Ashes Read online

  Water fell off the green leaves overhead as he wound his way into the woods. His shirt was soaked by the time he reached the clearing. The forest was alive with dripping, flexing limbs, trees drinking and growing, the creek fat and muddy. A fungal, earthy stench hung in the air. He stepped into the clearing.

  The ground was scarred with gashes of upturned soil. Brown holes. Empty. Where Dexter had buried the pets.

  Blood sacrifice. Works like magic. Especially on Halloween.

  Dexter tried to breathe. The shivering in his belly turned into a wooden knot.

  Twigs snapped damply behind the stand of laurels where he had hid the day before.

  No. Dead things didn't come back to life. That only happened in stupid movies.

  Tammy Lynn’s shoe was gone. No way would she come back here. It had to be Riley, playing a trick. But how did Riley know where he had buried the animals?

  He heard a whimpering gargle that sounded like a cross between a cluck and a growl, maybe a broken meow. The laurels shimmered. Something was moving in there.

  "Riley?" he whispered hoarsely.

  The gargle.

  "Come on out, dickwit," he said, louder.

  He saw a flash of fur, streaked and caked with dirt. He fled down the trail. His boots hardly touched the ground, were afraid to touch the ground, the ground that had been poisoned with blood magic. He thought he heard something following as he crossed into the yard, soft padding footfalls or slitherings in the brush, but his heart was hammering so hard in his ears that he couldn't be sure. He burst into the house and locked the door, then leaned with his back against it until he caught his breath.

  Something thudded onto the porch, clattering along the wooden boards. Behind that sharp sound, a rattling like claws or thick toenails, came a dragging wet noise.

  Clickety-click, sloosh. Clickety-click, sloosh.

  It stopped just outside the door.

  Dexter couldn't move.

  "What the hell's wrong with you?" Mom stood under the archway leading into the kitchen. Her face was pinched, eyes distended, skin splotched. Greasy blades of hair clung to her forehead.

  Dexter gasped, swallowed. "The—"

  She scowled at him, her fists clenched. He knew this had better be good. "I was just out running."

  "You're going to be the death of me, worrying me like that. Nothing but trouble." She rubbed her temples. Her smell filled the small room, sweetly pungent like a bushel of decaying fruit. Dexter put his ear to the door. The sounds were gone.

  "What are you so pale for? You said you wasn't sick."

  Dexter shrank away from her.

  "Now get up off that floor. Lord knows, I got enough work around here already without putting you in three changes of clothes ever goddamned day."

  Dexter slunk past her into the living room.

  "Guess I'd better get that laundry in," Mom said to no one in particular. Her hand gripped the doorknob, and Dexter wanted to shout, scream, slap her away. But of course he couldn't. He could only watch with churning bowels as she opened the door and went outside. Dexter followed her as far as the screen door.

  The porch was empty.

  Of course it was. Monsters were for movies, or dumb stories. He was acting like a fourth grader. Stuff coming back from the dead? Horseshit, as Dad would say.

  Still, he didn't go outside the rest of the evening, even though the sky cleared. Mom was in a better mood after the first six-pack. Dexter watched cartoons, then played video games for a while. He tried not to listen for clickety-sloosh.

  One of Mom's boyfriends came over. It was the one with the raggedy mustache, the one who called Dexter "Little Man." Mom and the man disappeared into her bedroom, then Dexter heard arguing and glass breaking. The boyfriend left after an hour or so. Mom didn't come back out. Dexter went to bed without supper.

  He lay there thinking about magic, about blood sacrifice. About the open graves in the pet cemetery that should have been filled with bones and decaying flesh and mossy fur and shaved whiskers and scales. He tried to erase his memory of the creature in the bushes, the thing that had followed him home. He couldn't sleep, even though he was worn from tension.

  His eyes kept traveling to the cold glass between his curtains. The streetlight threw shadows that striped the bed, swaying like live things. He tried to tell himself that it was only the trees getting blown by the wind. Nothing was going to get him, especially not all those animals he'd dismembered. No, those animals had loved him. They would never hurthim.

