Dead Ends, Page 3
Joshua Winters
***
“Mr. Douglas!”
The middle aged lead forensic scientist looked up from his desk where he had been taking his break. He had been deep into the late Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes, a half truthful story of piracy and turmoil in the Caribbean, and he took a moment to come back to his wooden paneled office from those troubled, crystal blue ocean waters and notice that one of his team was standing at the door, expecting his attention.
“What’s up?” he asked closing his book with disappointment, some would have been angry at being interrupted during their break, but they didn’t love their job as he did.
“Have a case straight from the chief, big fire down one fifty one, one dead, possible murder,” The young kid, only twenty, with wavy blond hair, shook his head in enthusiasm.
Richard Douglas tried to gather his thoughts, his worry lines creasing his forehead “Can you take someone with you?”
“You sent half the team home for the slow night, the rest are out in the field.”
Douglas nodded, the workload would increase the moment he’d called it a slow night, “ok,” he rose, gathering a silver briefcase full of equipment he kept at his side, glancing at his brown jacket and shaking his head, it was warm enough not to need it, “details.”
The kid started as his boss walked past him into the maze of the West Creek national forensics center. Here a few scientists where busy with local crime, but the division here also helped out across the nation, with big crimes or cases with multi state jurisdiction. Since the lab answered to no higher authority other than the justice system and government his team could be a neutral party when needed, or an extra hand.
“You know the old gas station on one fifty one.”
Douglas nodded, “The one near town?”
“Yeah, ran by Henderson. A passerby on his way to San Antonio found the place engulfed, pumps, building, his car, everything.”
Leaving through a door secured from the outside with cardkey access the two passed into the lobby, “Including the old man?”
The kid hesitated, “Likely.” His boss shot him a raised eyebrow, “There wasn’t a lot of him left, he looks like any other roasted human does, the firemen only know they have what appears to be a male sticking to the ground.”
“Hate the aroma of roasted humans.”
His partner frowned as the two of them headed through the lobby, “Never smelled a cooked person before.”
Douglas laughed, he was about to say more, when he noted… him.
The black robed creature wasn’t on his first visit through the town, nor would it be the last his team would see of him. He thought team but to this day, he had been the only person to see him, and if he hadn’t seen his handy work up close, watch his effect on the unsuspecting, Ryan would be ass deep in self imposed psychological treatment.
“Sir?” the kid asked.
Douglas hushed him with a finger, “Wait here, something’s come up.” He started back after the creature, not the first time in town, but the first time he was ever inside the lab. The creature opened the secured entryway into the labs without a card or pausing, as if he was opening any other non official door, and Douglas followed him. The thing of darkness gave an impression it only existed halfway in their realm and part way in another as it glided through his unsuspecting employees after having used doors, trailing him Douglas tried to make a list within his mind of who might be ready to die.
He tracked the creature through the maze of offices and cubicles, past the sealed chemist labs where a young Chinese man was studying something under a vented hood, passed the super computers buzzing with dozens of fans hard at work, into the near lightless back end of the building, he knew they were heading for the tanks. The tanks, as the team called them, where cells, temporary prison chambers to hold suspects for investigations or forensic processing. At least that was the areas foremost reason for existence. Instead more often than not the West Creek Police Department had them using their cells as overflow drunk tanks, thus the name.
Descending three rounds of a staircase they came into the dim concrete walled hall and Ryan couldn’t remember for the life of him if anyone was even here. What if the thing turned and mauled him? Would it, could it? He had never seen it touch a person before, but who’s to say the creature didn’t have its own power to destroy.
They stopped, it stared at a cell, through the concrete wall and metal door, standing, or floating, its robes billowing about it, the darkness within attempting to crawl out. Moving forward the thing opened the previously locked door and entered, Ryan booked it to catch the door before it fell close.
Inside the creature leaned over one of the town’s many local drunks, an overweight homeless man thrown to the streets by debt and a crooked house market. The dark sleeves of the thing’s robes devoured the man’s right hands as slimy, shiny, formless tentacles of darkness crawled up his arm.
The creature was at it, whispering into his ear, this man to be his next tool of death, but Ryan would stop it here. Turning its head to the side the void beneath the hood paused facing Ryan, and for a second it crouched there, holding onto the inebriated man, staring without eyes or a face to stare from as the poor drunk shivered in his bed, muttering in fevered tones.
Ryan stared back for a moment, a chill crossing his spine, but anger grew in his chest, “What!?” he shouted at it, “What do you want? Yes I can see you! I could always see you! Who are you going to kill now?”
The thing seemed to nod, such a human motion from something far from being human, and rose, withdrawing a black tentacle from the man’s arm. Within the once covered hand of the sweaty half mad drunk was a silver revolver. Ryan had no time to react, he pulled his own service pistol as the drunk fired, and missed. Ryan squeezed out a shot, piercing the heart of the man, killing him in an instant. A blessing as Douglas had known no one to live a sane life after coming in contact with the thing.
Douglas sighed at the dead drunk “You happy? There’s your sacrifice, now get the fuck out of my town!”
The creature stared at him, beyond him, and then back to the bed, nodding. As he moved by Ryan turned to give him a wide berth in the small room, still the things sharp shoulders brushed his chest, creating a sensation of being touched by dry ice, the skin dried and cracked, he was sure he’d be rash covered for weeks to come.
