Speaker 1: The party was two weeks ago. I stole a few
beers when the adults went looking, and shared them with
Lucy Sitkins away from the crowd. She drank hers greedily
as we sat beneath the bow of a low tree,
speaking low so no passers by could hear. Every time
we whispered, we tilted our faces a little closer and closer.
There was a moment when I thought she was going
to rest ahead on my shoulder as she told me
about how she wanted to be a vet, and my
heart skipped as they debated, putting my arm around her waist.
It was all cut short when her father, Larry, stood
in front of everyone in the party and forced the
beer can down his throat. I didn't see it. I
only heard the cries that had us both sitting upright
beneath the branches. By the time we got back to
the party, the adults escorting the kids away and ambulance
sirens were fast approaching. Dad was there, and he told
me to take my little sister home. The grim and
frightening lock on his face made me forget Lucy and
the smell of beer on her breath. I try hard
to remember if she ate from the barbecue. Sometimes I
think she didn't. Other times I swear I can picture
a biting into a burgher, and it's so vivid I
think it must be a memory. It's moved. Either way,
I'll never see her again. I felt a little gross
when I went into school the next day and asked
round if the stories about her dad were true. When
my father got home the night of the party, he
hadn't spoken to me or maum. He just went to
bed and didn't tell us what happened. Come morning, I
saw some of the older kids by the school gates
and overheard them talking. The details made my stomach churn,
but I wanted to know more. I didn't want to
act all excited about something terrible, but this felt by
the kind of thing people we'd be talking about for years.
Larry Sitkins had swallowed a beer can, shoved it down
his throat like a damn bog and strict wreath in
an egg. At least that's how one kid described it
to me. There was more, of course. He'd praised Satan
before slitting his own throat, got and drunk and fallen
hard onto the ground while chugging a beer tried to
catch the can mid air. Some one had punched him midsip.
There were lots of variations and what happened and how,
but there were only theories that got turned into rumors.
A lot of us were just trying to make sense
of it. Larry was a pretty run of the milk guye.
He was a landscaper who made lame jokes at kid's
birthday parties. He was about as nondescript as they came,
at least as far as a bunch of teenagers concerned.
We got halfway through the day before mister Stroup shut
the bleachers on his neck. He was in front of
the cheerleaders. There were ambulances again, crying girls and boys,
and even some of the teachers. Most of them just
looked confused, except for mister Stroup. I managed to catch
a glimpse of him as I jogged over to find
out what all the screaming was about. He looked empty
of all thoughts and emotions, and his head sat at
a crooked angle. I figured that was how people must
look him, and dead. But apparently he'd been like that
during the act. He'd walked up, perched his neck between
the slatted benches and hid the remote button to slide
the bleachers closed. Whole time, he was just sl like Jordan's,
stupid looking even as the metal mechanism crunched vertebrae and cartilage.
I later learned Larry had been like this too when
he killed. He was getting ready to pop the tab
on a fresh beer when he simply stopped, looked up
to the sky, then forced the whole thing down his
throat in a single, world shattering moment. I didn't know
it back then, but there were others just like Larry
had missed the strobe. A barista in a coffee shop
steamed half the skin on her arm while keeping eye
contact with the guy in the drive through. A doctor
had the local clinic used the biopsy needle to inject
air straight into his own heart. Lots of people shot themselves,
but not one of them aimed for the head. That's
a weird touch if you think about it. These people
obliterated their torsos or limbs with high powered rifles at
point blank range, no reason, offered just a vacant expression
as they deleted bits to their bodies and left nothing
but ragged stumps. There was no school the next day,
which was the only real clue I got about how
panicked the local authorities were. Wouldn't be long before the
national authorities joined in on the panic too, but that
would come later that morning. My parents left the house
at nine thirty for a meeting at the town hall,
and they dropped me off at my grandma's on the way.
I waited for them to leave before I told Grandma
I was heading out. It was a hot day, and
she only nodded her approval as she sat reading with
my sister. She hated seeing me play video games and
always encouraged me to go make my own adventures outside.
