Daisy. That was her name. Didn’t her little floral print dresses have daisies on them sometimes?
He got up, showered, got dressed, and ate breakfast with a large mug of coffee. The headache was still pressing on the back of his head and moving its ugly way toward his eyes.
“No noise today,” he said out loud, and considered calling out for the first time in his entire career. But that wasn’t an option, he thought again. Calling in sick was for liberals and pussies, his father had told him, and just days before the man blew the back of his own skull out with a shotgun.
Since he was neither liberal nor pussy, he would not let himself down by calling out for a headache.
He’d just have to tell the kids to be extra quiet today.
Pick them all up today.
“Shut up,” he said to no one.
As he went to the door, he found a rusted machete leaned up against the door knob. He stopped.
He didn’t remember putting it there, and he didn’t remember even removing it from the shed. His father had used it to work the cane fields in the Southern Territory, back when migrant farming was the only way for the Lemley family to make a living. He inherited it when the bastard blew out his brains. The edge glimmered as though it had been recently sharpened, even though the majority of the blade was still rusty.
How did he manage to do that and still be sick all weekend?
Daisy did it.
No. That was ridiculous thinking. But she seemed so real.
“Enough of this!” He said out loud again. This time, he heard a little girl giggle. He spun around, away from the door.
She wasn’t there.
“Take it,” Daisy said. Although he couldn’t see her, the pain in his head dulled a little when she spoke.
Lemley took it and went out the door.
There was not a soul in the maintenance bay that morning, which wasn’t unusual. Lemley always got there a half-hour even before the boss did. He punched his card, went to his bus, and did his maintenance checks. The machete stayed out of view, behind and underneath the driver’s seat.
Once finished with his routine checks, Lemley left to pick up the kids. His route started in Jewel Grove, but today, he’d do his coworkers a favor and pick up all the kids starting with Silver Hollow, too.
He picked them up, one by one, in Silver Hollow.
A group at the little meeting hall that used to be a church was waiting for him. He picked them up, too.
The bus rumbled its way to the general store, leaving a trail of acrid, black smoke from the exhaust as it squealed to a stop. There was a special surprise there, sitting on the steps of Haverty’s, in the form of the little red-haired girl in a white dress that seemed to glow in the sunshine, and a daisy in her hair. Little feet in white patent leather shoes climbed the metal steps of the vehicle. She smiled at him and looked up at his name plate.
“Good morning, Mister Lemley,” she said. Her voice was airy and pleasant, like wind chimes.
The pain in his head vanished.
“Thank you for picking us up today.”
Lemley’s vision blurred as his eyes watered. “You’re welcome,” he said, a crack in his voice.
The other children boarded the bus around her. The little girl took the first seat on the passenger’s side, where he could see her in his rear-view mirror. None of the other children would sit with her.
Hale drove on, picking up all the children in Silver Hollow. The bus was full of the buzz of children talking. He kept driving.
He made his way through the small town, picking up forty-four children in total.
Hale drove away from the town, in the opposite direction of the school.
The little girl in the starched white dress watched him, a small smile playing on her lips.
The noise was getting to be too much. He drove faster.
He found the field that the little girl had told him about before—led there in a dream.
“It’s time.” Daisy’s voice was soft, and she hummed an unfamiliar tune.
The bus driver pulled over and the children quieted. Whack. Hack. Blow by blow, inch by inch, they fell one by one. Their cries and screams drove each blow harder, deeper—then blissful silence—and oh, what bliss. His pants grew tighter, wetter, and relaxed again.
Hale grabbed the machete and took the remains to the field. There were still little bits left to clear up.
When he finished, he turned to Daisy. Her white dress was still immaculate, despite the gore that soaked through Lemley’s coveralls.
“Pick me up,” she said.
Lemley picked her up, her little white dress getting smudged with red.
“Take me in and tell them what you’ve done. Hand me over to them. I will make all this pain go away.” Soft lips kissed his cheek.
