Country Horror
The unmistakable smell of grease is heavy in the air. Not motor oil and the strong odors that come along with being in a garage, but the smell of used cooking oil, and the smells that accompany it when sitting in a shitty diner in a small town in Indiana. Smells so strong that you have to swim through them just to find your seat, and they stay in your clothes, even after several washings, so that no matter where you go you are constantly reminded of the one time you decided to subject yourself to a slimy wad of meat sandwiched between two starchy pieces of grease-soaked bread in a shitty little diner off the main highway. Indeed, I will end up having to burn these clothes, rather than try to wash them and attempt to wear them again. Maybe I’ll just save them as my diner outfit, jeans and a shirt permanently stained with the smells of vegetable oil.
The waitress takes the remnants of my burger and winks at me. She’s a woman around my age, but a healthy lifestyle of hard drinking and inhaling cigarettes has yellowed her prematurely wrinkled skin. She smiles. I feel a little queasy. I am reminded why I wanted out of rural Indiana, and why I am loath to be back.
They are all the same. Every rural town is the same town existing in multiple points at once. Multiple portals that exist in various points around America and all open up into the same small shitty town. With the same greasy diners, the same smoky bars, and the same sad people caught in the small town trap. God. No wonder suicide rates are higher here. I grab my keys from the table, toss a twenty down, and make my way outside. The air outside isn’t any less oppressive than the stagnant wading pool of grease I just left. The sweet smell of mint lingers in the air, the only positive. The aromatic undertones are hints of manure and depression.
The drive to the old farmhouse is as quiet and depressing as the atmosphere. My blue cord is bouncing and swaying from the rearview mirror while I guide my car down the lonely gravel road. I think back to my youth, and how I used to fly down these roads. Irrigation ditches on either side of the road, a gravel surface, and the wisdom of age have convinced me to take this trip a little more slowly than I did in my past. Clouds of dust billow behind me, even at my slow pace.
Ahead of me I see the farmhouse. An old two-story relic from a time long gone. Glancing in the mirror while I slow down, I see shapes in the lines formed by the dust clouds following behind me. At first they are indiscernible. A random mass of lines formed by grains of dust being kicked up by my tires. Slowly they coalesce into something hideous and sinister.
It begins taking form. The dirt and dust starts to form into a mass of putrid amorphous flesh. The mound grows larger and begins writhing around, and large feelers begin darting out and reaching at the car. Its movements are fluid, as if it were a sentient liquid able to take its own shape. Dread washes over me. All I can do is push my foot towards the floor and listen to my engine growl as it begins lapping up fuel from the tank. Writhing tentacles reach toward the back of my car like a mighty Kraken about to drag a ship down to its watery grave. As they wriggle closer to the car and grow larger and larger in my mirror I see myriad mouths and eyes open wide. Jagged teeth shift and flow as the mouths slither up and down the feelers. A great maw, located on the central mass, opens wide enough to devour half of the car in one bite. Its flesh seems to drip from its body in the same way globs of spittle dangle from its teeth. This horror, this nightmare, seems to be coming for me, and all I can do is push even harder on the gas.
Both of my feet are pressing the pedal, trying to run it straight through the floorboards. My legs are rigid. They are poles doing everything they can to hold the throttle wide open. My eyes are wide and lidless, and look as if they could bulge out of my skull. All I see is this gibbering mass in my mirror. The tires break loose and instinctively I lumber my poles from the throttle to the break.
The wheels lock. I don’t care. The tires still slide over the dirty gravel road. The road is ice, and I can feel the car slipping out of my control. It spins wildly and the whole world is a blur. I am suddenly stopped as the back of the car finally quits spinning. A loud crunch lets me know that I am no longer out of control, even though the world still looks blurry. It also tells me that I destroyed a mailbox. This farmhouse I crash at is my final destination. I don’t realize it right away, as my head is pounding, my vision blurry and double, I stumble out of the car. Everything is spinning, my legs are wobbly, and like a punch-drunk fighter I stagger towards the house, momentarily forgetting the horror that was chasing me just moments ago.
I lean against the house, my lungs burning as I frantically suck down gulps of coarse, dust-filled air. I look around panic-stricken as I slowly remember what caused me to spin out of control.
The cloud of dust that had chased me into the mailbox was starting to dissipate, but the horrific monster that was writhing inside of it could not be seen. The slithering amorphous blob, with its long tentacles and gnashing mouths was gone. I pat myself down, make sure that my digits and limbs are intact. 10, 10, 2 and 2.
The screen door creaks as I pull it open. The hinges haven’t seen oil in at least 15 years. The screen itself is torn and waving in the wind. The inner door sounds worse than the screen door, wailing loudly as I slowly push it open. The house smells of old laundry and dust, and I have to fight back the constant urge to sneeze as I walk inside.
The floorboards howl angrily under my weight, chanting a loud warning with each step, letting me know that there is a chance that neither of us will make it.
“Dad?” I call out. My voice sounds shaky. I am still unnerved by the hallucination I had in the street.
Where is he? I step inside the living room. It is dark and dusty, every window is either boarded up or covered over with old sheets and curtains. He had become increasingly hermit-like in his old age. At least that’s what I had been told.
