by Billy Wells
“Why would someone do that?”
“Don’t you see, Monte? This town is a trap. When settlers see it in the distance, they come here for the whiskey, the supplies, the pussy, whatever… Whatever killed them hid the bodies so more unsuspecting people like us would take the bait and fall into their trap. And this isn’t a new thing. Look at the bodies. Some of them in the hole are recent, and others have been here a long time.”
“Why did these things only attack Lefty last night?”
Jess thought about it and finally replied, “There must be a pack of these things somewhere, and one of the strays stumbled upon us when we came into town. Where is that boy we found in the street?”
“Robert said after the funeral that Mary and Steve are trying to nurse him back to health in one of the rooms above the saloon, but so far, he’s in some sort of trance. They can't get any food into him.”
Jess grimaced and slapped the dust off of his hat, “I've got a bad feeling about that boy. Let’s take a better look at him. Maybe he’s one of them.”
Jess and Marty boarded the wagon and headed toward the town in a cloud of dust. When they reached the saloon, they found seven of the group scattered around the poker tables, killing time and drinking whiskey. “Where are Mary and Steve?” Jess barked with worry written all over his face.
“They’re upstairs with the boy,” Lillian responded.
“Did he regain consciousness?” Monte asked.
“I don't think so, but for some reason, Mary said he looks better than he did yesterday.”
Jess grabbed Robert’s double-barreled shotgun resting against the bar and proceeded up the stairs two at a time, followed by Monte. Pausing at the top of the stairs, Jess motioned Monte to stay quiet as they stepped into a long hallway with doors closed on both sides. They listened outside each door and without knocking eased each one open as they proceeded down the hall. They found nothing in their search, and now, the door at the end of the hall was the only one left they hadn’t checked.
When Jess pushed open the last door, his eyes became riveted on the horror before him. Steve Sweet sat in a chair staring into space with dead, glassy eyes. Something had torn a chunk out of the right side of his neck. His shirt and pants were soaked with blood, and a large pool had accumulated on the floor at his feet.
Mary lay on the bed with her dead eyes fixed on the ceiling in tattered shreds of clothing. The blond boy’s head was buried inside the gaping cavern in her mid-section. Her intestines dangled across her exposed genitals and fell in a pile on her bloody boots.
The click the shotgun made when Jess pulled back the hammer aroused the boy who turned toward them and hissed at them like a cat. The boy’s innocent expression had disappeared entirely. Now, his savage, ravenous eyes glared at them like a deranged maniac. His whole face was wet with blood, gore, and slivers of flesh protruding from a mouthful of pointed teeth as he poised to strike.
“What is this thing?” Monte cried.
Jess pulled the trigger on the ten-gauge shotgun, and the hideous face and the upper part of the boy’s body disintegrated before their eyes.
“Something dead,” Jess answered, wiping the blood splatter from his face with his sleeve. The wallpaper in the room had changed to a scarlet fresco design in a split second. The lower torso of the thing fell off the bed on to the floor.
“Hey!” Monte said excitedly, “You took the mystery out of the cure with only one shot. These things aren't so tough.”
The doorway filled up with the group from downstairs, and they spread out around the bloody corpses.
“The boy killed Mary’s husband and was eating her when we opened the door,” Jess explained. ”He looked human, but he was really some kind of monster. He was getting ready to pounce on us when I pulled the trigger.”
The group looked at Monte to corroborate Jess’s incredible explanation of what had happened.
Monte nodded, “Hey, look at what the boy did to Steve and Mary. Nothing human could have done this. When Monte realized that Mary's face had been partially obliterated by Jess’s shotgun blast, his explanation trailed off. Starting over, he stammered, “Mary and Steve would have looked just like the people in the dry goods store if we hadn’t interrupted him.”
Jess looked at his companions with their mouths agape, still trying to get their minds around the carnage spread about the bedroom and said, “That’s why the boy looked better this morning. Instead of normal food, he snuck away and chowed down on Lefty during the night.”
