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Calham quietly approached Matt as he slept, hanging by his arms from one the barn’s support beams like a side of beef. He silently released Matt from his chains and let him slide out of them and slump to the floor. Matt crumpled against the straw-strewn floorboards and stayed there.
He was done.
The farmer stood over him for a moment, watching him, thinking. Calham knew this was probably his last moment to reflect on the nature of their strange relationship, before events would almost certainly accelerate them into their inescapable, violent conclusion. He’d wanted more from this, but it was not to be. Years of working against and then with nature had taught him not to fight fate. Things happened, things changed, and you had to roll with the punches. You planted crops and sometimes they grew and flourished, and sometimes they withered and failed. Feast or famine, you had to accept what you couldn’t command and move on. No, if this was not to be, then so be it. Move on, lets the seasons turn.
Matt felt the weight of Calham’s sombre stare when he looked up, and he sensed something different about the farmer. He stared at the older man’s tired, lined features and graying eyes, and saw a look he knew well; maybe he was done with the game too.
“Let’s finish this,” said Calham.
Matt stood up and fixed his old adversary with a look of defiant contempt.
* * *
The two men marched up the slope and out across the fields at a brisk pace, despite the oppressive heat from the midday sun. Matt stumbled over the uneven ground, dragging the shovel through the earth, as they headed towards the fallow field. His face was bruised and gashed, his leg and hand stained with dried blood from his injuries the night before. Though Matt wavered and swayed as he tried to maintain a straight line, physically and emotionally drained by his ordeals, Calham maintained a cautious distance and covered him with the shotgun as he brought up the rear. The farmer carried a large roll of tarpaulin tucked under his arm. Matt looked at it and wondered what it was for. He heard the rise of a familiar sound as they crossed into the fallow field and continued walking: the low, incessant hum of unseen energy spilling from the earth there. Calham rubbed his aching temples, feeling the effects of the night before, and a growing dread of what he might find upon unearthing Henry after such a long a spell in the field.
They made their way out into the centre of the fallow field.
“Wait,” said Calham.
Matt halted and turned around to face the farmer. Calham scanned the field with a worried look on his face. He was trying to remember where they had buried Henry in the early hours. In the excitement of the previous nigh,t he’d forgotten to leave the shovel as a marker. Calham rotated through three hundred and sixty degrees looking for the grave, only to end up facing Matt again with no clue as to the whereabouts of the creature. He looked at Matt pleadingly. Matt smirked at him darkly and shrugged his shoulders. The farmer lit a cigarette and took a long drag, hoping it might help him think. He looked at Matt again and then nodded at him to carry on walking. Matt moved off, but deliberately dragged his feet. He moved lazily, enjoying watching Calham squirm, as he searched the field in confusion. Matt slowed in the haze of the noon day sun and eventually stopped, no longer caring. He began sniggering to himself. Calham turned to look at him with dark, tired eyes, his anxiousness at having lost Henry now obvious. He frowned at Matt and gestured with the shotgun for him to keep on walking. Matt just smiled and gently shook his head. Calham drew closer and pointed the shotgun directly at him.
“You keep pointing that pop gun at me,” said Matt. “And it’s lost its effect.”
Calham advanced, pushing the muzzle towards Matt’s face.
“Move,” he said.
Matt remained calm and resolute.
“No,” he said. “I’m not playing any more.”
“I don’t have time for this,” said Calham. “He’s been in the ground too long.”
“Henry?” said Matt. “That thing was overripe the first time you dug it up.”
Calham started to speak, then hesitated.
“He’s my son,” he said finally.
Matt’s face creased in a moment of confusion.
“That thing was was your son?” he said. “And you brought him back?”
Calham said nothing, but his silence and guilty eyes spoke volumes.
“You’ve got to help me find him,” he said.
Matt stared straight back at the farmer and slowly shook his head again.
He really was enjoying this.
Calham took a step forwards, aiming the shotgun at Matt’s head.
“Help me,” said Calham.
It was still an order, not a plea.
Matt shook his head again, keeping his eyes fixed on the farmer. Calham thumbed back the hammer on the shotgun.
“You’re going to do me anyway,” said Matt. “Here’s as good a place as any.”
The two men’s eyes bored into one and other, and revealed that neither was willing to back down. It amused Matt to think that his compliance was still more important to this madman than actually saving his twisted son’s life. But then life and death weren’t what they used to be.
Finally Calham snorted and lowered the shotgun. He dropped his stony poker face too and began to blink, again looking just as exhausted as Matt.
“Fair enough,” he said. “End of the road for us all then.”
