Individually Wrapped Horrors

by Eric Joel Kleinschmidt, Sr.

  I had taken the first few drawings to school with me one day and my teacher at the time was so completely blown away by whatever it was she saw in them, that she entered them into an art contest and I won…second prize. But still, to come from no ability to second prize was quite the leap. From there, I was drawing nearly every day. I have very little of what I had drawn back then left. Apartment fire when I was in the tenth grade wiped most of it out. I was despondent for weeks over the loss. About a month and a half later, I was back to it. Picking up right where I had left off before the fire. It was still heartbreaking, but sometimes the greatest inspiration in our lives comes from a tragic loss. It did for me anyway.

  I was totally immersed in the creation of The Divine Miss Dandelion, an anthropomorphic flower in a kid’s book I was contracted to illustrate. She was currently trying to come to life right before my very eyes when Gina walked in. She talked as I drew, knowing my attention was more on what I was drawing, but excited to tell me about the deals she came across nonetheless. What caught my attention was when she blurted out, “Oh my god, Chris, I nearly forgot! A rock hit the field on the other side of town last night. Like a meteor rock. It left an impact mark and everything. A space rock! Isn’t that wild. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. It’s already been claimed by the science department from the high school. I guess they get dibs on it. Very exciting stuff, right?” I leaned back in my chair and thought back to a forgotten memory trying to resurface. It wouldn’t come.

  “That is pretty cool. Did you hear anything last night? Maybe when it hit?” She shook her head.

  “No, what about you?” I shook mine also.

  “Not me, but Old Sam up the road asked if I had and it meant nothing to me until now. Maybe this is what he heard last night.” She shrugged.

  “Maybe. I’m famished. Are you hungry? I’m gonna make a late lunch/early supper.” I thought about the cartoon that was almost alive in front of me.

  “Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be down.” She kissed me and headed down to the kitchen. I heard Caylee’s voice come up through the stairwell and went back to my drawing. I stared at the female flower on the page. Her face was almost there, I just couldn’t recapture the thread of thought I was trailing to her. The thought that kept recurring to me was of the meteorite that hit the field on the other side of town. Something about my childhood, something connected. All that kept coming to me on this train of thought were my drawings that came from out of nowhere. My mysterious talent for art that baffled my entire family. But what in God’s name did that have to do with anything? The connection, like the face of the dandelion princess, slipped away. I dropped my pencil into the tray and went downstairs.

  That night in bed, I slept very poorly. There were no nightmares that I remember, just tossing and turning that my wife later told me “drove her bananas.” I do remember that when I woke up that next morning, I was afraid. Afraid…but of what? Or of who? I didn’t know. There just was a feeling that something bad was coming and I couldn’t shake it. I started to wish we had never left the city.

  As far as Sundays went around our house, they were usually for R&R. No religious reason behind this, it was just a need to rest and reset before work on Monday. I mostly worked from home, but occasionally had to drive back into the city to take a meeting or get supplies, visit locations for story ideas and background knowledge. This Sunday was no different. After coffee and newspaper, it was off to an easy chair with a game app I liked to play on my cell phone. Reception out here was almost nil, but we had a good internet provider that allowed us to access the net and we did have a land line for emergencies. Shawn was still over at Derrick’s house and Caylee was up in her room. The sounds of muffled pop music came down through the ceiling. Gina was upstairs dyeing her hair. She was a natural blonde and for some reason or other, hated it. She was always going darker or lighter shades of dark, depending on her mood. Today, she was going to try out a dark brownish red she had found. I was pretty used to it after sixteen years of marriage. I was mind-numbingly engrossed in my game when there came a knock at the door.

  I turned off my game and stood up, stretching and cracking my back. With a sigh, I walked over to the front door. I opened it and Sam was out on the front steps. He looked tired and his eyes were shot through with red, like he hadn’t slept a wink in days. He held his hat in a humble fashion in front of him and his hands looked to me like they had picked up quite the tremor.

