Coming of Age: Three Novellas (Dark Suspense, Gothic Thriller, Supernatural Horror)

by Douglas Clegg

  “Oh I know,” she said, “it’s a vampire.”

  “I only wish,” he said.

  They continued walking, and he pointed out a snake moving along the edge of the road, so they stepped to the side, but kept walking.

  “All right. It had a job. It skinned those who had been sacrificed. What about the ritual?”

  “I just don’t know.”

  “Try.”

  After another ten minutes, she said, “All right. Okay. It was an obsidian dagger. Used for the sacrificial victims. Tore their hearts out. The blood was like rain. They let the blood rain down because it was to encourage rain and the crops. The Flesh-Scraper was used to get the skin off.”

  “To wear it,” Josh said, solemnly.

  “Right.”

  “And somehow, it fed off Griff first. Was it blood?”

  “I think so. I don’t know.”

  “It’d make sense if it was blood.”

  “Wait,” Bronwyn said. “Wait.”

  She stopped.

  “Rain,” she said. “Rain. Water. Liquid. It needs it. It’s not just taking their skin. It drank them. It drained them. It needs water—water in the blood. It’s a desert here. It needs water. It brings rain. That’s it’s ritual.”

  “That was a rain dance? Last night? But why?”

  “Maybe it doesn't like it too hot and dry,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Its enemy is the Sun God.”

  “This road is endless,” she said.

  “Thank God,” he said.

  “Have we been walking for hours?”

  “Feels like it.”

  “You thirsty?”

  He nodded. “Mean thirsty.”

  “We must’ve gone twenty miles by now,” she said.

  “At least.”

  “Wrong direction,” she said, too sadly. She pointed ahead.

  He looked up—he’d been mainly watching the road for snakes and lizards.

  The road ended in a dusty nothingness.

  “We’re not very bright,” Josh said. He was soaked with sweat, exhausted, and had begun to wish that he’d just stayed back at Dave Olshaker’s pick-up truck.

  “Wait,” she said. “Wait! Oh my god! Oh my god!” Bronwyn began jumping up and down. “Where the road ends! Oh my god, Josh! Josh!” She was so gleeful he had thought she’d gone insane for good.

  Then, she began running to the West, across what looked like a well-beaten dirt path.

  He looked in the direction where she’d run. Something shiny over the rise of land.

  She stopped, turning around. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted, “Ely! He told us! He said he lives where the road ends! Do you hear it? I can. I can hear his ZZ Top records! He’s playing them! Oh my god, Josh, we’re safe! We’re safe!”

  Her enthusiasm lasted three more miles, and the closer they got, the more they saw the hubcaps outside of a large shack with a trailer behind it. ZZ Top’s “Tush” played from within the house, and they went to the front door, rapping at it.

  After awhile, the truck driver -- who had given them a lift to the Brakedown Palace -- opened the door.

  An hour later, something that the entire town of Naga believed was a miracle occurred.

  It began raining.

  At first, it was a small trickle of rain, and then clouds swiftly overtook the fire of the sun. Thunder was heard in the mesas, and a bitter storm swept the desert.

  Josh slept, his arms around Bronwyn, and when night came, he went out into the rain with Ely, who asked him what had happened to his friends. He lied. He wasn’t ready to tell him about the night.

  Bronwyn came out a bit later, standing beneath the eaves of the little house, watching the storm as it blew across the night sky.

  “We can’t leave it there,” Josh said. “It’s loose, now. You think the cops will believe us? You think anyone will?”

  For just a moment, she looked empty. That’s the best way he thought of it. She looked as if there was nothing to her at all. All she wanted to do was get away. Even from him. She just wanted to run the opposite direction, even if it meant that Scratch was going to be hunting others.

  “Go on,” he said. “You can call your dad. Get him to wire you money. Rent a car or catch a bus. And go on. But this creature's out there. I can’t just go back to life and forget that. What if people go out and camp there? What if Scratch is just waiting for them?”

