by Alan Spencer
He tossed the empty can aside and then popped the tab of another. “Johnny Appleseed not only spread apple seeds across the country. He knocked up twenty different women. Nobody would believe them because no good Christian man from Massachusetts would do such a thing, oh no. Reputation works wonders for deadbeat dads. I believed he died here because of that. The skull’s got a wound to the head, and it’s probably from a mad woman’s scorn.”
She looked up at Caleb with an apology in her eyes, whispering, “Just go along with it. It’s what you wanted, right?”
He was about to agree, but catching sight of the bear traps hidden throughout the high-reaching blades of grass beyond the path, clammed him up. After counting the sixth one, he asked their guide, “What are the traps for?”
“This is private property." He finished the second can of beer and was nursing the third. “I’ve posted signs along the perimeter to keep out. My father bestowed this land to me and the house. His kind legacy won’t be defiled by sum punk-assed kids who want to romp in the woods and fuck their girlfriends pregnant.”
“Wow." He changed the topic. “So what else makes you believe this is Mr. Appleseed’s body?”
“Through the woods, I’ll show you, boy.”
Shaded from the sun overhead by dense trees, there was no walking path, only thick piles of leaves, rotting tree trunks, patches of poison ivy and sumac, and gnarled wrist-thick roots hidden beneath underbrush. Caleb’s Hanover shoes weren’t up for the task, as Chippie brought up.
He snapped two pictures of the woods for documentation purposes. Shannon tromped with ease in her black Sketcher boots with white and green polka dotted socks raised up to the ankles. Caleb couldn’t help but shape her healthy ass through her dress. The sight motivated him as the mosquitoes and flies crawled on the nape of his neck to suck the blood from his skin.
Up ahead he heard the furrowing of water, the rushing creek. It cut through the land for miles, spitting out a cooling mist.
“Rush Creek fuels the water wheel at Birchum’s cider mill,” she explained, pointing east. “It's free energy. I wish I had one for my trailer.”
Their guide was ten yards ahead of them, he realized; the man had hiked on without them.
She whispered to him, “He’s caught up in his own world. My dad used to shoot guns in his backyard with him, but he couldn’t make sense of Chippie. He got tired of talking about wars the man wasn’t in.”
He crossed the bridge over the creek and doubled his speed to catch up with Chippie. By then, their journey was already over. The sight captivated him. He deduced the grave’s location, the single apple tree standing erect among the foliage and repetition of dense woods. The reds of the apple skins glowed against the drab background of decay. The leaves were mint green. Bark a mineral gray. He flashed four pictures on impulse, then stepped up to the tree.
Chippie eyed the tree with vehemence. “I hate apples. This town wouldn’t have built those malls and duplexes and apartment buildings if it weren’t for that damn cider mill. It used to be quiet around here. Now people from all over drop in. Tourists.” He pronounced it two-er-ists.
The man cleared a patch of leaves with his boot and uncovered the dirt-filled sockets of a bare skull. Caleb gasped, his fascination demurring into horror. As the coot had mentioned, a circular hole formed a deep crater dead center on its forehead. Many of the teeth were missing, forming a cretin’s grin. The spine was intact along with the ribs and sternum. The body ended at the pelvis, the rest of him either buried deeper into the earth or missing.
“If this is real,” Caleb said, "wouldn’t the police like to run forensics tests?”
She whispered in his ear, “It’s a fake body. Plastic. The loon shot the hole in its head himself.”
Chippie dug up more earth with his hands. “You see the rags, this is him all right. It’s Johnny himself. You see it, right? You believe me, boy, don't you?”
The rags were dirtied denim and strips of canvas tarp. “This is a real discovery,” he fibbed. “The magazine will definitely be interested in this. Do you mind signing a release form? It gives me permission to publish your name next to your finding. You’ll be credited. This is your discovery.”
His accusing eyes brightened. “Well...yeah, yeah, you're right.”
Caleb unzipped his carry case and produced a clipboard, pen, and then the release form. “Sign the bottom.”
The man scribbled his name on the appropriate line.
