Merciless Pact Read online

  Merciless Pact

  by

  R Thomas Brown

  Copyright, 2011 R Thomas Brown

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Jeff Fielder

  Visit R Thomas Brown at rthomasbrown.blogspot.com

  Also from R Thomas Brown

  Mayhem: A Collection of Shorts

  Warning: A Collection of Shorts

  Coming Soon

  Hill Country from Snubnose Press

  Merciless Pact

  Greg stared at the man looming above him. “What the fuck do you want?”

  The pale man shook his head rapidly, pounding on his ear as if trying to remove water. “Sorry, Greg. It’s your turn. I’ve had my fill.” He pinned Greg with a boot to his chest and screamed as he vomited.

  Greg stared at the black ooze that rested on his chest and coughed out the bits that scattered into his mouth. “Son of a bitch. Is that you, Don? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Don, a man Greg Harris had shared beer, brawls and a border whore with, smiled, his color returning. “Nothing now.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see. Sorry, man. No choice.”

  Don stepped away. Greg prepared to lunge, but flinched at the sound of gunfire. He was fine. Where did that come from?

  “I’ve got a bead on you, mister. Just stand still.” It was Doug, Greg’s neighbor.

  Greg heard a window break and rose up. He hurried out the back door and saw Doug. “Toss me that. It’s Don. Don’t know what’s into him. Must have gotten into some rotten shit earlier.” Greg held out his hand to tell Doug to stop shooting. He nodded and rolled his eyes at Doug’s suggestion to be careful.

  Greg knew his property well, and the moon was bright enough that he went quickly. He could hear the grunts and groans ahead of someone hitting trees and small holes he wasn’t expecting.

  “Don, get the fuck back here,” Greg hollered ahead while keeping up his chase. His legs and chest burned with an acid born from the unaccustomed strain, but he ignored it and pressed forward. He knew he was getting closer. He saw movement ahead and paused to fire. The shot rang out, but did not hit home. He continued.

  He had ventured past his familiarity, and his pace slowed with collisions with trees and interposing brush. To his left, he thought he saw something move, and he darted over.

  “Shit!”

  He fell to the ground, his ankle throbbing as his foot stuck in a gopher hole. He held his ankle and shook his head. “Crap.” The sound of his attacker faded into the night and Greg clinched his teeth in pain and frustration.

  He struggled to his feet and took a limping step back toward home. Twenty paces in, he found himself face to face with fourteen points. A bigger deer than he was accustomed to seeing out here, but something else was wrong. It just stood there. Right in front of him. Not moving at all. And it wreaked.

  He looked over the stationary whitetail but was drawn into its eyes. They were a deep black. Not the dark color he had come to expect, but more of a black pool that seemed to pulse with a heavy nothingness. He felt a terror crawl up his back, but something deep within him felt like diving into to those sinkholes of colorless expression.

  Even as his eyes were caught, his nose gathered the scent and sent the message to his stomach, which spilled the partially digested dinner of multicolored cereal on the ground. The sweet but acidic smell combined with the deer to cause a repeat. As Greg tried to gain control, the deer fell to the ground.

  A low moan escaped the animal’s mouth, and hot death filled Greg’s nostrils. The animal slowed its breathing, stopped twitching, and died. The black drained from its eye yielding only cataract covered pearls which shone out from the maroon blood that seeped from the sockets.

  “Fuck me.” Greg watched the side of the animal rise and fall, expanding with each wave. It wasn’t the rhythmic back and forth of breathing from the dead animal, but the forceful pushes of something trying escape. His hand reached out to the deer, ignoring the pleading in his head to run. The skin felt taught, stretched too tightly across the expanding bag inside.

  With a push of his finger, it popped. Blood blew from the small hole mixed with maggots and bits of bone. Greg scrambled away as large black flies emerged from the stream of blood and bits. As he backed off, they followed, moving as a single cloud. Closer, they parted and swirled around his head.

  He stood, the fear fading away, conquered by a euphoria that overwhelmed him. Motionless under the moonlight, Greg watched not the flies but the patterns they made. Lines and curves swirled around him, making strange symbols in the air.

  He felt and urge to go. Not back to his house, but home. He took two steps away from his property when the flies scattered at the sound of a shotgun.

  “Greg, you okay.”

  He looked out. Saw nothing of the flies or their hypnotic dance. “Of course, Doug, just headed home.”

  “Son, home’s this way.”

  Greg blinked. “Right. Right. Be right there.” Greg eyed the fallen whitetail and the oozing black hole in its side. “Doug, hold on. Can you go get a floodlight?”

  “For what?”

  “There’s some fucked up deer over here. It just fell dead right in front of me.”

  “So.”

  “So? When it fell it burst open and that damned swarm of flies burst out of its swollen belly.”

  “Greg, can’t this wait until sun-up?”

  “No, I don’t want some damn coyote taking it away.”

  “Alright, just stay there. I’ll be right back.”

  “Thanks, Doug. Hurry back, I need to get a better look at this thing.” Greg stood over the deer and scratched his head. “What happened?” The cavity of the deer was empty. The rush of blood and debris had emptied the carcass of whatever the maggots didn’t eat. In the distance he heard a cry. He glanced back toward his house, but the sound was coming from the other direction.

