Vile Things: Extreme Deviations of Horror Read online

  Widow Martha and her fatherless children became media darlings. In fact, Kirstie Alley was rumored to play Martha in Lifetime movie of the week. The walleye tournament was postponed and Silas made the front page for one last time. For once, Lester stole the spotlight. Everybody loved a hero. Although his sex life didn’t improve much, Lester did receive a free Roland Martin signature series rod and reel courtesy of the local bait and tackle store, a free membership to B.A.S.S., ten spin-n-glow triple teasers and a set of Baywatch Season one DVDs.

  Lester graced the cover of the Winterhaven Gazette several more times that year for winning four fishing tournaments and for breaking one county fishing record. A lot of people commented on the pictures, saying he looked fat. Lester shrugged it off, saying the camera always added at least fifteen pounds. He didn’t care. He was famous. In fact, his breaking the state record for striped bass even eclipsed the disappearance of little Amanda Southern and little Ricky Jameson for the headline in that week’s paper.

  Fungoid

  Randy Chandler

  * * *

  IT WAS A FILTHY JOB but Frank was in no position to turn it down. When your life is in the toilet, you do what you can to stay afloat and keep your hand off the handle. Some days you have to fight the unforgiving urge to flush it all away and send the whole wretched mess spiraling down the tubes, yourself with it.

  But this was not one of those days. So Frank pulled on the black rubber knee-boots, stomped his feet a couple of times to imprint his humanity, and stared grimly into the sludge-filled swimming pool.

  Even after the electric pump had siphoned the stagnant brown water out of the pool and ejaculated it into the patch of woods on the other side of the backyard’s chain-link fence, the sludge-encrusted pool still reeked of floodwater and bottom-rot.

  Frank stretched the elastic band of the blue surgical mask behind his head and positioned the mask over his nose and mouth. It wouldn’t keep all the bacteria or moist spores out of his airway, but at least it would cut down on the stench. The instructions printed on the box warned that facial hair would prevent a proper face-seal. No way was he going to shave his close-cropped battleship-gray beard for a three-day job. He would take his chances with whatever-the-fuck-kind of bugs that might be hiding in that shit-brown sludge, waiting to set up housekeeping in his body’s susceptible cells.

  “Come on in, boys,” he said to microscopic culprits. “Make yourselves at home, if you can pay the freight. But I warn you, this old abode is way past fixer-upper, and I reserve the right to evict your ass without notice.”

  Christ. Talking to microbes now. “I could use a drink,” he said—to himself, not to the lurking nasties.

  But he knew he couldn’t take that first one. Not if he wanted to get this job done and get paid three days from now. One drink would lead to the next, and by the third one, he would slide into Take-This-Job-And-Shove-It mode, load his wheelbarrow and shovel into the back of his rattletrap GMC pickup and boogie on down the road. But he wouldn’t get far on an empty tank, and he didn’t have enough scratch to buy a six-pack or a pint of vodka anyway, so fuck it, get in there and get it done, bro. Stop whining and hop to.

  He glanced up at the deserted two-story brick house and wondered how it would’ve been to live here before the floods and before the Airport Authority decided to buy up all the residential properties in the area and add new runways where all the now-empty houses stood forlornly waiting for the bulldozers and wrecking ball. Janet had always wanted a house with a pool in the backyard, and for a while they’d both believed it would happen, but then he got laid off from his Lockheed job, started the really heavy boozing, and she left him for a computer-programmer with a golfer’s tan, a big bank account and a bigger cock. The “bigger cock” thing had come out during one of Frank and Janet’s last fights, and by that time the gloves were off and every bare-knuckle verbal hit was a body-shot meant to do lasting emotional damage. The jab to his manhood hadn’t been as devastating as the blow to his earning power, or lack thereof. “Fuck him and his big bank account,” Frank had said as he clenched his fists and tried his best not to smash her pretty little upturned nose. Janet had been ready for that one and countered with: “Oh, I will, Frank. I surely will.”

