Thing Bailiwick Read online

  Shoving her aside, James hurried to the shelf, swiping away several old ladies pocket books. “There she is,” he spoke softly at the discovery of the brown shoe box. He grinned at the warning scrawled on the side in black marker: ‘Touch me and lose your fingers, mofo!’ Tucking the gun into his waistband, he reached for it.

  But Tyrone had him some other plans. Shoving James aside, he scooped the box from the shelf hisself.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you!” James snapped, shoving him backward.

  “Smile, boys.”

  They both turned toward her and the flash went off. It took James a moment to realize that their picture had been taken. A white square of film shot from the bottom of the camera with a loud whine.

  She was grinning ear to ear with her bright white chompers as she reached over and flicked off the light switch.

  Mama Johnson’s silhouette remained outlined in the doorway for a moment, her white chompers almost seeming to glow in the dark. And James was certain he saw something funky going on where her eyes should have been. Something not right.

  There was a whooshing sound—the air being sucked from the room—and James felt his ears pop. Beside him, Tyrone dropped the shoe box. It hit the floor with a dull thud.

  “Sacless piece of shits,” Mama Johnson said as she closed the door.

  Darkness engulfed them…a darkness blacker than it had a right to be, blacker than ole Mama Johnson’s face. James had the feeling that if he was buried six feet under, it wouldn’t be as dark.

  “Shit!” Tyrone muttered behind him. “My ears. My ears done clogged, shit!”

  James moved toward the direction of the door, his arms outstretched like a blind man. A cool breeze caressed his face, and he hesitated at the odd sensation. No cool breeze belonged in a stuffy old closet. He grimaced at the foul odor it carried. He knew that smell. The garbage cans in the allies behind his place smelled that way sometimes, especially during the summer months when the rats predominated and the maggots proliferated.

  Behind him, he heard Tyrone drop to the floor to feel around for the contents of the box.

  Pulling the gun from his waist, James took a few tentative steps to where he knew the door should be, and recoiled when his hand came into contact with something that was definitely not a door.

  Snot.

  That’s what it felt like—thick, warm, gooey snot.

  He brushed his hand frantically on his jeans, then jumped as a high-pitched alarm went off behind him. It took him a few seconds to realize that it was only Tyrone. He’d never heard Tyrone scream before. Didn’t even realize homeboy was capable of creating such a sound. “What the fuck you screamin’ for?” he yelled, disturbed by the sharp edge in his own voice.

  “FUCK!” Tyrone wailed. “My fucking finger! My finger! Sheeiit!” he screamed, and then proceeded to plow into him.

  Snatching hold of him, James pummeled him in the head with the flat of the gun. “Shut up! Shut up! I swear I’m a bust your fuckin’ head!”

  “My finger,” Tyrone whimpered. “It done bit it off! Oh shit…shit! Let’s get the fuck outta here. The bitch done tricked us. There was a big fuckin’ rat in that box,” he blubbered.

  “Get the fuck off me!” James spat, shoving him away. “You think I ain’t tried to get out? The fucking door’s gone.”

  “What the fuck you talkin’ bout!”

  “Shut up…listen!”

  Tyrone stopped his blubbering and James craned his head toward the back of the closet, straining his ears in the darkness. Something was gnawing on a bone. A damn mutt or somethin’. He could hear a wet slobbering sound and then a crunching as bone splintered beneath sharp teeth.

  “Oh, fuck!” Tyrone whined, an irritating sound originating from somewhere high in his nasal passages. “It’s my finger! It’s eating my fucking finger. Shit!”

  “Shit,” James echoed, and then louder at the sound of tiny scurrying feet. With a yelp, he kicked out at something that bumped against his leg, and heard it careen across the floor. “Shit! Shit!” His heart was hammering. What the fuck was going on? This wasn’t part of the game. He should be rounding third base right about now and heading for home, not feeling like the pitch hit him in the balls, knocking them clear back up inside of him. Tyrone wasn’t supposed to be blubbering like a baby. Tyrone was a bad-ass, as bad as they came. Tyrone killed people and laughed about it. He wasn’t no pussy. James wasn’t no pussy, neither. He sure wasn’t supposed to pussy out over some fucking rat.

