The Alice Killings

『人柱アリス』

** Please see note at bottom of article.

The Alice Killings remain, to this day, one of the strangest and unsolvable serial killings in Japan. From 1999–2005, a series of five killings took place. The five killings might have been completely different, if not for the "calling card" that the killer left at each crime scene. He would leave a playing card (it varied from killing to killing) at each scene, in an obvious location, that had "Alice" written on it in the victim's blood.

Very few clues were found at each crime scene, and eventually, the case went cold. Below are details of each killing.

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Sasaki Megumi

The first victim was Sasaki Megumi, a twenty-nine-year-old owner of a restaurant. Those who knew her described her as a headstrong woman with a short temper and a sharp tongue when dealing with her employees. She was known by her customers for her fine cooking and her dedication to her job. Outside of her job, Megumi was very social, and often went to parties.

It was after one such party that she went missing. She decided to walk home from her friend's house, seeing as she was only a block from home, and she was a bit too drunk to drive. Several people offered to drive her home, but she shrugged it off. She was seen leaving the party at one in the morning, and this is the last time she was seen alive.

The next morning, a couple walking in the woods about a mile from Megumi's house saw a large amount of blood on an overgrown, unused path. Curious, they followed it, where they found Megumi's body. She had been torn apart, her parts impaled on various tree branches. The couple called the police.

It was the police that found the playing card, crammed into Megumi's mouth. It was a Jack of Spades, which had the word "Alice" written on it, as previously mentioned. There were no fingerprints or any DNA to be found. There was vomit on the scene, but the female of the couple admitted that it was hers.

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Yamane Akio

Yamane Akio was a barely known singer in a band that never played anything more than at various bars and community functions. His friends described him as a kindhearted man who would never raise his voice offstage. After his death, his band fell apart, not having the heart to find a new singer.

Akio was abducted from his apartment on February 11, 2001. His bandmates were the last people to see him alive, as he had practiced with them earlier in the day. That night, his girlfriend came to visit him, and was surprised to find the house empty. Within days, a missing persons report was filed, and a search for him began.

On the security footage of the apartment, a hooded figure could be seen entering through a side door, and leaving with a large garbage bag that bulged strangely. This strange appearance was never accounted for, and no one saw the strange man in person. This man is widely believed to be the killer, but his face was never shown, and there appears to be some doubt.

The following week, the owner of the bar "Yoshida's" (where the band had often performed) was opening for the day, and was met with a grisly sight. Slumped at a table was Akio's body. His vocal cords had been ripped from his throat, and he had been shot in the head. His "Alice" card was a King of Diamonds, and was found clutched in his hands, along with his ruined vocal cords.

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Kai Sakura

A teen girl, Kai Sakura had her whole life ahead of her. She was a sweet girl, and well loved by her classmates and relatives. She wanted to go to college to be a fashion designer, and was a week from graduating high school when she was abducted.

Sakura's family went frantic trying to find her, and the whole town was combed for the lost girl. Her body was found two days later, buried in a shallow grave. It didn't seem that the killer wanted her hidden—on the contrary, he had marked her grave with her "Alice" playing card, the queen of clubs. It had been taped to a stick and stuck on top of the grave.

Sakura's body had been horribly mutilated. Her eyes had been carved from her body, her skin was flayed, and her mouth had been carved open. A crown had been sewn to her head, likely while she was still alive. No sexual crimes had been committed, either pre- or post-mortem.

Along with Sakura's body was a note, written in straggly handwriting. It contained many disjointed phrases, some of which were unreadable. "Death is a distorted dream." "She will forever rule." and, "Ha! Ha! Those which die are the lucky ones." were various phrases that had been written, among others. A match to the handwriting was never found.

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Oshiro Hayato and Hina

These two were the last of the killings, and the least gruesome. Hayato and Hina were siblings, and very close. Hina was the elder sister, and was very stubborn. Her younger brother, Hayato, was very smart, and had skipped a grade, causing him to be in the same class as his beloved sister. The two rarely fought, as most siblings tended to do.

The two were found dead in their beds on April 4, 2005. The cause of death was a lethal injection. The children's bedroom window was open, and it was deduced that the killer snuck in quietly enough to kill the two without waking them, then snuck back out. Each child held half of an Ace of Hearts playing card that, when put together, spelled out the word "Alice."

One very smudged footprint was found on their carpet, but closer inspection was made impossible by the severe damage done to the print. This was the only piece of evidence, other than the playing card, left at the scene.

A year later, the mother of Hayato and Hina committed suicide out of grief. Their father, who is still alive to this day, is going through extensive therapy to get over the death of his entire family. At this moment, he is extremely depressed and heavily medicated.
Aftermath

Shortly after the death of the Oshiro siblings, a man named Suzuki Yuuto was arrested for the murders. He was a bum with mental problems, who claimed to "not remember" where he was at the time of any of the murders. Most damning of all, he was seen wearing a coat that had belonged to Yamane Akio. A bit of blood on the sleeve tested positive to be his. Yuuto, who was raving at this point, claimed that a "demon black man with no face" had given him the coat.

Yuuto was eventually released when a homeless shelter five miles from the Kai household claimed to have Yuuto in their files for the night of Sakura's murder. Since there was no way for him to get to where she was abducted and back without being noticed, Yuuto was released.

On April 30, 2008, a producer known as Yugami-P uploaded his first song to nicovideo, called Hitobashira Arisu (translated roughly as Alice of Human Sacrifice). This song is believed to be based off of the Alice Killings. It tells the story of a little dream who lures people into its world, and then goes on to tell the story of each "Alice."

The song has a few parallels with each killing:

The first Alice (depicted as MEIKO) was trapped in the woods, which is where Megumi's body was found.

The second Alice (depicted as KAITO) was a singer who was "shot by a madman."

The third Alice (depicted as Hatsune Miku) was well loved, became the country's queen, and was taken over by a "distorted dream."

The fourth Alice (depicted as Kagamine Rin/Len) was a pair of twins regarded as one "Alice." They are described as a "stubborn" big sister and "intelligent" younger brother. It also speaks of how they have "yet to awaken," a possible reference to them dying in their sleep. In addition, the suits of the cards found with each body are also mentioned. Yugami-P has not stated for sure if this song has any relation to the Alice Killings, but it is widely assumed.

**The original video was very ambiguous, only showing vague pictures of the vocalist voicing each part. Due to the popularity of the song, this has spawned several fan-made videos. The original video, for those of you without a NND account, can be viewed below:

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Written by BigMouth12349

Sacrifice

 

4/25/11

I awoke abruptly, sweat dripping from my brow. I could feel the presence again. His presence. I looked around my room. I know I’m being watched. It’s not anywhere to be seen. Damn. This is the third night in a row I’ve been awoken like this. The fear is starting to take over my mind. Something out there is stalking me. Something wants me.

But I should back up and tell this from the beginning. I’m sixteen years old, and moved into this house with my family seven years ago. It’s about 30 minutes outside of town, so we’re fairly isolated. My parents love living out here. They say it’s peaceful and pretty. I hate it. Not as much during the day as during the night. I’ve always been scared of the dark. It’s my number one phobia. I hate not being able to see. And out here at night, there’s no light other than the moon and stars. No warm, comforting glow of street lamps. No headlights slowly moving up and down the streets; just a hazy darkness. And it’s especially dark during a new moon.

That’s when I first encountered it. That thing. I had a bunch of friends over, and after dark, we all decided to play some airsoft capture the flag. It was a new moon, which made it especially dark and creepy. No light pierced the inky blackness, except the flashlights on the barrels of our airsoft pistols, and the occasional zip of glow in the dark airsoft pellets, flying at their targets. We were all having a great time. I had grabbed the other team’s flag, and was rushing back to my base, when I heard a sound that made my blood run cold; a scream of terror, coming from about thirty feet to my right. A flash of white was rushing away from the sound.

I changed direction, and rushed towards the noise, aiming my flashlight at the source of the sound. My friend Jacob was sitting in the dirt, holding his bleeding leg, obviously in pain. The cut was deep. Another friend, Matt, and I rushed him inside, where we sat on the edge of the bathtub, and began to wash and dress the cut. We asked him what a happened. Some creature had scratched him, he said. He didn’t get a good look at it, but just saw a flash of white. At first I assumed it was just a possum or something. That was before I saw it again.

The second time I was alone. It was the middle of the night, not a new moon thankfully, but still eerie. I had insomnia, a rather common problem for me. It was two a.m. and I had given up all hope of getting any sleep. So I went downstairs to the living room and popped in a DVD. As I lay on the couch, my mind lost in the world of Inception, one of my dogs started barking. I thought nothing of it, barking in the middle of the night is basically a routine for them. Then my other dog joined in, no big deal. But I noticed something. This bark was a lot more menacing than usual. It was more of a guttural, growling bark. The bark dogs make when threatened. I turned on the back porch light, and stepped outside, creeped out. I called for them. “Jake. Zoe. Come here.” Then I saw what they were barking at.

It looked like a human, crouched there in the grass. It was probably around four feet tall, with bare, pale skin, and long bony limbs. I studied it for about five seconds and it stared back at me. I’ll never forget its eyes; dark, almost like empty sockets. Its cold gaze washed over me, as if it was sizing me up. Then it slowly started to move toward me. I was almost paralyzed by fear, but was able to get back in the house. I locked the door behind me, and rushed to my parents’ room. They were convinced I had a nightmare. But I know the truth. This was the first time I had fully seen the creature that would soon push me to the brink of insanity.

I didn’t see that thing again for quite some time. I started to think that maybe my parents were right, and it was just a dream. I was really sleep deprived after all. But deep down inside, I knew I had seen something. But a few weeks ago I was on some website my friend Derik had recommended. And I saw a picture that shocked me. It was my creature, the one I had seen. The website claimed this creature was called “The Rake,” and that It stalks and mauls its victims. The moment I saw the article my blood ran cold. Could I have really seen this creature? The thought haunted me, refusing to leave my mind.

I saw it again for the first time in months last week. I had woken up in the middle of the night again. Immediately, I felt that something was wrong. The house was too quiet. I felt very unsettled. I got out of bed, walked to the window, and raised the blinds. It was very dark outside, but I could make something out. The creature was outside. Scratching at something on the ground. Immediately I opened the window, and yelled at the thing. It looked up at me, caught my eyes for a moment, then rushed off, crawling on all fours very close to the ground. When i went out to see what it was scratching at the next morning, I found something that still chills me to the bone; the mangled, half-eaten corpse of my dog Zoe. My parents think it was a mountain lion, but I know the truth. The so-called “rake”, that bastard creature, killed my dog.

