Steve Tem - Excavation

Alan Marley passed the pickup slowly on the ancient bicycle, the shiny hell-wheels spinning, spinning in the air a good three feet above the roof of the truck.

Ben shuddered and tried to pull his eyes away. Marley doffed his hat and cracked his mouth, filling it with shark’s teeth. A great purple birthmark clotted the entire right side of his face; it seemed to move like a separate, living parasite when Marley turned his head.

Alan Marley had delivered mail for Charlie Simpson’s dad when Mr. Simpson was postmaster. Marley had been the terror of Ben’s childhood, of all the children of that long-ago time. If he caught you out on the road alone, he’d chase you with that bicycle, trying to break a foot or a leg if he could. Cindy Gasson became a cripple because of him. And the worst thing was, none of the adults would believe them; they thought the children had made it up because of Marley’s unfortunate birthmark.

Then Marley finally killed somebody, little Timmy Peters; Timmy’s brother saw the whole thing and said Marley had ridden back and forth over the three-year-old dozens of times. Later Ben heard the little boy’s neck and back were broken, the ribs crushed into the lungs. Dan Peters caught up with Marley the next day—he’d been riding his bike down to Four Corners trying to get away—and shot him twelve times, reloading as he went. There never was a trial.

Marley grinned and rang the bell again and again. Ben thought he was going to cry. Then Marley was gone, and there was a tall man in black, preacher-looking clothes striding toward the pickup out of the darkness and the fog ahead. As he neared, Ben could see it was his father, with the same grim face.

Ben started the engine and stamped the gas pedal. His father flew apart into dozens of strands of sooty smoke as the truck hit him.

Ben kept going. The fog was creeping up this side of the mountain now.

For the past half hour or so Audra had been climbing the slope. Heavy mist still surrounded her, but she could feel the additional pressure on her ankles the way they were bending, so she could tell she was walking up an incline.

A gnashing behind her. A whispering.

It had been going on for so long, she couldn’t even be scared anymore. She just wanted it over. She would have stopped and faced it, waited for it, but her body wouldn’t let her. The cold, wet fog had somehow gotten between her mind and her legs.

A little boy was crying somewhere in the fog. Then a slightly older boy, moaning and sobbing. Then the sobbing became snarls, animal whines.

Dark streaks in the fog behind her. Dark movement. Giggling. Then the popping of animal lips.

“Stop it!” she screamed, and stumbled forward, bringing sharp pains into her ankles and feet. Her lower legs ached with sharp points of pain, as if an animal’s needle-sharp teeth were entering her skin again and again.

Giggling again. He was playing with her. There was nothing human in him, to play with her like that.

“Reed!”

More giggling. Then a sound like beast laughter, short and grunty puffs of sound.

A swift moving behind her. She screamed and tried to fly up the slope.

A tree caught her full in the face, a broken-off branch pierced her cheek, and with a shock she knew it had penetrated all the way to the mouth cavity. She jerked away and sobbed; bile came up to her teeth. Swiftness behind her. A whisper-movement through the dense fog. She began frantically climbing the tree. Branch after branch clutched or clawed with broken fingernails, bleeding hands, and soon she was hugging a section of bark above the branches, her cheek rubbing the sandpaper like bark as she screamed and shook, kicking down with her feet to break off the branches below her so that he couldn’t get up, no way could he get up here please GOD!

A thin shadow approached the tree out of white mist. Sniffling. She looked down… only a few feet below her, but could not see past the shadows shrouding his face, could just see the dull pink highlight of eye. Hair that was coal black, straight. Quarter moon reflection off a pasty-white cheek. He… it whimpered. And began scratching at the trunk with its fingernails, long fingernails glistening even through the dulling mist.

She sobbed.

Giggling. Giggling. It began to scratch more vigorously, furiously.

She looked down. The fog was rising, swirling around the tree. She could see no traces of her stalker anymore. The fog began working on the tree on contact, putting it through temperature changes—she could feel alternating waves of intense heat and intense cold. It caused a ticking noise in the tree, the ticking spreading out into the fog. Soon the whole area was ticking, slowly, and she couldn’t tell if her stalker was scratching anymore. She had no idea if he was still there.

Inez had calmed considerably since they’d left the mine, Charlie really had to admire her; he wondered why he hadn’t noticed this strength in her before. She was really some woman. There were things to do now, and she seemed pretty clear-headed about that.

“We’ve gotta get to the boarding house, Charlie… get those people out.” She was running at a good clip down the gravel road, plunging right through large, evil-feeling fog patches where neither one of them could see a thing, but she wasn’t even slowing down. Charlie was afraid he was going to have a heart attack before they’d made it half way.

When they reached the junction of a couple of dirt and gravel logging trails, he could see the town below them for the first time. He stopped short and grabbed her arm.

“Charlie!” She turned on him, enraged.

All the energy, and, curiously, the fear, had run out of him. He could see the worry passing over her face. He turned her to the town and pointed.

A dark lake, thick with assorted debris and strange, writhing shadows, covered what used to be the town of Simpson Creeks. Patches of green and blue and yellow darted back and forth beneath the surface like some sort of underwater moths or fireflies.

“We can’t see the house from here,” she said quietly.

“That’s even lower than the town, Inez.” He squeezed her shoulder. “It would have gone under before anything else.”

“Those people… our neighbors…”

Charlie saw headlights moving off above the town. “Somebody made it! Maybe a whole bunch!” He started dragging her down one of the log trails. “We can meet up with ‘em if we hurry!”

He didn’t have to say more; Inez had already raced ahead of him. Charlie could hear the pounding of his old heart. It filled his head. Likely as not just the sound of it was goin’ to kill him.

As the bear leaped through the window into Reed’s old room, the stalker in the woods started across the marshy, green-shadowed land at a slow plod.

Hector Pierce went rigid on his bed. One of the salesmen shouted, and Joe Manors began to beat on Hector’s chest.

His mother was bringing him cookies. Reed smiled gratefully. He could see her now, her red hair floating about her head as she stood in the kitchen doorway, the dim green light behind her.

He’d hoped he could finish the cookies and have a nice pleasant time with her before his father came down, but he could already hear the old man’s heavy tread on the stairs, his angry voice…

“The boy’s… got teeth, now…” Hector whispered faintly. But Joe Manors was the only one to hear. The face on the bed went slightly pale, the form trembled, then stopped.

“What he say?” the salesman asked when Joe straightened up from the now-still form.

“Oh, nothin’… nothin’. You know… he was just a crazy old man.”