[#021] Deafening

The deafening music shook the lamps outside even after the door swung shut and left me huddling alone in the frigid alley. Foul wind blasted the reek of stale garbage and piss between the bar and the butcher shop next door, and I had to duck my head behind a dumpster to get the cigarette lit.

The night sky groaned as I tilted back against the wall and frowned. Had I rolled my windows up? Nobody was going to steal my rolling toilet, but no way was I gonna drive home at three in the freezing morning with rain-soaked seats. I sighed and tucked my hands into the pockets of my heavy coat as I started down the narrow, littered walk toward the lot.

I kicked a trash can at the lip of the alley, rolling it right out into the empty street. My little coupe sat alone in the center of the blacktop, parked square between the heaps of trash and sand blown in from the waste around the block. I had only just reached the open window when the tape I'd left playing in the bar screeched, whining and sputtering out like something had smashed the deck apart.

Without the distraction to drown it out, without the simulated noise of the long-dead city, I could hear their own song as clear as a bell. It drifted up from the storm drains along the road and poured down from the higher windows of the scrapers across the street, an operatic tenor of chilling beauty.

My father's last words replayed in my head: If you can hear them, they can take you.

The cigarette tumbled from my mouth as I fumbled through the many pockets of my coat for keys. I dove into the car, shoving tools and bottles off the console as I gunned the engine and crossed the lowest pile of garbage around the edge of the lot. I could just make out the shape loping out the open doorway of the bar as I took off down the road.

I couldn't breathe until I hit the interstate. I pulled over five miles outside town and wretched into the scrub along the shoulder. I held my head until it stopped spinning, and I sank against the door with a quiet sob.

And when it all slowed down, I heard at last the gentle sing-song voice pouring from my trunk, and the thump as it pushed the hatch open from the inside.

One hope left, I thought, reaching into the passenger seat for the screwdriver.

After all, if you can hear them...

[#020] Inheritance

My destiny came into sight as the doors swung open at last.

Rich, cherry panels lined the endless foyer, broken only by the delicate glass lamps in their bronze fixtures and the most elegant oil painting of a ship heaving on the stormy ocean waves. A chime screamed the hour somewhere in the distance, and my thoughts receded to that oldest of opening lines:

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

"Or it will be soon," said the man behind me. He threw my luggage on the deck and turned back to his car. "You'll excuse me if I don't feel like stepping into the Murder House for a cuppa tea, yeah?"

I offered him no pardon, and he didn't wait for one. A moment later, I was alone again.

I dragged my chest of clothes through the entry and left them beneath the ship. Some staff must have stayed to light the lamps, and I suspected they would also carry my things to whichever chamber they deemed safest against the frigid draft I could already feel pouring down the hallway. I took a swig and tucked the flask of bourbon back into my pocket before hefting up the typewriter case and trudging towards the growing song of ticking clocks in the rear.

The fifth door on the right opened on my grandfather's office. I paused over the bare space before the roaring fire, where I knew a beautiful rug once lay. An enormous desk would bear the weight of my writing machine, and the liquor cabinet wedged between the bookshelves behind it would bear the weight of my guilt. The sound of clacking keys soon melted into the clockwork orchestra mounted on the walls, and I could almost feel the chains slipping off my wrists as warming inspiration spilled out onto the paper.

It's so difficult to find a unique voice in the true crime genre. I suppose all I needed was a change of perspective.

[#019] Return

A light caught my eye as I poked my head around the shelf furthest from the door. It drifted through a curtain of beads hanging from a plank in the back of the store.

Across the sign were the words: DO NOT RETURN.
 
Not Employees Only. Not Restrooms or even No Public Restrooms.
 
DO. NOT. RETURN.

Do not return from what? Was this an entrance from the other side of the building? And why shouldn’t you be turn around and head back if you came through by mistake?

I glanced over my shoulder. The lady at the counter busied herself ringing up a stack of books for a middle-aged couple. I was clear. Nobody would stop me.

Nobody would ever know I left. And that’s why they never found me.

I pushed on through.

[#018] Marked

"You're the third today."

"Hmm..." I flipped over the first card: Death.

The man on the other side of the table grimaced. "I knew it."

I gazed up at him. A spark of panic grew into his eyes. His fingers gripped the edge of the table, knuckles turning white against the lacquered surface.

"The others drew this card first?" I asked. "It's not especially uncommon. I mean--"

I cut off as I flipped the second card: Death.

"I knew it." He shot up so quickly the chair flew backward. "I knew it! Do the next one!"

I flipped the third card: Death.

"I-I'm so sorry," I stammered. "I must have mixed up my spares somehow, I could have sworn..."

"No, damn it!" He reached across the table and swept the remaining cards to the floor with his arm. All of them were Death. "It's some kind of horror movie bullshit! Do you understand? It's following me, everywhere I go!"

He stormed out without paying. I watched him charge across the busy street, narrowly missed by a screaming SUV as he leapt into the open door of his taxi. It pulled away from the curb to reveal the shadow of a woman I recognized from the palmistry shop down the street.

She returned my nod as the cab sped off. I grabbed my knife and hurried out into the street to join the hunt.

This one wasn't going to make it out of town.

[#017] Closing Time

Click

I glance over my shoulder at the million beady eyes glittering in the dim light from the street. Each night, I lock the door and turn to find them all peering at me from the darkness of the solid oak shelves my grandfather built. And each night, like clockwork, their eyes follow me as I walk to the rear exit behind the counter. I can always feel their glassy stares grasping at the weight of my sins and pulling me down into Hell.

