Wailing and Gnashing of Teeth

by Ray Garton

  Nothing.

  No, not true—something, but...what?

  A faint clicking.

  Coming closer. But what was it? This clicking—actually, it was more a kind of snapping—sounded almost as if some kind of fabric were being—well, no, it wasn't really. It was as if...as if—

  As if something is catching and snagging on the carpet as it moves across the floor...getting closer, he thought.

  Accompanying that was another sound: the high creaking of wood.

  Hal quickly sat up and found his face only inches from something that stood between his legs. All he saw were wide, flashing, terrifying eyes that burned him with their hatred and anger, and teeth, and blood, so much blood. Bloody, sharp-pointed teeth, with bits of meat stuck between some of them.

  In that brief moment, it smiled at him.

  Hal swung the long, heavy flashlight with his left hand and it connected with the small figure with a heavy, hard smack of metal hitting wood. The figure disappeared into the darkness to his right, and collided with what sounded like the wall.

  Then he heard it scurrying through the darkness, the sounds of its wooden body creaking, its feet snagging on the carpet, all fading as it scurried away from him.

  Making small, grunting sounds of fear, Hal clambered to his feet, and limped back down the hall to his bedroom. His arms swung at his sides, and the flashlight beam slashed up and down, sending wild, twisting shadows over the walls of the hall as he hobbled back to his bedroom, ducked through the door, then turned and slammed it shut. He turned the lock on the doorknob until it clicked into place. He wished he had a deadbolt on the bedroom door, as well. But who would think to put a deadbolt on their bedroom door? It was absurd. Your bedroom was supposed to be a safe and secure place, a comforting place to wake up in from some awful nightmare. It wasn't supposed to be a refuge in which you locked yourself. It wasn't a bunker, for crying out loud.

  Hal paced beside his bed for a while. The bed he'd shared with Jacquie just hours earlier. The bedspread and sheets smelled of her body, of the perfume she wore, something very light and musky and titillating called Magnetic.

  Jacquie is dead, he thought. He repeated the thought several times. It made his head feel numb.

  That thing out there killed her, he thought.

  His teeth ground together, popping and rumbling in his head.

  He could not let it get away with that.

  Call the police, he thought.

  Hal went to the phone on his nightstand and took the cordless receiver from its base. He turned it on, checked for the dial tone, then punched 9-1-1.

  He heard nothing on the phone but dead silence. It suddenly occurred to him that cordless phones were electric, and would not work during a power outage. He cursed and quickly went to his messy closet, where he used the flashlight to rummage around until he found the old-fashioned corded phone he kept in there for just such emergencies. He unplugged the cordless phone from the jack, plugged in the other, and tried again.

  Three rings.

  "Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?" a woman said.

  When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper—he did not want that thing to hear him—but he spoke clearly, succinctly, a little breathlessly.

  "I'm in my house, and I'm hiding from the...well, it's a..." He stopped, closed his eyes as he gulped once, then said, "The Jesus, it's a Jesus that was on my wall, and I'm hiding from it, from the Jesus."

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. They made him sound crazy.

  "Sir, do you understand that this is an emergency-only line?" the woman said.

  "My fiancee is dead," he said. "Her body is lying in the kitchen. That thing—it killed her."

  "Uh...you say you have a dead body there?"

  "Yes, that's right, and—"

  A sound in the bedroom. At first, it sounded like a series of light clicks, but then he recognized what it was—a dry, whispered cackle coming from the darkness somewhere behind him.

  "Haaaal...Haaarooold," the thing whispered, and it creaked with movement.

  It was in the bedroom with him.

  Something flew out of the deep darkness of Hal's walk-in closet, something long and grey. It so frightened him that he let out a sharp, loud yelp. The object cartwheeled through the air, and Hal had to step aside to avoid being hit, and it slapped against the wall over the bed. It fell to the mattress.

  It was Grey. The cat's throat was a bloody yawning maw, and his tongue dangled loosely from his open mouth.

  7.

