top of page

Horror


Our first night in the new house, we hear creaking that sounds a lot like footsteps, but that vanishes before we can really worry. On night two, the creaking turns to rustling and a husky Ujjayi breath that sounds more animal than human. By night three, my younger brother Daniel is leaving his room across the hall to demand that whoever’s there show themselves.

            “Out,” he’s saying, to the wind.

            Thus this is why we’re here, because we trust our own perceptions, and because while we’re not police people, given all we’ve been witness to, we do need to file a report in case something more earthshattering happens. A record these days is everything.

            In the front yard, we explain what we’ve heard to the cops, who suggest that all houses have their sounds. And moving someplace new, they remark, will always take some getting used to, whoever you are and wherever you go.

            We do know this to be true. We’re used to the old trailer near the busy highway in Poison Spider. The new soundscape in Paradise Valley is eerie, yes, but like I said, we trust our perceptions.

            “Relax,” the one cop is telling us. “Yeah? No one’s out to get you,” to which his partner nods.

            We’re trying, officers, trust us. Rest and relaxation are the purpose of this new house. For years, we’ve been on edge, and now at long last we seek peace.

            That night, amid Daniel’s snoring, I hear scratching along the wall in the hallway, which I almost believe is nothing, at worst a mouse, until I hear nails tinkling against the light fixture out there. Then a man in a cartoony moose mask slices through the dark. And then I’m sure I wake up.

            So I don’t tell Daniel the next morning, as with ease he makes coffee and prepares for work. He seems refreshed and fully ready to sling pancakes and biscuits at Shari’s downtown. Soon enough, he leaves, and there I remain to do what I do all day, which is beat back against the ruminating.

            This is what I mean about peace. If I do nothing, the thoughts in me spin terrible images: my brother and I in a ditch. My brother and I starving in some dimly lit cell. But if I finish my yoga and breathwork and read my books and articles until the sun starts to set, I can see my thinking patterns for what they are. And that’s false.

            He’s home around 4:30 and smells like gravy. I set him up with tea and ask him how his day was. “Yeah,” he’s replying. “Good. Busy. You know how it is, man.”

            I don’t, and this is why I’m so grateful for him. Though I have tried: a stint at the credit union manning the counter, a part-time gig leading sessions of power yoga at the YMCA, a summer driving the truck around town for the Salvation Army. Yet nothing stuck. Each time, the lights and the movement of people overwhelmed me, at which I shut down.

            Save for the one time I got lucky gambling on Wyoming football and paid off our debts, it’s been Daniel supporting us. Not once has he resented either me or what my brain is.

            “Not a peep last night,” he says now. “You?”

            “Just a dream, I guess.”

            “Maybe the cops were right?”

            Maybe, if temporarily, for that night it begins in earnest. The moose is back, and this time it’s staring at us from its perch on the railing by the stairs. Daniel and I, quivering trees in the hallway, shake each other from the dreams we’re not having.

            “What, then?” he says. “You want what from us?”

            The moose stares.

            “Coward in a mask?” he tries. A mistake. The moose rises, huffs, and disappears downstairs.

            It’s like, I know we’re both thinking, when Dad took us camping in the Bighorns the first time. He disappeared without notice for more than 30 hours, and then what we thought was him returning was actually a black bear sniffing out food. We stood frozen by the tent until a rock tumbling down a nearby ridge scared it away. Every time after that was like the first time all over again for us, if not exactly then in spirit.

            We do not follow the moose downstairs, not into that sudden and dense quiet down there, and in the morning, with a fresh light to guide us, we throw an extra scoop into the coffee pot and consider leaving, at least for the time being. But where, we wonder, would we be leaving and escaping to? Back to the trailer, where I had no real space for yoga and no environment conducive to reading? Where the Internet was as shoddy as the roads and my few sessions with the counselor online got interrupted? Where Daniel drank way too much and we watched one day as Eric, our neighbor, who’d done nothing wrong, got pulled from his living room by the police? Who mistook his medicated brain fog as confirmation he was guilty of whichever thing they’d heard about on the radio?

