Nick Cutter - The Troop

The Kent-thing’s limbs settled. Shelley turned him over so that he faced the sky. His eyes stared glassily through the salt water.

…Either Kent had been fooled or he’d fooled himself. He gazed at the airless vault of the heavens stretching above the ocean. The stars were white-hot, encircled by gauzy coronas. So lovely. The unfairness of it all came crashing down. He’d never tell a girl he loved her. Never see his parents’ faces again. Never sprint across the outfield at the Lions Club Park tracking a long fly ball. This fact leapt straight out at him. The world was not a fair place. His father had lied—or he’d just been plain ignorant. He’d never see his father again to tell him just how wrong he was. Never never never…

…A look of terror and loss came across the Kent-thing’s face. Shelley’s heart trembled. Joy washed over him in an awesome wave. Yes. Yes . This was what he’d been looking for.

Shelley set a hand on Kent’s chest and pushed him under, hoping to lock that expression on his face. Bubbles detached from the insides of Kent’s nostrils and floated up. A bigger bubble passed over his lips and burst on the surface with a wet pop.

In the final moments, Kent’s face settled into a calm and beatific expression.

The joy burst like a glass globe inside Shelley’s chest. His fingers dug into Kent’s waterlogged uniform while he waded deeper into the sea, pulling the grotesquely buoyant Kent-thing past the breakwater, infuriated for reasons he could not name.

Shelley grabbed the stupid thing by its hair—it was dead now, and dead things relinquished their names—dragging it into the surf. It weighed almost nothing. The salt water held it up; its heels bumped over the rocks for thirty-odd feet, but once Shelley had gotten far enough from shore it floated freely, like a piece of wood.

The tide clutched greedily at the body. Shelley hesitated, not wishing to release it just yet. He was enraged—vaporous, cresting surges of anger rocked through him.

He’d expected so much more . Some kind of revelation. A sign of the gears that meshed behind the serene fabric of this world—a glimpse of its seething madness. But no. In the end he’d seen only mocking resignation—and, finally, bliss.

He continued to drag the dead thing through the water. If he’d been paying closer attention—and usually he would’ve been; Shelley was a preternaturally aware boy, coolly observant of everything around him—he would have seen the thing’s scalp detach from its skull. The skin had winnowed to a sheer, raglike substance that peeled as easily as the papery bark off a birch tree…

If he’d not been off in his own little reverie, he would have heard the sound of the dead thing’s scalp tearing free of the bone: a watery sucking noise, little bubbles popping as the sea flooded in to kiss the naked skullbone…

If he’d not been zoned-out and oblivious, he’d surely have seen the thousands of white threads twisting out of the dead thing’s head—its skull , which was networked in fissures where the connective plates of bone had drawn thin and detached. They came out in snowy gouts, fanning out in numberless profusion, encircling Shelley’s hips in a wavering nimbus…

His reverie broke only once they began to touch his skin. And the moment he realized this was the moment it ceased to truly matter.

“Oh!” Shelley said.

He jumped in the water—a silly, girlish little hop. “Fishy!” he said, believing that a sunfish or saltwater eel had brushed his thigh. But then he looked down, saw the worms streaming out of Kent’s skull case, wriggling and darting… his rubbery face settled into an unfamiliar expression: horrified revulsion.

He stared, entranced. They were so small . The moon played over their bodies, almost shining right through them. They moved in hypnotic, transfixing undulations. He nearly laughed—not because the sight of them was funny, but because they didn’t even seem a proper part of his existence. They were funny because they weren’t entirely real …

They flicked around him in playful patterns. There were just so many . They curled into one another, jesting and flirting. He felt something playing against his skin but it was a distant, forgettable sensation. A sting on his hand. A light, burning sensation like a wasp sting, only much less severe. It was followed by another and another and—

Shelley was rocked by an abrupt surge of adrenaline. His fingers unkinked from Kent’s hair. He beat the water with his palms—frenetically, spastically. His gorge rose.

They were everywhere, clinging to him somehow. He uttered shrill, nasal, squeaky notes of violent distaste: “Eee! Eeee EEEE! ”

The threads became more animated. They poured out of the dead thing’s skull, leaving a milky contrail in the dark water—it looked like a streamer fluttering from some grisly Fourth of July float.

They wriggled down Shelley’s trousers, flitting and licking against his skin.

He swept the water with his forearm, trying to propel them away. His fear was unlike any he’d ever known; it made him desperate. Water fanned up, each droplet alive with wriggling white, landing on his arms and neck and lips. He snuffled salt water up his nose, sputtering on it.

He felt them inside his underwear. Some were so thin that they passed right through the weave of the fabric, needling inside, finding the sensitive skin at the bulb of his penis, the little hole where the piss came out.

Kent’s body floated out past the breakwater. Threads continued to spill from it, sifting down through the water. The stars played their metallic light upon the waves. Kent was a silver shape dressed in the brightness of the moon. Smaller shapes—inquisitive fish—darted at his appendages, fussing with his fingers and hair.

LATER, SHELLEYdragged himself back to shore. He shambled up the beachhead in hesitant steps. His lower lip hung slackly, a globule of spit suspended from it. The glob stretched until it snapped, splashing the rocks.

Tiny white things thrashed in the wetness.

He returned to the campfire and stared into its dead embers. The walkie-talkie was there, but the game with Ephraim was a distant concern.

He could resume it when Ephraim returned… if.

A gray curtain draped over Shelley’s thoughts—but beneath it and around its edges, things jigged and capered.

His hand kneaded his crotch anxiously. The pleasure he’d experienced earlier with Kent was gone. Now that area itched and burned. Could be a case of crotch crickets . Shelley had once overheard a construction worker saying that to his buddy while clawing ruefully at his groin. Shelley was pretty sure this wasn’t crotch crickets—it was a burn, a painful one, inside of him now. It’d raced up his piss-pipe like lit gunpowder, a bright and lively pain that ebbed to a strange hum inside his skin. Now he felt it spreading through him in slow, sonorous waves.

He bit his lip. He’d made a mistake. A big one, this time. Gotten carried away with his games. Lost sight of the danger.

It was only for a second, though , an internal voice whined. Just a heartbeat .

He sat cross-legged on the dirt. The burn receded. As the moments passed, it didn’t feel so bad at all. A comforting numbness coursed through his limbs, his veins filling with some wondrous warm nectar.

His stomach, though. That was grumbling, revving up— roaring .

Shelley’s hands clenched, tearing up clumps of dirt. Without realizing or truly caring, he filled his mouth with the contents of his hands. He chewed methodically. Grit and shell shards ground between his teeth. It sounded like he was eating handfuls of tiny bones.