Festive Frights

by CW Publishing House

  “How…dare…you hit…my…son? I'll kill you…you little bastard!” Milton was barely coherent. Spittle bathed my face as he screeched at me.

  The bathroom door slammed open so hard it hit the wall. The knob left a sizable hole in the plaster. Milton stopped yelling for a moment and turned to see what happened. I still dangled in the air between his hands. Mom stood in the doorway in the classic shooter's stance—knees braced and both hands wrapped around the biggest gun I’d ever seen.

  “Put him…down!” Mom's voice was pure ice.

  “You don't have the guts to shoot me, bitch,” Milton sneered.

  She didn't answer; she just pulled the trigger. The bullet went right through his left leg and lodged in the pedestal of the porcelain sink. Milton dropped me, then dropped himself onto the floor, howling like a banshee. The sound bounced around the room like marbles inside a bass drum. Joey sat on the floor beside the toilet, waving his fists in the air, knees bent, slapping his feet on the tile floor, crowing and laughing, rocking back and forth. The kid had finally gone batshit crazy.

  I ran out the bathroom door, and Mom backed out behind me, gun still trained on her husband. She just left Joey where he was. Milton wasn't going to hurt him, and I think maybe she was a little afraid of him, too. I know I was. We both ran to the kitchen and called the ambulance and police. This time she called Joey's psychiatrist, Dr. Neill, as well. When the ambulance got there, the paramedic put my shoulder back in place. It hurt like hell. Then Mom sent them into the bathroom to help Milton. The police arrived right after that. The psychiatrist arrived next, armed with a syringe with a very long needle. We could hear Joey still yelling all the way out to the front door. Mom stayed there to talk to the police.

  I showed Dr. Neill the way to the bathroom. Milton was out cold on the stretcher, either from the pain or they’d sedated him. Joey was on his knees, pounding the floor with his fists. They were swollen and bleeding, but I didn’t think he noticed. His eyes were wild, darting around the room without focusing on anything.

  “Go get him a stuffed toy,” the doctor instructed.

  I went upstairs and got Joey's blue, plush monkey. When I gave it to Dr. Neill, he thrust it into Joey's hands. The kid stopped yelling and looked at it like he didn't know what it was. While he was distracted, Dr. Neill plunged the needle into his forearm. Joey stared at him, eyes round. I could tell his mind couldn't focus. He had no idea where he was or what he was doing. In just a few minutes, his eyes closed and his body slumped. The doctor caught him before his face hit the floor, then picked him up. He stopped a moment at the door to speak to Mom and told her he was taking Joey to the hospital’s mental ward.

  Joey spent the next six months there. Milton spent the next three months in physical rehab, then six months in jail for aggravated assault. Mom spent the next three months doing community service in the veteran's hospital for her part in the whole incident. The judge gave her a misdemeanor charge of unsafe use of a firearm. This charge was usually laid on kids who shot someone non-lethally playing with guns. The paramedics' statements about the state of my deeply bruised arms and dislocated shoulder proved that Mom had just been protecting me, especially when they heard Milton screaming that he would kill both me and Mom. It didn't hurt that the judge who sentenced Mom was the uncle of the kid whose dog had been disemboweled. Milton would never underestimate her again.

  When Milton came home, there was an uneasy ceasefire in the house. We pretty much had to live there, because Uncle Mark had gone overseas with the Corps of Royal Canadian Engineers, so Aunt Nancy came to live with us. Milton hated it, but he couldn't do anything about it. He needed the extra help to keep up the house while Mom continued to work at the veteran's hospital. It was considered unpatriotic to deny medical assistance to our wounded war veterans.

  Milton wasn't home a lot during the war, anyway. He was mostly at work. His factory's pallets were sent across the ocean, filled with food, medical supplies, munitions, etc.—whatever our troops needed. Whenever he had to negotiate contracts with people who didn't know him, he took to using a wheelchair to gain sympathy, pretending he’d wounded in the war himself. It was true that he did need a cane, though. The main bone in his lower leg had been shattered. It never did heal straight, so he walked with a distinct limp.

