Journalstone's 2010 Warped Words for Twisted Minds (3 page)

Ted told them that his daughter, Pattie, started displaying similar symptoms of fatigue a week after her mom was able to return to work. Her kindergarten teacher had confided that the child would often fall asleep during story time, needing to be gently nudged awake. It began to get so frequent that Ted and his wife ended up taking her to a pediatrician, who informed them that the child was suffering from some sort of anemia.

“I came home early from a job interview to find my aunt in my daughter’s room, softly singing to her in what I guess was Welsh or something. Pattie was lying on her stomach deeply asleep, and I probably would’ve left them alone until I heard the sucking sound. It reminded me of the noise that tube makes when they place it in your mouth at the dentist. I called Edina but she wouldn’t answer for some reason, so I walked over to them-”

Ted looked green, as if he could feel an earlier meal slowly working its way back up.

“What’d you see?” Trish found herself asking, having been pulled into the man’s tale.

“Her hand was resting on Pattie’s arm, but it... wasn’t. It looked like Edina’s fingers had fused into her skin, and I could see these veins pulsing from my daughter into my aunt. I started shaking her to make her stop, and she quit singing, turning to look at me. And that’s when I almost fainted because she looked to be in her mid-fifties, like God had turned the clock back on her himself. She smiled at me and said it had to be done, that it was ‘part of the agreement’.”

“An ‘agreement’ between who?” Vaughn wondered.

“Do you know what a Plague Crone is? In that book I read on the Black Death, they were supposed to be creatures that rescued people from the disease as it spread throughout Europe. They’d keep an entire family safe from harm, but they demanded something in return. One – and sometimes two members – of the family would be given to the Plague Crone, who slowly sucked their life energy out of them. They were ancient old hags, but they started to look less like that the more they ingested human energy. Before they left, the Crone would also reward the surviving family members with gold.

“I don’t believe it,” Trish muttered, visibly uncomfortable. “So, you’re trying to tell me that you broke into our house and held my husband at knifepoint because of an old woman that pays families to let her suck up their relatives?”

“Lady, I don’t really give a shit what you believe at this point,” Ted sighed. “I just know what I saw that day was real. When she looked at me, it was like an invisible pair of arms grabbed me, forcing me down next to her on the bed. I couldn’t move, and I knew she was doing it! Pattie had just enough strength to turn toward me, and I could see her face looked like...something was caving it in from the inside! AND I COULDN’T DO ANYTHING TO STOP HER!”

Ted suddenly broke into ragged sobs, wiping his nose with one of his grimy sleeves. Vaughn, although knowing that this man had held a blade to his skin minutes ago, felt a pang of pity for this disoriented person.

“She said that a crone would attach itself to a family,” he continued, “often following them and their descendants for generations. Edina told me she came to America for the first time during the big Influenza Pandemic in 1918, holing up in a massive compound with my great granddad and his extended family as the flu wiped out millions. They renewed their pact with her once it was over, calling on her over the generations to come. There weren’t any more real pandemics as time went on, but members of my family sent for her when their money was scarce or times got really desperate. She became a member of the family, basically; the kind you hope never pays you a visit. After a while, my relatives stopped telling their kids what Aunt Edina really was, just mentioning that she was a generous person in times of a crisis.”

“Where was your wife during all of this?” Trish suddenly asked, standing close to Vaughn.

“She’d already taken Cheryl while I was out, placing what was left of her in the shed where I kept the firewood. My pager, which I kept on my belt, went off right then. For some reason, that seemed to have distracted her where whatever hold she had on me broke. Before she could start in again, I grabbed Pattie’s princess phone and smashed Edina in the head with it. She fell over, and I kept hitting her in the head until my arm got tired, noticing that what was running out of her wasn’t blood. It looked like...black pus or some sort of congealed fluid that couldn’t possibly come from a human being.

“Pattie was nothing more than a skeleton with skin stretched across it, my wife looking much the same when I worked up the courage to look in the shed. I knew that I didn’t have much time so I got my work tools from the basement, taking down a portion of the wall, and wrapping up my aunt’s body in garbage bags. It was tight in there, but I shoved her in as far as I could and then poured quick lyme over the body. Redoing the wall took awhile, but I got it where no one would notice it’d been disturbed.”

“Who called the police?” Vaughn asked. “Someone obviously did.”

