Walking Alone Read online

  Timmy stared at his grandma, cheerfully pouring coffee for everyone and talking excitedly about the plans for the day. Her happy exterior, her surface friendliness, once so comfortable and reassuring, now seemed hopelessly false to him. Though he saw no outward indication of it, beneath that front he saw a cold, hard woman.

  She had not come back home until well after three o’clock.

  Soon after the noises had stopped.

  They decided to go to the beach for the day and eat at an outside seafood restaurant near the pier. After cleaning up and getting ready, they all piled into the station wagon, Timmy in the back behind his grandparents, and headed toward the beach.

  Later in the afternoon, he got his father alone and told him he didn’t want to stay for the entire two weeks. He wanted to go back home.

  But his father didn’t understand, and Timmy couldn’t bring himself to tell his dad the truth.

  ****

  After dinner, Timmy went immediately to bed. He didn’t want to stay up tonight. He didn’t want to know what went on after everyone was asleep. He wanted to be deep in slumber before his parents even turned off the TV in their room. It was tough at first. He wasn’t tired at all, and he tossed and turned fitfully in the bed, panic welling within him as he realized that the hour was growing late. He even heard his parents and grandparents retire to their respective rooms.

  But then he was asleep, drifting, dreaming of a world where he was six and his grandparents loved him and the sun always shone.

  He was shocked awake into blackness, feeling the sock stuffed in his mouth, feeling the blindfold pressed against his eyes and tied roughly at the back of his head. He struggled and kicked, and he was gratified to feel his bare heel connect with something soft.

  He heard his grandpa’s muffled grunt of pain.

  Leathery old hands grabbed him around the waist, forcing all of the air out through his nose, and he was lifted off the bed and carried down the hall, through the family room, out the front door. He kicked and punched, his arms and legs flailing wildly, and once his hand connected with a wall. But neither of his parents heard the noise, and neither of them came to save him.

  He was crying as the old man carried him down the street.

  The night was warm, but there was a breeze, and the slight wind tickled its way through his sleep-mussed hair, caressed his bare toes. He tried to pull the bony old fingers off of him, using his hands to pry them loose, but the old bastard was strong. He felt neither hurt nor sadness as he thought of his grandpa. Their former relationship, their former lives, meant nothing now and he did not even think of them. He was filled only with a black rage of hate, and he hoped with all his heart that a huge semi would suddenly come barreling down the street and kill his grandpa, ramming into his body and smashing his fragile bones, turning his face to pulp, his brains to mush. He would be killed too, but it would be worth it. The semi would put a painful end to the old bastard’s miserable life.

  But no semi came.

  He felt his grandpa turn a corner, and he knew they were approaching the car wash. As they drew closer, he heard voices, as though a large crowd had gathered. Snatches of conversation reached his ears.

  “—I don’t even feel the arthritis anymore. I can hardly believe—”

  “—when it scraped off her little dress, I thought I was going to—”

  “—sorry to see Julie go, but now I feel—”

  Several pairs of hands grabbed him and threw him to the ground. He heard his shoulder smack against the concrete, and he felt a sharp flash of pain sear through the right side of his body. His arms and legs were tied with coarse twine, and he felt the bottom half of his body being wrapped in some type of cloth, like a mummy.

  The blindfold was pulled from his eyes.

  He was on the ground in front of the car wash, directly before the open entryway where cars were once ushered in to be cleaned. Around him, around the entire car wash in fact, were hundreds of old people, seemingly all of the grandparents in the city. They were standing, sitting on folding lawn chairs, leaning up against the low brick fence where just yesterday he had sat watching the police.

  Maybe the police will come, he thought wildly. Maybe the police will come, maybe the police will come, maybe—

  His grandma and grandpa were standing next to him, and beside them were two men wearing purple robes. The sheet wrapped around the bottom half of his body was purple as well, he noticed.

