It Came from Anomaly Flats Read online

  When a strip of skin peeled away with it, I screamed. And I ran.

  I ran back under the fence. The wires bit into my skin and drew blood, but I hardly felt it. I ran blindly out into the lot, past the truck, into the woods, just running, running, trying to get away.

  The search team found me a few hours later. My mother had woken up and found me missing. She called the sheriff in hysterics, and he finally agreed to send some officers around to my father’s usual haunts. When they couldn’t turn him up, my mother pointed them toward Gamma Field. When they found the truck, they called in the search party, and that’s how they found me, huddled and crying against a tree.

  I got sick for a while after that. I had headaches every day, bad ones, and I couldn’t keep any food down for a while. My white blood cells dropped to extraordinarily low levels, and I couldn’t walk for weeks. I have some soft tissue that was damaged beyond repair; I still have a limp, and my mouth twitches constantly now. But I guess I’m lucky. Radiation poisoning can be so much worse.

  A few days after they found me, another team in HAZMAT suits went in and filled the hole back in. They used dirt again. It’s still cheaper than concrete.

  No one ever saw my father after that. No one really expected to.

  He’s down there somewhere. Melted into the rest of them. And it’s ironic, because sad as it is, I guess my father got what he always wanted.

  He finally became an Aberration.

  The Lurchwood Bandits

  There is a certain story, and this is the way it’s told:

  One night, some years back, three bandits found themselves sharing a fire in the darkness of the Lurchwood. They didn’t know each other, nor did they owe one another fealty of any sort, but they happened to cross paths in this place, and, being of similar vocation, there passed between them some mutual understanding that allowed them to share community, natural loners though they were.

  Each bandit had arrived in this place for a different reason. The first bandit had recently succeeded in relieving a band of wedding travelers from the burden of their jewels. The wedding having gone late into the night, he had pushed deep into the Lurchwood, buried the stolen jewels in a memorable sort of spot nearby, and had settled down to his fire to pass the night.

  The second bandit was in the throes of a great plan. He envisioned a trap that might be sprung along the forest path: a washed-out gulley, a broken-slat footbridge, a felled tree, or some other such barrier he could construct that would give him good cause to make wanderers’ packs a little lighter. Here he was in the woods, searching out favorable locations, when he came across the crackling fire of the first bandit and bid him a cutthroat’s good evening.

  The third bandit would not betray his reasons for prowling through the forest, no matter how he was plied, but this was often the way with rogues, and after a short time, the other bandits stopped pressing the matter.

  Three bandits in the Lurchwood Forest. And what a curious trio they made.

  The hour being already late, there was no mention of supper, for that time had already passed. With no fresh-killed animal to skin, clean, spit, roast, chew, swallow, and bury by the creek, a sort of tense quietness formed among them, each glancing at the other, his hand never too far from the knife at his belt, for they say there is no honor among thieves, and though it is not entirely true—there is a code, there is always a code—it is a weak sort of thing, and honor is easily disturbed.

  Thus situated around the fire with nothing to busy their hands and only dark thoughts to hasten their minds, the three bandits fell into a terse sort of conversation. Not wanting to give much of himself away, each bandit spoke in short, callous whispers and cautious nods, and in this manner, over the course of the first hour, they slowly navigated the stilted topics of meteorology, economy, and craft.

  It was during the second hour that mercy fell in the form of a dented tin flask produced from the pocket of the second bandit.

  “Here! Share that, then,” demanded the first bandit, licking his lips hungrily as his companion drank deeply from the tin.

  “Yes, be charitable,” said the third bandit, his voice cold and gruff. “This fire’s a paltry thing, and I’d not shun a bit of warmth.”

  The second bandit hesitated, but thought better of denying two such practiced rogues a simple pleasure, and he passed around the flask. Each man drank down a mouthful and more. Thus lubricated, their jaws found the way to speech somewhat easier, and they began to speak more freely, so that even if they couldn’t be mistaken for companions, one might not think them wary, either.

  As the night grew late and the moon bled slowly down toward the edge of the sky, and when the flask had turned up its last fiery drop, the conversation turned toward darker words.

  “I knew a man, back in days gone, said there was no such thing as a perfect murder,” said the first bandit, finding himself well in his cups, for though the stranger’s bootleg was short in quantity, it was long in demons. “What do you fellows think of that?”

  “I know plenty of killers who haven’t swung for it,” said the second bandit. With more than a touch of pride, he added, “Don’t see my feet dangling, do you?”

  “That doesn’t make it flawless,” insisted the first. “Not getting caught, that’s a stroke of luck, more times than not. But the perfect murder...that’s a canny thing.”

  “It’s art,” the third corrected him smartly.

  The second bandit snorted. “No difference between the perfect kill and the perfect escape,” he said, crossing his arms.

  In the hour that followed, the bandits laid forth the distinctions of the impeccable murder. It should raise no alarms, they decided, nor a suspicion on any part. There should be found no body, no weapon, no evidence of wrongdoing. The perfect murder shouldn’t be recognized as a murder at all, not at first. A person gone missing, so-and-so run off. To carry out a truly exquisite kill, the victim would simply have to disappear, as if she never existed at all. And the killer wouldn’t need an alibi, in the most impeccable condition, for no murderer would ever be sought, and so no excuse would ever have to be made.

