“Hello, this is room 410,” I said. “I was wondering if you were having any reports of problems with the phones?”
“None that I’m aware of sir.” She was courteous and seemed honest, even though I didn’t receive the answer I desired. “Are you having trouble with your phone?”
“Just a moment ago I tried to make an in-house call, but couldn’t get through.”
“Would you like me to try the connection for you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Room 412 please.” It sounded strange coming from my tongue.
“Hold on.” I heard a shuffling of papers and then a moment of silence. The phone rang through the wall from 412, nearly startling me. It tolled six or seven times, then stopped. “Sir, there’s no answer on that line.”
I shuddered, orange soda gurgling in my throat. “Are you sure?” At this point I really didn’t know what else to say and was probably sounding a bit crazy. After all, it was the middle of the night. I thanked her and depressed the receiver. I then let it up and dialed into 412 again.
The phone rang. I heard it ring in 412 too.
It picked up on the first ring. Silence.
“Hello?” I said.
Waves of static. In the background: thump...thump...thump...
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
Within the storm of whiteness I heard the voice, now repetitive, like a scratchy record skipping on a Victrola:
help me...help me...help me...
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I was in a panic and could barely control the shudders rippling through my body. Blood sped in my veins at break-neck velocity, and I knew at this moment that I wouldn't find sleep tonight.
“Can you hear me?” I was yelling now and could have sworn I heard my voice echoing back to me from beyond the wall, as if traveling full-circle from the phone in 412.
A strong wind swept across the window, vibrating the sliding doors in their tracks. The thumpings grew louder. The static blared in the phone, a violent storm. The voice in the phone screamed. I could hear her. A woman, in distress.
Why can’t I hear her through the wall?
I had to do something. I smashed the phone down, picked up my keycard and ran from the room. The door slammed shut behind me, leaving me basked in silence. Eerie, foreboding silence.
And there I stood in front of room 412, gazing groggily at the peep-hole, its pinpoint of light staring back at me, empty and devoid of life. My mind swam in crazy circles, and I made great attempts to understand what it was in God’s name that had me assuming such abnormality in an otherwise unimpressive situation. Easily an individual under normal frame of mind could explain the night’s events with conventional rationalizations. The thumping, a pipe in need of repair. Or perhaps a laboring air-conditioning unit efforting to release its flow. And the phone, crossed lines, a stray satellite signal.
So does my refusal to accept such standard explanations predicate a grounds for insanity? Perhaps, but my feelings are passionate, and I stand determined. I had no choice but to know for sure the very rationale to such intrusion into my life, my life that up until mere hours ago had been completely normal and carefree. My life that now gave promise to madness.
I knocked on the door.
No answer.
I don’t know why, but I tried my keycard, as if compelled by unseen forces. I came to the realization at this very moment that most if not all of my curious actions tonight had been prompted by something strangely mysterious, almost supernatural.
The key fit into the slot. The tiny light on the lock changed from red to green.
I pushed the door open.
And here I beheld the source of the thumping against the wall.
The room was cool, the windows having been left open, its curtains billowing in the night’s stormy winds. The bed had been moved to the center of the room.
A female body hung lifeless from three exposed pipes in the ceiling above where the bed had been. The head was twisted in an impossible angle, eyes bulging from their sockets, tongue swelled and protruding from the lips like a slab of meat. The woman’s skin looked soft and pulpy, bearing a milky tone that reminded me of a fish’s belly.
The body swayed in the breeze entering through the open window, its weight thumping every few moments against the naked wall.
It was horrible, the sight of the body and the deadened strike of it against the wall, so dreadful to experience. And yet, so remarkably secondary to what I noticed next. I could only gasp and cover my mouth as the emotion of fear as I knew it took on a whole new perspective. Suddenly I was suffering a terror at a level previously unfathomable, to near-death perhaps, and I virtually fainted at the truth of what was.
