by Smith, Bryan
Luke shook his head. “I feel older than I am, like twice my actual age sometimes.”
“You’ve let yourself go a bit. It’s what happens when a man gives up, which you obviously did a long time ago. But, buddy, I’ve got good news for you. There’s this thing called exercise. You might want to try it. It’ll make a new man of you.”
Now Luke was the one scowling. “Are you auditioning to be my fucking life coach or something? Jesus Christ.”
Greg shrugged. “Maybe you need one.”
“And you’re just the man for the job.”
“You see anyone else volunteering?”
Luke sighed. “Fuck it, whatever.” He took a wobbly step toward the house. “Let’s flush those little snots out of there and get this over with. It’s fucking cold out here. You may not have noticed.”
Greg gripped him by an elbow. “Now hold on a sec. You’re not entirely without a point. We should think this over a bit. You’ve got the drunk man sway going on, which is not normally conducive to a successful bout of fisticuffs.”
Luke heaved an exasperated breath. “Man, make up your damn mind. First you’re all gung-ho about going in there and kicking some ass, now you think it’s a bad idea.”
Greg laughed. “You misunderstand my point. I’m saying we go in and do what we gotta do. I’m also saying we should fortify ourselves with another beer first.”
Luke squinted at him, allowing a silent moment to pass.
“So…the problem, in your view, is that I’m too drunk. And the solution is that I should have more beer.”
Greg’s expression turned mock-solemn as he nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”
“That doesn’t make a bit of fucking sense.”
“Yeah? So?”
“Good point.”
They made their way back over to the jeep, trudging through the deepening snow. Luke opened the passenger side door, reached in to take two cans of Bud from the carton, and passed one to Greg. They popped the tabs on the cans and chugged down some brew, which was still frosty cold thanks to the frigid conditions. Those beers went down fast. Both men agreed having one more was probably for the best. They were halfway through those beers when they decided to resume their campaign of intimidation through drunken shouting. It hadn’t worked before, but maybe the second time would be the charm.
The piercing scream came from somewhere inside the house after they’d been back at it for barely more than a minute. Luke’s second can of Bud slipped from his fingers and sank into the snow at his feet.
The men exchanged a look.
Luke said, “That doesn’t sound good.”
Greg didn’t say anything. All the humor had drained from his face. He tossed his beer to the ground and pulled open the Wrangler’s passenger door. After pushing the seat forward, he leaned into the back and fumbled around for a moment before reemerging with an old-fashioned long tire iron, an aluminum baseball bat with a taped handle and a fat barrel, and a big Maglite flashlight.
He held out the implements and said, “Choice of weapon?”
“Couldn’t we just call the police?”
Another piercing scream emerged from the house.
“Don’t think there’ll be time for that.”
Luke had to concede the point. He sized up the choices in front of him. The tire iron looked solid enough, but the bat was bigger and had a longer reach. On the other hand, that long reach might hamper its effectiveness in tight quarters. Also, the tire iron had a sharp end intended for prying off hubcaps. As a weapon, it could function as a blunt instrument of bone-crushing doom or it could put a pretty nasty hole in an opponent.
He took the tire iron.
Greg frowned. “Damn.”
“Hey, you gave me a choice. Take the tire iron if you want it.”
Greg waved this off and started toward the house, flicking the Maglite on as he went. He had the flashlight in his left hand and the bat in his right. He ascended the porch, the barrel of the bat propped over his shoulder. He moved with urgency and Luke hurried to catch up, unhesitatingly following his old friend through the open front door. They went through the foyer and then through the wide archway to the left into the living room.
Luke was rocked by an onslaught of long-suppressed memories and feelings as the Maglite’s powerful beam swept over the living room. Some of the best times of his life had been spent right here in this room, many of them sitting on that old couch with siblings while they watched movies on the big TV or opened Christmas presents. But there was no getting around the fact that it was also the site of the worst things that had ever happened in his life. On the way out the door that night, he’d seen his little sister’s severed head sitting on that couch.
