Rosie struggled to stand, but reeled back as another punch landed and sent her once again, into her daughter.
Her husband launched another booted foot, this one glancing off her back.
“Leave me alone, you bastard!” she screamed, pushing Jenny Mae protectively into the center of the room.
Dicky reached down and picked her up by the hair, jerking her head backwards, arching her back impossibly.
“I’m done with you. You hear that, Bitch. You and me are quits, but you will not have my daughter.” He laughed. “You are so stupid. It was so easy. I knew your bitch-friend Christina had told you about that place. Hell, she threatened me she would take you there often enough.” He hurled her against the TV. “Come here, sweetheart,” he said switching his voice to syrup, a hand out to Jenny Mae.
A mewling noise began down deep in her throat rapidly erupting into a long drawn-out no.
“It’s okay, mister,” came a voice from his left.
He turned and saw Sweet Little Piggy, who approached smiling, staring up into his face.
“Fuck me. What den of freaks did you bring my daughter into?” he asked, disgust replacing anger.
He swung a hard right hand at Sweet Little Piggy, but was stunned as her arm came up and caught his, just below the wrist. He tugged, but found his arm firmly trapped in the girl’s powerful grip. He watched as the fat albino girl reached up with her other hand and touched his chest and closed her eyes. She began to sing, “Stick men, stick men, my little stick men.”
He screamed with the impossibility of it all as he lashed out with his free hand and hit her once, twice, in the center of the face. Crimson blood erupted from the wounds and flowed down her white skin. The last blow freed him and sent Sweet Little Piggy tumbling back against the wall. He wiped the blood from his fist on the side of his jeans and advanced on his daughter. He picked her up by the waist and turned to his wife.
“Don’t even think about following, cunt.”
He kicked her again, this time in the leg with the steel toe of his boot. She squealed in pain. He turned, only to meet Grandma Fletcher who brought a tasseled lamp down on the top of his head, a scream of rage fueling its descent. He grunted and sagged to his knees. She brought it down again, but he managed to bat it aside with an arm as blood cascaded into his eyes blinding him.
“Bitch,” he screamed. He struggled to his feet, unsteady for a few seconds, falling once more to his knees before he turned on Grandma Fletcher. She glared at him, her face strange without the permanent glasses. Her blue-white wig had fallen off, revealing a closely cropped gray scalp. She scuttled sideways, faster than she’d moved in decades, heading for the kitchen, for a knife. He lunged and caught her in a linebacker tackle. They both hit the couch and rolled onto the floor knocking over the coffee table. She ended up on top of him, but was too stunned to take advantage. He grunted several times before he managed to push her off.
“Fucking Hell,” Dicky said to no one in particular as he stood shakily. He was gasping, blood dripping from his forehead to his chin. He grabbed a doily from the debris of the table and wiped his eyes clear of blood. He staggered into the middle of the room and stopped.
The albino girl drew rapidly on the wall. Her hands moved in quick, sure motions. So far, she’d drawn a two-foot high figure, perfect in every detail right down to the doily held firmly to its head.
It was him, absolutely clear and precise. Dicky reached up to feel his eye and found its puffiness matching that of the picture’s.
“Stick men, stick men, my little stick men,” came the voice—squeaky, lispy, crazy.
“I gotta get the fuck outta here.”
He spun to leave, but almost fell as his feet refused to budge. He looked down and saw three hands tightly gripping each ankle, arms melding seamlessly into the floor. He jerked his right leg up and felt it give two inches before it was slammed back down by the strength of the impossible grip of the improbable hands. His eyes went wild and he turned left and right rapidly, looking for anything. A searing pain erupted along his back, slicing through his jacket, his shirt and his skin. He turned and saw himself, raising a lash, grinning with glee. He saw the lash fall striking his back again, the tip cutting fabric and skin.
“Fucking Hell?”
