The Incident at Scruggs Flats
A short story by Madison McSweeney
The sky was as red as the blood of a calf, just like they’d promised it would be. It rained later, washing off the blood, so much rain that several trailers sank on their cinder blocks. It was dark by the time the sky cleared.
On a cushion on top of his mobile home, Jeff had an unobstructed view of the eclipse and the electrical storm that brewed at the horizon. When they came for him, he’d see them coming for miles.
In a swirl of blue taffeta, hair stiff with chemicals, Darlene presented herself to be judged.
Behind a folding table, the judges looked bored, with the exception of Mr. Gordon, who looked annoyed. Darlene could see herself reflected on the projector screen at the back of the auditorium, like an out-of-body experience. Her foundation, affixed to her face like a second skin, had been under the hot lights too long and had started to go slimy. She almost felt like tonight’s exoskeleton could stand up without her: poufy dress, teased hair, half an inch of makeup. And the smile. She didn’t remember smiling, couldn’t even feel herself doing it. The smile was an autonomous thing, a parasite that had chosen her as host. If she won tonight, it may never leave.
The delayed start was the fault of the outgoing Miss Scruggs Flats. She’d aged out of pageants this year, turning thirteen just before the registration deadline. As a gesture of goodwill, the producers had brought her back as a presenter, but she’d kept messing up her cues in dress rehearsal, and Mr. Gordon had made her do it again and again until she was perfect. Now that they’d got going, he was impatient, tapping the tabletop with a pencil as if it would speed up Abby Plank’s “If I could have one wish . . .” speech.
Practicing her own script in her head, Darlene saw the projected picture shift, flickering then turning sideways as it zoomed in on her. She waited for someone to fix it, or at least adjust the camera so it focused on Abby, but the image just hung there, the half-moon of her perma-smile shrinking.
Jeff blinked as lightning dyed the sky, trying to decode the message in the afterimage. If there were letters, they were disjointed and brambly, like the heavy metal posters that sometimes got stapled to telephone poles. He’d never been able to read those, either.
He felt deceived. When the Other Ones had deigned to talk to him, he’d always listened. They’d told him to sell what he had and stay here, so he had. When they’d doubted his commitment, he’d set his trailer on cinder blocks. He stopped visiting his daughter, paid the neighbour kid to bring him groceries once a week, quit his job and lived off savings so he wouldn’t miss them if they decided to pick him up early. But they hadn’t. And now the foretold day had come, and all they’d done was mock him.
“Are they here yet?”
A woman stood at the foot of his trailer. She was slightly ratty looking, hands hidden in the pockets of a grey sweatshirt, her dirty blonde hair half-down, half-caught in the hood. Slung over her shoulder was one of those purses that looks more like a burlap sack. Blue hearing aids plugged her ears.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know,” she said. “The watchers.”
Jeff blinked. “They told you to come here, too?”
She smiled wanly. “Did you think you were the only one?”
Mr. Gordon was close enough that Darlene could smell the bourbon on his breath, although his ire was aimed at the girl next to her. “You really think this is you at your best?”
The girl, Lisa, was on the verge of crying, the top half of her face crumpling even as her smile held. Across from them, the other judges fidgeted. “Full moon,” someone whispered.
Mr. Gordon was like this when he fell off the wagon, Darlene knew from eavesdropping. Her step-dad often asked her mother why she cared what some belligerent drunk thought of her family. But he was so kind, normally; at the last pageant he’d made jokes and chatted, asking about school and sports and horses like he truly cared. Alcohol made you different, Darlene thought, drained the good parts away and replaced them with someone else.
“I practiced hard,” Lisa insisted.
“You look like you just rolled out of bed,” Gordon interrupted. “You’re barely even dressed.”
Darlene couldn’t help but examine Lisa out of the corner of her eye. The girl had what her mother would have referred to as “a belly,” and the clinging fabric of the dress wasn’t kind. The short sleeves also didn’t help, her fat upper arms bursting out like overstuffed sausages. That was really what the pageant director was reacting to, although he only mentioned the wardrobe malfunction: Lisa’s dress – the one she wore every year – was half-unzipped at the side, like she didn’t fit in it anymore.
Darlene’s attention was drawn by the screen flickering. Black and grey static gave way to an image, blue skies and silver. It was a city by a lake – no, an ocean – glittering cerulean that shot up into dozens of gleaming skytowers, sleek and seamless. Not a brick or steel beam was visible on any of the buildings; they looked like they’d been sculpted from pure chrome. There was something naturalistic about the way they bent and twisted, more like branches or icicles than something hands had built.
