NEW READER FRIENDLY. This is Part Two of the story that was too disturbing for nosleep. It isn’t necessary that you read Part One, but if you want to it is still on my profile.
If for some strange reason, it’s always been your dream to see what the recovery would look like after a nuclear fallout, then your wish is my command. You now have two wishes left. Hey, it’s not my fault you wasted your first one. No, you can’t wish for more wishes.
The place is called Hollow Landing. Otherwise known as my home. I assume you’ve never been here because you’d have to be a moron to wind up here accidentally. If you came here on purpose, well, you’re probably not the type of person who reads for fun–either because you’re too busy serving People Stew to the local fish gods, or you’re also a moron.
Hollow Landing is a peninsula, running out into a fishing lake. It’s a fishing lake in name only because no one has ever caught a fish here. What folks have caught in Lake Wonday is syphilis and radiation poisoning. No one swims in the lake, because of the syphilis, but also because it’s riddled with leeches that are three times the average size. When we first moved in it was a hot day, and I decided to go for a swim. When I finished my refreshing swim I was covered in bulbous brown worms that were feeding on my blood. My girlfriend had to pry them off with a crowbar.
The funny thing is, The Neighborhood is right outside one of the nicer cities in the state. The highway runs right alongside it. Six miles away it’s all cappuccinos and neat rows of pampered flowerbeds, but if you drive in my direction you’re liable to be assaulted by a roving gang of inbred cats that mistake you for a strangely shaped milk bowl. They’re learning disabled. At least I assume so, the one that chews on my front porch step doesn’t exactly give off “fully capable” vibes.
The neighborhood itself looks like a disaster site. You know how there are always houses in ruins, but right next to them, there’s a house that’s freshly power-washed? Maybe you don’t, but The Landing is just like that. There’s our house, which I try to keep up, even if I do have to use tarps to patch the roof; across from a decaying, half-incinerated trailer with broken windows which hosts orgies for the aforementioned cats; and behind that, the heir to a world-famous soda company has a three-story lake house.
The people are a mixed bag too. Not all of them can even be called people. That’s, uh, not a racist thing, they aren’t human. For instance, there’s a man that walks the circle—an old guy, maybe in his sixties—his long hair and beard are snow white. He carries a walking stick, and his clothes look like they came off the set of a medieval drama film, but they could just be from Goodwill. Not everyone sees him at the same time. Just the other day, my neighbor Burke and I were standing out in my front yard talking and the old man walked by. I gave him a wave and he said, “Evenin’,” like he always does. Burke looked at me like I was crazy. He asked me who I was waving at, and I pointed to the old man. Burke then asked me to fork over the drugs, which I wasn’t on and didn’t have. The very next day I went through the exact same routine with my girlfriend, Vandie, only to discover I was the one who couldn’t see the guy this time.
I think maybe the place is a time-warp or a dimension…hole, or some kind of sci-fi shit. Sometimes things change. My lawn mower, for example, is a Kubota Guillotine. One day when I was getting ready to cut the grass I noticed that the model name had changed from Guillotine to “Eviscerator.” That’s not even a word. This entire place gaslights you, not to mention the literal gas problem.
It was a cold day, and for some reason, my eyes began to hurt every time I looked at our above-ground swimming pool, which wasn’t particularly unusual. Vandie and I were fixing the fence. There was a wrecking ball sized hole splintered right through the lattice. I thought maybe Miley Cyrus had been in the area until I saw the trail of ooze leading up from the lake through the hole–then I was sure that Miley was lurking around. We followed the trail to the tool shed. I had my CZ 9mm ready, prepared for anything. We flung the door open like a drunk, down syndrome-riddled SWAT team, but only found more slime inside. Also, the tools had been carefully organized in alphabetical order. We forgot about the culprit for the moment and gathered the tools we needed to fix the fence.
I was on my knees, focused on wire-tying one of those plastic storage tub lids to the wood surrounding the hole. I finished wrapping one wire through the hole I’d drilled in the plastic, and I turned to Vandie for another strand. When I turned back to my work, there was a face peering at me through the wooden diamonds of the lattice. It was a horrible face, lumpy and angular in all the wrong places, pimply, eyes sunk deep in the skull with black bags beneath them. I jumped backward, as much as you can jump from a kneeling position.
“Hey, neighbor,” said Fred.
I looked at Vandie, whose eyes were wide. She gave a small shrug and shook her head which translated to, “I didn’t see him show up either, but don’t act so surprised, he’s a fucking creep.”
