Midnight Corey A Knife in Your Eye

The Heap

Note: This is the story that I recently submitted to an anthology, but it was rejected. So now I'm thinking of expanding it to something more substantial. But maybe not. Thanks to Steve Wands for giving me the idea to post it, since he posted his (you can read it here).

The Heap

Tommy hoisted up the hood of the old blue Chevy pickup truck with a grunt. The stench of burning oil wafted into his face, almost masking the smell of decay fermenting around him. As he propped the hood open, he spotted the red boomerang lying in his yard – again.

He slammed his palm down on the truck and marched over to the toy. Snatching it up, he tried to break it over his knee. It didn't snap.

“I told them to keep their shit out of my yard,” he growled, flinging the boomerang toward the neighbors' house. It wobbled awkwardly, smacking off the worn rock in their front lawn engraved with “The Jamison's.”

Tommy caught a flash of a boy's face in the second story window just before the curtains flew over it.

He scowled and turned back to the truck. “White trash brats,” he grumbled as his boots squished through the muddy grass.

Pulling an oily rag out of his back pocket, Tommy leaned under the hood again. The truck was on its last legs, over twenty years old and rusted to the point of falling apart. The engine was a mishmash of parts doctored in with chicken wire and duct tape. The piston rings were in dire need of replacement – the truck's power was going to pot and the engine burned up another quart of oil every couple weeks. The damned thing threatened to overheat if he drove it for more than a half hour at a time.

The economy prevented him from repairing the truck correctly. Child support payments were due every month to the bitch two states away, his credit cards were maxed and his once steady gig as an electrician had slowed to a trickle.

Rottenness filled the air, emanating from the gigantic heap of roadkill in his side yard. The county of Walker awarded a contract every year to the party who agreed to clean up all the roadkill littering the county-maintained roads during the fall and winter. Predominantly unfortunate deer, the carcasses were also those of opossum, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, chipmunks, geese, groundhogs, rabbits, and the occasional household pet.

Tommy secured that contract this year, thanks to a little help from his friend who happened to be a newly-elected commissioner.

His ailing Chevy made it possible. A powered winch was mounted to the front of the bed, wound with wire rope. At the end of the rope was an adjustable leather strap stained with blood, perfectly sized to fit around a bloated deer torso. If Tommy could make the truck last through the final months of roadkill season, he'd get enough money from the county to buy a new truck.

Collecting anywhere from fifty to a hundred deer corpses every day, the demand was too much for his truck to handle – it was all he could do to keep the roads clear. That didn't leave much time to head to the county landfill, especially since its hours of operation had been cut back for Thanksgiving.

Yanking the dipstick out of the engine, Tommy frowned when he saw the brown smudge barely topping the LOW reading. He ran it through the rag in his hand and thrust it back in the engine, pulling it out again. He groaned.

A car pulled in the driveway behind him – a mud-spattered Slate Township police cruiser.

“Shit,” Tommy breathed, shoving the dipstick back into the engine and throwing down the oily rag.

Two officers stepped out of the car, and Tommy flashed his best half-smile as he wiped his hands on his faded Steelers sweatshirt.

He extended a hand to the first officer. “Hey Carl, how's your dad?”

Officer Swain reluctantly shook his hand. “He's fine, Tom.”

The second, smaller policeman stepped around the back of the cruiser and into the yard, abruptly stopping twenty feet from the mountain of deer. He swung his head in disgust.

Swain eyed the scores of deer, then looked at Tommy. “We got some more calls about this, Tom. What are we gonna do about it?”

Tommy's face flushed red. “It was them again, wasn't it?” He threw a thumb over his shoulder towards the neighbors' house. “They have it out for me, you know.”

Swain's expression remained tough. “It's been weeks, Tom. People are smelling this from a mile away. I'm getting sick just standing here.”

The other officer, whose nameplate read J. GARY, joined Officer Swain at the car and nodded in agreement.

Tommy shook his head. “I'm sorry about this, but like I said before, my truck is having problems and the holiday is screwing up the schedule at the landfill. After Thanksgiving, it'll all be back to normal.”

Swain sighed and looked at Officer Gary, who shrugged. A dog started barking next door, and they watched a chocolate Labrador leap out of the neighbors' back door. Denny, head of the Jamison household, barely restrained it with a short leash. He caught a glimpse of the police cruiser and looked away quickly, shaking his head and tying the leash to the crooked clothesline post. The dog continued to bark even after Denny returned inside, setting its sights on the carcasses in Tommy's yard.