“I did,” Ted shrugged. “I’d placed Cheryl and Pattie’s bodies in our bed, and then I downed a bottle of pills. The police were supposed to have gotten there after it was too late to revive me, but that didn’t exactly work out right. Naturally, they saw the condition of their bodies and just knew I’d done something terrible they couldn’t explain. Even if I hadn’t stopped talking by that point, there was no way I was gonna say anything about that awful thing I’d buried in the wall. They put me in that hospital, and I’d hoped that the history of what happened could keep anyone from buying this place. I guess that didn’t pan out too well, huh?”

“We didn’t know anything about it until Mrs. Bondelli told us.” Trish corrected. “And, whatever happened to Justine? The girl that was selling chocolate?”

Ted stared tiredly at her. “What do you think happened to her?”

Suddenly, he set the paring knife down on the ground. “I guess it just doesn’t matter anymore, really. She’s gone, and there isn’t shit any of us can do about it now. Can I use your bathroom? I’ve been needing to take a leak for about forever.”

Ted staggered on shaky legs up the stairs to the main bathroom, the door shutting softly. They stood there awkwardly for a moment, Trish turning to Vaughn.

“They’ll be here any moment now,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“The police,” Trish withdrawing her cell from her jeans pocket. “When you asked him a question earlier I managed to dial 911 and started tapping S-O-S in Morse code. They’ve probably been listening to most of our conversation.”

“Will you marry me?” Vaughn whispered, his eyes wide in amazement.

“We’re already married, honey,” Trish squeezed his hand briefly. “But, sure, why not.”

“How did you-”

“Girl Scouts.”

*  *  *

The police banged on the bathroom door twice, announcing themselves and ordering Ted to exit with his arms raised. When they finally burst in to find him dead, it wasn’t that much of a shock. The most horrid thing was that he’d ingested every last pill in their medicine cabinet, deeply slashing both his throat and wrists with one of Vaughn’s razors.

Pied Piper finally arrived the following day to repair their basement wall, informing them they’d be receiving a lifetime warranty against issues with the wall and pests in general. Vaughn and Trish figured that the company wanted to stay in their good graces at any costs. They chose not to ask them if Malik had ever shown up.

A week after Trish learned she was pregnant, Vaughn began his project of converting their gym room into a nursery. The treadmill had been the only item that’d required additional help, and he’d snagged Dale to cart it with him into the spacious attic where the new exercise room had been relocated.

“Make sure you keep using all of this shit. After the first kid is right about when this starts forming,” Dale joked and patted his own Buddha-like belly.

They spotted the crack in the ceiling above their bed shortly after making love late one Saturday morning.

“I told you that treadmill was too heavy to put up there,” Trish commented, laying her head on his chest.

“You did no such thing,” he snickered.

Reluctantly, he got up and threw on his boxers and sandals. “What kind of cheap-ass floor can’t even support a second-hand piece of exercise equipment?”

“Second-hand?” Trish protested. “Carmen said she brought that brand new.”

“Remind me later to talk about your sister and her mixed messages in sending out gifts.”

He retrieved his cell from the nightstand on his way out.

From the high attic window Vaughn could plainly see the small pile of bricks that lay atop the treadmill, the metal bent in around them. He hadn’t liked the idea of Trish using it while she was pregnant, but was sure that she’d be thoroughly upset when she saw the damage. The hole in the triangular ceiling above wasn’t anything like the former eyesore that Malik had left a month before in the basement. He wasn’t looking forward to making the call to initiate the repairs, but dialed Pied Piper in the hopes that their warranty included all of their walls. Being told by a recording that, due to the voicemail being full, he’d have to try his call again later Vaughn clicked off. He noticed the flashing icon of new messages, and he put the phone to his ear.

“You have one message,” the sexless voice informed him, and he hit ‘1’ to hear the call.

An icy jolt of pain suddenly seized his limbs, reminding him of the millisecond he’d touched a frayed wire on the family Christmas tree growing up. He could only move his head a few fractions.

Please, God, not a heart attack, he pleaded. Not with the kid on the way!

In his paralysis, he watched a short rain of still more bricks toppled on to the treadmill with a cloud of dust. When the body fell out atop everything else, it looked less like a corpse than it did a haphazardly-made scarecrow dressed in Malik’s dark jumpsuit. Somehow, he’d hit the speaker option before his motions froze.

“Hey, Vaughn,” Malik called him from the grave. “I told you I’d give you guys a ring if I ran into any problems. Well, remember that object I showed you on the sonogram’s screen? I need to go a little further into your wall than I estimated. Don’t worry, I’m not charging you any extra for this, and I’ll have everything patched up.”

