Thing

The Charlottes live in a quaint farmhouse with peeling white paint. They are surrounded by grassy fields and forest, their only neighbors a married couple around their age (Mr. and Mrs. Hermann) living just across the street—although just across the street is at the end of a snaking dirt driveway a little over a mile long, and subsequently another similarly lengthy driveway.

The vast fields are ideal for crops, as implied by a barn with nothing but a well and a bit of storage inside and an empty chicken coop built alongside the farmhouse, but the Charlottes are no farmers. What the Charlottes are are private people, and the seclusion the farmhouse’s location offers is advantageous to this.

Missy stays at home while Grant works, only going out for groceries and doctor’s visits. They go to Church each Sunday, always the first to arrive and the first to leave. Mostly, though, Missy stays home. Nobody wonders why. 

Talk goes around, but rarely anything more than concerns (both sincere and insincere) for her wellbeing; a woman really shouldn’t be cooped up so, it isn’t good for the spirit, the mind, the health. 

Because nobody can blame Missy for her disposition. I can’t imagine if it happened to me, the other women say (they needn’t whisper, for Missy is never around to hear them). No, their companions reply, I can’t imagine. 

We have no idea, they agree. 

Right now the long, snaking driveway is being traversed by none other than Mary Hermann. On Wednesdays she and Missy have tea and catch up. Mary worries about Missy; she doesn’t let up a whole bunch, and Mary fears what she is holding back is growing deep within her. It certainly cannot be good for the spirit, the mind, or the health.

Missy always has the tea hot and ready when Mary arrives at noon, and they will take it onto the wraparound porch to cautiously sip while nibbling on whatever treat Mary has brought over, if the weather is nice; today it is. Clear skies and fair weather. Today Mary has brought with her a saran-wrapped loaf of banana bread, which is still warm. Missy will take one look, laugh her timid laugh, and say thank you, but she doesn’t need any more inches around her waist. Mary will take one look at Missy and say she absolutely does. 

While Mary is walking along the dirt road, Missy is coming down the basement stairs. She has a tray in her hands brandishing several slices of moldy bread and two devilishly ripe bananas. The bananas smell like what they really are, which is rotten, so Missy breathes through her mouth until she can get it over with and scurry back up the stairs. She is conscious to avoid the loose nail sticking out of the unfinished floor at the foot of the stairs.

Missy’s lower half is hidden from her view by the tray, so she miscalculates the location of the next step and misses it. This sends the tray flying and Missy forward. It only takes the skipping of one step to miss all the rest; Missy tumbles down the stairs. She cries out each time she hears something thump or snap, although it happens too fast for her to identify precisely what is being injured. She doesn’t have time to dwell on the particulars, anyhow, because she lands at the foot of the stairs head first, the sharp nail poking out of the floor piercing into her left eye. 

The tray lands (miraculously without spilling a single item on its surface) at the foot of the cage, where the Thing has watched this all take place. Normally the woman opens the door places the tray inside, then quickly shuts it, but Thing realizes it can reach its hand through the gaps of the crate, once used for a dog the Charlottes buried in the fields several years back, and shovel the spoiled food into its mouth, brown peels and all. When all has been eaten, it notices a strange shiny object on the tray that has never been there before. Thing recognizes it as the object the woman uses before and after opening and closing the door. Perhaps, Thing considers as it takes the object into one grimy hand, it can use it in such a fashion.

It takes several attempts, but eventually a click is heard and the door of the cage creaks open. Wary at first, Thing slowly crawls out, stopping briefly next to the gurgling form of the woman, and then crawls past her and begins ascending the stairs.

It takes all of Thing’s strength to reach the seventh stair, and it has to pause and regain vitality before it can conquer the final six. At the top, it reaches up to the knob to turn it, and in doing so the door swings open. 

It blinks at the sudden brightness, the freshness of the air. It crawls to a transparent square in the wall, which is allowing the brightness in, and it stretches to look through.

The colors, the life of the outer world bring tears to Thing’s eyes. It opens its mouth and croaks, and is startled when a fog forms on the transparent square. It stumbles away from the window. Then its attention is drawn to the door, a rectangle with a knob like the one that let it out of the basement. Will this one, Thing wonders, let it into the vivacious outer world seen through the transparent square? 

It tries the knob and the door opens inwardly. Thing lurches forward and slams into a transparent rectangle, and sees that there is another knob to turn. Then the glass swings open (outwardly) and Thing is let out into the outer world.

