Preface
Yes. This is a rewrite. I felt it needed a lot of love, so I finally sat down and give the story some attention.
Journey Home
Christopher June
The diner’s air clung to skin like wet cloth—thick with moisture and the stale tang of frying animal fat. It hung low, a greasy vapor that stained your clothes with its stench the moment you walked through it. You’d carry it home with you, like some trophy earned for braving a slimy wad of fatty meat slapped between two starchy slabs of grease-soaked bread in a wretched roadside dive.
The waitress walked up to the table and reached for the remnants of my burger, She winked at me as she pulled the plate from the table. I was certain she was around my age, but a steady diet of Jim Beam and cigarettes had prematurely aged her twenty plus years. She smiled her yellow nicotine-stained smile. I nodded and smiled an uncomfortable half-smile and remembered what pushed me away from rural Indiana. The Small Town Trap.
Every rural town was an identical town that existed in multiple points at once. A virus, spreading its monotony across a vast multiverse. Myriad portals opened into the same suffocating repetition. The same greasy diners, the same smoky bars, the same sad people caught in the same small town trap. Everything was always the same, and it was both the appeal and the repulsion. No wonder suicide rates were higher here.
I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it—vaporized grease and midwest humidity filled my lungs. Time to leave. I snatched my keys from the table, tossed a twenty down and waded through the diner’s smog in an effort to escape.
The atmosphere outside offered little reprieve. The half-assed effort of the air conditioner managed to stifle some of the sticky heat, but once outside it punched me hard. The oily smell of animal fat was replaced with the sweet smell of mint, one of the few positives this time of year. However, beneath the humidity and fragrant scent of mint the aromatic undertones of addiction and depression wafted into my nostrils.
The drive to the old farmhouse was as desolate as the landscape. My old car was the only sign of life for miles as it cut through endless seas of mint and corn. My blue cord rocked with every bump as it hung from my rearview mirror. I found myself thinking back to my youth and the reckless abandon I had when I navigated these old gravel roads, the yawning irrigation ditches threatening to swallow me whole. I drive slowly now, age tempering the stupidity of a young man.
Up ahead the old farmhouse lurched on the horizon- a two-story relic fighting the decay of time. Its ancient windows were cracked and boarded, rotted wood sagged from nails rusted deep into the frames. Fragments of siding clung to the house’s skeleton like scabs, while sheets of plastic sloughed off like loose skin. The house was a leper, condemned to wither and die in isolation, its only companion the weight of heartache.
I eased off the gas as the skeletal remains of the house crept towards me. I find my attention pulled from the road and to my rearview mirror. Clouds of dust rose in a maelstrom behind the car, but hidden deep within its swirling dirt and rock a terrible shape had begun to emerge.
I blinked my eyes- Perhaps I had spent too much time on the road. I pressed them tight and reopened them in quick succession. I couldn’t be seeing this.. The vision of corpulence hadn’t faded. It writhed and lurched deep within the billowing dust and pushed through the haze like a swollen carcass dredged from the depths.
The world around me was pared away. The edges of my vision dimmed, and soon all I could do was focus on the horror that oozed across my rearview mirror. The crunch of gravel and droning of my engine faded bit by bit, and soon I was left with the thunder of my heartbeat pounding high in my ears. The sweetness of mint that had decorated the air curdled into a rancid staleness thick with dust. I stared, transfixed by the shapeless mass in my mirror.
The dust congealed into flesh- putrid and amorphous. The mound of rotted skin writhed and wriggled as it swelled deep inside the clouds of dirt and filth.
Slick probing tentacles shot from the bulk and probed the air around it, slowly reaching for the car… For me. Hypnotic horror held me firmly in place. The behemoth surged its shapeless body toward me, oozing in heavy heaves as it continued its pursuit.
