There were windows in the flat that looked out onto the street. Women were in the street, a signal of the changing world. They did not cover their hair, and spoke loudly. Sometimes he listened to their simple inflections, their calling each other habibi as they laughed. He thought about Zahra, and felt left behind.

The flat had white walls and almost no furniture. There was a Western fireplace, not that he needed it. There was a very pretty couch, and often he sat there.
Once he had a sister, and he’d loved her very much. Once he’d had a mother, and a father. Now he had an empty flat, and he was alone.

They had left them here, alone to rot, first in the asylum and now in an empty home. While they lay cold somewhere, rotting away while he remained there. Alone. Sometimes it made him angry.
Only at night could he remember.

Something hard and small and cold at his temple. He closed his eyes because he knew it was just a dream, only a very scary, realistic dream. But he also knew that he remembered this. He was shaking so much he couldn’t even control his lips. He wanted to say something, maybe to her, maybe to them, but then, that sound. Black. And he’d fallen.

Upon waking he’d forget everything other than school. Sometimes he still got up in a rush, dressing himself and throwing things into a suitcase, sure that he would miss the boat. Then he would remember, and have to return to being alone.

He didn’t know how long it had been since school, but he remembered that Zahra had not come. He knew only what kind of hospital an asylum was; what kind of shame had trapped him.

At least he could acknowledge it now. For a long time he could not. He had not wanted to. He would ask the nurses to take him to his sister, thinking himself still back in Paris. They were all the same, and they all had the same tight-lipped smile. No, he couldn’t go to see his sister. She wouldn’t see him, and she couldn’t. Sorry.

Sorry? Sorry got to him. They thought he wouldn’t be able to handle it. He was still too fragile. But he had managed alone just fine.

When he’d think about her he remembered the recurring dream and he would try to connect what he could not. Sometimes he had to speak his name out loud, just so that he would not forget. In the heat of the night, he would whisper it again and again. “Mansur. That is my name. Mansur.” If he forgot that, then they would have kept him forever. Even a few moments of silence unraveled him, bit by bit. Now at home, he either left the radio on or played something. Anything, to keep the silence at bay.

***

His neighbors were nice enough. The wife of the abusive husband loved him, and he knew she did. At night, when he didn’t want to dream, he would play the piano. Once he had heard her sighing happily, and opened the door to see her staring in the hallway. She wore a tattered house dress, and he remembered that. She blushed, but stayed where she was. There had been a bruise on her cheek that night. He could forget his name every once in a while, but never the sickening shade of purple the flesh had been.

Sometimes she was also on her verandah, leaning towards his flat. Always in that tattered dress. He would come outside, and all he would have to do was look to the right and there she was. Listening, her hands over her chest.

“Why did you stop?” she once asked him. He shut the door and gone to bed. It was punishment in his own way, for flirting with him while she was married; while she lived a normal life.

But her. He would find her every day listening to his music that he played to keep the silence away. He would be repulsed by the bruise. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her to go away. He didn’t love her, but he didn’t hate her either.

Sometimes the woman had Zahra’s face. Just like his face, but womanish. That is when he got angry, and told her to leave. She would always start at his voice, as if it were too different from his music for her to process.

…And then, one night, she followed him home. He had been outside (why had he been outside?) and she had followed him in.

“My husband is not home tonight,” she said.

“Alright.”

“Who are you? Where are the al-Hamras?”

“I am their son. And you?”

She did not respond for a long time, he remembered that. “Are you hungry?” she asked instead. “I’m sure your cooking is horrible, if you are living alone.” She laughed.

“I don’t remember the last time I ate.” She had been horrified at that.

“How do you live, then?”

“I don’t remember.” He had simply looked at her, but she blushed anyway. He didn’t like that.

***

She spoke like a fellaha, a coarse village peasant. Her hands were rough like one too. In the doorway of the kitchen, he tried to stare only at the stove. “What village do you come from?” he asked.

She blushed at that too. That bothered him more. “Is it obvious that I’m not from here?”

“Yes. I’ve been to Paris. Now I know what real city people look like. I just forget a lot.”

She nodded. “The village is not important. My husband is from there as well. He’s my cousin, and he came to school here. He and I were supposed to marry when I was fourteen. So when I was old enough, they sent me here. Sometimes he beats me, though.”

“I know.” Mansur said.

She looked longingly at the stove, as if wanting to cook for him. “Is there anything I can help you with…”

“Zameena. My name is Zameena.”

“Thank you, Zameena. I’m… Mansur.”

“Mansur.” She repeated it, happy to say his name. Her smile was shy when she left. He was annoyed, especially now that he was conscious that he had no idea what he ate, other than that meal. He wondered if he had eaten beforehand, smelling his coat in hopes of evidence of a smoky tea house. Maybe that was why he had been outside…

***

He found himself in a cemetery, with flowers in his hand. Al-Hamra. He was looking for al-Hamra. What had made him want to visit them?

The stone was dirty, but even when he bent it away it remained. Too fragile, he thought, but that didn’t make any sense. He threw the flowers down and left.

***

The door opened, and he looked up. “Can I go home now?”

Zahra smiled indulgently at him, going to turn on the radio, “You are home now, Mansur.” He sighed. He forgot that too.

“Sorry.”

She also sighed, and came to sit on the armrest of his chair. She put a hand on his shoulder, so that he looked up at her.

“I’m trapped by my own mind,” he said. She nodded. Then he realized that she wasn’t there, because he was at home, and he was alone. The wound from his dreams had taken away his memory, and now he had no one and nothing.

***

Zameena came again.

“I wish you would stop that,” he said. “You surprise me.”

Her smile was sheepish, and she held out something wrapped in brown paper. “I wanted to give you this.” Before he could protest the gift, she was gone. He blinked. Had he already forgotten watching her close the door?

He looked at the package, but didn’t want to open it. He felt it would acknowledge that he still hadn’t turned her away. He pushed the package further away from him on the table, and then looked out the window. Outside, it was still quite early.

He wondered why the apartment was so empty. Had not his parents been wealthy? Where had all of their things gone? Thieves, he thought. Yes, thieves. Family members, probably taking this and that while he was gone. Thieving family members were the worst. If he could remember a phone number, he called them. But for the life of him, other than Zahra, he couldn’t even remember a name.

He lay in bed that night and thought about the flowers he left. He didn’t even remember what color they’d been, or what type. Or when he bought them. If he had someone with him, he was sure that they would tell him.

Before drifting off to sleep, his hand seemed to move up of its own accord. He felt along his hairline till he felt the scar. The line of hard, lumpy tissue extended from the front all the way to the back. His hair had grown around it, but he could never forget that hindrance.

***

“How did you survive such a terrible blow?” Zameena said. “Who did it to you?”

Mansur didn’t like the question. He tried not to look at the cuts on her arms, or her face, which was almost completely swollen.

“I don’t know. But I am here.”

“Where was your family, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“He beat me again, Mansur.”

“I know, Zameena.”

He looked up and saw that her hands were shaking. “What do you want me to do?”

She laughed, and the sound was a bit off. As if she were from the asylum. As if something about her had gone wrong. “It doesn’t matter though. He’ll never hit me again.”

Mansur had to stop. “Zameena. What did you do?”

Her lips trembled, but she looked pleased. “Now we’ll see who’s ruin to the family.”

***

There was a commotion downstairs, and he went out to see. The shoemaker and his wife, his next door neighbors, were smiling from the landing. When Mansur peered down the stairs, he saw Zameena’s husband, his shoulders hunched and his head bowed. A thing young woman climbed a couple steps behind him. Her hands were brilliantly hennaed, but she wore day clothes. He looked at the two neighbors. “He has a new wife?”

“It’s about time he remarried. That other woman was no good, I knew right from the beginning. Not that this one is any better.” He spoke to his wife, ignoring Mansur.

“So he’ll have two wives now.” Mansur’s voice raised loud enough for them to hear.

“He was alone for much too long, really. And after what that woman did, it’s time he moved on.” The husband shook his head. The wife nodded her agreement. “She didn’t know her place. Now he’s had to make do with this one.”

“Not even from good parents.”

“Perhaps she’ll mind him more.”

“It’s just too bad… So bad.”

The husband looked up. A savage glare stared at the couple through wire-rimmed lenses. Deep jagged scars lined his cheeks. One went through his left eye, which was closed. The husband reached his landing, unlocked his door, and let his wife in.

“I heard business is bad for him now,” said the shoemaker.

The wife sighed, “I heard she used a razor.”

Mansur slammed the door behind him.

***

He was in the cemetery again. He laid flowers on the grave. He noticed that they were the same as the drooping flowers left last time and was glad.

The gravestone was just as dirty. This time, he worked and worked to wipe off the dust. He got on his knees and took off his jacket. Sweat formed on his forehead from the exertion, but he continued on. He used his sleeve, his hands, even his fingernails. He was desperate. He knew that something would happen if he could just get that dirt off.

A memory came back to him.

I am alone, he thought. She can’t come back to me and she won’t. No one will. I would rather be dead than face her. Furiously, he had begun to tie a knot.

Curious.

He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead.

Suddenly the letters in the stone were clear. There were the words, in calligraphy he had picked out: Faruq and Noura al-Hamra. Husband and wife. At least now their memory would be able to see day’s light.

Other characters were hidden. The top of what looked like a Z.

And then, a voice.

“Stop lying to yourself, Mansur.”

He turned around, and there she was. The woman with his face. The only woman he loved enough to want to see. He smiled.

“Zahra. Habibi. Where have you been, my dear one?”

“You know, Mansur.” She sounded cross, but she wrapped her arms around him. “You know, and you left me all alone.”

Mansur pulled her out of his arms, so that he could look at her. She was still beautiful as she had been, and he was proud of her. Now they were reunited, and he could move on with his life. This was what he needed. He could be alone forever now, as long as he had his sister.

“No… No, you know that’s not true. You’re the one who never visited me.”

“You know I couldn’t. I have been here waiting for you.”

Confused, Mansur struggled with a response. “But I’ve been here before.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn’t you come to me?”

Zahra smiled as if embarrassed. “Sorry,” she said.

“I met a woman who is very much like you.” He paused. “Her name was Zameena. The name even reminded me of you.”

Zahra smiled. “I know. She’s here, too. She tried to help you come back to me.

And when Zahra turned around, Mansur saw her as well. He did not smile at her

“But you never looked at her gift, did you?”

He frowned. “What is she doing here?”

“The same thing that I am. That you are.”

Mansur looked at his sister. “No.” Anger. Black, furious anger. “She followed me. She wants me to be her savior, and I can’t. I cannot fix her problems. I have my own. I have my own life to fulfill.”

Zahra’s smile was that of a mother who is trying, and failing, to play along. “Mansur, you know that that is not true.”

“I am not majnoon, Zahra! I’m not crazy. I know what I know. I am no hero. I only want to live my life.”

“You chose to forget because it was too painful, Mansur.” Zahra was wearing a red party dress that showed off her arms. She covered them now, putting her hands on her shoulders. “But you do know. Tell me what happened the night you were shot, Mansur.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. Remember. Remember the thieves.”

Pained, looked away from her, anywhere but at her, “They stole our things.”

“Yes. And you were too fragile to handle it. You survived, but you hated that you did.”

“No… I went to school. School in England. Or. Paris. I mean Paris. I made friends there.”

“The night before the boat was to depart, Mansur, they came. Men with guns. They shot Mama first. You remember, Mansur. You kept staring at the red on your piano.”

“No. That didn’t happen.”

“Baba tried to fight them. You remember, Mansur. Before he died he told us to run away. But we didn’t. We stayed in the closet.”

“No, Zahra. No. It was just me they shot.” His eyes leaking, he looked from his sister to Zameena. Both faces were deathly serious.

“And then after I died, they took you to the asylum. You were healing, but you refused to believe we were dead. For many nights, Mama, Baba, and I sat at your window, and you saw us and spoke to us as if we had not died. But we had, Mansur. We had.”

“Please stop it Zahra.”

“You wanted to leave the asylum, and you kept asking them where I was. But they didn’t want to tell you, because they knew you would spiral again.”

“Stop it!”

But he did remember. He remembered all of it.

The men who had come in the night. Who had come upon them all awake and a little drunk, and with guns taken away his family’s life. Zahra had screamed, and he could not handle Zahra screaming.

The asylum.

The cold white walls and the need to get to the boat and the alone. The clawing at the door, begging them to let him go. They lied to him, and he knew they lied to them. And then he stopped knowing, and believed the lies.

Until it had been too hard to bear.

“Why don’t you open your present, Mansur?” Zameena held out the brown package. He glared at her, but ripped at the paper. He stared at the lone picture, incredulous.

“I took that. When I found you.” Zameena laughed, a bit uncomfortably. “My husband killed me when he saw it.”

Mansur stared at the picture, disbelieving.

Zahra spoke: “You can’t go home, Mansur. This place is your home now.”

But he could not take his eyes off the image. Blurred, black and white. He saw himself. The knot he tied was fitted tightly around his neck. He was hanging, not unlike a portrait.

He was

Mist shrouded the forest, blown in by the cold winds of November. Crows called to one another through the sounds of rain dripping from branches to the dead leaves that lay in shades of brown, maroon, tan and burnt orange on the ground. The gray clouds in the sky seemed to enhance the stubborn gold leaves that clung to the beech saplings making them stand out as one glimmer of brightness and hope amid the utterly miserable weather conditions. The rain was light, but it was cold. A wind was picking up making my journey through the forest all the more miserable.

I leaned against a tree and winced in pain. The reason that I was wandering through this forest was because I had seen the distant light of a lantern shining from someone’s house. My car had tumbled when a strange creature, like a bloated horse with boar’s tusks, had charged out in front of my car. The car had flipped, rolled and landed in a ditch badly jarring me. My shoulder had been rather badly lashed and banged by some saplings growing in the ditch. I had thought them to be willow saplings, but the saplings were harder than willow, harder than oak even. I had given them little thought at the time since I was rather disturbed by the sight of the strange beast that had run out in front of my car—not to mention the fact that I had fallen out from the broken side window of the car to land in the ditch where the wounded animal might retaliate against what it probably considered to be an unprovoked attack!

Fortunately, the animal was nowhere in sight when I had reoriented myself and climbed painfully from the ditch. It was then that I had spotted the distant warm light that seemed to be lantern light shining from someone’s window. I had followed after the light but had eventually lost sight of the light in the gloom of the forest.

I had thought this to be most peculiar, and wondered why someone would douse the light so quickly. It seemed like the person would surely keep their lantern on for awhile longer what with evening setting in. Perhaps the person went to bed early…

I froze suddenly. What was that peculiar crunching? The sound seemed to build around me coming from nowhere in particular. I heard a huffing sound, like the laboring breath of a draft horse, add itself to the ominous crunching. I suddenly heard a footfall very near me, and I ducked around behind a tree gritting my teeth against the pain of my injured shoulder. I peered around the tree feeling my heart hammering. I felt my heart leap into my throat as I saw what was making the noise.

The same odd creature that I had struck with my car was walking with a shaky gait stomping its forefeet down while dragging its hind legs a bit. The beast’s back was covered with odd tumors and lumps, some of which were oozing a sickly black pus that had a yellowish sheen to it. The stench didn’t hit me at once, but I nearly gagged when it did. The creature was emitting a foul odor like the smell of rotten fish mixed with a snake’s musk.

I quickly covered my mouth with one hand not wanting to gag and alert the strange creature to my presence. What if it attacked? To be sure, the beast didn’t look as though it could run fast with its disproportionately short and thin legs that carried around its heavily muscled back. The creature had a horse’s mane, which had been cut. I wondered what the owner was playing at letting a diseased animal wander around. Had the animal escaped on account of the disease driving it mad?

The beast suddenly stopped and turned its head toward me. I ducked back behind the tree I was hiding behind feeling tension pull my innards taught. The beast did indeed have tusks, and its eyes glowed like red hot coals! I shook a little as I remained silent behind the tree. This was no earthly beast. This was some devilish monstrosity. I nearly ran as a panic suddenly gripped me, and it was all I could do to keep hiding behind the tree.

The sound of the creature’s footsteps had completely stopped from the moment it had turned to look at me, and its breath was no longer audibly huffing out. I had the feeling that it knew exactly where I was and was debating over whether or not I was worth chasing down or not. I shivered and not just from the cold. My cold fingers were digging into the flesh of my face as I determinedly covered my mouth to prevent my breath from hissing out ragged and sharp. My legs twitched a bit wanting badly to run, and every moment that I waited to feel the creature’s teeth and hooves strike me drained more and more of my self control. I finally started to lean forward preparing myself for the inevitable loss of self control when the creature’s footfalls sounded once more.

My nerves leaped, and I was running before I knew what had happened. I heard heavy footfalls as I sprinted away, and my legs moved faster and more furiously than ever. I expected the creature to bear down upon me at any moment, braced myself for the pain of the attack…

It was not until I had sprinted quite some distance in a maddened state of fear that I was able to muster the courage to glance over my shoulder. There was nothing behind me, and I swiftly stopped and stared around. The creature was nowhere in sight, and I could hear nothing but the drip of the light rain and my own ragged breathing. To my right was a group of cedar trees, and I stumbled over to sit beneath the trees as my muscles burned and my throat ached with every breath I drew in. My exertions had warmed me a bit, but I would soon be colder than ever. The wind was still blowing and the rain didn’t appear to be likely to let up.

I suddenly turned and stared behind me. Had I really seen…? Yes, there it was! There was a light not far away. Light meant that there was another person in this forest. I could get out of this strange, dismal place at long last!

I pulled myself to my feet and hurried through a thicket of thorn bushes emerging to find myself in a small clearing. The clearing was almost entirely occupied by a log house. The light of a lantern was burning, shining out from one of the windows. I hurried over to the window. I didn’t see anyone inside, but I knew there surely must be. I ran around the house until I found the door. I knocked on the door earnestly. I thought I heard a soft sigh behind me, but I didn’t see anything when I turned to stare over my shoulder. Thinking it to be a trick of the wind, I pounded on the door again and begged admittance.

There was no sound from within the house. I began kicking at the door shouting very insistently that I needed to enter, for I thought myself soon to die of the cold. The door swung open very suddenly, and I was nearly knocked over by the edge of the door brushing against my unwounded shoulder. No one stood at the door, and peering in, I didn’t see anyone. I shifted nervously, but the warmth coming from the house finally made me hurry in. The door snapped shut behind me, and turning, I didn’t see anyone behind me.

“Hello?” I called out.

My voice echoed slightly down the hall, which looked rather larger than it ought to be based on what I had seen from the outside. There was no answer, and I hesitantly walked down the hall to the living room. There was the lantern burning on the table. No one was in sight, and I called out again. No answer came to me, and I spotted a hearth almost hidden behind several tall chairs. I hurried over there and squatted by the hearth barely taking note of the two teacups set on a small coffee table. The fire was burning low, but there were a few pieces of dry wood sitting at the edge of the hearth. I hastily added these to the fire. Flames licked up from the coals, and I held my hands over the fire.

Warmth gradually spread through my hands. The warmth was almost too intense for me at first, but it gradually soothed my chilled hands. I shivered as the warmth started to spread through my body. I turned around to warm my back as well, and I gave a start of fright when I realized that the room was no as empty as I had once thought. A large black dog was sitting in a basket across from me. It was watching me with an eager expression on its face, and I worried for a moment that it intended to attack me. It had the attentive look of a hound about to chase after prey it has sighted. The dog wagged its tail after a moment, and I relaxed.

The dog looked like a cross between a Doberman and a Great Dane although I wasn’t sure if a dog born from such breeds would likely be completely black or not. The animal’s eyes were crimson in color, and I felt rather nervous to gaze into those eyes. The dog’s eyes seemed to betray a greater intelligence as though it had a human consciousness.

I turned back to the fire again not wanting to dwell on such disturbing thoughts. The dog’s eyes must have just looked red because of the lighting. They couldn’t really be red. Animals sometimes had reddish hues in their eyes, so the fire must have just been enhancing those hues. Yes, that must have been it.

When I had warmed myself, I turned back to examine the room again. The heads of several different species of animals were on the walls, and all of them looked deformed. The mounted head of a bear had huge tumors rising from the back of its head that gave the appearance of swollen horns. A boar head looked unnaturally warty, and its tusks were covered by thick, warty material. Two deer heads were on the wall as well, and both had long tusks growing from their mouths like fangs. Their antlers grew every which way, and their faces were disfigured by tumors. I shivered slightly and turned my attention away from the ghastly trophies.

The two tea cups were on the coffee table, and now that I wasn’t focused on warming myself, I saw that a sugar bowl, a plate of biscuits and a jar of cream sat on the table along with the tea. I wondered what the owner must be doing leaving his lantern and his dog in the house. I doubted that there were any nearby houses and couldn’t fathom why the owner would be away from his house in this weather.

As the owner was away letting his tea grow cold, I helped myself to a cup, for I was thirsty. The tea was rather strong, so I added some cream and sugar. Once I had emptied my cup, I moved over to the table the lantern sat on. There were papers spread around on the table, and I gazed down curiously at the papers.

The first couple of papers were drawings depicting animals of the like that were mounted on the walls of the hearth room. I looked over at a piece of paper that was closer to the lantern and felt my blood run cold at the sight of it. I was looking at the plan to a machine that ripped bones from living humans. Glancing at another plan, I saw a similar machine that pumped blood from a human’s veins. There was another piece of paper that depicted some sort of strange altar made of human bones.

I backed away from the table in horror. I had come into the home of some practitioner of a dark cult! Perhaps the owner was out hunting for more diseased animals. I had to leave and leave quickly.

“Funny how people come in, make themselves at home then rush to leave,” a voice hissed behind me.

I felt my muscles jerk involuntarily, and I dropped the teacup I had been holding, which shattered as it hit the floor. I spun and found myself facing a severe looking woman holding a curved knife. Although the point of the knife was facing the ground, the stance the woman had taken suggested that she could easily lifted the knife and slit my throat before I knew what had happened.

“Who are you? Why did you invade my domicile?” the woman hissed.

Her dark eyes glittered dangerously in the light of the lantern, and I hastened to explain myself.

“Please, Miss, I was in a car wreck. I hit some strange animal, and I saw the lantern’s light and came for help. I wandered through the forest and became frightened by the same strange animal. I ran and found this place. I was cold and begged admittance… The door opened for me, and I came in,” I said hastily.

The woman raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, really? In that case, I shall forgive you for breaking my teacup.”

I nodded and suppressed a shiver. The woman was eyeing me hungrily, and I wondered if she intended to use me as a sacrifice in some diabolical rite to the devil. Her eyes were like pitiless voids, and something about them made me want to run screaming from the house.

“What is your name?” the woman demanded.

“Earnest Duray, Miss. I inspect steam engines over in Dunlay,” I replied trying to mask the nervousness in my voice.

“I see. An interesting profession…”

She suddenly leaned forward and sniffed at me. I took a step backward in alarm.

“Yes, you’ll do just nicely,” the woman murmured.

“I beg your pardon, Miss, but would you give me directions back to the road? I really ought to be getting home,” I said.

The woman didn’t seem to be paying attention to me. She moved around me in a strange, sinuous fashion almost as though she were dancing to some unheard music. She lifted her knife, and I shifted away from her toward the door. The woman took a slow step after me, and her eyes suddenly were alight with murderous intention. I felt a strange tingling sensation ripple up my spine as the woman’s already sallow skin paled so much that it seemed to shine. Her lips curled up into a feral snarl although no sound passed from her lips. I saw her teeth elongate and thicken so that she could not close her mouth.

I turned and ran to the door. The door would not open though I turned the handle, pounded upon the door and kicked at the door fiercely. Panic rose in me, but even the increased strength that my panic gave me was not sufficient enough to open the door. I turned to see that the woman was taking slow, purposeful strides down the hall toward me. Her teeth had shrunk somewhat, and the feral snarl was replaced by a knowing smile. I know that you can’t escape me, the smile told me.

I suddenly realized that the was a door between the woman and I, and I lunged toward the door hoping, praying that I would be able to open it and escape without getting my throat slit by the woman’s curved knife, which had begun to glow with a dull red light. I yanked the door open with a cry and fled down the stairs on the other side of the door. The stairs went down for a long time, but I was too terrified to take note of that. I kept glancing back expecting to see the woman bearing down on me, but she wasn’t pursuing. I finally reached a large, metal door at the end of the long flight of stairs and wrenched it open. A large metal machine dominated the center of the room, and I hurried into the room and hid behind the brass plated tubes that snaked out from the machine. My heart hammered in fear as I crouched behind the machine.

It took a few moments for me to be able to look around the room, and when I did, I cursed myself for not looking around earlier. On one end of the room, there was a series of surgical tables, to which figures were strapped. One of the figures was twitching convulsively in the arms of a machine that was digging long needles into the figure’s veins. I realized after a few moments, that the figure was a small woman but not a human woman. The features of the woman’s face were different. She had slanted, almost squinting eyes that were pure black. Her face was long an angular, her skull longer than a human skull. Her limbs seemed long and spindly, and her body seemed short by comparison. I thought that I saw the outline of wings every now and then.

Turning my eyes from the unearthly woman being sucked dry by the machine, I saw that the other figures were still alive but had been gagged and strapped so securely to the tables that there were neither able to move nor make any sound. I could not see them as clearly as I could see the woman being drained by the strange machine, but none of them looked like they were human.

Looking over at the other side of the room, I saw that there was a strange altar made of bones, which sat inside of a strange cross between a furnace and a bizarre machine that looked like some sort of steam engine. The metal that made the strange furnace/engine was blackened and corroded in color, but the metal was still smooth lacking the texture of a corroded machine. I felt a surge of fear as I looked at the strange machine and altar combination, and the desire to run was overpowering. I stared around looking for an escape when I heard the sound of movement beyond the door. I ducked down as the door opened, and the woman that had been pursuing me came in. Her teeth had resumed a normal appearance, but I knew that she was still dangerous. The ominous glow coming from her curved knife spoke of that very clearly.

My panic grew as I saw another figure walk in behind the woman. The thing was human shaped, but horns extended up from its brow, wings like giant bat wings sprouted from its shoulders and a long tail with a barbed end stretched out from its tailbone. Its skin was the color of coal and occasionally flashed with a metallic sheen even though the dim lighting in the room was constant. Talons tipped its fingers and toes, and its facial features were devilishly handsome. It was completely naked revealing powerful muscles covering a fairly slender frame and that it was somewhere between a male and a female.

Some of the poor beings strapped to the tables struggled feebly against their bonds as the woman and the devil entered the room, and I surely thought that I would faint away from fright. Even though I was hiding, I felt sure that the devil and the woman knew where I was. Indeed, it only took a few moments for the women and the devil to look over in my direction.

“Stop hiding. Come out,” the woman said.

I shook with fear, but defiance and a sense of dignity rose up. I wouldn’t die cowering here, I thought fiercely, I would die on my feet!

I got up and walked out in the open. The woman and devil both smiled revealing pointed teeth, and I felt another thrill of fear race through my body. I wanted to run, but the desire to run was rapidly turning to the need to fight. I pulled out the switchblade knife that had been forgotten in my pocket until then. Now that my fear was telling me to fight, I finally remembered that I had it. The woman and the devil both laughed at me when I pulled out the small blade, and I cursed myself for leaving my revolver at home under my pillow. How much easier it would be if I only had my revolver instead of this switchblade knife!

I suddenly let lose a howl and charged right in at the woman and the devil. I turned at the last moment hoping to use the woman as an optical barrier making the devil hesitate even if only for an instant. My hopes were dashed before I even could slash at the woman as I ran by her. The woman hadn’t even moved, and I quickly discovered why. Something struck me hard and slammed me against one of the machines. I let out a strangled cry as a hand tightened around my throat.

I realized that the devil had shot at me, grabbed me by the throat and slammed me against the very machine I had been hiding behind earlier. The metal was hot against my back, and as I gagged and clawed at the devil with my fingernails (I had dropped the knife when I had been unexpectedly slammed against the machine), my eyes began to lose their focus. The devil continued to squeeze and press me against the machine until black spots ate away at my vision. I grew lightheaded from the lack of oxygen, and I wasn’t aware of my surroundings for a few moments.

I suddenly felt my back slam against a cold metal surface, and I felt the air get pushed out of my lungs. It took me a moment to recover, and I quickly realized that I had been strapped down like the other unfortunates around me. The devil had turned away from me after securing me, and I lay there gasping. The wind had been knocked out of my lungs, and I couldn’t even scream in protest though the terror bubbled up inside of me, stretched my nerves taught.

I heard the woman muttering in a strange language behind me, and I shivered as a chill raced up and down my spine. I felt heat wash over me, and I felt panic constrict my throat. They were going to throw me in the furnace and burn me to death in some diabolical ritual!

I struggled against my bonds in vain. A voluptuous, green skinned woman on a table next to mine growled deep in her throat. She looked human except for her green skin, but I had no time to wonder about her. Soon we would all be fried to a crisp as sacrifices in some evil ritual, so it didn’t matter how we were different anymore. We would all die together soon enough.

The woman’s face appeared above me, and she touched her knife to me skin. A terrible cold sensation like the hand of the grave grabbing my soul made me flinch and squirm trying in vain to get away from the terrible blade. The woman laughed aggressively and played the edge of the blade across my throat relishing the terror in my eyes.