  When Joey came home from the mental ward, he was a different kid—subdued, mostly quiet, and obedient. Of course, he was drugged up to the eyeballs, too. For the next four years, I walked on eggshells around Milton and Joey, but our household stayed peaceful. Joey went to a special school for kids with mental problems. His classmates were generally autistic, but there were a few nutty ones like him, too. It turned out he was reasonably bright. Surprised the hell out of everybody.

  Christmas Day, 1945

  This was the day that everything ended for me—the fear, the abuse, my life. It started out pretty good, too. Milton gave Joey the one toy every boy wanted that year—a genuine Marx New York Central steam engine train set. It wasn't assembled, so Joey ran to his father with the box.

  “Daddy, Daddy, will you put this together for me?” he squealed excitedly.

  Milton snoozed on the couch with his feet up. He was in no mood. “Get the other kid to do it. He's old enough to follow instructions,” Milton grunted and went back to sleep. My step father never used my name. Maybe he thought calling me by name might make me a real person in his eyes.

  Joey ran to me with the box. “Put it together for me, Dougie?” he wheedled.

  “I guess,” I said, pretending to be annoyed, but the truth was that I itched to get my hands on that train.

  For about an hour, Joey gave me pieces of track, train cars, and a station with a water tower. It looked like it might be a fun Christmas for a while. When it was all set up around the tree and plugged in, Joey raced the fully loaded train around the track, making choo choo noises. He hovered over the cars as they passed him with a scary, intense look in his eyes. We didn't know until later that he'd been flushing his psychiatric medication for a whole week. He wanted to enjoy Christmas without being dozy through it all. He was a volcano of insanity waiting to erupt.

  “Slow down, Joey. They're not supposed to go around the bends that fast,” I told him.

  “Shut up. It's my train, shithead,” he growled. It wasn't what he said, but how he said it, that creeped me out. He sounded like his father when he was about to do something violent to me.

  He dumped a whole package of toy army men on the tracks and watched as the engine hit them. The little soldiers flew everywhere and the train's cars buckled up behind the steam engine. I jumped forward and picked it up to stop the forward motion of the whole train.

  Joey pushed me aside and kicked the army guys every which way. He stomped on the station and destroyed it entirely. “Trainwrecktrainwrecktrainwreck…train wreck!” He screamed it out in a litany, escalating to a joyful, high-pitched squeal. The electrical wiring was damaged, and sparks singed the carpet. Rubbery smelling smoke had nothing to do with train steam.

  “Joey! Are you nuts? Stop it,” I yelled at him. I pulled him away from the tracks. To this day, I'm not sure what happened next, only that it happened very, very fast.

  Joey turned on me like a striking snake. He had something in his fist, which didn't register until I fell backwards on the floor. I felt the most intense pain in my chest. I looked down to see Joey kneeling on my abdomen, pushing the eight-inch-long turkey-carving knife right into my heart! I couldn't breathe. My chest heaved as it filled up with blood. My mouth gaped open and I gasped.

  Joey wrapped both hands around the wooden handle of the knife and concentrated his entire weight on the blade, plunging it into my heart. After that, my memory is pretty spotty. My spirit rose out of my body—apparently that can happen in violent, sudden deaths. I hovered above the star on the Christmas tree and watched Anthony Milton pull Joey off me. The knife handle stuck out of my chest like a big stickpin on a bulletin board. There wasn't much blood. The knife kept
it in like a cork, I guess.

  Milton folded my arms on my chest, just below the knife. When he picked me up, a small flow of heart's blood dripped into the cab of the engine, which was still in my right hand. He took the toy engine and put it back with the rest of the train. My mother was out in the kitchen, cooking, rattling pots and pans, and talking to Aunt Nancy and Uncle Mark, who was home from the war. I died in the living room and she didn't hear a thing.

  The next I remember, I was outside on the big hill above the train tracks down the road. It was a great toboggan and sledding hill. The side facing the railroad was forbidden to us, because a kid could end up on the tracks, but the other side was okay to use. My spirit oozed above the hill and watched my step-father carry me from the back of his Jeep station wagon and tie me to the new toboggan Joey got for Christmas. Joey sat under the open tailgate with his thumb in his mouth. He did that when he was coming down from a rage, but he hadn't done it since he was six. He was now nine.

