The House on Mayberry Road

by Troy McCombs

  Kids dressed in snow-suits were everywhere, pulling sleds, throwing snowballs, laughing, building snowmen. A winter wonderland.

  "Alright." Steera jerked the stick into drive. The cabin jolted. "Let's make like a fetus and head out."

  The vehicle squashed through some wet snow and drove down Yankee Street.

  Chapter 16

  Time passed too quickly for Rollings that afternoon. He did not stay in the SUV at any of the Sheriff's stops. He went in with him at Empire Foods, the Chester County Post Office, the Lecorrd City Building, and Family Dollar. He realized how much he missed being around people and being in normal environments where there were no astral projections, spontaneous predictions, or ghostly manifestations. He had almost forgotten what it was like being human. He had almost lost sight of himself during the past few weeks. But today—today was his vacation, a day to only be himself. He shopped at Pokin's, the second-hand clothing store, for nearly an hour, and purchased two shirts, two pairs of jeans, a package of underwear, and then he was done. They headed back to Steera's house at dusk.

  The snow was really starting to fall when the SUV pulled into the driveway twenty minutes before six. The roads were growing increasingly bad. Traffic had come to a standstill on certain local roadways. Luckily, the salt trucks were going up and down the many streets of Lecorrd pretty consistently; the city wasn't taking any chances with the nasty winter weather. To John, as he stepped from the vehicle with a bag full of new clothes in hand, it felt like five below zero. The wind chill made it feel like twenty below. Charlie's central heat was calling his name.

  Both men's faces flushed when they left the blistering cold behind and entered the warm, cozy house. John shut the door, ending the attack of Old Man Winter. He absentmindedly threw his bag of clothes on the chair. Steera turned on the light and tossed his keys onto the stand.

  "Want a drink?" The Sheriff made way for the kitchen.

  "No, I think I'm going to take a quick shower and try on my new clothes."

  "Okay. While you're in there, I'll call your phone and listen for it, just in case it is around and just got misplaced. It could have fallen or slipped between a cushion."

  John headed toward the bathroom through the pitch-black halls. Once he found his way to the bathroom, he entered, turned on the lights, locked the door, and started the water. This room was no exception to the others.

  It, like the rest of the house, was just as glamorous, cleaner than The Holy High. It smelled good for being a shitbox; the most dominant odor was that of scrubbing bubbles. The lights were sharp, well-placed, bright but not blinding. The mirror was without a mark and looked brand new. He went to it and looked at his reflection. He did not want this little interlude to be over with. He did not want to ever return to his line of work. It was stressful. Debilitating. He couldn't picture a worse job. It didn't even have many rewards, if any. He still saw Sarah in the mirror of regret, dangling, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. The worst was that sheet of paper stuck to her T-shirt. I'm a Freak. It had been written in such innocent handwriting, by a hand of purity.

  Would the image ever go away?

  Would his guilt ever subside?

  Maybe, he thought, he should have been the one hanging, dead, with the ‘I'm a Freak’ sign attached to his shirt.

  I'm a Freak.

  Then he remembered Ben and his message. "You gotta learn how to do this—"

  But Rollings wouldn't have any of it. Ben was wrong and had been ill for some time. The man could barely get out of bed, let alone preach quotations to someone who'd seen things that would turn an Atheist into a Christian.

  He shook his head and grabbed a towel. Before he undressed, he answered a sudden knock on the bathroom door.

  "I thought you might like your new clothes." Charlie smiled and handed him the Pokin's bag.

  "Thanks," John replied, taking it and closing door. He set the bag down on the edge of the sink.

  Steam billowed out of the shiny tub. Some of the mirror began to fog. The sound of the water in his ears was calming, lightening. He took off his clothes and stepped into the tub...forgetting a detail far more important than merely getting cleaned up:

  The Wolfs bane.

  He remembered it right in the nick of time. Had he stepped forward an inch or two farther, its power would have be rendered ineffective by distance.

  You almost just signed your own death warrant, dummy!

