65 Proof (43 page)

“Then he won’t mind us stealing his shit. Damn — will you check out the size of that lock!”

The padlock was almost as big as Phil’s head. An old-fashioned type with a key-shaped opening on its face, securing three lengths of thick, rusty chain which wrapped around the entire shed like packing tape.

“You gonna try to bust that with just a crowbar?”

“Won’t know until we try.” Rory raised the iron over his head, and Phil set his jaw and cringed at the oncoming sound.

The clang reverberated over the grounds like a ghost looking for someone to haunt.

“Sonuvabitch! First try!”

The lock hung open on a rusty hinge. Rory pulled it off and the chains fell to the ground in a tangle. Phil eyed the door. It was some kind of heavy wood, black as death. Next to the doorknob was a grimy brass plaque.

“Welcome,” Phil read.

“How about that shit? We’re invited.”

Rory laughed, but Phil felt a chill stronger than the night air. He’d heard stories about Old Man Loki. Stories of how he used to live in Europe, and how he hung around with that creepy Mr. Crowley guy Ozzy sang about.

Reflexively, Phil looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching.

There was a light on in the house.

“Shit! Rory, there’s…”

The light winked twice, then went off.

“There’s what, Phil?”

“A light. On the second floor.”

Rory pulled a face and made a show of squinting at the mansion. His mouth stretched open in horror, lips snicking back over years of dental neglect.

“Run, Phil! Jesus Christ! Run!”

Phil took off in a dead sprint, fighting to keep his bladder closed. He was forty yards away when he noticed Rory wasn’t next to him.

That’s when he heard his friend’s laughter.

Phil looked back over his shoulder and saw Rory holding his stomach, guffawing so loud that it sounded like a barking dog.

Phil felt his ears burn. He took his time walking back to the shed.

“You should have seen your face!” Rory had tears in his eyes.

“Shut up, Rory. That wasn’t funny.”

“I swear, you ran like that during football tryouts you woulda made the team.”

Phil turned away, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I wasn’t scared. You told me to run, so I did.”

“Okay, tough guy — prove you aren’t scared.” Rory pointed at the black door. “You go in first.”

Phil chewed his lower lip. If he didn’t go in, Rory would never let him forget it. The teasing would last for eternity.

Why the hell did he hang out with Rory anyway?

“I knew you were chicken.”

“Kiss my ass, Rory.”

Phil grasped the knob and pulled.

The massive door opened with a whisper, moving smoothly despite its weight. Warm, stale air enveloped Phil, and the sound of his own breathing echoed back at him.

So quiet.

Rory switched on the flashlight. The small beam played over four bare walls.

“It’s empty.”

“Shine the light on the floor.”

The cone of light jerked to the center of the room, bending over the edge of a large, round pit and disappearing into the darkness.

“What the hell is that?”

Rory crept up to the edge, holding his flashlight out in front of him like a sword. He peered down into the pit.

“Do you smell that?”

“Yeah. Rotten eggs. I think it’s coming from the hole.”

Phil glanced over his shoulder again, taking a quick peek at the house.

The light was back on.

“Rory —”

“There’s a rusty ladder going down.”

“The light is —”

“Shh! Do you hear that?”

Both boys held their breath. There was a quick, rhythmic thumping, coming from deep within the pit.

Bump…bump…bump…bump…bump…

“What is that? Footsteps?”

…bump…bump…bump…bump…

“It’s getting louder.”

The sound quickened, like a Harley accelerating.

“I think something’s coming up the ladder.”

Phil decided he’d had enough. This was the part in the movie where the stupid kids got their guts ripped out, and he didn’t want to stick around for it. He spun on his heels and hauled ass for the entrance, just in time to see a very old man with a pulpy, misshapen face slam the door closed.

Phil grabbed for the knob and pushed, but the door held firm.

“He locked us in! Old Man Loki locked us in!”

