F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Night Gallery

A Sermon Unleashed

by

You just never know who some people are when you meet them. Especially at night in a KOA campground. I remember one or two times our family stayed at some KOAs. It was fun…the six of us and our family dog. The smell and crackle of campfires and pine trees and grilled food. The conversations from faceless people who seemed friendly enough….

I’m so glad we never ran into any of the sort in this next story.  At the rate they were going, I don’t think they had many converts. Always keep your vehicles parked facing your getaway. Just sayin’.

This story has never seen the light of day…or been published.

 

A Sermon Unleashed

© F. P. Dorchak, 1989

 

A large part of his oxygen escaped, his knees rubbery.

“How do you know this?” Phil asked. It was dark, the smell and crackle of campfires in the air, and he and a guy named Darrell stood in an open area of a KOA.

Darrell chuckled again, and this one was much worse than before. There was no doubt as to the vileness in his tone. And the darkness just exaggerated everything.

“Because I made it all up!” Darrell said, his voice now rising above their personal conversation and carrying over to some of the closer people around them, including a group at a van. His laugh was unabashed and wicked and Phil’s eyes froze on Darrell’s shadowy face. He wasn’t sure…but it seemed like Darrell’s face was…changing? In the process of change? It had to be a trick of what little light there was. Why and how would Darrell’s face be changing, it didn’t make any sense, but that was how it registered to Phil’s mind.

“In a way, buddy, I feel sorry for you,” Darrell said. “You are not gullible and stupid like they are,” Darrell said, forcing thick words out of a now extending mouth. It sounded like his tongue was impeding coherent speech. And there were weird, abrading sounds seeming to come from Darrell. Like muscle and bone were moving around…pushing each other out of the way….

In the next instant Phil felt a powerful force strike him. Not that he knew it, but it came from a hairy but muscular hand and clobbered Phil like a flying slab of concrete. Bowling over, he smacked his head hard on a good-sized rock. That was the last he recalled before blackness….

 

Out from the shadows charged a figure.

He was tall…and he drooled as his face contorted and his cruelly clawed limbs completed their restructure. From under a quickly thickening mane hissed one word:

“Faith….”

“What’s going on here?” someone asked from the darkness. Flashlights clicked on everywhere at once. A girl named Brenda, from that group, whipped her head around and saw shadows running toward her group. She quickly made for her boyfriend’s truck. She’d just managed to dodge out of the path of some rushing thing that went past her for the group she’d just left.

“Phil? Phil?” Brenda called out. No answer.

The crowd behind her was hit by a rude flurry of fangs and claws. Their shrieks cut into the air as the group split up, people trying to outrun the faceless fury that ripped apart their bodies. No matter where they ran they all blundered into more of the same…it was like hitting a wall of rotating knives.

The attacks came from everywhere.

Sounds of screaming, tearing, and growling.

Brenda continued calling for her boyfriend. She never saw him…on the ground only ten feet away…unconscious.

The shrieks from the growing feeding frenzy increased. Other groups further up the campground’s road were going through the same agonies. Brenda saw several of the van group try to rush back into their van. One, a rather large lady, fell hard to the ground. She never got back up, as a closely following beast quickly fell upon her. Another growling shadow continued on to the van. It lunged inside it with the handful of people doing the same.

The van rocked

(don’t come knockin!)

violently.

Brenda’s voice was frozen in her throat.

She watched as silhouettes from the friends she’d just been with were being ripped apart into smaller silhouettes.

Something bump against her foot.

Whatever the thing was, it had hit her foot like a heavy, wet rag doll and she was afraid to look down. Rag dolls usually had more than just hair.

Gradually the sounds of struggle died…and all that remained were the sounds of quiet tearing. Squinting, Brenda saw several silhouettes run off into the night, but still saw no Phil.

The rocking van stopped.

Somehow spared, Brenda slowly backed up to the driver’s side of her boyfriend’s truck, and inched her way into it, ducking low. Silently she cried Phil’s name, tears running down her face. She fumbled several times with her keys before starting the truck. Dirt spat out from the tires and she dug two deep channels on her exit from the massacre. Several spitting stones hit Phil, who remained unconscious behind the van. A hairy head popped up from within the van, then went back to its business. Several of the other werewolves looked up at her as she sped away, one beginning to give chase…when Darrell called her off. She could go…they had enough for tonight. There would be plenty of time for her later.

There was always time.

Phil lay in the dirt. Blood pooled against his back as it sluiced out from the van. All around him lay the spoils of slaughter. The breeze was still warm, but it now carried a sickly sweet aroma with it. Amid the quiet sounds of eating, echoes of screams and agony still hung thickly in the air.

There were no more revelers, stargazers, or lovers.

Only mutilated bodies.

Phil slowly came to…his eyes painfully straining around in their sockets. His face was pressed into the dirt.

He was afraid to move.

But his consciousness was short-lived, and he again fell back into blackness.

A tall, naked, and muscular man emerged from around the van. A man with gray hair, his body covered in blood and gore. He came up to Phil’s position, his watery eyes looking down upon him. With one mighty, still-clawed hand, he lifted Phil’s unconscious form effortlessly into the air; examined it. A diseased grin formed beneath rabid eyes. What formed on its tortured face could have been called a smile.

“Phil,” the creature said, chuckling, “you always doubted me; doubted your girl. You never had the faith…but your girlfriend does…and to get her, I need you.” He chuckled. “Come along, my friend, we have much work to do!”

Dust whisked along the roadside. The blood that had been pooling up against Phil until now broke through the built up meniscus and branched out into chaotic little patterns in the sand.

“Faith, dear people…a little faith can get you through the worst of times!”

Darrell laughed into the morning dusk, returning back into the hills from which he and his kind had come, Phil’s unconscious form draped across his powerful and scarred shoulders. His followers grabbed their spoils, and quickly followed….

Amen.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

Attention Span

by

I got the idea for this story while attending a multi-level marketing seminar some twenty-five, thirty years ago. I still remember as I sat in the audience (on folding chairs) and looked around, everyone (except me) was focused in what seemed to me enraptured attention at the speaker. The speaker bored me. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I’d had this same feeling when I’d later attended an AMWAY seminar at the urging of a friend. That was the weirdest multi-level marketing program I’d ever attended—and my last, and where I may have actually birthed this story. I’d learned my lesson. At that AMWAY seminar it literally felt like a cult (sorry those of you who participate in AMWAY; you may not feel this way, the culture may have since changed, but that is how I felt all those years ago). All the women had been in conservative “church-goin'” dresses, all the men in dark, conservative suits with power (red) ties. And the smiles—

Oh, God, the sickening, saccharin smiles….

Unnerving posters were up around the auditorium with “positive statements” and other things I no longer remember…except that it was all decidedly creepy.

Disturbing.

The way everyone talked…what they talked about and how they presented themselves…the speakers, the layout. The attire. How they all seemed to have the same “certain point of view” on life, religion, world view. Then there was this line in my story that I remember so well: “Shaking his hand was like holding a sea cucumber.” Yes, the guy described in this story…his handshake…it was real, and that was exactly what I remembered thinking while shaking his sweaty, clammy hand.

And had there really been a gong onstage?!

Anyway, I’d attended these seminars because I was still in the Air Force and had been looking for a way out…something to get into that could support my exit from the military. As I sat there and observed everyone, I thought…what if…what if….

This story originally appeared in Tyro, issue #26,on June 1990.

 

Attention Span

© F. P. Dorchak, 1990

 

Hi, I’m Alex. What I’m about to tell you, you will not believe. Why should you? Nobody else did. I can scarcely begin to believe it myself, even though I’m sporting all the proof I’ll ever need.

It all started, innocently enough, with one of those “Hey Come see Us, We’re Great” cards I got in the mail one rainy afternoon. It came sandwiched between the usual bills for the Visa, furniture and utilities (why do they all come at once?), waiting patiently for my retrieval from the tiny silver box apartment complexes use. That day I remember in particular because I had gone to interview for a certain very desirable management position at McGraw-Hill Books. It was a position, I regret to inform you, that did not come my way. Somebody better than I had secured the reigns. As usual, I would remain in the background.

Had my brush with that form of mail-advertising ended there, there would be nothing to tell and I’d be able to walk out of this room on my own. But it didn’t happen that way. Later that night I also received, free of charge, the complimentary phone call. It, too, was extending the same invitation that the piece of paper had already screamed at me.

I remember I regarded that call—true to form—with much suspicion. I’ve always prided myself on my cynicism: it’s the one thing I can always count on without letting it go to my head! Anyway, as I lay on the floor, as I usually do when I’m on the phone for any length of time, I began listening to the voice on the other end. Not to what was being said, mind you, but how it was being said. There was something in this guy’s voice that bothered me. He sounded slimy.

Maybe out of pure curiosity, maybe out of sales pressure, I decided to show up at the designated place, at the designated time. When he started saying stuff like: “All your co-workers are coming, why not you?”, I felt like a worm. You know how it goes, can’t show your face at work the next day because everyone at work is walking around with shit-eating grins on their faces ’cause they’re privy to the Greatest Deal On Earth and you’re not.

That card has since disappeared. I never was able to relocate it. Presumably it was lost in the myriad piles of paperwork littered about my apartment table. I never did clean it up. And so it goes.

So there I sat, considerably more casual then the other bodies around me and finding the atmosphere of the auditorium rather oppressive. Somewhere I heard the sound of an air-conditioner, but it surely wasn’t in this room. It wasn’t so much that it was hot (though we could’ve done with a few degrees less), as it was stuffy. It reminded me of how dank cellars can smell on a good day. It was indeed an odor that was very much out of place, and why no one else was unnerved by this was, at the moment, beyond me. But that wasn’t the only thing out of place here. I was out of place. This looked more like a business convention what with all the formal evening wear galore and I wasn’t even wearing a jacket.

Up on the front stage, aside from the screen and podium, stood a small brass gong complete with hammer. How cute, I thought. The velvety backdrop was swaying to some movement from behind it, and I noted how there were two guards to either side of the gong. They were smartly dressed in the official uniforms of a bodyguard, their hands folded to front. Watching them for a few minutes, I noticed how they didn’t seem to be looking at any one thing in particular, just staring straight ahead, unblinking. I thought I had seen something peek through the bottom of the curtain, but couldn’t identify what it was.

The speaker, who was to shortly take the stage, was mingling with the crowd and shaking hands, trying to get elected into whatever office he thought he was running for. It was only an investment seminar.

His person bothered me.

Appearing dumpy and pliable, somewhat like the Pillsbury Doughboy, there was something about him that seemed as stolid as granite. Like ones and zeros in a computer, when he was on, he was congenial…and when he was off, he was cold, almost lifeless. He was a contradiction in terms, two people occupying the same space; impossible yet irrefutable.

It didn’t take too long before he made his way to me. I shuddered at the thought of having to meet him, for it meant that now he could associate a name to a face. My name, my face. I wished to remain as anonymous as possible in this crowd. The only fame I had ever collected came from the local gym where I found (much to my surprise) that I could move mass quantities of weight all by myself. My strength quite belied my size, at five foot eleven, a hundred and sixty pounds. Nothing much a girl would look at.

Shaking his hand was like holding a sea cucumber—have you ever held a handful of snot? There was no substance to his sweaty grip, or to his personality for that matter, and I quickly wiped my hand on the seat of my pants. Why were people so taken in by this guy? Conservatively clad in some nondescript men’s wear, there wasn’t a speck of dandruff on his lapels as he emitted an odor of impeccability.

His face was clean-shaven to the point of boredom. He had a nose that was small and unassuming, looking more like an afterthought than an intention—and his lips! His lips were puffy looking—like someone had spent the better part of an afternoon beating on them with a rubber hose! Topping his head, his graying hair was slicked back with some form of hair crème. But his eyes were the screwiest part of him, resembling dark pieces of coal stuck into a pale, chubby face. There was no two ways about it, this man just plain looked weird.

The congregation assembled and niceties completed, the gong was rung. We were ready to begin.

 

“…and so, friends,” ejaculated the speaker, “I believe I can convince each and every one of you to invest in our program. How you ask? Well, allow me just a moment of your time…”

Yes, it was indeed getting very boring. I kept waiting for his tongue to get tangled up in his lips. We’d only been there some, oh—let me see, fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes, and my butt was already feeling that wet, prickly sensation. There he stood before us, gesticulating with the authoritative air of a southern Baptist evangelist when I finally noticed something, even sitting all the way to the rear where I was. His eyes had taken on a strange, new quality.

By virtue of his taking position at the podium, his eyes transformed from the lifeless pieces of dark coal they had been earlier…to that of a strangely disquieting quality that seemed almost as if they belonged to somebody else. Or that perhaps someone else was looking through them at us. There was a fever being injected into those orbs, an infusion of near-righteous frenzy that seemed to increase with every sentence…forcing you to desire nothing else but the depths of his gaze. It was as though everyone in the room was being converted.

Everyone that is, but me.

So, unaffected and quite bored I decided to take advantage of this time by attempting total character assassination of our speaker. He did seem quite different now, more like another person had suddenly taken over. He still looked the worm, mind you, but I tried to find a description that would now describe the new him. The only thing I could come up with was roadkill.

Aside from his new steely gaze, he was still disgusting to look at. Everyone in the room was absolutely riveted to his gaze, his word, his every movement. The only way I could try to explain this was to look at it from the point of view of roadkill.

Dead animal meat alongside a highway is a disgusting thing to look at, but everybody does it. There are just some things in this world that defy explanation, and craning your neck about a bug-stained windshield to steal a peak at some roadway slaughter was one of them. What is it that attracts those passing stares from motorists? Fascination? Fear? Was that the secret to this whole audience fixation thing? Was it a fear of looking away—a fear of death?—the curiosity of trying to feel what it must be like to die, either among friends or alone on some deserted byway, hot screaming metal suddenly splattering through your brains and sending their remains all over the pavement? Feeling your last breath slowly ebbing away, your lifeblood warming cold, uncaring asphalt and your last view of the world some topsy-turvy angle of dirt, an unknown but active ant scurrying past your clouding vision and knowing—beyond a shadow of a doubt—that you are indeed dying, your life ended. You try to figure out what must’ve gone on within that animal’s mind during its last few moments, vainly attempting self-conciliation in a fleeting nanosecond to console yourself and your frail mortality…that swatting a roadside mammal is no different than swatting a household fly.

Who knows. All I knew was that he reminded me of roadkill, causing me to look out of curiosity, and all philosophy aside, I was dying here! This “free” dinner had better be worth it…

“…yes, our property is like no other! In the heart of the Heartland! Ripe for both the daring and the conservative at heart! All we ask is…ah—but just a minute. I’m not going to tell you that just yet! If it were that easy, I wouldn’t be here. In fact, I’d be out of a job (roar of devised laughter)! Now take a look at these figures for a moment…”

No, nothing’s worth this! How in the hell did I ever let myself get suckered? I guess I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night. But as I sat there in the very last row, watching all those Good Little Citizens hypnotized by this joker at the podium, I knew that I could be doing something better—like beating off in the john with Miss August. What tits.

