by T L Barrett
The shadow moved about the place, always bringing something new with which to torture Ben. This time it looked like a poker with a cork screw attached. The end glowed with an incandescent and unnatural heat. As he applied it to Ben’s chest, Ben’s blood began to trickle out and down his chest and belly and over his groin. Ben bucked in an orgasm of pain and gave a nasal moan that ended in a great roar.
“I have to thank you, Benji. Because of you, I’ve got myself one hell of a promotion. But you can see that can’t you?” the shadow turned its dark head. “Oh, ladies, clean up in Aisle three.”
A creature slithered on all six arms and legs out from behind a crumbling plaster partition. Its three heads wore the faces of three women Ben had always lusted over. One was his seventh grade math teacher, one was his wife’s best friend, and the final one was his cousin, Debbie. The heads hissed and let out great flickering tongues.
It lurched forward and began to lick at the blood that was dripping down over his thighs. Their sinuous tongues burnt his skin and left great throbbing welts.
“I hope you appreciate this, Benji. I’ve been told that I have great promise. You should be honored to have me assigned to your case,” the shadow said.
“But, I can remember being in your shoes. How anxious I was for the chance to prove myself, to seek promotion to better and bigger things! Well, I can’t fault you there! I suppose if I owe my promotion to you, than the least I can do is give you a little help up the old chain, you know what I mean?” The shadow asked. Ben just stared at the shadow in dull terror.
The shadow skewered one of Ben’s nipples with the glowing tip of his device.
“Let’s talk details, shall we?” the shadow asked over Ben’s screams.
***
Ben drifted his shadow-self through the lavish rooms of the estate house with glee. At a great mirror with burlesque frame, Ben noticed that he did not have a reflection. He found the concept quite liberating.
He went back to the entry to the large parlor room to enjoy the sights of his work. He had spent a great many minutes using the standard poodle’s innards to garland the expensive furniture and the hanging candelabra. He had always been a shop man himself in school, but guessed that what he had done might border on artistic genius.
He expected the dog’s owner to return to the house at any moment. She had been attending a charity committee meeting in town and was currently thinking about a warm bath and a mint julep. Ben knew these things now, although he did not know how, or from where the thoughts originated. They were perks of his new position.
The woman arrived just as expected. The rich bitch, somewhere in her well-kept late fifties, walked with the grace and confidence that only her late husband’s money could have bought. She had married quite a bit older than herself and seemed to be enjoying the benefits of this decision. Ben hated her as he had hated all of her kind in his life. He relished this black feeling and looked forward to what lay ahead with great anticipation.
“Hello, there, Mrs. Howell,” Ben, the shadow, said. “How was your time on the island with the professor and Mary Ann?”
The widow Winslow stopped, her eyes going wide at the sight before her. A demonic shadow stood in the middle of a scene from a carnal house. Her beloved Selene’s head lay on the settee. Mrs. Winslow’s eyes rolled, as her knees buckled, and she fell, face first, down upon the bloodied carpet.
When Mrs. Winslow awoke, Ben-shadow gave her time to adjust to the situation before telling her about the little arrangement he offered.
“…So, if you don’t want your swishy little son to end up like Selene here, then I think you should figure out who you want to call up and trick into coming here to go in his place. I need an answer Mrs. Winslow, and I need it fast. You and I both know that your little Brad is coming for dinner, and he never misses a chance to spend quality time with his mommy.”
Mrs. Winslow stared at the shadow before her, and then her eyes went to the cell phone lying on the side table. She closed her eyes and sighed.
“I won’t do it!” Mrs. Winslow said.
“What do you mean, you won’t do it? You have to do it. Otherwise, your little Brad is going to be so much wall decoration,” Ben-shadow said as he waved a huge hand at the gruesome display of the slaughtered poodle.
“No, I don’t have to. I don’t have to do anything!” Mrs. Winslow declared. She stood up. “You get out of my house right now!”
The shadow cocked his head at her.
“You can’t talk to me that way!” Ben-shadow said. “I’ll kill you!”
“Then go ahead and kill me!” Mrs. Winslow taunted. Ben-shadow roared and slid across the room till he grappled the woman back into the couch cushions. His icy touch on her neck made her face go pale and her breathing ragged.
“You will do what I tell you!” Ben-shadow roared. The woman spat in his shadowy eye in response.
***
Ben’s eye burnt as if from a great fire. A terrible sound accompanied the pain, and seemed to struggle to rise higher than the great exploding crescendo of agony. Ben struggled to open his remaining eye. It was only after he did so, did he understand that the sound was his own scream, although he could not stop it.
The shadow pulled the skewer from Ben’s eye socket with a great wet pop.
Ben shook, vomited and sobbed.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Benji,” the shadow said. “Not all of us are cut out for field work.” Above them a great conglomeration of beings that had rediscovered flight on the stretched and stitched remnants of their skin fled in the hell wind toward nowhere. Ben shut his eye to the awful sight of them.
When he opened it again, the shadow was waiting patiently for him with a new and intricate device of torture.
