Stories (2011) (92 page)

He grabbed up cars and people and chunked them high and far,
tore the roof off of his own house and dropped it on them. It looked like a
busy ant farm below, watching all the law scrambling about, and he realized
that during his trip to town, he had grown once again, this time not in inches,
but in feet. He had to be twenty-five to thirty feet high, and he was broad as
a barn. He marched off and left them and they followed, buzzing overhead like
bees, below like ants and beetles. He walked by a skyscraper that was slicked
out with solar panels. He saw his reflection there; he looked like a giant of
legend. Long haired, bearded, the beard matted with brains and blood from the
nurse he had eaten, as well as all manner of slop from his meal at the grocery
store. His penis and testicles swung like god’s own mallet.

Stalking on through town, he ripped the tops off buildings,
and finally squatted over the roof of one and shit in it, filling it up. He
grabbed up some of the police and wiped his ass on them and flung them to all
points of the compass. He went on through town and down to the lake and got
down on his knees and drank it dry, feeling a prod in his ass as he did.

When he stood up, he felt something between his butt cheeks,
pulled out a hand launched missile that had failed to go off. He crushed it in
his fist, and it exploded. He felt nothing; it was as if there was nothing to
feel.

They kept after him all day, shooting him with this,
shooting him with that. They even dropped a small tactical nuke on him. All
that did was take out some countryside and make his eyes water. This went on
for days. Finally, they just gave up for a while and went home and left him
where he had ended up, on a mountain, contemplating his situation.

From time to time the army regrouped and tried to take him
out, jets with napalm even. But all it did was burn some hair off his head and
skin. He had grown impervious. Soon he was so big that at night he slept lying
down in a valley. If it rained, he had to take it. If it got cold, he had to
take it. But the thing was, it was nothing now. He could hardly feel anything
anymore.

He grew larger and larger, found that his eyesight had
improved; he could see like a goddamn eagle, for miles. He saw towns in the
distance, cities. He went to them and he tore them up; he pissed on their
downtowns and shit in their reservoirs, continued to wipe his ass on humans,
but he had grown so big and they were so small, there was too much break
through. For awhile, cows were good.

He was so large now, he found he could walk across much of
the Atlantic Ocean, swim the rest with ease. Sharks would attack. They broke
their teeth. He slapped whales around, he sucked in and chewed up dolphins.

When he got to Africa he stalked through the country and ate
what he could find and the people starved in his wake, and sometimes he ate
them. He fornicated with holes in the sides of mountains; had Kilimanjaro been
a woman, she would have been pregnant ten times over. He killed anything he
saw, people, animals, vegetation. He breathed air so deeply, other living
things died from lack of oxygen.

Soon the messes he made, the piles of shit he left, the
urine he pooled, took their toll. The world stunk, and he, who merely thought
of himself now as Big Man, didn’t give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut
about the world, or about himself. It was all a matter of the now and not the
tomorrow.

He had always wanted to see Paris, and did, ripping the
EiffelTower out of the ground, using it to pick his teeth. In England the army
came out and a man on a tall trailer gave a speech over a megaphone saying how
the English would like to live in peace. He sat on Picadilly Circus, listened
intently. When they were finished, he ate the speaker and any of the others he
could catch. In Ireland they just said, “Go fuck yourself.” He ate them too.

Big Man walked across Europe. He was still growing, his head
was poking up near the empty black of outer space. He had trouble breathing. He
walked with his head ducked, and finally he crawled, crushing Rome and Athens
and everything in his path. He crawled all the way to China, wrecking it.
Nuclear bombs were tried there, not tactical nukes, but the big boys. They made
his skin itch and made him mad. He destroyed everything in his path. He had a
large Chinese dinner.

He took to hanging out in the oceans, floating there to keep
from standing. It gave him a feeling of comfort. He didn’t bother to leave the
ocean when he relieved himself, one or two. He didn’t wipe anymore. He just
filled the oceans with his waste. Pretty soon, he lay in piles of his own shit.

