Frozen fear, p.4
Frozen Fear, page 4
“Grab one.”
“No.”
He could barely stand up. No amount of bossing would change the fact that he had lost a ton of blood through his severed finger. When he looked at the truck, he suddenly realized the bodies weren’t going into the back. The bars of the front grill had opened into a crude mouth. Jagged oxidized metal formed teeth. At the same spot where the water moccasin had slithered out, a dancing fork of a tongue now tasted the air. Yes, it was hungry.
“We’ve got to feed it, Georgie.”
‘I know! Stop saying that! We got to feed it feed it feed it Feed the Truck feed the truck. Feed feed feed it death Feed feed feed it my severed-headed friends. Stop saying saying saying that!!’
Georgie spat, “Fuck you!” and crumpled into the dirt, crying and laughing, rocking back and forth. “What happened to your head? Where’d it go? Where’d it go? W-where’d-it-go-Skibidi-fuck-where’d-it-go-go-go—”
The monster cursed him, realizing his assistant was clearly not up to the task. It picked each headless body up and lifted them into the mouth of the truck. It devoured them with mechanical chomps of its grill. This made Georgie start sobbing harder. The truck was groaning with genuine pleasure as it ate his friends. The creature whipped around.
“Give me a good scream, Georgie. You can do it!”
‘You’re not getting a tune out of me, freakshow,’ he thought but didn’t dare say.
In went Beezy, into the chomping mouth of the truck. Snap, went his spine. Beezy’s buttocks turned at a strange angle. The crack of his ass peeked out of his black jeans. The truck’s demonic pleasure increased as the other bodies were fed into it. Its headlights grew a vivid pink, then a deep red. What a happy little truck. The Hell-Spawn-sans-head walked over to him.
“Help me carry the heads inside.”
“No no no,” said Georgie. “No way. My hand! It’s totally fucked. I can’t!”
He looked at the hooked claws of the monster. Now it was either stand up and do as he was told or become beheaded himself. He got to his aching feet. He picked up two of them, not knowing which they were. He thought about Tom Savini sitting around making fake Zombie heads for a movie. Fake. Fake heads that I’m carrying...
Georgie followed the creature inside the cabin of the truck, wondering if he was actually doing it, if this wasn’t some shitty dream, just the peak of the worst trip ever imaginable. The inside was slippery, drippy, sourness permeated, smelling like a neglected aquarium. His Docs stomped through mush on the floor.
“Open the cooler,” the guttural voice instructed.
“No.”
The monster called him a useless piece of shit, then opened the lid itself. Another level of stench. Something slick moved around inside the cooler. He didn’t dare look inside too long. The eyes of his dead friends met his as they were dropped in. Janey was the last. Georgie saw her blink then her eyes widened.
“Don’t let him do this to me, Georgie. Please!” Her pale lips trembled. “I’ve always loved you, Georgie. Don’t do this!”
I’m sorry, Janey.
“I don’t want to go in there!”
Georgie tried to speak. A glutinous pinkish-yellow tentacle shot from the inside of the cooler and drove up through her neck. Her eyeballs shot in opposite directions. Hot blood shot directly into Georgie’s face. The spiked appendage dragged her down. As soon as the cooler lid closed, the truck vibrated with electricity. A weak yellow cab light flickered on. The inside of the truck looked so much better without light. There was a lattice of unnamable debris on the floor all covered in a film of grayish green. Two or three dying fish flopped. The cooler rattled with an even electric hum, more like a monotone chant uttered by hooded figures for some ghastly unearthly rite.
Ahhh-uhhhh-mmmmm...it went. The creature shoved him towards the cab, and said, “This way.”
The filmed-over window of the ice cream truck showed hazy light like it was still underwater. The headlights burned tunnels into the gloom. In the cab, the driving seat was webbed with reeds, algae, various unnamable sediment, and whatever else that could have been scooped from the rectum of Pine Lake. The seat’s formerly vinyl coating was bloated with fetid lake water.
“Have a seat, champ.”
