Feeling my skin crawl, I pushed the door in, and said, "Hello?"
Rank, housebound air puffed out. It smelled like damp ash-trays and rancid milk. I felt for and flicked the light switch, but it was dead, so I leaned in to let my eyes adjust. For a second my heart seized up at what I thought was the shape of a person in the gloom-Oh God, oh God-until the shape resolved itself into a life-size cardboard cutout of Pamela Anderson. Getting a grip, I stepped inside.
Not much to see: mustard-colored shag carpeting, a bunch of baggy old furniture, TV, stereo-typical guy stuff. Pamela was the only decoration. These were the kind of men who could argue heatedly about which pro athlete should be president. I tried the TV and got nothing, but there were several remotes, and it's possible I didn't do it right.
So this was Stoner Central. I was a little disappointed. Except for a few cigarette burns the place was pretty clean. I'd always pictured something a little more exotically nasty. To tell the truth, I'd had a secret yearning to come in here since Mum and I first arrived, and had gone so far as to spy on their New Year's Eve party, skulking around under the trees as the place roared like a bonfire: sleazy-voluptuous tattooed women slithering against crude roughnecks, none of them much older than me, yet as confident in their skins as royalty, while music and laughter and the clink of bottles pushed back the solitude. I had fantasized about walking into that circle of light, all of them falling silent and the most scarily beautiful couple-the branded boy with the pierced lip and his languid, stunning gangsta princess-coming up and taking me by the waist. Welcoming me in.
That party was the last peep we'd heard out of the house, and I realized it was likely that no one had been here since then. I crept across the living room and peered in the kitchen. Not too bad. The contact paper was peeling here and there, likewise the Formica, but on the whole it was at least as clean as our place. No dirty dishes or pizza crusts-these guys wanted their security deposit back. Spotting a wall phone, I snatched it up, but it was dead. This was getting to be annoying. I checked the refrigerator with a sense of trepidation, but it contained only basic condiments and a few cans of beer. I hate beer.
There was a collection of tools laid out on the dining table as if on display: axes, hatchets, pruning saws, cleavers. The sight of all those sharp blades was vaguely unsettling, so I returned to the living room, thinking I ought to get back before Mum panicked.
Crossing to the front door, I was struck again by the putrid milk smell. I had forgotten about it in the kitchen-obviously it wasn't coming from there at all. I took a step down the wood paneled hall… the smell was definitely stronger. The only room I could see into was the bathroom, on my right. Some idiot had broken the toilet seat, but other than that it looked empty and clean. No, the smell was farther down, in the vicinity of those closed doors. It had to be pretty ripe behind one of those. You had to wonder what was causing it.
With terrific economy of motion, I was back outside, tugging the front door shut behind me. That I neither left it open nor slammed it in haste should put to rest any idea that I panicked. I was fairly secure about the source of that smell being nothing but, say, a rotting damp mop. But what would be the point of finding out?
Kicking through a drift of pine needles halfway down the walk, I began to hear something. A pattering sound from the road. I slowed to listen. It was the sound of rapid footsteps-someone running.
A jogger? There was something alarming in that ordinary sound, but I didn't want to jump to any paranoid conclusions. Chances were it was someone else who was feeling a bit marooned. Perhaps someone helpful. I couldn't see the person yet through the screen of trees, but in a moment our paths would intersect at the front gate. As the footsteps neared, I felt a strong, instinctive impulse to hide but limited it to stopping well short of the fence.
Now I could hear other footsteps trailing the first. I pictured a whole gaggle of runners, a cross-country team sprinting by in their shorts as if nothing was wrong. God, that would be good. I was shaking.
The first runner came into view, really moving, and it took me a moment to recognize my own mother. I just watched stupidly as a blue woman-her face the bruised color of a sparrow chick-ran deliriously toward me, dress flapping. Her open mouth was an obscene black hole. Then it clicked: That housecoat…
"M-mummy?" I cried, stumbling backward.
As she attempted to lunge over the fence, her dress became entangled in the hooked wires, and she fell. Senseless with shock and grief, I cried out and jumped to help her, but froze again at the sight of her rolling and heaving in the dirt like a wild animal. She was so blue, blue as someone in the throes of strangulation… but she was not choking. All the while she struggled to get loose, the huge black pupils of her glaring eyes were fixed on me. It was such a manic, predatory look that I shrank back with fear. Then the dress gave way like a shed skin.
I don't remember screaming or running or anything else that happened for the next few seconds, but somehow I wound up crouched in the trailer, gasping for breath, with my back against the front door. The door rattled in its frame. I must have been in shock, because the strongest feeling I had was that I was late and my mother would be worried.
