A Broken Vessel #2
He’d kept his voice low and intimate, but still I shushed him, just to be sure he knew who was boss. It might be his tip-off, but the boys were my crew.
The smell was even stronger inside the house, which killed my idea of spoiled crops.
I was glad of the rag tied across my mouth and nose.
Even with it, that earthy, fungal smell made me gag.
The floorboards were so spongy beneath our feet that I had no doubt the entire place was rotten from the foundations up, black mold thriving in the wall cavities and floors, colonies of the stuff swelling in the house’s invisible spaces.
Best Milo Southey could do was tear it down and start over with his fortune.
Except he wouldn’t have a fortune after tonight. I almost felt sorry for the guy.
Mikey took the lead going up the stairs, followed by Hoff, then me, and Julius last. We hadn’t heard so much as a snore from the second floor, but it always paid to be professional.
The further the kid stayed from anything physical, the better—we didn’t know him, not really.
I’d given him an armful of empty sacks to carry, more to keep him out of trouble than because we needed them.
Once Southey was tied up—if he was here at all—we could pull the van round and take our time.
Out here the only ones who’d hear us were the scarecrows.
Julius was right about one thing: all the doors on the landing were open, apart from the second on the right.
Mikey moved aside to let Hoff open it, and as it swung wide we saw the bedroom clearly, the curtains tied back to let a thin trickle of moonlight through.
It was cluttered, clearly an old couple’s room, the wooden furniture buried under mounds of bric-a-brac and junk.
To our left was a dressing table, the mirror turned to the wall.
Two old-fashioned china dolls sat on it, their faces pale discs in the weak light, surrounded by dust-furred hairbrushes and bottles.
Beyond that stood the bed, a frame of thick oak or pine.
The covers were pulled up to the pillows.
There was no one in it. Didn’t look like there had been for some time.
It was as I turned to Julius that I saw a movement in the shadows, the glint of something shiny and hard in a hand.
I turned to shout, but was cut short by the thud of a blow landing on Mikey’s thick skull.
I caught just a glimpse of another two figures—no, three—stepping into the weak light of the bedroom, before a dull pain shot through the back of my head and the blackness became darker still.
* * *
I didn’t wake so much as drag myself back to consciousness a little at a time. My head throbbed from whatever they’d hit me with; my mouth tasted like I’d been chewing on a raw steak. Took a few seconds to force my eyes open.
When I did, I saw Mikey and Hoff were still with me.
They’d come round earlier than me—between them, those two had the thickest pair of skulls I’ve ever known—and both were hogtied on the ground, strips of tape across their mouths.
I pulled against the ropes around my wrists and realized the same had been done to me.
This was exactly what we’d planned to do to Milo Southey, an irony that wasn’t wasted.
Didn’t seem the best time to entertain thoughts of karma, though.
We were outside. Four men I’d never seen before stood in front of us, their faces hidden behind blank masks. Then there was a fifth man. He didn’t have a mask because he didn’t need one. We already knew him all too well.
Julius smiled when he saw I was awake, prodded at me with his toe. The impact set a fire in my ribs; they must have broken something when they hauled me downstairs and out of the house.
“Wakey wakey, sleepyhead. Don’t want to miss the fun.” It was hard to miss his gloating. He laid it on thick enough to earn a career in musical theater. “Remind me who’s boss again?”
If I’d been able to pull the tape from my mouth, I’d have told him exactly what we did to the last jagoff who tried to double-cross us. As it was, I did my best to load my stare with a double dose of anger.
The tallest of the four men pulled up his mask and stepped forward, crouching down to get a better look at me.
They’d created a circle of light with a couple of camping lanterns, but the shadows it cast were heavy.
A high forehead, receding hairline. His nose looked flattened, like it’d been broken in the past and not reset—I’ve been in enough emergency rooms to know a deviated septum when I see one.
He wore a suit jacket, like he’d been playing lord of the manor when we got there.
Milo Southey, I guessed, if Southey even existed.
“Expect you’re wondering what you’ve stumbled into.
