by Pete Kahle
Jon covered his son’s eyes and thought of the number three, and counted too many men.
He grabbed Aidan and turned to the approaching men.
“Get back!”
He inched his way to the stairs as the men looked on. The creature dropped the obese man with a thud and turned towards them. “You seek to escape us, Jon? You seek a way out of the nightmare?”
Jon shot it twice, both bullets hitting the face.
“I am not made of flesh, Jon.” Always speaking with an indrawn breath, always the words like piano wire pulled through the spine. The lights dimmed as it spoke. It then took its hands down and dropped two bullets onto the cement floor where they made a little tinkling noise. “And your bullets cannot hurt me. I am made of men’s darkest desires, the secret lust, and I cannot be killed.”
Jon shot and shot again but the gun clicked empty so he threw it into the crowd of men and ran. He ran upstairs, gripping Aidan and he ran into the outside air leaving hope and sanity in the basement.
Together they ran to the car. Before getting in, Jon examined Aidan, patting him down. “Are you hurt?”
Aidan didn’t answer. His eyes were unfocused, staring off into the distance. Jon hugged Aidan, held him close and hated himself for getting him into that, pulling him down into his world. After a long while, he opened the car and help Aidan in. He called 911, throwing frantic glances at the house in case the remaining men come out.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Yes, this is detective Jon Stefansson. I need assistance at 312 Heather’s Lane. My house has been invaded, shots fired. The men are still inside along with….”
“Along with what, sir?”
“Just send someone!”
They sat there in silence for a while, only them and the patter of rain falling on the car. Jon’s ragged breathing, Aidan’s sobs. The screech of windshield wipers.
The street they lived on was every-town normal. Lawns in front of houses, though perhaps more of them were unkempt and overgrown than in other towns. A house down the street was boarded up, but kids would ride their bikes gleefully down the street without a worry, people washed their cars in the driveways and smiled at passing neighbors. It felt like the whole town was doing a balancing act, trying to be normal but at risk of falling. Like someone was watching them, judging their normality.
The rain pattered on the roof of the car. Finally police cars arrived, lights on but no sirens.
“Stay in the car,” Jon said to Aidan.
He walked out and greeted the officers, one of whom was Grode, the young officer he had spoken to outside Hendlsey’s house.
“Detective,” he said as way of greeting.
“Officer Grode,” Jon said, and read his name off the uniform, just to be sure. “The house, the basement….” He couldn’t get the words out. There was too much to say, so little of it he believed. Images of men he knew to be dead, lit up in the flash of gunfire and a monster spurring them on.
“Detective,” Grode said. “We got a report of shots fired, are you all right?”
“More men. You need more men.”
“What?” Grode asked. He looked at the house and back at Jon.
“Get more fucking men here!” Jon yelled. “The house is full of them. Arrest them, shoot them, I don’t care.” He knew then that he would never enter the house again. He strode over to the car, got back in and drove off to the station.
# # #
Back at the station, Jon hugged Aidan close. “Are you sure you’re unhurt?” he asked.
“They didn’t hurt me, they just…. It was like worms all over my skin. Like I was in the ground and worms were crawling over me, looking for a way in.”
Jon had called ahead and explained what had happened, initiated a trauma-response team for Aidan.
“This is Shawnee,” he said later and introduced the social counselor. “She’s going to talk to you about what happened. Mom will be here soon to pick you up, ok?”
Aidan said nothing. Aidan wasn’t there anymore.
“Aidan, she’s going to talk to you, and then mom will be here. I need to talk to the other policemen and tell them what happened. I’ll be back, okay?”
Nothing.
Shawnee, slim and serious, put an arm around Aidan. “He’ll be fine, Officer.”
Jon had already explained to her what happened in the basement, and protocol dictated that Aidan get trauma counseling right away.
“I have a report to file,” he said and walked away.
# # #
Later, he sat across from Grode and another officer in one of the rooms of the station. Cheap venetian blinds over windows looking into the station itself. A desk and uncomfortable chairs, along with police-issue coffee.
“Could you tell us, Detective Stefansson, exactly what happened in your home tonight?”
Jon didn’t much care for the way he was being questioned. There had been nothing in his house, no one in the basement. Or so they said.
He told them what had happened, again. A recorder on the desk between them listened and remembered. When Jon finished talking, Grode reached over and stopped the tape.
“Are you okay, Jon? Have you been seeing a psychiatrist lately?”
“What?”
He leaned back and gave Jon a look of sympathy. Condescending prick.
“There was no one in your house.”
“Just ask Aidan, he knows.”
“Your son isn’t talking, Detective.”
“Well, he’ll talk and he’ll tell you,” Jon said. “Look, where is he?”
Grode sat up and his partner, a fresh-faced new recruit trying to grow a mustache, stood up.
“What is this?”
“The counselor wants more time with Aidan. You are not to talk to him until she says okay.”
“What? I can’t see my son?” Jon stood up and made for the door.
“Sit down, Detective,” Grode said.
“Fuck you,” Jon said.
“Detective Stefansson,” Grode said and something in his voice made Jon stop.
“What?”