“It’s bizarre the apple tree stands alone,” Caleb added. “It’s very strange.”
“No, it’s not.” The man kneeled over the bones again. “Johnny’s body is fertile with the seeds. It’s him doing it. His spirit is causing it to happen at my house because he knows I hate that infernal fruit. It’s turned Smithville into a family-oriented town, a place everybody wants to stay. It’d shoot it all if it were up to me."
The sound of multiple screams tore them from their conversation. It echoed from on high and below, so real, Caleb counted a dozen or more caterwauls of agony. It lasted less then five seconds; long enough to alarm, but short enough to pass off as harmless.
“Probably a virgin gettin’ her cherry popped,” Chippie spat, eying the woods. “God bless America.”
Shannon wasn’t convinced of his explanation. She searched through the thicket and concentrated. “It sounded like it came from the cider mill.”
“It stopped.” He felt his heart drum in his chest. “It sounded like someone being murdered.” He called out to Shannon. “And hey, watch your step. The bear traps!”
Behind them, Chippie knocked on a silver maple tree. A small slot opened, and inside, he retrieved a pair of binoculars. The man searched each direction looking for what had caused the disturbance. “Nothing out there, not even at the Cider Mill. Not a soul.”
“What did you just do?” Caleb shook his head in disbelief; the vision of the strange man knocking on a tree and opening it replayed in his mind’s eye. “You—opened—the—tree.”
“I have dozens of trees like that. They're full of weapons, food, and supplies—the terrorists are everywhere. Unpredictable and full of their God. They don’t play by the rules, so I’ll play by theirs.”
She pulled him close by the forearm and said, “He’s weird. Don’t ask.”
“Let’s head back,” he suggested, deciding he had what he needed for the digest. “I have to find a hotel. Are you hungry, Shannon?—Chippie?”
He hoped the man declined his offer.
After a moment of the man pondering, Chippie shook his head. “Nah. I’ve got my own work to attend to. Maybe I will scout out those screams. They were suspicious.”
“Yep,” she agreed, waving her hand at the woods. “It could be aliens, or terrorists, or Johnny Appleseed’s ghost.”
The man didn’t hear her. He darted through the woods at full-sprint and vanished shortly thereafter. Shannon took the lead, playing navigator down the path, and they returned back to the house and then to his Sedan. Leaning against the passenger seat, she asked, “I earned my advance, right?”
“Yes, good job.” Caleb stanched sweat from his forehead with the cuff of his shirt. “Hey, after that juicy story, lunch is my treat."
4
Dale clutched the shovel with bleeding hands. Rub blisters had formed and opened along his palms, inducing pain and oozing pus. He used a torn rag to absorb the wounds, stanching the blood. Two hours, he’d been sticking, and shoveling, and hurling dirt. The kink in his back was electric. He’d created a three feet deep, sixteen inch wide hole.
He was nowhere near finished.
The spatter and drip of blood into the stock tank behind him had slowed. The dangling corpses brushed up against one another from pockets of breeze blowing through the mill. And where the mysterious and horrible monster had disappeared to during the time he busted his ass, he didn’t know, but it was in his mind watching him. The feeling was like a cold finger working up his spine.
The waft of e
xpiring bodies wasn’t subtle, being enhanced by the humid July heat. He paused for breath and found Margaret’s head soaked in blood in the basket among the others covered in flies. His wife’s stern eyes were widened, her mouth forever agape. Annie and Bruce’s heads were poised next to each other, their teenage glow drained to a deathly blue hue. Every member of his family was dead.
“This isn’t right. I should be calling the police, not helping this monster.”
He kneaded his fingers into his head. Dale wept because the decision to carry on or call for help had been made for him. What the man spat into his mouth, he wanted drums of it. He craved it more than single malt whiskey or his pipe. The blood was a potent concoction, and what gathered in the stock tank resembled what he’d tasted, but it didn’t duplicate what he’d ingested. There was an ingredient missing.
What else was in the blood, he had yet to learn, and would learn, he vowed, even if he had to murder the cretin to release the truth.
