A Fistful of Horror - Tales Of Terror From The Old West (17 page)

Thomas ran to the house and grabbed the can of kerosene from the shelf above the kitchen sink. By the time he returned to Bessie’s corpse, the weed had already enveloped her, squeezing tight and pumping more of its acidic sap onto her dead flesh. It had taken him less than a minute and yet the rear of her body was covered thick, sinewy vines, with only the occasional sliver of skin poking through. Thomas poured the fuel over plant and horse alike and fumbled with his matches, dropping several to the floor before managing to get her lit.

It had taken hours, but Thomas had stood there, watching her burn, topping up the fire with more wood, as it was needed. He had hated to admit it, but Bessie had sure smelled good as she was slowly roasted and charred in the open air. After a few hours, there had been nothing left of Bessie or the tumbleweed but some charred scraps of bone and the smouldering soil underfoot.

***

The night was quiet. Zacariah Wilson lay in his bed, sleeping a dreamless sleep. It had taken him hours to finally drift off. Every time he closed his eyes, he heard Bessie’s frantic screaming, rising in pitch and volume as she became ever more desperate; he saw his father raising his rifle, putting a bullet through her head and cutting those shrieks short with utter finality.

With the bedroom window open and a gentle breeze wafting in, he had finally managed to sleep. As he lay on his back, breath coming in deep, rumbling snores, the wind blew across his face gently caressing his skin and tousling his shortly cropped hair.

Usually the evening breeze brought with it the comforting, familiar smells of the farm but the only aroma tonight was that of smoke and charred horse flesh.

The wind brought something else.

Carried on the breeze, a small, blackened twist of weed floated through the open window, dancing like a mote in the moonlight. It span on a puff of wind, riding the zephyr into the room. Hovering for a moment over Zacariah’s sleeping form, it pirouetted in the air, before dropping into the boy’s open mouth.

***

“Pa!”

Thomas woke with a start. The fire was dying now, the grate a collection of ashes and embers. For a moment he didn’t realise where he was, but then the events of the day came flooding back.

“Pa!”

That was Jonah. Thomas leapt to his feet and ran up the stairs to where his eldest son was stood, tears streaming down his face.

“What is it, boy?” he asked.

“Zacariah,” he said, his voice choked with tears.

“What?”

“Zacariah,” he repeated.

Thomas grabbed him by the shoulders and roughly shook him. “What about him?” he shouted.

Jonah wept. Thomas let go of his shoulders and let him drop to the floor. He ran into the boys’ bedroom, barely making it through the door before stopping at what he saw.

“Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. He legs went weak at the knees and he collapsed against the heavy door frame. By the light of the moon, he saw the thing that lay in his son’s bed – the thing that had
been
his son.

Willing himself forward on shaking legs, he approached the bed. His poor boy. Scraps of his night shirt littered the floor and a dark stain spread out from under him across the mattress. The little that remained of him was covered in grasping, twisting vines that roiled over one another, clawing to find a fresh piece of flesh to burrow into. They pulled in, tighter and tighter. There was an audible crack as Zacariah’s ribs caved in and Thomas let out a desperate moan. It was then that he noticed the thickest of the roots, coming from the ragged hole torn out of his son’s neck, writhing and pulsing with its toxic sap.

Thomas dropped to his knees, staring dumbly at the raw, bloody wound where his son’s head had once been and the terrible throbbing root that protruded from it. His head, he thought, his beautiful head. Where is it?

A bang from outside shook him from his reverie. He forced himself to his feet and looked out of the window. Dear Christ, he thought, will this nightmare never end?

Outside there was another tumbleweed…and another. They were rolling in the wind, banging against the side of the house, as if they wanted to get in, to get at the food. He knew that they were just a twisted bundle of weeds, blown along by the steady northwest breeze, but rationality no longer held sway. He saw their dogged attempts to breach the walls of the farmhouse and could not shake off the feeling that they were under siege.

