by Lukens, Mark
“Hello!” Jed called out and tried a smile.
No one answered.
“Anyone here?”
Still no answer.
“I don’t mean no harm. I was … was robbed. They took my horse and pack. I need help.”
No one answered. Nothing stirred. A dark brown horse poked its head around the corner of the stables and watched him with wide, frightened eyes.
Something had happened here—Jed was sure of it.
He hurried up onto the front porch of the cabin, his boots thudding on the floorboards. He knocked on the solid wood door.
“Hello?” he called out.
No one answered.
“Are you hurt?” he called out to the door. “I’m coming inside! Don’t shoot!”
Jed tried the door handle; it was unlocked. He opened the door and he could smell the coppery scent of blood in the air before the door was all the way open. He could hear flies buzzing inside the murky cabin. He saw the dark splashes of blood all over the floor and walls.
He had his gun in his hand, cocked, with his finger on the trigger. He didn’t call out anymore as he searched through the cabin. He didn’t see any bodies, just smears of gore and blood, like the bodies had been dragged across the floors and walls by something impossibly strong. Most of the furniture was smashed to bits. Dishes and glassware was shattered all over the place.
A small fire crackled in the fireplace, but it would die out soon.
The kitchen was ransacked as badly as the living room. There was more blood in the kitchen—it looked like someone had splashed a bucket of blood around the room.
But there were no bodies in here, either.
They must’ve been taken.
And they would come back, Jed thought. The bodies would stumble up to the cabin again; maybe they wouldn’t have their skin or their faces or their eyes anymore, but they would still be coming because the skinwalkers would be inside of them, controlling them like puppets.
Jed decided he would take one of the horses out there in the stables, if he could even get a saddle on one of those spooked creatures. He might have to walk the animal for a mile until it was calm enough to ride, but if that’s what it took to get away from this place, then that’s what he would do.
He was about to bolt out of the cabin, but he heard a thumping sound from a bedroom at the other end of the living room. Was it one of them? A skinwalker? Or one of the bodies stumbling around? He didn’t want to see them again, the reanimated dead. He couldn’t see it again; his mind would crack like an egg if he had to see it one more time.
But then he heard a whimpering sound, like a woman or a child.
Someone was still alive.
Jed hurried to the front door which was still wide open and he looked outside. Nobody out there, nobody stumbling up towards the cabin.
“Help me,” a voice called out from the bedroom.
Jed’s mind screamed at him to run. Maybe this was a trap. If the skinwalkers could mimic animal sounds, then they could surely mimic a child’s voice.
There were more sounds of thumping from the bedroom, like somebody was moving things around and hurrying to get out of the room.
Jed was frozen in the doorway, his Colt still clenched in his hand, his finger still on the trigger. Before he could run outside, a boy appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. He seemed to be about eight or nine years old. He had long dark hair and Jed guessed he was at least half Indian, maybe even full-blooded.
“What happened here?” Jed asked the boy.
The boy stared at him with his dark eyes. “My family,” he whispered. “They killed them. Took them away.”
“Who?” Jed said, but he didn’t need to ask—he already knew the answer. Skinwalkers. And they’d left someone behind in the cabin, just like they had left me behind, Jed thought. But why? Why me? Why this boy?
Jed didn’t have time to worry about those things. He needed to run. But he couldn’t leave this boy here. He took the boy to the stables and they managed to saddle two horses even though both of them bucked with panic. Maybe when they were far away from this place and the smell of blood, the horses would calm down enough so they could ride them.
The boy hadn’t spoken much the whole time they saddled the horses; and once they started walking the horses, he wouldn’t speak at all.
But at least Jed had gotten the boy to tell him his name.
David, the boy had said. His name was David.
OCTOBER
THE SPIRIT OF HALLOWEEN
I know what you might be thinking—a poem? But this is actually a story—a Halloween story.
Three friends try to outdo each other with scares on Halloween night, but one of them has a true horror in store for the other two.
Three young boys stood at the end of a lonely street,
Costumes from head to ankles, yet sneakers on their feet.
It was Halloween night, with a chill in the air,
A full moon silvered the ground as they searched for the biggest scare.
A month’s allowance and a bag of candy was the prize,
To the one who could summon the worst frights to rise.
They had drawn straws before, and Mike’s turn came up first;
He led them to what he thought would scare them all the worst.
Mike smiled to himself, knowing this would be scary,
The darkness and looming headstones of the cemetery.
They sat in the middle of the graveyard, all of them looking round,
And they waited for the dead to dig themselves up from the ground.
Fear began to settle into Ted, then to Mike it spread;
“How can you be scared?” Billy said, “when everything here is dead?
“The Spirit of Halloween is what we’re looking for,
“So let’s leave this place, maybe Ted has something better in store.”
They took off, not letting their hopes be daunted,
Ted led them to a house that was surely haunted.
They crawled in through the window, careful not to make a sound,
Cautiously they looked throughout the house that Ted had found.