The image shifted; they were in a factory now, walls and ceiling wavering like smoke to reveal glimpses of the forests and buildings outside. On the production floor, miles and miles of squirming clones were birthed from conveyor belt wombs.
Darlene felt her face slip as she squinted to see better. The screen fell black, like it didn’t want to upset her chances. Beside her, Gordon was still upbraiding Lisa. The small crowd was placid, a dozen parents with their hands in their laps, grateful she wasn’t their daughter. Lisa’s father squatted in the front row, stiff index finger pointed at the raised corner of his mouth.
Smile.
“Weird Travis was the first in our high school to see them,” the woman informed him, legs swinging off the edge of the roof. Kate. “Said he saw silver ships sailing.”
Jeff watched a bat try to fight its way through the storm, the wind whipping it in a dozen directions at once.
“Shaped like dicks,” she added, and Jeff winced. “No one believed him at first, thought he just had some Freudian fixation or smoked a joint and saw a frisbee. After he went missing, we all just thought he’d gone crazy. When he came back, he said they’d probed him, you know, and he said it was such a pure sensory experience it forever ruined any woman for him. Not even his girlfriend could get him up anymore.”
Jeff seethed. She was so vulgar. How had the Others chosen her to reveal themselves to? Would they really bring her with them tonight?
Her hand flew to her ear, teeth clenched in a grimace of pain. The surrounding satellite dishes interfered with her hearing aids, and she occasionally picked up a signal from someone else’s broadcast. To Jeff, this one sounded like a cross between a bluegrass song and a dental drill.
“What happened to your friend?” he asked.
“Travis? He shot himself,” she said. “The Watchers took too long to come to him again and life without them was unbearable. That’s what was in the suicide note, anyway. The night they found his body, a buncha people from town claimed they saw ships, too, blocking out the moon.”
“When did you see them?”
“Not until later in life. Night shift at the gas station. I was outside for a smoke, watching a trucker fill up, and the whole sky turned to liquid chrome. And when the night came back, I felt like I knew everything.”
Jeff’s heart flared with jealousy. Her vision sounded beautiful.
“Hey, can I take a piss?”
“Door’s open,” Jeff said, and listened to Kate swing herself over the side and climb down the ladder, her bag thumping against the wall.
A roll of thunder shook the aluminum. “If you’re going to come take me home,” he muttered, once he was sure Kate was out of earshot, “right now would be perfect.”
Gordon tired himself out in time for the talent portion of the evening. Lisa trembled all through her baton routine, dropping sticks as often as she caught them. Darlene caught her own mother smirking in the crowd.
The girl who took Lisa’s place couldn’t have been more radiant, beaming because she knew her stiffest competition had been eliminated. If the judges sensed her schadenfreude, they didn’t seem to blame her for it, watching with pleasure as she tap-danced to The Bangles’ “Manic Monday.”
When the song faded out and the tap-shoe clattering ended, a steady drip, drip echoed against the floor of the auditorium. Darlene looked to the roof for a leak, then back to the judge’s table. Gordon’s crotch was wet, and urine was dripping from his pant leg.
The inside of the trailer was as squalid as Kate expected. Carpets reeking of smoke, couch older than she was, the fabric a greying lavender. Cramped countertops stained with long-dried spaghetti sauce, the sink edged with black grime. A half-eaten chicken wing sat on a plate on the stove, had obviously been there for days. Everything felt sticky.
But at least she didn’t have to worry about Jeff doing any cleaning.
Kate scanned the trailer for something that had been in the same place forever, something he’d never have any reason to touch. She ventured into his bedroom, which was a few steps up from the squat little bathroom that smelled slightly of sewage. She opened the heavy curtain separating the rooms, stooping to fit, and wondered how a grown man lived here full-time. Then again, Jeff seemed like a man who’d hit his head a few times.
She was grateful for the tumult of the storm outside.
A ceramic gray wolf sat on the floor next to the window, between an overgrown-yet-half-dead plant and an air humidifier. Careful not to disturb anything else, Kate gently lifted the wolf to run her finger along its underside. She affixed the bug next to the one of the four felt pads that prevented the statuette from scratching the floor. With her free hand, she touched her ear. “Device in place. Testing now. Do you copy?”
The voice in her earpiece, male and steely. “We copy. Confirm test and extract.”
