porch lights exploded into brightness, at the same moment she felt the slick arms and leafy hands tearing her away from Bill.

  The Painters loomed near Nettie, throwing their shadows over her face. Sandy Henning, the church organist, had joined them, and her nimble fingers flexed like turgid vine roots. Nettie looked past them at Bill and saw him fighting off the thing that Preacher Blevins had become. Bill’s big fist disappeared into Amanda's leering maw. The preacher's mouth was inches from Bill's, but Bill thrust a forearm up and blocked the assault.

  The preacher turned toward his own screaming daughter and his impossible smile got larger and more putrid, foul swamp sludge dribbling from his melon pink gums. Then Nettie's attention was ripped in half by an orange flare of pain shooting through her leg. One of the creatures had clamped its viscous jaws on her ankle, sucking at her sweat and salt and skin cells.

  Then Ann Painter’s face covered her own and she tasted the hellfire heart of carbon and the tangy artichoke air and the deep secret undergrowth of cellulose and the acid of aspen and ash as the tannic vaults and crypts of life's mysteries unlocked themselves and she was and she was and she was pulled free again and found herself in Bill's arms and he pushed her into the parsonage and pulled the flash-frozen Sarah by her pajama sleeve out of the reach of her own scabrous father.

  Bill kicked the door closed and the arm of one of the demons caught against the jamb with a thick, glutinous sound. Bill dropped Nettie onto the carpet and she watched with distant eyes as he slammed his shoulder against the door and the arm split like a rotted weed stalk. It bounced off the welcome mat and rolled to a rest beside Nettie. She looked at its dark purple veins still pumping dews, the forefinger still undulating, beckoning, urging her to follow.

  She was pollen. She floated on its breeze. Toward forever.

  Armfield was lost in his ecstasy, drunk on the holiest of waters. All his life had been a fruitless search, small rituals and sacraments and blessings bestowed. All his life he had walked in darkness, tossing prayers to an invisible and unfelt God.

  All his life his soul had been a battleground for the stern Jesus and the understanding and encouraging Satan. And now the human soul had slipped away, danced free of dust and stigmata and beast-numbers and psalms.

  Now, beyond life, he had found his true life's work. The true salvation and mercy and light. The one true master that demanded and deserved an eternal servitude. The kingdom and power and glory of shu-shaaa, forever and ever, amen.

  But still there was an ache, an empty human ache that he knew was part of that old and pitiful fleshly life. An unfulfilled knot in his Jack-in-the-Pulpit chest, a hunger in his brimming mouth and hands, a nutrient throbbing in his gelatin organs. The family must be united, the circle must be unbroken.

  "Sha-raaa," he sprayed to the deep night.

  His wife was at his side, her mascara sliding from her face along with the congealing strips of her skin. She raised the stump of her left arm to the heavens, spilling her milky effluence onto the red tiles of the porch.

  All in praise to shu-shaaa. Armfield had never felt so connected, so close to his congregation as he now did. They shared the same vision and mind and crusade. They were truly one in the eyes of their newfound god.

  And, like any god, this one demanded converts.

  They launched their soggy meat against the door.

  "Nettie, are you okay?"

  Bill gingerly sat her up and leaned her against the sofa. She didn't look hurt, except for her ankle, and she was smiling, a small, pink, dreamy smile.

  Her eyes were pressed into tiny crescents and her eyelashes twitched like monarchs on sprigs of white clover. He had seen that monster blowing its rancid wind into her throat. Bill swallowed and prayed harder than he had in his entire life.

  Oh, please, Lord, let her be all right. Because I need her more than anything on Your earth. And I don't know what plague You've loosed upon the world, but please spare Nettie from it. You can take me, I know I'm not the best catch there is, but I promise to serve to the best of my ability, I know I sing off-key but practice might make perfect if I have forever to work into the choir.

  I know she'll make a heck of an angel, but please just let me have her for one lifetime, and I swear we'll serve you for a thousand times a thousand.

  I know You are merciful, I've felt Your goodness in my heart ever since I asked You in, ever since You gave me the hope and strength and wisdom. But please tell me that You're listening. Please give me a sign.

  There was a crash of glass at the front of the house and the door groaned on its hinges, the thick wood panels warped from the stress of weight.

  Bill looked up from Nettie's blank face to the frightened mask of Sarah. She trembled in her pajamas, her arms wrapped around her chest, her eyes bulging with the memory of impossible sights.

  "Sarah,” he said.

  She stared deeper, farther.

  "Sarah!"

  He stood and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her until her eyes met his. "Come on, you've got to help me. We've got to get Nettie to a doctor."

