But any last thoughts Weak Bitch entertained about taking their chances and not visiting Fallingwater were instantly dashed when he spotted his ex-girlfriend, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me, standing next to the canoes that were stacked at the edge of stream bank.
Now in her late thirties, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me Smith was a cursed woman who lived in a house at the end of Klin-Klat Street with her invisible monster of a mother. No one in town knew what the mother looked like, but many imagined Mrs. Smith as some sort of demonic clown-gorgon creature with sharks for arms, while other folks envisioned her as a hulking werewolf orbited by a school of zombie air-piranha. In any event, whenever Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me left her house, her mother always followed. Though no one ever actually saw Mrs. Smith, she was never far away from her daughter. She only made her invisible presence known when someone was hapless enough to look her daughter in the eye for more than a few seconds. If that happened, depending on the offender’s gender, the daughter would either say, “Ma, he’s makin’ eyes at me!” or “Ma, she’s makin’ eyes at me!” in a sassy tattletale timbre, at which point the mother would come out of nowhere to pounce on the offender and tear them asunder. The daughter herself was not evil—she never wanted her mother to kill anyone—but the curse forced her to announce those fatal words of condemnation every time this happened.
No one had ever survived such an attack.
Weak Bitch and Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me had dated in high school towards the end of their senior year, and they’d gotten back together again for a few months when they were in their early twenties, but Weak Bitch had eventually broken up with her for good. For very understandable and practical reasons, dating the woman had proven too dangerous and stressful for him. But Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me still had feelings for Weak Bitch. Sometimes he’d look out his bedroom window at night and catch her standing out on the front sidewalk staring up at his house, all creeper-like.
“Hey, it’s Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me,” Weak Bitch said to Tom Two and The Membrane, just to make sure they saw her. He didn’t need to give them any additional warning: they’d learned long ago to always look away from her face.
They stopped on the path, keeping her at a distance. As usual, the woman was dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, but not because it was Halloween. That was just her thing: she dressed up as Dorothy year-round. She even looked a bit like Judy Garland in the face.
“Um, hi,” Weak Bitch said, looking down at the woman’s ruby slippers. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yes, it has. How’ve you been, Glont?”
“Eh, I’ve been better. And my name’s not Glont anymore actually. It’s, er…My Tiny Little Weak Bitch.”
“Yeah, I heard. Don’t worry, you’re still Glont to me.” As usual, Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me was pleasant and polite. And unlike the rest of Selohssa’s inhabitants, she’d never verbally harassed Tom Two or The Membrane, perhaps owing to her similar pariah-like status in the town.
“So,” Weak Bitch said. “I’d ask you what you’re doing here, but I’m guessing the Sheriff or someone else sent you to witness us reverse trick-or-treating at Fallingwater, right?”
“Actually, it was the mayor. But, yes. As I understand it, no one else really wanted to come out here to do it, but Mother and I don’t mind at all.”
Weak Bitch shuddered at the mention of her mother. “So what are you going to do?” he asked. “Ride in the canoe with us?”
“No. I’ll ride in my own canoe and follow behind you. I’ll keep my distance. I just need to see you float into the house, then mother and I can go home.”
“Is, like, your mother going to ride in the canoe with you?”
“No. She’ll be following along in the woods. She’ll be watching you, too.”
Weak Bitch, Tom Two, and The Membrane each peered fearfully into the wooded darkness surrounding them.
“You know, you really should at least say hello to her,” Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me said. “Otherwise, she might take offense.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Weak Bitch turned in place, waving to the woods in all directions. Tom Two and The Membrane followed his lead. “Hello, Mrs. Smith,” Weak Bitch called out before gulping nervously. “I hope you’re well, and that you’re, um, having a nice Halloween.”
He carried two canoes down to the stream in two separate trips, positioning them so they rested partly in the water. Tom Two and Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me each grabbed an oar from the pile next to the canoes. After the trio climbed into their canoe, Weak Bitch pushed off the streambank using the oar. Ma-He’s-Makin’-Eyes-At-Me watched the current carry them downstream for a moment before she boarded her canoe.
