Ghosts, Monsters and Madmen

by D. Nathan Hilliard

“Do I hear the sound of little feet?”

  Choking down a sob, Bobby backed across the hall and into a doorway. Feeling the knob against his back, he turned and fumbled with it. For one awful moment, it seemed to be locked. But then the rusty apparatus turned and he pushed his way through the door and then slammed it shut, putting his back against it.

  He found himself in an old bathroom. His bulging eyes scanned the room with frantic haste, seeking a hiding spot or means of escape. Faded sunbeams pierced the dusty air from the cracks in boarded windows. Rusted old porcelain sinks ran along the wall to his right, while facing them were a line of old toilets that were half buried with the boards and panels that once formed their stalls. His hand palsied with panic, the boy reached out with his dowel rod to drag a nearby board to him.

  “Do I hear the sound of little feet?”

  The voice came through the door, right beside his head. A faint scratching on the wood punctuated the words.

  Teeth clenched to the point of cracking, Bobby managed to catch the end of a board with his rod and get it within reach. Instantly, he grabbed the board and whirled, shoving it up under the doorknob and jamming the door closed. Eyes wide, the boy backed away from the door. Laying his hand on the sink now beside him, he watched the doorknob and prayed the board would hold.

  “Why, yes I DO!” said that awful voice, almost right in his ear.

  Stunned, he turned just in time to see the grinning rotten thing in the nurse’s dress lean out of the old mirror above the sink, and grab him by the hair.

  Bobby Ogden finally found his scream.

  ###

  Three nights later, Sheriff Patterson leaned back against the hood of his car on Cedar Hill and lit a cigarette. In the distance, the flames that engulfed Mercy House reached for the sky. No hint of emotion showed in his flat eyes as he took a long drag of smoke. The paperwork detailing the investigation into the fire and its results lay on his front seat inside the cruiser, next to a dowel rod wrapped in a small white flag and two empty gasoline cans. He would get around to signing it and turning it in when an appropriate amount of time passed.

  Bobby Ogden was still missing, and he knew the boy wouldn’t be turning up. The Sheriff found the little flag on the floor of a third floor bathroom. Les had been forced to kick the door in to find it, because of the board shoved up under the doorknob to block it. No other trace of the young daredevil remained.

  “Icarus,” the sheriff muttered. But he knew that didn’t quite fit right. Icarus, in his youth and exuberance, flew too close to the sun and melted his wings. Bobby had done something different. Led by his sense of adventure, and the youthful need to prove himself, Bobby had wandered too close to the shadows of the world…and they reached out and caught him.

  Les wondered if the Greeks had come up with some sort of myth for that too. They probably did, he figured. The Greeks were pretty smart guys. And everybody had their Anna Kragers.

  Roadkill

  Mary Phelps came to, hanging upside down in the darkness and hurting from several places at once.

  The hiss of steam and the smell of motor oil helped bring her up to date on her current situation. The seatbelt dug into her shoulder and waist where it held her up against the seat cushion. Her face stung as if slapped by a giant hand, the result of its meeting with the car’s airbag, and she realized blood from her nose and mouth now gummed her eyes and hair. With a groan she brought her hand up to wipe her eyes…and nearly fainted.

  The jagged agony from that extremity felt as if shards of raw glass scraped against each other beneath the skin. She realized that it must have gotten past the airbag and impacted the windshield in the accident. With a whimper she cradled it with her other hand, feeling its swollen and distorted contours. More than a few bones in it were broken.

  “M-Mary?”

  Chad’s groan from her left snapped her back from her pain-induced fugue.

  “Chad? What happened? Are you okay?”

  Mary reached for him in the dark.

  “Th-there was a truck, a pickup, coming the other way…something ran out into the road…some kind of animal…a big one…the truck tried to dodge it…and hit us.”

  She realized she must have fallen asleep beside him while he drove, because she remembered none of this. She preferred sleeping on the long drive home from his parent’s at night. The darkness of the countryside depressed her. She called the lights of the city home, finding life and hope in their brilliance. Out here she saw nothing but existence, with the nights being long reminders of mortality.

