Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2

by Gary A Braunbeck

  When I first came here, I was immediately taken aback by the wholesomeness of the place. It reminded me of old black-and-white TV shows from the fifties and sixties, where everyone smiled with their perfect teeth and nothing was ever out of alignment. I was just a traveler passing through, but I wound up never leaving the Town. One bite of Aunt Sarah’s peach cobbler at the Main Street Diner and who would leave? (Everyone calls her Aunt Sarah, although, to the best of my knowledge, she’s no one’s aunt. Similarly, we refer to the guy who owns the gas station as Uncle Paul and the twin brothers who run the coffee shop over on Benedict Avenue simply as the Cousins. It’s as if we’re all related here in Town: one big happy family.)

  I was once a traveler passing through, as I’ve said, but now I occupy one of the perfect whitewashed houses on Summer Street. My yard is always tidy—Johnny Goodkind comes around every Saturday in the summer to mow it—and my porch is always swept clean. In the springtime, sparrows build nests in the carriage lights that bookend my front door, and their birdsong wakes me up in the morning. I keep my shiny red eco-friendly automobile in my garage and wash it every Sunday afternoon, building the wax to a deep shine. I hang a new pine-scented air freshener from the rearview mirror with regularity.

  The shops downtown are of the mom-and-pop variety, and none rises higher than two stories. It is a town ordinance or something. The shop owners are friendly and wave to you as you stroll by. Huxley Burgess, the proprietor of Dandy Candy, has been known to distribute lollipops to any kid who happens by the front of his store, free of charge and with a beaming smile on his face. Diane Wilcox, who runs the used bookstore in town, is always prepared to hand you a perfect hardbound novel as you stroll by her place of business, the bookstore’s door open, the air conditioner cooling the sidewalk. She’ll hand you a new book on the morning after you’ve finished reading the old one, as if she’s telepathic and knows exactly what you need.

  Everyone in Town knows exactly what you need.

  There is a Memorial at the center of Town, though it does not memorialize any war or honor any particular political figure, at least as far as I (or anyone else) can tell. If you come upon it from the west side of Town, it appears differently than if you approach it from the east, although these are visuals you are safe only to glimpse in the periphery of your vision, even from a great distance. While the townsfolk (of which I am one, now that I am a permanent resident) take great pride in the Memorial, and clean the grounds that surround it on a daily basis, no one talks about the Memorial. Everyone smiles as they pick up the stray paper cups from the grass or (carefully) scrub bird droppings from the Memorial itself, but no one talks about it. No one looks directly at it.

  I play cards every Wednesday night with a group of guys from my street. We take turns hosting, although I never host, since I’m the only guy without a wife. The wives make meals while we play, really just little snacks, and they fix us drinks. If we played at my house, we’d have no woman to do such things, which would be unacceptable. I don’t mind; it’s nice to get out of the house.

  One evening, while playing cards at Joe North’s place, my next-door neighbor, Bobby Truss, leaned back in his chair and said, “Welp, it’s cancer.”

  We all stared at him for several heartbeats, not knowing what to say. Ultimately, it was Joe North’s wife who broke the silence.

  “You’re still a good-looking man,” she said, placing a hand on Bobby Truss’s shoulder. “You’ve got a nice head of hair and hardly any crow’s feet at the corners of your eyes.”

  Bobby Truss smiled up at her, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. We could all see the strain behind his eyes, the weakening of him. Crow’s feet or not.

  “I don’t understand,” said Joe North. “You wash your car every Sunday. You’re at the card games every Wednesday night.”

  Bobby Truss executed a partial shrug of one shoulder and looked miserable.

  “Okay, then,” said Michael Ulrich.

  So we took Bobby Truss Beneath and, two weeks later, his cancer was gone. He spent the following three days seated cross-legged in the grass in front of the Memorial (only with his back to the Memorial) where, in the daytime, he watched children fly kites in the park and where, at night, he pulled a blanket around his shoulders and shivered. Once, I brought him a hot cup of coffee to keep him warm, but I didn’t stay to talk to him—hardly looked at him, to be honest—and I hightailed it home before it was too late.