“So, Earnest, why don’t you tell me your real name before I kill you?” she said.

“I already told you my name. If you’re going to kill me get it over with,” I said flatly.

“You are a woman. Earnest is a male name,” said a deep voice.

The devil returned in my line of vision, and I felt cold terror gnaw at my stomach as his eyes and skin flared briefly.

“There’s no need to hide it. We can smell your scent, and your scent is that of a woman. Not many women can pull off the act as well as you can, Earnest. Your curves are modest allowing you to pass as a young male that hasn’t started shaving yet. Your shoulders are broad enough for you to pass as a man. Your jaw is a bit square for a woman. I can see why you did this. You wanted to escape the inconsistencies of your government. The wonderful idea of freedom made this country, but it has shamefully been trodden over, made a mockery of. Women aren’t really free, are they? Come now. Tell me your name so that I can honor your memory properly,” the woman coaxed.

I shivered. My instincts screamed at me not to reveal my name. Perhaps my name would be used against me. I couldn’t tell them that my real first name was Eugene. I shook my head.

“Pity,” said the woman, “I guess you’ll only be remembered as Earnest.”

She moved over to the table furthest to my left. I heard her pick something up off the floor as she moved over to the stout figure strapped to the table. I jerked as the most horrific scream I had ever heard in my life sounded only a few feet from me. The scream ended in a macabre gurgle, and the sound of blood pouring into a metal bucket.

The next figure strapped to a table started screaming too, and the scream of terror turned into a scream so horrific that I felt my soul shrivel into a small corner of my mind. Cold sweat broke out over my body, and I struggled futilely against my bonds. Frantic screams sounded from the table next to me, and I started to whimper in panic. A scream sounded again not as horrific as the previous two, but still terrifying enough to make me start babbling out prayers, begging for my soul to be spared if my life could not be saved. Then the woman was at the side of my table staring down at me. I let out a hoarse scream.

The woman smiled then released the straps keeping my left arm strapped down. I tried to jerk my arm away, but the devil reached over and yanked my arm out so hard that I thought it had been ripped from its socket. I began to scream more frantically than ever, denying, begging, praying. The woman’s curved knife plunged down into my forearm.

A horrible chill raced through my entire being followed by a painful fire. I opened my mouth and let out a scream that tore at my throat. The knife felt as though it was letting more than just my blood flow into the bucket the woman held under my bleeding arm. It almost felt as though my soul was leaking out as well.

Three more screams sounded as the woman and the devil completed their bloodletting. I was twitching and sobbing barely coherent. It took me awhile to realize that my arm had not been strapped back down, and I reached over to fumble with the straps holding my other arm down. Blood streamed and dripped onto my body and the table as I fumbled with the straps. Ignoring my attempts to free myself, the woman and the devil moved over to the furnace where the woman began chanting in a language I had never heard before. I fumbled more terribly than ever as the flickering flames dyed the room a deep red.

I started as the flames suddenly hissed and bubbled. I realized that the blood had been thrown on the fire, and the sickly odor that wafted over me nearly made me sick. I started again as a clatter sounded near me. The green skinned woman had freed herself except for the last bond on her right ankle. The woman and devil never turned away from their ritual as the green skinned woman untied the last bond with shaking fingers.

The green skinned woman sprinted over to where I had dropped my switch blade knife leaving a trail of blood as she went and tossed it in my direction. A slender, pale hand reached out and grabbed it as the green skinned woman sprinted over to me. The slender, elfin woman that had grabbed my switchblade knife disappeared from my vision, and I heard the chanting suddenly break as a scream erupted from behind me. The green skinned woman was rapidly untying the straps that held my legs down, and she had nearly gotten me loose when something crashed into the table I was partially strapped to sending the green skinned woman flying backward along with me.

I gave a last tug at my bonds and yanked my right arm free. I slumped forward, and felt something soft bump against me. Turning my head, I saw the elfin woman bleeding out next to me. I felt the bottom of my stomach drop, and I turned to see the devil advancing on us. Its face was twisted into a mask of rage. Behind it, I saw the witch bleeding and burning in the furnace. The elfin woman had not died in vain. She had eliminated one of the enemies.

I was suddenly being dragged from the room, and it took me a moment to realize that the green skinned woman had grabbed me by the ankle and was dragging me out of the room. The devil snarled and leaped at us, and I threw my hands up over my head and screamed. The sound of flesh hitting flesh sounded, and growls and snarls erupted from behind me. I turned and saw that the green skinned woman was punching, kicking and biting at the devil, which was fighting back. The devil was faster than the green-skinned woman, and he was also stronger than she was albeit only by a little. It was clear that the green skinned woman would soon lose even if she could take a few hits from the devil.

I cast about frantically for something to use against the devil. There was no sign of my knife or the knife the evil woman had been using. I turned instead to the table I had been strapped to and yanked one of the straps from it. I rushed over to where the green skinned woman and the devil fought and began lashing at the devil with the strap trying not to hit the green skinned woman in the process. The devil snarled a few times, and the green skinned woman finally slugged it good under the jaw. She kicked it a few more times then turned and sprinted up the stairs.

I let out a shriek of fright, for I had to jump over the enraged devil to get to the stairs. I managed to leap over the devil, and I immediately sprinted up the stairs after the green skinned woman. I heard the devil roar in rage behind me, and heard wings flap after a few moments. I let out another hoarse scream and hurried onward. Something slammed into me after only a few moments, and I felt talons dig into my flesh. I began screaming frantically and thrashing wildly. Feeling the grip loosen, I landed a few more kicks on the devil and fought my way free. I sprinted up the stairs again. The devil came after me again, and this time it pulled my feet out from under me. I yelped and kicked. The talons dug painfully into my ankle, and my kicking didn’t make the devil loosen its grip.

The green skinned woman suddenly appeared beside me, and she began beating on the devil as well. The devil let go after she kicked it in the face a few times. Grabbing me, she sprinted back up the stairs. It didn’t take long for the devil to let out another roar of rage, and I let out a pathetic whimper of fear as I heard the devil’s wings flap in the air again. The green skinned woman suddenly ducked down and yanked me to the stairs with her. The devil soared over us, pushed off the ceiling and came after us again.

I screamed, but the green skinned woman tugged me on running up the stairs with an unnatural speed. I tripped and was dragged for awhile at one point, and the green skinned woman only paused when she ducked to avoid another aerial attack form the devil. The devil roared as it charged after us, and the green skinned woman didn’t dodge this time.

My head was slammed to the ground with such force that I do believe I was rendered unconscious for a few moments. When I regained my senses, I was at the top of the stairs, and the house was burning around me. The green skinned woman was fighting the devil once more, and it was clear that she must soon lose. Many deep scratches from the devil’s talons were bleeding, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. I was too incapacitated to do anything for awhile, and I could only watch in a detached fear as the devil and the green skinned woman fought. I realized that the devil was getting slower, and starting to become shadowy and insubstantial. It suddenly burst into black flames, and the green skinned woman sprinted away from the devil as fast as she could. She seized me by the wrist as she fled out of the house, and I was dragged none too gently from the house.

Black flames exploded outward from the house moments after we had fled, and the wave of heat picked us up off our feet and flung us into the forest. I smashed my head against a tree as I landed, and I was quite dazed as the green skinned woman dragged me onward.

I confess that I don’t remember much more than a blur of trees after that, for I was too dazed to take note of anything. I believe, at one point, we fled past several deformed animals that were burning or melting into a black ooze, but I was delirious at that point and may have imagined it. When I finally came to my senses, I was sitting in a hospital bed. I was alone, and I saw that I wasn’t completely intact. The arm that had been cut by the woman’s curved knife was gone. I was told that a strange infection had caused the doctors to amputate it in an attempt to prevent the strange infection eating at my arm from spreading. Additionally, I had several black marks on my body from where the devil had ripped me with his talons. The marks gradually went from black to deep red, and they never faded for the rest of my life.

Although I never saw the green skinned woman again, I had the feeling that she was still around somewhere. My garden grew unusually well even in years of drought, and I had a feeling that the green skinned woman was behind it somehow.

I always lived in a shadow of fear never going anywhere without my revolver and several knives. Sometimes at night, I thought I could hear the distant roar of the devil, and my scars would pain me terribly whenever the sound echoed to me. I had a feeling that someday, perhaps when I passed from this world to the next, the devil would come for me again and attempt to devour my soul. Death had never frightened me more, and the fear only grew as I got older.

Eric Jenner was beginning to nod when the tires crunched on the gravelly side of the interstate. He jumped awake and swerved back into his place, thankful that no one was around to see him. Or hit him. He had tried turning on the air conditioning to full blast, and that had helped for a little while. Not long enough, though; Jenner was fading, and he knew it. In his twenty-three years of driving big rigs, he had only fallen asleep on the road once – but of course, that was all it had taken, as they say. His souvenirs from that little adventure came in the form of enough metal re-enforcement (pins in the legs, pins in the spinal column, and of course, the ever popular four inch plate in the head) to get him special treatment at airports. Since then, it had been his policy to quit driving as soon as he was even remotely tired; to pull into some hotel and just crash, even if he might only be an hour or two from his destination.

Tonight was different because his destination had nothing to do with his job. He had a feeling that if he didn’t reach Myra by tonight, she would be gone forever. If he stopped now, if he showed just one more sign of anger – even an unintentional one – it was probably curtains for them. She had already started talking about moving out of their house and getting an apartment. Eric had little doubt that if Myra did that, she wouldn’t be moving in alone. Not for the first time, he wondered whether or not he really had been better off not knowing about the man she was cheating with. After all, before that, he had been happy, and had assumed that she was, too.

Now he knew the truth, and he was miserable.

The first drops of rain spattering the windshield jerked him out of his thoughts of Myra, back to thoughts of the road. He didn’t mind driving in the rain most of the time, but then most of the time he was in his Peterbilt rig, and not in this dinky Honda Civic. Plus, he knew that after a little while, rain falling on the windshield would likely become a soothing lullaby, which was the very last thing he needed right now.

He glanced down at the cell phone lying in the passenger seat like the world’s smallest child getting to sit up front. He could call her. If he told her that he was tired and needed to pull off to get some rest, she’d understand. After all, she’d been there, holding his hand in the ICU and crying her eyes out as she stared at the damaged body of her husband. She knew that if he said he needed sleep, he meant it. Every time.

But tonight, maybe she knew something else, Eric thought. Maybe she also knew that she didn’t love him anymore.

So, no phone call. Tonight he would make it home, and he would talk to her face to face. If the stars aligned for him, if he could be very convincing, and most of all, if there still burned something inside her for him, he thought they might pull through.

* * *

He was fading again when he saw the smeared streak of halogen lights up ahead. He snapped awake, mentally gauging the distance to them so he’d be sure to catch the right exit. What he felt now was more than tired. It was an ache, the kind of soulless sorrow that comes from wanting to sleep and being unable to. It seemed he could feel it in his bones, in his stomach, behind the eyes he so desperately wanted to close.

It was a gas station; he could see it more clearly now through the rain. One of those middle-of-nowhere all-nighter joints, he supposed, and shuddered. If there was one job more lonely than his own, surely it was being a clerk in one of these places. He turned his blinker on, too soon, but it didn’t matter. It was almost two in the morning, and he hadn’t seen another car in half an hour. Raindrops fell, scattered, and were swept away by the windshield wipers as he pulled off the interstate, guiding his car mostly by the lights ahead, as if he were a mariner lost in a storm on a choppy sea, and the halogens ahead were the salvific lighthouse.

He certainly felt lost tonight.

The parking lot was rough; there were large cracks in the macadam which held sizable populations of weeds, these pushing up through as if to reclaim Earth for the flora. Caught among them were bits of trash – part of a coffee cup, a cinnamon bun wrapper, a broken beer bottle – souvenirs, no doubt, from this hallowed establishment, carried to a temporary resting place by wind and circumstance.

Eric pulled in, shut the car off, and just sat there for a long moment, hoping the rain would let up long enough for him to get out and go in without getting soaked. It didn’t happen. He reached over into the passenger seat and picked up the cell phone, flipped it open. He had two bars, which wasn’t much, but it would be enough should he decide to call Myra. He could do it; he wasn’t sure how close the nearest hotel might be, but it had to be closer than home.

Besides, this whole thing was probably a waste of time. In all likelihood, it was too late to save the marriage anyway; best for him to get over it and begin the process of moving on.

He put the cell phone back in the seat and opened his door. He would at least go inside and look around for something to wake him up, just to be able to say he tried. Beyond that, he could ask the lonely clerk where the nearest hotel might be – where the nearest town might be, for that matter; he wasn’t really sure there was much out here at all.

He was soaked the moment he stepped out of the car, and as soon as he shut the door he ran up to the awning, passing through the heavy sheet of drain water and gasping at the cold. He almost ran head first into the payphone, and wouldn’t that have been hilarious, he thought. He took a moment to shake himself off, wringing his hands, running them through his hair, wringing them again. Now his hair stood up in dripping spikes, and the skin of his palms was shriveled with moisture. It occurred to him that he was wide awake now, and that he could probably go another twenty or thirty miles in this condition.

But no; he was here, so he might as well get something to drink. Not coffee – Eric hated coffee – but something caffeinated. Maybe a Coke.

He walked to the front door, which was glass crisscrossed with black iron bars. “Charming,” he muttered, and stepped in.

* * *

The music hit him first, the smell second. Of the two, the music was more recognizable – he thought it was George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. The smell, though familiar, eluded him. It conjured strange scenes from his youth, existing as a cloudy ectoplasm enveloping the stage during certain scenes of the mostly-forgotten play of childhood. It was inane, alien, yet powerfully close. He both wanted to inhale deeply to explore its singular bouquet, and at the same time vomit it from his nose and thrust himself back into the night, where the rain-washed air would smell fresh and vivid and above all things right.

This smell was not right. It was wrong.

He stepped across the threshold, and above him a small grouping of jingle bells shivered into action, hailing his arrival by cutting harshly across Gershwin’s roving piano solo. They died out quickly, and the sound of the rain was slowly enveloped by the sound of the door whooshing shut behind him. Another tinkling of bells, and he was fully inside the store.

Something else felt wrong about the place immediately. Not only did it not smell right, but he seemed to be entirely alone. No one stood behind the counter; there were no patrons in the aisles. He hadn’t seen any other cars in the parking lot, so he supposed that made sense, but…

“I’ll be right there,” a raspy voice said, and Eric jumped. He looked in the direction the voice had come from, and saw an open door with the word “OFFICE” printed on it. On this door were a multiplicity of signs, including such witticisms as “THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES”, and “PROBLEM CUSTOMERS WILL BE TAKEN OUT BACK AND SHOT”. Oddly enough, these signs cheered Eric a little. They seemed to take a little bit of the creepy out of it, in some way he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

He turned toward the first aisle, and was startled to see a man-sized hourglass. Most of its sand – which was brown rather than the usual white – was in the bottom glass. On the top glass was a sign written by hand: TIME UNTIL CLOSE. This one seemed a bit less cheery than the ones on the office door. Eric shuffled past it toward the rest of the aisle and began walking down it, his eyes catching on things here and there. Car equipment on the first aisle: everything you could possibly need from jumper cables to air fresheners. There were sunglasses and phone chargers, phone cards and sun visors, ice scrapers and ice chests. It all seemed perfectly natural; if you were coming into this gas station, you were likely on some kind of long trip, and who in the world liked to take a long car trip sans those special accoutrements one could acquire most conveniently at a convenience store?

Eric smiled, moving on. He found that he had been wrong about the rain waking him up fully – he felt almost as tired now as he had in the car. Maybe a Coke wasn’t going to do the job. As a general rule, he tried to stay away from caffeine pills and energy drinks (he secretly suspected that cancer or something equally vile resided within such products, and that to use them even sparingly was to take one’s life in hand), but maybe tonight was the time for that rare exception.

The end of the first aisle ended up being the porn section. This was the part of any convenience store which he – and, he assumed, most self-respecting people – tried to skirt around, not because he had no interest in such things, but because it was uncouth. Now, of course, it was just him and the as-yet absentee clerk. The urge to look was primal, had been ever since he was a youth. Around about the time that that smell reminds you of, wouldn’t you say, a voice in his head intoned. He took a faint sniff of the air, dismissed it, and looked at the porn rack, checking over his shoulder first to make sure that he wasn’t being watched. There was no sign of the clerk yet.

What he saw surprised him; he had been expecting seedy stuff – this wasn’t a bookstore, after all – but he hadn’t been prepared for this. In place of the Playboy and Penthouse brand of magazine there existed a rack of sadomasochist literature. Magazines devoted to bondage and torture, leather and chains and spiked heels abounding. Women with barely-blurred breasts caught in vise clamps; men holding paddles with what looked like blood on them. There were faux vampire magazines; Goth dominatrix women with pointed teeth leering out from studded leather corsets. There were even a couple of magazines in what looked like Russian Cyrillic; one showed a man hanging himself, one hand on the rope, the other in front of him and – but for the carefully-placed shrink wrap one could be certain – probably on his penis. The other magazine featured three women, naked and not blurred out at all, sitting in a circle. Scattered among them were fake body parts. One of the women held a severed human arm up to her face, and was chewing on it. Eric raised an eyebrow; evidently, cannibalism had entered the world of porn since the last time he’d checked.

He moved on down the aisle, coming to the cooler, and by way of the cooler, to the portion of the store devoted to alcohol. Beer bottles and cans stood before him behind the glass walls of the cooler doors like rows of infantrymen, waiting only for orders. It’d be called the Charge of the Coors Light Brigade, he thought, smiling a little to himself.

God, he was tired. He brought his hands up to his eyes, rubbed them, stared at the beer.

Here was an idea: he could buy a twelve pack, grab some smokes (because it just wouldn’t be proper drinking without a pack of smokes), find the nearest hotel room, and drink himself to sleep watching some shitty old movie. Simple, beautiful, uncomplicated. He had always suspected that he’d make a pretty good alcoholic if he really applied himself to the task; here was the perfect opportunity to find out.

There was a metallic clicking sound behind him, and Eric turned to see that the clerk had finally come out, and was locking the front door.

“Sir,” he said, walking slowly back up the aisle, wondering if this place would even have something as urbane as an energy drink for sale. “Sir, I’m still in here. Sorry, I didn’t know you were about to close.”

The clerk turned slowly to face him, and Eric paused, mid-stride. The man was tall and lanky, sporting a button-up shirt that seemed out of place here. Eric noticed almost immediately that his left hand – and perhaps much of the arm that it connected to; it was impossible to tell with the shirtsleeve – was actually a prosthetic. The clerk’s pants, a faded but well-creased pair of black dress slacks, seemed to billow around him, as though his legs were thin as broomsticks. His face was gaunt and pale, almost a gray color. Eric only stopped staring two or three seconds after he realized he was staring and instead focused his gaze on the door.

“Ah, there’s always one or two,” the clerk said in that gravelly voice, his grin revealing two rows of broken and mostly rotted teeth, which Eric didn’t see because he was looking at the door.

“Yeah, well, sorry man,” he stammered. “I, uh…I was just looking for a quick energy drink or something. Do you mind?” He risked a glance at the clerk, seeing not agitation on the man’s face, but a kind of satisfaction. The clerk adjusted a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, and smiled, this time with his mouth closed.

“Not at all, sir. I’ll just leave this other door unlocked for you.” He waved his prosthetic hand in the general direction of the OUT door, and made his way around the counter.

“Where, uh…where do you keep – ”

“Third aisle, all the way back to the cooler,” the clerk said, and Eric noticed that the man was walking with a limp. Whatever had happened to this guy, it had fucked him up pretty badly. He went back the way he had come, this time passing the strange porn and the beer without looking at them. Sure enough, he found a host of energy drinks, named for everything from hip-hop singers to illicit drugs. Normally, he would have looked each one over – probably to see if the ingredients lists contained the word “cancer” – but not tonight. The store was already closed and besides, he had an uneasy feeling about this place. He grabbed the first thing his hand could find and shut the door.

The music changed as he was walking up, Gershwin giving way to some pop tune he didn’t recognize. So the guy has an eclectic taste in music, he thought, trying to fight the uneasiness and failing. So sue him.

“Ah, yes, the ‘Dumpsta Diva 202’, an excellent choice,” rasped the clerk as Eric set the large pink can on the counter. Eric hadn’t even glanced at the name, but he did now.

“That’s a weird name for an energy drink,” he said.

“I believe it’s named for the rap singer.”

“Wonders never cease,” Eric said.

“Pardon me if I’m being forward,” the clerk said, “but I noticed you were looking at our fine selection of…adult material. Anything in particular catch your eye?” He leaned across the counter, and Eric suddenly realized that the strange smell was coming from him. He still couldn’t put a finger on what it was, but the memories it conjured up grew perceptibly sharper; he was in his early teens, and he was in school doing something. But what?

“Sir?” the clerk said, and Eric came back to the present.

“Hmm? Uh…no. No, I didn’t find anything interesting in the por… in the adult section. Thanks.”

“Pity,” the clerk said, reaching up to adjust his glasses. When he did so, Eric saw a horrible thing. The clerk’s nose actually moved with the glasses. It was a slight thing, but in it, Eric caught a glimpse of the dead black chasm that lay behind the man’s prosthetic sniffer. What the hell was wrong with this guy?

“Pity?” Eric repeated dumbly.

“Yes,” the clerk said, finishing with the glasses adjustment. “I sometimes enjoy conversing with…shall we say, kindred spirits.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Eric said, and looked down at his energy drink. He had no memory of any popular singer who went by the moniker “Dumpsta Diva”. Knowing the current crop of famous people was Myra’s bailiwick, not his. But it seemed odd to him; surely even among the hip-hop community, there was such a thing as a modicum of class, wasn’t there?

“If you’re interested in hearing it, I’ve got one of the Dumpsta Diva albums in my office. She is…off the chain, as I believe they call it.”

“No, thanks,” Eric said, feeling genuine alarm beginning to creep in on him. “I’ll just take the drink.” He reached his right hand around and fished out his wallet. With his left he went for his cell phone – just in case. It wasn’t there, of course; he had left it in the passenger seat.

No worries, he thought. I’ll just pay for this and be out of here.

That was when he discovered that all he had was a fifty in his wallet. He’d neglected to take his credit card with him on this trip, since it had initially only looked like it was going to take him a few hours. Now, he realized that even if he wanted to get a room somewhere to crash for the night, he probably wouldn’t be able to. That was okay; as long as he could get out of here, he thought he could make it the rest of the way home. In fact, he realized, the small tendrils of fear that were encroaching on his mind had acted as the perfect wake-up – he felt fully alert now.

“Ah,” the clerk said, staring down at the bill in Eric’s hand. “Not only a late-comer, but a man with a large bill.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Eric said, not feeling sorry at all, but not wanting to piss this strange apparition of a man off. “It’s all I’ve got on me.”

“And you just assumed that I would be able to accept such a large bill at this late time of night,” the clerk said. “Isn’t that a little frightfully presumptuous?”

Eric looked up to see the clerk smiling again, this time with his broken teeth showing for all the world to see. It was in that moment that he finally realized what the smell was, and where he had smelled it before.

It was formaldehyde. The scene flashed before his mental eye: ninth grade, the science lab, and a young Eric Jenner standing with his teammates over the partially-dissected remains of a pig fetus. They had been kept in formaldehyde.

“You know what,” Eric said, backing away from the counter and slipping the fifty back into his wallet, “I’m sorry. I think I’ll just go.” His heart was pounding now, the not-quite-irrational fear swelling into terror of the clerk. He backed away several more steps, his eyes not leaving the ruined man, and he bumped into something, nearly knocking it over. He turned, only barely stifling a scream. It was the huge hourglass; all the sand now rested in the bottom half, and the TIME UNTIL CLOSE sign taped to it flapped in the slight breeze caused by the disturbance.

“I suppose I’ll just put this back for you, as well,” the clerk said.

“Yeah, sorry…I…I’ve just gotta go,” Eric said, and bolted for the door.

It didn’t open. Eric ran face-first into it, mashing his nose against the glass, and it did not open. The panic exploded now and became a hot white heat that ate rationality and shat adrenaline.

“What the fuck?!” he shouted, turning back to the counter. But the clerk was no longer there. Eric turned further, toward a steadily building wheezing sound, and saw the madman limping around the counter’s far edge. It took him a moment to realize that the wheezing was actually laughter; it was punctuated by little coughs, one of which produced a viscous black fluid which flowed from the corner of the clerk’s mouth, falling onto and staining his shirt.

“I’m terribly sorry,” the clerk said, his grin on full power now. “I seem to have forgotten to leave that door unlocked.”

“Don’t come near me, man!” Eric said, jumping back. This time, he did knock over the hourglass. It fell seemingly in slow motion, crashing to the floor and shattering into thousands of pieces. Eric, who had stumbled in the process of knocking it over, now leaped backward over what was left, as if it might form some sort of protective barrier. It didn’t, but he picked up a shard of glass, wielding it like a knife. “Don’t you even come near me, asshole! I don’t know what the hell all of this is, but you need to just fucking cut it out!”

“Sir,” the clerk said, reaching for his glasses, “this is a family establishment. I’m afraid I can’t tolerate foul language, let alone the brandishing of a weapon.” He removed the glasses and, consequently, the prosthetic nose, exposing two caves of blackened, desiccated flesh. “Even a weapon as ineffectual as that.”

“What are you?” Eric moaned. He could feel his grip on the glass shard weakening; could feel his knees wanting to buckle, his blood turning icy in his veins.

“A zombie, of course,” the clerk answered simply. “But you didn’t want to know that, did you?” He stepped forward slowly, grinning again; the black stuff he’d coughed up coated the bottom row of jagged teeth. “See, now you’re even more afraid than you were before, because you’re thinking that I’m either crazy – which is bad, or that I’m telling the truth – which I assure you is much, much worse.”

“Get away from me!” Eric shouted, renewing his grip on the glass shard so tightly that he could feel it cutting his hand; could feel the blood beginning to flow down his palm and onto his wrist. “Let me out of here or…or I’m going to call the police!”

“Oh, but you can’t call the police, of course, or you already would have. Did you think I wouldn’t notice when your hand went to your pocket? You were looking for your cell phone, but of course it wasn’t there. I’m betting it’s out there,” he gestured with his prosthetic arm toward the door behind him, “in the car. Sound plausible?”

“Look, what do you want?” Eric said.

“To eat your brains, what else?” the clerk said. “Honestly, I’m surprised you didn’t get that one right off.”

“My…my brains?” Eric said. “My fucking brains!” Now he was angry. “What is this shit? Am I being ‘Punk’d’ or something?” He glanced around, hoping to see the orchestrators of this particular prank coming out of the proverbial woodwork, knowing that he wasn’t going to.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what that means,” the clerk said, and began to lurch forward again. “Now, we can do this the hard way, or we can do it the really hard way. In either case, my friend, please know that I’m grateful for the nourishment which you are about to provide for me.”

“What are you talking about, you crazy bastard!?” Eric said, continuing to back up a step for every forward one the clerk took, as though they were locked in some malign form of dance – the hunter and the hunted, performing the two-step from hell. “Look, man. You’re not thinking right, okay? If you’ll just back off and let me use the phone, I can get you some help. I know a doctor who specializes in these sorts of things.” He didn’t; Eric Jenner couldn’t even imagine a doctor who treated this kind of head case, and he sure as hell didn’t know one.

“I’m not thinking right,” the zombie clerk repeated, the rasp in his voice somehow conveying a perfect sense of contempt. “My God, you can’t even speak properly to save your life. What has this old world come to?” He took another step forward, this one more of a lunge, and gave a harsh, barking laugh when Eric yipped and nearly fell over getting away from him.

“Stop doing that! Let’s fucking talk about this, man!” Eric reached out a hand to steady himself, realizing only a second or two later that he was leaning on the porn rack. He pulled his hand back, wiping it on his shirt.

“I find it difficult to converse with someone whose elocution consists mostly of sentences like, ‘Let’s fucking talk about this, man’. When you’ve been around as long as I have, when you’ve absorbed as much of the knowledge of etymology – which in the pantheon of things known occupies such a tall pedestal – it becomes rather boring to talk to the uneducated.”

“How long have you been around?” Eric said. He was stalling, and the monster in front of him seemed to know it; he stopped advancing for a moment, raising his real hand in an accommodating gesture.

“All right, all right,” the zombie clerk said. “I’ve got all night, and I’d hate to deprive you of all chances to think of a possible means of escape. Shall I tell you my life story?”

“Yes, please,” Eric said. The zombie stared at him for a long moment, the grotesque grin hanging off his face like a necrotic dream – the vision poisoned into a nightmare.

* * *

“My name,” he began, “is – or was – Joseph Bellows. I was born in the year eighteen ninety-seven, in Scranton, Ohio. When I was twenty years old, I was killed in the trenches in France. A bombshell went off a little too close to my left arm, tearing it off, and I bled to death before the corpsman could even get to me. Ten days later, I woke up back in Scranton, inside a coffin in the First Baptist Church, to the tune of ‘Amazing Grace’ being played on the organ. It was, of course, my funeral. I never knew how it happened, but…hey!”

Eric bolted.