But hey, no. I’m here. Listening to Mr. Charm and Charisma Himself, Joe Fishlips, or whatever he claimed his name to be (you never quite get their names, you know, and when you do, it seems to keep changing…).

“…now if you’d just be kind enough to bear with me…”

Oh yeah, right, like let’s play to the dain bramaged audience as if there were a choice! Fellow acceptance to a yuppie is everything! Besides, he got his laughter, and now he’s just one o’ the gang: “Hey, how ’bout that ‘ole Fishlips…”

“…you’ll see we offer something that absolutely no one else in the industry can offer…”

Yeah, public dumps offer something no one else can offer.

It was getting pretty deep, so I just tuned out ‘ol Joe and started eyeing the crowd, to see how many of them were actually that brainless as to be totally duped by this patronizing orifice. Scanning, I lost all respect for the Human Race. Was I the only one? It was indeed a dark day for Humanity, let me tell you!

But that wasn’t all. There was something…something else. I didn’t know exactly what it was at the time, but there seemed to be an uneasiness rippling through the crowd—an undercurrent of something indescribable, and though it bothered me greatly, it didn’t seem to bother the lot of them. There seemed to be a sudden abundance of casual shifting among the audience as they sat there in their rickety chairs, cigarette smoke weaving dreamy patterns in our oppressive enclosure. I hate cigarette smoke.

All of them had that same sick grin of blissful ignorance on their faces, that way people get when they think they’ve found the Answer to Everything. Had I been listening to my intuition, I would’ve—should’ve—gotten out of there, then and there. But like the yuppie I so detest, I stayed, picking at the stiff hairs along my arms. Forget the dinner, Arby’s would’ve been a lifesaver!

No, something sinister was underway and I was too entwined in my own cynicism to take heed. For one thing, can you imagine being seen as the only one getting up and leaving from an assemblage like this one? I’d have no one to talk to at work—not that that in itself especially bothered me, but I did have to deal with these people sooner or later.

So I stayed.

Yeah, I sat and I observed—not Motormouth the Charismatic, but the audience and the “bouncers.” They seemed to be eyeing the audience too, and apparently hadn’t yet noticed me noticing them. There was something definitely not right here, a dream-like quality to the whole affair. There were several times in which I had to actually concentrate on what I was doing. All the smoke, the incessant droning of our speaker and the stuffiness tried vainly to win my attention, but I wouldn’t concede.

Then something unfair happened, something so cunning and devious that it capped my stay for sure. Dinner was announced. It totally threw my whole evening.

So we were all herded out, instructed to follow those stupid little cards marking the way to the dining hall, even though everybody already knew how to get there (the paranoia of those guys at losing even one individual!). There seemed to be much conversation going on along the way to the dining hall, but each time I tried to focus in on any one of them, I couldn’t make anything out. It was as though it was all gibberish, meaningless dribble devised to give the impression of conversation. I was beginning to feel very much alone.

The meal wasn’t all that great—pseudo-adult portions of some bastardized version of a Swanson TV dinner. You had a choice, (and what a grand selection it was too!) either the chicken cordon bleu, or Spam.

Scattered randomly throughout the dining room, a few of us relaxed after our allotted 45 minutes of entrée. Just then the bouncers came back to see that there were no stragglers. Shit, after a muddy parfait one hardly had time to enjoy Dom Perignon-Ripple, served chilled. Oh well, the show must go on.

Marching some 20 paces to the rear and right of us, the Guard herded its quarry back into the corral. We “be-sat” ourselves in the Great Chamber. Isn’t it amazing how everyone gets the same chair they had previously?

No sooner had I “be-sat” myself, when that same feeling of uneasiness once more returned. The other, intoxicating quality, however, had not yet overtaken me. I attributed this to being able to leave the microcosm, reorienting my psyche back to its rightful compass setting. I know not why the others were not similarly affected, maybe I have some gene they don’t have. Whatever the case, by this time I was marked—the door-thugs had spotted me. Great, now there was absolutely no chance of sneaking out.

The room seemed darker, the rickety folding chair I sat in, squeakier. Everyone was so hypnotized by our narcissistic speaker except for me, and that, my dear friends, bothered the hell out of me.

Why was it that I, out of all these other people, was immune? Were there that many fools on this planet?

There it was again, that same rippling movement throughout the crowd. That same squirming.

Except for me.

Someone brushed at one of my legs. I shifted my foot.

I looked back at the thugs, who, unfortunately, were still there. Damn it all, if it didn’t seem like the room was getting darker! Was it just me, or were the lights actually growing more dim?

Think I’d get the hint? Hell, no!

I had lost all interest whatsoever in our arrogant speaker a long time ago and just had to find out what it was that was going on here. It wasn’t until some five minutes later that I didn’t give a damn and just wanted to get out as fast as I could—to erase that whole night from both my mind and the consciousness of the Human Race.

Once more I felt my leg brushed, but this time noted that the people around me hadn’t moved, or even affected their heartfelt apologies for breaking the Unwritten Law of—oh, heaven forbid!—touching another body! I looked down at my feet and lost all interest in Miss August.

Entwined around the lower structure of the puke-brown folding chairs were—and I kid you not—tentacles! Sickly-green and vomit-yellow! I looked up and down the rows around me, my mouth agape.

They were everywhere!

But more than that, they were attached to everybody’s legs. Everyone’s

but mine.

Ho-ly fuck.

What in hell was I supposed to do now? Ee-yuck, it still sickens me! No one even knew what was going on. The tentacles sucked and sucked, their huge trunks swelling with bodily fluids, looking like snakes apregnant with swallowing prey. There was a sick, puss-like film over each extremity, but there was not a one on Yours Truly. Some people had several on them, blood oozing from the inflicted wounds. Listening closely, I could hear the sucking sounds beneath the drone from the front. Gag. It made me wanna chunk right there!

Yet I was amazed at how calm and collected I remained. I guess that came from reading Stephen King. All I knew was that I had to get out of there, and now—not in three seconds, but yesterday! I looked back over at the bouncers, still there of course. It was just about then when one of ’em looked over at me again. I was nailed, no two ways about it. The guy stared right into me, he knew I wasn’t in the least bit mesmerized. Terrific. I had to do something. Be calm.

That’s when it all dawned on me why we were here. We were offerings to this—whatever it was—demon-god. Somehow we were all to be hypnotized, then fed upon. But something had gone wrong with me. Too tough for ‘ole Fishlips, I guess. Well let’s see how tough I am against a squid!

I started to get up, metal chair squealing at the release of my weight, tattle-telling to my naughtiness. That was when I felt tentacles sliming after my gams. Fawwwk, it was disgusting! Sliming after my legs—me!

No one in the audience moved. Fishlips stopped momentarily to take note of my singular movement, but masterfully continued, motioning for the Guard to deal with me. No fuckin’ way Hoser, I was roiled. Adrenalin pounding, I grabbing my chair from the clutches of a slime-hand and smashed it into the side of an approaching bouncer’s head, who went crumbling into a heap on the floor, but three others were soon joining in, not to mention those suckers. The audience continued focusing in on Joe’s chanting, several people silently collapsing either to the floor or onto the shoulders of those adjacent to them. The demon was feeding, and feeding well.

I just managed to sidestep a tentacle when one of the guards got up behind me, attempting restraint. Lifting weights gave me an edge the dude didn’t expect, considering my size, or lack of it. As strong as these thugs were—and they were strong—I managed to wiggle free enough to butt my head up into the guy’s jaw. I heard a crunching sound as he reeled back, his grip released, but a tentacle snagged me. Terrific.

It pulled me in. It was pretty tough, and I thought of all those other tentacles already out there and of the hellish damage they could—and were—doing. Quickly I grabbed my bent chair and started wailing away on the slime-fiend. It didn’t have too strong a grip on me yet and I managed to pull free, but I still had two bouncers to contend with, plus the bludgeons they were pulling out. I really didn’t need this.

I worked my way into a corner, preparing for the worst. There was no way this creature was getting me: I’d die first. I’d really rather die first….

The first thug lunged. I side stepped him easily, smashing the other across the face, blinding him and causing him to stumble right into the network of hungry suckers. Before it had even registered on my mind what had happened, the tentacles had whipped themselves around the figure and pulled him to the ground with such violent force that his body ruptured in several places. For the first time, I really looked at the bouncers. They seemed slightly sluggish, as if they too, like pal Fishlips, were not all there.

The other turned around, handling his weapon with both hands, eyes boring in on me. We paced around each other, my clothing ripped in several places, scrapes and cuts beginning to sting. Fishlips started to look real worried. Unfortunately for me, I maneuvered right into the zombie’s trap, two tentacles again grabbing me, but with firmer grips, pulling me to the ground. No way, I kept telling myself, no way! I wasn’t going to give this creature—or Fishlips—any satisfaction! I was going to make it out! Frantically I kicked and fought like a drowning man attempting to keep his head above water, tentacle vomit covering me.

The thug stood over me staring—no expression on its pale face (which I now noticed, was indeed pale). With both hands, it raised the club over its head. The tentacles that had latched onto me bit deep into my flesh, causing me to wince, but I had other things on my mind just then. The mindless guard swung at my head. Twisting, I managed to evade him at the last moment, sending a crack through the weapon as it bounced off the hardwood floor. The suckers weren’t making my life any more pleasant, either, but I got free of most of them.

Chair still in hand, I swept it across the floor and swept the guard off his feet, landing him (it?) on his back with a muffled thud. In a comical kind of way I noticed how his neatly combed hair flew up from his head as he fell, coming to rest about his forehead in a less-than-neat manner as he landed. A tentacle lashed out at one of the guard’s flailing arms, loosening it from its socket. As situation would have it, the bat rolled over to me and I grabbed it. The guard was simultaneously trying to get at me and undo the tentacle that was on him, drawing blood. I swung at him but missed. He got closer and I swung again, missing. Shit, fine time for the getaway car to stall, I thought. The zombie tried to right itself, but fell back down to the floor towards me, its useless arm banging helplessly at its side. I took advantage of this and swung the club with all my might, splattering the guards brains all over myself and the floor, not to mention splintering the bat, which now resembled more of a short spear.

Immediately I started hacking away at the tentacles on my legs. It was tough going, especially since others were still rooting for my corpuscles, but the sentinel’s remains next to me managed to divert the demon’s attention for the moment, and I wasn’t sure how long that moment would last. I lost all feeling in my right leg, my other one fast losing all sensation.

I managed to cut free, crawling as fast as my elbows would carry me. Fishlips was definitely worried now. His sales pitch, if indeed he was pitching anything, was much more hurried and higher in tone. The Watchmen up front with him made a gesture towards me, but he halted them.

He had let me go.

 

Well, to make my long story short, I managed to crawl out (and curiously enough, didn’t see a soul—or shin—the whole time exiting). But by then, I had lost all feeling in both legs, and they were actively bleeding out open gouges. I lost consciousness somewhere near Cascade boulevard….

 

So here I lay now, in a hospital bed, one leg gone, half of the other still in my possession.

No remorse you say?

I once remember reading a story asking the question of how much pain can a person endure? The answer was how much did that person want to live? Well, I want to live. Yeah, it’s my own fault. I guess I deserved what I got for being shallow and spineless—but what a price to pay for so trivial a problem! Of course no one believes me. I tried to tell them, and anyone else who would listen, but they all thought—think—that my story was brought about by my condition.

Fuckin’ A right of course it was, I yelled!

No dice. Of course, when they did check out the hotel, all there was was an empty convention hall reeking of smoke and B.P.O.E. stickers. Terrific.

All I can say is that no way am I ever dealing with an another telemarketing scam again, or “free” seminars. Ever. And I am going to find that Son-of-a-Bitch Fishlips if that’s the last thing I ever do….

Fucker.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Drive-Ins

by

If You Look Real Close.... (Image by Kevin [CC BY 2.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons)
If You Look Real Close…. (Image by Kevin [CC BY 2.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)
I love drive-in theaters!

We used to frequent one in the town we live in, packed up the truck with sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets—our dog—and drove off to the Aircadia Drive-In. Back the truck in and drop the tail gate. It was a wonderful experience…one I think back to often.

Now a Wal-Mart stands in its location.

When I was a kid we used to go to a drive-in that no longer exists. The Sara-Placid Drive-In. It’s totally overgrown. It was on Route 86, between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, NY. Near where that Post Office now is. I also found out a little more about it’s origins and fate. One of it’s owners, Ernie Stautner, was a Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Hall-of-Famer in the 1950s. The previous link says he died in Colorado. Small world (I live in Colorado).

Sara-Placid Drive-in Handbill. (Image by Drive-In 54, on http://cinema treasures.org, uploaded 9/26/15, Creative Commons [Attribution] License)
Sara-Placid Drive-in Handbill. (Image by Drive-In 54, on http://cinema treasures.org, uploaded 9/26/15, Creative Commons [Attribution] License)
Well, the Sara-Placid Drive-in is no more, ever since 1974…but every time I return home and drive past its inexact location…I look for it. Sadly, I can no longer pinpoint it. But somewhere…in some dimension…I know it still exists…and that’s why I continue to look for it….

What inspired me to write this?

Drive-ins.

That’s all you need to know.

This story has never been published.

 

 

 

Drive-Ins

© F. P. Dorchak, 1994

 

If you look close, real close, you can almost see them.

 

Thirteen-year-old Randy Thornton pedaled his bike up over the ridge, slivers of morning sunlight stabbing into his eyes from the other side of the rise. He brought the bike around and skidded to a quick stop. Surveyed the lot in front of him. White posts. Everywhere. Rows and rows of nothing but white posts.

And a screen.

Randy got off his bike and walked among the posts. Looked up to the huge white screen that loomed above him like a hungry vulture.

Silver screen they call it. Silver—like for monsters n stuff.

There were lots of stains and rips in it, but Randy thought sure a movie would still work. He continued on, walking his bike beside him, and soon noticed what looked like a lump of rags in the center of the sea of posts. He moved in closer; saw how the bunched-up rags were actually a hunched-over man sitting in the dirt. A man who mumbled. Randy ditched the bike.

“Mister? Mister, are you all right?” Randy stopped several feet from the man, who smelled like rotting food and days’ old urine. “Mister, are you all right?”

Randy reached out. Touched him. The lump of rags shuddered, but felt light as a bird…like one push would send him off flying.

But fly he didn’t.

Randy reached down and tilted the head back, then stumbled backward.

