Dead Man's Song

he was running, too, and with his first step his sneaker crunched down onto the shiny black shells and he could hear the bugs pop wetly. He ran as fast as he could, and he stared at Crow’s back twenty feet ahead of him. He fixed on that, not daring to look down, knowing without seeing that the roaches were milling in confusion as the leading edge of the wave was fighting to turn and follow while the main mass of them was still in motion forward. Their bodies boiled up around his ankles as he ran and he tried to pick up his knees so that his ankles would be as high off the ground as possible with each step. He was horribly aware of how low his sneaker tops were.

He ran and ran, and within a dozen steps his shoes were smeared with a sticky white-green goo of insect guts and still the roaches swarmed around him in their legions; the hiss of their bodies scraped against one another and the whisper of their legs over the rough ground was dreadful. He ran as the air burned in his lungs and pain blossomed in his chest like fireworks, all the time watching Crow’s back as the man pelted down the path back the way they had come. Crow was running faster, pulling ahead yard by yard.

We’re going to die! He thought as he ran. We’re going to die! It was the only clear thought he could manage.

Roaches leapt at him, clung to his clothes, crawled up his pants legs as he ran, and Newton was uttering a high-pitched continuous cry of total terror. The field was still a hundred yards ahead and now Crow was almost up to the back wall of the house. Newton saw this and a fresh wave of terror struck him as he suddenly remembered that whoever or whatever had locked itself in that house could use their keys to unlock the locks, and then those doors would open. Front door, back-door, cellar door. All of them would open, and what—dear sweet God, what?—would come howling out?

We’re going to die! He thought, but deep down another, far more horrible feeling was growing. It had no words, no specific shape, but Newton was gradually becoming aware of the possibility that there might be things in that house worse than roaches, perhaps worse than death.

“Newt!” Crow’s voice shook him into awareness and he turned away from the house and saw that ahead of him Crow had suddenly stopped running. Newton almost stopped as well, which would have been fatal because the roaches were gaining on him, coming at him from every direction, both swarms now joined into one vast bristling ocean, but Crow had stopped because he had reached the clear patch of sunlight. He whirled around, alternately brushing bugs off of his clothing and waving furiously to Newton. “Come on! Over here! In the light! Run, goddamn it, RUN!”

(2)

“He hates me,” Connie said hollowly, staring bleakly over the steam rising from her teacup. The kitchen was painted in shadows with only a single lamp on.

Val squeezed her shoulder. “No, he doesn’t. He’s just confused. I don’t think he’s gotten over Dad’s death yet. He’s rattled and upset and doesn’t know how to react.” She stroked Connie’s hair.

“But you yourself said—”

“I was mad at him,” she admitted, “and I was trying to shock him enough to snap him out of it. But…I seem to have only made him madder. We’d better give him time to cool down, sweetie. He’ll come around.” Her words did not match her thoughts, though. She prayed that Mark was out there now, wherever he was—sulking over a beer at the Harvestman, probably—thinking about those horrible things he had said and feeling bad about it. Maybe he’d come back soon, not crawling or abashed, but like a man, owning up to the things he’d said and done over these last couple of weeks, and ready to make things right. That would be great, but it was a bit too storybook and Val had her doubts. Maybe one day, but today didn’t feel like it was going to end with a Kodak moment.

They sat staring through the kitchen windows at the golden sunlight shining on the autumn-colored leaves of the big oak in the yard. All day it had been cloudy and now, just before sunset, the sun had drilled its way through the gray and the yard looked beautiful. It made her wonder what the forest was like down by Dark Hollow where Crow was. Was he seeing the same sunlight all the way down there? He could use it, she thought. Crow had been sweating his little hiking trip for days. Unconsciously she touched her stomach, and to the tiny baby just beginning to grow inside of her, she said, Your daddy’s a crazy man.

Connie said, “It’s not that I don’t want to…you know…do things with him. You know what I mean. In the bedroom and all—it’s just that I can’t. I just can’t.” Connie stared into the depths of her teacup as if there were answers down there. “Every time Mark tries to touch me, all I can feel is that man’s hands on me, and—and—”

“Whoa…shhhhh, girl,” Val said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “Don’t go there. Try to let it be. I understand what you’re going through. I’m still going through some of it myself.”

Connie looked at her, surprised. “You?”

“Uh huh. Nearly every night I see him in my dreams. Sometimes I wake up and imagine I can see him standing at my window. Pale, like a ghost. Scares hell out of me.”

With a shudder and a nod, Connie said, “Yes! That’s how I see him!”

Val laughed. “God, will you listen to us? We’re worse than a couple of Girl Scouts around a campfire.”

Connie tried on a smile, but it was too weak to hold. “I know…but I can’t help it.”

“Yeah, me neither, but I do remind myself that it’s just dreams…and dreams can’t hurt us. At least we have the satisfaction of knowing he’s dead.” Val stood up and gave Connie a quick hug and repeated, “He can’t hurt us.” She stepped back and smoothed her jeans. “Come on. Let’s take a walk. I need to get out of the house for a few minutes, catch the last of the sunshine.”

Connie looked doubtfully at the silent phone. “What if Mark calls?”

“Then he can damn well leave a message. Come on.”

(3)

Tow-Truck Eddie cruised the black road from Corn Hill all the way down to the Black Marsh Bridge and didn’t see a single kid on a bike. There were plenty of kids out, but they were older, mostly college kids in crowded cars heading out to the campus for the Little Halloween parties. No child on a bike, no Beast.

At the bridge he turned around and headed back to town. His frustration level was mounting, but as he drove the slow miles the voice in his head kept whispering one immensely powerful word, over and over.

Tonight! it said. Eddie’s hands held the steering wheel with a strangler’s grip.

(4)

Newton ran. It felt like ten miles to the light, but he ran. The roaches—some of them were actually leaping up at him—were piling over themselves in front of him, layer upon layer of them, and he had to plow shin-deep through them. Roaches were swarming up his pants legs—outside and inside—and as he ran he started slapping them off his clothes. One crawled down out of his hair and Newton screamed as shrilly as a little girl as he swatted it off his cheek. Suddenly Crow was there and he was reaching out with both hands to grab Newton and drag him into the patch of sunlight. Then he, too, was swatting and pawing at Newton, brushing away dozens of gleaming black bugs, knocking them down to the ground where they twitched and fled toward the shadows that surrounded them.

“Pants…pants!” Newton was yelling as he shook and danced in place and Crow grabbed his belt buckle, yanked it open, and then grabbed his pockets and pulled, tearing the cloth but also dragging Newton’s jeans down to his ankles. His legs were covered with roaches and as the sunlight touched them they leaped off and raced for shadows, while others scuttled up under the hems of Newton’s boxer shorts. Newton screamed when he felt them begin to crawl over his scrotum and try to wriggle between his buttocks. He tore off his boxers and danced a frantic jig and within seconds all of the insects had fallen off or been swatted away by his desperate hands. His legs were covered with tiny red marks from where some of the roaches had tried to bite through his skin. None of the bites had broken the skin, however, though Newton shuddered at the thought of what would have happened had the creatures had more than just a few seconds to gnaw at him.

They froze there—Crow with his chest heaving, eyes bugged out in terror, pants smeared to the knees with a paste made of insect guts and crushed shell, Newton with his pants and undershorts around his ankles, face white with shock. Around them in a circle thirty feet across the sea of roaches had come to a complete stop. Only their antennae twitched, but they did not move, did not mill around. They stood in their endless ranks and watched hungrily.