Monstrous, The by Datlow Ellen

Author:Datlow, Ellen [Datlow, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthologies (various), Fiction, Horror, Monsters, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781616962067
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Published: 2015-07-20T14:00:00+00:00

Grindstone

Stephen Graham Jones

Tinchera Pass, Colorado, 1885

Derle had fourteen slugs in him by the time he made it into the trees. Six of them had splintered bone. His chest whistled when he breathed. They couldn’t stop him from smiling, though.

He pulled himself past one tree, reached ahead for another, and felt the heat of a slug as it passed by his face, leaving a suck in the air that pulled him over just enough that, for an instant, before the splinters exploded, he could see a perfect hole punched in the tree he was reaching for.

Ten paces past that tree, the slug was sizzling into the wet undergrowth, writhing like the air hurt it.

Derle picked it up, turned, threw it as hard he could down his back path, his fingers smoldering, numb.

He was dying. No two ways about it.

His left hand was the only thing holding his intestines in. They looked just like sheep guts. When they’d spread out into Derle’s lap, that was the first thing he’d thought—sheep—and then from there had stepped back into his childhood, the smells, the sounds. The way a lamb can scream, if you want it to. If you know what you’re doing.

Derle fell forward, caught himself on his right hand, stumbled forward.

It wasn’t what he’d been trying to do to the girl named Suzanne that had got everybody on the wagon train reaching for their long rifles. It was what he’d been doing to their livestock for the last two months.

Last week, the heifer had given birth to something the preacher they had along had to turn his face from.

Derle had smiled then too, but covered it with his hand.

That night, as if in answer to the birth, an angel had screamed across the sky, on fire.

Or that’s what the preacher said it was.

Derle didn’t know, had been hiding with a stray, trusting dog, sure that if that light threw his shadow on the ground, it would split him in half.

In trade for getting to live, he’d let that dog go.

It never came back.

In the trees now, bleeding out, Derle wondered what strange litter that bitch was going to throw here in a couple of months. Whether she’d know to bite through their thin skulls or not. If they’d be satisfied with just milk.

Derle didn’t think so. Not if they took after their old man.

Behind him now, the shots were farther and farther apart from each other, just so he could hear them, he knew. Just so he would know not to come back.

Derle laughed and dark, rich blood welled up, seeped down his chin. He burbled his lips in it like a child, caught himself on a tree. Shook his head at how stupid this all was.

They were just animals, right?

Taking everything into account though, it was probably best they’d caught him before he had a chance to take Suzanne any farther than he already had. The designs he had on her involved acts he hadn’t even been able to subject the sheep of his childhood to, just because they weren’t built right.

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