Ugly Little Things

by Todd Keisling

  “Yeah,” Felix said. He stepped back a few feet and lifted the suitcase from the bed, extending the handle so he could pull it along its wheels. “Say, did housekeeping come around while I was gone?”

  “Housekeeping?” Jerry seemed puzzled, his eyes huge like an owl behind those thick goggles. “No, sir. This time of year we don’t keep no housekeepers on staff. Too slow for that. Why, there somethin’ wrong?”

  “No,” Felix sighed, shaking his head. “Some of my things were moved around. Maybe it’s just my imagination. It’s been a long day.”

  “Say, maybe Noah lit into your room while you was gone. I keep tellin’ him not to do that, but he won’t listen to me none.”

  In another time, Felix might have laughed at the old man, taking his comment as a lighthearted joke. Tonight, however, he found the thought of that pale, dark-eyed thing sifting through his clothes not only terrifying but repulsive. His mind flashed back to the mound of bodies inside the church, prompting his guts to roll and tumble once again.

  “You sure you ain’t okay, Mr. Proust? Yer lookin’ awfully peaked.”

  Felix forced his smile as he shuffled out of the room and closed the door behind him. “I’m just tired, Jerry. Here’s your key. I’m going to go put this in my car and then I’ll be right back to pay you.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Proust.”

  Jerry followed him as far as the front office before disappearing inside. Felix took a breath and rolled his suitcase over to his rental car. Keep calm, he kept telling himself. Act casual. Nothing is wrong. He was so caught up in the act of behaving normally that he didn’t notice the subtle chime coming from the inside of the car. He was too wrapped up in his own thoughts, walking himself through what was bound to be an incredibly awkward conversation with the state police. Yes, officer, you heard me correctly. There’s a pile of dead children inside the local church. How did I know to look? The town drunk told me so. This was after he told me about the strange idol they found down in the mine back in the 1970s. Oh, and did I mention I’m a recovering alcoholic?

  He closed the trunk and paused. The chime finally caught his attention. He’d left the keys in the ignition, expecting his departure to be swift. Perhaps he hadn’t closed his door all the way? He walked around to the driver’s side and tugged at the handle. The door didn’t budge.

  A cold spike tickled the back of his neck, working its way all the way down to the small of his back. The car’s dome light was on, illuminating the interior, casting a dim sheen across the shreds of wrapping paper in the front seat. The gift for his imaginary daughter lay on its side, the top popped open and the bright red wrapping paper torn to pieces.

  A series of images came rushing back to him, flashing from the dolls in the gift shop to the dolls back in Meyer’s Diner and Henry’s red, swollen eyes. He remembered the children eating with their parents and the way that little girl had stared at him with cold, unflinching hatred. He thought of the dead children in the church. Pieces of the puzzle were beginning to form in his mind, completing an image of impossible, soul-crushing horror.

  Now he understood. Now, watching as the scattered bits of wrapping paper trembled in the soft evening breeze, Felix realized with unsettling clarity just what Henry had been trying to tell him.

  He needed to try Larry again. Larry would know what to do. He always did. He’d helped Felix find his way to AA, and now he could help save him from this demonic town. He reached for his phone—and his heart sank.

  His phone wasn’t in his pocket. It was back in his room, sitting on the nightstand.

  “Shit.”

  He trudged back toward the building, the tension in his neck and shoulders building with every passing moment. He glanced through the window of the front office, expecting to see Jerry waiting for him at the counter, but the old fellow wasn’t there. Good, he thought. He was beyond polite conversation now, and he imagined himself throwing a wad of money on the counter before hopping into his car and speeding all the way back to the highway.

  Felix turned the corner and froze. A short, blonde girl in a blue polka-dotted dress stood against the door to his room, her hands held up over her eyes, pouting quietly in the corner of the jamb. Bits of wrapping paper clung to her hair. He held his breath, waiting for the doll to move. A slow ache slipped behind his forehead, pulsing to the beat of his trembling heart. He exhaled slowly, keeping his eyes locked on the back of the doll’s head while he tip-toed closer toward the door.

