Every year they came from the south, through the fields, regular as seasons, normal as night or day. You can set your clock on them, my uncle frank would say. Always the same time. Always Good Friday and always at sundown.
But every year, he said, there's more of them.
The afternoon I first saw them I was sixteen. Back then I didn't know my mom was sick, and that what I thought was just a long weekend at my uncle's was actually so she and my dad could go and see the specialist, to talk about the strange problems she had been having. While she was in a sterile white colored doctor's office pointing at a rough, stone-like patch of skin on her leg, I was two hundred miles away in a brilliant green backyard, listening to the tiny screaming of crickets and mosquitoes, my chest pressed hard against a fence, waiting to see them in real life.
This was a few years before the documentary had come out, so the only footage of them was still shaky homemade videos uploaded to YouTube or blurry photos on sketchy blogs. People were still trying to pretend they weren't real, acting like life hadn't started falling apart, that the Drift hadn't happened. When people are scared of the world they either ignore it, or write it off as a stupid rumor, a myth.
But out here they knew the myths were real.
Beside me stood my uncle and my two cousins, Martin and Adelaide. The long shadows spilled big pools of black across the deep green of the grass, touching the still bare spot in the earth where no vegetation grew. Behind us, in the old drafty farmhouse, Uncle Frank's third wife Erin (although, like his other wives, he never married her in a courthouse or a chapel because, per Uncle Frank, fuck God and fuck the government) waited for us to come back in. She didn't say why she didn't want to go out, but Martin told me later it was because an old boyfriend of hers had joined them and she was worried she would see him out there.
Martin was an echo of his dad, slightly rumpled, a stubbly mustache on his seventeen year old upper lip. He had flat blonde hair and thick glasses the shape of a full moon.
Adelaide at year older was different than Martin, not just because she was blind, although I had a hard time separating that fact about her from her. I was always worried I wasn't helping her enough or, worse, helping her too much, but she only found me ridiculous. I probably was. We're all morons growing up, and we stay dumb forever.
"Are they dangerous?" I asked and everybody laughed.
"If they was dangerous, would we be out here?" Uncle Frank said.
"I don't know," I mumbled as Martin threw an elbow in my ribs and pointed.
They're coming, he mouthed, and pretended to draw a zipper across his lips and throw away the key far, far behind him. I shut up and peered out at the trees.
At first I didn't see them. All I saw was the dark of the woods, the long slender trunks, the gleaming shadows of near dark.
And then the were there.
"Lot of them this time. More than last year," Uncle Frank said. He took a drink from his cheap beer and I detected, behind the laughter, a little bit of concern.
"How many?" Adelaide asked.
"More than twenty," whispered Martin. "I lost count."
I hadn't.
There were thirty one of them.
They moved from the forest, all headed toward us.
Each looked identical to the one next to them. Rumpled suit jackets, stained white shirts. Dirt spilled from their pants, leaving an earthen trail behind them. When one moved they all did. Each lurched in an awful synchronicity. They glowed, a queasy, greasy light, soft and white like a dim lightbulb.
I couldn't see their faces because of the paintings.
They held them up above their faces, their trembling hands wrapped around the frames. In spite of the growing dark could see the decay on their fingers. The way their nails were yellowed and twisted.
The paintings were turned out, away from them, so that the drawn images on the canvas seemed to take the place of their faces.
The paintings themselves were childlike and bizarre. Strange images, uncentered and out of focus, grossly disproportionate sketches of faces where everything was wrong. Eyes were pools of water. Mouths were caves expelling colonies of bats. One was sketches of knives in the shape of a head. Everything was primary colors and seemed to pulse in the almost evening air.
I looked beside me and the others watched with what seemed like — was it glee? Was it horror? Maybe it was somewhere in the space between the two, that strange trench of ourselves where we can't quite understand why terror is giving us pleasure, or the very opposite. Some bizarre, as yet undiscovered neurotransmitters that only fires in the face of spectacle, the third rail of our soul where electrocution is the end goal, the only goal.
