“Damn, I think I scratched my hand on a nail or something.” He looked at his palm. There was a long scratch on it, with little beads of blood popping to the surface. It stung, making him forget about the teddy bear. He looked through the tarp, but didn’t see any nails poking out. He was trying figure out what had scratched him when Lisa grabbed his arm, hurting him.
“Jeff!”
“Ow! Damn it! What is wrong with you?”
“I saw someone peeking around the fried Oreo stand over there. It might’ve been that creepy jerk. I knew he was following us!”
“Oh, what the hell?” This night wasn’t turning out at all the way Jeff had hoped.
“Hey!” he yelled. “We said we’re leaving; just give us the chance to get out!”
Jeff then saw the face Lisa had seen. It wasn’t the old man, it was one of the clowns that roamed the carnival, bugging people and giving away balloons. Little kids thought the clowns were great; Jeff hated them. They creeped him out. The clown stepped out from behind the cookie booth, giving Jeff a better look at him. Why was the clown out this time of night, and why was he still in costume? And his costume was all dirty--the white suit had dark stains all over it that almost looked like blood. In fact, Jeff thought he could actually smell blood—a rank, coppery smell that caught in his throat and almost made him gag.
The clown caught Jeff’s eye and waved at him with a shriveled hand. The fingernails looked like claws, thin, long and black. Then the clown grinned—and all Jeff could see were teeth. Big teeth, yellow and sharp, that looked like needles.
“Oh, God … we really need to go right now, Lisa. There’s something wrong with that clown.”
Lisa looked again toward the fried Oreo booth. Her eyes widened with horror. “Run!”
They took off running, racing back toward the Ferris wheel, hoping to get out the way they came in.
“Where’s the damn Ferris wheel?” Lisa was crying again, and she didn’t care about Jeff thinking she was a baby. She was terrified.
They saw it looming ominously in the distance above the other rides but couldn’t find where it was grounded. They couldn’t get any closer to it no matter how far they ran.
“This is crazy!” Jeff was scared and frustrated and just wanted to go home. He regretted not stealing the farmer’s tractor in the first place. He didn’t feel like such a badass right now.
As Jeff was silently cursing himself, the clown jumped out from behind the candy apple stand right in front of them. Jeff stumbled against Lisa, making her fall on the rough dirt surface. She lifted her head in time to see the clown roll a bright red ball toward them. It landed in front of her and exploded into hundreds of tiny spiders.
Lisa tried to get up, but before she could, spiders scuttled up her arms and into her hair. She stood up, frantically raking her fingers through her hair.
“Get them off, get them off!” she screamed.
“Get what off?”
“Spiders! They’re all over me!”
Jeff looked at her, but he didn’t see any spiders. And now the clown was gone, as if he hadn’t even been there. “There’s nothing on you! Shit, where’d the clown go?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care—I just want to go home! This place is scary and there’s something wrong here. I know those spiders were climbing on me.”
Jeff gently smoothed Lisa’s hair. “We’ll find our way out, don’t worry. I know it’s weird around here, but I bet the carnival workers are just trying to scare us for trespassing.”
“But the spiders—”
“You imagined them. Maybe the clown played a trick on you. But whatever, they aren’t there now. Come on, let’s go.”
Lisa closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “I didn’t imagine them, but fine, I’m ready.”
She grabbed Jeff’s hand and tried to walk on, but he didn’t move. She looked over to prod him on but saw it wasn’t Jeff’s hand she had taken.
It was the clown’s.
She screamed and dropped the clown’s hand, his nails scraping her wrist, drawing blood. She ran through the carnival, his laughter following her.
Lisa ducked into the first tent she came to. She hadn’t seen it when she and Jeff were walking around trying to find their way out. It smelled odd, somewhat musty. The tent was empty except for cobwebs covering the walls. She put her hands on her knees and bent over, trying to catch her breath. She wanted to leave the tent and try to find her way home, but she was scared the clown was waiting outside for her. She didn’t feel safe in the tent, either; the cobwebs frightened her and gave her the creeps the way they were fluttering without any wind. Suddenly she heard the clown’s laughter; this time it was all around her. She looked around but didn’t see him.
