Freezer: The Complete Horror Series

by J. Joseph Wright

  Not many people hung around after they’d gotten their food, which was a relief. More kids meant more temptation to kill. And the temptation was driving me insane. I don’t know how I did it. All I can say is the real me was strong enough, somehow, to push back those sinister demands, to ignore the devilish orders for me to slay each and every kid I’d served food to and indulge the freezer with a smorgasbord of fattened young calves. I didn’t though. It took all my inner resolve, but I didn’t. So you can understand my dismay at what happened next.

  It came out of the blue, as I was wiping down the service counter. The big rush was over, and I had just congratulated myself for not only getting every order correct and served up in record time, but also for my discretion in not slitting my customers’ throats. Three of them were still loitering—two boys and a girl—laughing and chatting it up around the little table I’d put out. Then, all of a sudden, one of the boys started coughing and spitting, his face as blue as an ice cube. The other two shot into action. One of them, a boy, jumped behind him and started giving him the Heimlich. Once, twice, and on the third try it looked like the kid coughed something up. He seemed fine after that. Only he wasn’t fine. As his friends puffed in relief, he jumped on the boy—and I mean jumped—and started wringing his throat. The girl, back in panic mode, pounded on his back, but he looked up at her and with one hand took her by the throat too. His eyes were the reddest red, and he looked like he was breathing fire. His face even seemed strange, not human, and he looked over at me with a giant grin while the two supposed friends of his went limp and lifeless.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. For a second, I surged with spontaneous energy, elated that there was more food for the bottomless hunger deep within, haunted by the supernatural link between me and the freezer. On the other hand, my natural personality felt a profound sense of grief over what I’d just seen. No more death. I swore to that. But somehow, by its own sheer will to eat, the freezer had found a way to be fed.

  But how?

  I searched for a reason and found it right away. On the prep counter I spotted it. My stomach turned at the sight. A mound of meat, churning and bubbling like a mud pot. I stepped back and clenched the bile from my throat. The guilt stabbed me deeper than any blade ever could. In the confused heat of preparing and cooking and taking orders, I had somehow reached into the possessed freezer and extracted a pound of flesh, literally. The evidence was clear as day. Quivering with some kind of life after death, the ground up human meat must have been made into a cheeseburger, and this kid, whoever he was, must have eaten it and was transformed into the same relentless killer I’d become.

  “You need help feeding the freezer, Eddy,” the kid gave me an infuriated stare. “That’s why I’m here. Now give me a hand!”

  I wanted to put an end to all of this madness. But when I laid my eyes on those fresh bodies, my overlord took control of me, forced me to help the kid pull the corpses in, and got to work processing. It was such a strange experience, like being out of body. I wanted no part in doing what I was doing, yet somehow I did it. It wasn’t really me, though. It was someone else, a demon, or many demons, controlling my hands, my legs, everything. I was watching as if from a mile away through a long, dark tunnel. I felt the power, the waves of immense energy as before, but this time I was able to distance myself from it, even if I couldn’t stop myself from committing those heinous acts.

  Finally, when the two dead teens were fully dealt with and we’d fed the last bits of them into the freezer, the kid turned to me, wiping his bloody hands with one of my cleaning rags.

  “From now on,” he wagged his finger in my face. “There’ll be no more hesitation, got that? I’m here to make sure of it. I was sent to watch over you, and to keep the bodies coming, okay? So no more whining about your family or not wanting to kill anymore. We’ve got a job to do,” he closed his eyes and seemed to revel in some kind of intense rush. “And it’s the best job in the world,” he stared at me again. “So let’s go do it,” his hand rested on my butcher knife.

  I just looked at him straight-on. “Let’s go.”

