MicroHorror

The first train was scheduled to arrive in the morning.

It was nearly midnight and the air was cool and clear. Bobby Jenkins sat on the town’s sole bluff watching the work crew laying track. He had been asleep on the coarse blanket that served as his bed, but the noise had woken him–that familiar clang of hammers against steel. So he snuck out as his father snored on and muttered in his sleep; his father often claimed to hear low voices in the dark.

Bobby thought the work had been finished; he had watched it progress for over a year, ever since he’d heard the first explosion. “That’s the ’glycerine,” his father told him, wild-eyed. After that, the tracks appeared, and the workmen with them.

The coming of the railroad was the most exciting thing that had happened to this town since he’d been alive–Bobby was born the day the war for the Union had ended. He read Andy Dibble’s newspaper as best he could and he was excited when they said that this was the beginning of a new age–that of the “iron horses.”

The boy preferred watching the workers to going to school: the iron men, the spikemen, the trackmen. They were gruff and strong, all, wearing hats and overalls, swinging hammers and picks. They smoked constantly and used words that his father spoke rarely and, when he did, prayed about for days after.

Earlier in the week, Bobby had seen the tracks finally meet the station–a barren patch of land with one spare but newly built cottage of wood and tar. The men let out whoops and hollers. Andy printed a front-page story saying that the tracks were operational and the first train would arrive in the early hours of November 1.

But now this night crew was working nearly a mile back from that station house. Bobby did not recognize any of these silent and disparate men. They were certainly not of the same rowdy group he had watched all year, though none of them had been locals either.

The railroad bosses had scouted the area before beginning construction. They knew right away that the townspeople didn’t have the strength or the numbers to do this grueling work; the population was a mere hundred and fifty, quiet and sad folks. It had started as nearly a thousand, but disease hit hard; Indian attacks, too. There were accidents, and so many men lost in the war. Now, it was nearly a ghost town. And so they called it Deadman. The water to the west was known as Deadman’s Sound.

But the tycoons saw money here, and with the lure of money comes people. Thus, the railroad.

Bobby’s father spoke against this. “The dead run this town. You can’t tell me otherhow,” he said. “And the dead don’t like the living–not us and certainly not outsiders.” Bobby was surprised at how many of his neighbors listened, as if they heard voices as well.

“Boy,” his father whispered to him alone, “don’t expect them to stand for this.”

But Bobby was happy. This first train was bringing in workers and families. It would be a fresh start for a place preoccupied with ghosts.

From below him, the only sounds were of tools splitting the tracks. Cutting them, turning them. The men did not rest; there were many of them and they moved fast. They were blue in the moonlight.

Bobby breathed in the rising mist and soon fell asleep. He dreamed of an empty town.

As the night wore on, the men continued to work. They re-laid the rails with great efficiency, leading them leftward, away from their original path. When they finished, just before dawn, the tracks ran to the water, with no stop and no end. The men disappeared in the light of the sun as the train sped toward town from the south.

It would arrive in Deadman as scheduled.

The shade of the tree once covered the entire world.

This is hard to fathom, but it is true. The tree’s trunk, many miles wide, rose up from the ocean and reached far into the sky. But what stood above the water’s surface was merely its tip; beneath the waves that lapped at its impenetrable bark, the tree’s girth grew exponentially until, upon finally meeting the ocean bottom, it covered all, extending from the base of one continent to the next.

The roots of the tree were countless. Some traveled in unending circles and wrapped around the earth’s core; some grew straight through to the other side of the world, rising through water and land, up and up until they touched the clouds. These roots were thick as today’s oaks and had branches of their own, reaching out until they became entwined not only with each other, but also with the limbs and leaves of the great tree itself.

And in these early days, the tree flourished. It bore fruits and flowers and nuts of all kinds. As seasons passed, these fell to the earth, brightening its fields and enriching its soils.

