It Came from Anomaly Flats Read online

  She would never have slept with Toby. Not in high school. Not back then. She’d been graced with looks good enough to put her in a different social strata—which wasn’t saying much necessarily, since even a rabid coyote would be better at parties than Toby was. But even so, Alison did okay for herself. Most of the girls in Anomaly Flats were “homely,” as her mom liked to put it, which really meant “lumpy, distorted, pock-faced, and fat.” Alison was none of those things. She might not have been a beauty queen, but she was good enough to have any guy in the Flats. Was her skin a little looser now than it had been in high school? Sure. Were her teeth and fingertips starting to stain yellow with nicotine? Yeah, okay. Was gravity starting to take its toll? Of course it was. Time was a bitch. But she was still one of the best things going in this town, and she didn’t need to sleep with Toby.

  But there was something about him last night...something about the way he fidgeted with the label on his beer bottle. Something about the way his eyes kept flitting so nervously around the room, like he expected someone to rush him with a knife at any second. Something about the way he tucked his shirt collar over his nose every few minutes and took deep breaths through the cotton. And it wasn’t just the tequila talking when she stumbled her way over to his table and put her hand on his leg.

  Maybe she felt like doling out some charity. Maybe she thought it’d be a laugh.

  Maybe she was lonely.

  Maybe Toby was an easy mark.

  Maybe time was crueler than she wanted to admit.

  She groped around in the darkness for her clothes and followed a tortuous trail of cotton and denim, twisting into her underwear and jeans as she stumbled, hung over and blind. “Can you turn on the light?” she said, annoyed.

  “No light,” Toby said. He had stopped moving, and even though it was practically pitch black in the room, her skin prickled with the feeling that he was watching her.

  “No light? Jesus, are you kidding me?” she grumbled.

  “It’s not wired.”

  “What the fuck?” she said. She tripped putting her legs into her jeans and hit the floor hard on her knees. She cried out in pain; the floor was rough concrete.

  “Where are we?” she whined. She hauled herself to her feet and tugged on the jeans.

  “Someplace safe.”

  Something in Toby’s voice gave Alison pause. She suddenly realized how hot she was. How hot the room was. How stifling. The air was thick and heavy and still. Sweat beaded on her forehead and neck, trickled down the small of her back. “I need to go,” she said, pulling on her shirt and feeling around for her shoes. Her heart was beating faster, and her breath was coming up short. Something was wrong. Something was off.

  “It’s safe here,” Toby insisted. Alison heard the mattress squeak as he sat down on it. He was closer to her than she thought…only a few feet away.

  “Great.” She exhaled with relief as her groping hands fell upon her shoes. She pulled them on, then straightened herself up and reached blindly for the wall. “Where’s the door, Toby?”

  The mattress shifted, and Alison could hear Toby squirm. “The norovirus can live for two weeks on a surface like a doorknob.”

  Alison stopped. “What?”

  “The norovirus is the most frequent cause of stomach flu. It can live for two weeks, and it can live on doorknobs. You have to clean them with disinfectant, or else you can contract the norovirus.” His voice was slowly becoming higher, his pacing faster. “This room is safe, but sometimes things can get in. You have to be so careful.”

  “Okay. Great. Germs are bad.” Alison kept moving, and she finally found the wall, but she pulled her fingers back as soon as they’d touched the surface. She’d expected drywall. Maybe wood paneling. But this wall was made of stone, and warm. The heat of it boiled through her body. “I’m just gonna leave, okay?” She crept as quickly along the wall as she could, feeling the way ahead with her toes, letting her fingertips search against the hard texture of rock. Dawn was approaching, and the gray light began to warm, but most of the room was still shrouded in darkness. She could only just see the outlines of her own hands. She couldn’t see Toby at all.

  “The pollen count is high today,” he whispered, his voice wet with sadness. The mattress squeaked again as he raised himself to his feet. “Mold and sedge, and ragweed, I think.” His voice came closer and closer through the gloom. “It’s not safe outside.”