A rough furry paw pushed him onto the seat, squishy wetness collapsed around his crotch and ass. The steering wheel looked gruesome. Ropey deadfall draped it like a cowl.
“Let’s take her for a spin,” a needle-sharp paw landed on his shoulder. “Just like old times.”
“No.”
Georgie saw that the rusted key was still in the ignition slot. He did not want to touch it. “Turn it,” the creature commanded. Sharp needles bit into his shoulders. He had a change of heart. Georgie gripped the key and turned it. As soon as he applied pressure to the rough piece of metal, several black specks emitted from the ignition slot. He quickly realized the advancing black specks had eight legs. There were lots of these little critters. Spiders. He watched in horror as they poured out and danced up his arm and spread out across his body. They looked like little black widows with stiletto-tipped legs. He was suddenly screaming again. The spiders kept coming, crawling and prickling.
“Turn it, you stupid shit, or they start biting!”
He turned the key in earnest now. The engine of the ice cream truck shrieked into life like a thousand starving long-tortured souls. He tried to beg for mercy, but his throat was choking with spiders. Looking at the creature, he saw that his persecutor had radically changed his appearance. It was dressed in a clean white shirt, white pants, all topped off with a perfectly folded crisp black bowtie. There was no head above the bowtie though. At first. Through his hazy vision, Georgie thought he saw something bobbing within the cavern between his shoulders. Hundreds of spiders spun disgusting wet ropes around his body. His arm was already mummified in webs, strong filaments like fishing wire.
“That’s it,” said the gray abomination. “That’s just the pitch I’m looking for!”
If he had not been consumed with increasing doom and was able to pay more attention to detail, he would have noticed that the creature was gaining a slimmer, more human figure. He looked ready to take the world by storm. He was ready for business. Something wormed its way out of the monster’s talking neck hole in sync with Georgie’s dying screams. There was a black glistening orb at the top of it. An eye on a fleshy pedicle. It snaked through the air, dancing and swaying to a rhythm only it could hear. Then the watchful thing paused over him. As the horde of spiders crawled into his throat, the eye waited in anticipation, waiting for that last breath, the last loosening of tension around its victim’s eyes, and the final dilation.
Seconds before it got what it waited for, the little orb expanded like a large hole, a hole the size of the universe, and sucked in its prey whole.
Chapter Six
When Josh woke up, he went into Georgie’s room. He didn’t know why. Before he even remembered Freddy’s disappearance, he thought about Georgie. It was unusual and felt strange. He expected to see Georgie lying there. The bed was empty, all made up, unruffled except for where they had been sitting on it last night. Georgie hadn’t come home all night. That would put his mom in a bad mood. She’d have to call around until she found him. He was probably at Beezy’s, sleeping off whatever shenanigans he got into overnight. It happened enough recently that there was a routine.
What a weird dream he’d had. It was brightly colored, cartoonish, and didn’t make sense. Worrying about Freddy probably triggered the dream. But a flying truck? Where did that fit in? Ah ha. Billy Tolliver’s picture. There was an ice cream truck in it. It said Mister Yum Yum across the top. Josh knew that while sleeping the human brain took bits and pieces of everyday life and tried to make a story out of them. Perhaps that’s all it was: his mind goofing around. Freddy, Titanic, and that terrible drawing.
It was Saturday. His mother would give him a few chores to do then the rest of the day would be his. He went downstairs to pour some cereal and saw his mother sitting at the table, a distant look in her eyes. Something was wrong.
“Still no Freddy, huh?” she asked him.
“No.”
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
He just shrugged. “Are you all right, mom?”
“Georgie didn’t come home again last night,” she said, looking down at the half-eaten piece of jellied toast on her plate. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. He’s been known to just disappear. But his friend, Jane Densmore...her mother just called and asked if we knew where she was.”
She shook her head. She looked very upset. She rarely looked this sad.
“Do you know anything about where they could be?”
“No, mom.”
“Are you sure you haven’t heard anything? Nothing through the grapevine?”
