Mom approached the deer. “I’ve never seen one.”
“You don’t hunt,” Dad replied, half accusingly, half joking.
She ignored him. “You want me to pack dinner up, or are you guys going to come in and eat something before you take care of this?”
“We’ll be in soon,” Dad said, still stroking the deer’s thin coat.
“Alright. You boys have fun.”
Dad took the gun we had used off his rack. “You want to grab me that screwdriver with the electric tape on it?”
I picked it up and handed it to him.
“Thanks.” He began unscrewing the butt guard from the gunstock. “This rifle’s been in our family for a long time. I know you don’t like hunting, but someday this gun will be yours, and I wanted you to be a part of its history too, even if you decide not to use it after I’m gone.” He pulled the guard away from the stock and showed me the writing underneath. “Those marks are your grandfather’s. He just tallied up his kills. But these,” he drew his finger over a small list of numbers. “Those are mine.”
“What’re the numbers for?”
“Those represent the number of points on a deer’s horns. Two for a crotch horn, six for a six point... you get the idea. I use a zero for the does. There aren’t many. I’m not big on taking them.” He handed me a knife and set the gun on the work bench. “Go ahead.”
“Just carve a zero?”
“Right below mine. Watch out for the design at the bottom.”
I scrawled my zero into the stock, careful to avoid the decorated circle below the series of numbers, and tried to hand the knife back to him.
“You’re going to need that,” he said, smiling. “You killed it. You clean it.”
Knife in hand, I walked over to the deer. “Shouldn’t we have done this outside? It’s going to be a mess.”
“Don’t worry about that. Open her up, just below the rib cage.”
I made a small incision and drew the knife downward.
Dad held a cup under the opening. “Slow down. There’s no need to rush it.”
Once the cup was full with the deer’s blood, Dad poured a circle around the animal, stopping just before closing it. “Alright, step out.”
“Aren’t we supposed to take its...parts out or something?” I asked.
“Just come here.”
Once I was out of the partial circle, Dad sealed it with blood. Then, with the rifle in hand, he poured the rest of the cup’s contents inside the circle, replicating the design on the butt of the gunstock. “Step back by the freezer.”
He backed away cautiously with me and screwed the guard back onto his rifle. “Now the real hunt begins.”
Ten minutes later, I still didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. The only thing that had changed was a pair of headlights splashing across the driveway. My dad handed me the rifle. “Don’t move.”
He opened the door, squinted at the light that was still saturating the darkness. “Hello?” he asked. There was no response, only the sound of something hard trailing across pavement, capped by a modest snap. Dad must have recognized who or what it was, because he poured a line in blood across the threshold before stepping out. “I have to go talk to these gentlemen. But I want you to stay where you are, do you understand?” He towered over me, asking again. “Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Yes, don’t move.”
“Good.” He pulled the gun out of my hands and checked to make sure it was loaded. “You only get one shot. Make it count.”
“One shot at what?” I asked, but Dad was already closing the door behind him. That’s when I noticed the circle on the floor faintly glowing.
The lights in the front yard dimmed. I couldn’t see anything outside, but I heard my father arguing with the men. “I think it’s best you two be on your way,” he said.
The slow succession of scrapes and clicks grew louder, getting closer to the door. Then one of the men spoke. “I thought your line gave up summoning.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me.” The man sniffed the air. “The blood of an innocent, and is that ectoplasm I smell? Tell me, what interest do you have in Hastur’s progeny?”
The blood on the floor began to defy gravity. Droplets levitated off the floor slowly, and then surged towards the ceiling. I remember running to the door, but I can’t remember if it was to help my dad, or get away from the circle.
The man speaking to my father smiled, which, even with the heavy shadows, did little to veil his unnatural age. His face was wrinkled and contorted, corpse-like. Long, white hair seemed to hover inches from his shoulders, as if suspended in midair. “Hi there. What’s your name?”
Dad waved me back inside. “I told you not to move!”
I turned towards the circle as the light emanating from it grew brighter. Then the ground started to shift. “Dad, what’s happening!?”
“Tell him.” The old man put his right leg forward, “click.” Then he dragged his left across the pavement to meet the other. “Your father is summoning a demon, and you’re to be the sacrifice.”
My father shook his head. “I don’t barter with the ancient ones. I bring them into this world so I can take them out permanently.”
“Who are the ancient ones?” I asked.
“Get back in the garage, Jeff. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”
I edged back to Dad’s work bench with my back to the wall, watching the circle for any sudden change. For about a year after that night, that’s all I remembered. But over time I managed a piecemeal recollection of what happened next. A thunderstorm the following summer reminded me of the two shots that reverberated between the house and the garage. Periodic nightmares closed the rest of the gap between me heading back into the garage and waking the next morning. After two gunshots, the front door to the house slammed and Mom screamed for my father and me. A large shadow crossed the lawn and another shot was fired. Then another, followed by silence.
The old man, still smiling, approached the garage. “Let me in,” he called. “I’m a friend of your father’s. You can trust me.”
