Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Page 43

  "Bean supper at the Grange or a card-party at the Eastern Star, probably," John said, stretching. He peeked into her clam basket. "You didn't eat much, love."

  "Love wasn't very hungry."

  "I tell you it was just a joke," he said, taking her hands. "Lighten up."

  "You're really, really sure that's all it was?"

  "Really-really. I mean, hey--every seven years it rains toads in Willow, Maine? It sounds like an outtake from a Steven Wright monologue."

  She smiled wanly. "It doesn't rain," she said, "it pours."

  "They subscribe to the old fisherman's credo, I guess--if you're going to tell one, tell a whopper. When I was a kid at sleep-away camp, it used to be snipe hunts. This really isn't much different. And when you stop to think about it, it really isn't that surprising."

  "What isn't?"

  "That people who make most of their yearly income dealing with summer people should develop a summer-camp mentality."

  "That woman didn't act like it was a joke. I'll tell you the truth, Johnny--she sort of scared me."

  John Graham's normally pleasant face grew stern and hard. The expression did not look at home on his face, but neither did it look faked or insincere.

  "I know," he said, picking up their wrappings and napkins and plastic baskets. "And there's going to be an apology made for that. I find foolishness for the sake of foolishness agreeable enough, but when someone scares my wife--hell, they scared me a little, too--I draw the line. Ready to go back?"

  "Can you find it again?"

  He grinned, and immediately looked more like himself. "I left a trail of breadcrumbs."

  "How wise you are, my darling," she said, and got up. She was smiling again, and John was glad to see it. She drew a deep breath--it did wonders for the front of the blue chambray work-shirt she was wearing--and let it out. "The humidity seems to have dropped."

  "Yeah." John deposited their waste into a trash basket with a left-handed hook shot and then winked at her. "So much for rainy season."

  *

  But by the time they turned onto the Hempstead Road, the humidity had returned, and with a vengeance. John felt as if his own tee-shirt had turned into a clammy mass of cobweb clinging to his chest and back. The sky, now turning a delicate shade of evening primrose, was still clear, but he felt that, if he'd had a straw, he could have drunk directly from the air.

  There was only one other house on the road, at the foot of the long hill with the Hempstead Place at the top. As they drove past it, John saw the silhouette of a woman standing motionless at one of the windows and looking out at them.

  "Well, there's your friend Milly's great-aunt," John said. "She sure was a sport to call the local crazies down at the general store and tell them we were coming. I wonder if they would have dragged out the whoopee cushions and joy-buzzers and chattery teeth if we'd stayed a little longer."

  "That dog had his own built-in joy-buzzer."

  John laughed and nodded.

  Five minutes later they were turning into their own driveway. It was badly overgrown with weeds and dwarf bushes, and John intended to take care of that little situation before the summer got much older. The Hempstead Place itself was a rambling country farmhouse, added to by succeeding generations whenever the need--or maybe just the urge--to do some building happened to strike. A barn stood behind it, connected to the house by three rambling, zig-zag sheds. In this flush of early summer, two of the three sheds were almost buried in fragrant drifts of honeysuckle.

  It commanded a gorgeous view of the town, especially on a clear night like this one. John wondered briefly just how it could be so clear when the humidity was so high. Elise joined him in front of the car and they stood there for a moment, arms around each other's waists, looking at the hills which rolled gently off in the direction of Augusta, losing themselves in the shadows of evening.

  "It's beautiful," she murmured.

  "And listen," he said.

  There was a marshy area of reeds and high grass fifty yards or so behind the barn, and in it a chorus of frogs sang and thumped and snapped the elastics God had for some reason stretched in their throats.

  "Well," she said, "the frogs are all present and accounted for, anyway."

  "No toads, though." He looked up at the clear sky, in which Venus had now opened her coldly burning eye. "There they are, Elise! Up there! Clouds of toads!"

  She giggled.

  " 'Tonight in the small town of Willow,' " he intoned, " 'a cold front of toads met a warm front of newts, and the result was--' "

  She elbowed him. "You," she said. "Let's go in."

