Close Encounters of the Strange Kind

by Michael Kerr

  Solitude was an anonymous desert town, which nestled in the shadows of The Black Horse Mountains in New Mexico, a two-hour drive southwest of Santa Fe. The population of two thousand and fourteen was close-knit and wary of strangers, which only served to cause intense curiosity when the rumour spread that an out-of-towner had taken the lease on the vacant property on Main Street and planned to open with a sale at 9.00 a.m. on the dot, on the morning of All Hallows Eve.

  Daemon Haggard was a fox-like figure of a man, with movements quick yet economical, seemingly too fluid for one who appeared to be at least seventy, and could have been much, much older. He was, despite his age, an imposing individual, standing over six-foot-seven, even with the slight stoop and rounded shoulders that brought his head forward in permanent semblance of a restrained bow. His hair was a snow-white mane, thick and lustrous, swept back from a face that was as deeply fissured as weathered granite. And his eyes were black stygian pools of infinite depth, almost hypnotic and shark-like; capable of holding any onlooker transfixed, as headlights will mesmerise a rabbit or deer in their glare.

  “Welcome to my humble parlour, dear lady,” Daemon said ‒ his voice as warm as cognac on a winter’s evening ‒ as his first customer, Mildred Crosby, closed the door behind her and entered his lair. “I trust that you will find something to enhance your Hallows eve. Please feel free to browse at your leisure.”

  The counters were glass-fronted and topped, holding a treasure trove of novelty items that ranged from the cheap and tacky to the exquisite and expensive.

  In all, one hundred and seventy souls passed through his portal that fateful day. Most came out of inquisitiveness, with no prior intention of making a purchase, but all were ensnared by a compulsion to buy something, however small, once inside.

  “What does that do?” Eleven-year-old Danny Benson asked, pointing to a grey plastic dagger in one of the showcases.

  “That, my young friend is a movie knife,” Daemon said, removing the item with a flourish to stab himself theatrically in the stomach with the retractable blade.

  “Wow!” Danny said, suitably impressed, his eyes having been deceived. “That’s neat, Mister.”

  Halloween had never been so scary; well not in Solitude. The real horror began as the sun sank behind the mountains, and the bruised purple darkness wrapped itself around the town like a magician’s cloak.

  Chuck Manders was twenty-two, not the sharpest tack in the box, and as excited as a five-year-old with his new acquisition of a terrific full-head mask that he had bought at the new spook shop. It had cost him over thirty bucks, but was so realistic that he’d just had to have it...Just had to! He must have pulled it on over his head at least fifteen times, to stare at the effect in the kitchen mirror. Now, as he admired his reflection yet again, a burning sensation on his face prompted him to reach up and pull at the latex mask. But it wouldn’t budge. As he tried to tear it free, it tightened to his skin, melding and integrating with his flesh; the fake nylon hair becoming real; the black, shiny lupine nose now cold and wet; the long rubber fangs, solid and razor sharp. As he screamed and tore at his now mutated face, he saw thick tufts of coarse, dark-red hair sprout from the backs of his hands, as his nails thickened, lengthened and curved out from what were becoming paws. A shriek caught in his throat, faltered, and erupted as a frenzied howl.

  Chuck’s mother heard the baying wail coming from the kitchen and ran through from the living room to investigate the reason for her son’s apparent distress. Her last earthly thought was one of astonished disbelief as a werewolf sprang across the room and ripped her throat out with one savage, wrenching bite.

  Across town from where a now bona fide lycanthrope was running amok, in a brick and stucco bungalow on Oak Street, Danny Benson had just stabbed his little sister Shari to death with his new trick knife. He had been stabbing her with it all afternoon, amazed at how the spring-loaded plastic blade retracted into the hilt on contact, appearing to sink into her body. This time, as dusk fell, the knife sank into her chest for real; the now solid, razor-sharp steel blade entering her heart and stopping it forever. Danny tugged and twisted to remove it, but couldn’t dislodge the weapon. And even if he had been able to, his sister was beyond all help, and past caring.