  "Sir, do you understand that you can get into big trouble for holding up this line with pranks?"

  Staring into the dark, Hal actually shook his head back and forth as he said, "No...no prank, this...isn't a prank."

  "You say you have a dead body?"

  "Yes, that's right, a dead body, my fiancee is dead. She was killed, the Jesus killed her."

  "The Jesus—what's this about Jesus?"

  "That's what killed her, the Jesus. And now it wants to kill me."

  "Speak up, sir, if you're going to—"

  "I can't, I can't. He's here. In the bedroom with me."

  He dropped the receiver, hoping vaguely that the 911 operator was tracing the call. The receiver fell to the bed, and the operator's tiny ant voice continued to speak, a small, pinched sound.

  Hal raised the revolver and aimed it into the darkness of his closet as he slowly got off the bed and up on his feet.

  He panted as he stood there, both arms out, the gun in his right hand, which rested on his left wrist, the flashlight in his left hand, its trembling beam shining on a wall, its glow casting long, black shadows in the room. His own breaths sounded thunderous in his ears, interrupted by the loud pounding of his heart.

  "Haaaal," the voice whispered from the depth of the closet. "Haaa-rooold! Don't touch yourself like that, Harold Lawrence Dillon, don't touch yourself! Do you...touch yourself, Harold? Do you?" The voice was hoarse, throaty, and filled with a grin, slightly muffled—because of the teeth, Hal suspected, all those sharp little teeth.

  Even though he was not the one backed into his walk-in closet, Hal felt cornered, trapped. He felt small and helpless and he kept remembering—

  Jacquie's dead Jacquie's dead Jacquie's dead ...

  —and the memory continued to sound in his head, the image in his mind of Jacquie splayed on the floor, naked and dead and drained of blood, eyes and mouth and throat open, made him feel even smaller and weaker.

  "Do you play with yourself Harold?" the voice whispered rapidly. Then it giggled—a sinister series of clicking sounds in the throat.

  He heard movement in the closet.

  It was coming out, closer and closer to the beam of his flashlight, which he'd been unable to shine into the closet. He had tried to, but simply could not do it. Because he knew what the beam would show him, and he was not sure he was ready to see it again.

  It was still cackling and creaking, and it was headed toward him.

  The gun made tiny clicking sounds because his right hand, no matter how hard he tried to steady it against his left wrist, would not stop shaking.

  Hal quickly turned to his left and ran out the bedroom door, into the hall. With the flashlight lighting the way, he ran back to the living room, tossing worried glances over his shoulder. The flashlight beam passed over dark, bloody footprints on the beige carpet.

  A sound followed him—the patter of small running feet snagging quietly on the carpet.

  As the cackling grew louder, the small running footsteps stopped.

  The thing landed on Hal's back, and he felt something break through the flesh of his left shoulder.

  He cried out as the Christ figure's fangs tore into the flesh of his shoulder. With its arms wrapped around his chest and its legs around his waist, it gnawed viciously into flesh and bone.

  He spun to the right as he dropped the flashlight and gun and closed bo
th hands on the head that was pressed face-down on his shoulder. A high, ragged sound of pain came through Hal's clenched teeth as he curled his fingers and clawed at the Christ figure's head. The flashlight clunked to the floor and rolled back and forth, making shadows slide fluidly and dizzily over the walls, back and forth.

  When it ripped away, it took some of Hal's shoulder with it between its fangs, and he cried out again. Warm blood trickled down his back and his chest and the pain was excruciating.

  But the thing continued to hold on to him. Laughing and laughing.

  He turned and fell backward onto the couch, landing with his back pressed hard to the couch's back cushion.

  It made a pathetic sound that was muffled by Hal's back and the cushion. Then it clamped its teeth into his back, tearing into his flesh.

  "Yaaah!" Hal shouted in pain as he threw himself forward off the couch. He got to his feet and realized the Christ figure was no longer on his back. He heard quick movement behind him. When he turned around, it was gone. There were blood stains on the back of the couch. Blood ran down Hal's back.

