From Twisted Roots

by Tobias Wade

  I barely started to tell the operator what was going on when something slammed into the bedroom door, causing the heavy wood to rattle in its frame.

  “He’s in the house!” I screamed into the phone. “Please, hurry!”

  Merry and Beauty stood side by side in front of me, teeth bared, ears pinned back. Goblin was on the nightstand behind me with his back arched and claws out. The door shuddered again. I pressed myself against the side of my bed, pleading with the dispatcher to get someone over to us.

  A long crack spider-webbed its way up the middle of the door under the third blow.

  I grabbed the dogs to keep them from charging at it and held them close even as they struggled to get in front of me.

  I screamed. Somewhere in the distance, a siren sounded, almost as if in response. And then another.

  The assault on my bedroom door stopped.

  There was no trace of any man, one with Reg’s face or otherwise, in the house when the cops arrived moments later. Just me, my pets, and a number of broken windows and a badly damaged bedroom door to tell the tale.

  They believed readily enough that someone had attempted to attack me. They even believed that he’d been watching the house, ringing the doorbell and then hiding to check who answered. They had a harder time believing it was someone almost identical to my husband with empty eye sockets.

  When I pulled up the Peephole footage to prove it, all we found was a blurry, barely decipherable video with the shadowy outline of a person standing outside my door. Even the audio was too garbled to make sense of.

  Reg was the only one who took me at my word, even when I couldn’t rationally explain what I’d seen. He stopped racing for a time, and we moved far from that house. It helped, but I still wasn’t satisfied with all the questions I’d been left with. I was mostly scared, but angry too: angry over the violation, the invasion, and the loss of security. I couldn’t truly put it behind me without at least trying to understand what actually happened.

  I looked around online and went to the local library to research the history of the house, but there was nothing particularly noteworthy. It was built in the 50s and had traded hands a number of times since its completion. None of it struck me as particularly odd; it was small, needed some work, and was a bit far from town for a lot of folks. It didn’t take me long to run through the list of available resources, but none of it helped much.

  In a last ditch effort, I looked up the person we’d bought the house from, Marcia Dunberry. I was able to locate her through social media and sent her a message explaining what happened, asking if she could help me understand. I hesitated before hitting send, well aware that this message looked like the ramblings of someone with only one foot in reality. I had to be honest if I wanted answers though.

  I checked my messages constantly over the next few days, anxious for her response. It was slow coming, and when it finally arrived, it was very brief.

  Hello, Elaina. I’m sorry for what you went through. I can’t say I’m surprised to hear it, though. I wanted to tell you when you bought the place, but the realtor told me not to. That house is sick. It’s built on a graveyard from the 1900s, the previous owner told me so. There’s an energy there, something bad. It wore my son’s face like it wore your husband’s. It doesn’t stop when you leave. It just bides its time. I think I’m finally free. Please don’t contact me again. Good luck.

  When I went to reply, I realized she had blocked me. All I was left with was a lingering chill.

  We have security cameras and lights all over our property now. Every door and window is reinforced and lined with locks. Peephole is still installed on our front doorbell, and Merry and Beauty and Goblin are forever at my side. Even so, I haven’t managed to shake the feeling that something is watching from outside. Waiting.

  I don’t ever answer the door anymore. Reg does, but only after checking Peephole.

  And if he’s not home, I listen for the loud pops and roars of his race car, which he started driving regularly so I always know when he’s coming.

  So I’ll be ready when it knocks again.

  Death’s Choice

  I tried really hard to get my kid out of my neighborhood. When he was born, I made all the promises my old man made me when I was young.

  You’re not gonna live like this.

  You’re gonna be better than me.

  You’re gonna be somebody.

  But what does an eighteen year old know about getting anybody outta anywhere? I couldn’t even get myself out. Me and my girl lived in my mom’s basement while we tried to get our shit together for little Abel’s sake, but it was never gonna work. My girl was younger than me, she didn’t want to be a mom, and she split when Abel was only a couple months old.

  My mom sat me down and told me, “Boy, I’m not raising your child, so you best figure out what you wanna do. Man up or drop him at one of those safe places where he can be adopted and get himself a real family.”

  I knew it killed her to say that. Mom loved Abel even more than me, I think, and the last thing she wanted was to lose her grandbaby. Abel was my son though, and my responsibility.

  I dropped out my last year of Highschool and started working a couple part time jobs. It was the real fucking American dream: fifty to sixty hour work weeks and still not able to make ends meet. The only reason I kept going was my little boy. The world just seemed to be getting shittier around us, but I kept clawing my way up; I didn’t hang out with my old friends, didn’t get involved in any of the old shit I used to do, just kept looking ahead and working my ass off.

  Things started to get better when I met Shayla at one of my janitor jobs. She had a kid around Abel’s age and wanted out of the neighborhood as bad as I did. We got together, started figuring out goals and saving money, and we thought we were really gonna do it.

  Closest we came was when Abel was about eight. Shayla and I had gotten married a couple years before and could finally afford to rent a place of our own a few blocks from my mom. It was still in the same neighborhood, but closer to the edge. Shayla got a real good job working as a secretary in a law firm, and I was digging ditches for the city. We were finally managing to get by with some money stashed away for the future. We could almost see a way out.