The last few nights have been terrifying. I’ve woken up in a cold sweat each night, knowing that damned thing is watching me. I feel its presence. I know it wants me now. And I have no idea what to do. I’m terrified beyond belief, and I’m helpless. My parents keep telling me I’m imagining things. But I’m not, dammit! I know what I’ve seen. And I know that it wants me. That’s why I’m writing this down at three in the morning. If anything happens to me, I want people to know what. I’ll update as soon as something else happens.

5/2/11

The last week was a whirlwind of terror. I’m constantly in fear now, I know it’s always watching me. Around every corner everywhere I go. Every night I feel its presence, some nights more than others. I don’t know exactly what it wants from me, but it is wanting something. I saw it again, for the first time in a week today.

I stayed home sick. I still feel like shit. I think it’s making me sick. I was laying on the couch, watching TV. Constantly looking over my shoulders, because I know he’s always watching me. I have a shotgun by my side, a benefit of living in the country. I got it from the garage. It’s loaded, in case the thing which I’ve decided to call the rake tries to attack. I knew it would soon. I heard a noise outside, and cocked my gun. I stepped outside to investigate. Nothing. Dammit. I decided to patrol the perimeter of the house, just in case. Walked all the way around, nothing. I stepped back inside and the smell hit me.

It was the stench of death. Rotting. I held the gun out in front of me. Slowly made my way up the stairs, and turned the corner into my room. It was crouched in the corner, facing away from me. It slowly tilted its head toward me. Then it spoke. It was a high, shrill voice. I’m not sure exactly what it said to me.

I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. But it moved at almost super human speed, and barreled into me, knocking me down. I saw it jump off of our 2nd floor balcony, to the living room floor. Charged out the door. My arm was bleeding bad, so I grabbed a shirt and pushed it to my arm to try to stop the blood. I rushed outside, the gun still in my hand. It was gone. “GO TO HELL!” I screamed. I stepped back inside. And saw the blood. Not my blood. Its blood. I grabbed the dog it hadn’t killed, Jake. Put his nose to the blood. He picked the scent up and started moving toward the woods near my house. I didn’t think twice, and followed.

We rushed through the woods. Around a mile away from the house, Jake started to whimper. I sent him back. This was my job. I started to explore the area, my finger twitching on the trigger, terrified. After about a half hour of searching I saw something weird. A small area of ground that was different. It seemed covered up. I walked over and swept away the grass. I was right. There was a board under the grass. I pulled up the board, exposing a hole. A rusty old ladder led down. Against all better judgement, curiosity got the best of me. I slung the shotgun over my back, and lowered myself down.

I was in a tunnel. It wasn’t well lit. A few candles. But it was light enough to see the blood smeared walls. The smell was awful. I could see paintings in the blood. Disturbing things. Stuff I never wanted to see. I walked through the tunnel toward the source of more light. I could see a sort of room. When I stepped in, I wanted to throw up. There were animal parts all over the floor. On the walls. This must be its feeding room. I turned around, retching. And there it stood, right behind me. It reached toward me. I blacked out.

I woke up in my room, about 30 minutes ago now. Alone. No cut on my arm. No blood anywhere. Decided to write everything while it’s still fresh on my mind. Parents still aren’t home. It’s dark outside. I’m terrified to leave my room now. Maybe it didn’t all happen. Maybe I’m going insane. Paranoia is here to stay. I realize what the rake said in my room now, when he talked to me. It wants sacrifice. Mom, Dad, if you read this after I’m gone, then get the Hell away. I don’t know where to, but just leave this place.

5/7/11

It’s over now. He’s satisfied. Sacrifice is made. And I’m alone.

He was with me three, three, three nights. He just stands next to my bed, watches me, and sometimes he’ll whisper to me. He told me he wanted sacrifice, bloody sacrifice. He said I had to do it. I knew he was right. They don’t matter to me. I can be alone. My parents thought I was going crazy. Little did they know, haha. So last night, I told him, I told him I’d do it. I’d give him a sacrifice, a good good sacrifice, so he will be happy.

I told them to come with me, I wanted to show them a pretty spot I had found. They walked with me, walked to the Rake hole. I opened it up, and pulled out a gun. I told them to go into it. They asked what was I doing, and I told them he wanted to see them. They went in the hole, and we walked through the tunnel. She was crying. Then Mr. Rake came out of his hiding place. He looked at me, with his black eyes and smiled. Then he killed them. They screamed a little bit. I didn’t care. He was happy now. He pointed at the hole, and I knew it was time to leave.

I’m back home now. All alone, in my dark room. I’m not scared of the dark anymore. I like the dark. It reminds me of my friend the Rake. I’m okay. I’m okay. Dammit I’m not okay. I just led my parents to their death. I’m crazy.

I have the gun to my head now, I’m going to pull the trigger. I’m looking across my room and he’s crouched there, smiling at me. Telling me to do it, that he’s still hungry, wants one more sacrifice. I’m going to give it to him. Goodbye. 

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Credits

Blindness

It’s true what they say – that when a person goes blind their other senses heighten in order to compensate. Knowing that, and thinking back on everything that happened to me, I still can’t come to a rational conclusion of how these events unfolded around me without my knowledge. Granted, I couldn’t actually see any of it happening, but I never suspected anything of this magnitude when judging solely on the minor oddities that I had experienced.

Sure, every once in a while I would hear noises, but my house was old and seemed to have a mind of its own. All of its pops and creaks had become just as familiar to me as navigating its interior without the benefit of sight. Even when things began to turn more bizarre, I always found a way to rationalize them away. Looking back, I ask myself, “How could I have been so… well, for lack of a better word, blind?”

My mother had tried to convince me not to move into the house alone. “Sarah, a young blind woman shouldn’t be living all by herself,” she’d said. But I wanted to – needed to. I needed to prove to myself that I was strong enough to do it. Besides that, as a 24-year-old, I didn’t want to live with my parents forever. And I sure didn’t want to wait around for a nice man to marry and move in with. That may never happen.

Having lost my sight at an early age due to a freak accident with industrial strength cleaning chemicals, I knew all too well the nuances of learning to create a mental map of my surroundings.

When I first moved into the old house I used my cane exclusively. I waved it back and forth in front of me with every step I took. I knew roughly where all of the furniture was since I was the one that directed the movers on where to put everything. I employed the cane for nearly a week, using its tip to develop a mental image of the layout. The learning process was slow and clumsy at first, but I eventually got to the point that I was able to shed my cane after several days and began walking cautiously with my arms extended. I progressed further and became familiar enough with the territory that by the end of the first month I was able to walk freely without the use of my cane, or arms or any other aid.

I became quite adept at moving throughout the house freely. Not only that, but the house was located in a somewhat urban area which made it convenient to walk to any place I had the need. The grocery was only three blocks away. There was a department store across the street from that, and a bank and coffee shop just a bit further on. I got used to listening to the flow of traffic and timing the lights in my head so I would know when the “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” signals were lit. Occasionally a kind stranger would offer to take my hand and lead me across. I would thank them and we would part ways once we were safely on the next sidewalk.

In those days I was working from home making phone calls to patients that had recently been discharged from the hospital. In essence, I was being paid by the hospital to administer surveys that were then used to improve their services. The hospital was kind enough to provide me with a laptop computer that contained several different voice-command software applications. I spent my days transcribing the recorded phone calls by speaking the customers’ answers into a microphone, and having the data fields automatically populate accordingly in the program.

The first odd event that I remember was on one particular day when I got up from my work desk for a lunch break. As I was headed into the kitchen, I kicked an object in the middle of the living room floor. I heard it slide a short distance on the carpet. I knew that I hadn’t left anything in the way of my path as I had just been through there not even an hour ago, and there was nothing on the floor.

I knelt down and patted around until I located the object. A book. By feeling its Braille title I recognized it as a book on national parks that I kept on my coffee table, some five feet away. I didn’t remember knocking the book off of the table. I stood there perplexed. The longer I thought about it though, the less frightening it became to me. I convinced myself that I must have simply forgotten about knocking the book to the floor, and I must have stepped over it or next to it during my other passes through the room. I returned the book to its place on the table and went about making my lunch.

That night, while lying in bed, I heard a sound that came from the kitchen. It was almost entirely masked by the usual sounds of the pops and creaks from the house settling, but I definitely heard it – faint as it was. It was a very light humming noise. So light, in fact, that an average person without enhanced hearing may not have heard it at all from this distance. I slowly got out of bed, listening intently, the sound increasing as I made my way down the hallway and through the living room.

As soon as I passed through the threshold into the kitchen I knew what the sound was. It was the compressor motor on the refrigerator, and it was substantially louder than usual. I approached the appliance and found that its door was standing wide open. I eased it shut and the hum returned to a normal volume.

“What on earth? Did I leave this open?” I questioned myself in a whisper. Maybe it didn’t close all the way the last time I swung it shut, I thought. I returned to bed, but had trouble finding sleep. My mind wandered and questioned how I could have overlooked the fallen book and the open fridge door when they’d first happened.

The next morning, I decided to go have breakfast at Espresso Express, the little coffee shop up the road. They served excellent coffee, and you could also get a ham & cheese croissant melt that was to die for. That alone was worth the effort of showering, dressing, and leaving the safety of the house to be plunged into a buzz of whizzing traffic, honking horns, and people clamoring on the sidewalks.

On that morning a gentle stranger helped guide me across the intersection just ahead of the coffee shop. I said, “Thank you!” as they released my arm, but there was no response. He or she was lost in the shuffle of people on cell phones, their conversations momentarily audible to me as they passed in front of and behind me. The tinny sound of a bicycle bell alarmed me, and I felt the breeze left behind when the rider whipped past. I entered the coffee shop to a much more serene environment and enjoyed my favorite breakfast at a seat near the plate glass window, bathed in the sunlight that washed in on me.

