Trollheart

I stand beside her, not sure how to open a conversation, not even sure if she wants to or will deign to talk with me, a professed unbeliever, as just about everyone in this town is. But the promise of human contact is something I long for, more, as I realise it now, than I had thought. Human. I taste the word, as if its flavour is unfamiliar, strange to me. Human. Somehow, for some reason, I find myself discounting all those I have met and spoken with - if you can call it speaking, when all they say is “He is coming”! - as if somehow not human, or at least, not any more. Even Benny. Even Benny has been got to, and is in some weird way no longer human. Listen to me: I sound like her, I snort to myself, and then realise she is talking to me.

“Weird, isn’t it, Charles?” she says, without turning to face me, her back to me as she seems to gaze over at the ruined park. “You spend all your life looking for conspiracies, making websites, writing blogs, checking footage, and all the time, it’s right here in front of you.”

This is it! I think triumphantly. She knows! She knows what’s happening. Good old Janet! The nut has figured it out. She knows what has happened, she probably knows how and why, and if I know Janet Grissom, which I don’t, she has a plan.

Of course, she is borderline psychotic, but let’s not worry about that now.

“I should have known,” she says, more to herself than me, still not turning around, and I realise now there is something odd about her voice, something … not stuttering, as such, but as if, well, as if she’s having difficulty pronouncing words. I once met a kid who had Down’s Syndrome, and she sort of sounds like him now. Slurred, but not from alcohol or (as far as I know) drug abuse, her voice is flat, toneless, devoid of any emotion. “Charles, it’s so obvious.”

I don’t take offence at the use of my surname. A long time ago, Janet came to the conclusion that the alien invaders (who were definitely here, and had infiltrated the highest levels of government, to the point that when she went to vote she always jeered “Shall I vote for the Pod Man or the Tentacled Queeeblepled?”) had acquired control over humans by usage of their first, or as she called it, Primary, name, and so she never used hers, and never used that of anyone else, always addressing them by their surname. She would probably have called her husband by his surname too, if she was married.

I’m not sure if I should speak now, and I take a moment to wonder how she knows who I am, how she even knows anyone has walked up behind her, when she has not turned around to see me? But I deem it best to keep silent, as she obviously has something to say, and since, at the moment, even if only in my own mind, she is my only ally, I hesitate to interrupt her.

In reality, I realise I just don’t want to be abandoned. I don’t want her to get the hump and walk off if I say the wrong thing, leaving me in this town of … of …

“All my life,” she’s saying, and it’s very clear now she’s talking mostly to herself, as if a younger version of herself were standing in front of her, and I just happen to be in earshot “I’ve worried - been convinced - that aliens are here. You remember my T-shirt? Look at it.”

And she turns to me.

I feel a scream bubbling up inside me, but it won’t come out. My voice is silent, my scream is stillborn, I feel the world wheel around me and a sense of dizziness takes me, coupled with the most violent nausea.

I see now why Janet’s speech has been slurred. It’s not, as I had originally thought, due to tiredness, like everyone else I’ve met so far. No. I realise that it’s very hard to speak properly when your face is disfigured by what looks like the word “coming” traced in deep red and black through, from below the nose to the chin, travelling across like an obscene badge of honour from one side of her face to the other. Her lips are split, her cheeks torn. Folds of flesh flap at the sides of her head, reminding me of a fish I once saw gutted, all red and glistening. Blood is running freely down what remains of her face. She seems not to heed it; perhaps she does not feel it.

Her teeth are broken and crooked where the knife has carved that hateful word, and as I drag my unwilling eyes higher, I see that two roughly parallel lines trace their way from the top of her forehead, passing through her left eye, which is red and bulbous and dripping. Just above them, where her eyebrows should be, another red line bridges the two, making what I suppose is a passable effort at a “h”, when you consider the effort it must have taken to have carved it out of flesh. The right eye is similarly marked, but by three horizontal lines joined by one vertical, a reasonable approximation of an “e”. It’s hard to tell really though, as her right eye has fallen completely out, and I’m left staring at raw, red flesh, through which I think I can actually see her skull.

