Why is he here? In this house, so empty, so silent, with his Yorkie, Kip curled by his feet. He is lying in a bed, white sheet on white sheets. He sits up, sees something move on the opposite side of the room, and starts, making Kip growl slightly. He sees it was only his reflection in a mirror. He looks around the room, taking in the clean white walls, the swept floor.
He tries to remember why he’s here, the fight comes back, the screams of his parents, as he cowers in his closet, squeezing Kip to his face. Finally, he had leapt up, sprinted past his parents and out the door. He’s not sure if they even saw him. He had run, and run, finally stopping by the abandoned house downtown, ignoring the childish voice inside that said, ‘everyone says its haunted’. He had peered in the window, and seen that the inside was clean, the walls a fresh white, the floors newly swept. He had crawled in this bed, the sheets new and clean, and slept.
He patted Kip. ‘It’ll be ok.’ He caught another glimpse of movement in the mirror. He looked up, something was moving on the wall. He squinted at the mirror. It was a crab. A brown and red speckled crab the size of his hand. He whipped his head up, looking at the wall. There was no crab, crabs couldn’t climb walls anyway. He shook his head. Stupid ghost stories. ‘It’s ‘cause a crab selling guy disappeared by this house. Mom said it once, and my subconnie-whatchamacallit remembered and seen a crab.’ He stroked Kip again.
He felt something move near his knee. He moved the sheets away, and there was the crab, scuttling across the sheet towards the edge of the bed. He squealed with revulsion and flapped the sheet, flinging the crab across the room. It hit the floor and began creeping towards him again. Kip began to bark, his high-pitched yipping echoing in the room. . .which was changing.
The crisp white walls were turning yellow, then brown, the paint peeling, the floor began to accumulate dust, the crab was wading in dust by the time we was half-way across the room. And the sheet- the boy screams, it is covered in bugs, all shapes and sizes, and crabs, those disgusting mottled crabs, and other creatures so disgusting his panicking mind can’t put a name to them. He leaps from the bed, Kip is already gone.
‘Kip!’ he cried, and heard the dog’s frightened yip. Somehow, Kip has gotten into the bathtub, in a small bathroom off the now crumbling bedroom. The fixtures are flaking with rust, a shattered bulb hangs from the ceiling. And something dropped from the bathtub tap. The boy edges closer, trying to see his dog. Another shape drops from the tap, and another. He peers into the tub and sees his poor dog struggling against dozens of snakes. They are wrapped around the small, furry body, their fangs deep in his skin. The dog’s struggles weaken, and his eyes begin to turn glassy. The boy screams, fleeing down the hall. The house is awful, pipes jut from walls like bones, wires hang like moss, the walls have crumbled in places, showing the lattice inside. The door, where’s the door?!
He turns a corner, and there he sees two figures. He recognizes them immediately.
‘Mommy! Daddy!’ he cries, and runs to them, his fear of them is great, but the fear of this house is greater. He throws his arms around his mother. ‘I’m so scared!’ He sobs.
‘Don’t be afraid, dear. None of these things can hurt you. They’re all someone’s fears. You can’t get hurt by someone else’s fears. The crab man was scared of crabs, he’d seen them all day for years, and he grew to loathe them, so only his crabs could hurt him.’ His mother rubs his back soothing. ‘Kip was scared of snakes, remember when he got bitten?’
‘So only my greatest fear can hurt me?’ The boy says, ‘Then what-’ He tries to pull back, but it’s too late, his mother’s hands have clamped around his neck.
‘Stay, darling.’ She whispers, but her voice has changed, and her breath stinks of rotting meat. Her skin changes, becomes putrid, ‘I’m ever so hungry.’
*Heeheehee, this is a giant nostalgia bomb for me. I wrote it when I was 13! I found an old CD of stuff I wrote back in high school, most of which sent me into cringes so hard my eyebrows broke, but this one wasn't too terrible for 13. I'm pretty sure it was the first scary story I ever wrote...
Monday, June 6, 2011
What Are Friends For?
My friend John asked me to help him move into his new house. He asked if I could stay a few days, help him get his stuff in and sort through the old owner’s stuff that had been left behind. He asked me because I’m one of those people who can’t say no when a friend asks for a favor.
