The Houses Lie Empty on Mulberry Street by Gabrielle Bleu

When Joannie rode her bike to school in the fall, Mulberry Street always sat empty as she passed. No cars, no adults, no other kids on bikes. The shades on the windows were always drawn. In the winter, Joannie rode the bus to get to elementary school. The bus never stopped on Mulberry Street.

Black and red mulberry trees planted along the medians and road verges gave the street its name. Joannie liked Crabapple Lane one street over much better. The apples didn’t make such a mess, and the houses didn’t sit like empty hermit-crab shells. The mulberries left purple-black trails behind her bike wheels, and there were no kids to make playdates with.

Until one day, children’s voices rang down Mulberry Street.

Joannie’s front wheel wobbled on the sticky, juice-covered sidewalk as she passed Mulberry Street on her way to Crabapple Lane. She paused, looking for who was talking. Two girls, one of them about her age, stood underneath one of the mulberry trees, picking up berries and dropping them into buckets.

Joannie, excited to make some new friends, pedaled hard, her bike wheels flying over the pavement.

“Hi, I’m Joannie!” she yelled, skidding her bike to a stop.

The older girl looked up while her younger sister kept working, her fingers stained with juice. They both stopped talking as Joannie approached.

“Want to play? What are your names?” asked Joannie.

It took the other girl a while to answer.

“I’m Rubra, and this is Mora. I guess, we could play a little?”

“Why don’t we play tag?” Joannie asked.

“I’ve never played that,” Rubra mumbled.

“You’ve never played tag?” Joannie quickly took command, ready to lead her new friends to fun. “Well its easy! One person is ‘it’ and chases the other two. If they catch someone, then they’re ‘it’ and they chase.”

“Is it scary?” Mora spoke for the first time, peering up from where she crouched. “Being ‘it?'”

“No, silly, it’s fun. Watch, I’ll start, and you’ll see it isn’t scary.” Joannie’s mother always told her to be nice to her friends’ younger siblings. Even if they asked questions that Joannie thought were stupid.

“It does sound fun, let’s try it,” Rubra said. “Only we have to be careful, we’re not supposed to crush any of the mulberries that have fallen.”

“Who told you that?” Joannie asked.

Rubra’s face scrunched up as she thought of an answer. “Papa?” She sounded unsure. “We were supposed to finish gathering them, but…” Rubra shrugged.

“No, we have to finish!” Mora yelled. “Papa said so.”

“We’ll be careful,” Joannie assured her.

“How do we start?” Rubra asked, and Joannie was thankful she wanted to play even while her sister was being a spoilsport.

“You better run!” Joannie yelled, lunging forward. Rubra dashed away, laughing. Mora looked at Joannie, doubtful, before running after her sister.

Joannie caught Rubra first. Rubra stood still as Joannie zipped away, rubbing her arm where she had been tagged. But soon Rubra chased after Mora, and then Mora sped towards Joannie.

Joannie quickly forgot about Rubra’s warnings, and ran all over, regardless of the mulberries. The vibrant fruit burst under her feet, splattering her shoes. Rubra and Mora ran more cautiously, taking faltering steps to follow their own rules. It made them very easy to catch. Mora scowled each time Joannie tagged her, glaring at her purpled shoes.

“It” again, Joannie focused on tagging Mora, to get her back for the mean looks. The younger girl tried to hide behind one of the mulberry trees, but Joannie saw her. In her excitement, Joannie tagged Mora too hard, pushing her backwards onto the ground. Sprawled on the pavement, Mora curled up over her knees and screamed.

“I’m sorry, are you okay?” Joannie bent down to help, thinking Mora was being a baby, that it hadn’t been that hard of a push.

But Mora was not okay.

Deep violet ooze spilled from between her lips. Mora caught some in her hands, before looking up at Joannie. She began to cry, the tears rolling down her cheeks the same dark color as what leaked from her mouth. Her body looked caved in around where Joannie pushed her, a mottled purple hollow.

“What did you do?” Rubra yelled, running up to them, her arm pushed inward where Joannie had tagged her earlier.

