Spore Read online

  “Oh my God! I’m glad you’re all right!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s questionable some days,” he said with a wry chuckle. “My therapist finally decided I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and one of the ways she had me cope was to draw or paint out my anger and fear. Turned out I liked it, and was pretty good at it, so I took all the art classes I could at school, even some summer program things.”

  Still no email and the phone, with the battery reinstalled, remained silent. “I took illustration and graphic design in college, then an online course thing for pro comic art…” He switched out the illustration again to the day’s final scan. “That’s really about it. Drawing’s all I know how to do.” 11:06. Still nothing. Goddammit, Mare. Where are you?

  “This is seriously cool. Making comic books.”

  The scan finished and Sean pulled the bristol out and set it on the stack before squinting at the images in PhotoShop. They looked all right, straight and intact with adequate detail, so he sent his pre-set adjustment filters to tweak polished pencil drawings. While the image auto-processed, he checked email again.

  Mare! Just a short note asking how things were at home, but Sean grinned as he replied, Crazy, but all good. Come on home. Love you!

  After processing, the first scan looked awesome, a nice, crisp pencil sketch. He was about to process the next image when Mindy said from close behind, “What about these?”

  Sean turned to see her holding his discarded drawings of terrified children. The rumpled vellum made them more pitiful, more horrifying, more desperate to escape their fate in the dark.

  “They’re nothing,” he said. “Just a bad dream.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mindy flew forward, tumbling, while Jeff whispered, “This is all your fault, Minders,” as if his voice alone flung her into the ether. She spun through the swirling haze like a ball thrown into a frigid wind.

  Helpless. Cold. Toppling forever without end.

  Trap me, Minders? Serves you right. Serves you fucking right!

  Her eyes bolted open and she lay in bed, gasping, sweat icy on her skin as she raised a hand to her throat. She smelled snow and frost and a car heater, heard the rush of her blood in her ears and her own desperate breath. Heart hammering, she pushed herself up to sit.

  Just a dream, she told herself, closing her eyes and opening them again. I’m okay. It’s just a dream. She took a deep breath, then another, forcing herself to calm.

  Movement caught her attention, maybe a breath, more felt than heard or seen. She turned her head to see a man standing in the open doorway, an inky shadow against the dark hall.

  I closed that door, I know I did, she thought, gasping as thunder rumbled from far away and sudden rain splattered against the window. Sean went to bed with Mare, right after she came home. Why would he be here, watching me? Mindy’s heart slammed hard, terrified, and she choked out, “Sean?”

  Her door still stood open, but the shadow was gone.

  Ghoulie woke to darkness, his skinny-kid arms bound behind him and something tight around his face. Despite agony pounding from his feet, he managed to roll to his side and sit. I’m in a cellar, he thought as he felt cool dirt under his knuckles. It stinks. Something died down here.

  He heard movement in the dark, low, almost silent, a rustle of grit to the left. Ghoulie turned, sucking in deep, scared breaths. “Who’s there?” he called out, voice cracking.

  No answer, but, as he strained to hear, the floor-level grit shifted again and, much higher, he heard a soft scrape. Something breathed, something big, its movement lost behind a peal of thunder and a woman’s sudden shriek.

  Startled, Sean bolted upright and out of bed, blinking and naked, while Mare screeched and scrambled back against the headboard.

  “What happened?” he asked, ready to pounce, to rend, to shred. Mare had never woken up screaming before, not once in their years together.

  She pointed toward the corner, and Sean saw it. A man. Lurking in a shadow beside the open bedroom door.

  Sean lunged, growling, and the shadow shifted but Sean hit him anyway, shoulder into the guy’s gut. The man let out a huff of air, but didn’t fall. They grappled, wrestling into the kitchen, and Sean barely heard Mindy’s startled gasp from the archway as the man flung him onto the floor.

  “I wasn’t doing nothing, but you had to start a fight,” the shadow muttered, edges of his body gilded by the light from the open bathroom door beyond the bed, but his features lost to the dark. He knelt and pulled back for a punch, mountainous rises of his knuckles gleaming.

