by J. L. Hickey
There was a familiarity to it all, like a dream that escapes your memory the longer your awake. Little slivers left behind, just enough to poke you, prod you. Had she dreamt it before? A memory replaying in her head, a sense of Déjà vu?
She dreamt of the double murder. The man Gary he was in her dream. She was in his head, watched as he snuck up behind Dennis, knife in hand, stabbing him in the back of the neck and grabbing him by the hair. He pulled the knife back out, then slitting his throat, deep, across the Adam’s apple. The sickening gurgling noise, blood pouring out, shooting like a fountain with every beat of his heart. So much blood. That scene replayed over and over again in her head—fractions of visions, emotions of pure anger.
It was horrifying. Too real.
She was out of liquor. Her phone was quiet, with no word from Aaron, or her dad. She thought of calling him, breaking down, crawling back to him like she always did. She hated admitting she needed him. Who was she going to turn to? Who would help her?
She gripped the photo frame of her mother in her hand.
She stood up, walked over to her dresser. She opened the top drawer, pulled out an old wooden box held closed by a string of twine. She took it back to her bed, unknotted the twine, and unraveled it. She hadn’t opened the box since her mother passed; she was always afraid to relive what memories remained buried. Memories that would evoke the pain of dealing with the loss of a loved one. If Haylee was good at anything in her life, it was slipping away from reality, hiding from pain, running from sorrow, pushing back memories, both good and bad. She preferred numb.
Haylee’s hand shook. She didn’t know if it was from the alcohol or the fear of opening the box. Either way, she breathed hard, focused her mind. For the first time in over almost two decades, she opened its contents.
So many memories: birthday cards, photos of their family, concert tickets her mother had taken her and Camille to as kids. She relished these items. It had been so long, she took each one out slowly, allowing the memories to flood over her. She didn’t rush them; each one she took time with, refamiliarizing herself with their tenderness. Treasuring the moments, she spent almost a lifetime trying to forget. She found happiness in them, not sorrow, not pain like she thought. She was surprised that through the tears streaming down her cheeks, she found a soft smile, natural and beautiful.
Then, she found what she was looking for. It had been so long ago. She was thirteen; she was thirty-five now. Would her number even work? Her email address? Her place of business still open? Haylee, after spending time with each of the box’s contents, finally took out the business card of Lydia Cayce, Clairvoyant, Paranormal Detective, Psychic.
Haylee grabbed her phone. Would she remember? Would she help her?
TWENTY-THREE
Aaron paced around his kitchen all morning. Haylee’s dad left before sunrise. They shared more than a few drinks. Gerald was a prick, that was for sure. However, the two of them bonded over alcohol and Haylee. Aaron wasn’t sure how to move forward. He held cell in his hand, trying to figure out what to say, or to text to Haylee. He started to multiple times, only to delete the text and start over. When he poked his head out his widow, to check on her place, he saw the Police cruiser parked in her driveway. Two officers, one in uniform the other dressed in a suit, probably a detective approached her door.
Fuck, he thought. What were they doing there?
He needed to smoke. Which he did, a lot. The minute Gerald left, he grabbed his baggie and his bong. That was too intense for him, the whole ordeal. The conversation, the breaking into his house, waiting for him, the story about Haylee and the woods.
That shit was crazy, really crazy.
And, he was still drunk from the many shots he shared with her dad.
He needed to come clean with Haylee, about the screenplay he was writing. He didn’t want Gerald to have anything over him. He wouldn’t allow him to try and blackmail him ever again. He wasn’t sure how she would react. Then, he wanted to hear her perspective about the woods, what happened. Because, what her dad just told him, that was not normal. That was some horror movie type shit.
He looked over at his laptop. He began to drown in his own self-loathing. Why had he started that stupid screenplay? Why, once they became closer, hadn’t he stopped? But the more he learned about the story: the murders, her current state of constant fear, this was a once in a lifetime story. It truly was stranger than fiction, and he had a firsthand look into the crazy story. It was like it was made for a movie adaptation. He would fictionalize it enough, or if he got the right backing, Haylee would be paid as well. She needed help financially. Right? Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing.
