Twisted Little Things and Other Stories (2 page)

I'd never, ever seen him act all crazy about something so trivial. As I started the engine, I couldn't help wondering what had made him get so worked up.

Three

“John Spencer Baxter?” Jimmy replied, his eyes widening with shock as he stared at the figures on the kitchen counter. “The dude who ripped all those women apart?”

“Creepy, huh?” I said with a faint smile. “I figured you'd be interested.”

“This is super mega freaky,” he continued, looking back down at his phone and scrolling through the web-page for a moment. “You can actually see them in some of the crime-scene photos. They must have been right there in the dude's basement while he was hacking his victims apart. They must have been there when all those women were screaming. Hell, maybe they even got, like, blood sprayed on them!”

“Maybe,” I muttered, looking at the figures. “I guess they saw a lot of bad stuff.”

Jimmy mumbled something under his breath, while still looking at images online.

“I can't stay too long,” I continued after a moment, checking my watch. “Lucas is in the car. I gapped the window, but still, the poor guy's going insane with lust. Must be all these invisible dog hormones floating through the air. I just figured I'd drop by and pick up those books you said Katie could have.”

I waited, but he seemed completely engrossed by whatever was on the phone's screen.

“Jimmy?” I said again after a moment. “The books? Do you still have them or not?”

“Look!” he said suddenly, holding his phone up so I could see yet another grainy black-and-white photo from the John Spencer Baxter house. “There they are! Those exact figures, on a shelf in his basement!”

“I know,” I replied. “I think we've established that the -”

“And again!” He'd already scrolled to another picture, and then he quickly brought up a third. “And there too! Man, these twisted little things are, like, direct from the crime scene!”

“It's kind of weird that there's a market for this stuff,” I pointed out, looking down at the figures again. “It's weird that they're even
allowed
to be sold, but I guess that's the way the world works these days. Everything has a price-tag. You should've seen my father, though. I dropped by his place earlier and showed him, and he really freaked out. I guess his generation sees things differently.”

“Are you gonna keep 'em?” Jimmy asked, setting his phone down and then kneeling in front of the counter to get a closer look at the figures.

I shook my head. “I'm going to post them back to the guy.”

“Why?”

“He sent them to me by accident.”

“So? That's his problem, dude. Legally they're yours now.”

“Is that how it works?”

“That's
totally
how it works.”

“Well, anyway, I don't want them.”

He looked up at me. “Can I have them?”

“No, Jimmy,” I said with a sigh, “they're not mine to give away. I already explained this, the guy in Wisconsin made a genuine mistake, and I'm gonna post them right back to him.”

“But dude -”

“Don't
dude
me,” I continued. “I'm sending the damn things back. And frankly, I'm...” I paused for a moment, before sighing again. “You know what? I was going to say that I'm surprised you want them, but then I realized I'm not surprised at all. After all, I'm talking to a guy who owns one of those dumb Klingon swords.”

“It's called a Bat'leth.”

“And a life-sized model of the woman from
Plan 9
.”

“These statues were in the presence of pure evil,” he replied, staring at them, “for a long, long time, dude. And pure pain, too. Can you imagine the atmosphere down in that basement while Baxter was torturing his victims? The screams, the blood, the fear... And then the periods in-between victims, or when there was just a corpse down there, waiting to be cut up. Do you think the air in that basement was different somehow? Like, these figures are made of wood, right?” He reached out to touch one of them, but at the last moment he held back, almost as if he didn't quite dare. “It's like it's hard to believe they didn't somehow absorb some of it.”

“Maybe the soul of John Spencer Baxter is inhabiting the soldiers,” I said with a smile. “Both of them at once.”

“Don't joke!” He winced as he touched the darker of the two figures, but he quickly pulled his hand away again.

“John Spencer Baxter died a few years ago,” I pointed out. “I checked. He was shot dead in a jail cell, but I really don't think he's come back to inhabit a pair of stupid wooden figures. I mean, this whole thing is getting pretty laughable, right? I genuinely don't understand why everyone's suddenly so superstitious. It's like there's something in the water. These are
just
two little chunks of wood.”

I waited for a reply, but Jimmy was busy tapping away at his phone, and after a moment I heard a muffled bumping sound coming from the tinny speakers.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Wait.”