  Her shoulders, slack. She looked down at her hands, then up at him.

  “Tomorrow morning, go," he said. "I don’t blame you.”

  She didn’t blink.

  She wasn’t going to stay behind, he saw it in her eyes.

  “I think you should come, too. You are not obligated to deal with that thing. It’s a monster, Josh. We can get help. We can…”

  “Nope. I think there’s a way to stop it. I think there’s a way to end this. I need to try something.”

  “I don’t want you…” she began. He knew how that sentence finished: to die.

  “We all die, Bron. We die. Life is a short space of time. Some people die young, some die at middle age, some die old. We’re lucky if it’s swift. We’re lucky if it’s only seconds of pain. We’re lucky if what’s between when we’re born and when we die is a powerful thing. A miraculous thing. I never believed in miracles. Before. I never believed that the goodness of the universe existed. But I know it does. I don’t believe for a minute that we’ve gone through this night because life is horrible. Or because monsters rule. Or because we’re meant to. I believe this is a test. This is a test, and to pass it, to find out who each of us truly is, we have to stand up to this thing. We have to stop it. Because not stopping it is just letting the bad things happen. For me, not stopping it is worse than getting killed.”

  “You’re going to die out there. Please, Josh. Please. Don’t be the next victim…”

  “I am not going to sacrifice myself,” he said. “I know I can stop it. I know it. Here’s how I was living before this, Bron. I was living as if nothing mattered. As if life were a joke. As if it didn’t matter if I was happy or sad or did nothing or did something. I was on disconnect. But last night showed me. Life is about something. We are about something. I am. And I know I can stop it.”

  “Please don’t die,” she said, quietly. Calmly. “Don’t be some kind of hero.”

  “I am going to do what I know I have to do,” he said. “We woke that thing up. My blood fed it. I have to put it back to sleep.”

  Josh bought the little souvenir at a shop in downtown Naga.

  Ely loaned him his busted-up Civic, and Josh drove around trying to gather what he thought might help. He went to the library in Naga and read a little in the reference section. He felt foolish and doomed, but something inside him—some engine—had begun to turn over. Something had changed within him from that one night.

  The rain continued into his second evening at Ely’s. Bronwyn had already gotten on a bus headed for Los Angeles, and although she told him she loved him, he knew now that it wasn’t love. It was simply attraction and situation. Love was something else. He hoped to have it someday, but it wasn’t a feeling that you could hand over to someone. It was deeper than that. He wished her the best, kissed her goodbye, and he told her that he would stop Scratch so that no one else would ever get hurt.

  As he watched the bus disappear in the distance, he thought of that line from her poem: The kiln of her skull explodes; a hundred broken memories burn.

  Later, he sat down with Ely and told him everything except the truth. Josh refused to let another person who was either friend or foe die because they’d let Scratch out of its cage.

  In private, he withdrew from the sack the item he’d bought the day before.

  Probably not an authentic Native American design, but made to look like one.

  Tourist crap, no doubt.

  The stone was carved to a point.

  An arrowhead.

  Made out of obsidian.

  Obsidian was the t
ranslucent dark stone used in the Aztec ritual.

  The dagger went into the heart. Something like that. He wasn’t sure how it was done. But the heart was brought up, spraying blood.

  How the Flayer of Men, the Flesh-Scraper, then skinned the bodies. And wore the skin.

  Obsidian was sacred.

  It had magical properties.

  And even the avatar of Xipe Totec, Mr. Scratch, would have something resembling a heart.

  Some engine that ran him.

  Sure, he thought. Maybe it was all roadside attraction bullshit. Mystical babble that some asshole had written up to get tourist dollars off the highway.

  He helt the arrowhead in his hand. It felt cool against his hot skin.

  Please. I don’t believe in anything other than the goodness of the universe. Let it be here. Let it be with me now. Give me the strength to stop this abomination.

  Without even knowing why, Josh fell to his knees, clutching the arrowhead. He closed his eyes.

