Tripleweb - Disjointed Ramblings

this is a test

Sun, 03 Apr 11 20:06:45 -0700

this is a test, please ignore

The Tape

Sun, 03 Apr 11 20:06:45 -0700

Possibly the worst story here. FIrst one I ever wrote anyway. Ah well. Here it is nonetheless.

The Tape

by

Robert W. Hudson

Cara slammed the door of the car and buckled her belt. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this," she said, looking at Jeff with a peevish expression. The cool October air had left her cheeks with a bloom of color, and Jeff once again marveled at the good luck that had allowed him to win Cara Rosen as his wife. Now, he climbed into the driver's seat and turned to look at her.

"Now, listen. This is going to be fun and educational. I know it," he enthused, taking her hand. He ran his fingers over the back of her hand and leaned closer. "I've been looking forward to this experiment for months, babe, you know I have. But you don't have to come along if you don't want."

Cara squeezed his hand. "I know, I know. But honestly. I have to come along to make sure you stay out of trouble. But why couldn't we have done this when it was warmer out?"

Jeff smiled and started the car. "Because, sounds travel better in cold air. The warm air currents make the air heavier and-"

Cara flapped a hand at him. "Yeah yeah, I've heard it. I'm sure we could've seen ghosts just as well in July as the middle of October, though."

"We're not looking for ghosts, we're listening for them," he tapped the tape recorder between them on the seat. "Electronic voice phenomenon. We're going to see what we can hear. But if we should see a ghost, so much the better."

Cara shook her head and patted him indulgently on the thigh. "Whatever you say, Great One. This all sounds, just so ... national enquirer-ish, seriously. You really think something's going to come of this?"

"Absolutely," Jeff said, guiding the car around a huge puddle of standing water at the intersection of their street and Oak Avenue. "There's lots and lots of documented evidence for electronic voice phenomenon."

"There's lots and lots of documented sightings of Bigfoot too," Cara said. "Doesn't mean it's real, does it?"

"Sure it does. Maybe lots of reports are exaggerated, but I'm sure there's something out there." He said this last in deep Vincent Price tones and Cara laughed at him."

"Well, if there is something out there, I'm sure you'll be the ones to catch it." she frowned. "I still wish we could've found a way to do this when it was warmer, though. I don't fancy freezing my delicate fanny off for a tape recording."

Jeff looked out the windshield at the weather. "Forecast says it might rain." He looked over at Cara. "Tell you what. It's nine o'clock right now. If we haven't heard anything by midnight, we'll go home, I'll give you a back rub and make you your favorite apple pie. Sound like a deal?"

"Darling, you're on," Cara smiled and leaned across the center console to kiss him on the cheek. "For your apple pie, I'll put up with just about anything."

Jeff smiled slyly. "Anything?"

"Get that look off your face," Jeff Loker! I know what you're thinking!" She smacked him on the arm."

"Hey hey, no assaulting the moichandise!"

Cara snorted and stared out the window. Clouds were gathering in the sky, and low ominous rumbles of thunder echoed off the building walls, like the growls of some discontented beast who was being shaken awake from a long sleep. A few drops of cold rain spattered the windshield. Great, Jeff thought. I'm going to spend the next three hours in the rain. Wonderful.

Finally, they left the city behind and turned off onto a dimly lit country road.

"Where the hell are we going?" Cara asked, looking over at the looming trees at the side of the road.

"There it is, right there, Mountain View Cemetery," Jeff said, pointing to a sign barely visible amidst a clump of ivy.

"You mean that we're going to spend a night in a cemetery? Just to record a tape?" Cara asked indignantly.

"That's right," Jeff said, grinning happily. "I finally managed to get the night off, and this is what I'm going to do - ghost-taping!"

"Hardly my idea of a good night off," Cara muttered. "But a deal's a deal."

Jeff and Cara, married for two years, worked at a manufacturing plant that made computer chips. Cara worked in water treatment, while Jeff worked on the wafers. They both worked graveyard shift, and they had spent many happy nights on break in the lounge, talking of life and the ways of the world. Finally, on their off days, they began meeting, and two years ago they were married. They both hoped to be able to quit the long 12-hour graveyard shifts and move onto something more lucrative and fulfilling, but it hadn't happened yet. Despite the common public misconception, jobs in the computer industry were coveted and extremely hard to come by. So, at least for the foreseeable future, they were stuck right where they were. Cara had been making noises about trying to go to law school, but, only four years out from earning an engineering degree, she was still too tired of school to think about going on for another six years. However, engineering wasn't for her, and she was also getting tired of diagnosing valve leakages and designing more redundant safety systems for water treatment plant operations.

Jeff, on the other hand, was quite happy in his current job. He spent a lot of his off time designing software programs to better enhance the design of microchips. He often remarked to Cara, though, that the current trend was going to end soon. Chips were getting faster, but only by cramming components closer and closer together. Pretty soon, he said, they were going to have to find a way to design entirely new processing systems, because by cramming components closer together, they were also running hotter. But, in the meantime, technologies for such things as quantum computers still had a long way to go, and they were stuck with silicon chips.

Shaking himself out of his ruminations, Jeff pulled off into the cemetery and parked in a grove of trees not far from the fence. "Ok, here we are at last," he said, bouncing out of the car and setting up his equipment.

He'd brought along a quarter-speed tape recorder from a company in California, one which could fit up to four hours on a single side of a 110 minute tape. With it, he hoped to be able to record voices of the dead, voices the human ear was otherwise unable to detect. He'd first heard about electronic voice phenomenon, or EVP, on a late-night radio show, and was instantly taken with the idea, much to the consternation of his wife Cara. "Jeff, it's just a bunch of people filling up empty time slots on the radio," she would say, rolling her eyes as she looked over his shoulder at the internet site or publication he happened to be perusing at the time. "You don't really expect to find anything, do you?"

