by Tobias Wade
51 Sleepless Nights
By
Tobias Wade
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, 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, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
51 Sleepless Nights
Copyright © 2017 Tobias Wade.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
It’s dangerous to go alone.
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CONTENTS
Vicarious
Virtual Terror
The Angel Doll
My Mother the Spider Queen
Don't let him steal my child
The power of a small city
The 32
I Met the Devil on Tinder
Dreaming Without Sleep
Burning Desire
Haunting Sound
Killer Selfie
Unborn Doll
Confessions of a Serial Killer
The Final Question
The Confession
Children Collector
Mother is Back
The Suicide Bomber
Post Office Worker
Who Wrote the Suicide Note?
The Psychedelic Tattoo
She Was Asking For It
Two Minds, One Body
124 Terabyte Virus
The Human Sacrifice
Countdown to the Beast
Anger Management
The Masked Orgy
Breaking and Entering for Dummies
Like Father Like Son
The Organ Harvesting Club
The Face on my Bedroom Wall
The Wall Between us
Everyone Lives, but not Everyone Dies
The Psychopath in my house
How to Start your own Cult
Three go to sleep. Four wake up.
She is still with me
Dead Man Floating
I Loved her in the Winter
History Written in Scars
My Journey in a Parallel Universe
The Party that Changed my Life
The Solution to Prison Overcrowding
A Letter from the Cold Case Files
The Organic Machine
Painting the Roses Red
I am a Human Voodoo Doll
The Monster Inside Us
My Family Tradition to Feed the Spirit
My Face Will be the Last Thing You See
Forward
IN DEFENSE OF FEAR
Why horror? Isn’t there already enough fear in the world?
Yes there is, and that’s exactly why horror entertainment is so important.
Some people will try focus on “positive emotions” such as love and joy while repressing their fear, anger, jealousy, and other “negative” emotions.
I think this is an extremely dangerous thing to do, because pretending they don’t exist doesn’t make the other emotions go away. It only inhibits our ability to understand and control them – and when we aren’t controlling them, they’re controlling us.
Without control, we are easy victims for any politician to use our fears to manipulate our vote. We are helpless to the holy man who uses our fear of the afterlife to control our values. We are even inept to confess to the girl we love, or follow our dreams, or anything else where fear stands as a boundary between us and our goal.
There is no such thing as a “positive” or “negative” emotion. Everything we feel contributes to making us human, and all emotions have an equal capacity to improve or destroy our lives and the lives of those around us.
How many times has love been our justification for obsession and greed?
Hasn’t the pursuit of joy caused some of us to waste our lives with selfish hedonism?
Even empathy for your neighbor has been used as grounds to start wars or ostracize entire races and cultures that seem different from us.
So do not judge fear as evil just because it can be used for evil means. It is silly to blame a knife for a murder that its wielder committed.
By appreciating the beauty of fear – fear as an art-form – by accepting it is part of the human experience instead of trying to run from it, we’re able to better equip ourselves to handle the fear in our daily lives.
That’s why I’ve decided to write horror. My goal is to dig down to all the nameless terrors rooted in your subconscious and rock you to the bottom of your psychology. I’m going to let all the monsters out from under your bed until you finally get a good look at them and realize that fear can’t hold you back anymore.
That it can even be fun.
Vicarious
Watching my son Andrew kick the winning goal. That’s my dream. Or catching his eye as he holds the science-fair trophy, head held upright with the pride of our triumph. I still remember how my own father looked the night my high school football team won state. Two of my teammates hoisted me onto their shoulders, and when Dad saw me, it was as though he forgave himself for every mistake he’s ever made – all because he raised me into the man I had become.
I don’t care what Andrew decides to pursue in life, I just want him to be great at it. Isn’t that what all father’s want? He’s going to be eight next month, and I know the next generation’s best (his future competition) have already begun to refine their talents. Mozart began playing at 3, Picasso could draw before he could talk, and Michael Jackson was performing live by 6 years old.
It’s taken awhile for Andrew to find his niche, but lately he’s started getting really into mountain and trick biking. His mother (Amy) thinks it’s too dangerous, but I know how important it is to be passionate about your skillset, so I encourage him every chance I get. Amy just doesn’t understand. She would see one little cut or bruise, and then suddenly that’s all that mattered. I say if you aren’t willing to bleed a little to achieve your dreams, then you don’t deserve to have them come true.
That’s why we started practicing in secret. I’d tell Amy that we were just going to ride around the block. We’d both pedal until the house was out of sight, then we’d blast off toward the hills wearing the same conspiratorial grin. He was good too, fearlessly bouncing down cliffs and rocky slopes that would have even given me pause. Every day he came home a little stronger, and a little more confident than the day before. Every day I knew it was worth all the exhaustion and sneaking around, because he was going to be the best and I was going to be the one who made it happen.
