Pete Gillespie stood up and sucked down the last of his Coors Light as Len Andrew's yellow plastic phone started to ring. He glanced at the ringing phone with the same amount of interest he might give a stranded motorist waving for help in the pouring rain. Absently crushing the can, he tossed it in the corner without looking. It landed on top of the rest of the garbage where it dislodged a half eaten apple, sending it bouncing down the pile and wobbling across the floor.
The kitchen smelled a bit like cooked cabbage, and Pete thought he saw a few maggots working their way in and out of last week's chicken dinner. The once pale yellow linoleum floor now resembled the color of a polluted sky, and the dishes were piled up over the sink. Pete made a mental note it was time to blow this joint.
The phone rang a fourth time, and Pete waited for the answering machine to pick up.
Pete guessed Len didn't have many friends or relatives who really gave much of a shit, since this was only about the sixth time the phone had rung in the last month. Judging by the way the line went dead as soon as the machine picked up he figured most times it was a telemarketer. On one occasion, some deadhead expressed his concern over ol' Lenny boy missing some sort of meeting, other than that, no friends, no calls from Mom, nothing. In other words, perfect.
The answering machine clicked, and Len's recorded voice announced he wasn't currently available. Pete chuckled. He always got a good laugh out of that one. The voice went on to say to please leave a message at the beep. An irritating tone squeaked followed by silence.
'Damn telemarketers,' Pete said shaking his head. He turned to the fridge to get another beer when words suddenly spilled from the speaker in a faint, but familiar voice. Pete froze.
'Help... me. Help me... please.' Pete turned and stared at the answering machine. The voice, which Pete was quite sure he recognized, didn't sound anything like it did the last time he heard it. No, nothing like the whining, shrill begging for mercy tone, but there was no way this could be who he thought it was. Len was safely packed away in the downstairs deep freeze. Of course his arms and head had to be carefully removed and rearranged to get the lid closed, but that did nothing more than reinforce the fact he couldn't be leaving a message on his own answering machine right now.
The line went dead, and a dial tone buzzed from the speaker like a horse fly twirling away the last of its life as it hung tangled in a spider's web. Pete continued to stare at the phone, his hand still on the handle of the refrigerator. The idea of relaxing with another beer somehow didn't sound as good as it did only a second ago. He knew that couldn't have been Len, but still, something wasn't right about it. The phone rang again, and Pete's heart leapt up to his throat.
He moved towards the phone, meaning to yank the cord from the wall, when it picked up on the second ring. The same flat, emotionless voice spoke to him.
'Just wanted to let you know that you're done with-" Pete didn't let whoever was giving him this line of shit a chance to finish. He sprinted to the phone and jerked the cord from the wall, knocking the phone off the counter in the process. It hit the dirt-covered linoleum and shattered, sending shards of plastic shooting across the floor.
'I don't know who the hell you are, but I know you're not ol' Lenny boy because his ass is packed on ice!' Pete knew something else too; he wasn't done with anything and never would be, not until he decided he was. He had been doing this too long to have some smartass on the phone fuck it up now.
#
It was ten years ago when Pete's mom had set up a job for him to work for his uncle Darrell at the hardware store in Jackson Tennessee, but after three months of sweeping up rat turds and selling nails to the local Billy Bobs, Pete knew being a hardware store flunky wasn't going to turn his crank. However, it didn't take to long to find out what did.
With no money to speak of, or any job prospects, hitchhiking seemed to be a pretty good option, so he set off to see the world. He was thumbing it up SR101 in northwest Tennessee when a guy named Nate Gordon pulled his late model Cadillac off to the side of the road and onto the gravel shoulder.
It crunched to a stop, and Pete walked up to the passenger side. He could tell as soon as he looked through the window this guy was a real flamer, but at close to midnight, it was starting to get a cold, and besides... he knew he could handle himself just fine.
They had only been on the road for a few minutes when Nate looked over and asked Pete if he wanted to earn a little money. The dim glow of the dash revealed a knowing smile growing on Nate's face like a rash. 'After all,' Nate said, 'I'm sure it gets lonely out on the road.'
Pete looked at the wad of money Nate had magically produced from his front pocket and then looked back up at his face. There was something about that fat smirking face that made Pete want to reach across the seat and rip it off of his fat smirking skull. However, Pete knew there was a time and place for violence, and even though this may be the place, it wasn't quite the time.
'Yea, sure. Why not?' Pete said in a conversational tone. He planned on earning a little money all right, but not the way this greaseball had in mind. They pulled off the highway into an abandoned strip mall parking lot. Ten minutes later, Pete had a cool two hundred and fifty bucks in his pocket, and Nate the Perv would never be exploiting unwary hitchhikers again.
Pete leaned over to wipe the blade of his stiletto on Nate's shirt then hesitated. He looked at the fresh blood glistening on the business end of his knife, thought what the hell?, and ran his tongue up the blade as if he were licking frosting off a mixer beater. The taste was bitter, but the thrill it sent through his body was well worth the nasty taste, let alone the little bonus of the heat wave it sent to his crotch.
