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It was a tongue.  That’s the first thing I saw, rubbery and purplish and not quite human.  It was longer, animal-like, twisted inside a ziplock bag and coated in frost.  And it wasn’t alone; the freezer was filled with hunks of flesh, some in clear bags, some bigger chunks in pink-stained white paper. 

Butcher paper.  White apron. 

“Well, I think it’s obvious,” said John.  “Those stories of UFO’s that go around mutilating cows?  I think we just solved it, my friend.”

I sighed.

“It’s a deer, you jackass.  He hunts, apparently.  That’s what hunters do, they keep the meat.”

I nudged around and found other painfully normal freezer stuff underneath.  A frozen turkey, some sausages.  I closed the lid to the fridge, feeling stupid, though not for the reason I should have felt stupid.  I had forgotten the question, the important one.  Too late at night, too little sleep.

John started checking cabinets while I glanced around for the boom box, realizing now that we hadn’t brought it down.  Why did that bother me?  It was upstairs with Shelly, right?

“Hey, Dave.  You remember that guy whose basement got flooded, then called us and swore he had a 15-foot great white shark swimmin’ down there?”

I did remember but I didn’t answer, afraid of losing that thread of thought that kept floating just out of reach like a wayward balloon on a windy day.  Besides, when we got there, it turned out it wasn’t a great white at all.  Just a garden variety 8-foot tiger shark.  We told the guy to wait until the basement dried out and call us back.  When the water left, so did the shark, as if it evaporated or seeped out the tiny cracks in the concrete. 

I can’t explain that one.  The guy probably thought we were experts after that, but what were we gonna do?  Harpoon it?  Stick an oxygen tank in its mouth and blow it up?  We figured it’s a shark, it needs water.  What do you want from me? 

Think.  Damned attention span.  Something is wrong here. 

I tried to pull myself back from my tangent, thinking of the boom box again.  Found it at a garage sale, the kind 80’s breakdancers used to tote around with them.   There’s a story in the Old Testament, a guy driving away an evil spirit that was harassing the King by playing pretty music on his harp.  Same premise, I guess. 

Wait a second-

“John, did I hear you say you thought she looked like Amber?”

“Yeah.”

“John, Amber’s almost as tall as me, just under six feet.  Blonde hair, kind of top-heavy.”

“Yeah, cute as hell.  I mean-“

“And you think Shelly looks like her?  The girl sitting upstairs?”

“Yeah.” John turned to face me, already getting it. 

“John, Shelly is short.  Short with dark hair.  Blue eyes.”

-They haunt minds-

John sighed, plucked out his cigarette and angrily flung it to the floor. 

“Dammit.”

We turned toward the stairs, took a step up, and froze.  Shelly was there, sitting half-way up the stairs, one arm curled around Molly’s neck.  Looking innocent, playing the part, wary eyes reflecting glints of torchlight. 

I stepped slowly onto the third stair, said, “Tell me something, Miss, uh, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your last name-“

“Shelly is fine.”

“Yeah, remind me anyway.  I hate forgetting things.”

“Morris.”

I took another step toward her. 

“That’s what I thought.”

I had just put my foot on another stair when John stepped up and shouldered past me.  He got within reaching distance of her, stopped. 

“So,” I said, “whose house is this?”

“What?”

“The sign out front says Morrison.  Son.  Morris-son.  Now would you describe your own appearance for me?”

“I don’t-“

“-You see, because John and I have this thing where we’re both seeing completely different versions of you.  Now, John has eyesight problems because of his constant masturbation, but I don’t think-“

She burst into snakes. 

That’s right.  One second she was a girl, then her body sort of spilled out of itself, falling into a dark, writhing puddle on the ground.  It was a tangle of long, black serpents, rolling over each other and down the steps.  We kicked at them as they rolled past, John warding them off with the torch.  Some, I saw, had patches of color on their scales, like flesh or the flowered pattern of Shelly’s dress.  I caught a glimpse of one snake with a writhing human eyeball still embedded in its side, the iris powder blue. 