"It's the joy of exploring the unknown, Cara. Stop being so closed-minded," he would reply absently. "You're taking the flat earth point of view."

"Well, Jeffy, here's something that's not unknown-your little hobby has eaten up five-hundred dollars already. If you don't stop, we're going to starve to death and end up with those spirits you keep going on about."

So now here they were, two months and about a thousand dollars later, in Mountain View Cemetery. Jeff had decided upon the night in the cemetery idea a week ago, after purchasing the tape recorder and a few tapes. He hadn't told Cara about it until just now. When he'd said he was going out, she'd instantly informed him that she was going along, citing that they didn't get to spend nearly enough time together due to their work hours. And now, here they were.

"This is sort of eerie," Cara said, glancing about at the silent cemetery. There was no moon and only faint illumination from dim sodium arc lamps set haphazardly throughout the two acre plot of land. This was a forgotten cemetery, not used anymore except by drunks and bums passing through, and kids looking for a quiet spot to discover for the first time in recorded history-at least for them-the joys and trials of sexual relations and illicit drugs. Shadows chased each other among the trees and a chill wind rustled fallen leaves along the footpaths, sounding like distant whispers in a vast cathedral. No traffic passed on the road. To Cara, it felt like they were the last people alive in the world.

The grove of alders they stood in seemed to loom over the narrow path, their denuded branches looking like skeletal fingers stretching out to seize unwary travelers. Cara shivered and hugged herself, zipping her jacket and staring around anxiously. "Jeff, are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, there's nobody here but us."

"What's the matter, Cara? Getting scared?" Jeff said, slinging the tape recorder by its strap as he set off for the main body of the cemetery. "He seemed totally oblivious to the ambience of the cemetery and cold night. "You can take the car and come and get me at midnight if you want," he added, offering her one more chance to back out.

"Don't be an idiot," Cara said, hurrying to catch up. "I was just making a passing comment." She was scared, though, just a little. No matter what she said to Jeff, she was sure something was going to happen. Something unanticipated and not at all to their good health.

She set off after Jeff, more slowly, staring around at the bushes and trees, at the deep shadows under their branches. The wind had died, and the night was deathly quiet. She shivered again. Bad choice of words, she thought. Very bad choice of words here.

Suddenly, Cara shrieked. "Jeff, look! Oh Jesus, look!"

Jeff spun. "What is it, Cara, he said rushing back to her. "What's the matter?"

"It was watching me! Cara was gazing with wide eyes at the bushes adjacent to the path they stood on. "There were yellow eyes in the darkness, big yellow eyes watching me! Oh, god, I-"

Jeff peered around at the shadows, but he didn't see anything. "Cara, calm down! he soothed, putting his arms around her. "Cara, Cara, where did you see these eyes?"

"Right there," she said, pointing to a bush a few feet away. "I saw them staring at me, big yellow eyes..." she shivered and kept staring wide-eyed at the bushes.

Jeff stared where Cara was pointing. "There's nothing th-"

And then something darted out from under the bush. Both Jeff and Cara screamed ... and then Cara started laughing, shaky high laughter, but still laughter. "Oh my god, I feel so stupid!" she said, wiping her eyes with a Klenex. "It was a fucking cat. God."

"Wow, guess we're both a little more spooked than we realized, Jeff said, staring after the retreating cat until it vanished beyond the fence and into the night. His hands shook as he smoothed the hair off Cara's brow. "Ok, now?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Damn, I can't believe I got freaked out over a damn cat."

"Don't worry about it, darling. Cemeteries do that to you. God, you nearly scared me out of 30 years' growth."

Cara took his hand, squeezing it apologetically as they began walking down the path between the tombstones. "Where exactly are we going?"

Jeff glanced around at the tombstones, which leaned drunkenly at odd angles like old teeth jutting out of dirty gums. "I don't suppose it really matters one way or the other. How about right here?" And he settled onto a tombstone and turned on the tape recorder. Cara stood behind him, leaning her thighs against his shoulders and staring around, still spooked but trying to control it. Jeff was right; it was natural to be spooked in a cemetery. Yet she couldn't keep the suspicion that something was going to go wrong out of her head. The fine hairs at the back of her neck prickled and her stomach was sour. And no matter how she chided herself to calm down, that nothing was going to happen, that ghosts weren't real but only Hollywood devices designed to sell movies, she shivered.

Jef clipped a microphone to his jacket and hit record. "Ok, this is Jeff Loker, in the Mountain View Cemetery. It's October twenty-second, and the time is-" he checked his watch "-about nine fifteen PM. What we're going to do here is attempt to receive signals from the other side, from the dead. If you can hear me, please tell me. We may not be able to hear you with our ears, but the tape here can pick you up. I'm going to set the tape recorder on the ground and let it run. Just say anything you want."

Jeff did just that, setting the machine next to the tombstone and rising. "Well, I guess we'll see what- Cara! Hey Cara!" But Cara had vanished.

"Cara, where are you?" Jeff shouted desperately.

"Over here, stupid, make like a lamp and lighten up. I'm just checking out some of these tombstones while you do you're thing."

"Goddammit Cara, you keep scaring the hell out of me. Come over here. It's dark and I don't want to lose you out here."

"Fine, all right, whatever you say, great-"

She stopped. "Cara, what is it?" Jeff was beginning to feel a definite sense of unease. Stop it, he told himself. This is real life, not a horror movie, and no ghouls are going to pop up out of the ground at your feet. Still, he checked over his shoulder, and nearly screamed aloud before he realized what he was seeing was a gnarled tree.

