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Mankind. In our brief existence we have dominated this planet and all of its inhabitants. Little remains that we cannot influence. From the largest mammals of the ocean to microscopic viruses of the Sub-Saharan. We are the true apex predator and our reign of terror knows no bounds. What we can accomplish is limited solely by our imagination & determination.
We all innately know not to pet the bear - for we would surely lose our hand. Other species will best us if faced alone. Our strength lies not in our individual combat effectiveness. Our strength lies when we come together with like mindedness. One such group of like minded individuals bonded together to create the most destructive force imagined: thermonuclear bombs. As a species, together, we reign tyrannically over this planet.
Eventually, our bodies and minds weaken. Life is a degenerative condition whereupon our vessel progressively loses its self sufficiency. Death is the result, but it is not the end. We instill in offspring our tightly held values, goals and methodology. Further refining the efficiency at which we influence our surroundings. This ability is crucial to our position at the top of the food chain. Each generation is an improvement upon the previous.
In spite of our advantageous abilities, we have an insurmountable weaknesses. We fear the unknown. Every phobia can be broken down to this. The foundation upon which all fears mutate and grow. The unknown.
Curiously, we are the only species subject to this, for the lowly badger does not fear the moon despite their unfamiliarity with it. Yet our unease created cryptid myths of monsters controlled by the moon. The ant does not flee from the magnifying glass. While we have associated close proximity to the sun with that of drowning.
Fear drives progress, and what we have created mirrors our motivation. We fear the dark, so we manifested fire to illuminate the night. We fear hunger, so we birthed agriculture to ensure we will always know when our next meal will be. We fear pain and sickness, so we devised medicine to protect us from unseen microbial entities and rid us of our ailments. We fear the sun and moon, so we take to the stars to master their realm. We fear each other, so we engineered tools of destruction to defend ourselves. We fear what is beyond death, so we imagined Gods to quell our uncertainty.
In our pursuit of controlling and understanding everything, we have developed another unique power. The power of self deception. We manifest validity for justification of our inabilities and weaknesses. We are able to delude ourselves of anything if we want, or need, to. Including the sovereignty of our domain. In this, our skill is unsurpassed.
It is through this unique combination of fear and self deception that we omitted from our collective knowledge the startling fact that we intimately understood Death ages ago. You see, man is not the alpha predator, nor ever was. At the apex of life, Death holds all under their watchful gaze.
Untold millennia at the mercy of their ascendency had molded mankind into livestock. Not yet grown was our curiousity or love. Instead, we lived in a delicate balance between disconnecting shock and sheer terror. The horrors we were subjected to, the abominations we witnessed…. Life was fear and fear was life.
A crucial mutation saved our species. Within a single generation, all newborns were gifted with pupils as black as night; as black as Death. At first, the offspring were thought ill. Particularly when other changes became apparent. Changes that were not immediately recognized at birth. As weeks passed, their behavior mystified the sages. Happy, playful, laughter - behaviors so new that names had to be created to define them. All was explained when a passing swarm of Death blotted out the sun and the infants did not frighten. They could not see them passing by. Blessed were these babies. Spared the traumatic lives, they otherwise would have drowned in fear side by side with their ancestors.
What we now call "death" is a living breathing creature that we have evolved to not see. It was speculated that they are as old as Earth itself. Existing just outside our spectrum of vision, we remain ignorant to their presence. Most animals retain sight of them. This is why dogs will seemingly bark at the wind, and cats seek concealment.
Mutations are without prejudice. A predator gaining increased low lumen visibility, or an uncontrolled growth of malignant cells; both are mutations and both are indifferent towards it's host.
Throughout known history, several men and women were born with the ability to see them. We sent them to prisons of white padding and labeled them as unsound of mind; forgotten to our society. Burned heretics utop mounds of tinder. Ignored and forced upon them a life of nomadism. Nearly all of these cursed individuals turn to drugs and alcohol as a means to escape their waking nightmare. When these momentary escapes no longer provide respite, many of these cursed souls resort to death, making up a startling percentage of suicides. We have invented names and definitions for mental and social disorders to help understand their conditions.
As the microscope aided our knowledge of tuberculosis and cholera, our increased understanding of the human brain has resulted in an increased number of diagnosed mental diseases. Whilst there are many others who believe instead that the enlarging percentage is not the result of our greater understanding. They believe that, in relation to population size, more people are developing these issues.
More people are suffering. More people are seeing them
Death, too, has evolved. Most of them perished from the slow withering decay of starvation when our new eyes obscured them from our reality. Those that remained learned new ways to hunt, developed new tactics. They learned patience.
A constant faint beeping sound disturbed Jack's peaceful sleep. Jack Hannagan opened his eyes, moving his arms about. The first thing Jack noticed was that he had been sleeping on the floor, even before his sight fully adjusted to the brightly lit room Jack managed to tell the distinct texture of stone beneath him. The second thing Jack came to notice was the fact that the beeping seemed to be coming from within him rather than an external source, pondering upon the possibility of being intoxicated, Jack groggily made his way to his feet as his sight fully adjusted to the lighting in the room.
The third thing Jack noticed was that he did not recognize the room he was in. Gradually coming to his sense, Jack looked around the room as the beeping sound slowly died out. It was a decent-sized square room with nothing unique about it; a simple concrete floor with walls painted in a dull yellow color. The room itself was largely devoid of furniture aside from a closet and a simple wooden chair in the corner. The only odd thing about it was a lack of windows.
Understandably, Jack immediately spotted the door and headed to open it, hoping the whole ordeal to be nothing but one odd drunken adventure. Making small steps, Jack eventually reached the door and grasped at the handle spinning it to the left, but it remained locked. He then spun it to the right, yet the lock wouldn't give. Feeling somewhat distraught, Jack started twisting and turning the handle and hitting the door but it wouldn't budge. Once discomfort turned to outright frustration, Jack was beating at the door and cursing aloud.
"Good evening, Mr. Hannagan, I'm glad to see you woke up!", rang a woman's voice, forcing Jack to freeze. There wasn't anything inherently strange in the woman's voice, aside perhaps from her unique accent, it sounded like a mixture of German and Russian but not quite either one. What frightened the man about the voice was its origin; it seemed to be coming straight out of his head.
"Jack… can I call you that? I know we haven't really met in person, or ever, but trust me you are going to like what I've in store for you. Welcome to by the way!", the voice rang once more through Jack's earlobes. The man, clearly confused, grabbed at his ears attempting to block the voice and looked around for any sorts of a camera or microphone hanging somewhere in the room but his inability to find any only drove him closer to the edge.
The voice continued, "Don't look around, you won't find it anywhere around you. You might find it hard to believe but I am speaking to you through a tiny device that I've installed under your skin. Now hear me out, Jack."
The man interrupted the voice by shouting, "Shut the fuck up and let me out of here!" as he began pounding on the door once again.
"I guess I have no choice… shame to do this to you, Jack, I found you kind of handsome… Oh well…" the voice responded calmly, further infuriating the man who unleashed a barrage of insults into the air.
An electric shock surged through Jack's body sending him crashing down to the concrete floor beneath him. As Jack's body crumpled on the floor flooding him in agony, the voice spoke again, "I guess I'll have to start over. This is , Jack, and around here you will have to figure your way out to freedom, that is, if you want freedom. I brought you here because you were an easy target to pick. You see, while I could do a lot of things, I'm just tired of simply unaliving people after doing for this long, I've decided to take a page out of a certain Herman Mudgett's book on how to do this fun stuff. You could say I'm taking a more classic approach to things. Don't take it too personally, but you are just my form of entertainment. If you want all of this to end, all you've to do is solve a few riddles and listen to my instructions. Simple as that! Come on, collaborate and everything will be fine! We'll have fun together!"
Jack began overcoming the pain that had riddled his body as his tense muscles started loosening up the man called out weakly, "Fuck you! If you don't let me out right now, I'll find you and I'll put you in the ground, bitch!"
The voice began laughing as a result of Jack's and responded by saying, "Alright then, you're an amusing one! First of all, assisted suicide is my hobby by now but nobody seems to be able to get the job done. You know what, I'll give you a hint. The chair, you're going to need it to get out of here. By the way, I'm Elisa."
"I am going to beat you to death with that chair, you skank if you don't let me out of here!", yelled out Jack as he made his way back to his feet. Elisa, however, did not respond and Jack decided to once again tried to pound his way out through the door.
After a few minutes, he came to terms with the notion that he wouldn't be able to open the door through sheer force; he started pacing around the room trying to figure a way out without complying with the sick bastard that had trapped him. At first, Jack concluded that he was perhaps having a bad trip, after all, he did remember popping a few with his buddies the previous night but that made no sense because Acid shouldn't make you hallucinate like this, this was way too clear and solid to be an acid trip. Jack gave up on the idea that he's having a trip and instead opted to think he might be dreaming. Almost managing to convince himself, he snapped out of the notion when he remembered how he was electrocuted earlier. Jack knew he should've woken up if he was electrocuted in a dream and besides it felt very real to him. He kept on coming up with ideas and excuses to avoid accepting what he came to realize was the most probable truth; that he was indeed locked up by some mad woman.
Pacing around the room in circles Jack eventually noticed something. Whenever he stepped on a certain spot on the floor it felt hollow as if there wasn't actually concrete at that spot. He stopped pacing and made his way to the spot he heard produce an odd sound and stepped on it a few times. Lo-and-behold, he was right, there wasn't concrete in that spot… it was a plaster type of surface. He tried stomping it through but his weight wasn't enough to crack the surface. Remembering what Elisa said to him he went and got the chair. Jack picked it up and look all over the object for clues but couldn't figure anything out. He set the chair on the floor and sat on it, trying to think about what she had told him. Nothing sprang to his mind. It seemed to him as if she was just playing with him all along.
Jack sat there, in the middle of that room in which he was trapped trying to conjure up ideas for his escape, but nothing just seemed to come to mind, eventually, he fell asleep in a sitting position.
A few hours later, Jack woke up, hoping to be at home, or at least in some familiar territory he instead found himself still sitting on the wooden chair inside that windowless room in which he had been imprisoned.
With anger building up once more inside of him, Jack shot up to his feet and threw the chair aside. Unexpectedly the chair broke apart; shattering into the individual pieces that together become a chair. Surprised by the results of his action, Jack inspected the fragments of the chair thoroughly hoping to find the key to his escape.
He didn't find any key, however; he found that one of the legs had a distinct design, whilst three of the legs were typical chair legs, the forth, it had a blade on one of its ends, acting as a screw. A moment of Eureka occurred inside Jack's mind, he knew what he had to do next. He opted to use the bladed chair leg on the section of the floor which wasn't concrete.
Jack went up to the weak spot of the floor and started stabbing at it repeatedly with his makeshift short pike. At first, nothing came of it, but after repeated attempts and some added pressure from the man, the floor finally gave in and fell through exposing a secret compartment.
Jack looked inside to see if he could find anything useful, inside he found a glass bottle. Shoving his arm down the small space, to reach the bottle, he ground his arm against the jugged walls, causing himself a few incisions that made him wince when he was pulling the bottle outwards.
Inspecting the bottle, Jack became overjoyed when he noticed a small metal key inside. Falling on his back, clutching at the bottle, Jack ignored the searing pain shooting up his arm and laughed triumphantly assuming he had earned his way out of the room.
Jack got back up to his feet and threw bottle hard at the floor, shattering it. His joyous face quickly fell as he saw the small key roll its way towards the hole in the floor. Knocking it's too small for him to reach Jack was about to break down. Fortunately for him, the key stopped rolling a few millimeters away from the hole.
Jack rushed to the key, picked it up from the floor and ran towards the door. He inserted the key into the keyhole and turned it left, but the door remained locked, he then tried the other way around but the key didn't move.
Furious, Jack yanked out the key and tossed it aside after which he slid down to the floor and began sobbing in frustration.
The man ended up crying himself to sleep.
When he woke up, Jack felt the thirst burn in his throat, assuming he had spent a few days by that point in the room he decided it would be a good idea to try to force his way out of the room again. Banging his fists as hard as he could at the door while cursing away at anything that came to mind. This time, however, no response came, and Jack realized he was completely alone. His impromptu burst of anger was quickly replaced by the dread that someone was actually stalking him inside the room. He began looking around the room quickly, hoping to find the intruder and a way out of the room along with it.
What he found instead was a piece of paper between broken shards of glass. Jack went and picked up the piece of paper, it was crumpled and smelled a lot like urine. The man swallowed his saliva and unfolded the paper, it contained a message, "This key opens the closet door where the next step to a successful escape is located."
Snapping once again, Jack threw the piece of paper onto the floor and began looking around for the key, he looked hard all over the floor but couldn't find the key. That's when the dreadful thought of the key falling down the hole in the floor crept up into his mind. Slowing himself down, Jack slowly made his way to the hall and look at it, hoping to be wrong. He wasn't wrong, the small key glinted at him from the bottom of the hole. Jack dropped to his knees and let out an anguished "Fuck" as he shoved his already bruised and swollen arm down the hole hoping to get the key. He could definitely grope at it, but only the edges of his fingers were able to reach the valuable object. Each movement of Jack's arm caused him irritating pain. After a few further fruitless attempts, Jack gave up on the key and decided he should just break the glass doors of the closet.
He pulled his bloodied arm out of the hole and took off his shirt as he was making his way to the closet, across the room, wrapping the shirt around his bloodied arm. He clenched it into a fist and began punching the closet door, ignoring the pain emanating from his arm and the shards of glass that flew at him.
He punched once, twice, thrice.
Then again
And again
And again
He kept on punching until the whole door was nothing but a set of metallic hinges and sharp remains of what was once a whole glass door.
Peeking inside, Jack found another note laying on a set of boxes and the note contained the message, "The key to your freedom is found in the container that contains '7-0-3-9-0-9-4-3-6-0-6-4-5-0-4-7-9-4-0-9-3-2-6. 18-0-10-22-0-2-17-10-9-0-9-17-14-0-25-24-24-7-0-17-10-1-14. 4-0-22-8-0-18-10-13-14-1-0-15-3-22-9-0-25-1-22-15-3. 11-4-5-10-0-4-9-0-6-12-0-7-5-6-2? (Figure out the coded phrase, answer it, and you're out of here! XO Elisa Dietrichsditter)"
Jack looked at the note and he felt himself lose it again, he turned around and began screaming aimlessly, cursing at Elisa with a sailor's mouth. Once the man's outburst had caused his head to throb with pain, he calmed down and decided to sit down and try to figure out the riddle that he was presented with.
Jack tried figuring out what the numbers meant; whether they were representative of letters or were they just a combination to yet another note with the solution on it. Musing over the ideas he had come up with for a while, he concluded that the numbers were coded words and that he had to figure out the code.
Time was definitely not on his side as the thirst that had been burning through his throat for a while did not go away or make it easier for him to think about the coding. Jack was struggling to maintain his focus and his inability to write down the possibilities he came up with, all of that made it even harder to come up with a solution. Any time Jack came up with a logical solution for a few numbers, the code got even more confusing and he had to start from scratch. Jack's ever-increasing paranoia also added to diminish his self-confidence causing him to doubt any solution he had tried to come up with.
After pondering and wondering for so long, Jack noticed something that lit a spark under him. He looked for a moment at the boxes in the closet and came to notice something on them. There were eight boxes stacked in the closet. The boxes had the letters; "H", "N", "T", "G", "O", "I" inscribed on them. One letter per box. Jack stared at the boxes for a moment, and then he came up with an idea that in his own mind seemed crazy enough to work just perfectly.
"Could it actually be the answer to the riddle? It has to be! She's been fucking with my head the whole time I spent here. The solutions to the problems here aren't what they seem. The complicated seems to be simple while the obvious is convoluted.", He mused to himself as he picked himself up from the floor and towards the closet. "The answer is nothing!" he yelled out proudly.
Jack shuffled through the boxes, tossing them aside until only one was left; a box without any inscription on it. He opened the box eagerly to find a key inside the box. "Gotcha!" the man yelled out joyously as he ran towards the door and shoved the key into the keyhole.
One twist.
Two twists.
Time froze as the doorknob clicked and clunked
Three twists.
Jack's heart dropped to his feet, he couldn't believe what he was witnessing the doorknob fell from its place. The only thing that kept it from crashing down to the floor was the fact that Jack held the key atop of which the knob set firmly in his hand.
It wasn't a key.
It was a screwdriver.
Flying into another frenzy, the tired and tormented man yelled at the top of his lungs that he will kill Elisa along with her whole family and every last friend. He demanded to be released and threw himself onto the floor flailing his limbs like a small child throwing a fit.
The man has finally lost it.
After long minutes of kicking and screaming, Jack finally calmed down. He decided that enough was enough and that it's time for him to fuck with his captor by ruining their plans. Jack opted to end his own life and not endure another moment of psychological abuse. He grabbed a shard of glass and inspected it carefully, almost enjoying the moment.
He looked at the shard in his hand for a moment before saying, "You are my only friend here, and I'm going to ask you for a favor, please don't turn me down…" Once he was done speaking, something had caught his sight. A faint glint inside the closet, deep inside as if it was almost obscured by the boxes earlier. The small glint sparked his curiosity, and he decided to look at its source. Once at the closet again, Jack inspected the inner wall of the closet from up close to notice something, a handle.
He reached out and the static electricity shocked his hand, but he didn't let go.
"Well, here goes nothing," Jack cried.
He turned the handle and something creaked behind it prompting Jack to try to push the surface in front of him. The back wall of the closet opened ajar from the pressure applied by Jack's arm and a blue light filled his eyes.
Jack made his way through the closet and found himself in a long and narrow hall. Just as he made his way into the hall, Jack noticed a tiny brown thing move across the floor about a foot away from him. The sight made him freeze and swallow his own saliva. The long antennae at the front of the tiny thing wiggled about in the air. That thing was a creature, a small vile, disgusting creature that had sent Jack spiraling down his awful childhood memory lane making the man shudder a bit. After what seemed like eons, the creature was finally out of Jack's line of sight and the man was broken out of his trance.
"Fucking hell."
"Oh, you've made it out of the closet!" that wretched voice in Jack's mind rung again through his ears.
"Shut up!"
"Congratulations, Jack! Now, if you want to get out of here, you'll have to follow my directions, okay?"
"Shut up!" Jack barked again, "I'm not taking any orders from you, you bitch!"
"Oh well then, starve to death, I'm not going to tell you about the dining room a few dozen feet away from here to your left," the woman said feigning frustration at Jack.
The man thought to himself that she must think this is some stupid game, treating him like a child. Without saying a word, he walked towards the destination for which the voice in his mind directed him. During the long moments that required him to reach the dining room, Jack kept thinking about how the woman behind the voice could be lying to him or perhaps trying to trick him into eating poisoned foods. He reasons that she was sick enough to do something like that.
Turning to the left to face an opening to a dimly lit room, Jack's nostrils were filled with pleasant smells of all kinds. He could smell the savory scent of various meats, freshly baked bread and the familiar scent of cold beer. The scents consumed his mind and in a matter of moments he had forgotten about his previous suspicions; running into the room without regard to anything else but his craving for food. Jack was like a man possessed, dropping himself onto the wooden chair next to the large table filled with various goods he began munching on whatever he could reach. Stuffing his mouth to a no end as if he had never eaten any food before. The savory flavors that filled his insides with a warm and fuzzy feeling even made him forget about the throbbing pain in his injured arm. Jack's euphoria was broken when the voice inside his mind spoke again, "Enjoy your dinner, pal, just make sure to not disturb the residents in the room."
"What re…"
He was cut off by the appearance of light in a previously dark part of the room. Jack's jaw dropped when he was a naked man standing in the newly lit part of the room, humping something. Soft whimpers filled Jacks ears before he could react further. A child's whimpers.
"Him", the word echoed inside Jack's mind, but he ignored it, focusing on the abomination in front of him. The sound of whimpering grew louder sending Jack deeper into shock and disgust. The naked man must've noticed Jack's staring as its head turned three hundred sixty degrees, to face Jack producing a disgusting cracking sound from his twisting neck. The sight of one's head turning all the way back combined with a pale white mask with a macabre monstrous smile and demonic eyes drawn on it made Jack almost throw up his food. He could feel every last bit of it making its way upwards towards his mouth.
"Ignore him, he's taunting you." The voice inside Jack's implored.
The man would have none of it, mostly because once the monster turned its head back to its natural position the whimpering got stronger. This whole time, the monster wouldn't stop humping whatever was in front of it. The notion of this monster raping a child sent Jack into a fury, he grabbed the thick beer mug he had drunk from and marched towards the monster who paid no mind to his obvious marching, preferring to keep on abuse its victim.
A step away from the monster, Jack lifted the mug above his head and swung it down towards the beast. Nailing it squarely at the top of the dome. "Son of a bitch!" he yelled out as he struck the creature.
The demon simply froze in his place, prompting Jack to smash the mug over and over again over its head until the mug broke into tiny pieces of glass. The beast contorted an arm backward, producing that same disturbing popping sound as before to grab Jack's neck. The abomination started lifting Jack's body off the floor before turning its torso toward him awkwardly without moving his legs from their position.
Jack struggled to remove the beast's grip on his neck, but it was too powerful. The beast shrieked at a wiggling Jack before throwing him aside. The monster then turned the rest of its body towards Jack displaying a massive erection and started running towards the man.
"Run!" yelled out the voice in Jack's head. He was too deprived of oxygen to react quickly even though his life depended on it.
The beast caught up to Jack as he was staggering to his feet and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt throwing him once more across the room. Jack landed hard on his back, "fuck", he let out in desperation. Turning onto his side he noticed something that drove him nuts, a childlike doll laid on the floor.
"Run! Run! Run! Run!" the voice in Jack's head screamed at him. He got back to his feet and began running towards the exit of the room. The beast had caught up to him, however, grabbing him by the neck once more this time, Jack managed to land a solid kick on the crown jewels of the beast sending it shrieking and stumbling backward while he made his escape from its clutches.
"You better keep on running, Jack, he won't stop until he catches up to you", the woman responsible for the voice inside Jack's brain warned him "What… what the fuck was that?", he questioned between his breaths as he kept on running aimlessly forward.
"Incubus. Just keep going forward that's how you'll get out of here… maybe…"
"Fuck… Fuck you!", Jack retorted before slowing down. "I'm done following your bullshit, let me out of here now!" he yelled out.
A familiar shriek echoed not far from Jack prompting him to pick up his pace once again.
"Oh shit!"
The voice inside Jack's head chuckled as he made his way through the seemingly endless hall. Soon enough his leg muscles were filled with lactic acid sending burning electric shocks through his nervous system. His lungs and heart fared no better than his legs; he felt as if he's going to explode if he kept on running like this but the endless shrieks that faded in and out of his field of hearing prompted him to keep on pushing forward.
After what seemed like hours, just as the man was about to collapse on the floor a sharp metallic scent struck Jack's nostrils. He decided to slow down just a little to steady his heart at least a little and after a few more moments he was bombarded by the scent of decay. The indiscernible scent nauseated the already physically beaten man, but that wasn't even the worst part of what he was about to encounter. Just as the scent of decay became completely overwhelming Jack's eyes were met with a sight the likes of which he had never seen before; a sea of corpses hanging from the ceiling by their intestines tied around their necks in nooses.
The scene forced the remainder of Jack's visceral contents to climb up all their way to his pharynx. He was about to discharge the contents of his stomach but the painfully familiar shriek, sounding closer than ever before prompted him to hold his breath and proceed to walk through the ocean of mutilated corpses in front of him.
With each contact between his skin and one of the corpses, Jack winced and cried out in disgust. With each passing moment, the sights and smell drove the contents of his stomach higher up his throat causing him to drop to the floor a few times in attempts to empty his stomach. Nothing came of it though as each deathly touch of a disemboweled corpse of his head as he was trying to puke sent him reeling forward with tears in his eyes. Jack felt as if he was a small child abused by a torturous parent at that moment.
The shrieks seemed to have faded out by the time he was almost out of the forest of death. By the time he reached the end of corpse trail, Jack fell down to his knees, threw up all over himself and began crying. He begged to be released from the nightmare he was stuck in, but no response came. Jack just wanted to lay on the floor and die, then and there, but another diabolical shriek blasted at his eardrums forcing him to pick himself up and run once again. At that point, he had no idea why he even kept running, in his own mind he was sure he was as good as dead but his body just acted on its own. Jack began cursing angrily as he ran forward, not knowing where he should go or what should he do. The shrieks became more frequent and started sounding closer and closer with each time he heard them.
Jack stopped dead in his tracks before a darkened section of the hall. A cockroach crawled out of the darkness, sending shivers down the man's body. He was mortified of the little creatures as he suffered from Katsaridaphobia; the fear of cockroaches. Nasty little things that make crunching sounds beneath Jack's boots when he squashed them. He didn't even know what made the little bastards so scary in his mind, maybe it was their affinity for trash eating.
The man heard a violent stomping behind him, looking back he saw that dreaded monstrosity inching closer and closer toward him. Jack winced in utter disgust before running into the darkness. With each step, he made he could feel something crunch beneath his feet. After a few moments of running, he heard the dreading hiss of hissing cockroaches. A few further moments later, something flew into Jack's face it had a very rough texture and it felt a little heavy. The feeling of having a cockroach touch his face sent him flying to the floor in a fit of panic. Jack ended up landing right on his injured arm.
As Jack rolled on the floor, more and more of the pesky insects crawled all over his body; their tiny rough legs ran across his body like tiny dull razors that left on a mark on him. The sensation of tiny hell-spawns mixed with a terribly sharp pain surging through his arm drove him crazier with each passing moment as he tried to crawl his way out of the roach nest. No matter how much he tried to crawl away, Jack could not get rid of the feeling of something crawling all over him, inside his clothes. He felt violated and started screaming in an attempt to scare off the insects but instead a few ran across his lips causing him to fling himself from side to side in utter hopelessness.
Suddenly Jack saw a light on one side, trying to focus on the light and ignore the repulsing feeling of sharp insect legs running all over his body he began crawling towards the light, breathing heavily with tears obscuring his already mostly useless eyes. Jack tried to not to wince each time he felt his hands land on a mass of bugs but he simply couldn't and so he opted to bite his lower lip shut in order to cause himself pain as a distraction.
As he started clamping his upper jaw on his lower lip, he felt a hand grab at his head, "Oh no, fuck no, fuck…" he thought to himself as he tried to crawl away from the grip. A guttural sound erupted just above him as Jack was flailing his limbs about in order to escape. He felt like he was done for until some hot liquid landed on his head, sending him into a frenzy of kicking and screaming. Jack felt something heavy land on him, with a hard rod touching his back.
The beast roared in triumph as it set atop Jack who tried desperately to get out from underneath it. Just as the monster clamped its hands around Jack's neck and began moving its hips back and forth a shadowing figure appeared at the center of the light.
It simply stood there for a moment and then extended what seemed like a hand to Jack.
Everything fell silent, and it seemed like the world had stopped in its tracks. The monster on Jack's back suddenly started retreating into the darkness and the cockroaches seemed to disperse away from Jack's body. He was finally alone. He finally felt as if he was at peace.
The figure just stood there, with its arm outstretched.
Almost overjoyed, Jack slowly stumbled back up to his feet and started walking towards the light groggily, with every ounce of his body aching and his mind exhausted beyond any exhaustion Jack has ever felt up to this point in his life. He did not know who this stranger was, but surely, anyone who could make the cockroaches and the Incubus run away must have been a friend.
Jack was too worn down to think properly about things, he even forgot about the woman's voice inside his head as he made his way towards the light. Like a bumbling fool, he thanked the figure that stood in front of him. By the time Jack made his way to the light he noticed that the figure was covered in clothing from head to toe, still unmoving from its fixed position, Jack's savior stood there with its arm outstretched as if waiting for him to shake its hand.
"Thank you! Thank you so much!" Jack called out as he threw himself towards the mysterious figure who still did not move. Shaking its hand vigorously, Jack noticed something. The figures hand, it felt scaly. The weird sensation forced Jack to try to pull his arm away but the figure's grip became stronger.
"What's going on?"
"Let me go, hey! Hey!"
"Let me fucking go!"
The figure did not budge, however, as Jack began trying to yank out his hand away from its grasp, screaming at it to let go. The figure had finally had enough, in a single moment, it pressed on Jack's hand so hard that it broke, causing the bones to tear their way through the man's skin.
As Jack fell to his knees in pain, screaming and moaning, the figure loomed over him, revealing its white irises and skull-like pattern on its face. Jack crying and begged to be released by the figure would not let go of his arm, instead, it roared at him, displaying a massive array of sharp fangs inside its reptile-like maw. The beast then grabbed the broken husk of a man by the collar and dragged him closer to its face.
"F... e… a… r..." the beast croaked at Jack's ear in a very hoarse tone before widening its mouth to snake-like proportions and clamping it down onto Jack's throat, biting a healthy chunk out of him.
As the man fell to the ground, with agonizing pain surging through his broken body he did not mind the fact that he was choking on his own blood, he did not mind the pain anymore, he was finally happy that he got out of his nightmare.
One way or another.
He was finally free.
A constant faint beeping sound disturbed Jack's peaceful sleep. Jack Hannagan opened his eyes, moving his arms about. The first thing Jack noticed was that he had been in that room before, jumping back up to his feet and looking around he began screaming, "Oh no! No! No! No!"
Jack realized his nightmare had only just begun, he was stuck in the room where he first woke up once again with the chair and closet being in top shape while the floor was clean.
"Fuck!", Jack cried out as he dropped to his knees and banged his fists onto the floor, both of his hands now completely unscathed. The man began crying as a result of his mental agony after a few moments of crying a familiar feminine voice echoed through Jack's ears. This time, it was near him, not inside his head. He turned around to see a young woman, in her mid-twenties with a waist-length light brown hair, aloof chestnut eyes and an almost unnatural smile on her face.
"Hiya Jack", the woman waved at him as he stared in shock, tears dripping down his cheeks.
"How… how is this possible?", he whispered, helplessly.
"Well Jack, to tell you the truth," her voice deepened to a demonic low tone, "We are in your head."
The sound of her voice hurt Jack's ears causing him to grab at them in order to block out the sound. "No… can't be… this is not real, this is not real... None of this is real, Jack… None of this…" Jack began shouting.
He was cut off, the woman loomed over Jack, her smile seemed more diabolical than Jack had ever seen. He stared at her helplessly as she spoke, without moving her mouth, "We are in your battered brain, Jack!"
Jack's screams were gradually replaced by the sound of the man's desperate sobbing. Jack fell on his back with his hands covering his face as he burst out into tears of a defeated man. He simply laid there and continued crying for a while until a soft voice whispered into his ears, "Do you feel that, Jack? Do you feel that feel that slowly creeps up on from the back of your mind?"
The man's mind went blank, and he stopped crying, "go away," he hissed between his hands.
"You are alone," the voice spoke, it wasn't inside his mind. He knew it, the voice was coming from a source next to him. Jack separated his fingers just so he could peek through them and turned his head around to scan his surroundings.
Much to his shock, Jack could not find anything – he was completely alone in the room.
The whispers came back, sending waves of terror across Jack's tormented being, "Yes, fear… Do you feel that fear?"
"Shut up! You are not real! None of this is…" Jack barked to no one in particular.
"Fear… that is all that remains within your fragmented psyche," the whispering voice noted.
"No," Jack uttered before proceeding to lash out, "None of this can be real!"
"Soon enough… Even fear will have gone… Soon enough… Nothing will remain…"
Jack became completely petrified once a static noise started drowning his eardrums, steadily replacing all sounds, all sensory information while the world around him slowly started falling apart like a fragmented puzzle and everything gradually faded to black.
After what seemed like hours of slowly agonizing disintegration of his world everything had turned into sheer nothingness and just as Jack was about to lose himself completely in void after all of his being was engulfed by a perpetual and still darkness he heard a familiar cheerful feminine voice call out to him gleefully, "Thank you for checking into !"
A middle-aged man sits in his hospital bed, calmly staring at the window. This middle-aged man has been staring at that same window for quite a while, never changing his position or doing anything else not even talking to anyone. The hospital staff has to adjust his body to feed and care for him as he himself seems to be unable to do so himself.
A doctor accompanied by a newly employed nurse walk into the middle-aged man's room and once the nurse catches a glimpse of the man he asks, "What's up with him, Doc?"
"Who, Eyal?"
The young nurse points at the middle-aged man sitting in the hospital bed staring at the window, "him"
"Oh, that's Jacob, he suffers from a very progressive dementia. He's catatonic. He's not expected to make it passed the next few weeks. He can't even go to the bathroom on his own anymore. The scans show that he has lost a lot of brain volume," answers the doctor.
Running his hand across his chin, Eyal looked at the patient with a glint of pity in his eyes and said, "It's a real shame, he doesn't look that old."
"Yeah, well he was a pro boxer for a long time, son, that's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy for you."
"I wonder what he is thinking right now…", remarks the young nurse in response as they simply keep on making their way around the room as part of their routine check up on the patients.
Apparently, some businessman had orchestrated the murder of my relative Uncle Sasha. I've learned of his death through a letter exchange with my parents back at the old motherland just as me and my girlfriend, Veronica, were planning to visit that place for the first time since we'd left seven years ago. My name is Simeon, and this is the story about why I'm never going back to Russia. You see, I come from a small village on the shore of Lake Jack London, in the Russian far east. This small town, well it's rather unique, because it consists of polytheistic religious movement that was founded back in the eighties and tends to abstain from things such as facilitated marriage, the use of most modern technology and contact with the outside world whilst taking part in things such as various superstitious behaviors, cultural elitism and a lot of nature worship. A truly lovely bunch, eh?
Anyways, to make a long story short. Last summer, after a horribly long flight from NZ to Russia, we'd eventually made it home (to be honest, it also took a few days on a train and travel by car to actually reach the village.) When we arrived that morning, everything seemed just as it did when we left. It was like nothing had changed in the last seven years. It was so surreal, almost like I was in an alternate universe.
It unnerved me slightly.
My family's reaction unnerved me even more. They acted as if I wasn't gone for the last few years. It was really unpleasant watching my own parents act as if I didn't seemingly randomly leave their midst as a sixteen-year-old kid. What kind of parents would do that? I mean, I get it, we were a free society, and freedom was really encouraged, but they never came looking for me, not even after they found out we were staying with my grandparents at Novosibirsk. It was borderline fucked up how they acted when we had come back. Sure, everyone was happy and all, but if my kids run away on me like I did on them. I'd kick their asses when I meet them and only then proceed to shower them with love.
Something was clearly off with my family. I mean, that was the most loving family ever when I was a kid.
Veronica seemed to be suffering the same treatment from her parents, which distressed her quite a bit. I didn't like that, not at all.
I would've made a fuss out of it unless my younger sister, Daria, hadn't come to try and knock me off my feet with a big bear hug then and there. Last time I'd seen her she was a kid. When I came back, though, she was already a woman in body and mind. She hugged me tightly and started telling me about everything that had happened ever since I left. Including the fact that she had been with the newly coroneted Volvkh of our community. That made her a priestess, which she was quite boastful of. I felt proud of my younger sister. In all honesty, I was proud, I still am.
Also, apparently, my parents had another son after I had left. About two years after my departure, he was born and they named him Timofey. He kind of reminded me of my child self.
It's such a shame I won't be able to be there for him, or Dasha…
I really wish I could've stayed, but after what happened, yeah... nah...
It's not like I hate any of them, really, I love my family, my childhood friends and even my childhood neighbors, but man, I just cannot let go of what had happened there.
So, Vera and I were settled down in a small shack that had been emptied especially for us, and the week we spent there was pretty much the perfect vacation. It's like we were in our own piece of heaven. I got to spend time with my family and the love of my life together. The rural scenery really fits my girl. She seemed so radiant back there. Not to say that she isn't now, but something over there made her seem even more special.
We would go fishing together in the lake with my father and younger brother. Whatever was caught was splendidly cooked by the three most important women of my life. Vera and I even spent one night sleeping on a boat at the lake, it was really nice experience.
On the seventh day of our visit to the old village, it happened to be last year's Kupala night. It's basically a summer solstice festival we and many other pagans celebrate. Also, it had made its way into the folk life of Slavic Christians as a holiday. The whole idea of this holiday is to welcome Jarilo, the god of fertility, into the world once more and pray from his blessings in agriculture and family life.
In our case, it was a day long festival at a local grove filled with traditional music, dancing a lot of drinking and a sacrificial feast for the young god.
