MicroHorror

Henry had expected to see their neighbor Chrissie still holed up in bed and incapacitated by her grief when he came to see her, but to his surprise, she met him at the door herself. “Henry! It’s so nice of you to drop by!” She was even dressed in a sunny yellow dress that seemed to go with her current disposition. He could not believe that just a few hours before the only thing she could do was wail about her husband (“That unfaithful jackass!”) and that woman (“That husband-stealing bitch!”), and her plans for the future (“I’m going to stay in this bed until I die!”).

“I see you’re fine now,” he said. He hesitated before he gave her the box that contained the chocolate cake his wife had baked, supposedly to help comfort her. She did not seem to need it now.

“Never better!” she said brightly as she took the cake box from his hands. “Oh, you just have to see what I bought today, Henry. I’m sure James will love it!”

With surprising energy she dragged him towards the living room. On a table in one corner of the room sat a small cage, hidden from the light that streamed in through the windows. Smiling, she nudged him toward it. He peered inside.

He let out the breath he did not know he was holding when he saw what it was. At first he thought it was nothing more than a ball of white fluff, but when it uncurled itself, he saw it seemed to be a sort of hamster; an entirely white one, except for its small pink ears. Its large, black-button eyes looked up at him with such an expression of utmost sweetness and love that he had to agree that the thing was the most adorable creature he had ever seen in his entire life.

“His name is Hammie,” Chrissie said. “Isn’t he the cutest thing?”

He decided to ignore the lack of imagination of the name, and went on smiling at the little hamster. “You bought this for James?” he said. “Then you’ve forgiven him?”

“I invited him and Miss Hope for dinner tonight, actually,” Chrissie said. Her smile widened. “Hey, would you like to try feeding Hammie?”

Something in her tone made him look up. There was a hard glint in her eyes as she stared at him up and down, her expression not unlike his wife’s while she eyed a slab of meat on display at the supermarket.

“I have to go,” he stammered. “Beth’s waiting for me, and–”

Henry looked at the animal in the cage, and saw that the sweet, adorable expression on its face had disappeared completely. It was replaced with a look similar to the one on Chrissie’s face now, but more intent, and… hungry.

“Oh, it won’t take long,” Chrissie said. She opened the latch on the cage. “We just need to let Hammie out of the cage, and then…”

Henry ran from the room as fast as his legs could take him, unable to stand the sight of Chrissie standing beside the open cage with a grin that split her face from ear to ear, and the hamster poised on top of its cage, baring its two front teeth, larger than any teeth he had ever seen on an animal before.

“Honey, a terrible thing happened next door!”

The next morning, Henry woke to the sound of his wife screaming. “James is dead,” she said, “and so is that woman, you know, Hope? They found the bodies this morning.

“Chrissie is nowhere to be found, too,” she went on without waiting for him to respond. “The police don’t know what happened, but they’re always useless. But it was terrible, really terrible!”

Henry still did not speak. He couldn’t.

“It seems James and that woman were both gnawed to death. It was the strangest thing. Hey, are you all right, honey? Why are you so pale? Honey? Honey?”

I suppose I first noticed something was wrong a couple of months after my return from Brazil. I’d been out there studying deforestation patterns and part of my remit was to visit the peoples living in the rain forest. While on one of these reccies, I was bitten.

The culprit slithered off too quickly for my guides to identify it and all they could do was give me catchall anti-venom and hope for the best. I had a mild fever for two days, but when that passed I thought nothing more of the incident.

It was Lindy who first noticed the change. She was stroking my back one night and felt a patch of plastic-feeling skin. You know what blokes are like, it didn’t hurt and no one could see it, so I happily ignored it.

Ten days later the skin on my arms and legs started to change too, became dry and stiff like leather. It was vanity I suppose, rather than fear for my health, that eventually propelled me to the doctor’s. She had seen nothing like it before, and I came home with a prescription for an emollient and instructions to return in two weeks if things were no better.

I actually went back to the doctor’s after just three days. It was on my face. I came away with cortisone cream and an urgent referral to Dermatology.

