Horrors, Volume One

by Jim McKenna

  “You can’t meet Her,” Brad said. “You don’t want to.”

  Biker was still a moment then nodded. “I guess so. Still, I mean that must be from far out black magic pussy, am I right?” He laughed. Brad didn't laugh.

  “Have you told your girlfriend about Her?”

  “No fucking way.”

  “You sure.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because if you have and you want to impress your lady friend and all that, perhaps I can drop off Her daughters for a night at your compound. I’m sure the lizards can teach your woman a thing or two.”

  “Sorry man, I was just asking.”

  “Don’t ask. Just do your job and you’ll be rewarded. That's all.”

  “Well, fuck you too I guess.” They both rose from the bench.

  Brad faced him and smiled. “You do good work. She likes your club. She provides for you. Don't ask for more.” He pulled a thick envelope from his hip pocket and pressed it into Biker’s left hand as they shook with their rights. “I like you, too.”

  Biker smiled. “Okay, man. you take care. Drive safe, and Happy Thanksgiving.”

  Brad watched him leave through the store to the car parking area. Thanksgiving. The thought made him sad. He’d forgotten all about the holiday and how it mattered to people. Walking back to his truck he thought of roasted turkey, stuffing, good wine and laughter. And of a woman sitting naked in the darkness crying. He walked to the back of the trailer and made sure the door was latched correctly, then walked to the cab and climbed in.

  He knew She was there right away. Sometimes She rode with her daughters in the trailer. They nipped at each other for the best spot near Her, and curled their pale bony bodies up tight against Her, pleading with their body language for their turn at Her breast. But tonight She was in the berth with him. He turned in his seat, parted the curtains and stepped into the the berth. She reclined on the bed, his iPad in her claws. The sheet and blanket were pulled up over her breasts. Her black hair was a glossy waterfall down her dark red shoulders.

  “We found her, Mother.”

  “You’re such a good boy. My little driver. How you love me.”

  “It’s time to go.”

  “No, not yet.” She set the iPad down, her Candy Crush game over. She spread her arms.

  Without another word he stripped and went to Her. His cock so full and hard it hurt. She wrapped him in her arms and pulled him close. Her skin burned hot but Her claws were ice cold. A long purple tongue bathed his face and eyes.

  “I love you, Mommy,” he gasped, and there was no more of him than his love for her.. He was gone long ago.

  “Yeeeesssssss.”

  The Woods

  Grogan Mills, Illinois is like thousands of small towns dotting the Midwestern American landscape. It can be said of the place that it has seen better days, and yet casting about for the history and color of the town one wonders when that time actually was. Grogan Mills is neatly bisected into the semi-affluent south side with its carefully minded 19th century homes and broad lawns, and the lower incomes and shabby homes of the north by Tyler Street. All along this twenty miles-per-hour stretch of main street are local businesses, a scattering of restaurants, and nearly a dozen bars. If one is here long enough, say two or three years, they will see a kind of turnstile effect along Tyler Street. The businesses inhabit old brick buildings but are not themselves old, and do not rise proudly along the main street so much as hang limp and threadbare like faded shirts on a summer clothesline. Some of the building are known by the locals for what was there long ago, and not for what has come and gone since. The Walmart on the far eastern edge of town swept away the businesses anyone really remembers and left a motley collection of second hand and dollar stores, and not one but two Christian themed coffee houses. Sure there are new ideas here, but seldom a really good one, and few are the businesses that have lasted the test of time. But it is not fair to blame Walmart for all the problems in Grogan Mills, IL. They are surely not to blame for the two manufacturing concerns closing within a decade, leaving the old regional hospital as the biggest employer in Sullivan County. There is some moderate wealth in Grogan Mills in the hands of a select few, but the will to change and an appreciation of the need to adapt are two virtues that have never taken root. So the town – never as picturesque as it could have been or progressive minded as it should have been – does not attract those city folk who are all about restoration and gentrification. And so it sits, nestled in a low confluence of two rivers prone to flooding under a green blanket of stately trees, lost somewhere within the grayness of the dead and the dying. Migration to greener pastures and warmer climates takes many families and young people every year. One by one, the line of stately old churches one block to the south of Tyler Street sit passively and without comprehension in their stately beauty, while their pews empty a little more with every funeral or U-Haul truck belching smoke as it pulls away. Grogan Mills residents are people of faith, surely. But more and more locals align themselves with the noisy excitement and immediacy of the strip mall fundamentalist churches pushing the modern American interpretation of God’s word, and everything that is absolute and immovable about it. In the end Grogan Mills sits as a kind of pretty but sadly passive town, whose people long ago populated their minds with enemies from other cities, counties and states, especially fear-haunted Chicago 150 miles to the north. In Grogan Mills they resent the reality of Illinois as a Blue state, for no Democrat has served on a single seat in this county in forty years, if ever. The locals will forever defy progress and vote to their traditions and fears.

