The Growing Void
There was a hole in the wall, and it wouldn’t stop growing. Not that Barty cared much, he’d been staring at it for the better part of a week. The cars and buses made themselves known as they passed outside his window under the gray sky of an autumn morning. He had been living there for almost a year now, and the cobwebs that his mother had let take over the ceiling had moved down to the walls and floors. Barty had worked as a salesman for 30 years, never finding much success but couldn’t picture himself doing anything else. One day, after failing to convert on a target he’d been warming up for the better part of a year, his boss Mary had called him into her office and insisted he find something else to do with his time. Truth be told, he was a bit relieved. He had never much liked the job and now he could spend the time he had always wished he had, cleaning his mother’s house. He had practically skipped through the fallen leaves on the way home, passing the wharf and noticing white caps on the waves as the water crashed against the stone barrier. It was a windy day.
When he arrived at his mother’s, he had found her face down in the garden near the begonias. She had apparently suffered a stroke as she scooped fertilizer into the plant beds. He remembered staring at her body for a full forty minutes before pulling her head out of the pile of poop. He simply couldn’t decide whether she was dead or just going through one of her strange gardening rituals. He reached down and grabbed the back of her head, already cold and stiff. He realized she wasn’t going to come out willingly and proceeded to rock back and forth to work her flesh loose from the fertilizer. Eventually her head came loose with a sickening yet satisfying THWOCK – and once he glimpsed her shit-stained smile, he knew she was gone. He contacted the police, they hung around the place for the next few days, taking stock of the meager possessions she had accumulated throughout her eighty years. It was mostly junk, though she had collected a range of dolls left around the neighborhood by various children as they came through to see the graveyard. The graveyard was the main attraction of their unusual town. It was large, gothic, and incredibly detailed. The ghoulish gargoyles practically dripped saliva onto the passersby as they slowly took in the headstones. One section was so black it almost glowed at night. That was Barty’s favorite, he would sometimes take a picnic lunch there and sit by it at night. Barty’s appetite only came alive at night, he had never wondered why.
Once the police had determined her death was of natural causes, Barty brought her body home and buried it at the edge of the cemetery, where she’d always said she wanted to rest. He picked a shady spot under the large oak tree at the western edge, spending much of that night digging a hole that he couldn’t quite make straight-edged. After three hours of trying, he realized she wasn’t going to care. So in she went, followed by lots of dirt. And that was that. Since then, Barty had occupied the house and struggled to change anything about it. The TV occasionally flipped on by itself and showed Barty some slice of a program that he’d never seen before. It was always a small puppet girl, with a few friendly creatures, including a brightly colored dragon who always told her she would be alright. Barty liked the show, but it never stayed on for more than three minutes at a time. About a year later, the hole appeared in the north wall of the living room and stayed there. Barty didn’t know how to fix a hole and figured his mom would’ve wanted it there, so he left it. After a while it began to get bigger, and Barty supposed that was alright too.
Now Barty noticed something at the edges of the hole, some small curling finger-like hairs. He wasn’t sure if they were hairs or worms, but he wouldn’t move closer to find out. He decided instead to go for a walk. It was, after all, a lovely Autumn Day. He stepped out the front door and walked down the street, noticing the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the dying leaves. There were never any birds in the neighborhood, which Barty never thought was strange. He made his way to the graveyard at the end of the block. He sat down at a bench to tell his mother about the hole. He described the greenish color that he sometimes saw at the edges of the darkness that filled its empty space. He told her about the visions of winged horses, clawed fingers and dripping fangs that he sometimes got as he stared into the darkness. He told her about the loss of his job and the fact that he didn’t really want another one. He told her about the emptiness inside himself, that he felt was growing each day and that he felt would one day swallow him whole. She said nothing because she was dead.
When Barty started the journey back home, he decided to do something about the hole. As he shared his fears and dreams with his dead mother, he realized that nothing would change unless he did something about it. He thought maybe the hole in the wall represented the unfulfilled needs in his own life and he vowed to do something about it. He realized in that moment that he had never felt so powerful, so in control of his own destiny. He knew that only he had the power to do something about this emptiness and was determined to fill it. But with what? His hopes? His dreams? He felt that they already occupied that darkness, it had swallowed them whole and left no trace of them for the world to see. Perhaps he would throw his mother’s things in there. Maybe the dolls would satisfy its appetite. Yes, that would be a good start.