That afternoon I took a break from making phone calls to use the bathroom. As I was seated on the toilet, I heard something next to me. It was as if something had brushed against the sink – an ever so subtle sound. My heart rate rose and my brow furrowed as I strained to listen closer. All I could hear was my pulse throbbing in my ears. Suddenly a wall clock in the living room chimed four ‘o clock, startling me to the point that I jumped slightly while still seated there. I regained my composure, washed up and returned to the computer to transcribe the data from my phone surveys.

I closed the laptop and went to make dinner at 6:30. Over the years, I had learned to be extra careful when dealing with the hot oven and burners. Once I had accidentally set a plastic plate directly onto a burner that was still hot, resulting in a cloud of noxious fumes that lasted for days – long after I’d finished cleaning up the mess. I was lucky that it had burned itself out and the damage wasn’t any worse. After that close call, I bought a small fire extinguisher to keep on the countertop next to the oven.

On this particular night, I made my dinner without any risk of fire. However, the undertaking wasn’t completely without incident. As I proceeded to make dinner I discovered that the canned goods I needed for the recipe were missing from the cupboard. I have always kept my canned goods in very specific places on the shelves so that I would always know what was what without the benefit of being able to see the labels. I don’t remember using up the items I needed that night, but apparently I already had. So, I opted to make a casserole instead.

I sat at the dinner table enjoying the simple meal I had made. The television was playing in the background, filling me in on all of the day’s news headlines. I finished the first portion on my plate and reached to dip into the casserole dish once more. I scraped the inside of the dish, the sounds of metal on ceramic echoing throughout the kitchen. It was empty.

“I can’t believe it! I couldn’t have already eaten it all!” I said incredulously. I had thought for sure that I’d prepared a bigger portion than that, and I didn’t remember emptying the dish fully onto my plate. Thoughts ran through my head in an attempt to reason out the matter: Had it baked up to be less than I’d anticipated? Had I spilled some on the table while dishing it onto my plate?

In search of the missing food, I placed the palm of my hand on the tabletop and moved it steadily over the area within my reach. As I was doing so there was a distinct movement in front of me. I gasped and my heart rate immediately quickened. I felt the blood pulsing through my neck. This sound was not as subtle as the others I’d been hearing. It was obvious – a sudden motion of something moving across from me. I continued listening, but all I could hear was the much-too-chipper weather man on TV giving the forecast.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I was no longer alone at the kitchen table. “Is someone there?” I called out, hoping there was no reply.

Silence.

I felt a shift in the air pressure as if something moved behind me followed by the creak of a floorboard. I froze. Something brushed against the back of my hair, gentle as a feather. I recoiled and let out a squeal.

I shot up out of my chair, made my way to the corner of the kitchen and turned to face the interior of the room. “Who’s there?” I demanded. No answer. By this time I was breathing heavily, practically hyperventilating. My chest and throat radiated heat as my heart raced inside, giving me the sensation of acute indigestion. I thought I might vomit.

I slowly made my way to the doorway leading into the living room. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity listening for something, anything that would explain the circumstance. Eventually I moved on and worked my way into the hallway bathroom. I locked the door behind me.

It took over an hour and a half for me to calm down. While in the locked bathroom, I wrestled with my thoughts. I reasoned with myself. I didn’t want to admit that my mother was right, but maybe I shouldn’t be living alone. It appeared to be taking its toll on me. On the other hand, all of these things could be logically explained, I told myself. If I wasn’t blind, I’d have seen whatever it was that caused the noises and it would be so obvious. I’d laugh about how ridiculous it was to be scared of it, I’m sure. At least that’s what I tried to convince myself.

What finally brought me out of the bathroom was the ringing of the telephone. I admit it startled me at first, but only because it had been so quiet for the last two hours. I cautiously opened the door and entered the hallway. My phone was in the living room. I approached it quickly and answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sarah, it’s Jill.”

Thank God, it was just my friend Jill. “Hi, Jill, how’s it going?”

“Oh, I’m doing good. I saw you at Espresso Express today,” she said in a playful tone, which I didn’t understand initially.

“You did?”

“Mmm-hmm. I saw you in the window when I walked by on the sidewalk.” Still in a playful tone.

“Well, why didn’t you come in and say, ‘hi’?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Disturb me? Why would you be disturbing me?”

“Because, silly, I assumed you were on a date. Who’s the lucky guy that was sitting with you?”

My mouth slacked open. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t form words.

“Sarah?” Jill asked, “Are you okay?”

I dropped the phone. I could still hear Jill’s muffled voice even though the speaker was face down on the carpet. I frantically made my way around the house, arms flailing in front of me.

“Who are you?” I yelled into the house. “What do you want?”

I was terrified, but also angry. I felt violated. I didn’t necessarily want to encounter whatever it was, but I couldn’t go on hiding in my own house any longer. I spent hours searching every square inch of the property and found nothing. I finally went to bed after I was able to calm down, but I did not fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning.

A light rustling sound woke me not long after I fell asleep, still in the dark hours of early morning. I wasn’t sure at first if it was real or if I had dreamed the noise. As I was about to get up, I noticed that the sheets next to me were pulled back. I stretched out my right arm into the empty space beside me. It felt warm as if someone had been lying there with me. The events of the previous day flooded back into my memory. My sightless eyes welled up with tears as I began to question my own sanity. Frustrated, I bolted up and out of the bed. I threw on some old clothes and headed toward the front door with the intention of fleeing the house, unsure exactly where I was going to go – maybe Jill’s place. She lived fairly close.

I wanted to take my cane with me as I always did whenever I went outdoors. I searched the house frantically, unable to remember where I’d left it. I almost always left it propped against the wall by the front door, but it wasn’t there. I made my way along all of the perimeter walls, feeling desperately for the cane.

When I neared the kitchen I still had not found my walking aid, but I made a discovery of a much more startling nature – a barely detectable vertical crevice in the wall I had not known about previously. I used all my fingers to follow the crease up the wall, across the top, and down the other side. It was a doorway designed to fit perfectly flush within the wall. I leaned my weight inward against the panel and felt a slight give on its right side. I worked my fingers into the crevice on that side the best I could, eventually prying the panel free. It swung open to the left. I gasped in shock and my pulse quickened. A hidden room right in the center of my house.

How I wish that I would have had sight at that moment. I faced a completely unexplored territory inside my own house with the possibility that someone else was in there with me.

I entered slowly, arms extended. “Is someone in here?” I whispered, afraid to ask the question. There was no response. I stepped forward. To my right I discovered a flat surface – a tabletop. I ran my hands along its surface. On top of the table, I was able to make out several unopened cans of food. No doubt these were the missing canned goods I’d been looking for. The table also contained silverware and a can opener that disappeared weeks ago.

My heart rate increased even more and my palms began to sweat. I worked my way forward until I came to a wall that I knew bordered the living room. I found a hole the size of a quarter at eye level. Sweat began to form on my brow as well. I found another similar hole on the next adjacent wall. This wall bordered the bathroom. Tears started to well up in my eyes. I was able to find two more holes on the two remaining walls bordering the kitchen and the bedroom.

I dropped to my knees in absolute horror and disbelief. How long had this person been watching me? How could I have not known? My hands were on the floor in front of me and I felt something soft. I investigated further with my fingertips. It was some sort of comforter or sleeping bag. At one end was a fluffy pillow.

At this point I was not only terrified beyond description, but I was also furious. How dare someone spy on me covertly from within my own walls! I knew I had to run out of the house and get to safety immediately, with or without my cane. I decided I would go to Jill’s house and we’d call the police from there.

I made my way to where I remembered the hidden door to be, my arms sweeping the area ahead of me in a panic. Instead of the open door, my hands found the warm torso of a human, a male, standing silently in the doorway. He grabbed both my arms and pulled me out of the hidden room and into the house.

We struggled in the kitchen. I kicked at him and screamed as loud as I could into his ears. I was able to get one arm free and I used it to grasp for the fire extinguisher that I knew would be by the oven. He attempted to pull me away, but my fingers reached its nozzle. I swung it at him, feeling the metal cylinder connect with the back of his skull. He released my other arm and I pulled the trigger in his direction, enveloping him in a cloud of white foam.

I ran into the utility room off of the kitchen where I knew my only advantage existed – the fuse box. I found the box and tripped every lever I could find, eliminating all power from the house. If this perverted psycho wanted to kill me, he’d have to do it on an equal playing field – in the dark.

The intruder had not followed me into the utility room. The fire extinguisher must have dazed him. I remembered the toolbox I kept in that room, and I quickly retrieved the longest screwdriver I could find. I stood in the corner and listened carefully. If he was still conscious, he would not be able to move around in the pitch darkness without creating noise. I would surely detect his movements.

I held the screwdriver against my chest, gripping its handle tightly with both hands. I felt my wildly beating heart against the side of my fist. After an eternity, I moved forward a bit. I may have knocked him out, or even killed him. I had to make sure.

I left the utility room and entered the kitchen. There was still no sound from anywhere in the house. I passed into the living room and headed toward the front door. Halfway through the room, I could feel his presence. Something in the air around me had shifted. Without warning there was breath on the back of my neck followed by a deep whisper directly in my ear, “The showers were my favorite.”

I screamed and swung around, stabbing the screwdriver into empty air. I ran for the door. It was merely a few feet away, but I couldn’t reach it due to the resistance I met when the voyeuristic brute’s arms wrapped around my waist. He wrestled me to the floor and straddled me. I tightened my grip on the tool and plunged it as hard as I could into his side.

I shudder to think about it when I recount the feeling of the steel shaft separating two of his ribs. It was horrid, and I was only able to stomach it knowing that if I hadn’t acted, my life would have ended then.

The man winced in pain and let out a deep, growling grunt. He fell backward and rolled off of me. I turned over onto my chest and pushed up off of the floor, then crawled over to the couch and used it to get back onto my feet. I still held the screwdriver, a warm trickle of blood seeping onto my knuckle.

I could tell that the intruder was writhing around on the floor near the doorway. I would have to exit through the back door. From the opposite end of the living room, I entered the sunroom where the door was located. I wasn’t as familiar with this entry point, causing me to fumble around with the deadbolt and screen door locks for longer than I would have liked.

I knew there were concrete stairs there leading to a flat patio. How many steps? Four? Five? I couldn’t remember. I proceeded slowly. The last thing I needed was to fall and twist my ankle. After navigating the steps, I came to the end of the patio, which emptied into a narrow alleyway between the shotgun-style houses behind mine.

