Get your own Free HomepageLeaves rustle. The car, a make hidden beneath the paint and extras, personal touches, belches black exhaust into the air with an almighty boom that shakes the signboard it is passing. The windscreen is thick with dust that has been smeared across it by a solitary tattered wiper. Behind it are two faces, looking into town with a grim determination.
Dogs howl. He’s coming - and only they can tell. The Pack holds a meeting to discuss the imminent arrival, and decides that it would be best to leave town before he arrives. They can smell his pre-scent over everything, over food, sex; nothing else matters. Get out while you still can, the howl says. He is coming, the bark says. They ignore the two-leggers who look out of their windows in their houses, who open their doors and throw their shoes and shout “Shut the hell up, you damn stupid mutts!” in their two-legger voices.
The old sign creaks as it swings on its post. A towns name. A populace count. Tufts of grass and weeds tug at its base, intertwining into a thick column of immovable green. Rust and dead paint flakes cling on to the post in attempt to keep from falling at each swing, swing, swing. The raven clutches the top of the sign with an ease that is almost second nature; it’s done this before. And in its beak is a glassy sphere, with cornea, retina, pupil. We don’t want to know where, or how it got it; the important thing is that this bird *does* have an eye in its beak. And we don’t have to read the black lettering on the sign to find out where we are.
Welcome to Eerie, Indiana.
Eerie - Phase 2
Day 241
Sparks showered from the innards of the radio as sparks so often do when radios and such are being repaired. Tiny flashes of orange and white light spilled across the smoked glass of the welder’s mask, from behind which hidden eyes watched intently. Spark spark, again, and the mask peered into the grey metal case, prodding the mangled workings with a long, sharp tool.
The welder shrugged, and lay down the tool next to the radio. He shut the welding torch in his other hand off, and set that down on the stained white tile at the back of the desk. He lifted the visor so it protected his curly hair from the less than intense glare of the bulb from the nearby anglepoise lamp. He peered again, and took a deep breath, before speaking.
“Ah, crap.”
He let his breath out in a sigh, and turned around, taking the mask off completely. He tugged a heavy black glove from his right hand, and ran the hand through his tangled ginger curls. “You totalled it, Harley.”
He spoke to what looked like a pile of dirty rags that lay on a wide pine bed. A pair of arms held a Spiderman comic in the air. Between the ends of the arms was something that could generously be described as a face. The mouth of the face moved as the pile of rags spoke. “Yeah. I thought I had.”
“Don’t you have any respect for other people’s property? I mean, don’t you have any respect at all?”
The comic lowered. The head to which the face was attached turned to face the welder. “Not when it’s your property, Simon.”
“You’re a turd, Harley.”
“Right back at you, big brother.”
Right about now, Simon Holmes could go for a good, loud scream; a war cry, even, and a nice big machete so he could hack off his younger brother’s limbs one by one, and then forcefeed them to him so hard they started coming out of his rectum. And then, he’d forcefeed *that* to him, too.
Oh for the days of the original Secret Spot, a place that didn’t have to put up with unruly brothers who had invited themselves in for the Fall. And no matter what Harley said, he didn’t buy the excuse that his partly finished radio transmitter had looked like a new age drinks vending machine.
He looked at his room. Not bad really. Since their first divorce and subsequent remarriage, Mister and Missus Holmes had been feeling a guilt that manifested itself in a smothering of their only child. Here Simon, we’ve built an extension onto the house, and you can have a bedroom in it that’s three times bigger than the old one. Have two beds, so you can have a friend stay whenever you like. Hey, that was okay by him. The new room was far enough away from his parents’ rooms (or *room*, depending on their mood) that he and Marshall could stay up all night long chatting when Marshall came to stay the night. When Marshall had lived in Eerie, that was. Those were the good times. Old enough to eat all the junk food he could get; not old enough to know any better . . . but he hadn’t expected that there would be a downside to it, that there would be *this* downside to it. Harley. Brother, plague be thy name. The guys at school had older brothers that would let them drive their choppers and sportscars, and would buy them truckloads of girly magazines. Simon was stuck with Harley. Harley had been a troublesome two, a terrible three, a fearsome four - and that was *nothing* compared to when he had hit puberty. Now he was the kind of kid that had bullied Simon mecilessly when Simon had been Harley’s age. His face was devistated under a crust of acne that added to both his age and his tyrannical nature. Harley was bigger and meaner and spottier than any kid in his year, and they rewarded him for it. Harley was in charge, Harley was the ring leader, Harley was the *man*. This kid had some kind of unhealthy hold over his peers. How many other thirteen-year-olds could say that they had dozens of teenaged girls knocking at their door, begging them to let them participate in their mock pagan sacrifices? How many other thirteen-year-olds could say that they *held* mock pagan sacrifices?