  He looked away from the empty house as he realized that not even a mansion with a top-of-the-line pool could have saved his doomed marriage. He put on heavy-duty work gloves, picked up the shovel and started spading the sludge off the shallow-end steps, dumping each shovelful of the foul brown gunk into his rusty wheelbarrow parked on the deck’s edge just above the top step.

  Frank tried not to think about the futility of the work at hand. His job was to clean up the pool and the gone-to-seed yard so the appraisers wouldn’t knock thousands of dollars off the fair-market value when the agents of the Airport Authority made their offer on the property. It wasn’t enough that the area residents were forced to give up their homes; the take-over artists would scam the poor saps at every turn and pay them as little as possible.

  Frank thought this clean-up gig was a little like nursing a sick death-row con back to good health so the state could execute him. Tradition held that you couldn’t have your executioner dispatch a guy who wasn’t healthy enough to ride Old Sparky or take the Last Spike in the vein. Wouldn’t be civilized. A man needed a healthy glow to go to his appointment with the Grim Reaper.

  Frank’s job was getting this muck-choked pool into ship-shape condition, spotless and sparkling enough for a bevy of bathing beauties to swim in it, so the powers-that-be could fill it up with dirt, pave it over and fly jetliners off it. Made perfect sense in this gone-to-shit world, didn’t it? Runways to hell were also paved with good intentions. And with back-breaking work for joes like Frank.

  He put his back into the digging and soon the first barrowful was ready for transport to the back fence. The sludge wasn’t too heavy with most of the water drained out of it, so he hoisted the wheelbarrow onto the top of the fence and dumped the sludge on the other side, then rolled the barrow back to the edge of the pool and started shoveling up the next load, keeping a wary eye out for snakes hiding in the muck.

  Soon he and the wheelbarrow were down in the shallow end of the pool. His rubber boots squished sludge. He shoveled and shoveled. His mask was damp with sweat, as was his old Grateful Dead T-shirt with the skeleton in the stovepipe hat sticking a bony fingertip in the groves of a vinyl disc to play a phantom dirge for the dead.

  “Big job,” said a gravelly voice.

  Frank looked up at a white-haired elderly man leaning on a silver-handled cane.

  “Yeah,” Frank said, pausing to lean on his shovel. He pulled off the mask and let it hang under his chin. “Tell me about it.”

  “They have machines that can suck that stuff out in an hour’s time.”

  Irritated, Frank said, “Yeah well, I ain’t in the sucking business, Pop. I do things the old-fashion way.”

  The old man grinned. He was toothless. He licked his gums and said, “They declared all the real estate hereabouts a floodplain after that last airport expansion and then went ahead like fools and cleared all that land back yonder and built them apartment buildings. Then every time Sullivan Creek overflowed, all these here backyards was swamped with that foul goddamn floodwater. That’s the damn government for ya. Always finding a way to fuck up a wet dream and stick it to you dry.”

  Frank nodded sagely. “You live around here?”

  “I do. I’m the last holdout. Everyone else’s vacated.”

  “Holding out for more money, huh?”

  “Nope. I ain’t selling. I’m going down with the house.”

  “Good for you,” said Frank. “Give ‘em hell.” Crazy old fart.

  Frank pulled off his gloves and lit an American Spirit. It seemed as good a time as any for a low-budget smoke break. “Must be kinda spooky, living all alone in a deserted neighborhood.”

  The old man grunted and said, “Reckon the only spook hereabouts is me.”
r />   Yeah, the old guy was a nutjob, sure enough. “I hear ya.”

  “It ain’t ghosts you should worry about.”

  Frank blew a little cloud of smoke up at the October overcast. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you should get out of that crud you’re standing in, go away from here and don’t come back.”

  “Why would I do that? That’d be the same as throwing away seven hundred bucks.”

  “It’s only money, son. Can’t buy salvation.”

  “If you’re revving up for a sermon, save your breath. I’m not looking to get saved.”

  The old man shook his head disgustedly. “And I ain’t preaching one. I’m just saying you should get out of that muck before it’s too late to save yourself.”

  “From what?”

  He nodded at the swimming pool. “From that fungus and everwhat else is in there. Them floodwaters run through an old graveyard before they get here. Means we was flooded with grave water. But it’s the fungus that’ll get ya. That stuff you’re shoveling, that crap’s et up with it. You’re digging your own grave.”