  I’d told my boy to stay away from the older kids a few houses down. They were no good, I’d say. They were dangerous. I didn’t tell him it was because they were messing around with a gang, one of the reasons me and Shayla wanted out in the first place, but I probably should have. Maybe it would’ve stopped what happened.

  I’d been at work on a Saturday, overtime to afford a birthday present for Shayla’s daughter, so I only got to hear about it after it happened. Abel had slipped out of the house and gone to hang out with the “cool” kids down the road. It had only been a minute, shouldn’t have been long enough for anything bad to happen, and it was broad fucking daylight.

  Didn’t stop some rivals from driving by and taking shots at the group. At my son.

  He took two in the back before he hit the ground. The two that had been meant for the “leader” he’d been standing in front of.

  By the time I got to the hospital, Abel was in surgery. Walking into the hospital was like a dream. Nothing felt real: not the hugs from my mom or Shayla, not the updates from the doctor, nothing. I sat in one of those hard plastic chairs against the wall, put my head between my knees, and I prayed for God to spare my boy.

  Shayla and Mom went to the cafeteria to get coffee while we waited, but I stayed there, staring at the doors and wanting some kind of answer.

  When someone stepped between me and the doors, I looked up, angry and grateful at the same time. I needed an excuse to vent and scream and fight, and this bastard had offered himself up without realizing it.

  “Hey!” I snapped, but then I froze.

  The figure before me was tall and covered in a heavy robe of black. Its hood was pulled low, hiding his features, but I was
sure that a skeletal smile lurked in the shadows. All he was missing was a scythe.

  I blinked.

  The robes became brightly colored in blue and red, and flowers wrapped around the skeletal figure. Beads draped around the skull and its tall headdress.

  Another blink. Now it was a Chinese man with a long black beard in official looking robes and a cap.

  Every time I blinked, the figure would change: a small Indian child, an old, haggard woman with wild hair, a large black dog. I’d never seen most of them, but I knew what each was called.

  Santa Muerta

  King Yan

  A Yamaduta

  Banshee

  Black Shuck

  All different names for the same being.

  Death

  “No.” I don’t know if I was denying what I was seeing or trying to ward off the creature in front of me. “Oh God, oh please, no!”

  It turned toward me, a hundred faces in a single form. Trying to focus on any one shot lightening across my brain. It wasn’t real, but at the same time, it was the only thing that was real. I was going insane with grief; it was the only explanation, but I didn’t care. If there was any chance I could save Abel, I was going to try it.

  “Not my boy,” I begged. I was miraculously alone in the hallway, speaking to something that probably wasn’t even there. “Anyone else, just not Abel.”

  It continued to stare.

  “Please...”

  Slowly, it lifted a hand, one minute boney, then dark skinned, then old, young, a paw, and touched my forehead.

  I wasn’t me anymore. I was someone else. Someone angry, so full of hate—there was a gun in my hand. It felt heavy and familiar. I was fearless. I was hot blooded, out for revenge.

  I was Abel. Older, no longer an innocent child. Flashes of a life whirled before me: drinking, drugs, love and loyalty bought with blood. The colors of the gang he’d been with when he was shot waving like a flag over it all.

  Everything went black for a moment. My eyes were opening as someone else. A pastor, filled with peace and generosity. The beloved leader of a congregation, a pillar in the community, a husband, a father, a friend.

  A reformed gang member who changed his ways and escaped a life of violence after being shot in a drive-by on a Saturday afternoon in broad fucking daylight.

  My body jerked sharply. I was back in my own skin. The figure still in front of me, its endless eyes all staring, waiting.

  “They’re both in there?” I asked weakly.

  The figure remained silent and still, but I knew. My boy and that piece of garbage were both in surgery, but only one would make it out.

  “You can’t know that will happen,” I said with a defiant shake of my head. “My son is a good boy! I’m getting him out of here! It won’t happen!”

  It tilted its head slightly.

  “Y-you, don’t know. Abel is good. Abel is...he’s good.”

  I started to sob while it continued to stand in front of me, waiting, expectant.

  “My boy,” I whispered. “Save my boy.”

  Then I was alone again.

  Carter Wright died on the table five minutes later. He was sixteen years old.

  Abel survived.

  I don’t know what I saw in the hospital or how real it even was. I don’t know why I was given the choice when it shouldn’t have been mine to make. I tried to go to different churches and temples to have it explained, but no one could help me understand.

  Even without that knowledge, I told Abel he’d been given a second chance and not to waste it. It never made a difference. First he lost his innocence by force, and then he willingly gave up the rest by choice. He wanted revenge. He knew who could make it happen, and he was going to get it whether I liked it or not. I had to kick him out when he was eighteen after he pulled a gun on Shayla in our home.

  Despite my best efforts, and all the love we gave him, and all the attempts we made to change things. Despite trying to move, to separate him from what was always outside our door, he was never my little boy again.

  He became everything that I’d been warned about.

