The music pulsing through his car sounded eerie, otherworldly.
What would his life be like if it had a Beatles sound track? A little more peaceful and sweet? How about The Rolling Stones? A little more demonic? The Doors? A little more psychotic?
I don’t know if I could get any more psychotic, thank you very much.
He pictured the look in Lucy’s eyes when he proposed, when he opened his hand and showed her the ring. She didn’t care that it wasn’t big. She cared that he was asking, that he was on one knee asking, that he said he loved her and always would, that he was inviting her to be a part of his journey.
She didn’t hesitate but said yes yes yes yes over and over again.
Dennis shut his eyes and listened to the music and drank his beer and remembered.
He remembered her smell, her touch, her skin, her hair, her voice, her walk, her every little thing.
And with a smile on his face, he drifted off into his own happily ever after.
2.
The knocking sounded from miles away. Gentle, but persistent.
Dennis wiped his eyes and could barely make out the river through the trees, the glow of the moon reflecting off the steadily moving water.
The empty beer in his hand had dropped on the fl oor. The CD had stopped playing. And no one was around.
But then he heard a shuffling. He turned and jumped, seeing the big shadow in the darkness.
Then another.
He turned toward his left and saw another.
Deer. A bunch of deer are hanging out just watching me in the darkness.
Dennis turned slowly, quietly. The deer were full-sized, the kind that could do major damage to a car. He had never seen deer this close up.
They stood almost as if…
That’s crazy, Dennis.
But he had seen far crazier things. They just stood there in the darkness like guards standing over a castle, their long, lean bodies serving as a wall.
One of the deer looked straight at him, and he squinted to see its beautiful strong face in the shadows.
I heard knocking. Pounding. What was that?
Dennis put a hand on the side of the car. The deer slowly moved away, not frightened like he thought they might be. One by one—there were four of them—they headed back into the woods.
All except the one that had stared into Dennis’s eyes.
It was a surreal experience, being here in the dark, feeling spooked, but also feeling completely at ease because of this remarkable creature.
Can I see its eyes, or am I just imagining it?
But he thought he could. And he thought…
I’m thinking a lot of things and most of them are crazy.
The deer turned and walked back into the woods to join its companions.
And with that Dennis started up the car and drove off.
October 27, 2009
The voices won’t go away. Not just Cillian’s, but all of them. They confuse and contradict and make him want to go out and cut.
Bob knows he shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t do this. There are certain ways of doing it, certain rules he always goes by.
But there are no more rules. Not anymore. Not when the dead show up to haunt him.
He scans the area and doesn’t see anyone. It’s empty. Grocery stores usually are around midnight. But that doesn’t mean guys who would rather be smoking pot and listening to rock and watching television aren’t working, doing the cleanup shift.
He passes the display of apples and the barrel full of pumpkins to go through the swinging doors. There is a small hallway lined with bags of potatoes and boxes of bananas. The floor looks freshly swept. He turns a corner and sees the back area where several sinks and tables are used to cut fruit. The knife on the counter is large enough to slice a cow. He takes it and continues walking through another set of doors into a freezer.
Bob doesn’t hear any voices now. Cillian’s voice is gone, but he knows it’s just temporary. He wishes he could kill him again, that he could make him shut up permanently.
He wants all the voices to go away.
The spiky-haired kid is loading a box of oranges onto a cart. He glances up and doesn’t appear surprised.
“What’s up?”
Bob approaches him, the knife at his side. The guy doesn’t see it.
“Lookin’ for someone?” the guy asks casually, hauling another box onto the cart.
Before he can say something else, the knife makes sure he won’t be talking anymore, or at least makes sure he won’t be saying anything decipherable. The gash in his cheeks and lips is deep.
The young man grabs his mouth a second before he starts to howl, and the knife finds its way to his apron, then works its way upward. Bob grabs the kid’s mouth and presses down hard and feels the blood and hears the screams.
It’s over in moments. He stands there, surveying the mess.
His skin tingles as his body shudders, his eyes rolling back for a moment. Everything in him tightens, then he lets out a long, shaky breath and opens his eyes.
He stares at the boxes. He knows he doesn’t have much time.
He’ll need to clean this up.
Nobody will suspect anything happened. Not to this kid. They’ll think he simply took off.
Nobody will check this dirty cooler he will mop. Or the boxes he will take to his truck.
Nobody will know.
And for now, the voices remain silent.
Fearless & Run Like Hell
1.
He was awakened by the sound of digging.
Dennis had gone to sleep with the bedroom window open. At first he thought he was dreaming the rhythmic noise. But as it continued and the sound of metal striking rock sent echoes into the quiet night, Dennis knew he wasn’t dreaming.
It was 2:24 a.m.
He threw on some clothes and didn’t bother bringing anything outside with him. It probably wouldn’t matter anyway.