  “So? I’m not putting down roots here. Ain’t like it’s gonna grow on me.”

  The old man shrugged. “Your funeral,” he said, then turned and walked up the driveway. He paused at the gate, raised his cane in gentlemanly farewell and toddled toward the street.

  “Crazy old coot,” Frank muttered. He ducked his cigarette butt in the damp sludge, pulled the mask over his mouth and nose, and then went back to work.

  Shoveling shit.

  Cynically, Frank thought it was fitting that his life had come down to this. He’d been shoveling shit of one kind or another for most of his life, so there was a certain karmic symmetry in his standing in a swimming pool of this brownish goop, working to dig his way out. It was perfect, really. The shit-shoveler finds his true niche. Frank wasn’t feeling sorry for himself; he was finally accepting his true lot in life. His low place in the uncaring cosmos.

  He whistled a sappy tune through the surgical mask as he worked.

  You coulda been a contenda, said the voice, ala Brando.

  Frank knew the voice well. The voice of failure, the one that mocked him and kicked him when he was down. This time he was ready for it. He said, “Coulda-woulda-shoulda. What’s the diff. Contender, dead-ender—it all comes down to shoveling this goddamn shit.”

  And what was this shit, anyway? What was its precise genesis? Heavy rains drive the creek water over its banks, the water washes over the land, collecting animal-vegetable-mineral detritus, including animal droppings (and probably human droppings from winos and crack addicts), road grit, dead leaves, moss, twigs, small rocks, litter—you name it— and then the cold roiling stew washes over the cemetery, bringing up groundwater with chemical juices and miniscule flecks of waxy flesh from rotting corpses, the grateful dead …

  Frank shuddered.

  He found his rhythm in the digging. The wet metronomic plops of the sludge hitting the belly of the barrow formed his mushy background music, all rhythm and no melody. Busting his move in the burbs. One … two … three … four … Toss the shit and dig some more.

  The gray overcast darkened, leaching color from the autumn day. The air chilled. Frank sweated. He wanted another smoke but he kept digging because there weren’t many Spirits left in the pack and he had to ration them to make them last.

  Just before he broke for a meager lunch of potted meat and Saltines, the hairs on the back of his neck prickled and he was sure somebody was watching him. He stilled his shovel and scanned the surroundings, expecting to see the old coot bent over his cane, but he saw no one. Just a squirrel twitching its bushy tail on the thick limb of an oak. And a crow taking flight from the woods on the backside of the backyard fence.

  He shrugged off the feeling of being watched, wishing he had a beer to quench his deep thirst and to keep off the jim-jams, those creeping willies that crawled his skin and twisted his imagination into crazy knots whenever he went too long without a drink.

  By mid-afternoon he’d cleared the shallow end of the pool. The bottom and sides still wore ugly brown stains but he would hose those off after all the sludge was gone. Then he would scrub the whole shebang with caustic cleanser, knock out the yardwork, go collect his pay and get drunk as a lord.

  He heard something plop in one of the isolated little pools of water nestled in the sludge in the deep end, and he spun around to see a frog rippling the brown water.

  “Froggy went a-courtin’, he did go, uh-hah …” Frank crooned. Then he scooped up the frog with the shovel’s blade and tossed it out of the pool and watched it hop across the weedy lawn. “The Great Frog God just gave you new life, warty little dude.”

  He worked until twilight, which came earlier than he’d expected. Then he remembered that Daylight Savings Time had ended last weekend and the world was back on “real” time now. He dropped the shovel in the wheelbarrow, trudged up the pool’s steps, sat down to pull off the rubber boots, and then got up and walked toward the dark house. He stopped at his truck to grab his sleeping bag, his gym bag and his sewer snake.

  He fished the house keys out of his jeans pocket. The owner had given him the keys so Frank could snake the shower’s clogged drain in the downstairs bathroom. He didn’t have the energy to do it tonight, but he saw no reason why he shouldn’t crash for the night in the empty house rather than waste gas driving back to his depressing rented room in College Park. The utilities were still on for the appraisers, so he’d have lights and hot water for a shower. No soap, but crashers couldn’t be picky.

