Room Behind the Garage
'Hey, man, I think I found something back here.'
It was Gary. He was standing in the back of the garage, up to his neck in dust, when he made the discovery.
They'd been cleaning ' thanks, Maureen ' in hopes of creating some room for the sale Jim's wife had planned for the upcoming weekend. So far, cleaning had yielded a bunch of dust, some rat turds, a few waterlogged skin mags, and some tools Jim was reluctant to give up. He never knew when he might need them.
'What is it now?' Dale asked. He was sweating and tired, ready for their next beer break, which were being monitored by the missus ('If y'all get into the beer too early,' Maureen had said, 'there won't be any work that'll get done a minute after noon.').
'Dale, shut up,' Jim said. He pushed aside a few old boxes of videotapes (including their wedding day video) and started his trek through the mounds of junk to the back of the garage. Jim and Maureen had no attic to be spoken of, especially since they'd put in new insulation two years ago. It was an allergy fit just thinking of going up there. So everything that had been in the attic went into the garage, no questions asked. It was something Jim would have to concede. When Maureen wanted space, she got it.
'I ain't said nothing,' Dale said.
'If you start complaining now, you won't stop,' Jim replied, kicking a half-flat basketball out of the way and finding a spot next to Gary. 'What is it?'
'Well,' Gary replied, 'it's not so much what I've found as what I haven't found.'
He knelt down and poked at a small broken piece of the wall. There was a hole in place of the wood paneling and Gary waved a hand in front of it. 'Cold air,' he said.
By this time, Dale had found his way back to them and was standing, discomfited, in the far corner of the garage.
'Is it something dead,' he asked.
Jim ignored him. 'A hole and some cold air. Big deal.'
Gary shook his head. 'You put in the insulation a few years ago, right?'
Jim nodded.
'Well, you shouldn't have this kind of cold circulating through your house, even back here. Besides, it's not that cold outside today and you don't have anything behind the garage that would let it get this cold. I hope, anyway.'
Gary stretched his neck down to smell the air coming out of the hole and coughed when he got his fill of it.
'Smells like sulfur,' he said. 'That doesn't make any sense at all. Old house smell, okay. Rats, sure. But sulfur?'
Gary was the neighborhood know-it-all. If anybody had questions about anything, he was the man to ask. He fostered curiosity in just about everything he encountered.
'Maybe it's just a cold patch in the insulation. Come on. I want to get some of this done so we can have another beer.'
Jim and Gary looked disdainfully at Dale, who knew it was at least another hour before Maureen would let them have a beer. And, to her credit, Maureen was harsh but fair. She just didn't want Jim to lapse back into one of his bad patches again, where he was drinking a twelve pack a day. He'd slowed his drinking to no more than a six pack a week and he had her to thank for that. In college, Dale and Gary had encouraged his drinking but did not scoff or complain when he started to change several months back. He was the most likely to turn 'alkie' and slowing down the sauce was helping his home life.
Jim knocked at one spot on the wall and got only a dense clunking sound. He moved his hand a few feet to the left and came upon the sound Gary had probably hoped for: a dull, hollow pop.
'Space between the studs, maybe?' Jim asked, his voice fostering a little bit of concern.
'I don't think so,' he said. Unlike Jim, Gary sounded hopeful, like the kid whose package of Amazing Sea Creatures has just arrived. 'There should be a stud somewhere in the middle, but I'd bet my life there isn't one.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Hunch,' Gary said. He was now pounding at various parts of the wall and coming up with nothing.
'Well, what could be back there?' Jim asked.
'Spare room, maybe? Something that's been boarded-over, for sure.'
'Or just nothing,' Dale said. He was sitting on a crate full of old LPs, most of which hadn't worked before but definitely wouldn't now. 'I bet there's nothing behind there but cold air and rat turds.' He chuckled but neither of the other two men joined in.
They had become enthralled.
Jim's wife, Maureen, wandered out half an hour later, three opened Coors Lights in her hands. She wore a puzzled look as she approached, as if she'd expected them to have beaten down the door by now.
'What're you guys up to?' she asked.
Only Dale stopped working, finding his way through the junk to the edge of the garage and graciously taking the beer in one meaty hand. 'Being idiots.'
'Looking for my long-handled axe. You don't happen to know where it is, do you?'
She chuckled. 'Yeah. It's what I use to cut my cakes.'
He didn't seem to get the joke. There was a loud clang as Jim dropped something metallic. 'Well, if you see it, could you bring it out to us?'
'What do you need the axe for?'
'Organization.'
'Ha ha. Really.'
'Well, Maureen, what we're really doing is''
Jim looked at Dale, glaring, and Dale cut his comment short. Maureen placed the two remaining bottles on a small workshop table, and Gary made his way to the front to retrieve it, thanking her meekly for bringing them 'refreshments'.
'My pleasure, Gary. You look like you've made a lot of progress, but I still don't like the secrecy. What are you boys planning? Have you been hitting your uncle's moonshine again, Jim?'
'No, baby. We're just busy.' He wasn't looking up. He continued the work, sorting through the junk and not looking up.
Maureen stood at the entrance of the garage, leaning against one wall, watching them. Gary was moving stuff around, but his attention seemed focused on the back wall. Dale wasn't working at all; he was merely enjoying his beer and a small break.
'Damnit,' Jim said finally, pulling a broken piece of wood from under a bag of unused concrete. He tossed it aside and wiped the sweat from his forehead. 'Well, I found the axe.'
'Poor baby,' Maureen said, motioning him to her. She hugged him and planted a kiss on his cheek despite the sweat and dust. 'Maybe you can get along without an axe for today.'
'I've got one,' Gary said.
'You think we could use it?'
'Use it? For what?' Maureen asked.
'The room behind the garage,' Dale blurted before finishing off his beer. Better that he do that if they kicked him out for squealing.
Maureen pulled away from Jim. 'A room? What does he mean?'
'Nothing.'
'Obviously he means something.'
