Aberrations of Reality

by Aaron J. French

  Boom.

  A shadow darkened the space of light beneath the door. The footfalls ceased. A moment later, the doorknob turned, and then the door creaked inward—“Harry?”—and then his dad’s terrifying, staggering form entered the room, moving toward him.

  “Time to get up, Harry. Where are you?”

  Harry watched his father’s legs from under the bed. When they reached him, he stole a breath and shot out wildly between the ankles, scrambling across the floor.

  “Hey! Git yer ass back here!”

  But Harry was already down the hall. He slammed the door, sped toward the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. His father’s footfalls struck behind him.

  Boom boom boom.

  Light in the downstairs rooms hurt his eyes. He ran into several pieces of furniture. He tore into the kitchen, expecting to find Mama behind the refrigerator on her knees, making Jesus Hands. When Harry saw her, he slid to a halt.

  She was lying in the center of the floor beside the dining table. It didn’t make sense, what had happened to her, and yet he instinctively knew that she was gone and never coming back: the Lord had sent a storm of lightning to take her… instead of Dad.

  Her clothes were gone and her legs stretched open. Welts and scratches and wounds ran along her thighs and waist, her bare breasts, and up to her neck—Harry screaming and sobbing simultaneously—and where her head was supposed to be, there was a puddle of gore like a watermelon smashed over the tiles. Resting in the center of the puddle was his dad’s hand axe, buried to the handle in flesh.

  Dad bounded into the room—“There you are, you little shit!”—but he slipped on the blood, stumbled, crashed into the wall and sprawled on the floor.

  Harry screamed and leaped over the body of his mother and out the back screen door. He jumped off the porch steps and into the grass, hurrying toward the dark wilderness beyond.

  The screen door slammed again.

  His dad’s footfalls on the porch.

  “Harry! You come back here!”

  Harry screamed through the trees without looking back.

  * * *

  The inside of the ruined shack churned with a darkness split only in places where sunlight seeped through broken boards. Harry fell to his knees and knelt religiously in the center, the jumbles of junk and old furniture surrounding him: a rusted porcelain sink, a crumbling chest of drawers, a dusty mirror shattered like gossamer.

  Harry cried, but not for Mama, not for Dad, not even for the six-year-old boy of his younger self he had just witnessed fleeing into the trees. He cried for the intensity, for the sheer shock and horror of his memories, for the bloodstained world that was once his childhood. He mourned for a life he never would—never could—have. And he was bitter that his had not been a normal, peaceful existence, that he wasn’t able to go to school with the other kids and feel normal like they did—that he couldn’t enjoy playing with toys as they did—and most of all that, after six, with his mama dead and his dad sent off to Remington Prison, he had no family to speak of and had to live in a foster home with Mr. Creashak, a middle-aged black man with a hair-trigger temper and an afro the size of a Buick tire, a man who listened to soul music constantly and who beat the living whiteness out of Harry on a daily basis.

  Murder Man stood by the wall, statuesque. He didn’t offer condolence or a single gesture of sympathy. Murder Man was a cold, uncaring creature who desired Harry to feel pain and suffering. He had no inclination to deal with Harry as a real person. Harry was an object to be despoiled, a tool, an animal to cage and torment. Murder Man abided in the inner sanctum of Harry’s being and did what Murder Men had done since the dawn of time and had always done so well: murdered his eternal soul.

  * * *

  The sun had fallen behind the trees by the time they returned to the ruined woman. Harry retrieved the shovel and dug. He’d wanted to be home by now. The entire day was gone.

  After an hour, he had managed to carve a decent hole in the soil. Crickets and critters sang praise to the burgeoning twilight. Harry worked while Murder Man watched from beside the trunk of an old cottonwood.

  Harry scooped the woman with the shovel blade, levering her anatomy into the hole. A disgusting job. The smell was awful. Even though he had acquired a stomach for death, he gagged on the stench.