My steps were slow and cautious. My hands told me there was a brick wall to my right, and a brick wall about five feet to my left. The sides of the two houses. I was entering unfamiliar territory without the benefit of my cane. My breathing was frantic and the tears continued to fill my useless eyes. I kicked something and nearly fell over. It felt plastic – a child’s toy maybe. I was moving much too fast compared to my level of comfort with the surroundings. But I had no choice as footsteps were approaching behind me.

I picked up the pace, waving the screwdriver out in front to buffer my impending collision with any obstacles. Ten more feet of forward progress and the screwdriver alerted me, with metallic clanging, to the presence of a chain-link fence connecting the two houses.

I stopped and cried out, my voice breaking up through my tears, “No.” I turned around, my back to the fence. I began swinging the screwdriver violently.

“Leave me alone!” I screamed.

More hyperventilating.

More tears.

The man approached slowly, and then stopped just a few feet away from me. I got the feeling he could see what he was doing. Either there was an electric light in this alley or the dawn had already crested enough that ample ambient light was available. I didn’t know which one was the case because I had no idea what time it was.

Knowing I was about to die, I just wanted answers. “How long?” I managed to ask. “How long have you been in there?” My voice was angrier than I’d expected.

“Since before you lived there,” he replied calmly, his voice deep. “I got lucky with you – a blind girl. With the others, I couldn’t come out in the open when they were home. I couldn’t sit and eat dinner with them. I couldn’t stand over them while they worked at their computers. I couldn’t go to the coffee shop with them.” There was a pause as he moved even closer. “I couldn’t stand next to them in the bathroom.”

I cried uncontrollably in a whirlwind of emotions. I had never before felt so violated, so angry, and so terrified all at the same time. There was sudden movement again in front of me.

“Don’t touch me!” I demanded as I held up the screwdriver. I don’t know exactly how it happened. I don’t know if he didn’t see the tool or just didn’t care, knowing that he was caught. But as he lunged forward, he managed to impale himself on the screwdriver and pin me up against the fence. My hands were still gripping the handle, but it was so deep inside him that his shirt was touching my fist.

His breathing became gurgled, and his last words to me were, “I couldn’t snuggle next to them in bed either.”

We collapsed together as one unit. The fence tore at my back as we slid down onto the ground. His dead weight nearly crushed me, but I managed to push him off and crawl away. I crawled all the way back to my house, in through the back door and into the living room to my phone. I sobbed hysterically as I keyed in the digits 9-1-1 and fell to the floor.

---

Credit: Moonlit_Cove

Finding Vanessa: The Return (Part 6)

 

Chapter Six: The Blood Swine 

I opted to lay low until that night, when my scheduled meet was to take place. When I was studying up on the town, I looked through countless plats, mentally ran through everything that had happened, and obsessed where Vanessa might be. Then one night, I woke from a sound sleep with my heart pounding and the realization upon me: I had looked everywhere there was to look.

Above ground.

It was so painfully obvious at that point. Vanessa had to be somewhere below the surface of the town. I shifted my focus on the sewer systems and to large areas of land that were bare of any identifying features above-ground. Roach had a guy who procured me copies of land records and property ownership documents. Careful study did not turn up much, though I earmarked the commune where Jerry’s murder cult stayed. My gut told me that the woods would lead me to Vanessa.

Another interesting fact I uncovered: someone had been slowly buying up large swaths of my dear old homestead. That person signed the documents with an X, and the title search showed these sales were to an T&D Partnership. My searches for the buyer’s identity came back negative. There were no corporate documents filed with the secretary of state. No articles or other information out there in the corners of the internet. T&D was a ghost, but a damn rich one.

I contemplated a metal detector, but quickly ruled it out, given the fact that I’d be digging every time it discovered a water line. I researched thermal devices, and bought one just in case. I doubted it would work, and pondered if there was anything at all that might.

In the end, I relied upon old-fashioned detective techniques, figuring these guys may have prepared for high tech, but hoping they had neglected the simpler methods.

Which was why I was freezing my ass off in the woods about a mile away from the gas station, praying to God that the alligator beast was somewhere nice and warm and unwilling to risk the cold for a bit of red meat.

Despite my fondest wishes the thermos I was carrying had a nip of whiskey in it, boiling coffee as black as pitch was going to have to be enough. I had ditched Maroney’s truck, minus the guns and camo gear, along the tree line and hiked to my current location--where the railroad tracks cut across the dark swath of trees.

And waited watching my breath fog up the night until I heard the crunch of leaves.

I stayed in the shadows until I heard the unmistakable whistle Roach had impressed upon me while I was still back in New Orleans. I stepped out to observe a man dressed all in black, save a red banana wrapped around his throat. He was holding a rope attached to what I sincerely hoped was not what I thought it was.

I blinked. The vision remained the same. *You have got to be fucking kidding me. *

Had I said that out loud? The man in front of me laughed, and the pig attached to the leash gave a grunt and laid down on its hind legs and I swear that it smiled at me.

“Name’s Everett. And this here’s Nadine. Best nose in the tri-state region.” The pig sniffed the air, then delicately laid down the rest of the way, her eyes never leaving mine.

I took a deep breath. I had expected a dog, but Roach hadn’t ever let me down. Still...I didn’t know anything about taking care of a pig.

Everett must have sensed my unease. He knelt down next to Nadine and rubbed her belly, then gestured for me to do the same. She rolled over, just like a puppy, and hiked her leg in the air so I could have better access to her creases. I took a deep breath, noticing that she smelled like baby oil.

“Nadine’s a good girl. I’ve raised her from a piglet, and she’s smarter than any dog I’ve ever owned. She can sit, stay, and roll over, and she’s potty trained. She can smell at least twenty feet underground, too.”

That got my attention. Twenty feet? That was twice as deep as I had hoped for. I strove to look for the silver linings in the situation: she wouldn’t start barking and give away our position. And I’m pretty sure pigs don’t get fleas.

I stood up, wiping my hands on my jeans. “What do I owe you, and when do I drop her back off?”

“She’ll find what you’re looking for in a couple hours, ole Nadine will. How about tomorrow night, same time, same place?”

His faith surely eclipsed my own. “And the price?”

“Roach has covered it. Tell her I said thanks, by the way.”

I wasn’t going to ask why he was thanking Roach when he was the one doing us a favor. I just told him I would, and took the leash. He melted back into the night, and there I was, alone with Nadine.

This was it. The chance I had been waiting for. Then I realized I had no idea how to get Nadine to track. Shouldn’t Everett have given me some instructions? I tentatively called Nadine’s name, but she just flipped over to her other side. I patted her head, but she didn’t rise. I jerked her leash, and she grunted and grumbled, but didn’t budge. Was I supposed to promise her a treat or something? Also, what the hell was I supposed to feed her? What if she had some sort of special diet or allergy or something?

I tried again, whistling lightly. Nadine shot to attention. I hadn’t realized pigs could move so fast. Her ears were straight up, and the tip of her nose was quivering. I reached into my bag and pulled out Vanessa’s jacket, still in the paper sack I had put it in when I received it in the mail from God-knows-who. I held it up to Nadine’s snout, and she snorted a few times, then turned around and started galloping, pulling me behind her forcefully.

We were heading deeper into the woods. I tried not to think about the things that I knew lived there, focusing instead on not tripping over the tree branches and debris that littered the forest floor.

The ground grew boggier, and my feet stuck in the mud, squelching, then sliding as the muck released my shoes.

I could hear the sounds of animals calling softly into the night, and then I heard something different. Something unnatural.

A buzzing, right in front of us. I saw a flash of light, and then the leash was yanked from my hand and Nadine’s high-pitched squeal pierced the air. As quickly as it had come, it was gone. My ears stopped ringing, and the overwhelming sound of silence overtook me.

What the hell had just happened?

My eyes readjusted to the dark, and my stomach lurched as I saw what was in front of me. Nadine’s back end was sprawled out, but the front of her was missing. Completely gone. I circled the pig, noting that there was no blood. It appeared that her back end had been cauterized, and the vague aroma of burning flesh lingered in the air. The leash I had been holding was cut cleanly in two, but the other half was nowhere to be found.

I looked around, but there was nothing else out of the ordinary. No scorched earth to indicate a fire or any phenomenon that might have been responsible for what I could only describe as the spontaneous combustion of half of a pig.

Then I realized I had to get moving. Nadine’s shriek had surely been a beacon of my presence, and I was a sitting duck if I didn’t haul ass. I started running, unsure of where I was headed, but with the knowledge that I was going to die if I didn’t get out of those woods.

I took a sharp left, then zigzagged my way past trees, mud, then back over the boggy ground. My breath was ragged, but I kept going, thanking God that my thermos hadn’t had that whiskey I had been hoping for earlier. I rolled my ankle, muttered a curse, and kept limping along, pushing branches out of my way.

The forest thinned, and I suddenly realized that I was near civilization, which was possibly more dangerous than the woods themselves. I crouched down, ignoring my throbbing ankle, and took stock of what lay ahead of me.

I saw a bus covered in graffiti, with fairy lights strung between it and a nearby tree. A huge burn pile was next to the bus, with everything from tree limbs to a futon tossed upon the heap. A generator hummed nearby.

Behind that was a gigantic metal building. Round. It reminded me of a grain silo, only about ten times bigger. Unlike the bus, it was pristine. Weeds grew up around the sides, but it was clear that it had been recently inhabited. The building looked deserted, but someone was obviously living in the bus. I trained my ears to listen for the sound of human voices, but heard nothing more than the pounding of my own heart.

Cautiously, I crawled to the bus, then ducked underneath it. It did not appear that I had been located by any drones, and I hoped to keep it that way if at all possible. I willed the darkness to swallow me up, and continued crawling closer to the burn pile so I might have a better vantage point and determine where I was.

Suddenly, I heard it. A Slavic voice. And an American one speaking back.

“Virginia Cobb is baking sourdough bread. Bobby Evans has chest cold. Marty Baker is unaware that today is his wife’s birthday. Cherie Baker is pretending to not be angry at husband.”

The voices got louder. It seemed that the Slavic voice spoke without a break. No hesitation. Just staccato words delivered with no intonation.

I suddenly recognized the second voice. Jerry He wasn’t speaking to anyone either, it appeared. He was...singing?

“There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hooooooooooleeeeeeeeeeee.”

