Scratch (7 page)

Afterword

Scratch
was written in 2009, and published in 2010 by Cemetery Dance Publications as a signed, limited edition hardcover book. It was also included in my now out-of-print collection
A Conspiracy of One
. This is the first time the novella has been made available to a wider audience.

While Old Scratch is a fictional creation, the other giant snakes of Pennsylvania mentioned herein are indeed based on actual legends, and sightings continue into present day. Indeed, as I was proofreading the final draft of this manuscript, the local news carried a brief story about another sighting of Raystown Ray. Apparently, when it comes to snakes, we grow them big here in rural Pennsylvania. That is one of the many reasons why I always carry a handgun and a stick when walking in the woods—and since I live in the heavily-wooded river bottoms along the Susquehanna, that’s pretty much all the time.

People always wonder what a horror writer’s fears are. Most of mine are probably similar to yours. Harm coming to my loved ones. Cancer. Gravity (not heights or flying, but gravity). My number one fear, however, is snakes. As long as I can remember, simply seeing a snake has always filled me with an unreasonable, overwhelming sense of loathing, terror, and revulsion. Doesn’t matter what kind of snake, either. Even tiny little garter snakes, which logically I know are harmless, terrify me. Fellow author J.F. Gonzalez used to think it was hilarious to invite me over to his home, and then get his pet boa constrictor out of its cage and chase me around the house with it. He stopped seeing the humor in this when I snatched a butcher knife off his kitchen counter one day and threatened to make snake cutlets if he came any closer.
 

Despite this admittedly unreasonable and unwarranted fear, I never really tackled snakes in my fiction until Scratch (unless you count the zombie snake in
The Rising
). During my last marriage, I lived in a place very much like Evan’s home in the novella, and the idea for this story suggested itself to me one day after a similar flood. While standing creek-side and surveying the flood damage, I noticed that the churning, rising waters had deposited several large, ugly watersnakes into the low-hanging branches of a tree overhead. I took one glance at those snakes and ran away. By the time I’d reached my laptop, Scratch was pretty much fully-formed in my head.

Eagle-eyed readers may catch a connection between this tale and my novel
Ghoul
, among other subtle links.
 

I hope you enjoyed
Scratch
. And to thank you for your purchase and support, here is a bonus short story called “Halves”, which was written around the same time as Scratch, and in the same house, and deals with some of the same themes—but with a very different sort of antagonist.

Brian Keene

September 2012

W
e walked outside one morning and my daughter, Ellie, stepped on half of a dead mouse.
 

It was my turn to take Ellie to school. She’s in second grade, and shy. A few of the older kids on the school bus like to pick on her. They call her names—‘Smelly Ellie’ being one of the more obnoxious ones. For the record, my daughter doesn’t smell, unless you happen to think that Johnson’s baby shampoo and soap stink. Apparently, smelly is the only word the little cretins could find to rhyme with her name. We complained, of course. It did no good. The bus driver was unwilling or incapable of putting a stop to it, and the administration assured us they’d look into it, but they never actually did anything. Mean-while, Ellie came home every day in tears. So my wife, Valerie and I, began taking turns giving her a ride to school each day on our way to work.
 

That morning—a Monday in late May—started off really nice. It was a beautiful day outside. Sunny and warm, but not hot. A gentle breeze rustled the trees in our yard, making them sway back and forth. Butterflies flitted about. Birds sang and rustled around in the shrubs. The sky was light blue and filled with fluffy, slow-moving cotton ball clouds. Ellie was in good spirits. No big surprise there. After all, she only had a few more weeks until summer vacation started. Her mood was infectious. I remembered what that felt like—having the open promise of the entire summer spread out before you.
 

Kids are good at reawakening emotions and joys you’ve long since forgotten. The sleepless anticipation that comes the night before Christmas or your birthday. The fun of getting dressed up for Halloween. The excitement of going someplace new or seeing something different. The simple pleasures of favorite books, television programs or a special toy. I relive my childhood through my daughter every single day. Childhood is better the second time around.
 

Valerie was pouring coffee into a travel mug in preparation for the morning commute. Ellie gave her mother a kiss goodbye. Then Valerie went into the bedroom to finish putting on her make-up. Ellie and I walked out onto the deck, basking in that beautiful day, and we hadn’t taken more than a half-dozen steps when Ellie glanced down at her shoe and screamed.
 

It was pretty gruesome. The mouse’s upper half was missing. Where there should have been a head and forepaws, there was only a pink and purple mess of tiny entrails. Some of it stuck to the bottom of Ellie’s shoe, and stretched like gum that had been left out in the sun for too long.
 

“Ewwww,” she wailed. “That is so gross!”
 

I told her to wipe her shoe off on the outside doormat as best she could. Then I thought better of it. Valerie would kill us both if she did that, so instead, I told her to go wipe it off in the grass. While she was doing that, I got a shovel out of the garage and scooped the grisly remains off the deck. Then I tossed the little corpse in the trashcan. When I returned, a small, wet stain was all that remained of the mouse. By the time I got home from work, that would be gone, as well. Flies were already buzzing around it.
 

“Come on,” I said. “We’ll be late.”
 

Ellie pouted as I buckled her in.
 

“That poor mouse. What happened to it, Daddy?”
 

“I don’t know, sweetie.”
 

In truth, I
did
know what had happened to it. I just wasn’t about to tell my daughter the truth—that the hapless mouse had had the misfortune to come across Hannibal, and Hannibal had done what he did best.
 