  His heart beating normally again, he grabbed it, placed it on the lip of the tub, and commenced to take his shower. The heat of the water against his cool flesh washed away not only dirt, but his wandering, negative thoughts. All accumulated waste, physical and emotional, spiraled down the thirsty silver drain. The persistent shhhh behind his head was soothing to his ears. He felt like he was being baptized again. He felt like his sins were being burned up by liquid fire.

  He was done in less than twenty minutes, a predictable amount of time for him.

  After shutting off the faucet, he opened the sliding glass shower door and stepped out into a steam-filled room, where he patted himself dry with a towel. He dressed, grabbed the Wolfs bane, and slid it into his pocket. Then he walked out the door.

  He padded down the hall, first fast, then slower, then very slow. His stomach suddenly began to ache. His mind unexpectedly began to weigh heavily inside his cranium. The farther he got from the bathroom, the sicker he became. He felt as though he was leaving a child behind in the tub under a running faucet. He was receding from an importance he needed almost as much as air. Something had gone terribly wrong. He felt D'kourikai close to him again.

  John came to an abrupt stop mid-hall, slowly turned, and looked back. He could not breathe, could barely move. His eyes fixed on the Wolfs bane lying on the floor right outside the bathroom door. It was triple the distance for its use to be effective from where he now stood. But how had it gotten there? He knew he'd certainly placed it in his pocket.

  Maybe I'm seeing things.

  He reached into the jean pocket where he believed he placed it. His hand felt a gross outcropping of tiny broken threads, and lastly...a huge hole at the base. There was a hole in his pocket. A hole that may well have led to his own deep grave.

  He wished dearly that he had not been so cheap, that he had bought the jeans at JC Penny's, Macy's, Elder-Beerman’s—anywhere besides Pokin's. Trying to save Steera a few bucks by going to a second-hand clothing store, he may have sold his very soul over to the entity he feared more than Balaam. Stupidly, he knew Pokin's was well-known for selling defective clothes that ripped apart easily and sometimes had tears in them. But he never imagined it would cause this.

  Now it was too late. The Wolfs bane was almost twenty feet away and D'kourikai was tracking him quickly. He could feel its eyes spotting him, latching on to his location, coming through invisible barriers, space, and time.

  Maybe it's not too late...Rollings wanted to think. Was there any chance he could get to his defensive weapon before It got to him? Was he fast enough? Could his legs move like the Road Runner's?

  Try was all he could do.

  Drawing a breath, he thrust his momentum forward and began to take his first darting step back toward the open bathroom door. But he decided to abort in early-flight when a guided beam of intense red fire spewed out from the still-steaming doorway, accompanied by a loud, gritty sound. The searing flames were not directed at him; they were directed at, and they obliterated, the Wolfs bane. The surrounding carpet also got torched, blackened. Some of the paint on the walls peeled and curled. A faint, purple smoke dispersed from the blaze and spilled down the hall. It smelled like Iodine, and felt like micro-thin feathers as it brushed against John's skin. A second later, it extinguished on its own, and only the source remained.

  He peered through the mist, trying to see what he was afraid of seeing. Slowly, like an illusion, he watched its eyes appear within the confines of his reality—one, then two, then three, then four—all the way up to twenty-two. Its ceil
ing-bound body bubbled into physical form atop the bathroom door frame, its limbs emerged, and its hideous face appeared. D'kourikai was there, staring at him, into him.

  "Rollings..." Its voice rumbled through the house.

  "John? John! Are you all right?" Charlie Steera's voice called from a nearby room. His heavy footsteps became audible to both, John and beast. His stout body became visible soon afterward.

  "Charlie, get out of here!" John warned him.

  "No!" Slime spewed from the entities mouth. "He can stay. Maybe he will learn something. You humans learn, but you forget so easily, so often." It chuckled. "I should kill you right now for what you've done to me. The orange fluid that left this scar! You dare go back to her, I will see it. I will kill her and leave you wounded. You try to block my link to you and I will destroy everything that is yours. The time is here, Rollings. It has finally arrived. I want you at my house tomorrow, before nightfall. You had better be there. If not, well...I can make your life a living hell for hundreds of years. You will beg me to end you, but I will not. You will get no peace, ever."