In one hand, he held an old-school radio. In the other, a bucket. He swung both as he sang. And he had a surprisingly good singing voice. He climbed on the bus, then emerged without the radio. He was still swinging the bucket, though, and I still heard the endless Slavic-tinged words muffled through the walls of the bus.

He bopped his way to the metal building, then hammered on the door in a series of complicated knocks before entering.

I laid there, unsure of what to do. This must have been the compound I had read about when I was studying up on the Mathmetist community. Information had told me that Jerry may have been living here, but now I had my confirmation.

Should I reveal myself? Risk his life and possibly my own? As I contemplated my fate, something caught my eye. A trip wire so cleverly disguised that it was a miracle I hadn’t stumbled into it and whatever ill-effects it had in store. My gaze tracked its point of origin, and I saw that it led neatly to the same tree the fairy lights were hanging from--no doubt waiting to dangle someone upside down from one of its branches.

I hadn’t considered the fact that Jerry may have had the foresight to plan for unwanted visitors, or the cunning to keep them at bay. Maybe there was more to him than he let on.

Jerry swung open the door to the metal building and started back toward the bus. This was it. Did I announce my presence?

I took a leap of faith. I whistled between my teeth, and Jerry stiffened, cocking his head and looking around.

I whistled again, and he spoke into the darkness.

“Penny, is that you?”

Who the hell is Penny? I tried a different tactic, speaking his name in a low voice. “Over here. Under the bus.”

Jerry dropped down and grinned, locking eyes with mine. “Oh, hey Ricky! I thought you might have been this owl I’ve been feeding, but you’ve probably scared her off.” He peered further under the bus, then shrugged.

“Before I come out from under here, are there any traps I should be aware of?”

“Traps? Oh, you mean like my trip wires? Yeah, I have eleven, but that’s okay. None of them will kill you! It’s like taking a ride on a roller coaster! I planned them out myself.” He grinned proudly.

Great. It’s like Home Alone meets Jackass. Despite my better judgment, I rolled out from under the bus and stood, realizing that I had probably sprained my ankle during my run through the forest. I leaned against the vehicle, trying to disguise my discomfort and assess the situation. Jerry had his back to me, and was busy pouring lighter fluid on the burn pile.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’m not sure fake leather is meant to be burned.”

Jerry laughed, adding more fluid to the heap. “You sound like O’Brien.” He stepped back and admired his handiwork, then pulled out a lighter. Not a match. A lighter. One that would require him to be about one inch away from a possible fireball. My experience told me this probably wasn’t the first time he was inches away from death by misadventure.

I, on the other hand, had no intention of a cleansing death by flame. I stumbled back as Jerry crouched down. I saw he had dribbled a little trail that led to the heap.

There was thankfully no explosion, but the smell of burning pleather is not a pleasant one, and I was of a mind that the smoke made it impossible for Jerry to roast the marshmallows he had lined up on the barrel next to the bonfire. Or at least, so I thought, but he speared one anyway and cheerfully held it over the open flames, turning it until it was as scorched as the futon.

He shoved it in his mouth, and had to have burnt the ever-living shit out of his tongue and cheeks, but his face remained impassively cheerful. “Do you want one? They’re dee-licious.” He smacked his lips and stabbed another marshmallow on his straightened out clothes hanger.

“No thanks.” I liked to pick my carcinogens with more discernment than Jerry.

“Your loss.” He picked a stump near the fire and sat on it, resolutely studying his creation and ignoring my presence altogether.

I limped over, picking a nearby stump and gingerly sitting down on it. I could feel my heartbeat in my ankle, and the events of the night were just starting to sink in.

I had lost Nadine. My one hope for locating Vanessa. How was I going to tell her owner? Roach was going to fry my ass for losing that hog. Also, what the fuck was I supposed to say to anyone who inquired about her disappearance? I didn’t even know myself what had actually happened. Was it a force field? The alligator longing for a midnight snack? An inhuman electric fence with the capabilities of a bug zapper?

Examining it in retrospect, I knew that it was an unbelievable story. Hell, I was starting to doubt it myself, and I had witnessed it with my own eyes.

“Have you ever heard a buzzing noise in the woods?” I studied Jerry’s profile, looking for any signs he might know what I was talking about.

“You mean, other than the bugs and drones?” He scratched his shoulder, contemplating my question. “I hear all kinds of stuff. Sometimes I hear screaming. Gunshots. Sometimes I hear a person singing opera. Bad opera. Like, the kind that sounds like someone is singing through a mouth full of marbles? And I don’t think it’s supposed to be English, but I don’t think it’s an actual language either? And then I hear buzzing in my head, but I think that’s because I drank too much wine so that I might better appreciate the opera, and then I fall asleep and when I wake up everything is quiet again.”

This line of questioning was getting me nowhere. I was going to have to be direct. “I was just out in the woods with a search and rescue animal and suddenly half of it was gone. Just vanished with this burning smell and bang. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

It sounded even crazier when I said it out loud. Jerry didn’t seem to notice. “I once saw a portal open to hell, but I pissed it closed. Or I pissed on a demon and he closed it because he didn’t like being urinated on. Tomato/clamato.” He popped another marshmallow in his mouth.

“The bunker was pretty cool, though, after I was right-side-up again.”

“A bunker? You mean like this compound?”

“God, I hate it when people call this place a compound. And no, not like here. It was a bunker. You know, like, underground.” He had the unmitigated gall to look at me like I was the idiot.

“Do you know how to get there? Could you show me?” I tried not to get excited, because no doubt it was just another dead end, but at least it was a thread to pull. And right now, I was all out of yarn.

Jerry huffed a little. “I mean, it’s kind of like my special place where I go when I need to be alone.”

I wasn’t going to point out to him that he lived on a compound in the middle of the forest laden with boobytraps and nothing and no one within screaming distance. It seemed mean, even by my standards.

“I’m not looking to move in there. I have reason to believe that Vanessa is underground somewhere, and I’m trying to find a way in.” I held my breath. I never knew what to expect with this guy.

“I guess I can take you there. But you have to pinky promise me you won’t tell anyone else about it.” He held out his pinky solemnly. I guess this was better than some sort of blood pact, but Jesus Christ, really?

He stared unblinkingly into my eyes. “A pinky promise is the most sacred of promises, Richard. If you break it, you die, like, immediately. That’s what I’ve heard anyway, so I don’t break them. Not worth the risk.”

I stood there, in the acrid smoke plumes of burning petroleum products, and I linked my pinky with his.

Some promises are meant to be broken, but I don’t think this was one of them. Regardless, death was possible whether I kept my vow or not.

(To be continued...) 

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Credits

 

Finding Vanessa: The Return (Part 5)

Chapter Five: The Carnival 

The trek to the gas station was uneventful, all things considered. The woods were dense, but it was easy enough to fight my way through the underbrush until I saw the familiar site of the dumpster behind the building.

That’s when I heard it. The low hum of a drone overhead. I cast my eyes to the ground, keeping my face shielded and my shoulders slumped. I might have been out of the forest, but I wasn’t out of the woods yet.

I stomped into the station and saw her. The young girl working the counter. Fresh. Innocent. Long hair and blue jeans. Her back was to me. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought I was looking at Vanessa.

Then she turned and gasped.

It took me a second to realize why.

Fuck. I had forgotten about the gun in my hand and the blood on my face. I slowly put the nine in its holster while maintaining eye contact with the young woman.

“I’m not looking for any trouble. I just need to talk to Jack or Jerry.” I looked around but didn’t see them anywhere. I glanced down at her nametag. “Are either of them around, Rosa?”

Her eyes darted to the door then back to my face. “Nope,” she said nervously.

“So it’s just you here?”

“No. There’s also Mack. He’s in the back room sharpening knives.”

Great. She’s about as good at lying as I am dancing the can-can. I humored her. “In that case, I’m going to use the john, then be on my way.” She kept her eyes glued to me as I made my way to the bathroom.

Here’s to hoping she doesn’t call the cops.

The bathroom was empty. Thank God. I made sure the door was locked behind me, then I changed into a pair of blue jeans and a white shirt. I needed to blend, and this was about as non-descript as I could be. I looked into the mirror. My small-town uniform was missing something.

Rosa was staring right at me as I came out of the bathroom. She didn’t seem all that surprised that I was wearing new duds, but I guess it takes a lot to surprise someone who works here. I went up to her counter and asked, “Does this place sell hats?”

She looked confused. “What kind?”

“Any kind of hats.”

“Yes. They’re in the corner next to the gnome display.”

I strode to the back, and gathered every single hat I saw in my arms. Most of them were mesh truckers caps with various unsavory phrases on them. I picked one that declared me to be “oilfield trash.” Perfect.

By the time I got back to the counter, another customer had wandered in. I piled my haul in front of the cashier as another idea struck me.

“That’s a lot of hats!” she said.

“Especially since you only got one head,” the old man behind me added. I turned and sized him up. He was holding a sixer of Natty Light and wearing a white t-shirt under a pair of overalls. He was about my height, maybe a little skinnier, but close enough to confuse a drone. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him.

“Then it’s your lucky day. Take your pick.”

He guffawed, then searched through the pile for one he felt was “representative of my station.” Apparently his station favored naked ladies who proclaimed THE FUTURE IS FEMALE.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the girl behind the counter smile and nod in approval.

“Whaddaya think?” he asked her.

“Aw, that’s so sweet, Mr. Callins! I think it’s great!”

He needed no other encouragement. The hat stayed where it was, and he left the station whistling.

By that time, I was prowling the aisles looking for something else. I found a display, and scooped those up as well.

Rosa narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “It’s a clear day outside. Why are you buying up all of our hats and umbrellas?”

“Maybe I’m feeling generous. Could you do me a favor and pass them out to all of your customers today?

She hesitated, then nodded when I put fifty extra dollars on the counter. “I guess that wouldn’t do anyone any harm.”

I paid, then asked to use the phone.

“Is it long-distance?”

“What does that matter?”

“Look, I don’t make the rules.”

“Yes, it’s long distance.”

“Then that’ll be fifty cents a minute.”

“Fifty cents?! I thought it was twenty-five.”

“Policy change. It’s a long story.”

I sighed, then pushed another dollar across the counter. “It won’t be long.”

