Forever never ends

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.

That's right. Call for the Man. Axt him to protect yo sorry black ass.

But a nigger ain't got no business meddling, he ought to just hang in the woodwork and keep his big lips shut.

It's a whitey world. It's their trees and rivers and air and dirt. Their fucking problem, not no jazzbo's, no suh.

I's gwine see no fucking evil.

He turned and saw a flash of movement, and his heart leaped into his throat. Then he saw that he was looking at the mirror that hung on the back of the open bathroom door. And the movement was only his own white eyes.

He sat on the couch, watching the hand dissolve, determined to guard Aunt Mayzie’s door and wait for a morning that seemed years away.

Robert looked up into the deformed milkbone skull of the Man in the Moon, wondering if the moon was looking down on his wife somewhere. He drew a final puff off his third straight cigarette and ground it into the ashtray. He always smoked out on the porch, in consideration of the kids. But now the ritual gave him no comfort. It was just a meaningless gesture, a murdering of time, a footless pacing.

He held his watch face to the moonlight. Four o'clock.

Robert thought about calling the police again to see if they'd turned up anything. But Tamara had told him that she was fine. And Tamara, unlike Robert, never lied. So all he could do was wait and worry.

And wonder about Ginger.

And the bad people with green eyes. And dirt mouths. And why he felt so helpless. He couldn't even worry worth a damn. All he could do was chainsmoke and count the stars.

Yep, he was one sorry son of a bitch.

He'd laughed at Tamara's Gloomies all along, tossed them off as a side effect of her psychology studies. As if he knew his ass from a hole in the ground when it came to the workings of the brain. He didn't even know his own mind, much less anything not directly related to feeding and mating and occasionally drawing a paycheck. Taking, that’s all he ever did.

If he knew his own mind, maybe he could figure out why he was afraid to tell Tamara that he'd cheated on her. And that maybe he'd done it because he had reached mid-life, had stood at the top of that hill and looked back and saw only his own worthless tracks. And now it was all over but the downhill slalom into the grave. And because she had power, sensitivity, imagination, she was a constant reminder of his own failings.

Robert had never fulfilled his great dreams, his expectations of fame and success and happiness and wealth. He hadn't made a single mark on the world. Even his footprints had disappeared under the shifting sands of time. And after he was gone, no one would notice his ever having been, much less mourn his passing.

In his ambition, his quest for radio stardom, his search for identity, he had urinated on the few flowers that had bloomed in the desert of his life. And the brightest, the sweetest, the great joy of his heart that had brought Kevin and Ginger into the world, was now beyond his help.

A siren flared in the distance and faded slowly across the dark hills. Sirens always made him think of his loved ones, especially when they might be the cause of the emergency.

He lit another cigarette and listened to the wind and other things sighing in the low branches of the forest. A winged creature flew low, brushed against the eaves of the house, and flitted back into the darkness beyond the yard.

Something pricked the back of his hand and he held it up to the square of the kitchen window light. A spider twitched on wiry legs, its plump body seeming to soak up light and cast it back like the glow-in-the-dark stars on Ginger’s ceiling. He shook his hand and the spider fell to the porch. He crushed the arachnid with his shoe and studied the spot where he’d been bitten. The wound was raw and jagged, a small chunk of flesh peeled back as if the spider had fangs.

Tamara should have known it wouldn't be so easy. Did they expect the shu-shaaa would just let them walk up to its temporary home and fill it with dynamite and chemical poisons and then just blow a little kiss good-bye as they blasted it to smithereens?

Tamara sensed its awareness of them just as the green light fully came into view, just as they were heading down the soft-sloping ridge, just as she was stealing DeWalt's absurd thought. He was humming "When Iris Eyes are Smiling" to himself.

She sensed the white roots thickening under their feet, turning into snakes and cables and lanyards. She heard the trees bending low, cracking their knuckles and knee bones, felt the conspiracy of laurels and fern. The forest came alive, armed with lances and clubs.

"Look out!" she yelled, ducking under a swiftly descending oak branch. DeWalt grunted as a dense limb dropped on him from the night sky. Chester ran toward the source of the glow, his bony shoulders stooped against the leaves that slapped at him.

Emerland ran, too, holding up his sack of fungicide to protect his face, pale roots licking at his feet. The two men reached the dead area around the Earth Mouth, where the trees stood like bleached skeletons.

Tamara’s mind went out to DeWalt and she felt the bright spark of his pain and the black, swirling cloud of his panic. Then her mind was swallowed by shu-shaaa and its frozen, grinning fog. She fought it off and helped DeWalt stand.

"It's stronger," he said, his face pale and wide in the moonlight.

She nodded. "We'd better hurry," she whispered, not knowing why she was whispering. Because shu-shaaa already knew. Everything and more. It had probed their minds and souls, plumbed the depths of their hearts, stolen the secret symbols of their hopes and dreams.

And though it didn’t understand, it knew enough to be afraid.

