Forever never ends

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Tamara followed Chester into what she thought must be his kitchen. She saw only the outlines of things, lesser shadows in the blackness. An old wood cook stove lurked heavily in the corner. The bones of broken furniture protruded from heaps on the floor. She smelled the damp soot of the chimney, the sweet odor of liquor and decaying fabric, and the thick whang of rancid bacon grease. The cool March air seemed cloying in here, pressing against her like a second skin.

"This way, darling," Chester said to her. She bumped into his back as he stopped suddenly.

I can see into the future, but I can't see in the dark.

The random syllables skittered across her mind, as elusive as wet rats: shu-shaaa, maz-zah, muh-aack. The green glow radiating from the ridge was the visual equivalent of those sick psychic signals she was receiving, its dim pulse growing stronger in the forest beyond the door. As they’d driven past her Toyota on the way to Chester’s farm, the signals had been more intense, direct, personal.

"There's a tone,” Chester said, and she felt his leathery hand and cold plastic pressing against her arm. She took the phone and squinted at the old-fashioned rotary dial. She counted the holes with her fingers and rang her home number.

Robert answered before the first ring had died away. "Tam?" he said, breathless.

"Yes, sweetheart. It's me."

He sighed in either relief or anger. "Where the hell-I mean, I'm sorry, I've been worried sick-where are you, honey? Are you okay?"

She nodded, fighting the tears and laughter that wanted to mix themselves together. "Yeah, I'm fine. God, I miss you."

"I miss you, too. What's going on?"

"It's a long story. You know the Gloomies?"

"Um-"

"They're here. It's here."

"What?"

"And it's bigger than I thought. Are the kids safe?”

“Sure. They’re sleeping. Now what the hell-”

“Keep them inside, no matter what. I've got to go, honey. I just wanted to let you know I was okay. I'll be home soon."

I hope. God, to be back in my warm bed right now, my flannel nightgown on and Robert snoring, with no Gloomies dancing and no visions painting themselves inside my head. No shu-shaaa and peg-heee and all this other random madness. Just plain old ordinary problems.

"Don't go," Robert said.

"I have to. Take care of the kids."

"Tam, Ginger has it, too," he burst out before she could hang up.

"What?"

"Seeing things. You know. She said something about the people with green eyes. Honey, does that have anything to do with your Gloomies?"

"Yes. Oh, God, Robert. Don't let anything happen to them.”

"Tell me where you are."

"No. It's better this way. I love you," she said, and this time she couldn’t stop the tears.

Chester took the phone from her. "Your wife's in good hands, mister. Don't you worry none.”

Then Tamara heard Chester draw a sharp breath. The phone dropped to the floor. Wet, oozing hands clutched her shoulders. The Earth Mouth must have overwhelmed her senses, because she hadn't registered the creature sloughing up behind her. Now, at the contact, her mind sparked and she was connected, for a fleeting moment, with the thing that had once been called Junior Mull.

His scrambled synapses shot her a broken jumble of symbols, fishfuck moonshine taxismoke shu-shaaa cheshur cheshur cheshur chesssh She twisted to escape, but he- it — was only pushing her aside, as if she were standing in the way of its dead heart's desire. Its green eyes were locked onto Chester, glowing like radioactive gemstones in the coal mine of the room.

"So, come to claim the family keep, huh?” Chester said, with more than just a touch of mania in his voice.

The thing stepped past Tamara, leaving a slick trail on her shoulders where its limpid fingers had clutched. It closed on Chester, panting in a moist expiration that passed for its breath. Tamara realized the creature's instinct had brought it here as if reeled in by some ancestral fishing line.

Her clairvoyance had been slow in picking up what Chester had instantly understood. Because Chester recognized the dripping, waxen hulk of swampmeat that reached its limbs toward him.

"Junior, just get the fuck on back. You ain't right no more. Don't you see that, boy?" Chester shuffled slowly backward across the wooden floor.

"Shu-shaaa… shay… home…," it said, gurgling as if its wide, wet mouth was full of snuff. "Shay… kish… chesher

…"

The green eyes cut a path like flashlights, and Tamara saw the rictus of Chester's face in their glow. She felt along the kitchen counter as the Junior-creature closed on Chester. The old man had his hands up in front of him as if to offer peace, but the creature's peace was more insistent, more urgent, more compelling.

Tamara's fingers brushed across some dishes and felt the rim of the sink. A jar tumbled, throwing a silver glint before shattering on the floor. Then her fingers closed on greasy metal and she lifted, finding comfort in the weight that filled her fist. She stepped forward quickly and swung with all her strength. The iron skillet smacked flush against the thing's skull with a sound like someone stomping grapes.