“Fred,” I tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Hello, Vandie,” Fred said. “You’re looking particularly warm on this crisp winter day.”
“Uh, hey, thanks.”
It bears repeating: Fred is a creep. Everyone in the neighborhood knows it. When we first moved in, we were warned about him. See, Fred is a peeping Tom. Once, I was washing my hands at the kitchen sink, and I saw him through the window, staring right back at me—from inside the backyard. I blinked and he was gone. Afterward, we kept our blinds and curtains tightly closed.
I stepped between him and Vandie. “What’s going on, Fred?”
“Well, I was wondering if y’all’ve seen anything weird of late,” said Fred.
“Weird?” I looked from Fred to the trail of slime I’d been kneeling in, “Never.”
“Well—ahem—good. That’s good. I wanted to let you know, I feel like someone has been lingering around my house, trying to…mess with me.”
“That’s terrible,” Vandie said.
“What gave you that idea?” I asked.
“Well, several things. I’ve heard a—ahem—scratching sound on my door. Like someone rubbing their body against it,” Fred whispered the last sentence. He looked over his shoulder, then leaned in closer toward me. I leaned away. “I feel like I’m being watched. Like someone is trying to get in—in my head. They—ahem—they tell me that they want to—ahem—ahem—they, well they want to—ahehHUM—I don’t think I’m m—AHUM—hum—HUM—” he broke into a coughing fit.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
“Well—HUM—I just have—AHHHUM—you don’t understand, they—HUUUH—make me—HWAAUH—” He doubled over, coughing and gagging.
“Here’s some water,” Vandie said as if she were offering it to a casual visitor.
Fred took it and straightened, one hand on his stomach. He started to raise it, but halfway to its destination, his mouth ejaculated red and black puke. The open bottle took the brunt of the fire. We stepped back. It smelled like a chemical weapon you would learn to make from a revolutionary’s manifesto. And blood. I know what you’re thinking right now, “Blood doesn’t have a smell.” But it does if there’s enough of it.
“Not in my water bottle, boner!” Vandie said.
“Well, I apologize,” Fred said. “But I think I’m okay no—HWAAAUUHHH—”
He erupted again. I was sickeningly reminded of a circus clown pulling a string of handkerchiefs from his mouth. It was a link of bulbous, shiny, ejecta that reeked like a meth lab. Fred collapsed to all fours, still vomiting. The chain of matter coiled on the ground in a slimy pile of refuse even a dog would avoid. Well, maybe a dog would eat it, but he would definitely be embarrassed if his friends found out about it. It kept coming, squishy blobs that jiggled like those cheap slimeball toys. The pile was rapidly growing larger. Gobs of purple, pink, and black. Then a curved, white object smacked into the mess. It was a bone.
“You okay?” Vandie asked belatedly.
Fred didn’t answer.
Instead, his arms gave out and he began to flatten out on the ground. Not only did he collapse onto his stomach, but his body was pancaking like an invisible steam roller was driving over him. In seconds he looked like a firehose that had bucked its operator free and was spraying haphazardly. It was all coming up now; long stringy noodles that I, unfortunately, recognized as muscles. Then the bones, the poor guy was vomiting up his own fucking bones. His face had already flattened out to become the top of the tube, so all his eyes had to do was fall from their sockets and ride the current out. With a SPLURP something round clogged his mouth, Fred flopped to the ground, quivering. He began to rise back into the air, shaking back and forth, arms dangling like wet neckties. Finally, the obstruction popped free, an organic projectile, and burst right through the plastic patch I’d just put on the fence. It hit the ground and rolled over.
It was Fred’s skull, spine still attached.
Fred’s skin was lying on the ground, the last of his fluids trickling from his mouth. Vandie and I stared at each other, not blinking. She made a little motion like she was brushing something off of her cheek. I wiped my face, and my fingers came away smudged with black and red goo. I bent down and began fervently wiping it off on the ground, then rubbed my cheek aggressively on my shoulder. I felt the urge to vomit and panicked at the thought. I forced it back down.
I turned around, realized I had no reason to walk that way, then turned back. Vandie was looking at the pile, wide-eyed. I didn’t need to see it, I could smell it. Vandie slowly raised a finger to point at Fred. I squinted and nodded.
“He just—” Vandie began.
“Mhmm,” I nodded rapidly, hands on my hips. My stomach was currently doing its best Simone Biles impression.
