***
Officer Sanchez spent weeks looking for his son and his chubby friend. Aside from the bag of camera equipment and the girl’s clothing there were no signs of the boys, or the tree monster. The group that came to search with him never found Ethan’s camera, and the memories of the other two cameras found lying in an canvass bag in an empty field where fried. The other tapes and disks where unrelated videos of the boy’s home, some of them having to do with the paranormal, which seemed so tame after his experience with the forest creature.
Meanwhile he lost contact with Cory, whose father said had become more and more paranoid this past week. Now there was no answer to calls to the house.
He pulled up to the small home not too far from a different set of woods itself, though in ‘new town’ far enough from the hill to give the impression of safety. His flashers lit up the nearby trees and house where he noted the front window with its frame torn out. Eyeing the land he saw no signs of out of the ordinary trees, a live oak woodland spread around the house and pink flowering Crape Myrtle where planted in the garden.
Entering the residence through the unlocked door he was stopped by what he saw, writing in black marker all around the walls. The writings of a madman.
The majority of it was “the trees” or “watch the trees”. as prominent where “the tall trees”, “the thin trees,” “its legs bend so high up”. In the center, likely written last yet the fixed point of the rest, was a small sentence. “It’s here, the tree’s are here, I’m SO SORRY, brother, my father, forgive me. The trees are HERE” and finished with a giant “RUN” underlined with a wide scribble in the same shape as the thing's appendage with an arrowed point at the end appearing to be a demons tail.
Fear gripped officer Sanchez, he had left his assault rifle in the trunk of his new cruiser.
The Harvest Moon
The bite the twist, the fight for freedom, it was a girls last chance at escape. My last chance as I fled away from the inhuman howler with the bloody bitten finger, through the dark woods whose shadows where thickened by a bright harvest moon. I raced to the edge, the edge of the world, of California, of life. My pulse beat at my ears, I couldn’t confront such a beast of a man, he who had no mind to reason with, the only choice given was one last escape.
I dove, legs straight, should have pinched my nose or held a hand over my mouth, but my arms flailed in panic as my pink wool sweater, worn over my black night shirt, flapped around my blond hair pulled up and curled clockwise into a bun for the night. My fall felt like forever, seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned to hours. Though I winced for the incoming impact I watched the orange white cliff face crawl by me, it was as if the sweater pulled up by the fall to flap against my head insisted we were moving faster than we where.
My feet hit first and the hardest, slapping against surface tension, rebounding my legs so I was in a sitting position when my ass hit, soaking my black Angry Birds Christmas pajamas in the salty bay. I had a moment to mourn my favorite pair of nightwear before I was shocked back into reality by my breasts smacking into the chilled water, pooling the loose sweater around me and drenching the T-shirt underneath. A giant wave rolled over and pushed me towards the cliffs stifling my gasp.
I was in the wrong place to go cliff diving, my family’s property rested on a cliff side that was always beat by the ocean below. Despite being stories above sea level a good storm could bring those waves up and into our yard. Rolling under the wave I came up only feet from the wall, gasping for air and looking back to see another forming, foamy water being pulled back and up into the surging head. The roar that bounced off the Cliffside was deafening, a chaotic war trumpet sounding my imminent death.
At least I hadn’t ended up like my mother, her bleeding entrails strewn over the living room’s coffee table, a long wooden thing with a cherry oak finish, and over her lap and legs that where still sitting in her favorite old white, ugly nineteen eighties recliner. I had no idea where her torso had gone to, by the time I had come upon her running had become a priority, too busy even to mourn.
The roaring became louder and I braced myself. Caught floating by the wave it picked me up and pulled me into its foam covered head just in time to slam me against the wall with such force my left shoulder bone slapped against it, making an ugly sound of porcelain being dropped on thin carpeted flooring. The swell subsided, I dropped under for a moment, my left shoulder throbbing, watching another, smaller wave roll over me, from under it looked like a big wrap of saran tumbling through the water.
The new wave passed and I came to the surface gasping once more, my lungs burned in the chilled fall ocean and for the first time since the dive I realized how chilly it was, my body trembled as if I had dived into ice. A yard further than the last another formed, I had to act, could try to find my way out and risk that thing again or drown right here after being beaten to death upon the freezing cliff side.
Maybe a quick end at the hands of a monster might be a reprise from the long death of drowning on the ocean floor. I turned away from the approaching monster of the sea, knowing I had only moments, to put my numbing hands upon the cool rock face while smaller, insignificant waves rocked by me, causing me to bob. Cursing that my hands had lost sensation but my shoulder still throbbed, I pushed myself to the left, heading what I thought to be north, or northeast since the cliff curved.