Milky luminescent fluid burst from the pulpskin and oozed down the stem of the creature's neck. The thing turned to Tamara, flashing a toothless smile made bright by the iridescent scarlet-red pistils dangling in its deep throat. A throat that was the lily of her dream, the throat that was a smaller replica of the Earth Mouth, as if the creature and the shu-shaaa Gloomies shared a common hunger.

Pupil and master.

Acolyte and high priest.

The seeker and the enlightened.

The pollen mote and the God seed.

The yield and the harvest.

She swiped sideways with the skillet and it axed into the soft neck. The creature's head canted to one side like a cornstalk hit by a hailstorm. She chopped again, her hand slick with the thing’s leakage, and the head rolled off, hitting the floor like a blob of wet dough. The decapitated body swayed for a moment, then regained its balance and took a juddering step forward.

Something gripped her elbow and she almost swung the clot-soaked skillet again. But she saw Chester's too-wide shining eyes and stopped herself. Through his touch, she could sense his fear and revulsion, she could feel his hatred of the thing that had brought such horrors. His anger smelled like stale sweat and shorted-out copper wires.

Chester tugged at her, leading her out of the house, his thin fingers pressing her flesh like iron bands.

"Who was it, Chester?" she said, once they were on the porch, panting in the safety of moonlight.

"Guh-grandson." Chester gasped. "Just like fucking chickens, these things is-they come home to roost."

Tamara tossed the skillet off the porch and rubbed the creature's oily juice onto her skirt. DeWalt must have heard the struggle, because he ran toward the porch steps, his hands clenched around the shotgun.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Family reunion," Chester said, looking over the hills. "Now let's go blow this alien sonavawhore back to Kingdom Come."

They walked to the shed and gathered their makeshift ordnance. Emerland was slumped like a puppet waiting for its strings to be jerked. He lifted the sack of Sevin without being told and followed Chester between the dark outbuildings.

DeWalt walked behind them, loaded down with herbicide, the shotgun, and the detonator. The wide white moon shone down, throwing their long shadows over the field.

Back at the farmhouse, the headless Junior-thing stumbled out of the house onto the porch steps. Tamara watched as it fell to the ground and scrabbled awkwardly among the weeds, as if searching for its head and heart and hope and all things lost. She lifted the can of Roundup and headed for the forest.

Nothing made sense.

Those people walking across the graveyard, Preacher Blevins in the lead-and was that Amanda behind him? — shuffling like a pack of drunks in the moonlight, heading for the parsonage. And Nettie's car, empty in the church parking lot. Where was Nettie?

Bill jumped out of his truck and hurdled the short hedge that marked off the cemetery. The preacher turned toward him slowly, as if the air were molasses.

"Howdy, Preacher," Bill called, a bit uneasily. It was well after midnight. Was this some kind of strange revival service?

But the preacher was Baptist. The preacher knew as well as anyone that Satan walked the night, especially when the full moon floated across the sky. Bill looked toward the church at the lamplight streaming from the open vestry door. The light cast an oblong yellow rectangle on the trimmed grave grass.

"Bill."

It was Nettie, weak and wounded. Her voice hadn't come from the church. Instead it had floated over the headstones from the parsonage.

"Nettie?"

He ran across the neat cemetery, dodging the white monuments, praying to the Lord to keep Nettie safe, not caring that he was treading over the graves beneath him. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something odd about the preacher and the others. They were shimmering.

Then the smell hit him, barbed into his nose like a winch hook. Skunk cabbage and stinkweed, moldy sawdust and rancid cedar. A moist and fungal stench.

"Help me, Bill," Nettie called again.

He dodged through the tombstones the way he'd skirted defensive linemen while scoring those high school touchdowns. But he had a feeling that this was the biggest game of his life, that more was at stake than championship rings and scholarships.

The parsonage’s dark bricks were stolid against the trees, its windows with their neat white trim like sanctifying eyes. Nettie was on the porch, holding her left ankle and pulling on the doorknob. Even from twenty yards away, he could see the moonlit tears trailing down her cheeks, her eyes wide and frightened. He rushed across the dewy ground and knelt beside her.

"What's wrong, honey?" he whispered, afraid and feeling helpless, as if Nettie were a bird with a broken wing. He didn't know where to touch her.

"Ankle's broken, I think," she said between clenched teeth. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him, then put her mouth to his ear. "I'm so glad you're here."

He held her a little away from him so he could see her face. Then he saw her ankle, twisted at an awkward angle above her white shoe. "What's going on?"

"The preacher. Gone bad. His eyes… look at his eyes."

