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Spooky Story by paurian

The old man watched the red and blue lights blaze through his window. He sat on the edge of the bed and pondered which of his friends would be missing from breakfast tomorrow. It was a nightly event for the Goodwill Fire Department to be pulled up in front of the New Haven Rest Home. He shambled to the window.

Three squad cars painted with the GPD shield and one more wearing the Mason County Sheriff’s. The whole department is out tonight…There was a wailing of sirens as an Ambulance pulled in. They were pulling into the dirt track behind the old Lakin Hospital.

The old man turned away from the window. His attention was grabbed by the concave mirror hung above the sink. He stared into that black void every morning. One of the volunteers from the offices downstairs gave him a quick tour when the State dropped him off here.

“This whole building used to be a town house owned by Jonathon Thomas,” he had said. “He was rumored to be head of a cult. Kept them all here before the town died. Must have been some truth to it, though. All the mirrors in the house are made of black glass. We’d take them down, but New Haven said that’d ‘disturb the history’.” He made air quotes. He noticed the old man was just staring into the corner and backed out the room.

The old man made a mental note to check the papers for what happened last night, but knew he’d forget. He glanced in the mirror again. His heart fluttered and his knees failed him. He tumbled backwards into the bed.

There was another face in the mirror. Except…except for the blue eyes. They were identical. They glanced in the direction of the old man’s simple twin bed. He clenched his chest and heaved. Reason started clicking in his head. Had to be a trick of the light…these God damn mirrors.

Then he had a far more disturbing thought. Far more disturbing than a different face in the mirror. Far more troublesome than an unfamiliar man peering at him from another world. Did I forget my own face?

He scratched at the gray stubble on his cheek. No, no. It was far too young. He looked for his wall clock closing his eyes to skip over the mirror. The hands were on eleven and ten. The news was already on; maybe they’d have a breaking new segment. Christ, am I really this old?

The floorboards creaked when he leaned forward for the remote. He looked down to see his slipper punch through the floor. He withdrew his foot and the board came clattering back down. He got to his hands and knees to push the board back in place. No, better leave it. Then I’ll never remember to tell housekeeping. He caught sight of something in the gap. He plunged his hands into the crevasse and pulled out a leather bound volume.

2

Jonathan sat on a bench in Olympic Park and sketched the wildlife as it passed. A man galloped past on all fours doing a crab walk. The man’s skin was gray and papery. It was tearing apart at the seams. It came to a stop in front of Jonathan’s bench, stretched his neck, and tucked its head behind its shoulders.

Jonathan recoiled when a red tongue slipped from behind its teeth and raked the side walk. He did a quick calculation in his head as to just how many germs would be teeming, how many passing children have dropped food, and how many dogs raised their legs.

“Look at that man, Mommy,” a little girl laughed.

He dropped his pen and looked up. Could she see it? She was wrapped in a wool coat and tugged at her mom’s sleeve.

“Mommy? Why is he crying?”

The mother’s hand covered in a red leather glove covered her mouth. Jonathan reached his hand to his eye. It tapped the dark lens of his sunglasses, and his finger dabbed at the warmth trickling down his cheek. He saw the splotches of crimson on the ends of his fingers. Shit. I’ve been out here too long.

The creature at his feet jerked and scampered away when Jonathan rose. He tucked the leather binder under his arm and bolted without a word.

3

The old man woke up in bed still wearing yesterday’s clothes and perspiration. A leather binder was spread across his lap. The page was open to a sketch in ink of a man on all fours. His tongue dangled over his upside down face.

He flipped back to the beginning of the book. The pages were cracked and yellow just like him, but unlike him these pages would never forget. Each one was devoted to preserving a singular thought and would hold it until the day it was destroyed. A pile of white lichen. A tall black figure without a face dragging a sledgehammer in its wake. A nude woman standing in waist deep water – a human heart in her hand.

Each page was more disturbing than the last, but the old man couldn’t help but feel a twinge of admiration for them as well. A jealousy crept through his heart, and he pushed the volume to the floor. He pulled his cane from the night stand.

The old man hobbled downstairs to the front desk. The nurse chatted on the phone. Her long purple claws clicked away at the keyboard.

