What Hides Within

by Jason Parent

  PRAISE FOR JASON PARENT

  “Jason Parent is a master storyteller. From the first word, you will be lost in the story.”

  —Confessions of a Reviewer

  “Jason Parent’s new collection, Wrathbone and Other Stories, includes some wonderfully original tales of horror… If you have yet to discover Jason’s work, this book will serve as a worthy introduction.”

  —Cemetery Dance

  “An enjoyable thriller that will appeal to fans of many different genres and Jason Parent is definitely an author to watch.”

  — The Horror Bookshelf

  “A Life Removed is, by far, one of the best books I’ve read this year.”

  — PopHorror.com

  “The elegant prose mixed with the dark and twisted imagination of the author brings horror to a new level.”

  — Amazing Stories

  Also by Jason Parent

  NOVELS

  A Life Removed

  Seeing Evil

  People of the Sun

  NOVELLAS

  Unseemly

  Where Wolves Run

  COLLECTIONS

  Wrathbone and Other Stories

  WHAT HIDES WITHIN

  by Jason Parent

  Copyright © 2012 by Jason Parent

  Bloodshot Books Edition © 2017

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author’s written consent, except for the purposes of review

  Cover Design © 2017 by Silent Q Design

  http://www.silentqdesign.com/

  ISBN-13: 978-1-947522-05-3

  ISBN-10: 1-947522-05-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s fertile imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  READ UNTIL YOU BLEED!

  CHAPTER 1

  C live imagined himself stabbing an ice pick into his ear to silence the mutterings once and for all, though he wasn’t sure his ear was most deserving of the honor. The vein running across his temple pulsated in concert with his rapid heartbeat. The staples holding his flesh in place threatened to spring from his head, the pressure beneath them mounting.

  He checked the bandage with his fingers. He could have sworn he felt pus ooze from the wound, but his fingers were dry when he brought them down before his eyes. Staring at them and trembling, he dared not avert his gaze for fear that the mere sight of the man standing in front of him would ignite his rage.

  Probably just my imagination, Clive thought, calming himself. He wiped his hand on his pant leg just the same.

  The smell of the sick, and the disinfectant used to counter it, filled the air, combining into lemon-scented ass. It made him dizzy. He looked around the room, trying to focus on anything tangible and regain his equilibrium. A gum-chomping receptionist, a row of hard plastic chairs, an elderly man with an untied shoelace, a cat clock with mischievous eyes that ridiculed him as its tail click-clacked back and forth—all painted ghostly images in Clive’s mind, snapshots of his surroundings viewed with uncertain clarity. At last, a plastic cup filled with unused Popsicle sticks caught his eye. He wondered if it would be possible to kill a man with them. And he had one man in mind.

  Only a few weeks earlier, Clive Menard’s life had been dull but carefree. With no aspirations or responsibilities, he plodded aimlessly through life, a simple man employing simple means toward simple-minded ends. Tall, slender, and fairly good-looking, he could have been extraordinary. But ordinary he was, and he liked it that way.

  Clive was complacent in his complacency, his life without waves. Then somehow, during the last few weeks, he’d been caught up in the storm.

  “You carved open my head for no goddamn reason?” Clive was hotter than midsummer Jamaican tar at high noon. But the screaming was hotter still, a squeaky-hostile voice chanting louder and louder inside his head.

  Kill the doctor! Kill the doctor!

  “Not now!” Clive shouted. The outside world went quiet. His head throbbed so much that he thought he might lose consciousness. With every pulse, he wavered between reality and a surreal counterfeit. His knees weakened. His senses dulled.

  Steadying himself against the receptionist’s desk, he knocked over her small Dixie cup of water. The liquid ran across her desk and onto her lap.

  “Hey,” she whined as she scrambled for some paper towels.

  Clive ignored her. The incessant chanting of that squeaky voice and the mounting pressure in his forehead overwhelmed all other concerns.