  They went in. And did not pass Go. And did not collect two hundred dollars.

  They went directly to bed.

  *

  Elise was startled out of a satisfying drowse an hour or so later by a thump on the roof. She got up on her elbows. "What was that, Johnny?"

  "Huzz," John said, and turned over on his side.

  Toads, she thought, and giggled . . . but it was a nervous giggle. She got up and went to the window, and before she looked for anything which might have fallen on the ground, she found herself looking up at the sky.

  It was still cloudless, and now shot with a trillion spangled stars. She looked at them, for a moment hypnotized by their simple silent beauty.

  Thud.

  She jerked back from the window and looked up at the ceiling. Whatever it was, it had hit the roof just overhead.

  "John! Johnny! Wake up!"

  "Huh? What?" He sat up, his hair all tangled tufts and clock-springs.

  "It's started," she said, and giggled shrilly. "The rain of frogs."

  "Toads," he corrected. "Ellie, what are you talking ab--"

  Thud-thud.

  He looked around, then swung his feet out of bed.

  "This is ridiculous," he said softly and angrily.

  "What do you m--"

  Thud-CRASH! There was a tinkle of glass downstairs.

  "Oh, goddam," he said, getting up and yanking on his blue-jeans. "Enough. This is just . . . fucking . . . enough."

  Several soft thuds hit the side of the house and the roof. She cringed against him, frightened now. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that crazy woman and probably the old man and some of their friends are out there throwing things at the house," he said, "and I am going to put a stop to it right now. Maybe they've held onto the custom of shivareeing the new folks in this little town, but--"

  THUD! SMASH! From the kitchen.

  "God-DAMN!" John yelled, and ran out into the hall.

  "Don't leave me!" Elise cried, and ran after him.

  He flicked up the hallway light-switch before plunging downstairs. Soft thumps and thuds struck the house in an increasing rhythm, and Elise had time to think, How many people from town are out there? How many does it take to do that? And what are they throwing? Rocks wrapped in pillow-cases?

  John reached the foot of the stairs and went into the living room. There was a large window in there which gave on the same view which they had admired earlier. The window was broken. Shards and splinters of glass lay scattered across the rug. He started toward the window, meaning to yell something at them about how he was going to get his shotgun. Then he looked at the broken glass again, remembered that his feet were bare, and stopped. For a moment he didn't know what to do. Then he saw a dark shape lying in the broken glass--the rock one of the imbecilic, interbred bastards had used to break the window, he assumed--and saw red. He might have charged to the window anyway, bare feet or no bare feet, but just then the rock twitched.

  That's no rock, he thought. That's a--

  "John?" Elise asked. The house rang with those soft thuds now. It was as if they were being bombarded with large, rotten-soft hailstones. "John, what is it?"

  "A toad," he said stupidly. He was still looking at the twitching shape in the litter of broken glass, and spoke more to himself than to his wife.

  He raised his eyes and looked out the window.
What he saw out there struck him mute with horror and incredulity. He could no longer see the hills or the horizon--hell, he could barely see the barn, and that was less than forty feet away.

  The air was stuffed with falling shapes.

  Three more of them came in through the broken window. One landed on the floor, not far from its twitching mate. It came down on a sharp sliver of window-glass and black fluid burst from its body in thick ropes.

  Elise screamed.

  The other two caught in the curtains, which began to twist and jerk as if in a fitful breeze. One of them managed to disentangle itself. It struck the floor and then hopped toward John.

  He groped at the wall with a hand which felt as if it were no part of him at all. His fingers stumbled across the light-switch and flipped it up.

  The thing hopping across the glass-littered floor toward him was a toad, but it was also not a toad. Its green-black body was too large, too lumpy. Its black-and-gold eyes bulged like freakish eggs. And bursting from its mouth, unhinging the jaw, was a bouquet of large, needle-sharp teeth.

  It made a thick croaking noise and bounded at John as if on springs. Behind it, more toads were falling in through the window. The ones which struck the floor had either died outright or been crippled, but many others--too many others--used the curtains as a safety-net and tumbled to the floor unharmed.

