Evil Heights, Book I: The Midnight Flyer

by Michael Swanson

  Lee's thighs and calves had begun to burn, and a terrible stitch was tearing into his side. He was at full speed now and had been for some time; the only thing pounding faster than his flying feet was his racing heart.

  I'm being crazy. The pain was growing so severe he tried to marshal his wits and collect himself. I ... Am ... Not ... Afraid!

  Afraid or not, still, this was as fast as he could run.

  Whatever it was, it was right up close, just behind, and being ugly now, toying with him, confident of the kill. It knew he knew it was there. The essence of his fear poured out into the air, the same as the sweat from his body. And the thing behind him craved the scent, the aroma of his blood drawing it ever forward, closer and closer.

  Lee was tearing along, driven to the edge of a full panic when he penetrated the hush of huddled shambles and quaking silence amid the shattered walls and dead trees which were the ravaged and abandoned homes. Each dark, empty place flew by, spilling out its own sadness, adding its woe to his desperation, and all the while, strengthening the thing which followed closer and closer behind.

  Lee was moving too fast to see the road through the pitch dark. What kept him from tripping and falling was only blind luck and his instinct to survive.

  If he fell, it would have him.

  The awful chill was no longer just behind; it had caught up and touched him, letting him know it really was there. The blind heat was all around, burning his eyes and searing his lungs. But there was that chill, that awful, terrible, deadly chill only inches behind.

  Run! For God's sake! Run!

  He was killing himself. He couldn't keep this up. It was too far to the light and he was so far back in the dark. He thought frantically, for the last time, screaming at himself to stop. It's only a damn dog!

  But he knew it wasn't any dog.

  On the verge of his lungs bursting it hit him. He understood why so far he hadn't been caught. Why it hadn't already done the awful things to his body it wanted to do. The thing was enjoying this. It was devouring his fear, eating him alive and step by step growing stronger.

  Oh, God! There it is! There it is! His thoughts screamed through the panic and the pain. At last, he was coming out of the ruined houses, and there were the lights of the highway, but still so far away. One yellow streetlight stood alone, still far ahead, its promise of safety reaching out to him, calling to him, drawing him on and giving him strength.

  But he was still so deep, maybe too deep within the darkness.

  Lee was in agony. Every screaming breath tore at him, burning his throat, searing his lungs. The stitch in his side was rending him, and the violent pounding in his chest threatened to explode at any second. Pain, terror, hopelessness, all manifest in utter desperation.

  Run!

  Run!

  Run!

  It was right behind, almost riding him. It was insane, weaving in and out, back and forth but never further from its mark than just inches behind, devouring his fear, suckling at the pain. Arrogant, sure of its catch, it brushed close again and again, licking his neck with a sour breath and delighting in the shiver of his sweat-soaked flesh.

  The light was closer.

  Lee felt it. Something changed. In its gluttony, it was missing its chance.

  Whatever it was he sensed, it could feel it too. It lashed out for him, but the darkness wasn't as substantial now, and it couldn't quite take hold.

  But its hands were on him, right up on him, the fingertips reaching out as they ran. He knew it was clawing the air desperately, only trying to take hold and finally drag him down.

  Behind his eyes, he could see it, the raw-boned arms whirling crazily. The awful fingers, their flat nails, rancid and dirty, were at his flapping shirt. But now, it was frantic; it was trying desperately to make up the unfair advantage it had suddenly lost, tear him from his feet, drag him down and fall at last upon him.

  He knew it now. What it wanted. Once it had him. It wanted him to see its face!

  The heat was all around, the awful, aching heat. It screamed its rage. It screamed its frustration. Like a busted bowel, the evil itself was spilling out.

  But both of them knew; Lee was getting away.

  Almost dying he was so spent, he drew closer to the light, and the thing had to shrink away. It spit at him in its rage, its bitterness blowing around him, seething with reeking bile, screaming out its spoiled anger, enraged like a selfish child.

  The streetlight hung high above the stop sign, which marked the end of Seminole Road. Not stopping even to look for traffic, Lee tore into the glow and fled out across the highway.