“Please leave me alone!” she sobbed. “I’m sorry we messed around with your carnival! I’ll never do it again. Please just let me go home!”
She felt a tap on her shoulder and knew the clown was behind her. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists, hoping he’d disappear. She whispered a prayer, knowing it wouldn’t be heard. She felt herself being turned around; she was helpless to stop. The clown now stood in front of her, baring his teeth. Then he opened his mouth wide and roared, exhaling hundreds of spiders. They hit Lisa’s face, climbing into her mouth when she opened it to scream. They slid down her throat, choking her. She fell to her knees, clawing at her neck, trying to cough them out.
Darkness overtook her and she mercifully knew no more.
* * *
Jeff couldn’t understand how he’d gotten separated from Lisa. He’d seen that damned clown again, and it had caught him off-guard. He’d nearly fallen and realized Lisa had. But when he went to pull her up, his hand had taken that of the clown’s instead, and he ran as fast as he could to get away, all thoughts of Lisa gone.
Now he felt like a coward, leaving her behind. You’re such an asshole, he thought. He walked back to find Lisa but heard the clown’s laughter all around him. He froze in place and looked around. Jeff took a few cautious steps forward and then heard a noise behind him.
He whipped around, but nothing was there. He turned back to search for Lisa and found himself face to face with the clown.
The clown put his face right up to Jeff’s, held Jeff’s chin in his hand and ran his slimy tongue along the side of Jeff’s face. Jeff wet his pants, but he didn’t care. He tried to turn and run, but the clown grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the ground, holding him in the air. The clown tilted his head left, then right, as he stared into Jeff’s eyes. He threw Jeff to the ground and dragged him by his shirt through the carnival, Jeff pulling at the clown’s hands on his collar all the while. Then the clown pulled him inside a run-down tent. Once inside, he threw Jeff to the ground.
Jeff saw Lisa lying motionless on the ground, her face frozen in a silent scream, with only the whites of her eyes showing. A spider crawled out of her mouth while Jeff looked on, horrified.
“You’re next,” the clown whispered in his ear, running a fingernail down the side of Jeff’s face.
Lisa’s body suddenly began to shake, then violently erupted with hundreds of spiders. They swarmed as they ate their way through her flesh, trailing blood and tissue. They skittered toward Jeff, who lay helpless as they bit him and tore at his flesh, while the clown laughed and clapped his hands.
* * *
The carnies played poker and threw back whiskey shots in their tent, laughing at each other’s raunchy jokes.
The Ferris wheel carnie shushed them. “Did you hear that? I thought I heard a scream.” He stood up and listened. Yes, there it was again. Definitely a scream; someone was in trouble or hurt. He worried it was one of the kids he had chased off earlier. Had he given them a chance to get away from the carnival, but maybe they didn’t take it.
“We told you before to let it go, Stan.”
“But that’s the third time this month it’s happened. What can we do?” Stanley had only joined up with the carnival a few months
before and still didn’t understand the way of things.
“Trust me—we don’t get involved. Bad things happen. Just drink your whiskey. It’ll be quiet again soon.”
Stan reluctantly sat back down, trying not to hear the terrified screams echoing in the night, and pretending he hadn’t seen a sharp-toothed clown peeking at him from around tents.
When Karen Met
Her Mountain
by Todd Keisling
Todd Keisling is a writer of horror and speculative fiction, as well as the author of the novels A LIFE TRANSPARENT and THE LIMINAL MAN, the latter of which was named a finalist for The Kindle Book Review's Best Indie Book Award of 2013. Born in Kentucky, he now lives with his wife and son somewhere near Reading, Pennsylvania. He still has a day job, he's awkward and weird, and if you were to live next door to him your grass would probably die.
