Straw Man

Welcome, Fantasy Nerds! Today we have a guest author on our blog. We’re very excited that Charlie Lowrey has allowed us to share his story here! It’s the perfect story to kick off the spooky season. Speaking of spooky season, make sure to check the end of the post for some Halloween fun!

The street is a ghostland, a dilapidated part of town blowing newspaper tumbleweeds. Lining the street on either side are gas stations, general markets, appliances stores and the occasional leaning house that appeared not to have been renovated since 1959. All their windows peer out uncannily, reflecting plump moon crescents like half-open eyes. Clive hardly notices any of it; he only steals another burning kiss from the glass opening of Mr. Jack Daniel’s riding shotgun and pushes his foot to the pedal harder.

In his mouth, a smoldering half-finished joint hangs like a bullet. Because that’s how he fucking rolled ‘em, man, like bullets. He twists the volume dial another notch to bring more AC/DC to life in his backseat. Bone.FM plays the hits all night long, and usually they didn’t interrupt with some bullshit DJ telling him everything he already knew. Especially not at two-thirty, because who gives a damn at that witching hour?

But at this particular time, some douchebag DJ named Motley Lou came on to inform he had been listening to Dirty Deeds, thanks for listening to The Bone, up next was George Thorogood. Clive rolls his eyes and takes another drag of the joint when he notices something up in the road. He slams on the brakes, bringing him from breakneck speed to standstill in a matter of moments, whispers of smoke and black streaks trail behind. His radio is jogged into silence from the rattle of the old Camero. An emaciated dog trots cautiously in front of the car, giving Clive a spiteful look (at least, he imagines so) and walks off into the dark.

“Fucking dog,” Clive mutters and is ready to peel out on the road again when he notices something out of the corner of his eye. Dangling by his neck from a streetlamp on the corner is a man. Wait, not a real man, just a straw man, with old ratty clothes and a painted-on sneer. Clive exhales a breath he doesn’t realize he is holding.

He takes the joint out of his mouth and looks down at it and then back up at the figure swinging slowly in the breeze then around him at the vacant town. He hadn’t noticed his surroundings until now and suddenly this town felt strangely claustrophobic. He sat there at that cross section in the road, taking in the town closing in around him and staring at the straw man, who stared right back with peering black eyes.

“Man, shit’s gettin’ to my head,” he says to the joint in his fingers and giggles queerly but then stops abruptly when he realizes how scared his laugh sounds. “Fuck it,” he says and slams the radio with a fist (like the Fonz) and it kicks back to life blaring The Bone. He pushes his foot to the floor and takes off again.

He’s meeting Miles in Wichita, where they plan to get hammered and find themselves a couple of old-fashioned gals to boot and canoodle. Miles would have been with him, and probably Brad too if the both of them hadn’t gone running off with those bitches from Kansas City who were out to take their money. Clive knew those type of scheming whores and strayed away, but women certainly held a magical force when they were rubbing the inside of your leg, smiling coyly and sneaking winks. Clive hadn’t been one for any of it, instead struck up a drunken conversation with an old-timer who told him his life story. Clive didn’t remember much of what he had said, but he did have a memento scrawled on a napkin of a shortcut to take through Kansas. The other two were already in Wichita, caught a ride with some sleaze-ball pimping out the women.

So now he’s racing along the road in the middle of the night to meet up sometime tomorrow afternoon and go to the races. Or not, who knew? These guys just did as they pleased, followed the wind and the tide to the ends of the earth looking for a good time. He probably wouldn’t sleep tonight, but sleep was for the dead as he always said. And luckily that old man had told him that shortcut, winding through some back roads and a little town he used to know when he was a young man. By the looks it hadn’t changed much since he’d left.

