Lump: the Conclusion

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4.

The phone was ringing. Ringing and ringing and ringing. Kurt opened one eye, then the other. He felt dry. Dried out. He wanted to sleep and sleep, but even as the phone finally silenced, the neighbors were being impossibly loud. He could hear their voices through the walls. Kids’ voices, singing off-key. Nursery rhymes, nonsense. He couldn’t make out any words, just the suggestions of words. Kurt threw one of the seat cushions at the far wall in annoyance. The small voices continued on, muffled into alien incoherency by drywall and distance.

Kurt imagined violence with surprising detail. His lips stretched into a smile, feeling a little better.

He went to the window, leaned his forehead against the screen, sucked in the air and the grey light and the smell of oncoming rain.

Down below, the sidewalk was littered with dark shapes. Wet leaves, most likely. Kurt’s hand crept upwards and discovered the bump, below his collarbone, now. As he prodded it, the bump seemed to shift downwards, like squashing a lump of bacon fat under a piece of plastic so that it squelched to one side.

“That’s weird.” The stupid neighbors were being so loud that his muttering was drowned out. “That’s weird,” he repeated, louder, as if he absolutely had to hear himself. His voice sounded distant, far away.

His phone began to ring again, but he ignored it, squinting down at the little black shapes on the sidewalk. The rain began to fall and darkish trails began to stream down the sidewalk away from the shapes. He decided to go down and investigate: the voices from next door were really starting to get to him. And the phone, always ringing. Anne, probably. Sweet Anne. He wouldn’t mind seeing her right now.

Kurt didn’t pick up.

The elevator ride down was no better. He could still hear voices, muttering, singing. He hurried out of the elevator, past the front desk, rushing to go outside. He saw the white teeth and the lipsticked smile of the attendant, saw her mouth moving, speaking, but he couldn’t hear her through the persistent, mumbling voices. He thought of leaping over the desk, wiping that smile from her face, more violence: this time it unnerved him, but he still smiled. Smiled in a way that made the attendant’s smile fall away.

He shoved his way through the front doors, pushed both of them with both hands.

Wet hit his face in warm drops, lukewarm-shower warm. Kurt opened his parched mouth, swallowed the rain, but he still felt dry. He dropped his chin, let the water stream down his face, pull his hair down to tangle with his wet lashes. Looked at the black shapes on the sidewalk, the pinkish trails running from them.

They were sparrows, he realized. It was like a cat had gone on a rampage. There were at least a dozen, laid out on the cement like tiny, pathetic offerings. Gifts, he thought, to carry on the cat metaphor probably too far.

His stomach took that moment to remind him he hadn’t eaten for over twelve hours.

He fought the urge to drop down on his knees and bite down into one of the tiny, feathery bodies. He could imagine the crunch of fragile bones under his teeth. The flood of blood and other hot fluids. His stomach twisted.

The voices were so loud now. He spun around, looking for the kids. But there was no one around, no one outside.

A car sped past, and in the wet sound of rubber against rain-soaked pavement, the voices seemed to coalesce. “Kurt,” he heard.

“Find me,” he heard.

“Bring her.”

Somewhere above him, through his opened windows, he heard his cellphone ringing.

Kurt looked up, and licked the rain off his lips.

***

He picked up the phone.

“Kurt? Oh my god. I’ve been calling and calling,” Anne said. “I thought something happened to you.” She choked on a sob. “I had a nightmare that you died. You were walking in the dark because I just let you go out there and I didn’t follow you and you were killed by--by--.” Whatever it was, Anne couldn’t articulate. She dragged in a deep, wet breath. “But of course--it’s stupid--I did try to go after you last night, Kurt, I did, I tried and then you were gone. I tried to let it go, tried to sleep, but this morning, that dream-- I-- Kurt, I took your car. To look for you. I drove. I’m driving now.”

Kurt blinked. Anne hadn’t driven since Pete’s death.

“Where are you?” Kurt said. He sounded dry, even to himself. Like he didn’t have enough spit to properly push out words. Like a man stranded in the desert for days.

“Don’t laugh.”

He waited.

“For some reason I thought. I don’t know. I thought you went back to the place. Where we--where we saw that person who got run over. I’m almost there, actually, almost, but--I’ll come get you. Where are you?”

“Stay,” he said.

“What?”

“Stay there.”

“Why?”

“I’ll be there soon.”

Anne started to say something else, to protest, most likely, but Kurt hung up the call.

***

He took a cab; in the rumble of its engine and the rush of its tires he heard a beautiful chorus, summoning him, crooning to him, urging him quickly. He stroked and rubbed the bump on his chest, traced it around and around, through his shirt. It was lower still--over his heart, almost. He caught the cabbie staring at him in the rearview, just once, and he grinned. The cabbie didn’t look again.

Soon enough they found his car, pulled over by the side of the road.

“You broke down?” the cabbie said. “Want me to call AAA for you or something?”

Kurt shook his head. He dug money out of his wallet. He didn’t look to see how much, just dumped all of it over the front seat. Didn’t matter anyway. Opened the door. The cabbie shouted; the car was still rolling. Kurt tumbled out.

