Category: Trembling With Fear

Chapter Six

Detective Marshall was on his way to the coroner’s office he when received a message. 

“We’ve got a witness. Firsthand and alive. The South Street stories are true.”  

That evening, Marshall met Helms at the police station. Waiting in his office, the Helms had a shaky little kid beside him. 

“I just saw the body,” said Marshall. “You saw it happen?”

“The boy saw it all,” Helms answered. “He saw its face.”

“And then what happened?” Marshall turned to the boy. 

The detective was asking for the unbelievable. Ferrill looked up from the tile floor. His voice ached. He hadn’t spoken since Grant’s death. “After it killed Grant, it tried to get away. Everyone else had shut their eyes, but I looked.” 

He choked back tears. “It must’ve noticed, like it could feel me watching. It turned and looked right at me. It yelled like I scared it, then it felt like I was breathing it in. I couldn’t see it anymore, but I could still hear it babbling and crying. All the way deep down somewhere.” Ferrill looked up at Helms. “Is it gonna come out of me?” 

Marshall swore to himself, somewhere between daunted and disbelief. Helms didn’t like this kid from the moment he saw him, but now he felt obligated to offer some comfort. At least to himself. “Not if you help us figure out what it is.” 

Marshall studied the boy’s face. He wasn’t making this up, and he was scared. “We’ll take you to a hospital and put you through some tests, alright? That should determine if there’s anything harmful inside you now.” It sure beats an autopsy. “If they do find anything, they can put you to sleep and take it right out.” 

The detective opened the bottom drawer of his desk and produced a dog-eared folder. “I’ll make arrangements.” He stopped and stood over Helms on his way out. “Somebody should call his family.”  

***

Late that night, Helms stood in a cold white hallway, waiting for the boy to finish his tests. The family had arrived earlier, now in the waiting room, trying to make sense of whatever bogus story Marshall had provided. He couldn’t stay with them. His nerves were raw by the time the boy had been laid down on the examining table. The sound of the young man’s jaw popping in the ambulance echoed in his head. We got to this one early. The kid has a chance.  

Marshall approached with a physician. “There’s nothing down his throat,” he said. The detective handed Helms an X-ray. The boy’s insides were displayed in black and white, no sign of trouble. 

“We’re running a CT scan now,” the physician added. “The boy wasn’t in pain when he arrived, but his behavior was a cause for concern.” He led the two into the lab. “He showed signs of severe paranoia when we checked his vision. He may be seeing things, flashbacks from the incident earlier today.” Helms shot a glance toward Marshall. 

Ferrill held still as he was moved into position. The machine’s steady drone surrounded him as his head entered the scanner. He had once heard of the magnets in these machines pulling piercings right out of the skin. He wondered if the thing’s claws were metal. 

On the other side of a mirrored barrier, Marshall and Helms watched colorful brain scans develop on a monitor. The physician grimaced. 

Ferrill wanted out. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but he was aware of something alien in his mind. He felt fear, but not his own. 

***

When the scan was over, Ferrill was taken to his room. He’d stay overnight, and the physician assured his family that they would be notified of any developments between now and sun-up. Then he took the two men aside. The prognosis was troubling.

“The scan shows irregularities in the occipital lobe,” the physician said. “That may account for the hallucinations he’s having, and the talk of strange faces.” Helms and Marshall exchanged a glance. “It doesn’t stop there. His entire network seems haywire. It’s as if his neurotransmitter signals are being intercepted… or misinterpreted. The operator has gone rogue.”    

“Can you do anything about it?” Helms asked.

“We can treat him,” the physician assured, “but it’s not a clear fix. We’re not mending a broken bone, here. It would be helpful to know what happened earlier to cause this.” 

Helms hesitated. Marshall stepped in front and led the physician down the hall. He held a hand behind his back, clenching the dog-eared files. 

***

Helms sat across from Ferrill’s bed, under a TV bolted to the wall. He had draped a towel over the screen at Ferrill’s request. The boy had found its black reflection discomforting. Helms was allowed to stay the entire night. Now he was trying to keep the boy awake. Neither of them wanted to fall asleep. 

The kid didn’t talk much beyond terse little requests. Draw the curtains. Shut the closet door. He wouldn’t look Helms in the eye. When Helms looked away, he could feel the kid glaring at him. The day had been cruel to both of them, but Helms began to feel a weight in the boy’s company. Where the hell were you going?  

“I really didn’t see your friend,” Helms said. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.” The power in his voice was gone. 

His words grew stale before Ferrill turned his head. “You didn’t kill him,” Ferrill’s tone was confessional. “That thing did. Grant was gonna die anyway, and I guess I am too.” 