She had used the phone cord to hang herself. It was strung over the pipes, wrapped expertly around her neck, the handset twisted madly in its knots in a position so that the mouthpiece gently touched her swollen blue lips. I gazed away only to see the abandoned connection in the wall where the phone line had once derived its signal.
Paralyzed, I waited in silence, staring at the empty phone cradle sitting on the nightstand in room 412, listening to the thumping of the cold body against the wall.
And I listened still for her pleas for help, pleas that I soon realized were echoes from a life so desperately seeking help. A life where not a single living soul had been around to hear them. Until it was too late.
Slugfest
“Coming down pretty hard now,” Shirley said.
I nodded in agreement, mindfully watching the sheets of rain pounding the windows. Rivulets trickled down, melting the beams from the headlights creeping along the interstate. The Quik-Mart sign out front flickered on and off and swayed in the torrid wind like a Thanksgiving Day float. I hadn’t seen a storm this fierce since the last twister came through about three years ago.
The weather had been treacherous for most of the night, and it still showed no signs of letting up. I got to work late, the ten minute drive nearly taking me half an hour. I’d put myself on the night shift--eight to four AM--and had just finished up my second cup of coffee. Not a soul came in since I arrived almost two hours ago and I was thinking of having a beer to help pass the time along.
“Forecast’s calling for rain all night,” I replied, repeating what I just heard on the radio. A crash of thunder sounded, rattling the windows. Lightning lit up the gas pumps out front. I watched as the rain battered my ‘82 Buick, heavy drops splattering the hood like bursting kernels of popcorn. I wondered if it would be worth staying open for the remainder of the night--it seemed doubtful that anyone would come in at this point. I’d only seen a few trucks pass on the interstate in the last half hour.
Shirley poured herself another cup of coffee then put up a fresh pot. I decided to have a beer and grabbed one from the cooler.
“Hey Shirl, I’m thinking of closing up early. What’dya say if no one comes in by midnight, we skeddadle?” I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty.
Shirley smiled. And it was perfect too. She hadn’t the greatest looks in the world, but she could light up a room with those perfect teeth and dimples of hers. She’d put in three years for me here, and damn if she wasn’t the best employee I’d ever had. Countless losers had come and gone, but not Shirley. Even when things weren’t going well for me and Mary, Shirley spent hours talking to me, putting reason back into my life. It hurt to know that I’d lose her someday. I only hoped it would be for the right reason, that she would meet a great man, someone that would take care of her like I knew I could if given the chance. If Mary hadn’t been around, it would have been Shirley.
“We ought to wait for things to let up a bit,” she said.
A gale whipped the windows, nearly shaking the building. The ceiling lights flickered. The Quik-Mart sign outside swayed like a tree. Cheerlessly, I nodded in agreement, doubting however that things would ”let up” anytime soon.
She opened a package of cupcakes and gave me one. As we ate, I listened to the radio, reports of the storm.
The noise of the rain slashing the roof and pavement damn near sounded as if the building would blow away any moment, maybe end up in Oz.
“You okay?” I asked, washing down the cupcake with a mouthful of beer.
She nodded, but looked scared. Hell, so was I. The storm--it felt powerful, and I wondered if we would both be trapped here forever. Crazy as it sounded, I wouldn’t have minded being stranded someplace the rest of my life with Shirley, even if it had to be inside my store. As long as I wouldn’t have to explain it all to Mary.
A pair of headlights suddenly appeared in the parking lot.
I hadn’t seen anyone approach until the door swung open and Sheriff Allan Kane pressed in. He’d been soaked to the skin, and I wondered if it’d just been the short scurry from his cruiser that had him so wet. He spun and pushed the door shut as needles of rain forced their way in, prickling my skin even from the safe distance I stood at. He turned and removed his sheriff’s hat, which had a plastic shower-cap shell covering it. Wiping his forehead, he said, “Nasty. Damn nasty weather.”
“Hello Allan,” I said. “Nice night for a cruise, eh?”
