Post by Sicko on Jun 28, 2017 3:01:30 GMT -5
Summer nights have a kind of magic to them in the cul de sac.
The sweltering, triple digit heat of the day has died down to an overlying, warm haze. The sounds of neighbors at the communal pool at the end of the lane fills the air; lilting laughter of children, adults grunting as they play badminton or other party games or just sitting around in woven lawn chairs with their third cup of soda out of the cooler. The air is filled with musky, burning charcoal as the designated grill-master has heaped a pile of briquettes under the meat and sent huge puffs of smoke wafting along with the sizzle of preparation. As twilight comes along, lightning bugs curl in lazy arcs around the empty squares of lawn in front of each person's house as we scroll down the lane, away from the fenced in community area with it's grill, circular kiddie pool, and chairs and deck. Up the lane, to a familiar duplex, to a garage, where it's door is swung open wide, and a partially covered ice cream truck rests, hiding like a slumbering dragon, like a mythical beast. It seems most apt, because a more pertinent beast is sleeping now, well fed.
For now, yes.
We pan around in a shaky arc, taking in the garage. It's low lit, only a single buzzing bulb in a cage providing orange light on a work bench. Hacksaw, bolt cutters, shears, acytelene, an old dial radio tuned to a classics station, alighting on them one by one. The delighted shrieks of children in the pool reach into the garage, as Connor Dempsey (scoundrel kid that he is) has dunked Tiff Barrett's head under the chlorine, and she came splashing up with a wild laugh. The rest of the quiet neighborhood hummed. A thousand snatches of conversation reached here, and the fireflies flitted in circles around the open garage door. The oldies station was playing the old saw by Mitch and the Wheelers... "Devil With the Blue Dress On".
"Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress, devil with the blue dress on..."
"Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress, devil with the blue dress on..."
The hulking form, sitting so hunched over that his shoulders are rounded, and yet his bald head is still nearly brushing on the hanging cord with the caged lightbulb, heeds none of this. None of the sensory input or the magic of the summer evening has reached him... because he's ruminating on the darkness that has begun to take root. He bends over double, his tree trunk arms pulled in, as he is banging away at the keys to an old typewriter. Brak-brak-brak, one key at a time, reaching out and pecking them deliberately with one finger as if he has to fractionally pause and consider the next character.
There are newspaper clippings on the workbench, and tacked up roughly onto the 2x4 backboard. "HORROR DISCOVERED IN TUCSON HOUSE FIRE - 3 DEAD"
"MURDER UNDER THE BIG TOP"
"MODERN PROMETHEUS - GRUESOME 'FRANKENSTEIN' KILLINGS GO UNSOLVED"
Huffing lightly, he squeezes his eyes closed as he looks at some of these clippings, but then goes back to typing, the brak-brak-brak, flat retort of the typewriter filling the garage in fits and starts. Because there was magic in the air. Black magic.
Diary entry # 45
Its spreading more than I thought was possible. Mariah has given me everything she promised me and more. When she came to me in my last stay at Springvale I thought it was a fever dream; or more, the kind of visions that the prophets used to describe in the old testimant. She glowed like an angel. And the things she whispered in my ear. If you feed me pain she says then I will give you anything you want. So I hav been good at - doing that. But what I didnt realize when she said it was that it was a thing that was growing. Mariah is growing stronger. And now I am wandering where this is going to lead. For her I crushed the skull of the man who drove me out to buy the ice cream truck. For her I nerely broke the bones of Alice Starchild. For her I have asked for more competition. In her name. They give me other men who take pride in being crazy. Lunatic. Now it is Crazy Boy. Men like these see madness as a good thing. Something they wont to be. But it is something that they do not know how to pull off. For me crazy has never been something I wanted. My wish for Mariah was for me to be a man again. And I will, if I feed her enough. The more pain. The more agony. The more broken bones guts blood hate pain I spill. The more she will save me my angel will save me. So I will hurt them. These weak little men. Who think that they know what madness is. They have no idea.
He pauses, considering. His titanic balled up mitts stop over the keys, with his pointer fingers outstretched only to hover over a key. The night air is getting dark, and crickets have joined the symphonic orchestra of suburbia. He strains his ears, listening to some of the voices at the party.
