Tales From the Midnight Shift Vol. 1

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  I was wailing, bucking in my father’s arms, trying to get loose. My mother ran along behind us, beating at his back, demanding he let me down, but my father paid her no attention. He hurried down the stairs and out the front door. There was no snow that Christmas, but icy rain was spitting down from the sky, making the steps and walkway slick and treacherous, but my father skidded along toward the old Volkswagen parked at the curb. I wasn’t wearing a coat, and I shuddered as my breath steamed out of my mouth in a white cloud. Ice caught in my eyelashes and made it hard for me to see.

  “Carl, where are you taking him?” my mother said, having followed us out into the cold. “Bring him back in the house right this minute.”

  “Do you want to find him dead in the morning?” my father hissed, whirling around to face my mother, slinging me around in his arms like a rag doll. “Because that’s what’ll happen if we stay here. Santa will come, open up the boy’s jugular, mark him off the Naughty List, and leave us that grotesque little gift to find on Christmas morn. Is that what you want?”

  “You’re talking crazy. You stopped taking the medication Dr. Henry prescribed, didn’t you?”

  “I’m not sick, Myra, I don’t need any goddamn medication. Now I have to get the boy outta here before Santa comes.”

  “Give him to me.” My mother suddenly grabbed one of my arms and started tugging at me, trying to get me out of my father’s hold. He reached out, put a hand against her face, and shoved as hard as he could. My mother’s feet slipped out from under her, and she went down on the sidewalk, landing heavily on her backside. Next thing I knew, the passenger’s door was opened and my father was shoving me inside the car. He hurried around to the other side and got behind the wheel.

  My mother was outside, trying to get the passenger’s side door open, but my father had engaged the locks. She was crying and telling me to unlock the door for her, but I was in near hysterics myself and could not think clearly enough to do so. It took my father three tries to get the old car started, and then we were rolling away from the curb. My mother ran along beside us at first, screaming for someone to help her. I put my hands against the glass and stared back at her as my father picked up speed, leaving her behind. At the next intersection, we took a right and I could no longer see my mother, although I could still hear her screaming my name.

  * * *

  The road was icy in patches, and the car would skid and slide on occasion, sending me careening into either the passenger’s door or my father. I had stopped crying, perhaps too far gone in my fear for tears, and I tucked my knees up to my chest and stared over the dash, expecting any moment for us to swerve off the road and slam into a tree. But somehow my father managed to pull us out of every slide, keeping us on the road.

  “Daddy, where are we going?” I asked, my voice shaky and quiet. We had gotten onto the interstate, which was nearly deserted on Christmas Eve, most people already settled down with their families for the holidays.

  “We’re going to your Uncle Mike’s cabin. He’s spending Christmas in Ohio with his wife’s family, so we should be able to hole up there and hide from Santa. He’ll never think to look for you there.”

  Uncle Mike was my father’s younger brother, and I had been to his cabin two or three times that I could remember. It was a rustic log cabin set up in the mountains about two hours from where we lived, isolated in a wooded area with the closest neighbor a mile and a half away. I had always found it creepy there, like the kind of place that would be perfect for a horror movie, and I did not relish the idea of being there alone with my father.

  “Why couldn’t Mommy come with us?”

  My father glanced at me, but his eyes still looked blank, as if he weren’t really seeing me at all. The car skidded on a slick spot, and my father turned his gaze back out the windshield. “Your Ma can’t be trusted. She must be in cahoots with Santa or else she wouldn’t have been so insistent about you staying at the house. She was probably planning to hold you down while Santa sliced your neck wide open.”

  I found a new well of tears somewhere inside of me, and they began cascading down my cheeks, seeping into my mouth and coating my tongue with their salty bitterness. I didn’t like hearing him talk about my mother that way, but I had enough presence of mind not to argue.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. I was too traumatized to speak, and my father withdrew into himself, sometimes mumbling unintelligibly but for the most part seeming to have forgotten I was even in the car with him. The icy ran began to come down harder, and the windshield wipers squealed as they worked double time to keep the glass clear. Even in his state of mind, my father knew enough to slow down as the weather conditions worsened, and the normally two hour trip took us just over three.

