She could hear commotion in the distance.
She ran off in its direction and splashed right into a leaf-covered pond that swallowed her right up to the hips. She fought her way free and found herself staring at countless pairs of eyes watching her from the brush. She began edging away, skirting the pond and reaching for her radio. But by that point, she did not know why. There was no way in hell backup would get to her. They had their own problems.
There was a rustling motion behind her.
She pivoted, bringing her weapon to bear. She saw nothing. Movement off to the right. She pivoted again and again, there was nothing. She was being played and she knew it. Whatever these things were—and she had long dismissed the idea that they were people as such—they were trying to heighten her fear and uncertainty. They were trying to work her into hysteria so she would get confused and make mistakes. And they were doing a very good job of it. Beads of sweat rolled down her face. Her hands were shaking. A blossom of cold fear had opened in her belly, spreading its petals.
“I’M ARMED!” she shouted. “I WILL SHOOT TO KILL!”
Her voice echoed off into the mist and still she heard sounds from every side, furtive rustlings and stealthy footsteps, a sound of phlegmy breathing. She sensed clandestine motion everywhere, but could not pin it down. She was beyond ordinary fear at that point and she was using every bit of her training, experience and resolve to keep down the full-blown panic that was rising inside her like a column of hot air.
She heard whispering.
It was all around her.
At first she could not be sure what was being said, but then it became clear to her. She was being mocked. Mocked by voices that were liquid and gurgling, barely human. “I’m armed,” they said. “I will shoot to kill.” As more and more of those whispering, clotted voices joined in it was almost too much. A scream trembled in her throat, her uniform shirt clung to her back with sweat. A cold chill went up her spine and every muscle tensed. The whispering continued, low and evil and hissing. There were other sounds… a guttural grunting like that of a boar, then something that might have been a hollow chuckling, and then the unmistakable sound of chattering teeth.
Something broke loose inside her and she began randomly firing into the mist. She put rounds out in front of her, to either side, and behind her with little control or thought until in her panic she realized she had emptied the Glock.
Then she screamed, a long and shrill sound of absolute despair.
And something hit her between the shoulder blades.
It was enough to put her face-first into the wet leaves and stagnant puddles. She tried to move and there was a knot of pain at her back. It felt like she might have dislocated her shoulder. Goddammit, move! You have to move! If you don’t get out of here right now, then… then…
She forced herself to her knees, banging her foot off what must have hit her: a rock. A big rock nearly the size of a basketball. She climbed to her feet, trying to pull her radio with trembling fingers and she heard a whooshing sound. Another stone. This time it collided with her face. She yelped and went back down to her knees. Her cheek was gashed open. A warm gout of blood splashed down her face.
She turned and saw someone not three feet away.
A woman… at least something like a woman. Her eyes were bulbous and blank white, dirty gray hair plastered to her head with water and leaves. Her face was a horror, like a deflated skin bag of ruts and pouches, a viscid sheet of protoplasm that was trying to crawl off the skull beneath.
Carla tried to crawl away, very aware of the fact that she was whimpering now, dirty and defeated, tears running down her face, her breath catching in her throat. She did not feel so much like a big badass cop. No, now she was a little girl hysterical with terror. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, rocking back and forth as she pissed herself.
The woman hopped closer to her on hands and knees, pendulous breasts swaying back and forth. She had a stick and she kept poking Carla with it. In the belly, the arms, the thighs. She was particularly interested in what was between her legs.
Carla tried to scream, but all that came out was an airless wheezing.
The others were moving in now.
She could see their silvery, moonstruck eyes getting closer as they came out of the fog. And crawling through the grass and wet leaves were… children. Small, primordial-looking things that inched towards her like centipedes. They made high, piping sounds like spring peepers, dragging themselves forward on their bellies. Like the woman, they were naked, their flesh unbearably white and streaked with dirt, smeared with mud, leaves in their hair. One of them was dragging what looked like a scarf behind it, but it wasn’t a scarf. It was an undulant, parasitic worm attached to its throat.
The woman swatted her again and again with the stick until it broke, leaving red stripes over Carla’s face and arms. Then the woman had her, forcing her down, straddling her. She brought her face in so close that Carla could see the mites jumping in her greasy hair. Her breath was hot and stank like an open grave. Drool fell from her lips, a ribbon of it breaking against Carla’s cheek.
Carla lost it.
She tossed her rider and almost scampered away, but hands seized her. What seemed dozens of hands. Her hair was grasped, head yanked back and the woman came in close again, muttering incomprehensible things in a clogged voice.
Carla screamed for real this time.
But not for long. The woman jammed her white, mucid hand into her mouth, silencing her. Carla gagged, then vomited, but she was held fast. The woman’s nails raked against her tongue and then the fingers went deeper and deeper.
No, no, no! Carla heard a voice in her head say.
The woman forced her hand down Carla’s throat, inch by terrible inch. Her jaws had to open wider and wider to admit it. The hand probed deeper as Carla shook with gag reflex, choking and trying to cough it out, but it was no good. An ordinary human hand would never have been capable of such a thing, but the woman and her hand were hardly normal by any means. Her flesh was like rolling wax, the tissues beneath nearly liquid. The hand narrowed and elongated like a snake working its way down a gopher hole and Carla was thankful when she began to lose consciousness.
By then, the woman had her elbow in Carla’s mouth and the others could barely contain their excitement.
Her last sensory experience was the distant feeling of that hand down in her belly, rooting around and clawing at things until it clutched something and tore it free, dragging its fleshy mass back up her throat to present to the others.
11
Later that night, an old woman, with the aid of her cane, left her farmhouse, sniffed the damp air and considered the dark sky. She knew, absolutely knew in her bones that trouble was coming, trouble like she hadn’t seen in ages.
She stood on the back stoop of her house, nervous about going out after dark, as she had been her whole life. Something that had only gotten worse and more deeply entrenched as the years had flown by, like the yellowing leaves of an ancient book. Night was a bad time out on Bellac Road. A time when things that should not be, were, and those that should have crawled like graveworms walked tall like men.
Earlier, she had heard the commotion and the shooting in the night, far distant in the outer reaches of the Ezren land where it butted up to the Pigeon River State Forest. She knew it was the police nosing about and making a fine mess of things, sticking their noses in where they weren’t wanted and getting themselves in a fix at the same time. It was only a matter of time. When she had seen that big, dirty bulldozer cutting a path through Ezren lands and peeling up what lay below, she knew it was coming.