Catching Hell

by Greg F. Gifune

  “Sit wherever you’d like,” the waitress said, her voice raspy from too many cigarettes over too many years.

  Stefan, Billy and Tory took up position on stools at the counter, and Alex hurried off to the bathroom. The waitress slid menus in front of them just as the cook hit a bell behind her. She turned, scooped up three plates of food and brought them to the women at the end of the counter.

  Alex returned from the restroom a moment later and joined the others at the counter. While she, Stefan and Tory scanned their menus, Billy studied the women. He guessed it was a mother and two daughters, though the mother looked relatively young. Early forties, he thought, and the daughters late teens. All three were attractive but heavily made-up, their hairdos out-of-date and frozen in place with copious amounts of hairspray. Even their clothes were bizarre, dresses and shoes he’d only seen people wear in old movies. The women noticed him looking their way and smiled in turn.

  Billy pretended to read the menu.

  “Can you believe how cheap these prices are?” Alex said softly.

  Stefan nodded. “Just like the general store.”

  “Ma’am, what town is this?” Tory asked the waitress as she moved past.

  “Boxer Hills.”

  “We’re just passing through,” Stefan said, ignoring Tory’s laser stare, “on our way to Bar Harbor.”

  “Glad you found us,” she said with a wry smile, her teeth stained brown from years of black coffee, cigarettes and neglect.

  “So what’s good today?”

  “Best burgers and iced tea in the state of Maine,” she said flatly.

  “Then that’s what I’ll have.”

  Billy was still watching the women. “The same,” he said absently.

  “Yeah,” Tory mumbled, “me too.”

  The waitress removed a pad from her apron, jotted down their orders then eyed Alex. “And you?”

  “The same but with an ice water, please.”

  As the waitress moved away, Stefan leaned closer to Tory, who was spinning back and forth on his stool like a child trying to effectively watch every corner of the diner at once. “Will you knock it off?”

  “We’re still in—”

  “Everything’s fine. Let’s just eat and we’ll go. Relax.”

  Billy lit a cigarette and again glanced at the women. The youngest, a brunette with expressive blue eyes, her lips painted with bright lipstick, smiled coyly and batted her eyelashes. This time he smiled back.

  “Um, ew,” Alex said under her breath. “Try to keep it in your pants for once, would you, sport?”

  Stefan gave a comical grimace. “Nobody told me The Andrew Sisters were going to be here.”

  But for Tory, who had no idea who The Andrew Sisters were, they all laughed and began to feel more at ease with their surroundings.

  As they waited for the food, for the first time since the freak rainstorm they began to enjoy themselves, engaging in small talk and banter. In time it seemed Stefan had been right after all. Maybe they had let their imaginations run wild. Maybe Boxer Hills was just an odd little town in the middle of nowhere that was a throwback to an earlier era, a village that had hung on to the past and become set in its ways. Maybe it was that simple.

  The waitress eventually delivered their lunches. As she moved away, Billy again made eye contact with the women. The youngest ran her tongue across her lips suggestively.

  “Well, this looks good,” Stefan said with his best attempt at cheeriness. He held the burger in both hands and took a generous bite.

  Thick splotches of bright red blood exploded from it, spraying the counter area and his plate. Stefan dropped the sandwich and staggered back off his stool, hands furiously wiping the crimson from his mouth. “What the hell is this,” he gasped, shaking dollops of blood from his hands, “what—what did you give me?”

  The meat bounced off the counter and fell to the floor with a nauseating splat, more blood and viscera flying from it. The gray, loosely formed meat was drenched in blood, and what Stefan had previously thought chopped onions, were in fact slowly writhing maggots.

  Alex screamed and jumped to her feet.

  Billy had seen what happened, but still mesmerized by the women, did not move. Their smiles slowly faded, their faces turned serious and cold, and previously enticing stares became masks of intensity. Though it disturbed him on a level primal in its depth, the shift in the women was so sudden and extreme he could not take his eyes from them. He’d never seen anything quite like it.