Bill turned his head. They were coming closer, wet and dripping, arms outstretched like trembling blasphemies. Their eyes shone inhumanly deep and unholy green. The preacher smiled and his mouth was alive, like a thing separate from his flesh, wiggling with bright worms.

Satan.

Satan was here, now, just the way the Bible promised. The Lord had called for the end without so much as a trumpet blast in warning.

"Sweet Jesus, save us," Bill said.

"I don't think Jesus can beat these things," Nettie said. "At least, not by Himself."

Bill shook his head, lost. "Green eyes. That part wasn't in the Book of Revelations."

Sounds drifted across the narrow strip of yard, flyblown hymns rising from those walking gates of hell.

"Bill, they're coming." She whimpered a little from pain. "They want me. Us. All of us."

Bill put his arms under Nettie, lifted her body that was still fresh and warm and naked in his memory. Her breath whispered across his neck. He looked around, wondering which way to run, but already they were upon him, wet arms and bright eyes and dead wet faces and ripped skin and fingernails sharp as thorns.

The preacher pressed his mouth near, the thick rinds of his gums snapping hungrily. Amanda Blevins, or the demon that now owned her fermenting flesh, reached for Bill with viscid hands. Others of their kind had come out from the trees or behind the marble headstones or perhaps up from the very ground itself.

Bill grew confused, as if someone had pumped him full of six kinds of drugs, or Satan had thrown open the door to a crazy house. Because words and images flashed across his mind, things green and quick and not of this earth. He felt Nettie being pulled from his arms as he squirmed under the hothouse assault. Tongues writhed near his cheek like snakes.

"Nettie!" he screamed, swinging his fists like sledgehammers against the blanched pulpy meat of the hellspawn.

Floodlights suddenly erupted, giving detail to the horror, revealing the devil's hordes. Their mouths opened in apocalyptic glee. They had seen the light. And the light exposed their ungodly hunger.

DeWalt stumbled, and then regained his footing. His legs were sodden tree stumps, dense granite pillars, tonnage. He absently reached into his front pocket for the habit of his pipe. He was putting it to his lips when he was struck by the vision of tobacco plants under a gleaming sun, rows upon rows waving their fat juicy leaves in shimmering reverence, full fields of rich decadence and sharp dewy blossoms, green armies with their nicotine arsenals. He tossed the pipe into the undergrowth.

DeWalt looked around at the long shadows of branches and the looming treetops. Even under the full moon, the night woods were secret and treacherous.

No wonder, Oh Lodge Brother. Whose side do you think they're on, anyway?

You're too xenophobic, Mr. Chairman. Maybe that's why you won't let anyone else join the Royal Order of the Bleeding Hearts.

Two hands, two balls. A balanced arrangement.

And what if I defect to that other club?

Which club would that be, Oh Brother?

Greenpeace's evil twin. The Royal Order of Shu-shaaa. The Earth Mouth. The God seed.

You haven't got the nerve. You wouldn't be here now if you weren't even more afraid of showing your true color. Yellow.

I object, Mr. Chairman.

Why do you think you were driven to make piles of money? Why you dodged Vietnam but didn’t give a damn about the peace movement? Why your marriage didn’t work because you could never give enough of yourself? Why you had it all but never enough? Why you always had to start over?

No fair. You're hitting below the belt.

It's your FEAR, Brother. Oh, not of death. A fear of being ridiculed. Of being found out. A fear of having lived. A fear of being caught giving a damn.

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

This meeting of the Royal Order of the Bleeding Hearts is now adjourned.

DeWalt looked at the shadowy forms of Chester and Emerland twenty feet ahead. He hoped Chester knew where they were going, because DeWalt was as lost as a preacher at a strip joint. Woodsmanship and sense of direction couldn't be ordered out of an LL Bean catalog. And other things also had no price.

His shoulder ached from the sack of fungicide he carried. The dust of its pungent poison wafted from beneath the tucked paper flaps. He had given the shotgun back to Chester, glad to be free of its power. But the dynamite bulged in his pockets, as heavy as the weight of responsibility. The detonator switch and blasting cap were in his vest pockets.

He hoped he would be able to rig the cap. Chester would never let him hear the end of it if he failed. If he remembered correctly, the detonator sent an electrical charge to the cap, and the heat caused a chain reaction in the cap that set off the rest of the TNT.

But how do you expect to remember that, Oh Lodge Brother? Do you trust your memories after your long fling with free love and sex and every sort of mythical motherlode mindmuck known to the human race? Do you trust the ravings of those kitchen-sink radicals you used to swap bedbugs with?

Those were decent people, Chairman.

Quoting chapter and verse from The Anarchist Cookbook?