She handed me the phone, set the egg timer, then turned around to straighten up the cigarette display as I made my call. The phone rang five times, then I heard the recorder pick up. “Lisa, it’s Eric. I was just calling to let you know I made it.”

There was no Lisa. But whoever was listening didn’t need to know that. I went on: “I tried out that new restaurant you told me about on the way down. Food was a little too spicy, gave me heartburn.”

I’ve made contact. They’re on the offensive.

“I might not be back by eight, so if you don’t mind feeding my fish, I’d really appreciate it.”

I need a supply drop.

“I’m having a good time, but I forgot my contacts on the counter.”

I don’t have a car anymore.

“Luckily I packed my glasses.”

I still have my gun.

“I’ll see you soon.”

The meet is still on for tonight.

I put down the phone and glanced at the egg timer. Thirty seconds left. Then I heard something that had my hand reaching for my gun until I realized it was just that same clown car from yesterday, with an entirely new cast of clowns. One of them had honked the horn and triggered “La Cuceracha” to emanate from somewhere in the depths of the engine. The others tumbled out of the vehicle and started to dance.

Rosa sighed and put her head down on the counter. I saw an opportunity and turned to her. “Here’s a twenty for their gas. Keep the change. Oh, and can you give this to Jerry for me?” I laid down a two-way and the cash on the counter. She didn’t pick up her head, but she mumbled something.

I walked outside and headed towards the shortest clown. Something told me he was in charge. Could have been because he wasn’t dancing. Could have been because he snapped his fingers and all of them stopped immediately, then clamored into the car.

“You can go ahead and pump your gas. I paid for it inside. But I was wondering if you could do me a favor in return.”

The clown grunted and raised his eyebrow, which I took as my cue to keep talking. “I’m looking for a ride.”

“Where to, kid?” The clown sounded like he had eaten gravel for lunch, then washed it down with straight whiskey.

“Wherever you’re headed.”

He looked me over, then nodded and said, “If you don’t mind sitting in the back.”

---

I ended up sitting in one of the clown’s laps. Despite his greasepaint indicating otherwise, I could tell he wasn’t happy. Neither was I. His legs were bony.

I didn’t ask where we were going, and my fellow passengers didn’t provide me with any details. I watched as trees flew past the windows, then houses, then trees again. And suddenly, we were at the fairgrounds on the other side of town and I was tumbling out of the car and trying to get circulation back into my ass.

The place was just like I remembered it. An overgrown baseball field on one side of the grounds; in it were fifty or so cars. On the other side was the livestock barn. I could hear the distant animal sounds and the louder smell of fresh manure. Barbed wire surrounded the trees on the perimeter. An exhibit building stood in the middle of the grounds, no doubt displaying quilts and homemade jellies in its confines. Bathrooms older than me stood with a single hanging light outside the doors, and with rickety stairs on the side of the building that made no sense but were still present in the design. A big pavillion right next to the gate welcomed the tone-deaf singing of 4-H’ers entering their first talent show and sixty year olds with bandanas and flag shirts perfecting steel guitar solos.

Of course there were the rides. A ferris wheel and gravitron were the big draws, but I saw something else that beckoned me closer. A tent was pitched, and on it a gigantic canvas sign proclaimed in screaming letters “FREAKS AND PECULIARITIES--COME ONE, COME ALL.” In smaller lettering, it read “Sideshow Act. $10.00.” A barker outside warned of the spectacles I’d miss if I weren’t to see the show starting in ten minutes.

Call me progressive, but it’s not my bag to want to see bearded ladies and conjoined gentlemen. But then I heard the familiar whir of an overhead device and decided a $10.00 diversion was well worth it for the coverage provided. I shelled out my money and headed into the tent with no idea of what to expect.

When my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the venue, I noted that there was a mid-sized stage with a large red curtain drawn across it, and about fifty chairs comprising the audience. Two or three people were sitting near the front, so I took a seat in the back close to the emergency exit in case the need for a quick escape should arise.

The air was slightly musty and the temperature moderately warmer than I felt comfortable with. Old-timey music was piped in from speakers in the corners and gave the place a vaudevillian atmosphere. Suddenly, a man in a tophat and a full tuxedo materialized onto the stage--I had no idea where he came from--and looked straight into my eyes. *Did I know him? His face was familiar. *

Instead of the bark I was accustomed to, he utilized a whisper that carried to the edges of the tent. I caught myself leaning forward to hear him better.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. We have scoured the Earth for curiosities far and wide, and tonight, you will witness spectacles as never before viewed in one arena.” He lit a cigarette, then grabbed a chair and sat in it backwards, looking at the audience and lazily blowing smoke rings into the air.

“Our first act of the night comes from the far reaches of Peru. A lowly woman who was ostracized and forced to beg for scraps like a dog by residents of her small village, please welcome *La Mujer Perro.” *

He swaggered off and what I assumed was a woman took the stage. Except this was no traditional bearded lady. This...creature was covered in thick curling hair and, despite having human features, was as close to a Wookie as I figured existed in nature. She barked and snarled at the audience, showing fierce canine teeth, then groomed herself as an animal would, making certain the audience was able to view her hairy legs and arms as she licked herself in an oddly intimate ceremony. I shuddered despite myself, then looked at the ground until she was led off on a leash by a handler.

More atrocities were introduced. A man with what appeared to be gills gulping for air. Two people of distinctly different ages whose flesh had fused together after a chemical plant explosion. A giant with gold earrings and enormous tattoos across his bare chest. Little people sneeringly referred to as midgets and dressed in various demeaning outfits.

The tuxedoed man pulled the curtains and stood center-stage. The lights dimmed, and the music grew darker and more primal. I could hear drums and chanting, which grew until they reached a shrieking crescendo, then stopped. I could hear my heartbeat, other people breathing, and something else. A low keening sound emanating from the curtains.

“Be prepared to be amazed at our final attraction of the night, women, men, and children alike.” Tuxedo Man’s eyes glittered malevolently. “While exploring the jungles of the Amazon, our agents discovered an indigenous tribe forgotten by the modern world. Upon arriving at this humble dwelling, they were fascinated to observe that these peoples had prepared for sacrifice a small child to appease their gods. Our agents saved him in the nick of time. All attempts at civilizing him have been unsuccessful, and he subsists on a diet of live animals and warm blood. I caution you to mind your distance, because who knows what this savage might be capable of?”

As he was talking, four handlers wheeled in a large cage covered by a scarlet red tapestry. The keening noise intensified. They left the cage in the middle of the stage, then disappeared into the wings. The ringleader--who still had not introduced himself--grabbed an edge of the cloth and tugged, revealing the contents of the cage.

I gasped involuntarily.

Inside was a child no older than seven. He was wearing a loincloth and appeared to have been painted purple. His eyes were huge, his pupils dilated to the point that only black could be seen. I suspected that the show had forced him to wear black-out contacts. He stared at me unblinkingly, and I found myself unable to tear my gaze away from his.

What sick fuck could do this to a child?

He was crouched on a bed of straw with a disemboweled rabbit nearby. He was unable to stand up or stretch out fully in his enclosure, and despite being in the back of the room, I could smell the metallic aroma of old hay and fresh blood.

Even though his mouth appeared to be closed, the keening continued. The rest of the audience cheered and got up to crowd his cage, but his eyes never left mine.

I wanted to throw up. To beat the ringleader to death with my bare knuckles and remove this kid to safety. My hands fisted, and my heart thundered in my chest. I closed my eyes, cutting off contact with the small wounded child.

How could I let this abuse continue? How could I just leave him?

I reasoned with myself. This isn’t your problem, Riggin. Call child services and get the fuck out of here with what you came for.

But I knew that in a couple of days, they’d pick up and move to another location. And I knew that government agencies didn’t give a rat’s ass about feral children kidnapped from their families and sold as entertainment.

*As far as you know, this is just an act. A tiny adult painted purple and marketed as a sideshow freak. *

I felt it in my gut this wasn’t the case. That this kid needed help and that no one else was going to provide it.

But I couldn’t take a child into the clusterfuck I was about to embark upon. It wasn’t part of the plan.

The best I could do is return in a couple of days after hopefully finding Vanessa and break him out.

I opened my eyes once again to see that he was still staring at me. And I realized that now I was the one keening.

He turned his back to me, and I stumbled out the side of the tent, where I tossed my cookies and tried to regain my composure. My shirt was plastered to my back, and my hands were clammy as I wiped my mouth.

As I was bent over dry heaving, I felt a sharp slap on the back of my head, then an ugly bark of laughter that I would have recognized anywhere.

*Coach Maroney. *

I was instantly transported back to my teenage days, with J.P. Maroney in the leading role as my tormentor. Standing over me smirking as I struggled to pull myself up during the senior fitness test. Flapping my arm around after I broke my wrist doing basketball drills, then telling me to get back to running. Kicking my chair over as I was leaned down to pick up my pencil off the ground in my social studies class. In his enormous jacked-up truck, chasing us around the block outside the school while screaming orders and honking.

Coach Maroney made my life a living nightmare all four years of high school, and I would have been fine never seeing his sneering face crowding my personal space ever again.

“What brings you round these parts, Riggin?” He pulled out a Skoal can and protracted from it a huge wad of tobacco which he then lined his lower lip with. This, coupled with his massive underbite and buzz cut, gave him the distinct air of being a bulldog slavering over a bone.

*God I hated him. *

“Investigating the disappearance of my niece.” I didn’t owe him a response, but figured this might hurry our interaction along a little more quickly.

“I’d suggest looking in the graveyard,” he drawled, looking at me like I was stupid. “They buried her in it about two months ago.”

I reminded myself I was trying to fly under the radar, and that eviscerating my former gym teacher would probably draw more attention to me than I was willing to garner.

Then what he said sunk in. “I didn’t say I was looking for her.”

I saw surprise and fear flicker across his big square face for an instant before he spit on the ground about two inches from my feet. “You’re not fooling anyone; we all know you’re searching for Vanessa. You’ve not been right since Donny died. You don’t think we forgot about that scene at his funeral, did you? Crazy runs in your genes. Best remember that.”

He turned his back to me and ambled toward the livestock barn, no doubt on his way to ruin someone else’s day or kick an animal or something.

I headed in the opposite direction with my head down and my hat angled over my eyes, stopping only to buy some alligator on a stick in commemoration of not dying at the claws of a prehistoric beast a few hours earlier.