“I didn’t mean to,” Joannie whimpered.

Mora continued to retch up the purple mush onto the sidewalk. The little girl tilted forward to lay down on the pavement. A purple pool trickled out around her. “Where’s your dad? We should get him.”

“Dad?” Rubra asked.

As she did, the berry buckets behind her began to quake, spilling over with violet juice. The mounds of mulberries moved. A head formed, dripping with juice, its face a mushy, mottled purple, its eyes two white pinpricks of unripe fruit. It peered over the edge of the bucket at the girls. Joannie gasped, and the mulberry creature lifted itself high, its neck thinning with the strain, before reaching out a dripping tendril into one of the other buckets. Its body grew, as it pulled the contents of the bucket into itself. It reached out to another, and another, until the head lay in the middle of a web of pulsating tendrils. The head turned towards Joannie and the still crying Mora.

“Papa,” Mora sobbed, her body shrinking smaller and smaller as she leaked the dark ooze of her insides. “Papa, I’m hurt.”

With a sucking sound, the head pulled back its tendrils from the buckets, solidifying into a body. The body lumbered towards the children; the featureless head angled towards Joannie.

“Papa, it was an accident,” Rubra said.

Papa paused, turning to look at its children. Rubra’s arm, swollen around the burgundy print of Joannie’s hand, her flesh squeezed thin at the point of impact. Mora, a bag of skin and clothes laying in an ever-widening purple puddle, amidst the streaks of smashed berries. It wailed at the sight. Joannie thought it sounded like the whale tapes her mom played her at bedtime. But the wail grew louder, until Joannie had to clap her hands over her ears.

“What’s happening?” Joannie yelled so Rubra could hear her over the sound.

“They won’t ever get to grow up to be like us, now,” Rubra yelled back. She pointed to the mash of berries the creature cried over, ones Joannie had carelessly crushed. The wailing stopped, the creature standing still as it dripped onto the already stained sidewalk.

“Like us?” Joannie whispered. Rubra crouched besides the puddle that had been Mora.

“Like us,” she repeated. Rubra reached out towards her sister and Joannie noticed her fingers weren’t stained purple. They oozed it. Her fingertips were a pulpy mash like Papa, and as she touched Mora, they spread and merged with the mire of her sister. She pulled away to look back at Joannie, her fingers left behind in the mush.

Joannie shrieked. Papa started at the sound and turned to look at her, its pale eyes blazing. It advanced on her, its form spreading into a wave of crimson, indigo, and violet ready to crash down and drown her. With a sickening squelch as the pulp of her palms met Joannie’s back, Rubra pushed Joannie away.

Joannie ran.

Papa lurched after her, leaving a streaking trail behind itself, crushing fences and mailboxes as it went. It ran over Joannie’s bike, and pulled it in to its body, the metal crunching under the weight and speed of the monster.

Joannie sprinted to the corner and turned off Mulberry Street onto Park. The wet, sucking sound stopped at the corner. Joannie tried not to think about the shape of Mora oozing into the pavement and kept running. She left Mulberry Street behind. Her shoes left red and purple footprints behind her as she went, a trail leading straight back to her house, straight up to her room. Safe inside, she peeked out the window to the street below her house. But Papa hadn’t followed her into the safety of her cul-de-sac.

Her mom was mad about the lost bike, but Joannie refused to go back to Mulberry Street to get it. She spent the rest of the summer playing in her room, peering out the window to make sure no purple stains had appeared on the sidewalks.

The concrete stayed a safe, clean grey, until the day city workers kicked dirt all over as they dug holes in the ground. Joannie watched them from her window, as they planted mulberry trees all along her block.

—

Gabrielle Bleu writes science fiction and fantasy. When not writing, she watches birds and admires lichens. Their work has appeared in the Arcanist, Utopia Science Fiction, and the Crone Girls Press anthology “Coppice & Brake.” Follow them on twitter @BeteMonstrueuse for birdwatching photos and the occasional thoughts on werewolves, and find more of her work at gabriellebleu.com.