The House on Mayberry Road

by Troy McCombs

  ***

  John threw open the door and entered into another gloomy, dismal Friday afternoon. Motionless white clouds filled the sky. A small flock of geese flapped past silently overhead. The ground was still wet from an early morning shower, and the sound of water pouring into the sewers was the only one he could hear.

  He removed the key ring from his pocket and went to his car. Fumbling with the assortment of brass, John inserted one into the driver's side door, but stopped cold before turning. Somebody was watching him from across the street, exactly on the corner of 25th and Charles. He was sure. But who? And why?

  John slowly turned his head, his eyebrows lifting in mid-rotate. The expression on his face changed thrice in two seconds: from fear, to confusion, to joyous surprise.

  Sitting there beside a bright-red fire hydrant was the last creature he expected it to be. Lucky.

  The dog was simply watching him, panting, almost grinning. Its big black eyes sparkled brightly in even this suppressive atmosphere. Drops of saliva flew from his mouth as he barked at John, requesting his attention. John didn't react for over a minute. He was thinking...had the dog been here all night? Had he followed me home somehow? Had he used his sense of smell to trail me to this apartment?

  Lucky was here. That's what mattered. John took that as a good omen.

  He unlocked his car, opened the door, and patted his leg. The dog ran across the road in an instant, kicking up black water from behind its weathered paws. The psychic smiled as his trusty companion came barreling toward, jumped up on him, took him to the ground, and licked his face over and over.

  "Lucky!" John laughed.

  Its large rough tongue jabbed at his cheek, nose, eyes, and forehead. Doggie drool dripped and oozed everywhere.

  "Okay...that's enough."

  Lucky stepped back on command. A car horn honked in the distance. A bellow of thunder burped from above. But Lucky didn't budge. He just attended to his master.

  John sat up, wiped away some slobber from his face, and looked long and hard into the animal's eyes, astonished by how well it actually heeded.

  "You can hear me?"

  The dog barked.

  "You know what I am, don't you?"

  The dog barked again.

  "You could be hurt very badly by helping me."

  The dog barked once more.

  "It's your choice, my friend. Are you sure you want to come with me?"

  The dog jumped into the car. John sat on the sidewalk a moment, wondering if Lucky was more than Luck...maybe an angel covered in brown and black fur.

  ***

  There was but one vehicle parked near the Mayberry House today: a State Police Cruiser … at least until John's pulled up, making it two. He parked right beside the black cruiser, before Runner's Stream but behind the path leading to the strangest house on planet earth.

  Steera was nowhere in sight, and the area seemed tenfold deader than any time before, not unlike the dream only hours ago. Lucky sat in the passenger seat, seat-belt wrapped snugly across his chest, panting heavily.

  The dog whimpered, however, when he turned his head to the right. John followed his gaze. Through the trees, over some branches, and past some bushes, a small portion of Prestillion House could be seen.

  "Believe me, I know how you feel, Lucky."

  Lucky looked back at John and tugged on the seat-belt with his slimy canines. His new owner reached over and unbuckled him.

  "Sorry about that. I know you didn't want to be buckled, but as if you couldn't tell, I'm a pretty bad driver."

  The dog barked, then pawed at the door. John reached over and opened it for him.

  "You need some fresh air? I know that as I—"

  Lucky jumped out and darted into the forest before he could finish.

  "Lucky! Wait!" John eagerly went to undo his own seat-belt. By the time he managed to push the switch, the dog was gone. Lucky had disappeared into the surrounding greenery, the loudness of his barks fading gradually.

  John stepped out of his car and looked toward some swaying bushes. He listened for a moment, waiting—hoping—to hear something.

  But no sound came.

  "Lucky!?" He raised his voice.

  Suddenly, one of the bushes starting swaying anew, disturbed by an unseen presence. John's eyes focused in on the leaves attached to the shrubs long, thin branches. Slowly, thoughts started to seep inside his head, thoughts he could not block or control. Some unseen presence was, indeed, putting them there. They were like snapshots from a camera, pictures of bad things meant to offset his concentration...