  Kill, kill, kill the doctor. Won’t you please just kill the doctor? the voice sang. Take his scalpel. Raise it high. Drive it down into his eye.

  “Clive?”

  Clive could barely distinguish Dr. Landenberg’s voice from the inner ranting. He spaced out. The blood rose in his head, threatening to reopen his wound or worse. Is this the start of a stroke? Most brain-surgery patients were lost on the operating table. Clive thought it ironic that he might slip away in a waiting room. But nothing about his treatment had gone according to plan.

  In his haze, Clive wondered if Dr. Landenberg could hear the voice echoing throughout his skull. The absent look on the doctor’s face revealed no perception of the sinister monologue playing out within Clive’s mind. How could the doctor hear the voice when Clive wasn’t even sure it was real? The menacing melodies playing in his head seemed to be meant solely for an audience of one.

  Clive sucked back his drool. Dr. Landenberg grabbed his arm to help him balance. Amid his convoluted thoughts, Clive wondered if the good doctor was kind of hoping he would die or considering how many ways he could breach his Hippocratic oath and get away with it, make his problem patient disappear.

  The middle-aged, wrinkled, white-coated brain surgeon appeared benign, not unlike the tumor he had falsely diagnosed in Clive. He propped Clive up in a waiting-room chair and held Clive’s head steady between his palms. He shook Clive, which seemed more likely to induce a seizure than to alleviate his patient’s symptoms. Instead, it wrestled Clive slowly away from his temporary fantasy world.

  “Clive?” Dr. Landenberg called again. He let out a deep sigh. “What are you going to do? In all fairness, the abnormality appeared on every scan in roughly the same spot each time. The machine seemed to be working perfectly. How could I have known it was defective?”

  For a moment, the voice quieted and his throbbing lessened, enabling Clive to catch the tail end of Dr. Landenberg’s excuses. It did little to quell his rage.

  “You sawed open my skull, poked around my frontal lobe, stapled my head back together, and stitched me up poorly, which is bound to leave a scar that only Tony Montana would be proud to have, only to tell me now, in my pain-stricken, out-of-Vicodin state, that when you looked at my brain, everything appeared healthy and normal? What kind of doctor are you, anyway? I thought neurosurgeons were supposed to be the best and brightest?”

  You should kill him, the little voice scoffed.

  “I’m not going to kill him,” Clive said for all to hear.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing, Doc. Just thinking out loud. Anyway, what do you propose we do to make this right?”

  “Clive, accidents happen. I’m sure you make a mistake every now and then at your job too. But,” Dr. Landenberg said, donning a smile that oozed false sentiment, “I do feel awful about all this. Would you settle for my sincerest apologies?”

  “Are you fucking nuts?”

  “Well, let’s see. What can I do?” Dr. Landenberg rubbed his chin. “I know. I’ve got two tickets to the Red Sox-Yankees game this Sunday
. I saw you wearing that Sox cap when you came in. It’s sure to be a great game.” He patted Clive’s arm. “You can have them if you like, and we can put this unfortunate event behind us.”

  “You really are retarded, aren’t you? Did you see any brain damage when you were poking around in my head? Or perhaps the better question is whether you saw any brain damage not caused by you. I wear a hat to cover the large gash that you lovingly left on my noggin, you jackass. You performed life-threatening surgery on me without justification or, apparently, remorse, and you want to quiet me with baseball tickets?” Clive scowled. Now, season passes? Those might have been a different story.

  “I don’t think I approve of your tone.”

  “What? You don’t like my tone? Are you seriously that oblivious to your own incompetence?”

  Can we kill him now? Huh? Please?

  “Maybe.” Clive was unable to answer without speaking out loud. He felt like one of those people who couldn’t think quietly, like those weird guys in grocery stores who stood in the middle of the aisle asking themselves, “What am I going to do today?” or “What movie should I rent later?” No one gives a fuck, so shut the hell up, Clive had always thought. He prayed he wasn’t becoming one of those guys.