He turned to run, but instead ran smack into a white post and got most of the air knocked out of him. He collapsed painfully to the ground. Looked back toward the man’s still-upturned face.

All he saw was the gaping, black hole where a face used to be….

 

Grandpa Jonathan sat back in his rocker, the old wooden legs creaking almost as bad as did his bones. Jonathan inhaled deeply from his pipe and eyed Randy intently. Randy sat before him, at his feet on the front porch steps, awaiting his reply.

“Well,” Jonathan said slowly, drawing out another puff, “that certainly is a mighty tall tale you’re a tellin me—”

“It’s true, Granpa, it is—and I never went back there again! Never!”

“So what do you suppose you saw?”

Randy scrunched his face into a tight little knot. “I—I don’t know. It was like, like something from a horror movie.”

Grandpa Jonathan’s rocker creaked louder, and he chuckled to himself.

“Well, Son, I don’t pretend to know what it was you saw, but I’ll tell you somethin that’ll knock your socks clean off.” Jonathan leaned forward and put his face right into Randy’s. “If you dare.”

“I-if I dare? What do you mean? Is it a story?”

Grandpa Jonathan smiled, took another drag from his pipe, and leaned back. He looked out beyond his porch front with a mischievous gleam in his eye, towards the town of Twin Falls, Indiana. It was late afternoon and twilight was fast approaching.

Götterdämmerung. Twilight of the Gods.

Or whatever forces that be.

“You know, when I was younger, I used to run a small theater up over t’Marion, and as I look back on things, I think it was my most favorite job of all time.”

“Why was that, Granpa?”

“Because, Son, I was promotin imagination. The ability to drift off for a period a time and pretend you was somewhere else. Someone else. To let the worries of the day disappear for a spell. The fifties were a great time, Randy. It was probably the most naive time in all of history. It was before Watergate, Vietnam—the Kennedy assassinations—”

“What?”

“They was times when the people of this country believed what they was told, lock, stock, and barrel— without question. They believed anything their governments told em, or their neighbors. Or their movie screens. No one doubted anything.”

“So what’s wrong with that?”

Grandpa Jonathan looked down into the still innocent eyes of his thirteen-year-old grandson. He almost didn’t want to say anything to the boy, didn’t want to break his spirit or taint his thinking with the realities of adulthood, but sooner or later someone’d have to tell him, and he’d sooner have it be him as anyone else.

“Grandson, even though you should pay attention to your elders—your daddy, your mother—even your old fart of a grandfather—even though you should heed us all now, there will come a time when you’ll begin to make your own way in the world. Start thinkin your own thoughts. You’ll wonder: why should I do something this way or that. Why can’t I do it my own way. Isn’t there a better way to do things? You’ll get married, have kids—”

“Eeeww! Never! I’m never going to get married! And I’m never going to leave you, Granpa!”

Grandpa Jonathan’s face opened into a wide grin, and he laughed mightily.

“That’s a good boy, Randy, a good boy!” He patted Randy on the back. “But all this is nothin to fret over just yet. You have so many things yet to explore. There’s still so much wonder to this world, and you’re only just discovering it. Now, Randy, I tell ya this, and hear my words, Son—don’t ever let that sense of wonder leave ya. Never. Cause when it’s gone, it’s a mighty hard thing to get back, if ya ever can. There’s a lot of wonderful and strange things out there, and as bad as some things might seem to get, there’s always something better…just waitin to be discovered. Waitin for you, Randy, my boy! Life is what you make it…not what you have to put up with.

“Well, anyway, I digress—”

“What’s that mean?”

“I strayed. When you get old, that tends to happen occasionally. It ain’t nothing to worry about cause it’s just God’s way a tellin ya to take stock of your life. Make peace. Anyhow, there I go again. I was talkin about theaters—”

“Yeah!”

“Movie theaters were great, but what I really wanted to get into were Drive-ins.”

“Drive-ins? Wow. Hey, you mean like—like the one I was at?”

“Just like, though they was still workin and not nearly so nasty. At least not at first. I heard about these drive-ins and decided to get into em. They were new to me, in the business sense, even though they’d been around for some twenty years by then. There was money to be made. Besides, I just plain liked em. It’s kinda hard to tell you just why, but it was almost like they was an entire sub-culture—that’s like another way of life within the life you’re already livin.” He stopped and looked to Randy to see if what he’d said had sunk in.

“I don’t quite understand, Granpa, but that’s okay.”

Jonathan smiled, patted the boy on the head, and noticed that the sky had grown substantially darker. Twilight was indeed edging its way in, and he wanted to finish his story before it had gone completely dark.

“Drive-ins were hangouts, like Fremont park in town, especially on the weekends. Guys would take their gals with em and make out, hardly ever really watchin what was up on the

(silver)

“screens. Younger folks would come in droves and make a party of it—some getting up to some major mischief, like letting the air out of tires or tyin cars up to each other. Sure, they caused folks some trouble, but it was a fun trouble, fun times. All us grownups would outwardly sneer and chastise em, but inwardly we wished we had done that stuff; that we was as carefree as they was. It was such an innocent time….”

Jonathan’s eyes glassed over as he looked out over the town behind Randy. Abruptly he came to, and continued.

“Well, one day, back round fifty-two, I believe, we had this tremendous wind storm. No rain, mind you, maybe even a little thunder, I can’t quite remember, but I do recollect the wind. It damn near blew things halfway around to the other side of the world, we said. Blew the roofs right off half a dozen houses, it did—”

“Wow!”

“—and even toppled over some folks’s cars. The Sheriff—Clyde Toupe, I believe his name was—was out that night, even against his own better judgment, he later said, and his squad car was blown clean over and right on down the street!”

“No way! Was he in it?”

“No, he said he had gotten out to check on something, and when he got back it wasn’t there. Fightin against the gale and holdin on for dear life, he looks down the street and finds it, sittin there on its hood, all smashed up and useless. It was spinnin like a toy top!

“Well, folks round them parts said it was the work of devil—or God, dependin on how guilty they was feelin at the moment. The non-guilty, they was sayin it was God’s way a tellin us that we was getting too complacent—too used to the way things was. That we needed to take more stock in what was goin on round us and not to be so concerned with just ourselves. Others said it was the devil comin to punish us for our transgressions—our evil-doin’s.

“Well, in either case, the town set about the nasty chore of cleanin up. Sheriff Toupe—I’m pretty sure that’s what his name was—got a brand-spankin new car. Huh—I remember how the kids was havin a field day with no law bein able to run em down for a week or two before Clyde got his new vehicle. And the neighbors, they helped each other out with repairs and losses and things. It was like small-town Marion had gone through a war, or somethin.”

“What happened to your theater, Granpa?”

“Eh, I was gettin to that, little one. Well, my theater house, the one in town, wasn’t damaged much at all, cept for the marquee—the lights—but my drive-in, that was quite another story. It had rips down the screen and debris from the storm strung out all over the place. Many of the speaker posts were damaged. Speaker boxes had been ripped right from their posts. It took quite a while for repairs to be made, but repaired they were, and at great expense. But the strangest thing I found that day was this guy sitting in the middle of my lot.”

Randy stiffened.

“Just like yours, but he still had his face when I found him. He was missin somethin else. Somethin much more important. He was missin his mind.”

Grandpa Jonathan paused again. Randy looked down to the porch where Grandpa’s rocker met the floor.

“Granpa—”

“You don’t get it, do ya, Son.”

He shook his head.

“Well, neither did I. I mean, how does a man loose his mind…in a drive-in theater? Sure, we played them grade-B horror flicks back then, but nothin that bad.

“Anyways, I helped him up and took him into my office. All the time, he’s a mumblin and a droolin, and, boy, did he stink!”

Randy giggled.

“I tried to talk with him, but he just wouldn’t—or couldn’t—come round. Since I didn’t know much about those kinds of things, I gave up and called the Sheriff. I figured he’d know what to do with him. So I called him and told him that I had the mayor in my office, and that he wasn’t quite right….

 

“In the end, nothin I could do to fix the theatre could keep it goin. It took me several months to fix the tears in the screen, the damaged posts, and the projector. Everything. And then really weird stuff started happenin.”

“What kind of stuff, Granpa?”

“Well, stuff like the projector always goin out on me. Electrical fires from speaker boxes. People runnin over the posts. Fights. There was even one day when I remember the popcorn machine explodin all over the place—but by that time it was far from funny. It was like that storm had been an evil wind, blowin up from old Scratch himself. People started actin funny, too, Randy. They wasn’t themselves. Some began to blame it on my drive-in. Why me, I don’t know, but they said they didn’t come away from my movies feelin right. Feelin right?

“So I had to close down. No one was comin to my movies and I was no longer makin any money. I eventually had to sell it to a development firm and they had the old theater bulldozed within a month. I still had my other theater in town, but it wasn’t where my heart was. When that place was plowed under, a little part of me went with it.

“But that wasn’t all. There was even weirder stuff just beginning.”

Randy shifted position on the porch steps.

Jonathan took a small sip from a glass Randy hadn’t noticed was nearby. Randy noticed how Grandpa Jonathan suddenly became more serious. His gaze had again drifted off beyond him, and it took a few shakes on his sleeves before Randy got his grandfather to return to the story. Twilight had arrived.

“Well, Son, your story, you believe it, don’t you?”

Randy shook his head. “Of course, Granpa—it really happened.”

“Well, that’s what I’m afraid of. You see, so did mine. And I think there’s some sort of connection between our two experiences, though for the life of me I can’t imagine what. I guess there are some things in this world that just happens to folks, see, some things that have no rhyme or reason. No explanation. Now what I’m about to tell you from here on in, I ain’t never told anybody—”

“Not even gramma?”

Jonathan’s eyes glazed over and he shook his head heavily.

“No, Son, not even grandma knew, and as much as it hurt me to keep secrets from her, I’m glad she never knew. I been carryin this thing around inside a me for quite some time, now, not even sure I believed it. Sometimes when you keep things in they have a way of gettin warped. Growing. But I don’t think this did. I know it happened.

“It had been a few months after the old theater’d been torn down, about midsummer, I think, and I was drivin by it one

(twilight)

“evenin. I hadn’t even been payin attention when I drove past the lot, hadn’t been payin attention when I saw the old silver screen standing there before the mass a little white posts lookin like a graveyard, and I can see by the look on your scrunched up little face that you don’t understand, neither. And, again, neither did I, cause, as I said only moments ago, that there Drive-in’d been torn down, screen and all, some four to six months prior to this little drive by of mine.

“It didn’t end there. No siree. Sure, I stopped then, even backed up to the field and took another look. But don’t you know it, it was gone. Never’d been there. It was just the same old empty field waitin for some new development. There was no screen, no posts—no nothing. But it happened again, and again after that. It got so that I wouldn’t drive by on that road anymore cause on almost every twilit evening, I’d see it.

“Then one day, towards the end of summer, it had been a real scorcher, and I wasn’t thinkin straight. Nobody was. It was hotter than even old Eddie from down to the railroad could recall. Three folks from up to the old folks’ home had died by the end of that summer from heat stroke. And, old habits dyin hard, I found myself drivin by that hellish place after it had grown dark. Even my soul was sweatin.

“And there it was. Boy, was it. That bedeviled drive-in was astandin tall and proud. And it was cold. I remember that, cold as ice it were, and it chilled me right to my bones. “And this time, it was worse. Worse than worse. The damned theater was in full-on operation, Randy. Full-on—lights, movie, and people!

“I stopped my car at the entrance—the old entrance exactly where it was before the place was tore down—and parked. I was shakin like a leaf in winter, but I got out and stood there. Riveted. There was a movie playin, Randy. Cars was parked. People was watchin it, buyin popcorn. And it weren’t no horror show, or nuthin like that. Nope. It wasn’t anything close to a movie you’d expect to be playin at a place like that. No sir. The movie what was playin was Bambi, for Jesus, Joe, and Mike! Bambi.

“Well, I was scared stiff. Couldn’t move even if I wanted to. But, boy, I had to. Had to. I had to see what was goin on, even if the devil himself were in the projection room. I had to see.

“So I entered the drive-in. I walked right up to the ticket booth and there was some young girl in there I ain’t never seen before, same girl whose face I still see in my nightmares. She just waves me on through, like she’s been waiting for me. And she smiles a smile that ain’t quite right. It’s still the same smile I see in my nightmares. Somethin about her face. Her smile. It was like her face was heavily blemished, you know, with zits n stuff, but worse. There was creepy crawly things moving around inside them zits, and when she smiled, heck, I don’t know, but I swore her mouth was black, like there was nothin inside.

“So in I walk, and on played Bambi. Everywhere around me was cars, and folks doin stuff. But it weren’t right, neither. There was a feelin to everythin that was cold and empty. I looked back to my car and saw it parked there by the roadside, but it didn’t comfort me none. I felt like a prisoner, trapped behind bars, my life just outside and starin back in on me, taunting.

“But I had to know.

“I don’t know how long I stayed there, but I gradually noticed something that scared me even more. As I looked up to the screen and saw them little animated cartoon characters, I saw that even Bambi was queer. But why shouldn’t it be—nothing in that place was right so why should the movie be any different? Then it hit me and my legs ran out from under me like cooked spaghetti, and I collapsed. I looked up to the screen, I looked up and I saw that them animated characters weren’t the animated animals I was used to, no—they was people I knew from town. All of em. Their faces caricatured up there on the screen, and by the Lord in heaven, it was them, right down to the crazy mayor!”

Randy jerked back, a sudden cold blast overcoming him.

“I lost it. I couldn’t take it no longer. I screamed—I cried—I came unglued.

I fell to the ground and beat it with my fists, and when I opened my eyes, it was gone. All of it. Every stinkin piece. I was sittin in the middle of this empty field balling to myself and my car was parked not fifty feet away, engine running.

“So I tried to get away, tried to get away as far as I could from Marion and this state, but something held me prisoner. Held others, too. Made me forget my wants and desires. We was changin, it seemed, distortin. Or maybe it was just me, lookin at everyone else who was changin. A Post Office or something was later built up on that property, but it didn’t matter. You see, when twilight came and you looked close, real close, you could almost see them. The people. The screen. Everything.

“So when you come in here and told me your story, hell, I had to tell mine, Randy, cause I wonder if maybe, just maybe, this thing is the same thing that happened to you. Maybe it’s comin for me after all these years, after the ones it didn’t get the first time, if that was the first time. Maybe it’s just something that happens to old theaters after they go away. I don’t know. See, Randy, drive-ins have magic, and when someone takes away the buildings and the screens, and the speaker boxes, they can’t take away the magic. It’s something that lingers on…hangs in the air. Maybe it comes with the land…and hopefully it’s a good magic. But I think every place is different. Did you know that at one time Twin Falls had six drive-ins in town?”

“Six? Really?”

