The following is an excerpt from the collection of short stories titled "Call of the Mountains: And Other Tales of the Bizarre." If you enjoy it, please consider purchasing the full collection from Amazon.com!
Photo by thomas shellberg on Unsplash
There was Willard Franks, wide awake, while Myrtle slept calmly, splayed about all over his chest. Both her arms were rubbing his shirtless chest while her legs mindlessly bounced between kicking him and straddling him. Willard and Myrtle had slept like this for most of the last 40 years, yet he somehow still hadn’t grown used to it. This night was particularly bad because of the bright summer moon pouring in while the crickets echoed each other incessantly. Lying down was useless for Willard. Plus, he had to pee.
As old as he was, it took Willard a moment to stand up out of the bed, cautious not to wake Myrtle. Several muscles in his back rejected the notion of getting up, and they protested loudly with pulling aches and twinges of pain. Once his back eased into the idea of waking, Willard’s knees offered their own reasons why staying in bed was preferable.
It was worse in winter, Willard thought, as he shuffled across the wooden floor of their weatherworn farmhouse and into the restroom without turning on the light. He could see just well enough to use the restroom without getting anything on the floor around the toilet. Myrtle would have his head in the morning if she woke up to find that he’d missed the toilet again. Willard mimicked her voice in his head as he played through the usual complaints.
“Was it just because the floor was bigger,” Myrtle would screech. “You don’t look like Jackson Pollock to me.”
Willard had gotten worse as he got older, but then he had also worn down Myrtle’s will more as she got older. She might moan about his inability to aim, but she had stopped beating him with a newspaper a few years back. So that was nice.
After all, the floor was still wet from where she had showered just an hour before, and Willard nearly tripped over the slippery tiles in the bathroom on his way to the toilet. He fought to grab the counter with his left hand while he balanced himself on the rickety shower door with his right, causing a clattering of Plexiglas and aluminum. If he hadn’t feared waking his wife so much, he might have yelled out in frustration right then.
Willard regained his balance and his composure enough to silently wash his hands on the most meager stream of tap water he could draw. Just a dab of soap was sufficient for lathering moist hands, and the minimal suds could be rinsed off and wiped off without incident or difficulty. Unstable pipes surrounding the bathroom and feeding the sink rattled and whined as Willard turned the brushed copper spigot, even in pursuit of such a minuscule stream flowing into an ivory farmhouse sink.
The Franks had lived in their crestfallen farm home for the entirety of their marriage. Some would say that the house was old even when the Franks bought it and the surrounding farm with a generous dowry from her family. Myrtle had come from old New England money, though she had lived in the rural South for her entire adult life and most of her youth. With her family’s blessing, she and Willard had been able to pursue their dream of owning a farm together. The two had never been blessed with children, but they had raised countless dogs and chickens. They had seen good crops, they had seen bad crops, there was the heat wave in the 70s that had killed off all the fish in the small lake behind their house, but they had spent their years together.
As Willard rubbed the soap from his hands and cleansed the last bit of grime from between his fingers, the old man looked up at his reflection lit by the midsummer’s moon. How much older can I get? How much longer can I do this? Willard splashed a handful of water on his face and squeezed the clumped specks of who-knows-what from the corners of his weary eyes. With a deep sigh and a woefully discontented stare, Willard Franks turned to leave the bathroom and once again crawl into bed where his wife of 40 some odd years could once again wrap her wrinkled, rheumatic body against his.
Just as he was about to turn the cold iron doorknob, however, Willard heard a faint gurgling sound emitted from just beyond the door. He patiently, calmly waited to hear if there was a replication. When he heard the sound again, Willard gently twisted the knob to observe his bedroom and see what exactly had produced the gurgling, flushing sound that echoed out of an unknown source.
Fortunately for Willard, he could ease the door open without producing a telltale creak. He pressed down on the doorknob while turning it to keep pressure on the hinges, and they had done their work seamlessly. Since he had not turned the lights on in the bathroom, Frank needed little time to adjust to the moonlit bedroom he could witness through a crease in the doorframe. There was the nightstand by his side of the bed with a small round clock that’s numbers glowed just enough to be seen from the bathroom. The paisley sheets on the bed that the two had fought over several years back were still crinkled on his side as they ought to be. Willard, a typical farmer of his day, had urged for a solid color bedroom suit. Perhaps a burgundy or hunter green? Myrtle had waffled between a plaid comforter over cream sheets or this paisley pattern that was rife with blue and green accents. Willard knew that his options were off the table, so he pretended to support the paisley pattern to ease the shopping along.