These men do not see the beauty of what is happening. They do not see the brutal neccessity of what I have done so far and I do not expect them to unnerstand. I tore thru 5 of the best competitors in PCW on Trauma. I am the reason Kyle Shane is not a champion anymore. I broke the bones of one stupid little girl who ran her mouth too often about how "Dark" things had gotten and I took two of the strongest, and in many people's minds sickest individuals and delivered to them a beating no one can forget. Men like Tyrone Crazy Boy will not see this. They are not able to. Tyrone is focused on only getting his career out of a rut, a never ending cycle of him saying that this time he will get himself together and try. He does not understand what it means.
A pause, for reflecting.
Madness is not urrational nonsense. Madness is not, whatever random stupidity one idiot can throw at a wall. Mariah has shown me that madness is a black well, a cancerous agent that when introduced into a school, can turn all of the cells against each other. Madness is inflicting pain on every single level until it is screaming for it to relent. Madness is pushing back what Mariah calls the glammer of normalcy to expose what was really there hiding all along. Like the bright white paint on an old ice cream truck.
Another headline, this one before his time, catches the camera's attention over the giant's shoulder. A familiar truck is outlined in the blocky, dot-matrix photo, with the headline screaming in horrified outrage "HE KEPT THE BODY PARTS IN THE FREEZER"
He closes his eyes.
But I also stand here conflicted because the more I do this the more chance there is I will go back. Does she understand what she is putting me through. If I go back to Springvale or worse if I go back to Max I will be dulled. They will take my truck from me. They will take my face from me. They will even take her from me or keep me so full of drugs that I will not be able to speak to her I can only speak to her now through the wall because the plane is so thin but if I am in Max I cannot go back I CANNOT GO BACK but I have to make our connection stronger. I have to make her stronger. Consider how badly I am going to have to beat Tyrone Crazy Boy Smith how much pain I am going to have to put him through to satisfy her this time around. As weak as he is there is very little chance of him hurting me but besides his stupid name and pretending he is crazy he does not deserve the agony I will have to put him through, will he. But I also can't fail my love. It's the dubble-egged sword of my condition to have to do it this way but I can see no other choice. My need for her and my need to be a man might make me desparate. However I am a man in love.
He stops to consider those last words for a good long time.
But what I can't tell Mariah is about the doctor who
"Ephrain? Sweetie?" Her voice cuts through the gloom of the now completely dark garage. Nora Turner, housewife and neighbor, has input her gossipy, birdy personality and defiled the sanctity of his lair, and she doesn't see in the dim light of the bulb in the cage that a big hand goes to the tray of tools and selects a ballpeen hammer. Mariah is going to have a feast tonight. He grits his teeth. Uncurls his fingers. She hasn't seen him, still looking dumbly around her in the gloom. "Ephrain?"
An impatient, angry voice comes from around the side of the duplex, back towards the communal picnic area. "Nora willya come on out of there, leave that man alone, I tell you," it's his neighbor, George Turner, a man who has grown increasingly interested in the ice cream truck. He has been spotted glancing out of blinds at it, watching it from the corner of his eye as he comes out in the morning to get the newspaper. He is a man who is coiled so tight that he is just moments away from snapping like a spring. He is a man who, ever since he got a new neighbor that had some dark secrets hiding below the surface, had allowed obsession to start eating at him, and giving a test to the hypothesis of madness spreading like a cancer. Now he comes along to collect his wife. He grabs her by the crook of the elbow, so hard that she pinches her and makes her wince. Flush from drink at the cookout, and neither truly in their right minds, both of them are blind to how different they feel. Because magic is in the air.
"Let go of me, George, you've had too much to drink," she says, pulling her arm back, "And I want Ephrain to come to the party. Maybe he can invite Mariah over, it's been so long since she's gotten out of the house!"
She was so ditzy that she was making his head hurt. He wanted to pop her in the mouth. Actually, after two decades of marriage, George had never started having those feelings until just recently, but it was... like they had always been there... and he wanted to shut her up for backtalking him... and... what was he even over here for...?