“How—”
“I o nuh,” I managed, way too much saliva in my mouth.
“What are we going to do?” Vandie asked.
Doubled over, hands on my knees, I shook my head.
We called Burke.
I went in to wash my face, scrubbing the contaminated area with a dish brush. When I walked back outside, my neighbor Burke had arrived. There was a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, as always. He surveyed the situation with his one good eye, while the gray, dead one gazed at nothing.
“That’s fucked,” he said.
“Yeah,” Vandie and I said together.
“What did he eat?” Burke said, smirking.
“Dude,” I said. “What the fuck are we going to do?”
“You could call the cops,” Burke said.
“And tell them what?” said Vandie.
“It looks like we fucking skinned a man, man,” I said. “Look at his fucking skin. What the fuck!?”
“You’d have to be a real good skinner to do that,” Burke said. He took a long drag of his cigarette, squinting. “We could get Dan’s help.”
Vandie’s eyes went wide, “No way.”
“Yeah, we’re not owing Dan a favor.”
“Alright then,” Burke said. “We gotta do it ourselves. I’ll go get the trash bags.”
“Tub,” I said, pointing vaguely. I was still trying to keep myself from puking, one hand on my hip.
“Huh?”
“There’s an empty tub in the carport,” Vandie said.
“Oh, alright,” said Burke. “Hey guys?”
We both looked up at him.
“Can I grab some chips?”
We shoveled Fred’s remains into the tub, but that only got us about halfway through the cleanup. We tried the trash bags, but Fred melted right through the thin plastic like gasoline. After that, I grabbed another tub, this one was full. I dumped my mom’s old commemorative Donkey Portrait plates onto the couch.
When we finally finished, we slid the tubs across the wet leaves to the edge of the lake. We loaded Fred’s temporary coffins onto the boat as carefully as we could, but some of him spilled anyway. I dropped the skin suit into the front of the boat with a wet SPLAAK. After ten minutes of Burke cursing and smacking the old motor, it finally started, and we began to putter out of the cove. The boat was so slow that a butterfly passed us, and I can’t be sure, but I think it flipped us off.
The boat wasn’t exactly ours. Burke and I had seen it floating abandoned one day when we were returning from a drug fetch quest. We pulled my truck across an empty lot and Burke swam out to it while I waited with a crowbar to pry the leeches off of him. He’d climbed in and paddled it back to shore. The tag was from ’71 and the engine appeared to be that old. We figured the boat’s owners had probably just set it free, cut the mooring line, and threw rocks at it until it finally ran off. The weird part was that it was full of modern fishing gear, but we didn’t question that because, “Hey, free boat.”
So, we were glubbing out toward the center of the lake in a boat that may or may not be associated with a missing persons case, carrying open tubs full of our dematerialized neighbor. If any lawyers are reading this, I’d like to know if any of that is considered illegal. Burke steered while Vandie and I sat near the back, picking up our feet every time the spilled slop sloshed by. The sun was going down, and when it passed behind the forest on the horizon the squawking began. It sounded like someone screaming with tin vocal cords. Everyone said it was a heron, and that’s exactly what the squawker wanted them to think.
“Fucking heron,” Burke said. “So, what’s been going on with you guys?”
“Not much, just working,” Vandie said. “Oh, hey, check out this weird-looking dog I found online.”
She pulled out her phone and unlocked it. It was an Iranian Pincher, or whatever, the one with human-looking hair. She scrolled through pictures of the dog with trendy haircuts. Burke laughed and his cigarette flared. We weaved through bare Cypress trees, middle fingers sprouting from underwater fists. There were stumps everywhere, and they scraped along the bottom of the boat menacingly.
Burke cut the engine among a thick stand of trees. Dumping refuse into the lake wasn’t taboo around these parts, so us trying to be sneaky about it was probably creating more suspicion than if we’d just done it from shore. Burke strode easily to the front of the boat, and I followed, wobbling like a three-assed chicken. We carefully dumped the first tub overboard, trying not to tip the boat. As we neared the pour point with the second tub, something moved under the water, sending ripples up.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Uh nuh,” Burke said.
The boat rocked and I grabbed the gunnel with one hand, tensing. I found myself listening intently, even though that is the least useful sense when dealing with an aquatic threat. The thing came out from under the boat, right in front of us. It was a catfish. The biggest fucking catfish I’ve ever seen. It just kept coming, stretching on and on. It was the length of the boat, at the very least.
