Easter Eggs and Bunny Boilers: A Horror Anthology

by Matt Shaw

  That had all changed this evening, though, when Kevin had returned from school, loping into their home like all the world bore down on his broad shoulders. His brother had seemed depleted, shrunken somehow, and far less buoyant than usual. It was as though all the verve and fire had seeped from his pores in the short space of a day.

  Billy sighed. This was the perfect time to go exploring, too. Their parents had warned them not to go into the woods alone, but tonight their parents were off with friends. They’d be gone until much, much later. At least one or two o’clock in the morning. Billy and Kevin had free reign of the house and of themselves.

  And instead of venturing into the beckoning unknown, here they were sat on the rickety old porch while Kevin painted some lame Easter egg.

  Even Billy, having just turned twelve the previous August, knew that this was an awful way to spend what could be an evening of unmitigated freedom. Why the hell was his older brother so damn hell-bent on painting that stupid egg?

  And why was he taking the activity so seriously?

  Worse than that, Billy was starting to feel a little afraid himself. Fear was like a virus. It spread and it wrapped its coils around anyone who let it in. He’d always looked to his older brother for support in such moments. Kevin was in many ways his idol. His hero. The older boy had been there for him during mom and dad’s numerous fights in their previous home. He’d been there to reassure him when they secretly watched late night horror flicks in their shared bedroom. He’d protected him from any older kids that had tried to pick on him. Kevin was strong, brave, and resolute. He could be a jerk sometimes, and would torment his kid brother from time to time just like any older sibling, but the one thing Kevin was not, was timid.

  Yet now, fear seemed to emanate from Kevin in waves, and it was creeping into Billy’s world, too.

  How could it not?

  As Kevin worked, carefully teasing the red paint across the flawless surface of the egg’s shell, Billy watched the woods beyond their home. Shadows crept across the small patch of grass that made up their yard like slowly grasping, elongated fingers, reaching closer and closer to the dimly lit porch where they sat, and for the first time, Billy sensed something else in the old forest besides adventure.

  He sensed dread.

  Unwilling to allow the fear to take hold, he pulled his eyes from the gloom of the treeline, and turned back to his older brother.

  “Kevin?”

  Kevin never looked up. His tongue protruded from his mouth in that way it always did when he was concentrating. “Yeah, what’s up?”

  Billy cleared his throat. “I was just wondering…could we maybe do something else tonight? This is sort of lame. Why don’t we watch a movie or something? Wanna watch a scary film with me, or…”

  Kevin cut him off. “No, Billy. I have to do this, okay. It’s important.”

  “Important? It’s just an egg, Kev. What’s so important about it?”

  “It just is!” Kevin barked.

  Billy flinched. Kevin had never raised his voice to him before. Sure, he’d cajole him and taunt him from time to time, but he’d never seen real anger bubble to the surface in his brother.

  Not like this.

  The harsh clip in his tone seemed to echo out over the yard and into the forest. There was no other sound besides the soft chirruping of the birds nestled in the canopies, and it made the words hit all the harder.

  Billy felt tears well up in his eyes, and with them, shame.

  Asshole.

  “Hey! I just thought we could have some fun! It’s getting too late to go into the woods now, but we’ve got the place to ourselves, Kev. Let’s at least do something cool!”

  His brother seemed to compose himself a little, finally looking up from the small egg and turning to face Billy. The waning sun cast his handsome face in soft fire, and as he spoke, Billy detected a sure trembling in his voice.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo, but I need to do this. Just trust me when I tell you it’s really fucking important, okay?”

  Billy gasped. “You said a bad word.”

  “I know. I know, and I’m sorry. I’m just a little freaked out right now, buddy. I didn’t mean to shout at you, but time’s wasting, and I’ve got to get this thing finished.”

  Kevin wasn’t making any sense, and he sure didn’t seem willing to talk about what he was doing. There seemed much more to this than simply following Easter tradition.

