Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

Its eyes—were they eyes? was any of this real ?—were black as buttons. It opened its mouth. Its face split in half, pulling its head apart; the top of its skull levered back like a Pez dispenser. Inkiness bled out of that slash, a blackness more profound than Micah had ever known.

Ellen grabbed his hand. She had seen it, too.

“ Run ,” she said.

They sprinted through the woods, their feet flashing over the ground. Ellen veered sharply left, off the path of death. Micah spun around to see if the face—and the body it was attached to—was in pursuit. He tripped and dropped the torch. It fell sputtering into a patch of dry earth. He abandoned it. They followed Ellen’s flashlight. It bobbed against the trees, the beam occasionally skipping skyward when she stumbled. Micah wasn’t sure where they were going, but Ellen ran with a purpose. Already the image of what he had seen—that bloodless face staring at them amid the tree limbs—seemed absurd. What creature could be that tall?

Unless it was up in the tree , he thought. Hugging it like a spider.

He pictured a terrible arachnid-like thing hooked to the spine of a dead pine, its thick furred legs throttling the trunk…

He grabbed her hand. “Stop.”

She checked up. They stood panting.

“We will get lost,” he said.

She pointed to her left. “The compound is that way. I see the light of torches.”

She shot a look behind him.

“Micah, you did see —?”

He nodded. “An animal. An owl.”

He could tell she wanted to believe him. He wanted her to, too.

They walked toward Little Heaven. Whatever the thing was, Micah could hear no breath of its pursuit. Had it even given chase? He wasn’t at all certain. He was becoming less certain of many things.

Those creatures from last night, this one now—what if something unnatural was at play? In the army, some of his more superstitious barrack mates would talk about seeing things while out on patrol. Unearthly lights, distant figures that seemed to float above the earth. Spooks. Ghosties. Another man, a sniper named Groggins, used to claim Korean scientists were creating half-human, half-animal hybrids in underground labs. Super soldiers, ape-men and snake-men, which was what Groggins kept glimpsing through his scope during night watch: lab mutants who had escaped containment roaming no-man’s-land, feasting on rotting corpses sunk in the mud, too skittish to attack—yet.

Micah never put any stock in it. Men’s minds went to strange places when put under pressure. And he knew that even if something strange was happening around Little Heaven, the worst thing to do would be to run half-cocked into the woods. No. They had a home base. Not a very hospitable one, but it would do. They were being fed and sheltered. There were weapons, even if they weren’t yet in Micah’s hands. He could get a gun, if push came to shove. So their best bet was to sit tight, assess the situation, and act only once all the information had come to light.

They walked quickly. Ellen swept the fringing bushes with her flashlight. No sign of the boy. They spotted torchlight. Soon they encountered two searchers trudging back to the compound. Their clothes were dusty, their spirits low. The boy had not been found and it was nearing midnight.

Virgil Swicker and Cyril Neeps idled at the front gates. They had not done much to look for the boy, as evidenced by their clean trousers. Neeps’s jaw tightened at the sight of them.

“What’d I tell you?” he said to Micah.

Neeps grabbed Micah’s sleeve. Micah swung round until they were facing. Neeps’s breath washed over him, hot and electric. Neeps waited until the Little Heavenites had passed from earshot before speaking.

“The fuck are you up to, sonny boy? Told you to stay out of this.”

Neeps’s fingers clawed into Micah’s forearm. If he wanted Micah to wince, he would be disappointed.

“There’s a missing child,” said Ellen. “How could we not—?”

“Wasn’t talking to you, bitch,” Neeps said casually. Swicker, who had been standing a ways off, pinched in at Ellen’s side. He could reach out and grab her if he wanted to.

“You being a clever Clyde?” Neeps’s eyes drilled into Micah’s unpatched eye. “Lost hikers, uh? Nah, I’m thinking not. You’re gonna want to hit the dusty ole trail real soon. Skedaddle your asses.”

Neeps picked a shred of boiled gray meat from between his teeth and flicked it at Micah’s chest. It stuck.

“We are a long way from anything, son,” said Neeps. “Ain’t no rules, except what the good Reverend says.” A chuckle. “And even then… well, Virg and me ain’t never been much for godly matters. I get a sense you ain’t, neither. So go. Take your show on the road, Pontiac.”

Neeps shoved him. Micah stumbled back, then calmly straightened the lapels on his duster. “You bet” was all he said in reply.

He and Ellen walked back to the bunkhouse. Cyril said something to Virgil, which was followed by a donkey bray of laughter.

Micah could tell Ellen was unnerved. Whether it was by the face in the woods or the confrontation with the hired guns, he could not tell. He wondered if he would have to kill Swicker and Neeps. He hoped to avoid it. It would be ideal if they were able to leave soon, just like Neeps wanted. As soon as Ebenezer was well enough to walk. But sometimes men like Neeps pushed a collision. And Micah always made a point of hitting first, and hitting harder.

EBENEZER AWOKEfrom a dreamless sleep. It was dawn. Frail sunlight leaked through the bunkhouse window.

He sat up. The others were asleep on the spare cots that had been brought in last night. Sleeping, or playing at it. Ebenezer wasn’t sure Micah ever really slept—he got the sense the man merely closed his eyes and faked it for a few hours a night.

Ebenezer put his feet down and tested his injured ankle. Dr. Lewis, the compound’s de facto sawbones—an old army meatball medic—had fashioned a splint to take the pressure off. He had given Ebenezer a few pills to help him rest. Ebenezer had taken them and dozed. When he had awoken for the first time, he’d noticed Minerva and Ellen bustling about, searching for a flashlight.

“What’s happening?” he’d asked

“Shut up.” Minerva tossed the pill bottle at him. “Take another pill, Phil.”

Ebenezer thought that a fine idea; he took another one. He slept for hours and swam out of unconsciousness in the early hours of morning. Perhaps it was the effects of the medication or a dream he couldn’t shake off, but he swore he had seen something at the window. The face of a child. But it was bleached white apart from the eyes, which were black, as if the pupils had been pricked like the yolk of an egg, the darkness spreading across each eyeball—

He had slept again and woken up only minutes ago. He stood. The pain was definitely there, a sharp spike radiating up his shin, but it was manageable. He was starving. He was always hungriest after he had been hurt—his body worked so hard at repairing itself that it drained its energy reserves.

He limped out of the bunkhouse. Dawn was streaming through the trees. He saw lights moving in the woods and heard the occasional cry of a boy’s name. Eli. It made him think of the boy he might have spotted at the window last night—the boy who had been nothing but a figment of his pill-addled mind.

He spied a man clocking his progress. A fellow with straggly white-boy hair—the hair belonging to a particular breed of man you’d call a reb—and a pistol holstered at his waist. This man watched him limp across the square with a flat, jeering expression on his face.