Turning to the bus still on the edge of the highway, he walked. Machete in hand, he held Daisy in his free arm. Over his shoulder, he carried the extra burden of a large, olive green, canvas duffel bag. Lemley filled it with enough pieces of candy to sustain the hungry girl. They boarded the bus.
He set her in the aisle, and she took a seat in the spot she’d been before. She was looking at him with a soft smile, eyes heavy-lidded.
“You’re doing fine, Mister Lemley. Now, start the bus and let’s go.”
He turned the bus away from the field and headed back down the highway toward the town of Silver Hollow. While the town wasn’t big enough for even a police station, it had a constable’s office. That’s where Daisy wanted him to go, so he could tell them.
Then all the pain would go away. It made perfect sense. She made his pain go away, so why wouldn’t he do what she told him?
The constable’s office consisted of one small building. Its innards contained a receiving desk, manned by a deputy, and a holding cell off to the left of the reception area. This was where Lemley knew he had to go. He was under orders.
The place smelled of a musty, old basement. The hardwood floors, dry and untreated, creaked and complained under his feet. Daisy was right behind him. He was glad not to be alone—the place was empty except for the deputy and the constable. The jail cell door hung open like a hungry mouth.
The constable and deputy looked up to see him, mouths rounded and eyes wide.
Lemley dumped the contents of his duffel bag onto the floor. To his surprise, the decapitated heads of twelve children came rolling out. Where had those come from? The sack had been full of candy—sugar skulls, toffees, chocolate-covered cherries.
But he knew. He knew it had been Daisy the whole time. He was just the instrument.
Standing before him, their eyes fixed in horror on the sight at their feet. The deputy turned away and retched as constable paled, but remained on his feet.
“What—wh-what in the fuck have you done?” He said to Lemley, his voice pinched, near hysterics.
Lemley turned, and Daisy was gone, along with the pain. Problem was, the world was fading away from him, turning black.
He fell to the floor, convulsing, feeling a gush of hot blood oozing from his nose, and then wetness near his ears. Warm. He let go and gave up. His crotch flooded with hot liquid, and the stench of blood and urine filled his nose.
The constable knelt over him, screaming.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? ANSWER ME, YOU SONUVABITCH!”
Lemley could do nothing but croak and bubble out one last sentence as the darkness smothered him.
“It was time to pick them up.”
MYSTERY MAN
Phil flicked his cigarette to the ground and watched it burn. The smoke danced as it rose higher and higher, to disappear into nothing. Time slipped away as his eyes followed the twists and turns of the pale trails. Closer and closer to the filter it went, the ash leaving a thick, sickly gray trail against the gravel on the driveway. A weak hiss escaped from beneath as he crushed it with one solid work boot.
He no longer cared about Linda. The woman was tired, old news, screwing everyone behind hi
s back. Phil tired of going home to the aroma of incense failing to mask the scent of sex that wasn't his. Hers and another man’s.
She said the heavy perfume covered the pot, and she thought the cops would show up, so to be safe, she burned that stale sandalwood.
Phil shrugged to himself and sighed. Not three weeks ago she'd claimed that she hated smoking weed, and she made tea instead. He’d given up the green ten years back—it didn’t interest him anymore. Sometimes it made his heartbeat zoom too fast the way cold medicine did, so he quit. The cigarettes were something else he wanted to give up, but couldn’t. They killed him by inches, every day, and he didn’t know how to get rid of them. Like Linda.
He looked up and stretched his neck. A smoky cloud wafted through the clear, blue sky overhead, trying to chase away the sun. The lone cloud failed, leaving a grayish haze that changed a small sliver of it to ash.
Doesn’t everything turn to ash?
Time to get back to work.
He put on his safety belt and climbed the side of the building. Working with the harness instead of a ladder made him feel like a superhero. That guy wouldn't use a ladder to scrape paint off the side of a building, and neither would Phil. With his mask secured, he scraped, going somewhere else in his mind. A place where there was no Linda, no cheating, no bills, no Phil's Paint & Plaster. Nothing mundane.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. The old white paint lifted and fell in curlicues to the black tarpaulin below.
