by Aiden James
“Merry fucking Christmas, you bunch of assholes!” he hissed as he opened the building’s front door, even more incensed by the fact it was unlocked.
The pussy John Campbell couldn’t even get that right. Until last night’s fiasco, John had been very dependable. In two and a half years, he’d called out just once, and that was due to a severe flu bug which almost shut down the entire University campus. Vernon still couldn’t believe he left him high and dry like this. The fact that the trainee, Matt Edmonds, permanently left his post at the McClung Museum earlier today came as only a slight surprise. And Johnnie Mercer, Steve Holland, and Tony Williams were attendance problems just waiting to get fired. He especially couldn’t believe the theatrics put on a few nights ago by Tony “the tank”…some fierce ‘weapon’ he turned out to be. Fucking crybaby, more like it. Only Pete Lindsey remained loyal, but then again, Pete’s just a part-timer filling in one or two shifts per week.
So, now it’s all up to Ole Vern.
His buddy, Frank Thomas, agreed to moonlight for him here at Langston around ten o’clock. Another surly veteran from Knoxville’s finest, unlike Vernon he still had a few years to go before he could collect full retirement benefits. Grateful that he was able to help out on such short notice, it allowed Vernon the opportunity to check on another trainee from the other side of campus, Billy Peacock, who agreed to fill in at the museum across the way later tonight. Vernon remained hopeful he could rejoin his wife and grandkids at home by midnight—if they hadn’t already gone to bed.
He turned on the outside security lamps and also the main floor’s long row of fluorescent lights. Surprised to see his breath inside the building, it seemed even colder than the subfreezing temperatures outside. His immediate assumption that the heater must’ve died made little sense. Dr. Peter Kirkland told him it had been fairly expensive to restore, where two of the building’s three units were replaced with new ones. Vernon had thought the whole extravagance of restoring the building in order for the basement cold storage area to be utilized was a bit much, until he made a joke about it in the professor’s presence. Dr. Kirkland’s response quite curt, he threatened to ‘find another security chief’ who would do a better job of protecting the University’s interests.
One of the few times in recent memory that Vernon had stooped to kissing ass in order to get back in the professor’s good graces, rising medical costs in treating his wife Maggie’s diabetes made it imperative he not lose this job. The nice salary outweighed the undependable personnel he had to work with. Besides, after appeasing Dr. Kirkland’s enormous ego, Vernon became privy to proprietary information about what was stored downstairs.
Nearly two-dozen skeletons unearthed in Cades Cove were now kept in the basement’s cold storage unit. Some belonged to early English settlers, though many lacked various limbs. All were headless.
Other bones present as well, these were believed to be Native American, with one unusual skeleton much older than the rest. That one was added just a few days ago. Afflicted with some gross deformity, it had a lot to do with why the cold storage unit was needed.
Utilizing so much of the security staff to watch over this shit seemed ludicrous to Vernon. But it paid the bills to just go with the flow on the assignment. The main floor had the same abandoned feel to it as it did when he first visited the building just before Thanksgiving, when Dr. Kirkland wanted to review the security arrangements with him. The University’s maintenance crews had done a good job of removing the broken furniture and trash, and relocating scores of boxed records that made it nearly impossible to move from the front of the main floor to the stairwell in the rear.
Vernon saved the University some money by not installing an official guard station, since Langston Hall was slated for a bulldozer next June. Though a century old, the locks on the front door proved adequate, and the security latches for the windows throughout the building were fully functional. The only change was the thick steel door in the basement, the easiest thing to check for his security staff. All it took was a quick pull downward on the handle, and voila!
He paused to look around him, noticing that John left the sticky rags from when he cleaned up Johnnie Mercer’s spilled coffee on top of the card table. The dried paper towels now stuck to the table’s surface.
“Goddamned slobs,” he muttered, scowling as he ran the tips of his fingers across the table top while studying the streaked coffee mess on the floor nearby. A ceiling light from the second floor hallway, the source for the stairwell’s illumination when he first arrived, began to flicker.