Helms remembered the bodies hauled in from South Street, each with their bloody eyes and open mouths. Now he knew what happened to them, but he had no clue how to stop it. “I’m sorry about Grant.”  

Ferrill glanced at the officer, but withheld his response. He was trying to forget Grant’s face. Then something odd occurred to him. He leaned forward in bed. “You told everyone not to look. You knew not to look at its face… How?” 

Helms didn’t know how to begin. The ghost stories had always been dismissible, but he had come to believe the worst since he discovered the vagrant. He never could let on how real it had seemed, but if anybody would believe him, it would be the boy. He called the detective into the room.

Chapter Five

From the wall, Ferrill could see that something was off with Grant. He wasn’t the sobbing mess that he became in the alley, but he was far from himself. Eyes still, slow to turn, nervous. He made a point not to bring up the previous night. Not even the matter of Grant’s money, still in the possession of the dealer. Ferrill paid for the beer.  

Grant leaned his back against the concrete. It was a sound barrier shielding the downtown neighborhood from the rumble of railroad tracks. At least here, nothing could sneak up behind him. Across the wall, layers of graffiti catalogued generations of ephemeral gangs, each leaving their colorful marks on the concrete before succumbing to the new blood. There was no fresh paint in this neighborhood. 

Ferrill watched as his drinking buddy absently stroked the contours of his face, lingering on the mouth. His eyes were elsewhere, as if he was studying his own image in a mirror. Grant had already accumulated a pile of empties, but didn’t line them across the wall today. His motions were automatic—something was heavy on his mind. 

It was like a grain of sand, stuck in the eye and stubborn to leave. No matter how much probing and how many tears welled up around it, the intrusion would persist and burn. Each glance, each effort made to ease the pain would only make it worse. 

The can in Grant’s hand had been empty for a long time, but it still rose up to his lips on occasion, lowered again with no thought paid. 

“I need to go home.” Broke the silence.

Ferrill looked down to Grant. “Whenever you’re ready. Take the rest of the beer with you.” 

Grant eased out of his stupor and looked back at Ferrill. “What are you talking about?” 

Confusion turned to concern on Ferrill’s face. “You said you wanna go home. You might as well take the case back. I’m sure not letting my family find it.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Grant stuttered. But he did feel the urge to go home. He didn’t think of his neglected apartment as a safe place, though. Not after the visitation. His mind caught flashes of the dusty old house from his dream. Something in him longed for it. 

Ferrill studied him from the corner of his eye. “Maybe you should sober up before you go anywhere.” I’m one to talk. Not trying to judge, here. “I’ll stick around until you’re ready.” 

*** 

Helms was eager to leave South Street. The detective had concluded that there was nothing left for them in the alley and stripped the tape as he left. The whole neighborhood seemed brighter, but he didn’t look in his rearview mirror until he had turned the corner. 

Grant felt the wall behind him vibrate. A train was coming. As it approached, the rumble of tracks drowned out all other sound. He began to feel ill. With his hearing overwhelmed, he couldn’t sense the thing creeping up on him. Now would be the perfect time for it to rear its ugly head. It was imminent. He stood away from the concrete. He had to escape the noise. 

Ferrill watched as Grant walked stilted across the empty lot. He tried calling for him, but the train snuffed his voice like a match in the wind. As Grant reached the street, he passed a parked car, a rusted relic that had been left there for some time. He heard a sharp tapping on the inside of the window. Louder than the train. Deafening. Just for him. He glanced into the car. Reaching from the tinted haze, a gnarled, rotten hand rapped persistently against the glass with needle-sharp claws. 

Grant quickened his pace, his head spinning as he fled the old car. He distinctly heard the window shatter behind him and took off running. He didn’t see the police cruiser coming down the street. Helms was going too fast, himself fleeing the demon presence of South Street, and preoccupied with the rearview. He stopped just in time to bounce the young man off his hood. 

From a distance, Ferrill watched Grant’s leg snap backward and swing limp as his body collapsed. He was off the wall and running in a heartbeat, the sound of the train lost in his head. Helms instinctively switched on his lights and leaped out of the car. 

Grant was dazed on the asphalt. He would live, but his leg would be a surgeon’s nightmare. Ferrill booked it past the vacant car and begged Grant for a response. 

“Let him breathe, kid,” said Helms in unsteady baritone. He pulled the radio and calmed his voice. He’d have to sound composed to call rescue, and he’ll likely have to correct this witness’ understanding of what just happened. 

“Where’s the damn fire, man?” Ferrill shouted. “Where the hell were you going? You could’ve killed him!” He took a closer look at Grant’s leg and choked. The young man on the asphalt groaned, but he didn’t move. 

Helms called for an ambulance and addressed the panicked teenager. “He ran out in front of me. You saw that,” he inspected Grant for another second. “And you’ve both been drinking.” 

