Ruins of the Mind

by Jason Stadtlander

  IT WAS A clear, crisp fall day, and Chris was pleased to be spending it with his young daughter. The two enjoyed a relaxing morning together driving along the ocean and breathing in the fresh salty air. His plan was to get as far away from Redrock as possible, so they drove from Redrock up Route 127 toward Gloucester. Perhaps they would visit Tuck’s Candy in Rockport? It was a charming little store. He and Ashley enjoyed observing through the protective glass wall as the proprietor mixed the candy in large batches and then dropped small portions atop drying trays to prepare them for sale.

  This was a good time to talk. “Ashley, I want you to tell me everything you know about the dewts. What do they want from you? And what’s up with that mean one being so…physical?”

  Ashley didn’t answer, remaining thoughtful. Then she looked up from the back seat, meeting her father’s gaze in the rearview mirror, still silent.

  “Ash?” her father prompted.

  She finally spoke. “They said they want me to open some door—a door that only I can open.” She was staring out the window now, and he could not read her expression.

  “But why you, Ash? What door—and to where?”

  These were questions he was fairly sure Ashley didn’t have an answer for, but in the odd chance that she might, he felt compelled to ask anyway.

  Ashley began talking again slowly, deliberately. “The dewts told me that not everyone can see them. Only those who have seen death can see them.”

  What was his daughter saying exactly? “That doesn’t make any sense, sweetie. You have been talking about the dewts since you were three, but the only person you’ve ever lost to death was Mommy…and she died only three months ago.”

  Ashley’s reply was certain. “That was when I first saw them for real, Daddy—right after Mommy died. Before that I just pretended, but when Mommy died, they became real.”

  Chris pondered what she had just told him. He reasoned that the dewts from earlier might not be the same as these creatures in the present. She could have named these things dewts because they sort of fit what she imagined them to look like. That made more sense to him, so he explored that possibility.

  “Do these dewts now look like what you had imagined then, Ashley—what you had pretended they looked like?”

  Again, she responded in earnest. “No. I always pictured my dewts as soft, little flying things. These are…yucky.”

  “Yucky isn’t exactly the adjective I would have used, but it sure fits,” Chris said under his breath.

  “Daddy, can we talk about something else?” She needed a change of topic and that was fine by him.

  “Sure. What would you say if we stopped by Tuck’s to watch them make candy canes?”

  Her response was a wide smile and a quick nod of the chin. “Okay—sounds good.”

  BACK HOME, THE evening was relatively uneventful. Chris and Ashley ate dinner, sat and watched a few episodes of The Pink Panther on Netflix and settled into bed. Immediately, Chris had an afterthought. Pulling the sheet back, he got up and walked to the hallway closet, retrieving the .38 Chief’s Special from the gun chest inside. He removed the child lock and loaded five rounds of hollow points into the gun’s chamber. He was damned if he would allow some demonic fairy freak to terrorize the only family he had left. Assuming guns can even kill the stupid thing—it walks through walls, so maybe it can walk through bullets, too.

  Chris walked back to the bedroom where Ashley sat propped against the headboard playing Plants vs. Zombies on his iPad. He held the loaded gun up above his shoulder, pointing it directly at the ceiling. “Ash, do you see this?”

  Ashley looked up at him, her brow furrowing in reaction to the weapon. She lowered her chin while her eyes remained focused on his face. “Yes…”

  Chris continued in a serious tone. “What are the rules when we are around guns?”

  She knew the answer to that one. “Never touch them,” she answered sternly. “They are only for grown-ups, and they can kill you.”

  Chris nodded his head in agreement with her response. “Good girl.”

  “Now, Ashley,” he continued, “I’m putting this in my nightstand just in case we have any unwanted feisty visitors. Got it?”

  “Okay—got it.”

  Chris had grown up around guns, as his father had taught NRA child safety classes. So he was well-versed in the dangers of owning guns and the responsibility of storing them safely in a house where children are present. His wife Angie had never liked the idea of his having a weapon but had reluctantly agreed to keep the Chief’s Special in the house as long as it remained locked safely away and had a child lock on the gun itself. She would no doubt freak if she realized a loaded gun was in the same room with their daughter. But then Angie had never witnessed an angry dewt walk right through a solid wall, either. His wife had been a strong, sensible woman, and had she seen what Chris had seen, he had no doubt that she would have allowed him to keep the gun within reach to protect their precious daughter.