  Right now, mortality topped her concerns because she realized Chad hadn’t fully answered her question. His ragged breathing sounded both loud and wrong next to her ear in the dark.

  “Chad? Are you okay?”

  “I – I don’t know, Mary.” The gasps he took scared her badly, “I can’t…I can’t…move…anything.”

  Two years of nursing school immediately kicked in.

  “Can you feel anything? Anything at all?”

  “I…I…can feel them. I just…can’t move them. I hurt.”

  “Okay,” talking made her face hurt worse, “okay, that’s good. If you can feel, then things are still connected. Just hang in there.”

  “R-Right.”

  His breathing still didn’t sound right, but she couldn’t tell anything more about his condition without being able to see. Even her own condition remained a bit of a mystery, but she began to suspect that despite all her aches and pains, her hand might be the worst of it. She needed to be able to see to be sure, but the headlights and dome light were out and the blackness around her was absolute.

  “Chad? Is there a flashlight in this car?”

  Chad muttered something.

  “Chad! Stay with me! Is there a flash light in this car?”

  “M –My…my keys.”

  “What?”

  Then she remembered.

  Chad’s key ring had a little LED flashlight and a small pocket knife on it. If they hadn’t been knocked out in the accident, then they should still be hanging in the ignition. Carefully releasing her wounded hand, and making sure to let it come to a gentle rest on the ceiling below, she reached over with her left hand and started fumbling around for the keys. She struck the dashboard earlier than expected, and in the wrong place. Feeling along the console, she encountered the steering wheel far from where it should be.

  Apparently Chad’s side of the vehicle had been crushed back in on him.

  Choking back panic, Mary started feeling through the unfamiliar jumble that filled that side of the car. The sheer unfamiliarity of the shapes she encountered unnerved her badly, and she despaired of being able to find anything in that mess. But then a familiar jingle reached her ears as her hand closed over the object of her search. With a sigh of relief, she carefully pulled the keys free and clicked on the little light.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  The steering wheel now pushed back into Chad’s chest, and the dashboard looked to be crushed back over his legs. The wreckage held him as firmly in place as the seatbelt did. His arms hung limp, down to the ceiling below, rivulets of blood pooling beside his motionless hands. Blood masked his face, and dripped from his hair. She thought she spotted an especially deep cut down near his jugular, but realized with relief that it must be the chain he wore his gold wedding band on, hanging down beside his head. Chad’s allergy to gold wouldn’t let him wear it conventionally, but he insisted on always having it on him.

  “H-Hi, hon.” His weak grin showed startling white against the red mess of his face. “I-I think…I messed…up your car. . .”

  “You sure did,” tears filled her eyes, “and you’re going to live and get better so you can get me a new one. Do you understand that?”

  “Y-Yeah.”

  “I’m going to get us out of here. Honey, you just hang on. Where’s you cell phone?”

  “Shirt…pocket.”

  That didn’t bode well.

  The beam of the fla
shlight confirmed the worst. The steering wheel crossed the shirt pocket, and she could see blood where fragments of the phone must be driven into his chest. No calls would be going out from that phone. They were cut off from the world. With that conclusion, she closed her eyes and groaned in defeat.

  They were all alone, trapped, badly hurt, somewhere off a little used country road. Their phone smashed, they were left with no way to call for help. No way unless…

  Her eyes snapped back open with realization.

  The other vehicle. The truck.

  A few quick stabs at her seat belt button demonstrated that the release had either been broken in the wreck, or her weight on the belt held the thing bound. Regardless, she needed to think of something else, and fortunately she had the answer at hand. Sorting through the keychain with one hand, she found the little penknife.