But what worries him now was not his lack of sleep or meeting his chums in the afternoon, but rather that uncanny dangling straw man. What kind of sick town puts up something like that? Especially this early in September, with Halloween so far away? In fact, this whole town had really started to give him the creeps, now that he finally noticed it. Probably just the pot, he reminds himself. Either way, he would like to get out of it as soon as possible. And ahead he sees his prayers answered as the woods devour the town once again. To drown out his thoughts and chills he twists the volume dial higher but finds it is already at its peak, so instead he reaches for Mr. Daniels riding shotgun but knocks the bottle onto the floor of the car.

“Shit,” he mutters and reaches down while trying to keep an eye on the curves leading out of town and into the adjacent woods. He pats the ground to the left, to the right, up and down, but his hands don’t find it. He looks away from the road and down on the car floor and locates it immediately. Hot damn, if I was blind, he thinks and then—

THUMP

He looks up just in time to see a great flutter of white covering his windshield and then barreling over the roof of his car. He swerves and almost hits a tree before slamming on his brakes and skidding to a stop, perpendicular in the road. He looks dead ahead, headlights failing to illuminate the dark abyss of the woods before him, terrified to look to his right and see what he hit. Not a person, please not a person, just a deer, not a person, not a FUCKING person, please God.

He turns his head slowly, mechanically, until the shape of a billowing nightgown comes into view, incandescent in the moonlight except where it is stained bright red. He is frozen, staring at the apparition, stoned and nearly drunk and feeling very surreal. Then, something clicks in his brain and he is as sober as a judge, running over to the figure faster than his old football coach could have worked him.

Sprawled on the ground, contorted at unnatural angles, is the figure of a little girl in a nightgown. Her jaw hangs loosely on her face, giving her a sinister smile to match crimson teardrops streaking down her face. In one mangled hand she clutches what used to be a bucket. She is not alive. Clive can tell this immediately, can tell that no one bent like that, so crooked and broken, could possibly be alive. Now, the panic sets in.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he mutters under his breath, a breath that billows out in a dense gray fog. Should it be cold enough out here for that? Irrelevant. A relevant question is what should he do with the body? He can’t just leave it here, there’s probably paint chips from his car on the body or some sort of serialized glass shards. He’s been plenty stupid in his life, but he’s no dummy, he knows how the forensic team would work, how they can trace this back to him. In his panic he simultaneously thinks clearly and quite foggy.

I have to bury the body, he thinks. What about the Jack Daniels? What about the Ziploc in the glove compartment? What happens if a cop comes up the road right now? He would be fucked, and not the good kind, he thinks, but right up in the asshole like prison, where it burns and you can’t walk for a week. His mind is racing and terror has taken hold of his chest and squeezed it tight.

So, with little to no thought, he swoops up the mangled corpse in his arms and finds it surprisingly light. Maybe it’s the adrenaline. He carries her over to the car, still running idly, and pops open the back trunk and drops her in, leaving bloody handprints all over the place. In fact, now his entire chest is painted blood-red like a neo-native warrior decked out in a jean jacket after sacrificing an enemy slave. He feebly wipes it off, gets more blood on his hands and then wipes his hands on his jeans, cursing louder as more time passes.

He climbs in the driver seat and slams into reverse, straightening himself out on the road. He notices the windshield is now cracked and the hood has a significant dent. There’s blood on the gearshift and steering wheel, on the door-handle and all over the seat. God damnit, he used to really love this car but now it’s a murder weapon and needs to be dumped. What a shame, this car had some good times; fucking in the back seat with that redhead cheerleader, snorting lines off the dash while cruising to Vegas, getting roadhead from that pornstar hitchhiker. But now, it needed to disappear.

He looks up the road and his headlights illuminate a sign that reads Horseshoe Lake 2 Miles. Perfect. If a lake is deep enough, it hides everything long enough; he just hopes its deep enough to drown his own fear and sorrow. He holds no question now that he has sinned—although he’s not a particularly religious man—only two miles to salvation, until the tightening knot he feels in his chest can subside, two short miles to freedom. He knocks the gearshift into drive and leaves another set of tire tracks burning on the pavement.

