by Pete Kahle
Finally, after he had apparently emptied the entire contents of his body cavity, Gordy fell forward sobbing and curled into a ball. He lay there in the afternoon sun and moaned for a few minutes before crawling to his feet and looking himself over. He was naked from the waist down. Red and brown streaks ran down his thighs. A few feet away, the remnants of his boxers lay torn to shreds, stained with blood and fecal matter in a ball at the foot of his porch.
“What the fuck is going on?” he blubbered. Something was seriously wrong with him. First, he had lost four days of memories and now this? Who knew what he had done in the lost four days? Gordy did even want to think of what could have happened while he was blacked out. Maybe he had a concussion. Some type of head injury had to be causing these blackouts. The alternative was not something he even wanted to consider.
And then there was the river of shit that was pouring out of him. He didn’t know if it was a disease or some sort of bizarre intestinal infection, but he knew that he had to see a doctor as soon as possible. That was an unmistakable fact. It just wasn’t normal to crap like a fire hose, especially with what felt like enough force to perforate his intestines. He didn’t even want to consider why he was doing it in a hole in his back yard.
Gordy normally hated doctors – in fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone in for a physical – but this time there was no other alternative. He would have to suck it up and seek some help, but first he needed to get clean. Again. He pulled himself slowly to his feet and staggered toward the hose attached to the spigot on the side of his house.
Thankfully, he lived in a relatively wooded area. The Tumasovs, his closest neighbors, couldn’t have seen him doing his business unless they walked through a few yards of brambles that separated their two properties. They were an old antisocial Russian couple with at least ten quasi-feral cats and dogs that used his and other yards in the neighborhood as their own personal toilet. He had waved to them a few times when he first moved in, but when it became obvious that they didn’t want to be friendly, he gave up and left them alone.
He hoped they had at least had their windows closed because he had been screaming pretty loudly and, based upon the pain in his throat and the hoarse quality of his voice, it had been going on for quite some time. Perhaps he was lucky and they weren’t home.
Each step he took induced another wave of burning agony in his nether regions, but he eventually made it to the faucet and gingerly turned it on. He gasped as the water hit him. It was so cold, but the initial shock gave way to relief as the icy flow numbed his raw wounds. Closing his eyes, Gordy let the open hose run freely over his bloody hindquarters, rinsing away the stains and the chunks. The pain was still there, but at least it had subsided to the point where he could think again.
Blearily, he examined his hands. His fingers were raw and swollen, his nails torn and bloody. Dirt stained his pores. Dozens of fresh cuts and abrasions scarred his palms and knuckles. It looked like he had been digging with his bare hands for hours, and when he looked around the yard he realized that might be closer to the truth than seemed possible.
In addition to the open hole where he had been recently occupied, there were at least five – no, make that six – similarly-sized mounds of torn-up grass and earth. Odds were that he had also made a deposit in those holes as well. That settled it – he needed to get to a doctor ASAP. Whatever was going on was much more than an intestinal bug or food poisoning. Neither caused people to black out or go into a fugue state, did they? It needed to be taken care of immediately, but before he could do that, however, Gordy had to change his clothes… yet again.
He climbed the back steps and reentered the house, hobbling like an arthritic old man. Remarkably, other than the fact that the screen was wide open and his cell phone had been left unattended in the middle of the kitchen floor, there was no sign that anything else had happened inside the house since his blackout.
He finished cleaning up in the shower, and pulled on a t-shirt and the baggiest pair of sweatpants he owned. His stomach gurgled and he felt pressure in his lower abdomen. Goddamn, I’m bloated. Feels like I swallowed a bowling ball, he thought. Please let this be over soon. I don’t think my ass can take this anymore. He was deciding whether to go to the ER, or to see if his primary physician had any open appointment soon, when a series of thoughts occurred to him. How did I get home? Why can’t I remember driving? Is my car even in the driveway? Heading to look out the window facing the street, Gordy racked his brain for any hint of what had happened since they had hidden in the cave – if that was even an actual memory rather than the remnants of a nightmare.