Darlene heard someone whisper, “He fucking pissed himself” as she took her place at center stage. Gordon looked out of it. This annoyed Darlene because she’d picked her song specifically to please him. He always teared up whenever someone sang “America the Beautiful.”
She glanced at the screen again, in case it held any more wisdom for her, and found it blank. She wondered if they had patriotic songs in the city she’d seen. Maybe not; maybe the people there just worked, toiling in labs and in the factories, and the beauty grew around them without anyone noticing. Or maybe there were a dying few who could appreciate art, and the rest of the population were mindless clones.
A voice brought her back. “Focus!” Her mother in the second row, face tight, the harsh lights bringing out every streak of sweat.
Darlene opened her mouth.
What came out felt mellifluous to her, but it wasn’t “America the Beautiful.” It wasn’t even American, or any language Darlene had ever let pass her lips. She saw her mother’s face fall, and the judges’ faces crinkle in confusion, but the words kept coming, fluid and sincere and absolute gibberish. Darlene couldn’t have shut her mouth if she tried.
Caps came off sharpie markers, which squeaked as the judges wrote their scores down. She wasn’t even halfway through her act.
Kate bumped into an end-table on her way out, sending a picture frame falling. She rushed to pick it up, inspecting the glass for cracks. On the other hand, the photo was already warped, like it didn’t quite fit the frame but had been shoved in anyway. A girl of about six, in a glittery pink dress, hair big in a style that reminded Kate of 1980s yearbook photos. She was probably cute under the pancake makeup. His daughter, she registered. Lived with her mother, he supposedly had visitation. She returned it to the same spot, like she was trying to cover her tracks. But that was silly. Jeff knew she was in here.
When she emerged, he was standing in front of the door. She hadn’t even heard him climb down from the roof. “Shit, you scared me!” she blurted.
“I was worried you fell in,” he said, without humour.
“Have you ever lived with a woman?” Kate replied. “It takes a while. We can’t just unzip and let loose.”
Her earpiece screeched again, another errant radio signal. Dolly Parton singing “Jolene” for three seconds.
“What is that?” Jeff demanded, as the static claimed her.
“It’s a hearing aid!” she snapped, hand to her ear.
But Jeff wasn’t buying it. “Who have you been talking to?” he demanded, and lurched to grab her.
Before Kate could control herself, her training kicked in, her hand leaving her ear to dip into her bag. A flick of her wrist sent an electric current surging through Jeff’s body, just as thunder roared above them.
Before the judges could lift their scorecards, the auditorium lights went out.
It was only meant to stun. But Jeff, lying on his back on the dead grass, was more than stunned.
Shit!” Kate hissed, looking around to make sure nobody had seen. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t the only one monitoring Jeff. They probably already knew he was dead.
Shit shit shit. She’d be fired. Eviscerated. They’d cut her fingers off and divide her organs between the seven of them. Suspend her head and spine in a vat to experiment on her nervous system.
She knelt to check his pulse one last time, placed a hand-mirror by his mouth, felt his wrists. Nothing. How had they not known he had a weak heart? Ripping out her earpieces, she grabbed him by the feet and dragged him into the trailer.
“They’ll say it was a pity award,” Darlene’s mother said, eying the silver trophy through the rearview mirror. “That they didn’t want to embarrass the seizure girl.”
Darlene set the trophy on the seat beside her, pulling down the seatbelt to secure it. Beyond the dashboard the sky was a pale pink, clouds at the horizon churning ominously.
“And then they’ll say you were faking for exactly that reason. Honestly, Darlene, I wouldn’t have been mad if you hadn’t won anything, but is this how you wanted to get second place?”
“I don’t think they felt sorry for me,” Darlene said. She remembered how Mr. Gordon had stood, like a puppet, when she’d finished her performance, a dreadful sobriety in his eyes. Bravo, he’d said, and put his hands together, and it had been like someone else was speaking through him. And she somehow knew that he’d wanted to give her first place, and finally been convinced out of it by the other judges.
She had a feeling he’d never pick up a drink again. She had a feeling he’d do a lot of things that didn’t seem at all like Mr. Gordon, drunk or sober.
The voices on the radio crackled beyond recognition, and her mother cranked it off, with a gesture like a farmer snapping a chicken’s neck. “We practiced so much,” she lamented. “Why couldn’t you have . . .”
