Horror RTG

A Clutter of Anguish Stories by Jay Bechtol / @BechtolJay #MythicPicnicTweetStory = Ardent In Bomont, when somebody dies, there’s an auction. Highest bidder gets to light the fire. These days the bidding starts at two hundred fifty eight bucks, winner’s usually someone from the surviving family. Everyone else kind of sits back, especially if it’s a kid. You know. In some ways it’s a good distraction. It can be cathartic, fun even. More so when there’s no family involved. All for the privilege of laying the wood under the little stone crematorium and setting it aflame. Ed Hergestrom is Bomont’s current auctioneer and mortician. After the fire burns, he sweeps up the ashes and puts ‘em in an urn. Highest bidder also gets to keep the ashes. Some people in town have five or six urns at home. I can’t remember the last time anyone was buried in the cemetery. If you asked ten people how it all started you’d get ten different answers. Most common theory is that a Norse family hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred years ago, wanted to have one of those Viking funerals and the local parson objected calling it un-Christian. The family offered the parson money until they reached a price that he couldn’t say no to. Who knows. Sounds credible enough. Doesn’t really matter because now it’s part of our town’s DNA. It’s dinner conversation, barber shop banter. Kids talk about the celebrity they’d want to light their fire. Traditions become ritual become blind faith. I can’t explain it, sometimes that’s just the way it is. Like anything, there’s an occasional downside, you know, families argue, but no matter what else happens, no one would think of doing anything different because it is how things are done. If you are from Bomont, it’s part of you. Then Violet Burgess died. Big Tom’s daughter. Most towns have a Big Tom of their own, the person that kinda runs things, even if they don’t actually run things. The sort of person no one talks about, except we all do. Violet married Jesse Burgess against Big Tom’s wishes. Big Tom never approved of Jesse, thought his daughter could do so much better, and had no problem telling anyone that would listen what a loser Jesse Burgess was. People listened to Big Tom because you really don’t have any other choice. Anyway, Jesse and Violet took off. Left everything and got out of town. Escaped Bomont, Big Tom, and our small town ways. Until there was a car accident. Violet survived long enough to tell Jesse her last wishes. She wanted to come back to Bomont and she wanted Jesse to light the fire. These things take hold. You know. My wife and I have talked about it a few times, what will happen when one of us dies. We each want the other to light the fire. It isn’t written down anywhere, and maybe we should, but we’ve also agreed that a thousand bucks is our cap. If someone starts driving up the bidding for some reason, we’ve agreed to stop at a grand. No need to break the bank for a silly tradition. Walk away with our dignity and money to keep on living. But I gotta tell you, if she goes first, I’m not stopping at a thousand. There is no one else in this whole world that is lighting my wife’s fire if she dies before me. And that’s the God’s honest truth. Grief is not rational. So, Jesse brought Violet’s body back to Bomont. Half the town showed up for the auction that day. Probably more. And no one was surprised to see Big Tom near the back of the crowd. “We’ll start at two hundred fifty eight dollars,” Ed Hergestrom’s voice carried through the assembled crowd. Jesse was standing up at the front. An arm’s length from the stone crematorium, Violet’s wooden coffin already wheeled inside, just visible. “Three hundred,” Jesse offered. “We have three hundred, thank you so much Mr. Burgess.” Ed Hergestrom nodded. “We are sorry for your loss and know that as we send Violet to her eternal rest…” “Six hundred,” a voice boomed from the back. No one turned. Everyone recognized Big Tom’s voice. Jesse grimaced, paused, and said, “Eight hundred.” “Sixteen hundred.” Jesse licked his lips and focused straight ahead. I was standing close enough to see the tears running rings around his eyes. “Two thousand,” Jesse countered. “Four thousand,” Big Tom responded. The sneer evident in his voice. “I’ll double you every time, you little shit. Think you can come back here and outbid me?” I didn’t think he would, but Jesse turned and looked across the crowd to his father-in-law. “Violet told me two things before she died, Tom. One, she told me to light the fire in Bomont.” His voice cracked a little, “Two, she told me under no circumstance to let you anywhere near the flame.” Big Tom waded through the gathering, toward where Jesse stood, “Then you are as stupid as I imagined. How high you gonna go? You think there isn’t a price I won’t pay? You stole my little girl once. It sure as hell ain’t happening again.” “Five thousand,” was Jesse’s reply. I was impressed that he