Doorbells at Dusk

by Josh Malerman

  “Sorry to make you wait so long, buddy. I had to deal with those assholes who brought me into this world.” The pumpkin seemed to gaze straight through him. Its mouth twitched, though, its evil grin expanding.

  It’s time for us to help each other, Travis.

  “Okay. But, um, how does that work, exactly? What else can I do for you?”

  We both know how you feel about those two fools you call your parents. Do we not?

  “I guess.”

  I need to ambulate. I’m not meant to sit here in this little patch of bum-fucked-nowhere for the rest of eternity. I need your help with that.

  “Okay. It would suck to be just a head. I feel for you.”

  I know what it is you need. You need to be free from your parents’ iron fist. They only cause you pain. I can help you get rid of them for good, Travis.

  “How do you propose that I get rid of them?”

  I think you know the answer to that, Travis. I will not suffer a fool for a companion. You need them out of the way, and I need them to make me whole again. It’s that simple. I can’t exist inside this rotten gourd for very much longer. In order for me to come fully to life, I need some of their . . . parts.

  It had all been true. Every second he had spent carving Jackass, he had fantasized about his parents meeting terrible fates. The pumpkin had been his outlet for the rage he had felt. And now it was encouraging him to get rid of them. It was insane.

  “What exactly are you saying, Jackass? You want me to . . . kill them?”

  It was your hatred for them that fueled your creativity when you made me. I am born of your rage. You know that this is what you want.

  “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  Jackass explained what had to be done, laying it out in detail for the boy so he could understand. As the explanation spilled forth, Travis grew anxious, his alarm growing every minute.

  Finally, the pumpkin said: I’m the only friend you’ve got, dear boy. You will do what needs to be done, and if you prove you’re worthy of taking a most esteemed position at my right hand side, I can give you so much more than freedom. You’ll know what it’s like to be somebody. To be really important.

  “I just don’t think I can do what you’re saying. I don’t particularly like them, but I’m no killer.”

  Time runs short, even now, dear boy. If you don’t act soon, all will be lost. You’d be crazy not to take this opportunity.

  “I hate them, I really do. I’m just not capable of doing anything like that,” Travis answered.

  Travis knew that he shouldn’t be taking any of this seriously. He could just stomp the jack-o’-lantern into the floor and it would all be over. But the damned pumpkin had him mesmerized.

  Do as I say, or you may as well kill yourself, Travis. Those fools have wanted you dead all along. They wish you’d never been born. Look at your pathetic little life. Yours is a soul yearning to unfurl its beautiful wings and fly free. Don’t you want to soar free, Travis? You’re in prison. You’re nothing. Nothing! They’ll see you into an early grave and laugh the whole time, the dying breath choked out of your fragile little lungs.

  Though it was insane, the pumpkin made some good arguments. His family had been against him all along. They had never tried to understand him. They didn’t care if he lived or died.

  A rush of conflicting emotions had overcome him, nauseated him.

  In a moment of panic, Travis dashed out of his room and charged headlong into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it behind him.

  Jackass was in his head, waiting for him. No more running, my friend. The world is ours. Just set me free, and the world is ours.

  Finally, Travis could not stand it anymore, and screamed out, “Please just leave me the fuck alone! Why are you doing this to me? Why, Goddammit?”

  Then he broke down, head in hands, sobbing loudly, incoherent words churning like gravel in his mouth.

  Immediately following Travis’s outburst, his dad’s footsteps rumbled up the stairs. Travis felt the first cracks appear in his sanity, and knew he was teetering too close to the edge of a chasm that was so deep that if were to slip over that edge, he would never stop falling.

  He knew, as the pounding footfalls approached the bathroom door, that his only option was to get the hell out of the house. Just run away, hide out in the woods for a while. Otherwise, there was no telling what might happen. He was surely going insane.