-1-
Karen Singleton’s daddy once told her, “Honey, sometimes things just happen and there’s nothin’ to be done about it.” That was thirty years ago, when she was little enough to sit on his knee. “When there’s a mountain in your way, you either climb over it, or find a way around it. There ain’t no in-between.”
Walking through the Arizona desert along Route 93, her favorite Sunday dress stained a dark shade of ruby, Karen finally realized her daddy was right all those years ago. Squinting, raising one hand to shield her eyes from the rising sun, Karen kept on walking down that dusty stretch of highway. Her feet ached. She looked down at bare toes caked in sand and blood, wondering when she’d lost her shoes.
Sometimes things just happen.
Karen cracked a smile and began to laugh in quick, hoarse bursts. Her voice sounded like a dying mule, the thought of which made her laugh even more. She clutched the hatchet and wiped the chipped blade with the hem of her dress. Daddy once told her a dull blade wouldn’t cut anything, but he was wrong about that.
Daddy wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t be right all the time.
-2-
“—Your father never much cared for me, anyway.”
Karen opened her eyes to a dusty brown expanse of desert sage and tumbleweeds slipping by in a blur. Her face’s reflection in the dirty window depicted a tired woman, a mourning woman. Dr. Martin Singleton hadn’t stopped talking since they’d left her daddy’s funeral, and after the day she’d had, all she wanted was to go someplace quiet. Someplace far away from here, from the deserts of her youth and the complacency of middle age.
“Are you even listening to me?”
Karen tilted her head away from the window and nodded. She closed her eyes, swallowed a pool of saliva on the back of her tongue, and patted his knee. Martin glanced at her, frowning.
“Your therapist says it’s best you talk about these things, Karen. So you don’t, you know . . .”
Relapse. He didn’t say it, but then again he didn’t have to. She knew all too well, but that didn’t change the fact that she didn’t want to talk about her daddy’s funeral.
She hadn’t spoken to her daddy all that much in the last years of his life, a fact she regretted as each mile quickly slipped away, lost to the desert behind them. Daddy was a hard man to live with; his dedication to the church had driven her away, first to college and then into the arms of an atheist, but she still loved the old man. He provided for her, cared for her, loved her in his own way. In hindsight, Karen supposed that was why she’d been drawn to Martin in the first place: he reminded her of her father, in some ways.
Martin was right, though—her daddy never did care for him much.
Any boy who walks away from God’s glory is trouble. You watch yourself, honey. I’ll never forgive him if he breaks your heart.
Karen smiled. Even her daddy, Pastor Marlon Ellis, could be blinded sometimes. Martin’s devotion never faltered, not after her miscarriage, not even after the accident that followed. Daddy was wrong about Martin, and Karen’s heart ached when she realized she’d never be able to tell him that.
Martin leaned back against the headrest and sighed. “Karen, you need to talk to me eventually. You can’t keep these things bottled up inside.”
“I’m fine,” she said. The terse response was almost mechanical, an instinctual reaction driven by necessity. Martin was right, but for now she just wanted to remain inside her own head. Confronting her sadness always ended in tragedy.
Karen turned back to the window, watching the emptiness of Route 93 flow past in a sandy blur. Her husband frowned, shook his head, and turned on the radio. Static rose and fell in waves, crashing against a DJ talking about upcoming events somewhere else in civilization, and a moment later Hank Williams began to sing “Weary Blues From Waitin’.”
Now we’re talkin’, her daddy said. He loved Hank Williams.
She leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, remembering the way her daddy used to sing this song to himself whenever it played on the radio. She could almost see him sitting on the edge of the bed, humming the tune while pulling on his black dress shoes.
Karen followed that memory down into the darkness of her mind as the hum of the engine lulled her to sleep—
“What the hell?”
Karen shot forward and cried out when the seatbelt dug into her shoulder. The world swam for a moment as an ache worked its way down to the base of her neck, and when she opened her eyes she saw they had come to a full stop in the middle of the highway.