A second after they got going, Weak Bitch and the boys heard a stick snap in the woods as the unseen beast commenced following them on the land.
Chapter 15
W eak Bitch had fond memories of Halloween in Selohssa, specifically the Halloweens prior to the tragedy at Fallingwater when his little family would wrap up the night by riding a canoe to the “Halloween castle in the woods,” as many referred to the place back them.
He recalled that the house became visible after you floated around the first bend in the stream, appearing as a magical cluster of orange, purple, and green lights twinkling through the gaps in the trees—like a low-launched firework frozen mid-explosion. The shape of the building gradually materialized as the stream brought you closer to the lines, planes, and right angles of Fallingwater’s asymmetrically stacked cantilevered floors and terraces, growing more definite as the distance shrank. Eventually, a recording of spooky Halloween sounds playing from speakers placed among the colored spotlights outside the house would reach your ears, heralding the final twist of the stream before Bear Run straightened out to lead directly into the arched entrance of the house’s ground floor, which was usually decorated to resemble a great, yawning mouth.
However, after they drifted around the first bend in the stream on this particular night, there were no colorful lights twinkling in the woods to lure them further. Beyond the reach of the flashlight—which Tom Two gripped in both of his white-knuckled hands while directing its beam dead-ahead like a headlight—lay an inky darkness disrupted here and there by shafts of pale moonlight penetrating the canopy, as many of the tree branches still bore their soon-to-fall leaves, the light forming shimmering patches of silver on the water.
Seated at the stern of the canoe, Weak Bitch only occasionally dipped his oar in the water, mainly to keep the canoe from running aground while the stream’s strong current did the rest of the work. Feeling tired and weak, he wanted to use the canoe ride as an opportunity to take a rest. Although he no longer tasted blood in his mouth, he was unaware of the slow but steady trickles of blood that continued to leak from his injured eyes and his mangled lip, rivulets that met at his chin before dripping down into his lap.
After a minute, Weak Bitch’s sore eyes adjusted to the dark. The canoe passed between the point where the old barbed wire used to cross the stream. Barely visible in the gloom, one of the fence’s end posts still stood alongside the streambank.
“See, guys,” Weak Bitch said, “it’s not so scary out here.” However, he knew he didn’t sound very convincing.
They floated onward into the darkness, the only sounds around them being the soft, white noise rush of the stream below them, the susurrant swish of wind through the tree branches above them, and the occasional solitary hoot of an owl. When the canoe reached the point on the stream where Weak Bitch remembered hearing the recorded Halloween sounds emanating from the house—ghoulish laughter, ghostly moans, rattling chains, werewolves howling, cauldrons bubbling, etc.—they still only heard the nightsounds of the woods.
The trees thinned out a beat later, Fallingwater’s black shape looming into view against a stack of luminous clouds backlit by the moon. As the structure grew with their approach, the entrance to the basement took shape, an arched portal visible as a deeper
shade of black painted on the surrounding darkness.
Weak Bitch was more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. It occurred to him that it wasn’t too late for them to abandon ship—to climb out of the canoe and up the streambank, to run back the way they’d come. But was he even strong enough to make it back on foot? He was so tired, almost faint now.
But what was there for them to run back to?
His nephews’ execution or exile, that’s what.
When they were about twenty feet away from the portal, Weak Bitch set his oar beside him, content to let the current take them the rest of the way. “Looks like it’s pitch black in there,” he said. “I bet no one’s home, which is perfectly fine by me. We’ll float in, you guys will drop some candy on the ledge, and then we’ll float right out the other side and down the slide. Easy peasy. Tom Two, gimme me the flashlight, will ya?”
Tom Two rose from his seat, clambered to the back of the canoe, dragging his nearly empty pillowcase with him. He handed the flashlight to Weak Bitch and climbed between his legs for protection, facing forward and peeking out through the gap that had formed between the brim of his sombrero and the edge of the seat, on which he rested his little hands. For its part, The Membrane curled into a ball and rolled next to Tom Two, trembling with fear.