I had no plans, didn't even want to see any
of my friends. I thought a lot about missus Strabe's
face as I crossed empty farmer's fields and walked into
the woods. I'd been to an open casket funeral once.
It was for Father Denis, who'd christened me as a baby,
not that I remember anything about him except his stony
face resting gently in the soft white folds of his
casket's interior. That seemed so long ago and so sterile
that the thought of it was a bit sad, but
not a whole lot else. But mister Strap's face had
frightened me, with his swollen lips and bulging eyes, alive
one moment and dead the next, with only pain to
separate the two. And yet he looked so bored, hanging
there from his own broken neck, still wearing those ridiculous
red shorts he always had on no matter the weather.
It took time to recognize that seeing a dead body
had freaked me out. I felt like it shouldn't have
messed me up as much as it did, And I
guess that's why there was a little bit of anger
mixed in with all those thoughts in my head. It's
also why I pushed on through the woods until the
trees began to thin, marching in the humid summer heat,
until my t shirt was soaked and my legs ached.
I wanted to feel tired, wanted it so the only
thing I could think of with my throbbing handstrings and
sunburnt forehead. It ended when I reached the tracks. Shaggy
rocks and boulders rose steeply on the opposite side. Only
other ways to go were left into town or right
into a dark tunnel, its mouth bristling with ivy. At
least the air coming from It was cold, so I
took a second to stand and catch my breath, feeling
the sweat cool and evaporate as the wind billowed gently
out of the darkness. I wasn't stupid, though I paid
close attention in case I heard the sound of any
passing trains, and when I didn't hear one, I raced
off the tracks as quick as I could. It honked
as it came past. Another day, I might have worried
that I was going to get in trouble over playing
in the rails, but all I could really think of
was the thing I'd seen lying by the tracks. It
had been lit up by the train as it came
roaring out of the tunnel, not far from the entrance.
In the strange silence after the train had gone, there
was only the dim light of the setting sun to
see inside the tunnel, and everything looked the same over clothes,
broken bottles, discarded crates, trash strewn around wherever it found space.
But I knew what I'd seen in the harsh white
light of the train's passing beam, and it was a
hell of a lot more than garbage. I'd seen a man.
He was lying face down. There had even been a hand,
bright and pale like the moon in the night sky.
I was sure of it. I didn't know what to do,
not right away. I was afraid and didn't want to
go inside. But I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen anything either.
I tried shouting to them if some one down there
heard me. They gave no sign of It. Wasn't until
I stepped into the darkness and let my eyes adjust
that I confirmed there really was a man lying down
in there. He was draped across the tracks, and he
didn't have any legs, and judging by the wather blood
stains had turned the collar brown. He'd been there for
a while. Hell, half a dozen trains must have gone
right over him, thinking he was just an odd bit
of cloth or something that if they saw anything at
all in that time it dried out a little. He
wasn't a mummy or anything, but the blood on his
stumps and coming out of his mouth looked more like
jelly than corn syrup. I was sobbing by this point,
crying hard as I tried to make sense of what
I was meant to do, while also feeling like all
of this was terribly unfair on me. There was a
moment where I could almost feel myself wanting to be
a kid again, a proper one, little one who doesn't
have to do things, one who can get upset and
scream and run away. I'd only just started to appreciate
how badly I'd been messed up by seeing mister Stroup,
and then God went and dropped that kind of nightmare
into my lap, teeth stained black with blood, and open
eyes that looked at nothing. It felt like a nightmare,
not just the moment with a body, but everything else too,
Everything since that beer beneath the tree had felt like
it wasn't part of reality anymore, but nightmares end. I
was outside, gasp vomiting, crying my eyes out when I
heard something shuffle in the tunnel i'd just run out of.
Part of me thought that a sound must mean someone
was alive and close by, and that meant I wasn't alone.
