HALFWAY

A rather nervous young man recently moved into a halfway house in the city. He had been in a hospital for the last several years, but after having worked closely with his psychologist, Dr. Gallagher, he was granted permission to leave and live a more independent life. His halfway house was only two miles from the hospital, which allowed Dr. Gallagher to see both his committed and independent patients.

The man recently released from the hospital was named Joey, and he carried on with his life like most other folks. He met with Dr. Gallagher for one hour every other day, and Joey discussed how being on his own again was affecting him.

It was on their second session that Joey had confessed to feeling nervous in his new home.

“It will take some time to settle in,” explained Dr. Gallagher.

“It’s not the settling in that bothers me,” Joey said. “It’s the woman.”

“The woman?” asked his doctor. “What woman? Is she a neighbor?”

“No,” said Joey. “The woman who lives in my kitchen.”

“Is she a roommate?” asked the doctor hesitantly

“No,” Joey said. “She was already there when I moved in.”

Dr. Gallagher specifically remembered helping Joey move into his new home, and he most certainly did not see any woman. In fact, based on the look of the place, it hadn’t been inhabited in years.

The doctor was very concerned about these hallucinations and worried they could lead to a psychological regression. However, after having seen Joey spend so much of his life in a hospital, the doctor was determined to try to work through the young man’s psychosis between the two of them.

“Does this woman try to hurt you?” asked Dr. Gallagher.

“No,” Joey answered, “but I get the feeling she wants to.”

“Does she ever speak?” asked Dr. Gallagher.

“Kind of,” Joey said. “But she doesn’t speak with words. She opens her mouth, but it sounds like wind or something, like when you hold up a shell to your ear at the beach.”

Their session ended, but as Joey was getting up to leave, Dr. Gallagher calmly explained to him that this woman Joey was seeing could not hurt him, and that he was not in any danger. Because of this, Dr. Gallagher advised Joey to ask this woman what it was she exactly wanted. The doctor had decided to wait to hear the answer Joey came back with before determining just exactly what kind of help Joey really needed. Before he had something more firm to go on, he would only assume these hallucinations of the woman were a byproduct of Joey’s release from the hospital and his subsequent new environment.

Two days later, Dr. Gallagher was in his office waiting for Joey to arrive. His phone rang, and when the doctor picked it up, Joey was on the other line.

“She won’t let me leave,” Joey said. “She wants me to stay.” His voice sounded very tired and scared.

“Joey, this woman is not real,” Dr. Gallagher finally said, in a calm voice. “It’s just a product of your new surroundings, that’s all.”

“I asked her what she wanted, like you told me to do,” Joey said. “She said she wants company. She says I’m not allowed to leave her anymore.”

“Joey, we have a session today,” the doctor said. “You must come, or I have to report this to the hospital.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Joey said. “She won’t let me.”

The line clicked.

Dr. Gallagher hung up the phone, growing nervous. He knew it was his responsibility to report this to the hospital, but he wanted to give Joey one more chance. And if Joey refused to come to the office, then the doctor would instead go directly to Joey’s house and confront him.

Upon arriving, Dr. Gallagher knocked several times but did not receive an answer. He opened the door – which was unlocked – and he entered. He saw Joey sitting at his kitchen table and staring into a corner of the room.

“Joey, it’s Dr. Gallagher,” he said as he slowly approached. “Is everything okay?”

Joey didn’t turn his head to acknowledge the doctor’s presence, but he did speak. “Sorry I couldn’t come, Doctor, but she wouldn’t let me.”

Dr. Gallagher stepped into the kitchen and looked around. There was no one in the kitchen but Joey and himself. “Joey, there is no one here,” he said, patiently.

“She’s here, doctor,” Joey said. “I’m looking into her eyes right now. I have to look into her eyes. That keeps her in place. If I look away, she comes out from her hiding place to hurt me.”

“Joey, there is no woman,” the doctor countered, growing exasperated. “If you keep up this behavior, I’m afraid I will have no choice but recommend you be re-committed to the hospital.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t like that,” Joey said. “She wouldn’t like that at all.” He continued to stare forward, not even blinking.

“Joey, where is she right now?” the doctor demanded. “Where do you see her?”

“She’s between the refrigerator and the wall,” Joey said and pointed. “Do you see her?”

Dr. Gallagher looked where Joey had pointed—looked at the small space between the refrigerator and the wall, which was no more than three inches wide.

He saw a woman with long black hair and white eyes impossibly standing in that space. Her body was as thin as a broomstick, and her long fingers squirmed over the top of the refrigerator like snakes. She opened her mouth to speak, but the doctor heard only the wind. 

Photo.

BIRD MAN

Those who knew him called him Bird Man, although no one really “knew” the man—instead they had become aware of his existence after encountering his strange, eccentric behavior for themselves. Because, you see, no one could honestly say that they knew anything about him—not even his real name. Some believe he had been drafted into Vietnam at eighteen and returned a few years later, re-born as a broken-minded man. Though he hadn’t lived in the city as a youth, Bird Man had opted to choose it as his new post-war home.

He always wore the same clothes: a pair of brown pants, a dark, navy blue button-up shirt, and a denim jacket. The clothes never changed, but they never seemed to tarnish, or become dirty. Some folks claimed to hear dog tags rattling around inside his shirt from time to time, which is how the Vietnam theory came to be. He had no true home and seemed to live on the streets. It was claimed that he actually lived in an old abandoned factory not too far from the places he was usually spotted, like the corner of 8th and Spruce Streets, where he would flap his wings in a fury at passing cars and caw at passersby. He sometimes visited area pubs, where he would either continue his bird shtick, or likewise, merely sit at the bar and remain still and quiet. He never ordered anything, but if the bartender slid him a glass of water or club soda, he would drink it.

Small pictures of birds, etched in charcoal, appeared all over the city’s buildings. No one ever actually saw Bird Man physically draw these pictures, but they always seemed to correspond with places he often visited.

“I think he marks these places because they’re where he feels safe,” a local had explained. “He knows he can go there and feel free from predators.”

Bird Man never harmed a single person, nor threatened to; unless he was being particularly loud or intrusive, the police were hardly ever called. He never even spoke in an intelligible language—just strange, guttural bird sounds. Despite this, he became a part of the small city, and the locals accepted him as easily as they accepted one of their own neighbors, or even the mayor. Some of these locals – themselves war veterans – did their best to give Bird Man solitude and respect. Others took innocent and lighthearted amusement in him and would be sure to point him out to others if they saw him on the street. “There goes the Bird Man!” they would shout as they passed by. “How ya doin’, Bird Man?”

