Four
It wasn’t the movie that woke him. And the mockery from the back of the house had stopped. Still he shuttered awake with a “huh” and looked around the room with foggy eyes. The movie was over. The disc menu looped every thirty seconds or so. It produced a lot of noise but it couldn’t have been enough to wake him.
John sat up and looked around the room trying to remember where he was. It was late. He should be in bed. He glanced at his wrist and noted that he should start wearing a watch again before digging his phone out of his pocket. It was after midnight—well past his bedtime.
There were few naps that he regretted. After having kids, it was one of the few pleasures he wasn’t forced to share. But, the pre-sleep nap always threw off his night. It would be minutes before he could fall asleep again.
He found the remote and, with the glorious push of a single button, turned off the entire system. He was surprised to find that he was already dressed for bed. The trash incident had been forgotten. All he cared about was getting back to sleep. He picked up the bat and turned out the lights as he left the room.
At the base of the stairs he heard a knock. Well, the start of a knock. There had to be more than one rap to be knocking and this was a single rap. He waited for it to turn into knocking. There was no second rap. He shook it off as never happening and started up the stairs. Three steps up the flight there was a loud bang and a dragging sound across the door like someone had not seen that it was closed, walked into it and comically slid to the ground face first.
It was enough to turn John away from bed. He raised the bat and stepped to the door. “Hello?”
There was another bang.
“Who’s there?” The door didn’t have a peephole. In the past he had said he was going to install one, but he said a lot of things.
Again the bang and the drag.
John put his head against door as if being closer to it would make it transparent.
“Who’s there?”
A voice spoke, but it sounded like low guttural gibberish.
“Stop mumbling. Speak up.”
The voice may have repeated itself. John couldn’t make out any words.
“Louder. You’re mumbling.” John couldn’t stand a mumbler.
The voice did get a little louder. But, it did not get any clearer.
“Bill, is that you?”
The muttering was still unintelligible, but John was convinced it was muttering in the affirmative.
“Bill, we’re not doing this again. You’re at the wrong house.”
The response was confused muttering.
“Remember? You moved across the neighborhood. You don’t live here anymore.”
The muttering was more inquisitive this time.
“That’s right. Your wife didn’t like the neighbors.”
There was a break in the muttering.
“Don’t you remember, Bill? You’re on the other side of the neighborhood, now. ‘The good side’ your wife called it.”
The muttering got louder and there was another bang against the door.
“Don’t get mad at me. You married her.”
The banging increased in frequency. It almost sounded like knocking. The drunk let out a loud moan.
“That’s right. Let it out.”
The banging stopped. The moaning stopped.
“There. Don’t you feel better? Now go home, Bill.”
The muttering returned.
“I’m not giving you booze.”
A bang.
“No. Last time you finished my whiskey. And I was saving that whiskey for when I wanted whiskey.”
Another bang.
“No, Bill!”
This third bang shook the door frame.
“Knock it off, man! It’s not your door anymore.”
There were three bangs in quick succession.
“Fine. I’ve got some Schnapps. You can have that crap. But, you can’t come in.”
Bang.
“I said no, Bill.”
John ignored the muttering, walked to the kitchen and pulled a half-full bottle of peach-flavored crap from on top of the fridge. He examined the bottle and wondered who would have drank the other half. He’d been meaning to throw the bottle out for years. He couldn’t stand Schnapps. Booze should taste like booze. It shouldn’t taste like candy or fruit or anything else.
Once he had accidentally tried an ice tea flavored Vodka. “You want ice tea, pour an ice tea,” he had slurred and swallowed the drink as fast as he could. The mere idea angered him. That someone wanted to enjoy the benefits of drink without having to taste the drink itself. It was a shortcut. It was cheating. The third glass hadn’t been bad.
John held the bottle by the neck and walked back to the front door. He could see the door shaking as Bill banged against it repeatedly. “Dammit, Bill. I’m coming. You’re, uh ... you’re going to love this stuff.”
John opened the door.
It wasn’t Bill. It was the rotting corpse of a man in a tattered suit. The threads of a former tie hung from around its neck and may have been the only thing holding the corpse’s head in place. Flesh hung like the threads of an old tie from the face of the creature in places but skull and bone made up the majority of its face.
John held up the bottle. “Schnapps?”
John would later say that the thing that wasn’t Bill lunged through the doorway. Truthfully it kind of collapsed into the foyer. It seemed to fall with gravity more than it was pushed with its legs, but the end result was the same, a rotting corpse tackled John to the ground and began to mutter.
The stench was worse than the smell of Peach Schnapps. It rose from half-rotted lungs through an aerated trachea and over a swollen tongue building up a momentum of decay as it went. The tongue flapped as the stench escaped to cause the muttering sound. It was the most disgusting thing he’d seen a human body do next to childbirth.
John screamed as the thing that wasn’t Bill moaned, leaned forward and brought its dangling jaw close to John’s throat. He grabbed the corpse by the shoulders and pushed it away. The corpse’s right shoulder snapped from the body. John screamed louder.
With the arm removed, the animated body fell closer and what was left of its jaws began to chew. John punched the thing across the mouth. The creature’s teeth flew from the rotting jaw in a single piece and landed on the floor a few feet away. Aside from losing its teeth, the creature seemed unfazed by the punch and dove into John’s neck. Weak muscles worked the jaws as it tried to chew into John’s throat.