  “What…what’s that?” Tyrone asked in his new, high pussy-pitch.

  James swung the gun around in the darkness. Something was growling. But it wasn’t no mutt. It was vibrating his eardrums, vibrating his teeth. He could even feel his bones vibrating. He didn’t know nothing that could make a sound like that. Didn’t really want to know, neither.

  Tyrone clutched at him, yanking on his sleeve while he whimpered like the pathetic pussy he’d become. “Get off me, bitch!” James growled, shoving him away, and was struck by how the words seemed to echo on forever, bouncing around and around until it sounded as if there were a thousand voices instead of one.

  And then a thousand voices became a million as Tyrone began to screech, a sound that spiraled around the room like a hurricane and right in to James’ brain. He threw his hands to his ears just as the closet was illuminated six times in eerie orange flashes, the gunshots sounding more like bomb blasts as Tyrone emptied his revolver.

  James’ hands fell limply to his sides. Keeping his head from exploding no longer held precedence.

  Tyrone had stopped his screeching, anyways. The only sound now was the hollow clicking of a hammer hitting empty chambers. Tyrone’s finger was on automatic.

  Though the illuminations of Tyrone’s gun shots had been brief—fractions of seconds—it was more than ample time for James to see something that would haunt his dreams for the next seventy years of his life. It was enough time to see that they were no longer in a closet. The rows of housedresses were gone. The drab-colored old-lady shoes, shelves, knitted sweaters, red pumps…gone. All gone. No, they were no longer in Mama Johnson’s closet. In place of the closet walls were what looked to be walls of stone, dungeon walls coated in thick snot.

  Tyrone’s finger was still busy…

  But the snot wasn’t the best part. The best was what was embedded in it.

  Clicking echoed all about…clicking…

  Eyeballs—hundreds…thousands…probably hundreds of thousands—were suspended around them, even on the ceiling. Lidless eyeballs that spun in a frenzied, futile attempt to blink as the gunshot flares assaulted them.

  Tyrone’s finger was still in overdrive.

  James knew them eyeballs was all on him and Tyrone, watching their every move. They were, after all, the stars of this fucking game.

  The clicking stopped.

  An eerie silence surrounded him, pulsating in his ears. “Mama Johnson?” His voice was pussy-pitched and trembling and barely above a whisper, as if afraid to disturb the captive audience now gaping at him in the darkness. “We’s sorry. Let us out and we’ll just head on home. We don’t want no trouble, ain’t that right, Tyrone?”

  “Yeah.” The reply sounded more like a squeak than a word.

  James swallowed down a lump. “We done learned our lesson, Mama Johnson,” he whimpered, the words reverberating down what sounded like miles of tunnels, a whispery echo that sent shivers down his spine. He was shaking. And there was moisture on his forehead and down his back. Fear was oozing from him. “Please help us. Help these wretched sinners.” The soft words were echoing oddly. “O Mary, blessed mother of Jesus…sweet, merciful, all forgiving mother of pureness, show us the way…to all that is righteous.”

  Tyrone crowded close, clutching at his jacket. “Fuck!” he whimpered. “Did you see them? Them eyeballs? Oh, fuck!”

  “Give them the strength to prevail against unsurmountable evil in this, their darkest of hours.”

  He couldn
’t recall ever praying. Not even as a kid. His Nanna Elma had held his hand and said a good night prayer over him that one time when she’d come to visit. But that had been when he was ten. A lifetime ago. And he’d never spent a minute in church—not unless he counted that time him and Tyrone and a few other kids from the hood had broke into the Holy Trinity House of God and ransacked the place.

  With a whimper, Tyrone fumbled for his hand, and James surprised himself when he took it, clasping tightly.

  “O sweet Jesus, son of God the Almighty, gentle entity of compassion, forgive these lowly sinners and lead them unto the—”

  He felt motion, heard the soft whir of wings, and ducked instinctively. There was a loud ripping sound in his head accompanied by a sharp pain as a patch of hair was torn from his scalp.

  Tyrone snatched his hand away and began to yelp and flounder about in the darkness, swatting frantically.

  “Help us, Jesus!” James shouted, attempting to be heard over Tyrone’s wails. “Sweet, holy, merciful—”

  “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!” Tyrone screeched, and James heard him crumple to the floor where he commenced to thrash.