  Milton put my winter coat and boots on my body, because it would have been strange that I was outside without outerwear. He left the coat open where the knife jutted out of my chest. Milton removed it and wrapped it in an old rag, then put the rag in his jacket pocket. He launched me down the hill with a push. It sent me to the middle of the tracks, where it snowed heavily at that time. The bastard counted on the weather to cover up my murder.

  He walked back to the car, his footprints later assumed to be mine, then went back to the house. My blood was on the knife, so I followed it. I don't know what he did with it after that. Milton packed up the train, including the engine, and took it up to the attic. I still didn't really understand what was going on. I was terribly confused. Don't forget, I only had the limited comprehension of a twelve-year-old, post-war kid back then. My life experience has increased exponentially through the years, simply through observation.

  There was a lot of coming and going at the house with Joey's aunt and uncle. Milton told my mom that he had dropped me off at the sled hill with the new toboggan. Joey was sent up to his room and told to stay there. Milton told Mom that the kid had a stomachache from eating too much candy.

  An hour before dinnertime, Mom sent Milton out to bring me home for dinner. He played out the whole farce by getting into the station wagon and driving to the toboggan hill. Besides, the train had gone through about an hour earlier, and he probably wanted to know what had happened to my body. My essence followed in the air above him. By that time, I realized I was dead and that he couldn't see me. I didn't use my full potential for scare tactics until two years later.

  Kids and parents stood at the bottom of the hill near the road. No one was allowed to go up the hill, even though the train tracks were on the other side. An ambulance was parked as near as it could get to the hill. Three cops and a small group of firemen slogged through the deep snow, putting tarps over crimson pools in the hillside. The cops questioned everyone about missing friends or relatives. They hadn't found all of me yet.

  When the cops questioned Milton, he told them he’d dropped me off and returned home. He asked what happened, and they said some dumb kid was tobogganing on the wrong side of the hill and got hit by a train. Milton feigned concern that he couldn't find me, but he didn't go overboard. He didn't want to look in any way suspicious.

  My severed head was discovered on Boxing Day, skewered through a thin, leafless branch of an oak tree, the blood frozen on my neck like a red scarf. A young rookie cop found it staring down at him, bobbing in the wind. He shit his pants.

  The whole scene fascinated me. Like many twelve-year-old boys, the idea of gore interested me, but seeing it would probably have made me puke my guts out, if my guts weren't already spread out all over the hillside. After my head was found the next day, the cops came to the house to confirm what they already suspected, because I was the only missing kid in the area.

  Mom fainted and went catatonic with grief. I hated to see her like that. Milton sent her to stay with Uncle Mark and Aunt Nancy, who had moved back home now that the war was over. Joey and Milton went about their daily lives as though I never existed. Milton started locking his bedroom door at night, though. He made absolutely sure the kid swallowed his pills, and even hired a daytime housekeeper. Mom never came back, so my spirit lay dormant in the attic, packed up with the train engine, where my heart's blood still lay in a dried little pool in the cab. I could have gone looking for Mom, but I lost interest in the living for a while.

  Christmas Day, 1947

  The train set was taken down from the attic and put around the Christmas tree once again. Joey was now eleven and wanted his train set back. The smashed-up station and water tower had been thrown back in the box just as Joey had left them. Some of the tracks were bent. When they took the engine out of the box, my spirit emerged, too. Things had changed since I had last gone downstairs. Milton had a jagged scar of about five inches down the back of his neck. Joey was missing his left ear. They apparently had a really unhealthy affection for knives. The two psychos must have gone at each other at some point and decided their own survival depended on getting along. I watched them playing with the train for a while, and got bored, so I decided I'd try to move something with my mind, or my energy, or whatever drove my consciousness now. I moved the trains really fast over the tracks.

  Milton went over and unplugged the power terminal. “Stop messing around, Joey. We just fixed the damned tracks. I'm not going to let one of your psycho tantrums wreck it again. No more derailments, or I'll take you back to the mental ward until you learn to behave. I'm done taking bullshit from you,” he told Joey as he sucked back his fifth beer.