“Of course.” I answered. “What are friends for?”
The place freaked me out from the moment I laid eyes on it. It was at the end of a long winding driveway that ran through the woods, one of those 1960’s modern jobs, with angles and glass and strange little 5 step staircases all over the place.
“Why would you buy such a butt ugly thing?” I asked he parked the rental van next to my car. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, and it looks like something out of ‘A Clockwork Orange’.”
“The owners died, no relatives, so it was dirt cheap, and it came with all the furnishings.” He replied.
“If there’s a big rocking penis sculpture in there, I call shotgun.” I said, and we laughed as we walked up to the front door. He unlocked the door and proudly swung it open.
I tried to smile and praise the place, it was his first house, and he was really excited. But my guts turned to lead as soon as I stepped inside. It was like the air inside was pressing down on me. The furniture was a mish-mash of old Victorian stuff and 60’s “modern” plastic. Most of the plastic stuff was a sick flesh color. And the way the house was laid out was just bizarre. Instead of the central hallway running from one end of the house to the other, it spiraled inward, with rooms branching off in odd places, leading into a small guest bedroom at the center of the house. That was the strangest room in the house to me, there was some kind of religious shrine against the wall opposite the bed, with dried flowers glued to the wall in layers over a side table littered with candles and a wooden box the size of a toaster oven.
After my tour, we began unloading the truck. We piled his boxes in the living room and kitchen, and decided to start going through the bedrooms and load the truck up with all the stuff he didn’t want. We would start in the first bedrooms and spiral our way to the middle. Most of it was junk, boxes of old letters written in German or Polish or something, old pictures of the last couple to own the house. They were both short, fat and mean-eyed. There pictures of six different kids, but only up until they were toddlers.
I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor, and something about the carpet grossed me out. It was old shag carpeting, a dirty red color, but it felt grimy, sticky like a movie theatre floor. I told John to either have it steamed to death or to replace it.
“Really? Why?” He rubbed his hand on it.
“Ug, doesn’t it gross you out?”
“No.” He gave me a weird look and went back to sorting. I noticed that he was spending more time looking at the old pictures and letters than I was, even pulling some out of the garbage bag I’d been filling.
“Why are you looking at those? You don’t even speak German or whatever it is.”
“They’re interesting. It’s someone else’s life.”
“Well, if you keep screwing around looking at old photos of some ugly old people, we’ll be here for the rest of our lives.”
He gave me another look, this one kind of pissed, and I sighed.
“I’m going for a smoke.” I got up, stretched and went back to the living room. The floor to ceiling windows were dark, reflecting myself back from the light of the hallway. I found the switch and flipped it on, and now the window was a mirror of the living room. It was kind of freaky, seeing myself, but not knowing if there was someone outside, looking in. There weren’t any curtains or blinds, and I made a note to tell John to get some. I found a switch for the outside light and flicked it on, opening the door slowly and peeking out. Nothing but trees. This place was getting to me something awful.
I smoked my cigarette slowly, not wanting to go back into the house. Something moved in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly, and saw a cat, lurking just outside of the circle of light thrown by the patio light bulb.
“Here, kitty, kitty.” I bent down, rubbing my fingers together and making that “Psss, psss, psss” sound. The cat just walked around the circle of light, meowing softly. The meow sounded wrong, like the cat was meowing into a hollow gourd. I’m a big cat softie, so I moved closer, thinking the poor thing might be hurt.
I was still bent over, with my hand outstretched, when it turned to face me. The left half of it’s face was a ruin, the skin peeled away, the eye gorged out. It meowed again, and it’s mouth opened far too wide, like a snake unhinging it’s jaw. Blood began to run from its ears and mouth. Its remaining eye fell from the socket and hit the ground with a plop. I screamed, backing away and clawing for the door. I managed to get it open and still shrieking, scrambled in and slammed it shut.
I stumbled down the hall, screaming for John. When I burst into the bedroom, he looked up from the photos he’d been looking at.
“What the hells gotten into you?” He said calmly.
“Didn’t you hear me screaming? There’s some kind of messed up cat outside! It’s bleeding and it’s eyes fell out! Right on your patio!”