“He put that dog out there on purpose,” Tommy accused. “He knows that thing barks like hell. Asshole needs to get a job, he's got too much time on his hands.”

Officer Gary straightened his posture and spoke for the first time during the visit. “The dog's barking because of your deer, Mr. Pratt.”

“Look,” Swain said, detecting Tommy's shortening patience. “Get these things out of here, or we can cite you for this. And the county can revoke your contract, so I suggest you figure something out.”

Tommy sagged, rubbing his forehead and scratching the light stubble on his cheek. He leaned back on the truck and crossed his arms. “Yes sir. Just a few more days, I'll have it cleaned up.”

The officers glared at him.

“That's what I heard last time,” Swain remarked, taking another long look at the pile of rotten bodies. “Don't make us come back out here.”

Tommy nodded without making eye contact. The officers returned to the cruiser, lingering in the driveway for another minute before departing.

He watched the car creep down the road, but movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention to the animal pile. Something moved – he would have sworn to it. But as Tommy approached the rotten heap and scanned it, nothing moved. Figuring that other animals were wandering out of the woods for an easy snack, he brushed it off – he was distracted by the damned dog next door that wouldn't shut up.

Tommy barely suppressed the urge to scream at the animal, or to just march over to the neighbors' yard and kick the beast. As he stared the dog down, he detected movement again. This time, it was the neighbor kids in their window.

They didn't dart out of sight when he faced them. Their wide eyes were fixed on him, and Tommy returned their stare with a sneer. They looked like miniature versions of their parents – the round-faced blond girl and the freckled, orange-haired boy.

Tommy held his frown, but the kids did something that took him by surprise: they smiled. Both of them at the same time. Then they whisked the curtains over the window and were gone again.

He was frozen with his boots planted in the damp, shaggy grass, shaking his head. He turned to the barking dog, flipped it off, and went back to his truck breathing loudly.

He leaned under the hood again, checking the dipstick one more time with shaking hands to confirm the engine's desperate need for oil. He removed the oil cap and trudged to the garage. Originally designed to house two cars, the attached garage instead functioned as Tommy's miscellaneous storage room. He took two big steps over some loose lumber and grabbed the last case of Pennzoil on the rusty shelf.

He dropped the box on the dusty garage floor when he heard the phone ring inside the house. Kicking off his muddy boots, he went inside.

The interior of his house was a portrait of single-male living. A knee-high stack of newspapers toppled over as Tommy came through the archway into the mess of a kitchen. The cordless phone was missing from its base on the counter. Tommy froze, held his breath, and listened. Over the muffled barks of the neighbors' dog, he followed the ring into the living room. The phone was wedged between the cushions of the ragged couch.

He pulled it out and was about to press the TALK button when the dog outside stopped barking – it began to yelp and whine. Tommy grinned, forgetting the phone and going back to the door.

In the garage, he stepped back into his boots and walked out to the driveway. The dog's squeals of pain intensified, and when Tommy saw why, he gasped so hard that he began coughing violently.

Deer were attacking the dog. Three bloated, blood-streaked deer – two doe and a buck with half its rack splintered off – tore chunks of flesh from the dog as it thrashed on its leash. It fought back, removing large chunks of rotten meat from its attackers. The deer didn't react to the dog's retaliation, letting themselves to be shredded.

More deer, awkward and hobbling, joined them, completely surrounding the dog. A scattered line of deer, intermingled with a few smaller rodents, marched out of Tommy's yard. His eyes followed the line back to the pile.

The heap of bodies was a writhing mass, expanding throughout the yard as the once-dead animals dragged themselves through the wet grass. The long legs of the twitching deer cracked as muscles and tendons moved again. Many of the deer's legs were broken, but that didn't seem to matter. They pushed themselves along with their working legs, dragging the broken limbs underneath them.

Other smaller roadkill, vastly outnumbered by the deer, also jerked back to life and lumbered toward the suffering dog. A half-raccoon raked through the grass with its front paws, its jaw spasming up and down. A flattened squirrel flipped its blood-caked tail back and forth as it tried to gain mobility.

Denny burst through the back door of his house gripping a baseball bat. The dog howled one last time before going silent, enveloped by the risen deer. The kids stood just inside the door, not daring to step outside as they watched their father sink the aluminum bat into the skull of the first deer he came to. Its right ear was missing, and a long strip of fur flapped down its neck. As its head caved in, the deer's jaw fell slack and its body slumped to the ground.

Other deer who weren't feasting on the bleeding dog took notice of Denny and went after him. Many of them had trouble keeping their balance, as their long, stiff legs weren't working as well as they once had. The ones that kept their footing advanced toward Denny as he raised the bat again, his chest heaving and his heart pounding in his ears.