Jim rolled his eyes and pointed at Gary, who seemed almost giddy at the chance to explain what was going on.
'Well,' he said, 'it seems like either your house has a minor defect or an extra room. Potentially. We haven't figured it out yet. But it could be nothing.'
Jim's wife waited.
'That's it?'
'Maureen''
'Well, Jim, I want this done by tomorrow. I don't care if you get sidetracked with whatever it is you're doing. But don't let it get in the way of reorganizing the garage. If we don't get it done this year, then we may never get it done. You know that.'
'I know.'
'Someday, I want to turn the garage into another room.'
'Okay.' Jim sounded a trifle angry, but he seemed to be doing a good job of keeping it under control.
Maureen had begun to head back toward the house, but she turned at Jim's reply. 'I'm not complaining, Jim, but I really want you to get this done. Am I being unreasonable?'
'No. I guess not.'
'You sure?'
'Yeah.'
She left it at that and disappeared around the corner of the house. Moments later, they all heard the back door slam.
As soon as he was sure she was gone, Gary leaned in and said, 'I've got an axe at my house. You want me to go get it?'
'No,' Jim replied passively. He was looking away, not really focusing on them, and thinking. 'We better get most of this done today.'
Gary sighed.
'I know, man, but you don't have to live with Maureen. If I don't get this done, she'll ride my ass until Christmas. I love her, but she can put up one hell of a fight when she wants to.'
'All right,' Gary replied. 'But if we really step it up today and get most of it done, do you think we can open up the wall tomorrow?'
'Open up the wall?' Jim hadn't really thought about it like that, but he supposed that if he was ever going to find out what was behind the wall in the garage, he'd need to get behind it, wouldn't he?
'Yeah, open up the wall?' Dale also asked. 'Sounds like a lot of work, don't you think?'
'But it'll be fun work,' Gary said. He was practically a kid again, living out the comic books he'd said he read as a child. 'I mean, I've got the axe, a pickaxe, the shovel if we need it''
He continued to list the litany of tools he kept in his house, but Jim had moved on, picking through a crate full of old albums, ones that were scratched or that no one would ever listen to again. He was intrigued by the situation, though not in the same way Gary was. He wanted to know why his house was defective. Did it have any insurance implications? Was it unsafe? Would it be costly to get fixed if it was a true problem, and would homeowner's insurance cover that?
'We won't need to open the wall up to see what's behind it,' Dale said, but they would. Even if they didn't have to, they would. Gary would talk Jim into it ' Jim knew that ' and Dale would follow along, complaining as usual.
'I haven't decided yet,' Jim said, interrupting Dale's whining and Gary's long-winded description of the contents of his own garage. 'We'll see tomorrow, once we get done with all of this. For now, let's just get back to work.'
The three of them worked well into the afternoon, until less than an hour to dark, and retired to their respective houses, happy for a respite from the work. But they'd gotten a good three-quarters of it done and would be able to decide what to do about the wall the next afternoon, maybe even before lunch.
Maureen had cooked chicken and rice and had made a nice, big pitcher of sweet tea when he shuffled in, but he wasn't able to enjoy it. The food was good and the sweet tea was to die for, but he couldn't escape his exhaustion. He nodded off a time or two during dinner, once right in the middle of Maureen's update on the town's gossip. Pine Hollow wasn't a big city, and each neighborhood had its own set of demons. Maureen liked to recount every detail for Jim, as if he cared.
'Jim, you listening?'
'Yeah, honey. I'm just so tired.'
'Well, you should just get to bed then.'
'But Louisville and Rutgers''
'No football tonight. The Bulldogs play on Saturday and you'll be able to watch that game. You can't even keep your eyes open, you know.'
'I know.'
'Well, give me a kiss and wash up for bed. I'll be up in a little while. After I clean up all this mess, of course.'
He kissed her and managed to get through a short shower before tumbling into bed, falling fast asleep before his mind could really register his fatigue.
It was 7:52.
He awoke suddenly sometime in the night, his eyes darting around the darkness, looking for a focal point. He found it in the pale light coming through the bedroom window and stared at it until he was sure he was awake. His body had jumped so suddenly into waking life that he doubted being in reality for a minute.
His mind immediately went to the garage, and it was perhaps for that reason that he awoke so violently.
The clock read 3:42.
A slight and almost inaudible sound drifted from outside through the window. At first, he thought it to be the hiss of a car's radiator letting out steam after overheating. It was very similar to that, though it seemed unlikely that a car would be doing such a thing at that time of night...in his back yard.
Jim could not move right away. He was given to fear in awkward or unfamiliar situations, and this one seemed to fit the description fairly well.
It hit him then that he'd left the garage door open. Something ' or someone ' had probably gotten in there and bumped into something that had some sort of air pressure. The sound outside, which was still very soft and faint, had morphed from the sound of a radiator giving way to that of a balloon letting out air and then settling into a creaky, old door sort of noise.
'Jim,' Maureen said, still basically asleep. 'What's that noise?'
All the while, Jim was not able to get up. 'Nothing.'
'Did you close the garage door?'
'Yes.' He paused. 'Well, maybe I'll go check.'
'O...kay,' she said and was almost certainly back in the vicinity of sleep.
Jim didn't want to get up for a number of reasons. He was comfortable, and if he got up he would most certainly spend the rest of the nigh tossing in the bed. The day's work had begun to take its toll on him and he could feel the first slivers of soreness working their way through his arms and back.
Under all of that, though, were the beginnings of fear. It was small for the time being, but he could feel his trepidation growing inside of him. Until he understood what was going on, a little part of him ' the same part which had thought a monster to be living under his bed when he was six ' would be afraid.
And that was all right, as long as he was able to reconcile himself with the fact that he would find out, unlike the monster debacle way back when.
'Jim''
'I'm getting up.'
He resolved to get up on the count of three, and when that didn't work he made it a count of ten.
The disturbance outside had not changed in volume, but it was mutating somehow. And, to add to his worries, there was a slow, unintelligible murmuring going on underneath it all.
Someone was out there.
