The old man smiled a full smile revealing a cavernous mouth with only two or three rotten teeth remaining. “Spoken like a true businessman.” The old man replied, “However, I have no intention of taking advantage of you, Mr. Wilson. As I said, this phone is meant for you.”
The statement stopped Wilson in his tracks. He thought to himself, “I never met this old goat before in my life. In fact, I have never been in this part of this city before. How did he know my name?”
Chapter 3
Wilson stood silently for a moment, unable to speak, looking at the man with uncertainty and confusion. “Excuse …me…” Wilson said uncomfortably, “I don’t recall telling you my name.”
The inexplicable elderly man behind the counter wore a smug expression of confidence as Wilson continued to understand with frustration, that the man was continuing to play his sick psychological game.
“You didn’t.” The old man said, still wearing that strange look, “But nonetheless, I know that you are Charles Wilson, a businessman from Pennsylvania, and you need this phone.” He handed the phone out to Wilson.
Wilson did not even look at the phone. As if in a trance, without realizing what he was doing, he reached out his hand, took the phone from the man and tucked it into his left trench coat pocket. The old man appeared satisfied, and Wilson had absolutely no idea that he had even accepted the phone.
The old man finally said, “The phone is yours and you must now pay the nonnegotiable price for it.”
Wilson stammered angrily, “All right. I’ve played this game a thousand times before, so let’s get to it. What is your asking price?”
“Ah yes.” The old man continued, once again reaching under the counter. When his hand returned, it held a menacing looking large caliber handgun.
It was exactly what Wilson had feared earlier, that the crazy old codger was going to blow a hole in him the size of Rhode Island. He started to step back, when to his surprise, the old man turned the gun around, placing his wrinkled hand on the barrel and directing the handle toward Wilson.
Wilson stammered, “I .. I don’t want …your damned gun. I just want to .. pay for that ridiculous phone that you have for sale and then get out of here.”
The old man continued to hold the gun by the barrel, the weight causing it to quiver slightly in his weakening grasp, “All in good time Mr. Wilson. As I said, a price must be paid.” Wilson was becoming more confused by the minute. How much more outlandish could this situation get? “The price for the phone is one death.” The old man said. “Mine. You must take my life in order to pay the required price for the phone. It has been preordained, and thus it must be so.”
Wilson’s mouth dropped in disbelief. “Take his life? Preordained?” He thought, “Surely, this man must be insane.” Then Charles barked, “Old man, you must be out of your damned mind. I have never killed anyone or anything in my entire life. I don’t even own a gun and I have no reason to want to bring any harm to you. You must be some kind of crazy old suicidal fool or something. I am out of here.” Wilson said while starting to turn to leave, only to find that suddenly he could no longer move.
He wondered fearfully what was happening to him. Literally, every muscle in his body became paralyzed. Panic began to seize Wilson and a cold sweat began to pour from every pore in is motionless body.
The old man continued to stand holding the huge handgun by its quaking barrel. “Mr. Wilson,” the old man continued, “You may like to believe that you have never killed anyone in your life but that is not necessarily so. Does the name James O’Connell mean anything to you?”
Wilson stood stock still unable to move or speak as the old man continued. “Yes, I can see that you do recognize that name. You are probably thinking that you had nothing to do with his death, as it was a suicide. You might say the same thing about Michael Johnson, Norman Gladstone and William Dawson. Is that not true? All of these were likewise suicides. Each of these men took his own life. You could always argue that you did not kill them, but the fact of the matter is that you did.”
“Your harsh business dealings with these gentlemen resulted in very successful deals for you and your company but not so good for them. As a direct result of your actions, these men lost their businesses and their property, their lives were ruined, their families abandoned them and eventually they took their own lives. And since suicide is a mortal sin, these gentlemen are now all enjoying an eternity of torture in the deepest regions of Hell.”
“But I digress. Speaking of business, I have important business with my master on the other side, and you must help me to get to him. Only you can assist me in crossing over. I can only accomplish this very important task if a certain set of criteria are met and you, my friend, are a very important element in my meeting those criteria.”
