Last spring, I graduated high school. We weren’t planning any big parties or anything—partly because of the whole germ thing, partly because we were never that into big parties in the first place. When I say “we”, I mean me and my two best friends, Mia and Cooper. We weren’t nerds…or if we were, we were the socially-acceptable type of nerds that had a lot of friends at school and rarely got picked on. We went with the flow, and that did sometimes include us going to games or parties, though usually we’d target smaller hangouts with people we could tolerate for a few hours.
Most of the time, though, it was just the three of us, and as we got closer and closer to graduation, our little circle of three seemed to involuntarily contract more and more, almost like a clenching fist. Mia was going to college in Nevada, I was staying here, and Cooper…well, he wasn’t sure yet, but the odds of him staying in-state for school were getting slim.
There was an unspoken tension between the three of us. A secret dread that said you better spend time together while you can, because come the fall, you’ll be all alone. It was silly, of course. We could still talk and visit, and we’d make new friends to keep us company while the three of us were apart. We all knew that rationally, but as the time ran down, I became acutely aware of how large my fear of losing them was. How powerful.
So we didn’t go to parties, no. But we found excuses to do stuff all the time. Not just hang out, watch t.v., play games and bullshit, but actually do activities. It had started right after Christmas, and by May we had found an impressive variety of shit to do. Parks—state, national, and amusement. Fairs—both the carny type and the medieval type. We had gone camping, hiking, fishing and swimming. There was video of me rollerblading down a hill (though Mia missed when I wiped out at the bottom) and photos of us petting goats at the world’s smallest petting zoo two counties over. It was literally just an old woman with three goats in her yard, but she’d posted an invitation on the internet to all visitors that were well-behaved and brought some food for her goats out of a voluminous list of things her babies would eat.
There had even been a brief flirtation with trying to find a haunted house earlier in the spring, but they weren’t as easy to find as movies led you to believe, and we were all more than a little nervous about getting caught trespassing at some abandoned house. Again, nerds maybe, but not unreasonably so.
But then Mia brought up the idea of the Clown Car.
She’d originally heard about it from her cousin, who heard about it…well, you know how that goes. But then she spent some time digging on the internet and finally found some more info on it—other people had played it before, and a couple of places there were some loose advice and rules for how it was played. Because it was, at least to some extent, a game.
When she first told us about it, we just laughed. Told her it’d be a lot less trouble to just go stand in the bathroom with the lights off and say “Bloody Mary” three times. We might be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but “spooky” games with weird, needlessly complex rules…it seemed kind of a waste of time. It was always just people laughing or trying to scare each other, and when it was all done, you were left kind of disappointed, because…well, that’s not the way the world really works.
You could see the hurt look on her face. It had been there from the start, but me and Cooper were busy making jokes, so it took us a minute to catch on. She didn’t suggest stuff often, and this was why. We were smartasses, and sometimes we got too rough with it. Cooper seemed to realize we’d pushed it too far just a couple of seconds before I did. Told her we were only kidding and it sounded cool. If we could figure out a good spot for it, we’d do it that weekend.
As it turned out, that was the easy part, because there had been a pair of violent deaths just outside of town.
In August of 1982, John Samson came home from a twelve-hour shift at the quarry. He normally wouldn’t have been driving his dump truck home, but the next morning he had an early special delivery to a subdivision being built fifty miles up the road, and it was quicker to have it ready then have to get it loaded the next day. Besides, he figured, no one was going to try to steal 40,000 pounds of sand and gravel parked in his driveway.
When he got home, however, he found his driveway was already occupied. His brother, Bill Samson, had come to visit John’s wife while he was away. Story goes that he’d been visiting her regularly for some time, much to the delight of the neighborhood gossips.
No one had thought to tell John about it though, so when he walked in on them, it was apparently quite a shock. I say that not because I know exactly what happened in there or what he was thinking, but because of what he did next.