I’d stopped going into work by now, stopped going out at all if the truth be known, and was becoming seriously worried. Then Lindy got called away to look after her mother who’d had a small stroke. I was on my own.

Lindy would ring every night and I would tell her things were fine and not to worry. I did enough worrying for us both.

Every evening, once it was dark, I would sit in the back garden and get some fresh air into my lungs after a day indoors. It was during one of these evenings that a small mouse ran past me. I can’t explain why, but the thought of that little creature stayed with me until the following evening. This time, however, while I was sitting there, I was watching, waiting, listening for it. After an hour or so I became impatient and broke up some biscuits, scattering the crumbs around me. I stayed frozen until the moment it was within reach and then, almost instinctively, with a speed I didn’t know I possessed, I grabbed it and dropped it live into my mouth. It went down easily, no chewing needed. The following night I caught three more, but it wasn’t until the weekend that I got my first cat.

It sauntered along the path and I grasped its tail, lifting it high above my head. The thing yowled and spat and writhed while I lowered it into my mouth, the hinges of my jaw, for the first time, dislocating. The peristaltic waves of my gullet crushed the life out of the poor animal and propelled it into my stomach, while I spat the fur from my mouth. I catch a cat most nights now.

I still tell Lindy not to worry when she rings, but God knows what she’s going to be coming home to next week. My skin has turned to scales now and my nose has flattened, kind of blended into my face. But most worrying of all, yesterday I noticed that my arms and legs are not as long as they once were.

Was this Heaven?

Surely not.

And yet huge, diamond-encrusted gates towered over him.

“Maybe the Almighty approves of murder, after all,” he said.

“And maybe not.”

The voice startled him, but the appearance of the aberration that stepped through the gates was even more of a shock.

“So you think you’ve ‘gone to Heaven,’ do you?” the creature snarled, its voice akin to the roar of a blast furnace. Standing at least ten feet tall, it was green and covered in scales. The face was apelike, with a flattened nose, and yet a mane surrounded its head. Arms and legs like tree stumps, murderous talons protruding from its three-fingered hands.

“Who… what… are you?”

The creature glared down at him, its diamond-shaped eyes like lumps of coal.

“My name is not important, little man. Had you been standing at the gates of Heaven, the Archangel would have greeted you. But of course, you are a serial killer; that is why you are standing at the gates of Hell and facing me, the Anti-Angel. Jake Farley, you have come to a very warm place.”

Jake staggered backwards, but came up against an invisible wall.

“Please, I can explain.”

Hands on hips, the Anti-Angel towered over him.

“I’m sure you can. But I’ve heard every one of your lies, so allow me to save you the trouble.” And with a flourish, it produced a scroll out of thin air and unrolled it. “On March the seventh, 1982, you started a fire in a library that killed the librarian, a fifty-two-year-old widow called Martha Huff. You didn’t intend to kill her, but you were still seduced by the publicity. In 1984 you stole a rifle and opened fire on a crowd in a shopping mall. Three people died, one of them a child…”

Jake Farley bowed his head as the roll call went on. It was like being back in court.

“And finally, Lieutenant Frank Hutt of the NYPD, whom you gunned down in that final shoot-out.”

The Anti-Angel tossed the scroll and it vanished in a blast of fire. “Jake Farley, there is certainly a place in Hell for you!”

“Wait, please…”

The Anti-Angel pointed at him, fire shot from its fingers and Jake Farley burst into flames. “We believe in making the punishment fit the crime,” the Anti-Angel boomed as the serial killer writhed in agony on the ground.

The flames went out, but a second later bullets were tearing through his body, blood spurting from a dozen wounds.

“Thought you’d experienced it all in the electric chair, didn’t you? But that was just the beginning. Now you are going to experience everyone else’s death… over and over again. Oh, no, Jake, you have not ‘gone to Heaven.’”

Extending a taloned finger, the Demon sliced his victim open from throat to crotch. “And it’s true what they say, Jake,” it added, twirling a piece of intestine around its fingers. “You really are a long time dead.”

