She was rounding the front of her car when it dawned on her that this old man may not be the scam artist she thought him to be.
He watched her with a smile on his wrinkly face as he spoke, “ah, I knew someday you would come here, beautiful Mathelda McQuaid.”
She replied in shocked, “how do you know my name, old man.”
“Oh, pretty lady, that is neither here nor there. The question you should be asking yourself is, what brought you here? Why are you stopped at an old man’s broken-down home in the middle of the Nevada desert? Come inside and I will tell you why.”
Hesitantly, she accepted his offer. Although worry and suspicion filled her mind, she was inclined to feed the curiosity that ran through her veins. He slowly walked in behind her and as she turned, he motioned for her to sit on the tattered couch next to the front entrance of the house. The mold was ripe in the air and the inside of the house was in worse condition than the outside. The old man lit a candle. He almost stumbled and fell over his own feet.
He spoke with a dry throat, “I would offer a drink, my dear, but I have none to give. You see, I have been without money for quite some time. I don’t even have running water or I’d offer you a glass of that.”
Pulling out an old handkerchief, the old man coughed as hard as a dying pneumonia patient. When he pulled the handkerchief away from his mouth, she could see spots of blood on it. Sitting across from her, a table sat. It was wobblily and on top sat something covered in an old musty sheet. The old man removed the covering and sat the candle next to the thing on the table. The object as far as she could tell looked like a crystal ball; just like the ones that belonged to them phony fortune tellers at carnivals and fairs. Rubbing both his hands across the crystal ball he acknowledged her skepticism.
“This right here is no ordinary crystal ball, in fact I knew you would be here today, this ball told me it would be and now it is. Take a look at it and tell me what you see?”
As he took his hands off the glimmering translucent blue sphere, she stared at it and replied, “All I see is my reflection, nothing else. Am I supposed to be seeing something?”
Before the man could answer, if he was going to answer at all, she saw a flicker within the crystal ball. Leaning closer, she realized her reflection had dissipated. The image was changing, her face seemed to fade away and a new image was taking form. In the image a young man stood next to a beautiful Hispanic girl, neither of whom she had any knowledge of ever knowing. The image was quickly erased from the sphere and replaced with another. Next, the sphere brought forth an image of an old man holding a sleeping child in his arms at the top of a dark staircase. The crystal ball changed images again fading from one to the next. This time she saw herself laying nude on a bed, in a room she didn’t recognize. Standing next to her a striking young man stood shirtless, he had black jeans on and red cowboy boots. He stood beside her smiling.
Looking up from the crystal ball, she was beginning to get an eerie feeling. Something was strange about what she was seeing. She looked from the sphere to the old man sitting across from her.
He fell silent, but he kept the smile on his face.
Looking back down at the crystal ball, the image had changed once again, this time the young man and Hispanic lady were back in the translucent picture. They were not alone. Behind them stood the smiling man with the red boots, he was holding a bloody baby over his head. The blood was running off the child over the man’s face. The young man and Hispanic lady didn’t look happy in this image. They looked full of dread and fear. In between them, at their feet, sat a crystal ball. The image washed out of sight, but another did not appear.
Silence embarked the room, a silence so thick she thought she could hear the flicker of the flame on the candle. The silence would have remained a minute longer, but the old man went into a coughing fit. This time he had no time to retrieve the handkerchief from his pocket. Blood flew from his mouth and over his hand that he tried diligently to cover his blasting coughs with. His eyes bulged from their sockets with each wheezing breath. Each cough seemed harder than the last. She was about to stand and see if she could give him assistance, but his coughing fit seemed to have ceased.
He looked her in the eyes as his smile returned and said, “I’m sorry, pretty miss, wish you didn’t have to see that mess.” Now, he had his handkerchief and was cleaning the blood spittle off his hand. “See, Mathelda, I’m dying. I have not the funds to go see a doctor and I have been in this pitiful condition for far too long. But that is neither here nor there. Don’t you, for a second, worry about this old man. Tell me, you were intrigued by what the crystal ball showed you, were you not?”
Still confused by the images that played before her and concerned for the dying old man’s health, she sat quietly for a moment. None of what she saw in the crystal ball made any sense. The uneasy feeling she felt when the images of the smiling man in red boots appeared were beginning to grow within her stomach. Looking at the old man across the table from her she realized his smile was similar, to the man in red boots. She pushed the thought out of her head.
This old man is just trying to make a sale, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t have me sold, she thought to herself before she spoke allowed, “look, mister, I’m not sure about anything that I saw, it’s all pretty unbelievable. This has been interesting. I’ll tell you what, though, I have about two hundred dollars on me. I’ll leave that to you, but I really must be going.”
As she stood, the smiling old man reached across the table and firmly grabbed her by the arm and remarked, “but you haven’t seen the best part. You haven’t seen what this crystal ball can really do. Go ahead, please miss, just touch it one last time.”
Reluctantly, she sat back down as she pulled the old man’s hand away from her arm. Putting her hand on the crystal ball, her vision went black. In her mind, she was taken somewhere else for a brief second. In the darkness of her blacked-out vision she saw herself driving a black car on a Texas dirt road.
