Amid the Recesses: A Short Story Collection of Fear (10 page)

Eddie stopped looking and
watched the psychiatrist. His eyes squinted as the red light of the
camera beamed at him like an alien probe. “It didn’t make things
better, Doc. I could dwell, you know? I could dwell on it and let
it eat me up and take up more space in my life. I don’t have any
more space.” He opened his hands and motioned to the clutter around
them. “I kept things that reminded me of her. They’re here and
there and, you know.” He laughed desperately.

No one else laughed. The camera
buzzed.

“
We going into the
bedroom?” Eddie asked.

“
That’s the plan.” The
cameraman said.

Eddie tugged on his shirt
collar “I look alright?”

“
Real nice, Eddie.” The
psychiatrist assured with a faint smile.

Eddie slicked back his
greasy hair and puffed a breath out like a revving engine. He
approached the door of the bedroom and placed his hand on the brass
knob. He opened the door.

A sudden distinct smell
permeated the air around Eddie and the crew like a black miasmic
poison gas that was indescribable and instinctually threatening.
Everyone covered their noses except for Eddie. They descended the
stairs. Eddie pulled on a ball-bearing lanyard coated in cobwebs
and a dim light filled the space.

“
I sleep down here most of
the time. I keep it dark.” Eddie said.

Firetrucks and dolls and
xylophones and coloring books littered the stairwell. In the center
of the stairs was a narrow path for passage.

“
I’m seeing a lot of the
toys you mentioned collecting down here. Is there a reason you keep
these items closer to where you sleep?” The psychiatrist
asked.

Eddie nodded as they
reached the base of the stairs. Toys, dolls, bicycles, train sets
and a large canopy bed fit for a princess sat in the center of the
room. The pink, silk obscuration draped from the high posts of the
bed. The crew paused in a silent reverie of the sight. The cameras
were lowered for some time before being shot up like a gun in a
pistol battle. The red light beamed on and stared with a mechanical
bewilderment.

The psychiatrist’s mouth
opened and closed in speechlessness.

“
Is that bed yours, Eddie?”
The cameraman asked.

Eddie looked back. “Do I
look alright?”

No one answered. Eddie
stepped toward the bed with his arms swinging dramatically like a
sinister circus ringleader. “I got a problem with collecting
things. A big problem.” He pulled the drapery aside and revealed
six corpses, five of which were those of children, dried and dead,
with leathery skin sunken and rippled at their skeletal faces, with
shrunken, withered eyes that observed the camera crew with macabre
diffidence. An adult female with two absent sockets for eyes and
curled, dried lips smiled in the midst of her post-mortem
companions and completed a sinister family photo-op, devilish and
unnatural.

The doctor threw her hands
up and rushed out of the room. She shoved away the stunned camera
crew and screamed: “Oh my god! Oh my god!” Her echo faded up the
stairs and through the house.

Most of the crew fled in her wake. The
cameraman remained. His head leaned out from behind the camera and
studied the figures on the bed with a hung jaw and wide
eyes.

Eddie gestured to the
figures on the bed. “If you’re goin’ down, you best go lookin’
good, Eddie.” He reached under the stained mattress and pulled out
a revolver.

The cameraman lowered the
recording camera. “Whoa, whoa, Eddie. Eddie, calm down. Calm down.
No need for any—“

The cameraman didn’t finish
the statement before Eddie cut him off. “When you finally find
something this precious, it’s just hard to get rid of.” He
shrugged. “You understand, right?” He asked.

“
Eddie…”

Eddie put the gun to his
head.

“
Eddie don’t.”

“
This is the only way out
from the bottom.”

“
Eddie!”

He pulled the trigger. The
judgmental stare camera’s red light lingered with indifference. The
camera whirred and buzzed with excitement.

RETURN TO THE TABLE OF
CONTENTS

Memoirs of Jacob Bright, Ten Days
Haunted

Day 1 - November 22,
1941

It is unusual that I would
sit writing in bleak candlelight, but tonight is the sort of night,
in a town like this, the wintry barren of Barrow, Alaska, when
darkness is all that will rear her head for this community of
wayward settlers, native Inuit, and researching folk as I am. The
sun does not grace us and something understands it... ‘tis why I
write.

