It was two weeks before Papa said I had to go to town. He was busy around the house and mama had been down with sickness for the last two days. It was hard going outside, and I dreaded the long walk into town, but at least it was a bright day and my route took me away from the swamp. The trip was uneventful, and I was actually feeling better by the time I made it back.
It was as I was about to climb the front steps that I heard a voice coming from under the house.
“Libby?”
I stopped mid-step, my pulse pounding. The voice was coarse and strange, but I still recognized it as Jesse’s. Feeling a thrill of happy relief, I sat down the bag I had and kneeled down to see better. “Jesse? Is that you?”
“Libby…? I’m so hot, Libby. So hot and so hungry…”
I could see dim outlines of a shadow shifting in the darkness under the house. I didn’t understand why she was under there, but maybe she had a fever and was out of her head. My first thought was to go get help, but when I went to stand, she called out to me again.
“Please…please don’t go. Help me. I hurt. My mouth hurts. I hurt all over and I’ve been alone so long.”
Crouching back down, I felt a warning buzz in the back of my head, but I told it to be quiet. This was my friend Jesse, who was likely terrified and half-starved to death. So I’d help her out from under the house and then get her someone once she saw I wasn’t leaving her.
Reaching my arms forward, I motioned for her to come closer. I didn’t like going under the house, and that dim bell of alarm kept sounding louder whenever I thought about moving forward. Still, she seemed to be coming closer. I could hear shuffling sounds in the dirt and the shadow seemed to be growing larger.
I couldn’t scream when she suddenly grabbed my ankles and started pulling me into the dark under the house. Landing on my back had knocked the air out of me. I had a moment where I felt like I was drowning, getting pulled down into some dark pit of quicksand, and then I managed to kick her off one of my feet as I finally let out a thin, gasping yell.
I retreated half a foot, but then she was pulling me back in, her hands like iron on my lower legs, and then my thighs as she drug me deeper into the shadowy belly of the house. I let out a more full-throated scream, but it turned into a shriek as I felt my right leg explode in pain. There was a moment where I felt like everything was kind of…collapsing in on itself…and then I was free.
Papa had heard me and pulled me free. A moment later, Mama, sick as she was, was joining him and they were pulling Jesse out from under the house. She yelled and thrashed, and I barely got a glimpse of her, but she didn’t look like Jesse any more. Not like Jesse much at all.
They locked her in the workshed behind the house and then carried me to the doctor in town. I was in the hospital for two weeks, and when I got back, there was only a pile of ashes where the workshed had been. I asked them what happened, but they would only say that it had been taken care of.
A few months passed. I couldn’t walk good without a leg brace now, and the wound never seemed to fully heal, but otherwise I was doing all right. Then I started to have the strange dreams. I’d be wandering the swamps, my fingers long and pale to the point of almost being able to see the moonlight through them as I wound my way between twisted trees of stark white. I’d be at the dinner table when my head would begin to throb. I’d close my eyes at the pain, only to open them at the clinking sounds I was hearing in front of me. It was bloody teeth, my bloody teeth, tumbling from my mouth onto the plate below.
As the dreams got worse, they carried me to the doctor. When that didn’t help, they carried me to the old woman who had delivered me and my mama before me. She was the one who told us about the candles and how they could stop the bad dreams. Stop anything else bad from happening.
And they worked. They always have. I’ve always slept well, had a full life with a wonderful husband and two sweet children, and now a sweet granddaughter. But that…well, that’s what happened to my leg.
****
Looking back, I’m amazed I wasn’t more horrified at everything she had just told me, particularly when I felt sure she was telling me the truth, at least as she believed it to be. Instead, I just took it all in and then asked a single question.
“Why did you stay here if all that happened to you?”
She gave an embarrassed smile and shrugged. “It just never felt right, you know? I tried going away one time, but after a month I started getting sick, even still using safety candles every night. I finally came back here, and by the next morning I was fine as paint. I don’t know if it’s because of my leg or not, but I don’t think I’m meant much for living anywhere else but here.” Just then she looked up as she heard my mother’s footsteps approaching. Giving me a sly wink, she whispered. “Let’s keep our little talk just between us, okay?”
I nodded, and in the twenty years since I’ve never talked about it to anyone.
But then six months ago my grandmother fell and broke her hip. She was in her nineties by then, and while we called her trip to the nursing home “rehab”, we all knew she wasn’t coming out again. Still, she was in good spirits over all, and once we briefed the night staff on her routine of having a candle lit at the door and window of her room, my grandmother seemed content.
I lived farther away by then, and it was three months before I made it back to see her. I had intended on arriving by mid-afternoon, but it was well after dark before I entered the nursing home and found my way to her room.
The room was dark and silent, the only sound the light noise of rain starting to hit the window outside as I stepped further in. Looking around, I fumbled for a light without success as I tried to distinguish the shadows in front of me by the dim ambient light of the hallway. There was the bed, but where was she? For that matter, where were her candles?
creak creak
I looked around at the noise. “Grandma? You here?”
