by Lukens, Mark
Time for a drink.
He poured himself a tall glass of cheap bourbon. He didn’t even bother with the ice.
It was too late to call Paul about the footage. He’d call him first thing in the morning. He was sure Paul would want to see this. He was sure he’d pay big bucks for it.
• • •
Vince’s eyes popped open in the darkness.
He sat up in his bed, trying to listen for the noise that had woken him up. His head was still swimming slightly from the cheap whiskey and his stomach burned like someone was twisting a hot poker inside his gut.
The noise had come from the kitchen, he thought. He swung his feet over the side of his bed and snapped on the lamp on the end table.
Somebody’s trying to steal my camera. My footage!
Vince jumped up and ran out of his room. He raced down the hall to the kitchen and flipped on the light. He saw his digital camera on the counter where he’d left it. The kitchen was a mess, but he’d get to that in the morning. He searched the rest of his small house, flipping on lights along his way. Everything was okay. Nothing disturbed. He checked all of the windows and doors and went back to the kitchen for a glass of milk. Maybe a glass of milk would make his stomach feel better.
• • •
Vince called Paul at ten o’clock in the morning.
“I’ve got something great for you,” Vince told Paul.
“Whadaya got, Vinnie?”
Vince hated it when Paul called him Vinnie. It made him want to call him Paulie—maybe see how he liked it.
“It’s the best so far,” Vince said into the phone. “I was driving down a back road and saw a motorcycle accident. Three dead. Bodies cut up in pieces. Plenty of gore.”
“Can you send it by e-mail?”
“Hell no. I aint taking a chance on this stuff.”
Paul sighed loudly in his ear. “Okay. I’ll come by tonight about eight.”
“Good. I got some other stuff to show you, too.”
Vince slammed the phone down and clapped his hands together. He glanced around at his kitchen. It wouldn’t hurt to get his house cleaned up a little.
• • •
Paul showed up at seven forty-five. Vince invited him inside and handed him a drink. He remembered what Paul liked to drink; he had a knack for remembering little details like that. Vince ushered Paul to the couch and coffee table. Vince’s laptop was already set up and all Paul needed to do was hit play.
They made a few minutes of small talk. Vince dragged out the conversation as long as he could; he never got many visitors to his home. But Paul said he was busy and needed to be somewhere else soon.
Vince left Paul in the living room to watch the footage while he made himself another drink—his third of the early evening.
“What the hell is this?” Paul cried from the living room.
That wasn’t exactly the reaction Vince had been expecting. He set his drink on the counter and rushed back out to the living room.
“Something wrong with the footage?” Vince asked, his heart skipping a beat, silently praying that something hadn’t happened to his computer.
Paul was on his feet, his face was pale and his eyes were wide. He stared at Vince in shock. “Is this some kind of joke, Vinnie?”
Vince sat down on the couch and turned the laptop towards him. He scrolled back to the beginning and clicked the play button on the screen with the mouse. The footage played out just like he had filmed it. There were pieces of wreckage and smears of blood and oil on the road. But when the camera got to the bodies, they weren’t there anymore. Everything else was there, even the splashes of blood and motorcycle parts, but the bodies were gone.
“I … I don’t understand this,” Vince whispered.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Paul said as he hurried towards the front door, “but I can’t use anything like that.”
“They were there when I shot the tape,” Vince said as he stood up. “Three bodies. All of them mutilated. I swear to God.”
Paul was even closer to the front door now. It looked like he might break into a run at any second. “Maybe something was wrong with the camera,” he said in a shaky voice, but it didn’t sound like he believed that.
Vince took a few steps towards Paul. “They were there. I swear they were.”
“I gotta go, Vinnie. You call me later when you get something else.”
“I got some other stuff, too.”
“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t really need anything else right now. Just … just call me later.” Paul opened the door and practically ran outside.
Vince went back to his couch and plopped down in front of the laptop. He watched the footage again and again, but it never changed. Somehow the bodies in the footage were gone.
• • •
Vince’s eyes popped open in the darkness.
He’d heard a noise … a squishy noise.
He listened for a moment in the darkness for the noise again.
Thump.
Squish.
Thump.
Squish.
He reached out for the lamp next to his bed to turn it on, but he knocked it over along with the rest of the Jim Beam. Both the lamp and whiskey crashed down to the wood floor, the whiskey gurgling out of the bottle. Vince, in a blind panic, crawled over the bedside table to find the lamp.
He needed light!
The thump and squish was closer now. In the hallway. Then right outside his bedroom door. And then inside his bedroom. It wasn’t a stealthy noise; it was deliberate, it wanted to be heard.
Vince found the lamp on the floor as a whimper escaped his throat. His hand closed around the base of the lamp, and he picked it up and set it back on the end table. He fumbled for the little pull string with trembling fingers and then he found it. He pulled the little chain and bathed the bedroom in light.
At the foot of his bed was an abomination, something impossible. His mind reeled, trying to understand what he was seeing.
Something’s wrong here. Something is very wrong.