Panic surged through me and in a frantic rush I gripped the wheel until my knuckles blanched and locked tight. My foot dropped heavy and hard on the gas pedal. The engine growled as it frantically lapped fuel from the tank. My mirror was filled with the horrific vision of writhing tentacles. My eyes focused on the shapeless blobs as they reached toward the back of my car like the Kraken dragging a lonely ship down to the abyss. I continued staring as the horror kept coming, like a book I couldn’t put down. Each appendage wriggled and oozed through the air covered in countless eyes and mouths that writhed and flowed with every movement. The misshapen mouths leaked jagged rows of decrepit teeth that slipped shapelessly from one end of its body to another. Nothing about this fiend was still-it pulsed with a grotesque vitality. It oozed closer. In response I drove my feet down with a relentless fury in an attempt to run the pedal through the floorboards. My legs were poles, my eyes were bulged wide from my skull. My mirror only showed the gaping central maw, and its maelstrom of endlessly shifting teeth. My ears failed, and all I could hear was the distant tinny sound of my own hoarse screams.
The tires broke loose and the rear of the car swung violently. My legs lumbered mindlessly towards the brakes. The short distance between pedals felt like entire galaxies away. The wheels locked, tires slid, gravel shot in all directions as the car slipped from my control. Everything swirled around me in a blur. I was desperate for something to lock on to. Something to focus on. My eyes fixed themselves on the only thing they could- the cavernous central maw of this monstrosity, which was still oozing its way towards me. Its slimy tentacled flesh lurched with a preternatural speed.
It was almost entrancing to watch. Pitted teeth constantly shifted around, anchored in place by massive strings of viscous spittle that slowly crawled down from its fetid mouth. Its tongue was swollen and massive, and it rubbed the pocked and rotten appendage against its craggy teeth. Its breath was thick and rancid, and billowed out in nearly visible clouds of rotted death.
A Sudden and distinct crunching noise was followed by the smack of my head against the steering wheel. The tiny window I had been viewing the world through had shut suddenly and the curtains were drawn down. I only saw swimming blackness, though a few seconds later the world brightened in lethargic swirls and everything came back into focus. I nearly fell out of the car as my adrenaline surged. It was fueling my thoughts and my actions, and in that moment I was running purely on instinct. I leaned against the car heaving as I pulled myself off of the gravel and onto my feet, the world around me still swayed back and forth. I struggled to recover and soon I felt the grease-soaked burger and fries eject itself from my stomach and onto the road.
I stood there shaking, looking nervously in every direction. All was still. I could hear birds chirping and the warm breeze blew through fields of mint, forcing its sweet smell into my nostrils again. There was no sign of the enormous monster that had just previously reached for my car as if to drag it deep into The Beyond. I looked around and my vision steadied again. The crunching noise was the car stopping as it decapitated the mailbox that once stood in front of the old farmhouse. The metal pole the box was once attached to still stood, concrete filled, and part of my car’s quarter panel had wrapped slightly around it, leaving a head-sized dent.
Where is it? I thought. I really didn’t want to know, I just wanted to know that it was gone. I patted myself down, checking for breaks and bleeding. Once I decided that I wasn’t injured beyond a headache I started to move, leaving my car still embracing the thick pipe that stood headless at the end of the driveway.
I felt my mind racing back through the last few hours of my life and it kept going back to the same question, “What the hell was in that burger?”
I reached for the remnants of a makeshift screen door, the rotted wood dangled from rusted hinges that creaked under the pressure of the light breeze. The screen swayed lazily as I pulled the rickety door open, and I raised my hand to knock on the grayed and swollen front door. I paused, the magnitude of what had just happened collided with the force of seeing Senior for the first time in at least 15 years. We hadn’t had a real conversation since I enlisted and shipped to basic. Occasionally one of us tried to reach out, only to have it end in biting words and stinging sorrow. We stopped even trying around three years ago, but after three peaceful years I had received a voicemail from him.
A few tears ran down my cheek, my arm hung frozen in the air as I prepared for the knock. I sucked in a deep breath and sighed it out. I needed to get centered. Calm. I was ready. Ready to see my father, though I still call him Senior, the concept of dad fit like a cheap suit, accentuating all of the negative features, never flattering at all. I was not, however, ready for what I was about to see on the other side of the door.