Another part of me thought something else. Entirely, it was
the part of me that took over and stopped me
crying and making any more noise. My mouth turned dry
as a desert, and all of a sudden I was
no longer hot all over, but cold, freezing cold, and
my legs were back pedaling away from the tunnel with short,
quiet steps. The noise persisted. It was the shuffle of
something getting dragged over gravel and old plastic bags. It
had a rhythm to it that was slow. The word
that springs to mind is one I got taught in
biology class a long time ago. Commotion. Something down there
was moving. He was moving towards me. It sounded slow
and broken and feeble. But that didn't matter. Somehow, even
though I knew it wasn't completely insane, I just knew
what was going to come out of that tunnel. I
knew it the way the rabbit knows the wolf, or
the hand knows the spider. But still, when I saw
him crawl out of the dark and into the light,
I screamed so loud i'd have a sore throat for
the next few days. It was the man from the tracks,
and even though he moved, he was not alive. I
tried to telling myself that he couldn't have been dead,
because only living things move, but that was nonsense. He
dragged his bloody, legless torso with one working arm while
the other lay dis gated across his back. The fingers
of both hands curling as he heaved himself along, and
that face, that same empty gawking expression. Just like mister Strobs.
He wasn't alive. He was a dead thing, and that
made him some kind of impossible monster. I turned and ran,
screaming through the trees. Whole time I could only think
of the thing that was behind me and was trying
to close the distance. It didn't matter that it was slow,
didn't matter that I ran for over an hour, didn't
even matter that I wasn't sure if I knew my
way home or even running in the right direction. All
that mattered was putting one foot in front of the
other until there was nothing left inside me. Time turned funny,
seconds moved into strange staccatos, until eventually I collapsed on
legs made of rubber. Then I dragged myself into an
old hollow tree to hide, and that was where I
lost all consciousness. When I woke up, the sun had
set and it was dark. I vomited some, then found
my way back to the beaten path and stumbled achingly
through the cold night air back to my grandma's farmhouse.
Dad was sick. My Grandma screamed something to this effect
at me as she held down his right arm while
my mother tried to grip his head in her bloods
like hands. He resisted with dumb determination. My little sister cried,
watching the scene like a shell shock soldier. There was
grunting and sobbing, and suddenly a bang. Then a puff
of plaster rained down onto my head, and everyone began
to yell and shriek. A little louder had a gun.
That was what my grandma was trying to wrestle out
of his hands. She held a knife, and that's why
there was blood, but I didn't know whose it was.
I wasn't sure what she was planning to do with
it until she tried to use it to cut his
trigger finger off. The scuffle resulted in another bang, and
a window exploded outwards. I finally ducked and grabbed my sister,
rushing her into another room, but there were three more explosions,
and each one broke something inside me. By the time
I heard my name being called, I was half deaf
and twitching at things that weren't there. My sister pleaded
for me to come back, her pink fingers grasping for
me as I put her down, but my mother was
shouting for me to come help, and I wanted to
keep my family safe. She told me to get something
to tie that up while she and my grandma used
both arms to pin each of his wrists to the ground.
His hands bled weakly as my Grandma used every inch
of her strength to simultaneously pin him and stop the floe.
He thrashed beneath them. His movements languid and easy, but
I could tell it was a struggle for them to
keep him down. As I ran to the garage, I
saw the gun on the ground with Dad's severed finger
near by. I kicked it out of reach before returning
shortly with the rope my grandma used to tie the
garage store open during hot summers. Mam tied the knots.
My Grandma tried talking to my dad, and it was
one of the few times in my life I saw
her as the woman who had once changed his diapers.
She was so soothing and tender, and her constant muttering
that everything would be okay seemed so fragile. She was
scared for him. Ma'am just did everything in a power
to wrestle some safety out of the moment. Only once
his arms were secure behind his back, and she was
confident he wasn't breaking free. Did she stand back, put
her hands behind her, and then immediately hunch forward and
sob call an ambulance, my grandma told me as she
walked into the other room to get my sister. Before
I got on the phone, I briefly hugged my mom,
who didn't seem to notice. I risked a glance of
my dad, who didn't look at anything at all. Dead
eyes glazed vacantly at nothing as he fought to free
his arms. When he finally looked at me, it was
no different to how he looked at the foe or
the wall. I didn't go to school the next day either.