  Stefan gagged then began to cough.

  By the time Alex had gone to him with a napkin and wiped the remnants of blood from his face, the cough had escalated to violent choking. He stumbled back a few feet, hands to his throat.

  “Jesus, dude,” Tory said, moving toward him, “you all right?”

  “Stef?” Alex put her hand on his back. “He’s choking—he’s—he’s choking! What the hell did you give him?”

  Billy, still entranced with the women, watched as they continued to glare.

  Stefan’s choking became worse.

  “He can’t breathe!” Alex cried.

  Her shriek snapped Billy free of his trance, and he quickly went to Stefan’s side as well. He pounded on his back but it did no good. He asked him what he was choking on, but when Stefan attempted an answer, a thick drool of spittle uncoiled from his mouth and dangled in a long string nearly to the floor. As his upper body bucked, he vomited. Hands pawing at his throat, Stefan’s face grew blood red.

  “Call an ambulance!” Billy said, turning to the waitress. She stared at him. “Now, goddamn it! Do it now!”

  The cook came out from the kitchen, a cleaver in hand, and watched as well, his face expressionless. Neither made a move to help.

  Billy turned to the women. They were smiling again, pleased. “What the hell is wrong with you people?”

  Stefan’s legs buckled, but Alex and Tory were there to catch him. Still unable to draw air, he began to convulse and writhe about, his eyes bulging grotesquely.

  “He’s choking to death!” Alex grabbed hold of him and tried desperately to see into his throat, but nothing seemed to be blocking his airway. “Call a fucking ambulance!”

  Billy spun and slammed a fist into the center of Stefan’s chest.

  He gagged, vomited a second time then dropped to his knees and drew a sudden intake of air so violent it manifested as an audible screech.

  Alex knelt next to him and gently rubbed his back. “It’s Okay, just breathe. Nice deep breaths, that’s it.”

  With a crazed expression, the cook suddenly swung the cleaver and buried it in the counter with a loud thud.

  They all jumped, startled and confused.

  The women at the counter began to laugh, but there was no humor in it, no joy. It was laughter so scornful and vicious it froze Billy’s blood in his veins.

  “Get him up and outside,” he said, hands at his side but clenched into fists.

  As Alex and Tory helped Stefan to the door, Billy grabbed the car keys from the counter and followed them, moving backward so he could keep the townspeople in his line of sight.

  “Go ahead, run.” The waitress smiled, flashing her brown teeth. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  Chapter Five

  “Get him in the car,” Billy ordered. “I’ll drive.”

  Still holding Stefan steady, Alex and Tory hurriedly maneuvered him into the backseat. Tory slid in next to him and Alex took shotgun. “What did that mean?” she asked as Billy climbed behind the wheel. “What did she mean, we’re not going anywhere?”

  “These people are fucking with us.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re not hanging around to find out.”

  “What the hell was that?” Tory said hysterically. “What did that bitch serve us, they—the blood, the—it looked like human blood, and the shit falling off it—”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Alex interrupted. “We haven’t done anything t
o them, why would they do this?”

  Rather than engage in further conversation, Billy sped from the lot and continued in the same direction they’d been heading when they came upon the diner. Nervously checking the rearview every few seconds, he was certain if they put enough distance between themselves and Boxer Hills proper, they’d eventually cross the town line or again gain access to the state highway.

  But the farther they drove the more remote the area became.

  Before, where they had seen an occasional house or street sign, they now saw only trees and increasingly aged, decayed pavement, the forest on either side of them thicker, deeper, darker.

  “How you holding up back there?” Billy asked.

  “I’m totally not into this,” Tory moaned.

  “I meant Stefan, moron.”

  “My throat’s sore, but I’m Okay,” he said, voice raspy.