  You can’t run away from me, my dear Travis. You and I are forever bound to one another. And we have so much work to do. Gather your tools, and let’s get on with it. No more bullshit.

  Travis’s brain suffered a vicious cramp and panic seized him, and he feared he was having an aneurysm.

  Through his anguished pulsing headache that gnawed on his skull like a pack of rats, Jackass’s soothing voice coaxed him, encouraged him to kill for him.

  Travis composed himself as well as he could, splashed cold water on his face at the sink, and slung open the bathroom door at the exact moment his dad was preparing to open the door and walk in.

  Father and son stood speechless for a moment, staring at each other, silent in the awkward moment. Finally, Travis edged past his dad and hurried down the hall before his dad had a chance to say anything to him.

  He took the stairs at a gallop, sprinted down the hall toward the foyer, and slid to a stop upon the wooden floor mere inches before he would have plowed into the front door.

  Outside, trees swayed to and fro, the gusting winds denuding branches; orange, yellow, and crimson leaves swirled along through the crisp autumn twilight. Running around the sides of the house, he unlatched and flung wide the privacy fence gate, launched himself into the backyard and headed for the tool shed.

  Everything he needed was there. He grabbed a small hatchet, a machete, a vicious looking filet knife with a razor sharp blade, the heavy duty battery powered jigsaw, and an assortment of other large hunting knives his dad kept in a locker, which was conveniently unlocked. All of it went into one of his dad’s old weather-beaten rucksacks. On the way out, he spotted a large, gleaming hacksaw with a nearly two foot blade. He took it, too.

  Hauling the sack of tools into the house and up to his room proved easier than he had figured. His parents were nowhere in sight. The television in the family room was turned up too loud, so he couldn’t hear anything else, but there was no doubt they were lounging on the sofa, getting soused, probably unaware that he was even still around. Travis had been certain that his dad would be waiting for him to come back inside after his outburst.

  He carried the rucksack into the bedroom, and emptied the contents on the bed.

  Travis sorted the tools out and advanced the plan to its next phase. The sky was darkening outside, and there would soon be kids streaming through the neighborhood; he had to make the best of the precious little time remaining before then.

  “Mom!” he yelled. ”Can you come up here for a minute?”

  Despite his intentions, he felt unusually calm. His palms were dry. He hefted the hatchet, and ran the blade lightly across his thumb. It was sharp enough.

  The television volume lowered and his mom called up from the bottom of the stairs. ”Everything all right up there, Travis?”

  “Yeah, it’s all good, mom. But can you come up here and look at something for me?”

  His voice was steady, but he felt nervous and hoped his mom didn’t detect anything threatening in his voice.

  After a moment, she came up the stairs.

  Do it quick, Travis. If you hesitate, all is lost.

  He ignored Jackass, and stood just at the side of his bed with the hatchet held behind his back, gripping it fiercely. When his mother walked into the room, he blinked a couple of times, while she stood swaying a little on her feet, glancing around the room. She spotted the jack-o’-lantern and frowned at him.

  Before she could speak, Travis made his move.

  He swung the hatchet up and lunged at her, swinging the hatchet down w
ith all the power he could muster as he closed the distance between them.

  She never suspected a thing, just stood there, her mouth opening up in a little puckered “o” right before the razor-sharp hatchet punched through the top of her face and nearly split her head completely in half.

  His mother convulsed horribly and then went limp. Gravity claimed the lifeless body, and she hit the floor like a sack of flour, pulling the hatchet handle out of Travis’s hand as she went.

  Travis gazed at the sight of his mother sprawled on her back, murdered by his hand, but Jackass’s voice interrupted right away.

  Quickly, Travis. Get your dad up here, now.

  “I know.”

  Travis dragged his mom’s cooling body over to his walk-in closet and pulled it inside, then shut the door.

  He had to get his dad up here without arousing his suspicions.

  One down, one left to go.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered.

  He yelled to his father.

  “This better be important, Travis,” his dad bellowed from below.