  Ashley fell asleep around eight o’clock, and Chris followed suit thirty minutes later while watching American Idol. He awakened at 11:14 p.m., turned off the television using the remote, and then got up to go to the bathroom.

  When he returned to his bedroom, Ashley was standing quietly by the window in her nightgown, looking out. Not wanting to startle her, he asked in something close to a whisper, “Ashley, honey, why are you up?”

  She didn’t turn around. He could not see her face, but he could tell she was frightened by the sound of her voice. “They came back, Daddy,” she said flatly. “There were five of them this time, and they said the treamatoads will come soon.”

  Chris was instantly angry that these indignant little creatures were scaring his daughter. He would do anything to reassure her that she would be protected and safe. “Ashley, honey, get back into bed. Come on, crawl over here next to me and I’ll hold you. You’re safe with me, Ash.”

  But Ashley wasn’t so sure. “Where were you, Daddy? They were here for so long, and they kept telling me over and over that I needed to open the gate.” She looked up at him, and the concern on her face was palpable.

  Chris considered the possibility that time could have stopped for Ashley just as it had for him. If that were the case, though he had only left the room for close to thirty seconds, thirty minutes could have passed for his daughter.

  He moved on, wanting to calm her regardless of the details. “Ashley, if any treamatoads do come, I promise you—I’ll be right here. I won’t leave you, okay?” They both crawled back into bed and Ashley cuddled up next to him; only this time, she did it more for his protection than affection. Chris reached for the light on the stand next to the bed and flipped off the switch.

  “Daddy, can we leave the light on?” she asked. Lighted rooms always had a way of making young children feel safe.

  “Of course,” he said and moved to turn the light back on. He then opened a bedside drawer, retrieving one of his wife’s handkerchiefs and draping it over the lampshade. Angie used to do this to stifle the harshness of the light when their daughter was afraid at night. This was one of his wife’s motherly tricks, Chris recalled fondly, and he missed her horribly in that moment.

  Ashley fell asleep quickly. Just as Chris was fading off, a high-pitched squeal rendered him instantly awake. Then two, three, four—an entire chorus of shrieks grew louder and louder. He grabbed hold of Ashley, pulling her toward him and his side of the bed nearer the nightstand. The shrieks appeared to be emanating from high up on the far side of the room. From the far corner, a dozen creatures suddenly came flying through the ceiling as if it were nothing but an illusion. The creatures flew in concentric circles, swooping down toward the bed but never quite close enough to touch the two of them.

  Strangely enough, these things reminded him of toads. They had large mouths with eyes mounted on top of their heads. But instead of reptilian skin, they had scales like a dragon and flew about using rough, leathery bat-like wings. There was some sort o
f bone structure within the leathery skin, and as each one shrieked, a white wisp spewed from its mouth.

  That’s when Chris smelled the stench. It smelled like the decay from a rotting animal, reminding him of a time in his childhood when he had left a milk-soaked towel sitting on his closet floor for several days. The reek was nearly unbearable, and Chris made every effort to fight back his gag reflex, but each time one of the creatures shrieked, the stench grew stronger.

  Ashley lay horrified, trembling and unable to move. She held fast to him with a strength that was surprising for a little girl. She cried out, begging for his rescue. “Daddy, please—make them go away!”

  Chris reached for his revolver in the nightstand but couldn’t open the drawer. It was frozen shut and wouldn’t budge. His right hand took a defensive swat at one of the creatures making contact, and that hand turned cold instantly as if it had been shoved into a vat of liquid nitrogen. “Agh! Son of a bitch!” He flinched, seething in pain and cradling his hand.

