"Thank you." And you, too, sweet Lord.
"Do you want to come down to the station and file charges?"
Wasn't there something in the U.S. Constitution about the criminal getting to face his accuser? "No, I'm okay. I just thought you might want to check it out."
"You were nearly attacked, you say? Were you threatened in any way? It's not against the law for someone to be out at night, I'm afraid."
Oh, Officer, this thing was definitely breaking some laws. Maybe not the laws of humankind, but certainly the laws of nature. "Well, just check it out, okay?"
"I need your name for my report."
James hung up. The sweat from his frantic run had dried but the fear still clung like salt. Fortunately, Aunt Mayzie had already been asleep when he got home. At least he didn’t have to offer her any explanations of things he didn’t understand himself.
James checked the locks on the doors and windows and went to bed, praying that Aunt Mayzie would be safe. His sleep was shallow and restless, disturbed by animated cauliflower nightmares.
The alien felt the mist of its spores scatter in the night. A tingle of air pressure altered its surface chemistry, took shape, and imprinted sound vibration on the creature’s skin. The symbol throbbed against its heart-brain, causing a disturbance in the pacific state of healing.
May-zee.
The creature analyzed the symbol, and compared it to the “shu-shaaa.” No connection. No pattern. No hint of higher intelligence.
The creature fed and rested.
CHAPTER TEN
"What do you make of it?"
"I ain't touching it."
"Looks like some kind of jelly to me," Chief Crosley said. "When did you find it?"
"This morning. Dispatch got a call last night, some drunk said he was nearly attacked back here." Arnie McFall ran his sleeve across the sweating bone of his forehead. The sun glinted off the car windows into his eyes. "Sent Matheson out, but Matheson didn't see nothing. I figured I'd poke around this morning, in case we had a bum hanging out back here. A bum could live in style, what with Sonny's dumpsters and all."
Crosley looked down on the milky pool of slime that even now was congealing and crusting under the warm sun. Ordinarily, he would have figured it for a chemical spill or some kind of underground leak, nothing that would hurt anybody. But it was the clothes splayed out in the middle of the foamy gom that was the mystery.
He didn't like mysteries. Mysteries were for those cop shows on TV, the kind that you watched while you put up your feet and killed a cold one or two. He didn't need any mysteries in Windshake, because he didn't have any snoopy writers or doctors or priests who could solve them like they did on TV.
"Maybe somebody just put these clothes here for a joke,” Crosley said. “When I was a kid, when we went to the beach, I'd sneak off at night and make weird tracks coming up out of the surf, twisting my hands and feet and crawling on my belly. So whoever saw it in the morning would think a monster had crawled out."
"Might be shenanigans, Chief. But it looks kind of natural."
The Chief had to admit that the clothes covered the ground in the shape of an actual person. The angles of the knees and elbows were curved instead of bent like a stick figure's. Dingy white socks jutted from the cuffs of the jeans, their bottoms worn completely through. A Red Man baseball cap had rolled a few feet away, where it leaned against a rusty transaxle.
Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble for a prank. And who'd want to waste a good pair of Levi's like that?
"Looks like whoever it was came down the tracks there into these old junk cars.”
"You're calling it a ‘who,’ Arnie. I don't like the sound of that."
"Sorry, Chief."
"I don't see no shoes nowhere."
"I've looked all over the back street. Nothing out of the ordinary. Besides this, I mean." Arnie pointed to the imprint.
Crosley rubbed his belly the way he always did when he was uneasy. He looked around the car lot, at the water tower and the weedy train tracks. The backs of the buildings were streaked with tarry runoff and fire escapes clung to the bricks like giant broken spiders. Traffic echoed off the storefronts from the jams of people pouring in for Blossomfest.
"You want me to scrape up a sample to send to the SBI boys down in Raleigh?" Arnie asked.
"No, let’s just keep this to ourselves until we know more. Run a missing persons check and that sort of thing."
"The way this is drying out, it looks like it'll flake off in the breeze. Won't be much left soon."
Good, thought Crosley. He said, "Who called in that report last night?"
"Didn't give his name. Like I said, Dispatch thought it was a drunk."
"The Virgin Queen is going to love this," Crosley said, referring to Mayor Speerhorn by her departmental nickname. "Especially right here at Blossomfest and all. She's going to shit a silver teapot."
Crosley resumed rubbing his ample stomach.
Chester didn't see Don Oscar out in the farmyard.
It ain't Don Oscar, Chester told himself. Let's just call it ‘Mushbrains’ from now on.
Because the last time Chester saw Mushbrains, about an hour ago, it was looking kind of milky and droopy, like a mushroom did after the steamy sun had worked it over. Sort of wilted from rot and turning to gooey liquid.
Yeah, like that, except this fungus thing used to be your drinking buddy.
Chester tongued his chaw and flexed his arthritic joints, grateful that the Lord had seen fit to throw down a sunny day. If it had been raining, Chester probably would have laid in the hay till the storm passed, his muscles cramped up like a pine knot. He tiptoed down the stairs, grimacing at every squeak of the dry chestnut.
He pulled the twine strap that lifted the corncrib latch from the inside. If Mushbrains was outside the door, Chester knew he was done for. He kicked open the door and bounced out onto the packed matted dirt of the barn floor, arms up like a karate fighter. Nothing stirred but a scrawny rooster that hobbled out of a stall, its red comb quivering as it swiveled its head.
Chester clung to the wall as he edged toward the barn opening. He didn't know what was safer, the cool dark shadows or the sterile exposure of daylight. He was debating a run for the farmhouse when the decision was made for him. Swampy breathing came from the far side of the barn.
He bolted across the yard, his limbs flailing like a crippled hay rake. Forty feet of fiery lung pain later, he was on the porch, kicking aside the broken screen door. He staggered into the living room, blind from sunshine, and bumped into the splintery carnage that DeWalt had strewn. He felt along the wall for his thirty-caliber, then decided on the shotgun.
He wanted whatever corpse old Mushbrains left behind to be unrecognizable.
He thumbed back the triggers, comforted by the feel of the cold steel. Mushbrains was easy meat now, if "meat" was the right word.
"Old Mushy ain't moving too swift lately," he said, his spirit soaring now that he was armed. He peered through the door, waiting for Mushbrains to slog within range. Toenails clicked on the floor behind him. He turned and saw Boomer.
Good old Boomer.
Good old Boomer, his fur now bristles, his spine bowed from the weight of whatever roiled in his bloated belly. His old stringy eyes had flowered into purple hyacinths, and the nose resembled a moldy peach. The drooping leathery tongue was veined like a maple leaf. Stinkweed thorns crowned the forehead and his grapevine tail wagged in stupid joy.
Chester jerked one trigger and his hound dog shredded like a December jack-o’-lantern. Chester wiped at his eyes, eyes that were too dry and tired to make tears. He opened a bureau drawer and filled his overall pockets with twenty-gauge shells. It was time to deal with the mushbrained monster that had pissed on his corn flakes and crammed grit in his craw.