1
Jaylen’s eyes opened and he saw shadowy figures dancing in front of him. Then he rubbed his eyes and the figures—just those little hallucinations that occur between sleep and wakefulness—disappeared. His nose caught on to where he was before his eyes even did. He inhaled and his nostrils picked up that musty smell of a basement. And his eyes caught up to his olfactory senses and saw that he was correct.
The basement had no windows and was lit dimly by one of those lightbulbs that hang from a ceiling. The ceiling and the walls were made of wood boards that would give you a splinter if you touched them. The floor was concrete, dusty and dried. A palmetto bug skittered by.
Jaylen’s baby blue eyes scanned the room, and he was startled a bit when he saw a few other children, lying in the corner, completely still. Are they dead? And where the hell am I?
“Psst,” said Jaylen. “Yo, what’s going on?”
No answer.
“Psst! Yo, can y’all tell me what’s going on?” Still no answer. “Hey, y’all awake? I’m just tryin’ to –
“Can you keep it down?” one of the kids muttered. “I’m trying to sleep.”
Jaylen raised an eyebrow. “The hell?”
These kids were just trying to catch some shuteye in this creepy old basement, and that was perhaps the most confusing thing of all. Jaylen hadn’t a clue how he got here. All he remembered was talking to some guy in a parking lot. But what parking lot? he thought. Was it Cookout? Or was it the gas station, next-door? He remembered talking to some guy. Something about the guy’s kids being stuck at another gas station, no gas in his car, and he just needed a few bucks to put some fuel in the tank to get his kids home. Probably bullshit to score some dope. But what happened after that? Jaylen couldn’t remember shit. Except some weird smell. It sort of still lingered in his nostrils. A sweet smell, but of a chemical variety, like glass cleaner. Next thing he knew, he’d woken up in here.
The other children in the basement—three in total—weren’t keen on waking anytime soon, so Jaylen proceeded toward the wooden staircase. It led up to a door that was painted jet black and had a golden doorknob.
He ascended a few steps before one of the kids called out to him.
“Don’t,” the kid said.
Jaylen stopped. “Don’t what?” he asked.
“Don’t go up there.”
“But –
“Don’t do it. Don’t go up there.”
“Why not?”
“He’s up there, right now.”
“Who’s up there?”
“Mr. Jeepers.”
2
Falls Park was sparsely populated with folks who wanted to experience the first of that autumn weather. It always took until October for that fall temperature to hit in South Carolina, mid-October at that.
Morgan Cooper walked along Liberty Bridge with a cup of ice cream in one hand, spoon in the other. He shoveled the Oreo sundae into his mouth, making sure that none dripped down his chin. He usually scarfed down his food, but he was on a date, tonight. Holly was her name, nice young lady that he’d met on a dating site. He hadn’t gotten much use out of the site for a while but had decided to put in more effort as of late. The case files down at the office were a bit light, lately, and his workload was thin, for now. That changed the second his phone rang. He licked ice cream off his fingers and answered the call.
“It’s Jaylen!” Those were the first words Morgan heard when he picked up. It was his sister, Sydney, and she was beside herself. Her son, Jaylen, hadn’t come home and she had looked everywhere but came up short. And of course, Morgan told her to slow down and take deep breaths and spell out where he’d said he was going and when she had last seen him. He hung up and told Holly he had to go.
***
Morgan drove down Augusta Street with two hands on the wheel because the two lanes were so goddamn thin that it was scary to even pass anyone. Jaylen’s mom had sent him and a couple of Jaylen’s friends to grab a pizza. Where the pizza came from, she didn’t care. There was a Little Caesar’s and a Pizza Hut right at the fork between Augusta and Mauldin Road, but Jaylen’s friends had to fess up to the fact that they’d gone to a nearby gas station to grab some swisher sweets.
Morgan drove to the gas station and peeped at the security footage, and he saw Jaylen and his friends loitering in the parking lot for a bit, and at one point, Jaylen’s friends went inside while Jaylen seemed to be beckoned by someone off-camera. And that was the last one could see of Jaylen within the footage. Anything that had happened to him, it had happened in the camera blindspots. Jaylen’s friends came out of the gas station but by then, Jaylen was gone, and they hadn’t a clue what happened.
Great, Morgan thought. No leads, and it’s my own nephew. Time to start questioning people, I reckon.
***
The crunching of dry leaves let the group of men in the front yard know that Morgan was headed toward them. There were seven of them in total, most sporting long dreads and white tank tops. There was a Porsche parked in the driveway, the prized possession of Richie, the oldest in the group, a 40-year-old veteran of the streets. Kids grew up fast in this neighborhood. Morgan had known Richie as a kid; they went to the same school and would hang out and shoot hoops sometimes. Different paths pushed them apart. They had a glaring parallel, too: as children, each of them had walked in on his respective parent, dead on the floor. In Richie’s case, it was a needle that had done his mother in. In Morgan’s, his father had a bullet hole in his head.
The group of men got a bit tense as they saw Morgan approach. Morgan raised two hands to ease them.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not here for y’all. I don’t care what you’re doing.”
“Well that’s good,” said one of the men, “‘cause we ain’t doin’ nothin’.”
“I’m looking for my nephew.” Morgan pulled out his phone and showed the men a picture. “He’s missing. Y’all seen him?”
Richie scrutinized the photo. “Jaylen? Y’all don’t know where he at?”
Morgan shook his head no.
“Nah, I ain’t seen ‘em,” Richie said.
“You guys see anything outta the ordinary?” Morgan asked. “Anything y’all don’t usually see, around here?” It was a good question. Morgan knew these guys, knew how they always kept one eye on the streets.
Richie thought a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, I seen somethin’. We was out here, and some van was drivin’ down the road, that way. I guess he ain’t know it’s a dead end, down there, ‘cause he turned around and he was gunnin’ it back up the street.”
“What color was the van?”
“It was… blue?” Richie looked to his guys and they nodded. “Yeah, it was blue. Like a dark blue. Had somethin’ written on it. Like, a vacuum cleanin’ place.”
Morgan wrote all this down. Then he and Richie gave a dap and a half-hug, a mutual respect between two different people who’d gone two different directions.
Morgan went back to the gas station and reviewed the security footage and, sure enough, spotted a dark blue van pulling into the gas statin. He put out an APB and stayed out all night. No more dates, for a while, he thought.
3
Jaylen sat on the bottom step and waited for the other kids to wake up. They awoke one-by-one, each one’s stirs waking the kid next to them.
There was Jack, a blonde 12-year-old, tall for his age, lanky. His hair was messy and grimy and so was his basketball jersey, and his apathetic attitude suggested he’d been here for quite some time.
Lilly, she was pudgy and had a fivehead and dull eyebrows that you could barely see. She had a sad look about her, her eyes always wandering to the floor.
Sam was of mixed ancestry, interracial parents of white and black, or so she looked. She had light skin and nice hair that was just shorter than shoulder length, and Jaylen would have been attracted to her if he weren’t so goddamned scared, right now.
“Can y’all tell me where we are?” Jaylen asked.
“We’re in a basement, dude,” said Sam, “what’s it look like?” She was a no-nonsense type, snotty, suffered no fools.
“Why?”
“Well, we didn’t come down here, ourselves,” said Jack. “We got kidnapped, like you.”
“How long y’all been here?”
“Me, probably six months,” Jack answered. “Hard to tell. Feels like six months, if I had to guess.”
Jaylen looked to Lilly but she didn’t answer. Her gaze hung lazily toward the ground.
“I don’t know,” said Sam, “probably a year.”
“Shit,” said Jaylen. He stood up and clambered up the stairs.
“Where are you going, dude?” Jack called up.
“I’m gettin’ the hell outta here.” The thought of being here for a year drove Jaylen mad, and he wasn’t afraid of what was beyond that door. Couldn’t be worse than being stuck in that basement.
Jaylen opened the big black door and entered the house. The place was small, cozy, filled with antiques, so much so that it looked more like an antique shop than a house. The place was squeaky clean, spotless, like some maid cleaned it night and day without missing an inch.
Jaylen crept through the silent house and to the front door. He opened it and was immediately brushed by a cool and gentle autumn breeze. In front of the house was a yard covered in dead leaves of red, yellow, and orange, and a pumpkin patch grew off to the side, the pumpkins ripened and fat. Beyond the yard was a cornfield with crucified scarecrows that looked like old west reverends.
That crisp autumn breeze persisted and carried dead leaves like drifting sailboats as Jaylen proceeded through the yard and to the cornfield. He entered the maze and pushed his way through the cornstalks. He saw a cob on the ground, but something was odd. There was movement behind the peel. He knelt down and picked up the cob. He peeled it and let out a shriek. Worms. No, maggots. Squirming and writhing atop a stripped cob. Jaylen shivered with disgust as he pressed on.
