The Matriarch (35 page)

“Too late for chances, Al,” Martha says. “Especially for you.”

“Right!” Gin says. “No chances. But I do have this for you.”

She brings the shovel down. He raises his left arm to ward off the blow, and the blade hits his elbow with a loud crack. He hears the women laugh as he blacks out.

The acting sheriff goes to a dark, velvety-soft place. It’s black there, a cushioned haven that he doesn’t want to leave. The pain won’t let him stay though; it leads Al back. Now in his arm as well as his head, the pain jabs and pushes at him until he’s out in the merciless light again. He’s on his back, clutching his useless left arm. Gin stands over him leaning on the shovel, a smiling giant.

He looks over at Martha and Anna on the couch, and Martha rises. She looks at him with a loving smile, and Al knows then that he’s going to be all right. She’s his mother, and she’ll help him. Mothers always help their children. She reaches out to him.

Thank God! She’s going to save her boy. Oh thank you God!

His mother, still smiling, takes the shovel from Gin. With both hands, she raises it high above her head. Her smile becomes a happy grin.

Apparently, Al sees with horror, it’s her turn.

She’s a scant fifteen feet away, and I’m looking at her heart. Her naked pulsing power. The dust moving through the golden shafts of light give me the illusion that her tentacles are moving. But then I realize they
are
moving. They’re moving toward me.

“Dott, Charlotte!” My voice is weak, and I know I can’t be heard. Especially since I told them to stay back from the hole. But I
have
to get up! I have to somehow climb back up the sides of the hole to the blessed sunlight. Then I’d yell for Frank and the girls—

A low menacing sound. Animal …
Louie?
Louie sweetie, is that you?” I look up through the hole and see nothing. I hear a guttural choking sound from my own throat. I want to laugh thinking of the
Lassie
movies when Timmy would be in life-threatening danger. He would tell the wonder dog just what was needed, and then Lassie would race off and get help for her master. It’s really funny … I look up the hole again, and
there he is!
My very own wonder dog looking down at me, wanting to help.

“Go get Frank, Louie! And Dott and Charlotte. Go Louie!” My wonder dog disappears, leaving me at least a whisper of hope.

I grasp a handful of dusty turf and try to pull myself up to a kneeling position. My calf explodes again, and I have to drop back down. With my head on the ground again, I see several vine-tentacles creeping slowly toward me.

Then I see Lester! He’s not ten feet away, on his back, his face lit by a small pool of shimmering yellow sunlight. His face is swollen and red, and his eyes are bulging from their sockets staring right at me.

“Lester!” I cry. Tentacles slither like snakes all over him, and one neon green rope-vine looks literally imbedded in my friend’s neck. He’s gone, I know. Lester-Lee is gone.

Oh Lester … I’m so sorry …

I blink away my tears and see The Tree’s killer tentacles on the move, leaving Lester’s body. And I know exactly where they’re headed.

I throw my body back, away from the slowly advancing shiny green vines. I still can’t straighten my leg. Not only is the pain dreadful, but also I’m not sure the leg will support me should I be able to actually stand up. I scrunch back further and feel the unyielding surface of the cavern wall at my back and shoulders.

I’m trapped.

12:40 p.m.

Deputy Stanly Mack drowses at the small metal desk. Warm day like this one, it’s hard to stay awake. He looks at his watch and sees he has almost three hours to go before someone comes to relieve him. There’s nothing quite so boring as a suicide watch, he thinks. Can’t read, can’t watch TV, can’t work a crossword, and for sure can’t sleep.

“Got to stay focused on the subject,” Schmidt had yelled at him.

All right, all right—I’m focused.

Deputy Mack tries like hell to keep his eyes open and on Lindee Banyon who sits slumped on the edge of her cot, but it isn’t easy. She looks like shit today with her skin so white. And that butter-yellow hair of hers has turned a dirty brown. The woman has really let herself go. She doesn’t even wash and it’s a sad thing to see.

He watches her sit and stare listlessly at the wall of her cell. It’s hard to believe this pathetic little thing offed her husband. There has to be a reason or some kind of circumstances that would get this lady off. So far though, her chances don’t look good.

Why doesn’t she turn on the TV? It’s just black and white, but she could at least—

Lindee moves. Sits up straight. And so does Stanley, as a sudden coolness comes over him. She smiles at the wall. A wall with nothing on it except rust-colored smears. He has never noticed those smears before. What are they anyway? Blood?

Her smile becomes a grin, and she leans forward, eyes on the wall and elbows on her knees. She chuckles. It’s an ugly sound, and goose bumps pop up on Stanley’s arms and shoulders.

Should he call for back up? He’d say, “The subject is grinning at the wall, and she’s making him nervous.” Oh sure.

“What are you smiling at, Mrs. Banyon?”

Her grin deepens, but she doesn’t answer. She’s caught up in what she’s seeing, as if she’s watching a movie projected onto that wall.

I watch the killer vines coming closer.

I try to focus on the large shape beyond these creeping vines, the mass of tangled roots at the base of her trunk. I can just make out that circular cluster—must be twenty or twenty-five feet in diameter. A cluster of shiny green limbs is coming from this throbbing mass that is her beating heart. They’re coming to join the ones that have just left Lester’s body. The ones still gliding over the ground on their way to me.