Once when I was in fourth grade, I had been so late coming home that she called the police. Some other girls and I had been holding a kind of seance in a churchyard, having convinced ourselves that the statues of saints moved when we weren't looking. We even gave offerings of pocket change. But then some less-credulous older boys showed up and spoiled the illusion.
The door stopped shuddering, and the thing outside leaped off the stoop to circle around back. The back door. I ran into the kitchen just in time to see my mother yank the screen off its hinges and smash the little window high in the door. Her whole arm snaked through, heedless of broken glass, a crablike blue hand skittering in search of the lock. Half her terrible face was visible in the opening, the mad dilated eye bulging with furious greed.
Weeping, I jammed a chair under the doorknob, and shakily said, "Mum, stop." I couldn't look at her.
"Lulu," she grunted. "Lulu help. Help Mummy, Lulu. Come out." Her voice was guttural, masculine. The sound of it made my hair prickle like static electricity.
"Mum, please," I wailed. "It's me! Try to remember. Try."
Her efforts became more frenzied, but it was no use-she couldn't reach the knob. Her arm withdrew like an eel, and I lost sight of her. Heart racing, I looked out the window over the sink just in time to catch a blur vanishing around the front of the house. There was a loud crash of breaking glass-the living-room window. Forcing myself to move, I arrived there just in time to see not only my mother but two more frenetic human monsters floundering in over the high windowsill. One of them had no eyes. It was a freakish feat of agility, this squirming invasion, and in a way it cleared my head, because it was nothing my real mother could have ever done in her wildest dreams.
Flying on pure instinct, I barely spared them a glance as I rushed past and into the first door off the hall. I half shut myself in the bathroom before I realized the knob was missing, then lunged for the next nearest door, one that opened on a shelved linen closet packed with canned goods and emergency supplies. Damn it! Footsteps pounded toward me-the little daylight filtering through from the living room was suddenly blocked by the press of approaching bodies. I didn't dare look back, just barreled through the next door and locked it behind me. As I whimpered there in the dark, the door beat hard against my shoulder, shaking the whole house: BAM! BAM! BAM!
My crying was a high-pitched whistle from deep in my throat, broken up by violent hiccups. That door's not going to hold, it's not, it's not…
What was that smell? I was in the last throes of animal desperation, but even that had to yield before the stench. The stench. It filled the dark room like a dense, gamy vapor, like cut bait left in a tackle box all summer. I couldn't see anything, just a thread of light under the heavy blackout curtain, but I knew there was something rotten in there.
I could hear the maniacs laying waste to the room next to mine, searching for a way through. It freed me to leave the door for a second and open the curtain a crack, just enough to admit a little light. I did this with trembling caution, not wanting anyone outside to notice and come crashing in. But there was no sign of them-the yard was empty. I turned and screamed.
The room looked like a slaughterhouse. It had been a bedroom, with a futon on the floor, CD racks, and a high chest of drawers, but everything was spattered with black congealed blood, all the way up the walls. The center of the futon pad was a lavalike mass of gore, mixed with teeth and hair. Several blood-smeared yellow raincoats were draped on a chair alongside gloves, overshoes, and other protective gear. Wads of duct tape and cut plastic police restraints littered the floor. Remembering the tools on the dining table, I suddenly had a bizarre revelation: Where were these guys when I needed them? Instead of dropping dead from the horror, my brain seemed to rise to the unspeakable and take unexpected strength from this scene-not everybody was squeamish. I had the choice there and then to fall apart or live… and be this kind of person. Because the carnage before me was not the work of Agent X mental cases. It was the work of hard-hearted men.
This was not a conscious thought process so much as an emotional rush that got me moving.
I dragged the sodden, reeking futon over against the door and prepared to move the dresser in front of the window. Then I thought, Why? Barricading myself in this awful place wouldn't save me for long-screw that. Instead, I tipped the dresser onto the mattress and went to unlatch the window. It slid open easily, presenting a clear field of flight. Then I frowned: I'd never outrun those things. Not even my own mother. Anxiously, I started searching for a weapon, a club, anything to hold them off until I could get back to our car… and maybe away.
The maniacs were going crazy in the hall, having heard my yelp and the dresser falling over. Still looking for any kind of weapon, I opened the closet and leaned in, then reeled backward as if slapped. In the middle of a heap of women's shoes stood a green plastic garbage can, filled nearly to the brim with purplish blue human remains. Amid the offal I could make out part of a jaw, ribs, hair, intestines. But that wasn't what had made me jump.
