Back In The Day Read online

  Back In The Day

  By Steve Wands

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  Published by:

  Steve Wands on Smashwords

  Back In The Day

  Copyright © 2011 by Steve Wands

  Cover Design and Layout by Apparatus Revolution

  http://www.staydeadrev.com

  [email protected]

  Cover photograph “Auto Wreck” taken by Kim Newberg

  www.publicdomainpictures.net

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  Back In The Day

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  Sometimes all we have in common is the past.

  Most people find a way of settling down eventually. Some find a career, others a spouse. The older we get, the further we drift from our friends and our old ways of living. It can’t be helped. It just happens. You can’t pin the blame on anyone; it’s life and that’s the way it is. After awhile your friends become close strangers and you stop talking about the things you used to do. Now you just talk about your kids and how the time flies, and how you don’t have time to talk anymore or hang out, or do anything really. Life—and growing old—has a way of exhausting you. It doesn’t really change you; it just kind of puts you on a shelf and lets you collect dust.

  That’s why when Amy came knocking on my door I knew something was up. It wasn’t even the look on her face. It was the knock on the door. Nobody comes knocking anymore. Especially not at ten o’clock at night. Christ, my kids are sleeping and my wife and I are trying to clean the damned house! So there she was. This girl I used to know looking like an old woman. She was as pale as the moon and her eyes were as wide as the stray cat’s around the corner. I didn’t know what to say to her and I sure as hell didn’t want her coming into my house. Lacy, my wife, was in the laundry room and if this went quickly she would never have to know there was a knock on the door, let alone an old flame flickering on the stoop.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice to see you too.”

  “Who’s dead?”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Wait here.”

  That’s when I knew this wasn’t going to be some quick message that one of our old friends was dead. Which was my guess. My first thought was Danny-boy finally took one too many pills and shit his pants on the couch watching fucking cartoons. Guess I was wrong. I closed the door on her as she stepped forward to come in. Fuck that. I had a life now. Wife. Kids. The 9-5. Even had a nice little deck in the backyard where I could enjoy a six-pack and read a book when the weather wasn’t shitty.

  Lacy was still in laundry room folding towels. She looked good doing it too. Her hair dangled slightly off her forehead, which, for some reason, I always found sexy. Don’t ask me why ‘cause I have no idea.

  “Lace, you mind if I go out for a walk? Feel like going out for a smoke.”

  “No, go ahead. I’m almost done down here and I was probably going to go to bed early. I’m really tired.”

  “That’s why I want to get out and get some fresh air.”

  “Okay, just be careful and don’t walk in the street.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  I was in the clear. If she went to bed early then I’d be able to take care of whatever the fuck was on my stoop. If it took too long I could always fake sleeping on the couch. As I walked to the door I hoped Amy was gone. Maybe she’d come to her senses and realized I wasn’t the kid she remembered.

  Guess not, cause there she was at my door like the stray cat she was. Great.

  She didn’t really give me much to go on. Said we were going to pick up Danny-boy and that Ethan had something at his house to show us. Something important. Going back home and going to sleep was important. This…this was both a waste of time and a trip down memory lane I could do without.

  We pulled up to an old Krauzer’s and there was Danny-boy pacing back and forth by a payphone. The more things change…

  When he climbed into the car I nearly gagged, as he smelled like a pair of sweaty drawers used to clean cum off his hands and then left in a damp corner for a few days too many. He was always disgusting. I figured he’d eventually grow out of it, or end up dead. To my dismay, I was wrong on both accounts. Here we were in Amy’s car, me rolling down the window as he patted my shoulder with that shit-eating grin that hadn’t seen a toothbrush in at least a week.

  “Look at you, big man, all grown!”

  “Yeah, you know.”

  “Man, it’s been what…ten years?”

  “Give or take. Either of you mind if I smoke?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nah, man, you got an extra?”

  Fucking deadbeat. “Yeah.”

  The smell of the cigarette smoke was almost enough to cover up Danny-boy’s stench but not quite. There was just enough getting through to my nose to ruin every drag I took while in his presence. I hoped my wife was fast asleep and I hoped my kids didn’t wake up with nightmares and need me to put them to bed, which was pretty much how it went all last week. Lacy let them watch the Wizard of Oz and the goddamned monkeys scared the piss out them—so almost every night I had to ease them back to bed.

  We were now on the parkway and Amy assured us we’d be at Ethan’s in just a few minutes. Said he had a little row house not far from the exit. I kept badgering her about what the fuck was so important that she had to drag us out in the middle of the night without an explanation. Said she didn’t know. Said Ethan would tell us when we got there. Said it was bad. The most fucked up thing he ever saw. So she said. All I could think about was the most fucked up thing we’d ever done. But that was a long time ago and we…I was a different person. Wasn’t I?