  He'd almost calmed himself when he heard the soft click of paws on the windowsill. It was the sound the cats had made when they wanted to be let in. Dexter's Mom wanted them out of the house, because of the hairballs and the stains they left in the corners. But Dexter always let them in at night to curl on top of the blankets at his feet. At least for a week or so, until he got tired of them.

  But he didn't have any cats at the moment. So it couldn't be a cat at the window. Dexter pulled the blankets up to his eyes. Something bumped against the glass, moist and dull, like a nose.

  No no no not a nose.

  He wrapped the pillow around his ears. The noise was replaced by a rapid thumping against the outside wall. Dexter hunched under the blankets and counted down from a hundred, the way he did when he was six and Dad had first told him about the monsters that lived in the closet.

  One hundred (no monsters), ninety-nine (no monsters), ninety-eight (no monsters)...

  After three times through, he no longer heard the clickings or thumpings. He fell asleep with the blankets twisted around him.

  Dexter awoke not knowing where he was. He sat up quickly and looked out the window. Nothing but sky and Sunday sunshine.

  Dad picked him up that afternoon. Dexter had to walk down to the corner to meet him. He kept a close eye on the woods, in case anything stirred in the leaves. He thought he heard a scratching sound, but by then he was close enough to get inside the truck.

  Dad looked past Dexter to the house. "My own goddamned roof," he muttered under his breath.

  "Hi, Dad."

  "I suppose she filled you up with all kinds of horseshit about me." His hands were clenched into fists around the steering wheel. Dexter knew what those fists could do. There had to be a way out, a way to calm him. Riley's words came to Dexter out of the blue: Gotta tell 'em that you love 'em.

  Yeah. Works like magic. He'd seen how that turned out. Got you what you wanted, but somebody had to pay.

  "She didn't say nothing."

  "Any men been around?"

  "Nobody. Just us. We . . . I miss you."

  Dad's fists relaxed and he mussed Dexter's hair. "I miss you, too, boy."

  Dexter wanted to ask when Dad was moving back in, but didn't want him to get angry again. Better not to mention Mom, or home, or anything else.

  "What say we go down to the dump? Got me a new Ruger to break in." Dexter managed a weak smile as Dad pulled the truck away from the curb.

  They spent the day at the landfill, Dexter breaking glass bottles and Dad prowling in the trash for salvage, shooting rats when they showed their pointy faces. Dexter felt no joy when the rodents exploded into red rags. Dad was a good shot.

  They ate fastfood hamburgers on the way back in. It was almost dark when Dad dropped him off at the end of the street. Dexter hoped none of Mom's boyfriends were around. He opened the door to hop out, then hesitated, remembering the clickety-sloosh. He had managed to forget, to fool himself out under the clear sky, surrounded by filth and rusty metal and busted furniture. In the daytime, all the nightmares had dissolved into vapor.

  Dexter looked toward the house with one hand still on the truck door. Dad must have figured he was reluctant to leave, that a son missed his father, and that no goddamned snotty-eyed bitch had a right to keep a father from his own flesh-and-blood. "It's okay. I'll see you again in a week or so," Dad said.

  Dexter searched desperately for something to say, anything to put off that hundred-foot walk across
the dark yard. "Dad?"

  "What?"

  "Do you love Mom?"

  Dexter could see only Dad's silhouette against the background of distant streetlights. Crickets chirped in the woods. After a long moment, Dad relaxed and sighed. "Yeah. 'Course I do."

  Dexter looked along the street, at the forest that seemed to creep up to the house's foundation. "You ever been scared?"

  "We're all scared of something or other. Is something bothering you?"

  Dexter shook his head, then realized Dad probably couldn't see him in the dark. "No," he said, then, "Do you believe in magic?"

  Dad laughed, his throat thick with spittle. "What kind of horseshit has she been filling you up with?"

  "Nothing. Never mind."

  "The bitch."

  "Guess I better go, Dad."

  "Uh-huh."

  "See you." He wanted to tell Dad that he loved him, but he was too scared.

  "Say, whatever happened to that little puppy of yours?"

  "Got runned over."

  "Damn. I'll see Clem about getting you another."

  "No, that's okay."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah."

  "Bye now."