But, as with many things so big, the tree was not wholly pure. Through its width ran several dark veins. These culminated in branches of bitter leaves and sap as red as blood. Sometimes these grew fruit, but it was soft and rotten and misshapen. The insects–alone in this age–fed only on the tree. Mostly, they ate what was good but some were drawn to those dark spots. There, they became fat and black.

Then the oceans filled, and the skies. The fish and birds that came did as the insects had before them. Taking what the tree offered, there were those who consumed the vile fruit and gray buds. Some of them sickened and died; others lived long, but turned fierce. Often, these animals ate each other.

Over time, the tree shrank and opened up the earth to the sun. A million years will wither all, even what was once healthy and strong. And as this happened, the tree began to crumble, falling upon itself and into the waters. Dead branches drifted through the sky and onto the lands; in some places, the dark blood of the tree seeped into the ground. The fruits that dropped years before had long begun to grow wild. Now, among them, there was infection.

Even the earliest humans, however, knew to stay away from what was tainted–to avoid the dark ground.

But then came the famine. And the storms. So the tribes of men wandered. Some joined together, out of the barren lands, and these people of many villages walked, looking for food. They came upon a black and full field.

The two most elder argued as the sun set and the wind blew around them.

“We must eat,” said the first, his face stern.

“We must not eat this,” said the second. She gestured to the fruit in front of them, its smell nauseous. She had seen what happened to the animals that ate of it. “It will change us.”

“But we will live.”

“I must live!” cried a young man nearby. His hunger was agonizing and he waited no longer.

He entered the field and ate. And the people followed. Starting slowly, the night turned into an orgy of consumption as man, woman, and child tore into the fruit with abandon. They sunk their teeth into elastic skin and mealy bodies. Some raised their heads, mouths full, and spit the pulpy mash high into the air. This was not done in disgust, but in triumph. Later, in the coldest hour of night when little remained, some began to fight over what was left. Others lay on the ground, eyes rolled back and fingers picking at their own bellies.

By morning, nearly all were dead and the dark seeds were carried away on the winds.

The bride was beautiful until she smiled. There was nothing wrong with her teeth; they were straight and white and strong, surrounded by roseate lips. It was the expression itself that was not right.

Victoria Dernt had a cloud inside her. It had always been there, rarely lightening and never abating. This cloud darkened everything she did. When she spoke her harsh words or screamed in rage one could almost see the gray vapors carried on her breath. A smile, as formed by her frostily exquisite features, did not lend her any brightness; it stretched tightly over her face, a façade in painful and obvious contrast with what lay beneath.

The only person at the wedding who could not see this was the groom. John Lokide loved this woman–maybe because no one else did. John had always been drawn to outsiders; he focused only on the good that he felt all people possessed. In Victoria he saw beauty and potential.

“I want to make something incredible one day,” she had told him once.

And though her vicious castigations rarely flagged, John–based on this sole statement of hope–thought only the best of her.

His family and friends were concerned that she would change him. They were not alone; her family felt the same. She had no friends.

Their first year of marriage passed in a whirlwind of screaming and tantrums. But John was undaunted. When others inquired about their well-being, he never faltered.

“We’re fine,” he would say. “How are you?”

On their first anniversary, though, Victoria’s ire was particularly fierce. Snapping in the face of John’s constant serenity, she abandoned her cruel tirade, wrapped her mouth around his right forearm, and bit down. She tasted flesh and blood; he felt the sting of vitriol enter his veins. In that bite, he felt at once what everyone else had always seen. When she let go, Victoria simply walked out of the house and did not come back.

The ugly wound took months to heal and, in the end, turned into an uglier scar: a pale circle of dense and lumpish tissue. But this was not the only lasting effect of that night. John’s temper turned; he grew snappish, then mean. Some thought it was because Victoria was gone. The more observant realized it was because of what she left behind.

John’s behavior changed as well. He stopped eating and his limbs grew thin; to some people, this made it look as if the unsightly scar was growing. He began to dress strangely, wearing long-sleeved shirts and heavy pants well before the weather called for them. John talked only about Victoria–surely she would return, he said. Others felt that this was unlikely–and fortunately so. Leaving his house less and less frequently, one day John stopped coming out at all.