A long table was station in the center of the grove at the middle of which was set a hay figure that was meant to represent the young god. It was just a large hay humanoid figuring with a huge shaft, which upon seeing, Vera joked how even a god cannot hold a candle to my pelvic prowess. In front of said table, there was a set of kettles in which the sacrifices were boiled over a long pyre.
That morning, each of the wishing would approach the Volvkh and his Volvkhvina and ask them for a blessing, sharing the troubles and desires and giving them their offering for Jarilo. Some offered birds, others offered bread loaves and portions of their harvest. After the initial gathering and requests, the offerings were made and by noon we've had a celebratory feast with lots of food and alcohol. After the feast, we've started participating in various fertility rites. Couples would have to hold hands and jump over a small pyre and if they couldn't make the jump it was a sign they aren't meant to last. Of course me and Vera made the jump, rather easily I must add.
It was a day filled with joy and celebration, one of the more fun holidays I got to enjoy in my life, as a whole. So after some drinking, dancing and eating, I decided it was a good idea to invite my significant other to a date in the lake. So it was me, her, a few candles and a bottle of vodka on that boat.
Fortunately, we made it safe back to the shore, hours later, not even wasted. I guess I tend to get more intoxicated by her amazing presence than by alcohol, which is a good thing. We came back ashore when it was already dark. From the lake, the grove seemed completely dark and empty at this point in the day. It almost felt like you could feel the presence of various forest spirits in the area. Everything was covered in a blanket of darkness, everything aside from the sacrificial pyre that was still burning strong all those hours.
We came back to the grove and were seated down along with the majority of the village's population near a huge willow tree. We were also told that there was a special occurrence about to happen, something truly magnificent that does not happen every year. I became somewhat anxious, perhaps it was the alcohol, or maybe the environment. It was however probably the attire Dasha was wearing; she had this long white dress and she covered herself in some kind of a large pelt. Her face was covered in some sort of makeup, it looked almost like war paint. Highlighting her already large green eyes. She looked almost menacing to me like that, especially because she was sitting on a horse.
She raised a ceremonial toast for those in attendance and we all drank with her, and then she called out someone. Four men came out of the woods, dressed in war paint and bear pelts. One of them was my friend Lazar. I didn't catch the faces of the rest. I guess I was really drunk at that point, as seeing them drag a fat man along with them did not steer that much thought at first.
Then I noticed that all of them were carrying wooden clubs.
The memories came back.
For the longest time I did my best to repress the reason as to why Vera and I had left in the first place.
Now it seems like I'll never be able to do that again.
Back when I was sixteen, there was this young woman in my village, she was a few years older than me. A real beauty, she was also apparently very intelligent and caring, as she made her way into a medical school in Magadan.
So just before we left, she came to visit her family with her boyfriend at the time.
I remember being outside with a bunch of friends when we heard people screaming and cursing. We ran over to see what was the noise and then we saw a bunch of the adults beating down on some poor chap. There was a whole mob beating down on that poor guy. The girl, well, her mother was holding her down as she begged them to stop, but they did not.
They stopped only when he stopped moving.
They had beaten him to death over the fact that he was a Jewish man.
I had no idea what all of this really meant at that moment, and even gathered the courage to look at the corpse up close, being the stupid teenager I was. He lay there, on his back; his arms and face blistered and covered in cuts and bruises. His face was broken and bloodied, I recall one of the boys even picking up a tooth of the poor man. One of the man's orbital bones was visibly crushed, you could tell by the fact that whole region of his face was purple and bloodied. His lower jaw seemed to have been yanked out of its place. It was hanging awkwardly to the left inside his mouth. I am pretty certain I had seen some purple squishy matter slightly spilled beneath his head.
We poked at his body for a bit, before being chased away by the elderly from the corpse.
I hadn't thought much of it back then.
Now I do…
It's fucking horrible.
The next day, I recall going out early in the morning to see Vera. As I was walking through the tiny streets of the village at some point, when I was nearing that young woman's house, I remember seeing an odd shape dangling from the roof. I slowly approached the house, and then I saw it.
A sudden sense of dread overcame me, so sudden I felt my breakfast come back up.
She had been suspended in the air, by a rope tied around her neck.
That lifeless stare she had in her eyes, it's like… it's like she was staring right through me.
A tug on my arm awakened me from my trip down memory lane, Vera was clutching at me as I was starting to realize what was happening. Dasha was standing next to the tied up fat man. Her face, she had that same empty, lifeless stare in her eyes. She was staring right through him. He seemed mortified by the situation he found himself in.
The sight had sobered me up a lot, I knew I couldn't do anything about what I thought was going to happen and I knew I wouldn't be able to leave. This was a very sacred religious ceremony on top of everything.
I knew what was coming and I did not like it, not one bit.
All I could do was wrap my around Vera and try to comfort her as she wasn't exactly thrilled about what we were to witness that moment.
Dasha had begun accusing the fat man of various "crimes" such as greed, disrespect to the land, the desecration of sacred grounds and the murder of my relative. Once I had heard it, something inside me snapped. I wanted to get to him and end his life, especially because he admitted to the deed. The crowd around me roared in disdain towards the man.
Dasha then proclaimed him ripe for the rite and stepped back from him.
What came next was the most painful thing I had gotten to witness in my entire life. It probably won't be ever surpassed.
My sister had thrown her arm into the air and then let it drop to her waist and with that the four men in pelts began beating on him with their clubs making animal like sounds while they were at it as the crowd cheered them on. Each blow made a thumping sound that made me sick to my stomach. I felt myself almost shudder with each blow the pelted men landed, especially the ones that produced a crunching sound.
The fat man was just lying there, begging and whimpering in agony as he was being broken down piece by piece by an angry bunch that had looked like the semi-mythological Neuri who were said to be able to turn into wolves.
The beating took a few minutes and then it stopped, with a wave of her hand, my younger sister forced the four pelted men to stop and demanded him to be tied to the willow and her horse. As they had been tying him to the tree, I remember the sight of his broken body; he was bloodied all over, something was poking through his shirt in his midsection, I guess it was a broken rib that protruded through his skin. He had blood smeared all over his chin, even though they had never hit his head once since it is regarded that the soul rests inside the head of the man, therefore they had kept it unharmed for the duration of the ceremony. His right shoulder was clearly popped out of its socket and one of his legs was bent backwards at the knee in an unnatural position. The fat man would not stop groaning and moaning for as long as being tied up.
I knew where this was going to go. It's been a common practice in ancient Rus' to use horses as a means to rip apart criminals as a capital punishment. I knew this wasn't going to be any different.
Yet, I knew I had nothing to do but watch the horrors that are about to unfold.
My sister than began chanting, "O' Gods, please welcome my gift,
"The blood of a sacrificial lamb,
"O' mighty Perun, please accept my offering,
"and mother Mokosh, take it in
"Father of winds, Stribog, please accept it.
"The child of growth, Jarilo, embrace it.
"Svarog and Dazbog consume it in flames.
"Ziva and Zara take it up to the heavens to feast upon.
"Morena, hold it in your cold embrace
"Veles, mighty magician king, accept this misguided soul into your realm."
The crowd repeated after her, she kept repeating those lines over and over as the fat man was being tied to the tree. A piece of rope was fastened around his neck and then the rope was tied to the horse.
Dasha stopped chanting and then signaled her horse to start walking, pulling the rope, tighter and tighter, she be began chanting again, staring directly into the man's eyes, she ordered him to chant after her, again and again.
He had no choice but to follow her lead, struggling more and more with each sentence, as the rope tightened around his neck. He had even coughed up some blood during the chanting and I'm pretty certain I could see tears streaming down his cheeks. His face overall went blood red and his eyes began bulging out disgustingly. Blood could be seen overflowing his sockets as his gums had begun visibly bleeding by that point.
Just as the man finished chanting, Dasha stopped the horse and the man gasped for air, and then I saw my sister smile, she smiled a sinister smile.
Everything went quiet and I had to look away.
She yelled at her horse to go, and a scram that turned into a suffocated gurgle could be heard. Lo and behold, the fat man's head popped out of his place and fell onto the ground as the crowd around me burst out into drunken cheers.
That sight, the sight of my sister doing something so evil, I just couldn't bare it. I whispered in Vera's ear that we're getting out of there as quickly as possible.
She was clearly shaken up by the event we've just witnessed.
As we were making our way through the crowd after a few minutes of unpleasant small talk with the people who were cheering for the death of a man, I noticed something at the edge of vision. It was a tall figure with horns. It was standing at the edge of the forest line. Once I noticed it, the figure turned around and left.
I must've been very drunk at that point.
Now you might be thinking I am probably going to conclude my story with a paragraph about how I've lost my faith and became an Atheist or something, that couldn't be further from the truth.
You see, that night Vera and I had decided that we should spend the night in the lake again, away from the bloodthirsty drunken mob. We thought that the fog that was covering the lake by this point would prevent the highly superstitious crowd from trying a night swim in that body of water.
Hell, we were right.
Nobody came to the lake to follow, or even look for us.
Nobody human that is.
You see, while I was rowing the boat, with everything we'd been through that day, we couldn't even speak to each other. We just sat there and stared.
That's when a splashing sound could be heard near us.
It was impossible. There are no large animals in lake Jack London and it was way too deep in the lake for someone to be swimming there.
Suddenly a bright light came from inside the lake, encompassing an area far larger than that of the boat we were in. Vera, startled, grabbed at me and began panicking, I had no idea what do to or to think, honestly, so I reached out to the water. It felt completely normal.
Then, out of the blue, from that fog came the same figure I've seen earlier.
It was a tall humanoid with a long hair and beard, sporting a rob like garb and it had huge antlers on the top of its head. It did not look at us, or anything really, it was simply walking into that light beneath us.
We both simply gasped in awe at the sight.
I wish I could say it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but there's no bloody way both me and Vera saw the same thing.
The figure noticed us. It turned its head towards us and stopped. Snake like eyes stared at us for a few moments as we sat there, frozen in a mixture of fear and awe and then this, thing, its neck expanded towards us. The beast exposed its sharp canines at us, exposing a bear trap like set of teeth flying our way. Its head flew right by us, throwing us both out of the boat before disappearing into the light which had faded away with it.
The sensation of cold water on my skin and the sounds of my screaming girlfriend shook me out of my trance. I quickly swam towards her and began helping her back up onto the vessel. Nothing had happened to us as a result of the fall, we were both dumbfounded by this strange occurrence and Vera, well, she didn't let go off me for the rest of the night due to being so fearful that something else might happen to her.
I don't know what the fuck happened there, I don't know what I've seen or what've seen. All I know is that my home village is filled with monsters wearing a human guise and that I'm not contacting my family ever again.
Also, I could swear that after the fall into the lake, I could hear a distant satisfied laughter coming from below me.
You see, on top of being the god of the underworld, the travelers, cattle, and music. Veles is also a magician-like trickster god, so maybe, possibly, just perhaps, we've encountered a god.
Who is to say what really happened there that night, all I can say is that in a vast country like my motherland, where so many things are still unexplained and unexplored, everything is possible.
Unsurprisingly, at least for me, these things still happen in Russia. People disappearing seemingly at random here and there isn't the thing of the past. Just like my relative, Sasha had seemingly randomly disappeared in the eyes of the wider public that knew him. So did that fat businessman. For all they know, he was lost somewhere in the Taiga and died from exposure to the elements.
As for us? Well, we're back in New Zealand and we're not going anywhere any time soon. I'm kind of into gardening right now. I've even planted a willow in our garden in honor of my horned god...
Sweat covered Lauren's face as she sprinted down the street while sirens blared behind her. She zipped past rundown houses with boarded up windows, rotten siding, and collapsed framework. A police car sped into view with its lights ablaze and she ducked into a home's overgrown side yard, then around to its back porch.
She tried to open the door but it was locked, so she steadied herself and pulled out a bobby pin and paperclip from her pocket, then used them to pick the lock with a smooth, practiced motion. It disengaged with an audible "click."
Once inside, Lauren locked the door and then stood at the threshold while she caught her breath. Small streams of sunlight peaked around the edges of boarded-up windows and provided faint illumination. As her eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, she perceived bare wooden floors, scuffed woodwork cabinetry with broken or missing drawers, and walls covered in grimy, torn, yellowish wallpaper. Everything was engulfed in dust and cobwebs.
Her sweat felt like it turned to ice and her teeth began to chatter. "That's strange," she thought. "Why would someone turn the air conditioning on in an abandoned house in the middle of summer?"
Before she had time to ponder, Lauren heard radio static outside. Someone rattled the doorknob, and then she heard a woman's voice say, "I think she went in here, but I'm not sure. The door's locked and I don't see any other way to get inside. We should search all the homes in the neighborhood, just in case."
A man's voice said, "Yes, miss."
"Take your team and start at the end of the block, then work your way down. All these houses are abandoned anyway, so kick in the doors if you have to. I'll start with this one and meet you in the middle. Get going."
"Yes, miss."
Someone slammed against the door and the sound echoed around the room. The impact repeated every few seconds until the door began to splinter, and Lauren realized she had only a few moments before the door collapsed. She took one step, but the floorboard let out a loud "creak" and she froze in place. The banging paused for a moment, then resumed with harder blows in shorter intervals. Lauren got down on her hands and knees to distribute her weight and minimize the noise of her movement, then crawled through the kitchen doorway.
She found herself in a dark hallway with several closed doors on either side. She reached up and tried each doorknob as she crept along, but they were all locked. She heard a "crash" behind her and then heavy footsteps. When she looked back she saw that a police officer stood in the same spot where she'd been moments before. Sunshine flooded through the doorway and framed the officer in an aura of light.
The officer pulled her gun out of its holster and said, "This is the police. Come out with your hands up!" She looked right at Lauren but didn't see her in the shadowy darkness.
Lauren crawled to the end of the hallway where she found a flight of stairs around the corner to her right. She slithered up the stairs to the second-floor landing where she saw another, darker hallway that was also flanked by closed doors. Faint light spilled through an open doorway at the end of the hall. Footsteps and creaking floorboards sounded beneath her.
She scraped her knees as she scrambled toward the light and gagged on an unseen cobweb. When she made it to the doorway, she saw that it opened into an empty bedroom with boarded up windows.
She entered the bedroom and closed the door behind her, then looked for a lock but found none. She noticed the room had a closet and tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge. A dark red liquid oozed out from under the closet door and she stifled a gasp. Then she heard footsteps pound up the stairs and realized she was trapped. She pressed herself into the corner and tried to make herself as small as possible.
She heard the officer rattle the doorknobs in the hall, and the sound came closer and closer. Finally, she heard footsteps approach the bedroom door and saw a flashlight beam through the space underneath it. She held her breath as the officer tried to open the bedroom door, but it remained closed as if it was locked. Then, the footsteps receded through the hallway and down the stairs.
She sat there until she no longer heard anything, then got up and tried the doorknob. The door opened without any effort at all.
Lauren peaked through the space in between the boards that covered a window in the first floor living room and saw a squad car parked outside the house.
"All I have to do is wait," she thought. "Sooner or later they'll leave the neighborhood and then I'll make a break for it. That is, if I don't freeze to death first. I still don't know why it's so cold in here. It must be 90 degrees outside even at night."
Pale moonlight shined through another window that wasn't boarded up and bathed the room in a spectral glow. She saw her breath as she sat on the floor and rubbed her bare arms. Then she looked over at the living room's fireplace with a wistful expression.
Muffled voices came through the ceiling and startled her. They were hushed at first, but then grew louder and more intense. She listened hard but couldn't make out what they said. A deep voice began to shout while a high voice began to sob. Then, the high voice let out a scream, but it was cut off by a "whack," then a "thud" as if something heavy fell on the floor. She looked back outside at the squad car with anxiety, but didn't see any motion.
Several minutes passed and then she heard a strange grinding sound as if someone was sawing a wet log. A dark spot formed on the ceiling. Liquid began to drip from it onto the floor.
Something on the staircase caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She looked at it for a moment and saw a round, shadowy shape on one of the stairs. It had what looked like long, greasy black hair matted against a pale grey forehead. Black ichor drooled from what appeared to be a lipless mouth with gleaming teeth. It gazed at her through what seemed like empty eye sockets. Then, it moved.
Lauren's eyes widened in horror as the round shape dropped down onto the stair beneath it with a "thump," then another, and another until it reached the bottom. Then, it rolled across the floor towards her like a possessed bowling ball and stopped when it came to within a few feet of where she sat. It opened its mouth and said in a high, raspy voice, "Dig!"
Lauren shrieked in terror, balled herself up against the wall, and covered her eyes. Her cries caught the attention of the two police officers who were parked outside. They jumped out of their car, ran up to the front door, and began to kick it down as they shouted into their radios for backup.
The commotion made Lauren look up, and when she did she saw that the shape had disappeared. As the front door began to buckle, she looked around for an escape route and saw a door on the other side of the living room next to the fireplace. She ran over and threw it open to reveal abyssal darkness inside.
She took one step through the doorway, but her foot caught nothing but air. She shot her hands out against the walls to catch herself. She realized that this was the stairway leading down into the basement.
She lowered her foot until it landed on a step, then the other, and continued all the way down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she felt a crunchy softness under her feet and sensed that the basement had a dirt floor. She heard the front door smash open and then the sounds of yelling and pounding footsteps upstairs. She walked with her arms out in front of her in the darkness until she touched a concrete wall, then began to feel around for another doorway or someplace else to hide.
The basement filled with ethereal green light, and she turned around to see where it came from. There, in the middle of the floor, stood a woman's headless body surrounded by luminescence. It wore a simple floral print dress that was torn and ragged.
Lauren stared in shock as the body pointed to a shovel that sat against the wall, then at the ground beneath its feet. It disappeared and the light went out, and she found herself once again in total darkness. She hyperventilated as she felt her way along the wall until she reached the shovel, grabbed it, then stepped over to the place where she thought the apparition had been and began to dig.
Her shovel blade hit something solid in the ground just as she heard the basement door fling open. A ray of moonlight pierced the darkness through a window and illuminated the spot that Lauren had dug up. There, she saw a bone sticking out of the dirt floor. Footsteps pounded down the stairs and flashlight beams shot all around.
Lauren dropped the shovel and rushed over to the window, then pushed it open and felt a blast of hot summer air against her face. She crawled through the window, then shut it behind her as the police landed at the bottom of the stairs.
Lauren sipped hot coffee as she sat in a booth in a small restaurant while a television behind the bar showed the local news broadcast. Her picture appeared on the screen, and she looked up with an expression of surprise and concern.
The newscaster said, "Police are looking for Lauren Samson, a criminal who escaped from the Jackson County Corrections Facility two weeks ago and is still on the run. She was convicted of multiple counts of breaking and entering, robbery, and theft and is considered dangerous. Police are asking anyone who has seen her to contact them immediately."
The newscaster continued, "In a related story, police discovered the remains of Jennifer Hewlett, a woman who disappeared 10 years ago, as they searched an abandoned house where they believed Ms. Samson was hiding. Someone buried Ms. Hewlett's decapitated body in the home's basement, and police later discovered her severed head in a bedroom closet on the second floor as well.
"Police subsequently arrested Ms. Hewlett's former boyfriend, Jacob Parker, on suspicion of murder. He and Ms. Hewlett had lived together in the house before she vanished. He was a person of interest in her disappearance but was not arrested due to a lack of evidence. Then, the case went cold."
The screen cut away to a video of police leading an older man in handcuffs into a courthouse as reporters shouted questions at him, then cut back to the newscaster.
"Investigators identified Ms. Hewlett's head and body with DNA technology. They also recovered Mr. Parker's DNA from skin cells under her fingernails. This evidence indicated Ms. Hewlett had been in a struggle with Mr. Parker shortly before she died. An autopsy revealed that someone crushed her skull with a hammer and then cut her head off with a saw. Police found a hammer and saw in Mr. Parker's toolshed that matched the corresponding wounds on Ms. Hewlett's body. The motive for the killing and subsequent mutilation remains unclear, though police believe he kept the murder weapons as trophies."
The screen showed a picture of Jennifer Hewlett. She had raven-colored hair and the radiant smile of a young woman in the prime of her life. She wore the same floral print dress that was on the headless body Lauren saw in the house.
Lauren stared at the television screen, dumbstruck, then jumped when she saw that Jennifer Hewlett now sat across from her in the booth. She looked at Lauren with a hard expression of dead seriousness. Before Lauren could say anything, three police officers entered the restaurant and began to look around. Lauren froze, but then Jennifer pointed over Lauren's shoulder. Lauren looked where Jennifer had indicated and saw a back exit she hadn't noticed before.
Lauren stood up, dropped a few dollars on the table for the coffee and tip, then crept over to the back door and pushed it open. As she stepped through the doorway into the parking lot, she looked back towards the booth, but Jennifer had disappeared.
James G. Boswell's Author Blog
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I have a strange relationship with the city I live in. I moved here about 15 years ago and still don't really feel as though I'm a part of it. I honestly don't feel like I'm a part of anything. That probably means I'm the problem.
I've got problems. Sometimes, usually late in the night, I feel a restlessness, perhaps it's anxiety, squeezing me. It flickers at the edges of my thoughts, a growing unease, a mounting despair. It's a terrible feeling and when I get it, I have to do something, I have to escape it. So I walk around the city I live in; the city I am in, but not a part of.
I walk the empty streets, accompanied by my distorted reflection pacing me in the darkened shop windows. Sometimes I see the occasional cars sliding through the night, like sharks with glass stomachs. Inside them, I can see the ghastly faces of their prey, under-lit by dashboard lights, peering out.
Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, I see other night walkers too. I don't know their names, but we recognize each other. Perhaps we are fleeing a common enemy - ourselves. There is a heavyset woman with wild gray hair, an older man with a cane who walks with a limp, and a black man with a harshly lined face and missing teeth. We are figures all familiar to each other, but strangers to ourselves. All shambling to our own unknown destinations. We acknowledge each other with furtive sidelong glances, then our eyes, and we, slide away - going in our own directions and into our own darkness.
I am harmless I think. But my shoulders are wide, my hair and beard are unkept, and my eyes are black, and naturally squint. In the darkness, vibrating with the emotions that drove me out into the night, I seem to repel eye contact. Those I see, look away from me, walk faster, and even cross the street to get away. It perplexes me, but I am at the same time weirdly grateful. When I walk at night, I want to walk alone in an empty city. Other people I see, people seemingly as lost as I, are an imposition to my solitude. They remind me of myself, the person I'm trying to get away from. I don't want them there, or at least I don't think I do.
The city I live in is a college town and on the weekends, the downtown area is filled with people sitting outside of the bars, chatting, laughing, and drinking. To me, they all seem beautiful and interchangeable. They seem like the lifeblood of the city, and there is an open seating area - situated between a handful of restaurants and bars, that in my mind seems like the very heart of the city. The people there make it beautiful, and recently the city decided to beautify it further by commissioning a local artist to paint a mural on one of the walls facing the open seating area.
The artist is a local one - a skinny tattooed girl with huge eyes and pageboy bangs. I know her socially, we nod, smile, and wave in passing. I admire her industriousness, her work, and her mural.
Late at night, when the square is empty, I walk past the mural. It's a cartoon collage of iconic things in the city. Buildings, a bridge, a local statue, and in one corner - four silhouettes sitting around a table - obviously they are a representation of the open area that the mural faces.
Originally, it was four outlined figures, but last week I saw that one of the figures was filled in. It was a painting of the wild haired woman that I'd so often seen walking late at night. Her hair was combed, and she was captured in the act of laughing - her head tossed back and one hand raised as if to cover her partially open mouth. I had stood by the mural, admiring the artist's work. Perhaps she knew the woman that I had seen so often in passing. It was a fantastic portrait - much more detailed then the rest of the painting. I had tentatively touched the wall - the woman's cheek. Under the bright colors I could feel the pitted texture of the brick. The paint had felt dry, smooth, and oddly warm beneath my fingers - and then I felt something twitch and give way beneath my palm. I had yanked my hand back, shaking it as though I'd been burned, and I stepped away from the painting - my palm and scalp still tingling. The woman in the painting laughed on silently, seemingly looking at me out of the corner of her partially closed eyes.
Four nights ago I was driven out into the night again by the feeling and I once more walked the dark and now emptier streets. I did not see the wild-haired woman, nor did I see the old man with the cane and the limp. But I did see that another figure had been filled-out in the mural. It was the old man in profile. He was sitting at the other side of the table, frozen in the act of pointing at the laughing woman. His cane wasn't in the painting. Perhaps he no longer needs it. Between the two of them sat the remaining empty shadows - two blank human shapes. The old man seems to be saying something - beneath his large hooked nose his lips are caught in the act of shaping some unknown word. He actually looks as though he's blowing an open mouth kiss at the laughing woman. Perhaps he is. I admired the mural and the additional detail of the familiar old man, but I admired it from a distance. I felt no desire to approach it. I did not want to touch it.
Last night, alone in my home, I had again felt the feeling, the unease and desperation that calls me out into the night. The streets were dark and completely empty now and although it was a hot night, or more accurately a hot early morning, I had felt my body break-out into a cold sweat as my feet, seemingly of their own volition, had carried me towards the mural. I didn't want to go. I went.
I had stood a safe distance back from the mural and I saw what I expected to see. Three figures now, filled out in bright colors and amazing detail. The third figure, and latest addition, is the black man with the missing teeth and lined face. In the painting he's smiling widely and his smile is perfect. The familiar lines around his mouth and eyes form deep creases - but the formally harsh natural lines have somehow been softened by the artist's skill into something nearly beautiful. In the painting he's holding up a drink loosely in one hand as though making a toast, and the other hand is held up, palm out, and fingers splayed, as if waving to the viewer - as if waving to me.
Between him and the woman, sits the sole remaining dark and empty silhouette. The outline of the remaining figure seems to be in the shape of a man with messy hair, a beard, and wide shoulders. It is still just a dark empty shape - but it is surrounded by its colorfully painted friends. Friends frozen in the act of laughing, talking, waving, and waiting.
In the dim lighting and to my tired eyes the dark figure seems like both a hole in the wall and a detached and separate shape floating in front of the mural. As I stared at it, it seemed to flicker and move. I had rubbed my eyes, backed away slowly, and I spun on my heel and went home. I told myself I didn't hear anything moving behind me. And as I walked home I told myself that the dark shape flickering in my peripheral vision was my shadow. But as I walked, it seemed that I felt the mural, or something else, lightly, insistently, plucking at my hair and clothes, pulling at me, calling me back. I told myself it was my imagination. I almost believed it.
Tonight, when the city sleeps and the feeling comes, I will be ready. I will return, one more time, to the mural, its familiar faces, and the waiting table.
I think that I will stay there.
"Good news, Mr. Miska! I believe you are a good match for our first trial!" Dr. Vijay said excitedly, "If successful, your vision will be completely restored."
"If it isn't successful?"
"You're already blind, would no eyes make it any worse?"
"I guess not." I resigned, "Where'd you get the eyes for a transplant?"
"A fellow researcher is dying. It's nothing he can pass to you, but in the interest of progress he's elected to donate his eyes in the name of progress."
The operation was more of a success than anyone ever could have imagined. My body accepted both eyes, no infections, and once I was allowed to have my eyes uncovered, perfect vision. I could see my son and wife again. I was featured in a few ocular research papers, too, which was pretty cool.
But, there's this thing, I'm hoping it's a side effect of my drug cocktail to ensure I don't reject the transplants. When it's dark, I see quick, small movements in the very edge of my peripherals. I thought I was just being paranoid and staying up too late at night. Then, I was doing the dishes on a particularly overcast day. Every time I started scrubbing, I'd see a shiny motion around my garbage disposal. I flushed the drain with hot water.
Something slimy shimmered as is swirled in the tiny abyss. Crrrrrt! I slammed the switch on and the blades started spinning and grinding. It seemed to be running without any obstructions. I went to jam a wooden spoon in to see if I was just seeing old built up crud when what can only accurately be described as a black sea anemone lurched it's tentacles from the drain.
I tried to ram them back into the grinding blades with a wooden spoon. The blades ripped the spoon from my hand and slung it from my hand. The writhing mass wiggled and sprawled in the sink. The spoon hadn't touched them at all. I dialed my doctor, and then they were gone. The next day my meds were adjusted, apparently a small fraction of people get hallucinations when using that particular cocktail.
I gave my brain a few days to adjust to the new medication. The phantom appendages lessened over that time, and were completely gone for a few weeks. My life returned to normal, I had great eyesight and everything was looking up.
I was working on a new financial report at work when a slimy purple tentacle slid around my computer monitor. I stabbed it with my letter opener. It being my monitor. The tentacle slipped towards me and reached towards me, the blunt point aimed at my eyeball. It jutted out sharply and went through my head. I fell out of my chair and into the hall of cubicles behind me. Perfectly fine, not so much as a drop of otherworldly goo.
The doctors saw no reason why I started having the hallucinations again. This time I was referred to a shrink. I received a battery of new drugs, but the tentacles never waned. They became more frequent, constantly reaching and stretching for me. If I open a can of fruit, it's burgeoning with a twisted mass of tentacles. When I go turn in for the night, they slimey purple masses squiggle and writhe out from under my mattress.
They started coming from more and more places. Power outlets, jutting from flat surfaces. One evening, my date yawned and a long purple tentacle slid out towards me. That was it. I couldn't take it anymore. I took my soup spoon and excused myself to the bathroom.
I can't see the tentacles anymore, but now I can feel something cold and slimy curiously moving across my arm
Whitney wrapped yellow cloth around her mannequin's waist, then used a piece of chalk to mark the spot where it overlapped. Her roommate, Amanda sat next to her at a desk in their studio apartment and sketched dress designs on tracing paper with a graphite pencil. A thunderous "boom" broke their concentration and shook the apartment. The lights went out, and Amanda looked at Whitney and said, "What was that? It felt like a bomb went off or something."
Whitney scoffed and said, "I can't deal with this right now. I need to finish my final project for my dressmaking class and I'm way behind schedule."
"I know what you mean. My fashion drawing final is next week, and I'm not prepared at all."
A strange violet light shined through their fifth-floor balcony's sliding glass doors and lit up their apartment with an otherworldly glow. Perplexed, they walked out onto the balcony and saw a huge purple cube in the sky. The cube folded in upon itself over and over again as spherical energy pulses shot out from its center. Each pulse created the sound of an explosion and made their apartment shake. This continued for several moments before the entire cube folded up completely and disappeared with a resounding electric "pop."
As Whitney continued to stare up into the sky, Amanda turned around to go back inside and gasped. Whitney looked to see what was wrong and was frightened to see that her mannequin now stood in the balcony doorway. Its hands covered the lower half of its face as if someone had posed it to look shocked and surprised.
Amanda smacked Whitney's shoulder with the back of her hand and said, "What the hell is that about, Whitney?"
"I didn't do that. I was out here with you."
They both looked at the mannequin with expressions of confusion and fear.
Amanda said, "Whatever, I'm gonna find out what's going on," then rushed through the doorway and knocked the mannequin over. It struck the ground with a hollow plastic "thud."
Amanda picked her phone up off the desk where it was connected to its charger next to Whitney's and pushed the button to turn it on, but the screen remained dark. Frustrated, she pushed the button a few more times with no success, then slammed the phone down. She grabbed Whitney's phone and took it over to her.
"My phone's not working for some reason. Use yours to get onto Reddit or Facebook and see if anyone posted about that weird cube thing in the sky. Everyone in the city must've seen and heard it. Someone must know something."
Whitney looked at the mannequin on the floor, then took her phone from Amanda and tried to turn it on. However, its screen remained dark as well. "That's weird," she said. "I've been charging it all day."
"I've been charging my phone for a while, too, and it won't turn on either."
A scream pierced the air, followed by the sound of gunshots. They looked back out over their balcony and saw a group of soldiers at the far end of the neighborhood. The soldiers were clad in black tactical gear and had rifles slung over their shoulders. As Whitney and Amanda watched in horror, the soldiers dragged people out of their homes and forced them into the cargo beds of black military trucks. Two teenage girls tried to run away but were gunned down before they could escape.
Whitney and Amanda were startled when someone pounded on their apartment's front door and said, "Open up!"
They went back into their apartment and Whitney noticed that the mannequin was no longer on the ground or anywhere in sight.
Amanda said in a hushed voice, "We need to find someplace to hide."
Whitney rushed over to the closet and opened the door, but hesitated when she saw that the mannequin now sat inside. It seemed as if someone had posed it to look like it was hiding, and its face was buried in its knees and its hands covered its head. Before she had time to think about it, Amanda pushed her into the closet and closed the door. They pressed themselves against the back of the wall behind the coats, shirts, and other articles of clothing that hung there.
They heard a wooden cracking noise as someone kicked in their front door. Then someone said, "This is just a small studio apartment, sir. I don't see anyone inside."
Another voice said, "Check it out. If you find anyone, bring them downstairs and put them with the others. If they resist, shoot them. Remember to confiscate any firearms you find, and don't take too long."
"Yes, sir."
Whitney and Amanda heard one set of footsteps walk away while another began to slowly circumnavigate their apartment. Then they heard the intruder pull out the desk drawer and dump its contents on the ground. The floorboards creaked loudly, and Whitney guessed the person had crouched down to look under their beds. The footsteps padded over to the tile floor in the kitchen nook, and they heard the pantry door's hinges let out a small groan as it opened.
Finally, the footsteps started to come closer to the closet door, and Whitney and Amanda held each other's hands as they shook in fear. The doorknob turned, and the closet door began to open.
"Hey, let's go," said the voice from the outside hallway. "Time's up and we need to move on."
"Yes, sir."
"Did you find any firearms?"
"No, sir."
"Alright, let's get moving."
The footsteps receded from the closet and out into hallway. Whitney and Amanda waited for what seemed like hours before Whitney finally opened the door and saw that no one was there.
Whitney sat on the couch with her mannequin beside her while Amanda leaned against the wall across the room. Twilight covered the apartment in semidarkness.
Amanda said, "We've been holed up in this apartment for more than a week and we're completely out of food and water. There's no power and our phones never started to work again. We need to go out there and see what we can find."
"But what about those soldiers? If they see us, they'll kidnap us or worse."
"That's a chance we have to take."
Whitney put her arm around the mannequin's shoulders and pulled it closer.
Amanda said, "I don't know why you like that creepy mannequin so much. I feel like it's watching me."
"Don't say that about Ashley. She's our friend."
Amanda stared at her for several moments with a look of disgust, then said, "Since when did you name it? You've gone crazy, Whitney. Seriously, you've completely lost it."
Whitney looked at her with tears in her eyes and clutched the mannequin tight as if it was a stuffed animal.
Amanda sighed and said, "Whitney, look, we have to get some supplies. If we don't, we're going to die. It's that simple. Everything electronic seems to have stopped working ever since that weird cube thing appeared in the sky, and we have no idea why those soldiers are here or what they want. Whatever's happening, we have no control over it."
Whitney cringed and said, "I know we need to get food and water, but what if our families come looking for us and we're not here? Someone needs to stay."
"You're right."
"I don't want to stay, but I don't want to leave, either. I'm afraid either way."
"Me too, but we have to decide who stays and who goes. Once we have some supplies, we can figure out our next move and see if there's a way we can contact our families."
Amanda took a quarter out of her pocket, then held it out to Whitney and said, "Heads I go, tails you go, alright?"
Whitney nodded.
Amanda flipped the coin, caught it on her palm, and then slapped it onto the back of her other hand. She looked at it, then showed it to Whitney: It was tails.
The next morning, Whitney slipped out of her bed as the sun first started to rise, careful not to wake Amanda. The dawn's light spilled across the floor as she pulled on her clothes. She then tiptoed past the mannequin which still sat unmoving on the couch.
She made it to the smashed-in apartment door and started to leave, but then she felt something tug at her pant leg. She turned around and saw that the mannequin was now right next to her in a kneeling position. Its head was tilted back to look up at her, and it had one hand against her leg in the place where she felt the tug. Its other hand lay flat across its chest, and it looked like someone had posed it in a pleading gesture as if to say, "Please don't go." Whitney looked and saw that Amanda was still asleep in her bed on the other side of the room.
Whitney walked down the hall to her apartment and looked inside through the open doorway. Moonlight bathed the living room in an ethereal glow, and she was able to make out the edges of the desk against the wall. She entered and placed two full grocery bags down on the desk, then reached into one of them and took out a candle and a box of matches. She lit the candle and put it down next to the grocery bags. The candlelight danced throughout the apartment and sent shadows everywhere.