Both of them look over as a rustle and a clank comes from inside the dark garage, and suddenly the shadows play over a rippling form. Two eyes open in the darkness, and a bald head swims out of the inky black, teeth gleaming ugly as a smile grows wide. "Howdy neighbors, I hope I'm not too late for the party... just had some work to do in the garage..."
George peers at the big man, eyes narrowing, but also feeling like an antelope that is a hair-trigger away from springing and bolting in the face of a predator. Those eyes seem to have a yellow patina and the teeth in that grin are impossibly wide. The big man looks like a nightmarish figure, incongruous and out of synch with the physical world, as if he comes from somewhere magical. He's holding, of all things, a silver, flat TV tray with a stack of popsicles on it, arranged in a semi-circle.
"I thought I'd do something nice for the kids..." the big man said, with an almost sincere, apologetic shrug. Nora gives him a look as if she's won over, and she squeezes his arm. "Aren't you just the sweetest man, Ephrain."
George is still looking into the blackness of the open garage door. The ice cream truck is there, with half a dropcloth over it. It's headlamps are nothing but milky sockets and it's paint is a vague suggestion of color in the gloom, but looking at it makes him want to tiptoe around it in case it should snap to life. Ephrain and his wife are going back towards the party. "George, are you coming?" Nora says, and she has such an attitude about her that he almost forgets his fugue in annoyance of her. He really can't stand her.
"And I was thinking, Ephrain, Bailey's youngest Mele has a birthday party over the summer, well wouldn't it be just delightful if you brought over an ice cream cake,"
The giant chuckles thickly, as they start retreating back towards the communal picnic fence, and the smell of barbecue on the grill and the laughter of children. He can be heard saying to Nora as he brings over his treats, "Did you know, ice cream cakes were a confection created in Victorian England, called bombes; made 'em of biscuits and cream topping, filled with fruit and vanilla ice cream..."
"Oh, you do say the most interesting things!" she laughed, a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
George couldn't take it anymore. A vein pulsed, beating against his temple, and it felt like some force was drawing him to look. The garage was sparsely lit... he tripped over thick cables and hoses, banged into a fire engine red tool cabinet. Metal tools crashed onto the floor so loudly that he knew anybody could have heard the sound in the garage. He cursed as he pulled himself up. Heart was leaping into his throat. He snapped his head around.
He knew that at any moment that grin was going to swim out of the dark, that massive monster's head would teleport in from the blackness and the grin would peel back from those teeth... "Hi, neighbor..." He gulped...
Not knowing why he was doing this, or what magnetism was calling him in to search through the garage and into the other side of the duplex on this muggy summer night... he yearned to go back... He yearned to get back to a lawn chair, by the pool, hearing Tim Alten bragging about his new grill and the heat index it could get up to as the sizzle of steak and smoke came to him... enjoying his summer... instead he was here, pulling the most stupid move a man could possibly ever think of. What was this madness that had infected him? Why couldn't he let this go? All of these thoughts and more flew through his mind. He felt like the blind men and the elephant in that damn old story as he felt along with his fingertips. He touched a metal tray carrying several tools, his hand played over the teeth of a saw, a tacky ballpeen hammer, an old fashioned radio with the dials lit up.
The oldies station was belting out a real classic, a real humdinger, Don Henley and Bernie Lendon leading the Eagles into "Witchy Woman".
George tripped again, and cursed this dark garage. If Nora could see him now... she'd think he was a God damn fool, stumbling around here in the dark, looking for dirt. Looking for something wrong with her poor, nice mister Ephrain, her sweetheart. Just thinking of his wife giggling, covering her mouth coquettishly and laughing with that big, sick freak was enough to propel him forward, into the blackness. The blackness which seemed to spread it's arms open wide, saying, yes, please, come to me.
"Raven hair and ruby lips... Sparks fly from her finger tips..."
"Echoed voices in the night... She's a restless spirit on an endless flight..."
Ah god, he thought, feeling forwards, all around him. His chest felt as tight as if he was having a heart attack. The vein in his temple was beating like a drum. The darkness felt thick, oppressive, dank, wrapping around him like velvet... and he felt tinges of blind panic creeping in, as he didn't know how deep into the garage he was...
