Snapdragon Book I: My Enemy

by Brandon Berntson

  Don’t deny me—pretend I do not exist. Don’t make it worse for yourself.

  Sadie pulled the covers up to his chin and whimpered.

  Grisly scenes came to life in his mind: Rudy lying dismembered—each appendage quivering—in a cold, wet field. Blood painted the grass. A red-skinned, four-legged monster chewed on one of his legs, its teeth tearing into muscle and sinews. His mother huddled in the corner of a dark room screaming with her hands to her face. His father lied in a pool of his own blood, his throat slit from ear to ear.

  No, my family is alive, Sadie thought, and shivered.

  The bogeyman was real, and he was worse than Sadie imagined.

  This is the path of the beast, the creature said in his mind. Do the darkness proud, boy.

  He saw himself, cowering, shivering in the corner of a dark room like his mother. A creature, a bloodstained troll, slavered on the floor, smacking its lips.

  You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, he thought.

  Sadie let himself go, falling into the path of the beast. It had traveled through time and space to find him…

  But is it really the bogeyman? he thought.

  Black shapes moved across the floor, rising into view.

  Yes. It’s worse than the bogeyman. It’s worse than the bogeyman could ever be…

  But the monster was only playing with his thoughts.

  Sadie shivered and pulled the covers off. He sat up, putting his feet on the floor. Walking across the room to the window, he lifted the pane. A warm blast of summer wind rushed in. The houses were dark and quiet along Chestnut Street. The streetlamps were lit. Strong gusts made the branches bend and creak.

  Baseball is over, Sadie. You’re not a little boy anymore. You will never play again, not with Mommy and Daddy, not with big brother. Certainly, not with Sammy Sosa.

  His chin trembled, and suddenly he wanted to cry. He believed what the demon told him.

  He had the sudden urge to run to his brother! A demon was standing outside his window! Rudy could make it go away! Rudy could do anything!

  But an invisible force kept him still.

  He had to let go, to sneak outside. It was the only way…

  Rather than fight, Sadie let go, the All-American dream of striking out Sammy Sosa vanishing in an instant.

  Shadows shifted through the room again, moving over his arms.

  The wind blew fierce, throwing the curtains inward. Thunder cracked across the sky. Lightning flashed, and rain hammered the roof of the house.

  His room was unnaturally cold suddenly. The figure stood behind him wearing a long black cape and hat. By the thousands, spiders patched the walls and ceiling.

  He rubbed his hands across his arms, but he couldn’t get warm. The wind was like ice.

  “It’s just trying to scare you,” Sadie said, though his voice, even to him, sounded uncertain. “It’s just trying to scare you. It’s just a bad dream.”

  If he wanted perfection, he had to go outside. Dreams awaited for him in the dark. If he hurried, he might be able to pitch against Sammy Sosa still.

  Just don’t take my family, he thought.

  Sadie turned, exiting his bedroom. He walked down the hall and into the living room. Pulling the front door wide, he slipped outside into the cold rainy night.

  Magic and mystery. What child did not long to be a part of such miracles?

  Sadie ran down the sidewalk. All he had on were his blue racecar pajamas, the ones his father had gotten him last year for Christmas.

  He was a puppet, no longer in control.

  You never were, the creature said.

  ii

  Gavin Lolly couldn’t sleep, and it was already past midnight. The rain was loud on the roof, keeping him awake, even though he was in the basement. Not that he minded. These were nights to savor. As nice as the day had been, he couldn’t believe it was raining at all.

  He’d just finished watching Sorority House Slaughter, a nighttime thriller on The Big Chill Theater. A ubiquitous killer had chased and butchered college co-eds for almost two hours. A half hour into it, he was already yawning from boredom.

  Gavin Lolly prided himself on tales of terror. He loved them, read them, watched them, informing himself on every maddening, bloody story he could find. Gavin concluded the lame directors hadn’t a clue as to what real terror was. It made Gavin ill. Horror in good taste, he thought.