Vaughn had no idea how Malik’s message had managed to still be in his phone, and he’d never spotted it. But, it hadn’t been the first time that a voicemail for him went into the wrong inbox.

“It’s probably nothing but me needing to get this equipment checked,” said the dead technician that now lay emaciated before him. “But that mass of whatever the hell it is...I could almost swear that it’s moving.”

Something that might’ve been a hand once appeared from the hole above just as Malik clicked off, the sexless voice stating that there were no further messages. The fingers were mummified, but Vaughn could make out the smudged diamond bracelet on its wrist as yet another brick fell away. There was a piece of black plastic, which could only be from the garbage bag Ted had used, caught in it.

When he saw the tendrils of gray hair emerging from the dark hole, Vaughn summoned everything within him to scream. The most he could manage was a wet mumble, his vocal cords like knotted cables. Edina, prying loose a cluster of plaster, finally had enough space to turn her dirt-encrusted face toward him. He wasn’t sure if the rodents had been responsible for gnawing away most of her face (before learning what she really was). So very little of her feature remained. The empty black sockets of her eyes, which had seen nearly every form of pestilence known to man, gazed down at him ravenously.

If she had any lips left, she’d probably start licking them right about now, Vaughn thought as the famished crone began lowering herself from out of the hole.

Emily Young peered out of her bedroom window into the darkness that lay just beyond the border of her back yard. Her body trembled with uncontrollable fear as she caught glimpses of the shadowy figures lurking in the thick air, creatures that were darker than the night itself. Their eyes were blacker than anything she had seen; two spots of emptiness nestled within more darkness.

Emily hated the night. She knew other girls that were afraid of the dark, as well, but not like she was. Her friends made her feel silly when they came over for slumber parties. Ten years old and still sleeping with a night-light? At least she wasn't one of those kids who wet the bed.

The hair on the back of Emily’s neck suddenly stood up, as if lightening were in the air. She could feel something watching her as she slowly turned her head. The hallway light had been turned off while she was looking out the window, and she hadn’t noticed. Those dark eyes, like tiny black holes that threatened to suck everything into their existence, peered out at her from the vast emptiness beyond her door. The creatures hissed at her, just a few feet from her bed. She quickly turned back to the window, shaken and terrified, but knowing they couldn’t enter her room so long as the light was on.

Emily's father Rob came into the bedroom. The sight of his daughter shaking as she stared out her window was still something to which he had yet to grow accustomed.

“Emily,” he said gently. “Come away from the window, sweetie.”

He watched with a breaking heart as his daughter turned to face him with her blue eyes misted with tears.

“It's okay, darling. You can sleep with the light on, and everything will be fine.”

“I want to light the candle, too,” She said, glancing around him into the hallway. “And, can we leave the hallway light on?”

Rob felt his patience wane.

“I've already explained to you that the candles are a fire hazard.”

“Please, Daddy. It's fine. Nothing is going to catch fire. I'm always very careful.”

Rob frowned. He knew that if he pushed this, a tantrum would ensue.

“Fine,” he stammered. “Light the damn candle.” He turned around and stomped out of the room, calling good night over his shoulder as he walked down the hall. How did parents deal with things like this? How did they keep it together? He knew it was common for kids to be afraid of the dark, but this was starting to get ridiculous.

He went into the kitchen and poured himself a shot of scotch. His wife Karen was at the sink, finishing up the dishes from dinner.

“How was Emily tonight?” she asked.

“The same as always,” he answered. “Actually, maybe even worse.”

He took a swallow and enjoyed the burn as it went down his throat. It was a moment of distraction from his agitation.

Karen sighed and wearily wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Blonde wisps of hair had fallen out of her ponytail to dangle in tiny curls around her face. Her blue eyes were tired, full of worry. Rob found the physical similarities between his wife and his daughter striking; pictures of Karen as a child were often confused for photos of Emily. They had the same creamy skin, the same spattering of freckles across the nose. Only the contrast in clothing gave the photos away.

“I think we need to send her to a psychologist, Rob. I can't stand watching her struggle all the time. Do you know she won't sleep over at her friends' houses anymore because they don't sleep with night-lights? This phobia of hers is going to ruin her social life. She only has three years left until she's in high school. Can you imagine how the kids are going to respond if she freaks out in class? The last time the power went out during school, she was in hysterics.”