  It was almost five thirty when we turned onto the exit that would take us to Uncle Mike’s cabin. The day was so overcast that it was practically full dark, and my father turned the lights on bright as he made his way along the serpentine roadways that took us up into the mountains. At one point, there was nothing on the left side of the road but a sheer drop with only a flimsy looking guardrail as a barrier. I kept imagining us skidding into the guardrail—through the guardrail—and plummeting down to the rocks below, where the car would explode in a mushroom cloud of fire and black smoke. But that didn’t happen. We turned into the gravel drive that led to the cabin, the tree branches reaching over us to form a tunnel that made the night even darker.

  There were no streetlights out there, and the cabin itself was utterly dark, so once my father doused the headlights, I felt enveloped by blackness, swallowed by it. I had never been a child overly afraid of the dark, not even needing a nightlight, but suddenly the night seemed alive with creatures just beyond my vision, creatures that wanted to sink their claws into me and do unspeakable things.

  My father left me in the car while he went to the front door, trying to get it open. He looked under the mat, apparently expecting to find a key, but I heard him curse when it was not there. I thought dully that I could run while he was distracted, just get out of the car and hightail it down the gravel drive, but the notion of running alone through the darkness was even more frightening than the prospect of spending the night in the cabin with my father. Besides, where could I go? There was no one around, and my father would catch up to me eventually.

  I squealed when I heard glass shattering, and a moment later my father was opening the passenger’s door and pulling me out of the car. In the gloom, I could not make out the features of his face, and I had the ridiculous idea that he no longer had a face, that there was only shadow where my father’s smile had once been. He carried me to the cabin, and I saw the window by the door had been smashed. My father reached through the opening and unlocked the door.

  I thought that once we were inside, my father would turn on some of the lamps in the den, but he didn’t. Instead he hastily sat me on a musty smelling sofa and slammed the door, turning the lock. He then ran around the room, making sure all the windows were locked and closing the curtains, still mumbling to himself. When he was done, he simply stood in the center of the large room, a dark silhouette that I could barely make out. I heard him breathing harshly, but he did not move, as still as a statue.

  “Daddy?” I said.

  “Shhh. We have to be quiet, boy.”

  “But I’m so cold.”

  At first he didn’t say anything, still not moving, but suddenly he bolted across the room to the large stone fireplace, thick with ashes from past fires, and started throwing the logs that were piled neatly to the side into the hearth. “Yes, the fireplace, he can always get in through the fireplace. I’ll fix that, though, start a nice roaring fire, and then let’s just see him try to get his fat ass down the chimney. It’ll be like that Big Bad Wolf trying to get into the house of bricks and ended up boiling in his own juices.”

  I cried silently, thinking that we weren’t in a house of bricks. We were in a house of sticks, the kind the Big Bad Wolf had blown down.
But the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t outside trying to get in; the Wolf was in here with me already, wearing my father’s skin like a coat.

  After my father had thrown in several logs, he reached into a box by the fireplace and pulled out several yellowing sheets of old newspaper. They made a crinkling sound as he wadded them up and stuffed them between and around the logs, using a lighter from the mantel to set them ablaze. The paper turned black with glowing red trim as the fire ate it up, the logs catching fire soon after. My father grabbed the poker and stabbed a few of the logs, causing sparks to fly up into the flue, the fire burning brighter, reaching up into the chimney as if trying to find escape from this madhouse. I was too far from the fireplace to feel the warmth right away, but the flames did provide a flickering light to the room.

  “There,” my father said when he was done stoking the fire, standing there beating the poker against his leg. “That should keep old Santa out unless he wants his ass flambéed.”

  In the wavering firelight, shadows flowing across his face like a living mask, my father looked quite demonic, and this only made me cry harder. “Daddy, I’m scared.”

