by Ray Garton
‘‘I’m sorry!” Jason’s mom cried. “I’m so sorry! I won’t do it anymore, I won’t, I promise!”
Jason froze and listened. At first, he’d thought it was just another fight between his parents, but now he knew better.
“Jason? Jason! Please help your mommy. Please! We’ll go away! Well go away and you’ll never be hurt again, I promise! Don’t let them get me, Jason, please don’t let them get meeee!”
He turned to Dr. Krusadian, a chill working its way over his body, and asked, “What’s the matter with Mom?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jason. Trust me. Now, I’d like to get a picture to remember you by.”
“Jason, I love you! Your mommy loves you! Plee-hee-heeeze, Jesus, get me out of here before, oh Jesus Christ, before they get me, please!”
He turned to the doctor with terrified eyes and whispered, “What’s down there?”
Dr. Krusadian studied Jason’s face as he spent a silent moment with his thoughts, then knelt down beside the boy and put an arm around his small shoulders, pressing his mouth close to Jason’s ear.
“Listen to me carefully, Jason. You must promise you will listen carefully.”
Jason nodded.
“Think back over the years, over your life. Have you been happy? Have you ever been truly happy?”
No reply.
“Listen to your mommy, Jason, listen to me! I’ll take you away from him and he’ll never hit you again, never, I promise just get me out of here!”
“You are smiling in none of the pictures,” Dr. Krusadian went on. “You don’t look happy. I don’t think you’ve ever been. Have you?”
A slight shake of his head.
Screams—such terrified, desperate screams—drifted in from the kitchen like foul smells on the air.
“There have been times you’ve wanted to be happy, haven’t there?” Dr. Krusadian asked. “Times when others around you were happy and enjoying themselves. But you could not. Because there was something inside you… something fat and suffocating that would not let you feel happiness. Am I right?”
Another tentative nod.
“Open this door, Jason, right now! You open this goddamned door for your mother or so help me God… oh Jesus, they’re coming, they’re coming! Jason, they’re coming!”
The doctor gave him a gentle squeeze. “Well, Jason, that is gone. That thing inside you that kept you from being happy? I’ve taken it away. All this evening I’ve been taking it away a piece at a time. So you can be happy. Because I’ve taken it away. And I’ve given it to the people who put it there. I’ve given it to your parents.”
“Ja-son! Ja-son! Jaaaaa-soooon!”
“But,” Jason whispered, “will… will they be okay? Will they be hurt?”
“They will be fine. Later. Things will be different. But they will be fine. Trust me.”
Jason thought about that a while as the screams went on, growing into lung bursting wails, then diminishing into raspy sobs. He thought about it and the frown on his brow slowly relaxed.
Dr. Krusadian stood and said, “Now. Come.” He adjusted something on the camera and led Jason to the hearth where he put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Let’s take a picture. Ready?”
He stood beside the enormous black man, expressionless and silent, still thinking about what he’d said. Then… slowly… Jason did something he hadn’t done in a very long time.
With a click and a flash, it was recorded forever.
Dani wore her voice down to a hoarse croak as she pounded on the door, begging to be let out. The sounds coming from below were making her ill and she didn’t want to look down the stairs, but when she felt she could scream no more, she looked over her shoulder against her better judgement and knew she was seeing her fate.
Richard was struggling in the grasp of the black creature that glistened like a big rotten peeled grape; the glutinous fists that protruded from it battered him relentlessly as it sucked him in, kicking and screaming Dani’s name until her name was no more than a nonsense sound. And after it had devoured him whole, it, too, began to disappear around him like filthy water being sucked down a drain, until it left him lying alone on the floor, a sloppy quivering mess, naked now except for the gobs of fatty slime that clung to his body, as the others closed in. But before they reached him, Richard craned his head back until he was looking at her, his face upside down, hand reaching out again, lips battling with one another to form words as his body convulsed.
He hissed, “They’re… inside me… now, Dani… puh-please… “
Then another was on him, this one purple as if engorged with blood, a long thick penis—tumorous and dripping fluids—jutting from its front, its throbbing head directed between Richard’s trembling legs. He screamed again as it spilled itself over him, but his voice was losing its strength.
As Richard disappeared beneath it, Dani turned away, trying to pound on the door again, but was unable to clench a fist.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped. “I’m sorry, I’m… so… sorry… “
Richard’s weary screams were muffled, then swallowed, replaced by moist slurping sounds, then—
—silence.
A long silence.
Too long.
Her lungs clogged with dread, Dani turned her head slowly to look down the stairs again. Richard lay on the floor, the flashlight draping half his body in shadow, as another creature moved toward him silently, this one covered with long thin protuberances the size and shape of cigarettes, each with a glowing red ember at the end. It headed for him like an impossibly slow, malformed heat-seeking missile.
But there were three others, and they moved around Richard—
—coming toward the stairs.
