Apeshit (18 page)

Crystal’s eyes fill with water, but before she can cry

something grabs her attention. The figure is back. It is

coming down the dirt road towards her. She can get a good

view of it now. It isn’t exactly human. It is some kind of

mutant. It is a seven-foot-tall pot-bellied naked woman

with sagging wrinkled breasts, a bald head, and two tiny

holes for nostrils.

The gray-skinned woman holds out her hands. Her

arms are much longer than normal human arms. They are

almost the same length as her legs. On each hand, she has

three fingers and two thumbs. She has extra thumbs where

her pinky fingers should be. There are long metal blades on

each of her fingers and metal hooks on each of her thumbs.

When she sees the claws, Crystal turns and runs.

She doesn’t know if the creature chases after her or not.

She just runs.

As she dashes for the cabin, she notices that the front

door has been ripped off and is lying in the dirt. All of the

outside lights have been smashed. The lighting inside is dim.

A gray blur bullets past her and darts into the cabin through

the broken door.

The thing was fast. It looked like the mutant creature

that was behind Crystal but it moved so quickly that she isn’t

sure what it was. Crystal stops and looks back. Nothing is

behind her. She wonders if the thing really went inside. She

wonders if she is hallucinating all of this.

She steps through the doorway of the cabin and looks

in. She doesn’t see anything in the entryway. Just in case

the thing really is real and inside the cabin, Crystal decides

she needs a weapon. The only things in the entryway are

those weird bronzed hands growing out of the wall. Crystal

pulls on one of them. It is hard and heavy enough to make a

decent weapon, but she can’t get it out of the wall.

Listening carefully, there doesn’t seem to be any

sounds coming from around the corner. The entire cabin is

silent. She decides to go forward, unarmed, stepping care-

fully into the living room.

The living room and kitchen are empty. Crystal

sneaks into the kitchen and takes a butcher knife out of

a grocery bag filled with utensils. She looks for the gun

that had been on the kitchen counter. It is gone. All of the

bullets are gone as well, except for one that is lying on the

kitchen floor.

There is a bubbling noise coming from somewhere

in the next room. Crystal peers over the kitchen counter

and scans the living room area, but there is nobody in there.

Then she sees movement coming from the other side of the

couch and looks closely.

She sees the back of Des’s mohawk.

Desdemona is sitting on the couch, drinking from Ja-

son’s bottle of scotch. Crystal comes up behind her.

“Des!”

Crystal lowers the knife and sighs with relief as she

sees her friend drinking casually on the couch. She thinks

she must have hallucinated that ghostly gray figure.
It wasn’t

outside and it didn’t come in here. It wasn’t real.
Crystal has

had hallucinations caused by stress before. One time, when

she was in charge of organizing a homecoming party, she be-

came so stressed out that she heard voices the entire day. It

was her own voice that she heard, telling her things that she

needed to do to make the party perfect, but it sounded like it

was coming from another person standing behind her talking

over her shoulder. With all that had happened with Stepha-

nie, Crystal believes it’s very possible that these could have

been stress-related hallucinations.

“Steph didn’t make it, Des,” Crystal says softly.

Des turns to her with the bottle in her mouth.

“I left her outside,” Crystal says.

As Crystal steps around the side of the couch, she

sees Desdemona’s entrails spread out across the cushions

and the carpeting. Her friend is covered in blood. Her throat

has been ripped open and a stream of Johnny Walker Red is

dribbling out.

“What the fuck happened?” Crystal cries. “Des!

Holy shit!”

Desdemona blinks slowly and brings the bottle of

scotch down to her lap, getting it tangled in her pile of mud-

caked intestines.

“Where is everyone?” Crystal cries. “What in the

hell is going on?”

“Something in the woods,” Desdemona croaks

through her broken larynx.

“Where’s Rick and Jason?”

“Rick is dead,” Desdemona wheezes. “Jason took off.”

Crystal goes to her friend and tries to comfort her,

but she doesn’t want to touch her mess.