Rob nodded. “Alright. I'll look into it tomorrow. I hate the thought of sending my kid to a psychologist, though. You know they're going to point fingers at us. They always do that. It's always the parents' fault somehow. And, I'm a good father. I wish she'd just grow up and snap out of it already.”

Karen walked over and put her arms around Rob. His Old Spice cologne smelled good, and she breathed it in deeply. So comforting, the familiar scents of her family. Sometimes when she was out shopping, she'd spray a bit of the cologne on her wrist if she came across a bottle. The smell would instantly conjure up feelings of being loved, of feeling safe.

“It's okay,” she whispered. “Everything is going to be okay. We'll get it figured out.”

For Emily, things were not okay. Ever since she was a little girl, she had seen creatures in the darkness, and she knew what those creatures were. She could hear their thoughts, like scratchy whispers inside her head. They were soul snatchers. Like vultures, they could kill their prey if they wanted to, but they preferred to lurk on the perimeter, hovering close by as death slowly presented itself.

The unsuspecting soul was simple to snatch as it emerged from a dead body, but the soul snatchers were lazy creatures; they didn't want to work very hard to steal the souls. Old people who died peacefully in their sleep were the easiest; their souls were at such peace that they were completely unaware of the evil crouching in the darkness, like a cat waiting to pounce on its prey. A soul that was emerging from a violent death was trickier, as its defenses were already up and bracing against an attack. The soul snatchers rarely went after these. Better to steal the souls of old people and of children. A child's soul was so innocent, so easy to entice and lure away.

Emily knew this, and it terrified her. She knew that the soul snatchers needed nourishment in order to survive, and they could only exist within the dark. Light would snuff out their essence as quickly as blowing out a candle flame.

During her younger years, Emily's natural instincts kicked in whenever she saw the soul snatchers, and she would look away, diverting her eyes quickly so that they didn't know she had seen them. This was when she believed in things like Santa Claus and unicorns and fairies; she was too innocent to know what was real and what was make believe.

However, as the years passed and the lie of Santa Claus was revealed, her belief in mystical creatures turned to disappointment. When discovering that these things only existed in storybooks, Emily became more and more alarmed that the soul snatchers didn't die away with all the other imaginary beings. She began to wonder about them, to stare at them rather than divert her eyes. And she began to notice that they were everywhere; they existed with the darkness, so that something as simple as turning off the light meant instantly being surrounded by them.

The soul snatchers at first didn't realize Emily could see them, as it was so rare to be seen by a human. But as Emily started to pay more attention to them, the soul snatchers noticed. They hated that she could see them. Her eyes were pinpoints of light that bore into their bodies like a burning knife. They began to stalk her, to torment her with their thoughts whenever she was close enough to listen. They sent her images of soul snatchers ripping apart her soul and sucking it piece by piece into their gaping mouths.

The hands on the clock slowly ticked towards the end of the school day. Just a few minutes left. Emily sat at her desk with her head resting on her arms. She was exhausted from so many sleepless nights. For a while, leaving the light on had been enough. Lately, though, she drifted off to sleep only to be confronted by vivid nightmares, and would wake up screaming several times throughout the night. A foggy memory of a whispered threat lingered in her ears each morning: “We'll get you in the darkness. We're waiting for you.”

The last time the electricity went out was a close call. She had been sitting in class, trying to figure out the math equation the teacher had written on the board. When everything went black, all the students screamed in startled excitement. Emily screamed, too, but her voice died away as an icy grip tightened on her throat. A static sound, like white noise, filled her head. She could barely breathe. And she could see the soul snatchers suddenly beside her. She stood up, knocking over her chair, and ran out of the classroom, down the hall, and out the front doors, all the while hearing the ragged breathing of the soul snatchers as they pursued and taunted her.

Out in the sunlight, Emily felt the icy grip vanish, and she began to scream with her recovered voice. Her teachers and classmates, along with the principal, had rushed outside to see what was happening. All they found was Emily, screaming unintelligibly about the darkness. Her parents were finally called to come pick her up. The whole thing horribly embarrassed Emily, but at least she had learned her lesson: from then on, she had a flashlight with her at all times and spare batteries, too.

A shrill ringing erupted over the loud speakers, and the students rose in practical unison, thrilled that another school day had come to an end. Emily grabbed her bag and was packing up her homework when her best friend, Sherrie, approached.

“Hey Em! My mom said it was okay to have a sleep over this weekend. Want to come over? I have Justin Bieber DVDs!” Sherrie squealed and clapped her hands together. “Ooh! And I can do your hair!”