It sent a thick root out of the ground and up her leg. The root probed like a maggot under her skirt before wrapping around her bare thigh. She slammed the can of Roundup against it, bruising herself with the effort. The root twisted, trying to pull her to the soil within reach of its brethren. Struggling to stay upright, she twisted the can's cap and pulled the plastic safety rings free, then splashed the concentrated poison on the base of the root. It writhed and shrank back and then flopped to earth.

The shotgun exploded, both barrels, the thunderclap rumbling through the thickets and echoing off the ridge. Chester stood near shu-shaaa, looking like a paper doll cut from black construction paper, gunsmoke silhouetted against the glow. Emerland hunched behind him like a rabbit. Tree limbs swatted stiffly at DeWalt, hickory and birch and wild cherry animated into action.

Her own psychic powers pulsed, charged with energy. She fought through shu-shaaa’s fog, pushed her psyche like a butter knife through cheese, bluntly shoved her mind into Emerland’s, feeling his fear and revulsion and hopelessness and his deep desire to lie in the soil and cover his ears and clamp shut his eyes.

"Stand up," she ordered him silently. Emerland looked around as if trying to figure out where her voice was coming from. He stood, trembling, the Sevin in his arms. Briars grabbed at his pants.

"Follow Chester," she thought at him. He nodded, and in the foul radiance, she could see the tears sliding down his cheeks. He was thinking of the voices, of devils and angels and madnesses, each of them the same in his mind.

DeWalt pushed at the leaves that pattered against him like moths.

"I think I can make it," DeWalt said, rubbing his shoulder. Tamara hooked her arm in his, glancing warily at the carpet of leaves, wondering what might lie beneath it. Her skin itched where the root had rasped against it.

"I wasn't going to leave you," she said.

"What a noble woman."

"You've got the detonator, after all."

“It’s nice to be needed for a change.” He tried to laugh but coughed instead, and they stumbled toward the light, kicking at the tentacles that waved at their feet. Nearer the Earth Mouth, all the organic matter had died, its energy sapped and its bones sucked clean, plants and trees grayer than deep winter.

Tamara helped DeWalt into the ashen ring of death. They caught up with Chester and Emerland, who were hiding behind a cold outcrop of granite.

The odor of fungus and rot hung in the air. The Earth Mouth throbbed, shaking the earth around the group. Neon pulses of light vomited from the alien throat: lime, then crimson, then indigo.

Tamara whispered loudly enough to be heard over the low rumbling wind, "It knows why we're here."

"I don't even need to read minds to know that the alien sonuvabitch is mighty pissed," Chester said. He reloaded the shotgun with trembling fingers.

"Wh-what do we do now?" Emerland’s head swiveled rapidly back and forth as if he were watching a Ping-Pong match from the front row.

Chester and DeWalt looked to Tamara, silently acknowledging that she was the leader now that Chester had brought them through the woods.

"First the fungicide, then the TNT,” she said. “Maybe the explosion will spread the poison to the far reaches of the thing. It's trying to dig its way to the water table. If it gets there…”

"And didn't you say something about sunup?" Chester looked up through the inert trees. The night was losing its grip and the moon had fallen low and weak in the sky. Dawn pinked the top of Antler Ridge in the distance.

"Wire the TNT together, just a few sticks should be enough to set off the whole batch," Tamara said, pulling the sticks from her pocket and placing them on the ground before DeWalt. She had known nothing about explosives before, but now she at least had DeWalt's vague knowledge, thanks to her invasion of his mind.

As he worked with the wires, running the electrical fuse into the blasting cap, Tamara leaned against a boulder. She tried to block shu-shaaa out of her mind, but now she was picking up the entire collective, the parts of the whole that were screaming across the galaxy, crunching matter and sucking the juice from stars as they grazed their way back to the beginning of time.

She wondered if she was strong enough. She closed down and focused, shutting off the Gloomies, turning down the whine that jammed the frequencies of her mind. Then, she reached, not across light-years but miles. To Robert.

As her mind swept out, past DeWalt's concentration and Chester's rage and Emerland's fear, she found Robert. She tried to tell him everything would be okay, that she would be home soon. And maybe since she was temporarily telepathic, she might just dig through his psyche and see what was bothering him. Maybe she could take advantage of this brief gift and find out his true feelings.

If God gave you a gift, you were supposed to use it.

She reached, trying to get a connection, but something was cutting in, static or a stronger signal. Had shu-shaaa gained power from just that little burst of sunrise?

Then she realized it was Ginger, asleep but with a vibrant mind, a mental radar dish looking for information. And she sensed what Ginger was sensing, that two creatures, the bad people, were emerging from the forest behind the house. And Robert was…

She saw now through his eyes, tasted his acrid cigarette, smelled the dew on the grass, felt the rough grain of the porch rail under his elbows, the throbbing raw ache in the back of his hand where he had been tainted and infected.

She felt the strong urge that tugged him toward the forest, heard the strange voice that called him to go among those leaves and meet the things that would welcome him fully into the fold.