“Don’t worry, Des,” Crystal says. “Kevin is going

for help. I’m sure he’s already called the cops by now. It

shouldn’t be long before they send in a rescue helicopter.

You’ll be fine.”

“I won’t be fine,” Desdemona says.

Crystal jerks her head back and looks around the

room, as she remembers the gray mutant who she’d seen en-

ter the cabin moments before. She retrieves her butcher knife

and goes to Desdemona, lowering her voice to a whisper.

“Did you see anything come through here before

me?” Crystal says.

Desdemona shakes her head.

“It was this naked mutant woman with long arms and

metal fingernails,” she says. “Is that the thing that did this to

you?”

Desdemona shakes her head. “It wasn’t a woman.”

“There’s more of them?” Crystal asks.

“I thought there was only one,” Desdemona says.

Crystal leaves Desdemona in the living room to

search the house for the gray-skinned woman. The upstairs

is dark and quiet. She decides to make sure the ground floor

is safe before heading up there.

She wonders how many of the creatures there are.

There are at least two, but the cabin could be surrounded by

those things. She doesn’t like leaving Desdemona alone in

the living room, especially with the front door of the cabin

ripped off, but she doesn’t want to force her friend to move.

Stephanie might not have died if she wasn’t dragged back

and forth through the woods. Crystal didn’t want to make

that mistake again.

There is a noise coming from down the hallway.

It is the sound of tools falling from shelves. The room

where Stephanie was supposed to sleep is empty, but

across the hall, under the stairs, there is an open door that

shouldn’t be open. It is the door that leads down into the

basement.

Crystal steps slowly down the stairs into the base-

ment, carrying the butcher knife at her waist like a sheathed

sword. The generator is purring loud enough to hide the

creaking of the wooden steps as she descends.

The creature is on the other side of the room, digging

through Jason’s grandfather’s collection of mounted deer

heads and stuffed birds. The gray woman picks up a duck

and bites into its breast. Sawdust spills over the creature’s

lips. It turns around, facing Crystal, as it tries to eat the

mounted duck. Crystal gets a good look at the swollen belly

of the creature. It looks as if the thing is almost nine-months

pregnant and ready to burst.

Crystal slowly steps back as the creature spits

feathers and woodchips into the air. It is looking straight

at her. Before the creature has a chance to charge her,

Crystal turns around and runs up the steps.

Once she gets upstairs, she closes the basement door

and slides the latch into place to lock it. Before the latch

is secure, the thing slams into the door. Crystal pushes her

weight against it. The creature slams again.

“Des,” she cries. “I need your help.”

With the next impact, the door cracks a little in the

center.

“Des!”

Her friend doesn’t answer.

Crystal decides to make a run for it. She leaps away

from the door and rushes into the living room. Desdemona

is no longer on the couch. The room is empty.

“Des!” she yells, but she doesn’t wait around for a

response.

She runs up the stairs to the third floor and heads

straight for the attic. The sound of the creature slamming on

the door echoes up the stairway. She pulls the cord on the

ceiling and climbs up the ladder.

Dashing blindly into the dark of the attic, her feet

catch on one of the pinball-boy sculptures, the one that Kev-

in drew the smiley face on. She trips and slams her head into

one of the bowling balls hanging from the ceiling.

While she sits there in the dark, her hands coated in

dust, blood gushing out of her nose, she debates whether or

not she should just close the attic door and hide up there until

morning. If the cabin is surrounded with these creatures, she

doesn’t stand a chance. Rick and Stephanie are dead. Jason

and Desdemona are missing, presumed dead. Kevin is either

long gone or never made it down the hill. She’s all alone.

She is better off just hiding.

But she doesn’t like the idea of sitting in a dark attic

all night. She just can’t get herself to do it. Right now, she

has a creature locked in the basement. If she can reinforce

the door the thing will be trapped down there. For all she

knows, this is the only one she has to worry about. For all

she knows, it is the only one still alive. She’s got to keep it