The Bone is not playing again and an eerie silence has descended over the car, starkly contrasting the moments before collision. He twists the dial, changes the station, gives it good slam but the radio does not return. Something during the impact must have jarred it into complete disuse. He curses again and strains to see out of the parts of the windshield not caked in cracks and crimson. The adrenaline is wearing off and the drunk-stone is filling its place once more, now mixed with a weary surrealism. His eyelids feel heavy but he pushes the pedal down further.

THUMP

He almost slams on the brakes again but determines that he has not hit anything else.

THUMP

It’s coming from the trunk.

THUMP

He pulls over on the side of the road, the weight is taken off his eyelids and his eyes do a wild dance. Either he’s drunker than he thought or that girl in his trunk is alive and making noise. He starts to pray it’s the latter, then seriously questions how that would play out. Her blood is in his trunk, he still needs to get rid of the car because it’s evidence; he certainly can’t just drop her off at her house with a note saying: “sorry, hit your kid, my bad -C”. Should he just kill her? He steps warily out and marches to the back of the car, deliberate and slow in his actions as he unlatches the trunk and with a shaky hand lifts it open.

The girl, this little blond-haired doll of macabre, is as dead as ever and staring up at him with glassy eyes. Please mister, I don’t wanna be dead, those eyes say, Please make everything right again, I wanna go home. Clive’s stomach does a 180 and feels as if hit by a sack of bricks. He pukes out greasy roadside hamburger and tries to steady himself but the fries still follow. He leans against the right blinker, staring off into the gaping darkness of the forest and shaking uncontrollably. He slams the trunk shut without looking.

“Get a grip, man,” he whispers to the night, “Get a goddamn grip!” An owl responds. He takes several deep breaths. The trees are crowding in the road, trying to lean overhead and steal away the night. In them, Clive can see contorted faces scolding him, leering trunks telling him this is exactly what he deserves for the life he has led. He sees the face of the straw man in the dark, those dark button eyes that held such insight, can almost hear him cackling madly amidst the crickets and sway of branches. He takes the Jack Daniel’s bottle from the passenger seat and throws it into the blackness of the woods, hearing it smash distantly. He tries to settle the shake in his hands but they don’t obey. Finding himself somewhere between pure hostility and unnerving fright, he hastily climbs back into the car.

He makes it another half mile down the road, the silence filling the car becoming a paralyzing scream in his ear. He keeps expecting the sound to return, keeps seeing those glassy eyes in the headlights ahead. He sees them staring him down, staring directly into his soul and—

THUMP

He almost swerves into a tree.

THUMP

Cool it man, it ain’t real.

THUUMPP

Sounds like somebody kicking back there, but her legs are twig-filled jelly, she can’t possibly make that kind of sound. She’s dead! What the fuck is wrong with me? Out of the corner of his eye he sees a shadow moving in the rearview. He twists his head to look and only finds an empty backseat and a windy retreating road behind. Please God, just let me get through this night and I’ll never drink or smoke again, I won’t do nothin’ again, please Jesus! I know I don’t pray or nothin’, but just do me this one favor and I’ll be forever grateful.

THUMP

It has been years since he cried, never was any reason, but now fresh tears start flowing down his face. Not tears of sorrow but those of pure and unadulterated fear, brimming over his eyelashes. The gooseflesh all over his body is standing at full attention. He feels like he once did as tiny child, pulling the covers up over his nose and staring into the black abyss of the closet; feeling the sort of fear he felt, years later, as he waited for his step-father to return home from the bars and come into his room as a giant menacing silhouette. But he pushes the pedal harder to the floor, determined to silence it all, even if he has to drive the car into the lake himself.

THUUUMMPP

He slams on the brakes and hops out of the car, sweat and tears drenching the wild, contorted face he wears. He races to the back of the car and violently flings open the trunk.