On the deck the wood beneath him groaned as he approached the noise. It came from down by the river, past the oak and the river birch trees.
Dennis slowed as he approached the source of the sound.
He could make out a shadow behind the tree. A man wearing no shirt, his chest and neck streaked with what Dennis imagined to be dirt.
Or blood.
The figure looked at him, leering at him with white teeth. “Care to join me, Dennis?”
Dennis was torn between continuing forward and bolting out of there.
Cillian shook his head, his face distinguishable now that Dennis’s eyes had adjusted to the moonlight. “Such a pity.”
“What’s a pity?”
“You. You’re pitiful, Dennis. You let me down. You are constantly—constantly—letting me down.”
“Then maybe you should go bother someone else.”
“Maybe if you didn’t disappoint me I would.”
“What can I do for you then?”
“See—look. Look at this. You don’t get it, do you?”
“Did you decide to bury my cat?”
Cillian laughed. “That’s a good one. You never cared for that thing anyway, did you?”
“You didn’t have to tear its head off.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like it back?”
“No,” Dennis said flatly.
“This is much too big of a hole for Buffy.”
“Deciding to bury yourself?”
“You’re so full of wit tonight. Is it because you visited the little park in the forest and saw some of God’s creatures?”
“What are you doing?” Dennis asked.
He looks and sounds and even smells real. How can this be a ghost? It can’t be.
But Dennis had seen the pictures. They were real. And this guy was dead.
Cillian looked up, sweat beading on his forehead. “Yes, even the sweat is real.”
“Can you read my mind?”
“Sometimes. But not in the way you might think.”
&nbs
p; “How might I think?”
“You don’t understand, and you refuse to understand, Dennis. You’re too stubborn, too confident. Even after all this time. After everything that’s happened.”
Dennis walked over to the hole.
“What is this?”
“I’d say it’s big enough for a man your size, wouldn’t you?”
“Are you gonna kill me?”
“You know I can’t do that, Dennis. And you call yourself a horror writer.”
“I like to think that I write more than just horror,” Dennis said.
“You write garbage that’s not worth filling this hole!”
Dennis stared. He wanted to grab the shovel and hurt Cillian with it, to knock him out and throw him in this hole and bury him.
Can you bury the dead? Will they stay down there?
“You know what’s going to fill this hole? Right in your backyard? Your buddy. Perhaps he will give you inspiration.”
Dennis thought of Hank.
What have you done?
“What buddy?”
“Oh, no, not the stupid one. No, he’ll get something else. The friend you call Ward.”
“What have you done?”
Cillian started laughing.
As Dennis went after him, he vanished.
The shovel dropped, and Dennis picked it up. It was real. The dirt was real, as was the hole.
He ran the dirt through his fingers.
Dennis sprinted back toward his house, not caring about the time or Cillian’s disappearing act or anything else.
Ward has a wife and a family and he can’t be involved in this. It would be my fault. I can’t allow that to happen.
His hands shook as he dialed the number.
2.
“Hello?” The voice whispered. It was Ward’s wife, Kendra.
“Kendra, I need to speak to Ward.”
“Wha—Dennis?”
“Yeah, it’s Dennis. Something—I just—is he there?” There was a pause.
She’s looking for him but he won’t be there because he’s downstairs lying in a pool of blood.
“Dennis, what’s wrong?” Kendra asked.
“I can’t tell you now—I just need to speak to Ward.”
“Okay.”
There was movement in the background, muffled voices, the shuffling of the phone.
“Hello.”
It was Ward. Groggy and subdued but still Ward.
“Are you okay?”
There was a pause. “Hey, Dennis.”
“Are you okay?” he repeated, demanding an answer.
“Yeah. Are you?”
“I just—something happened tonight.”
“What?”
“I can’t—I was worried about you.”
“Dennis, man—it’s almost three in the morning.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just, uh, just be careful, okay?”
There was another pause.
“Ward, look, I’ll explain everything. Just—give me a call sometime tomorrow. Apologize to Kendra for me.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“And Ward. Don’t…”
“Don’t what?”
What are you going to tell him? Don’t lose your mind? Don’t anger any dead people? Don’t go close to any holes in the ground?
“Look, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Dennis lay the phone on the counter. Suddenly he heard the dial tone, as if the speaker on the phone was on. And through the speaker he heard laughter.
Taunting, menacing, hilarious laughter.
“Just keep diggin’, Dennis! Keep diggin’! I’ll finish up for you tomorrow. Just you wait. I’ll finish up for all of you. Just you wait!”
3.
He awoke in the third-floor bedroom, the unused guest room across from the storage room. The morning sun striped over the bed, revealing his muddy clothes and clumped shoes. He felt hungover though there was no reason he should.
Had he dreamed the whole thing about Cillian digging the hole? He decided to go downstairs and see if there was anything in the backyard.
