Shock Totem 8.5: Holiday Tales of the Macabre and Twisted - Valentine's Day 2014

by Shock Totem

  “Nat, where are you?” calls a voice from the kitchen.

  “I’ll be right there!” Natalie shouts back. She reappears in David’s vision, smiling though there is a hint of sadness in her eyes. “I love you, Dad,” she says.

  I love you too, sweetie, David thinks. Please don’t leave me.

  It comes out in a bubbling groan.

  “I’ll be right in the kitchen, okay?” his daughter says. She places another kiss on his head and glides out of the room.

  Natalie, no! Natalie, come back!

  But she’s gone.

  There is more movement from the corner of his vision. David aims his eyes in the opposite direction, and if he had the ability to open his mouth and shriek, he would’ve done so right then and there.

  The demon is no longer hiding. It is no longer a formless mass of black gunk. It now holds the shape of a man, a hard man, a strong man, a man who has hatred in his heart and violence in his blood. The broad shoulders move up and down with each breath, and though the form is featureless and black as a stormy night sky, David knows exactly who it is. The thing’s head turns in his direction, and David looks deep into the void where its eyes should be. It is like gazing into the abyss, only instead of hellfire, there is nothing.

  Absolutely nothing, only blackness.

  • • •

  David stayed as far back from the sergeant as he could while the platoon made their way along a slender path crowded with overgrowth from the surrounding jungle. The sergeant’s name was John Pembroke, and he was a huge, burly bastard. While the rest of the enlisted men trudged through these godforsaken jungles grumbling about the desire to be back home, Pembroke took to the sufferable conditions as if there was no place he’d rather be. David himself had seen the grin on the man’s face as he plunged his knife into the throat of a young Vietnamese woman suspected of supporting the VC, but he’d done nothing to stop him from killing her. He wasn’t alone. None of the other men did either. They were too afraid to.

  With each passing day, David tried harder and harder to keep his distance from the man. Pembroke was from Oklahoma, the type of man who would quote scripture one minute and take glee in bringing pain to all around him the next. A headstrong man. Dangerous. Yet that same sort of man was what the Army truly wanted, for there were no better attributes for a wartime soldier than headstrong and dangerous.

  “We there yet?” asked the soldier beside him, his tone exhausted beyond belief.

  “Shush, Percy,” David said out the corner of his mouth.

  “I’m just—”

  “Hey!” snapped Pembroke from the front of the line, swiveling around to face his charges. “No talking, only marching!”

  Booted feet clomped together. The procession continued.

  David glanced over at Percy as they walked. He had thick purple bags under his eyes and his face was slathered with sweat. Angry red welts dotted his formerly flawless skin from where insects had fed on him. He looked frailer than ever, his too-large helmet teetering atop his head, and the rifle draped on his back made him look like a child playing at being a soldier rather than the real thing. Percy looked his way, and David shoved him away harshly. Percy pouted, falling further back in line. David felt instantly guilty, but he didn’t want to bring on Pembroke’s wrath again, especially after last time.

  They’d been in ‘Nam for three months now, and each passing day was worse than the last. Every morning brought with it a sense of bone-numbing fear, even though the firefights they’d been engaged in were sparse. The land they moved through was already occupied, after all—though that was sure to change once they entered Quang Tri. That, however, didn’t stop the fear of being found by the enemy in the middle of the night and slaughtered.

  David feared more for Percy than his own life. Percy wasn’t fit for warfare. He was fit for the more refined things in life, not trudging through mile after mile of muck with a rifle held above his head. He was meant to bring joy and light to the world, not death. David wanted nothing more than to wrap him in his arms and make him disappear from this place, rip open a portal through space and time and send Percy back home where he belonged.