Unlike the previous two guards to watch over Langston Hall, Vernon remained calm, cool, and collected. In his mind, everything had a logical explanation. Casually, he walked toward the back of the main floor. Once he reached the stairwell, the light dimmed and then grew increasingly bright as if fueled by a sudden burst of electricity. He remained unfazed, still expecting to find a sensible reason for the power surge.
He stepped into the shadowed area surrounding the basement stairwell and pointed his flashlight’s bright beam down toward the bottom from the top of the stairs. After verifying that the door was shut and the lower stairwell empty, he pointed his flashlight upward despite the unnaturally bright glow emanating from the second floor hallway. The first thing he noticed was the long wire hanging down from the ceiling three floors above where he presently stood. Then he saw the hundreds of tiny glass particles on the floor, telling him the light bulb likely exploded. He ventured upstairs.
It took nearly twenty minutes to check every inch of both the second and third floors. On the way down to the first floor, he snickered again about his former staff—the sorry group of little girls pretending to be men. He completely ignored how the fluorescent hall light on the second floor still flickered after he turned it off, while the suspended double-chain it hung from swung back and forth in the air behind him.
Must be a breeze caused by me passing by…watch out, Superman!
He merrily trotted down the stairs, ignorant of the bulb-less wire swinging wildly above his head. If he had looked up, he might’ve caught a glimpse of the garish shadows on the stairwell’s walls descending toward him.
Once back on the main floor, he set out to clean the mess near the guard station, whistling to himself as he stepped into the restroom. While he collected a few wetted paper towels and some soap, a scraping metallic noise resounded from the basement stairwell. He paused at the restroom doorway, listening for the noise to repeat itself. It did, the shrill screech louder this time.
Vernon’s pulse immediately sped up. He unzipped his guard jacket and reached into the inner left side pocket. Unlike the rules governing everyone else on his staff, he packed some serious heat, courtesy of the license to bear firearms privilege he kept long after his official retirement from the Knoxville P. D.
Vernon pulled out his .44 service revolver from his jacket. He released the safety from the pistol and stepped out into the hallway. The gun was already loaded, and a standard precaution with him from his early days on the police force, despite never actually shooting someone since his retirement from being a ‘real’ cop…at least until tonight. The sound of the heavy door downstairs being forced open made him think this might be the occasion where some unlucky fool got to meet Mr. Smith & Wesson.
Glancing cautious from side to side, he crept up to the basement stairwell. This time he peered over the edge without using his flashlight, held in his other hand, ready at a moment’s notice to flash in the face of the perpetrator—or, perpetrators, if there was more than one trespasser.
Hard to see anything from the middle of the basement stairwell on down to its murky bottom, the heavy steel door stood open, its shiny edge showing just above the deeper shadows that obscured all else. It left him no choice but to find out what the hell was going on down there.
He considered using a stern verbal warning, but then thought better of it after realizing he didn’t know much about the layout in the basement. He knew
only where the cold storage unit sat, just inside the doorway and off to the right. The last time he actually stood inside the large room, a ton of boxes and more broken furniture pieces were stacked haphazardly to the left of the unit. Everything cleaned up since then, a thief or vandal would have an advantage over him. Better safe than sorry.
A shuffling noise moved across the basement floor toward the door, accompanied by heavy breathing. Nervous but unafraid, Vernon moved boldly downstairs. Just before he reached the thickest shadows, he turned on his flashlight and held the gun pointed in front of him.
“All right, you stupid asshole, come out of there with your hands up!” he snarled, stepping down to the base of the stairwell when he received no response, other than the cessation of the shuffling noise.
The breathing grew heavier. His heartbeats had sped up even faster on the way down the stairs, and now the blood rushed through his body, pounding noisily in his ears. What made him most uneasy was the awareness that the breathing sound steadily approached the doorway where he now stood, and yet no other sound was audible from within the basement. It awakened every inch of gooseflesh along his arms, legs, and back while sending icy chills up and down his entire spine.