I waited.

“Jimmy -”

“Wait!”

I sighed.

“Jimmy, I really -”

“Just wait a moment, dude! Jeez, since when did you become so impatient?”

Sighing, I realized I could hear a faint, grainy voice coming from his phone. A moment later, a woman's scream erupted just as Jimmy turned the phone so I could see a dark video that showed a naked woman tied to a chair.

“Help!” the woman shouted. “Please don't do this! Please don't hurt me!”

From behind the camera, there was a faint sniffing sound, as if someone was laughing.

“Don't kill me!” the woman sobbed.

The camera moved around her, exposing a flank of flesh that had been sliced away from the left side of her torso, revealing the glistening, bloodied ribs beneath.

“Jimmy,” I said cautiously, “I really don't -”

“Help me!” the woman screamed suddenly, making me flinch. “Somebody -”

“There!” Jimmy said excitedly, pausing the video and pointing at the top right of the screen. “See them?”

I was about to ask what he meant, when I realized I could see the two wooden soldiers on a shelf in the background.

“The Baxter videos leaked online a while back,” he said with a grin. “There are your two little men, right there in the picture while that woman was being killed!”

“And you
watched
these videos?”

“There's nothing wrong with being curious,” he muttered, zooming in until the screen was filled with a pixelated view of the two soldiers. “They were in that room the whole time,” he continued, his voice filled with a sense of awe. “It's like they were witnesses to the man's crimes. Or accomplices. Or, even worse, they just, like... They stood there, watching with fixed, blank gazes, like a little wooden audience.”

I stared at the frozen image for a moment, before glancing at the soldiers on the counter. I'd never been a superstitious kind of person, but even I had to admit that it felt...
unsettling
to know that those two little statues had once been in the room where a serial killer had tortured and murdered countless victims.

“Look at those faces,” Jimmy continued, holding one of them up for me to get a closer look. “Do they seem innocent to you? Guilty? Uncaring?”

“They're toys,” I pointed out.

“But look at their expressions,” he added, holding the soldier even closer. “What did the experience of being in that basement do to them? Maybe the vibrations changed them on, like, a molecular level!”

Reaching out, I put a hand on his arm and forced him to set the figure back down. “The experience didn't do anything to them,” I explained calmly, “because they're wooden toys. That's all!”

“You don't believe that,” he replied. “Not for one second.”

“Well, I'm sending them back tomorrow,” I said finally, tiring of the whole thing. “I mean, they're weird, but I don't want to hang onto them.”

“Are you sure you don't want to pass them on to your good buddy here?” he asked. “I can slip you twenty bucks.”

“Do you have those books for me to pick up or not?”

“They're in the bathroom.”

I frowned. “Why are they in the bathroom?”

“I only read when I'm on the can,” he said with a sniff. “It's the only time I can concentrate.”

“When you said you wanted to donate books for the sale at Katie's church,” I said with a sigh, “you didn't mention that they'd been sitting in your rancid bathroom.”

“You don't want 'em?”

“I guess no-one has to know,” I muttered, heading through to his bathroom. Sure enough, a pile of thirty or forty paperbacks had been left in a cardboard box on the cistern. I moved the roll of toilet paper from on top, before taking the box and carrying it back out to the kitchen.

The bottom of the box was a little damp, but I told myself that was just moisture from the shower cabinet. I really didn't feel like giving the matter any more thought.

“I want you to get these things out of here,” Jimmy said suddenly, hurrying to me and placing the two wooden soldiers on top of the box. “Now!”

“Well, I'm -”

“Now, dude,” he continued, clearly agitated as he stepped back and kept his eyes fixed on the statues. I'd been out of the room for all of thirty seconds, but the change in his demeanour was incredible. “I don't want 'em in my house.”

“A minute ago you were -”

“Dude, seriously!” He started rubbing his arms, as if he was cold, and after a moment I realized I could see sweat running down his face. “What the hell were you thinking, bringing those things in here in the first place? Get 'em out!”

“Alright,” I replied, surprised by his sudden change of heart, “I was going anyway, I can't leave Lucas in the -”

“Get them out!” he shouted, grabbing the statues and hurrying to the front door. A moment later, I heard him heading outside.

“What's getting into people today?” I muttered under my breath, heading to the door just in time to see Jimmy throwing the statues into the street.