  The figure didn’t move, and the rational part of his mind chided him, screaming for him to just open the damn door, get the phone, and get the fuck out of town. He waited another beat and the doll didn’t move. Finally, he rolled his eyes, reached over the little figure, and opened the door.

  The blonde doll tipped forward, falling face-first onto the brown shag carpet. Felix let out a short laugh, more from relief than surprise, and stepped over the doll.

  Two things happened in short succession when he crossed the threshold and retrieved his phone. The first was a noise coming from within the small coat closet adjacent to the bathroom. At first, Felix didn’t notice the sound, nor did he recognize what it was. Between the persistent ache hammering away in his head and his preoccupation with finding his phone, his senses were overloaded to the point of numbness. He didn’t realize until it was too late that the noise was, in fact, the stifled laughter of a young boy.

  The second was his phone ringing, startling him so badly that he dropped the device. It fell onto the floor, its bright screen facing up and displaying an incoming call from LARRY MALONE. Felix bent to retrieve it, and that’s when the closet door swung open.

  Noah smiled at him, his plastic brow loosening somehow, wrinkling like a piece of flesh. His coal-black eyes almost shimmered in the yellow lamplight. A series of loose stitches held his mouth in place, and a dark brown liquid seeped through the mesh, dribbling down his chin.

  The smell spurred Felix to move. Until that stench hit his nostrils, he was lost in those black eyes, his knees glued to the floor by the dread hardening his veins. The stink of pig shit—and the sight of the foul liquid dribbling out of the boy’s mouth—fired his nerves into overdrive. He snatched up the phone and shot to his feet.

  Noah giggled, but the sound that came from his tiny frame wasn’t the voice of a child; it was the shrill squeal of swine, underscored by a guttural roar that made Felix’s arms tingle with gooseflesh.

  “Outsider,” a voice growled, but it wasn’t the boy who spoke. A sharp pain stabbed into the back of Felix’s calf, forcing him to cry out, swinging his leg forward. The girl with the blue polka-dotted dress fell forward, rolled over, and laughed at him. He teetered backward, working to put as much space between himself and those infernal creatures as possible.

  Noah had other plans, however. He vaulted onto the bed, ran three steps, and launched himself at Felix. The plastic child’s fingers had separated from their singular mold, flaring outward like claws. They pierced Felix’s shirt and sank into his flesh.

  Adrenaline dulled his senses, barring the immediate shock of pain. Felix reached up, gripped the back of Noah’s shirt, and yanked him away, sending a trail of blood splattering across the bed. More of that dark, viscous liquid dribbled from the boy’s mouth as Felix held him in the air, his stomach tumbling from the agonizing stench filling the room.

  “No wonder everything smells,” he said, watching with a sick sort of wonder as the doll-child kicked and scrambled to free itself from his grasp. “You’re all full of pig shit.”

  He looked over at the little girl climbing up the edge of the bed and laughed at how absurd this all was. Talking dolls, he thought. Angry, shit-spewing dolls with claws. Absurd though it was, his present situation hadn’t improved. He still needed to get the hell out of there, and despite the adrenaline rush, he found that he was trembling.

  “Outsider,” Noah growled. He took a swipe at Felix’s face, slashing the tip of his captor’s nose. The sting made Felix’s eyes water.r />
  “I think I’ve had just about enough of you,” Felix snarled. He squeezed Noah’s neck, slammed him to the floor, and brought the heel of his foot down on the back of the doll’s head. There was a low cracking sound, followed by a heavy squish. The sides of the doll’s head exploded outward as Felix’s loafer sank into a mess of hair, wrinkled plastic, and pig shit. He caught a whiff of the excrement and fought a rising urge to vomit.

  Felix lifted his foot from Noah’s remains and reeled backward. He braced himself against the door frame, gasping for fresh air in a moment of respite from the insanity.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he muttered, shooting a sideways glance at the girl in the polka-dotted dress. She stood at the edge of the bed, peering down at her ruined accomplice. Felix wasn’t about to stick around and ask her what she thought of the mess.

  He slid along the wall, put one foot through the doorway, and was about to make a hasty exit for his car when a wooden baseball bat collided with his temple. Stars exploded with brilliant color before his eyes as the impact sent him reeling. The cell phone flew from his hands and met the pavement with a sharp crack.