  Yet despite how much he cared, despite how much he wanted to protect the man he loved, he dared not do anything. His fellow soldiers, Pembroke included, were beginning to grow wary of Percy. They called him faggot and queer and cocksucker, and even though Percy did his best to hide his true nature, acting the brusque man and laughing at the dirty jokes told by his mates, just as David did, he had a certain way about him, a sort of feminine quality that he couldn’t veil no matter how hard he tried. The fear they might be discovered caused David to withdraw. He hadn’t spoken more than a word to Percy in more than two weeks; well, words that weren’t insulting barbs, that is. He would join the others in their taunts and do his best to ignore the look of hurt that came over Percy each time. At night he would lie awake, and he swore he could hear his lover crying in his tent.

  I’m sorry, Percy.

  At the edge of a river, just as dusk threatened to cast the jungle into blackness, Pembroke called a halt to the march. Tents were set up; canteens were pulled from; disgustingly bland dinners were devoured. There was nervous, lighthearted banter and quiet laughter. The song of the jungle rose in volume as darkness claimed the land, millions of wild things surrounding them on all sides, each and every one of them threatening in their invisibility.

  Death lurked in every corner of a land that was nothing but corners.

  David slipped into his one-man pup tent and fell into a fitful sleep, only to be awoken by shrieking. He scurried out from under the canvas enclosure, knocking his head against the support rod in the process, nearly toppling his tent. He fumbled for his rifle and rose up. His whole body quaked.

  His eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and David saw that it was nearing dawn. A few streaks of purple daubed the sky. The camp seemed to be empty; only he and six others of the twenty-four soldiers they traveled with emerged from their tents. All looked at one another, eyes wide with fear. The shrieking came again, sounding from somewhere farther along the riverbank. David knew that sound, that voice, just as much as he recognized the spates of cruel laughter that followed.

  Without a word and ignoring the confused queries of his mates, David darted along the riverbank in near-darkness, feet churning. Not more than a hundred feet away, he emerged from the foliage into a soggy fjord. The early morning grew all the brighter, and he could plainly see his fellow soldiers there, standing in a circle. In the center of that circle rose Pembroke’s head. The man muttered, spittle flying from his lips. His shoulders hunched aggressively, as if he was kicking at something in the center of the circle that the surrounding soldiers blocked. David heard a thud and another scream of pain.

  “Hey, Sarge, Higgins is here,” one of the men said. David had been so focused on Pembroke that he hadn’t realized he’d been seen.

  Pembroke turned in his direction, and the wall of soldiers parted. He stormed across the muddy ground, a wicked-looking grin on his face. David swallowed his fear and stood with feet shoulder length apart, holding his rifle with both hands before him. “What’s going on, Sarge?” he asked. It took his every effort to make his voice not sound as sheepish and afraid as he felt.

  “We caught him,” Pembroke said. A perverted sort of pride oozed out in his tone.

  “Caught who, Sarge?”

  “The faggot, Higgins. Had Johnston go to him tonight, say he’d been watching him. Said they could find someplace quiet and ‘talk.’ Ha! Talk!”

  Johnston, his face half hidden by shadow, leaned forward. “The queer tried to kiss me,” he said disdainfully.

  “Probably wanted to suck you off,” Pembroke shouted over his shoulder. He then turned back to David, his expression suddenly hard as stone and accusatory. “You knew him before coming here, right? You know he was a faggot all along?”

  David tried his best to ignore Percy’s whimpers. “Nope,” he said. “Neve
r knew.”

  “Faggots don’t belong in the jungle,” said Pembroke.

  “Sure as fuck don’t!” shouted another of the soldiers.

  David wanted to puke. He wanted to knock Pembroke out, grab Percy, and run away. But he did none of that. Instead, he said, “They sure don’t.”

  Percy’s bawls grew in volume.

  “Shut that cocksucker up!” Pembroke roared.

  A heavy sound followed, a fist striking a face. David swore he heard a crack. He then stepped forward, past Pembroke and toward the ring of his mates. They stepped aside for him, revealing Percy, laying on his side in the mud, face covered with blood and grime and bruises. David had to hold his breath to keep from passing out.

  “Tell me, boys...we’re in a land where there’s no rules. What do you think should happen to a faggot in a place like this?”

