Aberrations (16 page)

I was standing outside Strickler’s store, loading sacks of groceries into the back of my truck and thumping a fist against the glass of the cab to chasten Max into silence when I saw him.

He was standing in the center of the square, right next to the statue of Harlan Masterson—the town founder—who now presided over a scum-filled pond with an understandably depressed expression on his marble face.

The stranger wore a dark suit that only served to highlight his stark white features, his hair wild and fizzing around his narrow skull like black electricity.

He would have looked odd to anyone else, standing there with his hands behind his back, head cocked slightly while all around him people were going about their business warmed by the pleasant August sunshine. But to me he didn’t look out of place at all.

The dog bared his teeth and growled. I finished putting away my groceries and sat into the truck. Massaging the animal’s shaggy coat as I gunned the ignition, I found it hard to look away from the man by the statue.

After a moment of staring in a manner that would have been considered impolite in any society, I started home.

A quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed that the stranger wasn’t moving from his place by the statue and before I took my eyes off his dwindling form, I thought I saw him bring something long and thin out from behind his back, something that gleamed in the sunlight. Something he put to his lips.

* * * * *

I live alone. There are many reasons why that has to be the case but none of them are pertinent to this account. Although I don’t consider myself an unfriendly fellow, I think perhaps the sight of the many demons cavorting in my eyes is enough to deter any potential relationships I might have developed with my neighbors.

My house is small, quite literally a ‘cracker box’ but it is comfortable and clean. At least it used to be before it became necessary to smash up the furniture to use for barricades.

When I got home, I put away the groceries, still troubled by the sight of the pale-faced stranger. He might not have bothered me had he just been going about his business, or acting like a tourist but he had seemed distinctly out of place in the square and I don’t mean in the sense that any stranger might seem out of place in a town where there are no secrets and everyone knows everyone else. If anything, he looked as if he had been imitating the statue next to him. And the thing he’d been holding…

I grabbed myself a beer from the six-pack I had purchased at the store and sat down at the kitchen table, wishing I had something else to preoccupy myself with when the doorbell rang.

I hesitated, debating whether or not to answer.

There is a half-mile stretch between my home and the Sandersons next door. It had been almost six months since they paid me a visit and that had been an awkward affair, all uncomfortable silences and plastic smiles. Apparently, they had decided it was time to get to know their reclusive neighbor but I doubted I’d ever see them again after that brief encounter. If it wasn’t the Sandersons, then it would more than likely be someone selling something and I was in no mood to face fresh-faced salesman on that particular morning. But I decided to see who it was if for no other reason than to distract myself from the inexplicable dread that had wrapped itself around me like a wet blanket.

I opened the door and sighed.

Geoff Sanderson.

He looked excited, double chin flapping and face wrenched into an enthusiastic smile as he did a little two-step on my stoop, as if he needed to go to the bathroom.

“Geoff.”

“Hi Ed, listen! You’re not going to believe what’s happening in town!”

He was waiting for me to ask him what was going on but I didn’t. I’m not sure I could have even if I’d wanted to. My skin had grown cold and slivers of ice began to slide down between my shoulder blades. Whatever was happening, I had felt it coming and now Sanderson was doing a jig on my porch confirming it.

“Rats!” he yelped and studied my face for a reaction.

I stared blankly at him, wondering what he was talking about. Had that been an exclamation?

He sighed deeply, looking at me as if I were slow. “Rats, buddy! The whole town has been overrun by rats!”

“What?” I had a sick feeling in my stomach.

“Yeah! I just got off the phone with Carl Brandner at the bank. He’s a good buddy of mine,” he said in a confidential tone as if this was something he was proud of. “He said that about fifty million of the little fuckers just came flooding into the square. Isn’t that wild?”

I frowned at him, wondering how he could find such excitement in something that was making me physically ill.

“Christ. Is anyone doing anything about it?”