Yes, there was definately something odd about young Harley. But then, this was Eerie, and odd was the norm. And vice versa.
And Eerie was also home - it had been all his life - and Simon had to face the town alone. If his parents had taken a time out from their bickering they might have started to take an interest in their son’s life. He’d heard it all from Mars’s Mum and Dad. First it was “Our Marshall has a healthy imagination”. Then it was “Don’t worry, honey; it’s just a phase he’s going through. He’ll soon grow out of it.” And finally it was “Honey, I think Marshall’s got a serious . . . ‘problem’ . . . and we ought to get someone to look at him.” So they took Marshall to a specialist in teenage behavioural science, and he had told them that Marshall’s development would improve in a different environment, and so they had packaged him off to Power Cable, Nebraska, or wherever. Of course, what Mrs and Mr Teller *didn’t* know was that their *specialist*, Doctor Victor Carpenter, had been employing Dash-X to dig up bodies from the local pet cemetary in order to take them apart and sew the pieces together to create a bride for his reanimated pet shitzu. Marshall knew, and Doc Carpenter *knew* that he knew. So obviously Marshal had to go. Mars had kept in touch for a year or so, primarily to find out how things were going with “The Cause” at Simon’s end. One day the letters had stopped, without warning. Simon didn’t know why, but he knew that Carpenter was *not* involved - the last time he saw him he had been running to his lab to hide from an angry crowd of torch wielding pekinese. That had been the night that the lab had been burned to the ground.
Simon feared that his best friend’s fate had been far more terrible than anything Carpenter could have planned. It began with an “N”, and ended with an “Ormal”. Could Eerie’s main perpetrator of “good” weirdness have been washed out, straightened out, and turned into the all American High School star? It made him shudder to think of that happening to the leader of “The Cause”, but it was more than a little possible. Mars’s parents, bless them, wanted the very best for their kids. It had led to their arrival in Eerie, and their exit from Eerie. And if they thought that normal was best (which, now he came to think of it, seemed pretty unlikely) then normal was what Marshall Teller would get.
Anyway, what to do with the radio. Simon picked his welder’s tool and prodded the still smoking innards of the radio. He had been right first time - it was ruined. If Harley hadn’t destroyed it (which he had) then his welding torch would have - he *had* to get a soldering iron, he reminded himself. Another item for his World O’ Stuff list.
Behind him, Harley had grown bored of his comic (actually one of Simon’s - Simon had offered him a Ray Bradbury novel but he refused it on the grounds that he didn’t read anything that contained more than fifty words to a page) and tossed it carelessly over a shoulder, where it landed awkwardly on a pillow and slipped slowly to the floor, in the crevice between Simon’s spare bed and its night stand. He lazily sat up, the bed groaning under his substantial bulk, and sat with legs spread wide in a posture that he probably thought was manly and intimidating. A tartar and steel laced grin spread across his face.
“So Curly, what’s with the radio? Hoping ET’ll phone you?”
“Up yours, Harley.”
“’Cause he told me he wouldn’t. He *said* that . . .” At this his fat face attempted to look thoughtfull as he strove to recall some distant, imaginary conversation. “ . . . That no-one would call you . . .ever.”
“Up *yours*, Harley”
“He said that none of the girls . . . and none of the guys, not even that cute Teller guy you used to have such a horn for would ever call, would ever *want* to call you. That’s *ever*.”
Simon turned on his stool and took the mask from the top of head. He let it rest in his lap. “I’d flip you the bird, but I don’t want to spend all day here while you try to count how many fingers I’ve got held up,” he retorted, wearily.
“Oh yeah? Then where are you planning to go, Simon? Down to the World O’ Crap with your bum chum Radford?” He leaned foward conspiratorialy. “I hear he has a whole album filled with photos of little girls, that Kodak are making a sweet buck off of him.”