Nothing. It wasn’t a large room, but it felt massive and oppressive in the dark, almost like I was back…
creak creak creak
The pain as she bit down on my neck felt like it was going to split me apart, and I would have collapsed then if not for her strong, long hands wrapped around my arms and holding me upright. I distantly heard a woman yell somewhere behind me, and then I was falling for what felt like a very long time.
When I awoke, three days had passed. My grandmother had apparently had “an episode” and attacked me before fleeing out into the stormy night. As of then, or now, she hasn’t been found.
I still am taking rounds of antibiotics and steroids, but the wound on my shoulder just doesn’t seem to want to heal. They say I can have plastic surgery after a few more months, but honestly, before last week the pain flare-ups were way more concerning than having a weird hole near my collarbone. The pain was crippling at first, and while medicine took the edge off, it wasn’t until last week that it began to fade out to something more manageable.
At the same time, the strange dreams began. At first I thought it was a new side effect of the meds, and then I thought it was just a precursor to the flu I seem to be getting. I've tried more medicine and rest, and even lighting candles at every door and window, but I keep getting worse.
When I looked in the mirror this morning, I barely recognized the woman looking back. Pale and gaunt, with thin, white lips that moved restlessly as I looked on in growing horror. There was something in my mouth, and as I opened wide, I half-expected to see a piece of the hard candy my grandmother loved resting on my tongue. But it wasn't.
It was two of my teeth.
Victorian Steampunk Cosplayer Cannibals Just Killed My Wife
I’m not an unreasonable man. I feel like I’m fairly tolerant of others’ odd behaviors and bizarre interests. Maybe I don’t stay on the cutting edge of pop culture, or fringe culture, or whatever other ‘cultures’ exist, but my motto has always been live and let live.
So when a new group started hanging out at the bar down th
e street, I noted it, but I didn’t mind. At first, I thought it was kind of funny if I’m being honest. Four grown people dressed up in elaborate suits and dresses, complete with hats and capes and all manner of old-fashioned frippery. Well, at least mostly old-fashioned. Because if you looked closer, you would see several strange glints of metal and glass that looked strangely anachronistic in the context of their get-ups. Or maybe anachronistic isn’t the right word, as that stuff didn’t look new either, but it didn’t fit what they were wearing.
Brass telescoping goggles. A glove made to mimic the appearance of a robot’s hand. A face mask that looked like a cross between a gas mask and something I would expect to find in Amsterdam. All very detailed and authentic-looking, if “authentic” is a term to be applied to such things, but ultimately still very silly. So when I passed them the first time sitting in the biergarten of the “fancy bar” on my street, I couldn’t help but let out a quiet chuckle.
Apparently it hadn’t been quiet enough.
Two of the leather and lace-trimmed quartet turned toward me, and as I turned away, I saw one of the women flick a bejeweled middle finger in my direction. Feeling a combination of irritation and embarrassment, I trundled on home to ask my wife what the fuck it was I had just encountered.
****
“Sounds like Victorian Steampunk, dear.”
I stared at Jessica with a kind of slack-jawed expectancy, feeling sure that there was some further explanation coming. That she hadn’t thought that those five words would impart any kind of real knowledge without further context. But then I could tell from her expression that she intended to leave me hanging, enjoying the scene of me dangling from my lonely branch of cultural ignorance.
“And what, my love, is Victorian Steampunk?”
She glanced back down at her cell phone as she made an attempt at looking distracted and slightly bemused. “Hmm. I think it’s kind of like cosplay or something?”
I felt a vein throb near my temple. She was enjoying this greatly. “I see. And what is costplay?”
I saw her suppressing a giggle as she looked back up at me. “Cosplay. You know, people dress up like superheroes and aliens and shit? You really don’t know about that? I’d think it’d be right up your alley.”
I gave her a dismissive sniff as I stepped into the kitchen to start fixing dinner. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t fill my head with garbage.” A light snicker from the other room. Shaking my head resignedly, I called to her. “What do you want me to fix you?”
There was a pause, and when she spoke, the mirth was out of her voice. “I don’t want anything. I’m not hungry.”
Letting out a quiet sigh, I went back into the living room and sat down on the sofa next to Jessica. “You know you have to keep your strength up. You need food.” She started to argue and I pressed a gentle finger to her lips. “You need to do as I ask for the next few days, all right?” Kissing my finger, she nodded.
“I’m sorry, I know you know what you’re doing. That you’re looking out for me. And I don’t mean to make fun when you don’t know stuff.”
I gave her a small smile and patted her leg. “It’s all right. I think I just feel insecure sometimes because you’re younger than me. Things like this just remind me and make me feel a bit old some times.” She leaned forward and kissed my lips.
“You’re not old. You’re perfect.” Her eyes were shining with love when she pulled back. “And I would love some spaghetti with marinara.”
Beaming at her, I kissed her forehead and stood up. “As you wish.” I turned to head back into the kitchen when she called to me again.
“Can I take this off tonight?” She patted the padded chain around her waist. It was anchored to the floor at two different spots by steel eyelets run through with a fabric-wrapped chain that connected to the band that bound her. I’d made sure everything was quiet and soft so it wouldn’t chafe, but I still hated seeing her like that.
