Fiddleback 2

by Jeff Vrolyks

  * * *

  He parked his Audi along a dirt shoulder, the Stoddard farm hardly visible from this great distance. It was late dusk, the sky purple and studded with stars, the three-quarter moon low. He popped his trunk. Under the carpeted lid was his spare tire and a tire-iron. He took the tire-iron, closed the trunk. He double-gripped the handle as he strode toward the farm. It was stout enough to crack Eddie’s head open. He’d have to restrain himself from enjoying that pleasure, he reminded himself. A few broken bones, that was all. There were headlights well behind him, a car driving his way. He jammed the tool down the front of his pants and slowed his pace. A minute later an old Lincoln drove past him.

  At the property gate Trent surveyed the property. There was a porch light at the house. Beside the house was a garage with two open stalls, two cars inside. Good. Eddie was probably home. The barn was a massive shadow west of the house by about a hundred yards. Excellent. Plenty of buffer room to prevent a scream from reaching the residents of the house. He wouldn’t give Eddie much of a chance to scream. At the first instance that he suspected a cry for help coming, he’d bludgeon that bastard unconscious. There were very few lights on the property, he couldn’t have asked for a better set up. The property gate opened by a key-pad, but that wouldn’t be necessary. The wooden fence hedging the property was low and easily scaled over. He whistled quietly and awaited a dog to come barking at him. It didn’t happen. What kind of farm doesn’t have dogs? Shit, did it get any better than this?

  Trent clambered over the nearest section of fence and hastily made his way to the barn. At the barn he listened with an ear against the rickety unpainted door. It was silent inside. He didn’t think any lights were on in there, either. He tried the door knob that looked brand new: it opened. Well how about that? It was as if God wanted Eddie dead; and hell, maybe he did. The door squeaked on its old rusty hinges.

  “Hello?” Trent said softly but not too softly. He didn’t want to sound like someone getting up to no good. He should have stuttered out a hello. If Eddie was inside, he’d assume his stuttering retard friend was visiting. It wasn’t too late to implement the idea.

  “H-hello, E-Eddie?”

  It was pitch black in here. Either Eddie wasn’t here or he was asleep up in the loft. He hoped it was the latter. He closed the barn door behind him. Leaving it open would alert anyone who looked outside from the house. It was possible that Eddie was in the house, maybe fucking his retarded friend. Timothy looked a little like a fag. The pale skinny soft-spoken emotional type, which are always gay.

  It was too dark to see where he was going. His eyes had been adjusting to the darkness for a while now, but it was just too damned dark in here. He shut his eyes and willed his night vision to arrive. A moment later he opened them, and could see slightly better. He could see the darkest of the shadows that were low wooden partitions separating stalls. He could see the loft: another dark inscrutable shadow. He made his way toward it, soon found a fixed ladder. Bingo.

  Furtively he climbed it. It squeaked a little under his weight. There was an ass-hair more light up here than there was down below, and that was due to the digital clock, which emitted red neon light. There was a shapeless mass that might have been a bed. He took the tire-iron in both hands and stepped to it. Once his knee tapped the mattress, he chopped down with the tool, thumping the blankets. He was alone in the barn. That was fine. He could be a patient guy.

  The fine hairs on his neck suddenly stood on end. Ten feet away, maybe farther, he had seen something fleetingly. There it was again. He couldn’t identify it or pinpoint its exact location, but it was something. Maybe it was just the clock. He considered how turning his head might streak the red digital numbers and give the illusion of movement. He remained motionless this time, stared directly at the clock.

  There! It happened again and this time he did know where it originated from and it wasn’t the clock, but a few feet from it, about the same height of four feet. On the dresser, along with the clock and TV. It was a pulsation of green light, so slight that it easily could have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for his keen senses. He put forth to it, felt around blindly. His hand knocked something over. It clanked and rolled a few inches. He felt for it, struck it with his hand, knocking it behind the sonofabitch dresser.

  “Mother fucker,” he muttered.

  Figuring he was safe to make a little light, he got down on his stomach and used his cellphone like a flashlight, shining it under the dresser that stood on four two-inch-tall legs. There it was. What the hell was it? It was milky green, five inches long and carved to be some… he didn’t know what. He discarded the tire-iron to reach for it, seized it, brought it from under the dresser. On his knees he shone the light on it to get a better evaluation. It was pretty awesome looking. Sinister looking, a maniacal scream and sharp pointy teeth. Maybe he’d keep it. With a hand on the dresser he pulled himself to a stand, killed the light on his phone, returning the barn to darkness.

