Fishing in Brains for an Eye with Teeth (Thirteen Tales of Terror) (26 page)

As an answer, Kyle took off his baseball cap and turned around to show Wendell the back of his head.

The old man gasped.

Kyle suddenly suspected, “
You’ve
seen Injun Joe too!  Haven’t you?”

A flicker of pain crossed Wendell’s face and he gasped even harder for air.  Finally, he nodded.

“What?”  Kyle couldn’t believe it.  “When?”

Suddenly Wendell was shouting, with far more volume than Kyle would ever imagine he could muster. “I told you the story!  I warned you all!  I told you the goddamn story time and again!  Don’t you
remember
?”

Kyle was startled by Wendell’s vehemence and had trouble piecing together what he was saying.  “But that was—”

“What?”  Wendell held his own chest, shouting, “Just a
story
?”

“Yeah.”  Kyle was starting to feel some anger himself.  “That story in the 1960s?  You said Everybody Died.  I remember
that
part very well.  You always said five boys went into the forest but none came out!”

Wendell threw back his head, gasping.  He looked as if he was in distress.  He panted so hard, Kyle became concerned.  “Should I get a nurse or something?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Wendell shouted, “YES!”

For the next couple of minutes, Kyle listened to Wendell pant.  Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.  “You always told that story to entertain us, for God’s sake.  I remember you telling it at
Halloween
time.  Yeah, you said it was
real
but. . . .”  He stopped, not finishing the thought.

Wendell finished it for him.  “But you never believed me!”

Miserable, Kyle said nothing.

“No, I
didn’t
tell you I was one of the five who went into Bountiful Woods back in 1966.  But if I had… would you have believed me?” 

Wendell’s cheeks were growing red with anger.  “If I
had
told you I personally witnessed a devil from hell ripping apart my four best friends right before my eyes, if I
had
told
that
story, would you have believed me
then
?”

Kyle didn’t say anything.

Wendell rolled his wheelchair a little closer to Kyle, his eyes bulging, as he demanded to know, “
Would you have
?”

Kyle had a totally new perspective on all this.  After days of dealing with everyone’s disbelief—even his
family’s—
he had to honestly admit, “No.”  He sighed.  “I wouldn’t have.”

“But you believe me now, don’tcha?”

Kyle felt tears welling up in his eyes.  He nodded.

Wendell wrung his old hands.  To Kyle the elderly man’s fingers looked so brittle he was afraid one may tear the other one off (which gave him a chill as he remembered Tom’s hand becoming a tomahawk).

Swallowing hard, Kyle looked down at the cast on his broken right wrist.

Wendell gasped, “You want to know the real kick in the ass?  I
did
tell John.  I told him three years ago.  I told him the
entire
truth, including how I was actually
committed
by my parents.  When it happened back in ‘66, nobody believed
me
.  You hear me, son?  Nobody!”

Kyle said, “I hear ya.”

“But I told John. I did.” 

Wendell gasped so long and hard, Kyle said, “I believe you.”

“I told John even though I
wasn’t
worried.  I thought it was over.  I thought we’d seen the last of Injun Joe forever.”

Kyle frowned.  “Why did you think that?”

Wendell sighed.  “As best as I can tell, for about a-hunderd-twenty-years straight, Joe appeared once a generation, about every twenty— twenty-five years.  It happened in my grandfather’s generation, my great grandfather’s generation, even during my great great grandfather’s time.”  Wendell reached out a boney hand for Kyle, causing him to unconsciously recoil.  “You gotta understand!  I wasn’t that worried for my
grandson
in the
new Millennium
, for Pete’s sake!  I was worried about my
son
, back in the 1980s!”

“That’s why you never rebuilt the cabin after it was struck by lightning.”

Wendell’s eyes blazed with the fire of the past.  “That’s why
I
burned the cabin down myself.  It wasn’t struck by lightning.”

Kyle shook his head, suddenly very tired.  “Why didn’t you ever sell the land?”

“I thought about it.  Didn’t seem right, though, to pawn it off on someone who wouldn’t believe in Joe and might likely become another of his victims.”

Kyle shuddered.

Wendell began to cry, an awful thing to witness, since he required way more air than he seemed to be getting.

