by Strand, Jeff
(Example: There's one where Zep the Beetle is at the dentist, who is explaining the stages of tooth decay using wind-up chattery teeth. If you've seen the strip, you know that it's hilarious, right? But it's mostly about the way I drew the teeth, especially the one with the worm.)
"We should go do something else," said Erik. "We need to find some women."
"Holly won't like that," said Louie.
"So? I'm not gonna tell her." Erik looked at me, or at least in my general direction. "Are you gonna tell her?"
"I don't even know her."
"See? Let's go find some skanks."
Louie shook his head. "Holly doesn't like me spending time with skanks. She gets all upset and stuff. When she's upset, it's like, no fun. We should go bowling."
"I'm not drunk enough for bowling," said Erik. "We should play darts."
Louie's face lit up. "Oh! Oh! You know what we should do? I know what we should do!"
"What?"
"We should take him to see Blister!"
Erik grinned. "Yeah! That'll be great! Way better than bowling."
"What's Blister?" I asked. It didn't sound appealing.
Louie started to answer, but Erik waved a hand in his face. "No, no, no, don't tell him. Let it be a surprise."
"I'm not big on surprises from really drunk guys," I admitted.
"It's cool," Erik assured me. "You'll love it. I'll drive."
"Yeah, right. You're not driving anywhere," I told him.
"Sure I am." He called out to the bartender. "Hey, Doug, can I have my keys?"
"Hell no."
"Do you want to drive?" Erik asked me.
"You guys aren't puking in my car."
Erik shrugged. "I guess we'll walk. It's not too far."
And so I found myself walking along a dirt road in the moonlight with a pair of intoxicated hooligans fifteen years younger than me. I wasn't buzzed enough for this to seem like a good idea, but I had just enough alcohol in my system to go along with it with only moderate protest. Louie and Erik staggered ahead, singing various popular hits that would be forever ruined for me.
"How much further?" I asked, after we'd been walking for about half an hour.
"Not much," Louie said.
"Are you lying to me?"
Louie stopped walking and considered that. "I don't think so."
"We should head back."
"Are you scared?"
"I'm scared of our stupidity," I said. "There's no way you're taking me someplace I'd want to go if I hadn't been drinking."
"It'll be worth it. I promise."
We resumed our walk. I really hoped that Louie and Erik weren't leading me toward anything illegal. Somehow I didn't see Chuck being cheerful about the whole situation if I got arrested.
It took another hour for us to reach our destination, although that included a fifteen-minute detour for Erik to unsuccessfully try to prove that he could climb a tree without using his arms. Finally, we stood at the end of the driveway of a small brown house, mostly hidden by woods with no other homes in the vicinity.
It was sort of run-down, with no lawn and an old silver pickup truck parked in front. A rocking chair on the front porch was missing the left runner. The windows were dark.
On the far side of the house, maybe fifty feet away, there was a wooden shed, about the size of a one-car garage.
"C'mon," Louie whispered, tugging on my arm.
I didn't move. "Whose house is this?"
"It doesn't matter. Let's go see Blister."
"Okay, I'm going to have to be the responsible adult here. I won't be doing any trespassing tonight, sorry."
"Suit yourself." Louie headed toward the house. Erik followed him.
I stood there, watching them. This whole thing was a bad idea on every conceivable level. That's why I rarely drank—it made me do dumb shit like this.
My intoxicated buddies walked past the house, toward the shed. Louie turned back and gestured for me to join them, at which point my still-buzzed brain decided that despite my intense reservations, I was legitimately curious about the whole Blister thing. I hurried down the driveway, mentally cursing myself with each step.
The shed had a small window. A light was on inside.
"Does somebody actually live in there?" I asked.
Louie and Erik shushed me. We crept closer to the shed, moving with exaggerated (and clumsy) stealth. Erik caught the giggles for a moment, so we waited for him to get over it, and then proceeded forward.
"Look in the window," Louie whispered.
"Uh-uh."
"Do it."
Slowly, carefully, I walked over to the shed. The shed was actually in much nicer condition than the house itself. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked to have been recently painted. For some reason I found this kind of creepy. Perhaps the shed was in better shape because it was where the owner of the house stored his precious tools and victims. Perhaps he liked to spend leisurely evenings with a tied-up woman and a hacksaw. Perhaps he was in there right now, cackling softly and gently kissing her forehead as he very, very slowly pulled the saw back and forth.
I hoped that wasn't it. I only enjoyed phony decapitations.
There was a knot in my stomach and my mind kept saying "Get the hell out of here!" but I was only a few feet away, and a quick glimpse inside couldn't hurt. I'd satisfy my curiosity, get Louie and Erik off my back, and return to the cabin for some fishing. Maybe I'd try live bait instead of the metal lures. Yeah, that might work better.
I was scared.
I can't explain it. Obviously, there was the rational fear of getting caught—that made perfect sense. But there was another level of fear; the fear that what lurked inside that shed might not simply be a vision to amuse drunkards, but something awful.
My hands were sweaty and I wiped them off on my shirt.
I felt like a million eyes were watching me from within the woods. I wanted to turn and run away from the shed and the house as fast as I could.
