Sheriff Hoyt got closer and saw a kid wriggling out from underneath her body.
Now that, that was a surprise.
His right hand flew to the special rubber grips of his Ruger Blackhawk. Ever since those two assholes shot up the high school in Colorado and those two sniper spooks crept around Washington, D.C., he drilled his men that whenever they encountered a crime, they always had to be aware of the possibility of two or more suspects.
The kid struggled; Ellie May had let herself go, that much you couldn’t argue with. She had always been curvaceous, no bullshit there, but in the years since her glory days had faded, she had become a hell of a heavy woman. It took the kid a while to slide out from underneath a corpse that wasn’t in the mood to cooperate.
From a distance, he was maybe nine, ten. Sheriff Hoyt got a look at the kid’s eyes. Up close, the kid seemed older than he looked. Maybe twelve or thirteen.
The kid rolled away and stood up, wavering a little when he straightened. Blood ran from a trail of burned scalp that traveled up the back of his neck, skimming off the skull, leaving a straight, shallow gash. Sheriff Hoyt was impressed; the kid had come within an eyelash of a bullet in the brainpan.
The kid fixed Sheriff Hoyt with a stare, for only a blink of a moment, but it was enough. Enough to take in the hat, the badge, Hoyt’s face. The kid looked away and didn’t say anything. Disrespectful punk.
Just like his mom.
Sheriff Hoyt snapped his fingers. It all came together, like water spilling down a suddenly unplugged drain. He now knew where he’d seen the gun. At that bitch’s trial, before she stole the election.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said to the kid. “What do you think your mother’s gonna say about all this?”
CHAPTER 16
Bob Morton glanced at the mirror and got a good look at his face. Now that the memorial service was finished, he could catch his breath, take a moment to try and make sense of everything. It had all gotten so confusing lately.
Under the fluorescent light, he looked tired. Drawn. It was to be expected, he supposed. Mourning his son, hadn’t been sleeping right. Color was off. He just hoped his bad complexion hadn’t been too obvious this morning. He dabbed at the black spots at the corners of his mouth. He scrubbed harder; they persisted.
Bob double-checked the bathroom door to make sure it was locked, then leaned into the mirror and gave the biggest blemish on the right ride of his mouth, right where his lips came together, a wicked squeeze. It bulged, but wouldn’t pop. He tried again. No explosion, no wet splat. He tried on the other side. No matter the angle, he could not express the black circles.
And they were getting bigger, no question. Squeezing them just made things worse; his fingernails tore the skin and increased the swelling in the immediate area. He was starting to look like a squirrel in the fall, cheeks full of acorns. He splashed some more water on his face to calm things down. As the clusters got bigger, he noticed that the darkness inside the spheres faded more and more into a dull gray, like some kind of volcanic ash was slowly erupting out of his pores.
He used the hand towel to dry his face. When he touched his nose, it felt like it was clogged with hard nuggets of snot. Using his index finger, he pushed up on the tip, as if he were trying to make himself look like a pig, tilted his head back, and leaned in closer to the mirror.
Black stalks with conical buds at the tips clustered together in the nostrils like disturbingly thick hair. Bob gave them an experimental poke. They were flexible, and yielded to his touch. He placed both hands flat on the vanity and exhaled, long and slow. He understood that he was balancing on the razor edge of total, abject fear, and the slightest shift would send him screaming from the bathroom. His breath came out in a slight, wavering whistle, like a worried teapot.
He had to stay in control; his family and his reputation demanded nothing less.
He wrapped a wad of toilet paper around his fingers and pressed it to his nose. He took a deep breath and blew air out of his nose as hard as he could. Some air got through, but not much. His ears popped, and even that didn’t feel right. He checked the toilet paper and bit down on a bubble of hysterical laughter.
Some of the things had broken loose and were smeared into the tissue paper, along with sticky smudges of black snot. He didn’t want to admit it, but they did look like some kind of miniature mushrooms. The soiled paper went into the toilet. He found the tiny scissors he used to trim his nose and ear hairs, and went to work methodically snipping away at the things still in his nostrils.
Another blast into fresh toilet paper. When he pulled it back this time, it was covered with dozens of the mushroom things and more black snot. That went into the toilet as well, and he flushed it quickly. He took another look at his nostrils. He’d cleared most everything out of his nose, at least up front as far as he could reach. He needed a flashlight to check and see if there were more of the things growing deeper in his nasal passages, but he wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
He got a Q-tip from his wife’s jar and screwed it into his right ear, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. The cotton swab made murky, liquid sounds as he went deeper. He pulled it out and wasn’t surprised to find more black muck coating the tip. He reversed the Q-tip and stuck the fresh end back into his ear.
Bob went through more than fifteen Q-tips before he was satisfied he was cleared out. They all went into the toilet as well. He crossed his arms, jamming his fingers under each armpit, and bit down on the insides of his lips. He would not scream. He would not.
Then he felt something else, some kind of weird bulge in his armpits. He avoided meeting his eyes in the mirror as he lifted his shirt and found that more of the mushrooms were poking through the gray hair under his arms. He ripped off his shirt, lifted his arm high, and stared at the dark growths popping up. Turning, he twisted his head to look at his bare back. Just skin and patches of gray hair.
Still, he wasn’t going to assume anything. Not anymore. He yanked his suit pants down, stepped out of his shoes and socks. Nothing between his toes. Nothing on his legs. Nothing behind his knees. He pulled his briefs out and glanced nervously down at his groin. Nothing there, thank God.
Almost an afterthought, he stuck his right hand around to feel his ass, just in case, because he hadn’t been able to move his bowels in at least two days. That need was simply gone.
He felt more of the tiny buds pushing up through the tight folds of the skin of his anus. There was a single moment of pure, toe-curling revulsion, and before he could stop himself, he curled his fingers into claws and raked at his flesh.
He brought his hand back up. Black gunk was smeared under his nails. His hand shook. Then he gripped the mirror with his right hand and ripped at the mushrooms sprouting through the skin of his armpits with his left. He leaned closer to the mirror and saw that he was breaking the stalks off at the roots, leaving dark, ominous little craters behind.
There was no blood.
No pain.
Somehow, that was the worst.
Sandy didn’t trust herself to speak just yet and they drove home in silence. Kevin wouldn’t look at her, and watched the houses slide past his window. He’d barely said anything since Sandy had arrived on the scene and found her son in the back of an ambulance, getting the back of his head patched up.