My Eyes Are Nailed But Still I See Read online

  “Home, Johnson. Do you want to talk about home?”

  Shut up, Johnson thinks. Shut up now.

  “Would you like that?” Dr. Wagner is very excited. Surely this will be his breakthrough. Everything else has been about Johnson’s family, all the questions, the endless sessions trying to dig under the boy’s wall of hostility. But maybe ‘home’ is the key. “What do you want to say about your home, Johnson? We can explore that together. If you’ll only let me inside...”

  Shut.

  Up.

  Johnson pushes harder with his crayon, scribbling, scribbling, drowning out the doctor’s voice with repeated strokes. He looks down at his page and black blood seeps up through the white. The crayon smears this alien blood around; some of it dribbles off the edge of the doctor’s antique desk.

  The doctor does not notice.

  “Nails...” Johnson whispers. “I see my father... with nails in his eyes. But that can’t be right. Dad is Pig and Pig has no nails in his eyes.”

  Dr. Wagner is very pleased with this progress, is busily copying down every word from Johnson’s mouth.

  “Not this Pig,” Johnson says. “Not this—”

  Johnson then switches tracks mid-sentence.

  “Nails are where the heart is. Home is where the nails are. Nails are home are nails are hearts. We nail our hearts with our homes, and our homes nail our eyes closed so that we can’t see where we—”

  Shut up.

  But now it’s Pig’s voice in Johnson’s head, and it’s so heavy, the voice, what it stands for, what it means, what it has always meant, the voice is so full of weight that tears spring into Johnson’s eyes. He has missed his father so much.

  On the paper, Johnson draws nails in the black blood. Nails being pulled from a cartoon pig’s eyeballs. Releasing him.

  And the stuffed leather pig sitting on Dr. Wagner’s desk suddenly moves. Nothing more than a twitch, but it moves. Enough that Dr. Wagner is no longer thinking about the progress he’s made. Enough that Dr. Wagner stops spinning his little web.

  The sunlit-slats behind him grow brighter, shifting dust motes around the room.

  Shifting power across the desk.

  “I wasn’t always at home,” Johnson whispers. He pushes another of the files toward the doctor, who picks it up in trembling hands, glancing sidelong at the pig on his desk every few moments.

  Dr. Wagner begins to read.

  • • •

  The sun angled through huge, heavily draped windows. It was setting slowly but surely and the shadows had grown long. Johnson watched as they crept across the musty floor toward his feet. His eyes darted right, then left, chasing things that scurried and chittered and didn’t exist.

  He moved to the window. The hills stretched out and up and down at odd angles. Scotland. A hundred feet—fuck—maybe a thousand feet to the ground. Who knew? Wind whistled around and through the bricks. No need for air conditioning.

  Johnson shivered. The sun dipped lower, tinting the skyline crimson and orange. He stared out over the top of it all, wondering if he stared hard enough he could see America. In the corner, on an old, ornate desk, stood his paper and pens, his books. No pig. No company. October 31st in a land of stern uncles and chattery aunts whose accents Johnson barely understood. “Happy Hallo-fucking-ween,” he whispered to the dying sun.

  No trick or treat here. Johnson thought of spiders in the corners, and shivered. Here they would be bigger. Here they would watch and wait and they would not be so easy to squash under his heel. He had to get out of the room before he went insane.

  “Ye’ll find all ye might wish in the shed o’ back,” Uncle Michael had said. “Got tackle an’ bait fer a fine night’s sport, lad, and ye might catch sight o’ the monster.”

  “Stop it now, Michael, ye’ll be scarin’ th’ lad,” Aunt Bonnie had thrown in, drawing a deep breath for another spurt of nonsense.

  Johnson had lurched for the door, but too late to miss her parting shot.

  “The loch’s no place fer boys a’ night, Michael McHenry, and this isna’ Loch Ness. There’s no monsters, but you know the tales. All Hallows Eve is no night for traipsin’ the banks of any loch. ’Tis a night of beasties and ghouls best spent in the warmth of a bed.”

  The words jumbled together, and Johnson tugged his jacket on hurriedly. He knew his way down the back stairs to the shed Uncle Michael had spoken of. Any place and any thing was better than being cooped up in that drafty room. Even fishing. Even on Halloween. He could almost hear his big brother Morgan’s laughter floating down the stone stairs behind him.

