Song returned after several minutes, smiling and struggling to restrain laughter.
“Rutger has something to show you below deck, Captain. Let me take over here.”
Singer knew better than to ask questions and stepped aside to let his first mate manage the ship. When he found Rutger below deck, the big Dutchman was finishing up shackling a man to one of the heavy cannons. An empty powder sack covered the prisoner’s head completely.
“What’s going on here?”
“Oh, hello there, Captain. Song tells me that was a fancy piece of shooting you did up there to hit that Azzie priest.”
“Rutger, you didn’t call me down here to pat me on the back for my marksmanship. What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing wrong here, Captain,” Rutger said, his voice nearly breaking into laughter. “We’ve just got ourselves a little stowaway here, is all.”
He pulled the powder sack from his captive’s head.
“But we’ve got it all under control now, ain’t that so, Captain Hayward?”
Singer couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the British commander’s tear streaked face and quivering lips.
“Christopher Hayward,” he said. “I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to meet you again, especially under the circumstances.”
“Piss off, Singer,” Hayward said, his voice sobbing and petulant.
“Now, now, Captain, that’s no way to behave! We’ve got a long voyage ahead of us and I would hate for us to get off to a bad start.”
Hayward spit on his boot.
“The Captain told you to mind your manners,” Rutger said. He raised his boot and kicked Hayward in the head.
“Rutger,” he said, still smiling, “that’s no way to treat a guest from such an esteemed institution as the Royal Navy. It’s just not civilized.”
“Aye, sir. My apologies.”
“Clearly Captain Hayward is overwrought with grief over the men he left behind to die at the hands of the Aztecs. Such a tragedy, don’t you agree?”
“Aye.”
“You’ll hang for this, Singer,” Hayward said.
“Well, we can talk about that once you’ve recovered a bit of that gentlemanly demeanor of yours, Captain Hayward. Rutger?”
“Aye, Captain?”
“Lock this rabble in the brig until he’s ready to act like a civilized Englishman, will you?”
“With pleasure, sir.”
Johnny’s Monster
Originally published in Enter at Your Own Risk: Old Masters, New Voices (AS Publications, 2011)
In some respects, this was the story that helped restart my writing career. Although I wrote it before my graduate school hiatus (2007-2010), it was my first publication after that long period of inactivity. Much like “Turlington Manor”, this story tries to take a well-worn genre convention and make something new out of it. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with this idea. I remember sitting in a movie theater and getting angry when a preview showcased an upcoming film featuring the exact same concept. The story hadn’t been accepted at that point, so I was more worried about being accused of ripping the movie off than congratulating myself for being on the same wavelength as Hollywood studios. Then again, considering that I don’t remember the movie itself, maybe the idea wasn’t quite as groundbreaking as we thought…
As long as Johnny could remember, a monster had lived in his closet. Of course, his parents always told him it didn’t, but he knew better. Nobody else had ever seen it, except for the poor boy that spent the night as Johnny’s house after the first week of kindergarten. He never came back. There were many closets in the house and Johnny had seen the monster in all of them, but the closet in his bedroom was the one that truly terrified him. It was always in there, even in the daytime.
The door alone was enough to cause nightmares, even on the days he didn’t see the monster. It was made of old wood, unmarred by any paint or stain, and its grain contained a twisted menagerie of horrific images. Each time he forced himself to look at it, Johnny saw something different. Children skewered on the pikes, demonic creatures torturing helpless women, and the monstrous visage of some unholy abomination devouring men by the thousands in its gaping black maw were just a few of the scenes forever etched in Johnny’s young mind.
Every time he opened his closet door, he saw the monster crouching in the darkest corner. Sometimes it ate his shoes or pissed on his clothes. It was always there. Every day he got ready for school, its cruel eyes bored into him. Some days it smiled, never in amusement, but in anticipation of the night. When Johnny saw that horrible smile he knew he wouldn’t be getting any sleep that night. After he got home from school, he avoided the closet if he could, but he always seemed to need something or his mother unknowingly placed something important inside it. The monster was usually standing by that time of the day, but not always. It didn’t really matter to Johnny whether it was standing or crouching, either stance was equally terrifying.
Although it never came out of the closet during the day, it could still follow him around the house. Johnny would often be in another room when the air suddenly became much colder. When this happened, he knew that if he looked to the nearest closet door, he would see the grain of the otherwise normal wood twist into some graven, murderous image and he knew he was not alone.
On some dreadful nights, the monster slithered out of the closet and stalked around the house. He found it nearly impossible to control his fear when he heard the sickening creak of the door’s hinges break the silence of night. But the door didn’t just creak like any other door, it hissed like a venomous serpent and Johnny felt his stomach wrap around his spine whenever he heard that foul noise. If Johnny was lucky, it would prowl about the house and return to the closet with little more than a sniff in the direction of his bed. Other times the monster would lumber over to his bed before that twisted door even closed behind it. He tried very hard not to think about those nights. It loved to toy with him as well, sometimes sliding out of the room before coming back to torment him later. When it felt particularly cruel, it slinked out to roam the house, returned to his room after an hour or so, pass by his bed to pry open that hellish door, and then, just as Johnny felt its departure was certain, it close the door slowly and crept back to his bedside.
