Stranger Realms

by Jarred Martin

  The old man's grin made him shudder; square gaps of black as deep as freshly dug grave plots between his teeth. Would he trust the old man? His every instinct said not to, but what other choice was there? It was a coin toss: Trust the old man or don't trust the old man. Stay or flee. Get in the coffin, or . . . or what? What else was there?

  “You got a nickle, old man?” Grier asked suddenly.

  Seachnall rooted around the pocked of his overalls and produced one nickle, and handed it over. Grier flicked the coin off the thumb of his good hand and it spun in the air, until with the same hand, he snatched, and slapped it down on the tabletop.

  “Ain't you gonna look at it,” asked Seachnall, after Grier had stood with his hand splayed down on the table for awhile.

  Grier sighed and slid the coin off the table, handed it back to the old man. “I don't need to see it. It doesn't matter what the coin says anymore. I guess it never did.”

  “So you know what you're gonna do?”

  “I guess I'm gonna get in that pine box,” said Grier.

  Grier stepped into the box with an expression like he was settling into an ice water bath. He laid down in it, and the old man was over him. “Comfortable?”

  “As soon as we're out of town, and I mean just as soon,” said Grier, “You better let me out of this thing.”

  “It's a long way,” said the old man. He disappeared from Grier's sight and reappeared again with a long, thin piece of wood. The coffin lid. “You sit tight while I fit this piece on, and then we'll be right to go. I warn you, you're gonna hear me hammering, but don't you worry. It's just the pegs I'm hammering in to make it look shut. It ain't nails, and you can just press up on the lid and knock it off anytime you want, only don't do it 'til I say it's so, or better yet, let me do it myself. That thing ain't air-tight far as I know, so don't worry that you'll stifle. Breathe all you like.”

  Before Grier could think of a response the lid was over him, and all was dark save for the pencil-lead thin lines of light coming in through the space where the lid was loose around the top. But those little orange lines disappeared with the awful thud of hammering from above. A horrible pounding sound that seemed to echo all throughout the tiny space. Made it smaller somehow as if it was filled with sudden sound as well, that coarse hollow echoing sound of the hammer whack! Whack! Whack! He sucked in a deep breath.

  “Smaller and tighter in the darkness. No room to move.

  “Can you hear me okay in there? Don't answer, maybe just knock if you can hear me. Grier knocked, though he found he could only move his fists about an inch and a half at best. He sucked in another breath in the absolute dark. It seemed very warm all of a sudden. He was sweating.

  “That's real good,” Seachnall continued outside the box.”Now you're gonna feel some sliding and bumping and moving about. Don't you worry, that's just me getting you on this sort of cart I got for loading caskets onto the hearse.

  Just as he'd been warned, Grier next felt movement, rattling from below as some old wheels turned. Bumping and jostling, and then nothing for a long time, and then a long shifting sensation. He was being slid onto the back of the hearse, he guessed. The space was so small and black. He tried to imagine it bigger in his mind, but, he swore he could feel it pressing against his ribs now. And the heat. Sweat rolled into his eye. He tried to lift his hand to wipe it away and his knuckled brushed the top of the box.

  “Here we go,” said the old man. Grier could hear his voice just fine. It wasn't the most pleasant thing, but maybe it was better than being blind and deaf. Time passed, and he could feel they were moving slowly. He wished the old man would speak up. Maybe tell him what they were passing. But when the old man did began to speak again, Grier wished for nothing more than him to stop.

  The wagon creaked along the unpaved road. The old man seemed to steer the horse toward every deep rut. “Bad night for Sangville visitors,” the old man's voice creaked along with the wagon. “Not that we get so many visitors, other than our yearly ones, I mean.”

  In the casket Grier felt the darkness closing in around him. The air was like smoke in his lungs. He felt like he were being baked in a dark oven. How long had he been in here?

  The old man continued. “Suppose they seem peculiar to you. Anybody ever saw that queer glowing ship out on the bay is liable to feel more than peculiar. Here though, people born here, that is, get used to 'em quick.”

  Smaller. Darker. Hotter. I've got to get out. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out.