But tonight will be different.

I pace myself to avoid their suspicion. I step slowly down the center aisle, watching the heads of the dolls glide soundlessly to follow. They do not gaze at the trail dripping down my pant leg, nor the red gas can tucked beneath my jacket. I reek of it by the time I push aside the heavy door, but I'm not concerned. Answering to the police is easier than answering to God.

I lean outside and take a deep hit off the cool night air. The scent of dry maple leaves fills my lungs from beyond the alley, and I nearly change my mind. Decades of the family business will go up in smoke tonight. Is it worth it?

I strike the match and grin, holding it up to my eyes and watching the flame dance and leap from the tips of my fingers. A sudden weight falls upon my shoulder, and, before I can scream, a chill breath slides across my cheek and extinguishes the light.

"Never so easy," whispers a voice.

The door slams shut, smashing my nose and laying me out on the tile. As I claw at the bloody pulp on my face, I barely catch the scrape-scraping of a thousand tiny, porcelain hands scratching at their wooden seats as the Little Ones rise to discipline their servant.

Decades of the family business, and my part goes up in smoke tonight. All because I disobeyed.

I hope my son will know better.

[#016] Leash

“That nose is gonna get you into trouble.”

I stood beneath the leaves and stretched my legs. I must have watched the leash trailing off between the dense trees shake and shiver for ten minutes. It would fall slack as the other end drew closer, then tighten suddenly as it snapped back. The green cover blocked my view, but he couldn’t be more than ten feet away.

I yawned and sat down in the warm sunlight. The wind breathed through the flowers growing along the tree line and filled the air with sweet perfume as I closed my eyes and drifted away. I was half-asleep by the time the leash fell to the ground and a loud belch signaled the last of my owner disappearing into the unseen mouth.

My nose is going to get me into trouble? He’s the one who walked off into the trees because some thing cooed like a human baby. Guess he should have practiced what he preached.

[#015] Crash

The world went completely black just as the bus turned the corner towards me.

The ten ton weight pushed me off my feet and slammed me into the library wall. I felt something leaking inside as I scrabbled for purchase on the hot metal. The smell of burning rubber and the crunch of bone washed over me as more cars spun off the road, and I prayed for survival.

I prayed for sight.

It all came back at once. I opened my eyes and gazed at the dead and dying. Men, woman, children, all wrapped around the wreckage of the bus and half a dozen other cars it smashed along the way. Rivers of blood and broken bits splashed down the streets and pooled in the potholes and ran through the grates. Some of them still lived, writhing, sobbing, clawing at the wreckage of the world around them.

I sprawled over the hood of the bus and felt my life drain out. The pain faded with my senses, and I craned my neck to gaze upon the brightest blue sky I’d ever seen just one last time.

As I slipped away, I could just make out the blocky words printed in the clouds:

“Dumping physical memory to disk: 35”

[#014] Torment

I wake up and sniff the air. Musty. Cold, but growing warmer.

I cannot see or hear. I cannot remember.

Heat blasts from above. I reach out and touch opposing walls. The room is long and narrow… A closet? A hallway?

The fetid heat begins to fill my mouth with the stench of meat. A wet form slithers down my hand. I run for my life.

Hot air pulses around me, beating sweat from my bare skin for several minutes before a long and winding weight descends like a sandpaper snake, catching me by the neck and lifting me off the ground. I wrap my hands around its sticky length and pull it free, crashing to the floor, entangled with the massive, whip-like tongue. A million tiny legs quiver down my back as I gag on rotting, white-hot breath and--


I wake up and sniff the air. Musty. Cold again, but growing warmer…

[#013] Beware the Unmarked Door

Everybody encounters one at some point. Yours may be a rotting door at the bottom of an unmarked staircase lit by a single flickering bulb, or a metal hatch set into a concrete slab behind the community college. It could even be a dusty, gated elevator nobody ever seems to use at the end of a long hallway.

Mine is a fully-finished little door, half the size of a person and hidden inside a closet in the old Victorian house I purchased in Nowhere, Ohio.

Other people do notice your hideaway, as my realtor did, but none of them think twice about it. Once it catches your attention, it digs into your mind. I hear soft piano music drifting out of mine on a wind that smells like fresh-baked bread. Sometimes I pick up a distant rustling like spring wind through a row of blooming trees.

Of course, this is just a trick. None of those things are actually behind my door or beneath your elevator. These pathways open only from our side and only for a willing hand. Never approach your hatch alone, lest it sway you with a summer song or lull you with a heavenly chorus.

Because your hatch is not the entrance to a fairytale kingdom of manifest good and evil.

It is only an exit.

[#012] Missing Time

I checked the watch. 1:30 PM. Trees danced along the road. The sky brewed up a darkness that fell across the heated pavement like a bridge. I crossed.

I checked the watch again on the other side. 5:30 PM. My feet slid off the dewy grass. Golden light drew down the mountains as the last cloud blew away. Had I missed the storm? Had I missed the day?

I set off down the slope past the road. I checked the watch at the bottom, just as the cloak of night settled over me. 11 PM. Every step cost a little more time. I watched the stars pass overhead, charging through the heavens in a firefly stampede. Would my partner wait for me? Would my parents see me home?

The grass leveled off as I came to the trailhead a hundred yards from the road. The sun peeked out around the edges of the Earth. I checked the watch. 7 AM. I sighed and started up the path.

Only five miles to go.