He shook his head, wondering what she meant by grapevine. Then he looked at the jar of Smucker’s grape jelly on the table, looked back at her, and shrugged.
“I didn’t think so.” She sighed. She started to speak, then stopped. He thought she wasn’t going to but then she started up.
“These teenagers around here. Why can’t they do simple things? Like call. Everybody has a smartphone these days, right? Why can’t they phone and tell their parents where they are? It’s not like I don’t give Georgie plenty of freedom. I let him do whatever he wants, always have. And you know the crazy stuff he’s into.”
“I know, mom.”
“He has some very unseemly interests. Any other parent in their right mind would have trashed all those silly occult books he has. I’ve never said a word to him about them. Kind of afraid to, to be honest. I just keep hoping he’d grow out of it.”
“You’re a really good person, mom. I’m sure he’ll turn up soon.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, mom.”
“It’s not the first time he has disappeared all night. It’s unusual, sure, but you know Georgie...”
“Yep.”
“I don’t mean to complain to you, Josh. You shouldn’t be concerned with your weirdo brother. His problems are not yours.”
She smiled and winked at him, “Two weeks until summer vacation. Are you excited?”
“I sure am!”
“That’s great, honey.”
A few seconds of silence. His mother went back to staring out of the bay window of their kitchen.
“Want me to check on Mrs. Gilbert today?” he asked.
Mrs. Gilbert was an old disabled woman who lived in a nearby neighborhood. One of his weekly duties was to go by her house and do chores for her. She gave him twenty dollars a month for his work. At first, his mother insisted he do it for free. Mrs. Gilbert demanded he take some money considering the hard work he did: the shrubs around her house were a jungle. Getting cat food, litter, milk, and orange juice, then carrying it all on his bicycle was too strenuous to do for free. Mrs. Gilbert said she didn’t want to feel like she was “enslaving an eleven-year-old boy.” So, she gave him a ten or a twenty when she could, if she could still afford her medicine, she said. He wasn’t getting rich by a long shot. At least it was something and she was a kind old woman and grandmotherly to him.
His mom always told him it was important in life to help others in need. She was trying extra hard to press these values into him. She pressured him to go to church every Sunday although she often found excuses not to go herself. He sensed she was trying to carefully mold him so he wouldn’t turn out like Georgie. Georgie was a lost cause. His mother said there was nothing they could do for him. He had to make his own mistakes. “He’s reached a stage of mini-manhood and, although he thinks he’s at the very top, he still has many more steps to go. You develop like that your whole life. For the moment, he is going to huff, puff, sulk, and pound his chest and we just have to make a noble attempt to reach him.”
He was stronger, more willful, and louder than either of them. What Georgie needed was a strong father figure, his mom had told him. Their dad, her ex-husband Gabe, “just wasn’t that kind of figure”.
“Gabe is kind of a...” she thought deeply for the right descriptor, “free spirit. He likes to do his own thing. Raising kids takes more commitment, I believe, than he can give.”
She always reminded Josh that it wasn’t Georgie’s fault how he turned out. She and Gabe, she claimed probably, hadn’t given him the attention they should have during the divorce proceedings.
“I keep thinking we dropped the ball with him.” Sometimes her expressions confused him. What ball? Both he and Georgie aways hate sports.
“For the last few years maybe more, we’ve been trying to work things out together and I think we’ve been neglecting Georgie. We probably missed some warning signs,” Josh just nodded along. “All we can do now is hope Georgie comes to his senses. Hopefully, he won’t, um, hurt anyone or wind up in jail. Lots of kids go through these phases as teens and straighten up before they go too far.”
She stopped and looked at him, very serious suddenly.
“You don’t think he is already too far, do you?”
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know. He was eleven. He had to lie. He used his dad’s words. “No, mom. I think Georgie will be just fine.”
“Well, I hope so. It’s so hard to tell with him...”
Georgie was smart, too. He always made good grades, when he put effort into his studies. Josh first started reading because Georgie had such a huge shelf full of books. She smiled. Her intense eyes softened.
