Creepers (16 page)

Toby didn’t tell Tom, but where he really wanted to go tonight was out to Ricky’s.  He had to see for himself what had happened, what was going on.  That bastard half breed cop wouldn’t tell them anything.   Probably covering for the coons he thought.  Toby knew how those blacks looked out for each other.  That thought angered Toby, and he hocked a loogie out the window in disgust.  It also made Toby more resolute in what he was going to do, what he needed to do.

As Toby turned off the highway onto the dirt road that led to Ricky’s trailer, his thoughts turned to the more immediate task at hand.   At this time of night, Toby figured the place would be deserted, and he could check it out for himself.   The closer he got to the trailer the more sobering the situation became.  Reality can be brutal, and it was about to get very brutal for Toby.  He licked his lips and gripped the steering wheel even tighter, paying close attention to the twisting road.

Eventually, Toby ended up in front of a run-down trailer.  His headlights reflected off of the yellow police line tape that surrounded the area.  Toby crept to a stop as close to the front door as he could without breaking the tape.  His headlights illuminated the front of the trailer and part of the side area.  It looked deserted and alien to Toby, a lifeless place that held only death.  Toby licked his lips again and then swallowed hard.

He shut off the engine, grabbed his flashlight, and climbed out of his truck.  There was a light breeze that inexorably chilled Toby and caused leaves to rustle nearby, but that was the only sound there was.  It was eerily quiet, and it caused fear to rise in the pit of Toby’s stomach.  He looked around then, wishing his brother was here with him now.  Toby shook the feeling off and moved toward the front door.

This time, he had to break through the police tape that sealed the front door.  He opened the door and tried the light switch.  To his surprise, the lights came on.  He wasn’t quite sure why he thought they wouldn’t, probably the deserted feeling of the place he decided.  Toby was relieved that with the lights on, the place wasn’t quite as scary.  Toby, none the less, felt incredibly weird.  Everything appeared normal, as if Ricky and Sheila would come home any minute.  To Toby it was somewhere between trespassing and walking on a grave.

Toby walked around the trailer, looking into drawers and cabinets.  He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for.  Maybe he was just trying to get a glimpse inside Ricky Dixon.  Perhaps he was just procrastinating.  Either way, the trailer wasn’t that big and after a fashion Toby ended up at the front bedroom.  He stood at the door for a while, deciding if he should enter.  Finally, Toby reached in and turned on the light.

Again Toby was surprised.  Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  The mattress was gone, and the window screen was ripped up.  Toby stepped into the room and looked more closely.  He could see some dark staining on the old carpet on either side of the bed frame.  He bent down to examine it, and that’s when he got the first whiff of something.  There was a strange smell.  It was chemical and earthy all at the same time.  Toby figured it must have been whatever they used to process the scene.  He’d seen enough television shows to know how they do stuff, he just never thought about it smelling before.

Toby shrugged and turned to leave.  He turned off the lights and closed the front door like he had found it.  He even tried his best to replace the tape.  Toby walked out to his truck scratching his head.  It just didn’t make any sense.  It’s as if they just left.  Only they didn’t take anything with them.  Toby realized then that what he had been looking at was the place where Sheila had most likely died.  That thought caused his eyes to tear for the first time since this whole thing started.

Toby had liked Sheila.  He’d been so consumed with Ricky he had forgotten about Sheila.  Yes, she could be a pain in the ass, and yes she was always checking up on Ricky, but she loved him.  Toby could see it in her eyes.  Sheila’s world revolved around Ricky, and she had always treated him way better than he treated her.  He wondered then how she might have died.  A part of him also wondered if Ricky might not have done something to her.

No, Toby decided.  If Ricky had done it, he would have gotten rid of her.  Someone else must have killed her.  It had to be the blacks he thought; it had to be those God damned niggers.  With renewed ire, he climbed back into his truck and fired up the engine.  He would find out who had done this to Ricky and Sheila, and he would deal with them.  It was no longer about beatings or terrorizing people; this was about murder.  Toby decided right then and there that he was going to kill somebody after all.  He didn’t know who yet, but he was going to kill a nigger.

Toby was done out here for tonight though, and he wanted to go home.  Tomorrow he would start being the hard-ass he needed to be.  Toby turned the big truck around and headed back down the dirt road.  A light mist had come up since he’d been in the trailer, and it made the moonless night even darker.  His headlights reflected off the mist, and Toby was struggling to see the road.  He flipped on his fog lamps and continued cautiously down the road.