Some men from the government came to take Dad in
the morning, and Mam ordered me to my room. When
they arrived. She asked them a thousand questions, but their
replies were short and stern. All I managed to over here,
we were a few muffled phrases, Please stay put, ma'am,
someone will be in contact with you. Shortly, when I
ran to my window to look at them walking down
the drive, I saw that they all wore masks. One
of them saw where I was staring. I thought he
was going to wave, but he didn't. There was a
biohazard symbol on their clothes. After they left, Mom focused
on making dinner and looking after my sister. She kept
me close the whole time, barking anxious questions whenever I
tried to leave the room. Where are you going? Just
the bathroom? Oh okay. Then it felt like she was
painting normality into tissue paper, desperately afraid of breaking it.
I tried my best to seem like I was okay.
Last thing I wanted was to feel like some ki
who needed his mommy. We mostly just talked about mundane things,
but it was hard for both of us. The only
time the atmosphere seemed to change was when she asked
me something strange halfway through dinner. Did your father when
you both went hunting a few months back? What did
you do to the meat? I don't know. I shrugged.
Dad took care of all that. Why the men who
took him asked a whole bunch of questions about it. Then,
with a fragile smile, have you done your homework? They
told me your teacher would send you some assignments online.
Just like that, The thin pretense of normality came back,
but I was left with a wriggling feeling in my stomach.
It didn't go away as the evening marched on. In fact,
it only grew worse until I found my self in bed,
rolling from side to side and thinking about Mum's question.
The men who bundled Dad off hadn't seen like the
kind who messed around. They must have had some idea
of what was going on, So why ask about the meat?
On some level, I knew the moment she'd asked me
why it was relevant. Dad loved to hunt, and he
always brought meat to parties and barbecues. Wasn't it obvious
he'd brought something back from the woods, hadn't he? I
hadn't gone hunting for a long time, nearly three months.
Every time he'd asked, I'd refused, and I think he
knew why. On the very last trip, Dad shot three deer,
but we only took back two, one for us, one
for the town barbecue. The thirty shot, but we left
it on the forest floor because by the time it
had died, I was pale and shaking, and even Dad
couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice. Neither of
us had expected the deer to stand on its hind
legs and walked towards us like a man. Its gait
a heavy, broken thing as it lumbered over the forest floor,
and it had kept coming even after Dad shot it
six more times. One of the rounds struck it in
the head, but still it shambled forward on two misshaven
legs as its brains painted the ferns in pestilent gray.
When it finally fell, even Dad had gone pale, and
in the silent aftermath, I had to go off and
be sick in a bush. After that, we cut the
trip short. Dad walked me gently back to the truck
where the two deer we shot and trusted earlier that
day lay waiting in the pick up. I don't think
either of us even remembered they were there until later.
He'd still asked me if I wanted to head out
with him each weekend, but he never seemed surprised when
I made some excuse. The only time we talked about
it was not long before the barbecue, when he drove
me to school one day. He didn't deal with it
head on. He skirted the topic. Sometimes deer get sick,
he told me a little like old folks do. Remember Grandpa,
he got real scary towards the end, inn't he. Well,
deer get sick too, but we don't have to worry
same way. You couldn't catch what Grandpa had, Well, we
can't catch for the deer have us. Humans are safe,
just an uncomfortable part of nature. It had come out
of the blue, or at least it seemed like it.
I figured it was Dad's way of trying to get
me back on board with hunting. I knew he liked
me going with him. I'd liked it too, at least
until I saw that deer walk towards me on two legs.
But lying in my bed that night, after Mom had
gone to sleep, I started to wonder if maybe he
hadn't really been trying to convince me, Maybe he carried
a little doubt in himself about something he was gonna do.
What if he'd been trying to convince himself it was okay, too, dear?
I tried remembering what they'd been like. I hadn't shaked
them after we got in the truck. Why would I
seemed as normal as any others as we tied them down.