Ferrill fought to clear his mind, but the beer had done its job. Anything he said now would be digging his own hole. Helms directed him to sit on the curb until rescue came. 

***

A familiar siren wail preceded the ambulance. When Helms saw the red lights flash around the corner, he felt a sinking in his gut. He called in the accident, but they were responding to his own negligence. Ever since he saw Ferrill bounding over, his mind had been drafting explanations. The case of beer by the wall would help. 

Two EMTs carefully loaded the young man onto a stretcher and wheeled him into the ambulance. The teenager was off the curb and following. “Is he gonna be ok?” he asked. 

“It looks like his leg got the worst of it. They’ll check him out at the hospital,” a tech answered. “He won’t be up and walking for a while.” 

Helms stood behind the vehicle as they loaded the stretcher in. The young man sat upright, and as the dazed expression left his face, his eyes found Helms. It was a hateful, accusatory glare, crawling under his skin and demanding a reaction. Helms didn’t look away, his palm grazing his pistol before clasping his belt buckle. 

As he glared, the young man’s breath became shallow. Helms noticed his face begin to contort, like he was putting on a mask of himself. There was movement in his throat like bugs under the skin. The young man gasped.

“Something’s wrong with him!” Ferrell shouted, grabbing the tech’s arm. The other EMT was already in the ambulance, trying to secure Grant’s head.

As Helms approached, he saw a deep red trail of blood pour from the corner of the young man’s cheek. Helms froze. Grant gagged and threw his head back. In a nightmare bloom, two rows of long blades sprang from his mouth. The EMT leaped out of the vehicle in a panic. Grant strained to scream as the blades spread, his jaw ready to separate. Something in his throat made a sickening crackle. Then the blades reached out from the mouth, leading a long black figure like a snake. Another followed. They were arms. 

Ferrill collapsed in a fit, begging someone to stop the bloody tableau. Helms drew his gun. “Don’t look! Don’t anybody look at it!”   

Through the sights of his pistol, Helms watched as the arms cracked Grant’s jaw wide open, making way for something hidden in his throat. Helms closed his eyes. He heard a frenzied wailing, but it wasn’t the young man. In the ambulance, Grant gasped for breath around the slender arms slithering from his body. The claws rose and spread, and a gnarly, bone-thin creature emerged. Bracing itself on the stretcher, it studied the broken leg, then turned to face him.   

The face was pale as death, and horrified. It looked over Grant for a moment, then with a gnash of its teeth, it plunged its claws into his eyes. Pistol in hand and eyes clinched tight, Helms heard a horrible splatter, then a scream. He fired his weapon and opened his eyes. The young man was motionless on the stretcher, drenched in blood. The creature was nowhere to be seen. The two EMTs were huddled behind the ambulance, hands over their faces. The teenager was trembling on the pavement. He clutched Grant’s bandana, torn loose in the violence. He turned to Helms, “I saw it.” 

Chapter Four

Grant must have fallen asleep at some point, because the sun’s return woke him from a strange dream. His hazy mind recalled an old house, cobwebs and dust, silent and still. But he was back in his apartment now and had to shake the creeps from his head. He got up and looked around. There was nothing unusual about his room—his sweat-stained mattress on the floor, clothes gathered in a heap, a glass bong beside it. The window was locked, no sign of his visitor.  

In the bathroom, he wiped the grit from his eyes and flipped on the light. The face in the mirror wasn’t his own—it was white as bleached bones with sunken eyes like silver dollars. Blood-red lips and saw teeth parted in a scream stretching his jaw so wide it hurt.

Grant recoiled and collapsed into the bedroom, grabbing his face with sweaty hands. On the floor, everything seemed normal—his stubble, his broken nose, his lips, his jaw. He panted in a quivering heap until he caught his breath. Then he stood and looked into the bathroom mirror. It was just him. He shut the light off and closed the door. Grant didn’t want to see the mirror again.  

He lifted his mattress and found a plastic bag with a small dose of coarse powder settled in one corner. He bought it from the man in the car. It was always a good time, but as his heart raced, he began to contemplate its side effects. Rolling the last of it back and forth in the bag, he thought about going down to South Street and confronting the bony bastard. You sold me a bad batch. I’m seeing things! He’d probably get himself killed.   

But if it wasn’t the drugs, then what? Had something followed him from South Street? Was it really there in the dark, or in his head? Grant could still vividly see the grotesque face from the alley, and now the mirror. He wondered if Ferrill had seen it too.

***

Ferrill was moving slow that morning. The phone rang and he staggered after the sound. His body ached all over, thanks to Grant’s knobby limbs, and his mind felt like Swiss cheese. His feet padded softly down the plush carpet of his family’s home. Now he didn’t want to leave it again. 