The creature passed him to step over the prone body of the young team member supposed to have been waiting up in the lobby, a bloody hole dead center of his chest.
Blood Letting
I watch from the darkness where no one knows I hide. It is here I am more comfortable in this city than within its crusty bars full of noisy drinkers, the wet roads full of cars spewing out poison, or even at home.
What is home? The wooden walled building with carpet that could tell ten years worth of tales of violence and sex and abuse? No. The runaway sanctuaries which promises solace to any abandoned child only to send their own version of parents to beat and rape those unwilling to fight back? No. Home is where your heart is people say, and mine resides in the darkness of the street; where light is cast out by a brick wall tall enough to block out the sun, or by a lamp shattered by a stone.
My heart lives in darkness of the soul, a wickedness passed onto me by my father, without the violent tendencies. I watch the rapist do his work and envy the wintry heart that could do so, for the darkness he must live in is bliss. The murders that shock a nation, the media maintain it was brimstone and fire that created such atrocities, but I know different, it is living darkness.
I can never exist that far within the embrace of darkness, for I am too soft. But too long has my weakness gone unfed, too long have I been alone in blinding light, the pain within must come out. A bottle upon the alley pavement once filled with beer is now filled with empty promises, but within it I see the dark I seek. Smashing it with one bare foot I grimace in joy and grin against the pain as several of its larger pieces pierce the sole of my foot, driving the dark
ness further into me.
I pick up a ripe peace, one side is dull and curved, the edge of a frisbee, I grip that end with my hand. The other side is a curved blade, the toe claw of the ancient predator, ending in a point. Pressing that point into my wrist, forcing the darkness further in, I am as aroused as I am mortified buy the pain, first a prick and then a savage tearing as I pull the blade across my arm, which seems to dull the pain of my bleeding foot. I scream out in angst as I become hard with lust, the pain without and within have traded places, but not for good, never does it last.
My darkness is interrupted as the light leaks from my arm onto the pavement below, I could not start anew on the hand that scribed its blessing into my skin, yet a man, rude, short and fat yells at me to stop and drop my weapon as he batters me with harsh light. What weapon do I bare? Only a pen to an art form, a brush dipped in red upon a pale canvass. Who is this boorish man dressed in blue with a blade of fire that cuts my peace as a knife does hot butter? What does he know of anything? If caught he would force me back out of my darkness, and I cannot leave my home.
I thrust my pen towards him, it shines as the brown glass flickers within the man’s blaring torch, the artist brush flies end over end, the red paint made of my light that has fled from the darkness splashes onto him causing him to pause, that is my cue.
I run, my bare feet wet with my light a whisper upon the pavement as black as the night, but find myself weak, always my art leaves me hungry, dizzy, used. Why hasn’t the darkness scooped me up and carried me upon its wings, it’s leathery night filled wings that beat the lightless sky over me could easily carry me into the safeness of another dark home, far from this man’s sharp instrument of radiance.
But I am given no heed, I am on my own, and as I stumble past white hard concrete more light assaults me, from everywhere, joined buy a chorus of hundreds of war horns and screeching beasts. Light has come to make battle upon the night within its home.
Something hits me, a strike upon an artist, a metal clad beast like a knight out of an old fairy tale. My sight has blurred, my legs are numb, and someone screams in horror as I lie, an innocent artist beaten by those that would destroy my darkness. I try to rise and find my canvass arm useless, the elbow twisted inside out and right side in once again. I raise my neck to discover that my legs that had carried me rest several feet away along with my loins, no longer aroused, something red and glistening extends from them. From me crimson light pours onto the pavement, the light beasts that now surround me and their riders that shine horrid white knives in my face believe they have won. But no, at last the light is seeping out and into me seeps the deepest of black. My vision fades, I can say farewell to the world that ruled buy light and be welcomed into my home of eternal night.
Crickets
Mark woke gasping and heavy in sweat, horrified, what he knew was happening couldn’t have been.
He surveyed the room and realized he was back home. What a horrible dream it had been, his heart was pumping, his underarms moist and reeking of sweet onions cut open past their expiration date, like he had worked out for five hours, sans deodorant.
Still, as he rose from his bed, nude, darkened by tan, shining with sweat, thin innocence only preserved by the shadows of the nights’ dark, the dream faded to something less than a memory. A spider spun its web in the corner of his room, and for a moment he watched it as he tried to wrap his mind around what had frightened him, like the spider would wrap his webbing around any unfortunate victim ensnared within its trap. There was nothing there to grip, the webbing of his mind had let the fly of a memory slip away.
As he made his way into his bathroom he hit the lights, of the three iridescent bulbs supposed to light the tile floor covered in brown grime inside the eight by four foot room, one came on, allowing a dim flickering yellow glow to settle that seemed to deepen the shadows and unsettle Mark further.
He walked over to the toilet, its lid always up for he had no women to worry over, and relieved himself. After flushing he slid aside the dirty plastic beach themed curtain stained brown by time and looked into the tub, where he spotted something that made him hold his breath. For a moment he couldn’t even comprehend what had brought back to fear of his dream, he saw it but he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. A shadow the size of a dime, featureless in the dim light, seeming to stare at him through glassy eyes he wasn’t sure were there.