  Alison quickened her pace. “I’m not allergic,” was all she could think to say, even though of course she was allergic, her sinuses swelled at the thought of pollen, but out there was better than in here. “Toby, please turn on the light. Don’t tell me it’s not wired, it’s not 1842.”

  “There is no light,” he said again, so close now that she felt his hot breath on her neck. “Not in this place.”

  She screamed with surprise as she stumbled forward, falling against the wall, searching desperately for the door. “I just need to go, okay?” she said, her words tripping over the sobs that crawled up her throat. “I won’t tell anyone about…any of this, okay? Just…I just need to go.”

  “But there are microbes everywhere,” Toby said, sounding confused. “I want to keep you safe.”

  “I’m fine.” She blundered on, and her hands slipped over the metal of a door. She gasped in relief. She groped for the doorknob, but as she moved her hands, they slid through the metal, brushing against heavy wood beyond, and she realized the metal wasn’t a door, but a cage. A steel accordion barring her way out of the room. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks, and she whispered, “No, no, no…” as she moved her hands along the gate. She found its terminus, and her fingers closed on something small, and hard, another piece of metal, this one circular, attached to a hard loop.

  A padlock. The size of her fist.

  “Toby, what is this?” she cried, something breaking away in her chest and sending her whole body sliding down the cold stone wall. “Let me out, please. I just want to go home. Please let me just go home.”

  “Not until it’s safe,” he said. The light was intensifying beyond the window now, and she could see his gray silhouette as he moved in closer to where she sat crumpled on the floor. He leaned in close, and she put her hands up, warding him off, but he pushed them away, slowly but firmly, and laid his own hands on her shoulders. He leaned forward and brushed his lips against her forehead. “You’re so nice to me, Alison. You were always so nice to me. I don’t want you to die.” Alison squirmed away from his lips, but he held her tightly, his fingers pressing into the knobs of her shoulders. “Are you scared?” he whispered.

  Alison nodded, her sobs coming too hard and too fast now to make the words.

  Toby pulled her closer, encircling her in a hug as hot and smothering as summer. “I don’t want you to be scared,” he mumbled into her ear, and she could feel the wetness of his own tears and hear the fear that made his voice quiver. “I want you to be safe. I want everyone to be safe.”

  Alison swallowed her tears. “Safe?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Safe from what?”

  “The microbes,” he shuddered, his breath a hot vapor against her ear. “So many germs...so much sickness...Bacillus antracis...Bartonella quintana...Enterococcus faecalis...Clostridium difficile...nature is angry with us, Alison. So angry. It wants to destroy us. I want you to be safe. I don’t want you to die.”

  “I’m not going to die, Toby. I’m just going to go home. I’m not going to die.”

  “You always die,” he whispered. Then he convulsed into sobs that wracked his shoulders, and Alison slid out from his grasp and pushed herself back against the far wall as he twisted and heaved himself into a broken shadow. His wails echoed around the room, and suddenly he was screaming from all sides.

  Alison clapped her hands over her ears. She searched the room with her eyes. The light was growing quickl
y now, and the chamber was beginning to take shape, but everything was still just lumps and forms in the darkness. Suddenly she saw the silhouette of a hunting knife lying on the floor, and she lunged for it, but when she picked it up, it was just a tube sock, limp and moldy in her hand.

  “You always die!” Toby shrieked, clutching his head with his hands and rocking back and forth on his knees. “I want to protect you, but you always die!”

  “I’m not going to die!” she screamed back. “I’m not going to die!”

  The force of her voice seemed to wound him. His crying stopped, and the only sound was his deep, uneven breathing. “Have you ever seen what Yersinia pestis does to a human body?” he asked between deep breaths.

  “No. I—I don’t know. Maybe.” Alison crawled slowly toward the far corner of the room. Her hands stumbled over a bundled lump on the floor, but she couldn’t make it out in the darkness. She stepped over it and slunk forward into the corner, as far away from Toby as the small, hot chamber would allow. “I’m not going to get sick,” she said, trying to make her voice strong.