  “Good,” he glanced through the service window. “This is a bad spot. We need more—”

  As he spoke, the real me rushed to the surface and, in a mental coup d'état, took control of my own body once again, snatching my rolling pin and clubbing the kid on the back of the head. Despite his preternatural powers, he didn’t see it coming, and went down and out like a light. Right away my stomach convulsed. I bent over at the worst cramping I’d ever felt in my life. The freezer rumbled and roared, and I felt it again, knowing the demonic power was fighting back, trying to get me under its influence. But my will was strong. I’d had enough. I was going to do something to stop it, even if it killed me.

  And it felt like it was going to kill me.

  4.

  Using zip ties, I bound the kid up in the van pretty good. I knew he had the same incredible strength as I’d felt, so it had to be good. I made sure. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  I pulled into my driveway in Beaverton at exactly 1AM. I heard the kid coming around when I turned off the engine. I also heard the freezer, a deep, low, barely perceptible hum in my chest. It exerted its will on me, knowing it was close to its demise. I shuddered and shook, almost like I was having a seizure. Really, it was fortunate I’d come in so late. If someone had seen me, they would’ve thought I was seizing up, and probably called 911. A teenager tied up in the back would’ve been kind of hard to explain away, something I just didn’t need.

  In my flustered state, I had no plan, no idea, no way to destroy the freezer, though that’s what I needed to do. And that became my only goal. But my internal struggle had only just begun. With every step closer to the end of its existence, the freezer sent that much more lethal power my way, inundating me, infusing me. I can tell you my intent flip-flopped several times as I strode up the front walk. One second, I was the devoted and determined patriarch, out to protect my family. The next second I was deranged, out of my mind, itching for the smell of blood, feeding from the intense pleasure brought on by the slaughter. Each step, it seemed, my thoughts switched. Kill! Protect! Hate! Love! on and on, until I could take it no more and banged my head against the foyer wall so hard it woke the house.

  Brenton ran to me first, yelling ‘Daddy,’ but keeping his distance when he observed, quite astutely, my agitation. Then Shannon came along and scooped him up. She took one look at me and hurried Brenton back to his bedroom. Then she took me by the hand, led me into our room, and forced me to look her in the eyes.

  “All right,” she folded her arms. She had a look on her face, almost like she knew what was going on. “How many?”

  I could barely get the words out of my dry, scorching throat. “How many what?”

  “Don’t play games with me. How many people have you killed?”

  I broke down and told her everything. It wrenched my guts, but I told her. I told her about the fun little gift I found on the porch. I told her about Phil, the next-door neighbor, and how strong the feeling to kill was, how much control it had over me. I told her about fighting against that control, and getting away from her and Brenton so I didn’t do anything to them. I recounted my exploits in the Burger Buggy, the kid I was forced to kill, and the other boy, the one I had tied up at that very moment, who had been turned into some kind of evil assistant, or overseer, I wasn’t sure. I told her the whole disgusting story, every last detail, and made it plain and clear that, despite it tearing up my insides, I was determined to end it. Now.

  Shannon, to her credit, listened to the whole thing, not even batting an eyelash. I was amazed at her ability to stay cool under fire. Always was. But this rose to a different level. Her calm was epic, and it made me feel like the luckiest man on earth to have such a person in my life. What she said next solidified that feeling.

  “Give me the phone,” she sighed, almost as if this was a common occurrence in her life. Well, maybe it was. She took the tele
phone from me and started dialing. “I knew this day was going to come. That’s why I made arrangements in advance.”

  I wanted to ask her what she was talking about, but my insides were erupting like Mt. St. Helens. That freezer didn’t like this one bit, and it was taking it out on me. Big time.

  “Hello, Shelly?” Shannon said. “Yeah, I know what time it is. Just listen. You know that favor you owe me? Yeah, that thing we talked about…I need to cash in, right now.”

  There was a pause, and Shannon rolled her eyes and clenched her teeth. “I don’t care what time it is, Shelly. I need to do this, and I need to do it now,” her forceful tone scared even me, and when she hung up the phone, she nodded emotionlessly.

  “Let’s go.”

  5.