“Jesus Christ!” he hissed, hurrying back to meet me at the door. “Those things are evil, dude! You don't want to be messing about with that kinda stuff! Fuck! I can't believe they were even in my house!”

“Two minutes ago, you wanted to buy them from me,” I pointed out.

“That was before I realized just...” He turned back to look at the statues, and for the first time I realized he actually seemed lost for words. “After you left the room,” he continued finally, “I got a bad feeling. It was like something was suddenly creeping up onto my shoulders, like it was leeching out of their little wooden bodies and...” He visibly shuddered, as if he was genuinely freaked out. I'd never seen Jimmy act so strange, but he slowly stepped back into the house, keeping his eyes on the statues. “Don't send 'em back to anyone, dude,” he continued finally. “You know what you should do with those things? You should destroy them. For the good of, like, the world and shit! You have a moral responsibility to, like, incinerate them!”

“I'm not destroying someone else's property,” I replied, rolling my eyes as I carried the box of books to my car. “Thanks for these. I'm sure someone'll be very happy to inherit your collection of bathroom literature.”

“I'm not kidding!” he called after me. “Those statues aren't right! You need to burn them or crush them!”

I slid the box onto the backseat, before turning to Jimmy just as his front door slammed shut.

“Huh,” I muttered, having never seen him in such a state before.

Sighing, I headed around the car and picked the statues up from the street.

“What is it with you two little guys?” I asked, staring down for a moment at their intricately carved faces. “You sure as hell seem to get on the wrong side of some people.”

Four

“Easy, boy,” I stammered a short while later, holding tight on Lucas's leash as I led him from the car. “Can't you just tone it down a little, buddy?”

Even as we reached the garden gate, he was pulling to go the other way, as if the scent of some distant female dog was still driving him crazy. The scent might have been undetectable to the human nose, but to Lucas it seemed to be overwhelming.

“We'll just tie you up in the yard,” I told him, setting the box of books down, “and -”

“Daddy!”

Turning, I smiled as I saw Lucy racing out of the house, with Katie wandering after her a moment later.

“Hey,” I said, bracing myself just in time. Lucy clattered into me, wrapping her arms around me for a big hug. “I wasn't gone
that
long!”

“Mommy and I made cookies!” she replied, stepping back. “Mommy said we should do it while you and Lucas were out, because it'd be the only peace we get all day. Do you want to try one?”

“I'd
love
to try one,” I told her. “Let me just -”

Before I could finish, the leash slipped from my hand. I turned, but I was too late and Lucas had already bolted.

“Lucas!” I shouted, hurrying after him. “Stay! Sit! Lucas, stop!”

Reaching the sidewalk, I saw him racing away along the street, dragging his leash. Sighing, I watched as he ran around the corner, disappearing from view.

“Where did Lucas go?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, he's just got some...” I turned to her, not really sure how to explain. “I guess there's just someone he really,
really
wants to visit.”

“Are you gonna go look for him?” Katie asked as she joined us.

“That's what the app's for,” I muttered, taking my phone from my pocket and bringing up the GPS locator.

“Is Lucas coming back?” Lucy asked, with tears in her eyes.

“Of course he is,” I told her, tousling the hair on the back of her head. “Remember last time he got out and went chasing after a lady dog? And this time, it'll be even easier to find him because of the tracker in his collar.” I turned the screen, showing her a map of the neighborhood with a little red dot movingly surprisingly fast along a nearby street. “Shouldn't take too long. I just need to follow this thing until our canine Romeo finds his Juliet.”

“But why did he run away?” she asked. “Doesn't he love us anymore?”

“He loves us very much,” I replied, opening the car door again, “but he's just picked up on the smell of a lady dog, that's all.”

“
I
don't smell a lady dog.”

“It's a different kind of sense,” I told her, climbing into the car. “You and I can't pick it up at all, but for Lucas it's like the biggest stink in the world. Don't worry, I'll be back with him real soon.”

“Please don't let Lucas go away forever,” she replied, sniffing back tears. “I love him.”