  “Sam,” I said at once, “what’s wrong?” Sam did a little more of that mumbling and grunting beneath his breath and wasn’t making eye contact with me. “Sam, hey buddy, what is it? Come on. Let’s get you in here.” I tugged lightly at his coat sleeve and he came willingly into the house. I took his coat and hat and hung them up in the closet and lead him to the couch. He plopped down and sat rubbing his hands along the knees of his work pants. “Sam, pull yourself together, man, tell me what’s wrong.” He finally drew his gaze up to meet my eyes and I swear to you, it was like there was no one home in those eyes. It was also like he had no idea where he was or who I was. He just looked so lost and so gone. The cloud of confusion slowly began to clear in his eyes and his gaze truly met mine.

  “Well, hi there…Mick. When did you get here?” He blinked and slowly looked around.

  “Sam, do you know where you are?” I waited as he gained recognition. He turned back to me.

  “How did I get here?” He sounded dazed or drugged.

  “Sam, you just came to my door. Just now. I didn’t look, but I assumed you came in your pickup.” I got up and quickly walked to the door. I opened it and looked out at the pickup parked askew over some of Gina’s flower beds. There was a hissing mist of steam rising up from the grill and had a large concave dent dead in the middle. He had struck something or—God help him—someone on the way over here, that much was for sure. I closed the door and grabbed a bottle of rye whiskey out of the liquor cabinet. I poured a small glass for each of us and sat down on the chair facing Sam. He took his glass and finished it in a swallow. I sipped mine and set it down on the coffee table.

  “Sam, I need you to focus. Think. What happened on the way over here. You did some real damage to your truck and to…well, something else as well. What is going on? You can talk to me. We’re neighbors and friends, right?” His face turned back up to me. A single tear trickled down his wrinkled, unshaven cheek.

  “I had to see you, Mick. I had to. Had to see you. Had to come right away.” His mouth quivered and sweat broke out on his forehead. “Something’s not right and I had to come see you right away.” I reached over and grabbed the empty glass and set it on the table by the other.

  “OK, Sam, you’re here. Tell me what’s wrong. Not gonna cancel the fish fry, are you?” I said, hoping to lighten the mood. What he said next chilled me to the bone.

  In a distracted voice, he said, “I don’t like fish, you know that, Mick. Never have.” I leaned back in my chair. The confusion running through my head just then paralyzed me to the spot. We had moved out here two years ago—well, nearly two years ago. We met Sam a few days after moving in. Thought it would be the neighborly thing to do to go on up the road and say hi, introduce ourselves as the friendly new neighbors and try to get a lay of the land while we were there. See what kind of folks lived around these parts, that sort of thing. The day—the very first day we arrived at Sam’s house—he took us in and fried up some tasty trout. We had been back a hundred times or more over the course of two years for fish-based meals of one sort or another. We had a joke in our family that Sam lived on fish and fish alone. The joke being that one day, he’d eat so much fish that he’d actually grow gills and swim away. Now, this man…this Sam before me…telling me he has never liked fish. I wondered how hard he had hit his head when he hit whatever it was he hit. Or whoever he hit. I shuddered.

  “Sam, I’m going to take you into town. To the doctor, OK? The hospital E.R. in town if doc isn’t home.” There was a doctor up at the high school that li
ved in the town limits. He would often see local patients on the weekends to save them a run up to the city, if it was an emergency. About the time I told Sam I’d run him into town, Gina came downstairs. Her brownish red hair a definite eye-catcher.

  “Hi, Sam. What’s wrong, honey?” I looked up at her descending the stairs.

  “Sam’s had a little bit of an accident. I’m going to run him over to Doc Carrington’s place, if he’s home. Can you get the car keys, please?” She hurried her pace and ran for the keys, glancing out the window once at Sam’s smoking wreck. She got the door and helped me get Sam to his feet. Sam all the while looking again like he had no idea where he was or even who he was.

