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.