Toby slowed at a sharp curve and saw a flash of light out amongst the kudzu.  His fog lights had hit some chrome lost in the sea of vines.  As he slowed to a stop Toby could just make out the tops of four tires sticking up from the sea of green leaves.  His heart skipped a beat, and he swallowed down a dry lump in his throat.   Somehow, Toby knew just which vehicle this was.

Toby shined his flashlight on it and could only see bits of the upside down truck.  He could understand how it could have been missed.  It melded in with the vines and nearly disappeared beneath their green canopy.  In just a couple of days, the kudzu had nearly erased the truck from existence.  You had to be at just the right angle to see anything, and that was if you were even looking for it.  Toby knew the general assumption, or at least what people were saying, was that Ricky had taken off.  So there was no reason for anybody to be searching along the road sides.  Damn, Toby thought; he had to call the police.

Then Toby thought better of it.  If the cops were covering for someone, they might just remove evidence or something.  Toby had to act quickly; he had to check out the truck before he reported anything.  There was also the possibility that Ricky was still in it, hurt or even dead.  Toby swallowed hard then climbed down out of his truck.

He waded out through the thick, deep bed of vines.  They tugged and grabbed at Toby, impeding his progress to that of a slow crawl.  He half crawled on top; half waded through the dense growth struggling to reach the truck.  Toby couldn’t remember the last time he had worked this hard and part of him wondered if it might not have been better to have called someone.  That thought quickly left him as he finally reached the truck.  He flashed his light along the sides of the vehicle and confirmed that was indeed Ricky’s truck.

“Ricky?” Toby called out.  “Ricky, are you in there?”

There was no answer.  Toby paused for a minute struggling to hear.  He tried to light up the cab, but his flashlight couldn’t cut through the mass of vines and leaves that filled the window.  He called out again, but still there was no answer.  Both excited and panicked, Toby started ripping at the vines trying to remove them from the window.  The vines were so thick inside the cab Toby felt like he was tunneling.

Toby felt searing pain on his hands and his arms and even on his face.  He stopped long enough to look at his hands and thought “damn, they’re cutting me to pieces.”  He wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve, and it came back bloody.  “Damn,” he muttered and then dug back into the clump of vines.  Every fistful seemed to cut his hands even more.  Toby ignored the pain and the blood, and continued trying to clear the window.

Every vine, every clump of leaves, brought him further into the cab of the truck until eventually his hand felt a boot.  Toby stopped then and took a deep breath.  He swallowed hard; this was real.  Toby had always assumed or hoped at least that Ricky was being held somewhere.  Maybe beaten, but at least he would be alive.  This, however, changed all of that.  It changed a lot of things that Toby had been thinking.

“No,” Toby screamed.  He gripped the boot and shook it.  He shook it again and yelled, “Ricky!  Wake up Ricky!  Wake up!”  Toby shook it so hard the boot came free of whatever was holding it.  He looked down dumbly at the boot in his hand, then up beyond it to see a foot.  At least he thought it was a foot.  It was mostly bones and some tissue.  Toby gagged.

Horrified, Toby dropped the boot and tried to back out of the window.  Only he couldn’t seem to move.  His body suddenly went limp, and he couldn’t support himself.  He fell onto the vines, and his face came within inches of the foot.  Toby tried to fight, he tried to look away, he tried to scream, but he could do none of that.  Toby couldn’t seem to move a muscle.  Even his eyes would only look straight ahead.  He couldn’t even blink.  Lord, he so wanted to blink.

Although, Toby could see movement.  He saw the vines moving, writhing like some impossible snake.  He could feel them too.  They encircled his body.  He could feel them wrapping around his arms and legs.  They snaked their way up his pant legs and inside his shirt.  Toby was  panicked and more afraid than he had ever been before.  The vines, he thought, the vines are alive. 

The vines seemed more like an animal than a plant and Toby tried to scream again.  He felt them tighten all around his body, and he slowly started moving.  The vines slowly inched his body forward, further into the cab.  His face turned this way and that as he moved, showing him glimpses of what was beneath him in the cab of the truck.  Through the vines, he saw the mostly decomposed body of Ricky Dixon.  His clothing was tattered, but there was enough of it for Toby to know it was Ricky.

Again he tried to scream, and again nothing happened.  Toby came to a stop and was nearly face to face with the skeletal remains of Ricky.  His jaw was open in a silent scream and vines had protruded through the opening that had been his mouth.  It appeared to Toby they had grown down his throat and curled up inside his chest cavity.  The vines had intertwined with Ricky’s bones and had pierced his eye sockets and seemed to come out at the base of his skull.