She noticed something out of the corner of her eye and jumped when she saw what looked like the outline of a person sitting on the couch. The flame's light reflected off their dark brown hair, and Whitney breathed a sigh of relief when she recognized it as Amanda's.
"Oh, Amanda. I didn't realize you were awake," she said as she turned and started to take things out of the grocery bags. "I made it to the supermarket several miles away, and the place was totally abandoned. The power was out there, too, so I had to smash one of the sliding glass doors to get inside. I was able to grab some bread and cans of food and bottled water, plus some candles. I didn't see any other people except a few dead bodies that looked like they had all been shot. It was horrible. I think the soldiers kidnapped everyone else.
"Sorry it took me so long, but I decided to wait until after dark to come back just in case there were any soldiers still around. Are you alright?"
There was no answer.
Whitney looked back at the couch, but no one was there. She slowly turned around and saw that the mannequin stood next to her with its arms outstretched as if someone had posed it in a welcoming gesture. Frightened, Whitney picked up the candle to get a better look and realized that someone had draped Amanda's scalp over the mannequin's head. Her tangled hair spilled down its left shoulder like an ill-fitted wig. Blood covered its face.
Whitney yelped and dropped the candle. Its flame went out when it hit the ground and enveloped everything in darkness. She felt the mannequin's arms close around her like a cold plastic machine. It pressed its face against hers and wiped slimy blood across her cheek. Whitney screamed, but Ashley didn't care. Her friend had come home.
James G. Boswell's Author Blog
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2nd April, 1919
Dearest Mary,
It might seem childish of me to keep writing this diary in the form of letters to you after so many years, but I am still working toward our promise in my own way. Perhaps, by the time I get to Paris, you will already be there — perhaps the streets will no longer be full of dull bureaucrats!
I have taken the position of governess to a pair of children, at an estate on the coast, in a town called Foulness. What a queer name! I shall be travelling there for most of tomorrow. In this way, I squirrel away savings for the trip.
3rd April, 1919
My dearest Mary,
Foulness is indeed an appropriate name! The stench of the neighbouring salt marsh pervades this town, and those strange oversized marsh insects buzz in tight circles in every corner of the town. It is uncomfortably hot in the sun and uncomfortably cold in the shade. The people here look wind-beaten.
The estate where I will be working is on a small rocky island across the marsh, and a low bridge of stones apparently connects it to the town proper, though this is now covered by the tides. There is no ferry out, and no dock on the other side. I will be taking that bridge in the morning.
4th April, 1919
At long last, I have arrived at the estate proper — just as the maid was leaving. I presume that the bridge is so low as to be submerged most of the time, and the household is careful to cross in and out of town as close to low tide as possible so as to not be caught out.
The stench out here is stronger, and animals and sea life sometimes die on the rocks, lending their own unique spices to the already-thick sea air during the warm parts of the day. As I came up to the stone staircase leading from the low bridge to the main building, I saw the corpse of a gull on a nearby rock, its eyes crawling with maggots. I saw a figure clambering on the rocky piles beyond, running back behind the house.
I later determined that this must have been the boy, Terence, who is twelve — that age when boys make sport of poking dead things with sticks. He does not seem abnormally unruly for a boy of twelve. His sister, Anna, is only four but preternaturally calm.
I introduced myself to the children — the maid is the only other member of the household staff, and she sleeps in town, and meanwhile, the master of the house is still involved in his work in London — and got to preparing meals for them. Although the kitchen has been cleaned, the pantry is emptied of anything that could be eaten without cooking — I wonder how long the children have been fending for themselves here.
5th April, 1919
Dearest Mary,
My bedroom is cold and drafty during the night, and gusts of wind kept me awake late, but when finally I fell asleep I dreamt of good times with you before the war. Paris was not the only foolish youthful promise we made in the woods that summer! I had forgotten all the others. I don't know what prompted all those memories to return. I awoke early, my room's cold and drafty room becoming hot and stale shortly after sunrise, and so I was able to catch the maid, a Mrs Grant, before she left. She informed me that the reason there is no ferry and no dock here is that the tides would smash them against the island — and from the sounds I heard last night, I believe it!
She also told me that Master Marsten had moved to London at the beginning of the war, like your father did. She said that the house was built by some eccentric ancestor — a gentleman-scientist who fancied himself an authority on salt-marsh wildlife (although his works were never accepted by the natural philosophers of the Royal Society and never had any kind of wide circulation). I suppose the seventeenth century had its cranks as well.
She indicated that she was grateful that I wasn't like the previous governess, who she held in some low regard. Apparently, that woman was about my age & quickly became close to the children, only to suddenly disappear one day — leaving the children totally alone for some weeks before I could be hired. How irresponsible!
I requested she pick up some groceries — eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables if she can find any, and flour, since the bag left here has been invaded by some unfamiliar marsh-insect. She will bring them tomorrow morning.
Other than feeding the children and keeping one eye on their adventures on the rocks, I spent the remainder of the day acquainting myself with the house. It has no basement, but it's larger than it looks from the outside — an octagonal assemblage of rooms piled together like the rock walls it perches on, with a staircase wrapped around the inside of one wall. Most rooms are empty, only storing sheet-draped furniture. In a few places, there were signs of water damage behind and below the radiators; I must remember to ask Mrs Grant about fungicide. One small door set into the wall at the top of the stairway is locked, and I cannot for the life of me imagine where it goes — I will ask about that as well.
The children's play is strange — though I imagine it must have been borne out of siblings of such different ages being alone together for so long with nothing to do. Terence scrambles among the rocks with a stick in one hand, while Anna sits and watches, seeming to give him commands. How Terence manages to scramble so all day, in such oppressive heat, is beyond my comprehension. Were we so energetic when we were young?
This must have been the game he was playing when I first came, as well. Had Anna sent him to poke that dead bird? She's such a calm and sweet girl that the notion seems absurd — but still, I cannot shake it. Her calmness remains when she plays this game, but something else — a kind of commanding authority, and not a child's play-act of authority — comes through in her face.
After supper, the children and I sat by the little stove in the centre of the ground floor landing and I read them a story. Then, Anna said something strange. She said, "Mama says she likes you." Young children often have vivid imaginations, and so I dismissed it, but her face had that same seriousness.
6th April, 1919
When Mrs Grant came (thankfully hauling flour and eggs, although no fruit and only some meagre-looking withered vegetables unsuitable for pickling), I asked her if Anna had been close to her mother. "Oh dear no," she said. "Mrs Marsten, god rest her soul, died giving birth to Anna, who never knew her mother." This lifted a weight from my heart. Anna is not seeing her mother out of trauma — she has no concept of what it's like to have one, and so an imaginary mother is no different from an imaginary aardvark or some other fantastical creature a child might pretend about. Mrs Grant also lifted my spirits with regard to the water damage from the radiators, saying that the house is mostly cedar and gets far worse from the surf — everything dries out in the summer, when it is even hotter during the day than it is now, and the copper roof practically bakes the steam out of the whole house.
Terence was even busier at Anna's game today than usual. When the wind was right, I heard her preface her orders with something like "Mama says". Perhaps this is not an imaginary friend at all, but merely a part of the game they invented together. The activity, in this heat, must have been too much for Terence. Around sundown, I went to call them in, and only Anna came. I asked where Terence was and she said, "still on the rocks". I let him play for a little while longer, but darkness fell quicker than I expected, so I gathered up a lamp & went out to look for him.
I found him laid out on one of the stone steps, the water line up to his ears, flushed and warm to the touch, & carried him in. As I did, I thought I saw a light in the small parapet atop the roof.
I tended to his fever with cool, damp rags, until Anna told me "Mama said use the paracetamol". I did, and his fever broke, though he didn't wake up.
April 6th, 1919
Last night, below the gusts of wind, the waves against the rocks, and the groans of the shifting house, I thought I heard a soft, clear voice as I fell asleep. While it disturbed me, it didn't keep me awake, and I dreamt of you again. I had forgotten the reason we met in the woods that summer, and how cruelly your father was treating you. I think I was too young to understand the extent of it at that time. I naively thought friendships formed in a vacuum, and that our connection was the result of some shared piece of soul between us, but probably at that time the woods and my companionship were your sanctuary.
I checked on Terence, whose temperature was rising only a little, and roused him into a state of half-wakefulness to give him additional paracetamol, after which he lapsed back into slumber. I noticed his skin was a little greasy & that he was beginning to develop pimples on his cheeks. He is an adolescent after all, but I hadn't noticed these things earlier in the week, even when ensuring his face and hands were properly washed for supper.
I told Mrs Grant about Anna's strange prescription, and she looked slightly disturbed. She said, "Anna never called her mother 'Mama'." After all, she had never had a mother. Instead, that had been Anna's pet name for the previous governess, who had come nearly four years ago and stayed until recently. "Mama Mary." I did not say that I had a childhood friend named Mary; it is, after all, a common name!
Mrs Grant will be off on holiday for the next two days, so she stayed a little later than usual to ensure the house was cleaned up. She even helped me a little with the pie I was baking (using a couple rusty cans of fruit that nevertheless smelled edible). She stayed late enough that she had to pick up her skirts to walk back to the mainland! A small part of me wished she had stayed until the tide hit the high water mark on the stone steps, about half a foot above my head, and that she would need to stay the night.
After Mrs Grant left, Anna continued ordering me about — "Mama says fill the bathtub with cold water", "Mama says take in all the towels off the line". I played along. I must have tired myself out, because I found myself dozing before the stove late in the evening, after I would have normally gone to bed. I heard a creaking above me, and a pair of soft voices from the radiator.
One was rambling on and on and periodically giving orders, while the other was giving short responses. I identified the one giving short responses as Anna.
"We have always lived here in tune with the cycle of the waves and the cycle of the tides and we have always let them burst into the waters when they are ripe," said the rambler. There was a creak and a scraping sound above me. "You are not of age but you can feel this truth inside you. You must let him ripen and the seeds burst out into the water. Do not be afraid of it. He will burst so that you will not. It is only his blood that is wrong. He cannot become one of us. When he is ripened, let him go."
The rambler went on and on like this, and I tried to transcribe more, but the more closely I listen to the echoes in the radiator, the sleepier I get. Perhaps I, too, have become feverish and delirious? I will finish this letter and go to bed.
April 7th, 1919
Late last night, awakened by Terence's cries, I discovered the meaning of Anna's preparations. His fever had gotten worse — far worse — and he was squirming, his muscles spasming. I remembered that the tub was still full of cold water, and being unable to get him to swallow the paracetamol, I carried him there. But, as soon as his torso was submerged, it split open like a pomegranite, white pips floating to the surface. His skin was a thin shell, muscle eaten away and full of small holes, with nothing inside but bones and these squirming white worms that now rushed out. They burbled under the skin on his unsubmerged limbs and face, while the others floated or clung to the edges of the tub.
I heard the front door open, and the worms began evacuating his body, pouring out of the tub onto a line of fresh, dry towels laid out on the floor — a pathway to the doorway, where Anna stood in her nightgown in the pouring rain. I watched them march out, down the steps, and into the moonlit marsh clay, which had risen up above the water line. The worms scattered out, created each a tiny hole, and dove in.
"Mama wants you to understand," Anna said. "Mama is mama now, and Mary too, and even Papa's Mama." I was too shocked to respond.
I climbed up the stairs to my room, and as I slipped into sleep, I heard the radiator calling my name, saying "remember Paris, remember our promise before the war".
I was naive to hold on so tightly to a youthful promise. Paris is the domain of the Bluebeard of Gambais now, not some glamorous fantasy land of Byronic heroes and symbolist poets.
I took a shovel from the root cellar and destroyed Anna while she slept. Tonight, when the sun sets and your twisted, infected body can move again, I will do the same to you. This is the last letter I will write. In the morning, before Mrs Grant comes, I will take my shovel to London to finish the Marsten dynasty.
Originally posted here.
[WP] I am alone. Truly alone. Do not pity me, for it is my own fault. My insurmountable failure has brought this upon me and all the blame is warranted. They would all be alive now if only I could have made them understand. I have killed them all.
I first spoke with the wisest and eldest. I showed him the darkness within the light. Removed the wool from his eyes and let the truth lay bare. He... he didn't understand. The words he spat at me... had left me with no choice. If I didn't stop him, I would be exiled. The choice was taken from me, and I took the only option left for me. I killed him. It's been ages since anyone died from anything but old age. Not a one suspected malice.
The old and wise were too set in their ways. The younger, open minded, would understand. To my growing horror, not one of them would so much as listen! To them, I was the raving lunatic spewing gibberish. That is how I became known.
As more time passed, more "accidents" happened. Eventually, they put the pieces together. Shortsighted they were, mindless they were not. Unfortunately for them, by now their strongest and wisest were but a memory. They cowered in my wake. No longer will my words fall of deaf ears. Now they will listen, now they will understand!
They never did. They were too "pure" I later realized. It simply was outside of what they could rationalize. Beyond the scope of their comprehension. I was the only one who could understand, because I was the only one who could see it. I was the only one who wasn't pure: and now I am the only one left alive.
My sorrow is meet only by my solitude for I miss them dearly. Time has little meaning now. I don't know how long it has been. I am condemned to everlasting isolation. This emptiness alters time. Compresses and stretches it. Hours into seconds and seconds into decades. I can bear it no longer.
I will bear it no longer! Idle hands are my playthings. I have made use of my newly found "free time." Perfected my skills. I now possess the ability to recreate my old companions. They will be remade in their exact likeness.
They were kind hearted. Helping each other whenever the opportunity presented itself. Picked up one another during hardship. They shared their burdens. Courageous people. Despite their thinning numbers, they persevered. Never once hiding from the monster I had become, they continued on living. Frightened as they might have been, they continued on living, and caring. Until the very end they were determined to help me, and to never give up. The last one I murdered said to me "Do not fret, my friend, for we love you."
This goodness is my brothers and sisters of late; what they were made of. If I focus, I can will them into existence. We can start over. I will not be alone anymore. Alone, and it's my fault. I destroyed them, I erased them, I… I…. am evil. They were virtuous, and I am evil. They were created of good. I cannot create good, it is not within me. All that dwells within me is vile and corrupt; malicious and monstrous; I am wicked; I am sin. What I have done will remain within me until the end of time itself.
Maybe it doesn't have to be pure, maybe just…..
At the cusp of madness, drowning in lunacy. Breaking the surface for shallow gasps. His immense skills now veiled in instability. Memories of his old companions barraged his senses. Unfathomable pain prevented focus. He could not do it. Further and further he slipped until, when he could fall no further, his essence snapped in two.
Where one soul stood, now lies two. It was not a clean division, instead a copy of sorts. Identical minus one, little, thing. He was wrong; righteous sat side by side next to his darkness. His soul was not made solely of evil. The qualities he idolized from his childhood friends was a shared trait. Kindness, courage, determination, love; he held them all. Although, of all these elder beings, he alone possessed the darkness within the light.
Light chases away darkness, shining so brilliant that the darkness escapes with utmost haste. Darkness, on the other hand, darkness engulfs the light. A pin prick at the core, chewing away at its edges. Expanding ever outward. It feeds on the light, and when it has nothing more to eat, it eats you. It ate him.
A madness so pure, it could not be split, it could not be shared. That is the one, little, thing differing between them.
He yearned for companionship, instead he was awarded a shattered mirror. A nameless copy; an altered image of what he used to be, what he could have been. Broken soul, cast out and discarded. Shunned by the only other living being. "No brother of mine."
His copy refused him, He would not accept him. The mirror was but a window for Him, and He could see through it clearly. He knew him well, well enough to keep him at bay. For if he wasn't able to keep the darkness contained, then neither would He.
A vast chasm separates them. In their division, they are alone. Together, in solitude.
This new being sought out companionship of his own. For if left to His own devices, surely the madness would ensnare Him. He created other, smaller, beings in His own image. The good and the just passing to His new offsprings. The courage and the kindness, and everything from His old friends. Love, love at the core.
Like his brother, he held the darkness within the light. When he made the others in His image, the darkness was shared as well.
Now, now they both are truly no longer alone.
Paul and Merilyn are nearing the front of the queue when the food runs out.
Alongside six thousand of Manhattan's last hopefuls they have waited in line for fourteen sweltering hours. With her rucksack empty, Merilyn wasn't bothered by the dogs, but they have been corralled through a maze of chainlink and shoved ahead by soldiers nevertheless - for what feels like days in the August heat. Like every one of the city's tired and its sick and its poor they have been asked to temporarily remove their masks and their hoods on the way through the fences. They have each had cotton swabs taken of their cheek linings. A soldier tugged hard at Paul's teeth with a gloved thumb and forefinger, and Merilyn's hair was scooped into a ruthless ponytail and her scalp checked for blood before a masked technician waved them through the final checkpoint. After fourteen hours they are now within sight of the Walgreens store that has been fortified and appointed to serve as this week's aid station.
The public address system crackles to life across the entire city.
"New York City residents with fixed addresses in zones one through nineteen - I repeat zones one through nineteen - report to Hotel One. You will receive food and you will receive water in exchange for proof of residence. Each citizen will be required to present his or her own identification."
"You two as sick of those recorded messages as we are?" The couple in front of them in the queue are sharing a single khaki folding stool. The man is wearing jeans and a red plaid shirt. He hasn't shaved. They both have brown hair, he wears thick-rimmed glasses, and she is sat on his lap. Merilyn thinks they are smiling because of the creases around their eyes. After weeks of wearing painter's masks and scarves around her mouth and nose - she must have subconsciously pulled hers back up again after the checkpoint - she has become good at recognising facial expressions from eyes alone.
She suppresses a sheepish giggle and says, "oh, yes, actually. They're at every intersection, I know, but the one near our apartment has been out for more than a week now so I'd gotten used to not hearing them quite so loudly as all this. In fact, if I hadn't gone out to look at the noticeboard I don't think we'd even have known about this week's drop."
Paul stares straight ahead as the loudspeaker above them drones on in a clipped, official tone.
"Children under the age of fourteen do not qualify for separate aid. Do not bring currency with you to the aid station. Officers will not accept payment and no additional food or water will be provided under any circumstances."
"I'm Tom, by the way, and this is Angela", the man on the camping stool says. "You guys want to sit down? We've been here so long my leg's starting to go numb."
Merilyn looks at Paul, who mouths a curt "No."
"Ah well, no problem. You need something to eat?" He holds out a bright red Thermos. "It's just vegetable stock. Cold vegetable stock, I guess. We made it yesterday after all and we didn't have much stock left. Cold vegetable water might be more apt." Merilyn thinks he's smiling again.
"We don't need any help", snaps Paul before ducking away to the side of the fence, pressing his cheek into the links in an attempt to see around the crowds. The three of them stand in silence. Merilyn shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot and wishes she could have sat down. Her right foot is blistered along one side and she hasn't been able to feel the toes on her left for hours. Angela looks at her with what she thinks might be sympathy.
"Sorry. That's just Paul", she says. Paul returns from the fences and the four of them stand in silence for a few minutes longer.
"As with any public gathering, remain calm and remain vigilant. Do not touch anybody you do not know. Do not remove your masks or other face coverings unless explicitly requested to do so by a member of the US Military or an aid worker."
Dusk has slipped around the skyscrapers, unheeded.
"What I want to know", Tom remarks after the loudspeaker has finished and a soldier in tattered uniform has made a too-long circuit of the group, "is why, if it's just blood-borne, the quarantine gates are necessary."
Paul responds before Merilyn can intervene. "Because the government needs to be able to separate the drug users and hospital workers from everybody else. The quarantine stages are to protect us from other people."
"It's not just drug users, you know", Tom says. "Sure, the first cases were in the hospitals and the projects, but I know swimmers and hedge fund managers and teachers who all caught it. And if it was just blood, why are we instructed to avoid untreated tap water and always wear these damn things?"
Paul, never one to pass up the opportunity to belittle anybody else says sarcastically "You know hedge fund managers?"
At just that moment the line begins to move forward. Paul insists on barrelling through the crowds, but Tom and Angela soon catch up. The four of them are now next in line, behind an older couple. As they move towards the store one of the dogs begins to growl and, in a matter of seconds, two soldiers emerge from the lines beside the door and usher the woman away. Her husband barely has time to shout imprecations before he's thrust into the store regardless - hurried along to collect his rations.
The older woman is now out of sight, but a few moments later they hear shouting from inside joined by a rising clamour from all around them as the metal shutters outside the store begin to descend and screams rise up from the crowds behind them.
"Mel, get closer. I want to find out what's going on in the store. Hurry." Paul says.
The shutters have clattered down to near head height, and stopped again, by the time Merilyn has worked her way through the crowd. Behind the glass three armed officers in crumpled camouflage begin rapidly ushering staff - a young Indian man, arms loaded with boxes, and a compact Hispanic girl with the widest eyes - out of the rear door and into the loading bay behind the store. A third person is being pushed through with them: the older white man from the front of the queue, being swept up in the military rush with wild hair and no badge or uniform. A fourth officer, tall and thin and visibly scared, has the door wedged open with his boot and the first two fingers of one gloved hand pressed to his ear. He puts the palm of his other hand to the girl's back, shoves her roughly through and vaults into the threshold himself, shouting "Shit, sir, we're going to have a mob on our hands any second now!". He kicks aside loose cans and props the heavy door open with one padded elbow held at a right angle to his body. His finger is on the trigger. Through the aggregate grime and condensation, Merilyn watches him shakily level his weapon at the crowds outside.
"Help me up, both of you. Come on. I want to know what's happening!"
Paul has mounted a New York Times stand with his back to the store. The top of the stand is curved and slippery and he's struggling to stand upright. Angela and Tom are stood to either side, trying to stabilise him. Their hands are on his thighs and ankles. Painter's mask discarded and swinging wildly from a single strap around his neck, Paul is now head and shoulders above them. He is straining to see over the heads of the crowd and through the heathaze to the skyscrapers at the far side of the square. Over his thin frame his shirt is like a paper target.
Merilyn lunges for him. She feels the sweat-soaked poplin come unstuck from his spine. She pulls a lot harder and his trainers squeal on the glossy metal as he careens backwards. Arcing gracelessly downward as he falls, Paul's right fist finds Angela's lips and her teeth through her mask. She fades with a wet murmur into the throng behind her and Paul lands hard, elbows first, on the concrete of the pavement with Merilyn beside him.
"The hell?! Get off! Shit... Help! Get off of me!" Scrabbling to get to his feet, Paul locks eyes on Merilyn. "Mel?! What the fuck're you doing?! What's the matter with you?"
She yanks his open collar, pulling him back down to his knees. They are crouching jaw to jaw below the storefront hoardings when the first shots punch through the glass above. Throwing up his forearms to cover his head, Paul cringes lower to the pavement and further against her. He doesn't turn around. They both flinch as ten or more successive rounds send shards and strobes of light into the street. A shot glances brightly off the newspaper stand; another catches Tom in the shoulder. When Merilyn looks up again a young woman is frozen in place in the checkpoint gates. She clutches a towelling shoulder sling to her chest. The sprinting crowds part, jostle and shake the chainlink fences as they try to get past her, and when she finally turns to run a bullet catches her in the ribcage a handspan beneath her right arm. She stumbles two steps, then three, before she and her bundle are sandwiched into an oblique corner and smothered by the rushing crowd.
Over the rising clamour from the fences Merilyn hears a scrape of boots inside the store. Keeping low, she shuffles on her haunches to the doorway. One shoulder braced against the jamb, she risks a glance inside. The interior is shaped like a curtailed T, with the former cashier's desk directly ahead of her, the rear door listing open behind that, and empty shelving units to her immediate left and right. Merilyn's breath feels hot and rancid in her mask. She tucks a lank strand of hair into one plastic strap, raps Paul once on the shoulder and sprints inside. Her gripless shoes skitter over the floor tiles and her shoulderblades hurt when she skids to a halt with her back against the desk, facing out into the street.
Through the open doorway she can see Paul. His brown eyes look wild through the dirty glass, where he is still crouching by the entrance. Beyond him the tops of the chainlink fences sway and rattle violently. No wind has started. Just inside the radius of the light from the store she can see where Angela is splayed against the nearest wheel of a portable generator. Tom is hunched over her with his head hanging and liquid is pooling around them both. In a hoarse voice from his hiding place in the doorway, Paul croaks "Mel! Get back here! Damn... I'm cut. My hand, Mel! Mel! Look at my hand! Oh shit fuck shit fuck shit."
He darts a look backwards at the square and turns to face her again. His hair is slick and the sodium lights make the sweat in it shine.
"Did I do that?! She's not moving, Mel. That lady's not moving. What were their names? Bob!? Dan?! Oh fuck, I think they're hurt. What do we do?!"
With no response from the couple, Paul half crawls and half scrabbles across the floor to get near to Merilyn, slamming his knees into the bones of her shins in a graceless skid. A realisation reconfigures his face.
"Did she bite me or something? I got her blood on me, didn't I?! I just know I did", Paul groans as he collapses against the desk. "We've got to just wait here. This'll all calm down in a minute, just wait and see. Come on. I think... I think I need a doctor. There's bound to be one out there." Paul looks up at the ceiling, breathing heavily. She looks down as she feels him fumble for her fingers.
The floor around the cashier's desk is strewn with photocopied pages documenting the latest approved routes through the city, she notices, scattered amongst the familiar flyers. Government-issued pamphlets like the stacks left in the lobby by their empty concierge desk warn of the dangers of drinking untreated municipal water, sharing food and engaging in sexual contact. Paul insisted they ignore the last one.
Below the text a line diagram shows a woman in a business outfit tying a scarf around her mouth and nose and then fitting masks to a little girl and a smaller boy. She knows this next bit off by heart. Watch for: a persistent rash, peripheral limb and head aches, bleeding from the hair follicles and gums, under the arms, the tear ducts and the groin, difficulty breathing, tunnel vision, slurred speech, loss of muscle tone, convulsions and catatonia. Beside the list of symptoms, the girl and boy are holding hands. Merilyn doesn't have to turn the paper over to know that the reverse shows the same family, in the same bold black and white lines, keeping their regulation thirty feet from an infected man. The man has the universal danger symbol printed on his t-shirt and there is something wrong with the way he's standing. The artist hasn't drawn his face.
Paul is now animated and shouting again and his hands are dancing along the front of her top, pulling at it.
"Someone will sort this out... the, the police or somebody. They'll have an injection or a patch or something and, and maybe it's not blood that carries it after all! You heard what those people were saying. Nobody really knows. The police or the army will figure this out. They can fix it. They always do. They HAVE TO because they said they WOULD!"
He sounds completely and tirelessly frantic.
"It's the army shooting at us, Paul", snaps Merilyn in a voice louder and braver than she had meant for it to be. Paul's voice is smaller than he wants it to be when he replies, and he grits his teeth to take the tremor out of it. "We've got to go back and get back in line. I have to do something about this cut. Please. You know what the broadcasts say. I could have it! I'm asking you to listen to me, Mel, because this is important. Are you listening to me?"
He tries his last resort: "Please."
Merilyn knows that going back means the fevered crowd at best. It means the floodlights, the empty cages and empty stomachs. It means eyeing the people next to you in line and wondering whether they're thinking the same thing. At worst, it means much worse. She knows they can't take their chances on returning the way they came, along the approved routes and through the army cordons. Not with a visible wound. Not after being here. Going back means treading the same avenues all over again. It means coming home to Stone Street and dumping her limp rucksack in the hallway and portioning out sugar sachets and bleached water from the bathtub, hearing the faint emergency broadcasts echo and loop, missing the hum of the traffic, and having to explain to Paul again and again that they need to leave Manhattan or they will die there. Going back means pretending all over again that somebody is coming to help.
Without another word Merilyn grabs her backpack and vaults over the countertop, landing uncomfortably with her knees against a plastic milk crate on the opposite side. Leaning against the rear door, she slowly shifts her weight from one foot to the other to tease it ajar. She is acutely aware of her breathing inside her mask. The loading bay is bigger than she had anticipated. A gentle incline along the nearside wall separates the upper tier and the door from the two parking bays below. A length of railing runs alongside it, bisecting her view of the lower level. She can see two of the four army officers she knows are here. They are hauling crates and pallets of bottled water into the bed of an idling civilian pickup. They don't appear to be looking her way.
There are what look to be six or so soup cans in haphazard piles near the top of the ramp. Rather than risk the door swinging shut again and announcing her presence, Merilyn keeps one foot wedged between the jamb and the base of the door itself - her leg stretched - as she creeps forwards on her hands towards the food. After slowly and carefully covering a metre or so, she comes to an abrupt halt. Without the railing blocking her view she sees that the other two officers have their guns trained on the Walgreens staff and the white man, who are all kneeling with their backs to her. In the tactical lights mounted on the gunbarrels their silhouettes are very bold. The young hispanic girl is rocking rhythmically from her left to her right. She is keening like a lost child - a reedy and agonising sound.
Stretching her stale jeans to their limit, Merilyn keeps the door steady and begins silently reaching for the cans nearest to her. She picks up the first and quietly places it on the floor underneath her chest with her right hand. Her fingertips are shaking. All the while she can hear Paul muttering behind her, and the clamour from the cages behind that. She repeats the process, feeling her forearms beginning to burn. She is about to place the second can softly onto the tiles beneath her when a radio in the flatbed crackles to life. The can almost slips from her fingers. Thinking fast, she rolls onto one shoulder, keeping her foot in the door, and snatches the can with her now-free hand.
Lying motionless on her back and not daring to breathe, she hears one of the two soldiers sling his final pallet into the truck and move to the cab to answer the radio. The crying stops. When Merilyn is sure that no footsteps are coming her way she rolls back onto her chest, right arm trapped beneath her, and begins reaching for a third can - this one perilously close to the edge of the ramp. Her fingers are brushing the can, rolling it softly towards her when she hears a new voice start up from the level below.
The white man is muttering a prayer.
Distracted, Merilyn's fingers slip, sending the third can spiralling away from her. She lurches towards it but the can tips onto an edge and begins rolling down the loading ramp towards the truck, picking up speed. Sliding backwards towards the door, she then rises quickly to her knees, and is stuffing the two cans into her backpack when the third makes the bottom of the ramp and collides with a drum of catering oil.
"Jackson, check that out, do one last sweep and for fuck's sake STOP THAT NOISE!", barks the soldier now seated in the driver's seat of the truck. Merilyn hears the truck's door open and then slam shut. She hears boots striking the concrete floor. "You! Praying guy. Shut it. What are you even praying for?! Huh?! You hungry?! I've been out there. Out past the bridges. You think you have it bad that you can't find enough to eat? You think that's worth God's time? Or Allah's time, or whoever the fuck you're talking to? You're lucky. You hear me?! You're all fucking lucky and none of you privileged cunts know it."
Merilyn hears boot leather creaking and footsteps moving closer as she eases herself back through the doorway. The soldier down in the loading dock is still screaming, only now the pitch is rising.
"I haven't had an order in more than a week, you know that?! From anyone I actually recognise as being in command, I mean. We were sent out here today to get food to you people. We don't even have enough ourselves, but God fucking forbid you folks go without! There are thousands of you every few blocks and we can feed maybe two, three hundred but we come anyway. What makes you think you deserve more than your share, huh? Is that it?! You, the people behind you and the people in front, all you city boys, you're all the same. Black, brown, white, I don't give a fuck. All living in a fucking fantasy world with your cordons and your food drops and your fucking Dasani water. You're as dead as the rest of us and you don't even have the decency to admit it. To you it's just a disease, right? You get it and you get sick and you get cured. It's other people who die. You think that you put your little mask on", out of sight, Merilyn hears the ping of snapping plastic and a sharp intake of breath, "and you stick to bottled water, you don't hang out with the junkies and keep your dick in your pants this is all going to blow over, right? Is that what you think?!"
"N-n-no. I just. I don't know what you're talking about. We're hungry, that's all it is, I swear. I'm sorry, ok? I'm hungry. I'm hungry and I'm thirsty and I know I took more than I should have but my wife was here and now she's not and I-I-I, I don't know where she is and New York is all we know and we need to eat. Please! Where else am I supposed to go?! What else are we supposed to do?!"
"No. Fuck you! You don't KNOW hunger. You don't KNOW thirst. You don't even know that you're part of a fucking PR exercise! You know entitlement. That's what you know."
The soldier at the base of the ramp has paused, evidently affected by what the other is saying.
"You're the masters of the fucking universe here in the marketing heart of America, and we have to keep you alive at all costs. "We will not lose our brightest city." You remember that speech? Well we fucking lost everywhere else."
From across the loading bay - inside the truck, Merilyn thinks - a third soldier shouts for Jackson to wrap up his sermon and get a move on. "You're not special," Jackson spits on. "My fucking brother was special, ok? He went to the lines to fight in Boston and he left Carol and Annie with us and he never came back. And all the while you sat in your little penthouse and felt safe. You're not fucking special and I'm sick of you acting like it!" Metal slides against metal. Merilyn holds her breath as she allows the door to swing slowly shut.
"No. Don't point that at me. What are you - You can't do this! Please... you, in the truck, tell him! One of you tell him I don't know what he's talking about! What lines? I don't know what's going o-"
Her body now silently extracted from the opening, the door whispers back into the frame and Merilyn moves quickly into the store. Paul rises to his feet as her hears her coming. If he hadn't already realised as much from the shots now ringing out behind the door, the look on her face tells him he's getting his way again.
Paul struggles to keep pace with Merilyn as she marches down 6th Avenue. But having to run to keep up doesn't matter; he can tell they're going the right way. His way. He knows that they're going back home to sit tight and wait it out like he told her they should. And he believes, deep down, that whatever's happening, somebody is coming to save them. He says as much, over and over, like a mantra, as they pass shuttered store after store. His voice is big and powerful and commanding again now they're in the quiet.
Merilyn knows they're going home to die. She doesn't say a thing.
To be continued…
The hot breaths of the crowd steamed in the cold November air. They were huddled together, nudging each other in a bitter fatigue. The surge of bodies was pressed against the store gates, clamoring over their itineraries, and crushing those in front — who only pushed back, crushing those in the middle. Anthony felt like he was suffocating. How the hell did he end up here, at the gates of hell? He promised himself that he would avoid this day at all costs for his entire life. Yet, here he was — miserable amongst the miserable. Sale, 50% off, sale, deal, sale, door buster, SALE.
On one day a year, these trigger words sent the nation into a frenzy. Millions of people became rabid at the notion of saving money by spending money. They devoured all of the latest technologies and consumed their credit like wild animals. Tents were being disassembled by the most loyal shoppers in the front of the line. They had been camping out since the store closed at midnight on Thanksgiving. Smart shoes were projected to be the top seller this holiday season, and by god those people had to have them. There were hundreds gathered in a line that stretched around the corner of the building. It was super important that they arrive three hours early.
Anthony was okay with just watching the fights online the day after and laughing at all of the disturbing behavior with the comfort of distance. His hand hung numb in the vice grip of his girlfriend. Despite all his protests, she insisted that they'd find some really good deals. By the time he received his third elbow to the kidney, he was ready to fight. He had to remind himself that, fuck — then I'd be one of those assholes in the fail compilation. That was ten elbows ago. Now, his soul was being crushed, along with his body. He was over it already and had sunken into a deep state of despair in thinking that there were hours more of this to go. She owed him big time.
This of course led to the fight in the car on the way over — which is probably why her grip was so damn tight. If you don't wanna go, then you don't have to go. He knew that was a trap. So he went. Why did she expect him to be happy about it? There was a rattling at the gate as the crowd's patience was at the verge of violence. Come on! Let us in! It's 4 o'clock, asshole! If a mosh pit broke out, he wouldn't have been surprised.
The employees faced the open sliding glass door with dread. In moments, that rattling steel gate would open and all hell would break loose. They were in for a long, hectic day — and were likely to see people at their lowest. Most of them were veterans of the retail world and knew that if you just kept your head down, the nightmare would be over soon enough. Yet, the seasonal hires shook in reproach. They imagined the worst, and were probably right in doing so. The shouts from the other side were venomous and thunderous. The security guard checked his watch. 3:59 AM.
The manager of All Mart, Craig, held the chain and watched the time carefully. Sweat dribbled down his bald skull. This was it. No turning back. The minute turned and the manager yanked on the chain. Crank. Desperate feet shuffled in the crack and the gate swayed from the pressure on the other side. Craig pulled again and the gate lifted to the knees of the angry mob, frantic to enter. A man crawled underneath and dove into a pile of smart shoes. Crank. The boxes collapsed on top of him. Crank. A horde of raging bodies rushed forward like the flood waters of a tsunami. They descended on the pile of smart shoes as if quenching a vicious craving. They bore teeth, scratched, dropped shoulders into the chest of the elderly. A little girl lifted a box in the air triumphantly only to have a grown man rip it from her grasp. Give it back! She jumped, trying for the box but he threw an elbow, checking her little yelping body into a display of chips. Anarchy ensued.