Through teary eyes, he looked at the wall again and saw the girl’s hands move in an impossible blur as she transformed the whiteness into a pallet of perfect insanity. He saw a picture of himself behind him, a long lash poised to strike again. He watched as, in seconds, she drew two more versions of himself on either side of him.
He spun his head to the left as his arms were jerked out to the sides, almost dislocating by the forces upon them. He spun his head to the right and again, saw himself— evil, malignant and laughing as both of his other selves leaned back, using their weight to keep his arms immobile.
He stared forward, intent on screaming but felt it lodge in his throat like a ball of thick vomit. In front of him was another him— leering, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, arms crossed. He watched himself chuckle and puff hungrily on the cigar, the gray smoke swirling around his head like an evil halo. He watched as the cigar came out, up and down. The sizzle and pop of his left eye freed the vomit and released the tension in his bowels. When it entered his right eye, it killed him. He fell to the ground, his face bouncing twice on the carpet.
Sweet Little Piggy panted. Her chest heaved. Her smock was plastered to her body in dark sweaty patches. She had no need to draw anymore. Still, with a hoarse voice she still sung her song, “stick men, stick men, my little stick men.”
She turned, her eyes slowly clearing from their previous emptiness and saw the man on the carpet, a small tendril of smoke rising from his hidden face. She saw her Grandma, Rosie and Jenny Mae all getting to their feet. She turned to the man again, her face crinkling as if to cry and approached the prone figure. She kneeled down by his head and patted him on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, Mister. It’s okay.”
Silence
by David Whitman
“Wouldn’t it be cool if there was really something on the tape?” Craig asked, his face still flushed pink from their impromptu run from the police. He ran his hands through his long, sweat-drenched hair and coughed up phlegm. “Man, I gotta quit smoking.”
Dylan was not out of breath, but beads of sweat ran down his back and into his T-shirt. His shaven head gleamed in the moonlight, the sweat providing an unnatural sheen in the milky glow. The shadows on his face made his cheekbones jut out sharply.
They stared over at Silence and the tiny boy nodded, holding up the tape recorder above his skinny body like a prize, a beaming grin on his dimpled face.
“Man, I didn’t even see that cop until he was right on us,” Craig said, breaking out into another violent cough.
Dylan smiled, white teeth shining as he emitted a creepy little giggle. “All I saw was Silence come running up through the darkness, leaping over tombstones like he was running some kind of horror movie race track, demons biting at his ass. His eyes were so wide I started laughing. I could tell he was trying to scream the way his mouth was open so wide like that. I figure he must have thought he saw a ghost or some shit. He looked like one of them kids in the Little Rascals when they got all scared. Of course, then I saw the cop’s headlights and I knew it was time to get the hell out. Ain’t that right, Silence?”
The smaller boy, breathing heavily through his mouth, nodded. His abnormally wise eyes were still jumping with adrenaline, his black hair was sticking out raggedly. The last thing he needed was to get arrested. His father already despised him, blaming him for his mother dying in a car accident, and he was eternally aggravated over the boy’s inability to speak. “Stop pretending like you can’t talk, you little freak. The doctor said there’s nothing wrong, except that you don’t want to.” His father would end with a violent tirade of screaming and yelling, placing the sins of the world squarely upon his son’s back-along with the h
eavy leather strap he used to beat him with. If he got arrested, the old man, driven by Budweiser and bitterness, would most likely beat the hell out of him.
“Silence was a quick bastard,” continued Dylan. “It seemed like he passed us in a blur. Arms waving all around his head like that. Scared the hell out of me, man.”
He had been called Silence ever since he had died. When he was four years old he had drowned, slipping into the water of Lake Angel. But it wasn’t a slip. The fingers that gripped his ankle and pulled him down into the murky depths were icy, colder than water could ever be. The newspapers said he had been dead for seven minutes and the doctors, who really couldn’t figure it out, diagnosed his silence as brain damage from lack of oxygen. His dad and the doctors were both wrong. It was the promise he had made. It was his promise never to tell that had made her let him go. She took his voice and gave him his life.