  “Everyone will get sick,” he replied hollowly. “Everyone will ingest the poison—the bacteria, the viruses, the microbes—everyone will get sick. Everyone will die.” He wiped his nose with his forearm. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

  “I won’t,” she said. She slid her hands along the floor, along the wall, scrabbling desperately for something, anything, and suddenly, a miracle...a chunk of loose stone in the wall. She pried at the edges, ignoring the pinching pain in the nerves of her fingers. “And if I do, there are doctors.” More time, her own voice whispered inside her head, just buy a little more time.

  “Doctors?!” he shrieked. “Doctors don’t know anything!” He leapt to his feet and began slamming his fists on the metal cage. It clattered like thunder in its track. “Doctors don’t know anything! Doctors don’t know anything!”

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Alison screamed, her mind on the verge of snapping into a million pieces. Her fingers slipped on the piece of loose stone, and one of her nails broke off, leaving an oozing trail of blood streaked against the wall.

  “Doctors say they help you by shooting radioactive poison through your body! Doctors are liars! They don’t know anything!” he shrieked.

  “They don’t know anything!” Alison agreed, her voice sounding high and hysterical, even in her own ears. Her fingers scrabbled over the stone, prying and pulling until they were all numb and raw and bloody. It moved slowly, stubbornly. More. More, more, more.

  She saw Toby’s frame, made somehow monstrous and hulking in the shadows, turn away from the door. Turn toward her. Then he sprinted straight at her, so suddenly, so unexpectedly that she screamed again and covered her face with both hands. He skidded to a stop just inches away, his stale breath grown foul in the heat and the anger. “Doctors,” he whimpered pathetically, taking her left hand between both of his own hands and squeezing it tightly, “don’t you see? They make you sick. They put chemicals inside your blood. They make you take penicillin. They inject you with viruses. They’re bad. Alison, doctors are so bad.” He took her hand and placed it on his cheek, nuzzling into her palm. “You can’t ever go to a doctor. Not ever. Promise.”

  Quietly, agonizingly, Alison reached her right hand back to the stone in the wall. She wrapped her fingertips around it. “I promise,” she whispered, her voice choking. Her hand trembled as she pulled and pulled and pulled. “No doctors. I’ll just go home, okay? I won’t go to the doctor.” With a quiet grinding sound, the rock gave, and it fell into her hand. Alison gasped, then tried to bury the sound under a cough. She gripped the rock in her hand, closing it in a fist, her heart hammering in its cage. With a loud grunt, she swung the rock, and her fist made a wide, clumsy arc, but she swung as hard as she could.

  But Toby, heedless, rocked back on his heels and moved away at just the wrong moment, and the stone missed his skull by inches. Alison—horrified, horrified at where she was, horrified at what she was prepared to do, horrified at what would happen next—dissolved into tears, her whole body trembling. Toby walked back toward the door as she gasped for breath in the corner, the rock still clutched tightly in her hand. She heard the door cage rattle as he felt for the padlock, heard metal scrape against metal as he fumbled blindly with the key. The lock popped, and Toby slid open the gate, metal grinding against stone.

  Now! her brain screamed. Now, now, now!

  She launched herself to her feet and shrieked a horrible, desperate cry as she sprinted across the chamber, the rock held high above her head. She lunged at the shape of Toby, but her feet struck the bundled lump in the middle of the room, and she was falling, falling. She hit the stone floor hard, first her chest, then her head. The air exploded out of her burning lungs, and the whole black world tilted and spun. The rock went skittering off into the darkness, and Toby’s words fell on her like a net.

  “You’re safe in here. Safe from all the microbes. You’re always safe in here. I’ll come back for you when it’s clean. It’s clean in here, but it’s not clean out there. There are germs and bacteria and viruses, but I’ll find a way. I’ll make the world so clean, Alison, and you’ll live forever. You’re a good person. I want you to live forever.” He pushed open the door with a sharp wooden squeal, and more of the dim light rushed into the room.