  A test flexing of her right hand caused lightning bolts of pain to flash behind her eyes, and she knew it would be useless for the purpose of opening the knife. So she carefully brought the instrument to her mouth, and found the back of the blade with her teeth. It tasted of blood and metal, and stung against her split lip, but with delicate care she managed to pull the blade free. Once open, she put the knife to immediate use, sawing at the seatbelt. At the very last second she remembered her injured hand and pulled it in tight to her chest just as the belt gave way.

  It still screamed in brittle agony from the shock of her hitting the roof below.

  “M-Mary?”

  “I’m alright,” she whimpered through gritted teeth, “it’s only my hand.”

  “What…are you…doing?”

  “I’m going to go look for the truck. Don’t try to move, just wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

  “D-Don’t go.”

  “I have to, babe. The other driver might have a cell phone, or a radio. I have to try and get us help. Please, just be still and conserve your energy. I’ll be right back. I promise.” She gently touched his face with her fingertips, frightened of moving him and making things worse.

  “You…sure?”

  “I promise, babe.” The plaintive tone of his voice scared her as bad as its weakness. Chad simply wasn’t like that. Trying not to think about it, she turned her attention to getting out of the car. She struggled to turn the crank on her window, slowly opening it enough to allow her to escape. The sounds of the night poured in.

  Mary wriggled out the window, only to find herself surrounded by blackness as deep as that in the car. Turning on the pen light revealed the reason.

  The car was surrounded by trees.

  For a confused second she tried to figure this out, then realized what must have happened. Their car must have gone off the road during impact, rolled down the embankment, and then crashed through the tall line of brush on her left and under the trees behind. The gleam of bare wood from sheared branches in the brush confirmed this theory. Unfortunately, this meant the car could not be seen from the road. And that made it all the more important to find that truck.

  Mary clutched her wounded hand to her chest as she pushed through the jagged brush, the smell of fresh cedar sap filling her nostrils. With her own allergies, she knew she would soon be adding a rash to her list of injuries and tried not to imagine the itchy welts rising under her sweater. Stumbling out the other side, she found herself at the marshy bottom of a tall embankment. For a moment, she despaired of even making that eight or ten foot climb, then realized she didn’t have to. A lone taillight shone in the night, about fifty yards down the ditch.

  The truck had gone off the road, too.

  With a groan of relief, she stumbled off in its direction. The night brightened as the full moon briefly peeked out from behind the heavy clouds overhead, then grew dark as the skies once again closed over it. Mud covered the bottom of the ditch, but she found adequate footing as long as she stayed off to the side. She felt more alone than ever, struggling along the side of the ditch, with nothing but the sound of crickets to keep her company.

  Crickets…and something else.

  Mary paused and concentrated, about halfway to the truck. The new sound came from the darkness to her right, somewhere out of sight on the road above her. It had an odd, slow rhythm… “Chuff! wheeeeze. Chuff! wheeeeeze. Chuff! wheeeeeze” …and it raised the hairs on the back of her neck. It carried a powerful tone of pain and labored suffering through the night air, and she realized it could only be coming from the animal Chad mentioned earlier. The truck must have hit it, too. Judging by the damage done to their car, it amazed her that the creature still lived at all. She imagined it to be a cow, or an elk, figuring little else would be large enough to survive such an impact even this long.

  Or maybe a horse…

  She didn’t have time for this.

  Mary forced herself to ignore the sounds from the road and struggled on towards the truck. She hated the thought of leaving anything in agony, but there were hurt people to deal with right now. She loved animals a great deal, but humans still came first. She needed to get help, especially for Chad. Stumbling onwards, she reached the rear end of the truck and starting working her way down the side towards the door.

  The vehicle loomed large beside her, the type of old metal beast favored by farmers throughout the country. She could see by her penlight that it made its final, disastrous stop against the trunk of a large pine. Mary now feared the worst for this driver as well. The tree stood buried halfway up the hood of the truck, and she wondered how fast it must have been going to have damaged its heavy body so. Then she heard a burst of static and electronically fuzzed chatter from inside.

  There was a working two-way radio of some kind in the cab.