"Jeff, came Cara's voice out of the darkness, C-come over h-here. Now."

His sense of unease building, Jeff started toward Cara. He cried out as his foot snared in an upthrust tree root and he toppled to the ground. For one wild second he thought of hands reaching out of the ground, hands with no flesh on them and dirt in the joints. Then he came to his senses and, cursing the groundskeepers and wiping dirt off his face, Jeff picked himself up and headed for Cara again.

She was squatting down before a pair of tombstones, gazing at them with a fixed expression of horror, her mouth locked in a silent scream. "Babe, what's the problem-"

And then Jeff glanced at the tombstones. In the fading light, he could just make out their inscriptions:

In memory of Jeffrey M. Loker, 5-19-1972 - 10-22-2001

In memory of Cara L. Rosen, 6-22-1972 - 10-22-2001

"Jeff, that's us," Cara said weakly. "Those are our exact birthdates. And October Twenty-second-my god, that's today!" Jeff, what the hell is happening here?" her voice was rising hysterically. "What have you gotten us into?"

Before Jeff could answer, a high cackling laugh echoed out of the darkness, followed by a hideous animal grunt. Both of them screamed in unison and spun around to see what had made such an awful noise.

There was nothing. Absolute silence reigned once more.

They drew together and put their arms around one another. "What the hell was that?" Jeff said in a plaintive little voice. This was a very bad idea, he thought hysterically.

Cara started to say something, but before she could get a word out, a rock came flying out of nowhere and flew a scant inch past her face, followed again by that high laugh, this time from a different direction.

They whirled, but no one was in sight. "Who the hell is here," Jeff shouted into the darkness. The moon had sailed behind thick banks of cloud, and Jeff noticed with steadily rising terror that the low intensity lamps set about the grounds had all gone out. At once. the Mountain View Cemetery was shrouded in total darkness. But out of the darkness came the most blood-curdling shriek either of them had ever heard. It rose and rose to a pitch that would shatter crystal, and then changed into that high shrieky laugh. And in that laugh was total insanity and blood lust. It conjured up images, unbidden, of massacres and maniacs who put their mother's heads into the collection plates on Sundays, who might rip the limbs off children like pulling off chicken drumsticks, who might start fires in nursing homes to burn up the old people inside..

"Who is here," Cara shouted, clinging to Jeff's arm. "Where are you," she shouted again, as another rock flew at them, catching her ear a glancing blow. Blood dripped down her face and caught in a curl of her hair, hanging like a demented dewdrop.

"I don't know who's doing this, but I'm going to find out," Jeff said, pulling from a deep reserve of inner strength and starting off into the darkness, extracting a flashlight from his jacket pocket. "Probably some stupid kids."

"No, no, don't leave me all alone out here," Cara said, running to catch up with him and seizing his hand. "Why can't we go home? I can't stand-"

But she was interrupted by a rock flying at them. Before she could duck, the rock smashed directly into her forehead. Without a sound, she crumpled to the dirt and lay still. And once more, that hellish, inhuman laugh echoed off the tombstones and filled Jeff's head with murderous images. And Jeff was horrified to note that it was much, much closer than it had been before.

"What the hell is happening? Where are you?" And then Jeffrey M. Loker began to scream.

For right in front of him, and to the accompaniment of that demonic laugh, Cara, his beloved Cara, was being torn apart. Animalistic grunts and groans came from all sides, and horrible ripping and chewing noises issued from where Cara lay. But what undid Jeff was the fact that the creatures, whatever they were, were totally invisible.

His wife was being torn apart by invisible entities.

As he watched, still shrieking, Cara disappeared, until there was only a red spot on the ground. The sight of that final cataclysmic red spot where his wife had lain seconds before broke his paralysis, and with a shriek, Jeff turned and rushed off, dodging among the tombstones, attempting to escape the monsters, what ever they were.

His breath came in short sharp gasps. Incoherent thoughts flitted through his head-their honeymoon at a Minnesota lake resort; his final math grade in high school; lines of code for his latest computer project-but central among them was the need to get away from whatever hideous hell creatures he'd invited.

He ran, the shrieks and growls getting closer all the time. A painful stitch gripped the muscles in his side, causing him to run slightly bent. And it was that stitch which was the death of Jeff Loker. For in that bent position he didn't see the rock hurling out of the darkness ahead of him. It smashed into his head, not hard enough to knock him unconscious, but hard enough to knock him off his feet. And then the creatures were on him.

His screams were cut off as a snarling mouth chewed off half his face. His last thought was, Oh my god, they are human! They are hu-

And during this murderous scourge, the tape rolled on. Rolled on. And on..

* * *

"All right, Billy, let's unload this ol' lawnmower. Gotta do the city's work, you know," Johnny Champ said, opening the passenger door of the city truck. "Don't think we've done Mountain View for-" he counted on his fingers -"four weeks yet."

"Yup, that's about right," Billy Prisco agreed opening his door and getting out.

"Hey, who's car is that, do you suppose?"

Johnny spat some throat juice and came around the truck to see. "Dunno, but I like that bumper sticker." It was a picture of an ashtray made to look like a toilet. "Park your butt," was written beneath the picture in bright red letters.

"That's funny," Billy said, lowering the tailgate of the big truck. "Ain't never seen a car in this cemetery before."

"Y'know, neither have I. Wonder why that is."

Billy stopped and turned. "You mean you don't know?

Johnny pulled on his work gloves. "Know what?"

"This is where they used to bury all the convicts from the prison yonder. Mostly murderers and the like. Course, now they moved the burials up to the cemetery on t'other side of the road, but they stuck a buncha them in the ground over, I'd say fifty years or so. Now, help me get this damn lawnmower out of here."

