Lump: Part One by LC Hu

[mad_docs_of_lit]

1.


They saw it as they drove the back way home from work: a lump half-hidden in the tall grass by the side of the Route 15, gleaming white in the car headlights.

“That’s a weird rock,” Kurt remarked, even as Annie dug her fingers into his arm and gasped,

"Oh my god! Kurt, stop the car! I think someone got hit!"

Kurt eased up on the gas pedal but didn’t brake, eyeing the white shape in the dark. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Look—" Anne pointed. Squinting, Kurt saw it then, the shadows that picked out the shape of a bent leg, a foot.

“I don’t know,” he repeated, as much for his own benefit as Anne’s. "And even if it is a body... We should call the police."

"I took that first aid training thing a couple months ago. I can help. Please, Kurt."

Lately, Kurt had gotten very bad at saying no to Anne when she said "please." With her nails punching a row of crescents into his bicep, Kurt eased the car over and put the hazards on.

"Do you have a flashlight?" she asked, and he barely had time to say, "In the glove compartment," before Anne was out of the car, flashlight in hand, wading into the tall growth of weeds lining the side of the road.

"Be careful," he shouted, as Anne picked her way down into a shallow ditch. She waved him silent. He turned off the car engine and her voice drifted back to him:

"Are you all right?"

Deciding it was better safe than sorry to call the police, Kurt took out his cellphone. It wouldn't come on. He leaned out of the window and shouted at Anne, "Hey, can I use your phone? Mine's dead."

She was stooped over the lump, her back to him. She straightened up, but didn't turn towards him. Something uneasy stirred under Kurt’s breastbone.

"Anne?"

Anne turned, and the first thing Kurt registered was her wide eyes, dark irises completely surrounded with white. Her skin was washed out to the color of milky tea. Her mouth was hidden by the press of her small hand.

Kurt was out of the car in an instant. "Anne?" he repeated. She lowered her hand with some effort, and he could see her lips were forming a nearly perfect "O." She said something, but she was speaking so softly he couldn't hear anything more than a vague whisper. He closed the distance between them in four long strides. "What’s wrong?"

"I said," she repeated, in that same breathless tone, "It's not a person."

"What do you mean? Don't tell me," he said, trying to smile, to cover for his own hammering heart, "It's just a rock?"

But Anne didn't repeat herself, only stared at him, wide-eyed, and shook her head. Kurt took the flashlight from her and pushed past.

At first he saw only as much as he had made out from the road. But as he drew closer, the shadows retreated under his flashlight, and the whitish lump became undeniably a body. Kurt felt suddenly light-headed.

The body was pitched head-first into the dried out weeds. Its legs were drawn up under the torso, almost fetally; the arms were thrown forward, disappearing into the tall grass. They were long and bony at the wrists and elbows, but the flesh hung loose and pale from its underarms. It was naked, and dirty. In the dark, with the way the body was positioned, he couldn't tell if it was male or female. Kurt pushed aside the weeds, saw that Annie had started to roll the body over, had revealed the bloodied face. It was distorted, puffy—from trauma or decomposition, maybe—and white as the moon under the flashlight, but seemed human enough.

“Hey,” he said, almost timidly, “Can you hear me?”

He didn’t expect a reaction, and didn’t get one. He blew out a breath from between his lips and fell a step back, shivering. "Anne, give me your phone. We have to call the cops—"

He stopped abruptly as the eyelids twitched. He leaned forward, reaching a hand towards the pale shoulder but not quite daring to touch it. "Hey! Can you hear me? You're gonna be all right. We’re calling an ambulance, OK?"

The lashes parted. Kurt caught a wet gleam between them, solid black like an animal eye. He gasped, taking a step back. The bloodied mouth opened; he glimpsed the tips of sharp teeth. "Shit!" Kurt stumbled another step back.

He heard a noise like dry leaves sliding against each other. Words: "Help me."

The circular throw of the flashlight trembled. Kurt balked, torn between fear and sympathy. Then the body moved. He saw muscles sliding under skin, bunching up, and some primitive part of him reacted.

"Run!" he shouted at Anne. He had glimpse of her, deer-like, frozen and staring at him; and then she was bolting for the car, sliding inside. He made it to the car only a half-second behind her, hearing something rustling the weeds behind him, moving fast.

Something tore at his shirt as he slammed the car door behind himself. He fumbled with the keys in the ignition, stomped the gas, and sped all the way back to town.

***

Kurt's heart rate was returning to something near normal by the time he pulled up to Anne's house. They had been silent since they had left the thing in the ditch, but now Anne gave a small, awkward chuckle. She said what he'd been thinking:

"Did we just let our imaginations run completely away with us?" The space between her brows was rumpled with worry. "What if that person really needed our help?"

Kurt heard the shivery whisper creep through the back of his mind again. Help me. He swallowed. "We could call the cops now," he suggested. "Tell them about the body. Is your phone working?"

Anne nodded and produced her phone from her purse. As she held it, she seemed to shrink a little, like a duckling huddling down. "Should we say... it might be dangerous?"