Thankfully, his fears were unfounded. His beat-up Honda Civic was parked out front, half on the driveway and half on the piebald turf that he pretended was a front lawn. It was undeniable that it was a dreadful parking job, but otherwise the vehicle had emerged unscathed.
A barrage of barks and growls filled the air. He turned around, wincing at the agony in his ass, and realized that the animal sounds were coming from his back yard. The growls became louder. Peppered with wailing and intermittent yips, the baying was coming through the window over the kitchen sink. Gordy limped over and peered out. One of the neighbors’ dog was in his yard, going psycho barking at something on the ground. Right around where he had left his droppings.
“What fresh hell is this?”
TUESDAY EVENING - Ross started drinking first. In other words, as they all had known, he had been drinking the whole while, but now that they were stranded for the duration of the storm – and it looked like it would be a continuous downpour all night – he made the executive decision to salvage the day and make sure everyone got utterly shitfaced like him. Ross loved to drink, but he preferred that others drank with him. It was easier to deny that he had an alcohol dependency that way.
Gordy initially took it easy with the alcohol intake. He had the thought in his head that the rain would stop soon and he could get them to the cabin where they would start a fire, dry off, and get thoroughly obliterated in front of a campfire. Soon, however, he realized that they would probably be sleeping in the cave and it quickly became apparent that he would never live this down, so he might as well have some fun.
They had all brought some beer, but without a stream in which to refrigerate the cans, it was piss warm, so they started on the hard stuff right away. Gordy and Hector had each brought a couple bottles of cheap rum, Seth had his usual bottle of scotch, and Ross had filled his Camelbak canteen with Kool-Aid and a generous amount of grain alcohol.
Things got stupid rather quickly after that.
After several hours of drinking and praying for the storm to subside, the guys grew restless. The four of them huddled in various stages of undress, waiting for their clothes to dry. Even though there was still at least an hour of daylight remaining before sunset, the rain clouds outside obscured the sun and the illumination inside the cave was little more than a dim glow from the entrance, muted and gray. Gordy did have a couple of flashlights, but he only used them sparingly in order to conserve the batteries on the chance they would be here through the night, namely when they were searching their backpacks for alcohol. During those brief moments of light, they saw that the cave became funnel-shaped, narrower towards the back wall where a small waist-high opening led into darkness.
The howling wind blowing across the cave entrance produced a continuous haunting sigh that hissed off the walls like the final gasps of dying men. A mutual chill traveled up their spines at the sound. Conversation had ceased earlier. Listening to the rain, they had come to the obvious conclusion that they would be staying the night. Hector had already unrolled his sleeping bag and passed out. Gordy had changed out his wet clothes and now sulked next to him in his pajamas until they dried off. Seth sat near the entrance, smoking another cigarette and watching the rain pound the earth mere feet away, while Ross paced around in a nervous circle like a dog waiting by the door to go outside.
“I’m bored, guy
s.” he said, slurring his words. “This seriously sucks.”
“I said I was sorry, dude. I should’ve known better,” Gordy replied. “Next time we’ll go to Foxwoods and play the slots.”
“Foxwoods?” I’d rather go to a Pats game and tailgate. We could watch them stomp the other team”
“And be home sleeping in our own beds,” interjected Seth.
“Anything would be better”, he said. “Hey Gordo, let me borrow that flashlight for a bit.”
“What for?”
“Just want to walk around the cave a bit and see if we missed anything.”
“Fine,” Gordy said, handing over the SureFire. “Don’t use it for too long. It’s expensive and we may need it later.”
He nodded and flicked on the beam, immediately blinding Gordy, who cursed as he covered his face and stumbled back into the wall. Ross ignored his friend’s pain and walked away, waving the light in a back-and-forth pattern along the walls and floor.