The remains were alive.
Though every joint seemed to have been severed, the whole mass seethed like an octopus. It made wet, smacking sounds, and I had the insane impression that it was aware of me-that those veiny, glistening lumps were surging in my direction.
The bedroom door was coming apart. Moving like a sleep-walker, I closed the closet, casually crawled out the window, and dropped gently to the ground. Fresh air! Nothing was weird at all out there-it looked exactly the same as when I'd first walked up. I knew I hadn't been dreaming, but still felt self-conscious running for the road under that prosaic winter sky, as one who awakens kissing a pillow. I felt dirty.
Going through the gate, I made the mistake of looking back and caught a glimpse of herky-jerky figures emerging from the window like bats from a crevice. They were so fast. Chrome-bright panic knifed through the cobwebs, spurring me to run harder than I ever had, harder than I really could for more than a short sprint. I'd never been much of an athlete, except for diving, and that didn't require much stamina.
I came to the first crossroads and broke right, not daring my earlier shortcut. White noise began to fill my ears-the rush of blood to my head as my breathing shredded. I could taste iron. Please, God, I pleaded. I'd been avoiding backward glances, but as I ran I began to feel that perhaps the creatures were no longer after me, that they had lost interest. Lungs burning, I risked a glance and lost equilibrium, skidding, going down, skinning my hands and knees. Grit powdered my sweaty face and funneled down my dress. I hated myself.
But there was no sign of any pursuit. Heart galloping, I got to my feet and scanned the road. Nothing. Nothing but-
Movement flickered to my left, among houses and yards. I flinched, drawing a sharp breath. It was them, all three of them, coming across the lawn nearest the road and splitting up to cut me off. My mother was the closest, shamelessly charging up the center in her underwear, as rapid and jerky as a windup toy. Next was a man, a swarthy, unkempt soldier in tattered fatigues, whose face was the frozen scowl of a tiki idol. The last was a tall, limber boy who looked about my age but whose eyes were just hideous black sockets. He moved as surely as the rest.
With their blue-gray complexions, they resembled a trio of rubber-limbed Hindu deities. Where I had turned right, they had come across diagonally to intercept me, demonstrating at least an animal cunning. They weren't tired. Their loony, distorted faces showed nothing but wild obsession. Not even cruel glee-I got no impression that I was sport, just a commodity.
I doubled back, legs shaking, trying to duck the enclosing snare. The one angling to block my way was the blind boy, whose unhindered, gangly agility made me think, No fair! Tongue lolling out as he ran, he was wearing a tattered sweat suit and a gold medallion around his neck.
They had me: I was blocked and had to stop in my tracks. My only hope was the field I had cut through to get here, though I didn't feel good about running over uneven ground. Eyes stinging with sweat, I launched myself over the roadside ditch and landed, scrambling on all fours, halfway up the far embankment. I grabbed at dead stalks of last year's milkweed, but they pulled out of the loose soil like bathtub plugs, and I sprawled to the bottom.
It was all over. My legs were spaghetti, my heaving chest a box of coals. I sat upright and dug fruitlessly in the cold sand for any decent-sized stone, watching them come.
They didn't slow down the way a person would when he knows he's won, but converged on me with the same hyper-animated haste they'd shown all along. From low in the ditch, I watched first their gargoyle faces, then their torsos, then the rest come speeding at me. Covering my eyes, I whimpered, "I love you, Mum…"
Then a car hit them.
At first I only heard its engine and the snarl of its wheels churning gravel. The driver must have crept up slowly and floored it at the last minute, because I uncovered my eyes barely in time to see all three of my pouncing attackers swatted aside like chess pieces off a board. The sound was a triple impact, a mighty drum flourish-BADABOOM!-and a tinkle of headlight bits as the vehicle hammered through. Pebbles showered down on me. Immediately, the driver stood on his brakes and fishtailed to a stop. I was dimly aware of a crashing in the roadside brush, and realized that the bodies of my mother and the others were only then hitting the ground.
Spinning its tires in reverse, the car backed through the dust cloud until it came up even with me. It was Cowper's blue Expedition. From my low angle, I couldn't see the driver.
The passenger-side window powered down. "Hey, girlie! Lulu!" It was the nasal voice of Fred Cowper.
"Yeah?" I said, loath to move.
"Where are ya? You okay?"
"I think so."
"Then what you waitin' for? Get in the damn car before the bastids come back!"
I almost said, You're talking about my mother, but I didn't. I climbed painfully to my feet, peered grimly through the window at Cowper-who looked owlishly back at me through ashtray-thick prescription glasses-and yanked at the door handle. It wouldn't open.