Who says you didn’t do it yourself in a nightmarish fit of energy?
His lower back ached. His mouth felt dry, pasty. As he went to the stairs, wondering how he had ended up here, something in Lucy’s old room caught his eye.
For a moment he just stood there, staring.
On the wood floor rested the photo album.
Not a photo album but the photo album.
I know I haven’t looked at that since she passed, and I know I wasn’t looking at it last night.
It was perhaps the ugliest album ever made, with a bright yellow and blue cloth covering that said words in bold like LOVE and LAUGHTER and, in case you wondered what the album was for: PHOTOS. He had picked it out for Lucy on their first anniversary, giving it to her filled with funny photos. He had given her something else too, though he couldn’t remember what—a necklace or a gift certificate. But he remembered this gift. As the years passed, the album filled with more funny and memorable moments from their life together.
It still had a couple blank pages, pages she had added not long before she passed.
Dennis had thought of taking it out after she died, maybe about every five or ten minutes of every day of every week after she died. But he knew it would be too much. The best way—maybe the only way—to deal with someone dying was to go out and live as hard as you could. Sitting upstairs on the third floor looking through memories wouldn’t do anybody any good.
Did Cillian do this to hurt me? Is this one of the many ways he’s wanting to peel open the scab?
The room chilled him. He looked down at his arms covered in goose bumps.
Get out of this room.
He picked up the photo album.
As he walked down the narrow stairs to the second floor and his office, it felt like he was carrying a box of dynamite. As he entered his office, he heard something fall to the carpet.
It was a photo.
He picked it up and looked at it.
There she was, smiling, laughing, saying something. It was a snapshot taken in the last month of her life. She still looked like she had twenty or thirty years left. Who could have known?
He quickly slipped it back into the album.
I don’t remember ever seeing that picture before.
Dennis put the album in his closet. He couldn’t look through it. Not now. Maybe in another year. Or another decade.
The photo lingered in his mind. He couldn’t place it. Had he even been there when it was taken?
It’s easy to forget when you want to. To stuff it away in some dark place that can only be found through the mossy swamps of pain.
Dennis looked out his window and saw the hole in the backyard, the shovel next to it.
It was real, just like the stains on his clothes and the grime on his hands.
4.
Dennis spent the day in denial.
He avoided the growing pile of bills. He avoided the messages left by Ward on his answering machine. He avoided the e-mails and calls from Maureen asking how the manuscript was coming along. He avoided reading any more of Cillian’s horrific story. He avoided the thought of slapping a cover letter on it and sending it to Maureen.
He avoided the reality of Cillian and what that really, truly meant.
Dennis was a pro at avoidance.
And despite everything he had seen and gone through, he still couldn’t force himself to get help.
5.
When the doorbell rang at 5:45 that afternoon, Dennis found something to greet the guest with.
The .38 in his office.
He swung open the door, raising the gun and expecting to see the familiar sneering face.
Instead it was Hank with a case of beer and a bewildered expression.
“Okay, I give up,” Hank said, holding out the beer. “Take it. It’s all yours.�
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Dennis stepped outside to see if anyone else was around.
“Don’t worry. The neighbors didn’t see you.”
“It’s not Sunday,” Dennis said as if to remind Hank.
“Really? Is that the only day I can come over?”
In the kitchen, as Hank loaded the Coors Light Draft into the fridge, he glanced at Dennis. “Here I am thinking you might need someone to swing by and visit. Looks like I’m right. You okay?”
Dennis shook his head.
“So what’s the deal?”
“Remember what I told you the other day?”
Hank stared suspiciously at Dennis, still skeptical.
“The thing about the ghost?”
“Yeah,” Hank said.
“That’s why I’m holding this thing.”
“So you’re for real? It’s really happening to you?”
Dennis sighed. “Something is happening. I don’t know what. I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or what.”
“If that’s the case, you think carrying around a gun is a good idea?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that thing loaded?”
“Yeah.”
Hank handed him a beer. “If it’s a real ghost, it can’t hurt you. Not really.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked it up online the other night. They say most ghosts are stuck in holding patterns, as if they’re confused and don’t have anywhere to go. They need something to change before they can pass on to the next place.”
“Which would be what?”
“I don’t know,” Hank said. “Heaven. Hell. The great Dairy Queen of the beyond.”
“You believe in an afterlife?”
“I want to. I want to believe there’s more than just this. There has to be.”
“No there doesn’t.”
“Tell me something, Den. Why is it that Lucy and Audrey both believe in God and heaven and all that, and it’s so hard for you?”
“Wanna know why I write scary stories? Because they’re real. People like horror because it mirrors real life. Turn on the news and what do you find—one horror story after another. Those tales of happily ever after—now those are fiction. There is no such thing as happily ever after.”
“Den—tell me. Are you okay? Like, seriously?”
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