Jaylen passed a row of six scarecrows, spread fifty feet apart from one another, made of dirt-stained burlap, stuffed with arid straw, the burlap on their faces stitched into a skeletal grin, each wearing a black, wide brimmed hat. The second Jaylen stepped past the perimeter the scarecrows created, he heard rustling within the stalks. And it grew closer. And closer.
A loud and horrible squeal, like that of an angry boar, startled Jaylen and he took off running without a second thought. He looked over his shoulder and saw two people—kids, around his age—chasing him. But something was wrong with them. They had these godawful eyes, irises which were shaded an unnatural orange. Their mouths were upturned like those of decaying bodies, and their skin looked decayed, as well. And those sounds. No human could produce those. Those were noises straight from hell. The sounds of the undead.
Back home, Jaylen would lie in bed at night, scared shitless that some undead creature would emerge from his closet or out from under his bed to take him. Some boogeyman from the void of humanity’s nightmares. Though he was in middle school, he was still afraid of the dark, afraid of whatever lurked within it. And today, his nightmares had become reality.
Jaylen huffed and puffed as he booked it through the cornfield. He burst from the cornfield, but he tripped and fell over a dead stalk. He climbed to his feet and immediately felt a cold, bony hand latch around his wrist. He screamed as he turned and stared into the face of a hellish, undead child no older than himself. It chomped and drooled and snarled.
“Let go!” Jaylen shouted. “Please, let go!”
Jaylen yanked his hand as hard as he could. He wrenched free and fell backward. He got to his feet and dashed into the house and slammed the door and locked it.
The other children waited for him in the basement. Jaylen descended the stairs, still out of breath.
“So, how’d it go?” Jack inquired.
“What the hell were those things?” Jaylen asked.
“Kids,” said Jack, “just like us. They didn’t listen to him, so now they guard the land past the scarecrows.”
Jaylen huffed and puffed as he took all this in.
“I told you,” Jack continued, “we can’t leave.”
4
The APB led to the arrest of Robbie, a crackhead type who drove a blue van with a defunct vacuuming company’s logo and tagline: WILBUR CLEANIT – WE MAKE IT DISAPPEAR! How ironic…
Robbie was just about anorexic. He had crooked teeth and wore a raggedy sweatshirt. He was that crackpot on the streets that would approach with a, “Hey, lemme ask you somethin’” or “Hey man, y’all got five bucks so I can get somethin’ to eat?” Today he’d be eating in jail.
I bright light shone in Robbie’s face as Morgan stood with his hands propped on the table, leaning in as close as he could, even though he cringed at the crackpot’s scent. He’d been at this for an hour, and he was growing impatient.
“What’d you do, man?” Morgan asked. “You take that boy?”
“Nah, man,” Robbie replied. “I ain’t done that.” He acted so confused, and that just pissed Morgan off more.
“We know you did. Okay? Your van was at the gas station before he disappeared, and then you left after. We found chloroform under the seat in your van. We know you did it.”
Robbie sat there and nibbled on his fingertips. Morgan had had just about enough.
“You know what they do to predators, in prison?” Morgan asked.
“That ain’t me, man,” said Robbie.
“They’ll kill you. In the showers… they’ll grab you, they’ll tip you upside down, and they’ll chop your balls off. And then they’ll bash your brains the fuck in. If you don’t help us out, it’s gonna go a lot worse for you. I’ll make sure you get zero protection, inside.”
This image seemed to sink into Robbie’s head.
“I ain’t wanna do it, man,” Robbie said, on the verge of tears. “He made me.”
“Who?”
“He made me do it. I owed him some money, man. He said he’d either kill me, or make me take them kids…”
“Fuckin’ who?!” Morgan slammed his hands on the table.
“I can’t say, man. He’ll kill me.”
Morgan lunged across the table and grabbed Robbie’s shirt collar with both hands. “I’ll fuckin’ kill you. Who?”
Robbie shed a single tear.
“Don’t fuckin’ cry,” Morgan growled. “I don’t feel sorry for your ass.”
“It was Emilio, man,” Robbie said. “It was Emilio.”
“Emilio, who?”
“I ain’t know his last name.”
“What do you know?”
“He’s fat.”
“Go on.”
“He’s hispanic. Mexican, I think. He got a mustache.”
“Where’d you see him?”
“They took me, man. Two big dudes. Put a hood over my head. I ain’t seen where they took me.”
“Fuckin’ piece of shit!”
Morgan tossed Robbie aside as a few cops stormed into the room and pulled Morgan away.
“I’m calm!” Morgan shouted. “I’m calm. Get the hell off me.”
Morgan left and headed to Robbie’s house. A stakeout was in order, see if those loan sharks would come snooping around.
5
Morgan sat in his car with the lights turned off and the heat turned on low. He watched the crackpot’s house with a pair of binoculars. The place was a wreck. A bent chainlink fence surrounded a tiny front yard. The windows were barricaded. In the driveway was a dead possum—actually dead, not “playing” possum—and a vulture nibbled on the carcass.
The first night produced zero results, as did the following day. But the next night, someone must have noticed that Robbie hadn’t called in.
Morgan sipped from a plastic coffee cup as he kept watch. A few hours into the stakeout, an SUV parked on the side of the road opposite Morgan’s car, a few houses up the street. The SUV’s headlights went out and two hulking gentlemen, the ones Robbie had spoken of, got out and approached the house. One wore a leather jacket, and he was a greaser type, the kind of guy who would pull a switchblade out of his coat pocket when things got hairy. The other was black, wore a gray hooded sweatshirt, had that bouncer look to him.
The two apparently hadn’t gotten the memo that Robbie was arrested, because they knocked on the door, and their knocking turned into aggressive pounding as the minutes passed.
Morgan listened intently. The two hulks shouted at the house, not giving two shits whether anyone nearby heard them.
“We know you’re in there!” the greaser shouted.
“Come on out, man,” said the black guy. “You could die, homie, playin’ games with us.”
A few more minutes passed and the greaser kicked in the door without warning. The two entered the house, and Morgan could hear a bunch of crunching and smashing and glass breaking inside as the two thugs trashed the place. The two oafs left the house once they realized their crackpot quarry wasn’t there. They hopped in their SUV and drove off. Morgan followed. Back to the roaches’ nest.
6
Jaylen sat crisscross on the floor, his chin resting on his fists. The other kids each had a broom and were sweeping the dusty floor. This just gets weirder by the minute, he thought.
“What the hell y’all doing?” Jaylen asked.
“What’s it look like?” Jack retorted. “And you might wanna join. Make yourself useful. Grab a broom.”
“Why y’all doing this?”
“‘Cause we love cleaning,” said Sam, sarcastic.
“Does he make you?” Jaylen asked.
“Of course he does,” Jack replied. “And if the house isn’t spotless when he comes back, guess what…” He dragged his pointer finger across his throat.
Jaylen gulped. “All of us?”
“One of us,” said Sam. “It could be you, so get your ass cleaning. Grab a broom. And no more questions.”
“You ain’t gotta be all bitchin’ at me,” said Jaylen. “I’m just asking.”
“Your asking is annoying.”
Girls made Jaylen so insecure, and this one, Sam, leveled him with just her eyes alone. This was the type of girl who made him stammer and trip over his words, repeating the incident over and over in his mind all hours after school.
Jaylen grabbed a broom and swept next to Sam.
“I’m getting this area,” she said. “Go sweep somewhere else.”
Jaylen barely walked two feet away and continued to sweep. Sam rolled her eyes.
“So, what school you go to?” Jaylen asked.
“No school, now,” she said.
He hesitated “What school did you go to?”
“Beck.”
“I go to Hughes.”
“Didn’t ask.”
“Sorry.”
The two continued to sweep in silence, Sam doing a more thorough job than her counterpart, who was more focused on her.
“Y’all ever tried to get outta here?” Jaylen asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “and we watched him turn a kid into one of those things.”
“How does he do that?”
“I…” She trailed off a moment as the trauma set in. “You don’t wanna know. I watched and it’s… really disturbing. Now I just keep my mouth shut and clean because I don’t wanna get turned into one of those things.”
Jaylen picked his brain for small talk, wanting to veer away from this grim conversation.
“Do you know Ryan at Beck Academy?” he asked. “Ryan Watts?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He was a moron.”
Jaylen chuckled. “Yeah, he is.”
Sam cracked a smile as she recalled a memory. “I remember someone gave him five bucks to lick a bandaid that was on the bleachers.”
“Ew. He do it?”
“Yeah, he did it.”
“He’s a dumbass motherfucker.”
“Right? What an idiot.”
The two laughed.
***
The kids made their way upstairs and carefully dusted, polished, and wiped down the antiques in the house. Jaylen and Sam began to build a slight rapport, much as they could in this situation. Lilly swept the floor in a zombified manner, while Jack dusted an old typewriter and then moved on to polishing a Civil War cavalry saber, right next to a big, blue, ancient phonograph record player.