  He bent forward and swept up the flashlight. Every movement seemed to stretch open wider the deep wounds on his back and shoulder. The flashlight beam cut through the darkness as he moved it over the floor until it found his gun. He picked it up with his right hand.

  Why didn't you shoot earlier? he thought as he aimed the gun in the direction of the flashlight beam, followed the beam with the barrel. Finally, he lifted his left arm and balanced his right hand on the wrist, although raising his arm like that created explosions of pain in his throbbing shoulder.

  "Harold Lawrence Dillon, I know what you've been doing in that bathroom, and you should be ashamed of yourself!"

  The voice was so like his mother's that it made him gasp a little. But it repeated itself a couple of times, and when he listened closely, he quickly realized it was not. It sounded like a recording of his mother's voice played a tiny bit too fast, as if the tape was old and worn with use. But it still sent a shudder through him.

  It laughed somewhere in the dark, a throbbing, gutsy laugh that gurgled slightly.

  "You're a dirty boy, you are," the voice said, low now, and throaty, a bit grumbling. Then again in the slightly distorted voice of his mother: "You're a dirty boy and Jesus is going to punish you for it!"

  Hal was losing a lot of blood. He worried that he might lose consciousness soon, and the thought of being out cold and vulnerable while that fanged thing was running loose in the house—it froze his blood.

  Lightning made shadows dance on the walls and the thunder was God-like laughter rumbling overhead.

  Hal marched forward, toward the dining room, to pursue the thing.

  He stopped in the arched entryway to the dining room when he heard an awful sound—sucking. Loud, sloppy sucking.

  He stepped forward, went past the dining table with the Coleman lantern standing on it and glowing. His shadow was thrown across the kitchen floor, over Jacquie's body. There was something on top of Jacquie. Hal raised his flashlight.

  The gaunt, pale, stick-like figure of Christ had managed to turn Jacquie over onto her back and now straddled her stomach with its legs. Its face was nuzzled down in the gaping, bloody opening that used to be her throat. It slurped up her blood and sucked on her torn flesh.

  Hal's lips pulled back over clenched teeth as nausea filled his stomach, his chest, his throat. He lifted the gun and fired.

  Bits of wood shattered from the figure's back, and it dove off Jacquie's corpse as Hal fired two more rounds. Those bullets landed uselessly in Jacquie's belly.

  He lifted the flashlight, swept it back and forth in the kitchen, until he found his target.

  The gaunt Christ figure, with its bony knees and elbows jutting, clung to the cupboards over the kitchen counter, its back to Hal. It turned its head and looked back over its scrawny shoulder. Blood glistened in the scraggly beard and mustache carved so finally in the wooden face.

  Jesus smiled around its fangs and creaked woodenly as it began to crawl along the cupboards like a giant pale spider. It spanned the corner to its left and came down the cupboards straight toward Hal, cackling as it used its painfully skinny, but somehow muscular, limbs, like the legs of a spider, crept closer and closer to Hal, who was frozen in place, unable to move, his mouth hanging open as he watched the bloody Christ draw near.

  It reached the end of the cupboards. Lightning flashed in the window over the sink and gave the already pallid figure a corpse-blue tint. It lit up the bloody face with its eyes lost in pits of shadow, deep lines around its mouth, smiling around all those small, white fangs. Its muscles tensed for a moment as it prepared to leap.

  The thing came flying out of the darkness, waving it muscular arms, the loincloth clinging to its middle, lips baring the bloody, pointed teeth. As it came, it made a frightening sound: it was first the loud trumpeting of an elephant, then became the shrieks and cries of an angry ape.

  Hal aimed the .38 fast and squeezed the trigger.

  Its shoulder jerked back as chips of wood shattered from it, then the rest of the body followed, and the thing spun around, then landed hard, face-down.

  Hal stepped forward until he was standing over the still form of the Christ figure. He shone the flashlight directly down on the figure's pale, bloody shoulders. The thing's back was covered with deep gashes that criss-crossed each other and gaped open and oozed, all from a horrible, ancient whipping.

