The April Selected Story 1 is by Dean H. Wild

Please feel free to email Dean at: scrybe@deanwild.com

FLESH
by Dean H. Wild

Rich Connolly glanced out of the back window of the pickup truck and thought, The woods just swallowed us.

They banged through a pothole. He caught his camera and notebook before they could fall to the cluttered floor, then he looked over at Myron Clavelle who was clutching the steering wheel with grimy hands and gazing intensely at the road ahead. Their path was shaded by ancient trees that filled the truck interior with switching shadows. In the changing light, he could make out the birthmark on Clavelle’s cheek, a brownish line that resembled a horseshoe—open end up. That wouldn’t be so remarkable in itself, except that the dead woman found floating in a bog twenty miles to the south bore a mark just like it.

Twenty-four hours ago, Rich had been at the county morgue trying to pry some newsworthy facts about the dead woman out of the coroner when Myron came in to identify the body. Rich remembered the first bright stirrings of anticipation he’d felt when, after finished with Clavelle, the coroner leaned over to mutter just loud enough for him to hear, and nodding at Myron, said, “He claims that’s his aunt. Freakin’ weirdo.”

It was at that moment that he noticed the band of raw flesh encircling Aunt Millie’s wrists—something that the coroner did not point out or perhaps chose to ignore—something that Rich recognized as a rope burn.

Today those stirrings had not dimmed, Rich thought as he reached into the backpack resting between his feet and put on a liberal coat of tick repellent. These north woods, he’d heard, were thick with ticks. Once he was done, he slid the can back, next to his 9mm pistol and gave the gun a reassuring stroke. You never knew what else these woods might be thick with. Lots of Myron Clavelle’s, for example.

“I’m surprised Wisconsin is so heavily forested up here,” he said.

Clavelle looked at him, his eyes slit, his mouth molded into an unreadable grin. Teeth showed like broken bits of tallow. Rich tried to grin back. “The trees, I mean.” he nodded toward the window. “They’re thick.”

Clavelle wrinkled his nose and snorted with amusement. “I heard you the first time. You’re gonna want to to get the repeats out of your system before we get to the farm. There’s gonna be some running and fussin’ and Ma ain’t gonna have a lot of time to gab. I got an aunt that’s due to arrive today.”

“For the funeral?”

Clavelle gave him a look of bewilderment that flickered by as quickly as the midday tree shadow outside the truck windows, “Aw, no. Now that I eye-deed Aunt Millie, the county’ll bury her back in town. We don’t turn out for such things.”

Rich nodded and slowly opened his notebook, his pen ready. “Not much for religion, your family?”

“You’re interviewing me, ain’t you?” Clavelle gave him another grin, this one broad and astounded, but it was quickly stifled. “Shit fire. I better not say anything until you’ve talked to my Ma. Don’t want to cheese her off.”

Rich nodded again and sketched a single word onto his notepad. It was “Matriarchal.”

It was the word he’d been searching for since yesterday when he’d followed Clavelle out of the coroner’s office and asked if they could talk about his aunt. “Which one?” Clavelle had asked. “Besides Millie back there on that metal table, there’s fourteen live ones to home.”

Rich had managed to stay nonchalant despite the twisting anxiousness in his belly. “Why not all of them? Do you think it’s possible I could meet with your whole family?”

“I’ll see what Ma says,” Clavelle had scratched his neck with drumming fingers, head stooped, eying Rich with dull calculation. “Meet me back here tomorrow.”

And so they had met.

Another pothole, then the road split into sparse wheel ruts. The shade deepened, the wall of the woods becoming almost suffocating. Rich felt frantically aware of the miles that stretched between him and the heart of downtown. He glanced down at the backpack again, at the butt of the 9mm resting just beneath the zipper.

“Will she be driving?” he asked, needing to fill the truck interior with sound. “Your aunt, I mean. The one you’re expecting.”

Clavelle sputtered into his smudged hand, “That’s a good one, Mister. None of my aunts drive. Hell they can’t even—”

Rich saw the woman dart in front of the truck. “Watch out!” he shouted, clapping his hands on the filthy dashboard.