Toby so wanted to close his eyes, to look away.  He could do neither.  All Toby could do was lay there and endure.  The vines tightened their grip on him and the dug into his flesh.  The pain sent arcs of electricity throughout his body.  Searing pain like hot pokers gouged at him in tender spots.  The pain was unimaginable and Toby prayed that he would pass out from it, but no such luck.  Unable to move or cry out, Toby was forced to lie there and feel it all.

There was a burning in his stomach and then he could feel the writhing vines inside him.  They were crawling inside his belly.  Toby could also feel his flesh get loose and gelatinous.  It seemed to be turning liquid and fell off in chunks.  He could feel the oozing.  He could feel it all.  Sheer terror had filled Toby’s mind, and it kept him alert, it kept him awake.  Toby cursed and prayed, all of it only in his mind.

There was an incredible burning in his throat and then Toby felt a vine pushing out through his mouth.  He could taste its acidic flavor, and he wanted to gag.  He needed to gag; he simply couldn’t.  At long last, the pain was more than he could bare and Toby eventually passed out.  For hours, he would lie there, coming in and out of consciousness.  Each time Toby came awake he could feel a different part of him had been invaded by the creeping vines.

The burning on his face gave way to the pain of vines forcing their way up his nose and finally entering his brain.  Eventually, his lungs collapsed, and his heart stopped.  Toby’s very last thought was of his brother.  Toby hoped that Tom was okay; that he would be okay.  He wished that he’d been kinder to his brother.  Then Toby was no more.

Still, the vines continued their assault upon his body.  They twisted and writhed, absorbing every bit of liquid they could.  They turned muscle and flesh into a viscous fluid that they could absorb.  The vines would feed on this body for days, much as they had Ricky’s.  Wrenching every last bit of energy and moisture they could from the body, the creeping vines would encase it until there was no more.

Evvie sat in her living room staring at the front door ever since the hospital had made her leave.  Behind her, the house was silent, except for the incessant ticking of the cat clock on the kitchen wall.  With its eyes moving back and forth, and its tail wagging with each tick it counted off.  Evvie suddenly hated that stupid clock that couldn’t even keep time.  She was waiting for Precious to be coming home, and that stupid clock was mocking her.

Without saying a word, Evvie stood up from the couch and went into the kitchen.  She yanked the clock from the wall and threw it as hard as she could onto the kitchen floor.  Half smashed but still trying to keep time; Evvie stomped on the clock and then kicked its broken remains across the floor.  Satisfied, Evvie calmly walked back to the couch and sat down.  She turned her head to stare once again at the front door and then she broke down in tears.

After a short while, the tears dried up, and Evvie wiped her face with her hands.  She sniffed a few times and let out a deep sigh.  It was then that she realized how tired she was.  With her eyes puffy and burning from crying, Evvie decided she needed to go to sleep so that she could get up early and go and see Precious.  She stood and locked the front door, then continued around the house and closed and latched all of the windows.

By the time she had made it to her room, Evvie had found the house to be a sweatbox.  She knew she would need to have at least her window open if there were going to be any chance of her getting to sleep.  No matter how tired she was.  Evvie opened up her window and made sure the screen was in place.  A gentle breeze had come up and brought the pleasant smell of the outside inside.  Evvie took a deep breath and reveled in the slight relief from the heat that it provided.

Evvie went to the dresser, and she retrieved the old revolver.  She tossed it onto the bed while she got into her nightclothes, and then into bed.  For the second time in as many nights, she was going to sleep with a gun.  Part of her was afraid that she would ever have to use it.  However, a small part of her wished that she might get a chance.  Evvie clutched the gun to her chest and prayed.  She prayed for forgiveness for her wicked thoughts.  She prayed for strength.  Lastly, she prayed for Precious.  It was with thoughts of Precious running through her mind that Evvie drifted off to sleep.  However, as it turned out, her rest would be short lived.

About an hour later Evvie woke with a start.  She was bound and gagged.  Confused, Evvie tried to struggle but she was unable to move.  Her bindings were tight, but not that tight.  Try as she might, Evvie was unable to move, or blink, or scream.  She so wanted to scream, but she could make no sound at all.  In her hands, she could still feel the revolver, but she was unable to move even a finger to fire it.  Not that she could point it at anything, she thought dumbly.

Evvie could hear movement all around her, but she could only stare blankly at the ceiling.  There was an acidic odor in the air and it burned her nostrils and the back of her throat, but she could not even swallow it down.  Tears rolled down Evvie’s temples as the bindings were pulled tighter.  They dug into her skin and shot sparks of burning pain throughout her body.  It seemed to Evvie that everywhere the bindings touched her skin there was a burning pain.