  “That is the perfect scenario,” said the first bandit with an air of finality. “To sweep through a life like a ghost through the air.”

  The second bandit agreed. “I’m coming ’round to your way of thinking. No doubt that’s the greatest sort of kill.”

  “You’d need one thing more,” warned the third bandit, the fire casting strange shadows across his brow. “You’d need no conscience of the thing, for a man’s own guilt is oft his undoing.”

  The other bandits laughed at this, and heartily, for it was well received. “Of course, a conscience must be avoided at all cost,” said the first, hailing the fire.

  “No place for guilt among masters of the land,” put in the second.

  The third bandit raised his hand as a king before his subjects. “Brothers—if I may call you brothers, for we’ve shared fire and drink and a certain hospitality familiar only to our kind—I should like to propose a challenge, of sorts. An honest game among dishonest men.”

  “Speak on,” laughed the first bandit heartily, “I’ve a taste for some such excitement at present.”

  “Aye, and I’ll go along,” nodded the second. “Name the thing, and let’s have it out.”

  “My challenge, brothers, is simply this: we each fancy ourselves as right and reasonable experts now on the notion of a flawless kill. Let us pitch it all in, then, and see where this hubris may lead. Let us all endeavor to complete a perfect slaughter, and see whose kill is the cleanest.”

  “A thrilling idea,” the first bandit said, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “More so for me than for you two swindlers, I’d wager, for I’m undoubtedly the destined victor, but a thrilling idea all the same.”

  “You have my ear,” sa
id the second, leaning in closer to the fire as if for fear of being overheard by the trees. “But what’s to make the wager worthwhile? Surely the right to brag among thieves is a reward that needs no earning.”

  The teeth of the third bandit gleamed in the firelight as he stretched his lips into a cold and terrible gap that perhaps was meant to resemble a smile but fell far short of the mark. “Do I mistake myself, or have you a sack of gleaming victuals buried in the nearby hereabouts?” he asked of the first.

  The thief’s face drained white, and he seemed not to notice the tremble his hands took on as they rattled about his knees. He opened his mouth, but hesitated to speak, and the pause cost him everything.

  “Holding tight to the purse strings?” the second bandit asked, casting the thief a wicked smile.

  “Speak as if you wouldn’t!” the first bandit shot back. Then he rolled his shoulders and sat up straighter on his log, though the effort and the drink nearly took him backward into brush. He placed a hand to his hip, where his tired knife sat sheathed but thirsty. “What if I have got such a thing hidden by? It’s buried somewhere the likes of you wouldn’t never sniff out.”

  “Undoubtedly,” conceded the third bandit. “But if you’d place your keen abilities above our own, perhaps you’d put it up in a wager.”

  “My jewels!” the first bandit cried. “Right enough I’d have no fear of losing them to the likes of you, clumsy cads that you are. But what’s the sense in me being the only one who puts up a thing or two for claim?”

  “Wager the jewels,” the second thief said, shaking out the dented flask and stuffing it back into his pocket, “and I’ll wager my absence. Should fate unfairly intervene and cause me to lose the game, I’ll keep clear the Lurchwood, never to lay hand on one single soul such that walks its paths, on my vow.”

  The first bandit snorted. “And what might you be, the world’s most splendid thief for whose absence we should all scrape and shudder?”

  “I do myself no small way of good,” he insisted, crossing his arms.

  The first bandit growled, but after a few seconds of thought, he gave a quick nod, and the wager was accepted. “And what about you?” he asked, leaning into the fire and peering into the black eyes of the third bandit. “What’ll you put up, then?”

  “I put up myself,” said the man, and a moon’s shadow crossed his face just then, and a hideous bit of timing it was.

  “What do you mean by that?” the second bandit demanded. “You, too, will keep clear of the forest upon a loss?”

  “Upon a loss,” the man clarified, “I will slit my own throat from ear to ear and water this ground with my own blood and feed the Lurchwood scavengers with my own flesh and marrow.”

  A quiet, deep and thick, fell upon the three just then. “Surely you don’t mean us to believe…” the first bandit started.

  “Any more than I’m meant to believe you’ll put up your jewels,” the third countered.

  “I will! I swear by it!”

  “And you. Should I more be convinced that you’ll never step foot in the Lurchwood again?”

  “My vow is solemn and strong.”

  “Then let mine be just as much, and more. If one of you should best me in the ways of murder made perfect, I’ll cut my own neck and fall forever before the champion of the game.”

  “All right, then,” the second bandit said. He spat into the fire, and with a sharp hiss, his part in the thing was sealed. He glanced sidelong at the first bandit, who, by any sane standards, had the most to lose in his sack of jewels, presuming the third bandit filled his own sack with naught but empty air.

  The first bandit made a show of considering the offer at play, but at long last, he said, “I’m well for it.” He, too, spat into the flames.

