I looked at my father, wondering whether I should bring up the bloodstains. Well, the bloodstains, and the decapitated head in the backyard.
He didn’t know that I knew, or at least I believed that. He sat sanding a board, the smell of epoxy and wood dust hanging thick in the air. His back was to me as he worked in the garage. The wooden piece in front of him seemed to take all his attention.
How did one go about this, I wondered. Did we do an intervention? “Dad, I’m sorry, but I think you might be a murderer.” Or was I just supposed to call the police? But I couldn’t turn my own father in, especially without talking to him first. Perhaps there was a reasonable explanation for the bloodstains and the head in the freezer. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I noticed his head raise a fraction an inch, and in the reflection on the window in front of him, I saw his narrowed eyes staring straight at me. The night outside was dark and moonless, which gave the glass panes a pure black background. I swallowed hard, a lump forming in my throat.
“Are you going to just stand there, or are you going to come in?” my father said in his usual gruff, slow tone. I took a few hesitant steps into the garage.
“Hi dad,” I said flatly, mentally berating myself for such a weak start to this monumental conversation. I had sat up at night, thinking of how I would talk to him and what points I needed to bring up. But when his cold green eyes turned to look at me, I felt like a fly trapped in a spiderweb. My mouth went dry and my tongue clung to the top of my mouth. “Can we talk?” He turned back to his woodworking.
“I hope you’re not going to tell me you’re gay or something,” he said gruffly, a note of humor in his voice. I laughed nervously.
“No, no, but I was wondering… whose head is that in the meat freezer in the downstairs basement?”
“The meat freezer in the downstairs basement?” he repeated, frowning.
“Yeah, you know… where you keep the venison,” I said. He sighed loudly then gave a very long “Hmmmm” afterwards. I was surprised how long he kept the sound going without breathing in. After about ten or fifteen straight seconds of that, he suddenly went quiet and turned his whole body to face me.
“So you’ve been poking around in my things,” he said icily.
“I mean, not on purpose, but…”
“That head has been in the freezer for over twenty years,” he said, cutting me off. “My father first put that head in there, and we’ve had peace ever since. You didn’t take it out, did you?” I froze, not knowing what to say. He turned to me, his eyes blazing. “Did you?!”
***
We walked to the basement together. I wondered if this was some sort of sick joke. I got to the bottom of the stairs first. When I saw the head was gone, I stopped in my tracks.
“So where is it, David? Where’s the goddamn head?” my father asked angrily.
“It was right here!” I said, pointing to the small bloodstain on top of the large freezer. My father swore.
“It’s escaped,” he said, his face a mask of fury. “Dammit, you let it out. I knew this day would come. It’s my fault. I should’ve told you long ago about the head. Now it’s too goddamn late.”
“So whose head is it?” I asked nervously.
“It belonged to a very sick man named Edmund Chase, a notorious psychopath who stalked the area back when I was a kid…” And so my father began his unbelievable story of how the townspeople stopped Edmund Chase and why my family always keeps a severed head in our house.
***
I remember when the first child went missing. I was in first grade, and the teacher and principal stood up in front of our class and announced that a little girl named Amanda Wenchler had disappeared. Anyone who had any information was urged to come forward and tell their parents or their teachers. In reality, she had apparently been snatched from her house in the middle of the night, and it was unlikely anyone had seen the perpetrator. Nobody would ever come forward with any useful information about her disappearance.
Later that week, her blood-stained skirt was discovered at the end of a sewer. But her body was nowhere to be found. Her parents would ultimately be forced to do a memorial service with an empty coffin.
Three days later, a little boy in my class named Jake Gabini also disappeared. Someone had grabbed him as he played in the backyard. The town was in an uproar by this point. The townspeople would have lynched anyone suspicious in the area if dozens of state police hadn’t come in to contain the chaos.
My parents wouldn’t let me outside except for school and church. They refused to let me play in the yard or in the woods. Teams of neighborhood watch volunteers formed overnight, and armed vigilantes patrolled the streets after dark.
But eventually, as always, the panic died down. By the time a month had rolled around and no new abductions or murders had taken place, people began to return to their regular routines. I started walking to school again, and that was when I met Edmund Chase for the first time.
***
The white van pulled up alongside me, covered in dirt and grime, the back bumper skewed at an angle and ready to fall off.
“Heeeey there, little boy,” the man in the driver’s seat hissed as he rolled down the passenger side window. “You’re Frank, right?”
The first thing I noticed about this stranger was his eyes. They seemed to suck in all the light around him. They looked nearly black.
He appeared massive, at least six-foot-six. His head nearly scraped the ceiling of the van, and he took up the entire driver’s seat with a commanding presence. Red wavy hair ran down over his forehead, and across one cheek, a diagonal, slashing scar marred his skin.
I quickly checked up and down the street. The nearest house looked about a thousand feet away. Thick woods with fallen trees and ivy covered both sides of the street.
“Yeah, my name is Frank…” I said suspiciously. I had no idea who this man was. He laughed, sounding as jolly as any mall Santa.
“Oh, I know it’s a little weird, but I just live over the hill,” he said, jerking his thumb down the road the way he had come. “I know your dad. You look just like him. I swear, you’re the spitting image.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Anyways, I’m on my way to school so I’ll…”
“Hold on one second, please,” Edmund said, putting his arm out of the window to stop me while also giving me his most charming smile. I noticed how white all his teeth looked. They appeared as straight and small as the kernels on a cob of corn.
