THE SEM10TIC STANDARD

R. Leigh Hennig. Horror author. Editor.

Hollow Things

Originally published in the Eunoia Review, 2016.

3,076 words


Holly doesn’t understand all the bent ways of her mother. She doesn’t realize that mothers shouldn’t do things like watch their ten-year-olds bathe, or that she has no friends. Momma quietly destroys all of her relationships, turning and folding them over in her hands like salt kneaded into the loam of her daughter’s heart. Holly is dimly aware, because Momma is clever. Like a chameleon, what lives inside Momma’s skin is very good at manipulating what doctors and teachers and parents and relatives should have seen. Including Holly.

For now, Holly sits out in in the crook of the tire swing Daddy setup under a dirty pine tree before he left. Momma, who is not yet Mother who is further still from Jennifer, has locked her out of the house for the afternoon since school let out. “Just need space” she says, although space to do what Holly is never sure, since all Momma does is smoke menthols behind brown heavy curtains that maybe once weren’t so brown and watch daytime television until dinner, and sometimes for a while after that if she forgets or falls asleep.

So Holly sits in the tire swing and hums to herself while she digs her bare feet into the soft dirt. Cicadas rattle somewhere off in the tall grass that’s overgrown around their yard and the humidity and heat of the stifling New England summer beads sweat against Holly’s skin. Her shirt clings wetly to her back, and the air conditioner attached to the ramshackle of her house kicks to life.

She’ll decide later that she felt the thing fall rather than heard or saw it, but one way or another it happens, and Holly can see part of the waist-high reeds from across the yard shiver awkwardly underneath the dirty pine trees that she knows Momma hates. The reeds seem to chirp as she approaches. Carefully she combs through them with her feet, bending and folding them over as she searches the ground. It doesn’t take long. She scoops the thing up and coos at it gently, pets its head and rubs back the baby-fine down feathers. What she assumes must be its mother caws at her anxiously from a limb above, and Holly cranes her head to the sky.

“Fell out of your nest, I see. Bad place, you know. Mean old cat hangs around out here. We’ll need to get you back up there,” she says. Holly eyes the tree, follows the grey scaly trunk up and across to the branch overhead, then spots the nest. She furrows her brow, remembering the last time she dared climb a pine tree.

Look at you your clothes are a mess there’s sap in your hair and dirt all over you and spiders live in those dirty things I’m going to spank your ass go fetch me a switch don’t you ever get up in one of those pine trees again they’re disgusting things and do you want to be disgusting that’s not ladylike at all no daughter of mine will be improper not like a whore not so long as I have anything to say about it now take your clothes off and get in the bath and

And Holly is sure she does not want to go back in one of those pine trees, yet there its nest sits, and here she is. Doubt taps against the thin window pane of her mind. Holly thinks she’ll be careful. Thinks that if she doesn’t climb too much into the tree, just a little bit, just as high as she needs, she should be okay. Shouldn’t get too dirty. She scans the trunk of the tree all the way around and finds no sap to rub off on her and catch her dress, so she drops the bird in a pocket and wraps her arms and legs around and shimmies on up to the first branch. The mother bird is chirping and dancing something fierce now, bouncing from limb to limb around her like it were a prize fighter and all the branches the ropes of the ring Holly just stepped into.

“It’s o-kay,” says Holly. “I’m gonna return your baby in just a minute, don’t worry.” She moves out far enough to swing the soles of her feet up against the trunk. Catches it with her heels, walks up to the branch, and swings her legs over it. Sits up, then pulls herself on up to the next. Holly glances nervously back down toward the house. The heavy curtains that cover the windows and shut the world out remain undisturbed. She doesn’t think Momma has seen her, but it wouldn’t be the first time she’d watched Holly in secret, only to later burst through a door and demand she explain her shame.

A few more branches later, and she’s there. Holly scoops the tiny bird from the pocket of her sun dress and sets it back in its nest. The mother bird still dances about chirping at her, but it seems eased. Holly examines her dress and arms and legs: miraculously, she finds herself to be clean. Satisfied, she picks a landing spot on the ground, and jumps down. She rolls as she hits the ground and springs back up in the tall weeds, bits of straw in her hair the worst of the damage.

Holly bends to pat down her dress and freezes. A button is missing. Despite the balmy weather and recent workout, she shivers as a chill constricts her skin and passes over her forehead, across her cheeks, and down her spine. I must have lost it when I was climbing, she thinks. Oh no, but Momma . . . Holly spends the rest of the afternoon searching frantically for the button, even as the sun sets and the light dies beyond use, before her mother finally calls her inside.

Holly gathers her books from under the tire and bites her cheek as hard as she can ever remember to keep from crying as she walks down to the house. The inside is dim. The only lit bulb hangs bare from a wire in the laundry room that serves as the entrance. Laundry is piled in corners and the room smells sour from clothes sitting damp in the washer too long. The house is quiet.

“Momma?” Holly asks, stepping through the kitchen.

Her mother responds hoarsely from the bedroom around the corner. “Be quiet. I have a headache. Fix dinner for yourself tonight and shut my door.” 

“Okay Momma. I love you,” Holly says. And she does.

Her mother grunts and Holly does as she’s told. She breathes a sigh of relief. At least for tonight the button won’t be discovered. She knows the pantry won’t have anything but old canned vegetables and the fridge will be barren except for hot dogs, which she’s sick of having, so she goes upstairs to her room instead and reads a book on her bed. How long she’s been reading Holly isn’t sure, but the sun has long since gone down before she hears a rapping at her window sill. Looking over the pages of her book, she’s surprised to see the mother bird from earlier this afternoon. It has her missing button in its beak. Before she can say anything it drops the button on the sill and flies off into the night. Holly nearly squeals before remembering Momma is asleep, then sets herself to sewing it back onto her dress.

 

 

The next day Holly brings a bird identification book home from school. As soon as she gets home, she heads for the pine tree in the back to sit underneath. Before she can climb the hill to the back yard behind their house, Momma calls her in.

“Holly, got some chores in here for you. Come inside.”

“Yes, Momma.”

Momma is standing in the laundry room when she gets in. “Need you to get some of these clothes washed. Doing lights, take off your dress. It’s going in the wash.”

“Okay, let me go change in my room.”

“No. Those clothes are all dirty or they don’t fit. And there’s no one here but us girls anyway. Just take off your clothes.”

Holly knows this isn’t true and feels hot in her cheeks and ashamed but knows Momma will make her pick a switch if she doesn’t mind.

“Get working on this laundry then you can go outside and play.”

“Yes, Momma.”

Holly does as she’s told and Momma leaves the room. A few minutes later and she’s back, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Holly pretends she doesn’t notice the staccato flashes in time with the beep beep, click of Momma’s camera. She finishes the laundry, then goes to her room to find clothes.