Three days later someone found them all in the middle of S.R.3, a service road for the gravel pits that hadn’t seen much use since the late ‘70s. John had shot himself, but not before dropping off his final load. He’d apparently tied his wife and brother together, drug them behind the truck, and unloaded all twenty tons on top of them while they were still alive. According to one quote from the local article, the rescue worker that found them said their mouths were filled with sand from screaming.
The weird thing was, none of us had heard that story before Mia dug it up on the internet. It had happened before we were born, sure, but in a small town like this, local horror stories don’t die from old-age. Maybe it was kept more quiet because of the sexual component, or because the town was ashamed they hadn’t done more to head things off before it reached that point. Or maybe it hid itself, a story to be forgotten until it was needed again. Until some dumb kids wanted to play a game.
The rules were simple enough. You get in a car and drive to the spot you’ve picked out. The spot needs to meet certain criteria for this to work. As you’ve figured out, it needs to be at or near a spot where people died violently. It also needs to be on a road, and the road must be a dead end. At one time S.R.3 had gone all the way through to the other side of the pits, but after the murders they had started ripping the road up. If the company hadn’t gone belly up the following year, it might have all been gone long ago, but as it was, two-thirds of it was left, including the spot where John emptied his truck onto his wife and brother.
So check on the violent death spot. Double-check on the dead-end road.
The next thing is who went with you. This is kind of flexible depending on what kind of car you have. You can go by yourself, or you can go with other people. The key is you have to leave at least one seat empty. Cooper had his mom’s old Camry, so that was easy enough too. I was in the back, Mia was in front of me, and Cooper drove us out there.
We went just after midnight. Mia had found conflicting accounts of if there was a specific time you had to do it, but generally they all overlapped between one and three a.m., so we figured we were safe if we got the ritual done in that timeframe.
Because yes, there’s a ritual. Of course there’s a ritual, right? Specific mysterious things you have to do to get you more invested and make it all feel real. Specific mysterious things that could be misinterpreted or done slightly wrong without you knowing it, giving an easy excuse when nothing happened. Because it was your mistake, right, not the fact that it was all made-up bullshit.
If this sounds like I was highly skeptical, it’s because I was. I acted pumped for Mia’s sake, but the more we got into it, the more I just wanted it over with. We had to find the road and then the murder spot on the road. This was actually the easy part, as Mia had done the necessary research beforehand.
But then we had to make sure the front of the car was pointed due north. We had to light four candles and put them at each of the cardinal directions—north, east, south and west. We had to have three more candles, one for each of us to light and hold. And then we had to roll down all the windows, holding our candle in one hand while we hung the other hand out the window.
Once all this was done, we would stare at our candle flames. This was apparently very important. We couldn’t look away from our flame at any point or…we lost? We died? None of it was very clear, but it was definitely a bad thing. And as we looked at the fire, we would take turns saying the same phrase over and over.
We invite you in.
You could hear crickets on the air as we sat alone in the dark. I’d been convinced some of the candles would fall over or blow out, but so far they all seemed steady despite the cool breeze that would sometimes rustle the trees and send a dry, dusty smell through the interior of the car.
We’d never been on the road before, but driving up in the dark we could see enough to make out the sharp drop off on the right side of the road. The old pits were down there—I could picture a hundred foot drop ending in dirt and rocks and muddy water, but the height wasn’t what bothered me. It was the black void I could feel out there, a great absence that didn’t feel natural or friendly.
I didn’t understand it. I wasn’t afraid of the woods or the dark, at least not more than normal. But this place didn’t feel like normal woods at night. It felt…it felt like acid, like everything was burning and poison, being eaten away and…
I blinked. What the hell was wrong with me? There was nothing weird out here. If I felt like anything was burning, it was from the pollen or smelling the candles. I needed to get my shit together, quit letting this dumb game freak me out and just get through it.
“We ready to start?”
Mia turned around and looked at me.
“Whoa! Jeez, watch the candle. You trying to set my head on fire?”
She yanked it back from where it had brushed the side of Cooper’s arm as she’d looked back. “Oops, sorry Coop.” Turning back to me, she nodded her head. Her eyes were dark and wide in my candlelight, and when she returned my smile, I could tell she was as nervous as I felt. She glanced at my window. “Um, you need to put your other hand out, remember?”
Nodding, I stuck my arm out, letting my hand dangle limply against the side of the car. “Like this?”
She nodded and turned back around in her seat. “I think we’re ready.”
“We invite you in.”
“We invite you in.”
“We invite you in.”
Mia started, then me, then Cooper. We said it in a circle over and over, maybe five or six times, and then we sat silent, tense and waiting, hoping for both something and nothing to happen. I tried to keep my eyes on my flame, but it was hard. The light was very bright in the relative darkness, and the urge to look around only grew stronger as the seconds stretched into minutes.
“Should we do it again?” I could hear the cautious impatience in Cooper’s voice. He wasn’t trying to be a party pooper, but I could tell he was ready to be through with it…
Mia let out a scream.
“What, what is it?”
Her candle’s flame bobbed in front of me as she shuddered. “Something touched my hand. I felt it brush by my hand.”
Heart pounding, I shifted my light and gaze to the gap between her seat and the doors. Her arm was still hanging out. “Mia, pull your hand in!”
She shook her head. “No. It said in the rules you can’t pull it in until it’s done. You know, until all the lights are out.”
That was another part of all this. If it “worked”, you would see the candles outside the car go out one by one. After that…well, nothing really said what happened after that. We’d guessed after that you’d either see or hear something spooky or you’d be done. But something touching her?
“It could be an animal or something. Pull your hand in!” Cooper’s voice was high and scared-sounding, and I understood. I still didn’t believe in ghosts or whatever, but there was something wrong here. Something dangerous. And we needed to leave.
Outside, the candle on the my side of the car went out.
“I can’t!” Mia’s voice sounded long and strange, somewhere between a shout and a moan as she began to move around more. “I can’t move it at all! Oh, I feel it touching me!”
“Fuck!”
This last was from Cooper, and I could see him yanking away from his window violently, his candle turned sideways and dumping a sizzle of melted wax onto the center console. He didn’t make it very far though. I couldn’t see clearly, but leaning forward I could make out his arm still hanging out the window like it was pinned there.
The candle on his side went out.
“Something has me too! Oh, God! What…I can’t…”
I glanced back over my shoulder and I couldn’t make out any flame behind the car anymore. I wanted to look further, but I could only…wait. My arm was still out the window too. How was that possible? Why wouldn’t I have thought to yank it back in once Mia started screaming?
She was still screaming now—they both were. At first I thought they were being hurt, but as they quieted down to softer mutterings and moans, I realized they were just terrified. Trapped and terrified almost out of their minds. I was scared too, but at least nothing had…
I let out a gasp as something wet pushed its way between my fingers, running up the length of my palm and then rasping against the web of skin between my middle and ring fingers before exploring the other divisions between thumb and index, ring and pinkie. I wanted to scream, but the air seemed frozen in my lungs. I tried looking out the window, but I couldn’t see anything now more than before, and I was too scared to try and stick my head out. I just wanted my arm back and to get away from that terrible place.
The candle in front of the car went out, and as it did, everything changed. The air grew oddly still. The thing…licking my hand was gone. I could pull my arm in again, though I could feel a hardening film on the hand I’d had outside. Shuddering, I wiped it on my pants as I looked at Cooper and Mia. Their hands were back in too, and they looked as shellshocked as I felt. I was terrified to move, to make a sound, but I knew waiting would be a mistake. So, voice low, I leaned up between them and whispered.
“Let’s…let’s go. Now!”
I had time to see Cooper and Mia start to frantically nod in unison when Mia suddenly froze. She had been looking at me, but now…now she was looking past me, as though she saw something in the seat beside me. Blood thundering in my ears, I slowly turned to look back at the seat next to me.