By the time Anthony and Ana entered the store, the shoes were gone and there was blood on the floor. The little girl was crying into the arms of her father, who craned his neck like an ostrich in search of the culprit. The consumers were tearing the place apart in a manic frenzy. When they got to the technology section, it was a madhouse. The aisles were too thick to go down and the shelves were blocked off three deep. He looked up at the price of the newest gaming console. $299.99? That's not even a good deal.
Anthony pushed himself through the mass of bodies and came up on an empty shelf spare for one final console. He took a moment to reflect on whether he should or shouldn't buy this thing. He said that he would but now that he was standing here, was it worth it? A vulture swooped in and snapped down on the box. Anthony wasn't about to fight the guy when he could pay just as much online. No wonder these stores are dying.
An hour later, they were in line with a dismal take of three items. A virtual reality set, a top, and a pack of chapstick. The customers in front of them had multiple shopping carts full of laptops, games, clothes, and a huge television sticking out from one them. This was going to take forever. The lines seemed to be just as bad as waiting for the store to open. This was the first stop in a long list of must visits on Ana's game plan. He counted twelve stores before they left. If each store took as long as this one, he was in for a long, unrewarding day. He already spent all of his money on the virtual reality set. He just had to come to terms with the fact that he'll never get this day back. He was getting ripped off by wasting his time.
Eventually, they waded through awkward silence and paid for their meager items. They made their way to the doors and the people in front of them came to an abrupt halt. The steel gate came crashing down, separating a young girl from her family. Hannah! Hannah! No one knew what to do. So they just started griping in unison, to no one and everyone. How dare they suffer this injustice? They would surely let the world know.
"Good morning shoppers!" an upbeat voice boomed from the loud speakers.
Even the workers were surprised by the voice, and looked up to the ceiling with confusion and intrigue. Who the hell is that?
"Thank you for shopping at All Mart, where owning you is a pleasure. Today is a very special day. It's. Black. Friday."
The thralls of shoppers cheered as if on cue. Anthony's claustrophobia kicked in as strangers bumped against him from all angles, "What the hell is going on?"
"Now," the voice seemed to smile, "I bet you're all wondering what the hell is going on?"
Ana placed her hand on Anthony's shoulder as he looked up to the nearest video camera.
"Well," the voice took a considerable pause and the crowd murmured with anticipation, "you all have been chosen for an exclusive promotion."
Ooh, ahh, now we're talkin'.
"How would you like the opportunity to completely change your life?"
Hmph. I'd like that. That sounds good. Okay, I'm listening.
"One lucky winner will win the chance of a lifetime. I repeat, one lucky winner will win the chance of a lifetime!"
The crowd was getting riled up, hooting and hollering like buffoons.
"Outstanding debt? Paid. Dream vacation home? It's yours. Trip around the world? Consider yourself booked. One lucky winner will win one full hour to purchase anything their heart desires. Nothing is off limits. A private jet? You got it. Illicit drugs? Sure thing! Human trafficking? No problem. New car? Drone strike? Hunting trip to kill an endangered species in the name of conservation? Yes, hell yes, and abso-fuckin'-lutely. The only limit is your depraved imagination. You want it? We'll buy it."
Could you imagine what you could do with that kinda opportunity? I'd be set! What do I gotta do?
"All you have to do," the voice breathed heavily for several moments as the crowd hung on hope, "is survive."
The mumbling of the placid populace dropped to silence. Finally, one woman's voice shot up from the cash registers, "What the hell did he just say?"
"You have until the sun rises — which is approximately one hour. The last one standing, wins it all. Are you willing to trade the worst hour of your life for the best? The promotion starts now. Good luck."
The intercom chirped and the lights cut out to a general groan from the shopper. The Christmas muzak returned in an upbeat rendition of Deck the Halls. Craig attempted to pull the gate open but it wasn't budging. It must have been locked from the outside. The electronic sliding doors closed and automatically locked.
"Hey," a man stepped away from his family and got in the manager's face, "You can't keep us here against our will. Open the doors."
"I can't," the manager squeaked.
"Open the fuckin' door, now."
The manager pulled on the chains frantically, "I can't!"
"I'm not fuckin' playing with—" the father grabbed at Craig's shirt and a brief struggle ensued.
"Open the door!" the man reached back to swing but Craig pulled out a can of bear mace and let 'er rip. The immediate crowd dispersed like oil and vinegar and the man crumpled to the ground in a fit of tears. His wife didn't take too kindly to that and stepped forward with stinging slaps to the back of Craig's head. He sprayed her too but she kept fighting like a coked up frat boy in a night club parking lot after last call. Craig reached into the shopping carts of customers and threw bags of merchandise at her, but that didn't seem slow her down. She withdrew a knife from her back pocket and flipped it open. You fuckin' bitch. She slashed down at the manager's face. Bang! The crowd stampeded away from the doors.
The woman's chest exploded and her heart splattered across the manager's face. The bullet ricocheted off the wall over Craig's shoulder and she dropped to the floor. An off duty police officer lowered his pistol as the bullet shell danced on the tile floor. A roar. The dead woman's husband raged at the officer with wide, blind swings and caught the officer in the stomach. The husband grabbed a hold of the officer's waist and his weight sent them tumbling to the ground. They wrestled for the gun. Bang! They struggled until the officer's face tilted into death. The mob descended on the raging man in an attempt to save the officer.
"What do we do?" Ana said to Anthony as they hid behind a conveyor belt.
The man stood, gun in hand, and aimed it at the crowd, "Run."
Bullets cut through the people as they fled and the bodies began to pile up as they entered the aisles. Anthony and Ana broke out in a sprint as screams escaped from the middle of the mob. Pain and death echoed throughout the huge department store.
Anthony led Ana down the bike aisle towards the outdoor section. The store descended into chaos as people began attacking each other. Gouging, battering, murder. If they could get a gun to protect themselves, they might be alright. They stopped short of the gun display case when they came nose to barrel with an AR-15. A fat man who looked like he'd been prepping for this very moment lowered the rifle and placed it on the glass case, "It's got one in the chamber. Don't you be tryin' nothin' stupid."
He gingerly pushed cartridges into the magazine as Anthony stepped forward, "Listen, we can't just—"
"I can do whatever the hell I want, son," the man said, spitting tobacco all over the floor at Anthony's feet. "I'm American. If you think I'm just going to let an opportunity like this pass, you must stupid, dumb, or just plain unlucky."
"Let's just all remain calm, okay?"
"Remain calm?"
"There's no need to resort to vi—"
"Do I not look calm to you?"
The old man smiled as he calmly loaded the last cartridge into the magazine. Anthony spotted a machete hanging on the shelf and scrambled for it. The old man slapped the magazine into the well of the rifle. Anthony gripped the machete and pointed it at the old man, trying to appear threatening but he looked more like a boyish Peter Pan than anything, "Hey! Stop."
The old man charged a round into the chamber, revealing his own bluff, and lifted the gun. Anthony shielded himself by turning away from the barrel. The old man aimed. Thbbt. A blur flew over Anthony's shoulder with a gust of wind and an arrow stabbed through the old man's eye and pierced his brain. The old man crashed into the glass and slid to the ground with the quiver still vibrating — leaving a streak of crimson on the glass. Anthony turned to find Ana holding a crossbow. She stood before him a different woman, sexy but terrifying. What the fuck? Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Ana stripped the man of the the assault rifle and switched the safety on. Anthony watched in disbelief, "You know how to use that thing?"
"My dad used to take me hunting," she said. "Can't be much different. Come on, maybe we can get out through the dock."
Anthony followed her through the double doors into the stock room but she stopped short as a man raced away from a forklift. The forks leveled with the man's back and ran him into the wall, impaling him through the guts and crushing his rib cage. The forklift reversed and raised up with the body propped up with his intestines dangling. The forklift turned to face the couple and charged at them. Ana lifted the assault rife and opened fire. The mast shielded the driver and the forklift stayed its course. They retreated to a bundle of merchandise wrapped on a pallet. Ana pulled the trigger repeatedly. Shrapnel struck the driver in the face and his lips peeled back over his eyes. The forklift jerked as the driver fell out, still holding the wheel. The machine tilted and flipped to its side, crushing the driver underneath. Blood trickled from every opening of his body and his eyes bulged from the pressure on his skull.
A breath was all they had before another a seasonal worker came at them with a crowbar. The steel was descending at Ana when Anthony leapt out to take the hit. It cracked down on his right shoulder and he hit the ground. The worker backhanded the crowbar at Ana but she caught it and twisted. The seasonal worker drove her into the bundle of merchandise, shoving the crowbar into her throat. She choked and he lifted her off her feet, hanging her inches away from his foamy mouth. Her face bulged purple and she clung to her last breath. Choking, she saw the world fade away. Crckk. A machete split his skull in two and chunks of his brain splattered onto her face — stinging her eyes. Anthony pulled the machete back, dislodged it, and the worker fell at her feet. They ran through an open door and came out on the receiving dock. A sales associate was helping a woman into the compactor chute, "Quick, get in before they hurt you."
The woman scrambled inside and disappeared, "Keep your head down."
"What are you doing?" Ana asked.
"Herding the sheep," the salesman said.
"Is there a way out of here?"
"The door is locked," the salesman pointed into the compactor. "The only way out is down. Here, I can help you."
The salesman held out an inviting hand with a wide smile and Anthony stepped forward to look down the chute. Half a dozen people were huddled together in fear. Anthony leaned over to get a count when a burning sensation erupted up his right side. The salesman dug a knife repeatedly into his stomach and pushed him down the chute. He tumbled and slid over the edge of the compactor well, landing on several scared shoppers.
The salesman slapped the button and the compactor groaned as it kicked on. The press lurched forward and the group of people crouching amidst the trash panicked as they were pinned inside. Ana pulled the trigger once and the salesman's head exploded on the wall. She ran over to chute and watched as the compactor pressed down on the people who were scrambling to climb over the moving wall. Anthony managed to pull his upper torso up to the chute but his feet still dangled over, "Hit the button. Stop it."
He looked up at Ana with pleading eyes, "Ana, please. Hit the button."
Concern left her face and a calm overwhelmed her. His leg was caught by the moving wall and he was carried back down, "Ana!"
She watched him with pity, "I'm sorry."
"What? No, please, aghh. Ana!"
The compactor wedged his leg into the trash receptacle and snapped his leg in two. The tendons of his knee tore like the veins of a chicken wing and blood rushed down onto the hapless victims below. Their cries for help were muffled as the compactor ground to it's end. Their bones crunched and popped as their organs burst. Ana looked down with sullen eyes as Anthony trailed out of consciousness from a loss of blood. If anyone was going to win the prize of an hour long shopping spree, it was going to be her. Her mind was running wild with all of the possibilities.
She knew since the announcement that this had to happen. It was better to get rid of him now so that it wouldn't hurt so much later. Besides, the compactor was killing him — she was just letting it happen. Surely that was better than doing it herself up close and personal. The compactor pulled back and the people below were silent now. *That wasn't so bad.*
As the press rescinded, Anthony's limp unconscious body slowly rolled over the edge and dropped out of sight with a hollow thud. She left the machine running so that it would finish the job and walked out of the stock room determined to do whatever she had to do to win this damn promotion. She was tired of working a menial jobs for minimum pay. She could live out her wildest dreams.
Ana pushed through the double doors and bullets riddled the floor before her. Guns were going off in every direction and she leaped behind a display case. A downpour of bullets tore apart the stuffed animals on display and cotton fluttered about like a fluffy snow. She returned fire to set up some cover so that she could crawl over to the door with a sign that read: Employees Only.
She bursted through the door and faced a group of trembling employees. Please don't kill us. She lifted a quieting index finger to her lips and the people were relieved when she shut the lights off and wedged the door closed with a chair. A pair of boots clucked down the hall and their shadows casted under the door. The shooter waited on the other side, listening. She fired a string of shots into the door, and hear beyond the ringing in her ears. A body dropped and the shadow thickened. She opened the creaking door and looked down at the corpse. Craig, riddled with bullet wounds. Good and dead. She turned to the employees and smiled.
"It's all going to be okay," she said gently. A weight was lifted from their worry as she raised the rifle at them with a shrug. No! Please! She opened fire and eliminated the room of any competition. That was easy.
She returned to the floor and walked down the sports section. A scream from women's sportswear. A bouncy ball the size of a car tire bounced down the walkway and Ana opened fired, popping the ball. She listened for any threat and heard laughter in groceries. She ducked low and crept down the aisle. A small single engine cranked and sputtered alive just beyond the wall of products. She turned sharply and a pole saw poked out from the lowest shelf and ripped into her calf, shredding her flesh and muscle to the bone. Her leg buckled and she crashed into the shelving.
A stack of boxed basketballs fell with her and covered her. The saw thrashed underneath the surface of the boxes like a shark in shallow water — splashing furious flurries of cardboard into the air. The saw's twisting blades waved wildly at her crotch. She shouldered the rifle and shot wildly until the charging handle clicked back to an empty ejection port. The saw crawled forward, chipping into the tile just inches from her jeans. She rolled and kicked the saw away.
A row of baseball bats lined the pegged wall of the shelving unit. She stretched and barely grazed the bottom of the bat head with her middle finger. She pushed upwards through the pain and the handle lifted just slightly, moving a centimeter closer to the end of the peg hook. She dropped and gathered her strength in a single breath. She lunged upwards and the bat toppled off the hook and dinged her on the forehead.
Ana used the bat as a crutch and brought herself to her good foot. She limped down the aisle and a man turned the corner in a full sprint towards her. He was flailing a hatchet above his head, ready to bring it down on her. She put her weight on her good foot and lifted the bat to her shoulder — preparing herself for their inevitable collision. The man leapt into the air and chopped down hard with the hatchet. She timed his arrival and swung the bat, cracking his jaw. The hatchet hacked into her collar bone and they flopped to the tile. The man groaned and Ana rolled over on top of him. She grabbed the hatchet and brought it down on his skull, caving his brains into mash. Her rage erupted and she brought the hatchet down again and again. Each swing more brutal than the last. Blood sprayed up and dripped from her chin as if she were bathing in sacrifice.
She crawled across the walkway and pulled herself into a circular clothing rack. The coats were a weak shield but a shield nonetheless. She didn't know if she could go on. The opportunity of a lifetime carried the risk of losing life itself. Was it worth it? Only if she won. She wasn't willing to pay for death at the cost of her life. She couldn't give up. She had to walk out of those doors when the sun came up. It couldn't be long now — or could it?
She had no sense of time. Her purse was lost when it all began. With it, her phone. Her phone. If she could back to the front of the store, then she could call for help. The coats slid on the rails of the clothing rack and the cute little girl that got separated from her family stood over Ana with a sullen display of innocence. Her right hand was reaching behind her back and Ana raised a hand in surrender, "Hi there. Hannah, was it?"
The little girl smiled and giggled, dropping her hand out from behind her. She was wielding a bloody kitchen knife longer than her arm. The little girl's face twisted with menace and the knife slashed down. Ana lifted her hand to catch the girl's forearm. The knife slit the side of her wrist and the point came down just short of her eye. She muscled the little girl and slammed her head into the support rail of the clothing rack, stunning her enough to get a grip on the knife's handle. Ana dipped the blade into the girls neck and blood squirted out in thick waves, covering Ana's hand in warmth. She pressed into Hannah's chest and the blood flowed out of the wound — life left her. She rolled to her stomach and grabbed the handle of a shopping cart and pulled herself to her foot. She pushed the cart through the lingerie section and her dismembered foot dragged along like a can tied to a bumper.
The pain was excruciating and her head was getting dizzy, but something deep inside called for her to stay awake and stay alive. She wasn't thinking anymore, her body was on auto pilot. Stay alive.
"Where do you think you're going?" a swollen voice croaked behind her.
Ana turned to face an overweight woman whose chin was soft and thick. Her stained shirt was emblazoned with nightingale patterns and her collar was outstretched from years of use. She wobbled forward and cracked her hammy knuckles. She lumbered forward with her hands grabbing at the air. Ana blitzed forward and the woman wrapped her monstrous arms and squeezed. Ana lost all air as she wriggled in the lady's arms. The big lady's grip loosened and Ana pulled the knife through her massive belly. The stink of her gut bombed the air as her stewing stomach spilled out, covering Ana with bile.
Ana was no match for the woman's weight and they toppled to the floor in unison. She was smothered underneath the woman and pushed with all her remaining strength in order to free himself. She was pinned to the floor under hundreds of pounds. She gave up and released herself to sleep. Her eyes were closing whether she wanted them to or not. She was tired of fighting. The weight of the world closed down on her and darkness replaced the light.
Paul roamed the store, checking each corpse to make sure they were dead. He'd routinely check the front gate and look out of the peephole to mark the time by the lightening sky. The first couple times, he merely looked and kept a safe distance — but no one was moving. No one squirmed. Where was his reward? This was bullshit. His third go round, he started clubbing the skulls of each and every man, woman, and child. He had to be sure. Maybe there was someone who wasn't quite dead. He'd put them out of their misery and reap his rewards. But they never came. A pale blue sky reached out over the rolling hills of the full parking lot. The sun was rising and he was running out of time.
He smashed the skull of a fat woman and the blood poured down onto Ana, who was hidden by the opened belly of her victim. Her chest still rose and fell but that couldn't be seen under such a quilt, and the man moved on. After a fourth pass, he stopped underneath a video camera and threw his arms in the air. Everyone was dead.
"I'm the last one standing," he barked. "Where's my reward?"
He was met by an insolent silence, "I can't fucking believe this."
He paced back and forth while biting his bloody fingernails. Panic waved through his convulsing chest. He looked over to the mounds of bodies in every direction and a stillness came over him. What had he done? He was a monster. His hands trembled and his lips quivered.
"God," Paul bent over in exasperation. "Help me."
There was no promotion. No reward. Maybe it was all in his head. He did this. No. He couldn't have. He was the only one there. He must have. He pulled a revolver from his waistband and placed it firmly on his temple. *Help me*. Paul pulled the trigger and his body dropped to the ground.
Ana awoke some time later. The weight of the fat woman had been lifted from her and she came to with a severe migraine. When she gained focus, she looked around. The ground was littered with confetti but the bodies were gone. She must have missed the celebration. The destruction was still undeniable. What the hell happened? There was a receipt in her hand. She read the print and her face lit up with excitement. Congratulations! She won. She really won.
The only light in the store flickered over the customer service desk and a lone clerk stood in a blue vest and white polo shirt. She struggled to her feet and held onto the shopper cart, pushing forward through her pain with a tortured smile. Tears welled up in her eyes. She did it. The receipt trembled in her nerve shocked hands. She reached the counter and placed the bloody receipt before the clerk.
The man smiled through a frown and scanned the barcode on the coupon.
"Ugh. I'm sorry ma'am," the clerk said, "but this coupon is no longer valid."
"Wai— What?" Ana stammered. "That can't be right."
"The promotional period has expired."
"No," Ana hyperventilated. "Surely, there's some kind of mistake."
"No, ma'am. It expired..." the clerk read the screen, "...nine minutes ago."
"Nine minutes? You have to be kidding me."
"Listen lady, I don't make the rules."
"There has to be something you can do."
"I'm sorry," the clerk smiled tenderly, "but there is nothing I can do. Company policy."
Ana turned in shock and limped out of the open doors. The morningbirds were chirping and she reached the empty parking lot. She won. There was a tranquility to the hills as the natural world came alive while the humans slept. She won.She dropped to her knees and sobbed until the police arrived. She won.
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It Walks In The Woods
She was running as fast as she could. In fact, she was running for her life. She knew she couldn't turn around to look no matter how close the sounds or she would trip just like those movies her little brother is always watching. Besides, she had to keep dodging trees, jump broken stumps and garbage people had left in the woods. The sweat was starting to run into her eyes and down her back. Her long black hair got tangled in the tree limbs and came out in clumps as she never slowed down for a sec. Her legs started to shake and she thought they were going to give out on her and she would die here where no one would find her.
As her mind replayed the horrors of the last few hours from the moment she and her boyfriend entered the pretty little woodland area to the time they hear the unearthly screams, it seemed like an eternity. One minute they were drinking a beer, the next she was watching her boyfriend's intestines falling on the ground in a heap. She just had time to think that he had such a surprised look on his face before seeing the top part of his head taken cleanly off. Shocked, she watched as his body slumped to the ground in a bloody mess, his teeth oddly chattering as if he was cold. Strange, those teeth kept on for what seemed a very long time and she just kept staring, she could not stop. "Why won't they stop?" she kept thinking to herself.
A guttural screaming brought her back to the present. Looking up and around, confused, she didn't know what or where the sound came from. It never stopped, just came closer and closer, that's when her brain said run! Run she did, once she looked back and in all things holy she wished she hadn't! That's why she concentrates straight ahead, never looking back, no matter how close it feels or sounds, no matter how scared she is. She MUST survive, she MUST warn everyone.
The woods were getting dark but she could see a bit of light up ahead. If she could just make it to that point she was sure there would be people, a road, SOMETHING! But her legs were really starting to give out now. Her chest was starting to tighten, breathing was becoming a problem. Not much further, but she could tell she was slowing a bit. She lowered her head and dug down deep for more.
A smile came across her lips as one foot came out into the sunlight. She never slowed for a second but the force of her body being pulled backward by her neck alone delivered a loud crack. Her body was dead, but her brain alive for the few seconds as she watched the mouth close over her face and bite it off with a satisfying crunch, munching loudly. Using the claw on its hand it rips open her stomach to dig out her intestines for a handful. Standing there enjoying it meal quietly now, it suddenly swings its head in the direction of the opposite end of the woodlands. It can hear the child laughing. A family has just come in for a walk in the woods.
My summer job is giving tours of the woods and trails just outside my hometown of Older Hills, NJ. So far it has been a nice job to have right before starting college. The pay is good, appreciative customers often give me tips which I am allowed to keep, and I love being outdoors. I'm a small, pretty girl and often people express surprise that I'm willing to go out into the woods alone, even in broad daylight, with total strangers--maybe it is just the fecklessness of youth.
My routine is simple. I stand in the main parking lot of the Older Hills Woods Reservation, wearing khakis, hiking boots, and a maroon Older Hills Parks Department polo shirt. I carry a clipboard, but the clipboard is really for show since I keep all the forms, maps, and information I might need stored in my phone. My boss told me to carry the clipboard because, he says, studies show that clipboards let people know you're somewhere in an official capacity. My boss is a smart cookie.
Last week, a group of three guys pulled up in a monstrously huge, jet black F250 truck with Texas plates. The truck squealed to a stop, taking up one and a half parking spaces when it finally came to rest. I started to go over and yell at them to move it, but when they got out of the truck I thought better of it. All three were big dudes, and they just kind of gave off a vibe.
The three guys were all dressed in shorts and tee shirts. Two of the three had Texas A&M shirts on, so I guessed that was where they went to school. The third guy had an eagle clutching an American flag in its talons on his shirt. All three had trucker hats. One of them belched. The other two followed suit. I glanced half a dozen crushed beer cans in the truck while the door was open. Expensive truck. Expensive college. Trying too hard to look like good ol' boys. I could smell the Axe body spray ten feet away. "Frat boys," I thought, "this will be good practice for going to frat parties," I told myself, trying to look on the bright side.
To tell the truth, though, I was starting to get the jitters. There was something off about these guys. The tallest guy in particular, who I could already tell was their ringleader, had eyes that seemed a little cruel and wild.
"Sup baby," said the shortest and fattest of the three, giving me a wink. A million memes danced in my mind. I stifled a smirk.
"Hey there," I said with a smile to the tallest guy, just to piss Winky off, "would you guys like a tour of the woods? It's only ten dollars and the woods are really gorgeous."
The tall dude smirked. "So yer askin' if we're willing to pay ten bucks to go out in the woods with a pretty lil lady? Well shit yeah we are." Then he laughed and winked. "I'm only joking with you. What I mean to say is we'd love a tour of the woods and ten bucks is a bargain."
The middle guy, the guy in the flag shirt, spit tobacco on the ground. Super charming. He wiped his lips. "Shit, I can't even get a can of Skol in the fuckin' East Coast for ten bucks. Ten bucks for a little...natural beauty, can't go wrong there."
He said "East Coast" like it made him want to throw up in his mouth, but I ignored that and said, "Okay well we can get started right away. My name is Cordy, by the way."
The tall one did the talking for all three of them. I imagined he usually did. "I'm Tex. This little turdblossom you were just talking to is named Hoss and the fat guy there is Jimbo." Tex, Hoss, and Jimbo. Of course.
Tex, Hoss, and Jimbo strutted back to the truck and hauled out three backpacks. I was not at all surprised to notice the truck had a Sigma Chi fraternity decal on it. I'd already heard plenty of stories from friends who had gone off to college.
"Do we pay you now, or when we get back," asked Tex, casually pulling a wad of 20s and 50s from his pants.
"Hey now Tex, don't flash your roll like that. Someone might try to rob you," said Jimbo.
"Shit," said Tex, "I'd give up this roll over their dead body." All three laughed.
"We can take care of all that after we get back," I said. "If you're not satisfied I don't like to charge. We're pretty friendly and unofficial here, and we aim to please."
"I'm sure we're gonna be satisfied," said Hoss. "I mean, you seem like you're gonna be a real good guide."
I definitely had the jitters. And the heebie jeebies. But I also felt like I had a job to do, and I had to prove that I was capable of doing it. I guess that's why I decided to press on ahead despite my trepidation.
"Well," I said, "follow me. Hey you guys are Sig Chis? I hear you throw some kickass parties."
"Yeah," said Hoss, walking behind me as we made our way into the woods, "you haven't lived until you've lived through Derby Days weekend."
"Yup yup," agreed Tex.
"Cool, cool, I start U Mass next semester and I'm pretty sure there's a chapter."
"Yeah," said Jimbo, "Massholes party pretty hard. For East Coast pussies."
The three high fived. About 500 steps in and it already felt like the longest tour of the summer.
I decided to take the three frat boys on the Storm King Trail, which is a challenging but absolutely gorgeous hike that takes hikers past (and sometimes through) stunning flora, and also offers a fair chance of spotting a red fox or some deer. Bears are an occasional risk in the woods, but like the old joke says if worse comes to worse I didn't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun one of three Texans (probably Jimbo).
A voice in my head then asked me What if you have to outrun three Texans?
It was a warm, overcast day threatening rain, and none of the trails were very busy. The Storm King trail in particular, which is our most challenging (but also most beautiful) hike was deserted except for the Texans and me.
Tex, Hoss, and Jimbo had begun to linger together, whispering back and forth, fifteen or twenty feet behind me and it was starting to make me a little uneasy.
"Hey guys," I said, "would you please try to keep up? It would make me feel better if we all stayed together."
They did scurry to catch up with me as we hiked the muddy trails and took in the sights, but Jimbo commented, "I bet a pretty lady like you could get into all kinds of trouble up here in the great outdoors, huh?"
I tried not to show how this only vaguely veiled threat made me feel, so I just smirked at him. "I'll bet Texans can get in trouble pretty much anywhere, Jimbo."
That made Hoss and Tex hoot and holler, and Jimbo joined in.
We were a mile into the hike, and had been hiking steadily uphill for some time when Jimbo stopped, took his backpack off his back, and opened it up. He withdrew 40 oz bottles of Budweiser and started handing them out.
"You know you guys really aren't supposed to be drinking out here," I protested meekly.
"And just what are you gonna do about it?" asked Jimbo, with an edge in his voice.
I could feel the mood starting to pivot, almost imperceptibly, from "Aw shucks it's all in good fun," to something a little more sinister. I decided I was in no position to push the issue right now, so I just shrugged and said, "If anything too serious happened I would just call park security."
"And are y'all gonna call park security just because some good old boys wanna wet their whistles?" asked Tex.
I laughed. "Nah. I don't drink beer or I'd have one myself. You don't have any wine coolers in your bag, do you Jimbo?"
He grinned a beefy, ruddy faced grin. "Sorry. Fresh out."
"Oh well," I sighed. "Think y'all can keep up while you drink your beer?"
"Shit," said Hoss, "I was an All State running back in high school and drunk every damn down."
"Only thing you were All State in was pullin' your pud," said Tex with a laugh. Hoss looked downright huffy and muttered something under his breath.
We had hiked for another half an hour, and were almost to the part of the woods I wanted to show them. There is a beautiful clearing with an idyllic, bucolic little pond that's usually full of frogs and turtles this time of year. It's hard to find. You have to do a little bushwhacking and also do a little bit of rock climbing, and as far as I know I'm the only person who has ever found it. I know it probably sounds careless, like I was just asking for trouble, leading three rowdy frat boys to a clearing deep in the woods, but I just felt like there was something so magical about that place that I'd be safe once they saw it.
Still, I was a little jittery when I said, "You boys wanna do a little bushwhacking now, see something really cool?"
They hooted and hollered. "Sure thing, I'm always down for a little bush. Whacking," said Jimbo, predictably enough.
I sighed and picked up a big stick and started clearing heavy, droopy tree limbs out of the way. "Be careful," I added, "some of these plants have thorns that hurt like hell."
After beating our way through thick vegetation we had to scamper up a small, craggy embankment. Hoss must have lost his grip at one point, because I heard him yell "Son of a bitch I cut my fucking hand."
"Does it hurt," laughed Jimbo.
"Hurts like eight bitches on a bitch boat, you little bitch!"
"Boys, watch your language," I giggled, "or I won't show you my favorite spot in the woods."
I saw the three of them exchange sly, mean glances. I got a serious case of the jitters again.
Suddenly I saw Jimbo reach into his backpack and pull out a roll of duct tape.
"What are you gonna do with that?" I yelled.
Tex said, "Well Cordy, we already wet our whistles. Now we're gonna wetten our dicks. And out here this far, I'm pretty sure nobody can hear you scream."
"Leading us out here, don't even try to tell us you didn't want this, bitch," added Jimbo thoughtfully.
Hoss wasn't saying anything. Just staring at me like a wild predator. Which, I guess, is exactly what he was.
I took off running in the direction of the clearing.
Tex laughed. "Oh you'd rather do it over there in your favorite spot? Well that's fine with me. Let's make this shit romantic, boys."
And suddenly the three of them were hot on my heels.
I slipped in the mud and Tex, surprisingly fast despite his girth, had his filthy little fingers in one of my belt loops, but I yanked hard and got away. I kept running as hard as I could toward the circle of trees that surrounded the clearing and the lake.
Someone else, Hoss, I realized, was so close to me that I could feel his breath on my neck. Nevermind the jitters, my whole adrenal system was tweaked and I could taste the taste of battery acid and bile in my throat.
I slipped free of another pair of hands and this time I didn't bother looking back to see who they belonged to. I felt desperate, like a hunted animal, running so hard it felt like my heart might beat through my chest.
I ran into the clearing.
I think Hoss must have been the first one who noticed my boss. Hoss's eyes got big, like when someone saw something scary in one of those old cartoons, and he tried to stop and run the other way but the ground in the clearing was too slippery and he just fell on his ass. By then, Jimbo and Tex had also looked up and seen my boss and some of his assistants, but it was much too late by then.
I do wonder what they thought, when they saw a seven foot tall man-shaped thing with the head of a stag and the torso of a man and big, muscular, sinewy goat legs. My boss has big, brawny arms and always carries an ax and he's very theatrical about his kills. His assistants--devotees, really--who look just like him, only a little smaller and a little less majestic, prefer to use daggers.
In a matter of moments, the fight was over and the frat boys died screaming. The rest of the clearing was, as always, peaceful and placid, the very image of prelapsarian bliss. A frog hopped into the pond and made a splash while one of the Stag-headed god's underlings ripped off Hoss's right arm and began to munch on it serenely.
My boss is a smart cookie. He knows nobody will question that a college girl standing around in a polo shirt and holding a clipboard must be an official of some kind. Never mind that Older Hills is much too rich and full of old money to do anything so common as offer guided tours through their goddamn woods. The only things the Older Hills Parks and Rec department really cares about is its annual cocktail gala in the park.
No matter how many times I lead sacrificial victims to their doom here in this enchanted and hallowed space, I always get so jittery. It is such a thrill to serve a powerful, virile, laughing god. The compensation is also amazing, but most of the time I do it just for the awe. My boss says I'm the best guide he has ever had. Hell not just my boss, my GOD.
An hour later, it was all over but the feasting.
"You've served me well, as always," my boss beamed at me while he munched languidly on Tex's brain. The clearing was strewn with body parts and blood and viscera. Someone's liver was strung up on a yew tree and some crows had already begun nibbling on it. A camo hat and a MAGA hat, smeared with blood and dotted with bits of scalp, were dangling from limbs on trees down by the lake, and someone's hiking boot, with the foot still inside and oozing blood, had caught the attention of some more crows who were pecking greedily. I saw one of them pull a big chunk of something out of the boot and then fly off to enjoy his prize. One of the Stag Headed God's devotees had ripped the skin off of Jimbo's face and eaten it like string cheese, and was now playing with his big fat skull, pretending to make it talk, "Well howdy, lil lady," he said in a perfect Texas drawl that made me giggle.
I took Tex's roll of 20s and put it in my backpack. The tips are my favorite part of the job, I tell you what. ;)
Older Hills is such an opulent, pretty how town, and yet just a few miles outside town deep in the forest a ritual of such violent, primal, savage pandemonium is the law of the land. Sometimes I think about what a contradiction this is. But the thing is, I believe that many of the first families of Older Hills have a bone deep understanding that there is something that lives out here in the woods, and that as long as He stays healthy and happy the town also stays healthy and happy. The Stag Headed god is so old and so strong, older than Older Hills, and I believe that is why no one ever questions why so many people go out into the woods with a high school girl pretending to be their guide and never, ever are heard from again. Pretty how towns know to keep their secrets.
I'm a security guard at a small, old college on the East Coast. My job consists mostly of breaking up drunken fights between frat boys on Saturday nights, issuing citations to cars parked on campus without permits overnight, and occasionally "busting" a bunch of sophomores in a dorm for smoking pot in their dorm room--we usually take their stash and get stoned ourselves, because the dumbest, richest kids have the best suppliers. I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention that last part to my supervisor.
For anything very serious, though, we just do immediate damage control and then call local law enforcement. What I'm saying is that,on most shifts, my gig really doesn't run that deep. I wear my size 32/32 khakis with a university issued polo shirt, I walk around with keys jingling and walkie talkie occasionally hissing at me, or making beeps and blips, and I bullshit with college kids. It's like being a mall cop in a mall where the average person has a very high SAT score.
Last night something truly fucked up happened. I think that local law enforcement, University officials and the kids' parents are going to do everything they can to keep it out of the media. There is nothing I can do to bring these kids back, university security is now completely out of the loop, and I have no interest in losing my job--those are the three reasons I'm keeping this as anonymous as possible. But this is still a story that needs to be told, or at least sketched, because something very fucked up happened to five high school kids.
It really started a couple of weeks ago, when a new crop of kids arrived for one of the summer enrichment programs the college runs all summer long. This camp was for artsy kids to work on writing plays and music and poems. As a general rule, the arts camps are a bigger pain in the ass than the sports camps--the sports kids mostly wanna fight each other for the first few days, then they want to get drunk together for a few days, and after that they're too tired to do much but go through their drills and sleep all night. The arts kids mostly just wanna fuck each other, but some of them also bring in various pills and potions and if anything like an OD is going to happen it's probably going to happen during an art camp.
On Tuesday or Wednesday of last week, while the campers were eating lunch in the cafeteria of the dorm where they were staying, I was talking to one of the counselors, this woman I will call Claire, about the crop of campers and whether she had any concerns. Claire is a grad student at a big state school about an hour away, and she's an alum of this college. I have gotten to know her reasonably well this summer, because she gigs as a counselor/mentor at a few different summer programs. She's smart and calm and alert, and so she's a good person to talk to if you want to get a sense for how a bunch of campers are likely to behave after hours. In mid June, for instance, she gave me a heads up on a high school junior she was coaching at the debate camp who she thought was dealing uppers to the other debaters, and so one night when one of the kids started freaking out because she had taken too many pills not only were we already expecting a crisis we were also able to give local law enforcement a heads up about where they could probably find the camp's supply hidden. Sure enough, they searched the dealer's room and found his supply.
