Freezer: The Complete Horror Series

by J. Joseph Wright

  “All right,” she bit her lip. “Just remember. Pep R Onni’s. One hour.”

  I took the Burger Buggy and got on the road, following my smartphone GPS to the location of evil incarnate. I wasn’t sure if the cops were on my tail or not. I wasn’t paying much attention anyway. Let them follow me. In fact, I hoped they were trailing me. I probably would need all the help I could get.

  I took Farmington to Grabhorn, then followed that to SW Inglis Drive, where I was greeted by some of the most glamorous homes I’d ever seen. Large, sprawling mansions, each with wrought iron gates and grand views of the valley. The thought of one of these families of wealth and power cursed by such a deadly and insatiable evil made me shudder to the marrow. What could they accomplish if they were all cursed? What if they chose to use their influence to spread the wicked spell? The guilt invaded my thoughts once again, and that spurred me faster, screeching around corners, speeding through the opulent neighborhood.

  At 45632, the GPS on my phone squawked at me to stop. It was a typical home for the area. Huge. White. Modern and sophisticated and pristine. To my surprise, and great fortune, the gate was open, and I had free and clear access to the house.

  When I shut off the engine, my nerves started to get the best of me. What was I doing here? Just how the hell did I plan on resolving this mess? And what if the kid was home right now? I knew from my own unforgettably horrible experience just how strong this kid had to be. The netherworld and all the power it contained had infused my body with so much strength and cunning. This kid probably had the same things happening to him. And here I was with no demonic strength, no plan, no weapon of any kind. That scared the shit out of me. So I did the only thing I could think, and armed myself with the biggest knife I had in the Burger Buggy, a nice heavy butcher knife. Now I was ready. I stepped out of the truck.

  “Hold it right there!”

  My nerves went to hell again. All of a sudden I was staring at the barrel of a gun. For a second, all I could think was the kid had gotten the jump on me. He read my thoughts and was one step ahead, anticipating my feeble attempt at heroism, and now I would be dinner for his freezer. My worst fear was proved wrong, though, and I felt a sense of relief when my head cleared and I saw Detective Monroe, his dark brown eyes staring daggers into me.

  I mentioned that I felt a measure of relief when I saw Monroe. Well, that feeling was shattered when he pressed me against the Buggy, wrenching the knife out of my hands. It dropped to the pavement with a Clang!

  “I gotcha now, asshole!” he panted like a mountain lion. “You’re not getting another one…not on my watch. You think you’re so smart, dontcha? Sneaking out and giving us the slip.”

  “Detective, please listen—”

  “Shut up!” he had to take moment to regain composure. “You’re done talking. And killing. You think I haven’t seen you? You think I don’t know you’ve been out, lurking, abducting kids, hanging out by the high school, looking for your next prey?”

  “But I wasn’t—”

  “I said shut UP! You’ve been doing it all week, haven’t you? You’ve been going out and murdering people, kids mostly, and also a mother and her two children. Children!” he looked like he wanted to shoot me right then and there. “How the fuck could you?”

  His chin quivered with emotion, and I took that as an opportunity to offer him a desperate explanation. I sped through the story, starting way back at the beginning with Gramma, to what happened to mom, and then how I came to be the freezer’s owner and evil servant, just as they had. I even confessed about killing my neighbor, but swore it was in my muddled state of possession, and I had no choice. Then I told him about how I’d inadvertently allowed someone to eat some of the meat that had been inside the freezer, and how it turned that person into another servant to Hell. I explained what happened at Portland Steel, and how I thought that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t. The kid who ate the tainted flesh was still out there, and he must have had his own possessed freezer. I told Monroe destroying the freezer was the only way to end the killing spree, and that was what I meant to do.

  After my breathless plea, Monroe just blinked at me. “Listen, kid. I don’t know what kind of insanity runs through your family, but—”

  “Goddamit! It’s not insanity!” I struggled against his cop hold. “The freezer is real! And the high school kid who lives here is probably chopping people up and feeding his freezer right now!”

  Monroe looked up. “That house? That house right there?” he laughed sarcastically. “You know who lives there? The Charles family. Some of the most distinguished, highly revered people in the whole state. They own the local Pep R Onni’s, along with all kinds of other businesses around town. Those people are gold-plated around here.”

  “I’m telling you their son is the killer!” I was fighting a losing battle. Monroe was that close to putting cuffs on me when a sudden shriek stopped him. He looked at me cockeyed, then his mouth dropped open at another hysterical cry. No mistaking it. A girl was in desperate trouble. And there was also no mistaking the worst part—the screaming was coming from the Charles residence.

  12.

  Monroe didn’t try to keep me back or anything. He became a single-minded machine, kind of like I had become, and we both sprinted up the front steps. Then he saw me behind him and scowled, his gun aimed in the air.

  “You get the hell back,” he whispered hoarsely, but when he did, we both noticed the front door was ajar slightly. With the tip of his pistol, he pushed the door open, and what I saw inside made my heart race. Walls stained and smeared red. Strange symbols and pentagrams and obscure writing in some unrecognizable language. Furniture, nice luxury pieces, ripped and overturned and thrown every which way. Drapes ripped half out of their tracks. The stench of death and despair.