Outside under the tree, the sun is bright. The air is clean. There is no heavy curtain of cigarette smoke here. The golden reeds she sits in surrounds her, shrouding her and blocking out the house, the road, everything but the tree above her, and the blue sky. She takes her shirt off because it’s hot, because it feels good, because she wants to. Holly watches for the birds above her and flips through the identification book. She learns that her new friends are called Turdus migratorius: American robins. She envies them, envies their light delicate song. Their flight. She spends hours trying to imitate what she hears, talking to them, singing to them. Holly fancies they understand her, and in her mind she speaks though chirps and whistles. Delicate song flitters from her lips.

“Hello, Momma Bird. How are you today?”

“Fine, thank you. Yourself, my dear?”

“Oh, wonderful. Quite a day, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes. Thank you so much for saving my baby yesterday, truly. We are oh-so grateful.”

Holy blushes, but whistles on. “I am happy to help. What a lucky baby to have such a good momma as you.”

“You flatter me! But we owe you a life debt. Anything that’s ever needed, just sing.”

“Oh but I couldn’t burden you, and I wouldn’t know—”

“Sing, Holly, dear. Sing.”

Holly imagines that they talk in this way—and maybe they do—until the sun begins to set, and when Momma calls for her, the sound is a grating, foreign thing. Not like the whimsical notes of the robin’s song that dances on the wind like wild motes or dandelion seeds weaving through the air understood. Momma’s voice is hoarse and cold. It grinds against Holly’s ears like bits of thick glass caught in the sink disposal, and bringing her mind back from the robin’s song to understand Momma is a struggle. The sound of her own name is alien until it isn’t, until to Holly’s horror she realizes Momma has had to call her three times before she finally understands and can make sense of her words. Holly almost imagines she hears the robin call after her as she darts toward Momma, feet pattering anxiously against the earth. She almost imagines the robin whistling after her, Sing, Holly.

Maybe it does.

When Holly gets to the door she is out of breath, and Momma is waiting, arms crossed. Her jaw is set, and her eyes are flat. “I would have you pick your own switch for making me call after you if I didn’t think Uncle Lenny would mind it,” says Momma. “But I can’t have you all scarred up, now. You’re too important. Get this place cleaned up, we’re going to have company tonight.”

Holly scrunches up her nose and cocks her head, hands on her knees as she pants. She knows she doesn’t have any Uncle Lenny.

This doesn’t scare her because she doesn’t know it should.

So Holly does as she’s told. She goes inside and cleans the kitchen and washes the dishes and takes out the trash and does all the chores around the house that Momma doesn’t ever do. She orders and straightens the art decorations she’s made and hung for Momma on the fridge, the Mother’s Day card and the Easter collage and the watercolor from last week created just because. She does this with a smile on her face and a daughter’s love in her heart, warm and trusting and innocent and full despite the thick fog-like malaise that seems to hang low around the place. When she’s done, Holly draws open the curtains in the kitchen, opens the windows, and lets the light in. Hands on her hips, she admires her work. Momma will be happy. Proud. Of course she will. Maybe they’ll even eat dinner together at the table with their special guest, as a family. They don’t ever have guests. Holly wonders what the occasion is.

 

###

 

“Yes, she’s here. Upstairs in her room.”

A pause. Holly presses her ear hard against the grate in her floor, struggles to hear. She knows if Momma catches her like this she’ll get the switch, but something hasn’t felt right since Momma made her stay in her room after cleaning. She can only hear one side of the phone conversation; it will have to do.

 “Of course I’m sure,” says Momma. Her voice is muffled. Holly thinks it sounds like listening through a sea shell she found by the shore one summer with Daddy.

“Well, how many ten-year-olds do you know that have already lost their virginity?”

Virginity. Holly doesn’t know this word. Fingers fly over the worn tissue-thin pages of Daddy’s pocket dictionary.

“And she needs to stay that way. Until I get paid. Twenty minutes tonight. Just a taste. That’s it. School is out tomorrow for the summer. She’s yours after that.”

Like the pieces of a puzzle she’s stood too close to for too long, things fall into place. Health class. Crude jokes in the back of the bus. Questions in the locker room. She has no Uncle Lenny. Virginity.

Holly is no longer dimly aware.

“Fine. Yeah. Be here in an hour.” Momma coughs and slams the phone down in its cradle.

Tears well up and if Holly had ever known it before, she would have called the thing that crushes and leaves her hollow inside despair. She imagines the paintings on the fridge are brittle, and they crack, unseen, in the stale air of what she realizes is a very lonely house, not a home. The pieces flake and fall broken, tumbling and turning end over end as they sea-saw to the cold, freshly mopped linoleum. Holly sets her face into the crook of her arm and cries against the window sill.

 

###

 

 There are no tears left when the rusted pickup truck coughs into the driveway; spite has taken their place. Her dresser has been dragged, quietly as she can, to bar the door. The sight of him stepping out now fills her again with dread. She watches as what must be Uncle Lenny saunter toward the front door, stumbling before knocking. He crushes a beer can and tosses it to the bed of his truck. Though she doesn’t dare to hope, Holly thinks back to what she knows was only a dream.

Sing, Holly. Sing.

And so she does. She purses her lips together, presses her tongue behind her teeth, and whistles. She chirps, trills, rolls the words she imagines over in her mouth and through her lips like she never has before. Imagines, believes, that she weaves and twists and threads her desperation into something someone will hear. Holly sings.

 Muffled voices from below.

“You’re drunk,” says Momma.

“So?”

“Hey, watch out, will you? Jesus, ain’t you ever been around a kerosene lamp before? She’s upstairs. Let me see the cash first.”

The stairs begin to creak. Holly whistles and sings and cries her throat raw, the outside setting sun a fiery red through her blurry tears. She nearly misses the robin dart over the roof below and in through the kitchen window.

Her doorknob twists. “Holly, open the door.”

She presses her back against the dresser against the door, shakes her head. Her hair is matted against her forehead and cheeks, sticky wet with tears and sweat. Her chest heaves. “Oh no, please Momma oh no, I don’t want to,” she says. “Don’t make me do it, Momma. Please don’t make me do it.”

“Holly god dammit you open this door or so help me god I’ll fetch the switch myself and bust your ass like you never seen ‘fore child, open this door.” It shudders and bulges against the dresser under heavy-fisted blows. Holly braces her feet against her bed, presses back against it. Through curses and heavy fists, the door inches open. Her knees grow week and begin to buckle.

“What the hell, get off me—Jennifer, get down here! Damn thing, it’s come through the window, knocked the lamp over! Get some water, quick!”