  He turned to look at me, his eyes shining, reflecting back the fire as if the inside of his skull were ablaze like a jack-o’lantern. “You should be, son. You were naughty, and now you’re on Santa’s hit list. He’s going to be furious when he doesn’t find you at home, you can take that to the bank. He’s going to be out hunting you, boy.”

  I folded my arms on my knees and buried my face. I was shivering, and I wanted to move closer to the fire but didn’t want to be that near my father. I wanted to be home in my own bed, knowing that my mother was in the room just next door; I wanted this whole day to have never happened, wanted to go back to viewing my father as an odd but harmless man, wanted to regain my vision of Santa as a delightful giver of gifts and not some bloodthirsty monster. I hated my father for bringing me here, for scaring me so much, for hitting my mother, for turning my favorite time of year into a nightmare. Although I was so young, the hatred was intense and all-consuming.

  I screamed into my arms when I felt a hand on my back. My father had crossed the room and sat next to me without making a sound, or perhaps I’d been too preoccupied with my hatred to notice. He tried to pull me into his arms, but I resisted. However, I was just a boy and he a man, and he finally managed to crush me in a tight hug. “Don’t worry, I won’t let him get you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ll keep you safe, I won’t let him slit your throat from ear to ear on my watch.”

  I’m not sure how long we sat like that. I think I may have even dozed off despite my fear. Next thing I knew, the windows around the edges of the curtains lit up a brilliant white, and I heard tires on the gravel drive out front. My father shoved me aside and was on his feet in an instant, rushing to the window by the front door, the one with the broken pane.

  “He must have found us, boy. Maybe had them hell-beasts that guide his sleigh sniff you out like a hound dog. Oh sweet Lord, he’s got us cornered in here, trapped like flies on flypaper.” My father turned to me then and said in a chilling voice, “He’s gonna get you, boy.”

  I was staring past my father at the locked door. I didn’t know who was outside, but I prayed it was my mother. If only I could get past my father, unlock the door and get outside before he could get his hands on me, maybe this nightmare could finally come to an end. I was still calculating my odds when my father suddenly bolted forward, grabbed me and slung me across the room toward the fireplace. I collided with the pile of logs and sent them rolling across the uncarpeted floor.

  “He’s gonna get you boy, there’s nothing I can do to stop it now. But he’s gonna get me too, for trying to hide you. I shoulda known better, but now he’s gonna make me pay for trying to keep you from him.”

  There was pounding on the door, and I heard my mother on the other side, calling my name. I called out to her, crawling on my hands and knees toward the sofa, hoping to circle around it and get in front of my father.

  “I can’t let him get me,” my father said, snatching the poker from where he’d left it leaning against the wall. He started advancing on me, covering the distance in three large strides before I’d even reached the corner of the sofa. “Maybe if I kill you, he’ll forgive me. Maybe if I offer up your corpse as an offering, he’ll let bygones be bygones. I’m sorry, boy. I don’t want to do it, but there isn’t any other way. I gotta save myself.”

  Distantly, I was aware of more pounding at the door, of another voice joining my mother’s, a hand slipping through the broken pane, groping for the lock, but these things did not fully register with me. In that moment, the whole world had become my father towering over me like some fairytale giant, and that rather lethal looking poker that he brandished like a sword. I started to crawl faster, scuttling like a crab, but my father brought the poker down fast and hard, connecting with my left shoulder. I heard something crack, and pain exploded in my shoulder like a bomb detonating. I screamed so shrilly that I’m not sure human ears could pick it up, and I collapsed onto my side. My left arm felt numb, and it did not respond when I tried to move it.

  My father stood over me, holding the poker above his head, the sharp tip pointing down; he seemed to be aiming for the general direction of my heart. “I love you, boy, and I’ll see you on the other side.”

  I closed my eyes, expecting to feel the poker tearing into my chest at any moment. When I heard a meaty thwunk, I cried out, actually thinking the blow had come, and yet there was no pain. Something crashed onto the floor next to me, and I slowly opened my eyes. My father lay beside me, face down, his head turned away from me. An old ax stuck out of his back like some kind of weird antenna. Blood was already pooling beneath him.