  “It is! Something’s wrong with mom,” he answered, hoping he sounded panicked enough. ”I don’t think she’s breathing!”

  The telltale footsteps thundered up the stairs. Travis pushed his bedroom door until it was nearly closed.

  Travis pressed his back up against the wall just to the right of his open bedroom door.

  His dad came barreling into the room, slowed down only slightly by the door.

  “Judy, are you all rii—”

  The fish knife slid viciously across his dad’s throat before he could finish his question.

  Blood jettisoned across the room with incredible force. It splashed onto the walls and Travis’s bed before his dad’s hands went up to the ragged, gaping gash in a desperate bid to keep the rest of the blood from escaping.

  Gurgling, he turned and saw his murderer standing there, a sadistic grin on his face, brandishing the knife at him. His eyes were shocked and wide, but also confused. There was no doubt in that look that he couldn’t believe his son had done this. Blood was sheeting down his front like water from a faucet. He went down within a few seconds, and thrashed violently around on the carpet as he drowned in his own blood. It took an eternity.

  The hour of resurrection is nearly at hand. Jackass was quick to assert his will.

  Do it all exactly as I told you, Travis. Our destiny depends on your ability to carry out my instructions.

  Travis nodded at the jack-o’-lantern. ”Okay, okay. I’ve got it together.”

  He had to drag his mom’s body out of the closet. He laid her out beside her husband, who had curled up in a fetal position as he died, and went to work on her with the jigsaw. When he had the chest cavity chiseled out, he used the fish knife to cut out her heart. It was bigger than what he had expected, but still went into the top of the jack-o’-lantern easily enough.

  Ah. Yes, that’s it, Travis. Keep going. You’re almost there.

  The next part was the real bitch. The jigsaw battery died halfway into the first cut he made in his father’s skull. He had to resort to using the hacksaw. It took him too long, and he began to grow panicked, but the body had to be flipped over three times in order for him to cut all the way around the head and remove the skull cap while causing as little damage to the brain as he could help.

  While we’re young, Travis, Jackass quipped. Travis was not amused. This was awful. He had finally managed to detach the brain from his father’s cranium, but it was slippery, and kept sliding out of his hands.

  At last, he stuffed the brain into the top of the pumpkin, and collapsed onto the bed, exhausted from the exertion.

  He watched Jackass carefully. Waited for something to happen.

  When nothing changed after several minutes, he stripped and got in the shower.

  Refreshed after a good scrubbing, Travis was back in his bedroom. He ran his fingers through his stringy wet hair, a few locks falling back over his glasses, blocking out the view of his hideous creation sitting in the corner below the bedroom window for a second.

  A crushing black metal dirge poured forth from speakers hung around his room, vocals like demons conjured forth from the very bowels of the deepest hells, several down-tuned guitars laying down thick stuttering riffs. It was perfect. The gore-soaked clothes Travis had changed out of were balled up atop his bed. He had changed into his favorite outfit. Black leather pants, a Marilyn Manson t-shirt, leather jacket with jingling zippers everywhere, combat boots.

  He had gone back to the shed after he finished with his parents. The gas in the five gallon can had sloshed around at the bottom, but he figured he would not need a whole lot. It would be enough.

  In sixteen years, Travis had never felt more isolated, helpless, or doomed. He sat and brooded, flinching every time he looked around him. Tears of madness leaked from his eyes. A few candles strategically placed on the windowsill and headboard described otherworldly patterns on the otherwise night-darkened room. The bloated jigsaw smile of the jack-o’-lantern sat dark and oozing beneath the window. For the last fifteen minutes, Travis had contemplated his next move, but he had been unable to stir himself into action. His ass simply refused to detach itself from the carpet in his spot in the opposite corner of the room, no matter how badly he needed to act.

  He stared fearfully at Jackass as it leered at him, its demonic grin causing a fit of chills to coruscate through his spinal fluid.

