Tyler nodded.
“She’s right.I don’t know what done it, really.They wasn’t always this way.Maybe it was Uncle Sawyer’s churching, or them black bugs.I don’t know.I just don’t.All I know is.When Carol Anne’s Dad passed, things was different.They started getting weird.Awkward, you know.Thinking strange.Acting bizarre.They put on a good enough show but they was.Different on the insides, you know.”
“They eat people?”I asked.
“I think so,” Tyler said.“They started getting secretive-like.Stopped making rules that made any sense.Guests started checking out early, and Carol Anne or me didn’t get a chance to see what happened.New meat started showing up in the freezer.They started abandoning the animals in the pastures and forgetting to feed ‘em.I got scared but didn’t know what to do about it, other than stay and help where I could.Carol Anne seemed safe enough, at least.Them bugs, they don’t like you when you’re young.They run away.They run away from me and Carol Anne when they tried to feed ‘em to us.”
“What do you mean, bugs?”
“Big old nasty black bugs with a ton of legs,” Carol Anne said.“They tried to feed ‘em to us, but the bugs didn’t like us none and ran away.”
“So the black bugs—where did they come from?”
“I don’t know,” Tyler said.“Uncle Sawyer’s got ‘em in these big mason jars.Used to do his rites and ceremonies at night.Killing goats and cows.Real old testament stuff, you know.That’s how it started, maybe—maybe the ceremonies called the black bugs, or maybe Sawyer ate one of them bugs, and it started changing him.
“Me and Carol Anne, neither of us had the stomach for what they called churching anyhow.But I could hear ‘em at night.Whooping and hollering and screaming like beasts.I think I started cottoning on when we had that doctor disappear, and everyone started acting strange.I’d heard her screaming in the night.Everybody acted like I ain’t heard what I heard, but Carol Anne told me she’d heard it too.So I went and investigated the church—they didn’t want us there, at all.Me and Carol Anne was always left out of the loop, intentionally, I think.Anyway.Busted in at five AM when they were drunk off moonshine and sleeping off hangovers.Found a human corpse butchered all up a-hanging from the rafters.Of course.You make excuses.”
You make excuses, I thought.I tried not to think about the vampires in my life.
“What could have been a good enough excuse?”I asked.
“Maybe it ain’t what it looks like,” Tyler said.“Maybe it wasn’t so much all of this I was paranoid about.Maybe I’m just a kid.Maybe it was just decorating.Or maybe I was seeing things wrong.”
“Sounds like cognitive dissonance,” I said.
“It ain’t like that.I mean.These folks are family.I been coming out to the farm for years.Growed up with Carol Anne.Aunt Patti taught me how to cook and wear a bow tie.Uncle JJ and Uncle David and Uncle Sawyer used to play cards with me past midnight.It’s hard to see them switch like that.I ain’t saying I was smart about it.I mean, lady, no offense intended, but I ain’t even graduated from high school yet.I’m supposed to trust in the adults around me, still.There ain’t no guidance pamphlets down at the school.”He held a hand out in the air.“What to do when your family all starts murdering people and hiding it from you.”
“Are they gonna be okay?”Carol Anne asked.
“I don’t know, Carol Anne,” Tyler said.He cut his eyes out the window, at his rearview mirror, and then swore to himself.“We got company.”
A pair of headlights and a honking horn tore out of some underbrush, and a window rolled down.Sawyer’s lopsided face, replete with flapping hair stuck out of the window, a revolver in hand.
“Poor puppy,” he cackled.“Protecting your pals?Pull over and we’ll put ‘em to rights.”
The revolver went off, and the back window shattered.The wheel jerked, and Tyler held on to it as we swerved.
“Shit,” Tyler said.“Uncle Sawyer’s got a gun.Carol Anne—lady—y’all better hold on.This is gonna get worse before it gets better.”
Tyler gunned the engine, leaning forward.The road ahead of us was that same sharp bend I’d pushed Brother Al down earlier—enough room for two cars that shrunk down to one lane.If Tyler was going to make it—if we were going to make it—Tyler was going to have to get ahead of Sawyer’s car.
“Get good with God,” Sawyer screamed out the window.“Fillet your friend’s young flesh and fork it over!”
“Fuck you,” Tyler yelled and swerved.
The truck bounced against Sawyer’s car, and the world spun.We slid, gravel skittering under the tires, the wrong way through the gap, and then Tyler course-corrected through a fish-tail, and we were on the highway speeding.I turned backwards to look.Sawyer’s car was steaming, hood first in a knobbly elm.
“Yes!”I said.“Home free!”
Carol Anne and Tyler both looked sick.
“I don’t like this,” Carol Anne said.“You think Uncle Sawyer’s okay?”
I turned around in my seat, watching Sawyer kick his tire and shrink in the distance.
“I don’t think your Uncle Sawyer’s been your Uncle Sawyer for a while,” I said.
A hand darted through the shattered back window.I jumped, but it grabbed a chunk of my hair and jerked me forward, using my forehead to shatter the rest of the glass.I gasped, blood and liquid dripping into my eyes, and screamed.