'Whooo,' Pete said while wiggling his fingers in the air, 'who's the perv now?'
Laughing at his own good humor, he looked over at Nate. Nate's head was leaning back on the headrest, and his dead eyes seemed to have found something of great interest on the torn cloth of the car's interior. Pete gave Nate's forehead, which was already turning clammy and cold, a couple of quick slaps. 'You are my friend. You were the one who planned on doing something disgusting. All I did was to lick a little blood.'
Pete surprised himself on how natural this all seemed. He thought maybe it was all those rats he'd caught and tortured at the hardware store. It was like all the stories about guys who started out life torturing animals and-
A light flashed through the car as someone turned onto a side road somewhere behind him. It continued around a corner and disappeared. Pete knew he better quit enjoying the moment or this may be his first and only one like it, and he knew he didn't want that. No, not at all. Shaking off the feeling of euphoria, he got busy working the wallet out of Nate's patented double knit, perv slacks.
Then with the help of the map in the glove box and Nate's driver's license, Pete made his way to Nate's house. Nate lived in a rural area so no one saw Pete dragging the body up the front porch steps and into the house. He rolled it down the basement steps like a sack of old newspapers, pushed the door closed, and proceeded to search the house for anything worth keeping.
#
It had been going on like that for years, and like anything you do, practice makes perfect. Men, women, young, old, it didn't really matter much to Pete, and throwing them in the freezer, if one was available, was always the best option.
Through his illustrious career, Pete had developed a nice sense of knowing when things were starting to go wrong and always pulled out before the shit storm started. Today, however, as he stood in Len's kitchen, Pete could see the thunderheads rolling in. Someone knew he was here, and he guessed he didn't have much time before the place would be crawling with cops.
Pete decided the best way to avoid this potential cluster was to buy himself the time he needed to get the hell out of Dodge and that could be accomplished by tossing ol' Lenny boy in the pond behind the house.
He walked across the kitchen, opened the basement door, and flicked on the lights. The bare bulbs hanging from the exposed wood joists threw dark shadows across the steps, and a damp, musty smell assaulted his nose. He started down then stopped. Something wasn't right. He couldn't connect the feeling with any certain thing, but something made his guts tighten, and he didn't like it.
A low electrical humming noise, which he assumed was the freezer, emanated from the basement. Then Pete started to experience something he wasn't used to, fear. He could feel his heart rate go up, his hands were starting to sweat, and he felt a prickle on his neck. It wasn't like the fear of being caught, hell that was almost a rush. No this was different, this was worse. 'No, this is bullshit,' Pete said. 'You're just freaking yourself out, so just get your ass down there and get this done.'
Pete took a deep breath and continued down. The wooden steps creaked with his weight, and with each step, the humming got a little louder. When he reached the bottom, he stopped again. Now his heart pounded so hard it felt like someone was punching him in the chest. Bullshit or not, he didn't like this at all, not one bit. Then just get the son of bitch out of the freezer and into the pond, then get the hell out of here, Pete thought wiping his hands on his pants.
He stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked around. A small room, housing the furnace and a workshop, went off to the left. The right opened up into a large room with unpainted block walls and a concrete floor. Cobwebs spanned and hung from the wood floor joists above. Several piles of cardboard boxes stood, precariously stacked, in various spots around the room. The dampness caused the glue to release, and most of the boxes were split open, spilling out molded clothes and books like swollen corpses spilling rotting entrails.
The one bulb dangling in the center of the room hung black and lifeless, allowing Pete's shadow, cast from the light at the steps, to stretch more than half way into the room. In the far corner was an opening leading into a small room under the front porch. It had a recessed dirt floor making the ceiling almost eight feet high. Old wooden shelves stacked with dust-covered jars of corn, beets, and other vegetables, stood straight ahead. To the left of the shelves, the freezer sat like a white enamel sarcophagus.
Pete took a cautious step towards the opening. The feeling he wasn't alone poured over him in a rush. He felt unseen fingers reaching for the back of his neck, and he had to fight back the ever increasing urge to run up the steps, out of the house, and not stop until he was a thousand miles away.
As Pete reached the opening, the humming became more obvious. He didn't remember hearing it the last time he was downstairs and tried to convince himself it was nothing more than the freezer overheating. He hesitated, and then stepped into the room.
His first thought was he was right about it overheating. What looked like black smoke was seeping out from under the lid, but when he moved closer, he saw it wasn't smoke. It was too thick, too black. It almost looked like ink or black paint, but it wasn't a liquid. And the humming wasn't the hum of an electric motor; it sounded more like the humming of a hundred human voices talking in low, moaning tones.
Now the black stuff came out faster, pouring down the sides of the freezer and appearing to puddle on the dirt floor. Pete's heart continued to pound, making his temples throb while the humming cut deep into his brain.
As Pete watched in disbelief, bubbles swelled and popped in the middle of the puddle like boiling tar.