  The figure did not move.

  Hal aimed the revolver straight down at the thing, and fired once, then twice. With each shot, the small, bloody body jerked, and wood chips flew in all directions.

  Then the gun clicked three times before he stopped firing and let his arm fall limp at his side, the gun pointing at the floor.

  The figure rolled onto its right side, bent at the waist, and reached out both hands. They closed on Hal's ankle and the head thrust forward to close its large, razor-lined mouth on his shin.

  Hal released a long, hoarse cry of pain as his head tipped backward and his right hand squeezed the gun at his side and made it click again. Pain radiated up his left leg as those small teeth pierced his skin and gnawed into his bone, grinding against it, digging into it.

  For a moment, Hal lost his balance and began to hop backward on his right leg. The moment he regained his balance, he kicked his left foot out hard.

  The figure flew from Hal's leg and tumbled across the room, into the dining room. It hit the Coleman lantern on the table and knocked it over. The lantern rolled back and forth on the table, and the shadows around it became a living, writhing nightmare.

  The figure of Christ growled in the darkness, and quickly came rushing out of the dining room, heading straight for Hal, repeatedly snapping its rows of bloody fangs together.

  8.

  Hal kicked his foot hard and knocked the thing across the dining room. He turned and ran from the dining room, through the living room, then threw himself into the front bathroom. He spun around, and slammed himself against the door as he tucked the gun between the waist of his pants and his belly—it was warm against his skin, like a living thing—then used his right hand to lock the bathroom door.

  He stepped backward until the backs of his legs bumped into the toilet, the flashlight focused on the bottom half of the door. He reached behind him and put the toilet lid down, then lowered himself onto it. The gun poked him in the gut, so he pulled it from his pants and put it on the corner of the counter, by the sink. It would do him no good, anyway. It was empty, and the extra bullets were in the nightstand drawer in his bedroom.

  He was in terrific pain. He had never felt such pain as he did now from the bites the thing had given him. They throbbed, deep and brutal. He did not know how he had made it to the bathroom. His jaws never came unclenched and he trembled all over because of the pain. Perspiration prickled his forehead and cheeks, ran down into the wound on his back, and burned like the s
tinging of wasps.

  The sound of his heavy breathing seemed loud in the tiny bathroom.

  "What's taking them so long?" he breathed aloud. Shouldn't the police have arrived by now? How long ago had he called? He was losing his sense of time.

  He was alone with his dead fiancee, his dead cat, and the thing that kept taking big bites out of him.

  Something scratched at the door. Its laughter trickled through the narrow gap at the bottom.

  "You playin' with yourself in there, Harold?" the figure asked, and it sounded as if it had been inhaling helium because its voice was high and squeaky.

  Hal tilted his head back and sighed. "Oh, God," he whispered hoarsely. "God help me. Please help me."

  He waited.

  There were no windows in the front bathroom. It was small and he felt closed in, claustrophobic, and the feeling was rapidly growing worse.

  He could still hear the rain pouring on the roof. The thunder clapped, but sounded farther away now, as if the storm were moving on.

  He waited.

  Hal tried to think, but he could not line up his thoughts and put them together in any cogent way. His mind whirled around in rapid circles, like a top spun by an angry child.

  He heard something. Pounding. He wondered what the thing was doing out there. More pounding, then he heard a voice. Was it speaking to him again? He listened closely.

  Someone shouted.

  Hal stood up and went to the door, put his ear to it.

  "Sheriff's Department! Open up!"

  They're here.

  Hal turned the knob slowly, pulled the door open a couple of inches. He put his left eye to the opening and peered down the dark hall to the right, then leaned a bit farther out and looked to the left.

  He took up the flashlight in his left hand, pulled the door open halfway, leaned out, and shone the flashlight to his right, then to his left. Nothing. No sight of the wooden figure.

  More pounding, then: "Mr. Dillon? Marin County Sheriff's Department, please open the door."