But that was the past.
The screams were ongoing. There were loud crashes coming from somewhere upstairs. Someone here definitely sounded like they were in mortal danger. A young girl or woman, judging from the timbre of those screams. He couldn’t allow himself to be rendered incapable of action by memories of his own tragic past, not while someone in the here and now needed his help.
They reached the staircase.
Greg started up the stairs. They creaked loudly beneath his tread. There were some splintering sounds. This didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the stability of the place. A crippling accident was not out of the question. But this was what you did when someone who sounded like they were seconds away from being murdered needed your help. You plunged into the teeth of the threat anyway, because how else could you live with yourself afterward? Sure, it was the sort of job usually best left to professional first responders, but tonight they were the only cavalry around.
Luke was three steps up when he heard the creak behind him. He turned about on the stairs and yelped in fright as he glimpsed a shadowy form advancing on him. The Maglite was pointed in the other direction—up the stairs rather than down—so he wasn’t able to discern much about this new presence until it was almost right up on him. What he could make out was thanks instead to the dim bit of ambient light filtering in from the open front door.
“Greg!”
Greg stopped climbing the stairs. “Something wrong?”
“Point that fucking light down here, please.”
He heard Greg shuffle about several steps above him. Seconds later, the redirected beam from the Maglite lit up the face of a young man. He had the fresh features of a teenager—someone who was likely either a junior or senior in high school—but his physical stature was more imposing than was typical for someone his age. He looked like an athlete, possibly a football player.
The steps creaked again as Greg started back down. Somewhere upstairs the girl was still screaming. There were more crashes and thumps. The girl needed their help now. She was running out of time. Luke wanted to tell Greg to leave this situation to him and go to her aid, but he was unable to push the words out of his mouth.
The teenager came up another step.
Only one empty step remained between them.
Luke’s grip tightened around the base of the tire iron. This was partly because he wanted to have a sure hold on the heavy implement in case he needed to wield it quickly, but it was also to still the trembling in his hand caused by his mounting fear. It wasn’t the boy’s brawny build he found intimidating. Even a very strong person could be felled pretty quickly by a whack upside the head with a solid hunk of metal. What really bothered him here was twofold—the blood spatters on his face and clothes and his flat, hollow-eyed expression, which made him look like a soulless shell of a thing instead of an actual human being.
“Stay back, kid. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
The flat expression shifted slightly, a corner of the boy’s mouth turning up in a sneer. “Daddy has a message for you.”
The words were uttered in a voice that barely sounded human. It was low and insinuating, the way Luke imagined a snake might sound if it could talk.
Greg’s voice came from above him: “W
hat did he say?”
Luke didn’t respond. He was too transfixed by that cold, empty stare.
“Daddy’s so pleased you’ve come home, Luke,” the boy said in that same sibilant tone. “And he says to tell you that this time you won’t be getting away.”
Greg’s voice came again. Luke still couldn’t make his tongue work. He did, however, lift a foot with the intent of moving up a step in order to put some more distance between himself and this clearly deranged young man. Even as this impression of the boy flitted through his head, he knew it wasn’t quite accurate. There was something other than a mental imbalance at work here. Something unnatural. It was a crazy thought, but how else to explain the deeply odd behavior and the apparent fact that the boy—someone he’d never met—knew his name. And, perhaps most disturbing of all, there was that “daddy” reference. He thought back to the ghost stories he’d heard at Sal’s Place.
Maybe they’d been true, after all. Maybe his childhood home really was haunted.
Maybe—
The hiss emanating from the boy’s slack mouth became an enraged roar as he lunged at Luke with his arms outspread. What Luke did then was pure instinct. He flipped the hand gripping the tire iron down, positioning it so that the sharp end was pointing at the onrushing assailant. The boy had too much momentum to stop or make an evasive maneuver.
