Dweller

by Jeff Strand

  “You can’t take my kids away.”

  “When you took Garrett out there and let him go near that thing, you gave up all rights as a parent. You’re out of the picture. I love you, but there’s something hideous in your brain, and I’m taking our children far away from it.”

  Toby shook his head. “No. There’s no way I’m letting you do that. You want a divorce? Fine. Bring me the papers. I’ll sign whatever you want. Just don’t take Garrett and Hannah away from me.”

  “This isn’t your choice anymore.”

  “I’ll fight it.”

  “The hell you will. You do one thing to stop me and I’ll tell everybody about your dearest, most darling friend. I’ll hold a goddamn press conference. They’ll tear those woods apart looking for that freak, and they’ll blow him away. I’m not bluffing.” There was a cruel edge to her voice now, almost sadistic.

  “Please don’t take them,” he said in a soft voice.

  “You’re lucky I’m not calling the police right now. What you need to do is go out into the woods, put a bullet into that thing, and straighten your life out. Is that where you were all those times, those hundreds of times? What’s wrong with you? How can you not see the insanity of this?”

  “I do see it.”

  “Then why the hell are you bringing our son out there?”

  “Because he’s our friend!”

  “Not anymore. We’ll work the money and property out like civilized people, and you can say good-bye, but if you ever try to contact our kids, it’s over.”

  “If you spent time with him, you’d understand.”

  “Get help, Toby. Go to a hotel. I’ll call you when we’re ready to leave.”

  “You should kill her,” said Larry. “Orgy of violence!”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

  “Change of heart? You killed me. What’d I do, beat you up a couple of times? This bitch is stealing your kids.”

  “I deserve it.”

  “Nobody deserves that! Did you see how smug she looked? Go get the gun and shoot her in the back while she’s packing. How long has it been since Owen’s had a nice taste of juicy human flesh?”

  “Go away.”

  “So you’re going to let her win? What a loser. Loser in high school, loser now. Think how good it would feel to pull that trigger and watch the back of her head explode.”

  “It would feel horrible.”

  “You’re not using your imagination. Picture it with me. The bullet slamming into her skull, shattering it, gray matter splattering against the wall. Let’s see her steal Garrett from you when she’s a bloody corpse. I’ll cheer when Owen starts ripping tendons away from bone with his teeth.”

  “You can just go to hell,” Toby said. “I’ll never hurt her.”

  “No more sneaking around. Remember how great it was when you moved out of your parents’ place? You could see Owen whenever you wanted. Why’d you get married? All that freedom, gone. For what?”

  “I love her.”

  “And she loves you right back, huh? Is that why she’s taking everything away from you? Did she even try to understand? She thinks that she’s so much better than you that she can just kidnap your kids without letting you tell your side?”

  “My side is fucked up.”

  “It is. I won’t argue with you there. It’s fucked up in a way you don’t see very often. But you know what? When you’re twelve years into a relationship, the other person should be willing to deal with the occasional fucked-up situation.”

  “I put Garrett’s life in danger.”

  “How long did you keep the chains on Owen? How many precautions did you take? And Owen didn’t do anything!”

  “He might have.”

  “Had you not been there, Owen would’ve carried him to safety. The newspapers would all have a front-page cover story on the hero monster who saved the life of an innocent little boy. Kill that bitch.”

  “No.”

  “Shoot her.”

  “No.”

  “Make all of your problems go away.”

  “I’m not going to hurt her. This was all my fault. Maybe…maybe she’ll get over it and she’ll let me see them sometimes. It doesn’t have to be a lot. Just sometimes.”

  “Yeah, all right, way to stand up for yourself. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”

  Sarah was kind at the end. She let him give Garrett a kiss. He whispered that everything would be all right, that he’d take good care of Owen.

  He brushed Hannah’s hair one last time. She was too little to understand what was going on, but when she gave him that last hug, she seemed to acknowledge the finality of it.

  Toby didn’t cry when they left. He just sat there in the living room, numb. He stared at nothing.

  He should have never brought Garrett out there.

  But that was obvious from the beginning, wasn’t it?

  Then, when he could bring himself to stand, he went out into the forest to see Owen, and then he did cry.

  “I was right,” Toby said. “No matter what happens in my life, no matter what I go through, you’re my only real friend.”

  Yes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY GLIMPSES

  1998

  The second beer went down even smoother than the first. He had quite a few more to go, but he’d gotten an early start and he’d be nice and unconscious before sundown. It was funny, really. He’d suffered through all this misery, and the solution was right here in a couple of six-packs of cheap beer.

  He drank until he was comfortably buzzed, and then he drank some more.

  “I understand that there are extenuating circumstances, but this is the newspaper business. No-shows are just not acceptable.”

  Toby shrugged. “Am I fired?”

  “You should take a leave of absence, until you get things sorted out.”

  “Paid leave?”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Then take this job, and twist it right up your ass. Just right up in there, all the way.”

  “I think you should leave now.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably not such a bad idea.”

  “Hey, kiddo, how’s it going?”

  “I miss you, Daddy.”