From the comfort of his room, Ferrill could hear his mom visiting with friends downstairs and the noise of his dad’s TV, the volume always too loud. He realized for the first time that he found the sounds soothing. He had seen enough of downtown’s cruel underbelly. It wasn’t for him. He lost his interest in shady deals and back alleys. Ferrill didn’t want any part of whatever got into Grant. He took his time answering the phone. 

“Hey …uh.” Grant’s voice was uneasy.

 “Morning, douche.” There was no trace of levity Ferrill’s greeting.  

Grant felt his face warming red, thankful that Ferrill couldn’t see him. “Hey, I’m sorry about yesterday, My bad. If it makes you feel any better, I think you broke my damn nose.” 

“That’s great,” Ferrill laughed. “But I’m walking like an old man today.” The beginnings of a smile tugged at his lips. Without looking him in the eye, Ferrill remembered that he enjoyed shooting the breeze with Grant. Maybe he won’t write him off just yet. 

“You started it with that sucker punch,” Grant waded into a tease. “I’ve learned my lesson. No picking a fight with you.” 

“Don’t take me back to that street and we’ll be fine,” Ferrill’s tone darkened momentarily. 

“Don’t worry,” Grant said. “I think I’m done with all that. I don’t want to go back either.” He paused for a long breath. “When we were in the alley… did you see anything?”

At once Ferrill recalled the disappearing figure. First as faintly as a dream, now flooding back to him. “So that was real,” he spoke to himself. 

Grant’s heart pounded in his throat, “Did you see its face?” 

“I couldn’t see anything but its back,” said Ferrill. “And then it was gone, into thin air.” 

“It was horrible,” Grant’s voice dropped to an whisper. For a moment, he debated whether or not to divulge everything. He wondered if it could hear him now. “I still see it. At first, I thought it must’ve chased me home, but then I saw it in the mirror this morning.”

Ferrill didn’t want to believe him. It should be easy to dismiss Grant as delusional, but he felt his skin crawl at the thought of that thing. Creeping, following. I’m glad it picked you, Grant.    

Grant began to speak, but his voice choked. The bloody fluid draining from his nose irritated his throat. His sputtered gasps carried over the phone and Ferrill began to worry. 

“Sorry about that,” Grant regained his breath. “Hey, listen. That thing’s got me pretty creeped out. I need to get out for a while. Want to split a case?” 

Ferrill opened his sock drawer and dug out a ten dollar bill from the bottom. He delayed a moment, then responded. “Sure thing, see you at the wall.” 

Grant thanked him and held on to the phone long after the call had ended. When Ferrill’s voice was gone, he grew wary of the silence. How pitiful, he thought. Scared of being alone and the only friend you have to call is a kid. He turned to the door slowly, afraid he might glimpse something awful. Not this time, but he had to leave. His apartment felt haunted and his nose burned with the presence of dust and the mineral scent of blood. 

***

The alley wasn’t so bad in the daylight. Helms had arrived with the Detective Marshall to give the scene a definitive examination, in case something had been overlooked in haste.  Helms pulled the lopsided barricade tape away as Marshall passed underneath.

“It looks like the crime scene techs were as anxious as you,” the detective said. Then he looked back to Helms and felt a hint of his shame. “I guess I can’t blame them.” 

As they made their way down the desolate corridor, Helms noticed that the entire atmosphere of the neighborhood had changed. It still stank of smoke and garbage, but the lingering sense that he was being followed had gone. The difference between night and day, perhaps. 

Marshall surveyed the surroundings, up and down the walls, to the fire escapes, around every corner, but Helms kept his eyes trained forward. The detective noticed. “Ease up,” he said.
“Nobody ever saw it in the daylight.” 

Helms would rather avoid the subject, but he also felt the need to unload the burden. He hoped the detective wouldn’t find him crazy. Or naive. “Always in the dark. Always in a place they shouldn’t look.”

“That’s what they said,” Marshall replied. 

“Do you believe that?” Helms asked, forcing an incredulous tone. It wasn’t convincing. 

“Well, I find the whole story hard to believe,” Marshall sighed. “All those murders are related. I’m sure of that. But the walking nightmare bit? The face in the corner of your eye, damned if you look? I probably shouldn’t take that too seriously.” 

“Of course,” Helms spoke. “But I see where they’re coming from. You’ve worked some damned-awful cases around here. Dead folks stuffed under the floorboards for months. Heads in the freezer. People trapped in burning buildings…” Helms swallowed hard. “Do you ever see something so terrible that it sticks with you?”

The detective grimaced, like he held something bitter under his tongue. “You should know better than to ask that,” he reprimanded. After a long while, he spoke. “I have dreams sometimes, like we all do. But I don’t let it get to me. Everything I see in there is already dead.”