            At dinner the day after our first camping trip, Mom convinced herself that Daniel and I had slipped something toxic into her soup, which of course we had not. But something about our faces, she’d said. Our slack and wandering faces. We shared a room back then, and to be grounded meant one of us got eaten by mosquitoes outside.

            Thus this house in Paradise Valley, with its driveway and the North Platte River right there, plus the kids’ park that’s right down the road, is much bigger than the foundation and walls and two bedrooms and two floors. The mortgage as opposed to a deposit and hiked-up rent. The house represents growth itself, and we shall not shy away. Instead, we call the cops, who while claiming to be hamstrung do nothing again, then sleep with knives under our pillows.

            The moose is standing over my bed when I come to.

            “Do you know,” it says, “how to get to gravity hill?”

            When I say nothing, it paces and whines.

            “Do you know how to get gravity hill?” it says. “Do you know, do you know? Do you know, do you know, do you know?”

            Daniel is there in no time, but before he can stab it, the creature’s dodged and strafed to the window, from which it jumps into the backyard.

            “The police?” I manage, as a screeching howl splits the air. Like lightning. Like a fawn trapped under a falling boulder.

            “They’re coming,” Daniel says, and sure enough they do, to tell our aching ears sorry, but they can’t be staking out every house in the city every night. I don’t want to be totally unfair about the dynamic here, because they do seem to be listening to us, albeit somewhat obliquely. And they do offer us a suggestion, which is to film it. Or, they say rather, film him. To get his identifying details. That, or trap the crazy fucker in our house somehow.

            My brother’s day off is the next day, and perhaps against better judgment we take the car to gravity hill, which is at the base of Casper Mountain.

            A gravity hill works like this, should you not know: you find an inclining slope that’s part of a larger decline, such as on a road in the foothills. Then you shift your car into neutral at the bottom of the hill and watch as gravity does its work, propelling you as if by magic up this impossible rise. Casper’s hill used to be popular among teenagers, until the rich people started building houses out here and complained about the traffic and beer cans.

            Because we’re safe about things, we don’t block the lane or sit in any blind spot on the hill. We pull instead onto the shoulder and wait to see if something significant will happen.

            And something does, though it’s not what we expected. In place of a moose, a disgruntled resident stops his car right next to ours and asks what we think we’re doing.

            “Just taking a moment,” Daniel tells him. “It’s no problem, sir.”

            “Well take it elsewhere,” the guy says. “People live around here.”

            “My brother gets nervous in the car sometimes,” explains Daniel.

            “And my wife gets nervous seeing strange vehicles parked down the street,” counters the guy. “So if it’s not some emergency, gents, then it’s time to go.”

            Which is fair enough, honestly. He motions for us to go first, then follows as we pass elaborate homes and the turkeys that patrol the roadside. Once we’ve completed the loop, he turns one way and we turn the other.

            So do we know how to get to gravity hill? Yes, we do. But do we know why the trip there is so important? And vital? Well, the mystery persists.

            Is the moose mad about reduced habitat and sprawl, I wonder? Did a man made rich by drilling oily holes into the earth kill the moose’s calf with his diesel truck? Or is this moose truly a crazy fucker who’s only spouting nonsense to scare the innocents?

            “Maybe we should be calling it a him,” I say to Daniel suddenly, as he pulls into the Wal-Mart parking lot. “I mean, he’s wearing jeans. And how we define him matters.”

            “Have you noticed we never hear a door or window open before it comes?” he asks in reply.

            I have, yes. And to say so, I say nothing.

            Inside, Daniel looks for rope for a trap, while I wander the produce section because I’m hungry and, as my brother indicated, nervous from the drive. I’m nervous enough that by the time he joins me to ask if I’m ready, I’ve gathered every purple fruit and vegetable available in this market. The yams and grapes and raisins. Purple carrots and kohlrabi. Cabbage, asparagus, beets. Eggplant, plums, and purple potatoes.

            “Chill out, okay?” he’s saying. “It’ll be all right.”