Well… times were different then.

Yes. You hadn't developed your itch yet. Whatever happened to promoting change within the system?

Viva la revolucion, comrade. Times were different then, but times are different now, too.

You're out of order, Brother.

Yeah, and for everything, there is a season. You know, what the hippies sang, back when we thought the world was worth changing, let alone saving. We couldn’t even change our own damned minds.

He heard Tamara behind him. The can she was carrying sloshed as she changed hands again. The handle had to be biting into her palm, and her arms were probably numb by now. But she was faring better than the rest of them, urging them up the trail.

The moon had started its descent in the sky. Dawn was only a few hours away. Hadn't Tamara said something about the zombiemaker Earth Mouth thing getting stronger under the sun?

Yes, I did, Tamara thought.

Wait a second.

What did DeWalt say?

He didn't say anything. You heard him. In your head. Turn, turn, turn.

Nonsense. Clairvoyance is one thing. Telepathy is quite another.

And maybe you're getting delirious from fatigue and hunger and lack of sleep. And maybe, maybe, maybe you can chase arguments around your head like a dog chasing its tail until your brain collapses into a useless heap.

But LISTEN.

And she shut the flap of her own clamoring inner voice, closed up shop and concentrated. She heard DeWalt thinking something about lodge brothers and how the moon looked like a bad rind of cheese and how that reminded him of when he and his friends used to camp in the backyard up in Oregon and how he wished he were a child again so he could live his life all over Then she was out of him, her mind swimming with those extra thoughts.

She stopped walking and set the can of Roundup on the damp leaves.

"You okay, Tamara?" DeWalt asked from under the shadows ahead.

"Fine," she replied, thinking she would never be fine again. "Just resting for a sec. Be right along."

"Chester and Emerland are taking a breather, too. Chester says we're nearly there."

That made Tamara curious. Could she?

She opened her mind and sent her new telepathic ears tenderly into the night, swiveled her psychic antenna.

And she touched Chester's mind briefly, shared his thought that he was sure going to miss old Don Oscar's moonshine, but he was going to enjoy it while it lasted. She absorbed his bright fear, felt the raw spot where the overall strap’s buckle dug into his shoulder, tasted the sting of corn liquor, and smelled sweat-stained long johns. Then she pulled back.

She was either reading minds or else she'd finally shattered into a thousand schizophrenic splinters. It had to be shu-shaaa, the pulsing alien that had brought her Gloomies back from their hibernation. The creature had amplified her sensitivity, maybe from an overload of its own hot cosmic power spilling over, maybe from some undiscovered wavelength that operated beyond the scope of human understanding, maybe a final boon granted by an omnipotent conqueror to the ants it was about to crush. Who could know such things?

A stray thread of thought spiraled up from her crowded subconsciousness, in Chester's thin brain-voice, a sound byte that had probably slipped in randomly during the telepathic exchange.

"Curiosity killed the cat and never did no good for the mouse, neither."

Maybe it was best not to understand. All Tamara knew was that her head was full, brimming with not only her own fears and worries, not only the shu-shaaa blaring its presence in a bright invisible beacon, not only the Gloomies making a comeback that would rival that of John Travolta's, but now she had other brains to wonder and worry and ache over.

She picked up the five-gallon can and carried it into a small clearing where the others were talking and resting. She instinctively shut off her third ear and listened to their words instead of their brainwaves. She didn't know if she could handle all of their thoughts at once.

She didn't want to try.

"Oh, my God. Daddy! "

Nettie heard Sarah screaming from the open door, at the same moment that the porch lights exploded into brightness, at the same moment she felt the slick arms and leafy hands tearing her away from Bill.

The Painters loomed near Nettie, throwing their shadows over her face. Sandy Henning, the church organist, had joined them, and her nimble fingers flexed like turgid vine roots. Nettie looked past them at Bill and saw him fighting off the thing that Preacher Blevins had become. Bill’s big fist disappeared into Amanda's leering maw. The preacher's mouth was inches from Bill's, but Bill thrust a forearm up and blocked the assault.

The preacher turned toward his own screaming daughter and his impossible smile got larger and more putrid, foul swamp sludge dribbling from his melon pink gums. Then Nettie's attention was ripped in half by an orange flare of pain shooting through her leg. One of the creatures had clamped its viscous jaws on her ankle, sucking at her sweat and salt and skin cells.

Then Ann Painter’s face covered her own and she tasted the hellfire heart of carbon and the tangy artichoke air and the deep secret undergrowth of cellulose and the acid of aspen and ash as the tannic vaults and crypts of life's mysteries unlocked themselves and she was and she was and she was pulled free again and found herself in Bill's arms and he pushed her into the parsonage and pulled the flash-frozen Sarah by her pajama sleeve out of the reach of her own scabrous father.