But, no, I was right there, and I had to see. I was being silly. There were no killers or corpses in there.
I walked up to the side of the shed, then cautiously approached the window and peeked inside.
Somebody did live in there. I could see a neatly made bed in the corner, a small television, and an overflowing bookshelf. The wall was covered with pictures of owls, everything from crude drawings to photo-realistic paintings. The light came from an uncovered bulb dangling from the ceiling.
So the rickety old shed had been converted into a guesthouse. Still, what exactly was I supposed to see here? I was pretty sure it wasn't the owls.
Then with a sick feeling I realized what this must be about. No doubt the occupant of the shed liked to walk around naked. I was a frickin' peeping tom.
Oh, Chuck would love that. I could hear him shouting now: "You're not supposed to peek into people's windows after dark, you ridiculous idiot! I don't care how nice the breasts were!"
A face appeared.
I don't know how else to describe it except that it was...horrible. Burnt and scarred and, except for its long blonde hair, barely recognizable as human. A God-awful mess. A monster.
I jumped back in shock. "What the fuck is that..?"
The thing in the shed let out a soft sob and disappeared from the window.
I hurried away as Louie and Erik fell to their knees and howled with laughter. Once I made it back to the road, they stumbled after me, still laughing. I quickly walked back the way we came, hoping to get far enough from the house that I wouldn't be seen if somebody came out to investigate. Louie and Erik rushed to catch up with me.
"What was that thing?" I demanded.
"What thing?" Erik put a hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle.
"Seriously, don't screw with me. What was that? Was that Blister?"
"It sure was," said Louie.
"That was fucked up. Don't do that again." Furious, I stormed back in the direction of the bar, wishing desperat
ely that I could un-see that grotesque sight.
CHAPTER THREE
Despite not having been all that drunk, I woke up with a brain-crushing headache. At least I was in the appropriate bed and alone. I got up, took a four minute and fifty second shower, then got dressed and poured myself a glass of orange juice.
God, what a hideous face.
The best Louie and Erik could tell me was that Blister was "the town freak." Then they got distracted with butchering more perfectly good songs. We parted ways back at Doug's Booze Wasteland, where Doug called them a cab but I passed the Breathalyzer test he kept under the counter. I drove back to the cabin and went to bed.
My headache faded a bit as I kayaked on the lake, though the experience wasn't as relaxing this time. Maybe I just wasn't an outdoors kind of guy. Or maybe I should buy a container of nightcrawlers and do some more fishing. I'd promised Chuck that I'd lay low for at least a week, and I didn't want any blood vessels in his head to pop out and thrash around like cobras, so I decided to stick it out and get the worms.
I drove into "town" (which consisted of about six places of business) and went into the grocery store/tackle shop. I took a small plastic tub of worms out of a refrigerator that also contained a variety of carbonated beverages and brought it up to the front counter.
"Doing some fishing?" asked the cashier. He had a full white beard and looked about seventy.
"Yeah."
"Just making sure. You look like a worm-eater to me."
It took me a moment to realize that he was joking. I chuckled—usually I was one making jokes that people didn't get. "I gave that up earlier this year. Lost twelve pounds since then."
"Ah, I see. That explains it, then."
I paid for the tub and started to leave, then hesitated. "Hey, weird question for you. What do you know about Blister?"
His smile broadened, exposing a rotten tooth on the left side. "I'll bet you're not asking about the things you get on your hands and feet."
"Nope."
"Every town needs a spooky legend, don't you think? Blister's ours. Her father keeps her locked out back, never lets her out. I haven't seen her in years. She may even be dead. Be an act of mercy if she was."
"What happened to her?"
"Well, some folks say that her mother was a witch, and that on the night she was born—at the stroke of midnight—she ate her way out of her mother's womb. The child's skin was deformed, like she was filled with evil bubbling just under the surface, trying to rupture the flesh and spill out."
I just stared at him.
"That's horseshit, of course," he said with a laugh. "Hang out here long enough and you'll hear a dozen more versions of the Blister story. Truth is, she had a fight with her boyfriend. Nobody knows what caused it, but I think she was a bit too wholesome for him, if you know what I mean. He tied her down and went at her face with a straight razor and a blowtorch. Can you believe that? A blowtorch."
"Jesus."
"Yeah. He ruined her face, all right. I saw it once, and it made me just about sick to my stomach. I'd rather eat that tub of worms you bought than see it again."
The bell above the door rang as another customer entered. The cashier looked down at the counter, as if he'd been caught gossiping in class by the teacher. I thanked him and left.
So I was vacationing in a town where some nutcase kept his disfigured daughter locked up in a shed. And Chuck was pissed at my behavior.
But as I drove back to the cabin, I realized that I felt like...well, like a complete jerk. Not simply embarrassed because I'd acted like a drunken high school student, but ashamed of my cruel behavior. If the cashier's story was true—and admittedly, I had my doubts—then Blister had a pretty miserable life, and the last thing she needed was to have idiots like me peeking through her window saying, "What the fuck is that?"
Sure, it was pretty much all Louie and Erik's fault, but still...