Sarah closed the documents and shut down her computer. She rubbed her bleary eyes and glanced at the clock. Her new job was much tougher than she had first expected.

Her messy breakup with James, her crazy boyfriend-turned-stalker, didn’t help things at her new job, either. Everyone thought she was paranoid, but they didn’t have to live with the late-night phone calls and threats. At least getting rid of him was a good decision, she thought to herself.

She looked around her desk, and her gaze strayed to the statuettes on her desk. They had been an impulse purchase after getting the new job, but they were like family to her. Toth, Prickly, Clyde, and Julius, 12-inch-tall gargoyle figurines, stood guard over her tiny domain at work. She liked to think of them as her friends, because she hadn’t known a single person when she started her new job. It was strange, she admitted to herself, but the purchase was the first fond memory she had of her new life.

Just as she was grabbing her purse to leave, the glass in the front office door shattered. She ducked behind her desk, punching “911” into her cell phone. Just as the connection was made, James’ familiar face peeked around the corner of the desk and grinned evilly. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her out of the space below her desk. He smashed her phone against the wall and then slammed her into her chair with teeth-rattling force.

Spittle flew as he screamed in her face, “We could have been happy! You ruined my life, and now I’m going to ruin yours!”

He slapped her in the face, splitting her lip.

“Trying to call for help? Nobody can help you this time! I’m going to make you sorry you ever left me!”

Sarah tried to speak, but her face was numb, and her mouth didn’t want to form the words.

He pulled out his switchblade and flipped it open, licking his lips.

Suddenly, a dark shape crossed her line of sight in a blur. She thought she was losing consciousness, but James turned toward the shape as well.

“What was that?”

As he turned away from her, she saw two more dark blurs slam into his back, knocking him to the floor. She felt a surge of joy. Someone had come to save her!

Suddenly, James screamed in agony.

The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was seeing something with wings settle on his chest and thinking to herself, “How did an animal get in the building?”

Sarah woke to a bright light, and she instinctually cringed.

“Shhh! It’s okay,” she heard a calm voice say.

She focused her eyes on the speaker and saw a female police officer kneeling over her.

“Are you okay?” the officer prodded.

“I think I’ll be okay. Can you help me up?”

“Sure, but take it slow, though.”

Suddenly fear gripped her, and she asked, “Where’s James?”

Something like nausea passed over the officer’s face. “That guy over there?” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “He mighta been James, but he ain’t anymore.”

Sarah relaxed, and the officer helped Sarah gently to her feet.

She looked toward where James fell, and she cried out in horror. His head was gone. There were cuts and bloody holes all over his body, and his head was gone!

She turned to her desk, trying to will the bile back into her stomach.

The police officer said, “I don’t know what happened here, but this is the most vicious thing I’ve ever seen. There’s even blood on your desk.”

Sarah looked up, knowing what she would see, and yet she was unable to look away. There, on Julius’ teeth and claws, was the drying blood of her former boyfriend. She tried to be angry, sad, or hurt, but she knew that if not for the intervention of her “family,” she would never have lived through the night.

Early evening bleeds pink behind my parents’ house. Nate, my son, reaches for a squirming caterpillar with his fat fingers pinching open and shut like a pair of pink forceps. With a squeal of delight, he hoists the writhing thing from the sidewalk, holding it in front of his eyes for a closer examination.

“Boy, you’d better set that fella down.” Grandpa, face stretched like taffy and wrinkled as a three-hour swim, leans forward in his lawn chair. “God’s creatures don’t need none of us poking around, givin’ them hell. It ain’t right.”

“He’s only five, Dad.” I smile at Nate; he drops the caterpillar and scampers off toward the chipped door over Grandpa’s root cellar.

With a cough, Grandpa turns to me, smashes his face, and huffs. “No matter. Rules are rules, boy.” His arms fold across his chest.

Katie, my wife, turns to me, eyebrows extending as if in a question. I grin and shake my head. Dad’s losing it, I mouth. She rises, takes my empty glass, and starts for the house.