  Lucky with his head cut off and his internal organs ripped out from his stump...

  Tamera, John's mother, slicing her wrists open and laughing crazily...

  Sarah Pouster, the little girl John had tried to save, hanging herself over and over again.

  "You've failed your mission! Give up already," she said. "You were not ever--

  —The thoughts vanished when he saw two beautiful white bunnies appear from underneath the trembling bush. They were small, probably had been recently born, their little noses twitching, their tender ears as pink as the sky during sunset. A truly pleasant sight for fatigued eyes.

  Crunch!

  A twig beneath John's foot snapped in half. The rabbits lifted their heads, startled. They hopped past him and sprang up the steep hill behind him, running away like children toward the great white light. He watched them go with a smile on his face. All the horrors of the world actually ceased to exist for one small moment.

  But the bark that ensued a second later made him turn back around so quickly he almost fell. Lucky had found something or somebody and, by its vicious vocals, wanted to tear it apart.

  John took off into the woods, down the wild path, whose overgrown weeds were taller than just two days ago. His white Nike's turned brown and left behind noticeable tread marks in the mud as he plodded through it. Lucky continued to growl and howl at full volume. His rampaging bellows echoed all through the valley, drowning out every other natural noise for miles.

  Soon his owner closed the distance. Slowed down. Over some small, twisted branches, he could see just what his pet was enraged at: The Prestillion House.

  Out of breath, John finally entered the clearing. “Lucky...”

  As he spoke, Lucky ceased barking and sat down.

  "Scared the shit out of me!" Sheriff Steera was standing over by a tree, his gun drawn but lowered. There was a nervous shake in his clasped hands. "It's your dog?"

  "Yeah. What were you going to do? Shoot him?"

  "Hey, all I know is I was standing here, waiting on you, and this beast comes running toward me like a hungry black bear. I didn't shoot him, did I?"

  John walked over to Steera, who holstered his Glock.

  "Nobody's here but us?" John could not believe it.

  "Safer that way."

  "You sure about that?"

  "John, I've had three adventurers go into that house 'cause they were overly curious, and look what happened to them. I can't have any more of my guys going near this place."

  "Fair enough. But when I go in, who's going to help me if I get in trouble?"

  Steera looked from John to the house. John followed suit. The place looked no different to the psychic, but it felt different than before. Worse. It had put dreams in his head while he was asleep. It had seen further into his past than he thought anyone ever could. It hungered. It had eaten at least two of Steera's officers already. What in the hell else was it capable of?

  Then Steera asked him the much dreaded question: "Are you going in?"

  "Yeah. I have to."

  After taking five minutes to gear up—Steera gave him a flashlight, walkie-talkie, and tied a rope around his waist (to pull him out quickly if something went wrong)—John approached the towering house with Lucky by his side. His legs wanted to give out from under him. His body sweat in places he didn't know had glands. The taco he'd eaten earlier wanted to reappear from the sam
e place it went down. But he kept going anyway, forcing himself forward like a fireman into an inferno. His thoughts were scattered worse now than before the day he began practicing meditation. Nothing gave him comfort, not even the Doberman walking alongside him.

  Steera watched from a distance—from the other end of the clearing, as a matter of fact. His eyes were wide open, glassy, and his obese hairy hands held onto the rope snugly.

  John carefully tip-toed up the three porch steps and turned on the flashlight. With one nervous, sloppy motion, Rollings turned his head and looked back at Steera—and the world—one last time, as if saying farewell to it all before entering through the door.

  He didn't have to grab the knob; he didn't need to reach for it. The door squeaked open by itself. A musty, stale draft of cold air blew from the expanding crack. It reminded John instantly of the smell of his grandparents' attic—an ancient memory almost forgotten. Then, with all the courage he could muster, he and Lucky entered the house.