I knocked on the door, light taps that had a soft wet thumping noise when my knuckles made contact. I took another deep breath and closed my eyes anxiously waiting. I shifted nervously from one foot to the other but no response came. I didn’t know how much time had passed. It could have been 10 seconds or a minute, it all felt the same in the moment, so I knocked again. Thump. Thump. Thump. Some more nervous shifting and waiting.
“It’s me!” I said loudly, “I’m coming in!” I announced my presence and reached for the corroded door knob, I could feel its insides grinding, crumbling as it protested against the motion.
The door creaked and groaned as I pushed on its rusty hinges. It was an old wooden exterior door, the type with a single large window that sits about shoulder high. The window looked like a network of spiderwebs that was ready to spill from the frame at any minute. Behind that was a dingy coffee-colored curtain, though I’m certain it was supposed to be a sandy color. The door opened, and I peered inside. It looked exactly as I’d imagined.
“Senior?” I called out, my eyes scanning through the mess.
The first thing I noticed as I stepped into the room was the smell. A thick haze of decay hung in the air, and I struggled through it just to get in the door. Everything in the room, from the tattered cloth couch to the rickety coffee table, seemed stained with rot. Plates of moldy food sat on the makeshift table while flies danced around them. A cup of what looked to be coffee sat next to the plates, the corpses of many flies floated near the surface.
I shuddered as I forced down a gagging sensation. My nose was burning from the overstimulation and I desperately wanted to turn around and leave, forgetting for a moment the terrifying experience I just had. I had always envisioned Senior to be a filthy derelict, but this didn’t seem right. I couldn’t imagine that he had let himself sink to this level of neglectfulness.
“Senior”, I called again as I pushed through the living room and into the kitchen.
The kitchen was much worse. The appliances within were at least 60 years old, and the refrigerator was so ancient that it seeped radiation. A shoddy stove sat next to it, a lone pan sat on one of the burners. I peered inside, cringing at what I might find. Dirty hot dog water, with one sad and bloated tube of meat floating in it. It didn’t look old, at least it didn’t have the same level of rot most of the other remnants had. The table behind me was littered with more dishes, and an old cordless phone, the base of which clung to the filth-stained wall for its life with the understanding that any form of pressure would mean its doom. Next to the phone was a pad of paper and a pen, as well as half of a cup of coffee that also became the final resting place for a plethora of bugs. Both the pad and the coffee cup were relatively clean compared to the rest of junk strewn about.
The rest of the table was a landfill. Sifting through it I found a two-day old newspaper, the remnants of a stale doughnut, and various other debris. The whole house was covered in dust, but most of the actual filth seemed to be relatively new.
Where could he have gone in such a hurry? – My mind raced, this was not what I had expected when I received the call.
“The call!” I thought to myself. Senior had sounded frantic in the voicemail. He was frantically chattering about eternal youth and discovery.
We had barely spoken in the last fifteen years, and I was more than curious to know what he had found that made him call me, and like the god-damn idiot I am, I rushed out immediately. Not because I believed he had actually found anything, but simply because no matter how much animosity there was between us I was eager to move on. I wanted true peace, and I thought that just maybe I’d get it if I could just drag my dumb ass out to see him. At some point one of us had to be an adult.
I moved around the kitchen, poking through every nook and cranny I could find. The cabinets were surprisingly organized when compared to the refuse piles that accumulated on every horizontal surface. An unnatural silence draped over the room like a heavy blanket, and I barely noticed my own footsteps as I moved from cabinet to cabinet. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I assumed that I would know as soon as I saw it. Dust particles floated through the air, swirling around as I continued my search. The eerie silence was overbearing. Each noise was a distorted echo of what it should be. The birds that chirped their happy sing-song sounded a deep and melancholic warbling, the breeze was harsh and wet. Every sound was echoed and tinny around me.