“You’re such a good boy, Josh. Go to Mrs. Gilbert’s later on. Today you can look for Freddy.”
He wouldn’t tell her, but he didn’t think he was going to find Freddy. Something was wrong. Georgie and Freddy were missing at the same time. That had to mean something.
“Can I have some money for Gary’s?”
“Gary’s Olde Ice Cream Shoppe?”
“Yes.”
“Well, dang, Josh. It’s a bit early for ice cream. It’s not even noon yet.”
“I know.”
He had the worst craving for ice cream.
“I can’t drive you right now, Josh. How about I take you tonight?”
“I was going to take my bike, mom. I feel like riding somewhere.”
“As long as you are careful. Go get my purse. It’s in the den by the couch.”
Ten minutes later, he was dragging his Mongoose Freestyle out of the garage and pedaled it swiftly out of the drive way into the sunny afternoon. He didn’t get too far, not nearly as far as he wanted, before he had to stop. Jeffy Holmes, the annoying second grader across the street, called his name and rode up to him.
“Hey, Josh! Come here!”
Gerald and Michael would make fun of him if they saw him talking to Jeffy. He was a notorious dork. Josh slowed down a bit, hoping Jeffy would make it brief.
“Lots of crazy stuff going on this morning, right?” said Jeffy.
“What?”
As usual, it was a guessing game talking to Jeffy. He had the habit of trailing on and on about a subject without even establishing what the subject even was. Hence, he was the most annoying kid in the neighborhood.
“Those kids! They might be dead!”
“What kids?”
“The teenagers!” said Jeffy.
“What teenagers?”
“The teenagers at the lake!”
Josh felt like grabbing him by one of his big Dumbo ears and rattling his head. They both had stopped on their bikes, straddling them, holding the handlebars.
“They might be dead!” repeated Jeffy with added drama.
“I don’t know what you’re even talking about!”
“There was a fire down there!”
“Where?”
“By the lake!”
Jeffy tossed up his hands in exasperation as if Josh was the guy talking in circles.
He was probably talking about Pine Lake, the closest lake. It was on the other side of the park, the old part that was all rusty and weedy. Young kids were forbidden by their parents from going there. Of course, it was a frequent spot for Georgie and his buddies.
“Will you ride there with me?” he asked.
“Ride where Jeffy? Settle down. Pine Lake, right?”
“Of course, doofus!”
“We can’t go there. That’s a bad place. Our parents will kill us.”
“We’ll be okay,” said Jeff, re-situating himself on his bike like he was ready to bolt. “There are police and stuff down there.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“I just want to take a peek. We’ll just go halfway through the park. Not all the way there. C’mon!”
Jeffy started peddling fast. Josh followed along. There was something ominous about this. He had learned that word only recently: ominous. As far as he knew, it meant scary. He liked the sound of it. His English teacher, Mr. Grant, would be proud of him for using it in a sentence. The fire at the lake and dead teenagers were very ominous.
Jeffy kept looking over his shoulder. He was acting all schizo. His dad used that word sometimes. The time at Chuck E. Cheese when he was scrambling around looking for his toy car, his dad had said, “Don’t get all schizo, Josh! We’ll find it.” His dad had used it one other time while they were driving along. A car ahead of them was driving fast, zooming in and out of lanes. His dad had said, “Look at that schizo son of a gun! He doesn’t know where the hell he’s going!”
That was an interesting word. Skit-zo. The longer version was schizophrenia. He had looked it up but still didn’t understand the meaning. The dictionary said it was a condition something-or-other with delusions. His mother said it meant someone with more than one personality. Trying to figure it out just frustrated him more. Good luck ever using that one in a sentence.
“Something back there is following us,” said Jeffy.
“What?”
They stopped. Jeffy hiked his thumb, “It’s a little truck. See it?”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
He squinted his eyes and saw a little truck in the distance. It looked like it was parked against the curb. It could easily have been the mail carrier.
