by Carver Pike
Only the Midnight Man was there. That’s what I thought he was then. Now I know he was a demon taking the form of what I imagined him to be. The demon lifted me up off my feet and held me up high where I pissed my pants. Warm urine ran down my legs and pooled on the floor at its feet.
The room was dark but I believe even in light the demon’s face would have been black, ashen, horrid. It hissed and sniffed, pointing its face down at my crotch. It sniffed again. Something bumped against my leg and slid up to my stomach. Its tail snaked up my body and stopped at my chest.
“Ahhhh,” I said barely above a whisper.
I couldn’t yell anymore. My voice was stuck in my throat. I could only tremble and shit myself. I lost all control of my body in its presence. That’s how powerful it was. How horrific it was.
My chest hurt. My heart beat much faster than any heart ever should.
The demon suddenly yanked me closer, pulling my face an inch away from him. Its tongue dashed out and nipped my earlobe. It laughed a deep, coarse chuckle into my ear. Then it said words that would be forever engrained in my mind. They were words Mrs. Rebecca used to calm my nerves. Words meant to help with speech impediments. They were words she used in bed to relax nervous young boys.
The demon breathed in first and it sounded like it had moisture in its lungs.
“We all fall down,” it whispered into my ear.
Then it threw me through the air. My body collided with the kitchen counter where Mrs. Rebecca had placed two pumpkin pies to cool. In piss and shit filled pants, I slammed down onto the pies and tumbled over and onto the hard floor. That’s where I remained, covered in my own feces, urine, and pumpkin pie mush.
Going back to the circle of salt would be of no use. I’d already been visited by the Midnight Man. So there I lay, curled up in a ball on the kitchen floor, where I sobbed in a mixture of fear and relief. James was the only one to come for me. He showed up at my side, shaking my arm, asking if I was okay.
The others thought I’d faked it. Nikki swore I’d scooted backward into the darkness of the kitchen. She was convinced I was pranking them. Maybe if I’d told them everything that had happened they might have believed me. Instead, I kept it a secret. I was scared they’d think I was crazy or they’d be afraid of me. So I kept it all inside.
I spent most of the next day alone, thinking about what had happened the night before. I began to doubt myself. I knew what I’d experienced was real, but a part of me wondered if I was actually crazy. Had I imagined the whole thing? Was it all in my head?
The next night I met Samuel for the first time, and that was when I realized it was all too real. After that first visit, he never stopped visiting. I’d stayed awake out of fear, remembering the dark demon from the night before in the kitchen. Pure exhaustion eventually pulled me under and that’s when I saw him.
In my nightmare, I walked a dirt path shrouded in mist. Gravestones stuck up out of the muddy soil to both sides of me. The names on them meant nothing to me. I’d never heard of any of them. Not at that time. Later, I’d remember them and understand the road I’d eventually travel, but in this nightmare, they meant nothing.
Lightning lit up the sky overhead and as I looked up, I saw palm tree leaves blocking the moon in slits, revealing new slivers of light every few steps I took. Thunder crashed a few seconds after each bolt blazed across the dark sky. Then I realized the lightning was shooting down at angles, closing in on something, narrowing as it neared the earth.
Over the cracking of the lightning and rumbling of the thunder, a familiar tune played softly in the background, sounding like it was being sung by a group of schoolchildren.
Ring around the rosy. Pocket full of posies. Ashes…ashes. We all fall down.
The world grew cold. Wind kicked up and brought with it an arctic blast. Goosebumps rose on my arms.
Ring around the rosy. Pocket full of posies. Ashes…ashes. We all fall down.
The mist cleared away in front of me and I saw him. He was a young boy, younger than me, maybe ten or eleven. He wore a blue t-shirt and black slacks. His bare feet were dirty. His face was filthy too and his hair was cut strange. His bangs were straight across and hung just above the bridge of his nose, nearly blocking his eyes. It was as if someone had put a bowl over his head and cut his hair all the way around it. His nose was long and his face was bony like he’d never quite gotten enough to eat.
None of that was as important as where he stood.