* * *

He ran, past the porn rack, past the beer, the oddly named energy drinks. He ran wildly, seeing rows of soda to his left, aisle of chips and candy bars to his right. As he neared the ice machine at the back corner of the store, he looked to his left and saw a door marked: EMPLOYEES ONLY. Without hesitation, he slammed into it, and then realized that he had to turn the doorknob first. Behind him, he could hear the creature coming for him, its pace increased, its breath wheezing not laughter now, but genuine exertion.

I’ve got to get out of here, his mind yammered at him, over and over. I’ve got to get out of here! He burst through the employee door, praying that he would find an exit door right behind it. No such luck; if this place had an exit door, it wasn’t in the logical place at the back. Instead, he saw what appeared to be a dry storage area, littered with massive beer carton forts and empty boxes. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and Eric suspected it had been decades since anyone besides the creature now chasing him had even been back here. Or, at least, been back here and made it out alive.

To his left was the door to the cooler. It was old, with a pull-bar like that of an old refrigerator. If he could get in there and somehow lock the door…

He was in like a flash. From outside in the store area, he could hear the thing bellowing at him. He pulled the door closed, looking desperately for some kind of linchpin. For the first time that evening, fate smiled down on him. Not only was there a metal pin hanging down on a frail old chain, but there was a hole to stick it in. Lightning-quick, he stuck it in, then backed away. The terror did not leave him then, but it slowed a pace.

It was at least twenty-five degrees colder in here, and Eric was suddenly reminded that he was still drenched from the rain. He hadn’t realized he was shaking until now; the combination of fear and cold danced a furious clogging jig across his skin, and his teeth began chattering.

He heard the employee door opening, and then a banging on the cooler door.

“Let me in!” the zombie shouted, but he was laughing again, the wheezing quality of his breath an eerie mumbled drone in Eric’s ears. “I promise it’ll be quick if you let me in now. I can smell your brains, though, and they’re driving me crazy. Be warned; if you wait too long, I won’t be able to control myself.”

“How about you control yourself now and leave me the fuck alone!” Eric yelled.

No response. All he could hear now were the two ambient sounds of the cooler: that of the compressors pumping in the cold air, and that of his teeth chattering. Then he heard the employee door again, and through the glass between the rows of drinks, he could see the clerk’s figure lumbering out into the store proper. He used his free hand to move aside some of the beer, then peered out. The clerk was nowhere to be seen. All that lay before him were the dirty floors and lonely subdivisions of various unneeded products; a cobweb spun of man, its design fiscally predatory.

All the lights went out.

Eric started and sucked in breath, suddenly enveloped in utter blackness. He dropped the shard of glass, heard it tinkle on the concrete floor. He squatted, breathing heavily now, and felt for the thing, his eyes moving vainly back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Finally they caught something. It was faint, but it was there. A dim glow presented itself, lighting around two sides of a black angle. At first it didn’t compute, and then he realized that whatever light it was, there was a box between it and him. He reached forward, moved the beer aside, and peered out. It was the streetlamp outside. It should have been comforting, seeing that. Instead, it made the panic within him grow. If the only light coming in through the store window was the streetlamp, then the outside fluorescents were off, too. This meant that, for all intents and purposes, the store was going to be unnoticeable to the outside world.

In that instant, the glass cooler door Eric was facing swung open, the magnet lining giving off a pinched smooching sound, the hinge screaming a small scream. Then a hand – a horrible, cold and bony hand – reached through and grabbed him by the arm. Eric screamed, but it did no good. The clerk’s strength was amazing. He yanked Eric forward, and Eric’s face slammed into the metal rack above it. He felt warm blood trickling down his forehead, and for a moment he was disoriented. But then the creature was yanking him again, dragging him out of the cooler, knocking boxes of canned and bottled beer all over the place.

Frantically, he felt around the floor with his other hand, but it was too late for the glass shard. His torso was already partially wedged between the racks. It was a tight fit, but as more and more beer fell out of the way, there became more room for him to fit through.

He flexed and un-flexed his hand in the monster’s grip, hoping against hope that it would slip through; no such luck.

“Come on out, now, human,” the creature rasped, and Eric could now tell a difference in its speech. The words were slurred, as if the clerk had been drinking for half the evening, and they had an odd hollow echoing quality, as if they were words not so much spoken as merely produced. “I want your brains! I need your brains!”

“Get away from me!” Eric sobbed, unable to fight the pull of the monster as he was dragged the rest of the way through the cooler. He spilled out onto the floor, landing atop and around a heap of broken bottles and burst cans. Everywhere now there was the sound of de-fizzing, and the related but separate smells of alcohol and formaldehyde. A split second later, the monster was on top of him, its bony knee pinning Eric to the floor. Eric shrieked in pain as the knee drove into his kidney. Then the thing grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head up hard.

“BRAINS!” it croaked loudly, then sank its teeth into the hair and scalp.

Eric screamed as the zombie bit in. He felt the jagged teeth tearing skin from his head, and then grinding against something underneath. Suddenly, it was the zombie’s turn to utter a howl. The teeth went away, and the knee at his back slackened. Eric turned his aching head to look back and up at the monster. It was clutching both hands – the real and the prosthetic – to its mouth, through which came a horrid, rusty screeching now. He saw several of the thing’s teeth fall out between the fingers, rolling down its shirt and leaving a trail of blackish ooze.

The plate in his head. The zombie had bitten into the steel plate.

With a sudden burst of energy borne of pure survival instinct, Eric twisted his body, hurling the ailing zombie to the side. He got up on all fours, the throbbing pain in his scalp threatening to unman him. But he had to get out of here. He had to get to a doctor. Had to get to the police. Had to get home to Myra, even if she was cheating on him. He glanced around at the broken beer bottles and found a suitable one. Then he stood astride the zombie and held the jagged end of the bottle-neck up to its face.

“Keys,” he said. “Now!”

Wordlessly, its eyes wide and mysteriously dry over its empty socket of a nose, the zombie removed a hand long enough to reach down and grab its keys. It handed them to him, then returned the hand to its mouth.

Eric dealt it a solid kick in the chest, and was both surprised and horrified when his foot went through its sternum. He had to pull it out, which took some effort.

“Fuck you, man,” he said. “You fucking deserved it!”

Then he turned and staggered away, toward the front of the store.

Toward the locked door.

* * *

The rain felt surprisingly wonderful on his wounded scalp. Despite his terror, he paused a moment just outside the protection of the store’s awning to let it soak him down from head to foot. He found, for that brief moment, that horror was overcome by revulsion, and he had to fight the urge to retch on the way to his car.

Behind him, through the glass door of the store, he heard the monster again, its rasping scream seeming to grow closer, as if it had gotten up to walk off the mortal wound Eric had dealt it. That broke his paralysis. He dropped the thing’s keys in the parking lot, and reached for his own as he ran to his car.

Once inside, he fumbled with the keys in the dark for a long, terrifying moment – the one streetlamp did not provide much light out here, either – before remembering the dome light. Within five seconds, he was melting rubber getting back onto the interstate.

* * *

After only fifteen or twenty minutes of driving, he began to feel consciousness threatening to get away from him again. This time, however, he thought that it was probably from the blood loss, considering that he probably had enough adrenaline running through his system now to light a football field.

He was tired. He wanted to pull over and just sleep sitting up. Only for a little while, and then he could continue on his way home, where Myra would be waiting for him. Myra, he thought. How am I ever going to convince her of this one? Of course, Myra was low on the totem pole in terms of people he needed to see right now. He had to get to a doctor. Had to get to the police.

He remembered the cell phone, and looked over to find it in its spot, just where he’d left it. He wondered now if the thing back there would have attacked him if he’d managed to pull it out and call someone. That was an unanswerable question, and he suspected that there would be a lot of those in this case. He reached for the cell phone, felt his fingers close around it, then let it go.

Myra was what mattered. He didn’t know why, exactly, but somehow the events of this evening had honed his focus to a sharp edge that he wouldn’t have thought possible before.

Myra.

Myra.

Myra’s…

Myra’s brains…

Darryl Wheeler stood in the doorway staring at the pellets of rain that pounded against the pub window. His reflection looked sadly back at him and for a moment he thought his twin in the mirror was shaking its head at him in pity. I’ve been clean for six years. No heroin. No coke. Last week, at work, stress was pushing his buttons and he laid into a co-worker. The next day, he was called into the boss’s office. He was pointed to a seat and then told that to keep his job, he had take a psychological test, which he did the next day. He looked down at the evaluation the psychologist had given him earlier in the day. Somewhat paranoid: that phrase went round and round in his head. He had not told his employers his history of drug abuse. As he buttoned up his coat, the threat of yet another termination was rearing its ugly little head. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the rain. Buckets of it coming down as hard as stones. It collided with the pub windows as if it were trying to smash the glass and flood in.

When the rain hit the city unexpectedly a little after midnight, it was loathing and hateful to everyone. Transients took cover in store shop entrances, covering themselves with cardboard boxes and black plastic bags. Junkies scurried into gaping spaces between buildings, squeezing in with annoyed rats and other vermin. And with a long sticky tongue,

the rain found and dislodged the long-legged ladies who walked up and down the street like ducks in a shooting gallery, and smiled knowing smiles.

Pools formed carelessly along curbs, swirling and then rushing like hungry wolves toward the nearest living thing.

Darryl did not know this as he did up the last button.. CCR had just finished singing Who’ll Stop the Rain on the bar stereo. The news followed, warning people not to go outside in the rain, but the remaining few patrons and the bartender had other things on their minds. The hands of the clock read three-thirty. At least that’s what time Darryl thought it read, but the dozen or so beer he had slurped down over the last several hours spun his head and blurred the clock hands. Three-thirty. Closing time. He waved to the bartender knowing that he might not be chugging down pitchers of beer for the next little while. He reached unsteadily down into the little waste basket near the entrance that acted as an umbrella stand near the front door step under the yellow awning. Groping for several seconds, he realized he hadn’t brought an umbrella.

The newscast said nothing about rain. It made him angry. With today’s technology you‘d think they could predict a downpour like this. Resigned, he flipped the hoodie hiding beneath his coat coat up onto his head and stepped out , interrupting thousands of rather large raindrops in their journey towards the pavement. The sounds they made formed an eerie kind of music.

Strangely enough, the city streets were darker than usual. He looked toward the streetlights. They were still standing and alight, but they seemed a blur. I think I drank a little too much.. But why the hell not. Celebrate my being fired on Monday.

His leather shoes clicked against the pavement as the rain flooded the curb and poured over the sidewalk. The sole of his one shoe suddenly pulled away from its toe and the water nipped at his sock. He shook his foot

“Damn it,” he said.

He crossed the street in an attempt to avoid the puddles, but the harsh rain continued.

The lights in the bars that dotted the streets, and that usually stayed open late, disappeared as he walked by. No laughter, no arguments spilling out onto the sidewalk, no curse words emitting from patrons bidding a hasty exit. But it was three thirty am. And this was not a part of the city one wanted to be strolling around in after dark. Only the criminal carnivores spying potential victims from dark cracks and alleyways found pleasure here. But they too had been scared off by the unforgiving rain.

Darryl, now sopping wet, stopped. Rustling sounds drifted from the alleyway he was passing. He turned and looked. From the back entrance of what was probably a restaurant shone a light, beaming in full glory down upon a little man hanging halfway into a small dumpster. Next to him, a rusty shopping cart filled to the brim with bulging garbage bags. The little man’s feet dangled over a pair of empty rubber boots. He was tossing items out of the dumpster.

The alleyway appeared to be tapered and sloped. The rain seemed to be collecting along the wall the dumpster was against.

 Poor sap, at least I’ve got somewhere to sleep.

Darryl continued on his way, feeling hopeful. Another ten or so minutes and he would be in his warm bed. A long scream suddenly ripped through the monotonous drone of steadily pelting rain.

Daryl stopped. It came from the alleyway. He didn’t want to get involved. Let the police handle it. But he turned and ran back, feeling somewhat sober now.

The grocery cart, the well-used rubber boots, the rubbish on the ground–all there. The homeless creature was not. Darryl scanned the well-lit alleyway. Someone might have wanted to have a little fun with him. But the scream had not at all sounded like fun. Dourly, he went into the alleyway and peered into the dumpster. A half-eaten chicken stared up at him: milk cartons, egg shells, a pizza box, and some magazines. No street urchin. Maybe someone heard him scream and took him in.

He shook his head. Not likely. Sympathy for street people in this city came at a premium, especially in this kind of nasty weather.

The rain that had been rushing towards the tapered end of the alley had lessened. In fact, the swelling had subsided and the rain seemed to be retreating back uphill. But that was impossible. He knew it was impossible. Rain, like everything else in this world, could not defy the laws of gravity. Heroin and LSD could. Worms slithering up and down your arms, under the skin. But he was clean, so clean hospitals envied him.

Darryl didn’t know why he ran, he just did, his broken sole flapping up and down. He crossed on a red light, and stopped when he saw a police car. It sat diagonally on the road, its red top screaming and shining. An officer in a rain poncho looked up at him as he approached.

“The cells are all full. Go home and sleep it off, mister,” he said.

The words had trouble leaving his mouth. “ I saw … in the alley…the tramp.”

“What?”

He pointed down the street.

“ The alley!”

The officer swept up his night stick and rushed down the street where Darryl pointed.

That’s when Darryl saw it. The rain. As it rushed along the sidewalk, it began to swirl as if a pair of hands were wringing out a towel. But it swirled up like a typhoon. Darryl gasped because as he watched, what appeared to be a twisted pair of legs and a set of gnarled calloused arms appeared out of the swirl followed by a sinewy body, then a grotesque distorted head with what looked like a set of huge wart hog tusks. These tusks impaled themselves down into the police officer, whose screams reverberated throughout the empty streets.

Darryl turned and ran. As he ran, he saw the rain pounding the streets of his city; saw, puddles stream across neatly trimmed lawns and slide into cracks and under doors, through open windows, into cars. Looking, hunting, preying.

A restless woman, her hands trying to warm her arms on this cold night, stood, without an umbrella, in a t-shirt. The rain formed her hair into strings, and large drops probed her face. She didn’t see the pool of water forming around her. Smelling her. Suddenly arms of water shot up like sticky tongues, grasping her, anchoring her, and pulling her into the large puddle around her. She screamed, and a large eddy opened up beneath her and swallowed her up.

Darryl sprinted the remaining two blocks. He was soaked from head to foot, but he was safe. Thank God, he was safe. His lips needed a cigarette, but had quit those too years ago. Damn.

He leaned against the apartment entrance door and took several deep breaths. He stuffed a wet hand into his pants pocket and came out with a set of keys.

He unlocked the controlled glass door. The foyer was still there, with its plain red carpet and old armchair. He made his way to the elevator, pressed the button and waited. And waited and waited. He hit the elevator door in anger. He looked at the numbers on the top of the elevator. No light was running between numbers. He cursed again, and threw open the fire exit door and took the stairs.

He appeared on the fourth floor minutes later. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath.

He searched for his apartment key on the chain, and after using it, barged into his room, closing and locking the door behind him.

Safe.

He threw off his coat, stared at this morning’s dishes in the sink, went to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. He uncapped it and took a deep swig. He went into the living room, kicked off his wet shoes, then flicked on the TV.

A woman who looked like she had had plastic surgery to at least 80% of her body smiled directly at Darryl . “ Rain, rain and more rain. This city has been hit by the biggest rain storm in its history. And it won’t end soon.” She added another professional smile, then said. “I hope my hair will survive it. Don, back to you….”

He flicked off the TV and sat back on the couch. Did I really see what I saw? Shouldn’t I call somebody? He kicked off his pants and trudged into the bathroom. A shower always cleared his mind. That’s why he always took one before going to work, and after coming home. He turned on the faucets, adjusted the hot and cold, pulled up the shower control and hopped in. The warmth was exhilarating. And he stood under that warmth for what seemed to be the longest time. He felt the hot soothing water pulsing around his ankles. Then, a sudden realization struck him. He looked down. The water wasn’t swirling down into the drain, it was pooling up around him. There was no bath tub plug in place, yet the water had almost filled the tub.

 He screamed.

It couldn’t be. It was only the rain. Not the water supply. He lifted one leg and tried to hop out of the tub, but the pooling water shot up like a tongue. It grabbed his leg. A sheer cold numbness covered his skin. Another watery tongue sprung up and grabbed his arm. Another wrapped around his neck, cutting off his air.

Below him, an eddy began to appear, swirling faster and faster and Daryl began to swirl with it, around and around. The water turned red below him, and in the fleeting moment before he died, he saw the tusks, sharp and undiscriminating, waiting for him.

No tags for this post.]]> http://www.necrologyshorts.com/the-rain/feed/ 0 http://www.necrologyshorts.com/andrew-magenti/ http://www.necrologyshorts.com/andrew-magenti/#comments Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:05:25 +0000 admin http://www.necrologyshorts.com/?p=1661 by Allen Kopp

For as long as I live I won’t forget the night the young master was born. It was during a night of the worst thunderstorms I ever witnessed in all my life. All the fury of the heavens was unleashed upon us. The rain, thunder, lightning and wind tore at the old house on the outside, and the mistress’s screams tore at the inside. I don’t know which was more terrifying.

The mistress had the midwife with her and two women from the town. All night long the women toiled over the mistress and silently wept to witness her agony. Around three o’clock in the morning, at the height of the storm, the mistress was delivered of the child. Those of us who had heard her screams through the long night and seen the bundles of bloody rags being brought from her room were at a loss to explain how the mistress could still be alive. Toward dawn, while the storm was still raging, the women placed the tiny bundle in the mistress’s arms and withdrew without a word.

When the master was sure his wife was safely delivered of the child and the women had left, he went into his wife’s room. Thinking her asleep, he crept to the bed without making a sound and pulled back the coverlet. The room was dark—a sudden flash of lightning afforded him his first look at the newborn child. He recoiled as with an electric shock and bellowed like a wounded animal at what he saw. He ran downstairs and out of the house and was insensible and unable to speak for several hours.

Grotesque as the child was, we all thought it would die right away but, in spite of all our predictions to the contrary, it lived and began to grow. The mistress nursed it as she would a normal child. When it was three or four weeks old, it began to grow a coat of lustrous brown fur all over its body. Those of us who had seen the child every day from the beginning were less horrified at its appearance than we had been at the first, and all agreed that it was better looking with the fur than without. The mistress named it Andrew after a beloved departed uncle and told all of us firmly that, when referring to the child, we would use the personal pronouns he and him, rather than it. We all liked the name Andrew and it seemed to go well with the last name, which was Magenti.

When the mistress looked at Andrew, she didn’t see the monster that other people saw. He was fine just as he was—her darling boy. She had him moved into her room from the nursery so she could be with him and watch out for him all the time. Being of a religious bent, she believed that he was the way he was because God made him that way—for a reason. God knew the reason, even if she didn’t, and it was not up to her to question the workings of the Lord. It was her job to be a mother to the poor little thing and protect him from those who would hurt him.

The master didn’t like being in the same room with Andrew. He avoided looking at Andrew or having any kind of contact with him. By mutual consent, he never shared the mistress’s bed again. He believed she was responsible for Andrew, saying loudly and frequently that there never had been any freaks in his family but she obviously had some dark taint in her lineage that she should have told him about before he married her. If he had only known, he would have followed a different path.

As Andrew became older, his appearance changed. His head, which had been very large and elongated at birth, became rounder and more proportionate to his body. His face took on definition and didn’t seem the half-formed face that it once was. His amber eyes, which had once looked like expressionless fish eyes peering out of raw slits that never closed, became very large and expressive and had about them a haunting quality that was part human, part animal—eyes unlike any I had ever seen before or will ever see again.

There were times when the master and the mistress argued over Andrew’s fur. The master wanted all of it shaved off, believing that shaving was the one thing that could be done to give Andrew at least the appearance of being human, but the mistress wouldn’t hear to it. She knew that underneath the fur was pale pink skin like that of a pig and shaving it off would be a cruel denuding and a thwarting of nature. She did agree, as a concession, to have the fur trimmed around Andrew’s mouth and over his eyes to give him, she said, a more civilized appearance.

The mistress had all of Andrew’s clothes custom-made at great expense, including a long cloak with a cape attached in which he could place his hands that were like an animal’s paws but nevertheless as flexible as human hands. With the cloak was an odd tri-cornered hat with an opaque black net attached that could be let down when necessary, allowing Andrew to see where he was walking but keeping anyone from seeing Andrew’s face underneath.

The mistress believed that Andrew should not be kept prisoner in the house, that he should see something of the world, if only a small part of it. She was fond of taking him on little excursions in her closed carriage—visits to an old aunt and uncle in the next county—or to witness the beauty of the countryside in the spring or fall. Occasionally she would take him with her on shopping trips to town, where he, never leaving her side for a second, would draw the stares and gasps of the curious, swathed all in black as he was from head to toe.

For obvious reasons, Andrew wasn’t able to go to school the way other children did, so the mistress undertook to educate him herself. She set aside an attic room as a schoolroom, and there she spent three or more hours every day teaching him to read. (He learned to read and to write in a peculiar scrawl, but I never knew of him to speak a word, other than to make sounds in his throat.)

She bought picture books for him so that he could know about places like Africa, China, and the South Pole. He especially liked books about elephants, tigers, and curious animals like anteaters and lemurs. She read to him from the novels of Charles Dickens and the poetry of John Keats. On his birthday she presented him with a leather-bound volume of Keats’s poems for his very own to keep always.

The master awoke one morning in the spring saying he had a funny feeling in his head. When he tried to go about his daily business, he collapsed on the floor and we carried him upstairs to his bed. The doctor came as soon as he was called, but there was nothing he or anybody could do. The master died that night of what turned out to be a massive hemorrhage to the brain. He was barely forty-five years old.

He was laid out in the parlor in his elegant mahogany coffin banked with lilies and roses, looking more handsome and spruce than he ever had in life. A tiny smile on his lips and a hint of roses in his cheeks told us that dying might not have been what he would have chosen for himself at that particular time in his life, but, now that it had come upon him, all was well. Happy I live and happy I die.

A photographic studio in town offered a service they called postmortem or memento mori photography, meaning they would travel to wherever you wanted them to go (for a handsome fee) with their photographic equipment and photograph a deceased person before he or she was laid to rest. This gave friends and family the chance to own a likeness of the person in death without having to rely entirely on memory. The marriage of death and photography made perfect sense and proved a lucrative enterprise for those engaged in it.

The mistress engaged the photographer and his assistant to come to the house and photograph the master in his coffin on the day before the funeral. The men set up their equipment and took one shot of the master from the front and another from an angle and a third one from the doorway so that the whole room was included. Then they took a photograph of the mistress standing in front of the coffin in her fancy black silk dress with her hand resting on the satin edge of the coffin. When the photographic assistant asked the mistress if she wanted any other photographs taken, she brought Andrew down from upstairs and stood him in front of the coffin where she had stood.

Dressed in his black wool suit and stiff white collar and black cravat, perfectly tied, Andrew looked like something that wasn’t real but only imagined. To the photographer and his assistant, he appeared to be half-child and half-beast, but neither of them flinched or made a move to indicate that they were not accustomed to seeing such sights every day. Andrew looked straight into the camera with his strangely luminous eyes, his huge incisors slightly overlapping his lower lip, waiting for the man to take the photograph that would have unexpected consequences for him, the mistress and all of us.

Two weeks after the master’s death, the picture of Andrew appeared on the cover of a cheap periodical called The Nocturne, a paper that catered to the vulgar tastes of the masses. We discovered later that the photographic assistant had stolen a copy of the picture from his employer and sold it to the highest bidder, making enough money that he was able to go to the city and begin his own photographic establishment.

Many people who saw Andrew’s picture on the cover of The Nocturne wanted to know if it was a hoax or if such a creature really did exist. If he did exist, they wanted to see him with their own eyes. The Nocturne didn’t go so far as to publish Andrew’s name or where he lived, but many who knew about the master and mistress’s strange freak child —but had never seen him—knew it had to be the same child.

A newspaper reporter appeared on the doorstep, waving a copy of The Nocturne as though it was his pass to enter. He wanted to write a story for his paper, he said, about the life of the strange child that everybody was talking about. We turned him away without his story, but he swore he would be back.

Next came two men claiming to be doctors. They wanted to examine Andrew and explain to the world from a scientific standpoint how such a phenomenon had come to be. When we asked to see their credentials, they blustered and threatened to bring the law into the matter and force us to let them examine Andrew.

After the episode with the “doctors,” there came many other people, curiosity-seekers and the ghoulish who just wanted to laugh and marvel at Andrew as if he was a feature in a freak show. People would gather on the lawn and stare at the front door, hoping to catch a glimpse of something they could tell their friends about. The mistress said she had never wished more fervently in her life to own a shotgun and to know how to use it.

The people would not stay away, no matter how discourteous we were to them. There were those who would have walked right through the front door without so much as a knock as if it was their right to do so. The mistress had a ten-foot-tall iron fence installed all the way around the house. She hired a detective agency to keep some of its agents on the premises at all times. She believed the interest in Andrew would eventually fade and die when the idle masses had something else to occupy their time.

The fence and the detective agency men were effective in keeping people away from the house. Life resumed as it had been before the master died and before Andrew’s picture was published in The Nocturne. The mistress believed that soon people would forget and she would no longer need to retain the men guarding the house. The fence would be enough to discourage unwelcome visitors.

On an evening in late summer, several months after the master had died, we had finished with dinner; the mistress and Andrew were in the parlor. The mistress was seated at the piano, trying to work out a difficult passage in the Chopin piece she was trying to learn by heart. Andrew was seated next to the open window looking through a picture book. The air was stifling and humid and had been all day, but a thunderstorm that was brewing had brought with it a welcome suggestion of cooler air.

About the time the thunder and lightning began in earnest and the rain began pelting the house, there was a knock at the door. The young maid, the one named Alberta, went to the door as she had been instructed to do.

When Alberta opened the door a few inches and looked out into the darkness to see who was knocking, she was knocked off her feet and slammed against the wall. She regained her feet and began screaming hysterically. We all went running to see what was the matter.

Two dark, hooded figures had come into the house, silent and swift. They seemed to know the layout of the house because they moved with certainty, without hesitation. They went into the parlor where Andrew was, while the rest of us stood in stunned silence and watched them. One of the figures picked Andrew up in its arms; the other stood back as if to keep us at bay, but we did nothing. We just stood and stared, so shocked were we at what we were witnessing.

When they were making for the front door, the mistress made to put herself in their way to keep them from leaving with Andrew, but the other figure—the one not carrying Andrew—grabbed her arms and moved her out of the way as easily as if she had been stuffed with straw. While he held her arms in his gloved hands, he leaned into her face and said one sentence: He belongs to us.

They went out into the night, into the pouring rain. We all went running blindly after them but there was no use. They were lost from sight immediately, as if they had vanished into the air. We went to get a light and followed them a half mile or so away from the house in the direction in which we thought they had gone, but the rain and darkness kept us from seeing anything at all. We discovered the detective agency men unconscious in a ditch but still breathing. We carried them into the house out of the rain and tried to revive them.

When we called the county sheriff and told him what had happened, he came at once, bringing with him eight men. The sheriff questioned each one of us in turn. We all told him what we had seen but we weren’t able to give him any kind of a description of the hooded figures because every part of them was covered. When he asked me what Andrew said or did when he was being abducted, I could only answer that Andrew made not a single sound. When he asked me if Andrew seemed to be a willing participant in his own abduction, I could only answer that of that I wasn’t sure.

The sheriff’s men searched the area for any clues but found none. In the daylight, after the rain had ceased, even more men were brought onto the scene. The search went on for several days, but not a single shred of evidence was ever turned up. After that, the mistress hired private investigators to try to find Andrew and bring him back, but their search also was fruitless. There was no trail to follow and nothing to go on; no basis for a real investigation.

Nothing of Andrew was ever turned up. One year after his abduction, the mistress sold the house and all her belongings. She turned over all her holdings to the church and went into a convent to escape the unhappy world. She died in the convent two years later of a heart ailment. She was laid to rest beside the master in the Cemetery of the Holy Ghost on the edge of town. An ornate granite monument marks their resting place.

Several years after the mistress died, the night watchman of the Cemetery of the Holy Ghost, who I had known since childhood, sent me a message and asked me if I could come to see him. When I went to his room, he handed me a little leather-bound book that I did not at first recognize. I opened the book and saw that it was a volume of the poetry of John Keats. Then I remembered that Andrew had once owned a volume of poems exactly like the one I held in my hand.

When I asked the night watchman what this was all about, he said the book was left on the mistress’s grave and he, knowing I was the mistress’s step-brother, wanted me to have it before it was ruined by being left outdoors in the rain. I asked him if he had seen who left the book and he smiled and nodded his head.

I knew then that Andrew was alive. I knew also that I had to find him and talk to him. I wanted to know what happened on the night of his abduction. Most of all, though, I wanted to know where he had been and what he had seen in the intervening years.

“This can’t be happening to me, who is going to look after my mother?”

“Fuck your mother. If you don’t shut up, I’ll set you on fire right now.”

“If you’re just trying to scare me, you can stop now. I know you’re not really going to kill me.” She said, slumping down in the driver seat. She had mascara trails on her face that reminded him of a raccoon, or that religious lady he saw as a kid that seemed to cry every time a camera pointed at her. “I don’t want to play this game, and I need to get home and take my medicine.”

“I’m not playing any games, this is for real.”

“No, please, if you let me out, I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

“No can do, sweetie.”

