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spookyspaghettisundae · 2 years ago

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A Different Haul For 1993

Two years ago, the Whispers found a first shape to take.

Trees lined the long road. Forest swallowed both ends of the Tarmac where it curved through the woods. Choruses of crickets chirped happily. The sun burned, bright yellow and high in the picture-perfect blue sky. And the wide stretch between pavement and trees offered no shade for a lonesome wanderer.

Feet barked, toes hurt, and the back edges of his heels burned inside his military-issued boots with every step. Just a little bit too small for him.

Dressed too heavily for the warm weather, the fabric of his jeans, shirt, and army jacket had soaked up entire hours of sweat, adding to the burden of their weight.

Behind him, stray chunks of gravel flew off the asphalt. A car’s engine rumbled. A vehicle neared, traveling in the same direction as he walked.

Before even turning around to look, Freddy Fletcher extended a hand and stuck out his thumb.

Though he continued walking all the while, as he always did, his blood froze in his veins when the car slowed, pulling past him on the road.

A white Lexington cruiser with creamy stripes, imprinted with a star and big brown letters—marking it as property of the sheriff’s department.

It slowed until it stopped entirely, twenty paces ahead of him, pulled over on the side of the road. The car’s sirens remained dormant, though the ghost of their sound echoed in Freddy’s mind. A fear of the sirens coming for him one day.

Reflections of trees on the windows turned its driver into a shadowy, mysterious silhouette. Until the driver’s seat window lowered.

Freddy swallowed the thick empty lump of nothing in his parched throat and approached the vehicle.

He peered into the window. Back at him stared a woman in the expected uniform, wearing a black and beige baseball cap, also emblazoned with the golden star. Big, shiny aviator shades concealed the law enforcement officer’s eyes, framing a face that belonged to a redheaded woman in her late thirties.

The inside of the car reeked of stale cigarette smoke, coffee, and bourbon. The mixture made Freddy’s nose wrinkle. He was sensitive like that, and he hated the stench of nicotine.

The woman nodded at Freddy; Freddy reciprocated with the same gesture.

“Where do you need to go?” The calm monotone of her voice unsettled Freddy. Subtle tremors between her syllables sent shivers down his spine.

As if she was nervous herself.

Perhaps studying him?

Freddy pondered that as several seconds passed, mouth agape.

“Sorry, but, uh… aren’t you going to arrest me for hitchhiking?”

The uniformed woman stared at him. Then she shook her head.

“Not illegal in this state.”

Freddy nodded again and said, “My lucky day, I guess. If it isn’t too much of a bother for you, the nearest bus station’ll do, Sheriff.”

The Sheriff leaned over to open the passenger side door for Freddy, and only then corrected him.

“Deputy. Deputy,” She paused. Awkwardly long. “Hart. Please, have a seat. You look like you’ve been walking for a long time.”

Something was wrong. Freddy sensed it.

But she was also armed, driving a vehicle, and they were in the middle of nowhere. If he acted suspiciously now, there would be trouble.

He unshouldered his duffel bag as he rounded the vehicle, then slid onto the passenger seat. Dropping his bagged belongings across his lap, he buckled up, avoiding eye contact all the while.

The aviator glasses made her stony-masked expression indecipherable.

The car’s engine roared and the vehicle lurched into motion. They soon trailed down the road, with a steady pace growing steadily faster. Just a few miles above the speed limit.

Awkward silence filled the first minute, interrupted only by Deputy Hart, whose aviator-covered eyes stayed glued to their paved path.

“Where did you serve?” she asked.

Freddy clicked his tongue and then nodded anew. A routine question, offering a perfect segue for a rehearsed answer.

Just had to play along now.

“Saudi Arabia, ma'am.”

“Desert Storm?”

“Yes ma'am.”

Awkward silence ensued.

Then the Whispers began.

We know you, bandaged man. Skin thief, hapless child, toying with things you cannot comprehend.

Freddy shuddered. He looked around.

We’re about to save you from a life of grief.

The deputy only stared down the road.

She cannot hear us. It is not time for that, yet. First, you hear us. You… listen.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him, almost drowning out those Whispers. Telling himself:

GET OUT. JUST OPEN THE DOOR AND JUMP OUT.

You feel the weight of that knife in your bag. Thought it would be easy. Lonesome roads, an unsuspecting woman whose unexpected kindness you can exploit—

Freddy exhaled sharply, focusing, attempting to clear his mind—

But she knows. We know. We know the end of this road—your road—and she is now going to cut it short.

We will give you a different road to take. One without betrayal, and agony, and losing yourself in THE SUBSTANCE.

What a time to lose one’s mind. Freddy started telling himself that he had suddenly lost it.

Voices, of all things. Voices in his head.

His nostrils flared with frustration. He had always known something was wrong with himself. Past all the narcissism, something darker lurked beneath the surface. Something twisted, and sadistic.

Deputy Hart only stared ahead as she drove.

Her eyes stayed glued to the tendrils of THE HIGHWAY.

Keeping his eyes on the road, reading the environment, scanning the density of forest in anything but an absentminded fashion—Freddy spoke up, hoping to drown out the Whispers in his mind.

He had to kill her. He didn’t want to listen to these… Whispers. But he wanted to complete his work.

His mission.

“Any work I could find ‘round these parts?”

Take the knife—

Deputy Hart cleared her throat, tilting her head.

“Sorry, I’m new to these parts myself.”

She’s plotting something—

Freddy rubbed his chin and the dark stubble there scritch-scratched with every motion.

He craned his neck when the deputy’s car drove past a dirt road, forking away from the Tarmac.

“What’s down that way?”

USE THE KNIFE—

For the first time, Hart peeled her eyes off the road and followed Freddy’s gaze.