“Your basement, it… it wasn’t completely empty.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well. There was nothing in there that indicated anyone had broken into your house, and nothing to indicate any altercation had taken place in the basement. In fact, it looked like any suburban basement, full of boxes of stuff no one is going to use again. With one exception.”
Jon looked at Grode. He walked back and sat down.
“Well?” Jon said.
“Fifteen bullets, and a stack of CDs. The bullets were placed in a circle on top of the stack of CDs. Turns out, it was recordings of interviews you conducted with Tobin. Interviews with guys arrested on charges of child molestation.”
Jon felt a chill.
Grode placed a gun on the table. “Is this your weapon, Detective?”
Jon looked at the gun. “Yes, I think it is.”
“You forgot it at your house,” Grode said and looked away for a second. He was doing Jon an enormous favor, not filing the weapon as evidence or having him go through the paperwork of getting the gun reissued.
“Tobin is looking over the recordings right now,” Grode said.
Jon stood up and walked to the door. As he was about to leave, Grode said “We may want to talk to you again.”
# # #
Jon met Tobin in the evidence room. The same one he had been in a few hours before. Tobin looked gaunt and shell-shocked, as if he had just been pulled out of a WWI trench and put into a detective’s cheap suit and tie.
“I found something, Jon. I found something. Or maybe not, maybe I’m just losing it and seeing things.” He spoke too fast, words delivered in a rush.
He directed Jon towards a laptop computer on the desk.
“It’s our interviews, all of them, including us interrogating Kincaid. How the hell did someone get a hold of this?”
Kincaid was the C
liffside child killer. After a long case they had arrested Kincaid and freed two boys from his house. It was hailed as a victory in the media but Jon just wondered if they could have saved more if they had caught him sooner.
“And?” Jon asked. He was looking at the grainy fish-eye recording from the interview room camera. Jon and Tobin sitting across from an obese man. Jon looked young, almost wet behind the ears. Eager to do society a service by putting men like that behind bars.
That case had really killed something inside him, wiped out whatever faith he had left in humanity. He longer had that look… that hunger.
Tobin was biting his nails. Scratching the backs of his hands. “You have to tell me if you see it, Jon. You have to tell me.”
“See what?”
But Tobin didn’t answer, just gestured with his hand to the screen. Jon looked on.
“How many boys have you kept at your house?” Jon watched himself ask in the interrogation room all those years ago.
“They were cold. I… they were just cold,” was the answer.
“Kincaid,” Jon watched himself say in the interview room. He remembered wanting to jump across the table and punch him in the face. “We have evidence that proves at least five other boys have been in your house. Hell, we have two kids in the hospital right now who are going to tell us everything you did. If you cooperate, I might be able to get you into a nicer prison, where you’ll be safe.”
It was a lie, of course. Pedophiles were never safe in prison, an unspoken but well-known and accepted part of their punishment.
And then Jon saw it. Standing behind Tobin and Jon in the interrogation room recording. Tall and otherworldly, holding its oversized hands over its eyes. “They lie,” it said, with that awful indrawn-way of speaking. It was right there, standing so it could have touched Jon and Tobin if it wanted.
“It’s here!” Kincaid said and tried to push away from the table.
On the screen, in that room all those years ago, Jon and Tobin hadn’t turned, but had maintained their focus on Kincaid.
“What the fuck, Tobin?” Jon asked. Tobin kept biting his nails. He was staring at the screen without blinking, eyes sunken and skin pale and lifeless, like an unlit candle.
“You see it Jon, you see it?”
Jon had no answer.
“It’s on all the tapes. It’s on all of them. It’s been watching us all this time.”
“You did well,” the thing was saying to Kincaid on the tape, talking over Jon and Tobin’s questions. “You will be fine. You did as I asked and you shall be fine. The children are with me now.”
It took its hands away from its face, revealing the compound insect-like eyes. It placed a hand on each of Jon and Tobin’s shoulders.
Jon stood up and backed away from the screen.
It was there. It had been with them in that interrogation room and, according to Tobin, it was on all the tapes. Jon couldn’t make himself watch any more.
His mind couldn’t cope.
If that thing was real, and it could go where it wanted, how would they fight it? A light Jon had been holding against the world went out, the light that kept him going, kept him in the force all these years, a small hope that he was having an impact. Crushed.
And then something came to him, just like that. The light had gone out in him, he knew that, but it had been replaced by something else.
A dark and final thought. Something the monster had said in the basement.
# # #
Jon stood and looked into his reflection in the water. He was standing at the edge of the town’s reservoir, a small body of water sitting in the hills above the town. It was fenced in and the water fed into a purification plant that cleared out debris and killed bacteria. He looked at his reflection in the still water, in the early morning light, a tall man with dead eyes, all hope and stability gone from them.
The reservoir fed right into the town’s water supply. Anything that went in there would come out in the taps and the shower-heads.
The sun was about to come up and for once it wasn’t raining. Had it rained this much when he was a kid? A few days ago he had felt like he had a hold on things. If he could just capture enough of the men, he would have done something for the town. Done something with his life.
Recent events had rid him of that idea.
He opened the first box.