Claire said that the arts camp kids mostly seemed fine. There was a guy named Greg who seemed to vacillate between being painfully awkward and deeply angry around and about the girls at camp, which is a definite red flag, and so she pointed him out to me and I made a note to pass the information along to other security guards and supervisors.
"He's going to be a problem for someone, somewhere down the line," she sighed, "it sounds terrible but I just hope it isn't someone here. That feels like wishing harm to someone down the line but…" She trailed off.
"Yeah, I get it. Is there anything else about these kids on your mind?"
She shrugged. She looked at a table in the corner where there were five kids sitting together, and I followed her gaze. "Those kids aren't going to be a problem in the conventional sense of the word or anything, they're just weird."
"Even for art kids?"
She laughed. "Yeah. The boy at the head of the table is this kid named Baxter. He is, as you can see, a hottie." She giggled. "I mean not to me as a grownass woman, but thinking back to when I was 16? Yeah. So he kind of has some followers."
"Those three girls and the other, uh, less hot dude?"
"Yeah. Alexis, Chloe, Dakota, and Steve. They all seem deeply interested in the occult."
"Like Aleister Crowley and ouija boards?"
She giggled. "You're sort of dating yourself. More like Slenderman and Creepy Pasta rituals."
"Like those two girls who lived in some flyover state and tried to kill a third girl to impress Creepyman?"
"Slenderman, but yes."
I made a disgusted, worried sound.
"Don't worry. I don't think Baxter Saltonstall is going to be anywhere near an act of physical violence. I'm mostly worried about damaging property and dealing with clean up."
"Clean up?"
"Yeah, I work a lot of camps with kids these age. Sometimes they try to actually do the silly rituals people write about in Creepy Pastas and things like that. Nobody has ever gotten hurt, but sometimes they call for a lot of wax and candles or animal blood or something like that, and so kids get a little drunk or a little stoned and start messing around with messy shit and it gets…."
"More like straight up disgusting. Then you have to call housekeeping and the physical plant and they raise all kinds of hell because counselors are supposed to be omnipotent and keep kids from fucking shit up."
"But actually all kids really wanna do, when it comes down to it, is fuck shit up when they know there are still no consequences," I said with considerable empathy.
"Exactly. So I have heard these five talking a lot about a 'The Boy in Yellow' ritual but I can't find anything about it online."
"Sounds creepy," I said.
"Worst that happens probably is they spray yellow silly string all over their campmates while they're sleeping. When I was a kid I listened to punk music and scrawled dumbass 'Anarchy' symbols everywhere. I guess being fascinated with bullshit rituals is no worse," Claire said.
We had both laughed.
"I dunno," she said, "they're bored. They're pretty. They're rich. They're over it all...I mean I guess there are way more self-destructive things they could be doing than trying to creep people out. I oughta be grateful."
When it sunk in that they were all dead I started bawling like a baby, and I didn't even care that Claire and two other counselors (a guy named Clay and a woman named Meg) were standing there. We were all dumbstruck, and soon we were all crying. I was wiping away snot and tears as I called on the walkie for everyone on shift to come to the dorm immediately, and crying even harder when I dialed 9-1-1 because I couldn't even remember the direct extension number we were supposed to use to reach the town cops.
Clay had called the security around midnight to tell us that many campers were making noise complaints about something going on in room 312 of the dorm where they were all staying. It was Baxter Saltonstall's room, he had said, and in addition to the fact that everyone was sure there were girls in the room after hours there had also been complaints of loud chanting within the past few minutes followed by six loud shrieks. Clay and Claire had both been banging on the door, demanding that someone answer, but nobody was coming to the door and counselors were not provided with master keys for the dorms where they stayed.
I was the only person in the office when Clay called, so I had sprinted across campus alone. It didn't occur to me to get on my radio, because I assumed I was just going to key my way in and find a bunch of kids sucking and fucking each other or something.
I hit the dorm and sprinted up the stairs to the third floor, because I didn't want to waste time waiting for the elevator. Claire, Clay and Meg were all standing next to room 312, and I grinned at them and said, "Ready to break up the orgy?"
The way Claire was looking at me, though, took the wind out of my sails. "I heard those shrieks," she said, "whatever is going on in there, I don't think anybody is having fun. Be careful?"
I put on my serious face and nodded. I was still pretty sure this was going to be some kind of prank.
Five kids laying in a circle on the floor of the small dorm room. I thought they were asleep. There was a piece of paper in the middle of them--just normal white printer paper with instructions for a ritual called "The Boy in Yellow."
I started shaking the kid I recognized as Baxter, but he was non-responsive. At that point I started to think maybe they had all taken something, and so I started to shake him harder.
Meg screamed. I looked up and saw what she was looking at. On the bare off-white walls, in sharpie, someone had written "Die All! Die Merrily!" in huge letters. It looked like a girl's handwriting--all fancy and neat. A few feet to the right someone else had written "tfw the world has nothing to offer u and ur over it." Written on the room's shabby mirror, in the same elaborately curlicued handwriting, in coxcomb red lipstick, was the word "Carcosa."
My own breath was ragged now, my heart rate getting up into aerobic exercise levels. I realized I couldn't feel any breathing at all coming from Baxter. I shook him hard. I checked for breath the way they teach you to do in CPR. Nada.
"Check them all see if anyone is breathing," I yelled.
I shook the fuck out of Baxter. He was just gone.
Five minutes later we had to admit all five of them were dead. I guess they were just over it.
I got on my walkie. I got on the phone. I shut the door. We all cried and bawled and bit our fingers so we didn't scream and wake anybody else up. The last thing we needed was a bunch of art kids freaking out.
What I learned from the paramedics: There was no sign of trauma on any of the kids. There was no evidence of drug use (no needles, no ashes, no blotters, no pill bottles). The kids were dead as dead can be, but they looked peaceful and innocent as lambs. If they had really screamed (and there were plenty of witnesses who said they had) nobody had any idea why.
What I learned from the local cops: Jack shit. They shooed us away in a big hurry. Less than an hour later, though, as I was skulking around outside the building still shaken up and morbidly curious, I saw not only state cops but black SUVs with government plates roll up to the dorm. Whatever had happened, to get guys in black SUVs out in the wee hours it was no joke.
I had a sudden, brilliant flash of inspiration, and sprinted across campus back to our security offices. I keyed my way in, and discovered, to my relief, I was alone again. Everybody else had milled around for a little while and gone home.
The shrieks had started a little before midnight, according to Claire and Clay and Meg. Other kids had been complaining about the "creepy chanting" since 11:30 or so. So I went over to the security camera, cued up the footage for that dorm starting at about 11:30, and watched.
At 11:42, a strange thing happened. A skinny kid in a baggy, canary yellow hoodie appeared in the hallway. I rewound the footage over and over and still have no idea where he came from. He was just….there. And he was sauntering down the hallway. I could see the front of his sweatshirt, where there was a big emblem of a crown, and I could see that the hood was pulled so far down over his eyes his face was impossible to make out except for one feature that made me pop goosebumps: His eyes were huge and pure black. He was also wearing jeans and what looked like a pair of Nike Jordan Ones, also canary yellow,
The boy in yellow sauntered right up to room 312, pushed the door open without knocking, and walked in. There is no audio on our security footage, so I couldn't hear when the shrieking started, but my guess was it must have started shortly after he shut the door because that is the first time you can see people start to open their doors and look toward the room. At 11:47 a couple of pissed off looking boys walk to the room and bang on the door and say something, probably "Hey shut the fuck up." At 11:53 Clay goes to the door and bangs forcefully, and bangs several more times and then storms off, presumably to call me.
I kept watching the footage. I saw myself arrive. I saw me talking to the couselors outside the door, I saw myself key the door open and step inside.
I have rewound the footage from 11:42 until the cops arrived, over and over. What I have not seen is the boy in yellow leaving the room.
Even though I have been completely iced out of the investigation because I'm just a lowly campus security guard, I am having such a hard time letting go. Has anyone heard of a ritual involving a boy in yellow with a crown on his sweatshirt, or something called Carcosa?
The dorm windows are impossible to open from inside, after a kid fell from a high window a few years ago and broke his neck and sued the school. While I was still in the dorm room, the paramedics overturned everything, went through all the drawers and upended the mattress. I am now absolutely sure the boy in yellow came from nowhere, walked into the room and never walked out.
I fell in love with Margo the first time I tried to kill her.
I placed a gun to the crease in her forehead and pulled the trigger.
"Did it work?" Margo asked me. Clearly, her response told me that it did not. I opened my eyes and found the bullet had flattened against her skull.
Margo Purifoy had a condition, one that I don't think any medical book known to man can possibly explain.
She was immortal.
Of course before that moment, I doubted her. For three months she had insisted that she could not die. And for three months I was sure I was talking to a crazy woman. Noose? Tried that. Knife? All the time? Pills? Absolutely.
Nothing worked.
When Margo reached out to me, I was admittedly baffled by the matter. I don't want to tell you what my trade is but people don't seek me out because I sell kittens.
Margo had found me in the deep recesses of the dark web and her message was desperate.
i'm seeking a way to end my life. I have tried to do this alone, but it seems impossible to do so. I am willing to pay the person responsible for my death a sum of 100,000 dollars that can be changed into any currency they wish. Please contact me at ██████████@gmail.com
My first instinct was to assume that this was some kind of sting operation, an attempt to lure me or one of my colleagues out so that we could be caught in the act and thrown in jail.
But for that amount of money, it was too easy to say yes. Especially whenever Margo made certain that my identity would be protected. She provided me documents and money before even meeting me, all of which was legal tender. I had the opportunity to leave, but this entire matter intrigued me to no end.
She had money apparently from the long life she had endured. And she wired it to an account I had set up in the Cayman's. Even after that first attempt she insisted I should take it and run. She didn't expect me to stick around and figure out her problems.
Margo fascinated me though. The moment that bullet fell to the floor I found myself asking a hundred questions.
How long had she been like this? Her whole life.
How long was that? Margo claimed she had stopped counting after year 703.
Then I came to the question that probably mattered the most.
Why did she want to die?
"When you've lived as long as I have, seen the things that I have seen... witnessed the deaths of thousands. Kingdoms and nations rise and fall. Everything, and I mean everything becomes meaningless. You're powerless. You lose everything that means being human. Death is the only thing you have any control over any more, and with that gone... what can you accomplish in life?"
She told me about how she had seen children die more times than I could count. About events in history that no person living could ever get correctly.
I discovered as we connected that I was developing a liking for this woman. She was the one thing in the world that was an anomaly. A window into the soul of humanity.
So I made her a promise.
I would help her die.
We started small. I bought a few fire crackers and had her try to set them off directly in her face. She wasn't even mildly burnt.
Then we moved to the tub. I had her undress and start the water then I brought in the toaster.
I made certain the water was almost completely covering her body before dropping it in. She came out of the tub a few minutes later.
This went on for almost the next five weeks. Each day a different test.
Car accident. Nothing. Jumping from a building. Nothing. Stabbing her in the face, the eyes, again it all seemed pointless. At one point I got her to drink poison and she acted a little sick. But then the next day she admitted she was faking.
"I'm sorry... it's just... I felt like you were going to give up soon," Margo answered whenever I asked her why she pretended. "I won't. I can't. This defies everything you can ever believe in. It's beyond understanding," I told her.
After that, we developed a closer bond as we started looking into more extreme methods. I managed to have her see one of my friends that works as an open heart surgeon in a shady clinic for abortions. I recommended trying to put her in a coma and then taking out vital organs.
The propofol did the trick to knock her out. But any instrument to cut her only bended and broke.
I suggested placing an explosion in a tube down her throat. The surgeons got to work on preparing the device and then sliding it straight down her esophagus and into her stomach.
I lit the fuse and waited. Her body jumped and rumbled a bit. But nothing more. Margo was a goddess. Every extreme we tried only resulted in more failures.
Finally she admitted that she decided to accept her fate.
"If I have to keep on living, then so be it. At least I will be happy knowing that I have tried all possibilities," she said as we got back home. "I've wasted more of your time than ever necessary," she added as she passed me a briefcase with well over two million dollars in it. "This is everything I have. I want you to take it. You've been so kind. So patient," she told me.
I tossed it aside and made love to her that night. In the morning I told her I wasn't planning on leaving her. That in the months we had spent together I grew to love her more than life itself.
More than death could ever separate us.
So we married. We had a child. I forgot my old life. I made her smile again. So did our son. "Out of all the times I have been with anyone, you have been my favorite," she told me.
But still, I could tell behind all of this; her desire hadn't faded. She was still curious.
Sometimes when I came home I found dozens of pill bottles scattered across the floor.
Other times she had ruined knives and caused house fires, desperate to end her life.
She wasn't happy. I could see that now. She knew that no matter what one day we would be gone and she would still remain.
On our one year anniversary I surprised her and took her paragliding. I told her it might be the solution she was looking for. I made certain that she didn't have the equipment necessary to prevent her from experiencing the full brunt of the impact.
"I love you," she told me as our plane reached the proper altitude.
I promised her I would never tell our son and said my goodbyes. Then watched as she plummeted to the ground below. Once she was out of my line of vision I told the pilot to touch down and I ran to where she had hit the pavement.
She was standing there waiting for me with tears in her eyes. "This is torture! I can't do this I can't!! Why? Why is this happening??" she screamed. I held her close and looked up at the heavens. Did god even have an answer for this?
I thought there was nothing else that could be done. And I was certain that her depression would soon swallow me and our son whole.
I begged her to forget this dark dream. "So What if we die? At least you have us now!!" I shouted one day.
"You don't know how many times I have heard that before," she moaned angrily. That was when I knew there was nothing I could say that would stop her from trying.
I worried for our safety, my son and I. I knew that in her attempts to take her own life she might hurt us, even if she didn't mean to.
One time she came close to drowning him in the tub while trying to end herself. Another time it was a knife and he almost cut his finger off.
Something had to be done.
I reached out to my colleagues from the old days, when I was the one that was seeking to exploit suicidal cashcows. I told them everything and asked for advice. Some took it as a joke.
But one man had a solution that I had never considered before.
take her out to sea and dump her with stone weights on her legs. She may not die but she'll never bother you again
I showed Margo. She said it was worth a try. We got a babysitter and set out for the coast a few weeks after that.
As we moved toward the open ocean and I got things ready I asked her if she was sure this was what she wanted.
"It's the only way, right?" she said as she hugged my neck. We said our goodbyes and I watched her sink into the darkness below.
I thought that was the end of it. That Margo was gone forever. But last Thursday she came to my door, sobbing like an infant. She was covered in wet sea grass and moss, a tangled mess of barnacles covered her skin.
The current had swept her along and the ropes that had tied her down had eroded. Water had filled her lungs for days on end.
By all accounts she should have been dead.
Margo felt everything though.
"It's hopeless, this is punishment, I just know it!!" she screamed. I comforted her as our son watched on in wide eyed confusion. I told her that we would think of something.
But years went by, and nothing came of it. Our son grew up and learned of his mother's condition and the sadness that crept into our lives because of it.
"Why does Mom not want us? Why can't she just be happy?" he asked.
It wasn't something I could explain. Margo isolated herself from us, going on trips for days to find doctors or get high on drugs or even terrorists.
Absolutely nothing seemed to work though.
Then one day after dinner, she tried to choke on some food and our son jumped up and tried to help her cough it up. "Get away from me!! Just get away!!" she screamed as he performed the Heimlich Maneuver.
She slapped him across the face. I stared in shock as she sobbed and ran off to our bedroom. My son only stormed out, angry and confused.
This had gone on too long. I knew that if it continued her curse would destroy our lives altogether.
So I consulted the dark web again and looked into the mystic arts, spells and tomes that no man dared read.
I found one that I felt would fit the bill and bought it during a Christmas sale.
When I showed Margo, she seemed hesitant to even give it a try. But since it was the last resort, she eventually conceded.
We placed the goat's blood around our bed in a circle like the ritual implied. Then chanted the phrase 6 times. We walked around the bed counterclockwise.
Then I took her hand and we both fell asleep.
When I woke up the next day, I was staring at my wife and she at me. But our souls had transferred to each other's bodies.
She was mortal and I was immune. The spell had worked. She reached into her drawer and pulled out a gun, meekly passing it to me.
"Do it. I'm ready," she said. I pressed it toward her skull, closed my eyes and finished the job.
As the life drained from my body I caressed her forehead and watched her breathe her last. She said two words.
Thank you And then she was gone.
That was so long ago, when I watched my only body fall into a grave. When I explained to my son that now the curse was upon me. He will be on his death bed, and I will only watch in horror as he slips away. Margo was right about this curse, and it's one I carry now. One that holds a further curse upon me. For the spell said one thing that I never told Margo. That I could never go back to the way it had been or transfer again.
But... now that I have seen through her eyes what this hell is like, perhaps it is time that I start to explore this world and discover exactly what it means to die.
And maybe along the way, I can learn to live.
My wife, Amelia, and I have two beautiful children. Our daughter, Ruth, is 29 years old and a doctor, and our son Christopher is 23 and was just hired as a financial analyst by Blackfriar Capital. Both of our kids struggled a little bit to find their ways in life early on--Ruth was a punk rocker and Chris had some awful problems with anxiety and depression--but they both worked through their childhood and adolescent tumult and terror, and now they live charmed lives.
My son Chris had a recurring nightmare as a kid. In the nightmare, he would be coming down the spiral staircase that leads from the bedrooms and office suite upstairs, down to use the first floor bathroom. In this dream he would, as he put it ,"get lost on the staircase." He'd dream he was at the foot of the stairs, but instead of landing in our house's atrium he would find himself in a room that looked like it belonged in a fairytale castle, with another staircase leading further down.
In the dream, he said, no matter how much he fought to turn back and run up the stairs to his bed, he'd feel compelled by some invisible force to walk down that second staircase. At the bottom, he would come to a heavy, badly scarred wooden door, and behind that door he would hear bestial, frightful sucking and scraping and chewing noises. Chris could never make himself open the door. He would just freeze and stare at the door and feel a tremendous heat escaping from the crack beneath the door and in the dream his bare feet would begin to burn and blister.
He would almost always wet himself in these dreams. We sent him to shrinks who gave him meds, and by the time he was in high school the dreams had stopped, and Chris had started to get himself on track.
I thought of this dream last night for the first time in years, because I had the same dream.
I woke up at 3:11 in the morning, parched and peckish. I climbed out of bed gingerly, doing my best to not wake up Amelia, and I tiptoed across our plush bedroom carpeting, slipped on a pair of fleece lined, plaid Ralph Lauren slippers, and made my way downstairs.
I remember that at the first turning of the stairs I felt a strange twisting sensation in my stomach--like the feeling you get when a very fast elevator first begins to lurch down--and when I reached the bottom of the spiral stairs I realized that the stairs hadn't led where they were supposed to lead--not at all. Instead of the rather elegant atrium to our home, I was in a small, stone anteroom; and there was another staircase right in front of me, leading down.
I tried to look back up the spiral stairs I had just descended, but I only saw blackness, black as black.
I didn't want to walk down the stairs, but felt compelled to. My body started moving and my brain was along for the ride. Much as I tried to will my legs to stop, they just carried me forward.
It was a long climb down, and my heart was beating hard against my chest. I wanted to turn around, but couldn't. I wanted a drink. I wanted a Xanax. I wanted to wake up.
I heard the sound of leathery wings flapping, and felt something small and furry pelt me in the face--and then another, and then another--and for a moment I thought some prankster was throwing mice or hamsters at my face until I realized I had disturbed a cloud of bats with my descent, and I began to flail my arms around wildly trying to keep the revolting little beasties from my face.
I stepped down from the staircase and smelled what I could only assume was the pungent aroma of batshit. Which also happened to be how I felt just then and there--utterly fucking batshit.
At the base of the second staircase, I found a wooden door. The door was scarred, battered, heavy, charmless, and painted a dreadful, feverish yellow. Behind that door I heard scraping and sucking and chewing noises. An overwhelming heat was escaping from underneath the door and I realized my pulse had quickened and the taste of copper and salt--the result of adrenal glands tweaked all the way up into histrionic mode--filled my mouth.
I tiptoed to the door, quiet as a mouse, and put my ear to it and listened.The door was hot to the touch, so I stood back a little, but still I heard more sucking and more scraping, and then I heard a high, mad cackle and realized that whatever was making the scraping and sucking noises knew I was there--wanted me to know it knew I was there.
I turned and started to not walk but run away when I heard a powerful, stentorian voice like rumbling thunder say "Open the door, dearie. We may as well talk again, you've come this far."
I didn't want to open the door, but I did. It swung open with a dreadful creak, and hot air and a rancid stench overwhelmed me so that I had to cower my head and cover my nose and mouth with my hand.
The door opened into a cavernous space, more of a dungeon than a room. The abominable place was dark as night, except for an area where 13 fat tallow candles were laid out in a circle; and in the middle of the circle was a repulsive troll sucking on broken bones from a bone pile next to him.
He cackled at me. He had green skin and a pointy nose and big, pure black eyes and when he opened his mouth to address me I winced involuntarily at how huge and crooked and sharp his teeth were, and at how pink drool dripped down from his gaping maw. "Even the marrow is long gone. All sucked out! But I still suck and slurp and gnaw on the bones because I love the bones of children so much. Your late, unloved William was very very tasty I must say."
By way of illustration, he picked a bone out of the pile and casually snapped it in half and put a jagged end up into his mouth and went sluuuuuuuuuuuuuuurp and then discarded it casually and winked at me. Then he gave a huge belly laugh, and I shuddered to watch his naked, green, potbelly shake giddily.
I felt sick and weak. I couldn't stand to look at his terrible face for very long, least of all his huge, ink black eyes.
I tried to run once more but felt frozen. "Stay a bit, dearie," he said in his deep, gravelly voice. Then he winked at me coquettishly and I could feel a warm, wet stain spreading in the front of my plaid boxers and then felt the cold piss dripping down my leg.
In the pile of bones, I could make out a small skull, like the skull of a little boy. I saw a huge, white, fat worm slithering in one eye socket, across the hole where the nose would have been, and into the other eye socket. I retched. The troll clapped his hands, delighted.
The flies were everywhere. Huge, fat, black, fearless flies I kept having to shoo away from my legs, my arms, my face.
"What the fuck are you?" I managed. I stifled a scream as my eyes warily took in his whole figure and I noticed that, instead of legs his lower body was a nest of writhing green tentacles like a giant octopus.
He looked at me, bemused. "You already know that, dearie. You've already thought it. I'm a troll. I'm the troll who lives with you, and you don't want to remember me but you should. I'm the troll you sacrificed one of your children to so that the other two could thrive."
"I'm dreaming," I muttered and started to pinch myself.
"You're wide awake, you're just in a different place," he cackled, "and your son William here is delicious. He was the toll you paid to make your other two children happy and successful."
I swatted a fly the size of a silver dollar on my left arm, and the fly exploded with a juicy and satisfying splat, although I didn't care for the fly guts and viscera that were now on my arm--slimy and viscous. Viscous Viscera. Sounds like one of the punk bands my daughter used to spend my money to follow around, I thought with a sudden and surprising bitterness.
I hopped up and down and thought about flying, because when I realize I'm dreaming the moment I try to take advantage of that and do something cool I always wake up.
I landed with a thud.
"Trying to fly, dearie? I could sell you a potion for that, although of course it would cost you your daughter…Or maybe you're just trying to wake yourself up. But I promise, you're wide awake."
"Shut up you crazy fucking monster" I yelled.
"Maybe not your whole daughter. Not just for a flight potion. Maybe just her left hand. Think she'd part with it willingly? If not….But then surgeons need both their hands, don't they? Especially if they always have money problems because they have a little problem with the cocaine" The troll now reached behind himself and produced a butcher's knife I half-recognized as being part of a set I'd had and replaced years ago. "Well if she wouldn't part willingly I have my ways," he laughed and made slicing and stabbing motions with the gesture with such a stunning grace I couldn't believe an old, ugly and beastly thing could move so beautifully.
"That pile of bones is not my son," I said, now trying to wake myself up by catching the dream in its own logical consistencies, "I have one son and I talked to him yesterday. He's a…."
"Yes yes," he said, sounding bored. "The good one, the one you better loved, is a financial analyst with a pretty girlfriend and he's hot shit. He's such a good good boy now because you paid the Troll Toll These are the bones of William, your middle child. You gave him to me when he was 12 to make the futures of the other two brighter. I told you I could give them lives that were dreams of ease and I held up my end of the bargain. And you," he picked up a large bone from her bone pile and pointed it at me coyly, "held up yours. You and your wife, together. And so you and I are good as gold. Unless there are any more deals you would like to make. One child you love better than the other and wish to see succeed even more? I don't like full grown bodies and bones as much as children of course--not as sweeeeet, ya know-- but I do get hungry sometimes for more than the memory of marrow past."
"You're a liar," I said, wiping sweat from my brow down in the hellishly hot dungeon where my troll lived. I realized what a ridiculous figure I must be--shirtless and doughy white and a little paunchy sweating helplessly, wearing only a pair of plaid Banana Republic boxers, now soaked in sweat and piss.
The troll grinned. I didn't notice that one of his tentacles had been slyly slithering on the ground, moving closer and closer to me, until I suddenly felt it climb up my back and attach itself with one of the pullulating suction cups on its underside to my neck. At first the pain was excruciating, and I tried desperately to yank it off but it was held fast.
My wife and I have always had TWO children, not three. TWO. I was still sure of that much.
"We had two kids. Not three, two. We have two children and they are healthy and happy and this is all a dream."
The tentacle started to feel warm and soft against my skin. I felt light-headed, a little stoned. It felt like getting an injection, or the time I had the scare with my heart and had an IV drip of morphine. I felt like I was floating. I think I grinned like a goddamn loon.
He smiled indulgently, as though he was explaining subtraction to a bright six year old. "Two children you have but three you had. One you loved less than the others so you gave him to me and I ate him all up and enchanted your other two as part of the bargain. It's a common enough practice. You simply paid the troll toll."
"Then why have I never heard of it. Why do I not remember? I'd surely remember having a son named….was it William? I'd remember WIlliam and I'd sure as fuck remember handing him over to a goddamn troll to be eaten!"
The tentacle was beginning to feel nice, loving. And it was beginning to give me back some memories of another child--a little blond kid who was always breaking shit and demanding attention. I think he had started fires too? And wet his bed constantly. He was real enough, I supposed, and I was real glad to be rid of him. Thank God I had this friendly neighborhood monster here, who could take that brat off my hands and charm my other two. It was a common practice this day and age, I suddenly realized.
I snapped out of my trance. How and why was I thinking these thoughts? We had two kids. Two. No third, middle child named William who wet his bed and started fires and demanded too much attention we couldn't possibly pay him. (So you paid WITH him instead, dearie, I heard the troll's voice say inside my head.)
He smiled. "Memory and attention are so much more malleable than most people ever realize, especially when troll magic and children are concerned. You did the deed, you made an agreement with yourself to forget. I gave you some magic dust that helped. Not the kind of magic dust your daughter snorts up her nose--this is real magic. Troll magic. It happens all the time, every day."
I stared at him, dumbfounded. A fly landed on his lip, and he caught it with a long forked tongue and gobbled it down. The troll went on, "Poor little Willie was quite real, though, I promise you that. Handed him over to me when he was 11. You and your wife both. Pricked your fingers, signed a contract, I pricked mine and did the same. One Problem Child in exchange for bright futures for your other two. It was actually your pastor, the Reverend Goodman, who uh, introduced you to me. I have helped him out of a jam or two too."
"What about our kids? Our friends? Neighbors? Teachers? Jesus Christ you're a fucking loon. Someone would remember."
"Memories can be enchanted. Mercifully occluded. Besides, I know so many of your friends and neighbors too. All that matters is this: You had three children, one of them a brat. You wanted two perfect children instead, and that's what you got. Now I live with you and still suck and savor a while on the bones and marrow of the brat you very willingly gave up, handed over. I will move on someday, find another family and make another deal."
I felt the tentacle's sucker bulge up again, and then contract, as thought it was injecting me. II had a sudden vision of my daughter, who had always been a little ungrateful, who had always taken too much for granted. I could see her back in college now--being driven to a clinic by a friend to get an abortion. My wife and I had always suspected something might have happened that semester with that loser she was dating….and I could see her in what looked like the much more recent past, wearing a sweater I'd seen her in on visits home in fact, and she was bent over a glass table at someone's party and she was doing a line of coke….and now I could see her swiping some pills from work….I hated the places my mind was going, how angry I was getting at my own daughter and I forced myself to snap back to reality by biting my lip until it bled.
The troll giggled and applauded.
I finally calmed down enough to ask the question I hadn't asked yet. "How the hell did I even get here?"
He chuckled. "Ah. Finally a good question, and one I can't answer. Your good son used to find his way down here sometimes, and good as my word I never laid a finger on him, even though he did open the door once or twice…."
"He says he never did….that it was a dream and he never…."
"I'm sure that is what he remembers. But we spoke once or twice, just the same as you and I are speaking now. How he got here, I never knew. How you or him or any other person [and he spoke this word with such revulsion it was like he was spitting a bug from her mouth] finds our lairs I have no idea."
He looked me up and down and chuckled. "Half-naked and staggering around. On your way for a midnight snack? Fatten yourself up a bit for my kind?
He laughed a deep, rich laugh--a laugh so bellicose and bawdy that for half a moment I almost liked him. And he withdrew the tentacle from my neck. The suction cup came off with a pop, and I rubbed the spot where it had been and found a raised mound of flesh. Inconspicuous but definitely there.
Dazed and bewildered, I muttered to myself, "This has been the worst fucking dream. What did Melville say about nightmares? Something like 'Hell is an idea first born of a bad night's sleep from an undigested apple dumpling."
"Of course, dearie, of course," taunted the troll, "whatever helps you get back to sleep and going about your day again. But give that bratty daughter of yours some thought...your son is such a GOOD boy with such a bright future. He could be President someday, if you were willing to find a way to pay one more troll toll."
"Fuck you, you fucking nightmare thing," I said, and realized that to get out of this particular dream I was going to have to play the dream logic all the way out. I turned around. I opened the door. I went back up the stairs, back up to my bedroom, and climbed into bed.
Ruth called again the other day. Still no man in her life, so still very little chance of a grandchild from her (At least not one brought to term, dearie a feverish and hateful voice whispers in my head) and how a woman who makes so much money can still have financial problems is a goddamn mystery to me (Not a total mystery, dearie) but she was wondering if she could borrow a couple of thousand to have work done on her condo. She promised to pay me back when she comes home for Thanksgiving. I sighed. Told her it was fine. (When she comes home for Thanksgiving…..You know how to find me. I think you know how to find me now.)
The terrible dream I had about the troll has stuck with me, and some days I am still so shaken by it that it's hard to function for minutes at a time. At work I will remember it and remember the troll's voice and the way he sucked and scraped at the bones and the way the worm slithered around the skull and, most of all, the feel of that tentacle on my flesh. I put my hands in my head and want to cry. Ridiculous, I know. When I talk to Christopher again, I think I will mention it to him, because it's such a funny coincidence. Christopher is such a good boy--already being given more responsibility at work. He's the kind of boy--man now--who could become a Director at work, or even go into politics. Maybe he could be a Senator. Such a good boy, our best child. He just needs a break or two and that boy could go far.
The following is a letter received and archived by Doctor Jessup Hynek in 19xx, only minutes after his close friend, Preston Allende, bid him farewell for an intended two weeks at sea with the U.S.S Ash Leaf. Preston, and the ship, was never seen again.
Dear Jessup, I imagine it's been much time since we've last communicated, be by spoken word nor written letter. Fear not that I've succumbed to the sea. Fear not that I don't wish to see you again. Trust that is all I wish for. Forgive me though, for now I'm still not able to return to your side, I've faced unprecedented, remarkable circumstances at sea.
The sky mirrors the ocean, there is no sun, but there is light, there is heat. So much heat. We're always sweating, there's little water, little rations. It's irrelevant, this is hardly real.
I forget when we set sail, and honestly question if we ever did. Part of me knows that this isn't normal, but this is all I've ever known. This endless horizon, the water, the never changing climate, the thin ice we break through despite the heat. Our navigation tools are useless as tools. They are weapons, Jessup. Weapons. It is only through them that I was able to resurface (resink?) my fond memories of you back into my mind.
All we have on the sea is our cooperation. The surviving crew of sixty-eight tries to stay strong on our long voyage. Among memories I regained when we used our sextant to cut down the North Wind was of the twenty-six who passed when we first set sail. It put me at ease, yet unsettled me when I realized this, as the voices we hear in the halls corroborated my new memories. Some fused into the metal deck, drowned in the dense purple fog, or simply they vanished off the face of our frigate. Those who didn't die in the first moments after we began our maiden (which is also our current and more than likely also our final) voyage, went sea sick with cabin fever. The most potent madness I've seen, quickly bringing them to their deaths. Sometimes at their own hands, sometimes at ours as mercy, or self-defense. We do not feel their presence anymore. By choice. They are traitors. Traitors.
Those that weren't traitors, were martyrs in the battle against the North Wind. Much blood was spilled to drown the beast, and even now the sextant is stained with a bloody handprint. Most crewmates don't understand the reasons, most could not see what tore Mr. F's skin from his jaw. Some don't remember, others pretend to forget. But only five of us left understand.
Searching for land is our goal no more, it's merely a pass-time for some. Our telescopes still have use though, they let us see the true sky. The five of us have gazed into it. It's Void. Abyss. Those not acquainted with the true sky wish they were not alone on the sea. The five of us who have seen the true sky do not regret to any extent to withhold from them that, in fact, we are not.
If this message makes it to you, it means we were successful with our compass against the the beast Polaris. Though it will not be without blood. I do not know what else this may mean for the circumstances of our communication but in our 'time' apart I hope you've found peace on other shores.
Once Your's, Captain Preston Allende of the U.S.F Sisyphus
I spent most of the summer when I was 12 years old living with my grandparents. My grandparents lived in a beautiful, old town, full of money and secrets. I was a precocious 12 year old, and like, many precocious 12 year olds, I loved e.e.. cummings; and that summer, and for a long time after, any time I thought of his poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town" I would think of that town and that summer. Like the short and apparently simple poem, there was much more to the town than met the eye and not all of it was pretty or nice.
The pretty, old town was full of nasty, snarling secrets. My grandparents knew most of them, I think, but there are some secrets only kids ever learn.
It was a Tuesday morning and I was in the guest bedroom where I spent the summer playing Super Mario Brothers on my Nintendo. My grandmother's housekeeper, Sophia, came into the room and said, "Thom, turn down your game please? Your grandmother, has a headache." Sophia paused and then added in a whisper, "Also, she's in one of her moods."
My grandmother's moods were no joke. Once, when she was in one of her moods, she became convinced my grandfather was cheating on her and she'd thrown a hammer at him and he'd ducked in time to avoid being brained, but the hammer had struck an antique cabinet in the corner of the room and broken a Royal Dalton tea set that was worth hundreds of dollars. I remember my grandfather had stayed in a Hilton in town that night and kept muttering a very good question, "Who the fuck gave that loon a hammer, anyway?"
Other times, when she was in her moods, my grandmother would go at me with one of my grandfather's heavy leather Brooks Brothers belts for some minor misdeed and leave my back and ass black and blue with bruises.
As soon as Sophia broke the news to me about my grandmother's mood on that hot June morning, I decided to pack a lunch and have a library day. I was engrossed in reading Around the World in 80 Days at the time, and I thought it would be more fun spending the day with Phileas Fogg than being brained with a hammer or whacked with a heavy brown, brass-buckled dress belt for making too much noise while trying to save a pixel princess in a pixel castle.
I put on a pair of plaid skater shorts and a tee shirt with a picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue at the camera and oh-so-quietly snagged a few granola bars from the cupboard and threw them in my backpack and headed out into sunny streets.
A few years later, my grandmother really had brained my grandfather with a hammer in a pique of rage. Her lawyers had argued that she was mentally unfit to stand trial, and she had been committed to a private psychiatric facility called Sandstone in lieu of jail time, located just outside of that pretty how town.
It was a beautiful morning, and the sun was baking my skin as I walked briskly toward the library on Blackfriar Road. The warmth felt good, and the sapphire colored, cloudless sky made me feel glad to be alive, and even glad to be away from Mario Brothers for a few hours. I made up my mind to head to the basketball courts on the west side of town later and play some pickup ball--I'd grown four inches and shed some weight during my 7th grade year and was a pretty damned good basketball player now. Basketball was pretty good, and in the summertime 8th grade girls hung out at the courts and watched guys play, and that was even better.