But Bird Man never really responded to these greetings. Further, he never seemed happy, sad, or angry. His face was a blank slate, even when he was uttering his strange animalistic sounds. Like a bird, he had no discernible reactions to anything.

A few of the locals weren’t as nice to Bird Man and they antagonized him when they saw him. They jabbed him in the shoulder with their fingers, or sometimes mockingly threatened him with rolled-up newspapers or other objects. They would laugh and jeer and shout insults at him. “Lay any eggs recently, Bird Man?” And Bird Man would caw and shriek at them, much like a frightened bird would, and then run off down the street flapping his arms.

One day, a local man named Morley Herbert noticed that Bird Man hadn’t come around—not to his usual corner, nor any of the bars. After Herbert began asking around, he was able to deduce that it had been at least two weeks since anyone had seen the poor man.

“Maybe he flew the coop!” someone had joked, but Herbert wasn’t laughing. He had always felt bad for Bird Man, knowing that his home was the streets—knowing that he was beyond any kind of help.

Herbert contacted the police and aired his concerns, explaining that he was a “friend” if Bird Man and worried that he might be sick—or worse. An officer came to collect Herbert in his cruiser and the two drove to the abandoned factory where it was believed Bird Man had taken residence.

The factory was years deserted and in terrible shape. Most of the outer structure remained intact, but inside, it looked like a bomb had gone off. Ancient, oily machinery had been shoved into a corner and most of the windows had been broken, either by neighborhood punks or the fire that had brought the factory down in the first place.

In another corner was Bird Man’s nest—literally. A massive pile of bunched newspaper, dry twigs, and single straws seemingly plucked from hundreds of brooms were butted up against the walls. Fast food wrappers littered the floor. Though it wasn’t in plain view, the smell of human waste permeated the air.

Bird Man lay on his side on the dirty concrete floor, his arms tucked close to his body, his legs slightly splayed—like a bird that had fallen out of its nest and died on impact upon hitting the ground. His face wore not a grimace of pain, but a slight smile, his eyes gently closed. He looked to be at peace.

He was buried in a local potters field—a graveyard the church had sponsored where the indigent and the criminal were interred. More people attended his brief funeral than anyone would have anticipated—even those known for antagonizing the man in the past.

Stories of Bird Man wildly circulated in the months following his death. Recollections and “remember-when” stories were freely traded in bars, and many drinks were toasted in his honor.

One day, a new story about the Bird Man began circulating. Because the story’s events were so unusual, several of the locals worked together to tie the source of the tale back to one man: Morley Herbert.

Herbert later admitted that it was after a bout of mourning and too many drinks when he let slip something he never intended to share with anyone else—not even the police officer who had been with Herbert at the discovery of Bird Man’s body, and apparently did not see what Herbert had seen.

“The factory was in complete disarray,” Herbert explained. “It had been three floors when it was open for operation, almost fifty years ago, but after it caught fire, the whole place had been gutted. The floors had disintegrated. The walls were the only parts of the building left intact—and the ceiling, which was as least 150 feet high. There were no ladders in the place, and no possible way to climb up to that ceiling. Well, when I was in there, standing over Bird Man’s body, I happened to look up. And at the very top of the wall, close to the ceiling, I saw something drawn on the plaster: it was a picture of a bird…drawn in charcoal.” 

HAROLD

ATTACHED LIVING

My parents divorced when I was young, and I stayed behind with my mother in our house while my father temporarily moved to a nearby apartment complex. He remained there for roughly six months before moving out in a hurry. It was many years later that he told me about the strange occurrence he had experienced while living there.

His immediate neighbors were the Thornes, and they consisted of a young woman and her newborn baby. The father of the newborn did not appear to be in the picture. In the first month he lived there, he saw Ms. Thorne and her baby frequently, as they were both in and out of their apartment every day at the same time, apparently maintaining a steady schedule. The baby was always in her arms, cooing away and grasping at the air with tiny hands. My father would smile and nod at them, and he always received a warm greeting right back.

One day, for seemingly no reason, Ms. Thorne broke the routine. She and her baby no longer came and went each day. In fact, several weeks went by – which soon turned into months – and my father had not seen them a single time. He knew they hadn’t moved out of the apartment—he could hear the baby crying through the walls. He had learned for himself after raising a son that infant babies cried often—at all hours of the day and night, and for almost any reason. Because of this, he was patient with the young woman. He did not feel the need to go banging on her door and demand that she quiet the baby’s cries, like some other neighbors would have done. Despite his patience, the crying grew more and more intense over time. He began to wonder if perhaps the baby was ill, and because he was a doctor – he had worked for years in family medicine – he grew concerned. He wondered if maybe the young mother could not afford to take her baby to see a doctor. However, he did not want to intervene, recognizing that it was not his business.

One day at the nearby corner market, my father happened to run into the Thorne woman, who held her baby in her arms. My father approached her under the guise of saying hello, but really wanted to see if he could ascertain just what illness – if any – might have been plaguing her child.

He described the young woman as cordial, if a bit fatigued, and her voice was strained and weak. He made small talk with her, and she politely answered the questions he asked, though she did not volunteer any additional information about herself. Her baby was wrapped in a blanket and a pink knit hat covered her head. She told him her baby’s name was Jessica, who slept soundly as the two spoke. My father explained that he was a doctor and offered to periodically perform check ups on the baby to save her time and money. The young woman thanked him, but graciously declined, telling him she did not trust the care of her daughter to anyone with whom she was not already very well acquainted. My father told her that he absolutely understood, and after a while he bid them goodbye and went back to shopping.

Several more months went by and my father continued to hear crying through the walls. The tiny voice had become hoarse from the constant wails, and my father began to wonder if the child was not ill after all, but perhaps being abused in some way.

One night, the crying grew especially intense. It was full of anguish and he had deduced that the baby must have been in great pain, so he decided it was time to intervene. He placed a call to the local police and explained the situation, requesting that they also dispatch an ambulance to the woman’s apartment. They assured him they were on their way, but after hanging up, he decided to go to the apartment himself.

