A Mike McGee story by Ian Wilson
I woke up, if you can call it waking, that morning after a disturbing nightmare that something was watching me the whole night. Once again, I went to the window and looked out on the newfallen snow. A few squirrels and some assorted birds darted around the back lawn. The snow was marked with tracks from deer, rabbits, and our dog. Nothing really weird about that.
Heading to the bathroom, I took a look at myself in the mirror. I looked like I’d been rode hard and put away wet, as my late father used to say. I looked at the wound left by my previous encounter with the twilight zone; the four large claw marks left by the creature were healing, but they stung whenever I took a shower. I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since that encounter a week ago. I’d seen some other weird stuff since then, but nothing as strange as the thing I met that night. But that was child’s play compared to what would happen to me later that same day.
I arrived for my shift at four o’clock, entering Bosco’s Pizza through the employee entrance.
“You look like crap,” said Margaret, my manager.
“Good afternoon to you, too,” I said.
“You got that wound treated, right?” she asked. “You ain’t getting cat scratch fever or anything like that, are you?”
“Nah, I just ain’t been sleeping too good,” I responded.
She shrugged her shoulders and gave me my delivery run.
The road wound through the hills in one of the older neighborhoods in that little New England town. All the houses here seemed old and tired; like they were silently begging someone to push them in. “Please, let me die,” they seemed to say. My phone informed me that I had arrived at the address on the delivery slip. It looked pretty old, and a bit decrepit, but not nearly as run down as the rest of the neighborhood. Good. At least I was delivering to an actual person and not some crack-house.
I rang the doorbell. A noxious smell hit me like a ton of bricks as the door swung open. It was like the stench of a locker room full of sweaty football players and someone made sauerkraut for lunch. I kind of wanted to puke. A red-headed young man met me. He looked like he was in his early 20s with patchy facial hair, wearing a Red Sox tee shirt and bluejeans.
“Oh, thanks man!” he said, taking the pizzas. “Lemme get your money.”
I continued standing on the front porch, looking into what seemed to be the kitchen. I noticed a steaming pot on the stove top, some kind of black ooze bubbling within. Obviously, there was a dinner failure, and the poor guy had to drop back and punt.
“Thank God you came when you did,” he remarked. “My girlfriend is dropping by later, and I had a kind of a kitchen nightmare, as you can probably smell. I ain’t much of a cook.”
“You’re darn right,” I responded.
As he handed me the money, I noticed the pot seemed to be bubbling higher and higher, despite the stove being off. As it bubbled a strange gurgling noise came from the pot.
“Pardon me for asking but what the heck did you make?” I asked.
“Some vegetable stew,” he replied. “I found the recipe in my memaw’s old cookbook.”
The “stew” overflowed the pot, oozing out onto the stove. We both stared in horror as the black goo moved and changed, growing larger, crawling out of the pot and falling in a heap onto the floor. Eyes began to blink out of the goo, staring at us, full of mindless hate.
“What kind of cookbook was that?” I screamed at the young man.
“I dunno!” he shouted back, panic taking hold of his voice. “It was just old! I found it in the basement!”
Long, sinuous limbs reached out of the blob, dragging it toward us. A gaping maw full of sharp teeth opened up in the middle, hissing like a snake. The dude uttered a cuss word. Leaping from the porch, I ran back to my car. “You can’t just leave me!” screamed the redhead.
Reaching into the backseat, I grabbed my trusty baseball bat. I then reached into my glovebox, drew my vial of holy water, and leaped back to the house, just as the thing got hold of the dude’s legs. I sprinkled the holy water on the critter, shouting, “In the name of Jesus, release him!”
The thing let out a noise like the breaks on an old schoolbus and let go of the guy’s legs. We ran out the door, slamming it behind us.
“What is that thing?” the dude asked.
“I dunno,” I replied. I did not sign up for any of this spooky crap.
“Then how do you know that would work? What was that stuff?”
“Holy water. I was just guessing,” I replied.
“How do we stop it?” my companion asked.
“I dunno yet,” I replied. “Got a back door?”
“Yeah,” said my companion.