Wind whistled around the eaves and things went bump in the night,
What started out as nervousness was turning into fright.
There was a chilling rush of air, and a rattling chain rolling down a stair;
Mike admitted Ted had given him a scare, yet Billy sat yawning on a chair.
“I don’t mean to say, Mike, that this is a bit too boring,
But I wouldn’t want the ghosts to come, only to catch me snoring.
Let’s leave this broken-down house and the ghosts behind,
And I’ll show you some scares guaranteed to blow your mind.”
They followed after Billy until he put his hand up to yield,
No haunted houses or cemeteries, just an empty field.
In the middle of this field there was a large pumpkin on the ground;
Billy began to chant and circle this pumpkin round.
The ground began to rumble and their hearts began to race,
The pumpkin broke open, leaving a monster in its place.
The monster grew from the exploded pumpkin, towering in the air,
Warts on its slimy skin, small white worms tunneling through its hair.
It had long, powerful arms ending in hooked claws,
Sharp, needle-like teeth set in its snouted jaws.
The monster moved with amazing speed, scooping them up for the kill,
The two boys could not move for their fear had frozen them still.
Billy smiled, knowing the earlier scares had been topped,
So horrified were these two that their hearts had stopped.
Backwards now Billy chanted, sending events into reverse,
The creature gone, the pumpkin whole again, thus ending the curse.
He left his friends, dead from what they’d seen,
It was only what they’d wan
ted—The Spirit of Halloween.
NOVEMBER
RATTRAP
November brings to my mind Thanksgiving, and in this story Kevin and Bridgette, a young couple, gets ready for Bridgette’s mother to visit for Thanksgiving. But it seems they suddenly have a pest problem in their home. But these pests are much worse than they ever could’ve imagined.
“What the hell was that?” Bridgette hissed in the darkness, turning over to shake Kevin awake. “Are you awake?”
“Am now,” he grumbled.
The jiggling noise sounded again.
“Kevin, don’t you hear that?”
Kevin listened to the crackling noise that sounded like someone jiggling a door handle. He could see a gloved hand in his mind testing one of the door handles of their house to see if it was locked.
Then the noise stopped.
“Do you hear—”
“Yes,” he snapped. “Sshh.”
Kevin laid there, his body tense now and tingling with fear. This couldn’t be happening right now. He wasn’t ready for it. He could sense Bridgette beside him, feeling the same thing.
Which door were they at? The front door? He couldn’t be sure. It sounded closer than that, like it was right inside their bedroom. Kevin’s mind scrambled to think of a weapon he could use. He wished he had a gun, but Bridgette wouldn’t allow one in the house.
The noise sounded again. It sounded like somebody might be jimmying one of their bedroom windows open.
But that didn’t seem right, either.
The noise stopped again.
“Kevin, what is it?” she whispered, holding on to him now.
Oh yeah, now she wanted to be close to him. Not earlier.
“I don’t know,” he said as he sat up. He was starting to suspect that the noise wasn’t from a burglar. The noise sounded familiar to him for some reason.
Kevin got up and switched on the lamp next to their bed.
“What are you doing?” Bridgette’s face was lined with worry and fear, her eyes round and bright.
Kevin slipped on a pair of jogging pants. “Get the cell phone,” he told her. “Get ready to call 911 if I tell you to. I’m going to check on the doors and windows.” He headed out of the bedroom to the short hall that led to the hall bathroom, living room, and kitchen.
He checked the kitchen door. It was locked. He turned on the porch light, but he didn’t see anyone out there. He checked the front door in the living room and a few of the windows. Everything seemed okay.
“Did you see anybody out there?” Bridgette asked as she held the cell phone clamped in her hand.
“No. I think I know what it is.” But Kevin didn’t think Bridgette was going to like his explanation.
“What?”
Kevin was about to answer, but they both stopped as the jiggling sounded again. But now that Kevin knew what it was, it sounded more like a scratching noise. And it was coming from the ceiling, not from the doors or windows.
“What is it?” Bridgette asked as she looked up at the ceiling, following Kevin’s gaze.
“I think we have some critters living up in our ceiling,” he said. “Maybe mice. Or a squirrel. Or rats.”
“Rats?” It was like she hadn’t even heard the other rodents he had suggested. “How in the hell did we get rats? I keep the house clean.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
Kevin went to the refrigerator and pulled out a can of Pepsi. He popped the top and chugged a third of it down.
“It’s cold outside,” he told her as he set the can of soda on the counter. “They probably found a way in through a crack or something, trying to get out of the cold.”
“Great. Now they’re in the ceiling.”
They listened again to more scratching sounds. “Maybe in the walls, too,” Kevin added.
Bridgette stared up at the ceiling and he could see her imagining a horde of rats squirming all over each other like a living, hairy carpet; quick flashes of wet gray and brown fur, red eyes and sharp teeth, claws ticking along the wood and drywall.
“You think there are a lot of them?” she asked.