Monte repeated what Jess had told him at the cemetery, “This town is a trap. These things like this boy lure settlers like us into their web so they can feast on us.”
Jess continued, “Believe me, folks, there’s a lot more of these ghouls around here somewhere, and they’ll be coming for us soon. Gather up your stuff. Let's get out of here, before it's too late.”
Suddenly, Steve’s corpse lunged from the bloody chair, sunk his teeth into Herman Peale’s neck, and ripped away his jugular vein and vocal chords. Steve’s eyes had taken on the same ravenous fire Jess had seen in the blond boy’s eyes. He had come back alive after some period of time had passed. Now, instead of the kind considerate family man they all knew, he'd become a ghoul with nothing but bloodlust in his eyes.
While Steve continued to chew on Herman’s gory neck, Jess turned the shotgun around and crushed his head into a bloody pulp with repeated blows against the hardwood floor. Monte and the rest of the settlers stood in the room peppered from floor to ceiling with blood splatter, still reeling from the horror they had witnessed with their own eyes.
Lillian, Herman's wife, came into the room, fell upon her husband’s bloody corpse, and began to sob uncontrollably.
“I'm sorry, Lillian,” Jess said, trying to console her, “but the dead are coming back to life and eating the living. I'm sorry about Herman, but we can't let you stay here with him. We don’t know when he might turn and try to rip your throat out like Steve just did to him.”
Lillian had just arrived on the scene and had no idea what Jess was talking about. She looked at him like he had lost his mind. With her arms wrapped about her husband’s neck and her head pressed against his chest, she continued to sob and shriek uncontrollably.
“Lillian, you’ve gotta listen to us for your own sake, and for little William's sake. I know it’s unbelievable, but what Jess is telling you is true,” Monte pleaded. “After Steve was stone cold dead, he suddenly opened his eyes, took a big bite out of Herman’s neck, and started eatin’ on him. The same thing could happen to Herman. We need to lock his body in a room to be sure he doesn't try to kill you or one of us if he comes back to life.”
Lillian continued to ignore what they said, forcing several of her friends to pull her away while others carted Herman’s corpse to a room they could lock. Jess, Monte, and the others returned downstairs to gather everyone together so they could leave before the ghouls returned.
When they entered the saloon, they found the rest of their group on the floor being devoured by several emaciated corpse-like things. Their savage maniacal eyes spun in circles in their sockets as they tore the raw flesh from the bones in a ravenous frenzy.
Four of the creatures held Abraham Jarvis, a huge lumberjack of a man, down while four others feasted on him. They had already eaten away the flesh below his right knee, and were starting on the juicy thighbone.
Jess winced at the pitiful, frightened stare frozen on Abraham’s partially eaten head. His ears and his nose were gone. Jess knew he would see the horror of that contorted face in his nightmares if he came out of this alive.
Six of the things looked up from their bloody feast and glared at Jess and Monte. Their cold eyes drifted over their frames like someone choosing a choice piece of steak from the local butcher. Jess and Monte turned to run for their lives, but ten more ghouls blocked their escape at the entrance. Both men emptied their revolvers into the throng of claws and fangs that swept over them.
* * *
Two months later, eight wagons of thirsty settlers saw the stand of buildings in the distance. An hour later, the wagons stopped in front of the Aces and Eights saloon. A lone piece of sagebrush tumbled down the empty street as one of the men climbed down from the wagon. “Something doesn't feel right about this town,” the crusty old codger yelled to the others. “Let me take a look. Stay ready.”
A large, red-faced man in another wagon pointed toward the hill with one lone tree and a field of tombstones in the distance. “Something doesn't smell right either,” he said sniffing the air.
Several turkey buzzards from the distant mountain flew across the sun and disappeared behind the hill.