The thing hopped, it rolled over on its back and attempted to correct itself by flicking its thin stick legs in all directions, failing in its attempt. Mark let out his breath under a curse, shaking his head in self embarrassment, the little thing was a cricket, no bigger or scarier than a nickel. He picked it up by a leg using his right thumb and forefinger, grimacing at the gross bug that had invaded his home, and flicked it into the toilet, the leg he held snapped off and stuck to his thumb.
Mark flung his hand in a panicked less than masculine manner, had his buddies seen him he’d be the laughingstock of his group. The leg flew off to who knew what corner of the room, and he flushed the toilet along with its now swimming occupant. He had only seconds to contemplate how the cricket seemed oblivious of its missing limb, swimming without panic before disappearing down the stained porcelain hole.
Mark checked the bathtub that doubled as a shower, seeing no other intruders for the night he turned on the water, extra hot. The heat was unnecessary, it scolded his skin and turned his pale thighs and white buttocks a bright cheeky red, but he associated heat with cleanliness, and his body was the only thing he cared to keep clean. After sanitizing himself, paying more attention to his skin than he did his short hair, he stepped out of the shower, turned off the water and watched it circle the drain. It took a little too long for it to empty, Mark had to remind himself to use drain cleaner to clear out his hair that was webbing itself into a clog as it always did.
In the silence a cricket strummed its own leg solo, but doubted it was the one he had flushed the toilet sans a leg.
His thumb and finger itched; he used his other hand to scratch it.
From of the bathroom Mark headed straight for his old dresser drawers, pulling out clothes, a pair of briefs that hugged him comfortably, jeans that would take any abuse he’d give to them today, and a white, thin, button up shirt. He may have not dress to impress, but he made a statement his little off-campus apartment would never make in its life time, he cared to make an effort.
Something brushed across his skin on his left forearm from inside his shirt and he shook it, allowing two crickets to fall out and hop away in a panic. He grimaced and shook his head, he deserved this for living in such a pigsty.
His fingers itched again, he scratched them, his left forearm itched, he scratched it hoping the pests weren’t giving him something.
Out his apartment into the darkened early morning first floor hallway silence welcomed him, aside from the constant chirp of a single bug. Why it was the only one singing was a wonder; he assumed that was because the rest were busy running from him. Through the hall he exited through a blue metal door towards the end where he came upon another cricket which jumped away at a mad try to escape the doors sharp edge. He stepped out onto a small unlit parking lot, the cricket’s song neither becoming louder, nor more distant, forcing him to ignore it best he could.
Inside his ancient gold Grand Marquis, a four-door sedan Mark thought was better fit being driven by the old, he brushed yesterday’s pile of food trash off the driver’s seat and onto the apartment’s pavement. He took a last glance to make sure none of it was important, noting three crickets escaping the mayhem, heading, he hoped, for their own home, and not his. With a crank of the engine he pulled out of his little slice of the ghetto, heading south.
The drive to his college, where he took classes at the ridiculous time of six in the morning, was less than half an hour long. Though he drove towards his university, minutes from his parking that solo cricket still sung over the whisper of his car’s tires upon the pavement.
The schools lot Mark guided his car into was well lit and empty this early in the morning, as it normally was, by the time noon rolled around the parking lot, half the size of the University of San Antonio’s parking lot, would fill to the brim. After pulling into a spot near as possible to the four building school, Mark climbed out of his car and looked up to the glass doors that were the main entrance. The building sat upon and was built into a small hill so you had to climb three series of six steps or walk around back to enter the school. He climbed the stairs that led from the parking lot to the front of the main building, siding around a small group of crickets that had convened on the fifth step up for early morning choir, and he stopped. He heard only the one.
It couldn’t have been the same cricket as before, he knew he hadn’t heard it since he left his apartments… had he?
He shook his head in dumfounded wonder and continued upward to meet his good friend at the front entrance. Alice was a woman he had known since middle school, a girl he had once had a serious crush on as a boy, and a cherry red spiky haired emo lesbian that had no interest in men. He was one of the few men she ever congregated with because he had always been her friend, he had supported her love for the same sex and he had never used the D word.
In her world dyke was a no-no, when she caught anyone using that word, whether or not it was against her, except for the occasion one of those words were uttered by one of which it attributed too, they not only became part of the list of her most hated persons on the planet, but received at least one painful lesson on how much an ass whooping one of those “D’s” could give. Alice was infamous for putting boys in the hospital without discrimination on whether it was the ones who discriminated while playing dungeons and dragons or did so while playing sports in tight crotch hugging outfits.
She despised the jocks the most, boys with easy futures of getting paid well to beat the shit out of each other, rubbing themselves against other half-naked men in tight pants, with the audacity to come back and diss gays to make themselves feel secure in their insecurity. In her opinion, which Mark shared, anyone that bigoted towards homosexuals had something to hide and was likely a closet case themselves. This included the priests that often hired male escorts while preaching fire and brimstone about the evils of gay sex and how it caused earthquakes in Haiti.
“Are you coming?” she asked, raising a pierced left eyebrow, dyed red over the natural black roots.
He shook himself out of his reminiscing, “Sorry, it’s been a weird morning.”
