by Scott Hale
Herbert waved off his concerns. “I thought they were as good as gone, too, but I guess to read me it had to get all ghost-like. I don’t know. Let’s get out of here.”
Connor scooped up the shotgun and Herbert’s flashlight and handed them to him. He scrutinized Herbert’s old eyes for signs of damage, but except for the hints of cataracts, they looked untouched. “What did it want?”
“The other necklace,” Herbert said, jumping as lightning lit up Brian Zdanowicz’s room. “Wanted to know where it was. I expect it’ll make a run for it, now that it’s got something to do other than sit around haunting here.” He started to cough up blood, from the places in his throat where the Argento’s tongue had torn it away. “Let’s go. You cut its arm off. That’s good enough for me.”
“We’re just going to leave it?” He felt bad for the old warrior, who now looked as though he could be bested by a stiff breeze. “That’s kind of an underwhelming way to end the story.”
“Listen,” Herbert said, pulling a barb out of his mouth, “I need to get drunk, and fast. There’s no necklace to get, because that thing has it inside it. Your Argento may still be here, may be halfway across town now. Who knows? I don’t, and I don’t rightly care.”
“Herbert, man,” Connor said, and then sighed. “This doesn’t feel right, having no closure. I’m not going to be able to sleep at night knowing that thing is out there. Knowing that thing knows me. I mean, it imitated me. Christ, if it read your mind, it sure as hell read mine, too.”
Herbert grumbled as he reached into his pocket and loaded five more shells into the shotgun. “It’s good to know you can swim, kid, but that don’t mean you have to go off the deep end. One day at a time. Come on, let’s go. I’ll let you buy me a drink.” He smiled, waited until Connor smiled, too, and then, as he looked past the fledgling investigator, said “Oh, god damn it.”
Connor’s cheek twitched. “What?” Had the Argento come back? He didn’t need to turn around to see what the old man saw, because it was already there beside him, at his hips.
Grass. White, shimmering grass that moved like seaweed and smelled like soap. It was all around them, and where it wasn’t, it soon was. Over the boy’s bed it spread, and into the hall it went, growing out of wood and textile as though they were soil. And with the ghostly stalks came wind and the insects that rode in on it. Strangely colored and strangely formed, the small spiders and bulbous grubs paid Connor and Herbert no mind as they explored the shifting corridors of their new expanse.
“Herbert, exposition, please,” Connor said, afraid of what would happen if he were to move.
“It’s midnight, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Connor took out his phone. “Right on the nose.”
“Alright.” Herbert readied the shotgun and flashlight. “We go straight for the front door. No distractions. If you see something that needs saving, leave it. This is the Black Hour.”
Footsteps. Someone was walking down the hall towards the stairs. “What’s… that?”
“It’s a span of time. Starts at midnight. Lasts just as long as it sounds. During the Black Hour, anything can happen. It’s real up until the moment it’s not. It’s like dreaming and being awake at the same time.” Herbert lowered his voice as he, too, heard the people or person outside the room. “Sometimes it’s nothing. It can happen anywhere. But of course, it happened here. Tonight. How’s that for an ending to your story?”
“It’s good; it’s a good one,” Connor said, having a hard time paying attention to Herbert.
More footsteps; one step after the other: whatever was out there was headed towards where they needed to go.
“What about time zones?”
Herbert shook his head. “I don’t think it much gives a shit about things like that. I’ve only been in it one other time. Happened at a zoo. The snow turned to glass, and all the animals merged into one. That’s what we’re dealing with here, Trigger, so let’s bounce.”
It had only taken the Black Hour a minute to undo what the Zdanowiczs’ had spent years perfecting. The carefully chosen colors, expensive decorations, and personal embellishments were now lost to the glowing overgrowth. Connor felt a pang of sadness as they slipped quietly into the hall. The Argento had gutted the house, but for those who knew where to look, they could still see remnants of the owners in the objects they’d left behind. The Black Hour, however, took everything. For Connor, knowing that the family’s existence was now beholden to memory and rumor was more frightening than anything else. Death fascinated him, entertained and excited him, but the permanence of it was almost too much to consider.