  “He’s probably in shock, judging by the look of his pickup. You go and I’ll call Doc’s number and let him know you’re coming.” Gina said, pecking my cheek and running back into the house. I put the car in reverse, backed out of the car’s spot and drove quickly up the driveway, leaving a rooster tail of dust behind me.

  We pulled up to Doc’s house in a little under a half hour. His Tempo was in the driveway, so I went and knocked on the door. He met me at the door with a wheel chair. He was a thick man, upwards of 250 pounds or so. Not the best shape for a doctor to be in. But he was known in town and had a reputation as being sharp and tireless in his healing practice. There had been no school today, being Sunday, but he was dressed in his doctor’s uniform—of sorts—anyway due to a baseball game he was supposed to attend later today. His uniform consisted of a long-sleeved white workman’s shirt button-up and a white pair of khaki pants. A key ring hung at his side and jingled while he walked. His hair looked like that of a greaser kid in the fifties movies that were in black and white on TNT. He also wore thick black glasses. He spoke harshly, like the voice of a long-time smoker.

  “Yeah, your wife said you’d be coming. I said I’d be ready.” We helped Sam into the chair. Doc rolled him down the hallway to a make-shift patient’s room. We helped Sam into bed with a grunt and he lay there placidly staring up at the ceiling. The Doc began the usual things, light in the eyes to check for a concussion, pulse, looking in the ears and mouth also. He checked Sam over for cuts and abrasions, checked his reflexes (which were almost non-existent) and gave him a series of other examinations. I walked out into the hallway when Doc had to check Sam’s lower body, for decency’s sake. Doc walked out in the hallway and sat down on a bench.

  “Well, what do you think?” He took a long, deep breath.

  “Well, he’s definitely in shock. What happened exactly?” I recounted the story, at least the parts of it that I knew first hand, including the part where Sam didn’t know he liked fish. These two men knew each other from way back and the fact that Sam didn’t like fish and never had was news to Carrington. The Doc nodded at various points in the tale, and waited for me to finish. “Well, here’s what I’d like to do. I want to keep him here with me tonight. I don’t think he needs to go to the emergency room just yet, but he does need to be kept under constant surveillance. What I need you to do is take my keys to my office at the school and grab a few supplies for me. I will write them down. Nobody will be up there so no one will give you a hard time about being there alone. Grab these things,” he said, now writing, “and bring them back here. I’ll keep him here tonight and let you know in the morning if anything changes. And it’s this key,” he said, flipping through a key ring until he found the correct key. “Also, go ahead and take my car, that key’s on there, too. Less likely yet that someone will bother you if they see my car up on the hill by the office. Go ahead, I’ll watch him.” It was a lot to have happen for an otherwise quiet and serene Sunday, but Sam’s a good guy and he needed help, so—I went.

  I got up to his office, unlocked the main door and went in. Everything was right where he said it would be, no issues there. He was if nothing else, very meticulous and precise in his organization. I found an empty box and put all of the medical contents into it, locked the door behind me and headed back to Doc’s house. Arriving back at Doc’s house, I pulled into the driveway and shut the car off beside my own. When I walked up to the front door carrying the box with the supplies in it, I heard a muffled groan. Oh my God, Sam, I thought. I set the box down by the front door and let myself in.