Mark lead their way into the school, the white halls were lit to cast away the gloom of predawn, but quite and empty. The classes held this early were typically fine arts in a different building, theirs was the only core course laid out predawn because the teacher was a new mom sharing duty with her husband. They reached his rented locker, available to students with the coin to rent them for a month, among a wall of red lockers and put in his code, 9-16-23. As he opened it his jaw fell in awe to the amount of dime sized shadows within it. He closed his mouth in a grimace remembering the things disgusted him and moved away.
“What?” Alice asked peering over his shoulder, she also grimaced, but it was a smaller less disgusted grimace, “Oh, gross!” She reached up and pulled out his home room folder, a dozen crickets hit the floor. He knew there was twelve because he counted as he watched them fall, time drawing out the way he had heard of happening to some during great tragedy. Most the bugs scurried under the locker, one hopped madly down the hall, hitting the wall a couple of times, and two remained. One spun on its back in a futile effort to right itself, and the other was dead, but soon both shared the same fate as exoskeleton and foamy guts exploded under the heel of Annie’s black steel studded boots. “This is getting out of hand, the city has to do something about this cricket problem,” she looked at him, “show up at my house, I’m gonna sue the mayor or something.”
She flipped open his folder and shook it, holding the papers in with her thumbs, but nothing fell. Then she retrieved his English book, thumbing through it, it was clean as well. “Odd” Mark whispered.
“How so?” she handed him his stuff and slammed his locker shut.
“Those fuckers always get everywhere, should have scattered when we opened the locker, why aren’t their crickets in my binders, my books?”
Alice shrugged, stepping away from his lockers with him in tow, “I dunno, maybe we caught the party just starting. Don’t complain, I can go back and grab one for you, the one I squished, put it in your book for you.” She smirked, but he bit his tongue, knowing she would if he gave her reason to and wanted nothing to do with the disgusting creatures the rest of the day.
English went without fault and without bugs, it was a nice break. Afterword as the sun rose over the horizon into a blue day, Alice departed from him for her next class and Mark returned to his locker to get ready for a short rest. He was attempting to pull it open with care, just in case, when a textbook hit the door from inside, sent it flying open, and came sliding out with about twenty crickets, several of them crushed under the weight of the book. Within were twenty others, maybe even more; it was disgusting, more than that it was impossible.
His fingers itched; he scratched them, his forearm chimed in.
Mark backed away from the mess, leaving his defiled book on the floor and his locker open, turning to run he pushed aside a student that cursed at him in name. He fled to the stairs where he stopped to watch students skirting the choir from this morning which had turned into a crowd of a hundred disgusting crickets. People swarmed around them, yet no one seemed to pay them any mind.
At his car, opened it, and closed it. The vehicle was swarming with an impossible ocean of crickets, thousands, a tidal sea rising, falling, pushing against the windows, to the extent that his floor and the seats of his seats where covered.
He fled, what was less than an hour’s drive took a good hour on foot, in a dumping ground on the way home he took into account the swarms of the shiny insects were now outnumbering the trash. He ran to his complex, to his apartment, and entered.
There were no crickets, none he saw, no sea of them which he didn’t think he could handle in his one place of privacy.
Feeling the shower he had taken hours ago was inadequate he hurried to his bathroom, which too was clean of crickets, for that he thanked whatever power might be.
He turned on the water with a twist of the waist level knob, but it didn’t put out. Twisting the knob the other way Mark received much the same and knocked hard on the shower head. It rattled, something was in it, he knew what, a sudden urgency to flee his home washed over him. The shiny black bugs crawled out of the tub’s drain, and with the sound of escaping air in the pipes he twisted back to watch crickets bubble to the surface of the toilet’s water, one after another. This was just the beginning, soon there’d be millions.
He had to think of something, a way to kill them, get rid of them once and for all.
Mark dashed to the bathroom sink whose drain wasn’t putting out any living insects yet, and extracted a green jug the size of a milk carton, the front read “Drano”. It was a generic brand covered in warning signs of how toxic and corrosive it was.
Back at the bath shower combo he poured, upstream to wash the crickets back, twitching, dying. The instant those five crickets disappeared down the drain they had come from with the fishy smelling blue green chemical that looked like the blue sodas you’d buy at your local gas station, they stopped coming and some of the damned chirping died off.
The toilet bubbled, he turned to the horror of a dozen swimming, a few using others to stand on, attempting to get out but sinking their brethren and falling back int
o the water, to be the base for another ingenious, disgusting bug. He poured, more than he had in the shower, until the basin filled to the brim, letting it soak as he watched the few crickets he could still see struggle to death in their now toxic home and another bubble to the surface, dead. He flushed and mused whether he could use that toilet sitting ever again.
The apartment was clean of the bugs, or was it?
Back in his efficiency Mark opened the shirt drawer where sure enough a swarm crawled over his whitest shirts which he could no longer see and no longer wear. He poured until the drawer was full of green liquid and closed it. With a little more than a quarter of the bottle left he decided he had one more personal place he had to disinfect.
But still, in the quite, with crickets dying he heard only one.
His fingers itched, as did his arm, but he ignored them both.
When he arrived back at school it was nearing noon. The flight of stairs where now covered in the bugs, a mass shadow that the peopled seemed to ignore and walk through, squishing dozens underfoot. It was disgusting. Splashing the drainer on the stairs got the bugs scattered, creating for him a path, while he of all things caught odd glances from others passing by.
