Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

“It’s not our mum!”

Zack flashed her an angry look. “Whatever it is, help me get him onto it.”

“That’s your best friend’s dad! There’s too much connection. Does his mum know he came around here?”

Mr Brady rolled a little on the floor, groaning.

“I’ll explain everything. Maddy, they come back!”

“What?”

“Just help me!”

“Fuck!”

Zack moved around and got his hands under Mr Brady’s armpits and Maddy had no choice but to grab his legs. They hoisted him up, swung him once, then hefted him onto the fungus. It was much smaller again, Maddy noticed.

Brady immediately thrashed and screamed, but was already stuck, his face and hands bubbling and smoking. The bulbous fungus vibrated, almost like it was shivering with pleasure.

“Jesus!” Maddy said, voice choked like wire in her throat.

“Come on.” Zack pulled her from the room and closed the door as Brady’s screams became gargles.

They went into the lounge and Maddy collapsed onto the sofa, trembling. They’d blown it. Zack had blown it, there was no coming back from this. Zack sat in the armchair opposite and all she could do was stare at him in shock.

Zack grinned. “So, I remembered Josh was going to his grandparents with his mum. That’s all the way up near Cooma. His grandma has to get some minor surgery, so his mum went to help out, took Josh out of school for a visit. They’re away until the weekend. I pretended I got the day wrong, but I didn’t. I knew Mr Brady would be there alone, and no one saw me go and talk to him. I was really careful. And I told him my mum needed some help. He jumped at the chance.”

“Zack…”

He held up a hand to stop her. “No one saw, no one knows he came here. But it doesn’t matter anyway. Come and see this.”

He jumped up again and headed for the back door from the kitchen. Reluctantly she followed, thinking perhaps her numbness was a kind of shock. Zack led her into the garden and over to the fence. An old milk crate sat there, one his mother used to stand on to see over the fence for a chat. Maddy and Zack crowded onto it and Zack pointed at Jack Parsons’s house next door. “Look.”

She looked into Parsons’s side window. He sat in there, in his lounge room, staring at something. The TV maybe? She couldn’t tell from her vantage. “What the hell?”

She climbed down and looked at Zack.

“I don’t know exactly,” Zack said. “But I saw him earlier, coming back home. Just walking up the street like normal. And that’s when I came up with the plan to get Brady over. If they come back, it doesn’t matter who, right?”

Maddy shook her head, mind spinning. She couldn’t catch hold of a single thought.

“Did you see the thing in there was smaller again?” Zack asked. “Mum said one more, maybe two. Brady is one more. And look here.”

He led her over to their mother’s bedroom window, still open as it had been all along. There were footprints in the scrubby, patchy flower bed right below the window, and pale white marks on the sill. Maddy leaned forward to look but didn’t dare touch.

“They’ll remember,” she said weakly. “I mean, being pushed in. They’ll remember what we did to them.”

“I talked to Parsons this afternoon when I saw him. He doesn’t remember a thing.”

“Was he… I mean, was he normal?”

Zack laughed. “I don’t know. What’s normal for Parsons?”

The breeze shifted the curtains slightly and Maddy caught a glimpse of Brady, still, sunk half into the fungus. She gasped and looked away. “I can’t process this, Zack. I can’t… I just can’t.”

Zack hugged her. “It’s okay. I’ve got this. Brady might be the last. If not, Mum said just one more. We have to decide who.”

“Zack…”

“We’ll worry about it tomorrow, yeah? For now, it’s all done.”

Maddy nodded and walked away. She didn’t want to think about any of it. A weight of fatigue dragged at her and she wanted only to shut everything out. She went into her room, closed the door, and collapsed onto the bed. She let sleep take her.

The next morningMaddy felt a little better, the shock reduced to a dull sensation of surreality. If they were going to suffer for this, so be it. What was done, was done. But maybe damage control was an option. How the hell was Parsons back? That was the thought that kept circling her mind like a vulture looking for prey.

Zack was still asleep. She opened her mother’s door and looked in. The fungus on the bed was reduced again. Down to a small set of undulating white lumps, not much bigger than her mother’s body had been before all this madness started. And in a vaguely humanoid shape on the mattress. Would they really be shot of it soon?

One more!

The voice was sudden and harsh, and triggered the spikes behind Maddy’s eyes. She shut the door and hurried out. She rang Parsons’s doorbell and gripped her hands into fists to hide their shaking. It took a few minutes, but the old man eventually shuffled into view and opened the door.

“Madeleine?”

“Hello.”

“What can I do you for?”

He was never this friendly. She’d expected grumpiness from the outset. “I, er… Well, I just wanted to see if you were okay, that’s all. My mum said I ought to check on you, living alone as you do.”

“Very kind, but no need. I’m fine.”

“Okay, that’s good to hear.”

Parsons’s skin looked unnaturally pale, almost alabaster. His eyes were pale grey. She remembered his eyes as being rheumy and bloodshot, but not any more. They were pale, but clear. “So you’re feeling okay?”

“Perfectly.” He rubbed a hand along the other forearm and his thumbnail snagged a curl of something white off his skin. Without looking he pressed it back down. “What’s your mother worried about exactly?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You know how mothers are.” What did that even mean? She was rambling.

Parsons shook his head. “Not really, no.” He frowned a moment, like he was trying to remember something. “We used to talk over the fence, your mother and I. She would stand on something to see over. So would I.”

“That’s right.”

“I haven’t seen her in a long while.” He raised his eyebrows, almost as if he were challenging her to deny the assertion.

“She doesn’t really go out any more.”

“Maybe I should come and visit sometime? I’ve never been inside your house, have I.” It wasn’t a question.

“You haven’t?”

“No. Never .”

Maddy nodded. “Okay then. Well, as long as you’re okay.”

“Perfect. You don’t need to check on me any more.”

“Okay, sure. Have a good day.”

“You too.” He shut the door and Maddy stood staring at it for a moment, then turned away and went back home.

Zack was up when she went in. “One more then?” he said. “You okay to help me get it organised?”

“Yep. But I have to work.” Maddy paused, remembering some of the thoughts she’d had the previous day. “You leave this one to me, yeah?”

“Sure. You got a plan?”

“I have. Make sure you’re home by six for when I get back.”

“Okay.”

She went to work, steeling herself all the way. It took about twenty minutes at a fast clip to get from her house on the hill down to Woollies. In the staff room she saw Wendy Callow sipping a coffee. Mean Wendy Callow, always a bitch to everyone. And so sweet on Dylan’s mate, James.

“Morning, Wendy.”

“Maddy?”

“Yeah. You okay.”