From inside came a soft, hesitant clank.
Gregory approached the open door and looked in. Brian couldn’t see past him. Gregory was clearly staring at something in front of him. Gregory said, “Hello. Are you okay?”
A man’s voice, thin and whining, replied, “I’m waiting.”
“Are you okay?” Gregory insisted. “Is there anything wrong?”
“The kids are already part of it,” said the man’s voice.
Brian crept up to Gregory’s side and peered through the doorway. The dim, moving mound he’d seen when he looked in the first time now resolved itself.
It was a man in a suit. He had prized up the thin marble tiles that lined his entryway and had crawled under them like they were a quilt. He was hunkered on the naked substrate. He peered out from between the stacked, chipped squares, with red, terrified eyes.
“Where’s the owner of the horses?” asked Brian.
“Mr. Deatley,” the man answered. He clutched at his marble skirts. “A monster came through,” he said. “The kids were safe in a wall. Thanks be. Thanks be.” He started to cry. “It was a monster.” Several of his tiles slid off and went spinning across the splintered floor. Startled, he leaped; more tile jangled and fell. It busted on the backer board. The man shifted, looking about him. “Can you hide me? Can you put more marble on me? High up? The kids are already gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” Brian asked. He backed against the door frame. “Where — where do they take them?”
“They’re right here,” said the man. He was hunched down, stubbing his fingers and thumbs on tiles still embedded in the mortar, trying to pry them loose.
Brian squatted down. “Are they under the house?” he asked gently.
“In the wall,” the man whispered back. “They’re safe.”
A chill went down Brian’s spine. “Where?” he asked. “Where are they in the wall?”
“In their room,” said the man. “They love it here.”
“What was the monster like?” Gregory asked.
The man let forth a querulous whine. He kept drawing tiles to him and stacking them on his back, but at this point, he shook too much to balance it. The marble kept cascading down his flanks.
“It had armor,” he said. “It had … it was crazy.”
Brian asked, “Did it put the kids in the wall?”
The man shook his head, dislodging another tile. It bumped and rattled down his back. “They were safe in the wall. It tried to cut them out. It tried to get them and take them away.”
Brian stood. “Let’s find them,” he said to Gregory.
Once again, heading into danger, saving kids we don’t know, Gregory thought to himself. Only, this time I don’t even have a rake.
Carefully, looking around them constantly, arms spread, the two boys crossed the foyer. The man shivered at their approach.
They walked past him, staring around them. On the wall was a photo of sports cars going around a bend. Gregory stopped for a moment before it.
The man in the floor whispered, “I’m an amateur photographer.”
“Where are the kids?” Brian asked.
“Up in Bryson’s room,” the man answered, without explanation.
The two boys began climbing the steps. They kept their eyes roving from side to side so nothing could leap out at them.
On the stairs there were photos of the Sierra Nevada. Two blond kids stood in a field of flowers.
The boys found the children in the second bedroom they went into.
Gregory saw them and yelped. Brian could only stare. Without thinking, he pawed at the door frame, backing away.
It was not an unusual bedroom, except that everything in it was white. The bed and its comforter were white. There were white cubes filled with action figures and guns. There was a white rug. The goose-necked lamp was white, and it cast a white egg of light across the white walls.
The kids had been absorbed somehow into those walls. The sister hung out of the plaster, her upper body slumped, her arms hanging down, her white-blond hair hanging down, her head drooping. There was no seam between the wall and her body. It appeared that her back, her stomach, her shirt simply flattened into it, and she leached out into the plaster, devoured.
The brother had been almost totally consumed. He was less boy than architecture. Still, the wall bulged a bit in the shape of him, as if he were pressed against a membrane. An elbow jabbed out of the flat. A knee. The features of his face rose out of the blank surface. There was a spray of freckles across his nose that fanned out across the plane. They had scattered as he had been absorbed. The white wall was freckled now.
Around the sister were several brutal slices. Someone had hacked at the plaster where her legs should have been, trying to gouge her free.
Brian walked toward the half girl. Gregory started shaking and wouldn’t move. He wondered suddenly — wondered if his cousin had been absorbed like this — if she’d been in the walls the whole time, inches from them while they slept.
Brian went to the girl’s side and held his fingertips in front of her face.
“She’s breathing,” he said. “She’s alive.”
“What is going on?” Gregory demanded. “What is this?”
There was a crash downstairs. The boys jumped and realized it was the man’s tiles all dropping to earth at once. There were voices. The echoes rang out in the desolate house. “They’re upstairs,” said the man in the floor. “They’re looking after the kids.”
Brian and Gregory gaped and peered around wildly. Someone was crossing the foyer. Someone was walking up the stairs. Turning at the landing. Striding up another flight.
Someone walked down the hall, jingling slightly.
Someone entered the room. Brian and Gregory were already gone. Still there were the white bed, the white rug, the white lamp casting its egg of white light across the white-frozen siblings, the freckled wall.
Someone opened the closet.
Brian and Gregory cowered.
The man with the red, ground-up face confronted them.
“I believe I can answer your questions,” he said.