  "Get out of here!" John yelled to his wife, and kicked at the toad which--it was insane, but it was true--was attacking him. It did not flinch back from his foot but sank that mouthful of crooked needles first over and then into his toes. The pain was immediate, fiery, and immense. Without thinking, he made a half-turn and kicked the wall as hard as he could. He felt his toes break, but the toad broke as well, splattering its black blood onto the wainscoting in a half-circle, like a fan. His toes had become a crazy road-sign, pointing in all directions at once.

  Elise was standing frozen in the hall doorway. She could now hear window-glass shattering all over the house. She had put on one of John's tee-shirts after they had finished making love, and now she was clutching the neck of it with both hands. The air was full of ugly croaking sounds.

  "Get out, Elise!" John screamed. He turned, shaking his bloody foot. The toad which had bitten him was dead, but its huge and improbable teeth were still caught in his flesh like a tangle of fishhooks. This time he kicked at the air, like a man punting a football, and the toad finally flew free.

  The faded living-room carpet was now covered with bloated, hopping bodies. And they were all hopping at them.

  John ran to the doorway. His foot came down on one of the toads and burst it open. His heel skidded in the cold jelly which popped out of its body and he almost fell. Elise relinquished her death-grip on the neck of her tee-shirt and grabbed him. They stumbled into the hall together and John slammed the door, catching one of the toads in the act of hopping through. The door cut it in half. The top half twitched and juddered on the floor, its toothy, black-lipped mouth opening and closing, its black-and-golden pop-eyes goggling at them.

  Elise clapped her hands to the sides of her face and began to wail hysterically. John reached out to her. She shook her head and cringed away from him, her hair falling over her face.

  The sound of the toads hitting the roof was bad, but the croakings and chirrupings were worse, because these latter sounds were coming from inside the house . . . and all over the house. He thought of the old man sitting on the porch of the General Mercantile in his rocker, calling after them: Might want to close y'shutters.

  Christ, why didn't I believe him?

  And, on the heels of that: How was I supposed to believe him? Nothing in my whole life prepared me to believe him!

  And, below the sound of toads thudding onto the ground outside and toads squashing themselves to guts and goo on the roof, he heard a more ominous sound: the chewing, splintering sound of the toads in the living room starting to bite their way through the door. He could actually see it settling more firmly against its hinges as more and more toads crowded their weight against it.

  He turned around and saw toads hopping down the main staircase by the dozens.

  "Elise!" He grabbed at her. She kept shrieking and pulling away from him. A sleeve of the tee-shirt tore free. He looked at the ragged chunk of cloth in his hand with perfect stupidity for a moment and then let it flutter down to the floor.

  "Elise, goddammit!"

  She shrieked and drew back again.

  Now the first toads had reached the hall floor and were hopping eagerly toward them. There was a brittle tinkle as the fanlight over the door shattered. A toad whizzed through it, struck the carpet, and lay on its back, mottled pink belly exposed, webbed feet twitching in the air.

  He grabbed his wife, shook her. "We have to go down cellar! We'll be safe in the cellar!"

  "No!" Elise screamed at him. Her eyes were giant floating zeros, and he understood she was not refusing his idea of retreating to the cellar but refusing everything.

  There was no time for gentle measures or soothing words. He bunched the front of the shirt she was wearing in his fist and yanked her down the hall like a cop dragging a recalcitrant prisoner to a squad-car. One of the toads which had been in the vanguard of those hurrying down the stairs leaped gigantically and snicked its mouthful of darning-needles shut around a chunk of space occupied by Elise's bare heel a second before.

  Halfway down the hall, she got the idea and began to come with him of her own accord. They reached the door. John turned the knob and yanked it, but the door wouldn't move.

  "Goddam!" he cried, and yanked it again. No good. Nothing.

  "John, hurry!"

  She looked back over her shoulder and saw toads flooding down the hall toward them, taking huge crazy sproings over each other's back, falling on each other, striking the faded rambler-rose wallpaper, landing on their backs and being overrun by their mates. They were all teeth and gold-black eyes and heaving, leathery bodies.