  I didn’t want to gloat. It wasn’t the time. But Monroe gave me a look that seemed kind of strange. I caught in his glance a feel like he halfway believed me, and I took that as my cue to go on with my plan.

  “Wait! What are you doing?” he came out of his stunned funk when I rushed past him. Wordlessly, I led him into the kitchen, where I found what I was looking for: a refrigerator/freezer. Tall. Stainless steel. Three doors. Nice unit. But I knew what it was really. Monroe yelled in protest, but I had to show him. Had to have another witness to the torment, to the ugly truth I’d lived with all my life. Nobody else believed. Nobody on earth besides Shannon. Now Monroe would believe. Now he would see into the mouth of Hell. I ran straight to the fridge and opened the freezer part, preparing for the worst.

  Nothing.

  Hot Pockets and Haagen-Dazs and Orowheat multigrain bread. No endless chasm into the unknown. No severed body parts, writhing and wriggling and reaching out to snatch me. Monroe took one look at the rather ordinary frozen items and pointed his gun at me.

  “Just what the fuck’s going on here, Mitchell?” his eyes darted all over the kitchen, into the dining room, where the same evidence of violent struggle as in the living room was plain and clear. “You kill these people, Mitchell? Huh? Did you? You did this, didn’t you? You did all this?”

  The more Monroe looked at it all, the more he centered his sights on me, the barrel of his Glock staring me down. I knew what he was thinking, and had to do something quick. But I would never get the chance. Another skin-crawling scream, this one louder than ever, came from the basement. Monroe looked conflicted. He had designs on keeping me detained in the kitchen, but he obviously wanted to rush to the aid of this unseen, unknown girl.

  Finally, he exhaled hard, like he wasn’t happy with the decision he’d made, and took me by the arm, digging his fingers into my wrist.

  “Come on!” he yelled, then he let out an abrupt cry and let me go. At the same moment, he dropped to the floor. At first I had no idea what had happened. A heart attack? Stroke? But my confusion only lasted a second. A quick swing of something long and hard, a strong snap against my cheek, and I was down too, right next to Monroe, althoug
h I still had the awareness to see our attacker—Neil Charles.

  The kid’s dark skin was even darker in the shadows, but his eyes were bright, internally illuminated by the devilish fire which had overtaken his mind, body, and soul. One look at him and I knew the power had to be raging within him. I recognized the look on his face, one of desperate omnipotence. A feeling he was relishing in, and a feeling he was frantic to keep. Monroe was out cold. Not a sound. Not a movement. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. I thought the same fate awaited me, and when I saw Neil lift a golf club—a Callaway driver—I knew it was over.

  But Neil had one last thing to say before he killed me.

  “I was wondering when you’d come by for a visit,” he gestured at the chaotic mess of a house, a place that had been lavish and beautiful at one time. “Do you like the new decor?”

  “Neil,” my head throbbed when I spoke. “Neil, I know you’re in there somewhere. Listen to me…you can overcome this-this curse. You have to—”

  “QUIET!” his face contorted, and his voice sounded deeper and more hollow than a second ago. “We know what you did, Eddy Mitchell!” his stare was almost hypnotic. “How dare you go against us! We will NOT be denied, do you hear! What you did—it was a bad, bad thing. And now,” he held the golf club above his head. “It’s time for you to join the slaughtered.”

  I put up my hands. A meager attempt at saving myself. I don’t even remember getting hit the second time. All I remember is the darkness.

  13.

  With a splitting headache, I woke to the sound of my cellphone playing About a Girl by Nirvana. Shannon’s ringtone. I couldn’t see very well, and my movements were too constricted to reach my pocket. My thoughts were a jumbled mess, and it took a few seconds to remember what had happened. Then I felt something warm and soft next to me. A second later, my fright went through the roof when I recognized Detective Monroe in what was obviously the back seat of a car. A Mustang, to be exact. Neil’s Mustang.

  Monroe started to make noise, easing my fears that he was a dead man. Neil had hit him pretty good. Got me good too. Somehow, though, we both made it out alive—barely.

  “What…happened,” was all Monroe could say at first.

  “Neil Charles happened,” I rubbed my forehead looked out the window. Cars everywhere. A parking lot. “He’s taken us somewhere, but I have no idea where.”

  Then my cellphone started buzzing, a signal that a text had come in. Wriggling an arm free, I reached my pocket and looked at the message.

  At Pep R Onni’s now…waiting! Where R U?

  A small spark of something ominous started in my gut. A horrible feeling of two being put together with two. The parking lot we were in—I recognized it. And something Monroe had said earlier made me shake with the realization.

  “Neil Charles’s family,” I said. Monroe was waking up, getting stronger. “You said they owned a restaurant. Which one was it again?”

  “Everybody knows,” he sounded tired of me. “They own that Pep R Onni’s place.”

  “Pep R Onni’s Pizza Pie Palace?” I pointed to the sign across the parking lot. The sign above the big set of double doors decorated with a goofy penguin, giraffe, and a host of other cartoon characters.