  Murder Man observed silently, his oily black hair strung down over his face, looking on with the implied authority of a construction foreman. Harry hated feeling that ugly black presence at his back, and fantasized about plunging the blade through its neck.

  Harry filled the hole.

  Murder Man lifted his head and said, “This one’s done. How about another?”

  Yah did it again, tiger. You spoilt yerself.

  Images flashed through his mind: his raging father, Mama kneeling behind the refrigerator, waking in the middle of the—

  “No. I won’t do this,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going to the police.”

  He tossed the shovel beside the grave and turned to leave.

  Murder Man materialized in his path: a snout face exposing teeth, hair thrown back over his head, orange eyes alight. “What?” he snapped.

  “You heard me.”

  “They’ll throw you in jail. You’ll be raped by another man. You’ll hate yourself and your life even more than you already do.”

  “Are you kidding me? How could I hate my life more? I can’t stand who I’ve become. Do you hear me? I want to kill myself.”

  Murder Man was silent, considering. “If you leave and you do this,” he said, “—if you turn yourself in to the police, I won’t be able to reverse it. I won’t be able to bring you back. If you kill yourself I can still remain with you and help fulfill your destiny.”

  Harry fell to his knees, closed his eyes, and made Jesus Hands before his chest. He thought of Dad sitting drunk on the porch, chewing tobacco and complaining about the spooks and jigaboos taking over the town. He saw a quick flash of Mama nestled in her secret place in the kitchen, drinking a glass of whiskey, and praying to the Lord to send a storm of lightning to cleanse the souls of the wicked—and in the next image she was lying dead on the floor, Dad’s hand axe buried in her face.

  “I’ve got your lightning storm, Mama,” he whispered, crying again. “And I’ll bring it down on the wickedest heart of all.” A pause, a sob, a breath, and then—“Mine.”

  In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

  He rose and opened his eyes.

  Murder Man blocked his path.

  “Death is your purpose,” the demon said.

  Harry took a militant step forward and passed through the demon’s incorporeal form. His entire body shot through with horror, and when he passed to the other side, Murder Man flickered like a television with bad reception and vanished.

  Harry lit a Winston and kept walking.

  One step at a time.

  “This is for you, Mama,” he said. “You never quit your prayin’, so I’ll never quit mine. A storm of lightning’s gonna come, Mama… like a sword of apocalyptic justice.”

  He continued to his car, down the mountain, and back into town. He made his way slowly toward the police station as night spread its mantle of darkness over the town and its inhabitants.

  There was peace, once again, for a time, in Harry’s eternal soul, as he stepped through the glass doors of the police station.

  Whirling Machine Man

  The Jeffrey Hogan case had been all over the news. Various reports were being run on a poor kid who was found in a puddle of his own excrement—white-haired and drooling—with many of his teeth missing and his tongue torn out…

  That was the most horrifying part of the whole thing—at least in my opinion—the bloody gaping hole in his face. I had the unfortunate pleasure of viewing the medical photos in his case file.

  His parents found the eleven-year-old boy one morning, muttering about being lost in the woods. Jeffrey was blank-eyed, staring into midair—a condition he maintained
thereafter, even once they got him to St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital. And even now, up there in the Serene Hills Mental Facility, where, presumably, he’ll be spending the rest of his days receiving “treatment.”

  I want to tell you also that the Hogan case ended my P.I. career, failure though it might have been, for reasons which I will go into later. To this day I hold a position at the Department of Motor Vehicles, sitting on my ass issuing license plate numbers and I.D. cards. Not the most exciting work, but digging in the Hogan case produced a desperate need in me to feel safe…

  And, what pursues me now, since the case, well… it’s caused me to feel like I’m going crazy, and to believe my life is in danger.

  So that’s what my DMV job is: safe.