Suddenly, a very tall figure stood before him, partially shrouded in the thick darkness his flashlight couldn’t penetrate. His deepest gut instinct said it was somebody very dangerous, maybe a crazed psychopath. But the hardened cop side of his brain reassured him that was pure nonsense—the type of fancied fears sissies pretending to be real men would subscribe to. Listening to his well-honed police instincts, he could almost picture the dim figure sneering at him from within the shadows. Rather than play coy with this shithead, he motioned with his pistol for whoever was there to step closer to where he could see him.
“I’m going to give you five seconds to get your ass out here,” warned Vernon. “You’re trespassing, and if you don’t want to spend the rest of the holidays behind bars or in a hospital, you better come out….”
He didn’t finish. Rather, he couldn’t find his voice. The emergence of a tall, grotesque man stepping through the doorway took care of that. Under the flashlight’s bright glare, the figure looked especially creepy. The man appeared quite old, and yet the intense malice emanating from this weirdo made Vernon think that age wasn’t a hindrance.... Like Rob Zombie’s Michael in the remake of “Halloween”, but more hideous in appearance. The face and body were lined with disgusting groove-like scars. Long gray hair, matted with black feathers, covered much of the dude’s form. At the moment his gaze was directed toward Vernon’s feet.
The figure slowly raised his eyes. The contemptuous glare alone almost loosened Vernon’s bowels. But what caused his steady arm and hand to shake noticeably was the color of the eyes. Yellow, cat-like in appearance, and luminescent with a faint orange fire behind them.
The man—or thing, as Vernon now assessed—grinned, seemingly amused by the ex-cop’s physical response, and briefly glanced at Vernon’s crotch as if expecting him to pee his pants. Enough to arouse Vernon’s machismo, it ignited his anger.
“Party’s over, motherfucker!” he seethed, gritting his teeth as he spit out the words. He steadied his arm and cocked the pistol to prove he meant business. In truth, quite ready to put a slug in the ugly mug of whoever hid behind the mask…it had to be a mask, as no way in hell does a merciful God make someone look this horrific.
The grin on the ghastly face faded, and it seemed that maybe he made the impression he sought upon this asshole, who not only had given him the willies but apparently also was responsible for his staff’s disintegration. The figure raised its hand toward the gun and into the flashlight’s glare. Much larger than his own hand, it bore long fingers unnaturally proportioned compared to what a normal hand would look like—or at least the hands of any human he’d ever seen, dead or alive, during the twenty-six years he served as a Knoxville cop. But most disturbing were the long dark fingernails curled tight at the tip of each digit.
Anticipating the uninvited intruder to Langston Hall was about to make a move to gain the upper hand on him, he decided to shoot first. His intent was to wound the fucker and then call 911 for an ambulance, along with a squad car from the Knoxville P.D. That seemed to be the safest alternative with this nutcase, and he feared the dude in the scary old man getup might be carrying a concealed weapon. The image of some insanely huge, sharp machete appeared in his mind. At the same time, the face grinned once more, and its creepy head nodded as if to confirm it somehow knew his thoughts.
That’s it. Time to put a hole in the motherfucker and see how funny he thought that was. Vernon started to pull the trigger.
The fingernails unfurled in the ensuing nanosecond, and before he drew his next breath his hand was cleanly severed from his wrist, still holding the cocked pistol as it fell to the ground. Blood gushed from his wrist and he screamed in terror, while his grinning assailant bathed himself in exquisite ecstasy, letting the crimson spray wash upon his face and torso.
Vernon’s shock held him frozen where he stood. He thought about stooping down to pick up the gun with his other hand, yet the thought remained in its infancy when the monster grabbed his bleeding wrist and shoved it into its unnaturally wide mouth. Gruesome crunching and sucking sounds followed, along with the sound of his own heart acting as a slave pump to the thing that he realized all too late was in no way human. A stream of images of what he’d lose filled his terrified mind. Would he ever see his grandchildren, Spencer and Megan, again in this life? ...Who will take care of Maggie? ...Someone has to make sure she gets her insulin shots on time each day, since she’s often too weak to administer them herself….