It took some work but he convinced Lisa in the end. She had access to all the medication in the world, including the stuff they gave to convicted child molesters. He told her it would be used by half-way houses around the country for years to come, to help the men enter society again, to be productive while suppressing the worst urges. Lisa saw through him, recognized the lie for what it was.
“Look Jon,” she had said. “I never gave this to you.” She had that look, the look that said this was one of those promises he not break. He’d seen that look a few times and only broken a ‘that look’ promise once. Once was all it had taken to end the marriage. “But if this will help stop someone, I’m all for it.”
Inside each of the boxes was a litter of small bottles. Chemical castration was an extreme measure, considered on the verge of being cruel and unusual punishment. It took away your personality and made you sick. Lisa would figure it out of course, but by then it would be too late for her to do anything and too much at stake for her to say anything, to anyone. She’d just drink bottled water from now on.
A fly buzzed by his ear as he opened the first bottle and turned it over and let the thick liquid drip lazily into the water. Then he opened the next one. And the next one.
He’d make the whole town sick, he knew that. He’d make them sick and he’d cure them all. He’d kill the monster.
He’d fix everything.
Johann Thorsson is a native of cold, dark Iceland who spent his youth in Israel and Croatia. He writes regular features about books for Bookriot.com and his short stories have been published in number of magazines, both in English and in Icelandic. He is currently working on a novel. Johann can be found online at jthorsson.com and on Twitter as @johannthors
Lorelei
By Logan Noble
From the moment he set his eyes on that doll, Lewis hated it. It was a petite porcelain caricature of a little girl. The thing made his skin crawl. It was one of the worst dolls he’d ever seen, and Doris had some really creepy dolls. This doll was dressed in a little blouse like the one that Dorothy wore in the Wizard of Oz, complete with the worn blue fabric and white scattered dots.
Lewis crouched down, grunting as his knees cracked. His body wasn’t what it used to be. Lewis almost chuckled out loud. That was for sure. He’d played baseball in high school, back when he could have taken a cleat to the head and kept moving. As Bob Dylan said, the times are a changin’. That had been a good forty years ago. He’d been married to Doris for half that time. “Le-e-e-e-ewissssssss!” Lewis winced as his wife called for him from across the shop. Lewis took a final glance at the hideous doll before standing up to greet Doris.
Doris, who, when they had first tied the knot, had weighed in at a skinny and slender 125 pounds of curves, a beautiful woman in every way. Twenty years later, she now tipped the scales at a little over 250 pounds. Lewis forced a smile as she waddled over. Part of her giant side hit a display of stuffed animals, which tumbled to the floor, their plastic eyes staring on blindly as they squeaked to the floor. Today, his wife had elected to wear a bright blue shawl, one that made her look like a colossal blueberry.
“Lewis! Isn’t this little shop just wonderful? Who would have thought a place like this would be so full of treasures?” She exclaimed.
She paused in her chattering just long enough to sort through a collection of kitten calendars. Treasures weren’t exactly the word he would use to describe this place. It was a little tourist shop tucked into a Waffle House. It even had a little sign for when you walked into its tight space, a dust-covered post that read “Treasured Treasures”. It had stuffed animals ranging from
really dusty rabbits to extremely dusty kittens. Little necklaces hung and swung on askew stands in the dismal rays of sunshine that filtered through the opaque windows. Among those calendars and diaries were Tinkerbell umbrellas, road maps, wind-up toys and, of course, the doll. Lewis looked at it, squinting as he looked at its beady little eyes. The eyes seemed shifty, and he half expected the eyelids to flutter, the eyeballs to bulge from the head, like two bloated cockroaches ready to burst after a big meal.
“Le-e-e-e-e-e-ew-i-issss!” Doris screamed, suddenly right behind him. Lewis jumped, and realized that he had been lost for a moment looking at the doll. What the hell was I thinking about? “Is that not the cutest and most adorable doll you’ve ever seen in your entire life?”
As soon as the words left her mouth, the doll seemed to stir. Lewis felt himself gasp, and he took a step back. Its pert little mouth suddenly dropped open with a click, and Lewis saw that it had teeth - square white ones.
Then, it spoke.
“Hi! My name is Lorelei! Wanna play hopscotch?”
Doris suddenly rushed by him, nearly throwing him to the floor. She seized the doll and bearhugged it to her chest, knocking over a pile of stuffed animals in the process. Doris cradled it to her massive bosom, dwarfing the doll. Well, now I know what we’re bringing home.
“I’m buying this doll!” She laughed loudly, a bray that reverberated in the tiny shop. “Did I say doll? How silly! Her name’s Lorelei!” She looked at Lewis, her eyes twinkling. From the other side of the room where the diner was, a bell sounded. Their food was ready.
They entered back into the diner, and Lewis suddenly discovered that he wanted a smoke. That scared him. He hadn’t smoked since - the pit in the pit -his tour in Vietnam. They went and sat down, and Lewis swallowed, only to find his throat felt like sandpaper. I haven’t thought about Vietnam in a long time, Lewis thought. The waitress, who barely even glanced at them, brought them their drinks. Lewis chugged down his water, while Doris began to guzzle down her milkshake.
