MicroHorror

“Oh, my,” whispered the black-haired girl who had taken a seat beside Ricky. “That bully is going to beat you up something terrible. I heard he made Billy Johnson cry when they fought. Then he took Billy’s pants and made him walk home that way. I hope you’ve listened to your mother’s advice and put on clean underwear this morning.”

The girl’s name was Annette Spaglee. They were high-school freshmen now and had known each other for about two years.

“Go away, Annette,” Ricky said, his head down. “I’ve got enough trouble right now.”

Matt Trouten was a few tables away. Every time Ricky glanced up, Matt stuck a fist in his hand or ran a finger over his throat. Ricky had come into the library to hide out and think for a little while. Matt had showed up a few minutes ago.

“And you can’t tell on him,” Annette added. “Because that stepdaddy of yours might find out you backed down from a fight, and his pounding will be much worse than Matt’s.”

Ricky sighed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Annette giggled. “Okay. You don’t know that I can get you out of this.”

He studied her. She looked serious enough. “How?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” she answered. “Just agree to do something for me afterward.”

“What?”

“Just agree. I promise it won’t get you hurt or in trouble.”

He glanced over at Matt, who flexed his right bicep and gave it a little kiss.

He looked back at Annette and said, “Okay.”

With that, Annette got up. She walked around the tables and behind Matt. She pulled a short stick from inside her coat, swirled it, and then pointed it at him.

Matt looked as if he could sense something, but couldn’t understand it. By the time he turned to look at Annette, she had moved away and into the shelves of books.

Matt got up, and Ricky looked down, pretending not to know he was coming over. In his periphery, he saw Matt sit down beside him.

“Listen,” the giant kid said. “I don’t want to fight anymore. It’s stupid, really. So why don’t we just call it off.”

Ricky was speechless, so he just nodded.

Matt got up and gave Ricky a friendly slap on the back.

After Matt left the library, Annette came back to her seat. “That slap on the back looked like it hurt, but it’s the worst he’ll do to you today.” She held out a piece of paper.

“What is it?” Ricky asked.

“It’s Candace Samuels’s phone number. I want you to take her to the movies this weekend, buy her some popcorn, and be nice to her.”

Ricky cringed. “But Candace Samuels…”

“Has the biggest case of acne this side of the Mississippi,” Annette interrupted. “I know. But she’s a really nice girl, and you agreed to do it.” She grinned. “My mother’s a witch. She won’t teach me a lot of spells until I’m older. But, to keep me safe, she taught me how to remove aggression from males.” Annette moved closer, as if for dramatic effect. They were alone in the library, but she whispered anyway. “I got the aggression I took from him in my wand. My mother doesn’t know it, but I’ve figured out how to put that aggression in a new male.”

She leaned back in her chair and smiled. “I know where your stepdad works.”

Ricky sighed. “Give me the phone number.”

“So, what do you want to do now?” she asked, looking up at him with her sluttish smile.

This was all happening too fast, but a decision was needed.

Missy sat in the rented car with a gun in her lap. She watched the two of them come from the mall, holding hands, smiling. She spoke out loud, though they couldn’t hear her.

“Hello, Isaac and Tab. One year ago I found out about the arthritis. I took comfort in the two of you, my lover and my best friend. I told you what the doctor told me, that it would be chronic and crippling. You cried, got me drunk, then, when I was passed out, took comfort in each other.” She shook her head. “Looks like you’re still taking comfort in each other.”

She gripped the gun in the swollen and curled fingers of her right hand.

“Thank you, Vicodin, for granting me the ability to lift and carry this weapon for a short period of time.” She gulped. “I just hope you didn’t make me too stoned to aim it.”

When they were close, she got out of the car. She suddenly felt as if she were hit by a gale-force wind and was flying out of control.

Missy stumbled and then regained her balance. Somehow, she was walking toward the mall entrance. Her legs had shrunken, and she was wearing pink leggings. She looked up and saw a woman smiling at her.

“Hello, Missy. Time to talk about the rules of the cosmos as they apply to me.”