It was Kurt's turn to laugh nervously. "No! I mean. It's just a body, right? Besides. We don't want them to think it's some kind of crank call."

Anne said, "But..." Her voice trailed off. "No, you're right."

Kurt listened to her talk briefly to the 911 operator. When she hung up, they both let out a long breath, and looked at each other, and laughed. Anne smiled. "Thanks for the ride." She started to open the car door, glancing back at him, and then paused. "Hey, you've got—"

Kurt froze as she reached over his shoulder. Her fingers brushed the side of his neck; he hoped she couldn't see the way it affected him. She smiled at him, her cheeks dimpling.

"You've got a bit of grass on you," she said, and held up the offending stalk of dry grass.

Kurt laughed, more loud and forced than he meant to, and plucked it from her fingers. "Thanks. I thought— never mind. See you at work tomorrow."

Anne tilted her head. "See you," she said. Kurt waited until she was inside, and then headed home.

***

Kurt sat up wide awake in the middle of the night, a nightmare still clinging to him like bits of cobweb, nonsense words in that dry voice whispering in his ears. He pressed a hand against his chest. It felt like his heart was making an effort to thrash its way out of his body. Somehow he struggled back to sleep again, though it felt like he'd hardly slept ten minutes before the alarm went off.

As he was putting on his shoes to head out the door, Anne called. "I'm not going to work," she told him. "Couldn't sleep properly all night. I feel pretty terrible. It's Friday, anyway."

"Feel better," he said.

"Thanks.” There was a long silence where Anne didn’t hang up and Kurt didn’t want to. Then she said, “Kurt?"

"Hm?"

"Do you think it'll be in the paper?" she asked, in a small voice.

He didn’t have to ask what she meant. "I don't know."

Anne’s voice grew even smaller. "Do you want it to be in the paper?"

"I don't know."

"What if she died?" Anne whispered.

Kurt rubbed his eyes. "We called the police," he said. "We did the right thing."

Anne said, "I guess."

Kurt shifted uncomfortably. He flexed his fingers around the handle of his briefcase. "Look, I’ve got to go. Get some rest. I'll tell Bill you won't be in."

"Thanks," Anne said, but she didn’t sound grateful, only unhappy. Kurt sighed, and hurried out the door.

***

Kurt went to work the more straightforward way, avoiding Route 15 altogether. It meant he was sitting in traffic twice as long, and somewhere in the middle of it, he felt like Anne's worries had crept into his head and taken residence there. Trying to drown them out, he tuned into the local talk radio, listening for reports of someone found by the roadside, a body, but there was nothing. Maybe the whole incident was too minor. Maybe the “body” had just been a passed-out drunk, or a crazy homeless person.

He checked the paper when he stopped for his morning coffee, but there was nothing there, either.

It gnawed at him all through work, so that at the end of the day, he decided to take Route 15 home. He half-expected not to recognize the spot at all. Most of the road was flat and softly curved; the spot where they had seen the woman was no different. Fog had settled in as the sun went down, making his search that much harder.

The closer he got to town, the more ridiculous he felt—of course the body would be gone. The police would have picked it up. There would be no evidence. He could hardly expect to spot the small patch of crushed weeds where the white lump of a body had lain. But that was fine, he told himself. At least he could tell Anne that the person had been rescued, or the body retrieved.

Something caught his eye.

Slowing down, he saw it was just a broken off rear-view mirror, catching his headlights and reflecting them back at him through the thickening fog. He shifted his foot back to the gas pedal.

Then he heard it, a dry, papery whisper: "Kurt."

The car slowed as his foot hovered.

"Help me."

Just the wind through the grass, he told himself. Even though the window was up, the radio on. Somehow. Maybe through the grates.

"Kurt Hawkins. Help me."

The car slowed to idle speed. Gravel crunched loudly under the tires as it rolled halfway onto the shoulder. Kurt's right hand slipped from the wheel.

Another car blew past him, horn honking.

Kurt jerked awake, jamming down on the brake. He barely kept from bashing his head against the steering wheel. Shaking, he put the car into park. Road hypnosis, he told himself. He was tired from not sleeping properly. He had just dozed off. He was imagining things.

"Help me."

Kurt covered his ears, shook his head. "It's just lack of sleep."

"Help me," the whisper came, and it was joined by dozens of other whispers, a field full of dry reeds rustling and murmuring: "Help me. Help me. Help me. Kurt, help me."

Kurt shook his head again. He groped for the gear shift. The chorus of voices grew louder: "Don't leave me here to die. I'm dying. Help me. Kurt. Don't leave me." Kurt put the car into drive, flicked the turn signal to warn any one coming up behind him.

He got barely three feet before the world turned white ahead of him.

The fog had thickened into a wall of white, reflecting his headlights uselessly back at him. "Fuck!" Kurt put the car back into park. He glanced back, searching for any other vehicle. Maybe a truck that could see farther than he could. He could follow it out—

Behind his car, the fog was thinner; and he could see the reflection of the broken rear view mirror, maybe twenty feet back.

"Help me."