  “I didn't do anything, Dad. I wasn't even near the terminal,” Joey whined. He seemed cowed now.

  I realized they had never been punished for my murder, and it was time they paid for what they did to me. I made the trains go round and round, knocking over the toy landscaping and houses around the tracks. Then I made some choo choo sound effects, just like Joey had two years ago. I staged a truly spectacular derailment, only I hid the engine behind the tree.

  “Trainwrecktrainwrecktrainwreck…train wreck!” I bellowed. I had a snoot full of anger and hatred driving my essence, so I think they probably heard me on some level.

  Now that I had their attention, I mentally picked up each car and let them float in the air. With no warning, I threw the caboose right in Joey's face and broke his nose. Blood spurted everywhere. I laughed long and hard, making the windows rattle and the lights flicker on and off. As Joey screamed and cried his head off, I threw toys and train cars at Milton.

  “Stopstopstopstopstop,” Milton repeated over and over. I don't think he knew what he said.

  Joey ran into the downstairs bathroom and leaned his head over the sink to let the blood flow so he could breathe. Milton ran around the room, punching at shadows. Then I entered his mind; I just imagined myself oozing into his ear. It was a total mess in there—he was completely terrified. I had to calm him down if I wanted to make him do anything.

  “Breathe…slowly,” I whispered into his mind. He took some deep breaths. “Go get some ice for Joey's nose,” I instructed.

  He went to the icebox and put some ice cubes in a tea towel. Then he went into the bathroom and put the ice pack against Joey's nose. It was swollen to twice its size, but it had stopped bleeding. I mentally pushed him towards the couch. I could have gone into his mind, but I was afraid that if I did, my spirit wouldn't come back out and still be sane. I decided to talk outside Milton's mind, because inside it, was a dark, stark, scary place.

  I had some fun tormenting them. They had tormented me, so it was their turn now. I found it surprisingly easy to manipulate the energy around me. I just went with what felt right, and making those two psychos suffer felt really, really right! I made Joey lie down on the couch and close his eyes. Milton stood in the middle of the room, his thoughts such a jumble he just stood there in fear and confusion.

  “Go to the kitchen, get th
e wooden meat mallet, and bring it back here,” I said. He did what he was told. “Whack Joey on the top of the head with it…and use both hands,” I added as an afterthought. He did that, too. Joey literally didn't know what hit him. He didn't even get a chance to scream before he passed out.

  “Now, get your car keys, carry Joey out to the station wagon, and lay him out in the back seat.”

  Milton had no more will of his own. He didn't know what his body was doing, and he didn't care. I had blocked all his functioning rational thinking patterns, and he was now just a limping zombie. It was well below freezing outside, but I didn't make him put on a coat. Where he was going, there would be lots of heat. I had reserved a special corner of Hell for him and his demented, murderous son. Milton did exactly as he was told.

  “Drive to the train crossing down the road.”

  He started the car and slowly headed in that direction. I waited until the engine and more than half the train cars had gone past the crossing, then I uncoupled the last twenty cars and let the engine continue on its way without them. The engineer never knew what happened. He was never blamed, because he couldn't uncouple cars while the train was in motion.

  The loose cars still moved forward with pretty good speed when I went back to the station wagon and yelled at Milton, “Now floor it!”

  He stomped all over the gas and rammed the rail cars head-on. There were no barriers at that crossing, just lights and bells. As soon as the station wagon's engine hit the rail cars, it exploded. It made the most spectacular fireworks, and could be seen and heard for miles. I just hovered over the scene for a few minutes, then oozed back to the house.

  I packed the train set back in the box and floated it back up to the attic. My heart's blood was in that engine, and I instinctively needed to keep it safe. I kind of filtered through the floors like smoke, experimenting with what I could do as a ghost. Then I went downstairs, trashed the living room, and overturned the tree. I wanted it to look like Milton had gone nuts and attacked Joey and killed him. There was certainly enough evidence with the blood spatters from the kid's nose and the hair on the meat mallet.