“I’m sorry,” said Kyle.  “I should go.”

“No!”  Wendell said.  “Wait!  Please.”  He wiped his face, drying his eyes.  “I’m sorry.”

Kyle squirmed.  He didn’t want to be here anymore.

After taking another moment to gasp and wheeze, Wendell asked Kyle, “Are you dreaming about him?  Do you dream about Joe?”

Kyle choked up again.  He nodded.

Wendell told him, “It’ll pass.”

Kyle was comforted by this, the most comforted he’d been since that night.  He suddenly felt a surge of powerful gratitude toward this old man.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Wendell said.

Now it was Kyle’s turn to lean closer.  “Please,” he begged.

“After you’ve looked Joe in the face— once you get past the nightmares caused by that— you’ll never be frightened by anything ever again.”  He smiled for the first time, a smile made perfect by dentures.  “Trust me on this.”

Kyle smiled wanly.  “I do.”

Wendell raised his hands, again looking anguished.  “I
hate
it about John.  I really
did
warn him, even though I didn’t think it was necessary! He wouldn’t believe me!”

Kyle nodded.  “I know.”

“You know what I think it was?” 

Kyle was confused, not only by what Wendell just said but by the shrewd look appearing on his face.  “Think
what
was?”

“
Joe
.  Do you know what I think
Joe
was?”

Kyle was still confused.  “A ghost.”

“That’s what I used to think but I’m not so sure any more.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve studied the history of this county, son.  The Delaware Indians— they called themselves the Lenape people— they
did
have a settlement on Bullet Lake but there’s a lot of controversy about whether or not they had a
burial
ground there.  Most of their settlements were on the
eastern
side of the lake, where Flagg City is today.  The western side of the lake . . . well . . .” he gasped for a while before finishing, “there’s at least one account of the Indians
shunning
the western side because they believed evil spirits dwelled there.”

Kyle knew Wendell had more to say but he had trouble waiting out the gasping spells.  He jumped in, asking, “So you’re saying Joe
isn’t
the ghost of a Delaw— a Lenape Indian chief?  Then what do
you
think he is?”

“
I
think maybe Joe is a white man’s nightmare.  Maybe even Joe Flagg’s nightmare.  You know who Joe Flagg was, don’tcha?”

“Yes.”  Kyle knew Joseph Flagg was the first white man to see Bullet Lake, the first white resident here.  He was credited with discovering the Hook River and most of what was present day Trinity County.

“
I
think, maybe . . . it was some
white man
who first found Bountiful Woods.  Something evil was sleeping there, something
malleable
.  It might have been a ghost . . . but then again, it might have been a
creature
.  Joe looked pretty solid to me.”  Wendell looked at Kyle, who nodded confirmation.  Wendell nodded back.  “In the early 1800s, people had cause to fear Indians.  I think some white man— some pioneer you might say— Hell, maybe it
was
Joe Flagg— maybe—”  He gasped for a bit, and Kyle thought he’d lost his thread, but then Wendell said, “I think some white man who was deathly afraid of Injuns met something wicked in Bountiful Woods. . . something that
became
his nightmare.”

“And roughly every twenty-five years, that nightmare reawakens.”

Wendell nodded.

Kyle amended himself, “Roughly every twenty-five
to forty-five
years, I should say.”

Grimacing, Wendell nodded.

“I should go.”

Looking pained, Wendell said, “I should let you.”

For a moment Kyle didn’t move, however.  He just sat there, thinking.

Wendell misinterpreted this action, apparently thinking Kyle was waiting for something more to be said.  The old man blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

Kyle shook his head, frowning.  He didn’t know if an apology was appropriate or not.  And so he said, “I’ll see you around, Mr. Womack.”

They both knew they’d never see each other again.

At the door, Wendell stopped him, calling his name. “Kyle?”

Kyle stopped, looking back.

Wendell said, “You didn’t shoot anything, did you?  The others— John and the other three— they all killed animals in Bountiful Woods, didn’t they?”

“Yeah.”  Kyle looked back.  “That’s why you survived back in the 60s, right?  You never killed anything either.”