Clavelle brought the truck to a shuddering halt and sprang out of the driver’s door in a single, continuous motion. “Shit fire!”

The woman avoided the truck bumper easily enough and began fumbling through the underbrush, wearing nothing but a grimy cotton shift. Clavelle galloped after her. Rich cranked down his window to watch as Clavelle caught her and enveloped her in a tight bear hug. She kicked and strained against him, making thick grunting sounds in her throat.

“Hey, Mister,” Clavelle called, tactfully dodging her flailing legs and thrashing head. “How about a hand getting her to the truck?”

Rich paused; contemplating his discarded camera and notepad, then opened his door and stepped into the underbrush. He was on to something all right. He wished he’d brought a damned video camera.

The woman calmed a bit as he neared them, but her eyes were still wild and somehow unfocused, and her hair was a knotted mass. She was about forty years old, dirty skin, and Clavelle’s grubby fingers seemed lost on her. She was listening with skittish intensity to what Clavelle was whispering to her. “Get you home now. Do it for Ma, can’t you, honey? This man’s gonna be comin’ back to the farm with us.”

Rich stepped up. She regarded him with no more importance than that placed on the branches and leaves and mossy stones around them. He kept his voice low so he wouldn’t startle her. “Another one of your aunts, Myron?”

“Yessir. This here is Aggie,” Clavelle grinned. “Slipped away just like Millie, I’m guessing. She’da ended up drowning in the marsh just like Millie, too, if we hadn’t caught her. Pick up on her feet, would you?”

Rich took the woman’s ankles gently, ready for more thrashing but she had surrendered, stealing confounded glances at him, at the sky, the woods. The left ankle, he saw, was swollen and ringed with red flesh. Rope, a quiet, analytical voice announced inside his head.

“I’ll hold onto her in the back,” Clavelle said as they walked, “if you drive us in. The farm is just a quick piece through the brush. The road runs out but you’ll find it. Around here everything ends up at the farm.”

“All right,” Rich muttered, hoping Clavelle wasn’t wrong.

He supposed the breakout story he was after, the story that would get him noticed by one of the big city papers and all but assure him a place on an uptown staff, would not come without its trying moments. He helped lift the woman into the bed of the truck, then walked around to the front, watching as Clavelle opened his shirt and wrapped half of it around his Aunt Aggie like a protective wing. “That’s what you like, right?” the man cooed as the woman moved against his pale belly as if to suckle. “Just like going back, ain’t it?”

Rich climbed in and put the truck in gear, glancing once more toward his backpack as they rolled forward. He had the creeps.

The house appeared a moment later, a pair of two story rectangles at the far edge of a dusty clearing. Two small outbuildings sat back in the trees. Rich saw no activity, no running and fussing as Clavelle had predicted. A single bed sheet hung on an otherwise naked washline and a pair of chickens scratched at the fringe of the dooryard.

Once they stopped, Clavelle came around with Aggie held tightly in his arms and stuck his face in the truck window. “You go on inside,” he said to Rich. “Ma’s waitin’ to see you. It’s the bedroom right off the kitchen.”

“You’re not coming with me?” Rich tangled his fingers in the straps of the backpack. A tape recorder would have been great to have for this interview. How could he have come so goddamned unprepared?

“I’ll be along as soon as I get this aunt of mine set to rights.”

Rich looked at them thinking back into restraints, you mean. Aggie rolled her head left to right, flashing the birthmark on her cheek— an upright horseshoe that matched that of her nephew’s. “Okay,” he finally said, opening the door.

Clavelle led Aggie across the dooryard to a sagging shed with a door made of gapped and weathered boards. Rich watched them go inside and thought about following, then turned back toward the house. Ma, after all, was waiting.

He stepped onto the porch and felt it settle under his weight. The front door bore a window that looked into a large kitchen. The window glass was cracked and it cast a split reflection back at him, a left side Rich and a right side Rich, both of them hungry for a story, both of them looking back perhaps a bit wary. He let himself in.