  "JOHN, PLEASE! PL--"

  Then one of them leaped and battened on her left thigh just above the knee. Elise screamed and seized it, her fingers punching through its skin and into its dark liquid workings. She tore it free and for a moment, as she raised her arms, the horrid thing was right in front of her eyes, its teeth gnashing like a piece of some small but homicidal factory machine. She threw it as hard as she could. It cartwheeled in the air and then splattered against the wall just opposite the kitchen door. It did not fall but stuck fast in the glue of its own guts.

  "JOHN! OH JESUS, JOHN!"

  John Graham suddenly realized what he was doing wrong. He reversed the direction of his effort, pushing the door instead of pulling it. It flew open, almost spilling him forward and down the stairs, and he wondered briefly if his mother had had any kids that lived. He flailed at the railing, caught hold of it, and then Elise almost knocked him down again, bolting past him and down the stairs, screaming like a firebell in the night.

  Oh she's going to fall, she can't help but fall, she's going to fall and break her neck--

  But somehow she did not. She reached the cellar's earth floor and collapsed in a sobbing heap, clutching at her torn thigh.

  Toads were leaping and hopping in through the open cellar doorway.

  John caught his balance, turned, and slapped the door shut. Several of the toads caught on their side of the door leaped right off the landing, struck the stairs, and fell through the spaces between the risers. Another took an almost vertical leap straight up, and John was suddenly shaken by wild laughter--a sudden bright image of Mr. Toad of Toad Hall on a pogo-stick instead of in a motor-car had come to him. Still laughing, he balled his right hand into a fist and punched the toad dead center in its pulsing, flabby chest at the top of its leap, while it hung in perfect equilibrium between gravity and its own expended energy. It zoomed off into the shadows, and John heard a soft bonk! as it struck the furnace.

  He scrabbled at the wall in the dark, and his fingers found the raised cylinder which was
the old-fashioned toggle light-switch. He flipped it, and that was when Elise began to scream again. A toad had gotten tangled in her hair. It croaked and twisted and turned and bit at her neck, rolling itself into something which resembled a large, misshapen curler.

  Elise lurched to her feet and ran in a large circle, miraculously avoiding a tumble over the boxes which had been stacked and stored down here. She struck one of the cellar's support posts, rebounded, then turned and banged the back of her head twice, briskly, against it. There was a thick gushing sound, a squirt of black fluid, and then the toad fell out of her hair, tumbling down the back of her tee-shirt, leaving dribbles of ichor.

  She screamed, and the lunacy in that sound chilled John's blood. He half-ran, half-stumbled down the cellar stairs and enfolded her in his arms. She fought him at first and then surrendered. Her screams gradually dissolved into steady weeping.

  Then, over the soft thunder of the toads striking the house and the grounds, they heard the croaking of the toads which had fallen down here. She drew away from him, her eyes shifting wildly from side to side in their shiny-white sockets.

  "Where are they?" she panted. Her voice was hoarse, almost a bark, from all the screaming she had done. "Where are they, John?"

  But they didn't have to look; the toads had already seen them, and came hopping eagerly toward them.

  The Grahams retreated, and John saw a rusty shovel leaning against the wall. He grabbed it and beat the toads to death with it as they came. Only one got past him. It leaped from the floor to a box and from the box it jumped at Elise, catching the cloth of her shirt in its teeth and dangling there between her breasts, legs kicking.

  "Stand still!" John barked at her. He dropped the shovel, took two steps forward, grabbed the toad, and hauled it off her shirt. It took a chunk of cloth with it. The cotton strip hung from one of its fangs as it twisted and pulsed and wriggled in John's hands. Its hide was warty, dry but horridly warm and somehow busy. He snapped his hands into fists, popping the toad. Blood and slime squirted out from between his fingers.

  Less than a dozen of the little monsters had actually made it through the cellar door, and soon they were all dead. John and Elise clung to each other, listening to the steady rain of toads outside.

  John looked over at the low cellar windows. They were packed and dark, and he suddenly saw the house as it must look from the outside, buried in a drift of squirming, lunging, leaping toads.