“Want anything?” she asks Grandpa before scooting inside. He shakes his head.

We sit in silence for a few minutes, enjoying the rising rhythm of the cicadas in their nightly dance. Nate hops on the cellar door with a hollow thump, and Grandpa shrugs his shoulders and straightens in his chair.

“You remember that boy from down the street?” he asks with his gaze on a bit of purple sky. “That little bastard that always tore legs off them grasshoppers?”

My brow furrows, remembering. “Yeah. Yeah… his name was Wilkins or something. He was a mean kid. I remember when he cut the whiskers off Susie Ramberg’s kittens.” The sky works into a rich, bloody burgundy. “Whatever happened to him? Did they move or something?”

Grandpa chuckles at some private joke.

Just then, Nate hops off the cellar door, stumbling backward while his face drops all its color. He glances at me, eyes like billiard balls, wondering if I heard it, too–the sound like rattling chains and a low moan, muffled by the cellar door.

My stomach flops. “Dad…”

The door shakes, like something heavy ramming against the other side. Another moan, longer, more mournful. I can almost hear a human voice trying to form words. Nate runs behind my chair and hides.

“You just might want to keep yer boy away from that cellar, is all.” Grandpa turns to me, smiling with a face full of broken teeth and seventy years of tobacco stains. “That Wilkins boy was never a creature of God, anyhow.”

You must trust me. I have one piece of advice and you must follow it without question: you must stop reading this and go straight to the last paragraph. Do so without reading any other paragraphs, and do it now. Please, trust me.

What happens next is entirely your fault. You failed the test and now you’re in danger. I didn’t write this. They made me write it. It’s my fingers on the keyboard, that’s all, and your eyes on these words. Whatever happens, do not look away from these words. Keep reading until I tell you otherwise. And when I tell you otherwise, do exactly as I say. For if you do not read this exactly how I tell you to, you will die. Listen carefully. First, you must skip the paragraph that follows this one. Whatever you do, you must NEVER read the paragraph following this one. You must ignore it completely, casting your eyes down to the paragraph that follows it. Promise me. For the sake of those you hold dear. This is your only chance to redeem yourself for not trusting me earlier. Skip the paragraph following this one, and do so NOW.

The forbidden paragraph. You had to do it, didn’t you. They knew you would. Nothing you do now will make any difference. If there are people you love, call them. Tell them whatever people tell their loved ones when they know they’re about to die. Settle any scores. Make your final arrangements. For from this moment on, you will stay alive only as long as you can stay awake. The next time you fall asleep will be your last. They’re watching you. They’re listening to your thoughts. They’ll wait for you. And when you fall asleep, they’ll come for you. You should have trusted me.

If you skipped the paragraph above, you’ve done well. But your troubles are not over. For placing your trust in me at the second asking, you have given yourself a chance to live. This is what you need to know. They’re watching you. They’re listening to your thoughts. They’re waiting for you to make a mistake. When you do, they’ll come for you. To stay alive you must draw blood. Today, tomorrow, and every day. You must draw blood from someone you love. A drop, that’s all, and place it on your tongue. That’s what they want. That’s what they need. They’re inside you right now. And they’re waiting. If between waking up and falling asleep you fail to deliver the blood of a loved one, you will never wake up again. Follow this advice. And never, never go back and read the forbidden paragraph. Trust me.

If you followed my advice in the first paragraph, well done. You can stop reading now. But never, never be tempted to come back and read the paragraphs you skipped. You must trust me. And please, wish me luck. I’m tired. So tired, you just can’t imagine.

Daniel Stokes promised himself never to go back to prison. He’d learned his lesson. His time had been well spent. He’d taught himself not to make the same mistakes twice.

At home, his wife of ten years had grown grossly obese. He frowned whenever he looked at her. “Why’d you let yourself go?”

“Who cared if I did, Danny? Not you.”

”You should have cared, regardless of me.”

“That’s it in a nutshell, ain’t it? I didn’t care. You were gone and I gave up caring.”

“You knew I’d be back.”

“Like that mattered? What if you’d died in there? What difference would my looks have made then?” She blew out a stream of smoke.