Not in control of his own movements, Wilson looked down and saw his right arm reaching out and taking hold of the handle of the gun as the old man released his grip of the barrel. Wilson found himself with his right arm outstretched grasping the trigger of the huge weapon. He tried to release the gun, but could not. Somehow, the old man was manipulating him like a mindless puppet, causing him to point the gun directly at the man’s head.
“Very good, Mr. Wilson. However, you see, I unfortunately can only control you to a point. It is very important; in fact, it is mandatory, that you pull the trigger on your own. I cannot do that for you. You must kill me willingly of your own volition.” The old man explained. “So if you would be so kind as to just go ahead and pull the trigger and you will be free to leave and be on your way. It should not be a great challenge for a man such as yourself. As I have pointed out, you have already been responsible for killing many men, perhaps not directly and not this up close and personal, but nonetheless you were just as responsible as if you had pulled the trigger yourself. What is one more death on an already tainted soul like yours?”
Wilson tried again to speak and found that doing so took all of his strength. Even with all of his willpower, he could scarcely utter a few simple words. “I won’t….. do it…..I .. can’t … do it.” Wilson realized that he might be in a standoff for a very long time with this crazy old man, as there was no way he would ever willingly pull the trigger.
The old man stood, watching patiently in silence. The store was completely quite now and seemed frozen in time. Wilson could hear the floor creak slightly beneath the old man’s feet as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. He could hear the ticking of the huge grandfather clock, which now seemed more like a pounding of a drum in his brain. After a few more tense minutes, Charles could tell that it had become apparent to the old man that he would not pull the trigger.
“I see.” The old man replied, “I didn’t suspect that you had what it took to just shoot me in cold blood, your methods for killing seem to be more passive than aggressive. You apparently like to drive people to kill themselves rather than have the courage to do the actual deed yourself. I had hoped you might have what it took, but to be honest, few people do. I know you are a fan of Television, but it is a lot different in the flesh, so to speak. Don’t feel so badly about it, Mr. Wilson.”
“Perhaps there is something I can do to motivate you a bit. As I said, the price for the phone is my death. However, if you refuse to kill me, as I require than I suppose I will just have to kill you. The fact is, Charles, one of us is going to die within the next few minutes and I strongly suspect that you will not want it to be you. So I must insist that you reconsider your options.”
Wilson stood like a statue, the gun trained on the old man’s head. He noticed that the only movement he could manage was in his index finger. He tried to keep his finger from getting a spasm or twitch and accidentally applying any unwanted pressure to the trigger. However, the more he tried to prevent it the more he feared that it might actually happen. Perhaps the trigger of the gun was very sensitive and the thing might go off despite his efforts to prevent it from doing so.
Then a terrifying thing happene
d. The old man behind the counter began to tremble from head to toe as his face reddened and he beads of sweat formed on his wrinkled brow. His eyes stared at Wilson and seemed to be bulging from their sockets as he now shook violently. Wilson could hear the floorboards begin to rattle under the man’s quaking body. The man’s hands rested on the service counter, which began to shake with such ferocity that Wilson was certain that it would shatter to pieces at any moment.
From his frozen position Wilson could see that the storekeeper was changing, transforming before his eyes. The man arched and twisted as if stretching his back and neck muscles. His hands left the counter, as his arms seemed to move inward toward the centerline of his body while the tremors increased in their savagery. The man closed his bulging eyes leaning his head backward in a fashion very similar to that of the wretched demon statue Wilson had seen earlier.
At the front of the man’s forehead, Wilson noticed two bumps begin to protrude and stretch the skin to the breaking point. The skin ripped open splattering Wilson’s face with small speckles of blood as a pair of horns began to emerge from the torn flesh, growing rapidly longer, glistening with the man’s blood, curling up like those of a ram. Wilson again remembered the horrible sculpture and could not comprehend how this could possibly be happening.