kept his voice even. “Ten.” The crowd murmured at this one. As far as anyone could remember fourteen thousand was the highest any auction had ever gone. I know what I said earlier, about this being in our DNA, but for a moment I thought to myself that maybe the kid should let this one go. Forget the tradition, his grief, and Violet’s wishes. Big Tom’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “You want to keep going, you little shit? You drag my daughter away from her home, with nothing to show for it. You were worthless here, you are even more worthless out there,” Big Tom waved an enormous arm toward the distance. “You couldn’t keep my baby alive. My baby, you little shit. You let her die and you think you can come back to Bomont and light her fire?” Jesse broke. His eyelids lost their battle with the tears. “Fifteen,” he blubbered, “thousand.” And I knew that was it. I imagined the scene in the hospital. Violet’s dying wish. She knew her father would put up a fight but she thought fifteen thousand would be enough. Higher than anyone ever paid. I don’t believe Violet and Jesse had fifteen thousand dollars but they figured that was a number that could dissuade Big Tom. Jesse hiccupped. The crowd looked at the ground or the sky or the end of Violet’s coffin. Anywhere but at that poor kid. Ed Hergestrom closed his mouth which had been hanging open for the past three bids. “Thirty thousand.” Big Tom spoke softly, then repeated himself. “Thirty thousand. You want to think about that, Jesse?” And as far as I know that was the first and only time anyone ever heard Big Tom call Jesse by his name. The kid was openly sobbing now. “Please. She made me promise. She made me…I have to light that fire. She was everything to me.” “I tell you what,” Big Tom said, as if he’d just been hit with the greatest idea ever, “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll go ahead and take back my last bid. But in turn, you need to do something for me.” Then Big Tom smiled. From ear to ear. Jesse couldn’t raise his eyes to meet Big Tom’s. “What?” he whimpered. “What do you want?” “I want you to get in that coffin with her.” I thought Ed Hergestrom might interject, or one of the other townspeople. I thought the kid might tell Big Tom what he could do with his idea. I thought maybe the need to light the fire didn’t mean as much as any of us thought it did. “You go ahead and lay that fire,” Big Tom continued. “You touch the flame and get it going. Then you jump in that coffin with her. Ed here will wait and then push you both in there and close the door.” Big Tom’s smile widened, although I hadn’t thought that possible. “How does that sound, you little shit. The only thing in your life worth living for is right there in that wooden box.” I really expected someone to do something. You know. Half the town was there that afternoon. We all watched it. And if you ask people about it they will all say the same thing. They’ll say, “I wasn’t there,” or, “How could such a thing happen?” But watch their faces. The ones that were there, their eyes will go distant, they can still hear Jesse’s screams. Muffled by the closed coffin. Muffled by the stone crematorium. Muffled by denial. But they heard it then and they’ve heard it every day since. Because when you hear someone burn to death, you remember. = No. It Doesn’t “Ladies and Gentlemen,” the Ringmaster’s booming voice echoed through the cavernous tent. “We have now reached the Evvv-rything Happens For A Reason part of the show!” A hidden calliope tooted in giddy reply and the crowd leaned forward. She leaned with them, surrounded by dark figures clamoring for the next act, caught up in their insatiable appetite. “If you would be so bold to look to the heavens,” the ringmaster barked and swept his hand upward in a grand arc. “To the top of our tent. Where death is defied.” A spotlight traced through the darkness to where he gestured. A lone figure on a platform near the top of the tent’s main pole. A thin cable stretched out in front of him. “No net, no margin for error!” The ringmaster bellowed. The crowd around her stood and cheered. She remained seated, her discomfort vibrated into the worn wooden bench with the calliope’s frenzied melody. She squinted to better see the man about to step onto the high wire. The spotlight illuminated the figure at the top of the pole, highlighting his face. “Harold?” she whispered, then leapt to her feet with the rest of the crowd. “HAROLD?” she screamed but her voice disappeared in the cacophony of the crowd’s expectations. Her husband slid his left foot carefully onto the wire and tested it. His arms extended to either side as if he were playing airplane in the backyard with the boys. “Harold, please stop!” Her voice insignificant amongst the vocal ecstasy of the big top crowd. Harold took a second step, and a third. Then he wobbled, slipped, and his foot danced into emptiness. His arms came in as his body dropped, the taut line