Manx- Grandma's Message

  Wayne turned to roll down the window, but when he did, he got a nasty surprise. His grandmother, Linda, sat next to him. He had not seen her for months. It was hard to visit with relatives when they were dead.

  She was still dead now. She sat in a hospital johnny, untied so he could see her skeletal bare back when she leaned forward. She was sitting on the good beige leather seats with her bare ass. Her legs were scrawny and terrible, very white in the darkness, crawling with old black varicose veins. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of shiny, silver, newly minted half-dollars.

  Wayne opened his mouth to scream, but Grammy Lindy lifted her finger to her lips. Shhh.

  “.down it slow can you ,reverse in think you If .Wayne ,truth the from away you driving He’s,” she warned him gravely.

  Manx cocked his head, as if listening for a noise he didn’t like under the hood. Lindy had spoken clearly enough for Manx to hear her, but he didn’t look all the way around, and his expression suggested he thought he had heard something but wasn’t sure.
...

  He peered into the front seat for help, but Mr. Manx had changed. He was missing his left ear—it was tatters of flesh, little crimson strings swinging against his cheek. His hat was missing, and the head it had covered was now bald and lumpy and spotted, with just a few silver threads combed across it. A great flap of loose red skin hung from his brow. His eyes were gone, and where they had been were buzzing red holes—not bloody sockets but craters containing live coals.

  Beside him the Gasmask Man slept on in his crisp uniform, smiling like a man with a full belly and warm
feet.

  Through the windshield Wayne could see they were approaching a tunnel bored into a wall of rock, a black pipe leading into the side of the hill.

  “Who is back there with you?” Manx asked, his voice humming and terrible. It was not the voice of a man. It was the voice of a thousand flies droning in unison.

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