The air filled with a horrible stench the likes of which Wilson had never encountered; a combination of sulfur, human waste, dead animals, rotten meat and God only knew what else. He felt the urge to vomit even more so than when he had smelled the man’s disgusting body odor earlier. The old man’s mouth hung agape. Wilson noticed that the man’s few remaining tombstone teeth were falling out and clattering onto the countertop, bloody filaments dangling from their blackened roots. Inside the man’s foul cavern of a mouth, Wilson saw long sharp fangs, rising like stalagmites out from the man’s puss-filled bleeding gums, replaced these missing teeth.
Wilson noticed that a pointed goatee and mustache had appeared on the old man face. He wondered why he hadn’t noticed that before. Was it always there, or did it just appear? He was not certain. The changing old man drooled maggots from between his fangs. The worms slid downward on a steady stream of blood and slobber congealing in his demonic beard.
The old man’s hands had become much larger growing huge razor-like talons. His arms now reached high into the air, no longer aged and scrawny but massive and undulating with rope-like muscles, drenched with glistening sweat. To Wilson, it appeared as if the man was now close to seven feet tall. He also noticed that his own arm had been raised allowing the barrel of the gun to remain trained on the hideous creatures head.
In a low guttural voice barely able to articulate human speech, the creature before him said “Mr. Wilson, …one of us is going to die here tonight and I honestly don’t believe you want it to be you….” The beast raised its incredible clawed hands to strike down and slash Wilson to shreds.
Without taking the time to think, simply reacting, Wilson’s finger twitched on the trigger of the handgun, which exploded with a tremendous force, knocking Charles backward to the floor. He lay there for a moment dazed and deafened by the blast. He was unsure if the demon had struck him or if the recoil of the gun had knocked him down. Likewise, he was not certain if his shot had actually hit the creature or not. He had no idea what happened to the gun as it was no longer in his grasp.
Slowly, as he regained some of his orientation, he was able to roll over onto his side and get up on his knees, resting on his sweating, trembling palms. His mind seemed to be spinning out of control and it took a few moments for him to regain his equilibrium. Then staggering clumsily to his feet, ears still ringing, Wilson stumbled to the sales counter, grabbing it for support, while trying to determine what had become of the horrid nightmare creature. He took a few apprehensive steps around the counter; certain that he might either collapse to the floor, wary that the beast behind the counter would arise again and rip him to pieces. He thought strangely of how just a few moments ago he had wanted nothing to do with the man’s handgun and now he wished nothing else but to have it in his hands. However, it could not be seen anywhere.
To his astonishment, as he looked cautiously over the top of the counter, he did not see the demonic creature, but instead saw a frail old man lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood, his brains and skull fragments splattered high on the wall behind the counter dripping downward in gray and crimson streams.
“What the Hell!” Wilson said “The creature, the monster, where is the monster?”
Wilson was aghast. He knew that the old man had transformed. He saw it with his own eyes. He knew that he had been just seconds away from a horrible death at the hands of that enormous demon thing, yet now it was gone. All that remained was the dead body of a helpless broken old man. Then Wilson came to a frightening realization, “Sweet God in Heaven. I know I saw a beast.. but… but … where is .. the… the monster. Did I really kill … this old man in cold blood?” The grandfather clock next to the counter bonged eight times echoing through the vacant store, seeming to do so almost as loudly as the blast of the handgun.
With that, Wilson spun around staggering from side to side trying desperately to weave his way back to the front door, to escape this nightmarish place. As he moved jerkily through the store it appeared to him as if the air around him was changing. He felt the meager light in the room diminishing even further and thought he heard buzzing, like that of an incredible swarm insects behind him, as if a throng of angry hornets was persuing him.
As he hurried clumsily down the aisle, he bumped into the demonic ceramic statue causing it to topple to the floor where it shattered into hundreds of pieces. Looking down at the remains of the statue, Wilson saw thousands of worms and maggots crawling among the broken shards as if they had infested and filled the inside of the thing. His breath caught in his throat. He stumbled to the front door and finally mustered the courage to turn and look back just before making his exit. He could not believe what he saw.