As he turned onto his block, he stopped in his tracks. His mother’s house was now only half-visible. The house had been vertically sheared in half, with the southern half visible to Barty and seemingly the same as it ever was – but the northern half was completely gone, consumed by the now gigantic hole. The circular emptiness had grown so large that it had now eaten the north wall of the first floor, second and third, as well as the ground around it. The only part of the garden that was untouched were the begonias, something Barty thought would have pleased his mother. He smiled at the thought as he approached the half-house, half-galaxy. He noticed that the finger-worms at the edges of the hole were now large and snakelike. They each now had eyes, a nose, and teeth. He even heard what sounded to be like a low humming or even growling that was emanating from the snakes. He opened the front door and walked inside. Where the hole had started in the living room, there was now a face. A huge face with a gaping maw of a mouth, wide searching eyes, and skin the color of muddy seaweed. Barty looked closer and thought the face looked a bit like his old mother, but couldn’t be sure as it became fuzzy the more, he focused on it. He decided to try something. He grabbed one of his mother’s dolls from the shelf above the dining room table and tossed it at the face. The eyes immediately locked onto the doll as it flew and the mouth stretched toward the doll, opening wide as it approached and a long, wormlike tongue shot out and wrapped the doll up and dragged it inside the mouth. Barty thought he detected a smile in the face as it seemed to chew on the doll, somewhat intensely. He knew what to do.
After wrangling up the sum of his mother’s dolls, which took the better part of the evening, Barty had filled a wheelbarrow with them and rolled it into the living room. The hole was larger now and the entire house had been reduced to just the living room. All other rooms had been consumed, as had the basement, roof, and backyard. In the back of Barty’s mind, he thought that once the house was fully gone, the face would move on to the next house, and the next one until it got the graveyard. He didn’t know when this would stop. But that didn’t bother him. He had a purpose now and that was satisfying. He picked a doll and showed it to the face. The large eyes got wide and manic, bits of saliva began to gather at the corners of the massive mouth, the wormlike tongue slithering along what would have been the lower lip of a normal person. Barty tossed the doll and almost before it left his hand, the tongue shot out and grabbed it, pulling the treat into the maw for a nostalgic snack. Barty tossed two in the air at once, and the tongue split into two segments that each reached out to grab a doll. Barty then grabbed a larger doll, holding it out towards the face. The eyes focused on him and one of the tongues slowly moved toward him. It wrapped itself around the doll in his hand and Barty could feel the dead strength in it. He planted his feet and went into a game of tug-of-war with the face. As the tongue pulled harder, he felt his feet slide a few inches on the floor and heard a growl from the snakes at the edges of existence. He let go of the doll and allowed the face its prize. He then wheeled the wheelbarrow full of dolls toward the center of the hole-face in what was once the north wall of the house. The face was still chewing on the last doll Barty had given it, but the eyes went wide as they stared at the buffet before it. Thick strands of goopy, brown liquid began dripping from the sides of the mouth onto the living room floor and Barty realized it was salivating. He grabbed the handles of the barrow and dumped the load of dolls into the gaping maw, hearing a guttural roar from the thing as he did so. As it opened its mouth wide to take in the supply, Barty was pretty sure he heard his mother sigh happily underneath the roar of the creature. As he dumped the last of the dolls into the awaiting gap, he felt fulfilled. Finally, he felt his life had had a purpose, the significance of meaning and a job well done entered his mind. And he was very satisfied. He realized then that his life had always been missing this, and he felt such a grand anticipation for the future! Knowing that there so many tasks out there that he needed to accomplish, a whole world of strange oddities and spirits like this that needed tending to and that people wouldn’t understand. He felt a warm light at the center of his being and understood that was his reason for being, the reason he’d been born into this world, and he was actually excited. It was at this exact moment that the gaping maw finished chewing on the supply of dolls that Barty had gathered, and the hole grew to surround Barty entirely. Tears gathered in Barty’s eyes as he focused on his newfound purpose, never feeling the creature’s tongues wrap around his ankles. As Barty was pulled into the gaping maw, like the rest of the house, he smiled. And then the darkness closed around him and he was gone.
The next morning, a man was walking his dog through the neighborhood and noticed a beautiful cemetery at the end of a road. As he walked toward it, he noticed an empty lot between two houses that looked like a house should have been there. He had been looking for a place to live and felt drawn to this plot of land. His dog growled at the uneven ground that sprouted brown/green grass. He then saw a tiny doll in a pile of dirt. As he went to pick it up, he noticed an incredibly small tree sprout. His dog pulled at the leash, and they walked on to the graveyard. But the man smiled and knew his future waited for him here. He would be back.
