9 Tales Told in the Dark 15

by 9 Tales Told in the Dark

  “We can’t be held-,” the voice said.

  “Bullshit. I’m calling my lawyer right now!” Charlie yelled into the phone just before slapping it closed.

  It all came back to the dentist, the goddamned dentist. He managed a weak, faltering smile as he thought about his brother and how he never liked brushing his teeth. Charlie figured that James might’ve flossed twice in his lifetime.

  He shook his head and ran his fingers across the top of his head, his long hair flopping against the sides of his face, and that’s when he felt it. Something behind his right ear, where he had the phone. His fingers moved through the tangles of his hair and found something small and hard, writhing there.

  Pulling it free, Charlie saw that it was a black bug, unlike any insect he had ever seen. He flicked it off onto the grass and opened the phone, curious. Charlie felt something slow and deliberate move across shoulders and arms, like a block of ice sending waves of goose bumps downward along his body. There in the hinge of the flip phone were several more of the hard black bugs along with several small, white things that looked like maggots. The white ones were splitting open with wet gaping holes as more of them appeared.

  His fingers quickly reached for his right ear again, this time feeling something inside the ear canal. He used his pinky finger and dug away at it, finally pulling it free. This one was pulpy and white, swollen and ready to burst.

  Charlie moved closer to his brother’s car and looked around on the ground, trying to see if there were any of the same kind of bugs, and that’s when he felt something move just beneath his tongue.

  Charlie screamed, his voice breaking into a heart wrenching shriek, as he began clawing away at the inside of his mouth.

  THE END.

  TRAWLING by Sara Green

  Sweat stung Tiffany’s eyes. She rubbed her eyes with her sweat drenched forearm. She glanced at her watch.

  18:35…36…37…

  She’d had a faster start than normal. Her mind must’ve wandered and she unknowingly slowed down. She wouldn’t be besting her personal record today. She almost gave up and backed her run down to her warm down jog. But she reminded herself that was not how she would get stronger.

  Still, she was exhausted.

  The muscles in her leg burned and her motivation was a hummingbird away from distraction. She barely took note of a young boy hunched over in the gutter until she was almost upon him.

  The boy moaned out of frustration. Tiffany’s pace pulled her right past the boy, and she stopped several sections of sidewalk later. She jogged in place, and watched the boy’s face redden as he reached into a drain.

  She looked at her watch again.

  19:00...01…

  She jogged over to the boy.

  “Are you okay?” Tiffany asked.

  The boy didn’t answer. He was about five or six and he wouldn’t give up on trying to reach whatever he had dropped in the drain.

  “I-I-can’t get it!” he screamed.

  “Let me try.” Tiffany knelt down beside the boy, who gave one more swipe into the drain and then backed off. “What is it that you’re trying to get?”

  “It’s mine,” he said. “You have to give it back.”

  “Sure,” Tiffany said. She smiled at the boy. She was grateful to be on her knees for only the second that her body thanked her for not running. Her tiny running shorts didn’t cover her knees and chunks of searing hot asphalt stabbed her knees. She was too tired to react.

  “It’s mine. I just dropped it. It was an accident,” the boy said.

  “Well, my arms are a little longer…is that it?” Tiffany spot a five dollar bill clear as day. No wonder it had seemed so important to the young boy. She remembered when five dollars felt like a million. It was mere change to her these days—though it wouldn’t have been an unappreciated find, she was the kind of person that would steal from a child.

  She reached in with ease and grabbed the weathered bill. Her fingers went into something squishy, slimy, and gritty—like a face wash—only she knew right away it was anything she would put on her face.

  She stood up with the bill and was in the process of handing the bill to the boy, when he snatched it from her hand.

  “Don’t you steal it!”

  “All yours. But you might want to wash it off first.” Tiffany wiped the good from her fingers onto her shorts. It didn’t seem to want to come off, so she tried the rougher fabric of her tank top. Before she could say anything else, the boy had run across the street and disappeared between the set of row houses.