He impaled himself on the sharp end of the tire iron.
The enraged roar became a shriek of agony.
“Shit. Holy fucking shit.”
Greg again.
But now Luke finally found his voice. “Get upstairs before it’s too late. I’ll be right behind you.”
Greg wasted no time debating the issue and dashed up the stairs.
The boy had several inches of steel lodged inside him, just up under his ribcage. His wails of agony continued and then there were tears coursing down his quivering face. His features had lost that cold, inhuman aspect, the thing that had been inside him having fled. But it didn’t matter anymore. Though he was still breathing, he was dead already, the actual expiration being a foregone conclusion at this point.
Luke felt bad about it. He hadn’t meant to kill the boy. But there was no time for guilt now. He needed to go to his friend’s side and help him fight back against whatever was happening here.
“Sorry, kid.”
He braced a hand on the boy’s chest and gave him a shove. The boy tumbled backward, the sharp end of the tire iron coming out of his chest with a wet plop. Luke was already racing up the stairs by the time the body hit the floor below with a heavy crash.
Then he was in the upstairs hallway. The door to his old bedroom was just ahead on his right. It was standing open. But the sounds of struggle were issuing from the end of the hallway, in the large master bedroom where his parents had once shared a bed. He caught a glimpse of Greg disappearing through the door there with his Maglite and baseball bat.
Luke hurried to catch up.
Once he reached the end of the hallway, he dashed through the door and came to an abrupt stop just inside the room. The Maglite was on the floor. Luke guessed Greg had dropped it to more effectively wield the bat. The flashlight’s beam was helpfully pointed at the foot of the bed, illuminating the large old steamer trunk that sat in front of it. Nothing he saw in that first moment did anything to dispel the confusion gripping him.
There was no sign of the screaming girl, though he could still hear the sounds of her distress. At first he didn’t see anyone other than Greg, who was standing at a side of the bed with the baseball bat raised above his shoulders, poised to deliver a blow at…something.
Luke stooped to pick up the flashlight. He swept its beam to the left, aiming it at the floor as Greg brought the bat down in a vicious downward arc. The beam revealed the bottom half of a person whose torso wasn’t visible. Luke saw legs clad in raggedy red trousers. It was then that he understood, at least partly. The screaming girl was under the bed and this person was trying to get at her.
The bat made a loud crack as it struck the assailant’s legs. Greg delivered the blow with every ounce of strength he could muster, Luke was sure, but the howl it elicited from the person in the red trousers sounded more like outrage than an expression of pain. Greg raised the bat and brought it down again. This time there was a louder crack. Luke belatedly realized it was the sound of splintering bone. In the midst of this, he realized he was hearing more sounds of struggle from the other side of the bed. He swept the Maglite’s beam in that direction and saw another pair of legs jutting out from under the bed. These, though, were the shapely and toned legs of a young woman. A perfect bare ass was also visible. Like the guy in the red trousers, she was trying to get at the girl under the bed, whose screams had given way to frightened, desperate squeals.
Figuring he could handle the female assailant without it, he dropped the tire iron on the bed, tucked the Maglite under an armpit, and knelt down to grip the nude woman’s slender ankles. Gritting his teeth, he got his feet braced solidly on the floor and began to pull her out from under the bed. The woman screeched in surprise and began trying to thrash free of his grip. But Luke managed to maintain his hold on her and kept working at pulling her away from the bed.
Once he had her clear of the bed, he planted a knee in the small of her back to hold her in place and ducked his head down to peer under the bed. He had the Maglite in his hand now and the beam revealed the face of an attractive young blonde girl. Like the girl beneath him—and the boy from the stairs—she looked like she was probably eighteen or so.
