The crash was followed by another and another and another. They were destroying his specimens, that’s what they were doing.
He threw open the cellar door, the light casting flickering illumination. He saw prints leading down the steps, prints that were black and muddy. As he started down, a papery rustle in his chest, more jars shattered and as he got to the bottom of the steps, one was tossed at him out of the darkness, exploding against the wall a few inches from his head.
Arland started and slashed out with his knife.
Shadows.
Shadows creeping and crawling and oozing around him. The stink was worse down here, a musty odor of rotting vegetables kept in moist closets. It was almost unbearable. Like something dead and fruiting with mushrooms had come into the house. It made his eyes water and his stomach heave.
Another jar shattered against the wall and another.
A pain needling dead-center of his chest, Arland struggled forward and for the first time he was wondering if he was truly up to this. If maybe coming down here had not been a terrible mistake.
He could hear that other person…they were somewhere down in the webby, mazelike confines of the cellar and they moved with a wet, squishing sound as if they did not have feet as such, but were stepping about on bloated toadstools. Shaking badly now, he came around the furnace room and into the washroom where the dryer and washer were. His light reflected off shards of glass in the stationary tub. Dozens of bottles had been broken in there.
But as he moved forward, something sinking inside him, he saw a mason jar on the floor. Its lid was missing, but it was about half full. But not with rainwater, but with something yellow and sharp-smelling: urine.
Arland gasped, barely able to catch his breath now.
He held up his lantern and there was another mason jar a few feet away and another beyond it. Both were about half-filled with urine. There was no mistaking that gagging, foul odor, the ammonia-like sharpness of it. Somebody…somebody had broken his jars and then emptied the others out, filling them with piss. Yes, there were more jars ahead, they led like a trail right up to the door of the rec room.
Arland was suddenly terrified.
Because unless there were dozens of people, no single person could have put out that much urine. Nobody had that much water in them. Yet, he was still hearing those squishing sounds and he knew there was only one individual down here.
Okay, you fool old man, now what? Do you try and run or do you face what’s been doing this?
But Arland knew there was really no choice.
For if he tried to make it up the steps, he would feel the motion behind him, then cold white fingers at the back of his throat. Because this was not some mere prank, this was all done for his benefit. Just like that trail of jars was meant to lure him into the rec room like a trail of candy leading to a witch’s cottage.
There were things in life you knew and those you could never know.
And what was waiting for him in the rec room was definitely of the latter variety. It had come slinking in here to torment him. Something hideous that had perhaps went door to door up Kneale Street trying locks until he or she or it had found one unlatched.
You might as well have invited it in, he told himself. Something that wanted to get out of the rain and wind, something lonely looking for warmth and…companionship.
And what could that be?
What exactly could that be?
Because he was pretty certain it was not the government.
It was something else.
Arland went to the rec room door and heard a muted giggling in there. The sound of someone laughing into their hands. His throat dry and his heart hammering painfully, he pushed open the door.
He saw the pool table right away. There were three more jars sitting on it, all half-filled by this thing with an inexhaustible bladder. Oh, its smell was nauseating and it reminded him of barns filled with rotting hay and boxes packed with wet, decaying leaves. Nothing alive could carry such an odor, only something dead and gassy and blackened.
He heard that giggling again.
More pain threading through his chest, he brought the lantern around and the knife clattered from his hand. He could not say exactly what he saw, only that it was a great blubbery shape plastered with brown Autumn leaves. Its head was matted with strands of gray hair that fell over its distended face. Its flesh, what he could see of it through the leaves, was white and puckered, smeared with streaks of dark mud. And it was naked. The breasts were pendulous and thickly-veined with blue, the belly hanging in greasy rolls.
A woman…or something that had been one once.
She was squatting on the floor, giggling with a wet congested sound as she filled yet another mason jar with piss. All the while, making a droning sound that was oddly musical and maybe was supposed to be a happy humming.
Arland gasped.
The piss kept running.
The sound of that was awful, not just the sound of liquid squirting into that jar as from a spigot, but chunks and clots of something dropping in there as well as if the bladder itself was coming apart.
Oh, Christ, no, no…
Arland went down on his ass, pain exploding in his chest and his vision blurring. Darkness moved through his head in waves. But after a moment, his vision cleared.
He heard the woman get up, sounding like a bag of wet laundry shifting. She came over to him with those splatting footfalls and stood over him. She was swollen and ripe, water dripping from her. With one bloated hand, she held up the mason jar she had filled and dumped it over Arland’s head. The urine was cold and filled with bits of sediment and chunks of tissue. He vomited right away, trying to cry out the whole while.
The rancid thing stepped over him and he could see beneath that tangled hair and accumulation of leaves, that she had eyes…black, shining things, jellied and glistening like bubbles that wanted to pop. He saw a mouth, gray broken teeth licked by a black tongue.
She stood over him, filled with squirming things and larval activity, bits of her dropping away. Oily fluids and watery discharges ran from her and she kept smacking her lips.
When she spoke, it sounded like her mouth was filled with oatmeal. “Arland…let’s take some samples, eh? One more for our class action suit…that’s a boy…open your mouth…let me fill it for you…”
As Arland’s heart ruptured in his chest, he felt those flabby and greasy fingers yank his mouth open as she squatted over him, bringing the cancerous ruin of her green and undulant privates into his face. Humming happily, she drained her bladder into his mouth.
But by the time that gray, sludgy water overflowed his mouth, Arland was thankfully dead.
24
An hour after those things attacked the bus, Bobby Luce lost what control he’d had of the kids. Some wanted to leave and some wanted to stay and nothing he seemed to say could bring them together again. So much for team spirit. So much for the Fairstreet Flyers. Their camaraderie, if it had ever really existed, was now just dust in the wind and Bobby simply did not have enough hands to hold it together.
He was tired.
He was fed-up.
And, yes, he was scared.
Even now, a good hour after those things, those people, had tried to get into the bus, it was still on him as he imagined it was on the others: that deep-set, almost automatic fear that made him start whenever the wind picked up or something splashed. How could you put that business into context? How could you absorb that into your world-view and not come out of it with white streaks in your hair? Those people…there were other words for