  “Gore is not good taste,” he said, to the television. “Nudity and blood is not good taste. Anyone can create garbage. Garbage doesn’t take any thought. I can’t believe people buy into this stuff!”

  He watched the movies for the comedy. Gavin thought horror stories were funny. And he had to admit, even at ten, gore got old quick. It seemed the directors cared more for blood and guts than the actual story. For a while, he had thought it was cool, but these days it was just getting old.

  “Now, take The Haunting of Julia, based on the Peter Straub novel,” he pontificated to himself. “The movie has all the fits to keep you trembling. Why, if you think about it, it could be a psychological roller coaster instead of an actual ghost story, and maybe that’s the point. After all, maybe Julia was just a wacko. That’s what the ghost wants you to believe. But Julia knows she’s being haunted by her daughter. The viewer knows she’s being haunted by her daughter. The effect is brilliant. The film delivers the same appeal as the novel, but I’m not going to glamorize the movie over the book. I’m merely using it as an example compared to today’s mindless garbage. Like Sorority House Slaughter. See, mindless, thoughtless garbage. Two hours of my life wasted watching something a five-year-old could’ve made. Or, I could spend time with Julia, filled with all the shivers, chills, emotions, and delivering an impact powerful enough to leave a nice, healthy scar. Horror done in bad taste, or horror done in good taste? Ladies and gentleman, I do believe there’s a difference.”

  Granted The Haunting of Julia was a rare movie to find these days, at least on DVD. He’d never met anyone who’d actually seen it. Gavin had stumbled upon it late one night while watching television, and had been, to put it mildly, floored. He looked for it every day now, flipping through the channels, hoping, praying, wishing he had a VCR, so he could record it. That was the only time he’d seen it. But he’d read the book and loved it, too, finding it at a used bookstore in town.

  Gavin had conversations with himself on a regular basis. Already, he was a critic, though Gavin didn’t think of himself as one. His dream was to create dark, cinematic masterpieces with flair without all the Hollywood propaganda. It bothered him that every movie he saw these days consisted of a cast cut from Gentleman’s Quarterly and the entire Victoria Secret catalogue. Didn’t horror stories happen to average, unattractive people? Didn’t that alone, make them unrealistic?

  As traditional as he was, he defended the books above the movies. Not that he was well read, but he had managed to gather a few good books for his collection, most of them ghost stories. He had a fetish for the atmospheric haunting. It moved him deep inside. He preferred movies and books before his time. He was old fashioned in that respect. The Haunting of Julia had scarred him in a good way, something you just didn’t see anymore. Something about the soft, elegant cinematic atmosphere had struck a chord inside, and Gavin had been looking for movies like it ever since.

  Gavin wasn’t allowed the allowance to buy books regularly, and he didn’t frequent the town library. Julia had been a single purchase with money he’d found. If he were a filmmaker, he would adhere to the books as strictly as he could, down to the exact clothes and molecules the author described. It wasn’t necessarily the same work when you took liberties and changed plot lines and situations, was it? Hell, if it weren’t for the books, how many good movies would there be? In the field of entertainment, books and movies went hand in hand.

  “The Haunting of Hill House is the same,” Gavin continued his pretend interview. “You have the book, the nineteen-sixty version of the movie, and then the remake w
ith Liam Neeson. I’m not dissin’ Neeson, but I am dissin’ the movie. There they go throwing Shirley Jackson’s name all over it, when it has nothing to do with Shirley Jackson at all! I think it’s funny people remake films only to make them worse than the original. If you can’t make it better, then don’t make it at all.

  “Obviously, nothing compares to the book, but the nineteen-sixty film is a respectable representation. It begins and ends the same. The newer movie called, The Haunting, is nothing like the book at all. It’s an assault with too many special effects and not enough Shirley Jackson. After all, the reason Hill House is so terrifying is because it’s been standing for ninety years, and goshdamnit, those who walk there, walk alone.”

  “Thank you for your insights, Mr. Lolly,” he said, pretending to be the interviewer as well. “It’s been a real pleasure talking with you.”

