Monk Punk and Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus

by Aaron French

  No, not a kid. Mark was sure that it wasn’t an illustration for a kid. There was something too subversive in Steve’s manner. The very amateur approach to the little man, though, was somewhat disturbing—

  And then there was his dream: He’s like a caged animal. Except Steve wasn’t literally bound in a cage; no, whatever this Steve-idea was, it was bound in the pages of a book... and he, Mark, had let him out.

  He thought of the cigarette flaring in the darkness. Of the dark man in his dreams. Of the shattered window—

  No, that was something real. It wasn’t a dream.

  Okay... then explain.

  And with that, he’d only stared at his blank computer screen in his office. He had the comp papers spread in front of him as though he were studying them, but he couldn’t shake the mystery—which his mind insisted didn’t exist—which his mind insisted did exist.

  No, he said, finally finding some resolve before his morning class began, something is going on. At the very least, it’s a cute game between two old women who never lost their wonder for Where’s Waldo and so now they have their own man that they hide in books...

  It didn’t explain the cryptic “3 days” message, and he found that the message disturbed him more than anything. 3 more days until what? Except it wouldn’t be three more days, would it? It would be two days if counted from the time he read the message; one day left since he had bought the book. And even then, it had been a message between the women: three days until they skipped town to Tunica? Did it even matter?

  That node of terror, which had blossomed over the past couple of nights, said that it did matter, that it was important. That Steve wasn’t a character to take lightly. That the women who loved Steve were probably the kind of women you were waiting on to die.

  ***

  He spent the day in a haze, which was fine because he could teach in a haze. His only thought was that he wanted to get to the bookstore to find another series in Steve’s animated life. Would he be depicted the same, block-headed with the same red-handled knife?

  Something, perhaps that node, told Mark that, yes, he would look similar, because that was simply how Steve looked, block-head and all.

  The bookstore was closed; its storefront windows previewed dark aisles of books stacked every which way but right. Taped to the inside of the glass was

  CLOSED FOR VETERANS DAY

  WHY ARE YOU EVEN

  SHOPPING? READ!

  TAKE A DAY AND READ!

  AND PRAY FOR YOUR VETS.

  —BARNEY CRENSHAW

  Mark read and reread the note. He searched stupidly through the window, as if he would be able to spot another “Steve book,” when the truth of it, he realized, was that it could be any book the two ladies had decided to share. They, then, would have sketched Steve in it before passing it on. He stared in the window until he was aware of someone behind him, possibly wanting to read the note on the door.

  Mark adjusted his eyes to take in the reflection. His first thought was that the man behind him was carrying a box on his shoulder, because the poor reflection revealed only the shoulders terminating in a boxy form—

  When Mark turned around, he stood on the sidewalk alone. Downtown was dead as it had ever been.

  ***

  The three days don’t matter, Mark thought as he stood in front of his house. It looked different now. Saying that the bomb will drop someday doesn’t mean anything. It’s only a time, and some things exist out of time.

  The last thought made him shiver. He was dimly aware that the same wintry wind was edging its way back into this sunny day.

  Nothing to be afraid of. The sun’s out—high noon—and monsters don’t come out in the daylight.

  Right?

  Right.

  So why was he still standing in front of his house?

  Because “whatever walked there walked alone.” That’s why.

  Unable to develop enough resolve to enter the house, Mark skirted the front of the house entirely and walked through the narrow walkway to his backyard. He’d pick up the glass; that would only be right. So he did, stooping to carefully pick up the big pieces but taking in each corner of his yard with as much clarity as he could.

  Some things exist out of time stuck with him, clutching to the flesh of his memory. What did it even mean?

  Only, he knew what it meant. That little node of terror had a way of convincing his mind. It was that same little node that had repeatedly woke him up to the sound of branches scraping his window, repeatedly woke him to the squatting thing in the corner of his room. That little node didn’t go away as you grew up. It only became quiet, choosing certain times to speak.