The assault against the door ceases. Holly presses her ear against the grate in the floor, hears scuffling. Shouting. Soon, she no longer hears—she smells. Smoke. It begins to waft up through the grate. She throws her blankets over top and makes to push the dresser out from in front of her door, but her arms are tired. Her legs are weak, and the feet of the dresser have collapsed on themselves, dug into the wood of the floor. More, the door frame is splintered and warped. The door is jammed. It doesn’t budge.

Holly hangs out her window, watches the front door. She doesn’t know why, but it’s quiet below now. Momma and Uncle Lenny don’t come out. Her tears come again, but they’re of a different sort. Happier, in a way. It gets hot in her room, fills with smoke. Holly can see the flames licking out from the windows below. She doesn’t imagine her arms and legs forming into thin hollow things, graceful, lined with sleek black feathers and red puffy chest, her mouth a perfect little beak. She doesn’t imagine because she doesn’t have to. Holly remembers her envy of the robins and their flight. She remembers what the robin told her. So she sings. Holly sings, and sings, and sings, and sings.

 

###

 

The fire burned hot. Maybe even hot enough to turn bone to ash. But they only find the remains of two, and a family of robins sing easily into the warm summer day above golden reeds that sway in the breeze while men search blackened bones.

Father

Originally published in Shallow Waters Volume 6 (Crystal Lake Publishing, September, 2020).

922 words


The man I have been living with does not know that he is my father. If he did, I would be dead.

"Zeus!" he bellows, the gruff sound of his voice further muddled through the floor. "Beer!"

His speech is slurred, though it is only six in the evening. I make my way down crooked steps, passing sugar-thin windows that rattle in their latticed frames. Gritty snow lashes the weathered walls of our sagging Colonial, sounding like sand poured over a washboard. We lost power two days ago. I cup my hand around a small candle, protecting the dim light against a bitter draft that threatens to snatch it away.

It's brighter in the living room. Warmer, too—here I cannot see my breath. Against the far wall a fireplace roars, servants always on hand to feed it logs from the supply in the garage.

"More of the same, sir?" I ask, glancing at the growing pile of empty beer cans beside his recliner.

He grunts. I nod, turning toward the kitchen.

"Wait. Forget the damn beer. Whiskey this time."

"Of course, sir." It's difficult not to smirk; this is what I've been waiting for. He did not know me when we first met, instead taking me in as a favor to someone. It took a while before he trusted me to serve his drink, but that was always the plan: to gain his trust. And like most alcoholics, my father is predictable in at least one regard: his drinking habits. Beer in the morning and early afternoon, whiskey in the evening.

The house is dilapidated, but otherwise kept tidy by the servants that scurry from one room to the next. By the sink is the liquor cabinet, though checking it I find it empty. Ordinarily one of the kitchen servants keeps it stocked, a short fellow with red hair, but no one has seen him in two days, not since he made my father angry.

Descending into the cellar where the bulk of the stores are kept, I make my way past a forest of meat: rows upon rows of salted and smoked slabs suspended from hooks bolted into the ceiling. Pork, beef, goat. Other things not meant to be eaten. My father likes meat a great deal. Soon that will change.

Beyond the meat are shelves on the cellar's far wall stocked with jars, tins, boxes, sacks, and bags of different goods. I haul a case of Macallan under an arm, careful of my sputtering candle, and ascend the creaking stairs back into the kitchen.

I take one of the glasses from the cupboard and pour three fingers, then, glancing about the kitchen, sneak a plastic baggie of powder from my pocket. A swirl of the glass is all it takes for the powder to dissolve.

"God damn, what took so long? You distill a fresh batch yourself?" he says, glaring at me as I hand him the glass.

"I'm sorry, sir. I had to go into the basement. The liquor cabinet hadn't been stocked."

He twists in his chair to yell toward the kitchen but stops, seemingly remembering something, then takes the glass of whiskey and begins to drink.

I turn to leave but then stop, hearing a loud grumble and burp emanating from his tremendous girth that fills the sagging, threadbare chair.

"Ugh, Jesus," he moans, rubbing his stomach. Already a sweat has broken out across his brow. The powder is working faster than I thought it would.

He leans over the armrest and vomits, a stringy trail of yellow spittle dangling from his mouth. Eyes bulge in their sockets. From his mouth a stone falls to the ground amid the heap of empty beer cans. I bend down to pick up the stone, holding it beside my face.

"See the resemblance?" I ask, smirking.

"Who..." he gasps, veins protruding from his neck. "Who are you?"

"Six children you had. Six you ate—or thought so, anyway." I shake the stone in his face, gloating. “I don’t think it looks much like an infant, personally. More like a potato. What do you think?”

He swipes for me but I dodge him, taking a step out of his reach. I watch as he coughs and spills green and yellow bile onto the arm of the recliner. He leans further out and the chair tips over, dumping his mass onto the wooden floor with a reverberating crash. Plaster sifts from the ceiling. The servants have converged from throughout the house, silently bearing witness. They do not intervene.

The sound of his retching drowns out the storm outside. Blood splatters from his mouth against the floor as the contents of his stomach are forced out. Misshapen and half-digested lumps of chewed meat begin to emit. His body trembles with each heave of his gut. A crushed eye, the sclera still visible. Teeth. Fingers. Lumps of hair, bones, knobs of cartilage from broken joints. From the heaving creature before me are born the digested remains of my brothers and sisters, five in all, and had I not been secreted away by our mother, I would have been among them.

He crawls away from their remains, as if disgusted by their sight, dry heaving and choking on his own vomit. I kneel and take the mass of flesh into my hands, cupping them and scooping what I can to hold against my breast. We have work to do, my siblings and I, so much work. But first I must make them whole again.

Thicker Than Water

Originally published in Strange Lands Short Stories (Flame Tree Press, November, 2020).

3,879 words


It was not unreasonable for Marin and Damian Karras to assume that they would both return to the shelter alive. Plenty before them had. And as brothers, they had the highest chances of any. No one knew why that was so, why siblings returned more often than those who ventured out unrelated to one another. Even after more than forty years in the shelters, there was a lot that wasn’t known, like what started it all, or why the sky was poisoned. About the only thing that was known for certain was that science had nothing to do with what was left of the world.

It was the witch.

“You don’t have to do this, boys. Someone else can make the delivery, can’t they?” Sharon asked, pacing between her sons and taking the lapels of their slickers in her hands in turns.

Marin sighed. “It’s okay, Ma. We’ll be fine. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“We can find someone else. Anyone else. I could even go instead! I’m strong, I can make the trip!”

This time it was Damian who spoke. “Don’t be silly, Ma. It’s only a day’s trip. We can probably even make it before nightfall.”

“But—”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Damian said. “There’s more than ten hours of daylight left, and it’s been at least a year since blood relatives got...lost.”