"Wooo hooo witchy woman see how high she flies..."
His fingers touched a knob, frigid in the hot desert air. He looked around, trying to sense anyone around him, looking for the giant, looking for a reason why he felt someone scrying for his presence, waiting for him to make a move. He turned the knob, and pushed a door open. He bumped his knee on a kitchen cabinet, clumsily. The fear amplified in his heart, as he looked around him. It was much the same setup as their duplex, separated by one wall. He was in the kitchen, to the left was stairs leading to the second floor, if he went forward the half-kitchen would turn into a den. It was like a mirror image of what he found familiar; a magical doppelganger of what he knew, only black and sinister in the fading twilight.
And, again, he felt something both watching his progress into the empty house, and calling him, spurring him to come in. And, for the most clear and intense time since his mysterious, deranged neighbor had drove his ice cream truck up the lane the first time, he felt like he was going mad. He grabbed at his head, wanting to let out a shout.
As he did, he felt rather than heard the thing calling to him, whispering across the void, telling him to come closer.
He was caught, irrevocably bound, helpless under the call. He was no more to blame for this than the victims in the clippings tacked up on a backboard down in the garage. Come closer, it said.
There was a closet door inset in the side of the stairs, a small nook that swung outward for storage space under the staircase. He moved towards it without knowing why, except that it made the pounding in his head both better and worse.
He ripped the door back with unfeeling fingers, and his eyes feeling like they were too big for his sockets. The first thing he took in was the patchwork figure made of sewn parts, vaguely in human form, feminine form, with flesh greened and stretched with rot. A skeletal face stretched in a nightmare rictus of a grin.
"Hello, human" came the voice from under the stairs, and George Turner couldn't help it anymore. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed, his throaty cries ripping through the summer night sky. People at the barbecue looked up. Poolside, as he handed out fudgesicles to two little blonde-headed children, a giant's head snapped to attention. Everyone was woken up to the screams, and a buzz of scuttlebutt began going up among the assembled residents of Lexington Terrace.
The magic was just starting to spread it's dark roots and take hold.
The sweltering, triple digit heat of the day has died down to an overlying, warm haze. The sounds of neighbors at the communal pool at the end of the lane fills the air; lilting laughter of children, adults grunting as they play badminton or other party games or just sitting around in woven lawn chairs with their third cup of soda out of the cooler. The air is filled with musky, burning charcoal as the designated grill-master has heaped a pile of briquettes under the meat and sent huge puffs of smoke wafting along with the sizzle of preparation. As twilight comes along, lightning bugs curl in lazy arcs around the empty squares of lawn in front of each person's house as we scroll down the lane, away from the fenced in community area with it's grill, circular kiddie pool, and chairs and deck. Up the lane, to a familiar duplex, to a garage, where it's door is swung open wide, and a partially covered ice cream truck rests, hiding like a slumbering dragon, like a mythical beast. It seems most apt, because a more pertinent beast is sleeping now, well fed.
For now, yes.
We pan around in a shaky arc, taking in the garage. It's low lit, only a single buzzing bulb in a cage providing orange light on a work bench. Hacksaw, bolt cutters, shears, acytelene, an old dial radio tuned to a classics station, alighting on them one by one. The delighted shrieks of children in the pool reach into the garage, as Connor Dempsey (scoundrel kid that he is) has dunked Tiff Barrett's head under the chlorine, and she came splashing up with a wild laugh. The rest of the quiet neighborhood hummed. A thousand snatches of conversation reached here, and the fireflies flitted in circles around the open garage door. The oldies station was playing the old saw by Mitch and the Wheelers... "Devil With the Blue Dress On".
"Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress, devil with the blue dress on..."
"Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress, devil with the blue dress on..."
The hulking form, sitting so hunched over that his shoulders are rounded, and yet his bald head is still nearly brushing on the hanging cord with the caged lightbulb, heeds none of this. None of the sensory input or the magic of the summer evening has reached him... because he's ruminating on the darkness that has begun to take root. He bends over double, his tree trunk arms pulled in, as he is banging away at the keys to an old typewriter. Brak-brak-brak, one key at a time, reaching out and pecking them deliberately with one finger as if he has to fractionally pause and consider the next character.