  "Yeah."

  Dexter stepped away from the truck and watched the tail-lights shrink as Dad roared away. The people in the few neighboring houses were plastered to the television. Blue light flickered from their living room windows. The trees were like tall skeletons with too many bones.

  Leaves skittered across the road, scratching at the asphalt. A dog barked a few streets over. At least, it sounded like a dog. A good old red-blooded, living and breathing turd factory. Never hurt nobody, most likely.

  He walked into the scraggly yard, reluctant to leave the cone of the last streetlight. He thought about going up the street and cutting across the other end of the yard, but that way was scary, too. The autumn forest hovered on every side. The forest with its clickety-sloosh things.

  He tried to whistle as he walked, but his throat was dry, as if he had swallowed a spiderweb. He thought about running, but that was no good. In every stupid movie where dead things come back, they always get you if you run.

  So he took long, slow steps. His head bent forward because he thought he could hear better that way. Halfway home. The lights were on in the kitchen, and he headed for the rectangle of light that stretched from the back door across the lawn.

  He was twenty feet away from the safety of light when he heard it. Clickety-sloosh. But that wasn't all. The gargle was also mixed in, along with the tortured meow and the rustle of leaves. The noise was coming from behind a forsythia bush near the back steps. The thing was under the porch. In the place where Turd Factory had napped during sunny afternoons.

  Dexter stopped.

  Run for it? They always get you if you run. But, now that he thought about it, they always get you anyway. Especially if you were the bad guy. And Dexter was the bad guy. Maybe not as bad as Riley. But at least Riley knew about love, which probably protected him from bad things.

  Yell for Mom? She was probably dead drunk on the couch. If she did step out on the porch, the thing would disappear. He was sure of that, because the thing was his and only his.

  And if he yelled, he knew what would happen. Mom would turn on the porch light and see nothing, not even a stray hair, just a scooped-out dirt place behind the forsythia. And she'd say, "What the hell do you mean, waking up half the neighborhood because you heard something under the porch? They ain't nothing there."

  And she'd probably slap him across the face. She'd wait until they were inside, so the neighbors wouldn't call Social Services. Maybe she'd use the buckle-end of the belt, if she was drinking liquor tonight instead of beer.

  He took an uncertain step backward. Back to the curb, to the streetlights? Then what? You had to go home sometime. The thing gargled, a raspy mewling. It was waiting.

  A monster that could disappear could do anything. Even if he ran to the road, the thing could clickety-sloosh out of the sewer grate, or pop out from behind one of the junk cars that skulked in the roadside weeds. The thing could drop from the limbs of that big red maple at the edge of the lawn. You can't fight blood magic when it builds a monster on Halloween.

  He had a third choice. Walk right on up. Keep trying to whistle. Not scared at all. No-sirree. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.

  And that was really the only choice. The thing wasn't going away. Dexter stepped into the rectangle of light and pursed his lips. He was still trying to whistle as he put his foot on the bottom step. Monsters weren’t real, were they?

  The bush shook, shedding a few of its late yellow flowers. The gargle lengthened into a soughing purr. Dexter tried to keep his eyes on the door, the door that was splintered at the bottom where the puppy and cats had scratched to get inside. The door with its dented brass handle, the door with its duct-taped pane of glass, the door that opened onto the love and safety promised by the white light of home. The door became a blur, a shimmering wedge lost in his tears as the thing moved out from the shadows.

  He closed his eyes and waited for the bite, the tearing of his blue jeans and shin meat, the rattle of tooth on bone. He stiffened in anticipation of cold claws to belly, hot saliva on rib cage, rough tongue to that soft place just underneath the chin.

  Clickety-sloosh.

  His heart skipped a beat and restarted. He was still alive. No pain yet. He tried to breathe. The air tasted like rusty meat.

  Maybe it had disappeared. But he could hear it, panting through moist nostrils. Just beneath him. Close enough so that he could feel the wind of its mewling against his leg.

  Savoring the kill? Just as Dexter had done, all those afternoons and Saturday mornings spent kneeling in the forest, with his pocket knife and his pets and his frightened lonely tears? He knew that fear was the worst part, the part that made your belly all puke-shivery.