But I hadn't really been paying attention either. I'd been
hunting since I was seven. Helping Dad was automatic to me,
and to top it off, I hadn't known what I
was meant to be looking for. I squirmed beneath the
sheets and tried so hard to remember every detail of
that trip. Most of all, I tried to remember what
the first oh dear Dad had shot were like. They'd
gone down so quick, they'd seemed normal, But Grandpa had
been sick with Alzheimer's a long time before he got scary,
and I had to figure the same could be true
for those deer. Who was to say the one on
hind legs was the only sick creature in the woods
that day. I couldn't have forced these thoughts out of
my head with a crowbar. At some point, I accepted
I wasn't getting any sleep that night, and I settled
down to torture myself some more, until I realized it
didn't have to be that way. Dad had an old
freeze in the shed, and he sometimes kept meeting there,
not for long, and usually not for eating. He'd use
it for things he'd wanted to skin, or tried to
make a trophy out of it, which he rarely did,
since Mom didn't like that kind of thing in the house.
But if the deer weren't in the freezer, in the
kitchen or the garage, then they might he'd be in
the shed. And if I did open up that chest
and saw two dear bodies in there, that meant whenever
was going around and making people hurt themselves couldn't have
come from our little hunting trip. I snuck out of
my room as quiet as I could. Mom was on
the phone with my grandma and she was crying. I
stopped briefly by a door and listened to see if
maybe they knew something I didn't, But after she started
talking about how scared she was, I just felt bad
and moved on. At least it meant she was too
busy to notice me creeping down the stairs. I never
liked the shed at the end of the yard. It
was rarely used, even by my dad, who kept the
lawn mower and some old junkin there. It wasn't the
kind of place he kept food, but I had this
feeling he didn't keep these deer with the rest of
the meat he got from hunting. As I opened the
back door and looked over the shadow covered yard. I
found myself thinking about the tunnel and what I'd seen
back there, with everything that had happened, since I'd done
a good job of convincing myself it had never really happened.
The man with no legs who dragged himself out of
the darkness had become little more than a half remembered nightmare,
a moment out of time that was incompatible with all
logic and reason. But suddenly it was back with me,
all the emotions and thoughts that raised through my head
as I stared at his rotten flesh and glassy eyes.
The walk to the shed was uneasy. I fought the
urge to turn around the entire way there. Each step
was like walking on feet made of the lead. At
the door, I paused with my hand poised by the lock.
The house seemed so distant behind me, and I became
painfully aware nobody knew I was alone and out in
the dark. Inside was nearly pitch black. My phone helped
me light it up a little, but I didn't touch
the near by switch in case Mom saw it. From
a window. Cobwebs hung low from the ceiling, and shadows
crawled across the floor. And walls as I moved closer
to the freezer. The entire time, I kept expecting something
to happen. I even imagined that deer rising from beneath
the lid, pushing it open to stand unnaturally tall on
its hind legs, where he looked down at me with
the same dead eyes I had seen in my father.
The thought scared me so bad I nearly hyperventilated myself
straight into a panic attack. But before I had time
to really worry about any of that, I found my
hand on the freezer's latch. I pushed it open and
looked inside. The misty vapors cleared to reveal a pile
of meat and fur encrusted with ice. It was only
one head visible, but I so badly wanted come for
me that there were two animals in there, And I
took a deep breath and reached in to try pry
some of it loose. Some of it came away from
the sides with a sound like duct tape. But no
matter how deep I rooted in that mound of bone,
antlers and rock hard flesh, I couldn't see a sign
of the second deer. Her dad really served everyone's sick
meat was that why Larry Sitkins had missed the stroup
and all those other people had killed themselves. The thought
made me feel ill. I slammed the freezer shut and
walked back to the door in a daze, trying with
all my might to swallow the painful weight that settled
in my gut. I had one foot outside when the
freezer door rattled against the latch. The entire world spun
around me. My heart sank, and my skin froze in
a sensation that was growing increasingly familiar. I turned to
face the sound, both hands braced against the door, and
watched as the latch slammed into the lock once more.
The light inside the chest came on for the briefest moments,
and I glimpsed thrashing fur and teeth. Then it happened
again and again, and each time I saw bits of
hoof and bone and strange musculature that frightened me so
deep I fell down onto my ass and didn't even
realize when the latch finally gave way, the lid flew
open and stayed there. Light poured out of the box,
and I waited, breath held for that thing to emerge,
to come roaring out of sight and bear down towards
me on unnatural legs, But nothing happened. The silence stretched
on ford seemed like an eternity, until at last there
was a crash, louder than any before, and the entire
freezon rocked back and forth and slowly fell over. The deer,
or parts of it, fell out with a hard, wet thumb.