Evvie heard movement again, and this time thought it was the rustle of leaves.  As incredible as it seemed, she was sure she heard leaves rustling all around the room.  The sound caused an unrelenting panic to well up inside Evvie, and she fought fiercely in her mind.  Evvie did the only thing she could do; she prayed.  Evvie prayed for her and Precious.  She prayed for salvation, and she prayed for answers, but her prayers were answered only by incredible pain.

  It was then that Evvie felt the blood begin to trickle down her skin.  It flowed from a multitude of gashes caused by the ever tightening bindings.  The pain had become unbearable, and Evvie became light headed.  On the verge of passing out, Evvie finally found herself being slowly moved.  At a snail’s pace, her limp form was being moved toward the bedroom window, inching from the bed to the floor.  All the while, the bindings dug into her.

At one point, Evvie’s head was positioned so that she could see the lower half of her body.  From what she could tell, her body was wrapped up almost entirely in creeping vines.  The vines were beneath her nightgown and wrapped around her arms and legs.  She could feel them tickling her in strange places and poking her in others.  It’s as if her body had been cocooned by the vines, and now they were moving her out the window.

Ever so slowly Evvie was being dragged out through her bedroom window.  The vines tightened around her so that she could fit through the window frame, and Evvie could feel bones break in her arms and chest.  They dug into her flesh and then into her muscle.  Evvie felt like they were cutting her in two.  Now and then her head would move to one side or another, and she would catch a glimpse of herself.  Encased in green, the leaves of the vines seemed to shimmer and tremble.

Evvie was fading in and out of consciousness.  In flashes of pain and lucidness her life progressed in snapshots.  The air was misty as her feet cleared the sill, and soon she was hanging upside down on the outer rear wall of her house.  The wall was a mass of vines, and now it undulated as she moved with it to the ground.  The vines, the incredible creeping vines, were carrying Evvie away.  Evvie couldn’t even close her eyes to the torture; she could only watch and hope that soon she would pass out again.

Soon, Evvie was on the ground and blanketed in a sea of kudzu.  The vines stretched from the woods, across the side yard, and up the back side of her house.  The sweet smell of kudzu blossoms filled Evvie’s nose and momentarily took away the acrid scents she had smelled earlier.  Deeper into the kudzu Evvie was moved.  Along the way, Evvie felt bits of herself simply fall off. 

Evvie’s sense of time was gone, and she had no idea how long it had taken the vines to pull her into the woods or how far she had come.  It was dark and cool in the woods.  It was private and quiet too.  In the kudzu draped woods no one would ever find her, Evvie thought.  She would be lost forever and never even have a proper burial.  How could God do this to her, Evvie wondered.

Languishing in agony and despair, Evvie could only think of her baby girl Precious.  At least Evvie knew that Precious was in the hospital, and not melting away as she was.  In incredible misery, she was just slowly fading away.  She didn’t even care about herself anymore.  All Evvie could think about was Precious.  Her last thought was of her daughter, and her last prayer was just to see her.  One more time before she died, that’s all Evvie wanted.  Just once and then she could die happy.  But that was not to be.

***

Tom Unger shut off the motor to his Honda dirt bike and let it coast down the road as far as it would go.  He trembled as passed the turn off to the White house.  Shortly thereafter, Tom got off the bike and pushed it the rest of the way to the White Apple Baptist Church.  There was a single street light on in front of the church, and it dimly lit the parking lot.  The side and rear of the building appeared as black as coal, and Tom directed his motorcycle in that direction.

As Tom got closer to the church, he noticed Yancy’s car in the shadows.  He stopped beside it and called out in a whisper.  “Yancy?  Yancy, are you there?”  However, there was no answer so as quietly as he could Tom pushed the bike up behind the church.  There was a sea of kudzu vines there, and it was difficult to push his bike through them. 

At the back of the building, he called out again.  “Yancy, are you there?  It’s me, Tom.”  Again there was no answer but the rustling of the leaves in the breeze.  Tom continued the laborious work of moving his bike through the undergrowth.  Eventually, he ended up near the back door, and he leaned the bike against the vine covered building.  The vines had grown and covered the entire back wall of the church and grown onto the telephone line and pole.  Tom saw a window nearby in the wall of leaves and figured if he stood on his bike he would be just tall enough to get a peek inside.  Not that there should be anyone around at this hour, he thought, but better safe than sorry.

Tom wondered then where Yancy might be.  It was obvious that he had parked so as not to be seen.  Maybe he was spying on the preacher, Tom thought.  Maybe Yancy had decided to be with him and Toby again.  Tom got excited.  The more he thought about it, the more he came to believe that Yancy was out here like he had said he was going to be.  “Yancy?” he called out, as quietly as he could.  Again there was no response.