            But it isn’t, and trapping the moose that night doesn’t work. It’s got us cornered in Daniel’s room, the frayed rope in its hand. It seems bigger than before. It’s shoeless, and the feet aren’t human.

            “We know how to get there,” Daniel says then. “Directions and mileage, even. To gravity hill? Please, I got everything for you.”

            “You should have brought a gun,” the thing states, and bends Daniel’s ankle until it snaps.

            “What, then?” I plead.

            “I want a sacrifice,” it says. “You try to stab and capture me? You have a week, people.”

            “For what?” I say.

            “You have a week, I said. You have a week.”

            Thus in the coming days we hobble around. At Shari’s, Daniel’s taped ankle keeps giving out. One morning, after too many wasted eggs, they send him home. Home, from this job he finally found and likes, and that doesn’t destroy him. Home, after all the shit jobs that wreaked havoc on his organs and blood.

            Another morning, we return to Wal-Mart and buy a gun. Some shotgun contraption, we don’t know. But the guy at the counter says we can stand our ground with it. And the moose did mention a gun before.

            Is this our sacrifice, then? A weapon on the coffee table? When we’re neither hunters nor assassins? We are thin men with weary brains who are only trying to sketch out a quiet and benevolent existence. Yet look at these many bullets.

            We have given up enough to this world. We have put off friends and family and travel. We have attended no colleges or bachelor parties. I have little interest myself in dating and romance, I admit, but my brother I know would like some companionship. He’s 34 years old, for God’s sake. And when was the last time he slept with a person? Or even kissed one?

            No, our youth was thrown to the wolves, that we might scrap to put together a life where the day-to-day was not consistently grueling and demoralizing. And we got so close, truly. But now we wait for an enormous, stomping shoe to drop.

            Maybe, I think on the seventh day, this waiting was the sacrifice all along. We gave up our peace of mind. The dread and despair were what the moose really wanted. And with this we did comply. It’s like in junior high when Daniel defended me against the silly boys calling me those names, those names. While walking home that afternoon, we waited to see what retaliation would greet us. What blowback. And it did find us, but only later, after which even Daniel said he’d prefer a swollen eye to the uncertainty.

            The moose comes calling. “Who’s brought me my money and limbs?” it yells from the stairs. “Who’s brought me my tribute?”

            Is it us? We’re on the bed in my room, loading shells into the gun.

            “Ah,” the moose says, upon seeing it. “So this is what you think I am. A man to be shot down? A bleeding creature you can spar with? Well go on and shoot me down, then. But don’t you see I’m the sins of the father? I’m the raped land itself, boys, the house sinking into the river. Or maybe I’m just a lost soul that was curious about some fellow orphans, until you brought violence into it.”

            “You invaded,” I tell it. “No. We did nothing.”

            “Oh, did I? It was me with the knife and rope?”

            “Just leave us alone,” says Daniel. “Please.”

            “I think I’ll not,” it says. “I think I will not. I think I will help.”

            When push comes to shove, we simply don’t have a trigger in us. Not a one. Or is the problem faith, perhaps? Do we not shoot because we believe the moose is larger than the mask it wears? Or do we hesitate because we’re sure our actions won’t carry weight, because how often have they?

            In any case, the moose has the gun now, and Daniel’s other ankle is broken. As are a few of my ribs, I discover, which limits my breathing.

            “Let’s see what’s on the inside, gents,” the moose says, readying the barrel, and pointing it squarely at its own gut.

            “Don’t,” I say, before I can quite catch myself.

            It’s much too late for words, though, and there’s the crack of the gun. The shot splits my ears.

            “See it? Do you see it? Do you see?” The moose is hysterical. “Look, look, I’m showing you.”

            Another shot, another hole in its body. Another.

            “Do you see it?” it keeps asking. “Do you?” Yet all I see when my gaze shifts back into focus is daylight and the holes in my wall. And I see too the cops on our porch, because shots in the night mean neighbors reporting possible crimes, which means the same officers as before informing us that firing a weapon without cause into a residential space could mean somebody gets charged. Endangerment, recklessness, negligence. There are many possible definitions.