Bits of its chin and face shattered on the hard
packed ground, sending little shards of meat and bones skating
across the floor on melting streaks of blood. Some of
them even reached my feet. The thing inside moved with
the sound of snow crunching beneath your feet, its thick
neck and broken head twisting side aside, scanning the shed's
interior with faulty eyes. I've never seen anything move like that,
not before or since. This was worse than the man
in the tunnel, worse by a thousand times. The deer
was still mostly frozen, but some impossible force was making
the crystallized water in its own cells, and the result
was skin that rippled like tissue, and muscle that cracked
and crunch as they tried to flex and contract. It
lifted its head and tried to scream. The breathy sound
that left its fuzzy black lips made my heart start
skipping beats while my blooder entered. I couldn't help it,
couldn't stop myself, and when I looked down and saw
pieces of melting flesh starting to writhe and wriggle. I
tried with all my might to stifle the cry building
up in my throat, but it escaped as a desperate,
high pitched wine. The deer turned its head towards me
with a violent swing, another breathy shriek, and then it
began to thrash its stiff and frozen legs in a
terrifying attempt to get closer. To say it had a
predatory look would be inaccurate. Anyone who's seen a predator
in action knows that nature is mostly indifferent when it kills.
A bear tears into its prey with the same dull
look of someone opening the McDonald's. Predators don't hate the
things they're hunting. For this thing, I could feel its hatred,
its malice. It was nothing like what I'd seen in
my dad's eyes, or even the eyes of the man
in the tunnel, but it had spent months in that box,
hadn't it This was the disease when you skipped three
months ahead, anger, hatred, jeez. I couldn't even say if
it was going to eat me. That's what you think
when you see a zombie, right, It's going to try
and take a big bite out of you. With this
frozen clump of hair and meat and brain, lips, dragged
itself across the floor with an expression like murderous rage,
the look of someone ready to beat another living thing
to death using its own hands if it had too.
Unable to face it a moment longer, I dragged myself
back unto my feet and fled, shutting my eyes as
I entered the cold night air. I made it three
steps before I slammed into my dad. It was like
I'd run full speed into a tree. I bounced back
and hit the earth, pain flowing at my cocksis as
my father loomed over me. He'd felt cold for the
brief moment where we made contact. My mind blocked out
the sound of something hideous scrambling in the shed behind me,
and the entire world narrowed until it was just the
face of the man who raised me, looking down with pale,
dead eyes. Dad, He swallowed and briefly examined his hands.
I think I'm dead, he muttered, almost as if he
was talking to himself. When did I die? I poured
myself up and grabbed his hand. He was cold, but
his pulse was still raising. I could even see the
veins in his forearms. Throbbed sickeningly. Dad. Are you okay? Dad? Dad?
Are you okay? They told me I'm sick, he said,
his eyes gazing vacantly at the empty space behind me.
I think they're right, But there's more. He looked at me,
the intensity of his gaze so powerful that I let
go of his hand and took a step back. For
the first time in my life, I was scared of him.
I'm not alone in here, he said, his voice pleading
for help. Slowly, his expression twisted into a grotesque mask
of agony and desperation. Oh jeez, it isn't just me
in here. I tried to move, but he was a
big man, and his arms wrapped around me like steel bands. Dad,
I cried, struggling to pull myself loose as he sobbed
louder and louder. Dad, jeez, you gotta let go. There's
the shed door burst open. I managed to turn around
just enough I could see what came out, and I
felt an urgent terror crawling at my flesh. The deer
had pulled itself loose from the freezer, and now it
stood in the doorway and two legs. Its body looked
all wrong in that posture, like when you twist the
limbs around on a doll. Probably not far from the
truth thinking about it. Dad didn't react, but I began
to scream as the nightmare coalesced around me, my father
gripping holding me in place, as that horrible thing lurched
towards me on two legs. It moved like clamation or
a puppet show gone wrong, but it was quicker than
I feared. As each step brought it closer, I found
myself losing what little control all I had. I started
to scream, started to shriek. I beat at my father
with my fist, but he didn't budge an inch. My
clenched hands just bounced off his strong shoulders, and it
was like I was trying to hurt a punching bag.
