Midnight Grinding

by Ronald Kelly

  The man grinned as he opened the flap and slowly rummaged through the contents of his wallet. Brian spotted a couple of worn dollar bills and some scraps of paper. And something else…a wrinkled Polaroid snapshot nestled in the middle of it all.

  “You wanna see something you ain’t never seen before?” he asked, his voice a husky whisper. He looked the tourist square in the eyes.

  Brian was suddenly aware of the uneven quality of his gaze. The left eye was bloodshot and sickly looking, while the right was almost too normal in appearance. In fact, there wasn’t a red vein or imperfection of any kind. It practically shined in the yellow light of the back door lamp and when the other eye moved, it remained fixed and steady. It was a second before Brian realized that the man’s right orb was made of glass.

  “Well, do you wanna see it or not?”

  Brian simply swallowed dryly and nodded. He had the feeling that he had better agree…with whatever the man had to say.

  The man chuckled softly and withdrew the photo. “Look. Now ain’t that pretty?”

  Brian felt his breath catch in his chest and, for a moment, he felt as though he was suffocating.

  The Polaroid had been taken in the sparse light of a campfire. The naked body of a young man, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age, lay on a bed of green moss. Its arms and legs had been hacked off and stacked in a heap to the side.

  “That’s my doing, you know,” rasped the man. Pride gleamed in his one good eye. “Took that picture no more’n a month ago. Not far from here, either.”

  A mosquito lit on the side of Brian’s neck and bit him, but he made no move to shoo the bug away. You’re insane, Brian wanted to say, but he didn’t. He didn’t dare.

  The man with the filthy blond hair and glass eye scowled and stuck the photograph back in his wallet. “Now don’t you git to acting like everyone else I’ve shown this to.”

  Brian felt as though he were caught up in a nightmare. He began to back away slowly.

  Faster than he would have expected, the man leapt around him, blocking his way. He drew something from a pouch on his belt: a folding pocketknife. He opened it with a flip of his wrist. It was a movement he seemed to be very adept at. A six-inch blade of razor sharpness snapped into view, its steel flat gleaming in the yellowish light.

  “Now, you just hold up for a second, hoss,” he said with an ugly grin.

  “What…what do you want?’ Brian managed to say. His heart pounded wildly in his chest.

  “Well, if I ain’t mistaken, what I want is in that van out yonder.”

  Cold dread bloomed in the pit of Brian’s stomach. “My wife?”

  “No.” The man’s grin grew thinner and broader. “The baby.”

  Brian opened his mouth to reply, but found that he couldn’t.

  “Looks about the right age to me,” the man said. “About a year old, I’d guess.”

  “Yes,” croaked Brian, although he couldn’t figure out why he had answered.

  The man licked his lips absently. “Ah, just tender enough. Over a slow fire with a little salt and pepper for seasoning. Maybe some wild onion on the side. You take it from me…there ain’t nothing better.”

  Brian suddenly realized what the man was referring to. The very thought chilled him to the depths of his soul.

  “Once I get rid of you, I reckon there won’t be nothing stopping me,” explained the lanky fellow. “The woman’ll be dead before she even wakes up. The other young’un might scream a bit…but, hey, let him holler. Nobody’s around to hear him anyhow.”

  He’s going to kill me, Brian thought, his mind reeling. He’ll kill Jenny and Kendall, too. And then he’s…oh, God…he’s going to take Anne and—”

  The man took a slow step toward him. “Now let’s hurry this up a bit, okay? It’s getting late and I ain’t had a bite all—”

  Brian hurled himself at the man. He swung blindly at the man’s face and felt his fist strike the bristled flat of his jaw. The man stumbled backward, then grinned and lashed out. The blade of the knife missed Brian the first time, but skimmed across his forearm the second. A sharp sting sent Brian into immediate retreat.

  “I was gonna make this easy for you, son,” the man told him. “But I reckon I’ll just have to make it a little more interesting, since you’re so all-fired anxious to get in my way.”