  Glass jutting out of his hand, threatening to cut the fat of his palm, Mark crossed the small yard to the shed. He could have walked to the back corner of the wall bordering his yard, but he walked through the back gate and was instantly standing at the mouth of the shed. The old Mustang was a rusting hulk enveloped by dust and darkness. He looked past the car, to the dark corners of the shed, looking... for something that said—

  That says maybe someone was here, but now they’re gone. Who knows how long he’s been here watching your house night after night?

  He looked back at his house, convinced of this terrifying reality, and just as quickly refuted the idea. No one had been in the shed. It was evident in the dust. Everything had a look that said it hadn’t been humanized in years. It had a dead, hopeless luster which swallowed the light.

  Unable to avoid it, Mark walked into his backyard, taking in the whole scope of his house. It looked bigger back here than it did from the front. The bottom half was red brick, but the bricks were chipping at the foundation, while the upper half was sided.

  The garbage bag rippled loudly as the wind breathed against it, expanding and collapsing it out of the frame as though it were a lung—as though the house itself were breathing.

  In the corner of the yard, Mark found what he expected. Two cigarettes had been stomped into the ground. They were smoked down to the filter. He fought the urge to pick them up, afraid they might be contaminated

  (with radiation? the bomb never dropped, Marky)

  with something he couldn’t explain

  (an alien virus?)

  something from a darker reality than he was ready to accept. He kicked the cigarettes out of their hiding, realizing he was standing where—

  No, chief, you’re crossing worlds here. Don’t forget. Those were dreams. You spent your nights dreaming, watching this

  (steve)

  fellow haunt your backyard.

  And that was true. He knew it was. He was suddenly too confused to think about anything but the two cigarettes half-buried in the dirt. There had to be a separation in his dreams and reality; that was simply how it was. The great poets and artists were acknowledged because they could meld the two. The real world was tangible, a thing of substance, of rules and credence. Dreams were everything but; they were things of color, metaphor, and residual memories.

  Mark kept toeing the cigarette butts. Two of them. Two nights.

  “3 Days Left.” Until she did what? Killed her husband?

  No, Mark, she wouldn’t have to. Steve takes care of that.

  That voice; a new one. It was still very much his own, as was every voice in his mind, but it seemed colder. It had the assurance of a man who had seen too much to see anything but reality. His dad had had that voice.

  There is a possibility the bomb will drop, Ms. Tuttle said in his mind. She sounded so close, like she was there right next to him.

  The garbage bag breathed in and out.

  Behind him, the Mustang continued to decay in the darkness of the shed.

  Some things exist out of time, the cold voice echoed to him.

  The cigarette butts had teeth marks on them. Sharp, pointy indentations.

  You wanted the rabbit hole, Mark, said the cold voice.

  Now, get against the wall and clasp your fingers behind your head.
<
br />   You’re spiraling in it.

  What kind of thing made teeth marks like that?

  The kind of thing that—

  Something in the window moved—a shadow in the deeper shadow of the house’s dark coolness. It would have been something hidden, if not for the lack of curtains, which he had been meaning to buy. The movement hadn’t been a mistake, though. Whatever was in the house, Mark understood it was something that wanted to be seen. The movement had been an invitation to come in.

  Another movement: a man stepping out of the darkness from the unlit house. His waist appeared first as the noon sun threw an illuminating bar through the window.

  His chest followed.

  Look away. Cover your head. Duck and cover. He looked at the cigarettes. At the two marks in the grass where the cigarettes had been buried. Two footprints where grass refused to grow. The needle-point marks on the cigarette butts.

  Suddenly he was very thankful that he hadn’t touched them because he was aware there might be something on them. Something very unreal and alive from beyond.