Again, she felt as if a strong wind hit her and was flying out of control.

Then she was staring at a piece of teriyaki chicken. Her hand was big and hairy. A guy in a Linkin Park T-shirt sat across from her. “I can only stay in this realm if I’m bonded to a spirit that harbors this realm.”

The wind wasn’t only outside. It hit the food court too.

Then she was in a movie theater, with a hand caressing her leg. She was fairly certain she had an erect penis. The girl causing it whispered.

“As long as I’m close to that spirit, we can hop into others who are a reasonable distance away.”

Someone nearby shushed her, and then the wind took her away.

Then she could see her reflection in the mirror. She was a middle-aged woman getting her hair done by a man with a poodle perm. He said, “By the rules of the cosmos, I can only stay with your permission.”

The wind came and she was standing behind a checkout counter. A woman holding a shirt said, “I decided to try you because you want out of your body.”

The wind came, and then she was in a coffee shop. The barista said, “If you so choose, we can hop from body to body for the next few centuries, but if you haven’t decided to keep me within the next minute, I’ll have to go away from you forever.”

The wind came, and she was back on the parking lot.

“So, what do you want to do now?” she asked, looking up at him with her sluttish smile.

This was all happening too fast, but a decision was needed.

Missy was in her ex-boyfriend’s body. She thought the spirit was in her ex-best-friend’s body, but then she saw her own body across the way. It was holding up her crinkly-fingered hands as if to ask what she wanted to do. She didn’t see the gun she had been carrying.

She looked back at the whorish face of one of her betrayers. She looked around and saw the parking lot was full of potential witnesses. She looked across the way and nodded at the spirit inside her body. That spirit nodded back and moved away. Missy reached out to Tab’s throat, and with big, healthy hands, began taking her revenge.

“There’s something weird on the platform,” said Sonny. The homeless man had a voice that made it seem like he was always gurgling a little bit when he spoke.

Freddie the bartender was locking up the bar. It had been a slow night, his tips a mere forty-five dollars.

“I don’t have any money to give you tonight, Sonny.”

“I don’t want any.”

Stunned, Freddie turned to look at Sonny. His usually dark face seemed pale.

“You didn’t come here for a handout tonight?”

“No, I just want someone else to see.”

Freddie thought about it. Sonny was extremely poor and a little strange, but he had never seemed crazy. Freddie’s curiosity got the best of him.

“All right. Lead the way.”

The bar was on a mountain. The platform Sonny was referring to was at the end of the mountain’s only road and overlooked the city. The quickest way there was by car, but he was certain letting Sonny in his car would stink up the upholstery for a week. They took the trail through the woods instead.

“They said something about a mushroom.”

Freddie laughed. “They were probably talking about magic mushrooms! You’re taking me to see a bunch of junkies. I’m going to have to cut you off. No more peanuts or spare change. No more whiskey on cold nights.”

“I don’t want any of those things anymore. Seeing what I saw changes everything.”

Freddie had no response for that, but he was more curious.

He was getting winded, though. He spent too much time in a closed environment, sucking in secondhand smoke, and the climb was pretty steep.

It was a little while later that he heard something.

“What is that?”

“It’s them talking to each other.”

“It sounds like they’re talking over radios.”

“They’re not. You’ll see”

The voices grew silent a few seconds before Freddie and Sonny came out of the woods and stopped in their tracks. Several shadowy figures stood at the end of the lit platform. They were human-shaped, but didn’t appear to have a solid form, and when they moved, they seemed to distort the air around them. They appeared to be looking at the city below.

“What are you?” Sonny asked. “Why have you come here?”

“It doesn’t really matter that much for you,” a woman’s voice said. It was hard to tell which one of the things the voice had come from.

Freddie was silent. All he could do is wonder what this was. Was it a dream? Was it a trick?

Sonny walked up and touched one. His hand went through, though, and when he pulled it back, the silhouette reshaped.

“You’re not even here,” Sonny said.