Footsteps

Sun, 03 Apr 11 20:06:45 -0700

The Bear

Sun, 03 Apr 11 20:06:45 -0700

The Bear

By

Robert W. Hudson

Sonya Jackson was cleaning her son's room when she saw the bear.

John was at work and it was just the two of them there. From the living room came the sounds of inane day time TV, the bane of urban housewives everywhere. It was mid-June, the sun was shining outside, Mr. Anderson next door was mowing his lawn and Ms. Petrucci, the merry widow next door to him, was pruning her rosebushes. Just a normal day in suburbia, USA. And what could be more right than a woman in a ratty housecoat running a vacuum cleaner over a rug which has seen better days, a plump baby cooing to himself in a basonett? Why, nothing at all. Absolutely nothing, my dear.

Yet when she saw the bear, all the mundanity went out of the day. The sound of the tv became distant, like broadcasts from another world, the way distant laughter on a beach must seem to a drowning man. The vacuum cleaner roaring in her hand seemd to be on the end of a long plastic arm in a plastic universe. Mr. Anderson's lawnmower was grumbling from a thousand miles away.

The bear. It was just an ordinary teddy bear. A little ratty, a little threadbare, it's shoe button eyes gleaming from it's fluffy face, upon which a cheery smile had been stitched.

And with a single small drop of blood on the end of it's nose.

Like maybe br'er Bear had banged into a wall while running off on its Ursian errands, oops, sorry, just a little clumsy here, hardy har har. That single small drop of blood seemed to turn the bear's mindless glassy gaze into something sly and knowing, the gaze of a confidence man in a dark alley who would be happy to steal your wallet and make you think he was doing you a favor at the same time. It was dry and not very old, like a chocolate milk stain.

Stop it, she told herself, yanking herself back from these thoughts with a tangible effort. Little Peter probably did spill chocolate milk on it, he had some last night, and it's not blood at all. And how can a stuffed bear look like a con man? It's just an inanimate stuffed animal, you silly goose.

The bear smiled up at her, it's shiny eyes seeming to suggest otherwise, seeming to suggest that if she leaned a little closer, why, just a little closer, the better to see you with my dear, that maybe they could talk about it. Hmmmmm? Just a little-

There she went again. She turned resolutely away from the bear. The room needed vacuuming and she had to get the roast out of the freezer. Lots to do, no time to think about a crazy bear.

She left the nursery in a hurry anyway, despite all her self-assurances. Peter was squalling for his eleven o'clock feeding and it was time for her to have a little lunch too. Behind her, the bear smiled up at the ceiling. One glassy eye twitched, and then it was still.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Sonya was out back, sitting on the porch with a John D. MacDonald paperback. Little Peter was taking his afternoon nap in a shady spot near by. The sun shone brightly on the birdbath, sending up little rainbows from it's splashing fountain. Somebody down the street was playing music while washing their car, and the faint sounds of Hot Blooded came drifting across the yard. All afternoon she had been making excuses to herself about why she avoided the nursery.--I already cleaned in there; it's good for Petey to be here with me and not in a room by himself; the sun's too bright in there during the day. But what it all boiled down to was the simple fact that she was afraid to go in there. Something in the atmosphere of the nursery had changed. It felt like the moment in a movie were all the music went quiet just before the killer or the monster pounced.

And it was all that teddy bears fault.

That one small drop of blood on its nose.

It did no good to tell herself that it was chocolate milk and not blood. In her secret heart, she knew it was blood. Knew it the same way she knew her name. Where it had come from she did not know. There was no wound on Peter to account for it. No wound on herself either. And, as far as she could remember, John had never even touched the bear. John left the thankless job of child rearing to her. Old Johnny Jackson didn't get his pompous executive hands dirty, no sir. In fact, she was beginning to think more and more as the months went by that old Johnny Jackson didn't really want a kid for a kid itself; that having a kid was a means to an end, said end being to keep her out of his well-coiffed hair.

You could point to certain things-the way he never seemed to be around when diaper changing time came around; the way he always magically disappeared or was unwakeable when feeding time rolled around; the way he always called Peter "the kid." But what it all came down to was just a gut feeling. Peter was his protection, Peter was the distraction that kept her from looking too closely at him. And what would he need protection from? Was he having an affair with the Safeway clerk down the road on Stratford Avenue? Was he, perhaps, involved in drug shipments at the university campus?

Ridiculous. A real laugh riot, as Jackie Smith, the paper boy, would say. But still she wondered. In the dark hours after three A.M. while lying, stiff and unsleeping, as her husband snored next to her, she wondered. Perhaps he wasn't doing anything at all. Perhaps he just thought that raising kids was a woman's work. The dark side of chivalry, the side that never seems to get mentioned in those dating protocol books. Thou shalt open doors for women and, when she pops a bun outa the oven, thou shalt not interfere. Ever. In other words, maybe she was just being paranoid.

She had met John Jackson at NYU her second year. In 1972 this had been. She was majoring in beer tasting and pot smoking, and he was just one of the fraternity boys she and her fellow program majors entertained on Saturday nights.

He had been a lot different back then. More willing to laugh, less detached and more involved in the rhythms of life. He had told her that he was going to take over the world of finance and set it on its ear. She, being young and almost giddily optimistic, had believed him.

They had left the university, he had gotten a job at a bank in New York City and she had settled in to be a housewife. They were now getting up into their forties, and John had withdrawn more and more into himself. The more money he made, the more detached he got. Some days he didn't speak a single word to her, just retreated into the book lined sanctuary of his study, a room which she was not allowed to enter. She cleaned house, he cleaned out others' checkbooks.