Though his side of the bed was normal, Willard quickly realized that his wife’s side of the bed was horrendously shredded and slimy. The sheets she had been sleeping under, which now covered nobody, were ripped at every seam and dripped with mucosal remnants of whatever tore them. Willard did not focus his energy on that side, though, as he continued to scan the room for the cause of the sound and the damage to his wife’s side of the bed.
Standing by the window, watching the moon as if looking out from an aquarium, there stood a great horror. The fish-like biped, which was covered in slimy, iridescent scales, must have been at least seven feet tall. A four-pronged appendage slapped up against the window with a slurping, sliding sound, almost with enough force to shatter the glass. Rather than damage the glass, though, the creature’s membranous, webbed hand left a streak of goop sliding down.
Seized by terror, Willard gripped the doorknob like a vice and devoted all of his strength to preventing any movement. Gleaming light reflected from the creature’s gaping mouth, revealing rows upon rows of serrated teeth that looked like knives protruding from its gums. And all of it, the entire horrendous beast, was shrouded in the noxious odor of a rotted fish.
Willard dared not breathe. As the thing looked out over the farm with its globular, fixed eyes that sat relegated to the far sides of its face, Willard believed that the thing would soon leave. It had not yet noticed him, and it did not seem to possess an astute olfactory nerve with such underdeveloped slits for nostrils. Yet it stared out at the world with a starved longing and an innate sadness that, no matter how alien that horrid face was, even Willard could read. What was it looking for? Yearning for? That expression gave the farmer some hope, however, that the creature might wander out into the moonlight without further harm done.
Relaxation, no matter how slight, was Willard’s enemy. He eased off the doorknob even the least bit and let the door creak his presence. In a shot, the creature no longer stared out at some nebulous spot in the distance. Now, it shot those horrendous spherical eyes directly at Willard behind the door. The thing was just about a foot taller than the doorframe was, so it would have to duck to get in to reach Willard. And Willard knew that. As the lumbering beast with the peculiar gait galumphed towards the bathroom door, Willard steeled himself for what he had to do next. He had hoped to let the creature walk out the door without conflict, but that option was now gone.
Willard pulled the doorknob in just the least bit, waiting and timing his move. It stepped closer and closer. The thing put a hand on the door and leaned down to enter the doorframe. Once the creature lowered its head and crossed the threshold, Willard drew back and slammed the door on the thing’s head sending it flying backwards and onto the bed.
He could have waited around to see what happened to the thing, but Willard had no desire to do anything but run. He bolted for the door as the shrieking fish writhed around on his bed and grabbed at the throbbing pain it certainly felt in its head. As for Willard, he remembered the old shotgun down on the mantle. Willard would not take up the gun immediately, hoping to avoid that plan, but he had to consider it. With a ravenous beast traipsing through the house, no option could be ignored.
Slatted hallways rattled as Willard ran the fastest he had run since chasing down a loose chicken in March of 1985. There were times when he felt that the floor might give way under him they sounded so loud, but the boards held. Willard flew down the stairs, their joints creaking as badly as Willard’s the whole way down, until he glanced up above the fireplace and searched for what he hoped to find.
The shotgun. It was gone. In a moment of confused realization, where swift trickling rivulets of understanding and memory converged to become the deluges of terror and fury, Willard remembered. Myrtle had begged him to put the gun away, to lock it up where it wouldn’t be so easily found. And he had acquiesced in a moment of peace that he now cursed. He had moved the gun just two weeks before, but his anger burned not just at the fact that it was moved. What truly drove Willard to red-faced huffing was where the gun had been placed: under the bed.
With the same immediacy that Willard had turned to speed, or what passed for speed at his age, the man had to once again try patient, deliberate movement. He listened for the steps of the creature, heard none, and began to test the stairs. Soft creaks betrayed his intention, but there was as of yet no indication that the Precambrian horror in his house had recovered from the earlier assault.
After a few moments, Willard had climbed enough stairs where he could see under the burnt oak balustrade and survey the entire second floor. Side to side, Willard cautiously turned his head to observe every angle. The bedroom door was still open and he could still see the moonlight hazily passing through the dust clouds in the hall. He could see the wedding picture of him and Myrtle nailed up on the wall, slightly tilted. He could see the runner that padded the hallway from the bedroom to the attic.