The couch in front of me is empty and tired. It is staring at the blank TV screen, waiting for someone to watch something. The screen is cracked, a small pile of glass is lying on the floor in front of it. A small ramshackle table sits between the TV and the couch, an open bottle of bourbon and a half-filled glass stare at me. Neither the glass, nor the bottle are covered in dust, both are relatively new and clean. I push through the living room and into the dining room and kitchen. They are one large room with an old 50’s style refrigerator that is so old it is practically oozing radiation. A matching stove sits across the kitchen from the fridge. A pan filled with room-temperature hot dog water sits on a burner, a lonely dog floats, bloated and sad in the pan.
Looking through the room I find a two-day old newspaper, a half empty cup of coffee, and the crummy remnants of a stale doughnut. While the house is dusty and dark, it is not dirty. It is not the den of filth I expected to walk into when I got the call.
The Call I think to myself. He sounded frantic. Said they had found something. We hadn’t spoken in 15 years, and he finally called me to tell me he found something. Cool, Dad. You were dead to me. Like a fool I had rushed here. No matter how much the animosity grew between us, I was eager to come out and bury the hatchet. Now I cannot even find him.
I push the next door open, it whines loudly as it swings to the side. Nails on a chalkboard. The bedroom sprawls before me, a filthy and cluttered rat’s nest, and it smells terrible. The bed is in shambles, dingy blankets coated with an oily grime are crumpled to one end, the sheets, once white, have taken a filthy tan color. The night stand by the bed is coated in a near black fluid that has the sticky look of old soda. His phone is next to the puddle, and the fluid is on it, too. Nasty. My hand grabs his old wireless home phone. He didn’t believe in cell phones. I kept telling him that they weren’t ghosts, and that they didn’t care whether or not he believed in them. The fluid was as sticky as it looked, and my hand instantly regretted touching the phone. I look at the display and it flashes that he has a voicemail.
Pressing the gummed up buttons, I dial in so that I can hear his messages. I don’t know why I think this is helpful, but I do it, and it is. There are three messages, and one new message. The first two are debt collectors, their foreign accents and vague statements completely give them away. Shut the fuck up, your name isn’t John. I delete them, and the third message begins playing.
“Sam! Sam! You need to get out to my place quick! You’ll never believe what I’ve found! Jesus Christ Sam! Get out here! It looks like an egg! Or a Cocoon! Holy Shit! You have to see it!”
That sounded like his friend, Tommy. Tommy and he go way back. Protested their war together. Protested the war I was in together. Christ, I’m pretty sure they spend their weekends protesting heterosexuality together. They were both openly disappointed when I enlisted. When I left for basic, that was the last time I spoke to either of them. I was dead to my father, and he was dead to me.
The last voicemail is me, calling to let him know when I left for his place. My hands stick to the phone as I try to put it back into its cradle, the strange cola-like slime creates sticky streams as I pull my hand from it. Disgusting. I look around and consider my options. It is likely that he and Tommy are off getting drunk in the woods somewhere poking at whatever the hell Tommy found in the woods. I sigh in frustration and my foot subconsciously lashes out, ramming into the kickboards of the rickety cabinets.
I glance at my watch. 1359. I realize I should go to Tommy’s and see what the fuss is about. Hopefully they are sloppy drunk, they are such a treat when they are wasted and propping each other up, regaling each other with their over-exaggerated life accomplishments. I decide to start going out to Tommy’s and head towards the door. Movement catches the corner of my eye, a shadow by the boarded up window appears to be dancing and swirling. Hypnotized I stare blankly at it, and soon my vision narrows and all I see is swirling shadow. The room is a slowly whirling around me, and I feel trapped in a slow-motion merry-go-round. The lights dim and the swirls slowly become blackness, I cannot feel my body and I feel detached and naked.
“Join…. Us..” A hissing whisper comes from all around me.
“Join… Us…” It repeats, elongating both words in its hissing and whispering tone.
Fleshy tentacles begin reaching from the corners of my vision. I want to move, to run, but I cannot. My legs are frozen, and I’m not even sure if they are still there. I open my mouth to scream but my voice is gone. I silently yell at the top of my lungs and shut my eyes, screaming in silence.
Wind blows through the trees and the sounds of birds chirping flood into my ears. The smells of my father’s grimy home flood back into my nose and I slowly realize that I am standing in the living room once again. Opening my eyes slowly I peer around. The dust covered furniture is back in its proper place, and my arm is still outstretched and reaching for the doorknob. What the hell? I think to myself. I cannot tell what is going on. The first time I chalked it up to exhaustion, but now I’m quite unsure. The hairs on my neck are still on end, and my body is covered in a cold sweat.
My shaking outstretched hand reaches for the door and opens it, the afternoon sun floods into the drab home, penetrating the dust and darkness with its warmth and light. Slowly I walk to the car, still shaking.
The road to Sam’s house is a dusty road that is sparsely covered with gravel, a country road that sees little use. Deep irrigation ditches flank either side of the road, and a green muck coats the top of the water that sits stagnant at the bottom. Ahead of me is the turn off, a dirt trail with tire ruts that cuts through a lightly wooded area, the iron gate that is normally chained and locked sits open at the entrance. I sit in my care staring at it. I don’t know if I am ready for what is about to happen.