He shrugged. “A coyote probably got it.” And went back to the box of papers he was sorting through.
“Are you listening to me? There’s a mutilated cat outside!” I was crying now, I couldn’t believe he was just sitting there looking through papers he couldn’t even read.
“Fine.” He snapped and threw the papers back in the box. “You want me to go look at a torn up cat? Fine. I will.” He pushed past me, slamming my shoulder into the door as he did.
“What’s wrong with you?” I yelled.
“You’re the one who wants me to watch some poor animal die!” He yelled back, and yanked the front door open. He stood looking out, then turned back to me. “This is sick.”
“I told you, it came up to me and-” I stopped next to him, looking out the door. There was a cat on the patio, but it had been dead for a while. Maggots crawled in and out of the patched remains of its fur. “That wasn’t there, John. We walked across this patio 50 times today, bringing in your boxes.”
“Did you put it there?”
“No! How could I? If you tried to pick that up, it would fall apart!”
“Whatever. We must not have seen it earlier.”
“How could we miss it? We would have had to step over it!” I was beyond scared, and getting panicked. “I’m going home.”
“Well, gee thanks for the help.” He snapped. “I guess this is what friends are for.”
“Come with me. There’s something really wrong here.”
“Screw you.” He said and slammed the door shut behind me. A second later, the patio light went off.
I ran towards my car, leaping over the cat, trying to dig my car keys out of my pocket as I ran. I kept jamming down the unlock button, making the woods seem to leer and reach towards me as the parking lights flashed on and off. Finally I reached the car, slammed the door behind me and locked the doors. It took me a full minute to get the key into the ignition, it kept straying off to the side and scraping across the dashboard. I finally got them in and burned rubber reversing, almost slamming into the moving van trying to turn around.
I forced myself to slow down on the driveway, it was narrow and winding, and I did not want to get wrapped around a tree out here. Suddenly there was something in the middle of the road. I slammed on my brakes, stopping less than 10 feet from a large, dirty pig. It stood on the cracked asphalt, nosing the air with its snout and making soft pig noises.
“What the fu-” I began, when the pig reared up, squealing madly. It stood on its hind legs, pawing at the air with its front hooves. A red line began to trace down its belly, and suddenly split open, slipping the pig’s guts onto the pavement. Screaming, I smashed my foot down on the gas, swerving around the pig, which was still trashing around on its hind legs.
I got home late, and spent the rest of the night in my bed, curled up and crying. I tried to call John’s cell dozens of times but got no answer. I managed a few hours of sleep, but kept being awakened by nightmares where the pig danced and jerked in my headlights while its guts and blood ran out onto the asphalt.
I called some of our other friends, but none of them could get through to John either. I was worried sick, and ashamed I’d left him out there, so I got 2 of my biggest, brawniest friends to drive back out to his house with me. There was no pig in the driveway, but the cat was still festering on the patio. We knocked and knocked, but he didn’t answer. We walked around the side of the house, to see if we could see him through one of the big windows. Around back there was a pool full of dark, filthy water. On the cracked concrete next to the later was the rotting, gutted remains of a pig. We went back to the car and left. I called the police from my cell phone.
They found the remains of hundreds of animals on the property around the house. Most of them had been mutilated in some way, then left to rot where they lay. In the wooden box in the strange center bedroom they found the skeletons of 6 toddlers. By translating and reading some of the letters in the house, they discovered that the couple who owned the house had had 6 children. They’d had parties on each child’s third birthday, inviting a select group of their friends from Germany. At the party the child was killed and eaten. The cops tried to trace the letters, to find their friends in Germany, but they never did.
They never found John, either. I’m still ashamed and sad that I left him there that night. But I’m glad I left. God knows where he went to. I’ve drifted away from most of my other friends, too. They think I’m depressed over John. But honestly, I’m scared that one of them will ask me for a favor. Like helping them move. Because I’m the sort of person who can’t say no. Because, really, what are friends for?
*This was actually the (much) embellished version of some spooky shit that happened to me in 2 different modern architecture houses. One that my friend had just moved into and one that I cleaned when I used to work for Merry Maids. I am NOT a fan of that style, those houses ruined it for me, and now I think all those angles and glass are sinister as fuck.
