The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘Don’t let it get me!’ Jensen shrieked. He began to crawl blindly away from the bed. ‘I can’t see, don’t let it get me!’

The wind gusted. Dead leaves tore free of the tree branch that had come through the window and swirled around the room. The green thing dropped from the nape of Rideout’s creased and sunburned neck onto the floor. Feeling like a woman underwater, Kat swiped at it with the bristle end of the broom. She missed. The thing disappeared under the bed, not rolling but slithering.

Jensen crawled headfirst into the wall beside the doorway. ‘Where am I? I can’t see!’

Newsome was sitting up, looking bewildered. ‘What’s going on? What happened?’ He pushed Rideout’s head off him. The reverend slid bonelessly from the bed to the floor.

Melissa bent over him.

‘Don’t do that!’ Kat shouted, but it was too late.

She didn’t know if the thing was truly a god or just some weird kind of leech, but it was fast. It shot out from under the bed, rolled along Rideout’s shoulder, onto Melissa’s hand, and up her arm. Melissa tried to shake it off and couldn’t. Some kind of sticky stuff on those stubby little spikes, the part of Kat’s brain that would still work told the part – the much larger part – that still wouldn’t. Like the glue on a fly’s feet.

Melissa had seen where the thing came from and even in her panic was wise enough to cover her own mouth with both hands. The thing skittered up her neck, over her cheek, and squatted on her left eye. The wind screamed and Melissa screamed with it. It was the cry of a woman drowning in a kind of pain the one-to-ten charts in hospitals can never describe. Melissa’s agony was well over one hundred – that of someone being boiled alive. She staggered backwards, clawing at the thing on her eye. It was pulsing faster now, and Kat could hear a low, liquid sound as the thing resumed feeding. It was a slushy sound.

It doesn’t care who it eats, Kat thought. She realized she was walking toward the screaming, flailing woman.

‘Hold still! Melissa, hold STILL!’

Melissa paid no attention. She continued to back up. She struck the thick branch now visiting the room and went sprawling. Kat dropped to one knee beside her and brought the broom handle smartly down on Melissa’s face. Down on the thing that was feeding on Melissa’s eye.

There was a splatting sound, and suddenly the thing was sliding limply down the housekeeper’s cheek, leaving a wet trail of slime behind. It moved across the leaf-littered floor, intending to hide under the branch the way it had hidden under the bed. Kat sprang to her feet and stepped on it. She felt it splatter beneath her sturdy New Balance walking shoe. Green stuff shot out in both directions, as if she had stepped on a balloon filled with snot.

Kat went down again, this time on both knees, and took Melissa in her arms. At first Melissa struggled, and Kat felt a fist graze her ear. Then Melissa subsided, breathing harshly. ‘Is it gone? Kat, is it gone?’

‘I feel better,’ Newsome said wonderingly from behind them, in some other world.

‘Yes, it’s gone,’ Kat said. She peered into Melissa’s face. The eye the thing had landed on was bloodshot, but otherwise it looked all right. ‘Can you see?’

‘Yes. It’s blurry, but clearing. Kat … the pain … it was like the end of the world.’

‘Somebody needs to flush my eyes!’ Jensen yelled. He sounded indignant.

‘Flush your own eyes,’ Newsome said cheerily. ‘You’ve got two good legs, don’t you? I think I might, too, once Kat throws them back into gear. Somebody check on Rideout. I think the poor sonofabitch might be dead.’

Melissa was staring up at Kat, one eye blue, the other red and leaking tears. ‘The pain … Kat, you have no idea of the pain.’

‘Yes,’ Kat said. ‘Actually, I do. Now.’ She left Melissa sitting by the branch and went to Rideout. She checked for a pulse and found nothing, not even the wild waver of a heart that is still trying its best. Rideout’s pain, it seemed, was over.

The generator went out.

‘Fuck,’ Newsome said, still sounding cheery. ‘I paid seventy thousand dollars for that piece of Jap shit.’

‘I need someone to flush my eyes!’ Jensen bellowed ‘Kat!’

Kat opened her mouth to reply, then didn’t. In the new darkness, something had crawled onto the back of her hand.

For Russ Dorr