Creep House: Horror Stories

by Andersen Prunty

  He wasn’t even on duty, but there was something about the Celine woman’s case that had really gotten to him. He didn’t have any children of his own but, if he did, he would want to know that, should one of them go missing, the law would do everything in its power to bring them back. Jeff had taken a very active interest in her. It probably didn’t hurt that he was single and she was single and not at all bad looking. He reassured himself it was more than that. The FBI and the state police, though informed of the disappearance, didn’t really seem to be doing a damned thing about it. Diane had called him and told him about the clue, the little candy heart, and that had given him renewed desire to search for the boy.

  Every chance he got, he had come out here to the woods behind the house. He didn’t think it would hurt anything to wander around in the woods with his shotgun. If another clue didn’t turn up then he figured that, at the very least, he might be able to bag a deer. Part of him wanted to tell the woman the boy was gone, that he probably would not be seen again. That was what his gut told him. It seemed like he had been through this too many times before. Not here, of course. Things like this didn’t happen in Twin Springs, Ohio. But, fresh out of the academy, he had served on the Orlando force for three years. That had been enough for him. He couldn’t find any comfortable resolution with the little children like he could manage with teenagers. Teenagers had ways of taking care of themselves. Some of them just ran off. Some of them were mixed up in really weird shit. Children did not just run off. They were usually taken. And the people taking them usually did not have wholesome goals in mind.

  So tonight he had put on his plain clothes, his heavy winter jacket, grabbed his shotgun from his house, and come out here to wait. Maybe he had heard too many horror stories but he had visions of some crazy, child-abducting family living out here in the woods. They were probably cannibals, to boot. He knew there were a few communes on the surrounding farms. While many people saw this as a nearly Utopian attempt at peaceful coexistence, he could only think of the Manson family and cults. And he was hoping to catch one of them passing back and forth here in the deep night hours, thinking they were operating in complete secrecy.

  Branson was more than a little surprised when he saw Diane stumble into the woods. He was going to approach her until he noticed she acted differently than the woman who had presented herself in front of him before. She seemed, not so much hysterical, as wild. He decided to watch and see what she was going to do, where she was going to go.

  Suddenly, she stopped in the clearing and fell to her knees. He would have dismissed what happened next as complete fiction if he wasn’t observing it firsthand.

  The woman grew large. Hair sprouted out all over her body.

  A werewolf, Branson thought, wanting to dismiss the idea as ludicrous as soon as it popped into his head.

  But it was hard to dismiss as ludicrous when he could stand there and watch the face reach out into a snout, the teeth elongate and yellow, the ears grow and bend back, the clothes rip and fall away, the legs and arms deform, lowering the woman. He’d seen this occur in a number of horror movies and had always wondered why the person just stood around and watched this transformation happen. It never went quickly. Why didn’t they just plug them? He figured it was just one of those movie anomalies, something that had to happen and shouldn’t be thought about too much. But here he was thinking about it. Hell, here he was doing it. And he had the answer. Because a werewolf is not just a monster. It’s almost always a person the watcher knows. And maybe they know that person as a decent person. It wasn’t like the movies where the good guy hunts down the serial killer and stands paralyzed while the psycho soliloquizes.

  Now fully formed, Diane sniffed at the ground, looking hungrily up at the moon. Branson crouched down but it didn’t matter. She had already seen him. The doglike thing turned its head in his direction and growled, baring those sharp yellow teeth.

  Now that it was a matter of self-defense, Branson took aim with the rifle and fired as the wolf lunged across the clearing at him. He doubted his bullets were silver and wondered if that even mattered.

  He pressed the trigger again and again. The first shotgun blast sheared off the wolf’s right front paw. The second blast took off a hunk of the snout, collapsing the thing. After the second shot, the gun only clicked as Branson pulled the trigger. Empty. He stayed where he was, just slightly occluded behind the bare shrubs.