That is, until the day when it wasn’t worth it anymore. We’d just gotten home from a trick competition at the skate park, although it was hardly fair since Andrew was still 8 and all the other kids were teenagers. Andrew slipped up while trying a nose-wheelie, and was disqualified before even getting to show off what he’d been practicing. We were both so frustrated, but I was still proud of him for not wasting any time and getting straight back to the hillside to practice.
I could tell he wasn’t being cautious this time. It was my fault for applauding and egging him on to tackle bigger boulders and obstacles. When you’re disappointed, you can either give up or try harder, and I just didn’t want my boy to quit. When he asked if I thought he could ramp off a rock to clear the ravine, I told him what I thought he needed to hear.
“You can do anything you put your mind to,” I said.
We were wrong for believin
g in each other. I shouted when I saw his back tire slipping right before he made the jump, but it was already too late to do anything about. The bike pitched forward and hurled him straight over the handlebars, twisting the bike around on top of him as he flipped. Long before I heard the grotesque snapping of his impact, I knew he wasn’t going to walk away from this alright.
Maybe if I hadn’t pushed him so hard. Or so soon. Maybe if I hadn’t allowed my own guilt and fear to make me hesitate before I plunged into the ravine after him, then maybe I could have saved him. It took a full ten seconds of listening to his agonized groans before I could force myself to gaze down at what used to be my son. He’d landed directly on his head, but the helmet did nothing to prevent his neck twisting halfway around his body under the power of the impact. He’d been jarred so hard that part of his spine ruptured straight through his skin to greet the air with a bloody shine.
Screw competing. If he even survived a trip to the hospital, then I’d still spend the rest of my life feeding him with a spoon. But this was my fault and he was my son, so there could never be a choice. I took the first step of the never ending journey down the slope toward him.
“Let’s go home, Dad.”
The words should have been enough to bring tears to my eyes, but instead I froze in the grip of absolute terror. It wasn’t my son who said it – I didn’t even know if my son could talk anymore. I turned slowly, careful not to lose my grip on the pebbled earth and topple helplessly down the ravine.
“I’m okay Dad. Let’s go.”
Andrew – or at least someone who looked exactly like my son, all the way down to his freckles and the mustard stain on his sleeve – was waiting for me on the top of the hill. Back down the ravine, I still saw the twisted and broken version of the same boy lying there.
“Come on,” the unharmed Andrew said. “Race you back.”
He hopped on his bike and skidded fearlessly along the hillside. His speed and dexterity surpassed the old Andrew, even on his best days. As beautiful as it was watching him fly over the rocks, the sight was impossible to appreciate with the wet gurgle of coughing blood sounding from further down.
I had to make a choice, and judging by the amount of blood pooling on the rocks below, I had to make it fast. I could go down the treacherous slope and lift my son into my arms. I could drag him to the hospital, burning through my energy and savings in the vain fight toward a subnormal life. I could explain to Amy that I had lied to her, and that it was my fault that our life would never be the same. And if after all that Andrew were still to die, then I know she would leave me and I would have nothing left.
“Don’t worry Dad. We’re going to win next time. I promise.”
Or I could turn around and leave with … with what? Watching him race up and down the hills, the answer was obvious. I could turn around and leave with my son, and none of this will have ever happened.
“I’ll be right there,” I said. “First one home gets ice cream for dinner.”
Climbing up the hill after Andrew – after my son – it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. It was abject relief to see his beaming face waiting for me at the top. The only hard part was when I had already lost sight of the ravine and was headed home, only to hear a voice dissipating on the wind behind me.
“Please don’t go. I need you Dad.”
I gripped my son’s hand – my new son – and held on tight all the way home.
For the next few weeks, I wouldn’t let Andrew out of my sight. I drove him to school instead of letting him take the bus. I picked him up for lunch, then again when school got out, taking him to his favorite places and spending all of my time helping him practice. I was trying my best to be a good father, and trying even harder not to think about what that meant. I thought about going back to the ravine to at least bury the body, but every time I began to work up enough courage to face that broken corpse, my new son seemed to appear wanting to spend time with me.
By the end of the first month, life had gone back to normal and it was like nothing ever happened. The new Andrew was identical to the old, even sharing the same memories, and habits, and everything. By the second month, I’d even forgotten that horrible day ever passed, although sometimes the echo of those words being torn by the wind still slip into my brain as I lay down to sleep at night.
I need you Dad.
But I was a good father. I did everything for my boy, and I knew he was going to repay me by becoming the best biker the world had ever seen.