Disgusted, frightened and ticklish, John laughed as he screamed obscenities at the man that lie on top of him. “Haha, get off of meeheheh, you freehehehak.”
He rolled out from under his attacker and scrambled back on all fours. He put his hand to his neck. There was no blood, no bite mark or even a hickey, but the entire area felt disgusted and embarrassed by the whole ordeal.
The thing that sure as hell wasn’t Bill crawled towards him.
John kicked at the corpse’s head and tried to push him away.
The creature caught John’s foot in its remaining hand and pulled itself closer.
John grabbed blindly for where he thought he had left the bat. His hand found the neck of the Schnapps bottle and brandished it like a club. He pulled his foot free of the corpse’s hold and stood.
The creature stood on weak legs. Its pants were still intact but John could see that only bone thin legs supported it.
“I don’t want to hit you. Leave. Go on. Git.”
The corpse lunged forward and John swung the Schnapps bottle. The bottle shattered on the side of the creature’s head. Peach Schnapps sprayed across the foyer. The creature dropped to the ground.
“Are you happy now? My house is going to smell like Schnapps for days. Now get out.” John turned to point to the door. “Oh, God.”
They lumbered from side to side stepping heavy on each foot and gave one a sense that they weren’
t set on getting anywhere in particular. Still, somehow, John could tell they were coming for him.
Each creature was in a various state of decay. Some appeared rotted to the bone while others kept a less monstrous though still ghoulish appearance. About the only thing the creatures had in common was their attire. Though some hung like rags, each was dressed more formally than John would have expected monsters to dress. That and they all said, “Ooooo.” The same mocking noise the kids in the alley had made.
John rushed to the door and tried to slam it shut before the creatures reached his transom, but he stepped in a half bottle of Schnapps and slipped into a painful version of the splits. The alcohol soaked into his boxers. “Oh, that’s just great.”
The creatures in the yard got closer. Their moans began to synchronize in an unnerving harmony, “Oooooo. Ooooooo. John.”
“Oh shit, they know my name.”
Their mocking was never ending. The lumbering steps never ceased. There was a rhythm to their incessant consistency. It was driving him mad. He could swear he heard his name.
John struggled to stand in the puddle of Peach Schnapps but even with their bizarre gait, they were still faster than him.
The first creature reached the doorway and eyed John struggling to stand from the Schnapps induced splits. The horrid figure’s mouth snapped open and shut. Those were no dentures. They clicked with a sharpness unencumbered by cheeks and the sound echoed off the tile in the foyer.
John’s bat was sitting by the door. He tried to pull his legs together and dive for the weapon but the position was too unnatural and any movement just caused more pain. All he could do was yell. “Get off of my property!”
There was a thud and a ting and the creature nearest to the street collapsed. Another whack and another corpse fell from John’s view. There was a flurry of movement rushing towards his door. His name got louder as the moaning broke chorus and became a din of various growls.
John finally managed to stand. Three creatures filled the doorway. They could barely be called human. One had nothing left that one would recognize as a face. Patches of flesh outlined a skull and strung from the bone to create a fringe of former humanity that swayed as its jaws chomped the air.
John threw his shoulder into the door.
One of the creatures got a shoulder and most of his upper body through the doorway. There was a series of cracks as the door came to a stop. John couldn’t tell if it was wood cracking or bone. He imagined they would sound very similar. He hoped it was bone. New doors were a bitch to hang.
The combined force of the three creatures stopped John’s attempt to close the door. They leaned into the house, turned towards John, snapped their jaws and groaned. John fell back onto the floor. The door flew open and the corpses moved into the foyer.
John scrambled back over the body of the thing that wasn’t Bill. It smelled of death and Peach Schnapps. He wasn’t sure which odor caused his stomach to turn.
The creatures lumbered into the foyer.
The thing that wasn’t Bill moved underneath him.
John fell onto his back and the toothless corpse lunged at his neck. It began to chew. John began to giggle again. He screamed and laughed. “Get hahahout! Get hahahout of my hahahouse!”
The thing that wasn’t Bill was terrifying but harmless as long as it didn’t remember to put its teeth back in. But the other three that loomed above him bared sharp yellowed teeth that snapped at the air, warming up for when their once pearly whites finally met flesh.
John shoved the toothless corpse off of him and backed away on his elbows.
The nearest corpse that still had teeth moaned with excitement.
John heard his name again as the creature’s head absorbed a baseball bat. The skull fractured and caved in on itself but the creature did not fall. Instead, it turned towards its attacker.
Another swing of the bat collapsed the skull from the opposite direction and turned it into an hourglass—the world’s most hideous hourglass.
The creature roared as a third swing from the bat came crashing down on its crown and drove its temple to its chin. The moaning stopped and the corpse fell to the ground. Dead. Like a corpse should be.
Chris stood in the foyer with a tarnished aluminum bat. Erik swung some sort of green stick at one of the other creatures that had entered the house. The third was already on the ground with a flattened face.
John sat up. “Chris? Erik?”
The thing that wasn’t Bill leapt on him again.