Mark climbed and slid on his shoes coated in slick blue liquid as he entered the school, righting himself with the wall he made a b-line for his locker. It still stood open, pouring out bugs, crickets, billions of them, yet nobody noticed. If his best friend hadn’t seen them he would have assumed he was going crazy.
He dispensed drainer over the book which had fallen out, the ones not killed scattered, then he poured most of the rest into his locker, leaving only a small quantity in the bottle. The students passing by cursed at him and called out to him in surprise, anger, confusion and fear.
The crickets he cared about where dead.
All but one, that same one he heard everywhere he went. Oh god, he thought, everywhere I go. The bug was inside of him, in his head, in his ears, in his brain somewhere, and he had to flush it out. Mark pulled the bottle to his lips and let the disgusting blue liquid flow between his teeth, at first it tasted of fish and burned his sinuses, but then it didn’t taste at all. Soon what was left was gone, he dropped to his knees, his throat swelling from the irritancy that the chemical caused. His eyes rolled skyward, the cricket within his skull was no more. And there she found him, with blue lips, praying towards heaven and never falling to his face.
Alice woke gasping, heavy in sweat, horrified, what she knew was happening couldn’t have been.
She surveyed her room and realized she was home. What a horrible dream it had been, her heart was still pumping, her hair full of sweat stuck to her forehead, her night deodorizer keeping her from smelling, a secret she shared with no one.
Still, as she rose from her bed, thickly built, nude, pale, shining with sweat, innocence only preserved by the shadows of the nights’ dark, the dream faded to something less than a memory.
Tall Trees
Cory was in for it, he knew he was in the biggest trouble of his life, especially if he couldn’t find his little brother. The sun was setting, the orange light spread shadows upon the thick wooded world which was causing him angst. There was no telling what Ethan was getting himself into now he lost trail of him.
His brother had never been one to get into too much before, and though the town of West Creek, at the base of this large wooden hill he was upon, had its shares of problems, its legends of magic, of mysterious weather, and of serial criminals, compared to San Antonio to the south this aspirant city was a peace-filled community with almost no crime. The creatures out here weren’t too dangerous either, the odd coyote was the biggest threat, getting skunked was next on the list, and those threats where rare since animals here where shy and avoided humans.
No the trouble he feared Ethan might find himself in were caused by his young teen body riddle with adolescent hormones. Curse the deity that cursed underage children with sexual urges.
As of late he caught his brother with items Cory never imagined him ever looking at, pornographic DVDs and magazines, pictures from his other friends that could have landed him in big legal trouble if released, and a Flesh-light. Where the hell would he get something that expensive and sold to only the mature? Or should the question be who was giving him this stuff, egging on his desires?
Probably the same hussy he was with tonight, maybe his tastes were for older women, old enough to buy things from a sex shop, or his curious set of friends took what they could get their hands on. Either way this was the end, if he hiked out here and found his brother in the throes of lust he’d drag him home, expose everything to their dad, and there would be hell. Until now he had protected his little brother from his father, whose military upbringing made him a harsh and cruel man. The two of them with no mother to carry the weight as the other parent, often forced Cory acted that part for bro, but he had failed him, enough for this to happen, and it hurt to know that he couldn’t do more for him.
The sun sunk below the horizon and the tall trees that gave the forest it’s name, a species of Ponderosa tree that was far too south east of its usual habitat, had their thin forms stretched out into thick shadows. Cory thumbed the emergency lamp in his right hand, but the electric bulb only shifted the darkness out of his way as it thickened to the side. With dusk falling it was a single blade of sight captured in the ink of the woods.
“God dammit,” he muttered, “Ethan!” he called for his brother, “It’s late! It’s dark! If you come out now I won’t tell dad!”
He waited, listening. For the next three minutes he heard nothing, not animal or wind, or humans rutting in the bush. There was the sound of brush and dirt being moved aside from behind him and he spun, but there was nobody stalking him. A quad of strange trees, thinner than the rest, where the only thing he thought looked out of place. He scanned up their pale trunks, but none of them where low enough to allow his light to pierce the top of the green needlepoint foliage. Doubting his brother and friends had scaled trees on their way out here, he decided there wasn’t much point at pondering the trees for too long.
Cory shook his head, focusing his concentration he started further into the woods, into the darkness. As he moved the forest thickened around him, making direction a hard thing to keep track of. “Ethan!” he called out again, this time something with wings took flight from his disturbance causing him to crouch in reaction, a distant hoot announced it was only an owl. He remained crouched, waiting and listening, silence reigned the night.
There was a grunt, he spun on his heel as he rose to the deep voiced human sound, spotting nothing odder than a single one of those extra thin trees. The tree was slim, thinner than his arm, and he was not meaty in any sense of the word, but like the thicker ones around it, it was tall. Studying its pale bark he spotted a second in equal distance from it that the original four kept, they were odd, but not anything he cared about for now. Turning back Cory called his brother’s name again.
After a short search through thickening foliage Cory reached a clearing, before it, hung into the low branch of a bush full of red berries was a short navy blue skirt. By its size Cory determined it must have belonged to a middle school student, one of Ethan’s class mates no doubt, torn by the stick it dangled from. He let his light gaze its burning eye across the open field, beyond it laid another thicket of pine and brush.
“I have your skirt!” He shouted picking up the discarded piece of clothing, “Unless you want to go home exposed come out now, or I’m taking it with me!” he waited. There was nothing, no sound, no movement, no breath.