“No. We are not. Coming here in corporeal form would be impossible, not to mention dangerous. We just wanted to witness an alternative history.”

Sonny broke down crying.

Freddie moved closer. “You’re from the future?”

“No, not from the future, but a future. We are definitely not from your future. Now be quiet. We don’t want to be distracted. We want to witness the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?” Freddie asked.

None of them answered.

“The beginning of what?”

Sonny spoke through sobs. “They’re not junkies, and it’s not magic mushrooms they were talking about. They were talking about a mushroom cloud.”

Freddie stood there silent for a few seconds. He thought about what had been all over the news lately, about several of the world’s leaders bickering and making threats. He had thought the threats were idle, until now. He turned and moved back into the woods.

“Where are you going?” asked Sonny.

Freddie ignored him. He moved as quickly as he could. He was just going to go back to the bar, get in his car, go home, go to bed, and forget what had just happened. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

But he was still in the woods when he heard the civil service alarms come on.

“You’re not going to have our child believing in that crap, are you?” asked Becky, who was in bed with her hands over her distended stomach.

Jarvice was finished polishing the silver crucifix. He placed it on the bedside table and placed the rag in the drawer below. Each door of the house was also covered with a crucifix, but they were made of aspen, like the original cross.

“Believing in all the crap might save his life some day,” Jarvice responded. “You ever think of that?”

Becky sighed. “Of course I have, but I’ve also thought that believing in such things is what makes them real.”

He scoffed. “It doesn’t make them real or unreal. It just makes you see them better.”

Jarvice reached over and shut off the light. He thought he saw a silhouette in the window, but it went away fast enough that he was willing to admit to himself that it was probably an illusion.

There was light on his eyelids. Jarvice opened his eyes and saw a woman at the end of his bed, standing in a slight glow. Her hair was a rich dark and so were her eyes. Her skin was youthful and flawless. She was without a doubt the most majestic creature he’d ever seen.

“You’re my reward, aren’t you? I mean, you’re what I get for believing?”

She nodded and waved for him to come. Then she moved away from the bed and out the door.

“Of course,” he whispered, mostly to himself. “Not here with the nonbeliever.”

He moved into the hall, where she was waiting. She let him get close and planted a kiss on his lips. Her lips were soft and tasted like a fine wine. She moved away and waved for him to come. He followed her to the back door, which she went through. He opened the door and found her standing under the maple tree. She held out her arms, and he moved into her embrace. She let his tongue penetrate her lips and taste the inside of her mouth. It was incredibly sweet and hot, far more than what a mortal woman could offer.

She gently pushed him to arm’s length, which was fine with him; he wanted to look at her more.

She shook her head and then spoke. “My son told me what you said. You were right; belief doesn’t make anything more or less real. It merely affects perception. Your wife will never know what really happened.”

“You mean that I’ve kissed and embraced you?” Jarvice asked.

“No,” the woman replied with a smile. “I mean what my son did to her. You see, my dear, I’m merely a spiritual projection from a dead body. But my son is an aswang manananggal.”

Jarvice felt a burning anxiety rising in his stomach. “A what?”

The woman was still smiling. “He’s a kind of shape shifter. During the day, he’s a respected member of the community. During the night, he’s a floating head that searches for his food. I think that with your strong belief and perception, you might have killed him had I not led you away.” Her smile grew wicked, as if she were taunting him. “I think your wife might have been awoken by my light if she’d been able to sense it. She didn’t feel what he did. She’ll only experience the aftermath.”

Jarvice gripped her tight on her arms. “What did he do to her?” he hissed.

The woman suddenly became very old, her skin becoming gelatinous under his grip. “My son feeds on the unborn,” she said.

The old woman disappeared. He heard his wife scream.

“What’s wrong, hon?” Angie asked Hilliard.

His forehead was crinkled and his lips puckered, which was the look he got when something was amiss.

“I can’t find Mr. Troubleworthy. He didn’t come for dinner, and I looked all over the house.”

Mr. Troubleworthy was their twenty-five-pound cat.

“Did you look around outside?”