  Again, a burst of terror and rage surged through Brian. With a yell, he launched himself at the man. He caught him by the wrist and slammed it against the gas station wall several times. Finally, his fingers splayed open and the knife went spinning into the darkness.

  “You ain’t quite what I expected, boy,” laughed the man. “But then I reckon I ain’t what you expected either.” He reached up with his free hand and grabbed hold of Brian’s throat. His grubby fingers burrowed into his skin, as though attempting to poke through.

  Brian felt his windpipe begin to close and, for a second, couldn’t catch his breath. He knew the man was on the verge of killing him. But then he thought of his wife and two children in the Windstar and he knew he had to do something…fast…before he lost consciousness. He kicked out frantically with his left foot and finally managed to trip his assailant.

  The man lost his balance and went down. There was a hollow thunk as his head struck one of the concrete blocks. Blood trickled from his ears as he moaned and rolled over, struggling to his hands and knees. He reached out blindly with one hand and found a discarded Bud Lite bottle. He curled his fingers around the neck and broke it against the hard ground. Light gleamed wickedly along the jagged brown glass.

  “No,” Brian whispered. He dropped to his knees, took the man’s head in both hands, and drove it face down against the concrete block…forcing it upon one of the steel reinforcement rods.

  There was a moment of resistance at first. Then there was a moist pop and Brian felt something hit his chest. The man’s head slid downward until it could go no further.

  Slowly, Brian stood up. The man’s arms and legs twitched violently for fifteen seconds, then abruptly grew still. A long sigh of air hissed through his clenched teeth, then only the monotonous tune of crickets filled the night air.

  Brian simply stood where he was and watched, half expecting the man to get up. But he didn’t. And he never would.

  The horror of what had just taken place finally sank in. Brian quickly left that awful place, stumbling through the junk along the side of the gas station and heading for the van.

  He prayed that his family would still be asleep when he got there. And they were. All three dozed peacefully, unaware of how very close to death they had come.

  Brian climbed into the van and gently closed the door. Then he started the engine and pulled away from the Texaco station.

  As he was heading down the exit ramp, back to I-75. Brian knew for the first time in his life how a hit and run driver might feel.

  Soon, the van was again heading northward for the Florida state line. He cut off the air conditioner and rolled down the window, letting the wind dry the sweat from his face. It wasn’t long before his pulse and breathing had returned to normal.

  A minute or so passed before he realized that something was pressing uncomfortably against his chest. He dipped his fingers into the breast pocket of his sport shirt and found something there that shouldn’t have been. Something hard and round.

  He held it to the pale green glow of the dashboard light. The object between his fingers stared at him, almost accusingly so.

  Quickly, he flung the glass eye out the van window. It hit the rushing surface of the blacktop with a brittle crack, then was gone.

  Brian felt along the Windstar’s console blindly, until he found the packet of pre-moistened wipes that Jenny kept handy for little Anne. He shucked one from the sleeve and wiped his hands, fighting down nausea as he did.

  Then he felt a small sting and remembered the cut on his forearm. Almost afraid to look, he turned his arm in the muted light. He expected to find a large gash, but, instead, t
here was only a thin line of blood, no more than two inches in length. He dabbed at the cut with the towelette, then tossed the damp cloth out the window.

  It was so horribly absurd that he nearly laughed out loud. A brutal fight to the death and all he had come away with was an injury the equivalent of a paper cut.

  Onward he drove into the Florida darkness, keeping one eye on the gas gauge and praying he would make it to the next exit.

  Brian knew his wife would ask about the cut on his arm sooner or later.

  He had until sunrise to come up with the right answer.

  GRANDMA’S

  FAVORITE RECIPE

  This was the first piece of fiction I wrote after I decided to return to the horror genre. It’s both a tale about the hidden darkness in folks’ hearts and an introductory story to my novel, Hell Hollow.

  The character of Sarah Plummer was a composite of my maternal and paternal grandmothers, God rest their souls. One was kind and generous, as sweet as honeysuckle on a summer breeze, while the other was rambunctious, with a razor tongue and a hint of a wicked gleam in her eye.