“Sure. They done been torn down and built over, like the one I told you about, but they was there. In fact one of em’s an apartment complex that you’ll be passin as you go back into town—which, I might add, you better do if you don’t want to get a whoopin! Will ya look at the time! Randy-boy, you just let your old grandfather ramble on, didn’t you!”

“It’s okay, Granpa, I don’t mind!”

“Sure, but the light is fading and you need some to make your way back. So get—tell your folks hello for me, and don’t mind the ramblins of an old coot! I’ll call your folks to let em know you’re on your way. I’m goin to get my own woopin from em for sure!”

“Oh, Granpa—”

“Now I mean it, so get—and, Randy—” Grandpa Jonathan’s face grew stern and took on a more concerned look, “be careful.”

“Okay. See ya, Granpa!”

Randy hopped up on his purple BMX, turned it around, and headed back towards town. He waved to his grandfather as he left, but the words still ran around in his head.

If you look close, real close

You can almost see them.

Then Randy remembered the face he had seen at his drive-in. The black, nothing face that stared up at him and mumbled. Empty words from an empty face. Randy suddenly wondered why he had not asked Grandpa if he could stay the night. It was Friday, there was no school tomorrow.

But he was already on his way home and Grandpa was calling his folks.

You could almost see them.

 

Randy pedaled straight home. His parents were waiting for him and immediately set to the task of scolding him for riding his bike so late—and that didn’t he know he could get killed? And what was your grandfather filling your head with this time? And don’t you respect us? Do you want to die, is that it? Now go to your room, mister, and there’ll be no supper for you tonight. But all this fell on deaf ears because Randy was too busy reliving everything his grandfather had told him. So he gladly went to his room, gladly plopped down on his bed, and gladly tucked his arms high behind his head.

Imagining.

Randy stared into the ceiling and wondered about what was real and what wasn’t, and as he fell off into a troubled sleep he swore he heard the wind pick up. Swore he could hear it flipping over cars and knocking over buildings….

The devil’s wind.

 

Saturday mornings were great after the chores got done, but instead of going over to Todd Bearing’s house afterwards (which was where he told his parents he was going to spend the night), Randy decided on other plans. He didn’t feel right. His experience from the other day, as well as all that stuff his grandpa had told him, sat in his gut like a belly full of bad junk food.

And there had been high winds last night.

It hadn’t damaged things as much as in Grandpa Jonathan’s story, but it had made a bit of a mess. Randy wanted to go back to that drive-in, to the one he knew…but was scared. What if that guy was still there—or another to replace him, even more worse than the first?

What if he went…and never came back?

He knew what he had to do.

He had to go back. Had to see.

Had to.

Even if the devil himself was in the projection room.

 

It was about an hour away from sunset, according to the Weather Channel, as he pedaled up the small (boy-it-didn’t-feel-like-it) hill to where the abandoned drive-in lies. He passed the sign that said it was to be replaced by an office complex of some kind. An office complex. What a bummer. Granpa said there used to be six of these things in town, and now there was only one. One drive-in. That sucked. He hoped there’d be plenty when he grew up so he could enjoy them. That-subculture-thing.

Armed with comic books and Jolt cola (it gave him lots of energy, he found), he braked his bike to a stop. There it was, just as he had left it. With one exception.

Nobody was sitting in the middle of it.

Randy walked his bike through the rows of upright posts, up towards the rear of the lot, and thought it did remind him more of a graveyard than a drive-in. He looked back over it. White posts, everywhere. Like gravestones. And that silver screen. Empty. Like one huge gravestone.

Grandpa and his stories.

He tried to imagine what this place was like during its heyday—cars packed in, music piped over the speakers, folks camped out in the back of their cars and trucks with pillows and blankets. Older kids necking. He had seen some of this from the one remaining drive-in in town, but not here. There was none of that here now.

Hello, Randy.

He thought back to the bum. The faceless one.

Chicken skin.

If you look close, Randy, really close….

Shuddering, Randy turned away from the posts and took off his pack. He pulled out his comic books, can of Jolt, and settled down to the ground.

And waited.

For what, he didn’t really know. He just knew something was going to happen and he needed to see it. Maybe it was a movie. Maybe it was—

Randy’s heart froze. At the opposite end of the theater grounds where he had entered the lot, he saw movement. He dropped his comic book and nearly spilled over his Jolt.

“Oh, no….”

But it wasn’t that man. That evil, non-faced thing that had mumbled out of a non-existent mouth…no, this was somebody different. Somebody with a face.

Quietly, Randy watched as the faced intruder came into the center of the lot and sat down—almost at the exact spot where Randy had last seen the other.

This new guy either hadn’t seen him—or didn’t care—because he never looked away from the screen. The torn and ripped

(silver)

screen.

Then another came.

And another.

All with faces, all to stare at the huge gravestone before them.

Randy got up and backed away from the sudden rush of people, but only ended up running into two others that came in from behind. It was like the Night of The Living Dead, for crying out loud. Unperturbed, they all continued on down towards the center of the lot. Randy continued backing up and finally hit against the rickety theater wall behind him. He stood with his mouth open and stared. There must’ve been a hundred of them.

“No way. This is can’t be. I’m seeing things.”

Randy looked to the can of Jolt he held, then tossed it away.

The sun had now set and began to cast its blood red rays over the land. Rays that painted the screen, the rips and tears standing out even more, like poorly healed scar tissue. Red that flowed over the people and the white posts. All attention was focused on the

(silver)

now red

screen.

The pilgrimage had stopped, but not the red.

It was no longer merely a redness of twilight that simply colored things, but an integral part of the objects it touched.

The post.

The screen.

The bodies.

The very air.

Everything was aglow with vermilion. And it took on a life of its own. Randy could see the pulsation. It was in everything.

And still the masses waited….

 

Randy knew by now that twilight must surely have ended, but in the deserted lot of the Peak View Drive-In, it had not. It had become its own little world. Twilight remained. Blood remained.

Had to see.

Randy pushed away from the backboard and went forward.

If you look close, real close, Randy-boy, you can see—

Randy went into the crowd. Each individual’s attention was anchored to the movie screen before them, their faces blank. Many mumbled, and a humming sound seemed to resonate just above them. As he looked around, Randy noticed something else. These people weren’t bums or vagrants, at least not all of them. Many were dressed in fine clothes with shaven or made-up faces. Some looked like they had just come from previous engagements. Randy reached out.

“Ma’am, are you

(faceless)

“all right?” He touched the woman. She gave a little under his touch, but remained faced forward. Blank. Red pulsated through her, and her skin seemed swollen.

A sound came over the speakers and Randy jumped.

It was everywhere, echoing in deep cisternal notes that sounded more like the noise blood might make if its movement was amplified. Randy tested several others and got the same responses.

Nothing.

Just the sound of the pumping of blood.

Randy looked back to his

(car)

bike and found it gave him no comfort.

“I feel…I feel like I’m…repeating…something here….”

Then his eyes landed on something so familiar that his insides went loose.

Grandfather Jonathan.

“NO!”

Randy sprinted across the crowd to Jonathan when the silver-red screen erupted into a blinding fury, knocking him off his feet. He careened into several posts. They were cold. Burning cold. From deep within the ground came rumbling. Randy lifted his head and looked to the screen. It was a liquid red, and pulsed in time with everything else. Vibrant colors danced across its canvas, like the 60’s backdrops he’d seen on MTV.

Randy looked back to his grandfather and saw he was still there. It was no illusion, no case of mistaken identity. Randy picked himself up and again lurched forward, knocking past others who merely righted themselves and returned their attention back to the screen. The rumbling in the ground made Randy sick, vibrated parts of him he didn’t realize he’d had.

“Granpa! Granpa!” he screamed, and reached out. He shook his grandfather’s shoulders, but found the same reaction he’d gotten from everybody else.

“Granpa—speak to me! Come out of it, damn it!” Randy came around to the front of him and blocked Jonathan’s view of the screen. Randy found he had to step wide to keep his balance from the upheaving ground and saw how slowly Grandpa focused on him. Jonathan turned away from the screen only enough to look up into Randy’s face.

“Granpa—speak to me!” Again Randy grabbed his grandfather’s shoulders and shook.

“They’ve found me, Son,” Jonathan said slowly, dreamily.

“Who found you?”

Jonathan spoke slowly, returning his forward focus. “Don’t know what…they’re called. No one does. They fill…a void.”

“Granpa—I don’t understand—what do you mean?”

The vibration grew and Randy found it nearly impossible to remain upright. He fell to his knees. Jonathan was now able to focus back onto the screen.

“They come…at intervals…but not of time….”

Randy saw reflections from the screen behind him change and turned to look at it.

The screen had changed.

It had somehow become more, and it hurt him to look at it. He felt his eyes trying to pop free from their sockets, felt his brain expand, almost explode. The screen took on a three-dimensional depth. More dimensional. There was something within it.

Something that was coming out.

“Granpa!”

“…it is a cycle…of emotion. Not time. Comes not…for everybody. But for those…ready…to accept it.”

Randy looked around and saw that the people remained seated, but they took on a different look. Back at the screen, there were swirling colors…a kaleidoscope of images…some of which Randy found hard to focus on or make out. He turned back to Jonathan.

“Granpa, I don’t want to lose you,” he shouted, “I love you!”

Grandpa turned back to him.

“Is…too late, Son.” And turned back to the screen. “It…transfers…to others. Continues its journey…through others. Fills…the void…that exists within….”

Grandpa Jonathan had faded out. His face appeared different, like those around him. At first Randy thought it was just the light, but it was more.

Then something clicked inside Randy’s head: transferred? He was the one being transferred to?

The screen went dead. The pulsating had now become more of a subtle undercurrent.

COME, RANDY

Randy spun around, almost pulling a neck muscle. It was a voice—he’d heard it—a deep, resonating voice that came from behind him.

From the screen.

“Who’s there?”

No response.

“Who’s there—why are you doing this?”

The screen remained dead.

Then it went white, like before a movie is brought up onto its surface. Randy watched. Watched as the people around him reacted to the blank screen. Watched as some cried and some laughed, while others had still other reactions.

Randy looked to the person sitting next to his grandfather and saw a wide-eyed look that scared him. The person’s eyes were screaming from their sockets, but no scream came from her mouth. As Randy looked closer, he saw a thin red line trickle out from her eyes and mix with her tears. Randy turned away.

Another laughed hysterically, like a crazily stuck record.

Another had a more passionate, heady expression.

Then he turned back to his grandfather.

Whose face was fading.

Randy came closer, and again grabbed Jonathan’s shoulders. His face quickly began to fade from view. Taking another glance behind him, Randy saw that the screen was no longer white, but black.

Full of stars.

Cold, empty, traveling stars.

Randy shivered. Turned back to his grandfather. Grandpa Jonathan’s face now had that same blackness.

And the stars.

The entire lot was in darkness.

“Granpa! Don’t go!”

Jonathan’s face swirled…folded in and out of itself.

Flipped, spiraled, and split.

Randy felt his eyes again pull out from their sockets, his brain again having difficulty focusing or even understanding. He felt groggy. Found he had to brace himself away from his grandfather for fear of falling into him.

“Granpa, no—don’t go—I don’t want you to die!”

We all have to die sometime, Randy, it’s a fact of life. This is how I choose to go

Randy backed away. “Why are you doing this? Why did you drag me into it?”

Because you are a part of me, a part of us all

We need to continue

To be remembered

To die

It is this emotion which is needed to

continue

This bond

“You’re not my grandfather, are you!”

NO

Randy watched as his grandfather’s face further dissolved and finally melted away. Inward. Outward. Around itself. Watched as his face became like the man’s face he had seen that morning a thousand-million years ago. Watched as the face he had kissed and so loved over his thirteen years slowly and quietly disappeared.

Black and starry.

Gone.

If you look real close….

Randy felt his grandfather disappear. Watched as he hunched forward like the faceless one he had encountered. Watched as he felt the presence that was once Jonathan Thornton quietly expel like a gentle, worn, sigh….

Randy didn’t bother to lift his head. He knew what he’d find.

 

Randy felt unexpectedly emotionless as he backed away from the shell of his grandfather and returned to his bike. He looked to the others, but saw there weren’t as many of them as there had been before. He watched as some disappeared before his eyes, one by one, like stars snuffed out by a rising sun, while others, like candles in the wind were simply just not there anymore. He looked back to his grandfather just as he, too, was snuffed away.

 

Randy picked up his bike and brought it around. The lot was almost empty now. The sun was rising, and he was exhausted. He went towards the outer edge of the lot, but didn’t want to go anywhere near the center of that sea of posts. Instead he faced east, where morning blood colored the horizon.

This he welcomed.

And as he turned around, Randy felt a something trying to edge its way into his head, and he groped for it. Like a warm wave, it engulfed him.

IT IS THE PRICE TO BE PAID FOR YOUR SENSE OF WONDER

Sense of wonder.

He wasn’t sure he understood it all, but Randy felt sure he understood one thing. One day, far into his own adult future, he, too, would have to pay that price.

And as he looked back to the lot on his way out, he suddenly felt exhilarated. There was one individual still sitting in the middle of the lot. One still seated in that familiar, hunched over and silent position.

Randy smiled.

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

A Conversation With Hell

by

Don't Answer It. (Image by Holger.Ellgaard [CC BY-SA 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0], via Wikimedia Commons).
Don’t Answer It. (Image by Holger.Ellgaard [CC BY-SA 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0%5D, via Wikimedia Commons).
This story appears to be the first (or among the first) story I’d written as an adult and began recording, as I got full time into writing as a business. As an ongoing intent. From my earliest records, it appears I’d written this in May or June of 1987. I was 26 years old. It is my first writing entry into my writing log, which I’ve kept ever since. On May 6, 1987, I sent a letter to the Library of Congress for copyright forms. On June 1, 1987, I’d sent this story out to Writer’s Gazette, TheMind’s Eye, 2AM Magazine, Pleiades Magazine, and SCIFANT (I don’t know if this is the “SCIFANT” from all those years ago, but there’s the link).

My very first entry into my writing log, however, is the following:

Contacted Dr. Clifford Bennett about publishing “Hope,” “Conversation,” “Love”. He died May 4, 1987 (82 years old).

You can see there were other stories I was working on.

Dr. Bennett was in the publishing/writing world, and I no longer remember how I discovered him (maybe it was a referral from some critique group I was in at the time). For some reason, I also remember Dr. Bennett performing hypnosis, and we’d worked a couple times with some hypnosis sessions. Anyway, I’d met with him a couple times, then I remember he was “hard to get hold of,” and soon afterward I’d learned that he’d died. His obituary is posted after this story. Dr. Bennett was my first contact with “the publishing industry” and the first “professional” to help me with my writing. I wish I remembered more about him.

Anyway, this story harkens back to my straight horror writing days. It’s not one of my best, but it’s short and sweet. It needed some clean-up.

