Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (89 page)

“Kole,
you are so busted,” he said.

His
own words felt like nails being driven into his head. Jack’s breathing
hitched as more pain radiated from the left ankle, creeping up his leg like an
angry spider.

“My
eye, my stomach, and my ankle,” Jack said. The verbal inventory of injury
focused him, allowing him to contemplate the situation. He saw his BB gun
about seven feet away, the stock pitched at an angle on a broken cinder
block. The barrel hid in the weeds as though ashamed of the
fall. Jack sat up and spread his hands on the ground by his hips to brace
for the pain. This time, he fought the rising bile in his throat and
forced it back down with an acidic belch.

Jack
looked at his leg through a stranger’s eyes. Two chunks of ragged cement
clamped down on his foot, holding it in a hungry mouth, ready to devour its
prey. He saw a red burst on his white athletic sock and noticed that his
toe pointed at a ninety-degree angle from his ankle. When he reached out to
touch the top of his shoe, the pain of the injury washed through him, and he dropped
backwards, arching his back up as a cry roared from his chest and out of his
mouth.

Jack
panted like a dog. If he held very still, the dull, pulsing pain in his
ankle would not erupt into a volcanic slide of torment. He turned his head
towards the opposite wall. “Kole?”

No
response.

“Kole? Are
you okay?”

Nothing.

“I’m
coming, Kole.”

Jack
pushed his hands off the ground as if to stand when his ankle released a fiery
explosion of agony. The black wall rushed over him, knocking him back into
the realm of the unconscious.

***

The
silence shook Jack from his daze. He opened both eyes, although he could
see nothing out of the swollen one. He shivered while watching the mist of
his own breath float through the night.

Jack
listened and heard nothing. No crickets serenaded the autumn
forest. No birds fluttered through the trees. No squirrels dropped
mouthfuls of nuts on their ascent to a nest. The moon sliver rose and now
took its place a few degrees to the right of Polaris.

“Mom’s
gonna kill me,” he said. He pulled himself to a sitting position, careful not
to put any pressure on his trapped ankle. He looked to the opposite wall,
at the silhouette of his still friend.

“C’mon,
Kole. This ain’t funny no more.”

Kole
did not move. Kole did not reply.

They
only found parts of that kid, remember? He wasn’t far from here, back in 1986,
was he kiddo? He’s going to get you too.

“Shut
up,” Jack said, attempting to quiet the chatter inside his head.

Jack
reached to his right for a round stone. “Probably dropped here during the last
Ice Age.”

His
words echoed through the empty trees, and he grabbed the stone, raising it
behind him. With a throwing motion limited to his upper torso, he tossed
the rock towards Kole. Jack thought how disappointed his dad would have been
with his throw.

Put
your body into it, Jack. You can’t get any power with an arm toss.

Jack
shoved his dad’s voice from his head and squinted at Kole, willing his friend
to move, hoping to prod him into a verbal insult or flip of the middle finger.

The
rock landed three feet from Kole and scurried through the leaves until it
rested against the boy’s shoe. The silence of the forest returned like a
high tide.

Jack
wiped a tear from his cheek and suppressed the hitch in his chest. The air
of the November night turned colder, even without the harsh winter
wind. Jack squinted, listening keenly. And then he heard it.

The
blackened sky swayed overhead and threatened to swallow Jack whole. He
held his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to block out the sound as the
crinkle of leaves grew closer, like the encroaching rumbles of a summer
thunderstorm. Jack tried to convince himself it was a deer, but there was
no mistaking the rhythmic shuffle of a human.

He
kept his eyes closed, afraid to see the source of the noise. The visitor
circled the lodge in a great arc, but each pass brought it closer to the
walls. Jack kept still as he listened, his ankle throbbing.

The
crack of a twig snapped Jack’s eyes open. He could no longer play possum
and stifle his morbid curiosity. The sound came from behind the opposite
wall, close to Kole. For the first time since Jack had awoken, Kole
moved. At first, a flitter of hope rushed to Jack’s lips, words of relief
ready to bound from his mouth. When he saw Kole’s left leg rise and then
bend the wrong way at the knee, Jack’s heart fell into his stomach. He
squinted and buried his face in the rich forest soil.