smacking him across the chest. He clawed for the wire. The rapturous crowd silenced as one, all eyes straining to the heights of the tent. Harold held for a moment, perhaps two, then fell. She was alone, the ringmaster, the crowd, the calliope, all gone. Only the spotlight operator remained tracking the downward path of her husband in agonizing slow motion. She reached for Harold as his arm flailed, like it did when he danced. Like the time in Vegas when he dropped a coin in a slot machine and pulled the handle. Three sevens came up and One Thousand coins spilled out of the machine. A thousand dollars! he’d yelled while he danced. She’d laughed until tears came out of her eyes when he realized it was a nickel slot and a thousand coins only came to fifty dollars. His leg kicked wildly, the same leg he’d bent when he dropped to his knee and held out a ring he couldn’t afford. His eyes were wide, like when she’d taken off her white wedding dress and replaced it with that tight black lace her best friend convinced her would be perfect for a honeymoon. His mouth moved, like it did when he called the boys in for dinner. Like when he sang Bob Seger songs in the shower. Like when he told her he loved her. Harold’s body slammed into the ground with enough force for him to bounce. Sawdust sprayed in every direction. His lifeless body defied gravity before it fell once again, this time a much shorter distance, into the small crater from the initial impact. She knew it couldn’t be. This was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t really Harold. Or maybe he’d jump up, brush himself off, nod at her with that crooked smile of his and let her know everything would be alright. He… …said it would be a circus. A three ring circus, but cancer is beatable, Harold told her, we are strong enough to do this. The doctors, the tests, chemo, friends, family, it will be hard. He’d held her close, cancer will not defeat us, do you hear me? She heard him, believed him. Harold lied. She let her gaze drift around the cavernous church. To the curved ceiling above the altar, past the stained glass windows, past the blue-haired lady punching out some horrible dirge on the pipe organ. Until her eyes rested on the ebony casket. Her boys sat on either side of her. The organ stopped playing funeral music and a man in purple robes rose from a chair by the altar. He placed his hand on Harold’s casket and in a deep, soothing tone said, “Friends and family, welcome, to this day of mourning. We know that God works in mysterious ways. We know that He has a plan for us. We know that everything happens for a reason…” And in the front pew she bit the inside of her lip and tried not to scream. = The Manual The tree remembered the exact moment that fuck Shel Silverstein ruined everything. That human and his book. Made of paper. It glorified abuse and violence. Somehow made it acceptable. Wholesome. The human offspring had emerged from their nest, their fucking arms flapped futilely as they ran toward the stand he and his brothers and sisters called home. They carried that green book, read its words aloud, and made plans as to how they would emulate its recipe for destruction. “They are human saplings,” one of his sisters chided. “Relax,” a brother said. “It’s make-believe,” another chimed in. His siblings rustled their leaves at him. He barked back, “You don’t understand. Did you not hear their plans for us?” A pronouncement that only brought laughter and more derisive comments from the other trees. The tree ignored his family and flexed his roots, loosed the earth’s grip on his feet, and slid forward. Toward the nest of humans and their treachery. * Years passed and the human saplings grew and left the nest. Eventually returning with saplings of their own. The tree inched closer to the human nest, pushing through the soil in unmeasurable steps. One year two of the human offspring, now significantly older, stared at the tree. The thin wispy leaves on top of their heads had started to grey. “Remember when we were kids,” one of the humans said, “we thought this tree was so far away?” “Time changes everything,” replied the other human. Their ignorant nostalgia fueled his anger, urged him to uproot and topple forward right then. He would crush the two humans before they could destroy his family. Humans noticed nothing “You are monsters!” the tree screamed. “Leave us the fuck alone!” From behind he heard his family’s laughter, their leaves tittered in mirth. And pity. “They cannot hear you, silly. Stop this nonsense and come back here.” The tree gnarled and pressed forward. * More time passed and the human sapling’s saplings began making new humans of their own. The tree decided it was time. He’d grown taller in the intervening years and the humans still hadn’t noticed him racing toward their home. In the next windstorm he would do it. Leap upon their fucking nest and destroy them before they could destroy him. The tree had long