Inspiration? Aside from today’s telemarketers, we’ve all gotten wrong numbers. In today’s world there’s the “butt dialing” phenomenon. But back when I wrote this, in 1987, we just had plain old wrong numbers.

This story had been published in SCIFANT #8, May 5, 1988.

 

A Conversation With Hell

© F. P. Dorchak, 1987

Ring!

Ring!

“Hello? Hello!”

It was the same thing. The same thing for the past month. Will Garret had made a brief jaunt back to his house to pick up some papers he had forgotten. No sooner had he stepped into the hallway, when the phone rang.

A crackling sound over the phone with no answer.

Who was it? Was there a problem with the phone?

He’d already had it checked.

A bad line?

Nope, had that checked too.

A prankster?

Definite possibility.

Whatever it was, it had gotten annoying a long time ago. These calls came at all hours of the day, none of them consistent in time. Some would come at two in the afternoon, while others would come at three in the morning.

He hung up; no use prolonging the agony.

Will stepped back from the phone and watched it. Then to his surprise (and then again, maybe not), it rang again. He let it ring a few more times, he couldn’t not answer it.

He just had to know who wa—

“Hello?”

“Hello,” came the smooth as silk reply. It was a masculine voice.

“Who is this?” Will asked, more than a little irritated.

“Uh…Fred Tarpenton…of Tarpenton Buick,” came the reply.

“Oh—I’m sorry. I’m a little on edge…I’ve been getting these crank calls, and—”

“Not to worry, apology accepted.”

A promotional call from a car dealer. Not interested, but figured he might as well listen for a while, considering the way he’d answered the phone.

After hanging up the phone, he went back to work. A corporate executive is a busy guy.

At his office, Will slaved over extensive paperwork on the merging of a new client. His huge oak desk was filled with reams of paper, a coffee cup was buried underneath the piles, somewhere. His phone rang and he absentmindedly fumbled for it.

“Yes,” he said, his reply neutral, distracted.

Over the receiver came that familiar crackling sound.

He shot up from his desk, hurtling the phone across his office. He moved behind his chair and gripped it in tightly.

It had been bad enough that he had been getting these calls for the past three and a half weeks…but they’d been confined to his home. This is the first time he had ever gotten one at work.

“Miriam!”

He was already on his way into reception, where his administrator worked. “Miriam, did you just forward me a call?”

“No, Mr. Garret, why?”

Will forced himself to calm down, no use letting his charges think he’s losing his grip on reality.

“Oh, nothing…nothing.” He turned and returned to his office. He told Miriam to hold all calls.

Back in his office he sat back down. This was getting out of hand. He looked to the mess over by the wall. Guess hadn’t really needed to have Miriam hold his calls. Have to get a new phone now.

It was nearing nine o’clock as he entered his driveway. It had been a tough but profitable day. He exited his car and entered the house. He’d just opened the front door, when the phone rang. Will slowly closed the door behind him and cautiously approached the ringing instrument.

It continued to ring as he put his briefcase down. Reached for the receiver.

“Hello?”

Crackle.

“Who is this?”

Crackle.

“What do you want from me? Money? I’ll give you anything you want, just—”

Crackle.

Crackle.

“Fuck.” Will slammed the receiver down and reached for the wall jack, unplugged the phone and the other two he owned. If nothing else, he was determined to get some sleep tonight.

The next day was bright and sunny and Garret awoke in an excellent mood. There had been no phone calls to wake him. He ate a well prepared breakfast, read the paper and began to leave for work.

He felt as though he could take on the world!

Standing in the doorway, he thought it better to reconnect at least one phone, and backtracked in, reconnecting the living room extension. As soon as the contacts connected, the instrument rang.

“Answer this, buddy!” he said, and flipped off the phone.

The phone continued ringing.

It was a busy day, as usual. Business calls, meetings, paperwork and more paperwork. It was 4:05 p.m. and he thought it best to leave a little early today. He began clearing off his desk—

Ring!

Ring! Ring!

“Oh come on, Miriam, where the hell are you?”

After several rings, he grabbed the phone.

“Yes?”

Crackle.

FOOOOOOOSH!

A bright yellow-orange bolt of flame shot out of the receiver, searing straight through Garret’s skull. Not stopping there the flame wrapped itself several times around his head, burning flesh dripping like wax from his charring skull.

Will did get a chance to utter a shriek, but that was about all.

He dropped the receiver as he tried to stand up, his hands going up to his incinerated head. Tiny flames sputtered around what had been his nose and left ear.

Miriam burst in just in time to see him sink back down into the plush executive’s chair. The dying flames and smoke continued to issue from the blackened remains of what had been his head. The carnage was total.

Miriam stood, frozen, at the entrance unable to move.

Garret’s body from the neck down was untouched. It twitched a few times then lay still, arms hanging to their sides, his head cocked to one side and smoldering. A few feet from Will’s body on the floor lay the still flaming receiver. Several defiant flames still licked at the handset. Had Miriam her sanity, she would have heard the faint echoes of a demonic chuckle.

Out in reception, a phone rang….

 

Dr. Clifford Bennett Obituary, 1987
Dr. Clifford Bennett Obituary, 1987

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

The Chain Letter

by

Pass it Foreword! It Work! (Image by F. P. Dorchak, © 2015)
Pass it Foreword! It Work! (Image by F. P. Dorchak, © 2015)

Back before e-mail and the Internet, there were these things called “chain letters.” Actual letters that randomly circulated to the “unlucky” for immediate global dissemination and unheralded good luck upon the recipient. I received the exact chain letter in this story, and—except for the rest of this story—did exactly what Tyler Stevens did in the beginning of the story: dissected it for shits-and-grins. I had time on my hands back then.

Had these things started out as gags or bullying tactics?

Who knows.

I don’t believe in them. Chucked it or shredded it all those many years ago.

But then again…I am still waiting for my publishing career to take off….

I’m also changing up my short story links to my Short Story page. It’s much easier to manage all the links than putting them all down at the bottom of each post, which I have to constantly update and approve—individually—each time I post a story.

This story has never been published. Or copied. Or propagated. Or….

 

The Chain Letter

© F. P. Dorchak, 1994

 

“This paper has been sent to you for good luck. The original copy is in New England: It has been around the world nine times. The luck has now been sent to you, providing you act on it. You will receive good luck within four days of recieving this letter provided you sent it back out. THIS IS NO JOKE. You will receive it in the mail.

“Send copies to people you know. Don’t send money, as Fatehas no price. Do not keep this letter. It must leave your hands within 96 hours. An R.A.F. officer received $70,000.00. Jim Teller recieved $40,000.00 and lost it because he broke the chain. While in the Phillipines, George Weh lost his wife six days after recieving the letter. He failed to circulate the letter, however, before her death she won $50,000.00 in a lottery. The money was transferred to him four days after he decided to mail out this letter.

“Send 20 copies of htis letter and see what happens in four days. The chain comes from Venezuela and was written by Samir de Tressoint, a missionary from South America. Since the copy must have a tour of hte world, you must maske 20 copies and send them out or suffer possibly dire consequences. This is true, even if you are not superstitious.

“Beware: Cervantes Diego received the chain in 1943. He asked his secretary to make 20 copies and send them out. A few days later he won a lottery of two million dollars. Arian Dardamaix, an office employee, received the letter and forgot it had to leave his hands within 96 hours. He lost his job. Later, after finding the letter again, he mailed out 20 copies. A few days later he got a better job. Darian Fairfax received the letter and not believing threw it away. Nine days later he died. Be fair warned!

“Don’t ignore this!

“IT WORK!”

 

“What the hell is this?” Tyler Stevens asked himself, turning over the letter. The quality of the lettering was poor, no doubt because of repeated copying, and there were stains on its tri-folded and crinkled paper.

“Shit, this guy can’t even spell ‘receive.’ And what’s with this have-good-luck-or-die business?”

Tyler had just returned home from a game of tennis with his girlfriend, Dyanne Foster, and he was tired, sweaty, and hungry. He was in no mood for stupid human tricks. On his way to the hot, comforting, spray of a shower, he cast aside the letter.

The chain letter quietly smoldered under the table.

 

Tyler sat in front of his television, spaced out to some documentary that droned on about middle America and the construction industry. Getting up, he went over to where he last remembered tossing the letter, found it, and picked it up. It seemed somewhat more wrinkled than he recalled.

Fucking chain letters.

He wondered how much time he had before death or dismemberment.

Four days. 96 hours.

He took the letter back with him to the couch and Reread it. Several things immediately stood out.

First, beyond the obvious imperfections in English and punctuation (and he was no expert), why would somebody who claimed to be a missionary send out a threatening letter? Good luck!—but disregard this and you die! Just what kind of missionary would this person be? And wouldn’t de Tressoint himself (or whoever possessed the original letter) himself die? The letter did say not to retain it, so who could be in possession of an original?

And next, how does this person know that the letter made one let alone nine trips around the world? If its sole purpose was to make that trip—which it had apparently already had—then why was it necessary to continue?

And just what did the original look like? Assuming that the letter actually brought about money and employment, it had to exist prior to the deeds themselves. So, this being the case, the incidents cited had to be added after the fact—which meant that the letter had to have been tampered with.

Provided, of course, all of this was for real. Which it wasn’t.

So who did the tampering?

And who the hell were Jim Elliot, George Weh, Arian Dardamaix, and Darren Fairfax, anyway? Made-up names, no doubt. And how do we know that their specific “luck” was directly attributable to this particular piece of paper and not something else? How do we also know that some prim and proper English Royal Air Force Officer would even remotely admit to such a humiliating act as this? Officers, let alone British officers were bastions of strength and logic—not prone to silly superstitions and patronizing threats.

Tyler set the letter aside and went into the kitchen. He grabbed a wine cooler from the refrigerator, returned to the couch, and continued to pick apart the letter.

It was really no big deal that a husband inherited money from a deceased wife. Sure, it was a bummer his wife kicked after winning all that money, but wasn’t something like that a legal given? And how do we know that the woman who kicked wasn’t already well on her way to begin with?

Same with the others who’d died.

And the man who asked his secretary to make copies for him—how many businessmen (like those British officers) do you know who’d admit to being superstitious even if they were? Citing names didn’t lend any more credibility to a piece of fraud then the paper it was written on.

But back to the “original.”

What might it look like?

Tyler fumbled through a coffee-table drawer and came up with a number-three pencil. He hated being threatened, which was exactly what this letter was doing. He began lining out everything that couldn’t possibly have been in an original, and corrected any misspellings. The end result turned out something like this:

 

“This paper has been sent to you for good luck! The original copy is in New England. The luck has now been sent to you, providing you act on it. You will receive good luck within four days of receiving this letter provided you send it back out. THIS IS NO JOKE. You will receive it in the mail.

“Send copies to people you know. Don’t send money, as Fate has no price. Do not keep this letter. It must leave your hands within 96 hours.

“Send out 20 copies of this letter and see what happens in four days. The chain comes from Venezuela. Since the copy must have a tour of the world, you must make 20 copies and send them out. This is true, even if you are not superstitious. Be fair warned!

“Don’t ignore this!

“IT WORKS!“

 

Aside from the suffering “…possibly dire consequences,” and “Be fair warned,” which didn’t fit the overall tone of the letter, there was no mention of death or destruction—just that it had to leave the hands of the recipient and make a tour of the world if good luck was to be had.

Now that sounded more like something a missionary might send.

Next question: who would add to the letter (okay, so this one wasn’t all that difficult—any Tom, Dick, or Harriet who felt so inclined over the years)? But who could possibly even know what had happened to these people, and (more importantly) what had happened as a direct result of this letter?

Not possible. It was all fiction.

Tyler looked for the envelope, a torn and crumpled ball in the brown Albertson’s shopping bag he used as a trash receptacle. Who would have sent this to him? Of course there was no return address…and his address (which was a qualified correct with its missing apartment number and typoed street address) wasn’t even centered on the envelope. Instead, it sat skewed high and to the envelope’s left of center. His last name was typed first. The zip code was correct only after a wrong digit had been over-typed. This couldn’t have been anyone who knew him. On a hunch he went to the phone book. Sure enough, the address used was the one listed in the white pages, which had no mention of his apartment number, or zip code.

Clearly a class act.

There was just no way that certain things could possibly have been known in this letter. It was either that the letter—the original—was real and subsequently altered, thereby making the one he had no longer valid, or that it was written up as-is and sent out—definitely a hoax. Or—

There were other means involved.

Supernatural means.

“Bullshit.”

Tyler again trashed it.

 

The remainder of the week continued uneventfully and Tyler all but forgot about his chain letter—except for the rare moment or two when he found himself inexplicably making twenty copies of a magazine article…or the phone bill. Or buying that box of Mead 100 (twenty-times-five), white, 4 1/8 by 9 1/2-inch envelopes.

After finishing a later than usual work-out session at the gym, Tyler came home and showered. Afterward he soon fell into a deep sleep and slept soundly until three in the morning, when an uneasiness invaded his dreams. It was as if he dreamed of nothing but blackness…a deep, evil blackness that never ended. He tossed about in bed, unable to awaken…unable to break the dream’s hold.

The dream-darkness expanded within him like icicles of terror were actually invading his body. He dreamed of a beautiful woman who came to him from afar…a woman who seductively pressed herself against him…taunted and seduced him. They entwined…consummated. The scent of their lovemaking cloying, rich. The woman lay beside him, face down. He couldn’t look to her without becoming again instantly, painfully aroused. Slowly, he reached out to her. She rolled over to his touch…

“Come fuck me again,” she hissed.

The woman’s once-beautiful face was now misshapen and hideous. Punctuated with open sores and something running just beneath the surface of her odious, discolored skin. Her eyes were black and pupil-less and ran freely with a discolored puss. She cackled at Tyler, and he vomited. A wicked tongue shot out of the hag’s black, distorted mouth-that-looked-more-like-a-gash and licked up the vomit. Tyler tried to run…to break the hag’s dominance, but the hag’s tongue split apart and wrapped around his face, his torso, and down around his

 

Tyler shot up in bed and screamed, frantically running his hands all over his body.

A river of sweat ran off him.

He fell over in bed—then uttered another shriek as he fell onto the side of the bed where the hag was and whipped his body over to the other side of the bed.

His screams slowly died in his throat as he buried his face into the bedsheets and clawed them from their tucks and folds….

Opening his eyes he stared into the red glow of his alarm clock.

Three-ten, no, -eleven.

Stop. Regroup.

Closed his eyes, still clawing at the bedsheets

The room smelled differently….

A nightmare.

Sweating, he slowed his breathing to a more normal rate and rolled back over. Cast a quick look to where the hag had ben—in his dream.

Empty. That side of the bed was empty…no vomit, no pus, no….