  He took a few steps away, and the sound grew louder. It wasn’t Doug, but it sounded familiar. “Hey, is anyone there?” Only crying answered him and he continued toward the sound. The cry tugged at him. He needed to get to it. He needed to help. A few hundred feet from where he started, he stood, feeling he was here, but he saw nothing.

  The cry was loud. Painful. Calling him but he didn’t know where to go. A burst of light broke his attention. “Who’s there?”

  “Who’s there? It’s me, Doug. Thought I asked you to stay back there.”

  Greg covered his eyes as he looked back. “Yeah, sorry, but I needed to see what was making all that noise.”

  “What noise?”

  “The crying,” Greg said. But there wasn’t any.

  “What crying? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Greg’s mouth hung open. He just heard it. It was loud. “I don’t know. It was something crying.”

  “Like a baby?”

  “I don’t know.” Greg realized it felt like crying but didn’t really sound like anything. “But it came from here.”

  “Where? That sinkhole?”

  Greg looked down. His feet hung out over edge of a sinkhole. He hadn’t noticed that at all. One more step and down he would be gone. “Yeah, I guess. But, I don’t hear it now.”

  Doug ambled over and shone the light down the hole. The light danced off rocks and illuminated bits of plant debris and a few rodents, two eating another. “Unless you heard those, I don’t know what you were chasing.”

  “Me neither, Doug.” Greg looked down again.
r />   “Well, now let’s get a look at that deer and then get home. I’m old, tired and thirsty.”

  Greg patted Doug on the back as he sidled up next to him. “Right. Let’s look at the carcass and then I’ve got some Shiner at the house.”

  “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all night.”

  They headed off, but Greg looked back. Somewhere back there was a friend who broke into his house, assaulted and vomited on him. And that was the least of the things he was worried about.

  ***

  Scraping the plate for the last of the icing, Greg reminded himself to thank Alice, Doug’s wife, for the treat. When he awoke from a sleep brought on by exhaustion and a few beers, the homemade pecan rolls provided a jolt he needed. The weird events of the previous day vanished is a gooey combination of nuts, sugar, dough and a just a touch of awesome. He reveled in it, and its wonderful simplicity that was his life. Until now.

  The nagging image of the deer, the pit and the attacker played in his mind, spoiling the last bite. He stepped out his back door, and stood on the porch, gazing at the thin trees behind the small patch of grass he labored to keep green. Out there, something was happening.

  The deer. Don. None of it made sense. He had to know. With a tentative first step, he began his walk out into the woods. With each step, the bright morning sun of the Texas summer seemed to fade behind the overhanging branches, but his steps continued.

  Deeper into the brush and trees, he could see the broken limbs and disturbed ground of last night’s trek. He kept to that path and traveled deeper, further toward a something he couldn’t define. A few more steps and he stopped. In the path, stood a gray fox. It’s appearance was typical. Mostly gray, small areas of fur something between brown and red, typical in every way. But not the eyes. They were dark brown, as he expected, but sad. He felt this animal urging him to stop. Wanting him to turn back. “It’s just a fox,” Greg said to himself, and began to walk around the creature. It moved to interpose itself between him and his goal again.

  “Go on, now. Shoo.” Greg waved, but the fox remained. Each time Greg attempted to pass, the fox would release a mournful howl and get in his way again. Eyebrows furrowed, Greg stood with hands on his hips and considered coming back another time.

  Just then, the fox darted as a coyote pounced from behind Greg. Worries of having been stalked vanished with the sight of the two animals engaged in battle. Greg knew the coyote was a natural predator of the familiar fox, but the conflict was unexpected. The fox, with a quick nip to the coyote’s ankle, separated from its attacker. Greg expected the smaller animal to seek the safety of a tree, but it held its ground and looked at Greg.

  “What,” he yelled to the creature, which turned its head away and moved along the outside of the same invisible circle as the coyote. As they changed positions, the coyote stood in front of Greg, and began walking along the path of broken branches.

  Greg kept close behind. Ahead, the fox eyed the coyote and intermittently glanced at Greg. “What is it,” he asked, feeling foolish, but comfortable in the asking. The fox barked its warning, but the coyote pressed along, and Greg followed.

  Defeated, the fox scampered up a tree and howled. The coyote laughed. Greg followed the animal along the path, the sound of the fox dissipating into the various sounds of the woods in mid-morning. Greg stopped when the coyote turned from the path and stared at the unlikely guide which just stared forward. Greg turned his head to track the gaze and there was the pit.

  He walked toward the sinkhole, remembering but not feeling the call from the night before. He stepped to its edge and peered into the dark. It’s not so deep, he thought as he examined the rocky floor. It had seemed cavernous before, and wider. He looked around to check if it was the same spot, and he was sure it was. The coyote took a position opposite him, and seemed to nod.

  “I guess things just look different at night,” he said to the wildling across the way before the coyote skittered back and laughed as it vanished into the woods.