Tamara jolted Ginger, telling her to wake up and bring Daddy in, telling her to hurry hurry hurry because there wasn't much time and the orange daybreak jumped a little higher in the sky and the two creatures twitched with new hunger and they sensed Robert's bioenergy and hurry Ginger hurry.

The connection died, cutting off like a phone line in an electrical storm.

Because the Earth moved.

Nettie was floating floating floating heart of feathers in Bill's arms only his arms were skin, strange skin.

Why did she feel like she wanted to sleep but something wouldn't let her and why oh why was her throat so dry, had been ever since Ann Painter the Savior no the shu-shaaa had planted that kiss that drowned both body and soul — and what was that light? — oh, Bill, you better put me down because now I want to kiss you and then you'll be like us everything must be us and my mouth can't tell you to put me down and save yourself but how foolish it all was, once was blind but now I see, how easy it is to surrender when nothing matters except the feeding and growing and changing and the harvest and then the end of everything.

Only now, my love, you said open your heart so let me in let us all in I told you there was room for forgiving it's a big room let me open the door and oh the glory.

Yes, your breath is sweet and close and I'm sorry it has to end like this but I want to give.

I can't

I love you Bill shu-shaaa wants

But I can't your light and heat forgive me a time to embrace forgive me my trespasses and a time to refrain from embracing

I love you Bill

I love you shu-shaaa

I have sinned so I cannot save you

I love you too much, Bill to make you like me good-bye

She opened her eyes and Bill saw the green glow flickering in her retinas, something inside her trying to swell and explode. She twitched in his arms, tossed her frantic hands around his neck, drawing his head down for a final kiss. Bill yielded, helpless against the power she held over him.

Bill knew she was already gone, already infected, already like the monsters that milled outside the house. But still she lived, somehow, even without a heartbeat. And Bill couldn't resist her suddenly too-red mouth.

Many things sparkled in her eyes, things beyond his simple understanding, but all were beckoning and tempting. Their lips nearly touched, but at the last moment she stiffened and pushed him away.

Bill held Nettie against his chest as the warmth faded from her body. He pressed his face near her mouth, hoping to feel the vapor of her breathing. But all he felt was the mist of his own tears as her flesh wilted in his arms.

"Bill, come on!" Sarah was at the back door, looking through the peephole. "Those things… whatever they are, they're not back here."

"Nettie," he said to Sarah, softly. He was holding Nettie as if she were a rag doll whose threads were unraveling.

"We've got to go now, Bill," Sarah said, coming to him and tugging at his elbow. The preacher and his congregation still battered at the front door. Sarah glanced into the living room, then shut her eyes against her own remembered horrors. "My parents-I know how you feel. But we can't give up. You wouldn’t let me, and now I’m not going to let you. We've got to try to live… for them."

Bill looked at Sarah, then back down to Nettie.

"She's dead, Bill,” Sarah said. “I'm sorry, but that won't bring her back. She's with God now."

Bill wasn't so sure about that. Whatever those monsters had planted inside her, whatever they had done to her "Let's go," Bill said through gritted teeth.

Sarah threw open the door and they ran across the side yard, Bill carrying Nettie. He felt naked under the moonlight, exposed to God, raw. His truck was in the parking lot, its engine still running. Whatever the creatures were, their hands seemed too clumsy to use keys. He thanked the Lord for that small blessing.

Sirens flared down the narrow street and red lights strobed across the tops of trees. Bill slipped once and saw a fluid movement out of the corner of his eye, but he regained his footing and ran without looking back. They reached the truck just as a police car skidded to a stop beside the graveyard.

"You drive," Bill yelled at Sarah. He gently lifted Nettie into the truck seat as Sarah slid behind the steering wheel.

"Take her out of here," Bill said.

Arnie McFall, the town patrolman, jumped out of the police car and ran toward Bill. Sarah backed up the truck, throwing broken asphalt as the big tires spun. Bill watched until the truck was out of sight, then turned toward the graveyard.

Arnie had his gun out and was shining a spotlight at the figures wafting among the tombstones and the cemetery trees.

"What in the holy hell are they?" Arnie asked Bill, not knowing whether to shoot or jump back into his cruiser and speed away.

"Hell's people," Bill said, just before the ground rumbled and the grave markers toppled and the night fell in.

The alien absorbed the vibrations through its altered cells. The chaotic waves emanating from the approaching specimens disrupted its feeding, disturbed its healing, scattered its focus. It signaled the outlying roots and spore-infected units, commanding them to withdraw, centralizing its energy in the heart-brain.

The symbols swarmed, broke loose, and spilled through the soup of its senses:

Tah-mah-raaa-kish.

Eyez-gwine-see.

Luv-yoo-bill.

No-fuk-eeeng-eee-vil.

Hells-pee-pull.

Gwine-see.

Sun-uv-a-hooor.

Tee-in-tee.

Poy-zun.

Poy-zun.

Kish-poy-zun.

Tah-mah-raaa.

Poy-zun.

The shock of the dark energy sent ripples through the alien, stunning it, compelling it to contract around its center. Driven by instinct into self-preservation, it huddled itself into its birth position.