Could that have only been this morning? It felt like months ago.

I headed to the treeline, cutting across the parking lot, when a truck caught my eye. It had a confederate flag in the back window and CCHMRNY on the plates. Only one person this jacked up monstrosity could belong to, and--just my luck--it was one of the easiest hotwires of the decade. Something about American-made just stole easier.

In less than one minute, I was rolling down the windows and airing out the stench of Copenhagen tobacco and musty gym shorts. Coach Maroney didn’t seem to care about federal firearm laws, as he had no fewer than five unsecured guns lying around his truck, plus two more in a rifle rack mounted in the back window. Considering how the principal carried a knife in his boot and a handgun in the small of his back while I was in school, I doubted anyone in this town gave two shits about firearm laws.

Ten minutes later, the overwhelming smell had finally abated, and I allowed myself the freedom to breathe in deeply. Too soon. In my rearview mirror, I saw the flash of the blue and whites, and groaned under my breath. Have they bugged all the fucking cars in this god damned town?

The officer approached my vehicle. “License and registration.”

I stared at her. “Are you kidding me right now?”

O’Brien took her sunglasses off, then smiled slowly. “No shit. I already know this truck’s hotter than a five dollar pistol.”

“I borrowed it. He’ll get it back.”

“Maroney is an asshole. I really don’t care if he gets it back or not. I didn’t have the chance to speak to you yesterday, and I wanted to make sure you understand what’s at risk here. I know you’re looking for Vanessa. And I hope you find her, I really do. But it’s my job to make sure certain people stay safe, and I need you to stay away from Jack and Jerry and the gas station in general.” She raised her eyebrows. “Think you can manage that?”

“Why are you babysitting that place?”

“It’s my job to ask the questions here. Can you assure me you’ll stay away from the gas station?”

“I can’t promise you that, Amy. There’s something off about that place, and I intend to figure out how it’s involved in my niece’s disappearance. The way I figure it, I can do it one of two ways: with your help, or without. So what will it be?”

She put her glasses back on and turned her back on me, tossing over her shoulder, “Don’t call me ‘Amy.’” Then she walked back to her cruiser and sped away.

Looks like I’ll be doing it the [hard way.]

---

Credits

 

Finding Vanessa: The Return (Part 4)

Chapter Four: The Backroads

I spent the night of Vanessa’s “funeral” finding the bottom of a whiskey bottle. Word got to me that the ceremony was attended by only a handful of old classmates and a couple of drunk coworkers. I woke up the next morning to a hangover and a hard realization.

I was still alive.

The last time I was in town, I skated by on pure luck. I got out; I escaped, but I didn’t exactly go underground. Did a shit job of hiding. Hell, Middleton even called my new number the day the line was turned on. There was no reason a resourceful hitter couldn’t track me down and find a way to slip something into my drink, rig up a fake suicide, or just arrange for me to disappear. I needed to get in front of this train, and that meant making preparations.

I started with fifteen jump drives ordered online, overnighted to my office, and paid for from my own bank account. I magnet wiped them all before reformatting and uploading ten gigs of junk data files, then I opened a security deposit box at five different banks, depositing one drive in each, mailed nine of them to old contacts all over the country with no context, and--just for good measure--I buried the last one in a ziplock bag in City Park.

I tried not to be too obvious, but the idea was to keep them guessing. There was no doubt they were watching, and it was only a matter of time before they started collecting the drives. But they could spend years trying to decrypt the files and never realize that it was nothing but gibberish. If there was any bureaucracy to this organization at all, I may have bought myself some time. Somebody had to green light an execution, and hopefully, that same somebody would see my behavior and wonder if I had put together evidence and made a kill switch. If it didn’t work--if they knew I was bluffing--then this entire plan would come to an abrupt end my first night back in town.

It wasn’t enough to keep myself safe, though. I had to account for the one kid I had managed to actually save from that dumpster fire of a town.

Jamie.

When I started making my plans to return, Jamie had done everything in his power to convince me to bring him along. I’m not the paternal type, but there was no way I was going to let another one of Donnie’s kids go missing. So I gave him a project of his own. One that would hopefully keep him out of trouble. He had been in the town when I hadn’t. Had observed things without realizing they would be helpful.

Or, at least, that’s the line I fed him. He needed more than just convincing to stay where he was. He needed a purpose, and I could relate. Never thought I’d see the day where I considered New Orleans to be the safer alternative in terms of living arrangements.

Jamie did prove to be quite helpful. He filled me in on where everything was, the local gossip, and who was important. Not much had changed. Same last names, rotating first names. Same locations, different businesses.

I made the decision to sleep in the town over’s fleabag motel the first night I was back, since I already knew that at least two camps were tracking me (was Roger’s operation large enough to be considered a camp? Probably), and I saw no reason to interrupt their surveillance.

The motel clerk was an old woman with blue hair and more wrinkles than a Shar Pei. The Wheel of Fortune was blaring in the background, and she didn’t bother looking away from the screen as she slid me my key and told me that if I wanted more than one towel, I would have to pay extra.

The room was small and the fluorescent lights overhead hummed and occasionally flickered. The neon “Vacant” sign cast a bright red glow through the window, so I drew the curtains and turned off the lights, save for one small bedside lamp. I prowled the room, examining it up and down in every nook and cranny in an attempt to uncover any cameras or recording devices, but found none. Tried to convince myself this was because they had not known I was going to be checking into this room for the night.

It was one thing for them to bug my car. It was a totally different matter to have my naked body forever part of some fucked up file documenting my every move in this town. Consider me modest.

The room had a phone, a Gideon Bible in the bedside drawer, and a phone book. There was no TV—unsurprising for a place that wanted to charge me extra for the luxury of additional towels. Despite a “NO SMOKING” sign, the acrid smell of cigarettes clung to the room, providing me a cover to sneak my own smoke while I reviewed case notes.

I was hungry and I was tired. It had been a long day, but I still felt no closer to Vanessa than when I started out that morning. Miranda had been a dead end, and Jerry seemed to be more of a liability than an asset. I was on edge, waiting to see if my jump drive idea had panned out, or if whoever was in charge had decided to send somebody to take care of me.

Using the last of my energy, I balanced one of my walkies on the doorknob--a poor man’s proximity alarm--and put down pieces of double sided throughout the room, then double checked the batteries in the carbon monoxide detector in my go bag. I slept with a gun under my pillow, but I knew if they were coming for me, I’d never get the chance to use it anyway.

I laid down on top of the comforter to shut my eyes for a few minutes. I could hear police sirens and people talking outside.

Find Vanessa. Bring her home.

The next thing I knew, I was awake again and sunlight was streaming in through the stingy window.

---

Despite the fact that the walkie had never fallen, the next morning I noticed a couple pieces of double sided tape were unaccounted for. Someone, or something, had been in my room while I slept. It didn’t appear any new bugs had been added to the several already attached to my car and bags, so I took it as a message: *we’re near, and we’re waiting. *

Somehow I didn’t figure the person who sent the message meant it to be a comfort. But since they hadn’t killed me, I was going to chalk it up as a win.

Hell, maybe this dump just had a rat problem.

I packed up all of my stuff and cleared out of the hotel, returning the key to the wizened old woman at the desk, who had swapped over to watching The Price is Right. I double checked the car for explosives (besides the ones I brought), then I began the journey back into the belly of the beast.

Staying out of town left me with time to think as I drove. I made a point to take the backroads, through the woods. It would add more time to my trip, but it was worth it if it kept them guessing. While the twisting roads and engine hum lulled me into a road trance, my mind drifted back to that night in Roach’s club.

“You don’t shake easy, sugar. What’s different now?”

“Roach, I’ve encountered a lot in this line of work. And even with all the shit I’ve seen, there’s been a reason. It might not be apparent, and it might not be logical, but it’s always there. Not with this town. I can’t find my footing.”

“Have you ever considered you make up reasons to explain the things you’ve seen before? I gave up on trying to understand things years ago. I blame it on men.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s always the men.” Here I was baring my soul, and Roach was talking about the fucking *patriarchy? *

She shot me a look. One that told me I better shut my mouth and open my ears. Which I did. Because Roach has sharp shoes and an even sharper tongue, and I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of either.

“You don’t see women running around doing stupid shit with no rhyme or reason. You’ve spent this entire time thinking like a man; have you considered approaching it like a woman?”

“I try not to think about the situation at all, if I’m being honest.”

“That’s the problem with you. No thinking. Just ego. You need a plan. One that involves using your brains rather than your balls.”

“Roach, you have bigger stones than anyone I know.”

“Honey, I know. And I keep them in my purse.”

Something flew by my peripheral vision, snapping me out of the revery. I threw a look over my shoulder, but it was too late. Whatever was there on the side of the road was gone now, if it had ever been there in the first place.

There’s no fucking way.

Had I imagined that?

It looked just like her, but that’s impossible… isn’t it?

I eased onto the brakes and turned around in my seat. That section of forest was about to disappear from my view as the car rounded a corner.

I considered stopping, turning the car around, and going back to see if my mind was playing tricks on me, or if I’d really just seen that little girl standing on the side of the road near the forest. Her clothes, dirty and tattered. Her eyes, full of hate. Her blonde hair matted like the fur of a feral animal.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen her. That had been months ago. Just moments before I killed her father and brother in self-defense. Before the truck we were in flipped. I looked for her after the crash, but if I’m being honest, I didn’t look very hard. And when the powers that be tried to make the whole thing disappear, I put her entire fucking redneck cannibal family out of my mind.

I was still considering turning around, going back to see if it was really her. Another missing girl to sidetrack me. But before I could make up my mind, I turned a corner and saw something impossible in the middle of the road.

“Jesus!” I screamed as I yanked the wheel hard to the right. The tires screeched against the pavement, and I went off the shoulder, crashing into a wet ditch hard enough to deploy the airbag. It smacked me in the face and made me see stars for a few seconds, but I didn’t have any time to shake it off. As soon as my wits were back I reached into the center console for my Beretta 9mm.

There was no question. I was back in crazy town, and they had rolled out the welcome wagon.

---

I knew that the thing I saw in the middle of the road couldn’t be real. Not in the same world that I had always known. But the last time I was home, I came to realize that things don’t have to be real to kill you. I told myself to stay put. Leaving the car was a death sentence. That thing is out there, and you’re in here, and right now that’s probably the only reason you’re alive.