  His grandma looked at him kindly, and there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We didn’t want it to be you. Really we didn’t.” She shot a look of poisonous hate at her husband. “It was his fault.” She spat on the ground, and the hardness Timmy had imagined showed through. “Haunted!”

  His grandpa smiled, and there was a look of rapture on his face.

  Timmy scanned the crowd of old faces, looking for some sign of sympathy. His eyes alighted on a fat woman knitting in her folding chair. Their gaze met and she looked away. “I liked the old ways better,” she said.

  One of the purple-robed men lifted him up and placed him on the center of the track that went into the car wash. Timmy promptly pushed himself off, onto the cement. “A fighter,” the man said. He brought a flat board, and Timmy was tied securely to it. The board was placed on the track.

  As one, the crowd stood. Their faces were deadly serious, and they chanted a single alien word as the two men in purple raised their hands above their heads. The machines within the car wash roared into life, gears grinding, metal screeching, brushes whirring. No lights came on, but the track lurched once, and Timmy’s board started forward. He struggled and squirmed, but it was no use. He could not push himself off the track.

  All of the old people were singing now, something that sounded vaguely like a nursery rhyme he had heard as a child. Above the other voices, he could hear his grandma and grandpa singing loud and clear.

  The singing was drowned out by the noise of the car wash.

  He did not see the brushes come down.

  THE FEEB

  (1988)

  Jimmy T was a crippled little feeb who lived alone in a house with no furniture. Although he was somewhere between ten and fifteen years old, no one really knew his exact age. No one really cared. Jimmy T was not the sort of kid you gave much thought to.

  Not at first.

  When Jimmy T’s mama died, we all thought he’d end up in Riverview. We assumed someone from the County would have him committed. We sure as hell didn’t think he’d be able to take care of himself. But as the weeks passed, and then the months, and we saw Jimmy T hobbling down the footpath into the woods, collecting berries and molds and fungus the way he always had, we realized that he was going to be able to get by. And when no one came to take him away, we realized that the authorities were going to let him live alone.

  The crops began dying soon after that, stricken by a blight the likes of which the agriculture man had never seen. Henry said it was bugs, said he could see the places where the plants had been gnawed, but the agriculture man found traces of a fungus on the roots and branches, and he said it was some sort of disease. At night, fires could be seen on the various ranches as Henry and Lowell and their friends tried to smoke out the bugs.

  I had my crops treated with an anti-fungoid spray.

  All of our crops continued to die.

  I began getting up even earlier than usual. Despite the fact that I’d seen the agriculture man’s white fungus on my plants, I also saw tiny teeth marks. I wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  On the fourth morning, I saw Jimmy T out in my pasture. “Hey!” I yelled at him. “You get away from there!” But either he didn’t hear me or didn’t understand. It was hard to tell. I saw him bend down, pick something up and put it in a bag.

  I ran across the field toward him, and he turned slowly around. He hobbled toward me, then changed his mind and began limping away, toward his house. I caught up to him almost immediately. “What are you doing?”
I asked.

  He stared at me dully, his mouth open.

  I held out my hand. “Let me see the bag, Jimmy T.”

  He handed me the canvas sack, and I opened it. Inside were handfuls of white fungus. He’d been collecting them off my plants. I put a finger into the bag and touched the stuff. It was slimy and felt like jelly. I knew the feeb probably ate the fungus, and my stomach churned.

  He was lucky he hadn’t poisoned himself yet. I handed the bag back to him. “Stay off my property,” I ordered. I grabbed his shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Do you understand me, Jimmy T?”

  He nodded stupidly, and I let him go. He started walking back toward his house.

  Later that day Tim Hawthorne’s cow was found dead in the barn, her udders completely sealed shut with fungus. One of Henry’s chickens had it growing inside her mouth, and she died, too. I checked my livestock carefully, but they all seemed to be okay.

  We felt like we were in some damn science fiction movie.