  “Maybe,” he repeated as though he meant to say it the first time. “Maybe I should see about getting your license revoked.”

  “Well, a simple ‘no’ would probably have sufficed. I don’t appreciate your threat. I think you should leave.”

  Dr. Landenberg sounded insulted. Clive was far beyond the point of caring.

  “Fine. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.” Clive turned to leave, thinking he’d said everything that he was supposed to say. In truth, he didn’t even know any lawyers.

  “I’ll look forward to it. But before you go, Mr. Menard, there’s the little matter of your co-pay.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Don’t worry. Since there was no tumor to remove, the initial calculation we provided you has been greatly discounted.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Yeah, go fuck yourself, the miniature voice echoed. Clive exited the office, slamming the door behind him.

  CHAPTER 2

  N ine weeks earlier.

  Timothy sprinted through the thick underbrush. Thorns clawed at his clothes and skin, tearing both. Wet mud kicked up from his sneakers onto his calves and white socks. The sun’s rays had not yet baked the earth into solid clay after a passing shower, blocked out by tall pines and shady willows.

  Timothy’s eyes darted from tree to tree as he passed them, searching for a place to hide. She’d be coming for him soon, and he knew it. She was probably already gaining on him, not far behind at all. He needed cover fast.

  He spotted a felled tree and ran to it. The dense, fat base of the dead oak would veil him from her view. For the moment, he could rest, but he’d need to move again soon.

  Her voice grew nearer. Its soft, seeking tone and her impetuous laughter traveled as if on fallen angel wings to his uninhibited ears. She hunted him, seeming to prey upon her own excitement.

  Timothy crouched in the orange, red, and yellow leaves of fall’s beginnings. The leaf pile was high, an unusual accumulation for so early in the season. He thought to bury himself in it. Surely the pile was big enough for that. But the smears of blood painting his legs and the droplets still running down them would cause the plants to stick to him. His flight would be hampered by the crinkling of dead leaves rubbing together and crumbling as they fell from his body.

  Startled by the sheer amount of blood, he paused to check his wounds. The bodily fluid stained the leaves around him. But he felt no pain and could only find superficial cuts—no cause for alarm. At the moment, he had more pressing concerns.

  Slowly, Timothy regained his stamina. His breath formed a layer of condensation, melting in the air like steam from the mouth of a dragon. He closed his eyes and waited for the right moment to move.

  CHAPTER 3

  T he still black water was blotted with patches of bug-covered lily pads and colonies of green algae. Closer to shore, reeds as thick as bamboo stood tall and proud, feigning resistance to a vampiric death under a scorching sun. No more than twenty feet away, a lone swan paddled across the water’s surface, moving softly, as if silence would make it invisible to its unwelcome guests.

  Amid the lily pads, a dark-headed snapper poked its beady black eyes out of the darkness, only to retreat a moment later. It left a few air bubbles popping on the surface to remind the world where it had once been. All was quiet, still, peaceful.

  “I got one!” Morgan shouted, pulling back on her rod. She spun the reel with the ferocity of a wolverine pouncing on its prey. But the reel gave in too easily. Whatever was at the other end of her line had either taken off with her bait or wasn’t much bigger than the bait itself. She would find out soon enough. Her prize left a small wake as she willed it across the water.

  “Whoa,” Clive taunted. “That thing’s a monster. You may have just set the Milford Pond record with that one.”

  “Shut up.” Morgan frowned as she pulled her inappro-priately named large-mouth bass out of the water. It was, at best, the length of her hand. Clive watched as the joy on her face disappeared.

  “Clive, can you come help me?” Morgan sounded genuinely depressed. From her tone, Clive could anticipate the problem he was called upon to remedy. “I got my hook stuck in deep again.”

  Clive reeled up his line and rested his fishing pole against the front the cockpit of his Wilderness Systems kayak. Grabbing his paddle, he rowed deliberately and smoothly, his movements resonating with experience. He quickly made his way over to where Morgan sat, drifting, her catch flapping impatiently in the water beside her.