  “I miss you, too, Hannah. Are you taking care of your brother?”

  “He’s stupid.”

  “Well, so are lots of people. You’re speaking to one of them right now. Did you do anything fun today?”

  “Toby?” It was Sarah.

  “I wasn’t done talking to her.”

  “She has to get ready for bed.”

  “Come on, Sarah, it’s not like I can feed her to a fucking monster over the telephone. I don’t even know where you guys are.”

  “We’ll try to call you next week.”

  Dial tone.

  Toby wanted to throw the telephone to the floor and stomp on it until it was reduced to plastic powder, but he really couldn’t afford to buy a new one.

  “Oh, yeah, I’m rockin’ now,” Toby told Owen. “I’m working at the fac-to-ry. Monkey work. You wouldn’t believe the crap that a grown man will do for eight hours a day. Hour two, I want to put a bullet in my head. Hour three, I want to put a bullet in everyone else’s head. Hour four, I just sort of space out. I can still do the job, though. I don’t know why they don’t have a robot do it. Probably because even a robot would go crazy doing that for eight hours a day—it would take out a gun and blow its microchips out of its head. I did draw a cartoon today, though. Started to draw one, at least. It was a piece of shit so I threw it away. Christ, my head hurts.”

  1999

  “Happy, happy birthday to me!” said Toby, alone in his bedroom. “You know what would be nice? A phone call from my family! Is that such a big request? Am I asking for a fuckin’ unicorn? I don’t need a cake and candles, but maybe a thirty-second phone call would keep my life out of the sewer! Pretty good revenge, ex-wife of mine! Leave me alone on my birthday! Yeaaaahh, good one, Sarah! You win
!”

  “You know, Sarah, I understand that I did something terrible, but seriously, why wouldn’t you let me talk to my own kids on my birthday? Are you taking pleasure from this? Is this fun for you? The newest game sensation to sweep the nation, Torture Toby?”

  “You did talk to Garrett,” Sarah informed him. “You scared him and he hung up the phone crying.”

  “I…” Toby had no response to that, so he trailed off without completing his thought. “Oh.”

  “And your birthday is tomorrow.”

  “Owen, Owen, Owen. We should get out of this dumpy town. Go on the road. Have adventures. See shit. What do you think?”

  Owen said nothing. Actually, though it was a hard trick to pull off, Owen looked kind of disgusted with him.

  “What’s the matter? Am I scaring you?”

  Yes.

  “Ooooh, the big bad monster is scared of the skinny drunk guy! Sorry to make you uncomfortable, sir. Want me to leave? I’d hate to think of you spending the last year of the millennium with a drunken dick like me. Unless you’re one of those whiners who doesn’t think the millennium ends until 2001. Either way, hopefully the twenty-first century will bring better things to your life. Let’s drink to that.”

  2000

  “Oh my God, is it Christmastime already…?”

  2001

  Garrett had quit asking how Owen was doing, no doubt upon strict orders from Sarah, which made sense since she’d forbidden Toby to discuss the subject during their increasingly rare phone calls.

  When he’d brought up the subject of an actual in-person visit, she’d gently suggested that it wasn’t a good idea. When he’d pushed the issue, she’d hung up on him.

  The doctor’s expression was unreadable as he walked into the examination room, studying his clipboard. Why was he looking at the clipboard? Surely he knew what news he was delivering. Was he just avoiding eye contact?

  “We’re going to run some more tests just to be sure, but it appears to be benign, so that’s good news. I don’t anticipate that news changing, but we like to cover all of our bases. Now, as I’d warned, you are going to need surgery to have the tumor removed, which is a relatively simple procedure.”

  “Slicing me open and cutting something out is simple?”

  “That’s why I used the word ‘relatively,’ Mr. Floren. Compared to a quadruple bypass surgery, yes, this is simple.”

  “You’re right, I apologize. I’m just nervous. I should consider myself lucky. Fifty-six years old and this is my first surgery.”

  “That is a pretty good run. Don’t worry. We’ll take great care of you. You’ll be off your feet for a few weeks, but this is far better than the alternative, trust me.”

  Toby lay at home, watching television. He was going absolutely stir-crazy. He really hoped that Owen had understood him when he described the procedure and explained that he wouldn’t be able to visit for a couple of months. It sickened him to think that his friend might be wandering around, lonely and frightened and thinking that something horrible had happened.

  Well, technically, a surgeon had sliced open Toby’s body. That was pretty horrible. He was certainly feeling the effects of the scalpel. The way he felt now, he might not be up for a trip to the woods ever again.

  Of course, that wasn’t true. As soon as he could walk a couple of miles without his stomach popping open, he’d be out there to see Owen. Maybe sooner.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Toby said. “I don’t think I’ve ever shown you pictures of the World Trade Center, but they’re these huge twin towers in New York City. There was this plane sticking right out of it—terrorists flew a plane right into the building! Can you imagine that? And we were all watching this in the lunchroom, totally freaked out, and then right on live TV the towers collapsed! People were gasping and crying and getting mad—it was one of the most messed-up things I’ve ever seen. And another frickin’ plane bashed into the Pentagon. The Pentagon. I’m surprised they didn’t go for the White House. Trust me, Owen, you’re much better off living out here in your bubble. The world has gone berserk.”

