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.
No comments:
Post a Comment