  All that Mildred Crosby had purchased from Parlour Games was a rubber spider. It was not one of the usual trashy, unrealistic looking things that you see in most joke shops, but a remarkably lifelike arachnid, indistinguishable from the real McCoy. Now, to say that Mildred’s husband, Norm, was scared of spiders would have been at very least a gross understatement. He was terrified of them, and would not knowingly enter a room that one was in.

  Fiddlesticks, thought Mildred, it was Halloween. Where was the harm in putting a toy spider in the shower room soap dish?

  Norm went for his shower at six on the button every evening before he ate, and Mildred listened, hardly able to contain her glee as she heard the water drumming onto the tiles from the showerhead. Ten seconds later she heard the scream, followed by a heavy thud that could only have been her husband falling down. She bounded up the stairs two at a time, which was no mean feat for a sixteen stone dumpling of a woman, who had not moved so fast – even on the flat – for over a decade.

  Mildred threw open the bathroom door and stopped in her tracks, frozen in shock, her clenched fists pressed against her ashen face; legs rubbery and shaking as a hot stream soaked through her voluminous knickers and ran down to floor. Norm was lying on his back, naked and wet, clutching an oval of soap in his right hand. His eyes were wide open, fixed with an expression of sheer terror; his lips drawn back in a frozen snarl, as if to show off his nicotine-stained dentures. The toy spider was now alive, scuttling across his chest, away from the two bleeding puncture holes in his neck, which were the result of a bite that had injected deadly venom into the now late Norman Crosby.

  Jessica Crawford had bought a selection of witches and wizards hats from the strange yet captivating old man at the new novelty shop in town. He had told her that the hats possessed the power to make spells come true, just on this one special night of the year. The extraordinary thing was that as she had looked into his eyes, she had believed him without reservation. On reflection, though, she wasn’t going to expect too much. The plastic, cone-shaped hats had only been one dollar fifty each, and had been made in goddamn China for jeeper’s sake!

  As her guests arrived, Jessica insisted that they all wear a hat, to promote the right ambience for the Halloween party. And later, after four large vodka tonics – that she had built herself, and given little more than a sight of the Schweppes to – she cast her one and only spell.

  “Hokum, pokum, frogs and bats,” Jessica slurred as she watched her husband doing a fair impression of a randy octopus with Susan Trask, the divorced slut from across the street. “I think that all you men are rats,” she finished, before falling back on her butt, to regain her feet with great difficulty, and no little assistance from Betty Spielberg, who was no relation to Steven.

  The next few seconds could and should have been the resulting hallucination brought on by a large dose of LSD. Seven large cracks, like kernels of corn popping in a microwave oven, split the static-filled air of the living room, each accompanied by a flash of dazzling ice-blue light. Every man in the room glowed, metamorphosed, and shrank into a furry, long-tailed, whisker-twitching rodent. Only crumpled heaps of clothing remained to give credence to what they had been before Jessica had inadvertently put a hex on them. Amid the screams and darting vermin, Jessica fell back again in a dead faint.

  Until midnight struck, chaos reigned throughout Solitude. An assortment of Halloween masks that had been procured that day possessed their wearers, changing them from human beings into; mindless mannequins with pumpkin heads, shambling Frankenstein monsters, bloodthirsty vampires and demonic clowns.

  County Sheriff Jack Brodie lost his deputy, Todd, that night as the usually law-abiding townsfolk went berserk, rampaging through the streets,
killing and maiming each other. A crazed gang of trick-or-treaters walked up Main Street in a line, and Todd Grant braked hard, fishtailing, laying down black lines of rubber on the asphalt as he came to a stop just inches from the advancing band of maniacs in fancy dress. They pulled Todd from his cruiser and punched, kicked, bit and stomped him to death before torching his vehicle. One fun seeker took the dead deputy’s nine-millimetre pistol from its holster and shot five of his cohorts, before sticking the hot, smoking barrel into his own mouth and blowing the back of his skull out.