“You shouldn’t smoke either. It ain’t healthy.”

“So you say. Maybe I’ll get one of them patches. You know the ones? They’ve got ‘em for everything now. Diet patches, stop smoking patches, birth control patches. Just about anything.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Maybe I will.”

Eventually, they settled into some sort of a life.

Daniel filled balloons at a party store all day and by the end of the first week, he just wanted to fill himself with helium and fly away. He dragged his tired body through the door each night, his wife sitting in the same chair, still in her pajamas.

“You ain’t dressed yet?”

“For what? I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“Don’t you ever do anything besides sit, eat, and smoke?”

“Why should I, Danny? What good is it? You went to prison for fraud, for stealin’. I can’t hold my head up for the shame. Better to sit at home.”

“I did it for you. To get you stuff.”

“That’s funny, Dan. Real funny.”

His footsteps, heavy on the stairs, led down into the dark pit of the basement. There, he felt at home, cold walls, dank smells, and scurrying creatures.

Daniel, king of his fortune.

A plan formed in his mind. Prison psychiatrists would call it desperation born out of life going nowhere. Daniel was on a dead end street, along with his marriage.

Soon, he came home from work and told his plan to his wife, chair-bound, housecoat-clad, flip flops on her feet.

“A friend told me about a business venture. I’m selling some of those patches you talked about.”

She tapped her ashes into an ashtray. “Imagine that. A legitimate job.”

“You wanna try one? It’s a diet patch.”

She ignored him, her attention on the soap opera on television.

Downstairs in his office, he drew detailed pictures of patches. If she became his guinea pig, he could finish sooner with initial research. He could finish many things, quicker.

Next morning, she called him from the bedroom.

“Okay, Danny. I’ll use your patches. Maybe we’ll have a life after all if you sell enough.”

He nodded and smiled secretly.

That night, Daniel worked turning out bundles of ten patches. On each, he dripped lethal drugs and dangerous herbals to end hunger in anyone who wore them. Then, he set them aside to dry. Patch instructions dutifully placed with each square placed into the cellophane.

“Wearer should lick each patch thoroughly until it is wet before placing on skin. A slight tingling or burning sensation can be expected.”

Prison taught him so much; most importantly that everyone followed instructions. They always did what the package said to do. His eyes glittered from the single bulb burning in ceiling. He carried his small arsenal of patches upstairs. His guinea pig was waiting.

I’m eating bacon and eggs on toast, and drip ketchup onto the plate like blood from a fresh wound. Cassie used to tell me off for playing with my food like this, but she doesn’t eat with me anymore. She was out late last night. I can hear her bumping around in the back room, moaning. She always moans first thing in the morning. It used to be about domestic stuff, cups left in the sink overnight, socks on the bedroom floor, toothpaste with the cap off. Now she moans for the sake of moaning, with no real idea why she does it.

After clearing the dishes, I check on Cassie. Her hair is wispy and hasn’t been brushed. Her skirt is dirty, her blouse ripped, and she’s wearing no shoes. Even from the doorway the smell of her breath is like snorting a decaying rat. She walks towards me with her arms open, like for a hug, and stops at the gate, salivating through the muzzle. The moaning gets louder. Jesus, Cassie, you’re not the woman I married.

When she died I thought she was gone forever. You do, don’t you. We’d planned her funeral down to the last detail and said our goodbyes. She looked half dead from the chemo. Of course, we didn’t understand what half dead meant back then. I was sort of pleased to see her when she came back. She looked like shit warmed up, and the funeral plans went out of the window, but at least she wasn’t lying rotting somewhere. She was just trying to tear me limb from limb and eat me.

I shit, shower, shave and get ready for the office. Frank will be around soon for a lift. First, I run the Hoover around the lounge. It’s the only time I get to not hear Cassie moaning. I’ve tried to retrain her, but it’s tough. I can wrap her fingers around the handle and get her to push the Hoover across the room, but her sense of direction is shot away and her concentration wanders. She soon shuffles round and starts coming for me, salivating, moaning, reaching out.