My vision slowly narrowed as the world around me tightened its grip. I immediately lumbered for the table, planting my palms on its grime-filled surface. A plate clattered as my hands slapped down, and I heard it hit the floor shattering. The broken glass created a deep wave of sound that hung in the air, and I found myself taking deep breaths. My vision began to twist and swirl as I steadied myself, and mentally I was walking through the motions of getting this under control.
My first thought was that I was having some sort of after-effect from my head bouncing off of the steering wheel. I had experienced a concussion before and knew all too well what it was like. This felt different somehow. My feet no longer felt attached to the floor, and my body took on a weightless feeling. I could feel my stomach begin twisting in knots and I became thankful that I had already thrown up outside.
A distant noise began echoing in my head. It had a distinct ringing, but it was low-pitched and had a hollow quality to it. I closed my eyes tightly, doing everything I could to push these feelings away and regain control of myself. My fingers curled into tight fists that turned my knuckles white. I took a slow deep breath. The noise stopped briefly, but then started again. It had a rhythm to it, so I latched onto that rhythmic tone and used it to focus my attention.
Slowly the wetness faded. The deep infernal warbling of the birds outside slowly returned to their cherubic chirping. The breeze lost its sinister quality and now sounded once again like a normal summer day, and the rhythmic echoes that I had honed in on to steady myself slowly eroded to the shrill tones of the cordless phone on the table before me. It had been ringing incessantly, but I had felt so detached from the world that I was unable to recognize it.
I stared at the phone as the world around me started to return. The blinders that were narrowing my vision were being slowly removed, and the swirling motions steadied themselves
One ring
My stomach calmed and I noticed the broken plate. It hadn’t shattered, but instead broke in half. The remnants of food scattered over the dirty floor. Large ants and other bugs had already started breaking it apart to carry off to their unholy lairs.
Another ring
I turned my head back to the table, my eyes looking over my hands. No blood, thankfully. When I heard the plate I had been worried that I might have cut myself. My next thought went to the deplorable state of my surroundings, and how a minor scrape could have led to some sort of infection that would have left me hospitalized.
Another ring
At this point I noticed the cordless phone in front of me. I knew it had been ringing, but for how long? How long had I been struggling with whatever the hell that was? At least once? Twice? Was it ringing when I first came in?
Another ring.
Slowly I loosened the tense grip of my fists, and flexed my rigid fingers to allow the blood to flow back through them. The world was now steady and stable, balance had returned and once again I felt normal.
Another ring
“Fuuuuuuck,” I thought, “Doesn’t this guy have an answering machine?” The incessant ringing was now wearing on me, and I could feel my anger rise with every shrill chirp. I reached a hand out and grabbed the receiver. Instant regret washed over me as my fingers felt something sticky on the underside. I hoped it was just old soda, though then my mind went to the carpet of insects that had covered the scraps that hit the floor from the broken plate.
Another ring
I grabbed the receiver and turned it over in my hand, scanning for the talk button that would allow me to end the stabbing ring that blasted from its speakers. I stabbed the button with a finger. That was enough of that. The ear piece slowly found its way to the side of my head, and damp static filled my ear.
“Hello.” I said shortly.
No response. Just the crackling of static.
“Hello?” I said again, this time a question.
I strained to listen for anything besides the static. Was I hearing faint noises beneath it? I wasn’t sure. My ear struggled to hear, and I stopped breathing to reduce the background noise.
A few seconds went by, I was about to hang up but then my ears caught it. I thought I had heard faint noises, but now I was sure. It was labored breathing. It had the dampness of a lifetime smoker that was struggling with emphysema. A heavy wheezing that was strained, as if the person was exhausted by the mere concept of breathing. Soon I heard more. A smacking noise accompanied the breathing. Not like hands slapping into each other, but lips and tongues, the sloppy gurgle of chewing that comes when you are sick and your head is so thick with congestion that the only choice you have is a perpetual state of mouth-breathing.