“Front door,” Herbert whispered, taking the lead. “If it’s not in the same place, we’ll go through a window if we need to.”
“Wait a—” Connor grabbed the old man’s shirt, signaling him to stop.
Again, he’d heard footsteps. He pointed past the staircase where the hall stretched further back to the rest of the rooms. Two shapes stood there, in front of the large window at the second floor’s end.
“Keep going,” Herbert grunted, shaking free of Connor’s grip. “We stop for nothing.”
A burst of lightning exploded outside. In one moment of severe blue light, the shapes were made visible. One was a woman, the other a young girl. Everything about them was human, except for the part that truly grants humanity. Where the woman’s neck ended, a raven’s head began. And for the young girl, there was no neck at all, because an octopus’ body sat atop her shoulders. In each of their hands, they held a weapon—the woman, an ax, and the girl, a dagger—and by the way they stared Connor and Herbert down, shoulders hunched and breathing heavily, it seemed they had every intention of using them.
“What are they?” Connor asked as they tiptoed towards the top of the staircase.
Herbert shook his head as he moved the shotgun back and forth between the two terrors. “Nightmares of us, maybe.”
“It feels wrong to look at them.” Connor swallowed hard and cast his eyes to the ground to give the terrors the reverence they seemed to deserve. “I hope I never see them again.”
Steps in line with each other’s, Connor and Herbert carefully descended the staircase. The Raven and the Octopus watched them at first. Then, when they’d reached the halfway point, the terrors crouched down and disappeared into the pale grass. Like animals hunting prey, they darted through their cover, to overtake the meal that thought it’d got away.
“Herbert, go,” Connor shouted, quickening the old man’s pace.
Herbert spun around and fired at the top of the stairs, blowing apart the grass into ghostly whirlwinds. Connor caught a glimpse of the terrors’ eyes—a glint of violence in their monstrous skulls—and tore ahead.
“Front door, front door,” he shouted to Herbert.
It had moved several feet to the left of where it should have been, but it was there nonetheless.
A clap of thunder rocked the house, sending pictures and vases from their shelves. Connor waded through the thickening grass, his skin burning where it touched him. He threw himself against the front door, fumbled for its handle as he watched Herbert fire shell after shell at the terrors.
“Go!” the old man shouted, giving up and making a run for it.
Connor ripped open the front door—“Oh fuck!”—and stumbled backward. On the doorstep a porcelain doll stood, a butcher’s knife in its small, veiny hand. Hundreds of writhing larvae fell from its harlequin grin, the skin around its mouth splotchy and raw. The doll plodded forward, its drenched dress sticking to its mildewed flesh.
Connor was paralyzed, caught in the vermillion-flecked gaze of the creature one-fourth his size. He could feel a quiver in his arm, where the machete throbbed and yearned to be buried in the thing’s chest. Sweat poured down his forehead and piss dribbled down his leg.
He could hear the knife singing, its sharp song a promise of pain to come. He didn’t want to die, not like this, but maybe it was better this way. The doll, now that he looked at it, a fever brea
king across his brow, looked kind, inviting. He went to his knees, because the doll let him go to his knees, and held out his arms to embrace it.
An explosion of heat and noise blew past him. The doll flew off its feet, its face shattering into a million tumor-caked pieces. Connor fell forward, rid of the abomination’s mental grip, and breathed again.
“I told you there was a doll missing,” Herbert said, helping Connor to his feet.
“What if… what if it comes back?” Connor panted, covering his crotch to hide his accident.
“Look at it,” Herbert said, pointing to the doll. “It’s going to take a whole lot of super glue to put that thing back together. Ready for that drink?”
THE BUMP IN THE NIGHT
At 12:20 AM, Connor and Herbert left the Zdanowiczs’ house. With the Argento gone, the doll dead, and the Black Hour behind them, the investigation had been, more or less, a complete failure. But if Herbert North’s intentions had been to scare Connor into a life of isolation, then the whole operation was easily an overwhelming success.