Sam giggled as Jaylen did his best BlocBoy JB dance.
“It’s all in the hop,” said Jaylen. He bounced on one foot and kicked his other outward. Sam looked impressed and that gave Jaylen butterflies.
“Not bad,” she said.
“And then you end it with a dab.”
Jaylen jerked his head forward and threw both arms back. He felt his right hand hit something—a glass item, perhaps a vase—and then he heard Sam utter a “Oh, no!”
Before he could even turn around, Jaylen heard a loud smack! and the sound of shattering glass. He looked to see an antique vase—or what was an antique vase—in a dozen pieces on the floor.
“Oh, fuck,” Jack said. “Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. Oh, fuckin’ shit.”
“Jaylen, what did you do?!” Sam shouted.
“I’m sorry,” Jaylen stammered, “I didn’t mean to!”
“Fuck your sorry,” said Jack. “We’re dead. One of us is, anyway.”
“Let’s clean it up,” Jaylen offered. “I’ll clean it. I’ll take the fall for it.”
“That’s not how it works, dingus. He decides who takes the fall for it. Could be any of us.”
“I’ll clean it up. Maybe he won’t notice.”
“Goddamn… I hope you’re right, dude.”
Lilly barely had a reaction to all this. That same worn and jaded expression was on her face as she watched the scene.
The other three swept the glass into a dustpan. They brought the dustpan to the basement and hid the shattered glass in a dark corner and covered it with a raggedy blanket. They finished their cleaning in silence, and then they went back downstairs and waited for Mr. Jeepers to come home.
7
Morgan followed the two brutes to an abandoned warehouse off Laurens Road. They pulled into the big parking lot. Morgan circled to the next street over and parked in the grass. A set of train tracks ran parallel to the warehouse, through the woods behind it. Morgan knew this, and he got out of his car and followed the tracks. The tracks had tall grass growing out of them. They ran along a bridge and Morgan sat on the edge and peered out at the warehouse with his binoculars.
***
Morgan did his research the next morning and saw that the warehouse was not currently owned. He gathered as many spy bugs he could get his hands on and returned around noon. The sky was that vibrant blue that signified autumn.
Morgan flanked the warehouse exterior and drilled a small hole every few dozen feet, inserting a bug. He heard a scuffle behind him and immediately pulled his pistol. He whipped around with his pistol aimed at…
A coyote. It stood about fifty feet away and sniffed at the ground. An odd sight at noon. It noticed Morgan and scurried away. Morgan remembered the $75 bounty that South Carolina had recently instated on coyotes. Isn’t there more important shit to worry about?
***
The sun was a fiery red as it set, and the sky was pinkish. Morgan sat in his car and ate a protein bar, taking the smallest bites possible. Since Jaylen had gone missing, he was never hungry and he was never tired. Food and sleep just became means of survival, nothing more.
The audio bars on his laptop bounced up and down as the spy bugs picked up voices.
“What time he say he was meeting us?” a voice inquired. This was the greaser, the guy in the leather jacket.
“Should be in, like, ten minutes,” said the other, the black man.
“God, man, he did not sound happy on the phone.”
“You talked to Emilio, today?”
Morgan’s interest perked.
“Yeah,” said the greaser. “I think he’s puttin’ a bounty on Robbie. Can’t have him singing. And that rat bastard’ll sing like a damn chickadee, I guarantee it.”
“How’s he gonna hit him in jail?”
“He ain’t. Someone else will. That’s what he pays ‘em for.”
“I guess.” A pause. “Man, fuckin’ Emilio. I’m sick of his bullshit, man. Dude’s a real unhinged asshole, these days, man.”
There was silence for a while. Then, the sound of a vehicle rolling along worn asphalt, kicking up gravel. A car door opening and closing.
“Son of a bitch.” A gruff voice, shaky and stressed like someone strung out on coke. The sound of a pill bottle being opened and shaken. “Put the word out. Thirty-thousand for Robbie dead. Fifty alive, so we can find out what he told them.” This was Emilio, Morgan was sure.
“And where do we find a hitman?” the black man asked. “The John Wick hotel?”
“The fuck you say?” the gruff voice replied.
“Boss, I don’t know any hitmen.” A pause. “Do you?”
“Nah, homes,” said the greaser.
“Then you two’ll do it,” said Emilio.
“How? We gonna blow a hole in the wall and –
“Shut the fuck up!” Emilio was pissed, now. “Just shut the fuck up! You two are a couple of fuckin’ oafs. Nothing’s changed since day one, you fuckin’ monkey-ass, greaseball cocksuckers.”
“Oh yeah?” the black man said.
A gun clicked, followed shortly by a loud POP!
“Holy shit, dude!” the greaser shouted. “What’d you do that for?”
“I’m tired of his ass.”
“Dude, they gonna be pissed.”
“Who’s gonna tell ‘em?”
There was a long silence as Morgan grabbed his handgun and prepared to fly out of the car. Then, a scuffling sound—the sound of someone scrambling desperately to grab their gun—followed by another POP! and the thud of a carcass hitting the floor.
Morgan leapt out of his car and didn’t even bother shutting the door as he sprinted into the woods, toward the warehouse. He emerged from the edge of the forest and ran to an open loading dock. He climbed up.
Inside, the black man stood over the dead bodies of Emilio and the greaser, his back to Morgan. Morgan aimed.
“Put it down!” he shouted.
The man turned immediately and pointed his gun. Morgan fired a shot. The man slumped, dropped his gun, and raised his hands as hot blood oozed from his midsection.
“Don’t fuckin’ move!” Morgan yelled. “Don’t fuckin’ move! On your stomach! On your stomach! On. Your. Stomach! Arms out like an airplane! Arms out!”
The man complied and Morgan slapped the cuffs on him and phoned backup and an ambulance.
***
“His name is…” the man’s voice drifted off as he sat there, being interrogated by Morgan. “…His name was Emilio. He ran the show.”
The man, named Jasper, took a plea deal instantly on account of him being caught redhanded (literally) with two dead bodies at his feet.
“He enjoyed terrorizing the kids,” Jasper continued. “He brought the kids to the customers.”
“Customers?” Morgan asked. He was disgusted.
“The rich dudes. Fat cats that buy kids.”
“Where’d he take Jaylen?”
“Who?”
“Jaylen. Black kid, twelve years old, bald, skinny.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t take the kids anywhere. I was just an enforcer. Muscle. Collecting payments, all that.”
“Who took the kids to the customers?”
“Emilio would take ‘em. Tie ‘em up, put chloroform to their face, toss ‘em in the trunk of his car. And then he’d drive ‘em.”
Morgan stood and buttoned his blazer. “You better hope we find something, asshole. ‘Cause if we don’t, I’ll put your worthless ass under the jail.”
Jasper uttered a light sob, to which Morgan replied with a flip of his middle finger and a “Fuck. You.”
Morgan left the interrogation room. An officer approached and presented a plastic bag with a notebook inside.
“We found this after raiding Emilio’s house,” the officer said. “I think you might wanna take a look.”
Morgan opened the bag and pulled out the pocketbook. He opened it and thumbed through it. There were journal entries and there were odd sketches. One page was a drawing of a Venus Flytrap, and another was a thick tree with a hollowed base.
The journal entries offered a look into the kind of sick mind that would condone kidnapping children.
October 1st, 2018
I don’t like the little shits. People feel for the snot-nosed brats but I don’t. If god wants to burn me for it, then so be it. Truth is, there’s no hell. What we do on this earth just don’t matter. I’ll keep doing it and getting away with it. And then when my time comes I’ll suffer nil.
Morgan flipped through a few more journal entries and found a list. It was a list of names, an age written next to each name. Ten, twelve, eight… even six. At the bottom of the list was Jaylen’s.
8
The kids all hunkered down in the basement. They heard the front door open and close upstairs, followed by slow and methodical footsteps that crossed the floor. A sound, not unlike the shuffling of a deck of cards, preceded a scratching noise, and then, music coming from the late-1800’s phonograph. The song “Danse Macabre” by French Composer Camille Saint-Saëns echoed from the big blue horn. The footsteps tapped and scuffled along the wood floor, keeping to the rhythm of the song. The kids could see the figure’s shadow through the little cracks between the floorboards.
Jaylen and Sam looked at one another with horrified faces. Jack gulped as he played the tough guy. Lilly stared straight ahead with that catatonic expression.
The tapping and scraping across the wood floor became more intense as the song entered its bombastic finale of strings and trumpets and percussion. And then suddenly, the squeaking sound of a needle being pulled from the record. Silence followed. Deafening silence. It was so silent that Jaylen’s ears rang as if he’d just got off an airplane.