“Did someone visit me this morning?” he said.

She paid no attention.

“Excuse me!” he repeated. “Did someone visit me this morning?”

The nurse sighed. “Can I put you on hold for a moment?” She looked up at him and never bothered taking the receiver from her ear. “What?”

“Did someone visit me this morning? Like my family or something?” He wasn’t sure if he had a family.

“Name?”

He searched, but it didn’t come to him. He stood there with his index finger and middle finger pressed against his lower lip. The nurse let out a monstrous sigh.

“Room number?”

He pulled a key from his pocket and checked the tag hanging from the ring. “634.”

She spun the clipboard on the desk in her direction and scanned it. “No visitors today. Or this week. Are you expecting anyone?”

“Never,” he sighed. Some kind of task for housekeeping tickled the bottom of his brain. Failing that he came up with something that would get them up there and fast. “I shat the bed.”

The nurse rolled her eyes and pressed the intercom button. “We have a code brown in room 634.”

The old man hobbled back to the elevator. He was intent on beating housekeeping there before he was confined to bed pan only. Hopefully what he actually needed was obvious enough.

He stepped back into his room. The binder was lying in the sink. Did I leave it there? There was a subtle difference between having Alzheimer’s and simply forgetting. It was a simple litmus test. Someone with Alzheimer’s cannot remember that they forgot – no matter how many reminders.

He picked up the binder. A folded sheet of paper slipped from its pages. He picked up the sheet and unfolded it.

A pair of black eyes stared back at him from the pages without even a hint of white. They belonged to a shriveled gray man that took up the whole page. His head was devoid of any hair.

4

“Here,” Jonathan said. “It’s weakest here.” The obsidian arrowhead spun in a furious clockwise motion from the end of its silver chain. He tucked the arrowhead back into the pouch hanging from his neck. He motioned to the men behind him and pointed towards the ground.

The men in black cloaks placed the massive black mirror on the ground. Jonathan pulled the compass in its gold case from the pouch and mimicked the direction it pointed. A figure bearing a black banner plunged it into the ground. Three more planted banners in a clockwise formation around the mirror.

A woman with raven hair brought him the Sword. She pulled the hood back over her head and knelt before the mirror. The two that were carrying their mirrors circled laying the protective circle. The four corners cried their Invocations.

Jonathan began the ritual proper. He beseeched the spirit Lam to appear for them in the mirror. Lam the famous Saturn spirit that communed with Aleister Crowley. Wishing to create the Moonchild, L Ron Hubbard conspired with this creature in his OTO days. This was only an experiment to reach out to creatures from another world. No motives.

“Nothing,” the Oracle whispered. Jonathan fought the urge to touch his eye patch. He did not have consistent Sight without the needle and it had been exhausted. He relied on his Oracle to be his eyes. His mind must stay on the Evocation.

He shouted incantations demanding that the spirit appear to them in the mirror. He poised the tip of the Sword over Lam’s sigil. There would be repercussions if it did not appear now.

“I see it now,” the Oracle whispered.

“Spirit!” Jonathan said. “I command you in the name of YHVH to speak only truth and identify yourself!”

“Something’s wrong…” the Oracle gasped. “There…there’s hundreds of them. They are dragging themselves through. There’s a tear in the window. They’re…They’re slipping through!”

“Everyone concentrate on the Circle! Don’t let them out!” Jonathan raised the Sword over his head. He began the Banishings. The Oracle gibbered and shrieked. He stopped mid-incantation. He could see the spirits now. One was through. It hovered over the mirror. A tiny and shriveled thing devoid of sex and hair. Its eyes were black, scrying mirrors.

Sirens wailed. Red lights flashed over the Ritual. Deputies shouted at them through megaphones from their Mason County cruisers. The color drained from the tiny man. Its eyes flashed red, and bat wings sprouted from its back. They beat against the ground and the thing took off. A myriad of tiny hands pushed through the mirror. Its black glass clung to their papery skin like film.

