Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON Barking Sands

On vacation.

Hawaii. Where fat, brown people treat flowers like Jesus.

All us.

Mommy. Daddy. Grampa Don.

My brother who came out of Mommy with less brain than a cat. He smiles at everything. I call him Kitty. Daddy thinks it’s funny. Kitty can only open his mouth and stare and shake. Like there’s a maraca inside him.

We rented a Toyota Tercel.

‘Cheapest car worth dog-fuck.’ That’s Grampa Don talking. Mommy hates it when he says dirty stuff. But he’s always drinking beer. Loses track of where his tongue is pointing and just says it. Grampa Don’s always making trouble.

We’re on our way to Barking Sands.

It’s a beach on the southern tip of Kauai. The sand barks there. Big, bald-headed dunes of it chirping and growling like someone is poking it while it sleeps. The wind does it; like a ventriloquist using the grains of sand as its dummy. It’s a very sacred place. They say the ancient tribes are still living on the cliffs way above Barking Sands. I say that inside the Tercel while it bounces over the muddy road. The mud is red and splashes the car so it looks like it has scrapes that are bleeding. Like when Kitty falls down and cries and I just stand and watch him and hope he bleeds to death.

‘There’s no tribes still living,’ says Mommy, eating an ice cream cone I couldn’t finish, making sure it doesn’t drip on the upholstery.

Her tongue moves around it like a red bus going up a twisty road. Daddy breathes in the air and says it hasn’t smelled like this in Los Angeles since cave men went to work in three-piece fur suits.

Grampa Don spits out the window, and the car hops and rocks, having a spaz attack. The Kauai roads feel like the moon. There’s no one going out to Barking Sands but us. It’s getting late and the road is lonely.

It is the moon. Just on earth.

The sky will be dead soon. I feel a little afraid but for no reason.

Kitty looks at me and smiles but sees my face and starts to cry. If I had a knife I’d slash his throat. I imagine his dead body lying face-up, in the casket, suddenly awake. Screaming and trying to get out but making no sound. Muted by the birth defect that gave him a busted speaker. I feel bad for him down there, trapped forever under the earth, stuck in his box, screaming. But he’ll never do anything with his life anyway.

Maybe it’s better to know where he is.

Grampa Don just cut one and all four windows are cranked down. A sweet and sour old-man cloud is sucked out. The blue ocean is starting to seem like a choking face. We’re far from the hotel where we’re staying and I hate Hawaii. Being here with them.

Last night we went to a Luau and I stared at the pig on the long table. He looked alive. But his eyes didn’t move and as I tried to figure out what he was thinking, a big smiling man, in a white apron, cut into the pig with a shiny knife and slid a section of the pig’s body right out, like one of those wooden ball puzzles that’s made of different sections of wood.

He dropped it on my plate and the pig kept staring forward, unable to fight back. The man motioned me to move on with his bloody knife, and began to cut the pig into more pieces, erasing him.

I looked down at the piece of the pig and felt like throwing up.

Later I brought the piece back and tried to put it where it had been on his body; reattaching his flesh. But by then, he was just bones and a head. The eyes were still facing forward and I pet him a little, seeing my own value as no higher than his, and hating people for what they’d done to him.

Then, Daddy came and dragged me through a bunch of tourists with greasy mouths, lining up to watch the torches and grass skirts. I looked back to see the pig being taken away, its bones passing above the crowd, on a tray, like some terrible crown.

‘Barking Sands.’ Mommy is pointing.

Grampa Don is already out of the car and looking for a place to dump garbage. But there isn’t one and he tosses it on the ground saying it will just rot and become a hotel lobby, over time, with enough rain and ‘fucking tourist money’.

He says all the dinosaur bones grew into roads and rental cars after millions of years. He’s had four cans of beer since we left the Coco Palms Hotel, where we’re staying, and he’s unzipped and hosing down a tree-trunk.

His ancient nozzle sprays Corona on everything like some poison Daddy uses back in Los Angeles, to make snails’ heads explode.

Kitty points to a sign that says this is a holy burial ground. He likes words; their shape, worming together to form meaning he doesn’t understand. Grampa reads the sign and keeps sprinkling snail napalm like a punctured can.

‘This place is too fucking humid.’ Grampa Don is wiping his head, like those guys at the 76 station chiselling bugs off the windshield.

Daddy takes pictures even though the sign says no photography ‘cause it’s a holy place and I guess that’s bad. Daddy doesn’t care. Mommy smiles and poses under the big cliffs that go up and up and up. Her dress looks like it belongs in a vase. Kitty is crawling on the sand, chasing our footprints like a rabid bloodhound that needs to be shot in the head. I wish I could get away from them all.

It’s very windy and sand blows, sticking us with pins you can’t see. I cover my eyes and we all lean into the wind. Mommy says we look like arctic explorers going up a snow slope. She wants a happy family. But we aren’t.

I hate these trips. Being together.

Grampa Don takes Kitty’s hand. Daddy takes Mommy’s. A storm fills the sky with black sponges.

Grampa Don lags behind and we all get to the Toyota. It’s starting to rain. Daddy starts the car and the mud is turning into dirty, orange glue that grabs our wheels. They spin.

‘Zzzzzzzzzzzz.’ Kitty sounds like a trapped tyre.

The car is a mad dog chained to a tree. Thunder shakes us. Lightning cuts up the sky. Something is wrong. The sky is not happy or pretty any more. The air smells like dead things and angry wind makes all the plants and flowers look like they’re bending over to get sick.

There is warm fog. I can’t see the ocean any more. It crashes, attacking.

‘What’s the fuckin’ problem?’ yells Grampa Don.

Mommy tells him not to talk like that and he curses at her. Daddy tells him to leave her alone. They start to argue.

I hate their guts.

Grampa Don rolls down his window to look at the tyres. I notice something moving through the high sugarcane. He says he hates it here and yells at the mud and the sky and the big sand dunes that bark like wild dogs surrounding helpless animals.

The car tries harder to move. Grampa Don is getting all wet. Mommy tells him to close the window and suddenly he makes a weird noise. An arrow with red feathers is sticking through his neck, sideways. He turns and I see the sharp tip dripping blood on his tanktop. There is mud and blood on his face. He can’t breathe. There are wet bubbles in his neck.

Mommy screams.

I see feathers moving through sugarcane. Blue ones. Yellow ones. I see brown skin. Hands, eyes.

Grampa Don tries to scream and blood comes out of his mouth and sprays on everything. Kitty thinks Grampa Don is being funny and laughs, but makes no sound. Daddy screams at him to shut up and Kitty starts to cry. His face turns bright red.

Feathers.

We did something wrong. Something bad.

I am scared as they hide in the sugarcane. I know I’ll be dead in another minute. I know I can’t escape in this mud and rain. I look at my family. Mommy tries to help Grampa Don and Daddy keeps flooring the gas, too stupid to realise it doesn’t help. I say nothing as they ask me to help. I do nothing.

I hate them.

An old man and two people who just argue all the time. A retard brother someone should’ve cut into little pieces a long time ago.

The car is stuck. No matter what Daddy does. More arrows break the glass. We are bloody. We are dying. Rain is pounding harder, pinning us to the mud, and the tyres bury us deeper, spinning.

Digging us a grave.

As my family screams, I close my eyes and listen to the sand.