Then Peter came along early this year, a late child, but finally she had a focus. She was forty-two, her hips and waist wider and heavier, her hair more gray than black, and her wild sorrority days not much more than a distant dream. And now John was free to-

To what, exactly? To do almost anything at all, her mind whispered. You're out of his hair now. You have a baby to keep you busy. You saw how it was with your own mother.

Yes, she certainly had. Her mother had been what they would no doubt call bipolar these days. There wasn't a word for it back then. Sonya just knew she was always walking on eggshells around her. Her father had been a lot like John, and it sometimes filled her with sour amusement how history repeated itself. Only, with Sam Fleisman, it wasn't bank balances and bonds and stocks he was concerned with, it was drinking every bottle of liquor in the state of New Hampshire.

And so, with her husband out doing what he called "hunting up a job," Henrietta Fleisman lavished attention on her daughter Sonya. Somedays it was cookies and storybooks, other days it was lashings, both verbal and physical. And was she ever glad to get out of there? You bet. Free at last.

Except she wasn't. She had her own wailing wall didn't she? Her own little slice of captive attention. Peter.

But she wasn't like her mother. She was just being paranoid again, going off on little mind games.

Thoughts of paranoia led her back to the bear. It seemed ridiculous now, in the bright sunlight of summer, to think that it was anything other than chocolate milk on its nose. Sure.

She got up and stretched. It was time to put dinner on. The hour was growing late and John liked his dinner served promptly at six and here it was, passing on four. It was time to think of the dinner, the whole dinner, and nothing but the dinner. But she wanted to have one more look in the nursery. One to grow on, as it were.

Scooping up Peter, Sonya carried him back into the air conditioned sanctuary of her home. He was waking up, muttering in that sweet muzzy way babies do. She was going to have a look in the nursery, yes, but first she had to see to Peter. She wasn't delaying, no, not at all. I'm just ... being sensible. That's it, she thought. I'm not going anywhere near that bear again.

So she set Peter in his basonett and walked down to the nursery and looked in and saw that the bear was gone.

* * *

Later that night. The house was sleepy silent. John and Sonya were tucked up in their double bed down the hall; Peter was asleep in his nursery.. The teddy bear which had so troubled Sonya was still gone, to where she didn't know. John had come home, kissed her passionlessly on the cheek and settled behind the evening paper. She had fed Peter his dinner-pureed spinach and carrots and tiny pieces of roast-and dished out their own.

"How was your day, John?" she had asked.

"Just fine, dear," he had answered absently from behind his paper. And that was the extent of their dinner conversation. You couldn't say John Jackson was a bad man, just extremely self-involved. Sonya had sighed and gone about eating her carefully prepared dinner, for which she got not a single word of thanks, and then cleaning the kitchen, for which she was not noticed at all.

They had made love joylessly, and she faked her orgasm, something she'd had to do ever since the first time, and which John never noticed. And with his seed drying on her thighs, she wondered, like almost all women in unhappy marriages, what it was all for. And she wondered about the bear, of course. You could say that old br'er Bear had never escaped her mind.

But before she could do much more than wonder about it, she had fallen off to sleep. And dreamed.

It was a very peculiar dream. In it, she was standing in her kitchen. The house was silent around her, silent with the hush of expectation. Her counter tops gleamed; her floor reflected the bars of moonlight falling through the Venecian blinds on the window above the kitchen sink; the last drops of water on the dishes in the drainer glimmered like diamonds. And in front of her was a large butcher knife.

Her dream self picked up the knife and studied it. The sharp blade glimmered coldly in the moonlight, sending sparkles off the serrated edges. The handle felt warm and comforting in her hand, and she didn't think it at all odd when she suddenly found herself in the nursery. And who should be sitting against the wall, smiling slyly up at her, but br'er Bear his own self. The drop of blood on the end of his nose looked different by moonlight. Fresher. But her dream self felt no fear. br'er Bear was talking to her, now, telling her what to do, and she was not afraid, it was rather wonderful.

"You know what to do, Sonya, my little Goldilocks, don't you?" he whispered inside her head. "You know just how to be free, my little Sonyapoo."

"Yes," her dream self whispered fuzzily. All worries and cares were swept from her head, leaving nothing but a gentle untraceable happiness. And, since it was all a dream, everything would be all right. She crept toward the crib, the butcher knife raised high in one hand. And then she went to see John, her Johnny, he of the well-coiffed hair and pompous executive hands.

* * *

It was snowing again. Maggie Crenshaw sighed to herself as the news caster ran down the list of business and school closures for the day in his shabitual monotone. Jack was absent again; yet another business trip which had taken him out of state. Vanessa was howling from her high chair, and the dishwasher had broken this morning. Again.

Maggie sighed and got her daughter out of the chair and started washing the dishes, keeping a close eye out to make sure the baby didn't try to do something weird like put her head in the oven.

Snow was really falling in earnest now, and she watched it pile up out in the backyard through the kitchen window. She hoped Jack wouldn't get delayed at the airport. He was due home tonight, and Maggie had high hopes that maybe he could spend a whole weekend at home, something which hadn't happened in almost two years. In the meantime, though, she had to go clean Vanessa's room before it was time for her nap.

She got out the vacuum cleaner and wheeled it down the hallway, noticing that one of the lightbulbs in the hall fixture was out, casting it in deep shadows. Great, one more thing to do, she thought resentfully.

The blinds were pulled in the baby's room, and so she didn't notice it at first. It wasn't until she ran the shades up that she noticed it.

A raggedy teddy bear leaning against the wall. With three bloodstains on its fluffy face.