“Of course.” I answered. “What are friends for?”
The place freaked me out from the moment I laid eyes on it. It was at the end of a long winding driveway that ran through the woods, one of those 1960’s modern jobs, with angles and glass and strange little 5 step staircases all over the place.
“Why would you buy such a butt ugly thing?” I asked he parked the rental van next to my car. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, and it looks like something out of ‘A Clockwork Orange’.”
“The owners died, no relatives, so it was dirt cheap, and it came with all the furnishings.” He replied.
“If there’s a big rocking penis sculpture in there, I call shotgun.” I said, and we laughed as we walked up to the front door. He unlocked the door and proudly swung it open.
I tried to smile and praise the place, it was his first house, and he was really excited. But my guts turned to lead as soon as I stepped inside. It was like the air inside was pressing down on me. The furniture was a mish-mash of old Victorian stuff and 60’s “modern” plastic. Most of the plastic stuff was a sick flesh color. And the way the house was laid out was just bizarre. Instead of the central hallway running from one end of the house to the other, it spiraled inward, with rooms branching off in odd places, leading into a small guest bedroom at the center of the house. That was the strangest room in the house to me, there was some kind of religious shrine against the wall opposite the bed, with dried flowers glued to the wall in layers over a side table littered with candles and a wooden box the size of a toaster oven.
After my tour, we began unloading the truck. We piled his boxes in the living room and kitchen, and decided to start going through the bedrooms and load the truck up with all the stuff he didn’t want. We would start in the first bedrooms and spiral our way to the middle. Most of it was junk, boxes of old letters written in German or Polish or something, old pictures of the last couple to own the house. They were both short, fat and mean-eyed. There pictures of six different kids, but only up until they were toddlers.
I spent a lot of time sitting on the floor, and something about the carpet grossed me out. It was old shag carpeting, a dirty red color, but it felt grimy, sticky like a movie theatre floor. I told John to either have it steamed to death or to replace it.
“Really? Why?” He rubbed his hand on it.
“Ug, doesn’t it gross you out?”
“No.” He gave me a weird look and went back to sorting. I noticed that he was spending more time looking at the old pictures and letters than I was, even pulling some out of the garbage bag I’d been filling.
“Why are you looking at those? You don’t even speak German or whatever it is.”
“They’re interesting. It’s someone else’s life.”
“Well, if you keep screwing around looking at old photos of some ugly old people, we’ll be here for the rest of our lives.”
He gave me another look, this one kind of pissed, and I sighed.
“I’m going for a smoke.” I got up, stretched and went back to the living room. The floor to ceiling windows were dark, reflecting myself back from the light of the hallway. I found the switch and flipped it on, and now the window was a mirror of the living room. It was kind of freaky, seeing myself, but not knowing if there was someone outside, looking in. There weren’t any curtains or blinds, and I made a note to tell John to get some. I found a switch for the outside light and flicked it on, opening the door slowly and peeking out. Nothing but trees. This place was getting to me something awful.
I smoked my cigarette slowly, not wanting to go back into the house. Something moved in the corner of my eye. I turned quickly, and saw a cat, lurking just outside of the circle of light thrown by the patio light bulb.
“Here, kitty, kitty.” I bent down, rubbing my fingers together and making that “Psss, psss, psss” sound. The cat just walked around the circle of light, meowing softly. The meow sounded wrong, like the cat was meowing into a hollow gourd. I’m a big cat softie, so I moved closer, thinking the poor thing might be hurt.
I was still bent over, with my hand outstretched, when it turned to face me. The left half of it’s face was a ruin, the skin peeled away, the eye gorged out. It meowed again, and it’s mouth opened far too wide, like a snake unhinging it’s jaw. Blood began to run from its ears and mouth. Its remaining eye fell from the socket and hit the ground with a plop. I screamed, backing away and clawing for the door. I managed to get it open and still shrieking, scrambled in and slammed it shut.
I stumbled down the hall, screaming for John. When I burst into the bedroom, he looked up from the photos he’d been looking at.
“What the hells gotten into you?” He said calmly.
“Didn’t you hear me screaming? There’s some kind of messed up cat outside! It’s bleeding and it’s eyes fell out! Right on your patio!”