  Billy tried a different approach.

  “What are you painting on there, anyway?” he asked.

  Kevin sighed, holding the egg up before Billy’s face.

  He took in his brother’s work.

  It looked like he was painting an image of a boy on there.

  It was a rough likeness. Even though Kevin was quite an accomplished artist and had even gone so far as to win a few prizes in junior high for his work, the size of the egg and the evident trembling in Kevin’s hands had taken a toll on his workmanship.

  That said. Billy figured he knew who the clumsily painted figure on the egg’s surface was supposed to represent. The little painting had soft brown hair down to its shoulders, and wore a red t-shirt and dark blue denims, just like…

  “It’s me,” Kevin said, confirming his thoughts.

  “Why are you painting yourself on an egg?”

  “It’s just…I have to. I’d rather not explain.”

  “Come on, Kevin,” Billy groaned. “Tell me what you’re doing? You’re creeping me out.”

  Kevin’s attention was back on the egg, now. He lowered his head and began dabbing the brush onto the egg again. This time, he was working on the small self-portrait’s shoes. “You’d only be more creeped out if I told you, kiddo.”

  Billy huffed. “That’s a copout and you know it! This is full on weird, Kev. We could’ve been out there exploring the woods. Now it’s too late and instead we’re sat here like jerks painting your stupid egg!”

  Kevin continued his work. All his attention was on it. His eyes closed to no more than slits, as he worked the paint into his likeness.

  “Kevin!?” Billy shouted.

  The sudden rise in pitch almost caused Kevin to drop the egg. It slid momentarily from his grip, rolling across the tips of his fingers. With a small scream, Billy’s brother clasped the egg in his hand. Sweat broke out on Kevin’s forehead, running in tiny rivulets down his brow and into his eyes.

  “Jesus. That was close…” Kevin whispered. It seemed he was talking to himself now. He held the egg tight, as though it was a brittle, precious artefact. His breath came in short hitches as he eyed it, scanning the surface for any cracks.

  The soft swell of apprehension rising in Billy was giving way to anger now. He watched, frowning, as his brother composed himself and got back to work.

  The hell with this!

  “What is your problem, are you on drugs or something? It’s just a boiled egg! If it drops and cracks, you can make another one. It’s not like the painting is any good anyway!”

  “You don’t understand,” Kevin muttered. “You can’t.”

  “Then tell me!” Billy implored.

  With a long, pained sigh of resignation that would befit their downtrodden father more so than his brother, Kevin’s careful stroke of the brush came to a pause. He lowered the brush into the small pot of water sat by his side and then, ever so carefully, he sat the egg in the soft folds of a towel he’d placed by its side. To Billy, the effect seemed like one laying a delicate newly born baby down to sleep.

  His brother must be on drugs.

  He had to be.

  Maybe he’d gotten hold of some of that marijuana the kids at school had been talking about. It was everywhere these days.

  Made sense that maybe Kevin was on something. It would explain this crap, anyway!

  When he’d laid the egg in its cotton nest, Kevin shuffled round on the porch, and faced Billy. His eyes were cast in shadow. The looming dark of the forest seemed to draw ever closer as the dying sunlight sl
ipped over the horizon, as eager to be done with this day as Billy was himself.

  Then Kevin’s trembling lips parted, and he spoke.

  Billy soon began to wish he hadn’t.

  “Look, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound fucking crazy, Billy, okay. It’s going to sound like I’ve lost my mind, but you have to believe me, this is real. Can you do that, Billy? Can you trust me?”

  Billy’s pause was short. “I think so…yes. Yes, I trust you.”

  Kevin nodded, took a deep, laboured breath, and continued.

  “Before I go on, just know that the other kids at school showed me proof. I’ll get to that later, okay.”

  Billy was losing patience, and if he was being honest with himself, he was starting to wish he was inside the house and not sat out here on the porch while the shadows crept up the wooden awnings and the wind whispered insidious promises through the treetops only a stone’s throw away.

