Horror Business (17 page)

What was the first episode of
the Twilight Zone
? It was called “Where is Everybody?” It involved a man who comes to a town, and he doesn’t know who he is or how he got there. There is nobody in the town, but he can’t shake the feeling of being watched. In the end, it turns out that he’s an astronaut who has been in an isolation chamber for 484 hours. The whole town was a hallucination—

***

I’m vaguely aware of the warmth surrounding my head. I put my hand in front of my face, opening and closing it. It still works. I touch my face and pull a little piece of glass out of my cheek. I run my fingers through my hair. They come back red and sticky; I wipe them on the seat above me. The car is upside down. I probe more of my body and conclude that there are no serious injuries, just the blood. The air in the cabin is stale and cold. I breathe vapor.

Greg is dead. I’m sure of it. His head looks deflated. I poke him, and his skin feels cold. I shudder.

I just touched a dead body.

The sheriff lies with his face pressed against the metal cage. Jagged pieces of bone poke through his jacket. A giant shard of glass halves his face, extending from his mouth to his ear. I can’t look anymore. I reach out for the door handle—it’s not there. I kick at the windows. Nothing. I recoil to kick again when I hear a groan from the front seat.

The sheriff’s eyes are open. His mouth opens and closes around the piece of glass embedded in it. He cries. A mournful groan leaks out of where his mouth should be. I reach out and touch the divider. He follows my finger with his.

“Sir? Are you all right?”

He cocks his head. The question sinks into the damaged side of his head where it causes him intense anguish. He claws at the divider. He bashes his head against it.

…
responsible for the majority of shark attacks on humans
…

He opens the small window that separates us, reaching to pull me close. His mangled fingers brush my clothes. I back away as far as I can and bat his hand away. I pull my knees up to my chin, barely out of his reach.

There is nothing human about his screams. Or are those mine?

Instinct makes the creature go for his gun. He rips it from the holster, a motion that causes him to squeeze the trigger. A crater explodes out of his kneecap. His undead roar is deafening, perhaps slowing my reaction to the realization that
he’s going to fucking shoot me.

He fires again, and the bullet
ptwings
off the divider and through the passenger window. He reaches through the partition’s opening and puts two slugs into Greg’s dead body. The corpse shifts and ripples like congealed pudding.

I latch on to the sheriff’s arm. He wrenches back and my head slams into the metal cage. My vision brightens, but I hold tight. I hug his fist in my arms and put my feet on the divider for leverage. I pull until I’m nearly horizontal. His thrashing weakens, and the gun comes loose. His arm retreats through the hole, and I juggle the gun until I have it pointed at him. We’re both out of breath, waiting for the other to move. The monster knows he’s defeated. He makes another half-assed swipe at my shoes and misses. He puts his head down.

The door at my head opens, and a dirty hand covers my face. I taste a mixture of blood, soil, and potato chips.

Colt Stribal pulls me from the tomb.

I scramble out of his grip, away from both monsters. I put enough space between me and the wreck to catch my breath. The sheriff remains still. I sit down. The car has made a hideous scar in the brush and the tree that it hit is splintered up the middle. A faint billow of smoke floats up from the hood.

“Fucking pig.”

The greasy kid lights a cigarette. He smokes half of it in one drag. He covers one nostril and blows an efficient wad of snot at his feet. I lift the sheriff’s gun and point it at him. I try to summon anger, but the blood-loss makes me feel lukewarm.

“Hey!” I call out.

Colt doesn’t seem fazed by the weapon. He squints, and his ember flares. He tosses the finished cigarette out into the woods, which, I’m sure, is an extreme fire hazard this time of year.

“You … you fucking … killed my dog. …” It’s not as articulate as I had hoped.

“What?”

“And … you hurt my brother. …” Colt strides up to me and lowers the gun with his palm. He leans in close. He sniffs me. I look at the ground like an obedient dog. The way he does it—it’s almost gentle.

He steps back. “Who are you?” he asks.

“Jason Nightshade.”

“Jason,” he says. There’s no register, no recognition. He nods to the wreck, “I’m out of here, or they’re gonna try and put that on me. That cop and that fat fuck.” He laughs. “Two pigs in a blanket.”