“No, but the only place open was the back door, and he would never go out that way. He can see the ocean from there, and you know how the waves freak him out.”

“Yeah, he really does have an excessive fear of water, even for a cat. But I’m going to look around outside anyway. I mean, as big as he his, how could he possibly have hidden that well inside?”

Hilliard’s face revealed intense anxiety. He hadn’t looked this bad when any of their three kids moved out, but that damn cat tended to follow him around the house all day long. How could he not be attached to it?

“Don’t worry. We’ll find him. Every one of our neighbors would recognize him and bring him back. He’ll be fine.”

She stepped out the back door and onto the deck. She turned as she shouted for the cat.

“Mr. Troubleworthy. Come here, kitty. Come on, boy.”

One of their neighbors, Karen Pantally, appeared on the beach and walked toward Angie.

“Hi, Karen. Have you seen our cat?”

“No,” Karen replied. The usually calm and graceful lady looked more fear-stricken than Hilliard. “I heard you yelling for him, but he’s not the only one missing. My cat is gone, and Telly’s looking for both of hers.”

“Huh?” Angie said. “That’s odd.”

Hilliard stepped onto the deck. Now, to go with the crinkled forehead and puckered lips, his face had grown ashen.

“What is it, hon?”

“Shh. Listen.”

“Listen to what?”

His throat croaked when he spoke again. “Listen to the ocean. The cats knew it was coming.”

She listened. She thought she could hear it. Then she thought she could see the giant wave coming. It came fast. In the last moments of her life she was slightly amused by the thought of what had driven Mr. Troubleworthy to face his fear of the relatively small waves that usually hit the beach.

Cars zoomed past on the highway, and Manner moved on the sidewalk, feeling empty. He hated the world and usually liked to focus inside himself, but he couldn’t do that today, couldn’t be inside right now, because he had done something very bad. He looked across the highway, at the trees, trying to feel some sense of being alive or at least a sense of peace, but he found nothing there. He looked ahead, at the cars pulling into business establishments, and found nothing there either.

Then she appeared out of thin air. They met on the sidewalk. He reached out to touch her arm, but his hand went through.

“I’m merely an image,” she said. “Let’s walk.”

They did walk, side by side.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said.

“Of course,” she responded. “I’ve taken my image from your mind, you know. I am your guardian angel.”

He laughed gently. “I’ve not seen you since I was a child, not even in dreams.”

“I’ve been with you the whole time, just not in the same way. I’ve tried to nudge you here and there by placing the thoughts you needed in your head, by affecting your conscience.”

“I’m not always good at listening to my conscience.”

“I know.”

They walked on. He wanted to look at her, but he was too ashamed. She had been with him all this time, watching him. He hated to think any being knew all that he had done.

“Why are you here now?” Manner asked.

“Because your path is compromised,” the angel responded.

“Compromised?”

“Yes, compromised. I took the word from your head. It is how you would describe it.”

“Oh.”

He thought of what compromised meant to him. It meant altered in a very negative way.

“Is there something I can do?” Manner asked.

“Yes,” the angel responded. “That’s why I’m here, to make sure you do it. Look directly ahead, and tell me what you see.”

He looked up the sidewalk. “I see a woman in a car, pulling out of the gas station lot.”

“Yes. Now really look at her.”

He did. The woman seemed focused on traffic at first, but then she seemed to notice him. She smiled and held her stare.

“She’s pretty and seems warm,” Manner said. “Is she here to help me?”

“Yes, but she does not know it. Keep looking at her. Really focus.”

He did. She continued to look back at him. He liked what his guardian angel was showing him. He felt a slight sense of hope.

“Keep focusing on her,” she said.

He was getting closer. The woman rolled down her window.

“Keep focusing on her,” said the angel. “She’ll focus on you. Neither of you will notice the truck.”

He did notice the truck, but it was too late. Apparently, its driver didn’t notice him. Manner was hit and taken under the vehicle.

The next thing he knew he was standing on the sidewalk next to his guardian angel again. The woman in the car was screaming. The truck screeched to a stop. The sounds were dulled, though.

