“Why the hell did you come with us?” Zip said as he turned the wheel slightly. He wasn’t as drunk as Duane, but he wasn’t far off either. Empties rattled across the floor of the boat. Adam watched one roll toward him.
“I guess I was trying to prove something to myself,” Adam said quietly.
Zip laughed nasally. “Picked a hell of a place. This lake has some of the deepest water of any lake in the States, and what with all the missing boat stories.”
“Oh, shut up,” Duane grumbled. “The lake stories are like Bigfoot. It’s like…reverse marketing or some shit. Tourism.”
Zip looked quickly over his shoulder. “It’s true! Like just last month, there was that couple. Still ain’t found the boat! And my uncle saw a UFO out here last year.”
Duane barked laughter. “Your uncle Stevus? Ha! That guy. Haha. The missing fish are what I’m concerned about. What a waste of a trip.” He belched again, and reached into the cooler for another beer.
A sharp crack! sounded, and the boat jerked quickly into the air, then splashed back down, still speeding through the darkening water. Beer cans launched into the air and rained into the water behind them.
“What the hell was that?” Duane demanded, lurching shakily to his feet. “What’d you do to my dad’s boat!”
“I didn’t do shit!” Zip yelled, eyes bulging. “Felt like something hit us.”
“Guys,” Adam intoned flatly, “there’s water.”
“What the—” Duane began, staring confusedly at the water rising around his ankles. Empty beer cans bobbed franticly in the green froth. Duane’s eyes settled at a point to Adam’s right. Adam followed Duane’s gaping stare to a snarl of wood and plastic jabbing up from the floor, water bubbling spastically in its midst.
“What’s that?” Adam asked, transfixed by the foaming water.
“That’s a hole, numbnuts. We’re taking on water. Zip, you idiot! What’d you hit?”
Zip turned back, confused. “What’s there to hit? Look around, Duane.”
As Duane lectured Zip on the toil and hardship Duane’s father had endured to purchase the boat, water rose to Adam’s knees. He frantically flung water back into the lake with cupped hands. Duane joined in, using the cooler, but in what seemed like seconds, the boat had listed sickly to starboard. The lake rushed in.
Adam hugged at his life jacket, eyes closed as the boat fell away beneath him. When he opened his eyes, the boat was gone. He met eyes with Duane and Zip in turn. Both looked lost and forsaken.
“Shit,” Duane said matter-of-factly.
“We’re so far from the shore, man,” Zip said. His voice quavered. “Miles.”
Adam stared blankly at something over Duane’s left shoulder. “What’s that?” he asked.
Duane and Zip turned. “A boat!” Duane laughed. “Where’d that come from?”
Adam stared at the small, greenish boat bobbing lazily in the water. It was the size of a rowboat, but had no visible oars, no rowlock. For some reason, it reminded him of a pea pod. It was perhaps just big enough for these three drunken peas. He smiled crookedly.
Zip barked laughter and swam feverishly toward the boat. Duane hesitated a second, then started after him. As they climbed into the boat, Adam began to kick toward them.
“What a weird-ass boat.” Zip grinned. “Is it wood or plastic? I can’t even tell.”
Adam began to climb over the side, as Duane and Zip felt around the small boat.
“I don’t know, dude,” Duane said absently. “I think wood.”
“But there’s no boards,” Zip said. “It’s like all one piece.”
“Guys,” Adam chirped, “can you help me?”
Duane bent toward him. As Duane reached out an arm, he swayed and fell forward. His chin collided with Adam’s forehead with a percussive thwap. Adam’s vision blurred, and he bobbed sideways into the water, upending.
He stared numbly into the murky water under the boat, disoriented. The boat floated darkly in the green gloom. Adam looked quizzically at the bottom of the boat. Underneath it seemed almost the shape of a funnel.