He knelt next to the bed and shuffled across the floor, almost sure he was being soundless in the process. The rumbling outside was now becoming a sort of white noise in the back of his mind, and he listened stolidly for a way to clearly identify the voice. He imagined that, of anyone he knew, it would probably be Gary who had returned, sneaking back to study the wall and solve the mystery. He was divorced ' his Eileen had left him a year ago ' and he'd probably spent the whole night anticipating the discovery of what lay behind the wall.
When he peeked over the edge of the window, he was surprised to find that it was Dale who stood mumbling at the entrance to his garage. Dale had seemed the least concerned with the whole situation, but it was really him.
'Dale,' Jim whispered, but Dale paid him no attention. 'Dale, what do you think you're doing?'
Something about him didn't seem right. He looked stoned, loosey-goosey.
And he didn't seem to mind the racket coming from within the garage. From where he knelt, Jim could see only half of the moist annoying of his neighbors. From the waist up, though, he just looked odd, as if he didn't fully understand what was going on.
'Dale, go back home and sober up.' At this, Dale did indeed look up at Jim, and what he saw in Dale's eyes was not apathy but horror. Dale was terrified and unable to stop what was happening.
The garage ' or at least the commotion emanating from it ' had coalesced into a buzzing whir, like a jet propeller with a bird caught in it. It could have been a hallucination, but Jim thought he could almost feel the wind coming off the small shed.
When Dale took the first step inside, Jim let out a small cry and subsequently clamped one hand over his mouth to prevent any other vocal outbursts. Maureen would have a fit if she knew what was happening had been caused by his tinkling around.
He wanted to jump up and rush downstairs to help his friend, but his tired and sore legs wouldn't let him. He was fastened to the floor with only his adrenaline to help him, and he was sure that it wouldn't be enough to stop the inevitable.
Once Dale's head disappeared and he was fully inside the garage, the hanging light flipped on, casting shadows all about the concrete out front. Since the building lay behind the house (or at least partially askew), it was not technically a garage and thus couldn't be seen by anyone but the neighbors. Unfortunately, one of them ' the one who have been able to view this strange occurrence most clearly ' was now inside the monstrosity and walking steadily toward the back wall, toward the place which had flummoxed them so just that afternoon. Now, though, it seemed pretty clear.
The garage was a monster.
It was almost like a sick joke, but Jim wasn't laughing. The whirring noise heightened as Dale reached the crack in the wall ' or at least it's what Jim could envision due to the shadows ' and a single cry pierced the otherwise quiet night air as a harsh red light pushed suddenly out in the midst of the hanging light's glow.
In that glow, Jim saw the jagged teeth of a beast or the mangled view of a monster's mouth. Of course he couldn't actually see what was going on, but his imagination wouldn't let him escape with just an essence of what was happening.
Two thick, slurpy crunching sounds impaled Jim's hearing, the noise of a trash compacter snapping a broom handle in two, and was silent again. The red glow faded back to its original pale yellow shine and then flickered out as the hanging overhead light went out.
Jim waited, hoping for some kind of release, though nothing came. It was as awful as he had imagined. A monster had come along and swallowed his neighbor, albeit a pesky one, whole. Well, with two bites, but he couldn't afford the presence of mind to argue semantics at that point.
Jim slumped to a full sitting position and listened to the soft sounds of Maureen's snores ' she was back on the painkillers, by all appearances ' unsure of what to do next.
The answer to his quandary came in the form of heavy, tennis-shoe stomps across his backyard.
Jim peeked carefully out into his lawn to see his other neighbor looking up at him.
'Holy crap, Jim,' Gary said, his voice enveloped in a kind of awe-filled disbelief. He was holding a camcorder in one hand and a flask in the other. 'Did you just see what happened?'
Jim nodded and began to crawl across the bedroom carpet toward the stairs. It was about to become a long night.
'I got most everything on here,' Gary said, holding the camcorder out for Jim to see. 'I don't know how well it will turn out, but Jesus that was crazy.'
'I know,' Jim replied.
The two of them were standing in the driveway on the side of the house, cautiously peering around the corner at the garage. Nothing was happening that could be considered even remotely interesting. The garage had become a garage again, instead of a monster. It was dark and silent, showing no signs that it had ever been anything different.
'Just for clarification's sake,' Jim said, 'we both saw what happened. We both saw the same thing, right?'
'I got it all on videotape. We can compare notes, if you want, but I think overall, yeah, we saw the same thing. Dale Carson just got eaten alive by a living, growling garage. Against his will, I hope.'
'Yeah, I saw him. He looked up at me before he walked in. He was absolutely terrified.'
'Why him?'
'What?'
Gary glanced around cautiously, almost as if he thought the garage would hear him espouse his theory.
'Well, I wonder what made Dale so vulnerable.' He pointed at Jim's bedroom window. 'I mean, you live right there.'
'I don't know.'
'Maybe because he believed the least? Was he some sort of test run? I mean, not to speak ill of the dead, but Dale was''
'I know. And he was hitting the bottle pretty hard, so that could have played a part in it.'
'Could have. But it seems so unlikely.'
The two of them stood there for a very long time, unsure of how to proceed in a very strange situation.
Exhaustion had begun to creep back into Jim, who was now fighting the urge to just go crawl back into bed and worry about all of this in the morning. But curiosity ' and Gary, he knew ' would not let him get back to sleep until they had at least a working knowledge of what was going on.
'Well,' Gary said at last, 'why don't we hop the fence and go watch this at my house?'
'What if Maureen wakes up?'
Gary smiled. 'I don't know. You're on your own there.'
Gary's house was surprisingly neat. Jim had always imagined him to be a mad genius sort of person, the kind who leaves papers and theorems and food and things everywhere, but his house did not reflect Jim's assumption. Even losing his wife had not discouraged his sense of cleanliness.
Gary, meanwhile, had found a set of A/V cables and was connecting the camcorder to the television.
'You want something to drink?' Gary said absently as he fished around behind the entertainment center for something. 'Water? A beer?'
