Читать книгу Escape To Anywhere Else - Robert Rippberger - Страница 15

chapter seven

After driving for just under two hours, we neared home. We had gorged ourselves on Mom’s cookies and were feeling fat and sleepy. Dad had been nodding off but refused to give up the wheel. Louie and I kept him awake by having a talent show on the hood of the tractor. We drove past an apple tree and grabbed a handful, juggling like circus clowns until a few dropped beneath the tires and turned to applesauce. Nevertheless, the show went on. Louie impersonated Mrs. Tyler and squeezed my cheeks. I attacked him with a saliva-drenched napkin. We were rolling around laughing while Dad stared at us like we were alien children. I reminded him that we were spawned from his own contaminated gene pool—an idea that amused him very much.

Louie was back in better spirits. In hushed voices, over the roar of the tractor, we talked about what would happen if we told the outside world what went on in our home. A family thinking things were fine but unconsciously feeding on itself. Louie was yelling for mercy. He was looking to the priest to be his outlet, although I wasn’t so sure. We decided we’d talk through it more when we had privacy. Looking back on it now, I can almost hear his anxious voice uttering the familiar words—“Next time.”

As Louie and I joked around at the front of the tractor, Mom had her back turned, legs dangling over the roadway. Annoyed by the antics, she was trying her hardest to ignore us, but ever so often her hands would clench around her rosary beads as if ready to turn and strike. She did a good job suppressing the urge. Little did we know her chance would come soon enough.

Our tractor parked in front of the house. Dad gave in and passed out over the steering wheel, nearly gouging out his eye on the shifter.

“I feel weird,” Louie remarked as I climbed from the tractor and took a jarring step.

The cornfield pulsed in and out of focus. It was subtle at first but grew more and more intense, shaky and tumultuous.

“Me too,” my lips moved but the breath didn’t come.

I leaned against the tractor’s rear wheel. My knees quivered and I bent back, gazing toward the harvest moon. Its glow flaring in all directions and then melting from the heavens like wet paint on a canvas.

Behind me, Louie descended the stepladder. He hopped weakly from the last level. His body rose up, but his skate shoes anchored. He fell forward, face contorted and arms flailing, landing with a sour thud. I stumbled over to him. He wasn’t moving. I tried feverishly to wake him, but confused and disoriented I couldn’t do more than gasp and scream.

In my peripheral there was movement by the front porch. Through the fog a shape took watch from the shadows. A glow of life was breathed into a cigarette as Mom stood waiting. In her other hand she picked up a rusted paraffin lamp and lit it. The concave glass spilled yellow onto the patio, illuminated the bottom branches of the trees and her savage eyes. The flare of her pupils shot through the night as if from the bow of a demonic archer. Skirting and dodging any way I could, I tried to hoist Louie away with me, but he was too heavy. I grabbed his hands. We’ll be safe in the cornfield. Get to the corn, I thought. Go!

In a gasp, my vision went for the second time. The night sky spun around me at an accelerating speed. I dropped Louie, fell to the ground, and clung to it. I snapped my eyes closed, hoping to open them and be someplace else, anywhere else, any place but here.

“Help.”

The call came from the other side of the tractor. It was Dad, caked in dirt, trying to lift himself on crumbling arms. I cast an accusing glance toward the house as Mom flicked her cigarette into the yard and started back toward us. I had no idea what was happening but knew I needed to run. To the corn. There you’ll be safe.

I dropped to Louie’s side and tried again to wake him with a slap to the face. I pried at his eyelids, but they clapped shut again. He was out. No back-in-twenty-minutes sign, just an empty window into a dark void. Is he dead? I feared. What if he’s dead?!

Looking to the tractor, I saw Dad was missing. There was a rustling to my side. A stalk of corn fell as a familiar boot stepped and then disappeared. I couldn’t believe it. Once again he was leaving us for the wolves. Or rather, the wolf. I spun back to see the lamp swinging from Mom’s fingers, dispersing flickered beams over the gravel, the tractor, and then Louie and me. Louie’s fingers moved. It was a brief twitch, but it was movement! And while I wanted to shout with glee, I was hit with another round of fatigue. It would come and go. To get out of there I knew I had to muster everything I had in me. Propping Louie upright, I added his body weight to mine, and with a burst of adrenaline, took off.

Mom watched with amusement as we staggered from side to side. Drool trickled from Louie’s mouth and oozed down my neck and back. His finger twitch spread until he was doing wild arm spasms and full body jerks. His hands swung like clubs through the air. A cluster of knuckles crashed against my cheek. Out of reflex, I threw him to the ground and watched as his eyes rolled around in their sockets. Louie was gagging so I got him on his side and he vomited. That was when I remembered the cookies. Was that what was doing this to us? I wondered. And then the thought was gone, replaced with a sickening sense of helplessness. My strength drained, and my head felt as if it were filling with helium. My vision strobed black between glimpses of the stars. The aching pain in my joints numbed and my eyelids wilted. Then, like the slamming of a cellar door, they locked shut. And with darkness in front, sleep swept in from behind. I felt my way through the dirt and found Louie’s hand. My fingers intertwined with his, and that was the last thing I remember. His cold twitching fingers clasped in mine.