  Steve stood in the window, but the sun failed to illuminate any more of him. It left him a block-headed shadow framed in the back window of the house. He was a pallid, fluid figure in the shape of Man; his long fingers dripped like candle wax. The whiteness of his paper-white skin

  (dead flesh)

  was gray in the gloom. The thing’s facial features were stretched and discolored, its lips pale and bloodless purple, its mouth stretched downward in a sneer that Mark thought was supposed to be a smile. The corners of Steve’s blocky face dripped—

  Steve smashed a window with his knife. The shards flew out into the morning.

  Cover your head, Ms. Tuttle said.

  Watch for Steve in this one, he thought, followed by, spiraling down the rabbit hole now and isn’t this fun when there aren’t dreams and barriers...

  Mark had a moment of clarity when he saw each individual shard catch the light. Another window exploded.

  The neighbors will come out soon.

  But he knew Steve would keep them inside.

  Mark thought about fishing. About being thirteen and fishing for the last time with his dad. About the lures and how the fish were almost helpless not to bite them. How they were fighting a losing battle. He’d bitten the lure. He’d called to this thing.

  “READ A BOOK” the Crenshaw’s sign had said, and it was in that cursed bookstore that he’d stumbled across this pathway to something at first innocent—but wasn’t that how the most malevolent paths started out?

  Another window arced into the gray day, and Mark realized that the Steve-thing wasn’t breaking the windows. Steve was unmoving, a dripping statue in the gloom of his house. Below the windowsill, Mark knew that one of those dripping hands clutched a red-handled knife. A knife that seemed to flow with blood that never dried—a knife that wasn’t a true knife but an apt-enough definition of something more alien, an image translated into a new reality.

  The hating monstrosity in the window beckoned him without words or movement.

  Mark’s feet carried him across the yard. He heard the glass crunch under his feet.

  Although Steve stood unmoving, it was evident that something larger than its fiendish form was at work. It didn’t need to move; the form wasn’t the force, the entity. The block-headed entity was an objective correlative. That’s all it really is, the physical form of my fear. That’s all it is. That’s all.

  A rotting, putrid stench emanated from the house. But there was something else in that smell. Something sweeter. Something far and distant, otherworldly and inviting.

  When they go through my stuff, they’ll find Yellow, and someone will read it.

  He’s like a caged animal, he had thought, and the voice in his dream had affirmed it. But that wasn’t entirely correct.

  Mark reached up for the windowsill. The thing looked down at him, its mouth stretched so far that it had to be a smile or sneer. The corners of its distorted face dripped.

  If that stuff drips on me... but he got no further.

  Steve wasn’t exactly like a caged animal. More a thing bound by perceptions.

  Like a blind man who can now see the world around him. That’s how Steve’s discoverers were. They were seeing the darkness in a pocket of the world to which they had formally been blind.

  That eternal spicy scent beckoned Mark.

  He reached up with his other hand, a shard of glass piercing through it.

  He could feel Steve’s thoughts now, could feel that there was nothing human in them. Nothing loving, nothing hating. Just a rambling of indiscernible noises; a taste of colors; splashes of cyclopean shapes.

  Mark hefted himself into the room and, as he tumbled over the sill, felt a waxy hand melt onto the back of his neck. He thought about the cold dryness of an old woman’s hand, about how maybe he would meet the old woman who’d started this on the other side of this moment, about a book being found in her deserted house, about her own calm moment like this.

  Mark looked up. It was an empty room.

  The breeze was blowing through it. He couldn’t breathe that air in. Couldn’t smell the leaves. Could only feel the ripped flesh of his palm. Could only feel the gash running down his midsection from when he desperately slithered over the shattered windowpane. Could only feel something alien in the gloom.

  He blinked again.

  Steve was back. With that smeared, blasted face dripping all over him. The melting flesh crawled over Mark like something alive, like something trying to find entrance. He blinked again, felt the flesh crawling.

  That new scent, that far, distant scent that smelled like eternity decaying.

  That new scent, it swelled as the sun, slanting through the shattered window, settled its warmth on his cooling body.