He walked to the Thornes’ apartment door and knocked several times. The young woman did not answer, and the crying continued. He knocked again, louder this time, but still she did not answer. Finally he tried the knob, and seeing that it was unlocked, he entered. A smell he described as foul and sick hit him in the face—the kind of smell that infests a place not touched by sunlight for months on end. He could smell body odor and rotting garbage. He retched almost immediately.

He followed the crying to a back bedroom, which was large, and most assuredly the master bedroom. He tried flipping the light switch on the wall, but was greeted with an empty click—the lights did not come on.

“Ms. Thorne?” he called into the darkness. “It’s Dr. Jesper from next door.”

The crying in the room continued, but the young woman did not answer him.

“Mrs. Thorne?” he called again. He heard rustling on the bed in front of him. He took one step closer and barely in the darkness he could see the baby. She lay on the bed, blankets draped across her small body. He recognized the pink knit hat that he had seen the infant wearing months earlier. As he crept closer, the crying continued. Finally he reached the baby and picked her up. He brought her out into the hall to examine her under the light.

It was only after he noticed that the baby’s crying seemed to stay behind in the bedroom when he realized he was not holding a baby at all, but rather a child’s doll. Its glassy eyes stared up at him, and in shock, he dropped it on the floor.

“No!” screamed a voice behind him. The young woman hurtled out of the darkness and pushed him aside. He fell back against the wall as the young woman scooped up the doll in her arms and cradled it. “She won’t eat!” she cried. “No matter what I do, she won’t eat!” She fussed with the baby doll for a moment, shoving a bottle of yellow, sour milk into its plastic mouth. She then turned and looked at my father. She opened her mouth wide. And the cries he had been hearing since moving in – cries eerily similar to that of a baby – assaulted the apartment.

On the wall behind the young woman was a photo of a baby—the kind taken at hospitals immediately following arrivals of newborns.

“Baby Jessica” was inscribed on the photo.

And on a small shelf below the photo sat a tiny, golden urn.

THE FUNERAL

When I was fourteen, my grandmother passed away. She wasn’t a very nice person, to be honest, and none of us kids liked her, but she was my father’s mom, and he was sad when she died, so we pretended we were sad, too. But we weren’t.

Whenever my grandmother came to visit us, she would say the meanest things. She would call my brother fat, my sister dumb, and me she called ugly. She never said anything mean when my parents were around, though, and even though we were kids at the time, we knew better than to tell our parents the awful things she said. We knew they would never believe us. Luckily, our grandmother only visited a few times a year— on holidays—so we never had to really see her.

On the day of her funeral, people gathered around her coffin on the church altar.

“She was a fine person,” someone said to my dad and shook his hand. They were sorry for his loss, they said. A lot of people said that on that day.

“Thank you,” my dad said and he looked pretty sad.

“I’m glad she’s dead,” I said to my sister that day. “She was terrible.” We were sitting in the back pew reading our grandmother’s mass card. Her picture was on the front, and even though she was smiling, there was still hardness in her eyes that gave me chills.

“That’s not nice,” my brother said. “That’s not nice to say about anyone who has died, even if you didn’t like them.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “She was mean to us our whole lives. Now she can’t be mean anymore.”

The funeral eventually ended and everyone began filing out. I waited for the coffin to be rolled out so everyone could follow it to the cemetery, and when it wasn’t I asked my mom why not. She said it was because my grandmother was being cremated, so instead the funeral home would take the body away to do what needed to be done.

The church had emptied out and we were all in the lobby, and I turned and looked back at my grandmother’s coffin. I could see the bump of her folded wrists, which sat on her withered chest. Her skin was sickly white, even from where I stood. Looking at her body, I remembered all the times she was mean to us, and I smirked, but I tried my best to hide it.

I turned back to my mom and said, “Can I go say goodbye one last time?”

“Of course, sweetie,” my mom said, and she adjusted the flower which was pinned to the lapel of my suit jacket. “That’s very nice of you.”

I walked back into the church as my family all talked amongst each other in the lobby. I strode up to my grandmother’s coffin and looked inside. Her face was wrinkled and strange looking—as if it had been re-formed with candle wax. Her dry lips were pursed closed.

I leaned over to her and whispered, “I’m glad your dead. You were terrible.”

I fell back and knocked my elbow pretty hard on a pew, and I was too terrified to even scream, because her eyes had popped open, and they were frosty and blue, like a foggy street after a warm rain. Her hand curled around the side of her coffin and grasped its rail, using it to pull her dead body into a sitting position. Her head turned robotically, the bones in her neck creaking like dry firewood, and she saw me through her cloudy eyes. She grinned, and the wires keeping her lips closed ripped through her skin.

“No!” I screamed and I turned to run. I heard her climb out of the coffin, and I think it was right when her feet touched the ground when the lights inside the church went off. The only light in the whole place came from the altar’s two candles, which were situated on either side of her coffin.

I sprinted down the middle aisle, and in the darkness I could see only the shape of her, lit from behind as she came after me, her burial dress swishing against her legs. I could see loose strands of her hair above her head, and hear her bones cracking as her dead brain forced her dead legs to walk. There was ragged breathing in the dark, and to this day I don’t know if that was her breathing or my own.

I made it to the lobby doors, but they had been closed. I wrenched helplessly on them and found they were locked. I screamed in terror and beat on the doors, but no one came to my aide. I looked through the small windows and saw that the lobby was empty—and that everyone had left me.

“No!” I screamed through the window. “Someone help me!”

A hand gripped my shoulder from behind—so hard I thought my bones would shatter. She turned me around and forced me to face her. Her grinning face was inches away from mine, and when she hissed, the smells of the chemicals inside her leaked down my throat and burned my lungs.

“Get off me!” I screamed again and tore away from her grip. I stumbled in the darkness and fell backwards into a pew. I covered my face with my arms and begged to be left alone.

I felt hands grabbing at me again, forcing my arms away from my face, and I fought them as best as I could, but the hands were too powerful. They grabbed my face now, and they were smooth and warm. I opened my eyes and saw my father. He looked very concerned, but there was also a glimmer of a faint, even sympathetic smile. The church’s lights were on, and the lobby once again filled with members of my large family, some of them looking in at me with concern in their eyes. I was crying very hard.

“I know, buddy,” he said to me. “I know you’re sad she’s gone, but don’t worry. She will always be with us.”

I grabbed onto him and held him tightly, and he held me back as we sat together in the pew, and when I looked over his shoulder and back to my grandmother’s coffin, where she was lying again, I swear to this day—as I swear that what happened to me on that day is true—that she was smiling.