Calham cradled the weapon in the crook of his arm and began to unroll the tarpaulin. Matt watched him step back, put the shotgun down and snap the tarpaulin out open. The farmer then let it float down over the strange ground to cover it. He then backed up and raised the shotgun again.
“Stand on it,” he said.
Matt stared back at him, finally realising what the sheet was for. He stayed still, refusing to step on it. Calham digested this and grinned at Matt, enjoying the restoration of their power balance and his ability to still inspire fear in others. He nodded and continued to grin, happy to be playing their game again one last time. He began to slowly circle Matt, so as to face him from the other side of the field, forcing Matt to turn with him to meet his stare. The result was that the younger man found himself with his back against the tarpaulin sheet anyway, so that it would be there, ready to catch his blasted remains when the farmer fired. Calham raised the shotgun again, a look of ugly delight spreading across his weathered face.
“Wouldn’t want to get any of me on your precious field, would we?” said Matt. “Something might grow. Come back for you in the middle of the night.”
Calham’s index finger hovered against the shotgun’s trigger, and then slowly began to squeeze.
Matt stared back defiantly, bracing himself for the inevitable. Sweat trickled down the side of the farmer’s face and he swallowed, drawing his pleasure out, savouring the moment. The muzzle of the shotgun began to shake with effort, as he held it out and prolonged Matt’s agony. Calham blinked away small rivulets of sweat from his eyes and tried to steady his grip on the weapon.
A whimpering sound.
Calham glanced to his right, out of the corner of his eye. Matt was compelled to look as well.
The sound came again.
Calham lowered the shotgun and turned away from Matt to look, as something to his rear broke the surface of the soil twenty feet away. Matt watched this breach with a strange fascination, all too aware that this was the source of the whimpering sound. Even though he no longer cared if he lived or died, he realised he did want to see what this thing would look like after turning and spoiling a second time in the field. What fickle, sickly voyeurs we all were, he wondered.
Long, disjointed fingers pushed themselves free from the earth and clawed at the surrounding soil, as their animal owner reenacted echoes of its previous birth. Calham and Matt slowly converged on the burial site in mutual wonder and horror, as Henry’s slick, wet hand emerged from the ground.
Calham dropped the shotgun and drew closer. He fell to his knees and began digging in the earth around Henry with his hands. Matt watched the farmer uncover Henry’s slimy and grotesque foetus-like features. The dazed creature wearily tried to raise its huge, heavily-veined head, but it seemed unable to support the excessive weight there. Calham worked rapidly, consumed by the job in hand, unearthing Henry’s shoulders and chest, then its whole upper torso, revealing a fully-grown figure, despite it being slick with a coating of embryonic fluid. This moist, pale, new incarnation of Henry was similar to the old one in every way but its face. The creature’s already awful features had been twisted even further by another failed lifecycle in the field. One bulbous eye was now much larger and higher than the other, and Henry’s mouth meandered up and along its sliding features like a runaway zip. The whole impression was one of a melted foetus face slipping away from its skull, as if it was trying to escape its own head. Calham took hold of the drowsy creature by its sticky shoulders and shook it, as it faltered in its escape from the earth. It was like watching the farmer pull a sickly newborn animal from the belly of one of his livestock.
“Come on, Henry,” he said. “That a boy...”
The punch-drunk beast raised its head to try and look at him with odd, blinking eyes. It managed to focus and stopped, recognizing the voice and the blurred features before it. Its wild and uneven mouth slowly opened to reveal clusters of jagged tooth shards, as it tried and failed to speak to its father. Only groans and wet whimpers managed to escape its hideous mouth as it dribbled, then the creature’s enormous head lolled back down again under its own excessive weight.
“Come on, son,” said Calham. “You can do it...’
Calham slapped the beast’s face, trying to rouse some fight in it, trying to force life back into something that had already died long ago.
Matt looked on in disgust. Then his eyes moved to the discarded shotgun.
Calham began to shout at the creature called Henry, as its faltered and the strangled, knotted organs inside began to fail and shut down.
“Come on!”
“Let it die,” said Matt.
Calham struck Henry harder and harder with his open hand.
“Live!” he shouted.
“Look at it,” said Matt. “It wants to die.”
Calham spun around and snarled at Matt.
“Look, you fuck...” he began.
But he stopped dead when he saw Matt holding the shotgun, and that it was pointed at him for a change.
A smile slowly spread across the insane farmer’s face and he started to chuckle to himself. Calham’s laugh grew louder and more hysterical, as he shook his head, unaware of a low growling sound slowly rising behind him; unaware that Henry was slowly rising too, raising its awful, angry head towards him. Matt’s eyes grew wide and he instinctively took a step back out of Henry’s range. Calham’s laughter died out, as he caught the look of fear on Matt’s face. The farmer slowly turned to see Henry’s rabid, dribbling mouth opening behind him. The farmer’s lips parted to say something, but the creature lunged at him from its grave before he could speak.