  I looked up, and there was my mother. Her hair was disheveled and sticking up as if full of static electricity, and her eyes were wild. For just a moment, she looked just as mad as my father had, but then she started to cry and scooped me up into a tender embrace. Pain flared in my shoulder, but I cried not out of hurt but out of joy, wrapping my right arm around my mother’s neck. In the open doorway, I saw Mr. Haverson, our next door neighbor. He seemed dazed and hesitant to cross the threshold.

  My mother cradled me, being careful not to put too much pressure on my shoulder, and carried me out of the cabin. Just before she stepped outside, I cast a glance over her shoulder at my father. He was not moving.

  * * *

  My shoulder did not heal right, and to this day I cannot raise my left arm above my head, and my left hand goes numb if I work with it too long. Needless to say, that was the last year I believed in Santa Claus. Even as an adult, I tend to get nervous when the month of December rolls around, and the seasonal displays in the stores seem grotesque and frightening to me.

  There was an investigation and my mother was exonerated of blame in my father’s death, thanks in large part to Dr. Henry, whose testimony charted my father’s slide into paranoid schizophrenia. The verdict did not seem to alleviate my mother’s guilt, however, and she remained a distant, sad woman until her death from ovarian cancer at sixty-two. We never had a real discussion about that night, and I harbor guilt of my own for never talking to her about it, letting her know how grateful I was that she saved my life.

  I was six years old when my father went insane. He was thirty-one, the same age as I am now. I have a child of my own, a daughter just turned three. I sometimes watch her while she’s sleeping, examining my own thoughts, searching for anything that seems out of the ordinary or irrational, always on the lookout for any sign that I may be developing my father’s illness, afraid he may have passed down a poisonous legacy in my genes.

  So far I’ve discovered nothing to suggest that I am becoming my father, that I am following in his footsteps. But if there were something there, would I even recognize it? That fear is my own private hell.

  BIG DOG

  “I can’t believe it,” Ross said for the hundredth time, staring down at the
check. “A thousand dollars, all for me, for something I just made up out of my head.”

  “Let me guess, you can’t believe it,” Julie said with a teasing smile.

  “Hey, don’t make fun, this is a big deal for me.”

  “It’s not like this is the first story you’ve ever sold. I mean, you’ve had, what, fifty stories published so far?”

  “Yes, but this is different. The most I’ve been paid for a story before now was 75 bucks. I’ve just been accepted into a major anthology; a Ross Berkley story will be appearing alongside writers like James Newman and Brian Knight and Gene O’Neill. This will be some serious exposure, could be the start of bigger and better things.”

  Julie put a hand on her friend’s shoulder and said, “I’m thrilled for you, really I am. So what are you going to do with all that cash?”

  “God, I don’t even know. Maybe try to pay down some of my credit card debit.”

  “Boring,” Julie said, walking across Ross’s tiny studio apartment to the crude wooden desk shoved in the corner by the bed. “I think you should use it to indulge a little. Maybe an upgrade.”

  “If you’re thinking flat screen television, we’re on the same wavelength.”

  Julie stopped at the desk, staring down at Ross’s laptop. An Extensa 600 from Texas Instruments (back when they’d actually made computers), it was old as original sin and the sticker that had been pasted to the top of it—randomly depicting a Saint Bernard with the words “BIG DOG” underneath—was faded and dirty. “I was thinking more along the lines of a new computer.”

  “What?” Ross said, instantly rising from the sofa. “You want me to get rid of the Big Dog?”

  “It is so weird that you named your laptop.”

  “It’s not that weird. Guys name their cars all the time.”

  “Yeah, and their dicks. Doesn’t make it normal.”

  Ross walked over to the desk and laid a hand rather protectively on his computer. “I can’t get rid of the Big Dog. I’ve been through a lot with this machine, we have a history.”