“Your path was compromised,” his angel said. “It was the only way to help you.”

“But the girl?”

“Just a distracter. All the paths from what you had become led to bad places. You’re much better off now.”

“Why does this place exist?” asked Jacob through the night.

“You will see,” replied his grandpa.

The lighthouse beam illuminated the beach and a patch of the ocean with green light.

“There’s no dock. There’s not even a village on this island. Why would a ship come here?”

“Hush and watch!”

“I won’t! Who are you to tell me what to do? I’ve never even known you. You just show up at our house and my parents so willingly…”

“Look now!”

Jacob looked to where Grandpa pointed. In the ocean, not far from the shore, stood a man. The man inspected himself then turned to them. He hurried through the water.

Grandpa left the lighthouse porch. Jacob followed. They met the man on the beach. He was clothed only in raggedy shorts and his skin was crinkled from the water. He spoke with the excitement of a child.

“I’ve been roaming over the sea. I saw your light and was attracted to it. I found this body. It’s been so long. Do you have food so that I might taste again? Do you have drink, anything at all?”

“Yes. It’s all inside,” Grandpa said. He knelt in the sand, pulled a key ring from his pocket and unshackled the man’s leg. Jacob had just noticed the shackle. Its chain went into the ocean.

Grandpa stood and said, “Come.”

The man didn’t hesitate to follow Grandpa. They all moved to the lighthouse door, where Grandpa used another key.

The man looked at Jacob. “I can’t believe this. Alive again. I won’t waste it this time. This time, I will truly live.”

Grandpa opened the door. “Inside are dry clothes. I will fetch you something to eat.”

The man walked inside. Grandpa shut the door and locked it.

Terrible screams came from inside, causing Jacob to shake with horror. They were gone in a few seconds, and the light went out.

“So many screams,” Jacob said.

“Yes, one added every night.”

“So tortured.”

“Yes, and trapped forever.”

There was suddenly a glow. This time, it wasn’t from the lighthouse, though. Grandpa had lit a lamp. He unlocked and opened the lighthouse door, set the lamp and his key ring on the porch, went into the lighthouse and pulled out the body of the man.

“Is he dead?”

Grandpa smirked. “Every night. Take the lamp, so you can see.”

Jacob hesitated, got the lamp and followed Grandpa as he dragged the man across the sand. Grandpa replaced the shackle on the man’s ankle.

“There’s no need to take him out; the tide will do that part of the work.”

Jacob gasped at what he felt. “Grandpa! There’s something binding my leg too!”

“Yes. You can’t see it, but you can feel it’s there. It will go once you know you can’t escape anyway. The light will come on tomorrow. You know what to do.”

With that, Grandpa moved down the shore.

“Wait! I don’t want to!”

Grandpa laughed. “Who would? A woman will happen upon the island one day. She will feel sorry for you. I suggest you accept her hospitality. You’ll visit her grandchild when he’s of age. The keys are on the porch.”

“What if I don’t do it? I can’t leave, but I can refuse to cooperate.”

Grandpa laughed again. “Then the lighthouse will take your soul next.”

“Where are we going?” asked Janice.

“Just for a walk,” Isaac replied.

“No, you would never ask me for a walk unless you had an ulterior motive.”

“You’re right. We’re going for a walk to save lives.”

Janice sighed. “Just like a liberal. Give vague answers to simple questions.”

“You’re right. I am being vague. But I’m not really a liberal or a conservative. I more go where I’m led.”

Janice gave up. She knew he’d just keep being silly, and if she encouraged him to continue speaking, he might even become cryptic. For a while, she just walked along Highway 20 with him and his stupid beagle. Then something occurred to her.

“I got it. We’re walking here because you want me to suck in the emissions from the cars and admit it’s a bad thing.”

“Nope,” Isaac replied. “Just saving lives.”

Janice didn’t know why she tried. “Whatever,” she said. “But we’re not far from downtown. I want a drink when we get there. We can even go to one of those yuppie, liberal places that let bring your dog in.”

