Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

Pete and Jonathan wanted to get back to Pete’s place for obvious reasons, and she thought Dylan was probably entertaining similar ideas. Once he’d dropped the two blokes off, he turned to Maddy and grinned, soppy and kinda goofy.

“My place?”

She smiled, but shook her head. “Not tonight. I’m really tired. Can you drop me home?”

He visibly deflated, but tried to put a brave face on it. “Sure.” He paused a moment, then said, “Is everything all right? With you… With us?”

Break up with him , her mind said firmly. Do the right thing. Look at him, poor fucker. Don’t be mean and drag it out. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, short term pain then it’s all over and everyone is okay. Though by the look in his eyes, he would not be okay.

“Maddy? Are we okay?”

She nodded. “Sure, of course. I’m just really tired and… well, Mum has been kinda hard work lately. It’ll ease off soon, I know it will, but I don’t want to leave it all for Zack, you know?” You chickenshit loser , she told herself.

He smiled, clearly relieved. “Well, of course. That makes sense.”

Poor bastard, she thought. So trusting.

“You want me to help?” he asked. “Anything I can do? I could come around and, I don’t know. Help. I’ve never been inside your place.”

And you never will, sweet Dylan . “No, really, it’s fine. Mum’s going to visit her cousins soon anyway, the break will do her good and it’ll be nice for me and Zack to have a break.”

Dylan frowned. “I thought she was aggro… something phobic… too scared to leave the house.”

“Agoraphobic. Yeah, she is. Which is why we’re not pushing but slowly convincing her to go on this trip. Her cousin will come to pick her up and everything. Hopefully. We’ll be okay. Just drop me home, yeah?”

“Okay.”

Zack was asleep in bed when she crept in about 1 a.m. and Maddy was soon pulling the covers over herself. She couldn’t have been asleep more than a few minutes it seemed, when something jerked her awake. Disoriented, in that place between states, brain circling looking for a landing spot, it took a moment to realise what had woken her.

She blinked when she saw light pouring in through her bedroom door. She normally closed it at night but had inadvertently left it half-open. Maybe a by-product of relaxing now her mother had died. The light came from across the hall. And she heard a soft voice, whispering.

Nerves rippled across Maddy’s skin and she moved silently along the bed. Kneeling on the end of it she leaned forward and looked through the small gap between door and frame, across the hallway to their mother’s room. She suppressed a gasp. The smooth white fungus had grown again, so bright, clean and rounded in the light from the bedroom fixture directly above the bed. It covered the whole mattress now and hung in pendulous bulges down either side. The bed had a wooden headboard and footboard, both of which stood a half metre or so above the mattress. Both were buried in rolls of pure white. The rounded centre of the thing bulged up more than a metre above the mattress.

She saw it all because her mother’s door was wide open and Zack stood at the foot of the bed, his head tipped to one side. Maddy had the impression he was listening.

“I don’t know, Mum,” he said softly. “But why?” He paused to listen again. “Are you sure?”

Maddy chewed her lower lip. This wasn’t good. Maybe he was sleepwalking, having some kind of weird lucid dream. Enough for him to get up, open their mother’s door, turn her light on, start a conversation? It seemed unlikely.

“I don’t want to, Mum!” He sounded more sad than defiant.

He took a step back and shook his head. “Let me think about it.”

He reached back for the light switch, starting to turn, and Maddy ducked back out of sight. The light clicked off as she pulled the covers over herself and heard Zack trudge back down the hallway, then his bedroom door thunked shut.

“What the fuck was that about?” she whispered to herself.

The next morning she woke a bit after nine and crawled from bed, but Zack had yet to emerge. It was more than an hour later when he slumped into the lounge, hair in disarray, carrying a bowl of cereal.

“Yo,” he said, and sat down, flicked on the TV.

Maddy looked up from her phone. “Yo yourself. Going all right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“No reason. Sleep okay?”

“Yeah.” He shovelled cereal.

Maddy sighed. She’d have to come right out with it. “You remember getting up in the night?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? You got up in the night, like 2 a.m. or something. You don’t remember?”

He looked at her over his bowl, eyebrows crunched together. He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. He paused. Then, “No I didn’t.”

Was it worse if he didn’t remember or he was lying? Maybe he’d been sleepwalking after all. But he looked disturbed.

“Are you right?” he asked, sounding sarcastic. His eyes looked haunted, one squinted slightly like he was trying to remember something.

Maddy laughed it off, looked back at her phone. “Yeah, all good.”

Zack stared atthe TV, partly enjoying the time alone, partly wanting to go to Josh’s house. Maddy was off with her mates again and it was a novelty to have the place to himself. No scratchy-throated mother calling out to him, or ringing that little fucking bell he’d given her when she got really weak. Calling him to give her water, to wipe where she’d shit herself, just to see him, her little man. He shuddered, thankful it was all over.

But it wasn’t over. She was still in there, under that stuff. He wanted to go to Josh’s, forget it all and play games, but was also cautious not to push his luck. He couldn’t spend every minute over there, even though he wanted to. Maybe sometime soon he could invite Josh over instead. If that fungus did get rid of the body he could call Josh, say his mum was at her cousins in Bega. Having a friend over to the house seemed both audacious and exotic. He’d never done it before.

Bring him to me.

Zack stiffened in the chair, refused to accept he’d heard her.

Bring him.

“No, Mum!”

The whispering voice was muffled by the closed bedroom door, but still clear enough. He didn’t want to admit he’d known what Maddy was talking about earlier. He’d thought it was a dream. He’d dreamed that he’d been woken in the night by sounds of water, rain and waves, and by distant screams. He’d got up, looked out his bedroom window, and seen creatures falling from thick and pendulous clouds, limbs writhing as they tumbled through the rain to land with distant splashes in the ocean. Some far out near the horizon, others closer to the beach. What should have been sand was slick and shiny with some dark ooze. Between his bedroom window and the sea was nothing but thick, verdant bush, battered by incessant rain.

But he knew it was a dream. He couldn’t see the ocean from his window. He only saw the street outside, other houses, cars, whatever. Maybe if there were no houses between theirs and the beach he might catch a glimpse, but not this clear a view, as if from high above, looking out over the vast expanse of roiling sea as the creatures fell.

Then he’d heard a voice, whispering, calling him. It was still the dream, it had to be, because it was his mother’s voice. He went to her room, turned on the light, and the bulbous white fungus that covered her, bigger than ever, had shivered and her voice drifted from it.