Jess shouted from the shadow of the open window in the saloon, “What are you folks waiting for? This is a friendly town and to prove it the first drink is on the house. Come on in. Pull up a chair. We've even got hard candy for the youngins.”
Jess drew closer to the window so the settlers could see a little more of him. A ten-gallon hat covered his dead eyes, and a shirt two sizes too large for him covered his emaciated body.
The band of ghouls decided that rather than eat him and Monte, they would just bite them and turn them into ghouls. For a while, they would almost look human, and they could help lure new meat into the saloon. The charade would work as long as the settlers couldn’t see their eyes.
Fifty ghouls waited in the alley to swarm the new blood from behind as soon as they entered the saloon. The whiskey was gone, and now the bottles on the bar had only colored water in them.
Jess saw life a lot differently now that he was a ghoul. He didn’t know why, but it didn’t bother him at all to sink his teeth into a helpless human. He could eat anything that walked or crawled now. He was always hungry. As he tightened his grip on his ax handle, he looked across at Monte and the other ghouls at the other window and gave them the high sign.
Under his breath, he muttered the same prayer he said before he ate when he was human, “Thank you, sweet Jesus, for the grub we’re about to receive."
THE CALLER FROM HELL
On July 6, the phone rang at three o’clock in the morning. Clyde Bottoms opened his bleary eyes and struggled to free his arm tangled in the bedclothes. After knocking the alarm clock off the end table, he picked up the receiver and barked in his most menacing tone, “Hello. What lamebrain would call someone at this hour?”
He listened to the silence and glared at the number on the display. Just as he thought, it was the same number as before. “Listen, douche bag, I don’t know what your game is, but this is the fifth time you’ve called to harass me this month, and this is the last straw. I’m calling the telephone company in the morning to file a complaint. As soon as I put down the phone, I will also be reporting your ass to the police. If neither of them can stop you from calling in the future, I’ll be coming to knock your block off. No matter what rock you hide under, I’ll find you. Even if I have to buy a ticket to the North Pole, your sorry ass will be mine. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, motherfucker.” Clyde slammed down the phone, pulled the jack from the wall, and tried to get back to sleep.
In the morning during breakfast, he called Verizon and advised the officious sounding lady of the prank calls.
The customer service rep replied in an annoying robotic voice, “Are you sure you have the right number, Mr. Bottoms? The number you gave me is no longer in service.”
“I’m positive that’s the number,” Clyde bellowed. “The miserable son of a bitch has called me five different times.”
“Please watch your language, sir, I’m a Christian.”
“Sorry. This jerk off is really getting on my nerves. If you don’t believe me, just try calling it.”
“I believe you, sir, but transposing numbers is very common, I assure you.”
“As I said before, the correct number I’ve taken from caller ID on five different occasions is 508-683-6883. Could you please tell the pervert to stop harassing me?”
“I’ll make the call, but I’m sure nothing will happen. That number is no longer in service.”
“Humor me.”
After a moment, Clyde heard a phone ringing in his earpiece many times with no answer.
“That’s strange,” the service rep chirped. “The phone did ring, but no one answered.”
“See, I’m not crazy after all. Am I?”
“Please Mr. Bottoms, I certainly didn’t mean to insinuate….”
“That’s okay, miss,” Clyde interrupted. “I know you’re just going by what’s the computer says.”
“I assure you this kind of thing has never happened during the fifteen years I’ve been working this job. I will write up a purchase order to check out this connection ASAP.”
“In the interim, can you tell me anything about the caller. I wonder if I might know the person.”
“I can’t give you the name of a person. This was a business account.”
“What was the name of the business that had the number last?”
“My records indicate it was listed to the Morningside Cemetery.”
“Cemetery? Are you sure?”
“Positive, sir.”
“Where was the location?”
“The address was 1 Sleepy Hollow Lane.”
“Are you serious?” After a prolonged silence, Clyde asked, “What town?”
“Hell, Massachusetts.”