Emily opened her mouth to reply, but Alicia, the queen bee of the 5th grade social scene, cut in. “Do you own a night-light, Sherrie?”

Sherrie shook her head no and looked down at the floor.

“Then, I believe Emily's answer is 'no'. Unless you don’t mind sleeping with the light on. Hmm, but then you still have the monsters that live under the bed. And, the boogieman in the closet. You should really spend more time in the kindergarten class, Sherrie, since you like to hang out with kids who act like 5 year olds.”

Alicia tossed her long, auburn hair over her shoulder and walked away with a smug grin.

Emily fought back the tears that threatened to emerge from behind her eyes. She wished she could be normal like everyone else, so she wouldn’t feel so alone.

Sherrie put her arm around Emily’s shoulders. “It’s okay, Em. We’ve been friends since kindergarten, and nothing is going to change that.”

Still stinging from Alicia’s words, Emily simply nodded.

“I’ll ask my parents about this weekend.”

She grabbed her bag and rushed out the door and into the hall, head down, cheeks burning with embarrassment.

Emily didn’t see Alicia and the other girls waiting by the janitor’s room, she was so engulfed in her thoughts, her eyes fixed on the floor. Suddenly, she felt a hand grab her arm and she was yanked inside the room. The sudden plunge into darkness was so unexpected that she didn’t react at first. Then she started to scream as the soul snatchers emerged all around her, whispering their scratchy threats in her ear. Her scream died as an icy, unseen hand tightened around her throat.

Someone next to Emily stifled a giggle. Emily kicked out hard with her foot and connected with soft flesh.

“Ouch!” a girl wailed.

Emily reached around and caught a handful of hair. She pulled as hard as she could.

The girl screamed.

“You’re going to rip out my hair!” Emily pulled harder. “Okay! I’ll turn on the light!”

The room flooded with light and Emily collapsed, sucking in huge gulps of air, tears streaming down her face, her body shaking uncontrollably.

Victoria, Alicia’s right-hand girl, stood glowering above Emily.

“You little psycho,” she spat. “It’s just the janitor’s closet. What are you afraid of? You really are crazy, aren’t you?”

She walked out of the room, rubbing her shin where Emily had kicked it.

After a few minutes, Emily slowly got up. She was still shaking and a little disoriented. That had been much, much too close. She touched her throat where the icy hands had squeezed. Her skin still felt cold.

Rob noticed that Emily was unusually quiet at dinner. His parent radar went up as he observed his daughter pushing her food around her plate, not really eating anything. Any questions he asked received short, one-word responses, and she kept her eyes lowered on her plate.

He had planned on telling her about the meeting he booked with the child psychologist, but now he couldn’t find the courage to bring it up. His little girl just seemed so fragile. She seemed like one of those porcelain dolls, beautiful and delicate, so easily breakable.

Karen spoke up for him. “Emily, honey?”

Emily remained silent, but gave a small nod.

Karen looked nervously at Rob and cleared her throat.

“Your father and I love you very much, and we are concerned about your fear of the dark.”

She saw her daughter wince, but she went on.

“We set up a meeting for you with someone we think might be able to help. Her name is Caroline Greenfield, and she works with children who have phobias. Your dad is going to pick you up from school on Friday and bring you to your first appointment. I think you’ll like her. She’s very nice.”

Emily sighed. “I don’t have a phobia,” she muttered. “You never listen to me.”

“Being afraid of the dark to the point where it affects your life is a phobia, Emily,” Rob said matter-of-factly. “It even has a name: nyctophobia.”

“Can I be excused?” Emily asked.

“No,” said Rob. “Eat your supper.”

“But I’m not hungry.”

“If I tell you to eat your supper, then you eat your supper. Do as I say,” Rob’s face flushed red as he felt his anger rising. “Do you always have to be so difficult?”

“Fine,” Emily said through clenched teeth.

Karen sat back in her chair, her heart aching as she watched the scene unfold between her husband and daughter. They used to be so close. For years, Emily was the perfect cliché of “daddy’s little girl.” She could climb onto his lap, bat her little eyelashes, and get anything she wanted. Rob had never even raised his voice at her, but Emily’s growing fear of the dark and erratic behavior had changed all of that.

Karen just wanted things to go back to the way they used to be. She really hoped that Caroline Greenfield could work some magic.

The car ride to Caroline’s office was excruciatingly quiet. Rob had tried to engage Emily in conversation, but she only stared out the window and sulked.