  Felix saw the world through a watery filter for a few seconds before his legs gave out and everything went dark. Jerry stood over him, lifting the cracked Louisville Slugger over his shoulder. He looked down at Felix and spat.

  “That’s for tryin’ to leave without payin’.”

  ***

  “I can’t do this anymore, Felix. I won’t be badgered and I won’t be bullied. It’s over.”

  Helen’s shrill voice rose from nowhere, echoing off the chambers of his empty mind. Felix opened his eyes and watched as a series of low, gray clouds floated by. A sign reading DALTON DOLLWORKS trailed after them, followed by a group of streetlights glowing yellow phosphorous across a black sea of emptiness.

  He was floating on his back, bobbing along with the dark waves. A door slammed from somewhere far away, the sound carrying across the sea with a heavy wind.

  “Helen, open the door.”

  His own voice sounded strange to him. He was distant, arrogant, unsullied by the burden of that shoulder-riding baboon called Alcoholism. More streetlights trailed, followed by another sign reading DALTON PIG FARMS: THIS EXIT.

  “No, Felix. It’s always about what you want. Goddammit, I don’t want what you want.”

  The night sky swirled with a jumble of fractured images, and through them he saw himself aged ten years younger, heartbroken and alone, diving into a brown bottle for the first time. He saw those long nights of depression and remorse racing by in an agonizing montage.

  He saw Helen standing in the doorway of their bedroom, arms crossed at her chest, her chin quivering and her eyes barely holding back tears that would most surely come when they were ready. This isn’t right, he thought. This happened before.

  And it had. She’d come home early in a huff, frantically tearing through the drawers in their apartment bathroom, muttering things to herself like “It has to be here” and “Where did I put them?” What she was looking for was long gone, however, and Felix knew this because he’d found the pills that morning on the nightstand. They weren’t just any pills, either; they were Pills. He didn’t have anything against contraception, but he did have something against his wife lying to him.

  “I flushed them.”

  The look on her face told him it was over even before she said it herself. She’d never wanted children—and still didn’t, for all he knew—and he should’ve known better when, after trying for years to convince her otherwise, she finally acquiesced. He should’ve known better when their months of trying to conceive bore no fruit.

  “When you were out of town last year, I went to a clinic and had an abortion.”

  Was she just saying that to hurt him? Or was there some truth in her words? She glared at him, measuring his reaction, and he found he could do nothing but step back and sit down on the bed. Oh, how he’d wanted to strangle her then, but the mixture of confusion, heartache, and betrayal racing through him at that moment prevented him from doing anything.

  “I used to think you’d grow out of it,” she said, “but I knew in my heart you never would. It’s your eyes, Felix. The way your eyes light up whenever you see a baby on the street, the way there’s always a spring in your step, I knew you’d never back down from being a father. And maybe you will—but not easily, and not with me. I can’t—I won’t do it to myself.”

  Floating there, watching his younger self be torn apart by Helen’s cold words, Felix returned to something he’d known ever since he went dry just a few years back: It just wasn’t meant to be. Sure, he’d fought that axiom, going as far as the bottom of a bottle to escape it, but in the end, the epiphany remained waiting for him, steadfast in its resolve.

  Overhead, the stars blossomed into the pallid faces of Dalton’s youth, peering down at him with mesh mouths and coal-black eyes while the squeals of swine filled the air. He was transfixed by the sight, unable to move while the black waters lapped against his bloated face, and when the pale, clawed hands rose from the waves to claim him, he offered no resistance.

  Felix sank back into murk, dragged down to the bottom once more by the hands of unborn children.

  ***

  Something wet pressed against his cheek. Felix waited for the fog in his head to clear before opening his eyes, only to find he was staring into the mud-covered snout of a pig. The creature shrank back, startled by his cry of surprise, squealing as it scrambled over to a short wooden fence.

  His head throbbed, and warm blood trickled down his right temple from the wound. A series of snorts and squeals rose from behind, calling to mind an image of a street sign he’d seen in his dream, except now that he thought about it, he supposed he hadn’t been entirely unconscious. He could’ve done without seeing Helen’s cold face once again, though. He could always do without that.