Sheriff Kane had a grand reputation in our little town, where the worst crimes to be dealt with consisted mostly of bar fights and domestic squabbles. He had a knack to set calm to even the unruliest of situations by simply stepping into a room. The truth of the matter was that no one wanted to spend the night in the local pokey, where there would be no eats or comfortable sleeping for twenty-four hours. And if your tiff was bad enough that Allan Kane had to be called in, then it was worth backing off, as Allan was quick to send you to the lock-up.
“I was on my way home, had to pull off.” He poured himself a cup of coffee from the fresh pot Shirley put up. “Couldn’t see a lick.”
“Any cars on the road?” Shirley asked.
“Hi Shirley,” he said, smiling. Allan always feigned a thing for Shirley. Rumor had it that he was gay. He’d never been married, and once you reached a certain age around these parts without a serious prospect, then people started talking. Personally, I felt that the sheep had more to worry about than the women, but that’s another thing altogether.
“Car went off the interstate about an hour ago. Since then, nothing but wind and rain.”
“Everyone’s playing it smart. Could be a tornado coming through.” I walked to the window and looked out. Allan’s cruiser sat next to my Buick. Both cars were getting reamed by the downfall. I noticed a few hailstones bouncing off the hood.
Then, from out of nowhere, a man appeared at the window.
I startled at the unexpected sight, not from the impetuousness of his appearance, but at the horrible condition he seemed to be in. My first thoughts were to shrug off his apparent state of distress as a weather-induced mirage, a distortion of the pane’s watery runoff, but then he bounded in, confirming my initial glimpse: his suffering was as real as the beer was cold in my hand.
It appeared he’d spent some time outside in this crazy weather, his clothing drenched to sodden rags. His shirt had been torn at the collar and the skin on his face ran beet-red, a series of pock-like abrasions marring his left cheek.
“Hey Shirl, we got a fresh pot up?” I knew she’d just put the coffee maker into action, but I wanted to create a flavor of awareness, in case the stranger had some funny stuff up his sleeve. Suddenly, I felt grateful that Allan was here.
“You bet,” she yelled over the din of the radio. A Garth Brooks song had come on.
I saw Allan place his coffee-free hand on his gun. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d fired the thing, if he ever had. I guess it was just self-reassurance, that he was the big man in town.
“Hey fella, you awright?” he asked. He took a step toward the guy, placing his coffee down on the counter. I placed my beer next to his cup.
The man stopped and gazed at us. At once the anxiety I felt from the imposing storm took a back seat. The guy was in bad shape, his entire face having suffered those smallish wounds I first noticed on his left cheek. His eyes carried a blackness deeper than onyx, and I could’ve sworn at the moment they’d been witness to something staggering. He seemed to stare right through us.
“You hear me fella?” Allan raised his voice, cold and inquisitive. “What’s happened to you?”
The man tried to speak, lips tremoring but unable to release any words. A few unintelligible murmurs eventually slithered out, then he pitched forward in an odd manner, as if kept by an unseen force, looking strangely like a jerking crash-test dummy in those slow-motion films. He collided with the gum and mints display, and it proved no viable support for his hands to grasp onto, promptly crashing down alongside him as he fell, splaying its candies all over the floor in a shower of flavors.
Allan and I ran over, pulling the metal grid away and sliding it down the nearest aisle. The man started convulsing, arms and legs jutting straight out and trembling as if running a charge of voltage. His eyes turned up into their sockets, revealing bloodshot whites. His chest had been exposed through his torn shirt and I saw a series of pustules there, not unlike those riddling his face.
Kneeling down, Allan holstered his gun and pulled the radio from his belt. He played with it for a moment, then pulled it away from his mouth. His sullen face had me concerned.
“What? What is it?”
“The storm. There’s too much interference. I can’t get through.”
Shirley went behind the counter and picked up the phone. Her anxious finger on the receiver told the same story. The storm had cut off all hope of communication with the outside world, for now.