Once it takes one breath, it gasps for more, like a thirsty dog lapping up a puddle. It cannot get enough of the euphoria filling its lungs. A breeze tickles its skin. The rustling of the green things and the singing of unseen creatures is blissfully overwhelming to ears accustomed to pure silence. Thing crawls forward, and at the edge of the wooden platform tumbles down things similar to the steps that brought it up here, only there are fewer here. Just three.

On the ground it rolls onto its back and stares up into the endless above. It reaches out with hands and feet but it seems too far to grasp, and it can only look in wonder. 

After a while it becomes dizzy, so it reluctantly rolls back over and returns to crawling. It crawls through the green stuff, following alongside a long, snaking thing. Thing wonders where it leads; from here it looks like it very well might go on forever. 

As Mary is approaching the house she notices something peculiar; the front door is ajar. With what it takes to draw Miss Missy out of that farmhouse, even to get the mail left on the porch, Mary experiences an uneasiness she tries to suppress. That doesn’t last long, however, because just then her eyes are drawn to the thing crawling towards her.

Mary screams and drops the loaf pan. Without another thought she lifts her skirts and breaks into a sprint down the very path she came down. She doesn’t look back until she is safely inside her own home with the telephone clutched in white-knuckled hands, a police officer on the other line.

When the police arrive they discover the child on its back by the side of the long dirt driveway, unconscious but breathing steadily. The same can not be said for one Melissa Charlotte, who is found face down in a puddle of her own blood.

Grant Charlotte makes a startling confession. Whether or not he would’ve done so with a sober mind will never be known, for he is discovered quite hammered in the local pub he is an unloved regular in, coming to The Barrel every afternoon after work.

What everyone knows is that Grant and Missy once had a little boy named Charlie; he had been just a baby when they moved to town, and what was known of him was through word of mouth. Charlie had been seven when he wandered into the barn and tumbled down the well, landing head first at the stony bottom and dying instantly. 

Grant came home to find Missy standing over the well and looking down. She would never say, but he was sure the story she told the police was a different story than that which had actually occurred. Grant is adamant that Missy herself killed the boy, that it was no accident, after all. Who could be sure though, after all these years? Especially given what Grant goes on to reveal next. 

From then on life was darker than it had ever been. Missy stopped leaving the house. It had been dark in places, but where there had been shadows before there was now an abyss. Grant’s drinking habit became a true problem (this the police infer on their own, for Grant himself won’t admit as much) and his temper that once stopped at the flush in his cheeks and rise in his voice extended to his fists, which went out to his wife. She took it all, he says, like she expected it. Like she knew she deserved it. For what she done, he says. 

Then Missy got pregnant again. For a while, a light seemed to have been rekindled—or introduced. This was known around town; Mary Hermann and several church ladies had thrown her a baby shower. Halfway through the pregnancy, she miscarried. She subsequently drew into herself more than ever, and little was heard or seen of Missy Charlotte save by Grant or Mary Hermann. 

They said she miscarried, that is. What really happened was that Missy attempted to get rid of the baby, using prescription medication from the medicine cabinet behind the bathroom mirror. Only, she hadn’t taken enough, or it had been the wrong kind, because several weeks later she gave birth—a month and a half early. 

Grant describes the baby as a misshapen, unnatural sort of thing. It had a cleft lip, a somewhat sunken head, and several webbed fingers and toes. Once it was out of her, Missy went to strangle it, and Grant subsequently strangled her until she agreed she wouldn’t do it again.

Missy was convinced the thing (that’s what they call it, the both of them) was some form of punishment from God. She wanted to get rid of it, to abolish the curse. (What she didn’t say, Grant believes, was what the punishment was for. He is quite certain she believed she was being punished for killing their former son, and if that was the case Grant believes she well deserved whatever He had to dish out. (At this point he snickers and remarks that he believes she got just that in the end.)

Grant had loved the boy Charlie. Sure, he was his father, after all. He was one good thing that came between the two of them. If it hadn’t been for Charlie, Grant wouldn’t have stuck around for as long as he did. He certainly wouldn’t have married the bitch. He was a dumb little thing who loved all he saw and fetched his Daddy a beer when he asked him to; this is how Grant Charlotte describes his son with a sleazy smile on his face. 