His nonchalant reference to the corpses makes me throw up. Colt turns and walks back toward town.

“I’d go home if I were you,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Just forget the whole thing ever happened.”

“I have to get my dad’s car,” I say, but he’s already gone.

***

Dad’s car sits there, waiting to drive me back to safety. The weight of the keys feels comforting in my jacket pocket. My hand rests on the door handle.
Just go. Just unlock the door and drive away. Pretend like you didn’t even see anything. Or you could report the crash anonymously.

I should really get that replica gun in the graveyard. Maybe someday I’ll finish that movie.
My hand slides off the door handle. I flip the cylinder out of the sheriff
’s gun: two bullets left. Two more than Greg had.

The cemetery welcomes me back with a cold wind. I fumble blindly through the rows of headstones, pawing in the darkness for the metal of my prop gun. I feel something hard and pick it up, examine it against the red-moon sky. It’s the finger. So
that’s
where it was. I toss it aside and continue to rifle through the grass.

The wind carries the sound of whispers out from the surrounding woods. I hit the back of my hand against the metal of the replica gun. With guns in both hands, I feel like a hero. I turn around and meet reflecting eyes. They hover near the ground, blinking at different intervals. The creature cackles at my foolishness to return to its lair.

The guns clatter in my shaking hands. I raise one of them and try to keep the barrel between the two floating dots. I pull the trigger. The flash is blinding. But I see it.

Or, I see the fur, the teeth, the claws. The face is boxy with a wide set of jaws that hold rows of teeth. There’s no fur around the eyes, just bone sockets to hold the milky-dead orbs. The flash sends it back on its hind legs, a blur of mangled paws with translucent claws. The skin around the mouth is pulled taut, giving the creature a terrible smile.

It smells like beer and carrion. The creature runs away, silhouetted and bounding like a fox.

Shit!
Fired the replica. I shove the useless prop in the back of my jeans, and my other instrument of death infuses me with courage. I chase the creature.

I follow it up the hill, past the headstones and into the surrounding forest. Branches tear at my face as I chase the sound of crashing brush. I fall, and a rock opens up my jeans, my knee. I get up and run again. The sheriff’s revolver in my hand longs for revenge.

Owls hoot and warn me to turn back. Fuck those wise birds. I burst though a wall of shrubs into a clearing. My momentum carries me unbridled through the air. I trip on something soft. I land on my face. Pain blossoms from my nose and into my forehead.

I look up and stare into Bobby Yates’s eyes. One of the missing children. I reach out for him. Again, I touch a dead body. I scramble up on my feet and realize that the softness that I tripped over was actually a human face—hollow and gaping up at me.

Bobby’s eyes sit inside his lonely head. There are body parts littered everywhere in the clearing. I even recognize some of them. They’re the animals Brock massacred and left to rot on the lawn. Some of the body parts can’t be more than a couple weeks old. And then there are some older bones.

A low growl rises behind me. It’s my turn to run. I make a break for the trees. Thumping paws are right behind me. A claw takes a piece out of my calf. Adrenaline takes care of the pain. I jump into the darkness, feeling the blood pulse from the exposed muscle scraping my sock. My arms hit branch, and I wrap fingers around it, pulling my legs up. I feel a whoosh as the creature flies under me. Its laughter becomes a metallic scream. I try to pull my body up on the branch but accidentally squeeze the trigger of the gun instead. A bullet whizzes out into the night.

One bullet left.

I drop from the branch. The pain from my missing calf crumples my leg upon impact. The monster flies past me again. My right leg gives out. I reach back and feel my pants shredded at the hamstring, plus more blood. So much blood.

I lie down. The monster’s roar softens to a growl. It doesn’t need to announce its victory. My head rushes and eyes are everywhere, laughing at me. I can’t die without a fight. I can’t give up like I gave up on my brother.

I pick a set of eyes and fire the revolver at them. I don’t hear the
bang
, but there’s enough flash to see the wide mouth, the rows of bloodstained teeth, the skeleton eyes. There’s enough flash to see the bullet enter the jaw.

It falls to the ground. Its legs scramble for footing. I don’t let it. Despite the pain and the blood draining from my body, I pull myself up on my feet and stand over the writhing monster.

