Night Creepers Read online

  NIGHT CREEPERS

  David Irons

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2019 by David Irons

  PROLOGUE

  Summertime — 1998

  'Six bucks, what the hell can you even buy with six bucks!' Peter Carey threw the broom across the dusty old shed, watched as it rebounded off the mountainous stack of newspapers piled to the old sagging roof.

  Sarah Jones, the girl who always had blonde pigtails and chewed gum, laughed, clapping her hands and watching the vaporous mist of dust motes explode from her fingers in the afternoon sun.

  The pair of them had been recruited by their moms to clear out old Mrs. Baker’s shed; well, shed seemed too posh a word for the derelict shack they stood in now. It was the size of an apartment, three well spaced rooms brimming with archaic debris from the old woman's life: crystal radio sets, valve TV sets, grandfather clocks with sprung innards. The years old stench of rot attacked the insides of their nostrils as if festering cacti had been inserted into them; the taste at the back of their throats a dry woody tang.

  'Six bucks, what's it worth?' Peter said. 'A McDonalds and a comic book? A few games down at the arcade? A ticket to see some bullshit movie? Fuck me, if I asked my old man for that chump-change he would toss it to me.' He spat watching it instantly dissolve into the dust sodden floor, vanishing in its dryness as if it had never been there.

  Another voice entered the conversation, one that turned both their faces sour. 'It's not bad, I mean our moms did ask us to help Mrs. Baker, I didn't even know we were getting paid,' Jennifer Blu said.

  'Shut up,' Peter sneered, as Sarah shook her head, face puckered as her pigtails hit her cheeks. The three of them were acquainted with one another from school, Peter and Sarah being friends from fifth grade, Jennifer Blu a new arrival six months ago in seventh grade. She had even moved into Max Foster’s house at the end of the block. Max was one of the guys — one of the boys. Max was the kid all the girls called a babe, or hot stuff. Now, Max was gone — moved to Idaho, and his replacement… the scrawny red-haired girl that stood before them now.

  Jennifer knew the eyes they gave her, they were one of the most pervasive things in her time here in California. The same eyes transferring from skull to skull, face to face, eyes that said 'Who are you, Jennifer Blu?' Not one of them — that was for sure. God, she missed Boston. Why couldn't they have stayed in Boston!

  'You'll fit in honey, it just takes time!' Mom said.

  'It's normal to be the odd one out to begin with, until someone new comes along and they become the odd one out,' Dad had said.

  Time had passed, other new kids had come, but her ridicule hadn’t gone.

  'Maybe, we can turn you upside down and use that ginger mop to sweep the floor with, Jennifer?' Peter grinned.

  'Yeah, like go put a fucking hat on, your hair is hurting my eyes,' Sarah groaned. 'It’s offensive.'

  'Good one!' Peter snorted.

  Jennifer clenched her fists three times, words echoing in her mind — Ignore it. Ignore It. Ignore it.

  'I'm done with this B.S.,' Peter said, hawking another loogie on the floor, 'tell the old bag she can keep the six bucks, I've had it.'

  'Yeah, really,' Sarah said, rolling her eyes.

  'Hey, come on, we can't let Mrs. Baker down.' The words spilled honestly from Jennifer's mouth, an internal wince squeezed just as authentically.

  'Mrs. Half-baked more like,' Peter said, 'the old bag can hardly walk, can hardly think; lets just tell her we're done, take the cash and blow this pop stand.'

  That's not fair! echoed in Jennifer's mind, she clenched her fists three times — Ignore it. Ignore It. Ignore it.

  She didn't have to say anything; they saw the words in her mind splash on her face. Jesus, why were they stuck here with the little ass-kisser on a Saturday afternoon? An idea struck Peter, charged his bones with childish meanness like a lightning bolt. It infected Sarah, a devilish flair making her eyes ignite and her lips gasp; she knew what he was thinking, the meanness becoming an infection.

  'Well, okay, we'll stay,' Peter smiled, trying to hide the grin that ate away behind his lips, 'but you have to help us with something ‘round the corner.'

  'Sure,' Jennifer said.