He reached down to himself. He uttered a sound of disgust. Wet dream, alright.

His stomach revolted.

He rolled over onto his side…and came face to face with the puss-leaking, diseased face from his nightmare. She lay in bed beside him, tongue flicking in and out of her knotted gash-of-a-mouth.

“Come fuck with me,” she croaked.

Her noxious and grating words blasted through Tyler like a pair of cranked, thousand-watt speakers.

Tyler squealed like a stuck pig and exploded out of bed, blankets and sheets still wrapped around him. He tripped over himself and the attached sheets and smashed over one of his dressers’ lamps as he vacated the room in one gigantic bound. In the darkness he ran into a wall and

come fuck with me I love a good fuck

laid himself out—

come fuck with me I love a good fuck

—but just as he was blacking out, Tyler saw the hag descend upon and straddle his….

come fuck with me I love a good fuck….

 

Tyler awoke groggily and leaned up against the bedroom doorjamb. Felt the painful bump and dried blood on his forehead. The bathroom lights were still on, but were now paled against the early morning sunlight. His mouth felt like an empty tree trunk with moss growing inside it and his neck was as stiff as a two-by-four. He slowly picked himself up and twisted the kinks out of his body. Looked to the blankets tangled in his legs.

How had he gotten here?

Tyler looked back to his bedroom. One of his lamps missing.

He shuffled out from the tangled sheets and returned to the bedroom. Found the lamp scattered about the carpet like a murder victim, its bulb smashed and lampshade torn.

His bed was deserted.

All his sheets were in a pile that lead into the hallway, where he had awoken. He threw himself down on the bed.

What the hell’d happened?

Clammy and shaking, Tyler didn’t feel at all well. Pushing himself up off the bed, his hand narrowly missed a dried, discolored stain on the sheets.

And there was just a hint of pungency to the air….

Nothing a good shower couldn’t fix.

 

After buying new, 60-watt light bulbs and a lampshade, Tyler hurriedly rushed home to clean up and meet Dyanne for their one p.m. tennis date. Showers were great, but when the hot water ran out it was time to get moving. It wasn’t that Tyler had a shower fetish, but there did seem to be nothing a warm shower couldn’t remedy and that’s what he loved about them.

Changing quickly, he made it out to the courts. Dyanne stood by the fence, waiting impatiently.

“What took you so long?” she asked, her words laced more than a little with annoyed attitude. Her racket swung casually from her two-fingered, I’m-not-at-all-happy-with-you-right-now grip. “These courts are severely booked—”

“I’m sorry, honey, but I had a rough night—”

“Oh?” she said, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow.

Oh, that accusatory eyebrow.

“No-no-no, that’s not what I meant—I mean, I did have a rough night—but not from—look, I had a nightmare and ended up sleeping on the hallway floor, okay? Had to replace a broken lamp.”

Dyanne’s I’m-pissed look took on a softer look. “Excuse me?”

“The funny thing is, I can’t remember a damned thing about it, just that it scared the crap out of me.”

Embarrassed, Dyanne lowered her voice and uncrossed her arms.

“I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I just had to pick up some new light bulbs and a new shade. I broke a lamp.”

“God, what happened? Can’t you remember any of it?” She moved in closer, brushing away some of Tyler’s bangs.

“Nope. Just that something literally scared the piss out of me. But, it was just a dream—now, let’s play some tennis!”

 

Dyanne and Tyler were deep into their second match, the score 30-40. Dyanne served the ball. Fault. Her next serve made it, but drew Tyler to the far end of the court. He barely snagged the shot before his own return forced Dyanne up to the net. Her return forced Tyler back to the rear and caused him to miss. Deuce.

Dyanne retrieved the ball and again served, spiking this one just inside the white rectangle. It whizzed past Tyler, who missed the most perfect serve he’d ever see.

“Ha, lover, my game! Oww….”

Dyanne was so cute in her pink shorts as she pirouetted about the court.

“Nother game, hon-ey?”

“Sure, but this time I win!”

Tyler set up and served. Dyanne picked it up easily enough and her return sent Tyler scurrying back across court. She was giving him a good workout, but his quick backhand sliced it to a sharp left. Dyanne rushed to meet it…and missed it by a hair.

The next scene suddenly slowed down.

Like a person unsure of what it was he was witnessing, Tyler watched as Dyanne performed a neatly executed forward spin from the momentum of her missed swing…her racket slowing left her hands and flew into the chain-link fence. She spun around for a second turn, moving backwards and towards the chain-link fence that enclosed the courts…her hands going up before her face.

She smiled just as she clenched the galvanized, crisscrossed wires of the fence.

Something’s wrong here, Tyler sensed, terrible wrong….

He couldn’t have known that a section of the fence’s wire had raised itself into tiny little barbs just where Dyanne’s hands were now planting themselves…but that’s exactly what happened.

As Dyanne made contact, she screamed…

And life returned to normal play.

Tyler sprinted across the court to Dyanne, who was now cupping her hands into her chest. Tyler leapt over the net and quickly came to her, her a tight grimace of pain.

“What’s the matter—what’s the matter—are you all right? Dyanne?”

Tyler crouched down on the court. She was in a heap, leaning back against the fence. “Dyanne—let me see!”

Tyler pulled her hands away from her chest and saw the blood that remained on her shirt and exposed skin of her upper chest. Lots of it.

Taking her bloody hand into his, Tyler felt his stomach

(come fuck with me I love a good fuck)

knot.

Her hand was torn to pieces.

Most of the flesh on the underside of her palm and fingers had been brutally torn away.

“Oh my…God. We’ve got to get you to a doctor!”

The other players on the court had now all stopped their games and looked on. Some turned away in disgust.

“Someone, please,” Tyler pleaded, “call an ambulance—please!” One man broke free from his daze and ran off in search of the payphone.

Tyler looked up to the fence where Dyanne’s hand had landed only seconds before and found it stood as nonchalant as ever—and there were indeed raised barbs on it. There were also droplets of blood…and what looked exactly like bits of Dyanne’s skin clinging to those barbs.

Come fuck with me—I love a good fuck….

 

Tyler took Dyanne home to her apartment and stayed with her. She looked so vulnerable…so helpless…and reminded him of a puppy, named Sheena, he’d once had as a kid. Sheena had been running loose one day, as did most dogs out in the country, when she finally met the front-end bumper of a ’67 Ford truck. She’d managed to limp off to the roadside, but could go no further and collapsed in the tall grasses, her left rear leg broken. The driver, a farmer from down the road, felt terrible and took her to the local vet, footing her bill. Sheena was back on her feet in no time, her rear leg bandaged in white and her tail wagging, but whenever it rained the family had to wrap her leg in plastic bags until she healed. Needless to say, she never ran free again.

So there rested Dyanne, her right hand bandaged white and lying on her chest, which rose and fell to her (finally) relaxed breathing. They had watched television all night and it was quite clear that Dyanne had plans that evening that totally involved a quiet night’s rest. As she fell asleep on her couch, Tyler picked her up and carried her into her bedroom. He gently lay her down in bed, took off her bathrobe, and eased her beneath the crisp bedsheets. Once she was properly situated, Tyler also disrobed and slid in beside her. He loved the feel of her warm skin against his and wrapped his arms around her. He fell asleep thinking about how much he loved her and hoped she’d be okay.

 

The alarm clock had gone off several minutes before either had noticed it, but Dyanne was the first to stir. She slammed it off with her bandaged hand and winced from the impact. She turned to Tyler, who still lay with his arms around her. Very mindful of her injury, Dyanne repositioned herself and kissed Tyler on the forehead.

“Time to get up, sleepyhead.”

Tyler stirred, eyes still closed. Dyanne gave him another kiss, then nudged him slightly.

“C’mon, honey, time to get up. I’ve got to get to work.”

This time Tyler responded with a soft smile.

“Hi.”

“Hello, morning breath.” She smiled back. “What do you want to eat?”

Tyler said nothing, but instead rolled in closer to her.

“Fine, be that way, I’m taking a shower.”

Dyanne climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom, starting the shower.

“Don’t let that bandage get wet,” Tyler shouted from the other room. “Wrap it in a

(Sheena)

bag or something—”

“Don’t worry, I heard the doctor too!” Dyanne said. Poking her head back into the bedroom, she added, “But thanks for caring.”

“Any…time.”

Dyanne felt silly doing it, but she got out a used Oroweat bread bag from the kitchen and wrapped it around her bandage. Using a large rubber band saved from many paper deliveries she secured it and returned to the shower. She tested the water before entering by inserting her good hand. By this time Tyler was ready for movement and slowly crawled out of bed. He took in the sounds of running water and Dyanne’s periodic splashing sounds from the shower.

Smiled. Got out of bed.

“May I join you?” Tyler asked, entering the shower stall.

“Anytime, stranger.”

“May I soap that gorgeous body of yours?”

“It depends on what else you have in mind.”

“Watch the hand—”

“Riiight,” she said, and came in closer.

 

Come fuck with me, I love a good fuck.

 

As the next few days progressed, Tyler found himself accumulating scars and bruises of all kinds…just little ones here and there, and in themselves they wouldn’t have been any big deal—except that Tyler collected them for no apparent reason. He’d wake up with a new one (or two) each morning. Dyanne, of course, also detected them and Tyler explained them away as one of those periods in life when you seemed to be the world’s klutziest person and there was nothing you could do about it.

But everywhere he turned things went wrong.

Checks bounced…a twenty-hour bug found a home…and yesterday he scraped the side of a car as he parallel parked—and he prided himself on how good a parallel-parker he was.

Tyler and Dyanne went for a walk after a late lunch at la Petite Conchon. Early evening rapidly approached and traffic was a bit on the heavy side as people headed home for an early weekend.

“Thanks for lunch, hon,” Tyler said.

“It was the least I could do after all you seemed to be going through this week. I wanted to do something special. Maybe it’ll break the

(twenty copies)

(raised barbs)

“spell, or whatever.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see. Let’s cross here,” Tyler said, checking traffic. “I’ve got to get going. There’s something I need to do.”

“Okay,” Dyanne said, smiling, “but first, this—” She pulled Tyler into her arms and planted him with a deep, lengthy kiss. “I love you!”

Tyler held her with a penetrating look.

“And I love you—more than anything else in the world—now, come on!”

Grabbing her good hand, Tyler led her out into the street, a section of the traffic now clear, but as Dyanne followed, her pocketbook bumped against her side and out fell her checkbook. Halfway across the road.

“Wait!”

“Wait what? We’re in the middle of traffic!” Tyler came to a halt three-quarters of the way across the street.

“I dropped something!” Dyanne broke his grip and went back for her checkbook.

Tyler searched the road for what Dyanne had dropped.

Everything slowed down….and came the whispers…

…come fuck with me, I love a good fuck…

…come fuck with me, I love a good fuck…

…comefuckwithmeIloveagoodfuckcomefuckwithmecomefuck—

Tyler turned to see a large, black car moving towards them. He opened his mouth to scream—but nothing came out.

Dyanne bent down to pick up the book

(come fuck with me I love a good fuck)

and looked up to him, a smile across her face as she triumphantly waved the errant checkbook at him.

Come fuck with me I love a good fuck!

He saw her look around for traffic.

comefuckwithmeagoodfuckIlove

Saw her spot the car.

a good fuck a really good fuck

Saw her arms go up.

I love it I love it

Her hips connected first.

The sound of her bones breaking against the metal reverberated hollowly in a universe gone lag.

A good fuck I love

Tyler saw her head and face unite with the windshield in a spurt of gore and glass…her teeth and gums gnashed horribly together.

One of Dyanne’s hands flopped off to one side of the car as she molded to the hood.

And that was not all Tyler had seen.

He saw the face of the driver…the face of the hag from his nightmare.

The lightbulb.

The stained bedsheets.

The nightmare.

Dyanne’s body rolled off the vehicle and landed with a thump. Bumped about once or twice more before coming to a rest.

For what seemed an eternity, her head lolled limply from side to side.

The car continued on in its course.

Tyler was unable to move. Forced to watch. He realized what kind of car had hit her.

A hearse.

 

Tyler was still shaking when he got home. He’d spent the rest of the day and half the night at the police station and related matters and could barely hold himself up. He was sick to his stomach.

But he had found the paper.

Did what had to be done.

Was spent…had no more will. Collapsed to the living-room floor, tears streaking his face. He lay still. Thought about George Weh’s wife and Darian Fairfax. About twenty-times-five and four-and-one-eighth-by-nine-and-one-half-inch envelopes.

Felt an unexpected urge for a shower.

(wash the sins)

Needed to.

Sobbing, he looked to the bathroom.

The light was on.

He didn’t remember turning it on…but that didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered. He’d lost Dyanne. Lost everything.

He dragged himself to his feet and made his way to the bathroom. Kicked off his shoes and removed his clothes.

Found the shower running.

Nice and

(it didn’t matter)

hot.

Steam filled the bathroom.

It just didn’t

(nothing did)

matter.

Naked and trembling, Tyler stepped into the shower and felt the warmth penetrate his skin. He collapsed into the bottom of the tub.

Whispers came from the spray.

(nothing mattered)

Did you have a good fuck?

“Fuck you!” Tyler yelled.

Did you have a good fuck? I did.

“Fuck you,” he sobbed and closed his eyes. The whispers chuckled.

The hag’s face formed in the mist above.

I had a great fuck, Tyler, now it’s your turn.

On ran the whispers. The face disappeared.

Tyler lay in the bottom of the tub, adrift in his misery. He ignored the fact that the shower had grown hotter (it didn’t matter); spikier (nothing mattered)….

It just didn’t matter one goddamned bit.

Tyler tried to right himself when he noticed that the water had become downright painful. Not hot painful, but spiked painful. He looked down to his body and saw the red.

Was it something in the water?

Felt disjointed. Resigned. He collapsed back inside the tub and let the warmth flow over him.

Through him.

Around him.

His last thoughts were of Dyanne.

Tiny daggers…no larger than short pins…screamed down from the thundering shower head and tore and ripped and penetrated into his body.

Ripped through his nerves and burst open his organs.

Razored blades that clattered down along the plastic surface towards the drain like iron filings to a magnet.

It wasn’t long before his heart had ruptured into an explosion of red that filled the tub and spattered the walls.

Tyler floated….

The water rained down upon him…washing away the filth….

The sins.

Tyler’s body lay empty.

It just didn’t matter anymore.

It never did.

 

At a rickety and battered table sat an ancient, diseased woman. Her hair was greasy and gray and her veins filled with bile and hate. Her life reeked of a different kind of cancer not of cigarettes or cells.

But she liked writing letters. Got real good at it, in fact.

Having no friends, she wrote them to no one in particular. She just wrote—not that many would willingly read what it was she had to say. She didn’t much like people, and that was okay, because people, it turned out, didn’t much care for her. She didn’t have a name, didn’t need one. People used names for identity. To be proud. She had no need of either.