  “Shouldn’t be playing in the streets, kid,” she said, and then tried to get back to the pace of a jog. But she was tired and her feet shuffled beneath her in an effort that was more tiring than had she just walked.

  The gook on her hand smelled—even after her much appreciated shower.

  “You can use tomato paste if you touched a skunk,” her mother told her over the phone. Tiffany rooted around in her pantry as her mother took the conversation elsewhere about somebody Tiffany didn’t know and would never meet. Such were the ways of talking with her mother. Tiffany was reduced to ‘Uh huh’s’ and ‘tell me about it.’ Normally, she’d be more irritated that she couldn’t get a word in edge wise, but the pressing need of removing the stench from her hand took precedence and so she almost did a back flip (if she could) when she found at the back of her pantry an old and dusty can of tomato paste.

  She poured the paste into a bowl and stuck her hand in it.

  Tiffany worried about her laundry. She’d tossed the shorts and tank top in the hamper. All her clothes would smell awful if she didn’t wash them right away, she thought.

  “Hey, Mom, laundromat closes in an hour. I’ve got a wicked load I’ve got to get washed. Can I call you back in a few?”

  Her mother agreed, but continued talking---about how her father never did the laundry. “…Couldn’t fold a t-shirt if his life depended on it.”

  Tiffany pinned the phone between her shoulder and cheek and carried the bowl with her hand in it back to her bathroom. As she reached the door it swung. It almost closed. Then something fell inside the bathroom.

  She had no explanation for it and she stopped dead in her tracks. She didn’t own any pets and… she sighed…her towel must’ve fallen off the hook on the back of the door. The moment of uncertainty passed as her mother rattled on about the best way to store clean socks. Tiffany pushed the door open with her toes. No towel on the floor stopped the door’s swing. It slammed against the wall.

  The bowl dropped. Shattered. Red splattered everywhere. The paste squeezed between her toes. Her cell phone sat in the mess. None of that mattered.

  There in the bathroom an animal’s rear quarter kicked out from within the clothes hamper. Its fur was short, no more than an inch long. The gray and brown hair was sparse against beige flesh. Robin’s egg blue veins streaked across its back, some ending or beginning at picked scabs—brown sugar surrounding raspberry jam.

  It was not a dog. Nor a cat. A possum was prettier and smaller.

  The animal stopped. It sniffed twice.

  Two long sniffs, like shushes. Then a moan like pleasure. The animal shook itself from the hamper.

  Tiffany yanked the bathroom door closed.

  It slammed into the door. Scraping like a starved animal.

  The whole door shook, handle and all.

  Tiffany dove for her phone. She screamed at her mom, “There’s a wild animal in my bathroom! What’s the number for animal control?”

  The door stopped rattling.

  The doorknob turned.

  Tiffany scrambled out of the hallway, back to her kitchen. She battled the silverware drawer until she was able to reach in and grab a knife.

  The animal dashed into the kitchen.

  Tiffany jumped up on the counter. She swung the knife.

  It just stood there and sniffed the air again. It didn’t have eyes. Longer hairs than the ones on its back sprouted out from where eyes shoul
d’ve been, it hung at the animal’s sides like Fu Manchu. Halfway down the mustaches was the build-up of gook and dried blood. Next to these dirtied sections, were thin purple lips that seemed to stretch down the animal’s neck and end somewhere in what resembled its chest. If it opened that mouth, it was big enough to bite off half of Tiffany’s body.

  It rose to its hind legs, standing like a chimpanzee—it sniffed the air and found Tiffany. Then it made what on a human would be called a smile. Running on its hind legs, it assaulted the kitchen cabinet. It could not jump very high. Tiffany was able to back up into the sink. She kicked dirty dishes out at the animal. She had lost her phone when she fled. She tried to reach down and stab it, missed, and then it snagged her hair. She pulled free. A chunk of hair remained in the animal’s grasp. Her scalp bled. She wiped the blood from her face, smelling the gook on her hand again. The tomato paste had not removed the scent at all.