When
the forest settled into solitude, Jack opened one eye enough to see that Kole
was gone. Two parallel mounds of leaves bared the black soil where Kole’s
heels had passed moments earlier. The sound of crunching underbrush faded at a
steady pace. By the time Jack gained enough courage to open the other eye,
the forest had fallen silent yet again. Mumbled words terrified him until he
realized they were his own, his friend’s name mingled with unintelligible
prayers. He could no longer fight back his sobs.

He
reached for his BB gun, as if the copper pellets might ward off the evil
spirits of the forest. His fingers shook, his palm outstretched, but his
ankle was still caught in place. Jack scanned the ground with one cheek
planted in the cold leaves, and he saw scattered cinder blocks, broken bottle
necks, and the shapes of twisted trees concealed by the dark of the
night. The wall sloped upward to his left, concealing most of his body
from the other three sides of the lodge.

He
didn’t see me
, he thought. 
He took Kole, but he didn’t
see me.

Jack
glanced up at the moon as it inched across the inky black sky. It peaked
and descended towards the south, a good sign that dawn stood closer than
dusk. He closed his eyes and imagined his parents canvassing the
neighborhood. He had told them he was going to Kole’s, and Kole had told
his parents he was going to Jack’s. With both boys missing, Jack realized
the predicament he faced. He cried for his mom and pleaded for his dad,
stifling sobs in the crook of his arm.

For
the first time, Jack felt a smooth object behind his head. He reached back
without turning his waist and snagged the top of the water bottle he had in his
backpack. It must have dropped out during the fall. He held it up to
the meager moonlight and swished the water around before unscrewing the top and
draining the few ounces left inside. The sweet, cool water brought a wave
of relief, and he fumbled through the leaves until he found his phone. The
screen was dark, but it had survived the fall inside his jacket. He held
the power button down with a shaking finger and had to turn away from the
bright burst of the LCD display. Jack waited as the phone came to life,
but his eyes never left the bars at the top right corner. With the weight
of a wrecking ball, the words “No Service” flashed inside a red box.

“No. Not
fair. Not fair at all.”

Jack
bit his lip until a word popped into his head:
Triangulation
. He did not
remember where it came from but guessed it was something he had heard on a
crime drama.

If
I leave it on, the cops can find me. That’s what it means. I might
not have service, but they can pick up my phone when they get close.

With
giddy exhaustion, he pushed off the ground with his good leg, but his trapped
ankle dropped him back down to the ground, bringing a wave of torment to his
head and knocking him into the void.

***

The
moon barely moved as Jack’s throbbing ankle lifted him from troubled
sleep. He glanced at the opposite wall, not expecting to see
Kole. The leaves remained, untouched. He imagined the police scanning
for his phone,
triangulating
. As a chilling wind swept through the
lodge, he noticed an object sitting on a pile of cinder blocks that had not
been there before. Jack had memorized every tree branch, fallen block, and
pile of broken bottles within sight during the long night. His eyes
adjusted to the lack of light, and his heart dropped when he saw it. The
cell phone battery sat next to the open display, darkly creased with dozens of
lines of broken glass. Jack buried his chin in his chest.

He
felt the movement of the leaves before he heard the footsteps, and he cursed
under his breath, words that would have made his mother cry and his father
blush. He hated that phone with all of his being. It was his Judas, his
betrayer.

He
estimated the visitor to be a few hundred yards away but closing with a steady
gait. Jack flailed on the ground, the pain from the worthless ankle
washing over him like a foamy eddy in white water rapids. He placed both
hands on his knee and pulled, but his effort brought nothing but more misery
and panic. The leaves whispered as the footsteps cut through the forest.