“Aw, c’mon n-n-now,” Weak Bitch said, his voice and hands shaking as he shone the flashlight dead ahead, its unsteady beam barely penetrating the dark gap that lay mere feet ahead of them. “There’s n-n-nothing to be scared of here, b-b-boys.”
Chapter 16
A fter they floated through the archway, Weak Bitch scanned the room quickly with the flashlight, his breathing short and heartbeat rapid as he swung the cone of light around the room like a lighthouse beacon. Fuck all this helpless sitting around and waiting in dread bullshit, he thought. If there was something waiting for them, he just wanted to see it already.
From what he saw, the room was empty. Back in happier times, when it wasn’t Halloween and the weather was fair, Old Man Cruthers had used the ground floor of his house for entertaining guests. The basement-like chamber had been furnished with lounge furniture, billiard tables, televisions, stereo equipment, and a long wet bar with two shelves of liquor set against a mirrored wall and a polished marble countertop flanked by a dozen leather-wrapped stools. All those things were gone now. Instead, there was only the bare concrete expanse of floor, the sandstone and mortar walls, and the three evenly spaced concrete support columns. Stained here and there with blots and streaks of greenish-black mold, every visible surface sweated a patina of dampness that glistened in the flashlight’s pale beam. Visible as a rectangle of brickwork, the former doorway to the staircase that lead up to the second floor had been sealed off with brick and mortar long ago.
No one else appeared to be in the room—either human or inhuman. However, the flashlight beam failed to reach behind the support columns. As such, Weak Bitch couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone was hiding behind one of them.
The canoe bumped to a stop at the closed, mostly submerged swing gate that ran across the stream at about halfway across the chamber, the canoe’s nose nudging between two of the dozen or so ring-shaped buoys tied to the top of the gate and floating atop the water.
“See, guys?” Weak Bitch asked uneasily, his still-bleeding eyes darting from one column to the next. “Nothing to be afraid of here. But let’s hurry it up anyway. Go ahead and set some candy on the ledge.”
Tom Two, still trembling with fear, climbed out from between his uncle’s legs.
Fighting his mounting fatigue, Weak Bitch leaned to the side, reached out with his free hand, and grabbed the swing gate lever. “Hurry up. Then I’ll pull the lever, and we’ll get the hell outta Dodge.”
That’s when it slid out from behind the middle column, facing them like a nightmare made real…
TERROR MANNEQUIN!
“Oh, sh-sh-sh—” Weak Bitch stuttered in an unsuccessful attempt to cuss. He pulled back on the swing gate lever with all his weight.
It wouldn’t budge.
Just like in the stories, the glowering, sallow, cadaverous-looking mannequin stood holding a grotesquely featured ventriloquist dummy on its left forearm, on whose lap sat a wax doll with a half-melted face, on whose lap sat a crude, faceless voodoo doll. An unopened jack-in-the-box occupied the voodoo doll’s lap—the end of one of its blunt little limbs rested on the ball-shaped handle of the box’s crank. The mannequin shuffled toward them, stiff legs advancing with short, jerky steps.
“Oh, God…” Weak Bitch said as he pooped his pants. He let go of the jammed lever, slumped over in his seat while Tom Two tightly hugged the cowering, trembling ball that was The Membrane.
“Y-you guys…you go ahead without me!” Weak Bitch said, close to passing out. “Save…yourselves! And whatever you do…don’t look at the thing if that voodoo doll starts turning the crank!” He wanted to join them—to swim for it and try to make it to the slide—but he was too damn weak.
Still holding the approaching horror in the spotlight of his flashlight, Weak Bitch shoved Tom Two away with his free arm and clenched his eyes shut. “Jump in the water, fellas!” His voice growing increasingly feeble and faltering, he added, “Climb over the gate and swim for it. Take…the slide...down. Then run…fucking…home.”
The thing loomed just several terrible steps away.
Tom Two didn’t listen to Weak Bitch. Instead, he closed his eyes, grabbed his pillowcase from the floor, reached in, and pulled out his last three pieces of candy: a Nestle’s Nursing Home, a Hershey’s Hospice, and a Cadbury Crème-atorium.