He was crucified. His wrists and ankles were nailed to a cross but he didn’t look concerned. Then the lightning struck him. It shot across the sky, cut down, and smashed into the wooden plank behind his head, exploding in a shower of sparks. His head remained undamaged.
“LOOK AT ME,” he said. “DON’T TURN YOUR EYES AWAY, YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”
Ring around the rosy. Pocket full of posies. Ashes…ashes. We all fall down.
I’d stopped walking but suddenly I moved forward. No, I didn’t move forward but the world seemed to move past me. Without moving my feet, I was frozen there in front of him, maybe ten feet from where he hung on the cross. And the kids kept singing. The lightning kept crashing.
Ring around the rosy. Pocket full of posies. Ashes…ashes. We all fall down.
“BLOOD WILL RUN!” he yelled. “KILL THEM ALL! KILL THEM, YOU MOTHERFUCKER! KILL THEM OR YOU WILL DIE YOURSELF!”
“Kill them all,” voices whispered.
A deep voice like a burly man, the fragile voice of an old woman, the happy voice of a mother, the strange voice of a child. Demons whispered to me from all over, from side to side and from top to bottom. They were everywhere.
My eyes opened and I was in bed but I wasn’t alone. There, surrounding my bed, was a half-circle of demons. Each had grotesque features too horrible to explain. Horns and vomit and snot and blood and jagged teeth and broken noses and wounds gushing blood…three demons stood around my bed taunting me. A foggy grey light emitted from somewhere behind them. All I could do was stare back at them and cry. The more I cried the more they taunted.
Over the years, I’ve come up with nicknames for each of these demons. Hag was an old lady with pale skin that always looked damp. Her grin was too wide for her face and she had no teeth, but rotten gums in their place. She wheezed a lot when she talked. She wore a barbed wire wreath atop her head, with rotted teeth and bits of bone and dried flesh hanging from it. The points digging into her skin once caused blood to drip down her cheeks, but it had long since dried and remained there to this day. With her demented crown of sorts, she looked almost like a queen. A grotesque and super horny queen.
Rotten was a male demon with a bald head, or mostly bald. A few strands of bloody hair dangled down from his head in sporadic places. The skin on both sides of his face looked to have been raked off, and when he spoke, what was left of it stretched out over bloody cheek muscles beneath.
Putrid was what I called the third demon. His face and head were covered with sores that always leaked puss. His nose had been lobbed off and the brittle cartilage that remained looked cracked and tender. His teeth were long and sharp, jagged, and he loved to chomp them down hard incredibly close to my face when he spoke. He got off on threatening me.
Then, of course, there was Samuel. The young crucified boy on the cross was the evilest of them all. He loved to yell at me and call me names. He came to me every night in my dreams and no amount of screaming or begging or praying would make him leave me alone. He was my personal curse. They all were actually.
That first night I saw them surrounding my bed was the night my mind shattered and split. The night I became like two different people. By day I was the sweet brother who seemed nearly simple in his good-naturedness. By night I became something else. Full of fear and hate and tormented by demons, I took my terror out on others. And I was good at it.
Chapter 2 – Kevin
“Well ain’t you a looker?” came a sweet voice mixed with the slur of one too many tequila shots.
My instincts told me not to look back at her. She didn’t belong to me. I didn’t have a girlfriend at the time, but even if I did, it wouldn’t be her. Barflies make great bedmates but not loyal partners. This one was drunk at midafternoon so she was probably even less dependable than most. Ignoring my instincts, I glanced over my shoulder and past her toward the front door, hoping I’d see Ivory. He’d only stepped out to use the phone. Of course this was before his stint in prison, before he got his nickname, so back then he was just James.
If we’d been at Red’s, our usual hangout, I wouldn’t have felt so uneasy, but this was some roadside joint, more of a trucker hangout than a biker bar. Ivory had convinced me to go with him on a drive to San Diego to meet a guy who was selling tattoo machines and other equipment we could use. After a long life of not knowing what we wanted, we’d finally found a common interest. We were both damn good artists. Things were going great. This was our chance to practice before opening our own shop. I remember that ride home because we were both so happy. We were together, we had a trunk full of supplies, and we both knew what we wanted. We’d depend on each other and make a life of our own.
