The Pines

He struggled to sit up. “Please. Just once.” Pushing at the boy’s hands, he thrashed in the bed, but Marl held him firmly. “Just once. Come! Please!” Finally exhausted, he rested his head on the cot and just stared at the flies that stuck to the ceiling like tufts of black velvet.

Marl squinted at the window.

“There’s nothing to be scared of, Marl.” Desperation played across the vulpine face. “You don’t hardly go out no more, getting pale as a worm. Look at you…hair so long, just like a girl. But look at your muscles.” He ran his palm across smooth hardness. “You ever see a dragonfly?” His voice went soft with weariness, with surrender. “When it’s little, I mean? Right after it hatches out in the water? The pond’s all foul, stinks.” He spoke in quick gasps. “Just a little thing, harmless. Nothing notices it in the mud on the bottom. Looks the same as all the other worms.” Already little more than a whisper, his voice grew even softer, weaker, and as he spoke he stared intently at his swollen hand. “Then one day, all of a sudden, something happens. Gets hungry. Is hunger. Starts to eat everything it can catch, salamanders, leeches. Don’t matter.”

“You ain’t seen my cat, has you?”

“Or fish, even if it’s a great big sunny. Don’t matter.”

“Looked all over for ’er.”

“One time, I scooped one out of a puddle. Scooped him right up in my hand, mud and all. After all the wet stuff leaked away, just lay there. All of a sudden, it felt like fire.” He unclenched his fist, then gazed at the insects on the ceiling again. He fumbled with the empty cup, and his hand slipped to the boy’s leg. “That’s what it does. Kills and kills. Gorges till the wings burst outta the skin on his back, and he flies.”

Marl wouldn’t look at him. The hand on his leg moved.

“…wings…in the sunlight…changing colors…so pretty…”

“Your hand bleeding?”

“Just draining a little. Be all right,” Ernie told him, staring. The light faded. Marl’s hair still glowed.

“Th-there’s this bad dream I have.” Marl stayed on the edge of the bed, his face turned away. “Bout something hungry inna pines. They always making fun a me downstairs. But I know. It’s out there. I use to try to drive it ’way, burn it out, make it go ’way.” Beyond the window, a few tall pines prodded the sky. “You know?” He turned his head and looked down at the bed. The room had grown darker than the hot glitter of Ernie’s eyes, and he watched as Ernie reached for him with a hungry languor.

In the mad jumble of the bedroom, clothes were piled on the floor and heaped on the bed. Beside her, nestled in laundry, he lay motionless.

His hair was damply plastered to his forehead, and beaded moisture ran down the side of his face. As she stroked him, she watched the pale lashes of his closed eyes and listened to his even breath. She kept her touch light, wanting to hold him tightly but fearing to wake him.

The room smelled of lovemaking. Sweating herself, she looked down his body at the muscular chest and stomach. She remembered the fierce rejoicing in his eyes when her jeans had finally peeled away, remembered how the sight of her one thinner leg had caused a violent tenderness to well up within him. Her breasts still ached slightly—he’d nearly crushed her to this chest her fingers trailed along. She toyed with the tightly curled and sweaty hairs, then caressed his head, smiling gently to herself.

It had been too fast and fumbling but incredibly intense, and she thought back to the shy formality of those first times with Wallace, when she’d been little more than a girl. Then her thoughts turned to Barry’s pornographic posturings and she closed her eyes against the sudden sharpness of that memory. She smiled again. With Steve it had been rough and fast and loving and, yes, he’d hurt her a little, though she would never tell him.

Something, some dream of pain or sorrow washed across his face, distorting it. There came the low, ominous sound of his grinding teeth, and she held him until the tension passed.

With a murmuring groan, he turned heavily in the creaking bed to lay half upon her, momentarily squeezing away her breath. She stroked the trickling dampness of his hair.

Eyes still closed, he cradled her again, his lips finding her breasts.

They lay belly to back, drowsing in the heat, while twilight seeped through the windows of the still room. Was there a sound? Not sure whether he’d heard something, Steve listened. Her breath warm and soft on his face, she slept deeply, her body suffused with limp peacefulness at last.

Across the window, amber light spread like honey over the wall, growing orange as he watched. Long wavering ridges and cracks mapped the paint, and in the pleasant gloom, he lay thinking.

Until dawn, they’d sat up with the boy, calming him, questioning him, even making some attempts to repair the wreckage of the house. When Matthew had finally slipped into a natural sleep, Steve had carried him back to the attic, undressing the boy himself, while she waited below.

Damp sheet sculpted to his body, he stretched out a hand and laid it on her arm. We’ve wasted so much time. In sleep, her face was like a child’s, all worries faded. He thought about her life, about the boy in the attic and, in spite of the warmth, slid a protective arm about her. She curled against him like a cat, and he smiled indulgently, glancing around at the ferocious disorder of the room. At first, he’d assumed that their visitor last night had savaged it. Only after quite a while had he realized this to be its normal state. Her belongings formed mounds everywhere, and he felt an intense pleasure at just being here among them in the heavy softness of this room.

Won’t that window open farther? He felt the stagnant air lulling him, felt sleep stealing over him again as he inhaled the deep warm scent of her and listened to the flutter of her breath. Shadows stretched across the floor, crept up the walls.

He heard the sound again and thought of the dog, still hiding under the sofa when they’d gone to bed. Athena stirred slightly. “Sleep some more, babe,” he told her, his voice hushed as he patted her gently. “Sleep.” He rolled over, eased himself out of the bed. “You need it.”

He wandered naked into the hallway. In the shadows, something breathed, and moved, and then came toward him.

Wearing only his ragged jeans, Matty stood halfway down the hall, and he glared at Steve with a look of absolute malevolence. Oh Lord, letting the kid see me come out of his mother’s room like this. The boy’s face was drawn and lined from hours of sickness. Oh God, what’s wrong with me? Blinking, trying to clear his head, he heard again the sound that had awakened him.

“Uh…Matt…uh…are you all right?” He backed away with slow horror. “No, don’t come any closer. Stay where you are!”

His arm shot out in a defensive reflex as Matty lunged. Teeth met with a click an inch from Steve’s chest.

Lord God! His whole body trembled, wet with fear. Oh dear Jesus. He stared at the boy. He went for my throat. He backed into the bedroom, no longer protective, now seeking safety. He tried to…

The boy crouched in the shadowed hall, another growl boiling deep in his chest.

At last, even the final thread of purple fades, and vast shadows slide across the sky, enfolding the earth in a patchwork of darkness, velvety blackness overlapping thick gray.

Like a sentient creature, heat broods, hovering over Munro’s Furnace. The stench of the garbage dump hums with vermin, and in a cold strike of moonlight, they swarm, a riot of life in the night.

Something sighs. Hot guttering breath grows more rapid as the night drips. Luminous eyes blink, recede to blackness again, then open, awake to the flicker of self-awareness.

Awake.

The sound of an owl hollows through. A seething lust, rabid in the dark, prowls the twisted scrub, its feral shadow like a hole in the night. It stalks the dump, then turns in an avalanche of refuse and creeps toward the center of town.

No lights show in any of the houses. No air stirs. Violent and frenzied images swim, screaming in the beast- mind: hooked fingers, nails splintering on bone; skin parts, bubbling throat; the fingers disappearing in flesh— spurting soft hot meat—teeth sink in, tearing, wet jets out. A memory flickers of being forced to abandon the one in the car when the big splashing thing—tractor?—approached on the flooded road. Blood and foam in his mouth then.