One Night in July

Content Warning: Language, Gore

It was half past ten and Ronald Gibbs was thinking about closing for the night when the woman with tattered overalls and blood-stained tee-shirt stumbled into Ron's Diner holding an infant and looking like she’d seen something fierce. It was the second of July, the time of year when neighbors set off firecrackers at 2 AM and the smell of burgers and dogs sizzled over charcoal grills filling the air with good, old-fashioned patriotism. Sure, you’ll have your occasional accident or two, fireworks are dangerous, but with a little fun comes a little risk. And who doesn’t like a little risk?

Why, just the other day a young Jimmy Neilson set off a bottle rocket that nearly took off three of his fingers for Christ’s sake; I know ‘cause I saw. Had he let go of the damned thing he would have been all kinds of fine, but he just held it there. It crackled a bit, then the sparks spilled out white hot. They flickered over his flesh for what felt like forever. I heard Mrs. Dansbury yell, “LET IT GO, JIMMY! LET IT GO!” But before he could the rocket burst into a bazillion tiny pieces that twisted and spiraled everywhere. It was a remarkable thing to watch. He screamed bloody murder down Bayonet Drive three-quarters of a mile until his voice gave out. I phoned Mrs. Neilson some time later. She reassured me her boy was fine, even joked the doctor almost amputated two of his fingers before thanking me for my concern. One could say he had two angels looking after him that day. I say he got off plain lucky. And part of me still believes she was only half kiddin' about the amputations. I can still hear that blood-curdling scream of his ringing in my ears. 

It had been a blistering summer that year in ‘95, damn was it hot. But somehow it was worse than that. The summer of ‘95 in Buxton, West Virginia was downright miserable. It was on par with central Texas which was experiencing heatwaves that peaked at 109 degrees, two time zones over. And the local radio broadcast was warning of yet another heatwave the following week. But on that fretful evening of July the second, the weather weighed the least bit heavy on my mind. 

“Why don’t you head home, Kane,” Gibbs hollered, “ain’t nothin’ to do now but mop the floor.” 

He turned, and through the swinging doors rolled out an old slosh bucket and tethered mop. 

That’s when the little bell above the door jingled, letting in a blanket of warmth that still makes my skin crawl. 

I was finishing off a cold one, you see, when I turned toward the noise. I first noticed the beads of sweat running down the woman’s cheeks, followed them down her neck, then into the crack of her breasts. She stood there in the doorframe, suspended in time, heaving uncontrollably. I leaned forward to get a better look, partly believing she was a ghost or a figment of my imagination. 

Is that blood? I thought to myself. 

“Close the door, would you?” Gibbs started as he shot around the corner, “You’re letting all the—”.

I put my hand up to cut him off and we watched as the woman staggered in. With a faint gasp she mouthed, “Hel-p…Hel-p me…”. All I could make out were the ‘puh’ sounds and with that she fell to her knees in a wheezing fit. I bumped off my stool as if someone lit my ass ablaze and took to the floor with her. 

“Pull her in Kane, grab her. “ said Gibbs. “Shut the door and pull the blinds.” Gibbs limped over with a chair. I helped the woman stand long enough for him to set it before she collapsed, all-the-while holding the infant firmly against her chest. 

“Hold her steady.” I said, grunting. 

I closed the door, pulled the blinds and ran to get ice water and a cold rag. I came back in a hurry and locked eyes with Gibbs. 

“She’s out,” he said, “I’ll hold her here as you fan her down. Maybe she’ll come to.”

“Grab the baby,” I said, “I’m moving her flat to the floor.” 

We moved as quickly as two old men could. The tile floor was chilly and before I began with the cold, damp rag, the woman came to. 

“Gibbs, look—“ I said as I held out my hand, “Water, quick!” 

She sat up slowly and Gibbs handed me the glass of ice water. 

“Try this.” I told her, jingling some ice.

She was still a little dazed, but took the glass. She took a sip, another one, swished it about her mouth and swallowed, then downed the whole thing in large heaping gulps. Suckling on a piece of ice, the woman looked up at us. She had emerald green eyes. 

“The baby isn’t mine.” she said holding the glass to her temple. Then she started suckling again. 

“What’s your name, miss?” Gibbs asked. 

The woman’s face gave way to more color than the molten red she burst through the door with. Now that I was close enough, I began wondering who this stranger was. Nobody I’ve seen before, that’s for sure. And no woman in this town wore clothes as fancy or jewelry as sparkly. I looked down at her tattered overalls that were torn this way and that, and I had a hunch it wasn’t a new fad. Someone or something had done that, and I felt my blood run cold with fear. 

“Margaret,” she said, “Margaret Heath.” she suckled some more. 

Gibbs and I exchanged glances. 