It wasn’t until Andrew was 12 years old when I began to notice behavioral anomalies that I couldn’t explain. But surely the real Andrew – I mean the old Andrew – he would have had his own changes by this age. I tried to tell myself that he was just starting to go through puberty, but even Amy began to feel that something wasn’t right.
“Do you know what I caught Andrew doing last night?” she told me one morning over breakfast.
“He’s going to be a teenager soon. I’m sure I don’t want to know.”
“He was eating a bug!” she declared. “A big shiny cockroach. Just munching it right up, looking as proud as a kitty cat who caught his first mouse.”
Then there was the rustling outside our window late at night. A dozen separate occasions I must have heard it – like someone was in the bushes watching us. Amy wanted me to check it out, but I just kept imagining Andrew running through the field like a wild creature, biting the heads off animals or digging up worms. I think I was happier not knowing.
It wasn’t just that either. Some nights we’d catch him awake at four in the morning, face an inch from the mirror, just staring at himself and giggling. Another time he had a butterfly knife – God knows where he got it – and was peeling away the skin on the back of his hand. He’d exposed a strip of bloody muscle and tendons running all the way from the tip of his finger running halfway up his forearm. I took the knife away and demanded what he was doing, but all he said was:
“Just curious what goes on under there, Dad.”
He grinned when he said Dad, stressing the word like it was our shared secret. Neither of us had ever mentioned that day on the hillside, but it felt like he not only remembered, but was actively using it to blackmail me.
The worst was when he was trying to get something out of me, like when he decided he needed a laptop. I told him to wait for his birthday and turned to leave, but then he replied with:
“Please don’t go. I need you Dad.”
Those words were burned into my subconscious like a trigger. Whenever he said it, I couldn’t even look him in the eye. I’d just cave and give him what he wanted. It’s not because he was the boss of me or anything. There’s nothing wrong with me wanting to be a good father.
All the while, he kept practicing with his bike. He was the best I’d ever seen, and anyone who saw him swore the same. He refused to participate in anything big because he “wasn’t ready yet”, but he blew all the local competitions a new one. People started coming from miles around to watch him perform, and as soon as they found out I was his father, I’d have a dozen hands clapping me on my back or offering me a beer.
“You must be so proud of him,” they’d all say.
“Of course I am. He’s my son.”
This coming weekend is going to be his biggest one yet. Some YouTube personality will be recording the whole thing, and I know the second the world sees what my boy can do, he’ll be too big to ever put back in a box. I tried to warn him about how things will change after that, but he wouldn’t listen to me.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” he asked. He sat down on his bed, giving me a look of wide-eyed, blameless sincerity as though he was a perfect angel sent here to bless my life. Bullshit act.
“Don’t pretend you know what I want,” I told him. I was sick of that grin he always wore. “You go if you want to, but you’re going alone. I don’t want any part in this media circus.” I turned to leave, trying to get out of his room qu
ick enough before he said –
“Please don’t go. I need you Dad.”
I don’t know why, but that time it really got to me. It wasn’t just a little kid trying to get away with something. This was an active taunt, manipulation of the highest degree. I thundered back around to face him, hoping to put my foot down and reestablish myself as the authority figure.
“If I ever hear you say that again, I’m going to beat your ass until – ”
“Until what?” he interrupted. “Until I’m as broken as he was?”
My breath caught as though someone had reached down my throat and grabbed it from the inside. He’s never spoken of the other Andrew before. I’d hoped to God he never would. My hands involuntarily clenched into fists, so tight I could feel my muscles trembling all the way up my shoulders.
“It was never about me succeeding, was it?” he asked, that arrogant grin spreading across his face. “You just wanted a little for yourself, didn’t you? Only now the light’s grown too bright, and you’re getting scared.”
“I want you out of this house. Now.” I’ve never spoken like that before in my life, so low it was closer to a growl than words.
“You sure Mom agrees with you on that?”
“Don’t call her that. Get out. I want you gone.”
“Throw away one son, and it’s his fault.” Andrew wasn’t backing down. He was standing an inch from my face now. “Throw away two, and suddenly it’s yours.”
I threw my fist at his face with everything I got. Maybe I could break his nose, or knock his teeth out. Maybe I could scar him up – anything to make this impostor look less like my son. I hadn’t realized just how strong he’d grown though, and when he swatted my fist away, it felt like the bones in my hand were rearranging themselves.
“Don’t be like that, Dad,” he said. “You wanted me to be the best, didn’t you?”
I grunted through the pain and swung again. My eyes could barely follow the blur of his movements. He locked my outstretched arm against his side, and before I knew what was happening, he’d spun me around and slammed me into his closed door. I tasted blood, and my arm strained so bad against his pressure that it must be about to dislocate. I bit my tongue, trying not to scream. I couldn’t let Amy know her son was a monster.
