When I was in college I worked in a local flower shop. The store was owned by an old man named Toliver who had bought the place a few years earlier when he moved to town. He had no particular love of flowers, but he said that he needed a fresh start and the business had been for sale, so he took it as a sign. Judging from my few months there, he was never going to get rich from owning the place, but we did enough business for him to pay me more than most places would have offered a kid my age.
As you might imagine, our biggest business came from weddings and funerals, and over time I’d grown accustomed to dealing with the finicky fiancées and bleakly numb bereaved that so often came through our door or called in an order. It was rare that I remembered anyone past the parting jingle of the jostled bell above the door as they departed. But then again, I’d never encountered someone like Mr. Dormin.
I hadn’t looked up when he first entered the shop, and when I did, I took a step back in surprise and fear. He was a wall of a man—nearly seven feet tall and twice the width of my narrow frame. The long, black raincoat he wore hung off him awkwardly, as though the angles were wrong underneath. And his face was broad and hard, with pale skin so smooth it almost looked artificial—poreless and disturbing in its symmetrical perfection. And not just poreless, but hairless as well. The man wore a red knit cap, but I could see no sign of hair on his head or his face, not even eyebrows. I began to wonder if he was a cancer patient or burn victim, but was brought out of my thoughts by the deep rumbling of the man’s voice.
“Is he here?” His eyes were a flinty blue that seemed to almost glow in the shadows of his low, jutting brow. They landed on me only briefly as they canvassed the store beyond the counter.
I blinked. “Uh…I’m sorry, sir. Is who here?”
The man’s gaze fell on me again, his mouth puckering slightly as though he tasted something sour. “Templeton. Or…Toliver.” He put his hands on the counter between us with a muffled thump. I glanced down to see his hands were covered in leather gloves that creaked as he squeezed his fists. “Is he here?”
Swallowing, I shook my head. “Um, no. Sorry. Can I get your name? Or can I help you with something?”
The man’s expression didn’t change. “My name is Mr. Dormin. And no, only he can give me what I want.” He glanced around the store. “When will he return?”
Glancing at the clock, I saw it was nearly four. Toliver usually took off from two until four-thirty before coming back to work until six or seven most nights. But I didn’t want to tell this guy that, mainly out of fear he’d decide to just wait half an hour. I didn’t want him hanging around, and I wanted to warn Toliver before the guy found him. I had no idea what this strange man wanted from him, but I didn’t have a good feeling about it.
So, looking back to Dormin, I lied. Told him Toliver would be on a trip until that Friday. The man did show slight emotion then, a small grimace followed by a nod. “Very well. Until then I will wait.”
For a panicked moment I was afraid he was going to try and wait there, as crazy as it was. But then he turned and headed for the door, surprisingly quiet as he made his way out into the afternoon light before disappearing out of sight. The only sign he’d even been there were the fading sounds of the bell on the door and the frantic thudding of my heart.
I called Toliver immediately. Normally a very calm and jovial man, he grew very quiet for several moments, and when he did speak, his tone was deadly serious.
“John, I want you to close the store immediately. And it’s going to stay closed, at least for a few days. I’ll keep paying you for now, of course. None of this is your fault. If I find I can’t reopen in the long-term, I’ll let you know in advance before I have to stop your pay. Thank you for warning me.”
I went to respond, but the line was already dead. I thought about calling back, but decided against it. It was none of my business. Maybe Toliver was into something shady or owed money to a loan shark or something. Either way, I didn’t need to rock the boat if he was going to keep paying me. For now, I should just do as he said and close up shop.
And that’s exactly what I did. For the next two weeks I waited for word from Toliver, but none came. I even went by the store a couple of times, but it was closed up tight with no sign of my boss having been around. I knew he was still in town, or had been a few days earlier, because I got a month’s pay mailed to me with a local postmark that Tuesday.
And sure, I didn’t want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but I also was kind of worried about my boss. Toliver was old and a little weird, but he was also a really nice man. He was funny and patient and had always treated me well. If I didn’t owe him because of the money, I felt like I at least owed something to him for being a good guy.
So one night after class, I went to his house. It was a small farmhouse on the edge of town, and everything looked as I’d last seen it except for the lawn. Toliver normally never let his grass go more than a week or two without cutting it, but now there were weeds up past my knees. Frowning, I made my way up to the front door and knocked.
It took a few tries, but he finally came to the door. He sounded relieved when he heard it was me, but he still seemed reluctant to open up. Wincing inwardly, I pushed the issue. I just wanted to check on him, I said. Talk to him for a minute. Make sure he was okay. After a moment of silence, he opened the door and hurriedly beckoned for me to come in, his eyes looking past me into the deepening gloom of night.
The light in the front hall was dim, but enough for me to be shocked at Toliver’s appearance. Normally a fastidiously neat and clean-shaven man, he was now sporting at least a couple of weeks of beard growth and looked as though he might not have bathed in nearly as long. He shut the door quickly behind me and threw the deadbolt before turning to look at me with an expression that…the man looked terrified.
Voice shaking, I blurted out the questions I’d been pondering for so long. “What’s wrong? What’s going on, Mr. Toliver? Who is that Dormin fella?”
He was shaking his head, and I could tell he already regretted letting me in. “It doesn’t matter, my boy. It will be settled one way or the other soon enough.” I could smell a wash of alcohol flow over me at his words, and as he stood there in his dirty bathrobe, I realized he was unsteady on his feet. He was drunk.
A part of me—the scared, selfish college boy part of me that didn’t want hassle or to deal with anyone else’s shit—wanted to leave right then and there. To extract myself from whatever drama this old man had going on and just go find another job somewhere. It was be easy and I could justify it by telling myself it wasn’t my business and he didn’t want my help anyway.
But looking at him in that hallway, he looked so frail. So tired and used up, like a faded photograph of the man I’d known and grown to like and respect over just the past few months. Something was really wrong, I thought. Something he couldn’t get out of by himself. And maybe I couldn’t help him either, but I knew I had to try.
“Mr. Toliver, please. Just tell me, okay? Do you owe Mr. Dormin money or something? Do we need to call the cops?”
His eyes widened slightly, and at first I thought he was angry, but then he let out a wet laugh and waved his hand. “No, no. That won’t do any good. They’d never find him. Never stop him if they did. He’s coming for me, you see. To finish the path we set him on.” Toliver wiped at his face, and as he looked back up, I saw he was crying.
“I…I don’t understand. I think we should just call the cops. Or, um, I can tell him to leave you alone if he comes around again.”
I let out a small yelp as Toliver suddenly lunged forward and gripped my shirt with surprising strength. “No! No, John. You stay away from him. From this. He will break you if you stand in his way.”
I put my hands on his arms gently. “Please tell me what’s going on. Please.” Toliver didn’t release my shirt, but instead fell into it, crying softly against my chest for several moments before he began to speak.
“Someone was killing the children.”
It was when I was a young man. I had a family—a little girl and a beautiful wife. We lived in a small town near Warsaw, and for three months, a child had been taken every new moon. Every time, we found what was left of them three days later, hanging across the limbs of a tree near the child’s home. We had questioned everyone. Searched out every stranger. Patrolled the streets at night. It didn’t matter. When the sky was black a fourth time, our own little girl was taken.
My wife found her on the third morning, hanging from a maple tree we had planted the year we got married.
It broke her. Broke both of us. In my grief, my rage, I abandoned her to mourn alone. I poured all of my energy into one thing. Revenge.
There are ways…old ways known to me and some others. Ways of fashioning tools and giving them a kind of life. We needed such a tool to find whoever had done this to our children. Something that was strong and ruthless, relentless and cunning. Something to exact vengence. Justice. Punishment.
So we made a man out of stone and clay.
It wasn’t as difficult as you might think. There are methods and words that must be exact, but the most important part was the intention. We poured our grief and rage and guilt into that thing until it blazed with a manner of rough life—a burning will so hot that our tears sizzled away on its stony skin. And when its eyes opened, it rose and set off on its hunt without a single word or complaint.
After it went out that first night, I returned home with a lighter heart. I would wait to tell my beloved Beata what we had done once the bastard had been caught, but I vowed to myself that from that point onward, I would devote myself only to her. Any anger or accusation I felt towards her, or towards myself, would leave me once the killer had been expunged from this world. And when I lay down beside her that night…I slept well for the first time in weeks.
The man who had killed those girls was found dead the next morning, though not by our creature’s hand. A pig farmer at the edge of town, he’d hung himself two days earlier and left a note describing his sins and his remorse. Bits of hair belonging to the girls, including my Maria, were found among his belongings, and there was no sign that anyone else had helped him commit these horrors. It was suddenly all just…over.
Or so we thought. We didn’t know where the creature we’d created had gone to, but as the days came and went, our group’s consensus was that it had likely been released as soon as its work was done. Perhaps it had even found the man’s body and then wandered out into his field before tumbling apart like so much rock and mud.
These were the guesses and hopes of fools, myself included. We hadn’t understood the nature of what we had conjured or the brutal calculus by which it operates. But it wasn’t long before we began to learn both far too well.
The parents of the first little boy that had been taken were found torn apart in their home.
Two night later, the mother of the second child, just an infant at the time of their murder, was found dismembered in her front yard. As with the first killings, someone or something had broken through her front door and chased her outside before plucking her limbs off like petals from a flower.
By this point, the few of us that remained had begun to understand what was happening, even if we didn’t know why. After all these years, however, I think I do.
It was what we put in it, you see. Not just our hatred and blame for the insane man who killed our babies. But our guilt and loathing for ourselves and our wives and husbands. When we knelt over that creature and gave it a measure of our life and our pain, we weren’t just creating it. We were teaching it. Molding it with our hearts just as we had with our hands. Showing it the faces of everyone we blamed—even our own.
Toliver’s lips quivered as he looked up at me. “I tried to save Beata. I did. We ran to this country, and for nearly ten years there was no sign of it. And then one night it came and…”
BOOM BOOM BOOM
We both screamed as the front door first squealed and then shattered. Filling the void left behind was the man I’d seen in the flower shop weeks before, though now he was stripped bare. He stepped inside, his pale, perfect skin glowing in the soft light of the hall. He was completely hairless, but that wasn’t all. He had no nipples, no genitals, no belly button. No toenails on the ends of his white, misshapen toes.
And then there were his hands. His skin grew scaly at the wrist before hardening into something that reminded me of concrete mixed with jagged rock. It seemed impossible, but that stone was alive, moving and flexing as he lunged forward and snatched Toliver away from me.
My friend had the chance to scream, but he didn’t. Instead, he used his last moment to find my eyes and mouth a single word.
Run.
I heard about his murder the next day, and though it sickened me, I pretended to be surprised. The creature hadn’t tried to stop me, and though I spent the next few nights terrified by every sound, I had the feeling that it wouldn’t try to hurt me now that its work was done. Maybe, I thought, if Toliver was the last life holding it together, it really had finally gone off into the woods to die.
It was a nice thought, and it lasted until Toliver’s funeral. I was one of only a dozen people there, and the thought of maybe being the closest thing the man had left to a friend or family only added to the sad loneliness of the whole thing. I felt guilty that I’d run, that I hadn’t done more to save him, but what could I hope to do against something like that? It wasn’t something I understood or could fight. So instead I’d sit there and feel sorry for him and myself because there was no one else to…
There was a man at the edge of the cemetery. Even at a distance, even wearing that long, misshapen coat, I was struck by the size of the man and the magnitude of his malign presence. Suppressing a shudder, I glanced away before forcing myself to look back. He was still there, still watching, and it felt like his hard blue eyes were burning into me. For a panicked moment, I almost got up and ran again, but then I thought better of it. No. It wasn’t there for me. I had nothing to do with this. This was about Toliver, not me. And now it was done.
As if reading my thoughts, the thing turned slightly, and now I knew it was looking at me. Staring in horror, I saw its pale face split into a terrible smile as it raised an arm and gave me a little wave. The gloves were gone now, but there was no clay or jagged stone glittering in the afternoon sun. The hands were made of flesh—pink and baby-fresh—and as he waggled his fingers at me, my gorge began to rise. I did get up now, stumbling a few yards away to retch against a headstone before turning back to glance apologetically to the attendants and to gaze at the empty lawn beyond.
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