They moved with their hideous sameness to the empty space forty feet away from us. The strange bare spot of grass. I felt sick at their motions, how inhuman it was, but thinking about it now, it reminds me of the way geese spread across the sky and turn into a V. The absolution of identity.
"They're at the spot," Martin whispered to Adelaide and I saw her nod.
One walked from the group. A shocking moment of individual action. It turned away from us and kneeled.
It turned away from us and put its painting down. It began to dig.
The whole world seemed to go silent escaping for the noise of it scratching, raking at the ground. The sods of dirt landed wet and heavy all around.
"Don't look at its face," Martin whispered to me.
In all the quiet his voice was a gun shot, a backfiring engine, a car crash. For a second, they paused. They didn't turn to us but we knew they were listening, that somehow Matin's nasally murmur had disturbed their strange ritual.
We waited and I held my breath until the sound of digging returned.
An hour later, it had dug a hole deep enough to fit.
I watched it lower itself. I closed my eyes when it's body angled for a moment, in such a way I knew it would expose its face.
For a second I wanted to see. An inexplicable urge, a desire for self destruction disguised as curiosity but I didn't; I bit the inside of my cheek instead, hard enough I tasted the cooper of my own blood.
The thing covered itself with dirt.
After it was completely obscured I watched the things bodies twist around, their hip bones cracking, until their legs faced away from us but their portraits still watched us. They lumbered away, in unison, back into the woods, glowing soft in the increasing dark.
Uncle Frank was the first to talk.
"Let's get back inside," he said. He covered his mouth and coughed. The crickets had started again. Mosquitos buzzed their bloodsongs and Martin and Adelaide turned and walked away.
I stared at the fresh dirt and at the woods, then spat the blood from my mouth into the dirt.
The next morning, when I went down for breakfast, only Adelaide was there.
She said everyone was outside already, feeding animals, working on chores. I nodded and grabbed a cup of coffee. They had big earthenware mugs. I poured cream in and let it get swallowed up. Steam poured out and I inhaled.
"Do they need help out there?"
"From you?" She laughed, then apologized. "I'm sorry, it's just you don't know anything about farming. You'd be more trouble then what you're worth. Anyway, they're fine. But I did want you to help me out, if you don't mind."
"I don't mind at all," I blew on my coffee.
"Take me to the hospital. I want to see the garden."
Uncle Frank was fine with me borrowing his car, even after I told him I didn't have a license. I was in the middle of explaining I had some of my driver instruction hours already when he interrupted me.
"Jesus Lord, Steve. This is the country. You think we worry about licenses out here?" He threw me the keys. "Be safe. Take it easy on the hills."
Twenty minutes later, after the most terrifying ride of my life, I pulled into the parking lot for the Day County Memorial Hospital.
"Steve, no offense, but if you always drive like that maybe I should drive home," Adelaide said, getting out of her seat.
"I'm so sorry, these roads are crazy! They're so curvy and anyway I don't even have my license yet —"
"Hardly an excuse," she said. "Now come on. The garden is in the courtyard."
The sun was warm and hot. We walked across the parking lot and through the automatic doors and then we were in the hospital. It smelled like cleaning supplies and stale air.
Nurses pushed old people in wheelchairs and dead eyed family members sat in uncomfortable chairs. A loudspeaker crackled messages out to doctors while Adelaide and I followed the signs to the courtyard.
We stepped out and I gasped.
"Have you ever seen so many?" she asked.
"No," I said. "Never."
The courtyard was full of statues that used to be humans before they caught the Gargoyle Fever.
That wasn't the medical name for it, of course, but that's what everybody called it. It started with just some rough spots on your skin. Then the get harder, darker.
Then they spread.
It only takes a few months for it to finish.
No cure. No treatment.
The courtyard was full of the statues. Once humans, once alive, now like Medusa's ex boyfriends, frozen forever.