“But you can’t do this,” she said, fidgeting with the chains wrapped around her ankles. “You can’t do this to me, please baby, it’s me!”

“Trust me,” he said staring down at her, looked deep in her scared eyes through the window, and felt nothing but disgust. “You are the only person in the world I want dead, and this is going to happen, so you just better go ahead make your peace with it. ‘Til death do us part; and all that other shit I can’t remember.”

“If you let me go, we can work this out!” she screamed out from inside the car. “This isn’t funny!”

“You can scream like they did if you want, but no one is around to hear us for miles. Everyone else in the world is busy opening Christmas presents, well, except for me and you.” He replied. Clark was surprised at how calm and collect his voice sounded, the strong determination he heard when he spoke gave him even more resolve to see this horrible thing through. He lifted his welding helmet to inspect his handiwork. “It’s too late, sweetie.”

“It’s not too late!” Kayla pleaded. Her balled up fists pounded on the glass in unison, and each thump was followed by the metallic clink of the handcuffs. Small smears of crimson circles splattered on the driver-side window with each feeble attempt to struggle. “Just please, don’t do this! Clark! Stop that!”

He couldn’t stop. Not since he put the plan into motion all those years ago, no, Clark passed that point of no return without hesitation. He could remember the exact moment he passed over the zero barrier; because it was at that point in a normal person’s mind that a little voice is supposed to chime in with the usual “Hey, Clark, this is getting a little crazy; maybe you shouldn’t kill your wife, maybe you should finalize the divorce and try to move on with your life.” But that voice never came. That voice also knew what she had done to deserve this. No, his wife could scream all she wanted, but he couldn’t stop now.

“Will you just fucking stop?” Kayla begged. Her green eyes were wild in the early morning light, and he had never seen this side of her. His therapist called it socio-pathic denial, meaning she could hide her psychotic side from not only the world, but herself as well. “Stop it!”

“But sweetie, if I stop now, you won’t get what you deserve, and we wouldn’t want that would we?” Clark said with a smile. It had been so very long since he had a genuine smile on his face. He had faked so many smiles since his children passed. He thought after tonight, there might be at least a few more smiles in his future.

He slammed down his helmet continued welding the last car door shut with heavy-duty steel pipe scraps he had been slowly collecting from his jobsites. His foreman had asked a few months back what he was doing with the scraps, suspecting Clark was selling it on the side, but Clark had replied he was starting a hobby by creating metal art; he had mumbled something about it being his therapist’s idea. “Hippie-crap”, the boss had replied, and they had both laughed, but ever since the tragedy, Clark could only pretend to laugh.

He had spent the last two weeks converting his Toyota Camry into something that looked like a demolition derby car with a roll cage built on the inside, and now with Kayla locked inside her final vehicular tomb, he was just a few more spot-welds away from the end. He had removed every window and door handle just in case, he had clipped the all the brake lines, and installed a new safety belt harness that he welded a small plate to cover the release button. When he had strapped her limp body in the car and locked her in, there was no way for her to escape, and it was then he realized he was really going through with committing the murder of his crazy wife.

Now, as Kayla kicked her shackled feet against the pedals and screamed something about him having no balls, Clark ignored her. As the welder began spitting angry sparks of bright white light, he concentrated on finishing the task at hand. The only thing that mattered to him now was melting the two metals pieces together; he focused on moving his skilled hands in small tight circles, ensuring that no one would ever find his darkest masterpiece of metal art.

As his welding rod melted down to a useless stub, he carefully placed the spent evidence in the small bucket filled with water. Somewhere in the distance, a fish jumped and splashed in the lake.

“If you let me out, I will do that thing you always liked.” She said looking at him with seductive eyes. “I’ll do it real good.”

“Oh yeah?” Clark asked.

“Yeah, come on, I really want to.”

“Never going to happen,” he said, reloading his welder with a new rod. “And let me tell you something sweetie, I never liked the way you did it, I think you used your teeth on purpose, just to be a bitch.”

“I should have bit that little thing in half,” She said coldly. She stared out of the window at him with eyes that looked as if she were a wild animal fighting the effects of a tranquilizer dart. “Then your whore can give you a disease that makes the other half rot off. I hope the short half falls off into the toilet.”

“Hush sweetie.”

“Fuck you, you’re not the one in the car!” she screamed. She held up her handcuffed wrists, raised the middle finger on her left hand, and then spit on the window. “You can’t just kill me!”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Clark said. “See, you’re going in the water, there is no way you can talk your way out of this. I know you’re not really crazy. At least not as crazy as you told the judge and jury.”

“I was sick back then.” Kayla said, trying another tactic. She turned her eyes up at him, as a lost puppy would. “I needed help, I’m better now.”

“Sweetie,” Clark said, putting his face close to the window. “I’m about to give you all the help you need.”

“You call this help, you big-fat-fuck?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why didn’t you just put a bullet in my head?” she asked. “I was sick, but as long as I keep taking my meds; I am fine. Please let me out.”

“An evil bitch like you deserves more than just a bullet in the head.”

“What’s the difference?” she asked, her upper lip rose in a slight snarl. “Dead is dead isn’t it?”

“No, if that was the case, I would have just drowned your sorry ass in the bathtub back at home. I want to hear you scream at the top of your lungs, that’s why we are way out here.”

“So you just want to hear me scream? Fuck you, I won’t scream. Never!”

“Yes you will, I am going to make sure of it.”

“So what? You went through all this trouble just so you get to hear me scream, is that it?”

“No, I am doing all this for our children.” Clark said. “You remember our children don’t you?”

“Let’s be honest Clark, that was always your big thing when we were together, your so-called honesty. You never cared for our kids until they were gone. You are a hypocrite, you know that? You spent all your days working and the nights sneaking off to be with your fat whore.” She said as if she were spitting the words out of her mouth. “You never really care for me either. All you ever cared about was fucking your whore. You were going to leave us for her!”

“No, I was just going to leave you. I would never have left my boys.”

“You’re a fucking liar!”

“And you’re a murderer.”

“So are you!”

“This isn’t murder.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked. “What the fuck do you call this?”

“I don’t know.” Clark said honestly, both to her and himself. “I know that this isn’t just about revenge, or even two wrongs making a right. I don’t really know what you call this. I only know that you are going to see how it felt to die just like our boys did, but unlike you, what I’m doing isn’t murder.”

“Yeah? Your therapist help you come up with that bullshit justification?”

“No, actually some guy in Oklahoma wrote me a letter when he saw our story on the national news.” Clark said. “He said that he wished someone would put you in the back of a car, and push you into a lake. Then you could drown just like our boys did. He said that would be just fine by him.”

“Well you can write him back and tell him all about how your little plan backfired.” She said. “You’re not going to kill me, you love me.”

“I hate you for what you done.”

“Can’t you forgive me?”

“Never.”

“But I love you. Please, Clark, let’s talk this out. How about I cook us a nice hot breakfast?”

“No thanks, I am not really hungry,” he said. “But after I leave here, I am taking your car to the bus station downtown, then I am driving up to my parents for Christmas dinner with my fiancé, I’ll eat good then. I’m still kind of jittery from all those energy drinks earlier. Besides, I heard that my mom is making that turkey stuffing you like.”

“I hope you choke on it,” She said. “You and your whore.”

“You watch your mouth.”

“So what, you and your whore are going to start a whole new family so everyone will eventually forget about the bitch on the news that went crazy and drowned her kids, is that it?”

“Actually, that’s the whole plan. Now I won’t have to monologue like an evil villain.”

“Fuck you and your stupid plan.”

“Have it your way.” Clark said, pulling down his welding helmet. “The sooner I forget about you, the better.”

“You always were too overly dramatic, you know that, you little momma’s boy?”

“I’m not being dramatic.” He said, his voice muffled by the helmet. “No more talking.”

“You’re not being rational.” She taunted with the same sarcasm that haunted his memories of their marriage. “At least I am being the rational one.”

“You want rational? Fine!” Clark threw his helmet to the ground. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. His fingers were shaking as he pulled out the small photo from behind its flimsy plastic cover. He paused for just a moment as the image of his children smiled up at him, all their youth and innocence locked in the photograph forever. He reached over pulled the windshield wipers up, and stuck the photo between the rubber and glass, so she could see them as she died. He had to admit to himself, it made him feel better. A lot better. “Here! You can apologize to them now!”

“Stop it!”

“Apologize to them and I’ll let you live!”

“Fuck you, get that away from me!”

“Do it!”

“No!”

“Then at least look at them and tell them why you did it!”

“Never!” she said, curling her body away from the window, so she wouldn’t have to see the smiling faces of their once happy children. “Stop it, this isn’t fair!”

“It is fair!” he said, pulling his helmet back on his head. “It’s very fair and very rational. You had your chance.”

He sent sparks flying in the early morning light, sealing his wife’s casket. He could see her reflection twisting and turning to free herself from her restraints, her image shone against the driver side window like a TV in the bright light, and finally she just gave up. She slumped back down in the seat and stared at him with genuine sadness in her eyes. Clark saw the anger fade away and a strange glaze overcame her eyes, the same that a proud wild cheetah has when it finally comes to accept its new cage at the zoo.

With the last piece of steel in place, the final weld meshed the metal plates together as one, and his wife’s water-coffin was complete. Clark stepped back and removed his welding helmet for the last time, he was changing careers, this was the last night he would consider himself a welder. He admired his handiwork, both professionally and artistically, and nodded with a final approval of each.

Clark placed his welding supplies back in his work truck, and returned carrying a cordless drill with an extra long bit in hand. As he approached the car, he looked down at her, expecting her to have some sort of sarcastic and derogatory remark saved up and ready to launch from her mouth like a heat seeking missile. She simply looked out the window at him, almost uninterested, as if she were silently watching the scenery on a short drive she had already passed by at least a hundred times. Then she began to cry quietly, muffling her sobs, and trying to hide her weeping by letting her hair fall over her chest.

“What?” Clark asked, knowing from years and years of countless fights and arguments that he could always provoke her out of the silent treatment. He also knew that sometimes it took days of what he called her “Pity-Me-Parties” where she just moped around the house, feeling sorry for herself the whole time. It would go on like that until he would break down have to beg and plead her to tell him what was wrong, but until she felt like he had suffered enough, she would remain silent and sulking. Not falling for that old trick, he thought, this old dog knows better. “Aren’t you going to beg me to let you out?”

“I’m going to die,” she said softly, her face still concealed by her hair. “What’s the point?”

Clark shrugged. “That is the point. As long as you understand in that crazy head of yours that I am doing this for the boys. So that when I go to sleep at nights, in my dreams, they won’t ask why mommy killed them, we can be happy again.”

“I’ll be with them before you will.”

“No you won’t, you evil-fucking-bitch!” he shouted, spitting the last word out of his mouth as if it were poison. “See, you’re going straight to hell, and believe me, this is your last chance to look at their picture. Go ahead; take a good long look at each of their faces one last time, if you can.”

She couldn’t. She just cried quietly, her bare shoulders heaving.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I did what I did because I loved them.” She said, turning to face him, and she tilted her head so her hair flipped behind her.

Clark froze in disbelief, his face became instantly hot and flushed with anger, and he did not know where or how to begin expressing the rage he felt. “Fuck you.” was all he could manage.

“I don’t know if you can understand this or not, but when I knew we were never going to be a complete and happy family anymore, I just couldn’t let them go through it all.” She said. “I did what I did out of mercy, don’t you see that? I mean if they were looking down on us right now, what would they say?”

“They’d say, Go daddy!” Clark answered.

“Whatever,” She said. “You are making jokes, but I am going to die.”

“Yes you are,” He said seriously. “And I don’t just think they are looking down on us right now, I know it. I can feel it in my heart.”

“And you think they would approve of you killing their mother?”

“Sweetie, if I didn’t, you wouldn’t be in the car.”

“Don’t call me that.” she said. “Not anymore.”

“Fair enough, Kayla.” Clark replied. He pulled the trigger on his cordless drill twice, and let the bit spin in the air. “I guess since we are still legally married, I should ask if you have any other last requests.”

“Take the picture away.”

“Sorry, but I like it there, it seems ironic. I can just imagine you letting out your last bit of air and when you do, you will scream, and just before you die, you will be looking at them. No, I am going to leave the picture right where it is, I have another in my wallet. Maybe you should ask for something else.”

“Why don’t you climb in here with me? We’ll both go together, for old times’ sake.”

“No thanks, I have a Christmas dinner later.”

“If you’re not going to give me anything I request, then why did you bother asking?”

“Just trying to be a gentleman, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, beginning to cry again. “This is all very noble of you, some Good-Samaritan you turned out to be, about to kill the damsel in distress.”

“Trust me; you’re no damsel in distress. You’re the evil witch that killed Hansel and Gretel!” Clark shouted, furiously pointing the drill at the window like a gun. “And now that you’re going in the same oven as our children, you want me to feel sorry for you? Is that it, Kayla?”

“No, I get it!” she shouted at the window. She quickly calmed herself and began talking quietly again. “I just don’t want to be punished anymore. I spent six years in prison, everyone I met knew who I was and what I did, even my therapists hated me and that was punishment enough. Now it’s bad enough that you are going to kill me, but no, you have to make it worse. You have to make me feel bad too. Well you win, I lose.”

“You went to a fucking psychiatric mental hospital, not a prison.”

“Now you’re splitting hairs, Clark.”

“Not really, when they send you to the mental hospital, then you are sick and you get to go free. When they send you to prison, you are a killer, and you go to prison to die.”

“We all have to die eventually, right? Just punish me and let me die.”

“You’re right, but what I am doing isn’t about punishing you,” Clark said. He hated it when she twisted words into double meanings where both paths lead to the same point that was all about her, always poor-poor Kayla, as if the sun and the moon would fall from the sky if it weren’t for her. He always hated explaining things to her as if she were a five year old, but he would be damned if she didn’t see his side in all of this. “And yes, we all die eventually, but you took the eventually part from our boys. That’s why you’re here now. They were supposed to grow up and live long lives and give us grandbabies that we could have spoiled rotten; but you stole that from them. When you killed our precious babies, you stole all that from us, and you also killed a version us. And obviously I am not the version of myself that you remember since before you went in that loony bin.”

“Good.” She said, sniffing. “Eventually your new version of yourself will get caught, and when they do, they can read that at your execution.”

“Even if I did get caught, which wouldn’t be for at least another two hundred years or so when this new reservoir dam breaks or overflows, you are sitting on the steepest cliff overlooking the deepest part of the lake, no one is going to find you. Besides, even if they did, you forget that you taught me all I need to know about getting a few jurors to feel just sympathetic enough to let me go free. Just a few years of therapy and pills and all is forgiven right?”

“It’s okay, I accept the inevitable. I have come to terms with it, so lets get this over with, I am sick of looking at your fat face.”

“Fair enough,” Clark answered as another smile crested on his face as he squeezed the trigger on his cordless drill. “Don’t you move Kayla, I’ll be right back.”

She shook her handcuffs at the window and gave him a sarcastic gesture with her face.

He paid her no attention as he walked around to the front of the Toyota and began drilling, humming a Christmas tune as he worked. After he littered the car’s hood with large random gaping holes, Clark moved around to the back and began boring the hot drill bit into the cold steel of the trunk. He was finishing up the Little Drummer Boy and had begun humming the beginning of Silent Night when he stepped on the bumper and pulled himself up on top of the car. The suspension creaked as the back of the car dipped down, the shocks momentarily objected to taking on his heavy load. Once on top, he only punctured the metal with a few holes, not wanting all the air to escape at once, just enough for his plan to have that happy ending he needed. He gently slid down to the ground, and the car rose up as the shocks instantly reclaimed its lost inches.

“All is calm, all is bright.” Clark sang out loud, but he no longer felt like humming or singing when he looked down upon the woman he once married. He tried to feel pity, but he just couldn’t; not even now. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“How much difference does it make?”

“I guess what I meant to ask is if there is anything you’d like to say, now is the time.”

“I can’t believe you wrote me all those letters, giving me hope, when the whole time you knew you were just making it all up so you could kill me.”

“Is that what you want your last words to be?”

“You want me to say I’m sorry.”

“Well are you?”
“No.”

“Then neither am I.” Clark said honestly.

“Well then, I guess that’s that.”

“I guess so.” He said, hating her completely. “Kayla, I want you to know that I sincerely hope you burn in hell forever.”

“The feeling is mutual, you fat fuck. Just do what we are here to do.”

Clark smiled. He was now very happy with how it was all turning out; she had helped make it much better than he could have ever planned.

“Well, Clark, I’m waiting.”

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you the most important part.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” she said, mocking him. “Are you going to poison my dog too? Whatever it is, I promise, I won’t give you the satisfaction of hearing me scream.”

“You’re wrong about that. Looking back, if I had thought of it, I would have killed that mutt too and put it in the trunk, but I guess I missed that opportunity. What I have in store is much better, but I have to tell you now, I don’t think you’re not going to like it. It’s my little insurance policy to make sure you scream.”

“Why don’t you just break it down for me then?”

Clark smiled again. He was really enjoying himself. “In the glove box, there are two telephones in a sealed inside a plastic freezer bag. One is setup to automatically answer my call, and the other is set to the only ringtone it has; the recording you took of our boys singing along to Barney. That way when I call the first phone, I can hear our boys singing in the other, and then, I get to hear you scream.”

“I won’t scream; I’m ready to die.”

“You’ll scream.”

“We’ll see.” She said looking down at her lap. “Goodbye Clark.”

“Goodbye Kayla.” He replied. He still was unable to feel anything for her but pure hatred. He supposed in the end; that was best.

He placed one cellphone’s wireless piece in his ear, and pushed dial. He heard the auto-answer pick up. “Say something.” He told her.

“I’ve said all I’m going to say.”

He heard his wife’s voice in his ear just fine. He had to agree with her on that, he had said all he needed to as well.

Time to finish it, he thought as he turned to get in his truck. He tossed the cordless drill in the passenger seat and climbed in the cab. Through the earpiece, he heard her curse him as chicken-shit coward. Clark smiled. He truly was getting his Christmas wish after all.

As his work truck roared to life, his heart was revving in the high RPM’s in his chest, and he could feel a tingling all over his body, but the electricity seemed to pulse the hardest in his hands as he gripped the steering wheel. He expected to see tiny blue sparks fly from his fingertips to the metal shifter as he put the transmission in gear. With the truck in drive, he reached out with his shaking right hand for his other cell phone.

It seemed to happen almost instantly, as soon as he pushed the green button on one phone, he immediately heard the other ringing both in the car’s glove box and in his earpiece, and he heard the long forgotten but still unmistakable sounds of that big purple dinosaur song he had always secretly hated. Then he heard his beloved boys begin singing along, and he began to cry. The hot tears surprised him, he hated himself for crying, but he still mumbled the song along with his long lost sons.

“Great big hug, you to me!”

As he listened to the ghosts of the pasts, he began to doubt himself. From his earpiece, he heard his wife say she would never scream, never give him the fucking satisfaction, and that was all it took for him to get moving again. The hate might have been gone for just a moment, but it had definitely returned.

Slowly, Clark let his truck roll forward. He saw the brake lights light up erratically and he smiled. He watched her shadow through the back window, and his smile grew when he saw her put the car in park. Putting up a fight to the end, he liked that.

He let the truck connect to the rear bumper, and dropped the gear down into low. His boys continued singing, both had been trying to sing along to impress him, but neither had quite mastered the entire lyrics back then.

“Love you, love me, happy family!”

The smaller car’s tires began chirping against the dirt and rock that led to the edge of the lake, but against the large truck’s powerful engine, it offered little resistance.

Slowly, steadily, the vehicles trudged forward together, towards the steep embankment. Clark leaned out his window to judge the short distance remaining, and more importantly, to have an unobstructed view.

“Best friends, as friends can be!”

As the lead car’s front tires scraped over the edge, the car began a fast slide forward, and he pushed on the accelerator hard before pounding both feet on the brake. The Toyota seemed to lunge out on its own, as if it were committing automotive suicide.

“Great big kiss from you to me.”

Clark watched mesmerized, as if the world were suddenly turning in super slow-motion, like those old cartoons. The moment seemed to stretch out beyond any possible distance, and his eyes widened with pure joy when he saw the car quickly flip end over end as it slowly disappeared.

He realized his truck was sliding on the gravel. He quickly turned on the steering wheel and it skidded into a stop.

Clark ran to the edge and carefully peered down at the surface of the lake. Down in the dark water below, due to luck rather than planning, the car had had landed upright and had already begun to sink in the deep end of the lake.

At first, thousands of small bubbles rose to the surface from the submerged hood and trunk, but as the car sank, he saw only a few bubbles rising from the cab. Perfect.

In his ear, he heard what he had been waiting for. His boys had quit singing along with Barney, and all was quiet, except for the small sounds of her splashing. He could tell as the splashing got louder, the water was steadily rising. Then she screamed. She screamed and screamed again, a horrible blood curdling sound that should have come from a mountain lion and not a heartless woman. Over and over she shrieked and splashed as she struggled, until the point that he thought she would scream in his ear forever. Clark both smiled and cried, listening as the final scream faded in agony, and in the end, he heard one last gurgle, then silence.

Clark watched as his wife’s metal casket sank deeper and finally out of sight, and after the last air bubbles surfaced, there was peace again.

“This is how it’s going to be now.” The man’s ghost said. It sat off to the side, in the dense fog, where the flying dirt would not disappear through his body. “You know that right?”

After everything that happened in the last four days, he did. Now, being haunted by the ghost of the man he just killed, Larry knew. “Shut up, Dave. Go away, you’re not real.” He wheezed between breaths.

“Yeah, right,” the ghost of Dave said. “You’re digging my grave and you want me to shut up?”

“It’d be nice.”

“Well it ain’t gonna fuckin’ happen. It’s me ‘n you now. We’re gonna be friends ‘til the end, just like herpes.”

“I’ve been through enough.” Larry said, stabbing the shovel into the dirt, and leaning on the warm fiberglass handle. “I’m sick, got the flu.”

“Ahh, poor baby,” Dave replied. “I hope you die.”

The way his fever was spiking, Larry thought he just might. But before he keeled over, he promised himself he would finish this grave. Back to work, he thought, and the shovel returned to fulfilling its purpose in this world. Five more feet to go.

“You know when the cops come looking for you, you’re gonna get the chair.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why’s that?” the ghost asked. “It is what you deserve for killing me.”

Larry looked the ghost in the eyes. He tossed a load of dirt through the ghost just to make sure it wasn’t real. As long as he isn’t real, Larry could convince himself he is just temporarily insane, or more likely, he was hallucinating because of the fever. But the ghost looked just as real as the dead body laying face down, and that made it hard not to believe. “Because this in this state, the electric chair is reserved to be used only if lethal injection is someday found to be inhumane or unconstitutional.”

“What are you a fuckin’ lawyer or somethin’?”

“Yes I am.” Larry said. “I passed the Oklahoma Bar thirteen years ago, just after my daughter was born.”

“Look, for what its worth I wasn’t gonna do anything to her.”

“You already did.”

Another scoop of rich dirt flew into the ghost’s face.

“No, they never proved that and you know it!”

Larry pointed the shovel at the ghost as if the metal blade could decapitate a ghost. “You did. My daughter said you did, and they proved you raped her friends. You did it and you got what you deserved.” He sent the shovel back to work in the dirt.

“It was over eight years ago, and I paid my debt to society.”

“Not to me! And not to her!” Larry screamed quietly. He didn’t want to alert any of his neighbors that bordered his back pasture. He kept digging; dawn would be coming soon, and he still had so much left to do. “You never even apologized when you were alive.”

“Would it have mattered if I did?” the ghost asked.

“Probably not.”

“So you killed me after seven years of prison for two things I never did?”

“You know why I did it.” Larry said, giving in to the ghost’s prodding. He snorted thick mucous back into his sinuses. “I would not have shot you in the head and then twice in balls if I thought there might be a chance you didn’t do it. No, I had all the proof I needed; I had to wait for the time to be just right; and now I am about to get away with murder. You messed with the wrong girl, Dave.”

“How are you gonna get away with this?” Dave asked. “You think the cops won’t find me buried out here eventually?”

Larry smiled as he heaved another load of dirt. His head felt like he was swimming underwater. “I could leave a suicide note if it makes you shut up.”

“Are you kidding?” the ghost said. “What would it say? I just feel bad, cruel world, so I shot myself in the head and nuts, and then buried myself out here.”

“That’s pretty good. I just might use that.”

“How about you leave your name and address?”

“It wouldn’t matter.”

“How’s that?”

“Because you’re not going to be buried out here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dave asked. “You are digging my grave, literally, as we speak.”

“I have been planning this a very long time. I am not about to get caught now. You’re not being buried here, you’re being burned here.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You can’t just burn somebody.”

“That’s where you are wrong.” Larry heaved another scoop of earth, and then took the short hop down into the shallow hole. “It’s called the Wick Effect.”

“You’re making shit up,” Dave said. “You’re delusional.”

“No, it’s true,” Larry said taking a small break to breakdown the plan to the ghost, as if he were Lex Luther giving Superman the evil-genius monologue. “I saw it on the Discovery Channel. They were doing a show on spontaneous combustion. They showed how a body could burn up in a very small area. They put a pig on a mattress and set it on fire, and when the body fat drips down into the fire, the flames get hotter, creating the “Wick Effect”. The flames burn so hot, that the pig fat dripped down, keeping the flames burning hot until there was nothing left. Except for the feet, not enough fat in the feet to burn the bones. But your fat will burn the rest of your body hotter than the funeral home cremator, because you have a lot of body fat don’t you? Did you know that in this state, the law says if the cops can’t find the body, then it can’t be murder? I win.”

“Bullshit.”

Larry smiled, finally having gotten one over on the ghost since it appeared. “You’ll see.”

“It’s not real.”

“You’re not real.”

“Is that why you put my body face down over there?” the ghost pointed to his corpse. “Maybe you can’t stand to see what you did.”

“Maybe, but you’re still not real.”

“Maybe not, but in your head, I am. And I’m never gonna stop. Can you imagine the next five years without sleep. Every time you start to nod off, I am gonna start screamin’. So get used to having me around for a long, long time.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How’s that?”

“Because I intend to burn your soul, on earth as it is in hell.” Larry tilted his head to the side. “I’d like that.”

Dave shook his ghost head from side to side. “No, someone will see the flames and call the fire department.”

Larry stopped in mid-shovel. “Do you think I am that stupid?”

“Yes.”

“Well I’m not. I have a trash burning permit, pre-dated in advance for today, on my private property, out here in my pasture where my cows will shit and piss all over your final resting place. I have to use this shovel so there is no paper trail to me renting heavy equipment. Trust me; I have had a long time to think this through.”

“Well have you thought about the fact that I have been missing for almost a week.”

“And you stink.” Larry said. “Don’t worry, just a few more feet to go, and no more stank.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Dave said. “I mean the cops are going to be coming for you, because you have the most motive.”

“You have no idea what you are talking about.”

“You’re a lawyer, think about it!” Dave said. “I mean, you are the only one with nothing to lose. All your friends are going to tell them since your daughter killed herself you haven’t been right since.”

“I expected the cops to be here yesterday.” Larry said heaving a heavy scoop out of the hole. He wasn’t about to let the ghost get to him using his daughter’s suicide as leverage. Instead, he dug down even harder, slamming his boot down on the shovel. “Now they are too late.”

“Oh yeah, well you said that everything got burned except for the feet.” Dave said. “What are you gonna do ‘bout that, smarty-pants?”

“I’m gonna use that logging chain to fold you in half. That should do.”

“So you don’t know if my feet will burn up or not?”

“No, that’s where I guessed.”

“Oh, the brilliant lawyer guessed.” Dave said sarcastically. “You better hope you are right.”

“I have accepted the possibility of getting caught.”

“I did too, once.”

“Yeah, well yours was worse. Mine is just revenge.”

“Just how is mine worse, killer?”

“You killed more people than me.” Larry said grunting.

“I never killed anyone.” The ghost replied. “I’m not a murderer like you.”

Before Larry could contain himself, he jumped out of the hole and swung the shovel at the ghost. The shovel hit nothing but air, pissing him off more. Larry saw the corpse lying motionless in the grass, and he began beating the dead body with the shovel, each stroke creating a loud and satisfying BONG!

“Hey, calm down.” The ghost said holding his arms out in front of him. “Easy, big fellow, easy.”

“No!” Larry said, beginning to cry again. “You killed those girls; you just didn’t pull the trigger like I did.”

“Bullshit.”

BONG!

“My Emily was never the same. Never. Her friends are scarred for life, and they will never be the same either. No, you killed those little girls that day alright, all three of them.”

BONG!

“Quit hitting my head, its disturbing!” Dave yelled.

Somehow that struck Larry as severely funny, and he began to laugh. He gave it one more, just because. The last hit didn’t create the same sound as before, instead the metal dug into the soft decomposing throat, and it created a long hissing sound. A gush of rotten air escaped and Larry turned to vomit. He wasn’t laughing anymore, that horrible had stench ruined the moment. When he had control of himself again, he wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve, and hopped back into the steadily deepening hole. When he was sure the nausea had passed, he sent the shovel back to work; the night was slowly turning into day.

When he pushed down on the metal blade and pulled back on the handle, the fiberglass cracked halfway down. “Shit.”

