The Haar

by David Sodergren

So aye, it’s fair to say it took more than a little blood to turn Muriel McAuley’s cast-iron stomach. In fact, the only thing Muriel couldn’t abide — that really, truly nauseated her — were stuck-up wee arseholes in suits telling her what to do.

Apparently, laws don’t apply to the rich.

“You know, money can buy a lot of things,” said Arthur as he huffed his way towards them. “But it cannae buy decency. It cannae buy compassion. And it cannae buy a nutter with a fucking shotgun.”

Men like that — rich men, with no morals — did whatever it took to get ahead. They lied and cheated their way to the top, treading all over the little people beneath them without a care. That was bad enough. But even worse was the way Grant treated the land. A man with no respect for nature was the worst type of man.

“Are memories real?” “Of course,” she said. “Then so am I.”

There is a God, thought Aaron, and then the creature yanked hard on his skin and turned him inside out like a revolting fleshy pillowcase.

An oily arm erupted from the bathtub, wrapping around Shelly’s neck. She choked out a startled wheeze as the thin cord tightened, cutting into her skin. The veiny appendage bulged as it sucked the spurting blood from Shelly’s throat, her face turning red, then blue, then purple.

“Get them out of me!” he cried, his arm dangling loose from his shoulder, held in place by nothing but stretching veins and tendons, his flesh alive with crawling horrors that rippled up his neck. He dropped his weapon and scratched at his face, screaming, nails digging bloody trenches in his cheeks as his eyes went dark and oily and dozens of creatures spewed forth from his mouth in a revolting torrent.

“If you love someone, tell them. Tell them every day. Never let them forget. And if they go away for a while, never forget them. They can come back, Jack. They can come back.”

Grant clawed at his son’s throat, tearing out handfuls of fleshy meat and discarding them on the sand. His fingers closed around his dying son’s vertebrae, crushing the bones with one powerful fist, and the lifeless torso crumbled to the ground, blood gushing from the severed head that Grant held aloft, brandishing it like a macabre trophy.