Not a funnel, Adam thought, a flower petal. He stared confusedly at a thick cord that descended from the cone-shaped bottom of the boat. He realized why a flower petal had come to mind. This looked like a stem. He followed this odd tether with his eyes, its length sinking deeper and deeper into the waters of the lake. As his eyes stared into the murk, he saw a dark shape far beneath him, a massive, hazy shadow looming from the bottom of the lake. The cord from the boat appeared to descend into it. Adam stared into this darkness, his mind a fog of wordless, impalpable dread.
A sudden spasm of activity in the water woke him as if from a dream. His body again upended, and he took a gulping breath of cool air. The boat nodded in front of him. Its shape seemed changed, the sides higher and narrower. It resumed its former shape before his eyes, but there was no sign of Duane or Zip. Adam grabbed the side of the boat, and hoisted himself up, peering over the edge of the craft.
His eyes widened as he watched greenish, toothy spikes sink into the inside edges of the boat. They were so quickly absorbed that he was unsure if he’d really seen them. Duane and Zip were nowhere to be seen. The only signs of his friends were one of Zip’s shoes. Adam reached for it over the edge of the boat.
He gasped as he saw that the worn sneaker contained a foot. Adam dropped it back into the boat, and quickly turned. He began to beat hysterically at the water, making a quick retreat from the boat. He swam without direction into the watery horizon, the sunset darkening to purple dusk behind him.
A short distance from the boat, Adam moaned as a green, woody spike shot up from the depths, spraying his face with water and blood and fragments of life jacket nylon as it poked through his chest.
“Duane’s dad is gonna…” Adam wheezed. “He’s gonna…iceberg…”
Adam’s head lolled, as the small green boat drifted closer.
“SHE WON’T DO it.” David scratched under his eye patch with a plastic hook hand and took a swig of beer. Bored with the party, he figured messing with Audrey was as much fun as he was going to have. She asked for it anyway, as stuck up as she was.
David’s girlfriend Alexis had her witch mask tipped back on her head, its warty green nose pointing up like a horn. “No way,” she sneered. “Audrey’s a wuss.”
Sophia stared through the sliding glass door and fidgeted with the half-bald tip of her black tail. “We’re not s’posed to go outside. Mom says the evil sprits will get you.”
“Spirits,” David said. “And that’s only if you take your costume off. You don’t even know the rules.”
“I’m telling Mom you’re drinking,” Sophia said.
David shoved his little sister into the glass.
Sophia recoiled from the door with a gong, whimpering as she scrambled to retrieve her mask. She held the plastic whiskers and ears to her face, the broken rubber band dangling to the neck of her fuzzy suit.
David poked Audrey’s white sheet with his hook. “So? Are you gonna do it or what?”
Audrey tugged the eyeholes over so she could see. Beyond the reflections of the sniffling cat, witch, pirate and ghost, the Aickman’s backyard roiled. The porch light switched off then on again, triggered by the leaves that swirled through the air and skidded across the yellowy lawn. The half-bare branches of a huge oak strained to the left, relaxed, then pulled left again, like seaweed in a shifting current. Aside from the occasional tink of a leaf against the glass, the only sounds were the laughter and thumps of the party upstairs.
There was no trick-or-treating in their town, only indoor get-togethers and furtive car rides home. Everyone was afraid of the last night in October, when unwary kids often died. Everyone except Audrey, who knew that the town’s real curse was a high juvenile suicide rate, attributable to a cultural cocktail of ennui and mass hysteria. This was the thesis of term paper the previous semester, which got a D-, telling her she’d hit a nerve. Audrey couldn’t wait
for college in another town, preferably another state, away from this insanity.
“Sure,” she said, seeing a chance to have some fun with David and his slutty girlfriend. They bought the superstition just like their teachers and parents, so scaring them would be easy.
She took a phony deep breath, slid open the door and stepped outside. Alexis jabbed her broom at the leaves that scuttled in with the wind as Audrey closed the door behind her.
