[#057] The Hand in the Dumpster

I wouldn’t have paid the plastic, child-sized hand a second glance if the cotton cobwebs crawling up its sleeve hadn’t made it obvious someone had tossed a box of Halloween rubbish in the dumpster.

Halloween’s trappings have influenced every aspect of my life, from my favorite color (pumpkin orange) to my favorite candy (Reese’s Pieces – they only come in harvest colors). I love old monster movies and cemetery tours, and I even love the weather, when the smell of crispy golden leaves permeates the air and the temperature falls just far enough for me to huddle up in my sweatshirt.

And anyway, I’m not a dumpster-diver. Or at least I wasn’t.

The doll wore a cartoon vampire costume, with oily hair swept back into the collar of a flowing cape, white paint spread across the face despite the peach tone of the arms beneath the tuxedo sleeves, and a golden star medallion dangling from a red ribbon around his neck. He looked like a baby-faced trick-or-treater, but the creepy laugh he loosed when you squeezed his hand gave me the impression he was fresh out of “treat.” He even had those eyelids that slid down when you tilted him… Ugh.

He was eerie, and he was perfect. I couldn’t leave an unsettling piece of Halloween junk to die, especially not with working electronics. So I did something I told myself I would never do: I reached into the dumpster and fished the two-foot terror out just as the first peal of autumn thunder cracked the cool September sky. Then I got myself home and cleaned up my new toy before the first rain drops fell.

I sat my little vampire on the mantle above my ancient television, turned down the lights, and tossed in an old VHS copy of Phantasm. Angus Scrimm’s voice bellowed through the halls as I tread back to the kitchen to wash dishes and start dinner. I returned to the couch with a bowl of penne just as Fred Myrow’s haunting score followed Jody through the basement window of Morningside Mortuary. Both the cheesy pasta and the cheesy movie on the screen kept me so busy I failed to notice for quite some time the doll had been moved to the other end of the couch and angled to “watch” the TV with me.

Suddenly I found myself crawling like a spider over the arm of the sofa, bowl fallen to the floor as I skittered backward into the kitchen. I stood in the dark and stared at the miniature monster in my den as shotguns racked and musical stings stung. The bluish glow of my old television played across the doll’s face as it turned slowly toward me. One suited arm raised in a slow, smooth motion, placing its hand across its mouth as if to shush me. Then it turned back to the movie.

And the much larger arm that moved the doll pulled back into the shadows behind the couch.

[#056] Visitation

"I had a dream."

The knife clattered to the sink. I gazed up at his reflection in the window and stretched a mask of a smile across my face. "What about, sweetie?"

"Daddy."

The mask cracked. "Did you... Was he okay?"

His reflection shivered. "He told me to ask you why you did it."

My fingertips sank into the sink and grazed the handle of the knife. "Did what sweetie? I don't know what you mean."

He nodded slowly, with a look in his eyes that could draw tears from a statue. "Daddy told me you would say that."

I turned. The room behind me was empty.

[#055] The Forest Drank of Blood

I paused and listened to the reeds rustling in the evening breeze, just above the crack of footsteps over dry grass. My heart raced, and I threw myself down into the tall, brown depths of the thicket to pray It hadn't brought the hounds.

Moments passed as the steps grew louder.

Thoughts of my brothers galloped through my mind. The last I saw of them was blood on a tree trunk, years ago after the peal of thunder rang out from the intruder's rifle. I ran from my home that night, and It did not follow then.

But now It had come. Now It would try to end me too, and feast on my bones for days in the hovel at the edge of the wood. I knew what the monster did with us when It caught us. I knew the last of my kin were ash in a pit somewhere behind the hills.

I knew the risks, and yet I tread Its grounds the same.

My plan was simple. I baited It out with a tap on the window, and It leapt from the chair with rifle in hand as though It had been waiting. It must have recognized me as the survivor of Its massacre, for all the anger burning on Its face. It followed me out between the sacred trees, and I prayed It hadn't taken the time to open the doors on the nearby kennels.

No hounds tracked me as I lay hidden in the grass and waited. No teeth followed the scent of my fear through the waving reeds and bit down on my flanks. I watched the killer enter the field through blades of dancing brown, Its face a mask of rage as It swung the cannon left and right. Moonlight serves as Its only guide as It strode through the thicket to court death.

But the forest itself had guided me.

The intruder passed me, deaf somehow to the drum beating in my chest. I held my breath and watched It take two steps, three steps, five steps past my position before I rose and charged It with my antlers down. I felt Its pink flesh give beneath my glorious points. The cannon fired against my left ear, singing my fur with its heat, but it was too late.