Everything was perfect until Ivory wanted to stop for burgers and beer. Well, he wanted a burger. I wanted pumpkin pie but bars don’t usually carry fresh-baked treats, so I ordered chicken fingers with honey mustard sauce.
A beautiful blonde woman took the place of where I’d hoped to see Ivory. She stood behind me, twirling her hair around one finger, her brightly painted pink lips too close for comfort. She evidently didn’t understand the need for personal space because she was all up in mine. She reminded me of someone I used to know growing up. Except this girl’s nose was slightly pushed up in an adorable way.
“I…I…I’m wa…waiting for my br…brother,” I told her.
My fucking stutter did nothing to help my image. If she’d been attracted to me seconds before, surely she lost interest as soon as my declaration bumble fucked its way out of my mouth. If that were the case, she didn’t make it known.
She must really want a free drink.
“Well, handsome, maybe I can keep you company ‘til that brother of yours returns,” she said.
“Y…y…you remind me of s..s…someone,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” she asked. “Buy me a beer then?”
And there it is.
I hadn’t sat down expecting to buy a lady a beer but she was so beautiful and she had a pretty smile and I could afford an extra drink.
“You stutter,” she said as she waited for the bartender to bring her the beer.
“I d…do,” I replied.
“That’s cute,” she said.
She turned on her stool and my eyes were drawn to her breasts. Ivory would use a word like tits but that word always seemed disrespectful to me and I didn’t want to ever be disrespectful to a woman. I wondered if she actually found me attractive. She seemed to, but women are great actresses when they’re thirsty.
I know I’m not a bad looking guy. At least that’s what I’ve been told. I have a strong jaw and a pleasant smile. I wear a fedora at all times. It’s kind of my thing. I started wearing one right after high school, when I finally realized I was adult enough to keep my face covered if that’s what I really wanted. My hat allowed me to keep myself hidden whenever I wanted to. I’d grown up with a terrible stutter and a low self-esteem, so being able to hide myself was important. Most of the rest of my body hides too, behind a mask of tattoos. Colorful ink stains my body and I love every piece of my artwork.
“Real cute,” came a deeper voice over my shoulder.
I looked back to see a big guy wearing a backwards baseball cap and a faded T-shirt with some sort of workplace logo on it. An unlit cigarette dangled between his lips.
“So cute I almost can’t stand it,” he said. “Bill, can you stand it? Raymond, you?”
I didn’t need to look back again to know two of his buddies were with him. They each muttered something I couldn’t hear over the loud jukebox rock.
“Get out of here, Betty,” the first guy said.
Betty. I didn’t know they really made girls named Betty. That always seemed reserved for comic books or TV sitcoms. I can’t remember ever meeting a Betty.
“I’m sorry,” she said as she got up and ran away.
“Greg, he likes talking to your girl,” either Bill or Raymond said.
“You like talking to my girl?” Greg asked.
“I’m only wa…wa…waiting for m…my chicken f…f…fingers,” I told him.
“Ma…ma…f…fangers,” Greg said slowly in his thick southern accent, making fun of me, but also fitting his stereotype perfectly which was kind of making fun of himself in the process.
He reminded me of a kid from grade school. Matthew Donahue. I’d never forget the boy’s name because he made me cry in bed at night no less than five times. He was a bully and I never got the chance to right that wrong. It wasn’t until I changed schools that I finally got away from him. This time, in this bar, no changing locations was going to get me out of this. I tried. I started to stand up when Greg’s heavy paw pushed my shoulder down, putting me back in my seat.
I’ve always had a problem with blacking out when my anger gets the best of me. So the details are still a bit fuzzy but I do remember that this Greg guy kept his hand on my shoulder. With his other hand, he hit me hard on the jaw. My mouth throbbed. Then he was yelling out again, this time all joking aside, “Ma…ma…f…fangers!”