She saw a sign that said Shiloh, Texas. Little home of big spirits.
She saw a young man walking down the dirt road in front of the big black car she was driving.
The vision ended. In her heart and her mind, she felt a new urge, something she had never felt before.
I don’t know what’s going on here, but I do know when I leave this place, I think I might take me a trip to Texas. Besides, what do I have to lose? She thought to herself.
She felt a slight bit of sorrow rush through her and she quickly tried to push it out of her mind. Longing for a change, she kept her hand on the crystal ball. Neither image came to her as her eyes filled with darkness once more. This time, she could hear her own voice speak as she saw herself standing in the woods. Somehow, she knew it was in east Texas and far from society.
Her voice in her mind firmly spoke, hide that crystal ball here. Arthur will help you. Before you bury that evil sphere, though, wish it to have Arthur serve and protect you. Do it, make sure you do this. Make sure.
The image seemed to blast out of her mind, sending her head back as her eyes shot open. The first thing she noticed was the old man who had been smiling since she arrived, even smiled through his coughing fits, was smiling no longer.
He spoke through squinted eyes, “what was that all about? What did this crystal ball show you?”
She looked at him as the uneasy feeling taken full grip of her insides. She wanted to leave.
She looked at the old man as she tried to keep her quivering voice calm and replied, “I don’t know what this thing is.” She pointed at the crystal ball as she stood up to leave. “But I have got to be going. I have had enough of this magic crap. I don’t like the way it makes me feel.”
She pulled the two hundred dollars from her back pocket and placed it on the table near the old man.
Turning to leave she noticed the old man standing as well.
Through the beginning of what was surely going to be another coughing fit, he seemed to
plead, “no wait Mathelda, don’t go yet, there’s one last thing you have to see this crystal b….”
The coughing fit began. This time the blood poured from his mouth and the old man dropped to his knees. He was hunched over and heaving with each blast that flew from his broken lungs. She saw the bloody handkerchief poking out of his pocket. Bending down to assist him, she pulled the handkerchief out. She handed it to him and started to pat him on the back to see if that would help his fit pass.
The old man stubbornly pushed her away and through booming, bloody coughs, he fumed,
“Make a…” He coughed. “…wish.” Blood ran down his chin as the coughing seemed to slow and he was able to make his way back to his feet. “Touch the crystal ball and make a wish.” A few more weakening coughs flew from his mouth as he motioned for her to go back to the crystal ball. “Go ahead then, you can have your money back and be on your way. I just want someone to see the magic this ball possesses before I die. You know, it’s been a decade since anyone has stopped by.”
Obliging the old man, she stepped forth and stood in front of the crystal ball.
He then instructed, “you get three wishes, so make each one count.”
Touching the ball with both hands, she thought only for a second of what her first wish was going to be. She wanted to help the dying old man, even though she didn’t even know him.
She thought, why not help this old man, she had spent so much time taking from young men, why not help this old one out.
Looking at the old man slowly finding his way back to his chair, she noticed he was struggling to maintain his smile through his rough breathing. She looked at him and smiled while making her wish.
“I wish that this old man in front of me to have his youth restored.”
The old man stopped smiling and looked her in the eyes as he bellowed with laughter. It wasn’t a happy laugh, either; it was one of evil. The cackle that came from the man was frightening. Taking a few steps back, she watched the man laugh hysterically and transform before her eyes. The man’s face twisted and distorted, the few strands of white hair on his head fell off. His head began to fill with shiny brown that waved over his skull. His teeth that were rotten with age, turned to a shiny white as the smile returned. His faded black shirt turned crisp and new. She noticed his worn boots that had been holey and deteriorating from years of use began to restore to their former youth, too. The boots shined and were red as blood. Those boots were like the ones the man in the crystal ball wore. The man that had stood beside her in a room unknown, the man who let the babies blood flow unto him behind the pair of young people with fear in their eyes. She felt herself moving back, until she felt the doorknob. Looking from his blood red boots, she met his eyes. His shiny teeth were sparkling in the candlelight as his smile stayed relentless. The room became cold as fear shivered through her bones. The man’s eyes were white and blank.
He pointed at her and softly spoke, “thank you, pretty lady. I must tell you something, before you run away from me. Over all these years, all these centuries I have walked this filthy earth, not one person has ever offered me help with their first wish. You know, I almost feel like I could let you leave here freely. But there’s one thing I forgot to mention about this here magical ball. You see, its bonded to me and me to it. Now, thanks to you my powers should be restored in the years to come. You restored my youth, it’s been a thousand years since I looked like this.”
He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and seemed as if he was trying to draw her in. For a second, she caught herself staring at the man with nymphic interest. Fear, however, settled within her and she wanted to leave.
The striking man that stood before her, motioned with his hands for her to calm down as he spoke, “you have no reason to fear me, pretty girl. I will not hurt you, unless you don’t follow the rules. You see, when you make a wish into the crystal ball, you belong to me. You must feed me what I desire. Oh, what I haven’t had to eat in so long is children. Not the young ones; too innocent. I need to be fed the adolescent; bad children who deserve my wrath. Teenagers, I believe is what you call them. Yes, those who do bad things. I must be fed. You have one purpose—to find and feed me what I want for my name is…”
She had heard enough. Without thinking of what she was about to do, she flung her hand back and punched the man as hard as she could in the nose. The impulse shocked her, almost weakened her knees. The bone cracked as her fist made contact, the man shouted in agony. She took the crystal ball off the table and ran out the door.