'No thanks,' Jim said, absently admiring Gary's movie collection. It consisted mostly of horror and science fiction stuff, but Jim saw a few action-type flicks indicative of a man yearning for his own adventure.
He nearly laughed when he saw The Goonies.
Once he fostered the necessary connections, Gary turned on the television and pressed play. A moment's static was replaced by a blue screen, which was in turn replaced with a starkly clear picture of Jim's backyard.
'Wow,' he said.
'I know. It's digital. I wish I had the money to go HD. It's all about the quality of the''
A brief rustling onscreen jerked him out of his tangential discussion. The camera was moving through a section of bushes, Gary's malnourished azaleas, and trying to get a better look over the fence that separated the two yards.
Through the lens of the camera, Dale could be plainly seen, even amongst the dark shadows which dominated the frame. And, even though his back was facing the camera, one could almost see the inarticulate, foreign manner in which he was moving. It reinforced Jim's belief that perhaps Dale was drawn in against his will.
But, he thought, maybe Dale's interest in the anomaly had taken over and was the overarching force guiding him toward his imminent death. It was possible, though not likely.
'How did you know to come outside and film?'
Not looking away, Gary replied, 'Well, I never actually went to bed or anything.' He smiled. 'I stayed up and kept peering out of my back window. I couldn't help myself. I was too excited and didn't want to miss anything. At some point ' sometime after midnight ' I just kind of drifted outside with my camera. It was all fortuitous, I guess.'
Not that anything about today had made Jim feel especially comfortable, but Gary was beginning to worry him. He was taking on the look of a man obsessed, even though they'd only encountered the garage's oddity that afternoon. It was the look in his eye or something, the glint that said he would take this thing to its conclusion, logical or not.
Onscreen, Dale was still staring (or presumably staring) into the depths of darkness in the garage; only a few minutes from death, but a small, squeaky voice could now be heard in the distance. The camera moved up and to the right, revealing the very top of Jim's head.
'Jeez, do I really sound like that?' It was all he could think to say, considering what was about to happen.
'Yeah,' Gary replied. 'But watch. This is where it gets weird.'
There was another high-pitched entreaty for Dale to quit his nonsense, and, for a moment, the side of Dale's face could be seen. It was still impressively dark on the television and Gary pushed some buttons to improve the conditions, but nothing helped, not really.
In the face on the screen fear could be assessed, though the severity of it could not. It was only a momentary glimpse of the last emotions of Dale Carson, but the implications of their meaning were immense. The two of them, he and Gary, would have to take this whole situation to its logical conclusion, even if it meant putting themselves in danger.
'I don't know that I can watch the rest of it again,' Gary said and stood up, rubbing one hand on his eye. 'You were lucky to be sitting in your room. I didn't even want to look. But I couldn't turn away, either.'
Dale took his first step into the garage, and light filled the small room. The screen went momentarily blank, struggling to adjust to the intensely bright pop in the distance. From behind the camera, Gary gasped and said something unintelligible.
'Oh my God,' Jim said. 'I thought Dale turned the light on.'
'Nope,' Gary replied. 'It's all there, man. I couldn't believe it myself, at first, but the damn light just came one. Just like that.'
The next few moments passed quickly, and Jim didn't bother to finish watching. Instead, he joined Gary in the kitchen. A beer was waiting for him on the counter.
'You know what I just realized, Jim,' Gary said. 'That place is probably filled with blood.'
Jim sighed. 'Dale's blood.'
'Yep, and it won't clean itself.'
'I'm not going back in there.'
'What, and let your wife stumbled onto the pool that used to be your nosy neighbor? I bet that would go over real well.'
'You must be out of your mind.'
'I am a little, probably. I mean, what else could explain what happened in there? Drugs? Has the water supply been poisoned?'
'I don't know,' Jim replied. 'But I do think that you're way too interested in what's going on.'
'No, I just think that something truly paranormal has happened, and we were lucky enough to be privy to it.'
'Lucky? Could you say that to Dale?' He nodded at the blank screen and upturned the remainder of his beer. 'He's dead, and all we did was watch. Both of us.'
Gary placed his beer gently on the table and took one step toward Jim. 'What would you have suggested? That we intervene? In case you were wondering, I had no clue what was going on. How do you know that we would have survived?'
Jim waited, letting the tension pass for a moment. He could feel that Gary was getting extremely serious about what was going on. He felt it too, but he also knew that they'd have to work together to figure out the situation in his garage. If Gary backed down, he'd be stuck with a cannibalistic carport. 'Well, it is my house. Maybe I would have survived.'
Gary smiled, perhaps in spite of himself, and downed the rest of his Budweiser. 'I guess you're right. So does that mean that I get to carry all of the cool gadgets?'
'What cool gadgets?'
'I don't know. The mop and bucket, maybe?'
'I just considered something,' Gary said as he passed the mop and bucket across to Jim, 'what if that thing ' I don't think we can call it a garage anymore ' is still hungry? What do we do?'
'Feed it my wife,' Jim said, and immediately caught himself.
Gary was staring queerly at him. Jim could see that even in the darkness.
'Whoa now, Jim,' he said. 'You don't want to go around saying things like that around the people who are helping you. You shouldn't be saying them at all, as far as I'm concerned, but especially since one of your neighbors is recently deceased. Almost makes it look like you planned the entire thing.'
'Are you crazy? I'm scared shitless over this, and I'm afraid to know what we're going to do if it rears up at us, too.'
'Well, hopefully we'd be able to get away, as long as it didn't use any sort of mind control on us.'
'The way that it did with Dale?'
'Yeah.'
'You don't think he wanted anything to happen, do you?'
At this, Gary stopped. He'd crossed over the fence and was trudging the bucket full of warm, soapy water along with him. He held his flashlight in the other hand.
'I sure hope not,' Gary said. 'It would make this whole thing moot if he actually wanted to die, wouldn't it?'