He shrugged. “A coyote probably got it.” And went back to the box of papers he was sorting through.
“Are you listening to me? There’s a mutilated cat outside!” I was crying now, I couldn’t believe he was just sitting there looking through papers he couldn’t even read.
“Fine.” He snapped and threw the papers back in the box. “You want me to go look at a torn up cat? Fine. I will.” He pushed past me, slamming my shoulder into the door as he did.
“What’s wrong with you?” I yelled.
“You’re the one who wants me to watch some poor animal die!” He yelled back, and yanked the front door open. He stood looking out, then turned back to me. “This is sick.”
“I told you, it came up to me and-” I stopped next to him, looking out the door. There was a cat on the patio, but it had been dead for a while. Maggots crawled in and out of the patched remains of its fur. “That wasn’t there, John. We walked across this patio 50 times today, bringing in your boxes.”
“Did you put it there?”
“No! How could I? If you tried to pick that up, it would fall apart!”
“Whatever. We must not have seen it earlier.”
“How could we miss it? We would have had to step over it!” I was beyond scared, and getting panicked. “I’m going home.”
“Well, gee thanks for the help.” He snapped. “I guess this is what friends are for.”
“Come with me. There’s something really wrong here.”
“Screw you.” He said and slammed the door shut behind me. A second later, the patio light went off.
I ran towards my car, leaping over the cat, trying to dig my car keys out of my pocket as I ran. I kept jamming down the unlock button, making the woods seem to leer and reach towards me as the parking lights flashed on and off. Finally I reached the car, slammed the door behind me and locked the doors. It took me a full minute to get the key into the ignition, it kept straying off to the side and scraping across the dashboard. I finally got them in and burned rubber reversing, almost slamming into the moving van trying to turn around.
I forced myself to slow down on the driveway, it was narrow and winding, and I did not want to get wrapped around a tree out here. Suddenly there was something in the middle of the road. I slammed on my brakes, stopping less than 10 feet from a large, dirty pig. It stood on the cracked asphalt, nosing the air with its snout and making soft pig noises.
“What the fu-” I began, when the pig reared up, squealing madly. It stood on its hind legs, pawing at the air with its front hooves. A red line began to trace down its belly, and suddenly split open, slipping the pig’s guts onto the pavement. Screaming, I smashed my foot down on the gas, swerving around the pig, which was still trashing around on its hind legs.
I got home late, and spent the rest of the night in my bed, curled up and crying. I tried to call John’s cell dozens of times but got no answer. I managed a few hours of sleep, but kept being awakened by nightmares where the pig danced and jerked in my headlights while its guts and blood ran out onto the asphalt.
I called some of our other friends, but none of them could get through to John either. I was worried sick, and ashamed I’d left him out there, so I got 2 of my biggest, brawniest friends to drive back out to his house with me. There was no pig in the driveway, but the cat was still festering on the patio. We knocked and knocked, but he didn’t answer. We walked around the side of the house, to see if we could see him through one of the big windows. Around back there was a pool full of dark, filthy water. On the cracked concrete next to the later was the rotting, gutted remains of a pig. We went back to the car and left. I called the police from my cell phone.
They found the remains of hundreds of animals on the property around the house. Most of them had been mutilated in some way, then left to rot where they lay. In the wooden box in the strange center bedroom they found the skeletons of 6 toddlers. By translating and reading some of the letters in the house, they discovered that the couple who owned the house had had 6 children. They’d had parties on each child’s third birthday, inviting a select group of their friends from Germany. At the party the child was killed and eaten. The cops tried to trace the letters, to find their friends in Germany, but they never did.
They never found John, either. I’m still ashamed and sad that I left him there that night. But I’m glad I left. God knows where he went to. I’ve drifted away from most of my other friends, too. They think I’m depressed over John. But honestly, I’m scared that one of them will ask me for a favor. Like helping them move. Because I’m the sort of person who can’t say no. Because, really, what are friends for?
*This was actually the (much) embellished version of some spooky shit that happened to me in 2 different modern architecture houses. One that my friend had just moved into and one that I cleaned when I used to work for Merry Maids. I am NOT a fan of that style, those houses ruined it for me, and now I think all those angles and glass are sinister as fuck.
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