Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz Read Free

and disappeared into the darkness.
    Amanda couldn’t breathe. Something horrible was
happening, and the cloud had something to do with it. She pushed
herself forward, ignoring her instincts—which were telling
her to run upstairs and hide—and glanced out of the window
just in time to witness Douglas West’s demise.
    He was doubled over in the middle of the garden— her garden—and was violently trembling, the way a dog
might just before a particularly nasty shit. Amanda stifled her
screams as she watched. Douglas’s mouth opened wide; wider than
was physically possible. His jaw must have dislocated, and it hung
down a few inches below the rest of his face, swinging from
side-to-side as the pain racked him. Then, a torrent of those things spewed from his mouth. In that moment, his eyes rolled back into
place, and he seemed to realize something was not right. Hundreds–perhaps thousands—of the things hit the grass and scampered away in every direction. Amanda was paralyzed. Her legs
gave out, and she hit the kitchen floor with a meaty thump .
    She cried. The water that she greedily finished a moment
before threatened to reappear. Where had this nightmare come from?
How could this ...
    She had to call her mother. She clambered to her feet,
angry with herself for being so weak. Although it was almost
impossible to get her legs to work in tandem, she staggered to the
telephone and snatched up the handset. For a moment, the number
evaded her. It was ridiculous for she had called that same fucking
number every day for the last three years. She took a deep breath,
allowed the temporary amnesia to pass, and sighed as she keyed in the
number. Pushing the handset to her ear, she prayed for the voice of
her mother to appear.
    Two rings ...
    Three ...
    “Hello?”
    Amanda could have burst into another bout of hysterics,
but it was not the time. “Mom, thank God. Are you okay? Is the
door locked?”
    The silence that followed was enough to send Amanda over
the edge, and she leaned forward as her stomach, full of water, gushed into her mouth,
which she opened to let the clear vomit hit the
tiles. In her ear, her mother said something about the garage;
something about being stuck in the garage with another man.
    Amanda wiped the spittle from her lips and chin before
attempting to speak. “Mom, who is that? Where did he come from?”
    “He was stuck, out on the road,” her mother
replied. “He looked like he needed help. He doesn’t look
well, Amanda. Not well, at all.”
    Amanda screamed down the phone. “Mom, you have to
get away from him. Get into the house and lock the fucking door!”
    A muted voice said something, and then she heard the
sound of her mother responding. It sounded, to Amanda, like “Stay
back , ” or, “Get back , ” though it was
muffled and incoherent.
    “Mom, get to the house. Leave the sick man where
he is and get—”
    The phone went dead, leaving Amanda screaming to
herself. Her head pounded with the beginnings of a violent migraine.
She dropped the phone and watched as it swung left and right,
clattering against the wall. In the background, the television
reiterated the importance of remaining indoors, and that the cloud
had something to do with everything that was happening.
    No shit! Amanda thought.
    She stumbled into the living room and fell to her knees
in front of the TV. The empty studio had been replaced with a
darkened room. It looked like the entire production team had
gathered, though obviously it was too much of a good story to stop
filming. The camera was capturing everything, and although it was
gloomy in the room, several figures could be seen moving around,
hastily blockading doors. At the far end of the room, the female
anchor was being soothed by an elderly man. A face suddenly filled
the screen. It was so close to the camera that Amanda could make out
a thick arrangement of nasal-hairs, despite the darkness. The face
started to whisper.
    “We have confirmation that the