Molly jumped back and barked—a little too late, I thought—and made a show of snapping at one of the snakes as it wound its way down the stairs.  She bounded to the top of the stairs and disappeared through the doorway.  We kicked through the slithering things and stomped up after the dog, just as the stairwell door banged shut completely on its own. 

I reached for the knob.  At the same moment it began to melt and transform, turning pink and finally taking the shape of a flaccid penis.  It flopped softly against the door, like a man was cramming it through the knob hole from the other side. 

I turned back to John and said, “That door cannot be opened.”

We stumbled back down the stairs, John jumping the last five and landing on the floor below with a smack of shoes on concrete.  The snakes fled from the firelight, disappearing under shelves and between cardboard boxes. 

That’s when the basement started filling with shit. 

A brown sludge oozed up from the floor drain, an unmistakable stench rising above it.  I looked around for a window we could crawl out of, found none.  The sewage bloomed out from the center of the floor, touching my shoes, rising over my soles to the shoe leather in a few seconds. 

John shouted, “There!”

I whipped my head in his direction, saw him grab a little plastic crate from a shelf and set it on the floor.  He climbed up on it, then just stood there with the muck rising below.  Finally he looked at me and said, “What are you doing?  Go find us a way outta here!”

I was ankle-deep now in a pool that was disturbingly warm.  I sloshed around, looking above me until I found the large, square duct feeding into the floor from the furnace.  The return air vent.  I went to a peg board on the wall and grabbed a huge screwdriver, at least a foot long.  I reached up and jabbed it into the crease between the metal of the duct and the floor, prying down the apparatus with a squeal of pulled nails. 

I finally got ahold of the thin, metal duct with my hands and felt the edges cut into the skin.  I pulled it down to reveal the dark living room above me, obscured only by a metal grid.  I jumped and knocked the grate aside with my hands, heard the thing clang off to the side above me.  I leapt up again and grabbed floor with both hands, feeling carpet under my fingers.  With a series of frantic, awkward movements I managed to pull my limbs up until I could roll over on the floor of the living room. 

I looked back at the square hole and saw a flicker of flame emerge, followed by the torch and then John’s hand.  In a few seconds we were both standing inside the living room, glancing around, breathing heavily. 

Nothing.  Just a living room. 

A low, pulsing sound emerged from the air around us.  An almost-human sound that was still utterly without humanity.  A laugh.  A dry, humorless cough of a sound, as if the house itself was expelling the air with giant lungs of wood and plaster. 

“They love to play games, don’t they?”  said John.

“It’s all they have time for.”

We both knew the drill.  We had to draw the thing out somehow.  John handed me his lighter. 

“You light some candles.  I’ll go stand in the shower naked.”

Molly followed me as I went back to where we left the boom box and the other supplies.  I lit a few candles around the house—just enough to make it spooky.  John showered, I found another bathroom and washed the sludge off my shoes and feet. 

“Oh, no!” I heard John say loudly over the running water.  “It’s dark in here and here I am in the shower!  Alone!  I’m so naked and vulnerable!”

Out of things to do, I walked around for a bit and eventually found a bedroom.  I glanced at my watch, sighed, then laid down over the covers.  It was almost four in the morning. 

This could go on for hours, or days.  Time.  That’s all they have.  I heard Molly plop down on the floor below.  I reached down to pet her and she licked my hand the way dogs do, me wondering why in the world they felt the need to do that.  I’ve often thought about trying it the next time somebody got their fingers close to my mouth, like at the dentist. 

John came back 20 minutes later, wearing what must have been the smallest towel he could find.  He lowered his voice.  “I think I saw a hatch for an attic earlier.  I’m gonna see if there’s room to crawl around up there, see if maybe there’s a big scary-looking footlocker it can pop out of or somethin’.”

I nodded.  John raised his voice theatrically and said, “Oh, no.  We are trapped here, all alone.  I will go see if I can find help.”

“Yes,” I answered, loudly.  “Perhaps we should split up.”