The killer crumpled on the horns my ancestors gave me, and It sank into the ground when I pulled them out. The rifle flew away, thrown by my vengeance and carried on the autumn wind into the reeds beyond reach. I met Its gaze in silence as the light drained from Its eyes. It passed without another sound, just as my brothers did.

Finally the Hunter had paid Its debt to my people, and the forest would drink of Its blood for weeks.
Then a crack rang out, and lantern light spilled into the thicket from the tree line. Another had come.
I grinned and threw myself down into the grass, feigning death to draw the new one closer. The forest already told me more would arrive in the following season. I will meet them all in turn. Beware if you arrive among them:

Not all of us will rest in peace.

[#054] I always thought my brother was joking when he told me to throw his phone in the creek after he died. (Part 5 - "Jake is Hurt.")

I returned to the farmhouse Friday with an unofficial police backup of one: Officer "Stinky" Finky, who may have begun to curb his vile reputation by proving helpful.

We drove for what felt like hours through the twisting backroads of western Ohio, winding around acres of treacherous crossroads and dodging potholes large enough to nest a family of raccoons. My stomach climbed another inch up my throat with each mile, until I felt like I could open my mouth and pull out a plate of leftovers.

But Kevin needed help, and I needed closure.

Night fell before we made it to the farmhouse. We both packed heavy flashlights from his squad car, and I knew Finky sported something else in the holster on his belt. That said, I didn't expect either one to dent a monster who wrecked a truck face-first and walked away. Needless to say, I wasn't sure what he expected to do if we ran into a bad situation.

I pulled the car over at the base of the hill just after 9PM. A soft glimmer like lamplight spilled through the dusty glass pane in the front door. Nothing broke the silence as we trudged up the hill and heaved open the entrance to the cellar. We climbed down into the darkness without a word, and even my breath caught somewhere inside when our twin cones of torchlight fell down the short branch of the subterranean hallway and revealed an open door.

The smoke that poured from the room when I broke the lock some weeks ago had thinned. I could now poke my head inside and see the giant, wing-tipped recliner bolted to the center, with its red, tacky fabric streaked black in a sunburst pattern from the violence inflicted on it. Toolboxes overflowing with jagged implements of horror scattered across the room, all claw hammers and worn hand drills dripping with rust. I even caught sight of a chainsaw leaning up against the rear wall, its torn chain lying in a pile beneath it.

No Kevin. No Hurt.

A pall of nausea fell over me as I processed everything. I had to grasp the door frame to keep upright.
This was where it all went down. Years ago, a man in a vampire costume led a couple dozen teenagers down here and fed their visage to the beast. I couldn't remember any unexplained disappearances, but we did have a rash of deadly surprises just before my graduation: Wrecked cars, house fires, and even a prowler said to stalk the other side of town for about three months. Was that Hurt, too?

And how long had Jake, Kevin, and George been coming down here to carry out... There's nothing else to call it but torture. They must have been cutting and smashing and ripping into this thing for ages to keep it contained, whether that meant Hurt was satisfied with their attention or it was simply too weak to escape for all the pain inflicted.

Was this what it took to stop a monster? Was this what we would do to save ourselves?

Cold, hard metal thrust into my hands. When I looked down, I found myself holding a mostly clean butcher knife. I glanced over at Finky, but he was in the back inspecting the chainsaw. He hadn't handed me the knife; I had picked it up without thinking. The thought of hacking into a person like a pork chop on legs brought me to the brink of tossing up everything I'd ever eaten, yet still I held the weapon to my chest like a protective cross as I watched Finky pace around the room in search of clues. He stopped when he noticed the blade in my hands, and his nod of approval only made me feel worse.

It was then we noticed the distant, rhythmic thumping sound from above.

This kind of noise in any other situation would have brought to mind another activity, but a brush with death has a way of grinding your thoughts into a black powder and spraying them back into your face. My heart leapt up my throat as the two of us froze solid and waited for the bass to drop. No screams echoed down the corridor, and we soon mounted the steps into the house proper with a quiet prayer.

My sneakers fell on broken glass, and I winced at the mess in the kitchen. The table had been flipped, smashing the pyramid of beer bottles all across the cracked tile. Rotten food littered the walls and corners, drawing flies by the hundred. An odd reek slithered down my throat and boiled my senses, and it followed me as I stepped out into the hallway.

A lit oil lantern hung from a nail on the wall, providing the soft glow I'd seen from outside. A collection of dens from the seventies comprised the ground floor, with ratty couches in mismatched plaid slumping over gnarled tables instead of the array of furniture you'd expect in a real home. The chest of drawers still sat against the front door, but this time the previously jammed top had been ripped out and tossed on the ground. Inside it lay a dozen bottles of lighter fluid and several boxes of long matches, and suddenly I recognized the smell drenching the hallway and the kitchen.

