MicroHorror

My little brother had a small party for his ninth birthday. A few of his friends from school were there, eating cake and ice cream in the back yard. Dad hung a piñata from a tree branch and they hit it with a broomstick until it spilled candy onto the grass. I wasn’t invited.

I paid my little brother a visit late that night. “Hello, Danny,” I said.

He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. “Huh? Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Danny. Your big brother Tom.”

“I don’t have a brother!”

“Ssh! You’ll wake up Mom and Dad!”

“Where are you? I can’t see you.”

“I know, Danny. I’m talking inside your head. Nobody can hear me except you.”

“Huh?”

“I’m dead, Danny. I died before you were born. On my ninth birthday.”

“What happened?”

“We went to Splashdown, the big water park in Clarksville. It’s not there anymore; they closed it and tore it down. All of my friends were there. I went down the big slide, and into the pool at the bottom. My bathing suit got caught on something, I don’t know what, down there right at the end of the slide. I fell down, and I got trapped under the water. I tried to get up, but people kept coming down the slide and landing on me. I couldn’t stand up. I couldn’t breathe. Nobody came to help me–I guess they didn’t know I was in trouble. I drowned, and I died.”

“Wow… uh… did it hurt?”

“Yes, Danny. It hurt very much.”

“So… uh…”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t Mom and Dad ever tell me about you?”

“They wanted to move on. They blamed themselves, and even though they couldn’t admit it, they wanted to forget about me and have another kid. So they had you. It’s funny–you were born exactly one year after I died. We have the same birthday. For your ninth birthday, you got cake and ice cream and a piñata. For my ninth birthday, I died. That’s not fair.”

“What do you want? Why are you here?”

“Oh, Danny. I thought you’d be smarter than that. I’m here to get what I deserve. I want what’s rightfully mine.”

“Huh?”

I woke up the next morning, yawned, stretched and got out of bed. I went downstairs. Mom and Dad were in the kitchen. Mom smiled when she saw me.

“Good morning, Danny! How does it feel to be nine years old?”

I smiled back.

“Good morning, Mom. Good morning, Dad. I feel great. What’s for breakfast?”

Why won’t they leave me alone? It’s the same every day. Ken and Maurice, dressed in white, escort me to Dr. Johanson’s office. They tell jokes and laugh while I stumble down the hall feeling like I’m going to throw up.

Dr. Johanson’s nice. She and I chat about how I’m doing and why I’m here. Well, I do most of the talking. It’s all very serious, and that’s fine with me. Dr. Johanson tells me I must have experienced a trauma when I was a child that made me this way.

I tell her about the time Matthew Peters picked on me for not laughing at his jokes.

“Let’s see you do better,” Matthew says, crossing his arms on his chest. “Come on, Duh-wayne, make me laugh.” The girls standing near us giggle, the boys chant Duh-wayne, Duh-wayne. Mr. Grant, my Algebra teacher, smiles as he hands over his meal card to be punched.

I try to move away, but two boys block my path. My mouth is dry. I need something to drink. Water spots form on my shirt as the sweat soaks through. One of the boys notices and says milk is leaking from my tits. The kids laugh. Mr. Grant’s teeth make an appearance. My body starts shaking. I scream and attack Matthew, punching and kicking as hard as I can.

“That’s enough,” Dr. Johanson says. “You need to calm down.”

I look at Dr. Johanson. She’s pretty. I wonder if she’s an alien.

She asks me if I think that’s when my problem started. I don’t answer. I look out the window instead. She asks me again, and I say I don’t think so. It’s the first time in eight months I haven’t replied I don’t know.

The look on Dr. Johanson’s face changes. She leans forward. A gap forms between the buttons of her black blouse. More black shows, bruises, just like Mommy. Tell me what happened, she says.

I’m calm now. I know there won’t be any laughter.

“Please,” I hear myself say. “Please don’t hurt Mommy.” I watch as he rips her blouse, pushes up her skirt and yanks her underwear down. Mommy struggles underneath him. “Please, Daddy.” I grab his leg and try to pull him away, but he’s too strong. He carries me out of the room and closes the door. I sit outside, helpless, listening to Mommy cry.

My dad’s been away. Mommy told me he was in the Army. Once I heard Aunt Joyce ask when he was coming home from prison.

Daddy groans. I hear him say how good it was and how much he missed my mom and how she should be ready for more in a little while. And then he laughs.

The rain pounded a hollow drumbeat on the roof.

Justine closed her eyes again, knowing that sleep would not come.