Just then the wind kicked up and scattered rain droplets tapped gently on the windows. A current of air hit and nearly ripped the door off its hinges as the thing slammed open with a raucous BANG! Margaret kicked up with putrid horror as the wind howled through the open door. She flew upright so fast it seemed as though someone threw the switch and old Sparky was there paying a visit. I jammed the door shut with a bit of work, just in time to hear Gibbs ask the woman about the child. 

“Now,” he said, “was I hearin’ you right when you was sayin’ the baby wasn’t yours, or do I have corn in my ears?”

“I don’t have children.” she said, swallowing hard. 

I didn’t like that answer. And looking over at Gibbs I could tell any signs of hope were quickly fading to dread. Not hers? I thought. Then, whose was it?

“That town—,” Margaret interjected, “about eight miles north. What town is that? There—there weren’t any signs.”

She looked at Gibbs and I again with those sharp green eyes. 

I looked at Gibbs, then back at her. The pitter patter of rain and cars hacking through thick puddles of oily black water breaking the silence. 

Gibbs leaned forward, still holding the resting child, and all at once got real serious. 

“You said north?” He gave me a look of concern. I found my face like his, bloodless, without color. 

“That’s where I found it, the baby,” she said, “tucked away on the inside of a fenced in yard. It was just…crying…mercilessly. There were these—these things there, trying to get at it. I couldn’t just leave it there.”

She began to clam up, as if she was reliving that moment again. You could see it, you could see it in her eyes like an old classic horror flick. 

“I did the right thing, didn’t I?” Margaret swiveled her head from me to Gibbs and back in frantic confusion. It was at that moment I realized Margaret Heath was not a woman, but a girl no older than my granddaughter. 

“You’re—you’re just a kid…” I heard myself mutter. 

“Seventeen.” she said as she massaged her temples in circles and began to stand. 

“Easy now,” Gibbs said sternly. We both hooked in around an arm and pulled her up slowly. She weighed practically nothing. We sat her down in the chair and gave her a moment to settle. 

“Did you see anything?” Gibbs said with a stark look. His eyes locked in. He knelt down close, eye level with the girl. The child, still motionless, rested soundly on the soft, button-backed booth. Come to think of it, neither of us had checked the little fellow since they barged through the door some time ago. 

She paused. Her eyes were doing that dance again. Margaret thought for a while and said, “Yeah…I sure did, mister. Felt it, too.” And with that the life poured out of her. 

I had only seen Gibbs shaken one other time. It was August, a few years back. Still remember it like yesterday, though. At the time we were having a few beers down at Jerry’s, the local bar. Turns to me and says his dog got loose, ran away, the crazy mutt. Started cursing the thing up and down. And when Gibbs gets going he gets going. Anyway, then he gets real anxious, you see, like when you tell the doctor something don’t feel right in your insides. Told me he went looking for it up north in Denton. “It was strange,” he told me, “Like somethin’ got hold of the town and squeezed the life out of it.” He only told me bits of what he saw, I could tell he wasn’t entirely sure of himself. Never found the dog, either—just a mangled bunch of bones not too far into town. “Could’ve been anyone’s dog,” he said, “But I reckon what I saw hadn’t come from a dog at all. There was this stuff around it. Looked like drool—fresh, nasty drool. And those bones—those bones didn’t come from no dog.” He was pretty drunk at the time, but there was something in the way he said it that makes me uneasy to this day. Call it intuition, call it a hunch, call it whatever the hell you’d like—I haven’t been around Denton since, no one has. And for what it’s worth I’d like to keep it that way. 

I was just about to pick up the child when Gibbs told me off. I had a feeling he and the girl knew something I didn’t, so I stopped dead. I backed off like he said. He tussled over to the kitchen and grabbed a pair of tongs. He looked at Margaret. 

“You sure that’s a baby?” he asked lowly. Before she could answer he rattled off another, “How’d you get that blood there, on your shirt?” 

She looked down, confused-like, in a way you’d act if you were told a spider was on you. Most of the blood was soaking near her ribs, just below her left breast. As she twisted the shirt to get a better look, new blotches formed on the white cotton in real time. She was bleeding, bad. 

“I—I don’t understand,” she said faintly, “I—I must’ve gotten caught…by the fence grabbing the baby.” 

She didn’t seem certain. And by the look of it, was losing lots of blood. Margaret lifted her shirt slowly and Gibbs and I had a look. 

“My God.” Gibbs said quietly. 

He saw it right away, but it took me a second or two to realize what it was. Gibbs stammered back with the tongs.

I got closer, like a moth to a flame. The jagged edges looked painful, it—it was a tiny little bite pattern, no bigger than a golf ball in size. Purple and red oozed out of it like tree sap, bubbling up and foaming down her abdomen. The blood vessels leading away from the sore popped with a dark blue tinge. What in Gods green earth—?

“Everyone get back, dammit, stand back!” Gibbs yelled, “Kane, grab the 12 gauge, do it now!”