  The stairs wound down forever, round and round and round until Johnson was dizzy. He leaned in close to the wall. The thought of crashing down those hard, sharp stones itched at his mind. Morgan would have pushed him, toppling him half-over, catching him just before he tumbled head over heels, laughing and apologizing, only to do it again. Johnson even missed that. Why couldn’t his parents have chosen Morgan to learn the family’s history, visiting the “old country”? But Johnson knew the answer to that: Morgan was Momma’s boy—always had been, always would be.

  Behind him, the sudden slamming of a door startled Johnson. He spun, forgetting his fear and common sense in a single heartbeat. The next step caught his toe cleanly, pitching him forward and down. Johnson cried out, his voice echoing up the spiraling stairs, but nothing he could do slowed his momentum. His shoulder struck the stone hard, and he caromed down, whirling in the air. Then his head struck stone, bright-black flash of nothing, and he was swept away.

  • • •

  The water rippled with bright moonlight. Johnson’s line sliced deep through the silvered waves, taut from the weight of sinker and bait. The wind ruffled his hair, and his collar was pulled up tight to ward off the chill. Nothing moved. Nothing in the water. Nothing behind or above him. Nothing but the wind.

  The moonlight was bright, and that should have calmed him, but something wouldn’t let go of Johnson’s guts. Something crawling and cold. He tugged on his fishing pole impatiently, bouncing the bait off the bottom in what he hoped was an enticing dance. Nothing.

  The sound rose slowly, floating on the breeze and fading past like a Mac truck rushing past a window. Then the pitch sharpened, grew slender and glass-like, cutting through his senses and imbedding itself in his heart. A cat? A baby crying?

  Johnson shivered and the fish were forgotten. He yanked the pole up, furiously cranking the handle to wind in the line. The sound rose again and Johnson nearly tossed rod, reel, and bait into the loch to spin away in terror. He had no idea what could make a sound like that, but he wasn’t hanging around to find out.

  With his equipment clutched so tightly his knuckles were whiter than the moonlight, Johnson turned and sprinted for the shed and his uncle’s keep. Something was wrong. His feet moved, and his breath pounded, but the landscape barely changed. Dark shadows reached from the sides of the trail, as if to trip him. Glowing spots of light shimmered in the shadows, slipped to the side, disappeared. Still he ran.

  The outline of the shed appeared suddenly, and he stumbled toward it, reaching for the handle of the door. Before he could reach for it, shadowy forms melted from the trees and the rocks, slipping up close, surrounding him. Johnson shifted his eyes to the right, then the left. His heart slammed up into his throat, and his voice failed.

  Unable to speak, he turned slowly. One, two... he counted and only barely managed not to whisper the rhyme, Tick, Took, Tick, Tock, and on his grubby heels... Twelve. There were twelve dark shapes. Black, with pointed ears and great swollen bodies. Huge. The stench was horrible.

  Johnson leaned against the door of the shed while another figure, slightly smaller, sauntered from the shadows. As it grew closer, he saw that this pig was not black. Not so dark as the others, but somehow more menacing. The moonlight robbed his eyesight of color, and yet, in the gray-white-black chiaroscuro world that swallowed him, he saw that the pig was red.

  It hunkered back on it
s haunches and watched him, seeming to grin.

  “Well,” the pig said, it’s voice sibilant—hissing through lips and across teeth not formed for human speech. “A sight, indeed. Let us raise our voices, my friends, in a coronach for young Master McHenry.”

  “I’m not McHenry,” Johnson blurted. “And... what the fuck is a Corona... Coro...”

  “Coronach—song for the dead.”

  “I’m not dead,” Johnson said, voice quavering, trying to press back close enough to make a grab for the lock on the shed, and gauging the possibility of screaming loud enough to be heard over the wind.

  The twelve great black pigs swayed from side to side, and their voices warbled and puffed, grunted and snuffed, emulating bagpipes in a manner that rippled up and down every bone in Johnson’s body.

  The shapes moved closer, twisting into each other. The grunts and snuffles became louder with each heartbeat. The music, if you could call it that, swelled and faded, echoing and reverberating the length of each of Johnson’s nerves, plucking them as if strung on some bizarre, nightmare harp. The notes shifted and ground into his bones, permeating him, pressing him tighter still to the shed’s door.