Shaking his head, Pete blindly shuffled back, never taking his eyes off of the black mass. The middle of the puddle now rose up and seemed to be taking the shape of a person.
What looked like a head, then shoulders, lifted up from the ground until the top of it brushed the ceiling. Long arms broke away from the rest of the body, and the face seemed to flow and roll. One face would start to surface then rolled back as another one came forward.
The faces appeared to switch from male to female and young to old. Some Pete thought he had seen before, but just when it was starting to click, another face would appear, always just beyond recognizable.
The mouths of the many faces stretched open into a gaping yawn. The humming was now deafening, and voices were starting to break out from the humming. Voices Pete thought he had heard before, but wasn't sure. Fighting to keep control, he clamped his hands over his ears in an ill-fated attempt to drown out the sound.
His whole body shook, his eyes bulged and pulsed in their sockets, threatening to burst out. The thing's long arms stretched out to him, and the column of its body split to form legs. It glided towards him. Long fingers formed at the ends of the arms. The mouth stretched and twisted under two shining orbs, gleaming out at him like polished coal.
Pete screamed and turned to run, but hit the wooden shelves, knocking them against the wall then down on top of him. Jars of corn and sour beets hit the floor and burst open making hollow popping sounds. He tried to scramble towards the doorway, but his legs were tangled in the shelves.
The thing hovered over him and reached down just as Pete broke free of the shelves. Getting to his knees, he lunged towards the door. Something gripped his ankle with inhuman strength, and an instant later, he heard a sickening, crackling sound as the bones of his ankle were crushed.
He screamed again in a horrible mix of terror and then fell on his face, snapping off his two front teeth. Then he was being pulled backward. He reached out and grabbed at the damp block walls. For a moment he started to pull free, then the thing tighten its grip on his ankle sending a new burst of pain though his body. Pete tried to scream through a mouthful of his own blood as he was pulled back into the room.
#
Frank Johnson, the detective who had been in charge of the freezer murders at the Len Andrew's place, sat staring out the small window beside his desk. He couldn't believe it had been a whole year since that weird case out at the Andrew's place. He was in such deep thought he actually jumped when the phone rang.
Frank reached over and grabbed the phone from its cradle. 'Johnson here.' He twisted his cigarette out in the cheap glass ashtray on his desk, sending previous spent butts and ashes onto the marred wood surface of his desk.
'Frank, hey it's Sparrow. How's it going?'
'Steve Sparrow. Shit, how ya doing man? I haven't heard from you since you transferred... when? Eight, ten months ago?'
'Yeah, it was right after that shit out at the Andrews place.'
'Yeah..." Frank said, staring at the ashtray on his desk. Steve had been assigned to the Andrews case with him, so when he called at the same moment he was thinking about the case, it sent a chill crawling up his back like a fat spider. "Yeah, right. So what's going on Steve?'
'Lisa and I will be going through Willow on our way to Atlanta this spring and wanted to see if you wanted to get together for dinner, or at least a few beers.'
'Hell yes. Are you kidding?' Frank said, shaking off the weird feeling. 'Just tell me when, and I'll make sure I'm around.' Frank leaned back in the old wooden chair behind his desk. It rolled back a few inches, coiling up a Three Musketeer's wrapper in the wheels.
'Great,' Steve said. 'As soon as I get the date settled I'll let you know. Lisa will be happy to hear it too.' There was a slight pause on the line then Steve continued in a much more subdued tone.
'Hey Frank, speaking of that case out at the Andrews place, what ever happened with that? You ever find the guy who lived there?'
Frank hesitated, then grabbed his smokes off the desk, and put one between his lips. 'Nope, never found him.' He lit up and sucked in a deep breath. 'But you're not going to believe this shit.'
'What shit is that?' Steve asked, his voice suddenly tight.
'They linked the DNA of the guy in the freezer, who turned out to be a guy named Pete Gillespie, with at least thirty other cases of murder and missing persons, but that's not the weird part.' Frank took another drag and blew the smoke over the mouthpiece of the phone. 'When the boys at the lab checked the blood in the freezer they found DNA of sixty three other people.'
'What? Sixty-three people? That's impossible. Even if the guy kept souvenirs of his victims how could there be that much on him?'
'No, I'm not talking incidental DNA, I'm talking about the stuff found in blood.'
'Bullshit. There is no way,' Steve said.
'I told you you wouldn't believe me. It was like there were sixty three other people stacked up in that freezer before Gillespie found his way in.' Frank took another drag and absently tapped the ashes on the floor beside his desk. 'They found the same shit on the front of the freezer and in the dirt around it. Now here is the kicker. All of the DNA was from people either already on the missing persons list or known as murdered. That's how we linked this guy up with so many of the victims. They were his victims.'
Frank took another drag and twisted out the stub of his cigarette. There was silence on the other end of the phone. 'Steve? Hey Steve, you still there?'
#
Three hundred miles away, Steve eased the phone back in its cradle, deciding stopping in Willow maybe wasn't such a good idea after all.