In case you’re not in the know, Nestle’s Nursing Homes and Hershey’s Hospices are pretty much the same thing. Basically, they’re solid milk chocolate versions of those little red hotels used in the boardgame Monopoly. In fact, Nestle’s Nursing Homes and Hershey’s Hospices are the exact same size and shape as those little hotels. That’s because the molds used to make Nestle’s Nursing Homes and Hershey’s Hospices were originally used to produce the Monopoly hotels. In 1983, Nestle and Hershey’s acquired them from Hasbro for that express purpose. Or maybe it was 1997. Or maybe it was 2006. Or maybe it was 1812, the year of that lame war nobody remembers anything about. I actually don’t remember what year Nestle and Hershey’s acquired the hotel molds, but it probably doesn’t matter. Who fucking cares? I mean, Google it if you want. Anyhow, as for Cadbury Crème-atoriums, they are identical to Nestle’s Nursing Homes and Hershey’s Hospices save for the fact that they have taller chimneys.
His eyes still closed, Tom Two held out the three wrapped pieces of chocolate in his trembling hands, the sides of his palms pressed together to form a bowl. The jack-in-the-box began playing “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
As the jingly melody plinked its way to the inevitable “Pop!” Weak Bitch and Tom Two braced themselves, turned their faces away, and clenched their eyelids shut while The Membrane wrapped itself into an even tighter ball.
At the moment when the “Pop!” note played, they heard a somewhat anticlimactic click, presumably the sound of the box’s lid flipping open, followed by silence.
“Don’t…don’t look!” Weak Bitch repeated in a near whisper.
But unable to resist his curiosity, and against his better judgement, Tom Two opened one of his eyes, creating a narrow slit. He thought a little peek wouldn’t do any harm.
Suspended at the end of a black spring jutting out of the open box was a small, golden brown lump.
It was a Chicken McNugget.
With a goddamn face!
The lines of this little visage—mouth pulled in an uneven frown, brow furrowed in an angry-looking “v” above pinpoint eyes—glowed orange-red as if from a candle burning within the thing’s diminutive, battered, deep-fried form. It wore a multicolored, three-pointed jester cap with a tiny bell at the end of each dangling sleeve. As Tom Two spied on the thing through his slitted eye, he didn’t think it was a super terrifying thing that coul
d kill people by just looking at them like the legend said. On the contrary: though the head was weirdly creepy, Tom Two’s overall impression of the thing was that it was FUCKING STUPID!!
Tom Two was also pretty damn sure his heart had not just stopped beating and had not turned into a Totino’s pizza roll, and he was also certain his brain had not transformed into dogshit at the sight of the thing. Still, as he didn’t know what he was dealing with, he decided to err on the side of caution by not letting the thing know he had seen it.
The Chicken McNugget head glanced from the sugary offering in Tom Two’s hands to Tom Two’s spooky face and back to the candy. It tilted to the side as if puzzled and unsure of how to proceed. The face turned to Weak Bitch, then to The Membrane before returning its fiery-orange gaze to the proffered sweets. Its tiny jaw widening to two times its size in order to accommodate the candy, it dipped down into Tom Two’s hands and took one of the chocolates in its mouth—the Hershey’s Hospice—before retracting to its original position. After the Chicken McNugget swallowed the Hershey’s Hospice, wrapper and all, a lump formed at the top of the spring, which apparently doubled as the thing’s neck. The lump descended the spiral and disappeared into the box a moment later.
The creature belched loudly.
“Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww yeah!” it said, uttering the two words just like a rapper would, though its voice was inhumanly deep and gritty.
That’s when Weak Bitch passed out from blood loss, his hand releasing the flashlight and letting it fall to the floor of the boat with a hollow clunk.
Chapter 17
D espite his blurry vision, when Weak Bitch opened his eyes after regaining consciousness, he found himself staring up into the harrowing faces of the Chicken McNugget-in-a-box and the wax doll. He screamed, thrust his arms out. The doll, which grasped a sewing needle in one little fist and a length of suturing thread in the other, pulled away to dodge his flailing arms, as did the Chicken McNugget head.
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