“Probably not,” he told her even though he wasn’t really sure. He just wanted to set her mind at ease a little. “It’s probably just a stray rat or mouse that got inside.” He drank the rest of his Pepsi down and crushed the can. He hugged Bridgette around her shoulders. “Come on, let’s get back to bed. I’ll protect you. Don’t I always protect you?”
“You’re my hero,” she said sarcastically.
• • •
Two nights later Bridgette woke Kevin up at five o’clock in the morning. He wasn’t too happy about being pulled from a dream about a girlfriend who might want to have sex with him once in a while.
And she was glad he wasn’t happy, because she wasn’t happy.
“What?” Kevin growled as he managed to pry his eyes open. He glanced at the alarm clock. “It’s early. I don’t have to be up for another hour.”
“If I can’t sleep, then you can’t sleep.”
“What are you—” But then Kevin heard the noise. The scratching noise. The chewing, munching noise that had sounded like a burglar jiggling the door handle two nights ago.
“That mouse or rat, or whatever it is, has been going at it for about three hours now. He will chew and then stop. I’ll almost be asleep, and then he’ll start again.”
“What makes you think it’s a he?” Kevin asked her.
“Okay. Then she is driving me crazy.”
“I’ll find out where he or she is getting in the house when I get home from work. Try and seal up the crack or something.” He rolled over to go back to sleep.
“I want it dead. We need to kill it, Kevin. My mom will be here in two weeks for Thanksgiving and I want it out of here.”
“Let me just take a look when I get home today, and then we’ll go from there.”
“No, when you get home we’re going to buy some rat traps or something to kill that thing with.”
“You said you wanted a pet. Maybe we could catch it and put it in a cage. Like a hamster or something.”
“I wanted a cat or a dog, not a nasty little rat.”
Kevin sighed, impatient to get back to his dream. “When I get home today, I’ll look around the house and try and find where it got in here. And then we’ll go to the hardware store. I promise.” Now please leave me alone, he thought.
Bridgette plopped back down on the bed and sighed.
The house was silent for a moment, and then the chewing and scratching sounds started again.
• • •
That afternoon, after getting home from his crummy job, Kevin conducted a detailed search of the outside of their house. It was their first house, and it had needed some “TLC” as the real estate agent had phrased it. They couldn’t afford much of a house on what they made and what they had saved, and this was the best they could find. And even then, Bridgette’s mother had helped them out with the down payment—a fact that she would never let them forget.
Kevin had been happy renting. If they were renting this house, they could’ve just called the landlord and told him to get someone out here to fix this problem. But no, they had to buy a house. Bridgette’s mother had her convinced that it was a good investment. But they had dumped all of their savings into this fixer-upper and now they constantly argued about every penny they spent.
Yeah, owning a home was paradise.
Kevin found one slender crack in the block near the foundation on the side of the house with the aging AC unit, but he doubted a rat could squeeze in through there. He also found a few torn places in the mesh under the eaves, but he couldn’t see how a rat could climb up there and crawl inside—it seemed like it might be too risky for the little fella.
He took his inspection inside. He checked the small laundry room that was just off the kitchen—it had a door that led out to their small backyard. There was a small hole around the dryer vent, but it looked awful
small. He checked all of the windows and doors and they seemed to be tight. He checked the cabinets under the sinks in the two bathrooms and the kitchen. He didn’t see any gaping holes or chewed wood. Next he checked the small area off of the living room that housed the heating unit.
Bingo.
“Looks like home,” Kevin whispered as he shined his flashlight at a crack between the living room wall and where the previous owners had added on the second bedroom and bathroom. The space was only about two inches wide, but it looked like something had been chewing on the insulation stuffed in between the walls.
• • •
They drove to the hardware store. Kevin thought that the little fella would probably find his way outside again, but Bridgette wanted it dead. She didn’t want her mom to see a big, hairy rat bolt across the floor as they were eating their Thanksgiving dinner. She wanted the house perfect for when she came. Or at least as perfect as their little fixer-upper could be.
“Maybe we should get some poison,” Kevin said as he drove. He still found the idea of a rattrap a cruel and unusual punishment. He could imagine the rat running across the trap and the metal bar crashing down on his hindquarters and crushing him. He could imagine the rat squealing as it slowly bled to death. And then Kevin would have to find something to finish him off with. No, he didn’t like the idea of that at all.
“Poison’s fine,” Bridgette said. “I don’t care, as long as it’s dead.” She was fed up. Before Kevin got home, she had found a few pieces of garbage from the kitchen waste basket strewn across the floor. She claimed the rat had done it.
“We’ll have to start taking the garbage out every night before going to bed,” he had told her. But he read her thoughts in her eyes: that wasn’t the solution to this problem.
Kevin parked the car and they entered the hardware store. It wasn’t a big box hardware store; this one was an old-fashioned hardware store that was nearly empty except for a few overfriendly employees.
“Where are your rat poisons?” Kevin asked an employee who had a head of gray hair and tanned, wrinkled skin. He could tell that the man had spent a lot of time working outdoors in his life.