He stepped back from the window, and his foot struck something hard and heavy on the floor. He tried not to look – didn’t want to look – but his head moved, as if of its own volition, and he had no hope of resisting.

He choked back an angry sob as he looked down into the glassy, staring eyes of his youngest son. They were wide and frightened and the lips below were blue even in the wan moonlight. His boy had choked to death. That bastard plant had crushed the air out of him whilst Thomas had lain asleep downstairs. How could he have let that happen? What had gone through Zacariah’s mind, he thought, as that hideous weed grew inside him, cutting off his air and tearing through the soft flesh of his throat. Had he still been alive when the pressure had been too much for his slender neck and his spine had been severed, he wondered. The thought of it was enough to unman him and he dropped, helpless, to the floor.

He sat there, legs out straight in front of him, head sagging deep into his chest and wept scalding tears for his dead boy. Six year, he thought. For six years he had kept his promise to his dead wife; to Zacariah’s mother and tonight he had let them both down.

A dark, grasping tendril snaked off the bed, away from the tattered remains of his son. It began to creep across the floor and up Thomas’ leg. He brushed it away from him in a lethargic motion, but it did no longer seemed to be interested in him. It reached out blindly, probing the darkness like a finger and moved with great slowness away from him across the rough floorboards towards the dark shadow that had seeped into the wood beneath Zacariah’s head.

Thomas had heard of plants seeking out nourishment in the parched flatlands, their roots acting as sophisticated divining rods and he realised that this particular weed was simply looking for a food source that was richer than an underground waterhole. He grabbed at the vine, shocked at the strength he felt beneath his fingers. It pulsed and rippled like a snake, under his grip, looping around his wrist and cinching in tight, forcing him to let go with one hand. The smooth vine pulled at him with a terrible strength dragging him towards the bed, towards that writhing, teeming mass of vegetation, with its rows of barbs like shining in the moonlight like shark’s teeth.

Thomas dug his boots into the floor, pulled as hard as he could towards the door, but the plant would not be denied. It forced his broad frame across the floor inch by inch as he tried to prise the thick root away from his wrist with his free hand. He was beginning to lose the feeling in his hand as well as losing ground to the insistent plant.

Just then, a shadow sped past him in the dark room and he felt a blessed relief as the pressure was released and the feeling returned to his hand. He looked up and saw Jonah standing above him, the blade of the Bowie knife he held in his hand glinting in the moonlight.

“Get up!” he shouted.

“Zacariah,” Thomas mumbled.

“Zacariah’s gone, Pa,” Jonah replied, pulling at his shoulders. “We gotta get out of here.”

In fits and starts, he managed to pull his father from the room and pull the door tight shut. The terrible banging from outside continued, shaking the farmhouse with each strike.

“There’s more outside,” Jonah said.

“I know,” Thomas replied. “I seen ‘em through your brother’s window. Two or three of ‘em”

“Looks like half a dozen now.”

Thomas pulled himself to his feet and looked his son in the eye. “Thank you, Jonah,” he said. “Your brother…”

“I know, Pa,” his son replied. “I know, but we’ve got to do something or they’ll get in.”

“Fire,” Thomas said.

“Huh?”

“Fire. We’ll burn those fuckers to ashes, boy and grind what’s left into the ground.”

“Okay,” Jonah said.

“Hell, we’ll burn the whole house to the ground if we have to.”

“The house?”

“Son,” Thomas began, “I don’t know where those things came from and I don’t know why they turned up here. Frankly,” he said, “I don’t give a shit. They killed your brother and if we have to give up everything here to turn them into dust and smoke, then that’s what we’re gonna do. You with me?”

“Yeah, Pa,” he said.

“Good boy.”

“But, how are we gonna burn ‘em?”

“What?”

“There’s no kerosene left,” Jonah explained. “You used it all up on Bessie.”

“Bessie,” Thomas said, remembering. “That’s it, son.”

“What is?”

“There’s more kerosene out in the stable. Hell, there’s a whole drum of the stuff.”

“But those things are outside,” Jonah said.

