by Shock Totem
“Shaina, was—?”
“Don’t pay attention to it,” she said. “Just keep walking. We’re almost there.”
Something cold and smooth brushed against the side of Shaina’s face. She screamed, and there was absolute darkness as her fingers released the flashlight’s button. Shaina cranked her head to the side as the skin-crawling feeling of damp began to register along her violated jaw and cheek. Shaina felt May’s hand slip out of her own, and May screamed.
“I’m right here, May!” Shaina said, reaching up and feeling her cold keys jab her cheek painfully; thinking better of it, she wiped at her face with the sleeve of her jacket. “Just calm dow—fuck!”
The end of the tunnel seemed to have gotten farther away again.
“Shaina?”
“Sorry, there was a—”
She felt something soft brush against her free hand’s fingers, and she snatched her arm back a split second before realizing it was May’s own cold hand seeking comfort; she took it and pulled her closer. Fumbling for the flashlight on her keys again, Shaina said with surprising calm, “Come on, Sis, let’s just get out of here.”
“Shaina, wait! I can’t see you.”
“It’s okay,” Shaina said. “Just hold my hand and follow me.”
“Okay, but where are you?”
Shaina stopped, feeling ice water pump into her veins. Turning back, she maneuvered the flashlight until it was focused on her sister, standing several feet away. One of May’s hands had a white-knuckled grip on the handle of the jack-o’-lantern...and the other, Shaina saw, hung empty by her side.
Something black and glistening lowered itself from the ceiling directly behind May, just as the hand in Shaina’s squeezed.
Darkness enveloped the tunnel once again, and with it—screams.
Something rammed into Shaina, and she tore away from it, but the gibbering cries belonged to a terrified May. Grabbing her real and wonderfully warm hand, Shaina started running.
The tunnel stretched onward. The more they ran, the farther away the light at the end seemed to be. There were more sounds around them, which Shaina ignored as best as she could; the darkness seemed to snatch at her jacket and her feet, but she tore through the unseen brambles, her feet somehow moving faster beneath her.
Now, the light ahead was getting brighter, closer.
Wispy shadows smacked a sticky, unseen cobweb on her face. With a terrified, disgusted grunt, she tried to wipe it away but felt only the dry coarseness of her sleeve against her skin.
As the mouth of the tunnel reluctantly yawned around them, she kept running until they emerged into the dim but welcoming light of the adjoining alley once again, and Shaina had a moment of panic when she thought she’d dropped her keys; but May held them up, smiling weakly. They embraced each other with shivering sobs.
After a long moment, they crept back between the buildings near the street, stopping just short of the sidewalk. Leaning in, Shaina whispered, “If that thing is still out there, we need to go somewhere else.”
“Where? How?”
Shaina bit her lip, looking around. She could see a streetlamp and a car nearby; on the other side of the street were the two cars that the thing had hidden behind. Keeping her eyes on it, she said, “C’mon.”
They moved into the nightmarishly silent street again. Shaina fixed her gaze on the two cars across the way, and waited. There was no movement that she could see, and that was precisely what worried her.
She stared for a good, long time. Taking a deep breath, she waited...
“Go!”
They sprinted in the opposite direction up the street. They had made it nearly to the end of the block when a sound came from behind them, a muffled, crunching pursuit on the pavement.
They made a tight left around the general store—
Light.
A spot of light—beautiful, brilliantly bright light had appeared dead ahead. It moved, pointed directly at Shaina and May for a moment, then switched up once, twice, three times before pointing down, and just visible in the ambience above it—an insistently beckoning hand and the shine of eyeglasses.
Oh my fucking god! Shaina wasn’t sure, but didn’t particularly care, if she’d said it aloud. She and May tore along the block to the house, charged up the steps atop which the woman stood. Then a whole doorway of light was opened, and Shaina was vaguely aware of the harsh, urgent words the woman whispered as they entered the surreal familiarity of a warm, bright living room. They turned and watched as the woman jumped inside and slammed the door shut behind her.