  And yet there is a purpose to this place, and those who have remained behind after graduation day hang on doggedly to the simple virtues of their community, not unlike passengers from a shipwreck clinging to life rings bobbing in the sea. When I first moved here I was amazed there were so many schools and so many kids, given the dim prospects for employment within easy driving distance and small size of the community. But there are indeed still families here, and here is something about Grogan Mills I discovered that really surprised me. It seems the mean population of Grogan Mills has rarely actually seen a change. Census records from the 1920’s to the current year put the number of souls calling Grogan Mills home to be right around 5,800, with scant variation one way or the other. For those who remain there is a strong sense of comfort, security, and belonging. I am the exception to most residents in that I am from somewhere else, and a true rarity that I came from the sunny American Southwest to settle here. After four years of calling Grogan Mills home and participating in the community as best as I could, I never did get to a place where I was not looked upon with that subtle sort of outsider suspicion. I guess in hindsight I should have been suspicious of them, too. But that is something too, too easy to say now.

  It was a woman who drew me to Illinois, and a cold-blooded murder that introduced me to Grogan Mills. She was a sweet little blonde with a quick wit and hard body that I was more than ready to explore for the rest of my life. I resign from my law firm in Arizona and chased her sweet little butt to Chicago.

  Here’s the thing about Phoenix you might not know. When I called it home, and it was my home for forty years, someone like me who was born in the desert was a rarity. Almost everyone is from somewhere else, and mostly that somewhere else is the Midwest. Hell, the whole Arizona economy is based on the transient population moving in from cold, rust belt cities. I had a kind of personal pride in that I was taking the opposite route, like a noble salmon swimming against the current to my own special spawning ground. And Chicago appealed to the romantic in me, with its great history, architectural marvels, and solid place among the pantheon of the Great Cities of the North. In a few months I passed the Illinois Bar and was hired at a good salary in the criminal law section of an established law firm, and made the most of my new home.

  A few months later Oscar Tate, a sad wimpy little man, took a baseball bat and bludgeoned his girlfriend to death while she slep
t, then did the same to her two kids as they came home. The Tate family had money, and they used it to hire my firm to defend him against the charges. So began my drives from Chicago down into rural Illinois and the Sullivan County Courthouse at Grogan Mills. It was three hours one way in good traffic, and during those drives I had time to think on life more and more. Before too long I was thinking mostly about the woman I thought I loved. By the time the trial actually began and I was holed up in the Super 8 motel for the duration there was nothing more to think about. The woman was gone. I guess she was like a cowgirl driving me like a herd animal to some new destination a long ways away, but when the job is done she mounts up and rides off, leaving me and the slaughterhouse far behind. Like the song says, “It's your misfortune and none of my own”.

  It was on a bright spring day in the second week of the Tate murder trial when I saw the woods for the first time. The judge had called a recess and I slipped out of the courtroom, lighting a cigarette as I skipped out the door. I stood by my BMW in the warm sunlight, relishing the sensation of the sun above me and the radiant heat of the blacktop warming my clothes from the chilled air of the building. It was a large square of dense forest, about 300 yards wide on each side set like a great green block among the furrowed cornfields whose rows marched right up to the edge of the parking lot. The foliage was so thick that the sides of the woods appeared as a solid wall of green, like something ancient and primeval cut like peat from a bog and dropped in bulk from some other place and time. I can’t say what it was that drew my eye to the wood, or whether there was a feeling of malice or unease within me as I stared out at the dense green wall and lofty treetops. I do know there was an odd, watchful stillness in me as I gazed across the new corn at this place. It was one of those silent, vacant feelings one gets from time to time, like after seeing a compelling movie, or spending time drifting through a museum taking in the works of art. A feeling like my mind has reached out for something secret and elusive, and now is left waiting for a whispered answer that will not come as the real world returns like a leaf gently, slowly falling from a great height.

  Oscar Tate was found guilty of the murders, but at a lesser charge that kept him from being strapped to a gurney. This is how a defense attorney sometimes measures success. During my time here I had struck up some friendships with fellow lawyers and professional men, and the town grew on me more and more. Within a few weeks I was looking at properties on realty websites, and that same summer I followed my heart and possible midlife crisis to Grogan Mills. I bought an old Victorian on a broad corner lot south of Tyler Street, and proudly moved in and set up my new practice.

  Two years went by, and life rippled and flowed like water. I was somewhat of an anomaly in my new home. I joined fraternal organizations, made new friends and a cluster of drinking buddies, and even tried on a few romantic relationships along the way. Business was good and between the paying clients, required pro bono work, and a brief stint as the local public defender I was never at a loss for things to do. My house had been well taken care of by the prior owners and for this I was thankful since I have no real inclination towards repairs and remodeling.

  And through it all, every once in a while the woods caught my eye, and played a little tune in my mind. For some reason I was hesitant to ask anyone about it. It was as if there was some kind of a secret within, and I was relishing the effect the woods had on me. And I was leery of letting people know the place held me with some kind of still, silent curiosity. I never saw birds in the trees that I recall. I never saw anyone out there by it. The woods seem to sit determinately and solidly alone in the universe and fully detached from the real world. Once, or possibly twice I did ask about it to friends as we sat at the Elks lodge sipping beer. My questions were met with a shrug for the most part, and someone told me there was some kind of bog or spring in the center of the dense trees. The city owned the land, I discovered, and years ago leased a broad strip of the property that fronted on the county road to a remote control airplane flying club. I walked home from the bar that night puzzling over this, since I had never heard of such a club at all. One boring, hot Saturday afternoon I drove to the woods via the county road, and sure enough there was a great grass lawn in front of the wall of trees, with a worn sign proclaiming its use by a club that I had never seen or heard of.