  The parking lot on the other side of the shiny asphalt was just an irregular, gray patch of crushed oyster shell. The tiny store was little more than a converted garage, but it was bright with light and there people were there.

  Lee, blind and spent somehow slowed and came to a stop without falling down. He was dizzy. Each wracking breath tore at him, and the pain in his side burned clear through his lungs stabbing at his heart. If he could have stopped the heaving gasps long enough, he would have thrown up.

  A man with his bag under his arm, who'd just emerged from the store, noticed Lee doubled over. His head was down and he was using one arm to help to prop himself up against the brick wall.

  "Damn, kid! You all right?” The man set his brown paper bag down on the hood of his car and moved up hesitantly, as though approaching an injured dog.

  Lee could only look up through his streaming eyes, and breathe, and breathe, and breathe.

  A dangerously skinny young man accompanied by a dog-faced girl with enormous pink curlers in her hair, were sitting in their car. They'd seen Lee, too. They got out; both of them coming out of the driver's side door, and came over cautiously.

  "Everything all right here?” The skinny man asked, more of the first man than of Lee.

  "I don't know. I walked out of the store, and there was this kid here all doubled over like he'd been hit by a truck. Look at his face!"

  Lee was as sickly gray as the oyster shells, trembling and sopping wet.

  "You been in a fight, boy?” The skinny guy asked, putting his arm back, keeping his girlfriend behind him.

  Lee let himself go collapsing to his knees, with only the one arm holding him up from slumping down on the grimy cement walk that bordered the front of the store. The other arm he kept clutched to his side.

  "I think maybe we should call someone,” the young woman said, not keeping her place behind her boyfriend. She came close and stared down at Lee, the curlers half as big as her head. “What's the matter with you, boy? You want we should call an ambulance?"

  "No,” Lee croaked. He really did feel like he was going to be sick. The one word was all he could manage.

  He looked up into the genuinely worried faces of the strangers, standing together under the buzzing neon lights, and desperately tried to catch his breath.

  "Just ... running."

  "Running!” said the man who'd come up first. “Looks more like you've been run over.” He turned to the other two. “I said right off he looked like a truck had hit him."

  The pain in Lee's side was starting to edge off. It felt better when he pressed his hand against it. His breaths weren't such great wracking agonies anymore, but he did still feel like he might be sick at any moment.

  "No ... Please ... I'm okay."

  All three unlikely Samaritans had been leaning down. They all pulled back and straightened up, then looked one at the other as though asking each other if there was anything else they could do.

  Lee managed something like a smile.

  "I guess, if you say so,” the thin guy said; but he didn't look so sure.

  "Just ... need to ... catch my ... breath ... thanks,” Lee managed almost a complete sentence.

  The couple looked to each other, and the thin guy shook his head. Then together they walked back to their car. When they pulled out, their headlights washed over Lee. Leaving the gravel, the car's tires squeale
d when they hit the asphalt. Lee could see the ugly girl with her curlers still staring at him out her open window.

  The first man finally picked up his bag from atop the long hood of his enormous Chrysler and put it down inside the open window. Reaching in the opened the door from inside and then got in. “You ought to take it a little easier,” he suggested, popping a piece of gum in his mouth. “You'll bust your heart like that, boy."

  From his place on the walk, Lee managed a better smile and a weak little wave.

  The car pulled out leaving Lee in the parking lot, all alone.

  It was a couple more minutes before he felt strong enough to get to his feet. More than once he looked back across the highway, beyond the pool of light spreading on the gravel around the stop sign. Whatever it was, he felt it; it was still there. It was well back in the dark, looking at him. Worst of all, he knew, it knew, he still had to go home.

  * * * *

  Little's Ice House was a gray cinder block rectangle, with three garage doors, which were always up in the summer and always down in the winter. The little store sat back from busy Highway 57, separated from the roar of the cars ripping down the four lane black top by just the twenty yards of dusty oyster shell parking lot. Like any good Ice House, most anything anyone could want could be found inside.