I kept thinking about the sob she let out after I peeked in the window. What had it been? A sob of humiliation?
I needed to apologize.
Yep, just like the time I was twelve and I broke Mr. Scott's car window with a BB gun, I needed to suck it up, march over there, knock on the front door, and say that I was sorry. And I needed to do it now, before I convinced myself that it wasn't important and it became a small but ferocious bit of guilt gnawing away at me after I returned home.
Actually, there was something I needed to do at the cabin first. But immediately after that, I was going to drive back to the brown house in the woods with the shed and apologize to Blister.
* * *
A man sat on the front porch as I pulled into the driveway. He was seated in the broken rocking chair, smoking a cigarette. He stared at me suspiciously as I turned off the engine and got out of my car, a rolled-up sheet of paper tucked under my arm.
"Hi there," I said.
He nodded, but it wasn't in a friendly manner. "Hi."
I walked up onto the porch. The knot in my stomach from the previous night had returned with a vengeance. I assumed that this was the father, and I'd really hoped to avoid him. The situation was uncomfortable enough as it was.
The man was probably in his fifties, and had short but unkempt black hair. His jeans and white t-shirt were covered with grease and dirt—he'd probably just gotten off work. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his face had tough, sharp features.
"My name's Jason," I said.
He glared at me. "I've already got a church."
"No, that's not why I'm here. Look, I feel like a complete jackass being here, but there was an incident last night. Some friends and I had too much to drink and I let them talk me into looking inside the shed."
The man sat up. "You peeping at my daughter?" His angry tone concerned me a little, as if he might whip out a pocketknife and slam it into my face.
"No, nothing like that. I mean, sort of like that, but we weren't spying on her or anything. Just a quick glance. I didn't even know anybody was in there."
"Well, now you do. And now you can mind your own goddamn business."
"That's exactly what I plan to do," I said. "I'm only here so I can apologize. I really feel terrible about this. There's no excuse for it."
The man took a drag from his cigarette. "So apologize."
"I'm sorry."
"Good. Now you can go."
I stood there for a moment, feeling awkward. "I was actually here to apologize to your daughter, if that's okay."
"It's not okay."
"She deserves an apology."
"I'll pass on the message."
I sighed. I could hear the sound of Blister's sob, playing over and over in my mind. "Sir, I'm not trying to cause problems for anybody. I just think she deserves to hear 'I'm sorry' from the guy who behaved like a jerk last night, and I'd feel a lot better about myself if I could apologize in person. And I brought something for her."
He looked directly into my eyes, as if trying to discern my true intent. Then he shrugged, crushed the cigarette out onto the armrest of the rocking chair, and stood up. "I'll take you back there. You make it quick, and then I don't want to see you around here again."
"Thank you. Your name is...?"
"Malcolm."
"Thanks, Malcolm."
I felt a queasy sense of dread as we walked back to the shed. Why hadn't I just let him apologize on my behalf? All I'd done was peek in her window; it wasn't like I needed to drop to my knees and grovel for forgiveness. Maybe I should just say, "Actually, you're right, I shouldn't disturb your daughter any further" and head back to the cabin.
No. I needed to do the right thing. I'd failed to do the right thing many, many times during my life, but I was an adult and I wasn't going to weasel out of a simple apology.
Malcolm rapped on the shed door. "Rachel! I'm bringing in company! Get decent."
He waited for a moment, then pulled the door open. He walked inside and, after a brief hesitation, I followed him.
The s
hed smelled nice, as if somebody had been burning cinnamon-scented candles. It really was difficult to even justify calling it a shed from the inside. It was more like a very tiny house, maintained with more love and care than my own place.
Blister—Rachel—sat on her bed. She wore a faded pink nightgown and a light blue plastic mask. It had small slits for the eyes, rosy cheeks, and a too-wide smile. Very unnerving.
"Hi," I said.
She said nothing. I couldn't even be certain that she was looking at me.
I resumed speaking before the silence could become too uncomfortable. "I don't know if you recognize me. I'm the fool who peeked in your window last night."
Rachel gave an almost imperceptible nod. It almost looked like a doll that you're sure you only imagined moved its head.
"That was uncool beyond belief. I will never drink again. I just wanted to come by and say that I'm truly sorry, and I hope I didn't ruin your evening."
She remained silent. Her right hand was trembling, and she used it to smooth out her nightgown a bit.
Malcolm stood there, arms folded. "Are you done?"
"Almost." I pointed to the decorations on the wall. "I saw that you like owls. I'm actually an artist, a cartoonist. My work isn't as good as the ones you've already got, but I did this for you."
I unrolled the paper and held up the drawing I'd done of an owl. Though I wasn't that skilled at drawing birds I thought it had turned out pretty well.
She stood up so quickly that I flinched. Just a reflex, but I mentally kicked myself. Great. I was here to apologize, and I was acting like she was some horrific doll-creature coming at me to eat my flesh.
Rachel lowered her head a bit and slowly sat back down on the bed. I walked over to her, forcing myself not to move at a tentative, cautious pace, and handed her the drawing.
She took it from me and held it in front of her mask, looking at it closely. "Thank you," she said, in a soft, scared voice.