Tommy heard a crunch behind him. He looked over his shoulder and screamed – two bucks with broken antlers lurched within a few feet of him. The nearest deer's belly had split open when it was killed on the road; its bulging black stomach and entrails had partially hardened during the stay in Tommy's yard. The dried organs dragged through the grass underneath the deer as it hobbled, pieces pulling off in its wake.

Trembling, Tommy skittered away from the dead deer. He collided with his truck, knocking the air out of his lungs, hearing a female scream from inside the neighbors' house – Denny's wife Mindy.

Tommy pulled himself along the side of the truck and watched Denny club the growing crowd of rotten deer. Mindy, a very tall, full woman, barged out of the house, shotgun in hand.

“Denny!” she shrieked.

The kids crept out behind her, stopping on the top step. The girl began sobbing, and the skinny boy clung to her arm.

The animals engulfed Denny, even though the bat kept swinging. Tommy looked back to his own yard, seeing that the pile of dead animals had all but dissolved – only badly mangled bodies and body parts remained still.

The animals were everywhere. The majority had gathered around Denny, but many more wandered off in other directions, shambling into the woods behind the house or onto the road.

Now a group pursued Tommy, who still clung to the bed of the truck. He pushed off toward the house, but sharp pain exploded in his calf. He fell to his knees in the stony driveway and looked back to see a tailless opossum sinking is needle-sharp teeth into the meaty flesh below his knee. Tommy cried out, slamming his fist down onto the back of the coarse gray animal. It released its bite and he flung the creature away.

Then Denny screamed. The shotgun fired. The children screamed. Tommy pulled himself up with the truck's bumper, wincing at his throbbing calf. Another gun blast rang out, and Tommy saw Mindy drop the shotgun and fall to her knees. Denny was nowhere to be seen, covered in a sea of feasting deer. Smaller creatures scurried around their legs to get a taste of the warm flesh.

The animals began to limp toward Mindy. In tears, she swayed on the moist grass.

“Mommy! Mommy!” the children pleaded, reaching their arms out from the doorstep. The cries had no affect on her.

Something nudged Tommy from behind. He jumped as if he had been shocked, spinning to see disfigured deer snapping at him. He kicked away an attacking raccoon and staggered to the garage. He fixed his eyes on the rusty machete hanging on the wall above a dingy set of cabinets.

Knocking over a stack of milk crates, he reached up and snatched the cobweb-covered blade from the wall and limped back outside. Confronted by a pack of stumbling, spasming deer, he drew the machete over his head. The brown blade came down between the clouded black eyes of the nearest one, a mid-sized doe whose ribs jutted from its crimson-coated fur. Its skull split open; it collapsed and stopped moving.

Tommy chopped the snout off the next one, leaving a black oozing hole in the center of its face. He pushed another ragged deer out of the way and thrust the machete ahead.

The kids sobbed on the top step as the horde of living dead animals came within feet of the their hysterical mother. Tommy gritted his teeth and dashed over to their yard.

A squirrel caked with dried blood made it to Mindy first, but Tommy stepped in and skewered the animal with the blade before it could bite her. He lifted it up to his eye level, then shook the re-killed squirrel off.

He grabbed Mindy's elbow. “Get in the house!”

“Get your hands off me!” she spat. Throwing his hand off, she fell over backwards.

Tommy spotted the shotgun on the ground, and traded his machete for it. Cocking it, he fired into the advancing crowd of deer. One's head exploded, coating the surrounding animals with blackened gore. He fired again, crippling a pair of others and buying them a few more seconds.

He dropped the gun and took two handfuls of Mindy's shirt, straining to pull her upright. “Go! Now! Your kids need you!”

The boy and girl had already retreated into the house, and left the door open. Tommy stuck out both arms and shoved Mindy toward the door. Her head snapped back and her arms flew out in surprise, but she regained her balance as she floundered to the steps. Tommy turned back for the weapons, but they were already lost in the group of animals. He cursed and followed Mindy into the house, slamming the door behind him.

The kids ran toward the kitchen. Mindy turned around in the dim foyer and brought her face within inches of Tommy's.

“It's your fault!” she screamed, anger twisting her flushed face.

He held up his hands and stepped back against the door. “Hey, I just saved your ass–”

A loud crash on the other side of the door jostled him. Tommy went to the nearest window, parted the curtains, and peered out. He jerked away from it. “We gotta get out of here.”