He waved away my question and I felt like punching him in the face. “Wait, wait! That’s not the best part.” He licked his lips. “Right in the middle of this shitpile of rats there’s…wait for it…there’s a guy!”

I felt the blood drain from my face before he said it.

“Playing a fucking flute! Can you believe it?”

I couldn’t and the look on my face must have said as much because the smile vanished off Sanderson’s face as if he’d been slapped.

“Hey Ed, you okay?”

I stepped away from him and slammed the door. He continued to mumble through it for a few seconds more and then I heard a car door slam. He drove away, no doubt regretting having taken the time to share such prized information with the weirdo down the road.

I drained the beer in one gulp, irritated that I hadn’t something stronger and began to pace.

They found me
, I thought, struggling to stay calm.

Outside in the back yard, Max began to growl. The phone began to ring.

And the world went to hell.

* * * * *

A state of emergency was declared, the media descended on Harperville like vultures and the stench of death permeated the air as people began to succumb to the effects of the infestation.

The next morning, accompanied by the echo of shotgun blasts and distant screams, I tuned out the world behind my faded curtains and switched on the television.

A weary smile creased my lips as I read the banner CNN had chosen to tag their lead story: BLACK DEATH 2002—HARPERVILLE, OHIO

Images of half-chewed bodies and twitching disease-ridden victims flashed across the screen but barely registered. I had been sensible enough not to stop drinking since Sanderson delivered the news and now my head felt light as a feather.

I felt guiltily satisfied that my rotund neighbor, who had derived such morbid glee from the ‘plague’ was probably himself now portioned out into hundreds of piles of rat shit.

Occasionally something would thump down low against the side of the house but I was too drunk to let it frighten me. Besides, it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen this kind of thing before.

The alcohol wasn’t strong enough to dampen my grief however at the loss of Max. The golden retriever had been my only real friend since leaving Garretsburg and the sight of his mutilated body, lying on its side and still chained to the doghouse, brought tears to my eyes.

Grief turned to rage, then guilt.

I think now if I owned a gun I wouldn’t be recording this. I’d have swallowed the barrel and gone the easy route out of this nightmare.

The only consolation is that it will soon be over anyway.

* * * * *

He came at midnight.

I was jerked from a fitful slumber in the armchair by the sound of someone knocking on the door. Disorientated, I rubbed my eyes and wiped drool away from my chin with the sleeve of my shirt.

The television was still broadcasting the atrocities that continued to take place at the center of the town. Apparently old Harlan Masterson had tired of watching the pond and was now lying face down in the murk.

I tried to tell myself as I hoisted my aching body from the armchair that it was the authorities at the door, come to take me to safety but I knew it wasn’t. There are no safe havens for people like me and it was only then I was coming to realize that.

When I opened the door and saw the stranger standing there, I felt only the smallest twinge of surprise. The light from the room failed to reach his eyes and I trembled as I stared deep into those cold orbs.

Around his feet the rats swarmed like a living carpet, all fangs, claws and hair.

His face was all angles and completely bloodless as he looked over my shoulder as if checking to see if I had company. I stepped back and let him enter, leaving the rats at the threshold climbing over each other and squealing. Obediently.

I shut the door.

“Nice place,” he said in a voice that sounded deceptively human. He sat in my Lay-Z-Boy armchair and clicked back the lever that folded out the footrest. Clomping two thick black boots up, he turned to look at where I stood paralyzed by the front door.

“Take a seat,” he said. It wasn’t a suggestion and I felt an inner pang of disgust at how fast I obeyed his command. I lowered myself into the high backed armchair in front of the window.

He cast a glance at the television and his lips curved into a smile, admiring his handiwork.

“You were expecting me,” he said then, the smile gone, those black eyes boring into my skull. I realized that if I chose not to respond, he could simply tear the answer from my mind.

I nodded slowly. “I had hoped…”

“Hope is not something you have the luxury of entertaining anymore, Piper.”