  It was a rare thing when the woods asserted itself in my mind, but I seem to be able to recall all of them, and the place has always retained its subtle pull on my thoughts. In general it is easier now than it used to be to remember specific events in my life that hold no real importance for me. I have been gifted with a remarkable retroactive clarity since that red-letter day, at 6:20 when a pain like I had never felt rose like a great wave in my chest and swept over me, and I collapsed to the wet pavement in Kankakee, felled by a massive heart attack. The Event (as I have come to called it) descended upon me like thunderstorm, and in a span of a few painful and frightening hours everything in my life changed. Returning to Grogan Mills after a week’s stay in a hospital well known for their cardiac services, I knew that my life had changed irrevocably. Friends came to see me and wish me well, and one of them, a plumber I knew from the Elks named Kyle, recounted his own experience with cardiac arrest.

  “There’s something about the heart, Gary. Something happens to man when the heart stops beating and then gets turned back on. Your gonna feel different about a lot of things. I dunno how exactly, or why, but it happens. It did with me. Those people who tell you all you have in life is in your brain? Fools. The heart means something.”

  He was right. Even early on I knew there was truth in his words. My body was still raw with the pain from the stents inserted in my arteries and the electric blasts from the defibrillator used to return me to life. Leaving the hospital for the ride back to Grogan Mills I knew that if I wanted to live I was forced to commit this first part of my new existence to rest, recuperation, and the ease of personal and professional stress. So began what I would call my Cardiac Exile.

  At first nearly everything made me very tired, and it was a strange thing to experience my body weakening during some activity I performed without a thought not long before. It was as if I had turned from a middle-aged man to and old gent overnight. The doctor and cardiac therapist assured me my strength would return, and owing to the fast response of the ambulance and my proximity to just the services I required the actual damage to my heart was minimal. In fact, with the mandate of losing 30 pounds in front of me, coupled with my new status as a proud ex-smoker, if I played out everything right I could come away from his healthier in mind and body than I have ever been. This is what I told myself and friends near and far as I got back to my quiet house, and waited for autumn’s arrival and the leaves falling in a red and gold rain.

  I had been home for a little over a month when I again saw the woods. As my body grew stronger I ventured farther and farther out on my daily walks, and eventually added a bike ride in the evening. Grogan Mills is ideal for the casual walker and rider. I explored all the streets on the south side, and was surprised now and then at a house I would come across of a unique architectural style I had not known was represented in the town. Slowly the days went by, and closer and closer I got in my wanderings to the ugly concrete courthouse with its wide lawn, and the view across the now tall and dry corn to the woods sitting lone and silent. One day I rolled my bike up onto the lush grass of the courthouse lawn and stopped, leaning off on one foot and staring at the faraway trees. A breeze blew high and soft, and the cables on the flagpoles clanged like ship bells, and I could hear a wind chime tinkling a tuneless hypnotic tune from some porch. But the trees in the woods, tall, old and stoic, did not seem to want to move, and kept to their stillness as my thoughts buzzed around them like lazy bees.

  It was as I stood there that day staring at the woods that I linked in my mind’s eye for the first time my prior feelings of curiosity for the woods with an vision or scrap of imagination I had after the heart attack. I was
in the hospital in the darkness of my room, staring up at the ceiling tiles. I had become afraid to sleep, and it was only with real exhaustion that I would drift into anything like real rest. Once I dreamed and I saw a sky of bright stars spinning over my head, framed by swirl of high branches and leaves, all of it spinning, spinning, spinning. Now staring across the corn at the woods on this pleasant early September afternoon that image came back to me, and all at once I resolved to explore for myself the woods and see what secrets were nestled within the dense trees.

  The next day I had a light lunch (my Cardiac Exile had made even eating a spooky affair), and rode my bicycle though the bright sunlit streets out to where the road takes the lazy left, turning east onto the county road. A short ride of about half a mile brought me to the lawn, and I pedaled up on it and left the bike there, walking towards the trees. From a distance it always looked like there was some kind of dirt road or track surrounding the woods, but for the most part the standing corn, due for harvest any day now, abutted the trees allowing for very little room to walk. The ground was very rough and uneven, and I walked carefully between the corn and the tree line for some distance before finding even the slightest point of access. Even then I could not get farther than fifteen feet into the trees before encountering an impenetrable tangle of branches and bushes. At one point I came to a large boulder and scrambled to the top, and balancing there peered deeper into the dense woods. I could see far inside what looked to be a break in the overhanging canopy, and sunlight streaming down to some kind of culvert that was completely lost to my vision. As much as I wanted to proceed I thought it unwise to attempt it that day, and so cautiously I followed my steps out and back to the lawn, where I found I was no longer alone.