He needed more weed. He needed a lot more weed.
Who was he kidding? He was misusing her trust.
“Shit-fuck,” His brain cursed him. He always manages to screw up anything good in his life.
He pushed away the thought, first thing first. He needed to resupply.
Aaron, scoped out the front door, making sure Haylee’s side wasn’t stirring. He needed to get to his car without her noticing. He did not want to confront her, not yet. He didn’t have a plan, no clue what to say to her. And, he stood her up after she asked him to stay the night. Sent her a single text, claiming he would be late getting back over. Except he never came back over. Another brilliant move. I
He grabbed his coat, car keys, and his favorite snapback Detroit Tigers hat and bolted to his car. First things first, he needed that weed.
TWENTY-FOUR
Gary crawled out of the cellar doors, pale, sweating, terrified. He was hyperventilating. His brain struggled to comprehend what had transpired. The cold air hit his face, stung his lungs as he breathed deep in. He crawled on all fours a few feet from the house, rolled over to his back, and stared into the night sky. His body was sore. His muscles ached, his stomach felt like razor blades were passing through him.
He started to gag. He coughed hard; his lungs burned, stomach cramped up. He rolled over to his side, vomited with intensity, his stomach spasmed. His back arched, spewing what looked like a fountain of crawling maggots. The vomit was filled with thick black mucus. It dripped from his chin into the white snow. Hundreds of larvae spilled onto the cold earth, crawling over one another. Terrified of the site, he scuttled away on his stomach. He wiped away the awfulness from his mouth. He moved back towards the Dennis’ car in a panic. He looked towards the cellar; he sensed the eyes staring at him. There, the creature stood. Inside the cellar door, hunched over, peering at him with its brooding tongue hanging from its mouth. Was it following him?
“Oh god…” he muttered. The creature did not move. It stared at him, with its thin, lanky body spotted with dark coarse hairs, its skin putrid, decaying. It was a god-awful sight. It had a massive head, large eyes bright and red. Large antlers protruded from the skull, six sharp points on each side. Its skin around its face was even more decrepit compared to its body. Its flesh hung off its shredded chunks, parts of its face were utterly missing, other parts oozed with puss. And the black maggots crawled everywhere. They were moving freely through its exposed skin in and out of its muscle tissue. Even when standing upright, the creature was hunchbacked, its breasts sagged, swayed when it moved.
What happened to him? Gary’s brain still weighed heavily in a fog. He remembered going into the cellar, seeing the creature in the corner, its grotesque sight, awful. The smell of rotting flesh, formaldehyde, a strange, disgusting mixture of death and decay was overriding his senses. Then he blacked out. He awakened not long after, laying on the cold cement basement floor. He was naked; his clothes tossed aside the floor. Blood smeared between his legs, bleeding internally, no doubt. The creature was gone, nowhere to be seen. Gary gathered himself and fled. It hurt to stand, he’d been se
xually assaulted by that thing. Or so he presumed. He quickly gathered his clothes, fighting through the pain.
His memory was coming back now; the creature’s gaze still penetrating him. A soft whisper took his conscious.
Huuuuungry
It wasn’t so much a voice, more of an urge. One that was not driven by his own needs. It was like a thought, an itch he couldn’t scratch. A seed planted in his brain, ready to sprout into terror.
Gary closed his eyes, shielding his face from the creature. His body shook, both from the cold winter air and from pure horror at the creature before him. He hadn’t known how long he lay paralyzed in fear. He curled up into a ball, fetal position and wept.
“Gary?” Dennis’s voice broke through. “What on earth?”
Gary pulled himself back to reality. He looked up to see the cellar door closed, the creature gone. Dennis stood over him with his phone’s flashlight on him.
“Dennis?” Gary’s voice cracked.