  That’s what the animal smelled. It must’ve fed off the gook in the sewer, she thought, and she remembered the young boy and his five dollar bill. The animal might’ve eaten him already. She reached for the cabinet where she stored her plates. She chucked them at the animal. But it was quick, dodging as if it had something better than eyes. Then it bumped into her breakfast nook. It could climb onto the chair. And then the table… and then the kitchen counter.

  Tiffany jumped off and ran for her front door.

  She almost made it.

  The animal pounced. It landed in the small of her back, pinning her to the ground. It slammed the bottom of its long chin onto the back of her head. Over and over, until Tiffany passed out.

  Then it devoured her.

  The young boy whistled. In his pocket was the five dollar bill and in his mind was the plan on how to use it. Though he gave the thought of a bag full of candy much thought. He skipped along the sidewalk, up and down the block. Then a block away he spotted something come around the corner.

  His smile evaporated. He scampered back down the sidewalk and jumped off it at the drain. He ducked down and fished the five dollar bill out of his pocket. He threw it into the muck.

  A young couple took notice of the straining boy.

  Eager to prove his worth, the male stopped and asked the boy, “What’s wrong, little buddy?”

  “I can’t reach…it….” the boy said.

  The male laughed and reached inside the drain. He easily grabbed the bill and gave it back to the young boy.

  “There you go. Now what were you doing that made it fall down there.”

  “Fishing.”

  “Fishing? In a sewage drain? You best be careful not to eat what you find in there.”

  The boy nodded and said, “I’m not the one that’s hungry.”

  THE END.

  IN THE CITY THERE’S A THOUSAND THINGS by Paul Lubaczewski

  Cities in a way, are eggs, hatched from, cities. They are born from, and built on, the remains of themselves. Today's “Level Lot! Ideal Space!” was last decade's stately townhouse. Much can survive, mostly intact, just as much burns down, and gets torn down, blocked over and built up. Some things can become completely forgotten, subway lines built a hands breadth from an old line once bustling stops that exist now, as only a set of marks on an obscure brittle map in some hall of records.

  It's funny, you move to the city, it's to get away from anything that reminds you of the Podunk country life you had back home. Of course you find yourself missing things, it's to be expected.

  For me it was caving, going where nobody else goes, and seeing the sights, the physical exertion, and frankly, the sense of peace.

  Luckily almost every major city has a grotto, the name cavers give to their groups, connected to it. So meeting other cavers in the city was surprisingly easy, especially when you consider that major American cities are noted for their dearth of natural caverns. But still a group of us would meet on a regular basis and organize trips outside of town to get our cave on.

  Eventually it seems a small group within the group finds a way to break out the gear closer to home. In Chicago they call themselves Sew-lunkers, Australians call it Draining, and most can live with the term Urban Spelunkers.

  I enjoyed going out to the country again to cave, but eventually, work would get to me, and it seemed like I was missing more trips then I was making. I was talking to Bill about it one night after the Grotto meeting.

  “Man, I'd love to go out with everybody, but by the time I get the car out of the city, go up, get back, I barely even have time to clean my gear before it's time to go back to work,” I complained.

  “Well we do some stuff closer to home, to keep you in practice,” replied Bill.

  “Like how?” I asked.

  “Ever think about all that below us, below us? Wanna see it?” he smiled.

  I want to stress, urban spelunking is not the same thing as caving. It's just not. It's more regular more regimented, caves go where they go. It's a different feeling of discovery. With a cave, it's the idea that sometimes you feel, like your sitting where nobody has sat before. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you are. Tunnels there is still a thrill of re-discovery, but it's distinctly different. You think of who built this, and why, and what their lives were like. You thrill to know that above you people go about their daily lives never even realizing that an entire lost world is right below their feet at all times.