  The quickest of looks shared by Peter and Sarah, a spark of their individual meanness arced and conjoined. They moved behind the huge stacks of symmetrically stacked newspapers, printed columns that seemed to hold the shack’s roof up. There, in-between them, near the back, stood an old rusted red locker. A tall, six-foot structure that needed to be put back into the ground with the amount of corrosion that ate away at it.

  'That thing, we were going to clean that out. Wanna help?' Peter said.

  She knew she didn't trust them, could feel herself not trusting them as they led her, grinning, towards the locker; but she still walked forward, didn't engage with her better judgment, common sense displaced for an empty autopilot.

  'It’s pretty ganky,' said Sarah, nothing genuine about her tone.

  'Yeah take a look,' Peter said, and before she could think, before she could react; before she could clench her fists three times, before those three words echoed in her mind — Ignore it. Ignore It. Ignore it.

  Peter pushed Jennifer forward as the locker’s door was yanked back by Sarah; she hurtled inside, head slamming straight into its back, the door quickly shoved shut by them both. Then complete darkness, then echoing whimpers not manifesting in her mind, but exiting her lips.

  'How'd you like that ginger freak!' Sarah laughed, Peter locking the door from the other side.

  'Hey!' Jennifer called, banging on the cold steel door, throat immediately feeling as restricted as the rest of her body in the tight space.

  'Please!' she pleaded, balled fists banging the door, the reverberating sounds of her pounding filling her ears.

  'I wouldn't do that,' Peter said, 'it’s not like you're in there… alone.'

  'What do yo—' Jennifer blurted.

  'Look up!' Sarah giggled.

  Jennifer did, eyes wide and readjusting like the lenses of a movie camera. There was nothing, just cold endless darkness, just that moldy smell intensified, just…

  Then she saw it. The thickest, grimmest cacophony of spider webbing she had ever seen, like a still haze of fog, or an ethereal mist frozen in time. It was a disgusting blanket of spinneret secretion that with each knock of her hands began to quiver, and at its edges, long thin hairy legs began to protrude from the sickening edge of darkness.

  'Got some new friends in there, Jennifer Blu?' Sarah laughed.

  'Please,' Jennifer whispered, shrinking down to the floor as far as possible, watching as above, the webbing bowed pregnantly, dipping as its silky mass was weighed down by the biggest spiders Jennifer had ever seen started to fill its space.

  Little taps rattled out on the other side of the locker, both Peter and Sarah singing in rhythmic child's rhyme as they pattered their fingers against the cold metal.

  'Night Creepers — Night Creepers, creeping up your nose, wriggling through your body; wriggling to your toes!'

  A scared seriousness whistled past Jennifer's teeth, 'Please, let me out!' each of the arachnid's eight eyes seemed to shine with a deep black opal desire, seemed to stare straight into her as she stared back.

  'Pleaseeeee!' she whined.

  They didn't stop.

  'Night Creepers — Night Creepers, creeping through your hair, are running down your body, running everywhere!'

  From above, eight legged bodies began to descend, opened wide like reaching claws; legs spread as if to smother their prey, ready to catch the girl who had entered their domain. It was like a bad dream, a vile nightmare that had bled to life.

  'Night Creepers — Night Creep
ers, used to be a pest, now they're always with you, because you are their nest!'

  'Have fun, loser!' Peter called, the pair laughing, running for the shed’s door, leaving her locked in the locker.

  Locked in the locker! Locked in darkness. Locked with the — 'Night Creepers — Night Creepers.' Where did they learn that awful song? Why was this happening? The spiders knew someone was there; they were only coming out to greet her — all marble eyes, all spindly legs, all furry bodied. They lowered themselves on their webs past the locker’s small vents where slats of sunlight beamed through; it cast ghastly shadows of the beasts.

  Eight spiders were coming down, growing bigger as they descended towards her.

  Tears began to bead from her eyes, skin itchy, goose bumps rising. She had hated spiders, insects and creepy crawly things — had they both known?

  Night Creepers — Night Creepers.

  It was an octagon of oversized arachnids, a mass of dangling legs coming down from each side.