And the flower from my suit jacket was clenched in her hand.

RAGGED

“Shhh, listen,” Travis said to me over the phone. “Do you hear it? It’s in my house somewhere, and it’s breathing. Do you hear it? The ragged breathing?”

“I don’t hear it,” I said. “I only hear you. You sound panicky. Did you take your prescriptions tonight?”

“I don’t understand how you can’t hear the breathing,” Travis said. “I hear it all the time, but when I call you, you never hear it. It sounds like…a dog with emphysema or something.”

“No, I don’t hear it. I don’t hear any ragged breathing.”

“Once you hear it, you’ll never forget it,” Travis said. “So maybe you’re lucky.”

“Travis, this thing you hear—you’ve seen it before. You said that already, last week, I think. Right?”

“Yes,” Travis said.

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like a man,” Travis said. “But I don’t think it’s human.”

“Can you describe it?”

“Its skin is flesh-colored, like yours or mine, but it has scales. And it has gigantic teeth. Not fangs—regular human teeth. But they are huge. They’re so big that this thing can’t even close its lips around them. That’s why it smiles all the time, because the teeth force it to. And its hair is long, down past its ears. And its eyes, they shake inside its skull like rattling marbles. It wears an all-black suit with a white shirt, and it wears a bowler cap.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Travis asked.

“Travis, last week you called me and told me this thing was in your house.”

“I know, it was under the bed,” Travis said.

“Right, but last week you also said this thing had an alligator’s face and octopus arms. Now you say it looks like a human being.”

“Yeah…?” Travis said, pensively at first. But then: “Yeah! You’re right! This thing must be…some kind of shape shifter or something! Maybe a demon! That’s why it only comes out at night!”

“Travis, do you need me to come over?” I asked.

“No,” Travis said. “The thing might get you. It hasn’t gotten me yet, but I think it might be afraid of me. Maybe because it’s my house, I’m not sure. But no, if you come over, it’ll get you.”

“Nothing will get me if I come over, Travis,” I said. “Because whatever you’re seeing isn’t real.”

“Easy for you to say,” Travis said. “You’re there, and I’m here, and I’m telling you: a monster is somewhere in my house.”

“Travis, have you taken your prescriptions?” I asked again, growing exasperated. “Twice a day, right? Two pills at a time? Did you take all four pills today?”

“Those pills make me drowsy,” Travis said.

“You have to take them.”

“Why?”

“Because when you don’t, you see things that aren’t there.”

“This thing chasing me? It isn’t here because I didn’t take some stupid pills,” Travis said. “It’s really here right now, in my house.”

“Have you called Dr. Farthing?”

“No.”

“Maybe you should call Dr. Farthing.”

“Why?”

“If you’re seeing things, your doctor should know.”

“How is he going to help me? Unless he has a shotgun that can kill shape shifters.”

“Travis, do you need me to come over? I should come over.”

“No, I told you, don’t. There’s a reason this thing hasn’t killed me yet, but you might not be safe.”

“Why don’t you go to bed?” I asked.

“With that thing in the house?” Travis shrilled. “Not likely!”

“Lock your bedroom door,” I said. “I once read somewhere shape shifters can’t cross through doorways unless they’re invited.”

“That’s vampires.”

“No, it’s not,” I lied. “It’s shape shifters.”

“Oh. Think that’ll work?”

“Yes,” I said. “Close and lock your bedroom door and get some sleep. And call me tomorrow.”

“Okay, thanks,” he said. “Good night.”

“ ‘Night, Travis. And take those pills.”

It was approaching early evening the next day when Travis called me, and while his voice sounded panicky again, it was a lot weaker. He barely spoke above a whisper.

“The door thing didn’t work,” he said. “It came into my room last night, anyway.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“It took something from me.”

“What?”

“It stuck its hands into my guts—through my skin, without breaking it, somehow—and took something. I’m afraid it might’ve been my soul.”

“Travis, I think I should call Dr. Farthing.”

“Let me finish,” Travis said. “After this thing took my soul, it went out into the hallway and began retching all over the floor. I think something in my soul—or maybe the soul itself—made it sick.”

“So why would this thing purposely take your soul if it knew it would get sick?”

“I wondered about that all night, and I think I realized why. This thing—whatever it is—wants to eat me. That’s what its big teeth are for: ripping the flesh off my body in strips and crushing my bones.”

“Okay?”

“But it can’t eat my soul because the thing would die. It must be poisonous to it, or something. So it had to get rid of it before it can eat me.”

“Where is the thing now?”

“I don’t know; probably somewhere in the floorboards. I think that’s where it lives.”

I looked out the window and saw that it was growing dark, which gave me an idea. “So, you don’t see the thing right now?”

“No.”

“Do you hear it?”

“No.”

“Well, look out your window. It’s dark out. See that? And no monster in sight. Right?”

“You’re right,” Travis said. “It is dark. Which means it’s going to come soon. And it’s going to kill and eat me."

“No, Travis, that’s not what I meant,” I said. “I think I am going to come over.”

“No,” Travis said. “It’s dark now. You’d never make it in time.”

“Then why don’t you come to my place instead?”

“I would, but I’m too weak. I spent all day in bed recuperating from that thing stealing my soul.” He cursed at himself. “I wasted the whole day. I should have been thinking of ways to kill this thing.”

“Travis, I’m calling Dr. Far—“

“Sshhh!” Travis hushed into the phone, and then I heard nothing. I waited with him, in the silence.

“What is it?” I finally asked.

“It’s here… in my room. It’s looking right at me. Do you hear it? The ragged breathing?”

“What’s it doing, Travis?”

“It’s got a sharpener. It’s filing its top teeth into fangs.”

“Travis, please,” I said, the hair pricking up on the back of my neck.

“You were always a good friend to me,” Travis said. “The very best, for years.”

“Travis, what are you going to do?” I asked, growing alarmed. I pictured the worst. I pictured him climbing into his bathtub with a razor blade, or taking the rest of his prescriptions in one hand and slapping it against his open mouth, or tying a rope around his neck and throwing himself off the roof, or—

“It’s coming at me now,” Travis said. “I should probably hang up. You won’t want to hear this.”

“No!” I shouted. “Don’t do anything stupid! Travis, I’m calling the police!”