  At his feet, Tyrone’s shrieks sounded horribly muted, like a tea kettle, high-pitched and moist. Something was smothering him. There was a moment that James thought to let Tyrone fend for himself. Every man for hisself. That’s the way it had always been. But for some reason, reasoning that was so alien to him that he couldn’t even recognize it as compassion, he couldn’t allow himself do that.

  Tucking the pistol in his pants, he straddled Tyrone’s body and reached toward the whistling tea kettle, prying away the clawing hands.

  The thing suctioned to Tyrone’s face was slick and featureless. A giant leech. But it had wings, two things he immediately knew could be used to his advantage. Grasping one in each hand, he put a foot dead-center of Tyrone’s chest and wrenched backward, putting all his weight into it, grinding his teeth and growling as he strained.

  There was a repulsive ripping sound as it tore free, and he pitched it hard and heard it splat into the snot that surrounded them.

  At the sound of frantic flapping wings attempting to pull free, he pulled the gun from his waist, took aim, and fired.

  Millions of eyeballs did their macabre dance, and in that millisecond James caught a glimpse of Tyrone where he lie convulsing beneath him. Where once there had been an eye, was now a gaping socket puddling with blood. His remaining eye was rolled back in his head as the tea kettle continued to whistle through bloodied lips.

  “OH, JESUS!” The flying leech had ripped off half of Tyrone’s face, had taken his eyeball, and James had no doubt that it had just been added to the ghastly collection now gaping at him.

  James stood his ground, protectively straddling Tyrone, his friend of over fifteen years. “SWEET, SWEET JESUS! OH, JESUS, SWEET FATHER OF ALL HUMANITY, HAVE MERCY! FIND IT IN YOUR HEART TO LEAD US FORM THE SHADOW OF EVIL!”

  He spit a strange gravelly substance from his mouth, not even realizing that it was pieces of his own chipped teeth.

  “BLESSED SAVIOR, LEAD US UNTO THE LIGHT OF RESTITUTION! HELP US TO SEE THE ERR OF OUR SINFUL WAYS!” He was shouting…hoping that someone, anyone, might hear his pleas. “FIND IT IN YOUR HOLY POWER TO GRASP US FROM THE PERNICIOUS JAWS OF THE RAVENOUS BEAST SO INTENT UPON CLAIMING OUR WRETCHED SOULS!”

  Something whirred by his head and he ducked, flailing his arms, unconsciously firing two random shots before he caught himself and forced his trigger finger to relax.

  For some reason, the creature he saw in the brilliance of those split seconds was more hideous than anything previous. It was the size of a rat, but it was no rodent. It had a hundred legs and its body was long and segmented, and elegant antennae swayed slowly before it. Though it wasn’t the creature itself that so horrified him, but the fact that it had propped itself on Tyrone’s cheek and was partaking greedily from the blood-filled orifice that had once held Tyrone’s eye.

  Rooting it out with the toe of his shoe, he flung it away, hearing it tumble along the floor. Beneath him, the kettle whistle dropped a few octaves to a more tolerable level, and then finally to a mere wet hiss.

  “Almighty father in heaven, blessed by thy name!”

  Though his voice was surprisingly strong, James could feel his knees on the verge of buckling, his body swaying dangerously.

  The growling commenced yet again. It seemed to come from all around, from the very walls themselves. It vibrated through him, rattling his teeth, rattling his brain. And then the culprit revealed itself directly before him not more than five feet away. It was the glowing eyes that gave it away. Like twin, smoldering cigar tips, they leered at him. Except these eyes definitely had lids. They blinked at him repeatedly…lazily…maddeningly.

  Taking aim between the ocher orbs, he fired, hitting his mark. The eyes went out as he was splattered with acid, the substance burning his hands and face. As he frantically attempted to wipe the searing gore from his face with the back of his sleeve, he felt something slither along the side of his shoe, and kicked out in the darkness…but it was gone.

  “Blessed angel of mercy, help these pitiful vitiated heathens to peer into the face of death as cleansed souls! Save them from eternal damnation at the hands of the pernicious paradigm of all that is evil!”