“What are you two doing?” the woman hissed, turning to switch the bolt on the door and crossing the room towards them. She slammed the flashlight down on a wide, wooden table near the door before stomping, stony-faced, past them.
“We were—” Shaina blurted, trying and failing to find some sane way of describing their evening. “There’s something out—”
The woman spun to them, her eyes narrow behind their wide lenses. Shaina abruptly recognized her, realized just where they’d wound up, but she said nothing as the woman shouted, “It’s after hours! Are you two crazy?”
Some decorations and furniture were new or different, but it was all coming back to Shaina now; the coziness, the warmth, the smell of freshly-baked bread...
Shoving her keys in her pocket, Shaina led May into the living room, where their unexpected hostess had them sit down on a couple of big, comfy chairs—the very same ones that Shaina remembered.
The woman left them and went into the kitchen. After a time, Shaina said, “Mrs. Hull...do you remember me?”
Mrs. Hull stood in the kitchen doorway, an oven mitt over her left hand and a puzzled look on her face.
“It’s me, Shaina. I...I used to date Kevin?”
Mrs. Hull’s eyes widened, and she stepped farther into the living room. “Oh my God...Shaina?”
“Yes, it’s me! Oh Mrs. Hull, what is go—?”
“Oh, look at you! Wow, you’re a young woman now, aren’t you?”
Shaina took an uneven breath. “Yeah, I guess, but—”
“You really hurt him, you know.”
“What?” Shaina frowned.
“He was okay later, of course,” Mrs. Hull continued, shaking her head and closing her eyes. “But oh, that was a long year.” She opened her eyes, looking away now, into some distant memory, and her face darkened. “Then he joined Bestwick Construction, and they uncovered all those tunnels out in the woods...” She shook her head, glaring at Shaina, who only then noticed the tears collecting along the rim of Mrs. Hull’s eyes. “And then he and the other workers...vanished, and then—”
“Mrs. Hull,” Shaina interrupted, and was rewarded with silence. “Please. I don’t know anything about any of this. I’ve not been here in years, and—”
“I’m scared!” May said, her voice cracking slightly, and Shaina went silent. She and Mrs. Hull looked at May, whose eyes were wide, but no tears accompanied her heavy, uneven breaths. “Please, Mrs. Hull,” May added, sounding younger than ever. “We just wanted to go trick-or-treating, but something scary is going on out there. Please help us!”
“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Hull said. “Wait, are you—?” She turned to Shaina. “Is this little Mallorie?”
“It’s just May,” May said.
“Oh wow, listen to her!” Mrs. Hull said, beaming like everything was normal. “Hold on, I just have to check on the bread.” She waved her mitt at them, grinning. “I always bake during the curfew.”
She disappeared back into the kitchen, and May and Shaina looked at each other. Shaina had so many questions swirling in her mind, so she took the moment to line them up in some semblance of order before she bombarded Mrs. Hull with them.
“There we go,” Mrs. Hull said, as she re-emerged from the kitchen. “All set.”
The lights went out.
All background noise was silenced. The room was still warm, but the interruption brought a heavy chill nonetheless.<
br />
“Oh no...oh no,” Mrs. Hull muttered from somewhere nearby. “Just...wait. Don’t move.” She made a breathless snicker and, unable to deliver her intended humor, said, “Don’t want to knock anything over, do we? Heh.”
Shaina immediately thought of the tunnel, of how pitch-black it had been, how bad that smell had been. She wrinkled her nose, almost smelling that thick, cloying odor all over again—
Stop it, she commanded herself. You’re safe. You’re fine now.
“Mrs. Hull,” Shaina said, licking her dry lips. “What is going on here?”
“A compromise,” Mrs. Hull said. “Every residence has its compromise. We wait inside at night as they make their rounds, and—” she broke off and made a sound like a gasp or a hiccup. After a long moment, she cleared her throat.
“Shaina,” May said in a low voice.