  She wasn’t bullshitting me about being there in a few minutes. We arrived at Ethan’s in just under fifteen minutes. You could hear the vehicles in transit on the parkway from where we stood staring at Ethan as he sat on his porch. It wasn’t a bad house at all from the looks of it. A little to close to the neighbors, but other than that I could see myself living there—much better than what I was imagining. Ethan used to live in low-income housing. Rats. Roaches. It was him, his two brothers, and their mother for the longest time. She passed when Ethan was still in high school, which basically sent them to the street. He even lived with me for almost a year at one of my many shitty apartments. But that was then, and here we were now and I felt a twinge of pride for him. He’d gotten his shit together so it seemed.

  He came down and greeted us all with one of those handshakes that turned into a one-armed
hug. The kind we used to share. I hadn’t done that in years and it felt strange. Made me feel out of place. What else was knew.

  “Good to see you guys!”

  “You could’ve called.”

  “If I told you, you would’ve hung up and dismissed it as a drunken prank. You need to be here. You need to see it for yourself.”

  “Then show us already. I’m sick of this cryptic bullshit.”

  “Easy, Kal. We’re all friends here.”

  He led us inside then, to the basement.

  We all gathered around it. Not quite sure what to make of it—what to make of him. The whole scene kind of reminded me of that old book Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But this wasn’t some blank body. This was him, the man we killed, naked as sin stretched across two of Ethan’s card tables. He was clean looking, you know? No dirt. No blood. He looked fit for a funeral with the exception of him being naked.

  At first I thought it was a joke, but none of these friends of mine would’ve been smart enough to pull it off—myself included—and if this was a joke, what was the punch line? It wasn’t funny. It was fucking scary. There he was, the bruises on his body as fresh as they were a decade ago (or was it longer now?). The body hadn’t aged. He wasn’t breathing. It didn’t really smell. Then a thought came to my mind.

  “Was he unearthed?”

  “No. I already checked—that was my first thought. That maybe someone found out and did this. I can’t think of why’d they go through the trouble of this—of setting a body here, and cleaning it up. Shit!”

  “But wouldn’t the body rot? Even a little?”

  “I think it would, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah, man, it’d have to right? This fucker looks like we just…you know…”

  “So the grave is untouched?”

  “Yeah. Looks like it always looks.”

  “You still go?”

  “Every year. Any of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I always drive in, but can never find the courage to get out and walk up.”

  Maybe we weren’t as different as time made it seem. Maybe I’d just been fooling myself all along that I’d grown up and changed; that I was an adult. Because as I stood there, looking at that man, I knew I’d always be a scared kid looking over my shoulder.

  “So did he just appear down here on these tables like this?”

  “No. No he didn’t. Fuck, man, it creeps me out just thinking about it. My wife travels a lot for work, right. And she left to go to Cali for a few days on Tuesday. We were the only people, besides her boss, that would even know that. Wednesday night I’m rolling around in bed cause I couldn’t sleep. Every time she goes away I can’t sleep right. So I put my arm around her, at least I thought it was her. I was sleeping. Then I realize she’s cold and clammy so I wake up and this motherfucker is lying right next to me on her side of the bed! I was fucking spooning it!”

  Danny-boy burst out laughing and then quickly reined it in once he realized he was the only one. This was deadly serious shit and my heart and mind were going a mile a minute. I could see in Ethan’s eyes that he wanted to punch Danny-boy right in his kisser, but he knew that would just end badly. There were clearly bigger matters at stake.

  “So then I moved him down here. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to call the cops, but if they linked me to this guy somehow, I’d be fucked. But then I started seeing shit, and hearing shit like whispers and seeing shadows where there shouldn’t be shadows. Real ghostly shit. It was kind of like I was I eatin’ face. So then I called Amy. And well, you guys know the rest.”

  “But why now?”

  “Fucked if I know. “

  Ethan looked at us for a minute as if chewing on something he wanted to say. I could see it in his eyes. And then, after a few moments of indecision he opened his mouth.

  “I think you should all touch it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Well, I think I started seeing and hearing shit after I touched it. I think he’s trying to tell us something and maybe after we all touch it we’ll know what the fuck is going on?”

  “Do you have any gloves?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think we can do it like that.”

  “We all going to touch it at the same time?”

  “That’s fucking nasty yo. I don’t want to touch him!”

  “Yeah, I think we should do it at the same time.”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Nah, man. It’s nasty.”

  Despite Danny-boy’s opposition we convinced him to touch the body. We stepped closer. Danny-boy and Ethan on one side, and Amy and myself on the other. We reached out together. My fingers were shaking like blades of grass in the wind as I extended my hand out and onto his cool body. When my fingers made contact with his skin I felt like I put my fingers into an electrical socket and I couldn’t move. From what I could tell it was the same for the others. We all just flicked our eyes around the room, staring at each other.