  You’ve got to know your place in Town. And keep to it.

  A woman named Shelly Montrose once forgot her place—or maybe she didn’t forget but just refused to follow the rules—and she went out after curfew. She was drunk—or so we surmised, based on her giddy cackling and slurred speech, plus the empty liquor bottles we found the next day in her house—and she went up and down Summer Street banging on doors in the middle of the night, calling her neighbors (myself included) all variety of horrible names. No one answered their doors and we all pretended not to hear her. I buried my head beneath my pillow, and despite the quaking of my body and the chill that suddenly engulfed me, I feigned sleep. Yet I didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

  In the morning, Shelly Montrose no longer existed. The front door to her house was left ajar, and there were empty bourbon bottles on the kitchen counter. The TV was on, but the only thing on the screen was a screenshot of the Memorial, which no one wanted to look at for more than a quick glance. (Mark Smith found the remote buried beneath a couch cushion and managed to turn the TV off before it was too late.) At the end of Summer Street, where Summer meets Freedom, a large, black, charred asterisk was imprinted in the pavement, and bits of the pavement itself had been smashed at the asterisk’s center. It was as if a bolt of lightning had rained down from the sky the night before. A fuzzy bunny bedroom slipper was discovered nearby, the pink fur powdered in black ash. There was some blood on it, too.

  We placed the slipper on the pedestal of the Memorial that afternoon, and by evening, just like Shelly herself, it was gone.

  One random Saturday, a pickup baseball game was held in the park. Eric Lambert hit a home run, and as the players and onlookers cheered, the ball sailed high over the park and was momentarily blotted out by the glare of the sun. It came down near the far end of the park and made a solid tonk! sound as it collided with the Memorial then bounced several yards in the grass. The cheering ceased instantly and many of the onlookers quickly turned away and busied themselves with other matters. The batter, Eric Lambert, stood motionless at home plate, the bat still clutched in both hands. The expression on his face was one of disbelief that slowly morphed into pure terror. He began babbling apologizes, but everyone knew it was too late.

  The kids came and took the bat from him. Then they led him across the park until they all stood before the Memorial, though everyone was careful not to look directly at the Memorial. Eric Lambert nodded his head once, dropped to his knees in the grass, and began to weep silently.

  The kids took turns striking him with the bat. They struck his back, his shoulders, his neck, his head. He fell to the ground and stopped moving soon after. The kids continued to beat him until his clothes and hair turned bloody and his limbs turned purple and began to swell.

  When they were done, the kids took him Beneath. Three days later, Eric Lambert returned. He looked just fine, and he was even excited about playing baseball again. We were all excited for him because he was an exceptional baseball player.

  Another boy, whose name I’ve forgotten, was also brought Beneath that same day. He’d made the mistake of watching the ball strike the Memorial, only to have his eyes linger on the Memorial itself for a second too long. He was brought Beneath with Eric Lambert but he never returned. No one expected him to.

  Look, it really is a beautiful Town. Sunny and warm. Pleasant. We’ve got our problems like anyone else—the occasional power outages or the bird droppings falling on your freshly washed car or SUV—but we really can’t complain. Who would complain?

  It�
��s my turn to clean the Memorial. I have to look at it while I work, but I do so with one eye closed, and stare at focused sections of the Memorial, one piece at a time, like examining individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle instead of the whole thing all at once. I have to be careful to clean it in sections and move on quickly. Some folks have let their hands linger, only to lose those hands soon after. Those are things that cannot be fixed by bringing them Beneath. Those are, in truth, punishments. You cannot let your hands linger.

  You cannot look at the Memorial.

  You cannot indulge.

  You cannot question.