“Are you crazy?” The cab driver stopped the cab, started to get out. Kurt smiled and waved. The cab driver seemed to decide better than to check on him. He tugged the door closed again and pulled away in a hurry.

“Quickly,” the voices sang to him. “Soon.”

Kurt made his way towards his car. As he drew closer he realized Anne was not inside. The weeds by the side of the road were crushed. His smile broadening, Kurt followed the trail.

She seemed to have been looking for something. Or called away by something. Kurt frowned. He felt something that made him grit his teeth. Jealousy, maybe.

“Hurry!” The tone of the summons had changed. The wind whipped the tall grass around him, lashing it over his skin, driving him forward. “She’s here!”

Kurt plunged into the shadowy woods. He was following the voices now; Anne’s trail was lost between the trees, where there was much less to break and crush. The trees grew farther apart the deeper he went, but he still felt suffocated.

“Hurry!”

He glimpsed white between the trees, and his heart began pounding. Saw a shape bent over, shifting. Something was struggling under it.

“Help me,” the voices said, and Kurt ran forward to help, but to help which of them do what, he couldn’t say. He pushed on thrashing flesh, turning his face away from the flying dirt.

“Kurt! Oh thank god!”

He looked over, seeing Anne hunched next to him. Under her hands was a thing: a white thing, slack-fleshed, so pale it was almost translucent, its dark, all-iris eyes pinned to him. It had stilled, as if exhausted. Her knees were crushing its bloated chest, its puffed belly. Its dirty hands gripped her forearms, nails punching into her skin. It looked freshly dug out of the ground, soil still caught in the corners of its mouth, the curves of its nostrils, the deep lids of its huge eyes.

“I followed it--Thought I followed it, but there was nothing. A lump of dirt. I don’t know why. I started digging.”

The thing seemed to have regained some reserve of energy; it resumed thrashing, nearly bucking Anne off, the wings of its flabby underarms flapping.

“Help me!”

Kurt couldn’t tell if Anne or the thing had spoken, or if they both had.

“Help me hold it!” Anne said. She had taken one hand off the white thing, was groping for something beside her. A small shovel, Kurt saw, one he’d kept in the trunk after being snowed in one time too many. Her fingertips touched the plastic handle. The thing bucked, almost throwing her off; Anne shrieked.

“Kurt!” she gasped, and under her words, he thought he heard the thing, the thing using Anne’s voice. “Help!”

He could tear her off. He could tear her off the thing and he could tear her throat and then he didn’t have to be so thirsty any more. They could share her, have her together.

“Kurt! Oh god. I’ve got it!” Anne had caught the handle of the shovel.

“Don’t!” Kurt said, lunging for her. She looked at him, her curly hair whipping around her face, framing her surprised eyes. His hands closed over her small wrists. He knew he was hurting her, but he couldn’t stop. She was going to kill it. She was going to kill him--

She brought the shovel down.

***

Kurt sat up with a start. He was behind the wheel of his car. He blinked at the sunshine streaming through the windshield. He must have pulled off the road and dozed off--he had been feeling pretty worn out, lately. He was just lucky he had the sense to pull over, that he hadn’t fallen asleep behind the wheel and crashed. The woods by the side of the road didn’t exactly look welcoming. He’d been dreaming about them, now that he thought about it; some sort of--white thing. He squinted as he attempted to remember more clearly. Anne, digging in the dirt for some reason, something wrong with the shovel she was using, something wet on the sharp edge. Maybe not digging, maybe chopping--

Kurt shook his head. He rubbed absentmindedly at the flat of his chest, just under his collarbone, fingers tracing ribs and skin and nothing else. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting to find.

Right, he’d been driving home with Anne, and they’d pulled over for some reason, and where was Anne? Just how long had he been asleep?

The car door opened, and he jumped.

“Kurt?” It was Anne. She lowered herself just enough to meet his eyes, and then she sighed, as if she were very relieved. She leaned in and tossed something over the back seat, into the trunk area. He thought it was her jacket, but it hit the floor of the trunk with a too-solid thud. Whatever it was showered soil all over his recently-vacuumed upholstery.

“Shit, Anne! You just got dirt all over the car!”

“Sorry,” she said, shrugging as she dropped into the passengers seat. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What were you doing, anyway? Playing in the mud? You know, I had this dream that you were digging--”

Anne looked at him again, so intensely that he shivered. She laid her hand over the flat of his chest, just under his collarbone, fingers tracing, almost caressing. He shivered again, but for other reasons, this time; her hand was soft and welcome. When she took her fingers away, he touched the spot, but found the vaguely flat landscape of ribs and muscle and skin and nothing else.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” She leaned over. He almost jumped again as she kissed him. Her lips were pleasantly warm against his cheek, and they chased away the last clinging bits of the unpleasant dream.

“Let’s go,” she said again, and finally smiled.

Kurt obliged her, if only because he was hoping she might kiss him again, and steered the car off the shoulder. They drove down Route 15 in the bright sunshine, and Kurt didn’t look back.

-Fin-

Copyright

LC Hu

"Lump"

© 2010, LC Hu
Self Published
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