Bleeders

It crashed behind the barn just before dawn. I was still bleary-eyed, standing on the porch waiting for Red to finish his morning business. The inky sky split in two, torn asunder by an electric-blue ball of fire. It left a trail of light in its wake, and I braced myself for the shockwave that was sure to follow. But nothing happened. I told myself I was imagining things, still drunk on sleep. But the smell, I couldn’t have imagine that – an acrid, bitter scent it was, like burnt fuses, or that time Momma bleached her hair blonde. I felt the hairs on my arms tingle from all the static what was in the air.

“Come on Red, let’s go have a looksy, shall we?” he trotted back from the bushes, good fella that he was, always ready for an adventure. We headed down the rutted track towards the barn, the tractor casting eerie shadows as we skirted around the back of the outbuildings. A light mist hung over the path. I don’t know what I done hoped to find. Mostly I was just after worrying about fire – remembering the red haze that hung over our valley for months during the last dry spell. Whether you believed in global warming or not, and I'm on the rail about it myself, them fires was no joking matter.

The corn was still young, barely knee high and sharp as razors. I was mighty glad not to be wearing shorts as I passed down the rows, Red scooting ahead, nose to the ground. Well, most everything to the ground if I’m honest – Red might’ve been big of heart, but he sure weren’t much in the leg department.

Down near the bottom of the field, where the ground dipped t’wards the stream, an angry black slash scorched the ground. 'bout as wide as a bale of hay, whatever it was that’d fallen from the sky had carved its mark on my land alright. I put my hand to the soil, but it was cold already. Gotta be thankful for small mercies.

I followed the crevice to its deepest point, where something glinted in the first pale light of day. Crouching down, I got excited, it was glimmering like diamond, all jagged and blue-tinted. I reached into the hole without thinking, eager to know whether I’d struck it rich or not. My fingertips brushed the surface and pain flared up my arms, my nerve-endings jangling like I’d been electrocuted. I tried to pull away, but it burned, my fingertips fused to the frozen object. Not diamond then, I should be so lucky, but ice. Coldest damn thing I ever seen. I lost a bunch of skin peeling myself free and rocked back on my heels, clutching my hand to my chest.

Red was agitated, pawing at the ground right by the hole. I ain’t never seen him act that way before, always was a calm mutt, bordering on lazy. He began digging furiously, sending showers of soil out behind him.

“Steady on old boy,” I told him, “easy there.” But he didn’t listen, his head and shoulders disappearing into the ground as he strained to get at something.

“What is it, Red? What’d you find, fella?” He was tugging at something black and long, some kinda worm or garter snake. “Confound it you mutt, you had me scared for a minute there! Let’s go get us some breakfast, eh boy?” I whistled him to heel, and he reluctantly followed me back up towards the house, glancing back a few times as we went.

I told Missy and the boys about the meteorite, but they thought I was joshing them. I showed ‘em my fingers, blackened where I’d touched the frozen space junk. After breakfast I took ‘em down to the hole, but there t'weren't nothing there, the object completely melted away. So much for my 15 minutes of fame.

A week went by after that, uneventfully. Strawberries were ripe and juicy in the South field, and our backs were aching as we packed ‘em up for market. We had a walk-in cooler out behind the barn, to store the fruit till Zeke could drive out to pick it up. I was stacking up punnets when Red started growling. Like I said, he was a peaceable critter, not prone to dramatics. This low-throated growl sounded primitive, like his inner wolf was itching to break loose. I didn’t like it, not one bit. I headed over to the barn door, where he was crouching, the fur along his spine standing on end.

“What’d you see, Red?” I asked him. I caught sight of something black slithering behind the apple barrels. “Is it a rattler? You’d best stay away, we don’t need no vet bills about here.”

Red sniffed at the barrels, then sat on his haunches, staring at the shadows until I finished unloading my trays.

That Tuesday Curtis complained the water tasted funny. Our well was old, been there since my Great-Granddaddy dug it out himself back in the 1800s. It was deep and fed by the underground waterways that ran down from the hillside surrounding our valley. Weren’t no way it could’ve been polluted, we kept it covered to avoid animals falling in. I went and done a test on it, and nothing seemed amiss, it was safe to drink alright. But Curtis wasn’t wrong – it didn’t taste right no more. Kinda soured, muddied. We took to boiling it before we drank it.

On Friday I was on the porch toking up after a hot day’s work when Missy screamed. She was up in the bathroom, the door locked, pitching a fit. I banged on the door, but she was too shook to reply. I shouldered my way through, the bolt hanging loose as the door flew in. Missy was cowering in the tub, the shower curtain clutched around her. The water was a deep and unsettling pink, darkening more by the second.