“Ha, ha!” Dave said pointing and smiling. “You’re screwed now! Didn’t see that comin’ did’ya smart fella’?”

Larry pulled the shovel free from the dirt to inspect the shaft. Just as he thought, it was cracked down the middle. He didn’t have a spare, but it didn’t matter. He simply placed the handle across his knee and pulled it apart. He flung the useless end at the body. Without slowing down, he knelt down in the dirt and began digging the hard way.

“It’s gonna take you all night to dig like that!” Dave said, clapping his ghost hands. “You might as well call the jail and make reservations.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Larry said. He began excavating small piles dirt instead of removing the big chunks. His head was pounding, and the blood rushed past his eardrums so fast it created a sonic boom in his brain. “This doesn’t change a thing.”

“I think it does, you see I figure you have an hour, maybe two at the most, before dawn. You’re gonna get caught.”

“I have a backup plan.”

“It won’t matter ‘cause you’ll never get that hole dug with half a shovel.”

Larry coughed up what felt like the bottom of his left lung. With his mouth loaded, he spit on the corpse. “You’re not listening, Dave. I’m going to fold you in half, remember? I only have to dig half a grave with half a shovel.”

“I hear the birds chirping, it will be dawn soon, and then people will be waking up wondering what is causing all the smoke.”

“Not in this fog,” Larry said. “Its too thick, just like the Weather Channel predicted.”

“You watch too much TV.”

Larry kept digging, lurching on his knees to remove small mounds of dirt from the deepening hole. His back screamed out in pain, his fingers were beginning to bleed, but he kept thinking about his little girl, and that gave him the fuel he needed to stoke his hate-fire inside. He knew he would keep digging with his bloody fingertips if it came to that. He knew Emily would want him to finish, just as he knew she wanted him to be the one who killed this man.

“You think just ‘cause you watch CSI and Bones that you can get away with this?” Dave prodded. “This is the real world, wake up, Larry.”

“In the real world, dead men don’t talk, so shut up already.”

“Do you still think I am just going to go away ‘cause you burned my body?” the ghost asked.

“I am hoping that you will be gone when my fever breaks.” Larry said. He was deep enough that the air in the hole was dirty; he could taste it on his tongue, and felt the gritty earth coating airways, causing him to cough even more. “As soon as I begin to break a sweat down here, you will be gone, you’ll see.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Not likely,” Larry replied. “I am almost never wrong.”

“I know one thing you were wrong about.”

“What’s that?”

“The time,” the ghost said, suddenly appearing at the side of the hole. “The fog getting brighter, dawn is closer than you think.”

Larry popped his head out of the hole and looking to the east to check the validity of the ghost’s statement. “Shit.” He plopped back on his knees and began furiously stabbing the sides of the hole, widening the opening that resembled an open mouth with brown lips.

“So close,” Dave said looking down at Larry. “I would say it’s too bad, but I want you to get caught, and when you do, I’m gonna do a little dance.”

Larry ignored the ghost’s taunts, and continued to scoop with all his might. He had to finish, just had to. After all, Emily was counting on him. Load after load, with every chunk of soil he flung over his shoulder, he remembered that.

He dug so hard so fast, that eventually he became dizzy and disoriented. He had to stand up and prepare to vomit outside the hole. He stood with his eyes closed, inhaling deep breaths of cool crisp morning air.

“You’re out of time.” Dave said.

Larry opened his eyes and saw part of an orange circle cresting the eastern horizon. He was waist deep in the ground, and he could see the fog lifting. The ghost was right. He looked to the hole with a small measure of satisfaction. It was bigger and deeper than he thought when he was on his knees. Not quite as deep has he had planned, but it would have to do. “Time to move on to phase two.”

“What’s phase two?” the ghost asked. “You might as well give up.”

“Time to burn, you bastard, but first we need blankets.” Larry said. After he layered the sleeping bags on the dirt, he grabbed the dead man by the arms, and Larry quickly pulled the corpse into the hole. “Would you hand me that chain?”

“No, you go ahead.” Dave said shaking his head, but his eyes never left his dead body.

Larry grabbed the chain and wrapped the long end under the body. He then pulled the dead man’s knees into his chest, and locked the chain in place. Another burst of putrid air escaped Dave’s slit throat, and Larry vomited on the corpse. “That’s a nice finishing touch; don’t you think, Dave?”

“I’m gonna piss on your grave.”

“Who knew killing you would be so much trouble?” Larry said, climbing from the hole. He lay on the wet ground, looking to the morning sky. Sick or not, broken shovel or no, he had made it. And that made him feel better, if only for a brief moment. A small breeze puffed up, and he felt sweat beading on his forehead. His fever was lifting. All he had to do now was light the fire, and make it all go away.

“You know you will get married the first night in prison.” The ghost said. “I did.”

After a moment of lying in the dirt, he achingly rose to his feet. His back popped in several places, all his muscles began to protest, but he pushed through the pain. He limped to the supplies waiting nearby. He grabbed several quick swallows from the canteen, replaced the metal can in his backpack. He pulled a book of matches and cigarettes from the front pocket, placed them both in his dirty shirt pocket, and went to gather the gas cans. “Never going to happen, I am going to finish this.”

“I’m telling you, you’re not gonna get away with this.” Dave said. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

“We are about to see about that,” Larry said. He began dragging the metal cans to the side of the hole. “Better make your peace with God. Again, I guess.”

“Go fuck yourself, Larry.”

Larry laid one can down on the ledge and unscrewed the cap. Immediately, gasoline poured out, covering the body entirely. Larry smiled as he dragged the other can to the head of the grave. For the first time in a long time, Larry was happy. With both cans drained, he and Dave stood over the body, letting the blankets soak up the fuel. The sun rose in the east, the bottom finally broke free of the horizon, and the fog was lifting.

“This ain’t right.” Dave said solemnly.

“You’re right about that,” Larry replied. He pulled out the cigarettes and opened the fresh pack. He put one in his mouth and waited. “This is for Emily.”

“See you in hell.”

“Maybe,” Larry said. He lit the first cigarette he had smoked since Emily was born. He pulled in a deep drag, and proceeded to light the rest of the matches in the book. A small flame sparked to life, each matchstick angry and hungry, just waiting to finish his plan. “I love you Em.”

The matchbook sailed into the open pit, igniting instantly. A huge blast of flames shot up and out, and Larry had to back peddle to a safe range. The fire blazed and popped, angrily rising up into the sky.

Larry again had to step back as he watched the flames flicker and dance in the morning air, creating a thick grey smoke that billowed almost to heaven. Higher and higher, hotter and hotter, the flames burned the air, completely clearing the fog in the area. The blaze danced back and forth swaying in the gentle breeze, almost hypnotic in its movements. He pulled on his cigarette one last time and threw the remainder into the pit.

Together they watched the dancing fire as the morning sun slowly rose behind them.

“Did you hear something?” Dave said at last, breaking the silence. “It’s coming from over there.”

Larry tried to hear over the crackling and popping of the flames, but the blazing inferno was too loud. He thought he could hear drops of fat sizzle every now and then, but other than that, he heard nothing. He looked in the direction the ghost was pointing, but saw nothing. He turned back to the flames, hoping the ghost would go away now that he had burned his soul.

Then he heard it, an engine revved in the distance, and Larry knew the time had come. He saw the SUV slowly maneuvering its way through his pasture, and he didn’t have to see the police lights on top to know it was the cops.

“Whew!” Dave shouted as he jumped up and down. “For a moment there, I thought you really were gonna get away with my murder, but now your goose is pretty near cooked. That’s the law coming for you. I told you! I told you!”

Larry stood motionless, waiting for the police to approach, and he became aware he needed to urinate, but he probably couldn’t squeeze a drop. His heart pounded in his chest, almost up into his throat, and he considered just making a run for it. His legs protested, not willing to budge after the long night of strenuous digging. He would not make it ten feet before he dropped in exhaustion.

“You’re busted, and you’ve nowhere to run.” Dave said smiling. He began waiving his arm in the air, as if they could see him. “He is over here!”

“I think they know.” Larry said, watching the vehicle creep closer. “I think the forty foot flames in the air were their main clue.”

“It doesn’t matter!” Dave said happily. He pointed to the fire. “My feet are still there! He is gonna see them and bust you!”

Larry looked, and sure enough, the corpse’s feet were on fire, but still not burned beyond recognition. His heart skipped a beat. “Shit.”

The police SUV came to a stop. For a few agonizing moments, time slowed to a crawl, and nothing happened. All kinds of thoughts raced through Larry’s mind, including several worst case scenarios.

“Murderer!” Dave screamed, in hopes someone could hear him. “You filthy fuckin’ murderer!”

“Shut up!” Larry hissed through his teeth.

Finally the door opened and a boot touched down, followed by another. “You alright Larry?” the voice called out.

Larry couldn’t speak. Instead, he waved a hand in the air, trying to wave the man off.

“Hold on, I’ll be right there.” The voice called out.

“Yeah, come over here and see my foot!” Dave screamed as loud as he could. “It’s evidence!”

Larry began to fear the cop might just hear the ghost after all.

After a few moments, the officer exited his vehicle and began walking towards the bonfire. It wasn’t until the man blocked the sun behind him, that Larry recognized him. The man stood tall in the morning light, casting the shadow of a giant.

“He is a murderer!” Dave tried shouting into the officer’s ear. “He fucking killed me! My body is right there! Hurry before it’s too late.”

“Gus,” Larry said, trying not look at the ghost. “How’s business?”

“Good as can be, I guess. I was knocking on your door when I saw the smoke.” Gus said. He pushed his thick glasses higher up on his nose. “You got a cold or something?”

“Oh yeah, summer cold I think. What’s got you out this early, Gus?” Larry asked, amazed at how casual his voice sounded. “It’s not my fire, I have a permit.”

“Murderer!”

“No it’s not the fire, and I know you have a permit.” Gus replied. His eyes stared directly into Larry’s soul. “We have been friends since kindy-gart’n, an’ I know you always obey the laws.”

“Law and order every time, that’s me.” Larry said. “What’s up?”

“You remember that piece of shit Dave Collins?” Gus asked. “He went missing a few days ago.”

“You understand if I don’t feel bad.” Larry replied honestly. “You of all people should understand.”

“He is a killer!” Dave pleaded. He knew the cop couldn’t hear him, but he was still trying.

“Mm-hmm. What’cha got burning?” Gus asked, pointing behind Larry. “You got a diseased cow or someth-”

Larry froze, knowing he was caught. After years of planning, the ghost was right. “Yeah, the cow died last night.” Larry croaked from his dry throat.

“Was the cow wearing shoes?” Gus asked as he moved around Larry.

“No, it is my shoe, and my foot is burning right there!” the ghost screamed to no avail. “Look!”

Larry slowly turned his head to see Gus pick up Dave’s shoe that had somehow fell off when he dragged the body in the hole. He had missed it. He had been so careful, planned every detail, but in the end, he supposed everyone gets caught eventually.

“Look!” Dave shouted and pointed furiously at the blazing inferno. “Look right there!”

Larry blinked in disbelief as Gus seemed to look into the fire right where the ghost was pointing. It was over now. Larry accepted it, and wished he had another cigarette.

“Is that the foot of the man who molested my nieces and your daughter?”

Larry swallowed hard and nodded.

“Carry on.” The officer said, turning his back and walking back to his cruiser. “You should get that cough checked out, those summer colds are terrible.”

“What the fuck?” Dave screamed out. “What did he say?”

Larry watched Gus climb back into his vehicle and drive away from the flames and into the sunrise. When he turned back around to watch the fire do his dirty work, he smiled a big grin because he knew he had done it, gotten away with murder, and now Larry could tell that it was turning out to be a beautiful day.

It was a beautiful, breezy spring afternoon. The wind was very powerful, but the sun was shining and it was not too cold. The sky was blue with a few subtle clouds floating by. Birds were chirping and forming with one another in the sky, creating a beautiful series of designs. Fred and Jack were taking a walk. They were both stoned and enjoying every second of it. They were getting ready to cross the railroad tracks.

“God, this is a perfect day!” Jack said while walking across the tracks with unnecessarily animated steps. His long, blonde hair blew back with the strong wind.

“Shit, you’re right,” Fred said, taking baby steps and trying not to trip. His brown bowl cut shot in multiple directions.

They passed Mickey’s Tractors and Farm Accessories. It was a newer establishment. Its small parking lot was almost empty.

“Damn, not too much business here,” Jack said, not looking ahead as he walked.
“Watch that rock, dude!” Fred said.

Jack looked down just in time to see the rock. He jumped forward, spreading his legs apart and then jumped forward again bringing his feet together as if he were playing hopscotch.

They both looked at each other nervously and then laughed hysterically, almost passing out from lack of air. They both ended up on their sides on the sidewalk.

There were not many people around, but they both got up once they realized how foolish they must have looked.

They walked on, trying very hard to keep their composure. They reached a small, old shack. It was not much larger than a port-o-potty. The roof was cracked and there were vines covering the brick exterior.

“Aw, fuck yeah!” Jack said. He stared at the former baseball card shop with wide open eyes.

“Heh, I remember this place,” Fred said.

“Yeah, I used ta come here all the time. It’s a damn shame it’s not still in business.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how it is with most of the places in this town.”

“Yep.”

They walked a little further and reached the area where the Pinewood Pool Club had once been; it had also been abandoned for quite some time.

The entrance sign was covered by overgrown trees. All that could be read was ine. There were rusty railings on both sides, which had once been attached to a gate. Jack and Fred looked toward the parking lot. It was covered with pot holes. The painted parking lines were no longer visible. They looked ahead and could see a handicapped sign that was hanging upside down from the pole to which it was barely attached.

“Dude, remember when this place was the shit?” Jack asked Fred.

“Hell yeah, dude,” Fred replied. “We used ta come here all the time back in the day. Fun times.”

“Yeah, I wonder if that high dive is still up there.”

“Shit, I remember that thing. Cannonballs off that thing were the shit.”

“Hell yeah. Remember when we pissed off all those people doin’ that?”

“Heh heh, yeah.”

“Ya know, we should go in there and check it out.” Jack paused. “For old time’s sake.”

“Yeah, that’d be cool.”

They both walked through the parking lot toward the main building where the front desk and the locker rooms had once been. They both felt like they were astronauts walking on the moon. They walked very slowly in order to avoid tripping.

Once their journey through the parking lot was over they reached the gate to the main building. They both looked back in wonder.

“Damn, that’s a far walk!” Fred said. “You sure you wanna go any further?”

“Yeah, dude,” Jack replied. “There’s no turnin’ back now.”

The gate was also covered by vines and overgrown trees. The front door was barely visible. The window to the men’s locker room was broken; there were a few small shards of glass attached to the frame. A small part of the roof was visible; it looked like most of the shingles were gone. They both realized that it would be extremely difficult to get past the gate, especially in their current condition.

“Maybe we should go around,” Jack said, looking up, down, left and right.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Fred replied.

They headed over to the left side of the building. They stepped off of the pot hole-infested concrete and onto a patch of long grass that came almost up to their knees. Gnats and flies retreated as the two of them came through. They both looked down as they walked to make sure there were no holes or any other obstructions.

They reached the left side of the building. Next to it was a barbwire fence. Past the fence was a small, empty cornfield; and past the cornfield they could see the back of Mickey’s.

They looked ahead and noticed that the grass was now even longer, up past their knees. They stood still for a moment, trying to think of a good way to get through the grass.

“We may just have to run through this shit and get through it real quick,” Jack said, in deep thought.

“Well…” Fred said. “One…” He counted with his fingers. “Two…” They both looked at each other excitedly. “Three… Go!”

They both took off in a near sprint. It would have looked like they were racing from a distance. They managed to keep their peripheral vision on the ground as they ran. Their buzzes began to die down, but they were still having the time of their lives.

They made it to a large fence with vines covering it. They could see past it somewhat. The grass was just as long as where they were standing. The diving boards were still intact on the left side of the pool, as well as the life guard stand. The baby pool was covered with debris. They both thought about how many storms had passed since the pool was last open. The small snack shack looked like it could fall and crumble at any time.

They both looked up at the fence, which was easily ten feet high. The vines stretched all the way up to the top.

“We made it this far, dude,” Jack said. He smiled insanely. “We gotta climb this shit.”
Fred looked at him doubtfully for a moment, but then returned the smile and shook Jack’s hand.

They both climbed simultaneously. They tried hard to use the vines and fence as leverage. They both lost their footing a few times and had to drop back down and start over.

It seemed like forever, but they both made it to the top. They both held onto the top rail of the fence and looked at each other. They looked down, and their hearts jumped. It was much higher than it had looked before they had climbed up to the top.

“Shit, we’re gonna hafta be careful,” Jack said, trying not to look down.

“Well, we better get goin’,” Fred replied. “The longer we wait up here the harder it’s gonna be gettin’ back down.”

“Yep.”

They both stepped over the fence with their right legs. They sat uncomfortably on the fence and managed to get their left legs over. They both let out sighs of relief and climbed down the fence with ease.

“Hell yeah, we made it!” Jack said while standing with his hands at his hips and his chest puffed out.

“Yeah!” Fred said.

They walked through the long grass toward the pool, swatting at bugs the whole time.
They stepped onto the concrete surrounding the pool, which was cracked all around. A faded 3 ft. label was on the siding of the pool next to a filter vent. The interior of the pool was brown and grimy. The previously white surface was now almost completely covered. There were branches, wadded up paper balls, leaves, pieces of pipes and other pieces of filth that combined to form a mini junkyard.

“Damn, that stinks!” Jack said, plugging his nose with his fingers.

“Uggh!” Fred was also holding his nose. They both stepped back a little in order to catch their breath.

“Hey, dude, I dare you ta go down there.”

“Fuck no!” Fred pushed Jack, almost knocking him down onto the concrete.

“Let’s go check out the diving boards.” Jack led the way over toward the diving boards. He had to kick a few branches out of the way as he walked.

“Damn, these fuckers still look like new,” he said.

“Wow!” Fred said, even more impressed than Jack.

The high dive was in the middle and there were two lower boards on each side of it just as they both remembered. All three boards were peeling a little, but they were in great shape for the most part. The support poles still looked very strong. It was a wonder that the entire place was trashed and run down and the diving boards looked almost new; they looked like they had just been replaced, but the both of them knew that they were the same boards that had been there ever since they could remember based on the small triangle that had been carved into the left board.

They looked past the diving boards toward another barbwire fence that they both recognized. Past it was the Pinewood Forest area with overgrown shrubs sticking through the fence. To the right of the forest was another small cornfield. It had been an open field years before where kids would play football and fly kites.

The forest was very dark. It consisted of many trees, shrubs and vines. There were a few open areas without plants, but it was hard to tell what was past the plants near the fence.

“Damn, it’s like this forest has a light shield or somethin’,” Jack said. “I don’t remember it bein’ that dark before.”

“Me neither,” Fred said.

They walked toward the right hand cornfield, which also had a barbwire fence cutting it off. It was open and empty just like the one on the left side of the pool. Past this cornfield was State Rt. 285, and past it was a large farmhouse owned by Larry Chine, a friend of Jack’s father. There were cattle grazing in the surrounding fields.

“Hell of a view,” Jack said.

“Yeah, I don’t remember it bein’ this pretty before.”

“It wasn’t. There used ta be a junkyard out that way.”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Let’s check out the baby pool.”

“All right.”

They walked along the barbwire fence toward the baby pool. The concrete was just as cracked as on the other side, so they walked cautiously.

The fence that had surrounded the baby pool in the past was gone. They walked right toward it and looked down into it.

It was covered with dirt and leaves just like the main pool. They both looked closer and could see a few dead rats camouflaged within the filth.

“Aw, shit!” Jack said. He stepped off and gagged.

“Fuck!” Fred said. He stood with his hand over his mouth, staring at the gruesome sight.

The small, dead rats did not appear to have eyes, and there was dried blood surrounding them. Occasionally a fly would come by and land on them, but retreat shortly afterwards.

“Damn, even the flies are disgusted by this shit,” Fred said.

“Are you still lookin’ at it?” Jack asked. He was still crouched down facing the opposite way of Fred.

“Yeah. I got a bad feelin’ there’s somethin’ else underneath.”

“Yeah, a bunch more filth and shit. Let’s get outta here.”

“Hold on a sec. I’m gonna grab a branch real quick.”

“Aw, man!” Jack just stood in his crouched position while Fred walked back over toward the forest area. The former peeked back around inside the baby pool and turned back around immediately with a look of disgust.

Fred came back with a long, crooked branch. It looked like it could fall to pieces at any time. Jack looked toward the locker room building to their right and saw a much sturdier-looking one, but he kept his mouth shut about it.

I’m just gonna let Fred poke around a little and then we’re gonna get the hell outta here. No biggie.

Fred did just so. He poked in the dirty filth, moving the rat carcasses over a little. Jack peeked over briefly a few times, unable to look away completely regardless of how disgusted he was.

Fred had dug a small hole where the rat carcasses were. There were a few others buried in the filth. He moved them out of the way and reached a patch of hair very close to the bottom of the pool. He dug more and more and revealed what appeared to be a hair-covered head or body of some sort.

“Jack, you gotta see this!” Fred said.

Jack stood up and headed over. He looked down and gagged again.

“Fuck, man! I don’t wanna see any more of this shit!”

“Hold on, I think this may be somethin’,” Fred said.

He dug a little more and revealed what he had been afraid of finding. It was a human head. It appeared to be a male adult head with brown hair. Its eye sockets were opened; in the place of eyes was rat poop. The mouth was full of leaves and dirt. The nose was completely covered with mud, and twigs were sticking out of the ears.

“All right, you really gotta see this!” Fred said.

“No, let’s go!”

“Come on, seriously.”

Jack turned back around and looked down. He did not look away this time. He put his hand on his mouth just as Fred had. They were both motionless and speechless for a moment.

Then a tapping sound came in from the locker room building to their right. They both looked over, keeping the head in their peripheral vision. The door to the men’s room creaked open slowly.

They both looked at each other.

“Cover that shit up!” Jack said.

Fred scooped the leaves back over the head, burying it. They both walked quickly around the pool back to the fence they had climbed. They climbed over it much more quickly this time.

When they made it to the other side they jogged toward the parking lot. A police cruiser came into view once they reached it.

They both stopped in their tracks as an officer came out of the driver’s seat, leaving the car running. He was a large man with a mustache. He was sweating and the two of them wondered how he was able to do his job effectively because of how out of shape he was.

“Hey, guys,” the officer said, walking toward Jack and Fred. “What’s goin’ on?”

“We were just…” Jack said. “Takin’ a walk.”

“Well, ya know this place has been shut down for a while. There’s really no need for you guys ta be back here.”

“Yep, yer right. We were just leaving. Just wanted to come by and see it for a second. We used to come up here a lot when we were younger.”

“Yeah, well ya better get goin’ now.”

“Okay.” The officer got back in his car and took off. Jack and Fred headed back to their apartment.

“Man, you think we shoulda said somethin’ to that cop?” Fred asked.

“No way, dude!” Jack said. “We gotta keep this shit to ourselves for now. If we say somethin’ they might think it was us.”

“I don’ know, man. There could be a serial killer or somethin’. I think we should do somethin’.”

“Let’s just keep our ears and eyes open for now. If we hear about some other shit happenin’ we’ll tell somebody.”

Fred hesitated for a moment.

“Yeah, that’s cool,” he said.

They went back to their apartment and smoked weed for two hours straight, trying to completely forget what they had seen at the pool.

***

The next day Mickey Mill arrived at work a little early. He would normally get there at nine and get ready to open the shop at ten. He arrived at eight in order to take care of inventory and try to tell if any of the teenagers had been stealing anything.

He stood outside and smoked a cigarette before getting to work. He looked over at the old Pinewood pool as he smoked. He did not like looking anywhere near the direction of it, but his eyes were sometimes drawn to it. The whole place gave him the creeps. Every now and then he would see some kids snooping around the area, but that was it. No one ever went over there to cut the grass or check the building.

For some reason it always looked dark over around the area, even if it was a bright, sunny day. The vines were out of control, and the place was filthy. He never walked anywhere near it, but he could imagine that it probably smelled horrible.

He threw his filter on the ground and stepped on it. He went back in and got right to work. He went into the break room to get a drink of water from the cooler and saw that the large dining table had a large splat of vomit right on the center of it. Some of it had gotten onto the chairs and floor as well.

“Fuck no, not again!”

Many times Mickey and his employees would hang out after the shop closed and drink and play cards in the break room. He knew it was not the most ethical thing to do, but he had a reputation of being a “cool boss”, and he would always keep the parties in the work place and not invite any outsiders.

Mickey was twice the age of most of them, so he would usually leave to go home before the rest of them. His most trusted employee, Jon, had a key to the building and would be the last one in the building on many nights.

The previous night was no exception. They closed the shop at nine. Mickey stayed and drank with Jon, Kevin and Carl and left around eleven. Mickey knew that Carl could not handle his booze very well, so he considered the probability that it was him.

But why the fuck wouldn’t one of the others clean that shit up?

He grabbed a Styrofoam cup and filled it with water from the cooler, trying hard not to inhale. He left and closed the door.

I don’t have time for this shit!

He grabbed his clip board and immediately started counting key rings, which were located near the front door of the shop. It did not take him long to find out that there were a few missing. He bowed his head for a moment.

A loud gust of wind from outside kicked him back into reality. It hit right up against the side of the building, ending with a high-pitched whistling sound.

He went out through the back again and looked around. There was only a low, subtle wind blowing through consistently. He looked at the large trees on his left to see the branches and leaves swaying with the wind. He looked to his right at the Pinewood pool and saw that many of the leaves that had been covering the ground outside the fence were gone, leaving a small, open space with crumbled, dead grass. He pondered the area for a short moment with a frown on his face and went back inside.

He was in a terrible mood, but he managed to finish the inventory before any of his employees came in.

He heard Jon’s truck pulling up outside in the employee parking lot. He frowned again; he was ready to go off, but he wanted to get a decent explanation first.

“Hey, Mickey,” Jon said stressfully. It looked like he had gotten up from a light sleep and came straight to work. His long, brown hair was sticking in all directions, and his eyes were bloodshot. His shirt was wrinkled and it looked like he had not shaved in over a week.

“Jon,” Mickey said, sorting cash from the day before. “You left somethin’ in the break room.”

“Shit… All right.” Jon ran to the break room as if he were evading police.

“Aw, fuck!” he yelled out from the break room. He ran back to the register.

“Mickey, I’m sorry. Look, my mother hasn’t been doin’ good. Last night I had ta rush over and check on her. Carl musta honked right before we left. Look… I’ll clean it up, man.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jon,” Mickey said. “Carl’s due in soon. He can do it.”

“Naw, I got it. I’ll be right back.” He ran back toward the break room.

Mickey looked at the clock and saw that it was five till ten. He walked over and turned the open/closed sign around. He did not see anyone out in the parking lot. Normally there would be a few people waiting outside for the store to open on Fridays. Mickey was thankful that there were no early birds today. He was glad to have a little extra time to straighten up the place.

Carl walked in. He did not look any better than Jon. His mustache was uneven, his hair was greasy and covered with dandruff, and his shoes were untied. He almost tripped when he stepped onto the floor mat.

“Hey, Mickey,” Carl said while tying his shoes.

“Carl,” Mickey said, looking at him with a smirk.

Carl stood up, frowned and hit his palm up against his head.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

“It’s okay, Carl,” Mickey said, smiling. “Jon’s takin’ care of it now.”

“Aggh.” Carl ran over toward the break room.

Jon and Carl came back a few minutes later. They both still looked stressed and hung over, but they were ready to work.

“So your mother’s still having problems?” Mickey asked Jon.

“Yeah,” he replied. “She was havin’ chest pains last night. I had ta call 9-1-1. Thought she was havin’ an attack, but no, thank God.”

“Well, damn. I’m sorry ta hear that. Is she still in the hospital?”

“Yeah, they’re keepin’ her there just for today, I think.”

“Well, I’ll try ta let you off early today.”

“Thanks, Mick.” He went up and hugged Mickey.

“I’m real sorry, Mickey,” Carl said. “We got a little out of control last night.”

“Well, just don’t let it be a regular thing. We’ve been hangin’ out here a lot lately. We’re gonna hafta cut back a little, maybe to once a week.”

“Yeah, that’s fine with me,” Carl said.

“So, have either of you noticed anything weird about the old Pinewood pool?”

“Shit, yeah,” Jon replied. “That place gives me more and more creeps every time I see it. One night I drove by there, and I coulda sworn I saw a light flickerin’ in the building. I can’t see why anyone would be out there in the dark, unless they’re fuckin’ crazy.”

“Yeah, those vines really creep me out,” Carl said. “They look like veins.”

“God, I’m startin’ ta think it’s takin’ away business. I think it makes everyone a little queasy. I may start lookin’ around for a new place for the shop.”

“I wouldn’t blame ya,” Jon said.

“I saw a couple young dudes hangin’ around over there yesterday. Saw ‘em leavin’. They looked scared ta shit.”

“Well, I ain’t goin’ any closer than I have to,” Carl said.

“For damn sure,” Jon said.

It was slow for the majority of the day at the shop. Mickey let Jon leave three hours early, and cut Carl shortly afterwards. Mickey locked up at seven, an hour before closing time. He stood outside and smoked a cigarette before he left, studying the Pinewood pool area the whole time. Nothing stuck out to him, but he was still very afraid.