'He has ' well, had ' been pretty depressed lately. Maybe he just''
Jim ran one outstretched thumb across his throat, making that throaty sound which normally indicated a knife's cut.
'Suicide? Really, Jim? Dale was absolutely terrified, even during the day, when we were just goofing around.' They stopped at the entrance to the garage. 'Even if he did think about suicide, I doubt that he'd want it to go down like that.'
Gary pointed his flashlight inside, revealing a scene of grotesquerie Jim had only associated with bad horror movies.
'Wow,' he said.
'I know. Let's hope that bastard is taking a nap or something. I never wanted to end up like Dale, and I definitely don't now.'
It wasn't just the blood on the walls, floor, and boxes that repulsed the two of them, but the little pieces of their former neighbor that lay like accidental dust bunnies all over the place. A toe here. A large bone fragment over there. Jim even thought he saw an eyeball somewhere.
'Did it regurgitate, you think?'
Gary had taken two steps inside and was waving his flashlight around frantically, perhaps checking to see if he had angered the thing in the garage.
'Don't know,' he said. 'It's a possibility, but this all could have come from the initial attack. Come on in. The water's fine.'
Jim didn't laugh. 'I don't know that I can, Gary. What if it''
Gary had already crossed the floor to the back of the room and was inspecting the wall with his flashlight, running its beam from left to right, as if he were inspecting an ancient text carved in the main tomb of an abandoned city.
'I really don't think it will.'
'How do you know? Have you ever dealt with something like this before?'
'No,' Gary said, not turning around. 'But in the movies, if you make it into the heart of the beast's lair without disturbing it, you're usually fine. Until someone accidentally wakes it up, of course.'
The utter amazement and joy in Gary's voice was a little more than mildly disconcerting. He was talking about the movies with no sense of sarcasm.
Jim inched forward. He was standing just under the garage door when the building groaned. It sounded like a giant lion's unhappy growl, and Jim was so frightened that all he could produce in terms of a scream was a choked, whispery yelp. He took two steps back, putting himself just outside the garage again, and waited for the thing to swallow Gary, who stood stock still and used one finger to gently turn off his flashlight.
They were immediately submerged in darkness, and neither spoke a word, even a single syllable, for some time. Gary might have been a little zealous in his investigation, but he wasn't stupid enough to agitate the thing.
Instead, they stared sightlessly into the garage, whose darkened wall seemed to grow and expand in front of them, an illusion which did not help the situation.
But the silence persisted for several minutes, and at some point they almost simultaneously concluded that they would be all right if they continued.
'Jim,' Gary whispered, his back still facing the outside world, 'you think you can come in here and look around with me now?'
Jim, hesitating, said, 'I think I can now.'
He took his first few tentative steps in and let out his breath, which he hadn't remembered holding moments before. But he almost wished he hadn't when he got a whiff of the odd, hot, sanguine odor that drifted up to meet him as he passed through what had formerly been his junky garage.
Gary flipped the switch on his flashlight and placed the mop bucket gently on the ground at Jim's feet.
'Well,' he said, 'guess it's time we get started with the work.'
It was just after sunrise when they poured the last of the bloody water into the corner of the yard, at the edge of the fence that separated Jim's property from Gary's.
They had reluctantly cleaned the placed from top to bottom, and it was with a great amount of relief that they sat on the dilapidated old boxes full of old crap and waited to begin the day's clean-up.
'Maureen's gonna be pissed if she finds out I was out all night,' Jim said. 'Or that'll probably happen anyway.'
'You ever thought about leaving her?'
Jim's brows furrowed and he thought about it for a while before answering. 'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Well, I, just, I hadn't thought about life without her, you know,' Gary said, speaking of his Eileen, 'until the day I found that she'd left. Never crossed my mind.'
'Really?'
'Really. I thought the 'til death do us part' was really supposed to mean something. Guess I was wrong.'
'And you think Maureen's going to leave me?'
The door on the side of Jim's house creaked and slammed against the frame, the sound echoing loudly in the soundless daybreak.
Gary looked at him earnestly. 'That's not what I was getting at.'
It was Maureen who emerged from around the corner, dressed in a threadbare pink robe and carrying her morning cup of coffee. Black. No sugar.
She smiled, though it was transparent. Jim glanced at Gary and noticed that even he saw right through it.
'So there you are, hubby,' she said, still showing them that patronizing smile. 'I was wondering where you'd run off to.'
Jim stumbled for words. Fortunately, Gary had prepared himself. 'Well, we thought we'd get an early start on the work. Jim knew how soon you needed this to get done so you could move forward with your yard sale plans.'
'Mmm-hmm,' Maureen said, running her eyes up and down her husband. 'Is that why you're still in your pajamas?'
Jim opened his mouth but balked at the chance to speak. All that came was that peculiar choking sound from before.
Maureen winked at them. 'I knew it. I knew I'd caught you. The two of you.'
A small, yet audible, sound emerged from the back of the small building, though it was loud enough for both Jim and Gary to hear. They both stiffened a bit at the sound of it, but neither of them gave away their knowledge of the situation.
It was a groan. The thing was awake again.
'I guess so, Maureen. What did you catch us doing?'
She lifted her coffee cup and pointed behind them with one long, bony finger. 'You've been checking out that damn crack in the wall, haven't you?'
Gary chuckled, a forced measure. 'Yep. I reckon so. We thought we'd get out here and take a peek before we actually got to work.'
'Well,' she said, her eyes fixed on her dumbfounded husband. 'If the two of you had been actually working, it might all have been done by now.'
'Perhaps, but then we'd be done and have to come harass you, wouldn't we?'
She smiled, still not completely melted but better than before. The sound coming from behind them was growing louder, emerging out of the groan into a low whine, consistent with the racket they'd heard the night before.
Strange, Jim thought. I don't remember hearing the sound on the video, and Gary never mentioned it.
He looked at Gary. On his face, the same expression ' that of wonderment ' was still existent. It hadn't changed an iota, and Jim suddenly wondered if he heard the noise at all. It wasn't the same as seeing their neighbor get eaten, but it seemed that it would be enough to change that child's expression, at least a little bit.