A pang of nausea filled me as I picked the drawer up and set it carefully on top of the chest. Finky tapped me on the shoulder, holding a single finger up and then pointing to our right.

Stairs ran up to the second floor behind a dividing wall, and a trail of acrid smoke drifted down from above.
I gestured for Finky to take the lead. We crept up the stairs, the rhythmic thumping growing louder and louder until the upper floor came into view and we paused near the top, peeking over the landing at the three open doors lined up in a row. The rooms to the left and right were empty, save a slowly leaking water bed.

The center room was not.

A man with curly dark hair and filthy jeans sat on the filthy floorboards, facing away from us. His legs splayed out in front of him, one foot bare and the other clad in a muddy boot. The back of his shirt lay in shreds, but I still recognized the band logo.

And I recognized the man, too, before I even pulled George's phone from my pocket, flipped it open, and dialed the number.

Jake's phone rang, and he turned around. But that thing wasn't Jake at all.

His lower jaw had come unhinged and distended like a snake's mouth around the last piece of his meal: a long leg clad in a sneaker hanging from his mouth and kicking the floor as he slowly slurped it up into his gullet inch-by-grotesque-inch.

Finky opened fire, but the Jake-thing was faster. It tore the leg from its mouth and leapt into the hallway, sinking its claws into Finky's arm. I screamed and lashed out with the knife, tearing a long gash like a smile through its gut and spraying myself with rusty blood.

Not-Jake screamed back and threw itself to its knees, smashing its face again and again into the railing around the stairs as it pulled at the edges of its stomach wound. I stared in horror as something bright and yellow emerged from the hole in its belly, and more and more appeared as it tore its flesh away.

Then Finky pushed me down the stairs.

I'm lucky I didn't break my neck before I came to rest in a standing puddle of lighter fluid. Finky appeared at my side, pulling me to my feet and down the hallway to the basement door. He paused at the entrance to the kitchen and turned back... To knock the oil lamp from its perch on the wall.

Plumes of smoke poured from the boarded windows by the time we reached the car; real smoke, the kind that doesn't come from monsters. We watched the farmhouse smolder from a safe distance for as long as we dared before pulling out, for once happy not to see a quick response from the fire department.

We both swore to forget this thing ever happened. George's phone hasn't rang since then, and no gaping maws or black, acrid smoke ever showed themselves at my doorstep. I can't say for sure the thing is gone, obviously. I never saw it escape the house, and I don't know if I could ever be sure enough to sleep again. Instead I lay in bed for hours every night, clutching that knife to my chest and praying I won't have to use it.
Just what was that thing anyway? Was it Hurt? Why did it look like Jake? Why did it keep Jake's phone? I've been thinking about it sitting there, tearing open its own stomach wound like it were shedding its skin to reveal...

You know what it looked like? That bright yellow, rubbery patch beneath the Jake-thing's torn flesh?

It was Kevin's poncho.

[#053] I always thought my brother was joking when he told me to throw his phone in the creek after he died. (Part 4 - Kevin Needs Help)

Sorry for the delay, but I've been feeling a little under the weather since my "adventure" at the farmhouse. My cousins, Jake and Kevin, are still officially missing, and I wasn't sure what to do about it for the longest time.

A lot of comments said I should take the evidence to the police. Here's the thing: I live in a town with more tractors than cops, even if you don't count the farm supply store at the north end of Main Street. Half the deputies are kids I remember from school who were recruited in a blitz after a neighboring township dissolved. The only real evidence is in the farmhouse, and I doubt any of it's conclusive unless we walk in on Kevin doing... Whatever it is he has to do to contain that thing in the basement, and I don't think I want "Stinky Finky," the creep who carved swastikas into his desk in Pre-Calc, waving a gun behind me when I open the door and step into that smokey, urine-and-sawdust torture chamber.

It feels so weird even associating the two ideas in my head. This whole "Hurt" thing has no place existing in the same world as my real life memories of Christmas presents and Pokemon. I'd almost convinced myself for the last week it was all a weird nightmare that strayed too close to reality in my brain, like the surge of feelings since George passed had finally snapped some fuse inside me. Maybe my cousins were thirteen again and had just ran off to spite my aunt. Maybe I imagined the police report about Jake's truck, and he's out there somewhere banging his head to whatever dumb band he wears on his t-shirt these days. Maybe Kevin...