  David had no answer for him, but the others sure did.

  • • •

  It wasn’t my fault, you did this! David pleads as the shimmering, blackened shape of John Pembroke rises from the couch. The thing takes two lumbering steps forward, and then loses all form. It becomes a tidal wave of oil, falling to the carpet in a splash. It forms a lake of rippling black, like a dead sea in the middle of the living room. That lake soon becomes a river that flows ever toward him.

  Stop! Go away! NATALIE!

  But there is no help for David Higgins, and he knows it. Hell has come back for him. The demon has arrived to take payment for his sins.

  The oily river flows up the stand next to his wheelchair. It is so close now that if he could move at all, he could reach out and sink his fingers into the disgusting slop. But all he can do is look on, his heart hammering out of control, as the demon’s essence slithers into the vase beside him, right on the edge of his vision. Almost instantly, the roses in the vase turn black, charred, dead.

  David is frightened, more frightened than he’s ever been before.

  A slimy feeler reaches out for him and turns his head.

  His muscles scream at him, his nerve endings fire in agony. He looks at the vase and the demon that lies within, and in the clear, reflective surface of the vase, he sees a reflection. Only it isn’t his reflection. It is someone else, someone younger, someone with wind-swept blond hair, delicate features, and kind blue eyes. In David’s panic, the machine beside him begins beeping out of control.

  Not you. No, please, not you.

  • • •

  Percy knelt there in the fjord, but he no longer cried. He must have been beyond tears at that point. All he did was breathe slowly, in and out, and stare at the muddy ground. He never even reacted when his fellow soldiers, men who were supposed to have his back, marched around him in a circle, clouting him upside the head, kicking him in the stomach, violently ripping at his hair.

  Even David joined in. His sense of self-preservation made it impossible to do otherwise.

  Finally, Pembroke called an end to the games. David merged with the rest of his platoon, standing with hands clasped behind his back at the edge of the river, staring down at his ravaged lover. Percy muttered something beneath his breath, something David couldn’t quite hear. He was glad he couldn’t.

  Pembroke stood before them, shoulders rising and falling as he huffed. For a moment David thought that this would be enough. That Percy’s torment was over.

  He was right and wrong at the same time.

  The sergeant whirled around and stormed up to Percy, ripping his sidearm from his holster in the process. The men of the platoon gasped, but none, including David, moved to stop him. The large man pressed the barrel of the gun to Percy’s temple. Percy slowly moved his head, peering up at Pembroke with eyes that now seemed dead. There was no pleading in them, no admonitions, no nothing. He simply stared past Pembroke, as if the man looming above him, holding a gun to his head, wasn’t there at all.

  “Faggot,” Pembroke said.

  He pulled the trigger.

  One side of Percy’s head caved in, the other side exploded. Blood, skull, and brain matter flew, splattering the jungle muck. The body flopped over, rocked in a spasm, and then fell still. The men of the platoon gasped and shouted. One of them even ran up to Percy’s corpse, shoving it onto its back, straightening the neck as if he could somehow revive it.

  But not David Higgins. David did nothing but turn around and head back to camp as Pembroke shouted orders at the others. There were tears in his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall. His insides were a raging ball of torment. Percy would never return home; Percy would never again kiss him; Percy would never again offer that smile that could light up a room. Simply thinking of it was nearly enough to drive him insane.

  And so David allowed himself to speak, uttering five words under his breath, between his quiet sobs, that would damn him for the rest of his life.

  “At least it wasn’t me.”

  • • •

  David’s life flashes before him. He sees the entirety of his involvement in Vietnam, a war that would end before his platoon ever reached Quang Tri, and his own unspeakable acts. He sees himself in a bar in Laos before heading home for good, sitting solemnly with his mates, their sins unspoken between them. He remembers the sorrow he felt at realizing he would never talk with Percy again; never sit beside a fire in winter wrapped in each other’s arms; never again have a person who not only served as a companion, but as a life partner, in each and every way.