Listen to me.
The madman’s voice tore into his mind, nearly buckling him over from the shock of the intrusion. It was like a seizure of his skeleton by an icy cold grip.
There’s somebody here. Two people are looking around at the front of your cider mill. They want a tour. Talk to them. I need you to buy me time.
“No!" He predicted the man’s train-of-thought. “You want to kill them.”
If the wrong people find out about our secret, it shall ruin everything. You don’t want that. Then there will be no blood for either of us.
“Let me deal with them. You don’t have to kill them. Please give me a chance."
The creature didn’t reply, leaving Dale to ponder the instructions. Deciding to follow orders, he lunged up the steps, and on the first floor, he crossed the front counter and raced to locate the visitors. The cashier, Norma Graham, was absent from her station. The display of Smithville mugs had been knocked over, each mug shattered amid post cards and t-shirts with apples embroidered across the chest. After a moment of bumbling in confusion, two faces stared in through the screen door. They were tourists in their mid-forties from Boston, the proof in the Red Socks t-shirts and ball caps they adorned.
The visitor called out, waving to Dale, “Hey, are you giving tours? I hear Birchum’s Cider Mill has the best cider on earth. My cousin vacationed here years ago and gushed about it. I can use a glass of the tart stuff."
Talk them up good. Pretend like they’re customers. Sell them the place, but don’t let them come in.
Dale acted on the monster's commands. He stormed through the door, and in two motions, he closed and locked it behind him.
“We’re on break now, but I can tell you a few things about the place.” He spoke fast, his words running together. “My father started the mill in 1956. Family owned since then. He knew when to harvest the apples at the right time of the month for the sweetest taste. Every apple is hand-picked and hand-washed. After the mill became a hit and put Smithville on the map, the apples were used for apple cider, apple fritters, apple butter, apple sauce, apple donuts, apple strudel, and well,” he skipped the cutesy tone, “just plain ol’ apples.”
The couple laughed despite the poor oration; every tourist did at the quip. It normally gave him joy, but today, he was deprived of that satisfaction. The bodies swinging overhead by their ankles, the heads heaped in baskets, the stumps for necks exuding blood, and the extravagant taste of what he'd swallowed—he smelled the blood in the couple’s skin in front of him; sensed its circulate beneath the skin in the veins—he vowed to protect his fix.
But they didn’t have to die.
“I’m closed. I urge you to come back later. Have lunch in town. Stella’s Steakhouse is superb. The greatest steak and potato you’ll ever have.”
“Do you mind if we check out the nursery first?” The woman, a five foot tall overweight loaf, inquired, ignoring his attempts to get them the hell off the property. “We drove straight here. A trip from Boston in a car, and this unbearable heat, you can understand why we would want to stretch our legs.”
A wailing laughter pinged in Dale’s skull, They’ll stretch them in hell!
The final opportunity to save them arrived and expired in less than ten seconds. The hideous man crawled from underneath Dale's hauling truck—a Dodge Ram rigged with a trailer—and lunged at the woman. With one hand, the monster gripped her neck and squeezed. Lifting her in the air, the poor woman batted her arms and legs while choking on a constricted windpipe.
A pig taking a breath from the slop trough, the lunatic belched, “Blood!”
It squeezed the woman’s neck so hard the flesh and muscle tore, the head slipping through his hands as if greased. The jugular and femoral arteries spat twelve inches high, and the monster extended his tongue to lap the sweet juices. The head thumped against the ground four times while the woman’s eyes still blinked and the mouth convulsed in death-twitch spasms.
The man pushed aside the headless body and hissed, “Mooooore!”
“Run you bastard!” He pushed the tourist back to his Plymouth Voyager. “There’s nothing you can do for your wife. Save yourself!”
He feared to impede the attacker’s path, so he faltered out of the way, the monster sprinting at the terrified tourist. The man threw open his car door in a panic, howling in terror, praying to God, pleading to the creature even after he was thrown from the vehicle four yards out. Walls of dust were kicked up between them, their struggle cloaked behind a dirt screen.