  Way I saw it, if I didn’t procure some safety fast I was liable to end up in Serene Hills alongside Jeffrey. Because the empty space where my right arm used to be ever antagonizes me with its absence. Simple things like riding a bicycle—unless I get fitted for the prosthetic, and them things ain’t cheap, though I have been considering it—will forever remain unavailable to me. That’s something I’m learning to deal with. But allow me to fill in some of the details so you can have a better understanding.

  * * *

  I don’t recall the exact day Maria Hogan came into my office, but I do know it was some time after the hubbub surrounding her son had died down. The county gazettes had pumped several weeks’ worth of sensationalism onto their front pages at her son’s expense but had since returned to running their usual dribble. I had pretty much forgotten about it, and so when the tired-looking blonde with large breasts and larger hips appeared opposite my desk, it took me by surprise.

  I recognized her from the news reports, but now she just looked terrible. I said, “Please, have a seat,” and signaled to the vacant leather chair; nodding, she installed herself accordingly.

  “My name is—”

  “I know who you are.”

  She blinked. “You know what happened to my son?”

  “I do.”

  “You know where he is?”

  I presumed she meant Serene Hills, so I nodded. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Hogan?”

  She was quiet a moment. Then: “I want you to find who did this to Jeffrey.”

  “Ma’am, the police are doing their best—”

  “No, they’re not.” She glared at me and there was a flicker of ferocity in her eyes that I found briefly attractive. “Jeffrey can’t speak and he won’t write, and the cops must’ve combed through the woods behind our house two dozen times, and nobody knows a single thing, and I know—I just know—that it’s gonna fall off their radar soon. They’re gonna box up my baby’s case file and go about their business.”

  She ended with a burst of emotion, and I sat there feeling awkward while she wept in her hands. I lit a cigarette, and Maria Hogan raised her face disapprovingly to me, but I didn’t care: I needed the nicotine.

  “Mrs. Hogan,” I began, “I understand all of your concerns but I’m just not sure what I can do about it. From what I’ve heard there are absolutely no leads, no motive, no evidence, and no blood in the forest. They’ve got nothing, which means I’ll get nothing. I’m sorry, but it is what it is.”

  She arched her eyebrows. “I thought you ran a business here?”

  “I do, it’s just…” I blew smoke out my nose. The truth was that I was scared. And not just scared: horrified. I couldn’t imagine the kind of person who could remove an eleven-year-old kid’s tongue and teeth, and didn’t want to, either.

  Sensing my distress, she said, “I’ll let you in on a secret.”

  “I think you’d better go to the police if you have new information.” Watching my own ass was something I excelled at, thankfully.

  But she tossed her head. “Nope, they won’t listen, not to this. I can only tell someone who has an open mind…” She glanced at the nameplate on my desk.

  “Morgan Summers, and call me Morgan,” I said. “I suspect I have an open mind, but—”

  “The person who did this to Jeffrey lives in a cabin in the Mintano Wilderness behind our house.”

  My eyes widened. “You told that to the cops?”

  “No… it’s not really there—not physically.”

  “What?”

  She sighed, struggling with the words. “I’ve never actually seen it. Only Jeffrey saw it. He saw it a few times. He said a mad scientist lived there.”

  I chuckled. “Yes, I did hear something in the news about your son having strange episodes in the woods.”

  “I told them that. And you know what? The police didn’t do a thing about it. That’s why I never told them about the cabin.”

  She reached in her flower-patterned handbag and withdrew a small manila envelope, the kind of thing in which you might receive a piece of jewelry in the mail. She placed it on the desk and slid it over to me. Stamping out my cigarette, I picked it up and opened the flap.

  “I found that lying on the back porch when I went outside this morning.”

  I frowned at her. “Does your husband know you’re here?”

  She didn’t answer. I knew it was probably evidence that I was potentially contaminating, but I was too intrigued now not to proceed.

  The first object I pulled out was a small gold old-style key; the second, a folded sheet of paper; the third, a small hunk of metal that I thought was just metal, until I realized there were several human teeth wedged into it.