***

Larry Cline was awoken by the mooing of his cattle at seven A.M. He got up in a very frustrated state. He was normally able to sleep in on Sunday mornings, but he could not deal with the moaning noises any longer.

He got up and headed downstairs to see his wife, Jane, making coffee.

“Yer up early,” Larry said.

“Speak for yourself,” Jane replied. “Those cattle are driving me crazy.”

“God, I’ve never seen ‘em like this before.” He looked out of the window at his front yard. The cattle were walking around restlessly, kicking and moaning nonstop. Jane stood by his side and looked out.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it was that Mickey Mill,” she said. “Those tractors are always so loud, and I’ve heard voices comin’ from over there late at night. I just might need ta go over there and give ‘im a piece of my mind.”

“Mickey’s harmless. He’s a good man, too. I wouldn’t blame him for anything.”

“Whatever you say.” She walked back into the kitchen.

“That wind is really blowin’ today. It was pretty bad yesterday, too. These gusts come outta nowhere.”

“Yeah, I keep thinkin’ a big storm is on its way. But then again I’ve been thinkin’ that for the past week.”

“Ya know that old pool is a little mysterious. It seems like it’s always dark over there. I’ve heard noises comin’ from there when I drive by.”

“Ugh, I don’t even look in the direction of that place. Gives me the creeps.”

“Someone needs ta go there and clean up the place and check it out.”

“You could.”

“Ha ha, I don’t think so. If they pay me ta do so that might be a different story. I got a feelin’ it’s pretty rough over there. That damn pool’s been outta business forever it seems like.”

“Yeah, I still remember takin’ the kids there when they were little. It was a pretty nice place back then.”

“Sure was. That was the spot.”

They both sat at the dinner table and read the newspaper from the day before. Larry came across an article about a missing man named Dan Hatter. He almost cringed. The man had been missing for two weeks, and there were no leads of any sort.

Mysterious shit, just like everything else.

Larry set the paper down and headed out to clean the barn and hopefully calm down the cattle a little.

***

Jack and Fred were up late watching TV at their apartment. They were beginning to come down from their high. The past few days they had tried to stay high all throughout the day; it made them forget about what they had seen at Pinewood. They had been ignoring the issue, but Fred’s conscious began eating at him.

“Man, I know we’ve been tryin’ ta keep this shit behind us, but don’t you think we should go tell someone?” he asked.

Jack paused and bowed his head.

“Shit, I’m startin’ ta think so,” he said while surfing through channels. “I don’t know if I wanna go to the cops, though. They haven’t exactly been my friends lately.”

“Yeah, I know. I been readin’ the paper. There’s been some missing people. It’s really scarin’ the shit outta me.”

“Yeah, that shit’s all over the news.” Jack picked up his smoking bowl and set it back down. “We do gotta do somethin’.”

“Ya know I don’t have any kind of record with the police. Maybe I could get a hold of them. I won’t mention your name.”

“Well, that cop that stopped us knows I was there anyway, but maybe you should just go ahead and do it. Those fuckers may start eyein’ me even closer than they already do, but that’ll just hafta be my sacrifice.”

“Well, maybe we should wait a little bit and see if we can’t think of something else that’ll leave both of us off the hook.”

“We can try.”

***

Jon was staying with his mother for the time being. His father was out of town on a business trip, and he wanted to make sure his mother was recuperating successfully. She was doing much better. She did not look sick, and she was much livelier than she had been. The doctor had her taking one pill a day for her heart, and recommended that she do some light exercise each day and to call him if she felt bad during or after.

Jon woke up at ten A.M. and went up to his mother’s room. She was reading a paperback novel. She had on her black spectacles that made her eyes look three times larger than they really were.

“How are ya, mom?” he asked.

“Great, honey!” She took off her spectacles and set her book down.

“No more chest pains or anything?”

“Nope, I’ve never felt better, really.”

“Well good, good. Look, I’ve got the day off and the doctor said you could use some exercise, so you wanna go for a walk sometime?”

“Yes, that would be nice. Maybe soon.”

“All right, I’ll go anytime. Just let me know.”

“Okay.”

Jon walked into the kitchen and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. Sheila ate a granola bar and changed into some jeans and a sweater. Jon threw on some ripped jeans and his leather jacket.

“You better wear a jacket, ma,” he said as he opened the front door.

She grabbed a light wind breaker and put it on. They both walked outside.

“Oh, such a nice day!” Sheila said, breathing in the fresh spring air. It was warmer than it had been, and there was a light breeze passing by.

“So how have you been, Jon? We really haven’t talked in a while.”

“Well, I’m okay, mom,” Jon replied. “Work’s been kinda slow, but I’m still gettin’ enough hours to get by. I’m probably gonna start back up with school next fall.”

“Oh, good, good. I was hoping you would. Are you going to continue with your major?”

“Yeah, I think so. Mechanics seems to be my forte.”

“Well, I think that’s great. Your father and I don’t say it very often, but we are very proud of you. You’ve been through a lot and haven’t given up.”

“Well, thanks, ma. I appreciate it. I wanna make you two proud. I’ve just been worryin’ about you.”

“Well, you really don’t need to. I feel strong as a horse now.”

“I know, but you need ta take it slow. The drug is makin’ you feel real good right now, but it doesn’t mean that you’re all better.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t planning to do anything too harsh, not for a while anyway.”

They reached the intersection of Poplar St. and Pine St. They looked toward the railroad tracks; further on was Mickey’s.

“You wanna go right here?” Jon asked.

“Hmm,” she replied. “Let’s go up by your work. I haven’t been up there in a while.”

Jon immediately thought about the pool and his heart sank.

“Well, I guess we could go up there. Let’s not go any further, though.”

“Are you okay? You look kinda scared.”

“It’s just that pool is kinda creepy. I don’t wanna go by it.”

“Okay.” They crossed the street. “Ya know you had a lot of fun there when you were younger.”

Jon smiled.

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

They reached the railroad tracks, looked both ways and crossed.

Jon was sad to see that there were no customers at Mickey’s.

“Let’s go in and say hi to Mickey,” Sheila said.

“Okay.” They headed in.

Mickey was sitting at the cash register playing some sort of hand-held electronic game.

“Mickey,” Jon said as he walked in.

“Hey, there!” Mickey said as he stood up and came forward.

“How are ya, Sheila?” Mickey came up and hugged her.

“I’m doin’ a lot better. How are you?”

“Well, I’ve been better, but I can’t complain too much. Business is a little slow now.”

“Well, sorry to hear that. Is it just you here?”

“Yep, I just cut Jake and Carl. Didn’t want to, but I sorta had to.”

“Damn,” Jon said. “Did that guy come back today for that 9030?”

“Nope. He was supposed to be here earlier. Maybe he’ll show up later.”

“Yeah, I bet he will.”

Sheila looked around the shop and was very impressed by everything.

“Looks like you’ve got quite a shop here, Mickey,” she said.

“Well thanks,” Mickey replied. “I wish everyone else was as ecstatic about it as you.”

Sheila laughed.

“Well, we’re gonna go finish our walk, Mickey. I’ll see ya tomorrow.”

“All right, you two take care.” Mickey shook Jon’s hand and hugged Sheila.

“That’s a shame Mickey’s isn’t doin’ so good,” Sheila said as she and Jon walked back toward the sidewalk in the direction of the pool.

“Yeah, it’s like people don’t wanna come anywhere near his place.”

“You think you’re gonna be able to survive working over there much longer?”

“Yeah, my hours are good. Everyone else’s hours are gettin’ cut, though.”

“Well, I guess Mickey likes you.”

“Yeah, I’m the most reliable employee, that’s for sure.”

“Well, that’s good. That’s what I raised you to be.”

“Mom, we should head back.” Jon stopped in his tracks and noticed that they were very close to the entrance sign to Pinewood. He put his hand on her shoulder.

He noticed that she was staring toward the main building. He took a few steps forward so that he could see her face.

“Mom?” Her eyes and mouth were wide open. Jon looked toward the building with a frown, but did not see anything out of the ordinary.

He looked back toward her, and she began to fall back slowly with no control. Jon caught her with both arms.

“Mom?! Mom?!” He was in a knelt position holding her. Her eyes and mouth were now closed. It was clear that she was unconscious now.

Jon began to look around and see if anyone was out walking or driving.

“Help!” he cried out. He looked toward Mickey’s, which was only about thirty yards away. “Mickey!”

Mickey came out and sprinted over immediately. He knelt down and joined Jon in holding her. He put his hand on her neck to feel for a pulse. He could not find one, so he repositioned his hands a few times.

“Let’s bring ‘er in,” he said. He and Jon grabbed one arm and rushed her into the shop. They set her down on the couch in the break room. Mickey called 9-1-1 and told them to hurry. There was a hospital just a little down the road, so he was confident that they would arrive soon.

“Is it her heart, you think?” he asked. He came back up and joined Jon in tending to her.

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” Jon was crying and his face was beat red. His hands shook whenever they weren’t touching something. “She was feelin’ fine. We just went for a short walk. She saw somethin’! Over by the goddamn pool! I didn’t see it, but she sure as hell did.”

“Son of a bitch! I’ve had it with that damn dump!” Mickey began to cry as well.

The medics arrived promptly. Mickey and Jon heard the sirens. Mickey ran up, opened the front door and kicked the rubber stopper underneath it to keep it open.

Two medics came in with a stretcher. Mickey guided them into the break room. They hurried in and looked at Sheila. They both had very little hope just from looking at her, but they began to check her for signs of life.

Eventually they both looked at each other shamefully. Then they looked up at Mickey and Jon, who were standing deathly still, waiting for a miracle.

“She’s gone,” one of the medics said under his breath.

Mickey and Jon hugged each other and cried even harder.

***

Larry was beyond stressed now. His cattle were still going nuts almost 24/7. He tried keeping them in the barn, but it just made them moo even louder. He had gotten many complaints from neighbors, none of which were very close by. They had all said that the moos were keeping them up at night. He was about ready to hire a horse whisperer-type person to come over and fix whatever problem they were having. Larry knew deep down that it had something to do with Pinewood, though. It had become hard for him to even look over in the direction of it without getting chills.

He went back to cleaning out the barn. It was a hot, humid day and he was sweating and breathing hard. The cattle had been shitting all over the place; in the barn, in the field, and even in their water buckets. They had been kicking it around as well. Larry was now cleaning the interior and exterior walls of the barn. His radio was playing blue grass music, and the volume was up almost all the way. It was drowning out the sounds from the cattle a little, and it helped to ease Larry’s mind a little.

He was in a working mode now, and he was actually enjoying it to a certain extent. He began to hear a faint voice in the background, so he looked behind him.

Jane was standing in the doorway of the barn. He went over and turned the radio down.

“Larry, there are some weird sounds comin’ from that direction.” She pointed behind her. “I’m scared.”

Larry followed her out of the barn with a frustrated look, but he did not say anything.

They both looked toward the cornfield on the other side of the road, which was owned by Larry’s friend, Bob. They also directed their vision toward Pinewood and Mickey’s.

“I don’t hear anything, babe,” Larry said. “What did it sound like?”

“I don’t know, it was awful, though,” Jane said.

“Well, I wouldn’t doubt it. That place is fuckin’ wicked.”

“I’m startin’ ta think it wouldn’t be the best idea to go over there and clean it up. We should all just leave it alone.”

“Yeah, we’ve all been doin’ a good job of that. Maybe some dumb kids have been pokin’ around over there. Probably some practical joke. I’m gonna keep my eye on it, hard as it is. I wanna see if anyone’s over there that shouldn’t be.”

“Just don’t go too close.” Jane went back inside.

Larry began to sweep the floor of the barn. The moos had died down a little.

Finally, peace!

He did not find the silence odd at first. He just tried to enjoy it. He finished sweeping with a satisfied smile on his face.

“Larry!” Jane screamed. “Come quick!”

Dammit!

He set his broom against one of the stalls and headed outside.

Jane was pointing toward the fence at the end of the field. One of the cows was lying down on its side. The others were gathering around it slowly.

“Shit!” Larry said softly. He and Jane ran down to check it out.

The cattle were now moaning softly and sorrowfully. Some of them were sniffing their fallen friend, who was not moving at all. The others were walking back and forth with their heads down.

“Outta the way!” Larry said as he came up to the fallen cow. The others stepped out of the way, leaving room for him to see what was going on.

He was looking for signs of life very closely. The cow did not appear to be breathing. Its eyes and mouth were open. Once the flies made their way over Larry knew she was dead. He looked back at Jane, and she was crying.

He had had problems with the heifer in the past. She had been overly aggressive at times, and he believed that she had a heart condition. She had been fine over the past few months. It didn’t make sense for her to just fall over and die all of a sudden.

He looked over toward Pinewood with a frown. He did not see anything out of the ordinary, but he had a good feeling that it had aided in the death somehow.

“Well, I’ll give Bill a call,” Larry said while walking up to hug his wife.

He had his friend Bill come over and dispose of the carcass. He stayed inside for the rest of the day; he was no longer in the mood to clean the barn, even though it still needed a lot of work. He stayed in with Jane and tried to comfort her.

***

Fred had gone ahead and contacted the cops about the head that they had found in the baby pool. Jack was not thrilled, but he supported the decision anyway. The cops questioned both of them for what seemed like forever. They both had to admit that they had trespassed, but neither of them received punishment; the police were very glad that the two of them had come forward and reported the circumstance. It gave them something to work with.

Fred was working at his new job in the cafeteria at Sal State, the community college in which he attended. He had been very desperate for a new job and found that there was a large section on the Sal State website with different employment options. He did not get paid much at the cafeteria, but it was a job that he was able to begin working right away, and it paid the bills.

He brought over a pan of macaroni and cheese from the kitchen and set it in the display warmer. He served a few of the students and then sat down for a moment and watched the news on TV. The lunch rush was over, so he could relax a little.

He watched President Obama talk about the new health care plan. The TV was on mute, but the caption was on.

A news break came on right afterwards; a reporter was standing near Mickey’s Tractors and Farm Accessories.

“Hey, Kelly, turn up the volume,” he said to one of the other employees. She was wiping down tables. She stood up on one of the chairs and turned the TV up.

“… at what used to be the Pinewood Pool Club. After reports of a dead body in the baby pool and other mysterious deaths around this area circulated, two policemen came to investigate. Regretfully, one of them did not make it out alive. It is still unclear what happened. The surviving officer is currently in shock and cannot be interviewed at this time. Many believe that this lot is haunted. We will bring you more on this story as it develops. Craig?”

“All right, you can turn it back down,” Fred said in a very disappointed tone.

Kelly grabbed the remote from a nearby counter and pressed the mute button.

“I remember that pool,” she said. “I used to go there with my friend when I was younger.”

“Yeah, me too,” Fred replied.

“Why is everyone so freaked out about that place?”

“You don’t wanna know.”

“Sure I do.” She came up and sat on the cashier’s counter. Her blonde pigtails dangled as she sat down.

Fred figured he had some down time, so he told her the whole story in depth. She sat and listened with wide eyes. Then she began to chuckle all of a sudden.

“So what, there’s a ghost over there?” She smiled playfully.

Fred frowned without saying anything. He began to wipe down the counter.

“I’m sorry, Fred,” Kelly said. “It just seems a little far-fetched.”

Fred had somewhat of a crush on Kelly. He could not stay mad at her for long.

“Well, sometimes crazy shit happens,” he said. “It don’t always make sense.”

“You’re right, I shouldn’t be laughing.” Her expression turned serious. She tried to reveal her sensitivity.

“All I know is I’m not goin’ back there unless I have to.”

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to. Stay away from that place. How close do you live to it?”

“Few blocks.”

“You don’t have to pass it, do you?”

“No, I’ve just been goin’ around it the past couple days. Tryin’ not ta look at it.”

“Well good. Hey, I’m gonna do my outs and then I’m off. You take care, Fred.” She came up and hugged him. For a short moment he forgot about all of his problems and entered a blissful state.

He took a few more orders and watched the news on mute for the rest of his shift. There were no further updates regarding Pinewood.

***

Jon knew he had to do something. It had been four days since his mother’s death. The funeral was a day ago, and he had been grieving heavily. Now he was sitting in his mother’s house alone–his father was visiting relatives. His grief was slowly turning into anger. As far as he was concerned, someone or something had killed his mother, and there had to be pay back. He considered the fact that if he went over there to try and avenge his mother and died in the process that it would not solve anything, and would not be something that his mother would have wanted him to do. He just sat on his couch in complete silence and thought to himself.

He was interrupted by a knock at the door. At first he was irritated, but then he thought that he could use some company.

He looked through the side window to see Carl, his co-worker and friend, holding a dish of some sort.

Jon opened the door and let him in.

“Hey, man, I brought some baked ziti for ya,” Carl said. He set the dish down.

“Thanks a lot, bro,” Jon said while hugging Carl.

“I’ll go put this in the fridge.”

“Cool.”

“Ya know, somethin’ needs ta be done about that Pinewood lot.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure.”

“We should burn it down.”

“Shit, I don’t know. If that shit’s haunted it prolly ain’t gonna be a good idea.”

“You really think it’s haunted?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know any more. You?”

“I really don’t know either. I heard there’s a couple dudes that went over there and found a dead body. Maybe we should try ta meet up with them sometime. They might know some shit we don’t. That is, if and when you’re up to it.”

“Shit, I’m down right now. I heard about that, too. They live pretty close; that is if they haven’t moved far away by now after seein’ that shit.”

“Yeah, good point. What they saw had ta be different than what your mom saw, though.”

“Not necessarily. My mom had a heart condition. What she saw destroyed her, but those young dudes probably just got scared by it.”

Carl bowed his head.

“All I know is somethin’ ain’t right.”

“Yep.”

“One of farmer Larry’s cows died not too long ago, too.”

“Damn, I didn’t hear about that.”

“Yep, just dropped dead. Just like that.”

Jon sighed and bowed his head.

“Well, those dudes’ names are Fred and Jack. One of ‘em goes to Sal State. The other works at that drive through down there, I think. I’m sure we could contact ‘em. I’ll try tomorrow.”

“Cool, dude, just give me a call. I’m down to help. Where’s your pops?”

“He’s up in Troy visiting with his mom and sisters. This isn’t the best place for him now. Prolly isn’t for me either.”

“Yeah. Well I’m gonna get goin’. Send him my regards. Give me a call if you want some company.”

“Cool, man.” Jon hugged Carl.

“All right, bro, call me tomorrow. I don’t have school or work.”

“I gotcha.”

Jon stayed up for another half an hour thinking and considering things. He finally lay down in his bed and was out almost right away.

***

Larry’s cattle had been very quiet over the past few days. The silence would have been nice, but Larry could find no comfort at all. They were very afraid, and so was his wife. He was afraid, too, though he did not like to admit it.

He had finished cleaning the barn inside and out. It now practically looked new. He even got some positive comments from friends and relatives who had come over; many of which were worried about him and Jane. They could all see the change in Larry and Jane. Neither of them had been very lively over the past few weeks. Larry’s nephew and brother had come over and helped with the cleaning, which Larry was very grateful for.

Larry knew that some action had to be taken. He and his wife could not continue living like they were. He considered his options. They could sell the farm and move to a new one, they could try to get rid of whatever it was that was causing all of the problems, or they could stay with relatives for a while so they would at least be away from the chaos.

He was leaning more toward the second choice. Running away had never gotten him anywhere in life. He had to stand up and defend his territory. He had heard many rumors about Pinewood being haunted for several years. At first it seemed like some dumb legend that teenage kids tell their younger siblings to scare them, but he was beginning to believe that it might be possible.

Acceptance is the first step, right?

Jane had not left the house in two days. She missed bingo night with her friends. Larry was having trouble even getting her to come downstairs for dinner. She was the main reason he had to take action; he knew that she would not be able to deal with the situation much longer. He had kept a close eye on her the past few days. He offered to take her to the doctor, but she declined.

“Honey, you wanna get up and go for a walk today?” Larry asked from the doorway of their bedroom.

“No, I’m tired,” Jane replied. She grabbed her pillow tightly.

“That’s because you haven’t been up and out. It might feel good ta get up and get your blood flowin’.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Ya know we could drive out to the Maplewood Park. It’s far from Pinewood if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

Larry sighed.

“All right.”

He walked downstairs. He decided to clean the house. It had been a long while since anything in the house had been cleaned. Everything looked filthy, and Larry wanted to have it looking good for potential company.

He grabbed a cloth and began dusting the shelves. A loud knock came from the front door, startling him. He grabbed his chest and then laughed it off, feeling embarrassed.

He opened the door to see Mickey Mill with a solemn look on his face.

“Larry,” Mickey said.

“Mickey,” Larry said. “Come in. You want a drink?”

“No, I’m good. Just seein’ if you had a little time to talk.”

“Well, yeah. All the time in the world.”

“Good.” Mickey paused. “I heard about your heifer. Sorry.”

“Yeah, well thanks. Shit happens.”

“So I take it you’ve had your eye on the Pinewood over there.”

“Sure have. That damn place is destroyin’ our lives.”

“Yep, sure is. Some employees and I have decided to try and do somethin’. Not quite sure what yet.”

“Well, somethin’ does need ta be done. I’m in, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

“You’re a good man.” Mickey patted Larry on the shoulder. “We’re gonna start out doin’ a little research. We gotta find out more about the past of that place.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that’ll give us a little insight.”

“Yep. Well, you still have the same phone number, right?”

“Yes I do.”

“Well, I’ll give you a call. Maybe tomorrow.”

“That sounds good, brother. Say hello to the missus.” They shook hands, and Mickey left.

Larry went upstairs into his bedroom.

“Who was that?” Jan asked.

“Mickey Mill.”

“Oh.”

“He’s wanted to meet up with me sometime and try to figure out what’s goin’ on with that damn Pinewood.”

“Well, good.”

“I think we can make a difference if there are a lot of us.”

“Yes, definitely.”

“Well, I’m gonna go finish cleanin’ the house.”

“Thank you very much, Larry. I’m sure I’ll get over this soon. I’ve just been feelin’ bad lately.”

“We all have, hon.”

He kissed Jane and went back downstairs.

***

Jon and Carl had found the address of Fred and Jack after some minor investigating. They had gone to the house of Anne Day, a friend of Jon’s mother. Anne lived just down the street from Fred and Jack. The two of them had mowed her lawn the previous summer.

She told Jon and Carl where they lived. She told them to make sure not to stress them out at all because they had just been through a terrible ordeal. She felt good for bringing the four together.

Jon knocked on the door with Carl at his side. They both waited a short moment, listening for any sound of movement. There was nothing. Jon knocked again with more force. They both heard someone moving in the apartment.

“Who is it?” a voice called from the other side of the door.

“Hey, I’m Jon and this is Carl.” Jon pointed to Carl since he assumed that the person was looking through the peephole. “We wanna talk to you about Pinewood. We’ve had some bad experiences with it just like you guys.”

“Your mom died over there, right?”

A short moment of silence.

“Yep,” Jon said.

They heard the door unlock, and it came open slowly to reveal a skinny, long-haired guy with blood-shot eyes.

“I’m Jack.” He extended his hand, and Jon and Carl shook it. “Come on in.”

He led them in.

“Aye, Fred,” Jack said. Fred was sitting on the couch. All that could be seen at first was the top of his head.

He got up and faced his guests.

“This is Jon, and this is Carl,” Jack said. Carl shook both of their hands. Jack led the four of them to a nearby poker table.

“Now I don’t think we need to sit here and discuss all the crazy shit that’s been goin’ on,” Jon said. “What we need to do is find a solution to this problem. Carl and I were wondering if you’d like to help us.”

Jack and Fred looked at each other with wide eyes.

“You mean… Go back over there?” Jack said.

“No, not yet anyway,” Jon said. “We’re gonna try and get some information about the place, and not the dumb rumors that you heard when you were a teenager. I’m talkin’ hard facts.”

“Where are we gonna get this information?”

“Well, we’re gonna try many different sources. Mickey, my boss, is gonna help us. We’re gonna try internet, city records, past employees of Pinewood and others who may have seen some shit. It ain’t gonna be easy, but I know we gotta do somethin’.”

“Fuckin’ aye,” Fred said.

Jon wrote down his cell phone number.

“Go ahead and give me yours,” he told Jack and Fred. They exchanged numbers.

“All right, we’ll call you guys sometime soon if that’s cool,” Jon said.

“Yeah, any time,” Jack said.

Jon and Carl left and went straight over to the house of Ken Geary, a former life guard at Pinewood.

***

They pulled up and saw Ken sitting on the swing on his front porch reading the newspaper. They had found out where he lived by simply looking up his telephone number in the phone book. Jon asked him if they could talk, and he invited them over. Ken lived just down the road from Jon’s mother.

Jon and Carl both walked up the driveway. Ken did not notice them at first; his face was buried in the newspaper.

“Hey, Ken?” Jon asked. He and Carl stopped right at the front porch.

Ken looked up with a frown, which turned into a smile once he knew who it was.

“Oh, hey, guys.” Ken got up and shook the hands of Jon and Carl. “Sit down.”

Jon and Carl sat on a bench next to the swing. Ken sat back down in the swing.

“Y’all want anything to drink?” Ken asked them.

“No,” Carl said.

“No, we’re cool,” Jon said. “We just wanna hear a little about your life guard position over at Pinewood.”

“Yep,” Ken replied. “It’s the damnedest thing that I still live so close ta that shit pile. I thought I’d be far away from there by now.

“Well, I worked there from about ’95 to ’99. It was just a nice little summer job I had when I was in high school and the beginning of college.”

“So, did you ever notice anything mysterious over there when you were workin’?”

Ken smiled.

“Ya know there have been all sorts a’ rumors floatin’ around about that place for a while. It just hasn’t been till recently that people have really been affected by it.

“I guess I never thought the place was haunted. I used ta scare the shit outta my friends over there, though, especially in the night time. There were times I saw some doors open, but it was windy on those days. I will say that the place is a hundred times creepier now than it was back then, that’s fer damn sure.”

“So I know some of those stories and rumors were funny and stupid, but do you remember any of ‘em off the top of your head?”

Ken laughed while rubbing his head.

“Well, I know you guys have heard most of ‘em. I guess the wackiest one was that a UFO crashed down in the spot, and there were aliens buried in the ground. Supposedly they come out at midnight every night and howl like wolves or some shit.”

Jon and Carl laughed for a moment.

“Naw, I haven’t heard that one,” Jon said.

“It’s gotten way outta hand, I can tell ya that much,” Ken said.

“Well, so I guess the main reason we came here is to ask you if you think the place is haunted.”

Ken sat motionless for a moment, as if in deep thought. He rested his cheek against his right fist.

“Well, at first I thought it was a buncha shit,” he said. “All the rumors escalated into a big fairy tale. But now I’m thinkin’ a little different about it. I ain’t gonna lie, it scares me to death passin’ that place, especially in the night. Somethin’ ain’t right about it. Do I think it’s haunted? Maybe. That would be one explanation, I can say that.”

“Yeah,” Jon said. “I think a lot a’ people are tryin’ ta play it off as something less serious because they’re scared and don’t wanna think about it.”

“You’re absolutely right.”

“Well, we’re gonna get goin’,” Jon said as he and Carl stood up. Ken stood up and shook their hands.

“Thanks for your time,” Carl said.

“No problem, dudes,” Ken said. “How ‘bout I give you my number if you need anything else.”

“Okay, I’ll put it in my cell phone,” Jon said while pulling his phone out.

They didn’t get a lot of new information on Pinewood, but they did get a different perspective of it. Jon and Carl were both ready to get more information and put it to the test.

***

Jon, Carl, Fred, Jack, Mickey and Larry had all met up at Mickey’s shop to discuss what they had researched. Jon, Carl, Fred and Jack had visited a few other past employees of Pinewood, who had all given them about the same information as Ken. They also went to the library and researched the internet for any unusual findings in the city of Sallow, as well as some basic history. All they had found were some legends and alleged hauntings, but none of them were around the Pinewood area.

Mickey and Larry had gone and talked to some of the older folks who were now living in Eastside Elderly Living. Most notably, a man named Leonard Hock had mentioned that he had always been a little nervous around certain places in Sallow, including Pinewood. He had said that he had heard sounds coming from the Pinewood area late at night as far back as 1975. He mentioned that he felt that it had gotten worse over the years, and he was not against the idea of a haunting.

The six of them decided to do the inevitable and go over to the Pinewood parking lot with flashlights and check it out while it was dark.

They walked from Mickey’s over to the parking lot and stood at the entrance, scoping things out.

They all shone their flashlights back and forth around the main building, the fences and beyond. It would have looked like a laser rock show from a distance. They were all afraid, but they knew they would have to move closer at some point.

Nothing was out of the ordinary at first, aside from the general creepiness of the whole area. It was a quiet night with a light breeze passing by occasionally. The six of them stood side by side, completely blocking the entrance to the parking lot.

“Well, we better move up a little,” Mickey said. “Maybe to the middle.”

They all walked forward and stopped right in the middle of the lot. Bugs were beginning to bite them, and they all began to wonder what exactly they were trying to accomplish. They all knew they had to do something, but they felt foolish at the current moment.