  He looked up at the clear sky and listened to the sounds he grew up with. Back when all that existed were possibilities. That was before their Dad left. Before their Mom died. Before his brother lost himself to the bottle, the blunt and who knew what else. He lost himself in the memories and sounds, meandering through the woods. When the dream stopped it was night.

  The stars shone down. Cicadas sang their song. The fox and coyote continued their verbal fight in the distance but Greg knew the coyote would win. The cicadas grew louder. Greg remembered as a kid playing inside a bush that was covered in the vacated shells. He and his brother would collect them and use them to stage epic battles of little green army men against the invading forces of giant cicadas. The shells were all around.

  Now the sound was all around. It pressed down on him. He could feel the shriek in his head and his heart beat to the same dull rhythm that lived underneath the sound. He stood on shaky legs and searched for the swarm that could cause this noise but the saw nothing. All around the sound buffeted him, but the sky was clear. His headache growing, he turned back toward the house.

  A cicada fell from the sky. Then ten more. Then a hundred more. Thousands fell all around him, flapping and flipping. Loud and angry, they screamed for help. They piled up around him, coming from everywhere and nowhere. They screamed. They cried.

  Then nothing. No sound.

  Greg looked at the mound of the bugs all around him. It was a motionless stack that stood eight feet high, and encircled him. He turned, in awe and wonderment of how he would get out. The porch beneath him felt warm under his sandals. He toes felt wet. He looked down and saw a black ooze pooling at his feet coming from the base of the pit of cicadas. The same black ooze that the stranger had puked onto him last night.

  He noticed the bugs turning to vacant shells as the ooze flowed. He watched as a line rose from the floor to the opening separating insect from carcass. The last bug gave itself to the black as the ooze rose to his ankles. He was surrounded by the shells. The ooze continued to rise.

  His heart raced. He felt trapped. He pushed against the stack, but the wall gave way to his hands, revealing only more wall. The ooze rose to his knees and he pressed again, shoving his arms into the façade of discarded exoskeleton. He could still feel more at the edge of his reach. The ooze rose to his waist. He took a breath and pushed himself into the stack. With each step, the bugs clawed at his skin and the ooze rose. Bits of skin and hair were lost to the dead and the ooze rose to his chest.

  He reached out again, and felt air. With a burst, he dove free of the tomb, and it crashed behind him. The ooze fell and seeped into the forest floor. A wind began to rise and swirl and the cicadas rose into the air, swirling about in a dust devil of death. Faster and faster it spun, crushing the shells until only fine sand remained. A gust scattered that dust out among the trees. Greg looked at himself. He still had the scratches, and the smelly ooze was beginning to crust on his clothes, but the bugs were gone.

  He was alone.

  ***

  Greg checked to make sure the Camry was secured. Not easy considering the damned car was falling apart after the deer, the tree and the creek took their toll. That much impact and even the rear seemed to be six minutes from dumping out. Not the way he wanted to start the day after last night, but being the only tow local to Comal Creek meant he got calls all hours.

  “I’ll get this to Bert’s, but I don’t think he’ll try to fix it.” He turned back to Mary Copper, a waitress at The Skillet.

  “Well, I guess I’ll see if I’m in good hands, then.” She laughed.

  Greg had known Mary for years. She was three years younger, but one of his friends had dated her in high school. They flirted off and on through the years, but nothing ever happened. “Come home with me, and you’ll be in good hands.”

  The familiar smirk appeared. “Really? That’s not what I heard.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Heard you had other things that worked
better than your hands.” She licked her lips and brushed by. Laughing again as she walked to the truck.

  Same innocent flirting as always. Never went anywhere. They’d made out at a party a decade ago, but it felt weird. Too familiar. Greg felt something, though. Her smell seemed different. Powerful. He wanted her. He slipped behind the wheel and started the diesel engine. “Hey, Mary, you wanna come over tonight?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  Greg cleared his throat. “Yeah. What do you say?”

  Mary’d lived alone for the last five years. Her brief marriage ended after Joe took off with a lady trucker on her way north. Greg knew she’d been a little gun shy ever since she found the two of them rocking the sleeper cab.

  “Sure. I’ll come by after work.”

  Greg put the truck in gear. “Great.” They didn’t talk again until they reached the garage. She hopped out and walked across the street to The Skillet. Greg dragged a couple of cars out of the brush as the day went on. He said little. Couldn’t keep his mind off Mary. .

  Back home, he picked up a bit, but thoughts about her, about them together, occupied his mind. He was more than curious. More than aroused. He was obsessed. A woman who had been only a friend for twenty years had become everything in a few hours.

  Done, he showered, slipped on a pair of jeans and grabbed a beer from the fridge. He took a swig. Didn’t taste right. He looked at the bottle. Same stuff as always. Shiner. Loved them. Never had them last more than a few days. Took another sip. Spit it out in the sink. “Weird.”

  He heard a car pull in and settle in the gravel outside his mobile home. He peered through the screen door and saw Mary easing out of the old VW that The Skillet used for deliveries. She held a large bag. “Hey, there. Need any help?”

  “No. Just figured you’d forget to make any dinner, so I grabbed some burgers from work. Hope that’s okay.”