The kids all glanced at one another, frightened and anxious, as the silence persisted for a very long moment. Then the footsteps knocked against the wood, crossing the floor to the basement door.
The basement door opened. Whoever opened it, they stood at the top of the stairs for a very long time. Then the first footfall fell upon the top step.
Thump…
Thump…
Thump…
A shadow came into view, lanky and ghastly, like some towering skeleton. The man they called Mr. Jeepers entered the basement. He was tall and thin. He wore a Victorian era suit with a red overcoat. His head was completely bald. A scar ran down the right side, just above a protuberant, elephantine ear. His face was wrinkled. He had a big, hooked nose and his eyes were sunken, lids hanging lazily. He stared at the kids with a creepy half smile. The kids just sat there, terrified, knees pressed to their chins.
Mr. Jeepers paced across the basement. Like a sixth sense, he moseyed to the corner of the room, knelt down, and lifted the blanket, revealing the shattered vase. He gazed at it for a moment. Picked up a shard and examined it, ran a finger across it.
The kids grew tenser as Mr. Jeepers turned and approached them. He stood over them the way an abusive father stands over his terrorized children.
Mr. Jeepers jutted his head forward like a chicken. He repeated this thrice before hawking up a wad of green slime that hit the floor in front of the children with a sickening squelch. The kids winced as something crawled out from the glob. It was a grub, four inches long, green with an orange head. It climbed out of the slime and wriggled toward the four children.
“Ah, god,” said Jaylen, “what the hell, man? You a sick motherfucker.”
The grub squirmed in Lilly’s direction. She stared at it in shock but did not move in protest as it crawled up her leg. She sort of snapped out of her trance as the critter crawled up her midsection. She pinched it with her thumb and forefinger and tried to pry it off, but it held onto her with an iron grip. Her eyes widened and she began to scream as the thing crawled up her neck. The other children grimaced, reeled, and groaned with disgust. The grub wormed up Lilly’s chin and forced itself between her lips. She screamed and cried as she clawed at the thing, but it remained locked to her skin. The grub inched forward and, little by little, disappeared into Lilly’s mouth. Her cries turned to horrid retching noises as the thing snaked into her throat. And then… silence.
Lilly’s head tipped back and she went limp. Her eyes faded into that inhuman orange color of the other zombified kids from the cornfield.
Mr. Jeepers knelt down and scooped Lilly up and cradled her in his arms. He turned around and ascended the steps. No words were necessary. His point had been made.
“Oh… my god,” Jaylen stammered.
“That’s why we don’t fuck around,” said Jack. “So, next time, no more fucking dancing.”
Jaylen felt awful.
9
The boonies of Lake Murray always reminded Morgan of an episode of Scooby-Doo,with its backcountry atmosphere, hermit-type locals, and spooky little bait and tackle shacks that held a small cast of zany characters.
They’d tracked Emilio’s cellphone as having been to Lake Murray on the night Jaylen went missing. Either the buyer lived here, or they had met up here to make the transaction. Morgan hoped it was the former. The latter would lead straight into a dead end. Even if the buyer lived around here, it was a needle in a haystack. The lake was 78 square miles with lots of surrounding ground to cover.
The pedophile buyers in these human trafficking cases were always rich elitists. Emilio’s cellphone showed he’d been in these boondocks before heading back to Greenville.
Probably just meeting here to make the transaction, Morgan thought. No way one of these yokels is paying ninety-thousand for a kid.
A single ding! occurred as Morgan entered the tackle shop, which smelled of wood dust, stink bait, and mud from the plastic cups that held earthworms. A middle-aged man and his twelve-year-old boy examined crappie bait off to the side. An old, soft-spoken clerk sat behind the counter and read a fishing magazine. Morgan had done his homework before arriving, and he found that this clerk was a registered sex offender. The clerk must have been at least eighty, frail, so thin you could see his bones. He spoke just barely above a whisper.
“Help ya?” the clerk asked.
“Hope so,” said Morgan. He flashed his badge, and then he held up a photograph of Emilio. “You see this man outside your store on the night of the twenty-second?”
The clerk pulled a pair of glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on. He cleared his throat as he leaned in and squinted at the photo.
“Hmm,” the clerk muttered. “Not sure. Why?”
“Conducting an investigation,” said Morgan.
“I don’t think I’ve seen him. Don’t recall seein’ a latino outside my store in a long while.”
Fuckin’ racist. “Mind if I have a peek at your security cameras.”
The clerk paused for a long moment.
“Can I see your badge, again?” he asked.
Morgan rolled his eyes and flashed his badge.
“Closer?”
Morgan held the badge right up to the old man’s skeletal face.
“All right,” said the clerk. “Go on ahead. I’ll be in there in a minute, see if I can’t be of some help.”
Morgan walked behind the counter and to the backroom.
The middle-aged man and his boy approached the counter to check out, and the clerk was noticeably friendlier toward them.
***
The clerk stood behind Morgan like a shadow as Morgan studied the security footage. The cameras had been installed in a shitty manner, plenty of blindspots. Morgan was coming up short.
A ding came from the store. The clerk turned and headed for the door.
“Gotta take care of this customer,” he said. “Make it quick, now. I got a business to run.”
Morgan continued to sift through the security footage. Plenty of ordinary customers, fishermen, drunk teenagers coming down to the lake to shotgun beers and skinny-dip. But no Emilio. Nothing useful.
Outside the backroom, he could hear the clerk talking with some young boy, maybe around eight years old. The clerk spoke to him in a real friendly manner, almost coy.
Morgan walked out of the backroom. The clerk stood behind the counter, his back to Morgan, staring intently at the young boy, who was alone. The young boy was sifting through various catfish lures. The clerk didn’t seem to notice Morgan was standing right there. Morgan watched the clerk’s face, which was frozen in a sort of content half smile as the clerk studied the young boy.
Morgan cleared his throat. The clerk snapped out of it and stood attentive.
“Find anything?” the clerk asked.
“Nothing,” said Morgan. “Call this number if you see anything irregular. Thanks for your time.” Morgan looked at the young boy and then back at the clerk, as if to say, Best you leave him alone, creep. This seemed to offend the clerk.
“Will do,” he said. “Thanks for comin’ in. We don’t get a lotta negro folk, ‘round this shop.”
Morgan shot the clerk a fisheye glare before leaving.
***
Morgan stood at the shore as mini waves splashed in front of his feet. He gazed at the lake as he held his cellphone to his ear and spoke to Sydney.
“Why are you at the lake?” she asked, befuddled.
“The guy who took him brought him here,” Morgan said.
Sydney sighed. “Y’all need to hurry up and find him. Please hurry, Morgan.” She fought tears.
“I will. Don’t worry.”
Sydney hung up without saying goodbye. Morgan shook his head and put his cellphone back in his pocket. He left out all the human trafficking business when he spoke to her. It would have scared her senseless and sent her into an even greater panic.
A small, aluminum fishing boat with a painting of a sturgeon fish on the side drifted through the cove. A middle-aged man, slightly chubby with wrinkly jowls, a friendly face, wearing a fisherman’s hat, stood with his line in the water. He waved to Morgan, and Morgan waved back.
“You a detective, or something?” the fisherman asked.
“What gave it away?” Morgan asked.
“You’re wearin’ a suit at the lake. I figured you were either a detective or a bait and tackle salesman.”
Morgan cracked a smile for the first time in days. “I’m Detective Morgan Cooper.”
“Jim Carswell.”
“You fish this cove, a lot?”
“A good bit. Pull out some good bass, ‘round this one. Caught a record crappie back in fifty-seven, in this cove. Was just five years old.”
“So, you been here all your life?”
“Yessir.”
“You see anything odd around here, last Monday?”
Mr. Carswell mused for a moment as he reeled his fishing line, slow and steady.
“What do you mean by odd?” Mr. Carswell asked.
“Anyone you hadn’t seen around here, before,” said Morgan. “Any odd behavior from anybody. Anything at all, really.”
“Not that I can think of. Seen a lot of weird stuff, in my day. I once pulled a teddy bear up from two-hundred feet of water.”
“Well… that’s weird, all right.”
“I always wondered what happened to the kid who owned the little stuffed bear, but…” Mr. Carswell drifted off and stared blankly at the water for some time, before shaking his head with a flick of his eyebrows. “Anyway… I like to think the kid just dropped it, or something.”
“Yeah, me too,” Morgan replied.
“There’s little towns at the bottom of the lake. Did you know that?”
“Heard something about it.”
“Yeah. They flooded ‘em to create this lake. I always wondered if everyone made it out, alive, you know?”
Morgan nodded. “Yeah.”
The fisherman pulled out a flask and took a swig. He looked at Morgan and shook his head as he smacked his lips. “Bad habits. Hard to shake ‘em.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
“Where you from?” Mr. Carswell asked as he cast his line.