  “The road’s gone to shit.” Billy slowed the car. The condition of the road was suddenly so bad it had become dangerous to proceed at anything beyond a crawl. “Christ, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  He made a three-point turn and headed back in the opposite direction. They soon passed the diner, but again, saw no roads for the highway, and eventually found themselves back in downtown Boxer Hills.

  “Sonofabitch,” Billy muttered as the car rolled to a stop. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Alex pointed to another side road off Main Street. “There, try that one.”

  Billy did, following yet another country road along a winding path that went on for several minutes only to empty out right back where they’d started, at the beginning of Main Street.

  “Every goddamn road dumps us right back here.”

  “We just went in a completely different direction,” Alex said wearily. “How could we end up in the exact same spot?”

  Stefan massaged his temples. “What the hell’s happening?”

  “All these roads look the same.” Billy sighed. “We’ve got to be missing something, there has to be a way out of here.”

  “It’d be tubular if you could find it.” Tory pushed his cowboy hat down tighter on his head. “Because sincerely, I’m having a cow, I’m totally giving birth.”

  Billy watched the main drag awhile.

  No people. No cars. No animals.

  Madness.

  Once again, he headed for the road that had brought them here.

  Nearly half an hour later, after driving in every direction and taking every road they could find, they continued to wind up in exactly the same place. All roads led to this single destination, as if the town of Boxer Hills had somehow been cordoned off from the rest of the planet the moment they crossed into it. And impossible as it seemed—impossible as it had to be—after exhaustive attempts and numerous arguments, they finally had no choice but to accept that there truly was no way out.

  The waitress’s words had proven prophetic after all.

  You’re not going anywhere.

  Billy parked on the side of the road at the mouth of Main Street. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

  “Now what?” Alex asked, emotion straining her voice.

  Billy took her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. For weeks he’d watched her act terrified, playing at horror onstage. It had been a terribly draining process, and often after their performances he’d spent an hour or two decompressing and clearing his mind of the hideous images of fear his character had inflicted upon her. Assuming the role of a heartless psychopath night after night was emotionally exhausting enough, but when it was aimed at someone he truly cared for, psychologically, it was downright excruciating. And this new look of terror on her face was even worse because there was no premeditated method behind it. This was no hoax made to appear real, an illusion they both knew and understood the inner workings of. These emotions were genuine, deadly, and all Billy could see was a young woman he knew and loved and respected, a woman who had once been a lover but who would always be a friend, there for him even when he stumbled, even when he fell, someone who championed him though he rarely deserved to be. In his brief twenty-one years he’d already garnered a reputation as someone unreliable and sure to disappoint more often than not. He’d spent what little life he’d had letting people down and falling short. This time it would be different. “Everything’s gonna be fine,” he told her. “Trust me. I’ll get us out of here.”

  She nodded rapidly, as if fervor alone might make it so. “Okay.”

  “None of this makes any sense,” Stefan said quietly, and then, as if it had only just occurred to him, “I could’ve choked to death back there, I could’ve died. I thought I was dying. It felt so strange, like someone was strangling me.”

  “Those women acted like they were making it happen,” Billy said, “like they were controlling it.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “So is trying to feed us whatever the fuck that was they gave us. So is every road in this town leading us right back here. So is the road that brought us here in the first place vanishing into thin air.”

  “Let’s not lose our minds,” Stefan said. “We need to stay clearheaded.”

  “Nothing’s been right since that storm. Nothing’s been normal since.”

  “Do you honestly think I’m unaware of that?” Stefan dropped his head. “I just…I don’t know what to make of any of this.”

  Billy watched the trees lining Main Street, so perfect and uniform, so falsely beautiful. What was this place, what was it really, truly, behind the façade? “For some reason, this town won’t let us leave,” he said, angrily pushing open the car door. “Let’s go find out why.”

