The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

MOM SCHOOL by Rand Soellner

“Faster, faster!” J’hompool ordered.

“I’m going as fast as I can,” Txly answered. Txly’s dark talons clawed at black soil in the lightless hole, scraping it around her furry gray body. J’hompool pushed it down the opening behind them. Their round bodies bored a four-foot tunnel up from the cavern under Muncie, Indiana. “The sun’s down. I can feel the difference,” said J’hompool. “We need to hurry. There is much to do tonight.” Txly bit her gray, wormlike lips and continued her angled ascent. After several hours, they neared their goal.

Thirty feet above, Mrs. Kraft warned her daughter Kate, “Your teeth are gonna rot outta your head!” Kate finally relented and jammed her toothbrush into her mouth. She and her little brother Kevin never brushed or spent much time grooming unless Mom made them. Kevin smiled his buck-toothed “Ha-ha You Gotta Do Something I Don’t Gotta Do” smile at her from across the hall; he had missed this routine. Kate did not care. She and her brother helped each other get away with lots of things. She did not believe her teeth or Kevin’s would really rot, but obeyed her mother’s incessant orders because Mom was bigger than she was, and Kate had learned that You Better Do What Mom Says if you want to keep your privileges. Thirteen-year-old Kate had experienced a full day: birthday party, afternoon rock concert, video tape movies with her friends in the family room until midnight, and crude instructions from these same friends on the proper usage of tampons. She had received several miniskirts and low cut blouses and looked forward to wearing them tomorrow along with her usual gloppy mascara and eyeshadow.

“Good night, dear,” said Mr. Kraft, winking at his daughter as he plodded to his bedroom. His graying hair was as rumpled as his pajamas.

“Nighty-night,” added Mrs. Kraft. She looked immaculate in her pressed housecoat and fresh, though modest makeup. Kate had never seen her sweat. Neither had Mr. Kraft.

“Night, Mom and Dad,” Kate responded, drooling mint Crest into her sink. She held her blonde hair back as she rinsed.

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” called Mr. Kraft with a tired smile.

“My, she’s getting old,” Mrs, Kraft whispered to her husband. “On her way to becoming a woman. Just think. Some day, she’ll be a mom, too.”

“Not too soon, I hope,” commented Mr. Kraft as they entered their bedroom. Kate’s parents loved her dearly and wrestled with the problem of how to educate her in the ways of adulthood.

In her room, Kate jumped into bed and turned off the light. She gathered her stuffed animals around her: Mr. Bunny-Hugs, Lady SoftAsMink, and a time-worn Teddy. She knew her friends would have made fun of her had they known she still slept with these toys, but she was used to Teddy and the others; they made her feel safe and soft and warm inside. As her head hit the pillow, a pile of earth puffed out a four-foot pit below the raised floor of her bedroom. This crawlspace gave Mr. Kraft a place to store tools. He had also stuffed pink fiberglass insulation between the joists to insulate the floor against the harsh Midwestern winters. Although it was only September, the trees were rusting, losing their green clothes. Kate did not understand that. Soon it would be cold. If she had to stay outside all winter, she would want a thick coat to keep warm, and would not take it off.

CREAK said a floorboard.

“What’s that?” Kate wondered.

CREAK.

Rats? Sometimes they got under the home and into the crawlspace.

Daddy has to set traps sometimes, and—

CREAK. BOOMP.

That sounds like a board coming loose.

Two round shapes the size of her father’s snow tires burst up through the floor. Through Kate’s window, pale moonlight revealed little, only their rotund bodies and shining green eyes. Their hind claws grated on the maple floor. Kate’s eyes widened and cold sweat popped out on her forehead. She trembled under the blanket and sheet, her arms stiffly clutching them to her chin. The creatures’ shining green eyes scanned the room, casting emerald sabers like flashlights, then fixed on her quivering lump on the bed. Before she could scream, one invader rolled to her bedside, bumped into it and lifted a stuffy arm. From its armpit sprayed a purple fog that made Kate groggy. The gas smelled like sweaty cinnamon toast. The… gremlins, Kate decided to call them, snapped her out of bed, snarfled her down the hole in the floor. Oh God, I’ve seen movies like this: ATTACK OF THE KILLER MOLEMEN. Please don’t rape me. I haven’t even learned what sex is yet… Gremlins and girl disappeared down the tunnel below the Kraft house while Mr. and Mrs. Kraft and Kate’s little brother Kevin slept soundly.

For a half hour Kate saw nothing. Black on black. Smells of earth. Clawed hands pawing at her, dragging her relentlessly down, down. Green eyes suspended in darkness. Her thin cotton nightie scraping against dirt walls. Finally, flickering light ahead.

The gremlins rolled out of the tunnel and bounced like rubber balls onto the cavern floor thirty feet below. Kate screamed, her shredded nightgown flapping as she fell. She plunged into a deep pool. Cold. Am I going to drown? She fought her way up to the surface, wondering if her heart would stop, frozen and shocked by the cold. Gasping like a fish, she swam to the pool’s edge and scrambled onto the floor. Her tiny nipples hardened. Good grief, I’m naked! Self-consciously, she pulled her arms about her body, vainly trying to conceal herself. Goosebumps made her skin look like cottage cheese. The two gray gremlins that had brought her beckoned silently. No way I’m following you guys! Kate noticed bulges on the gremlins’ chests. They’re female. That was a little better. Not much, but something.