  It wasn’t just the fine hairs on his neck bristling this time but an icy finger running the length of his spine. And this time there was a more tangible reason for it. When the cell light blinked off, light remained up in that loft, and it was behind him. A soft yellow light. His nerves were made worse when his shadow on the dresser shifted to his right from movement not his own.

  His neck had never been stiffer than when he turned his head around. Trent was anything but a coward; a more intrepid man there was none. He was suffering the most fatal dread he had ever known; impending danger, demise even. His breath was hitched as he looked over his shoulder, eyes as round as silver dollars, mouth agape.

  He shrieked like a prepubescent boy, backed himself into the dresser which thudded into the barn wall from the force, dropped the cellphone from his right hand, the idol from his left hand, and clutched at the dresser-top with white-knuckled hands. With the release of the idol the ghostly image of a little girl, whose eyes were glowing white orbs and mouth a gaping black hole with razor sharp teeth, dissolved by degrees, leaving behind a yellow hazy light that dimmed for seconds before becoming pitch black. The fucking thing had been stepping ominously toward him.

  “Wh-what the fuck,” Trent stammered.

  He stood motionless, heart exploding in his chest. He waited a terrifying moment before bending over to scoop up his phone. He contemplated finding a lamp and turning it on, turning every light switch on in the joint. He shuffled his feet when turning to stoop, inadvertently kicked the cellphone or idol (he wasn’t sure which); it skidded across the wooden floor, was silent for two seconds, then a thump down in the barn below. There was no glass-crunching explosion which he anticipated; he guessed it landed on hay.

  “Mother fucker…”

  What the hell was that thing, a specter? A real live fucking ghost?

  Trent ruminated over the green idol. It wasn’t until he held it that he saw the girl; when it dropped she vanished. That’s no coincidence. He looked to the invisible floor, searching for faint green pulsations of light. He wished never to touch that infernal thing again. But what if it was the idol he kicked over, and his cell lay by his feet?

  Even though Trent wouldn’t handle that wicked thing again, someone else was handling it. It was Eddie’s property. Could it be some extraordinary thing that provides a benefit to Eddie? Mae was adamant about Eddie not reading her diary; if that was the truth, how did he know what he knew? Like he dwelled over earlier, even if Eddie had read the diary he couldn’t have known Trent was sneaking her the pink pills, yet Eddie did know that was the case. Was the idol responsible for this?

  He needed to know if it was his cell or the idol that was kicked off the loft. He used a foot to sweep the floor before him. He hit something. Something large. It was the tire-iron. He picked it up and tried again. He nudged something. Then again, harder this time. It rattled the sound of a rock, not a phone skimming the floorboard. It was the idol on the floor. He decided to sweep it under the dresser. When he and Eddie got i
nto a brawl, it would be best for that thing not to be accessible to him, just in case it benefitted him in some inestimable way.

  He got on his knees and felt his way toward the step-ladder. Carefully he made his way down. At the bottom he began the daunting task of searching for his phone. There was hay in two stalls below the loft. He climbed on it and felt around, fruitlessly, both stalls. Damn it all to hell. He’d have to do without it.

  That fucking specter, Trent recycled in his wary mind. There are no such things as ghosts, are there? I don’t believe in ghosts. Have I always been wrong about that?

  He needed to push that shit right out of his mind. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on it. He willed the idol out of his head and began focusing on the task at hand: Eddie. How would he defeat him? He’d wait in the barn, club the sonofabitch when he entered. It was simple and effective. Too bad there wasn’t a window in the barn he could peer out of, watch the Stoddard home for Eddie to come out, if he was indeed there. He probably was. It was getting late and the garage was full. He was probably there for dinner.

  He settled on an idea. He’d leave the barn door cracked open and would watch the house from it. The second the door opened he’d close his, then wait. When Eddie opened the barn, Trent would brain him with the tire-iron; if it killed him, oh well. Better than oh well, good. It would be a nerve-wracking wait, knowing that he shared this barn with some unliving thing. No, don’t think about her. Remember? Focus on the task at hand.