Matt retreated further, as father and son clashed, violently thrashing and writhing in the fallow soil. Blows were struck on both sides, and the two killers locked arms, each trying to gain the upper hand. Then Calham broke off from the contest. Metal glinted in the sun as the farmer quickly raised something into the air and then repeatedly thumped it down into the creature’s bloated head, making it squeal. Calham stabbed Henry three times, then scrabbled to his feet and stood over the creature’s twitching body, his knife poised for another attack. Henry bobbed about drowsily for a moment, then let out a last wheezing gasp from its mangled mouth and slumped back into the soil. Blood leaked out from its punctured head and soaked back into the fallow field. Calham watched the creature spasm and twitch, as it rode out its shuddering death throes. Eventually they subsided, and the thing that had once been his son was quiet and still.
“He was going to kill me,” said Calham. “My own flesh and blood.”
“Takes after his father,” said Matt.
The farmer looked up from his self-obsessed daze. He turned to face Matt, wiping Henry’s blood from his ruddy, red face. He looked carefully at the shotgun, now leveled at his chest.
“Oh you,” said Calham. “Where were we?”
“You were about to kill me,” said Matt. “Again.”
Calham rose and smiled at Matt, before casually approaching him. Matt saw a blade hidden in the farmer’s hand glint as it caught the sun. He braced himself against the shotgun’s stock and leaned into it, aiming the weapon at the older man.
Calham stopped in his tracks.
Busted.
He forced a smile.
“Funny thing about us,” he said. “I kept bringing you back, time after time. Must have got quite attached.”
“Yeah?” said Matt.
“When it came to the crunch, back then, just before Henry, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t shoot you.”
Matt raised his chin and waited to hear what else the farmer had to say for himself.
“I couldn’t shoot you,” said Calham. “I couldn’t shoot you, but I just killed my own son...”
Matt tightened his grip on the shotgun.
“...and last night I saw you, standing over me, with a blade. You could’ve gutted me in my bed, but you didn’t, did you?”
Calham took a step closer.
“You couldn’t kill me,” he said. “Any more than I could kill you.”
Another step.
Matt thumbed back both hammers on the shotgun. Rob’s dead face stared back at him from the recesses of his mind. That was the one sight he would never, ever forget, no matter what happened to him.
“A lot’s happened since then,” he said.
Calham’s conniving eyes searched Matt’s face for signs of forgiveness or weakness.
He found none.
Realising that his time was in fact finally up, Calham found himself gazing down at the strange soil that had inexplicably resurrected so many of his victims. There was genuine look of wonder in his eyes for a moment, and he began to ponder its unexplored possibilities; possibilities way beyond his own needs and games; but then the look was gone again. He stared at his final victim with something like acceptance and slowly nodded.
“Right,” he said. “So I suppose the next question is, what are you going to do once you’ve pulled the trigger?”
Calham began to slowly approach Matt again, knowing full well what this would mean.
“Are you going to put me in the ground here?” he said. “Bring me back?”
Matt tightened his grip on the weapon, as the bloodied farmer drew nearer.
“Maybe out of curiosity?” said Calham. “Maybe out of the guilt you’ll feel after you’ve killed me?”
Calham now stood directly in front of Matt.
Close enough to spit on.
“Or maybe you’ll want to bring me back...” said Calham. “...just so you can kill me again.”
Matt’s eyes focused on the neighbouring cornfield in the distance behind Calham. The field where Rob’s broken body lay buried without any hope of return.
“Who knows,” said Calham. “Maybe you’ll get the taste for it after all...”
This last insult was too much for Matt. The thought that Calham still felt, deep down, that they were the same was too much for him to bear.
He squeezed the trigger and watched Calham’s midsection disintegrate into a fine red spray. The farmer split in two, his severed upper body spinning up, tumbling through the air, as his legs wobbled and collapsed to the ground. The farmer’s upper body finally landed in the earth some feet away from the rest of him with an unceremonious thump.
Matt slowly lowered the shotgun and stared at what was left of the farmer’s remains, scattered over his own field. Matt’s features were cold, his eyes held no remorse. In that moment he felt absolutely nothing. He dropped the shotgun and knelt down in the field, instinctively digging his fingers down into the earth. He looked out across the fallow field and Shadowbrook Farm, and into the deserted green landscape that lay beyond. He rubbed the strange soil between his fingers and studied it for a moment. He then looked again at the dead farmer.
Dark, unwanted thoughts began to invade his mind.
He began to wonder.