  2002

  “I need to repair my life. You’ve gotta help me out, Owen. I can’t do it by myself.”

  “I just don’t even care anymore. Maybe someday I won’t wake up. That’ll be nice. You could take care of all my funeral arrangements. You get the house, you know. Everything else is going to my kids, who might be dead for all I know, but you get the house. It’s like some crazy old lady leaving her worldly possessions to her cats. I don’t know what you’re gonna do with it, but it’s there if you want it.”

  “He says this one might be malignant. Can you believe that shit?”

  2003

  “Hello, my name is Toby, and I’m an alcoholic. I had my last drink in the hallway before I came in here.”

  “So she says, ‘Sorry, if you can’t get it up, that’s not my fault.’ And I said, ‘I’m the one paying for this, so it’s your job. If you can’t do it right, I’ll take my business someplace else.’ That’s exactly what I told her. And then she tries to leave without giving me my money back! I said, ‘Hey, you can’t do that! I know what I paid for!’ and she says she’s going to call her boyfriend. And so I said fine, you know, if that’s the kind of service she wants to provide, she’ll learn that this is a word-of-mouth type of business.”

  “Dodged another bullet. These things keep growing inside me, and the doctors keep cutting them out. I had this dream where it was guilt manifesting itself. It might not have even been a dream. I probably do have guilt tumors floating around in my stomach acid, waiting to take hold and start growing like tomatoes.”

  “Check this out. It’s a cell phone. Everybody’s got them these days. I can call anybody I want. Not very good reception out here in the woods, though. Wish I had somebody to talk to.”

  2004

  “Well, they finally figured out that a robot can do my job. It was always just a matter of time. I’d better learn to flip burgers, or you might have yourself a roommate.”

  “A real friend wouldn’t let me keep doing all this self-destructive stuff. I’m just sayin’.”

  Toby wondered how much sympathy he’d have for himself if he could watch his life from the outside. Probably not a lot. He’d probably just give himself a disgusted look, shake his head sadly, then call for a janitor to sweep it all away. Get the repulsive bum out of the way so decent people didn’t have the eyesore.

  Even Owen didn’t seem to enjoy his company all that much anymore.

  He really had to fix this mess. And he would, after a couple more beers.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  2005. 60 years old.

  The best thing about being a drunken babbling idiot was that nobody believed you when you blurted out secrets about your monster friend. Toby was a laughingstock in the small bar, whatever it was called, and he rarely ventured there more than once a month, and only when he was already half plastered.

  He’d never said anything about the murders, at least as far as he knew, but he’d told the bartender all about Owen. The bartender hadn’t cut off his drinks. It wasn’t that kind of place.

  Toby sat alone in a booth surrounded by empty bottles, although many of those were left over from the last patron. He wondered if he should try to walk home, take a cab, or let the bartender sort it out after he passed out.

  A man slid into the seat across from him.

  “You’re the monster guy, right?”

  The man was probably a few years older than Toby, smelled truly vile, and had wild hair and an unkempt gray beard. Even by Toby’s drastically reduced standards, the guy looked like a complete bum.

  “No.”

  “Yeah, you are! You don’t have to pretend anything with me, man.” The bum had a lazy eye and sounded like a hippie. Toby was embarrassed to admit to himself that despite the odor he was happy to have somebody to talk to.

  “There’s no monster,” Toby said. “I make stuff up.”

&n
bsp; “Man, lower your defenses. I know all of these. Loch Ness Monster, Jersey Devil, aliens in Area 51 and Hangar 18…you go online and know where to look, you can find the truth on anything.”

  “Fine. So I’m friends with Bigfoot.”

  “Nah, man. What you described to Jimmy isn’t a Bigfoot.”

  “The bartender’s name is Jimmy?”

  “I dunno. Might be.” The man picked up one of the discarded bottles, shook it, and finished off the drops that remained. “You don’t know the story?”

  “I didn’t know there was a story.”

  “1946. These American soldiers are back from World War II, and they take their girlfriends out camping, right? Maybe a hundred miles from where we are right now. Nice and peaceful, everybody’s having a good time, probably gettin’ it on because you don’t get laid much when you’re out fighting Nazis, and then these things attack them. They’ve got these scary-ass teeth and claws, and they just rip those people up. It’s like a war, man. One of our heroes gets away. A girl. Yep, three trained soldiers and it’s one of the girls who escapes. So she makes it out of the woods and she’s going nuts and she tells somebody what happened, and the next thing you know this team goes in there with rifles and they just mow those things down!”

  “Sounds kind of far-fetched.”

  “I know! It’s crazy! So you’ve got this government operation and a bunch of dead creatures, and they think, ‘Well, shit, we can’t have Americans panicking over soldier-killing monsters after we just got over the whole Nazi thing!’ and they cover it all up. The lady who survived goes into an asylum. Rips her own eyes out. Dies a few years later.”