  “Ah, such a fine sound,” the red pig crooned. “Such art. Be a good lad and pay them now, McHenry. No pig sings for free.”

  The twelve great black pigs wound round one another, shuffling closer, their eyes gleaming with hunger, their snouts lowered. Drool ran from their jaws, washing down each bulbous chest, dripping to sizzle on the ground. There was no doubt what those twelve foul creatures desired most in payment, and Johnson felt the skin drawing tighter across his bones as he shied away. Then he caught movement in his peripheral vision.

  A goat. Near the fence. His uncle’s goat—though who owned it was of little consequence just now.

  “Take the goat!” bellowed Johnson, waving his arm in the direction of the hapless animal. The shapes swirled for a moment, interrupted. The red one hissed something and the pigs held their ground.

  “You would rather the goat come with us, yes?”

  Johnson shivered, sweat glistening on his forehead. “Yeah, yeah, take the goat.” His eyes were wide, the smell from the shadows now almost unbearable.

  The red pig grunted and they were off.

  A blanket of shadow fell over the goat; it bleated in pain as it was ripped to shreds, bits and pieces flung this way and that. As muscle separated from bone and blood splashed the nearby trees in wide arcs, Johnson slammed his eyes shut and wished he were back home. Even life with Morgan, Pig, Mother, and the spider was preferable to this. At least there he knew what to expect, knew it intimately.

  When he opened his eyes, all that remained of the goat was pristine, glistening white bones, picked so clean that not even a speck of flesh or blood marred them.

  The great dark forms whirled, converged into a lightless mass and returned across the eerie landscape before Johnson could find the common sense to run.

  Too terrified to even blink, Johnson stared, mortified, as the twelve black pigs returned. The red one had disappeared from sight, but now stepped clear of the shadows, watching. When the others had settled in their tight, dark semi-circle about Johnson’s trembling form, the red one spoke once again.

  “Come,” it grunted, “let us sing another coronach for young master McHenry.”

  The otherworldly symphony of snuffling and grunting started again, and the shapes coalesced and closed in at a faster rate than before. Even the sound was more imminent, deeper and louder. Johnson shivered, his eyes darting back and forth amongst the shapes, trying to see some way through.

  Trapped, Johnson suddenly opened his mouth and screamed—a scream that tore at his vocal cords till his voice cracked. The wind whipped it away from his head and carried it off. No way anyone was going to hear his cries over these gales; the sound just blended with the mournful wail of the great swine chorus swaying before him.

  In searching for an opening between the morphing, droning black pig shapes, Johnson spotted the only other living creatures in his field of vision. At the adjoining fence to the neighbor’s yard, several horses grazed, their manes whipping in the wind as they plucked grass from the ground. Two white ones and a dark brown one.

  “Fucking horse!” Johnson pointed and roared. “Take the fucking horse!”

  Scant feet away from him, the shapes stopped and waited for directions from the red pig, some of them dipping close to Johnson, giving him an up-close whiff of their decay, taunting him.

  “You would rather the horse come with us, yes?”

  “Yes, the horse, anything, just leave me the hell alone! What did I do to deserve this?” Tears of confusion streamed down young Johnson’s face, and his back dug into the shed’s rusty lock as he pressed closer to the dilapidated building.

  There was no answer, but the herd spun on dark hooves and thundered to the pasture, surrounding the dark horse and smothering it like a black blanket. The animal screamed in terror, then in pain, and it seemed to Johnson that the beast disappeared even more quickly than the goat.

  Johnson’s mind scrambled. The other horses bolted, whinnying off into the distance.

  Nothing left, Johnson thought. Nothing left now but me.

  He looked to his left, saw the red pig low to the ground, watching the feast wind down, the last scraps of the horse being fought over by three of the slobbering shadow-pigs. The horse’s bones clicked against one another as they collapsed.

  Then his flight reaction finally kicked in. He leaped over the red pig, just avoiding its teeth as it nipped at his heel. It cried out an irritated command in a strangled voice to the others. The three shapes battling over the final piece of the horse looked up, their socketless, beady pig-eyes boring into Johnson’s skull as he took off at full tilt toward the house.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck! Johnson thought as he pumped his legs against the wind, They’re not going to hear me. I know it. Shit!