  A yellow and white striped awning stretched out and down along the entire length of the roof. Above it, an enormous, white, formed plastic RC Cola sign read at each corner in red letters: Beer, Ice, Groceries, and Bait.

  Mr. Little was always to be found inside. If the sun came up that day, he was there.

  He was a robust, fat man, with a crescent-shaped scar on the end of his chin that furrowed a deep, white line through his ever-present growth of stubbly, black beard. Certainly the most striking thing about Mr. Little was his terrifyingly enormous belly button, which stuck out like a growth or tumor at the very center of his spherical beer gut. When he stood up against the counter it couldn't help but attract the attention of every customer who came up to the counter. At times, the thing would work its way out through the gaps between the buttons of his shirt, well above his low hanging pants. Surrounded by the dark, curly hair on his belly, more than one new customer had done a double take, when seeing it for the first time. Not exactly sure what it was she had seen, one woman had once filed a complaint with the police, she was so convinced that Little had been standing behind the counter exposing himself.

  Lee had been in Little's only a couple of times since they had moved out of Pickford Acres and into Grandma's house, though he had passed it every time he had been down the highway. Like every red-blooded kid and most grown men, Lee loved a good ice house, and Little's was a classic. Mr. Little was one of those rare individuals born to his trade. Anywhere else, except perhaps, sitting on a bar stool at a local honkey tonk, sipping a Falstaff, he would have looked out of place. But here, standing behind that counter, he was in his own true element. There were few people who could come in to his store more than twice, that he couldn't call by name.

  "What can I do you for tonight, Mister Lee?” Little called out from behind the counter but seconds after Lee had walked in.

  Lee had settled down tremendously, after catching his breath. He looked around, still not quite familiar with the layout of this particular store. “Sugar, Mr. Little. My mom sent me for a bag of Imperial."

  "We got both kinds, brown and white,” he said reaching out a thick, hairy arm, pointing towards the far corner of the store. “Or you could just grab a few of the pieces of cane in that barrel over yonder and squeeze you a little of your own."

  Little's raucous guffaws reminded Lee exactly of the wild braying of a mule he'd once seen at the county fair, when it has stubbornly refused to be led out of its trailer and the owner had resorted to a cattle prod.

  "I think I'll get me a drink first,” Lee called out. He had to speak up, as Little kept an enormous fan going at the back of the store to try to keep the place somewhat cool, or maybe to blow away the mosquitoes before they could suck the customers dry. On strings, tied up high between the doors, were all sorts of hats and bonnets all bouncing and swaying under the steady blow.

  "Help yourself,” Little hollered back. “If you can't find it. We ain't got it.” This too, Little thought was enormously funny, and that poor donkey suffered the prod again.

  All along the front of the store were long, narrow wooden troughs. In the morning, they were filled to the top with chunks of ice, which Mr. Little, using an ice pick, broke out from enormous hundred pound blocks delivered by the ice truck. Inside the troughs were bottles of every type of beer and soft drink you could imagine. Part of the fun was searching around through the slurry trying to find the one you wanted. By the evening, most of the ice had melted, and to reach in deep, and fish around for a cold one, was an experience only a true ice house could provide.

  Lee stuck his arm in amongst the bobbing bottles and searched around until he found a big brown bottle of RC Cola. He fished it out and then expertly popped the cap off using the opener screwed to the side, the top falling into a galvanized, metal bucket placed below. He scooped out another handful of the icy water and smeared it across his forehead. Nothing had ever felt so good.

  "Starting to get hot ain't it,” Little called out, noticing the quick dip. “When it gets a little hotter, I'll let you kids just dive right in, and only charge you a quarter a piece.” This was followed by one big, resounding burst of the mulish laughter.

  Lee made his way back past the brooms and fishing poles, the laundry soap, and motor oil to the shelf of assorted groceries and canned goods. “Strange,” he thought, “They always put the milk and bread and other things your mom would need at the back of the store.” The candy and drinks were always up in the front.

  He grabbed a five-pound bag of Imperial Cane Sugar and headed back across the store, his RC already half gone.