Mindy shoved him aside and looked for herself. A crooked deer head smacked into the glass, and she flinched with a scream. The deer's mouth fell open and its black tongue rolled out, but was pushed to the side by more deer, smearing blood across the glass. They butted the window with their heads.

Mindy spun and grabbed Tommy's arm. “Get the hell out of my house!” she sobbed. “If you wouldn't have kept those rotten deer next door, this wouldn't have happened! And my Denny wouldn't be dead!”

Tommy met the raging woman's glare. “Listen, I'm sorry about Denny. But this isn't my fault.”

“Like hell!” she shouted, raising a fist. “We had to put up with your shit for weeks before anyone did anything about it. And now . . . now . . .”

Her fist dropped to her side and she wilted. “Oh, Denny.”

A lump formed in Tommy's throat as the children sadly emerged and embraced their mother. Tommy rubbed his eyes, brushed back his hair and breathed slowly, trying to calm his racing heartbeat and racing thoughts.

Glass shattered in the kitchen. Tommy darted through the archway and found a bloody deer head protruding through the bay window on the far wall. It thrashed around, shredding itself on the jagged glass surrounding its neck. On either side of it, more deer butted the large pane, busting out more glass. They thrust their mutilated heads through, fixing their lifeless eyes on him.

The wind was knocked out of his lungs as he was grabbed from behind in a bear hug.

“Get the hell out!” Mindy screamed in his ear, dragging him out to the foyer.

Tommy thrust his arms out, breaking her hold. He slipped and collapsed to the floor, but Mindy stayed on her feet. She scrambled to the front door, flipped the lock and grabbed the knob.

“Out of my damned house!” she yelled, emphasizing the last word by whipping the door open.

A gruesome buck, missing an eye and covered in oozing lacerations, appeared in the doorway and bit off her nose. Blood spurted onto the white door and the slate tile at her feet. Mindy's hands flew to her face, and she let out a gurgling scream.

The children panicked, watching another deer charge in and bite her arm, taking out a small chunk just above the elbow.

Tommy turned to the terrified kids and pointed to the stairs across the room. “Go upstairs! Now!”

They froze, trembling as their mother bled. She flailed and howled as the deer pecked her apart. Her large frame blocked the doorway, and the animals feasted as she coughed and twitched.

“Go!” Tommy angrily ordered, hurrying them across the room.

They kept their puffy eyes glued to their suffering mother as they took to the staircase arm-in-arm. Tommy stood at the bottom, shooting his eyes back and forth between the children and Mindy. Her arms fell limp and her wails subsided The deer pushed her body into the foyer as they nuzzled into her abdomen. Their yellow teeth broke through skin and muscle, clamping onto strands of intestine and slippery organs, dragging them out onto the floor tile.

A house-shaking crash rang out from the kitchen as a deer slipped in through the window and crushed a chair. A bloody mess, it jerked in circles on its side as it slid on the linoleum.

Tommy broke from the stairs, his wounded leg in white hot pain, and lowered his shoulder. He collided with the nearest deer. The animal released the strip of muscle between its teeth and fell back out through the door, knocking over three more. Tommy regained his balance, raised a foot, and booted the other deer out, its neck cracking on impact.

Mindy lie in a twisted, grisly heap. Her eyes stared at the ceiling, and her mouth hung open in a scream that had never finished. Blood spotted her pale face.

A raccoon clumsily scurried inside, and Tommy brought his heel down on its skull, stopping it immediately and squirting sludgy guts out its mouth. Seeing the deer threatening to come back inside, Tommy reached down, took hold of Mindy's shoulders, and pushed with all the strength he had left. Her corpse rolled forward, out the door, and down the steps. The animals tore into the body again before it hit the ground.

Tommy slammed the door, locked it, and checked the kitchen. The deer still thrashed around the floor, unable to get itself upright. He scanned the place for some kind of weapon, but saw nothing – not even any knives on the counter. He headed for the stairs.

The kids huddled on the top step. Tommy made the climb with the help of the railing, grunting as he made a bloody boot print on every other step. He sat on the top step at the children's feet, catching his breath, eying his bleeding leg.

Leaning back, he ran his hands over his face and listened to the animals start to pound at the door again. The dead animals knew they were inside the house, and it was only a matter of time before they got in. Tommy opened his eyes, looked upward, and felt a glimmer of hope when he spotted the trapdoor to the attic.

“Hey,” he said to the kids. “Can we get up there?”