  About the author: Ricky lives with his wife and son in Russellville, AR. His work has appeared in Nebo, RE:AL, Everyday Poets, EarthSpeak, Full Armor, Pond Ripples Magazine, And/Or and the anthologies Daily Flash: 365 Days of Flash Fiction and Isolation. In 2006, a small press published a chapbook of his experimental poetry. He looks for beauty in broken things.

  Uncle Rick

  M. Shaw

  Friday...

  Geoffry’s dad tells him that his Uncle Rick will be coming for a visit tomorrow. Geoffry has never been this cold before. Earlier, his mom told him that his pre-school is closed today because of the cold. So he stays in the house, freezing. Every so often he asks his mom to turn up the thermostat, not knowing what this means except insofar as he’s heard her say it. She always promises to, but he has noticed no change.

  Geoffry has never seen Uncle Rick before. He understands this is because Uncle Rick lives in Oklahoma City, which is different from Lawton, where Geoffry lives. The simple presence of that word, “different,” has ominous implications, because it marks the presence of so many of the unknowable distinctions that Geoffry must struggle to place in his world. Working from his senses, he wonders if it is much colder in Oklahoma City, and if Uncle Rick is bringing the cold with him.

  It’s warmer behind the couch, so he spends most of his day there, wrapped in his blanket. A few times his dad, all smiles, tries to coax him out with the promise of hot chocolate and games of Sorry!, but Geoffry is uninterested in going anywhere that might be colder. Finally his dad shrugs and walks off, coming back once more to ask if he’s sure about the hot chocolate. Geoffry finally agrees, and a minute later his dad sets the cup in front of him. His mom makes some comment about them needing to get ready for Uncle Rick, and his dad agrees and leaves Geoffry alone.

  The evening passes in a constant roar of cleaning equipment and housewares being moved about. Geoffry stays put. By the time it’s starting to get dark, there is white rain coming down in slow motion.

  “Know what that is, Geoff?” his dad asks.

  “White rain?”

  His dad grins. “You must not have seen snow before.” He asks Geoffry’s mom if he’s ever seen snow, and s
he replies that he hasn’t. His dad pats him on the shoulder. “Let’s go outside, have some fun with the snow. What do you say?”

  “No,” Geoffry replies solidly. “It’s too cold.”

  His dad sighs. “Suit yourself. I’m going out.” He grumbles something about not moving here from Michigan to pass up snow when it comes. He pulls on a coat and gloves and heads out the front door.

  Geoffry’s mom reads to him before he goes to bed. She reads Maia: A Dinosaur Grows Up, which Geoffry doesn’t pay much attention to except to look at the pictures. He usually likes the artwork of clay-colored monster lizards, but it seems to have new meaning tonight. He asks her to stop before she’s finished, and she quietly obeys. She turns off the light and turns on the nightlight before she leaves, telling him she loves him. Geoffry curls into a ball under the covers, still cold.

  Saturday...

  When Geoffry goes into the living room after waking up—to find that it’s even colder than yesterday—there is something in the front yard. It looks moundy and white, like the snow on the ground. Were it not for the thing’s obvious but somehow twisted humanity, Geoffry would almost think it was part of the snow. It has a hat on its head and a scarf around its neck. It looks at Geoffry with big, round, gray eyes and smiles at him with big, round, gray teeth. Its Pinocchio-nose is a carrot, and its arms are sticks. Geoffry has never seen anyone who looks like this before.

  His dad comes and crouches next to him. “Know who that is?”

  “Uncle Rick?” says Geoffry.

  His dad chuckles, pats him on the back, and walks off. Geoffry goes back to his corner behind the couch. His mom comes pacing through the room with the phone to her ear, talking into it excitedly. “I just don’t want you to try the roads if they might be dangerous. The snow and all... I know, but there will be other opportunities to see us.” Then, as she leaves the room again, “Fine. Well, be careful.”

  She hangs up as Geoffry’s dad signals her that he’s going out. “I’m gonna walk to the video store before they decide to close it. Figure we’ll be spending a lot of time inside this weekend.”