  Yes, he wished he was inside.

  With the doors locked.

  “Just tell me, Kevin…jeez! It’s getting dark”

  “Okay, but try not to worry, Billy. As long as I paint myself onto this egg, we’ll be fine. That’s what they said.”

  “Okay…” Billy prodded.

  “Thing is, some of the kids at school, they…they told me a story about this place. About Abbington Wood. They said that the woods are old. Very old. And that they run deeper than meets the eye. They said that there are places in the woods, far back from town, where no one ever goes. They don’t go there because they’re scared.”

  “Scared?”

  “Yeah. They said that ever since the first of the white settlers arrived, before there was even a homestead, never mind a town, people have been going missing. Children.”

  “You mean like…kidnapped?”

  “Not quite. Apparently it started the very first spring the settlers arrived. At Easter to be exact. A little girl went missing from her home. All that was found was a trail of blood leading away from her bedroom and into the forest. Her father and a few men from the settlement took to searching for her in and around the old wood. They searched for days…weeks…but she was never found. No body. No nothing. It was like she had just disappeared from the face of the earth.

  “It happened again the following year. And the year after that. In fact, Billy. It happened every single year since that first Easter, until one year, an old Maliseet Indian passed through town with his family, heading south down along what we call the Saint John river, towards the border into Canada. He helped them, told them he knew what was taking their children – their first born children. He said that those old woods were home to many things not meant for this world. Not natural. Things that didn’t belong. Things older than man himself. He said that the town sat on something the kids at school called a ‘ley line’, and that the threshold between worlds was thin here. So very thin that at some point, somewhere back in time, something had come through.

  “And it set up its home in those woods, right out there…” Kevin nodded towards the old forest.

  Billy felt chills kiss the nape of his neck as Kevin went on.

  “No one knows what the thing is that lives out there, but they say it’s an abomination. Something that predates even Christianity. Whatever it is, people around here say that it’s the true spirit of Easter.”

  “Easter’s a Christian holiday, Kevin.” Billy retorted. “The egg represents…”

  “I know what the egg represents, kid. Or rather, what it’s supposed to represent. To us, it represents the resurrection, but all religions are an approximation of older myths that came before. Everything is hand-me-down, Billy. The same tales, or similar, are rooted in all cultures. They teach us all this at school. In the Pagan religion, Easter is the beginning of spring, the rebirth of nature after the cold grip of deathly winter. The egg represents fertility, new life. You see, each culture has its myths and its gods, Here, in Abbington, one of those myths is actually real.

  “The Maliseet elder told the townsfolk what they had to do. It was simple really. The creature in the woods, it demanded that a rite be performed. His tribe had dealt with such a being before. They feared and revered it. Saw it as a lesser god of sorts. They understood the old ways before the white man came, and understood the being’s desires. It feeds on the destruction of human tradition…human spirituality. Now, it wants to mock the holiness of the holiday.”

  Billy looked down at the roughly painted egg, chills creeping up his spine like liquid ice. He fought to compose himself. Kevin’s story was getting under his skin.

  Against his better judgement, he peered out into the now impenetrable gloom of the forest. Was it his imagination, or had the woods fallen still? The soft symphony of the forest seemed to have faded into silence. No birds sang in the trees. The rustling of leaves caught in the gentle springtime wind had ceased.

  It was as though nature herself were holding her breath.

  And he felt eyes on him, too.

  Watchful. Baleful. Poison with insidious intent.

  It was his imagination.

  Had to be.

  If Kevin had noticed the eerie stillness that had fallen over the woods, he never let on. He continued his story, speaking faster now, eager to be finished.