With clumsy jerky movements, Dani turned her body toward them, pressing her back hard to the door and hugging her knees to her breasts. She ignored the others moving in the shadows at the far end of the basement as the three she watched oozed by Richard and into the glow of the flashlight. One came ahead of the others, the color of dead flesh, its bulk shifting this way and that as a hand—or the shape of a hand—reached out between the two bulbous eyes. Something grew out of the hand, something long and narrow, a familiar shape, with a long clamp running down one side. The clamp opened and closed as the fist squeezed the object’s handle.
A curling iron.
The others advanced slightly behind, covered with eyes—human eyes—that were gouged and running with blood.
Blinded eyes.
Dani wanted to scream but didn’t have the strength and saw no point to it anyway.
The creatures stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Waiting.
The most wonderful thought occurred to her then, as Richard began to stir again, surrounded by slime-fisted creatures with unfeeling eyes, his body clothed in slime. The thought made her so happy, so excited and hopeful, that she stood and grabbed the doorknob behind her, rattling the door as hard as she could.
“They can’t come up the stairs,” she muttered, then screamed it, pounding on the door again, her back to them, glancing over her shoulder every few seconds as she begged again for help—”They can’t come up the stairs! Help me! They can’t come up the stairs!” —until—
—the creature holding the curling iron out before it like a sword split open. Its enormous mouth gaped until it was a great black hole at the bottom of the stairs and Dani thought if she fell in she might never reach bottom. She stopped pounding, turned, and—
—a thick rope of slime shot from the mouth and up the stairs in a heartbeat, slapping around her ankle and pulling. Hard.
The world lurched and Dani found herself airborne, looking up at her feet until she hit the stairs and was bathed in sharp stabbing pain as the thing dragged her down over the hard wooden steps, closer and closer to the gaping cavern of a mouth that waited below, until she was plunged into the moist stale blackness and it closed around her and then—
—eternity began.
It was the fir
st of three.
Jason stood in the kitchen doorway watching Dr. Krusadian. The big man stood at the rear of the kitchen, his ear inclined toward the basement door. The screaming downstairs had stopped some time ago, but the doctor listened carefully to the silence. Then he turned to Jason, stood straight and smiled, saying, “My work here is over.” Jason followed him into the living room, where Dr. Krusadian picked up his bags and carried them to the front door.
“You’re leaving?”
“I’m finished.” He put his bags down, put on his coat and hat and faced Jason. “When your parents come up later, they will be… groggy. A little confused, perhaps. And quite messy. Pay them no mind. They will clean up, get some sleep, and be fine. Wait for them in your room. And don’t go into the basement. Jason, my friend—” He held out his hand and they shook, “—it has been a pleasure. I’m happy to know you.”
“But… will I see you again? Can I call you? I mean, if I ever need you again?”
“You won’t.”
He touched Jason’s head gently, then left.
27.
Jason awoke on the sofa to the light coming from outside. He went to the window and watched the sun climbing into a cloudless sky. The storm was over.
A sound from the kitchen startled him and he spun around, watching the doorway anxiously. He heard their voices first as they came out of the basement.
“What time is it?” his mom mumbled.
Someone stumbled.
“Richard? Are you all right?”
“I’m… yeah, I’m… I think I’m… gonna be sick.”
“Where’s Jason? Jason?’’
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Are you okay?”
He started toward the kitchen, calling, “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Don’t come in here!” she blurted weakly, but firmly. “Just… why don’t you just… go upstairs for a while. ‘Kay?”
“Yeah. Sure, Mom.”
But he didn’t. As they continued muttering to one another, Jason crept to the kitchen doorway hoping to peer around the door-jamb without being caught. Then he heard a sound that he couldn’t at first identify; it was like a wet, ragged cough.
No, not a cough. A sob.
His dad was crying.
“Richard,” his mom soothed, “Richard… c’mon, Richard… “
Jason no longer wanted to look. He hurried upstairs to his room.
Dani stared at Richard, horrified and weakened by the sight of him. Naked and shivering, his body dripping slime, he appeared, for the first time she could remember, cowed and broken. He leaned heavily on the table, shoulders hitching as he cried quietly and fought to hold down his gorge. Beneath the dark wet streaks that striped his head, Richard’s brown hair was completely white.
“My God, Richard,” Dani breathed, “look at you. Did… did that really happen? What did he do to us?”
“Stupid question, Dani,” he muttered, padding across the kitchen. “Stupid question.” He leaned forward and vomited into the sink.
When she heard Jason’s bedroom door close, Dani left the kitchen and carefully scaled the stairs, her body aching from head to foot. More than anything she wanted a hot shower, then crisp sheets and a long dreamless sleep. But as she trudged through her bedroom and into the bathroom on watery knees, she had a feeling there would be no more dreamless sleeps.