  Whatever I have in me. Whatever there is beside flesh and blood and molecules and nerves and bone. Let it come out in me. Let it come through me. In the name of Griff and Ziggy and Tammy and Dave. And that other guy.

  Dave’s friend.

  In the name of them, and their memories. Their lives. Their life forces.

  And my own.

  Give me the power.

  The knowledge.

  The ability.

  To stop this creature.

  He drove back up the road that ended, and found the Pimpmobile.

  The rain had stopped hours before. The sun beat down on his scalp and the back of his neck. He got up after a bit, feeling slightly dizzy.

  He went down and sat under a manzanilla tree—a gathering of bleached sticks more than a tree, but it provided a very slight shade.

  He drew down one of the dried branches and began creating the weapon.

  Within a few hours, it looked good.

  The arrowhead was tied—stripped from his belt, which he’d shredded. The tree branch was smooth and white—an imperfect spear.

  He tried throwing it, but his aim sucked. He felt weak, and sleepy, and knew he needed to rest if he were to fight in the darkness.

  He slept, using his shirt and jeans as a makeshift tent, propped up between rocks and sticks and scrub.

  It was boiling, but at least for a bit, the bright searing eye of the sun was not upon him.

  Josh's dreams came fast and feverish—

  They were dragging him up the long steps, up the pyramid. Only it wasn’t a real pyramid. It was like a cartoon. It was like someone had made it up, and hastily drew the stones and the shadowy people who dragged him upward.

  Then, they stood over him—Ziggy, Griff, and Tammy—and held him down against a wide stone bowl. Above him, the faces of Charlie Goodrow and Dave Olshaker. Their big greasy mugs looking down at him, while someone else raised a shiny black knife just over his head.

  When it thrust down, he screamed, and Charlie Goodrow brought up a big mass of pulsating red, and started crowing, “He’s a gusher! Lookit that! The boy gushes like a goddamn sweet Texas oil field!”

  Josh’s blood sprayed up, peppering their faces, splashing their features until all of them were read. Josh thrashed, wanted his heart back, but felt no real pain.

  Someone began playing a weird kind of reed instrument, and a drum began beating slowly. The voice of some unseen creature sang a strange, unmelodic song.

  Although it was in another language, Josh possessed an understanding:

  Flayer of Men

  Bring us your rainfall

  We give you blood

  Bring us life!

  We offer flesh for scraping

  To you alone—

  Flayer of Men

  Dance in his skin

  Dance so that children may be born!

  Dance so that the crops will grow!

  Dance so that the sun will not burn your people!

  Dance and be reborn in blood and life, from your dark sleep!

  And then, Josh seemed to float along the flat stone floor within the pyramid, lit by torch, and watched as the Flayer of Men scraped the skin, using long needle-like talons, carefully drawing the top layer of flesh from the meat, and pressing it, blood still dripping, against his shadowy face.

  Josh drew closer to look at the eyes of the Scraper, but they were empty sockets, and Josh realized that he was looking at his own skin, laid across the Flesh-Scraper’s small body, wrapped and sewn together.

  The Flayer began to move oddly, side to side—a dance of life and death, wearing the skin of the sacrifice. Its eyes became his eyes, its face, his face. The Flesh-Scraper began to look just like Josh himself.

  Suddenly, Josh no longer watched this dance, but was inside, behind the skin, looking out.

  He awoke.

  It was night.

  He sat up, feeling the dryness at his lips and the scaly feeling in his throat.

  We are connected, he thought. Me, with the Flayer of Men. By my blood. It knows me.

  He waited a long time, until he heard the scraping sound.

  The only light was the luminescence of the white sand of the desert, the enormous blue-faded moon in the sky, and the stars, which, as he looked up at them, seemed to him so far away as to be unconcerned with the problems of a man of nineteen, in the middle of a wasteland, waiting for a monster.

  The gasping sound came first, then the sound of something being dragged.