  “ . . . not always that many. Not just girls like last night, either. Sometimes it's three or four little ones. But sometimes it's seven or eight. One year, we must have sent a good dozen off with them. But they always come back next year. Drop the old one's off pick up the new ones. Every year.”

  Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Got to try to calm down. Was the old man still talking? Talking about those kids the monsters took. He listened for a while. Something didn't add up about the visitors. If they took five children every year . . . and they've been doing it for generations, so just going back sixty or seventy years . .. That would mean. . . He gasped. Hot stifling air half filled his lungs. It was the whole town. The entire town had been taken off with those things at some point. He recalled the child in the hooded robe he'd seen returned the night before. That utterly inhuman expression. Where had she gone? What had she seen? Was what left the same as what came back? My god! The whole town!

  Outside the old man was still talking “. . . a place wonderful, and terrible. A place where shadows have weight. There's things there that nobodies ever seen before, and I couldn't describe if I tried. But there's old things too. Old things you see in new ways. Somehow, that's the funniest thing of all.”

  The old man babbled on, but Grier was long past listening to him. The darkness was crushing him. There was no air anymore. All that he should have breathed had been squeezed out of the blackness. It digested him in its hot belly as he lay in it. No more. He could stay here no more. He pressed up on the lid. “just wood pegs,” the man said. “Not nails.” He promise the top would lift up at the slightest touch. He was pressing on it as hard as he could with both hands. It didn't budge. He panicked. Started to feel lightheaded. As if he were falling and twisting down a dark, endless hole of airless black. “Let me out of here. You here me, old man? Get this lid off this thing. I have to come out now. I need out if here. I can't breathe.”

  The old man didn't answer. He'd stopped talking long ago. For a long time there was only the black silence, the heat and the sound of his short ragged breaths.

  Suddenly the casket was moving again. Just as suddenly it stopped. Silence again.

  Then it was broken by a horrible sound.

  Whump

  Something soft and heavy hitting the coffin lid.

  Whump

  Again.

  Whump

  Again and again.

  Whump.

  Soft and heavy raining down.

  Whump.

  Growing softer.

  Wump

  fading

  womp

  far away now. Soft. like dropping something heavy down on a mattress.

  Nothing.

  The coffin lid creaked as if there were a great and growing weight pressing down on it.

  Darkness.

  Silence.

  And although there was no light, Grier was certain that a fine grain of dirt had begun to drift through the cracks in the side of the coffin, and it creaked again as more weight settled on the top of it.

  “Hello?” Grier whispered to the darkness.

  “Is there anybody there?”

  The Spooky Doll

  Do you think me mad, Doctor? Have you judged me so, having only moments ago made my acquaintance? And what reasoning, beyond that flaccid, pulpy thing you have extricated from myself, gruesome though it may be, has led you to this conclusion? I assure you, I’m no madder than you. I can prove it, in fact. For what demented mind would
even think to question its own sanity? Do you see? And you can be sure that I have called my sanity into question, have sat for many a solemn hour in torturous contemplation while I worked out this quandary. That proves it, does it not? What diseased mind would bother with such a notion at all? Do you see? Do you?

  No. I suppose it’ll take more than that to convince you. Those men outside. You’ve called them to take me away, haven’t you? Well, so be it. Let them come. Let them take me. But first, you really should hear my story, if only to satisfy your own professional curiosity as to how I came to have that bestial severed organ inside of me. Hear my story, and if you still think me mad, then I’ll let the men take me hence, and with no further word. Hear my story and know the truth, doctor, then judge for yourself. So listen, please, I beg you. Listen to my tale. It is a mad one to be sure. But your narrator is sane, I know that I am. I am a sane man, Doctor!

  My story begins days previous, on what was to be the anniversary of my son’s birth, to be exact, though he and his mother had passed some long winter since. I watched the sickness take them, Doctor. Two spritely cherubs, once robust and full of health, suddenly frail, bedridden, wasting away as each day passed, growing sicker and frailer, until neither had strength enough to carry on. Both passed within hours of the other, leaving me alone to bury them; me alone to mourn, to do not but dwell in the black void their absence created. So you can see how the date would instill in me a significant melancholy. And it was so, in my melancholy and nostalgic daze, that I set out for a walk to ease my mind, and I soon found myself outside a quaint toy shop situated along the main thoroughfare.