The rectangular mirror over the sink, framed by strips of glaring white lightbulbs, was unmercifully cruel. She stared at the stranger trapped in the flat glass and wanted to cry, but was too exhausted to shed any more tears.
The substance clinging to her made her look old and lumpy. Lumpier than usual. Clots of it dribbled from her breasts, down her belly and over her face, and a string of it dangled from her chin. And her hair…
Mingling with the honey blond were broad streaks of white. Old lady white. Aged, decaying white.
She watched the reflection closely, half hoping it would change, or better yet, go away. When it didn’t, she reached up, wiped the slime from her face and slopped it into the sink, revealing the deep lines that were carved into the flesh beneath her eyes.
Dani backed up three steps and sat on the edge of the bathtub, silently asking herself questions she couldn’t answer.
What happened?
How much time has passed?
What were those things?
Closing her eyes, she tried to recall it all—
They’re… inside… me now…
—but it was murky. She went back farther to their conversation with Dr. Krusadian—
My job is to remove from Jason all the demons you have inflicted upon him…
—to the hint of smug threat in his voice before he sent them down into the basement—
It is time to face up to what you have done to your boy…
—and back farther still to the fall that broke Jason’s arm and brought the huge black doctor into their house—
No, she thought, feeling ill…
—and before that to the evenings full of screams and cries and the sounds of fists beating flesh—
… no, no…
—but the memories that stretched back almost a full nine years were somehow different, changed, as if someone had rummaged through her mind and rearranged them, and—
… please God no, he couldn’t have…
—no matter how hard Dani tried to shift those memories in her mind, no matter how hard she tried to turn them this way and that and look at them from several different angles—
… they’re inside me now, sweet Jesus, they’re inside me now!
—those scalding memories of violent nights and scab covered mornings would not return as the safe, padded memories they had once been and Dani slid down off the tub and curled into a sobbing, retching ball on the tile floor.
The memories were not hers. They were no longer viewed through her eyes, tinted by the filter of her own thoughts and perspectives.
They were the memories of a victim, not of an observer.
The memories were Jason’s.
And they were there to stay.
Dani screamed into her hands until she lost consciousness.
28.
They didn’t scream in the Campbell house anymore. And things did change, just as Dr. Krusadian had promised.
Jason’s parents stopped drinking. They didn’t mention it, didn’t even act as if they’d ever touched alcohol. The bottles that had been emptied at Dr. Krusadian’s insistence had simply not been replaced.
Jason’s mom kept busy around the house; she began to cook large delicious meals on the weekends and, during the week, they ate out more often than before, frequently at the restaurant of Jason’s choice. His favorite was Chuck E. Cheese, where his dad always filled Jason’s pockets with tokens and let him roam the game room while Mom and Dad sat quietly at their table.
Dad stopped reading the paper so much and spent more time with Jason in the evenings. In fact, they both spent more time with Jason.
Yes, there was definitely something different about them, but—except for the way they looked—they were different in a good way. They were quiet and nice and they touched him softly, sometimes staring at him silently for a long time with a sad look in their eyes. But they looked tired and… older. Their voices were thinner; they spoke slower and walked slower, shoulders heavy and brows furrowed. And in the bathrooms, Jason noticed bottles of coloring with labels that promised to hide gray hair.
But that wasn’t so bad, because things were better.
They traveled. Disneyland was much more fun the second time around, and at Marine World and Safariland, Jason had his picture taken with animals he hadn’t even known existed.
They took lots of new pictures to replace the old. Jason laughed and waved from the back of an elephant; he and his parents stood with Goofy and Donald Duck; he smiled as he hugged his mom on the beach and laughed on his dad’s lap on a picnic in the redwoods.
The new pictures were all very differen
t from the ones they replaced because, in each of them, Jason looked happy. Very happy.
His parents didn’t, though. They never smiled for the camera anymore.
Mom had arranged them all on the mantle in the living room, putting two on each side of Jason’s favorite picture.
It was an eight-by-ten, framed in brass, and had arrived in the mail in a plain brown envelope addressed to Master Jason Campbell. There was no return address.
It was the picture that had been snapped immediately after Jason learned what had been done to his parents in the basement.
Jason stood next to the mountainous Dr. Krusadian in front of the fireplace.
And Jason was grinning joyously…
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All stories, except for “Sinema”, appear here for the first time. “Fat” Copyright ©1990 by Ray Garton “Active Member” Copyright ©1990 by Ray Garton “Something Kinky” Copyright ©1990 by Ray Garton “Shock Radio” Copyright ©1990 by Ray Garton “Dr. Krusadian’s Method” Copyright ©1990 by Ray Garton “Sinema” Copyright ©1988 by Ray Garton. Originally published in Silver Scream (Dark Harvest 1988)
Copyright © 1990 by Ray Garton
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-2763-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
RAY GARTON
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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