Maureen, most certainly, did not hear it or else she would be giving them both a hard time right now, complete with the hand gestures and loud, controlling voice she liked to use in these situations.
'What's that?' Maureen asked, and Jim snapped back to reality. She had been rambling on about something or the other that she wanted him to do that afternoon, and something out of the ordinary had caught her attention, causing her to stop in the middle of her sentence. 'What is that?'
Jim exchanged glances with Gary, the eyes of both men wide and frightened. For once, Jim saw that Gary was speechless, too, and a wave of panic rushed over him. What if they'd missed a big part of Dale ' his fat head, maybe ' and she was staring right at it? Or worse, what if she had begun to detect the whirring sound that was growing behind them?
She'd take a trip to Divorce City and half of his income would go right with her, that was for sure. It was an unspoken agreement between them that if he was to screw up at any point in their marriage or embarrass her in a way consistent with the teachings of her mother, then she would leave him. Her damn mother didn't like him very much anyway. But he didn't know if she would have the heart to give him up for the police.
Well, he thought, I guess we're about to find out.
'What, Maureen,' Jim managed to say. 'What have we done now?'
She glared at him. 'Don't make me feel like I'm belittling you, mister. Something is going on with that damn garage, and I want to know what it is right now.'
She was moving forward now, staring through them and trying to get a good look of what lay inside. Her coffee cup dangled at a strange angle and for a moment Jim thought she was going to spill the hot liquid on herself and end this whole situation prematurely. He actually hoped for that until he realized that it would not happen.
'Maureen, I don't ''
'Get out of my way.'
Jim wanted to blurt something out, to make something up that would convince her that she did not want to go in there, but nothing would come. The two of them were standing now, making a big show of the fact that they didn't want her in there, but it would not last forever. Maureen was not the type of person just to give up on a situation as strange as this one. Even if she didn't find her way into the garage today, she would most certainly do it later.
But the whirring, Jim thought as his mind drifted to the previous night's events with Dale Carson. He envisioned Maureen enveloped in a thick membrane of blood, broken in half and almost digested by whatever it was that had taken over their small two car garage.
There was no way he could let her join Dale.
'We just killed a rat, a big one,' he blurted out, and Maureen stopped in her tracks. 'Big as a tanker.'
She gave him an incredulous look. 'Then what's with the weird noises coming from in there?'
'What noises?'
'The ones that sound like a miniature helicopter is taking off in there. What about them?'
Gary stepped in. 'The rat was chewing on one of the electrical lines and got fried. We were waiting for it to stop stinking in there before we disposed of the body.'
The sound was picking up even worse now, making a low fwit-fwit-fwit in the background.
'And you didn't think to tell me that first off?' She waited for an answer which did not come and then pushed through them. It was a weak excuse and, being the intelligent woman that she was, she saw right through it. 'I knew it was a lie.'
Jim didn't even bother to turn around. He was just going to wait for that giant mouth to open up and try to swallow her before intervening, if at all. If she wanted to see what was really going on in there, then she deserved a little taste. Perhaps Gary would be more compassionate right now, but Jim couldn't stand to listen to her anymore. Not right now, at least.
He was too tired and too harried with the inexplicable truth of the situation to try and stop his wife from getting involved. If she made it through this, then she deserved to know what they believed had happened ' what they had seen ' even if it sounded as crazy as he thought it did in his head.
The racket from within the garage had progressed to a rattling knock, like a dryer full of belt buckles. Jim hadn't turned around, but he knew that she was now inside. He was all but sure she was looking around for something to chide him about, but the place was pretty spotless, even in the wake of the splatterfest of the previous evening.
Gary, too, seemed momentarily struck with awe, and it was only through the grace of God that Maureen did not cry out when she found out what had happened. It came to her slowly, her realization, but she realized it fully as she listened to the whirring in the back of the garage.
'Where's Dale?' she said, and at this, Jim began to walk, slowly and jerkily, toward the back of the house. 'Why isn't he helping you?'
Jim was halfway up the back steps, thinking of what he would tell everyone once news got out. Maureen may have been the Bellow Street head of gossip, but she wasn't the only one in town. News would travel fast, especially since both of them would be gone.
'Jim?' Gary said, and something in his voice made him stop dead in his tracks.
He turned to see the crack in the back wall of the garage widen, large, tangential divisions branching up and out like a tree in fast forward. Maureen stood in its wake, her screams stolen by the sound from within.
Neither Jim nor Gary could move but for entirely different reasons, or at least to Jim it seemed that way. Gary was staring wide-eyed at the large discrepancy in reality, logging it in his mind for future reference, because hopefully it would be the only time such a thing would happen. Jim didn't even have to look in his direction to know this was so. Gary was a natural anthropologist, unable to detach himself from his nearly obsessive predilection for the macabre, and now that they were faced with a beast of nearly Lovecraftian immensity, he would settle into his role as the awe-inspired scientist. It was not his place to be the hero.
For some reason, that responsibility had fallen on Jim's shoulders. He had no other part in this. It was his wife caught in the middle of the hellstorm and he could not let her die, not even if she deserved it a little for being too nosy for her own good.
Wind pushed out of the small building, hot and putrid like the smell on the inside of an old brewery, and Jim's eyes watered as he tried to make his way back the way he came. His legs were giving him fits now, shaking and stiffening up, but he moved forward nonetheless, going right at the center of what had ripped his poor neighbor in two the night before.
'Gary, help me!' Jim said above the whipping wind.
'Maureen'll be killed if only one of us goes in there.'
Gary, who was staring at the burgeoning disaster inside Jim's garage, tilted his eyes toward him but gave no definite indication that he'd be willing to help. He was locked into place, and Jim couldn't really blame him. He didn't want to do this, either. Hell, he'd almost let his wife get devoured because he was too afraid of what lay inside his old garage.
'Gary!' he said, his voice cracking on the last syllable.
'Come on.'