  Monroe did a double take. I was already out the door and halfway to the entrance when he caught up with me.

  “Mitchell,” he stopped me. “You’re not a cop. Stay out of this,” he reached for his waist and found his gun missing. I thought we were screwed. But he just smiled and tapped his temple, then lifted his left pant leg. Concealed in a brown leather ankle holster was a shiny little revolver. Spinning the cylinder, he eyed me one more time.

  “I’m not staying out of this, Monroe,” I said. “My family’s in that restaurant.”

  “Your family?”

  “Yeah. It’s my kid’s birthday. And there’s no telling what’s going on in there right now. Neil Charles might be murdering everyone in sight.”

  “Listen, there’s no reason to think that might be happening.”

  “Bullshit! You’ve seen the crime scene photos. You know how many people are killed once this thing gets going. You know the bloodshed and the mutilation and the—”

  “Okay! I get it. We don’t know what to expect, so I’m gonna need you to watch my back. Can you do that?”

  My steely stare was my answer, and we both walked in angles toward Pep R onni’s, straining to see through the painted windows for signs of murderous mayhem. But decorations covered almost every square inch of glass, making it impossible to get a view inside. We heard noises, loud shouts, what sounded like people in distress. I felt a lump in my throat. Shannon and Brenton were in there, and that fueled my frenetic actions. I didn’t follow Monroe’s orders and stormed inside. No weapon. No idea how I was going to stop this supernaturally-charged kid. My only thought was to save my loved ones, and save them I was going to do.

  Monroe chased me down just as I got through the second set of doors. The detective was forceful with me and had his pistol pointed at the first thing he saw moving at him, but that was a father and his two young kids, all three of whom looked terrified to be confronted by a Saturday night special.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” demanded the man.

  “Uh, sorry,” Monroe lowered the pistol to his side. “My mistake.”

  The man didn’t say another word, but conveyed his disgust by sheltering his two kids from the detective while ushering them out the door. By that time, I was in a state of shock. Where I expected to find a horrific scene of carnage, I instead beheld joy and excitement and smiles. Hoots of happiness. Cries of contentment. Pep R Onni’s was much more than a pizza place. One complete section of the building was dedicated to arcade games and midway attractions like Skee Ball and soft darts and Hero Hoops. Older kids played billiards and foosball while the younger ones played Whac-A-Mole and jumped around in the colorful plastic tube slides. And everyone, from parents to kids, enjoyed the stage show, where Pep the Penguin himself, along with several of his animated animal friends, danced and sang about the delights of pizza pie.

  Monroe and I both stood silent for a moment, exchanging bewildered stares.

  “Everything seems normal,” he said.

  “Yeah. Too normal,” I began to search for Shannon. “Neil’s here, somewhere, and I’m getting my family out.”

  I ran up a small flight of steps and scanned the main eating area, a collection of at least two dozen tables with several booths along the wall. The place wasn’t packed, but it was close. That terrified me.

  “Daddy!”

  I spun to find Brenton’s glowing little face. He had a piece of pizza in one hand and an orange soda in the other. Next to him was his best friend, Germ. I wasn’t sure if that was his real name, but everybody called him that. Shannon had a thankful look on her face.

  “You’re here,” she tried to pull me down in the seat next to her. “Finally!”

  I stood firm, and that took the relief right out of Shannon’s expression. Right away she looked worried at my jittery behavior.

  “You guys gotta get outta here, right now!” my tone made the people in the next table take notice.

  “What’re you talking about, Eddy?” Shannon lowered her eyebrows into a concerned glare. “Do you realize how much Brenton has been looking forward to this?”

  “Shannon!” I banged the table. Brenton started crying. Germ just sat wide-eyed. Shannon’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t have time to explain, but you have to go…now!”

  She looked at me for a second, and as she studied my face, I could tell she realized what was happening. Maybe she didn’t understand it all, but I sensed she sensed it had something to do with the freezer curse, and when Monroe went running toward the kitchen, his gun at the ready, she became quite serious.

  “Come on, Brenton, Germ. Let’s go,” she stood and started gathering the wrapped gifts littering the table.

  “But Mommy!” Brenton cried lo
uder, his mouth half full of pizza.

  “No buts,” she insisted. “We’ll have to do this some other time.”

  “But it’s my birthday today!”

  “I said no buts,” she rushed the kids out, but before she did, took me by the arm. “You be careful,” and she vanished out the door with my son and his friend.

  14.

  Just as the door closed behind my family, I heard Monroe yell something from the back. The people in the other tables looked up. Smiles faded. The merriment died down as folks started to notice something was wrong. Another tense, terrified scream from the back turned even more heads.

  “Everybody get out!” I took it as my job to evacuate the place. But Pep R Onni’s was huge, with several different areas separated by glass walls, so it was impossible for my voice to reach everyone. A Pop! made the people nearest the kitchen flinch and run for the exits in terror, but it could have been mistaken for a bursting balloon. I knew it was a gunshot, though, and that made me abandon my effort at clearing the place out. Helping Monroe was the only thing on my mind.