The sloppy breathing poured from the phone, giving my ear a cold sliminess. I recoiled at the feeling of the fluid seeping from the receiver’s tiny ear holes, jerking the old cordless phone away from my head. I stared down at it in disbelief and watched as a small puddle of what I hoped was water collected in the recess where my ear once was. I had pulled the receiver from my head, but the horrific soft squelching still hung in the air as if the phone still clung to the side of my face.
A wriggling movement pulled my attention away from my hands.
“What the hell?” I thought as I pulled my eyes from the weeping receiver and back to the rest of the house.
Everything was different. It was the same ramshackle house with filth-covered boards and rusty nails keeping its patchwork frame together, but it was somehow different. Slightly skewed. The doorway was no longer a rectangle, but instead seemed bent into an unnatural shape that stretched up into nothingness. Large dust balls, roughly head-sized, hung lazily in the air. I squinted my eyes to try to get a better look at them, but their already vague and hazy appearance just became more unfocused the harder I tried to see them.
The inside of the house darkened. The sunlight that spilled in from cracked boards and naked windows dimmed at some point while I had taken the phone call. I moved to the window, attempting to dodge the murky spheres on the way. It was an impossible task, but I soon found out that I moved right through them. They didn’t displace, they didn’t sway or move, they simply hung in the air unnaturally. I glanced outside to see the once sunny farmland that had surrounded the house was now a twisted hellscape mockery of itself.
The normally fertile dirt that was lined in soft rows was now dry, barren, and cracked. The once green crops that sprouted were now crooked and bent like arthritic fingers twisting from the ground. My grip tightened around the receiver. My jaw tightened and I could feel my heartrate start to spike. The loose gravel road looked more like a river, the rocks and dirt flowing and rolling over each other as it made its way past the house.
I put my other hand on the counter in front of the window to steady myself and I breathed in slowly and deeply. I looked down at the phone. The water had stopped pouring out but was still pooled in the ear-hole. The wet breathing was still there, consistent and wheezing. It took on a different quality. Sharp short breaths barked out of the phone and bubbles of air burst from the water with each staccato breath. Was it coughing? No. Laughing.
It laughed at me. I glanced around looking for anything I could find that could be used as a weapon. I didn’t know why, I only knew I felt threatened. I felt naked and vulnerable and needed something to make me feel protected.
More movement. A slithering in the corner of my eye, but this time I saw it. It looked like a large pipe, but it was soft and had the yellowish hue of sickly flesh. I followed it with my eyes, and I realized it was constantly moving. It had the peristaltic motions of a worm, or intestines. At one end it exited the house through one of the many rotted holes, the other end trailed through the house.
I followed it as it twisted and wriggled through corridor after corridor. My stomach knotted as I moved deeper into the labyrinthine maze that the house had suddenly become. Through stretching doorways and slanted halls that disoriented I followed the writhing fleshy mass as it twitched and wriggled. We twisted and turned through another set of doors, and it occurred to me that without this tentacle guiding me I’d soon be lost. Deeper we went, and we had made countless twists and turns until we came upon a simple white door that sat neatly in its frame. A hole in the stained drywall allowed the flesh tube to enter. I looked around and realized I was back in the kitchen.
How had I ended up back here? It was impossible. I had been walking for what seemed like ages but here I stood back in the Goddamned kitchen!
“Son!” a voice yelled. It sounded vacant, tinny. There was a certain static quality to it.
I looked around, confused, “Dad?” I asked out loud. It turns out that when you’re terrified it doesn’t matter how cheaply words fit.
“Son! I’m here!” the voice responded. It had a familiar wetness to it, and I realized it was coming from the phone.
I raised the phone, staring in confusion. The husky breathing was replaced by the sound of my father’s voice. He didn’t have a cell, so how could he call himself?
“Where are you?” I asked. I swallowed, and pushed a lump of fear down my throat. I’d been in terrifying situations before, and learned by way of Uncle Sam that extreme violence overcomes fear almost every time. I glanced around again, looking for a weapon. I was taking stock of everything around me.
