Glen

Chapter 5

Sleep did not elude me, this time, but god, I wish it had! The nightmare opened in the world of my childhood. I sat in my backdoor, staring out into the field behind the house where my life had ended, and my father's work had begun.

Night had fallen, and a dull, fat Harvest Moon drenched the world in a sickly sepia. The wind wept through the trees, warning of things to come, caressing me with icy fingers. My eyes traveled the nostalgic scene until it fell on the old shack.

The door hung open, just so, and a faint, golden light seeped out of it and the windows. The whole place looked like a shrieking jack o' lantern. I could hear the slow, rhythmic rasp drifting to me from within, bringing the shack to life, like a beast seething with an insatiable bloodlust.

Before I knew what was happening, I found myself moving toward the snarling maw. My heart was pounding in my ears and hammering at my ribcage, wanting desperately to escape. I did not want to go, but I had to. Daddy was waiting. The world seemed to darken around me as the moon was swallowed by some unseen force.

A brief flash of light brought me from my trance. Thunder roared after it, announcing that the sky belonged to the storm. Rain began to fall, hot and heavy. It was a pleasant exchange for the chilled wind.

The ground had seemed solid enough, but the closer I got, the more it began to suck me down, like the hands of lost souls trying to bring me to meet their fate; deep, marshy mud threatened to swallow and drown me. I picked up my pace as panic set in, determined to escape into the shack before the earth sacrificed me to whatever ever undead things clawed at me, now. I tried to scream, but my voice was lost to the storm and the rasping breath of the waiting structure.

The harder I fought, the further away the shack seemed to be, and the harder the ground latched. I am going to die, here! I thought. The orderlies will find me dead in my bed, with mud up to my junk! Surprisingly, the thought brought a smile to my face. It was a mad, ghoulish thing, but a smile, none-the-less. If I die, I don't go to jail! That was good news, at least!

I had pondered my fate too long and could feel the muck kiss my knees. New horror drenched me in a cold sweat, and the wind began to scream, licking my saturated face with the vigor of a predator. I began to drag myself out of the marsh with my hands, using all of my remaining strength. I would get out of this alive! I felt I owed it to Doc to finish my tale. I liked the guy, and I wanted to be a legend! I couldn't do that with my story untold.

I dragged my body along like dead weight, grasping at weeds, grass, vermin holes; whatever I could find to keep moving. I started to cry, either from the exertion or from the seeming hopelessness of my condition. I looked up for a moment, filled with desperate hope, and found that, at last, the shack was within reach, like it had decided to finally accept me into its hungry jaws.

When I reached the opening, I took a shallow, sobbing breath. I had made it. I closed my eyes, for a moment, and listened to the hypnotic sound that had summoned me to this place. I knew the sound, all too well, that and the hum of the hundred or so flies that made their home in the workroom. When I opened my eyes, I looked down at myself. I was caked with gunk from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes. Is that...blood?!

The breathy metronome grew louder, and I froze, caught off guard by the whisper that danced to its time.

"Shut...the...door...boy...You...are...lettin'...the...rain...in..."

Trembling, I looked over my shoulder. My father sat, hunched over his work table. He had sawed through his latest "project" and into the table below. He continued to pull it back and forth, without ceasing. His clothes were moth-eaten and dry-rotted, hanging off of him like a tattered tent.