  Aw, shit, Sean thought, ready to turn his head aside so his nose wouldn’t get shattered.

  Then as another shadow blocked the bathroom light and extinguished his attacker’s glow, Sean heard a loud click.

  “Okay, fuckface,” Mare said. “You’re gonna put your hands on your head right now, or I’m gonna blow a big goddamn hole in it. And don’t even try to think you can get the drop on me. Your cranium will be hamburger before you turn halfway around.”

  The man remained motionless as Sean crawled to his feet.

  The shadow’s head nudged forward as Mare shoved the gun against it. “Hands on your head, asshole. Right fucking now. Or you’re a splatter.”

  He complied.

  “On your knees,” Mare said as Sean staggered to the kitchen light.

  He fumbled for the switch and flicked it on to see Mare, nude and furious, holding their .38 to the back of his Uncle Paul’s head as Paul settled onto his knees.

  Sean gaped. What the fucking hell?!

  Paul looked at Sean with a shrug and an aw-shucks grin. “So. Naked fighting and guns, eh? I musta crashed a helluva party.”

  “It’s the middle of the night and we were asleep!” Sean snapped as Mare gave him a confused frown. Head swimming, he took a step forward to spit blood into the sink. “And what the hell are you doing breaking into our house?”

  “I want to know who this asshole is!” Mare said, gun still pointed at Paul’s head.

  Sean stared into Paul’s eyes, so like the ones he saw in the mirror every morning. “My Uncle Paul. He spored about the same time as Mindy.”

  “He’s family? Aw, piss.” Mare fled to their bedroom and slammed the door.

  Paul stood, grinning. “Dude. You fight like a pussy, but you married a bad ass bitch.”

  “What are you doing here?” Sean asked, his heart rate easing closer to normal.

  “My buddies couldn’t let me keep crashing at their place, so I thought I’d just come home.”

  Sean crossed his arms over his chest. “This isn’t your home.”

  “Used to be, though,” Paul said, holding Sean’s gaze, just a regular-looking guy in a muddy workshirt and faded jeans. “And you still keep the back door key under that same paver.”

  “What key and what paver?” Sean asked, confused. They’d never needed to lock the back door until the news crews and picketers arrived. “We’ve never had a key for that door.”

  Eyebrow raised, Paul pulled a key and fob from his pocket and jiggled it at Sean. “This one. I obviously know a lot more about your house than you do.”

  Sean narrowed his eyes and glared as his hands clenched beside his armpits. Don’t you dare try to take my house. Don’t you fucking dare.

  Mare opened the bedroom door fully dressed and took a breath before walking through to the kitchen. She held Sean’s jeans and a pair of boxers. “Mindy, can you give us a moment?”

  Mindy, her face bright and flushed, nodded once then bolted.

  Paul grinned at Mare. “See? You like me too!”

  “Shut up,” she snapped, then tossed the clothes to Sean. “Babe, you wanna take care of that?”

  Oh, Christ. Mindy, Sean thought, eyes closing as embarrassment crawled down his body. But he was already yanking on the jeans and wonder
ing why his uncle had decided to cause trouble on a rainy night.

  “After I split at the hospital, I went right to my buddy’s place, just a couple of blocks away,” Paul said, gripping a glass of water. “He was sitting on his front porch and recognized me right off, said he couldn’t believe his eyes.” Paul took a drink and sighed, apparently unaware that Sean was staring at his forearm as if cockroaches swarmed over it instead of a dark, lumpy mole. “He’s pushing sixty now and has liver cancer. Terminal. He’s so doped up on OxyContin it’s a wonder he saw me at all. Maybe he thought I was a spirit or hallucination.”

  Sean squeezed Mare’s hand before she could start yelling again. She usually had the patience of a boulder, but between the spores, the picketers, and Paul’s violent entrance, fury had edged into her eyes and voice.

  Sean managed to hold his temper tight in his throat. “Sorry about your friend, but it still doesn’t explain why you came here, in the middle of the goddamn night, and broke in.”

  “He wasn’t the only friend,” Paul sighed, rubbing his mole as if it itched. “I tried several. One’s dead, another’s in jail for kiddy porn, a couple have moved who knows where, and one’s wife ran me off with a shotgun.”