He cleared the table from between the booth cushions where the baby had been lying, careful not to bump it. I walked in quickly with the 12 and gathered myself alongside him. I looked over at Margaret, who was quiet and slumped in the chair, I assumed she conked out. But I was wrong. Margaret Heath was dead. 

Gibbs and I exchanged glances. It was then I felt the cold AC on the nape of my neck, I’d been glossy with sweat and shaking like a leaf. I held the gun steady in my arms, not knowing if I’d use it or lose it. Dammit to Christ on a Sunday, I thought, leave it to me to stay past closin’. But I’m glad Gibbs wasn’t alone; glad I wasn’t alone.

“You reckon it’s a—a zombie baby or somethin’,” I said. I was only half kidding, but the sarcasm didn’t rub off that way. It felt like we were in the confines of Hell. 

“This ain’t no zombie,” Gibbs whispered, “Cannibals. Sure-as-shit, flesh-eatin’, no good, rotten CANNIBALS!” he hissed.

Just then the thin sheet that held the baby, or demon, or whatever it was, began rocking side to side. It looked like a tiny cocoon awaiting its final form. It started growling. You could see the arms and legs begin to flail in maddening patterns. We were frozen to the tile, watching with horror. The arthritis in my knees and ankles gave way to trembles as the rain belted harder against the walls. Streaks of bolted lightning echoed with loud boisterous claps of bangs and booms. I was close to letting off a big bang myself, a brown one, in my pants—but I held it together. 

“Cock that thing, Kane,” said Gibbs, “Get ready—“

“W-Where should I shoot it?” I asked, trembling. I was hesitant, but willing to fire when told. My grip was some kind of sweaty, the gun practically swimming in my hands. I held it tighter—the whites of my knuckles shown through my waxy skin; thumping heartbeats in my ear like a snare drum. I thought of my wife. What she would be thinking watching her old man approaching an infant with a shotgun pointed at its head. She wouldn’t understand, I thought to myself, she couldn’t. When the time comes and I’m six feet under, this very night will be buried with me—you can bet your sweet ass on that one. 

“Shoot it right here.” he said slowly. He turned to me, stone-cold, and raised a finger to a point between his eyes and notched his thumb like a trigger. I nodded, shit-scared. He winked, then turned with the tongs and peeled back the cocoon-like linen. The thing kept struggling, waving about frantically as it had been.

That’s when the rain stopped. 

What I heard and saw next came straight from a nightmare. 

Gibbs tore the sheet from the child-like creature like a band-aid. 

I lowered the gun and joined Gibbs up by the booth, glaring at the little creep show of horror. It was crunching down on something hard—grinding down with its strange, serrated teeth on what appeared to be its own leg bone. Its foot had been gnawed off like a half-eaten chicken wing and what’s worse is it was working its little mouth past the ankle joint to the knee. It—it was eating itself. Too hungry to feel the pain of self-cannibalization. And that's if it felt anything at all! How bizarre, I thought, how truly bizarre. 

Gibbs nudged at my shoulder and brought me back. I looked over at him still feeling as though I were in a horror film. 

He muttered, “When I holler, shoot the fucker in the head.”

I nodded again and this time my body went numb. I held the barrel less than five feet from it and knelt down to steady my wobbly legs. I took aim. Opened my right eye, closed the left. Ready as I'd ever be. 

Gibbs let out a monstrous roar, slamming his foot hard on the tile over and over. He made one hell of a racket.

As for me, I felt the blowback of the shot not long after. Sent me back some but I kept hold of her. Clobbered it right there, between the eyes. Its brains splattered like grape jelly and, well, that was that. 

It took a full days work to clean up the mess, and we agreed on burying the bodies out back. My back was in knots for a week after that. Never did call the police, either. That was Gibbs’s doin’—didn’t have it in him to open that can of worms. Besides, an episode like that, at our age, was best swept under the rug anyway. 

I still have dreams about that late night in July. More so about the girl than anything. Call it crazy but I hardly remember much about the gunshot, happened so fast. Just kind of blotted it out a while back. I prefer it that way. No, it’s the girl who sticks in my mind these days. Never found out where she came from or what she was doing in a town like Denton, and as ridiculous as it may sound I couldn’t care less. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think of her from time to time. I’ve come to care about her in some distant way, sometimes leaving flowers over her burial behind the diner—that’s been a more recent thing. Maybe it’s the guilt, I don’t know. But one thing I do know is: there hasn’t been one shred of guilt over what I did to that little demon bastard, not one. In a way it felt like revenge—revenge for Margaret Heath, the girl who clawed her way out of Denton in tattered clothing, doing the noble thing—what she deemed was right. I’m glad I pumped it full of lead. I’m glad I got revenge for Margaret. And revenge is a dish best served cold, I suppose.