  Felix turned and realized he was staring up at the dusty rafters of a tall ceiling. Bare yellow bulbs hung along the center beam, casting a dim glow over the room. When he tried to move he found that neither his arms nor legs would cooperate. He craned his neck to get a better look and winced when something dry and coarse dug into his throat. Pulling on his arms or legs made the cord tighter. Of course they would hog-tie me, he thought.

  He relaxed his head and rested against a mound of muddy hay. The musty smell made his nostrils itch. He closed his eyes, wondering how the hell he was going to get out of this mess.

  A large brown hog with a pale spot on its side wandered over to the fence and stuck its snout between the slats. Felix opened his eyes and stared at the beast, grimacing at the stink of its breath and the frothy spittle dribbling from its open snout.

  “Bessie likes you.”

  A woman’s voice echoed across the room, followed by the appearance of a blurry shape that floated into the background behind the hog. Felix strained his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman, but she was too far to his right.

  The visitor cleared her throat. “Mr. Martin? Mr. Brody?”

  Felix lifted his head and watched as two middle-aged men hopped the fence. One of them had a knife in his hand. Felix’s natural instinct was to shrink back, recoil from the blade as much as he could, but his restraints prevented such movement. Defeated, Felix closed his eyes and waited for the sharp jab that would end his life.

  The tension left his restraints.

  “On yer feet, boy. Don’t they teach ya respect in the big city?”

  One of the men—Brody or Martin, he wasn’t sure it even mattered—gave his leg a swift kick, and the sharp pain spurred Felix to move. He climbed to his feet, rubbing at his neck, and wondering if the rope had left a mark.

  A young brunette smiled at him from beyond the gate. She wore a black silk robe that shimmered even in the dim lighting.

  “I’m sorry for the hassle, Felix. May I call you that?”

  “Sure. What should I call you?”

  The young lady smil
ed. “My name’s Maggie Eloquence Dalton. I’m sorry for the . . . poor hospitality.” She motioned to the wound on his head. Felix raised a finger to it and discovered a huge knot had erupted near his temple. “I couldn’t let you leave without giving you what you came for.”

  He stared at her, realizing for the first time that he’d never actually seen a picture of Miss Maggie before. Despite his research and the years of press coverage, no one had published a photograph of the Dalton Dollworks CEO. The woman who stood before him couldn’t be her. Maggie Eloquence was in her seventies. This tall, slender brunette wasn’t a day over 30, easy.

  Felix forced a smile. “I think I’ve had enough of the games, lady. No more bullshit.”

  One of the men shoved him. He keeled over into the dirt.

  “Mind yer manners, ya little shit.”

  “Brody.” Maggie’s voice went cold. Felix looked up at her, then back at the two men. They shrank back to the end of the stall, grouped with the other hogs. “Felix, I must apologize. We got off on the wrong foot.”

  Felix stood. “Assuming you are the real Maggie Eloquence Dalton, lady, you’ve got a hell of a lot to answer for.”

  Maggie smiled, offering him a short nod before opening the gate. “I s’pose I do, Felix. S’pose I do. Will you walk with me? It’s been a long time since I’ve had a gentleman come callin’ for me, and it’s a beautiful night out. We do have so much to talk about, after all.”

  She hooked her arm with his and gave him a gentle tug. Felix let her lead him, realizing he didn’t really have a choice.

  ***

  They strolled outside, down a row between two large, fenced-off areas. Hundreds of hogs rooted through the mud, snorting and squealing, going about their own pig affairs. The stench of excrement was palpable here, but after a day subjected to that smell, Felix barely noticed. He was too caught up in the mystery of the woman in the black robe, trying to work out everything that had happened.

  “Are you going to tell me who you really are? Or why you tried to kill me?”

  “Kill you?” Maggie laughed earnestly, clinging to him as they left the barn. Her warmth stirred something inside him, something that had been dormant for far too long. A wave of heat flushed through him. “Bless your heart, darlin’. Why would I ever do a thing like that? And I already told you who I am, Felix.”