Rory kept his focus on the pit. “I think I can see some…”

A black hairy thing sprang out of the hole and yanked Rory downward. The flashlight spun in the empty air for the briefest of seconds, and then fell into the pit after Rory, the light dimming until the room was drenched in pitch black.

Phil stood stock-still in the darkness.

A minute passed.

Five.

He heard whimpering, and realized it was his own.

This can’t be happening, he thought. Why was this happening?

Bump.

A sound. Coming from the pit.

The thing was climbing the ladder.

Phil forced himself to back up until he was pressed against the door.

“Hailmaryfulofgracethelordiswithyou —”

…bump…bump…bump…bump…bump…

“—blessedartthouamong —”

The noise crescendoed, then stopped.

The silence was horrible.

Phil couldn’t see anything, but he could feel the presence of something large and warm coming towards him. Something that smelled like rotten eggs and wet dog.

He screamed, and kept screaming when it wrapped its prickly tentacles around his face, a thousand hooks digging in and pulling. Phil’s hands shot up to push the pain away, and similar barbs shot into his palms.

His screaming stopped when the barbs filled his open mouth.

Then, with a quick tug, Phil was dragged down into the pit.

There was a sensation of falling, skin burning and tearing away, consciousness blurring into a darkness as complete as the one that surrounded him.

And suddenly, Phil was watching a movie in his head. A shaky, black and white film of him and Rory breaking into Old Man Loki’s mansion. Rory had the crowbar, and they used it on Loki, breaking his bones, bashing his face, demanding his money. Old Man Loki moaning the whole time, “The shed! The shed!” Repeating it over and over, even when Rory jammed the crowbar down the old man’s throat.

The movie abruptly cut to Phil as a much older man, clad in an orange prison uniform. He was strapped to a chair, a guard swabbing electrolyte on his temples and his left leg. The switch was thrown and Phil’s blood began to boil within his veins, every nerve locked in agony.

Phil watched the prison doctor pronounce him dead, watched as his own soul left his body, transporting him to Loki’s estate.

A terrifying déjà vu ensued as he viewed himself acting out the same scenario he’d experienced only moments ago. Breaking into the shed — the thing grabbing Rory — getting dragged into the pit —

When Phil finally caught up with himself, he discovered he was in a small, stone dungeon.

Next to him, a forty-year-old version of Rory was chained to a medieval torture rack, naked and stretched out until his shoulders had separated. His body was a haven of slithering, spiny worms, which burrowed underneath his skin.

“Hi, buddy.” Rory offered a bloody smile, his teeth filed down to exposed nerves. “Be nice to have some company.”

Phil remembered that Rory had been executed eight years prior.

“What’s going on? What happened to the shed?”

Rory whimpered, a worm tunneling into his ear. “Old Man Loki didn’t have no shed. That’s why we beat him to death. Kept saying it over and over, when we asked him where his money was.”

“But we just broke into the shed.”

The worm stitched out of Rory’s nose, trailing crimson mucus. “The shed is the doorway to this place. I remember breaking in, too. Right after I died.”

Phil squeezed his eyes shut. His temples still burned where the electrodes had been attached. But the memory of his own death dwarfed the fear he felt right now.

He opened his eyes and tried to bolt, panic surging through him. But, like Rory, he found himself tied to a rack. His eyes fell upon a fire pit, where a dozen branding irons glowed white.

A squat, hairy man entered the room. He had sharp horns sticking out of his head where ears would normally be, and his skin was a dull shade of crimson.

He picked up a hot iron and gave Phil a fanged grin.

“Welcome to eternity, Phil. Let’s get started.”

I had this terrible little story idea stuck in my head for almost twenty years, and finally put it down on paper for the collection Gratia Placente published by Apex Digest. One of my rare jumps into science-fiction, though this is more horrific black humor than sci-fi.

“D
amn, Jimmy Bob, these are damn good cracklins.”

Earl’s face — wrinkled and sporting three days’ worth of gray whiskers — glistened with a fine sheen of lard. A hot Georgia breeze blew smells of tilled earth and manure, but the overpowering scent was pig skins, fresh from the deep fryer. Earl eagerly reached for the plate Jimmy Bob held out, a pile of pork rinds stacked onto a grease-soaked paper towel.