  "D-doctor?" Her lower lip quivered. She shook her head, denying her senses.

  "Something's happened. Something's wrong
with the people."

  "M-mom and Dad?"

  "I'm sorry, Sarah. I wish I knew what was going on. But I don't. I only know that they've changed somehow."

  Sarah bit her thumbnail, the rims of her eyes red from fear and shock. The door splintered and she glanced over at it.

  "We don't have much time,” Bill said. “You call the police, I don't know what to tell them, just get them out here. Then we're going to have to make a run for it. If we can reach my truck, we'll be okay. We can’t stay here much longer."

  Sarah nodded, suddenly grim and determined, as if awakening in a hospital bed and realizing she'd have to fight for her life. She padded barefoot across the carpet as the pounding on the door grew louder.

  Bill laid his hand on her arm. "We can pray for their souls. That's all we can do. The rest is up to the Lord."

  She looked at him coldly. "What kind of Lord would do something like this?"

  He had no answer. Sarah went down the hall and took the telephone off the wall.

  Bill looked out the window. More black shapes emerged from the forest, as if the trees themselves had come to life. He knelt to Nettie and lifted her again. She seemed lighter somehow, as if a vital part of her was missing.

  She was still smiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "We're about in its territory," Chester said, scratching idly in the dirt with a stick. "See how the woods is getting weirder? Them roots running through yonder like sick snakes?"

  He didn't like the way the trees looked, dark skeletons with sharp dead arms. Small animals, either alive or else dead and green eyed, chittered among the crisp foliage. The spring leaves shimmered in the moonlight, starchy and shiny and curling like needy claws. And if he held his head just so, he could hear the faint, raw wind that blew from the Earth Mouth.

  "How much farther, Chester?" DeWalt asked, breathing heavily. The California Yankee was about tuckered out. They all were, except Tamara.

  "Another hunnert yards and we'll be over this ridge, then we'll be able to see the mouth."

  Chester looked at Tamara. She was leaning against a tree, looking up at the moon. He was about to warn her against trusting the trees, but he figured she knew better than he did. After all, she was the one with the juiced-up brain that seemed to know what the Earth Mouth-what did she call it? Shu-shaaa? — was thinking.

  If you could call it "thinking." Hell, aliens weren't meant for God's green earth. This world was made for humans to walk across and piss on and plant in and pave over and generally use its thick dirty skin however damn well they pleased. But this Earth Mouth-zombiemaker thing, if it came from the stars, was liable to pay no mind to what God intended.

  Hell, hadn't He throwed enough planets and stars and chunks of rock into the sky to go around for everybody and everything, no matter how fucked up it was?

  Why couldn't the shu-shaaa-shitbag take the MOON, for Christsakes? Nobody would miss it much, except maybe poets and poachers and other such trash. Well, maybe old hound dogs, too.

  "What if this doesn't work?" DeWalt said.

  "Then we'd best get used to the idea of wearing ivy undershorts." Chester worked his plump chaw to the back of his gums, then turned to Emerland. "You ain't said a word since we left the farm. Your tongue ain't turned to a turnip, is it?"

  Emerland looked up from where he was sitting on the sack of fungicide. "When my lawyers-"

  “When your panty-waist lawyers do what? Sue the alien?" DeWalt laughed. "I'd like to see what you were awarded for emotional damages. And, of course, the Earth Mouth gets to be judged by a jury of its peers. So we'll need at least a dozen more of them. And how would you like to have a heart-to-heart chat with its lawyers?"

  Even Tamara laughed, brought back from whatever far corner of space she had been floating in. They all sat quietly for a moment as the crickets and night birds played their odd instruments, their tunes off-kilter in a music that seemed to slip into the spaces between sound and silence.

  "Used to hunt these woods with my boys," Chester said. "Back in better days. We’d bag half a dozen squirrels ever single trip."

  "I'm sorry about your grandson," Tamara said. She came out from under the tree, the moonlight shining on her golden hair.

  "Don't be. If there ever was a case of somebody getting their just desserts, that was it. That boy was sorrier than a cut cat." He spat for emphasis.

  "Tamara, how many more of the creatures are out there, do you think?" DeWalt asked.

  "Feels like a hundred, at least. I only sense them through it. They're feeding organic energy back to the shu-shaaa. And the more it eats-"

  "The hungrier it gets,” DeWalt finished.

  "We'd best give it an early breakfast, then." Chester stood up, the nerves in his knee joints flaring blue fire through his legs. The dynamite in his coat pockets banged against his ribs. His side throbbed. He hoped his liver wasn't going out on him now, not after all those years of good service.