She just wrote.

But this time she received a letter.

One that found its way to her doorstep.

She had no mailbox.

She found the letter while on the way to the woods with an eviscerated cat. She liked gutting cats, they were fun. Dogs were too big. She liked cats.

Collecting the letter in her rickety hands, which had no return address, she sat down at her table and inspected it.

Who would write her?

How did it get here? No matter, maybe she could return the favor.

She opened the splotched and unevenly sealed envelope and removed the contents. Unfolded the paper. She read the few, hastily scrawled words beneath the poorly typewritten paragraphs first. It was then that her yellowed orbs screamed wide. She heaved the letter away, which smoldered and disintegrated before it hit the floor.

Tried to outdistance what was to come.

The old lady tumbled furniture as she fled.

Heard noises in pursuit.

Ran into the living room. A wide, spacious living room. She used to be rich once. Had a big house.

The whispers grew, filled the building.

Words that became audible and loud.

You know what they whispered.

 

Pass it on. IT WORKS!

 

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

 

Red Hands

by

Reaching Out Can Be A Scary Thing. (Image by mjchael [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Reaching Out Can Be A Scary Thing. (Image by mjchael [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
October 28, 2004 I was interviewed on a local radio station about things-paranormal. I’d met the station’s News Director and had noticed that she seemed, well…leery…of me (it was a “weird” handshake—she didn’t want to shake my hand!). Her name was Kina. After my interview I asked the DJs to show me to Kina’s office. They did and Kina and I had talked and had a great time joking around. She said that I didn’t seem so “scary” in and of myself! She told me part of “something” that is detailed in the excerpt, below.

As I left, I told her and the DJs I was going to write up a short story in honor of them about what Kina had told me. Below is an excerpt from my December 1, 2004 query letter to George Seithers, of Weird Tales (no, it didn’t get picked up) that details what Kina had told me:

Enclosed is “Red Hands,” a ghost story inspired by real events. I was interviewed on a local radio station, 95.1 The Peak, and the News Director had told a ghost story about seeing huge red hands come out of her bedroom walls (now I know why she gave me such a hard time about shaking my hand!) above her bed when she was a child in South Central Los Angeles. It apparently happened nearly every night, she says, so she used to sleep with her mother. Her grandmother felt that there was “something else” living there with them, but her mother never thought anything of it.

I wrote this fictional adult story using the real names of all involved (they’re all public figures, in radio, and I set it around my real interview with them). I didn’t know the whole story until after I’d written this.

The on-air staff said I could use their names, so, I’ve left their names in the story. But, while most of the names are real, some are not. I’ve tried to make contact with them “today,” but so far no luck.

This story has never been published.

Red Hands

© F. P. Dorchak, 2004

1

Kina Foster awoke screaming out her lungs as she leapt out of bed, blundered through her bed sheets and blankets, bounced off her bedroom wall, clipped her left elbow along the edge of her upright dresser, and flung herself out into the hallway, where she broke a nail madly scrambling for the light switch. She spun around as she began her collapse to the floor, several feet farther down the hallway at the top of the stairs. The only thing that kept her from tumbling headlong down those stairs was having whacked her head a good one on the edge of the stair’s handrail.

Dazed, she sat on the floor. Opened her eyes wide…and shook her head.

Kina sat back against the wall, inhaling huge gulps of air and groaning. She cradled her hurt elbow into her body and examined the broken and bleeding nail. She then winced as she closed her eyes and leaned her head all the way back to the wall. Reaching for the head wound, she grimaced. A tear trickled down her cheek and she began to sob.

But her throat was sore…

As if she’d been screaming.

Sniffling loudly, she opened her eyes and stared at the entrance into her bedroom.

What…had just…happened?

What had just caused her to leap out of bed in a blind rage and end up a puddle of mush in her hallway?

She grabbed the handrail. Using it like an anchor, she tried—desperately—to recall…

Dreams. Blinding, horrific imagery she found hard to decipher. Screams, oh, God, the screams! Kina let go of the rail and slammed both hands to her ears.

She could still hear the screams!

And something had come to her…for her…followed her….

If something had followed her…would it stood to reason that it might still be in there?

Kina cautiously pushed herself up off the floor. She scanned the hallway for a weapon. She was across from the bathroom and looked in to the shower. The shower curtain hung part way open on its shower rod. One of those removable wooden poles that pressed against the walls with spring-loaded friction.

Kina shot to her feet and grabbed the shower-curtain pole, tearing it from the walls. Frantically, she knocked off the rubber cup on one end, and hastily pushed off the shower curtain. The pole was strong and solid. Stuck for years in its position, it didn’t compress or come apart. The longer the better.

Did she really believe something had followed her back from a dream? No. But she had to go back in there sometime…and to be forearmed was forewarned. Composing herself…and her new lance held forcibly out before her…Kina left the bathroom for the bedroom.

She flicked on the light switch as she entered it.

Images continued to fly through her mind, but she still couldn’t make out anything. The only thing she could grab and hold onto was an intense and acute sense of fear, pain, and dread that still had a hold over her. She coughed—her throat indeed sore—and glanced at her clock, which read just a little after two in the morning. And the late October winds were howling it up outside her windows. Pole tentatively held out before her, she slowly advanced toward her bed. She whipped to the right as she passed the door.

Nothing there.

Turning back to her bed, she examined the rumpled and pulled-back blankets and bed sheet. Poked at them with her lance.

More nothing.

Crouched and looked under the bed.

Additional nothings…but, just to make sure, she swiped the pole back and forth under the bed. Just dust bunnies, loose change, and a lost black sock she’d been looking for for almost six months. Back to her feet, Kina went to her closet and pushed open its folding accordion doors with the stick. Jabbed in and about her clothes.

Sweet nothings.

Kina stepped back and lowered her pole. Let out a strained chuckle.

“Good, Lord, it was only a dream.”

She went back out into the hallway and turned off the hallway light, still uttering the occasional nervous chuckle. When she reentered her bedroom, she stood in the middle of it listening to the high winds outside.

Late October…high winds…two-thirteen in the morning…and Hallowe’en in a couple days.

Yeah, no issues there.

Kina went to turn off the bedroom lights, when—quick as lightening—two hands thrust out at her from the wall…two red hands attached to red forearms.

Kina jerked backward, tripping over her feet, and slammed into the upright dresser, knocking it back against the wall with a load crack!

The red hands again thrust out after her, this time up from the floor at her feet.

Screaming and scrambling her feet under her in that pathetically cartoon-like manner, she finally gripped the hardwood floors and swung her pole wildly about her, smashing an antique picture up on the wall behind the upright dresser (that her mother had given her), her jewelry armoire to her left, and totaling her hanging bedroom light fixture above. This, unfortunately, popped her lance apart, shortening it by half, and sending the years-compressed spring ricocheting off a wall and onto the hardwood floor out of view.

Kina backed up against another wall—but the hands again found her, shooting out of the wall around her.

Once again crazy with fear, Kina swung what remained of the bathroom lance-now-baton directly at the spot on the wall from which the red hands had emerged. They were now gone, but that didn’t stop her from gouging out a good-sized chunk of wallpaper and wallboard.

She backed up to her doorway, when the hands again jut out for her. Kina swung her weapon and this time connected with her other dresser’s mirror, obliterating.

“Come on, you son-of-a-bitch! Show yourself, whatever you are! Come on!”

She got back to her feet and angrily swung at walls and the bedroom, which was one of those cheap, hollow things. Her stick stuck in the door , and unable to pull free, she viciously kicked—slipped—and knocked herself out as she connected with the floor….

 

Kina entered her office at KRDO’s 95.1 (“The Peak”) radio station. She dropped her purse and bags on the floor, then dropped herself into her chair. Sucking on a throat lozenge, she coughed. Her throat was still raw. Shawnee, one of the D.J.s, poked her head into her office.

“You okay, hon?”

Kina barely looked up. Her back was to the door, but she glanced into the review mirror to the left of her computer.

“No…,” she said, her voice squeaking.

“What happened to your voice?” Shawnee asked, entering her office. “We heard you’d had some kind of accident.”

Kina again coughed.

“I had a really, really, really bad dream last night and screamed my head off. Ended up banging my elbow, breaking a nail,” she said in a half-whisper, displaying her wounds, “then smacked my head up real good.”

Kina lightly touched the bump on her noggin.

“Damn, girl, must’ve been some dream,” Shawnee said, trying not to laugh, but smiling broadly.

“Doctor said I’ll live…but I wondered if she’d been the right one for me….”

Shawnee let out a good laugh. She came in farther and leaned against the edge of Kina’s L-shaped desk, right up alongside her as she intently eyed her. She placed a concerned hand to Kina’s back, and said, “Anything you wanna talk about?”

Kina shook her head. “No…just wanna forget about it all. Get back into my every day routine, you know? I don’t really remember anything about it, anyway,” Kina said, lying.

“Nothing? With all those war wounds?” Shawnee said, casually picking away at a stray piece of Kina’s hair.

Kina shook her head.

“Okay. Well…if you need anything, just let me know.” Shawnee again placed a concerned hand to Kina, then left.

Kina stared out her window.

What the hell had happened?

It had to have been a dream, right? Things like this just didn’t happen in real life. That’s Freddy Kruger talk and Freddy’s only a dream—a nightmare—a movie, damn it, a movie. She got herself so worked up and spooked she didn’t know which way was up.

Kina logged in on her computer and began to immerse herself into her work day. Jan Carter had already stood in for her while she’d been to the Emergency Room. Time to get back into her everyday routine….

 

“…seven-fifty-seven, Steve Ryan, Dave Moore—and Kina, we’re sorry to say that we have some scary news for ya. We have author F. P. Dorchak, here in the studio with us,” Steve Ryan, of the Peak Morning Show said on-air to Kina.

“My door is closed,” Kina roughly replied back into her mike from her office, “and it’s barricaded!”

Steve and Dave chuckled.

“We’re going to talk about the paranormal and ghosts,” Steve Ryan continued, “and, ah, how they interrupt our daily life and the whole deal, so, ah, I don’t know—you better just, ah, keep that door shut—”

“You know, I work with you two, so I just don’t know how much stranger normal life can get…,” Kina said, laughing.

Oh, but she did.

She hadn’t been able to not think about the events of the early morning. And now add to it that the station was doing a whole week of “weird stuff” …ghost stories…astrologers…psychics.

Now, who was this new guy? An author who wrote paranormal fiction? What was the attraction to this stuff?

She’d never been big on it…well, perhaps more to the point was that she had never been big on it, because she’d always been afraid of it. Ever since she’d been a little girl and her parents had told her about The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and that darned headless horseman, she’d never been able to get into anything spooky. Now, she had no choice…she’d awoken this morning to her own personal Freddy Kruger reaching out to her—her—and this wasn’t a movie and it hadn’t been a dream—but it had to of been, right?

Crap like this just didn’t happen outside the movies and books! It just didn’t…it’s like what that guy in there right now does, it’s all made up—fiction.

What had happened to her had to have been a delayed hypnagogic reaction or something…a delayed dream thing…still groggy with one foot in dreamland.

She needed to use the ladies room.

Kina got up, then realized she had to walk past Mr. Paranormal in there talking with Steve and Dave. Maybe she’d just take a quick peek in at the guy….

Kina quietly came up to the studio doorway, and looked in at him. He looked normal enough…short cut, brown hair, even sported an Hawai’ian shirt. A black Hawai’ian shirt, but still. He didn’t look like she’d imagined him to be at all.

He turned to her.

Crap!

Smiling, Mr. Paranormal got up and made his way toward her, hand held out…and that was when she lost it.

All Kina could see was a red hand.

Those red hands.

Kina barely made it into the bathroom stalls before she lost her Danish and tea….

 

Kina did about all she could to stay as late at work as possible, but when Jan Carter left it was time to go. Jan showed up at Kina’s doorway, with her ever-present cheery tone.

“Hey-ah, girl, how ya doin?”

“I don’t want to go home.”

“Well, let’s talk about it, huh?”

“I don’t want to. I’ve decided I’m never going to sleep again.”

Jan laughed. “Oh, come on, be a big girl. It can’t have been that bad. Everyone’s been talking about it, but no one seems to know—what happened?”

Kina sighed and cleared her throat. Her voice was feeling decidedly better, but was still rough.

“I had a really bad dream is all—and it’s embarrassing. I kinda…um…messed up my bedroom, I was so scared.”

“How do you mean ‘messed up your bedroom’—you didn’t —”

“Nooo…I, cmm, kinda, um…beat up the walls.”

“No way!” Jan said, laughing.

Kina shrugged her shoulders, giving Jan an “oops” look.

“What brought that on?”

“I had some kind of a nightmare I can’t remember any more. But I do remember how I felt…I was extremely terrified. More terrified than I could have ever imagined. I was so scared it hurt. I felt sure I was going to have an aneurism. I’m not exaggerating.”

Jan went serious. “Anything else?”

“You’re gonna laugh.”

“Am not.”

“I saw…in my bedroom, I saw…cmmm…red hands.”

“Red hands? Just hands?”

Kina nodded. “They shot out of the wall at me like this—” she said, and thrust her arms toward Jan—who took a step back.

“Oh, my gosh—that’d scared the bejesus out of me!”

“Well, I woke up screaming—I mean I was screaming my lungs out. My throat’s still sore, as you can tell. I didn’t—and still don’t—remember the dream…just that I was terrified. Once I calmed down I went and got a pole—you know, that bathroom rod that holds up shower curtains?”

Jan nodded.

“I got that, went back in…checked under and around everything, but didn’t find anything.”

“Of course. That’s how it always works in horror movies—”

“Jan—you’re not helping!”

“Sorry.”

“I checked everything out and found nothing. So, I go to turn off the light switch and go to bed—when…when they jump out at me. The hands—glowing red hands—from the walls. Shoot right out of the wall in front of me! Scared the you-know-what out of me!”

“Kina, darling are you sure—”

“Was it a figment of my imagination? I’m not sure of anything, anymore. When that guy, that-that author—Mr. Paranormal, or whatever his name was—was in earlier, I took a look at him. He looked normal enough, but when he got up to shake my hand…I saw them, again. Those red hands coming at me—”

“Oh, now, honey, you know that all that is is all this Hallowe’en hooey going on this month. That’s all it is. It’s that time of the year when we all get just a little more spooked than normal—”

“This was different, Jan, I tell you. Whether or not that guy’s hands really were red, what I saw in my bedroom last night was real—in some way. In some way, I can’t yet figure out. There’s just something about it. A feeling I got.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, toward the end, I got angry. I mean, really pissed. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t scared any more, and I wasn’t…wasn’t angry at the hands, I realized later, once I thought about it…I was mad at something else…something about the hands.”