There are newspaper clippings on the workbench, and tacked up roughly onto the 2x4 backboard. "HORROR DISCOVERED IN TUCSON HOUSE FIRE - 3 DEAD"
"MURDER UNDER THE BIG TOP"
"MODERN PROMETHEUS - GRUESOME 'FRANKENSTEIN' KILLINGS GO UNSOLVED"
Huffing lightly, he squeezes his eyes closed as he looks at some of these clippings, but then goes back to typing, the brak-brak-brak, flat retort of the typewriter filling the garage in fits and starts. Because there was magic in the air. Black magic.
Diary entry # 45
Its spreading more than I thought was possible. Mariah has given me everything she promised me and more. When she came to me in my last stay at Springvale I thought it was a fever dream; or more, the kind of visions that the prophets used to describe in the old testimant. She glowed like an angel. And the things she whispered in my ear. If you feed me pain she says then I will give you anything you want. So I hav been good at - doing that. But what I didnt realize when she said it was that it was a thing that was growing. Mariah is growing stronger. And now I am wandering where this is going to lead. For her I crushed the skull of the man who drove me out to buy the ice cream truck. For her I nerely broke the bones of Alice Starchild. For her I have asked for more competition. In her name. They give me other men who take pride in being crazy. Lunatic. Now it is Crazy Boy. Men like these see madness as a good thing. Something they wont to be. But it is something that they do not know how to pull off. For me crazy has never been something I wanted. My wish for Mariah was for me to be a man again. And I will, if I feed her enough. The more pain. The more agony. The more broken bones guts blood hate pain I spill. The more she will save me my angel will save me. So I will hurt them. These weak little men. Who think that they know what madness is. They have no idea.
He pauses, considering. His titanic balled up mitts stop over the keys, with his pointer fingers outstretched only to hover over a key. The night air is getting dark, and crickets have joined the symphonic orchestra of suburbia. He strains his ears, listening to some of the voices at the party.
These men do not see the beauty of what is happening. They do not see the brutal neccessity of what I have done so far and I do not expect them to unnerstand. I tore thru 5 of the best competitors in PCW on Trauma. I am the reason Kyle Shane is not a champion anymore. I broke the bones of one stupid little girl who ran her mouth too often about how "Dark" things had gotten and I took two of the strongest, and in many people's minds sickest individuals and delivered to them a beating no one can forget. Men like Tyrone Crazy Boy will not see this. They are not able to. Tyrone is focused on only getting his career out of a rut, a never ending cycle of him saying that this time he will get himself together and try. He does not understand what it means.
A pause, for reflecting.
Madness is not urrational nonsense. Madness is not, whatever random stupidity one idiot can throw at a wall. Mariah has shown me that madness is a black well, a cancerous agent that when introduced into a school, can turn all of the cells against each other. Madness is inflicting pain on every single level until it is screaming for it to relent. Madness is pushing back what Mariah calls the glammer of normalcy to expose what was really there hiding all along. Like the bright white paint on an old ice cream truck.
Another headline, this one before his time, catches the camera's attention over the giant's shoulder. A familiar truck is outlined in the blocky, dot-matrix photo, with the headline screaming in horrified outrage "HE KEPT THE BODY PARTS IN THE FREEZER"
He closes his eyes.
But I also stand here conflicted because the more I do this the more chance there is I will go back. Does she understand what she is putting me through. If I go back to Springvale or worse if I go back to Max I will be dulled. They will take my truck from me. They will take my face from me. They will even take her from me or keep me so full of drugs that I will not be able to speak to her I can only speak to her now through the wall because the plane is so thin but if I am in Max I cannot go back I CANNOT GO BACK but I have to make our connection stronger. I have to make her stronger. Consider how badly I am going to have to beat Tyrone Crazy Boy Smith how much pain I am going to have to put him through to satisfy her this time around. As weak as he is there is very little chance of him hurting me but besides his stupid name and pretending he is crazy he does not deserve the agony I will have to put him through, will he. But I also can't fail my love. It's the dubble-egged sword of my condition to have to do it this way but I can see no other choice. My need for her and my need to be a man might make me desparate. However I am a man in love.