“What the fuck do you want?!” he yells at the corpse. But it does not answer, only stares vacantly over his left shoulder. And then, very slowly, her eyes slide like old honey to lock onto his. For several horrifying seconds he engages in a staring contest with the dead girl, frozen in place. She blinks and Clive nearly faints on the road. His heart jumps into his throat and hangs suspended there for several breathless seconds. Behind him, distant headlights turn a curve and display an unreal shadow over the macabre scene in his trunk. It’s probably a tired trucker working his way to another job late at night; but the possibility of an on-duty cop strikes Clint like an arrow to the heart. Regardless, it certainly wouldn’t find him above suspicion with blood all over his jean jacket and the interior of his car. Briefly, a part of him would almost rather be caught than have to get in that damned car again. Yet by the time that thought fully crosses his mind, he’s already driving again. Instincts over logic have taken hold of his poor soul.

His blood pumps so fiercely he can feel the intricate network of veins and arteries mapping his body. His heart feels ready to explode from his chest. The distant light behind him has begun casting strange light and shadow inside his car. He looks in his rearview to see if the lights are catching up to him and finds the little girl staring back at him, jaw hanging around her throat like a neckerchief. Her eyes are hateful, illuminated by the reflection of the headlights behind him as if some sort of demon. My demon.

THUUUUMP

“Can’t you just leave me alone?” He sobs. The late-night driver behind him heeds his plea and turns off onto some unseen dirt road. The little girl, however, remains a silhouette in the backseat. Damn, and he was thinking about just pulling over and admitting everything through choking sobs to whoever would listen. Now he was alone again. Now they were alone.

Ahead a big blue sign reads HORSESHOE LAKE TURN RIGHT. He pushes the pedal to the floor. He looks into the rearview and finds the little girl is gone once more. He knows she’ll be back, but it doesn’t matter anymore, it will all be gone soon. He takes a sharp turn onto the dirt road leading to Horseshoe Lake. He’s become so scared that he’s numb, a thick fog has covered his brain and all he can think about now is driving full speed into that lake. It feels like blissful escape. Goddamn these woods, Goddamn that town, Goddamn that straw man, Goddamn this whole awful shortcut and most especially Goddamn YOU.

The radio bursts back to life, no longer playing The Bone but rather singing a white static lullaby. Somewhere in the static a little girl is crying, like she fell down and scraped her knee. Or lay mangled in the trunk of some asshole’s car. Clive’s hands are shaking so badly it was becoming nearly impossible to steer the car towards the lake below. He is sweating bullets; because that’s how he fucking sweat ‘em, man, like bullets.

He would have killed to reach over and grab that bottle of Daniels, to have one last swig and taste the sweet burn as it lit up his windpipe and belly. But he already killed, and now he had to pay his dues. Underneath he can feel the dirt road rocking him back and forth, masterfully handled by his midnight Camero. More than his own life he felt sorrow for the Camero, a black beauty camouflaged yet shimmering under the full moon. It was like his child, this car, and with such strong regret he took it with him into the darkness ahead.

Up ahead the small dock was illuminated by moonlight, vacant save for a small decaying rowboat. The lake behind it was polished obsidian black, reflecting only the plump crescent of the moon like a drowsy eye. The lake looked big and deep and very receiving, like a warm embrace. Clive closed his watery eyes and pushed down on the gas as hard as he could. The uneven wooden board of the dock played a melancholy tune on his tires as the Camero accelerated. And as the car launched off the dock like a circus spectacle, he could feel icy hands closing around his throat.

…

What Did You Think?

Be sure to let Charlie know what you thought of his story in the comments! If you would like to read more from Charlie, check out his website: www.charlielowrey.com

And now, for the Halloween fun we promised…We will be holding a Halloween Writing Contest! Just use our contact form to submit your spooky stories by October 20th. The winner’s story will be posted on our blog on Halloween! In addition to the glory of being the winner of Clever&WTF’s Halloween Writing Contest, we will share your bio and any links you would like included with your story. We can’t wait to read your spooky tales!

Thanks so much for reading!

-Clever & WTF