  I’ve failed to mention Shannon owned a Hair Salon in Hillsboro. Wasn’t anything big, really. Just a few women and her, styling, shampooing, some nails too. Turned out one of the women working there, Shelly, owed Shannon a lot of back rent for her styling station. They’d worked out a deal a long time ago. Shelly’s husband Bob worked at Portland Steel, and, as a shift supervisor, had the run of the place after hours. From what Shannon said, the mill had everything we would need to demolish that freezer for good. Apparently, she’d been thinking about this in detail for quite some time. I always knew she was a genius. One of the reasons I love her so much.

  We dropped Brenton off at Shannon’s confused mother’s house, and, at 2am, met Bob at Portland Steel, a sprawling industrial complex in the northwest end of Swan Island. With a yawn and a scratch, he asked again what the hell we were doing here again.

  “We have something we want to destroy completely. No trace left,” since I felt like shit, Shannon was in charge now. She pointed to the Burger Buggy.

  “Lady, I can’t destroy that thing,” Bob almost laughed. “It’s way too big. You need to take that to the wrecking yard.”

  “Not that, goddammit,” she’d already run out of patience. “It’s inside of there. A freezer. We want it gone. Completely. Can you do it?”

  He scratched his head. “What the hell do you want to destroy a freezer for? Can’t you just take it to the dump? And why are we here so late, anyway?”

  “Listen, Bob,” Shannon got in his face. “Your wife owes me big. We’ve already made these arrangements in advance, so are you going to honor the deal, or am I going to have to collect on the two thousand dollars?”

  “Two thousand?” his scruffy face twitched. “She owes you that much? Goddamit!”

  He told us to wait there, and we took that as our chance to sneak the freezer out of the Burger Buggy. We didn’t want to explain to Bob why we had a teenage boy tied up inside. Turns out we didn’t need to. When we got to the back, we found the door wide open, broken zip ties all over, and no kid in sight.

  We both knew the gravity of our little discovery, but neither of us could say a word about it, because just then Bob showed up in a Hyster forklift, noisy and smelling of natural gas. Shannon and I heaved the freezer out of the Buggy, and we both eyed each other when it started to rock and shake and growl. All we could do was hope Bob didn’t notice. We also hoped he didn’t see the plastic ties inside the wagon. Luckily, Bob was too focused on his driving to notice a thing, and we followed on foot as he hauled our possessed possession into a gaping portal which led to the heart of the steel mill.

  I thought I’d stepped back in time to the industrial revolution. It was dark and dusty and everywhere we turned there was another mammoth machine with all kinds of dials and levers and giant moving parts. Bob took us deeper and deeper into the building, to a place where the ceiling opened up with all these girders that crisscrossed high above. In my nauseated state, I was in no real condition to study my surroundings, but kept my eyes peeled, just in case we ran into millworkers with healthy curiosities. I did see a couple. One spotted Bob and waved and only gave us a cursory glance at what we were doing. There were others inside the plant, but I only heard and didn’t see them, and we got to a place where one of the biggest machines in the whole building loomed large over us.

  “This is the compactor,” he yelled louder than he needed to. “We’ll use this to crush it,” he pointed to a large belt, laid flat and long, with grooves and little metal hooks. “Then the conveyor will take it to the oven. That’ll liquefy it down to molten metal,” he gave Shannon a look. “Is that good enough for you?”

  Shannon stiffened her upper lip and nodded. Then she noticed how I was holding my midsection and asked me if I wanted to go back to the truck and wait it out. I wouldn’t hear of it. I needed to know that thing was gone for sure. I needed to see it with my own eyes. Shannon showed me she understood with a grim smile and we both watched Bob, using the Hyster, lift the freezer toward the compactor.