Kate’s blue eyes surveyed the huge cavern. Stalactites hung overhead. Between them were hundreds of holes, just like the one from which she had fallen. Signs hung above each hole. She could not read them from the floor. A wooden catwalk crisscrossed the ceiling about five feet below the holes, and offset just enough so that things could fall out to the pools below. Hundreds of pools. Something screamed from two of the holes. Flesh-colored lumps splashed down before her. In seconds, two thirteen-year-old girls popped to the surface, gulping air. I’m not the only one. Four gray lizard hands grabbed Kate’s arms and legs, carrying her flailing, screaming body to a bonfire at the cavern’s center. A part of her mind detached itself from the shrieking portion and asked: Are they going to cook me? Eat me? Tears gushed across her face; her nose became congested. She wished she had a tissue. She would have to snort like the street people she had seen behind dumpsters downtown. She realized one’s dignity evaporates quickly without clothing and comforts.

Through the gremlins’ sharp teeth huffed smells of something sickly sweet, like the rotten steak Kate had helped her mother throw into the trash last week. Kate’s stomach churned. She wondered where these things obtained their meat.

There at the center of the cave, before the raging fire, an old female gremlin with sagging breasts waved a baton like an orchestra conductor. A thousand human girls chanted. The girls sat on crude wood benches in concentric, stepped semicircles around the grandam. This is like a movie theater or band shall, thought Kate. The fire warmed her skin, calming her gooseflesh. Her two overseers sat her down on a seat at the end of a bench by the other chanting adolescents. What are these girls saying? Kate frowned. The multitude of voices made it hard to understand.

Gradually Kate interpreted the mind-numbing chanting around her.

Hundreds of girls in the amphitheater mindlessly repeated this litany, their glazed eyes registering a trance. The other children were mostly nude, but tattered nightgowns and T-shirts clung to a handful of them. All were wet.

A hundred gremlins moved through the crowd of mesmerized adolescents. The beasts lifted their armpits, spraying numbing purple cinnamon gas. Kate held her breath and chanted with the other girls:

Her two gremlins passed with their noxious purple pits opened. Kate continued holding her breath for at least a minute, giving the fog time to dissipate. With her reddening cheeks puffed out like Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet and her blue eyes bulging, she finally sucked in a fresh breath, then another and another. She remained conscious.

I always wondered where girls learned all that stuff women know—how to be moms. I never imagined… The gremlins moved, working the far side of the crowd. Kate saw her chance. Running from the amphitheater to the cavern’s side wall, she scampered up a rickety wooden stair, her small, unrestrained breasts bouncing. Its steps were smaller than she was used to; she climbed two and three at a time. In moments, a shout rose from the amphitheater, unintelligible shrieks from a score of gremlins, dismayed at her defection. They tucked their arms and legs, becoming huge dirty tennis balls, rolling after her. Right up the stairs they came, emitting little “Oofs” and “Arghs” as they bounced up the treads. Kate ran along the catwalks frantically, searching for escape.

“Milwaukee” read a sign above her.

“Detroit” said another.

The signs were posted above tunnel holes in the cave’s ceiling. Where’s Muncie? Her heart beat loudly in her ears, like when she ran the mile once a year in gym class. The catwalk divided, one path left, the other right. Gremlins behind. Without thinking, she felt the right path was the correct choice.

“Evansville.”

“Indianapolis.”

“Fort Wayne.”

“Muncie!”

Kate smiled grimly and jumped to the railing Damn, a splinter in my toe! and jumped up into the hole. It ascended at an angle, so she clambered through it on all fours. Her delicate, pampered skin was chafed and scraped, but she ignored the pain, squeezing her body through, hoping she could squirm fast enough, God it has to be fast enough, has to be… Heavy breathing at the hole’s entrance below her. Got to go faster! Clammy sweat peppered her brow; grit clung to her damp naked skin. Strange gibbering behind. Faster! Clawing sounds. Darkness.

An alarm shattered the cold morning air. Kate sprang out of bed. Got to… What? My, what’s all this dirt? I’m filthy! Kate jumped into the shower, the layer of dirt turning to mud, then washing away, swirling down the drain. The warm water stung her abrasions at first, like old-fashioned Mercurochrome on a hundred knife gashes. She sucked in her breath and tensed her punished back, leg and arm muscles. Gradually the water’s soothing wet warmth calmed her complaining body.

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” she singsonged as she turned off the water. Kate selected a modest matching plaid outfit her mother had purchased for her birthday. She dressed, cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair back from her face, and decided against the heavy makeup she normally wore. Although she usually skipped breakfast, she looked forward to it today.

She opened her bedroom door. Her mother walked by. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” Kate chanted. Her mother beamed at her appreciatively. Kate’s little brother Kevin zoomed down the hall, half clothed. Mrs. Kraft opened her mouth, ready to reprimand him, but Kate beat her to the punch. “Kevin!” ordered Kate, “march back to your room, young man. Put some decent clothes on. And brush your teeth.”

In Kevin’s betrayed gaze was the understanding that his relationship had changed in some fundamental way with his sister and all females past her age. “Geez! Where do you girls learn that stuff?”