“Goodb—“ Travis managed before there was a thickening crunch. I heard something heavy tumble to the floor. I heard the phone topple across the tabletop for a moment before dangling by its cord. I heard the phone tap-tap-tap against the table leg.

I heard dragging. I heard ripping. I heard chewing.

And then I heard something else: silence...for a moment. Silence before someone—or something—grabbed the phone with a hand covered in stony growths.

And before the phone was put back into its cradle, severing the connection, I heard something else.

I heard ragged breathing.

A STRANGER ENTERS

The stranger entered the dusty, creaky saloon, letting the doors swing back and forth wildly behind him. Some of the saloon’s occupants turned to acknowledge the stranger’s presence, more out of nervous fear than curiosity or etiquette. These hairy-necked and bush-mustachioed men always knew when a stranger with anonymously handsome features, an unclear, mysterious origin, and a ten-gallon hat was entering through the doors. It was easy to tell. The conversations would halt, the billiard balls would no longer clink against each other, and the pianist playing old-timey music would cease dancing his dirty fingers over the black and white keys. All eyes would fall on the stranger entering, as if awaiting some kind of reaction, like a stirring speech, a deathly threat, or maybe some spontaneous combustion. There never was, though, but at this point, the act of momentarily halting one’s own life had become old hat. 

Plus tumbleweed would blow by in the background, because it was the Old West, and in the Old West, tumbleweed is constantly blowing around. 

The stranger, decked out in a flowing dark-brown trench coat and with spinning, clinking spurs on his boots, approached the bar. He pulled the stool slowly out, the whine of wood against wood emanating in the still-quiet saloon. The idle chatter previously wafting through the bar slowly returned, as did the clinking of billiard balls, and the old-timey tunes from the piano.

The bartender walked over to him, wiping the bar with a bar rag, because that’s what bartenders do pretty much all the time – they wipe things with their bar rags. It helps you to know who the bartender is, if you can’t see their apron, that is.

“Whaddya have?” asked he bartender, still wiping. 

“Whiskey,” muttered the stranger, his dark, beady eyes looking deep into the bartender’s soul, excavating every nook and cranny with just his tiny pupils. 

Or not. 

Maybe he was just an asshole.

“Sure thing, stranger,” said the bartender, acknowledging that this stranger was unknown, mysterious – and hence – instantly intriguing. 

The bartender withdrew a shot glass from the mirrored wall shelf behind him and poured the stranger a finger of whiskey. He absent-mindedly shook his head as he watched the thick booze dribble into the glass. He hated it there in that stupid bar that he didn’t even own. Hated his job, hated his wife, hated the fact that he was forced to pay off the debt racked up by his no-good dead brother-in-law, which when he counted on his fingers, would apparently take him the rest of his life plus twenty years.

And the stranger’s presence wasn’t helping.

The bartender was sick of it: another day, another mysterious stranger with an appropriately exciting and awe-inspiring life; whether running from the law or seeking justice, it was always hard to tell. It was always different, but it was always the same. Sometimes heroes were antiheroes, and sometimes villains were all you could count on, but all the strangers, no matter their origin, proved to be popular and domineering figures who fisted mugs of ale as men chanted their name, and who at the end of the night would go to bed with the town’s most beautiful virginal lady, whose first name was usually hyphenated, like Mary-Pat, or April-May. After all, this was the Old West— the reign of the cowboy and the six-shooter. Bullets, beer, and broads. Oh, and jovial piano music. That’s pretty much all there was. 

And while one would think that the arrival of such an interesting character—those of the variety with the black eyes that contained a life’s worth of misery and pain—would perhaps add a bit of excitement to the otherwise mundane life the bartender was living, they’d be wrong. Living vicariously through his patron’s own lives the bartender was not. And if he had a bag of gold for every time a mysterious stranger entered the bar and temporarily interrupted the bar’s events with his mystique, well, he’d have a lot of gold. A lot of gold. He’d have so much fucking gold that he could give some gold away for every time some other luckless soul dealt with a series of monotonously repetitive events that would lead him to use that same trite expression. 

“Hey, old timer—you’re not gonna charge me for a double, are ya?” the stranger asked, mysteriously, and with great, unshaven brood.

The bartender stood a moment more, still holding the bottle of whiskey over the shot glass as it continued to dribble within, and the stranger could only watch as the booze rose to the top and began spilling out over the lip of the glass. The stranger cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. The bartender’s eyes darted to him wildly, finally breaking out of his brief daydream, and he then realized he was dripping whiskey in thick rivers onto his shoes.

“Consarnet!” he said and grabbed the wipe rag he wiped with and began wiping at his spill. He finished picking up the spilled booze from the floor and tossed the rag in a box under the bar marked “dirty rags.” He pulled from the box on the floor next to it marked “clean rags” and began wiping the bar again, because it had been several seconds since he’d done a good wiping. 

As the bartender wiped, he could feel the stranger’s eyes on him. He met his hard gaze and for a moment, no one spoke.

“Might I trouble you for the shot you poured that I can’t reach?” the stranger asked, briefly sniveling his mustache. The bartender exhaled in disgust at his own idiocy and grabbed the shot from the shelf behind him. He clanked it on the bar in front of the stranger.

“Sorry, fella,” he said, nodding at the stranger. “Havin’ an off day. This one’s on me.” The stranger returned the nod, albeit very slightly, and he threw the shot back. 

“Another,” he said. “Drinking whiskey makes me feel like a tough man. And when you throw in my sun-crackled leather attire, my hairy face, and my deep, penetrating eyes, I make quite the ominous, mysterious character, don’t I?”

The bartender nodded in agreement – granted, the stranger’s visage and brood was nothing new, but still – he had a good point.

“Yes, very mysterious. You did stop the show when you came in here, I’ll give you that. But I gotta be honest, mister—we get mysterious strangers like you in here all the time. Some of them got stories, some don’t, but it’s always the same show.”

“Oh yeah?” asked the stranger. “Do they do this?” He withdrew a match from the band on his hat and flicked the red tip across the back of his front teeth, igniting it. He withdrew a single black cigarette from somewhere deep in his beard and stuck it in his mouth. He danced the flame across the tip until it glowed red and then he ate the match.

“Yes, sir,” said the bartender. “That’s usually the next thing they do. And some of them even put the cigarette out on their tongues.”

“Hmm, yes,” agreed the stranger, flicking his tongue out in response and showing the bartender a series of black dots from the previous times he had done just the same.