“Greenville,” Morgan answered.
“Ah, beautiful. I love downtown, Greenville. I go up there during ‘Artisphere’, every year. Well, almost every year. Saw this painting, there, once. Civil War painting. Modernist, though. The painting, it was a Union soldier, but he was carrying a rebel flag. I didn’t know what to make of that. I truly don’t.” A pause. “Anyway, I’m rambling.”
Morgan smiled and waved as he walked off.
“Maybe I’ll see you around,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sure,” said Mr. Carswell. “Been here all my life. Ain’t plannin’ on leavin’.”
“Good to meet you.”
Morgan began to walk back to his car before Mr. Carswell called to him.
“Mister?”
Morgan turned. “Yeah?”
“One thing,” said Mr. Carswell. “Did you visit that bait and tackle shop, down yonder?”
“Yeah. ‘Bout a half hour ago.”
“The fella that owns the place, I seen some weird stuff going on, over there.”
“How so?”
“Well, when I fish this cove, I see kids, without parents, comin’ in and outta that place. Spendin’ a lotta time in there, too. I thought, maybe they’re his grandkids, but… I don’t know anyone who’s got that many grandkids. Anyway, I told the cops, but they ain’t showed too much interest in kids comin’ in and out of a bait and tackle shop. But I know somethin’ odd when I see it.”
Morgan nodded. “Thanks.”
***
The nighttime critters of the lake gave their final symphony performance before the late-autumn cold silenced them for the winter. Morgan sat in his car and listened to 98.9, the song Drops of Jupiter playing on the station for the third time that day. He watched the old clerk’s home. Darry was the clerk’s name. Everything had looked normal for the past few hours. A light was on somewhere in the center of the house, accompanied by the flickering blue light from a television.
The weirdness began when three boys, middle-school aged, moseyed up to the house and knocked on the door. The door was answered and the boys entered.
What the fuck?
Morgan watched the house with binoculars but he couldn’t get a good look at anything that was going on inside. He got out of the car and approached the house. When he got within ten feet of the house, he could smell the skunk smell of mid-grade marijuana. He knew that smell all too well from childhood.
Morgan peered through a window on the side of the house. All he could see was a dark room. He moved down the side, to the next window. He peered through that one and saw puffs of smoke coming from the living room. He could hear childish laughter and intoxicated rambling. He rounded the corner and peeked through the next window. In the living room, the three boys sat on the sofa, passing around a blunt. Old man Darry sat in an armchair and chortled with the boys as if he were their age.
Piece of shit. Morgan rounded the front of the house and approached the front door. Thanks for the probable cause, asshole. He kicked the door in.
***
Darry’s frail figure lay on the floor in handcuffs. Two of the kids sat on the sofa, shitting themselves with thoughts of their parents being called. The third kid had taken off and hauled ass out the door.
“My back hurts, mister,” Darry groaned.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Morgan.
“Goddamn spook. Can’t believe they let y’all be cops.”
“Shut up.”
Morgan walked up the stairs and entered Darry’s bedroom. He tore up the room and searched it and found a hidden compartment with a box of VHS tapes inside. He already knew what was on them.
Morgan went back downstairs and found the basement door. He opened it and descended down into the musty cellar. He flipped on the light. The basement was filled with antiques; old typewriters, phonographs, dolls, globes, paintings of the lake, eerie cat clocks. Several boxes lay on the floor, dusty, unopened for years, probably. He opened the first one and there were stacks of playgirl nudie mags inside. He opened the second one and there was child clothing inside, even though this old perv had no children. He went back upstairs and arrested the creep and the two boys. Local cops arrived and brought them to the station, and Morgan followed.
10
The interrogation room was bright white from the fluorescent lights. Morgan had questioned Darry, but it was cut short by the arrival of Darry’s lawyer.
Morgan sat relaxed across from Theo, one of the three kids who were smoking up with the old man. Twelve-year-old Theo was panicked and had dried tears on his cheeks, beneath reddened eyelids.
“Son, I want you to calm down,” said Morgan. “Have a sip of water.”
Theo grabbed the water bottle off the table and took a meager sip.
“Tell you the truth,” said Morgan, “I don’t really give a shit if you were smoking a little weed. I have a nephew I’m trying to find, and I think old man Darry might be behind his disappearance.”
“Really?” Theo asked. He looked befuddled.
“Did you ever know Darry to be the type of guy to abduct a child?”
“No. We just thought he was a nice man who would… you know, spark up.”
“So you never saw him do anything suspicious? Hanging around other kids, bringing ‘em into the house?”
“No.”
Morgan huffed, impatient. “I need to know where your friend ran off to.”
“I don’t know,” said Theo.
“You know where he lives,” Morgan replied. “He’s your friend. Where’d he get off to?”
Theo shrugged and stayed silent.
Time to bring out the big guns.
“Son,” Morgan started, “this’ll go a lot better for you if you cooperate. Otherwise, you might be in a lot of trouble for the weed. You could go to jail for a while.”
It was bullshit, Morgan knew it. But it was working, because he saw Theo’s demeanor change immediately.
“Okay, okay,” said Theo. “His name is Ellis. He lives at Two Forest Lane.”
Like taking candy from a baby.
11
Jaylen lay on the cold concrete floor. He couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t stop staring at the glob of green goo across the room that had now dried. No one had elected to clean it up. It made their meal of bread and water (a meal that Mr. Jeepers gave them every night) difficult to eat. Nobody had an appetite, that evening.
Jack was definitely asleep, a short but loud snore erupting from his throat every couple of minutes.
Sam lay on her side a few feet away from Jaylen, her back to him. Jaylen crawled over to her and lay behind her.
“Sam?” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“You asleep?”
Fuck, stupid question.
“No,” she replied.
“Oh,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Are you mad?”
“No.”
“I feel really bad.”
“We all do. It’s not your fault. None of this is. It’s no one’s fault.”
“I wanna go home.”
“Me too.”
Jaylen thought of home and his mother and his friends and his uncle, Morgan. He knew Uncle Morgan was on the case, but after what had happened today, Jaylen wondered if this was a solvable case.
“I miss my mom,” said Jaylen.
“Me too,” said Sam.
“I miss… pizza.”
“Pizza?”
“Yeah. But, like, not just eating pizza. I miss going and getting it with my friends. Then, we’d bring it back home, eat it, watch a movie.”
“I miss movies.”
“Me too. What kind of movies did you like?”
“Scary movies.”
“Not me. They…” He was sort of embarrassed, but he continued. “…freaked me out, too much. I’d have to sleep with my closet door open if I watched one.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. My guidance counselor says it’s ‘cause of OCD. I don’t know… it’s embarrassing.”
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed.”
Sam rolled over to face Jaylen. The two wrapped their arms around one another and hugged and slept that way through the night.
12
It was almost noon. There was a clamber of fleeing footsteps inside when Morgan knocked on the door. Morgan jogged to the side of the house and saw Ellis dash out his backdoor and to the chainlink fence behind his house.
“Hold up, kid!” Morgan shouted as he ran after Ellis. “I just wanna talk!”
Ellis climbed to the top of the fence, but Morgan quickened his pace and lunged before the kid could hop over. He grabbed the kid’s arms and yanked him down off the fence and steadied him so that he didn’t smack his head on the ground.
“I just wanna talk, kid,” Morgan said with a hint of desperation.
Ellis lay on the ground but he didn’t struggle. He lay still, waiting for Morgan to release him and let him up. Morgan gave him a hand and hauled him to his feet. Ellis brushed the dirt and grass off his shirt and glared at Morgan with a mean mug.
“Have a seat,” Morgan said. He pointed to a chair on the back porch.
Ellis obeyed and plopped down, pouting. He had a thick southern accent and he wore a white tank top with dirt stains and seaweed green cargo shorts.
“You gon’ arrest me?” Ellis asked.
“No,” said Morgan. “I ain’t gonna arrest you. I just wanna ask you some questions. Are you parents home?”
“Naw. My pop, he’s been gone two days, now. My mom’s sleepin’ off a migraine. We ain’t got no food in the house. So, last night, I went to Darry’s house, down yonder, to eat some dinner.”
“That’s rough. Sorry, kid.”
Ellis shrugged. “What you wanna know?”
“I wanna know about Darry. You boys liked hanging out with him?”
“I guess so. He’d buy us food. Take us to movies ’n shit.”
“You boys know he was a sex offender?”
Ellis raised an eyebrow. “Naw, I ain’t heard that.”
“We found some VHS tapes in his bedroom,” said Morgan. “Videos of… kids.”
Ellis cringed. “Ugh…”
“So this all comes as a surprise to you?”
“Pretty much. We always knew he was a little… odd, I guess.”