John left the room.  I tried to relax, hoping even to doze off.  Ghosts love to sneak up on you when you’re sleeping.  I scratched Molly’s head again, and she again did the finger-licking thing.  I heard John messing around down the hall.  So freaking tired.  I don’t sleep much these days and it always catches up to me-

* * * * *

Sleep.  Licking.  A soft splashing sound from another room.  I dreamed I saw a shadow peel itself off the far wall and float toward me.  Most of my dreams are like that, always based on something that really happened.

My eyes snapped open, my right arm still hanging over the edge of the mattress, the rough tongue still flapping away at my ring finger.  How long had I been out?  Thirty seconds?  Two hours?

I sat up, trying to adjust to the darkness.  A faint glow pulsed from the hall where the nearest candle burned away in the bathroom. 

I quietly stepped off the foot of the bed and headed across the room and into the hallway.  Down the hall now, toward the sound and the light.  It turned out they were coming from the same place.  I ran my hand along the textured plaster on the wall until I reached the bathroom, the gentle splashing sound growing with each step.  Not splashing.  Slurping.  I peered in. 

Molly, drinking from the toilet.  She turned to look at me with an almost cat-like can I help you stare.  I thought absently that she was drinking the poowater with the same mouth she used to lick my hand, then realized that if she was already in here then that wasn’t her by the bed.

I picked the candle off the counter and headed back to the bedroom.  I stepped in, the candle casting an uneven halo of light around me, rustling the shadows aside.  I moved toward the bed and saw... 

Meat.  Dozens of the wrapped and now partially-unwrapped hunks from the freezer, laying neatly on the floor next to the bed in an almost ceremonial fashion, the objects arranged in the rough shape of a man. 

I moved the light toward the head area, where I found a frozen turkey still in the Butterball wrapper.  Under it, wedged between turkey and torso, was the disembodied deer tongue, flapping around on its own accord. 

Hmmmm.  That was different. 

I jumped back as the turkey, the tongue, a slab of ribs and the top half of the meat levitated off the floor in turn.  Suddenly the man-shaped arrangement of meat became animated, raising up on two arms made of game hens and country bacon, planting two hands with sausage link fingers on the floor.  It stood upright, looking like the mascot for a meat shop whose profits went entirely to support the owner’s acid habit. 

“John!  We got, uh, something here.”

It was about seven feet tall, its turkey head swiveling side to side to survey the room, the tongue swaying uselessly below.  It extended a sausage to me. 

“You.”

It was an accusation.  Had we dealt with this thing before?  I didn’t remember it, but I was so bad with faces. 

“You have tormented me six times.  Now prepare to meat your doom!”

I have no way of knowing that it actually said “meat” instead of “meet” but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.  I ran. 

“John!  John!  We got a Situation 53 here!”

The thing gave chase, its shaved ham feet slapping the floor behind me.  My candle went out.  I tossed it aside.  I saw a closed door to my right, so I skidded to a stop, threw it open, and flung myself in. 

Linen shelves smacked me in the face and I fell back out of the closet, dazed.  The Meat Man wrapped its cold links around my neck and lifted me up.  It pinned me against the wall. 

“You disappoint me.  All those times we have dueled.  In the desert.  In the city.  You thought you had vanquished me in Venice, didn’t you?”

I was so impressed by this thing’s ability to articulate words using that flapping deer tongue and a frozen turkey that I almost lost track of what it was saying. 

Venice?  Did he say Venice?  What?

Molly came by just then, trotting along like everything was just A-okay in Dogland.  Then she noticed some meat standing nearby and started happily chewing on a six inch-wide tube of bologna that was serving as the thing’s ankle. 

“AARRRRRGHHHH!!!!”

It dropped me to the floor.  I scrambled to my feet and ran downstairs.  It followed. 

John was waiting, holding the portable stereo.  The thing was half way down the stairs when John pushed the “play” button.  The crystal melody filled the room and the beast was thrown back by a harmonic wave courtesy of the band Whitesnake. 

“Here I go again, on my own

Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known

Like a drifter I was born to walk alone”

The thing grabbed the spots on the turkey where its ears would be and fell to its knees.  John wielded the stereo in front of him like a magic shield, stepping up the stairs, bringing it closer to the beast.  The thing writhed in agony. 