“Hey look on the bright side, Benji,” the shadow said. “At least, we’ll always have each other!”
Hitchhiking in a Red State
Johnny knew he was in trouble when the driver said: “Look at all those lazy animals just sleeping the day away on the interstate.”
Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree
Donnie got up his nerve to ask Marla Tripp out for a picnic after he got his draft papers. He had always wanted to ask the husky voiced girl out since the seventh grade, but never had. He told himself it was because her father was a drunk and that she tended to date the boys from down in Pattenville, tough mean boys that were famous for beating horses and each other. But, it really had to do with the fact that Donnie had always liked her maybe a bit too much. As his uncle had noted every time the Tripp clan had come over to help with the haying, Donnie got ’moony’ around the girl. For one, it had embarrassed him the way he had stumbled over himself, but for another it had downright frightened him.
Donnie was no wall flower. He stood a good six feet high and had powerful shoulders and a square jaw. He had dated girls, but most have them had been pretty but waifish girls from town. None of them had really interested him, not in the visceral way just hearing Marla’s voice had, or seeing her buxom dark-haired beauty flounce about careless like as she biked to town or followed after her swarthy and serious brothers.
Ever since getting the letter, Donnie hadn’t thought much about Europe, or fighting, or anything else that might pertain to the couple of weeks he had before heading south for boot camp. When he sat through the news reels at the matinee with his little brothers some part of him knew that what he saw in flickering black and white had to do with his future, but it seemed more like a future that would happen to somebody else.
What Donnie thought about, almost constantly, was Marla. So, on a crisp and sunlit Thursday in September, Donnie got in his father’s truck and drove on out to the Tripp farm, which was really only a breeding ground for pigs and flies. Marla looked the picture of a naughty girl as she swung under a big beech tree branch and let the wind carry her old calico dress up her dark thighs. Her dark eyes stayed fastened on him as he walked up toward the house. Not seeing the point in carrying on with some
charade of an excuse for being there, or spending any time conversing with the taciturn Tripp men, Donnie turned and walked right up to the girl of his dreams.
Donnie lifted a hand awkwardly as he came under the shade of the beech tree. Marla just smiled wickedly. Suddenly, she let go of the ropes and sailed forward, her dress around her waist, and landed on her feet. Her feet took a couple of unsteady steps forward, and she fell fully against Donnie’s front.
Donnie grabbed the girl’s arms to steady her, but she moved forward, pressing the side of her face against Donnie’s shirt. Donnie stumbled back a step, and had to put his hands on the girl’s back for fear of falling. Marla groaned.
Something stirred in Donnie, and he took his hands from her and stepped away.
“Why Donnie Hall, you are one rascally boy to come here when all the men folk are away! I guess you planned that one out well, didn’t you?” Marla said.
“I didn’t! I mean…I didn’t know, Marla. Honestly…”
“Sure you didn’t,” she pouted her lips out at him provocatively. “I’m sure you just drove up to buy some pigs a month before they’re ready for slaughter.” Donnie looked down and then took a deep breath.
“No, Marla, I came here to see if you would like to go on a picnic with me.”
“After all these years, what makes you want to eat cold chicken with the likes of me?” she asked.
“I’m going to be shipped out to boot camp in a couple of weeks. I’ve always wanted to ask you out. So, I thought, what the heck.”
“What the heck,” she said and lowered her lashes at him.
“So… will you go on a picnic with me, Marla?” Marla gave him a cat’s regard.
“Yes,” She said. Donnie sighed. “But on one provision.”
“What’s that?” Donnie crossed his arms defensively.
“We can only have the picnic up at the Gingue Farm, under the apple tree, the one on the hill.” Donnie knew what she was talking about; everybody knew about the legendary apple tree on the hill, but Donnie feigned ignorance anyway.
“What apple tree are you talking about?” he asked.
“You know darn well what I’m talking about Donnie Hall, the apple tree, the one with the blood apples.” On the Gingue farm, which was betwixt the Hall Farm and the Tripp Farm, there was a high hill pasture where a great old apple tree grew.
***
Many years ago, sometime in the tail end of the last century, the Gingue family had been one of most prosperous in the Northeast Kingdom. They owned a huge tract of rich land and every year brought home most of the ribbons from the Essex County fair. On one such warm September Gala, a young Miss Abigail Gingue caught the eye of a young gypsy man in the midway. The story goes, that the gypsy man had his grandmother, an old witch, put a spell over that girl. Soon, she got sick and forlorn acting. Her parents kept her in bed, and she did protest mightily. Some say that the brother, who still broods over the phantom of the farm to this day, even tied Miss Abbey to the bed. She carried on day and night, until the fair ended. Then in tears, she quieted. Her spirit seemed defeated, and her body soon followed. She looked apt to die, and the doctor was sent for.
The doctor left with a shake of his head and a shrug of his shoulders. The Gingue family knew she was apt to die as not. Then, they woke up one morning to find that the girl was gone and her bedroom window was left open in the cold autumn wind.