            We show them the room, which importantly has no blood in it. No body, no mask, no evidence. The gun’s on the floor, and the buckshot’s in the wall.

            “Who shot it?” the one cop asks us, then sighs when we insist it wasn’t us.

            “You all have professional help, right?” says the other cop.

            “I have a counselor,” I say.

            “A good one?”

            “I have nothing to compare him to,” I confess.

            Later, before they leave, the one pulls me aside to ask if this is some domestic dispute that I’m afraid to speak up about. Is abuse happening here? Is the younger brother getting out of hand and striking or otherwise harming me?

            “You see it sometimes,” he says. “The resentful member of the family lashing out at the indebted one. You’re disabled, right? I mean no disrespect here.”

            “Why aren’t you listening to us?” I ask him.

            That afternoon, I schedule an emergency session with my counselor Jamie, which takes place over Skype, in my bedroom such that the damage to the wall remains out of view.

            In the end, I don’t know what to tell him. We trust our perceptions. There’s some dark magic to the moose, and the violence surrounding it is escalating. Meanwhile, the house is everything at this juncture in our lives, and leaving would be tantamount to failure. We will stand tall. But to explain all this, however calmly, could mean Jamie will think I’m in need of a different form of care. A care for the unstable or psychotic, which are not me.

            So I talk generally about the house, my yoga and reading, the chores, the adjustment to the neighborhood, and add that I’ve been having some unsettling dreams about an intrusive monster. As though I don’t think we deserve this house.

            “But you do,” he says. “Clearly.”

            “I know that.”

            “Do you remember,” he says, before our time is up, “the week you had those terrible dreams, and you turned the chaos of them into a yoga sequence with really dynamic movement? It was all sideways, you said. And unpredictable. Get sideways, I’m saying, and maybe embrace it?”

            Embrace it. But that sequence I crafted was about balance, and I see no balance here. No equilibrium or equanimity. My breathing is troubled from the broken ribs, and contains therefore no wisdom to draw upon. I see no integrating of this nightmare, Jamie. I see my brother drinking alcohol I didn’t know was in the house.

            “Stop it,” I’m telling him.

            “The neighbors came by while you were up there.”

            “I said stop it.”

            “To complain,” he clarifies. “But what I was thinking was, I know there are some out there who worry if we’re okay. But they’re not the type to come by and ask, don’t you think? The type to come around are the complainers.”

            “Jesus, Daniel.”

            “We were stupid to think we could live in paradise,” he goes on. “Of course there’d be a moose. Of course we’d be pushed straight out again. And it’s right, we did attack first. You grow up with this shit, and then you never escape it. You just recreate it again. Over and over. Remember when Dad drove us drunk into the McDonald’s? Then walked away without us like nothing happened?”

            “We can escape it,” I say, if only to hear the words.

            “No. But I don’t want to leave the house. I want to float the river from the Robinson Road put-in and get out in our backyard.”

            “Come on.”

            “I’m going to be sick.”

            And he is. And then, once he’s had some coffee and sobered a little, we do float the river. An outrageous and irresponsible choice, yet we do it. And we commit moreover to enjoying it. We stop by the spillway to listen to how the water flows down it. We see deer and antelope on the hills to the west of us. No moose.

            That night, I still see no sideways, no gravity, no dynamic something to invert the spiraling. The moose arrives intact and woundless. In its hands are flowers, as well as some of my more worn books on meditation.

            And me? I say somehow to go on and do what it wants.

            “So you’re brave now?” it says.

            “No,” I say, because I’m not. What I am is darker than these two I’m sharing the room with. I am the house presence who imagines sinister scenarios. The sick and the rot reside in me. I have ruminated for days on much worse than a shotgun blast to the ghost’s abdomen. A few broken bones and some wheezing, then? I have choked in the contours of the mind’s prison and exploded my own chest a thousand times a day for years on end. So listen, gents, I am very low on patience.

            The moose pauses, to which, unthinking, I approach it.