Deep in concentration I hadn’t notice how loud the roar of the wave had become until it lifted me, allowing me only a yelp before it slammed my face into the rock wall, bending my neck backwards in half. I don’t remember going under, coming back up, and have no memory of swimming ashore. I woke on pea sized sand colored gravel that wasn’t sand which acted as the beach far below my house with a gasp followed by a bucket full of water escaping my gullet.
Unable orientate myself, my body exhausted and chilled, my shoulder swelling with every heartbeat, I flipped myself over, the gravel clinging to my wet shirt, and slipped off my sweater, tossing it aside. It may have been my favorite, but the water had ruined it and it only worked to weigh me down.
With my numb hands and my screaming shoulder matched by my massacred face, I pushed myself to my knees, pressing my palms to my legs to balance myself trying to stand. There was a scuffling sound to my left amongst brush, I was in a clearing that marked a road paved through the grass by heavy vehicle use, boaters that cast off for a day of fishing, and I was in plain view.
Hoping I had happened upon was nothing more than a vicious boar I waited, knowing boars might not attack if you stood still, not posing a threat. But then it grunted, not the snuffled grunt of a pig, but the semi human vocalization of the beast from above. How had it made its way here so quick?
I ran, not getting much more than a limping trot from my legs, trying to bottle the scream that swelled at the bottom of my throat as the thing crashed through the bushes and once again gave chase. My mind wondered how human it was, would it be smart enough to not make the same mistake again? In the grips of panic I had bitten its finger, tasted its own sewage smelling flesh, and fled as it had stood in stunned silence.
I slipped to my hands but kept my feet, a scream bubbled past my lips into a strangled cry I hoped carried to someone near, somebody with a weapon. Righting myself in a hurry I set out in a straight line up the incline across the grass that rose in height around me. Soon it was brushing my thighs, tickling it as wheat on my family’s farmland had done many times, but I had no joy left in me to tickle out, the monstrosity pounded through the brush on my heels, huffing and grunting.
Then there was pavement, so sudden I tripped over my own bare feet and sprawled onto my side, the rocky road tearing at the right of my face and my belly as my shirt pushed up into my breasts. A black claw came from nowhere and slashed at my exposed stomach, I screamed.
The scream from my lips was horrible, of such animalistic terror that for a moment the thing that had given chase ran to the other side of the road, frightened by its own prey. Watch
ing it in horror and revulsion I continued to screech, unable to quit. The thing was not a wolf, nor a werewolf you’d often see in movies, like that b-rate cult flick The Howling.
It more ape than anything, with slicked back brown fur that bunched around its head and hung around his body which fashioned it its canine appearance. Its hands where black as night, as black as the three inch claws on all five fingers, its feet where much the same with an opposable thumb. Its horrible maw was black shining flesh, like the color of the inner lips of dogs, almost as if some dog had his face turned inside out. It was long and filled with spaced razor-sharp teeth that snared at me, reminding me more of a baboon than any other animal. I thanked the fates it didn’t have a baboon's ass, don’t think I could enter the afterlife with my head held high knowing that the thing which had killed me had a bright red bubble butt.
My screams where choked off by fear mixed with exhaustion and the thing padded carefully towards me. Looking away from it and down to my exposed belly my face twisted in wonder and disgust at what I saw. Red liquid pooled around me and red, warm ribbed tubing slung out from a small incision in a u over my lap.
Blood, I realized the red liquid was my blood bleeding out onto the pavement, and the tubing, the realization struck me with a numbing sensation, were my intestines. The only thing my mind could think to do was reach my numb hands, my left arm scraped and bleeding by my latest fall, down and grip the tubing, pushing it back into the clean slit in my stomach. The tube like organ made a nauseating squelching sound as I forced it in.
A moment of dizziness passed, but I held my hands firm upon my abdomen, meaning to keep my insides within myself.
I looked up to see the monster a foot from me, studying my progress. It raised its hands in the air and swung his big black claws from side to side, a cheering spectator. It uttered a short guttural bark, gnashing its teeth together.
After settling the creature kneeled on one leg, an awful human movement, and pushed on my hand which held my abdomen closed. Until then the wound hadn’t hurt, but at that pressure something inside me knotted, I gasped, my back arching as something cold that wasn’t pain flew through every nerve ending in my body. The sensation subsided, I felt shit slide out of me into my favorite pajamas, unable to keep myself from weeping the thing turned its head towards my face at the sound.