  It was that same melancholy and bitter nostalgia that compelled me, a man childless and widowed with no prospect of siring an heir, to enter such a shop that only sold curious items to satisfy children. There was nothing out of the ordinary in this particular shop, or nothing I noticed, anyway. To my outlook this place was the common sort: Shelves of picture books, jacks in their boxes, and wooden locomotive engines. I looked about. It was in my rather aimless wandering that I chanced to spy the shopkeep; a sort of agitated fellow who looked up at me from the newspaper spread open on the counter periodically, and did not attempt to hide the annoyed expression that my presence seemed to bring about. I had not been in the shop for long when he gruffly informed me that he was to close soon, and that I’d better make my mind up quickly if I wanted to leave with anything. This decree put me in a sort of predicament as I had not expected to purchase anything, or visit the shop at all. But since the man was already annoyed, I thought it would be best to at least play the part of an interested party, better so than the aimless vagrant who wanders about shops he has no business being in. And so I grabbed the nearest item to me, determined to inquire of its price and no matter what it may be, inform the shopkeep that I’d think it over and come back the morrow.

  “How much for this?” I commenced my hasty ruse.

  “How much for what?” asked the shopkeep.

  “Why, how much for this . . .” And I looked finally at what thing I had been holding. I don’t mind telling you, I started a bit when I cast eyes on the gruesome thing: A doll, to clarify, and a hideous one at that. It was of the sort that have cloth bodies, and the extremities after the knees and elbows of porcelain, or china, as well as the face, which was ghastly rictus in the exact fashion of those in the late stages of a gruesome fever, pocked with sores, and twisted mouth that was an actual cavity with individual and meticulously aligned tiny teeth set about its recesses which disappeared far deeper into the doll than I would have cared to examine. “. . . Er, this doll,” I finished, trying not to shudder.

  And for the briefest of moments a look of absolute horror came over the shopkeep’s face, but vanished so quickly that I convinced myself it was merely a trick of light. The shopkeep, composed once more, his face fixed back to its usual scowl, informed me, “I’ve never seen that thing before in my life. You must have brought it in with you.”

  “I believe you’re mistaken, sir,” a polite refutation to the patently absurd notion that I would bring toys into a toy shop. “I picked this item up from your very shelves. Right here,” I showed him.

  The shopkeeper was having none of this. “You’ve not found that thing here. Not from any of my shelves, you haven’t. I don't know what sort of rouse you’re attempting, but I tell you again, sir, we’ve closed for the day’s business, so be gone with you and your retched doll. And if I see you back here again, It’ll be a fair sight more than the door I’ll be showing you, not that you’ll be too keen to see with both your eyes swollen, if you take my meaning. Now, be gone!”

  Threats! The man was clearly mad, I thought. And I knew better than to stand and argue with a maniac, so, in good fashion, I resolved to take my dolly and go home. I found myself once again out in the streets, now with a hideous companion in tow, tucked under my arm. If I was in the right state of mind I would have left the accursed puppet outside the shop, though, I know now that it would have done me no good. But flustered as I was by the shopkeep’s abrupt refutation, I only thoughtlessly carried the thing along with me. And as the shock of the man’s abuse wore off, I was once again keenly aware of the intense melancholy that pervaded my mood.