  ****

  We stayed out all that night. We didn’t want to split up—we knew we wouldn’t find anything that way—so we just picked a ranch at random, and all of us went over there. We picked Booker’s place, and we stationed ourselves all around the barn and pasture, but none of us saw a thing. I went home the next morning tired and dirty and discouraged, only to find that two of our cats were dead. There was no fungus on them, but they’d been gnawed ragged. I found some fungus by their cat dishes on the porch.

  I called up Henry, and we went to see Mrs. Caffrey. We figured if anyone could solve this it was her. Neither of us liked going to the witch woman’s, but sometimes there was no other choice.

  She met us in her trailer, and it looked like she was expecting us. She nodded a greeting, told us to sit down and asked what we wanted. We told her about the blight on the crops, about the dying animals, and she nodded silently.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Henry asked.

  Her answer shocked us. “It’s the feeb,” she said. “Kill him.”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “The feeb,” she said. “Kill him and the blight will be gone.”

  I looked over at Henry and shook my head, warning him not to say anything until we left. We both knew Mrs. Caffrey hated Jimmy T. Jimmy T’s mama had always blamed Mrs. Caffrey for her son being born the way he was. She said it was because of the roots and herbs Mrs. Caffrey gave her and told her to take when she was pregnant. Mrs. Caffrey’s business actually fell off a little after Jimmy T was born, and though she denied it, everyone knew she hated the boy. But I never would have thought she hated him this much.

  We thanked Mrs. Caffrey for her help and left. Henry tried to press a few bills in her hand, but she refused, as always. Before we took off, she ran up to the window of the pickup. She must have known we weren’t going to follow her advice. She reached out and held my hand for a moment, cocking her head as if she were listening for something. “Be in the north end of your field tonight,” she said. “Then you will see.”

  I was shaking as I drove home, and I realized I was scared. “Should we?” I asked, looking over at Henry.

  “What else do we have to go on?”

  We met in the pasture after dinner. I brought a flashlight and an extra jacket in case it got cold. Henry brought a shotgun. “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “Just in case.”

  The orange at the edge of the horizon faded into purple and then into black. Henry and I shot the breeze a bit, but there wasn’t a whole lot to say and the conversation just kind of died. I was tired, and I could tell Henry was, too. Neither of us had gotten any sleep lately. We decided to take turns on watch. Henry pulled the short straw, and I gratefully leaned up against the fence post and closed my eyes.

  Henry shook me awake. He had my flashlight in his hand, and he was shining it on the ground. It was dark, but I could still see his face. He was frightened. I stood up. “What is it?”

  “Come here,” he said.

  I followed him through a row of cotton to the edge of the irrigation ditch. He shone the flashlight down, but I couldn’t see anything at first. Then something moved on the periphery of the beam. I took the light from him and pointed it myself.

  A white fungoid creature was dancing along the bottom of the ditch.

  It was joined by another. And another. And another.

  They began to crawl up the side of the ditch toward us. I saw horrible jellyish skin, toothless mouths, webbed little fingers. I turned to run, but Henry was already shooting. I swung back around in time to see the first creature explode, blown into fungus fragments by Henry’s shotgun. Screeching, the other two creatures ran the length of the ditch the way they’d come. I followed them from on top of the bank, but they were faster than I was. I saw one of them leap out of the ditch and dash across the open space.

  To Jimmy T’s house.

  I stood in shock, watching as the other one followed, pushing its way through one of the holes in Jimmy T’s screen door.

  I hurried back to tell Henry. He was examining what was left of the creature he’d killed. He didn’t touch the bits of white fungus but prodded them with his shotgun. They quivered like they were still alive, and Henry grimaced in disgust. I looked at him. “The other ones went to Jimmy T’s,” I said. “I saw them go inside.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Get the guys,” I told him. “We’re going in.”

  A half hour later, there were eight of us standing in the drive leading up to Jimmy T’s. All of us were armed. Even old Randolph had brought a pitchfork.

  Since I was the one who had seen the creatures, I led the way.