  He had to show his fear. That was only fair. He owed them that much. And if he looked scared enough, maybe the thing would have mercy, just rip open that big vein in his neck so he could die fast. Then the thing could clickety-slooshon back into the woods, drag its pieces to the grave and bury its own bones.

  Dexter tried to open his eyes but couldn't. Still the thing mewled and gargled. Waiting was the worst part. You could hold your breath, pray, scream, run. They always get you anyway.

  Still he waited.

  He blinked. The world was nothing but streaks, a gash of light, a fuzz of gray that was the house, a bigger fuzz of black night. Something nudged against his kneecap. He looked down, his chest hot as a brick oven.

  It hadn't disappeared.

  Two eyes met his. One round and dark, without a white, hooded by an exotic flap of skin. The other eye was heavy-lidded, yellow and reptilian.

  Behind the eyes, lumps of meat sloping into a forehead. Ragged pink where the pieces met, leaking a thin jelly. Part fur, part feather, part scale, part exposed bone. A raw rooster comb dangled behind one misshapen ear.

  Beneath the crushed persimmon of a nose were whiskers and wide lips, the lips parted to show teeth of all kinds. Puppy teeth, kitty fangs, fishy nubs of cartilage, orange bits of beak like candy corn.

  Hulking out behind the massive dripping head were more slabs of tenderloin, breast and wing, fin and shell. The horrible coalition rippled with maggots and rot and magic.

  The lump of head nuzzled against his leg. The juice soaked through his jeans.

  Oh God.

  He wanted the end to come quickly now, because he had given the thing his fear and that was all he had. He had paid what he owed. But he knew in the dark hutch of his heart that the thing wasn't finished. He opened his eyes again.

  The strange eyes stared up into his. Twin beggars.

  You had to let them feed. On fear or whatever else they needed.

  Again the thing nuzzled, mewling wetly. Behind the shape, something slithered rhythmically against the leaves.

  A rope of gray and black and tan fur. A broken tail. />
  Wagging.

  Wagging.

  Waiting and wanting.

  Forgiving.

  Dexter wept without shame. When the thing nuzzled the third time, he reached down with a trembling hand and stroked between the putrid arching ears.

  Riley's voice came to him, unbidden, as if from some burning bush or darkening cloud: "Gotta tell 'em that you love 'em."

  Dexter knelt, trembling. The thing licked under the soft part of his chin. It didn't matter that the tongue was scaly and flecked with forest dirt. And cold, grave cold, long winter cold.

  When you let them love you, you owe them something in return.

  He hugged the beast, even as it shuddered toward him, clickety-sloosh with chunks dribbling down. And still the tail whipped the ground, faster now, drumming out its affection.

  Suddenly the yard exploded with light.

  The back door opened. Mom stood on the porch, one hand on the light switch, the other holding her worn flannel robe closed across her chest. "What the hell's going on out here?"

  Dexter looked up from where he was kneeling at the bottom of the steps. His arms were empty and dry.

  "Don't just stand there with your jaw hanging down. You was supposed to be here an hour ago." Her voice went up a notch, both louder and higher. "Why, I've got a good mind to—"

  She stopped herself, looking across the lawn at the houses down the street. Dexter glanced under the porch. He saw nothing in the thick shadows.

  Mom continued, lower, with more menace. "I've got a good mind to take the belt to you."

  Dexter stood and rubbed the dirt off his pants.

  "Now get your ass in here, and don't make me have to tell you twice."

  Dexter looked around quickly at the perimeter of forest, at the black thickets where the thing would hide until Mom was gone. He went up the steps and through the door, past her hot drunken glare and stale breath. He shuffled straight to his room and closed the door. The beating would come or it wouldn't. It didn't matter.

  That night, when he heard the scratching at the windowsill and the bump against the glass, he opened the window. The thing crawled inside and onto the bed. It had brought him a gift. Riley’s bloody boot. When you loved something, it owed you in return. Maybe it had carried the other one to Tammy Lynn’s house, where it might have delivered her lost shoe on Halloween, the night of its birth. To thank her for the gift of blood.