House Call

Sun, 03 Apr 11 20:06:45 -0700

HOUSE CALL

By

Robert W. Hudson

Author's Note:

The idea for this story came from an old radio episode, called The Dark, which is an episode of Lights Out. The show was originally broadcast on December 29, 1937. I heard it when I was about eight years old, and friends and neighbors, it gave me nightmares for a week. I was afraid to walk home alone at night, and thereafter the show took on a certain glow in my imagination.

Now, years and years later, it doesn't give me nightmares, but it's still one of the more creepy episodes of OTR I've ever heard, even topping the famous The House in Cyprus Canyon from Suspense.

I fear that this story will probably lose some of its glamor, because the scariest part of the original radio show is the sound effects, but I am going to do my best to impart a sense of atmosphere.

So, without further ado, here it is.

R. W. H.

House Call

"Jesus Christ, this rain is gonna drive me insane," Officer Frank Matthews muttered to the steering wheel. "I tell you, Johnny, if the weatherman says we're going to have a sunny day one more time, and it keeps on rainin like it has been, I'm gonna go down there to the TV station and personally shove an umbrella up his ass."

"You do that," Dr. John McClendon said absently from the passenger seat. He was rummaging through his medical bag, trying to find something. Matthews didn't know what and cared less; he was still griping about the rain.

"I been a cop ten years," Matthews pontificated, "and the absolute worst thing is the damn rain. People are friggin idiots when it rains, going too damn fast, forgetting their damn headlights, man, you just wouldn't believe the crap I've seen out there."

"Uh huh," McClendon muttered from the depths of his bag. "I know I packed some epinephrine, now where the hell ... Ah, here it is."

McClendon was with Officer Matthews as part of the Doc and Cop program adopted by the city last year. Theory was, if a doctor always rode with a police officer they could save valuable lead time at accident scenes while rescue vehicles traveled from hospitals. SO far, it hadn't seemed to make much of a difference, and all the doctors were griping because they weren't getting paid any extra for what they saw as volunteer work, and hospitals and clinics were now making it mandatory for their staff doctors to put in at least twenty hours a month on the program. The common consensus among the doctors—and the cops too—forced to enter into the program was that it was just another pork barrel project City Hall dreamed up to make themselves look good.

This was McClendon's first time out on patrol, and he wasn't happy, not happy at all. And the stupid blowhard at the wheel wasn't making matters any better.

"-So, snow's better than this goddamn rain," Matthews was saying. "At least when it snows, all we got to deal with is pulling idiot SUV drivers outa the damn ditches. When it rains, we got to deal with fucking ever'body and their fucking uncle crashing into each other-"

"Unit seventeen, unit seventeen, this is base, do you copy?" the radio crackled from under the dash.

Matthews muttered: "Oh shit, here we go again," and snatched up the microphone. "This is seventeen, over."

"Ah, what's your 20, seventeen? Over"

"We're on, uh, Marcum Avenue and 13th Street, over."

"Ah, we got a call for a 10-16 at, ah, 21 14th Street, seventeen, go check it out, over."

"Will do, Over and out," Matthews said, rehanging the mic on its prongs.

"What's a 10-16?" McClendon asked.

"Domestic disturbance, could be anything," Matthews replied, still looking surly.

"Well at least it isn't a rain related accident," McClendon ventured cautiously.

Matthews snorted. "Don't be too sure about that, buddy," he said, waggling a finger at McClendon. "You never can tell when the weather gets like this."

McClendon bit his tongue. God he couldn't wait for this night to be over.

The house at 21 14th Street was a crumbling two-story structure surrounded by what had to be the ugliest lawn in creation. The porch looked to be falling off it's moorings, the windows were covered with what looked to be centuries of dirt, and that lawn. Dear god, McClendon thought, it looks like all the sunflowers in the whole state migrated here.

They were ugly sunflowers too, great hairy stalks almost four feet tall, nodding back and forth in the rainy wind. Welcome, they seemed to say, welcome and abandon hope, all ye enter here. There was a pile of moldy looking shingles that had fallen off the roof stacked up near the garage, which too looked like it was about to fall over. The upper windows bulged out of their frames like beetling eyebrows and seemed to stare blankly at them as they pulled up to the curb.

"Jesus, that's one fuck of an ugly house," Matthews said, in his typical blustery way. "Looks like the goddamn Adams Family's great cousins' place or something." He spat a stream of tobacco juice on the street as he got out. "Man, I hate these fuckin calls," he muttered, stuffing another chaw in his lip.

McClendon said nothing, but grabbed his medical bag and followed Matthews up the walk. the rain was still coming down, slooshing with a somehow unpleasant sound through the rusty old downspouts and running into that abomination of a lawn.

The front walk was paved with crumbling old stones with giant weeds growing up between them and gaps which looked like glacial heaves so that they had to step unevenly. "Goddamn, ain't they ever heard of resealing their damn driveway?" Matthews griped as he tripped over one of these gaps and nearly fell. "Place looks like nobody lives here anyway, the fuck are we doing here?"

McClendon had to agree. The place looked like it'd been abandoned for a hundred years. "You sure they got the address right?"

"Fuck if I know. Dispatch is usually pretty good, but damn, this place-"

Matthews was interrupted by a loud scream from inside the decaying house, followed by a funny splattering sound. "Oh fuck," Matthews said, and picked up his pace, looking like an absurd kangaroo as he hopped over the crazy sidewalk. "Stay close, Doc."

There was another scream from inside the house, muffled by the rain, and another funny splattering sound. They had reached the front door and Matthews banged on it with his fist. "Open up! Police!" he roared, making McClendon think of Joe Friday. "Open up, now!"

Nobody opened up. There was complete silence from within the house. And the rain kept falling.

"Do we go in?" McClendon asked, fidgeting nervously as the porch under them made ominous creaking noises.