  The inside was far more visible now in the daytime than at night, and not quite as intimidating. Still, however, the windows appeared tinted, but that was probably because the place was old and dusty. Nobody had lived here for over a hundred years. John's beam of mag-light captured every particle of dust, dirt and foreign microbe floating in the air. Straight ahead stood a compact even staircase whose railings were entwined with cobwebs. He couldn't even see much of the wood, save the steps. They were cracked, decayed, and rotted. Lucky sneezed so suddenly that John almost ran out the door in fright. But when he realized the source of the sound, his nerves eased.

  A little.

  Turning to his left, John shined the light into the next room and stepped into it. The floorboards beneath his feet whined noisily. Lucky followed closely behind, sniffling through the dust, unable to see much.

  This room, though dulled with age, had a strangely homey feel to it. A glorious shaft of sunshine poured in through the arched window by the far wall, shined on an antique dresser, bounced off its cracked mirror, and radiated back out toward its original source. The funny thing was this: the sun wasn't shining in Bellsville today; it was covered by a thick mass of storm clouds. Even if they'd parted momentarily, the sun was shining from the opposite direction this time of day. John theorized that this either wasn't the real sun, or that it was being manipulated to one's own liking, and only a source as powerful as a demigod had that ability.

  No. It can't be the real sun, John told himself as he stepped farther into the small, perfectly square room. Besides the window and crumbling dresser, a mattress-less bed and nightstand were also inside. The metal springs barely attached to the rusted bed frame were sharp as razors, and the floor beneath them was scattered with feathers and clumps of a dangerous material John recognized quickly: asbestos. He covered his mouth and nose with his collar, just to be safe.

  The frame of the bed, though chewed and destroyed, was too small to have fit an adult. And when John's eyes shot to the far corner, through a piece of twisted bed frame and behind the stand, he realized that this was, or had been, a child's room. Probably Sandra's, because a single, one-eyed, 19th-century doll was staring straight at him. Its clothes were so dirty they were black, and its face was threaded thoroughly with sewing string.

  The cold chills ran up John's back, came through his arm, and into his hand. The flashlight trembled. Lucky looked up at him, concerned.

  "It's okay, it's just a doll," he told himself aloud. He knew many stories of old dolls possessed by dead people, witches, and warlocks. Such toys, he knew, could even be as dangerous as pure-bred Ouija boards. Milton-Bradley boards, no, but boards designed from specific wood and medieval tools, yes. Still, he wanted the doll. By touching it, he could have gained insight into the house's prudent past.

  Go get it. It's not going to hurt you.

  But the rubber in his legs kept him from going any farther.

  And the rubber almost made him crash to the floor when Lucky suddenly turned and ran upstairs, barking.

  John swung around, aimed his flashlight up the battered stairs. The dog was gone right after the tungsten beam lit up its hindquarters.

  "Lucky? Lucky!"

  Lucky, from somewhere above ground level, whimpered. The whimper died out...fast.

  John hurried up the stairs, the mag-light in his hand bouncing around, its diffused beam lighting up the banister like a disco ball in a club on opening night.

  "Luuuucky!" John's scream sounded dull and harsh in the house.

  That singular doll in the child's bedroom turned its head and shut its one open eye.

  Outside, Charlie Steera gripped the rope with all the strength in his fat forearms. He could hear the psychic's frantic voice, and could feel the psychic's only lifeline growing taut.

  Back inside, John ascended the remaining three steps in one stride. He turned to the left, then turned to the right, searching for his possibly injured—or dead—dog. But Lucky was nowhere in sight.

  The small balcony on which he was standing overlooked the downstairs living room, gave a glance into the kitchen beyond, and creaked loudly with any little movement. An angled window behind him silhouetted his figure as he came forward, treading down the narrow hallway arched neatly like the walls of some old cave.

  Another whimper...

  "I'm coming, buddy."

  John stormed forward, passing by an array of closed doors on either side of him. There were twelve of them in all, and they were grouped so closely together that the rooms themselves could not possibly have permitted more than a few cubic feet of space in each.