“Sorry, Sis,” Shaina said, patting furiously at her jacket for her keys. “Just trying to get my—”
Lights, background noise; everything came back on.
Shaina took a heavy breath and looked at May. Her sister’s eyes were wide, glancing around with quick movements. When they finally fixed on Shaina, she smiled pathetically, and Shaina weakly returned it.
They turned to find Mrs. Hull walking over, pulling the mitt off her hand. “You probably want to get back to your car.”
Shaina turned to the curtained windows.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Mrs. Hull said, smiling.
“Mrs. Hull, what is going on?” Shaina asked. She hooked her thumb at the window. “Those things out there were—”
“Don’t be afraid,” Mrs. Hull repeated, and dropped the mitt on the floor.
Shaina picked up the mitt and handed it back to her. Mrs. Hull’s hands rose, but she didn’t take the proffered mitt. Instead she reached up and took her glasses off and dropped them to the floor.
Shaina felt her pulse quicken.
Mrs. Hull lifted her hands once again, holding them before her face like the most important step in the game of hide-and-seek, plating her fingertips at different points. She squeezed, pulled, and the face beneath split swiftly with the sound of a watermelon being opened.
Shaina lunged to her feet, grabbing May and dragging her toward the door. They slammed against it. Ambient shadows, squirming with ever-moving enthusiasm, manifested on the door before them, and the half-glimpsed visage became even more frightfully detailed in Shaina’s mind.
Shaina groped at the door’s bolt as the stench from the tunnel returned in full force, but now more pronounced, riper. Chuckling, wet chortles rose behind her, sounding like no laugh she’d ever heard.
Fortunately, the bolt was well-greased, and turned easily when Shaina twisted it. She pulled it open and May shoved past her just as appendages—possibly still hands—brushed Shaina’s jacket as she launched herself past the open door and into the night.
Shaina tripped over a raised crack of cement at the next corner, but kept herself upright and stole a look to make sure May was still running with her. They rounded the corner just as the horrible, bulky crunch hit the pavement behind them.
As they turned into the middle part of Baker’s zig-zag, another of those horrible things spilled out from behind a house at the end of the block. It stopped at the end of the lawn, a hulking mass of twitching, glistening gray, seeming to watch them with unseen eyes as they ran by. Shaina shouted wildly and snatched at one of May’s swinging hands, hauling her closer as they ran down the block and toward Bridge Avenue again.
The car was waiting for them, and they couldn’t have arrived sooner, for two more of those things were arcing toward them on the ground with fluid loping movements, crunching on the pavement as they approached. Shaina opened the driver’s door and shoved May in headfirst, and May wordlessly scrambled into the passenger seat. Jumping in after her, Shaina slammed the door shut just as one of the things moved in beside the car.
Shaina heard screaming, and her spasming hands somehow found her keys and stabbed one into the ignition—but it was the wrong one. The screams got louder, and Shaina realized she was making them. As she removed the key, something slammed against the driver’s-side window, and she ducked back instinctively and dared to look.
The gray mass spread out on the window, rippling with horrible animation, and a face began to appear.
The keys!
Tearing her eyes away from the face, trying not to think about how only inches and safety glass separated her from it, Shaina fumbled with the keys, found the one with the green loop around it, jammed it into the ignition, and the car came to amazing life.
Shaina throttled the gearshift, hit the lights—
The face twisted against the windshield, and Shaina recognized the features as it opened its mouth and licked at the filthy glass obscenely. Screaming, she hit the gas, and the face disappeared as the car shot forward.
• • •
Shaina didn’t stop driving until she felt her adrenaline cloud begin to subside. How far had they gone? Where had they gone? It didn’t matter.
There had been silence in the car for some time now, and Shaina finally looked over at May, who sat facing directly ahead, eyes wide and glassy, the corners of her mouth curled slightly down.
“How...how are you doing over there?”
May didn’t blink as she croaked, “I’m fine.”
Shaina slowly took her foot off the gas. They were approaching one of the hills just before their hometown, and the car began to slow. “May?”