In the middle of the patch of nothing where those trees again, endlessly tall, thin as bone, knobby and wooden, four in a set, spaced at equal intervals. Two in a pair a foot from each other, the coupled pair three or four feet apart from the other two. He tried to gaze up through the darkness but his lamp gazed into broken looking brown foliage without piercing it. Maybe one day when he didn’t fear for his brother or himself
he’d come out in the day and have a look at these things.
He marched uphill towards them, the beam of his light playing across the healthy green ground until it fell upon the blue and white ensemble resting in the dirt, caked in what appeared to be mud. The rest of the girls clothing lied in the middle of the trees, a matching white button blouse with blue edging, a familiar school uniform, knee socks, black dress shoes, a pair of white panties and a push-up bra. Who sent their middle school student in a bra meant to make her look bigger? It was disturbing; no wonder kids these days were getting pregnant at thirteen.
Cory threw the skirt onto the rest of it, scooping them up and stuffing them under his arm, “You’re in real big trouble now if I leave!” He shouted “No clothes, you’ll have to hoof it home nude!” he listened. There was nothing, the wind was dead today, but that didn’t stop a chill from crawling down his spine, sending gooseflesh across his arms. “Listen, bro! Be a man, come out, she doesn’t have to show herself, you can take her stuff back to her and I’ll never know who she was, I’m here for you, only you!”
The silence was deafening, he thought if he listened too long he’d go mad. Something shifted to his right, but he spied nothing on the ground, it was probably a small rodent coming out to see what the yelling was about. Cory left the odd set of trees behind and moved forward to the other side of the clearing, before he went into the woods again he glanced back, lights of the circular city below where still visible at this distant, meaning it’d easier to find his way back once he lost himself within the trees.
The pines swallowed him again, he had to squeeze through a few densely gathered ones until it opened to a finer, endless looking forest. Cory made his way through at a snail’s pace, aiming his light every which way for a sign of disturbance when he stumbled to his hands and knees after tripping over something soft and warm. Grimacing at the new cuts the rock and pine ground had torn into his hands, imagining the canvass he had spilled over were jeans belonging to the legs of his brother, he turned to see another of his brother’s belongings in wait instead, a blue duffle bag, the one he used for his camera.
Ethan had been a camera aficionado, since pre-k he had taped everything he could with a series of birthday gifted camcorders. He recorded nature most of the times, even delved into the paranormal as of late, convinced a ghost haunted there house. Had he moved further, into pornography, like those soft core pictures of classmates Cory found? If so the tapes, and there were many in the bag, would have to be destroyed, if anyone caught wind of an underage kid taping himself having sex with another his age Ethan would be jailed forever.
When Cory unzipped the sack there where two video cameras Cory did not recognize inside instead of his brothers, one’s side was scorched as if the battery and taken flame, the other’s lens was sliced off at a clean angle. He looked around, concerned evermore for his brother, “Ethan! Come on man! I found your stuff.”
As he now expected more silence greeted his calls, shouldering his brother’s bag and stuffing the girls clothing inside he zipped the bag before moving on. Despite the lack of any activity or disturbance in the area everything pointed to his brother moving in this direction, but why were they traveling with an undressed girl? Were they lost? Had she brought a change of clothes and forgotten her uniform? Was their group in actual trouble?
He passed another of those odd trees, not needing to look to verify there where others nearby, before he came into a second clearing.
This marked the end of the woods, the ground rose from here into a small treeless hill and rounded out a dozen yards above. The trek up wasn’t impossible, but it was steep enough it’d be difficult if he was to try it. Before he started Cory noticed another quad of those trees once again alone in the middle of the clearing. Below it something glowed, shining blue light upon their pale wood.
He ran over to and picked up his brothers shiny digital camera. Because it was digital there was no re-winding, he touched the open glowing screen, hit replay, the number zero, and it started from the start of its recordings. He skipped through b-roll footage of their home before it showed the group in a car. There appeared to be five, his brother was the unseen camera-man, there were two other guys with him in back, everyone wore dark clothing, carrying the cameras now in the bag, the time stamp showed the recording started at three past two in the afternoon.
“Are ya’ll ready?” His brother asked.
The Hispanic kid closer to him, Robert if Cory’s memory held, grinned while taping Ethan back, “Sure.” He said, then paused, “This isn’t some trick, you’re not going to have some dick dressed up in a suit waiting out there to scare us are you?”
His brother snorted, “No, my bro would be a good candidate, but no. This is to debunk the Slender Man myth. Charles, give us a rundown on the subject.”
The third kid with a camera, an overweight white kid, placed his camera in his lap and held up a notebook, “Originally called the Tall Man or the Man in Black,” he started, his words slushy under his full cheeks, “or the Der GrobBman, he is an ancient tale that stretches back to Germany, Britain, and Rome. A dark tree like boogeyman that steals children who wander into the woods. He was as recent as two thousand and nine termed Slender Man by a college kid who created two shopped pictures of him and started the new craze.” The kid stared at his camera, “you guys take over, I have to stop this old thing from acting up.”
The camera spun around at a dizzying speed, his brother’s young rosy face coming into focus, “We will go in, do what we can to… provoke the entity, take shots, and head home before dad gets pissed and sends Cory after me. Should you find this footage Cory, I’m likely dead, run for your life.” He laughed into the camera. As it spun back Cory noticed the girl in the front, the year younger red headed sister of Charles, a good friend of the group. The mystery man was the one driving, a man Cory didn’t recognize.