            “Wait,” says Daniel, but here I go, up close, to reach out and grasp the mask, which feels like warm rubber on my fingertips, like some score from the discount Halloween bin. Pulling it off, I expect to see my own likeness there, or some face resembling Dad’s, or even my brother’s. Yet beneath the mask is not us, but a fuzzy wrinkle in space, like a smudge on your glasses you notice only after you’ve gotten a headache from it, or a shimmer of heat on the horizon.

            In the moment I possess it, I see all the secret thoughts that the world at large accepts. I see how the thoughts rebel and twist and warp, and because I see it, I know what’s real. And when you know what’s real, and glimpse what’s truly timeless, you don’t have to be afraid anymore.

            “So find another house to torment, monster,” I say, in my plain and flat voice.

            The mask snaps back suddenly, and rather than disappear, the moose shoves me to the ground and strangles Daniel against the wall until his eyes are bulging. His throat gurgles above kicking feet. When I get up to fight, I stumble over my own snapping ankles.

            “Stop,” I’m begging, my stupid rebellion, it’s useless, and then I’m left to watch as Daniel slumps lifeless to the floor.

            The moose restrains me until sunup, at which point I finally can call an ambulance. The cops meet me at the hospital and dive right into their questions.

            “He’s been dead for hours,” they say, “so why didn’t you call 911 earlier?”

            “So he’s got ligature marks on his neck, yeah? Right?”

            “So that face you’re making,” they go on, “are you not more upset your brother’s gone? I tell you, if my brother were gone, I’d be absolutely inconsolable.”

            “Right?”

            Honestly, for most of the process, I can’t say anything. Even when they get me a lawyer, who has me talk to a good psychologist, I’m often rendered mute. They don’t want to hear what I have to say: about the invisible force that’s haunting us. The record we did give to the police. The rebelling thoughts that we don’t pay attention to, and now a good man is dead. An honorable man. No, they want me to say crazy things, so that the judge and the prosecutor will be nicer to me. Maybe we’ll get a good plea deal out of it. And so I watch them lean in and wait for me to say I don’t really understand how the world works. Or that I hear voices in my head.

            In fact, so much of this is familiar. Consider the plea deal my lawyer does eventually advocate for. Consider that it’s the perfect instantiation of life as we used to know it, the false choice between a set of options that in no way suits me. But I get it, they are trying their best, I suppose, with what they have.

            If there is a surprise, it’s that they track down Mom, who comes up from Arizona to visit me in lockup. I’ve never been able to lie about things, so when she asks if they’re treating me all right here, I say no, it’s a hellhole. It’s demons in a cage. I’ve got visible bruises she doesn’t ask about.

            She’s remarried, I can see, though she doesn’t talk about it. The ring is a simple band. She says sorry, then doesn’t elaborate. She heard about Dad passing, she adds, and the awful baggage he left. The debt. She’s on medication now. Her doctor helped her find a regimen that works for her. She’s got a job she likes doing photoshoots for elementary schools in Tucson. She’s sorry. The kids are cute.

            And she’ll fight for me, she promises every time. I really just want her to stay in the house for a night or two and see if the moose appears to her as well. But instead, she berates the cops and talks to journalists. She posts fiery things online. And while it’s not nothing, it’s certainly not going to lead anyplace but exhaustion. For in my dim cell, I can hear the many responses. The people clamoring for me to take responsibility already. There’s no boogieman making our shitty choices for us, you know. If this wasn’t me, they say, then go ahead and prove it. They’re all ears and all about justice. They believe in freedom. Just show them one tangible thing. 

 

Tim Raymond works as a barista in Seoul, South Korea. His fiction has appeared recently or will appear in BoulevardCRAFT, and Southeast Review, among other publications. He posts comics about autism, gender, and writing on Instagram at @iamsitting.

Comentários


J Journal

Department of English

John Jay College of Criminal Justice

524 West 59th Street, 7th Floor

New York, NY. 10019.

johnjaylogo.png
CUNY_Logo_ copy_edited.png
clmplogo.png

Site Design by Dalyz A. © 2020

bottom of page