Hannibal is our cat. He showed up during the winter, bedraggled and skinny, with matted, dirty fur and a pronounced limp. His age was indeterminable, but I guessed he was under a year old. He was wary of us, at first, but once I fed him, he rubbed up against my legs and purred. After that, he let me care for him. I brushed his fur and got rid of the knots, and in lieu of a bath, I wiped him down with some sanitary kitchen wipes. When I was finished, I discovered that beneath the dirt and grime, Hannibal had a beautiful, luxurious coat; his fur was as white as snow, shot through with pale yellow streaks. I checked with our neighbors, but nobody was missing a cat. Assuming that either someone had abandoned him, or he’d grown up feral and wild, I took him to the veterinarian, got him fixed, wormed, and checked out. Other than a bad ear mite infestation, Hannibal received a clean bill of health. The limp, as it turned out, was caused by a cut on the pad of his front paw, and that soon healed. He settled in quite nicely, and was affectionate and quite grateful for his new home.
 

He expressed that gratitude each and every day by bringing back dead animals. Mice, voles, birds, newts, butterflies, frogs—whatever he could find. Each day, there was a different carcass lying on the deck or in the driveway. Once he’d brought back a four-foot long black snake, and another time, I found a squirrel. Those last two shocked me; they seemed much too big for Hannibal to tackle, but evidently, he was a scrapper.
 

Usually, his prey was less-than-intact by the time he brought it home. I don’t think he ate them—not with all the food I gave him at night. But he didn’t exactly bring his kills home in one piece, either. I can’t tell you how many half-rodents, half-frogs, and butterflies with missing wings I’ve cleared out of the way since Hannibal’s arrival. Until that morning, I’d done a good job of not letting Ellie see them.
 

Valerie wasn’t thrilled with Hannibal’s gifts. She liked having wildlife around the house—liked having daily visitors to the various birdfeeders she’d hung up all over the lawn. But she liked Hannibal, too—right up until he began doing what outdoor cats do. Then, he wasn’t so cute or cuddly anymore.
 

We hadn’t intended to make him an outdoor cat, but despite his loving behavior, Hannibal simply couldn’t grasp the concept of using the litter box. Even after he was fixed, he still insisted on spraying the walls and couch, so rather than keep him inside the house, we let him roam the yard. I fixed up a box for him in the garage, and added a cat-door so that he could come and go as he pleased. It kept him dry and safe, at least, and in the winter, he stayed warm.
 

As I pulled out of the driveway, I pondered the best way to explain to Ellie where the mouse had come from and what had happened to it. She loved Hannibal, and he absolutely adored her. I didn’t want her to suddenly shy away from him. It was important that she learned about the natural behavior of things. But then we hit traffic on the way to school, and my cell phone rang. It was work, wanting to know if I could make it in any earlier. I put off telling Ellie until later.
 

In hindsight, that was a mistake. That was how the trouble started. Then again, even if I’d told her, I don’t know if it would have changed anything.

Like the song says, I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.

The next day, Hannibal left half of a bird on the deck. Ellie’s shriek of disgust was followed by Valerie screaming my name.
 

“Ward! Get out here.”
 

Muttering, I put down my coffee and walked out onto the deck, barefoot. A headless, baby robin with soft, downy feathers and only one wing remaining lay next to the spot where the half-mouse had been the day before.
 

Valerie glared at me, hand on her hips. “Will you get rid of it, please?”
 

Nodding, I started towards the garage to get the shovel. The gravel in the driveway hurt my bare feet, and I winced, stepping lightly. I stopped halfway when Ellie spoke up.
 

“Mr. Chickbaum says that Hannibal did this.”
 

Mr. Chickbaum was Ellie’s imaginary friend. She’d first started talking about him three years ago, soon after we bought this house. Our suspicion was that she’d created him to help her deal with the stress of moving to a new home, and having to make all new friends. Valerie and I didn’t mind. We’d both had imaginary friends when we were young. Mine was a talking chicken shadow named Billy. Valerie’s was a tree named Mrs. Billingsworth. We both outgrew our imaginary friends, and assumed that given time, Ellie would, as well. We thought no more of it, and even encouraged her on the rare occasions that she brought him up.
 

According to Ellie, Mr. Chickbaum was a little bearded man about six inches tall, who wore green clothes and a hat. The first time we heard this, Valerie and I both immediately thought of leprechauns, although Ellie insisted that he wasn’t one. Secretly, I’d always assumed that her imagination formed him based on an old Warner Brothers cartoon. When she was very young, Ellie used to sit in my lap and we’d watch Looney Tunes together (I’ve always had a fondness for the classics, and even own several original cartoon cells). One of them, an episode entitled ‘
The Wearing of the Grin
’, had been a mutual favorite of ours, and we watched it countless times. In the episode, Porky Pig is walking to Dublin, Ireland, and gets caught in a bad storm. He seeks shelter in an old castle, which is inhabited by some paranoid leprechauns who are suspicious of him and mistakenly think Porky’s there to steal their gold. I miss those times. We stopped watching Looney Tunes as Ellie got older, because Valerie insisted they were too violent. I was certain that Mr. Chickbaum stemmed from Ellie’s subconscious memories of those times.

Ellie played with, talked to, read books with, and drew pictures with her imaginary friend, but always in the privacy of her own room. She never pretended he was there when we were in the room with her. For a while, Valerie had even set a place for him at the dinner table, but stopped after Ellie explained that Mr. Chickbaum didn’t want anyone but her to see him.