Screaming it in pain was more like it. Next thing I knew, I was standing over all three men. I’d stabbed one in the ribs with a broken beer bottle. Blood was all over the place. Greg’s hand was shattered and I’d smashed his jaw. The third guy’s head was cracked open from a chair I’d swung at his face. Ivory ran through the front door, saw the damage, and pulled me out of the bar.
In the car, Ivory went off on me. He doesn’t do that often, but sometimes he has to set me straight. He’s the only person I don’t get mad at when he yells.
“What the fuck, Kev!” he yelled. “You can’t be doing that kind of shit. You can’t hurt people like that.”
“I…I…bl…blacked out,” I said. “I d…don’t ra…remember nothing.”
“Of course you don’t, dammit!” he yelled. “You hurt those guys real bad back there. You might’ve killed the guy you stabbed with the fucking bottle.”
The sound of a police siren barreling down the highway toward us brought a look of panic to Ivory’s face. Ivory never lost his cool. That was one of the best things about him. He was ridiculously good looking, so much that women seemed to shed their clothes almost on sight. Most of the time he had a rugged, unshaven look about him. Not quite a beard, but it looked as if his face was always threatening to grow one. His hair was short, his eyes were warm, and like me, he had quite the tapestry of tattoos covering his body. And he was always so fucking cool.
When the siren blared from behind us on the highway, it was the first time in a long time that I saw a look of dread on his face. The light in his eyes dwindled a bit. At first he stepped on the gas and I thought he might try to outrun the cop, but then he came to his senses and slowed down. He shouted commands at me.
“Oh shit. Kev, don’t say a fucking word. You understand? The cops are gonna stop us. Let me do the talking. Just let me…I don’t know. Don’t say anything.”
The look of desperation on his face is one that still haunts me to this day. I didn’t really think it was that serious. I’d gotten in fights before. I’d blacked out before and hurt people and I’d never gotten in any real trouble. But Ivory’s face as he slowed the car down and stopped on the side of the road was one of worry and defeat. I think he knew how things would turn out. I did what he said and kept my mouth shut only because I thought he’d be able to get us out of the mess I’d gotten us into. He did get me out of it, but he did it by putting the blame on himself.
He told them he’d been the one at the bar when the fight started and that
I’d been in the bathroom the whole time. My brother loved me. He always had and this was the ultimate sacrifice. He told me later that he knew he could handle some time in prison but that I’d get hurt too badly. I was too simple. Not his words, mine.
I know what people think about me. I know I can be slow at times and I don’t always say what I want to because of my fucking stutter, but I’m strong too. I could handle the time in jail, but I honestly don’t think Ivory was concerned about my ability to handle the time. I think he was worried about my ability to control my temper. Blacking out in anger inside could lead to more time added to my sentence. With Ivory, he’d be more likely to control himself.
What kind of older brother lets his younger brother pay for his crime? You’re a loser, Kevin. You’re a piece of shit. You’re not worthy of a brother like Ivory. You’re not worthy of his sacrifice.
Sacrifice. So much sacrifice in my life.
My childhood was sacrificed because my parents didn’t feel the need to take care of my brother and me. My love for Mrs. Rebecca was sacrificed because my brother didn’t believe the relationship was pure and thought he needed to fix the situation. Then Ivory made a great sacrifice for me when he took the heat for me and was sent to prison.
Seeing him go was the hardest part. The fractured part of my mind, the part that makes me make stupid mistakes, the part of me that doesn’t understand right from wrong sometimes, that part didn’t expect him to be gone so long. I went back to our apartment and watched some TV. I laughed at an old rerun of Cheers and then fried some bologna in a pan and ate it with some reheated macaroni and cheese. I never did get my chicken fingers with honey mustard. I wondered if the cops fed my brother.
Every noise in the hallway made me think Ivory would come strolling through the front door. He didn’t. It took two days for me to look deeper into the situation and to find out how serious things really were. Ivory wasn’t coming home. I visited him in prison once a week. Nothing I could think of would make things any better. Once when I visited and saw him with a black eye, he told me not to come visit him for a while. He told me he needed some alone time. He said he’d send me a letter when he was ready to see me again. That hurt a lot.