“Not tonight, my love, but soon.”
****
Two nights later, the four had become eight. The new members weren’t as elaborately costumed as the first, but they still stood out starkly from the rest of the patrons. I tried to avoid their attention as I passed by, but I could feel their gaze on me nonetheless. I could hear one of them whispering to the others “that’s the guy”.
I had a strong urge to stop and confront them then and there, but to what end? Was it a crime to be slightly rude or to whisper about a passerby? It was better to avoid any confrontation at all, particularly with everything already on my mind. I heard a few more sniggering remarks as I went further toward home, but by the time I saw Jessica, I had already forgotten them.
It was the following Monday when the problems truly began, or at least my understanding that there was a genuine problem. These ne’er-do-wells, their ranks now swollen to eleven, blocked my path home. Asked me to come join them, and when I refused, pretended to take offence. Said I was “stuck-up” and thought I was better than them. Holding on to my self-restraint as tightly as I was able, I was resolved to just push through their blockade until one of them spoke again. She was a young girl, likely no more than twenty, but it was clear she was in charge. She called the others away, and like obedient ducklings, they crowded back behind her. Tipping her small black bowler at me, she raised a thick, filigreed monocle to her eye as she spoke.
“Be seeing you.”
****
They murdered Jessica the following afternoon. I knew what had happened as soon as I awoke in my shadowed chamber, and when I found her, I nearly lost my mind. They had savaged her body and wrapped her chain tightly around her neck. They had bitten, and apparently eaten, chunks of her flesh. I allowed myself only a few moments of blind rage and sorrow, as time was a luxury I did not have. I would have to act quickly if I were to set things right again.
It only took a couple of phone calls to learn where I could find the sociopaths that murdered my love. Once I knew where to find them, most of them anyway, I debated the best way of handling them. The most direct and efficient way lacked any real imagination or flair, and ultimately, adding a little color to the proceedings would not add much time while providing the benefit of additional anonymity.
So I went to the plague chest.
****
During the Plague, doctors such as myself wore various contraptions to provide some measure of protection as we traversed the dead and attempted to heal the dying. Looking back on it now, both modern medicine and my own experiences make the garb of “the plague doctor” slightly tragic and humorous, but I still remember the peace of mind it afforded me to have that dark, heavy cloak and thick, almost raven-like mask between me and a world that had grown so hostile with madness and death.
It didn’t protect me from the bubonic plague, of course. I caught it and ultimately died, though it was but a temporary state thanks to the tender mercies of Pina and her sister. They accomplished what I had failed to do in twenty years of work—thwart death. Or perhaps the better phrase, the more correct idea, would be that they struck a bargain with death. For my resurrection came at the cost of others’ lives. As Pina always reminded me, everything must be paid for.
Pulling the plague doctor mask on, I faded out into the night.
****
“Fuck, stop okay. Just fucking stop!”
I had found a group of seven of them, clustered up in a dark corner of a club across town. My sources had told me the murderers liked to make the rounds, and this was one of their frequent stops during the week. The man who was screaming was one of two survivors, though that title would be, like so many things, brief and fleeting. I had already gotten close enough to smell him, to know what he did and didn’t do. I had already gotten close enough to the girl, the leader, to know that she led in butchery and cruelty as well.
To her credit, she didn’t cry or beg, even when I ripped the head off the last of her compatriots. I could hear her heart hammering, but the only external noise sh
e had made the entire time was when I first appeared in their dark corner of the club and began killing them without word or explanation. It was the sound of surprised confusion—perhaps at my arrival or perhaps at the fact that no one else in the club seemed to notice or care. I offered no explanation and she asked for none, but then I reached for her and she stabbed me in the arm.
She was very quick, but not nearly quick enough. I could have avoided the blow, but I wanted her to see her best efforts fail. I needed her to feel desperate and trapped as I snatched her up and spirited her away from the tattered remains of her strange gang. When she saw me pull the knife from my arm casually and toss it aside, I was happy to see rage and terror dancing in her eyes. And before you think less of me, please understand that my desire for her to be afraid was not merely petty retribution on my part, though I must admit it played a role.
It would also make her blood and flesh potent for my sweet Jessica.
****
When the girl stood at the edge of our bed, my hand at the back of her neck, she looked down at my wife’s ruined corpse and began to laugh. I could sense the evil and insanity radiating off of her, and it took considerable will to not crush her neck to powder. But no. She was the one most responsible for sending Jessica to death before we were ready, and she would be the most apt offering to get her back. I just prayed that it was enough.
The first sign that it was working was the sound of the killer’s manic laughter changing. She sounded like an engine slowly dying as the tattered flesh and broken bones before her began to stir at her presence. The offering had been accepted after all.
Shoving the girl forward, I slit her neck just enough to start things flowing before easing her down into my wife’s embrace. The murderess tried to struggle and flail as her faded laughter was replaced by a high-pitched wail that might have been meant as begging for mercy. Such a foolish concept, and particularly futile once my love wrapped her arms tightly around the girl and began to feed.
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