It cut to them at the entrance of the park, a metal bar blocking their way lit up by the car in which the older gentleman still sat, in the same dirt lot Cory had left his own car. There hadn’t been a car when he parked so the four could have made their way off. Robert held a pair of cutters, “Rule one to agitate Slendy, you have to trespass into an area that is wooded, though some said it’s better if you break and enter, we’ve decided to do both.” He snipped the chained lock, and it fell to the ground with a loud rattle, tossing the clippers to the side he pushed the small bar gateway open with his foot so they could walk in.
It cut to a scene of them moving into the first clearing, the sun lowered to the horizon, which meant it was about the time Cory had been entering the woods himself. Halfway across the girl stopped them, “I have to go.”
“Samantha” her brother moaned, “Really?”
The camera turned to eye the siblings, Samantha was giving her brother a hard look, then held out her hand to Ethan, “Paper please.” The camera swung around before it was back up, his brother handing the young girl a roll of toilet paper, “I’ll be quick, no taping.” She said winking at them. She was in their catholic school uniform but none of the boys where, meaning she stayed late at school and was picked up on the way there.
The footage cut out of focus, then back, it caught the girl running towards the group, her face drawn into a horrified grin, she was screaming nonsense, her dirtied panties in her hands, he couldn’t tell if the stains on the once white panties were mud, shit, or vomit. Nude from the waist down she pulled out of the rest of her clothes.
“The fuck!?” her brother shouted, “What’s wrong with you?”
There was a grunting sound Cory thought familiar and his brother spun tape to the woods before them, “Guy’s, something’s out there” the footage rolled and split, there repeated four times before it caught itself again. This was a glitch that shouldn’t have happened with this digital camera. “The fuck!?” Corey whispered, there was a quick glance of the young Samantha, nude and on her dirt caked knees, sobbing in the midst of the four odd trees from the clearing
where he had found her clothing, before Ethan turned and ran. There was a loud scream from behind them that became distanced and turned out into a squelch that became a defeated silence.
The footage rolled again and the next scene, though the footage appeared continuous, was deep within the second area of forest. “My sister!” his friend wailed, Robert and Ethan where also sobbing.
“What the fuck was that!?” Robert yelled, the stress in his voice evident, “Not fucking Slender Man that’s what!”
Ethan turned to his friends, he breathed in, trying to calm himself, but the footage still shook with his fear, “We have to move, get out of here.”
“To where!? Home is back towards that… thing!”
Ethan scanned the forest, “This way, on the other side of the hill is a shop.”
In the video it was dark, Cory would be moving through the first set of woods and soon would come across their friend’s dress. Or was it their late friend? Who was stalking them? Who was Samantha’s abductor? Why hadn’t he heard that scream?
Ethan walked over to Charles and pulled him to his feet, “We gotta move or your sister died for nothing,” he said in a voice both firm and compassionate.
The chubby boy nodded his head in understanding, holding his camera out in his hands in what seemed a desperate try to make his problems smaller, “I broke it,” and he had, the lens and neck cleanly broken off, missing.
“It’s ok, switch it off, you have the best footage of that thing so we’re going to put it in here,” he took it and put it somewhere at his side, the bag Cory now shouldered, “we gotta move.”
The group moved from the clearing, towards where he was now, minutes away he had been hot on their trail, by now he was picking her clothes up from under the trees, why hadn’t the three of them heard him? Why couldn’t he hear himself on the video yelling for his brother? How had the kidnapper avoided him while handling the young girl?
The footage continued for a while before Charles spoke, “I saw the thing coming, but I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. I could only watch, it’s as if the thing shut me off, turned off my mind’s ability to do what I needed it to do.”
Ethan reached over and patted his friends shoulder, but didn’t say a word. Cory filled with a sense of pride at how mature his brother was being. He felt like a heel for having even suggested thought he had been doing something wrong up here, other than trespassing.
The video rolled again, it went static, then blazed white before coming back, his brother was speeding through the forest, dashing over bushes and weaving in and out of trees “Oh fuck, I’m so sorry guys, so sorry. Oh Cory, Cory I love you,” the way his brother spoke sent chills and goose bumps up and down his arms again, he spoke like dying man, “Oh Cory I’m so sorry, fuck me, guys I’m so sorry.”
Forgotten in his hurry Ethan didn’t care to where it pointed, there where views of trees, his pants, the ground, and more trees, until he collapsed to the grass under a collection of tall trees within another clearing.
He knelt weeping and coughing, the latter caused by the trauma and forced cross country sprinting. Cory found himself unable to keep a dry eye watching his little brother.
The shot rose to point skyward and he noticed that Ethan now sat in the same patch of thin trees he now sat in, where he and his camera would part ways. He sat the camera on the ground with care, looking up towards his brother who knelt looking down at it, there was no night vision, his brother’s light was the only reason he could see him, his red eyes, the streams of tears down his face.
“I’m so sorry Cory,” he whispered, “but run.” As soon as he whispered this something came out of the dark, wooden and brindle in color, spiraled and coned like the spring end of decorative wind chimes, ending in a point. It took his brother in its coils, a toy caught in a slinky, and pulled him up into the darkness as he let out a soft cry of surprise.