The man started hyperventilating, thick painful wheezes frothing from his lungs. I ran a nervous hand through my hair. I didn’t know what the hell to do. I looked at Shirley and she just leaned over the counter staring helplessly. Injured--hell, he could’ve had some nutty disease, a strange case of the flu, maybe something worse. I had images of being quarantined inside the Quik-Mart for the rest of my life. Somehow this wasn’t how I originally envisioned being stranded with Shirley.
It seemed Allan hadn’t had much training in first aid either. His fingers searched the air, then he clambered up and pulled an asthmatic inhaler from the counter. He opened the packaging and tried to pry it into the man’s mouth, but his teeth had clenched shut.
Then, I noticed something weird.
His pant leg had accordioned up like the stripped peel of an apple, exposing the milky white of his calf. The skin here had also undergone similar distress, riddled with open sores. I saw, nestled between two open sores on the side of his calf, a dark spotted slug. It slithered on the erupting skin, furling in and about itself, fleshy, wet and glistening, four inches long and showing two rubbery horns atop a lumpy head.
“Allan?” I managed.
The Sheriff tossed the inhaler aside and looked at the man’s leg. “Ugh--”
But that’s all I heard him say because at that moment every semblance of noise in the place--Allan’s voice, the radio, the man’s sickly wheezing--had at once been drowned out by a sudden torrent of hailstones pelting the roof, the windows, the cars outside. Everywhere, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, over and over, a great percussive storm beating out its rhythms in a symphony of chaos that pulverized every sound preceding it.
“What the hell...?” Shirley yelled, quickly pacing around the counter and sidling up next to me. I thought to myself that it had taken all this unanticipated fear and disarray to finally get her to seek solace in my company. I reveled in the moment of comfort I provided, then took to the windows alongside Allan to check out the storm.
“Don’t let your eyes deceive you, my boy,” Allan said mournfully. I fought a strip of confusion in his statement, then followed his boomeranging gaze beyond the window, saw, and understood.
The hailstones, they weren’t bouncing on impact like most chunks of heavenly ice might. No, these babies went splat on the surface. They then duly uncurled into elongated, gelatinous strips and writhed about in manic tw
ists and turns.
It was hailing slugs.
“What is it?” Shirley shouted, then stepped back from my side, fingers clawing at her reddened cheeks. I tried to offer her a comforting look, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the wicked phenomena outside. Neither could Allan. Remarkably the Sheriff had held his composure, and I could tell from the sweat beading on his brow that he was having a hell of a time trying to come up with an answer to the mess of questions rolling around in all our heads.
The slugs fell in a fury, whacking the roof and damn near covering the two cars out front. It had grown black outside and the size and consistency of the falling slugs increased, critters the size of golf balls slapping the concrete and twisting open into six-inch ribbons of wriggling, slimy meat.
Shirley let out a screech and I twisted to see her staggering back, shaking her right leg as if she stepped in dog crud. She almost toppled backwards but the counter caught her, supporting her weight. A small display of caramels spilled to the floor, along with my can of beer and Allan’s cup of coffee. For a brief moment I wondered what was wrong but then I saw her peering downwards, hands shaking wildly, grin clenched in taut disgust. She kept on kicking her leg, and when I looked at it I almost fainted. A slug of considerable length and width was coiled around her ankle, twisting and slithering up her leg. It quickly disappeared beneath her pants.
“John, it hurts! Do something! Please!” I’d never heard her yell and scream like that and it pained me greatly to see her suffering. She needed help, even if it was just a slug.
But just a slug it wasn’t. I’d gotten to my knees and slid her pant leg up to her thigh. “Jesus,” was all I could mutter as I gasped at the sight of them. Two nasty critters way up Shirley’s leg, the first at her calf, the other just below the knee. With two fingers I plucked the one from her knee; it made a suctiony sound as it came free. Shirley screamed as I tossed it toward the front door.
Demons, Freaks & Other Abnormalities Page 12