The Cleansing

by Shane Staley

  There were actually old tires scattered beneath the trailer. How could I have known this? To my knowledge, the skirting was never removed. How it looked now was almost exactly the way it had looked in my dream. Spiderwebs were plentiful, as were years of dead leaves blown underneath the skirting. I pointed the beam of the flashlight to the dark corner in question. The beam faltered to illuminate the darkness there.

  I took a deep breath and—

  Felt a cold hand grip my shoulder.

  I froze in fear.

  A voice said, “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Without a second thought, I backed against the presence behind me, gripped the heavy flashlight with both hands and swung upwards blindly.

  The handle connected with a dull thud.

  Chapter 5

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” I said, kneeling next to the fallen woman. She opened one eye with a shocked expression and slowly sat up.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said once again.

  She held one hand over her left eye socket, the other hand was braced against the ground, shaking.

  I pulled her up and she leaned against my arm. I slowly guided her up the stairs and into the camper. She collapsed on the sofa without even a word.

  I rummaged through the freezer and pulled out several loose cubes of ice. Then I found a plastic bag in one of the drawers and created a makeshift compress.

  She accepted it, placing it directly above her left eyebrow after pulling her hair back.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “For the ice,” she replied.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “You shouldn’t sneak up on someone like that.”

  “You think so, huh?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Actually I had a headache before I got here. Now it’s in migraine territory.”

  “Can I get you anything else?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “You always react like that?”

  “You always grab strangers from behind?”

  She shook her head. “I just barely touched your shoulder.” She cleared her throat and shifted the bag of ice slightly. “And it’s not like you’re a stranger.”

  “I’m not?”

  “You’re Chris Tyler,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m Audra Beck. My dad’s Gary Beck. He was friends with your father.”

  Old photographs flashed through my mind after she mentioned the name.

  “My father’s been expecting you,” she said.

  Chapter 6

  “Ouch, what happened to you?” Gary asked his daughter.

  Audra and I had just walked a great distance from my father’s lot to her own. Her father was sitting outside on a lawn chair with a concerned look on his face.

  “I snuck up on him,” she said, sounding unsure if that was the truth. “It was an accident.”

  Audra ventured over to her father as he put his arm around her and inspected the red welt above her left eye.

  “Shiner,” he commented.

  “Lovely,” she replied. “Next time you want someone, better go get them yourself.”

  Gary laughed. And it was a laughter that seemed comical, the kind that appeared over-exaggerated, but genuine. Gary slapped his knee, doubled over and then began coughing.

  I caught myself smiling just watching the old guy get his composure back.

  The only time I had ever seen Gary Beck was in my father’s collection of old black and white pictures. An ex-Vietnam vet, Gary was my father’s fishing buddy. Of the numerous pictures I saw him in, he always wore an old beat-up blue and white Yankees ballcap, Yankees T-shirt and faded blue jeans. There were a few other pictures of my father and Gary together in Vietnam, as they served in the same platoon. I had never met him in real life before, which was strange, taking into consideration that my father spent a lot of time with him.

  Gary stood before me now and it was as if he had jumped out from one of those old black and whites. He wore the exact same Yankees cap. Although he had a different T-shirt, Gary wore the same style of gold wire-rimmed glasses that slid to the tip of his nose. His hair was slicked back, shoulder-length and graying.

  And the one feature I recalled foremost was his kind face and big smile. It was the kind of face, even if he was a stranger to you, that you’d feel comfortable striking up a conversation with.

  “Hello, Chris,” he said in a slightly raspy voice. His smile burst forth, followed by a rapid handshake. “It’s good to finally meet you, man. I feel like I already know you from all your dad’s pictures.”

  “Likewise,” I said.

  “I’m sorry about what happened to him. He was a great man!”

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  “Did he ever get a chance to talk to you?”

  “About what?” I inquired. It suddenly dawned on me that Audra was the one my father had secretly met behind the garage. Little pieces of the puzzle were coming together and I sensed the major pieces would soon fall as well.

  Gary looked at his daughter, then back at me. “Well, I’m not going to beat around the bush. I talked to your father weeks before he was hospitalized and he said I could trust you and that you would help.”

  “Okay,” I said, listening intently.

  “I’m not going to tell you the whole story right now, because you wouldn’t believe me anyway. Instead, I’m going to show you something and I hope you’ll understand.”

  “Alright.”

  Gary pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and motioned for me to follow him. We walked to the back of his trailer, into a dark patch of trees. Past the trees, a steep hill plummeted into another deeper level of darkness. He carefully slid down the dirt path to the bottom of the hill and I followed. A thin trail worked its way into a thicker cluster of trees. Beyond those trees all vegetation ceased.

  I stood before what looked to be a perfect circle. In this circle, cracked brown earth appeared. There was no crab grass or other weeds, no saplings or even the slightest growth whatsoever.

  All the way around the perimeter of this great circle there were oblong black rocks, halfway buried in the dusty soil. The exposed end of each rock protruded roughly three feet from the ground. These peculiar onyx stones were spaced evenly, several feet apart.