  She wanted to puke, wanted to vomit the fear that bred inside her, but didn't want to open her mouth, just in case — Night Creepers — Night Creepers, creeping up your nose, wriggling through your body; wriggling to your toes!

  She tried to fiddle with the inside of the lock, could see its mechanism scraping up; if only she had something — anything to give it that extra leverage to slide between door and jamb, to pop it up, to pop it open.

  She would do anything — anything!

  'Please, help me!' she bawled, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for the eight-legged beasts to be on her. She put her hand to the floor of the locker, expecting more of the same, more awful insect life to touch her back. But there, beneath her right hand was what felt like a rigid piece of card, something thin and flat — something… that could be used to open the lock!

  She sprang to action, slipped it in the jamb; pushed up, pushed hard, a slight metallic click entering her ears, a squirt of light feeling around the door as it creaked ajar.

  Falling forward, falling free, she had escaped! Rubbing her hair, looking at her hands, expecting spiders — finding nothing. She looked over her shoulder, the locker door closing shut like a door to a mausoleum, an eerie whine commencing with its final click. The nightmare locked away inside, where it belonged.

  She breathed out, shivered, sighed; looked down at what was in her hand — it was a card, not a playing card, what looked like a tarot card; old and worn. A grinning face stared from it: a red face, slicked black hair, thin moustache; pointed eyebrows that matched the horns protruding from his head. It was dead centre in the card, one eye winking, the other seemingly staring straight at her. She knew the face, somehow knew all the names that went with it: Old scratch, Old gooseberry, Old thorn, Beelzebub, Mephistopheles — The Devil. Underneath his grinning face, a slogan written on a curling scroll: "Come on Down!"

  A wind seemed to find its way into the old shed, seemed to flitter the card, folding it, making it look like… The devil was winking… at her. And as he did, Jennifer Blu whispered the only thing she could, 'Thank you.'

  In her head, a reply echoed out in a voice that wasn't her own, ‘No problem.’

  The mysterious wind blew again, a sulphurous smell tainting it: the wink returned.

  She was away from the descending arachnids, free from the confines of the locker, and in a way, she owed him one, in a way she had made a deal. In a way he had saved her, and one day… she would have to repay the favour.

  CHAPTER 1

  Summertime — 2018

  'Tick, tick, tick' was for the most part of a working day the only thing Jennifer Blu ever heard. Each slow, intolerable, clanking tick from the pointing hands of the old grandfather clock on the wall opposite, were off-set by the dull swing of its golden pendulum. Sitting back in her desk chair, looking up at the clock’s off-white face, she sighed at what its hands told her: two-thirty pm.

  Watching the second hand as it dully thumped around its dial, each second felt like a minute, each sixty seconds felt like an hour. She remembered something her mother once told her: 'Time is free, but it's priceless.'

  Oh, how dear old mom could be so wrong, she thought, pulling her thick red ponytail. It was a habit that had started just to keep awake and, at times, used its pain to confirm her existence within these four walls.

  Pushing herself back in the green, leather desk chair, she outstretched her hands in front of her to touch the solid oak desk that she sat at for eight hours of her day, a gigantic yawn escaping her red lipped mouth. Next to her a black, decades-old dial phone rang, making her brown eyes pop wide open, waking from her work-induced coma.

  Composing herself, pulling the usual grimace away from her face, she slipped the receiver from its cradle then placed it to her ear; clearing her throat, implanting deep somber warmth in her vocal tones, her expression curled to one of concern.

  'Blitzer's Funeral Services, Jennifer speaking, how can I help you?'

  Internally she sighed — another customer, one who probably hadn't experienced death before and would use her to vent their 'I can't believe this happened to me,' diatribe. She would try to stick to business, arranging to bury the poor grieved-over sap before he began to stink the place up. She often wondered why they didn't get it? Death happens to everyone, it's the only guarantee you had in life. You might never love, be loved, become a success, live to your own self-imposed full potential, or make your dreams come true. But death floats over all of our heads like a constantly ticking countdown timer, just waiting to hit zero and have its power cable pulled.