He could also see the face of the man whose legs Greg was continuing to pummel with the bat. Except that “man” wasn’t quite the right word. This was more of a thing, a creature of darkness walking around in a hideous, twisted facsimile of a man. Its flesh was blackened and leathery-looking. Rotten. The eyes were blood-red orbs. There was nothing about it that seemed human. And yet Luke detected a hint of something subtly familiar in those blackened features.
The bat rose and fell again and again, pulverizing bone, but the thing in the decaying Santa suit—for that’s what it was, Luke saw now—seemed oblivious to the effects of Greg’s brutal assault. Its rotted lips pulled back to show nubs of yellow teeth protruding from blackened gums.
“Welcome home, son,” it said. “Now crawl under here with daddy so I can finally finish the good work I started so long ago.”
Luke felt something dark and cold slide up inside him and curl around his heart. There was a painful tightness in his chest. Memories from ten years ago came rushing at him again. The bodies and pieces of bodies. All that blood. His narrow escape as he fled screaming into the night.
Seeing her chance, the girl who’d been trapped under the bed scampered out from under it, surged to her feet, and ran out of the room. Luke heard her racing down the hallway and then thumping down the stairs. This was followed by the sound of a startled shriek and then a crash. Surmising the cause of this wasn’t too difficult. She’d tripped over the body at the bottom of the stairs.
But this wasn’t a calamity. She’d undoubtedly gotten another good fright, but she’d get to her feet again in very short order and run out of the house. And that was a good thing. It was a victory. It meant he and Greg had accomplished what they’d set out to do. They had saved the girl’s life.
Luke finally managed to clear the thick lump in his throat. “Greg, take this other girl and get out of here.”
Greg stopped swinging the bat. “What?”
“You heard me. Take her and go.”
Greg grunted. “No fucking problem. But you’re coming with me, amigo.”
“No, I’m not. I have to stay here and let my father finish what he started. That’s the only way this ends. It’s destiny. I never should have lived in the first place.”
The thing that had once been his father laughed softly, a low graveyard rumble. “Good boy.” It reached out to Luke with a gnarled hand. “Come to poppa.”
“Fuck that. Fuck all of that.
”
Greg’s booted feet thumped on the floor as he came quickly around from the other side of the bed. Grabbing hold of Luke’s overcoat by the collar, he hauled him to his feet and propelled him toward the door.
“Get moving. I’m right behind you.”
Luke stumbled over an uneven floor plank and crashed against an edge of the doorframe. Somehow he managed to hang on to the Maglite. When he got turned around and was able to sweep its beam across the bed, he saw something that shouldn’t have been possible. His father had emerged from under the bed and was now standing on legs broken in numerous places. Shards of black bone jutted from rips in the fabric of the red trousers.
Silas Herzinger—or, rather, the creature that had once been that man—took an unsteady, herky-jerky step toward Greg, whose back was currently turned to him. He began to raise the heavy-bladed axe clutched in his gnarled hands. Luke opened his mouth to shout a warning, terror rising up inside him again as he realized the words would come too late to save his friend.
Somehow, though, Greg sensed the looming threat and whirled around in time to raise the bat and deflect the swinging axe blade. This last-second defensive maneuver saved him, but the axe hit the bat hard enough to send it flying out of his hands. The Silas-thing began to draw the axe back in preparation of taking another swing at its now defenseless intended victim. Recognizing that the creature’s focus was only on Greg, Luke knew he had to act now or his friend would die.
He pushed away from the doorframe and took a running leap at the creature, hitting it with his shoulder at about waist level. The impact caused the thing to lose its footing and they tumbled to the floor together. Luke heard the axe hit the floor with a heavy thump as it slipped from the creature’s grip. Snarling with rage, the Silas-thing clawed at his face with its twisted, blackened hands. A fingernail traced a bloody groove down one side of Luke’s face. But Luke had the advantage of leverage, having landed atop the creature. He’d also managed to hold on to the Maglite. Bracing his free hand against the rough wooden floor, he raised himself up high enough to take a swing at the thing’s face with the heavy flashlight.