If there had been anything else to do, she would have gotten up. But the electricity had been off for hours, and it was, after all, the dead of night. There was no reading to be done in this darkness, no phone, no internet.

She was shut off from the world.

Or at least, any part of it that she might have wanted to access.

Route 71 had been washed out by rain; that much she heard on the radio before the battery finally died out. And with that road gone, no one was getting through to return her power.

For fall, this was normal weather. Mudslides and sudden rain storms.

She sighed and turned over. There was a strange energy in the air. She felt it. Almost like the smell of ozone after lightning had cut through the air.

Listless, she rose from bed and made her way to the kitchen.

She was able to find a glass along with the stash of bourbon from the cupboard. This was not her usual drink, but on a night like this libations seemed in order.

She had the glass to her lips when it happened.

A lightning strike filled the windows in the living room, so blinding that it was for an instant as bright as day. The form of a man stood out, a black shape as malleable as a pool of tar.

Not outside the window. Inside.

His knee… or where his knee should have been was resting against the edge of her couch, as if he’d been sitting there just a moment before.

The glass shattered against the floor. Another lightning strike and this time thunder rattled the sky.

She blinked.

She didn’t see anything.

Stepping carefully, she tried to avoid the glass. She thought she’d gotten away from it cleanly when she felt a shard press deep into her tender flesh. Now her unwanted visitor was only one of her problems.

Hopping on one foot, she made it into the bathroom. She was able to remove the bit of glass. She bled for a while. Sitting on the edge of her bathtub, she held the towel over her foot, applying pressure for what seemed like a long time.

She listened to the sounds of the house.

Stillness. More rain drumming on the roof.

It had been years since she’d seen a ghost, and she was wondering, why now? Why tonight of all nights? Her gift was also a curse.

Clearly, there was nowhere to hide.

She hobbled into the bedroom, and sat there. She breathed in deep, trying to control her fear. And once she had calmed herself, he appeared.

The form came up from the ground, a shadow peeling itself from the floor to become whole. And once it was whole, it took a human form.

“It’s been a long time,” the man said, “since we’ve come to you.”

She shook her head. This spirit, she knew. He’d haunted her many times before. He called himself her Guide. “I hoped we wouldn’t see each other. What do you need me for?”

He sighed. “We’ve had this talk before, haven’t we? You want to know why the dead seek you out?”

She wanted to know a lot of things. Why she could go for months, even years without seeing the dead. But she said nothing. He knew her well enough to see what was in her eyes.

There were others coming now, forming from the ground as the Guide before them had. Their dead eyes beseeched her. Some outstretched their hands. Others groaned. Soon they would fill the room.

“Justine,” he said softly. “I know it’s not what you would have chosen. But you must realize why they come. They don’t like to be alone.”

I followed, wondering if she noticed me; she was a beauty and knew it. Her hair so black and legs long and thin, she had a perky walk and clutched her purse nervously like it contained something valuable. As she went down the escalator towards the ground floor I could see the perfect part in her hair.

I moved faster now, picking up speed; she slowed to look at some woolen scarves though winter was months away. The exit was in plain sight and I was still walking–not to raise any attention but picking up speed nonetheless.

Two meters away, I leaned forward and hit the needed tempo for the job. Shoulder and elbow an arrow I caught her hard and snatched with all my might, her wind gone and no sound as she fell. With blood humming in my ears I was passing through the exit, a blur to entering customers.

I moved it under my jacket, bringing the pace back to normal, safe zone within sight.

The alley was cramped and dark but I could still see the contents.

Pocketing the credits and feeling my pulse pick up I saw it, shiny and small. It was light to the touch. I slipped it in and the images came in a wash, children and men, her story, her soul.

My legs shake as I move out the other side of the alley, feeling saturated. A shake of the head and her life’s images drift away. I can’t help but grin.

She’d overslept by quite a bit. Trisha blamed her clock radio for that. It was playing static, and the white noise just hadn’t been enough to rouse her. She fiddled with the knobs, trying to figure out if it was broken, or if her station was just off the air. The dial traveled quite a ways through multiple stations. She thought that she should have picked up something by now, but the radio was still only giving static. Then it finally picked up a news show.

“…genetically altered strain of kudzu. Citizens are advised…” the newscaster was saying. Trisha flipped the radio off, satisfied that it still worked.