After Charlie died, the good between Grant and Missy went with him. Then came the thing, and Grant admits he doesn’t feel much of anything besides revulsion for it. It isn’t like Charlie, he says. He hadn’t wanted Charlie either, but this is different. He came around to the first boy; not the second (the second is a boy, he says, if you could call it that). 

Because if Grant Charlotte agreed with his wife on any account, it is that this thing was cursed. A curse. From God, from the devil, he doesn’t know, but it sure wasn’t no blessing (he snickers again). And if it is a curse, it sure as hell isn’t his. No, he says, this was Missy’s punishment, and she would take it—did. This is her’s. 

Grant doesn’t like to be home, with either of them. He spends more time at work than he needs to, and more time at the pub than he wants to. Meanwhile Missy takes—took care of it. Grant doesn’t know just how she went about this or what the thing would even look like now. He left it all to her. Sometimes he saw her taking the scraps of food, or the stuff gone bad, downstairs and he knew she was feeding it. When the basement door opens there’s a stench, so they always keep it shut and locked unless Missy is going down. 

At this point in this hideous recollection Grant’s eyes become soberingly wide (an illusion, mind you). “The door,” he mutters. “She left the goddamn door open, I’ll bet you. When I go home I’m going to have to smell that stink.” This is the last thing he says before his eyes droop and he slumps forward, head banging on the bar counter. He will wake up in a cell with a bulging goose egg on his forehead and no one will feel sorry for him.

While Mary Hermann is hotfooting back to her house, both shoes abandoned at different locations, Thing is crawling towards the spot where it first spotted her. The beautiful woman dropped something, it sees, and it sniffs as it comes closer. Although it has just eaten its stomach rumbles at the marvelous aroma emitting from the pan. It’s warm and sweet and something Thing has never smelled before. 

It tears at the seal covering the pan, long, dirty nails easily ripping into the plastic. With this barrier out of the way it lifts a handful of the mushy stuff to its mouth, considers it, and then begins shoveling. It scarfs all the mushy stuff down until all that is left is crumbs, and then it eats those, too. This is when it rolls over onto its back, belly more full than it remembers it ever having been, and stares into the endless above until it dozes off. 

Mary Hermann agrees to meet with the boy several days later, although reluctantly. The fright she experienced upon seeing the child was like nothing she had ever known; she had a feeling of utter despair, like she was sure the thing coming at her was going to kill her if she didn’t drop everything and run—so she had.

The police who discovered the boy understood immediately why she reacted as such. The child, who is now around five years old (according to the timeline they gathered surrounding the death of the Charlie boy and the supposed miscarriage) exhibits all of the abnormalities Grant described. What he failed to describe, however (and perhaps had not known, given his willful disconnect from all that went on in the basement of his home), was that the child was also covered in his own filth. Layers and layers of the stuff, both dried and wet with recency. More of the filth was found in heaps in the dog crate and seeping out of the sides of it—later they’d find several more such dog crates filled with gunk stuffed in the barn. It appeared they changed them out when they got too full or too filthy—just how much was too much is impossible to discern with a sane or sober mind. 

When Mary sees the boy again, she is almost underwhelmed at the sight of him. He has been washed and dressed, his nails and hair clipped and snipped—and perhaps the paper gown he is wearing is his first ever outfit. With all that filth washed off of him (despite the horrible rash that formed because of it) he looks like what he is; a mere child. And the fact of it brings Mary to tears.

“Hello, sweet thing,” Mary chokes, and approaches the child. Mary isn’t a mother herself, and it pains her terribly, for she was born with the nurturing spirit of one. She wants nothing more than to take the child in her arms but refrains, not only because her hands are full, but she remembers she was been warned against making any advances; the child is likely to be weary. The way she was feeling about coming here, she hadn’t thought she would find any trouble in this.

Thing perks up. The beautiful woman spoke its name, she knows its name! Its chest thumps at the sight of her; its heart soars at the sight (and smell) of what she is holding. The warm, sweet mushy stuff, it knows that smell. It didn’t before, but it does now. 

The beautiful woman notices Thing looking at the mushy stuff and mumbles something, but it doesn’t understand. Then she peels back the seal covering it and offers what is inside to Thing. 

The child eats like an animal; it is the only proper way to describe the way he shovels and shovels food into his mouth. Crumbs falls down his gown and he doesn’t seem to notice. He growls while he consumes, saliva dripping down his chin. It is revolting, and Mary thinks it very well may be the loveliest thing she has ever seen.