There was a mushy smacking sound, something was chewing, and he noted the rain that was dripping onto the camera was red, the thing was eating his little brother. Cory felt the bottom of his stomach fall out of him as he realized that his brother was dying just out of sight. The camera would stay here until it he found and stopped it. He looked at the front, noting the droplets of blood for the first time upon its lens. Then he glanced around at the four trees he now sat under, wide eyed and understanding for the first time.
He heard it grunt, heard it move, and he did the only thing he could think of. Launching Ethan’s camera up, Cory sprang to his feet and ran, pushing off the bag to leave it behind, speeding away. He was lucky that the thing paid attention to his projectile before coming after him, but the grunt that sounded afterword was thick with frustration.
There was no sound of stomping feet, something that large he felt should have shaken the ground with each step and crashed through the other trees, but he sensed through the silence it was walking, bending on high horrible knees and closing in on him. He dodged for the woods, believing that the thing had trouble catching his brother while running within them because of its size. If he could gain ground in the trees and book it across the next clearing he might make it to his car.
Once in the forest he lost sense of it following, he wasn’t sure if that was because it wasn’t or because it looked the part of a tree, of the woods more so than any other animal. Another bird took flight, not that he took much notice as he passed through. He was into the original clearing in moments, the four other trees where gone, and he hoofed it, his legs burning, his lungs aching, sure he was holding his breath but unable to make himself breathe, remaining on the verge of fainting. Passing into the next leg of thick foliage, his vision faded, grew, and faded again, but he never stopped pushing.
Though he wondered if he was running or if his mind ran mad as it staid still and numb. What if he was below the thing, curled up into a fetal position, awaiting his death, maybe already being mashed into bits to be swallowed behind jaws he imagined where as human as it’s voice, with flat grinding teeth?
Then hope, a pair of lights in the distance, car lights, not his own but another’s. He exited the woods, down the hill, and gaped at who he saw, the driver from the video. He eyeballed and swooped low to pick up the bolt cutters from the grass, making for the man who was standing beside his car.
The stranger drew a gun and stopped him in his tracks, “Drop your weapon! I’m an officer of the law and you have just made a federal offense!”
Cory gasped in his breath, he found he could cry now he was in company, “You’re a cop!? What cop sends kids to the middle of the forest at night with no parent supervision, where the fuck where you!?”
The guy lowered his weapon, “What? Who are you? What happened?”
“They’re dead!” Cory wailed, dropping the pair of bolt cutters in his angst.
The cops face went ashen, “My Robert?” he whispered.
Before he could answer, Cory could feel it. It was upon them, watching this scene play out, dinner and theater. He eyed the cutters he dropped, there was no time to grab them with the thing near buy, it’d have him, it always had the ones that knelt. He booked it, causing Robert’s father to aim again, “Stop where you are!”
Cory ignored him, “In the car! In the car! In the fucking car!” he screamed skirting around the cop, he noticed it was one of those dark undercover cruisers, with hidden lights but no gate in the back, not made to handle prisoner transport. Once inside Robert’s father clambered into the driver’s seat.
“What’s going on?! You’re Cory right? Where’s Robert? Where is your brother?”
The spiral wooden like appendage slammed into the car’s hood crumpling it and withdrew, the cop shouted in surprise, pausing for a second before he tried his car, it wouldn’t turn over, “What the hell!?”
“The tall thin trees, shoot them!”
Robert’s dad drew his thick silver hand cannon again and fired out his open side window at the four trees which appeared at the edge of the forest, one of three shots hit
home, the hole spat out something clear, and the thing did another of its grunts followed by a clicking growl. The top of the car began to get beaten in, the windshield exploded, the legs of the beast where all of a sudden on all sides, as if the four had sprouted from the pavement instead of walked over to be on top of them. The ceiling peeled back in a flash and was taken, the cop shot up at the darkness. Something sticky and sweet smelling like sap rained down upon them.
Suddenly the officer flew into the air with the grasp of the wooden spiral appendage and then fell hitting the damaged hood of his cruiser with an “oof!” and a metal crunch before rolling off onto the dirt road. The thing stumbled to the side, bending at joints too high for Cory to see.
It made a deep weeping sound that mixed with its usual grunt, turning towards the woods, its stump feet trailing root like toes. Its weeping continued until it reached the trees and vanished from sight, there was a crash of brush, then silence.
Cory climbed out of the now roofless vehicle and over the hood to help the cop to his feet, the officer’s eyes were red and filling with tears, “That thing took them?” Corry nodded, too full of adrenalin mired shock to resume his own mourning “is there any way out of here?”
“My Car,” he pointed his nose to the parked white Mercury Cougar, “should we leave? I saw a video, I know the girl and my brother are dead, it doesn’t show your son or his other friend dying. They could still be out there.”
The cop held his ribs, “I don’t have that much fire power if I didn’t kill it. We need to gather a group, an armed group, before we go for a look.” Placing a hand on Cory’s shoulder, panting in pain with a grimace, “I’m sorry about your brother.”
The image of the thing chewing his brother, with flat teeth he never saw but knew it had in a human jaw, was something he thought he’d never get out of his mind. Without a word he helped the officer to his car, not sure he’d join the search party, or ever leave home again.