“But I’ve made up my mind

I ain’t wastin’ no more time

But here I go again” 

“Take it!”  screamed John.  “It looks like you should have taken time to beef up your defenses!”

The beast grabbed its abdomen, in pain, we thought.  By the time we saw what it was doing, it was too late.  It pried loose a canned ham, and before John could react, it hurled it at the stereo, the ham whizzing through the air like a Randy Johnson fastball. 

Direct hit.  Sparks and bits of plastic flew, the stereo tumbled out of John’s hands and fell heavily to the stairs.  John hopped down to floor level as the beast rose to its feet and leapt down in pursuit. 

It grabbed John by the neck.  It snatched at me, but I dodged and grabbed the coffee thermos on the table.  I ran back with the thermos, spun off the top and dashed the contents at the meat thing’s choking arm. 

The meatstrocity screamed.  The arm smoked and bubbled, then burst into flame.  The limb then blackened and peeled off from the socket, falling to the hard wood below.  John was free, falling to his knees and gasping for air. 

The beast howled in agony, collapsing to the floor meatily.  With its only remaining arm, it pointed at me. 

“You’ll never defeat me, Marconi!  I have sealed this house with my powers.  You cannot escape!”

I stopped, put my hands on my hips and strode up to it.  “Marconi?  As in, Doctor-slash-Father Albert Marconi?  The guy who hosts Magical Mysteries on the Discovery Channel?”

John stepped over and glared at the wounded thing.  “You dumbass.  Marconi is 50 years old.  He has white hair.  Dave and I aren’t that old combined.  We’re not your nemesis.  Your nemesis is probably off giving some seminar, standing waist-deep in a pile of his own money.”

The thing turned its turkey at me. 

“Tell ya what,” I offered.  “If I can get you in touch with Marconi, so you two can work out your little differences, will you release us?”

“You lie!”

“No, we know him.  We’re in the same business, we have a direct line.  Now, I can’t get him down here, but surely a being as superhumanly powerful as you can destroy him at a distance, right?  Here.”

It watched me as I fished out my cell phone and dialed.  After talking to a secretary, a press agent, a bodyguard, an operator, the secretary again and finally a personal assistant, I finally got through. 

“Marconi here.  My secretary says you have some kind of a meat monster there?”

“Yeah.  Hold on.”

I offered the phone to Meaty.  “Do we have a deal?”

The thing stood up, hesitated, then finally nodded its turkey up and down.  I handed it the phone.  It boomed its voice into the phone menacingly. 

“So!  We meat again, Marconi.  You thought you had vanquished me but I-“

The beast spontaneously combusted into a ball of unholy blue light.  With a shriek that pierced my ears, it left our world.  The lifeless meat slapped to the floor piece by piece, the cell phone clattering down next to the pile. 

Silence. 

“Damn, he’s good,” said John.  I walked over and picked up the cell phone.  I put the phone to my ear to ask the doctor what he had done, but it was the secretary again.  I switched it off.  The doctor hadn’t even hung around long enough to say hello. 

John made a casual hand-dusting motion.  “Well.  That was pretty stupid.”

I tried the front door and it opened easily.  Who knows, maybe it had never been sealed shut.  We took time to straighten up the place, not finding any Morrisons restrained or dismembered and figuring that “Shelly” was at least telling the truth when she said the real family was on vacation.  The shit had vanished from the basement, but I couldn’t fix the heating duct I had messed up earlier.   We packed the meat back into the freezer as best we could, with one exception. 

The sun was already dissolving the night sky by the time I got home.  I opened up the tool shed and set the broken boom box inside.  I found an empty jar, filled it from a square can of formaldehyde and dropped the deer tongue in.  I placed it on the shelf next to a stuffed monkey paw, laying lifeless with two fingers extended.  I locked up and went to bed.

-from the journal of David Wong

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Copyright © 2008 David Wong and Jason Pargin - All rights reserved. No part of this book or website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the express written consent of the author and publisher. This online book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidence.