Don’t Look Behind You:

A Collection of Horror

Chamber Of Horror Series

By

Billy Wells

Don’t Look Behind You-A Collection of Horror

Copyright © 2013 by Billy Wells

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Dedication

I dedicate this book to Ron Mahon of www.writerpublish.com for his help and guidance in making Don’t Look Behind You a best seller in six categories on Amazon.com.

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STORIES IN THIS BOOK

SOMETHING IN THE HOUSE

Randolph and Francene have come from the cemetery with some friends to visit a house where they lived when they were alive.

WITCH ALBERT

Marty’s new toy man is eating his other super heroes in his collection. He wonders what Witch Albert will do when they are gone, and she gets hungry.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

A bank robber takes a desolate road to escape a roadblock. He would have been better off turning himself in to the police.

CHARLEY

Mandy is the only one who can see her imaginary friend who lives in the swamp.

WORLD DOMINATION

Barry believes a young man in the window seat is orchestrating  Armageddon on his laptop computer game.

WHO’S YOUR DADDY

Cecil returns to his hometown for his mother’s funeral, he discovers the father he never knew was a serial killer who devoured his victims.

JOWLS

Alex seeks revenge on three partners who reneged on making him partner after 31 years of service in remote locations

BRIDE OF THE GORILLA

Werewolves cause madness and mayhem at Dizzyworld Amusement Park.

GHOST TOWN

Settlers come upon a deserted town where the former occupants fled in a hurry from something evil.

THE CALLER FROM HELL

Clyde Bottoms is receiving calls from a disconnected phone last used by the Morningside Cemetery twenty-five years ago in Hell Massachusetts.

THE DOME

After attempting to start a concrete business in northern New Jersey, the police found what was left of Earl Breedlove crawling around a dumpster in Newark. His brother, John, seeks revenge.

THE TAXIDERMIST

Louie finds a deformed taxidermist with outstanding credentials to mount  his most prized kill from twenty-five years of hunting.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

Jeremy White stared in disbelief at the footprints in the snow leading away from his front door, and none coming to it. He suspected Billy Smith had broken into his house during the night, and he wanted to nail him.

THE BOOGEYMAN

Agnes returns from a scary walk after dark and finds her front door standing open. A serial killer the media calls the “Boogeyman” will kill another woman in the next four hours if he follows his pattern.

INTO THE LIGHT

After Tomas sees an intense light as doctors try desperately to revive him, he finds himself fighting for survival as a new character in the original movie Night of the Living Dead.

ROAD KILL

Matt and Penny pick up a young man with a flat tire on a lonely road in the middle of the night.

THE CADAVER

Blanche foolishly risks her career as a university professor to enhance the learning curve of her students by supplying fresher cadavers for them to dissect.

SOMETHING IN THE HOUSE

In the middle of the night, a loud noise that sounded like two pots striking each other awakened Gary from a deep sleep. Sitting up, he peered through the open door of the master bedroom into the landing on the second floor.

“Gwen, I heard something,” he whispered, nudging her under a mountain of covers. “I think someone’s in the house.”

He waited for a response but got only an uninterested groan and continued heavy breathing.

“Remember,” he said softly as he rolled out of bed, “you don’t know the passwords to the bank accounts if anything happens to me.”

When Gwen, still submerged in heavy blankets, answered with a snort, and started to snore even more loudly, Gary crept silently to the doorway. Looking both ways down the length of the hall, he listened for more sounds.

Momentarily, he heard the rattle of glasses in the china cabinet in the dining room. Sliding to the floor, he crawled to the railing and peered down into the black living room. He heard the refrigerator door open, then the sound of ice falling and liquid filling a glass. Apparently, whoever was creeping around in the dark on the first level was not attempting to be silent.

Had Gwen allowed someone to spend the night without telling him? He didn’t think so, but why would someone robbing the house be so brazen to make more noise than a bull in the proverbial china shop? Was this more than a robbery? The thought chilled him.

Gathering his nerve, he took a deep breath and rising to a standing position shouted, “Who’s there?”

After a pause, an unfamiliar voice answered from below, “My name is Randolph.”

“Randolph?” Gary repeated, searching his memory for a connection. Finding none, he replied, “I don’t know any Randolph. What the hell are you doing in my house in the middle of the night?”

With no hesitation, the voice that reminded him of Boris Karloff answered with a lisp, “I used to live here many years ago with my mother and sister. It was a quiet night in the cemetery. A perfect evening for a midnight stroll, and I thought I’d stop by for old time’s sake.”

“Was this some kind of sick joke?” he thought. “Did some lunatic escape from a loony bin?”

“How did you get in my house?” Gary demanded.

“I used the key under the flowerpot on the porch. I always use it when I come to visit. You know you should consider finding a less obvious hiding place. Really, why even lock the door?”

Suddenly, Gary heard something fall and break in the den. “Is someone else here with you?” he inquired more meekly.

“Yes, Donald and Francene, my brother and sister, came with me, and we found a few more hungry friends along the way,” said the creepy voice from the kitchen.”

“Why are you walking around in the dark? You’re making enough noise to wake the dead.” Gary winced as soon as he said the words, and trying to recover, replied, “Why not turn on the lights?”

“We like the dark,” Randolph said eerily.

“Look, enough of this nonsense. I don’t know what planet you came from, but you can’t just barge into someone’s home at this or any other hour just because you lived here years ago. Leave now, or I’ll call the police. You’re scaring my wife.”

Randolph, unperturbed by the threat, chanted in a whimsical voice, “’Liar, liar, pants on fire, hang them from a telephone wire.’ Your wife is here with me, Gary, and she’s not scared. At least, not anymore.”

“Now, who’s lying?” Gary shouted. “Gwen is sleeping in our bed in the master bedroom. I can hear her snoring through the doorway gather your friends and leave immediately, or you’ll spend the rest of the night in jail. This is your last chance.”

“That’s not your wife you hear snoring,” Randolph declared boldly, “it’s my sister, Francene. Your bedroom was hers when she lived here forty years ago. I’m surprised you didn’t smell her.”

Hearing more voices below, Gary turned on the light in the upstairs hall with the wall switch. His jaw dropped when he saw three pale women in hospital gowns shambling into the living room from the kitchen. His blood ran cold as he watched them craning their necks upward toward him like hungry birds, and began to smack their lips menacingly.

“Where was his cell?” he thought, in a frenzy. Then, he remembered leaving it to charge on the kitchen counter just before bedtime.

Standing paralyzed with fear at the top of the stairs in his boxers, he watched three more figures shamble into the living room and join the others ogling him with their malevolent, ravenous stares.

“What do you want?” Gary screamed.” Whatever it is, take it and leave. Please!”

At this remark, Randolph and his friends began to snicker, and then burst into a fit of maniacal laughter. The six drooling women with hungry eyes and slobbering jaws lumbered single file up the staircase toward him.

Gary shuddered in terror at the grisly fate that would befall him if they got their hands, or should he say claws on him. He turned to flee into the master bedroom, but moving toward him from the doorway, he saw something surely from the grave. It had a hideous pocked face, rotten teeth, and a long tattered gown clotted with damp, wormy earth.

Recoiling backwards from the horror, his flight catapulted him headlong over the rail of the balcony. His piercing scream drowned out the uproarious Happy Birthday greeting from his wife, friends, and neighbors flooding into the hallway and the living room to begin the celebration. In midair, when someone turned on the lights in the dining room, Gary saw the monster from the master bedroom pulling off her rubber mask and looking down at him from the railing with sad eyes. It was Janine, his next-door neighbor.

In the seconds before Gary lost consciousness after breaking his neck on the ceramic tile floor, he saw the entire room fill with balloons and confetti. Gwen looked ravishing in her favorite cocktail dress blowing a noisemaker and tossing a streamer into the air. A huge banner with the words, “Happy Halloween, Gary on Your 40th Birthday… A Night To Remember” was the last thing he saw before the grim reaper gobbled him up.

Gwen had done it again. She had planned a truly memorable party that no one in attendance would ever forget.

Gary died on the same day he was born, October 31.

WITCH ALBERT

Marty saw the toy figure lying on the sidewalk through the white picket fence. He was ten years old and small for his age. Due to the number of derelicts passing on their way to the local soup kitchen, his mother had warned him to stay away from the gate and never to talk to strangers when he played in the front yard. Sparky, the family’s German shepherd, stood vigil outside his doghouse and kept a protective eye on him. Whenever anyone passed, the dog would bark a warning and bare his teeth. Marty felt perfectly safe with Sparky standing guard.

Against his mother’s strict orders, the boy approached the fence and scrutinized the toy man with one leg on the sidewalk and the other in a patch of grass along the curb. Picking up a branch that had fallen into the yard from a nearby oak, Marty stuck it through the opening between the slats in the fence and tried to drag the toy man across the sidewalk so he could grab it.

Try as he may, he could not loosen the figure stuck in a crevice at the edge of the concrete.

Out of nowhere, he heard someone approaching on the walk to the left. Turning his head, and quickly removing the worthless branch, he scooted backward into the safety of the fenced yard behind a shrub. Mortified the person might see what he considered a treasure and snatch it for himself; he closed his eyes and hoped the stranger would pass without noticing it.

When he thought the pedestrian had finally passed, Marty peeked to see if the toy figure was still there. He winced when he saw an ugly, old woman with a pointed nose and chin wearing a long black cape and hood standing at the gate leering at him.

Reaching down, she plucked the toy man from the sidewalk and held it up in her wrinkled hand. “Is this what you want, sonny?” the old crone croaked.

Sparky growled and continued to bark. Marty sat transfixed and speechless, staring at the creepy burn scars on the woman’s face and the white film covering the pupil of her right eye.”

“Cat got your tongue, sonny. Don’t be frightened; I’m just an old woman who got burned in a house fire. I mean you no harm.” She placed the toy on top of a fence post and stepped back from the gate.

Marty wished she would leave so he could grab the toy and add it to his collection, but he dared not venture forth with her standing so close. Sparky’s chain could not reach the front gate.

After several minutes of a stalemate, the crone sighed and trudged off. When she turned right at the corner and disappeared from sight, Marty ran to the post, grabbed the toy man, and darted inside the house.

Bounding up the stairs to his room, he placed the new addition to his collection with the eight others on a shelf next to his bed. The figure was a handsome prince with shoulder length brown hair. Dressed in a dark brown tunic and green pants, he reminded him of Robin Hood. He had a silver sword melded into a scabbard, and a red gem dangled from his neck. Marty beamed with excitement and, after thoughtful deliberation, named him Prince Albert.

When he went to bed that evening, he noticed the new man seemed to emit a peculiar inner light, unlike the others that were totally opaque.

In the morning, after brushing his teeth and dressing for school, Marty noticed one of his favorite men, Mighty Man, missing from the shelf. He was positive he had been there when he went to bed.

Marty searched his room for the missing super hero, but finding nothing, he trudged down the stairs to breakfast in frustration.

During breakfast, his mother noticed his long face and asked, “What’s wrong, darling?”

“Mighty Man is missing. I looked everywhere, but I can’t find him.”

“Don’t worry; I’m sure he’ll turn up. It’s time for the bus.”

All day long at school, Marty wondered about the strange disappearance of Mighty Man.

The next night before turning in, he noticed Prince Albert looked slightly taller than his other figures. “Maybe the new man was defective,” he thought. When he turned off the light, he had the uncanny sensation he was not alone. He had never had such a creepy feeling before in his own room, even at an early age. Pulling the sheet over his head, he listened for an unfamiliar sound, but after a time, he drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Marty threw out his arms and yawned loudly. His eyes immediately fell upon the space in the middle of the row of toy men. “Mom,” he shouted. “Pulse Pounder is missing. Were you in my room this morning?”

From the master bedroom, his mother called out, “No. When I went to my exercise class at seven, I looked in on you, but I didn’t come inside your room. Your figures couldn’t have walked away by themselves. You must have put them somewhere. Where did you have them last?”

Her question hung in the air without a response as he picked up Prince Albert and studied him. He seemed even bigger and taller than yesterday. His handsome features had taken on a more villainous undertone, and his cloak had become a darker shade of purple, almost black. Two of his favorite men had disappeared, and he believed Prince Albert had something to do with it. Picking up his new acquisition, he placed it in the file cabinet next to his computer and locked the drawer.

That evening, after finishing his homework, he started watching TV, but he could not focus on the programs. He kept thinking about Mighty Man and Pulse Pounder and what Prince Albert might do next.

At nine o’clock, his mother called out from her easy chair and crossword puzzle, “Time for bed!”

Before turning in, Marty tried the file drawer and found it still locked. He looked at the seven men on the shelf and made a mental note of their position. After turning off the light, he wondered what he would find in the morning. Not long after, he fell into a deeper sleep than the night before.

In the early morning, Marty started tossing and turning. In a nightmare, Prince Albert had grown as tall as his father had, and his face had changed into the monster in Jeepers Creepers. His hands had become grotesque claws, and he had a mouthful of tiny, pointed teeth. When he spread his bat like wings, he could fly. Out of a dense fog, Marty came to the master bedroom door and opened it. Before him, he found the hideous, winged monster hovering over his parents while they slept with long, menacing claws poised to strike.

Marty awoke screaming, his tee shirt wet with sweat. He could not keep his hands from shaking. He jumped from bed and ran to his parent’s bedroom. To his surprise, the bed had been made, and everything looked the way it always did. The smell of bacon from the kitchen brought an enormous sigh of relief.

Returning to his room, he started dressing for school. It was then he saw only five figures on the shelf. Crimson Crusader was gone, and the file cabinet drawer was open next to the computer. Prince Albert stood alone on the end table with a trace of toy man blood on his lips. His dark purple cape had become as black as coal. The deep-set, sinister eyes were cruel, and a long, pointed nose and chin riddled with scars protruded from the executioner’s hood he wore about his face. Marty shuddered when he realized his new toy man had become a toy figure of the ugly woman who had placed Prince Albert on top of the gate, but now, the figure had grown bigger and taller than yesterday. He wanted desperately to tell his parents, but he knew they would never believe him.

His mother shouted from the kitchen, “Marty, breakfast is ready, and the bus leaves in fifteen minutes.”

He trudged down to the kitchen and took a seat at the table. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate a piece of bacon and a forkful of scrambled eggs to make his mother happy.

Returning to his room, he placed the witch figure in his backpack and ran outside to catch the bus.

When he crossed the Tamerack Bridge before reaching the middle school, Marty removed the toy figure from his backpack and hurled it through the open window. When it disappeared below the plane of the bridge’s guardrails, he felt confident his troubles were over. Further, out in the distance, he saw the white water crashing against the rocks below, and knew the dreaded prince who had become a witch had gone to a watery grave.

Marty slept well that night. He didn’t know if he would ever find his three missing men, but at least, he had the other five to play with. His warm, fuzzy feeling dissipated the moment he opened his eyes the next morning. He couldn’t believe it when he found only four toy men on the shelf. Midnight Monster was missing. Even though, Witch Albert was nowhere in sight, he could still feel the menacing evil of her magic in the room.

Dressing in record time, he scurried down the stairs to the breakfast table. His father was reading the paper, and his mother was preparing waffles. Taking a deep breath, he said, “Mom. Dad. You were right about the boogeyman in my closet and the troll in the flowerbed, but this time, I know I’m right. For once, I need you to stop what you’re doing and listen.”

Both their mouths dropped open, and his mother took a seat at the table.

“An old woman placed a toy man on top of our gate. I think she used it as bait so she could grab me, but I stayed away from the fence like you told me. Sparky was barking so she couldn’t come into the yard. When she finally left, I picked up the toy man and added it to my collection. I was so happy. At least, I was at first. He was the coolest figure I’d ever seen, and none of my friends had him.”

“You never mentioned this new toy to us?” his mother said, returning to the stove.

“No, I didn’t. I felt weird about keeping something that might belong to someone else, but the old woman picked it up off the sidewalk and gave it to me. I should’ve told you, but I was afraid you wouldn’t let me keep it.”

“I don’t understand the problem, son,” his father replied sympathetically. “I don’t think we care if you keep the toy. If someone comes along to claim it, I’m sure you can find another one just as…cool at the store for your birthday next week.”

“The problem is since I added the new man to my collection; I find one of my original men missing every day when I get up. And Prince Albert, that’s what I named him, is getting bigger and taller each day, and he looks just like the old woman who left him on the fence in the first place.”

“That’s quite a story for this early in the morning,” his mother replied. “I can see we’re not going to solve this now; it’s almost time for the bus. Eat a waffle, and let your father and me talk about it while you’re at school.’

“I’m not hungry!” Marty shouted. “You don’t believe me, do you? Real life is just like in the movies; no one will believe you until it’s too late.”

“I believe you believe what you are saying, but how could a new plastic man eat an old plastic man and change from a man into a woman in the process?” his father said, trying to hide the smile widening on his face.

His mother added, “It’s likely you had a bad dream. Have any of your friends come for a visit? Maybe they took your men and left you a different one they didn’t want.”

“I threw Witch Albert, that’s what I call him now, out the window of the bus into the river yesterday while we were crossing the bridge.”

“Oh,” his mother said happily, as she buttered half a waffle. “Maybe you solved your own problem.”

Marty stared blankly at the refrigerator and said, “Another figure was missing this morning. Somehow, Witch Albert must have come back.”

His parents looked at each other, and his father said, “Before you leave, go to your room, and bring down the Prince or the Witch, whichever it is now, I want to take a look at it.”

“She’s hiding somewhere in my room. I can’t find her.”

“Maybe she’s still in the river,” his mother chirped enthusiastically.

“No!” Marty screamed. ”She’s here, somewhere, I tell you. Midnight Monster is missing this morning, and I think Witch Albert ate him.”

“Let’s don’t talk about the prince who became a witch now. We’ll talk tonight. I’m sure there’s a plausible explanation for all of this,” his father said, trying to look hopeful.

Marty grabbed a waffle and hurried out the front door to catch the bus.

Looking down at the white water below the bridge as the bus headed toward school, Marty wondered why Witch Albert had come to his house to cast her magic spell, and more importantly, what she would do after she ate all of his toy men. Would he be next?

Mulling it all over in his mind, he suddenly realized the figure of the witch that Prince Albert had become not only reminded him of the old woman on the sidewalk, but someone else he had known long ago. The cloudy image hung in his thoughts, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen it. The bus pulled into the parking lot, and he followed the other students inside.

During lunch, he asked his friend, Fred, “Can you think of any kids at school who died or got hurt really bad since we started here?”

“The only one I can think of is Margaret Long, You must remember her. She’s the one who hanged herself after her parents burned to death in a house fire. If you ever saw her, you’d never forget her face. It was like something out of a horror flick,” Fred groaned, looking at the clock on the wall.

A fire… Margaret Long hanging herself… Each image exploded in Marty’s mind’s eye like a molten bat straight from the blackest recesses of Hell. Immediately, he remembered everything about what Fred had just said as if it had happened yesterday.

He closed his eyes and began to search his darkest thoughts. Gruesome visions of memories that only moments ago seemed completely erased from his mind had returned with a vengeance. He saw Prince Albert’s handsome face morph into the scarred face with the bulging eyeball of the witch on the sidewalk, then, into the horror of Margaret Long’s face after the fire. The nightmare images hung suspended in the blackness behind his eyes. He remembered the suicide note that said she could not go on any longer with the hideous scars she had received in the fire.

Fred looked at him. “Are you okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“I think I did see a ghost,” Marty said in a weird stupor his friend had never seen before. The bell rang, and when Fred saw Marty’s eyes beginning to focus again, he scurried off to his next class.

Marty had to stay with Fred for basketball practice and caught a ride home with Fred’s father. The sun was going down when he opened the gate to his house.

He didn’t know why, but he had a bad feeling about what he would find inside.

When Marty entered the yard, he missed Sparky’s familiar woof of hello. The motion detectors in the eaves triggered the yard lights to illuminate the area around the doghouse toward the back of the property. When he approached, he found the German shepherd lying motionless with his eyes wide open. He knew he was dead. He looked the same as the dog they had before Sparky looked after a car had run over him. Why would Margaret’s evil spirit send Witch Albert to kill his dog?

Tears rolled down his cheeks as he realized he would never see Sparky again. The lights in the kitchen were ablaze. Should he run down to Fred’s and get his father or go directly into the house to check on his parents? He was only ten years old. What could he do if the witch was in the house? The heavy feeling of dread returned as he unlocked the front door and went in.

“Mom! Dad! Where are you? Sparky is dead,” he shrieked, entering the kitchen.

There was no reply. The eerie silence unnerved him.

Passing through the laundry room, he opened the door to the garage and found the blue Buick parked inside. Where were his parents? At the neighbors’ house? He didn’t think so.

The sound of the icemaker startled him as he headed into the foyer. The black bedrooms at the top of the stairs seemed to beckon him as he climbed one agonizing step at a time. His eyes flitted to the left and then the right as he braced for something to spring upon him from the shadows.

Placing his hand on the railing, he found it sticky to the touch. He turned on the light and saw a trail of bloody footprints on the treads leading down from the bedroom level.

“Mom! Dad!” he screamed as he bounded up the stairs. Reaching the landing, he saw that the trail of blood led to the master bedroom, and then, to his bedroom.

“Was this really happening or was it a horrible nightmare?” He paused at the door to his parent’s bedroom, and then, pushed it open. Gasping for breath, he turned on the lights and saw bits and pieces of his Mom and Dad strewn about the blood-spattered room. He recognized his mother’s gold earring on an ear lying next to the bedpost and saw his father’s anchor tattoo on a severed forearm. Everywhere he looked, he saw more ghastly evidence that some inhuman monster had sliced and diced his parents almost beyond recognition. He fell to his knees and began to cry like he had never cried before.

His head began to spin as flashes of memories flitted like leaves across the landscape of his mind. From out of nowhere, a picture of a large building with barred windows floated by in his mind like a phantom.

He remembered his father asking, “Son, are you having flashbacks again?”

“Flashbacks?” Marty thought. “What did he mean?”

Then, his father turned to his mother, and with a worried look on his face, he asked, “You’re sure he’s still taking his medication, aren’t you?”

“Medication? What medication?” Marty remembered saying out loud.

A small room with padded walls flashed into view. A pink teddy bear with no eyes lay on an ugly gray floor.

He remembered his father saying, “The doctor said he might remember the fire someday, and if he did, it could bring back his psychopathic tendencies.”

Marty didn’t remember where he was when he heard his mother say, “Marty is fine. It’s been two years since he came home from the institution, and the doctor said his episodes would not return if he took his medication every day. Believe me, I monitor his medication right after I brush my teeth every morning, and I know with certainty, he’s never missed once since he came home from the sanitarium.”

Marty remembered her expression of horror when she poured the pills from a vial into the palm of her hand and discovered they were not the pills the doctor had prescribed.

It seemed like he heard his parents screaming at each other from far, far away, a long time ago.

Then, Marty remembered his mother’s terrifying words “return to the institution for shock treatments” that rattled every fiber of his being.

He found them in the master bedroom when he returned with the axe from the garage. His father was reading his emails on his Ipad when the first blow caught him between the neck and his shoulder blade. It was pathetic the way he begged for mercy and tried to crawl into the walk-in closet. His mother was on the toilet when he bolted in and split her head open again and again.

Everything was so clear now. He remembered he kept chopping them into smaller and smaller pieces. That’s why he could barely raise his arm to shoot basketball with Fred.

He remembered the blood from his soaked tee shirt swirling down the drain when he took his shower to get ready for school. The bus came right on time, just like always. It was all so clear now. He had taken another one of his toy figures with him to throw into the rapids on his way to school, just as he had done every day that week. He had no idea why he threw his men into the river, but it felt satisfying.

He remembered Margaret’s father had slapped him when he had caused everyone to laugh at the way she stuttered when he came to pick her up at the birthday party. It was the first time anyone had struck him, and he didn’t like it. It didn’t take long to find out where they lived. When he told his parents he had burned their house down, men in white jackets took him away to live in an institution for what seemed like an eternity.

He would rather die than go back there. He would kill anyone who tried to send him back.

He looked at the blood, gore, pieces of bones, organs and shredded limbs strewn about the grisly chaos of the master bedroom. If only he hadn’t lost it when his mother said “shock treatments.”

Returning to the kitchen, he severed the gas line behind the stove with the axe, placed three lit candles on the breakfast nook table, and headed toward Fred’s house at the end of the block.

“Maybe the fire would destroy the evidence like it had in several movies he’d seen when a gas line exploded,” he thought.

Just as he rang the doorbell at Fred’s front door, he heard the earsplitting blast. The fireball that erupted was better than any fireworks display he ever seen, and the houses next to his were leveled.

What would happen to him now? Maybe they would give him a new set of parents. Marty smiled like a boy who had just taken candy from a baby.

No one knew he was with Margaret when she hanged herself. With his help, of course.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

Garth looked at the two-lane highway ahead of him. It was late, and he had not seen one car on this godforsaken road. He had gotten away before the police set up the roadblock. He didn’t think his cronies had been as lucky. A black leather satchel with his share of the bank heist was in the trunk. He had counted ten bundles of twenties when he had stopped for a pee at a rest stop earlier. He had at least $200,000, and he couldn’t wait to see his sister in Mobile.

The heist had not gone as planned. One of the security guards had tried to be a hero, and Clyde, his best buddy since middle school, had to waste him. Consequently, he had graduated from small time breaking and entering capers to the big leagues in less than twenty-four hours. The most likely to succeed and the captain on the football team would now have his face on a wanted poster for robbery and murder. He wondered if Georgia had the death penalty. He had never had a reason to think of such a thing before today.

His eyes were getting heavy from staring at the miles and miles of yellow lines splitting the black asphalt ahead of him. He had stopped for coffee, a coke, and some No-Doz at the last gas station, but he was still struggling to stay awake. He turned up the volume on the one station that kept fading in and out. As far as he could tell from his dog-eared map, he was 70 miles from the next town, and his gas gauge was below a quarter tank. He should have filled up when he pulled off the interstate to avoid the police roadblock.

Garth rolled down the driver’s side window and stuck his head into the onrushing wind. The rusted-out ‘99 Chevy hurtled into the blackness of the lonely road at 75 miles per hour. The sheer desolation of this stretch of highway without a single car, billboard advertisement, or even an occasional broken down shanty made him feel like the last man on earth.

When the static on the radio became louder than the music, he turned it off.

In the light of the full moon, the clouds had the ominous look of a giant tsunami coming from the gulf toward him. He had never seen a sky so scary.

Trying desperately to stay awake, he slowed the car and ransacked the console. He couldn’t believe it when he found an old cigar buried deep in a sea of matchbooks and out of date maps that must have been in there for years. His lighter didn’t work and neither did the first three matchbooks that looked waterlogged from another life. But, when all seemed lost, he miraculously found half a box of wooden matches in the glove compartment that did work. He placed the big fat stogie between his lips, struck a match on the dash, and lighting it, sucked in a lungful of the worst tobacco smoke money could buy five years ago. He coughed and struggled to catch his breath. He rarely smoked, but he thought the cigar would help keep him awake. After inhaling the giant cancer stick until he felt he was going to puke, he finally had to flick the ghastly thing burning his fingers out the window. He saw the sparks dance across the asphalt and skip out of sight in the rear view mirror.

It immediately dawned on him that a reporter on the radio had just warned drivers not to toss cigarettes out the window due to the lack of rain this summer. The commentator had also reminded campers to be sure to extinguish their campfires. He remembered the old commercials when Smokey the Bear had said, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Somehow, he was okay with being a bank robber, but he didn’t want to be a firebug. As he sped into the night toward Mobile Bay, he continued looking in his rearview mirror. Was it his imagination or did he actually see an orange glow in the blackness behind him? The last thing he wanted was to bring attention to his getaway route.

He continued to doze off. The final warning that he should pull over came when he awoke driving in his subconscious going 15 miles an hour. The landscape was extremely flat, and there was almost nothing to hit anywhere close to the shoulder of the road, but in the distance, he saw flashing red lights and the skeleton of tall concrete pillars he thought must be Interstate 10. Worrying he might fall asleep completely and drive into one of these massive blocks of concrete; he decided to pull off the road to get some much needed shut-eye. He saw a clump of bushes and pulled behind it. The low-lying mist that blanketed the marsh along the road would also provide cover if another car ever did come along.

He heard the wind begin to howl and saw the bushes next to the car bending over in the torrent. He closed his eyes and immediately fell into a deep sleep.

*  *  *

Hours later, the sound of a helicopter above startled him awake. It sounded alarmingly close. Then, a large, feathered object struck the center of the windshield causing it to splinter outward in all directions. The beak of a duck protruded through the glass. In a heartbeat, several more ducks bombarded the roof and the trunk of the Chevy. The impact of each blow sounded like a bowling ball striking the exterior with tremendous force. Every hundred feet or so, several more ducks hit the ground in front of the car as the sound of a troubled chopper roared above and came rapidly closer. The aircraft exploded in a ball of fire a few hundred feet to the right. He guessed the helicopter had inadvertently flown into the flock of ducks.

In the rear view mirror, Garth was mortified to see his fear of becoming a firebug had been realized after all. A raging forest fire was devouring the terrain on both sides of the road. Turning on the ignition, the Chevy roared to life and bolted forward. The forest fire coming at him from the left and the flames from the crash to the right left only a narrow path back to the highway. Even though the wingspan of the duck in the windshield, the blood splatter, and the billowing smoke made it impossible to see anything ahead, Garth fishtailed forward where he thought the road would be. He was relieved to feel the front wheels thump back on the asphalt. In the rear view mirror, he saw two feathered bodies slide down the back window, leaving a murky trail of blood.

Garth peered through the small section of windshield at the road ahead and could no longer tolerate the duck lodged in the windshield ogling him with its one open eye. Consequently, after driving almost blind for another 500 feet up the road, he pulled over, got out of the car, and gripping a handful of feathers, pried the duck’s carcass from the windshield and discarded it. Moving to the rear, he pushed the two ducks blocking the back window off on the ground.

Returning to the car, he sped away. The shattered glass and blood splatter still made visibility almost nonexistent, but even if he had a bucket of water and a squeegee, he couldn’t spare any time to clean the window with the raging inferno almost riding on his trunk lid. He wondered why he didn’t see the flashing lights of a stream of fire engines speeding cross the bridge with sirens blaring to fight the fire.

His question was answered a moment later when he saw the approaching funnel of a tornado churning up the land in front of him. Stomping his brake pedal almost to the floorboard, he came to a screeching halt and sat spellbound in the middle of the road between the storm and the raging inferno.

In a matter of minutes, the twister would run headlong into the forest fire burning out of control on a fast track toward the Bay. He couldn’t tell if the twister or the flames would get to him first.

In the distance to the right, he saw a culvert and the first gigantic leg of I-10 leading to the bridge. Would the culvert half submerged in water next to the concrete stanchion give him shelter from the storm?

He pulled the trunk release, and getting out, raced to the rear of the car to retrieve his satchel of money. To his dismay, he found the trunk battered so badly with dents from the ducks that had bombarded it, he could not get it open. He looked about the ground for something to use as a crowbar, but found nothing. Desperate, he placed the tips of his fingers into the narrow slit and tried with all his might to wrench it free, but it wouldn’t budge.

The ominous funnel of death was almost upon him, giving him no choice but to abandon the satchel and make a run for the culvert.

Sprinting ahead of the wall of death, Garth leaped down the embankment and scrambled inside the huge cylinder of concrete that stood next to one of the massive legs of the highway bridge.

Minutes later, he saw telephone poles hurtling through the air like toothpicks. Enormous green highway signs atop the bridge lifted off the ground and sailed high into the whirlwind. And then, like a giant buzz saw, the twister settled on his Chevy and split it into two halves. The trunk lid burst open, and the leather satchel flew apart, sending streams of greenbacks into the wind as if they were shot from a cannon.

Suddenly, the sky erupted with the hardest rain Garth had ever seen. The downpour and the twister began to drown the raging forest fire. Like magic, the inferno ebbed, and the debris began to smolder. Garth shuttered in horror inside the culvert as the tornado continued to churn up the ground and the water around him.

The driving rain caused the water in the culvert to swell abruptly, and before he could climb out, the rushing torrent had swept him into the turbulence. Grabbing hold of a limb from a fallen tree, he held on for dear life and went for the hellish ride of his life into the rampaging floodwater.

After another hour of fighting the whirlwind to a state of sheer exhaustion, the wind subsided, and the rain stopped. Garth fell back against the tree limbs and watched the clouds slowly melting away. The sun began to rise on the distant horizon, and the tree with him aboard finally came to rest at the edge of a swamp. Struggling to his feet, he peered into the aftermath of toppled trees, churned up highway, and startling devastation as far as he could see. Sections of the interstate had been swept away. The landscape in all directions was a wasteland.

All he had was the clothes on his back and $23 in his pants pocket. His car and the satchel with $200,000 were gone. He struggled from the muck of the swamp and, planting his feet on solid ground, thought how lucky he was to be alive.

When he had nicked himself shaving yesterday morning, he wondered if it was the beginning of a shitty day. Little did he know then, the shit storm that lay ahead. He looked at the morning sun lifting into a new day, filled with promise and hope. There would always be another bank to rob.

Then, he saw the fifteen-foot gators with hungry eyes and gaping teeth that surrounded him. This day was also starting on a sour note, and he was pretty sure it was going to be even shittier than the day before.

CHARLEY

When Marie came down from her bedroom and entered the kitchen to start breakfast, she saw a trail of muddy footprints across the ceramic tile floor. The tracks came from the laundry room. Upon further inspection, she found they started at the door to the outside, which stood ajar. Returning to the kitchen, she followed the footprints to her daughter’s bedroom.

Entering the pink polka dot decorated space, Marie found her little nine-year-old, Mandy, with golden curls and blue eyes buried under a pile of blankets.

“Mandy, have you been sleepwalking again?”

The little girl opened her eyes and yawned broadly. “I don’t remember getting out of bed, Mommie.”

Looking more closely at the carpet, Marie noticed bits of grass in the fiber. Pulling back the bedclothes, her hand shot to her mouth to stifle a scream. Her eyes widened from the sight of streaks of mud and pieces of leaves and grass covering Mandy’s feet and the lower part of the bottom sheet.

“You’ve been outside again,” Marie said, trying not to lose her composure. Where do you go in the middle of the night? You could’ve been killed. There are big gators not far away in the swamp.”

“Mandy looked at her dirty feet and finally said, “Charley wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”

“Stop talking about Charley. He’s just a figment of your imagination. He can’t protect you from the gators and the snakes. He’s not real.”

Mandy looked at her mother and decided it was useless to debate the existence of Charley. After all, no one could see him, but her.

“Wrap the dirty sheet around yourself and get in the bathtub. I don’t want you tracking mud all over the house. I just cleaned the carpets yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, Mommie. I don’t remember sleepwalking.”

“When you’re clean, get dressed, and come to the kitchen for breakfast.”

Thirty minutes later, Mandy sat down at the table in the nook and started eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes. Harold, her mother’s live-in beau for the last three years, lowered the morning paper and said, “I heard you went walking in the swamp last night.”

Mandy continued eating and said nothing. She had loved her real daddy so much, but this man, who came to live with them after her father disappeared in the swamp, scared her. He was tall and muscular with a short military haircut. He had an enormous spider tattoo on his bicep, which made her skin crawl. Sometimes he had a very bad temper and hit her mother. She hated him and wanted nothing to do with him.

Seeing the sour look on Mandy’s face, Harold grabbed her wrist and pulled her chair around to face him, “Look at me when I’m talking to you. Mommie just started a new job, and our insurance won’t kick in until the first of the month. If you get hurt, we’ll have to pay through the nose.”

“I can’t help it. I don’t know when I’m sleepwalking,” Mandy whined.

“Well, I have no choice, but to lock you in your room every night for the next two weeks. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you company while Mommie is waitressing. I know a few bedtime stories. How would you like that?” Harold said, leering at her with a cruel smile.

“Take your hands off her, Harold!” Marie shouted, picking up a frying pan from the stove.

“Do you see the way she looks at me? She may not like me, but damned if she’s not going to show me some respect. She needs discipline; the kind she’s never gonna get from you.” Harold released her, and Mandy slid her chair back in its place. With a stern expression, she ate another spoonful of Frosted Flakes without looking in his direction.

Marie ignored Harold’s comment and continued to glare at him while putting the frying pan back on the stove. After a time, her scowl softened, and turning to Mandy, she spoke calmly, “We’re going to have to do something about your sleepwalking. Going outside by yourself at night is extremely dangerous. A wild animal might drag you away. And the swamp could swallow you up, and we’ll never see you again.”

“Like, Daddy?” Mandy asked, with big, inquisitive eyes.

Marie turned away and did not answer.

“That’s what happened to Daddy, isn’t it? The swamp swallowed him up.” The little girl said, demanding an answer.

Turning back, Marie replied, “Nobody knows what happened to Daddy. He went hunting that morning with Harold, and we never saw him again. It hurts me every time I think about it. I believe losing him would be easier to deal with if we only knew what really happened to him, but I guess we never will.”

Marie looked at Harold coldly. “You were with him that day. Mandy wants to know what happened to her dad.”

“Like I’ve told you both a million times, one minute, he was right behind me, and the next minute, he was gone. I searched everywhere, but couldn’t find a trace. He must have gone down in the swamp.”

Mandy looked at him suspiciously. “But you didn’t hear him cry out?”

“Like I told you before, I was listening to songs through my headphones on my IPod. If he called for help, I never heard him. Jesus! It’s like you think I’m responsible. He was my best friend. Why would I want to hurt him?”

“Is Daddy in heaven?” Mandy asked.

“Yes, darling, I’m sure he is. I’m sure we’ll all meet him up yonder someday, but until then, we need to keep you out of the swamp. If you’re not afraid, you should be. I’ll have to see about some kind of gate on the door to your room.”

“I’m not afraid. Charley will protect me.”

Harold lowered the paper and asked, “Is Charley here now?”

“No.”

“Where is he?”

Mandy did not want to play this silly game, but she answered anyway, “He lives in the swamp.”

“Can we meet him sometime?”

“No! He’s my special friend. No one can see him but me.”

“Well, little darlin’, if he was here now, I’d give him a piece of my mind. I’d tell him he shouldn’t be messing with a little girl your age. He must be some kind of pervert.”

Mandy jumped up and scurried away to her bedroom.

“Harold, I wish you would stop badgering her,” Marie shrieked, as mad as a wet hornet. “I thought when you moved in with us she’d get to like you, but how can she when you’re such an asshole?”

He leapt from the chair and backhanded Marie with a blow that sent her flying across the kitchen floor. “Don’t talk to me that way! I’m the boss in this family. Get that through your thick head.”

She picked herself off the floor and ran upstairs crying.

A half an hour later, Marie emerged from her bedroom and called to Mandy, “The school bus will be here in ten minutes.”

* * *

Later that afternoon, Mandy returned home early due to a special teacher’s meeting Marie had forgotten. When she got off the bus, she could hear her mother and Harold arguing at the top of their lungs through the open window. She regretted that their house was isolated in a grove of trees, and no neighbors lived close enough to hear them. She imagined Charley had already told her everything they could talk about, but she decided to sit on the secluded swing in the side yard and listen anyway.

Harold shouted, “If you want the kid to like me, why do you keep insinuating I’m to blame for Quint’s disappearance? You know, and I know we did it together, and you were the one who came up with the idea of killing him for the insurance.”

“For God’s sake, hold it down,” Marie shushed.

Ignoring her, Harold continued to rant, “You were the mastermind that said the $300,000 life insurance policy would be our ticket out of this crummy town, and you needed my help to lure Quint into the swamp.”

Even though she knew what had happened to her dad, Mandy could not keep from crying at the thought of her mother planning it with that scumbag, Harold.

Lowering her voice, Marie replied, “If you’d knocked him out and then drowned him instead of shooting him, we wouldn’t have had to wait three years for the insurance company to turn over the cash.”

“I didn’t have a choice, I tell you. Quint caught me with the baseball bat just as I was coming up behind him. I never planned to use the gun, but when he decked me, I had no choice but to pull the trigger. Like I’ve told you a million times, I could see it in his eyes. He was on to us. Somehow he knew what was coming down.”

Marie looked at him, fuming with disbelief at his incompetence and started slamming pots about on the kitchen counter.

Harold finally said, rubbing her shoulders, “Look, baby, all of this shit is water over the dam now. All that matters is you deposited the insurance check, emptied the bank account, and we’re ready to kick the dust of this one horse town off our shoes and buy a villa somewhere across the border. Open the briefcase; I want to see what three-hundred grand looks like.”

“I’m not your baby anymore, you bungling idiot.” Marie yelled, squirming away from him and running to a drawer on the other side of the kitchen. She pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.

“What are you doing, sweet thing? You said we’d go away together if I took care of Quint for you.”

“Are you really that stupid to think I’d actually go away with you?” Marie shrieked, swinging the pistol about like a wild woman. “Mandy hates your guts, and I fell out of love the first time you blackened my eye. You’ve been treating me like shit, and now it’s time for some payback.”

“What are you gonna do about Mandy. She’ll be coming in on the bus in another half an hour.”

“She’ll believe whatever I tell her. I’ll say you tried to hurt me like you did this morning, and I had to protect myself. Believe me, she won’t need any coaxing, she’ll be happy when you’re gone.” Marie said coldly, fixing a steady bead on her ex-beau’s midsection.

Suddenly Harold’s expression of disbelief vanished, and a broad, toothy grin lit up his face, “You know, Marie, I’ve been keeping tabs on that gun for weeks ever since we got word the insurance company was wiring the money. I hate to break it to you, babe, but I replaced the bullets with blanks just in case you decided to cut me out of our deal.”

Marie’s smirk disintegrated, but she stood her ground, still pointing the gun, as Harold came closer.

“I’ve also been checking the level in that bottle of rat poison under the sink every day,” Harold continued, rolling a toothpick around between his buckteeth. “And… I always let you take the first bite at every meal.”

Her hand began to shake, and her upper lip trembled as she squeezed the trigger six earsplitting times. With each loud but uneventful report, Harold sucked in his stomach and posed in a Superman stance with his hands on his hips with a wide grin across his face. When Marie tried to bolt for the side door, Harold easily blocked her path. Grabbing the frying pan from the stove and swinging it with all his might, he smacked Marie upside the head and sent her sprawling to the kitchen floor.

Standing over her, seething with unbridled rage, he gave her a brutal kick in the face for good measure. Leaning down, he crowed mockingly, “I guess you’ll be keeping Quint company down in the swamp instead of going with me to Mexico. Good riddance to bad rubbish, bitch.”

Looking out the window for Mandy and her school bus and seeing nothing, he muttered to himself, “The bus must be late. How convenient.”

He quickly picked up the briefcase full of money and placed it in the trunk of the car in the garage. Spotting a wheelbarrow, he placed a shovel inside it, negotiated it into the kitchen, and unceremoniously dumped Marie’s lifeless body into it.

After cleaning up a few drops of blood from the ceramic floor, he tossed the dishrag into the barrow, maneuvered it through the back door, and headed for the swamp. The wet ground made the trip along the path difficult, but Harold finally reached the place where he had dumped Quint’s body three years before.

As he drove the wheelbarrow to the edge of the muck, Marie began to stir. Thrusting the handles upward, she went flying head over heels into the oozing, sucking bog. She was already up to her waist when she opened her eyes and tried to focus. The first thing she saw was Harold standing above her with the shovel.

“Well, honey pie, before you go, I’ve got one more thing to say.” Harold paused to gather the words he had been practicing to get off his chest for months. A sudden loud splash interrupted his concentration not far away to the right. Several birds, also spooked by the unexpected noise, left their perch in a nearby tree and rocketed into the sky.

Harold tested the ground with his shovel as he edged closer to Marie who continued to sink steadily into the muck. “As I look back on the friendship the three of us had before your greed set in, I have to admit, I really liked Quint. I guess you could say he was the best friend I ever had. But you turned my head with your bodacious tits and ass and seduced me into killing him for the money.”

Choking with emotion, he moved almost to the lip of the pit and spoke louder still, “I’ve felt a strong sense of guilt about blowing Quint’s brains out many times, but I’ve never seen one shred of remorse in your soulless eyes. There’s no denying, you’re one heartless bitch.”

Marie was already up to her cleavage when Harold raised the shovel and eyeballed her like a piece of shit.

“What are you going to do with Mandy?” she choked, groping for something to hang on to before she went under.

“I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.”

“I hope you rot in Hell,” she choked, gagging on a mouthful of black slime.

Harold swung the shovel like a baseball bat into the crown of her head, leaving a gaping wound with blood pouring from it. He placed the bloody implement in the wheelbarrow and drove it in on top of her. In minutes, there was no sign of anything, but the relentless, sucking mire.

When Harold returned to the house, he heard the TV in Mandy’s room. He thought about rushing in and strangling the annoying brat when it dawned on him, he had stupidly dumped the wheelbarrow into the muck on his last outing. The act of carrying the miserable prima donna to her murky grave seemed too much of a chore for him to undertake at that moment. He thought he might have some fun with her first now that Marie was out of the picture.

Creeping inside the house through the side door, he silently climbed the stairs to the master bedroom. Mud and blood splatter peppered his clothes. He didn’t want the kid to see him with her mother’s blood all over him.

After taking a shower and putting on a clean shirt and blue jeans, Harold placed the dirty clothes in a garbage bag and crept downstairs. After stowing the bag in the trunk of the car with the briefcase, he moved stealthily toward Mandy’s room. The little monster had the volume on the TV much too loud. He pushed open the door and burst into the bedroom. To his utter surprise, the room was empty.

“Mandy,” he called out. “I’ve got a big surprise for you. Where are you?” He turned off the television and listened to the dead silence of what seemed to be an empty house.

“Mandy, I know you’re here. You don’t need to hide from me. Mommie had to go away for a few days. Aunt Mollie is sick. We’re going to have a lot of fun, just you and me.”

He listened, but heard nothing. “To prove how much I care about you, I got you something you always wanted.”

The house remained eerily silent. Through the window, he saw the sun fading through the trees. Turning on a light, he noticed a note on Mandy’s pillow. Picking it up, he read the following words written in rudimentary block letters:

IF YOU WANT YOUR MONEY, MEET ME IN THE SWAMP. YOU KNOW WHERE. CHARLEY.

Harold dropped the note and ran into the garage. Opening the trunk of the car, he discovered the briefcase with the money was gone. He slammed the trunk lid down and returned to the kitchen for Marie’s gun. Finding it missing, he grabbed the largest butcher knife he could find, a flashlight, and several other things he thought he might need, and placed them in a burlap sack. In a mad frenzy, he stormed out the side door and headed toward the swamp.

Shadows were falling, and a full moon was beginning to rise in the distance. He could still see the tracks of the wheelbarrow in the soggy ground.

Reaching the clearing where Marie and Quint lie beneath the mire, he saw Mandy sitting on a log with the briefcase on her lap. As soon as she saw him, she stood and hurled the case into the unforgiving ooze. Immediately, it began to sink in the hungry bog.

Harold screamed, “You little cunt. Wait until I get my hands on you.” Placing the flashlight, the knife, and the rest of the items in the sack on the ground, he took the rope and tied one end around a tree and the other end around his waist, and dove into the muck. Just as the case completely vanished, Harold found the handle below the surface, and prying it out, hurled it back onto to the dry ground at the lip of the mire. With both hands, he started reeling himself back to dry land.

Mandy spotted the butcher knife he had dropped on the ground, and started cutting the rope. When Harold lunged forward to stop her, he felt a powerful, invisible force grip his wrist. He heard a snap and felt an excruciating pain. Looking down in horror, he saw the blood spewing from the stump of his severed hand.

Screaming like a man on fire, he clawed at the roots at the edge of the pit for purchase with his left hand. His eyes flitted back and forth searching for the invisible thing he knew loomed above him.

He heard Mandy say coldly, “You said you wanted to meet Charley. Well, he’s standing right next to you, and he looks extremely pissed. I’m sorry you can’t see him, but you believe me now, don’t you?”

Harold looked at her wide-eyed with terror and pleaded, “Mandy, tell Charley to stop. Please have mercy on me. I beg you.”

Mandy extended her tiny fist toward him, and shaking her head, turned her thumb downward like a spectator in the Roman coliseum.

Harold immediately felt two massive hands surround his temples like a golf ball, and in another effortless motion, Charley ripped his head from his shoulders like tender pork from a baby back rib. Suspended in midair, Harold’s round face seemed to fragment like sections of a personal pan pizza, one slice at a time. After the bloodbath, his bloody torso slid backward into the muck.

Ten minutes later, the bog had sucked away whatever Charley had failed to snack on.

Mandy stood at the edge of the mire and thought about how happy her life had been when her father was alive. She remembered the good times before Harold had come along that she would always treasure. No matter how bad her mother had become, Mandy knew she had never stopped loving her. But when Mandy found out from Charley that she was responsible for killing her dad, she could no longer return her love. She would miss her mother, but she could never forgive her.

The moon was high above now, and the swamp seemed more menacing as the wind moaned among the trees. All around her, the sounds of something moving closer pricked her ears. She had never heard these sounds before. In the moonlight, she could see long, dark shapes slithering from the blackness toward her. Their cold, reptilian eyes ogled her hungrily, but she was not afraid.

Charley swept her off her feet and carried her in his arms toward home. The gators parted like spooked cattle and made a path as they headed out of the swamp. Not one of them dared confront her invisible friend

* * *

Mandy found a happy home with adopted parents who loved her. The authorities never found the remains of Marie and Harold. They assumed like so many others in that neck of the woods, they ventured into the swamp and got swallowed up. Mandy told the police they weren’t there one day when she came home from school, and she didn’t know what happened to them. No one ever mentioned the insurance money Charley had hidden for her in a secret place in the backyard. It became a welcome nest egg for her bright future.

Mandy never saw Charley again after she moved 500 miles away, but she always sensed he was still there to protect her.

* * *

One special night when Mandy was eighteen years old and a freshman at a prestigious university, she went on her third date with a handsome young man named Roger Miller. He had parked high on the hill overlooking the beautiful lake at one of the college’s favorite make-out spots. A breathtaking full moon cast its golden glow on the water. They noticed only one other car parked in the shadows a short distance away.

After two hours of swapping spit, Mandy grew disappointed that Roger had not tried to cop a feel. She assumed his fear of moving too quickly or not moving quickly enough was making him crazy. She knew he wanted to do the right thing and did not want to take a chance on losing her. To make matters worse, she sensed that each time he started to make his move, he had the overpowering sensation they were not alone.

Mandy lowered the window, and thrusting her fist outside, gave the silent woods a thumbs-up sign. When she heard a plaintive sigh on the wind, she whispered to the beautiful, moonlit night, “It’s okay, Charley, I’m in love.”

Mandy turned back to her puzzled date, planted a sloppy kiss on his lips, and placed his hand on her breast.

* * *

Mandy and Roger were married right after graduation.

WORLD DOMINATION

Returning to his aisle seat to the right in the last row of first class, Barry noticed the words “World Domination” scroll up on the laptop of the young man seated at the window in the opposite corner. He saw the monitor explode into hundreds of virtual pieces. Then, the words “Mission Accomplished!” twirled end over end from the right and blinked several times while skyrockets and confetti filled the screen.

Barry was seated next to an elderly woman who had been reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo since they boarded. The aisle seat next to the gamer was vacant. According to the desk clerk at check in, their flight from Orlando to Philadelphia was sold out, and Barry wondered why the seat was empty.

When the flight attendant stopped to ask for a second drink order, Barry couldn’t resist inquiring about it.

The attendant turned her body to block the view from behind her and whispered, “The young man purchased both seats and left strict instructions he did not want to be disturbed.”

“Two first class tickets. That’s impressive.”

“It’s unusual, but not unheard of,” she said and scurried off.

Barry picked up a magazine from the seat pocket and started browsing to kill some time. He continued to glance over at the gamer now and then. It was obvious he was in his own virtual world, oblivious to everything around him. About every fifteen minutes, the young man, who Barry estimated to be in his late twenties, jotted something down on a clipboard he kept on the empty seat next to him. Barry could see two groups of four vertical lines with a diagonal line across both of them and a third group with four vertical lines. He guessed this meant fourteen items of some kind.

When his second gin and tonic arrived with a bag of peanuts, Barry noticed the flight attendant place a bucket full of ice with a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne chilling inside on the tray table in front of the empty seat across the aisle. It was apparent by the way the gamer moved his shoulders and manipulated a strange looking joystick, he was still consumed by whatever game he was playing and chose to ignore the champagne. Despite what looked to be expensive headphones covering his ears, Barry could hear occasional bursts of explosions, followed by the tumultuous sound byte, “Ta Da!”

The gamer took a pen from his shirt pocket and drew a diagonal line across the third grouping on his pad. Reaching for the bottle of champagne, he removed the cork, poured a crystal goblet of the bubbly, and took a satisfying sip.

When the flight attendant came by for a third drink order, Barry said, “If I wanted a bottle of whatever he’s drinking, how much would it set me back?”

“Eleven hundred.”

“Really. Do you stock thousand dollar bottles of wine as a matter of course?”

“No, you have to request it in advance.”

“Should I know this guy? Is he Eminem or Usher? You know… Some famous rapper.”

The flight attendant smiled and said, “Would you like another gin and tonic?”

Suddenly, the fasten-seat-belt light came on with its familiar chime, and the speaker above his head crackled to life. Barry recognized the voice as the pilot from his earlier announcements, but this time, it had an emotional overtone, “What I’m about to tell you is beyond comprehension. I have received triple confirmation that the world we have known will never be the same again. During the last thirty minutes, the fifteen largest U.S. cities, Washington DC, and the state of Israel have been incinerated by nuclear bombs. The President, his Cabinet, and all the member of congress were killed in a session at the US Capitol. All the people in a fifty-mile radius of ground zero in each of the targeted cities are presumed dead. Iran has taken credit for the terrorist attack, and as a consequence, our government has retaliated with nuclear warheads, which have eradicated the entirety of the Middle East countries.”

The passengers in front of him along with the flight attendants started weeping uncontrollably as the pilot continued his unfathomable report; “Our country is under military rule until some form of government can be restored.”

The pilot’s voice broke into sobs, and then he painfully continued, “New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Austin, & Columbus, Ohio no longer exist.” The announcement ended abruptly.

Barry was an only child, and his parents lived in Satsuma, Alabama, which was in a location not affected by the attack. He started thinking of the many people he had befriended in his life who lived in the cities the pilot had mentioned. He was thankful he could not think of anyone close to him who might be a casualty unless they had stopped in one of the targeted cities that day.

The final destination of this flight had been Philadelphia. He wondered where they would land in light of what had happened. Would his apartment in Princeton still be there? What would life be like under military rule? Would his parents still receive their social security checks each month? Would there still be television programs to watch? Everything about the future was a mystery.

Looking around, he saw that most of the passengers had their heads in their hands with tears streaming down their faces. The flight attendants had stopped responding to passenger requests. An assortment of shrieks and wails emanated from the coach section behind him.

The young man, who continued to play his video game on his laptop, was the only passenger in first class who remained indifferent to the pilot’s announcement. The gamer continued to pound on his armrest with his eyes riveted to the screen. Not once did Barry see him lift his head to survey his surroundings.

Barry looked at his watch. The plane was scheduled to land in fifteen minutes.

“Shit!” the gamer cried out in disgust, apparently disturbed by something that had happened in the game. Looking over at him, Barry saw the following words scroll up on the computer screen, “You have been nuked and have only one life to live. Prepare to kiss your ass goodbye….”

Barry unstrapped his seatbelt, and standing, reached over from the aisle and tapped the young man on the shoulder. The gamer looked at him with disgust, obviously incensed by the interruption, and without removing his headphones, said belligerently, “What is it? I’m right in the middle of a life and death situation, and I can’t afford to lose my concentration without dire consequences.”

Barry wondered how he would react when he heard the catastrophic news. “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I thought you should know that fifteen of the largest US cities, Washington DC and Israel have been nuked by Iran and no longer exist. Everyone who lived there is dead. The US response to the terrorist attack was to blow away the Middle Eastern countries. Does this rank as an acceptable reason to interrupt your mindless game?”

The gamer looked at Barry like a turd on the bottom of his Gucci shoes and said in his most pompous tone, “I have no time for small talk. You are not equipped to understand all the forces in play in World Domination. Please stop distracting me. I have only one life remaining and need my full concentration.”

The gamer turned away from Barry and resumed play on his laptop. Barry saw a cityscape light up and a mushroom cloud form above it, followed by the rushing force of liquid fire that obliterated every building on his computer screen.

The words, “Word Domination” scrolled vertically across the screen, and then, “Fort Worth Nuked” flashed in front of the incinerated cityscape. Then came the muffled musical interlude, “Ta Da!” in the headphones. The gamer turned and looked at Barry with venomous disgust; perturbed he was still standing in the aisle watching his game.

“What an idiot,” Barry said, returning to his seat. Pulling a blank piece of paper from his pad, he wrote a heavy handed message in a black felt tipped marker and placed it on the gamer’s empty seat. It read, “I’m not joking, asshole.”

The gamer ignored the message and continued playing.

A minute later, when the pilot announced Fort Worth had been added to the list of cities nuked; Barry looked at the gamer in an entirely different light. He imagined the devil himself sitting across the aisle from him as he reviewed the order of events.

He had just seen Fort Worth disintegrate on the creep’s laptop. Looking across at the notepad on the empty seat, he saw three groups of five plus one vertical line, which meant the total of something the geek was tracking was sixteen. Was it a coincidence sixteen of the largest US cities had been blown off the face of the earth? Was it also a coincidence the same city he had just seen being incinerated on the laptop was the same one the pilot had just added to the list? Could the obnoxious asshole sitting across from him be personally responsible for the death and destruction of millions of innocent people all over the world?

In Barry’s mind’s eye, the gamer’s face seemed to morph into something diabolically evil. What he saw was no longer human. He batted his eyes, and the devilish thing he thought he saw was again just the young man playing a game on his laptop.

Suddenly the gamer pounded on his armrest, knocked the bucket of champagne off the tray table, and cheered like he had just won the power ball lotto. He grabbed his notepad and added two more vertical lines to a second set of groupings Barry had not noticed below the first set of sixteen.

“One last sector and it will all be over,” he said with sweat rolling down his face. His split computer screen showed two more cities disintegrating as fireworks and confetti replaced the fire and smoke of the destroyed cities. The loudest “Ta Da!” yet burst from the headphones, and the words “Mission Accomplished” pulsed on and off in rainbow colors.

A robotic voice in the computer said, “One life left, and one sector remaining to win “World Domination”.

Barry looked into the feverish, soulless eyes and cringed at the insidious grin on the face across from him. In that moment, he was convinced the gamer was the instigator of the world’s destruction. He believed without any reservation that the fate of humankind was in his hands. No one around him knew this maniac was only one step away from finalizing his insidious plot.

Barry jumped from his seat, grabbed the gamer’s laptop, and smashed it against every surface he could see around him. Afterward, he threw it on the floor and stomped on it several times. He heard a robotic voice croak, ”Game over” as the screen flickered and went out.

The gamer scrambled from his seat and pounced on Barry, sending him to the floor. Like a wild man, he pummeled him with vicious blows and screamed, “You’ve killed us all, you moron!”

He broke Barry’s nose and pounded his face into a bloody pulp until he finally realized what he was doing wouldn’t make a hill of beans worth of difference now. Pushing back on the carpet and leaning against the seat behind him, the gamer picked up the bottle of champagne from the floor and took a swig of the bubbly left inside. The passengers and the flight attendants paid no attention to the outburst behind them. Each of them had their own personal losses to deal with, and nothing else mattered.

A voice resonated from the speakers throughout the plane, barely recognizable as the pilot, “We have just received word that China and North Korea have been obliterated by unidentified nuclear weapons in response to their mounting an additional attack on the United States. Russia has initiated a similar attack, and their warheads will enter our airspace at any moment. I am told there is little hope that our military in its current state can prevent the impending incineration of our country. May God have mercy on our souls.”

Barry looked at the battered laptop on the floor with a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. The last thing he saw was a great white light, and then there was nothing.

WHO’S YOUR DADDY

The wake and the funeral were over, and Cecil was alone in the house where he’d grown up. His mother, Katherine, had died of a heart attack at the age of 70.

As he sat on the sofa nursing a warm beer in the old house, he kept looking at the pictures of his mother and him at different stages of his life. Conspicuously, the father he had never known was not among them. His mother had said he died in an automobile accident just before he was born. He wondered what his old man was like, and why no one ever wanted to talk about him.

Somehow, the loss of his mother had affected him more than he thought possible. He had broken into tears several times that day which was something he had never done as far back as he could remember. The sense of being totally alone in the world with no one he could count on to be there no matter what had rocked his world more than he had thought possible. He had made casual friends at work, but no one he had ever confided in like his mother. She knew everything about him. Things no one else would ever know. He actually felt a need to be with another human being on this fateful night. The old house seemed extremely creepy without his mother in it.

Since he had left the neighborhood thirteen years before to take a job 700 miles away in Atlanta, he couldn’t think of anyone to call except the couple next door who’d helped him with the funeral arrangements. Where were the old friends he used to know? Why had he made no effort to keep in touch? His best buddies and the crazy things they’d gotten into in high school lingered on his mind but only as nostalgic memories.

He went to the kitchen, and finding the telephone number in the address book near the phone, he called the elderly couple. After three rings, the lady next door answered, “Hello. This is the Phelps’ residence.”

“Hello, Margaret, this is Cecil next door. I wonder if I could come over and talk for a while. I’m feeling very lonely in this big house by myself, and there’s no one else I know to call, but you.”

After a muffled word to someone else, and then a lengthy pause, she replied, “Why, sure, Cecil. I’m preparing dinner for Abe and me. You’re welcome to join us, but keep in mind, it’s been a long day, and we were planning to turn in early.”

“I understand. I’ll just come for a little while.”

Cecil put down the phone and made a beeline out the door. Margaret seemed less friendly than when he’d arrived, but he agreed, it had been a long day for all of them, and she had lost a dear friend.

Abe greeted him and ushered him into the dining room. The aroma of the hot food brought back fond memories of his mother’s home style cooking. After making small talk during dinner, helping them with the dishes, and cleaning off the table, the three of them settled on a sectional in the living room. The TV was on, but the volume was barely audible.

Cecil was first to speak, “While I was sitting in the living room, reminiscing the pictures of my mother and me on the wall, it occurred to me, I don’t remember ever seeing a picture of my father. Living next door for forty-six years, I assume you got to know him to some extent before I was born. What can you tell me about him?”

Margaret and her husband exchanged glances, and after clearing her throat, Margaret said, “As I remember, he was about six feet tall and of medium build. To be frank, he looked a lot like you at your age, much more so than Katherine.”

“What did he do for a living?”

Margaret looked at her husband nervously, and replied, “As I recall, your father had quite a few jobs. He was kind of a jack of all trades.”

“Master of none, I suppose?” Cecil remarked with a laugh.

“I don’t know about that, but most of the time we knew him, he was a traveling salesmen. He was on the road so much of the time, we rarely saw him.”

Cecil tossed this piece of information around in his head to see if it corresponded with what his mother had said. He didn’t remember anything about his father being a traveling salesman.

“My mother said my father’s name was Phillip.”

Abe fielded the question, “That’s right, Phillip Blevens.”

“Blevens? That can’t be,” Cecil blurted. “My name is Williams. You must be mistaken.”

“What am I thinking about?” Abe said nervously. “I must have been having a senior moment. Of course, his name was Phillip Williams.”

When the TV news commentator mentioned almost imperceptibly that a homeless man had been found in an alley off of Lincoln Avenue with his face partially eaten, Margaret’s almost dropped the coffee cup she held. Regaining her composure, her expression returned to normal as if the news flash meant nothing to her.

After an uncomfortable pause, Cecil asked Abe, “Did you and Margaret get together with my parents socially before I came along?”

Margaret answered quickly, apparently trying to speak before Abe replied, “Not really. I did things with Katherine… bridge, mahjong, but Phillip was always a loner when he wasn’t on the road.” She paused, and looking weary said, “Cecil, I’m really sorry, but I’m developing a migraine. I hate to cut your visit short, but I’m going to have to turn in.”

“Would it be all right if I come back tomorrow and talk with you before I return to Atlanta?”

Margaret responded immediately, “I’m sorry, but we’re going away the next few days. Why don’t you call us next week if you think of anything else you’d like to know.”

The three of them stood. Cecil thanked them for the dinner and the company and returned to his home next door.

Something about the entire conversation with the next-door neighbors didn’t sit right with him. He couldn’t understand how they could live next door for twelve years before he was born and know so little about his father. He suspected they’d been lying about him all evening. Abe getting his father’s name wrong was really suspicious. After that, it was obvious Margaret didn’t want him to answer any more questions.

With nothing else to do that evening and without cable on the TV, Cecil decided to box up his mother’s personal items and put them in his car. To his amazement, he found the house peculiarly free of personal items. Had someone come into the house after his mother died and taken everything that pertained to the past? The house didn’t have a basement, but he remembered his mother had stored boxes in the attic when he was growing up.

Climbing the stairs off the kitchen to the attic, he didn’t find any boxes of photographs and memorabilia. In fact, a box of extra ceramic tile pieces for the kitchen, and two old curtain rods were the only items stored in the huge space. Afterward, he looked in the garage. At first, he thought it too had no personal items, but on a high shelf tucked away in a corner, he found a small box with twelve pictures from his childhood.

How could his mother and dad accumulate so little? He couldn’t remember any fires or floods to explain why their personal items would be missing.

The day had been a nightmare, so he decided to turn in early, but in spite of his exhaustion, the mystery of the missing items weighed heavily on his mind.

The next morning, he called Margaret. He was surprised she answered on the first ring, until he sensed her considerable agitation when she recognized his voice, “I know you’re going out, and I won’t detain you, but after searching the entire house, including the attic and the garage, I only found twelve pictures of me growing up. I remember photograph albums, scrapbooks, files of tax returns, and boxes of my teenage stuff my mother stored in the attic. All of it’s missing. Do you have any idea what could have happened to these things?”

The silence on the line was maddening to Cecil as if every word was like pulling teeth. For a moment, he thought he’d lost the connection and was ready to redial when Margaret said, “I’m sorry, Cecil, but I don’t have any idea where she kept such things. The pictures on the wall in the living room are the only ones I’ve ever seen.”

“Really?” he muttered. “I just wondered. Well, thanks anyway. I’ll see you the next time I come to town.” Cecil put down the receiver, exasperated by the obvious cover-up. Margaret and Abe knew something they weren’t telling him.

Cecil decided he had to solve the mystery of his past before returning to Atlanta as he’d planned. He headed for the local newspaper office that printed their first edition in 1896. He asked the elderly lady at the front desk with the stick up her ass if he could see back issues of the paper from 1976 through 1978. After hemming and hawing, she indicated the older issues were only on microfilm and had to be referenced with a reader. After a deep sigh, the silver- haired woman led him to the dilapidated looking machine and gave him a tray of microfilm rolls of the years he’d requested.

Placing the first roll of 1976 into the reader, he started searching for anything that might tell him something about his father, with a particular emphasis on the obituary section. After two hours of tiring scrutiny, he found something he wasn’t looking for. The headline on the front page read, “Mass Murderer and Cannibal, Phillip Blevens, arrested in Raintree County.” The article went on to say Blevens had allegedly raped and murdered thirty-eight young women. Several as young as fourteen years old. The signature of the serial rapist and murderer was the eating of flesh from the face of his victims. Some of the bodies had no lips, nose, or ears when they were found.

Shocked by this startling piece of information, Cecil reread this part several times and then continued reading. The article went on to say the one woman who escaped Blevens’ clutches after being brutally raped with a razor at her throat was Miss Katherine Underwood, who conclusively identified her assailant in a police line-up. The police were holding Blevens without bail at the county lockup. If convicted, he would be put to death by lethal injection.”

Cecil sat dumbfounded by the unbelievable write-up. It wasn’t hard for him to put two and two together. His mother was raised a strict Catholic, and her parents didn’t believe in abortion. He was likely the illegitimate son of the mass murderer, Phillip Blevens, and this was why his mother and the next-door neighbors wouldn’t talk about the past.

Cecil often wondered why he’d been born so fucked up, and now he knew. He mused at the old cliché that came immediately to mind. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The most significant difference between his M.O. and his father’s was that most of his victims had been homeless men. He’d never wanted to have sex with a woman since he’d always been a homosexual. He had no problem chewing off lips, a nose, and sometimes the cheeks of a man or a woman. If he was really hungry, a tongue with a scoop of vanilla ice cream made a delightful dessert. In terms of cannibalism, he’d always been a switch hitter. He could eat men or women.

After his eyes were about to pop out of his head from hours of looking at the reader, he thanked the woman at the front desk and drove to the library. Finding a computer, he found that Phillip Blevens had been put to death by lethal injection in 1988 when Cecil was ten years old.

Reading about the death of his biological father was the same as reading about someone he’d never known from Podunk, USA. It meant absolutely nothing. He never understood why some people get all teary eyed when they discovered an unknown relative actually existed. The concept made no sense to him. Just because a person is related doesn’t mean you have to like them. After all, they could be a child molester or someone who likes to eat flesh off of faces. Who could get sentimental over a person like that?

The trip home had been extremely productive, it had answered the mysteries that had plagued him all his life. Too bad it had taken the death of his mother, the one person he’d loved more than any other, to make it happen.

He’d planned on giving the keys to the realtor and returning to Atlanta yesterday, but now, a loose end had developed he had to deal with before he left. He had a bad feeling about the next-door neighbors. He was certain they knew all about his father but had promised his mother never to tell him. They had probably removed all the personal items from the house to comply with his mother’s wishes when she died. To make matters worse, the looks on their faces when the news anchor reported the details of the homeless man’s death confirmed they suspected he might have murdered him.

He’d promised himself before he left Georgia he would not kill anyone in this hick town. Atlanta was a big city, and the death of a homeless person wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar, but here in Pottsville, it was front-page news. Even a police chief, who primarily handed out parking tickets, might suspect him since he was the only new visitor in town. He knew killing the homeless man was a risk he shouldn’t have taken, but he was so goddamned hungry after the long drive, he couldn’t control himself.

He was certain Margaret and Abe suspected him, but the one thing that contradicted this idea was they had not called the police after he left their house last night. Margaret had also answered her phone when he called this morning. Maybe his worries were unfounded, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t take a chance on them turning him in to the police.

Margaret had said they were going away for a few days, but when he pulled into his driveway and saw their car parked in front of their house, he heaved a sigh of relief. He decided to wait until after dark to go next door. His appetite would be greater then. It helped to be overly hungry when old meat was on the menu. It was so much harder to chew.

At dusk, he saw their lights come on in the kitchen and the living room. At 8 o’clock, the kitchen went dark, and at nine, all the lights went out.

Allowing plenty of time for the old codgers to fall asleep, Cecil left his house through the laundry room and crept silently around to the neighbors’ back door. His credit card worked perfectly; one swipe, and he was in.

Standing in the kitchen, he smelled the sweet aroma of a cake Margaret must have baked that day. As he passed the counter on his way into the living room, the guilt of slaughtering his mother’s best friend and eating her face for dinner unsettled him. Old Abe had also been a sweet old guy; he didn’t deserve to die. His victims were usually people he didn’t know. Murdering someone he’d broken bread with weighed heavily on his conscience.

As he inched forward in the darkness, he thought he heard someone whisper further down the hall. He tightened his grip on his Crocodile Dundee hunting knife in his left hand and the baseball bat in his right. The circumstances would dictate which method he would use. He thought a couple of good whacks to the head would do nicely until he tied them down.

Suddenly, a bright light blinded him, and a woman’s shriek that sounded like a scalded hyena had burst from the portals of hell disoriented him. His body quaked from a debilitating electric shock from both sides of the hallway that sent him slumping to the floor as blackness enveloped him.

* * *

Sometime later, Cecil’s mind cleared, and he heard an unfamiliar voice say, “Dominic, I think he’s coming to.”

He opened his eyes and saw two men standing over him. He tried to move his hands, but immediately found his arms and legs strapped down. The chair he’d been tied to was slanted backwards like a dentist’s chair. A bright light assaulted his eyes, and he found his jaws were clamped open so he couldn’t close his mouth. “Who’re you,” he mumbled.

“I’m Dominic, Margaret and Abe’s son, and this is my friend, Guido.”

“Wher’m I?” Cecil struggled to speak.

“Somewhere no one will ever find you,” Dominic said with a cruel smile.

Cecil grimaced with his most puzzled expression, and Dominic slapped him in the face hard and bloodied his lip.

“Hey, this doesn’t take a rocket scientist, Cecil. Your father mutilated and tortured my little sister, Charlotte, and we’re going to do the same to you to get even. Now that we know you murder people, too, we don’t feel so bad.”

Dominic placed a tool chest on the chair in front of him and withdrew a pair of pliers. “My parents thought about turning you in to the cops but decided to call me instead. I convinced them my kind of retribution could help ease their painful memories about Charlotte’s death better than having you rot behind bars for the rest of your life. I’m the guy people call when killing someone quick is not good enough to compensate for the crime they committed.”

The big man started working on his front tooth, and Cecil screamed and struggled to free himself, but Guido held him down with powerful hands.

Dominic continued, “I’ve never had the opportunity to work on someone where I had a personal stake in the degree of pain. You’re the first, and I plan to soar to new heights. Guido and me never went to dental school, but over the years, I’ve become an expert with various types of pliers, and Guido is a master with a drill. After I make an extraction, he makes sure the nerves are completely raw with his drill. Yeah, when we get through with you in a month or so I guarantee you won’t be eating any meat.

Cecil screamed like a little girl, and Dominic farted several times he had to strain so hard to pull the first front tooth. Guido plugged in the drill and couldn’t wait to get started.

JOWLS

Like many of the affluent players in the Big Apple, John Broadback, founding partner of the law firm, Broadback, Hodgekiss, and Rangoon, spent the last two weeks of August at his retreat in the Adirondacks. In the circular complex of buildings, a large A-frame was the focal point of the property nestled deep in a beautiful forest.

Pouring his wife her second Grey Goose martini, John settled in his oversized hammock with his third Jack Daniels on the rocks. “Hodgekiss thought I was crazy when I told him this CD of mating calls would bring flocks of owls to our back porch.”

Taking a sip, Martha replied, “I wish I had a picture of his face when he saw them swooping in from all directions.”

After a good-natured chuckle, they immediately perceived a weird stillness creep over the landscape around the towering structure. Then from the underbrush, they heard a high-pitched howl that didn’t seem far away. Chills ran up their spines as the shrill, eerie cry grew louder and alarmingly closer.

“What on earth is that?” Martha stammered.

John rose from the hammock and peered into the woods. “I’ve never heard anything so creepy in my life.”

Their eyes flitted back and forth across the wooded landscape. Martha was the first to see the enormous black shape emerging from the undergrowth and bounding toward them with gigantic leaps. John struggled from the unsteady hammock to get to his feet as Martha dropped her martini and bolted toward the sliding glass doors shouting, “Get inside the house!”

John’s bulk hampered his attempt to reach the sliders before the enormous jaws of the beast clamped on his right ankle and snapped it in a single bite like a dry twig. The humongous doglike thing the size of a small pony went immediately for Broadback’s neck and ripped his throat out. Martha stood behind the glass but couldn’t bear to watch the savage attack on her beloved husband of thirty years. Pulling the curtains, she picked up the phone to call 911, but to her horror, she found the line was dead.

The enormous wolfhound’s ears pricked upwards when it heard a whistle too high for a human to discern and immediately bolted from the deck and returned to the woods. The mammoth beast that weighed over 200 pounds followed the beckoning sound to a white van parked about a quarter of a mile away from the Broadback retreat. It leapt inside the rear doors that stood open and settled on a large tarp covering the floor of the van and licked at the blood and gore matted on his thick coat of fur.

Alex Cooper, former vice president of the Broadback, Hodgekiss, and Rangoon law firm, flipped a switch on the dash, and the rear doors slid shut. There was no turning back. Phase 1 of his plan of revenge for his termination from the firm after thirty-one years of service had begun. The Partners had promised him a full partnership many times, but each year, they found a different excuse to postpone his promotion. The crowning blow came when he and his wife, Gail, were dining at the Rainbow Room and overheard the three of them discussing with fits of uncontrolled laughter how they had used him all those years. It was clear from their remarks; they had never planned on promoting him.

He had given his life to the firm, working sixteen hours a day for many years. He had hardly seen his son grow up because of the incredible sacrifice he had made to be Partner one day in such a prestigious firm. He had the uncontrollable urge to plunge his steak knife into all three of their black hearts, but the blade was too flexible to inflict any serious damage.

When his wife had seen the look on his face after Rangoon’s final humiliating remark, she grabbed his hand and said, “Don’t be a fool. Do you want to spend the rest of your life behind bars?”

“Those greedy bastards need to pay,” he muttered, his voice breaking with unbridled hatred and tears starting to flow. Grabbing a napkin, Alex left the table and headed for the men’s room. As he stared at his receding hairline and the beginnings of a turkey neck in the mirror, he decided he would spend the rest of his life if he had to, to make them pay for what they had done to him.

His mind returned to the present, and he found himself sitting in the white van. Looking in the rear view mirror, he couldn’t recognize the wild-eyed man staring back at him. The Partners had created a monster all right, and he was looking at him. He started to giggle as he thought about what Broadback must look like after meeting Jowls. He shuddered at the grisly thought.

He wondered if Martha had survived Jowls’ attack. He’d given him a whiff of one of John’s tennis shoes he’d stolen from his Manhattan fitness club and pointed him toward the Broadback vacation home. He had no idea how his trainer had created such a killing machine. The wolfhound had cost him a considerable amount of money, but he was worth every penny. He couldn’t believe how gentle and loving Jowls could be right after such a brutal mission. He could rip his prey apart one minute and cuddle with a baby the next. He’d also been trained to be silent or scary depending on his master’s vocal preference. Alex had used the howling destroyer mode on John. He wanted the bastard to feel the fear before it bit him in the ass.

He had a two-day window to deal with Martha. He’d cut off her landline service, blocked her cell and Internet connections, and slashed all four tires on her SUV. He also had placed surveillance cameras in various locations around the property to monitor any movements outside the house. If she found the courage to attempt to seek help on foot, he would unleash Jowls again to take care of it, but he hoped she would wait for their caretaker to arrive on Monday morning.

He couldn’t wait to see the replay of Jowls attack on his former boss. He had filmed the carnage in HD quality.

The next afternoon, David Hodgekiss and his wife, Grace, were dining under an enormous gazebo overlooking a small pond stocked with multi-colored fish. The elaborate picnic area was located about two hundred yards up a grassy knoll from their palatial retreat.

Hodgekiss had just opened an obscenely expensive bottle of wine when they both heard the gut-wrenching howl of Jowls closing in. Realizing immediately the impending danger, his second boss took his wife’s hand, and together they ran headlong toward the safety of their home.

Behind them, they heard something big thrashing through the woods toward them, and the menacing sound of a predator’s savage howl. Looking back, they saw the enormous shape emerge from the woods and couldn’t believe the size of it. The mad frenzy of the devil dog’s eyes took Hodgekiss’s breath away. It looked more like a horse than a dog, but its huge jaws and vicious, bared teeth left no doubt; it was on a mission to destroy.

Suddenly, Hodgekiss stopped and turned to face the oncoming monstrosity, “Run! Run for your life! Grace, get inside the house.”

His wife turned and shouted, “You’ll be killed!”

“No need for both of us to die. Run!”

Turning to resume her flight, she heard a stifled gurgling sound. Turning to look, she saw the hound from Hell ravaging her husband. Blood poured from the gaping hole in his throat as the beast thrashed his limp body around between its teeth through the terrain like a rag doll.

When Grace reached the safety of the sliders, she immediately tried to call 911. The line was dead. Running to the SUV in the circular drive, she found the engine wouldn’t start. Ignoring the consequences in a fit of rage and emotion, she started running down the driveway.

Alex saw Grace running away from the house in his array of monitors. He had no choice. When Jowls returned to the van, Alex gave him the scent of her moccasin, the command to take her out, and sent him on his way.

For some reason, having Jowls ravage Grace the same as her husband brought a pang of remorse to Alex’s conscience. He hoped he would not have to do the same to Martha Broadback, but he would if he had to.

Alex had rented Jowls for the weekend from a cloak and dagger operation recommended by a very unsavory gangbanger he’d had as a client for tax evasion. He’d never dealt with scumbags like him before, but he’d been the only underworld contact he knew personally. Walking on the wild side of life frightened him, but the intense hatred and the unquenchable thirst for revenge on all three of his former bosses had driven him to it. The worst part in renting Jowls was meeting his trainer who reminded him of a muscle-bound Joe Mantegna in the movie Thinner, but a lot scarier.

It was too late to worry about the consequences now. He was way past the point of no return. Two down, and one to go. Last, but not least, Imad Rangoon would be Jowl’s victim for tomorrow. He was the one Alex blamed the most for his termination from the firm and his incessant assignments to the four corners of the earth for six month stints so many times. It was a miracle his wife, Gail, had stood by him through all the bitter years.

Rangoon had never married and flaunted his reputation as a consummate ladies man. He’d been caught by the receptionist twice having sex with a young paralegal on the table in the large conference room. Alex loathed him and considered him a disgusting waste of life. He didn’t know what bimbo would be with him this weekend, but after the last deadly deed was done, he would no longer care what happened to Martha Broadback and Imad’s sex toy after that.

Alex’s hands shook with anticipation as he extracted Rangoon’s shoe from a gym bag and let Jowl’s inhale his scent. Like before, he opened the rear doors of the van and pointed in the direction of Imad’s complex. The enormous slobbering wolfhound’s eyes widened with a ferocious anticipation as he leapt from the van like a race horse with his ass on fire and headed into the woods on his mission of death.

When Alex turned on the monitors to prepare for his viewing of Jowls’ attack on his most hated boss, he discovered his connection to the cameras had been lost. After all his meticulous planning, he would not be able to see the beast ripping Rangoon apart live. He hoped he wouldn’t lose the videotape he’d set up in an adjacent out building.

He decided to wait fifteen minutes before he recalled Jowls to the van. If the dog were bloody when he returned, he’d know the deed was done. He didn’t care what happened to the woman the miserable son of a bitch had brought with him for the weekend.

Back at Rangoon’s massive retreat, he and his paramour were going at it like rabbits in heat. They knocked over a pitcher of margaritas and a bowl of chips and salsa that crashed on the concrete patio.

Neither of the lovers saw Jowls approaching until it leapt upon the back of the middle-aged Casanova and started ripping him apart. The buxom brunette managed to slide out through the pool of warm blood on to the patio. Picking up a lawn chair, she struck the hound on the head and continued pummeling him as the beast ripped at Rangoon’s midsection and genitals with his gnashing teeth. Pausing to rid itself of the relentless distraction of the lawn chair, Jowls turned from Rangoon, clamped his jaws on the woman’s hand holding the chair, and wrenching it away, bit off three fingers on her left hand. She ran screaming to the house with blood gushing from the stumps of her fingers while the voracious beast resumed ravaging Rangoon’s lifeless corpse.

A minute later, the woman reappeared with one hand wrapped in a dishtowel and a small handgun in the other. Sprinting to her lover’s side, she planted six bullets into Jowls’ skull.

Alex heard the shots, and immediately blew his ultrasonic whistle to bring the dog back to the van. After a time, when Jowls did not respond to his call, he assumed Rangoon had reached a weapon before the canine had reached him.

He hadn’t planned on visiting the scene of the murders in delight, but this unexpected turn of events called for his immediate involvement. He had no choice but to take out Rangoon himself. He’d taken care of the phones and sabotaged his car during the night, but he couldn’t let the asshole contact the authorities. He could only imagine what Jowl’s owners would do to him if the murder trail led back to them. And if by some miracle he did survive, he would certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars when the police got involved.

He had to be very careful. Without the live camera feeds, he didn’t know what had happened at Rangoon’s place. He placed his revolver in his belt behind his back and drove the van to Rangoon’s complex.

Parking in the cover of the trees, he sneaked toward the main house through the woods. Making his way to the back of the A frame using several storage sheds for cover, Alex crept closer to the sprawling pool area. As soon as he peeked around the corner of the outbuilding, which was only sixty feet from the tiled patio, he spotted the bloody grass next to the pool. In plain view, he saw the hulking frame of the black beast spread-eagled on top of the splayed remains of a corpse he assumed was Rangoon. As he drew closer with wary apprehension, he saw the gaping hole in the top of the dog’s head. Underneath the shards of bone and teeth, his old boss’s face was barely recognizable.

The harrowing bloodlust of the scene sickened him and caused his head to spin. For some reason, he had forgotten about the bimbo and struggled to the patio. Taking a seat, he couldn’t believe where his maniacal lust for revenge had taken him. What would Jowls master do when he found the dog was dead? If anyone had told him he would be a cold-blooded murderer someday, he would have laughed in their face at the total impossibility. He wondered what his poor wife who had stood by him like a saint would say if she could see him now. He wanted to call her, but telling her about what he’d done on the phone would be insane. He thought about not telling her at all.

Then, he heard the sound of the sliding door behind him, followed by the sound of his wife’s familiar voice. Slowly turning, he saw Gail standing before him with a handgun pointed at his head. Blood splattered her pink swimsuit and the towel wrapped around her left hand.

“Well, Alex, you stupid son of a bitch, since Broadback and Hodgekiss didn’t show for breakfast this morning and didn’t call, I assume they are as dead as Imad. I guess you’ve finally succeeded in getting your revenge, but what you don’t know is I’ve been fucking your old boss behind your back for the past twenty years. It wasn’t the Partners that sent you on all those godforsaken assignments. I’m the reason you spent all those lonely nights in those far off places.”

Alex’s face reddened with rage as he contemplated making a play for the gun concealed under his shirt at his back. His hands trembled as the adrenalin raced through his veins.

“While you were humping camels in the Sahara, I was giving Imad blow jobs at his apartment on Park Avenue. When you called me every night to cheer me up, I was never in our pathetic shit hole in the Boonies your measly paycheck could afford. I only tolerated you because of our son. If Imad would have married me, I would’ve left you in a New York minute.”

Alex wanted to smash her face in with a hammer, blow her brains out with his gun, strangle the breath out of her with his bare hands, but all he could see was the muzzle of the Smith and Wesson 44 Magnum aimed directly at his nose. If he was going to make his move, he had to make it soon.

“You just killed the only man I ever loved. I hope you rot in Hell, you spineless, limp dick loser.”

She pulled the trigger six consecutive times at pointblank range, but the gun was empty.

BRIDE OF THE GORILLA

A piercing cry from the monkey cage startled me awake. The sun was hot, and I had apparently dozed off lounging on a plastic rock close to the entrance to Dizzyworld Amusement Park.

Opening my bleary eyes, everything around me seemed extremely peculiar. Just above the orangutan enclosure, the monorail sat motionless on the Serengeti platform. All the doors were open, but no one was getting on or off. In addition, no people were coming or going up the ramp. Looking down the concourse, I found it stranger not to see a single person perusing the animals in any direction at this time of day.

Closing time was 8 p.m., but the sun told me, it was no more than five or six o’clock. It got dark early this time of year, and the sun was just fading on the horizon while a picture perfect full moon was beginning to rise above the leopard cages.

As I moved away from the station toward the front of the lion, panther, and tiger enclosures, I noticed not only the absence of people, but I also couldn’t see a single animal inside any of their usual habitats. Moving closer, I pressed my nose against the cold steel and peered into the shadowy interior to see if I could spot one of the animals hidden behind a bush or tree.

Suddenly, a man with a zookeeper hat emerged from behind a concrete barrier and glared at me with unmistakably bad intentions. The man’s attitude was so unnerving, I cowered further back from where I stood at the front of the cage. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the zookeeper’s face began to morph into something wolfen. Immediately his human body transformed into a hairy beast with beady eyes, massive claws, and long, ugly teeth. Taking one more giant step backward from the cage, and not a second too soon, a fistful of claws lunged through the bars and fanned the air in front of my face, missing my nose by a hair.

In a mad frenzy, the wooly beast pummeled the front of the cage with superhuman strength. The wall of steel bars creaked loudly in protest with each devastating blow. I struggled for breath and stood transfixed in a state of utter fear as the bottom section of bars shook in their casing, and one long screw popped out of its place. I was so frightened; I stood paralyzed in my tracks as the beast continued to pound on the bars like someone in need of a straight jacket. Finally, the wolf man howled mournfully, and realizing he could not get at me, he began to sniff the air for something easier to snack on.

Looking further down the concourse toward the rhino enclosure, I saw a mother pushing a stroller with a pink balloon tied to its frame. I could hear the baby crying from where I stood. Immediately, the hairy thing’s ears pricked up, and its nostrils flared as it bounded toward the woman and her baby. I watched in horror as the beast leapt into the air, pounced on all fours upon the screaming mother, and dragged her off with blood spewing in all directions. Long after the woman’s cries had ceased, I could still hear the baby crying.

A moment later, three young couples with phones at their ears rounded the corner of the leopard enclosure. Embroiled in conversation, they were totally oblivious of the carnage that had just taken place. Prying the phones from their ears, they were happily snapping pictures and munching on popcorn when two more hairy monsters emerged from behind a concrete barrier and mauled them. Popcorn and phones flew into the air as blood sprayed the sunglass kiosk behind them. Monkeys began to shriek as a black panther moved toward the front of his cage to get a better look at the slaughter.

In the distance, I heard the sound of gunfire and more people screaming. Police cars burst from around a corner and sped toward the cage where I stood with my mouth agape. A helicopter rocketed overhead and started to descend in a clearing near the hippo tank.

Three werewolves raced by in front of me. One stopped and toyed with the idea of taking a quick bite out of me, and then followed closely behind the others. Moments later, twelve members of a heavily armed S.W.A.T team sped past in the direction the werewolves had headed.

The chaos and the carnage in the park today was much too much excitement for someone like me who had just delivered a bouncing baby…gorilla named Congo. My name is Mambo, and in spite of my condition, the love of my life, Hercules is ogling me seductively from behind a shrub. As he ambles closer with muscles bulging, his erection tells me he’s not here to pick daisies. I start to give him a whack up side the head with my food dish when a burst of gunfire thankfully deflates his ardor for the moment.

In spite of the turmoil, the food truck delivers a medley of greens to our cage just like a normal day. The gunfire is over, and life is returning to normal. Hercules and I have been happy at Dizzyworld. We get three squares a day, medicine when we’re sick, and until today, never had to worry about wild animal attacks. Now, I’m a proud mother with my new baby, Congo. How sweet.

For the last six months, unlike Hercules, who’s never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, I’ve been part of a National Geographic experiment. I’m learning to understand what my trainer, Jeremy, is saying in his language. He holds up an item and tells me what it is so many times I feel like strangling him, but by controlling my angst, I get a special treat when I respond correctly. He wants me to try to speak his language, but so far, I’ve been unable to say one word of English he can understand.

*  *  *

Now, It’s the middle of the night, and all is quiet except for the intermittent shrieks of the monkeys near the monorail station. It certainly was a crazy day at Dizzyworld, but thank goodness, the police thwarted the werewolves. The full moon over the leopard cage is… what’s the word…breathtaking. Wow! I can’t believe I remembered that word.

What’s that sound? Such a peculiar sound for this time of night. Could that be a key turning in the lock of our cage? A shadow emerges from the dark interior. The security lights along the concourse illuminate a familiar face.

“What on earth is Henry, our zookeeper, doing creeping around in our cage at this time of night? He’s not here to clean up our poop; he didn’t bring a shovel. He’s not here with a late night snack; his hands are empty. Coming into our cage with no whip and no stun gun is a first. Has he been drinking?

Suddenly, the mystery clarifies as Henry’s face begins to change just like the other zookeeper who had tried so hard to attack me. It was now abundantly clear what would happen if I allowed his transformation to take place inside our cage. Wasting no time, I bounded across the few feet, which separated us, and picking up Henry in mid-morph began to cripple him as best I could with uncanny strength fueled by a massive infusion of adrenalin. In a matter of seconds, his wooly body with a mouthful of hideous fangs and a fistful and a footful of monstrous claws lay in a hairy heap of blood and gore. He was still twitching, but completely incapacitated by a broken back and fractured limbs. His severed right arm lay at an odd angle to the side in a pool of blood.

I felt sorry for poor Henry who’d been taking such good care of us, but his imminent transformation into a deranged blood beast left me no choice. After all, what’s a gorilla to do when confronted by a ghastly werewolf?

I didn’t want Hercules and I to get in trouble so I knew we had to dispose of the body before the Dizzyworld crew inspected our cage in the morning. I quickly awakened my love mate, and after stifling his amorous advances, coaxed him to help me carry Henry’s remains to the lion’s den across the way. Luckily, the keys on the ring he’d brought with him conveniently unlocked our cage.

Simba and Samson, the two eternally hungry lions next door, wasted no time in gobbling up what was left of poor Henry as soon as they smelled the fresh blood in their domain.

On our way back to our cage, I noticed the blood and gore matted all over Hercules hairy chest from carrying Henry’s corpse to the lion’s den. I assumed I must look ten times worse since I was the one who’d ripped off his arm to begin with.

We both looked at the keys I held in the palm of my hand and grinned broadly, showing every yellow tooth in our mouths.

The next morning, the park officials had no clue why the flume ride was operating on its own, and how two escaped gorillas had figured out how to take a ride on the monorail.

GHOST TOWN

In 1870, a group of settlers in wagons on their way west saw a stand of buildings in the distance.

“That must be a small town at the foot of the mountain,” Jess said, rolling his parched tongue across his teeth. He could almost taste the shot of whiskey he knew he would order as soon as he found the saloon.

After another hour, the men pulled their seven wagons into the alley beside the Aces and Eights Saloon. The town consisted of eight wooden structures on each side of the street. They didn’t see a single person outside, and no one was visible in any of the windows or doorways. There were no horses tied to any of the hitching posts. Nothing moved except a lone piece of sagebrush tumbling lazily down the rutted street and a rusty weathervane twirling in the wind on top of the hotel.

"What do you make of this, Jess?" Monte asked, surveying the silent, eerie buildings that stood like tombstones in a deserted graveyard.

"Damned if I know. It doesn't look like a ghost town. The buildings look too good for that. Maybe the people are afraid of strangers, and they’re hold up inside."

Monte scratched his head and said, “We don’t look like wild Indians, do we? And no one would take us for escaped convicts; we're not wearing any stripes. Looks to me like whoever was here left in a hurry. I wonder what they knew that we don't. I'm beginning to feel like Custer at the Little Big Horn.

"People or not," Jess groaned with a long face, "I just pray there's whiskey in that there saloon. I could really use a snort right about now, but my hopes are fadin' fast."

Monte looked at the large sign on the wall next to the entrance to the saloon that read "WHISKY-BOTTLE $2.00 and licked his lips.

Jess smiled at the smaller sign on the window upstairs that read “PUSSY, $1.00.” The sour look on his wife’s face in the wagon told him she had already seen it when they rode into town.

Hitching up their britches a tad, Jess and Monte left the others and pushed through the swinging doors.

Entering the space, they saw liquor bottles and stacks of shot glasses lined up in front of a long mirror behind the bar. Playing cards lay scattered about on most of the round poker tables that filled the room. An upright piano stood silent in the corner.

"Just like you said, it looks like everyone stopped what they were doing and left in a hurry,” Jess remarked, turning over the four hands at one of the tables. “This person was the winner of this hand with a full house, but it looks like they never knew who won. They just upped and left the cards and the money on the table and took off.”

“And look at the half-full shot glasses on the bar,” Monte added, “who would walk out and leave good whisky behind? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’d say judging by the lack of dust and cobwebs, they didn't leave so long ago," Jess concluded, swiping his fingers along the bar top.

Someone yelled excitedly outside, and Jess and Monte ran out to see what was causing the ruckus.

“I went to the dry goods store and found what was left of a man spread out on the counter,” Henry Farmer said, trying to catch his breath.

“What happened to him?” Monte asked.

“It looked like something ate him,” Henry replied with a somber look.”

“What do you mean ate him?” Lefty Simmons gasped.

“There was almost nothing left but a skeleton. His clothes were in a bloody pile on the floor, and something had eaten almost every shred of flesh from his bones. I don’t think a buzzard could’ve picked him any cleaner.”

“I went upstairs to take a look around, and I found a women’s skeleton in a bed. I guess it was his wife. Whatever ate the man ate her, too. The bedclothes were covered with dried blood.”

Mary Sweet shouted, pointing at a figure at the end of the street, "Look, someone's alive, after all.”

Suddenly, the shambling figure of a young boy fell in a pile in the dust.

When the group of settlers reached him, they found a shockingly skinny boy with bushy, blonde hair, lying unconscious and barely breathing in the middle of the street. They carried him into the livery stable to get out of the hot sun. Immediately, the smell of death and decomposition struck them in the face like a sledgehammer. They discovered carcasses of several horses picked as clean as the bodies they had found in the dry good store. The air was thick with flies buzzing about the bones.

The stench was so unbearable, Monte and Jess had to move the boy to the building next door. The three of them stayed with him while the others returned to the saloon and the wagons to check on the women and children.

Mary determined the boy had a rapid pulse and a slight fever, but otherwise, she had no idea what may have caused him to lose consciousness. She assumed he had fainted from severe malnutrition. He was horribly emaciated, and the bones of his rib cage stuck out like the black keys on a piano.

Mary felt sorry for the waif who had the most angelic face under the grime she had ever seen. She stood up and looking toward the mountains in the distance said, “I wonder if this youngin’ was part of that wagon train we came upon that the Indians attacked.”

Since the boy’s ailment wasn't from a wound or a broken bone, they loaded him into a wagon, took him to the saloon, and put him in a room upstairs. Monte's wife, Carolyn, brought him some food, hoping it would bring him around.

Downstairs, the women watched the men hooting and hollering at the bar, and after they put the children to bed, they began to make merry themselves.”

“Let's hope poison whisky is not the reason the town folk disappeared,” Jess chuckled.

“If it is, I guess, most of us will be in heaven soon,” Roger answered with a wide grin and poured himself another drink.

At about nine o’clock, the settlers decided to return to their wagons to bed down for the night rather than stay in the rooms above the saloon. The strange disappearances of the townsfolk and the horrific deaths at the dry good store had made some of them uneasy, but others simply ignored what had happened and continued drinking their fill of the whiskey.

The next morning, quite a few, both men and women, were hung over as they gathered around a campfire in the alley next to the saloon. The smell of coffee and bacon eventually brought most of them to the table in spite of their inebriation.

Monte savored his last biscuit and carried his coffee to the front of the saloon where Jess leaned in a chair against the wall playing a harmonica. In the distance at the other end of town, Monte noticed a flock of turkey buzzards circling, and then disappearing behind a clump of boulders.

“Hey, Jess.” Marty pointed. “Them buzzards weren't there at sunset.”

“Guess somethin’ died last night.”

“Is everyone accounted for?”

“Don't know,” Jess said, scratching his balls, “I just crawled out of my bedroll.”

After counting the people around the campfire, Jess determined that Lefty Simmons was not among them. He weaved his way to his wagon and called for him, “ Lefty, get your sorry ass up. You’re missing flapjacks and bacon, and Mary Sweet made the coffee.”

Jess waited for a reply, but there was no answer. Pulling back the canvas cover, he saw the blood splatter on the floorboards and called out to the others, “Listen up, Lefty is missing, and there's a lot of blood in his wagon. I've got a bad feeling he's what them turkey buzzards are chewin' on at the other end of town.

The men put down their plates of food and headed to the spot where the buzzards were feasting. They were all thinking the same thing. Something had sneaked into their camp last night and snatched up Lefty right under their noses. Whatever got him could have taken any one of them.

Monte fired a few shots into the air to chase the turkey buzzards away from their morning snack as they drew closer to the grisly remains.

Jeff was the first to lose his breakfast when he saw what remained of poor Lefty. Great slabs of his thighs and his midsection were missing. Something had chewed the flesh from his arms and legs like human drumsticks. Either the buzzards pecked out his eyeballs, or his attacker gouged them out.

Everyone but Abraham Jarvis wretched and turned away from the horror on the ground. Herman Peale removed his flannel shirt and draped it over the pile of blood, bone, and guts that had been Lefty only yesterday.

“I don't know about you,” Herman muttered, “but I think we should get in our wagons and leave this town right now before whatever killed Lefty comes for us.”

Jess and Monte told the others to meet them at the cemetery on top of the hill in two hours. Monte went back to the saloon, got his wagon, and returned to where Jess stood watching the buzzards flying overhead. They placed Lefty’s remains in the wagon and drove to the cemetery. Removing two shovels from inside, they picked a spot under the lone tree that stood just before the crest of the hill and started digging a grave.

When the hole was big enough, they lifted Lefty’s body wrapped in burlap from the wagon and placed it in the grave. It had been almost two hours, and looking down from the hill at the town, they saw the others were gathering in the street for the funeral.

Jess said to Monte, who was wiping his brow, “Go find Robert and tell him to bring his Bible. He can say a few words at the ceremony. He's good at that. Tell the others to come on. Let’s get this over with and talk about what we’re gonna do.”

Monte climbed into the wagon and headed for town.

Jeff picked up his shovel and started pushing the dirt into the grave. He had planned to leave it open until after the service, but the intense, foul smell changed his mind.

By the time the others reached the gravesite, Jess had filled the hole with dirt and piled a few rocks on top.

After everyone gathered around, Robert read a verse from the Bible, and then he prayed aloud with his eyes closed, “Well, God, Lefty has joined you way up yonder. He won't have to worry about Injuns anymore, where the next waterhole might be, rattlers, flash floods, tarantulas, dust storms… you know… all the things you put in our way to make us strong God-fearing Christians.”

Several of the male mourners couldn’t help but chuckle at this remark causing several of the stern-faced women to shush them. The wind moaned in the trees, and the sky looked like a storm was coming.

“He's gone to that eternal land of milk and honey where the antelopes play, and the skies are not cloudy all day,” Robert continued thoughtfully, “I know Lefty wasn't perfect. I don't have to tell you that. You probably have a list of things he done we don't even know about, but he was a good friend to all of us, and we hope you'll take good care of him up there. I don't know what Lefty will do if there's no whiskey in heaven. He was a real boozer. Maybe that stuff they call nectar will do when he needs a snort. Well, I know you got a lot of stuff on your plate so I'm signing off. Have mercy on our souls.”

Everyone in the group said “amen” in unison. Several of the women placed wildflowers on the grave before they started back down the hill.

Jess whispered to Monte as the rest of the mourners thinned out, “Even after I closed up the grave, I can't get the stink of death out of my nose.”

“I don't think that's Lefty we’re smelling,” Monte said. “I think it's coming from over the hill.”

Jess walked to the top of the rise where more tombstones peppered the hillside. Monte followed. When they reached the summit, they saw a steep incline drop into a large ravine. The smell of death was much more intense here. Looking into the gaping hole, they saw the bones of hundreds of bodies of humans, livestock, even dogs and cats scattered in piles below. Rats and other vermin scurried about the putrid abyss like ants.

"Well, Monte, I guess we know where all the town folk went.”

“But what we don't know,” Monte replied, “is what killed them.”

“Whatever did this doesn't just kill a person, they eat him, too.”

Monte’s brow wrinkled as he turned to Jess, “What kind of animal could it be?”

“It wasn't no animal that left that man spread-eagled on the counter, and it wasn’t just one of them that slaughtered the whole town. You saw the half-filled glasses of whiskey on the bar, and the playing cards and the money on the tables. These people left in a hurry, trying to stay alive. They knew something was coming for them, and they took off.

“The poor bastards didn't get far,” Monte replied, heading down toward the wagon.”

Jess stopped and muttered to himself as Monte listened, “What does this tell us? Why aren't they scattered all around the street. Whatever killed them took the time to cart their bones to the top of the hill and dump them in the ravine.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“Don’t you see, Monte? This town is a trap. When settlers see it in the distance, they come here for the whiskey, the supplies, the pussy, whatever… Whatever killed them hid the bodies so more unsuspecting people like us would take the bait and fall into their trap. And this isn’t a new thing. Look at the bodies. Some of them in the hole are recent, and others have been here a long time.”

“Why did these things only attack Lefty last night?”

Jess thought about it and finally replied, “There must be a pack of these things somewhere, and one of the strays stumbled upon us when we came into town. Where is that boy we found in the street?”

“Robert said after the funeral that Mary and Steve are trying to nurse him back to health in one of the rooms above the saloon, but so far, he’s in some sort of trance. They can't get any food into him.”

Jess grimaced and slapped the dust off of his hat, “I've got a bad feeling about that boy. Let’s take a better look at him. Maybe he’s one of them.”

Jess and Marty boarded the wagon and headed toward the town in a cloud of dust. When they reached the saloon, they found seven of the group scattered around the poker tables, killing time and drinking whiskey. “Where are Mary and Steve?” Jess barked with worry written all over his face.

“They’re upstairs with the boy,” Lillian responded.

“Did he regain consciousness?” Monte asked.

“I don't think so, but for some reason, Mary said he looks better than he did yesterday.”

Jess grabbed Robert’s double-barreled shotgun resting against the bar and proceeded up the stairs two at a time, followed by Monte. Pausing at the top of the stairs, Jess motioned Monte to stay quiet as they stepped into a long hallway with doors closed on both sides. They listened outside each door and without knocking eased each one open as they proceeded down the hall. They found nothing in their search, and now, the door at the end of the hall was the only one left they hadn’t checked.

When Jess pushed open the last door, his eyes became riveted on the horror before him. Steve Sweet sat in a chair staring into space with dead, glassy eyes. Something had torn a chunk out of the right side of his neck. His shirt and pants were soaked with blood, and a large pool had accumulated on the floor at his feet.

Mary lay on the bed with her dead eyes fixed on the ceiling in tattered shreds of clothing. The blond boy’s head was buried inside the gaping cavern in her mid-section. Her intestines dangled across her exposed genitals and fell in a pile on her bloody boots.

The click the shotgun made when Jess pulled back the hammer aroused the boy who turned toward them and hissed at them like a cat. The boy’s innocent expression had disappeared entirely. Now, his savage, ravenous eyes glared at them like a deranged maniac. His whole face was wet with blood, gore, and slivers of flesh protruding from a mouthful of pointed teeth as he poised to strike.

“What is this thing?” Monte cried.

Jess pulled the trigger on the ten-gauge shotgun, and the hideous face and the upper part of the boy’s body disintegrated before their eyes.

“Something dead,” Jess answered, wiping the blood splatter from his face with his sleeve. The wallpaper in the room had changed to a scarlet fresco design in a split second. The lower torso of the thing fell off the bed on to the floor.

“Hey!” Monte said excitedly, “You took the mystery out of the cure with only one shot. These things aren't so tough.”

The doorway filled up with the group from downstairs, and they spread out around the bloody corpses.

“The boy killed Mary’s husband and was eating her when we opened the door,” Jess explained. ”He looked human, but he was really some kind of monster. He was getting ready to pounce on us when I pulled the trigger.”

The group looked at Monte to corroborate Jess’s incredible explanation of what had happened.

Monte nodded, “Hey, look at what the boy did to Steve and Mary. Nothing human could have done this. When Monte realized that Mary's face had been partially obliterated by Jess’s shotgun blast, his explanation trailed off. Starting over, he stammered, “Mary and Steve would have looked just like the people in the dry goods store if we hadn’t interrupted him.”

Jess looked at his companions with their mouths agape, still trying to get their minds around the carnage spread about the bedroom and said, “That’s why the boy looked better this morning. Instead of normal food, he snuck away and chowed down on Lefty during the night.”

Monte repeated what Jess had told him at the cemetery, “This town is a trap. These things like this boy lure settlers like us into their web so they can feast on us.”

Jess continued, “Believe me, folks, there’s a lot more of these ghouls around here somewhere, and they’ll be coming for us soon. Gather up your stuff. Let's get out of here, before it's too late.”

Suddenly, Steve’s corpse lunged from the bloody chair, sunk his teeth into Herman Peale’s neck, and ripped away his jugular vein and vocal chords. Steve’s eyes had taken on the same ravenous fire Jess had seen in the blond boy’s eyes. He had come back alive after some period of time had passed. Now, instead of the kind considerate family man they all knew, he'd become a ghoul with nothing but bloodlust in his eyes.

While Steve continued to chew on Herman’s gory neck, Jess turned the shotgun around and crushed his head into a bloody pulp with repeated blows against the hardwood floor. Monte and the rest of the settlers stood in the room peppered from floor to ceiling with blood splatter, still reeling from the horror they had witnessed with their own eyes.

Lillian, Herman's wife, came into the room, fell upon her husband’s bloody corpse, and began to sob uncontrollably.

“I'm sorry, Lillian,” Jess said, trying to console her, “but the dead are coming back to life and eating the living. I'm sorry about Herman, but we can't let you stay here with him. We don’t know when he might turn and try to rip your throat out like Steve just did to him.”

Lillian had just arrived on the scene and had no idea what Jess was talking about. She looked at him like he had lost his mind. With her arms wrapped about her husband’s neck and her head pressed against his chest, she continued to sob and shriek uncontrollably.

“Lillian, you’ve gotta listen to us for your own sake, and for little William's sake. I know it’s unbelievable, but what Jess is telling you is true,” Monte pleaded. “After Steve was stone cold dead, he suddenly opened his eyes, took a big bite out of Herman’s neck, and started eatin’ on him. The same thing could happen to Herman. We need to lock his body in a room to be sure he doesn't try to kill you or one of us if he comes back to life.”

Lillian continued to ignore what they said, forcing several of her friends to pull her away while others carted Herman’s corpse to a room they could lock. Jess, Monte, and the others returned downstairs to gather everyone together so they could leave before the ghouls returned.

When they entered the saloon, they found the rest of their group on the floor being devoured by several emaciated corpse-like things. Their savage maniacal eyes spun in circles in their sockets as they tore the raw flesh from the bones in a ravenous frenzy.

Four of the creatures held Abraham Jarvis, a huge lumberjack of a man, down while four others feasted on him. They had already eaten away the flesh below his right knee, and were starting on the juicy thighbone.

Jess winced at the pitiful, frightened stare frozen on Abraham’s partially eaten head. His ears and his nose were gone. Jess knew he would see the horror of that contorted face in his nightmares if he came out of this alive.

Six of the things looked up from their bloody feast and glared at Jess and Monte. Their cold eyes drifted over their frames like someone choosing a choice piece of steak from the local butcher. Jess and Monte turned to run for their lives, but ten more ghouls blocked their escape at the entrance. Both men emptied their revolvers into the throng of claws and fangs that swept over them.

* * *

Two months later, eight wagons of thirsty settlers saw the stand of buildings in the distance. An hour later, the wagons stopped in front of the Aces and Eights saloon. A lone piece of sagebrush tumbled down the empty street as one of the men climbed down from the wagon. “Something doesn't feel right about this town,” the crusty old codger yelled to the others. “Let me take a look. Stay ready.”

A large, red-faced man in another wagon pointed toward the hill with one lone tree and a field of tombstones in the distance. “Something doesn't smell right either,” he said sniffing the air.

Several turkey buzzards from the distant mountain flew across the sun and disappeared behind the hill.

Jess shouted from the shadow of the open window in the saloon, “What are you folks waiting for? This is a friendly town and to prove it the first drink is on the house. Come on in. Pull up a chair. We've even got hard candy for the youngins.”

Jess drew closer to the window so the settlers could see a little more of him. A ten-gallon hat covered his dead eyes, and a shirt two sizes too large for him covered his emaciated body.

The band of ghouls decided that rather than eat him and Monte, they would just bite them and turn them into ghouls. For a while, they would almost look human, and they could help lure new meat into the saloon. The charade would work as long as the settlers couldn’t see their eyes.

Fifty ghouls waited in the alley to swarm the new blood from behind as soon as they entered the saloon. The whiskey was gone, and now the bottles on the bar had only colored water in them.

Jess saw life a lot differently now that he was a ghoul. He didn’t know why, but it didn’t bother him at all to sink his teeth into a helpless human. He could eat anything that walked or crawled now. He was always hungry. As he tightened his grip on his ax handle, he looked across at Monte and the other ghouls at the other window and gave them the high sign.

Under his breath, he muttered the same prayer he said before he ate when he was human, “Thank you, sweet Jesus, for the grub we’re about to receive."

THE CALLER FROM HELL

On July 6, the phone rang at three o’clock in the morning. Clyde Bottoms opened his bleary eyes and struggled to free his arm tangled in the bedclothes. After knocking the alarm clock off the end table, he picked up the receiver and barked in his most menacing tone, “Hello. What lamebrain would call someone at this hour?”

He listened to the silence and glared at the number on the display. Just as he thought, it was the same number as before. “Listen, douche bag, I don’t know what your game is, but this is the fifth time you’ve called to harass me this month, and this is the last straw. I’m calling the telephone company in the morning to file a complaint. As soon as I put down the phone, I will also be reporting your ass to the police. If neither of them can stop you from calling in the future, I’ll be coming to knock your block off. No matter what rock you hide under, I’ll find you. Even if I have to buy a ticket to the North Pole, your sorry ass will be mine. You don’t know who you’re dealing with, motherfucker.” Clyde slammed down the phone, pulled the jack from the wall, and tried to get back to sleep.

In the morning during breakfast, he called Verizon and advised the officious sounding lady of the prank calls.

The customer service rep replied in an annoying robotic voice, “Are you sure you have the right number, Mr. Bottoms? The number you gave me is no longer in service.”

“I’m positive that’s the number,” Clyde bellowed. “The miserable son of a bitch has called me five different times.”

“Please watch your language, sir, I’m a Christian.”

“Sorry. This jerk off is really getting on my nerves. If you don’t believe me, just try calling it.”

“I believe you, sir, but transposing numbers is very common, I assure you.”

“As I said before, the correct number I’ve taken from caller ID on five different occasions is 508-683-6883. Could you please tell the pervert to stop harassing me?”

“I’ll make the call, but I’m sure nothing will happen. That number is no longer in service.”

“Humor me.”

After a moment, Clyde heard a phone ringing in his earpiece many times with no answer.

“That’s strange,” the service rep chirped. “The phone did ring, but no one answered.”

“See, I’m not crazy after all. Am I?”

“Please Mr. Bottoms, I certainly didn’t mean to insinuate….”

“That’s okay, miss,” Clyde interrupted. “I know you’re just going by what’s the computer says.”

“I assure you this kind of thing has never happened during the fifteen years I’ve been working this job. I will write up a purchase order to check out this connection ASAP.”

“In the interim, can you tell me anything about the caller. I wonder if I might know the person.”

“I can’t give you the name of a person. This was a business account.”

“What was the name of the business that had the number last?”

“My records indicate it was listed to the Morningside Cemetery.”

“Cemetery? Are you sure?”

“Positive, sir.”

“Where was the location?”

“The address was 1 Sleepy Hollow Lane.”

“Are you serious?” After a prolonged silence, Clyde asked, “What town?”

“Hell, Massachusetts.”

Clyde put his ear closer to the phone. Confused as to whether he’d heard her reply correctly, he repeated the question, “What was the town again?”

“As I said, sir, the name of the town is Hell, Massachusetts.”

“Can you tell when the service was terminated?”

“Certainly, if you think it would help.” After a lengthy assault of generic music on his eardrums, the representative came back on the line, “I’m sorry, sir, but it appears our information is corrupted.”

“Christ, lady, you don’t have any records on this number?”

“We have the record, but the termination date is in the future, not the past. It can’t be correct.”

“What’s the date?”

“July 26 of this year. I’m sorry to say the date service started is also incorrect.”

“What’s that?”

“July 6, 1969.”

“Other than that being my birthday, why is that so strange? Sylvester Stallone and George W. Bush were also born on July 6.”

“I’ve never seen a date that old in our system. Our computer records began on January 1, 1979. All customers who started before that date say “Prior to 1979” instead of the actual start date.”

“That is strange, I guess. Well, in any case, let me know what your people find out about the connection.”

“After all these odd circumstances with the data, it may be best to change your telephone number.”

“That would be the last resort. So many people have it; it would be a drag to change it. I have to get to work. I’m sorry I was such an asshole… I mean so obnoxious at first. You’ve been very helpful.”

After a few more pleasantries, Clyde hung up the phone and sat in disbelief at the details of the weird calls in the middle of the night. To summarize, a disconnected phone that started service on the day he was born and was once the telephone number of a cemetery in a place called Hell keeps calling to harass him. He put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and left for work.

All that day, he couldn’t get his mind off what the service rep had told him. The premise that these calls were a coincidence seemed less plausible than the premise they were premeditated. Could one of his friends be doing this to rattle him? It wasn’t likely that a random call to Verizon would connect someone involved in the charade.

On the way home, he stopped at the police station not far from his apartment. Approaching the front desk, he saw a tall, intimidating man in a blue uniform.

“I’ve been experiencing prank calls in the middle of the night. Is there someone I could talk to about the problem?” Clyde began.

“What borough are you in?”

“Manhattan.”

“What’s your name?”

“Clyde Bottoms.”

“Have a seat. An officer will be with you shortly.”

He sat in the waiting area with ten ugly gray chairs that looked like something from World War II and picked up a dog-eared magazine with no cover.

Fifteen minutes later, a middle aged uniformed officer called his name and escorted him to a small conference room. They took seats on opposite sides of a table scarred with cigarette burns.

“I understand you’ve been having a problem with prank calls?” the officer began. “Do you have any idea who’s calling you?”

“Not really. I have the caller’s number from the readout so I called the telephone company and made a complaint.”

“And they couldn’t resolve the problem?”

“There records show the number was disconnected July 26 of this year.”

The officer thought about the date and replied, “That’s next week.”

“That’s the mystery. They say the service was terminated years ago, but the date in their system is in the future.”

“Did they give you the name of the person the listing belongs to?”

“They say it was the business phone number for the Morningside Cemetery located in Hell, Massachusetts, and the records indicate the service was terminated in 1986.”

“Nineteen-eighty-six…. That would be twenty-five years ago.”

“I didn’t do the math, but I’ll take your word for it.”

The officer’s expression changed, and he looked at Clyde as if a light bulb had come on in his mind. “Is this some kind of joke? Believe me, Mr. Bottoms, I have better things to do than waste my time on a practical joke.”

“I assure you I’m not making this up. These calls, which I’m receiving in the middle of the night, are driving me insane. What I want to know is if Verizon can’t resolve the situation, can the police intervene in my behalf.”

“What can we do if we don’t know who is making the calls? The caller is not even in our jurisdiction. I can call law enforcement in Massachusetts, but they are sure to think you are some kind of nutcase if I pass on the information you’ve given me. If Verizon can’t help you, the best thing you can do is set up a new, unlisted telephone number.”

Realizing the futility of explaining something so bizarre to anyone else, Clyde thanked the officer for his time and left. On his way home, he contemplated what he would have to do if Verizon couldn’t resolve the problem.

Two days later, he received a call back from the same service rep he’d spoken with before. She started in the same annoying monotone, “The maintenance man traced the phone number to a dilapidated building that was once the sales office of the Morningside Cemetery. Like I said before, the business was located in Hell, Massachusetts, which he said is now a deserted town at the tip of Cape Cod. He tested the line, and as I expected, found it to be totally disconnected. He did say a fallen tree had knocked over two telephone poles along the right side of the parking lot that once supplied service to the building, which was originally a church.

“So, in a nutshell, you can’t stop the person from calling me.”

“Mr. Bottoms, it’s not possible for someone to call from that location, and it hasn’t been possible for more than twenty years.”

“Regardless of what the maintenance man said, the fact remains that I’ve received five calls from that number. Well, this is getting us nowhere. I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet and shut down my current number and start a new one. Make it an unlisted number. Hopefully, the ghost in Massachusetts will have to find someone else to haunt.”

* * *

Three days after Verizon activated the new number, Clyde received the sixth call from the same number at 3:10 a.m. Scrambling for the phone, he shouted, ”How did you get this number, you retard.” He held the phone tightly against his head and listened to the silence on the line, hoping to hear the slightest hint of a sound.

Suddenly, the rich baritone vibrato of someone who sounded like a seasoned Shakespearian actor answered, ”I’ve been waiting for you to knock my block off, Clyde.”

The words hit him like a sledgehammer right between the eyes. A cold shiver ran up his spine as he sat upright in bed. He couldn’t believe what he had just heard. Then came the click, and the long drone of the dial tone. The complete silence that surrounded him in his own bedroom seemed foreign. The shadows on the wall from cars passing in the street raised the hairs on the back of his neck as he turned on the lamp on the end table and surveyed every inch of the room.

Thinking about what the voice from Hell had said made him feel inadequate for the first time since a bully had bloodied his nose in the schoolyard when he was ten.

He had just received a challenge from the caller in Massachusetts.

He leapt from the bed, went downstairs to his gun cabinet, and withdrew two rifles and two handguns.

The creep in Massachusetts had been forewarned that he was no one to mess with, and yet, the crazy bastard would not stop harassing him.

Clyde had been a one-man army in Viet Nam. He had the scars of the bullet wounds to prove it. He was forty years older now, but he weighed the same as the day he’d been drafted. His arms were like molded steel from bench pressing 300 pounds after breakfast every day of his life. He’d wasted more Viet Cong soldiers than anyone he’d ever met. He’d also killed his share of women and children along the way.

He had no remorse. To him, they were collateral damage, and they could kill you just as dead as a man. He had a scar across his cheek from a knife a small boy had used on him while he raped his sister. He’d never forget the look on the kid’s face when he blew his brains out. Sometimes, he still saw the terror in that slant-eyed child’s face in his nightmares.

Clyde packed a bag and left a message at work on voice mail he’d be out for a few days for personal reasons. Putting Hell, Massachusetts in his GPS, he turned on his headlights and headed toward the interstate. The readout estimated the trip to be seven hours.

As he proceeded up the highway, he wondered what he’d do if he didn’t find the culprit when he arrived in Hell. Just because the caller talked big on the phone didn’t mean he would really show when Clyde pulled up at the Morningside Cemetery. It made no sense, but for some uncanny reason, he believed the crazy bastard would be there waiting for him when he arrived. But why?

* * *

Seven hours and ten minutes later when Clyde passed the turnoff to Provincetown, mist and patches of fog engulfed the road. The eerie mountains of sand dunes surrounding the car seemed to smother him with creepy premonitions that reminded him of the setting for John Carpenter’s movie, The Fog. He could hear the chilling soundtrack playing in his mind as the waves crashed below him on the sandy mounds. The dead smell of the ocean hung in the air like a Goliath fart. In the distance, the rusty girders of an ancient bridge that he thought he’d seen before in one of his most horrific nightmares emerged from the fog.

An overpowering sense of dread gripped him as he crossed the narrow suspension bridge. Even in daylight, he could barely see the road in front of him. Proceeding at a snail’s pace for fear of plunging through the battered railing into the murk, he finally reached the end of the rickety monstrosity.

Like magic, the fog lifted, and he saw a lopsided sign hanging by a nail from one corner that read “Hell, Massachusetts.” The derelict buildings shrouded in mist and dark shadows along both sides of the street made him feel like he’d crossed over into another world. He saw the faded sign “Morningside Cemetery” and stopped in the middle of the street.

As the Verizon maintenance man had said, the sales office for cemetery plots had once been a church, complete with stained glass windows and a steeple that rose into the sky until the top disappeared in the fog. Many a teenager had hurled a rock at Jesus and his disciples over the years since most of the glass lay in pieces on the blue stones bordering the exterior. Part of the roof sagged into a giant opening, and the steps leading up the portico had several broken slats. In the distance, a gigantic tree had fallen across two telephone poles at the edge of the parking lot. Telephone wire littered the gravel and disappeared in the tall grass.

Behind the weather beaten church, Clyde saw a hillside of headstones of all shapes and sizes. Scattered among them, moss covered gnarled trees stood like ancient sentries among the ruins of the dead. Across the street, Clyde saw another faded sign with barely legible letters that read “Maggie’s Kitchen” lying on the sidewalk. The ravages of many storms and hurricanes and the corrosive salt air of the ocean had turned every paint peeled board of siding to a somber gray.

Getting out of his car, Clyde stood in the dreary ruins of downtown Hell, and wondered why on earth he had been goaded into coming to this godforsaken place at the tip of Cape Cod. Walking up the meandering path, he noticed most of the tombstones had been placed there in the 1930’s. Unlike the cemetery where his parents were buried, he knew no one would ever place a flower on these graves. Even the children of these lost souls were long forgotten. After browsing the epitaphs he could still decipher on the tombstones, he returned to his car parked in the middle of the street in front of the church.

As he pushed the remote to unlock the doors to the car, he heard a telephone ringing inside the church. Each ring felt like someone sticking a dagger into his heart. Each repetition gripped his soul with a tremor of impending doom. He’d never backed down from a fight in his life, but he knew if he had a brain in his head, he should get in his car and drive away.

Ignoring what his inner voice was telling him, he proceeded to the massive doors that stood agape like the jaws of a steel trap ready to spring. Paying no heed, he strode like John Wayne into the dark shadows of the interior. The wind in the eaves sounded like someone playing a dirge on an organ as the phone continued to ring. In the light from the hole in the roof, Clyde saw a telephone on a table on the altar and blundered toward it. Taking a deep breath, he picked up the phone, and gathering all his strength to sound as macho as possible, he barked, “Hello.”

“I’m waiting for you, Clyde,” the eerie voice hissed.

Clyde looked around at the roomful of gray, metal chairs, caked with dust, and asked, “Where, motherfucker?”

“At the top of the hill overlooking the ocean,” said the voice that grated like fingernails on a blackboard. Then came the click and the constant drone of a dial tone.

Returning the receiver to its cradle, Clyde noticed the old dialup phone had no wires attached to it. Undaunted, he said as a cruel smile lit up his face, “Still playing tricks with the phone, huh, asshole?” He pulled the army knife from his belt and peered through the broken windowpane at a lone figure at the top of the hill silhouetted against the sky.

As he made his way toward the front door, Clyde noticed enormous spider webs crisscrossing every window cavity. Legions of bats hung from each rafter above him. Entering the deserted street, he looked at his car and thought of taking the sniper rifle he’d used to exterminate hundreds of Vietnamese civilians from a ridge overlooking their village. He remembered sitting in the cover of the trees at long range and randomly cherry picking whoever stepped from their shack. Some of his cohorts were raping and pillaging while he did what he loved best. Wasting gooks. He had to stop when his shoulder was too sore from the recoil to hold the rifle against it any longer.

As he walked toward the top of the hill, the images of his victims with their heads exploding flitted across the face of his memory like a bloody slideshow bringing a smile to his lips. At the crest of the overlook, a fog bank rolled across the landscape so dense he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.

Not far ahead, the stranger’s voice cried out, “I’m still waiting, Clyde. You’re taking a long time to come and knock my block off. Have you lost your nerve?“

Instantly, a surge of unbridled fury began to boil out of control through every sinew of his body as Clyde bounded forward in a trot with his knife at the ready, screaming, “Here I come, motherfucker.”

Reaching the top of the rise, the stranger seemed to evaporate before his eyes. Like magic, Clyde found himself at the edge of a cliff enveloped in fog. He had to grab hold of a boulder to keep from falling headlong into the abyss. The putrid stench emanating from below made him wretch as he stumbled backward from the precipice and tried to catch his breath. As he turned back toward the town, he saw a tall, mountain of a man with pointed ears blocking his path about ten feet in front of him.

Clyde immediately crouched into a hand-to-hand combat stance, and raising his huge army knife with the serrated blade, bellowed, “Are you the miserable son of a bitch that’s been calling me at three o’clock in the morning who is about to receive a new asshole?”

“Clyde, skip the macho bullshit,” the malevolent stranger replied, “Look around. Didn’t you see the sign when you drove in? You’re in Hell, can’t you smell it?”

“I know where I am. I’m in Massachusetts. It’s cold as a witch’s tit on this hill, and the smell of the ocean would gag a buzzard. Before I carve you up, tell me why you’ve been calling me?”

“It’s your time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time for you to spend eternity with the innocent villagers you massacred in Viet Nam.”

“They can’t hurt me. I killed them over forty years ago. They were worm bait then, and there’s certainly nothing left of them now.”

“Really. Take a closer look into the pit,” said the stranger, his voice brimming with sadistic glee.

Clyde turned and found the fog had magically disappeared from the edge of the cliff where he stood. Looking into the abyss, he saw a stew of decomposing, half eaten bodies of all ages. Mingled with the reeking corpses, rats and other vermin scurried in and out of the gelatinous torsos, biting and clawing for their share of the dead carrion.

Clyde recoiled away from the grisly stew of things in the pit. Then, mustering a battle cry from the depths of his loins that even Rambo would have applauded, he ran amok plunging the knife in sweeping arcs at the devilish thing before him. The blade split the air again and again with no consequence as the cloaked figure began to shift from one monstrous entity to another before Clyde’s eyes.

A raspy frog-like voice croaked, “You still don’t seem to know who you’re dealing with, Clyde, but stupidity becomes you.” Raising his open palm to his lips like preparing to blow a kiss, the Devil’s breath lifted Clyde from the ground like a toy soldier and sent him flying headlong into the chaos of bodies below.

Struggling to find purchase in the putrefying cesspool, Clyde saw unspeakable things with half their heads blown off slithering toward him in the muck. He groped for the knife that had slipped from his grasp in hopes of committing suicide, but a multitude of icy hands held him fast. He felt the excruciating pain of being eaten alive, and longed for his heart to stop beating.

A voice boomed from above, “I designed this pit especially for you, Clyde. It’s a place where the dead are eternally hungry, and the flesh of the damned is restored each morning so it can be eaten again and again until the end of time. Now, that’s what I call Hell, if I do say so myself.”

Clyde tried to scream, but he’d swallowed too many maggots.

THE DOME

A heavy set man accompanied by three others in black suits steered a wheel chair occupied by an unconscious man named Earl Breedlove into the enormous domed space.

All four members of the Pacifico mob wore night vision glasses as they made their way to the center of the interior marked by a red X fashioned from Day-Glo tape. The dimensions of the perfectly circular space were 600 feet from wall to wall in all directions.

The derelict arena had been built to accommodate a climate controlled practice field for football, baseball, basketball, and tennis before the financing collapsed, and the project was scrapped. After the dome and the adjacent parking garage had remained vacant for ten years, a Mafia kingpin had purchased the multimillion-dollar property for $200,000. The larger cost was the contractual obligation to pay the annual real estate taxes for $300,000.

Reaching the red X in the middle of the floor, two of Pacifico’s beefy men lifted Breedlove from the wheelchair. After removing his clothes, they left him spread-eagled on the floor where X marked the spot. He had been beaten severely by the four men before he had been delivered to the dome Pacifico used to torture his enemies.

Breedlove had foolishly moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to set up a concrete business in Northern New Jersey. The concrete and trash removal businesses had historically been monopolized by the mob, and anyone who dared to infringe on the territory primarily around Newark would be a target. Breedlove had been warned repeatedly to dispense with his insane attempt to start a competing concrete business and return to South Carolina. When he continued to pay the threats no mind, Pacifico’s goons had firebombed his storage sheds, destroyed several expensive mixers, and called his home on numerous occasions to threaten his wife and daughter. Breedlove continued to ignore the threats and solicited the help of the local authorities who did as little as they could to help him since most of the higher ups had been on the Pacifico payroll for many years.

Three hours after Pacifico’s men had left him nude on the hard concrete floor in pitch-blackness, Breedlove began to regain consciousness. In addition to the vicious beating, he had been tasered repeatedly in extremely tender places. His head continued to throb with a debilitating migraine. When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He immediately realized to his dismay he was as naked as the proverbial jaybird. The bastards had attacked him in his own parking lot right after closing time. As he struggled to stand, his hand felt the smooth floor that had no texture to the touch.

Throwing out his arms in all directions, he touched nothing. He had the eerie feeling he was in a huge space of some kind. He cried out and heard a slight reverberation. What was this space? What would come next?

He started walking forward with his arms extended to prevent him from walking headlong into something. Twenty paces out, he felt nothing. Fifty paces out, still nothing. One hundred paces out, he had to lower his arms to quell the pain of holding them out in front of him for so long. Sweat beaded his forehead as the sensation of the room getting hotter piqued his senses. His lips were parched, and he suddenly realized he was extremely thirsty. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but he imagined it was for many hours.

He heard a low whine from above and a blast of hot air descended upon him. In seconds, his whole body dripped with perspiration. He lowered himself to the floor that seemed cooler, at least for the time being. Pacifico was behind his kidnapping; there was no doubt of that. Breedlove had called his brother, John, an Army vet who had just returned from the Middle East for help. He hoped he was on his way, and wondered if he would ever find him now that Pacifico had made his play.

A half an hour later, Breedlove lay in a pool of his own sweat. He was certain it was well over one hundred degrees in the dark suffocating space. Whichever way he turned, he felt the same smothering hot air. His skin somehow felt like he’d been lying in the sun for hours with no sunscreen.

Suddenly, the low whine stopped, and he heard a loud whoosh of some kind of motor turning on. In a few seconds, he felt the invigorating breath of cool air rather than heat falling from above. Almost immediately, he felt refreshed like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water in his face. In fifteen minutes, he could feel the goose bumps rising on his arms and his nipples getting hard.

One of Pacifico’s men had turned the air conditioner to a bitter cold setting. He was naked and totally exposed to the frigid air swirling around him. The floor felt like a sheet of ice as he balled himself into a fetal position. His teeth chattered uncontrollably.

Suddenly, a booming voice echoed from high above, “You know, Breedlove, I don’t think the weather in Jersey suits you. You should have stayed in North Carolina.”

“You bastard,” Breedlove screamed in agony.

“Tell you what I’m gonna do,” Pacifico continued. “If you want to sell me your business, I’m willing to pay ten cents on the dollar. Are you interested? It’s better to be ruined financially than dead. What do you say?”

“Fuck you! My brother will make you pay. You’ll never get away with this.”

“Your brother. Ooh, now you’ve got me shaking in my Gucci shoes. Your big bad brother is coming after me. Hey, Breedlove. Do you like rap music? People in Jersey can’t get enough of this shit.”

Suddenly, a booming drumbeat that shook the entire structure emanated from a humongous speaker system. Breedlove placed his hands over his ears to diminish the imploding sound so loud he thought his eardrums would explode. The freezing cold and the penetrating throb of each downbeat were driving him to the brink of insanity, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

After what seemed a lifetime of excruciating pain, the music and the cold air stopped simultaneously, but even after more time elapsed, Marty could still hear the pounding decibels in his mind. Blood trickled from both earlobes onto his shoulders. His head throbbed with a catastrophic migraine.

Lying in a fetal position, he sobbed uncontrollably, slamming his fists into the immovable floor. Why on earth had he dared take on the New Jersey mob? Truth, justice, and the American way did not work here. The police he thought would set things right had to be in Pacifico’s pocket.

After a time, when the reverberation in his head subsided, he realized he couldn’t hear anything in his left ear and almost nothing in his right. The prolonged bombardment of the rap music had deafened him, and he doubted he would ever hear normally again. As he peered in all directions, there was not a glint of light anywhere. He had no feeling in his fingers and toes.

For all practical purposes, he believed his life was over, and he would never see his family again. He couldn’t bear to think of what Pacifico and his thugs would do to him next.

Two hours later, he heard a dull calliope of squeaking noises in his ravaged right eardrum. He sat up and peered into the blackness, straining to identify the scuffling high-pitched sounds rushing toward him from all directions. He bundled himself into a tight ball on the cold floor still damp from the blood running from his ears and braced himself for whatever came next.

In only a few seconds, he felt the sharp teeth of the gigantic rats ravaging his arms and legs and then his face. He tried desperately to fight them off, but they covered him like a blanket. After several minutes of unparalleled agony, he heard another sound of hissing and screeching in the hole that was once his right ear. The rats had stopped feasting on him and had scurried away, chased by what sounded like an army of large cats.

After a time, all motion stopped, and Breedlove lay in a pool of his own blood. With the little feeling remaining in the stubs of his fingers, he felt his face and grimaced in horror when he found almost no flesh on the right side. His nose and his lips were gone, and his teeth protruded from a gaping cavern in his left cheek. The rats had left him a monster that no human being would be able to tolerate. His mind wandered to the horrible picture of the woman on the Internet who had lost most of her face from a chimpanzee attack.

A month later, the police found what was left of Breedlove crawling around the trashcans in a Newark ghetto. All four stumps of his arms and legs had been cauterized with a blowtorch. He was barely alive and almost unrecognizable as a human being. He had no idea who he was and never would again. His wife, daughter, and his brother could not bear the trauma of visiting him in the hospital. Finally one night, someone dressed in black donning a ski mask mercifully pulled the plug on him.

* * *

Three months later, Pacifico left Sparks Steak House after an exquisite meal fit for a king and was on his way home in his stretch limo when an SUV shot from an alley and ran his car off the road. The driver of the SUV ran to the limo and put two bullets in the brain of the chauffer and tasered Pacifico into submission before he could reach his 45. The authorities had no leads on identifying the perpetrator since the gang lord had a long list of enemies.

When Pacifico came to, he found himself strapped to a metal table. Sitting in a chair beside him, he saw a middle-aged dark haired man who appeared to be working on a crossword puzzle. The man seemed familiar and reminded him of Michael Madsen in Species.

“Who the fuck are you?” Pacifico barked.

“I’m John, Earl Breedlove’s younger brother.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, I know. You’re the motherfucker who tortured and killed my brother.”

“Your brother was a moron with a death wish. He came to New Jersey to die. I’m sure you know he tried to set up a concrete business in Newark to compete with me. What did he think I was going to do? Welcome him with open arms. And by the way, I did not kill him. I messed him up some, but I left him where the cops were sure to find him.

“I’m his brother, and I couldn’t recognize him and neither could his wife and daughter. They still cry every night from the memory of seeing him that first night in the hospital.”

“Look, I begged him to go back to North Carolina or whatever shithole he came from. I offered him a fair price for the business. I tried to work it out with the stupid son of a bitch, but he wouldn’t listen. He might as well have put a gun to his head and blown his brains out. I even threatened his wife and his kid, but he still wouldn’t play ball. He was an idiot. You must know that. Have you got a cigarette?”

“Don’t you know those things will kill you?”

“Look, if you think you’re gonna kill me or mess me up to get some payback, you’re gonna die a worse death than he did. You can’t fight my organization. If you kill me, my boys will kill everyone you know including your dog and your cat. If you have a hamster, they’ll kill him, too. They’ll also kill your brother’s wife and daughter and whatever pets they have. Be reasonable. Let me go, and I won’t retaliate. We’ll just consider your brother was a moron with a death wish and leave it at that.”

“You really have a way with words. You should have been a comedian, you’re very funny. To start with, I never said I was going to kill you. I just want to mess you up a little like you did my brother. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That’s fair. Don’t you think?”

Pacifico’s expression changed as if struck by a lightning bolt as he finally began to comprehend the magnitude of Breedlove’s words. “Whatever you do to me, my boys will do to you three times worse. You can’t win. Give it up. Go back to Shitsville or whatever rock you crawled out from, or you’ll end up like your brother.”

“It won’t be that simple. Your scumbags won’t know who is responsible. You have more enemies than you can shake a stick at. I’ve been very careful, to cover my tracks, believe me.”

“You must be even stupider than your brother. If you leave me drooling at a dumpster in Newark, you don’t think my boys can put two and two together?”

“I checked around and found twelve other poor bastards you tortured and left a vegetable on the streets of Newark. You’re a sick motherfucker, and you definitely need some payback. As soon as I finish with you, I’ll probably re-up and be on my way to a tour in Afghanistan for Uncle Sam. I’m a demolitions expert and before I leave, I thought I’d practice my craft on your chamber of horrors. I understand the dome off Market street is where you show off your handiwork to your goons before you turn the poor bastards you’ve tortured loose.

Pacifico started straining at the duct tape that held him on the table, and for the first time, a look of fear lined his face, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

“And it’s my good fortune you’ve planned a cocktail party and a side show for your entire organization tomorrow evening.” John Breedlove pulled out an expensive embossed invitation detailing the event from his coat pocket. A bloody splotch soiled the right corner of the envelope.

“You son of a bitch. You’re gonna wish you were never born when my men get through with you.”

“Settle down, Pacifico, I have a speech I wrote for you to read so I can record it and play it through the sound system at the party tomorrow night.” John rolled out an easel with the script written on a whiteboard next to the table and held a microphone close to his mouth.

“You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m gonna read that,” Pacifico spat.

‘It’s up to you how much pain you can stand,” Breedlove said, holding up a pair of pruning shears. After John snipped off three of the gang lord’s fingers, he sang like a canary.

John couldn’t stand the constant blubbering after Pacifico gave his uplifting speech, so he gave him a healthy jolt with the taser. His eyes rolled up into his head, which lolled backwards and thumped on the table.

Afterward, John rolled four large laundry tubs on casters into the room and positioned each of them on a corner of the metal table where Pacifico lay sleeping like a baby. Methodically, he placed each of gang lord’s hands and feet in the containers filled with water and piranha fish. Breedlove watched the hungry fish feast for several minutes and then tied off each of the bloody stumps with a tourniquet. He wanted to be sure Pacifico would still be alive for tomorrow night’s extravaganza.

The next evening, two hundred guests arrived at the Dome. The enormous structure was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. The entire top of the curved glass roof glittered like diamonds in the night and had more lights on it than a Vegas casino. It could be seen on the skyline for miles.

Pacifico’s gang members assembled in the center of the space at pre-assigned seats at twenty tables for ten facing a gigantic portable stage covered with a red velvet curtain. Waiters delivered cocktails and hors d’oeuvres to the beefy guests and their wives. Mammoth shrimp had been flown in from Hilton Head just for the occasion.

Pacifico had always stressed that the members in his organization arrive on time at these spectacular events. To make this perfectly clear, he had wasted one of his right hand men who arrived late at the last affair. Consequently, on this night, every chair was occupied at the stroke of 8 p.m. when the music from 2001 A Space Odyssey signaled the beginning of the show. The lights in the dome went out, and only the large spotlights on the rectangular stage remained.

Suddenly, Pacifico’s voice resonated from the humongous speakers, “I am happy all of you are in attendance and on time. We have a spectacular evening of entertainment planned along with the finest in superb dining and premium liquor to put you on your asses by the end of the night.” A roar of laughter arose from the shadows as Pacifico continued. “In order to dispense with the most graphic part of the show so that everyone can enjoy their dinner about a half an hour from now, I want to remind all of you what happens to someone who crosses Rudy Pacifico.”

After a drum roll, the red curtains opened on a black platform standing erect in the middle of the stage in the beam of an intense spotlight. Two scantily clad prostitutes with enormous boobs, reminiscent of those who display ring cards at professional boxing matches, turned the display on wheels around so that the back of the platform faced the audience.

After several of the women at the tables uttered a shocked cry of horror when they saw a man with no hands and feet strapped to the black canvass. Shreds of ravaged, raw flesh hung from the ugly wounds surrounding the missing extremities. A murmur of disgust and disbelief resonated from the guests witnessing the gut-wrenching sight.

“Christ!” someone said. “I think the boss has outdone himself this time. What’s a guy gotta do to deserve this kind of punishment?”

Another voice from the shadows shouted, “Can you believe the poor bastard is still moving?”

Another cried out, “I don’t recognize this schmo. He doesn’t look like that Todd fellow we done the other night. Who is he?”

The head of the bound figure rose and stared blearily into the crowd. When the lips began to move, a pained, but familiar voiced cried out, “It’s me, you stupid morons. Run for the exits, the entire building has been rigged with C4.”

Suddenly, the stage lights went out, and an unfamiliar, triumphant voice boomed from the loudspeakers, “This is for my brother, Earl Breedlove, motherfuckers!”

An enormous explosion split the colossal dome into four pieces and brought the massive ceiling down on Pacifico’s entire organization, incinerating everyone in attendance in a ball of flame and obliteration. After the dust and debris settled, the stars shone down on the rubble and the burned bodies strewn about the multimillion-dollar heap of collapsed concrete and twisted steel.

John Breedlove said, placing the detonator on the seat of his pickup as he drove away, “Maybe rather than a tour in Afghanistan, I should retire from the Army and start a concrete business here in Northern Jersey. There seems to be an opening that needs filling.”

THE TAXIDERMIST

After bagging a twenty-five-point buck, which was the highlight of his hunting career, Louie Shafer decided he had finally brought down a deer worth mounting. He could already visualize the head and shoulders of the beautiful beast over the fireplace in his cabin in Nashville.

Surprised, he could not find a local taxidermist on the Internet, he dusted off a dog-eared copy of the yellow pages he kept in the garage. Again, he was disappointed to find only a tiny ad for taxidermy services on a page entirely devoted to tax preparation. The shop was located in Sharpsburg, which was a one-stoplight town twenty miles away. He had hoped to request bids from several vendors since he had no idea what he should pay for the mounting. He also wanted to see examples of the work of various taxidermists to compare the quality. Unfortunately, with only one supplier, a Mr. Osgood Blood, the point was moot.

Looking at the small ad in the bottom corner of the yellow pages, the name “Blood” stuck in his craw like a bitter pill. Did he really want to hire someone with the distasteful surname of “Blood” to mount his most prized treasure from twenty-five years of hunting? He wondered what nationality would have such a frightful name. He had certainly not met anyone with that name before.

He was planning to invite about twenty of his closest friends to his cabin to celebrate his fortieth birthday. He could picture their jaws dropping when they feasted their eyes on the awesome rack above the fireplace. Twenty-five points! None of them had even seen such an animal before, and neither had he. He picked up the phone and called the number.

On the third ring, a weird voice that reminded him of Lurch, the butler from the Adams Family, answered with a deep “Hello, Blood’s Taxidermy.”

“Hello, my name is Louie Shafer. I’d like to ask about having you mount a twenty-five-point buck. I bagged him early this morning and placed the head and shoulders in ice in the back of my pickup as soon as I could. I need your advice on what I should do to preserve the specimen until I can get it to you.”

“Twenty-five points! You don’t see an animal like that very often. How far from my shop are you?” Blood said with an odd accent Louie had never heard before.

“I would guess about twenty miles”

“The sooner you can get the deer to me the better. It’s important to fold the skin inside the carcass in a certain way before it goes into cold storage.”

“It’s a mountain road with a lot of hairpin turns, but I think I can make it there in forty minutes, tops.” Louie replied.

“My shop is behind the petting zoo, which I also own. It’s a long rectangular building on the right side of my home. I’ll be waiting for you.” Louie marveled at how every word Blood spoke resonated in the earpiece.

“But before I make the trip, can you give me an estimate of the cost, and how long the process will take?”

“The price for a head and shoulders mount is $750, and based on my current backlog, I can start on yours in about nine months, so...I’d say I can have it for you by September 1. How does that sound?”

Louie couldn’t believe what he had heard and shot back, “I had no idea it would take that long. I’m having a birthday party for a group of friends June 5, and it’s critical I have it by then. If I pay double your fee, can you put me higher on the list?”

Blood replied with no hesitation, “I’m sorry. I’ve already promised nine other hunters a date on their mounts, and there’s another one standing at the counter right now trying to make up his mind. I’m sorry, but I can’t modify these prior commitments. An alternative might be to offer to pay for one of the mounts already scheduled. I’m pretty sure one of the hunters will wait longer if you pay their fee.”

“Can you recommend someone else for the job?”

Blood hesitated. “I can give you some names, but I can’t say I can recommend any of them. Once you see my work, I am confident you will not want anyone else to work on such a rare animal. Why don’t you bring what you have to my shop? It’s an extremely hot day, and I want to be sure the remains are preserved correctly to insure maximum quality.”

“Okay. I guess I’m sold. I’ll see you in about forty minutes.”

Louie removed three bags of ice from the backup refrigerator in his laundry room and added them to the twenty bags he had purchased at the 7-11. To make sure the carcass didn’t slide around during the trip, he placed two cinder blocks on the corner of the black tarp he used to shield it from the sun.

In forty-one minutes, Louie pulled his pickup into the parking lot of the address he had jotted down from Blood’s ad in the yellow pages. He could not believe the number of cars in the lot. A large sign on a ten-foot high fence read “Pigley Wigley’s Petting Zoo.” There were acres and acres of fenced in areas housing all types of animals. A surprising crowd appeared to be having the time of their lives. Carnival games and many upscale rides bustled with activity. Gigantic balloons of every color of the rainbow decorated the concourse.

“Granted, this was no Disneyworld,” Louie thought, “but it was a thriving enterprise.”

Looking in all directions, he finally noticed a small sign with an arrow pointing around back that read, “TAXIDERMY SERVICES.” The rectangular metal sign was so small, he was almost on top of it before he saw it.

The combination of the two businesses seemed bizarre. Also, Blood had a nine-month backlog of business with little or no advertising. Why would someone with undeniable business savvy not have a web page on the Internet? And, why would the owner of the multimillion-dollar children’s park personally waste his time on a rinky-dink taxidermy business? He smiled and decided it takes all kinds of people to make a world.

To add to the puzzlement, when he rounded the bend in the road, his mouth dropped open when he saw a sprawling colonial estate surrounded by palatial gardens. “This couldn't be the place,” he thought. Then, Louie saw the long, rectangular building and a sign with the single word “BLOOD’” in the window. The scarlet letters printed on a pure white background in an eerie font suited for a horror movie billboard caused him to remove his sunglasses and sit dumbfounded. “This weirdo, Blood, must have a warped sense of humor to go with his graveyard voice.”

Despite his continued apprehension about this place, Louie knew the ice was melting in the bed of his truck, and he had nowhere else to go. His vehicle was the only one in the expansive parking lot so he pulled right up to the front door. Turning off the engine, he climbed out of the truck.

Immediately, a blast of hot air almost buckled his knees as he crossed the sidewalk and approached the entrance to the shop. This had to be a record heat wave for this time of year. The tacky Pepsi Cola thermometer on the wall read “97 DEGREES,” and yet, he felt an icy tremor of apprehension creep up his spine as he looked at the darkness behind the taxidermist’s glass entrance. The sky even seemed to cloud over as he approached, and a voice inside himself he had never heard before whispered, “Get the fuck out of here.”

When he timidly pushed through the revolving doors, he heard an eerie “bong” somewhere in the back of the store. On the walls behind a long glass display case, the eyes of various animals seemed to follow him as he approached the counter. This made his already nervous stomach heave with an even more disquieting feeling.

The room seemed peculiarly dark for a showroom. Subdued spotlights fixed on each animal provided the only light. Several of the larger displays were so startling; Louie hesitated to turn away for fear the foreboding beast would leap from its perch on the wall upon him. He had seen mounts at the Moose and Elks Lodges, but he had never seen any so realistic it produced the creepy sensation that the beast was actually alive.

The illuminated display case contained rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and small mounted specimens so real, Louie stood a comfortable distance back from the glass.

“Are you Mr. Shafer?” A deep, bass voice boomed from behind him.

Louie felt as if he had jumped a foot off the ground when the reverberating Lurch-like voice seemed to rattle the windowpanes. Like a phantom from out of nowhere, a giant of a man at least a foot and a half taller than he stood shrouded in the shadows behind the display case.

“Jeepers,” Louie said, turning to face the ominous man dressed in black. “I didn’t hear you come into the room. I’m sorry, I…” His voice trailed off and he was suddenly paralyzed with fear as his eyes fixed on Blood’s animalistic face emerging into the light. He thought of running for the door, but couldn’t get his legs to move. He stood like a statue, staring at the monstrosity before him.

The taxidermist’s head was much too big for the rest of his body. His face and particularly his enormous ears had ugly patches of stiff bristles that only something like a hedge clipper could remove. He had miniature tusks for his lower incisors that extended in sharp points above his upper lip. Instead of a nose, he had a snout brimming with a yellow mucous that oozed into his mouthful of jagged, discolored teeth.

Blood finally broke the prolonged silence with a nervous chuckle, “I apologize, I forgot to forewarn you about my appearance on the phone. I got distracted and forgot to put on my George Bush mask I wear to meet customers. This always breaks the ice with a laugh. I can’t believe I blundered into the showroom without it.”

Louie’s face reddened with embarrassment as he stammered, “I’m frightfully sorry for my initial reaction in seeing your unfortunate malady. I hope you can forgive me.“

“It’s all right, Mr. Shafer. You are the only customer who has ever seen me this way, and I can imagine how much of a shock it must have been. I am the unfortunate victim of a rare birth defect. A wild boar bit my poor mother during her pregnancy, and I ended up with some of its DNA. I hope this does not interfere with our doing business.”

Louie turned his gaze back to the mounts on the wall and wished to God Blood would put on his George Bush mask. Even after hearing the medical explanation, he still couldn’t get himself to look at the taxidermist’s face no matter how hard he tried. After an uncomfortable silence, he finally muttered, “From what I’ve seen at the local Moose and Elk Lodges and on the Internet, your work is unbelievable.”

“I hope in a good way,” Blood said with a crooked smile.

“Absolutely, beyond compare.”

“In talking with you on the phone, you struck me as someone who doesn’t have a lot of hunting experience.” Blood said as he surveyed Louie from head to toe with a mental tape measure.

Louie did not understand why he made that assumption, and replied, “That’s actually not the case, Mr. Blood. My father started taking me hunting when I was only ten years old, and I’ve been an avid hunter ever since. I’m simply not versed in the particulars of mounting since I’ve never bagged a deer worthy of putting on display. However, I’m proud to say the buck I shot with my crossbow this morning without any doubt deserves to be a fixture on my rec room wall.”

“So you’ve successfully hunted deer for many years?”

“Absolutely,” Louie beamed. “I hate to brag, but I would estimate I’ve had over fifty kills.”

Blood looked at Louie with an odd expression and continued delving into his history as a hunter, “Do you hunt for food or just for the sport?”

“I hate to admit it, but I detest venison. It gave me the runs the few times my father made me eat some. I have no desire to eat the meat from the animals I kill, I’d much rather have a juicy beefsteak, a Big Mac, or a Whopper. I simply love to set the sights of my crossbow on a wild thing and pull the trigger.”

Blood face turned ashen at this remark and recoiling backwards a step, he said,  “I’ve talked with a lot of hunters in my time, but I’ve never heard anyone describe the killing of an animal like that before.”

“The rush I get is almost orgasmic,” Louie ranted, out of control. “To have the power of a living thing’s life or death in your sights is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Once in a blue moon, you can’t plan it, when I don’t get off a perfect shot… and I find I have only wounded my prey, I get an extra rush of adrenalin when I feel the warm blood gushing through my fingers after I slit its throat. To feel the intensity of its heartbeat… To see the fear in its eyes… Christ! I’m almost getting a woodie just thinking about it. And then to witness its body shutting down as it breathes its final breath, it’s mind-blowing. It makes you feel like you’re some kind of God.”

Blood’s tusk-like front teeth seemed to quiver as he listened with obvious disdain to Louie’s tirade, but held his tongue, if he had one.

Louie returned from his momentary journey into blissful exhilaration and asked, “Can you help me with the carcass? The sun is blistering hot, and the ice in the pickup is melting.”

“Of course. Let me get a cart,” Blood said as he proceeded through a door behind the display case. A moment later, he returned wheeling a flatbed across the room, and Louie followed him out a side door to the parking lot.

When Louie unlatched the tailgate, he was immediately drenched with a splash of water from the melted ice that accumulated in the truck bed.

Blood expected what was coming and stepped away in time to avoid the ice bath. Unable to control his laughter, he scoffed, “I guess that was like diving into a swimming pool on a hot summer day.”

Louie did not find the remark funny, but said nothing. Then, removing the tarp, they lifted the head and shoulders of the deer on to the cart and rolled it inside the shop to a refrigerated room.

When Louie entered the cold storage area, he saw nine rectangular metal tables each with a bloody sheet covering an elongated lump of something underneath.

“I see you’re a man of your word, Mr. Blood. You do have nine mounts scheduled before mine.” Almost immediately, Louie’s wet clothes started to freeze on his frame as he groaned with teeth chattering, “For God sakes, Blood, what temperature do you keep it in here?”

The taxidermist smiled his weird hog-like smile and replied, “After I apply my special preservatives, I find ten degrees below zero best for storing the bodies for more than six months.”

After they transferred the carcass from the cart on to the metal table and covered it with a sheet, Blood noticed Louie’s wet shoes were sticking to the freezing cement floor. With no warning, he lunged toward Louie and placed a handcuff on his wrist that was attached to a chain tied in to a heavy steel ring on the floor.

“What the hell are you doing?” Louie screamed as he watched Blood make a beeline for the entrance to the shop. He heard the whoosh of the heavy freezer door closing and saw Blood’s face morph into something not human through the insulated glass panel. He saw his cruel, savage eyes bulging with insane delight.

Louie shrieked at the top of his lungs and twisted at the handcuff like a madman in a futile attempt to escape. The unforgiving, freezing blast of cold air falling from the ceiling engulfed him. In a few minutes, he could feel his whole body stiffening. Ice sickles formed in the snot dangling from his nostrils from his all out struggle to escape the unbearable, biting cold. The blood from his ravaged wrist had partially frozen in a pool at his feet. The thermometer on the wall read ten degrees below zero as he grimaced at the hopelessness of his situation,

Moving almost in slow motion to the closest table he could reach with the length of chain, Louie raised the frozen bloody sheet draped over something on the table and glared in horror at the head and shoulders of a hunter he had shot the shit with at Maggie’s Diner only a few weeks ago.

One of the glass eyes of the mount staring up at him was cockeyed, and the blue lips of the work in progress sported a large artificial red apple clinched between his teeth.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

Jeremy White frowned at the annoying task that lay before him of shoveling his sidewalk and driveway. He was fifty-seven years old, and snow removal was not on his list of favorite things to do.

It snowed about a foot after he went to bed, and the weatherman said the temperature would plummet into the teens by the afternoon. He wanted to complete the shoveling before it got icy.

He put on his overcoat, boots, gloves, and hat, and looking like someone on his way to the North Pole, he went to the garage and grabbed the dreaded snow shovel.

When he opened the garage door, he winced when he saw the snow had drifted into a huge pile on that side of the house. More than two feet had accumulated in his driveway, at least a foot more than the actual snowfall reported by the weatherman.

And so he began, and in no time, he was huffing and puffing. White was totally out of shape and tipped the scales at a blubbery 250 pounds. Every time he picked up a shovelful of snow, he regretted not hiring Bob Smith’s son, Billy, to do the job. The little weasel shoveled all the driveways in the neighborhood except for his. For God sakes, he was a marketing analyst at Wallyworld. Why did he shovel his own snow? He didn’t do windows. Was it the money or was it because he could not stand that sneaky, red-haired, freckled face twerp? He suspected Billy as the one who soaped his windows and toilet papered his trees and shrubs on Halloween. He also suspected he’d battered his mailbox and put weed killer on his prized azaleas.

About halfway down the driveway, he paused to catch his breath and surveyed the front yard. It was like an untouched winter wonderland except… His mouth dropped open when he noticed footprints leading from his front door around the left side of his house.

“What the hell,“ he muttered. This didn’t make any sense. He hadn’t gone out the front door that morning. How could there be footsteps? Had someone broken into his house during the night? He hadn’t noticed anything peculiar when he came down for breakfast.

He jammed the shovel into a snow pile and slogged across the lawn to the sidewalk. Sure enough. There they were. Footprints leading from the front porch to the back of the house. The scary part was there were no footprints coming to the porch, only going. Someone from inside the house must have made them.

White placed his right foot into one of the prints and discovered the intruder had a shoe size much smaller than his own. Immediately, his face turned red with rage as he pictured Billy Smith sneaking around his property like a thief in the night.

He felt a sudden puff of wind on his cheek and saw a few new flakes falling to the ground. He hoped they had come off a nearby tree, but no, it was actually snowing again. His first thought was to search the house to see what was missing, but now he decided it was more important to see where the footprints led. He didn’t want the new snow to cover the tracks. Blind with fury, he really wanted to nail Billy Smith this time.

Quickly, he raced around the corner of the house into the backyard. Following the path that led into the woods bordering the development, he felt like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, and the prey was afoot, as Conan Doyle always said.

The skeletons of barren trees stood like sentries in the woods behind his house. The area was much bigger than he thought, but the tracks were easy to follow since they stayed on a path the neighbors had apparently created over many years. After a short walk, the trees thinned out, and he found himself at the edge of a large clearing.

What was this place that had no trees and foliage? Was this an old baseball field or part of a farm from long ago? He lived nearby, but since he had just moved in nine months before and spent much of his time on the road, he wasn't familiar with this parcel of land.

The snow fell harder now, and the footprints had become less distinct than before. He quickened his pace.

Suddenly, he heard a loud crack under his feet and just up ahead; he saw a dark discoloration in the snow where the footprints veered sharply to the left. Immediately, he understood what this place without trees really was. In his haste to catch the redheaded weasel, he had wandered out upon the ice of a small lake covered over by the snow.

Mortal fear swept over him as he realized the ice where he stood was not frozen solid. Tossed on the ground beside him lay a bag of salt exactly like the brand he used to melt the ice on his sidewalk. On the discolored section surrounding him, he saw handfuls of white particles spread across the path he had followed and beyond. Someone had purposely scattered most of a bag of salt right where the footprints had led him. The annoying smirk of Billy Smith rocketed into his thoughts as he looked up and peered across the expanse of the lake. In the distance, he saw a diminutive figure watching him from the tree line a few hundred feet away,

White’s whole body began to shake with unbridled fear as he inched slowly backwards like a man walking on eggshells. The insidious, little bastard had obviously found the spare key he’d hidden under a rock to unlock the side door and sneaked into his house during the night while the snow was still coming down in sheets. The creep knew the footprints leading away from the house would lead him to the place the place the lake had not frozen solid. He even stole the bag of salt he’d just purchased at Home Depot to help melt the ice. How could he have been so stupid not to realize this was a body of water, not a farm or athletic field?

White couldn’t see the cracks forming beneath him as he tiptoed like an obese ballet dancer ever closer to safety. With each step, the ominous squeaking of the ice splintering below grated on his raw nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. He wanted to cry out but dared not put any added thrust on the ice such an action would demand. Billy Smith wanted him dead for some ridiculous reason, and White knew he wouldn’t lift a finger to help him.

Suddenly, the path darkened as a huge section of snow sagged below the surface. Incapable of enduring the suspense any longer, White bolted for solid ground. His gallant try of deception to get a jump on the ice before it broke apart was short-lived. In the flash of an eye, he fell headlong into the freezing, breath-sucking water. His arms flailed for purchase as every pore of his body cried out for mercy from the biting agony of the unbearable ice bath.

He screamed, and the water swept into his mouth. His head went further under, and in seconds, he thought his lungs would burst. As he struggled for breath and groped for something to grab hold of that could save him, he wondered if he would be nominated for this year’s Darwin award for his stupidity.

In a matter of seconds, he couldn't fight the inevitable any longer. He simply gave up and let the Grim Reaper take him. His last thought on earth was he hoped he would get his hands on Billy Smith if they met in the afterlife.

After the momentary burst of commotion White made to save himself, a deathly stillness fell over the lake. The wind moaned in the trees, and the snow began to fall harder.

In the distance, Billy Smith beamed with accomplishment. His nemesis, Mr. White had taken the bait completely, just as he thought he would. It had taken a lot of courage for him to use the spare key and sneak into his house in the dark. He couldn’t believe his good fortune when he discovered the bag of salt pellets in the laundry room. He figured the fat fuck would fall through the ice anyway since he probably weighed three times as much as he did, but the salt put the final nail in his coffin. Billy prided himself on the patience it took to sit in the garage all night, worrying he might be discovered. But going into the house and leaving by the front door really took balls he didn’t even know he had. His heart had been beating like a jackhammer the whole time.

Billy didn’t feel the slightest bit of remorse. For some reason, White had despised him from the first day they met, and he felt the same about him. Not only had he not hired him to shovel his driveway and cut his grass, he tried to blackball him with the other neighbors. He suspected, but couldn't prove, he was the one who punctured the basketball he left on the playground near his house. White was also the only one who complained about the noise he and his friends made when they played basketball until sundown during the summer. For criminy sake, if he didn't like to hear kids playing, he should not have bought a house next to the schoolyard.

Billy pulled his coat up around his face and started walking toward home. He continued recounting all the reasons he ‘d set the trap for White on the ice. The miserable son of a bitch was so tight; he wouldn't close his windows and turn on the air conditioning so he wouldn't hear them dribbling up and down the court. Jeepers! How did he expect them to play without bouncing the ball? And how about the time he called his parents and accused him of battering his mailbox with a baseball bat. Sure, he was in the car, but Skipper Norman had done the deed. He was also with his buddies when they toilet papered White’s shrubs and soaped his windows on Halloween. His friends never knew it, but he had never lifted a finger against the old fart. He didn’t know why, he just didn’t.

He had despised Mr. White for so many reasons, but the crowning blow, the reason he wanted him dead, was when Corky, his precious, little cocker spaniel, went missing.

He and his parents had put signs on every post in the neighborhood and on the bulletin boards of every convenience store. He cried all week when not one person had come forward with any information. Corky had disappeared from the face of the earth five days ago. It was a mystery until yesterday morning when Mr. White tipped his hat and smiled his crooked smile as he went by in his Volvo. He had never done that before. Billy knew then, he had taken poor Corky, and he was flaunting it.

Billy was so happy the world would be a better place without Mr. White. He doubted anyone would shed a tear for the miserable, old Scrooge.

As he reached the halfway point home, he thought of what he would say if his parents discovered he hadn’t slept in his bed last night. He checked his phone for messages and found he didn’t have any. His parents usually got up late on Saturday so if he hurried, they may not even know he was gone. If they did check his room, he would just say Benny was sick, and he‘d helped him deliver papers that morning. This excuse always worked.

Suddenly, on the path in front of him, he saw a grisly pile of bones and guts. Apparently, a large predator had ripped apart and mostly devoured a smaller animal. Turning away in disgust, he tried to think of what animal in the neighborhood could have done such a savage deed. Then, he saw Corky’s name on the familiar green dog tag he always wore around his neck, laying among the sickening stew of remains.

A tremor of guilt struck him like lightning as the realization that White had not been responsible for Corky’s disappearance after all. He had been too quick to be his judge, jury, and executioner. The loss of Corky had pushed him over the edge. He stood there, recounting all the other things that had caused him to set the trap for White. The punctured basketball, the flat tires on his bike, the incessant whining to his parents.

It was painful to consider the possibility that White may not have been responsible for any of these things, the same as he had not been responsible for Corky's disappearance. A frown of deepest sorrow and guilt replaced the wide grin that had lit up his freckled face only moments ago in celebration of his perfect crime. Deep shadows of uncertainty brought bitter tears to his eyes.

Behind him, Billy heard an ominous growl that froze him in his tracks with fear. Turning, he saw the bloody, bared teeth of Mr. Foster’s enormous white wolfhound foaming at the mouth with ravenous, hungry eyes.

“Nice doggie,” Billy whimpered, just before the rabid hound tore out his throat.

THE BOOGEYMAN

Each day after supper, Agnes went for her two-mile evening constitutional before settling down to watch TV before bedtime. A little exercise after eating made her feel less bloated, allowed her to sleep better, and diminish the calories required to stay at her current weight of 120 pounds.

She weighed the same as she had as a teenager. At the last high school reunion, many of her female classmates at Garfield had ballooned up. She didn’t even recognize some of them. Agnes had always cared about the way she looked and never wanted to be fat.

Her husband died last year, and it was lonely in their big house by herself, and a little scary, but at this point in her life, it suited her just fine. She really didn't want to start another relationship with an old geezer. Just thinking about a grizzled old reprobate groping her at her age made her skin crawl. Now, if a young Clint Eastwood or Richard Gere would try to get her in the sack that was another story, but that would never happen.

The evening walk on the path that followed Route 11 went the same as always. She smiled when a young man, who could have been her grandson, blew his horn as he stormed noisily past in a red Corvette. Her body was pretty svelte, thank you, but she was 65 years old, and no longer bothered to color her graying hair. Maybe, the young man needed glasses in addition to a new muffler.

She took the path following the high road on the way to the convenience store, which was almost exactly half way. On the path returning, which followed the low road, Agnes had to walk through a covered bridge. The wooden structure about 100 feet long was always as dark as a cave even in daylight. She had almost reached the middle when she thought she heard footsteps behind her. A person could easily hide behind any of the large support posts that ran along both sides of the bridge. These foreboding posts had really frightened her at first. Now, after a decade of walking through without anyone jumping out and pouncing on her, she rarely gave it a second thought. But tonight was different. She really thought she heard footsteps behind her after entering the bridge.

Stopping abruptly, she turned and looked back. It was too dark to see anything. She listened for the slightest sound and mentally prepared herself to go into an all-out run if need be. But, just like always, she only heard the sound of the stream rushing across the rocks below. It comforted her to know that unless the pervert caught her off guard, she could surely outrun him. It would take a seasoned athlete to catch her if she started sprinting for her life. She had participated in the Boston Marathon five times in her younger days, and she could run pretty fast even now.

When she reached the end of the bridge, she thought she heard the footsteps again and turned abruptly as before and listened. “Is someone there?” she cried out.

Suddenly, several bats flew from the rafters and swooped past her head, sending her into a defensive crouch. After resuming an erect stance, she melted behind a post and didn't move a muscle for several minutes. Stealthily, she peeked around the post; almost certain something big and terrible would be standing there to grab her. To her utter surprise, there was nothing but the sound of water running and the gentle whisper of the wind in the trees. She could see the opening at the end of the bridge but couldn't detect anything moving across it.

In the last half mile, Agnes stopped several more times and looked back. She still had the uncanny feeling someone lurked in the stand of trees along the path.

When she finally stepped up on her porch and looked back at the empty road, she felt silly, she'd let her imagination get the best of her. Then, she gasped when she saw the front door standing wide open. She remembered closing and locking it when she left for her walk. Or was that yesterday she remembered so vividly?

She hadn’t left the door unlocked even once since she moved there ten years before. Reaching inside, she switched on the light. Her heart pounded as she stood peering into the dimly lit interior beyond the foyer. Nothing stirred, and nothing seemed out-of-place.

Should she call 911? The intruder, if there was one, could still be in the house. Had she left the front door open? It was possible, she guessed, but not probable.

“Better safe than sorry,” she said aloud as she returned to the front yard and called 911 on her cell.

Immediately, a woman’s voice came on the line, “What is your emergency?”

Agnes replied, “I believe someone has broken into my home.”

“What is the address?”

“99 Barbary Lane, Mt. Jackson.”

“To whom am I speaking?”

“This is Agnes Schwartz, the owner of the property. Is this Maude Kline, my old bowling buddy?”

“It sure is, Agnes. Is Henry there with you?”

“No, Maude, Henry died last year, I'm surprised you didn't know.”

“You're not in the house, are you?”

“No, I'm standing just outside the front door.”

“My advice is to go to a neighbor's until the officers arrive,” Maude instructed. “The intruder may still be in the house. Do you have a car you can lock yourself inside temporarily?”

“I have a car, but it’s in the garage, and I can’t reach it without going into the house.”

“Move closer to the street. The police officers are on their way and will be there in five minutes. I'll stay on the line until they arrive.”

“Thanks, Maude, I hope this is not a wild goose chase,” Agnes said timidly. “When I returned from my evening walk, I found the front door open, and it gave me a fright.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Maude said, trying to put her at ease. “The policemen will be happy to check out your house, regardless. Stay calm. Did you see any sign of a break-in?”

“Not really, but I only took a quick look inside.”

“I understand. You can't be too careful these days, especially with the Boogeyman still at large.”

“The Boogeyman?” Agnes asked, clueless.

“Certainly you must know about the Boogeyman, that’s what the media calls him. He's strangled eight elderly women in their homes over the last eight months. The whole town is buzzing about him. Don’t you read the paper or watch TV? No sane woman over fifty would leave her home after dark with that madman on the loose.”

“I don’t watch the news,” Agnes confessed, “it upsets me… and I don’t get a paper. I love movies, and that’s all I watch. I get them from Netflix.”

“I don't mean to scare you, but each of the murders occurred on the last day of the month. Today is March 31, and, as far as we know, the Boogeyman hasn’t strangled anyone yet, and It’s only four hours till midnight.”

“Eight women?” Agnes thought. She remembered Gertrude, her bridge partner, talking about some murders several times, but somehow, she imagined the victims were young women. She couldn't remember any serial killer targeting older women in any TV show or movie she's ever seen. She never once thought her life could be in danger, and like a fool, she was walking two miles after dark every night.

In the distance, she saw the lights of a fast car approaching and was relieved when the police car pulled into her driveway.

“The officers are here now,” Agnes said, starting to breathe easier. “Thanks for staying on the line with me.”

“You’re safe now, but my advice to you is to forget your movies from Netflix and keep up with the current news, at least, until they catch the Boogeyman. After all, you are exactly the kind of person he chooses for a victim. I have to go now. I've got another call. Good luck.” Agnes returned the phone to her pocket and walked toward the cruiser.

A tall mountain of the man in a blue uniform got out of the driver’s seat and approached her with another much shorter officer, who followed behind him from the other side of the Crown Vic.

“Are you Mrs. Schwartz?” the tall officer asked in a peculiar accent that sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles.

“Yes, I’m the one who called,” Agnes admitted nervously.

“I'm Officer Danielson, and this is my partner, Officer Johnson. I understand you may have had a break-in?”

“When I returned from my walk, I found the front door not only unlocked, but open. I’m 99% sure I locked it when I left. I don’t think I’ve ever left the door unlocked in the ten years I’ve lived here,” Agnes explained. “I reached in and turned on the light, but considering someone might still be inside, I decided to call 911.”

“You did the right thing,” Danielson said, stepping from the shadows into the front porch light.

Agnes did a double take when she saw the officer's enormous hands holding a medium-sized notepad in his palm like a playing card. Looking up, it was all Agnes could do not to scream when she saw his ghastly, misshapen face riddled with patches of scar tissue. To gather her composure, she quickly turned toward Johnson, who remained partially obscured in shadow.

“You should never enter the house after a break-in until we make sure the perp is no longer inside,” Danielson continued.

Agnes decided he had a speech impediment rather than a foreign accent, and keeping her eyes riveted on his partner, remained silent.

“Sit in our patrol car while we inspect the property,” Johnson said firmly, as he unhooked the leather strap from his holster.

Following his instructions, Agnes went to the cruiser and climbed into the back seat. She watched the officers draw their guns and stealthily enter the house.

As she sat there, she realized Danielson looked a lot like Grendel Ogre, a weird-looking man who played a human monster in several black and white movies that had scared the wits out of her in the fifties. She couldn’t keep her hands from trembling as she watched the lights go on all over the house.

Fifteen minutes later, the officers came out the front door. Danielson moved around the right of the house, and Johnson disappeared into the backyard to the left.

In another five minutes, with their firearms holstered, they returned to the patrol car. She met them in the driveway.

“Well, Mrs. Schwartz,” Danielson mumbled, barely understandable, “we checked everything, and we couldn't find any sign of a forced entry.”

Johnson piped in, “On the surface, everything inside seemed fine, but, of course, if something was stolen, only you would really know it. All we can say is there is no one hiding in the house now, and you can go back in without any fear.”

“Thank you so much,” Agnes said, fixing her eyes on Johnson and moving toward the front door. “I'm sorry if this was a false alarm, but when I found the door open, I was frightened.”

“No need to keep apologizing, we don’t blame you for being frightened with the Boogeyman still on the prowl,” Johnson said, writing something in his notebook.

“Since I don’t get a paper and rarely watch TV, I didn't even think of the Boogeyman when I found the door open.”

“Really…” Johnson said, turning to Danielson with a look of disbelief, “he’s the first one you should've thought of. You know it’s the last day of the month, and if he follows his profile, he'll strangle someone by midnight.”

A cold shiver ran up Agnes’ spine, and she felt an odd lump in her throat when she thought of the black tongue protruding from the mouth of one of the strangler’s victims in Hitchcock’s movie, Frenzy. A weak smile forced the horrific image from her mind, and looking between the two men to avoid eye contact with Danielson, she said, “Well, thanks again. I promise I’ll be a lot more careful from here on out, and I’ll watch the news every day.”

Both officers smiled and turned toward their patrol car. Danielson paused and looked back as if he wanted to say something. Agnes pretended not to notice and turned toward the front door.

From the porch, Agnes watched the officers get in their car and drive away. She hoped Danielson had not detected her inability to look him in the eye, and her intense mortal fear of him. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she knew his appearance had to be a terrible problem for him each time he met at new person. Johnson must be a saint to partner with someone who looked like a movie monster in real life. She closed the front door and double locked it.

Entering the study, Agnes unlocked the center drawer of her large mahogany desk and took out her 38 Special revolver. After checking to be sure it was loaded, she felt a lot safer that she was no longer defenseless. If the Boogeyman came to her house, he would be sorry. She was a crack shot. She could shoot the eye out of a hummingbird at thirty paces. “Well, maybe not thirty,” she thought, and chuckled weakly.

It was only nine o'clock, and she never turned in until at least eleven. Her adrenalin was still pumping, and she didn't feel like watching a movie. She went into the living room and took a seat on the sofa in front of the television. Placing the 38 on the end table, she recounted what had happened in the covered bridge and afterward along the path. She thought of the gaping front door, Danielson’s horrible misshapen face, and his eerie way of speaking. She couldn't get the vision of his huge, meaty hands out of her mind and could almost feel them gripping her neck.

An unfamiliar sound at the back of the house piqued her senses. Turning, she cringed when she saw that one of the officers had left the curtains on the slider completely open. If anyone was in the backyard, they could be watching her every move. She jumped up, and moving quickly to the back wall of glass, she pulled the cord and closed the curtains. Returning to the sofa, she turned off the lamp on the end table and sat in the dark. Everything around her seemed strange as she kept replaying the night’s events over in her mind like a scary movie. She wondered if the Boogeyman had strangled someone yet.

An hour later, the chime of the front doorbell sounded and startled her awake. For a few moments, Agnes sat frozen in fear. No one had come to her door at this hour in years. She struggled for the strength to rise from the sofa. Running the marathon in her current state was out of the question. She had never felt so drained of energy as she picked up the revolver and tiptoed toward the foyer. When the doorbell chimed a second time, she peeked around the ficus tree and tried to catch a glimpse of the person at the door through the side panel.

In the dim light from the street lamp, she saw the haggard face of Danielson pressed against the glass, and covering her mouth, she was barely able to stifle a scream. His face rekindled the nightmare that had plagued her as a little girl after seeing Grendel Ogre strangle a poor woman in that horrible old movie. There was no way in Hell she would open the door for him.

Why had Danielson changed from his uniform into street clothes? Why had he not called her first if he had a question or had forgotten something? Was the Boogeyman at her front door?

Suddenly, she heard the voice that made her blood run cold only a few inches from her throat just behind the door, “Hello, Mrs. Schwartz. This is Officer Danielson. I tried to call you, but your phone’s not working. Are you all right? My partner thought he may have forgotten to lock the slider, and he asked me to check it out.”

Agnes was shaking so badly, she feared she would bite her tongue off if she tried to speak. She remained silent and firmly plastered against the wall in a cold sweat. After ringing the doorbell two more times, she heard Danielson step away from the front porch. Peeking through the glass, she saw him disappear from view to the right.

Why did he come back? Was he here as a concerned police officer or was he the Boogeyman, here to strangle the life out of her before midnight.

In a few moments, she heard Danielson’s voice calling to her from the back porch, “Mrs. Schwartz, if you're here, please answer me. I need to know you’re all right.”

After several more knocks on the slider and repeated pleas for her to answer, it was all she could do keep her sanity when she heard the slider open in the breakfast nook. Danielson’s weird voice called to her from inside the house, “Mrs. Schwartz. I don't want to frighten you, but my partner asked me to be sure he locked the slider. It’s a good thing I did, because he was right. He did leave it unlocked. I tried to call ahead, but your phone is out-of-order. I can’t turn on the light because the electricity is off. Please, tell me you’re all right so I can go home.”

Was the electricity really off in her house? She could see the streetlight burning brightly through the side panel of the front door and lights were on in the Jenkins house across the street. Then, Agnes saw the flat nose and the cauliflower ears coming ever closer as one big eye hung in the light of the street lamp and seemed to leer at her with lethal intent. Was she still dreaming or was Danielson dragging one foot as he shambled closer to where she was hiding? She saw his mouthful of crooked teeth spread into a monstrous grin. His protruding eyeballs bulged with recognition when he spotted her shaking in terror on the floor.

“Mrs. Schwartz, why didn’t you answer me when…?” Danielson saw the 38 Special emerge from the shadows and raised his hands in submission as he recoiled slowly backwards. The crooked smile vanished from his shocked, misshapen face.

“Please leave now or I'll shoot,” Agnes warned him.

“Take it easy, I’m just trying to help you,” the officer stammered, “I live close by and….”

“Can’t you see how terrified I am,” Agnes shrieked. “With an hour left before midnight, I don't trust anyone at this point. Leave now before my nerves make me do something both of us will regret. It's not your fault, but you remind me of a monster I had in a nightmare when I was a little girl, and I’m deathly afraid of you. Even if you have good intentions, I can’t control the fear I’m feeling right now.”

“Sorry. I was in a fire when I was little. I was just worried…”

“Please, leave now!” Agnes shrieked. “I won't tell you again.”

Danielson paused a beat, then turned and walked briskly to the back and left through the slider without another word.

Agnes didn’t move until she saw the headlights and heard his car pull away from the driveway. She closed the slider, locked it, and pulled the drapes across the creepy darkness in the backyard. Her heart was still beating fast, and her entire body was still shaking. She shuddered at the thought she had almost shot a police officer because he reminded her of Grendel Ogre, an actor who played in an old movie a long time ago.

She picked up the phone and verified the line was dead. She tried the light switch to confirm the electricity was off. “I guess he was telling the truth after all,” she thought. “What a night of weird circumstances,” she said to the darkness.

She removed the phone from her pocket and saw the time was 11:30. From the top drawer of the chest in the foyer, she found a flashlight. Turning it on, she was elated the batteries still worked. Totally exhausted, she climbed the stairs, still gripping the 38 for insurance and pointing the beam of the light into the darkness above. She knew she would never be able to sleep, but she had to try. She could barely put one foot in front of the other when she reached the landing.

After brushing her teeth and putting on her nightgown, she fell into bed and placed the gun on the end table and the flashlight beside her on the bedspread. She wondered if the Boogeyman had found his ninth victim yet. The beam of the light was diminishing from weak batteries, but the dim glow was a small comfort as she fixed her eyes on a small speck of dried blood on the ceiling from a fly she swatted the year she moved in.

As Agnes lay there praying for sleep to come, a sudden realization of horror gripped her like a vice and had her gasping for breath again. Scared half out of her wits and wanting the giant policeman to leave immediately, she forgot all about the back slider being unlocked. If Danielson wasn't the Boogeyman, the real one had plenty of time to sneak in the back door when she sat in the cruiser.

At once, everything around her seemed ominous and threatening. To make matters worse, the flashlight went out entirely. Her eyes flitted back and forth in the darkness like a scared rabbit, dwelling on every shadow in the room, straining to detect the slightest foreign sound or movement.

What if it was the Bogeyman in the bridge, and he really did follow her home? Or maybe he was the young man who blew his horn as he passed in the car. He might have turned around and followed her. Maybe the Boogeyman left the door open when he came to strangle her, and then, waited in the backyard when he found her gone. With a sudden burst of adrenalin, Agnes grabbed the revolver from the end table, sprang to her feet, and tried the light switch on the wall.

The electricity was still off as she expected it would be. She crept to the door and peered out, ever listening to the silence for movement. Her fear accelerated when she still saw the street light and several porch lights on across the street through the bedroom window. Why was her house the only one without electricity? This couldn't be a coincidence; the Boogeyman had obviously chosen her as his next victim. He must be somewhere in the house. Everything pointed to this gut-wrenching conclusion.

Peering into the eerie blackness of the lower level from the top of the stairs, Agnes knew it was futile and probably suicide, even with her revolver, to leave her bedroom without a light. She knew her pounding heart would explode from fright if she really saw the Boogeyman step from the shadows.

She slammed the bedroom door, locked it, and propped a chair under the doorknob. The battery powered clock on the end table read 11:45 when she climbed into bed, shaking with unbridled fear. Placing the revolver next to the clock, she rested her head on a mound of pillows and strained to make out the speck of fly on the ceiling she could no longer see. Maybe tomorrow, she would get the ladder and take care of it.

Turning on her side, she watched the digits turning slowly over as each minute passing seemed like an eternity. The room felt as cold as a tomb.

At 11:55, she felt something move beneath her. It was the last place in the house she would have checked.

Then came the loud “achoo” from under the bed like a giant fart breaking the silence of a somber wake.

Agnes lunged for the revolver that had disappeared from the table as a hand as big as a catcher’s mitt clutched her throat and started squeezing. The Boogeyman had a deadline to meet, and he had to work fast.

INTO THE LIGHT

The rescue squad pulled Tomas from the tangled wreckage. He'd taken his eye off the road too long when he tried to answer his phone. When he looked up, he saw the deer caught in his headlights in the middle of the road.

His excellent reflexes had allowed him to miss the animal by veering off the road into the bushes. Unfortunately, he did not see the deep ravine concealed by the foliage. The car and Tomas went airborne after smashing through the guardrails, which inflated the airbags.

He was still in one piece with his seatbelt fastened when he creamed a huge boulder halfway down the hill. The hood of his Mustang folded up like an accordion.

Despite the massive head injuries, Tomas was still breathing when the EMTs loaded him into the ambulance. About twenty cars pulled off the road next to the ravine. The occupants craned their necks as they peered down at the tangled wreckage. Several shook their heads when they saw the Mustang was barely recognizable.

When Tomas reached the emergency room at St. Barnabas Hospital, the EMTs wielded him inside with several IV lines dangling around him. The bandage wrapped around his head was wet with blood.

As he lay motionless on a stretcher in the hallway, the long faces of the doctors and nurses attending him forecasted the hopelessness of his condition. Tomas' s eyes opened wide between the slits of his bandages, and then, closed again. His forehead creased with pain, he went entirely limp, and he stopped breathing.

A doctor in green scrubs shouted, “Clear” as he placed two paddles on Tomas’s chest, which caused his body to jump off the table like a rag doll.

Tomas couldn’t move, but unbeknown to the doctors trying to save his life, he heard the constant drone on the blood pressure device to his right and felt several hard blows of a fist on his chest. He detected a hint of spearmint gum on someone’s breath as they exhausted every measure to save his life.

Suddenly, the beeping of machines and doctors barking orders dissipated, and then disappeared entirely. It was like he had gone completely deaf in a split second. He had never heard silence so complete before. Even with his eyes closed, Tomas saw a bright light fill the spectrum of his consciousness, intense and all consuming.

Then, like magic, the light engulfing him faded like a wisp of smoke in a strong wind, and he found himself standing by the side of a country road. Tomas felt certain his critical condition from the accident would not have allowed him to leave his hospital bed if he were alive, so he assumed he must be dead. What he was experiencing now must be what people say they saw after they died and were brought back to life.

“Wow,” he thought, “he never imagined in his wildest dreams there would really be life after death, but here he was somewhere on what the mediums on TV call “the other side”. What lay before him now was nothing like the afterlife he'd seen on TV and in the movies. This road looked about the same as many country roads he had traveled in real life.

Looking in all directions, he didn't see anyone else. Inspecting his clothes, he discovered to his chagrin that a flimsy, hospital gown was all he had on. Like most hospital garb, it was open in the rear. He could feel a cool breeze on his naked ass.

The weather was balmy on the other side, and a slight breeze was blowing. It felt like about 75°. There were no cars traveling on this road. He saw a cornfield on the left as far as he could see. A cemetery occupied the entire hillside on the right.

“A cemetery,” he thought, “he hoped this was not his final destination in the dream he must be having. This new world seemed familiar, and yet, incredibly strange. A minute ago, he felt warm, and now, he felt a sudden chill. His lips started to quiver. He had no sense of time in this new world. The sun seemed to move across the sky like a sped-up, time-lapse video.

He saw an old house up ahead that looked long-deserted and thought he might spend the night there. Possibly, he might find something inside he could use to cover his ass.

As he approached, the white, frame house seemed familiar. Even though he didn't believe he'd ever been there before, he had an uncanny sense of déjà vu that he'd seen this place in a photo or a painting somewhere. He didn't know why, but the house seemed eerily foreboding.

Climbing the two steps to the front porch, he was about to knock when he noticed the door stood ajar. The stark silence of the countryside made him very uneasy. Something about this place seemed very wrong. The house appeared to be deserted, but he knocked anyway. When no one answered the door, he called out, “Hello, is anyone there?”

Tomas waited, but again, no one answered. He pushed open the door and entered the dark, shadowy space. When he saw the partially eaten body on the floor, he realized immediately where he was and why it seemed familiar. He was in the house George Romero used to film the movie Night of the Living Dead. The cemetery he'd seen across the road must be the one where the brother and sister had placed the bouquet of flowers on their father’s grave just before the first zombie attack.

“Zombies,” he thought, “certainly if he was in heaven, there would not be any zombies. He looked out the window and saw about ten zombies shambling toward the house just like in the movie. Where was Barbara, the woman from the movie who’d lost her mind from fear? Was she hiding in the house?

He pinched himself and feeling a twinge of pain, he decided maybe he wasn’t dreaming. In any case, the zombies seemed shockingly real in the nightmare he’d stumbled into, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if they sunk their teeth into him.

In the movie, the hero had hidden in the basement to escape the zombies. Sure enough, on the right side of the kitchen, Tomas recognized the door he knew from the movie led to the lower level. He ran to it and discovered it was locked from the inside. Tomas started pounding on the door and shouting for whoever was down there to help him. Through the window, he saw the zombies getting closer, and he began to pound on the door and shout just the way he would if his life was at stake.

After a time, he heard a voice he recognized as the black hero played by Duane Jones in the original movie shout, “Who’s up there?”

“My name is Tomas, and a shit load of zombies are about to climb up on the front porch. Please open the door, and let me in before it's too late.”

“Are you alone?” the voice asked without any urgency.

“Yes, I’m alone. Hurry!”

The door opened a crack and a shadowy, black face peered out at him and laughed like he just heard a funny joke. He undid the chain, and opening the door, said, “What is that you’re wearing?”

Tomas ignored him and slipped inside. The black man locked the door behind him.

“Have you already killed the father and the mother when they came back to life after you barricaded yourself in the basement?” Tomas asked, looking into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs.

The black man looked at him in amazement and asked, “How did you know about that?”

“Just consider me a psychic. What’s your name?”

“I'm Ben.”

“That’s right, I remember it now from the movie.”

Tomas followed Ben down the stairs and took a seat on the basement floor next to a candle burning on a makeshift table. He saw that the lone survivor had dragged the double dead corpses of the husband and wife whose daughter had turned into a zombie into a corner on the other side of the room. “So this is the end of the movie, and all the others are dead. You're the only one left. ”

“How did you know all this?” Ben said, staring at him in awe with his mouth agape.

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” Tomas said solemnly.

Suddenly, they heard scuffling upstairs and pounding on the door. A worried look came over Ben's face as he looked up the stairs with apprehension.

“Cool it, Ben. We’re totally safe down here in the basement. We just need to chill out until the morning when the authorities will arrive and kill all the zombies.”

Ben looked at Tomas as if he had lost his mind and wondered what kind of weird nutcase he had let into the basement.

“Look, Ben, we’re in a movie I've seen at least ten times. Someone even did a remake in color with Tony Todd playing you, which had a different ending. All you need to know is in the morning when we go upstairs to meet the police, don't look out the window. If you do, one of the cops will think you are a zombie and blow your brains out. While the final credits roll in the movie, it shows the good guys dragging your ass to the bonfire and tossing it into the flames.”

A heavy thud struck the door above, and the zombies continued to batter on it for what seemed like an eternity without breaking in. Then, everything went silent, and the two of them sat looking at the candle burning on the table for another hour.

Even though Tomas knew the zombies couldn’t get into the basement if this nightmare remained true to the original movie, he said, “Look, Ben, I’ll take the first watch. Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

After thinking this over, Ben decided to comply. In no time, he began to snore loudly, and Tomas spent the rest of the night looking at the candle burning down on the table and the matchbook with five matches beside it.

In the wee hours, Tomas, not really concerned about the threat of a zombie attack, dozed off and did a horrible job at standing guard. When he awoke, he found Ben gone. Looking up the stairs, he saw the door standing open.

He hoped for his sake that Ben had believed him when he told him not to look out the window. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he heard gunshots above.

Racing up the stairs two at a time and bursting into the kitchen, he found Ben spread-eagled on the floor with a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead with blood pooling around him on the linoleum floor.

Tomas was sad that just like the movie, the nightmare did not have a happy ending for Ben, the hero. He moved cautiously to the window and peeked outside.

He couldn’t believe it when he saw the zombies overrunning the sheriff and his deputies in the front yard. He immediately thought of Custer’s Last Stand when it became apparent that the bloodbath taking place before his eyes would surely end badly for the good guys. He grimaced when he saw the familiar face of one of the zombies in the movie chewing on the sheriff’s neck, which was not supposed to happen.

Tomas’s blood ran cold when the dead thing spotted him in the window, and struggling to his feet, started moving toward the front of the house. Five other zombies appeared in the doorway with blood oozing from their black teeth. He shivered when he saw their eyes fix on him as if he were a juicy steak. Having no choice but to retreat back into the basement, he slammed the door and locked it.

The candle had burned out, and it was pitch black below. The stench of decomposition wafted into his nostrils that seemed much stronger now than it had earlier. He heard an odd rustling, he didn’t understand. The electricity was off in the house, but he remembered the pack of matches on the table next to the candle. He crept as silently as he could to where he thought the table would be.

The overpowering stink of death took his breath away as he extended his arms like a blind man and inched forward in the darkness. He had a bad feeling something unexpected was about to happen in his nightmare. This extended plot had not been in the original movie, and he had no idea what would happen next. He hadn't seen any zombies in the house that could have entered the basement when he went upstairs, and he hadn't touched anyone or anything so far. Yet, he sensed he was no longer alone in the darkness that surrounded him.

Could the father and the mother have reanimated again? He didn’t see how. Under zombie rules, the dead couldn't come back to life twice.

Tomas’s leg bumped against something hard. Reaching down, his hand felt the top of the table, and then the book of matches. He picked it up and tore one of them off. Now that the match was in his fingers, he didn’t have the nerve to light it.

After his heartbeat accelerated to a fever pitch, and unable to endure the suspense any longer, he drew in a big gulp of putrid air and struck the match.

Even before his eyes grew accustomed to the sudden flare of light, he saw the hideous faces of the zombies surrounding him. Immediately, an army of monstrous hands grabbed hold of him, knocking the match from his grasp, and plunging the basement into total blackness.

Suddenly, the sweet scent of intoxicating perfume replaced the stench of death and decay. When his vision cleared from a dense fog, Tomas found himself in his hospital gown in the middle of a room filled with beautiful young women dressed in skimpy negligees. He could see their bountiful breasts heaving through the gauzy fabric that left little to the imagination. A king's ransom of gold coins covered the floor around a large circular bed directly under an enormous skylight.

“This is more like it,” he thought. “Somehow, he had traveled through Hell to arrive at this heavenly place.”

A young brunette goddess, beautiful beyond belief, started caressing his body with her magic hands. Her intoxicating perfume made his head swim with ecstasy. A seductive blonde of equal beauty slithered on to the satin sheets and removing his flimsy gown, mounted him. He had never imagined heaven could be like this. He had only pictured clouds and angels playing harps.

Another young princess with eyes that could make any man move mountains traded places with the blonde. He gasped in ecstasy not comprehending this level of pleasure in all his life as her warm lips closed over his own and velvet tongues lapped at his erect nipples. His body contorted with the pleasure of one orgasm after another, again and again.

None of this made any sense, but he hoped it would never end. He hadn’t seen a bright light after leaving the Night of the Living Dead, but what the Hell….

In the flash of an eye, Tomas’s world went black. The doctor chewing the spearmint gum stepped away from him, exhausted from trying to save his life. Another doctor returned the paddles to their container on the side table.

“Call it,” the first doctor said, mopping his brow with a towel.

“What do you make of it?” the other doctor asked.

“What?”

“The huge boner and the crazy grin he had on his face when his heart stopped.”

“I guess that will remain one of life's mysteries, or should I say death? In any case, there's a frosty Sam Adams waiting for us at Barney's. We tried every trick in the book, but he was a goner when they brought him in. Call it,” he said, removing his mask.

The second doctor looked at the clock on the wall and replied, “He died at 11:32 p.m.

ROAD KILL

Matt and Penny saw the flashing lights ahead when they rounded the curve in the road in their Mercedes. Their high beams illuminated a young man standing at the rear of a Chevy Impala on the right shoulder. A jack rested against the back bumper; the trunk lid was open.

As they got closer, the stranger raised his right hand into the air and stepped into the road. It was three a. m., and even during the day, this stretch of highway attracted very few travelers. Slowing to a crawl at a safe distance, they looked at the man with wary apprehension.

“It looks like the young fellow needs help,” Matt said, carefully scrutinizing the tall grass and the ravine that ran along the right shoulder of the road for any sign of a hidden accomplice. “Should we stop?”

“He doesn’t look dangerous. I’d guess he’s a college student with a flat tire.”

The young man continued to stand in the middle of the road, peering into their headlights.

“Do you have your pepper spray ready?” Matt asked, turning to Penny.

“I do.”

“The Smith and Wesson, just in case?”

“Check.”

Matt heaved a sigh of relief and said, “Then, let’s be good Samaritans for a change. It might be just what the doctor ordered.”

The couple pulled in behind the Impala. Matt got out and greeted the stranger, “You look like you’re having car trouble. What can we do to help?”

“My right front tire blew out, and I don’t seem to have a spare. A friend of mine let me borrow his car for the weekend.”

“Did you call anyone for road service?”

“No. The batteries in my phone died.”

“I’m Matt and my wife, Penny, is in the car. We live in the area, and I’m sorry to tell you, there are no gas stations open around here at this time of night. The best we can do is to drop you off at a motel about ten miles from here.

The man smiled and shook his head. Looking exasperated, he said, “That’s okay. The man who stopped before you came along pulled a gun on me and lifted my wallet and credit cards. I need to call my parents so they can wire money. Hey, I’m Bruce. I attend Bridgewater College. That’s where I was headed before I had the flat tire. Can I use your phone?”

“This is not your lucky day, Bruce. We’re one of the few people in the world who don’t own a cell phone. Nonetheless, what we can do is drive you to the closest gas station with a pay phone. I can’t promise, but there used to be one there. Hopefully, you can call your parents collect.”

Picking up the jack and placing it in the trunk, the young man said, “You sure are considerate people, stopping to help a total stranger in the middle of the night on this lonely road.”

“Lock up your car and hop in the front seat. You’re tall, and there’s more legroom. My wife can sit in the back.”

Bruce closed the trunk lid and locked the doors. When he approached the passenger side of the car, he saw Matt saying something to his wife who had already moved to the back seat. Opening the door, he said to Penny, “I’m happy to sit back there. Why don’t you sit up front?”

Matt replied, smiling, “Bruce, you look like a fine fellow, but frankly you’re still a complete stranger. We’d feel more comfortable if you sit in the front.”

“It’s okay, I understand.”

The stranger wondered what the woman sitting behind him would do if he pulled the gun he had in his coat pocket. He couldn’t see her hands, but he didn’t think she would have a gun. He had rolled the body of the man who had picked him up into the ditch behind the Impala. He must have been a lowlife. He only had $25 in his pocket and a single Exxon credit card in his wallet. These people looked like they had a lot of money. He hoped he would find a way to get them to take him to their house. This could be a big score. He decided to go with the flow and see what played out. He felt for the Glock in his coat pocket. He had six rounds left in the magazine.

Finally, after a period of awkward silence, Penny said, “I understand you’re a college student who had a flat tire and no spare who’s just been robbed.”

“In the time it took to lock my car, you already know my life story,” Bruce mused, turning on a little more Southern charm.

“Matt said you need to call your parents. I hope the telephone is working at the station.”

“Let’s hope.” Bruce replied, “Public telephones are hard to find these days. Everyone has a Smartphone or a cell. That is, except you folks.” They all laughed at the comment.

Bruce really hoped the telephone would be broken.

Ten minutes later, Matt pulled up to the telephone booth outside a dark, deserted filling station.

“Just my luck,” Bruce murmured, seeing the out of order sign taped on the door of the glass enclosure.”

“Look,” Penny finally said, “We only live ten miles from here. You can use the phone at our house.”

Bruce tried not to show his excitement and replied, “I’d really appreciate it. I have classes tomorrow afternoon, and I need to get on the road if I’m going to get there in time.” In reality, he had never spent one day in college. He’d dropped out of high school in the tenth grade.”

“Don’t worry, Bridgewater is only forty miles from Luray. That’s where we live. I believe there’s a Western Union store smack dab in the middle of town,” Matt added.

A half an hour later, Matt pulled off the main highway and followed a private road through a grove of trees. A large house with its interior lights ablaze stood at the top of a high hill in the distance. Bruce knew he had hit pay dirt when he counted five garage doors on the right side of the sprawling mansion. He guessed the home had at least ten bedrooms.

Matt pulled the Mercedes up to the front door. When they entered the house, Matt motioned to a room to the right of the foyer, “There’s a phone you can use in the den.”

Penny asked, “Would you like a beer?”

“A beer would be perfect.”

“Do you prefer a particular brand?”

“Anything wet.” Bruce answered, perusing the expensive furnishings all around him. His jaw dropped when he saw the largest flat screen TV he had ever seen. He knew at once, he had to have it.

The light in the den was already on when Bruce walked in and took a seat next to a phone on a coffee table. After going through the motions of dialing his own number, he left a voice mail message after the tone when nobody answered, “Mom. Dad. My car had a flat, and someone robbed me. They took my cash and my credit cards. I need you to send money to Western Union in Luray, Virginia. I’m okay, but I really need your help to get me out of this predicament.”

Penny placed an impressive, long stemmed frosty beer glass on the table. Bruce picked it up and took several giant swigs while he dialed two other numbers. After finishing, he said, “My parents aren’t at home, and their voice messages are full. I tried their numbers and left the same message. I hope they aren’t on vacation.”

Matt and Penny looked at each other, and Bruce took it to mean they might be sorry they had gotten involved in his problems. Finishing his beer, he felt the weight of the Glock in his pocket and tried to decide if he should continue the charade a little longer or put a bullet in both their brains now.

“Would you care for another beer, Bruce?” Penny asked.

“I slur ood slike one,” Bruce replied. He heard the gibberish he had just said that sounded like he had a mouthful of marbles. The beer glass slipped from his fingers as the room started to spin, and a cloud of blackness enveloped him.

Hours later, Bruce awoke strapped to a long table; unable to move his arms and legs. Bright overhead lights assaulted his eyes as he tried to remember what had happened and where he was.

To the left, he saw a man he recognized as Matt standing over him with a surgical mask and a circular saw. Seeing his eyes open, Matt spoke in a soothing tone; “We’ve been looking for someone with car trouble who needed help for weeks. And Voila! You finally came along.”

“The morning news said they found a man’s body in a ditch with a fatal head wound near an abandoned Chevy Impala on Route 211,” Penny said, coming into view from the right in a surgical gown with a scalpel in her hand. “I guess we took a chance when we picked you up. It just goes to show; you can’t judge a book by its cover. Well, at least, the story will have a happy ending, Looking down at him, and pushing back a lock of his hair, she added without the slightest trace of remorse, “At least, for us.”

Turning on the saw, Matt looked down at Bruce like a boy with a new toy, “Do you remember the commercial that said, ‘A mind is a terrible thing to waste’? Truer words were never spoken. The brain is the essence of the human body. It’s what I need to put an accumulation of body parts from fresh cadavers into motion. The others brains I purchased from undesirable ruffians never produced satisfactory results, because, shall we say, they were damaged in transit, but finally, I have a living, breathing specimen to work with right here in my laboratory.”

Looking past Penny, Bruce saw the Olympian shape of an enormous hulk of a man lying nude on the table next to him. He appeared to be at least eight feet tall. His entire body was a mass of stitches. His pale and discolored limbs twitched sporadically as if set in motion by periodic bursts of electric charges. In the middle of the thing’s forehead was a gaping hole with a series of veins and tubes dangling around it.

Bruce tried to scream, but his lips were sewn shut. The pain was excruciating, but it only lasted for one swipe of the blade.

THE CADAVER

When Blanche, the anatomy instructor, pulled back the sheet, the young first year medical student recoiled with a gasp. The other students in green scrubs stood around the gurney and stared at the middle-aged corpse in a momentary state of awe. Despite the initial shock, they tried to stay as indifferent to the dead body as possible.

“If seeing a dead body is that upsetting to you, Roberta, possibly you should seek another profession.”

“I’ll be all right,” The young woman gasped, trying to catch her breath, “this is the first dead person I’ve ever seen.”

“Really. You certainly must have led a sheltered life. You and Mark will begin by opening the chest cavity and dissecting John’s liver.”

“John?” one of the students asked.

“John Doe,” Blanche explained, “is the name given to unidentified bodies not claimed by family members in sixty days. That’s where we get most of our cadavers.”

“He’s been on ice for that long?” A pretty brunette with blue eyes asked with a wrinkled brow.

“At least that long. Your name is Florence?” Blanch asked, looking at her list. “Yes. Your partner will be George. I’d like you to dissect the kidneys for today’s assignment. I’d like a full report of your findings on the condition of the organ by tomorrow.”

Blanch paired the others and gave them their assignments. Shortly afterward, she saw Roberta running toward the ladies room, trying without success to contain the vomit spewing everywhere in her wake.

Working on cadavers who had passed more than thirty days ago depressed her. She believed the students could learn so much more if they could work on fresher bodies, but the system remained rigid on this point. To make matters worse, her state required a waiting period of sixty days, which was thirty days more than some other states. The waiting period allowed the cadavers loved ones to come forward and claim a body before it passed to the medical students. Sometimes relatives came forward after the dissection. Professors teaching anatomy always had to expect this eventuality in twenty percent of the cases.

The most upsetting delay occurred when the coroner delivered the body of a homeless person to the morgue who no one could identify. In these cases, the prolonged wait made no sense. How could someone come forward when the person’s name was never published? Blanche tried and tried to get her superiors to change the sixty-day waiting period on these cases, but to no avail.

When she arrived home that evening, she didn’t feel like cooking. She shouted to her husband, Jeff, who was on the computer and her son, Max, who was playing a video game, “I’m too tired to cook. I’m ordering pizza.” After getting no response, as usual, she called in the order.

When the deliveryman arrived, she called out, “The pizza is here. Come and get it.” After two more tries, Jeff and Max finally came to the dinner table and began to wolf down several pieces of pepperoni and mushroom.

“Well, Jeff,” Blanche inquired, “tell me how your day went.”

Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he replied, “Politics, politics. Everybody is trying to get the upper hand on somebody. I can’t bear to think about it. What happened with you?”

“One of the first year med students had never seen a dead body before and puked all over everything.”

Max winced as he put down his pizza slice.

“Sorry, big guy, I’ll behave,” Blanche said apologetically. Max resumed eating after taking a swig of Coke.

“I talked to the coroner again about changing the sixty day rule for homeless cadavers.”

“I don’t give you much hope for that,” Jeff replied.

“Why’s that?” Blanche said, looking perplexed.

“How can you single out homeless people from your corpse supply not to come under the same rule as everyone else? It’s not politically correct. It would be cadaver profiling?”

“I want to give my students the opportunity to dissect the freshest organs possible. When they become surgeons, they won’t be operating on dead people. When a surgeon makes an incision on a live person, he must take into account many factors to keep the person alive during the surgery. With a cadaver, nothing he can do will change the outcome of the procedure since the patient is already dead. It’s ludicrous to postpone dissection for sixty days when an unidentified person will never have someone come to claim him.

“Can’t we talk about something else?” Max said with his eyes rolling. “I can’t believe my mother works with dead bodies. Why would anyone choose such a thing for their career? It must be one slot down from proctologist.”

“Hey, big man. I’m training new doctors to save lives. Think about the end result. Without people like me, more people would die a much earlier death. My job also helps to keep you in video games.”

After dinner, Jeff and Max resumed their earlier activities, and Blanche started watching TV.

* * *

A couple of months later, Blanche received a call from a colleague who knew about her extreme dislike for the sixty-day rule. “Blanche, I’ve found someone who works in the morgue who’s willing to look the other way on the waiting period for an extra $100 per head.”

“Who would do this?” Blanche said incredulously, “and why would you not report him?”

“It doesn’t matter who it is. I heard you wanted fresher corpses on unidentified homeless people to help teach your medical students. If you don’t think a measly $100 per head is worth it, and you want to wait an extra thirty days, be my guest. It’s no skin off my ass.”

“Wait!” Blanche said, considerably softer. “Let me think about it. It’s not worth ending my career over something like this.” She thought about the old black and white movies where grave robbers supplied researchers with fresh corpses, and grimaced, realizing she was actually considering it.

“No one will be the wiser, and you don’t have to get involved at all. I’ll call you tomorrow at the same time. Keep in mind, you’re not the only one who’s requested this service, I promise you. And even If you decide to join the others, you’ll still have to wait your turn.”

After carefully considering the pluses and minuses, Blanche decided to take the chance for the sake of her students and the advancement of medicine.

A week later, when Blanche was about to pull back the sheet on a body, an arm slipped from the gurney on her side. She looked at the exposed limb in wonderment. It looked much different than any arm on a cadaver she’d seen in ten years. When she touched it, it felt hard and cold as usual, but in spite of the rigor mortis, it had a pinker color, was definitely less rigid to the touch, and had much less discoloration than normal. The time of death on the toe tag was November 6, which was 31 days ago. Blanche knew the date was wrong.

Gerald, a tall, nerdy looking student, who she selected to dissect the corpse turned to his partner and said, “Wow, this cadaver seems different, Leonard, is he really dead?”

Blanche pulled the sheet further down the abdomen and said coyly, “I think the autopsy incision on his chest is a testament to his stature as a cadaver.” The rest of the class roared with laughter.

As the weeks passed, it became more common to see fresher cadavers in Blanche’s anatomy class. She was happy her students could learn more than she had when she started out. They would also be far ahead of most students in the nation. At the same time, she struggled with the guilt of breaking the rules mandated by the State Medical Board and the fear it could lead to the end of her teaching career.

The thought of someone at the morgue pocketing an extra hundred dollars for providing these cadavers also weighed heavily on her mind. Now that she had participated in the illegal acts, how could she stop? Were there really other medical professionals breaking the rules like herself, or was that just a teaser to make her take the bait?

The family had planned a ten-day trek to climb Mount Rainier. Roughing it in the wild had never appealed to Blanche, but knowing how much Jeff and Max enjoyed it, she agreed to go with them each year. Taking this time off always put additional pressure on her the week preceding the trip, and this year was no exception.

On Thursday of that week, Dr. Henry Wildermuth came to her class to discuss a medical issue. As he made his way across the laboratory to speak with Blanche, he noticed two students dissecting a cadaver on the way. Pausing at the table, he stood in awe at the general condition of the male specimen who was about forty years old. Taking note of the clipboard hanging on the gurney and reading the data on the toe tag, he stood with a wrinkled brow and an incredulous expression, correlating the dates with the condition and appearance of the corpse.

Taking note of his scrutiny, Blanche excused herself from her discussion with the students and meandered over to her fellow professor.

“Hello, Henry. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

He paused for a moment, and then, turning to face her, remarked, “I must say none of my cadavers look anything close to as good as this fellow. I’d say his time of death could be measured in days rather than weeks. Where did you find such a fresh specimen?” Wildermuth waited for her to respond with marked anticipation.

“The cadaver came to me the same way yours come to you. Is there a problem?”

“I’ve heard some of the professors are getting special treatment by greasing someone’s palm in the morgue now and then, but certainly you’re not one of these misguided felons. Your reputation for integrity precedes you.” Wildermuth’s right eyebrow lifted, and he looked for a reaction to his comment in her eyes.

“Henry, you know me better than that. I just take what they give me.” Blanche picked up the clipboard and made a mental calculation. “The dates on this chart are definitely incorrect. Someone must have written in the wrong date. It happens sometimes.”

“I came over to ask you if you want to join me for lunch. I have a few “what ifs” to run by you.”

“I’d love to, Henry, but I have to leave early today, I’m going on a ten-day vacation with the family to climb Mt. Rainier.

“That sounds exciting, but you don’t strike me as a mountain climber,” Wildermuth said, shaking his head. “ I’ve never heard you mention it before. Do you expect to come back with your fingers and toes intact? A surgeon may get along without toes, but fingers are pretty much a necessity.”

Blanche smiled and reminisced the affair they’d had when they first met, “I’m really a lot more athletic than you might think. When Jeff and I were dating, we climbed a number of the tall mountains in the US. It’s more his thing than mine, but I can hold my own, and Max loves it. I’d rather be on a beach in Hawaii than hanging off a cliff, freezing to death, but it’s a chance for us to do something together as a family.

“Well, be careful. We can have lunch when you return,” Wildermuth replied, and moving closer, he whispered, “By the way, I heard through the grapevine the Dean has authorized an audit of the costs for the department. It’s scheduled to start next week.”

The words chilled her to the bone, but she tried to remain calm, “That’s good to know, Henry. I hadn’t heard about it. I appreciate the head’s up.”

Blanche watched Wildermuth eyeballing the cadaver on the metal table as he exited the lab. She wondered if he knew she was involved in the illegal trafficking he spoke of. Because they had become close way back when, she knew he wished her no harm. He could even be watching her back.

Back in her office, she picked up the phone and called the doctor who had initiated her involvement with the person in the morgue. “George, I hear the Dean has ordered an audit of the department’s expenses. Do you know anything about it?”

“Not a thing. Why are you calling me?”

“You know why. You’re the one who put me on to the guy in the morgue,” Blanche retorted sharply.

“I have no idea what you are talking about. I’m in the middle of something. I can’t help you.” Click.

“The lying son of a bitch,” she thought, and slammed down the phone.

She dialed her home and Jeff answered, “When will you be home? I want to leave before the rush hour. You know what happened last year.”

“I'm sorry, darling, I won't be able to go with you after all. I just found out about a surprise audit, and I need to review my files and speak with some people before the auditors come next week.”

“What does an audit have to do with you, Blanche? This sounds like an excuse, if you ask me. I know climbing mountains is not on your list of favorite things to do, but you promised both of us you’d go no matter what.”

“I know, darling. Until five minutes ago, I had every intention of going, but this audit came out of nowhere. To be frank, I made a bad decision about the sixty day waiting period, and I need to cover my ass.”

“You what?”

“I authorized an extra hundred for each fresh cadaver. I did it for my students, but now, my career might be on the line.”

“I can’t believe what you’re telling me, and the part that really hurts is you didn’t discuss such a critical decision for all of us before you blundered ahead. I understand why you did it, but is your obsession for excellence worth losing everything we’ve worked for?”

“I made a bad decision,” Blanche confessed, starting to cry. “I really can’t explain what came over me. I’m truly sorry for my lapse in judgment. I hope you can forgive me. I’m really out on a limb, and all I can do now is get as many ducks in a row as I can before my career comes crashing down around my ears.”

“Well, what can I say? Let’s hope you can find a way to get through this. Would it help to go to the Dean and beg for him to forgive your indiscretion?”

“Frankly, Jeff, part of the reason I agreed to participate in this insanity was my main source told me most of the other professors were already involved. I should have verified this then, but I never got around to it. Now, it's critical I find out how many of us are really in this program to decide my course of action. That’s why, I can’t go with you to climb Rainer.”

Jeff voice cracked with emotion, “What ever happens…for better or worse, I love you, and I always will, even if we do have to go to the poor house. Your career is certainly more important than climbing a mountain. After all, it’s no Everest. Max and I can postpone the trip. We’ll stay and give you moral support and go on our vacation some other time.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’ll be at the lab all weekend and probably the best part of next week. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to help. Go without me and have a wonderful time. Tell Max, I’m sorry.”

“I can’t let you to face this alone,” Jeff countered.

“You may be back before the audit even starts. Go.”

After several more back and forth interchanges, they agreed Jeff and Max would take the trip to Rainer without her.

Blanche went to the accounting department and asked to see the paid bill files and the purchase orders for certain vendors, which put a look of concern on the payable clerk’s face.

“Look,” Blanche explained, “I’m trying to find the address of several vendors I used over the last several years. It’s important I contact them about the information they provided, and I didn’t keep a list.”

The clerk gave Blanche a sour look and pointed to the bank of file cabinets for the current year lining the wall to the right. The woman also showed her the location of the files for the two previous years. Blanche pulled the cadaver folders for all three years, took a seat at an empty desk, and started plowing through them. She found the requisitions for the extra $100 started more than three years before, and appeared on almost half of the invoices.

She was relieved to discover every professor, except Wildermuth, had authorized the bogus charge periodically, even before she’d joined the program. During her review, she found two $500 charges marked as “special delivery” in the current batch of invoices, which worried her. What was this “special” charge all about?

After a time, she realized she had misjudged the number of invoices related to cadavers and so; the audit of the files would not take long at all. Blanche was sorry she had not joined Jeff and Max on the vacation, but she still wanted to speak with some of the other professors to see if they were concerned about the unexpected audit.

The controller entered the room and advised Blanche the accounting department would be closing in a half an hour and would be locked for the entirety of the three-day holiday weekend. The policy of the university was that the files could not be taken from the accounting department. She would have to come back Tuesday to resume her review of the paid invoices.

Blanche took a big pile of the purchase orders and invoices into an adjacent room filled with office machines and started making copies with the time remaining.

Over the weekend, she reviewed the copies and tabulated the number of special charges for each doctor. Her analysis confirmed that every doctor other than Wildermuth had participated in the illegal program just as George had said. She still couldn’t wait to give him a piece of her mind for hanging up on her.

On Tuesday morning, Blanche stormed into George’s office without knocking, and took a chair across from him. George immediately threw up his hands as a sign of a truce, got up, and closed the door. “Before you go into a rant, realize, I couldn’t speak with you before. The Dean was in my office. Now, what do you want?”

“I want the name of the person who is providing the fresh cadavers from the morgue?”

“If you must know, I’m the brains behind the operation. I have a lackey working with me who does the heavy lifting. What’s your problem?”

“There’s going to be an audit next week, and I’m concerned my indiscretion may come to light and my career will be history.

“Who said there’s an audit?”

“Wildermuth.”

“He’s just trying to scare you. He’s the only doctor who is not participating, He’s always had the hots for you and is probably trying to protect you from the slings and arrows of possible misfortune.”

“There’s no audit?”

“No, and there never will be. The Dean himself participated in the program when he taught anatomy. Stop worrying.”

Blanche exhaled and sat back in her chair, “Are you sure your heavy lifter in the morgue is following the thirty-day protocol? Some of the corpses we’ve seen lately seem too fresh.”

“I can’t believe you’re complaining the stiffs are too fresh. I thought you wanted your students to be on the cutting edge with a scalpel. Excuse the pun.”

“I keep seeing Boris Karloff, the sinister cabman, digging up corpses from the cemetery to deliver to Dr. MacFarlane in The Body Snatcher.”

“Stop worrying. Do you think I would risk doing something that could bring all of us down? Jose knows I’d cut his balls off and feed ‘em to the coyotes.”

“What about this special charge for $500 that started appearing lately instead of $100?” Blanched asked, eying him suspiciously.

“Five hundred dollars?” George barked. “I don’t know anything about any $500 charge. Where did you see it?”

“It’s on the invoices I looked at in the accounting department to prepare for the audit that’s not happening. There were two this month.”

“Damn that greedy little weasel! The only explanation I can think of is he must have come up with a new way to make money on the black market, and inadvertently charged the wrong amount on two of our invoices.” George’s face reddened with rage as he rose from his chair fuming.

“I’m sorry, Blanche, but this could be the end of the program, at least, until I can find a replacement for the slimy little creep.”

With nothing more to say, Blanche trudged back to her office. She couldn’t wait to tell Jeff what she’d learned from George. They would return on the following Monday afternoon. She spent most of the rest of the week trying to reach Jeff and Max, but was not surprised to find both their phones out of service due to the severe weather at Mt. Rainier that week.

On Monday morning, Blanche sipped a latte from Starbucks and made a list of her class plans for the day. At 9 a.m., she went to the lab where her students waited for class to begin. They quieted when they saw her approach, and watched two gurneys burst through the double doors into the lab. The students separated into two groups beside the two cadavers covered with an opaque, plastic covering.

Pulling back the sheet on the first specimen, Blanche saw a lopsided head wrapped in a gauze bandage. She assumed the young male had died from massive injuries in an automobile accident.

The students surrounding the table stood in awe at the atypical condition of the body. The cadaver appeared to be a young teen, probably thirteen or fourteen years old. Except for the head trauma, the skin looked almost like that of the students standing around it. Once again, Blanche immediately thought of Boris Karloff, the grave robber, in The Body Snatcher, and a chill ran down the back of her neck. Something was very wrong about this cadaver. Wrong to the point of embarrassment. There was no visible trace of discoloration from rigor mortis.

Blanche reviewed the clipboard, which indicated the body had been on ice for sixty days. She didn’t know how to explain the condition of the corpse to her class, and decided not to try. Jose’s continued disregard for protocol and his blatant falsification of the data by such a long period of time caused her to wonder what other atrocities he might be capable. She shuddered at the thought.

Putting down the clipboard, she shifted her focus to the dissection.

An uncanny sense of déjà vu engulfed Blanche as she surveyed the upper portion of the torso and the jagged sutured incisions of the autopsy. She gasped when her eyes fell upon the distinctive birthmark shaped like a butterfly below the boy’s right nipple. There was no doubt; this was Max, her only child that she adored with every fiber of her being. The shock of what she was seeing took her breath away, and her face turned as white as a sheet. Several members of the class, particularly Roberta, who Blanche had embarrassed on the first day of med school, snickered mercilessly and cleared the way as they watched her stagger backward into the adjoining table.

Trying to steady herself against the metal leg, she saw a second male cadaver with a bandage covering his face that the second group had already started dissecting. Her hand shot to her mouth as she teetered drunkenly over the partially nude body. Pulling the rest of the sheet away, her eyes filled with horror when she recognized her husband’s cobra tattoo just above the pubic hair surrounding his substantial penis.

Blanche swooned and crumpled to the floor in a faint.

From Billy Wells

Thanks for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed it.

Reviews In Today’s World

In the past, when everyone knew everyone else in their neighborhood, people used to share information about the good and bad things they discovered to help each other in their day-to-day living.

Now, in this global village where we are in touch with everyone and everything in nanoseconds, Amazon monitors what readers say about the books they read in order to distinguish the good from the bad. Amazon is particularly interested in what the readers that actually bought the book say about it.

Since reviews are the life’s blood of today’s authors, and we depend on them more than ever before, I would sincerely appreciate it if you would place a review of this book on amazon.com. It does not have to be long; only a minimum of twenty words is required.

This link below will take you to the Amazon page to place your review for Don’t Look Behind You.

http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Collection-Horror-Chamber-ebook/product-reviews/B00DCFQTVE/

Short Story Collections by Billy Wells

Don’t Look Behind You: A Collection of Horror

My Amazon best seller in six categories is a collection of seventeen nightmares in the horror/thriller genres.

In Your Face Horror

A compilation of 31 of my most gruesome stories from Black As Night and Shivers and other nightmares

Thrillers & Chillers

A compilation of my least gruesome stories from Black As Night and Shivers and Other Nightmares for my readers who love thrills and chills, but not so much horror involving vampires, werewolves, and hairy monsters.

Shivers and Other Nightmares

My second collection of 30 short stories, mostly horror with surprise endings. The book includes some thriller and chiller stories as well.

Black As Night

My first collection of 32 short stories, mostly horror with surprise endings. The book includes some thriller and chiller stories as well.

Scary Stories: A Collection of Horror –Vol. 1

A collection of ten short stories, mostly horror with surprise endings. This book contains longer stories than my others, and in my opinion, some of my best work to date.

Places To Find Out More About Billy Wells:

Billy Wells Amazon Author Page

billywellshorror.com home page

Billy Wells Horror You Tube Channel

Billy Wells Coffeesmoke You Tube Channel

Billy Wells Author's Den Page