  “Damn, this is one hell of a fire pit,” I commented, trying to break the dead silence. “Where’s the lawn chairs?”

  Gary turned to me, a smile widening. “You mean where’s the virgins, right?” he said, followed by another fit of uncontrolled laughter.

  “Don’t look at me,” Audra said.

  Gary’s fit of laughter quickly stopped. “What do you mean by that?” he asked, suddenly serious.

  I turned my head, but was unable to conceal my laughter.

  “Nevermind,” she replied.

  Gary shot her a questionable glance above his spectacles, then pushed them back onto the bridge of his nose.

  “Go get the goat, would ya?” Gary asked.

  Audra rolled her eyes, then disappeared into the tree line.

  “Goat?” I inquired.

  Great, a satanic sacrifice, I thought.

  “You making cheese down here?” I asked.

  Either Gary didn’t hear me or he was tuning me out because he didn’t respond. Just stared into the dirt.

  “So what’s the deal with this place?” I asked.

  Gary pulled a shovel from the small shed behind the stones. He walked into the center of the circle and motioned for me to approach.

  “This has been here since the early settlers,” he said. “Its ownership has changed hands only once since the mid-1800s. Used to be controlled by the Smith family, passed down from generation to generation. Back in 1973 I bought this place from Lester Smith,” Gary explained. He looked distant, almost troubled. “I used to camp here down the road from him and we became friends. The guy was deeply religious. He was into a cult of some sorts that I never really understood. He
said his family was guardians of this place and that it possessed something that could cleanse a man of his sins, cast away the dark side.”

  “Was he a little off his rocker?”

  Gary shrugged the question off. “He said there was a bloodletting ritual he performed on himself many years before meeting me that cleansed his soul. His family felt betrayed that he violated the sacred ground and left him,” Gary explained. “I guess the ritual was supposed to be forbidden and dangerous, but Lester was curious. He was dying of emphysema at the time, and said he had a vision from God that told him to perform the ritual.”

  “What was the ritual?” I asked.

  “I’m about to show you.”

  Gary raised the shovel, then buried it in the cracked earth. He shoved a boot down on the shovel, driving its blade inches beneath the surface. He tossed the dirt aside, then the shovel. He knelt down and pointed into the dirt.

  At first sight, I thought I was looking at pieces of silver metal.

  “You ever seen anything like this?” Gary asked.

  I looked closer. The metal pieces were actually worms of some sort. They looked like earthworms, but their metallic silver color seemed unnatural.

  “Christ,” I said, “I’ve never seen any living thing that color before. What is it?”

  “Land leech,” Gary said. “But it’s no ordinary leech.”

  “Is it dead?” I asked. The leech looked dried up.

  “No, it’s just dormant right now. If I placed a few drops of water on it, it would be fully active in a matter of seconds.”

  “How’d they get here?”

  Gary shrugged his shoulders. “They’ve always been here as far as I know. The leeches, the rocks, the dead earth.”

  “I’m confused,” I cut in. “So what does this have to do with me or my father?”

  “It’s complicated,” Gary replied. “There’s something I need you to see.”

  Minutes later, Audra emerged from the woods dragging a large cage on wheels out into the open. She wore a pair of heavy gloves and tossed another pair to her father.

  Gary dipped the shovel into the dirt and extracted one of the leeches. He pushed the shovel in front of my face. “Here,” he said, “Hold this.”

  I reached out to grab it.

  “Whoa there. Grab a glove first.”

  He kicked over a box of latex gloves he had retrieved from the shed. “Better use these. Just the moisture from your hand can make it active.”

  After wrestling to get my sweaty hand into the size eight glove, Gary dumped the leech into my grasp and we approached the cage.

  The goat in the cage was wild, charging the sides of its wire confinement, its head butting the metal over and over. Several times it lost its balance, fell, but each time it got back up and continued its assault.

  “Back away,” Gary told Audra.

  We stepped back and the goat ceased its thrashing. It stared coldly back in our direction, unmoving.

  “What the hell is wrong with it?” I asked, actually feeling a little frightened by the goat’s insane actions.

  Gary shook his head. “It was born on the neighbor’s farm. Six months later, a wild dog attacked and killed its mother. For some reason, the dog left it unharmed. But shortly after, the goat became wild itself. It hurt my neighbor’s children. Charged my neighbor on several occasions, even bit him on the leg once. He tested negative for rabies, so the goat was free and clear. They isolated the goat and it just went mad. If it did have rabies, it would have died weeks ago, but it kept on living and kept getting more aggressive. Neighbor was going to shoot it the day I offered to take it away. It’s been in that cage ever since. Neighbor said it had something wrong with its brain, some form of animal retardation or mental sickness. The thing doesn’t sleep. It just stares. Whenever a person or another animal gets within five feet of it, it goes insane. If you ask me, the thing’s possessed...evil.”

  “It’s name’s Junior, as in Gary Jr.” Audra said, with a quick wink in my direction.

  “Very funny,” Gary replied.

  Audra added: “You see, the goat acts a lot like Dad used to act before his first cup of coffee in the morning.”

  Gary bit his lip, though he couldn’t help but smile. “Ha ha.”