  “Doc? Is everything all right?” I called, walking down the hallway to the room I had left the two in. No answer. “Doc?” I slowed my pace, dread filling back in. That old familiar dread from the restless sleep of the night before. “Hey Doc, I got your…” My words trailed off as I rounded the corner into the room and saw all the blood. “…supplies.” I finished numbly. The ceiling was fairly dripping with dark red gore, trailing down to the floor and blurring the lights in a red cast. The bed in the center of the room was a lake of blood shot through with black streaks. There were chunks of meat in the lake and an arm on the floor at the foot of the bed. It had been gnawed through. I held my breath without even knowing I was doing it as I continued to scan the room. I saw a pair of crutches leaning against the wall next to me. I grabbed one and looked at the biggest chunk in the pool of blood on the bed. I used the rubber-tipped end of the crutch to move it around until it finally flopped over on its side and I saw it for what it was. It was a man’s lower jaw, teeth and all, broken and bitten. I flattened myself against the wall and held my hand over my mouth. I knew I was going to scream if I let go, so I held tight. Tears were coming from my eyes at having seen such a horror and my full body was trembling and vibrating. The crutch I still held tapped across the floor from my hands shaking so bad. “Doc? Doc, what the hell?” I whispered, backing out of the room. I had to get out, I had to get to a phone. I had to—

  My thoughts broke off cleanly as I turned to see Sam in the hallway, ten feet from me, covered in blood. A strip of torn meat hung from his chewing teeth. His eyes were enormously blank. Black holes through space and time, empty vacuums sucking out my strength. I thought I might collapse to my knees. I took a deep breath and said:

  “Sam? What did you do? What the hell, man?” Sam made no attempt to acknowledge me or my inquisitions. He looked on and out through time out of mind, chewing on that piece of meat. That piece of meat? That piece of…Doc? Was that Doc? Oh, Lord. Oh my sweet Jesus. What is going on? “Doc?” I yelled this time. No answer, just juicy chewing sounds. Lips smacking a savory good taste. “Doc?” I moaned again. That was when Sam looked up at me. 68-year-old Sam, he of the fish fries; he of the rusty old Ford pickup; my friend and neighbor. He looked up at me and grinned. The remaining piece of meat fell from his lips to make a flat smacking sound on the hardwood floor. He cocked his head to the side and said:

  “I had to see you, Mick. I had to. Had to see you. Had to come right away. Something’s not right and I had to come see you right away.” Echoing what he had told me at the house. The next few events all happened with great rapidity. He lunged at me with an intense fury and hunger in his eyes and it occurred to me that I was still clutching on to the crutch. Without thinking, I swung it up and around, catching him on the side of the face with the rubber tipped-end. He went sideways into the bench. I spun the crutch around end-for-end so I was now holding the rubber-tipped end. He lunged again and I hit him on the side of the head with the shoulder rest. This time, he went into a mirror mounted on the wall and went down on the floor. I didn’t wait, I dropped the crutch and ran. God help me, I just ran.

  Out to my car, keys fumbling in my right hand, I got in and fired it up. Sam—or whatever this thing was—leapt from the porch step onto the hood of my car, smashing the glass with his face. Still being somewhat human, this knocked him for a loop and he slid bloody and seemingly unconscious onto the ground. I burned tires backwards, then frontwards and took off for home. First, get the family somewhere safe. Second, call the authorities. Doc, poor Doc. I’m so sorry, man. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know what’s happening. I sped through town and down the highway to my road, fish-tailed onto the gravel road, then likewise into my own driveway. I brought the c
ar to a rest next to Sam’s busted up truck. My wife and kids and Derrick came out on the front porch. I looked at Derrick, then to Shawn.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” I barked.

  “Mom said he could stay over and she’d take us both to school tomorrow. Dad, what’s wrong? Why are you covered with blood?” I grabbed them all by the shoulders and herded them into the house.

  “We’ve got to get inside. Get a few things and get…” I was cut off by the sound of an on-coming vehicle. We all turned to look. A car was approaching at high velocity. Leaving a tall trail of dust behind it, it sped toward us on the gravel road. There is a sharp bend in the road just before our driveway and the driver of the vehicle must not have known that. It sped ever closer until, at the bend in the road, it lost control and went up over some fallen trees and other forest debris. It flipped up and over and sideways into a ditch and rolled twice, finally coming to a stop on its passenger side. We all stood, breathlessly watching.

  “Dad…?” Caylee began. A rusty squeaking hinge began to move as someone in the car was trying to get out.