Jasmine and Sarah Blair. Sisters. They’d gone out for a supply run the spring before last, only the supplies never came. Neither did the girls.

Evan MacNeal, who had once been a sheriff, stepped forward from the small crowd that had gathered to see the boys out. “We’ve been over this, Sharon. It’s their turn.” His voice was soft, but firm.

What remained of the Karras family stood silent in the lobby of the old subway terminal, listening to the sound of the rain patter softly against the sagging roof. In places it leaked through, dripping to the once-white marble tile. Faded schedules and fares still hung to the walls in places, the print stained by moisture and long since legible. Empty vending machines stood against the walls. Turnstiles had either rusted in place or had been ripped out by the scrappy group of inhabitants that had made the subway their home. Mold grew from the walls like carpeting.

“You’re sure you have everything you need?” Evan asked.

Damian nodded. “Positive.”

“Then you better get going,” Evan said, firmly shaking the hand of each of the brothers. “You’re only losing light. And don't try to push it. Stop at the school before dark, and stay there until morning. The harbor is in the library on the second floor. Blessed it myself on my last time through.”

The Karras’ all hugged briefly, Sharon pressing her boys tight to her breast, sobbing as she held them. Damian and Marin flicked the safeties off their rifles, pulled their waxed slicker hoods over their heads, and stepped from the station to the overgrown parking lot of the tarnished world beyond.

 

###

 

“What do you think she looks like?” Damian asked.

“You think this is really the best time bring that up?”

“Why not? It’s not like she can hear us. She's only active at night.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it? She’s a witch. You don’t know what she can hear. And no one knows for sure that she isn’t active during the day.”

“She’s probably off in France, banging a cow or something. She can do that, you know. Travel the world in an instant.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“And you’re a dumb bastard.”

Damian laughed. “Tell you what: if I see her, I’ll be sure to let her know you think she’s hot. Maybe she’ll pity fuck you before making you shit out your intestines or something awful like that.”

“Already got it covered,” Marin said, walking beside his brother as they picked their way through reeds that stood as tall as their chests. “Jan’s chowder already did the job last night.”

The laughter of the young men echoed along the broken city street and through the shattered windows of the storefronts they passed. Lumps of rust that were once cars lined the ruined buildings on either side of the road. They had been walking for hours, the sun now directly overhead, but through the thick slate clouds they could not see it.

“You think anyone’s still alive over there? In Lewiston, I mean.”

What remained of the city of Lewiston was in fact some miles to the north. Their destination was a warehouse much closer, but the inhabitants had named it after the place from which they'd been driven: Brunswick. The few settlements that remained were odd that way—schools and bus stations and churches and office buildings, all named for the dead towns that surrounded them and from which their occupants had fled.

“Of course they are,” Marin said. “Evan was on the radio with them just last week.”

“Yeah, but did you talk to them on the radio?”

“Well, no. But so what?”

Damian shrugged, kicking a rock as he walked. The rain continued to fall.

“Don’t you think it’s a little odd that no one other than Evan is allowed to talk on the radio?”

“You worry too much.”

“You don’t worry enough,” Damian said, glancing sideways at his twin.

“Think about this, genius: that shit you’ve got in your backpack is worth more than both of us—”

“Not to me. Not to Ma.”

“—and if it weren’t, they wouldn’t be sending us out here to deliver it, would they? Hiking our asses across this God-forsaken city to a settlement with less than a hundred people living in it. Use your head, okay? Stop being a jackass for once.”

Marin looped his arm over Damian’s shoulder and the two of them walked in silence down the quiet path. Occasionally they spotted people through the remains of some of the windows they passed, overturned tables and broken pipes hanging from ceilings that had long since collapsed. But they were only mannequins.

 

###

 

“We’re going to have to stop at that school,” Marin said, wincing. “Thought we could hurry and skip it, but we’re not making enough progress, and I need to get dry. This rain is starting to get to me.”

“I told you, you should have waxed your jacket again before we left.”

“I waxed it last week!”

“They've been thinning the wax,” Damian said, holding out his gloved hand to catch the drops of rain that fell in his palm. “Mixing it with some kind of filler. It doesn't last as long as it used to. Not as thick.”

“Nothing last as long as it used to,” Marin muttered. They had made it to the elementary school beyond the south crossing of the Androscoggin River, half a mile from an old college campus. It was damp inside, the air heavy with the stink of mildew and rotting earth. Broken glass crunched beneath their feet as they crossed the cracked marble tiles of the lobby. Marin clicked on a flashlight. The light was dim, and he shook it to charge the battery. An arrow had been spray painted on the wall, pointing up a staircase.

The harbor—some just called them safe houses—was one of several that dotted the makeshift pathways for travelers on their way from one settlement to the next. It was a room in the abandoned school, and at one point had been a library. Small plastic chairs and low tables meant for children were piled in one corner. Paint that had once been colorful and bright had flaked from the walls, revealing the dull grey of crumbling plaster beneath. It smelled of rot and dead rodents but it was dry, and it was safe. All the same, Damian found himself pouring a line of salt across the doorway and repeating the prayer their mother had taught them since before they could read.

“You don't need to do that, you know. It's already been blessed.”

Damian thought about this for a moment, then finished his prayer. “Something feels off about it. Can't say what it is, but I don't trust this place.”

Marin shrugged. “Suit yourself, Dimi, but I think you're a little paranoid.”

It didn’t take long before they’d collected a pile of books dry enough to burn. Damian started a fire and the two brothers took off their rain slickers and shirts, pulled off their boots, and stripped to their briefs.

Damian whistled when he saw his brother’s back. “Ouch. She really got you, didn’t she?”

“Is it bad?” Marin craned to look over his shoulder.

“Your whole damn back is all bruises. Surprised you can move your arms at all.”

“You got any of that cream left? I’m almost out.”

“Yeah. Ma gave me a jar before we left.”

Above the small fire Marin had strung a wire from one side of the room to the other. Together they hung their wet clothes before Damian fished a small tube of powder from his bag.

“You better say the prayer for this one,” he said. “I always screw it up. Would hate to have our clothes not properly cleansed.”

Marin uttered the spell quietly as Damian sprinkled the powder over the fire. Smoke thickened and it rose to the ceiling, curling over their damp clothing before billowing out of a broken window. Ten thousand needle pricks of light glowed brightly and moved across the fabric, skimming its surface like water fleas as it went, burning away the physical manifestation of black magic deposited by the steady rain.

They tended to each other’s wounds while their clothing dried, working the healing ointment their mother had blessed into bruised and tender muscles. Everywhere the wax on their clothing had failed was a place for the rain to penetrate, slowly breaking down everything it touched. The rain was evil, passive in its way, but evil all the same. The witch had seen to that. There was little she had not cursed.