Dylan snatched the tape recorder from Silence’s outstretched hand. “Let's take this back to my room and see if we got anything.”
They were recording what was called EVP’s, or Electric Voice Phenomenon. A few nights before, they had read about it on the Internet and listened to a bunch of samples, smiling in disbelief at the ghostly and haunting voices. The Internet site had said that if you took a tape recorder to any place that was considered haunted and just walked around recording, you would hear the voices of the dead.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t get caught by the cops,” Dylan said as they walked down the dimly-lit street towards his house.
Craig grinned. “Damn straight. My Dad would have tanned my hide but good. And Silence’s Dad would have probably lynched his ass in the front yard.”
Silence agreed. He was a little nervous as to what was going to be on the tape. Since his accident, he had always felt a special kinship with the dead and he knew if any place was haunted, it was Greyson’s Cemetery.
Children had been vanishing for almost 150 years in their town. Some of them were later found mutilated and murdered on the shore of Lake Angel. Many people had reported seeing Civil War soldiers marching through the cemetery as well, a confederate flag fluttering in the wind behind them as they marched through the tombstones.
“I wasn’t so much afraid of the cops,” Dylan said, lighting up a Marlboro. It looked out of place between his thin lips, like a child trying desperately to appear tough. “I was afraid of some sicko copying that dude Gabriel out there.”
Gabriel Walker was caught making snuff films earlier in the year. He was using the cemetery as a set, mutilating and raping young women on camera. Their small town had made the national news for months after he was caught.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Craig said. “I don’t want to be no star of a snuff film. I was thinking how the ghosts of Gabriel’s victims were probably still lurking around out there, too. If Lukas is on this tape, though, I think I’m gonna cry.”
Silence had no argument with that. If Lukas is on that tape, he thought, I will never sleep again.
Lukas went into the cemetery to record EVP’s, but vanished just like the dozens of other children throughout the years. They had dared him to go in alone, something they regretted after he was nowhere to be found the next day. Lukas had always promised if he died, he would come back as a ghost.
“I bet the Nightwalker got Lukas,” Dylan said, his voice lowering to a whisper. Even uttering his name was considered a bad omen to any child growing up in Rawley.
Craig laughed and pointed at his tiny friend. “Look at Silence! You’re freaking him the hell out!”
Silence was terrified of the Nightwalker. Over the years, he had become a sort of southern Boogeyman. The legend of the Nightwalker had been born out of the townsfolk’s inability to solve all the children’s disappearances. Every Rawley child had heard the phrase, ‘If you don’t be good, the Nightwalker is gonna get you.’ It was said his rotting flesh was covered with the faces of dead children, all of them moaning and hissing as he walked through the night.
Dylan smiled at Silence and the tiny boy shot him the middle finger. “He doesn’t even want us to talk about the Nightwalker.”
“The Nightwalker is fucking cool,” Craig said, voice trembling with hero worship.
Silence shook his head and gave a quick glance behind him to make sure the Nightwalker wasn’t lurking.
“You better watch your back,” Dylan said. “If the Nightwalker catches you alone, you won’t even be able to scream.”
Silence shot Dylan an ‘Are you stupid?’ look, but smiled to show he was amused.
They tape recorded near the Fenwick mausoleum, the oldest grave in the cemetery. Edward Fenwick was the first kid to be murdered by the Nightwalker. They found his body in mangled and nearly unidentifiable pieces in the early 1900’s, scattered all over the shore of Lake Angel.
They had just let the tape roll as they sat quietly on the rotting steps of the Fenwick crypt, their eyes scanning the shadowy tombstones for any signs of movement.
Silence decided he would be brave and search away from the mausoleum steps for signs of Lukas. He knew it was a stupid thing to do, but he really wanted to prove to his friends that he wasn’t the coward his father thought him to be. Every time he moved his head to look in a different direction, he could swear he saw tiny figures dancing in his peripheral vision. Some of the tombstones were so white they glowed in the moonlight.