No one believed his outlandish stories, of course, but the neighbors were all too quick to recount the house’s gruesome history. A retired judge had built the place after his wife’s death and he lived there with his six children for many years. In that time, he saw his son commit suicide, two girls disappear without a trace, and a daughter brutally murdered in her own bedroom. No one ever knew what had driven his son to suicide or who was responsible for the death of his youngest daughter. The two missing daughters were never found. Shortly after the murder, the judge and his two remaining girls moved away for good.
Years later, the eldest daughter moved back to the house with her husband and two children. They remained there for some time without incident until the husband left town for a week with the older son and returned to find his wife dead and his younger son missing. Police combed the area for a week until he was discovered dead beneath the floorboards of his own bedroom. The husband abandoned the house and when he died, his surviving son immediately put it up on the market.
For years, he pleaded with his parents to move away from that awful house. He tried running away a few times, but they always found him. They tried taking him on vacations but he resented them, always knowing in the back of his mind that he would eventually return to the house and his bedroom. He told them about the six people who had died or disappeared there, but they were unmoved by such superstitious nonsense.
When he was twelve years old, he walked into the living room and announced to his parents that if they did not agree to take him out of the house and never make him come back, he would kill himself. Fed up with his apparent antics, they chastised him. When they finished yelling, he produced a knife from his pocket and calmly slash
ed his wrists right before their eyes. He was trying to bring the knife to his throat when his father wrested the knife from him. They rushed him to the hospital immediately and he never set foot inside the house again. It was the happiest day of his life.
Taking a deep breath, Father Jonathon Cross walked towards the door of the old house he’d once called home. With each step the house seemed to loom higher over him, as if it were trying to intimidate him from coming any closer. He ignored the feeling. When he reached the heavy oaken door, the final barrier between him and the home that still tormented his dreams, he stopped.
Jonathon slowly reached out and placed the tips of his fingers on the wood.
At the touch of his skin, something inside the house stirred. He heard the wheezing, rattling breath and caught wisps of a familiar, pungent odor. After so many years away, he’d forgotten how that stench had infected everything around him for his entire childhood. The ragged breathing quickened, accompanied by a sound Jonathon had once prayed to never hear again.
Laughter.
It was a laugh unlike anything heard before on God’s earth. There was no humor in it, no joy, only anticipation and an eagerness to tear away the façade of Jonathan Cross and find little, terrified Johnny beneath.
“Welcome home, Johnny!”
Jonathon’s heart stopped cold and he yanked his hand away from the door.
“God, help me,” he said.
Somehow, miraculously, Jonathon had made himself forget that the monster could speak. The memory swept back to his mind and he almost screamed in terror. All those sleepless nights spent listening to the monster whispering from the closet returned in one harrowing flash. It became clear to Jonathon that the monster’s black heart had always fed on terror. Inflicting pain was but a fleeting pleasure.
Jonathon quickly reached into one of his coat pockets and produced a large wooden cross. Holding it tightly, he pressed it flat against the door and recited an exorcism to both strike back at the monster and quell his own overwhelming fright.
“I cast thee out devil! Get thee hence unclean spirit, for the kingdom of God is upon you!”
The laughter suddenly subsided, replaced by a low growl. Jonathon wasn’t sure if the incantation had an effect on the monster or if it was angered that he had managed to reign in his fear, for regardless of whether or not the words had actually hurt it, they had given him the strength to continue his quest. Reaching into one of his pockets, he fished out the house key. He clutched the cross tightly.
“Give me strength…”
He slipped the key into the lock and the deadbolt slide back with a screech, like fingernails upon a chalkboard. Depositing the key back in his pocket, Jonathon reached for the doorknob and opened the door.
The door opened into the living room. There were no closets there, but from the front door he could see into the kitchen and remembered the closet next to the back door where his mother always kept his winter coats and play shoes. A staircase to his left led up to the bedrooms. There were two closets in his parents’ room and one in the guest room. He recalled that the monster liked the guest room closet and would often flee there when he tried to show people that a monster was indeed in his bedroom closet.
Beyond the guest room was the worst place in the whole house: Johnny’s bedroom. Jonathon believed that the closet in his old room was a direct conduit to whatever hell the monster called home. It would be waiting for him there.
But instead of going up the stairs, he walked to the coat closet by the kitchen. The monster sometimes waited there during the winter since he always tossed his coat into the closet after school. The wooden door appeared normal now, but he could feel its presence all around him so it was difficult to tell if it was inside.
Swallowing hard, Jonathon yanked the door open. The closet was dark, but empty. Slipping the wooden cross back into his pocket, he pulled out a small Bible and a bottle of holy water. He loosened the bottle’s top and waived it just inside the closet as if he were drawing a cross in the air. The water splashed on the cold wooden floor and Jonathon said a short blessing. When he finished, he heard the water on the floor hiss softly.