Jack
closed his eyes and saw his mother hanging laundry on the clothesline in the
backyard. He felt her warm smile carried on the rays of the summer
sun. She waved and winked in slow motion, a clothespin clamped to the
collar of her faded t-shirt. He blinked and brought the forest back into
view. The trees turned into creatures, arms waving and taunting
him. They rubbed against one another, creating a funeral dirge.

Tears
ran down his cheek as he clamped his eyes shut again. He saw his father
pushing the red mower through the front yard. The aroma of fresh-cut grass
filled his nose while the throaty purr of the mower engine faded into memory.

He
sat up and looked out towards the hill. With both hands, he pushed the
leaves away, searching for an escape. He noticed his backpack and other
items on the ground below his cell phone, positioned by evil hands to
foreshadow his last stand.

He
could hear ragged breathing over the shuffling leaves. Tree branches
snapped and echoed like rifle shots, and Jack thrust a hand into his back
pocket and fumbled for his wallet. He held the billfold to his face, using
what was left of the waning moonlight. Jack flipped past the library card
and novelty Elvis license to the family portrait behind mottled plastic. His
finger traced a tear that scuttled down the face of the photo and into the
multitude of leaves, absorbed and forever bound with the rest of the forest
floor.

A broken washing machine, three loads of sopping wet clothes,
and an exhausted wife inspired this story. A washateria can be a lonely
place.

At Own Risk

A
single file of water droplets slid off the pipe, settling on the linoleum with
an echo. Fluorescent lights flickered across water-stained ceiling tiles, and
the scent of flowery detergent hung in the cold air. The man shuffled to the
change machine, sliding a crinkled dollar bill into the slot and waiting until
the dispenser spit four quarters into the stainless steel tray.

Not
empty yet
.

Three
of the top loaders sat with their lids closed. He opened them, making each
washer look like a square bird ready for a worm. His hand slid into the
cylinder of the first machine, the one under the sign attached to the wall with
yellowed scotch tape: We are not responsible for loss or damage of clothes. Use
washers and dryers at own risk.

He
closed his eyes, following the rules and obeying the ritual. The hard
plastic chair bumped the back of his legs, dropping him into its cold embrace
as it slid against the wall, nestled between the garbage can and the vending
machine.

The
temperature dropped again, the air becoming colder than the rainy November
night on the other side of the glass door. He opened his eyes and raised a
hand to his forehead. The blinding whiteness stung against the black velvet
of the night.

And
so the visions began, as they had so many times before inside this place. He
shifted in his seat and waited as the first person came toward the window,
invisible and unnoticed. She used the edge of a basket to push the door open, swinging
around to place her bruised buttocks on the glass. The sunglasses covered
most of the black eyes, all but the outer edge of the bruise that crawled down
towards her crooked nose. There would be no lipstick today, nothing that could
be applied over the pain of a split lip.

The
faded Metallica t-shirt rested on a black leather belt inside her basket, the
concert dates of yesteryear gone along with her hope for the future. The
woman’s bleach-blonde hair swung around and came to rest on tiny breasts, constantly
hidden by crossed arms. The greasy strands failed to mask the hand
impressions on her neck.

She
dropped the basket to the floor and kicked it towards the row of washing
machines. Bony fingers reached into the acid-washed jeans to retrieve five
quarters, one short of the required tithe.

“Shit,”
she said. With her left hand, the one without any rings, she shoved lacy
panties and bloody towels into the mouth of the beast. A capful of bleach
followed, finished with a mighty slam of the thin steel lid.

He
stared over her bobbing scrunchy to the sign: We are all responsible for loss
or damage to our self-esteem and face. Tolerate jealousy, twelve packs,
and his pinky ring at own risk.

I
could see that. No revelations there, Nostradamus
.

He
stood and moved the laundry basket on wheels towards the woman. She did
not flinch or turn to look at him. They never did.

The
third washer from the left called out, beckoning him closer. “Touch me,” he
thought he heard it say.

When
he looked up, the woman was gone, along with all evidence of her existence. The
man settled back into the plastic chair when he felt the coming of the next
vision.