FIFTEEN
There was no use hiding in the closet. Gregory and Brian sheepishly stepped out.
The man set down his briefcase and held out his hand to shake. As he did, he introduced himself. “Milton Deatley. Real estate developer. Super to meet you.”
Brian didn’t move. The man grabbed his hand and shook it. “I know,” said Deatley. “Brian Thatz. It’s a pleasure. I’ve seen you before. From a distance. We apparently share a commute.”
Deatley looked at Brian’s friend. “Gregory Stoffle?” Deatley guessed.
“You’re dead,” said Gregory.
“And you’re rude,” said the corpse of Milton Deatley. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pamphlet that had been reproduced on a cheap color printer. “Here you go.” He handed it to Brian and turned away.
It was a piece of paper folded into three. The title was on the cover flap. What Humans Need to Know About an Invasion of the Thusser Horde.
“What is this?” Brian whispered.
The corpse of Milton Deatley did not answer. He put his briefcase on the bed and opened it. There were no papers inside, only raw meat.
“Where’s my cousin?” Gregory demanded.
“It’s all in there,” said Deatley, pointing vaguely toward the pamphlet before turning his attention away from the boys.
The corpse reached into his briefcase and pulled out a handful of meat. He walked over to the boy in the bedroom wall, stuck his fingers into the boy’s half-glimpsed mouth, and pried it open. He roughly arranged the tongue. He shoved in meat, then manipulated the lower jaw to force it to chew. Beneath the lumpy chin, the wall puckered and smoothed.
“What are you … doing?” Gregory protested in horror. Deatley didn’t even look at him. He fed the kid another mouthful of meat.
Brian opened the pamphle
t and began to read.
What Humans Need to Know About an Invasion of the Thusser Horde
As a human, you might be asking questions about the Thusser settlement of your world. You might be asking, “But what does this mean for me?” The answer is almost total annihilation. This pamphlet is designed to put your mind at rest by answering some commonly asked questions about the settlement and what will follow.
What’s Going On?
You may feel confused or concerned about changes that have been going on in your neighborhood. That’s perfectly natural. The fabric of your world is becoming increasingly thin as we prepare your region for settlement. Time has stopped working as it usually does. The cycle of days is different as we accommodate your world to our own very different chronological landscape. Soon, all will be prepared, and the Thusser will enter this world and take possession of the houses we are constructing here. And these three square miles are only the beginning.
Brian felt a chill of horror at the friendly, informative tone of the pamphlet. He looked up at the corpse of Milton Deatley. Deatley picked up another handful of meat and walked over to the girl who hung out of the wall. With the heel of his other hand, he shoved the girl’s forehead up. Her mouth hung open. He crammed it full of meat and forced her to chew.
Brian and Gregory read on in the nightmare brochure.
Can my friends, my family, and I escape before you arrive?
Unfortunately, that’s not possible. Because if you’ve gotten this pamphlet — well, we’ve arrived! Many of your friends and family members have probably already been absorbed by their houses. We can’t let them go. They’re part of the preparation. They’re part of the neighborhood — a neighborhood, after all, is people! We need them. We need their spirits, their dreams. That is part of the atmosphere we breathe. They are what we build our foundations on. They are the dirt into which we pound our tent pegs. We cannot remain in this world without one foot in the dreams of humanity. So each house will have its slumbering humans. After a while, they’ll stop dreaming entirely. They’ll just be appliances like any other. By that time, the settlement will have spread across North America. There are millions of us waiting to come through. In fact, we’ve been waiting for centuries!
But that means you’re breaking the Rules! You’re moving into Norumbegan territory!
Yes, that’s true. The Norumbegans are too far away to care. They have their own concerns. They can hardly remember this place. They’ll never notice if we move in. Why should we consent to their silly Game when the territory is ripe for the taking? The Thusser Horde needs a place to settle. There’s demand. So we’re going to move in. It will happen in about three days.
“Where’s my cousin?” Gregory demanded.
Brian asked, “Has she been swallowed by her house? Is she in the walls like that?”
“It’s all in the brochure,” said Deatley. The girl’s teeth clacked together as he forced her to chew, then massaged her throat so she’d swallow. “Read.”
Brian and Gregory looked down. Indeed, the next question was,
You may be wondering: Where’s my cousin?
We like to accommodate our clients here at Rumbling Elk Haven. Your cousin Prudence owned a piece of land right in the middle of our neighborhood, unfortunately. The owners of the units around her thought she might stir up trouble. And we realized she wouldn’t harmonize well with our community. So we had her removed.
Has she been absorbed by her house? Is she in the walls?
No. She wasn’t willing to be part of what we’re trying to do here. She was not a team player. She has been sequestered and is being reworked to ease her transition into the neighborhood.
Gregory went and stood directly in front of the corpse. He shouted, “Where? Where is she?”
The corpse didn’t blink. It was, perhaps, incapable of blinking. “I’ll take you there, if you like,” he said.
“Right now,” Gregory insisted.
Deatley stared him down. “You’ll never see the light of day again. Think about what you ask for.”