“Did you cut yourself, Missy? What is it?” I asked her, but her eyes were wide with terror, and all she could do was point at her lower leg.

A black slug-like creature clung to her shin, its slimy gray-black body bulging as it fed on her blood.

“Why, it’s a leech! How in tarnation did that get in here?” I asked, grabbing it with a towel and squishing it between my fingers. It ruptured, dark red soaking the towel and setting Missy off screaming again. I lifted her out the tub and wrapped her dressing gown around her, noticing there were several more lines of red trailing down her wet legs. Reaching blindly into the tub, I grabbed the plug. As the water swirled down the drain I chased it up with a good dose of bleach. I thought I saw dark shapes squirming and thrashing as they washed away, but I could have been imagining it.

Missy was quiet the rest of the evening, we gave her a hearty dash of whiskey in her malted milk at bedtime, it settled her down some. The boys were excited, leeches weren’t the sort of thing that happened round our way. They regaled each other with spooky stories of plague doctors and explorers wading through swamps. Red slept out on the porch, refusing to come inside. He woke me up in the night, growling again. Coyotes most likely, or a fox scouting round the compost in hopes of a few bones. I found it hard to get back to sleep.

Saturday night we got home late, stopping at the Cracker Barrel for supper after a successful day at the farmers market. The mood was cheerful as we sang along to country tunes in my old truck, the sun setting over the far side of the valley.

Curtis was the one to find him. Dear old Red, out in the barn, his brown fur spotted with rusty stains. I could tell right away he was gone, flies landing all over his eyes, one floppy ear flipped inside out. He was curled in a ball, but it was clear he hadn’t gone down without a fight. There was blood spattered all over the dirt, and a deep hole over near the corner, beside the apple barrels. Poor Red, whatever he found, rattle snake perhaps, or a cotton mouth – it’d done for him. As I scooped his body up and took him out front to Momma’s rose garden for burial, he seemed weirdly light. Sort of – emptied. I thought of them leeches in Missy’s bath and shuddered. Things weren’t right on the farm no more.

After that everything went from bad to worse. On Monday the barn was littered with dead rats and mice, their tiny bodies stiff with rigor mortis, our feral barn cat alongside them.

Tuesday it was the chickens. We thought at first a fox had gotten in, there was a tunnel dug under the wire and their white feathers were speckled with blood. Missy wouldn’t go outside anymore, she was too afraid.

Wednesday we went to milk the cows, only they didn’t come in from the pasture. They lay out in the paddock, huddled together in the corner, their calves behind them. All dead, lips peeled back in a grimace. Pink froth around their muzzles, eyes rolled up in their heads. Drained again. The grass had holes the size of a gopher, dark tunnels heading on back towards the barn. We couldn’t bury the cows, so we piled up their carcasses and poured lighter fuel over them, our scarves pulled up over our faces at the stench of their burning flesh.

Friday the water stopped flowing from the faucet, and I went to check the well. Heaving back the heavy lid, I saw something writhing and roiling in the depths below. I slammed it closed quickly, hurrying back to the house to check on the boys. I told them to pack their stuff up. There wasn’t nothing left to stick around for.

We threw our possessions in the back of the truck, bags of clothes and Missy’s china dolls, Grammy’s mantle clock and our Pa’s shotguns on the top. The boys sat in the truck bed, tying down the stuff. Missy pressed her face up to the window, her skin pale, dark circles under her eyes.

I went to the well. I poured the bottles of fertilizer first, not knowing how long I had, or whether those things inside knew what I was planning. Next the bleach. A high-pitched screaming sound came from the pit, and long, dark tentacles reached up towards me, grasping the edges as they tried to escape. I beat them back with a stick, hefting the lid back in place and weighing it down with cinder blocks.

Back in the truck the boys were hollering. I turned and ran towards them, then stopped dead in my tracks. A screeching was coming from the barn, an unearthly, primordial sound. From the hay loft more wriggling, slithering bodies squirmed and reached out for us, impossibly thick, glistening moistly and glowing a faint blue. I grabbed a jerry can from the truck-bed and ran to the barn doors, heaving them shut, ignoring the heavy thuds of a thousand slithering creatures. I circled the barn, sloshing gas on the walls. It went up swiftly, the old wood dry as tinder.

We drove away at a teeth-rattling pace. In the rearview mirror I saw tentacles squirming from the blazing rafters, the flames licking blue as they reached angrily for the sky, before shriveling and falling back into the inferno.

I hope to God we got them all. It keeps me awake some nights, the wondering. What if they made it out of the well – what if they travelled up into the mountain rivers? In my dreams they are waiting underground, feasting on bats and small rodents, growing. I hope I am wrong.