Clyde put his ear closer to the phone. Confused as to whether he’d heard her reply correctly, he repeated the question, “What was the town again?”
“As I said, sir, the name of the town is Hell, Massachusetts.”
“Can you tell when the service was terminated?”
“Certainly, if you think it would help.” After a lengthy assault of generic music on his eardrums, the representative came back on the line, “I’m sorry, sir, but it appears our information is corrupted.”
“Christ, lady, you don’t have any records on this number?”
“We have the record, but the termination date is in the future, not the past. It can’t be correct.”
“What’s the date?”
“July 26 of this year. I’m sorry to say the date service started is also incorrect.”
“What’s that?”
“July 6, 1969.”
“Other than that being my birthday, why is that so strange? Sylvester Stallone and George W. Bush were also born on July 6.”
“I’ve never seen a date that old in our system. Our computer records began on January 1, 1979. All customers who started before that date say “Prior to 1979” instead of the actual start date.”
“That is strange, I guess. Well, in any case, let me know what your people find out about the connection.”
“After all these odd circumstances with the data, it may be best to change your telephone number.”
“That would be the last resort. So many people have it; it would be a drag to change it. I have to get to work. I’m sorry I was such an asshole… I mean so obnoxious at first. You’ve been very helpful.”
After a few more pleasantries, Clyde hung up the phone and sat in disbelief at the details of the weird calls in the middle of the night. To summarize, a disconnected phone that started service on the day he was born and was once the telephone number of a cemetery in a place called Hell keeps calling to harass him. He put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and left for work.
All that day, he couldn’t get his mind off what the service rep had told him. The premise that these calls were a coincidence seemed less plausible than the premise they were premeditated. Could one of his friends be doing this to rattle him? It wasn’t likely that a random call to Verizon would connect someone involved in the charade.
On the way home, he stopped at the police station not far from his apartment. Approaching the front desk, he saw a tall, intimidating man in a blue uniform.
“I’ve been experiencing prank calls in the middle of the night. Is there someone I could talk to about the pro
blem?” Clyde began.
“What borough are you in?”
“Manhattan.”
“What’s your name?”
“Clyde Bottoms.”
“Have a seat. An officer will be with you shortly.”
He sat in the waiting area with ten ugly gray chairs that looked like something from World War II and picked up a dog-eared magazine with no cover.
Fifteen minutes later, a middle aged uniformed officer called his name and escorted him to a small conference room. They took seats on opposite sides of a table scarred with cigarette burns.
“I understand you’ve been having a problem with prank calls?” the officer began. “Do you have any idea who’s calling you?”
“Not really. I have the caller’s number from the readout so I called the telephone company and made a complaint.”
“And they couldn’t resolve the problem?”
“There records show the number was disconnected July 26 of this year.”
The officer thought about the date and replied, “That’s next week.”
“That’s the mystery. They say the service was terminated years ago, but the date in their system is in the future.”
“Did they give you the name of the person the listing belongs to?”
“They say it was the business phone number for the Morningside Cemetery located in Hell, Massachusetts, and the records indicate the service was terminated in 1986.”
“Nineteen-eighty-six…. That would be twenty-five years ago.”
“I didn’t do the math, but I’ll take your word for it.”
The officer’s expression changed, and he looked at Clyde as if a light bulb had come on in his mind. “Is this some kind of joke? Believe me, Mr. Bottoms, I have better things to do than waste my time on a practical joke.”
“I assure you I’m not making this up. These calls, which I’m receiving in the middle of the night, are driving me insane. What I want to know is if Verizon can’t resolve the situation, can the police intervene in my behalf.”
“What can we do if we don’t know who is making the calls? The caller is not even in our jurisdiction. I can call law enforcement in Massachusetts, but they are sure to think you are some kind of nutcase if I pass on the information you’ve given me. If Verizon can’t help you, the best thing you can do is set up a new, unlisted telephone number.”