Just then, his beagle went off the sidewalk, into the grass of someone’s yard, and took a dump. Isaac extracted a bag from the leash holder.

The house they were in front of, like most the houses on the Highway 20, looked decrepit enough to be condemned, but by the old car in the driveway, it wasn’t.

“Just leave it,” she said. “I’m sure these people won’t mind a little more filth.”

“No way. Bad karma. Hold this.”

He handed her the leash holder, and she took it. She turned away, toward the road, while he did the disgusting. She was surprised when the dog she was holding darted into the road. She tried to pull him back, but only succeeded in stopping him right in the middle of the lane. A Volkswagen Bug was coming right at the stupid dog. The Bug swerved and came off the road. Janice didn’t have time to get out of the way.

Isaac looked down at the mangled body that obviously had no more life. Down the road, people were stopping. Someone was screaming. The dog, Diedric, came up to him.

Isaac looked down at the panting beagle and said, “I had no idea. I knew she was the daughter of a senator and had her own political ambitions. I knew she was to be an important person later on in her life. But when you said we were doing this to save lives, I thought you meant we were going to educate her in some way.”

Isaac shook his head. “What an amazing web time is.”

“I’m so sorry!” someone was shouting. “I was trying to miss the dog.”

Isaac knew he had to stop speaking to the dog now, and he had to act sad.

Lance sat at the computer with his jaw dropped open.

“What?” asked Meg.

“Some person named Anock just donated thirty thousand dollars to the site.”

“Wow!”

She had to get up from the couch and see for herself. She looked at the e-mail and confirmed that someone had actually donated the massive amount of money to the site he’d set up as a resource for horror writers.

“I was going to have to close it, but with this, and with the other donations trickling in, my site will only be as mortal as I am.”

“Yeah,” Meg said. “It’s more than you even need.”

Lance was asleep when she snuck out of bed and went into the living room. She sat at the computer desk, fired up the ancient machine and went to Buy.com. She found the laptop she’d been looking at but unable to afford. She was about to start the ordering process, when she noticed the reflection in the monitor.She gasped. Her heart was fluttering.

“Lance.”

“No, not Lance. You can call us Anock. Lance is sleeping and having the wonderful dreams we’ve placed in his head. Shouldn’t you be sleeping too?”

She chanced a glance over her shoulder and then quickly looked back at the computer. In the short look, she’d seen several things in her living room. She thought one had a cape. Another had a pointed hat. One was big and hairy.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll just go to bed and go back to sleep.”

The reflection in the monitor grew. She wanted to scream. She wanted to alert Lance to the horror she was about to suffer, but the thing approaching her was in her head and wouldn’t let her move. She felt its icy hand touch her shoulder. It knelt down and whispered in her ear.

“Good, and when you wake up, thank him for providing support to those who feed belief and make us real. Thank him, because if he didn’t love you, we’d be fighting over which one of us got to feed on you.”

Its hand was suddenly gone from her shoulder. The reflection in the monitor was gone too. She looked behind her and saw no monsters had hung around. She shut the computer down and went back to bed, where she cuddled into his sleeping body.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The woodsman was nearing his home, but first he had a delivery to make. Driving down the dirt road, he looked into the woods, where there was so much life moving about, and he felt it, and it made him happy. When a flock of blackbirds flew over, he looked into the sky, where there was so much life, and he could feel it, and it made him happier. He even looked at the dirt of the road, and knew that below the surface dwelled life, and he could feel it, and he was even happier. He didn’t look into the bed of his pickup, where the human bodies were not alive, but he could feel them, sucking from his happiness.

He finally came to the place of his delivery and stopped his pickup on the road. He took the bodies, one by one, into the woods and laid them in a clearing. He knew the wolves were stalking him, because he could feel them, and they made him afraid. He left his offering in a pile. He returned to his truck. Now the wolves had bodies to feed on and would leave the life in his forest alone, and when he went to sleep tonight he would have good dreams, because he’d feel the living thanking him.