A cold gust hissed, pulled the white sheet tight against her side and whipped its tattered hem. She walked to the edge of the cement patio, turned and looked back at the house, shielding her eyes from the glare of the porch light with her robed arm. On the second story, the silhouette of a horned head and pitchfork swayed against a glowing orange shade. In the basement, the wide eyes of David, Alexis and Sophia stared back at her through the sliding door.
Audrey waved her sheet.
Sophia waved back with the tip of her tail.
Audrey pulled off the billowing white fabric, giving it to the wind to hurl against the cedar fence. Glad to be rid of the clammy shroud, Audrey straightened her blouse, biding her time as David pounded on the glass with his hook and Sophia burst into tears.
When the porch light switched off again, she ran behind the oak tree.
The light came back on but there was no sign of Audrey.
“Shit, shit, shit.” David tried to think but the word kept buzzing in his head like an alarm.
Sophia’s tears and snot frothed down the inside of the door. “Did the sprits get her?”
“How could I know she’d really do it?” David stammered, craning his neck to search the dim corners of the yard. “What do we do?”
“Screw her,” Alexis said. “Nobody shoved her out there. Nobody pulled off her stupid costume. It’s all on her.” She grabbed David’s beer from his hand and tipped it up.
Sophia wiped her nose with her furry arm. “I’m telling Mom.”
“Do it and I’ll lock you outside,” David said. “I’ll take care of this, understand?”
Sophia nodded and sniffed a bubble back into her nose.
Alexis choked on the beer. “What are you going to do?”
“Find her and get her back in here quick.” David knew it wasn’t much of a plan but he had to try, even if Audrey was a snob. He couldn’t leave anybody outside on Halloween.
Alexis shut the door behind him as he crossed the patio. The wind had died down, leaving the yard silent and the branches still.
“Audrey,” David shouted. “Where are you?” He stopped on the lawn and held his breath to listen. Then his gut twisted.
The leaves were still moving.
They crinkled and scraped across the ground, propelled by their lobes, which stretched out, grabbed and curled, clawing forward like undead, severed human hands. They massed and circled around his feet, approaching and recoiling as he dodged and kicked.
“Audrey.” He retreated into the shadows under the tree.
The leaves followed.
Audrey bit her lip hard, stifling a chuckle and nearly tipping from the branch she straddled. David was directly below her now, his voice growing shrill. The big jock was creeping around like a frightened caveman, trying to save her from a suburban legend. It was almost touching in a Stone Age kind of way.
She choked back a laugh as he turned a circle under her, stumbled and kicked at a pile of leaves by his feet. Then her gut twisted. The limb upon which she sat was moving—not side-to-side but up and down, independent of the surrounding branches, which were almost motionless. Audrey dug her fingernails into the bark and hugged tight as it worked to buck her off.
A pop lifted her head. A nearby bough arched its outermost branches toward her, its wooden flesh whining and snapping. Like desperate fingers, the twigs strained and stretched ever closer. She shimmied back toward the tree’s trunk but the branches enveloped her, writhing around her body and circling her head.
Her cry was cut short when the limb supporting her fell away.
David leapt into the swarming leaves, crushing them into the turf as he rolled away from the falling bough. Sharp switches whipped his legs when the limb thundered to the ground. More leaves fluttered down as he struggled to pull himself from under broken wood, rose to his knees and looked up at the tree.
High above, in the void around the splintered stub of the dropped limb, Audrey hung from a noose of branches braided tight around her broken neck. Her legs twitched as her body turned slow circles in the air.
David felt for the eye patch, which was gone, as was the hook, the tricorn hat and the rest of his costume, buried under the limb. He staggered to his feet and limped across grass and cement to the sliding glass door, only to find it locked.
“Open up. Let me in,” he screamed through the glass at the darkened basement.
The only answer was a rustle of leaves…and the hiss of another icy gust.
BOBBY SLAPPED HIS hands over his eyes and came to a complete stop just outside his bedroom. Lisa looked down at her son and then peered into the gloom of his room.
“What’s wrong, Bobby Bear?” she asked, tugging at her son’s wrist. His elbow locked, his arm going rigid so that she couldn’t pull his hand away from his face. “Bobby? Baby, open your eyes.”