 

###

 

The wind was howling when Damian woke, though it was not the shrieking wind that had woken him.

It was full dark. They had pulled their sleeping bags close to the fire when they turned in for the night, partly because of the warmth, partly because of the proximity to the protective smoke.

“Marin,” he whispered, shaking his brother. “Marin! Wake up.”

His twin continued to sleep deeply. The coals in the fire had gone out. Damian looked about and saw only darkness. From the hallway beyond he heard footsteps, soft, as if from bare feet. He pushed the sleeping bag away and rose, walking to the library entrance. A door hung there once, but it had rotted away from its hinges. Damian stood to one side and peered as far around the corner and down the hall as he could without crossing the line of salt and into the hallway.

There was nothing. He looked the other direction, and again, saw only darkness.

“Marin!” he said, turning back to his brother. “Get over here!”

Damian screamed when he looked back to the dark hallway. Inches away, on the other side of the invisible barrier, a man's pale face hung upside down from the ceiling. His eyes were milky, the pupils hazy, as if the jellied orbs had begun to rot. Long black hair, stringy and wet, dangled toward the floor. Split and cracked lips moved soundlessly, as if in prayer. He was naked, and he had no arms.

Damian fell to the floor and scrabbled backward in a panic, his heels kicking at the soggy and moss-riddled carpet as he pushed away. The figure remained in place, suspended in the door frame, whispering words from a language ancient and dead.

Crack! A flash of light and a defining boom from his right. Marin pulled the bolt to eject the spent casing and slammed it shut before firing again. The creature in the doorway shrieked and scrambled along the ceiling and out of sight.

Marin shouted at Damian, gripping his shoulder.

“What?” Damian staggering to his feet and rubbed his ears. Gradually the ringing subsided.

“I said, are you alright?”

“Fine, I'm fine,” Damian said. He felt dizzy from the thunderous gunshots and the adrenaline and his racing heart. The air smelled sharply of cordite from the gunfire. “That was her, wasn't it? That was the witch!”

“No,” Marin said, flicking the safety on his rifle and leaning it against an old desk beside his backpack. “I don’t think so.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we're still alive.”

“Jesus,” he said, sitting down, wiping sweat from across his brow. “What was it doing?”

“Praying, looked like. Trying to overcome your spell. To get into the room.”

“Think it could have?”

Marin's face clouded. “I don't know. It should have never been able to even approach the door. You were right to seal the entrance, though. Someone's compromised the barrier here. It's not safe.”

“Jesus, what was that?”

“Something from a nightmare.”

Damian’s hands trembled. He sat back down and pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his bag. “I think this is the nightmare,” he said, gesturing at the desolate room around him and the world beyond the broken windows.

They took turns sleeping that night, each watching and listening uneasily in turn. Eventually the grey morning came, and with it, more rain. The rain was another form of attack, the brothers knew, and they thought about that as they ate their cold breakfast in silence.

 

###

 

“Who you think he is?” Damian asked, toeing the body with a muddy boot. They were on the move again, having left the school behind several hours ago. He knelt and checked the pockets for something useful, but found only a faded picture of a man kissing a woman on the cheek, his arms wrapped around her sides and hands resting on her swollen belly.

“I don't know,” Marin said regretfully. “No one from our camp, though.” He took the photo from Damian, running a thumb across its glossy surface, wondering what had happened to the woman and their baby. The picture had been taken in a dark building, a factory maybe, but the smiles on the young couple's face were radiant. Had anyone ever been so happy, he wondered? It was amazing under what circumstances happiness could exist.

They finished checking the body for anything useful, and, finding nothing, moved on. They'd re-waxed their clothing before heading out that morning, but progress through the ruins of the city had been slow. The rain had been constant the day before, but since their encounter in the night, it had been become driving, as if personally offended by their perseverance. Places where their flesh was exposed or where the rain got through had turned their skin into a constellation of black and blue. Everything hurt, as if their very muscles were breaking down with each step. The image of what they had seen in the night weighed heavily upon them and though it was daylight, they couldn't help but feel as if they were being watched. Occasionally something flittered just on the edge of their vision and they jerked their heads around to catch whatever it was that seemed to be dogging them, but the world about them remained recondite.

When they came to an old traffic signal they stopped. From the rusted metal pole still standing above the street hung six bodies, their corpses swinging gently in the wind. Men or women they couldn't tell, but one they knew was a child.

“This isn’t her work,” Damian said quietly.

“No, it’s not.” She doesn’t own all of it, Marin thought, thinking of evil and what people could do to one another. The brothers tightened their grips on their rifles, glanced nervously around, and kept on.

 

###

 

When Marin caught his brother checking his watch for the third time that afternoon, he chuckled and said, “Why do you even wear that thing? It's not like it's in any way useful.”

Damian shrugged. “Habit, I guess.”

The watch was analog, but like all clocks, its time could not be relied upon. The hands moved on their own accord, sometimes forward, sometimes back, sometimes not at all. There was nothing wrong with them mechanically, but since the rain had begun to fall nearly four decades ago, they had become unreliable. There was no reason for it except to say that it was the will of witch, and even that had been a guess.

Still, Marin thought, if he finds comfort in it, why not?

These were the things that were on his mind when they turned the corner and finally came to the remains of the warehouse, their final destination.

“Where's the guard?” Damian asked. A piece of corrugated tin squealed and banged against a barricade, flapping loosely in the wind. Trash littered the approach, wrappers and bits of plastic and metal filaments flittering across the cracked and overgrown pavement.

“You’re sure this is it?”

Marin pulled a laminated map from a zippered pocket on his chest and unfolded it, looking around to compare his surroundings to what had been marked. “Yeah,” he said. “This is it. No question.”

Damian unshouldered his rifle. “Hello? Anyone there?” His call died in the rain, muffled as if laid upon by a lead blanket.

“I don't like this,” Marin said, folding the map again and bringing his own rifle to bear.

Slowly they entered the warehouse. It had been a Costco once, and inside metal racks had been pulled to form a concentric circle of barriers. Water dripped from the ceiling in a thousand places. Damian called out again, his voice reverberating through the expanse of the building's interior.

“I don't understand,” Marin said. “They were on the radio asking for this medicine not two fucking days ago. Where is everyone?”

“Let's try to find their radio and call back home. At least we can let Ma and the rest of them know we got here okay. Maybe they've even heard something since we left.”

They carefully picked their way through the settlement, looking for any sign of recent life but finding none. When they came to what appeared to have been an old optometry department, they found a HAM radio setup. A base station had been established, spools of wire leading from the transmitter up along the wall and through the ceiling. A layer of dust coated the equipment.

Marin tried the knobs on the radio. It was dead.

