Aberrations by ed. Jeremy C. Shipp Page B

vapor.
    Dexter looked toward the house with one hand still on the truck door. Dad must have figured he was reluctant to leave, that a son missed his father, and that no goddamned snotty-eyed bitch had a right to keep a father from his own flesh-and-blood. “It’s okay. I’ll see you again in a week or so,” Dad said.
    Dexter searched desperately for something to say, anything to put off that hundred-foot walk across the dark yard. “Dad?”
    “What?”
    “Do you love Mom?”
    Dexter could see only Dad’s silhouette against the background of distant streetlights. Crickets chirped in the woods. After a long moment, Dad relaxed and sighed. “Yeah. ‘Course I do.”
    Dexter looked along the street, at the forest that seemed to creep up to the house’s foundation. “You ever been scared?”
    “We’re all scared of something or other. Is something bothering you?”
    Dexter shook his head, then realized Dad probably couldn’t see him in the dark. “No,” he said, then, “Do you believe in magic?”
    Dad laughed, his throat thick with spittle. “What kind of horseshit has she been filling you up with?”
    “Nothing. Never mind.”
    “The bitch.”
    “Guess I better go, Dad.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “See you.” He wanted to tell Dad that he loved him, but he was too scared.
    “Say, whatever happened to that little puppy of yours?”
    “Got runned over.”
    “Damn. I’ll see Clem about getting you another.”
    “No, that’s okay.”
    “You sure?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Bye now.”
    “Yeah.”
    Dexter stepped away from the truck and watched the tail-lights shrink as Dad roared away. The people in the few neighboring houses were plastered to the television. Blue light flickered from their living room windows. The trees were like tall skeletons with too many bones.
    Leaves skittered across the road, scratching at the asphalt. A dog barked a few streets over. At least, it sounded like a dog. A good old red-blooded, living and breathing turd factory. Never hurt nobody, most likely.
    He walked into the scraggly yard, reluctant to leave the cone of the last streetlight. He thought about going up the street and cutting across the other end of the yard, but that way was scary, too. The autumn forest hovered on every side. The forest with its clickety-sloosh things.
    He tried to whistle as he walked, but his throat was dry, as if he had swallowed a spiderweb. He thought about running, but that was no good. In every stupid movie where dead things come back, they always get you if you run.
    So he took long, slow steps. His head bent forward because he thought he could hear better that way. Halfway home. The lights were on in the kitchen, and he headed for the rectangle of light that stretched from the back door across the lawn.
    He was twenty feet away from the safety of light when he heard it. Clickety-sloosh. But that wasn’t all. The gargle was also mixed in, along with the tortured meow and the rustle of leaves. The noise was coming from behind a forsythia bush near the back steps. The thing was under the porch. In the place where Turd Factory had napped during sunny afternoons.
    Dexter stopped.
    Run for it? They always get you if you run. But, now that he thought about it, they always get you anyway. Especially if you were the bad guy. And Dexter was the bad guy. Maybe not as bad as Riley. But at least Riley knew about love, which probably protected him from bad things.
    Yell for Mom? She was probably dead drunk on the couch. If she did step out on the porch, the thing would disappear. He was sure of that, because the thing was his and only his.
    And if he yelled, he knew what would happen. Mom would turn on the porch light and see nothing, not even a stray hair, just a scooped-out dirt place behind the forsythia. And she’d say, “What the hell do you mean, waking up half the neighborhood because you heard something under the porch? They ain’t nothing there.”
    And she’d probably slap him across the face.