planned on crashing through the human nest, breaking off human limbs, and gathering their fruit. To see how they liked it. An idea formulated the first time he’d heard the words in that book. “Don’t do it,” one of his sisters called as an autumn wind began to blow. “You’ll only hurt yourself.” The tree knotted his brow and waved a dismissive limb at the stand. “I’m doing this for all of you. All of us.” The wind strengthened and whooshed through his branches. To the tree it sounded like the wind’s approval. “Brother wind,” he replied, “what have the humans done to you? Join me, they cannot steal from us forever.” A massive gust pushed against him and he knew it was time. He lurched, freed his roots, and surged forward. Toward the center of the human nest. Howling with glee. Shel Silverstein in-fucking-deed. * The tree laid on its side, leaves still panting with the exertion of the night before. He tried to wiggle his dirt-laden roots, free the one that had caught on some large underground rock and twisted his trunk as he fell. Somehow he’d missed the human’s nest and only grazed a back corner and exposed the place where the humans kept their metal transportation boxes. But he hadn’t clipped a single human. Hadn’t felled a single sapling. And now they gathered alongside him. “Let me be!” he screamed as the humans closed in on his fallen body. “LET ME BE!” he wailed. But the only response came from the deafening growl of a human machine. Whose teeth whirled with blinding speed. * What remained of the tree had been shaped and smoothed and now resided within the human nest. Outside, the tree thought he could sometimes hear the distant rustling of his brothers’ and sisters’. Inside, the humans would occasionally gather around him and laugh and talk. At one gathering, an original sapling, now quite old, slid the green book across the tree’s polished surface, into the hand of another human. “Here,” the old sapling said, “share this with your granddaughter. She’ll love it.” The tree cursed Shel Silverstein. And wept in defeated silence. = Windchimes More stupid boats this morning. Sixty-three now with the two that drifted in last night. They think I don’t notice but I can add, yes indeedy. I can add those numbers right up. The boats came three weeks ago, maybe five. Very, very hard to keep track of when anymore. Doesn’t matter. Boats float in and I count them and stand guard with my pile of rocks. I wonder if they are real or not. Real. Maybe I’m the only one that sees them. But there’s no one to ask. No one no one no one. Just me. So I keep my rocks, and once a day, to show them I know what they’re up to, I chunk one of the rocks at a boat. The closest one today looks like one of those lifeboats from the old movies. Clunk goes my rock, right off the wooden side. Clunk then plink. That sound means those boats are real, yes indeedy. If it only went plink, then that would mean there’s no boat, just a rock falling into the water. Plinkity plink. Sometimes the wind will blow, and the boats will all push against each other. The sides of them clack together and sound like something I remember. Something at my mom’s house when I was a kid. When the ocean was a lot farther away. When my mom and other people still walked around. I think it was a windchime by the front door. It had tubes of bamboo that clacked together. Dull sounds. That’s what the boats sound like when they bump into each other. Clack clack. The worst music ever. I have to keep watch during the day with my pile of rocks. * Now there’s seventy-one boats. I’m tired. My rockpile is getting smaller and this is no job for one man. Person. Human. Somedays I’m sad that all the other people left. Somedays I’m angry. I’m about to throw a rock toward the nearest boat, when I see one of the creatures stumbling down the shore toward me. It’s still far away, but I can see it coming. It waves its arms, but I don’t fall for that. No indeedy. I pick two rocks from my pile, smooth and round. They’ll go straight and far. I’m very good with rocks now. I wait. Like my mom taught me. On the water the boats clack together. The thing is close enough now, so I give my first rock a toss. High in the air, like a rainbow, just without all the colors. The creature sees it and dodges. But that’s all part of the plan. Because while it’s watching that first rock, all pretty in the air, I’m lining up the second rock. Smack-a-whack, it slams right into the monster’s chest. It screams out loud and falls down. Weird. The rock didn’t go sploosh and splash straight through. “Jesus Christ,” the creature screams, “what the hell is wrong with you?” I pick up another rock and the thing raises its hands. “Wait! Stop!” It hollers. “I’m a friend.” I rub my thumb on the edge of the rock. All the people are gone, yes indeedy, but maybe not. “Are you a person?” I holler back at him. “Of course,” he calls. “Jesus, what do you think?” I decide that it’s time to close my mouth. Quiet quiet quiet. He