Brian said, “You tried to kill me.”
Milton Deatley shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought you might warn the Norumbegans. Luckily, it appears you don’t know how.” Deatley kept kneading the girl’s chin to get her to chew. The meat flecked her lips. “Much more convenient that way. The Norumbegans won’t be tipped off until we’ve already arrived. By then, it will be too late.”
“Don’t say we,” said Gregory, defiantly. “You’re just a human, too. And not even a live human. A dead human.”
Deatley did not respond. He shook his head and wiped his fatty, bloody hand on his pants. He took out a pocket package of Kleenex and plucked one loose. He scrubbed his fingers with it.
Brian saw the pamphlet rearranging itself, the constant fluttering of language on the page.
You are dead. You are human.
This body, yes, is a reconstituted human. I have been rebuilt from the remains of Milton Deatley, deceased. But I am one of the Thusser. I am sitting in a pod, gesturing so this puppet dances on its strings. It was impossible to send in one of the Thusser bodily without setting off alarms. And we needed a human avatar who could make preparations, purchasing the land according to the economic rites of your people. We are an orderly invader. We needed a representative to appear before the zoning board and the town selectmen. For that purpose, we gathered together the pieces of Mr. Deatley and supplied some gobbets to make up the difference. So I only appear to be a real estate developer.
I am terrified. I am clutching this brochure, and it creases in my hands as I stand before you. You do not seem to even pay me heed as you go about your business. I do not know what to do when faced by the enormity of your invasion.
Stop worrying! Calm down. Really! There’s nothing you can do. We are an infinitely more ancient race than yours, and infinitely wiser. As I speak to you, as I arrange this helpful and informative pamphlet, it is like a kindly human talking to a dog. My signal is infinitely rich. You can’t even detect, much less participate in, the excess, all the nuances and extensions to what I’m saying that are at the moment reverberating in this room and rippling through this sheet of paper. A dog can only hear “sit,” “lie down,” and “walkies.” [There was, at this point, full-color clip art of a dog wagging its tail, tongue out.] As you read this, you feel a strange unease — it seems like the ink itself crawls and betrays you — because on some level you are aware that there are many meanings — things unspoken, hieroglyphics in thought. Many are swimming past you, and you are unable to assimilate them. Many more manifest themselves on this page in response to your animal anxieties. I am sorry I cannot make this clearer. You may explain to a dog why you are taking it to the vet for shots, but it will still look at you accusingly when the needle goes in.
So you’re saying that if we could only understand it, we’d realize this is good for us?
I haven’t said anything of the kind. It will essentially obliterate millions of human animals. They will be nothing more than slumbering bundles.
But the Rules
There are no Rules anymore. Your race likes to function under general agreements. That is necessary because you are all essentially at the same level. But when there is a race far superior to humankind, there is no more need for Rules. There is only dominance.
You can’t do this. You have to — you have to go somewhere else. There are other worlds. The Norumbegans found one. You could go to another world and leave us alone.
But why would we? We want to come here.
But we’re here.
Why does that matter? You’re irrelevant to us. You don’t really count. The Thusser Horde wants this place as its own, and we will get it. You’re a race far inferior to us. You’re useful to us as stepping-stones. Your joy, your sorrows, don’t matter to us whatsoever.
You can’t even understand the depth of our emotion and how it exceeds yours. The infinitely nuanced melancholies,
the bottomless griefs, the joys one of us feels at any given time are more various at once than all of the symphonic pleasures of Rome or Manhattan Isle. Do not think we are a harsh race, unfeeling and terrible. We are a deeply compassionate people — far more than you can ever understand. You are simply not equipped to experience our superiority in this regard. Even as you read and I watch you, standing on the other side of the room with my arms folded, even as I decree your eventual fall and explain its inevitability, I am at the same moment involved in sorrow at your passing as a race and nostalgia for the days of your ascendancy. We plan on including a mural in the community center that recalls humankind and its little joys — going berry picking, hailing buses, excreting, riding the surf on belly boards. All the quaint little behaviors that the Thusser associate with mankind.
The animated corpse of Milton Deatley stood, indeed, with his arms crossed, watching them read, watching the fear grow on their faces.
“But,” protested Brian, “you must be able to settle on another world! A different one! It just doesn’t make sense!”
“Why? There’s this one. We like it. We want it.” Milton Deatley threw his dirty Kleenex on the floor, closed his briefcase, and snapped its locks shut. Then he smiled at the two boys. “Anyhoo,” he said, “there will be time enough for remorse later. I have mouths to feed. A few more days and they won’t need to eat anymore. They will have been completely absorbed. As for you, how about this: You have until nightfall to leave. Go back to Boston. It won’t be absorbed for another year or two.” He prepared to go. “Remember: Out by nightfall. Or we kill you outright.” He grinned. “Okay? I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but you really are irrelevant to our effort. Nightfall. That’s it. And don’t think of warning anyone. It’s already too late. Far too late.”
He strode out of the room. “Have a great day,” he called as he headed down the stairs, leaving Gregory and Brian appalled and alone.
The pamphlet was now blank.