  A stacked mound of long, green-striped watermelons, with more than a few spindly, green grasshoppers cavorting from one to the other, blocked his path to the cash register. He made a turn, squeezing past the big, red box painted with large white letters spelling out “Night Crawlers and Crickets,” and arrived, at last at the counter.

  "Why would anyone buy a box of bait, Mr. Little, when they can just pluck it fresh right off the melons?” Lee asked. “Or do you charge for those live ones, too?” He pointed at the grasshoppers.

  Mr. Little almost doubled over he laughed so hard. He didn't stop until he'd spat a big glob down behind the counter.

  Lee hoped there was a bucket or something back there.

  "You ain't from the health department are you?” Little stood back, shaking his hands, and trying to look afraid.

  Lee didn't know if he was referring to the joke about the bugs on the melons or the awful loogey he'd just seen Little spit. So he just grinned, knowing Little was only joking around anyway and plopped the sugar down on the smooth wood of the counter. He pulled the dollar from his pocket. The wadded bill was soaking wet, sweated clear through.

  "You gonna be takin’ that bottle with you,” Little asked, accepting the wadded up dollar and folding out flat with a quick double snap.

  "No sir,” said Lee, draining the last of the RC and feeling immensely better than when he had come in.

  "You ought to go grab another, seeing as how fast you finished that one,” observed Little, handing him back the change.

  "Not tonight.” Lee gave Little his biggest grin. “That is, unless you got a special, buy one get one free?"

  Little's squinted and shook his head quickly, looking like a church lady who'd just heard a dirty word. For a moment all his professional good humor had evaporated. He hitched a thumb at the wall behind him. “See that sign?"

  Lee looked up. There were a whole slew of redneck cartoons and little quips tacked and taped to the cinderblock wall below the Hamm's Bear Beer clock. The biggest one with red lettering read: Free sodas and beer! Tomorrow!

  "Do I reall
y get one free tomorrow?” Lee asked.

  "Good question,” Little replied. “You come back and ask me tomorrow."

  Lee nodded his head, catching the gleam just as it reappeared in Little's coal black eyes.

  "Anything else?” Little asked.

  Reaching into a wire bin chocked full with big wads of wrapped chewing gum, Lee grabbed a handful and then handed back a few pennies. “I'll take a few of these."

  "Don't blame you,” said Little, suddenly resuming his humorous smile and posture. “You gonna need a bag to carry all that?"

  "Yes, sir,” Lee replied, casting his eyes suspiciously at the huge jar of swollen, pink pig's feet, next to the giant, jumbo dill pickles on the counter. “Do folks really eat those things?"

  Mr. Little whipped a bag from under the counter and snapped it open in one quick move. He plopped the bag of sugar down into the brown paper bag and then snatched up the tongs leaning against the jar. Holding them out in front of Lee's face he snapped them vigorously, like a pair of castanets.

  "I'll fish you out a little one, if you'll eat it right here!"

  Little was as serious as Lee was horrified.

  Out burst another guffaw, and Little put the tongs back down. “You'd be surprised, son. They may look bad, but them things is sweet. That's why I offered you one on the house. Once you've had one, there ain't no goin’ back. Kinda like girls, huh?” Little leered, his bushy eyebrows suddenly arching up high. He put his elbows on the counter and leaned in so closely Lee could smell the tobacco on his breath. “Pink and rubbery, sweet and salty; if you know what I mean?"

  Lee thought the man would surely choke, he laughed so hard.

  Lee dropped the pieces of gum in the bag and rolled the top shut, reluctant to leave.

  "You sure you don't need anything else, son?” Little asked, having just spat another glob.

  "No sir. I guess this'll do. Thanks."

  "Y'all come back, ya’ hear,” Little called out.

  Lee pointed to the sign. “Tomorrow!"

  Little was still braying when Lee stepped out into the night air. Overhead the fluorescent lights were buzzing, and a few million June bugs and gnats were swarming about, coming out of the dark to thump up against the lights, then fluttering away drunkenly before swooping around again to careen back in wildly, repeating their head bashing over and over again.