"Gotta," Matthews said, unstrapping the butt of his revolver. "Got probable cause now." And he tried the knob.

The door was open. It creaked loudly, sounding like a half-baked sound effect on a haunted house record. The air puffing out of them smelled foul, a mix of old food, mildewy furniture and excrement and ancient wood. And it was completely dark in there, not a light anywhere.

"Ready, Doc?" Matthews grinned, showing all four of his teeth.

"I guess so," McClendon said, clutching his bag and trying not to breathe too deeply.

"Let's go, and stay behind me," Matthews said, opening the door wider with another loud creak.

Matthews looked around for a light switch, but when he flipped it, nothing happened. "Probably a bunch of deadbeats got turned off for nonpayment," he muttered, pulling out his big police flashlight.

The foyer was covered in a moldy looking shag rug which gave with an unpleasant springiness when McClendon put his feet on it, like it was covering a layer of Jel-O. By the light of Matthews's flashlight, they saw that there was a flight of rickety stairs leading to the upper story and two doors leading further into the house. The wall paper hung off the walls, looking like ancient flower-patterned skin and rippling nastily in the breeze from the open door behind them. God, I really don't like this, McClendon thought to himself, shivering.

"Shut the door," Matthews said, keeping his voice low.

McClendon kicked the door shut and they were immediately plunged into silence. The horrible smell that had wafted out at them now pressed in on them, seeming almost thick enough to taste. Even the rain falling outside was silenced.

"Fucking creepy in here," Matthews said, shining his flashlight around the rotten looking foyer.

"Yeah," McClendon said hoarsely. He was still trying not to breathe too deeply.

"Well, let's go. "Hello! Anybody home? This is the police!"

McClendon jumped at Matthews's shout. It felt like shouting in a church. Matthews saw and smiled grimly. "Sorry bout that, Doc," he said, not sounding sorry at all.

McClendon waved a hand. "Never mind."

They waited. Nobody answered. Five seconds of silence passed.

"Anybody home?" Matthews called once more.

Finally, there was a sound. A dripping noise from somewhere in the house. Drip, Drip, drip. Like something glutinous falling on porcelain.

"The fuck is that?" Matthews asked, stepping toward the right hand doorway.

Wishing madly that he had stayed home tonight, McClendon followed, stepping gingerly across the unpleasantly springy carpet into a wood floored living room completely barren of furniture. More hanging wall paper, more dust, and the stink seemed to get heavier. The flashlight cast weird shadows, leaving more than half the room in darkness. McClendon stuck close to Matthews. He didn't want to be without the light. Being without light felt like a very bad idea in this house.

Then, from somewhere ahead of them, there came a low laugh. Sounded like a woman who'd completely lost her marbles. It went on and on, and it gave McClendon goose bumps listening to it. He'd served some time in the psych ward at County Hospital, and he'd heard laughs like that from some of the real crazies there.

"Ma'am? This is the police. Show yourself," Matthews called, stepping quickly across the room, McClendon at his heels.

The woman didn't answer, just went on laughing. McClendon wished even more fervently that he'd stayed home.

Finally, they saw the woman. She was huddling in the corner of what looked to have once been a dining room, though it was hard to tell because this room too was devoid of furnishings. She was completely naked, her face hidden by vast quantities of white hair. She was sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth and laughing. Only, she wasn't really laughing, McClendon saw with mounting unease. She was really screaming, but her voice was almost gone, so her screams came out in hoarse laugh-like grunts. This must've been what the neighbors had called in, this woman's screams.

"Jesus," Matthews muttered. "What the fuck is wrong with her, Doc?"

The woman didn't look around as McClendon hurried toward her. Just went on staring into space, rocking and screaming. Sweat coursed down his back and his heart was pounding. What on earth?

"Ma'am, can you hear me? I'm Doctor McClendon here with Officer Frank Matthews-"

And then he got close enough to see. The woman wasn't old, in spite of the white hair. She was probably about twenty-three, he saw when Matthews shone his flashlight on her. Her eyes were bulging out of her sockets, and teeth marks were driven halfway through her lower lip. She didn't blink when the light struck her eyes, just went on staring off to her right. Her nails were chewed almost to the quick and it looked like her bladder had let go beneath her. She looked utterly mad.

"Jesus," Matthews said again. "The hell happened to this lady?"

McClendon didn't answer. He knelt in front of the woman and touched her shoulder. "Ma'am? Can you hear-"

She screamed louder, or tried to, and shrank away, her eyes bulging more frantically, drool trickling down her chin.

"Holymarymotherogod," McClendon heard from behind him.. "Oh my Christ what the fuck is that?"

McClendon spun around on his heels. Matthews had followed the woman's gaze to see what she was staring at. He was standing, the flashlight hanging by his side, his mouth agape, his face white. He looked ready to faint.

And when McClendon saw what he was looking at, and realized what it was, he had to bite his lip to keep himself from screaming.

It looked at first to be a pile of meat on the floor. Red and pulsing and quivering. And then McClendon realized what it was, and had to fight his gorge.

"My god, doc, what the fucking hell is that," Matthews croaked, swaying on his feet.

"It's a man," McClendon said, staring at the thing on the floor as if hypnotized. "It's a man. And he's been... turned inside out."

"What?"

"Yes," McClendon said, surprised by the calmness of his voice, when everything inside him was urging him to run from this accursed place as quickly as possible. "It's a man, he's been turned inside out. Organs hanging, look, there's his brain, it's still alive, and his heart-"

And then the thing on the floor started to moan, muffled cries, muffled because his mouth was on the inside, where it wasn't supposed to be. It was trying to stand up, they could hear the wet slippery sounds of raw meat squishing together, and the fluids dripping off him, creating that sound they'd heard earlier, drip drip. And McClendon lost the battle and vomited all over the floor.