  “Thank you for having me, Sid,” he said.

  He understood the concept of horror as much as his young mind could grasp it. He’d make it his mission to represent traditional horror in the modernized world of poor production and bad remakes. When he was older, he would create the best macabre movies ever seen, not this glamorized gore, sex, and teenage romp. He didn’t have the skill to pen, but he studied the movies and books, and he imagined what it would be like to adapt the greatest horror fiction to the big screen. Sorority House Slaughter was the perfect example of the kind of director Gavin did not want to be.

  Also, he knew terror first hand…the reason he leaned toward it in the first place. Nothing was more horrifying than life itself, and the movies he saw were a pale representation compared to what he had to endure. Horror lived in the same house as he did, slept under the same roof. His mother crept about upstairs like a violent ghost in a Shirley Jackson novel, more terrifying than the most tasteful (or dreadful) of films.

  Gavin kept to his dark, lonely room in the basement. As long as he kept out of sight, he’d be okay. He’d been doing it for years now.

  He’d found the television in a pile of junk in the basement. Fixing aluminum foil to an already busted antenna, several channels actually came in rather well. If only he could get a popcorn machine and indulge in fountain drinks, he’d never have to leave. Hanging out here could be quite enjoyable.

  Surviving in the Lolly household had become a daunting task, but Gavin played the role to perfection.

  Welcome, he thought. Only dead things live here. Only foul vermin and beasts from the fields. Note, the smell of stale skin and cigarette smoke, the ageless copulation. And if you dig further, you can make out the stench of vomit. Yes. Here. There. Take a big whiff. Can you smell it?

  It affected his grades as well. It was hard to focus when the beast occupied his thoughts all the time. He’d come close to repeating the fourth grade because of it.

  If only something would slither out of the darkness and swallow her. The times she’d pulled him out of school so his bruises could heal…

  Change would come, though, Gavin told himself. He could feel it. He just had to be patient.

  Wide open landscapes had been filling his head recently, dreams presenting themselves on a movie screen in his mind’s eye. Colors were visible in lieu of his passion. The dreams had begun only a few days ago…a white palatial structure, spires towering into a bright blue sky.

  He had friends again, too, boys his own age. A miracle awaited him, a battle between two worlds, and Gavin Lolly was a part of it.

  Maybe the change he looked forward to was simpler, like reading The Tell-Tale Heart in front of his classmates, or choosing The Haunting of Julia to watch at the end of the school year. That would be cool.

  The dreams, either way, promised a new life, ransomed from the hands of his diabolical mother.

  Thunder cracked and boomed above the house. Rain continued to pour.

  Gavin basked in the white glow from the television, waiting for the next thriller to begin. Hopefully, it would be better than Sorority House Slaughter. Grinning, he saw it was Attack of the Spiders. Gavin shook his head and sighed. “Who chooses this stuff?” he said.

  Not the worst, but better than Sorority House Slaughter. Instead of gore, he’d have to endure the cheesy melodrama.

  Startling him, a scream split the air, and Gavin did a little jerk. Impressive, he thought, but it wasn’t coming from the television like he’d thought. No one was visible on the t.v. to even issue a scream.

  It came again, a wail from outside, a murdering cry of terror, muffled because of the rain, but distinctly audible.

  Gavin turned to the tiny square window above his bed, the glow from the streetlamps, but it was too small to see anything other than the tall grass.

  Gooseflesh rippled across his arms.

  Gavin Lolly grabbed his blanket and wrapped it around his shivering form.

  iii

  Know my pain.

  Sadie McCall didn’t comprehend pain, not just yet. He was a stranger to himself. Something evil beckoned, and he followed.

  I will show you the universe.

  Yes. That’s all he wanted.

  The rain hit him hard, pelting him, pushing him to the ground as he ran.

  I am here for you. Giving my life. Trembling cold.

  Someone else was talking, putting words into his brain. Yes. He would give his life. The thing, whatever it was, made dark promises, and wasn’t that better than no promise?