  The feeb’s house was dark, but it was always dark. He had no electricity. I shone my flashlight over the face of the house, into the glassless windows, but nothing moved. “He’s just a kid,” someone behind me said.

  “You didn’t see those things,” Henry told him.

  I thought of what Mrs. Caffrey had said, and I knew Henry was thinking the same thing. “Jimmy T!” I called. “Jimmy T!” I shone the flashlight on the screen door, letting the beam rest on the rips at the bottom where the creatures had gone in, but there was no movement and no sound. “Jimmy T!” I called again.

  “What are we planning to do here?”

  I turned around to see Charley staring at me. I realized he was the one I’d heard before. “He’s just a kid. And a feeb, besides. He don’t know what he’s doing.”

  “Let’s just go inside,” Henry said.

  I walked up the rickety porch steps, the others following.

  Jimmy T was sitting on the bare floor in the middle of the empty front room, staring at the wall. His canvas bag, now empty, sat beside him. “Jimmy T,” I said. He turned slowly around, and I expected some sort of reaction, but his eyes were as dull as ever. I walked forward, my footsteps loud in the empty house, and I could hear the other men moving in behind me. “Where are they?” I asked. “Where are those creatures?”

  Jimmy T said nothing.

  I picked him up and jerked him to his feet. He let out a high girlish squeal. I clamped my hand around his thin little arm and forced him in front of me. “We’re going through every inch of this place until we find them,” I said.

  We moved from one empty room to another, seeing nothing but dust and occasional leaves. Upstairs it looked like it was going to be the same thing. The first room, nothing. The second room, nothing.

  But in the third room, in the middle of the floor, was a naked woman, her legs spread wide.

  No. Not a woman. As I moved into the room and looked closer, I saw that she was made from mold and fungus and lichen, shaped into female form.

  Standing in the doorway, Jimmy T started quivering all over. His hands shook, his knees knocked, and his lips began twitching. Even his eyelids started to flutter. With one quick motion, he pulled off his pants. I saw the boy’s erection for only a second, then he was on top of the fungoid form, pumping away between
its legs. We watched in disgust as his bare buttocks moved up and down, as his torso squirmed, as his hands caressed the lichen hair. He was babbling something high and whiny and entirely unintelligible. Someone behind me muttered a sickened “Jesus.”

  “Pull him offa there,” Henry said, grimacing. “Make him stop that.”

  But Jimmy T was already finishing. His body stiffened noticeably, he let out a loud screech, and then he lay slumped on top of the slimy white figure, spent. A moment later, he stood up and pulled on his pants. His face, as always, was blank, and I had no idea what he was thinking. I glanced toward the mound of fungus, surprised to see that it had kept its female shape, even after Jimmy T’s exertions.

  And I saw the first creature run out from between its spread legs.

  Everyone else saw it at the same time, and Campbell, who was wearing gloves, reached out and grabbed it. Grimacing distastefully, he held it up. The creature was made out of fungus, but it looked like a miniature Jimmy T. Its eyes were closed, and its little legs were pumping, as though it were running across solid ground.

  “Put it down,” I said.

  Campbell put it down, and the creature took off. I ran to the window, and a moment later I saw it dash out the screen and make a beeline for my pasture.

  I turned back around. Others were coming now. Three other slimy creatures, all tiny copies of Jimmy T, rushed out from between the fungoid woman’s legs and ran toward the door, heading out to my pasture.

  Henry’s eyes were focused on Jimmy T, and there was fear on his face. The feeb was staring at the wall, oblivious, his head rocking back and forth as if in time to slow music.

  “What’re we gonna do?” Henry asked.

  “Let’s wait,” I said. “Let’s wait until they come back. We saw them return here once. They’ll probably come back again.”

  Jimmy T picked up his empty canvas bag, scooped out a small bit of fungus and applied it to the woman’s breasts, molding it skillfully into nipples. He hummed as he worked, some strange little song I didn’t know.