  Glancing at Mare, he muttered, “You’d like her.”

  Mare started to speak, then rolled her eyes and looked away.

  Silence hung awkward in the air as Paul rotated the glass in his hands. Sean hid his grimace, wondering why the simple action made his belly lurch as if his uncle were twisting the head off a bunny instead of merely toying with a glass of water.

  “The last…” Paul said, “Well, let’s just say after spending one night listening to him talk to his imaginary friends about beasts rising from the depths to serve their awakening tentacled master, I got the hell outta there.”

  “Ah, a Cthulhu-ite,” Sean said, relishing his horror geekdom. “They’re an interesting bunch. I drew a series, oh, two years ago, about—“

  “Let’s skip that for now, babe,” Mare grumbled, glancing at Mindy. “Maybe when it’s daylight.”

  “Sure,” Sean said. That three-parter had been especially creepy and Mindy already appeared flustered and pale.

  “Right, Ass-a-thought-something.” Paul shuddered. “I dunno, whatever it was, it was creepy as hell. He was the last one I could find. Everything’s gone or dead or rotted away. There’s a froo-froo coffee shop where Smokey’s garage used to be, and, shit, the guys I did find are all old men.”

  “It has been twenty years.” For both of us. Sean felt his palms sweat as the nightmare flickered in his mind.

  “No, it hasn’t,” Paul said, staring him in the eye. “It’s been two damned days. That’s it. Two days. Now all of my surviving friends are beat to hell or batshit crazy.” He sighed and sipped his water. “Or both.”

  Mindy nodded and stared at her hands. “Yeah. It’s all changed. They’ve moved on without us.”

  “Look, I have nowhere else to go,” Paul pled, shifting his gaze to Mare. “I wandered around awhile, looking at this or that, hungry as hell, bored out of my mind, and I finally decided I just wanted to go home.” He leaned forward and touched Mare’s hand. “Can’t you understand that? Wanting to go home?”

  Mare held firm, she didn’t speak or pull her hand away, but she tensed beside Sean.

  Paul drew back his hand. “I’m sorry I scared you. The front door was locked, so I came around back, checked the paver and, right there, the key, you know? So I let myself in. I figured Sean would have the big bedroom I expanded off the kitchen, so I tried the little ones first and hoped one would have a spare bed or cot or something. No luck. Artsy crap in one, and she was in the other,” he said, nodding toward Mindy.

  “So I walked into your bedroom and scared you. I didn’t mean to, just wanted to ask Sean if I could crash here. I didn’t expect anyone else to be in there.”

  “What about the couch?” Mare asked, her voice tight. “It’s right there in the living room, and it’s empty. Don’t you think finding you sleeping on the couch might have been less of a hassle than you scaring the shit out of us in the middle of the night?”

  “I didn’t, I didn’t think…”

  “Yeah, you didn’t think,” Mare muttered. “Fucking asshole.”

  Paul frowned but said nothing, and Sean wondered if he remained silent to accept guilt and appease Mare, or to merely keep his true thoughts to himself.

  Mare still held Sean’s hand and glowered with constrained fury but, beside her, Mindy had curled into herself and stared silently at her clasped hands.

  “I think the three of us need to talk,” Sean said, hating the coppery taste of the lie. As far as he was concerned, no discussion was needed. “We’ll decide what to do with you, if anything.”

  “Fair enough,” Paul said, standing. He took a breath then sighed it out again before saying to Mare, “I am sorry I woke you, sorry I scared you.” Then he turned and walked to the living room.

  Breathing easier once Paul had left, Sean nodded toward their door and whispered, “Come on to the bedroom with us, Mindy.”

  Mindy looked up, surprised, as Mare stood. “Me? Why me?”

  “Cause you’re part of this, too.” Sean stepped aside to let Mindy pass then he followed the women into the bedroom and closed the door.

  Mare sat on the edge of the bed. “I don’t trust him. His friends got old, and his life evaporated. Whoopty fucking hoo.”