  “Jesus!” I shrieked, dropping the object. “Are those…?”

  “Yes. They’re Jeffrey’s.” She picked up the sheet of paper and unfolded it. “This’s a letter intended for him.” She read:

  “To the one speaking for the dead:

  I realize you experienced great pain and suffering during your transformation. But still I do not understand your departure from the lab. I warned you that crossing over would be… uncomfortable. Of course there was physical pain. Illusionary though it may have been, I know it seems very real in the moment. But it is for the good of science. We’re pioneering a new frontier. I’m enclosing a key, so that you might return to the lab at your leisure, as well as a portion of the prototype in hopes that looking upon it might entice you back.

  Yours,

  The Amputator”

  Maria Hogan put down the paper, looked at me. I wasn’t sure if she was giving me shock, disbelief, or just plain rage. “Well?” she said.

  “Totally nuts. I think you need to pack up your stuff and take it over to—”

  “No… No! You’re not getting it.” She slammed her palm down on the desk. “Even if they did hear me out they wouldn’t believe any of it, which means they won’t look in the right places, which means nothing will happen. Which means this bastard”—she waved the paper—“goes free.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you,” I said. “All I know is that several human teeth wedged into a metal harness are lying on my desk. I have half a mind to call the police myself. The D.A. is a close friend of mine, and so are a number of boys on the force.”

  She sat back, her eyes going cool as she reached into her bag a second time. “Guess I should make this more worth your while, huh?” She dug out her checkbook and pen, leaning on my desk to write, glancing at my nameplate again. She tore off the check.

  I took one look and had to light another cigarette. “That’s a lot of zeros,” I said. “You have this kind of money?”

  “My husband does.”

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  “What does that matter? He’s sunk so far into his morbid funk after what happened to our son that I’m not sure he’ll pull out of it. Besides, he knows about the hidden cabin. Jeffrey told us both.”

  I smoked and sighed and felt like a rusty railroad spike was being dug into my side.

  My salary at the time was measly to say the least, and I’d even had to let my secretary go in order to maintain the business. I desperately needed money.

  I thought: What’s the worst that can
happen? I take the key and rummage around in the Mintano Wilderness, find nothing and come back empty-handed, then tell her I told you so, take the money, and run off to Cancun. Piece of cake.

  But of course there was the whole conscience thing, and not to mention the possibility, be it slight, that she was telling the truth—in which case I could find myself face-to-face with some psychotic criminal. But even that had its egoistical perks. And it wouldn’t be the first time I had squared off against something violent. I’d been in the private investigator business for over eight years, and had seen my share of fights.

  I took a long deep drag on the cigarette and sat back in my chair. “I’ll take your case, Mrs. Hogan, but on one condition.”

  She brightened. “What?”

  I flipped the check with my index finger. “I’ll be cashing this before I get started, which is not my usual policy, but what you’re asking for is dangerous, could even get me into trouble with the city if they found out I’m withholding evidence on an open case. That means I’ll have to use some of this money to pay off cops and detectives in order to get my hands on the file. Understand?”

  She nodded, smiling. She seemed extraordinarily relieved, and I even noticed a portion of her weariness evaporating. “Do what you need to do,” she said. “And thank you, Morgan.”

  “You can thank me once we get through this without landing our balls in the grinder.”

  She made a face, and I nearly burst out laughing. Leaning farther back, I kicked my boots up on the desk, closed my eyes and smoked, and said in my best Perry Masonesque voice, “Now, Mrs. Hogan, tell me everything you know about the incident involving your son.”

  * * *

  I waited in the rain at 10th and 63rd, secreting myself under the awning of an Italian bistro. My long coat was drenched, but I kept wrapping it tighter, hoping to keep out the chill. The cars on 63rd moved spectrally through the mist, flinging water from their tires, their headlights looking like passing souls.