"Unlock it," I said.
"It's unlocked," he replied impatiently. "Pull hard!"
I yanked and yanked, and shrugged at him.
"Son of a bitch!" He leaned across the seat, fumbling with the door handle, but it wouldn't budge. I could hear him muttering, "Son of a bitch bastids wrecked my car." The right front end was slightly crumpled from the collision. The door and fender were buckled together, but it didn't look that bad.
Glancing behind the car, I spied a number of people, eight of them, running toward us. Even from a distance it was very easy to tell what they were. Cowper dithered angrily, stretching his bony legs across the passenger seat to try and kick the door loose. The back was crammed with boxes, or I would have just jumped in there.
"How about the window?" I asked, fidgeting.
He ignored me, rocking the car with his futile kicks.
"How about I climb in the window?"
"Keep your shirt on," he said. Then he glanced in the mirror. "Crap. All right, get on in."
The window was not as easy as I'd hoped. It was gym class all over again. I made the mistake of climbing up one foot at a time, but it was too high, and I found myself in the awkward position of hanging from the sill by one leg and one arm, with my dress bunched up around my waist. "I can't do it!" I cried.
"Aw, for Christ's sake," he snapped, bolting from the car and hurrying around to my side. I thought he was going to try shoving me through, and had a flash of Winnie the Pooh stuck in Rabbit's hole, but he pulled me out and sent me around to scoot across from the driver's side. Doing this, I was unnerved to see that he hadn't followed, but was trying to jimmy the door loose with a pocketknife.
Behind him something moved in the underbrush. Like a jack-in-the-box, the blue soldier popped out of a thistle patch and stood there, slowly swaying. His body was a squeezed-out toothpaste tube, his head an oozing Picasso. Then the eyeless boy jerked to life nearby, even more of a wreck… then my mother. I lost my breath at the sight of her.
"Mr. Cowper, they're coming, they're coming," I choked out, tears flying from my eyes. "You have to hurry right now, get in-"
"Don't worry, I see 'em back there." He wasn't even looking.
"No, the others, the ones you hit, they're up there, look…"
The three mangled carcasses started for us, thrashing through the weeds and across the ditch.
Cowper made a final effort, and the door clunked open.
"Outta the way for Crissake!" he hollered, throwing himself over me and scrambling behind the wheel. He was nimble for his age, but it still took him a minute to get settled in place. In that time, the three creatures reached my side of the car, dragging broken limbs and dirt-caked loops of intestine behind them.
I watched them come, my window open, my door unlocked, simply because I didn't know which button was which, and I didn't want to make a fatal mistake. In the side-view mirror, I could also see the other eight, a tribe of capering goblins rushing up from behind to join the party.
Cowper hit the window button. As it began sliding shut, a face suddenly rose up in front of the mirror and wedged itself in the window. It was the dust-floured harpy that had been my mother. She was unrecognizable. The whites of her eyes were inky black, crying dark blue tears that streaked a clownish face so swollen it was featureless, all eyes and lips.
Those balloon lips parted, croaking, "Lulululululululu," until her breath ran out. Then she wheezed and continued, "Lululululululululu," all the while fighting me for the door. She still had strength but no dexterity, and her grip on the handle kept slipping loose. The other two arrived beside her, crowding each other in their eagerness to worm through. Strings of black spittle fell on me, and I leaned as far away from the door as I could without losing my grip.
"Lock the door!" I screamed. "Lock the door!"
Even as I said it, the locking bolts shot home with a deliriously gratifying ka-chunk.
"You don't have to wait for me, you know," Cowper grumbled. Twisting around to face backward, one hand on the wheel, he said, "Fasten your seat belt," and gunned the big Ford in reverse. Like magic, the three ragged creatures were left rolling in the dust. The sight of them dropping away was so sweet it was agonizing-I wasn't ready for hope, and might never be. I was leaving my mother behind.
We kept going backward at a fast clip, swerving a little as if taking aim, until there was a jarring multiple thump, and the car bounced over something. We passed through the line of maniacs, half of them clutching hopelessly after us, the rest stretched out in the road. Once we were safely clear, Cowper stopped and turned the car around, proceeding away at a more leisurely pace.
"Do I have to tell you to close that window?" he griped. "I got the heat on."
"Sorry," I said, finding the button. All of a sudden I started trembling so hard I was afraid Cowper might think there was something seriously wrong with me and put me out. But he wasn't paying attention. He was looking in the rearview mirror with grim intensity, nodding to himself.
"And that's why I drive an SUV," he said.