Yesterday began as any
other late November day, as the community hung and limped along, or
so did those that remain during these late months, trying
desperately to conform to the perpetual darkness. Many, for the
bitter cold and lack of sunlight, retreat south, or beyond the
Arctic Circle, to revel in the few short hours when the sun would
peek over the horizon, uninterested with this alien world, bound to
move on below the horizon again like a shy child at its mother’s
skirt. The Inuit, I believe, were more productive than ever, but
remained reclusive to those that challenged the dull expulsion of
light. George Ferrell, the shopkeeper of the midtown general store
would have been one of those omitted from the Inuit’s concern if he
wasn’t the very link that brought their hunt and trade to those
that hadn’t the ability to obtain certain commodities themselves.
For this reason, it is most unfortunate that today, on the
twenty-second of November, in the year nineteen forty-one that
George Ferrell is no more.

The authorities of the
town, Officer Reinken and Officer Yarborough, reported that George
Ferrell was the victim of a heinous death, which was described as
implicitly as possible to the worried people of Barrow. However,
soon after, all of the gritty detail emerged as result of Jenna
Newstead, the standing authority in everything that is gossip and
verbal trade, and it was first shared with her small ritualistic
bunch during a late night poker game.

Ms. Newstead claimed that
the entire general store appeared as though it had been run through
by a herd of wild bulls. From top to bottom the store had been
ripped apart during the late night, as was the man that managed it.
Amid the disarray of smashed canned goods, scattered cereals, and
leaking liquor bottles, was Mr. Ferrell’s blood spread from ceiling
to floor, from door to counter and back again. I recall the exact
statement, “an explosion of gore,” being a tactlessly appropriate
description for the scene.

The violent depiction could
have been most easily explained by the possibility of an attack by
a pack of wild beasts, many of which are common in this part of the
country, and with a large degree of those animals being nocturnal
by nature, this time of the year, when light dared not to embrace
us, it mostly made sense that on their now timeless wild hunt,
Ferrell and his store could have fallen victim. Secondly, not all
of
Mr. Ferrell’s body was found at the
scene. A severed arm, however, was, and if he did somehow manage to
survive, it was unlikely he’d remain alive for long. Also, if there
were in fact animals behind the debacle, hungry and ravenous, why
was any bit of him left at all? The scene was
unsettling.

There were other theories,
yet. The native Inuit of Barrow were known for their violent
cultural characteristics. In my study, I have heard tales from
those with diplomatic ties to the natives, like George Ferrell,
that claim that the Inuit were thought to carry out the practice of
senicide, or the killing of their elderly or unproductive peoples.
Also, it was said that in their culture, for purposes of purifying
their souls prior to passage to the afterlife, violent and terrible
suicides were carried out. Needless to say, death was not as
entirely taboo as it was to some of us, and given Mr. Ferrell’s
explicit link to the natives, it wasn’t hard to believe that a
trade deal may have gone awry and an angry native took to
thoroughly
“purifying Mr.
Ferrell for passage.” I know now that I will tread lightly in these
dark hours until the source of this tragedy becomes
clearer.

Day 2 - November 23,
1941

While the local authorities
were busy with the investigation of Mr. Ferrell’s death, we
received more questions than answers. Last night, an hour past
midnight, Lyle Carver, the local butcher, claimed that Ms.
Newstead’s door was reportedly broken into and hanging from its
hinges. I went to see the claim with my own eyes and stood outside
of the door this evening to try and understand the breadth of what
it was we were dealing with. The scene offered little
explanation.

To say that the door was
broken into was a bit of an understatement. It would be better to
say that the door was
broken through
and left in splintered wooden planks around the
threshold. Inside of the door and beyond the highlighted tape
indicating the perimeter of the crime scene was Ms. Newstead and
her inner circle of three local women, dressed in red, not by
design, each slain. It was in this moment that consolation was
replaced by threat and the police, without podium or grandeur,
explained the scene to those of Barrow in all the graphic detail
required to convey such a threat.