“Scatter! Leave the equipment!” Jonathan shouted. The men in cloaks ran. The Oracle convulsed on the ground. Two deputies leapt from the cruiser. Jonathan drove the Sword through the mirror and stuffed the parchment bearing Lam’s sigil into his mouth. He hooked the Oracle under her arm pits and scurried with her into the fog.

5

“How are you feeling today?” the red head asked. The old man looked at her sitting in the chair on the other side of the room. He sat on the edge of his bed. Adult Protective Services sent him a looker this time. Of course, he would have rather the State sent him a hooker instead of a Social Worker.

“Do I have a family?”

“I’m sorry to say no Mr. Thomas,” she said. “Technically, the State put you here.”

“Guessed as much. Um…is the feeling that you’re being watched and followed at all times normal?”

“No, that’s paranoia. How long have you been feeling this way?”

The old man shrugged. “I think I might also be seeing things. Out of the corner of my eyes. Can’t look directly at them before they slip away.”

“I’ll make an appointment with the physician for next week.” She made a note on her clipboard. “Please be candid- sexual encounters included. Syphilis has a high rate of occurrence in nursing homes.”

The old man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know if I’m getting any or not. Be news to me either way.”

“Right.” She made another note on her clipboard. “Is there anything you need? That the facilities are not providing?”

“Well, while we’re on the subject and before I forget.” He scratched his chin. “I could use some porno. I could use a hobby, and I’m pretty sure I can’t misplace my dick.”

One more note. “Anything else?”

He closed his eyes, ran his thumb and index finger over his cheeks, then his eyelids, and pinched the ridge of his nose between two thumbs. “Some smokes.”

“I’m required to mention that smoking has a proven link to lung cancer and encourage you to join one of the facility’s many programs.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered and rubbed his forehead. “But I’m pretty sure you’d say no if I asked for a gun.”

“Have you been having suicidal thoughts?”

The old man threw up his hands. “I forgot.”

6

Years later they regained their strength and found another weak point. A spot away from the highway. Down in TNT behind the Lakin Sanitarium – close to home. His Oboth urged him on in tiny whispers. Jonathan was still not blessed with the Sight, but his other senses were sharpening. He dragged the Sword along behind him returned to him via police auction.

“Here,” his familiar said in a rasp. Tiny invisible hands pressed against his chest. Not enough force to push him back, but tiny pin pricks like his chest had gone asleep. He raised the Sword and the procession behind him stopped. He gestured towards the ground and they placed the Mirror.

He peered at his reflection in the abyss. The Oracle was useless to him. She saw demons in every shadow and elementals under every stone. He took responsibility for her, paid her hospital bills, and kept his distance in hopes that one day she would forget.

A tiny silver glint danced on the point of the pin he withdrew from the inside of his glove. He clenched his right eye shut and forced his left wider with thumb and forefinger. The other hooded men milled around him tending to their various rituals and implements. The tip of the needle passed as if his pupil were a void.

He did not flinch. Crimson spread across the iris like the sun eclipsing. His Oboth appeared beside him. It took his visage. His blue, curious eyes took in the scene around him.

Jonathan Thomas began his incantations.

A woman hovered over the mirror now. She clenched a bundle in her arms. Her grey dress now in tatters swirled around her uncovered feet.

“Identify yourself!” he barked. “Draw your sigil, spirit!”

The spirit opened her eyes. They were pure black within black. He observed him passively and pushed the bundle forward. His stomach sank and saliva pooled under his tongue. His familiar turned into a wisp and hovered behind him.

“I command you in the name of Adonai to identify yourself!”

The shredded gray cloth unfurled around the bundle. The gleaming white head of an infant stared back at him. It seemed to stare straight right through Jonathan. Its very sight repulsed him and of all the otherworldly creatures he’d spied this one was the first that truly unsettled him.

The baby grinned.

“Spirit! I command you to withdraw from this world!” He bellowed the dismissals. The static in the mirror faded, but the Spirit remained. She stepped forward her feet held aloft. Jonathan took Lam’s sigil and dropped it on the black candle of the Circle.

Its center turned orange and the black spread gangrene over the parchment. It crumbled into dusk and scattered around the candle. She took another step and raised the baby overhead. The threadbare blanked spilled on to the ground and vanished.