  Slamming hard into the door at the bottom of the huge house, Johnson pounded with his fists and feet, hollering at the top of his lungs. “Aunt Bonnie! Uncle Michael! Open the door!!”

  Where the hell are they?

  Johnson whipped around, throwing his back against the door. A wave of nausea washed through him. They were coming. The red pig sauntering behind the pack, the twelve black ones issuing their dirge for the dead. It was louder than the wind now, and set Johnson’s fillings to ache in his head.

  No time.

  A quick glance around.

  The tree.

  With a final petulant knock on the door, Johnson turned and was off like a shot.

  Sneakers chewed into bark, bits dropping dead to the ground, hands scrambling for grip on the lower limbs. One word, the sole occupant of Johnson’s mind: Climb!

  He felt the black pigs’ presence directly behind him and closing quickly. He slipped, missed a limb he was reaching for, nearly fell, caught himself, reached again, found his grip, and hauled himself over the largest branch, but not before one of the larger pigs leaped from the ground and tore a six-inch strip of denim and flesh from Johnson’s left leg. He clamped his eyes tight and howled in agony.

  The black pigs jumped at him from below. The red one sat back on its haunches and just watched. It shifted restlessly from hoof to hoof, dead sockets aimed at Johnson’s heart, snout lifted to the wind—gauging the situation carefully. Visions whirled and coalesced in the misty air, half-formed of the pain from his leg and half from sheer terror: Morgan. Mother. Spiders, thousands of spiders dangling from the limbs about him, crawling slowly up the tree’s trunk, spiders dangling on webs from the ears and tusks of the pigs as they rooted about below.

  Johnson did the only thing left to him. He lifted his face to the sky and screamed. Not a mild scream, or a half-throated wail. The sound curled up and launched from his throat as he clutched the branch beneath him tightly enough that the wood cut into his fingers.

  The cry reverberated through the land, bouncing off the house, ricochetin
g through the woods, carving its way through the bush, even rustling the bones of the goat and the horse—freezing time itself in its tracks.

  Nothing moved. The sound owned the moment.

  In a little cabin, less than a half mile down the road, novelist Angus Griswold very suddenly dropped his pen, turned ashen grey, and mouthed a silent curse. “Shite,” he whispered, then, through suddenly cold lips. “Who’s been fool enough t’ be oot on sech a night?”

  Angus grabbed his long coat from the rack and bounded through the wooden door.

  • • •

  The wind picked up, and though the moonlight was as bright as ever, the shadows grew longer with the slow slide to dawn. Johnson gripped the limb tighter, wishing he could rise higher, but he was afraid if he turned he might slip, and if he slipped, he was pig chow.

  Fuck, Johnson thought. No way down. No telling how long until morning, and the first of the damned pigs was snuffling and rooting at the base of the tree, pressing at the roots and damp wood with its hooves, testing for stability. The animal scrabbled uselessly up the trunk of the tree, rumbling deep in its throat.

  Johnson breathed more easily. Fucking things might be able to eat a horse, but they couldn’t climb for shit. Swell. Now all he had to do was wait for morning and hope his aunt or uncle, or someone/thing the pigs could eat would stumble along so he could make a break for it again.

  Below, the red pig had stepped forward again. Its eyes gleamed, and the white of fangs showed clearly from beneath its snout.

  “A final coronach,” it said softly, “for young Master McHenry.”

  The sound rumbled this time. The ground shook with the volume and depth of the bass. The tree trembled, and Johnson clung tightly as the last remnant of autumn leaves and dead twigs tumbled down around him.

  Then the first of the great black pigs lowered its head and pressed its skull tightly to the trunk of the tree. Johnson watched, fascinated. The second black pig joined the first, and then a third, skulls tight to the wood, fatty flesh quivering with the joint effort of pushing, and singing—the deep sorrow of the sound calling to Johnson’s soul. The rest of the twelve pressed in behind, four to the tree and four more to the rear end of the first rank, then four again—leaving only the last pig, centered behind the two middle columns, pressing forward, hooves crunching on the cold, hard ground, trembling, singing-and damned if the fucking tree didn’t shudder.