I backed away from the work bench, towards the freezer, and pried the lid open with my free hand, remembering all of Mom’s speeches about how children can get sealed inside and suffocate. But when the glass on the garage door shattered and the old man tried to reach inside, the freezer seemed the most logical refuge.
Mom’s words must have stuck with me on some level, because I didn’t let the lid shut over me. It remained wedged open by the barrel of my father’s rifle, now aimed at the old man.
He backed away with his hands before him. “There’s no need for that.”
I kept him in my crosshairs, ignoring the red light that had grown to near-blinding proportions at the center of the room. The old man clenched one of his outstretched hands into a first, and the deer on the floor began to move, slowly rising to its feet like a marionette. The old man then pulled his fist into his body slowly, and the deer started for him. Just as it began to clumsily amble out of the circle, the ground swelled and burst below its feet. And out of the hole came the most vile thing I have ever seen in my life. It rose to the surface quickly, anchoring itself with thorn-encrusted tentacles. With one swift motion it shot to the ceiling and lurched down, tearing into the deer. Its jaw snapped twice and the deer was gone.
The man at the door dropped to his knees. With his arms outstretched, he called to the beast. “Hastur!” he cried. He literally cried. Tears streamed down his face as he repeated again and again “Hastur!” The man pointed to me. “Behold your offering!”
And for the second time that day, my shoulder cradled that rifle. But this time I was alone. There was no reassuring voice to guide me or steady my trembling hands. I reached for the trigger, unsure as to who or what needed the one bullet more. The old man continued to call out to the beast. “Will you take the offering?”
I eyed the beast cautious
ly as its gaze settled on me. I set my sights on the thing, and watched from the corner of my eye as the old man’s face dropped and his hands motioned for me to stop. God help me, I fired at that wretched thing. A mixture of black and green oozed from the wound as thin, black appendages slithered from the hole in the floor to cover the opening in the creature’s flesh. Its scream sounded like a symphony of screeching tires accompanied by a throng of crying children, blotting out all other sounds. Then the thing slammed into the ground and rose again. Before I could see anything else, I pulled my father’s rifle into the freezer and let the door close above me, thinking it better to die frozen than in the gaping maw of some otherworldly beast.
X
I awoke the next day in four inches of water, a pillow of thawed vegetables, and a state trooper hovering over me, arm extended. “You okay, son?”
Shaking uncontrollably, I drew Dad’s rifle into my chest.
The officer turned to another person in the room. “He’s in shock.”
Another officer stood just outside, taking pictures of the glass fragments scattered across the driveway. “No shit, Sherlock. Call an ambulance.”
After what felt like hours, an EMT reached into the freezer to check my pulse. “You’re going to be alright.” Her hands rounded my neck and grazed my spine. “That hurt?”
I couldn’t speak.
“You have a touch of frostbite, so this might hurt a little. We’re going to lift you out now, okay?”
I sat up slowly, dropped the rifle at my feet and reached out to her. “Where’s my mom?”
“All in time, dear.”
As she pulled me out of the freezer, I tried to confirm what had happened the night before. There was nothing. No blood, no circle ...no garage for that matter. Smoke trailed through the air from the foundation. The entire thing had burned around me.
The EMT held me close to her and I felt the warmth return to my extremities. “Fire cut the electricity and raised the temperature in your hiding place above freezing. Shock must have just about shut you down completely. Under any other circumstance you would have suffocated. You’re lucky to be alive.”
We walked across the driveway to the ambulance. The gravel was spotted with blood and broken glass, as was the walkway to the front door. The EMT pushed my head into her shoulder. “Don’t look, honey.” We picked up speed then, until I was handed off to another person and strapped down for a long trip to the emergency room.
I don’t remember much after that until the day my grandfather dragged his oxygen tank into my room at the hospital and told me through efforted breaths that I was coming home with him. I learned later, well after recovery, how Mom and Dad had died that night. Mom had suffered a gunshot wound to the stomach and Dad had been shot in the head. The police ruled it a suicide prefigured by an attempted double homicide. When they questioned me, I confirmed everything they said. They fed me the closest thing to a plausible fabrication, one I never could have come up with on my own. I never mentioned the deer, the circle, or the other men who showed up at our house that night. Or that god-awful creature. Frankly, I didn’t remember much of it at the time anyway.
For years I tried my best to forget about what little I did remember. Everything that reminded me of my life before that night remained tucked away in the corners of Grandpa’s farmhouse. All of our photo albums were in the attic. I couldn’t bring myself to look at those. Dad’s rifle stayed under lock and key in the basement. That I did seek out.
It didn’t take me long to get my hands on it. Grandpa kept the key in the violin under his bed. I heard it rattle when he played in the evening. If I was lucky he’d fall asleep with the violin on his lap. I’d fish the key out, head down to the basement and take Dad’s rifle out of the cabinet. I remember holding it for the first time after my parents died, running my hands down the stock and wondering if it felt similar to Dad when he did the same. I’d like to think it did, but I believe that rifle meant much more to me than it did to any of my ancestors. It’s true what some say, that things only get better with age. As I got older, my repeated handling wore away the lacquer finish to the hard wood below. The stock, begrimed with the sweat and skin cells of three generations, had a new veneer, that of history.