“Any idea what?”

Kina vigorously shook her head. “No idea. I just know I don’t want to go back in there. Alone, anyway.”

“I’ll go with ya, girlfren.”

Kina looked up. “Would you?”

“Yeah-ah. And I tell ya what, we’ll just go back there to face whatever it was that happened, then you can stay at my place tonight—or for as long as you need—how’s that?”

Kina smiled, choking back tears.

 

Kina entered her home first, Jan right behind her.

“Well, things certainly look normal enough,” Jan said, unzipping her jacket.

“But isn’t what you really want to say is that that’s how it always is on Elm Street?” Kina said, removing her jacket.

“Well….”

“My bedroom’s up that landing, then to the rear of the hallway, on the right.”

Jan walked ahead of Kina, then stopped. “Well, time’s awastin’. No time like the present,” she said, turning back to Kina and removing her jacket. “You ready to do this?”

Kina nodded.

“Then, let’s do it.”

The two walked up the handful of stairs onto the upper landing.

“Nice hardwood floors,” Jan said.

“Thanks.”

Jan stopped before the bathroom, peeking in. “And that must be where you found your lance-a-lot,” she said, smiling.

“Yeah…was kinda in a hurry, you know.”

“Sounded like a good choice, if you ask me!” she said, smiling.

They approached the bedroom.

“Holy cripes!” Jan exclaimed, entering it. “I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you messed up the place!”

It was worse than Kina remembered.

There was s stick impaling the bedroom door and the now-exposed light switch by the door was reduced to one tiny plastic shard that held on to the screw holding it onto the wall, the rest of it scattered on the floor. Large portions of wallboard and wallpaper hung off the wall and were also all over the floor. Her bedroom mirror was also gone, shards of glass everywhere, mixed in with the hanging light fixture she had also ripped from the ceiling.

“Must’ve been what I slipped on when I knocked myself cold,” Kina said, pointing to the glass all over the floor and rubbing her head. “Glad I didn’t cut myself up.”

“Yea-ah!” Jan said. “Man! Will ya look at this place!”

Two other walls were also torn up and had wallpaper hanging out like gaping war wounds. The broken antique picture frame and picture were also on the floor behind the upright dresser, which had gouged the hardwood floor and was tipped toward the wall, its two rear pine-wood legs neatly snapped off. As for the bathroom shower curtain rod, now popped apart into two pieces, one lay on the floor partially under the bed, the internal spring nearby, while the other part was still wedged into the hollow bedroom door.

Jan chuckled as she fingered but didn’t remove the stick in the door. “Well, I see you’re going to need some serious redecoration action, my friend.”

Kina shrugged embarrassed, coughing a couple rounds.

“And remind me never to wake you from a sound sleep!” Jan added. “Okay, so what happened here? Be specific.”

Kina went over to her bedside nightstand. As she began to relate the events, she found the dream images coming back.

“Well, I awoke, stark raving mad—as in crazy—and was screaming my lungs out. I jumped out of bed, here,” she said pointing, “and rammed my elbow into the edge of the dresser, here.” She suddenly remembered the wound and rubbed it. “Then I went out into the hallway, broke a nail, and collapsed. Grabbed the shower curtain rod and reentered.”

Kina walked past Jan, who turned to follow her narration.

“I came back in, searched the place, and found nothing —that’s always how it happens on The Nightmare on Elm Street. Then—also just like on Elm Street—the red hands thrust out at me—here—from the wall, just under the light switch,” Kina said, showing her.

She was initially reluctant to touch the wall, but she found new confidence coursing through her (confidence always strongest with others around). Though the memories and images no longer scared her, she did feel something strange about them. Like they were still out there. Still…needing?…her.

Needing her?

“That’s when I opened fire. Took out my room. The rest is history.”

“You’d said earlier that they followed you? Is that right?”

“Yeah,” Kina said, hedging, again walking past Jan for the broken upright dresser. “Over here, they came up out of the floor at me.” Renewed confidence or not, she avoided the spot on the floor where the hands had materialized up out of the floor. “Then, over there, out of the wall. Then back out over there,” she said, pointing back to the wall near the light switch. “Then the mirror.”

“Well, do you feel anything now? Any, I don’t know—tingling sensations, or whatever it is you’re supposed to feel in real-life horror movie situations like this?”

“No…well, I do kinda feel like they’re still…‘out there,’ in some way, but perhaps the strangest thing is that I no longer feel scared. Can’t explain it.”

“Did you catch much of that paranormal author’s show today?”

Kina chuckled. “I know what you’re gonna say. That he feels that many ghosts out there aren’t really out to get us; that they’re actually just caught in-between worlds or something…what did he call them?”

“‘Lingering anxiety ghosts,’ or something,” Jan said.

“Right. Or could be—”

Kina stopped dead in her tracks.

“Oh, my God.”

Jan came to her. “What? What is it?”

“It just hit me.”

Kina pulled away from Jan but turned back to her, a look of surprise on her face.

“Jan….”

“Yes?”

Then Kina changed her mind and said nothing, and turned back to the wall, lifting her arms before her, palms up, as if mesmerized. She stared at the light switch wall by the door then slowly turned back to Jan, her arms and palms still upraised, a look of horror on her face and approached her. Jan backed up as Kina approached.

“Kina, honey, are you okay?”

Kina stopped just before her.

“Jan…it was something Steve and Paranormal Guy said…about how in the movies they always make the ghosts out to be bad or evil, always out to get everyone.”

“Yeah…honey, now you’re scaring me….”

“Well, they felt—Paranormal Guy felt—that they—ghosts—weren’t so much out to get us, as they were just trapped maybe, or confused. Maybe even dreaming back about their just-departed lives…”

“Dreaming? Do the dead dream?”

Kina just looked at her.

Jan continued, “Okay…and?”

“Jan, look at me. Look at me! What do I look like? What do I look like I need?”

Jan looked to Kina…really looked to her…how her arms—her hands—were held out before her.

“Oh, my G—”

“Help. I look like I need help, Jan, that’s what they look like.”

“Well, now, then, that would put a different spin on things, wouldn’t it? Good Lord, I have chicken skin all over me….”

“And I’d turned it away! I turned it away, Jan! Don’t you get it? I may have turned someone away who needed my help—reached out to me….”

“Yeah, but reached out to you from where, honey?” Jan said.

“Does it matter?”

“Uh, yeah!”

Jan came to Kina and grabbed her by the arms. “Oh, honey, don’t worry about it—”

“But I have to! What have I done—because I was afraid? Had I hurt someone—ghost or not?”

“But you don’t know that? And it was just a dream.”

“But I feel this…something…right now. Right this minute. It’s still out there, he/she/it is…is still out there….”

The images did continue to fly around in her head…still screaming through her mind at light speed. Still, she was unable to make anything out. But she felt the red hands were still out there…still needing….

“Oh, my God, Jan…I think I might have done something very, very wrong…I’ve never felt this way before…I suddenly feel a little sick…”
“But what if…what if, I don’t know, you bring something evil here, into our world? Paranormal Guy didn’t talk about that—”

“No, not on-air, but I snuck up beside the door when they were talking off-air, him and Steve and Dave, and he said that he feels a lot of the evil stuff is actually confused energy coming from us…that there really isn’t any such thing as…how did he put it, ‘an inherent Devil’—”

“Well, that may be, but what kind of an expert is he? He writes fiction, for God’s sake…he’s no expert. And, really, who among us knows? What human has the be-all, end-all knowledge about the afterlife and is a hundred percent correct? What if—I don’t know—what if these confused spirits really can get nasty, like The Exorcist nasty, or something, and kick our asses? What then?”

Kina dropped her arms, a look of exhaustion falling over her face.

“Thanks for doing this, Jan,” Kina said, reaching for one of Jan’s hand. “I’m fine, now. Really.”

Jan cocked her head, skeptical. “Don’t you want to come with me, stay the night?”

Kina shook her head, confident in her decision. “No…I’m going to stay here, in my own bed. I’ll be fine.”

“You’re not planning on pulling in those hands, are you?”

“Another thing Paranormal Guy said was that ghosts are not physical…so I can’t very well do that, now can I? He said he didn’t believe what we saw were so much physical images as mental images we translate into a physical-like image. No—you go home, now, Jan, I really appreciate all you’ve done, you’re a good friend. I’m just mentally and spiritually exhausted. Thanks.”

“If I was a really good friend I wouldn’t leave you here and would protect you from your own bad self—”

“Fine. Then I’ll make us some dinner and you can sleep in my guest room….”

 

Kina was absolutely exhausted by the time they’d both cleaned up the bedroom’s mess. She made dinner, Jan made her calls, Kina put Jan up in the guest room and then made her way to her own bed. She looked forward to sleep….

 

Kina again awoke just a little after two a.m. to use the bathroom. The full moon shown in through her bathroom window and the wind still howled for a second night in a row. She stared at the moon and smiled as she sat on the toilet; closed her eyes.

If you’re out there and you need help, Kina thought, reaching out to the red hands, come back. I’m ready for you, now.

This time I’ll help you….

 

Kina washed her hands, then dried them…but as she turned to return to bed, she again had that weird feeling. She paused; felt a little bit of fear rising within, but just told herself to get over it—that there was no need to be afraid.

She knew—in her bones—there was nothing to be afraid of.

At least not in this instance. She told herself.

Yeah, Nightmare on Elm Street….

She knew what she would find before fully turning around.

She didn’t bother flicking on a light.

She saw them. Dark, glowing red hands, reaching down and out from above her bed…hands spaced about two feet apart, just short of the union of the wall and ceiling crease.

They just silently hung there. Not motionless, per se, but still…as if a person really were on the other side of them, reaching out to her.

And she wasn’t scared. Not in the least.

Cautiously, Kina approached them and came to stand beside her bed and the nightstand.

She looked up to them…then placed one foot onto her bed, and, grabbing the frame of the bed in support, pulled herself up. She faced the wall and looked up to the red hands. Spreading apart her feet on the bed…she lifted her hands…but stopped short of actually grabbing them.

They really were hands—and they really were red.

And it was really two-fifteen in the morning.

Kina looked toward her closed bedroom door, thinking about Jan Carter, snoring soundly away in the guest room. She smiled.

Then looked back to the hands. She closed her eyes then reopened them.

Still there.

Bracing herself, Kina went for it and reached out to them.

She didn’t grab them—at least not physically, anyway—but did grab onto…something…because she was suddenly flooded with emotion that was like drinking though a raging fire hose. She tried to slow it down, but couldn’t. It wasn’t intentional, she didn’t think, by way of the emotion of the link she was now attached to overloaded her, but felt it was more like this ghost had so needed her…so needed her help—and yesterday—that it was like the opening of emotional flood gates and there was no turning it off. This…creature, this ghost…had a lot to download, and needed to do it as soon as possible. Needed her to be there…to help open those flood gates and let the emotion flow.

And there was something else….

Kina felt as if she was going to explode…her entire body felt as if it was spiritually and physically expanding…out to the ends of the universe—yet was simultaneously face-to-face with some invisible entity right before her face.

It was a feeling of expansive contraction…of swirling and spinning…of being there…standing on her bed yet also simultaneously being flung to the farthest reaches of the universe. And through all this, she was crying…unabashedly sobbing. Her entire being quaked with sorrow…pain!…there was intense pain in this spirit…anguish. Anguish she had never experienced before. Every synonym for pain and hurt filled her soul…and there was no shutting it off. Now, she was starting to get scared, but told herself to shut the hell up…there was so much more at stake here than her being a fraidy cat of the unknown….

Kina cried out…screamed in loving rage at where all this pain in this ghost was coming from. She reached out to it with intense, powerful thoughts of hope and peace and that this ghost needed to release itself from whatever horror it was experiencing.

It needed to move on!

That it was dead and there was nothing that need hold it to wherever it was. Whatever pain it was experiencing. It had to leave.

As if the emotion couldn’t get any stronger, it did…but this time Kina felt a difference to it…felt a change in conviction…a focusing. Kina poured more of herself into her link with the ghost…leave, she commanded, you can do it! I’m here to help…focus on me… explode away from wherever you are! Whatever is holding you back! Do it NOW!

There was a mentally bruising explosion of light in her mind and Kina experienced a singular burst of energy that felt like a supernova—

And it was over.

Done.

She collapsed to the bed, emotionally and spiritually spent. She looked up to where the red hands had been…but they were gone.

Kina closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Her mouth was really dry.

“Thank you….”

Kina shot upright. Looked around.

She leapt off the bed and turned on the bedside lamp.

No one. There was no one in the room with her—yet she’d distinctly heard the words “Thank you” spoken out loud.

To her.

She rushed to Jan’s room, but she was still sound asleep, snoring loudly though peacefully.

Who’d said that?

Kina chuckled, then returned to her bedroom.

She knew there was no one else in the house with them. Knew it hadn’t been Jan talking in her sleep, nor had it just been all in her head. She’d heard those two words clear as day, as loud as if someone had been standing shoulder to shoulder with her.

She had heard someone thank her, and she knew who that was, even if she didn’t know who it was.

She’d helped save a life. Ghost or otherwise.

Kina brushed off the bed sheets from where she’d been standing and got back into bed. The wind had even died down. She smiled and turned off the light.

“Good night,” she said, aloud, and rolled over and fell asleep.

She could have sworn she felt a light kiss brush her cheek….

2

December 13, 1967

A Siberian Gulag

A nameless, faceless prisoner lay strapped onto a rough-hewn board, various tubes and wires attached to numerous places on his scared, broken, tortured, and burned body. Both his legs had recently been broken, but he didn’t know what “recently” meant anymore. On all his limbs were open, infinitely painful, raw wounds from having been methodically and carefully burned. To his head were attached electrodes, and in his arms more tubes. His tongue had been removed. He hadn’t been allowed to sleep, hadn’t been allowed to dream, and had been kept as barely alive as possible through science and chemicals and ever-present torture.

But as totally controlled as his captors thought they were over him, there was one thing they couldn’t get under control with all their methods…

His will.

His ability to think what he wanted to think.

He was fine with losing his body—and if he could get free he had no qualms with slitting his own throat, or putting a couple well-placed bullets to his brain. But that was never going to be. He was their experiment and would die of old age, if they had their way.

So he had decided to reach out…reach out to whatever might be “out there”…whatever might have mercy on him and help him free himself from this hellish nightmare. What else had he? What had he to lose?

So he had.

And he had found someone.

A ghost? A figment of his imagination? He didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew…was that he had—finally—put an end to his suffering and had willed his own freedom. Willed his own death. Freed himself with the help of someone or something, he didn’t know. All he knew, was that he was free…free to move on….

And he did.

But not before he thanked the woman who had braved her own fears and had helped set him free.

“Thank you….”

 

Related Posts