Jonathan shielded his eye. The baby was too bright. It cast its own silver light over the ritual. He sprung to his feet and drew the Sword. The woman halted before the tip.

“Draw your Weapons and form on me!” The other hooded men gathered behind him. They bore their weapons Athame, Wand, Pentacle, and Chalice. He took a step back, and they followed his example. The woman took a step forward.

They continued this way back to their home. They picked up their pace over the highway. The man in the back unlocked their door, and they crossed the threshold. Jonathan slammed the door.

They took a step back. Nothing. Then another – still nothing.

They let loose a pained and collected sigh.

The black eyes of the woman glared at them through the tiny glass window set in the door. Silver light peeked under it.

7

“Three days.”

The old man sat up in his bed. His hands went to his left eye. The lights were still on. He looked down and found the leather volume in his lap- the sketch of a woman and child. The infant was constructed with only three simple lines. It reminded him of staring into the sun. The dogs of panic dug at the edges of his sanity.

He got to his feet and dropped the book from the window. He cut the cold air off with his guillotine window. He saw a sea of rodents pour from the woods. They dashed across the highway, and like lemmings half their number was cut down by passing cars. The survivors dashed across the lawn and vanished in a hole on the corner of the rest home.

The old man turned from the window. A pair of stolen, blue eyes watched him from the mirror hanging from above the sink. The young man that haunted his dreams was watching him. A voice boomed from all around the room.

“Three days!”

The old man fell back into the chair. He looked across the room and spotted the leather bound volume resting in his bed. He pressed his face into his hands and wept. In the morning he would request a room change, but probably forget.

8

“Three days.”

Jonathan’s chin rose from his chest.

“Three days! Three days! Three days!” his Oboth droned on.

He cussed and crawled to his feet. The Sword tumbled to the ground. He was cradling it in his sleep again. Rats scampered over his path. They were the first ones to figure out that that this ground was warded.

He twisted the key of his can opener and released the aroma of Chef Boyardee. He shoveled the cold macaroni and tiny meat balls into his mouth with his fingers. He licked his fingers clean and unfurled the map of Goodwill he swiped from Town Hall. The pendulum hung from his fingertips, and he held it over the map.

It passed over the map until the arrowhead circled a townhouse downtown. He marked the spot on the map – a new one. He pulled out his pocket watch and confirmed it was still broken. He trudged down the stairs. The blade of the Sword banged on each step.

And to think they called him a Cult leader. A cult leader wouldn’t put up with this shit. A cult leader wouldn’t have given all his followers an out. The followers of a cult wouldn’t abandon their Leader.

The occurrences were lessening after the people left. These things trying to worm their way into our world. Things that did not bow down to any Earthly god. Maybe, just maybe if they stay away, a day will come when he doesn’t have to do this anymore.

To think there was a time when he actually helped these things through.

He continued down the highway the sword dragging behind him. He caught a glimpse of something sliver from under the Lakin Sanitarium. Necessity was the invention of all things. He learned long ago how to watch things in his peripheral.

The thing hesitated and contemplated Jonathan. It could smell the wards still clinging to him from the house. He didn’t waste a second and dashed the thing’s brains out on the blunt edges of the Sword. He pushed the dented tip through the creature’s throat. He wondered when the day would come when he couldn’t lift the Sword anymore and knew it was coming soon.

9

Something dripped from the ceiling on to the old man’s face. He brushed his face and woke up. He looked down at his hands and spotted a red smear across the palm. He looked up and expected something as macabre as blood dripping from the ceiling. Nothing there.

He rubbed his forehead again and came back with nothing. He looked down and expected to find the leather bound volume. He didn’t.

Instead there was a highway atlas of West Virginia. A pin glinted silver by he lamp light. Its tip was dark and rested on an ‘X’ crossing town hall.

“One hour.”

The old man looked at himself in the mirror. He mimicked the phantoms movements. He stretched his eye lids between thumb and index finger. He slid the needle in with the ease of a contact lens. The room was transported to its decrepit state during the Exodus. He picked up the steak knife from his dinner tray and carved the Sigils down the length of his cane.