Finally, he stood, wobbled, walked, his head bent low. It
was uncomfortable to walk. Crawling was uncomfortable. To do almost anything
was uncomfortable, and he had wrecked what there was of earth worth having.

Big Man took a deep breath and stood. His head was in outer
space, and he could see all manner of man-made debris whirl by. He felt himself
growing even as he stood. He ducked his head back into the atmosphere and
sucked in a tremendous breath. Anything that breathed air nearby died from lack
of oxygen.

Standing, his chest full, he discovered that his upper body
felt light. He bent his knees and sprang. He went up, and up, and up. It was
fun. It was glorious. And then he didn’t drop. No gravity. He was floating in
the black, star-specked void of space. And he kept growing. His air ran out. He
stopped breathing. He stopped knowing. He stopped being. Still he grew. His
body became so big that from earth below, what was left of mankind could see
his shape against the sun; he looked like a tremendous paper doll cut from
black velvet.

Big Man entered the gravitational pull of the sun. He shot
toward it like a rocket. He grew so big his body blocked out its rays, and on
earth it went dark and cold and people and animals and vegetation died. And
still Big Man grew and grew and drifted toward the burning hot light of ole
sol. And when he came to the sun, he was so big, with his arms outstretched, if
there had been anyone left to see him, they might have thought the big dark man
was about to catch a huge yellow ball.

The sun greeted him with fire, and it was all over for
BigMan. He was a huge puff of flame. Below, the cold, dead ball of the earth
continued to turn and whirl around the weight of the hungry sun.

They weren't biting.

Harold sat on the bank with his fishing pole and watched the
clear creek water turn dark as the sunlight faded. He knew he should pack up
and go. This wonderful fishing spot he'd heard about was a dud, but the idea of
going home without at least one fish for supper was not a happy one. He had
spent a large part of the day before bragging to his friends about what a
fisherman he was. He could hear them now, laughing and joking as he talked
about the big one that got away.

And worse yet, he was out of bait.

He had used his little camp shovel to dig around the edge of
the bank for worms. But he hadn't turned up so much as a grub or a doodlebug.

The best course of action, other than pack his gear on his
bike and ride home, was to cross the bank. It was less wooded over there, and
the ground might be softer. On the other side of the creek, through a thinning
row of trees, he could see an old farm field. There were dried stalks of
broken-down corn and tall dried weeds the plain brown color of a cardboard box.

Harold looked at his watch. He decided he had just enough
time to find some bait and maybe catch one fish. He picked up his camp shovel
and found a narrow place in the creek to leap across. After walking through the
trees and out into the huge field, he noticed a large and odd-looking scarecrow
on a post. Beyond the scarecrow, some stretch away, surrounded by saplings and
weeds, he saw what had once been a fine two-story farmhouse. Now it was not
much more than an abandoned shell of broken glass and aging lumber.

As Harold approached the scarecrow, he was even more taken
with its unusual appearance. It was dressed in a stovepipe hat that was
crunched and moth-eaten and leaned to one side. The body was constructed of
hay, sticks, and vines, and the face was made of some sort of cloth, perhaps an
old tow sack. It was dressed in a once expensive evening jacket and pants. Its
arms were outstretched on a pole, and poking out of its sleeves were fingers
made of sticks.

From a distance, the eyes looked like empty sockets in a
skull. When Harold stood close to the scarecrow, he was even more surprised to
discover it had teeth. They were animal teeth, still in the jawbone, and
someone had fitted them into the cloth face, giving the scarecrow a wolflike
countenance. Dark feathers had somehow gotten caught between the teeth.

But the most peculiar thing of all was found at the center
of the scarecrow. Its black jacket hung open, its chest was torn apart, and
Harold could see inside. He was startled to discover that there was a rib cage,
and fastened to it by a cord was a large faded valentine heart. A long, thick
stick was rammed directly through that heart.

The dirt beneath the scarecrow was soft, and Harold took his
shovel and began to dig. As he did, he had a sensation of being watched. Then
he saw a shadow, as if the scarecrow were nodding its head.