“Yes, sir, cut from the same cloth, it seems,” said the bartender.

“These men you say come in where…what do they tell you they do?” the stranger asked, watching the bartender pour his second shot. “You know, for a living or whatever?” 

“Oh, this and that. Some of the previous strangers shot men, and some killed men. Some would just shoot the sheriff, or the deputy, while others would go one step further and kill them. Sometimes these strangers would get shot by some men, or the sheriff, or deputy—and sometimes killed. And one of them I think was a school teacher.”

The stranger nodded along with his assessment. It was true: most mysterious strangers were usually in town to shoot a man (or several), get shot by a man (or several), and were either there to cause chaos or defeat it. 

And other times, teach.

“Ya wanna know what I do?” asked the stranger, throwing back the shot.

“If you wanna tell me, mister.”

The stranger growled at the burning of the whiskey going down as he slammed the shot glass down on the bar. He tipped the front of his hat up slightly with his gloved finger and looked at the bartender.

“I kill the undead.”

The bartender stopped cleaning the beer mug he held in his hands, mid-wipe, and narrowed his eyes at the stranger. 

“I beg your pardon? I am in such disbelief at what you’ve told me that I stopped wiping this here glass. What do you mean you kill the undead?”

“Just what I said, mister. And another shot, please.”

The bartender was still a moment, his eyes boring into the stranger’s own, trying to determine if he was for real. He then quickly grabbed the shot glass from the stranger’s fingers, as if there was some physical danger in doing so.

“What do you mean ‘undead’? Like, Mormons?”

The stranger shook his head. “No, old timer. The undead is just how it sounds: people die, stay that way for a bit, but then they come back to life.”

“I ain’t never heard of such a thing!” the bartender stated emphatically, pouring another shot of whiskey.

“It happens, old-timer. More often then you know,” the stranger grumbled.

“But why? Why do they come back? Unfinished business? Or out of love for those they left behind? Perhaps to spread the word of God and to convey the meaning of life?”

“They eat us,” the stranger responded. “They try to eat our heads and skin and stuff. So I come around and I shoot ‘em.”

“You shoot ‘em? And it kills ‘em, you know, for good?”

“If you shoot ‘em in the head, it does.”

The bartender briefly held the shot of whiskey out in front of him, and when the stranger reached for the glass, the bartender threw it back himself. He wiped his sleeve sloppily across his mouth to sop up what little booze didn’t make it in, which is what people did in the Old West. 

“How long have you been doing this?” asked the bartender, his quivering hand still holding the empty shot that held the attention of the stranger’s eyes.

“Dunno. Forget. Can tell you how many of the undead I’ve killed, though: 217.”

“How’d you get started in this line of work?” the bartender asked.

“Didn’t plan on this life. Just fell in my lap, I reckon.”

“My goodness,” said the bartender. “Well, you’re right, mister. Ain’t no one ever come in here spinning stories like the one you got.”

The stranger nodded.

“Ain’t you got a family somewhere? Or friends?”

“Can’t tell you that. It’d ruin the mysterious aura that I’ve established.”

The bartender silently agreed, but with his face. He made his face look a certain way or something that showed he agreed. Without saying he did.

“So what brings you to this town? We ain’t got no dead people runnin’ around, do we?” the bartender asked.

“They don’t run. It’s more of a…shuffling walk. And yeah, you do.”

“I’ll be!” shouted the bartender. “Who?”

The stranger withdrew a piece of wrinkled paper from the inside of his coat and read off a name.

“Baby Brooks.”

“Baby!” the bartender shouted. “It can’t be!”

“Who was she?” asked the stranger.

“Prostitute, but a nice one. Kind. Good momma to her kids, too.”

“Not no more, she ain’t. Now she eats heads,” the stranger replied.

“So, have you found her?”

“Not yet—I just rolled into town. I always take a drink before getting to work. Helps make the killin’ easier, plus I get to tell the bartender about my life, but in such a way that each answer I give only leads to more questions.”

The bartender poured one more shot into the glass and slid it over to the stranger. “Well, good luck to you, sir. This one’s on me, too. They all are.”

The stranger lifted the shot to the bartender in salute and threw it back. He got up, pulled some coins from his pocket, and dropped them on the bar.

“Man always pays his dues,” he said. He tipped his hat to the bartender, slid his stool out from the bar, and walked to the swinging saloon doors. He stood there a moment, directly in the bright shine of the steaming sun above, his silhouette a jet black shape surrounded by the blinding rays of the day. It was his hero shot. The stranger—this man who stops conversations, pianos, and balls—was there to save them. He was there to do a job he’d done hundreds of times before, and though no one knew his name right then, soon, everyone in the town would.

And then Baby popped up out of nowhere and ate his head. 

Just like that, the stranger was dead. 

He died pretty quick, especially for a hero. No drawn out final words, no coughing or sputtering blood, no gripping of a loved one’s hands before the final darkness rolled in. Just the crunch of his skull as Baby sank her teeth in, and then the loud collapse into a pile of overwrought manly behavior and steel spurs.

Turns out Baby Brooks had been stumbling down the empty, sandy streets of Retraction, the empty, sandy town where some people managed to keep quiet lives, and it was by sheer coincidence that the head she bit through belonged to none other than her would-be assassin. 

As she sloppily chewed the stranger’s brains, the people inside the saloon who had witnessed the act fled, terrified. Some tore through those same saloon doors that the stranger had exited through, jumping clean over the feasting whore, while others threw themselves through windows. And they all did that thing where they jumped right onto their horses and the horses took off immediately with no prodding from the riders, which the bartender thought had only existed in those penny comics.

“Ain’t anyone gonna kill the thing?” the bartender demanded of the people ruining his windows, which no one heard because of all the hooting, hollering, and jumping through windows and onto horses that was going on. 

Baby Brooks continued to eat the stranger’s brains, so the bartender rolled his eyes, flung his bar rag over his shoulder, and grabbed his sawed-off shotgun he kept bolted to the bottom of the bar. He approached the blood-splattered exit, swung the saloon doors out slowly, and looked down at the slurping Baby.

“That’s the last time you give head in this town, Baby,” the bartender said, amused with his last-second cutting joke that no one was around to hear. He even turned to collect appreciative smiles or laughs from the people he had hoped were near, but there were none. His only audience was a dead man and an undead woman, who was currently ass-deep in brain matter and not paying him any mind. He wondered if he was even supposed to make jokes. Admittedly, it acted against the whole chilly, gloomy façade that so many of these strangers had exhibited in the past. He would have to think about that one.