It prodded my cheeks, mixing blood with my tears, then it prodded at my breasts which I was thankful where still covered, not able to let go to fend off the ape thing’s harassment without risking everything sliding out again. I tried to concentrate on anything other than the ape which was molesting my chest and all that came to mind was the warm load sitting in my pants. I failed to stifle a sob which made the ape thing jump to its feet and bark in anger, it swung it’s claws at my eyes, but backed away when light flooded us both, causing it to pause and cover its eyes with its blood coated hand, I didn’t have the pleasure.
Blinking away the sudden blindness I recognized my neighbor’s truck, a light blue mid nineties two door Chevy used for logging during the fall and winter years. Tom, my six feet, dark haired, a year older than me, and handsome in a country bumpkin way neighbor climbed out the driver’s seat, his big white cowboy hat upon his head, a pump action shot gun in both hands, I assumed primed and ready. He was my knight in shining armor, or cowboy attire, if I survived the night I would marry that man.
But he didn’t open fire, and the thing never charged him, nor ran away in fear, the two of them stared at each other, the ape thing’s eyes respectful if not fearful of my neighbor, whose eyes looked back at the creature full of sorrow and fury, the eyes of a chastising parent.
“Charlie you damned fool, get in the truck,” he hissed through his teeth, his mouth set on an unhappy grimace.
I caught that he had named the thing, the thing’s name had been Charlie, the name of his brother. To the surprise of the crowd of friends and family I had hallucinated around me, the thing listened to Tom, made its way to open the passenger door and buckle up so it could sit and watch the scene.
“You’re not looking too hot there Nikki.” Tom said, planting a cowboy boot on each side of my body, he was now standing over me as if he would sit upon my chest. His nose wrinkled, “Don’t smell so wonderful either, but gutting things will do that.”
“Tom” I whispered, barely aware that I was crying once again, I gasped as the cold metal twin barrel shotgun pressed hard into my cheekbone. My hands let go of my open midsection to grip onto the double barrel, trying to wrestle with it, but he held strong and my palms where slick with blood. He looked down as the loop of intestine flopped out with wet slurp.
Tom laughed, “That almost sounded like a fart. I’ve never been able to finish my little brother’s kills before; he usually ravages them to death. I think a bullet might leave too much evidence,” he winced at the word evidence and leaned to put aside his shotgun. He stepped back to squat onto my hips, turning to face me. I gasped again and another squelching sound came from my bottom as he gripped the ribbed tubing with both hands, “Haha!” it was a loud and obnoxious laugh, “that was a fart! Did you shit yourself?”
Without waiting for an answer he pulled a length of myself out like he was unwinding a rope, I shook and groaned at the sensation of it sliding out of the tear, creating an empty cooling cavern within my womb. Walking in a squat up above my head with it in his hands, there was a wet plop above my head, his hand jerked my hair as he lifted my head up, and then placed it back down. There was now something moist and warm upon my neck, I knew what it was, I saw what he was about to do, but I couldn’t fight him, my arms no longer worked.
“Tom no,” I cried out, tears and the snot running down the sides of my cheeks the most normal thing in the world, the only normalcy I had left, “Tom no, I liked you. I won’t tell, promise I won’t ever tell.”
He came back over to place his feet where they had been before plopping his skinny ass on my chest, pushing the air out of me, looking at me with the same curious expression his apparent were ape brother had given me a moment ago. “Sorry babe, it’s way too late, this orange moon, well, it fucks everything.”
He placed his hands to the sides of my head, and though it had been pulled out by at least three feet I still felt them grip my intestines. The tube was warm and moist, slimy with blood and other internal juices when he wrapped it around my neck like some awful scarf.
I thought to thank him for the warmth against the chill, but I didn’t have the breath, having not breathed back in after he sat on me, knowing what he was planning, and wanting to expedite my death as much as possible. I pet his hands, something I found comforting, they were strong, rough from field work like my dad’s and covered in hair, tensed with pressure as he pulled hard on my insides wrapped around my outsides. The first thing to go was my hearing, in one moment I heard Tom grunting, the wind whisper through the grasses, the growl of his abused old beater, even the ocean which had almost taken me moments ago splashing against the near Cliffside. Then I heard nothing other than an odd whining, the hum of a mosquito in my head.
Then fuzz crept into my eyes, some say you see stars when you start to pass out, but I thought it was less stars and more the fuzzy white noise old cable T.V.s might get if the channel it had tuned to received no signal.