As I drove away, I glanced in the mirror and saw Katie leading Lucy back across the driveway. Looking at the dashboard, I frowned when I saw that there was no sign of the wooden soldiers. When I realized that I'd put them on top of the box of books, and that I'd left the box in the driveway, I very nearly turned the car around to go back. Then again, I told myself there was no need to worry, and that the soldiers would simply sit on the box until I returned. The last thing I needed was to let myself get caught up in the same supernatural paranoia that had gripped Dad and Jimmy.

The soldiers would be fine. No-one'd hurt them.

***

Bringing the car to a halt at the edge of a rough, bumpy road just outside town, I peered at the trailer parked nearby. After double-checking the GPS app to make sure I was in the right place, I got out of the car just in time to spot Lucas over by the trailer, frantically digging a hole in the dirt. I'd expected to find him whimpering at a fence, but instead he just seemed to be searching for something.

“Really, boy?” I muttered, heading over toward him. “Did you have to come all the way out here?”

As I got closer, I saw that the trailer was a rundown, battered old thing, with faded paint and dirty windows. For a moment I actually thought it might have been abandoned, but then I spotted a couple of neat trashcans arranged along one side, and I realized that while the exterior of the place looked all beaten-up, the windows revealed neat curtains and what appeared to be a set of crystals hanging from the ceiling. Nearby, more crystals had been hung from the branches of several trees, and now they were catching the sunlight as they turned in a gentle breeze.

A moment later, the door opened and a middle-aged woman stepped out. She was wearing some kind of shawl, and I was already picking up on the smell of incense. The hippie vibe was pretty damn strong.

“I figured someone'd show up to collect him sooner or later,” she said with a smile, looking down at Lucas as he continued to dig a few feet away. “He seems pretty determined.”

“Lucas, get over here!” I hissed, before turning to the woman. “I'm sorry, he's being tormented by the scent of a lady dog. Do you have one?”

She shook her head. “Just me here.”

“Huh.” Reaching Lucas, I saw that he was still digging keenly, having already managed to get a couple of feet down into the dark, dry soil. “I thought I'd find him pining outside someone's gate,” I continued, “not frantically digging in a garden.” I glanced around, but it was clear that there were no more trailers or houses nearby.

“There must be something down there that he really wants,” she pointed out. “He showed up about twenty minutes ago and got straight to work.”

“I'll get him out of your way.”

“Maybe you should just let him finish. He'll only try to come back otherwise, and he's not hurting anyone.”

Looking down at Lucas, I couldn't help feeling that my dog was looking particularly dumb. He had his head buried deep in the pit, and every few seconds a faint, pig-like snorting sound emerged.

“Would you like a drink?” the woman asked.

“Oh, no, thank you,” I replied. “I really don't want to disturb you.”

“Nonsense. You're the first person I've seen since I arrived.”

“I'm fine, thanks,” I told her. “I really just want to get my crazy dog home.”

“I've only been parked in this spot for a few weeks,” the woman said after a moment, still smiling. “If there are any dead bodies down there, they're nothing to do with me.”

“I don't know what's gotten into him,” I muttered. “I was so sure he was pining after a lady again.”

“Allie,” she replied.

I turned to her.

“Allie,” she said again, holding out a hand for me to shake.

“Oh. Michael. Michael Anderson.”

“Nice to meet you, Michael. As you can probably see, I'm really just passing through town. Or rather, passing by the edge of town.”

“You live on the road?”

“Something like that. I like to keep moving.” An awkward pause settled for a moment. “Not that I'm a fugitive or anything,” she added suddenly. “I'm not running away from anything, I just... I like to keep going, see different places, that sort of thing. I prefer not to get too tied down to one area.”

“Sounds like a good way to get about,” I replied, although I immediately realized that was kind of a dumb way to phrase things. Still, I figured I should be polite, even though I thought the nomadic lifestyle sounded kind of stupid. At that moment, however, her wind chimes began to whistle again, and I couldn't help but laugh.

“You find something funny?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not.”

“What's in your car?”

“I'm sorry?”

“There's something in there,” she continued, turning and looking toward the car. “Sorry, I don't mean to sound weird, but sometimes I pick up on...” She paused, clearly lost in thought. “There's definitely something in your car. Something that shouldn't be there.”

Even after just a couple of minutes, I had the woman pegged as something of a hippyish kind of person, and the last thing I wanted was to get into a discussion about crystals and healing auras.