  But the door John was looking at was not closed or on either side. It was partially open, right straight ahead. A stripe of daylight shimmering through a window within lit up Lucky's wagging tail. That's all he could see, in addition to a decayed rocking chair. Just what Lucky was wagging its tail about aroused John's curiosity to the boiling point.

  He opened the door quickly but gently. It creaked noisily. At last, he stepped into the next room. His eyes shot over to the window, then down at Lucky, who was staring excitedly at a figure bent down and turned away in the far corner. That's exactly where the mag-light beam shimmered.

  The being was entirely nude, its outward form flesh-like but scaly, its color one shade darker than albino. It looked smaller than a normal-sized man, but not as small as a dwarf. It was trembling brutally, either afraid, or laughing, or...cold?

  John didn't know. He just walked toward it, trying to make as little noise as possible. It, like Lucky, had a tail—a stubby one—attached to the end of its spinal column, and dangling down over its butt crack. The body structure of the thing, which John didn't think was a body at all (he believed this was solely a non-transparent spirit), was bizarre at best. Bones protruded from places where there weren't supposed to be bones. Additionally, some of its limbs were bent in unusual directions improbable in human anatomy. Its feet, for instance, were twisted backward and up, resting in a very painful-looking position where John could see its dark-blue toenails. Its quivering head didn't move like a person's, either, but in a much wider range of motion. Upon further observation, John noticed that it was utterly hairless. He felt his own hair begin to fall flat.

  Was it that? A creature? Could it be? Some prehistoric mammal, or reptile, even, trapped in the Prestillion Home and unable to leave?

  John slowly reached out for its shoulder. It trembled so savagely now that the psychic thought it was going to crumble. The floorboards wavered with its erratic movement. Lucky watched from a few feet away as its owner actually touched the thing. His warm hand against its cold flesh produced a little steam.

  John could not believe it...a physical, living, organic specimen of a being unknown to mankind.

  It suddenly stopped shaking. It felt the foreign being touching its shoulder. That's when the creature twisted its head completely around without moving its torso. It came face to face with a creature it had never seen before.

  John stumbled ba
ckward, mouth agape. The two unfamiliar beings looked into each other's eyes, both afraid of the other's intended purpose. One had two brown eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ears; the other had three red eyes, one small nostril, and a beak, its face twisted a hundred different ways. Each found the other ugly. Each wanted to know more about the other. Neither could really move. John forgot about his psychic skills, or even that he had a voice box. The freakish imp with the long, skinny arms may or may not have had one at all. The Doberman watched them both, its eyes sparkling, its mouth open, its tongue hanging out. Drool oozed onto the floorboards below.

  It took a while for any sense to come back to Rollings' mind, but when it finally did, he took a mental picture of the creature. He remembered he had a job to do, so he opened his mouth to speak.

  "Hel—wh—just—I'm—an—" But the words would simply not come out right. The whole time, he did not feel any animosity from the animal. No anger. No frustration. Just uneasiness. And he did pick up on certain sensations about its life, its habitat. It did not reproduce in any physical way. It was only semi-intelligent. It was dependent on its own race and had no idea where it was now or how it had gotten here. It learned fairly well, but had a very limited memory. It fed on some kind of minerals buried underground in caverns—

  John concentrated, trying to see further into its world. He strained to look past the veil of the human eyes and, as he did, his nose began to bleed. His head began to ache. He began to feel actual physical pain in all his joints.

  He stopped.

  Lucky growled.

  The creature turned its head back an inch more and looked at the dog. An earthly expression manifested on its face. Stark horror.

  Suddenly, it stretched its mouth open so wide it could have swallowed a small football. John could see into the back of its quivering throat. What is it doing? Lucky darted out of the room and down the stairs, whimpering and howling louder now than he'd done outside moments ago. The only window in the room shattered into pieces. John jolted backward, puzzled. He had no idea what was happening. Glass fell everywhere. The creature kept its pose.

  "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you.” He went to place a hand on its shoulder. It recoiled back into the corner. The small pieces of glass lying on the floor cracked and snapped apart.