Bill kicked the door closed and the arm of one of the demons caught against the jamb with a thick, glutinous sound. Bill dropped Nettie onto the carpet and she watched with distant eyes as he slammed his shoulder against the door and the arm split like a rotted weed stalk. It bounced off the welcome mat and rolled to a rest beside Nettie. She looked at its dark purple veins still pumping dews, the forefinger still undulating, beckoning, urging her to follow.

She was pollen. She floated on its breeze. Toward forever.

Armfield was lost in his ecstasy, drunk on the holiest of waters. All his life had been a fruitless search, small rituals and sacraments and blessings bestowed. All his life he had walked in darkness, tossing prayers to an invisible and unfelt God.

All his life his soul had been a battleground for the stern Jesus and the understanding and encouraging Satan. And now the human soul had slipped away, danced free of dust and stigmata and beast-numbers and psalms.

Now, beyond life, he had found his true life's work. The true salvation and mercy and light. The one true master that demanded and deserved an eternal servitude. The kingdom and power and glory of shu-shaaa, forever and ever, amen.

But still there was an ache, an empty human ache that he knew was part of that old and pitiful fleshly life. An unfulfilled knot in his Jack-in-the-Pulpit chest, a hunger in his brimming mouth and hands, a nutrient throbbing in his gelatin organs. The family must be united, the circle must be unbroken.

"Sha-raaa," he sprayed to the deep night.

His wife was at his side, her mascara sliding from her face along with the congealing strips of her skin. She raised the stump of her left arm to the heavens, spilling her milky effluence onto the red tiles of the porch.

All in praise to shu-shaaa. Armfield had never felt so connected, so close to his congregation as he now did. They shared the same vision and mind and crusade. They were truly one in the eyes of their newfound god.

And, like any god, this one demanded converts.

They launched their soggy meat against the door.

"Nettie, are you okay?"

Bill gingerly sat her up and leaned her against the sofa. She didn't look hurt, except for her ankle, and she was smiling, a small, pink, dreamy smile.

Her eyes were pressed into tiny crescents and her eyelashes twitched like monarchs on sprigs of white clover. He had seen that monster blowing its rancid wind into her throat. Bill swallowed and prayed harder than he had in his entire life.

Oh, please, Lord, let her be all right. Because I need her more than anything on Your earth. And I don't know what plague You've loosed upon the world, but please spare Nettie from it. You can take me, I know I'm not the best catch there is, but I promise to serve to the best of my ability, I know I sing off-key but practice might make perfect if I have forever to work into the choir.

I know she'll make a heck of an angel, but please just let me have her for one lifetime, and I swear we'll serve you for a thousand times a thousand.

I know You are merciful, I've felt Your goodness in my heart ever since I asked You in, ever since You gave me the hope and strength and wisdom. But please tell me that You're listening. Please give me a sign.

There was a crash of glass at the front of the house and the door groaned on its hinges, the thick wood panels warped from the stress of weight.

Bill looked up from Nettie's blank face to the frightened mask of Sarah. She trembled in her pajamas, her arms wrapped around her chest, her eyes bulging with the memory of impossible sights.

"Sarah,” he said.

She stared deeper, farther.

"Sarah!"

He stood and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her until her eyes met his. "Come on, you've got to help me. We've got to get Nettie to a doctor."

"D-doctor?" Her lower lip quivered. She shook her head, denying her senses.

"Something's happened. Something's wrong with the people."

"M-mom and Dad?"

"I'm sorry, Sarah. I wish I knew what was going on. But I don't. I only know that they've changed somehow."

Sarah bit her thumbnail, the rims of her eyes red from fear and shock. The door splintered and she glanced over at it.

"We don't have much time,” Bill said. “You call the police, I don't know what to tell them, just get them out here. Then we're going to have to make a run for it. If we can reach my truck, we'll be okay. We can’t stay here much longer."

Sarah nodded, suddenly grim and determined, as if awakening in a hospital bed and realizing she'd have to fight for her life. She padded barefoot across the carpet as the pounding on the door grew louder.

Bill laid his hand on her arm. "We can pray for their souls. That's all we can do. The rest is up to the Lord."

She looked at him coldly. "What kind of Lord would do something like this?"

He had no answer. Sarah went down the hall and took the telephone off the wall.

Bill looked out the window. More black shapes emerged from the forest, as if the trees themselves had come to life. He knelt to Nettie and lifted her again. She seemed lighter somehow, as if a vital part of her was missing.

She was still smiling.