I put the car in reverse and gave it some gas, but the tires weren’t catching.

Shit.

I put it in drive and tried rocking back and forth, but no dice. This beater didn’t have four wheel drive, and unless somebody else came down this backroad who could pull me out, I was stuck. And even if they did, chances weren’t good that I’d want their help.

I took a deep breath and looked out my window at the thing that had forced me off the road in the first place. I blinked a few times, half expecting it to vanish. But it wasn’t going anywhere.

It was sprawled out across both lanes. I couldn’t see where it started, because the tail end went off the other side of the road. But its head was right here, six feet away from my car door.

It was a fucking dinosaur.

I double checked to make sure the gun had bullets, one was chambered, and the safety was off, then I looked back out the window at the beast.

It hadn’t moved an inch since I first saw it.

Maybe it’s fake?

That thought was only a brief comfort, as I quickly remembered the juggernauts I’d encountered on my last visit to town. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t afford to assume that anything here wasn’t completely lethal.

With my gun trained on the monster, I used my free hand to unbuckle my seat belt, reach into my pocket, pull out my pack of smokes, and fish one out. I lit it, took a puff, and waited for my nerves to calm down enough for me to properly assess the situation.

The thing outside my car window was an enormous immobile alligator, one that looked like it started crossing the road and then fell asleep. Gators aren’t unheard of around these parts, but this creature--if it was real--would easily be a new world record. At least twenty-feet long, with a head big enough to snap a deer in half in one bite. About four feet tall at the highest point. Like I said, it was a fucking dinosaur.

The car wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. It was a shame, but in hindsight I’d probably made the right choice swerving off the road. Running into that thing would have been like hitting a brick wall.

I grabbed my phone and flicked it on. More bad news there. No signal detected.

I waited until the smoke was spent, staring at the creature the whole time. Trying to detect any kind of movement. Any breathing. Anything. But it didn’t move. It just laid there like a fallen oak.

I shelled out a lot of money preparing for this trip. Ironically, most of it went into this piece of shit car. You wouldn’t know it from looking, but the windows and windshield were all made of polycarbonate plastic. The door frames were packed with phones books, and the tires were all filled with sealant. The gas mileage was shit, but the car was effectively bulletproof. I was sitting in a shelter with a monster outside the window. As long as I stayed put, it couldn’t hurt me. But then again, I couldn’t stay here forever.

Two possible options appeared before me. I could wait, hoping that the next person to come around that corner was friendly. Or I could unlock the door and try to find a way to get free from this ditch.

Time was ticking away while I tried to make a decision.

I reached for another cigarette when the phone started ringing. I jumped at the sound.

What the hell?

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I sure as shit wasn’t expecting to see Donny’s number on the caller ID. I let the phone ring while I lit the smoke.

Here we go again. They’re gonna try and get inside your head. This is what they do.

I answered.

“What do you want?”

“Well is that any way to talk to family?”

“You’re not my family.”

“Eric. It’s me. Donny.”

“Go fuck yourself sideways. I’m here to get my niece back, so do yourselves a favor and get out of my way.”

“She’s alive, Eric. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

“I’m not buying this. My brother died.”

“I know I did. But they brought me back. Most of me anyway. But I don’t have my same senses anymore. I don’t get hungry. I can’t see anything. I don’t feel, except for pain sometimes when they want me to. But somehow I know things. There are hundreds of us, just like me. They don’t know that I’m talking to you, but I need you to know that they’re coming for you. Right now. They know about the jump drives. They don’t care what’s on them. You’re making them scared and stupid. The order came out today. Everyone knows to kill you on sight. Do you understand? No more cover ups. If you go back into town, the sheriff will put a bullet in you on main street without a second’s hesitation.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“You have to get moving. They’re five minutes out.”

The line disconnected.

I went ahead and lit that second cigarette.

They’re messing with you, Eric. That’s the only logical explanation. The fact that they want you to move means that you’re doing the right thing staying put.

Outside of this town, logic and reason had been assets. But so had my gut. And in this town, only one of those three really seemed to matter. Right now, my gut was telling me that the voice on the phone--whether it was Donny, or them, or something else entirely--was right. I needed to move.

FUCK!

I crawled over the center console and opened the door on the passenger’s side. That thing in the road still hadn’t moved, but I wasn’t going to take my eyes off of it for long. I needed to find something to put under the tires. My first step into the ditch put me ankle-deep in hot mud. Well, nobody said this was going to be easy.

I shut the car door and-

It was like a bomb dropped. Everything happened so fast I couldn’t keep up with it in the moment. The trees on the other side of the road shook. Birds erupted into the sky. I could feel the ground shake beneath my feet and the noise exploded in my ear drums.

It finally moved.

The beast jerked its enormous head in my direction. The only thing between us was the car--the source of the blaring noise.

My car alarm was going off! Something must have gotten screwed up in the crash. Just my luck.

In a split second, the alligator and I both lunged towards the vehicle. Even though it was six feet away and I was right next to it, the beast got there first.

Its jaws snapped onto the hood of the car, and the vehicle lifted. The car door slammed into me, knocking me flat onto my back in the mud. I struggled back to my feet, then I went for the door, caught the handle, yanked it open, and dove inside, slamming it shut behind me.

The car continued to rock back and forth, and before I knew it, I was moving. We were sliding across the road. Through the front window, I could see that the gator had latched onto the hood, and for the first time I realized that this animal had no eyes. I didn’t have long to wonder how this thing got along before we jerked forward again. It was moving backwards, dragging the entire car with it. I dove into the driver’s seat and put the keys into the ignition. In front of me, the hood buckled around the creature’s teeth and the alarm went abruptly silent.

Fuck.

I turned the key, but there was nothing. The alligator had bitten right through the battery, and now it was pulling me into the woods. The tires went off the asphalt into the mud, and suddenly the gator had a much easier job. We went fast, as fast as the thing could drag us. If it was about to take me into a swamp or bog, I was toast. This car may be bulletproof, but that wasn’t going to save me from drowning.

I said a quick prayer. If God or the devil or whoever was prolonging my sorry excuse for a life felt like sending me another deus ex miracle, now was the fucking time to do it. But I wasn’t going to hold my breath. The alligator released its bite, repositioned, and clamped down again. This time, the windshield went spider web and I had an all too uneasy feeling of deja-vu. The car lurched on, deeper into the forest, and I jumped into the back, pulling away the middle seat and opening the trunk access compartment. My 9mm may as well have been a bb gun against this thing, and if I hoped to do any damage, I’d need a weapon to fit the job.

It took me a few precious seconds to find the emergency supplies bag and pull it through to the backseat. A few more to fish out one of the M67 frag grenades I’d decided to pack “just in case.”

The car grew darker as the creature dragged me deeper into the woods, under the thick cover of tree branches where only minimal sunlight could reach. We moved in short bursts, then it would let go, readjust its bite, and start again. I had no idea where it was taking me and no desire to find out. The plan was to cook the grenade, open the door, and lob it. It had a lethal blast radius of fifteen feet, and there was a pretty good chance I’d eat some blowback if I didn’t time it just right. But I had to try something.

Right then is when things went from weird to insane.

The car stopped, and rather than bite into the engine again, the monstrous alligator whipped its head to the side. It was looking, or listening, for something. At first, the only thing I could hear was my heart pounding, but after a few still seconds, I heard it too.

A radio.

And it was getting closer.

I looked out the window in the direction of the noise, then said to nobody in particular, “Oh you’ve got to be fucking kidding me right now.”

The song was one of those new-aged dubstep, techno whatever-you-call-thems. The kind of song that’s comprised mostly of electronic noise with no real discernible rhythm and a beat designed to compliment a dance club on ecstacy.

It was coming from an old-fashioned, oversized boombox, which was being carried by the man in the bear suit. He was holding it over his head and walking straight towards the car. The alligator backed away from me, and I realized that I was about to witness a man/bear being brutally ripped to pieces by a prehistoric monster. There was no way I could save him. I’d tried to prepare myself for any possible scenario, but that was not something I was ready to see.

The alligator took off at full speed, faster than a burnt cat, whipping its tail into the side of the car hard enough to put it onto two wheels for a split second. Yet again, I couldn’t believe what had just happened. The alligator had turned and run off in the opposite direction, away from the man in the bear suit.

The man doubled his speed, running right at me like he were chasing the beast away. When he reached the car, he jumped onto the contorted hood, where he set down the radio and cranked the volume up as loud as it would go. Then, facing away from me, he grabbed his head with both hands and twisted the bear mask around 180 degrees so that the face was staring at me with those giant black button eyes. He started to dance, poking both middle fingers into the air and waving his ass in my direction, then he jumped down and ran off the same way the alligator had gone, his face pointed behind him the entire time, staring at me until he disappeared into the forest.

And just like that, the whole thing was over. I had to wait a few more seconds until my heartbeat returned to normal, then I put my game face back on. I’d already been through this before. I’d have time to freak out later, to wonder what’s real, to give another shrink a reason to to retire. But right now wasn’t that time. This whole thing was the kick in the pants I needed. A reminder that things in this town don’t play by any of the rules I’m used to.

I hated it, but I knew what I had to do next. Abandoning my car was always part of the plan, even if I thought I’d have another day or two. And I thought I’d be doing it on my terms. But I could adapt. I needed to.

I grabbed only the things I needed. My go bag. My Beretta. My cellphone and wallet. The rest would have to stay here, but I couldn’t allow them to dissect the contents of my car. I needed to keep my plan to myself, which meant there was only one thing left to do.

I connected the improvised grenade casing through the trunk compartment in the back seat and fixed the pin to the wire tied to the roof of the trunk. If somebody opened the back of the car without disconnecting it first, they’d only have a couple seconds to reevaluate their life decisions before the grenade took them out--along with most of my supplies.

I locked the car doors, turned off the boombox, then consulted my compass to be sure I was heading in the right direction. I was about two miles from the gas station if I cut straight through the woods. Fortunately, I was heading away from the bear man and the giant alligator, but the gun wasn’t going to leave my grip until I was standing inside an air conditioned building with the doors closed behind me.

I was about a mile into my trip when I heard the explosion.

Some unlucky sap had gone looking where he shouldn’t have.

It was a damn shame. There was a lot of gear in there that I could have used. 

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Credits