Other than the debris of the past few months – branches, stones and leaves mainly – nothing seemed to stick out and spark his interest, until the flashlight beam washed over the hole on the far wall. He looked in the opening with the light and immediately realized that the small tunnel curved down into a narrow chimney. Aiming the beam down the shaft, he realized something immediately.
“Holy crap, this is deep,” he exclaimed. “I can’t even see a bottom.” To prove his observation, he picked a baseball-sized stone from the floor and dropped it down the hole. Nearly ten seconds later, the sound of it hitting bottom echoed up to them.
Seth looked up sharply and walked over with a curious look on his face.
“Try that again,” he said.
Ross repeated his action and Seth counted the seconds.
“Nine,” he reported.
“Wow… that must be like a football field.”
“Try five of them. It would have to travel a few hundred yards to take that long to hit bottom.”
Ross shook his head in bewilderment. “How do you even remember that? We took Physics over a decade ago.”
“You might still know it too if you didn’t spend your high school years stoned off your ass,” blurted Gordy from the other side of the cave.
Seth laughed as Ross grumbled under his breath. He seemed about to respond with a when he cocked his head and frowned. “Do you hear that?” he said as he stuck his head back in the hole.
“Hear what?” Gordy said. “All I hear is the rain.”
“Ross, give it a rest,” Seth added with a sigh.
“Shhh, shut up! Just shut up! Stop talking and listen!”
Seth and Gordy exchanged worried glances. They had been friends with Ross for a long time. He had a severe inferiority complex and they were well aware that he had a short fuse when he felt he was being mocked, especially when he was drunk. Sometimes it was fun to needle him until he did something that he would regret the next morning, but now was not the time for him to have a meltdown. Neither of them would put it past him to rush out into the night and get lost in the storm where he would probably get struck by a falling limb from a tree or maybe die of hypothermia. That was definitely something they did not want to deal with at that moment.
So they held their tongues and shut up… and, surprisingly, they heard the noise, too.
A slick, rustling sound came directly from the hole in the wall. Hearing it painted a picture in Gordy’s mind of someone crumpling a large amount of cellophane at the bottom of a well. Crackling and echoing up the twisting stone chimney, the noise sounded like a chorus of whispers that moved with an organic ebb and flow.
Ross, grinning at the looks on their faces, proclaimed, “I told you I heard something!”
Seth walked back into the cave to take a look. “It’s gotta be an echo. Some trick of the acoustics warping the sounds of the storm.”
“Maybe an underground stream?” suggested Gordy.
Ross shook his head. “Nah, it seems like something’s moving down there. Up and down the sides of the hole.”
“Shine the flashlight at it.”
“No shit, Sherlock. I’ve already tried that, but it’s too friggin’ deep. The light can’t reach that far down.”
“Let me try looking,” interrupted Seth. Ross handed him the flashlight and he looked down the shaft, carefully aiming for the center of the darkness. Nothing. Shadows and stone walls extending down. That was all.
“Sounds like a giant bowl of Rice Krispies down there, but I still can’t see shit,” he admitted. “It’s black as hell down there.”
An updraft of warm air hit him in the face and he pulled his head out coughing as he tried not to vomit. The smell of rot and methane filled the chamber, so thick they could taste it on their tongues. Hector woke screaming. “Aaauuggh! What is that? It smells like the Devil’s asshole!” He ducked back into his sleeping bag and covered his head. The others covered their faces with their sleeves and alternated between holding their breath and trying not to fall down laughing as he spewed forth a barrage of muffled Spanish profanity.
Seth began shouting in a fake Speedy Gonzalez accent, “Andale! Andale! Es el Culo del Diablo!”
Normally Gordy would have sighed in disapproval when Seth or Ross blurted out an ignorant comment like that, but now he couldn’t even catch his breath. He was already feeling a bit sick from the amount of rum he had drank and the stench was more than he could handle. Sinking to his knees, he attempted to filter it out by breathing through the fabric of his sweatshirt.