  Like a flick of the fingers, the entity disappeared, along with the purple haze intruding the hallway. Neither man could move or speak. Steera gazed at his ruined carpet as if it was the greatest of his problems; Rollings gazed at the ashes of the Wolfs bane, knowing that this was finally the moment to stand up or fall.

  If I fall, I will never feel ground again.

  He had less than twenty four hours to prepare himself. During that time, and during the entire night, he tried to calm his nerves, to pray silently in a distant corner of his mind where he hoped D'kourikai could not see or hear. He didn't think It could, but could not understand why. It had hindered his meditation before. It had given him instantaneous migraines, the kind that powerful aspirins would not remedy. Was he doing something different? Or was It giving him a break until tomorrow? Either way, sleep was out of the question. He could not relax. Exhaustion and stress were his only two apparent resources for the next several hours. After that, he was either a hero, or no more. Steera slept good, snored for most of the night. Lucky stayed up barking in Jennifer's backyard, trying to pull himself free from the chain that confined him. Jennifer slept restlessly, sporadically, calling John every time she woke up. She had called him fifty times since mid-afternoon, without any answer. Had something happened to him?, was the repeating thought that played through her head. She had no other way of reaching him and did not know Steera's number. At about four A.M. she was out like a light.

  John gazed through the window at one point, looked up at the moon for a while, and said, with tears in his eyes, "Mom, if anything goes wrong, I love you." He rested after that, but his mind did not shut off.

  Chapter 17

  The morning bloomed with a downpour of rain. Much of the snow on the ground was washed away. No sun showed itself. Horrific dark clouds covered the sky in a quilt of depression. Steera's SUV was no longer parked in the driveway. He'd left John a note on the kitchen table, which read: Will meet up with you at the clearing. Take money on table for a cab.

  After reading it, John sat on the couch and looked at his reflection in the turned-off television screen. He felt so many things and could not control one of his renegade thoughts. His stomach growled for food, but he was too tense to eat. He was so tired, his head felt like a bowling ball. He knew what he had to do, and remembered suddenly what Vaul had told him recently: The sooner you do this, the sooner you get it over with.

  The phone on the nearby stand was standing tall on the charger, a white plastic transmitter/receiver ready to reach out and touch someone. He looked over at it. Everything inside him told him not to reach for it, but he did. His trembling fingers eventually pressed the right numbers, the ringing entered his ear, and the next thing he knew, he was waiting for a cab to come get him.

  ***

  One hour passed.

  Rollings stood alone in the clearing, facing the Mayberry House, amongst several dead, torched soldiers, most of whom were younger than him. Their bodies were still smoldering, their skin black, their limbs stiff and bent at strange angles. There must have been twenty of them scattered about the field. Vaul was one. There were no survivors, no voices, no movement from anything or anybody. The place was a tomb, and the house was an organism of death, run by the most despicable thing in any dimension. John was on his own, moments away from a supremely arduous confrontation.

  He skimmed the house from bottom to top: the strained, cracked foundation; the porch and its two paint-chipped posts; the front door that began to bubble outwardly before his very eyes; and the two topmost windows that moved vertically on their own, slanting at the inner corners like the brows of some enraged animal. The roof titled back, barely noticeable, and the porch roof curved into a little smile. Wood, plaster, and concrete were alive in a construction of evil. John just stood there, unmoved. He knew he was ready—It was ready—to now receive him. The door, which suddenly exploded into shards of splinters, confirmed this intuition.

  He stepped forward...stepped forward again and again and again. The walk seemed hours long, yet was so short he thought he had regressed time. His left foot met with the first step, his right on the second, and his left again at the top. He avoided the broken pieces of door, took a deep breath, and then entered the premises more reluctantly than a claustrophobic into a closet.