SHE KNOWS WHO YOU ARE. WHAT YOU ARE. USE THE KNIFE BEFORE SHE—

The side road shrank behind them as she said, “Park and YMCA camp down by the riverside there, I believe. But, like I said, I’m new to these parts.”

Because she does not belong. JUST LIKE YOU.

Take the knife.

Freddy chewed on a sliver of dried skin that had been peeling off his lip, then spoke up again.

“Mind pulling back there and dropping me off? I’m in no hurry, and a little time by the riverside to cool off sounds perfect to me right about now.”

Deputy Hart rolled her jaw and almost instantly turned the car around. Though the sunny country road had stayed empty this entire time, she still used her blinker before making the U-turn. Gravel on the roadside crunched as the car’s wheels sliced across it before connecting with pavement again.

Within seconds, they had returned to the side road, where Hart stopped.

She switched gears to park and stared down the dirt road.

THE KNIFE.

“This is good. Good right here.”

With even more routine than the rehearsed answer, Freddy unzipped his duffel bag, slung out the big hunting knife, and—

Stars.

You are all made of starlight. Destined for the darkness and void between you.

Stars exploded as his face hit the dashboard, stunned from the sudden burst of violence. Limbs flailed. The knife should have made its way into the deputy’s neck before she could respond, but she had been prepared. She had slammed Freddy face-first into the dashboard.

Waves of pain exploded past the stars, the world turned upside down. She slammed his face against the dash again, and again, before a swift kick threatened to crack a rib, and he hit the pavement outside the vehicle.

Still reeling, he scrambled to get up on his feet and froze when she barked at him.

“Stay right where you are! Do not move!”

Freddy gritted his teeth and balled his hands into fists. His knuckles burned where skin had broken, scraped bloody on the asphalt.

She loomed nearby, out of range from him, just several steps too far away for him to safely lunge at her. He could feel the cold barrel of a gun, waiting to turn fire-red and hot as it spat out deadly bullets.

His body ached, screaming at him to attack.

No witnesses—he could finish this. If he failed, and she arrested him now, it was all over.

Nothing is over, answered the Whispers. This… is a new beginning.

The year was 1993, and Deputy Hart could have provided Freddy with the final puzzle piece. The last reagent for his ritual. He wouldn’t even have needed to continue these charades, posing as soldiers and paramedics and police to get isolate and claim his victims.

Then take their skin.

She could have been his final haul for 1993.

She talked at him, but he couldn’t hear her through the fog of his own thoughts, and the Whispers. They refused to shut up.

The anger welling up from his gut turned away from the woman, and towards the Whispers.

It’s a different haul now. Rejoice you won’t become what we see you become, bandaged man, lost in another world, another time—

“Shut up!” he blurted out, with spittle spraying from his mouth. “Shut the hell up!”

He stared down the barrel of her pistol and then froze when Hart flipped out a badge. A badge that some local sheriff department officer would never be carrying around.

It read: FBI.

Special Agent Quinn Parker.

Listen…

“FBI! Freddy Fletcher, you are under arrest for multiple murders and for attempted murder of a federal agent,” she said with a trembling voice.

Shaken herself, she evidently played it safe. It almost inspired new violence in Freddy’s heart.

Almost.

He yearned to plunge that knife into her neck. Burned for it. So close, yet so far.

Then the shadow behind her grew, exploding from behind her back.

Towering, black like ink, a sinister silhouette blotted out the crystal blue sky. It swallowed the sun, and cast a shroud of darkness over him. And the moment the shadow caressed his face, and his eyes went wide with dread, an icy cold gripped him. He no longer felt his body, his sweat, the grit, the blood, the pain, the humiliation, the—

Look—

It all went dead. Silent. Like he was staring into an abyss. The abyss. The Shadow had subsumed Agent Parker. It towered, reaching out with its growing tendrils, and tentacles, and claws, and teeth, and a thousand silvery eyes that opened, wet, and curious—

Behold.

The Shadow’s tendrils embraced Freddy. A painful cold, covered in tiny teeth, with awful maws like lampreys, they kissed his flesh. So close to biting, scraping, and harvesting, and feasting—

Do as you are told, child of the triangle door. Lest you become bandaged man again, and lose yourself in the dark pools of a false oblivion.

Then the Shadow collapsed.

All that stood there was the redheaded FBI agent. Against a bright blue sky, with the blazing sun behind her.

Crickets chirped and buzzed in the dense forest.

Through a fog and haze of nausea and defeat, Freddy finally surrendered. He had money—Philip had money—maybe they could get him out of this yet. Lawyer up, play it smart.

He was smart.

They were smart.

If he played his cards right, he would be out of jail soon enough, just in time to complete the ritual.

To see where the door would lead them.

Freddy barely heard her ordering him around to toss his knife aside, yet complied immediately.

We have a better agent this time. In time, she will hear.

In time, she will… listen…

The cold of metal cuffs clicked around Freddy’s wrists, restraining his hands behind his back.

Before long, he would be locked up in the Castle on the Cumberland.

Kentucky’s supermax prison.

All the evidence she had stacked against him would put him behind bars for life. Evidence impossible to obtain.

Impossible by natural means, that is.

And in long nights of solitude, between bouts of a cold rage swelling in his chest, directed at that damned woman, he would think he heard the Whispers again.

But it was just his sanity cracking.

Thinking back to that day in 1993, even two years later. Questioning his identity. Questioning reality.

Knowing there was more beyond it. Things he could not perceive. Things conspiring against him.

Cold sweat accompanied each burst of paranoia, whenever he thought he glimpsed the Shadow from the corner of his eye, only to find dark corners.

Vacant and cold.

The Whispers would never answer, never speak to him again.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t put Freddy together again.

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