He stops to consider those last words for a good long time.
But what I can't tell Mariah is about the doctor who
"Ephrain? Sweetie?" Her voice cuts through the gloom of the now completely dark garage. Nora Turner, housewife and neighbor, has input her gossipy, birdy personality and defiled the sanctity of his lair, and she doesn't see in the dim light of the bulb in the cage that a big hand goes to the tray of tools and selects a ballpeen hammer. Mariah is going to have a feast tonight. He grits his teeth. Uncurls his fingers. She hasn't seen him, still looking dumbly around her in the gloom. "Ephrain?"
An impatient, angry voice comes from around the side of the duplex, back towards the communal picnic area. "Nora willya come on out of there, leave that man alone, I tell you," it's his neighbor, George Turner, a man who has grown increasingly interested in the ice cream truck. He has been spotted glancing out of blinds at it, watching it from the corner of his eye as he comes out in the morning to get the newspaper. He is a man who is coiled so tight that he is just moments away from snapping like a spring. He is a man who, ever since he got a new neighbor that had some dark secrets hiding below the surface, had allowed obsession to start eating at him, and giving a test to the hypothesis of madness spreading like a cancer. Now he comes along to collect his wife. He grabs her by the crook of the elbow, so hard that she pinches her and makes her wince. Flush from drink at the cookout, and neither truly in their right minds, both of them are blind to how different they feel. Because magic is in the air.
"Let go of me, George, you've had too much to drink," she says, pulling her arm back, "And I want Ephrain to come to the party. Maybe he can invite Mariah over, it's been so long since she's gotten out of the house!"
She was so ditzy that she was making his head hurt. He wanted to pop her in the mouth. Actually, after two decades of marriage, George had never started having those feelings until just recently, but it was... like they had always been there... and he wanted to shut her up for backtalking him... and... what was he even over here for...?
Both of them look over as a rustle and a clank comes from inside the dark garage, and suddenly the shadows play over a rippling form. Two eyes open in the darkness, and a bald head swims out of the inky black, teeth gleaming ugly as a smile grows wide. "Howdy neighbors, I hope I'm not too late for the party... just had some work to do in the garage..."
George peers at the big man, eyes narrowing, but also feeling like an antelope that is a hair-trigger away from springing and bolting in the face of a predator. Those eyes seem to have a yellow patina and the teeth in that grin are impossibly wide. The big man looks like a nightmarish figure, incongruous and out of synch with the physical world, as if he comes from somewhere magical. He's holding, of all things, a silver, flat TV tray with a stack of popsicles on it, arranged in a semi-circle.
"I thought I'd do something nice for the kids..." the big man said, with an almost sincere, apologetic shrug. Nora gives him a look as if she's won over, and she squeezes his arm. "Aren't you just the sweetest man, Ephrain."
George is still looking into the blackness of the open garage door. The ice cream truck is there, with half a dropcloth over it. It's headlamps are nothing but milky sockets and it's paint is a vague suggestion of color in the gloom, but looking at it makes him want to tiptoe around it in case it should snap to life. Ephrain and his wife are going back towards the party. "George, are you coming?" Nora says, and she has such an attitude about her that he almost forgets his fugue in annoyance of her. He really can't stand her.
"And I was thinking, Ephrain, Bailey's youngest Mele has a birthday party over the summer, well wouldn't it be just delightful if you brought over an ice cream cake,"
The giant chuckles thickly, as they start retreating back towards the communal picnic fence, and the smell of barbecue on the grill and the laughter of children. He can be heard saying to Nora as he brings over his treats, "Did you know, ice cream cakes were a confection created in Victorian England, called bombes; made 'em of biscuits and cream topping, filled with fruit and vanilla ice cream..."
"Oh, you do say the most interesting things!" she laughed, a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
George couldn't take it anymore. A vein pulsed, beating against his temple, and it felt like some force was drawing him to look. The garage was sparsely lit... he tripped over thick cables and hoses, banged into a fire engine red tool cabinet. Metal tools crashed onto the floor so loudly that he knew anybody could have heard the sound in the garage. He cursed as he pulled himself up. Heart was leaping into his throat. He snapped his head around.