Tom figured he either couldn’t hear him or was somewhere where he had to be quiet.  Perhaps he was in the church, Tom thought.  He climbed up onto his motorcycle and balanced himself precariously on the seat.  Clinging onto the vines that were clinging onto the church, he was able to pull himself up and balance himself all at the same time.  He peered in through the window.  The church was dark.  There was a faint glow from the other windows around the church, but it wasn’t much.  All Tom could make out were indiscriminant blobs of darkness and shadows. 

Tom wasn’t surprised, but he was a little disappointed.  He figured it would be like this at this time of night; he was just hoping that he might see Yancy creeping around in there.  Tom guessed he would have to break in through the back door.  Just then, Tom froze.  He thought he’d heard something.  He thought he’d heard footsteps coming up behind him, heavy footsteps moving through the kudzu. 

“Yancy, is that you?” Tom said.  He turned around quickly to see who it was, but doing so made him lose his balance.  He tried to regain it, but the vine he was clinging to let go of the building, and he fell backward.  As he fell, vines gripped firmly in each hand, Tom pulled them and whatever they happened to be coiled around away from the church.  The vines grew taught and nearly stopped Tom from falling, however, the wire they were coiled around snapped and he continued to fall.

Both Tom and his bike fell into the kudzu.  It cushioned his fall somewhat, but the thicket jabbed him in the back in several places, and he became entangled in the mass of vines.  The wind slightly knocked out of him; Tom struggled to free himself and sat bolt upright in a panic.    Tom was sure he heard someone moving towards him.  He turned to the left, then to the right, then to the left again.  It was such a perfect pitch black that he couldn’t see anything or anyone out behind him.

“Is anyone there?” Tom called out.  “Yancy is that you?”

His only reply was the rustle of leaves.  Sitting up chest deep in the kudzu, Tom laughed at himself.  Just the wind, he thought to himself, and he’d ripped the phone line out of the wall.  Tom shook his head in disbelief.  He tried to stand up, but the vines had him wrapped up good.  “Damn.” He mumbled to himself as he tried to pull himself free of the entanglement.  As he pulled them from his wrists and arms, the vines and leaves nicked his skin.  They were only small cuts, but they burned none the less.

“Damn,” Tom muttered and tried to stand.  The vines seemed overly snug around his legs, and he plopped back down hard onto his butt.  Tom started to remove the vines from around his legs and waist, but his arms had become leaden.  Tom could barely lift them, and then they dropped to his sides like dead weight.  Confused, Tom tried to stand again and discovered that he couldn’t move at all.  “Shit!” Tom tried to exclaim, but nothing came out.

In his mind, Tom was struggling mightily; only nothing would move.  Panic filled Tom as again and again he tried to move, but he only sat there.  Behind him, he could hear the movement in the leaves continue toward him, inching closer and closer.  His panic turned to terror as he felt something move up behind him and gently caress his back.  Then he felt it move around his neck, and then around his torso.  Soon, Tom felt that he had been wrapped up in something akin to barbed wire.

It poked at him and sent sparks of pain up his arms and legs.  It tightened around his neck and jabbed at his throat.  Somehow, without knowing how, Tom knew that he had been bound up by the vines.  He couldn’t move, and the vines were getting tighter.  Then Tom felt movement.  Or rather, he felt himself being moved.  Still in a sitting position, Tom was being slowly dragged backward.  He tried to scream.  He tried to fight.  He tried it all in his mind because Tom was completely paralyzed.

As Tom moved backward, he slowly fell onto his back, and his eyes now faced the sky.  The kudzu fell all about him and soon he was blanketed by its leaves.  Tom continued to be dragged away from the church, dragged through the kudzu.  His mind was ablaze with terror and pain.  He wondered then if this was what Precious had felt when he and Toby dragged her from her car.  Through the fear and pain Tom wondered if God was getting even with him for what he had done last night.

Tom soon found it difficult to breathe as the bonds around his neck grew ever tighter.  The bindings around his middle and his arms got tighter too.  They dug into his flesh and cut him.  The rough ground scratched at his back as he was dragged along.  Eventually, he would pass out, and shortly thereafter die.  All the while he kept thinking about Precious, and how sorry he was for what he had done.  All the while he wished he could take it all back.

***

Yancy thought he could hear a motor far off in the distance.  Yes, he was sure that it was a motorcycle.  In his heart, he knew that it was Tom on his dirt bike.  Then a short time later he was sure he heard Tom call his name.  “Thank God,” he cried out in his mind.  Yancy tried and tried again to scream, to move, but he couldn’t.  Yancy could do nothing but lay there where the kudzu vines had dragged him and endure.