Morgan sat down across from Ellis and got very serious. “Son… I’m looking for my nephew, right now. He was kidnapped and brought to Darry’s shop. The area around it, at least.” Morgan sighed weakly. “And I don’t know where he is.”
Ellis thought for a moment, and you could tell he was thinking on something heavily just by the way his eyes surveyed the ground and his thumbs twitched nervously.
“Y’all think he went missing near the shop?” Ellis asked.
“Yeah,” said Morgan. “He got kidnapped and brought there and… then, I don’t know what.”
“I think…”
Morgan looked at Ellis as Ellis’ voice drifted.
“What is it?” Morgan asked.
“I almost got kidnapped over there, too,” Ellis confessed.
“By who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t tell nobody?”
“Naw, ‘cause I was…” Ellis thought a moment. “Can I get arrested for talkin’ about drugs? Like, say I bought drugs a long time ago.”
“No, you can’t get arrested for that. I promise.”
Ellis nodded, satisfied. “I was trying to score some cid.”
“Acid?”
“Yeah.” Ellis got all sheepish and ashamed.
“Jesus, kid.”
“Man, if you just gon’ judge me…”
“No,” said Morgan, “I’m sorry. Go on.”
“I was tryin’ to buy acid,” Ellis continued. “This dude, we call him ‘Dan Diesel’, he was sellin’. I met him down by the shore, near Darry’s place. He gives me acid, and he says, ‘You wanna do some with me? I get real lonesome, sometimes.’ I’s like, ‘Sure.’ So, we do acid together. I’m trippin’ like crazy. Next thing I know, someone’s snatchin’ me up and throwing me in this little boat. I ain’t remember where Diesel went. But this guy, I don’t remember what he looked like, he throw’ed me in this small boat. It was like a fishin’ boat.”
“How’d you get away?” Morgan asked.
“I guess they expected me to take a full hit ‘a acid,” said Ellis, “but I only took a half. I wasn’t as loopy as they thought I’d be. So, I kicked and clawed the dude’s face, and I rolled outta the boat. Damn near drowned. I’s lucky there was a sandbank where I fell out. I got away. Didn’t tell nobody, ‘cause I didn’t wanna get in trouble with my folks for the acid.”
Morgan stewed on this for a long moment.
“You said it was a fishing boat?” Morgan asked.
“Yeah,” said Ellis. “It was a ‘lil aluminum one. I think it had a picture of a fish on it. A sturgeon, maybe?”
Morgan felt his jaw gradually descend. “Oh my god…”
13
The breeze outside Mr. Jeepers’ home had that crisp autumn touch, the earthy smell of leaves and the scent of pumpkin seeds hanging in the air. It contrasted with the nightmare of this place. Jaylen sat on the front doorstep and picked at the grass, which was pale brown and arid. He picked apart blades of grass before tossing them aside. He looked out at the cornfields and at the scarecrows that lined the back perimeter. A couple of cawing crows sat on the shoulders of one of the scarecrows. As Jaylen picked and dug at the lawn, he felt the corner of the rug to which the grass was attached to. He dug at it and lifted the corner. He scrutinized the lawn in its entirety, and he realized that the lawn was made up of these big, rectangular carpets of grass. He had an idea.
***
Jaylen clambered down the basement steps, out of breath with pure excitement. Sam and Jack, who were busy sweeping the floor, looked at him, confused.
“Guys!” Jaylen shouted. “I got an idea!”
“What?” Jack asked, befuddled.
“The grass rugs! The grass rugs… we can make a, uh, a booby trap!”
Jack immediately shook his head. “No. Count me out, bro.”
“Why?”
“‘Cause I don’t want a worm crawling down my throat and turning me into some zombie, that’s why.”
“What’s our other choice? Livin’ down here, forever?”
Jack stayed quiet and just shrugged.
“What do you miss most about home?” Jaylen asked.
“What?” Jack said.
“I said, what do you miss most about home?”
“I mean… my parents and my sister.”
“Sam? What about you?”
“Same thing,” said Sam. “My parents. My little brother.”
“I miss my mom, too,” said Jaylen. “I miss my uncle. And I also miss pizza. Damn, I miss pizza. Sick of this fuckin’ bread and water this asshole gives us to eat, down in this dump. Aren’t y’all?”
Jack and Sam didn’t have to think about that one. They nodded their heads. Sam walked over to Jaylen and grabbed his hand and held it tight.
“Nah,” said Jack, “I ain’t doin’ it. I’m sorry. I’m just scared.”
“Me too, man,” said Jaylen. “I’m scared, too. We all scared. But I’m more scared of livin’ down here, in the dirt, all my life and never seein’ my folks, again. Aren’t you?”
Jack nodded. “Yeah.”
“You with me?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I… I’m with you, Jaylen.”
“All right. Here’s what we’re gonna do…”
14
Morgan pulled up outside Mr. Carswell’s small house, which was on the water, held up by wood pillars that were posted up from the lakebed. Dark clouds were rolling in over the lake, giving the water’s surface a grayish green tint.
Morgan shut off the car and sighed loudly as he stared at the steering wheel. Mr. Carswell’s aluminum fishing boat was docked, done fishing for the day, and that meant Mr. Carswell was home. Morgan grabbed his pistol, holstered it, and stepped out of his car. He approached the front door. He stood beside the screen door with one hand resting on his pistol’s handle, and he opened the screen door to knock.
A moment passed, and the front door opened. Mr. Carswell stood there with his friendly face as it greeted Morgan.
“Oh, fancy seeing you, here,” said Mr. Carswell.
“Yeah,” said Morgan. “How ‘bout that?”
“Like to come in?”
“Sure.”
Morgan entered the house, which had fishing poles and tackle mounted to many of the wood paneled walls. Mr. Carswell invited him to sit, but he remained standing in the living room.
“Like something to drink?” Mr. Carswell asked.
“No,” Morgan replied, “I appreciate it, though.”
“So, you find anything on that old guy at the bait shop?”
“He’s in custody, actually. Was smoking up with some boys, middle-school aged.”
“Oh, jeez. Well, glad I could be of some help. It’s a shame. I liked his shop.”
“Yeah…”
Awkward silence for a moment.
“So, what brings you here?” Mr. Carswell asked as he moseyed over to the kitchen. He turned his back to Morgan and began making up a pot of coffee. “You sure you don’t want some coffee?”
Morgan grabbed his pistol and unclipped the holster. “Mister Carswell… I’m gonna need you to put your hands on the back of your head and interlace your fingers.”
Mr. Carswell froze in place, keeping his back turned to Morgan. “Now, why would I need to do that?” he asked.
“I know you been takin’ those kids, Mister Carswell.”
“Huh… don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Morgan noticed as Carswell’s hand drifted toward one of the opened kitchen drawers.
“Stop!” Morgan shouted. “Mister Carswell, don’t fuckin’ do it!”
Carswell lunged for the drawer, but Morgan wasn’t having it, and he pulled the trigger and sent a bullet right into Carswell’s hamstring. Mr. Carswell shrieked as he fell, taking the opened drawer with him. Morgan rushed over and kicked the fallen revolver to the side. He aimed down at Mr. Carswell.
“On your stomach!” Morgan shouted. “On your stomach! Arms out! Arms out! Palms flat on the ground!”
Mr. Carswell obeyed. “You motherfucker,” he groaned. “Fuckin’ jungle bunny cops, poking around my business.”
Morgan slapped the handcuffs on Carswell. “Don’t you move.”
“My family’s lived here for generations,” Carswell continued. “We’ll do as we fuckin’ please, you goddamn darky.”
Morgan ignored the bastard and began to search the house. He opened drawers and emptied them, threw up couch cushions. Anything he could find. Anything. The sofa was pushed against the wall. Morgan pulled it out and, sure enough, there was a small compartment in the wall behind it. He knelt down and opened the wooden lid.
“You stay the hell outta there,” Mr. Carswell growled.
“What are you gonna do about it?” Morgan retorted. He reached into the dark compartment and pulled out a small wooden chest. He opened it.
Inside the chest was a stack of memorabilia. A folded Confederate flag topped a map of Lake Murray. Beneath those items was an old, black-and-white photograph of a Confederate soldier.
“Get your garboon hands off of those,” said Mr. Carswell. Morgan ignored him.
Beneath the photograph was another, a portrait of a family: the father was the Confederate soldier from the first photo, and there was a mother and there were four children, one teenaged boy and three little girls.
An old, worn journal, yellowed from age, lay near the bottom of the stack. Morgan opened it and skimmed through it, and the writings took him back in time to the 19th century, to the Reconstruction Era south.