“Here's the dynamo.” Damian lifted a foot and pressed down on the pedal of a bicycle. A light atop the handlebars glowed dim. “Looks like it still works.” He dropped his pack and rifle and climbed on the seat and began to pedal. The radio fizzled and came to life, the output from the speaker a mindless dull static.

“Hello?” Marin said, keying the mic. “Is anyone there?”

Static.

“Keep at it,” Damian said, pedaling away. “Someone's bound to pick up.”

After five minutes of calling into the radio with no response, Marin set the mic back into its cradle. “Come on,” he said. “If there's anyone out there, they're not listening.”

Damian climbed off the bike and picked up his pack. As they walked away, destined for the deeper recesses of the warehouse, the speakers on the radio crackled faintly.

“Hello? Who is this?”

“Shit!” Marin said. “Get back on that thing before the battery dies!”

Once again Damian dropped his gear and began to pedal.

“This is Marin and Damian Karras. We're at the warehouse settlement of Brunswick. Who is this?”

Brunswick? I haven't heard from you guys in months. This is Lewiston. What's going on over there? I didn't think there were any of you left!”

“We're not from here, we came up from Freeport. They called for antibiotics three days ago, but there's no one here.”

“That's impossible. No one has called from Brunswick in over three months.”

Another voice came over the air. “Clear the channel, Lewiston. This is Freeport Actual, authorization code charlie-charlie-niner-zero.”

“Freeport Actual? Sheriff? Are you—”

“I said clear the fucking air, Lewiston.

“Acknowleged, Freeport Actual. Signing off.”

Damian and Marin looked at each other, unsure of what to say.

“I'm sorry it had to be this way, boys.”

“Evan?” Marin said, speaking into the mic. “What's going on here?”

“Your mother has taught you well. I didn't expect you to get this far. I'm sorry you did. I'm sorry about a lot of things. I wish it didn't have to be this way.”

“What’s he talking about?” Damian asked.

Marin dropped his pack and rummaged through it, pulling out the sealed antibiotics they were to deliver. Ripping the seal off the package, he dumped its contents onto the floor.

Rocks.

Understanding dawned on Marin. The broken barrier at the elementary school harbor, the empty warehouse.

“You son of a bitch,” he said, his hands shaking. “You set us up.”

The response was immediate, visceral. “Damnit, it was the only way! How many times have you been taught about sacrifices since you were children? 'The blood of the lamb shall wipe away the sins of the father.' Is that not what the scripture tells us? Is it not?

“You crazy son of a bitch,” Marin said, his voice rising. “If you believe that shit, why aren't you out here? Why us?”

“I'm sorry, boys. I really am. The witch needs a sacrifice so the rest of us keep on. That's the way of things. Your mother understood that.”

Fuck you!” Damian shouted, his voice breaking even as he panted while peddling. “She would have never agreed to this.”

“Really?” the old sheriff asked, his voice only just rising above the static of the radio. “Are you sure about that?”

“We're coming back there, Evan. And when we do, we're putting a bullet right in your forehead,” Marin said.

A sigh came over the air, followed by a long pause.

“Don't…” a voice said. A woman's. It was their mother's. “Don't ever forget how much I love you. I'm so, so sorry,” she said, tears evident over the airwaves.

Damian stopped pedaling. “Shut it off,” he said, climbing off the bike. “I've heard enough.”

Marin did so, his sooty cheeks reddened and streaked. He sniffled, wiped his nose.

Damian gripped his shoulders. “Be strong, brother. There are worse things out there than the witch. We’ll show them,” he said, thinking of the bodies they had passed. Had the people of Brunswick figured things out, as they had? Had they put an end to it, as they would? Or were people slaughtered simply because?

Perhaps both are true, Damian thought. He had a moment of doubt, thinking of all the people still living at Freeport station. Friends and neighbors, women and children. If they returned and put an end to the insanity, would they become a new insanity? Would that make them any worse than the witch and the lives she had taken, the sacrifices she demanded?

Like the sky, the world remained shades of gray, as it always had. As it always would.

Together they shouldered their bags and slung their rifles, setting out for whence they came.

Piano Man

Originally published in Love Letters to Poe, Volume I: A Toast to Edgar Allen Poe (Love Letters to Poe, March, 2021).

Author interview follows the published story at the link above.

1,461 words


Marin began to worry he’d done something wrong the night he first brought a man home from the bar. One hundred and sixteen miles from his quiet Cape Cod along the coast of Maine, the bar wasn’t one he’d ever been to before. No one to recognize him, to pick him out from a crowd. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, and bound at the wrists and ankles, with tape over his mouth, the man wasn’t going to be giving it anytime soon, either.

He turned onto the unpaved road that curved along the sound, his aging, rusted Lincoln bouncing on broken shocks. A thud came from the trunk as the man within it whacked against something hard. Marin rolled his windows down and let the salty air flood the cabin. Waist-high sea grass on other side of the road swayed with the sighing of the ocean, the sound of the rolling waves against the rocky shore a constant, soothing roar, like a television forever tuned to static.

This far up the coast, there was no one. Marin shut the engine off in the driveway, not bothering to pull into the garage. He pulled an animal control stick from the back seat and popped the trunk, looping the metal hoop around the man's neck and hauling him onto the ground.

“Terry, right?”

The man grunted, blood flowing freely onto the gravel from a broken nose.

“Terry it is, then. In we go,” Marin said, jerking on the long metal pole. Terry moaned as he was pulled to his feet. Marin shoved him in the direction of the front door and Terry stumbled forward, his feet struggling to catch up. Veins and cords of tendons stuck out from his purpling neck.

The setting and fixtures inside the house were archaic. Appliances rusted from the salt air and broken granite surfaces dominated throughout. Maple bookshelves and mahogany tables, polished to a sheen, reflected light from a steely ocean and slate-gray sky. A wall of floor-to-ceiling windows faced the expanse of the foaming ocean.

The piano—a Whurlitzer that Marin had dragged across the country since his mother’s passing—stood upright in a far corner of the open living room. Above it was a hook, and here Marin secured the end of the pole, shoving Terry onto the piano's bench beneath.

"Drink?"

Terry said nothing. He slumped forward, but the wire of the pole constricted, and he started to choke.

"Oh, right," Marin said, ripping the tape off Terry's mouth. "I'll make it a double." He went to the kitchen, and there, pulled a pair of glasses from the cabinet and poured a dram of Bruichladdich for them each.

Marin set a glass on the piano before the younger man, who had begun to weep.

"Take a sip," Marin said, taking a knife from his pocket. He cut the tape binding Terry’s wrists tightly together behind his back. "You look like you could use it."

Terry pushed himself upright to relieve the tension from the restraint around his neck. "What do you want?" he choked.

"I should think that would be obvious." Marin nodded toward the sheet music spread out before him.

"I...I can't," Terry sobbed.