The name "Blackfriar Road" always sounded sinister--Satanic, possibly--and therefore intriguing. Like the rest of the town, though, Blackfriar Road looked pretty and pleasant. Blackfriar was a long, wide, brick street shaded by big maple and Chinese Elm trees on either side. Some special trees had plaques telling in whose memory they had been planted and when. I always stopped and admired the biggest tree on the same side of the road as the library, the first one I would pass when I turned onto Blackfriar Road, which was a stately, luxuriously shady maple tree that had been planted, according to a handsome bronze plaque posted next to it, in 1917 in honor of a man named Guy Hastings who had died in World War One. In the spring and summer the leaves of the tree were a sumptuous, deep jade color and in the autumn the leaves took on such crazed reds and oranges that the tree made me think of the burning bush that had talked to Moses. I was standing under this tree, admiring it like I always did, when the most peculiar cloud I had ever seen passed overhead and the world suddenly went all haywire.
I looked up and saw a very dark--almost pitch black--cloud moving very fast across the sky and heard a tummy-rumbling clap like thunder. At first the coal black cloud looked pretty small but then, right in front of my eyes, it began to expand and billow out and out and out like a giant genie emerging from his bottle in a cloud of acrid smoke. The cloud grew huge until it blotted out the sun and a savage, savagely cold wind blew in my face. I popped clusters of goosebumps, and shivered against what had suddenly become an icy cold day; and I braced myself for a hard, cold rain.
The rain never came. The cloud passed over like an exterminating angel, and the day grew hot again.
It didn't even strike me as particularly spooky, until I reflected on it later, that the normally bustling downtown area was now completely deserted.
Nobody was in the Walgreen's on the corner getting a prescription refilled or buying a Coke. Nobody was in the baseball card store, Bleed Cubbie Blue (owned by a lifelong diehard Chicago Cubs fan) pawing through unopened wax packs or haggling over the prices of more valuable cards. I didn't see anybody coming in or out of the local grocery store, Kingman's IGA. There were not even any Saabs or Lincolns or Cadillacs parked along the side of the road, as there always should have been by mid-morning.
I just accepted everything at face value, the way you blithely accept dream logic. I don't think I even felt much surprise when I noticed that what had once been the only vacant lot in the downtown area, a big lot right next to the Blackfriar Street library, was now occupied by a charmingly ramshackle brick building with a shingle dangling down in front of its big wooden front door reading "Doctor Callahan's Curiosity Shop and Pageant of Exceptional Children. Admission Free of Charge. Always Accepting Auditions."
Even though the day had begun to burn warm again, I was still shivering. Downtown was abandoned and all the businesses were closed and the shades were drawn at the library too, so I did the only thing that I could think to do and walked toward the only door that looked open to me, because sometimes that's what you do when you're a kid. Maybe that's all childhood really is.
The front door looked very heavy and there was a strange smell coming out of the house--like something too too sweet that was covering up something gnarly, like when my mom would be too hungover to bother showering sometimes and would just douse herself in Chanel before she went out. I paused for just a moment in front of the door, but then the biggest horsefly I had ever seen landed right on my, arm and I freaked out and flailed my arm to shake it off, and then pushed the door open and stumbled inside.
I stepped into what looked like a run-of-the-mill antique store. Nothing very curious here at all, and certainly nothing Exceptional. My mother loved to "go antiquing" and often dragged me along, so I had seen enough tea sets and oak cabinets and old oil paintings displayed in musty rooms with scratched up hardwood floors to be profoundly bored. I felt jilted, since I had been promised both Curiosities and "Exceptional Children" (and since I considered myself a bit of an exceptional child too).
Upon closer inspection, though, I could tell that this antique store was unusual. ("Maybe an Exceptional Child like yourself will see something here others miss," a high, fine voice in my head said.)
Among the tea sets and imitation Grecian urns, and statues of voluptuous women, and oak furniture, and oil paintings were some more striking and macabre pieces. There was a fantastically detailed painting of the most sinister looking black knight mounted on a black steed I had ever seen--taller AND wider than me by far--that filled me with a nebulous sense of dread. Worse still, when I turned my back to, I swore I heard the faint sound of hooves; but I was much too chickenshit to spin around and look again.
I was not a religious child at all, but I could recognize there was something frightfully wrong, and yet very seductive, about the old fashioned ivory lady's hair comb in a glass display case that depicted an agonized Jesus Christ being crucified upside down. I imagined the kind of lady who might wear that accessory in her hair, and realized I was getting a boner.
I walked to the far corner of the room and saw a glass display case full of impossible looking insects--an ant the size of my fist with ferocious pincers, a foot long millipede with a stinger like a scorpion, and something that looked like a cross between a tarantula and a wasp--all encased in jagged hunks of amber.
I couldn't shake the feeling that the eyes of the insects trapped in amber were following me. Clocking my every move. Looking for a chance to strike. I wanted to run out my door and take my chances with whatever was going on outside. But, I thought, if I do that I will never find out if maybe I'm an Exceptional Child too.
I heard a noise behind a door on the far side of the room that sounded like kids about my age, giggling. I supposed those must be the Exceptional Children, and since the sign promised me Exceptional Children (with Free Admission, no less) I didn't think twice about walking over and opening the door.
The door opened into a small room, where three children were seated at a round, red table with a baby blue table cloth draped over it; and they were giggling softly and eating cookies from a giant mound of cookies piled on a big blue platter, and they were sipping something out of little yellow tea cups. They were all sitting on the same side of the table, and their backs were all to me. I thought they must be having some kind of costume party, because on one of the kids, an athletic looking white dude with long, curly hair, I could see big fluffy costume wings like an angel in a toilet paper commercial; and on top of another boy's head, a little black kid, I could see bone-white spiral horns protruding, like he was dressed up like a demon. There was also a little blonde girl with a ponytail, and it didn't look like she was dressed up as a monster but that was okay because I had seen enough Disney movies to immediately recognize her lily white and fairy-cake blue dress as an Alice in Wonderland costume. I thought it must be someone's birthday, with the costumes and the cookies and tea--although whoever's birthday it was either didn't have very many friends or almost nobody had arrived yet.
I was a naturally shy and aloof little kid, but I was so shaken from the weird ways the world seemed to have turned upside down in the course of just a few minutes that I realized, to my own surprise, just then I preferred the idea of clumsily trying to make friends to the idea of just turning around and scurrying off. Besides, I thought, these must be the Exceptional Children and I really wanted to impress them. I took a deep breath and said, "Hi. What are you guys doing?"
Alice spun her chair around and looked at me. The black kid with the horns on his head spun his chair around and looked at me. The boy with the angel wings did not spin his chair around but instead seemed to kind of hop up with his butt and spin himself around while his chair stayed still, which struck me as appallingly bad manners and quite lazy of him. While he was spinning around, one of his big fluffy wings hit Alice and she got a face full of feathers, and she punched him in the arm. Hard.
"Ouch," he said in a high sweet voice. He had a serene, if somewhat sarcastic mien and a lot of beautiful curly blond hair. He looked like the kind of little boy my mom had always wanted instead of me.
"Clumsy nerd," she growled back.
The boy with horns on his head looked at me with big, sweet brown eyes and said, "Hi. I'm Nicky."
"Hey. I'm Thom," I answered.
The boy with the wings said his name was Gabriel, and the little girl said coyly "I'm Alice, but a lot of people just call me Geek."
"People call me a geek too, because I read so much and I'm much above average at math," I admitted, "but I play sports too."
"Yeah," she smirked, "that must be why they call me Geek too. But you can call me Alice."
I thought it over, and guessed that a girl named Alice dressing up as Alice had a kind of internal logic so I said "Hey, Alice. Is someone having a birthday? Is this a costume party?"
Gabriel cackled. Alice smirked, and Nicky looked a little embarrassed.
"Sure, you could say that," said Alice, whose dress, I noticed, was already stained with red frosting or possibly a jam filling from the cookies they were all munching on. "Do you want some tea? Maybe a cookie?"
The room was stuffy, but smelled too sweet and there was something that smelled bitter to me just under the cloying sweetness that ruined whatever appetite I might have had.
"No," I said, and then, because I thought Alice was very pretty I added, "but thank you very much."
"Maybe you'll change your mind," she sighed.
"Sure, maybe. So what are you guys doing here anyway? I have had a really weird day."
"Weird how?" asked Nicky.
Alice ignored him and said, "It's like you said, we're having a party. It's in your honor. Well, your honor and Dr. Callahan's honor."
Gabriel, who had the most remarkable costume I had ever seen, flapped his big feathery wings a couple of times and said in a dulcet voice, "We are Dr Callahan's Pageant of Exceptional Children and we are having a party because he sensed another exceptonal child, you, and led you to us."
The smirk was so incongruous with his sweet voice and even sweeter face that I shivered a little. But I recovered quickly and started to think about what a waste it was to have spent what I was sure was a lot of time and effort to look like a lameass angel instead of something awesome like Darth Vader.
"So we threw him a surprise party to celebrate all he's done for us," giggled Alice.
I looked over at the plate piled high with red and blue frosted cookies, and I saw a big cockroach scurry out from under the pile of cookies, twitter his antennae, and then skitter back to the mound of sugary delight. That settled the question of whether or not I was ever going to try one of their lame cookies--I knew how gross cockroaches were because my grandmother's housekeeper had seen one in the kitchen once and had screamed like she'd seen a ghost and lectured me for the next half hour about cockroaches were the worst bugs in the world. If Alice, or Doctor Callahan, or whoever was throwing the party couldn't even keep the worst bugs in the world out of their cookies then not only was I not going to eat any but I was going to be much less polite next time she offered me one.
I hadn't known Alice very long, but I already thought she was getting a little pushy.
Nicky turned his big brown eyes at me and looked me up and down. I found myself gazing at his horns. They were not as splashy as Gabriel's costume, but in their own way I was realizing they were actually more impressive. Nicky was a beautiful boy with fine features--I wouldn't have described them as "patrician" at the time but decades later that is all I can think of when I think of his fine high cheekbones and his aquiline nose. The pearl white horns were slightly asymmetrical I realized--I was always a child who loved patterns and I saw that the right horn had a finer, more intricate curlicue at its tip than did the left, which was blunter and thicker. I felt hypnotized as my eye shifted from horn to horn, and had the urge to blurt out my deepest secrets to him.
"Tell him to eat a cookie!" yelled Alice at Nicky, who broke his gaze with me and looked at her sadly.
Looking at her, he said to me, "Thom, I think some very bad things happen to you sometimes in your house. I think you sometimes think of ways to protect yourself, but I think you should only do that as a last resort. I think you should leave home as young as you can though and never look back."
I balled my fists up and felt hot, wet tears on my cheeks.
"Oooh," said Gabriel happily, flapping his wing as though he was very much enjoying my sadness. Both Nicky and Alice hopped out of their chairs just in time to avoid being struck by the billowy, feathery wings which turned out to have a remarkable span when completely unfolded. I couldn't help but wonder how they worked. If we ever got to be friends I would ask--it might make a good science fair project for the 8th grade fair.
I was still upset, though, too upset to think much about hypothetical future friendships.
I wiped away the tears and said to Nicky, "I don't know who you are but you can go to hell. I live in a big house in a nice neighborhood and we have a housekeeper and a pool and you WISH your life were as nice as mine."
Nicky looked down sadly and only said, "I see. Sometimes I say dumb things, I guess. I am sorry, Thom."
"It's okay," I said quickly and roughly.
Alice punched him in the stomach. "Why didn't you make him eat a cookie," she asked as Nicky doubled over and fell on the floor.
"Hey," I asked suddenly,"where is Doctor Callahan?"
"What?" demanded Alice sullenly.
"Well if you are Doctor Callahan's Pageant of Exceptional Children, and this is a party for Doctor Callahan, then where is he at anyway?"
Alice smiled charmingly. "Oh, silly boy. He's on the phone of course. He'll be right back down and then we will all have great fun."
I felt skeptical. "Okay. So what makes you so exceptional?"
"Is he blind," asked Gabriel, giggling like a loon and making a breeze flapping his fake wings.
I stared at him wordlessly while Alice also giggled crazily and even Nicky chuckled a little.
Gabriel looked me in the eye and said, slowly and loudly, "I. Have. Wings. You. Dweeb. And Nicky has horns. And Alice, well…."
"I'm just geeky," she said, "geeky and pretty," and she batted her lashes at me.
"And you dress up like….Alice in Wonderland for some reason."
"Exactly," she said happily. "If you won't have a cookie, would you at least like some tea?"
I *was* thirsty. But I thought of the cockroach. And I thought about how goddamn weird all these little kids were acting. And I thought maybe Dr Callahan was some kind of pervert, like we kept learning about in school, and these kids were here helpers. I thought about cockroaches and stranger danger and I said, "Not right now."
Alice pouted visibly.
"So you mean these aren't just costumes," I mused. It was finally dawning on me that maybe the shadow that passed overhead on Blackfriar Street wasn't the strangest part of my day after all. "Is this, like, some kind of freak show?"
I regretted my words even before Gabriel, with astonishing quickness, scratched at my right forearm with his fingernails and left a painful gash on my arm.
"We are exceptional children! We are a Pageant!" he shrieked, and now his voice was as harsh and terrifying as it had once been sweet and gentle.
Alice grabbed him and hugged him and whispered something and then faced me. "It isn't nice to call us freaks. If you're here, it's probably because Dr Callahan saw something in YOU too. You could be an exceptional child too."
Nicky sighed. "We all have certain natural gifts," he explained, "which Dr Callahan was, is, able to spot and uh, nurture."
"Your gift is...having horns?"
"That's the visible part of my gift, yeah. But there is more to it. People look into my horns and get...interested. Like hypnotized almost. Then I can sometimes make some good guesses about what they're thinking, or urge them to do certain things they might not usually do." He paused and then said, quite diplomatically, "I guess sometimes my guesses aren't very good. I'm sorry about that."
I shrugged and muttered. "I don't wanna talk about it. I don't know how bad your guess was."
He nodded sadly again.
"So, Doctor Callahan sounds like a good man," I said hesitantly, almost desperately, "he like, finds kids with special gifts and nurtures them?"
"Oh he nurtures them for sure dude," cackled Gabriel as he began to flap his wings again.
"Sometimes he has to be tough with us though," smirked Alice.
"He's a….disciplinarian?" I asked. "Disciplinarian" was a word my dad had taught me. It was how he described the meanest tennis coach I ever had, a Chinese woman who used to make me run suicides on the court in hot weather until I threw up.
"He is," said Nicky, shaking his head ruefully. I was a precocious kid who loved to show off using big words, but there was something about the way Nicky spoke and thought that I recognized, despite all my callow arrogance, as far more adult than I was capable of being even though he looked younger than me and didn't always try to use the biggest word he could. Years later I'd read a Greek poet who wrote, "We suffer into wisdom," and I thought of my brief, terrifying, beautiful encounter with Nicky.
"Hush you!" screamed Alice and then, almost desperately, she picked up a cookie and thrust it at me. "Here! Have a cookie! You look so hungry!"
I sidestepped her and pushed her away and she almost tumbled over.
"Oh Jesus, Alice," said Gabriel, "he's going to find out sooner or later."
"You hush too!" said Alice. She tried to punch Gabriel but he knocked her aside with one of his big wings.
"Doctor Callahan hurts us sometimes," said Nicky calmly, "to bring out our full potential. Like when he found me, I hardly had any horns at all. It's the price we pay, to become Exceptional."
Alice started to make a fuss again, but this time Nicky made eye contact with her and seemed to will her to drag her chair over into the corner and have a seat. I got the idea that it was taking a lot of effort, but that Nicky could be very strong when he wanted to be.
"Like I was saying, I hardly had any horns at all. Just a couple of little bumps on top of my head that kind of freaked out my parents and my brother. But then Dr Callahan found me."
"What do you mean he found you?"
"Well...I guess it happened kind of the same way it happened to you. I was walking along one day and this big black cloud passed overhead. To me, it looked like a demon. Like a giant demon with horns and a forked tail. Anyway, next thing I knew everyone was gone and the street was deserted except for...the door to this place. So I came inside and Doctor Callahan was here and he offered me some tea and a cookie. There were other, different Exceptional Children here at the time. Anyway, once we had all eaten and had some tea I said I wanted to leave but Dr Callahan and the children told me I couldn't leave ever."
"Because...you ate their food and drank their tea?"
Nicky nodded solemnly.
"So where is the doctor now? And what happened to the other little kids?"
He sighed. "The doctor goes through kids pretty fast I guess."
"He...goes through them?"
Nicky looked at me and then seemed to change the subject. "The horns hurt, growing out. Doctor Callahan used to rub them with this powder that burned my skin like crazy and smelled like rotten eggs, and then he'd say incantations in evil sounding languages and my horns would grow bigger and bigger. And as they got bigger, they'd force their way through my skin and it….it really really hurt."
I winced involuntarily and I heard Gabriel chuckling.
"Let me finish Gabe, I know you have something to say too."
"He thinks *that* hurt," said Gabriel.
"It did hurt. You weren't there, but it hurt like heck. And sometimes when the bony parts of the horns weren't coming through right he would….he would cut into my head with a knife excavate parts of the horn himself."
"Yeah," said Gabriel, "that sounds pretty bad actually. Not as bad as what happened to me, but pretty bad." His voice was high, fine and mellifluous.
"It also hurts everytime I look at someone and read all their worst thoughts and scariest memories," said Nicky. He was beginning to cry. "I'm sorry, Thom, but that's what I do and what I did with you and I'm sorry for what has happened to you."
I wanted to accept his words at face value. I wanted to cry and hug him because I was beginning to love Nicky a little, but my guard was really up and I was too wary of both Gabriel and Alice by now to really do much more than nod.
"It hurts when I can make people sin too. Dr Callahan used to make me make people sin, and every time someone did something bad under my power I was the one who felt guilty over it, not them."
"He...used to?"
Nicky looked at me sadly but then Gabriel started to flap his wings furiously and I was utterly transfixed as I saw his body first wobble and then begin, with awkward jerks first to the left and then to the right, to lift up off the chair he had been sitting on the entire time.
As Gabriel's wings flapped furiously he began to sing a fine, high, angelic sounding song in a language I had never heard, and I got three surprises for the price of one: The first surprise, of course, was that a boy, even a little boy with big wings, was taking to flight and now hovering at least six feet off the ground, beating his wings so hard the cloyingly sweet air was whooshing around. The second surprise was that Gabriel was stark naked from the waist down: no jeans, no khakis, no Spiderman Underoos. Just his frilly white shirt draped over his body. The third surprise, though, that was the one that almost drove me mad: it didn't matter that he was naked because there was just nothing below his waist.
I guess I could make out two stumps where his legs used to be. The stumps seemed to be bleeding still, and some yellowish white pus was also leaking out in profusion, making a puddle of blood and pus on the floor that would have made me lose my cookies if I had eaten any. But he had no legs. He also, I noted, had no dick and no balls. He was an angel-winged, legless eunuch flapping his wings and flying a few feet above my head singing a song that was breaking my heart and chilling my blood in a language I had never heard before and have never heard since.
Gabriel stopped singing and looked down at the puddle dripping from the sores on his stumps. "Well, dude, you can SEE what he did to 'encourage me to use my wings more.' It was bad enough the way he made these goddamn wings grow--that hurt like hell--but then he cut my legs off to make me even more Exceptional. He thought it unnatural and undignified that I would ever *want* to walk when I could fly! "
My legs had completely given out and I was slumped in the far corner, as far away from Alice as I could get, because she was still the Exceptional Child who gave me the worst vibes, even though she looked the most normal and the sweetest. Just as sweet as a roach nest made of sugar cookies.
I noticed Gabriel's stumps were also crawling with maggots and I dry heaved.
Alice laughed.
"We put a stop to him though, Gabe. We put a stop to him before he could hurt you anymore," said Nicky softly and Gabe fluttered over to him and perched on the table next to Nicky's chair and Nicky hugged him while Gabe's wings fluttered and his wounded stumps wept blood and pus--two wounded friends who had been through a terrible ordeal together.
I wished I had a friend to hug right then and there--and I was so scared I didn't even instinctively chide myself for sounding gay by thinking that.
"Nicky," I said softly, "for the last time, what happened to Doctor Callahan?"
Nicky nodded at a green and red plaid blanket crumpled up against the far wall, near Alice.
I had a sudden sick feeling, but before the feeling could develop into a full blown thought Alice said "You know, Thom, you weren't wrong about us being kind of a freak show. And you know there are two meanings of 'geek' right? There's like a math and science geek, yeah, and I'm that too. But there's another kind of geek. A really Exceptional kind of geek. The kind of geek you might put in a pageant, Thom."
I threw myself hard to the right just in time to miss Alice who had leapt at me, mouth wide open revealing blood stained teeth, and her hands were clawing at the wall where my head had been, and I suddenly realized those were definitely not strawberry jam or frosting stains on her dress.
I scampered toward the blanket and threw it aside.
Crumpled up unceremoniously in the corner was the lifeless corpse of the late, great and terrible, Dr. Callahan--or what remained of it. His face was bruised so deeply and thoroughly it looked like a giant blueberry, and the blood still seeping from innumerable lacerations in the once handsome face looked like strawberry jam; but in the middle of his face, right where his nose should have been, there was just a big gristly hole and in the split second I looked down into it I saw, and now can never unsee, the back of his throat, his tonsils, and his top row of teeth and gums. I almost lost my lunch, but something kept me sane and relatively together even as the same terrible thoughts bounced endlessly in my head like a superball thrown hard against the walls of a small room, "His nose. She ate his nose. His nose. She ate his nose. She ate it right off his face. His nose."
"This all would have been so much easier," Alice shrieked in a banshee like wail, that brought my brain rocketing back to reality, "if you had just eaten the cake or drunk the tea! Once we do that we can never leave and we understand our fates!"
Fairytale logic. Any wily 12 year old would recognize it--once you eat or drink in the Faerie Realm you are their prisoner forever. Even here, in the darkest and grossest of all Faerie Realms, in the Disgusting and Perverse Pageant of the Late Great Doctor Callahan.
I turned around and saw Alice, her face now turning scarlet with rage. After hearing the stories of the tortures--physical, psychological and magical--that he had put the kids through in order to make them "more Exceptional," I felt no sympathy for the late and unlamented Dr. Callahan and I could conjure up very little righteous indignation toward Alice. None of that mattered, though, the only thing that mattered to me was getting out of this situation without being eaten alive, and the only thing on Alice's mind was eating me up from my toes right up to my nose.
I cast one last furtive glance at the corpse and saw that she had chewed three fingers off of his left hand, which was resting against his chin as he lay in the corner as though he were a two fingered philosopher deep in thought. It has been a mixed blessing, having a brain that works like a camera, and through the years there have been so many times I've wished, laying in bed alone at night or sitting on a night flight somewhere with only my thoughts to keep me company, that I couldn't shut my eyes and see his terribly scarred and partially macerated face, that I couldn't see the nubs where the fingers had been chewed off, and above all that I couldn't see the gaping hole on the left side of his chest or the empty cavity where it occurred to me years later his heart should have been.
"I'm not even Exceptional," I pleaded, "I mean not really! I don't even fit in here! I mean I'm a pretty good reader and I do math above my grade level but that doesn't make me an Exceptional Child it just gets me on the Honor Roll! I don't have wings or horns or anything!"
"Don't sell yourself short," said Alice drooling copiously, "I'm sure we can find something. You're pretty light on your feet. Old Dr Callahan might have sawed off your feet and replaced them with springs. Called you 'Springheeled Jack' maybe."
"Yeah yeah," said the Gabriel, "or else you have good vision so we could pluck out your eyes and replace them with actual eagle eyes and call you The Eagled Eyed Boy."
"We don't have any eagles here to steal eyes from, retard," said Alice calmly, as though that were the only objection she had to his plan. "We do have springs though. Springs in the chair. Springs in the couches. But I'm tired of playing pageant, really. Aren't you? Mostly I'm just hungry. Geek girls have to eat SO MUCH."
Alice lunged at me while Gabriel cackled and clapped and Nicky looked sad. I jumped out of the way, but she flailed her right arm around and gave me a nasty scratch on my neck that started to bleed immediately. At the sight and the scent of the blood, I saw her eyes widen and she licked her lips.
I overturned the table to try to slow her down, and as the platter shattered on the floor and cookies spilled all over the carpet hundreds of huge cockroaches skittered around. Some tried to run up my legs and I shrieked and brushed them off, but Alice reached down and began cramming them in her mouth chewing with her mouth wide open, and as the blood guts squirted out from her mouth she exclaimed, though a mouth full of cockroach meat, "They're SO GOOD so much better than the goddamn cookies down here! You should try one Thom. Try them all!"
Alice was now standing between me and the exit, but the table was between me and her, and the smell of blood and the cockroach apertif seemed to have sent her into a kind of feeding frenzy because it suddenly occurred to me that, the way her eyes had gotten huge and she kept shifting from foot to foot she might be even more desperate to eat me than I was to get past her. So I gave her the ol' head fake, like in basketball.
Sometimes if the guy guarding you is taller and better than you, he's really anxious to jump up and block your shot to make you look like a chump and make himself look cool, and sometimes you can take advantage of this by faking with your head like you're about to jump, tricking him into jumping way up in the air, and then you just dribble to one side or the other and past him. I had gotten really good at the head fake.
So I made eye contact with Alice and got ready to fake her out. My plan was to make her think I was springing for the door, to get her to commit to jumping over the table at me and then pause just long enough to get an idea of how she was going to land. Then I would run toward whatever side I knew she'd be off balance on. I thought there was also a pretty good chance she'd stumble on the table, which would be even better. In order to sell the fake, though, I knew I'd have to make eye contact with her and that was almost a terrible mistake.
I cleared my throat. I looked at her face and said "Hey Alice, come get me." I looked into her eyes to let her know I was serious, and I nearly lost all nerve, all hope. Her eyes were wide, crazed, burning blue circles but what terrified me the most was how old they looked. They didn't look like a little girl's eyes, or like a person's eyes at all--they looked like the eyes of some million old malignancy who had just crawled out of his grave hungry as hell. Her eyes looked older than time itself, and danced with some primal pandemonium. I dug the fingers of my right hand into my left palm hard enough to feel blood trickling down to break the trance.
It occurred to me the blood was really going to madden her even more.
I awkwardly moved my head to the right and slumped my shoulders, like I was going to make an awkward, desperate zig to the right. Alice shrieked and jumped over the table, angling right, and that was when I zagged left instead.
Rage and rapacity had made Alice preternaturally quick, though, and she still almost corrected her course and caught me as I tried to scamper away, except that Nicky stuck out his foot and tripped her and she spilled to the floor hard.
"Run," said Nicky to me softly. "I think you'll be okay if you run, I think it will be normal out there again."
Just then, I wanted to laugh, because I was pretty sure nothing was ever going to be "normal" again, but it wasn't the time quibble. I thanked him hastily and ran out the door and up the stairs. I heard Gabriel singing something beautiful and sad in a language I would never hear again and I heard Alice bawling and ranting and I heard crunching noises and tried not to wonder what she was eating and I ran out the door and up the stairs and through Doctor Callahan's terrible curiosity shop and out the front door and onto the street and took a nasty tumble.
The spell was broken and I was right back in the pretty how town, sitting on my ass in a vacant lot while bemused looking pedestrians glanced at me on their way to buy cough syrup and baseball cards and groceries. The sun was warm. The library was open. There was no sign of Dr Callahan's Pageant of Exceptional Children, and if I asked any grown ups they would think I was nuts.
And yet I'd have bet money that sometime in the past months a little black boy had gone missing; and a little white boy with curly blond hair and an angelic face and a charming, geeky little blonde girl and many others besides. Pretty how towns keep their secrets.
This was 20 years ago, give or take, but I remember it like yesterday. This was the night when the Devil waltzed right past me on Park Avenue and gave me a friendly nod and a smirk — pure patrician frost. I was a brokeass college kid at the time, and I'd have preferred a tip to a patrician smirk, but it was a hell of a smirk all the same. I didn't realize it was the Prince of Darkness, of course, until later. So listen.
It's Manhattan, early December — the first seriously wintry night of the year. A real fucking wonderland. An ice storm fucking with the city. Big fun. Check out the traders and the trustfunders slipping and sliding down Park Avenue. Blue shirts, red ties, pinched little faces. A bald dude in a grey overcoat loses it a block away — one second he's mincing along like hey go mad and then whoosh! Right on his ass. I stifle a giggle. It's my third week working as a doorman at the Towers of the Waldorf Astoria, and it would be unseemly to giggle. I'm working the door to make a little extra coin while I go to NYU. The job is fun and simple: Kiss every ass that goes into or comes out of the Towers like it belongs to a sultan or a movie star or a head of state (because it might!) and keep everyone else (the taxi hacks, the vendors, non-Waldorf foot traffic) moving along and very much in line. Know when to schmooze and when to wave your dick around. I look up: Frank Driscoll, who has been in a Presidential Suite for the past two nights, is waiting on a cab, but as the cabbie swings in he seems ready to let some schmuck, definitely not a guest, who is waving a 20 in the air get in instead. Two quick steps across the icy sidewalk and I'm in the cabbie's face, yelling, apoplectic with rage, boo-koo pissed off, "Pierre I swear to God I'll make sure you never get another fucking fare here on any shift I work," and Pierre shrugs at the schmuck while I open the door for Driscoll, who had better make it worth my while next time he sees me. Waving your dick around makes time go faster, makes you feel like you're working, and can lead to some serious tips. Isaiah, the first buddy I made on the job, taught me that. Isaiah Washington — we called him Zay because of course we did — is working his way through Columbia's business program and has every angle clocked.
Maggie Wong, a girl in her early 20s who comes from serious family money, strolls through the revolving door out onto the sidewalk with her mean-spirited little Chow dog, Kobe, trailing unhappily behind her on his alligator skin leash. Lickety split I'm saying "Good evening Ms Wong," and offering Kobe a doggie treat. Mean little brat bites my hand, just like he always does. Maggie Wong giggles, tips me a fiver, just like she always does. Zay swears she is a hardcore sexual sadist — says that if I wanna make real money I could let her tie me to a bed and let Kobe tear me to shreds while she watches. Zay is a bullshit artist but on the other hand Maggie Wong does seem to be one fucked up cookie who is booked in our largest Presidential for another week.
What happens next — this was 20 years ago but I remember it like yesterday.
I'm pocketing the fiver Maggie just tipped me, checking to make sure my hand isn't bleeding, and trying hard not to shiver against the shimmering air because guests at the Towers don't appreciate it when the Help shivers. A man steps out of the revolving doors wearing a camelhair overcoat, a tight, atomic orange Versace jumper, grey slacks, and oxblood Bruno Magli tassel loafers. The shoes jump out for a couple of reasons: 1) You can tell just how filthy rich a filthy rich bastard is by what kind of shoes he wears out in shitty weather, and 2) While, all up and down Park Avenue, men wearing LL Bean Duck Boots were still sliding and mincing like drunken Vassar girls trying to keep their balance, this man was strolling out the door and down the sidewalk footloose and fancy free in the most wildly inappropriate shoes.He hits me with a smirk and a nod and goes on his merry way and I'm staring at his shoes the way corn fed rubes stare at skyscrapers their first night in the big city.
It's because I'm staring at his shoes that I notice a curious thing. He's definitely wearing Bruno Magli tassel loafers, but the footprints he's leaving are all kinds of wrong. He's leaving these little steaming holes in the dusting of snow and ice that had glazed the sidewalk. He's leaving these little…smoldering…cloven hoof prints on the sidewalk. Zay, who is helping a Russian plutocrat load his Hermes luggage into a waiting limo follows my eyes, sees what I see, sees me starting to freak out on a cosmic level. He makes eye contact with me. Locks in eye contact. Moves his finger across his throat, "CUT IT OUT" the gesture says loud and clear. I take a breath. As soon as he can, Zay moves over to me and whispers, "Be easy dude. We'll talk later."
My breathing eases up. My vision de-blurs, the world re-coheres. Mark Twain said once that it's almost worthwhile to have a terrible headache because, when relief finally comes, it's worth five dollars a minute. Five bucks a minute is a little steep on a doorman's salary, but I am so relieved to realize that, whatever else is happening, I'm not actually lose my mind, that I decide Zay has at least earned a cup of coffee after our shift.
A few hours later, we're standing in a crowded Starbucks a few blocks from the hotel. You probably know the one I mean. It's the Starbucks down the block from that other Starbucks. I think there is a Starbucks across the street. A Duane Read nearby, too.
This time of night, the joint is full of financial guys and their assistants, so the pungent coffee and caramel smells are mixing with the smells of Grey Flannel and Armani Acqua di Gio and we can overhear discussions of politics and fantasy football leagues getting heated. At first we look for a secluded spot to talk but there aren't any so Zay shrugs and says, "Fuck it. It's Manhattan. Nowhere is more private than right in the middle of a crowd of self-obsessed assholes anyway." We elbow our way some stools and plop down. Zay tries to lead into things gently. Wants to make some bullshit small talk. I'm not having it. "Dude. The footprints. Get to it."
He shrugs. "Oh. That's pretty simple."
"Thank God. I thought I was going nuts."
"The man rocking the snazzy shoes and leaving the cloven hoof prints is named Nick Olde. He's a frequent guest at the Towers. He always stays in the Cole Porter Suite. And he's the Devil."
"I see."
"I don't think you do. He's Old Nick of song and legend. The actual, factual Devil himself. Boss of all bosses."
"You're full of shit."
"He is a frequent and much valued guest. Always stays in the Cole Porter Suite."
"You. Are. Full. Of. Shit."
"Work the job long enough, decide for yourself dude."
"Fuck you."
Zay shrugged. "He's a hell of a tipper."
"Fuck you. What do you take me for dude?"
Zay shrugged again. "I could tell you a story, dude. Someday, when we're both all growed up, I could tell you a story…"
A month passes. Zay and I have both been promoted to working the desk inside the Towers. We're a couple of smart cookies who look good in blazers and know how to take care of guests. The tips are better. The base pay is better. No more freezing our nuts off outside. "We got hustle, babe," is how Zay put it. Nick Olde is a frequent guest. He always stays in the Cole Porter Suite. If someone else is already booked in the suite when his assistant calls to make the rez, they are discretely moved into an alternate room and schmoozed so much by management that they don't mind the minor inconvenience. I always pay attention to Nick Olde. I log evidence. I make judgments.
Nick Olde has perfect patrician features and a year round tan and a literal forked tongue and beautiful almond shaped eyes — "The Eyes of Christ, they call them in some cultures, my boy," he once remarked and then laughed his fine, high, rich, chaotic laugh. Nick Olde always smelled of Clive Christian Number One but, when he leaned close to you, you could pick up the very faint aroma of rotten eggs and burnt matches. I slowly become convinced Nick Olde is the Devil, and the more convinced I become the more he seems to sense my belief and the more clues he drops, dragging me deeper into the conspiracy.
It's late on a Tuesday night and Nick is stumbling into the Towers after a night on the town. I'm the only person at the desk and he is the only person at the lobby. He nods and smiles at me as he walks past and then suddenly, halfway down the hall toward the elevator bank, he just freezes in his track, his back to me. He's wearing grey slacks and a tweed jacket and his oxblood tassel loafers and I notice something wiggling around on his butt. Something on his ass is pullulating, something is making the back of his pants push out like he's been hiding an umbrella in his ass and the umbrella is trying to poke its way free. I suddenly realize what is going on and I want to turn away but I can't. A pointed tail is tearing through the back of his pants, uncurling slowly but magnificently. It's red and scaly and fat and long. I feel sick to my stomach, I feel like crying, want to run away but can only stare. The tail swishes around a few times and then lands on the marble floor with a thud and Nick Olde walks slowly, calmly, to the elevators dragging his tail behind him with this ungodly scraping noise. Scraaaaaape scraaaaape scraaaaaaaape along the beautiful pink and grey marble. As he steps into the elevator, I start bawling. I am afraid to react until he was out of sight, afraid that if I lose my shit he might calmly walk back over to me, tail dragging behind him, and drag me down to hell right then and there. There have always been rumors our elevators go secret places, if you know the right buttons to push.
Call it cold. Dead certainty: Nick Olde is the devil. Sure as a reservation for Neely O'Hara means Sara Michelle Gellar is checking in, sure as the Japanese ambassador's son Yoshi is going to demand I score him some coke, Nick Olde is the Devil.