“Yeah, but the wind’s blowing them this way,” his father said, “away from the stable. They might grow like nothin’ I’ve seen before, but they’re slow and they can’t move against the wind. I’m gonna go fetch some of that kerosene, the whole goddamn drum if I have to, and we’ll just light those fuckers up.”

“I’m coming too,” Jonah said.

“The Hell you are,” Thomas replied. “I’ve already lost your brother tonight and I’ll not lose you too.” Jonah looked down, tears threatening to well up in his eyes once more. “Now you stay here, stay safe. I’ll not be more than a couple of minutes.”

Jonah did as he was bold. He watched his father run towards the stable, grey as a ghost beneath the moon. He was right. The tumbleweeds continued to batter themselves against the farmhouse, buoyed on the strong night breeze. His father was in the stable for two minutes that felt like an eternity as he watched for his familiar shape to come back out of the building.

There he was, rolling the barrel of oil before him and keeping a watchful eye on the plants that were bombarding their home. He really means to do it, Jonah thought, he really means to just set fire to the lot of them, building and all. He was moved slowly, trying to keep control of the wayward drum, but he was getting ever closer. Twenty feet to go now. Fifteen feet. Ten.

Something was wrong. The wind had shifted. The tumbleweeds ceased their assault on the walls of the house and rolled ponderously towards Thomas. It’s okay, Jonah thought, he’ll see them. He’ll get out of the way.

But he wouldn’t. The drum of kerosene had rolled onto its end and Thomas was so involved in getting it rolled onto its side again, that he hadn’t noticed his impending doom.

“Pa!” Jonah cried, running from the safety of the porch. His father looked up, confused, into the rolling ball of spikes and thorns that was heading for him and froze. Jonah made the distance in record time, diving for his father and knocking him out of the tumbleweed’s path.

“Jonah,” Thomas called, “are you alright?”

Jonah pulled himself up from the ground. “I think so,” he said. He touched his face with his hand. “Yeah,” he confirmed, “just a scratch.”

Thomas looked at him and there was a small scratch, just visible beneath his left eye. That would make this the second time tonight that Jonah had saved his life. As he thought this, the sliver of a scratch split open and heard Jonah screamed as tiny strands of weed pushed out from under his skin. Thomas was motionless for only a couple of second, but Jonah’s face was already a mess of barbed vines more seemed to be sprouted from him every moment. Jonah’s head was misshapen from the tendrils’ vicelike crushing and one of his eyes had been popped out of its socket and now lay on his cheek like a beach jellyfish. Even as he watched, on of the thirsty roots plunged in the softness whiteness of the eye, sucking up all the goodness.

Thomas retched, throwing up his dinner on the floor, where it was soon joined by Jonah’s twitching, lifeless body.

Thomas ran into the house and plunged a length of wood into the remains of the fire. He rolled it around in the embers, hoping to get it hot enough to burn or, at the very least, hot enough to ignite the kerosene. He left the wood smouldering in the grate and fetched his claw hammer. Returning to the main room he was delighted to see the tip of the wood glowing red.

He ran outside, smashing open the drum of kerosene and dragging it to the house, leaving a tail behind it like that of a comet. He touched the glowing end of the wood to the kerosene and felt his heart catch in his chest as it seemed that it wouldn’t light. A second later, with a whoomp the oil ignited, rushing to the barrel set in the farmhouse.

Thomas coated the wood in the flaming liquid and went after the remaining plants.

“This is for my boys,” he yelled madly to the sky as he thrust the blazing torch deep into the heart of one of the tumbleweeds. It began to die at once, the flames consuming it with ease. He moved onto the next, content to finish the job once he was sure that all of them has been caught and set ablaze.

Thomas worked through the night, burning the tumbleweeds one at a time as they became corralled into one corner of the farm or another, thanks to the wind. He took particular pleasure in burning the one that had killed Jonah. Poor, brave Jonah. It was no way for a young man to die, mummified by some unholy plant, but he would see to it that he had a proper cremation.