  He sees the face of the woman he would bring home from that stinking hellhole of a country. He sees the easiness of their relationship, how she wanted nothing but to get out, and that at least was something he could give her. He relives their life together in the span of a moment, of Linh sitting at home as he went on business trips—or furtive rendezvous with men under the guise of business trips. He looks on as his daughter is born, as his loveless marriage ends when Linh succumbs to breast cancer.

  He sees it all, and his insides begin to burn.

  The vase of roses explodes, raining shards of glass down on his unmoving form. Yet Percy’s face remains, shimmering in black, staring at him in hatred. Tendrils sprout from his eyes, his mouth, from the gaping wounds in the sides of his head. The face begins to laugh as the tendrils skate toward David, lifting jagged bits of glass, wrapping around his wrist, squeezing like a displeased parent would a naughty child.

  “You did nothing,” the demon that is Percy grumbles in an inhuman, watery voice. “You killed me.”

  I wanted to help, I did, he says inwardly. I did all I could.

  “You did nothing when it mattered.”

  David’s mouth falls open. His heart now beats so quickly that it feels like it might explode just as the vase did. His head grows dizzy. He wants to tell Percy that he’s sorry, but he can’t. For it isn’t Percy at all. The demon’s features shift, blackness sliding over blackness, until David’s own face, washed with darkness and dread, is staring back at him.

  The first words that David Higgins speaks in more than three years is not an apology at all, but the name of the beast before him, the name of his haunt, his damage, his sin, himself.

  “Toi Loi,” he says, the words nothing but damp a groan. It is all he can muster. He wants to say more, to scream at the top of his lungs, to demand he be forgiven, to announce that what came later washed away his sins. But it would do no good, and as his life slips slowly away, he finally understands the demon’s true reason for being.

  One evil act cannot make up for another.

  Toi loi.

  • • •

  At least it wasn’t me.

  It was a proclamation and a curse, an evil thing to think and beyond evil to utter aloud. It had haunted David as he sat in his tent, knees clutched to his chest while Pembroke ordered his charges to dump Percy’s body in the muddy river. It haunted him as he dismantled his tent and packed it away in his rucksack. And it haunted him as the platoon continued its march through the ever-oppressive jungle, following the river northeast. A strange, somber aura
worked its way through each man present. Every snap of a branch was an accusation; every rustle of leaves in the thick foliage was a monster waiting to devour each of them whole.

  And David knew right then that he deserved it. They all did.

  As he walked, he saw Percy’s face the moment he died. He saw his head snap to the side, saw blood and bone soar through the air. He saw his delicate, beautiful features bruised and bloodied and hopeless.

  And yet you did nothing, a part of him said in accusation.

  There was nothing I could do, the survivor in him replied.

  You taunted him. You were no better than the others. You’re a monster.

  David did all he could to silence the voice. Guilt threatened to overwhelm him. In desperation he flipped his culpability over in his mind, twisted it, made it blackened and rotting, just like Percy was now. The guilt turned to anger, bubbling within him until he felt like a ball of rage. His breathing came in quick bursts, his jaw quavered. Suddenly he didn’t feel so warm. Suddenly, his every muscle hummed with energy as he took step after step through the swampy wasteland, keeping his eyes ever forward, on the back of Pembroke’s head, lest his anger start to fade.

  It was nearly dark again, the jungle coming to life all around them, when Pembroke called the order to make camp. The soldiers performed their duties somberly. No one spoke, no one laughed. They all knew what had happened was wrong. They all knew they were partly responsible.

  It began raining just as the jungle was swallowed in near-complete darkness. David sat in his tent, jittery, knees pulled up to his chest, while the rest of the camp slept. There was no way he could sleep, not now, maybe not ever again. Percy’s death played on a loop behind his eyelids each time he tried. He tilted his head, hearing snores rise above even the sound of the rain. David unhooked his hands from around his knees and slipped out of his tent, tucking his knife into his belt.