"What are you talking about? Sure you can. You said you played in a band, remember?"

"I know sets, okay? Pieces I've practiced. I can read a staff. I can't just sit down and...and...play like this!"

"You sounded pretty convincing at the bar." Marin gestured toward the piano before reaching forward to position Terry's limp and shaking hands atop the keys. "Clair de Lune. Debussy. Do you know it?"

Terry, his face swollen, bloody, streaked with tears, nodded.

"Not exactly an easy piece, I admit, but I have faith in you. Now play."

"Are you going to kill me?" Terry asked, his voice a throaty whisper.

Marin placed his hand on the piano and tilted his head, eyes closed, as if taking from it silent instruction.

From the piano came low, bassy chords, loud, as if a fist had been struck against the keys. Marin snapped from his thoughts and looked at Terry.

"Don't do that," he said.

Terry looked up, eyes wide, palms out in defense. "I didn't touch it."

Marin slapped him across the face. "Don't lie to me, Terry. This was my mother’s. Show some respect."

Terry stammered. Spittle flew from his lips, his words an incomprehensible babble.

Marin squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose while Terry rattled on. He sobbed about his brother, his sister, his parents. It was all noise to Marin, a string of nonsense that only furthered him from hearing his mother's piano once again. He rubbed his temples before resting his glass of whiskey on the edge of the piano.

"Stop," he said, raising his palm against the panicked flood of noise that flowed from the other man. Terry ignored him.

Marin suddenly stood and withdrew the pocket knife, flicking the blade open with one hand and taking a fist full of Terry's dirty-blonde hair with the other. Marin jerked Terry’s head back against the restraint of the pole and slipped the blade of the knife against Terry's cheek, who promptly fainted, falling limp against his restraint.

Marin sighed, unclipped the end of the pole from the ceiling hook, and eased his prisoner to the floor. He went to the kitchen for another drink, and it was there that he again heard the clang of notes from the piano. He stopped, jerking his head from the cabinet to peer into the living room. Terry was still unconscious.

"Hello?" he asked, carefully approaching the piano. "Mother?"

A single note, soft and long, emanated from the piano.

Wide eyed, Marin approached the piano bench and sat. She’d never spoken to him like this before—directly, the piano an extension of her voice. Always her instruction had been a thing felt, intuited, like the way the wind smelled before a storm even when the sky was still clear. It was why no one believed him when he insisted she lived on. Her voice was a silent one, speaking only to him, but it was there, nonetheless. Had he done something wrong, then? Was this not what she wanted?

“You said to…to bring you…”

He placed his hands above the keys, unsure of what to do next. He could play, if she allowed it, if he’d done as she demanded. But it had been a long time since then, as if disgusted by who he was, what he’d failed to become. The dropout from Juliard. The failure who should’ve been an extension of his mother’s legacy, her brilliance nearly a household name in the world of concert pianists. When he decided he would play for himself instead of the world, that was when she’d cut him off. All that mattered to Marin was the music, and that had always been the problem. He recalled the last time they’d spoken, some days before her death.

If only you were a disappointment, Marin. I could live with that.

Then what am I?

A mockery.

He wanted to believe it was the dementia behind the wheel of her hatred, but her eyes had been more clear and alert than they’d been in months. He’d been unable to play since, desperate though he was to try. If the piano was to be played, it would be through the hands of others, Marin only allowed to watch, not to touch, as it had been when he was a boy.

But now a note song forth, then another. His hands remained fixed, his fingers hovering over the keys.

Terry stirred, groaned. Shivered. A fifth note came from the piano. Marin understood. Terry had been a mistake, then. Not what his mother wanted.

“I’m sorry,” Marin said, taking up the pocket knife he had left on the piano. He reached across the bench and to the floor, thrusting the knife into Terry's throat and slashing savagely. Warm blood doused his hands and spread outward while Terry spasmed, gurgled, and fell silent. Carefully, his nerves wired and tense, Marin resumed his position at the keyboard, waiting for what would come next.

Silence.

He pressed a key tentatively. When there was no rebuke, no discordant slamming of furious notes in rejection of his touch, he pressed another. But that's all it was — individual notes — and he wondered what it would take for something more to come forth.

 

Tears fell against the keys, though he didn't know why. He tried to wipe his eyes with the back of his hands, but he couldn't. They were covered in blood.

"Please," he whimpered, urging her to let him do more, to once again make the piano sing. “Please. I just want to play.”

The Lobby of the Hotel McCoy

Originally published in the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter (Flame Tree Press, March 2022).

994 words


Marin lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying his best to ignore the rhythmic thumping from another bed against the shared wall of the hotel room. He’d checked in an hour ago and was supposed to text Jenn that he’d arrived, but something about the hotel manager bothered him. There was something not right about the man, something that worried about the edges of Marin’s subconscious like the fraying of a door’s weather stripping, gradually admitting a draft.

It was his hands, Marin finally decided. They had been dirty. Not just unwashed, but filthy, the way a mechanic’s often were. Black under the nails, grime around the cuticles, dark lines of dirt tracing the grooves of his fingerprints. Why should a hotel manager’s hands be filthy like that, Marin wondered? He could think of no reasonable explanation.

Abruptly the thumping stopped. Marin relaxed, allowing himself to sink into the silence of the night. After the ruckus of traveling, the headache of navigating the airport terminal, the traffic and the honking and the—

The thumping resumed in earnest. Marin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. His phone buzzed. It was Jenn.

Hey, you make it to the hotel okay?

He dismissed the notification.

The temperature outside felt incredible. Mid-fifties. It was twelve below when he had left Portland. It felt like it had been winter in Maine for months—mostly because it had—and while he very much looked forward to seeing his friend and enjoying the weather, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something here was wrong.

His phone went off in his pocket.

Your flight landed two hours ago. Where are you??

Two hours? Had he really been here that long? How long had he been standing outside his hotel door, staring at the lobby, lost in his thoughts?

You’re obsessing again, he thought. A rare flash of introspection his therapist would have heralded as progress. No, not obsessing—he wasn’t supposed to use that word—fixating.

But this was real. It wasn’t like the lady at the bus stop, or the UPS guy—that had gotten him into a lot of trouble—or even his ex-girlfriend. The hotel manager had looked uneasy when he had checked in, shifting his weight from one foot to another, eager for Marin to take his room key and leave. He’d said almost nothing to Marin when he entered the lobby, instead hurrying back from some other room to stand behind a computer, sweat beading down his temple.

And then there was the matter of checking Marin in in the first place. It took way too long, the man hunting and pecking at the keys while glancing nervously at Marin, like he didn’t know what he was doing, like he didn’t know the computer system.

“Like he didn’t work there,” Marin whispered, staring at the lobby and the soft glow of the lights that spilled from the wall of windows that encased it.