  The town became an inferno, as houses and stores were burned to the ground. Nothing and no one was safe. Jack called the State Police, and then sat back helpless in his locked office with the lights switched off and a pump-action Mossberg across his knees, as he waited for backup and the emergency services to arrive. It reminded him of a war zone, or maybe an invasion of psychopaths from the maximum security facility over at White Rock, who he could easily imagine had been released and given carte blanche to live out their sickest fantasies and desires, en masse.

  Five hundred and forty people died in a single night, with double that number seriously injured. It had not been the result of an earthquake or any other natural disaster (that at least could have been understood), but inconceivably by their own hands. Citizens had killed family members, friends, neighbours; anyone who crossed their path. Later, the authorities would search for a credible reason or explanation for the cataclysm, but would come up blank.

  During that evening of decimation, the cause of it all stood at an open gateway to hell; the abode of the damned that masqueraded as Parlour Games. The violent passing of so many souls had rejuvenated the abomination that had manifested in the guise of Daemon Haggard. As the body count had risen, its hair had darkened to a shiny blue-black, and the folds and creases in its skin had smoothed out, as the organism reclaimed a youthfulness of centuries past. It breathed in large gulps of the town’s life-force as it straightened up, renewing itself by ingesting the pain, fear and suffering of the disembodied souls; soaking them up like sweet nectar.

  Much like a black widow spider, this demon had lured them into its web. They had come to it, flies to a dog turd, and bought its satanic wares, which were its living, sentient servants.

  As the town clock struck midnight amid palls of black smoke and dancing orange flames, the shop began to change. The elegant awning stiffened, withered and turned to dust. The gold leaf writing and fresh paintwork cracked and faded. Inside, the sham of reality dissolved as the myriad novelties shimmered on their shelves, shifting and reforming into slithering worm-like creatures that became first translucent and then disappeared, leaving the premises a barren, stinking shell.

  The fiend, who had no name in human language, chuckled, as with watchful eyes that swirled with a miasma of crimson, ethereal motes, it viewed its work. Now gorged with the town’s terror, it began to glow, losing its shape as it became a coruscating, blinding ball of light, first expanding and then collapsing with a thunderclap, imploding like a super nova, to turn into a particle that passed through a black hole of its own making.

  Emerging almost simultaneously in a parallel universe, with an age-old agenda, the Devil’s disciple sought out new life, assuming an appropriate shape and suitable identity to cloak itself from creatures that would soon become its prey.

  4

  NOT ALONE

  It was almost ten o’clock in the evening, and Kate needed to be out in the night, running free.

  The cat wound its body sinuously through her legs as she entered the kitchen, his deep purr resonant in the hushed surroundings of the flat.

  “What is it, Rusty? You’ve got fresh milk and food down,” Kate said, bending to stroke the large ginger Tom, that had adopted her six months ago and moved in. He was of indeterminate age, had an ugly scar above his nose, and had also lost the tip of his right ear, presumably in some dispute over territory, or maybe in combat for the favours of a local female of the species.

  Taking a carton of OJ from the fridge, Kate sipped what was left of it straight from the open top, then went through to the bedroom, changed from T-shirt and blue jeans into grey sweats and Nike trainers, and pulled her long, blonde hair back to fasten in a ponytail with an elastic band.

  Kate had been running, or to be more precise jogging, for over a decade. At first it had been to lose weight in conjunction with a diet. Now, like an addiction, jogging had become an act that resulted in withdrawal symptoms if she did not indulge it regularly. Above all, she loved to jog at night, to savour the quietude it afforded.

  As she was about to leave the flat, the phone rang. She went back into the kitchen and plucked the receiver from its wall-mounted cradle.

  “Peanut?”

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Just checking in. Did I disturb you?”

  “No, Mum. You know that Sunday is my day off from the world as we know it. I don’t even buy a newspaper or switch on the TV.”

  “You should keep abreast of things, Peanut. What happens has effects that―”

  “I know, Mum. It’s like the weather. If a butterfly beats its wings in Japan, then we could get a hurricane here in London.”

  “You’re mocking me, Peanut. I’m only thinking of your well-being.”

  “Well, you stop calling me Peanut, and I’ll stop mocking. Deal?”

  “You never used to mind your father and I calling you that.”