Behind them, Ross was on a mission. He ran to his backpack and pulled out a long thin object wrapped in plastic. He peeled the wrapper off, revealing a bundle of long, thin, brightly-colored cardboard tubes – roman candles left over from the 4th of July. He had planned to light them one night at the cabin, but now seemed more appropriate.
“This’ll light things up,” he laughed as he separated. “I’m gonna shoot this down where the sun don’t shine – right down the Devil’s Asshole.” Pulling out his lighter, he walked to the opening and stuck his head in once more to check if anything had changed.
The smell of decay was even stronger and the beam from the flashlight still could not penetrate the stygian depths of the shaft. “This is gonna be awesome,” he muttered to himself. He flicked the lighter and held the flame to the wick.
Back behind him, both Seth and Gordy were watching. Hector was still huddled in his sleeping bag. Seth was somewhat confused. Gordy, on the other hand, felt nervous when Ross pulled out the fireworks, but he couldn’t think clearly.
“Ross --” he said. “What are you --?”
The wick sparked and ignited. Ross pointed it down the hole and prepared for the pyrotechnics to begin. All at once, the pieces all clicked together and Gordy knew what was wrong.
Methane.
Fire.
“Stoooopppppp!” Gordy screamed, but it was far too late. The gas ignited and a plume of fire exploded into the main cave.
Something was making the dog lose its mind. It straddled the edge of the shit pit in the center of the yard and howled so loud that it seemed its throat would rupture. Gordy recognized it as the one he considered the alpha male of the Timusovs’ pack of untamed mutts. He didn’t know its name, but since one of its favorite activities during the winter was to scour Gordy’s yard for frozen poopsicles for a midday snack, he liked to think of it as the Unholy Ravenous Turdmonster.
The Turdmonster was an extremely large dog. Scratch that - it was freaking humongous. There was obviously some St. Bernard blood in its bloodline, or perhaps a Bull Mastiff, or some breed that regularly gets mistaken for a horse or a baby mammoth. Gordy also thought that there might be some poodle in its lineage since its hair, though matted, overgrown and filthy, was on the curly side. If it weighed anything less than two hundred pounds, Gordy would eat his hat.
Though it could have intimidated anyone who was unfamiliar with it, Turdmonster had never bothered Gordy or scared him. Before today, he had
only heard his canine neighbor bark a few times, and those instances were in response to other dogs yapping down the street. To be honest, Gordy’s back yard would have been much more unsanitary if it hadn’t been regularly looking for some snacks. Whenever Gordy came out during one of its frozen feces foraging missions, it just gave him a look that said Okay, okay, hold your horses, buddy. I’m outta here, and then he slunk into the woods between the yards. The unspoken agreement between them had always been that neither one of them would deny the other passage through the back yard. It was an amicable truce.
As its booming barks echoed through his and the neighbors’ yards, Gordy went to look out the screen door to see what was causing the canine meltdown. The Turdmonster was thoroughly enraged by something in the hole where Gordy had had his unfortunate accident earlier. Quietly, he stepped out onto his back deck, careful to avoid the boards that creaked, and leaned against the wooden railing to get a closer look.
Now that he was closer, he heard a whisper of something in the air in the few moments between the barks and growls. Bubble wrap, he thought. Sounds like someone is popping bubble wrap. A shitload of it. The weird noise was coming directly from the makeshift toilet. He wanted to go investigate, but, with the Turdmonster in a mindless frenzy less than ten yards away, he realized that the idea was ill-advised.
Seconds later, the opportunity presented itself. Turdmonster leaned forward sniffing and whining at what he saw in the hollow. The big dog appeared confused and frightened. A hole filled with shit wasn’t something it found every day, but it seemed to sense that something was off kilter. The bubble wrap noise seemed to increase in pitch and a flash of movement lashed at Turdmonster’s muzzle. He reared backwards with a sharp yelp of pain. The dog scrambled frantically away from the hole and turned tail, yipping in panic as it ran away, blood leaking from a deep circular wound that had been ripped from its nose by whatever had attacked it.