At 12:35 AM, the old warrior and his wobbly sidekick found the nearest bar and got shitfaced. Like a couple of kids who’d seen their parents naked, they sat there in silence, nursing their shame.
At 12:50 AM, Herbert, in one drunken motion, tossed Connor his payment of three hundred dollars, threw back a handful of peanuts, sauntered over to the jukebox, and threw up all over it when it started blaring country music.
At 1:30 AM, after riding the road’s median as though they were trying to earn a tip from it, Connor and Herbert finally made it back to Adelaide’s Hollow. Connor stumbled out of Herbert’s car and headed for his own. The old man promised to call him in the morning, to finish the interview and to check-in to make sure Connor was still alive.
At 1:40 AM, Connor checked the trunk and backseat of his car for stowaways. He sat there for a bit after Herbert drove off, machete across his lap, watching the carnivorous tree.
At 2:00 AM, he left a voicemail for his father letting him know with the most obvious of lies that he was okay. Then, he responded to a text message from his best friend, Henry, who asked if Connor was interested in exploring a haunted castle (he wasn’t).
At 2:20 AM, Connor barged into his apartment, machete raised high like a maniac. He turned on every light and decoration, giving the darkness no quarter. He woke his laptop from its sleep and then, stomach wailing like a trauma ward, went into the kitchen. There, he gobbled down a bowl of cereal, wincing every time the spoon clinked off his teeth.
At 2:30 AM, Connor the cyclops couldn’t ignore the urge any longer. He scurried over to his laptop and began furiously typing his account of the night. At first, he invented a character to play the role of himself, but that felt wrong, disingenuous.
“No matter how many times Connor pushed, poked, and prodded his mother’s meatballs, they continued to be totally inedible,” he giddily wrote.
Here and there, he paused to sketch the house and the creatures they’d found inside on the pad of paper beside him. This would be his best work, he concluded, one he would be remembered for.
At 3:10 AM, Connor Prendergast was snoring louder than a fat kid at a slumber party. Mid-mumble, a strange smell stirred him from his slumber—a smell he could not place. His eyes opened slowly, and then panic set in as he realized he sat in darkness. The laptop was still on, still charging. His apartment was in an old building, and not a particularly well put-together one at that, but when the power went out, it went out in every room.
He tipped the laptop lid back, sending a beam of white light across the living room. Still alone, but where was his machete? Like the dead, he stumbled towards the nearest light switch and gave it a flick. The overheads and lamps buzzed on. Something had turned them off.
At 3:12 AM, Connor found the machete in the bathroom, lying across the sink, where it had no right to be. Suddenly, the apartment, which he had lived in for close to two years now, felt very alien to him. Wandering out of the bathroom, diligently turning on light after light, he began to feel as though something had crept inside and settled into the apartment itself. The furniture and furnishings—they felt wrong, looked wrong, as though tainted or infected. The air, too, had changed; it felt as though it were building up, being held back in an anxious wait. Each hallway, and there were only two of them, seemed to stretch on forever, and each door—why were they all shut?—a gateway to horrors yet unseen.
A noise broke up his thoughts: a knocking, a rapping at his double-bolted, chain-locked, and soon to be nailed-shut door.
Connor sighed, laughed. “Probably just the neighbors. Probably heard me stomping around in here.”
Quiet as a thief, Connor crossed the apartment and put his eye to the peephole. No one, nothing, yet the knocking continued slowly, deliberately. He stood on the tips of his toes to get a better look, holding out hope that he was under siege by a small child or a red-hooded dwarf. But again, no one, nothing.
“Alright, assholes, I’m calling my mom and dad,” Connor shouted, having regressed a full fifteen years.
“James, buddy,” he said, going back to his desk and picking up his cell phone. “Come on, bro, be awake.”
As he swiped though his contact list, his nose twitched and, once again, he caught a whiff of that strange smell from before. But this time, now that he was awake and aware, he knew exactly what it was.
Super glue.
NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN
Herbert North lowered himself into the swamp and slowly waded forward. Boney trees twisted out of the roiling murk, their flesh the leaves that now blanketed the black waters. Mosquitoes washed over him in blood-swollen waves, taking what they could, when they could, because he was in no position to swat them away. He’d brought the torch, but then left it behind, as the dead things ahead had their own light, and he didn’t want them to see him coming.
Joy
Joy knew her husband was going to kill her; it was only a matter of time. She leaned over the dinner table, poured the stew into the two bowls there. She blew out the candle nearest where her husband would sit so he wouldn’t have to see the slop she’d so boldly served him. Murdering the man would be easy—it always was for Joy—but she had hoped he would be different. And now it seemed that same hope would be the very thing that sent her back to the grave she’d spent so long climbing out of.
One grunt, two groans, and ten heavy footsteps later: Joy’s husband came through the front door and stood there until she emerged from the kitchen. She put on a smile, and then glided down the hallway, her white satin dress moving gently with her motions, giving to her a fleeting grace she didn’t otherwise possess. Her husband waited unmoved on the threshold, as mud sloughed off his boots onto the hardwood floor.
“I missed you,” Joy said, leaning forward and kissing her husband on the lips. He tasted of sweat, and of another woman. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
Her husband nodded and, much to Joy’s surprise, he smiled and said, “As did I.”
Staying true to her name, Joy let out a squeak; grinning like the schoolgirl she’d never been, she wheeled her husband around the house, until they were in the kitchen and he in his seat.
“Catch any bad men today?” Joy asked, bringing some water to the table before sitting down.
Her husband stirred the slop in the bowl with his spoon, as though trying to dredge up what may lie at the bottom. “There’s bad women, too,” he said.
“In Marrow?” Joy thought of the town and those that inhabited it—the women, especially. They were hard creatures, empty creatures; shells of something that had once been great and beautiful, but now were nothing more than hollow vessels to be filled and put to labor. “What’s the worst you’ve ever caught?”
Joy’s husband took a drink of water and asked, “Man or woman?”
“Don’t matter,” Joy said in the southern accent she’d been honing the last few months.
“We had ourselves a murderer a few years back,” her
husband said, finally taking a sip of his stew. He sighed as though he’d been expecting poison, and seemed satisfied. “He would take men up to his shack in the Black Hills.”
A passing carriage outside gave him pause.
“He would take men up to his shack in the Black Hills and eat them.”
Joy put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she exclaimed in a breathy whisper.
“Doesn’t that frighten you?” her husband asked. He looked at her suspiciously. “Doesn’t that disgust you?”
“Of course it does. It’s awful.” Joy tried to make herself look pale, but she was already as white as one could be. “I’m sorry. I know it’s macabre, but at the same time, it fascinates me. It must fascinate you, too.”
Her husband dropped his spoon into the bowl. “I’m sheriff because these things repulse me, sicken me. I do not find them fascinating, Joy.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked into her lap, ashamed.
“Are you happy?” Even without the candle lit before him, she could see that her husband’s face had darkened.
“Of course,” she lied, though she had never truly known happiness, so it was difficult to say for sure. “Aren’t you? Boone, aren’t you happy?”
Boone fell back in his chair and exhaled loudly, as though he’d been holding his breath ever since their wedding night three months ago. “Where’d you come from?”
Joy wanted nothing more than to find someone she could share that answer with, but Boone was not that person. She had misjudged him, and herself.
“Here and there,” she began, as she always began. “You know me, love. I’ve never laid roots anywhere until now.”
“Marrow isn’t some place you just stumble into.”
“Well, I did. I didn’t mean to, but I did. Why does it matter? If it bothered you so much, love, why didn’t you ask sooner?”
“Why didn’t I ask?” Boone leant forward, elbows to the table, fists to his temples. “Joy, I’m lucky I didn’t starve to death when you came to town. You were all I could think about. You were all I wanted. I couldn’t sleep because time was wasted when it was not spent with you. Do you know how many noses I had to break to keep the ‘bad men’ from you?”