  “He adopted it,” Audra explained. “He always wanted a son to call ‘Junior’.”

  Gary moved next to Audra and put his arm around her, then pointed to the cage. “And as my children go, Junior’s actually the brightest.”

  Audra stepped away and punched her Dad in the arm. She shot him a mean glare that dissolved quickly into a smile.

  “You ready?” Gary asked her.

  “Ready as ever,” she replied.

  They both approached the cage. Once again Junior thrashed wildly.

  “Stand back,” Gary warned me.

  They opened the cage door and Gary took the goat by the head, twisting its neck to the ground. The goat made a terrible whining sound and fought violently to free itself. From its looks and its actions, I somehow knew the goat was not trying to free itself to escape. It looked poised to actually attack Gary and Audra. It almost seemed comical to see a goat that aggressive, but something about its nature actually scared me.

  Once Gary secured the goat’s head, he looked up at me, sweat beading on his forehead. “Spit on it,” he grunted.

  I took two steps toward the cage.

  “Not the goat!” Gary said. “The leech!”

  Audra giggled.

  I looked down at my cupped hand. So fascinated with the goat’s behavior, I had actually forgotten about the dried-up thing in my own possession. The silver leech was rock-hard in my hand. In my mind, there was no way it could have been alive. But I did what I was told and spit on it.

  Seconds later, its body undulated before me, working its way around my hand.

  “Put it in Junior’s nose,” Gary instructed.

  I just laughed. Shook my head.

  “Do it!” Gary yelled. It wasn’t an angry yell, but a desperate yell as the goat was beginning to slip from his grasp. Audra maneuvered atop its head to assist her father.

  I looked at Gary and realized he was dead serious about his request.

  I pinched the leech between my gloved index finger and thumb and lowered it to the top of its nostrils, noticing the leech would never fit inside the goat’s nasal passage.

  To my amazement, the leech’s body elongated before my eyes. Its tubular body flattened, then rolled into a needle-sharp point as it penetrated the goat’s nasal cavity.

  I cringed at the sight and felt my stomach turn.

  Audra jumped off the goat and Gary shoved it back into the cage and closed the door.

  The leech disappeared fully into the recesses of the goat’s nasal cavity. The goat responded by thrashing around once again, but then it suddenly collapsed.

  When I glanced in again, the goat was still, eyes open and staring ahead.

  The goat closed its eyes then, and it shook. It kicked its legs. From time to time, it would cry out, as if frightened. Other times, it would calm itself and sleep.

  The fit lasted about ten minutes. In the time the leech inserted itself, the goat’s eyes had grown watery. A mixture of snot and blood ran from its nose. It shook violently from time to time, breathing rapidly, then quieting to what seemed like a deep sleep.

  But then the bloodsucking creature emerged as quickly as it had entered. It squirmed through the same nasal passage, extracting its body in one sick popping sound. Once it was fully freed of its host, it grew still and started changing. And to my utter amazement the leech expanded to twice its normal size, engorged on what I assumed was the goat’s blood. The leech’s silver color started changing as well. As if a shadow had crossed it, its slick body turned black in an instant.

  * * *

  Amazingly, the next morning, the goat was tranquil enough to be freed from its cage. It grazed on the lawn carelessly. It showed no signs of hostility. In less than twelve hours,
this wild goat became mild-mannered enough to be a family pet. The transformation was unbelievable.

  As for the black leech, it continued to grow. By the following nightfall, the leech had grown considerably, as it was now longer than the length of my hand. It thrashed inside a Mason jar, flipping like an earthworm that has been torn in two.

  The strangest thing about the transformation was that the leech now seemed aware of us. It shifted inside the jar, positioning itself to where we stood outside, as if it was watching us. When I picked up the jar, the thing lunged to where my hand touched the glass. It spread itself out there, its jaws flush against the glass, as if it was probing for my hand.

  Chapter 7

  That night I couldn’t eat supper. We sat outside at the picnic table, the fire casting strange shadows into that jar. I couldn’t help but feel that the presence inside was watching us. Worse yet, I recalled the dream in the hospital. The black mass I dreamed about looked like that very thing we had captured.

  I shook off the chilling thought and instead, listened as Gary talked about my father. I felt consumed by his every word. Though some of what he told me seemed far-fetched, I believed him. I knew my father trusted him as well.

  The answers to all my questions were slowly coming to the surface.

  Through Gary’s passionate story, I discovered my father’s secret side. Stories that had been told to me by my grandmother and mother fused with Gary’s story. This coupled with my own time with my father helped paint the picture of what had happened to him during those lost years of his life.

  * * *

  My father was just a kid when he found himself in the jungles of Vietnam, fighting for his country. Bound to a strange fate, Gary and my father found each other in the same platoon. Both men were travelling in the same jeep on the day that would change both of their lives forever.

  It was a supply run that found my father driving into a village that had remained neutral to both the North and the South. Halfway through, a band of Vietcong opened fire on the jeep. My father sped away through twisting roads, headed back towards the safety zone. Miles away from safety, a Vietnamese boy ran out in front of the jeep.