Simon rose to leave, but a brief wave of anger passed over Harley’s face and he pushed him back onto the stool, making it rock precariously back on one leg. “I hear,” he continued in a nasty tone of voice, “that he was once locked up in the basement of his shop for six months, because he asked some guy to do it - and he really got off on it.”
Simon just looked down at the greasy hand on his Eerie Bats sweatshirt. He was used to Harley’s taunting, Harley’s disgusting potty mouth - Harley was at the age when boys discover cursing and do it all day long, along with other even less savoury practises, but physical violence as opposed to verbal violence was a big no-no where the two brothers were concerned. Maybe some day Harley would beat on his older brother, but for the time being that was out of the question. Although Simon was pretty scrawny, he could cream Harley any day of the week. Harley had forgotton that he was talking to his older brother, and not some scared twelve-year-old he could shake down for his lunch money. He had walked right up to the line he couldn’t yet cross, extended a foot across it . . . and turned as if on a top’s point, walking slowly away.
Harley looked at his hand, not recognizing it for a second, and then pulled it away from Simon’s arm as if the shirt sleeve were a hot plate.
Simon stared into his brother’s piggy eyes. “Radford is a good man. Don’t spread rumours about him, Harley. Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself.” He watched Harley nod slowly. He was gratified to see that there was a miniscule amount of fear in that nod, but was annoyed to see that it was counterbalanced by an amount of defiance. He could hold his own against Harley for the moment, but there would be a time in the not to distant future when that hand would not be withdrawn. Simon didn’t want to think about what would then follow.
He stood, and left the room, taking a ring bound note pad and a biro from his cluttered desk as he went. After a second or two, he took a step back into the room. Harley was sat with his back to him, either taking no notice of Simon or not knowing that he had returned. Simon decided on the first option, and left the room again, this time continuing on his way, taking the stairs down to the hallway that led to the front door.
“Eerie’s not weird.” Famous last words, if ever they’d been spoken. And could she really have said them, all those years ago? But that was before, of course. Before the change, the adventure. Before the death. And now she had a year out and was returning to Eerie, Indiana. Returning to the last but one in a long string of homes. It seemed ironic that the place that would finally end her problem wouldn’t be the place that she and her family would settle down in. Instead it was move on, get along to the next bead on the string, and they had found themselves in the one bead that hadn’t wanted to move along and let the next one be counted. It wasn’t that Fairville wasn’t nice - there had been towns both better and worse in her history - that was the point. Fairville was just another town, like Tamerton, Shobi, Redwood Falls and all the others. Eerie was . . . different. Like a box of Jacobs’ Crackers that’s had a Foxes Biscuits label splashed onto it. You’re after sweet chocolate and end up with salt, and something that would go nice with a slice of strong cheddar. It looked like all the others on the surface; as she had said “*Eerie’s not weird*”; but then you bit into it and discovered . . .
Marshall knew about Eerie, that was for certain. Maybe there were a few others, like that guy that owned that junk-store-cum-soda-bar. People who stood outside the real world and looked in at it, *knew* what it looked like, and in Eerie’s case, what it didn’t. He had said so himself, and she hadn’t believed him. But that was before . . . and after? After was now.
Now she walked along the street by the pavement, where the fallen leaves had gathered. There was perhaps half a days worth here now, the home owners in this neighbourhood wouldn’t want a build-up of mulch outside their picket fenced gardens and driveways; they would sweep up the leaves every morning, maybe even every night. She could see it now, hordes of sweepers moving in a syncronous, monotonous motion like something out of Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”. Same in Autumn, same in Winter, same in Spring. Sweep the leaves, sweep the snow. Sweep the May blossom all away. Did the sweeping masses get a summer break, or did they have to sweep some unknown substance away each morning and every evening? She didn’t know.
The leaves slurped at her boots as she made her way down the street, and there was the occasional crackle as a freshly fallen yet-to-be-soggified leaf was crushed under her footsteps. The air was crisp to such a degree that it almost rang in her ears. She loved the Autumn. She loved all the seasons, but at the moment, Autumn , or Fall in her native Amer-English (her father had rejected the word “Fall” in favour of “Autumn” for the golden season some time before she was born. “The ‘Fall’,” he had told her when she was four, “was the creation of Evil in the Garden of Eden, and Autumn was about as far away from Evil as it was possible to get”) was her favourite. Everything felt so *alive*. The vivid brightness and heat of the summer had passed, but in its place was a beautifully pale sky, a wonderful tapestry of colours on the ground and in the trees made up for the loss of the ever present green and yellow, and the pollen laiden air had passed on, giving way to the rich smoke of bonfires. As she walked, she inhaled deeply. Yes, there in the air was a faint tinge of smoke. Soon it would be the predominant scent.