  He let himself in through the back door, went through the kitchen and found the tiny bathroom at the foot of the stairs. He stripped naked, ran the shower until the water was warm enough and then slipped under the stinging jets. He cranked the “H” knob and let the hot water knock fatigue from his muscles. He stayed in the shower until the water started to cool. He pulled an old beach towel out of his gym bag and dried off, then put on a clean set of sweats.

  He laid out his dirty sweat-wet work clothes on the carpet since there was no good place to hang them to dry, and then unrolled the sleeping bag under the dining-room window and stretched out on it with a paperback he’d remembered to bring along: Kerouac’s On The Road, recently scored from a used-book store. Sad Jack was long dead, having destroyed his liver and pickled his once-brilliant brain with booze, but the youthful exuberance of his early Beat days lived on in the yellowed pages.

  Frank found his dog-eared place and started reading. He would’ve liked nothing better than to hit the road and take his carefree adventures where he found them, but he knew that was just so much wishful thinking. If he hit the road, the road would hit back—with gleeful vengeance. His ancient truck wouldn’t survive a cross-country trip and he probably wouldn’t either. Frank’s carefree days and his youthful exuberance were way behind him.

  Ahead of him was another day of shoveling sludge.

  A howling dog woke him. Sounded like the mutt was right outside the bare window. Frank rose to his knees and looked out but didn’t see the howler in the hazy glow of streetlights. Other hounds howled in the distance, answering the feral call. Frank banged his fist against the pane, hoping to scare off the unseen mutt. It must’ve worked; the closer howling ceased.

  He flopped back onto the sleeping bag and scratched a sudden itch on his right wrist. The scratching only set off more itching, and soon he was scratching his forearm, upper arm and shoulder.

  What the hell? Had he gotten into some poison oak or ivy?

  He got up and turned on the light. An angry red rash had risen in the flesh around his wrist. He pushed up his shirtsleeve to see that the raised pimply skin ran all the way up his arm. He pulled off the sweatshirt, went to the bathroom to examine his torso in the mirror.

  “Jesus …” he said when he saw the extent of the rash’s rapid spread. Its rosy fingers already reached from his right deltoid to his chest. “… Christ!”

  The old
man’s gravelly warning came back to him. It’s that fungus that’ll get ya. That crap you’re shoveling is et up with it.

  In the brightness of the bathroom’s light Frank could see that the rash, though crimsoned, had a blackish tint. A closer look showed that each little red pimple wore a greenish-black cap. He did his best to resist the maddening urge to scratch the infested skin.

  He kicked off his sweatpants and jumped back in the shower. He stayed in the jetting spray until the hot water petered out again. The shower only intensified the itching. Finally, Frank gave in and feverishly scratched his arm, shoulder and chest. The relief was short-lived, instantly followed by worse itching—this time accompanied by the stings of a thousand tiny needles in the flesh. He raked his nails everywhere the rash was. He fell into a dreamlike state of tortured bliss, scratching on autopilot. Scratching … scratching … scratching …

  The dog howled again. The beast was in the bathroom with Frank. How the hell …?

  Then Frank caught his reflection in the mirror and realized he was the one howling.

  Losing my fucking mind.

  His fingernails were ragged—a long way from his last half-assed manicure— and had drawn smears of blood from the rash. He washed off the blood at the sink, then slipped into his sweatshirt, put on his shoes and rushed outside.

  The old man with the cane was in one of the neighboring houses, and Frank intended to find the geezer and make him make him spill, no bullshit now, make him tell what he knew about the fungus or whatever the fuck it was that was consuming Frank’s flesh and driving him mad with itching and making him howl like a moon-drunk mutt with a bad case of mange.

  Lunatic itch, said the voice. Not the Voice of Failure this time. Nor one of those inevitable voices given to haunting alkies in desperate need of a drink.

  A new voice, smarmy and insinuating. A voice too shrewd to sound judgmental, speaking in tones of phony intimacy. Like the cool voice of a cruel god.