At this Gary's eyes seemed to clear, and he began to nod slightly. It was too late to merely stand around and think of something to stop whatever was inside the garage ' perhaps it was a monster and perhaps it was not ' but for now saving his wife would have to suffice.
Inside, the tree-shaped crack in the wall had begun to quiver and what had formerly looked like long branches now seemed like jagged, wooden teeth, complete with sharp ends. It was as if every toot was a giant dagger. A light shone through the back of the mouth ' or what looked like a mouth ' perhaps to blind its victims but most likely it was to see them. Jim could identify no other set of eyes, and he was not completely sure that the thing even had to see its victims, especially in the daytime.
As he reached Maureen, his bladder letting go of the beer he'd had only hours ago, he saw in her eyes the same sort of bewilderment and fear which had basically gotten Dale killed. She stared into the depths of the monster's rudimentary mouth, but it was clear that there was nothing she could do about her terror. She might as well have been strapped into a chair. It reminded Jim of Medusa in Greek mythology and he suddenly had a plan.
Meanwhile, Gary had caught up and was now screaming at Jim, asking him what they should do next. The wind and whirring was clipping his comments off as he spoke them, but Jim got the gist of what he was trying to say.
'Get Maureen out of here first,' Jim said, grabbing his wife's right arm. Gary and nodded and grabbed her left, pulling with every bit of strength he could muster.
Nothing happened.
Either the monster had too great a control over her, which was entirely a possibility, or the two of them just weren't pulling hard enough. She was stuck, and it was then Jim wondered if it was meant for him to get out of this alive or not. The situation had come along so suddenly that he thought perhaps it was his destiny to be killed by the sort of mundane work a husband in the suburbs is subjected to every day. It was certainly what had killed his father, although in an entirely different manner, of course. His father had died of a stroke in the garden two years ago. Jim, it seemed, would die cleaning out the garage. Indirectly, of course.
A thick, black mass protruded out of the crack in the garage, looking like a cross between a giant gray tongue and a monstrous worm, and it was headed for all three of them. Maureen shrieked, or at least he thought she had shrieked, but that did not seem to help. They were stuck, and not a thing they could do would help them now.
Jim realized, then, that he had been pulled in by the same force which had so enchanted his neighbor to his death, like the Scylla and Charybdis of Pine Hollow, Georgia. He was fully aware of his terror and only wanted it to stop, but it was nothing he could control. He was frozen.
'Jim!' Gary screamed, but, then again, he was frozen too. It was only a matter of time now. Soon, he wouldn't even be able to speak.
The smell emanating from the beast of the garage was the same as before, that abandoned brewery odor. But now it was stronger, truer somehow, and Jim felt he was being suffocated. Hell, he was being suffocated. And the closer the tongue drew to him, the more helpless he felt.
The gray mass was slithering cautiously toward them now, possibly checking to make sure they were, indeed, helpless. It wiggled to one side, sizing up Gary, and then to the other, where Jim stood struggling with his own body. Maureen stood quietly between them, unable to move anything but her eyes now. She was watching their tormentor move from side to side, a charmed cobra doing tricks for the locals.
Veins throbbed and pulsed on the mass, as if it were breathing in through the black, porous dots on its surface. Jim was waiting for the moment that it would attack, hoping that the spell of the paralysis would break momentarily. He assumed that it was the smell which had caused them to seize up, and he probably would have come to that conclusion had he been closer the night before. He was slowly developing a plan, and only a slight break in the thing's hold would give them a chance at survival.
Otherwise, they'd be screwed.
The tongue-shaped monster wrapped its tentacle tip around one of Gary's legs and snatched him down onto the ground as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. He landed with a thud, though the brunt of the sound had been stolen by the blustery airstream pouring from the jagged mouth of the garage.
Even though he couldn't hear it, Jim knew that his neighbor ' and he guessed his best friend ' was screaming for him, screaming for anything, really, and he couldn't do a single thing to help him. It was all he could do to avert his eyes from what was going on.
The tongue was dragging Gary through the labyrinthine accumulation of boxes and junk, and, to his credit, Gary was fighting the best anyone in his situation really could. He was thrashing around a little, catching himself against boxes or old tools, before getting pulled forward into the mouth of the beast. Jim was reminded of the final scene in Jaws.
Then it broke. The strange spell over Jim and Maureen let go, and the two of them could move again.
Maybe the beast couldn't tell we were here, he thought.
Jim was suddenly rushing forward, unsure of what he was going to do, having been scared out of his previous plan, which involved getting the axe and chopping the tongue in two. But it was too late for that. He ran the risk of cutting Gary, and that would do him no good, not now. He knew he had to do something, though, or else Gary would be dragged to his death.
Gary, meanwhile, was looking at him with eyes far more terrified than Dale's had been. They held a realization of what was going on, which is the opposite of what Dale had showed them. Perhaps it was why it had been so easy to watch him die. He did quickly, without thought. This all seemed so much more protracted than the death of their other neighbor. Dale's death had been quick, gory.
Jim looked around, trying to find something that would be a useful weapon against an animal which he had never encountered. Would an axe work? A chainsaw? He didn't have time to crank something gas-powered, and, even then, he didn't know that his stuff would even work in this strange new atmosphere.
A box of old magazines lay at his feet ' boxes were everywhere ' and he was struck with the craziest notion yet.
He picked up the box and hurled it at the jagged mouth, which was opening and closing like a giant, gaping eye. It shattered several teeth on its way through, sending shards of wood in all directions. There was a moment that he thought it had worked, a moment just after the thing screamed. Everything was still, including the tongue, which had given the conquest of Gary a break.
Jim wasted no time reaching down for his friend's hands, pulling him free of the beast's grasp and hauling him outside the garage door. Gary was shrieking like a madman, although Jim couldn't tell if was because he was glad to be free of the thing or because he wanted to see what the inside of that thing was like.
Meanwhile, inside the garage, the tongue was still and the mouth had stopped its fruitless chomping, looking oddly like factory machinery left to rot. There was no liquid to be spoken of ' no blood or saliva, in other words ' and the voracious wind had ceased, leaving the three survivors in a substantial silence.