  You can find your way in to this forgotten underground all sorts of ways really. A buddy in the endless construction that happens on the west side of Manhattan may mention they hit something cool, and maybe you want to check it out. Some of the more forgotten subway stops can lead you, if you move quickly to another part of the system. In this case you try to avoid the homeless that have colonized down there to a degree. Come to think of it, it was people wanting to avoid them above ground that led them to live down there in the first place. Sometimes you can get in around the river banks. As much as the city likes to think it's all sealed up down there, is as much as it isn't.

  This time started as a friend of a friend situation. A buddy of a guy in the grotto had just bought a property way up in Harlem. In the course of renovating it, they were banging around in the basement. He pulled a few loose bricks with the idea of resealing it properly with new materials when he saw an opening in to some kind of access tunnel. Knowing Jim sometimes went along with Bill underground, he mentioned it to him. Permissions were obtained, iron clad waivers were signed, and we drove uptown.

  Nobody really likes driving in the city, but Bill has a pretty nice Suburban, and absolutely nobody likes hauling all their gear on the subway. Finding parking, or better yet splitting the cost of paying for it, is way better than trying to keep your stuff safe and unforgotten all the way from Brooklyn in a crowded subway car.

  We got to the house around noon. There were five of us. The aforementioned Bill and Jim, Melissa (a sprite of a girl, a single fellow might be trying to figure out a way to get to know), Bill's long suffering wife Andrea, and myself. Jim had the key and the code so we let ourselves in.

  “Do me a favor, haul the gear down in to the basement, and we'll gear up there too. I promised the guy who owns this place, he'd barely know we were here,” said Jim.

  “Well let's hope the basement is as spacious as the landing is,” joked Bill.

  I won't bore you with too many details of us going in to the basement and gearing up. You could tell the house itself was slated for the ongoing upscale renovations that were creeping over the island. Probably sell again next year in the millions. Gear consisted of helmets, knee pads, coveralls, lights, and caving bags to carry all the little things you would regret not having a mile in, in the pitch dark.

  “Are we going to map this today?” asked Melissa. It was a reasonable question from her especially, because of her size she was often as not sent in to those tight spots others won't fit.

  “We're gonna hand sketch a bit today, in case we find anything really interesting, but we're more or less booty scooping this,” s
aid Jim

  “Oh my, bad caver,” chided Andrea, “map as you go.”

  “Well despite my assurances that he'll never know we're here, first trips always make owners nervous,” replied Jim. “I want to get as much distance in as possible, if we say we found some cool stuff, and don't make a mess of his building, we've got a better chance of coming back.”

  “True,” I said. “We might also get lucky and be able to hook this on to something that's already been mapped.”

  “Nothing for it then, let's get our dirt on,” said Bill. ”Jim you got the lead on finding this place, you get the honors. I'm dying to know. Poke your head in there and tell us if it goes.”

  Jim squatted down in front of the concrete that had cracked out, and the stones that had fallen in, leaving a blackened hole beyond. “Awesome!” he exclaimed happily after he poked his lit helmet inside.

  “What do we got?” asked Bill trying to keep his enthusiasm at a minimum.

  “The concrete was over a doorway they blocked in with some cut stone. Past this, we got a walkway. I'll be able to see better once I slip through here,” said Jim happily. With that, he popped his head back out and strapped on his helmet. It only took him a minute to slip through.

  We all heard him let out a whistle of appreciation. “Well come on through. We look to be down here a bit for today kids!” he called back to us.

  Everybody slid through the hole one by one to join him. I brought up the rear of the group. Low man on the totem and all. I hadn't been caving or urban spelunking with this group that long. But it was a long impatient wait to get in, having to listen to all of the ooo's and ahh's on the other side of the hole. It was a moderately snug fit once I came up, but nothing major, once you get your head and shoulders through you just slide on in really.

  But I could see the reasons for the enthusiasm once I joined everybody. What we had was a moderate length of tunnel, the size you could fit maybe two abreast, but not far up ahead you could already see stairs heading further down. The air was dry and dusty here, which is always a bonus doing this, the less muck the better, though I doubted that part of our luck would hold for long. Best of all though, not a hand print, not a foot print in the dust that we hadn't left ourselves. This was a new discovery!