  “It was fine when I was a kid. But I think I’ve outgrown it.”

  “Have you been out jogging yet, dear?” Connie Harper said, suddenly changing the subject, as was her habit.

  “I was just heading for the door when you phoned. Why?”

  “Because I worry about you going out alone at night. It’s not safe in this day and age.”

  “Don’t worry so much, Mum. I promise to be careful.”

  “You’d better be. Now, don’t forget that it’s your father’s birthday next Saturday. I expect you to make the effort and be here. We’re having a ‘do’ at the golf club.”

  “I’ll be there,” Kate said.

  “Good girl. Take care, then. I must go and wake your dad up, he’s fast asleep on the sofa, and it’s time for bed.”

  “Okay, Mum,” Kate said with a smile. “Goodnight. And give dad a big hug and kiss from me.”

  “Will do. Goodnight, Peanut,” Connie said before quickly racking the phone.

  Kate smiled again.

  “Guard the house, Rusty,” she said, closing the front door and walking down the steps of the Victorian terrace house to the street.

  The night air was veiled with fog that the silvery light of the full moon penetrated intermittently with a soft-edged glow.

  She stretched, took deep breaths, ran on the spot for a few seconds, then set off down the street towards the northern entrance of the park, that was just a few hundred yards away. Once inside the immense tract of land – that she thought of as a haven from the oppression of urban sprawl – she found a rhythm as her heart rate increased and her body became filmed in a sheath of perspiration.

  Reaching the lake, Kate made her way along its edge, marvelling at the luminescent blanket of fog that clung to the surface like a raft of blue-grey cigarette smoke. All she could hear was her own breath and the soft slap of her rubber soles on the asphalt path as she forged her way through the wispy, insubstantial tendrils that seemed to reach out for her ankles. She rounded the end of the lake, headed up towards the path that cut through the trees, and suddenly felt goose bumps break out on her forearms, and the skin tighten at the nape of her neck. She neither saw nor heard anything. Her apprehension was purely instinctive. She felt as though she was being watched; that she was no longer alone.

  A second later, a shape darted across the path up ahead, shrouded by the night and the fog, to vanish into the trees before she could properly identify it. She halted, squinting towards where it had been.

  A deer! Surely it had been a deer. But what if it wasn’t? Should I t
urn back and head for home? Damn it, I’ve got the heebie-jeebies. The parkland is full of deer, badgers, foxes and other wildlife. Be rational. There’s nothing to worry about. And even if it was someone...a person up to no good, then I would outrun him, unless he was Usain Bolt.

  She jogged on, heart thudding in her ears and her teeth clenched, bunching the muscles of her cheeks. As she passed a wild thicket of rhododendron, the leaves rustled. She stopped again, caught a blur of movement from the corner of her eye, and felt a rush of adrenaline flood through her, heightening her senses and inciting her to take flight. A low, throaty growl galvanised her into action, and she turned and ran, sprinting back towards the lake, powered by fear. The high, mewling sound that she could hear was escaping from her own mouth. What she had heard in the bushes was no deer, or any other benign animal. As a toddler she had been attacked by a neighbour’s dog, and as the mongrel leapt at her it had made the same deep-throated, guttural noises. The long, jagged scar behind her left ear was a permanent reminder of the unprovoked assault. If she had not turned her face away...she shuddered. The event had resulted in nightmares that lasted for years, and a persisting fear of any dog larger than a Chihuahua.

  Running faster than she had ever run before, Kate kicked hard, her legs pumping, back straight, head up and arms close to her body. But it was gaining. She heard ragged breathing, and so zigzagged like a rabbit trying to outmanoeuvre a fox, to leave the path and cut diagonally across the grass towards the lake.

  Oh, God! There was more than one. They were flanking her, matching her speed as they closed in, panting, keening and snarling. With sideways glances, she saw the shapes emerging from the clotting fog, loping on all fours.

  A burning pain ripped through her back, and the blow knocked her off her feet, causing her to fall and roll down the bank of wet grass, to gasp with shock as she broke through the layer of fog and splashed into the icy water beneath it.