  A few futile jerks on the door revealed it to be too badly warped to open, so she staggered around the other side to test the passenger door. She encountered the same problem there, and now cast about in desperation for something to smash a window. She struck paydirt in the form of a crowbar in the bed of the truck. Coming back around to the passenger side, to avoid any chance of doing any more damage to the dim still form of the driver inside, she went to work on the window.

  Being one handed and in a weakened state herself, she found it an awkward process and it took six or seven blows before she managed to shatter the glass. Now that she could reach in and unlock the door, she discovered she could wedge it part way open. It turned out not to be as bad as she feared.

  A plump older man lay slumped over his wheel, the right side of his head sporting a large gash. A long double-barreled shotgun leaned perilously against him, its barrel against his cheek, where it obviously landed after falling from the gun rack in the back window. A quick check found a strong pulse though, and no life-threatening bleeding. Mary decided prudence dictated leaving him alone until help arrived. She did take the time to gently move the shotgun away from him and put it in the floorboard. She also noted the radio mic in his hand, as if he had attempted calling for help himself before passing out. Wasting no time, she gently pried it out of his hand and pushed the mic button.

  “Hello? Hello? My name is Mary Phelps! There has been an accident, and people are hurt. Two of us need ambulances. Hello?”

  The radio hissed for a second.

  “Carter, is…shzzzt…from you…shzzzzzt…losing your signal…shzzzzt…we have your location…shzzzt…help is…shzzzzt…twenty minutes out…shzzzz…”

  Sparks from beneath the truck’s damaged dashboard announced the radio’s death but Mary almost hugged herself with relief. The farmer must have gotten out a successful call for help before losing consciousness. She resisted the urge to pat him on the shoulder and settled for a whispered, “thank you,” instead. The best thing she could do now would be to climb the embankment and wave down the help when it arrived, so she could lead them straight to the injured.

  She felt guilty about not going straight back to Chad, but couldn’t risk the rescue units passing them by in the dark and thus delaying needed treatment. She worked her way across the ditch bo
ttom and then started up the embankment. She fell once and lay there a moment as the agony of her wounded hand washed over her, but then rose again to finally clamber up toward the highway. While she fought her ways upward, she heard that “Chuff! wheeeeeze” sound again and noted it seemed closer than before.

  Finally reaching the top, she stood to find herself on the shoulder of the road. She tottered there, panting, looking for signs of headlights in either direction. She knew it was still too early, going by the time set by the voice on the radio, but there always remained the chance that somebody else might come by sooner. Instead, nothing but blackness stretched from one horizon to the other, although the trees brought that horizon in close. Another break in the clouds and the huge moon revealed an empty country road…and something else.

  A black silhouette lurched and crawled down the side of the road. It continued the gasping wheeze that she heard earlier, although it didn’t sound quite as dire now. Realizing this could not be a cow or deer, Mary took a few hesitant steps toward it before coming to a stop. For a second, the way it half-crawled, half-dragged itself reminded her of a man, but she realized that couldn’t be the case either. It was too big and bulky for a man, and shaped wrong. Her heart fell into her stomach at the thought that a wounded bear now dragged itself toward her across the asphalt. Taking a couple of steps back, right to the edge of the embankment, she shone her penlight at the approaching hulk.

  It wasn’t a bear.

  The thing that snarled back at her in the lights beam was a creature from some horrific dream. The left side of its lupine face smashed into an unrecognizable pulp, its right eye glared golden and feral with mad hunger at her throat. The truck must have been going fast, because it appeared to have broken half the bones in the creature’s body. And yet it lived. And moved. And to her horrified amazement the creature’s left ear, which appeared to have been half torn off, seemed to shift and knit itself back to its head right before her eyes.

  Her clinical mind rebelled at the sight of the thing before her, refusing to accept the evidence of her own eyes. And in the midst of that rebellion it was as if some younger version of herself, the twelve-year old who loved horror movies on the Saturday Afternoon Matinee, spoke up in her mind and took her own stance on the events unfolding in front of her.