She turned a corner, and she walked along the final street, the *right* street. This was a place that she hadn’t been in for seven or so years, now, but nothing had changed. The buildings, white fronted, pastel painted, still looked the same. There was the treehouse that she had seen all that time ago but hadn’t been allowed to play in, “not in your condition, young lady”. Some of the branches surrounding it had been sawn off and the rope ladder leading up to it had been replaced by some wooden steps nailed to the tree trunk, but it was the same treehouse all right, not a board had been touched. As she passed by on the opposite side of the street, her minds eye squinted, trying to remember the boy who had lived in the house, the real house behind the play one. Short, grinning, straw hair . . . Timmy MacAllister. She had spoken to him a couple of times, he had been a few months older than her. Her father had forbidden her from playing with him, after her mother had stopped her from climbing the old rope ladder into the rickety old hut. *”That boy,”* her father had said, *”Is a mischief maker. Steer clear of him sweetheart. You don’t need any of his kind of adventures. Not in *your* condition.”* After that, she hadn’t spoken to him again. Oh, daddy was only doing his job. A parent couldn’t be too careful when their child was in *her* condition.
Past the treehouse, now, and there in front, two houses away, was her old home. Between her and it there were two very large trees which all but obscured her view of it. There was the roof, and between the trunks and over the fence, there was the porch. Her step quickened.
“Good morning, young lady.”
The voice came from right by her ear, and made her start. As she had caught sight of the house, she had stepped onto the pavement, and was just passing a large hedge when . . . She looked at the speaker, anxious to get a clear view of her old house, but making sure that her manners where not being overlooked in her anxiety. He was a middle aged man, balding, well rounded, and moustachioed. He wore grey trousers, a navy blue cardigan which bore white patterns on it, and beneath that, a grey shirt. Her gaze dropped briefly, and she noted his impossibly shiny black shoes. The man smiled at her with a fixed grin, the type more often associated with marionettes. In his hands he held an enormous pair of rusty hedge clippers.
“Uh. Hi,” she said. She flashed him a nervous smileand glanced in the direction of her house. So close, yet so far.
“How are you, this fine day?” The voice was politely inquisitive, but she noticed to her dismay that it didn’t seem to eminate from the man in front of her - his smile didn’t move once, his lips didn’t form a single word.
The marionette connection flared in her mind once more. Was this guy some kind of ventriloquist’s dummy? Come to think of it, his face *is* kind of shiny. Then she looked at the clippers, and a far more disturbing thought took hold of her mind. This was a serial killer who had waited all these years for her to return home, like in Halloween or Friday the 13th. He was wearing some kind of hallowe’en mask, *that’s* why his lips didn’t move when he spoke, and any minute now he’d come for her with those rusty old oversized scissors, yelling “These are for you!” trying to snip her head off.
But then the lips moved, and the voice spoke again. “Miss, is there something wrong? You look a little pale.” The voice was still polite and inquisitive, and without a trace of concern despite what it was saying, but this time it seemed a little clearer, a little less muffled.
And then, something happened that cleared up the whole situation. The man’s identical twin brother stepped out from behind him.
She let out a breath of relief, and the faces of the two men creased into identical frowns of concern. “Are you all right, miss?” asked the second man, Tweedledum, she named him. In his hands he cradled a green plastic watering can, which wore a flower sprinkler in its spout. She looked from him to his twin, shaking her head briefly and smiling in what she hoped was a reassuring fasion.
“No. I mean, yes . . . I’m fine. It’s just that . . .” she slumped her shoulders, relaxing, and smiled brightly at the men. “I didn’t realise that . . . you’re twins, right?”
The two frowns turned back to fixed plastic smiles. “We’re identical twins,” said Tweedledum.
“ . . . at least,” interjected his brother, Tweedledee.