  With Billy in the lead, the quartet left the car on the outskirts of Main Street and walked toward the center of town. The park and gazebo on the first block were empty. The post office that followed was closed, and the police station next door sat vacant. As they ventured farther, marching right up the middle of the street, they saw that the General Store had also been shut down. Everything was abandoned. What few townspeople had been there previously had seemingly locked up and walked away.

  “When’s the last time you saw a police station close?” Billy asked. The heels of his scuffed boots clacked pavement, and as he keyed on the cadence, something else occurred to him. He came to a stop. The others did the same. “Listen. There aren’t even any birds singing. None in the sky, either.”

  “I haven’t seen an animal since we got here,” Alex said. “Not even a bug.”

  “Are you guys sure getting out of the car is a good idea?” Tory asked. “That dude with the cleaver wasn’t joking.”

  “We don’t have much choice at this point.” Billy looked back in the direction they’d come. The Fairlane and the false sense of safety it represented sat undisturbed, the street behind them empty. The others awaited his next move. Stefan massaged his throat, looking more drained and overwhelmed than Billy had ever seen him. In his IZOD shirt, shorts and penny loafers, he looked like some displaced catalogue model. Tory shuffled about uneasily, that silly hat in place and a joint he still hadn’t smoked cradled behind his ear. Closest to Billy stood Alex, the fiery determination in her big brown eyes not quite capable of concealing her fear, her sweatshirt hanging loosely to reveal a small, smooth shoulder, the delicate skin there flaked from recent sunburn.

  Billy could only wonder what they saw when they looked at him.

  A gentle but warm breeze kicked up and blew across the road, rustling the trees lining either side of it before continuing on to the forest. The sun had become partially obscured by a bank of gray clouds rolling ominously across the horizon, and humidity was on the rise, converting the previously dry and comfortable heat into one far more oppressive and sticky.

  “It’s gonna rain again,” Tory said listlessly. “What’s with this weather?”

  Billy walked on. The others followed.

  They moved past the General Store to the street beyond. The firehouse was unattended, and there was no sign of the m
an in overalls or anyone else at the gas station. The windowless stone structure at the end of the street—a building they had assumed was a church—was quiet. That left only the library. Though there were no signs of life coming from it either, the front doors were open. A plaque which read: Alton Boxer Public Library hung over the front entrance. Billy hesitated just shy of the quaint gravel path leading to the front doors. Despite its small size, the multi-peaked roof and formal front porch gave the building a decidedly colonial flavor. Painted bright white and beautifully landscaped, it was, rather ironically, the best-kept and most attractive piece of property in town.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance, piercing the silence.

  “There’s a lot of useful information in a library,” Alex said, her voice echoing along the lonely street. “You know, town history, general info, that sort of thing? And there are usually maps.”

  The library stood before them, offering nothing, its open doors an invitation or a trap, a portal to understanding or a predator poised to devour them.

  “Except for this place everything in town’s shut down tight,” Billy said. “That’s no accident. There’s something in here they want us to see.”

  They stepped into a wide foyer. A winding staircase to their right led to a second floor, a no admittance sign on a small chain strung across it signaling everything other than the main floor was off limits to the public. Several portraits of stern-faced men and dour women in colonial garb—evidently prominent people in the town’s history—haunted the walls of the foyer, hanging in matching antique frames and glowering at Billy and the others from their distant pasts like the intruders they were. Numerous book displays, mostly dog-eared paperbacks and magazines on free-standing racks, led to another open doorway and the main library area, which was small and somewhat cramped.

  Tall bookcases packed to capacity lined the walls, and a basic wooden table and chairs occupied the center of the room. A set of lofty windows along the back wall revealed a view of a pleasantly landscaped yard area and an expanse of forest beyond. Beneath one window sat a glass case containing what appeared to be older, perhaps more valuable books, and an unexceptional assortment of town artifacts. The librarian’s desk was unoccupied, but amidst a small stack of paperwork, a few books and an outmoded telephone, a cup of coffee sat at its front right corner, still steaming.