The stun gun has been on charge overnight. Green light. I fetch a blouse from upstairs, the flowery one she wore on her 40th birthday. I zap her, to remind her who’s the boss. She staggers back and lets out a long, loud moan. You have to be cruel to be kind. One mistake and I’d have to sever her spinal cord, and that really would be the end. I remove her torn blouse. She’s naked underneath, and her breasts are covered in saliva. She gnashes her teeth behind the muzzle. I have to work quickly. I’m running late so I leave yesterday’s skirt on her, push her feet into some comfortable shoes, then give her another good zap and remove the muzzle in one swift movement.

With the back door opened, I guide her outside, avoiding her sweeping arms. She keeps looking back at me so I have to shove her a little. She moans her appreciation and blinks for a moment in the sunlight, then she’s off, wobbling down the garden path as though she’s on board a ship, almost losing her balance.

Cassie bumps into Lorraine from three doors away, but there’s no recognition other than the fact that she’s not food. Doug and Sally, Greg, Saffron, Louise, they all head slowly down the beach road, arms wide, eyes empty, hoping there’ll be some tourists. And then I freeze. It’s Frank. Shuffling down the road. Half an arm missing. He moans as he wanders past, without looking at me.

Poor Frank, he must’ve gotten careless. There’s not many of us left down here now. It’ll soon be time to move on, but I can’t leave Cassie. Not yet. Not while she still needs me.

Daryl knew he couldn’t hang around much longer, not if he wanted to hit every house in town before midnight. Mischief night only came once a year and he wasn’t going to waste it sitting at home waiting for Billy. Not this year, not when he finally found the perfect spot to collect his ammo.

Reluctantly, Daryl decided to go it alone. He climbed the rusted fence and jumped down into the overgrown bramble of old man Johnson’s backyard. He crawled under the chicken wire surrounding the garden and smiled as the putrid stench of decaying vegetation assailed his nostrils.

With his sack filled to the brim with rotten tomatoes and peppers, Daryl turned to leave. He hesitated when he spotted a huge mushy brown cabbage, the perfect piece to complete his arsenal. It was way in the back, so he crawled deeper into the garden and reached his arm out as far as it would go, his fingers grasping at air. He turned his head to the side so he could stretch out a little further and let out a yelp when something cold and slimy grabbed hold of his arm.

Daryl frantically struggled with his attacker and was eventually able to yank his bleeding hand free. Filled with panic, he turned to run, blindly stumbling through the garden. He had almost made it to the fence when a sharp blow to the back of the head sent him sprawling to the ground.

Daryl awoke with a splitting headache, lying face down in the dirt. He tried to get up but discovered that his hands and feet were bound with plastic ties. He nervously looked around and recognized that he was once again in the cabbage patch.

Old man Johnson walked into Daryl’s field of vision holding a bloody shovel on his shoulder. “Sorry I had to hit you, son, but it looked like you just might get away”. He let out a cackle as Daryl struggled to free himself. When he finished laughing the old man knelt down next to Daryl and said, “I was beginning to fear that I wouldn’t be able to feed my cabbages the nourishment they need to get them through the harsh winter. But luckily you boys showed up.”

“What are you talking about?” Daryl asked, trying to make sense of the situation.

The old man smiled and turned to walk back to the house. He called out over his shoulder, “Take a look around you, boy, and you’ll be able to figure it out.”

Daryl struggled into a sitting position and looked around him, only now noticing the bleached bones that littered the ground. A soft whimper caught his attention. He craned his neck to look behind him and let out a blood-curdling scream.

Billy was tangled up in vines with several monstrous cabbages attached to him. Daryl was horrified to realize that the throbbing cabbages were alive and feeding on his friend. They were abnormally large with red tinted leaves and had giant mouths full of what looked to be jagged pieces of bone instead of teeth. But, to Daryl, the most disturbing feature was the cabbages’ pale blue eyes. Human eyes. He didn’t want to look but was mesmerized by the gruesome scene unfolding before him. He watched as the cabbages systematically moved from section to section until they sucked his friend dry, turning him into withered husk.