As he closed the closet door, the air grew foul and cold. There was a terrible scratching sound followed by a low growl. He slipped the Bible and holy water back into his pockets and drew forth the large cross. Cautiously, he opened the closet door.
The closet was still empty, but the sounds surrounding it were almost deafening, as if a hundred clawed hands were scratching at the wood around the closet, desperate to get inside. Jonathon noticed the steam rising from the holy water on the floor and realized with satisfaction that the monster’s growling was a sound of frustration. He slammed the door shut and left the kitchen, along with the horrible sounds within it, behind him.
It was a fairly simple matter to bless the remaining closets. His parents’ room seemed almost silent compared to the storm the monster created downstairs. He didn’t feel the monster’s presence anywhere near them. The closet in the guest room worried him but it was empty as well. He blessed it quickly and slammed the door shut.
Four of the house’s closets were cleansed of its evil. There was only one place for it to go.
By the time he got to his bedroom, the monster had stopped trying to get into the kitchen closet. Jonathon heard it clawing and snarling down the hall in his parents’ room. Then it tried the guest room closet and roared in anger when it couldn’t force its way inside. When he touched the knob of his bedroom door, the house fell silent. Jonathon hesitated.
“Come inside, Johnny, we’ve been waiting for you.”
“We?”
He gripped the wooden cross tightly and opened the door.
The room was not as Jonathon had expected. It should have been empty and covered with dust and cobwebs like the rest of the house. But what he saw before him was…impossible. The room was well lit by a ceiling light and full of oddly mismatched furniture, ranging from antique styles to modern trends. Six children sat on a large bed in the corner of the room, each about four or five years old. There were four girls and two boys. Four of the girls and one of the boys were dressed in old-fashioned clothes. The other boy wore a t-shirt and jeans. They stared at him blankly; if they could see him at all, they gave no indication of it.
The air smelled like rotten meat and Jonathon found it difficult to breath. He looked at closet in the far corner of the room. It was closed, but he could see the familiar twisted portraits in the wood grain. The door seemed to bulge and surge, as if it could barely contain the evil force within.
“What in God’s name?”
“Say hello to your brothers and sisters, Johnny. They’ve been waiting for you to join the family. We were beginning to think you’d never come back to us.”
Jonathon cringed at the sound of the monster’s voice.
“That was a naughty thing you did to the closets, Johnny. You know I don’t like naughty little boys.”
Jonathon knew that if he could see the monster’s face at that moment, it would be smiling. The thought angered him and he yelled back at the monster.
“What is this? Who are these children? What have you done to them?”
“You don’t recognize them? Perhaps they should introduce themselves first.”
At its words, all six of the children hopped off the bed and stepped forward. Jonathon blinked and the room suddenly changed. It was no longer the same, odd room of mismatched furniture, but a wreckage of broken beds and splintered tables. Above him, the ceiling light began to flicker, making it difficult to see anything. Finally, it stopped and cast a dull crimson glow around the room. When Jonathon looked down, he saw that the children had changed as well. But as he eyes fell upon them, he realized that the light had not changed its shade. The floor and walls were covered with their blood.
Two of the little girls lay on the floor in a heap of broken bones and blood. Their dead, soulless eyes still stared at him intently. The other girls were older now; on
e was in her early teens and the other middle aged. They were both gutted like animals. Closest to Jonathon were the two boys, who had also aged several years. One boy, about ten years old, was emaciated, his skin hard and cracked like a dried-out fruit. It was difficult to tell the age of the second boy because the upper half of his skull was shattered.
Jonathon took a step back, horrified. These, he realized, were the souls of the monster’s previous victims. There were the old judge’s daughters, two brutally ripped apart and the others disappeared without a trace. He had a feeling that their bones could be found stuffed somewhere in the house’s walls or floor. And here were the two boys, the judge’s son who killed himself to escape the monster’s torment and the grandson who hid under the floor in terror until he died of dehydration and shock. Even death could not deliver them from the monster’s grasp. Jonathon realized that he would be sitting alongside them if he had succeeded in his desperate suicide attempt.
Enraged, Jonathon pulled the bottle of holy water from his pocket and flung it at the closed door. It shattered and the figures in the wood grain shrieked at the water’s touch. Jonathon leapt over the slaughtered children and tore the door open.
There it was, crouched in the corner: the monster that had made his childhood a living hell. It jumped in surprise when Jonathon flung the door wide and then stared at him in disbelief. Without hesitation, he lunged forward, wrapped his hands around the monster’s neck, and dragged it kicking and snarling out of the closet. When it cleared the doorway, the monster regained its footing and shrugged off Jonathon’s hands. Before he could recover, it seized him in its powerful grip and tossed him across the room. Jonathon struck the wall and fell to the floor. He looked up at the monster as it shambled forward. It towered above him, eyes aflame and maw full of fangs and bile.
Distant Worlds Volume 1 Page 15