“Are you okay? What happened? I stepped out of my car to smoke and heard whimpering. You’ve been gone for about a half-hour. Why are you laying on the ground?”
Gary stood upright. His mind was still foggy. He wasn’t sure why he had been lying on the ground. His belt was loose; he readjusted it, shook off the dirt from his clothes.
“I don’t know,” Gary shrugged.
“Let’s get you back, warm you up with some coffee. We can talk about it where its warmer.”
“Yeah, okay,” Gary muttered. Behind the fog, the desire was still there. The strange urge of hunger, thirst, but for something different, something he’d never experienced before. It was louder now. Stronger. What was it? Where had it come from?
“You look sick, pale as a ghost,” Dennis opened the passenger car door for him.
“Yeah,” Gary muttered again. Except, he only half-listened. Instead, he focused on the urge, the penetrating notion to quench the hunger.
“All right, well, get comfy, we’ll get this sorted out back at the house,” Dennis frowned, shutting the door once Gary got into the seat. Dennis was a bit spooked himself. The last thing he expected to find on the far side of the house was Gary curled up into a ball whimpering like a lost child.
He entered the vehicle, buckled himself in, shifted to drive and pulled out of the old murder house.
TWENTY-FIVE
Aaron pulled up into his driveway after a long night of errands and procrastination. Haylee’s lights remained on next door, and he wasn’t ready for a confrontation. He parked his car and turned off the engine. He waited to see if Haylee was going to stir in her apartment. Was she going to come out and confront him? It had been almost a whole day since he ghosted her. He left earlier, picked up enough weed to last him through the weekend, grabbed a bite to eat at a local restaurant. He could barely stomach the meal from all the nerves. He wasn’t eager to return home; he couldn’t push it off any longer; he had to speak to her at some point. Thankfully, it looked like he was being spared, for now. Her side of the duplex was quiet, one single light on in the living room. He assumed she’d passed out on the couch early.
Aaron exited his vehicle, grabbed his bags, his leftovers from the Italian restaurant in town he ate dinner at prior, a half a marinated meatball sub that he would snack on tonight if he ever got his appetite back. His body hurt today, physical reminder of the accident, so he used his cane to help him out of the car and into his duplex. He fumbled with his keys to unlock his front door, trying to move quickly, quietly as not to alarm Haylee he was home. He made it, locked the door behind him, took a deep breath. Thank God she didn’t open her door.
He was in, no confrontation. Maybe his luck was changing.
He dropped his bags next to his sofa, angle his walking cane against the ledge. It was a quarter to eight pm, Friday night wrestling was about to start. He made it home in time to relax, finish his meal, smoke a bit, and enjoy wrestling. One of his favorite hobbies he’d never grown out of as a child. He needed to get Haylee out of his mind, her dad’s breaking and entering as well. What a crazy week, he needed some normalcy back in his life.
Aaron took his jacket off, hung it against the back of his door. He took a seat on his sofa. It was nice to relax. He stretched out his legs, covered himself with a blanket. With the remote, he turned on the television and put it on the station for wrestling to start. He fidgeted, trying to get comfortable, it had been a long exhausting two days. He pulled out his bag of weed, his bong cleaned from its prior use sat on the table next to the sofa. He needed another smoke.
A cold breeze hit him, like a window was left open.
This struck him as weird. After the break-in last night from Haylee’s dad, Aaron made sure all the windows were locked, as well as both back and front doors. He decided the weed would have to wait. There was a definite cold breeze through the home, and that was not normal. He hadn’t noticed at first due to adjusting from the bitter cold outside, but his apartment was freezing.
Did the heater turn off?
Aaron stood up, placing his bag of weed next to the bong. He checked his front windows, both closed and locked, yet the breeze seemed to come from the kitchen. The backdoor? Wasn’t that how Gerald broke in?