He was a superhero. 'I'll save you!' Dive-bombing the villains, breaking the necks of the evil-doers, living a double life. There was Phil, the go-to guy for all your painting needs, and then there was his secret identity—Mystery Man.
The villains in Phil’s world? True evil. No antiheroes. They murdered for the pleasure of plunging their knives deep into the chests of their targets. Only Mystery Man could stop them.
SCRAPE! Cut. Blood. Pain. A wide gash leaving a drip, drip, drip as it oozed out of him.
“Shit,” Phil watched blood pour from his thumb, eyes wide, then narrowing. Red dots of his essence hit the side of the house, scarring the bare wood underneath with a rusty tinge. The flesh on his thumb opened like a hungry bird’s mouth. His stomach attempted to leave via his chest for a moment, and he growled.
He lowered himself to the ground and got into the back of his truck. The first-aid kit was somewhere inside with the road flares and the flat-tire fixer. After using his good hand to sort through the pile—success—soothing salvation was moments away. Phil slammed it onto the van bed and grinned as the damn thing popped open from the force. He liked being that strong. Whenever he used too much strength on something, he felt like a superhero. But Phil’s grin soon turned to a grimace. His thumb was throbbing now from the effort.
Alcohol pads, gauze, and tape in one hand, he set them on top of the box and cleaned the gash, letting it bleed. Grabbing the Quikstopper (stops bleeding fast!) out of the kit, he poured it on the wound, and waited. A few moments of pressure and adhesive, and the bleeding stopped. He added his liquid bandage and skipped the gauze and tape, hoping that would be enough.
Satisfied that he wouldn't bleed to death, he headed back to the house, and climbed back up to the spot where he'd been working. He needed to clean up that spot of blood, so he got his turpentine out of his utility belt (Mystery Man had one of those, too), and a clean brush.
The spots weren’t there.
Phil did a double-take. He looked at his thumb. The ugly wound looked back at him, resembling a screaming mouth. No, he hadn't dreamed it up.
He looked back at where the spots should have been. Nothing but bare wood, the paint chips scraped off as he'd left it. Except those damn spots. What, did the house eat it?
Phil shook his head. Ridiculous. Guess he hadn't bled as much as he thought.
Back to work and back into his head.
Mystery Man rescues The Girl just in time before Baron Badass strangles her. Punch, kick, roundhouse! POW! Baron Badass goes down in only one round. Yet he gets one last, rueful laugh. “Oh Mystery Man, you fool. You'll never disarm the Doomsday Clock!”
With one deft move, Mystery Man takes his Shuriken and throws them at the ticking bomb at the edge of The Clock Tower. The sharp blades cut the wires, stopping the timer and saving the city from Plague Most Foul: PMF. Yes—the worst plague to attack a human. Once again, Mystery Man saves the city, and no one will ever know it. For he is Mystery Man, and he must stay in the shadows of rumor and whispers in the dark.
The sound of humming pulled Phil from his reverie. It made the hair on the back of his neck raise, just like it did when Linda placed soft kisses on his neck. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d received such an intimate gesture. The humming was bit sing-song. Breathy. A gentle breeze at the beach.
He swung his harness around to get closer to the window, following the sound like a Siren's song. The house had been empty for years—heck, the Silver Hollow Historical Society was paying for the job. The house sat, rotting away, and the Society had tried raising the money to restore it to its former glory.
They had enough in the budget to restore the building itself. A city doctor had given them a generous donation. Phil consulted with seven different historians to help him use the right methods of restoration—he wasn't an expert, but he was what SHHS could afford. So he tried to do everything just so. Donating bits of his funds to the experts for their time. Made him warm inside to do something like that.
The frame of the house was in excellent condition (a shock to everyone involved in the project) and supported his harness. He was a slim man though. Not much to hold up.
The humming continued.
He peered in the window. No one was there.