Except, Jim realized, it was really only two.
Maureen was nowhere to be found. He really couldn't recall the last moment he'd seen her, but it had to have been sometime after Gary's whole debacle.
'Where's Maureen?'
'I don't know,' Gary said, staring down at his legs, which were still wrapped in tongue.
Jim slipped out of the garage, knowing that Gary would be all right to help himself up, if he even got that far. He seemed pretty interested in what had just tried to eat him. Nevertheless, it was over ' or at least it seemed over ' and he had to make sure his wife was all right. If she wasn't in the house, then he'd have to begin worrying. She couldn't just vanish, could she?
He managed the stairs leading up to the back door and forced his way in, moving oddly but moving either way. His fear was causing him to feel drunk, detached from his own body, and he couldn't help but think that maybe she was gone, that maybe she had disappeared during his struggle with the beast. It wasn't such a farfetched idea to him.
Walking through the dining room, though, he heard a low murmuring and found his wife seated on the couch. She was hunched over the telephone, repeating the same thing over and over without pause.
Got to get the garage cleaned. Got to get the garage cleaned. Got to get the garage cleaned.
It was all too eerie, but he had to approach Maureen. She couldn't be expected to understand what was going on, not even in the smallest sense. Outside, Gary was cursing up a storm, throwing things and just making a general ass of himself. He imagined Gary to be prodding and poking the remains of the monster which had nearly dragged him to his death, afraid to go retrieve his video camera lest the thing disappeared.
Jim was relieved to find that Maureen wasn't speaking to anyone in particular, but he pulled the phone from her hands and placed it back on the end table next to the couch nonetheless. Not that anyone would believe her anyway, but he had to help her preserve her sanity.
'Hon,' he said, speaking into the top of her head. 'Are you all''
'I'm going to tell,' she said. Her voice was timid and flat, but there was an air of a threat in it. 'You know I'm going to. Everyone will know what happened back there today.' She looked up at him. 'And to Dale. He's dead, isn't he? They already got to him.'
Her face was colorless and waxy-looking, like a candle made to look like skin. Jim saw in her eyes that she was serious, that she would tell everyone that she knew what had happened. It was no surprise to him, but he'd hoped that maybe she'd want to keep it a secret. To protect her husband.
'Maureen, I can't let you do that.'
'You can't stop me,' she said. 'Unless you want to feed me to that thing back there, if it's not dead.'
She was shaking, probably coming off some kind of pill ' or maybe several of them ' and wanting another.
'And I'm leaving you, Jim,' she said, not looking at him. 'It's been a long time coming, but I think that it's time we tried to go our separate ways. I hope you don't mind.'
The words hit him like a belt being snapped in a quiet room. 'You want a divorce? Because of what happened today?'
Now he was the one who was shaking.
'No, but I can't say that it didn't help. I mean, standing there, staring at that thing, I couldn't help but wonder what's happened to my life. To our lives. You know, I thought for a second you were going to let me die.'
She smiled imperfectly, a sinister smile, and he reached out to touch her. She shrugged his hand from her shoulder, and it felt like it was over now. Jim could see that she was serious and had been thinking about it for a long while.
He sighed, thinking of a delicate way to tell her what he thought.
'Maureen,' he began, searching for the words, 'everyone's going to think you're crazy if you try to tell them about what went on this morning. You know that.'
'I'll tell them about Dale.'
'You wouldn't do that.' He could feel a slow heat rising in his stomach, heading for his heart and face.
'Oh, you'd think that. So, even if they don't believe the, you know, monster stuff, they'll at least get a sense of what happened to Dale. And guess what? When they don't find him, my suspicion will be enough to come check out the garage. There has to be some bit of him left in there.'
Jim was backing away now, trying to block out all of the horrible things he wanted to do to his future ex-wife. For a moment, a split second, he wished that the monster was still alive, still viable enough to take one more person with it.
Then a great thing happened. Jim thought of the video, the one which actually showed what happened to Dale, and he smiled. It wasn't proof of alien life, but it was enough to keep him from being convicted of murder.
And Maureen didn't know a damn thing about it.
'But then I couldn't pay you alimony from prison, Maureen.'
She had stood up, probably heading for the bedroom to take a few pills or pack her things. Wasn't that what people did in these situations? On her face was a perplexed look, which had replaced the smug sense of accomplishment from only a few moments ago.
'You're not going to kill me, are you?'
He chuckled, or at least tried to, and walked to the refrigerator, meaning to grab two beers but getting a couple of Gatorades instead.
'Did you hear me, Jim?'
'I'm not gonna kill you, Maureen. If you want to go, then go. I can't stop you.' He turned to face her. 'But I saved your life ' Gary's and mine, too ' today and I can't believe you'd walk out on the heels of that.'
'It was your fault I almost got killed in the first place, what with you screwing with that damn garage wall.'
'It wasn't my idea to clean out the garage.'
Her eyes widened. 'See! That's exactly why I'm leaving you, Jim. It's that kind of thing that's pushed me away. Don't you see that?'
'Is it?' He opened one of the cabinets and pulled down several bottles. Xanax, Percoset, Librium. He held them up for her to see. 'Or is it all this?'
'That has nothing to do with us.'
'Okay, then,' he said, and uncapped one of the bottles. Maureen shrieked as he poured one of the bottle's contents down the sink.
'What the hell is the matter with you?'
She lurched forward, grabbing at the second bottle Jim was trying to open, and spilled the little pills all over the floor. Maureen dropped immediately to her knees and stuffed two or three in her mouth. She was sobbing now, not from the argument but for her lost treasures, and Jim knew it was time to go.
He picked up the two Gatorade bottles and headed for the back door.
Maureen called after him. 'Where do you think you're going. We haven't finished this conversation. I'm leaving, remember?'
'Oh, we're finished,' he said as he opened the back door. 'I just remembered that I have some cleaning to do.'
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