There was no one in the Clavelle kitchen. He had expected to see at least one of the fourteen aunts toiling away (perhaps lashed to an old time wood stove with just enough chain to allow passage to the sink and back) but the only sign of recent activity was a stack of careworn towels on the kitchen table. Sitting atop it like a freakish paperweight was a dull butcher’s knife. A pair of buckets sat on the floor nearby. Something to catch the rain if a storm broke out, he guessed. All else was neat and still.

“Izzat the newspaper man?” the voice came from behind the door at the far side of the kitchen.

He gripped his notebook a little tighter, “Yes ma’am,” he called out. He could smell yeast even though there was no evidence of breadmaking in the vicinity. Maybe Ma Clavelle was brewing up a tub of beer in her bedroom in honor of their relative’s visit. “May I come in?”

“Best do it now.”

He pushed on the door and it opened into a space barely large enough to hold Ma Clavelle’s bed and dresser. A shade had been pulled over the only window, making the air papery and yellow. “I have some questions—”  he began, but his words trailed off.

The shape in the antique bed was massive, dressed in a drab nightgown that tensed at the shoulders and side seams and looked oddly prim with its thick white ruffles at the cuffs and neck. He could not see all of Ma Clavelle because a quilt was tossed over her head like a loose hood and trailed down her shoulders in veil-like folds. Light fell on one thick cheek, on a tiny mouth that pouted above a stout knob of chin. The left eye was exposed and peered from the folds of the quilt like a glossy bead. He drew in a slow breath that was rank with the odor of unwashed skin and stale sheets and the living scent of yeast.

“Don’t know what you could ask the likes of me,” the voice was soft now that he was close. The massive form shook with a polite laugh. “Nothing that’s going to matter, anyhow.”

“Tell me about the other women living here,” Rich said, affording a small step forward. He flipped open his notebook, hoping he could see well enough in the gloom to write. “Myron says he has lots of aunts, but I don’t see anyone.”

“They is all here,” Ma shook and a bloated hand flopped onto the mattress. “They is my sisters, you know. Flesh of my flesh.”

“Millie, too?” he asked, wishing he could see the moony face well enough to read her reaction to the name.

Ma’s head tilted. Her breath bubbled in her chest, making sounds like a massive boiler in a dripping furnace room. “Millie wasn’t supposed to get out, but she knew what was coming. Didn’t want to take the spit.”

He stepped closer to Ma Clavelle’s dresser as he spoke. Her bright eye followed him, “What does that mean, take the spit?”

“Maybe Myron’ll show you once he’s done with his chores,” she offered and pounded her hand against the mattress, making a lingering squawk that served as a giggle.

A figure moved outside of the window, becoming a streak of dark haze on the backside of the window shade. A ladder became propped against the outside of the house, its rungs casting slatted shadows. Chores, Rich thought, glancing from the window to the top of the dresser where a clutch of dusty perfume bottles sat next to a dish of forgotten and long moldy food. In front of that was a stack of paper slips, yellowed and dirty. He stepped closer to get a better look. The topmost slip was turned over showing a name written in a thin shaky hand. Dora, it read.

“Tell me,” Rich turned back to the large shape of Ma Clavelle. “Do these sisters of yours stay here of their own free will?”

Ma laughed again and droplets of mucus flew through the air like dull jewels. There was a drizzling sound from somewhere beneath the quilt. “They got to stay. This farm is our homestead, you know.”

A figure climbed up the ladder outside and an erratic hammering sound rattled through the side of the house. Rich imagined Myron Clavelle tacking a banner to the wood siding that read “Welcome Dora” and the arriving sister staring at it with the dull comprehension of a tree toad while the ropes were slid around her wrists and throat.

Myron did his chores quickly, clamoring down and making the ladder shadow swoop away. Rich shrugged so that he could feel the reassuring weight of his backpack and the 9mm against his shoulder. “Can I talk with one of your sisters, Mrs. Clavelle?”

“Can’t. They is all outside, in the keeping shed,” she said, her small bow mouth turned up into a smile.

“Is that what you call it? That place where I saw Myron take Aggie?” Again he wished he could see her face more clearly.