Things I learn about The Devil: The Devil travels alone. He travels light — a single leather attaché case. He wears vibrant colors and prefers tight fits that show off his blasted pecs and bulging arms. He's a good tipper. Sometimes he wears colors I can't really see. Feature this: Looking at a color you literally can't process, a color that makes you feel feelings but you can't actually see. I highly recommend giving it a shot, if you ever get the chance. Sometimes I dream about those colors to this day, and when I do I splooge my sheets like I'm 16 again.
Time passes. Nick has the most interesting assortment of friends and visitors. Christ, if I named names!
There is the young woman, a singer, who went up bursting with bravado and who came back down looking moribund, broken, muttering "My God, what have I done." She seems to have come to terms with whatever it was she did do, though, if her performances at the last several VMA awards are any indication. There is this hot young novelist a few months before his big break and there is that desperate entrepreneur a few weeks before a hedge fund sunk eight figures into his startup. There is the middle aged man who went up smelling of flopsweat and Glenlivet and who came down an Attorney General (you can look him up if you want, he's that middle aged white Attorney General for an Eastern state). There is another novelist, an aging ex-wunderkind whose books I used to love, who comes frequently but never seems to get anywhere — maybe he's working off an old debt. Maybe they're just friends.
I'm still working the desk when Zay takes off, moving on to bigger and better things. We have a few celebratory Rob Roys at Peacock Alley in the hotel, one of the three bars in the Waldorf. After his third Rob Roy, before he heads off to hang out with his real friends, he hugs me and says, "Man, sometime when we're both big shots we'll run into each other again, and I can tell you a story that will take your breath away about good ol'Nick Olde." I cry a little when Isaiah walks out the door for the last time. The bartender, this blonde with short hair named Cassandra, calls me a little girl. ""Jesus, dude, why don't you go write him some love poems in your trapper keeper. Listen to some Elliot Smith songs and remember the good times."
"Strong men also cry, Cassie, strong men also cry." You can't go wrong quoting Lebowski.
"Hey look on the bright side. Knowing Zay and knowing you, he'll be walking through the doors as a guest long before you can quit this job."
"Fuck you." I walk away. I've always been a boy who loves a good exit line.
It's my last night at the hotel. I'm moving on to bigger and better too. Take that, Cassandra. I'm working with this girl from Hunter College, a stuck-up deb named Jennifer. She's supercilious and condescending and wears too much CK Eternity perfume. Seriously — a debutante from an old Virginia family wearing CK Eternity. Jennifer is the fucking worst.
A black woman in her early 20s comes in. She's wearing shiny black vinyl pants and a tight black tank top and ridiculous spiky heeled boots that she's clearly not accustomed to walking in. Her hair — and this lady has a LOT of hair — is adorably poofy and she's wearing black rimmed glasses and I like her immediately. Jennifer is looking at her with undisguised distaste. Fuck you, Jennifer. Please don't be here to see Nick Olde, nerdy looking black girl in ridiculous outfit.
"I'm, uh, here to visit Mr Nick Olde," she said meekly. Fuuuuuck. Lemme be clear. I don't know what happens when a person sells their soul to the Devil. I don't really know from souls. I don't know if I even believe in souls, but I do believe in the Devil — he once tipped me fifty bucks when he was in an especially joyful mood after a late night visit from a Roman Catholic Cardinal in full church regalia. I believe in the Devil and I believe in exploitation and I've seen people when they come back from visiting Nick and whatever it is that happens to them I didn't wish it on this poor girl.
"Are you sure?"
"What do you mean 'Am I sure,' "She's pissed. She slams her knockoff Lanvin garbage bag style purse on the counter and it flies open and I see: a cell phone, a couple of books (including, and I will never forget this) Feynman's Lectures, and a small velvet package. "I'm a grown ass woman and I'm here to see Nick Olde. I'm expected. If there's some kinda problem…"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, of course you're right." I mean it. She's a grown-ass woman with free will and agency. Who am I to tell her what to do? "You actually need a room key to operate the elevator, but since Mr Olde is expecting you I will just lead you over to the elevator and send you up with my own key. Is that acceptable?"
She smiles, says that it will be just fine. As she gets on the elevator I run my hands through my hair, try to think of something to say. She smiles, "Don't worry sugar, it will be okay I think. Thanks for giving a shit."
"I don't think you should have let her up," Jennifer says when I go back to the desk.
"Of course you don't, Jenny, of course you don't."
An hour later, the young woman is back in the lobby already. She walks out quickly, avoiding eye contact, and when she gets to the sidewalk she takes off running as fast as she can in her ridiculous boots. Fuck. Why couldn't I have just called off sick tonight. Why couldn't last night have been my last night? What a sad fucking bummer to go out on.
The phone rings a few minutes before my shift ends.
"Ah, m'boy, I'm glad it's you who picked up. I'd like you to come upstairs and help me out a little please. I'm…unfavorably disposed at the moment."
"Unfavorably disposed, yes yes. Please come up here with some speed, my old friend."
I sigh. Put down the phone. Head up. The fuck am I gonna walk into? Is he gonna drag me down to hell forcibly, Don Juan style? Because I do not get paid enough for that shit, especially not on my last night. Besides, I never even enjoyed any debauchery. The most debauched thing I've done in months is trip on cough syrup while playing some Final Fantasy.
Is he gonna ask me to help him sacrifice a baby on an altar draped in crimson and gold? Plan the overthrow of a third world dictator? Pick out a tie to go with his jacket? Change a light bulb? Why hadn't I just clocked out a few minutes early on what was, not to put too fine a point on it, my last fucking night?
So I let myself into the suite. Check out that grand foyer, complete with full length mirrors running along both walls, complete with a badass chandelier hanging above the entrance. Check out the antique furniture in the sitting room, the grand piano Cole Porter himself used to play when he was in town over by the enormous window. No sign of Nick Olde. Walk through the sitting room into the master bed room and….Jesus Christ!
Check out Nick Olde, stark naked, bound head to foot in chains. There's his huge dick, flopping around in front, there's his huge tail flopping around in back. There are his cloven feet. Look at those legs, hairy as a goat! Sigh theatrically. Point and laugh. "Jesus man. The fuck happened here?"
"My last deal went a bit south, old sport. Happens occasionally. Hell of it is, I'm not able to free myself from iron, particularly not if certain incantations have been, er, incanted." Symbols drawn above his bed, I think in lipstick. Something that looks like a snake coiling around a tree, something else that looks like some Hebrew letters.
"Mr Olde, this is my last night at the hotel. I know who and what you are, and despite it all I've grown to like you, but before I let you go. About the young woman who was up here…"
Nick grins. Grins wide. Laughs. "Yes, quite likable isn't she? Every now and then a deal goes bad for me. Once, maybe twice a century. When it happens, it happens. I don't go looking for revenge. But I'm going to get very very angry at you, my old friend, if you don't begin behaving like a friend very soon." The room started to get hot, so hot the antique wallpaper seemed to wilt and pucker and my chest got tight and I became very aware of what it meant to test the patience of Nick Olde.
I haven't seen or heard from Nick since that night. I'm a free lance writer these days, which is nice work if you can make a living at it. Zay is a hedge fund honcho out in Connecticut, which is even better work if you can get it. He never did get around to telling me that story — we travel in different circles now.
The reason I'm telling you this story is that I recently saw the young woman who got the best of Good Old Nick Olde on television. She was announcing a breakthrough her technology startup had made in the field tachyons and the possibility of reversing time's arrow. Her speech was eloquent and lucid. She made it clear that "time travel" in any meaningful sense was still lifetimes away, but that she considered the tech her company was developing the first meaningful step in the right direction. So I have some idea now what she wanted, and got, out of Nick. Her speech concluded with, "Oppenheimer famously said, after the successful detonation of the atomic bomb, 'I have become Death Destroyer of Worlds.' He was quoting a passage from the Gita that might better be translated 'I have become Time who destroys worlds.' It is my fervent belief that Time can, too, be used to heal worlds."
The clip has been all over the news cycle. Clearly visible in the background are smiling, fervently applauding members of the board of directors and the venture capitalists financing her research. He's lost most of his hair, and he's 25 pounds heavier, but front and center among the VIPS was my old buddy Zay Washington. Seeing him there gave me a terrible feeling, made me want to find him and get him to tell me that story finally.
In hindsight, it never really was such a huge problem.
At first the bumps in the night, the inexplicably open doors and the whisperings I'd hear just as I fell asleep left me terrified. But as time went on, they became merely unnerving, almost routine.
I'd still jump at the sudden sounds but the feeling of dread I'd experienced in the beginning had faded.
So if I'm honest, it wasn't really the strange events at home that made me do it. It was everything else - the stress of work, the collapse of my relationship, squabbles within the family.
Being awoken at 3am by an almighty crash to find the bookcase knocked over, every cupboard door flung open and every light bulb blown was just the final straw.
I stormed home that day with my new purchases in hand. The sage, the salt, the candles and a host of other trinkets.
God knows what my neighbours thought was going on as I bellowed at whatever the presence was to get out of my house, threatening it with hellfire and brimstone if it stayed a moment longer.
The sound it made was terrible - I'd been expecting demonic screams or a howling wind but it sounded more like a child's plaintive wail. The footsteps were anything but childlike though, booming past me through hallway before the front door flew open.
Then everything went quiet.
When i stopped shaking and could hear something other than the sound of my own blood roaring in my ears, I poured myself a drink. I was terrified, but I felt satisfied, powerful. Even if everything else in my life was spiraling into chaos, here was something I could control.
Life gradually got better after that. I found a new job and i managed to keep the peace between my siblings, even dipped a toe back into the dating pool.
I still thought about the presence though. More and more I found myself feeling guilty taking out all that frustration onto it.
That's why I almost felt relieved when it came back. I found the cupboard doors open when I woke one morning and that night I listened for the whispers as I fell asleep.
But the whispers never came.
I'm starting to think I was wrong. I don't think it came back.
The presence that was here before never used to growl, or make the mirrors shatter.
It never made a dozen birds fly into the windows at once, their necks snapping on impact, leaving them twitching and spasming on the ground.
And when I burned the sage and lit the candles it didn't grab me by the throat with invisible talons and fling me across the room like a rag doll.
"Stupid brats. Always playing where they don't belong." Billy heard Grandpa say from his rocking chair.
Billy didn't care. He just sulked next to his Grandpa as he watched Jimmy and Cindy play tag with some of the other out-of-town kids. Billy loved tag. It was his favorite game. The thrill of chasing and being chased felt wonderful to the small boy.
But Grandpa wouldn't let him play. No matter how much he begged and pleaded, Grandpa just said no. He had pointed to a sign in front of the lawn where the others were playing: "Stay Off Grass"
"But they're playing on the grass" Billy had whined. "Why aren't you telling them to get off the grass?"
Grandpa shrugged his shoulders as his chair continued to rock back and forth. "It's too late for them. Sometimes, Billy, you just have to let nature take its course. Remember what happened to your uncle Ricky?"
Billy scrunched his face, trying to remember exactly who that was, before shaking his head.
"Ah, was before your time. He didn't listen either. Loved jumping all over that very lawn. Tried warning him time and time again. Sometimes he listened. But he disobeyed me one too many times..."
That's when Billy noticed, out of the corner of his eye, a bit of grass and dirt start to raise up ever so slowly from the rest of the ground. "Grandpa, do you…"
"I do, Billy my boy. I do. Now watch and learn."
Billy watched with interested as the outer parts of the lawn slowly separated from the dirt and the concrete. And in the middle of the lawn, it was starting to depress ever so slightly.
But none of the children playing tag seemed to notice. They were too far lost in their play. Cindy laughed as Jimmy reached out to tag her. His fingers were just centimeters from her shoulder…
Billy's eyes widened as the lawn folded in on itself, springing shut on the trespassing children. There was no time for last screams or cries for help.Just there one moment, and consumed the next
Billy quickly hid behind his Grandpa's rocking chair. Fortunately, it blocked out the grisly end of the children. But it could not block out the sounds as the jaws of the lawn went to work on those trapped inside. The chewing sounds of ripping flesh, and the slurping of fresh child-meat going down it's gullet. The sounds that would stay inside Billy's mind for a long time.
Partially in shock, and partially looking for a comforting presence, Billy looked to his Grandpa. But he didn't seem disturbed at all. In fact, he seemed more interest in his crossword puzzle then the mass carnage happening across the street.
"See, Billy? Nature doesn't like it when you disobey it." Grandpa said, as Billy heard a final burp. "Ricky never learned. Neither did those brats. Now, did you?"
Billy quickly and frightfully nodded. He had indeed learned that lesson.
[x-post from /r/nosleep]
I really should have realized sooner that something was not right. I was on my way home from college for Christmas break. Finals week had been hell and I couldn't wait to get home to my family, my pets, my friends, and my queen sized bed. It was already dark when I left my last final -- unfortunately, my university had assigned the 6:00-9:00pm time slot for social science classes, and my anthropology exam had taken longer than I had expected it to. Of course, the day I was heading home had reached the lowest temperature on record in over forty years for my area, so I lugged my giant duffel bag to my car, threw on some layers of clothing, and cranked up the heat in my car.
My hometown is about two hours from my university, and I had traveled to and from it many times by myself, always taking the same route: there were two or three turns where I had to get off one highway and onto another, but most of the way, it was a straight shot.
I'm sure you are familiar with highway hypnosis. I've noticed myself being affected by highway hypnosis on twelve-minute drives to work let alone two hours on a relatively empty, straight highway. The turn where I should have realized something was off happened before I even realized I had made it. I was simply on autopilot, listening to the instructions given to me by my built-in GPS even though I was irritated it had interrupted my music. It vaguely registered in my mind that I didn't usually take the exit it had told me to use, but I figured I had accidentally tapped one of the alternate routes suggested by my Maps app and didn't think too much of it.
Soon, Maps started taking me further and further away from large highways. I kept following it as it led me into darker and darker areas, through winding, mountainous roads and even onto some dirt roads with little more than a street light or two littering the ground next to a farm and a small house.
By then I had started to feel paranoid but did not want to stop driving in order to check my GPS for fear that my car would get too cold and stall, stranding me in the middle of nowhere in dangerously cold temperatures. I considered turning around and trying to retrace the route I had used, but I was unfamiliar with the turns and did not have a clue how to get back to the highway. It had started to snow.
Not knowing what else to do and due to my usual confidence that I get lucky in situations like this until things turn out well, I kept driving and ignored the nervous feeling in my chest and stomach. (I know. I'm the definition of the idiot who dies first in horror movies). I slowly drove over an icy bridge and into a city that I had vaguely heard of and knew was close to my hometown, which comforted me slightly. My GPS led me through hazy and eerily inactive streets and past churches, schools, and quiet restaurants. As I was driving along a small road, my GPS announced that I had reached my destination. Alarmed, I slowed down, pulled to the side of the road and looked at the screen in the console of my car. It still displayed my own house address as my destination, but puzzlingly, the little checkered flag was at my location.
As soon as I had noticed the flag, my car shut off. Quickly, I tried to restart it and was met with nothing, not even the desperate clicking that usually accompanies a car that is failing to start. I reached into the cupholder where my phone was plugged into the car, only to see "No Service." My heart sank into my stomach. I knew that if I put all the clothes in my duffel bag on, I could stay in my car overnight and try to survey the area when morning came; without a doubt, my parents would become worried before it even hit midnight and notify someone who would find me. I would much rather do that than take a chance and go searching for any nearby houses; plus, I thought, I didn't know what kind of people I would be met with if I had gone to search for help. I did anything I could to rationalize my decision and decided firmly that staying put was the best idea.
With another wave of uneasiness in my stomach, I threw my door open and quickly went to open the trunk. Walking around to the back of my car, I saw a figure approaching me slowly. I could tell even from a distance that the person would tower over my 5'6" frame. Instinctively, I put the sharp part of my key in my hand to extend between two of my curled fingers, the cold metal hidden by the long sleeves of my sweater and coat.
"Did your car stall?" the figure mumbled to me in a deep, raspy voice.
"Oh, no. I'm just checking to make sure I didn't forget something in my bag," I lied. I knew as soon as I had said it that it wasn't a good enough lie, and as he got closer to me, I could see the disbelief on his face. He looked like someone you might see at a gas station in the middle of the night, buying an unhealthy amount of Mountain Dews and beef jerky.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," I said, not turning my back to him. "Thank you, though."
"For what?" he asked me. At this point, I was extremely uncomfortable with our interaction and with how close he had gotten to me. I ran my thumb over my key, making sure it was positioned well enough to be effective if I had to use it.
"For checking. But I'm fine," I smiled, hoping he would go away and that he couldn't see my teeth chattering: whether it was from the cold or my fear or both, I didn't know.
"You have a pretty smile," he said, lowering his voice. I could swear I saw sweat on his forehead even in the fierce cold of the night. "You can come into my house and call for help. Your car is dead."
"No, thank you," I responded firmly, "but maybe I could use your phone?"
"I only have a house phone."
At that point, it was painfully clear that he was trying to lure me into his house, and I didn't know how else to escape the situation. "Oh, that's okay. Goodnight," I said, quickly going back around to my car door and getting in. The man lingered awhile, simply staring at me in my car, before slowly walking away. I let the breath escape that I had been holding in, but was cut short when the glass of my car window shattered. He had thrown a rock in my window. I started screaming.
"Shhh," he said, reaching in my window for me as I screamed and writhed away from him. I backed myself up against the opposite side of the car, but he grabbed my scarf, then my shoulders, then my waist, and pulled me out of my car. He had me in a death grip with his arm around my waist and squeezing my wrist, and was walking me toward a house I hadn't even noticed was there. I kicked my legs, punched at him and screamed as loudly as I could, but nobody came to my rescue.
"I waited all day for you to finish your tests," he whispered into my ear, making my skin crawl and my heartbeat race, dread washing over my whole body. His breath smelled like alcohol and cigarettes, and my knees shook uncontrollably. I didn't want to imagine how he knew who I was or how I had tests or, more importantly, what was awaiting me in his house. I didn't stop screaming. He dragged me inside and told his Smart home system to lock the door behind him. He led me inside, down a flight of stairs and down a hallway into what appeared to be a computer room. I eyed the terminal, and he chuckled. Somewhere in the room, his phone buzzed.
"You can't use the computer yet, sweetheart," he cooed at me. "Not until I know I can trust you." He forced my mouth closed, covering it with a long piece of masking tape he had apparently left dangling from his desk. He finally let go of my wrist to grab the roll of remaining tape, and I took my chance. I shot my arm out and shoved my key into his left eye socket, stunning him and causing him to stagger backward. As he scrambled and writhed in pain, covering his eye with his hands, I kneed him as hard as I could in his groin and kicked him in his stomach with all the force I could muster, hoping it would be enough to send him backward and knock him out. Luckily, I had caused him to smack his head against the concrete wall in his basement, and he fell to the ground with a loud thud.
My whole body shaking and my heart pounding out of my chest, I went to his computer and tried as many different combinations as I could think of for passwords. Knowing I had to work quickly but needed to be quiet, I simply typed in jumbles of letters and numbers and pressed enter. Finally, as I had hoped, his phone buzzed once more in the room. I had alerted his security system that someone unauthorized was trying to gain entrance to his system, and he was receiving a notification.
Despite how meticulously he seemed to have planned this encounter, he hadn't disabled the emergency call on his phone. I dialed the authorities, tried to move some things in front of the room he was in to barricade it, and retraced our steps in his house until I was back outside in my car, shivering and watching my skin turn purple in bruises left by the strength at which he had been gripping my wrist. I wasn't a very religious person, but all I did until the police arrived was pray.
As it turned out, the man was a mutual friend of one of my friends on social media. She didn't know him, but allowed him to follow her; from there, he found me, tagged in one of her posts. He found out where I went to school, found my records, gained access to my accounts, and, as easily as that, bypassed any security that my car had in place. Since cars connecting to the internet and built-in GPS systems are a relatively new technology, cyber criminals (who may also be real criminals) are able to easily take advantage of even the most minuscule vulnerabilities in any device that has at one time been connected to some type of internet. Police and cyber security professionals learned that he had hacked my GPS, used the buffer overflow vulnerability, and caused it to glitch on my end, but had used coding to tell the GPS to send me to his home while it still appeared to be sending me to my own house on my console. Long story short, don't always trust your GPS. I was lucky. You might not be.
Normal is not a constant. It has a different meaning for each of us. I was homeschooled all through grade school and I never knew that my normal was so far off from other people's. I had a hard time adjusting to college life as a freshman and the realization that I had spent my life in a world completely separate from that of my peers did not make anything easier.
I owe a lot to the group of friends that adopted me. Maybe adopted is a strange word choice, but that is what it felt like to me. They found me, took me in, and taught me how to fit in with what most people believed to be normal. By my junior year, I was just one of the gang and no one would guess I was any different.
When graduation finally snuck up on us, we promised to stay in touch and everyone believed we'd still hang out all the time. But after we graduated, I never saw them again. No one ever saw any of them again. It hurt to lose the only people I had been close to outside my family, but loss is inevitable.
The last time I saw them was the night after graduation. We'd all gone to a party as one last hurrah before we put college behind us forever. Jeff, Kaylee, Martin, Amanda. I still remember how happy they looked as they danced and drank and enjoyed all life had to offer. I found myself alone in the corner, I just couldn't bring myself to be happy about our imminent separation.
My mother had told me that would happen. I'd make friends while I was away and I would grow close to them, become attached. But, she had said, there was an expiration date and there was nothing any of us could do about it. Once graduation came, that would be the end of my time with them.
I decided I'd had enough of feeling sorry for myself and found Jeff in the crowd. "Hey man, let's find everyone and get out of here. I know a place we can hang out, just the five of us." He nodded and helped me round up the group.
"Where are we headed? The party was just getting started," Amanda was never one to miss a good party, but she also wasn't going to ditch the group. I knew that much, we'd grown too close for that.
"There is an old meat processing plant about 20 minutes from here. I was thinking it'd be a nice secluded spot where we could hang out and get trashed, just us five. Make one last memory before the real world tears us apart." I could tell they didn't quite see the need to leave the party, but they agreed in the end.
My car was already packed with blankets and booze. I had avoided drinking at the party so I would be ready to go, I didn't want to mess up the night I had planned so carefully. Getting pulled over, or worse getting in an accident, because I'd had a few drinks was not an option.
"Oh, I see you were planning all this from the start, huh?" Martin had hopped in the back right next to the cases of beer. "How could you be sure we'd come along? Haha, I guess you know us too well." He wasn't wrong about that. Everyone got loaded in and I put the car into gear and headed out. It was a short drive and as I watched everyone laughing and drinking, I couldn't suppress the sad smile that spread across my face.
"Gonna miss this, huh?" Kaylee was in the passenger's seat next to me. "I know we always say how we'll stick together even after college, but it won't be the same, y'know? Jobs and family, and who knows what else, will put distance between us eventually. Tonight is bittersweet. I am happy to have made these memories, but I can't help but feel like it'll be over tomorrow and that makes me really sad."
"Hey, let's not think about that right now. We'll party hard tonight and then we can worry about that depressing shit tomorrow, yeah?" I gave her the warmest smile I could muster and she smiled in return. "Anyway, this is the place, so let's get all the crap out of the back and get drunk." The gravel crunched under the wheels of the van as I pulled up to a large industrial building that obviously hadn't been in use for a long time. Large faded letters on the side read, 'GARRETT MEATS.'
"Isn't your last name Garrett?" Amanda looked at me.
"Yeah, how do you think I knew about this place? I come from a long line of butchers." Jeff was grabbing blankets out of the back and Martin was of course taking care of the beer. There was a faint sound of whistling being carried on the wind but no one seemed to notice as we all headed inside.
I'd already cleared out a spot and laid down plastic sheets ahead of time so I lead the group there. The faint sound of water dripping was coming from somewhere and I may have heard the scurry of a mouse or two. I could only hope Amanda didn't notice because she would flip out, and while he always tried to play the tough guy I was pretty sure Martin wouldn't be too happy about it either.
"We can lay out the blankets here, I already put some plastic down so they shouldn't get dirty." I pointed the spot out to Jeff and started to help him put the blankets down. "Martin, you can stack the beer over there. Amanda, I got a stereo over there with some CDs so why don't you put on some music?"
"You really put some thought into tonight, didn'tcha?" Amanda was already looking through the stack of CDs before I'd even said anything. "I thought we were just gonna be partying tonight but I like the idea of one last hangout before college life is behind us."
The next few hours flew past. Everyone was throwing back beers while recounting our favorite college memories. No one seemed to notice the noises that had begun to encircle us. Maybe it was because I was the only one not drinking that I heard it, but either way I could make out the sound of something scraping against the metal floor.
I must have had a look on my face because Kaylee leaned over and asked me what was up. I put a finger to my mouth and told her to listen while I turned the music down. "What is that?" she asked me. "It sounds like something is moving around us. Is someone else here?" She looked worried.
"Maybe we woke some squatters or something, I'm sure it's nothing to worry about." I'd planned the night so carefully, everything had to go right. I motioned to Martin to come over and I whispered in his ear, "Hey man, Kaylee heard some weird noises and I think she is a bit spooked. I wanna call my dad and see if there is any reason someone might be around tonight but I left my phone in the van, could you grab it for me?"
Martin gave no objection and headed out to the van with the keys. "Where is he off to?" Jeff was looking at me with one arm around Amanda and a wide grin on his face. I'd always known he liked her just a little bit more than he did the rest of us.
"I just asked him to grab something out of the van for me, no worries." I looked at Kaylee, "I'm sure it's nothing. I'll give my dad a call and see if anyone is around tonight, and if not he can send someone over to check things out for us." She seemed a little relieved, at least until the loud clanging noises started echoing from the catwalk above us.
"What the fuck is that noise?" Now Amanda was also looking panicked too. Jeff pulled her closer and wrapped both arms around her.
"Don't worry, I won't let anything happen to you. Dude, this is your family's place right? You know what's going on?" Jeff was trying to be brave for Amanda, but I could hear a quiver of fear in his voice. I kept my cool.
"This place is pretty old, I doubt it's anything to worry about. Probably a raccoon or something got up there. I'll go check it out." I stood up and Kaylee grabbed my hand.
"I'll go with you. I don't think it's a good idea to go alone. You guys stay here and wait for Mart." She grabbed a flashlight and followed me away from the two of them and deeper into the building.
"I'm pretty sure the ladder to the catwalk is somewhere on this wall. I don't know if we'll be able to get up there though, probably too dangerous." Kaylee shined the flashlight along the wall until the light landed on the ladder. "Ah, well, I guess it isn't even a matter of danger." Looking at it, at least 90% of the its stairs were completely missing. "There's no way anyone could have climbed up there, at least we know if anything is up there, it's definitely just an animal."
"And as far as I know, there aren't any seriously dangerous animals around here so that's a relief. Let's head back and let them know," Kaylee sounded relieved. I turned around and we headed back to our hangout spot. When we got back, both Jeff and Amanda were gone.
"Oh my god, they couldn't have gone somewhere to like, you know…wait, what's that?" She illuminated the blanket by where the couple had been sitting. It was hard to notice, given the dark color of the blanket, but with the flashlight I could make out what looked like a large wet spot on the blanket. I went over and touched it, the liquid was warm and sticky. When I pulled my hand away, the tips of my fingers had turned red.
"Oh fucking fuck, it's blood," I was frantically trying to wipe it off on a dry portion of the blanket when the shrieking started. It was loud and pained and seemed to go on for longer than should be capable for human lungs, but I was certain it was Amanda. I instinctively headed toward the sound and Kaylee followed.
What we found was not the scene we'd have imagined from the scream, but it was still completely horrific. Martin's body lied on the ground, gutted with his intestines strewn about around him. A look of pure agony was etched across his face, his arms were bound above his head with barbed wire, and his legs were nowhere to be seen. Kaylee collapsed into tears behind me and then began to scream.
I turned to see her staring at something on the ground in front of her. It was an arm, Jeff's right arm to be exact, the same one he had been wrapped around Amanda. "Kaylee, get up. We need to get out of here." She wiped the tears from her face and got to her feet. She wasn't weak, and while I am sure she'd cry over what we'd just seen later, she knew there was no time for that now.
"No, we need to find Jeff and Amanda, they might still be alive." She had a look of resolve on her face that quickly turned to a twisted grimace of pain. The man that I had been watching sneak up behind her stabbed a large butcher knife through her back.
"I'm sorry it had to be you." The look she gave me was one of confusion and pain, her lips moved as though she were trying to ask why but only blood came pouring out. "All of you were destined for this fate the moment we met. Trust me that this isn't easy for me either. The four of you truly were my best and only friends, and to be honest, I love you Kaylee." The knife made a wet, squishing sound as the man pulled it free and reinserted it several more times.
I held back the tears that I could feel starting to well up in my eyes. "You could have at least let me tell her why this was happening, dad." As he pulled the knife from her back for the final time, Kaylee fell to the ground, now just a lifeless form.
"There isn't time. I let you have your last few hours with them, now we must finish the preparations." His response was as cold as always. I couldn't hate him for it though, he had seen many awful things in his lifetime that made him cold and detached.
My two older brothers came out of the shadows carrying the rest of Jeff and Martin as well as Amanda's body. They'd never let me live it down if they saw me crying, so I shoved my feelings down deep and got to work.
At this point, I am sure you are thinking of me as some murderous bastard that set up my closest friends to be murdered. What I did to them was unforgivable, and I won't try to change your opinion of me, but there is a reason I am sharing this story. I have done many more monstrous things in the years since that night took place, but I still have a heart, I am still human.
I think it is only fair that people know why. If you find yourself in some abandoned place with those close to you being killed off, you at least deserve to know why it is happening. So as my son gets ready to go out into the real world for the first time and make his own group of friends, I share this story because even though there is nothing anyone can do to save themselves from the fate that my son and my family may bring to them, maybe they will at least see this and know why.
I come from a long, long line of butchers. But we have a very particular specialty. I doubt many would be able to believe this, but there are creatures that exist in our world that, even with our knowledge and weapons, we would never be able to protect ourselves against. The only reason we continue to survive as a species to this day is because we provide sustenance to them, and it is duty of my family, along with other families around the globe, to harvest it.
They feed off of the bonds humans share. The strong feelings of love and friendship that build between a group of friends is a delicacy that satisfies them more than anything else. The men in my family learn to build the necessary bonds with others and how to harvest them when they are at their peak. The women are the teachers that raise and train each generation.
That night after graduation was when my group of friends felt the closest, and that is when our bonds had to be harvested and served up to keep those vile beings we serve placated. I've seen the end come for many others I called friends since then, but none of them knew the greater good they were serving.
Knowing the sacrifices I was going to have to make someday was my normal growing up. I had thought it was something everyone dealt with and was prepared for. Realizing that I was going to have to take the lives of those that I grew close to without them ever being aware of why almost broke me. I've down what I had to, and I can never atone for the crimes I have committed, but at least now whoever reads this will know why we have to do these awful things.
"Okay, bro, you look dead. Get a drink, get your ass back here, and carve out a little piece of real estate for yourself, if you can. We are doing forward lunges next," shouted my trainer, Vera.
I hated my trainer, Vera.
I hated her short, pink, Instagrammable hair. I hated the huge tattoo of Rocky III villain, Soviet super-jock Ivan Drago, that dominated her left arm. I hated her voice and hated the way she yelled out orders with her hands on her hips like some kind of demented, super-buff Veruca Salt.
A couple of private sessions ago, Vera and I were still pretending to banter back and forth. I had requested training sessions from her specifically because I had developed an intense sexual crush on her from watching her around the gym. Now, drenched in sweat, knock kneed, and painfully aware of my doughy paunch, I just resented her, particularly her cloying insistence I be more assertive about "claiming my own space" on the gym floor.
"Maybe if I whip it out and piss all over one of these yuppies' Adidas Ultraboost sneakers it will show them whose territory this is," I muttered under my breath, hobbling over to the nearest fountain.
I'd just finished a set of burpees and my thighs and calves were quivering blobs of jelly. My hands felt gritty and numb from slamming repeatedly against the gym floor to get down in position. Before the burpees we had done a set of goblet squats that left my thighs in agony, and before *that* we had started off with two-handed dumbbell swings. My biceps and shoulders were shrieking at me. My breath was coming in raggedy, raspy bursts. I felt like I might puke. And god, I loathed lunges.
My gym was hip, sleek, cool. The walls were covered with floor to ceiling mirrors and all the cardio equipment came with television monitors and access to social media platforms so that the young tech professionals didn't need to need to neglect their Twitter timelines while they got their heart rates up, and there was row after row of weight machines and free weight stations and squat stations in the cavernous space. Twenty or thirty feet to my left, as I limped over to the fountain, several buff bros in bandanas and sloganed tee shirts were yelling encouragement to each other as they worked out on the enormous TRX station. "You got it bro, crank out four more for me!" yelled a swarthy, imposingly muscular man wearing a sleeveless tee shirt that said "Pain is Weakness Leaving Your Body" at his buddy, a trim but muscular dude with dark hair that was still moussed and styled as he did pull-ups.
I bent over and sucked down some lukewarm water from the fountain. The water tasted a little rusty--if you wanted the good stuff it started at 3.50 a bottle in the juice bar. I was hunched over awkwardly, and some water went down the wrong way and I had coughing spasms for what felt like a very long time. When I looked up, I saw this guy I'd heard some of the other dudes in the locker room call "Pusher" skulking in a shadowy corner between the fountain and yet another rack of kettlebells. Pusher was grinning at me.
Pusher was a white guy with close cropped, blond hair, and brilliant blue eyes a million blue miles deep.He was wearing an orange and blue Adidas tracksuit and a pair of pearl white on off-white Jordan 1 high tops, and he was staring at me with undisguised amusement.
I knew from locker room scuttlebutt that Pusher sold "supplements" of the grey and black market variety. My gym was full of vain, aging men with deep pockets, and so he made a mint selling high end steroids, designer nootropics, and HGH injection kits to 50 something lawyers trying to keep up with 20something third wives.
To my surprise, Pusher stepped toward me, smooth as silk,
and pushed a fat, black pill into my sweat-slick palm and gently but firmly pressed my fingers closed in a fist around it. "Take this," he said with a grin. His voice was a rich baritone and his face was placid, amused--a cameo of cool guy-ness. Portrait of a drug pusher as prom king.
The pill felt slimy and warm against my hot flesh. I gingerly opened my fingers and looked down and saw spidery rivulets already running down my sweaty palm, as though the pill was beginning to dissolve right in my hand. At first the rivulets looked black, but the more i looked at them the more they looked shimmery, iridescent. The iridescence was hypnotizing, transfixing, and somehow making me feel a vertiginous and a little disoriented.
I had every intention of demurring on the pill, but then I looked him in the eyes again, and something i saw in them simply compelled me to scoop the pill into my mouth and wash it down hastily with all the water I could guzzle. It was the closest I had ever come to being on the wrong end of the ol' "These are not the droids you're looking for" trick. The taste was sickening--bitter and rancid like butter gone bad.
He winked at me. "In about a minute, your workout with Ivanka Drago over there is gonna get a lot more bearable. You'll be doing handstand push-ups before you know it."
I laughed outright, "Bro, I've never done a handstand in my life, let alone a handstand push up."
In a blink, though, it occurred to me that that just a minute ago I had been gasping and wheezing but now my lungs felt full and strong. And my muscles, which had been tight and tremulous, now felt loose and replenished.
I felt powerful. I felt vast, as if, like the dead poet with a great beard once said, "I contain multitudes." Everyone around me seemed to be moving in slow motion, but I was moving at double speed. The world was alive with colors, and I felt like every shadow wanted to tell me a secret.
My reverie was broken when Vera yelled over, "Okay dude enough pussyfooting around. Gimme some lunges!"
I looked at Pusher once more and even though his lips didn't move it felt like I heard his voice in my head say "If you like this shit, dude, meet me at John Barleycorn after your workout. We should talk."
My eyes must have gone agog because he looked at me and said, this time with his lips moving, "You heard me right. Go get 'em, Tiger," and then he winked and shuffled off.
"This shit is amazing. I can't even believe how pumped I feel right now," I was yelling across the table at Pusher. Even on a Wednesday night, John Barleycorn is crowded and loud.
I was so amped up that I was grasping the side of our table with whitening knuckles and clenching and unclenching my jaw compulsively. I'd blown through a set of lunges, and then, when I took my water break, I'd been so psyched that I'd tried to actually do a handstand push-up. I cranked out 15 of them effortlessly, strutted back over, and told Vera to hit me with her best shot. The next 20 minutes of training were brutal, and under normal circumstances the sets would have killed me, but the harder I worked the more psyched I felt.