  “Let me see it,” he demanded, removing a pair of long, thin pliers from the tackle box between his legs. They were included as part of his fishing supplies for precisely such an occasion.

  “I hope you can save him.”

  Morgan cringed. Clive knew she was too delicate for the unfortunate reality of catch-and-release fishing. He could hear her quietly praying each time she felt a tug on her line.

  But every now and then, Morgan would let a fish have at her bait too long so that worm, hook, and inches of line would end up halfway down the poor bass’s throat. That was when Clive would be called in to save the day.

  “Damn, Morgan. You got the hook buried in its stomach this time. How the hell did you manage this? Who taught you how to fish, anyway?”

  “You did.” Morgan appeared close to tears.

  Clive looked away, ashamed that his thoughtless rant might have added to her distress. He busied himself in the task at hand.

  “I’m sorry, Cli. Just please try to get it out.”

  “I’ll try, but I may need to cut the line.”

  “What will happen then?”

  Clive just shook his head. He wanted to lie, to tell her what his father always told him: Don’t worry, son. It’ll either dissolve or work its way out.

  All horseshit. He knew the truth full well, solidified by his experience catching fish with hook remains buried in their gullets from some other sorry fishermen who would likely tell exaggerated stories of the not-so-big ones that got away.

  But he could never lie to Morgan. She buried her face in her hands, awaiting the final outcome. Clive held the bass with one hand clasped loosely just under its fins. With his other hand, he plunged the pliers down its throat.

  Thank God these things don’t have a gag reflex. Not like Morgan. He chuckled quietly, his thoughts briefly detouring from the risky operation. The bewildered bass blankly stared at him. Its mouth slowly opened, bending to the will of the pliers. Clive wondered if basically the same thing had happened to him when he had his tonsils removed all those years ago.

  “I can see the hook, but I can’t—”

  Clive strained, delicately clearing out the bait and excess fishing line. “Wait a minute. Now, if I can see
how it’s caught in there… if I can just—fuck! It’s bleeding.”

  “Aw,” Morgan whined. Clive rolled his eyes. The fish’s bleeding paled in comparison to that of Morgan’s liberal heart.

  The wet pliers, clamped at an awkward angle, slipped off the steel hook. With the back of his fish-free hand, Clive wiped the sweat from his brow, and he sighed deeply as if the survival of ten thousand orphans depended on the outcome of his plight. A whiff of fish innards hung in Clive’s nostrils, the pliers having crossed by his nose. He plunged them back into the fish’s mouth.

  “Hold on, little guy.” Clive gave the hook a quick and hardy yank in the direction he hoped was the reverse of its entry. The barb gave way, relinquishing its hold on flesh. “I got it.” Clive pressed down on the bass’s lower jaw and carefully slid the hook from its mouth.

  He tossed the bloodied hook aside. It plopped into the water a mere four feet from him, the evidence of its carnage quickly dispersing within the gentle flow of an undercurrent. Returning to his patient, Clive continued to hold down the fish’s lower mandible, exposing a row of sharp but tiny teeth.

  “I can only see one little red spot.”

  With both hands cradling the tiny bass, Clive eased it back into the water. Although the fish was undoubtedly shocked, it swam off speedily and healthily.

  “Man, that was harder than removing the funny bone in that game we used to play. Usually when they aren’t going to make it, they swim off slowly or float sideways in the water. That one took off, so at least he’s got a fighting chance.”

  “Thanks, Cli.” Morgan smiled, showing her gratitude. “I’ll take care of you later.”

  “Ooooh, I like the sound of that.”

  Clive could only guess what she had in mind, but he was fairly certain his guess was right. Having been close friends for what Abe Lincoln would call a score, Clive and Morgan had “experimented” from time to time, never committing to anything solid or carving out a definition for what they had. On rare occasions, she was a friend with benefits and with absolutely no strings attached. He looked forward to later.