***
The journal told of its author, Arthur Jeepers, a Civil War veteran who’d fought for the south. He returned from the war to his wife and his four children, and they went back to farming in South Carolina, now without the help of their two slaves. Though the reconstruction of the south was a big transition for many of the southerners, Arthur’s family pushed through and their harvest the following year was plentiful. It was a wonderful autumn for the family, and Arthur commented in an October entry, “I wish this autumn would last forever, for it is a perfect season with a perfect family, and would surely yield a pleasant death if my time came at this very moment.”
There was a months-long gap in between entries, jumping from November 20th to February 3rd. The February entries took on a very bleak tone, and it turned out that Arthur’s family had perished.
Some time after Thanksgiving, a band of traveling Union soldiers arrived on the Jeepers family farm and requested food and shelter for the night. Arthur agreed and allowed them to sleep out in the barn. During dinner, the youngest Union soldier had been eyeballing Arthur’s wife, so much so that a blindman would have noticed it. Arthur spoke up, and things only escalated from there. An argument broke out and things got physical. Before Arthur could blink, he was being held to the floor, screaming in protest as he watched the youngest Union soldier throw himself atop his wife. And it lasted quite some time.
When it was over, the soldiers made their way to the door. Infuriated, Arthur grabbed his rifle and shot at the soldiers, killing the youngest. The eldest soldier was the youngest’s father, and so, out of vengeance, the remaining soldiers apprehended Arthur and murdered his children, one-by-one. And they murdered his wife, too. But they left Arthur.
Arthur’s journal entires took an understandably nihilistic tone, and his writings began to sound like those of a madman. He wanted to live in eternal autumn, just the way it had been while his children were still alive, that wonderful fall season before their untimely deaths. And he wanted others to feel the pain that he felt. By god, they would. They would feel his pain, exactly the way in which he felt it.
The last words of the journal’s final entry chilled Morgan to his core: “Best hold your children close. Mr. Jeepers is coming.”
***
Morgan stood up and walked to Mr. Carswell, who lay flat on his stomach with his leg bleeding, groaning in agony.
“All right, scumbag,” said Morgan. “Where are those kids?”
“Fuck you, man,” said Mr. Carswell. “I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”
Fuck it, thought Morgan. He placed his foot over Carswell’s wound and pressed down. Carswell squealed.
“Fuck you!” Carswell shouted.
“Where’d you take ‘em?”
“Fuck!”
“Where?!” Morgan pressed harder.
“The map! The map!”
Morgan stepped away and walked back to the wooden chest. He grabbed the map of Lake Murray and unfolded it. He examined it, studied it for a moment, and found a red dot, which marked a small island in the middle of the lake.
Morgan called in backup but they would take a while to get there. He didn’t have that long to wait. He got in Carswell’s aluminum boat and headed for the red dot on the map.
15
Jaylen stabbed the soil with the rusted shovel from the cellar. He removed a clump of dirt and repeated it. Jack did the same with a shovel of his own. Sam gathered the piles of dirt with her hands and poured them into burlap bags, which she then hid in dusty corners of the basement among cobwebs and boxes full of old junk. The kids dug all morning, all the while hoping Mr. Jeepers wouldn’t return early, today. They
By noon, they had dug a two-by-six foot hole, slightly smaller than a grave. Next came the cavalry saber…
The Civil War cavalry sword was over three feet long, shiny and sharp with a golden handle. Jaylen took it off of its wall mount and brought it outside. He climbed into the little grave they had dug and propped the sword, handle-first, in the dirt as if it were a beach umbrella. He twisted it tightly into the ground and caressed a pile of dirt around it and then packed the dirt firm. The sword pointed straight up at the sky.
Then came the final step.
The three children found a medium-sized rug in the basement. They brought it up and into the front yard. They stretched it out over the top of the miniature grave. Then, they took the rectangular grass rugs that they’d removed and placed it over the carpet. It was a homemade pitfall trap, the brainchild of the children’s inner caveman.
All that was left to do was to wait for Mr. Jeepers to come home.
***
The children hunkered down in the basement. Their stomachs turned nervously as the sun began to dip down below the cornfields, creating ominous silhouettes out of those crucified scarecrows.
Jaylen’s hand was clammy and so was Sam’s, but they held hands anyway, squeezing tight as though they were getting a shot at the doctor’s office. Sam’s head was held low, her eyes shut, her face crumpled as she silently prayed. Jack sat criss-cross with his hands folded and both index fingertips in his mouth so he could chew them.
Jaylen stood up and walked to the little rectangular window that was just under the ceiling. He grabbed a heavy box from the corner and slid it under the window, using it as a stool. He stepped up onto it and looked through the window. All he saw was the cornfield and the ghastly silhouettes of those scarecrows.
“See anything?” Sam asked, nervous.
“Nah,” said Jaylen, “not yet.”
Moments passed. The air was thick with tension. The basement darkened with each passing minute as the sun plummeted.
Jaylen stared at the cornfield and soon saw the old boogeyman emerge from the stalks.
“He’s here,” said Jaylen.
Sam and Jack both exhaled and tensed up at the same time. Jaylen stood with his fingers gripping the concrete windowsill, eyes glued to the front yard.
Mr. Jeepers walked toward the house with that odd smirk on his wrinkled face, eyelids droopy like someone who just awoke from a nap. He strode unknowingly toward the children’s trap.
Jaylen bit his bottom lip. “Come on, motherfucker,” he whispered to himself. “Come on… just a little further, you creepy-ass fuck. That’s it…”
Mr. Jeepers was now just ten feet from the trap and closing in. He hadn’t a clue in the world. He paced across that dead brownish grass, each footstep creating a crunch sound that Jaylen could hear from where he stood.
“Come on, you old bastard,” Jaylen whispered, “just four more steps…”
But Jaylen was wrong about one thing.
It wasn’t four more steps. It only took three.
Mr. Jeepers let out an inhuman squawk as he plunged into the pitfall trap. Grass and dust flew in all directions as the rug gave way.
Then, there was silence as the dust settled.
“Did he fall through?” asked Jack, impatient.
“Yeah,” said Jaylen, “he went through.”
“So, what’s happening?”
“Nothing.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, go ahead.”
Jaylen looked at Jack and cocked his head. “Whatchu mean, ‘go ahead’?”
“Go take a look,” said Jack.
“You go take a look.”
“Flip a coin?”
“You got a coin?”
“No.”
“Rock paper scissors?”
Jack nodded.
Jaylen stepped down from his perch and knelt in front of Jack. Each held out a hand and placed his fist atop his palm.
“Ready?” asked Jaylen.
“Yup.”
Both at the same time: “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”
Jaylen looked gazed at his two taut fingers, his ‘scissors’, as they pointed right at the rock that was Jack’s tight fist.
“Shit, man,” said Jaylen. “Best two outta three?”
“Nope,” said Jack.
“All right, man.”
Jaylen was about to stand up before Sam crawled over to him. He looked at her, confused. She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. He grinned and felt just a bit braver.
“Be right back,” he said.
Jaylen took a deep breath and proceeded to the stairs. Each step felt like a transgression as alarm bells sounded in Jaylen’s mind, screaming at him to turn back.
He reached the top of the stairs and placed his hand on the golden doorknob. He inhaled deeply and exhaled with a low “Goddammit.” He opened the door and crept down the hall, past a row of antiques, which looked a bit dusty today since the children hadn’t tended to them. He arrived at the front door. He opened it.
Jaylen peeked outside, both hands clutching the edge of the front door. Dust rose slowly from the pit, but the hole was otherwise inactive.
“Come on, man,” Jaylen murmured. “You dead, or what?”
Jaylen stepped out onto the porch and tiptoed across the floorboards like a sneaky child on Christmas morning. He grabbed the railing and leaned forward to see inside the pit, which lay just beyond the bottom doorstep.
Silence. Nothing but dust steadily rising.
And then, movement inside the pit. A loud, piglike squeal filled the air as Mr. Jeepers climbed to his feet, the sword blade protruding from the back of his head.
16
The wind hit Morgan’s face as he boated across the glassy water, deserted due to the steady rumbling of thunder. He held the map tight and kept it tucked firmly in his pocket, only looking at it after slowing the boat down to a crawl, fearing that it would fly out of his hands, taken by the wind to be engulfed by the lake.
Straight ahead was a small island, so small that it barely showed on the map, overtaken by the small red dot from a magic marker. Morgan beached the boat and hopped out onto the bank. He looked around the island and could see the whole thing, front to back. A muddy bank surrounded less than an acre of sparse forest.
Morgan headed toward the trees. He was at a loss. He hadn’t a clue why the map had brought him here. He gazed at the trees as discouragement washed over –
The trees.
Morgan thought back to Emilio’s journal. That drawing of a thick tree with a hollowed out base. He spun around.
And there it was. That thick tree, clear as day, sitting mighty among the smaller trees, the hallowed base agape like a dark and shadowy hell mouth. Morgan stared into its dark abyss, and he was afraid. But he proceeded. He knelt in front of the hole and crawled inside.