They heard some light rustling coming from the bushes near the front door of the building, and they all directed their beams toward the bushes. Larry had a pistol by his side and he touched it lightly.

The rustling became louder. They were all hoping it was just a small animal making the noise.

The bushes opened, and a man came out and started running toward the cornfield on their right like a bunny escaping from a predator.

They all followed him with their beams, and Mickey yelled out, “Stop!”

The man stopped with his hands up and a scared, disappointed look on his face.

***

He stood shaking; he was trying very hard to remain still, but it was obvious that he was drunk and nervous. He staggered back and forth, almost falling on his face at one point. He was a stocky man with a large beard. He was wearing some type of gray hat and a gray jacket with ripped black jeans.

“Who are you?” Mickey asked.

“I’m Chip,” the man said. “What the hell’s goin’ on?”

“Do you know you’ve trespassed into a crime scene?”

Chip looked even more flustered. He looked like he had no idea where he was.

“Crime scene?”

“Yes sir,” Mickey continued impatiently. “You haven’t seen the news in the past few days?”

“Naw, man. I don’t have a… TV. Hell, I don’t even have a damn home.”

“So you sleep here?” Larry asked. He was itching to pull out his gun and point it at the man, but he refrained.

“Well, I did. Not any more. You guys ain’t cops are ya?”

“No sir,” Mickey said. “We’re just six men lookin’ for some answers. Now why don’t you sleep here anymore?”

Chip sighed and bowed his head.

“It’s okay, man,” Jon said. “If you saw something you really need to tell us. It could save a lot of lives.”

“Fuck,” Chip said. “I’ve been homeless for a few weeks. I won’t get into that, though.

“Anyways, I was sleepin’ here one night not too long ago. It was over by them bushes.” He pointed toward the bushes by the entrance to the building. “That shit ain’t com’terble, but it keeps me hidden and away from the cops.

“I kept hearin’ some tappin’ noises. Shit woke me up about six goddamn times. I think it was comin’ from the building. I wasn’t about ta go check in there, though. I couldn’t see shit. I fine’ly got up and headed over ta find a new sleepin’ spot. Then I hear some voices as I’m walkin’ out. Couldn’t understand a damn word, but it sounded like a bunch a’ people talkin’. Then a real cold chill came outta nowhere givin’ me goose bumps. Scared the shit outta me.

“I fine’ly worked up the courage ta come back tonight and check the shit out. I heard some voices again. This time… it sounded like a damn demon.” Chip shook for a moment as if he had chills.

Everyone was silent for a moment. They all nearly began to shake just as Chip had.

“Chip, if you want you can come with us,” Mickey said. “It’d be a hell of a lot better than comin’ here on your own, I can tell ya that. We’re gonna try ta get to the bottom of this, somehow.”

“Well… Yeah,” Chip said. He came up and shook hands with everyone.

“So, demon voices?” Mickey asked.

“That sure as hell is what it sounded like ta me.”

“Well, we’re gonna stay out here and investigate a little more tonight. You won’t be looked down on if you decide to leave right now and get yourself together. You can always meet up with us some other time.”

“Screw that, man. I’m here ain’t I? Might as well stay and try ta finish this shit up.”

“You’re a good man, Chip.”

***

All seven of them had moved up right by the bushes near the entrance of the building. They all remained silent with their flashlight beams going back and forth. They did not hear or see anything out of the ordinary.

“Maybe whatever the fuck that’s back there is afraid of large groups of people,” Chip said.

Jack laughed nervously. “That would make sense. Me and Fred saw a door movin’ when it was just us.”

“Maybe it’s fuckin’ with us,” Fred said. “Tryin’ ta make us feel safe.”

“The one thing we haven’t found out yet is if there’s any records of anyone dying back there,” Mickey said. “I know you guys found that head, but there’s nothin’ showin’ if someone else died back there a while back.”

“Well, I’m sure we can find others ta talk to,” Larry said. “I’m sure if I search deep enough I’ll be able ta find ‘em.”

“You guys smell that?” Jack asked everyone.

They all inhaled deeply and let out sighs of disgust.

“God Almighty!” Larry said. “Were there some animals back there, Chip?”

“Shit, everything you can imagine is back there,” Chip said while plugging his nose. “I’ve never smelled anything that bad before, though.”

They all walked backwards slowly. The odor was nauseating. None of them had ever smelt anything quite like it before. It was similar to the smell of sewage but much stronger. They all began to gag violently. Before they knew it they were all back at Mickey’s shop.

“All right, that’s it for today,” Mickey said while coughing. “We’ll have to regroup tomorrow.”

“Good,” Larry said. “I just thought of someone I could go to. I don’t know why I didn’t think of him before.”

They all headed home. Jack invited Chip to come stay with him and Fred for the night.

***

Larry got up earlier than usual the next morning. He headed over to Bob Saller’s house in Medway. Bob had been a colonel in the Vietnam War. Larry believed that Bob knew more about the city of Sallow than any other person. It had been very hard pressed to find Bob over the past few years. He mainly just stayed at his house in Medway with his wife. He would also go on random vacations to God knows where. Larry knew that there was a very good chance that Bob would not be home, but he was desperate. He was ready for a journey.

Larry stopped at the side of the street next to Bob’s house. He did not see Bob’s blue Toyota in the driveway; there were no other cars around either, which Bob found odd.

He got out and walked up to the front door and rang the door bell. He waited a minute before ringing it again.

He heard loud footsteps and a raspy, mumbling voice coming from inside. Larry knew it was Linda, Bob’s wife. Larry was not looking forward to talking to her, but he stood and waited for her to open the door.

She opened the front door and looked through the storm door with a serious frown on her face. Once she recognized Larry she half smiled and opened the storm door.

“Larry?” she said. “It’s been forever!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Larry said. “How do you do?” He came up and hugged her.

“Not too bad, but I am gettin’ to the end of the line.”

“Aren’t we all? Is Bob in?”

“Oh, no. He’s… He’s up in Canada believe it or not. He didn’t tell me exactly what he was doin’ up there, but he’s supposed to be gone till next week.”

“Hmm. Well, does he have a cell phone?”

“Yep, he hates those damn things, but he finally folded and got one a few years back. I called him yesterday and talked to him. He seemed ta be doin’ all right.”

“Well, could you give me the number? It’s really important.”

“Well, sure.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and looked up the number.

She gave it to him, and he entered it into his cell phone.

“Thank you very much, Linda.” He came up and hugged her again.

“So, how have things been goin’ up in Sallow? I haven’t been that way in a long time.”

“Well, things have been better. I need Bob’s help with a problem we’ve got up there.”

“Oh, my. My friend Carla did say there were some mysterious deaths that happened.”

“Yes, and we’re tying to solve that mystery. Me and some friends.”

“Well, good for you. Good luck and tell Sheila I said hi.”

“I will. You have a good day, Linda.”

“You too. Come on back sometime.”

“I’m sure I will.”

Larry speed-walked back to his car and took off.

He got back home and called Bob from his house phone since his cell phone had been having service problems. It rang three times. Larry was ready to leave a voice mail when Bob answered.

“Hello?”

“Bob?”

“Yep, that’s me.”

“This is Larry Cline.”

“Larry, no shit?” Bob coughed. “Well, how the hell are ya, brother?”

“I’ve been a lot better.”

“Well, that sucks ta hear. What’s the problem?”

“Long story.” Larry tried to make it as short as possible, but it still took him two full minutes to explain everything.

“Son of a bitch,” Bob said under his breath.

“I figured since you know Sallow better than anyone else I can think of that I’d call you.”

“Shit, I was hopin’ it wouldn’t come down to this.”

“So, you know somethin’?”

“Remember Sergeant Johnny Grove?”

“Hell yeah I do. You and him were pretty good friends, weren’t you?”

“Best of friends. When he died it was sorta kept under the radar. No one was really sure how he died, but it was over at the spot where the Pinewood pool was later developed. As far as everyone was concerned, he just dropped dead. I’ve always had a different theory, though. Haven’t told many.”

Larry’s eyes widened.

“We both fought in Vietnam together, but I think it affected him a little more than me. He was never stable after that. He would never speak of many of the things he saw over there that I didn’t, and I’m kinda glad he didn’t tell me all of it.

“Every time I saw him he looked more and more disturbed. It was like he was crumblin’ inside. He never talked about the war with anyone, but it was still easy to see that it was affecting him deeply. I tried to talk to him sometimes, just to clear the air if anything, but he would always shut down.

“The night he died he was out for a walk. The police report says he walked over to the land of the future Pinewood and fell down with a heart attack, but that just doesn’t seem right to me.”

Bob cleared his throat.

“I think he either went mad out there because of his war experience, or went mad from seein’ something on that land. He either killed himself because of it or whatever the fuck it was killed him. It’s somethin’ I had been workin’ on for a while, but I kinda put it on the back burner. Now it looks like I don’t have that option anymore.”

Larry was silent. He began to shake mildly, so he held onto the phone with a tighter grip.

“That place has always been creepy, and it’s only gonna get worse. I’ll be back there in two days, maybe sooner. You think you guys could hold off on any more action till I get there?”

“Sure, Bob,” Larry said. “We’ll keep an eye on it, but we’ll wait for you before we go over there again.”

“Yep, stay away from it for now. It’s dangerous. I may have the upper hand when it comes to this. If Johnny’s ghost is there I may be able to deal with it somehow.”

“All right, Bob, you take your time. There’s really no rush.”

“It would be nice if there weren’t, but I got a bad feeling that there might be. I’ll get back as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, Bob.”

“Well, you take care till then, and whatever you do don’t get too close to that place. You probably pissed it off when y’all were in the parking lot that night.”

“Shit, you’re right.”

“Well, don’t worry about it. No sense in it.”

“All right, bye, Bob.”

“Later on, brother.”

Larry hung up the phone and sat in the rocking chair, staring at the wall.

“What’s wrong, Larry?” Jane asked, coming from out of nowhere.

He jumped a little.

“Good, good. Look, I’ll tell you sometime soon, but not now.” Larry walked up to the bedroom. His wife looked at him with confusion.

***

Mickey could see the smoke when he was on Rt. 252 on his way to the shop. He had had a bad feeling from the beginning that it was coming from his shop or near his shop. He became more anxious the closer he got. It was coming up in black and gray clouds and appeared to be out of control.

When he reached his shop he was somewhat relieved that his building was not on fire, but he looked toward the Pinewood building to see that it was engulfed in flames.

He parked his car in the back of his lot and watched the fire, taking Bob’s advice and not going close to it. Some of the bushes were on fire as well, and it was spreading. He heard sirens off in the distance. Some people had come out of their homes and were watching the fire as if it were a parade. Mickey just stood still and watched. He had no desire to move at all at the moment.

A fire truck, ambulance and police cruiser arrived. The fire fighters immediately began to hose it down. They were luckily able to contain it and keep it from spreading into the nearby forest.

The police talked to Mickey, as well as some of the other witnesses. Mickey told them that he had not seen what had started it. The police looked very nervous and would not go too close to the scene.

“You guys are doin’ good by standin’ back,” Mickey said. “Some of your firemen over there are gettin’ a little close. You may wanna tell them to stand back.”

“We will,” one of the cops said.

Jon and Carl arrived almost simultaneously. They got out of their cars and stood by Mickey, looking at the small remaining fire and the awful amount of smoke that was surrounding the entire Pinewood area.

“Fuckin’ aye,” Jon said.

Carl just sighed.

“They don’t know much,” Mickey said. “They’re not sure if it’s arson or what the fuck.”

Mickey heard the faint sound of a phone ringing and realized that it was coming from his office. He unlocked the door and ran in, picking up the phone at the last second.

“Hello?”

“Mickey?”

“Yep.”

“It’s Larry. Look, stay as far away from Pinewood as you can right now. I’ve got a friend who’s comin’ over ta check it out with us.”

“When?”

“Probably tomorrow. The next day at the latest.”

“No problem. The damn building is on fire now.”

“Shit. I’ll be right over.”

“Okay, take your time.”

Larry hung up.

“Is that Larry?” Carl asked. Jon was standing right beside him. They both looked at Mickey nervously.

“Yep. He told me that we need ta stay away from that place for now. He’s got a friend comin’ hopefully tomorrow.”

“Well, hopefully no other crazy shit happens before then.”

“I think we’ll be okay if we leave it alone.”

Larry arrived no longer than a minute later. He parked at Mickey’s, got out and headed straight toward the emergency vehicles. He could see that the firefighters were now standing back away from the building at the edge of the parking lot. He talked to the cops and told them that it would be wise to leave once the fire was contained. The cops were puzzled, but they agreed. They did not want to have to get any closer than they had to.

Larry went right over to Mickey’s. He came in to see Mickey; Jon and Carl were standing by the cash register talking.

“Larry,” Mickey said while shaking his hand.

“My God,” Larry said. “It’s gettin’ worse.”

“Yep. Your friend could end up bein’ a real life saver here.”

“Yep, that’s what I’m hopin’. He knew somebody that died over there, actually I knew the guy, too. Scary shit.”

“Well, it doesn’t take a genius ta see that whatever’s over there is pissed off.”

“Yeah, just try to avoid it at all costs. Don’t look over there. Don’t pass it in your car. Don’t even think about it if ya can. I know that may be hard, though. We just hafta sit tight for now. If you wanna close the shop a little early today, you can all come over for dinner. The missus is plannin’ on cookin’.”

“That would be nice, Larry.”

“You can bring your wife over if you want.”

“I’ll give her a call.”

“Yeah, I’ll come over,” Jon said.

“Me too,” Carl said.

“Well, it’s a date then. I’m gonna get goin’. Wanna meet at, say, six?”

“That would be nice,” Mickey said.

“Okay, well I’ll see ya then.”

“Good bye, Larry.”

***

Mickey and his wife, Anne, arrived at Larry’s at six p.m. sharp. Jon, Carl, Fred, Jack and Chip were all gathered near the front of the house talking.

“This should be nice,” Mickey said.

“Yes, I’m glad they invited us,” Anne said. They got out of the car, and Mickey introduced Anne to everyone standing outside.

They all came in together. They could smell the food right as they walked in. Anne came up and hugged Jane and Larry.

They all sat down at a large, dimly lit dinner table. Everything was well-organized. The silverware, napkins and plates were arranged neatly and bread and butter were on the middle of the table. Jane and Larry began to bring dishes of food with covers on top of them, and everyone talked among themselves, feeling good and relaxed.

Jane took the tops off of the dishes once everything was out. Roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, Brussels sprouts, sausage and baked beans all formed a heavenly aroma. Jane said grace, and they all began to eat.

“Jane, you’ve really outdone yourself this time,” Mickey said while piling food onto his plate.

“Oh, it really wasn’t a problem at all,” Jane said. “I’m glad you all appreciate it.”

“This is just what we’ve all needed right here. We may be going through some hard times right now, but at least we can all get together and have a good time. Cheers to that.”

Everyone said “cheers” almost simultaneously and tapped their glasses together.

“You know, I really want to say that I appreciate what you are all doing,” Jane said. “Many would just leave and run away. You are all showing such courage.”

“Yeah, that’s what we gotta do in hard times,” Larry said. “It would be nice if everyone had those same values.”

Everyone agreed.

They finished their dinner, and Jane brought out two coconut cream pies. They all indulged and then sat back in their chairs, feeling bloated. When they were able to stand up, they talked for a little while longer and then headed outside.

It was dusk, but they could all see small particles floating through the air, some of which landed in their eyes and made them squint. Larry rubbed his cheek with his index finger, and looked at it.

“Ashes,” he said under his breath. They all looked at him to see that he was staring off in the distance. The ashes were visible everywhere; it was like a black blizzard.

“Shit,” Mickey said. Everyone was silent for a considerable moment after that. They just watched their dark surroundings, shielding the ashes with their hands on their foreheads. They all looked over toward Pinewood but could not make out anything clearly.

“Well, guess we all better get home,” Mickey said. Everyone said faint goodbyes and got into their vehicles. They all headed straight home, and were eager and nervous for the next day to arrive.

***

Everyone woke up at dawn the next day; they all immediately got up and looked through the nearest window. There were light flurries of ash still coming down; they seemed to be dying down, though. They all wondered how it was possible that so much ash could come from such a small building.

Bob, Mickey, Larry, Chip, Frank, Jon, Carl, and Jack met at Mickey’s at nine A.M. sharp. They all figured earlier the better.

Larry introduced everyone to Bob. They were all very impressed with the latter. Bob was very handsome and physically fit for his age. He was also very well spoken. He told them all some brief stories of when he was a colonel. They all listened quietly.

“Well, we better not waste any more time,” Bob said. “Might as well get ta doin’ what we need ta do.”

They all followed Bob over to Pinewood. There was still a small amount of smoke and ash rising from the remnants of the main building, but it was not coming down like snow all over the area any more. They could see the three diving boards past the remnants; they were still in good shape, aside from the fact that they were now blackened by the ashes.

Everyone aside from Bob stopped right in the middle of the parking lot. Bob kept going toward the ruins.

“You may not wanna go much further,” Larry said.

Bob looked back at Larry, smiled and walked forward a few more steps.

“Johnny?” Bob called out.

Silence.

“Johnny, I know you’re in here somewhere.” Everyone looked at the back of Bob’s head as if he were insane.

The wind picked up a little, and a small whirl wind of ash came out of the center of the burned building and headed toward the cornfield. Everyone watched as it traveled and then eventually disappeared.

“Come on, Johnny,” Bob said. “You gotta leave these people alone. They haven’t done anything to you.”

Bob remained still. Larry walked up to him so he could see his face.

Bob was staring toward the ruins with wide eyes and an open mouth. Larry turned his head and saw something glowing in the ruins. He could not tell what it was, but he had a feeling that Bob knew.

“Bob?” Larry said. “What is it?”

“We’re gonna have to come back tonight,” Bob said. He walked back toward the entrance to Pinewood, passing everyone. He stopped at the side walk and looked back.

“Anyone who wants to come by, I’ll be here at nine sharp.” He walked back to his car alone.

***

Everyone arrived back at Pinewood at nine p.m. to see Bob standing in the same spot he had been when he first spotted the glow. They all looked to see that the glow was now much more visible. It was still hard to tell exactly what it was, but it was a spherical.

“Folks, we’re about to communicate with the dead here,” Bob said softly. “Try not to say anything unless you really feel compelled. I’m gonna be doin’ most of the talkin’ here. Just be completely silent for now.”

Everyone hushed and looked at the glowing ball. There was a subtle buzzing sound coming from it, similar to a sound a generator makes. Everyone except for Bob was unable to stare at it too long without looking away and squinting.

“Johnny?” Bob said.

An eerie whisper came from the ball, which sounded to most of them as, “Hello, Bob.”

“Johnny, it’s been forever,” Bob said. “I never thought I’d see you again under these circumstances.”

Another short whisper came from the ball; no one could understand it except for Bob.

“Yep, yep,” Bob said. “Well, you’re obviously pissed off here, but that doesn’t mean you should be killin’ and terrifyin’ people. You wanna talk about it?”

They all listened hard; Bob was the only one who could actually understand every word; the others could only make out a word or two every now and then.

Everyone heard the last two words that came out of the glowing ball, “our home.”

“Our?” Bob said. “Johnny, who else is there with you?”

The ball began to shake in a spastic motion. The ground began to rumble as if an earthquake were starting.

Bob looked back at the others calmly.

“Everyone get down,” he said over the commotion. “Tornado drill-style.”
He crouched down with his arms covering his head, and the others followed his lead.

They all looked around while in their cover. The shaking was fairly violent, but they were all able to stay crouched down without falling over. They looked over toward the remains of the building to see a large tree from the Pinewood Forest up in the air. It was floating slowly toward Mickey’s shop.

The tree stopped right above the shop for a moment and came down bottom first, the bottom part crushing Mickey’s shop. The tree landed in the road, blocking the passageway. A car coming from the left screeched, but was unable to avoid the tree. The car crashed, smashing its fender. A truck from the right braked and stopped just short of the enormous tree.

They all looked toward the woods and saw that many more trees were uprooting and flying up in the air, coming down around the area of Mickey’s shop. They stayed down in their positions. They could hear and see the trees crashing down on their vehicles in Mickey’s parking lot; luckily the trees did not land close enough to cause any bodily harm.

Once the trees ceased, they all looked over toward the glowing ball to see that it was rolling toward them slowly and growing larger as it excelled.

***

By the time it had stopped right in front of Bob, it was the size of a beach ball. It was brighter than ever and looked like the sun from a distance. There were weird sounds coming from it; it sounded as if there were a storm going on inside of it.

“Johnny?” Bob said. He could not look directly at it. “Johnny?”

The ball began to clutter back and forth. They all took a few more steps back. The ball then flew up in the air right above Bob. It descended, and Bob walked backwards, motioning for everyone to get out of the way.

It drew forward and almost landed on Bob as he scooted back, but then it shifted to his right as if there were a shield surrounding him. The ball landed on the concrete and bounced around violently.

Bob realized that there was a fight going on inside of it while the others watched in horror as the ball shuffled around. Different faces began to shoot out of it randomly, one at a time; one would come out and then get sucked back in as another surfaced. Most of the faces looked ghoulish and evil with large eyeless eye sockets and cracked foreheads. Every now and then a normal, human-looking face came out, mumbling in anger. They all knew that it was Johnny right away.

The ball grew even larger, about the size of a baby pool, and rose up into the air; faint voice came out of it again; this time the others could not make out a single word, but Bob listened carefully.

Bob looked back, motioning for everyone to get out of the way. Bob stayed still while the others walked toward their smashed cars, keeping their vision on the ball and on Bob. Mickey and Larry went to help the man who had crashed his car.

The ball slowly accelerated toward Bob as he walked backwards one short step at a time. Everyone aside from Mickey and Larry watched with wonder.

Bob looked to his right and saw a large branch, which he grabbed quickly. Many distorted voices came out of the ball, but Bob was able to focus in on Johnny’s.

“Okay, Johnny,” Bob called out. He held the branch like a spear with one hand and shielded his eyes with the other. He carefully looked for a good target; everyone assumed that he was trying to avoid impaling Johnny.

The ball shook uncontrollably as it hovered above, but it was losing momentum. Bob hurled the branch right into the center of it. He stepped back and watched as the ball shot large flashes up into the sky. It minimized and weakened. It tried to zap Bob with a flash, but was unable to get it to extend out to him; he continued walking backwards, occasionally looking behind him. He watched as an ambulance and a police car pulled up by the down tree in the middle of the street.

The ball finally stopped moving altogether, and it was now the size it was originally. The voice came from it again, and Bob listened closely.

“So long, Johnny,” Bob said. “Thanks.”

The ball rolled back toward the ruins. It bounced into the destroyed remains and disappeared.

Bob walked toward the others.

“It’s over,” he said. “For now anyway.”

***

Bob told his story to everyone the next day. They all listened intently. He mentioned how he and Johnny had always looked to the sun as a symbol of hope during rough times in Vietnam. Bob was not sure what the other spirits were that had been terrifying the town, but he knew that Johnny’s spirit, with the help of Bob, had conquered them; and sent them somewhere else, hopefully and most likely far away from Sallow or any other place on Earth.

Johnny had told Bob that the town of Sallow had been mistreated by many of the residents and that his “partner spirits” were pissed off and fed up; Johnny also was, but not enough to hurt his friends.

No one really understood this at first, but when they thought about it, they realized that Sallow had not been given good care over the past few years. There had been pollution and deterioration because of people’s neglect for the care of the town. Most of the people in the town began to change their ways a little after that. There were no other signs of hauntings or weird happenings after the dreadful event. Many believed that all of the spirits had gone far away, while Bob and some others believed that Johnny’s spirit was still at the Pinewood spot resting quietly.

Bob took his belief to his death bed; he died a year after the event. Doctors were not sure what had killed him, but it was likely just plain old age. It was doubtful that the Pinewood event had had anything to do with his death.

He was eighty-nine.

Mr. Gunderson handed Bill the crossbow nodding in approval. After a roaring fire, and chocolate all over the boys’ faces, Bill begged his Dad to tell them a story. It didn’t take long for him to get going. Bill said, Mr. Gunderson rose up to his full frame with the campfire flickering off his glasses and red cheeks. Bill loved it when his dad told them stories.

“The boy always worked hard for the peasant. They only thing that got him into trouble was if the peasant wanted him to walk by the church cemetery at night to fetch some more wood. “I’m scared! I shudder to go by there.” The second boy watched, because the second boy was dumber than a post and he wanted desperately to figure out how to get something right. The father would always give in and give the first boy candy whenever he shuddered. So the second boy started to mutter to himself, “If only I could shudder. If only I could shudder.” One day, after the second boy had kicked over the entire morning’s milking by accident the peasant boxed his ears. “There are rocks with more brains than you! If only you could learn something to make yourself useful!” Standing nearby was the church sexton.”

“What’s a sexy ton?” Greg asked.

“Well your aunt Gunderson, of course.” Mr. Gunderson said with a wink.

“Shut up and don’t interrupt.” Bill said.

“A sexton. A long time ago, they would need somebody to watch the churches and dig the graves for the bodies. Back then, nobody had watches much, so it was his job to ring the bell, so people could kind of tell what time it was. He usually had a little hut behind the church. Anyway, the church sexton saw the boy rubbing the side of his head and muttering, “If only I could shudder. If only I could shudder.” The sexton got an idea and so he asked the peasant if the boy could work for him. The peasant was grateful to be rid of the boy and agreed at once. The sexton told the boy that his job was to ring the bell for the town at midnight. So right around midnight, he woke up the boy, and then ran up the stairs to hide right by the door to where they kept the church bell. He thought he would scare the boy out of his wits by standing in the shadows with a sheet over his head.

The boy rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and trudged up the stairs. Turning around after ringing the bell, he demanded for the ghost to identify himself. The sexton stood as silent as a stone, thinking that the breeze catching the sheet in the moonlight would be enough. The boy demanded he speak a second time and the sexton stayed silent. He knew that if he spoke, it would give away the joke. Finally the boy took a step toward him and threatened the ghost if he didn’t speak. When the sexton stayed silent a third time, the boy stepped forward and pushed him down the stairs. The boy stepped over him and went back to sleep. When the sexton’s wife noticed he was taking longer than usual to ring the bell, she went to investigate. Not only was he knocked out cold, he had broken his ankle, tripping on the sheet. In hysterics, she dragged her husband a stretch, and then splashed water on him when she heard him groan to get him to wake up. Sitting up and rubbing the back of his head he explained the joke to his wife, and then discovered the broken ankle when he tried to get up to walk. Limping her husband to the edge of their bed, the wife took her broom and started to beat the stuffing out of the boy. He ran all the way home with her yelling from her doorway many a German cuss word about how useless he was. She wasn’t done either, because as soon as day break came and the market opened, everyone could hear her chew out the boy’s fathers about what a burden the little bell ringer had been. The father had to give her free cheese and sausage for a week, so that there wasn’t any more trouble. The boy knew at that point he was going to have more luck on the road, running away because his father was going to take it out of his hide. So the boy got into his father’s sock drawer, took fifty dollars for expenses, an extra shirt and started walking to the next village. Like always he was muttering to himself, “If only I could shudder. Then father would know I can learn. I just need to learn how to shudder.”

Well right as he got into the next little village there was a man walking down the street who overheard the boy. He asked the boy where his parents were and the boy explained about the sexton, the fifty dollars and how he just wanted to learn how to shudder. The man agreed to teach him how to shudder, but the boy had to promise to pay him fifty dollars when the lesson was done. The boy heartily agreed and the man led him to the gallows. The boy didn’t understand. The man said that the seven men hanging there were learning how to fly, and if they boy would just stay there the night the men would teach him how to shudder around midnight. The boy immediately sat down just next to the gallows eager to learn his lesson. The man shook his head and said he would be back in the morning to collect his money. All day long the villagers gave the boy odd looks, pulling their own children closer and hurrying past the swinging bodies.

Ignoring them the boy just hugged his knees against the wind, trying to stay warm. Finally when the sun went down and the villagers were all eating dinner he got up and gathered some sticks for a fire. He got the fire pretty hot and looked up at the men with pity, thinking that if he were cold, they must certainly be cold. He wanted them to be sure to teach him, so he thought he would do them a kindness by helping them warm up. So the boy found the large knot behind the gallows that held them in the air and twisted it loose. Then he undid each noose and dragged each man next to the fire. When he was done, he sat down to try and ask them what the secret was to learning how to shudder. When the men were silent like the sexton in the sheet the boy, again, became really angry. On top of that, he had piled a couple of them too close and their clothes were beginning to catch fire. Disgusted, the boy yelled at them for not recognizing that he had taken pity on them in the cold. Beating the flames out of the smoldering smock, he dragged each one back and put the noose around their necks. He couldn’t get the knot back, so he just lined their bodies up on the road in a line, and fell asleep next to his fire, which happened to make it look like he was the eighth man in the line. When the man came to collect his fifty dollars he was startled to see the bodies and let out a yelp when the boy stood up. When the man asked what happened, the boy reported how unkind the seven men were and that weren’t even very good at flying since they wouldn’t move away from the fire when it lit their clothes. When the boy said he wouldn’t pay the fifty dollars the man just backed away slowly, afraid of how stupid the boy was.