  As soon as he was inside, there was a loud ding, and the doorway was suddenly blocked off by some large, foreign black piece of matter. John turned and touched it. It felt like cloth in metallic form. Strong. Immovable. There was no way out here.

  ***

  Nobody was home at Jennifer's house except Lucky, still tied up in the backyard and still trying to break free from the chain. His barks were deafening, and had been on the neighbor's nerves for some time now. Rick Petra was half tempted to put that annoying mutt down with his twelve gauge. Shut him up so he could sleep.

  The dog's paws were bloody, bleeding from long hours of scratching at the spike in the ground that had his chain restrained to the immediate area. Its teeth were aching; some of its canines were chipped and jagged from biting at one point in the metal link. He needed out. He knew his beloved master was in mortal danger. He knew he wasn't far, and he knew that he needed vital help soon. Too soon. If he had to chew off his legs to get out, he was willing. He would have done anything for John. Even given him his life.

  Trying again at the spike, Lucky clawed at the soil, digging deeper around it. He'd already dug a crater the size of a basketball. A mound of dirt was piled up two feet away by his food dish. Slowly, he felt the source of the obstruction weakening, coming out, rocking from side to side. The large piece of rusted metal was becoming more visible. Lucky's loud roars ravaged on, now accompanied by small whimpers. Eventually, tired and pained with wounded paws, he gave up digging and looked toward the two garbage cans standing over by the fence. He was not going to struggle anymore. He was going to break free, no matter how bad it hurt. His plan was going to work. He was going to John. Now.

  Quieting, suppressing the pain, and getting into attack position, Lucky gazed at the two Rubbermaids overflowing with garbage. Steam billowed from his snout. Determination burned in his eyes. He just focused on his expected route of escape and, in his own way, cleared his mind of doubtful canine thoughts. Rick Petra watched from his next door kitchen window as the dog stood there, finally silent, in a bull-charging pose.

  What's he doing?

  Then the animal rocketed off, running intensely away, out of his field of vision. Lucky galloped toward those garbage cans as fast as he could. His wounded paws left behind small smears of blood in the cold grass. Drops of drool trickled off his protruding tongue. The chain that connected him to the spike rapidly gave slack and extended, the metal quietly rattling together as he gained distance. Meeting the garbage cans at full speed, Lucky jumped up onto them. The tremendous momentum ripped the spike right out of the ground. The dog prevailed and leapt over
the fence and into the alley. He was now free to voyage diligently through the streets, looking to assist Rollings, a long chain still connected to his collar.

  Chapter 18

  John turned away from the sealed front door of the Mayberry House and bumped into something, or someone. Grunting, startled, he looked up at the obstruction. Relief flushed over him.

  "Charlie Steera.” He sighed in relief.

  Charlie was standing on the first step up from the bottom of the staircase, Glock pistol in hand. He looked ready but stiff. His eyes appeared keen.

  "What are you doing here?" Rollings was confused.

  "Waiting for you. Together, we will destroy this house. I want to kill the damn thing that lied to me about my wife. It said that if I brought it a hair from a powerful soul, it would help me, as I've already told you. It, all this time, wanted to just help itself. Induce havoc. I want to be able to say that I helped stop a monster from another world."

  John looked at the gun in his hand. It looked useful enough, but probably wouldn't hurt D'kourikai at all. "What's the point of the weapon? How in the hell did you even get in here with it?"

  "I preoccupied It. If you keep your nemesis' mind on one thing, he may very well overlook something else."

  John was surprised with his partner's contentious reasoning. "But how? How did you do it? What did you bait It with?"

  Charlie smiled. "Y—"

  His statement was lost when the loud, piercing shriek from the basement about shattered both men's eardrums. They felt the high-pitched frequency in their bones. A very minimal electrical charge shot into the bottoms of their feet and flowed up their legs. Whatever had caused the sound was alive, an organism apparently in severe pain.

  Steera stepped down and walked over toward the kitchen doorway, gun raised. John hurried over to him and threw a hand on his shoulder to stop him.