  Then I could see what looked like shadows swirling around the room behind Ethan and Danny-boy. I could only assume by their expressions that they were seeing the same thing behind me. I heard the whispering. It started off soft but quickly seemed to fill the room. They were still whispers, but amplified somehow.

  Then I knew what we had to do. We all knew. And I’m pretty sure that Ethan knew too, before he summoned us all here.

  The whispering and the shadows all seemed to stop abruptly. Then I could feel my fingers again. I moved them away and it felt like I was pushed—it looked like we all were—just pushed, slightly away from the body.

  “I got to get out of here! Gotta get away!”

  “Danny, settle down, man. Nobody is going anywhere just yet.”

  “It wants me! It wants me dead!”

  “We know Danny.”

  There was something inside us. Thinking back I think it was the shadows—the ghosts or whatever the fuck you want to call them. They felt dark, and they felt dark inside me. And they wanted good old, good for nothing Danny-boy.

  “It was my fault! It was always my fault!”

  It was. We always told him it wasn’t, but it was.

  We surrounded him. It was us, but it wasn’t really us. There was the darkness inside driving us to do it. We had to. I can’t tell you how we knew it, but we did. We had to kill Danny-boy. If we didn’t the darkness inside wouldn’t leave. It would kill us all. We had lives, except for Danny-boy. I had a wife and kids now. Ethan had a wife and they were planning kids. Amy was raising a son all by herself. Danny-boy, well, he was living in the past. He never really lived beyond that day anyway. It haunted him. It haunted all of us, but we pushed on. We buried it. Not Danny. He buried himself. All we had to do was pat down the dirt.

  So we did.

  He screamed, but it wasn’t loud enough to escape the basement. The darkness seemed to keep it down there. It gave gravity to his screams and to his breaths, pulling them to the cold concrete floor. I still don’t understand why it had to be now. Why all this time had to pass before bringing us together for this.

  With the deed done, the body on the card tables turned to dust. I felt the darkness leave, but I knew there was some of it left in me—in the others too. Maybe no more than footprints, but its mark was indelible. Our emotions the darkness held at bay opened like flood gates and we collapsed on the ground, crying, asking each other what the fuck we just did as Danny-boy stared at us with his dead eyes. I’d see those for the rest of my life. I swear to Christ I would.

  I don’t know how, but we pulled ourselves together. For a few moments we wondered if there ever was a body there. Maybe we’d all just gone mad for a bit, ya know? But it was real. I know it was. I felt it. We all did. We could still feel that darkness biting at our hearts like hungry wolves.

  Ethan said he’d take care of Danny-boy. Just like he’d taken care of the old man. Amy and me walked away—haunted witnesses for the second tim
e around—more alike than I ever thought. As we left the house Ethan’s two brothers sped up to a screeching stop at the front of the house. I hadn’t seen them in forever. We all did that hug we used to do and they actually smiled. I think I did too, but it’s getting kind of hazy, honestly. I can’t see myself smiling, but maybe I did. His brothers were a couple of tough guys, always were, probably always would be and I guess they’d find a way to take care of Danny-boy. Better we not stick around to find out.

  Amy drove me back home. We didn’t talk much, and I guess it was better off that way. When we reached my street I told her to stop before reaching my house. The last thing I needed was for Lacy to see me get out of another woman’s car.

  “Maybe we should all get together sometime?”

  “No offense, Amy, but maybe it’s best we never see each other again. If this is how our reunions will go it’ll be one of us next time.”

  She was right.

  I walked away, leaving the past where it was and hoped it stayed there.

  That night, after I showered and went to bed I couldn’t sleep—go figure, right. I stared at the dark walls of my room. The shadows seemed to drip. The darkness of the room felt alive. I felt it watching me and all I could do was stare back. Once I noticed the sun was coming up and the darkness was dripping away like oil down the walls and scurrying like rats into the corners, I wrapped my arm around my wife. She felt cool and clammy, so I checked her head. I went to kiss her, but all I saw staring back at me were those fucking eyes—Danny-boy’s milky-white-dead-as-a-fucking-doornail-staring-at-the-sky eyes.

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  Please enjoy these two additional tales of terror from my new collection:

  HORROR STORIES

  A Macabre Collection

  Available at smashwords.com

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  From The Page

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  The walls oozed moisture. It dripped like sweat down the bowing walls, down to the well-worn and warped hardwood floors that creaked with every uneasy step. The windowsills screamed as the soft rotting wood gave way under pressure. Rats scurried through the walls, their thick ropey tails thumping along the sheetrock as wads of insulation stuck to their hairy hides.