I started to swear too, started to scream. Things I
thought were bad, then worse. Then so bad. I'm not
even sure I can blame other people for putting those
words in my head. I told my dad I hated him,
called him the worst names under the sun. All that
commotion got the attention of others. Neighbour's lights started coming on.
My mum emerged from the back door, wrapping a robe
around herself, and she squinted at us in the dark.
What the hell is going on, she cried as she
stumbled towards us. But when she saw that deer, she
started screaming too. I don't know why, but I thought
that other people appearing would help somehow that as two three,
half a dozen people came stumbling into open lawns, peering
over waist eye fences, it had stopped the slow but
inevitable onslaught of that monster. It did no such thing.
I had to listen to their confused shouts and cries
or gesturing and begging for help the entire time, the
sound of the creature over my shoulder getting closer and closer. Meanwhile,
my hands tried to pry away my father's thick arms,
but each time I got leverage, he simply flexed and
his grip tightened around me. He was muttering something the
whole time, but I couldn't hear it. Finally, my mum
screamed and ran, swinging an old rake at the space
behind me. I heard the impact, the splintering of the
wooden handle. Then she stumbled backwards, and I had to
twist to get a look at the deer that was
now just sick or seven feet away, the spokes of
a rake still sticking out of his face. A monster
looked right at me and opened its mouth, and I
swear to God, who was going to talk? But right
then someone shouted, for the love of God, Alice, get
away from that thing. Alice was my mother's name, and
she fell to the floor, just seconds before an explosion
broke the night, silencing all voices and shattering the deer's
head like a crystal ball hitting the ground. My heart
raised so fast I thought for a moment I was
going to die. Then I looked down at Dad and
finally heard what he'd been mumbling this whole time. It's
in us and it wants us. It's in us and
it wants us. It's in us and it wants us.
There isn't much left of Dad these days. I got
to visit a couple of times. Fat lot of good
it did, as far as I'm concerned. He died that
day in the kitchen when he first tried shooting himself.
They're treating us in this special hospital. Mom was real
upset that visitations are limited, but I think it might
be for the best. Her and my sister tested clean.
Most people did, I didn't. Mom snug me this phone
a couple of weeks ago, and I've been using that
to write. Funny thing is. One of the orderlies saw
me on it a few days ago and just laughed.
I think that maybe the government aren't too worried about
this story getting out. At first, I didn't really get
why until I started actually putting all this down into writing,
got to the part where that halfman came out of
the tunnel, and I realized, no one's gonna believe me. Still,
I got a try, partly because I want to protect people.
Whatever this disease is, it's a hell of a lot
more than some twisted Bryans, And I think the government
knows that Dad certainly did. Most Invector did too. That's
why they killed themselves. They wanted out the voice that
comes with its illness. Is like. It's like if your
brain is just words in a book and then someone
DipEd that book in a full kind of used motor oil.
You just want to give in hand it all over.
It wants your body, so whatever you do, you don't fight.
That's worse, give it up. In hindsight, we should have
let Dad kill himself. What he went through was well,
it was probably a lot worse than the others who
got to die. I sometimes think about going into his
room with a pillow, but security is pretty tight around him.
As for me, infection is still in its early phase.
It takes everyone differently, and for me it's taking quite
its time. They think it's because of my age. Still,
I can sort of feel it under there growing. I
think it's why I'm writing this. It wants me to.
This sickness. It lives out in the woods, way way
out in parts of the soil where the sun hasn't
shown in millions of years. It's old enough to remember
a time you could walk from Appalachia to what's now
called Glasgow, and it's been fumbling around out there in
the brains of deer and other things. The sickness tells me.
This tells me it's learning about this new world. Tells
me about how mind tastes. For most of all, it
tells me it's getting closer.