Martin gripped the steering wheel. Karen followed his gaze through the windshield.
A white, rust-spotted pickup truck sat on its side between the highway and hillside. A carpet of shattered glass spread out from the wreckage, and a woman lay a few feet away in the middle of the road with her back to them. A few strands of her dirty blonde hair fluttered in a low breeze.
“Oh, Jesus.” Martin shifted the SUV into park and was about to climb out of the car, but Karen put her hand on his knee and shook her head. “I have to, Karen. She’s hurt.”
And then he was out the door, jogging across the gap toward the woman in the road. Karen watched her husband, trying to swallow the uncomfortable lump slowly rising in her throat.
Somethin’ ain’t right, honey. A pickup doesn’t just fall onto its side. You need two to tango. Where’s the other car?
She leaned forward and looked at the road. No skid marks or other tire tracks. All the shards of glass were off to the side, sprinkled along the edge of the truck. There were no pools of gas or oil, and although the thought made her stomach twist into itself, there wasn’t any blood, either.
Karen’s shaking fingers found the latch and opened the door. She stepped out into the dry Arizona heat and struggled to find her voice. Don’t go there, she wanted to cry out. Get away from her, Martin. But her words failed her, and Karen stood frozen to the highway as shapes emerged from behind the overturned truck.
Martin knelt beside the woman with his fingers on her neck. He looked back when Karen closed the SUV door.
“She’s alive,” he said, climbing to his feet. “Grab my cell and call 911.”
Martin was still watching her, his face a mixture of grim determination and puzzlement, wondering why his wife wasn’t doing as he’d asked. He was so perplexed by Karen’s immobility he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps.
He didn’t notice the young woman with the dirty blonde hair roll onto her back. He didn’t see her toothless smile and her gums riddled with blackened, bloody holes; he didn’t see the rusty blade in her hand.
“Thy will be done,” the woman said, jamming the knife through the center of Martin’s loafer.
In her mind, Karen made a mad dash across the road toward her husband, sprinting as fast as her heels would carry her. She tore the blade from her husband’s foot and slashed the blonde bitch across her face, spreading that toothless grin even wider by a few bloody inches. She saw herself turn to the figures advancing toward them from beyond the pickup truck; she saw herself fending them off with the blade, protecting the man she loved, the man who
had nurtured her through the aftermath of her accident. She wouldn’t let them hurt him anymore than they had, and oh, they would pay dearly for doing so.
Except that wasn’t right.
Confused, Karen blinked and found she was back inside herself, snapped out of her trance and into a reality punctuated by the agonized shrieks of her wounded husband and the gleeful laughter of a crazy woman lying in the road.
Five masked men in dusty black robes emerged from behind the pickup truck and approached the pair on the highway. One man broke away from the group and turned toward her, crossing the distance with quick, able steps. His mask was blood red and depicted a pained expression, with one side of its cheek drawn downward in agony. Jagged cutouts framed two crazed eyes that glimmered in the late afternoon sun—and they were boring a hole right through her.
The other men fell upon Martin while the blonde crowing bitch climbed to her feet. She danced around them, singing in her cackling manner, “Thy will be done! Thy will be done! The time is at hand! Thy will be done, oh Lord!”
Karen saw one of them cup a dirty rag around Martin’s mouth while the others held him down. Her husband stopped kicking a moment later, his body suddenly limp. She heard one of the men groan as he braced against Martin’s dead weight.
You’d best get movin’, honey.
Karen’s daddy didn’t have to tell her twice. She reached for the passenger door and yanked it open.
“Now where’re you goin’, little lamb?”
She was halfway across the passenger seat when hands fell upon her ankle, and she kicked instinctively, holding that image of her husband’s limp body in the forefront of her mind. She had to get to the driver’s seat, get Martin’s cell phone, and call for help—like she should’ve done when he’d asked her. God, if she hadn’t been so slow and so stupid. She reached for the console. The cell phone was just a few inches more—
Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction Page 66