  Below each of our homes is a basement, culled straight out of natural earth, and it is recommended—though it is not a rule—that you limit the amount of time you spend down there. Anyway, there really is no reason to go down there at all. But sometimes that happens. And when it happens, you’ll find yourself in a dirt-walled cavern, where there is no electricity or even a solid floor beneath your feet. (You’ll have to carry a candle or flashlight to see anything at all.) It’s just a black hole in the earth. And in the center of that hole is another, smaller hole—a hole within a hole—and rising straight up from that hole is a thick cable of flesh, pinkish-white but also powder burned (much like Shelly Montrose’s discarded bunny slipper), that reaches straight up through space and clings to the exposed floorboards that comprise the basement’s ceiling, which also comprise the floorboards of the rooms of your house above. Where the fleshy cable meets the exposed boards, it splays out into a network of smaller tentacles, much like the complex root system of a tree, and these tentacles traverse the floorboards, splitting into smaller and smaller networks of tentacles, some so thin and fine they are like the hairs on your head. Each one seems to pulse as if with a heartbeat or respiration. Each one is warm to the touch… although it is not recommended that you touch them. (I’ve touched them only once, and the palm of my hand itched and burned for several days thereafter, ultimately erupting in tiny weeping pustules and sores that took a full six months to heal. And even after they healed, my palm has remained an unsightly, ashy gray.)

  The small tentacles climb up between the wooden boards and spread throughout our houses. They are in the walls, under the floors, behind the stairs. They grow and spread with a sense of consciousness, twining around the foundations of our homes and all the other buildings of the Town. They are part of what exists Beneath, part of what holds dominion over our Town, and we are blessed to have them. I feel they are somehow related to the Memorial in the park, although I have never looked closely enough at the Memorial to understand why I believe this.

  Who built the Memorial?

  That is a question you should not ask. No one knows, anyway. At least, I don’t think anyone knows. It’s not something we talk about. We just wash our cars and bake apple pies and play cards on Wednesday nights. We get whatever we need from the Town and the Town gets whatever it needs from us. It’s a beautiful symbiotic dance, and we’re all happy to take part.

  For now.

  Because sometimes I wonder just where I came from and how I got here. I was a traveler, a passerby, someone on his way from Point A to Point B, only to get waylaid in this quaint little place. I drive a shiny red eco-friendly car, but that is not the car I drove when I first came into the Town. Whatever happened to my first car? Where, exactly, was Point A? Where is Point B? Is there someone waiting for me there? Do they miss me? Have I blinked out of one existence only to fill some void in another?

  But these are dangerous questions, and certainly not questions I would ever ask aloud. I smile and wash my car. I turn the TV off at exactly eleven every night—you can see everyone’s TVs click off simultaneously if you happen to glance out the window at the precise time every night, a choreographed darkening of Summer Street and beyond—and I close my eyes and wish for sleep even if I’m not tired. When Meghan Smith gets the flu, we take her Beneath and she is repaired. When David Wallace accidentally smashes his thumb with a hammer, we take him Beneath and he is fixed. When Charlie West, drunk on Irish coffee and stumbling from the Main Street Diner, accidentally rides his bike into the marble base surrounding the Memorial, we gather about him and beat him until he can no longer move or make a sound. Then we carry him Beneath and, days later, he returns, sober and good as new. And when, two weeks later, old Charlie, drunk again, stands in the park staring up at the Memorial, pointing some accusatory finger, tears streaming down his swollen, ruddy face, and suddenly starts screaming and sobbing and cursing, dropping to his knees, but also still staring at the Memorial, well, we all gather around old Charlie and grab his arms, his legs.

  “An inscription!” Charlie screams, struggling to free his limbs. But there are too many of us and our grips are tight. “There’s an inscription on the base! I’ve read it! I’ve read it!”

  Those who are not holding onto Charlie quickly cover their ears with their hands. But those of us who are too busy clutching at Charlie West, holding onto his arms and wrists and ankles and cradling his neck in a headlock as we wrestle him away from the Memorial, we cannot shut out the sound of his voice, so we also hear the word that is inscribed at the base of the Memorial as he screams it.

  Charlie screams. And we hear it.

  We hear it.

  Blessedly, someone covers his mouth.