We snuck around back, listening to the carnage within as the thing searched for us. I heard timbers cracking as it burst through the front door. It was now out in the world; very, very bad. The redhead cussed again.
“We need a weapon,” I whispered. The redhead led the way to the tool shed, which was full of gardening implements. He grabbed a splitting maul while I grabbed a pickaxe, and out we went.
“Will these kill it?” he asked.
I put a finger to my lips. An ear-splitting scream rent the air.
“Whiskers!” said the redhead, his voice trembling. Evidently, the thing just made a meal of his cat.
“Stay sharp!” I said. Like that would do us any good. I was way out of my depth. I should have just gone back to work and left him to fend for himself, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him alone with that thing, nor did I like the idea of it running around loose. We crept around the corner of the house. I felt something drip onto my face. I looked straight up into the jaws of the hellish thing this poor fool had conjured up. It had crawled onto the roof, planning to take us by surprise, except its slobbering jaws had betrayed its presence. It pounced down (if a thing with no discernable legs can pounce), wrapping me in its tentacles like a net. It would have devoured me if the redhead hadn’t attacked it with the splitting maul. The thing turned its attention from me to the redhead, still holding onto me. I dripped some more holy water onto the tentacles. They sizzled like bacon in a frying pan. The thing let go. Taking my pickaxe in hand, I gave it a good sound whack. Whimpering like a dog, it retreated into the night.
We ran into the back door, bolting it behind us. I searched for something to fortify the front door. We began piling furniture against the shards of what was left of the front door.
“That was the last of my holy water!” I said.
“Aw crap!” said the redhead.
A woman’s voice interrupted us.
“Dylan, what are you doing?”
“Crap! It’s my girlfriend!”
The redhead (Dylan by name) threw the furniture away from the door and dragged the girl inside. She was a pretty good looking girl, with olive complexion, black hair, and lip-piercing, wearing tight jeans with holes in the knees, a short jacket and shirt of some type. I couldn’t really pay attention.
“Dylan, what are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, Angela, I don’t have time to explain!”
We resumed fortifying the door.
“Who is this?” asked Angela.
“This is the pizza guy, uh, Mike, I guess,” Dylan replied, reading my nametag.
“Hi Mike,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“Delivering pizza,” I replied as I handed Dylan another chair.
“Why are you stacking furniture against the door? Why’s the door broken? Dylan!”
Her protestations were cut short by sudden scream. We were so busy trying to keep the thing out that we didn’t notice it got in somehow. My best guess is it crawled down the chimney, like Santa Claus from Hell. It grabbed hold of Dylan’s limbs, holding them fast. I sprang into action, grabbing the splitting maul and beating the crap out of the thing. Just as its jaws were inches away from Dylan’s neck, Angela let out a scream and threw whatever was in her hand, I heard glass shattering. The creature let out a long, terrible scream that ended in a gurgling whimper. I watched it melt before my eyes like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz, writhing in agony. All that was left was a steaming black puddle on the floor that stank like burning tires.
Angela pulled Dylan away from the puddle, embraced him tightly, and kissed him over and over.
“What was in that?” I asked.
“My Nonna’s homemade pesto,” said Angela between kisses. “I brought it over to have with dinner. What was that thing? What happened here?”
“Ah, of course,” I said.
“Dinner went bad,” said Dylan.
“What?” asked Angela, incredulously.
“Long story short, he used his memaw’s old cookbook and conjured something otherworldly, I showed up with the pizza, and you killed it with pesto,” I said, summing up the evening.
“None of that makes sense!” proclaimed Angela.
“It does when you realize pesto contains garlic and basil, two plants that repel black magic,” I explained. “Your Memaw must’ve been something else.”
“I always knew Memaw was weird, but…” said Dylan.
“Find that cookbook and burn it,” I said.
Reaching into his pocket, Dylan pulled out a wad of cash and handed it to me.
“Uh, thanks,” I said.
“You earned it,” said Dylan. “I just wish there was more.”
Pocketing the cash, I wished them a good evening, and told them to have the house blessed and put some salt on the stain left by the thing. Returning to my car, I said a short prayer before heading back to the restaurant for another run. I really wish this weird stuff would stop happening.
LogoSophia Magazine 