  I made my way home with no further incident, and no sooner was I through the door than I had a bottle uncorked, and the doll lay forgotten on the floor while I commenced to try and lift my sadness with spirits. I gave myself over to the drink, which is akin to having a good friend go rabid. One moment it is a nourishing brew that comforts in sincere embrace, while the next mercurial instant find its neck throttled in frothing rage. And so it was that a billowing black veil was lifted over me, held by the twin, winged cherubims of my wife and child flying high about the room, and through its shroud I can only recall vague instances, somewhat in vignette, and whatever equivalent there can be to the other senses. My erstwhile and presently only companion, my dog, the aged Bildad, sniffing at the monstrous doll as it lay where I had carelessly let it fall. My frequent many trips too and from the ice bucket found me stepping over it. The velvet curtain flutters again, and now I can surely smell the scent of my departed lover, the fragrance of roses and saffron, of sweet things, longing to be touched, but just out of reach, lingering on shores of blackest night that I dread to ever know. The veil shifts again, and the bottle touches my lips, Bildad whines somewhere lost in my memory, and there is also the sound of a child’s laughter. Dreadful thing to hear when one is alone and weakened by his own emotion, may you never know such a thing, doctor. I wept, I think. The curtain trembles once more, and I see that I have emptied the bottle. A bottle so drained is a task complete, as I recall myself slumped forward, my limp form revealing the near completeness of my mission, which was surely to bring myself into a stupor of such sublime innocence that I could forget the memory of my dearly departed. A worthy task for a troubled mind.

  And here my wherewithal returns complete, to my utter misfortune. I recall making my final return to the ice bucket, coming across poor Bildad, who was quite old,and had gone gray around the muzzle, and didn't always bark when someone came to the door anymore, though he did seem rather agitated that night. Stepping over him, I brought my bare foot down on something incredibly pointed and hard, and I looked down to see that that awful doll had somehow gotten underfoot. I cursed as I leaned to pick it up from the floor. I eyed it closely, or as close as my blurred vision would allow, and affirmed the thing's hideousness. The visage I peered into, a crude likeness of the contorted rictus of fever’s death. Truly hideous. I found myself wondering what sort of vulgar character could conceive to create such an offensive item, and then an idea occurred.

  This next part I tell you with great shame, it must be said, and I tell it forthrightly, asking only that you keep in mind that how a man acts when no one is looking is his own business entirely, and had I know that I would be publicly testifying to this action, I surely would not have done it. Thinking on the doll’s offensiveness, the pecul
iar notion crossed my mind that its creator, one so utterly loathsome, to my mind, who would endeavor to craft such a hideous visage as the doll possessed, might surely endow his creation with some sort of anatomical facsimile. I must confess, curiosity did overcome me, and without further thought I snatched down the thing’s trousers to see for myself. What I saw confounded me for the briefest of moments, but no more. For what I saw was . . . Nothing. Only the smooth, pale ceramic of which its hands and face were crafted. But staring at its featureless crotch, I was suddenly contemptuous, and forced a smile as I insulted the thing.

  “Well, not much here, is there? Seems as though whoever made you forgot to arrange your sex. So not only are you a loathsome and homely homunculus, you’re a submaphrodite as well,” I slurred, hatefully.

  To add further insult to the inanimate creature, I commenced to pull my own trousers down and expose my own dangling member to it, shoving him close, so that his black beady eyes could not forgo the sight. Having humiliated the thing to my satisfaction, I then brought him back up to my eye-level, and sloppily, administered my wet, alcohol soaked lips to its smooth crotch before pulling both its pants up.

  “You’re going into the bureau,” I informed the doll, as I carried it through the house, faithful Bildad following the both of us to my bedroom. I threw open the bureau, and flung the doll inside and slammed the door. “May I never peer at your horrid expression again,.” I exclaimed. “And so help, me, if I ever do again, I’ll put you in the fire,” I shouted through the closed door.

  A more sober mind might have taken a moment to reflect upon how a simple doll could raise that sort of ire, but not mine. I only pitched myself forward onto the bed, fully clothed and ready to let the realm of nod hold me in its sway. Goodnight.

  But, of course, the night was not so good. That night, as so many, I turned and tossed, nearly rending the bedclothes. The scent I smelled, the odor wafting down from the heavens; the fragrance of my lost love I again began to inhale, as if swung from the ungodly censor of some foul priest. And hung above the air, on reprieve or defiance from the bleak sepulcher that both are remanded, I heard beating wings in the dry fragrant air, the feathered organs of flight that grow from the angelic forms of departed mother and child. What blasphemous reflection would permit me slumber so insouciant? Or at least the meager convalescence that reclining would endow? It was not to be.