  His struggling increases… and then he grows still. Maybe he is too tired, too restrained. Or maybe he’s just defeated. I’m tired myself, perspiring and feeling the strain in my muscles. And even though Charlie West has gone silent, my ears cannot stop hearing the word he screamed. The inscription.

  We take him Beneath, and this time, Charlie West never returns.

  But you wash your car and smile at your neighbors and do not ask questions about Point A and Point B and what happened to your car, your real car, and you try not to cry yourself to sleep at night, and everything is fine. Just fine.

  Who can complain?

  It’s a beautiful town.

  About the Authors

  Laird Barron

  Born in Alaska, Barron raised huskies and worked in the construction and fishing industries for much of his youth. He moved to the Pacific Northwest during the mid-1990s and dedicated himself to writing. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence, was published in 2007, followed by three more collections and a pair of novels.

  Barron’s stories often contain elements of literary crime, horror, and noir. Cormac McCarthy, Robert B. Parker, Angela Carter, and Martin Cruz Smith are among his favorite authors and significant literary influences.

  Currently, Barron lives in the Rondout Valley and is at work on tales about the evil that men do.

  Max Booth III

  Max Booth III is the Editor-in-Chief of Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and the Managing Editor of Dark Moon Digest. He is the author of five novels, including The Nightly Disease, and the editor of six anthologies. He writes columns online for LitReactor and Gamut. Raised in Northern Indiana, he now works as a hotel night auditor somewhere in Texas. Follow him on Twitter @GiveMeYourTeeth and visit him at www.TalesFromTheBooth.com.

  Gary A. Braunbeck

  Gary A. Braunbeck is the 7-time Bram Stoker Award®-winning writer of To Each Their Darkness, Destinations Unknown, as well as several books in the acclaimed Cedar Hill Series. His work has received the International Horror Guild Award and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

  James Chambers

  James Chambers writes tales of horror, crime, fantasy, and science fiction. He is the author of The Engines of Sacrifice, a collection of four Lovecraftian-inspired novellas published by Dark Regions Press which Publisher’s Weekly described in a starred-review as “… chillingly evocative….” He is also the author of the short fiction collections Resurrection House (Dark Regions Press) and The Midnight Hour: Saint Lawn Hill and Other Tales, in collaboration with illustrator Jason Whitley, as well as the dark, urban fantasy novella, Three Chords of Chaos and The Dead Bear Witness and Tea
rs of Blood, volumes one and two in his Corpse Fauna novella series.

  His short stories have been published in the anthologies The Avenger: Roaring Heart of the Crucible, Chiral Mad 2, Dark Furies, The Dead Walk, Deep Cuts, The Domino Lady: Sex as a Weapon, Dragon’s Lure, Fantastic Futures 13, The Green Hornet Chronicles, Hardboiled Cthulhu, In An Iron Cage, Kolchak the Night Stalker: Passages of the Macabre, Shadows Over Main Street Volume 1, The Spider: Extreme Prejudice, Qualia Nous, Reel Dark, Truth or Dare, TV Gods, Walrus Tales, Warfear, and the Bad-Ass Faeries and Defending the Future series as well as the magazines Bare Bone, Cthulhu Sex, and Allen K’s Inhuman.

  He has also edited and written numerous comic books including Leonard Nimoy’s Primortals, the critically acclaimed “The Revenant” in Shadow House, the Midnight Hour for Negative Burn, and the original graphic novel Kolchak, the Night Stalker: The Poe Crimes.

  Erinn L. Kemper

  Erinn L. Kemper grew up in an isolated mill town in coastal British Columbia, Canada. From there she moved to the city to study Philosophy at the University of Victoria. Over the years she’s worked as an eye glasses repair person, fish farmer, cabinet maker, parks department laborer, small museum staff, book store clerk, home nurse, teacher—and lived in a camper in Japan, and on a forty foot wooden sailboat. She now lives in a small town in Costa Rica on the Caribbean Sea where she plans to write her second novel from her hammock, at least until happy hour.