This last image gave enough strength to yank his arm back, freeing it from the fiend that let out a shriek of cackled laughter at him. Vernon saw in horror that his arm just below the elbow was missing, and the old man’s face looked somewhat different—still hideous but not so old. It grinned maliciously as it chewed on something and then spat part of it out of its mouth. When Vernon realized the spattered pinkish mush lying on the stairwell floor had been the twelve-inch section of his arm inside the thing’s mouth, he screamed. It provided a surge of adrenaline to get him back up the stairs. The image of his dear wife not surviving long without him gave him strength and urgency to try like hell to get out of there.
The fiend stealthily pursued him from behind, climbing each stair slowly, as if it had all night to get him. It made Vernon think again of Halloween’s Michael, and how he always found a way to catch up to his victims in the horror movies he made famous, plodding zombie-like but somehow able to cut his victims off before they reached a safe haven. Vernon prayed it wouldn’t be like that for him, but when he glanced behind him, the thing smiled knowingly in the dimness, its jagged sharp teeth stained with his blood. Its eyes glowed hot, and it winked at him. Like it wanted him to know it would catch him…that somehow before he made it to safety, he too was going to bite it just like in a horror movie, and bite it big time.
He found his legs once he neared the guard station. Less than thirty feet to the front door and his ticket to freedom… and the thing behind him was losing ground. He praised the Lord for that, especially since the row of fluorescent lights clearly revealed the monster’s complete horridness. Unbelievably strange and ugly, but also definitely real… very, very fucking real.
Almost to the door. Suddenly, the heavy breathing from earlier resumed. Vernon was wrong about one thing—actually a lot of things, but this one mistake seemed larger than the rest. The sound didn’t belong to the thing pursuing him from behind. It belonged to something else, and whatever that was now pursued him in earnest.
Two dark shadows appeared on either side of him, stretching across the walls. Like the unearthly creature behind him, the shadows had human shapes and other characteristics, like long hair with the same dark feathers clumped in their hair. These two phantoms also carried knives and coup sticks that appeared quite real, moving ahead of him j
ust as he reached the door. Desperately pushing on the door latch, he glanced long enough at one of the images to where he beheld its face that grimaced in anger. The features were definitely Native American except for the eyes. The eye sockets were empty. Soulless, and opening to a dark void that extended far beyond the confines of Langston Hall.
It all seemed like some terrible nightmare, except for the excruciating pain that resonated from just below his right elbow, along with the crimson trail the open wound left behind him. That was all too real, and he started to feel dizzy. If he could just open the door and tumble outside to safety….
The phantoms didn’t stop him, despite reaching the door before he did. Their essences began to dissipate as soon as he touched them. But the frightful sound of their chilling shrieks hindered him just enough to struggle with the door…how to open the damned thing with a pair of fucking Indian ghost faces screaming at you.
The latch finally did open, and he pushed through the door to the outside, where the crisp night air greeted him. He started to smile in relief on the porch—praising God that despite the loss of limb he would indeed see his grandkids and Maggie. He’d call 911 in just a moment, once he made it down the steps from the porch and put some distance between him and Langston Hall. But before he made it down the first step, two boney, powerful hands grabbed him by the ankles.
Without proper security staff on hand—including at the McClung Museum less than a hundred yards away, on a lonely Christmas night with no one around—Vernon’s shrill screams went unheard. Pulled back inside, the strange looking old man with yellow eyes and sharp jagged teeth dragged him all the way back to the shadows and then down into the basement. The thick steel door soon screeched shut, leaving only the smeared trail of blood from the wound where Vernon’s missing arm used to be. It was the first clue that told Frank Thomas he and his good buddy wouldn’t be sharing a few shots of peppermint Schnapps as previously planned.