“Come on, Lucas,” I said, turning to see that the dog was still digging like a maniac. “Let's get out of here and leave this nice lady alone. I'm sure she has things to be doing.”

“You should get them out of your car,” she continued, with a hint of concern in her voice. “Both of them. Destroy them if you can, but don't take any risks.”

I turned to her. “Them?”

“There are two. I don't know what they are, but there are two of them in there. They're very similar to one another, but they're not quite the same. They've picked up something from the world, something that seeped into them and stayed there. Not something whole, either. It's more like... a fraction of something that was once much larger and more powerful.” She turned to me. “Why are you driving around with those things in your car?”

“Well...” I paused. “I don't know what you're talking about, but -”

“You must know,” she replied, interrupting me. “You can't have not noticed them. No matter how closed your mind might be, you can't possibly ignore something that's this powerful.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but in truth I wasn't quite sure what to say. Allie was clearly barking mad, but somehow she seemed to have picked up on my concern about the statues. How she'd managed that, I had no idea, but I figured she must have just gotten lucky with a few vague comments, and now she was reading my body language to wind me up a little more.

“I see it in your eyes,” she continued. “You know what I'm talking about.”

“Come on, Lucas,” I muttered, heading over to the substantial pit that Lucas had already managed to dig. I was smiling now, almost laughing, thanks to the severity of her bullshit warning. “Let's get out of here. Come on, boy! We're going home!”

“You can leave them with me,” Allie said, with a hint of fear in her voice. “The things from the car, I mean. I can deal with them. Contain them. You're taking a huge risk if you keep them around. Trust me, those things are dangerous. Even if they're not actively trying to hurt you, their mere presence will -”

“They're not in the car!” I muttered. “They're -”

Pausing, I thought of the two soldiers resting on the box in the driveway. For a brief moment, I felt a chill run up my spine, but I quickly told myself not to let some dumb hippy get into my head.

“Okay,” I said, turning to her and holding my hands up, “I should head off. I just need to get my dog and go home. That's all. I'm really sorry we disturbed you, but I promise it won't happen again.”

“You think you'll be safe if you just -”

“Stop!” I said again, raising my voice a little. “I get it. You think there's something nasty in my car. Fine, whatever. You're wrong, you're being very dramatic, and I'm taking my dog home now. Goodbye.”

“Don't you sense it?”

I sighed.

“I think you do,” she continued. “Maybe not as much as other people, maybe you're just not as receptive, but... Still, you must feel something in the air, something that's slowly reaching out and -”

“Bullshit.”

“Can I at least see them?”

I paused for a moment. “No,” I said finally. “No, you can't see them.”

“Because you're scared?”

“Because they're just two dumb little wooden soldiers!” I snapped. “They didn't absorb anything, they're not somehow magically contaminated by something that happened in a room a long time ago. They're just two stupid little toys and they're not even in the car right now! I took them out and left them at home!”

Sighing again, I realized she'd tricked me into giving her more information. Looking down, I saw that Lucas was still desperately trying to dig deeper. At that particular moment, I was tempted to grab his collar and drag him away.

“Come on, Lucas,” I continued, no longer even bothering to hide my irritation. “Let's get home and leave this nice lady to smoke whatever's giving her these crazy ideas.”

I waited, but still Lucas ignored me.

“Lucas!” I shouted. “Now!”

Spotting movement nearby, I turned and saw that Allie was approaching my car.

“Stop!” I yelled, hurrying after her. “Get away from there!”

“Can't you feel it in the air?” she asked, stopping several feet away and staring at the car. “Seriously, tell me you're not picking up on it. It's coming from your car and it's filling the air, or -”

She paused for a moment, still staring at the car with tears in her eyes.

“No, I was wrong,” she muttered. “They're not in there, not anymore. They were earlier, though, and they left a small trace of themselves. If I can still sense that trace now, they must be more powerful than I'd realized.” She turned to me. “Where are they now?”

“This is bullshit,” I replied, trying very hard to sound calm and collected.

“Something got into those figures,” she continued, “something awful, and now it's a part of them. It's not their fault, but nothing can be done to cleanse them, not now the evil has soaked into them so completely. They just have to be burned and forgotten about before they have a chance to hurt anyone. Trust me, I have a sense when it comes to these things. I've always been very open to certain impressions.”