He took his phone from his pocket and opened the note taking app, recording the time, date, and his observations about the hotel manager so far. He was falling into old habits again, patterns that had gotten him in trouble before. His sentencing had been a lifetime ago, his time long since served, but still he remembered what the judge had said at conclusion of his trial:

You’re not a detective, Mr. Duvall. You never were, and you never will be.

Zzzzt zzzzt. His phone. Jenn. Okay, I’m just going to come pick you up at the hotel. Whatever you’re doing, just hang out in your room, I’ll be there in 10.

Marin read her worry between the lines; she knew his past.

Everything’s fine, replied. Just checking some things out.

His phone immediately rang. He silenced it.

The lobby was deserted. It smelled heavily of bleach, when it hadn’t before. Marin approached the counter and peered over. Nothing appeared out of place.

“Except for you,” he muttered, checking the display on the phone that sat by the computer. Six missed calls. A red light flashed to indicate a voicemail. Had it been that way before, when he checked in? He didn’t think so. He made a note on his phone.

At the far end of the lobby was a room, and, finding it unlocked, he stepped inside. In one corner was a pile of ice cream bars, popsicles, and frozen candy bars. They sat beside a chest freezer, pictures of its disgorged contents plastered to its sides.

“What the hell?” he said, making another note on his phone. It had rung twice since he’d entered the lobby.

Marin approached the freezer and gasped, stunned by what he saw.

Staring up at him through the glass lid was a man, mouth agape, lips purple, knees folded against his chest. One eye was bloodshot—no, nearly completely red, the sclera no longer white—the result of some skull crushing trauma.

Marin felt movement behind him and ducked as a crowbar whooshed through the air above his head, the curved edge of it smashing and sticking into the drywall of the small room. He jumped backward, throwing his shoulder into the gut of the man behind him. Together they fell against shelving that lined the near wall, knocking supplies in every direction.

The struggle was brief. Marin eyed a box cutter that had gone skittering across the floor. He dove for it, flicked out the blade, and whirled around, slashing blindly. A red fissure opened up along the man’s neck, and, after a horrible series of gurgling and flailing, he fell still.

Marin panted heavily, standing over the body, pulse racing. It was then that he looked up, through the door into the lobby, and saw Jenn. Saw the horror on her face, her backpedaling away from him.

“It’s not what you think,” Marin said, struggling to catch his breath. “It’s not—"

But she had already left, and in the distance, sirens.

Grapes

Originally published in The Antihumanist, 4th Edition (May 2022).

933 words


Ellen Jane Duvall was born three months early on February 10, 2020, weighing only three pounds, six-and-a-half ounces. When my daughter died three days later, a part of me died with her. My grief was indescribable. Total. But Marin’s grief was more than total. It consumed him.

We had tried so hard. First, we turned to science. I’ll never forget my husband’s face when Marin decided to sell his grandmother’s piano to pay for one more fertility treatment. He grew up listening to her play it—a Wurlitzer that had survived being sold for food during the Great Depression, and the fire that destroyed most of his mother’s home in ‘67. I begged him not to sell it, even though he couldn’t play.

After science failed us and there was nothing left to sell, we turned to God. For one brief summer we were no longer the staunch atheists we had always been. It was Marin’s idea. He’d seen a sign outside a church quoting Romans one day on his way home from the university biology lab, where he worked as an entomologist, studying ticks. I never learned which verse it was he’d read, only that it had contained the word hope.

I fell into a depression and lost interest in the church when God proved as useful as the scientists, but Marin found something else to latch on to.

The night he brought home a deck of Tarot cards there was a fight. I don’t remember what was said, standing there in the kitchen shouting and pointing and slamming cabinet doors, but the memory still hurts.

And then it happened.

You know how everything goes between the announcement and the birth. A baby shower, doctor’s appointments, nursery decoration. Before I went into labor, we’d had no reason to worry. I remember the sound the spring peepers made in the sweltering Maine summer night, driving to the hospital and my hair clinging to my face in a wild tangle, my swollen feet sticking out the window of the back seat. At 10:21, our baby girl was born.

Three days later, she was dead. Her tiny lungs just weren’t ready.

I don’t remember much about what happened after that. Two weeks went by—or maybe it was three—and people came and went, dropping off food, cards, flowers. I was numb. When I wasn’t crying, I slept. We were like ghosts to each other.

The alarm bells should have gone off when Marin returned to work. A part of me knew it was too soon, that no one could be in any reasonable state of mind to work so quickly after that kind of loss. But I can’t deny that I actually wanted him to go back to work. Needed him to.

Marin started wearing sweaters, even though it was too hot for them. That was the first thing. You can write off someone’s return to work as an attempt to keep their mind busy, but no one wears sweaters in the middle of August.

He began losing weight. He said he wasn’t hungry, and I believed him. Neither was I. His skin became pale, sickly. I don’t remember looking in a mirror, but I’m sure my complexion was no better. He stopped touching me and that was okay too, because all I wanted was to be left alone. On the rare occasion that I tried to hug him, he’d push me away. But I understood. I won’t say that I hadn’t done the same.

We became like strangers, lost in our grief. He started sleeping on the couch in the basement, and for three days I didn’t see him at all. I ventured to the basement for a picture frame—the ink on the only photo of Ellen that we had had begun to rub off—and then I saw my husband alive for the last time.

The light was dim. He’d removed all the bulbs but one, and the absolute stink that filled the cool, dry room was unlike anything I’d ever encountered, a coppery mixture of blood, earth, and shit. It was absolutely fetid. I began to wretch at the bottom of the stairs, dry heaving with my hands on my knees.

There was a moan from the couch. I could see his eyes, tears glistening in their narrow slits.

“Heather,” he called, his voice frail, little more than a whisper.

“Marin?” I tried to straighten. My head swam. The stink, oh God, the stink. I gagged.

“Heather, come here. I want to show you something. We don’t…we don’t have to be sad anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come. Take this blanket off me.”

I held my wrist against my nose, wary of the strange noises I heard as I approached the couch. Slowly I pulled back the blanket.

“I’ve been feeding them. For…for us. Babies, Heather. So many babies.”

My husband’s skin moved, shifted, ten thousand grey and purple grapes undulating in the shadow.

Not grapes.

Ticks.

He’d taken a number of them from the lab and had been breeding them ever since, attaching the babies that spawned to his arms and legs, torso and back, all over to let them feed.

But I don’t know why he felt he had to hide them from me.

I buried my husband a few days later. His plot is next to our daughter’s, right next to the one that waits for me. We’ll share a gravestone, and it’ll read simply Marin and Heather Duvall—Loving Parents. But first I’ll need to nourish our children. There are so many mouths to feed.