  My grandmother was a pillar of the community.

  Yeah, I know. You hear that about people all the time. But in this case, it was true.

  Sarah Plummer was a kind and loving neighbor, a faithful friend to those around her, and a great woman of faith. She cherished the little farming community of Harmony, Tennessee with all her heart and was very active at the local church. Every Sunday morning, come rain or shine, you would find her there, teaching Sunday school and playing accompaniment on the organ as the choir sang. She always visited the sick at the hospital and the shut-ins at the nursing home, and she mailed out cards daily, saying “Get well soon!” or “Missed you at church Sunday.” She visited every yard sale that was held in Harmony and bought at least one item, however insignificant, just to let them know that she had done her part.

  And Grandma baked. She was legendary in town for her confectionary masterpieces and her homemade cakes and pies. Her specialty was cookies. Raisin oatmeal, chocolate chip, and, my personal favorite, snickerdoodle. Whenever she got wind that someone was down and ailing, she would take out her ceramic mixing bowls and flour sifter, her cinnamon, nutmeg, and baker’s cocoa, and set to work. Grandma did everything entirely from scratch. No store-bought cake mix ever tarnished her kitchen counter. Pure ingredients were always used in just the proper amounts: flour, lard, fine cane sugar, and fresh country eggs from Will Turney’s farm a mile outside of town. Then came the additions that really gave Grandma’s desserts their sparkle. Big tollhouse chocolate chips, freshly-shred coconut, juicy raisins, pecans and walnuts. When she was through and the pans of earthly delight were cooking in the oven, Grandma’s kitchen smelled like how I imagined the sweet aromas of heaven itself might be.

  Then, after the cooling, Grandma Plummer would place an even dozen on a plate and cover it with a tent of aluminum foil. Whenever the townfolk saw her walking through town with a silvery parcel in her hands, they smiled. They knew that she would be ringing someone’s doorbell soon and wishing them well, with both kind words and a special treat, the likes of which only she could concoct.

  Yes, my dear little grandmother was a saintly woman.

  Or so I thought for a very long time.

  ***

  Sarah Plummer had not had an easy way during the ninety-six years of her life.

  She had been born to a hard-pan dirt farmer and his wife, a sickly woman who had been weakened by a bout of typhoid fever when she was a child. Grandma’s early years had been difficult, hungry ones and, in the year of 1917, she had lost her four brothers and sisters to an influenza outbreak. She had been the only surviving child.

  She had married at the age of eighteen to a man named Harold Plummer, who served as postmaster of the Harmony post office for nearly forty years. He had died of a sudden stroke in 1988. Being a housewife for her entire married life, Grandma lived modestly on Grandpa’s postal pension in the little, white-clapboard house they had shared on Mulberry Street.

  Like Grandma, I too had been dealt my share of hard blows throughout my childhood.

  When I was four years old, my father was fatally injured at the sawmill he worked at. He fell into a buzz saw and bled to death before the paramedics arrived. Then a year and a half later, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Despite a hysterectomy and numerous chemo treatments, she succumbed to the disease nine months later. I went to live with Grandma Plummer then and thanked the good Lord that she was there to receive me with open arms. She did the best she could to raise me into the man I have now become and I have nothing but gratitude for both the discipline she provided and the love she gave me during those tender years of childhood.

  Despite what people thought, my grandmother did possess something of a temper, however. Whenever someone hurt her feelings or she felt slighted or wronged, she would grow absolutely livid. But that never seemed to last very long. She would always take her Bible in hand and, sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch, pray until those anger lines smoothed from her face and that gentle smile returned once again. Then she would get up, go into her kitchen, and bake a peace offering.

  ***

  The first time I sensed that something wasn’t quite right with Grandma Plummer was shortly after my twelfth birthday. It was a balmy May that year and Grandma’s flower garden was brilliant with spring color: marigolds, hyacinth, petunias and moss roses.