Dusting off his pants the boy stepped over a burned corpse and started walking down the road. Way on the top of the hill he saw a castle, and when he stopped at the local inn to have a bite for breakfast, he asked who lived there. Drying a mug, the innkeeper put down his rag and shook his head. He said nobody lived there because evil spirits haunted it years ago when the queen broke a promise to the wrong troll. He also said that the king was offering his daughter’s hand in marriage to the man that could stay three days and three nights in the castle, since that was the contract the troll put out with the spirits. The boy finished his breakfast and asked where he could find the king. The innkeeper said not to bother because men stronger than a scrawny boy had tried and failed. The boy mumbled something about needing to learn how to shudder and that this way at least he didn’t have to pay fifty dollars for the lesson. The innkeeper picked his rag again to keep drying glasses and pointed over the East ridge. He told the boy the king was touring the country and staying in a hunting lodge about a half day’s walk away.

When the boy arrived he asked the king what he needed to do. The king laughed at him at first, but the boy’s fierce look made the king finish telling him what to do next. The boy was allowed three things and the only thing he couldn’t do was to take another person’s life in the process. He said the spirits were able to keep control by piling up the bodies of the ones that had gone before, so killing another person would just add to their advantage. The king said the boy was also allowed three things. The boy asked for a cutting board and knife, a lathe and a proper flint for making a fire. The boy lost his own flint in the skirmish under the gallows earlier. The king escorted the boy to the castle and since the hunting party was still active, they said thanks to Ullr and bagged a couple of rabbits for the boy for his trouble. Skinning the rabbits and keeping all but the feet and tail, the boy thanked the king and walked up to the castle door to begin his stay.

The first thing he did was to find some pieces of broken furniture so he could start a proper fire in the enormous hearth. There were cobwebs in the windows and a couple of rats scurried in front of the kitchen door to let the boy know he wasn’t welcome. Since he arrived in the early afternoon, he decided to dress the rabbits and start roasting them over kitchen pit. This meant he needed to find more wood and realized he was going to run out of old furniture soon. He started to walk up and explore the other levels of the castle when he heard wind rattle the windows and slam a door. He was sure he heard whispering and yelled for them to identify themselves. The whispering voices giggled and disappeared with the smoke that was going up the hearth chimney. He found an entire room full of dolls and toy beds, so he figured nobody would need those right away. The bed burned OK, but the dolls were part porcelain and the paint made an awful smell in the fire. He pulled out one of the doll carcasses and decided to just stick to burning the furniture. Occupied with the rabbit he didn’t notice the sun go down, nor the little boy that came to the kitchen door. Reporting that he was a victim of the king, the little boy demanded that he get a piece of the rabbit. The cook refused and they started to tussle over the rabbit leg. The little boy’s mother came in and started to wrestle as well and soon an entire family dressed in rags was threatening the boy for his rabbits. The boy pushed one of them out the window, just as he had the sexton, but it didn’t seem to phase the rest of the people starting to crowd into the kitchen. Finally the boy gave up and let them have the rabbits and as soon as he did, they started growling like hungry wolves, nipping and biting at each other. While they were distracted the boy inched his way out of the kitchen and got a faggot….”

“Did you say faggot, Uncle Gunderson?” Greg’s eyes were as big as saucers.

“It means a stick of wood. Sorry. Old words from an old uncle….while they were distracted the boy inched he way out of the kitchen and got a stick of wood from the fire that was burning pretty hot. He waved at the mob in the kitchen and then tossed the burning stick onto the doll’s head where it popped and cracked, splitting the forehead and making the glass eye roll across the floor. The crowd screamed, thinking he had cut the head off the original little boy that was standing in the doorway. Moving quickly the cook snagged a morsel of rabbit, and growled back, making sure to pick up the burning stick and wave it around. As quick as the whispering voices vanished, the mob dispersed into the shadows. The boy shrugged his shoulder, cleaned up the bones of the rabbit and tossed them into the kitchen pit, so the rats wouldn’t be tempted. Lying down in the kitchen next to the roasting pit, he slept in peace the rest of the evening.

The king, curious about the boy’s progress, sent up a page with some bread, cheese, dried fish and beer for the boy.

“A page is in a book. It can’t carry anything.” Greg protested.

“A page was a fancy way to say servant or butler.” Mr. Gunderson explained.

“Quit interrupting.” Eliot grumbled.

“Anyway, the servant was quivering when he knocked on the door. The boy let him in and saw him shivering and asked where the page had learned to shudder. The servant was looking from side to side and gently put the supplies down, ignoring the question. He said the king just wanted to know if the boy was alive. The boy nodded yes and the servant just backpedaled his way out the front door, taking off at a dead run as soon as he could turn around. The boy sighed and carted the supplies to the kitchen. Remember the night before he reserved the cheese and beer off to the side deciding to store them in the cellar away from the kitchen. He spent the day looking at the torn tapestries, broken spindles and ink wells that were dried and crusted. As the evening came closer, the boy went down to the cellar to start by eating the cheese and drinking the beer. He figured if the other people in the house were hungry they would eat the bread and leave him alone. As he got to the last step he saw a wrinkled crippled man reaching for the cheese. The boy yelled at him to stop, but the man ignored him and took a bite of the cheese. As the boy ran to snatch the cheese he noticed bandages wrapped around the old man’s head. Turning to face the boy, he offered a smile to the boy that showed more squirming maggots than teeth. The boy asked what the problem was and how the maggots got there, to which the man simply pulled up his shirt to reveal a rash and a gaping wound. The boy asked if it hurt, and offered the man a small piece of cheese. The man looked over his shoulder and then took the cheese only the shuffle off into the shadows. The boy turned to see a woman with a hook nose trying to drink his beer. She didn’t seem to care that the snot was running down into her mouth, and her watery eyes trembled as she raised the flask to her lips. The boy protested again, yanking the flask from her hands and wiping her snot off on his sleeve. The cellar door suddenly slammed shut, and the crippled man returned with a chain in his hand, the maggots spilling out of his mouth in force now as he chuckled at the boy. Aggravated that he had shared his cheese with the old man, he kicked the man’s hurt leg only to have it hit the back wall and then hop back and return to the old man. The boy said that there was more food up in the kitchen, and that he had scared away the other people if they were hungry. The woman’s eyes narrowed like it was a trick, but the cellar door slammed open while they were both standing there, and they started to walk up the stairs in front of the boy. Holding the block of cheese in his hand, the boy tossed it over their shoulders into the kitchen and jerked the chain out of the man’s hands, making him stumble forward. The woman shuffled to the kitchen for the cheese and the boy slammed the cellar door shut on himself, locking it from the inside with the chain. He still had his beer and so he settled at the bottom of the stairs to listen to pounding and howling on the door. He figured he could last a night without food if it meant a decent nights sleep. He fell asleep on a pile of rags still wishing he could figure out how to shudder so that his father would know he was capable of learning something.

Waking up a little earlier in the morning, the boy realized the rags he was sleeping on was covering up a bunch of bones. He spent the day hauling up the skeletons and picking through the bones. He decided that whoever would be there the next night might enjoy a game of nine pins…a game like bowling….so he could take his lathe and fashion a crude couple of balls from the skulls and some pins from the shin bones. In the middle of his hauling, one of the king’s men came to check on him with a new sack of provisions. The boy was holding a knee bone in his hand when he came to the door, startling the man. Determined not to prove the page boy correct, the man came in when the boy invited him, but let out a gasp to see the pile of skulls lined up in a neat row next to the hearth. The boy reported that he was still deciding on which person had the roundest head, and that he needed them in an even line to figure it out. Gulping deeply, the man set down the sack with the same bread, beer, and cheese, and quietly backed toward the door. The boy saw the man’s hand shake as he reached for the handle and asked him if would teach him to shudder. The man simply opened the door and fled by quickly mounting his horse.

In trying to find how to make a proper blocking wall for the pins, so they wouldn’t scatter everywhere into the parlor, the boy discovered a bonafide coffin. He realized from the pictures carved in it that this must have been the boy that died and something during the funeral must have happened because there were cobwebs spread all over the crown where the queen’s hair was flaking out of her own bare skull. Kept in place only by her ancient pink gown, the boy couldn’t resist pulling the crown off. Watching her head roll off the table and onto the ground, the boy pretended he was king by putting her crown on. He also decided that she had the roundest head and made sure that the coffin would make the perfect back stop. Taking the remaining legs of and end table, he piled wood next to the hearth, to make sure he would have enough wood for a proper fire. He was sad that he wasn’t able to learn how to shudder and he was sure whoever was going to visit was going to try something stupid like the other ones by stealing his food. He made sure to eat half of it during lunch, and left the rest for bait in case he needed it later. Polishing her skull with the lathe, he made a proper ball and practiced rolling it against the nine pins. He practiced so much he didn’t notice when the sun went down, and when the well dressed gentleman offered him a small wager over the nine pins, the boy accepted remembering that he had the fifty dollars. Winning the first three games easily, the boy noticed a crowd of well dressed gentleman gathering around the nine pins and trying to get a turn at playing the boy. It was as if he was unstoppable and the crowd was roaring cheers for him as pin after pin was falling. The kitchen came alive and there was food all around for the boy and the players. They played well into the night and finally the first gentleman offered the boy a larger wager. The boy shrugged and asked what it was. The gentleman walked over to the coffin and opened it revealing that it was full of gold. The boy’s eyes grew wide as he eyed all the Spanish coins that were spilling onto the floor. He asked what the wager was, and the man said that if the boy won the match, he would get all the gold. Grinning and rubbing his gold ring, the man also said that if the boy lost…and waving his hands over the coffin it revealed an empty coffin with chains….if the boy lost, he would agree to be chained into the coffin. The boy was yawning, and didn’t see how he could lose so he agreed. He said that first, though he needed to be allowed to sleep a little because he wanted to be fresh for such a large wager. The crowd started to grumble like it was a trick, but the gentleman didn’t seem to mind the idea as long as the boy agreed to not take too long. After resting his eyes just a bit, he was jolted awake by a chain clamping onto his hand. The gentlemen had somehow already placed him in the coffin and had his left hand locked in place. The boy protested saying that they weren’t honoring the wager. They all sneered at the boy, and the gentleman waved his hands to the crowd saying that the boy was correct. A bet was a bet. He just said the boy now had to bowl with his hand chained to the coffin. The crowd howled and cheered and the boy asked that they at least carry the coffin over to the front of the parlor where the ball was. Smelling the air the boy could tell it was getting colder outside and decided to play out the last game realizing that it was probably rigged. Reaching back, he turned and tossed the skull toward the other skulls, knocking two of them into the fire. Someone looking like the queen jumped out of the fire and charged the boy, making him pull the coffin over the top of himself. They pounded and pounded on the top of the coffin, but where unable to turn it over because he had wrapped the chain around the sofa leg he was near. The chain came to life like a snake and was about to wrap itself around the boy, when he remembered the flint. Quickly lighting the sofa on fire, he slammed the chain down. In the commotion the pounding stopped and he instead started to hear was sounded like people fighting in the parlor with swords, knives and sticks.

Suddenly there was a collective scream as dawn came streaming through the window. The chain fell of the boy and he heaved the coffin off of himself to see most of the skeletons had somehow burned up in the parlor fire. He was standing there wondering how to get the chain unlocked when a knock came at the front door. This time it was the king himself who came to the door to see if the boy had survived. Amazed, he had his men unchain the boy, and declared that the castle was his to own along with his daughter’s hand in marriage. It was also revealed by the king that just next to the cellar was another room full of gold and treasure that had been lost to the king since it had become haunted all those years ago when his first son died of the plague.

The boy grew into a man, but still remained much the same, constantly muttering to himself that he wished he could learn to shudder. His wife finally got fed up with the muttering and ordered a page to fill a bucket from the moat full of fish. While her husband was sleeping early one morning, she ordered the servant to throw the bucket of fish onto her husband, soaking him to the skin with fish and cold water. Shuddering, he finally smiled, and thanked his wife, promptly falling back to sleep. He shuddered a couple of times for good measure while the last fish flopped off the end of the bed.”

“That’s it?” Greg asked.

“That’s it. The boy was seen as a hero and Ullr was allowed to have his son back. If you’re going to use this crossbow, you need to remember where you came from and respect the weapon. That’s what Ullr would have wanted.”

My lack of energy rendered me useless. I couldn’t continue with my daily goal of writing three-thousand words; once, feeling bold and tired of the ongoing lack of productivity, I dragged my laptop onto my lap and typed out all the incoherent sentences that popped into my head. I read the bloody words on the screen, unable to concentrate. The pain exploded in my brain – it felt as if every single lobe and vessel ruptured and then floated to the bottom of my empty head, each ripped and shredded into little strips of fire and ash. I shoved the laptop off my lap, letting it fall to the floor. I heard nothing of its impact into the ground, only the high-pitched squealing sound that endlessly played itself out inside my head.

I let out a scream. My bedroom door flew open. My wife came in with a look of pity and worry, holding two pills and a glass of water. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Is it really bad?” I know she asked this with a heart-felt thought of concern, but the question sent me into an uncontrollable rage. I’m lying in here, screaming my head off, clawing at my head as if I were trying to rip my brain out, and you ask me –“IS IT REALLY BAD?”

“Yes!” I yelled, with my voice wavering with tears and pain.

Her head jolted backward with surprise and fear. “Well, take these pills. It’s about that time anyway.” She stretched out her hand with the pills placed in the middle of her palm. I grabbed the pills, shoved them in my mouth, and held out my other hand, demanding the glass of water. She handed it to me and watched me gulp the entire glass down. “Do you want some more water?”

“No, that’s fine,” I said.

She hesitated, worrying I would yell at her again. “Do – do you want anything else?”

“No,” I said, flipping my body over, trying to find a comfortable position. “Thank you,” I finally added.

She walked out of the room. She turned the door knob and slowly shut the door with her eyes peeking through the opening, reducing it to a smaller size with each passing moment. The door finally made contact with the wall, and the door knob slowly twisted back to its normal position.

This fever went on for an entire week. After those long seven days, I finally felt decent enough to do something. A week after the fever started, which burnt and tortured my brain, my wife took me to visit two people who I had never met. This meeting equally fried my brain, leaving me confused, terrified, and unsure of my conceptions of sanity and reality.

I woke up, the cloudiness and pain of my mind reduced to a faint hum. The dark-redness that shaded my vision of the world was gone, and I could finally see the vast amount of colors, splashed upon objects and areas everywhere I looked.

I walked out of the room with a smile on my face; ready to tell my wife how much better I felt. She sat on the couch, her leg folded upon the other with its foot twitching up and down. She gripped a magazine with her hands, her eyes searching with determination, gliding over the words.

“Hey, babe,” I said.

She looked up, her smile and the light of her face grew as she did so. “Hey, honey,” she said. “You’re up! Oh my gosh!”

“Yep. I feel much better today.”

“This is great,” she said, slapping the magazine down on the coffee table. “You can come with me to meet the Loveoes.”

My mind quickly searched my memory, which seemed to have been destroyed during the week-long battle against the fever. Do I know these people? Am I supposed to know them? Is she going to be mad at me if I don’t remember the Loveoes? I uttered syllables of no particular meaning but of confusion and questioning.

“Don’t worry,” she said, laughing. “You don’t know them.”

I sighed and waited for further explanation. Nothing came. “Why are we meeting them?” I asked.

“I knew Cynthia in high school. I ran into her at the grocery store yesterday. She told me she had a husband. His name is… – oh shit – Manny! She asked me to come by her house – it’s not far from here if that’s what you’re worried about. She wants to catch up, talk about the old high school days, I guess.”

“Okay. I guess I can go.”

“Great! I didn’t want to go alone.”

“When are we supposed to go over there?” I asked.

“She said she would call when she’s ready.”

It was precisely 4:55 when the phone rang. I was staring blankly at the clock, wondering if I could fit in a quick nap before my wife’s high school acquaintance called. I glared at the clock, refusing to blink, and watched as the four quickly transformed into a five.

The phone rang. My wife ran into the kitchen and picked it up. I heard little bits of the conversation. I knew it was Cynthia Loveoe and that we would be leaving for their house very soon.

My wife hung up the phone, stood in the open doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “That was Cynthia,” she said. “She’s ready.”

“Okay,” I said, without much enthusiasm. “Let’s go, then.”

Before we could get outside and into the car, my wife’s eyes suddenly widened, looking as if she had just realized something. “We should bring something,” she said. “It would be so rude not to bring something. Hang on, I’ll be right back.” She ran back into the kitchen. I heard her open the refrigerator, quickly and forcefully shuffling things around. “Yeah, this is fine,” she assured herself. She came out holding a twelve pack of beer. “This is fine, right?” She asked.

“Yeah,” I said. Of course she would bring the beer that I bought, without even considering bringing her twelve pack of lemonade that she buys but never drinks, I thought.

We walked out of the house, got into our car, and drove to the Loveoes’. It didn’t take long to get there – my wife was right about that.

When we pulled up near the house, we looked at the address on the mailbox, looked at the house, and then looked at the address again. The house was completely shaded in darkness, trees on both sides hanging oppressively over the house. The borders of the windows teetered from their position, hanging down, swaying left to right along with the wind. The paint was almost nonexistent; it looked as though it had been ripped from its surface by a giant claw, tearing and chipping it from the house. “Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s the right address,” she replied.

We parked on the side of the street and walked up the sidewalk that was nearly invisible, with its grayness covered by the yellow and orange leaves that fell from the swaying and frightening trees. With the wind blowing it looked as if the trees were ready to snap. I pictured the trees crashing onto the roof, collapsing the tiny shack.

My wife knocked on the door. The door was violently sucked into the house, and a head popped out with a look of curiosity and excitement. “Miranda!” The woman, who I assumed was Cynthia, yelled. “Come in! Come in!”

My wife walked in and I followed. I shut the door behind me. Looking back on it now, the shutting of the door was the worst thing I could do. By shutting the door I separated myself from reality – or what I had viewed as reality. My conceptions became misconceptions. My beliefs became small, meaningless things that had no real purpose or truth. And I became another unwanted entity, wandering in something bigger than I was, something that has no plans, no purpose, no paths, just a happy accident, just a rolling boulder of insanity. And it never stops.

Everything changed once we were inside the house. I became tired, my heartbeat seemed to slow, and my mind seemed to shift – to what, I don’t know. I couldn’t think straight. Pictures darted in and out of my mind, flashing and fading away in seconds. Dark green eyes, wide, gleaming at me – blue eyes squinting at me – a young child staring at me, naked, in its bed. I couldn’t explain what I was seeing, and it nearly drove me to screams of terror and madness. Tentacles squirming madly around, coming at me with force and fury. A clock sitting blankly on a wall, tick-tick-ticking away. The hand moving quickly, quicker than usual, to midnight. A loud bell rings the moment it hits the twelve. Mice are pouring out of the floor like a waterfall going upward. They come running at me, clawing themselves out of the carpet, eating and tearing each other apart. Their small, lifeless eyes are all on me. They all stop before me, the first row directly at my feet, and let out a loud and hideous screech.

I tightly shut my eyes, brought my hands to my ears, nearly ripping them off my head.

“Are you alright, friend?” The woman asked me.

I opened my eyes, slowly, cautiously. My mind took several seconds to gather its thoughts. “Oh, yeah…yeah, I’m fine.”

She extended her hand to me. I grabbed her hand lightly, shaking it gently. Something was moving in her hand. I felt it. It wiggled and squirmed like maggots.

She smiled at me, a large smile as if she were pleased. She had to see the look of disgust on my face – it had to be extremely noticeable.

“What is your name?” She asked, still smiling that wide, almost doll-like smile.

Again, it took me a while to answer. I stood there, looking at her, my mind trying to make sense of all that was happening. “Oh…my name? It’s Howard.”

“Hello, Allan,” she said with ease and confidence.

I stuttered, ready to correct her mistake. I looked over at my wife. Her smile was just as happy and big as Cynthia’s. There was no look of confusion or misunderstanding; she looked content and completely willing to accept what was going on.

“Let’s go into the living room. That’s where Manny is.”

We walked through a tightly constricted hallway. Cynthia led the way, followed by my wife, and I straggled behind them both. I spread my arms out on each side, balancing myself on the walls.

The moon shines brightly upon two lonely women walking on the side of the street. Not far behind them lurks a man, dressed in all black with two eyes sewn shut, crying thick tears of red. He stops behind the women. His jaw drops in an inhumanly manner. A high-pitched, wavering scream is released, enveloping the two women in a dark cloud of wistfully moving smoke.

My mind felt as if it were about to explode. It pulsed and ached, steadily leaking the healthy fluids of reality. My throat began to clench and my mouth began to water. I began to heave, my body convulsing upwards, and I grabbed hold of the wall to my left, leaning on it. I let out a horrible sound of retching and vomiting. A loud splash of liquid and mush hit the floor. Cynthia looked back at me, the smile that I hadn’t seen her without still remained. She placed her hand on my wife’s upper back and gently nudged my wife forward, persuading her to enter the living room. She went without questions or concerns, and left me with Cynthia.

“That’s alright,” she said, approaching me. She rubbed the back of my head as she said, “We’ll get that cleaned up.” Her eyes were glued upon mine. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s go into the living room.”

I did as she wished, just as my wife had done. I sat down next to my wife on the couch, which faced the two chairs on the other side of the room, where Cynthia and her husband sat. “Allan, this is Manny. Manny this is Allan.”

“Actually,” I said, extending my finger in the air, “my name is Howard.”

Cynthia looked at me and nodded as if I had said something that she agreed with.

“What’s your last name?” Manny asked, wearing the same overly-enthusiastic smile as his wife did, and the same wide-eyed stupor.

“Webb,” I replied.

“Allan Webb! The writer?” He asked excitedly.

“Yes,” I said, annoyed, “but…”

“Oh my God,” he said, slapping his knee; the smack echoing through the house. “My wife and I just love your work. We have all your books.” He leaned over his chair and grabbed something off the side table. His hand gripped the book that he had grabbed, causing the veins to bulge and pulse. He handed the book to me. I turned it over to the cover, staring at it. It was my book, indeed. It was the most recent book I had published. From the Mountain Up, the title read. I shifted my eyes to the bottom. By Allan Webb. I rubbed my eyes, opened them, and the name remained. I had to be going completely insane.

My name is Howard, I thought. Howard! It’s not Allan!

I took two deep breaths, gaining the courage I needed to bring up this subject with our hosts. “What the hell is going on here?” I asked, holding up the book.

“What do you mean, Allan?” Cynthia asked with a look of deep concern on her face.

“My name is Howard. I already told you that! And for some reason this book says it’s Allan – just like you guys!”

All three of them began to laugh hysterically. Their heads tilted into the air, releasing their loud and obnoxious cackling into the sky. I looked at my wife, joining the Loveoes in their hideous laughter. I stared at her with bewildered amusement. The Loveoes, along with my wife, in a comically synchronized manner, stopped laughing simultaneously. Then they casually began conversing with each other again, completely ignoring that I had said a thing. My wife grabbed the beer and set it down on the coffee table. “We brought you something,” she said, pointing to the table. “Help yourselves.”

“Oh, thank you. They’ll go great with dinner,” Cynthia said.

My mind was on fire – with disbelief, confusion, and the chaos of my once-believed sanity. The brain, never stopping, never resting, pumped images and visions to my eyes, images not imagined by me – I know! They had to be fueled, forced into my mind by this place of mayhem and disorder.

A clown, standing alone, smiling widely with a look of mischief in his eyes. He looks as though he’s ready to show me something. He pulls a balloon out of his pocket, presents it before his face. He begins to playfully stretch the balloon. It stretches out, then back in, out, and back in. The look of happiness and play is gone, and now his eyes grow dark and menacing. His teeth are fangs – I hadn’t noticed it before! He lifts up the cushion of the chair that is sitting next to him. He places the limp and newly-stretched balloon under the cushion, and lets the cushion fall upon it. He sits down on the chair, looking away from me now. And he snaps his head back and lets out his hiccupping laughter.

Sweat began pouring down my face. I ruffled my hair, frustrated with the incoherency of this place. I pulled my hair, harder and harder, until I let out a sigh of pain. I could still hear light talk happening around me, knowing that they hadn’t paid any attention to me.

Cynthia’s eyes narrowed as she lifted herself from her chair. She walked into the kitchen without excusing herself. I could hear her opening and shutting things, pots and pans banging into each other, and then her sigh of relief and triumph. She walked out of the kitchen, holding a tray of things that appeared to be hamburgers. She set them on the table by the beer. “Try one. They’re really good.”

I grabbed one, not wanting to get harassed for not eating my host’s food. The thing that appeared to be a hamburger slid around in my hand, as if it were still living. I lifted the top bun and looked at a dark-red piece of meat that held two small black eyes, staring and shifting toward me, despite my attempts to move out of its sight.

I looked at the other three happily devouring their meals. I put the bun back, blinding the disgusting thing. I squinted, preparing myself for what was about to happen. Letting out a quiet growl, I squeezed the thing between my teeth. Blood squirted from its wounds that I had inflicted, and it let out a terrible, glass-shattering, high-pitched scream that rang through my ears and my mind.

But, of course, no one else paid much notice. They glared at me, smiling widely, not saying a word. I threw the thing back onto the tray; thankfully, the thing was silent now. “I’m not very hungry,” I said. They ignored me and started a light conversation amongst themselves.

Then there was a different sound other than just the small conversation. I heard scampering, light feet running upon the barely-carpeted floor. It was coming from the hallway, to my right. I looked – and this is what proved it wasn’t my mind or my thoughts that were causing this insanity – it proved it wasn’t me, but it was this place. For the thing that I saw was in that house. I saw it in the hallway.

In the narrow hallway was a thing that stood no higher than two feet. Its legs were short and stumpy, and its arms were the same. The head was incredibly large for this creature’s small body. It stumbled and wobbled up and down the hallway, until it came to a stop at the side wall of the hallway. It stood there, its body jolting up and down with each slow, raspy breath. Then it quickly dropped down on all fours, and began to make a loud chomping sound, with quick slurps. It sounded as though this creature were eating something. Something in the hallway, near the wall. I heaved, feeling as though I were about to vomit again, thinking of that thing quickly inhaling what I had left for it in the hallway. It made its final loud gulping sound, and then scampered back down the hallway.

I lowered my head into my heads, on the verge of tears. I looked up, and watched the Loveoes talk with my wife so casually, so calmly, without a care about what was going on with me.

The room is completely dark. I can’t see anything. But, suddenly, a spotlight beams down upon a little girl in a fluffy white dress. The dress comes down just below her knees and then extends out around her. A white bow in her hair tops off her pretty outfit. She looks at me, puts her hand to her mouth, bashfully, and nervously giggles. “Come here,” she says in her little, squeaky voice. “I want to show you something.” She sits down on a black stool that sits before a black piano. She begins to lightly strike the keys, one-by-one. I hear a quiet drip, and on one of the bright white keys appears a dark red droplet. The little girl’s face darts from the piano and toward me. Her hand returns to her mouth as she laughs her shy, hesitant giggles. She turns back to the piano and resumes pressing each key down, from lightest to deepest. The crimson tears continue to drip down from above, falling quicker with each sound of the piano. The girl moves her way down the piano, the tones getting deeper and deeper. The droplets dripping faster and faster. The girl’s hands are covered in the gore, and she smears it inartistically on the keys. The room shakes when she angrily bangs on the final key. A body, horrifically ripped open, falls down upon the piano. “Daddyyeeeee!” The little girl whines. Her head snaps back to me. She places her hand upon her mouth and playfully snickers.

I scanned the room. All three of them continued on; showing no worry of my noticeable terror and panic.

Then a cry was heard, but not from me; this was the cry of a baby. And, this time, my wife heard it too.

“Oh! You guys have a baby?” My wife asked, surprised and delighted.

The Loveoes looked at her and laughed. Their eyes were wide, their smiles large, their laughter maniacal. The baby continued to cry, and it got louder each moment.

“Can we see him or her?” My wife asked.

“He’s fine. Trust me, he’s fine,” Cynthia said. Manny nodded along with her assurance.

The cry turned into a scream, an announcement of pain and misery. Cynthia got up, and tugged on my shoulder, telling me to come with her. “Oh, we’re just going to take a peak,” she told Cynthia. “He sounds like he needs his mommy, anyway,” she said, smirking at Cynthia. Manny and Cynthia had a look of worry on their faces for the first time since we had been there.

“I said he’s fine!” She called from her chair, but my wife and I continued on, following the screams. “Just let him go to sleep! He’ll be fine!” Cynthia’s yells were turning into faint whispers as we walked down the hallway.
By Shane Johnson

We got to the end of the hallway, stopped in front of the door that the screams were coming from. My wife opened the door slowly, quietly. “Hi, baby,” she sang softly.

It was completely dark in the room save for a light that hung just above the bed that the baby was lying in. We inched toward the bed. I leaned over the side of the bed, and looked down onto the creature that I had seen wandering through the hallway. Its head was enormous; its eyes were fat and round. Two teeth, squarely shaped, poked into its bottom lip. I stared into its eyes, unable to move, mesmerized by this hideous creature. My wife looked lovingly at the thing, as if she thought it a beautiful creature.

As I stared at it intently, despite my desire to look away, it muttered a horrible statement in its scratchy, croaky growl of a voice. My wife listened to it, delightedly. And cooed back to it, “Gaagaa-moomoo-ooo-ooo-haa-haa.”

But I know what it truly uttered. It cried, “Get me out of here.”