My head snapped up at the mention of the name. It was something I had forgotten how to hear, something I had prayed I would never hear again. How foolish of me to think I could ever step out of the shadow painted for me by past masters.

“Don’t call me that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is it something you’re ashamed of?”

His impossibly long, almost feminine fingers drummed a tattoo on the arm of the chair.

I locked mine together to keep them from trembling.

“Do you miss them?” he said, nodding at the front door. The rats screeched in response.

I shook my head, bile filling my mouth with the return of memory.

“Not even a little bit?”

“No.”

“I find that hard to believe, Piper. A legend such as yourself should be proud of his achievements.”

I looked down at my hands. “I told you not to call me that.”

He sighed and the drumming stopped. “Can you really sit there and pretend that you’re the victim? That the atrocities you so willfully caused were forced upon you?”

I heard the creak of the chair as he sat up and dropped his boots to the floor.

“I did what I was supposed to do, but it’s over now. I’m just as human as the people you’re killing.”

He scoffed. “I’m afraid you’ll never be as human as them, Piper. Never. You may have hidden yourself away in this shell of yours and you may act and smell and shit like them, but you’ll always be one of us.”

I looked into his viscous eyes, watched as the darkness shifted like tar. “Why are you here?”

He produced from his pocket a seven-inch flute, the mouthpiece solid gold, the pipe burnished silver. He twirled it in his fingers and grinned. “Play,” he said.

I swallowed. At the sight of the instrument, my lips began to burn and God help me, I wanted to take it, to play the tunes that had been the signature of my old life, the melodies that had carried me from village to village, from Hamlin to Harperville. A desperate longing swelled in my chest, a sudden powerful urge to shrug off the pretense of my new found existence and bring the flute to my mouth, to fill it with my breath, to rub my fingers over the holes in its proud body with sensual fingers, to return to the world I had forsaken. To kill again.

No. I remembered. The children. Buried across vast plains of nothingness, their innocence torn from their naïve young bodies as payment for the deceit of their parents.

I remembered and oh, how it ravaged my insides. All the lives taken, all the violence. Lured from their homes with the promise of being carried to Heaven on the notes of a song only to find their mouths filled with dirt, their fingers removed and sent in crimson parcels back to their families. It would continue, of course. Nothing on earth had the power to stop it, but I could retain hope of salvation by resisting the urge to return to that life, to plunge my fingers back into the bodies of the innocent, to tear them asunder. In the face of such evil, I still had the power to say—

“No.”

“It will never leave you,” he said, visibly infuriated by my refusal and it was then that I knew that he too would be forced to pay a price if he failed to bring me back. “You are a pitiful sight, Piper. You concern yourself with the implications of a return to your old life. You fear the sight, smell and taste of the blood of children but yet you are willing to let me wipe out this town if you refuse. Do you think that will redeem you?”

I forced myself to look away from the flute, afraid that if I stared at it any longer then I would have it in my hands and to my mouth before I knew what I was doing.

“Do you think
anything
can redeem you?” he spat and something rippled beneath his skin. Beneath the anger, I could see the faintest trace of fear.

“What will they do to you if you go back alone?” I asked in as calm a tone as I could muster.

The muscles in his jaw tightened. This time, when he crouched forward I thought the creak came from his bones and not the chair as I had previously thought.

“It took you some time to adjust, didn’t it?” he asked, ignoring the question.

“What are you talking about?”

He fluttered a hand at me. “This…disguise. This shitty little mortal life you prescribe to. It took you some time to get used to it, didn’t it?”

The sinking feeling in my stomach told us both that I knew what he was referring to. I could feel soft fingers probing at my brain and I shook them off.

“How could it be any different?” I replied, knowing he had dealt his best card.

“I didn’t say it did. But by human laws, murdering children is one of the most heinous crimes of all. You no longer have your status as Piper to use as an excuse. You no longer have the treachery of mortals to use as an excuse. As a supposed human, the act of murdering children and burying them in your backyard leaves you viable to the most horrendous form of punishment.”