  “Most of the people that live here are ‘old blood’. That’s what Lucy at school called them…’old blood’. It means that their families have lived here since the town was built. They go back generations. She said that they all follow a much older tradition here, and that they learned to do so through heartbreak and bloodshed. Many children had been lost before they began to take the old Indian’s story to heart. These were stoic Christians, set in their ways. It wasn’t easy for them to let go of their own rites and take up a new one. They saw it as an affront to their god, and that was the whole point. The thing in the woods, it wanted to replace their holiest of traditions with something…darker.

  “Anyway, they learned to follow the old ways, but like any other town, new people would move in. People who didn’t understand the way things work around here. The locals would welcome those families in, and when the time was right, they’d have a talk with them. Sometimes they’d tell the parents, but usually they’d tell the kids, knowing that kids would be more likely to believe them. They’d tell them all about the dark thing out there in the woods, and what they had to do to keep it from their door.”

  “And the families, the kids… they didn’t listen.” Billy stated. It wasn’t a question.

  “Some did. Most in fact. After all, why take the chance, right? Others, though…others thought the whole thing was nonsense, and kept the holiday in their own way. They came to regret it.” Kevin paused, smiling ruefully. “Of course, I wasn’t buying any of this shit when I first heard it.”

  “Stuff.” Billy corrected.

  “Sorry…stuff…I wasn’t buying it, but Lucy and Ian took me to the school library. They’ve kept all the old records there of the town’s history. All the newspaper clippings, going back till at least the turn of the century. They showed me the articles, Billy. They showed me the articles about the missing kids. And you know what?”

  “What?” Billy asked, rapt.

  “Every single one of them vanished on Easter Sunday. Every single one of them, gone, this very night…”

  Kevin’s final words seemed to hang in the air like black smoke. Billy felt his stomach fold over on itself. He couldn’t help it. He was frightened.

  Without another word, Kevin carefully picked up his egg and resumed painting. It was almost finished, by the looks of it.

  While he watched, Billy played the story over in his mind.

  His brother sounded like he meant it. He didn’t sound like he was playing games, but then wasn’t that exactly what an older brother would do to try and scare him?

  Yes, of course it was!

  Suddenly, the spell was broken. Billy breathed deep. In that moment, he realised just what his lame ass brother was playing
at. Here they were, alone without their parents for the first time in a new home, right next to some very spooky woods, and Kevin was trying to freak him out.

  He was toying with him.

  There was no old tradition.

  No creature in the woods waiting to strike.

  No Indian.

  No nothing!

  Now that he was thinking rationally again, Billy felt very stupid. He’d been suckered, and not for the first time, by his smarter, cooler sibling. It seemed like a prank more suited to Halloween, but he had to give Kevin credit for his performance. It was Oscar worthy.

  Fighting to hold in his smile, Billy decided that he’d play along. He’d let his lame older brother think he was terrified. Let him think he was every bit as gullible as Kevin took him to be.

  For now.

  Kevin had finished painting the egg now. Holding it in his hands, he stood up from the wooden stairs where they sat, and walked out to the far end of the yard.

  As he did so, Billy stifled a giggle. He watched as Kevin laid the egg down the thick grass, just before the threshold of the forest. The woods didn’t seem so ominous now. They were just some regular old woods. Trees and animals and birds and flowers. They were still a little creepy, yes, but what woods weren’t creepy at night?

  And now, it truly was nightfall.

  The sun had slid over the horizon, and only the faintest trace of its luminous fire kissed their world. All else was dark. A million stars shimmered above their heads, dancing their celestial dance, and the moon peered out from behind purple-tinged clouds.

  Yeah, it was creepy, but it was just a forest.

  He watched Kevin go about his silly charade, amused.

  After laying the egg down, his brother clasped his hands together, closed his eyes and whispered a few words. Though he couldn’t hear the words, Billy smiled, impressed. It was quite a show he was putting on. Billy felt almost complimented that Kevin would put in so much effort just to give him a good scare.

  He hid his smile as his brother turned and made his way back to the porch, empty handed now. The egg lay before the wall of black like a tiny sentinel.