  Then, just as quickly as the hideous creatures had arrived, they faded back into the ceiling and disappeared, their piercing screams trailing off as they left. Chris examined his hand. It still hurt plenty, but he could move it. He jumped up on the bed and scooped up his daughter, securing her firmly under his left arm. Next he ran to Ashley’s bedroom, and sitting her down at the end of her bed, he flung open a dresser drawer. Chris grabbed some of her clothing and dressed the trembling girl hurriedly.

  Hand in hand, the two ran back to his room where he dressed himself quickly. Chris walked to the nightstand, wanting to unjam the drawer and retrieve his gun. Curiously, the drawer slid out smoothly just as it always had. He wondered what could have caused the jamming of the drawer just when he needed it to work most and assumed it had something to do with the treamatoads. Perhaps time had stopped just as it had earlier when the dewt came through the wall? No, that’s not right—the chair had fallen down during the encounter with the dewt. So things can be moved when time is stopped. Regardless, he didn’t have time to analyze this now. He needed to get his daughter out of the house, fast.

  What makes you think that leaving the house will mean escaping the dewts and the treamatoads? Chris wasn’t exactly sure, but at least so far, he had yet to encounter one outside his house. Case in point: he and Ashley had spent the day up on Cape Ann and hadn’t run into a single dewt or treamatoad there. So he surmised that the creatures only existed inside the house. Please, let my logic be sound…

  Chris went to his closet, grabbing an overnight bag and throwing in additional clothing, toiletries and anything else needed or that Ashley might want. The flurry of activity was making Ashley even more nervous, and she interrupted his running around with a loud, “Daddy—where are we going?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I think we’ll head to grandpa’s in Boston. We should be safe there.” He reached for his daughter’s hand, picked up the overnight bag and rushed the two of them out of their home, heading for the car.

  Once in their Cherokee, Chris kept glancing nervously into the rearview mirror, half expecting to be followed by a flock of treamatoads. According to the Jeep’s dashboard clock, the time was 11:48 p.m. What the hell is wrong with me? Twenty-four hours ago, I was struggling to fall asleep as usual…and now I’m running from dewts and treamatoads—seriously? He glanced again toward the back seat and saw that Ashley was sound asleep. He felt relief. In only another twenty minutes, he would be on Beacon Hill at his father-in-law’s brownstone…but how was he going to explain any of this to his father-in-law? Hell, I have no clue.

  Chris made a turn on Route 1A toward the Sumner Tunnel and drove through the tolls, automatically paying with his transponder. In a city the size of Boston, even at this hour there was still some traffic, but it was minimal—only a few taxis and other cars were in the tunnel. He easily maintained a solid forty-five miles per hour.

  As Chris’s Jeep neared the bottom of the tunnel, he spotted a curious dark area just before the car began to climb back toward the surface. He thought at first that a light might be out in the tunnel ahead—but then the shadowy area began moving from right to left. As his vehicle drew closer, he saw that the dark shadow resembled a large hive of bees crawling en masse across the road. Chris slammed on his brakes, and the car behind him followed suit. Like a line of forward-moving dominos, the cars in the lane adjacent to his hit their brakes as well.

  So—he wasn’t the only one who saw it. Both cars leading each lane of traffic, his and the blue Ford F-150 next to him, were now completely stopped, headlights pointing directly at the blackish moving mass. Whatever it was, it was quickly filling up the entire tunnel opening. He now struggled to see any light at the opening on the other end of the tunnel that he so desperately wanted to reach.

  Chris glanced quickly in the back seat at Ashley. She remained asleep despite the jolting halt of their vehicle. He looked back out the front window. The mass now filled the cavity between the two tunnel walls. It was moving in on them quickly, advancing several feet every few seconds, seething and twisting its way toward them from just forty yards away.

  A high-pitch chorus of shrieks began and grew louder as the menacing cloud closed in on them, now only thirty yards from their car. Chris could now distinguish greater detail, and to his dismay, the moving wall was not in fact a single body mass but rather thousands—if not hundreds of thousands—of dewts. The terrorizing little creatures were all moving together, clambering over each other at an alarming rate, shrieking the entire way.