“They’re in there!” Bobby hissed, his arm trembling in Lisa’s hand. “If I look at them, they’ll eat me up!”
Lisa smiled at her son’s creativity and commitment to his intention; kids were forever inventing reasons not to go to bed. A few minutes later, Bobby was tucked in, under his mother’s promise that his light would stay on all night. He swept the room with wide eyes, and then closed them. He breathed a sigh of relief, realizing that through his eyelids he could still see the glow of the bulb, and let himself drift off.
Three chimes of the grandfather clock downstairs yanked Bobby out of sleep and straight into the real nightmare. His body was tense and glazed with a sheen of sweat that glued his dinosaur pajamas to him. He knew immediately what was wrong; his mother had lied to him. He couldn’t see the glow through his eyelids, which could only mean that while he slept she had come back and turned out the light.
He kept his eyes squeezed shut, his heart hammering in the back of his throat and his ears. He pressed his lips together, trying to stop his breath from bursting out in the shotgun shudders he felt in his chest. Something, and Bobby knew it with every fiber of his being, was right above his face.
Despite himself, Bobby whimpered and then immediately held his breath. He was only safe from the things in the dark if he was asleep, and he hoped that they thought he still was. If he opened his eyes, if only a crack, he would see them. And then they’d be able to get him.
He’d been trying to tell his mother this for weeks, since he had first noticed one of them snaking toward him with liquid limbs from the corner of his eye. She said it was his eyes playing tricks in the dark, but it wasn’t his eyes, it was them.
He held the sound of his sobs in, forcing them back down into the pit of his stomach, but it wasn’t good enough. His torso jerked with each sob he held in, rocking the mattress underneath him. The face hovering over his got closer, he could feel the warmth of its skin radiating onto him.
Bobby squeaked as something hot and dry brushed past his foot underneath the duvet. He pressed his lips together so hard that he bit them in an attempt to take back the sound he had just made. His mattress creaked, but not just in one place; there were at least six of them on his bed now.
Bobby’s sobs turned into audible whimpers as tiny but sharp fingertips took a hold of his eyelashes and tugged his eyelids upwards. Bobby tensed everything, trying to keep his eyes shut. They’d get him if he saw them. They were trying to force him to look.
It was useless; his eyes opened just a crack. It was dark but he saw them. He saw the teeth.
Lisa bolted into her screeching son's bedroom, fumbling for the light. In the dark, she thought she saw a dozen separate shapes around Bobby’s bed. Sh
e found the light and started screaming.
Bobby tumbled to the floor, his blood-covered hands feeling around as though he was still in the dark—and he was. He turned his face toward her, the hollow, weeping sockets where his eyes had been boring into her. She slid down the wall onto the floor, her mouth forming a silent “O.”
“They ate them!” Bobby howled, with as much blame toward her as there was pain. “They ate them!”
FIND THE PIECES of your past.
The chill autumn wind whispered through the darkened living room from an open window. The crumpled paper lay on the old shaggy carpet at her feet. A scuffed-up doll’s head hung from what little hair it had left pinched between her fingertips. Lorna didn’t know who had left that note but she didn’t want to find the pieces of her past. She didn’t need to; they were all over the house.
She moved quickly across the room, the old floor creaking in protest. The plastic head landed in a wastebasket with a dull thunk.
Get it together. It’s just a broken doll—but who leaves doll parts just for funsies, honestly? There’s no one else here, chill.
Ten years had passed since that awful night when her eleven-year-old self had been bundled away by a police officer trying to shield her from the horrors inside. But she had already seen the horror of her parents’ bodies. There had been more of their blood smeared across the floor than was left inside them. She had watched terror-stricken as they cuffed her older sister, covered in their parents’ blood, and led from the house, stuffing her into the back of a cop car. She would never forget her sister shouting back at her, “I’m so sorry! He made me do it! Please believe me!”
In Creeps The Night Page 2