The girl rubbed her eyes and sullenly looked up at the ceiling; the boy merely nodded. Tommy sprang up, shoved past them, and reached for the tarnished handle. He pulled, but the door wouldn't budge. On his second effort, the door sprang open with a crack, raining dust and cobwebs. Tommy brushed the dirt out of his face, extending the folding stairs. Musty, humid air hit his face. The contraption creaked as he helped the girl start the climb up into the darkness.

Shattering glass downstairs made the girl flinch. Another crash sounded. Tommy hurried her up, trying to remain as calm as possible. He lifted the scrawny boy onto the thin steps and took one more look downstairs. There were a series of thuds, then the head of a misshapen doe came into view at the foot of the staircase.

Tommy gasped and looked to the attic. The girl made it to the top of the steps and crawled away from the trap door; the boy did the same with shaking legs. Tommy was right behind them, scaling the steps to the attic as the first of the deer lumbered to the top of the stairs below them.

Reaching the attic, Tommy bent down to pull the trap door up. He started to lose his balance, reeling in place for a few seconds and hovering over the hole. Throwing out his arms, he steadied himself on the edges of the opening, staring straight down to the landing below. Hooves appeared, followed by the rest of the mutilated deer. The twitching animal stumbled and ran into the attic stairs.

Tommy let out a shriek, pulling his hand away. The boards creaked, and he reached down again to grab the trap door as the deer smeared half-congealed blood on the bottom steps. He finally caught hold, pulling the trap door up with a loud groan. It latched into place. Tommy let out a lungful of air and sat straight down, exhausted.

He dragged his sleeve across his face and turned to the kids. They were silhouetted by the foggy window on the far wall.

“Is there a light up here?” Tommy breathed, squinting through the darkness, trying to locate a switch on the wall or a bulb dangling from the rafters.

Finding nothing right away, he lifted himself off the floor, moaning as the pain screamed from his calf. The children sniffled, silent in the murky darkness as Tommy carefully stepped around unidentifiable objects on his way to the window. Shrouded by layers of cobwebs, the window likely hadn't been cleaned in ages, but was still somewhat translucent. He brushed away the sticky webbing and leaned close to the dingy glass.

The army of shambling deer and scattered rodents surrounded the house, beating against the sides. Tommy and the kids felt the house vibrating as the animals assaulted it, relentless in their pursuit of the meat inside.

“Well, we're safe for now,” he said to the kids. “They can't get up here.”

Turning to them, he abruptly stopped and dropped his jaw. The black point of a fireplace poker hovered inches from his eye. The redheaded boy held it out, vengeance contorting his preadolescent face.

“You killed my mom and dad!” he screeched, extending his arm to thrust the poker into Tommy's eye as far as it would go.

Tommy bellowed in agony as the boy pulled the poker out and stabbed Tommy's other eye, inserting the poker even farther into his head than the first time. Blindly reaching up and grabbing the thin metal shaft, Tommy freed it from the boy's hands. Stiffening, Tommy crashed to the floor. The poker remained lodged in his brain as his body went limp. Blood poured from his eye sockets, pooling on the splintered floorboards.

The children looked at each other. Holding hands, they stepped over Tommy's corpse and peered out the window.

“How do we make this stop?” the girl whispered, watching the countless damaged deer hobble around the house.

The boy huffed. “I don't know,” he said. “I don't remember what the book said.”

“And it's still downstairs.”

They stood, staring through the clouded glass at the mess they had started, listening to the fervent pummeling below.

Watching My Favorites Again

The opportunity to write this book with Melzer has motivated me to go back and watch some of my favorite horror movies of all time. I find myself getting so busy with keeping with all the new zombie movies coming out, that I rarely take time to go back to the greats -- the reasons I fell in love with horror movies to begin with.

This weekend I watched Basket Case (1982) and Nosferatu (1922). And there's a whole stack sitting here, just waiting for me to watch them again. They're nothing new; I've seen most of them a million times. But they're the greatest horror films ever made, and every time I watch them, I experience the same magic that I did the first time I saw them.

New Project Collaboration with James Melzer

I'm very excited to announce that I'll be collaborating with James Melzer, author of The Zombie Chronicles, on a nonfiction book. For the time being, we're calling it 100 Horror Movies You Have to See, and it's exactly what you would think: a tribute to the 100 horror films that Mr. Melzer and I believe to be ones that you simply cannot go through life without seeing.

Expect our own thoughts about these movies, plus interviews with cast and crew involved in these films.

You know I'm a big fan of the horror genre -- I have been my whole life. James is highly knowledgeable in the realm of film, especially horror, and it's an honor for me to be working with such a talented guy.

Expect updates as the project moves forward!