***
Morgan emerged from a burrow and took a breath of autumn air. Real autumn air, not like the half-summer, humid fall air of South Carolina in early October. He looked around and saw eternal autumn, just as Arthur Jeepers had described; a forest of trees with vibrant yellow and red foliage, the ground littered with fallen leaves, pumpkin patches and apple orchards, bales of hay, an empty carriage for hayrides. The sun was beneath the horizon now, the last of its rays peeping out and creating a pink streak across the lower sky.
Morgan looked over his shoulder and saw that, just behind the burrow he’d emerged from, was a mirror image of the large tree he had climbed into. Here, it was much less worn. It looked alive, healthy, dripping with sap.
Ahead was the forest, preceded by a small pumpkin patch. Morgan started toward the tree line. He stopped among the pumpkins for a moment. The big squashes were fat and ripe. Morgan bumped a stout pumpkin with his foot and felt that its casing was actually soft and spongy, opposite of its appearance. He kicked it. His foot went right through the casing, and when he pulled back, bucketloads of maggots poured out like a flood. He grimaced as he shook a cluster of the worms off his foot.
Morgan proceeded through the forest. Each footfall produced a crunch. It was dark, now. The air was cold and quiet. Morgan glanced up at the treetops and saw a pair of glowing owl eyes reflecting moonlight, and they tracked him as he strode through the woods.
The woods thinned as Morgan walked further. He gazed upward and saw a tree branch, stripped of its leaves, which looked like a claw silhouetted against the moon. And the moon was a big, orange harvest moon. I’ll bet it’s like that every night, Morgan thought.
Ahead was a field of tall grass, knee-high, beige, a cornfield beyond it. Off to the side, in a patch of cut grass, was a large gravestone. Jeepers was engraved on it, the names of Arthur’s wife and four children below it.
Morgan nearly leapt from his hide as a flutter of large wings sounded off to the side and a raven landed on the gravestone. It stared at him for quite some time, and then it spoke.
“Hi,” said the raven in a typical parrotlike squawk.
Morgan raised an eyebrow. “Hi?”
“Who are you?”
Morgan stumbled backward, taken aback by the bird’s fluency. “Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus Christ,” the raven repeated.
“I’m… I’m Morgan.”
“Why are you here?”
“To find my nephew.”
“Mr. Jeepers?”
“Yeah. Where is he?”
The bird pecked at its wing for a moment, then spoke again. “The house, yonder. No one goes there. Bad, bad.”
“Where? What house?”
“Through cornfield! Bad, bad!”
Feathers flew as the raven flew away. Morgan headed toward the cornfield and pushed his way past the stalks.
***
Mr. Jeepers was angry. He snatched Jaylen and held him by his shirt collar with one hand. Jaylen stared horrified into Mr. Jeepers’ eyes, one of which had the sword shoved through it. But Mr. Jeepers was completely unharmed. There was not a drop of blood. It was as if the sword had been shoved through an embalmed corpse.
Jaylen’s feet dangled a few feet above the ground as Mr. Jeepers carried him into the house and toward the cellar. Mr. Jeepers opened the door and allowed it to sway open with a low creak, followed by the thump, thump, thump of Mr. Jeepers footfalls on the wooden steps.
Sam and Jack stood at the bottom of the basement steps and looked up, horrified, as they saw Mr. Jeepers descend with Jaylen in hand. Mr. Jeepers steps were so slow, methodical. He reached the bottom and tossed Jaylen to the floor. Jaylen crawled over to Sam and Jack like a frightened puppy.
Mr. Jeepers stared at the petrified children for a long moment before placing one hand on the sword handle, and the other on the blade that jutted out from behind his head. He tightened his grip and pulled. A sickening slicing sound occurred as Mr. Jeepers pulled the sword all the way out through his face. He held the sword up and examined it for a moment, and then he tossed it to the floor and the blade hit the concrete with a clank. Mr. Jeepers looked down on the children with his one good eye and his damaged socket. His mouth opened wide, wider than any normal human could ever open it, his jaw unhinging like a snake’s. A shrill and angry howl emanated from Mr. Jeepers’ throat, and the children all covered their ears.
That’s when Mr. Jeepers’ face began to peel away. The skin broke into six segments, and those peeled away and opened up like some blooming flower of death. Beneath the segmented flesh was Mr. Jeepers’ true face. It was nightmarish, the face of a demon; it was skeletal, two eye sockets that gave off an orange glow, as did the nasal cavity and the mouth, which issued a bony grin that was held together by fleshy stitching like a scarecrow. The stitching tore as the demonic maw opened up and uttered a bellow that shook the room.
Mr. Jeepers paced toward the children and a snake-sized worm slithered out from his mouth and plopped to the floor. The worm was beige and segmented and had a mouth full of teeth and a dozen angry eyes. The worm hissed at the children as it slithered toward them, and they screamed as they sat hunkered in the corner and held onto one another.
“Stop!”
Mr. Jeepers’ bellowing died down. He turned around and came face-to-face with Morgan, who stood at the bottom of the basement steps, his pistol aimed at this otherworldly thing, unlikely to have any effect on it.
Jaylen stared in disbelief, hardly able to believe his Uncle Morgan was here.
“Jaylen, you all right?” Morgan asked.
“Yeah, Uncle Morgan,” he said. “I-I’m fine.”
This demonic and beastly incarnation of Mr. Jeepers began to step toward Morgan to dispatch him, but what Morgan said next stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Arthur!” Morgan shouted.
Mr. Jeepers uttered a low growl as he gazed at Morgan, perplexed and befuddled.
“I know who you are, Arthur,” said Morgan. “I know where you come from.” He reached into his pocket. Here goes nothing. He pulled out the old photograph from the chest, the portrait of Arthur and his family, and held it in front of Mr. Jeepers.
Mr. Jeepers mellowed as he gazed at the photograph. The segments of his face folded back over, and he was no longer demonic. The snake-sized worm evaporated. Mr. Jeepers’ face no longer had that creepy grin on it. It looked sad. Longing. Morgan dropped the photograph. Mr. Jeepers reached down and picked it up and stared at it for some time.
Jaylen seized his chance. He crawled to the fallen sword and picked it up and stood behind Mr. Jeepers and swung it at the back of his neck. With a loud chopping sound, Mr. Jeepers’ head fell to the floor.
“Let’s go!” Morgan shouted.
Jaylen, Sam, and Jack stood and followed Morgan up the stairs. Meanwhile, Mr. Jeepers headless body stumbled around angrily, and he when he found his head, he screwed it back on, and his demonic face returned. Each of his arms and legs split into two members and he became like an arachnid. He skittered up the stairs.
***
Morgan and the children sprinted through the cornfield as cornstalks smacked their faces and tripped them constantly.
Grunts and growls from zombified children filled the air as they gave chase to Morgan and the kids, their eyes glowing orange just like their master’s.
“Oh my god,” said Jaylen as he pointed at the scarecrows.
The scarecrows were moving. Each scarecrow hopped down from their respective post and joined in on the chase. They were zombified children, same as the others, sentenced to being scarecrows for the rest of their days.
Morgan and the children burst from the other side of the cornfield. The zombies and the scarecrows continued to pursue them as they ran past the gravestone, through the forest, and across the pumpkin patch.
“The burrow!” Morgan shouted. “The burrow! Crawl in! Crawl in!”
The zombified children were pushed aside as Mr. Jeepers galloped out of the woods and charged toward his prey.
As Jaylen, Sam, and Jack headed toward the burrow, the sky began to crumble, breaking into thousands of pieces like a shattered jigsaw puzzle. The same began to happen to the land; the trees, the pumpkins, the ground, even the Mr. Jeepers’ zombified minions.
Sam crawled into the burrow first. Then Jack, then Jaylen. Morgan was last. He could feel Mr. Jeepers’ hot breath on the back of his neck as he dove into the burrow and crawled through the dirt and the roots. He heard Mr. Jeepers utter one last, futile wail of pain as his prey escaped him for good.
***
Morgan emerged from the hole in the bottom of the tree, and he saw Jaylen, Sam, and Jack all lying on the ground, panting. He crawled to Jaylen and hugged him tightly.
“Oh my god,” said Morgan, “oh my god, oh my god, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Me too, Uncle Morgan,” said Jaylen. “You saved us!”
“I guess I did.”
The three children reunited with their parents and Morgan was hailed as a state hero, though no one would believe the story of Mr. Jeepers. It forever remained a mystery, except to Morgan and to the kids.
17
Jaylen laid in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin. He stared into the dark void of his opened closet, which he left open out of fear of what might be inside. He threw off the sheets and climbed out of bed and walked to his closet. He stood there in front of the doorway for a minute or two.
“Man, fuck you,” he said.
Jaylen shut the closet door, climbed into bed, and went to sleep.