Harold glanced up and saw that the shadow was made by a
large crow flying high overhead. The early rising moon had caught its shape and
cast it on the ground. This gave Harold a sense of relief, but he realized that
any plans to continue fishing were wasted. It was too late.

A grunting noise behind him caused him to jump up, leaving
his camp shovel in the dirt. He grabbed at the first weapon he saw - the stick
jammed through the scarecrow. He jerked it free and saw the source of the noise
- a wild East Texas boar. A dangerous animal indeed.

It was a big one. Black and angry-looking, with eyes that
caught the moonlight and burned back at him like coals. The beast's tusks shone
like wet knives, and Harold knew those tusks could tear him apart as easily as
he might rip wet construction paper with his hands.

The boar turned its head from side to side and snorted,
taking in the boy's smell. Harold tried to maintain his ground. But then the
moonlight shifted in the boar's eyes and made them seem even brighter than
before. Harold panicked and began running toward the farmhouse.

He heard the boar running behind him. It sounded strange as
it came, as if it were chasing him on padded feet. Harold reached the front
door of the farmhouse and grabbed the door handle. In one swift motion, he
swung inside and pushed it shut. The boar rammed the door, and the house
rattled like dry bones.

The door had a bar lock, and Harold pushed it into place. He
leaped back, holding the stick to use as a spear. The ramming continued for a
moment, then everything went quiet.

Harold eased to a window and looked out. The boar was
standing at the edge of the woods near where he had first seen it. The
scarecrow was gone, and in its place there was only the post that had held it.

Harold was confused. How had the boar chased him to the
house and returned to its original position so quickly? And what had happened
to the scarecrow? Had the boar, thinking the scarecrow was a person, torn it
from the post with its tusks?

The boar turned and disappeared into the woods. Harold
decided to give the animal time to get far away He checked his watch, then
waited a few minutes. While he waited, he looked around.

The house was a wreck. There were overturned chairs, a
table, and books. Near the fireplace, a hatchet was stuck in a large log.
Everything was coated in dust and spider webs, and the stairs that twisted up
to the second landing were shaky and rotten.

Harold was about to return to his fishing gear and head for
the bike when he heard a scraping noise. He wheeled around for a look. The wind
was moving a clutch of weeds, causing them to scrape against the window. Harold
felt like a fool. Everything was scaring him.

Then the weeds moved from view and he discovered they
weren't weeds at all. In fact, they looked like sticks... or fingers.

Hadn't the scarecrow had sticks for fingers?

That was ridiculous. Scarecrows didn't move on their own.

Then again, Harold thought as he looked out the window at
the scarecrow's post, where was it?

The doorknob turned slowly. The door moved slightly, but the
bar lock held. Harold could feel the hair on the back of his neck bristling.
Goose bumps moved along his neck and shoulders.

The knob turned again.

Then something pushed hard against the door. Harder.

Harold dropped the stick and wrenched the hatchet from the
log.

At the bottom of the door was a space about an inch wide,
and the moonlight shining through the windows made it possible for him to see
something scuttling there - sticks, long and flexible.

They poked through the crack at the bottom of the door,
tapped loudly on the floor, and stretched, stretched, stretched farther into
the room. A flat hand made of hay, vines, and sticks appeared. It began to
ascend on the end of a knotty vine of an arm, wiggling its fingers as it rose.
It climbed along the door, and Harold realized, to his horror and astonishment,
that it was trying to reach the bar lock.

Harold stood frozen, watching the fingers push and free the
latch.

Harold came unfrozen long enough to leap forward and chop
down on the knotty elbow, striking it in two. The hand flopped to the floor and
clutched so hard at the floorboards that it scratched large strips of wood from
them. Then it was still.

But Harold had moved too late. The doorknob was turning again. Harold darted
for the stairway, bolted up the staircase. Behind him came a scuttling sound.
He was almost to the top of the stairs when the step beneath him gave way and
his foot went through with a screech of nails and a crash of rotten lumber.