The largest cabbage turned and locked eyes with Daryl. It opened its cavernous mouth in a silent scream, dripping blood from its splintered teeth onto the ground below. The cabbage began to tremble as one of its vine legs snaked out and dug into the dirt, pulling its body forward. Another vine crept forward and after finding purchase in the earth, dragged the cabbage ahead a little further. This was followed by another vine and then another. Daryl watched helplessly as the cabbage methodically inched its way towards him, hunger blazing from deep within its beautiful blue eyes.

The general store was quiet, the air stale and dry. Dust eddied around the old screen door as it opened to admit a youngish man in a business suit.

Walter Gray squinted in the general store’s murky interior. As he moved back toward the groceries, his ears caught the strains of a conversation between an old man in a flannel shirt and the plump cashier.

“…swear, Peter’s come into town earlier every year. I can’t sleep for the noise at night.”

“Just ignore it, myself. I’m gettin’ on; figure it ain’t much longer before I leave with ’im. Life out here’s too hard.”

“Lyle! Don’t talk like that!”

Walter finished his shopping, not noticing as the conversation halted when he approached the counter. As the portly woman rang him up, he stood looking at a shadow box to the left of the counter. It contained several old photographs, labeled HISTORIC PREACHER’S RIDGE.

The old man spoke. “Passin’ through? Not much up here.”

“Ah, no. I rented a cabin a little up the valley. My wife and I, we’re on vacation.”

“Up the valley? That’s no place to spend a vacation. Animal attacks, lots of folks hurt last month. Tell ya what, I can put you up at my place for the night an’ you can head back tomorrow.”

“Thanks, but I’ll take my chances,” Walter said, unnerved by the old man–Preacher’s Ridge was a boomtown, one that had started dying almost as soon as the paint dried on it. Tourism was almost its sole revenue and scaring renters couldn’t help matters. They stood in silence until the woman gave Walter his receipt. He turned to go, but curiosity overcame him.

“I notice in your display there aren’t any Native American pieces,” he said to the cashier. She shrugged.

“Indians? Indians never settled Preacher’s Ridge, near as anyone can tell.” Autumn air gusted in as Walter pulled the door open.

The old man called after him. “Son, be sure an’ lock that cabin up tight. An’ look here–if you hear an echo you get out in a hurry, hear?”

Walter’s wife Christine was waiting in the car as he left the storefront. His mood had soured from the nonsensical warning, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her smile was contagious and soon Walter had put the old man out of his mind.

Exhausted from their long drive, they arrived at the cabin near sunset. A dedicated vacation home, it was built to grant a wide view of the valley. Once the couple had unpacked and eaten, however, darkness had fallen and Walter abandoned any hope of sightseeing until morning.

Christine retired early, tired from the road, while Walter stood washing dishes in front of the kitchen’s bay window. He bristled, suddenly uneasy. His eyes had to be tired from the road; he could have sworn–

No, there it was again. Out in the dark woods, a vague impression of the scrambling of disjointed, pale limbs. Walter could hear twigs snapping and pine needles shuffling.

Walter stood, frozen. Straining, he could discern more of the figure–a gaunt, stooped body, narrow shoulders, two dark eyes, a slack, black-lipped mouth…

Its head snapped toward the window. Walter’s hypnosis shattered into panic and he pulled the blinds. Something hit the side of the house.

“What the fucking hell?” he screamed.

Outside, a voice, stumbling and lilted. “…fucking hell, fucking hell.” The scrambling resumed, circling the house.

The conversation from the store suddenly crystallized.

“Peter’s come in–”

“Repeaters come into town earlier every year.” What the hell was this place? What had the native tribes known that kept them from settling here?

Christine. He had to get her out of here.

Walter ran to the bedroom. His wife lay asleep, covered by her large quilt.

“Christine, baby, we have to leave.” She didn’t move. Walter leaned closer.

“What did you say, sweetheart?”

“…say sweetheart say sweetheart–” Walter didn’t have time to scream.