Something was sitting next to me now.
In the inconstant light of our candles, it almost looked like a person, though its face had no real features other than two narrow dugout slits that might have been its eyes. The thing’s head, its entire body, looked like it was made out of mud, you see. Some thick, dark clay that leaned forward into the light, as to give us all a better look. We were transfixed in our terror for a moment, watching the monster as it hooked a thick finger across the lower part of its head and raked out a new furrow. A detached part of me realized what it was doing.
It was making itself a mouth.
The thing slung off the excess, striking the back of Cooper’s seat with a wet squelch. It then worked its new feature for a moment as though testing the feel of it, a dark worm of a tongue wriggling free for a moment before disappearing into the moving crack again. When it was satisfied, it spoke to us in a clear, deep voice that sounded both loud and far away, as though the creature was speaking to us from the other end of a well.
Thank you…for your invitation. We…accept.
I had a moment to realize Mia and Cooper’s candles had gone out, and then the thing next to me leaned forward further and puffed my own out, plunging us into darkness.
In some ways, as strange as it sounds, the dark was a relief. We were trapped in some kind of nightmare, and the less we had to see and endure before we woke up, the better. Because, I had to remind myself, none of this was possible. None of this was real.
That’s when I felt the thing beside me grab my shoulders even as more hands began touching me from outside the car. I did move then, fighting to get free, to escape the things grasping at me, even run away from the car if that’s what it took to be free. But it was too strong. They were too strong, because the hands at the window weren’t just hands anymore.
Something was crawling through my window, settling its weight onto my back even as I squealed in fear. I could barely make out the silhouette of more things coming in through the other back window, Cooper’s window, and when I turned, Mia’s as well. They just kept crawling in, wrapping themselves around us, shoving each other for better purchase and position, filling up the car with flesh that felt slimy and cold and rough. They smelled of old things, sour things, and they made grunting noises as they came, squeezing tighter and tighter as more made their way in from the outer dark.
I was beyond most thought at this point, though I did have some dim idea that it would be a race between them crushing us to death or our suffocating. I was almost past the point of caring when I realized I could hear something new. It was hard to move at all now, but I managed to turn my head enough to peer through a gap into the front seat. It was Mia I had heard.
She was gagging as one of those things started to crawl inside her mouth.
I yanked my head back violently as I felt something at my own lips, grasping my jaw firmly and prying it apart with fingers that tasted of bitter earth. No, this couldn’t happen. None of this was real and this couldn’t happen and…I heard Cooper choking and gagging too as the first of them pushed past my mouth and went down my throat. There was no fighting now. No escaping. I just needed to hope it would kill me soon. I just needed it to end.
We all woke up at sunrise. The inside of the car was filthy—not just with dirt, but our own bodies voiding at some point in the nightmare of it all. We just held each other and wept for a few minutes, too broken to be ashamed, and then we slowly pulled ourselves together enough to clean off as best we could and then make our way back down the road.
Mia had to drive us this time—Cooper’s hands were trembling too badly, and it took all the concentration I had to not just start screaming and bawling every couple of minutes. She was shaken too, but she still managed to get us to a gas station where we could clean the car and ourselves enough to avoid too many questions other than why were we out all night. As it turned out, we didn’t even get in much trouble. All our parents knew we were with each other, and that meant—even if we broke curfew—we should be safe enough.
It wasn’t until the next week that we all started aging way too fast.
They call it Werner’s Syndrome, or adult progeria, and it makes you appear to age very fast. It’s extremely rare, and having three cases that are progressing so rapidly and they all know each other? We’ve already had two medical journal articles written about us and our families keep talking about some kind of lawsuit, though no one can nail down who to sue or why. All that they do know is that something like that couldn’t be a coincidence or just congenital. It had to have, as one doctor told us, been influenced by something outside.