  Then, against the whiteness, he saw a small dark form.

  Running between bits of brush and clutches of cactus.

  He felt a lump form in his throat. He wondered if a person could genuinely die of fright.

  He knew Scratch’s hunting method, now. He knew that the little mummy liked to get the scares going. It was its ritual. Get the scares going, make a big to-do, get people on the edge of their seats, and then, strike.

  He felt his nerves jangling, and wondered if prey animals felt this just before an eagle or owl swooped down, or a mountain lion neared.

  He felt like prey, and it brought with it that strange sensation he’d felt before:

  That somehow he was more alive now. That this monster, this evil, horrible thing, could somehow make him more aware of every cell in his body, right down to his toes, and the electrical whirring beneath the skin of his fingers.

  And as he sat there, thinking all this, feeling it, he felt the first scrape of talon along his ankle.

  He reached back for his weapon.

  The obsidian arrowhead, tied to the nearly smooth stick.

  The hunt had begun.

  A second scrape at his ankle took away an outer layer of skin. Bleeding. Hurt like hell. But he leapt up, and circled around, feeling like a hunter in some ancient world, holding the spear up.

  “Come on, Scratch,” he said. His voice was raspy.

  He could not see anything other than shapes against the earth.

  He wasn’t sure if he had begun imagining things, but it seemed like there were several shapes moving—shadows against shadows.

  Shit, I’m losing it.

  Make me a warrior. Make me a man. Make me the hero. Make me the one. It was like a chant in his head. Fill me up with strength. Give me power over my enemies. I am good. I am just. I will overcome. I will defeat. I will be the victor.

  As he circled the car, and then wandered a ways into the dark, holding the spear up, he felt…tribal. He felt connected. He had a welling up within him that made him feel as if he were not fighting some monster on the desert, but was participating in some ancient rite of manhood—that he was meant to be here. Gone were the trappings of home and university and his sense of the future and his hold on the past.

  He was HUNTER.

  He was HUNTER and this thing was his HUNTED.

  I AM NOT PREY! I AM NOT PREY! You are rabbit. I am coyote. You are serpent, I am eagle! I AM THE HUNTER OF THE GODS OF DEATH!

  A lightening of his being occurred—he no
longer felt the small jabs of rock beneath his feet, nor did he feel the fear in the same way as he had, nor did the desert seem as dark.

  He felt as if a weight had come from him and had been cast off into shadows.

  And there it was.

  The Being.

  The Creature.

  The Flayer of Men.

  He knew its name. Its ritual name.

  Xipe Totec! You are under my foot!

  Xipe Totec! You are the skin of the snake!

  Xipe Totec! You have no power of me!

  I am the PRIEST and the HUNTER of Death.

  A small voice within him: Am I mad? Is this insanity?

  But the larger voice within him—the voice of a man he barely recognized—said aloud, “I am here to destroy you!”

  It was his own voice, but it seemed to come from a different place inside. Something had been awakened.

  The creature leapt at him, and he lost his balance, falling backward. The spear went flying back, out of his reach.

  He felt the claws dig in—Scratch was crawling up along his left leg. The pain was excruciating.

  I’m not afraid of pain. I will not be afraid of pain. Pain is nothing. Pain is a scream to nowhere. Pain is meaningless.

  He felt as if the veins of his legs were being ripped out, but he gritted his teeth and refused to accept the agony.

  I AM THE PRIEST. I AM THE HUNTER.

  It tugged at his legs, and began dragging him across the rocks and sand. His head hit the back of a rock, and he felt himself lose consciousness.

  I AM THE PRIEST.

  I AM.

  Hang on. Hang on. This is no dream. This is real. Wake up. Wake up.

  Josh opened his eyes. He felt a pumping of blood within him. I am alive. I will not die. He pivoted on his hips as Scratch drew him across the dirt. Then he reached his hand out and dug his fingernails down into the earth. Pressed his fingers in. Held on.