Daryl Gregory by The Devil's Alphabet

Author:The Devil's Alphabet [Alphabet, The Devil's]
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General, Fiction - Fantasy, Fantasy, Fantasy - General, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Tennessee, City and town life, Syndromes
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2009-11-23T09:00:00+00:00

There were four of them who found Willie that day, but it was Deke who’d led the way into the house, an ancient cabin that didn’t even have an indoor toilet. He practically knocked down the door getting in. Rhonda came in behind him, followed by Barron Truckle and Jo Lynn.

It was Jo who’d come to Deke with the news of the charlie parties, the rumors of a new drug and bad things happening up in the woods. She’d convinced him they had to do something about it, and not only that, but since Willie and Donald were charlies, they had to bring Aunt Rhonda with them. Rhonda wasn’t mayor then, but Jo said she was the leader of her clade. It was the first time he’d heard that word.

Donald Flint, Willie’s youngest son, was in the front room, sitting on the couch with a half-naked charlie girl on his lap, facing him. Another charlie girl lay on a pile of blankets on the floor; she’d been jolted awake by the sudden noise. The place was a sty, beer cans everywhere.

Donald looked at them stupidly, then decided he should be offended. He pushed the girl off him and started to get up. Deke yelled something—he didn’t remember what—but it made Donald stick to his spot on the couch.

Rhonda kicked the girl on the floor, told both of them to get home. She knew their families, and they knew she knew them. The girls scrambled for shirts and jeans and hustled out. Half a minute later they’d started up one of the six cars in the gravel driveway and peeled out.

Deke told Barron to watch Donald, and then he followed Jo down the hallway. She marched straight to Willie’s bedroom as if she’d been there before. Or perhaps she was only following the smell. When that back bedroom door opened the stench rolled out in a wave: shit and rot and a strange sickly-sweet odor he didn’t recognize. It would be months before Deke would be able to name it as the smell of stale vintage.

The old man’s corpse lay sprawled sideways across a pair of double beds that had been pushed together. He was wider than any human being he’d seen to that point. Willie’s body seemed to have collapsed in on itself like a rotted pumpkin, and his skin was pocked and cratered by infection and his son Donald’s inept needlework.

Someone gasped, and Deke looked down and behind him. Rhonda had come into the room and burst into tears. He’d always thought that was just a phrase, but the tears were coming out of her like a cloudburst, a flood, making her cheeks gleam.

Then just as suddenly the tears stopped. Her face went rigid and somehow she willed herself to regain control of her body. Later, Deke thought that this was the moment she became mayor of Switchcreek.

I see now, Rhonda said. Or at least that’s what he thought she said. I see now.

Rhonda turned and strode back down the hallway.

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