  “Yeah, cry me a river,” Sean said, wanting Paul out of the house and as far away as possible. Just looking at his uncle made his belly clench. “That still doesn’t explain why he didn’t knock, or call out, or just come by during the day. Why scare the crap out of us like that?”

  “Exactly,” Mare said, looking up at Mindy who’d remained quiet and withdrawn over by the dresser. “Do you have any comments? Any concerns?”

  Mindy raised her gaze to them and shrugged. “Kind of. I guess. When he was here with the rest of us that morning, he didn’t hardly speak at all. Just sat on the couch and frowned at everyone. But when we were all in the van…” She shrugged again.

  “What happened in the van?” Sean asked. Give me an excuse, any excuse, to toss him out on his ass.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Mindy said. “He just wasn’t very friendly. But I wasn’t friendly either, I guess. I was scared and confused. We all were. I wonder if, maybe, that’s part of this, part of the fungal infection that brought us back. How we’re not really ourselves at first, but as we get better, we become ourselves? I dunno. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Sure it does,” Mare said. “I see it every day. The nicest people can be real pissy if they’re sick or in pain. Once it gets properly managed, they’re themselves again.”

  “Right,” Mindy said, then she took a breath and raised her head. “I didn’t like him then and honestly, I don’t know if I like him now, but I do know what he means, what he’s going through. And, since you want my honest opinion, I guess I have to say it doesn’t seem right or fair to take me in like you did, but cast him, family, out into the rain.”

  She paused to chew her lip. “I know what that’s like, and it sucks. My own sister did it to me. She threw me away. I can’t step back and just let it happen to someone else, even if I don’t like him much. It’s not right.”

  Sean and Mare stared at each other until Sean muttered, “Fuck,” under his breath. Family was family, and fair was fair. Goddamn it and our principles all to hell.

  “You’re right,” Mare said, shoulders sagging with begrudging acceptance. “I guess he could have the basement or something. But only ‘til he can find another place.” She took a breath and sat a little straighter. “He needs to find another place. Soon.”

  “Piss. Okay. Guess I get to tell him then,” Sean said, reaching for the door with a sweaty hand. Don’t, don’t do it, his mind whispered, but he opened
the door anyway and entered the kitchen. As he walked to the living room he cursed himself for agreeing to let his uncle stay.

  Mindy watched Mare after Sean walked away and she said, “Can I ask a favor?”

  “Sure, anything,” Mare said, smiling patiently at her.

  “I need something to do. I need underwear. My own shampoo. Maybe a magazine to read. I need money. I’m never gonna make Jeff pay for what he did to me without money.” She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. “Do you know of anyplace that might hire someone without identification?”

  Mare stood, her brow furrowing. “Actually, I do. The nursing home I work at has several, um, undocumented workers in housekeeping and the kitchen. Pretty sure they get paid cash, under the table, but I’ve never asked.”

  Cash would mean no tax records, but it’s a start. “I can clean or cook, sure. Plenty of experience in that. Do you think they’d hire me?”

  “Maybe. With all the folks calling in sick lately, they’re pretty desperate for warm bodies. I can run you over there tomorrow, if you want, and talk to HR.”

  Mindy thanked her and dodged past as Sean returned. Hopeful, she returned to her room and lay in bed a long time (door locked, just in case), staring at the ceiling as Sean and Mare quietly argued, then made up, then made love, the sounds muffled by the thin walls. She thought about the past two days, and how neither Mare nor Sean had said one word to anyone about her being a fungaloid.

  Or a spore, she thought, rubbing goose-pimples off her arms. Sean calls us spores. And Paul didn’t seem to recognize me, but I sure recognized him.

  She thought of the others in the police van, the other spores. All had been dead far longer than her; the closest was the old farmer who last remembered the harvest of 2009. Ten years back, fifteen, twenty for Sean’s uncle, more than thirty for Evelyn. Would they even comprehend the new phones? The computers? iPads? Twitter? Facebook? All of the ways people didn’t communicate back in the eighties, or, hell, any time during the twentieth century. Who could rightfully speak for them?

  She tried to sleep but couldn’t. Her mind kept gnawing on the same nugget in the back recesses of her brain.