  It was Halloween night, and darkness had fallen. In his neighborhood, trick or treating had just begun, and droves of children would come knocking at the front door any minute. Time had run out. The night was already alive with the laughter of so many children. The shouts of joy and wild abandon, as the children made their merry way through from house to house, dragged like fingernails across so many blackboards in Travis’s brain.

  He wished more than anything that he could trade places with one of those kids. He longed to know their innocence, for his was lost.

  Somewhere out there, the twins would be roaming around with their friends, unaware of how their lives had been devastated while they had their night of fun. Travis had taken their parents from them.

  He was aware of how everything had gone horribly wrong, but he actively attempted to convince himself something could be done to reverse time and put everything back the way it was.

  Everything that has happened, I’ve brought upon myself.

  He peeked out the window. The arc sodium street lights buzzed to life as twilight changed to dusk. Smaller lights further illuminated front porches of the homes whose residents participated in Halloween festivities. The wholesome sounds of children finally freed to gather their treats filled the chilly night. They capered about out there, blissfully unaware of the atrocities that happened every day in the sick twisted world around them.

  Travis thought about the acts he had committed. He was a murderer. Not only had he killed his parents, he had mutilated them, stuffed their pieces into his jack-o’-lantern. And what had it all been for? Had that really been him? He wasn’t a good guy, as far as he knew.

  Am I evil? He could not believe it, but he knew it was he who had brutally destroyed these two bodies strewn over the length of his bedroom carpet. Their fluids were spattered from one side of the room to the other by his hands.

  In the midst of this human wreckage, he had waited for something that was never going to happen. He didn’t know for sure what he had expected to happen once he had done the things Jackass had bid him do, but he knew now that there would be no triumph tonight. He had been promised a new lease on life, a grand new existence, but the only world opening up to Travis was one in which merciless convicts raped little guys like him in the shower every day for the rest of their lives. Jackass had lied.

  But had he? Or had Travis just been lying to himself. He supposed it didn’t matter in the end.

  Jackass had remained conspicuously silent ever since his dad’s brain had gone into its hand-carved crani
um.

  Had it ever really talked to him at all?

  He glanced furtively around, seeing the aftermath of the evening’s carnage as if for the first time.

  Bile filled his mouth, and he stagger-stepped around his parents’ corpses, ran down the hall into the bathroom. After the contents of his stomach had been expelled, he felt a little better. His throat burned, so he stuck his head under the bathroom sink and drank greedily for a few seconds.

  On trembling legs, he returned to his room. He didn’t want to go back in there, but he had to. The end of all this was coming at him like a tidal wave, about to crash into him and deliver him to his fate.

  The smell of gasoline burned in his nostrils.

  After he had doused his bloody clothes and bed, there was a little bit of gas left in the can. He now opened the lid and poured the remaining fuel on his head.

  An eerie hush had descended, like the room itself had been sealed inside a mausoleum deserted for centuries. Travis sat at the foot of his bed, in his newly christened kingdom, and consciously averted his eyes from the mirror that adorned the inside of the bedroom door. The sight of his reflection shocked him. He quickly looked away. Then he picked up his television remote control, averting his eyes from the carnage he had wrought, and swung it violently into the mirror, sending thousands of pieces of glass showering down onto the floor around him.

  He’d found a pack of wooden matches in the shed when he retrieved the gas can. He pulled one of them out of its box now and looked around at his room one last time.

  Then a peal of laughter boomed through his head like thunder in a mason jar. Travis cried out, the pain driving him to his knees, his resolve dissipating like so much smoke.

  Foolish boy. What are you doing? You won’t be ruining it all now. I still need you to complete the ritual, Travis. You’re the last piece.

  Jackass laughed like a crazed hyena. When the cackling finally came to an end, the jack-o’-lantern began to vibrate. It looked bigger than before, and there was a tangle of green vines sprouting from underneath its bloated, bloody face.