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| Haint |
| He turned away from one nightmare to face another. About a half mile down a muddy tunnel of coiling trees and red muck road lay Nealy�s Creek Road, where the green husk of his car canted toward a roadside ditch in the guise of death. He had been shuttling along on all four-bangers of the dinged and dented Gremlin when it began to vomit and cough, shuddering in pain and finally dying with a metallic groan. He had tried to restart the engine, but only managed to grind out a shrill squealing from the starter that ended with an ominous clicking. He had been trying to make it home for Halloween. Nealy�s was a shortcut to the highway and a plan to save on gas. This part of Mississippi was just about empty of people, with old slattern farms squatting 10 to 15 miles apart. The weather was a medium drizzle. Just enough to immediately wet the skin and keep it goosebumped with a 55 degree temperature carried along on a fitful wind in this hour before sundown. He had got out of the car and pulled an old Navy surplus blanket from the back seat to drape over his shoulders. He had about 20 dollars in the pocket of his frayed jeans and a pair of tennis shoes that had most of the tread worn down. There was nothing for it but to slog in the mushy red clay in search of help. He walked about 300 yards up the road and came upon a leaning mailbox on a knotted post next to what he figured was the driveway road to a farm. Painted on the side of the mail box in big, awkward red letters was the name Horace Haint. He checked the mailbox and found a couple of yellowed letter envelopes and a newspaper that came unrolled, as he handled it, when the rotted rubber band snapped. Take the farmer his mail and get started on the right foot, he figured. The drive turned out to be half a mile long and slick with a red clay goop. Funny, there were no tire ruts or puddle holes. The mud crusted at the edge of the hunching trees on both sides and bubbled up like congealing blood. There were no birds or crickets singing. Silent as a crypt. He could see gaping and contorted faces in the pines and oaks as the sun crept down the horizon behind a thick curtain of clouds. There were greasy vines choking up the tree trunks with tongue-shaped leaves that wriggled obscenely and cast grasping shadows. He squeezed his eyes a few times to get rid of these haunted visions, but they wouldn�t go away, and he could feel glaring eyes on his back. He fell twice on his back in the scarlet stew and was coated with the red, pasty mud. Well, it�s the night for getting the creeps, he chuckled nervously and kept his eyes on the road. Now, he turned, again, and looked at the farmhouse at the end of the road. It squatted like some old, fat toad, in three feet of speargrass and ratty dandelions that looked like they were sucking and eating the house from the ground up. The house was two stories of bleached clapboard warping and curling with black gaps saying "nobody lives here, boy." An age-old tractor with some kind of rake attachment, with broken teeth, leaned to one side of the house, disintegrating one year at a time. The thing that really bothered him was the bright white, three-foot sign mounted on the barbed wire fence surrounding the house. It had professional lettering two feet high painted on it that read "Beware." Just that one word. It looked new, without rust or shotgun pellet holes. It must mean the house was in danger of collapsing, he thought. Well, Horace Haint, I hope you built good, cause I�m going in out of this slimy misery of a night, he thought. The fence had no gate, so he crawled over the rusty barbs and waded through the grass that tugged and speared his jeans with barbs, and wrapped around his legs as if it wanted to drag him down and keep him. He got to the sagging porch with snapped strands of grass biting into his legs. The porch boards flexed under his weight, but held. He tried the front door and the latch handle was broken, but he gave the solid oak door a few hard shoulder nudges and it opened with a groan of protest and a shower of splinters. The house had plenty of windows and smeared as they were, he could still see in the light of dusk. Enough to duck the huge cobwebs and make out a small parlor with a staircase. The house was stifling and smelled of dust and old rotting cloth. The bare wood floors whined under his feet. He turned left through a living room with white sheets humped like ghosts over furniture and entered a bare kitchen at the back of the house. A rusting potbellied stove hunched in one corner. The cupboards were empty, except for a handful of candles. Ah, light for a miserable night. He stuffed the candles in one pocket. He went back out to the staircase and gingerly climbed the old, creaking steps. The first door he tried opened to a smell of dried vomit and sunburnt shrimp oozing from a tarnished double brass bed. He quickly shut the door and decided to explore no further, but as he went back down the stairs, it clattered open. Well, he wasn�t going back, and the smell didn�t come down the stairs after him. At the foot of the stairs, he found a small bedroom with a mattress on the floor. After he kicked away the spider webs from the corners of the room and the window casement, he checked the mattress. It was lumpy, but dry enough, and surprisingly clean and free of dust. The sun was down now, but as he looked though the window, the clouds seemed to shred away and a dull orange moon glowered as big as a pie plate. He tried to open the window for some fresh air, but, as he did, a chorus of moaning howls ending in hideous gasps erupted. They didn�t sound like dogs or coyotes, and wolves didn�t range this far south. He decided a closed window was the best policy. He lit one of the candles and sat down on the mattress. He tried to ignore the sudden chills he felt as he listened to the mournful baying that rose and died in waves. He had to concentrate on something else, anything. He pulled the old newspaper and the envelopes from his pocket and pitched them