“Gerald?” Aaron called out into the kitchen. He grabbed the walking cane from the side of the sofa before inspecting. There the backdoor was locked, but he noticed underneath the side window, shards of broken glass littered the linoleum flooring.
“What the hell?” Aaron scoped out the scene. His window was covered with blinds; somehow, they had been bent. He pulled the string lifting the blinds, exposing a broken glass window. A strong, steady cold breeze hit his face. The window itself wasn’t that large, not large enough for a grown person to crawl through, maybe a small child. However, it was close enough to the door handle, that someone could easily unlock the backdoor.
Aaron had kneeled to examine the broken glass. He was too taken aback from the scene to notice or hear the opening of the walk-in closet in the living room behind him. Unknowing to him, the intruder patiently lurked in the shadows of the large closet. He was stalking, waiting for his return home, anticipating an opportunity for Aaron to let his guard down.
It was Gary Thom, still in the same clothes from almost a week prior when he fled the Simmons’ premise. He was skinnier, sickly looking. He’d lost nearly fifteen pounds since his escape from the Emmet County Police. His blue hoodie was worn-torn, dirty, same for his denim. His skin pale, his fingertips black from frostbite. Same as his nose and ears. The skin was decaying, gangrene setting in. His lips flakey with dead skin, cracked. The harsh elements had not been kind to Gary. Yet, he did not care. He felt nothing in the physical sense. The pain was no longer an issue.
Gary was a new man. A better man. Gone was a life wasted on monetary things; he only had one mission in his life now—the constant drive to keep it happy. Gary lived off survival instinct now; new, strange, yet beautiful urges had begun to course through his brain. Outside of the pure basic needs to remain alive: food, water, sleep, his only other needs were to fulfill those inner desires. The inkling necessities that popped up into his conscious, telling him, urging him, making him.
Right now, he had a particular mission, a straightforward urge he had to fill. He knew what it wanted. He knew what it was telling him to do. If he did so, he would receive its love, its parental guidance, let him suck from its teat, have his full, fill his belly with its love. He craved its attention, its acceptance. He lived now for its embraces, his life dedicated to its existence.
He didn’t know why this man was the target. He didn’t care.
Gary gripped the knife in his hand tightly, despite the numbness of the frostbit that settled in his fingertips. It was a long butcher knif
e he grabbed from the kitchen counter after he had broken into the back window, unlocked the backdoor. The stand-in closet was a perfect hiding spot. He could listen, hear where Aaron moved in the home. Aaron had cursed, called out to Gerald, easy to tell it came from the kitchen. He propped the closet door open, watched as Aaron kneeled to inspect the broken glass.
That was his moment to strike. He did so fast efficiently. He’d become a skilled hunter, a master of fatality by his own hands. Before the love of the creature, he’d never killed a thing. It was against his nature. Now, Gary moved forward with excitement. His brain was reliving the memories of his first two kills. Dennis and Nora, the thrilling excitement of butchering them both. The delicious taste of warm human flesh, the blood pouring freely from their dying bodies. Blood rushed between Gary’s legs at the mere thought. The sweet sensation of release he’d experienced with the dead bodies, spewing his seed on them. The raw surges of animalistic aggression made him hard.
Aaron heard the footsteps of a man running towards him. He turned from the kneeling position to see Gary charging him. The knife held in his right hand, Gary lunged forward with it. Like an animal, Gary was going straight for the neck. Kill the man quickly, then have fun. He would bring back the best parts of his kill to the creature. The head, the genitals, they would feast on the flesh of a loved one.
Aaron, acting in pure instinct, swung his walking cane at the attacker. It made contact hard with Gary’s right hand, across the wrist. Hard enough that it knocked the knife from his grasp. The weapon fell against the kitchen floor, making a metallic clanking noise.
Gary grunted when the strike landed—grabbing his wrist momentarily. The pain throbbed only for a second before the urge to kill Aaron overwrote any physical, sensory his brain was sending him. He went back after the knife, as did Aaron, who grabbed the handle first.