“One and the same,” she said, and her voice betrayed no shock or surprise. “Can’t blame Aggie for running out, neither. She knew she was next, after Millie. They’re dumb, but they figure out stuff. Not that figuring helps them once Myron gets the fire going out back,” she said, quivering inside her quilt. “And when he’s done, he brings out the spit with all that fresh meat just dripping off.” Her hand came up, swiped at her lips, then fell away, shiny with drool.

Rich lowered his pen. The excitement that had been building in the back of his head was beginning to twist and squeal back there, making him almost giddy. He had to keep his voice from shaking as he moved closer to the bed. “I see you’re picking names at random over there on the dresser. Are they really your sisters, these women in your keeping shed?”

“You don’t know the half of it, newspaper man,” she grunted and shifted, her skin making wet, sliding sounds in the half light. "They is flesh of my flesh, and that makes them family. And when the time comes, they go back to my flesh. Right back.” She took a moment to fetch a sigh, a huge sound that seemed to churn inside her huge nightgown. “But we’re watering down, just like when you feed a crop the same castings year after year. The new sisters ain’t never right. I almost hate to see what Dora will be like.”

“Aunt Dora’s not coming by taxi, I’m guessing,” he said, close enough to rest his hands against the footboard of the bed.

“Got that right.” Ma cackled and shifted again, tugging at the quilt with a sigh of discomfort. “We Clavelles don’t do things like other folks.”

“No,” he said as a faint blast of yeast-scented air coursed over him. The quilt slid down exposing the full form of Ma Clavelle. "”I see that. My God—”

His first reaction was only a need to see the form in the bed more clearly. He reached over to the window shade and tugged it, making it slap upward and flutter on its rusty springs. Ma squinted into the bolt of sunlight, a harsh squeal rattling from her throat.

And then Rich saw what was happening to Ma Clavelle.

There was a second mouth, a slanted gap high on her right cheek, that opened and heaved out a puff of air just strong enough to waggle the strings of mucus stretched across it. A mounded nose that had erupted near Ma’s ear flared and twitched, testing the air, taking in his scent. Two flat eyes, as dull as steel knobs, opened at the side of Mrs. Clavelle’s head and rolled toward him. The face pushed forward as he watched, squirming away from Ma, skin sliding apart from skin.

Gripped with terror, he flung his notebook down and clawed at the window sash. The wood did not budge and his fingernails were peeled backward with his attempt. He glared down stupidly for a moment, finally recognizing the fresh ten penny nails on the outside. Myron’s chores. “What the hell are you?” he said out of reflex, turning back to the huge, undulating shape as it sat forward, its head splitting into two distinct faces.

“I’m a Clavelle,” Ma said with a little effort. “Eunice Marie Clavelle. And this one coming is my newest sister, Dora.”

He glared at the dripping head and neck that peeled away from Ma’s raw flesh like a new chute from a withered plant. A thin, mottled arm crept from beneath the quilt, pulling it down some more, dripping slime.

“She’s another dull one,” Ma huffed resignedly, jerking to her left to help speed the tearing process. “I can tell already. Damnation, we’re just too watered. The meat’s gotta change.” Her eyes became fixed on him as she squeezed and rolled atop her sagging mattress. There were two bodies now, one bloated and half covered with a torn nightgown, one thin and glistening and flinching at the daylight. Ma Clavelle smiled. “Meat’s gonna change. Maybe the next one will be smart. Maybe want to write newspapers.”

He broke away from the window, his feet feeling like useless blocks. He tried to make it to the door. Aunt Dora reached for him as he passed the bed, her hand a slick rake of wet roots. At that moment, Myron Clavelle stepped into the open doorway.  He met Rich head on, grinning, and shoved him backward. “Sorry, buddy. We ain’t done.”

“Got to change the flesh,” Ma crooned, “before we go to water altogether. You got the fire ready, boy?”

“Yuh,” Clavelle grinned and gave the smaller shape in his mother’s bed a melting stare, “Hi, Dora. How are ya, honey?”

Dora squirmed from beneath the quilt, exposing wrinkled sallow skin. The flat face worked into a bleary smile and a hand stretched out, dripping and weak. Myron bent and traced his tongue along the wobbly fingers, sucking up mucus as he went.