  There was a neighborhood dog from down the street, however, that had been trying Grandma’s patience lately. Buster was the hound’s name and he had dug up about every purple and blue iris that Grandma had planted along the driveway. I had pegged him in the hindquarters with a Little League baseball a couple times, but he kept coming back and wreaking more havoc. I suggested that we buy a BB gun—not necessarily to scare the dog off, but because I really, really wanted one at that age. But Grandma would hear none of it.

  A while later, she walked out the back door with a leftover piece of my birthday cake on a plate. She set it down in the grass and, soon, Buster was there, chowing it down hungrily.

  “Why are you feeding the mangy mutt?” I asked her.

  “Because even though Buster vexes us with his bad behavior sometimes, he is still one of God’s creatures,” she explained. “I’m repaying his transgressions with an act of kindness. Turn the other cheek. That’s the way the Good Book says it should be.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I stood and watched the dog wolf down my last piece of birthday cake. “If you say so,” I mumbled, scratching my head.

  The next day, Buster was staggering around in the middle of Mulberry Street, snapping and snarling and foaming at the mouth. The neighborhood kids—me included—watched in horror as Sheriff Tom Stratford shot the dog down with his service revolver.

  They strung yellow police tape around Buster’s stiffening body until a man from the county animal control could come out. He showed up a couple hours later, scooped Buster into a black plastic bag, and hauled him off.

  No one in town could figure out how a healthy animal like Buster had contracted rabies so swiftly, with no signs or symptoms to forewarn anyone.

  But I had my suspicions.

  ***

  That night, after Grandma had gone to bed, I got up and took a flashlight from my nightstand drawer. Then I explored the kitchen pantry.

  Something had bugged me the previous afternoon, when Grandma had served that piece of birthday cake to old Buster. It hadn’t looked right. The sugary white icing with its red-laced baseballs and hickory brown bats had held a nasty grayish tint to it. And, that evening, when I had gone in for supper, I had spotted a bottle sitting on the kitchen counter. A tall, skinny bottle that held a dark liquid. I just assumed it was vanilla extract from Grandma’s baking ingredients. Before I could ask, however, she had taken the bottle and spirited it back to one of the shelves in her pantry.

  The little closet smelled of cinnamon and garlic as I
swung the pale beam of the light around, searching for that bottle. I found it a few minutes later, sitting on the shelf with her spices and baking supplies. Quietly, I reached to the back of the shelf and brought it forward, where I could get a better look.

  It was an old bottle—very old. It was tall and narrow, and sported a single dark cork in the mouth of the stem. A label—yellowed and curled at the edges by age—read:

  DR. AUGUSTUS LEECH’S PATENTED ELIXIR—CURES A VARIETY OF PHYSICAL ILLNESSES: GOUT, ARTHRITIS, IRREGULARITY, AND CHILDHOOD AILMENTS.

  A cold feeling washed over me at that moment.

  Augustus Leech. I had heard that name before…a story whispered over a crackling fire at a local summer camp when I was eight years old. A dark, lanky medicine showman with a top hat full of magic tricks, a song and a dance, and a patented elixir that guaranteed to cure all maladies and ailments. He had come to town in the early 1900s and sold his tonic for croup, anemia, and dysentery. And, in the process, poisoned half the children of Harmony.

  Legend had it that the menfolk had armed themselves with guns and pitchforks and, like a mob in an old Frankenstein movie, had chased Leech out of town. Deep down into a shadowy place called Hell Hollow…never to be seen again.

  Some kids in town had dared to explore the hollow, but I never did. I wasn’t a child for taking risks. Not with the share of tragedy fate had given me in my younger years.

  I picked up the narrow bottle. The glass seemed oily to the touch. I studied it in the pale glow of the flashlight. It was half full of a dark, syrupy liquid. Curious, I wiggled the cork until it pulled free. The contents smelled both sweet and sickening, like cotton candy and jelly beans mixed with dog vomit and the decay of a bloated possum at the side of the road. I didn’t breathe it in very deeply. It made me feel sort of lightheaded.