10

“Tragedy has struck again in Mason County,” reported the news Anchor, “Two injured and one dead in Goodwill today. Best known for his alleged cult activity during 1969, Jonathan Thomas beat two orderlies and killed a security guard in Town Hall. We go live to Stacy McCormick at the New Haven Rest Home.”

The image of the man was replaced with a blonde woman. Black circles of mascara run under her eyes. The caption Melissa Adkins – Nurse on Duty scrolled at the bottom of the screen.

“I knew there was something wrong when I saw him. He was wearing sunglasses, and I thought he was crying. He was heading for the door, and I called security. I’ve never seen anything like it; he downed them both with like one hit.”

The camera panned to a brunette in a smart, blue pants suit.

“He was found an hour later in Town Hall,” Stacy said. “Police found him beside the body of one security guard, Kenneth Roberts. Police stated if they had not found Thomas on the scene they would have assumed it was an animal attack. Due to his Alzheimer’s and dementia it is currently unclear whether Thomas will stand trial for this. He is currently being held in Sweetbrook Hospital’s urgent care wing due to self inflicted wounds. Back to you, Tim.”

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Roberts family tonight.”

11

Jonathan tumbled over the body of a security guard. The throat was slashed and eyes mashed in the sockets. Howling ripped through the air and slashed his forearm that instinctively covered his face and throat. He knocked aside the talons with his cane.

“You’re too late,” the lady in gray snarled. His younger doppelganger, his Oboth, leapt on her. Her talons reduced him to mist in an instant. Jonathan slipped the impaled tennis ball from the end of his cane. Screaming the Banishings, he lunged and drove the Sword through her heart.

Her legs melted into the mist that poured through the open door.

“How long Jonathan Thomas…” she croaked. “How long is it until you forget us?”

12

The old man thrashed against his bindings in the hospital bed. His left eye was covered, but he couldn’t remember why. Did he always live here? The machinery around him chirped in reply.

“I brought what you asked,” said a red head standing beside his bed. “Well, the other thing you asked for.”

The old man shrugged.

“But I can’t leave it here…” she said. “Bringing documents is more along the lines of your attorney’s job.” She unfurled a map in his face; it was covered with tiny black X’s that held no meaning for him. There were hundreds of the little marks. He stared at it and said nothing.

“For your sake I hope you never remember what you did,” the social worker said before leaving.

The old man thrashed. He was laying on something uncomfortable. His bedpan? The leather volume slide from under his cover and hit the floor with a plop.

“Five days,” the air whispered.

(photo: by c@rljones)

It always surprised people to find out that there even was an IT industry in West Virginia. Half of the state was still on AOL assuming they had Internet at all. Hospitals even the size of Meadowbrook was wired. There were no actual paper trails with medical records thanks to Bill Clinton and HIPPA. Some nurse left a senator’s STD screen in the break room one too many times.

The real issue here is that prior to 1998 Meadowbrook Hospital has no records.

Victor pulled his truck into the dirt lot in front of the New Haven Aslyum. Ramir whistled when he dropped out of the passenger side. Victor couldn’t blame him even at high noon it was creepy as hell. Even without the fog…might actually help the old folks in the New Haven Rest Home right across the hospital. Wouldn’t have to look at the thing.

“Shit!” Ramir spat. Victor looked behind him. Ramir was spread out on his stomach. His laptop case was just out of reach. “Tripped over something. A rock. Someone carved nineteen thirty-two on it.”

“That’s a grave, Ramir.” One they actually marked, anyway.

He jumped to his feet and snatched the case. “There are a thousand tortures I would rather endure than being here.”

Can’t blame him…I’d rather have Mary rip out my heart again. Their badges may have read Meadowbrook Memorial Information Services, but their paychecks read New Alliance Technology Solutions. A subsidiary of the New Alliance group recruited all across the state, but they didn’t have to look very hard to find Victor. He’d always been here. With one big exception.

NATS contracted full time to Meadowbrook and the mines. That fact always caught people by surprise. Victor guessed that when people pictured coal miners they still pictured blackened men with pickaxes attacking a seam of coal illuminated only by a tiny, dripping candle on the front of their hardhat.