” His voice was nasal and faltering, like he had to keep pausing to breathe.
I bet he suffered from chronic allergies in the summer.
“I’m afraid you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.
Your kind never do. There are things out here—” he waved a hand at the darkness, “—that you can’t understand.
But we have to keep them happy, and that means sacrifices must be made.
I can’t tell you if it will hurt or not, because no one’s ever made it out the other side. I can tell you that it will be quick.”
One of the other men said something, and Southey—if that’s who he was—nodded.
“I heard it too. We only have a minute.” He turned back to me. “You see, Mr. McGinnis, this is the end of your story. My friend over there in the darkness is going to come and have his way with you three. When he’s done, it’ll be like you never existed. This is how it goes.”
As the five of them retreated with the lanterns, leaving us in near total darkness, I thought mainly of Tiffany.
It had been bad enough for her, growing up without her mom; if I wasn’t there either, that meant she’d be put into the system, and we all know how that spits people out.
I’d thought on my life choices plenty of times over the past two years, but I’d never had the guts to act on those thoughts.
That she’d be the one to pay for that hurt more than the broken ribs and the cracked skull.
The fact that I’d be gone and wouldn’t have to see it happen wasn’t any kind of consolation.
Then there was a sudden whickering yelp in the blackness to our left, and I felt my bladder give in.
The way they’d left us, tied hand and foot and dumped in the dirt, I had only the vaguest sense of what approached us in the darkness.
It was large, that much was clear; taller than most men by several feet, and broad in all the wrong places.
It shuffled as it moved, like its legs were too small for its body and it was dragging itself across the mud.
There was another yelp, quieter this time, and with it came a gust of something rancid and spoiled, like toadstools growing on roadkill. I gagged so hard it made my eyes water.
It sniffed around us, circling behind me so it stayed out of sight, though the stench stayed so strong I found it hard to breathe. When it stopped moving, I heard it panting in the dark. Against my better judgment, I twisted to see.
It had stopped by Mikey.
I’m grateful for a couple of things from that night.
One of them is that it was too dark for me to see the look on Mikey’s face as that thing leaned over him.
The noises he made…they’re with me still.
I hear them sometimes, when I’m half asleep in the small hours and my mind is twitching like an addict.
Not just the screams, but the fear, the grunts of pain as it tore into him.
The wet ripping sound in the blackness. It only took a minute, but Mikey’s end felt like an eternity.
My gut clenched as I waited my turn in the dirt.
Then there was only the sound of that creature in the dark, its shuffling and chewing, each wheezing breath like the whistle of an oncoming train.
I’m ashamed to say I held my breath. Made myself as quiet and still as I could manage.
I don’t know if it worked, but after a few seconds I could hear the creature moving away from me and Mikey, to where Hoff was tied.
That I’d just served up my best friend to who-knows-what wasn’t lost on me, and in that moment something broke inside me.
We all like to think we’d throw ourselves on a grenade for our brothers, but very few of us would.
I saw my true self in the blackness of that field, and I ain’t proud.
Hoff went quieter than Mikey. I like to hope that’s because he was still stunned and only half-conscious, unaware of what was happening to him—but I’m only lying to myself.
I suspect the thing in the darkness took his head and throat first, so he simply never had the opportunity.
Maybe that means it was quick. I guess that’s the best I can hope for.
It made short work of Hoff too, and in those heightened seconds my mind raced, scrabbling for purchase on a way out.
They’d tied my hands and ankles good and tight, so there was no give there.
I thought maybe I could twist around onto my knees at least, face whatever it was as it came for me—but I only succeeded in scuffing a half-circle in the dirt, turning myself about so I looked toward the road.
That was how I saw the lights. Just a blink in the darkness at first, like a red eye winking.
I wondered what other monsters were lurking in the night.
Then there was a blue flash, and a second red light joined it—then more, growing rapidly nearer.
I heard the whoop of a distant siren, then another in reply, like a pack calling to each other.
I’d have whooped myself, if I’d still had air in my lungs.
Instead, I felt the relief wash over me like a cool breeze.