Willard gasped, though, when he saw the film built up on the floor leaving the bedroom. And caking the coarse wool woven into the runner. The thing had somehow left the bedroom and wandered to another part of the house. For such a large creature, this ambling fish managed to slink away unnoticed. Perhaps in his frustration over the gun, Willard thought, he had missed the footsteps above.
As his thoughts momentarily crossed the gun once again, Willard realized that he had a chance to reach it now without incident. Had the beast been lying still at the foot of the bed, he might have shown some trepidation regarding reaching for it. Now, it was free.
Each step required concentration and no small measure of courage. Yet as Willard climbed the stairs and grabbed on to the balustrade at the very top, he kept his momentum and confidently stepped into the bedroom and softly rummaged for the shotgun he’d kept on the mantel the previous 30 years of living in this home. He was able to put his hands on it without making too much of a ruckus, even though Willard certainly hoped he could avoid using the gun. He had no concept of what results the gun might produce against his pursuer, anyway.
Putrid steam blanketed the back of Willard’s neck as drops of saliva oozed in his hair. And once again he heard and felt that guttural moan the thing had made before. All at once, two fleshy objects that passed for hands gripped Willard by the shoulders as he produced an unequaled howl. He moved like a man 20 years younger as he rounded on the beast and brought the butt of the gun to meet the left side of the creature’s face. He had not yet loaded the gun or else he might have shot it. Rather than wait to attempt a third confrontation in this same room, Willard abandoned the foul biped to roil on the floor.
The thing recovered quickly, though, and crawled on the floor in a motion that seemed more natural to it than walking. Willard had not gone far, and he was just reaching the stairs when it swiped at his leg. That light grasp, as tenuous as it was in the creature’s oozing appendage, was enough to set a wobble in Willard’s descent that caused him to lose his balance. He faltered on the first couple steps, but he fell headlong into the wall that made up the bend halfway down the stairs. Willard rolled the turn and tossed his gun and a handful of shells over the downstairs floor.
Shells and buckshot clattered on the floor of Willard’s living room, the tinking of metal against wood letting him know just how far the pieces scattered. Above, Willard could hear the slapping of moist skin against the ground as the aberrant beast fumbled its way down the steps after him. Slippery, slimy fixtures reached at Willard’s heels, loosing and tightening their grip to no avail. Willard kicked at the creature and clawed his way towards the shotgun while grabbing up a couple shells and working to free his throbbing ankle from that beast’s hands.
He had managed a slight gap between them when he rose to his feet, but the creature was also gathering its stance. As Willard started to run, he could feel the splintered ankles bearing him up start to give. The fall down the stairs had taken a toll on this old man, but he was determined to reach the outside. Willard’s new aim was the front door, which was in sight. Beyond that, his hope was to reach the shed and lock himself in. He knew he would be safe from the creature’s imposing yet ineffective hands there.
Hopping and hobbling, Willard forced himself to blink off the tears that welled up. His pain, it was so severe. But there’s little he could imagine to be worse than the sensation of being chewed up by a walking fish, so Willard pressed on. He limped to the door and turned the knob, stepping foot onto the covered wooden porch with a humming bug lantern making visible his path in a wash of pulsing purple light. Just about 25 yards to the shed, Willard hoped.
His impaired gait was sufficient for even surfaces such as the floor inside and the deck, but Willard soon found out how unsure his steps were. At the top step, Willard lost balance and found himself once again tumbling forward down the steps. This time, though, there was no berber to break Willard’s fall as he landed hard in the dusty, well-trod path in front of the steps.
As soon as he heard the door behind him slam open, though, Willard recollected himself and surged forward towards the shed on all fours. He knew that the thing was upon him and that his time was running short. Willard glanced back briefly to see that the creature still pursued him with great effort and apparently malicious intent as it barreled through the door and started to rapidly descend the porch stairs towards where he lay helplessly.
Willard threw himself to his feet and scrambled ahead, occasionally needing to brace himself against the ground with an outstretched free hand, the other still gripping a side-by-side double-barrel shotgun his grandfather had once used to dispatch vagrants from his own farmland. In a few moments, it seemed, Willard would need it to ward off a different threat entirely.