  He headed up the sloping trail. The others fell in behind him.

  James awoke suddenly, as if a broken knife had twisted into his guts. He found himself fully dressed. He had gone to bed not expecting to sleep. His ears had been dream sentinels as he slept, guarding the nervous bivouac of his brain. And they had sounded the alarm. He blinked into the darkness, listening.

  Every tiny twig whisper, every breath of wind, every falling dead blossom was a monster, a ghostly creeping thing.

  His heart twittered like a disturbed nest of rats that were now crawling up the walls of his insides.

  Something wet slapped against the windowpane. He turned his head toward the spilled moonlight.

  Oh, Lord, a FACE, a thick, rotten white plum.

  Like the thing in the red cap.

  The glass was stained with slick streaks. Pale vapor swirled from the distorted nostrils like smoke through an orchard. Then the face was gone.

  James rolled out of the small bed and crept to the door. He turned the knob and the door swung open on silent, warped hinges. He stepped into the hall, the weight of his feet sending creaks into the still night. Somewhere in the living room, an old clock ticked.

  James put his ear to Aunt Mayzie's door. She must have been lost in starry dreams, probably of her Theo and her little Oliver. She wasn't the sort to suffer nightmares.

  But nightmares might walk through walls.

  The liquid sound was now outside the house, at the side yard. James opened the door a crack..

  It stood on the porch stoop.

  The mushroom creature's head swiveled like a periscope, wringing shimmering dew from the neck stump. The grass was wilted and bleached in the creature's wake. It reached for James, who was frozen in place.

  The hand was inches from his face when he broke from the horrified trance. He slammed the door and it closed on the wrist, fingers flexing in desire.

  James shoved his shoulder against the door and the hand snapped free, like a starchy vegetable. As the door slammed, the hand bounced on the floor. James kicked it across the room, where it oozed a greenish fluid.

  James groped the air in front of him until his hand found the coffee table, then the telephone.

  That's right. Call for the Man. Axt him to protect yo sorry black ass.

  But a nigger ain't got no business meddling, he ought to just hang in the woodwork and keep his big lips shut.

  It's a whitey world. It's their trees and rivers and air and dirt. Their fucking problem, not no jazzbo's, no suh.

  I's gwine see no fucking evil.

  He turned and saw a flash of movement, and his heart leaped into his throat. Then he saw that he was looking at the mirror that hung on the back of the open bathroom door. And the movement was only his own white eyes.

  He sat on the couch, watching the hand dissolve, determined to guard Aunt Mayzie’s door and wait for a morning that seemed years away.

  Robert looked up into the deformed milkbone skull of the Man in the Moon, wondering if the moon was looking down on his wife so
mewhere. He drew a final puff off his third straight cigarette and ground it into the ashtray. He always smoked out on the porch, in consideration of the kids. But now the ritual gave him no comfort. It was just a meaningless gesture, a murdering of time, a footless pacing.

  He held his watch face to the moonlight. Four o'clock.

  Robert thought about calling the police again to see if they'd turned up anything. But Tamara had told him that she was fine. And Tamara, unlike Robert, never lied. So all he could do was wait and worry.

  And wonder about Ginger.

  And the bad people with green eyes. And dirt mouths. And why he felt so helpless. He couldn't even worry worth a damn. All he could do was chainsmoke and count the stars.

  Yep, he was one sorry son of a bitch.

  He'd laughed at Tamara's Gloomies all along, tossed them off as a side effect of her psychology studies. As if he knew his ass from a hole in the ground when it came to the workings of the brain. He didn't even know his own mind, much less anything not directly related to feeding and mating and occasionally drawing a paycheck. Taking, that’s all he ever did.

  If he knew his own mind, maybe he could figure out why he was afraid to tell Tamara that he'd cheated on her. And that maybe he'd done it because he had reached mid-life, had stood at the top of that hill and looked back and saw only his own worthless tracks. And now it was all over but the downhill slalom into the grave. And because she had power, sensitivity, imagination, she was a constant reminder of his own failings.

  Robert had never fulfilled his great dreams, his expectations of fame and success and happiness and wealth. He hadn't made a single mark on the world. Even his footprints had disappeared under the shifting sands of time. And after he was gone, no one would notice his ever having been, much less mourn his passing.

  In his ambition, his quest for radio stardom, his search for identity, he had urinated on the few flowers that had bloomed in the desert of his life. And the brightest, the sweetest, the great joy of his heart that had brought Kevin and Ginger into the world, was now beyond his help.