Idly, she wondered why it was so dark in her room this late in the day. She turned to the window. A subdued glow of green-tinted light managed to penetrate the wall of leaves pressed up against it. Trisha decided that the neighbor’s ancient willow must have finally tipped over in the night. She wasn’t terribly surprised to have slept through it. Trisha was one of those people who could sleep through anything.

Trisha lazily got dressed, ate her breakfast and prepared to venture out into the world. There was one small problem, though. Her front door wouldn’t open. After a couple of well placed rams loosened it, she was able to force the opening slowly wider. There was much ripping and the smell of abused foliage as the web of vines that had apparently been blocking her door gave way. She stepped out into another world.

An alien landscape stretched away in all directions, odd shapes all done in a single shade of green. Almost like one of the deep snows she’d seen in her youth, the landscape was reduced to suggestions of what lay beneath. Trisha was able to pick out some of the shapes. The rounded hump to her immediate right was her beloved Volkswagen beetle. A round plateau was the neighbor kid’s trampoline. A massive cone had once been a tall pine tree. The boxy mountains all around her were her neighbors’ houses.

She was also struck by how quiet the morning was. No birds sang, no traffic noise reached her, and the Johnsons’ dog hadn’t started its morning routine of barking madly at her. In fact, the only sound she could hear was an odd whining sound, like a clogged motor trying desperately to run. The sound seemed to be coming from an odd little hill across the street. The shape was familiar, something she’d seen before, but she couldn’t remember there ever being anything permanent in front of Mr. Craig’s house. Then something clicked in her mind and she realized that the shape was Mr. Craig, sitting atop his riding lawnmower. A lawnmower which had still been running when it had been overgrown.

For the first time that morning, it dawned on Trisha that she should be afraid. She tried to run, but found that she couldn’t move. The vines had silently entrapped half her body while she’d been musing. They tightened around her when she struggled, cutting off the circulation in her legs. She tried to claw the vines off of her hips, but they caught her hands and began to creep up her arms. Her last act was a reverberating scream that no one was around to hear. The vines grew into her open mouth, seeking the moisture. The next morning, Trisha didn’t worry about oversleeping.

A lone pigeon flew low by an odd little hill that had long since given up making mechanical sounds. Exhausted from trying to find a perch that didn’t try to snare it, the bird fell to the ground. There were a few brief moments of flapping, but afterward the world knew an unnatural peace of unbroken green.

The Slasher had been surprisingly easy to capture. He had been armed with nothing but the now famous knife, and had broken down crying and cooperated completely once it was out of his grip. The Slasher, terror of the entire state, sat weeping incoherently in the back of a squad car.

The knife itself rested in an evidence bag held by Officer Kyle Bowman. It was a ghastly-looking thing. The files identified it as a Mangbetu sickle, with a long curving blade and a handle made of ivory and carved ironwood. Feathers from some exotic bird had been tied to the pommel. The knife had obviously been cared for almost reverently. The blade was polished to a mirror finish, and not even the feathers showed the slightest stain of blood. It was almost beautiful, in a macabre kind of way.

Knives were really terrifying weapons when you got down to it. A scrape or even an animal claw mark was a good honest wound. A blunt weapon at least depended on the strength of the assailant. A knife, though; with almost no push behind the attack a sharp knife would cleave clean red lines and arcs, unnaturally even separations in the flesh welling with blo–His partner called to him. Kyle realized that he had been staring at the knife resting, so seemingly innocent, in its evidence bag. Staring at it for quite some time. He followed his partner back to the squad car, feeling oddly dazed.

Kyle would have preferred to go home and rest, but the Slasher had been a big case, and they wanted him to get his part of the paperwork done as soon as possible. As he signed one bit of bureaucratic nonsense after another, he began to become entranced with the way the pen cut the white surface of the paper, leaving neat black loops of letters behind.

Kyle awoke on his desk and realized several hours had passed. Since it was already evening he decided whatever paperwork he hadn’t finished before he’d fallen asleep could wait until tomorrow. Part of his mind wondered why his fellow officers had allowed him to sleep at the precinct, but something pushed the thought away before he could dwell on it. His feet slid in something wet as he walked out of the building, but he hardly noticed.

His wife was watching television when he got home. She turned to greet him, but suddenly started to scream. He tried to comfort her, but she just backed away, screaming and pointing at his hand. Kyle looked down at his hand, saw his wife’s reflection in the polished blade he carried, and immediately realized what was upsetting her. Her skin didn’t have nearly enough beautiful red lines and arcs. Well, he could fix that for her.