  And now, almost fifteen years later, not a day goes by that I don’t regret the choice I made in the presence of Death.

  The Quiet Neighbor

  Just about the first thing anyone new to the neighborhood learned was to avoid Bud Filimore. Cantankerous, territorial, and fueled by what seemed to be a deep-seated hatred for just about everything, he was the kind of man that childhood nightmares are made of.

  He’d only lived there a few months longer than us, but by the time my family moved in across the street from the Filimore house, his reputation was already firmly established. When other neighbors came by with their cookies and casseroles to welcome us and saw me and my brother, just nine and eleven, they’d pull my parents aside and offer hushed warnings.

  “Keep them away from that nasty little man across the way,” Mrs. Devin said. “He can’t stand children.”

  “My son, Bill, swears Bud tried to run him down in his car!” Mr. Crane said.

  “He’ll look for any excuse to yell at them. He says the most terrible things,” Mrs. Paul said

  My parents thanked them, but I don’t think they quite believed them. My mom especially wasn’t fond of gossip, and she tried to take rumors with a grain of salt until she could make her own decisions. She didn’t have to wait long.

  My older brother, Scotty, and I were outside tossing a baseball one Saturday morning when Scotty tossed it too hard and high. It sailed over my head, bounced in the street, and rolled to a stop at the very edge of Mr. Filimore’s yard. Both of us had overheard our neighbors warnings and were hesitant to even look at the house, much less approach it.

  “Go get it, Liz,” Scotty said, nudging my shoulder.

  “But you threw it,” I replied.

  “So? You missed it!”

  “I couldn’t reach!”

  My whining had no effect. He pushed me toward the road and, after checking both ways, I began to creep toward our ball.

  I almost reached it. Just a couple more steps and it would be within my grasp, but the front door of the house flew open first.

  “What the hell are you doing?” A stout man with thin, graying hair came bursting outside to stomp across his lawn toward me.

  “M-my ball,” I tried to say, pointing to it.

  “You brats throwing things at my house? Think it would be funny to break a window?”

  “N-no,” I glanced over my shoulder to see Scotty half-poised to run. I whimpered.

  “Get outta here,” Mr. Filimore snapped.

  “Can I just—”

  “No!”

  Before I could react, he’d scooped up the baseball, which had barely even touched his grass, and stormed back inside. The whole front of his house seemed to shake with the force of his slammed door.

  It was the first of what would be many run in’s with everyone’s least favorite neighbor. Our parents tried to talk to him about his behavior, but he just told them to keep their noisy little shits off his lawn and away from his house if we didn’t want trouble. Dad thought about calling the cops on him, but as Mom became fond of saying, there was no law against being rude. We were told to just be more careful.

  “He must not have always been such a bull,” Mom said over dinner about a month after we’d moved in. “He’s married, you know.”

  Dad scoffed at the idea. “Oh yeah? How do you know?”

  “Dolores Devin was by again for a chat and it came up. Bud wears a ring, and she said she sees Mrs. Filimore looking out the windows from time to time. The poor woman never comes outside. She thinks she heard Bud say it was cancer once.”

  “Poor lady, sick and married to that,” Dad said.

  “Terrible, isn’t it? But it does explain a bit about him. He’s just trying to keep things quiet and peaceful around his house.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Scotty m
uttered. Mom frowned at him.

  “He’s probably very sad and lashes out without meaning to.”

  “He’s an asshole,” Scotty said.

  “Language,” Dad warned, “but yeah, he is.”

  Whatever his reasoning, we all agreed it would be best to just try and avoid Bud Filimore.

  Scotty and I were extra careful to keep all our toys well within the confines of our own yard when we played outside. I couldn’t help but keep a wary eye on the house across the street, just in case he decided to be extra crazy and we had to run for it.

  That’s when I started to notice Mrs. Filimore.

  Almost every time Scotty and I were out and I happened to glance at their house, I would see the tall, slender figure outlined behind the sheer curtains in one of the upstairs windows. I couldn’t get a very good look at her, but I figured it couldn’t be anyone but the missus; Mr. Filimore didn’t have anyone else.

  She never banged on the window or shouted at us like her husband. She’d just stand there, watching us. I liked to imagine that she was a nice lady; a quiet neighbor who just enjoyed seeing kids at play.

  I remember mom saying Mrs. Filimore was sick and I felt sorry that she was trapped in her house with her horrible husband. I tried to be nice and smile and wave once. Just once. Mr. Filimore appeared on his front stoop and yelled at me for being a pest until I retreated inside.

  When I peeked out the living room window later, Mrs. Filimore wasn’t in her usual spot anymore.

  Eventually we got used to Mr. Filimore glowering at us as he drove slowly past, his short temper and his loud voice. It was such a regular thing that our fear turned first to caution, then only to eye-rolling dismissiveness.

  “Bud doesn’t own the street. You kids go out and be kids. If he has a problem with it, I’ll deal with him,” Dad said.

  After that, we started to be a little less careful with our things and a little more free with our laughter. We lost a few balls to the Filimore yard, one or two frisbees, but nothing we really cared too much about. Nothing until Scotty’s remote controlled helicopter.