That’s two words, and the third is ripped across her nose, which is hanging loose. Seemingly completely oblivious of the horrible wounds that have been inflicted on her face - I have to assume by her own hand, then - she smiles, forcing the grotesque, broken lips apart. Although she asked - demanded, really - that I do so, I transfer my gaze to her chest automatically: anything not to have to stare into that awful, awful mockery of a face. The calm, serene face of a smooth-skinned alien looks unconcernedly back at me, underneath it the words THEY ARE HERE.

“They are here!” she spits, literally, the words out: two or three teeth eject from her mouth amid a spray of spittle, blood and other stuff I don’t wish to think about. “They are here!” she repeats, rather unfortunately shaking her head, which dislodges some loose flesh. It falls to the ground like the leaves from a tree in autumn, and she pays them as much mind. “How could they be here?” she asks me, a quizzical tone in her voice. “How? Tell me that!” I feel like she is going to advance on me, touch me, and for all the pity I feel for her, I do not want her anywhere near me. I take a step back. She does not advance. “How could they be here?” she asks, “when He is coming? How is that possible? What a fool I’ve been!” She snorts in derision, which has the unfortunate consequence of shaking what remains of her nose loose. She takes as much notice of it as she has the various other wounds on what was once a human face.

I wish I could be sure, but given how ruined her mouth is I can’t. It looks to me as if her destroyed lips are mouthing one word, which gives the lie to what she’s saying to me. It’s just one word, and I wish I could obey, comply, if that’s what she’s saying, because right at this moment it’s about the only thing that makes sense.

Run.

But I stay where I am, as if gripped in some invisible vise, as if something is going to happen, something important and certainly very terrible, and someone or something wants me to bear witness to it, won’t let me turn away, won’t let me take heed and put into action the wordless instruction, the prayer, the warning I fancy I see on Janet Grissom’s bleeding and torn lips.

No, no: there is a show to be seen. Be patient. Here is some music…

The sound her mouth makes, however, the words she actually forms, that I can hear, are “I waited too long, Charles. I waited too long … Rob.” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her call someone by their first name, certainly the first time she’s called me by mine. I feel, somewhere deep down, in a place that has been closed off to me, that I can’t access, that this is a cry for help, a confirmation that she is being made speak words she does not believe.

“I waited too long,” she repeats, a sad, mad look in the one eye that remains, its ravaged, bleeding pupil unblinking. The eye is wet. She may be crying, or it may just be all the blood and goop that’s spilling from it. She turns her back on me again. I almost scream with relief, and feel vaguely ashamed, and selfish. “Don’t make the same mistake I did, Rob,” she counsels me. “Don’t wait to accept Him into your heart. You have no choice. He is coming.”

Then she steps out into the road, directly in front of a large semi truck.

I’ve never even seen a traffic accident before, and I have never seen anyone die. It’s surreal. Janet literally explodes across the front of the truck, her skin, her bones, her exposed insides exploding through in a burst of dark colour and a horrible plopping sound, spread across the highway, some of what was a woman, a human being, only moments ago, splashing back on me like rain. Repulsed, I take a step back, a wordless cry still struggling for release in my throat. The truck does not even stop, just sounds its air horn as I watch, horror-stricken, and continues on its way.

“Now, sir! Step back there if you don't mind!” A heavy hand is suddenly on my shoulder and I start, realising in amazement that I am suddenly surrounded by men in uniform. Dimly, I perceive them as police, their bright yellow hi-viz jackets slick with rain, their faces dripping too, as if they too are crying, but these are not men who cry easily. You can see that as the waning sun strikes sharp reflections off their mirror shades.

Cockroaches...

“Restricted area, Sir.” The cop in charge is consulting a notebook and nodding to a colleague. I don't see what the colleague does, but he disappears from my line of sight. “I'll have to ask you not to cross the cordon. Can’t have anyone getting in the way when He comes, can we.” His frown deepens, as if a suspicion has formed in his mind. “Didn't you see the police tape?” he asks. It’s almost a challenge. How could you not see it? It’s all over the place!

As if shaken awake from a dream, I now see that my left arm has a twisting yellow strand of plastic tape adhering to it, and behind and in front of me is more of this tape, marking out an area which protects the entrance to the carnival and, more importantly, seems to roughly encompass the thing I cannot see, but can feel, and have been drawn towards. I had obviously blundered through the cordon, unaware even of its existence, as my feet took me down towards the thing.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018