Nobody was sure if the statues were dead or not. Did they die when all they organs went concrete? Or was there still a person in there, somewhere, now in an infinite perpetual undeath? Maybe they were more than dead? Forever a piece an art. A living sculpture.
"Do you see a girl with short hair?" Adelaide asked. "She's my height and around my age?"
I looked around until I saw someone who matched that description. I told her I did and she asked me to take her there. I took her elbow and we walked till we got to the stone girl.
"Hey, Veronica," Adelaide said. "I hope you're okay. This is my cousin, Steve."
"Hi," I said awkwardly. I gave a half wave.
"I just wanted to say things are boring without you. I miss you."
The stone statue, the girl, stared back at us.
We stood for a few moments and Adelaide told the girl about the things the night before. She told some stories from school and I stepped a little aside, feeling like I was I intruding on something. After a while, she reached out and touched the statue's cheek.
"Bye," she said, and then asked if we could go.
We walked out together, leaving the silence of the statues behind us.
That night was Saturday and after we ate I walked out to the backyard. Adelaide and Martin came out with me and we stood at the fence, near the bare spot. The thing's painting was on the ground next to it. A drawing of a red circle with a red circle inside of it. Tiny text in the middle, etched in black read CLOSER.
"What happens to it?" I asked.
"To what?" Adelaide yawned.
"You know," I said. "The thing."
"Oh shit," Martin said. "Nobody told you?"
"It comes out, right?"
The two just smiled and didn't answer.
Martin went back inside later and Adelaide stayed out. The stars were bright and raw in the great black sky above us. Dead suns now still burning in their future. Our sun is being looked at right now by aliens long after we are dead and our whole world is cold and black.
"I'm glad you came out to visit," Adelaide said.
"Me too. I haven't been here for years. It's so pretty. Sorry," I added. "I know you can't see it. Fuck, I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound dumb."
"It's ok," she laughed. "You always sound dumb."
"I do, I know. It's a gift. Hey, Adelaide?"
"Yeah?"
"What happened? To your eyes? My mom said there was some kind of accident..."
"Yeah," she said. "There was."
She paused, then cleared her throat.
"Those things. When they came one year, I looked. I saw it's face. Then they rushed over to me. My dad tried to stop them, so did Martin, but they couldn't. They were too strong."
I didn't say anything. Just stood there.
"Do you want to see?"
She reached up and took off her dark glasses.
The only thing there were black holes where her eyes had been.
"After the finished they just walked away," she said. She put her glasses back on.
"What did the thing look like?" I asked.
She shook her head. "You want to know? Look at one. If it means that much, find out."
Easter Sunday,Uncle Frank woke me up.
"Come on," he said. "It's time."
It was still early. There was a fog rising off the grass the sun hadn't yet burned away. Birds were singing and the things were standing near the spot.
There was something breaking out of have dirt.
A hand, then an arm, then finally a full body.
It wasn't the same thing that had gone in. This was a pale white creature, human but not. Soft around the edges, it looked wet.
It stepped forward on weak new legs and the things surrounded it. They pushed it down. In the circle of their bodies I saw blood dripping from the plump body, staining the earth.
They were eating it.
When they shuffled away there was nothing left but dirt and blood.
Monday I caught a plane home.
My parents met me at the airport.
My mom told me her diagnosis.
My dad didn't say anything.
A few months later the stone swallowed my mother whole. We donated the statue to the hospital and my dad spent more and more time in his workspace in the garage. I thought he was working on some project. The house smelled like paint and something else. Something coppery.
Finally, one night I thought I heard something strange. After calling, I walked downstairs and went into the garage.
The door to the outside was open. The things were standing there, waiting. My father was walking to them, holding a painting before his face, a painting of blue green triangles angled so bizarrely I got a headache looking at it.
On the ground, a blood stained box cutter. His old face, sawed off.
I watched them walk away in unison and in perfect time, the sky dark above them, without any visible stars.
I could see everything.
Submitted April 19, 2019 at 07:01PM by Orphanology http://bit.ly/2DnQYaq
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