They stood in the doorway. Or rather a hole in the wall. Could have just parked the truck in here. Victor clicked on his flashlight. No windows. The walls were stained gray. Any furniture or equipment had long been stolen or rusted away by now. The doors weren’t even left. The walls were dripping with graffiti. During the summer this place was quite a happening hangout for students of Goodwill High. His spotlight fell on red words Marcy Was Fucked Here an arrow lead down.

John Denver’s Country Roads rang off the stark walls.

He pulled his phone from the belt clip. It was illuminated by Mary’s photo. She wore an exasperated smile and black threads of hair hung over her face. This was the first photo he snapped on the phone. She had just woken up from a nap.

Victor sucked on his lower lip. His thumb hung over the big red Decline button. He walked over to the window behind his desk. The phone reported no bars and the call disconnected. He clipped the phone back to his belt and his hand went instinctively to the white band around his finger. He twisted the skin between his thumb and forefinger. His personal worry stone.

An e-mail dropped into Victor’s inbox from the higher ups the week before. New Alliance wanted a site survey of New Haven before starting renovations. They didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes – this time they wanted a paper trail that could outlast the town. They wanted to resurrect this building that started life as New Haven Industrial School for Colored Boys in 1906.

Victor crossed from the yellowed grass to the stone floor. The call disconnected. Ramir raised an eyebrow.

“No bars,” Victor said. He clipped his cell phone back to his belt. For a moment the screen illuminated Jenny Loves Mothman in blue.

“And they criticize arranged marriages,” Ramir said. “The key is we lead separate lives.” Ramir was the cliché Indian Admin and in Goodwill of all places. The only one Victor had ever met. “Well, we gave it our best. Let’s go for drinks.”

“Means nothing. I get one bar tops by my desk.” Victor unzipped his laptop case. He bit down on his flashlight and pulled a Dell notebook out. He retrieved a tiny Linksys box from a side compartment. LEDs sparkled like little, green stars. “Start from the basement. Work our way up.”

They turned into a stair well following the yellow spotlights. One eye following the light, the other on their instruments. MacGuyver in green. Seriously? Spelled it wrong to boot.

Victor’s stomach collapsed. He wanted to turn and run. Just to flee this building that blossomed after an awkward puberty into the New Haven Colored Sanitarium in 1927. Desegragated in ’58. Closed in ’79. They say the doctors lobotomized the lot of them for the hell of it and chucked their bodies out the back. Not all of them from the hospital days. Of course, they say that about any old asylum.

Except the New Alliance bulldozers unearthed the mass grave in 1995. Delayed the project for over a decade. The Sentinel reported that there were remains from fifty-seven bodies in all.

“No signal,” Ramir said.

“No surprise there.” Victor’s nostrils flared. His nose hairs now cinders.

“You smell that?” Ramir dashed the spotlight around the room. The black fell away from a table like a cloak dropping to the floor. It was burdened by an array of brown bottles ranging in all sizes. A blue, steel still towered over the bottles as the table’s centerpiece. Plastic tubes ran down from the still to the propane tank tucked under the table haphazard like an exposed circulatory system. “What is that?”

“We need to get out of here,” Victor said in a harsh whisper. “Right now.” They turned on their heels back towards the staircase. A grinning skull stood in their way.

“What are you doing in my house?” Except it came out “mah hawse.” His hand scratched over his stubbly face. In this light the man’s rotten teeth looked like they were filed to points. Please, please, please just be a trick of the light.

“We were just leaving,” Victor said. “Saw nothing.”

“What are you boys? Ghost hunters?” he said. “A little early for that, ain’tit?”

There was a soft click and the sun blossomed in the center of the universe. Ramir and Victor held up their hands like they could hold back the flood light if they just applied themselves.

“Got a fancy laptop,” another voice called.

“You..you can have it,” Ramir said. He placed the laptop on the ground and slid it towards the light. He had no idea if it got anywhere close.

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a sand nigger.”