Though he closed distance on the shed, matching the trailing menace step-for-step by some miracle of fortune, Willard’s final grips of hope turned to despair as he realized two facts. For there was a small lock on the chain wrapping the door to the shed, and the short space between he and the beast would not allow time to unlock the door even if he had the key. He was out of options and would have to shoot it.
It was almost in reach now, and Willard steeled himself for the encounter ahead of him. Instead of running around the shed and continuing his escape, which he knew would soon be at an end either way, Willard flung himself at the shed and rounded on the beast with the shotgun leveled at the beast’s midsection. It was still 20 feet away. Then 15, then 10. Just as Willard closed his eyes and prepared to squeeze the trigger, the creature seized up and reached spindly hands towards its throat.
Wheezing and coughing, with fits of horrifying shrieks emanating from the thing’s mouth accompanied by globules of spittle and mucus, the creature fell to the ground. It could not breathe the air anymore, and Willard could see that the earlier sheen of water on its skin had turned to a crackled exoskeleton. It writhed in the dirt, gathering a layer of dust along its outer shell. Even that summer air, as humid as it was, proved too dry for the thing that belonged deep below.
As its body was wracked by furious spasmodic twitches, Willard eased his grip on the gun. He knew that the worst of it was over and that soon he would have to once again explain away the bizarre state of things. For where had once been an abyssal, ichthyic aberration, the image of Willard’s beloved Myrtle started to appear. The creature’s spiny fins reverted to wispy gray hair. The four-pronged hands returned to their usual digits. Its webbed feet shrunk again to show the more moderate sized toes belonging to a woman. Anywhere it had the scaly pieces falling off, human flesh returned. Within minutes, it would be like her again and Willard would need to tell her something.
For as long as he could remember, Myrtle had been of two natures. For most of her time, she was this normal human woman. Then, almost at random and without sign, she would sometimes become an abominable hybrid between some old race of a forgotten world and the presently dominant species. Her transformation had startled Willard the first time after they were married, certainly, but he had developed a system.
And now, watching his bride lay naked on the ground, Willard was once again moved with pity for the woman he loved. To live a half-life with some other creature waiting to take over. What a horrid reality she endured, and yet without knowing. It was the mark of mercy that she was unable to remember her times in that body, though the separate identities terrified Willard the most. For he knew that she, in that form, would have no qualms about devouring him. And he knew that he, to defend himself, would one day have to end the creature and her with it.
Yet for now, she was peaceful again. Willard left the gun leaned up against the shed and bent over to lift his wife into his arms. She was heavier than he remembered, it having been a year now since the last time she turned. Maybe he was just less capable of carrying her. That last transformation, he had little trouble outrunning it. Yet the rheumatism had come on quick since then, consigning his joints to a lesser state.
As soon as he reached the stairs, Myrtle opened her eyes and started to speak.
“What…what are we doing out here?” she asked.
“You were sleep walking, Myrtle. Don’t worry about it,” Willard answered.
“Why am I naked?” she wondered.
“Beats me,” Willard said. “Last I knew, you threw your nightgown off and were screaming something about it being just like college again.”
Myrtle let out a sleepy chuckle and wrapped her arms around Willard’s neck.
“Liar,” she joked.
Willard just looked down at his bride’s face, still as beautiful as ever after more than 40 years, and he smiled. As Willard carried her into the house and up the stairs, his heart was heavy and his eyes bleary. For he knew that the next time she could not sleep through the night, the next time she turned, he would have to choose which of them saw tomorrow.
They climbed the stairs and rounded the corner into their bedroom. Willard sat his wife in a chair for a moment while he changed the sheets and discarded the tattered remnants. Then he once again picked her up and tucked her in for the night. And as he wrapped the sheets around her, a small voice that so reminded him of how she sounded the day they were married spoke.
“I love you, Willard. I’ll see you in the morning,” she sighed.
“I love you, too. Get some sleep.”
“Willard?” she called out as she drifted off again. “Thank you for always taking care of me.”
NOTE: I previously published my short story "Blessed Are the Dead" as a stand-alone post on this website. This is the last short from this collection that I'm going to feature as that wouldn't be fair to the folks who have paid for Call of the Mountains. If you've enjoyed this story and the others I put out, then please consider buying my collection available on Amazon for just $9.99. You can read it from any device that has an Amazon Reader app on it, which is downloadable through the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, not just a Kindle. You can click the link above, or visit the Writing page on my site for more information.