May remained featureless as she muttered, “I’m fine.”
“You’ve not said a word since...” Shaina couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Neither have you.”
Shaina pulled the car over. Maybe three hundred feet up the road, her headlights were just starting to show the WELCOME sign for their hometown.
May turned and looked at her. Her eyes were wide, unmoving and unreadable. Shaina’s heart broke for her; she bit her lip, looked away, felt her own eyes stinging. It was a horrible, heartbreaking way for May’s childhood to end.
“I’m sorry,” Shaina said. “I’m away all the time now. I barely get to see you anymore. I just wanted us to reconnect. I just wanted to have fun with you again, trick-or-treating.” She shook her head, feeling tears form. “I’m so sorry.”
May said something, and Shaina sniffed back her tears and self-pity. There would be plenty of time to cry later; right now, she had to be the big sister that May needed. She composed herself and asked, “What was that?”
May’s hands rose and pressed to the sides of her face. “Trick-or-treat,” she repeated, and tore off the mask.
Barry Lee Dejasu lives in Providence, Rhode Island. A contributing editor for Shock Totem, he’s also an author, media journalist, moviegoer, music collector, and book hoarder.
HOLIDAY RECOLLECTION
THE MANSION
by Lee Thomas
In high school, the popular kids partied at a place called “The Mansion.” Not being one of the popular kids I only heard about excursions to the mansion after they’d occurred, usually on Mondays while the Pops rushed to classes, talking about how wasted they’d gotten.
Though not unpopular, I was at best a non-entity to my classmates, another face in the crowd, another body around which to navigate as they moved from one class to the next. As such, I was surprised when one of the football players, let’s call him “Mike,” invited me to The Mansion for a Halloween kegger. He even offered me a ride.
The Mansion was exactly that. It was situated in a small, wealthy area called Medina not far from Bellevue, WA. The place took up a block, which had a single street light on the near corner, leaving the bulk of the extended cul-de-sac in shadows. The design of the house could be roughly described as Modern Mediterranean, with archways and white walls and a tiled roof. Outside, damage was visible but not extensive. A broken window. A lone bit of graffiti on one corner of the facade. I know it was there, but I can’t remember what it depicted.
Inside, cosmetic and structural abuse flourished. The place had been gutted. One empty room with scarred and pitted walls followed another. Graffiti climbed like mold on the remaining surfaces. Beer cans lined the baseboards. In the center of the living room, a hole punched through to the basement. It was roughly eight feet in diameter. More than one drunk student had fallen through it over the course of the school year.
The electricity had been shut off long ago, so the only lights, mostly centered around the keg and cups in a back hallway, were camp lanterns and flashlights.
Mike disappeared about thirty seconds after we arrived, leaving me to wander the scene. Though I’m sure a few of my classmates had taken the time to don costumes, most of us milled through the shadows in our usual clothes: t-shirts, polo shirts, jeans, khakis. The setting was a more than adequate acknowledgement of the macabre holiday.
I came across a friend of mine, David, and his giggly girlfriend on the staircase. They made out in the soft glow of a boom box. UFO’s “Love to Love” glided with bluesy grandeur from the small speakers. Conversation wasn’t on their agenda so I moved on.
Though I said, “hello” to a lot of people, I was mostly on my own, too nervous around my peers to instigate a conversation, too uncertain of myself to flirt with any of the girls (and frankly, not particularly driven to do so). I’d always felt removed, disconnected from the majority of my peers. Easier to keep my head down and not chance conversation. This feeling was intensified by the laughter around me.
In the living room, I paused at the edge of the hole and looked down. No lights there, but movement. Shadows writhed within shadows. Darkness embraced itself and turned slowly so that no side went untouched. As I lost myself in the black motion, fear settled in, though I couldn’t exactly pin my fear on any one thing. I knew my classmates moved below, but for a time, I imagined only space, deep and infinite. I also imagined what lived in that space, wondering on the kinds of plans it had for me.