  The third bandit nodded solemnly. He removed the knife from his own belt and slid the jagged-sharp blade across his hand. A line of blood spurted to life in his palm, and he licked it up with one long, strident swipe of his tongue. He let the blood mingle with his spit, and this offensive mixture he let stream into the fire. The flames leapt and roared, and the bargain of the three was done.

  The rules were simple and took little time in devising. Each player would have his own night to complete his task, and no one man could fashion his method off another’s. After the third night, when all three bandits had had their say, they would convene a final time and suss out the kill best done, by way of something like a committee. “What if we can’t come to a common name?” the first bandit inquired.

  “If two of three don’t well match a name,” said the third, “then we all three of us forfeit what’s placed on the line.” The other two agreed to this whole-heartedly, for each was certain beyond doubt that he would be the winner, and to such a degree that there could be no cause for dissent.

  The next night belonged to the first bandit. The other two tended the fire while the first made his preparations. He strode through the trees, making a fine show of deep consideration, until he lit upon the thing that would suit his plan best: a thick and sturdy branch, not far gone over from green, strong and resilient and capable, aye. He cut it loose from its mooring and set to work, shearing the twigs, peeling the bark, and honing his knife’s edge against the wood until one end of the branch narrowed into a fine point, sharp enough to draw blood at a touch. “Build up that fire, brothers,” he said with a sly grin late in the night as he hefted his stake and set off into the black wood. “I’ll need it crackling to a squeal on my return.”

  The bandit crept through the forest, knowing that on a night as bright as that one, he’d have no trouble stalking upon a pair of clouded lovers, and indeed, he walked for not half of a mile from the fire when he spied two silhouettes huddled close against the world. Ah, the bandit thought, while the others might be saddled with worry on how to manage one, I’ll make a quick dispatch of two, and my victory will be all the more ensured.

  He leapt out from behind his tree and, with a quickness belying his age, he plunged the wooden fang deep into the chest of the young man. A lazy fountain of steaming blood spurted forth from the wound, and the boy’s eyes took on the particular size and sheen of silver dollars. He fell without a noise, the poor blessed child, but his companion, a pretty young thing not long out of pigtails, saw the great horror and felt the warm press of blood streaming against her own chest, and she screamed. The bandit wrenched his stake from the young man’s heart, and though it caught just there betwixt sternum and rib, he managed to tug it free with some effort, for he was a lean and hungry bandit, made strong by his rough way of life. The branch came out slick with blood and gore, and the girl screamed all the louder for having it thus revealed, but the bandit made a quick end to it all by jamming the thing into her throat. The scream curdled to a quiet, choking gurgle, and bubbles formed against the splinters lodged deep in her neck. The girl’s eyes rolled up into her head, and the bandit pulled his spear from her flesh, and she fell, blood spraying in a crimson fan. Her body slumped against her lover’s cooling corpse, and as soon as it began, the awful thing was done.

  Some minutes later, the bandit reappeared at the fire, dragging the girl with one hand and the boy with another. The stake, he’d tucked carefully into the boy’s trousers, so it mightn’t be lost among the brambles. The bandit stopped at the edge of the circle, breathing hard, and he dropped the ankles from his hands. “Hail, brothers! You’ve built up the fire to a pretty plum, and I thank you for that. See! I bring forth not one perfect kill, but a pair!”

  The second bandit snorted at the bodies, scraped and tangled as they were from their halting journey through the brush. “There’s nothing clever in it to my eye,” he said.

  The first bandit smiled. “Just wait, brother, just wait.” He bent down and pulled the bloodied stake from the boy’s trousers and held it up to the reaching flames. “See how I add one more log of my own to t
he fire.” He dropped the weapon into the blaze, and it quickly caught, the drying blood sizzling and sputtering before giving way to the smoke and cinder of Lurchwood ash.

  “Admirable,” the third bandit said, watching the tool of murder disintegrate into soot and air. “And what of the bodies?”

  The first bandit tapped a finger against his temple to indicate the considerable strength of his reason. “Bodies aren’t so strong and hard as wood,” he said. He picked up the boy’s body and dragged it forward into the circle. “Now you see the need for a fire made hot; for what’s a human form but cold meat ripe for a sizzle and melt?” He heaved the body up onto the bonfire, and for a moment, it seemed as if the weight and density of the boy might smother the flames. But the fire found itself once more, and soon the skin was crackling, the eyes bursting to milk, and the air was filled with the singular aroma of meat on a spit.

  Once the boy had burned down a bit, the bandit picked up the girl and threw her on the fire as well, so she came to an uncomfortable rest upon the sinews of her love. “Oughtn’t you two wait for the wedding night!” the bandit cackled as he wiped his hands on his shirt and delighted in his admirable kill. The other two bandits were silent as the meat roasted and the marrow bubbled in its bones. The dead flesh crackled to a charred black and began to flake away into the ash. The first bandit was all but assured victory.

  But before long, the fire began to die out, and no fresh wood could revive it. A sickness lurched within the bandit, for though the flesh had mostly burned away, two skeletons yet remained, their bones blackened, yes, but still clinging to sinews, still laden with meat, still very much existent. The second bandit laughed to see such panic in his companion’s eyes, and the third only watched darkly from beneath the brim of his hat.