  He was reciting words that he didn’t even know were in his vocabulary, rooting them out of a brain he thought held only ignorance, dredging them up from a heart he thought held only emptiness, drawing them out of a soul he thought housed only ugliness. He spoke words that he never imagined he’d speak, beautiful words he didn’t even realize he knew. But it all made sense. Everything he said was making perfect sense.

  Winged creatures were whirring all about, dive-bombing him, making him weave and duck like a prize fighter.

  “O divine master of tolerance. Absolute deity of all that is virtu—”

  At his feet, Tyrone began to shriek and flail, and so James reached down, prepared to pull yet another flying leech from his face. Instead, he encountered a sinuous snakelike creature, surely the very that had just slithered across his foot. He knew without doubt that it was now writhing in an attempt to burrow into Tyrone’s gaping socket.

  Choking back vomit, he attempted to wrench the wriggling serpent free, but quickly released his hold as a hundred stingers pierced his hand, shooting fire up his arm.

  Beneath him, Tyrone was shrieking, the tea kettle now at a furious full-steam boil.

  “O MERCIFUL FATHER IN HEAVEN, FORGIVE ME!” Thrusting his gun against Tyrone’s forehead, he pulled the trigger.

  In the brilliant orange flash, he saw that his earlier assumption was right on the money. The serpent had burrowed itself into Tyrone’s eye socket. From there it had taken a detour, its head popping from Tyrone’s mouth. It spasmed at the flash of light, before darkness once again enshrouded it.

  Tyrone fell mercifully silent at his feet.

  James began to weep, something he’d never done before—at least not that he could recollect—and he was surprised at how good it felt…cleansing in a way.

  He’d cut a kid’s face wide open once and didn’t shed a tear. Raz the Taz. Well, his real name was Ricardo Razzolla, but everyone called him Raz the Taz ‘cause he was a pumped up muscle-head and a wound-up whirling ball of energy just like that Tasmanian devil-thing in the cartoons, always wired and always running off at the mouth, a really big mouth that never knew when to shut up, never knew when it had reached that point of no return. He’d flapped his jaw just one time too many in the presence of James Dinger Jenkins, till James had decided to cut it a new flap.

  And he’d killed before. Yeah. That lady who surprised him by jumping out her bathroom pointing a hairdryer. Not a smart idea to surprise a man with a gun in his hand. Especially if that man was right in the middle of robbing your ass.

  But it was different this time. And not only because Tyrone had been his only real friend, ever since they was eight and playing ba
seball in the alley with sticks and wadded up pieces of tin foil, and pieces of cardboard for bases. There was a knife twisting in his heart, an agonizing aching. A life had ended at his hands. Emotions flooded him, a drowning downpour—guilt, shame, sorrow, despair—all so new to him, so painful, pain that ran so much deeper than anything physical.

  His fingertips began to tingle. It traveled up his arms to his shoulders and then down his torso to his toes, pimpling the skin to painful peaks and lifting the hairs to harrowing heights and making his balls shrivel. His body was coming alive, being reborn. And with a conscience. Terror gripped him like it never could before, in a fist so tight he could barely breathe.

  Something scurried up his pant leg and he swatted away what felt like a giant centipede. “O God,” he wept, “please, please!” At his feet, he could feel a frenzy of activity. It was the burrowing snakes swarming over each other in a frantic attempt to be the first to gain access to the fresh wound that had just opened up in the middle of Tyrone’s forehead.

  “O ethereal being of holiness…celestial father of creation. Please guide me through my darkest hour.” The emotions were overflowing…just as the tears were. As Tyrone’s body begin to wriggle at his feet, he quickly stepped aside, turning his back on the obscenity that had once been Tyrone. His body was now host to a thousand writhing unmentionable horrors. “Our father…who art in heaven…hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…on earth…on earth…”

  He heard movement behind him—the soft rustling of clothing—and he knew it was Tyrone. Or, rather, the body that had once housed him. It housed something different now. He heard it rise slowly to its feet, heard it shuffle to stand behind, felt it hovering close.

  “Kingdom come…kingdom…king…”

  He felt the chill of its breath on the back of his neck, smelled the odor of rancid maggot-infested foulness. “Oh, God! God, I’m sorry,” he wept.