"Jesus Christ! Oh my fucking god," Matthews cried, vomiting all over his shoes and making the flashlight dance wildly all over the place. The woman in the corner cackled louder, staring at the inside out man on the floor and trying to push further into the wall, her eyes still fixed and wide open.

"Matthews, put that thing out of it's misery, for the love of all the saints," McClendon said, his voice losing its calmness and going up and down the register.

"But it's still alive, look at it, it's still fucking alive!" The thing on the floor had gotten to it's knees, they could hear the awful sounds of its digestive juices working and it was still moaning from beneath the covering of raw meat.

"Shoot the damn thing, Matthews!" McClendon screamed. "Shoot it now!"

Matthews, still gagging, fumbled the gun out of its holster and pointed it shakily at the thing and pulled the trigger. The shot went wild and sank into the wall behind it with a cheesy thud. He took aim again, steadying his right hand with his left, and put a shot into the pulsating brain. The thing shuddered, and fell to the floor with a horrible splatting sound, like a hand splatting into half congealed mashed potatoes.

"How'd he get like that, for fucks sake?" Matthews said, still trembling all over and staring, horrified, at the misbegotten thing he had shot.

The woman in the corner screamed suddenly, or tried to, and raced across the room on her knees and threw herself on the pile of meat lying in the middle of the room. 'Oh God, no," McClendon muttered. "Why didn't I just stay home tonight?"

Matthews had staggered off into another corner. "Doc," he said in an odd voice. "Doc, come here and looka this."

"What now," McClendon said, joining Matthews and following his pointing finger. Behind them the woman continued to sob and cackle over the pile of humanity on the floor, but they both ignored her.

"Looka this door. There's something oozing around the bottom of it," Matthews said, keeping his voice low. "Looks like fuckin crow feathers."

McClendon gazed down at the bottom of what looked to be some kind of closet door. Sure enough, inky shadows were crawling there, looking like a bit of deepest midnight come alive. There was a low hissing sound too, like dead leaves blowing on a metal surface.

"What do you think it is?"

Matthews shuddered. "I ain't sure I wanna find out, tellya the truth," he said, backing away. "I seen enough here to last me a lifetime.

"Well, we've started, might as well finish, McClendon said, and opened the closet door.

"What the..."

There was no floor in the closet. Just a shifting, writhing mass of shadows, crawling and seeking and hissing. "Goddamn, what the hell is that," Matthews repeated again.

"Damned if I know, McClendon said, stepping backwards. "It cant be good, whatever it is-"

Then the shadows moved faster. They oozed up over the lip of where the floor used to be and crawled hungrily across the floor toward Matthews, hissing louder and growing darker still, as if in excitement.

"Oh shit, oh no, they're coming for me," Matthews said, trying and failing to back away, but the shadows had oozed around his ankles and it was like he was stuck in quicksand. "No no no, our father who art in heaven, oh fuckin hell it's cold, so fucking cold-"

The shadows crawled busily up his legs moving faster still, and McClendon broke his paralysis and seized one of Matthew's burly arms and tried to drag him away, but it was no use; the shadows had him in a grip like hissing cement, and he might as well have tried to move the house with one hand.

"Please Doc get this shit off me it's so cold so cold, and it hurts oh my god it hurts so fuckin bad..."

"I'm trying, Matthews, don't worry I'll get you out of this," McClendon panted desperately, renewing his struggles to pull him away from the living shadows. They had oozed up to his chest now, and McClendon could feel the cold radiating off them, like standing next to an open freezer. Matthews was crying, snot hanging out of his nose and tears running out of his eyes, and the shadows had reached his neck and were hissing more loudly still.

"Pleeeeeease!" " he gave one last desperate scream before the shadows completely covered his head, "you've got to get this stuff off meeee..." He sounded like he was talking into a padded box, and then there was silence for a few seconds. McClendon had backed away almost involuntarily, shivering all over and crying himself. This was unnatural, this was a devil thing, this had to stop. And then there was a horrid splattering noise, like somebody sucking up a milkshake, the same noise they had heard from outside, and the shadows fell off Matthews in a horrid hissing rush and he was standing there, inside out, organs hanging off him like grotesque party streamers, and he was still alive and crying from in there.

"Oh Christ, oh dear god," Matthews said, for now the shadows were coming for him, and from behind him he heard the insane woman's madly cackling laughter as another tentacle oozed out of the closet, and was it bigger now? He thought so. He turned and ran from the room, panting with sobs and only wanting to get out of this hell house as quickly as possible, cursing the Doc and Cop program with every fiber of his being, but there was a mad ssssssh from behind him and his feet were jerked out from underneath him, and he fell with a bone jarring thud on the wood floor.

"No! I've got to get out of here, got to tell somebody about you, you can't be allowed to live-"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the shadows had snared the mad woman and were dragging her toward the closet, where another amorphous body waited hungrily to get her. She wasn't even struggling, just continued to cackle and stare sightlessly around her.

But now they were crawling up his body, and he started swimming frantically on the floor trying to get away, sobbing louder and breathing in great tearing gasps. "Got to get out of here ... got to tell somebody ... you're unnatural, you can't be real-"

But the shadows had reached his neck, and Matthews was right, it was cold, cold as what the outer reaches of space must feel like, and he seemed to hear voices in his head "-gonna eat you gonna eat you gonna tear you gonna make you bleeeed-" and now they were closing over his head and he saw nothing but blackness, and then there was a great wrenching pain all over his body and he knew no more.

And in the interior of 21 14th Street, there was a final hiss, and silence. And silence. And more silence.

For the show that gave me the original inspiration, Click here