The official story goes that Miss Abbey must have run off with the gypsy carnival and wasn’t heard of or seen of since. The Gingue farm quickly deteriorated. The Gingues became reclusive and spent a lot of their time marching up and down their borders with rifles. Finally, a score of years later, the Gingues sold off a third of their farmland to the neighbors on both sides, the Halls and the Tripps.
But, as in most doings in the Kingdom, there was another story, a much more fabulous story that people only whispered about at hunting camp or in lonely sugaring shacks. Some say that old man Gingue went down to the root cellar and found his daughter, lying there in the arms of the handsome gypsy from the fair. The legend goes that the old man killed them both and had his sons bury them in the high pasture. An apple tree grew over the spot and people say that to this day the apples that come from that tree have a red quality to the pulp. Some say that eating those apples will bring mad unending love to those that do. Others say that it will make a man as strong as an ox. In any case, no one has been able to prove these rumors true or false; the remaining Gingues keep a keen eye out for trespassers. Many a foolhardy boy, eager to prove a boast or just hell bent on Apple Jack have had to dodge a bullet or two from the guns of the Gingue clan.
***
“Marla, I want to have a picnic with you, more than anything. I just don’t know if trespassing on Gingue land is… wise,” Donnie said.
“All right, Donnie. If that’s the way it is, then you better skedaddle before my pa gets back, and you’ll have to buy a pig you don’t want,” she turned away and went back to her swing.
“Wait, Marla, all right. I’ll do it. It’ll have to be tomorrow at six o’clock. Meet me up at the old apple tree.” Marla danced up to him, leaned in quick and kissed him on the cheek. Donnie couldn’t sleep that night.
***
The sun painted the green hills a golden red. Donnie near to floated over the high fields. His father’s prized bull, perhaps infected by Donnie’s humor, frolicked nearby, throwing his head up in the air, and giving a lively trot. Donnie laughed at it and turned his head toward his destination.
Getting past the barbed wire fence was not a real problem for Donnie; it was the sudden report of a rifle that he dreaded. For a moment, Donnie wondered if the vixen, Marla, had set him up on a goose chase. Then he shook his head. Marla did not seem like the kind of woman to jest in such a fashion. She might spit anyone she’d meet in the face, but she wasn’t a backstabber.
Soon, he caught sight of the hill and the huge apple tree standing at its crown. He went high and tried to keep low, praying that enough of the high growth in the unkempt meadow would conceal him from the house and barns below. Keeping his eye on the tree, the whole time, Donnie began to experience a strange feeling. At the same time, he felt magnetically attracted to the sinuous branches with their red weight of the season and strangely repulsed by the size and presence of it.
He paused for a moment, realizing that his heart raced, but then caught sight of Marla looking up at the tree and standing in its long shadow.
As he approached she turned and smiled honestly, then returned her stare at the tree. She pointed.
“Look, Donnie, why would anyone do this?” she asked. Donnie followed her finger and squinted to peer into the shady recesses under the lowest branches. Hanging from the branches were a few skeletal carcasses of animals. The carcasses were all desiccated and dried. All of them had been beheaded.
“I don’t know, Marla. I suppose the Gingues mean to scare folks away, I guess, or they’ve just gone plum crazy,” Donnie offered.
“My aunt goes to the Baptist church in town. She says old lady Gingue mutters to herself and weeps during prayer,” Marla said quietly. Donnie regarded her and was surprised at how delicate, how maidenly the farm girl looked. She wore a simple but complimentary checked dress. She had braided her hair and twined in little bits of baby’s breath. When she turned her dark eyes to his, he was struck with a feeling of weighty import.
“What did you bring in your basket, Donnie Hall?” she asked.
“I’ll show you what’s in mine, if you show me what’s in yours,” Donnie quipped. Marla bit her lip. Donnie blushed for the both of them. Marla put her basket down. Donnie followed suit.
“Oh, Donnie, look there,” Marla said. Donnie followed her gaze to where a recently butchered goat lay somewhat near the tree. Its beheaded corpse had spilled its blood out upon the stained earth and some bare roots of the apple tree. Flies buzzed around the neatly cleaved neck stump.
“Maybe, we should have our picnic somewhere else, Ma
rla,” Donnie suggested. Marla bit her lip again, nodded and came very close. She put her hand on Donnie’s shoulder. She smelled wonderful: like flowers and baked bread.
“Maybe, you’re right, Donnie Hall, but first you have to give me a boost.” She came very close, and Donnie licked his lips in anticipation. She put her both hands on his shoulders and then pulled herself against him. Donnie had to reach down and grasp her thigh in order to not fall over. She reached upward past him, and her breasts, ripe and firm pressed against his head. Donnie braced himself and raised her knees up as high as his chest. Marla caught a red apple in her hand, or rather it seemed to fall right into it, so easily did it leave the branch.
As she slid back down his front, Donnie savored the feel of her strong body, her broad hips against him. For a moment they were face to face in an embrace.