  'I understand' had become the go-to phrase on phone calls such as this, she could have just tape recorded herself saying it, then played it back endlessly at thirty second intervals, as the sniffles and woes at the other end of the phone fit perfectly around each recycled and repeated syllable. This may sound a little callous; it may sound a little cold, but when carried out as many times as she had, it was just another two step in the old routine of grief.

  Without consciously knowing it, the call ended, Jennifer apparently saying all the right things when she was supposed to, like a well-oiled machine. Hanging up the receiver, she looked up at the clock again. 'Tick, tick, tick.'

  Only two minutes had passed and her sentence of silence began again. The only difference in the room's atmosphere was the dull drone of the air-con as it crawled to life on a timer, emitting a sullen cool breeze that hummed from its air ducts.

  I hate this fucking place, she thought. My god, I hate this fucking place.

  This place being not just the funeral parlour, but Bandon, North California, a small town west of Fort Jones.

  Apparently, you could put a price on time; well at least if you were working in the claustrophobic, hazy, smoke-yellowed reception of Blitzer's Funeral Services and that price was $7.00 an hour. Even if you broke that rate down into the mystical time extending clock on the wall, where each minute felt like an hour, somehow, $420 an hour would still never feel like enough to be confined in here.

  Her job was to meet and greet the bereaved, showing insincere sincerity to the grieving all for the sake of a sale. Lots of, 'I'm sorry' and her favourite, 'I understand', were used on wailing family members, all while trying to dip her hand into their wallet or purse for as much as she could pry loose.

  The entire office oozed with claustrophobic morbidity; it was a consumer haunted house, its products the elements of death: the dull lighting, the slow hum of the air con blowing the whispers of cob webs in the corners; the walls covered in framed dusty pictures of budget coffins, urns, hearses and horse drawn carriages. Images that were all slowly deteriorating through time, wrinkling at the edges and fading from their once glossy existence into sun bleached obscurity.

  Opposite, sitting on an aluminium trolley draped in lavish, long red velvet, was a full size, solid oak coffin. The crowning jewel of the reception; the thing that polished its bleaker than bleak tone. With the top half of its lid popped open, a plastic, formed red rose
wreath sat on the closed bottom. The coffin had a strange appeal to it, an almost heavenly allure that contradicted the darkness around it, its white plush innards looking exactly like a comfy well-made bed.

  Another old proverb from her past burst through her mind: 'They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.'

  'Warhol,' she thought, remembering hearing this ten years ago, back in the days when life was fun, in one of her classes at the California College of Arts back in Oakland. When the real job — being an artist— was an attainable and achievable thing, not just a dream.

  Stopping her fingers automatically tapping on the keyboard, she listened to the closed door to her right, back to the small confined office area where her manager, Alison Johnson, worked. A woman who had genuflected so much to the boss, Jennifer was surprised she wasn't permanently confined to a wheel chair.

  Alison was an uptight bitch with an uptight look. A witless woman when it came to common sense — who took her job way too seriously. And, right now, she could be heard tapping away at a keyboard too; in Jennifer's mind, with black razor tipped talons.

  She had seen this job advertised in a local newspaper and thinking it seemed like a simple, no frills gig, she applied and before she knew it, she had an interview with Gregory Blitzer, the 53-year-old owner of Blitzer's Funeral Services.

  Even from the initial interview, she could tell Blitzer was a strange man. Egotistical, self-assured and wannabe debonair; he was a self-made man, dipping his toes into real estate and property development, investing in any number of local businesses: bakeries, delis and garages, all which made Blitzer a very wealthy man with time on his hands.

  Jennifer's second run in with Blitzer was much different. Only a few months ago, late on a Friday afternoon, her bored as usual, waiting for the hands on the clock to move and free her from the suspended animation that held her to the oak desk, suddenly interrupted by him bolting through the door.

  She slowly looked up at him, realizing this was the first and only time anyone had seen him near his own business since the debacle that was his divorce. She awkwardly smiled at him, as he did back to her. Then quickly, as if not to be noticed, he twisted the lock on the door behind him.