  At twenty yards and closing, Chris could clearly see that each one had its own look—some old, some young, some more grotesque than others. At a diminishing distance of ten yards, the shrieking rose to a thunderous pitch. The intensity was so great that the windows of the Cherokee and all of the surrounding vehicles shattered with a muted pop, elevating the pitch to a deafening sound.

  Ashley woke up screaming. Chris jumped out of the Cherokee and hurried to open his daughter’s door. He unbuckled her seat belt with lightning speed, sweeping safety glass off her as he yanked her from the vehicle. He scooped her up in his arms and began running for the entrance to the tunnel behind them.

  But it’s so far away. Chris was carrying Ashley with her head facing behind him, looking back over his shoulder. He could hear the hideous creatures scurrying toward them, their scratchy little feet and clawing arms tapping on the tiled walls like little nails tip-tapping on a chalkboard. Clickity-clickity their feet went, pattering in a frenzy, and they shrieked loudly enough to instill dread into the bravest of men. Chris dared a glance over his right shoulder. The dewts were only twenty feet behind them.

  Suddenly, an unbidden scream erupted from the mouth of his daughter—a bizarre sound, incomparable to anything he had ever heard. Her scream sounded like it should be coming from two people. There were two distinct, ear-piercing tones—each noticeably different but in harmony with the other; it was as if his daughter had two sets of vocal cords ringing out in unison.

  Chris continued running but noticed that the shrieking of the creatures behind him had changed from cries of attack to cries full of trepidation and fear. While still moving, he dared another glance back over his shoulder. To his relief, the nasty dewts were backing off. He slowed his pace, just a little at first, and then when it became apparent that they were truly in retreat, he slowed to a walk, lowering his screaming daughter to her feet and turning around to view the demonic little creatures now clearly on the run.

  Ashley continued screaming in ear-piercing tonal harmony—this was not the sound of a human child, but it was indeed his daughter. Her voice reverberated off the solid walls around them at such a powerful pitch that it vibrated his teeth. It was the most unnerving sound he had ever heard as an adult and as a parent.

  All at once, the cloud of dewts flooded toward them both at an impossible speed, destroying his vehicle and the F-150 in the process. Following his instinct, Chris grabbed Ashley and huddled down on the floor; there was nothing e
lse he could do. The flood of disturbing creatures overcame and enveloped them—but he felt nothing.

  Chris dared to look up, and when he did, he saw Ashley’s right arm raised straight and high in the air, the palm of her hand facing upward. He saw some sort of energy emanating and flowing out from her hand, forming a hemispheric shield around them both. All the while, her harmonious dual scream continued growing in intensity.

  It was then that Chris realized she was fighting the dewts. His daughter was warding them off with some powerful energy emission. The hemispheric shield grew larger and larger still, an impenetrable shell that the creatures kept scratching and scraping at but remained unable to penetrate. Ashley rose to her feet slowly, her scream unabated, the protective shield now the entire width of the tunnel. She walked purposefully toward the dewts, her eyes bearing down on them, and abruptly stopped screaming.

  The dewts had apparently experienced enough. They ceased their shrieking and made their way quickly and systematically to the end of the tunnel. The silence now was a stark contrast to the shrieking of the dewts and the deafening scream of his daughter just seconds earlier. The only sounds remaining were the steady hum of the protective shield as Ashley continued moving slowly forward and the clickety-click of the dewts’ claws as they exited the tunnel.

  Chris noted then that something had changed inside his daughter during the brief time spent inside the Boston tunnel. Ashley possessed an air of overriding confidence about her that he had never seen before as she pressed onward, pushing the dewts farther and farther back away from those they intended to harm.

  At approximately fifty feet past the vehicles, Ashley stopped. She moved both her arms slowly to a straightforward position, and the protective shield stopped moving. She raised her face to the ceiling and a shimmering blue orifice opened up, making it look as if a thundercloud had taken residence of the four-foot space within the tunnel ceiling. Silent lightning flashed from inside the cloud. The dewts began screaming in fear as dewt after dewt was suddenly sucked up into the cloud until not a single one remained. Ashley lowered her straightened arms, and the protective shield disappeared. The overhead cloud instantly faded to nothing, leaving the tunnel as it once was.