The chorus of whispers started up again, filling the car. Kurt tried to ignore them, turned up his radio, stuffed his fingers in his ears. But the voices only grew louder, until he was sure they were trying to drive him out of the car. He'd seen enough horror movies to imagine what would happen if he got out, and in glorious technicolor detail . He huddled down in the seat, trying to wait them out.

"Don't leave me here."

"I'm dying."

"Help me."

Kurt discovered his fingers were hooked around the door handle. He pried them away, tucked both his hands into his armpits. "No," he said, and then louder, "No! I'm not going to help you, so get out!"

The chorus abruptly dimmed, voices falling away.

"Help me." One voice this time, but so clear and so real that he glanced at the empty seat beside him.

"Kurt, please."

"Help."

Kurt shivered; the whispering voice sounded sick and hoarse, and sad.

"Please."

Kurt found himself gripping the door handle again. "What am I doing?" he said. "What the hell am I doing?" But he didn’t let go of the door handle. He sucked in a deep breath. He grabbed the flashlight out of the passenger's side seat where Anne had left it the night before, and got out of the car.

"If I end up dead," he said, staring into the fog-smudged night, "I'm gonna deserve it."

He left the car running, and walked towards the only landmark he could see. The flashlight turned the rear-view mirror into a star whenever the beam passed over it. As he drew closer, he saw bits of glass, too, some of it colored blue. The grass in the ditch was crushed down. Kurt stood just where the gravel gave way to nature. He didn't dare leave the side of the road.

“Hello,” he called, hesitantly at first, and then louder. “Hello?”

He played the light of the flashlight into the unyielding dark beyond the ditch, getting only glimpses of tree trunks and more tall weeds.

"So, I'm here, because I'm clearly fucking nuts," he said. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, or something.”

There was no response. He blew air between his lips and flicked the flashlight towards the woods one more time, carelessly. His breath caught in his throat: there was something, white and moon-like, between two of the trees.

"Help me."

He slowly raised the flashlight again; saw the face, less bloated now, over a skinny body, barely keeping itself up against a tree. Too-large eyes with too-large irises, eating up almost all the white, but still human, he thought. The lips were slightly parted, but he saw no points, no wrong teeth. The face seemed almost innocent, now, caught somewhere in that ageless limbo that most people linger in between the late teen years and their mid-twenties. He still couldn't tell the gender. The weak light and the shadows teased and tricked him with the answer. There was dried blood on the pale skin, flaking off its chin, and the front of its chest, and its belly.

The figure trembled. A moment later its strength seemed to fail; it collapsed down towards the ground. Kurt took one step forward, then stopped himself. Whatever—whoever—this was, something wasn't right. If it was a person, a normal, reasonable person, it would’ve come out of the woods by now. It would’ve spoken, and not in crazy imaginary voices that he couldn’t be sure weren’t the product of lack of sleep. He groped for something sane, something logical.

"Didn't the cops come?" he said.

The thing—person—whatever it was—raised its head. It nodded, once.

"Why didn't you let them help you?"

It drew back against the tree.

"You're obviously hurt. You need a doctor."

The white figure sagged again, dropping its eyes.

"Look," Kurt said. "Maybe I'm stupid, but I'm not that stupid. I'm not going in there for you. So you want my help, you come to me."

Kurt wasn't sure how long he stood there, watching the figure in the woods watching him. The damp was getting to him, weighing down his clothes, leaving him shivering. He lowered the flashlight, looked back towards his car. At least the fog seemed to be thinning.

A light breeze stirred the withered grasses. "Don't go."

Kurt started, looked back towards the woods. The white figure was gone from its resting place against the tree. He heard the crackle of dry leaves being crushed, pushed aside. The round face emerged from between the growth in the ditch, dark horse-eyes staring. It crouched there, not coming further, though he could see the round heights of its knees drawn up next to its chin. Now that it was close Kurt could see the heavy gash through its upper arm, across its left thigh. No wonder it—he—she—whatever—was so pale. Kurt found himself feeling sorry for it.

"I must be fucking nuts," Kurt muttered. He looked again for the points of teeth between its lightly parted lips. Nothing.

"So what, was it my imagination? Am I just losing it? Or... Are you some kind of retar—um, challenged—I mean. Heavy birth defect or something."

Two hands, long fingers slightly hooked, spread towards him. Beckoning. Kurt was half-conscious of taking a step forward.

"I'll take you to the hospital. But that's all. I can't do anything else. Okay?"

A breeze stirred the dried grasses, the sound almost pleasant, like purring, cooing. Kurt shivered as the air movement chilled the damp on his skin. He took another step forward. The hands spread further. Kurt reached for one of them. His fingertips brushed the pale skin. It felt cold, slightly clammy.

The clawlike hand snapped shut like a trap around Kurt’s.

Kurt jerked back with a shout. The creature moved too, forward as he pulled back, lunging. For a moment all he knew were the points of its teeth, the light of the flashlight catching on the bladelike surfaces.



Continues ... »


Copyright

LC Hu

"Lump"

© 2010, LC Hu
Self Published
mad.docs.of.lit@googlemail.com