“Bet you don’t even have a green card!” the other vagrant said. The spotlight fell on Ramir’s face. “First Nine-Won-Won…”

“Look! My family is from India. I don’t have a green card because I was born in this country-” Ramir pleaded. He stood frozen like a deer in the headlights.

“Then my baby Mama lost her phone job!”

“And now we have a got damn A-rab president.” The meth skeleton shook his head. He made the motion of flicking a tear from his yellow eye. “Ain’t it just a fucking, crying shame? What has the world come to? Our boys go off to die, but we still got the enemy right here in Goodwill.”

“I suppose the retired Navy plates on my truck don’t mean a God damn thing to you?” Victor said.

The skeleton shrugged. “Stockholm? I’d a thought you’d known better, Beenadick.”

The vagrant set his floodlight on the ground. He swaggered towards Ramir the light flashed silver off his cleaver. Ramir’s lower lip trembled. “Should I cut his head off like they did to our boys? But on account of you’re a veteran…just castrate ‘em.”

Victor closed his eyes and shut off the flash light. His eyes popped back open – he could make the faint figure of the skeleton by the flood light. He threw his forearm over the skeleton’s neck and pulled the pen knife from his pocket.

The flash light clicked back on, and the skeleton clenched his eyes out of reflex. He felt a pressure against his eye lid and his eye push back into the socket. A tiny pearl of warmth was already forming against the lid.

“Move one more step!” Victor said. “And I put his eye out.”

The vagrant glanced back for a second and a silver crescent flared. Ramir gurgled and stumbled forward before collapsing outside the stream of light. The smell of iron and shit pierced Victor like a bullet. All of Victor’s air escaped his mouth and his muscles slacked. The vagrant buried his elbow into Victor’s gut. Victor thrust his knife, but missed the mark.

The knife skittered out of sight like a cockroach. The skeleton turned around glaring at him a yellow eye through a lanced eye lid. Victor brought the flashlight down in a fury of blows. The light extinguished and plastic shattered on the skeleton’s hands and forearms. His heel slipped on the blood blossoming from Ramir’s crumpled body. The skeleton tumbled into the vagrant.

Victor bolted for the stairs. The graffiti streamed past. He raced out of the Asylum and into the fog. He turned the corner around the asylum and charged further into the white void. Where is my truck? He could hear boots pounding against the soft earth. Black figures formed in front of him. Then the crooked forest of TNT sprung up around him. He curved his route. I can circle back around.

The footpads were closing in. He could hear the breath burning in their throats. Victor tumbled over a root. He ran his hands over a white dome. An igloo. One of the munitions bunkers left dotted all over Mason County during WWII. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and propped it closed with his body. It was black and damp inside. He twisted his ring finger.

The stomping ceased. He braced himself and stopped breathing. It felt like hours passed before they moved on. He exhaled slowly and deliberately. His thoughts finally caught up with him slicing through the adrenaline buzz.

His chest heaved. What the hell are you doing? Pulling this kind of shit…it’s been a long time since Desert Storm. Who are you kidding? It’s been a long time since basic training. You were an engineer in Canada for fuck’s sake.

This is what crying would feel like.

There was shifting outside the door. The crunch of brown leaves under steel toes.

Your little stunt got Ramir turned into a Pez Dispenser. He actually had something to live for. Now all he has to look forward to is spending all eternity filled to the chin with shitty candies.

Then the stomping continued on until it was a faint whisper in the dark. Victor allowed himself to breath again. Why didn’t they look inside? Of course…He had to ram right into the igloo to even see it. He thought of checking his pulse. That’s what runners do, right? He jabbed his two fingers to his throat. Then chuckled and shook his head.

The door scrapped the ground and swung open once his body was lifted from it. He surged forward. Didn’t know how long he had before the meth necks circled back around. That little, haunting slice of Palin’s real America.

There was the rattle of chains. His right leg whipped from under him. Victor would later say that it all went black, but to be honest, it already was.

3

Victor saw himself riding a raft of logs drifting down the Ohio. Not so much Huckleberry Finn as lumberjack. The logs were flanked by grey boats from the Company. Goodwill was in the grips of its second boon. The timber payload was en route to the steel mills of Pittsburgh. Victor knew this in the same way we all know our dreams.