Officer Yarborough, the
younger of the two authorities, spoke in a shaky, uncertain voice.
He said, and I remember it vividly as I quote, “Tonight it has
become apparent that last night’s attack at the General Store and
the death of Mr. Ferrell wasn’t a terrible accident, but instead a
scene of a terrible murder.” The ‘oohs’ and covered mouths of
dismay sprung about with the revelation, but there was confusion as
to why they spoke of last evening's scene and not of the scene at
hand. It was apparent that they were connected in some way. He
continued, “Tonight we have discovered four women, Ms. Jenna
Newstead, Gina Gregory, Lilah Horton and her sister, Vivian
Horton—“ and he shook his head and stuttered and fought back tears
and said, “—all dead.”

Officer Reinken, the
ranking official, stepped up to finish as Officer Yarborough moved
away to collect himself.

I write now as I remember
him saying: “This isn’t going to be pretty, people, but I’m going
to tell you the way it is, because we need you to understand the
severity of the situation. All four women were decapitated.” I
needn’t pause long here, as anyone that understands the propensity
of people understands the reactions the confession garnered,
“Furthermore, the sick bastard responsible for their deaths placed
the severed heads on different bodies, clockwise.”
Clockwise
, I thought, was
an odd detail. There was the
threat
. Then came their warning, which
as I write here in my small cabin, confirms I have not heeded the
latter half of the officers’ advice: “We ask that the remaining
citizens of Barrow either remain within their homes, preferably
armed, or immediately leave the city until we can find who or what
is responsible for the atrocities encountered the past two
evenings. I promise you, on behalf of the Barrow police force, that
we will do everything in our power to bring this to an immediate
end.” I do have a gun, however, on the table beside me as a
write.

Mass exodus seemed to be
the majority of the response. I recall seeing the butcher, Mr.
Carver packing away his things and leaving in a hurry that evening
along with the others. Tonight Barrow is more quiet a town than I
ever remember it. Remaining are perhaps twenty or thirty. I hope
the one responsible went with it.

Day 3 - November 24,
1941

Barrow is desolate and
empty tonight. We are but a dying star in the north, sputtering
like coughing engine. When I walk through the streets, I am greeted
by strange stares through shaded windows. Everyone that remains is
suspect of everyone else. Civility isn’t an option
anymore.

During this evening’s walk,
a potentially treacherous activity inspired solely by boredom and
twisted curiosity, I managed to record those that remained: The
Barrow acting physician and doctor, Doctor Reynold Creston was
locked away inside of his clinic. I knew he was there due to the
soft glow of his clinic’s double-paned window. Snow was nearly
piled up to the sill of the window from the outside.

Boris Chekov, the Barrow
mechanic and one renowned for his ability to fix nearly anything,
large or small, was the resident Russian of Barrow. I hardly
understood anything he said, but his Russian words often came with
a whirlwind of very English curses about one thing or another. He
understood more than the rest of us about the tumultuous nature of
the world. We are in a great war, he babbled, though I admit I’ve
seen little of it being here in Barrow, as remote as we are. The
Army did construct some sort of crude radar site off-limits to
everyone, known as Point Barrow.

I recall becoming
especially cold near the cemetery. On this chilly Alaskan night,
which I wager was something of four or five degrees below zero, I
remember young Patrick Martin, a city worker and undertaker,
sitting atop a headstone, rocking back and forth in a heavy coat.
He was mentally retarded and usually kept to himself, shunning the
public. I thought it was strange that I found him outside. As
threatened as we all were, it seemed that the mass exodus of people
from Barrow tranquilized the imbecile. I don’t think he understood
the true threat—or perhaps he was responsible. If I had to guess
anyone was responsible, I would guess Patrick Martin. I kept the
encounter with him to myself, and probably would have reported the
suspicious activity if I hadn’t noticed that Officer Reinken was
already keeping an eye on the lad across the street in his patrol
car. I waved in the direction of the officer, but he didn’t seem
notice me. He sat in his car with the lights off.