“Aaaaawwgghk!”
The shatter of bone, the gurgle of lungs filling up with fluids, the cries and struggle ended in seconds. The shape of two men stepped from the dirt cloud, unveiling themselves. The madman had punched through the tourist’s chest and pitted him up in the air like a portable human pike. The sun painted the murderer's skin in blue and white hues. Veins lashed across his cheeks, creating banks and trenches along his face. The eyes were the most hideous aspect of him. The large orbs threatened to spill from the sockets, extended to twice their normal size.
He was overwhelmed by the scene of cold-blooded murder. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You want to taste the special blood again, don’t you? It’s not in the veins of your victims, Dale. I created it. We must keep working if we're going to enjoy more of that very special blood you relished."
The rare and exceptional flavor of blood, it banished the murders committed on his property. The anomaly before him mattered foremost; how the creature ticked, and where he kept his “special blood” landed at the top of Dale’s worries.
“Help me carry these bodies inside." The monster lifted the tourist’s corpse over his head with minimal effort. "You can do this, Dale. The taste won't ever leave your memory. You will crave it forever, so help me help you, okay? Let's get these bodies inside the mill."
Dale dragged the woman inside, having to kick her head through the threshold on the way like a soccer ball. People passed through on and off during the day, and despite his reservations about murder, he didn’t want the bodies or the strange man to be discovered until he could collect his thoughts and form a plan.
He struggled to keep up as the monster completed the stairs and ducked down into the bowels of the cider mill. He tapped the woman’s head with his shoe down the stairs, the extremity thudding down each step until it slammed onto the floor below.
The monster barked, “Hurry, you’re wasting blood!”
He clumsily descended, then at the bottom of the stairs, he picked her up by the armpits and dragged her to the stock tank of blood nearby. He peeked at the neck stump of bones and broken veins and twisted meat, marveling at what trickled out of the arteries and flesh.
The impulse crippled his self-control. He delved his teeth into the soft spongy flesh of her stump, sucking and lapping what he could. His face dripped with the crimson delicacy, dousing the fires of his lust.
A victorious, proud voice shot into his skull. My experiments were correct. You crave blood. Look at you
, you’re beautiful.
The plan will succeed.
He’d swallowed two mouthfuls of crimson when Dale was shoved from the body then manhandled by the neck.
The monster spat, “Enough.”
“Who are you, really?"
“My name is Ruden." He tied the woman’s ankle with plastic twine—what was used to tie off bushels of apples—and hoisted her to the ceiling by climbing up a ladder with the body over his shoulder. “I’ve made my home in that well for nearly a decade. Why, is none of your business."
Ascending the ladder, Ruden stamped on the man’s head until the neck snapped from the head, the break a wicked “pop.”
He tried to pin down the monster’s origin. “Are you a vampire?”
The question amused Ruden. “The closest you could pin me down is an advanced descendent of Vlad the Impaler. My fight is for blood, like Vlad's cause. I am not immortal, but the mass consumption of blood keeps me alive longer, gives me strength, and has built up my heart to a pillar of vascular fortitude. How I was introduced to this and why I’m here is not important right now. You’re digging a pit, as I’ve instructed. Keep digging until you’ve completed your task. Get to it."
“You promised me more blood!” The taste of normal blood on his tongue was a tease to the better crimson that once slaked his throat. “Where is it, damn you. How is it made? What’s in it that makes it so fucking good?”
“That isn’t for you to know,” the creature scolded, though beholding his creation and his reactions. “Nightfall, I shall recruit more like you. You can’t finish this hole on your own. Some will join you and others will collect bodies for me. The more blood we add to the collection, the closer we are to reaching our goal. In the meantime, I wait for my friends to crawl out of hiding.”
The monster pointed to the nursery. “Follow me to the well.”
He kept his complaints to himself, doing as he was told. He kicked the apples in his path, splitting the skin and denting the meat. Nature’s tart aroma used to relax and reassure him the bills would be paid and his family would prosper, but now he detested it. The idea of tasting or smelling anything aside from blood was puke-inspiring.