He lost his balance. Nothing-new there. The lumber vibrated from under him. His ears were ringing. The Ohio was violent today. He opened his eyes. A cloud of black soot billowed over him. The timber rattled apart and the ground fell out from under him.

He plunged into the black Ohio waters like forty-three more souls would in December, 1961. He broke the surface only once. He caught a glimpse of the ship. Orange light danced across its bow. The name New Alliance blazed in red paint stood out on the stern.

Then like those Christmas shoppers dumped from the Silver Bridge the cold seized him. His muscles were frozen. He descended into the black as smoothly as a knife through your only friend’s throat.

His legs dug into the bottom of the river. A blue light spread across the bottom. Something was moving. A school of fish? No, the Ohio was littered with corpses. They writhed and danced with the tide. He saw one blue face staring at him from the driver’s side of a sunken car.

Beside him Ramir stood. Victor spun his head in his friend’s direction. Ramir was bound in chains. He looked as if he died while trying to protect his privates. Maybe he was.

Then there was Mary.

Mary was the only vibrant and living creature on the bottom of the Ohio. She glided without effort through the icy waters towards him. Her skin was cast green in the light. Her tangle of hair darker than the water.

She pressed herself against him. Her naked body resurrected his dead muscles. Heat spread over his body. She pressed her lips against his and put breathe back in his lungs.

There it would stay trapped his lungs for all eternity. He knew this because it was a dream. Her hand pressed against his breast.

The pain roused him awake.

4

Moonlight crept through the door ajar. The Goodwill’s breath hung overhead. Victor pulled himself upright. His back drenched in stagnant water. His ankle throbbed. He unbound it from the chain that wrapped around it once, maybe twice. He propped himself against the wall. He limped out of the Igloo.

He staggered in the direction moss grew. He knew north would take him to Point Pleasant eventually. Might even lead him back into the Goodwill. God alone knew where he was. TNT – that could mean anywhere. Might as well just say Timbuktu.

His phone chirped. He unclipped it and found he still had no bars. It chirped again and the screen went black. He considered chucking it before clipping it back to his belt.

The sound of engines running pricked up Victor’s ears. He closed his eyes and listened. Trying to discern the direction of the road. Stumble out onto to route 79 waving like a madman. Hope to God no new Mothman stories sprouted as a result.

Then the low rumble was closing in on him. Victor half ran and half stumbled forward. Light flashed through the trees and Victor took a dive. He slid on his belly behind a lichen flicked stump.

Hunters. He was sure of that. Maybe they won’t be the same ones.

“We know you’re still out here, Beenadick!” cried a man mounted on an ATV.

“Your got damn Ching Chong truck never left,” the other hunter roared over his ATV’s engine. Victor pretended he was a Neanderthal trapped in ice. A static man trapped within the same silent second for all eternity. They would lose him again one inch at a time.

A techno beat of Hava Negila chirped from the pager at his hip. Even out here the Hospital could call him. Always at the wrong time!

The stump burst and thunder clapped through the trees. Victor hurled his pager. The meth necks threw their ATVs into reverse. Did they think I had a grenade? Victor made a run for it.

Thunder clapped again. Victor’s body crumbled. A black rose blossomed over his breast. He slid on his side through the muddy creek bed and fell face first into the water.

The meth necks pulled their ATVs up to the creek’s edge. Their rasping laughter hung over him when they cut the engines. Their flood lights danced over him.

Victor laughed and the men stopped. Because they didn’t get the joke. He hurt all over, he still laughed. “You missed!” Victor laughed and dabbed his fingers against his oozing wound.

Another slug tore through him. Victor slipped and landed on his ass. He laughed even more. Like many of the creeks running through the TNT this one was fed by the Ohio. The meth necks plunged up to the ankles in their filthy boots. They were in his domain.

A bubble surfaced and popped. Mary burst through dripping from head to toe. Her skin was gooseflesh. Her nipples were hard lentils. The hunters could only stare.

A correction. This was her domain, but unlike these men he was allowed here. They were little fish and they had no idea just how big the pond really was. The bigger fish always ate the little fish. It’s just the way of the world.