  Sadie ran barefoot through the rain, passing the dark, silent houses along Chestnut Street. Soon, he was at the edge of the neighborhood where the meadow began.

  The demon beckoned. Sadie didn’t think of the monster as evil, but it corrupted his thoughts, turning them somehow toward love. He would learn to love the beast, it told him.

  Cold numbed his brain.

  Sadie stopped running. His racecar pajamas were soaked, dark hair plastered to his face.

  Remember this, this endless running, this thoroughbred racing—

  Fifty yards into the meadow, he saw it, a sentinel on a black horse, its face masked by clouds.

  See me for what I am. I swallow children whole.

  The meadow was foggy. Was that why its face seemed masked by clouds?

  Sadie stepped into the meadow as if under a spell, mud squelching between his toes.

  Locked deep within his own mind, another smaller version of himself seemed to be knocking on the door of his consciousness. The real Sadie was in there somewhere shouting for him to wake up!

  The creature loomed over him now, an arm’s length away.

  Blackness and evil looked down into his eyes. The beast grew larger, vast spaces of night reaching out with shadowy hands and claws. A grin stretched behind the fog.

  Sadie blinked and swooned, seeing the figure for what it actually was. A demon leered at him from under the top hat, a cape of shadows, a more fashionably distinguished Reaper, its face a patchwork construction of bones.

  The thing reached out, clutching the collar of Sadie’s pajamas, and lifted him up and onto the saddle. Sadie screamed and wailed, his paralysis suddenly broken. He fought, kicked, and screamed, beating at the monster, but it was useless.

  Rain continued to pour. Hadn’t he been in his room only seconds ago? What was he doing out here alone in the dark?

  His eyes went wide, heart skipping a beat, choking on his own terror. The creature slipped a bony arm around his chest and held him tight.

  But he still had an All-American dream, he told himself. He was going to strike out Sammy Sosa.

  Not in this life. But trust me, your death is for a good cause.

  Stars filled his head, and he swam through space, a timeless, unfolding universe. His blood turned to ice.

  The demon steered the horse away from the town lights and toward the mountains.

  The meadow disappeared. A tangible blackness opened in front of him. The darkness was alive. It had fingers. It reached out and touched him, filling his mouth.

  Sadie sniffed back tears and cried.

  Home, h
e thought, pleadingly. I just want to go home…

  Claws dug into his abdomen. Lightning rods of fire galvanized his mid-section, and Sadie screamed.

  He’d always—despite what he’d thought (his dreams of striking out Sammy Sosa and pitching in the majors)—been soiled by rot and depravity.

  That’s what the creature told him as it carried him away into the dark.

  iv

  Gavin looked at the window above his bed, a piece of glass no more than a foot and a half wide by ten-inches tall.

  The scream did not come from the television at all. It had come from a boy no older than himself.

  Gavin stood on his bed, making sure the window was locked. Peering outside, he saw only the tall, wet grass, a silver reflection from a lamp pole.

  Thunder pealed across the sky.

  Should he investigate? Should he run into the pouring streets and see what was happening?

  For a second, he had the urge to do just that, but another scream split the air.

  Gavin Lolly grabbed the covers and threw them over his head. He reached out and turned off the television. Attack of the Spiders seemed all too real suddenly, as though a million tiny fiends were crawling all over him.

  CHAPTER IV

  His mother was already gone for work. The morning sun stirred him, shining through the living room window. Masie was asleep in her room. Seth’s first thought was of Jeanie Masterson and the kiss she’d given him the night before. Not a bad evening, if he did say so himself. Seth smiled, remembering sitting up with Masie the night before, watching Spider-Man 2. He must’ve fallen asleep quickly afterwards.

  Jeanie Masterson! How could he not grow attached? Did Masie understand what he was going through?

  Seth closed his eyes. He could spend his entire day lost in thoughts from the night before, Jeanie’s slender arms around his neck, her head tilting to one side. He’d take her away if he could—just she and him—to some distant land. Jeanie deserved thrones and kingdoms!