The autumn I turned nineteen, Grandpa handed the key over to me and gave up the ghost, leaving me with two years’ worth of unpaid taxes, funeral arrangements, seven rooms filled with small farm equipment, and his collection of partially-functioning violins to clear out for auction. Once I got the details ironed out for the funeral services, I set to cleaning out the old farmhouse, starting with the attic. Under any common circumstance, most of what I found up there—family journals, drawer after drawer of old photographs featuring nameless and unrecognizable blood relations, gut strings for Grandpa’s small collection of violins—would have been fit for the burning barrel. But when you lose almost everyone and everything familiar in your life, these heirlooms supplement the history you lost. I found myself poring over dust-covered photos pressed onto aluminum, scrutinizing leather-bound journals jacketed by thin blankets of mold, trying to find anything that I could trace back to my childhood. I couldn’t bring myself to part with any of it. I even second-guessed my decision to put doubles from the photo albums, empty day-planners and a few empty leather-bound journals in the kindling pile near the fireplace. But some things had to go.
X
They buried Grandpa just before hunting season, when the leaves start turning and there’s still enough green in them to give the trees character, to make each one stand out from the others before they all blend into a single, monotonous shade. I greeted the folks from town who came to bid my grandfather farewell, most of whom were in the autumn of their lives, and incidentally had all blended into a single, monotonous shade. Then I closed the afternoon by scattering the first layer of dirt into the hole where my grandfather was laid to rest.
I didn’t stay to see the burial through. I loved the man, but knew that doing right by him and getting that house cleaned out would have meant more to him than drawing out the grieving process. So I headed home to clear everything out for the auction.
When I pulled in, a weathered truck, faded red from rust and wear, sat in the driveway. The cab was stacked to the brim with most of the documents from the attic. After what I’d been through that day, the truck didn’t leave me uneasy in the least. I was too drained to feel anything but modest concern. I walked inside and found the table piled with Grandpa’s violins, all uncased, some smashed. A hulking figure rummaged through the remnants, expressionless. There was neither shame nor a sense of entitlement in his eyes when he noticed me.
I picked up one of the violins, looked it over. “Can I help you with something?”
Then I heard the disquieting scrape of a boot across the floor, punctuated by a gentle “click.” It repeated, the sound growing in intensity until that old son of a bitch from my childhood rounded the corner. “We’re just here to take what’s rightfully ours.”
My first impulse was to kill him on the spot, just choke the bastard out. But with questions left unanswered, and the modern-day incarnation of Lurch standing before him, that urge passed quickly. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Harold. I’m your grandfather’s uncle. We’re looking for my rifle.”
“I sold it.”
“Lying doesn’t come easy to you, does it? Your father wasn’t very good at it either. Family virtues, they’re the best and the worst of us.”
“You need to leave.”
The man stepped before his partner. “You remember me, don’t you? I figured you’d have kept those memories locked up tight enough to keep you sane, but I guess you’re stronger than I thought.” He walked to the table and scattered the remnants of one of Grandpa’s violins, extracting a picture. “Your grandfather was a smart man. Kept our skeletons in the closet where they belonged.” That crooked grin I remembered from childhood crept across his face. “He had a brother you know, met the same fate you w
ould have if I hadn’t stopped your father.”
He threw the photo onto the table before me. In it two boys stood side by side. A white deer rested at their feet. “Some men, they’re too soft for the hunt. Your grandfather was one of them. He tucked the family history away in these instruments, carved it into that rifle.” He took another one of the violins, smashed it against the table and dug through the remnants, extracting another picture. He handed it to me, waiting for a reaction. In the picture my grandfather, his brother and the old man held a tentacle spanning at least eight feet in length. “The hunt grew on him eventually, but I don’t think he ever intended for your father to find out about summoning.”
He took another step forward. “I caught your father tracing one of the circles in the dirt out front when he was a boy, so I taught him everything I knew. I thought it was instinct, something coursing through the bloodline, but his mom put the fear of God in him. He didn’t want nothing to do with the dark arts, or so I thought.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out another photo of my father and him holding another, smaller tentacle. “It grew on him too, but he was too much of a coward to use the family’s knowledge to his advantage.”
He stepped forward again, dragged his left leg to meet the other. “Those things down there, we used to hunt them. But they ain’t meant for killing. You get them in your crosshairs and they’ll do anything you want them to. Give them something, or someone, and they’ll do you one better.”
He extended his hand over another violin and clutched the air. The violin shattered. “Where’s the gun, boy?”
“It’s in the basement.”
He rubbed his hands together and laughed. “Let’s go!”
I pointed to the hallway leading downstairs. “Help yourself.”
He started for the stairs and Lurch followed. “Mule, you stay here. Keep digging through those scraps. I want everything in them.”
Reluctantly, “Mule” obeyed, glaring at me out of the corner of his eye as he sorted through the broken shards of wood with his thick digits.
New Tales of the Old Ones Page 23