Static filled my vision, replacing Tom and the terrible world. True darkness ate away at the sides of the static. Last to go was the sensation of myself wrapped around my neck.
The Hunters
Grady climbed through the window, brushing his sweatshirts sleeve against the rust-covered shards of broken glass, to fall to the crumbling floor below, landing on thin plywood that creaked under his weight. Once inside he sensed something was wrong with the building but he couldn’t see, the place was as thick with darkness as it was with humidity and dust. There was a wooden thump behind him, he swung the infrared camera he had been pointing at the ground around spotting his fellow hunter, Alex, with his short spiked black hair. Alex grimaced
a smile within the screens green glow, “Calm down man, where hunting ghosts, nothing will kill you.”
The board under their feet creaked, the hunters pointed both their cameras towards the floor, the plank of wood spanned a jagged four foot hole, their infrared lights couldn’t penetrate the darkness below that may have lead into a basement. “I take that back,” Alex remarked “nothing dead will kill you,” he inched his way past Grady and off the wood, “watch your step.”
They were in the abandoned West Creek Asylum, near the center of the long oval that made Old Town, the original city of West Creek which sat upon the rise of the northern hill, edging along Tall Trees. Old town and the much larger circle of New Town at the base of the rise made the entire city of West Creek looks like a whistle from above. The city itself had its own deadly history, but nothing compared to the abuse and torture the patients had endured here under state physicians. Lobotomies, electroshock, the removal of important organs, and sometimes even an exorcism. Grady couldn’t blame the scientists of a time in which religion was still law and science was fledgling, many didn’t know any better.
It was this dark history that had brought his friend Alex to his fifth ghost investigation, but the knowledge that the team would have to break and enter without permission caused the rest of his usual five man crew to bug out on the project. Not wanting to go it alone he had offered Grady the chance to join him, and Grady was willing to risk everything to go on an expedition after begging for over a year.
He had no clue why Alex never let him on one before, perhaps it was his tendency to scare easy, maybe it was that he had no money and no equipment to call his own, or possibly Alex wasn’t as good a friend as Grady had hoped. It was no matter, he was on his first investigation and was ready to have fun like the guys on TV.
Alex looked little like a young Zak Bagans
“Shh…” Alex had slowed to a stop at the corner of a wall where the hallway turned and Grady crept up behind him, his old sneakers a whisper on the dusty tile floor. No light pierced the asylum's darkness forcing Grady to use his LCD screen on his camera to make his way through, and from it he could see that Alex had his camera pointed, on its own, around the side of the wall.
He waited, staring at his friends back for an agonizing ten minutes, when Grady spoke up, “Um, you see something?”
“Shh, wait,” he repeated.
In another moment he started forward again, Grady followed. There was another set of wooden planks spanning a hole in the floor, surrounding them where tiled walls and door less rooms, their floors full of what had once been their ceilings. “Hello!?” Grady called out, gaining an irritated glance from Alex into his camera as his voice echoed through the old empty place.
Alex passed over the creaky floorboards, there was a whisper that caused him to stop on the other side, “Was that you?”
“Nuh-uh,” Grady’s eyes were wide as he glanced around in the darkness, not sensing any movement.
“Come on” Alex motioned Grady forward, starting off into the black beyond the view of Grady’s camera.
The wooden planks creaked and shifted as soon as Grady walked onto them, it made him nervous but he kept on, having seen Alex pass gave him confidence. He’d prove anything Alex could do he could do better.
Grady stopped midpoint the wooden makeshift floor, there was a cackle, from his camera Alex was nowhere to be seen, he was alone. The laugh became louder, growing closer, “Alex?” he called, frozen in the beginning throes of panic. He darted his camera every which way, eyeing the walls and darkness around him, the noise sounded as if it came from right buy his side but there was no one there. “Alex!”
“What?” Alex shouted back, his voice echoing from his distance down the old hallway, “You’re being too loud.”
Grady opened his mouth but with a crack like thunder he felt sudden weightlessness, something punched him in the gut and he was falling. He hit more wood that also snapped in his ear, and face down the new floor below him gave way once again. He fell and fell, here he fell forever, he rolled in the air, reaching out for lights, for walls, for anything to slow his decent. Wet, cold, concrete stopped him, he whipped his head and cracked the back of it against the ground, everything buzzed, and then everything was dark.
