Cruel World(31)

Quinn rose from the bed, his joints full of spiked rust. He hobbled across the room, his ankle flaring like a hot coal each time he put weight on it. He reached the painting and stood looking at it for a long time until the brushstrokes blended together into a haze.

He tore the painting from the wall and flung it across the room.

It hit the foot of his bed, the glass shattering and sprinkling the floor. The frame shifted and released its hold on the colorful canvas. The picture folded beneath itself and lay still. He breathed hard, each inhalation painful. He could still feel a giant hand squeezing his chest.

He made his way downstairs to find the sun coating the floor in the living room gold. A cool draft leaked from the direction of the solarium and he shivered, pulling on a sweatshirt hanging in the closet. He opened a can of smoked herring and sat eating it at the counter, staring into nothing. The XDM lay beside the warm can of pop, its grip in easy reach. He would never go anywhere without it again.

After choking down the last of the salty fish, he rinsed the can and threw it in the trash, which was almost full. It was starting to smell.

He stood at the kitchen window looking at the puddles shining on the drive. They were splotches of blue, reflecting the faultless sky. A chill ran through him. The puddles were the same color as the thing’s eyes outside. Graham’s eyes.

Dizziness swarmed him and the kitchen tilted. His briny breakfast made a leap for the back of his throat, but he gritted his teeth and breathed through his nose until it settled back in place. Fresh blood leaked from the makeshift bandage around his palm from gripping the counter so hard. He’d need to dress it properly. But first he had other things to do.

On the way out the kitchen door, he paused at the junk drawer and sifted through the contents. In the very back was a small tape measure with a maximum length of twenty feet. He held it for thirty seconds before replacing it and slamming the drawer shut and heading outside.

The day was cool despite its clarity. Quinn hugged the sweatshirt closer to him as he limped around the side of the house, waiting for the moment the solarium and the thing lying outside of it would come into view. It won’t be there. It will have regenerated somehow and dragged itself off. It’s watching you right now. The thoughts were enough to make him halt and bring the gun up from his side. He turned in a slow circle. Birds spoke somewhere in the woods, unseen in the branches. In the distance, waves crashed against rocks. When he managed to shuffle forward, the ends of pale fingers, upturned to the sky, came into view.

It lay where it had fallen; it hadn’t moved overnight.

Quinn approached it, going around its side to where he’d sat the night before. He’d lost track of time after seeing the earing hanging from its distended lobe and only come to when lightning struck a tree a hundred yards from the house, showering the ground with sparks that winked out like falling stars. He knelt, steadying himself with one hand on the ground as he took in the sight.

It was even taller and skinnier than he’d thought. Its legs were long, twice the length of his own. One was drawn up as if attempting to curl into a fetal position while the other was straight, locked in a line at the bulbous knee. Its arms were equally long and would easily reach its knees while standing upright. The hands. They looked bigger in the light of day than the night before. They reminded him of enormous, pale sea-crabs. The digits were a foot in length, except for the missing left index finger that ended in a gored stump. Its torso was emaciated, that of a starving animal, ribs pronounced like xylophone bars. The bones beneath the skin resembled bamboo, its skin almost translucent and drawn tight over them like a circus tent wrapped over poles. His gaze traveled up its unreal size and stopped on its face.

The features were nearly unrecognizable. The .45 caliber bullet had destroyed an area of its upper nose and forehead the size of a silver dollar, yet even before that its countenance hadn’t looked entirely human. Its head was oblong and slanted, the face stretched and uneven like a person’s visage reflected in a funhouse mirror. The mouth hung open revealing tombstone teeth, chipped and sitting at varying degrees within gray gums.

But its eyes. Its eyes were Graham’s.

They were half-lidded and bloodshot, but there was no mistaking them. How many times had those eyes smiled at him while slipping him a treat prior to dinner that his father had forbade? How many times had they studied a glistening sauce, seeking the exact moment to remove it from the heat? Even in death they hadn’t lost their character, their Nordic blue.

Quinn sat back from the corpse, letting the unreality wash over him. The wind coasted across the grounds, picking at his clothes. After a long time, he gathered himself and stood, then walked to the big pine tree where the shovel lay in the grass.