No! Fuck no! I gotta fight.

What about the spray? Where’s my sprayer? How fucking stupid of me not to keep it with me! Did I drop it somewhere above? No, I remember holding it against me when I fell. So where is it? I can’t see it anywhere.

“Fraaank! Frank!” I hear my voice snatched up by the surrounding earth, almost silenced. Even though I know they can’t possibly hear me, I call out for Dott and Charlotte too. And Louie. No one answers. I hear nothing. Maybe they’ve gone for help, but her killer-tentacles are too near. I know that even if help comes, it will be too late.

But if I stay where I am, I’ll be strangled by The Tree’s green arms just like Lester. I can’t imagine a worse death. I’ll take my own life first. But how? No weapons, no pills …

My God! I’m actually trying to think up a way to kill myself.

I take a breath and draw my feet in toward my body. I manage to get a knee on the ground, though my ankle is bursting with pain. I see only one avenue of escape. I have to scramble over these fucking tentacles and get back to where I landed when I fell down the hole. Then, somehow, I have to claw my way up a side of the hole to the surface of the ground. Simple.

I give a cry and lunge forward, thrusting my body over the writhing vines, my right foot and leg a painfully throbbing and slowing weight. My hands touch her tentacles—cool, yet pulsing with life. And strength. I move slowly through the pain toward the sunlit spot where I landed. I see my left hand come into sunshine there. I sob with relief and lurch forward until it warms my entire body. I raise my right hand to a root protruding from a side of the hole about two feet above my head. I clench my teeth and painfully haul myself up to a sitting position.

I’m gonna do it! Yes sir, by God! All I gotta do—

The root shudders and twists in my hand. It’s alive!

Before I can react and drop it, it wraps itself tightly around my wrist. At the same time, I feel a similar pressure around my left boot at the ankle. Yet another of her tentacles pulls my injured right ankle out from under me and wrenches it back, holding it firmly. I cry out. I’m lying down now, my right hand captured and held above me. Her roots are stretching me out as if I’m on the rack.

“Ahh, Jesus. Frank … Frank?” He’s nowhere near, I know, but I yell for him anyway as more of her insidious vines slide up onto me. My right knee pops as her roots pull it in two different directions, and I hear myself scream.

No more. I can’t take any more. I’ll black out from the pain and that will be a blessing.

There’s something red then at the corner of my eye. It’s a refill can. The one Lester had been carrying. It’s almost hidden behind the big man’s body. Even if I could reach it, it’s no good to me now.

Another tentacle glides up over my groin and onto my chest. It pauses, then creeps toward my neck. I grasp it with my free hand and try to pull it down off my chest. As if playing, it jerks away from my hand and continues on its way to my throat. It’s so smooth. It has no eyes, no feelers or antenna of any kind. It’s blind, driven by malevolent instinct upward where it coils itself around my neck. It’s cool and almost feels good on my sweaty throat. I spit at it, a feeble gesture, but all I can muster right now. I know I’ll soon join Lester-Lee. Stretched out and helpless, I wait for the end.

“Frank?” A weak cry. The coil squeezes tighter.

My uncle’s name is the last word I’ll ever speak.

A blur then. Something … boots. Scuffed cowboy boots hit the mushy dirt near my head. Along with a pair of skinny legs in faded blue jeans. And then—thank you God—on top of those jeans is a bare-chested Frank, my wonder-uncle. And he’s holding the other sprayer! Canine feet arrive then, strong, with nails extended and digging in. Aggressive as hell.

I want to cheer, but I have no air. I struggle in the iron grip of strangulation. Through dimming eyes, I see Frank start pumping the sprayer. Louie is at Frank’s side, barking.

I want to watch. How often does a show like this come on? But my world goes dim, then even darker, and almost black. I float in a land without air. It’s as if I’m adrift in a murky pool of water but tethered by a steel-like band around my neck.

From a distance comes a warm, salty mist that bathes my face. It drops lower, to my neck. The band loosens. Then it gives way completely.

Air!

My starved lungs are jumping inside my chest. They suck in life.

A hissing sound. Sizzling, like meat being seared. Hot tentacles scurry off my body, seething, thrashing. An acrid burning smell envelopes me as I gulp down the pungent, fetid,
blessed
air.

I cough, great racking spasms that threaten to bring up the entire lining of my throat and stomach.

Right hand free now—the spray has burned off the rope—I touch my neck and rub it gingerly. I realize my foot is free now too. My entire body is free!

“Jesus Christ,” I murmur.

“Kind words indeed, but I wouldn’t go that far,” I hear my uncle say. “Just an old man doin’ his best.”

I try to laugh but cough instead. I feel Louie’s warm, rasp-like tongue on my face and then Frank’s strong hand under my arm, lifting me up.

“Come on Cassidy, get up. Let’s get outta here. Dott and Charlotte are waitin’ for us.”

I stand, kitten-weak and shaking, resting the bulk of my weight on my left foot. I want to tell Frank we’re no way outta here just yet, but when I look at him I finally succeed in laughing. He’s a wild man; his face is framed in filthy, used-to-be white hair that’s standing straight up. His scrawny chest is covered with mud and dust; he looks like he’s been underground for days.