keeps his hands up and gets on his feet and walks toward me. Slow, like a butterfly with one wing. When he gets close to my rock pile, I can see he is telling the truth. He’s a person with skin and hair. Long, like a girl’s. He has a backpack. “You’re not going to throw another rock at me, are you?” I shake my head but keep the rock in my hand. Just in case. “My name is Charles,” he says. It sounds strange to hear another human voice. “What is yours?” Quiet, I remind myself. “Is their anyone else? Here with you? Do you know what happened? Where everyone went?” I shake my head again. My mom used to say she could hear the pebbles rattling around in there when I did that. I hope Charles doesn’t hear them, too. He glances out toward the water. “Holy shit,” he says. “Was this a resort, some sort of marina? Where’d all those boats come from? There’s gotta be a hundred out there.” “Seventy-one,” I tell him. “Is there food on them? Weapons, first aid kits? Anything? Holy crap, they could be like a gold mine. No people on any of them?” Stay quiet, I tell my mouth. Quiet. My mouth ignores me. “No people,” I answer. He looks at me, my pile of rocks, the boats, and then back at me. Like he’s trying to put a puzzle together but one piece fell on the floor and he can’t find it. “Where’d they come from?” I shrug. “Jesus, man, let’s take a look.” He drops his backpack and pulls off his shirt. There’s a huge red mark in the middle of his chest and he catches me staring at it. Right at it. “You’re a pretty good shot with those rocks. Is that what you hunt with?” But he doesn’t want an answer, he’s too busy stripping his pants off. Not a good idea. I squeeze the rock in my hand, like it can tell me what to do. Like my mom used to. Used to. “Don’t go out there,” I say. “What?” “You shouldn’t go out there. To the boats. Bad. Clack clack,” I tell him. He smiles at me then. I’d forgotten how nice it is when another human being smiles at you. “You can wait here,” he says, “but I’m going to check one of them out.” “Don’t,” I tell him but he doesn’t hear me because he’s already running into the water. He swims toward one of the bigger boats. It has a ladder off the back, like maybe a rich person used to have it. He puts his hand on the ladder and pulls himself up. “See,” he yells back at me. “Nothing to it.” He looks into the boat and then back at me. “Whooee, it stinks out here,” he calls across the ocean. “Like a foot of standing water inside this…” The thing that lives on the boats rises up then, splashity splash. Like it had been waiting there just for him. The thing looks like a person, but it’s made of water. Seaweed and other stuff floats in its body. I think I can see eyes bobbing around where the head should be. One of the eyes looks down at Charles. The other eye looks past the other boats, over the water, to me and my pile of rocks. And it gurgles with hungry excitement. Charles doesn’t even have time to scream. Another creature pops up and the two things suck him right up. Slurpity slurp, like he wasn’t a person at all. Like he was some kind of food or something for these monsters. Then the things slide over the side of the boat. I can see Charles’ arms in one of the things, his legs in the other one. His long hair swishes inside both of them. They ripple through the water, coming to the shore. I pick up a handful of rocks, I don’t bother to pick out the good ones. No time for that now. When the ripples get to the edge of the water, they stand up, like they want to be people. But they are not. No indeedy. Charles’ face floats in the middle part of one of the creatures. He isn’t smiling anymore. The thing with my friend inside takes a couple of steps out of the water onto the shore. Bad idea, they aren’t very strong once they are on dry land. I spin my first rock, a perfect shot, right to the head of the thing. At least what I think is the head. It splurshes into a jillion little drops and splashes back into the ocean. The other one keeps a foot in the water, stronger that way, and it takes five good shots with the rocks to really make that one turn around. I watch the things ripple back toward the boat with the ladder, slide up and over, and plop into whatever stinky water is on the inside of all those boats. I keep the extra rocks in my hand until the sun goes down. * I’m so tired. There are one-hundred and nine boats now. Every day the creatures get a little braver. Sometimes five or six of them come at once. One of them looks like the person that smiled at me. His name was Charles. I throw the rocks so hard and fast. I remember that when the boats bump together, they sound like the windchimes outside my mom’s door. Clack clack. And I wonder when all the people will come back and I can go home. = Stories first published @CrystalLakePub Jay’s stories have also appeared in Penumbric, Rock and a Hard Place, and other fun places. His novel "The Great American Coward" is available from Golden Storyline Books