  The body of the wolf slowly turned back into the Celine woman. Branson felt like this would probably spell his end as a police officer. It was frowned upon to kill the people who you were trying to help. He felt certain he would eventually have to draw someone’s attention to this naked, shot-up body that happened to belong to a woman he had somewhat openly taken a “special interest” in.

  Another sound from the far end of the clearing.

  What now? Branson thought.

  Then he saw Joey. At least, he thought it had to be Joey. It was a smaller wolf than the one he had just shot and even though it was completely animal there was something about it that made Branson think of all those pictures Diane had shown him prior to the search. It was like watching a cartoon where the animated character vaguely resembles the actor doing the voiceover. The wolf strolled out into the clearing, approaching the body on the ground. It licked at the woman, nuzzling its wet nose against her neck and Branson swore he heard a whimper that sounded very much like a human cry.

  The wolf looked into the woods where Branson crouched and issued a growl. Then it came at him. He couldn’t load his gun fast enough. The wolf threw itself on Branson, its jaws gnashing in front of his face and Branson smelled, just faintly, the sugary smell of candy hearts. He wanted to laugh with the absurdity of it all but sharp teeth tore through his jugular and he was pretty sure he would never laugh again.

  RUNNING FROM THE ROSES

  The old woman lay on the bed, arms against her sides, eyes and mouth closed. Chloe thought her grandmother must be the only person who looked severe even when sleeping. Countless times Chloe had stood beside this bed, staring down at the old woman, waiting for the cessation of the covers’ rising and falling. A part of Chloe looked forward to this. When she wasn’t staring at the woman, she stared at the wallpaper, crawling with green vines and red roses. She didn’t want to seem cruel and even though, in her grandmother’s better days, the two women had fought continuously, Chloe didn’t want to think she hated the woman.

  She didn’t want to think she was doing any of this out of hate.

  Hate was the furthest thing from her mind. What she thought about on this sad day was love. It was her intense love for a boy named Jack Kettering that rooted the decisions of which the seeds had been planted much earlier.

  Jack was on his way. Together, they were going to go to California and leave Twin Springs, Ohio, behind.

  Her meager suitcase sat beside the front door inside the ramshackle house.

  She stood over the bed, looking down at Grandma Elly and wishing things could have turned out differently. It was late summer and Chloe wore a black skirt that cut off just below the knee. Wind came in from the windows, touching her pale legs under the skirt and above her combat boots, making her feel amazingly alive in this, the most depressing stage of her life.

  But she was young. Wasn’t it okay to feel alive? Shouldn’t she feel like the world was hers, spread out before her?

  She pulled the uncomfortable wooden chair from in front of the wall over to the bed. She sat down and crossed her legs, leaning toward her grandmother.

  The wind whistled as it was cut to pieces by the screens in the western windows.

  “I won’t leave if you just say something. Anything at all, Grandma.”

  But she knew the old woman wouldn’t say anything.

  Chloe felt feverish. Cold sweat stood out on her skin. What should she be feeling? She didn’t know. She was only seventeen and nobody had ever sat her down and explained to her how one feels when confronted with this type of t
hing. She was too young to remember her parents dying. And that was different anyway. They were not the ones who had raised her. Who had loved her through everything since she was a baby. They were not the ones who had made her life a living hell for the past two years. And the only mystery they had left her with was the mystery of who they were and what they were like. She didn’t expect them to be anything but mystery.

  But her grandma shouldn’t have been a mystery. Chloe wasn’t an idiot when it came to human nature. Her grandma should have been an open book to her but she knew there were things about her grandma she didn’t know about. Dark things. Maybe even scary things.

  Off in the distance, the faint rumble of thunder rolled out of the hills.

  “Jack’s gonna be here soon, Grandma. I’m gonna go with him. Do you want me to go with him? Because I’ll stay if you need me.”