to the floor. Happy Halloween, he thought. No parties, no booze, no spooky games with girls dressed like Morticia. His eye fell on the newspaper. Oh well, Horace wouldn�t mind, since he was long gone. The newsprint was brittle and smeared a little. But, smack on the first page was the headline "Horace Haint Dead." A cold chill seeped down his spine. What an unsettling coincidence. A photograph above the headline was a black and white picture of a man with a long, drawn down face, prominent jaw and a deep, ridged brow. Huge pitiless black eyes stared back at him. So, this was Horace. The story read that Horace had fallen off the roof of his house, while shingling, and had broken both knees. He was a private man with no family and no friends. He farmed cotton and alfalfa on his own and was only seen once a month at the co-op general store. So, nobody had known he was hurt. He had no telephone. Horace had, somehow, crawled into his house and up the stairs to his bed. The coroner said Horace had died of pain and shock. The local mail handler had discovered him when he had grown suspicious, after he couldn�t stuff any more mail in Horace�s mailbox. Horace had been dead for a week. No wonder the smell in the upstairs bedroom. But this story was six years old. Why was the smell still there? He sat and thought about Horace. He wondered why Horace had never made any friends. He looked up at the ceiling thinking about what it had been like to be hurt and unable to go anywhere, or do anything about it. He wriggled and hunched his shoulders with the thought. He wondered what Horace would think about having him squatting in his downstairs bedroom. There was nothing about the place that made him feel welcome. This line of thinking was making him uncomfortable, so he quit. He thought a little about what he was going to be able to do the next day about his car. The outlook was was not promising and probably involved a lot of hoofing to the next farm. He hoped it was occupied. And money was going to be a problem. Dad would wire him some, if they had a wire service in next country town. Even if they did, it would probably take two days in this hick country he had gotten himself stuck in. Enough gloom and doom. He could make it. Think about tonight and some sleep. He decided to sleep with a candle lit. Something about lying here in the dead house of the dead, with that baleful orange moon glaring through the window, just didn�t sit well with him. He didn�t need nightmares to add to the mix. Happy Halloween, he told himself, as he took off his wet, mud-caked shoes, shirt and jeans. Just the place for ghosts and goblins, and here he sat. He lay back on the mattress and drowsed off to sleep. "Tick, tick, tick." He awoke with a start and looked at his watch. One minute past dead midnight. "Tick, tick, tick." It was coming from the ceiling. Like rafters settling, but louder. "Tick, tick, tick." He saw it now. A bulge in the ceiling, and a sprinkle of old plaster falling. The bulge was about the size of someone�s foot. "Tick, tick, tick." Another bulge with falling plaster, about two feet from the last one. The hair raised up from the back of his neck. Like something was walking upstairs in that bedroom that smelled of rotting death. "Cha-ching, ching." The sound of a dragging chain, and then another step. This was insane. As he raised his candle higher, he could see weird liver spot mottlings in the plaster of the ceiling, like the clotting mold one found in an old graveyard. "Tick, tick, tick, cha-ching, ching." Another step. Now, he was thinking of them as steps. But he couldn�t find another explanation in his racing thoughts. Sweat began to run down his face and back, and legs. Cold and slithery. The steps had crossed the ceiling and he heard a dull thump and that knotted chain jangling on the stairs. The boards creaked and shrilled as the steps slowly plodded downward and closer, and closer. He wanted to reach for his jeans and couldn�t. A horrid, long scratching sounded at his door. He wanted to stand up and leap through the window, but he was rooted in his sitting position to the mattress. Reasoning was not something living in his head. Visions of zombies brought a low moan to his lips. The door creaked, inch by inch, open. God, why had he ever been stupid enough to stay here? The door sprang open with a crash. He lost control of his bladder. Standing in the doorway was a black shape like a horribly melted man. A ghastly whisper spewed from it, "I need somebody." His candle blew out. The moon had turned blood red. It suddenly grew cold in the crimson light. "I need somebody." The air smelled like sulfur. His legs and arms wouldn�t move and tears streaked his face as he heard that unearthly call. The shape dripped down to the floor into a writhing pool. "I need somebody," it hissed as it began to ooze toward the foot of his mattress. His brain felt like it was boiling and his feet and legs turned to ice. "I need somebody," the creeping slime gasped as it began to slide into his left foot. He could feel a freezing miasma flow up his shin that prickled and stung him as it moved inside his flesh and bones with the legs of a thousand ice spiders. His frenzied mind kept screaming "this can�t be, it�s a nightmare." His leg�s skin undulated with lumps as the goo moved up and began to swell his knee. His knee began to grow, until he thought it would burst. He shouted hoarsely at the feel of snakes under his skin. He stared in the bloody light as the movement stopped. Two slits slowly opened on his knee. Two jet-black eyes with red-tinged white stared back at him with burning intensity, watching him as he vomited into his lap. He began to scream high-pitched screams between gasps from a tightening throat, as his mind tore free. A longer split opened below the eyes, so that he could see the bone of his kneecap. A blackened tongue slid out to lick the lips of the slit. His mind collapsed into mewling fragments as the lips of the slits hissed, "I need you!" � 2000 DPMcClellan |
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