“Thanks, Earl,” Jimmy Bob said. “Got me a new way of preparation.”

“Tell me.” Earl scooped two more into his mouth and chewed so fast he risked a tongue severing. “I been eating cracklins since I was weened off the tit, ain’t never had any this good before.”

“It’s a secret.”

“Chicken shit. Tell me or I’ll beat it out of you.”

Jimmy Bob snorted, a sound not unlike a fat bullfrog croaking. He slapped Earl on the back, hard enough to make the old man’s dentures slup off his gums and out of his mouth. The teeth bounced onto the dirty wooden porch.

Jimmy Bob stared down at Earl, a man half his weight and forty years his senior, and smiled big.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take a beating, Earl. The secret, my good buddy, is skinning the piggies while they still alive and kicking.”

“Doe thip?” Earl said. He’d been going for “no shit” but hadn’t stuck his teeth back in yet.

Jimmy Bob held up his hand, preacherman-style. “That’s the God’s truth, Earl. Something about them porkers struggling and squealing before they die, tenderizes their skins and imparts that extra tangy sensation. Longer they struggle, tastier they get.”

Earl wiped his falsies on his bib overalls and slurped them into his eating hole.

“You’re putting me on,” Earl said.

“You got a dead spider in your bridgework, Earl.”

Earl picked out a dry Daddy Longlegs and flicked it over his shoulder, then repeated his prior statement.

“I’m honest as the day is scorchin’, Earl. Ain’t just the cracklings, neither. Bacon comes out so juicy it melts in your mouth, and you can cut the pork chop with a spoon they’re so tender.”

“Now I know you’re funning me, Jim Bob. Ain’t no way you can carve up a hog while it’s still kicking. It would run like the dickens, and the blood would make it all slippery.”

“I built me a hog rack, out of wood. Keeps it locked in place while I do the carving. Put on the salt and vinegar while they’re still wiggling, so it soaks in. Louder then hell, but you’re tasting the results. Want another one?”

“Hell yeah.”

Earl was reaching for more when the big silver saucer flew out from behind a fluffy white cloud, situated itself over Jimmy Bob’s porch, and hit the two men with a beam of light.

There was a moment of searing hot pain, then darkness.

Jimmy Bob awoke on his back. His head hurt. His last memory was of Earl, who had come over with a mason jar full of his rotgut corn shine, and he figured he had himself a granddaddy hangover. But Jimmy Bob couldn’t remember drinking any of the shine. All he could recall was eating cracklins.

He stared up at the ceiling, and realized it wasn’t his ceiling. It was silver, and curvy.

Then he noticed he was naked. Even worse, Earl was on the floor next to him, similarly declothed.

“Oh sweet Jesus, how drunk did we get?”

Jimmy Bob reached for his nether regions, but nothing down there seemed to ache from use. Thank the lord for that.

He sat up, the metal floor smooth and cool under his buttocks, and looked around. The room they were in was all silver. No furniture. No carpet. No doors or windows. No lights, even though he could see just fine. It was like being inside a giant metal can.

Then Jimmy Bob jerked, remembering the spaceship in the sky, the blinding bright light.

An unidentified flying saucer. A UFO.

Lordy, him and Earl had been ubducticated.

He nudged his old buddy.

“Earl! Get your ass up. We’re in some shit.”

Earl didn’t move.

“Goddammit, Earl!”

He shoved Earl again. Earl remained still. Jimmy Bob noticed his friend wasn’t breathing, and had taken on an unhealthy bluish tint.

Jimmy Bob knew about CPR from watching TV, and much as he didn’t want to touch lips with the older man, especially since they both were nekkid, he forced Earl’s mouth open and blew hard down the old geezer’s throat.

His breath didn’t go nowhere, no matter how hard he gusted, and Jimmy Bob squinted down and saw the big bulge in Earl’s neck.