As she was getting in her car, she could hear him yelling, “my powers will restore bitch, and I’ll find you. You can’t hide. You made your wish; you owe me payment and I always get paid.”
Speeding off, she never looked back. She drove for hours before she stopped. She took a shirt from her bag in the back seat and covered the crystal ball. A Nauseating feeling filled her stomach, and the only thing she could discern to do was go to Texas as the visions had showed her. After that, she didn’t know what she’d do, the only thing she knew for sure was that at some point or another, the man with blood red boots would come for her. A child is what he wanted and when he caught her, she would have to deliver.
Chapter 12
Even in death, she could not escape the malevolent being. The atrocities she had helped fulfill, she made her helpless lover do for her, were memories that followed her even in death. Her spirit lingered in the old house that, for many years, had been the kitchen for the demons feeding. Caught between earth and hell, Mathelda McQuaid’s spirit floated through the old house she had once lived in. Memories flooded her entity, trapped within the home that had brought the end to so many children.
After she had stolen the crystal ball from the man with red boots, she became determined to make her way to Texas. She had to go to the woods of east Texas and find a place to bury the crystal ball and hide it until it called for her or the evil man made her retrieve it. She knew she had time, because the man had said that it would take some years for his power to restore. She would find a place in the woods to hide the ball and then she would head to Shiloh, Texas. There, she would drive the dirt roads every day until she came across the man from the image that the crystal ball had showed her.
Her days of sleeping with men and robbing them were over. She had enough money stashed in the back of her car to start a life wherever she wanted. Outside of the small farming town of Shiloh, resided a more typical small city in Texas. Bloomberg, which was home to about five thousand people, seemed to be like a good place for Mathelda to live while she endlessly drove the dirt roads of Shiloh.
The year she spent in Bloomberg was a restless year. Her nights were filled with the same reoccurring nightmares.
The man stood before her naked and suspended in the air, just floating effortlessly above the ground. She lay naked in a field, legs spread. Blood lay before her like a miniature pond, and to her right she could hear a baby cry. Next to her stood the boy she searched for everyday on the dirt roads. His name was Arthur, she knew that for a fact.
Arthur looked at her with a smile as the evil man descended before her and said, “Mathelda, thank God, it’s a girl.”
The nightmare would then shift.
Arthur stood in front of her begging, “Please, Mathelda. I can’t do this any longer.”
Tears streamed down his face as the agonizing screams of a child could be heard beneath them. You could hear an evil voice boom over the screams of fear and pain, too, “know my name son. I am Moloch.”
Most nights, she’d awoke with pouring sweat and in her own piss; that was how her long year of searching had gone. Her appetite diminished and her usual upkeep of her appearances had ceased. Yet, somehow, she stayed as beautiful as she ever had. The crystal ball lay next to her on the floor and she would stare at it, endlessly, most sleepless nights; never seeing anything, but her reflection. Time dwindled by slowly, each day she circled the dirt roads of Shiloh, Texas; never finding the boy for who
m she searched for. The nightmares began to bleed her of any energy she had in herself.
The day had come when she gave up on her search, it was over, she was finished; hide the crystal ball and await her dim future was her new course of action. Only one other plan seemed to suffice, and she thought about it most night. Suicide. Her life had been a series of repeated mistakes. Strange men she had sex with, her alcoholic mother, and her abusive father all had been a colluding effort to destroy her. On top of everything, her funds were becoming scarce. As she got ready to drive out of Bloomsburg to east Texas, her car started making a loud clanking noise. Black smoke blew from under the hood. Then flames rose from it. She jumped out of her car and ran down the empty street from where she lived. She fell to her backside and watched her car burn then explode. The explosion wasn’t near as loud as she expected it to be, but then again it could have been masked by her tears and memories she wished would cease.
When she was eleven years old, she had become a woman earlier than most girls and sooner then she wanted too. Her mother was no help. Her parents were poor white trash and living in a drug infested trailer park in Plankerton, Oregon. All four hundred pounds of her obese mother heaved up and down with laughter when young Mathelda told her she had started her period.
The woman that was supposed to be her mother, looked at her scornfully and just remarked, “well, clean yourself up, now you’re an official bitch. Bet it won’t be long ‘til them legs be spread of yours, invitin’ every dog around into them.”
Her mother was extremely jealous of her young daughter’s beauty. What fueled her jealousy was the fact that her husband, the girl’s father, couldn’t keep his eyes off of her.
Sobbing, she turned away from her hurtful mother and ran to the bathroom to clean herself up.
When her father got home from work that evening he approached her with a refreshing attitude toward her situation. When she told him that she started her period, he said nothing. He went to the store and when he returned he had his nightly beer and a box of tampax for his daughter.
Cold Fear Page 5