The bartender extended his sawed-off shotgun and blew Baby’s brains out all over the OK Corral (which every Old West town has), halting her feast of the stranger’s skull innards. He lifted the shotgun and leaned it on his shoulder. He even tried to stand the way he imagined heroes stood, but he couldn’t quite find the right pose. 

The bartender picked up the stranger’s hat from the sandy ground and slapped off some sand before placing it on his head. He then withdrew a match from the hat’s band, held it a moment to the front of his teeth, and then dragged it across.

The flame did not ignite, and it really fucking hurt, too.

“Aw, God,” said the bartender, holding his teeth in pain. He dabbed at the teeth with his tongue a moment before the pain was relieved.

All this leaning, and all this fancy-schmancy match lighting—he had a lot to learn.

He gave one last look to his bar – a prison for most of his life – before grabbing the stranger’s dark brown leather coat, holsters, and guns from his torn body. Now dressed in them, he opened and spun the chambers of both guns before snapping his wrists and closing them shut with a satisfying clink. 

A nearby blind man whistled some kind a tune which sounded as ominous as it was hopeful, as the bartender, soon to be a mysterious stranger himself in another Old West town, walked off into the sunset.

Also, later that night, he screwed a local virgin beauty named Katie-Jo.

Because that’s what heroes do.

ONE SCARY NIGHT...

JOHN CARPENTER'S OTHER HALLOWEEN

The Ghost Maker: A Halloween Tale

By John Carpenter
1988
 

I live my days in silence, behind the barred in windows of this asylum, in a cell of shadows. Until this moment I have spoken to no living person of the events of that Halloween night five years ago - because I could neither ask for nor expect belief.

But today, my doctor has given me paper and a pen, as he hopes I shall be compelled to write out my tale of horror and madness - once and for all expelling the demons that hold me in their catatonic embrace. I know this horror shall never leave me.

So my purpose, Dear Reader, is to finally put before the world the events of Oct. 31, five years past, as I experienced them, that no man may follow me to this hideous darkness in which I dwell, awaiting the only mercy I shall ever know - my release - the moment of death.

It was a bitterly cold night and I welcomed the warmth of the hearth in Howard Necron's study that All Hallow's Eve five years ago. I settled myself comfortably into an armchair by the crackling fireplace and waited as Necron poured two large snifters of brandy. He then turned to me with the oddest smile...

"I suppose, William, that you wonder why I have asked you here this evening," Necron said as he poured the amber liquid.

I admitted that I had been somewhat curious, as for the last 15 years we had been bitter professional rivals. We had once been partners in science and the closest of friends as well, but a dark schism had developed over our opposing research ethics. Necron had always wanted to prove that which should have, to my mind at least, remained in the ephemeral world of mathematics and theory. Disagreement had turned to debate, which in turn had become cold enmity.

"What would you say, William, if I told you that using universally accepted scientific principles, I could create a ghost?"

"I would say, Necron, that you were as mad as a March hare." My smile of derision must have been obvious, for he turned quickly away, pausing for a moment with his back to me before he slowly crossed the study to hand me the brandy snifter.

"To science, eh, William?" As he raised his glass to mine, his gaze seemed to burn into me, as if a shrewd smokey secret passed behind his eyes. I nodded and took a sip of the brandy. It had a sharp undertaste, and as I started to mention something about it, Necron settled himself closer to me on the ottoman at my feet.

"What is Schrodinger's cat?" he asked in a whisper.

"There's no need for this. We both know what it is." I suddenly felt unfocused. Drowsy. Probably the heat from the fire, making me sleepy. "It is a... a... thought experiment used to demonstrate the paradox of observer-created reality," I answered.

Necron seemed unbearably close to me now, his face but inches from my own.

"Yes," he said, "Nothing is real until you observe it."

Necron now stood, staring down at me with triumph and ice, the fire flickering on his face, shadows squirming like mad, devouring insects. A wave of dizziness washed through me.

Necron continued: "Imagine a box. The size of a coffin. Inside it is a radioactive particle with a 50-50 chance of decaying in, say, one minute. Also in the box is a glass bottle containing cyanide gas, and a Geiger counter. And, finally, into the box, is placed - an unconscious man."

"A cat, wasn't it?" I broke in. I was having a difficult time maintaining any line of reasoning, but there was a chill to his words.

His eyes began to drift strangely above me, as I sipped once again from my drink. That metallic undertaste assaulted me again. What had he put in my brandy? Could Necron be that insane? I tried to focus on his face. His features seemed to melt in the heat of the fire.

"If the radioactive particle decays, the Geiger counter so records it, trips a hammer, smashes the glass bottle, thus allowing the cyanide gas to escape and kill the man."

Necron's words were running all together.

"You mean... the cat," I mumbled weakly.

"Or," he said, "if the particle does not decay, the Geiger counter is silent, the hammer not tripped, the man allowed to live."

The room was spinning like a child's music box. The heat from the fireplace... Necron looming above me... My eyes bobbed open, closed. "What did you put... in my drink?"

But Necron ignored my slurred question.

"Don't you see, William? I could be either a murderer or a savior, because until human eyes see inside the box, the man inside is both dead and alive at the same time - a complex, linear combination of the two. The man in the box is a ghost of all possibilities of dead and alive, condemned to live in a limbo until the box is opened and he is observed by human eyes." His voice had dropped to a sibilant rasp, eyes glowing with a fury.

The snifter of brandy suddenly fell from my fingers. As I lost consciousness Necron's face was the last thing I saw.

"I am the ghost maker," he said, grinning. Then there was nothing. Blackness. Silence.

I awoke. I was lying down. Enclosed. Trapped. I couldn't move. Listening. Trying to breath. Then suddenly I threw up my arms. Touched a solid surface above me, no more than a foot away from my face. A lid. I was buried. In a coffin. A box.

I pushed up the lid a fraction of an inch.

A sliver of morning sunlight appeared as the lid opened, illuminating the inside of the box.

I suddenly saw the thing above me. It was hovering, just a foot away. Its body prone, it was staring down at me. Fuzzy. Indistinct. Its arms reached for me and at the same time another pair of arms lay at its side.