Grady wasn’t sure how long he had been out or when he came too, even with his eyes open it was pitch black. He noticed Alex’s voice getting louder and louder, but even at its peak it sounded distant and far away. Grady attempted to sit up, his right arm hung loose, his head burned, a wound was flowing down his neck. There wasn’t much pain, but he thought that might be because he was entering a state of shock.
He had no real idea how he was fairing, he wasn’t athletic, tall, lanky, the only injury he had ever encountered that was serious enough was a broken toe. His legs appeared fine, so he rose using his good arm to push himself off the ground, but between the darkness and his head he was dizzy, disoriented, and fell back to his knees on his good left arm. It fell onto something cool and plastic, Grady’s first thought was to run but his body didn’t want to comply. Instead he braved picking it up and realized what his hand happened upon.
It was the camera Alex had lent him, he palmed the LCD screen, the screen was lined in cracks. The camera still hummed with life despite that it had fell several stories and landed on a wet stone floor. His one useful hand fumbled with switches until a white bulb of light from its front cut into the darkness, causing Grady to gasp in awe.
The room was huge, there where stage seating around him like a movie theater, even box seats bolted into the wall, though many had fallen because of disrepair. He had dropped onto a small concrete stage at the bottom of a giant theater, its great walls cracked and crumbling. “Grady!” Alex called again from above, he sounded shaken up which made Grady feel a little better about their friendship.
“I’m alive” Grady shouted back, his voice cracked, alive, but not well, “Call nine one one.”
There was a pause, he seemed to mull that over, “We’re trespassing!”
“My fuckin’ arm’s broke!” he yelled, irritated, “I don’t give a damn what the cops think, I need paramedics.”
“No! I’ll find you, we’ll drive to the hospital!” he insisted.
“Jerk," Grady groaned, “Fine but you’re carrying me back out!”
Something shifted and Grady swung the camera he had been pointing at the hole in the ceiling. The light fell upon a boarded door at the auditorium stairs top “Ah shit”. He rose to begin the climb up the small, steep, concrete steps cut from the asylum’s foundation. About midway something rang out, causing him to jump and swing his camera every which way.
When he calmed enough he realize it was his cell phone. He had to bring the phone out of his back pocket with good hand as he held onto the camera, his touch screen was also smashed, but it still worked. With a press of the call button Grady shouldered the small phone, “Hello?” The call was heavy with static, Alex yelling in between bursts, “Hey!” he interrupted “slow down! I can’t hear you.”
Through the bursts Alex was still hard to hear, “Where... Fell… stairs…. Dead…”
“Listen!” he interrupted again, reaching the top of the room, “something’s wrong with my phone, I broke it in the fall, so calm down and listen if you can hear me. I’m in the basement, an auditorium, but I can’t get out, the only way out is boarded up and my arm’s broke, I can’t pry them loose, you have to call the cops!”
There was nothing but white noise. “Alex?” he listened, a deep, sharp cackle rang out from within a static, the same laugh he had heard before he fell. Something shifted beside him and he brought his phone down to point his camera’s light towards it, there was nothing. He felt a presence behind him, something slapped his hand that held his phone and camera, he screamed, turning to back away from whatever had attacked him. Something clattered further away, he realized he was no longer holding his phone.
Cursing under his breath, sweating under t
he stress of both shock and fear, he swept his light back and forth, but he couldn’t see his phone, or the thing that had attacked him. It was impossible, he was near the center top of the auditorium, no doubt built for the best security for the staff and view for the audience, he could see every chair his light fell upon, to the concrete stage, but nothing was there.
The door slammed behind him, he screamed again, turning and stumbling backwards, falling to one knee as he took the first stair wrong. “Shut up you damned girl!” came Alex’s voice from the other side, he slammed something against the door again with a grunt, the center plank cracked, the six around it held firm. “You know how lucky you are? These doors have likely been bolted since the day the place closed. You’re the first one in forever to enter it!” Another thud and the doors bulged inwards, the boards still held, “the hell is this locked with?”
“It’s boarded from the inside.” He coughed, was it getting harder for him to breathe, or was it panic?
Alex stopped, “How’s that?”
Grady didn’t follow, so he kept quite
“If it’s boarded from the inside, as far as maps tell there’s no other way out.”
Something scuttled behind Grady, “Uh Alex” he called in a whisper, “Hurry!”
“What?”
“There’s something in here.” He whispered swinging his light back around, a shadow dashed from the stage as his light hit it. The scuttling came from the right side and dissipated. “Hurry!” he screamed.
Dead Ends Page 4