  And she knew the old woman needed her. Of course she needed her. Chloe was the one who fed her. The one who changed her bedpan. The one who made sure a nurse came over once a week to check on her. She was also the one who made sure her grandma wasn’t put in a home because that had been her last wish before lapsing into whatever complacent vegetable state she had lapsed into. Chloe knew it wasn’t just pride keeping her out of the home. It was something else. It was that secret.

  The sky darkened, throwing shadows across the room.

  Chloe stood up from the chair and paced around the room, the room with the busy wallpaper that reflected a simpler time, a time when painted roses could almost pass for the real thing.

  “You know, this hasn’t been easy for me!” she screamed, knowing she didn’t have to. She had screamed countless times before. It didn’t matter whether her grandmother heard her or not. She wasn’t going to respond. Nothing was going to make her respond. She wasn’t screaming at her grandmother anyway. Not really. She screamed because she felt like she had to. It kept the madness at bay.

  The sky darkened further. The room dimmed along with it, the deep red roses of the wallpaper turning almost black. She imagined fat, malignant tumors covering the wall, held together by vines that were actually thick tendons, metastatic tendons carrying the malignancy from one tumor to the next.

  “What’s wrong with you, Grandma? You know I can’t take it anymore, don’t you? Why didn’t you just let me put you in a home? Is it because they would run too many tests on you? Is it because they could take samples of your blood, samples of your skin and find out what you really are?”

  She surprised herself with this last thing she said. It was the first time she had allowed that thought to be spoken aloud.

  Growing up, it had never crossed her mind that her grandma was something else, something other than human. Something called, around town, a Zwinn. The Zwinns were myth, legend, scapegoats for the unexplained. Vampires, maybe. Maybe witches. Near demonic familiars that somehow took the place of their human counterparts. It made sense, now that she thought about it. It made even more sense when spoken aloud. Until then, she didn’t think she believed in the Zwinns. She certainly didn’t actually think her grandmother might be one. Chloe’s idea was not unfounded. She was able to recall the genesis of that idea perfectly and, thinking back on it, was surprised it had taken her this long to give voice to her suspicions.

  She had been young. Eight or nine. She woke up in her bedroom, the remnants of a terrible dream squirming through her head. She still remembered the dream vividly. She and her grandmother were running through the woods. It was dark. The moon hung full overhead only it wasn’t the moon at all but the pale waxy face of a man. A terrifying man who struck some chord of familiarity within her. It was a face she would never forget and hadn’t seen since but, nevertheless, she had often found herself wondering just who it was. Scared, she had wandered out of her bedroom. She heard voices coming from down the hall and figured her grandma must be out there watching television. She hadn’t even thought her grandmother might have visitors because no one ever visited this sad old house unless it was one of her friend’s parents coming to pick her up for a sleepover.

  First checking the family room and finding it empty, she then went into the kitchen.

  She squinted her eyes against the blue fluorescent glare of the light. The light seemed comforting at night when it was her and her grandma in there baking cookies or eating dinner, but now it just seemed harsh. Harsh and obtrusive. Obtrusive because there were people standing in the kitchen and the brightness of the light prevented Chloe from really focusing on them. There were three of them. Chloe moved a little closer, her eyes gradually adjusting to the light, able to make the figures out a little better. Two men and a woman. One of the men spotted her and flashed her a wan, secretive smile but didn’t say anything. Didn’t hint to her grandmother they were being spied on. And didn’t that face look familiar? Wasn’t it the face she had just seen in the moon, in her nightmare? Now it didn’t seem so terrifying just . . . familiar. Where had she seen that face before?

  The woman was the most beautiful woman Chloe had ever seen. She wore a very black, almost floor-length dress. Chloe couldn’t identify the fabric in this lighting. Her black hair was pulled away from her face, high cheekbones, large eyes, large red lips. She was fashion magazine beautiful, Chloe thought. Now able to focus perfectly, she noticed the woman’s eyes and, even from this distance, she could see the woman’s green eyes sparkling – green bordering on yellow like some undiscovered gem.