Maybe Kevin didn't wake me up with a text two days ago that said:

• "KEVIN: help"

Yeah, that needle of a message popped my dream bubble quick. Suddenly I could imagine walking by the back door and seeing the creature's sagging mouth spouting acrid smoke like a white-hot trash fire. I couldn't let those nightmares cross that far into my world. I couldn't let Hurt show up at my mother's doorstep in the middle of the night.

So I finally called the cops. And, because of course they would, they actually sent Stinky Finky.

The kid who once referred to my hairy cousin Jake as "Jewbacca" rang my bell at nearly half past two in the afternoon, a solid six hours after I'd phoned the station. Finky wore his uniform like a curtain. It hung off his skinny, rigid frame and wrinkled at his feet where the too-long trousers pooled around worn boots. His sunken eyes and sallow cheeks told a story of regret I couldn't wait to hear, but I had to file my love of petty vengeance away to make room for monsters.

Instead, I played the hospitality card I've heard we're known for in small towns: I let this ugly soul into my home, offered him a drink, and, after double-checking to make sure Mom didn't sneak home for lunch while I was in the shower, I spilled every bean I could gather from my scattered, aching brain.

Finky didn't write anything down but, for his part, he seemed to listen. His eyes grew wide in all the right parts of the story, and his mouth slacked open only twice: once when I mentioned the drawers full of weapons at the farmhouse and again when I uttered the name "Hurt."

I finished and stared at him a moment, watching the slow birth of recognition across his face. He sat for several minutes, looking all the world like he was thinking of a way to evade the obvious question: "What do you know about this?"

And Finky, former bane of my existence, did the most human thing I never imagined he would do: He broke down in tears.

Finky confessed he knew about the farmhouse. In fact, he'd attended a Halloween party inside it years ago. At least twenty kids from our high school met there, and each one thought it was thrown by somebody else's older brother. Nobody questioned it because their mysterious benefactor had provided a buffet of booze and pizza, and everybody was tripping all over themselves to be cool about it.

An old man in a Dracula costume emerged from a door in the kitchen just after midnight. He stood in the living room and called out for everyone's attention, because he had an astounding Halloween treat to show them if they would just follow him down into the cellar. He promised it would separate the boys from the men, and what big-headed teenager could resist that?

Almost everybody followed. And yes, Jake and Kevin were there.

Dracula led them down those stairs and along the short branch off the hallway, and he stopped them outside a padlocked door. He waited until everybody gathered there beside him before drawing a long, rusted key from his sleeve, popping the lock, and standing aside. One by one the brave and the buzzed filtered through the door into a room filled with acrid smoke, which Finky assumed came from little more than a common haunted house fog machine. In the center of the room stood a massive, ratty armchair, and in that chair sat a man whose lower jaw rested on his chest in a frozen scream. A metal circlet mounted to the wingtips held his head upright, but he blinked and moved just like a real person.

But he wasn't real. He couldn't be real, because then Dracula stepped into the room and threw the switch just inside the door, and the lights throughout the house dimmed as thousands of volts poured through the circlet and into the seated, screaming man. Finky watched the man's skin crackle and brown like a steak, jiggling and dancing in his chair for several minutes as the kids froze in terror and watched the mock execution until some machinery in the back exploded in a shower of sparks and the man stood up, tearing himself free from his restraints with a cry of anger.

Finky ran from the cellar and out of the house, plowing over the mailbox at the bottom of the hill as he drunk drove his jackbooted butt out of there as quickly as he could.

His story complete, Finky and I sat for several minutes in silence while I absorbed his words. A grown man had staged a party for a group of gullible teenagers and deliberately exposed them to Hurt. Why? To share his burden? To force some of them to take over for him and try to contain it?

That's what Jake and Kevin did, isn't it? They turned into monsters to keep Hurt away from the others.

And was George at that party? Was George led down into the smoke and sawdust by a vampire, straight into his doom?

Finky didn't know. His beer-soaked brain could barely hold more details about that night in the basement. But he did know what happened to Jake, though he had forgotten by the time he found the truck.

That's right. Finky was the officer who found Jake's truck. And he also found one small detail he hadn't shared with anyone, even his mates on the force:

A single boot tossed in the bushes near the accident, blood-streaked and reeking of urine and sawdust.
Officer Finky never heard about the farmhouse or its unkillable tenant since that night, but the smell of that boot alone cracked some foreboding door in his head. George, Jake, and Kevin had flown under the radar the rest of Finky's life, and whatever pact they made to contain the fiend apparently hadn't extended to him.

Until now.

The two of us drew up a plan. He's off duty this whole weekend, and we are driving up to the farmhouse together this evening.

I hope Kevin can hold on until then.