He was walking home to his wife and kids when he crossed the bridge. When he reached the other side of the bridge, he saw the Reaper. The Reaper’s black robes billowed and flowed in spite of the fact that no wind was blowing. And from these robes a skeletal hand appeared and beckoned him. He was so shocked by this that he pissed himself and ran back across the bridge. Exactly what the Reaper wanted. The bridge collapsed under his feet. He fell into the river and drowned like a rat.

You need to calm down. There is no need for this overreaction. You have been in this bedroom hundreds of times. The walls are the same blue patches that they were the last time, floor the same dingy old unstained wood, bedspread the same tiny squares sewn together. There is nothing new here. These walls have held you in childhood. Blood seeped into this floor from your skinned knees and sobs have resounded against these walls. Why are you still scared? Scared of what?

Is it the thought of another? The last roller coaster ride of hormones almost caused you to leap off the edge of reality. I was the only one there for you then and I am still here for you now. Anything you want to talk about is fine–the baby, the voices. Are the voices still bothering you? Are they still in there whispering to you? If they are then we can talk through them. It would probably be good to talk about them. Saying it out loud sometimes helps to clarify that they are not real. That the thoughts may sound crazy but that doesn’t mean you are. The voices can’t make you do anything; they can only suggest things. You don’t have to listen to them. You love your children and would never hurt them. The voices are only goading you on; they can’t move your hand. You still control your body–not even I can make you do anything you don’t want to. I am only trying to help, trying to make you see the difference between the voices and me. I am a part of you; they are trying to hurt you, trying to make you hurt your children. You don’t want to do that. They are safely asleep in their beds, dreaming of fanciful dances and wrapping themselves in the remembered warmth of your arms. The same arms that the voices now want to push down on their pale tiny throats. You don’t want to do it. You want to remember the deep intelligent blue of her eyes and the flowing creativity of her graceful hands. They have so many drawings to complete and multitudes of tests to attempt. There are jump ropes to leave tossed aside and chalk pictures to watch wash away. Their lives have just begun and you need to be there for them. You can be–you only need to listen to me and not the voices.

I told my husband I found a vampire in the baby’s room this morning. He didn’t believe me. Just a bat, he said. Chased it out the window, he said. Postpartum depression, he said. Just because I can see the bugs on the walls and he can’t. He’s been looking at me funny lately, but I know a vampire when I see one. Baby’s all right, though. He looks at me with his little red eyes, and when he nurses, he clamps down so hard with his sharp little teeth. “Hush, baby. Daddy’ll be home soon. Hush, baby, I’m hungry, too.”

Aunt Augusta’s wedding dress was peach and cream like her complexion. The high buttoned Edwardian-style collar was fastened by means of pearls and the tailored sleeves were similarly pinned close to her arms from elbow to wrist. A ruff of gossamer lace covered her delicate hands to the fingers and the bouquet of saffron and white lilies dropped like a frond of elderflowers from her left hand over the full skirt: cream clouds of satin, overlaid with a cobweb of the same lace peachy, seeded with pearls that danced like daisy chains on a spring day. The bodice betrayed no sign of breasts. It crumpled inwards where it should point out and the tiny waist required either the slenderest of figures or the boniest of corsets. Her right hand barely brushed the polished wood of the wrought iron of the banister. She had the appearance of an elegant phantom teetering on the brink of existence, standing tall at the top of the sweeping flight of stairs.

The place was just as I’d imagined it. I remembered the photograph well. But this was no photograph for I was here, in the hallway of what used to be our ancestral home and was now considered to be a very fine wedding venue. And she was there too, not quite in the flesh, as beneath that dress and veiled head, I saw only bone and I already knew there was no future in those hollow eyes. It struck me that I should run but my legs refused the call. The maître d’ beside me saw nothing at all and continued to talk about dates and times and guests. All at once the figure lurched and toppled, just as I’d been told she had all those years ago, breaking her neck, and a plume of ice-gray dust replaced her broken ghost upon the floor.

I was offered some water. I turned and fled.

I would marry Nick at the church of his choice, in the town hall, at the football ground if that’s what he wanted and I would never set foot in that house again. Such romantic notions are of no importance. I’d cancel that wedding dress too. I rushed home to his arms. I wouldn’t tell him where I’d been. It was a silly idea and I was cured. I would go straight in and upstairs and kiss him and tell him I loved him and that I was sorry for being such a silly, stubborn bitch.

The key turned in the lock but the door would not open. “Nick,” I shouted. “Nick?… Nick? What’s behind the door?”

“Nick?”