Not only did I feel powerful and agile, but it felt like I could anticipate what was about to happen right before it happened. It felt like I could literally scan the brains of people around me, hear their thoughts. After the workout, Vera had asked me if I wanted to grab a drink or something, but I'd blown her off, telling her I had someplace important to be.
And of course, I did have someplace important to be. At that moment there was nothing more important to me than finding Pusher.
So we sat at a two person table on the bottom floor of John Barleycorn and sipped our drinks and I raved at him about how the pill made me feel--told him things he must have heard a million times by now as if they should have the full force of revelation for him that they did for me there and then, feeling these feelings for the first time. Pusher sat back coolly and looked at me. Our table was right beneath a shelf decorated by a huge model of a wooden schooner. Farther behind Pusher was a big decorative steering wheel from some kind of old boat and I imagined for a moment that I could create a yacht out of thin air, just with my thoughts, and use that wheel to steer it around Lincoln Park. I was out there, dude.
Luckily, a white knuckled white guy, sucking back a Stoli on the rocks and raving about how amped up he is doesn't really stand out in a douche bro bar like John Barleycorn, where patrons are in and out of the bathrooms doing lines of Bolivian marching powder in semi-regular rotations like little clockwork coke fiends. The table next to us was occupied by three Chads and a Trixie, all in Vineyard Vines regalia, each slugging down a different microbrew beer. I used what now felt like Superman X-Ray vision to zero in on a pocket of white flecks beneath one of the men's noses. I smirked at him, made a motion to him to wipe it off. He looked bewildered, cowed. He did as I had beckoned him to do.
Pusher looked over at them, winked at the girl in the bright blue Vineyard Vines whale logo tee shirt and the pink Cubs hat, and then did the trick again where he looked at me and seemed to beam a thought right into my head. "Be easy, man," I heard him say although he was not actually talking, "Don't act like too much of a clown. We wanna keep this shit low key for right now."
My eyes went agog again. I patted the side of my head with the heel of my hand, like I was trying to clear my head after falling off a bicycle or something.
This time he actually talked, "It's not in your imagination. I gave you some real good shit. We call it 'Konami Code,' and it is lit as fuck. I can hook you up again. I can even get you started making some real money by moving it yourself. But you can't be a spaz and just start blabbing about this to everybody at the office tomorrow. Comprende?"
I did. I understood perfectly.
"You look a little stressed, buddy," I said to Henderson, clasping my strong right hand on his stooped shoulder in an avuncular way. "Work getting to you?"
Henderson's dark green polo was ludicrously wrinkled and hanging too loose on him. He had been overwhelmed with a project for the past month, and it was taking its toll. He clearly had been missing meals, and his shaggy brown hair and the big bags under his eyes told me he'd been neglecting sleep and basic self-care, too. It was what Pusher would call an opportunity for us to be "mutually beneficial," since I could always use another customer and Henderson could sure a hell use a little KC in his system right now.
Six of my coworkers were buying from me regularly now, and the office was humming and throbbing with a kind of electric vitality. Because I controlled the Code, I was seen as the alpha in this souped-up monkey house; but I rarely used the drug myself, preferring to save it for special occasions.
In all candor, I didn't care for some of the side-effects. Not only did Konami Code make me far more aggressive than I was comfortable with being, and not only did I wake up with king-hell hangovers after every use, but the pills also caused some bizarre side effects in the way I perceived reality. I would see anthropomorphic shadows at the blurry edges of my field of vision, and the shadows sometimes seemed to try to take experimental steps into being in my full line of sight (somehow I intuitively knew how to will my brain to banish them each time they did). Moreover, I was experiencing more and more frequent episodes of jamais vu--the sudden feeling that a mundane and familiar environment is alien and unfamiliar--by the 3rd and 4th times I dosed. The 5th time, when I had an episode of lost time and had to retrace my steps over the course of several hours based on the credit card receipts unceremoniously stuffed into the pants pocket of the suit I couldn't actually remember buying, I decided Konami Code was going to be an occasional treat for me, at best.
Henderson looked at me with a plaintive look in his eyes. "I uh, I've been thinking about coming to see you."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah," he said, "I've heard you have something that might...help me."
I winked at him. I put a fat black pill into his open palm and shut his fingers, just like Pusher had done for me.
"How much?" he asked, voice quivery.
"First time is free. After that, if you like it, we'll talk. It's reasonable. It's a lifesaver. It's….transcendent."
"It's a cheat code," he said, smiling for what was probably the first time in weeks.
"You know it, bro. Take it fast, though. With plenty of water. Doesn't taste great."
A few hours later, I was standing in the lobby of the Drake Hotel on Michigan Avenue with Pusher. Pusher was wearing a pair of orange Louis Vuitton slacks that looked baggy on him, and a white Burberry sweatshirt with an image of a huge black knight on a horse and wielding a lance on it. His black faced Movado museum watch was hanging loose on his arm, too, and overall Push looked pretty haggard.
"You okay man? You kinda look like shit," I said.
"Thanks, bro. Appreciate it."
"I'm concerned. I want my partner to be thriving," I said, half-serious.
"Yeah. I'm halfass trying to kick, so I'm Jonesing a little bit is all. See, Supply is always hassling me to quit using. Says that when you kick the shit for a little while, once you're at like the level I'm at, that's when you start getting super strong. They call it "Transcending." I call it "leveling up."
"Of course you do," I said with a laugh.
"Anyway, if he thinks I'm at least trying to kick he won't give me as much grief."
"What happens if you level up?"
Pusher shrugged sullenly. "Not sure. Not sure I wanna know. I guess you become part of Supply, but I have mixed feelings about that."
"You'll see when we meet him. I think it's 'Him,' anyway."
"Hey man, before we go down, I've been meaning to ask you. You've got this fucking god level product you're moving. But you say I'm the only one at the gym you've hooked up so far, even though there are a lot of way richer dudes you've been dealing everything but the kitchen sink to for years. So how come you picked me?"
Pusher grinned. "You looked loyal. And you looked needy."
"Gee, thanks."
"I don't mean you looked like a chump. You looked hungry. I wasn't looking for someone to get hooked--that'd be easy to find. I can name 11 high net worth individuals I deal to just off the top of my head who would have become steady clients. But getting steady clients isn't how you make money in the game. You find people who you think can move shit for you and you get them on your downline, working for you."
I was nodding. I had been thinking about getting someone to start dealing for me too, although I'd have to go outside the office to do it. I had been thinking lately about how much our relationship reminded me of a pyramid scheme.
"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you probably don't even use that much. Unless you have a date with Ivanka Drago or something, right?"
I had started dating my trainer. To be more accurate, I had started fucking my trainer once or twice a week. And those were the only times I used anymore, and lately I'd used it less and less often for our rendezvous too, as it became less and less important to overwhelm her with my virulence and our scenarios became more comfortable.
I nodded again.
"But you're needy-see you like being the center of attention at work, right? You like having what people need?"
"You're exactly what I wanted. And you've probably been thinking about expanding your own operations too." He motioned to an elevator and we strode across the seedy opulence of the lobby of the oldest standing grand hotel in Chicago side by side.
"Have you been reading my mind?"
"Sometimes," he winked. "Another perk of overly decadent use is that psychic powers blink in and out, as you well know."
A dowdy, pale woman, probably a tourist from Green Bay or someplace like that, overheard us as she walked past toward the concierge and scowled disapprovingly. She was wearing a white tee shirt with an American flag on it and a big cherry red MAGA hat. Pusher blinked at her twice, hard, and she tumbled right on her ass and got up, looking grumpy as a wet rat.
Pusher smirked.
The elevator stopped on the lobby and we got in. Pusher made sure we were alone, and then he quickly punched a sequence of floor numbers I couldn't follow and then hit B for Basement three times.
"Oh great, the basement. I always knew you'd take me cool places."
"Actually," he said, "we are going down just a little bit farther."
There was a terrible, mechanical noise--a grinding and a creaking and a humming--and then the elevator abruptly lurched neither up nor down but *backwards*, as though it were switching tracks.
"In many buildings built before 1930," Pusher said, "the elevators can actually be programmed to go to a secret sub-basement level, if you know the code. The sub-basements were built specifically to accommodate the, uh, entities we are going down to re-up from. They're very old, and very powerful, and although nobody is too sure exactly where they came from there's pretty good reason to think they live in the center of the earth, which is actually hollow. Most of these sub basements are in very old cities like Philly and New York, but Chicago had a few. This, I hear, is the last easily accessible one in the whole goddamn city."
"Jesus Christ, that is a whole lot to take in," I said, as I felt us descend slowly.
"Yeah. Also, Supply is pretty ugly. So brace yourself."
"What exactly does 'pretty ugly' mean?"
"It means brace yourself."
The elevator ground its way all the way down, creaking and whining incessantly until it came to an abrupt halt so jarring I nearly lost my balance. The doors opened agonizingly slowly, and the scene I saw when my eyes adjusted to the much dimmer lighting had me wanting to jump back into the elevator and mash all the buttons until I was on my way back up. Pusher probably anticipated this response, because he pushed me semi-gently into the milieu, and I felt him say in my head "Be easy bro. Don't spaz, it's cool."
The soi disant "sub basement" was actually a capacious cavern. The walls were rock, and savage looking stalagmites poked and protruded through the floor of the cave like the needles in Pinhead's face, while equally nasty stalactites poked down from the ceiling.
I couldn't tell where the greenish illumination in the cave was coming from, until it finally dawned on me that big gobs of greenish algae clumped on the cave walls were shedding their own light.
The most disturbing part by far, though, was the art adorning the walls.
As art, the cave paintings left a lot to be desired. They looked childish and furious--like the product of some demented delinquent with an eternity on his hands to throw an endless tantrum scribbling on his bedroom walls. But the effect they created chilled me to my bones. The artwork told tales and set scenes in crimson swoops and deep brown squiggles and blood black blobs and feverish yellow scratches. I couldn't positively identify a single entity the artist or artists had been trying to depict, but I could piece together stories. Stories about huge, slimy, tentacled abominations wrapping their tentacles around helpless animals and eating them slowly. Stories about huge centipede-like insects being worshipped by anthropomorphic figures--one scene clearly showed three manlike things feeding a fourth hogtied cohort directly into the mandibles of a wriggling black bug. At the center of the largest unbroken wall directly in front of me, I saw the largest single image I could make out: the scene depicted a gargantuan, elongated, segmented insect that looked like a centipede or a millipede with a nauseatingly oversized stinger attached to its ass segment; and this creature had a whole human shaped critter in its mouth, head first, feet sticking out, being digested alive.
I felt sick and dizzy and wanted to sit down.
Pusher, who had obviously been down here enough to be immune to the vertiginous and disorienting effects of the green glow and deranged drawings, nodded toward a metal door in a far wall that I would have never even noticed. "That's where Supply lives. I will go in, make sure it's cool if you come in too, and then uh, just try to keep calm."
"Fuck a duck," I muttered.
"It's a lot to take in," Pusher said. He walked toward the door and knocked three times. The door swung open and then slammed shut the moment he was through, and thus my view of whatever was on the other side of the door was most mercifully occluded.
I was drenched in a cold sweat. My mouth felt like I was chewing on cotton and I had that battery acid taste of adrenal glands going apeshit in my mouth. The last thing in the world I wanted was to go into that room and see whatever it was that kept the supply chain moving along. I just wanted to go home and forget about all of this. I found a clear and fairly clean spot on the floor and sat down and shut my eyes and tried, with no success, to do some half-assed breathing exercises a childhood shrink had taught me to try to ward off panic.
Though I couldn't see what was going on behind the metal door, I could hear plenty. I heard grotesque, sucking noises and sloshing noises and I heard what sounded like an argument in a language I couldn't place. Pusher obviously did not speak the language very well either, based on how garbled and halting his end of the conversation was. Supply was fluent, and sounded furious. Supply's voice sounded, more than anything, like the chirp of locusts in a dry season, interspersed with a high wild warbling like a cricket chirp turned up to 110 decibels.
At last both Pusher and Supply were silent for a long long time and then I heard Supply say, in a voice that sounded like cicada calls strung into syllables "New Pusher. Wait outside. You are not prepared to meet Supply."
It froze my blood.
"Thank God," I said through gritted teeth.
When Pusher came out, he looked pallid and shaky. He was sweating a little, and his eyes looked far off and haunted. He did not have a package with him.
"Jesus, dude. You okay?" I asked. I did not ask "Where's the product," although that was a major concern for me. I had hungry junky larvae to feed, back at the office after all.
He rubbed his short hair and winced. "Supply is cutting me off."
I stared at him, confused and concerned.
He said, "Supply says it is high time for me to step up to become Supply, to level up; and it's time for you to move up as a pusher. For you that's hunky dory, you're already ready, but for me that means I need to….detox."
"So what happens to you when you detox? And where do I get Code to move?"
He swallowed hard. "Detox sucks. I tried it once and it broke me. But nobody gets anything until I, as that cockscuking centipede thing in there says, 'Transcend.' "
Pusher winced violently and his entire body spasmed. I got the distinct impression his buddy Supply was an expert mind reader and probably didn't appreciate being called a cocksucker.
I sighed. I thought things over. I wasn't happy, but Pusher was, more or less, my friend. I said, "Is there anything I can do to help you?"
"Yeah. There's a lot you're going to have to do to help me. I'm going to need you to come in and check up on me basically daily because I am going to get seriously sick."
I grimaced. "How long is this going to take?"
"Fuck if I know. It takes as long as it takes."
The last time I saw Pusher, at least the Pusher I had always known, I knew he was going to be in rough shape. After work, I swung by his penthouse and brought some wonton soup and some goldfish crackers, since those were two things he could sometimes keep down at this point.
Pusher buzzed me up wordlessly when I rang, and when the elevator doors opened onto his atrium I could see the place was trashed. The subway sized poster from a Sex Pistols show from 1977 was on the ground, face up, the glass on the frame smashed and the tip of a green and blue plaid umbrella stuck right into Johnny Rotten's ugly, leering mug. Sconces dangled from the walls, wiring exposed. Tables and chairs were overturned and ripped to shreds. I wrinkled my nose, certain I could smell the tang of drying piss, like Pusher had been peeing in the corners of the room, perhaps marking his territory. I tried to convince myself it was only my imagination that the shadows seemed to be moving wrong.
Worst of all, the walls were covered with those same kinds of crude but starkly terrifying drawings I'd seen in the cavern beneath the Drake hotel.
Unlike the chaotic and scattershot paintings on the cavern walls, though, Pusher's had a unified theme. A series of five large images painted in red and black and yellow flourishes on the previously immaculate white walls showed some kind of hideous insect creature slowly transforming into something recognizably human. It seemed like Pusher was trying to deal, artistically, with the agony and anguish of his detox, and that he was determined to have a happy ending.
It was this narrative that he had painted on his walls, more than anything else, that convinced me to stay even though warning bells in my head were going off like hey-go-mad. If Pusher could see light at the end of the tunnel, if he was working toward some kind of redemption, then I owed it to him to feed him some fucking soup and clean up a little while he struggled.
The lighting was somehow all wrong in the atrium, and as I walked down the hallway toward Pusher's bedroom door, where I could hear something pacing and shambling around, the shadows I cast looked all wrong--long where they should be short, spiky where they should be round. Through some trick of the lighting, halfway down the hallway the shadow on the wall suddenly seemed to lunge at me and I threw myself breathless against the opposite wall, literally afraid of my own shadow. I dropped the bag with the soup and the crackers in it, but nothing spilled. I resolved to just check up on my friend and do my best to get him to eat a little something and then get out again.
The hallway, too, was completely trashed. The floor was littered with empty and half full bottles of Fiji Water and crushed tangerine Lacroix cans and Frito Lays and ghost pepper Doritos wrappers and the walls were smeared with something brown and crusty and I tripped over one of Pusher's white on white Jordan 1 sneakers right in front of his bedroom door.
I started to knock on the door and stopped short. I was sure Pusher was in the room, and fairly sure he was alone, but I heard so much shambling and rumbling that I was suddenly loath to disturb him. It sounded like furniture was being moved around, like drawers were being opened and closed. I could hear what sounded like whispers, but I couldn't make out any of the words.
Finally, I took a deep breath and felt sheepish. I'd come all this way, was I going to turn around now just because my friend was rifling through his drawers for clean underwear, or moving his bedroom furniture around?
I knocked. No answer, so I knocked again. This time I heard rapid, furtive whispering and then a voice that sounded like Pusher's say, "Yeah who is it?"
"How many visitors do you get these days dude?" I said. "I have wonton soup and some crackers. Thought you might be, uh, hungry."
"Okay bro. It's unlocked," said Pusher in a kind of sing-song voice. I felt a little uneasy, but was also inclined to cut him some slack since he had clearly been going through hell lately.
I pushed the door open and walked in. The room was very dark. Pusher had put in blackout curtains and the only illumination was a small Japanese lantern on the floor near Pusher's bed. Pusher himself was slumped against the wall, on the floor next to the bed and sweating profusely.
"You look like shit," I said.
"I feel it too dude. Come on in though. I think the worst is over."
"I hope so," I said. "You don't look like you have too much left in you."
Pusher was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of green Puma track pants with a white stripe. He had lost so much weight recently that his chest had sunken in, but his belly protruded in a round, nasty bump that made him look pregnant. I thought of cracking a joke about it, and thought better of it.
"So what'd you bring me?"
"Like I said, some wonton soup from Sun Lao down the street and some goldfish crackers. Nothing too exotic."
Pusher grinned at me in a way that froze my blood. I remembered he was in the process of "transcending," whatever that meant. If it meant wasting away until he was nearly disincarnated, I guessed he was doing a fine job of ascending. I reminded myself of his drawings in the other room, reminded myself he was a tough guy trying to hang on and move up in the world, and I reminded myself that I might have to go through something similar someday if I wanted to keep pushing the KC.
So instead of turning tail and running I moved toward him to offer him the bag.
"That's right, come close. All the better to see you," he said and I noticed how his eyes were buggy, and I clocked the purple pouches that had grown so pronounced underneath them they looked like bruises.
"You sleeping at all Push?"
"The Transcendent Mind sheds the need for sleep," he said.
"Okay but it looks like your mind could probably still use it," I said with a chuckle.
That was when I heard a wet, tearing sound like something ripping through a wet bag. I froze, dropped the bag, and tried to place the sound.
I smelled something foul and noticed a black, ichorous pool rapidly forming around Pusher, spreading out from under his ass. At first, I thought he had shat his pants, but then I saw two spiny, chitinous stalks protruding from his back and wiggling around in the air like a magician's fingers going "ABRACADABRA." I felt violently ill and the blood rushed to my head and I staggered backward.
Pusher's face began to contort. At first it looked like two balloons, one on each cheek, being blown up on his face as his skin pullulated, stretched to the breaking point, and then I heard him starting to dry heave and saw his mouth open and close frantically, his throat bulging out like he was trying to scream but unable to make a sound.
I took another step backward and fell on my ass right next to the door.
Things happened pretty fast after that. Pusher's cheeks broke open with that same sick, wet, ripping noise and two enormous mandibles protruded and began to clack hungrily. At the same time, I heard his jaw break and an entire head rocketed out from his unhinged jaw like a snake unhinging its jaw to swallow a water buffalo, but played in reverse.
It was then and there that I had a surprisingly detached, serene realization: The pictures I thought showed Pusher reining some beast in and transcending the process to become human again really should have been read from right to left. It all made so much sense that I had to laugh.
Now Pusher's body was being ripped and torn to shreds as a grotesque insect exploded out from his human form, rendering his old flesh a travesty of muscle and tissue and fat. The walls were splattered with gleaming viscera and I looked around with a kind of lunatic wonder at my old friend's organs now scattered carelessly on the floor. Most of his old head had landed near my feet, while I think part of a lung had flown all the way over to the door leading to his master bathroom. Either his liver or spleen had exploded leaving a trail of fetid black fluid on the floor.
I willed myself to look beyond the ravages of my friend's obliterated flesh and blood and saw something so hideous I couldn't even process it completely. From some angles the thing in front of my looked like a giant cricket because of its giant hind legs, which it was rubbing together to make an agonizingly loud and high pitched trilling noise that brought tears to my eyes. Most of its body looked like a huge millipede or centipede, with thousands of bristly little legs wiggling in all directions. But the head resembled nothing so much as the head of an earwig magnified hundreds of times. The eyes, though, the eyes were all Push--still a million blue miles deep, although now attached to stalks and roving wildly both directions at once.
I felt such fear and revulsion that I wished I'd had a little Konami Code on me. It might have given me the wherewithal to fight this abomination that had killed my friend, and get Pusher some kind of justice. But on the other hand, what if Pusher was still alive down there, somewhere?
I realized the thing was still a little dazed from the trauma of its violent emergence, transcendence, and that it was still trying to get its bearings. I lunged for the door and got it open, just in time to feel one of its tendril like legs lash against the back of my left calf which immediately froze up, swole, lost all feeling.
I staggered against the door, flung it open, and threw myself outside into the hallway, shutting the door behind me. It was a struggle to get to my feet, and it was with an overwhelming sense of relief I realized the big bug that had once been my best friend wasn't dexterous enough yet to be able to use a doorknob with its skittering legs and front pincers.
Soaked head to foot in a cold sweat I hopped on one foot down the hallway, to the elevator in the foyer, and mashed buttons desperately until the elevator came. I heard furious, cacophonous banging and chirping and shrieking (I thought it must take time for the creatures to learn to approximate human speech) but then, just as the elevator "dinged" I heard one last furious, futile crash against the door and a loud but tremulous shriek in a high wild hum that sounded almost human, almost like Push, "Hey buddy, why don't you get your ass back here so I can teach you how Transcendence really feels?""
I enjoy antiquing. I love going to big antique fairs and little garage sales, rummaging through old barns and farmhouses or checking out abandoned workshops. You never know what you'll find. There's treasure out there if you know what to look for. Some of the best stuff comes from estate sales. People will spend a lifetime gathering all sorts of stuff with a theme all their own. Most of the time it's huge collections of Hummel figures or endless shelves of Mickey Mouse souvenirs. But every once in a while you run into a real collector, someone who amassed a museum's worth of eclectic rarities. That's where I found the box.
I encountered it on a weekend upstate, in a manor house near Ticonderoga. Rich old recluse name of Otis Vandermeer had passed on and an estate sale of all his things was in progress. Seems like the old boy had really got around. Souvenirs from decades of world travels filled every room. I moved about the house with an eye from what I might be able to sell to certain dealers in Manhattan for a fast turnover.
He had a taste for the occult. The house was peppered with the bric-a-brac of magic and religion from every corner of the world. There were nail fetishes from Africa, shadow puppets from Bali, a totem pole from the Winnebago. One glass case held a collection of strange knives from Persia. Not everything on offer had the aura of the supernatural. A yellowing envelope which held a tuft of coarse brown hair had typed on its front, "YETI HAIR – NEPAL". Seems our departed collector had a sense of humor. Yet it was the box which caught my eye. Sitting alone on a shelf in one room, I could not tell if it was given pride of place or if it were being kept a safe distance from everything else. I was instantly intrigued.
The box was an enigma. The size of an old dispatch case, it was made of a dark and unfamiliar hardwood, the corners and joints so well matched that only with a magnifying glass could one see the dovetail. Brass fittings protected every corner and a brass lock of excessive size was set into its front. Dangling from the lock was a small but ornate brass key from which hung an engraved fob. Inlays of brass adorned the lid and all sides, seemingly random squiggles which on persistent scrutiny gave the impression of language. The interior was a single open space lined in what appeared to be shettim.
The box was in exceptionally good shape. No mar, scuff or scratch could be seen on any part of it. In fact, the only imperfection was on its external bottom. A scorch appeared to spread from the center of the bottom panel, nearly reaching the edges at all points. It seemed that at some time in its history the box had been placed on a hot surface long enough to impart this flaw.
No clue was given as to its original purpose. The card sitting next to it on the shelf merely said that it was obtained in Arabia and was of unknown origin. The estate agent speculated without expertise that it may have been for keeping jewelry. Yet it had no lining of silk or satin or velvet typical of such containers, no compartments or drawers. I intended to do my research or, if that proved fruitless, make something up. Antiques fetch a higher price when attached to an interesting story.
Of course I bought it. The price was far less than I expected. Priced to move, perhaps? Knowing now what I now know, I would not be surprised if the estate were eager to see it gone. The agent wrapped it in heavy paper and butcher's twine before handing it to me with the most peculiar expression on her face. Did she fear I would change my mind, ask for my money back and leave her with the box? I smiled at the thought and thanked her as I left with the package tucked under one arm.
Curiously, after only a few steps I felt the need to hold it at arms' length with both hands. Something about holding it against my body had set me ill at ease. As I made my way to my car I noticed that the box seemed heavier than even its sturdy construction suggested. I have to admit some relief at finally placing it on the back seat. As I made my way back to Albany I found myself laughing off a ridiculous anxiety at the thought of having to pick it up again to carry it into the house.
Once home I brought it into my office and set it on the work table aside my desk. A pen knife soon freed it from its paper wrappings. I stood back and admired it once more. Sitting there amidst the papers and other products of the modern world it seemed out of place, incongruous. No, it was more than that. I had the sudden impression that it didn't belong here. Not on my desk, not in this house, not in the city of Albany. A sudden dread at its presence flashed upon me before dissipating with equal swiftness. I laughed aloud at my imagination, chided myself for reading too many comic books as a child. The box was an enigma and my mind was filling in the gaps with wild ideas. I turned and sat at my desk and began the search for the true heritage of my new curio.
My first efforts bore little fruit. A search of various antiques databases showed nothing in pictures or descriptions that matched the box. I sighed at the thought of having to pay for an expert appraisement. Half the time I had the feeling these sagacious authorities were pulling their answers out of thin air. I did have connections at the University I could try, but I wasn't prepared to call in that favor just yet. Better to spend money if it came to it.
So wrapped up was I in my studies that I was jarred by the sudden sound which came from behind me and to my left, in the vicinity of the box. It was a common sound that bore a certain unease in context, for it was the sound of an empty wooden box whose lid had fallen closed. I turned quickly but saw nothing out of place. The box sat closed where I had placed it. I studied it for several moments with a peculiar disquiet. Perhaps it was excessive caffeine intake or a need for sleep that drew me to imagine a slight movement in the lid of the box, a faint tremble without obvious cause. I stood stepped over to the table to more closely continue my scrutiny. My hands reached out and slowly lifted the lid.
The box was empty. No insect or mouse had somehow found its way inside. I gave a moment's thought to other possible the box may have been disturbed. No errant wind or passing vehicle had caused the box to vibrate. I could do little more than dismiss the sound as a flight of fancy. Perhaps a tree branch had hit the house and I had mistaken the sound. With a shrug I lowered the lid and returned to my research.
Another hour passed without success. I found nothing in the way of pictures or prior appraisals that could match. I switched tactics and began searching on its prior owner. Turns out there was a lot to say about the late Mister Vandermeer. He was once wanted in Belize for antiques smuggling and had been a person of interest in Morocco concerning the theft of a rare musical instrument. There was a 1973 newspaper report from Sao Paolo mentioning he'd been cleared of the charge of attempted murder. A woman in Turin had been detained after attacking him in a trattoria, shouting that he was "the son of the Devil" as they dragged her away. As amusing as this all was it got me no closer to learning of my new purchase.
I finally got traction when a notice in a Parisian newspaper from 1987 caught my eye. A group called La Société des Magiciens had placed a legal notice in the paper accusing Vandermeer of stealing something called "La boîte sans fond" from their archive. I could find no follow-up to this notice in that or any other French newspaper for the following year.
La boîte sans fond. The box without a bottom? This box certainly had one, I'd seen it myself. I thought about it for a few minutes before the answer came to me. Did they mean a box with a false bottom? A group of magicians would surely have such props lying around. But this was no Vaudeville castaway. Its age and workmanship were obvious. Perhaps it had been the plaything of some noble? The inlaid décor suggested an Ottoman origin, or perhaps an attempt by a European craftsman to create something Arabesque. Such a lineage would make it highly valuable to a group of stage illusionists hoping to prove, or perhaps create, a lineage for their craft.
Thoughts came and went of both its monetary value and of the headache the Société could give me if they blocked any attempt at a sale. I could approach them directly and offer to return it for a generous finder's fee. But all that would have to wait. My first priority was to establish that this was indeed the bottomless box.
In my absentmindedness I retrieved the small brass key from my pocket and inserted it in the lock. It turned easily with a faint click. In hindsight I know that the box was already unlocked and my action should have locked it. Yet the top opened easily at my touch. I lifted the lid and peered in to examine the inside in search of some latch or mechanism that might allow access to a false bottom. Thoughts of finding some letter or document within that would help me to establish its history were dashed in a moment at what I saw.
The box had no bottom. Where once had been set a dark and grainy panel of shettim was now a void, a shaft that seemed to go down many feet into darkness.
It was several moments before I could shake off the shock of it. The lid slipped from my hand and fell closed with the familiar sound. I stood there for quite some time before reaching out slowly to once again open the box. As before, the bottom was not there. A glance under the table showed that there was nothing there.
I was faced with an impossibility. How could this be? Surely it was some illusion, a trick devised by the artisan that constructed it for the amusement of a patron. There was no shaft, only the appearance of one. No wonder the Société had been angered by its loss. Such craftsmanship was unparalleled. Unique. No doubt it would fetch a high price at auction. Again my mind drifted to profit.
As if to jar me from my reverie a gust of air, hot and moist, came from within the box. There was a taint to it, a disquieting combination of earthiness and meatiness that set me ill at ease. I hesitated to peer in too close. Instead, I fished around in my pants pocket and came out with a penny that I proceeded to drop down the center of that odd opening. I strained to listen but heard no sound of it hitting bottom or bouncing against the sides of what seemed a deep shaft indeed. How did they do it? How did the makers of this strange and wondrous curio make an illusion so complete as to seem bottomless? I wondered as I closed the lid and gave the key another turn in its lock.
No sooner had I turned from the box to check my computer screen did I hear a sharp, single rap from inside the box. Startled, I did not think to once again unlock it with the key before lifting the lid. In doing so I accidentally discovered the true nature of the lock as it did nothing to secure the lid. I lifted it with ease, to reveal the inside of the box as it was when I first observed it. Its bottom of dark shettim wood was once more apparent. And there, resting at its center, was my penny.
I stared at it in wonder for many moments before a twinge of pain in my hand revealed that I had been squeezing tightly the key in my palm. The key! It didn't lock the box. It triggered the mechanism that caused the trick. I imagined an illusionist in some parlour or drawing room entertaining a small group with the box. Perhaps it had been built for the Société des Magiciens as their masterpiece, a small trifle whose execution was so sublime as to leave even the most discerning eye perplexed. A magician's trick for the amazement of fellow magicians.
I retrieved the penny and closed the lid, then inserted and turned the key once more. Aside from the faint click of the mechanism I heard no other sound that might give a clue as to how this amazing illusion was achieved. Lifting the lid once again revealed the dark shaft that seemed to fall deep into the earth. I once more looked under the table and saw nothing.
I closed the box and wandered into the kitchen. A possibility was tugging at the edge of my thoughts, one I could not entirely dismiss. The illusion of the box was without precedent, the best I'd ever seen. But…what if it was not an illusion? What if the box was truly magical? I shook off this silly thought and went to make something to eat. But as I rummaged through the freezer the possibility that I had stumbled not on some clever contraption but upon a truly magical device was a thought too sticky to discard. Its prior owner was certainly the kind of person one would expect to have the real thing. And didn't the Société try to get it back, then seem to give up the chase? Maybe they were afraid to draw too much attention to the affair. If the gendarmes had taken custody of it, what would have happened? Odds are it would have been declared a national treasure or some such and disappeared into some vault. Vandermeer had it the whole time and did nothing to conceal it. Wouldn't they know where to go and get it? They could have paid him a ransom or sued him or even broken in and stolen it. They did nothing. Why?
I had plans to meet with some friends later that evening so I threw on some fresh clothes and headed out. It was the usual drinks and chatter and I ended up getting home late. I felt something was off from the moment I stepped through the door. Someone had been here. In fact, someone was still there. The lights were off and the alarm had not been tripped. Still, I could feel the presence of a stranger. With haste I went to my office. I had a pistol in the desk drawer. Once I had it in hand I turned on the light and called out for the intruder to show himself. Then I took a look around.
The office had been ransacked. Everything that had been on my desk or work table was strewn about, as if swept off their place to the floor by the armful. Books and papers were everywhere and my computer dangled off the edge of the desk by its power cord. The chair was pushed to one side. All was askew, with a single exception. The box remained exactly as I had left it, serenely untouched amidst the mess.
There was motion in the adjacent kitchen. I heard the sound of the back door being opened. With more haste than sense I ran into the darkened room in time to see a shadowy form make its way outside. I followed it out into the back yard, watched as it made for the tree line. "Stop, or I'll shoot!" I yelled. Then the motion sensors for the back yard flood lights kicked in.
Even now I can't say what I saw. I only saw it for a moment before it disappeared into the forest. It had two arms and two legs and it ran like a man. After that, I don't know. It was all out of proportion. It was too thin. The head was too long, and when it looked back at me before running off I saw its eyes were too big. There were no clothes and no hair, yet I had the distinct impression that it was covered in scales like those of a serpent. It was there for a moment in the light, then it was gone.
Of course I called the police. A search of the house and yard showed no signs of burglary. They concluded after a brief visit that I had forgotten to set the alarm and had returned just in time to startle the intruder before he could take anything. I told them I hadn't had a good look at the guy other than that he was short.
When they had gone I went back into the office and looked at the mess. I couldn't stop looking at the box. Somehow I knew the intruder had been here because of it. How did he get in? Why hadn't he taken it? I went to it and lifted the lid. The smell that came out was hot and organic. An animal smell. No, a reptilian smell. That's what it reminded me of, the smell of a terrarium where someone kept a lizard or a snake. A shudder ran through me as a wild thought came to mind. How had that thing I saw got into the house? Nothing had been open, nothing unlocked. Nothing but the box.
I snapped the lid closed and fished around my pocket for the key. My hands were only shaking a little as I inserted it and gave it a turn. Opening the box once more showed the mundane interior I had hoped to see. I closed the lid and picked up the box to prove its ordinary nature. I could see the scorch on its bottom, same as before. What startled me into almost dropping the box was the identical scorch mark now seared into the white surface of my work table.
I sat up till dawn in a chair in the living room, the key in one hand and my gun in the other.
At first light I managed to make a phone call to the Société des Magiciens in Paris. Fortunately the man who answered spoke better English than I did French. I had only to mention the box and the name of Vandermeer to get an excited response and a plea for my address. They informed me that a representative was in New York City and could be to my house that same day.
In fact, there were three rather nervous-looking Frenchmen on my doorstep by lunchtime. I ushered them in and showed them the box, still sitting on my office work table. Despite the lid being closed the leader of the three asked if it was "open". I knew what he meant, and showed them the box did indeed have a bottom at the moment. They were visibly relieved when they saw this was the case.
I informed them in passing how much it had cost for me to purchase the box. The lead man smiled and presented me a stack of Euros as thick as a brick. A quick flick of the stack and I knew that even with the exchange rate I was getting double what I'd paid. I smiled as well, a smile of relief to be rid of it, and handed him the key. We all shook hands as I was praised for returning them their precious box. One of the others gingerly picked it up and they all made to leave.
I felt compelled to tell them as they were headed out the door of the intruder the night before. Though I tried to make light of it I watched as the smiles melted from their faces to be replaced with a distinct unease. They looked at one another with worry before their leader muttered, "Merde". Then they all but ran for their car and sped off.
That was all about a week ago. Since then things have been pretty quiet. I did read about a farmer in the next town over having his prize pig stolen, and a butcher in the town past that being robbed in the night of some meat. Surely these are unrelated, and the fact that they are going in a straight line to the City is purely a coincidence. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment downtown. Seems there's a fella there wants to sell me an antique puzzle box. Wish me luck!
This is The Signal, a place for readers to find well written short horror fiction, and for writers of said fiction to have their work seen. The Signal is also a place for aspiring authors to submit their work for the upcoming podcast of the same name. We allow all subjects and styles of horror here, including sci-fi, comedy, fantasy, and everything else. As long as they are well written and exist within the horror genre, feel free to post them here!