“Son. I’m in the basement! I’ve got something down here to show you! A birthday present!”
My grip tightened on the phone. I could feel tears as they welled in my eyes. I was slowly coming to the realization that whatever I was talking to wasn’t my father. Or maybe it was, but he wasn’t talking like him. Every conversation we had as an adult started with our christian names, but always ended with much fouler words.
He sounded normal, like he was unaware of the outside world. The gnarled claws that the crops had transformed into would have been visible from the basement windows, so surely he could see what happened.
“You haven’t gotten me a present since I was a kid.” I responded.
There was a brief silence that was followed by the sharp barking wheeze. It was laughing.
“Come on down. I’m a new man. I’ve got all of your presents.” The voice was still his, but it was different. It took on the familiar wet pneumonic quality. I wanted to leave. I wanted to turn around and go, but I wasn’t convinced I’d be able to. I knew I was back in the kitchen, but the endless walk through the empty hollow halls had my head in a mess.
“Dad,” I said quietly, “I love you, but I need to go.” The tears were flowing freely now. I wished I knew what had happened. I wished I understood what was going on around me, but the more I tried to think about it the harder it was to understand.
I let my arm fall to my side, and the receiver slowly dropped to the floor. The sounds of the languid wet breathing still popped like bubbles in the phone. I turned away from the basement door and started to walk. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I knew that anything was better than the horrors in the basement.
The scent of smoke filled my nostrils, burning them with its odor. I turned. I shouldn’t have. I should have just kept walking.
My eyes widened in terror when I looked at the basement door. A shapeless mass of flesh slowly oozed from the door, its great bulk strained against the frame. Tumorous growths populated the surface of the creature and patches of it smoldered, creating the foul burning stench that filled the air. Strands of scar tissue stretched over large patches of its bulbous body, and wiry specks of hair dotted the surface of the beast.
It ducked its head beneath the top of the door frame. I watched as the head sunk into the blob, only to extend back out once it was through the door.
Its face was blackened flesh filled with malignant growths, and its lipless mouth was lined with white teeth.
“Come back. I have a gift… A present… for you…” It said.
The dread of realization crashed into me like a semi. I was staggered at the impact and felt my legs wobble.
“Dad?” I whispered, horrified.
It lumbered towards me, sparks of flame appearing randomly on unburned patches of flesh. I stepped away from it slowly. I didn’t need to rush, It had the speed of water in a pond.
“I need to give you your present.” it whispered in its wet hoarseness. I could see bubbles of fluid popping from its burned out mouth.
“I need to give you…” it trailed off. Its movement was slow, and every time it lumbered closer to me it seemed to be exerting itself to exhaustion. I just kept backing away.
“I need you…” It said.
I believed it.
Another patch of fire sprouted up, cooking unscarred bits of its fleshy bulk. An inferno grew with deliberate pace. Wallpaper began to peel from the heat and the rickety wooden furniture caught fire as the flames danced around it.
I stopped backing away. I turned and I ran.
“Don’t… Leave… I have so much for you!” it called.
I pushed through the table, shoved it to one side and sent its contents crashing to the floor. I stumbled through the crooked doorway and into the living room. Burning flesh filled the air and the kitchen was soon enveloped in scorching flames.
“We can grow together!” It yelled after me. Its voice was loud and raspy, filled with the sound of boiling water.
I tripped, breaking the door. I fell on top of it and spilled out into the sunshine. The light burned my eyes as I squinted. The twisted corn and mint were replaced with lush, green crops, and the road was once again dirt and gravel. The sky was a brilliant blue with perfect marshmallow clouds that hung high.
I looked back inside the house. It was dark, and its gloom threatened to spill into the world. The creature inside cried in desperate agony. I staggered to my car where I sat exhausted on the edge of the hood. I sat and watched my childhood memories evaporate as they became food for the fire. I watched the terrible monster that had consumed my father slowly writhed and burned until it was a smoking heap of charred fat and bone. I watched until there was nothing left but the ash that rained down from the sky.