“Can we please go?” Vandie asked.
“Absolutely,” I said.
We started pouring carefully. The fish came back, it was coming to the surface, right under the goop waterfall. I blinked as it grew closer. Then blinked again, slamming my lids together like an A.D.D. kid wielding crash cymbals in a middle school band. A face—a human face with catfish whiskers—bobbed to the surface, half the size of the boat. Its eyes were perfect discs, lidless, but human. Its deflated nose flopped around in the current. It opened its mouth right underneath the Fred faucet. I could see directly down its fish throat, and I was uncomfortably aware of the triple row of human teeth protruding from the bone-white gums.
When we’d finished pouring it smiled at us for a long moment, slowly submerging without taking its eyes off of us.
A boat was cruising by back on the channel. Burke lit another cigarette, but Vandie snatched it from his mouth with a shaking hand and ripped it hard, the cherry blazing to light up her pinched face. As he plucked another from his pack, I grabbed Fred’s skin and tossed it overboard. It didn’t sink.
“Uh, shit,” I said.
“What?” Burke asked. “Oh, here,” he handed me a paddle.
I poked at the skin, pushing it under. It floated right back up. I speared it again, to the same effect. I’ve heard that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but in my case, I think it’s just stupidity.
“We need something to, uh—”
“Yeah,” Vandie said.
We started rifling around the boat. Unfortunately, most boating-related items are made to float. I looked back and noticed the skin was bobbing away and fished it back with the paddle. Then a beam of light hit my face, blinding me.
“Whatchyall doin’ out here?” a deep voice said.
I put a hand up to cover my face and saw that another boat had crept up on us. I was being spotlighted. What’s worse: it was a Game and Fish Commission boat.
“Just going for an evening cruise,” Vandie said.
“Whatcha fiddlin’ with over there?” The officer said.
“Oh—it’s nothing,” I said.
“Now it’s alright if you got a trotline up, I ain’t gonna steal your spot. You need help gettin’ a fish up? I gotta net—here, I’ll pull around to ya.”
“No, that’s—”
But he’d already cranked his engine. He was running on the trolling motor, which made virtually no noise. That must have been how he snuck up on us. I pushed the skin down again, trying to force it under the boat.
“It’s okay, really,” Vandie said, switching to her southern accent. “We like the fight.”
“If itsa catfish you’ll be fightin’ all night,” the officer said.
The blanket of flesh kept weaving around my paddle, it was like trying to get control of a rogue bedsheet while facing into the wind. He finally made it around and shone his spotlight down at the water. The illuminated skin looked almost translucent. I could see the officer’s face now, and he looked disgusted.
“What ta hell is ‘at?”
“It’s, pshh, I don’t even know what that is,” I said.
“It looks like skin,” he said.
“Skin? No, I don’t think—”
“Dan? Is that you?” Burke asked.
“Burke! I didn’t see your face,” Dan said.
“Hey, man,” Burke said. “Yeah, I was hiding it. I don’t do well with authority. You got anything we can sink this skin with?”
“Oh, yeah. I gotta brick. I’m out to sink some thangs myself,” Dan said.
He pushed off of a stump so that the side of his boat bumped up against ours. He passed me a cinder block.
“I didn’t know you worked for Game and Fish,” Vandie said.
“I don’t,” Dan said. “You probably want to tie it through one ‘a the holes, else it might pop out on the way down.”
“Yeah…good thinking,” I said.
I did as suggested and then let the brick go, watching the last of Fred—Fred Something disappear.
We sat in silence for a moment. “Should we say a few words?” Burke asked.
“Mmm, nah,” Vandie said.
We got home, thanked Burke, and gave him more chips for the road. As soon as the door closed behind him I turned to the kitchen sink and began washing my hands. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the motion sensor light had clicked on in the backyard. I looked up through the window and froze.
Fred was standing there, watching me. I can’t be sure, but I think he gave a little wink. I blinked, and he was gone.
I sat down on the couch gazing at the wall. Vandie was showering. I must have passed out, because I was jolted awake by a knock at the front door. My first thought was of Fred. Pistol in hand, I cracked the door slowly. It was Dan. He was still in his Game and Fish uniform, and the nametag said “Jerry.” He was holding a bottle of lighter fluid in one hand and a dog’s squeak toy in the other. He squeaked it twice.
“I need a favor,” he said.