Bentley Little: The House

Grunts and the sharp exhalation of breath. She looked over her shoulder as she ran and they were upon her, moving faster than humanly possible, streaming around the house, over the dirt. Tiny hands grabbed her upper thighs, reached between her legs to pull at her crotch.

They were already swarming past her, around her, and even as the hands on her legs yanked her down, she was tripping over the ones in front. One, the leader apparently, stood on the stump to the right of the clothesline, jumping up and down and shaking what looked like a maraca made from the skull of a rat.

The creatures were even smaller than she'd originally thought, two feet high at the most, but they were powerfully built and they all had weapons and there were far too many of them. They rolled her over, onto her back, and one held each side of her head. Two took her left arm, two her right, two more each foot, spreading her limbs.

One continued to grab between her legs.

She was crying hysterically, but even through her tears she could see that she'd been wrong at first. It was not just bees or beetles that accompanied the creatures but a whole host of bugs. And they were all strangely wrong, profoundly changed and disturbingly incorrect versions of ordinary insects.

Onto her face alighted a butterfly with the screaming head of a baby. It spit on her nose and flew away.

She was going to die and she knew it, and she was crying out for all she was worth, hoping someone--the returningHube , a passing hiker, a visiting rancher-- might hear her, but the clownish monsters did not seem to care and made no effort to gag her mouth or stifle her. They let her scream, and more than anything else, it was their lack of concern, their certainty that no one would come to her rescue, that impressed upon her the dire hopelessness of her predicament.

The creature holding the left side of her head looked down on her, opened its mouth, and the sound of a piano emerged from between its green lips.

The one with the rat-skull maraca jumped up and down on the stump, pointed at her, yelled, and the sound that came out of its mouth was that of a string quartet.

She was no longer screaming, but was crying, sobbing, tears and snot pooling in the various indentations of her face.

The skull of a possum was placed on her chest.

As if in a dream, she heard the sound of Hube's truck in the drive and then in front of the house, heard him slam the pickup's door and call out her name. For a very brief fraction of a second, she considered yelling at the top of her lungs, telling him to get out of here, save himself. But her love was not that altruistic and she did not want to die alone here with these monsters. She wanted her husband to save her, and she screamed out his name: "Hube!"

"Patty?" he called.

"Hube!"

She wanted to say more, wanted to be able to impart additional information, wanted to tell him that he should bring his shotgun from the truck so he could blow these monsters to Kingdom Come, but her brain and her mouth could not seem to get it together and she just kept screaming out his name.

"Hube!"

She was raised up, tilted forward, and was able to see her husband dash around the corner of the house and run into a wall of the clown creatures. They leaped onto his head, onto his chest, onto his arms, dragging him down. Weapons were lifted, bones and baseball bats, skulls and horseshoes.

The one on the stump jumped up and down, ordered Hube'smurder in the voice of a string quartet.

They beat him to death with the sound of a symphony.

Michigan This was the life.

Jennings followed the guide through the brush, bow extended. Last year, he'd taken Gloria to Palm Springs, and the year before that to Hawaii, but this year, by God, he'd put his foot down, and they'd booked their time share in northern Michigan. He was going to do something he wanted for once, and if that meant that Gloria had to either watch videos in the condo or shop at The Store in this little podunk town, then so be it.

He'd arranged for several short hunting trips during their two-week stay. One daylong duck-hunting expedition.

One overnight bear hunt.

And this one.

A three-day bow hunting trip.

Of the three, this was the best, the one he was enjoying the most. He'd never used bow and arrow before, and though it had taken him a while to get used to both the physicality and limitations of this sport, the guide, Tom, told him that he was a natural. He felt that himself, and he found that he liked the added handicaps bow hunting placed on him. It made him feel more in tune with nature, like he was a part of this forest rather than just a dilettantish intruder, and that resulted in his increased enjoyment of the hunt. It gave everything a slight edge, and while they hadn't bagged any game yet, even his misses were more exciting and more fulfilling than some of his rifle scores.

There were four of them on this trip: Tom; himself; Jud Weiss, a retired deputy sheriff from Arizona; and Webb Deboyar , an air-traffic controller from Orlando, Florida. Jud and Webb were still at the campsite, and Tom was taking him out on his solo, an elk tracking that would hopefully lead to a kill and mounted antlers over the fireplace back home.

The two of them had been tracking this elk, a big bull, since before noon, and by Jennings' watch it was already pushing three. The time had flown, though. It was exhilarating being out here like this, taking part in nature's cycle, and he could not remember ever having felt more alive.

Tom suddenly held up a hand, motioned for him to halt.

Jennings stood in place and followed the guide's gaze.

It was the bull elk.

Unmoving, the animal was standing in a copse of bushes on the other side of a dying fir tree. Jennings probably would have missed it on his own, would have blundered ahead and scared the beast away, realizing what it was too late to shoot, but Tom knew these woods like the proverbial back of his hand, and he'd spotted the animal instantly.

Jennings' blood was rushing, the adrenaline pumping.

He was psyched, and as silently as he could, he repositioned his bow, notched the arrow, and drew back the line. The plan was simple: he would shoot the elk, and if it wasn't a clean kill, if the beast was injured and not killed, Tom would finish it off.

The details of that had been a little too gruesome even for Jennings back in the trading post where they'd started, but now the idea of leaping onto the animal with a big buck knife, subduing it in hand-to-hoof combat, and cutting out its heart seemed like the pinnacle of raw experience, and he wished Tom had taught him how to do it.

The elk moved, looked up, looked at them.

"Now!" Tom yelled.

Jennings aimed the arrow, let it fly.

He brought the elk down with one shot.

Tom immediately ran forward, through the underbrush, through the bushes, knife extended. Jennings followed the guide stumblingly, saw the other man leap on the animal, cut it open.

The hairy skin split and the stomach contents spilled out.

His father's body emerged from the open wound.

Jennings dropped his bow, backed away, all of the saliva suddenly drained from his mouth. Tom was scrambling away from the dead animal as well, an expression of shock and uninhibited fear on his face. The knife in his hand was dripping blood, and he gripped it tightly, pointed outward.

Jennings felt a warm wetness spread from his crotch down his leg as he pissed in his pants. He wanted to scream but could not, and neither he nor Tom said a word, made a sound.

His father rose to his feet. He was wearing a suit, but both the suit and his skin were covered with blood and a clear sort of viscousgoo . He was smaller than he used to be, almost dwarfish, but he hadn't aged at all or at least the age had not registered on his face. Jennings' initial dumb thought was that his father hadn't died, they'd buried the wrong man, but he remembered seeing his father's body and knew that he had died and that this was some sort of ... monster.