He knew that at any moment that grin was going to swim out of the dark, that massive monster's head would teleport in from the blackness and the grin would peel back from those teeth... "Hi, neighbor..." He gulped...
Not knowing why he was doing this, or what magnetism was calling him in to search through the garage and into the other side of the duplex on this muggy summer night... he yearned to go back... He yearned to get back to a lawn chair, by the pool, hearing Tim Alten bragging about his new grill and the heat index it could get up to as the sizzle of steak and smoke came to him... enjoying his summer... instead he was here, pulling the most stupid move a man could possibly ever think of. What was this madness that had infected him? Why couldn't he let this go? All of these thoughts and more flew through his mind. He felt like the blind men and the elephant in that damn old story as he felt along with his fingertips. He touched a metal tray carrying several tools, his hand played over the teeth of a saw, a tacky ballpeen hammer, an old fashioned radio with the dials lit up.
The oldies station was belting out a real classic, a real humdinger, Don Henley and Bernie Lendon leading the Eagles into "Witchy Woman".
George tripped again, and cursed this dark garage. If Nora could see him now... she'd think he was a God damn fool, stumbling around here in the dark, looking for dirt. Looking for something wrong with her poor, nice mister Ephrain, her sweetheart. Just thinking of his wife giggling, covering her mouth coquettishly and laughing with that big, sick freak was enough to propel him forward, into the blackness. The blackness which seemed to spread it's arms open wide, saying, yes, please, come to me.
"Raven hair and ruby lips... Sparks fly from her finger tips..."
"Echoed voices in the night... She's a restless spirit on an endless flight..."
Ah god, he thought, feeling forwards, all around him. His chest felt as tight as if he was having a heart attack. The vein in his temple was beating like a drum. The darkness felt thick, oppressive, dank, wrapping around him like velvet... and he felt tinges of blind panic creeping in, as he didn't know how deep into the garage he was...
"Wooo hooo witchy woman see how high she flies..."
His fingers touched a knob, frigid in the hot desert air. He looked around, trying to sense anyone around him, looking for the giant, looking for a reason why he felt someone scrying for his presence, waiting for him to make a move. He turned the knob, and pushed a door open. He bumped his knee on a kitchen cabinet, clumsily. The fear amplified in his heart, as he looked around him. It was much the same setup as their duplex, separated by one wall. He was in the kitchen, to the left was stairs leading to the second floor, if he went forward the half-kitchen would turn into a den. It was like a mirror image of what he found familiar; a magical doppelganger of what he knew, only black and sinister in the fading twilight.
And, again, he felt something both watching his progress into the empty house, and calling him, spurring him to come in. And, for the most clear and intense time since his mysterious, deranged neighbor had drove his ice cream truck up the lane the first time, he felt like he was going mad. He grabbed at his head, wanting to let out a shout.
As he did, he felt rather than heard the thing calling to him, whispering across the void, telling him to come closer.
He was caught, irrevocably bound, helpless under the call. He was no more to blame for this than the victims in the clippings tacked up on a backboard down in the garage. Come closer, it said.
There was a closet door inset in the side of the stairs, a small nook that swung outward for storage space under the staircase. He moved towards it without knowing why, except that it made the pounding in his head both better and worse.
He ripped the door back with unfeeling fingers, and his eyes feeling like they were too big for his sockets. The first thing he took in was the patchwork figure made of sewn parts, vaguely in human form, feminine form, with flesh greened and stretched with rot. A skeletal face stretched in a nightmare rictus of a grin.
"Hello, human" came the voice from under the stairs, and George Turner couldn't help it anymore. He screamed, and screamed, and screamed, his throaty cries ripping through the summer night sky. People at the barbecue looked up. Poolside, as he handed out fudgesicles to two little blonde-headed children, a giant's head snapped to attention. Everyone was woken up to the screams, and a buzz of scuttlebutt began going up among the assembled residents of Lexington Terrace.
The magic was just starting to spread it's dark roots and take hold.