The statues that protected some of the graves looked particularly ominous by the light of the moon. Each time the cool October wind rushed into his hair, he felt he was being visited by a presence. When he saw the police headlights stabbing through the outstretched stones of the cemetery, he was almost relieved. It meant they would be able to leave.
When they arrived at the house Dylan stuck the tape into his stereo, turned on his black light, and sat back onto the bed. “I have a feeling we got something.”
Craig sat on the floor nervously playing with his shoelaces. Silence was staring at the speaker like it was the giant screen of a television, his small body tense. He knew if little Eddie Fenwick were on the tape he would suffer nightmares for the rest of his life. The only reason that he had even become part of the whole thing was because he missed Lukas. Lukas and Silence had been friends since they were in kindergarten. They had even invented their own sign language, much to the annoyance of their teachers.
At first they heard nothing on the tape but the soft hiss of the recorder and the chirping of crickets. Dylan sat on the bed assuredly in the eerie blue lighting, tapping his fingers onto his skull.
The sound of a child crying filled the bedroom, a shrill and heartbreaking sob that broke the hiss on the tape. Dylan started biting his fingernails, his face giving away the fact he never believed they would really get anything of substance.
Silence stood up and paced the room, his legs threatening to give out underneath his wiry frame. The crying went on for about forty seconds and then it dropped to a low and harsh breathing.
“Crowlin keeps us,” a child’s voice whispered. “The black one is with Victor, but I wouldn’t disturb him.” There was a soft humming and his voice went in and out like phantom radio waves, each word seeming to come from even further away. “…Killed…water…branches…run.”
The child shrieked, his voice far away as if he was being pulled into a dense and thick fog.
A man’s voice seemed to slither from the speakers, grave and ancient, a deep southern accent soaking each word. “Our family is doing so well.”
It was at this point on the tape that Silence could be heard racing through the graveyard.
“What the hell is Silence doing?” Dylan said on the tape, laughing. “He looks like he saw a ghost.”
Dylan sprung up from the bed and turned on the ceiling light. “Holy shit, dude!” He held out his hand. “Look at my arm. My goosebumps are like zits!”
“I’ve never been so scared in my life, man,” Craig said.
Silence was standing before the speaker, his dimin
utive body dwarfed by its massive size. He ran his hands through his dark hair. It was only at this point he realized he was not even breathing. He let his fists drop to his sides and he exhaled. The dark circles underneath his haunted eyes made him look like a dying child.
As the night went on, Dylan played the tape over and over as Silence transcribed the cryptic words into his notebook. They listened to the tape, speaking only in hushed and serious tones.
It did not take the boys long to figure out some of the clues on the tape. Silence knew immediately that Victor Cannon was one of the men killed in the snuff film that had been made in Greyson’s Cemetery. Lukas was African American, so it was assumed he was the “black one” who was in the Cannon grave. The name Crowlin sounded familiar to Silence, and it was agreed he would go to the library the next day to see if he could dig anything up.
Jakep Crowlin was a wealthy local merchant in the late nineteenth century, Silence found out the next day as he perused some of the older newspapers on microfilm. At the age of seventy, Crowlin was suspected of killing some of the local children. When a customer visiting his general store saw the bonnet of the young and missing Bessy Kane, cries of murderer! could be heard all over town. Bessy was the fifth of seven children found missing that summer, and the town of Rawley had become paranoid and edgy.
Jakep Crowlin was found dead in his general store, hanging from the rafters, his tongue sticking out of his fat lips like a black worm. It was speculated a vigilante father had murdered him.
The next day, after an exhaustive search, they found the Crowlin Mausoleum. It was in the older part of the cemetery, snake-like weeds wrapped protectively around the its gray-green walls. The date of his death was July 27th, 1890.
Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors Page 18