  That’s when it felt like Hell had boiled over. My skin turned inside out, my heart raced out of my chest, and I couldn’t stop sweating. It was all in concert with the gyrations and protestations of that freezer, teetering on the big metal forks. I was too caught up in my own agony to see what was happening, but I knew Shannon was distraught. A couple of times the freezer shifted hard and knocked against the forks. I kept hearing her cursing under her breath, muttering ‘Come on, come on.’ It looked like Bob was going to do it. The freezer was going to be placed inside that monstrous machine and reduced to a tin can. The freezer knew it, and all its gesticulations, all its violent protests were being sent to me. I felt its agony, sensed its terror so much it sent me into fits of dry heaving.

  Bob saw none of this. He had the freezer nearly all the way into the compactor when the largest, most violent vibration the freezer had produced to date rocked the forklift, and had Bob hitting the switch that stopped the hydraulics with a bounce and a jerk. He sent Shannon a bewildered stare, then removed a plug from one ear just when the freezer let out a hellacious scream. It sounded like a child, innocent and pure, and it compelled Bob to punch another switch, letting the freezer drop back to the floor.

  “What the fuck are you getting me into!” he climbed out of the Hyster and rushed to the freezer. It knocked and rocked as he put his hand on the lid.

  “Don’t look!” Shannon sprang toward him, but he was too fast, and when he flipped open the top, a skinless arm reached out to seize the loop of his overalls. I received an instant dose of stimulation, a feeling so wonderful and euphoric it washed away, temporarily at least, my extreme sickness. Replacing the pain and suffering was pulse after pulse of power, and I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to help the severed hand. I wanted to shove Bob deep into the freezer’s cavernous mouth, and probably would have if I’d had more time. As it was, Shannon became frenzied, and put her foot against the freezer’s side and wedged Bob away just before he was pulled to the point of no return. Shannon must have been surging with adrenaline, because she shoved Bob, a pretty good sized man, and had the temerity to get the lid closed again, shutting the bloodthirsty, gaping maw and restoring at least a little calm. The freezer kept shaking, though, and my revulsion came back, this time magnified ten times over.

  “What the fuck! What the FUCK!” Bob kept bitching, not helping my condition at all.

  “Shhh!” Shannon spied the nearby machines. The constant sounds of clanking and buzzing all around must have covered our commotion, but she looked just to make sure. Bob, it seemed, didn’t want to listen to her warning.

  “What the—” he squinted at me as I doubled over. Then he studied Shannon, the freezer, and me again. “Hey…hey, I know you two,” his face lit up almost like a kid on Christmas, losing his former fear in favor of wonder. “Brenda Mitchell,” he pointed. “You’re Brenda Mitchell’s kid. Eddy, right? And you’re Shannon Sellers. God, why didn’t I put this all together earlier? All this time my wife’s been working at your salon and I had no idea.”

  “Listen,” Shannon got tough with him again, and the freezer responded to her determination by growling at her. At the same time, I felt a shock of pain so severe I nearly blacked out. “
We don’t have time for this shit, you got that? This freezer’s cursed, understand? Now finish this…destroy the fucking thing!”

  Bob’s chin, or chins, started to quiver. “S-so it’s true, then? The story’s true? That freezer really did make your mom and grandma kill all those people, didn’t it?”

  “YES!” Shannon was red in the face. “It’s true, all of it! The fucking freezer’s a menace! It turns people into zombie killers, and we have to destroy it right now!”

  “Okay, okay!” he jumped to his feet and was in the forklift before he’d finished talking. Not another word was said as the lift went up, as the freezer’s rumblings grew worse, as my personal torment became unbearable. It felt like I was burning all over, every inch of me, inside and out, roasted over an open fire. My limbs gave the sensation of being pulled from my body, at the joints, one bone at a time, and it felt like the torture would last forever.

  At the highest extension of the lift, Bob angled the Hyster forks, slipping the freezer into the compactor. I convulsed, feeling a shock down to my DNA. Shannon held me, but I pushed her away, preferring to be alone in my misery, and also afraid I might’ve done something horrible at the last minute. That evil freezer still had a profound influence over me, and it wouldn’t go down without a fight.