But he was right: nearly a year later Victoria came back.

It was early morning and the house they had shared was dark. Victoria used her old key to open the door. She walked on whispering floorboards to the living room and turned on the light.

John sat in a stark wood chair in the center of the room. He was naked. A mass of flesh rose from his right arm–a pulpy stump in the shape of Victoria’s mouth. From there, runs of scar tissue spread like gnarled roots in every direction. Most were pale and gray but some were pink and some were red. These covered nearly every inch of his withered body but had left his forehead smooth. As Victoria watched, branches of scar reached from both sides and, pulsing slowly, moved over that as well. Untouched, his eyes and teeth shone in the light.

John spoke to her. His voice was no longer clear and pleasant. It grated, as if the scars had burrowed down his throat and were smothering his insides. He did not move.

“Come closer,” he said. “Come and see what you’ve made.”

Take away the open sky and the sunlight, the cool breeze, and the colors that fill the fields. Strip away the hopes that brighten your day; imagine the ground has swallowed your friends and everyone you know. Take away all of your love and your joy. And when there is nothing, cover the world with haze and black, biting hail.

This is what the spirit knew. It had a name once; maybe it was Bill or Lydia or Martin or George. But the spirit did not remember that or anything else from the days when it had walked among us. Now it had but one concern: trying to eat Brian James.

This was not easy. Brian was alive, insulated from the spirit by the mostly whole mantle that separates the living and the dead. He did not even know the wretched thing existed.

But the spirit knew him. Brian was the light of its being: a vibrant ember in its dark world. The spirit followed his every move. It was aware of other people, but just barely. Maybe it was drawn to Brian because of his smell; maybe his glow was the brightest; maybe he was simply the first person the spirit saw after waking in its terrible new realm years ago. But once it latched on, it was unrelenting. And, not knowing how else to fill the unimaginable void it felt inside, it tried to consume the light.

It threw itself onto Brian’s back, his shoulders; it wrapped itself around his legs. It opened its wide maw, endlessly trying to swallow Brian’s head and hands and feet. When Brian parted his lips, the spirit lunged and tried to bite off his tongue. It followed him everywhere, flittering back and forth and letting out shrieks of impotent rage.

Until the spirit could find a way back into Brian’s world, it would remain hungry. And so it searched; it persisted.

Brian led a quiet, solitary life. He worked; he came home. He divided his free hours between his computer and walking the tree-lined path behind his house to the small lake a half-mile down.

Sometimes, in front of his computer screen, Brian would stretch out his legs and arms, close his eyes, and relax. This drove the spirit mad, much like when Brian was sleeping. As Brian sat in his private space, his light intensified by the stillness, the spirit thrashed and snapped and screeched all around him. Rarely, it saw a hole, an open space through which to get to Brian at last. These disappeared quickly, however, and the spirit was left seething and empty.

One warm day, Brian stood at the lake. A woman appeared through the woods on the other side. He had seen her before; like him, she came here often. 

Brian remained where he was as the woman walked the water’s edge. When she reached him, he smiled at her.

“Hello,” Brian said.

“Hi.” She smiled back, the day’s light brightening her hair.

The spirit knew no difference between inside or outside; in its world, there was no warmth and Brian was the cold sun to which it clung. But, here, it sensed something. The dull glow of the woman did not interest it. It was the thing that held to her back, wailing and tearing at her face. When it came close, the spirit swiped at this other of its own kind. The two hissed and spat, both emitting low growls far different from their previous piercing cries.  But, as always, they could not be distracted for long from their people.

Brian watched as the woman continued past him. He was happy for the brief interaction and content that they would each return to their own quiet road. What neither knew, however, was the ravenous want that would follow them to the end, always looking to be sated.

As Brian stood under the blue sky and breathed in the fresh, open air, the spirit screamed again and assailed him anew.