The radio noise was replaced by a whirring that seemed to come from outside the car. Darlene twisted around to look out the back window, getting her head at just the right angle to see the dark disc skimming the bottom of the clouds. It moved at an unhurried pace, which must have been very fast because Darlene’s mother was speeding and the saucer was keeping pace with them.
It was raining when Kate’s car pulled off the paved road, into the rumbling dirt-and-rock road that led deep into the woods. She grit her teeth as the wheels hit every bump. Crammed into the back seat, insulated by three layers of bedsheet, Jeff didn’t complain.
The Scruggs Flats Trailer Park was one of those places where residents don’t bother locking their sheds because if someone wants something, they’ll bust in anyway, and where people leave supplies and equipment strewn across their postage stamp lawns. No one had stopped her when she swiped a rusted shovel from against someone’s picket fence.
The rain was not so bad in the forest, wide summer leaves catching the bulk of it, swiping it from the air and ushering it along branches and trunks. The earth in the clearing was soft from the moisture, although her digging was slowed by roots and embedded rocks the size of toasters.
People like Jeff can’t be counted on, she told herself, story solidifying in her mind. They get ideas in their head and wander off without telling anyone. Sometimes they’re never seen again.
“He started to get scared,” she muttered, jabbing the tip deeper. “Got erratic, told me he wasn’t sure if he wanted to see the watchers, after all. When I got back from planting the bug, he was gone.” A jab, a clump of dirt, bugs clinging to sprouts, a larger pile of dirt on the ground. Behind her, Jeff was lain flat, out of the way. “There are other conduits.”
She stopped talking when the shovel came up against an obstruction, grunting as she dislodged it. Shoulders slouched, head down, she didn’t see the body stand up, sheets falling to its knees. It faced her, watching with neither confusion nor understanding, waiting for her to break the rock free before speaking. “What are you doing?”
“Jeff!” she shrieked, and nearly stepped into the hole. The body reached for her arm, catching her fall.
“I am not Jeff,” it said. Its voice was pleasantly blank, like the stop announcements on a subway. In terms of timbre, it sounded like Jeff’s voice, but retained none of his guardedness or paranoia.
“We’ve been waiting for you to come,” she said.
The body blinked. “That does not concern us.”
Her heart sank. She’d been taught that first contact would be unpredictable, perhaps dangerous, hence the stun gun, but this landed in between all the scenarios she’d prepared for. She had responses for excitement, curiosity, fear, and malice; no one had trained her for apathy.
Kate gulped. “I thought you were supposed to take him to your . . . home.”
Did she sense pity in the being’s eyes? “That was never our intent,” it replied.
She tightened her grip on the shovel. The thing in Jeff’s body remained at ease, posture effortlessly straight, muscles relaxed. She had the idea that if the thing were to make a move, there would be no pre-attack tensing of muscles to warn her. It would just go.
“Where is . . . what did you do with Jeff?” she asked, voice trembling.
Its eyebrow raised. “Jeff?”
Kate didn’t answer. It waited a polite amount of time for her to say something, and then turned around. “I’m going to leave you now,” it announced, and walked through a break in the trees. Her eyes followed the figure as it strolled through the woods, never looking down to watch for hazards, seeming to find every throughway without turning or deviating from its path. It did not attempt to make for the road or follow any trail. It wasn’t going anywhere in particular.
When the former Jeff had travelled too far for her to see it, Kate turned and re-filled the hole.
The boy who bought Jeff’s groceries was annoyed when he didn’t get a call, but no one really noticed Jeff’s absence until the rent was due. Kate left town with even less disturbance, like a seal slipping into the water without a seam.
When the park manager came to bang on Jeff’s door, his boot ground a blue hearing aid deeper into the dry ground. No one ever noticed them, even though they’d been there for weeks. Occasionally they sputtered to life, catching an errant signal. At first it was voices, grey and clipped, speaking in military jargon. They received no response. Soon, it was just snippets of gospel, radio banter, news reports.
“The search continues for child beauty queen Darlene Earl, who disappeared along Lester Road ten days ago, shortly after taking home a prize at the Miss Scruggs Flats pageant. Her mother says she has no memory of . . .
Madison McSweeney is a horror and dark fantasy writer from Ottawa, Ontario. She’s the author of Most Likely to Summon Nyhiloteph (Little Ghosts Books), The Doom That Came to Mellonville (Filthy Loot), and Beach Vibes (Anuci Press). She tweets from @MMcSw13 and blogs at www.madisonmcsweeney.com.