The place seemed to be disintegrating before his very eyes. It was as if he was looking at a picture in a book and thousands of insects were devouring the picture from the center outward. As the world he thought he was part of was being eaten, all that remained in the center was a spreading blackness, darker than anything he had ever seen.
The entire contents of what was once a much-cluttered store was disappearing as the insect things continued munching away at reality. Approximately five feet in front of Wilson the room was as the store originally looked but beyond that was nothingness. Wilson grabbed the handle of the door, flung it open and headed out onto the empty sidewalk, slamming the door behind him. He stopped for a moment and looked in the front window not seeing any of the signs advertising prepaid cellular phones that had previously been there.
He placed his hands on the window and tried to look into the store, seeing only blackness. His hands felt a vibration as thousands of the insect things he heard in the store banged against the glass of the front window. He could not see them in the darkness, but he could feel their tiny bodies slamming against the glass. Wilson shivered from head to toe, backing away from the window, dazed as if in a horrible nightmare.
Charles was confused beyond all comprehension. What had just happened to him? For that matter, had anything actually happened to him? Did he just have some sort of bizarre hallucination? Had he actually even entered the store, or had he fallen into some sort of seizure outside of the obviously abandoned building and imagine the whole thing? Nothing made sense to him anymore. He could no longer recall what was real and what he may have imagined.
He staggered backward away from the storefront, stumbled off the pavement onto the dark, rainy side street, almost losing his footing. He began tripping back clumsily toward his hotel, dazed and bewildered. Then he stopped dead in the middle of the abandoned alleyway realizing something; his ears were still ringing. They had been fine when he left the hotel, but they were ringing as if from the result of a loud explosion. I
f he never entered the store, if there was no old man, if there was no demon and if he hadn’t fired the gun that took the old man’s life, then why were his ears ringing?
Wilson’s stomach lurched with the sinking feeling that perhaps all of the events of the past few minutes actually may have happened. He felt the urge to vomit, and did not even care to suppress it; as perhaps vomiting would purge his body and soul from all of the horrible thoughts that swarmed through his mind. Then, just as quickly, his stomach settled and the urge passed.
Wilson stood still in the middle of the street trying to comprehend what had or had not happened to him; what was real and what was imagined. Unconsciously, he reached his left hand into the pocket of his trench coat and felt something inside. It felt like a cell phone.
Chapter 4
One touch of the cell phone in his pocket and the realization of the implications surrounding that atrocious phone once again sent a chill down Wilson’s spine. He could not recall the old man handing him the phone and did not recall putting it into his coat pocket, but he obviously must have done so. That meant that the old man had to have actually existed and the incident at the store must have actually occurred.
Wilson’s brain started to play a back and forth game of illogical logic. He did not understand how he could have ended up with the phone if none of the events of the past hour had actually happened. Yet, since he did have the phone then surely everything must have happened as he now recalled. Moreover, how could something so bizarre have possibly happened? Yet, if it all had somehow taken place, then why and how was the mysterious store, now abandoned? However, if it had not happened, why did he have the cell phone?
Wilson pondered this confusing paradox for a few moments longer, then decided he had better let it go lest it might drive him insane. Slowly and with much trepidation, he pulled the phone from his pocket to examine it under the dim streetlight. The silver skull shaped numeric keys shined against the background of the blood red phone cover. The phone seemed to produce an almost tactile vibration in his hand, or perhaps a pulse might be more accurate. It made him feel sick inside to feel this phone, as if it were some vile disgusting living thing he held in his hand, its cover feeling less like plastic and more like mottled flesh. He wanted to throw the phone away in revulsion, but could not seem to will himself to do so. Charles simply could not get his mind around what may have or may not have happened on this terrible evening. He stood in the dwindling rain as if in a trance, hair now drenched with rainwater, staring down at the hideous phone.
Burn Phone Page 3