  Alison blinked slowly through the doorway and saw a line of monstrous teeth jutting up through the grass. She blinked again, and the teeth lost their edges and became smooth, time-worn gravestones.

  “Stay here until it’s safe,” Toby said. “I’ll come back for you when it’s clean.” He closed the cage behind him, the padlock clicking into place like death’s clock.

  She whispered his name, but the chamber swallowed the sound.

  Toby peered sadly at her though the gate, his fingers hooking through the holes and gripping the metal tightly. “All the nice people should live,” he said, and then he gave her a crooked little smile. “All the nice people are here. I’ll bring more nice people, too.” Then he swung the door shut and locked it from the outside.

  Alison was alone.

  She pushed herself up to her hands and knees and ran a hand along her forehead. It came away smeared with blood. The sun had broken the horizon, and the room was quickly filling with morning light. The chamber seemed to blossom around her, the gray shapes and silhouettes melting into hard lines and colors. The mattress took shape, dingy and old, yellowed with age and frayed around the edges. As she watched, the room split like an amoeba, and she blinked hard until her field of vision swam back into one unified canvas. The stone walls soaked in the sunlight and warmed to a rosy gray, and the room’s wet heat intensified. Alison pushed the dripping hair from her eyes and stumbled onto shaky feet. She made her way tremulously to the door. She grasped the padlock with hands that shook so badly the whole gate rattled. She pulled at the lock, but it gave no sign of weakness. She gripped the cage and jerked it back, grunting, sweating, beyond the point of tears…desperate, angry, empty. But no matter how hard she tugged at the cage, no matter how hard she rammed her shoulders into its metal lattice, and no matter how much breath she lost screaming, the gate refused to yield.

  She sank to the floor, her chest rising and falling, rising and falling, her blood pumping through her veins, surging against her cells, desperate for somewhere to go. But there was nowhere to go. She knew what sort of prison held her now, knew it from the moment the gravestones had appeared beyond the doorway. An empty crypt at Whetstone Cemetery.

  An almost-empty crypt.

  She stared, dazed, across the chamber. There was the mattress; there was the sock; there was the rock she had torn her fingers apart to pry loose, and had wasted. And there, to her left, a lonely island in a sea of stone, the bundled lump that had ruined her chance. She could see easily now, in the morning light, that the thing had a shape, a di
stinct and familiar architecture, the recognition of which snuffed some sputtering flame in her so that she went dark and quiet on the inside.

  The thing on the floor was a bundle of corpses—three of them, all female, withered and dried, emaciated and gone to grave from starvation, or dehydration, or maybe both. Three other nice people...three other good girls locked away for their own safety from the horrors of nature, not to be let out until the world was clean. Here, rotting so long that they didn’t even smell anymore.

  She saw the pale white marks on the wall beneath the window where they had tried to claw their way up. She saw dried, rusty flecks of blood where they’d worked to pry the gate from the stone. She saw clumps of hair, loose and ragged, blonde and brunette strings of candy floss that had fallen out of three different scalps as each girl before her starved all the way to death and shriveled slowly up into herself.

  Alison looked up and stared, dazed, into a ray of sunshine that pierced the room through the high window. She saw millions of tiny particles floating lazily through the bright column of light. “Microbes,” she whispered. And then she laughed, long, and loud, and full, because it was all so funny, though she did not know why, and she could not stop.

  Aberration

  When I think of my father, I think of baseball. The two things are inexorably linked, wholly inseparable, twisted together in my mind like the snakes of a caduceus.

  He lived baseball. He ate and drank it. He breathed it in. He wanted so desperately to play, and he even tried out for the minors a few times, but he couldn’t keep himself clean, and he shot his dreams away. Even so…the scuffle of cleats, the crack of the bat, the hard, crisp pop of a ball smacking into a leather glove. These were the things that excited my father.

  It wasn’t my mother. It wasn’t me. It was baseball.