Wendell laughed without humor, a horrible thing to hear.  “Not for lack of wanting to.  When my group found Bountiful Woods, I had a cast on my arm.  I’d broke it playing basketball.”  He nodded at the cast on Kyle’s arm.  “Kinda ironic, huh?”

“Yeah,” said Kyle, uncertain if it was or not.

Wendell insisted again, “I
warned
John.  I really did.”

Kyle sighed, feeling exhausted.  “I believe you.”

Kyle started to leave again, and then paused a second time when Wendell again called his name.

“What?”

“Why did he grab you?  That’s what happened, right?  Joe grabbed you.  Why?”

Kyle blurted out an answer without thinking. “Oh, I don’t know.  Probably because I threw a beer can in the lake and said, ‘Fuck you, Joe.’”

Kyle expected a laugh, or at least a snicker.  Even a shocked look would do.  Instead, Wendell just appeared sad as he said, “I’m certain that was it.” 

Kyle turned and heard, “Kyle?”

“What?” he snapped, turning around.

“Just one last question, son.”

“What?”

Gasps.

Waiting.

“If you have a boy, will you warn him?  Will you tell him the truth?  Will you tell your son
everything
that happened out there on Bullet Lake?”  Wendell’s voice broke up as he asked, “Will you?”

Kyle answered honestly, “I don’t know.”  And he bitterly thought,
It’s not
my
property/responsibility, old man.  It’s
yours
!

When Kyle left the nursing home, he drove straight to the nearest bar.  He was not twenty-one; he had no hope of being served but he proceeded anyway, feeling bold.  He sat down, ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey, and much to his surprise, he wasn’t carded.

After drinking a toast to each of his dead friends, Kyle Cain acted completely out of character.  Thinking of Drake Dupree, he approached the most attractive woman in the tavern and struck up a conversation.

Within an hour, he was telling her the Legend of Bullet Lake. 

He was curious how she’d react.

He told the story as if it was fiction but, by the end, he was pretty drunk and so into it, he admitted
he
was the one that left all his buddies behind and ran like the cowardly lion.

She didn’t believe him.

He took off his cap and showed her his head.

She squealed when she saw Joe’s mark.

They ended up spending the night together, at her apartment, having wild sex.  As Kyle fucked her on her balcony, he realized he had never felt more like Drake Dupree in his life.

The next morning, Kyle stood at the sink in the woman’s bathroom, looking at his ruffled hair in the mirror.

The woman appeared behind him, wrapping her arms around him, as she said, “So, tell me the truth.  How did you do it?”

“Do what?”

She ran her fingers through the back of his Beatle mop hair.  “This.  What?  Did you use bleach and a stencil or something?”

Kyle Cain’s hair was jet black until he met Injun Joe.

Where the Thing touched him, his hair had turned white.

There was a perfectly clear white handprint on his otherwise black head.

“Bleach?”  Kyle conceded.  He’d never tell anyone the truth again.  What happened beside Bullet Lake would forever be a secret that only he knew.

Sadly Kyle Cain realized that lying was a relief.  “Yeah,” he said.  “That’s it.  Bleach.”

 THE END

 Embarrassing Secret   

 ____________________

It was a creature of chaos.  It was a designer of disorder.  It was a purveyor of peril.  It was an instigator of insanity.  It was bad to the bone… but, like everything else, It still had to eat.

The monster walked like a man and talked like a man but It was actually an unnatural abomination clothed in the rough rags of normality.  It was gross abnormality at Its core.  It was a nightmare wearing a manly form.  Its face was handsome; Its humanity was never questioned; It was charismatic and amiable; but underneath the thin veneer of a gentleman was a thoroughly malevolent devil that could smell suffering from six miles away, like a shark scenting blood in its waters.

It hunted as a man but it fed like an extra-dimensional savage.  It ate in the ‘nude,’ shedding Its three-dimensional form for something less confining.  When anguish was ripe and agony abounded, the monster lost Itself to gluttony.  When disasters happened— the most terrible calamities— the stomach of a human being wasn’t
nearly
big enough to contain all the horrors.

Nightmares made the creature hungry.  Torture made It ravenous.  Whenever someone moaned in their sleep, it was like ringing a dinner bell.  Whenever someone screamed in pain, it was like dangling red meat in front of a starving tiger.