It was a blurred composite. A living transition. A contradiction. All possibilities, dead and alive. It undulated. Gazing eyes. Dead eyes. Living eyes. Blue decaying flesh.

In the fraction of a second before it disappeared I saw the creature's shape crawling, diffracting - indefinite, exploding anew out of rippling flesh.

A leering death's head began to scream down at me, disintegrating, crumbling and decomposing, growing and rejuvenating, humanity degraded and corrupted, dead and alive, revealed in an instant.

And then it was over. The thing disappeared. Its features settled, collapsed into definition. I looked around - the glass bottle at my feet was unbroken, the cyanide gas contained. The Geiger counter at my side was silent.

My mind raced frantically. Dead plus alive. Alive minus dead. Dead plus the square root of minus alive.

And then, as I continued to push upward, the impact of Necron's experiment hit me. As my fingers lifted the underside of the lid, the thing made man stared back at me in horror, screaming a long, sustained shriek of utter annihilation. Touching the unfeeling surface of a mirror - I realized the hideous image had been a reflection.

It was I.

 





 


© 1988, John Carpenter and The New York Times.

KEYHOLE

A professor was working late one wintry night when a sudden storm came, dropping over a foot of snow on the ground in record time. The professor, seeing that he had been essentially snowed into the building, readied himself to spend the night.

He alerted the university's security guard that due to the weather he was going to be spending the night. The security guard nodded, but then warned him of the things  he might experience during the night, such as knocking and footsteps, as well as the ghostly figure of a girl who is sometimes spotted roaming the halls late at night.

The professor found the security guard's claims dubious at best, but eager to get back to work, merely said he would keep an eye out.

After several more hours of grading papers, the professor saw that it was approaching three a.m. and decided it was time to turn in for the night. He stretched out on a couch in his office and had just fallen asleep when he was woken up by the sound of someone knocking at his door. The professor, remembering the security guard's warnings, became frightened and tried to ignore the sounds. 

As he tried to go back to sleep, the knocking came again. Wondering if maybe it was the security guard himself, he got up. To make sure it was the guard before opening, he peaked through the keyhole of the door. All he saw was the color red, and assuming that a person wearing that color was standing in the hallway, he opened the door.

No one was there.

He closed the door and went back to bed, tossing and turning for the remainder of the night.

When morning came, the professor located the security guard and told him of his strange experience, and how he had peered through the keyhole and saw a close-up of red - what he had assumed was someone's clothing. The security guard merely nodded, not surprised by the professor's description. The guard went on to explain that the spirit said to haunt the university was of a young girl - a former student - who had been ritualistically killed several years earlier. 

Her eyes had been carved out of her skull, leaving behind red, bloody holes.

STRANGE AND SCARY THINGS

I'm pretty sure, as a kid, you had these books:

I certainly did. They were as essential to my youth as the Goosebumps series and Wacky Wednesday. 

The stories themselves were pretty basic and well-known urban legends. They were vague, to the point, and sometimes even silly (though trying not to be). And you can only read so many stories that end with "now jump at a nearby friend and scream" before you roll your eyes. Despite these seeming shortcomings, it was an added strength for the book. In most cases, illustrations are in place to serve the story. In the case of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, it was definitely the other way around.

But, at the same time - at a young age, and in the right frame of mind - the stories were chilling, and even sometimes disturbing, due in no small part to the incredibly strange and often surreal illustrations by Stephen Gammell. His approach to illustration was very nontraditional - especially for children's literature. To sound like an elitist hipster douche bag for a second, his work in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collection was very reminiscent of Dali, and Bosch before him. His interpretations of any particular story's monsters were horrifying enough, but even human beings depicted normally within the confines of the tale suddenly became misshapen characters born from a nightmare. Occasionally there would be an illustration that had so little to do with the events of the story that it made the happenings that much more off-putting and unnerving.

For instance, in one of the most famous stories not just in the book, but in folklore itself, a girl named Susanna returns home to her college apartment to see that her roommate, Jane (in their shared bedroom), is sleeping. Susanna quietly undresses in the dark and slips into bed, only to be jarred awake several times during the night to someone singing "Oh, Susanna." She repeatedly tells Jane to STFU. Yada yada yada, skip to the morning, and someone is still singing that song. Susanna flips out, jumps out of bed, and tears the covers off her roommate to see that she is dead.

End story.

And the illustration that accompanies this tale?

Yeah. What exactly is that? But...it somehow works. At the very end of this story, when the poor girl is assaulted with the sight of her mutilated friend on a bed only a few feet away, and the impossible sound of singing still fresh in her ears, perhaps Susanna has gone mad. And perhaps what you see is Gammell's interpretation of madness. Or perhaps he is suggesting that we're not in control of our own lives, and are helpless to defend ourselves against the dark forces that look down upon us from unseen places. 

Perhaps he is telling us there is only fate - not free will - that will determine our paths...and that we are doomed.

Either/or - the friggin' creeps.

Flipping through the pages of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the pictures you see before you could very well instead be hanging in a museum - and you would never think twice about their inclusion in artistic history, alongside other famous works by other famous artists. One of my personal favorite illustrations of Stephen Gammell is below - one which accompanies a story called "The Drum," perhaps the eeriest story in any of the three books. Two young children - a brother and sister - become terrible nuisances to their mother, at the behest of a young gypsy girl who possesses a strange drum for which the siblings yearn. Their mother threatens to abandoned them - to leave them with a strange woman, who has glass eyes and a wooden tail. The siblings, though fearful of this threat, continue to misbehave in order to finally possess the strange drum. At story's end, the gypsy girl explains that it was all just a game, and she never had any intention of giving up her drum. The siblings rush home...and see their new mother waiting for them in front of the roaring fireplace - their new mother with glass eyes and a wooden tail that thumps against the floor.

This illustration accompanies the story:

The painting below is entitled "Carnival Night" (1886) by Henri Rousseau.

The similarities, whether intentional or not, show that Gammell has not just a modern illustrator's mind, but a classic artist's.

As of 2011, Gammell still provides illustrations for childrens' books, and though Alvin Schwartz, who compiled the tales for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, has long since passed on, perhaps a fourth book will some day come down the pike under new guidance. And with it will come nightmares for a new generation of dark-seeking children.

"I was four at the time, thinking that I really didn't want to go to school next year... I just want to do this -- just scare other children so bad it gives them nightmares for the rest of their lives."

- Stephen Gammell