I’m 19 now, but I look like I’m in my early 70s in most ways. Except my feet. It’s funny, but I guess without a lifetime of walking, my feet are somehow holding up better than the rest of me. Maybe I should be a foot model since school’s not really an option.
Our parents don’t agree, of course. They want to help, but they also want to deny this is a death sentence. They want to pretend there’s no reason we can’t live for another twenty or thirty years, and with medical advancements, even more. They don’t want to hear what the doctors’ are already hinting at. Mia’s kidneys are only functioning at about a quarter of what they should be. Cooper is going to need stints put in within the next month or two, and that’s assuming a heart attack doesn’t kill him first. And that nest of tumors at the base of my spine are only going to grow from here. We get all the problems of old age without all the pesky living that comes with it.
Of course, its none of their fault. Our parents love us and want us to live. And the doctors, they don’t know what to call it other than something like Werner’s, even if they know it doesn’t quite fit. Even if we could tell them more, it wouldn’t make a difference, because it’s not something they can understand. They still labor under the assumption I used to make—that the world was sane and could be understood. That there is no magic or evil except in the minds of people. That there’s nothing outside looking to get in.
Mia thinks it’s a thin spot. She says that places with violence and pain and fear, maybe they get eaten at by the acid of it all. Makes it easier to see things there, even if its not really ghosts. Makes it easier for things to see you too.
Early on, we did try to explain it to them. Once we saw we were getting worse, we panicked, and we were going to tell everything that happened that night, whether they thought we were crazy or not. We would tell them about how we still feel wrong all the time, still hear voices and have odd thoughts almost every day. Something, anything, that could help them fix us.
But then we realized we couldn’t. Literally, the words wouldn’t come when we tried to say them or write them. We could talk about it to each other, but to no one else. Even when they started crawling out of us again, it was our secret to keep.
Because six months ago, I woke up to an arm pushing out of my mouth. It was impossible, all of it was impossible, but as I gagged and choked and cried, something pulled itself out of my body. When it was done, it stood in the moonlight and stared at me with a blank expression, no longer looking like something made of dirt and clay, but now looking like a naked young man in his twenties. He studied me a moment longer and then went over to the window, sliding it open before crawling out silently into the night.
A few minutes later I got a call from Cooper and then we called Mia. It had happened to them too. It happens now like clockwork on every new moon, and the next morning, we always look and feel about ten or fifteen years older. They’re eating us, bit by bit, from the inside, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Something stops us from fighting it or telling about it except to each other.
I wanted to write this as a warning, but the only way I could write it at all was as a letter to Mia. It’s funny, at first I couldn’t write at all, but once I resolved to hide it away and not give it to anyone else, the words came again. And maybe no one will ever find it, and if they do, I guess that means that we’re already gone. If you do find it, please spread it to others if it will let you. Make them understand that it isn’t just a story, but something that really happened to us. We didn’t understand what we were doing. We didn’t know when we made the invitation, there was something out there waiting to answer.
I tried talking to one of them once. I’d left the light on because I figured it would happen that night and I wanted a better look at what crawled out of me. It looked like a woman in her forties—birthmark on her back, freckles on her legs…her hair even looked like she’d had it cut recently. Just like the rest, she just slid off of me and onto the floor before rising to stare at me for a moment before leaving for good. This time, however, I spoke to her as she turned toward the window, and for a wonder, she turned back.
“How are you doing this? Why? How many of you are there? How many of you are there in me?”
For a moment she just stared at me again, but then a terrible smile spread across her lips as she leaned over me. I thought I’d grown numb to all the horror, but my heart still felt close to bursting as she drew close to the side of my head and whispered in my ear. When she was done, she stood up again, the smile still frozen on her lips below a pair of green, dead eyes. Lifting a finger to her lips, she winked at me before turning away and going through the window. As she climbed out of view, I repeated the words she’d spoken, my voice dry and cracked and alien-sounding in my own ears.
“There is only one of us.”
----
Comments