  Everyone in the kitchen whispered. At least Chloe thought they were whispering. They may not have been speaking at all. Chloe imagined a telepathic communication. Chloe’s grandma was the only one who sat. She sat in a kitchen chair and had her right arm raised. The beautiful woman held her hand in both of hers. Chloe thought the woman held her grandmother’s arm like a bottle of precious wine. She didn’t know why she thought it but she wondered if these three people hadn’t just been drinking from her grandma’s arm.

  It was a strange picture, a strange thought, but it was one that would come back to her many times over the years and it was the last night she remembered her grandma in quite that way because, seeing the older woman there in the chair, with her hand raised, was the last time she would think her grandma was being honest with her. There was a rift. It went unspoken but it was felt and that lack of verbalization only seemed to make it grow deeper.

  Once her grandma knew she was standing there, she was quickly shooed to bed and, every day since then, Chloe had known the woman was keeping something from her. Something secret. Something Chloe desperately wanted to know. And there were times when Chloe would catch her grandmother staring at her and wondered if the old lady was reading her mind. That would certainly explain why she always managed to be a step ahead during their arguments.

  That was the only time she had seen the strange people come to the old sad house but she knew they had come on different occasions throughout the years. She knew this because, when they visited, her grandma’s physical condition deteriorated at an alarming rate. She couldn’t help but think her grandmother was being bled dry. Bled dry by this triumvirate of mysterious people she had seen gathered in the kitchen that one night. But why? That, she didn’t know. Perhaps her grandmother’s life was precious to these people and slowly, slowly, they were sucking away the last of it. And then, two years ago, it had happened. Her grandma had gone from a woman of sixty-five to a woman who was on her deathbed.

  And on her deathbed she had stayed.

  Now, as the first of the rain started to water down on the house and all the huge trees around it, she sat on the side of the bed, wrapped in that clean linen scent, placing a hand on her grandmother’s sallow chest.

  “I think I know what they were, Grandma. But I want to know who they were. I want to know you didn’t have a chance before I do this. I want to know I’m not helping to end any sort of life at all.”

  Thunder cracked outside. A gust of air, almost cold, swept into the room. The meager sunlight caught on the rain beading the window and added it t
o the already busy wallpaper. Now there were a lot of little gray tumors to go with the fat black tumor roses.

  “Jack’s going to be here soon, Grandma. Give me something. Please.”

  Still, the old woman said nothing.

  Thunder cracked again. The blazing glow of the lightning popped into the room for a split second. It was like an x-ray and, when she looked at her grandmother, the only thing she saw beneath the skin was dust.

  From outside, she heard a car horn. Jack. Beautiful Jack, come to take her away.

  She reached into the waistband of her skirt and pulled out the handgun. She didn’t know much about guns. She didn’t know what kind of gun it was. She didn’t even know the name brand. She had fired it exactly once, into an old board out behind the house, to make sure it worked. It did. Not only did it work, it looked like it left a big enough hole to properly cremate a potential suicide’s brains.

  She held the gun over her grandma’s nightstand.

  “This is for when you wake up and realize I’m not here.”

  The clunk the gun made against the wood of the nightstand was as lethal sounding as the actual report the gun had made going off out behind the house.

  “I’m sorry,” Chloe said, the words sounding weak as they came out of her mouth. From all around her, the roses like tumors or hungry mouths seemed to wriggle across the walls. Breathing. Whispering her name. Begging her to stay.

  She turned her back on her grandmother, turned her back on the hideous hungry roses, and left the house.

  The storm raged down, spitting at her, and there was some deeply rooted religious part of her hoping God was not going to strike her down for what she had just done. She opened the passenger door of Jack’s ancient Volvo and threw her suitcase in the backseat.

  “Is everything okay?” Jack asked her when she slid into the passenger seat.