The thing at the foot of his bed was one of the bodies from the motorcycle wreck, the man who had been cut in half. His muscular arms propelled him forward on the floor, his fists thumping down on the floorboards and then his gory stump at the bottom of his torso made a squishy sound as it landed on the floor, pieces of skin and intestines trailing behind. The dead man’s mouth hung open, his jaw slack, his eyes blank.
Vince tried to back up into the headboard, but he had nowhere to go. He drew his knees up to his body and watched the thing’s arms shoot forward and thump on the floor to propel him forward.
Vince’s paralysis broke. He knew he had to move now or he would never move again. He bolted to the end of his bed, his mind burning with white-hot panic.
Why? How? No! Gottagetaway!!
He fell off the end of his bed and hit the wall with his shoulder, but he still kept his eyes on the thing on the floor that whirled around, twisting on the gore at the bottom of his severed torso. Vince slid along the wall, knocking pictures down along the way, trying to stay as far away from that monstrosity as he could.
And then he bolted for his bedroom door.
But he stopped when he saw half a man hop into the doorway. The man’s left leg was gone, the flesh at the knee a shredded mess with one sharp piece of bone sticking out. His left arm was gone from the elbow down; the stump ended in ragged flesh. His blood-soaked clothes glistened black in the lamplight. Vince stared into the man’s face which was unharmed on the right side, but the flesh of his left cheek was peeled back, revealing broken and jagged teeth; his tongue flicked between the teeth like a wet and red snake trying to escape its prison. Dried blood matted down his hair on that side of his now misshapen head.
Vince took two steps back on shaky legs, trying to whisper the word no. He was tripped up by the thing on the floor. Vince reeled, trying not to take his eyes off of the half-man in the doorway.
He couldn�
�t fall to the floor. He couldn’t be down on the floor with that thing.
After regaining his balance, Vince scattered back to the corner of his bedroom near the closet doors.
Both monstrosities hopped and shuffled towards him with frightening speed.
Vince found his voice. He screamed and screamed.
And then when they were only a few feet away, Vince exploded forward and ran right between them like a running back racing for the goal line. He felt their hands trying to clutch at him, fingernails digging at his skin. But Vince focused on the doorway—his goal line, his only hope. He pushed on, even though one of them had hold of his leg, but Vince dragged the half-man behind him all the way to the doorway.
A moment later he broke free from the two, but they were still right behind him in the hall, faster and stronger than they should’ve been. There was no way he could make it all the way down the hall. He shouldered his way into the bathroom and shut the door on them. As soon as he shut it, he fumbled with the lock, finally twisting it with his sweaty fingers. He backed up a few steps away from the door as he heard their bodies slam into it. The flimsy door shuddered in its frame. Near the bottom of the door Vince could hear the frantic scratching of fingernails, like a cat clawing to get inside.
This is just a nightmare, right? I’m passed out drunk right now, trying to wake up.
Vince started to cry. He sobbed in disbelief, his shoulders shaking with the sobs. He wiped at his eyes and looked at the small window over the toilet. It was way too small for him to crawl out of. He had locked himself into a corner.
The two half-men slammed into the door again. It was only a matter of time before they smashed their way in.
He needed some kind of weapon to fight them off with. That would be his only chance.
He flipped on the bathroom light and glanced around. He saw that the shower curtain was closed and there was a trail of blood on the floor that led from the door to the bathtub. The side of the tub was splashed with blood. There were bloody handprints on the shower curtain.
Oh God, no.
Another slam against the door. It was splintering badly now, barely hanging on by one hinge. It wasn’t going to hold up against too many more hits like that.
But Vince wasn’t looking at the door now; he stared at the shower curtain covering the bathtub. He walked towards the shower curtain, his bare feet wading through the sticky, dark blood on the floor.
He reached out for the shower curtain to rip it open.
The last hinge on the door broke free. The door slammed open.
Vince ripped the shower curtain aside and saw the woman who had bounced off the tree, leaving most of her face behind. Now her face was nothing but a mask of red gore with black holes where her mouth and eyes used to be.
The half-men thumped and squished their way across the floor, but Vince still didn’t look their way; he couldn’t take his eyes off of the woman as she raised her arms, extended her fingers, and reached for him like a lover.
The one-legged man slammed into Vince and plunged his broken and jagged mouth into Vince’s neck. There was a thump and a squish and the no-legged man grabbed one of Vince’s legs and tore away at his flesh with his teeth.
But Vince didn’t move. He didn’t scream. He was way beyond that now.
The woman reached out and held onto Vince, leaning close to him, the gaping dark hole that was once her mouth opened, emitting a thick, coppery smell. Her mouth met his lips and she kissed him, the sticky mess of her face smearing into his.
He was beyond madness now as they ripped him apart.
• • •
Four days later Paul checked his mail. Most of the mail was bills, but there was one envelope with no return address on it. Paul knew what was inside. He’d received many envelopes like these over the years.
He went back inside and slapped the bills down on the dining room table and went to the living room with the envelope. He sat down at his desk with the laptop on top of it. He ripped open the envelope and shook out the generic CD inside. Written on the CD in red marker were the words:
The Violent Death of Vincent
Paul stared at the CD for a long moment, turning it over and over in his hands. He wondered if this was another one of Vinnie’s sick jokes. Or maybe he was making up for what he’d done the other night.