“ . . . we like to think so!” This line, spoken in unison by the two facsimilies, came out with such gusto that the nervousness that was just beginning to seep from her synapses was blown, as if by the twins’ breath, right back into her foremost thoughts. So they were twins, it whispered: so what? They could be murderous twins, crazed after so many years of looking into their partner’s face and seeing their own staring back at them. And now, they had sworn a blood bonded revenge on the world that had born them, starting with the tender young morsal who had travelled across America to get to her old house, and now stood before them . . .
She mentally placed a stilletoed heel on that thought, and unconvincingly swore that she would *never* watch another horror movie. From under the mental foot, the Nervous gremlin muttered that of course she’d never watch another horror movie. She wouldn’t survive this encounter to watch another horror movie.
To hell with all that. Twins could *smell* fear.
She brightened her smile, squeezing every last drop of good will into her mouth, until she felt that *she* was the one wearing the mask. “So,” through the smile, “do you live here?”
“Oh no, said Tweedledee with a condescending tone in his voice and a slight bob of his head. “We are only working here for today. Tomorrow we’ll be somewhere *quite* different.”
“We’re odd-job men,” continued Tweedledum. “Trimming hedges today, watering plants tomorrow . . .”
“ . . . selling food containers the next day,” said Tweedledee, effortlessly taking back the thread of conversation. At this remark, they each gave two short, prissy laughs, so spaced that the sound ricocheted from brother to brother like some seventies stereo effect.
She desperately wanted to end her conference with the Tweedle brothers and move on to her house, but her deeply ingrained good manners prevailed. She outstretched a hand, bound at the wrist by silver charm bracelets that tinkled gently with the movement. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Melanie Monroe.”
First Tweedledee, then Tweedledum solemnly shook her hand. They introduced themselves, each other, actually, as Bert and Ernie. “Oh,” said Melanie. “Like on Sesame Street!” This statement was met with twin expressions of blankness. What’s the matter with these people? she thought. Hadn’t they ever seen Sesame Street? Surely *everyone* has seen Sesame Street!
The Nervous gremlin starting to holler in her ear again, Melanie decided to come clean. “I used to live in Eerie. Actually, I used to live in that house.” She pointed, and the brothers’ heads turned to follow her finger. They each took a sharp intake of breath. “What? What’s the matter?”
As the heads returned to their staring positions, a look of utmost foreboding passed over each of them. Bert (Tweedledum) spoke, his voice quavering a little. “While you lived in that house, did you . . .”
“ . . . see anything?” his brother finished.
“See anything? What, like a ghost or something?” Two nods. Melanie took up what she hoped was a sceptical posture. “Are you trying to tell me that that house; my old home, is haunted?”
“A lot of buildings in Eerie are haunted,” said Bert.
“We think that your old home may be one of them,” continued Ernie. “People around here say that they’ve heard some *strange* sounds . . .”
“*Scary* sounds.”
“ . . . coming from that house recently. In the dead of night, they say a monstrous phantom roams the staircases and toilets, rattling chaons, mourning for the loss of his one true love.”
Great. Come to Eerie, visit the house that inspired Poltergeist.
“Do you know who’s ghost this is meant to be?” she asked.
“Be?” The twins inquired simultaneously.
“Yes. You know, someone dies, they’ve got unfinished business on this plane; in this case they are ‘mourning the loss of their one true love’; so they can’t rest, they come back and become a ghost.” She spoke with the air of a casual expert. “That’s what usually happens.”
“But this ghost,” said Bert, “isn’t a ghost of any particular person. He’s more kind of a ghost in general.”
Melanie pantomimed hard thought. “But *he* said that this ghost was mourning the loss of his one true love. If the ghost wasn’t *of* anybody in particular, how could he have had a one true love?”
The brothers opened their mouths to speak, then closed them and looked at each other. Some telepathic conversation appeared to take place, at the end of which they truned to face Melanie and spoke. “We should be going.”
Melanie allowed herself a triumphant grin at the confounding of the twins. She’d pay for that in karma, she told herself, but it was probably worth it. “Okay,” she said. “Don’t be strangers.”
She turned and walked past the garden towards the haunted house. Behind her, the twins gathered their remaining gardening tools into a large wheelbarrow, and ambled away down the pavement. She stopped and watched after them for a while, before following the overgrown path up to the door of a house she had once called home.
© Dan Ness, 1998. So you want to redistribute this, huh? Well tough! This is my work, and it stays here. Link to the title page.
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