Rich leapt toward the door. Myron skipped backward lithely and pulled a butcher’s knife from his back pocket. Rich stopped himself less than an inch before colliding with the rusty tip.

“You can’t do this,” Rich heard himself saying, backing away from the knife. He glanced behind himself thinking he had one chance, and if he failed he would end up rotating on Myron Clavelle’s metal spit behind the house. He could smell the faint odor of wood smoke already. “You have no right, whatever you are.”

Clavelle turned the knife in his hand. “We just keeping the family intact, ain’t that right, Ma?”

Ma grunted her concurrence. She was sitting apart from Dora, her right side looking deflated like the opening of a spent seed pod. Dora was at her side, curled into the quilt, watching them with her flat, colorless eyes. Clavelle snorted and shook his head. “We got as much right to do this as you got sniffing around our farm trying to make bread and butter out of our business. Keep your nose clean and you don’t get any shit on it, know what I mean?”

Rich let the back pack slip off his shoulder and caught it deftly in his hand. “I will ask you once, nicely, to let me go.”

“And drive you back to down while I’m at it, I suppose,” Clavelle snorted again. He closed the bedroom door. “Shit fire, you ain’t downtown no more, Mister. You’re at the Clavelle farm now.”

Ma chuckled wearily and turned to her son. “I’m going to need some kind of dinner pretty quick, so quit blabbering, boy.”

Rich brought the backpack up and plunged his hand inside. Clavelle stepped forward. “I’ll start by bleeding him out right here, if you want, Ma.”

“Stop,” Rich demanded as he brought the gun into view.

Clavelle blinked, his grin faltering and then he snorted and raised his knife. “No way. Newspaper man has no business with that.”

Rich fired. Clavelle did a broad backward twirl and landed next to the bed. The side of his throat had become a gushing furrow. His mouth drooped and filled with crimson. Rich stared numbly as Dora peered over the edge of the bed, an enraptured smile on her lips, and reached down to dip her loosely hinged fingers in Clavelle’s leaking wound. She made a wet cooing sound and dragged her dripping fingers across her waiting tongue.

“Dora,” Ma grunted, shuddering inside her sopping nightgown. “You get your sister some eats, too, you hear?”

Dora turned her gaze to Rich. Her soggy, wrinkled cheek was marked with a blemish, a horseshoe, open end up. She smiled, her lips crimson, her face alight with gratification and discovery. She skittered to the edge of the bed and swung her legs out. Rich glanced backward once more, realizing that a black sense of urgency was stealing his means to move.

Myron’s legs were splayed in front of the door, blocking it. The gun felt like a chunk of worthless wood in his hand, his fingers unworkable. Dora stood on wobbling legs, her hands strained into claws, her small breasts waggling, her flat eyes lowered to a predator’s glare.

One chance remained. He turned to the window and flung himself toward it. The glass shattered, biting into him on all sides. He met the ground in a hail of winking shards, landing awkwardly and rolling on the packed earth of the dooryard. He heard Ma Clavelle moan as he got to his feet and began to run.

“Damnation!” she cried. “That’s good meat going to waste right there!”

He ran into the trees at the back of the house, feeling them enfold him. He was not sure where he was going, but he did not care. The woods were like a wall, and he wanted a wall between him and the Clavelles; wanted it for all time.

He turned sharply once, then once again, crashing through underbrush, ducking beneath fallen trees, watching the sun drift as a dappled disc between the branches. He searched for a sign of civilization, a fence, a trail, anything. He couldn’t remember which way the road had come into the woods; he couldn’t remember which direction the road had run before it had ended. How could he have been so unprepared? And beneath that, another credo crept into his head. Anything that wanders these woods long enough ends up at the farm.

God, he hoped Clavelle had been wrong about that.

Dean H. Wild has been writing for over twenty years, and most of his work is in the horror and dark fantasy genre. Some of Dean’s work in print include “The Laughing Place,” published in Brian Hopkins’ Extremes 5: Fantasy and Horror from the Ends of the Earth, and “The Kid,” included in William Simmons’ Vivisections. Please visit Dean at: http://deanwild.com/