He debated whether to watch the CD or just throw it away. But he knew he wasn’t going to throw it away. He was going to watch it.
He always watched.
Paul put the CD into his laptop and watched the short piece of footage. He watched it again and again, but no matter how many times he watched it, he couldn’t understand what he was seeing. There were three mangled people in a bathroom and they all looked like they were chewing on someone, eating and tearing at someone who was invisible.
But the person wasn’t there.
Vinnie wasn’t there.
• • •
Paul’s eyes popped open in the darkness.
He reached for the lamp next to his bed and turned it on. He sat up very straight, listening for the noise again.
It was a deliberate noise.
A thump.
And then a squish.
APRIL
PURGATORY
April makes me think of Easter. And here is a tale of a resurrection of sorts. After a car accident, a couple tries to outrun their attacker by driving up into the remote woods where they find a deserted town—or is it really deserted?
“Is she okay?”
Julie didn’t answer. She was checking on their daughter.
Hank kept his foot hammered down on the gas pedal. The woods on each side of the narrow road whipped by in a dark green blur. The front of their gold Kia Optima seemed to be eating up the backwoods road.
The Kia didn’t sound right, there was some kind of loud clicking noise coming from under the hood, and even though Hank had the pedal to the floor, it seemed like the car was beginning to lose power, struggling to stay above sixty miles an hour. He had to take his foot off the gas and tap the brakes a little as he took hairpin curves way too fast, the Kia’s tires screeching in protest.
But he had to keep speeding down this road or the black pickup truck was going to catch up to them.
Something banged from the rear quarter panel on the passenger side of the car; a loose piece of metal, Hank thought. Damage from where the pickup had smashed into them. The back door was smashed in and the impact would’ve thrown Cassie across the back of the car, but her seatbelt had held her in place and the door caved in around her, the glass shattering. Now Cassie sat bleeding among the crystals of broken glass.
“Is she okay?” Hank asked again.
“She’s unconscious, but she’s breathing,” Julie finally answered, but it sounded like she was struggling with her words, trying to choke back sobs.
Hank didn’t dare turn around and he couldn’t see Cassie in the rearview mirror with Julie hovering over her, wiping away blood and glass from her face and body. Hank’s eyes flicked up a little to the shattered back window in the rearview mirror. Only half of the window was a spider web of cracks so he could see out the driver’s side.
He didn’t see the black pickup following them yet.
But he knew it wouldn’t be long before the man in the black pickup came after them.
“We need to get her to a hospital!” Julie screamed from the back seat.
“I’m trying,” Hank said.
He grabbed his cell phone from the center console and dialed 911. But he got the same message again and again: No Service.
He threw the phone down and put both hands back on the wheel, navigating the twists and turns of the narrow road that rose higher and higher into the hills, farther into the wilderness.
Hank thought back to the accident that had happened only minutes ago.
The black pickup truck had come out of nowhere and smashed right into the side of their car. After the collision, the driver of the black pickup truck hadn�
��t even gotten out to see if they were okay. Instead, he had backed his truck up thirty yards and shifted back into drive and gunned the gas. The truck’s powerful motor screamed with fury and the back tires spun on the pavement as wraiths of smoke drifted up from the back of the truck.
The seconds seemed to stretch out like taffy as Hank stared at the grill of the truck coming towards them again. And then he fought through his shock and panic. He didn’t have time to worry if Cassie and Julie were okay; he only had a second to make his decision because the truck was going to hit them again.
Julie screamed as the truck sped towards them. She was already twisted around in her seat, looking back at Cassie, screaming for her.
Hank had gunned the gas pedal and drove out of the truck’s way just in time.
Oh God, Hank thought. He’s trying to kill us! Why?!
They had been out driving, exploring parts of Oregon they’d never been to before. They had stayed at a rustic motel off a lonely road in the woods. After breakfast this morning, they had explored a trail behind the motel. And then they decided to drive up into the mountains and explore. Maybe stop and take some pictures.
And that’s when the black truck had hit them.
“The phone won’t work!” Hank yelled at Julie as he sped around another curve in the road.
Julie was crying now. “She needs some help, Hank.”
“I know,” Hank answered, trying to sound strong and sure. “I’ll find something.”
Hank didn’t really know where he was going. They had set out to explore, just driving up this road at random. They had used their GPS, but now it wasn’t working. Maybe it had been broken in the crash.
But he remembered somebody at the motel talking about a town up in the mountains. It had a strange name but Hank couldn’t remember it.
And a moment later Hank saw a sign announcing that Purgatory, Pop. 1128, was only a mile up the road.
Thank God!
They would find some help there. If not a doctor, then at least a phone. They could call the police and an ambulance.
Cassie will be okay, Hank told himself. She’s going to be fine.
As they entered the tiny town of Purgatory, which seemed like it had been carved right out of the mountains and trees, Hank glanced at the rearview mirror—he didn’t see the black truck behind them yet. Surely it would’ve caught up to them by now, especially with the Kia slowing down more and more as the clicking noise from under the hood grew louder. Something was loose under the hood … something important, Hank was sure.