I stomp down on the creature’s face. It tries to bite my shoe. I’m too weak to do any real damage. Instead, I find a large rock.

The rock does the trick. I don’t stop until it’s wet. The creature stops moving.

Back in the clearing, I find the best-looking pile of bones and lie by them. Blood still rushes from my wounds, and my head is too heavy. The moonlight becomes unbearably bright. I shut my eyes against it. I hear approaching footsteps, and feel a presence loom over me, blocking the moon’s brightness on the back of my eyelids. A hand grabs mine and squeezes. I flinch, afraid to open my eyes. It doesn’t let go.

***

I wake up shivering, face to face with the hollow-eyed skull. I bolt upright and feel the blood loss instantly. The skeleton’s hand—still clinging to my own—breaks off when I jerk my arm back. It remains intact, bound together with moss and rotting roots. I run my other hand up my calf. The wound’s edges have hardened, making the parameter jagged and flaky, but the inside is deep and wet. White pain flashes through my head and flows through my body in waves. The nausea makes me throw up between my legs.

The skull stares up at me, gap-jawed and concerned. I push it away and it rolls back into its own ribcage. I start the endless trek down the hill toward the car. I take the skeleton hand with me—its bony fingers interlocking with mine make me feel like I have company on this journey, make me feel less alone. The pain threatens to sedate me. I have to hold myself up against trees several times. By the time I pass the tombstones, the first slivers of morning line the horizon.

Still shivering, I take off my jacket to cover the seat of the car. I place the bones in the passenger seat. Early-morning frost blocks the window. I blast the defroster, sit in the car, and close my eyes. I go in and out of consciousness. When I wake up the windows are clear and I’m sweltering. I put the car into drive.

I pass the accident. No one’s been up here yet. The officer’s car remains upside down. Someone else will find it.

Headlights come up behind me. I slow down. A convertible pulls up next to me. The passengers are all well dressed gentlemen, each wearing a jacket and a scarf flapping in the wind. The driver and I make eye contact. He smiles, exposing two razor-sharp and abnormally large teeth. The others smile the same way. The driver hits the gas and the convertible speeds past me. My brother turns around and looks at me from the backseat. The road ahead opens up and drops into a fiery mouth. Every monster imaginable waits down there—all the ghouls, skeletons, werewolves, zombies, and vampires wait in the flames. I follow my brother’s car down and everyone cheers at our arrival.

Warm colors sharpen as the focus reveals an image of an empty chair. Then from offscreen, a boy emerges and sits in it. You recognize this boy because he looks like me.

After fidgeting, he speaks.

Boy: My favorite scary movie of all time is John Carpenter’s
The Thing.
Not only is Kurt Russell a badass in it, but it has some of the most gruesome special effects in movie history. But that’s not what makes it an effective movie. It’s the cold and the isolation. The feeling of loneliness, it’s hard to pull off in film.

At 00:10:14 the image cuts to an over-exposed shot of the park. For a couple of seconds it looks like all the people are lit up with nuclear light, playing games in atomic fallout. The frame shakes while the exposure changes. The grass and sky return to their natural hue; people look safe from skin-burning radiation. Children offscreen laugh and shout; some of them scream…

Ally stands at the door in a black hoodie and pajama bottoms. She holds a plastic grocery bag at her waist with both hands.

“Can I come in?” She bites her lip.

I nod and wave her over. I can’t do much more than whisper. She inspects my IV and flicks the bag holding the medicine.

“Stop it,” I say.

“I saw your parents on the way out. They looked good.”

“Yeah, they’re all right.”

“Were they mad?”

“Not yet.” I pause and hallucinate little red hearts dancing around her face. “It was an old car anyway. I think they were just happy that I’m not dead.”

“They’re calling you a hero,” she says.

“Who?”

“The news and stuff.”

“For what?”

“You know, finding the kids”

“Psh, I’m no hero,” I say, but my modesty is betrayed by burning cheeks.

“That’s what I said.” Her smile stretches until her eyes are nearly closed. She takes my hand in hers, and I let myself sink into the comfortable bed, deeper and deeper. I feel her hand tighten and I emerge from the fog. “So, what’d you tell them?” she asks.