Phil shook his head. Maybe it was from the woods out back, and the voice just carried funny. There was a trail leading throughout the entire forest, branching off to a house a mile away. It cut deep into the woods to the other side—about twenty-five miles of thick, overgrown trail. On day hikes, it was a way to escape Linda and her incessant yammering. Phil knew the forest well—the thickets, river, and the cavern network that sprawled out for miles, soothed by the sounds of running water, birdsongs, and little crunches of animal footsteps on the underbrush. It led to an enormous chasm with moss-covered rocks and rushing waterfalls.
Back to work. Phil abandoned his Mystery Man story in favor of pondering the house and its awkward history, and the tour with Dr. Francis Langelier, head of the SHHS. Phil had no head for history, but because there was money involved, he paid attention to everything Dr. Langelier and his overgrown, butternut squash-head had said.
“The original owners built the house before the Strife of East Versus West, in April of 1861 by a Union officer who married a Secession Nurse. An unusual pairing, to be sure. She had tended his wounds and saved his life. This young nurse, a credit to her profession, once said, 'I help the sick and the wounded, I don't ask them what side they're on.' But far more interesting is that they built this place on top of a ruined crematorium. Digs performed on the grounds by the Historical Society unearthed dozens of people who had been cremated incompletely—the workers never pulverized their bones. The majority of the remains, anthropologists have found, are of women, aged eighteen to twenty-five—they came from a nearby asylum.”
Phil’s mouth hung open, eyes wide. He wanted to tell Langelier that he never knew that, but no sound came out of that perfect ‘o’ of lips. He'd lived in Silver Hollow his entire life, and the only thing he ever knew about Dubbs House was that the other kids called it haunted. They had for generations. But even when he was a little boy he didn't believe in that haunted house stuff. He believed what he could see, and that was it. Once he found his words again, he spoke. “What kind of asylum was it, Doctor?”
Dr. Langelier smiled. It wasn’t genuine—it never reached his eyes.
“Well, Mister Hausmann, we haven't found out yet. There's quite a debate on the subject. Some say it was for the mentally disturbed while oth
ers claim there is evidence to support a TB asylum. However, we may never know as the fire wiped out the town records. The fire in 1894 burned so hot, it leveled the former church, half of the constabulary, and the nearby farmhouse, but Dubbs House still stood. Only a handful of townsfolk survived. They were a superstitious lot. In fact, they recorded only that they would never speak of the 'atrocities' committed before the fire. They feared ‘bringing back the Timeworn Order’s displeasure.’ Not a bright lot, would you say?”
“Oh yeah, not at all.” Always agree with the guy who signs the checks. “I never believed in that hocus-pocus, anyway.”
The doctor laughed and clapped Phil on the back, knocking Phil’s teeth together with the impact. Phil forced a smile of his own.
“Good man, Mister Hausmann. Now, as you can see...”
The doctor had gone on about the house, even including the second fire at Dubbs House in 1955. Phil squinted at the side of the house as he worked, the vast haze of words gathering like fog on the horizon of his brain. Words telling him the asylum was filled with women, and that some of those bones were not just found in what was the crematorium area. No—they found remains all over the dig site.
He wasn't stupid. He could imagine enough to piece together what happened. In his mind’s eye, they burned alive. They burned, they screamed, they choked and gagged on the smoke. All of them vomiting last night’s dinner of undercooked chicken and bland potatoes as the flames overtook their bodies. Bladders voided, bowels emptied—shitting themselves as the fire consumed them in a fitful embrace.
“They found rusted chains and parts of iron bed frames...”
Burned alive in the second fire of 1955, chained to their beds. But how did the wood not burn? Why just the people? If it leveled the buildings nearby, why didn’t it level Dubbs House? How was that possible? Just stone and asbestos, or something else?
Phil shivered.
The paint. Back to the paint. Scrape off the old skin, bit by bit. Scrape it off and keep moving. In front of Phil was the paint and the task at hand. His heart was beating too fast and his stomach filled with a sick heaviness that came before he puked up its contents.
Now Entering Silver Hollow Page 2