“You see, Frank, my dog ran away earlier, and she likes to come around this area. If you could spend a couple minutes to help me find her, there’d be a fiver in it for you.”
My eyes widened at the prospect of five whole dollars, which, you must remember, was worth a lot more back in my day. He even offered to pay in advance. I walked forward to grab the bill he waved out of the driver’s side window, fully intending to just take the money and run. But he grabbed my wrist with an iron grip and leaned close to my ear. I could feel the bones of my arm rubbing together as he tightened his large, callused fingers further. I yelped in pain and tried to pull away. He started whispering.
“There are many mysteries in the universe- headless bodies missing arms and legs tossed into garbage bags, and steel tables covered in blood in secret rooms we’ll never see.”
“Hey, let go!” I said loudly, trying to wrest my arm out of his iron grip. He just continued to whisper in a hissing tone, his eyes narrowing to slits as a lunatic expression came over his face..
“Yes indeed. Many mysteries to uncover, like Christmas gifts to unwrap. The human body, too, is like that. Have you ever zipped off someone’s skin like an unwanted, secondhand coat?”
“I need to go to school!” I cried as he pulled something out from his lap with his other hand. He yanked me by the shirt and forced a piece of white cloth over my mouth. I gagged at the sickly-sweet hospital smell that emanated from it.
“You must be a very stupid boy,” he whispered in my ear as I inhaled the cold, astringent chemicals, “if you think you’re going to school today.”
***
I awoke with a pounding head and a dry mouth. I felt my hands bound behind my back. A gag lay tightly pressed against my mouth.
“Well oh well oh boy!” someone said enthusiastically from up front. I turned my head, realizing I was stuck in the back of the van next to countless tools and coolers. I heard the crack of a can opening, and saw the man chugging a beer as he drove.
“Today is going to be a fun day,” he said. “It’s so beautiful outside. I mean, look at the sun and the clouds! Not too hot and not too cold, eh?” He looked in the rearview mirror, meeting my eyes. “There are some things they don’t teach you in school. You have to get out and experience the world to learn them.”
I felt the van turning abruptly, then we were going over rocks and potholes for about ten or fifteen minutes. I figured we must have turned onto some unpaved forest road.
“I’d offer you a beer,” the man said, “but you’re not old enough. The law’s the law, you know.” With a gleeful smile, he pulled the van over to the side of the road. I slid forward as it lurched to a stop, smashing my head on a toolbox. I kicked against the bindings around my feet and legs, trying to loosen them without success.
“I reckon this is as good a place as any. Alright, let’s get started.” He opened the driver’s side door before going to the back of the van and opening the two rear ones. He pulled me up with his strong killer’s hands as I whined and protested through my gag. Laughing, he threw me to the side of the dirt road. I landed hard, the wind getting knocked out of my lungs.
The man started pulling out coolers of beer and lawn chairs. He dragged this all out to a dirt clearing fifty feet or so from the road. Then he started bringing over tools: axes, saws, box cutters, pliers and sledgehammers. Finally, he came and grabbed me, throwing me over his shoulder.
The fall breeze blew by, smelling like leaves and evergreens. I realized with a sense of dread and horror that these would likely be the last normal sensations I’d ever experience, the last place I’d ever see. After this moment, it would feel like an eternity of ripping and screaming, and then, at the end, merciful darkness.
At the center of the dirt clearing in the woods, he threw me down. He opened a toolbox, taking a boxcutter and flicking out the blade. It gleamed, catching the sun’s rays. He brought it down towards my face, his smile widening as his hands began to shake with excitement.
“I’m sorry to say,” he said, smirking, “but my past subjects have said that this is quite unpleasant. Where should we start? With the eyes?” He moved the blade a fraction of an inch from my right eye. I flinched, trying to pull back, but he punched me in the face. “Don’t move! Did I tell you that you could move?” He cut off the gag with the box cutter. I noticed how sharp it was, how it slid through the cloth like butter.
“Actually, I think I’ll cut out your tongue and eat it. Open up.” He moved the blade towards my lips, gripping my jaw with his hand and prying it open. I started screaming as his fingers closed around my tongue.
A gunshot shattered the silence. The man looked down at his chest, seeing the blossoming circle of blood that now dripped down his white shirt. He grabbed at his heart, choking.
“Fuck… you…” he said as he fell forwards, landing hard on top of me. I felt the warm blood dripping down on top of me. Struggling, kicking my bound legs, I tried to get out from under the dead body.
A moment later, I saw my father and uncle running from the direction of the dirt road, a rifle slung over each of their shoulders.
“Holy shit, Frankie!” my father said, pulling the madman off of me. “You’re OK! Thank God.”
“Good thing I told you to watch him when he walked to school, huh?” my uncle said, smiling. “We got the bastard.”
“That’s Edmund, alright,” my father said, flipping the body over with a grunt. The man’s eyes stared blankly up at the sky, his pupils large and dark. A small trickle of blood ran from his mouth.
“Alright, you get the shovel and start digging,” my uncle said, “and I’ll get Frankie the hell out of here. Frankie, you never saw nothing, OK? Let’s get you home.”
***
So that was the end of that. They took me home and buried his body deep in the woods. Vigilante justice had prevailed and stopped a grave evil, as vigilante justice always does. They decided not to get the police involved, since my uncle had a criminal record and wasn’t supposed to be in possession of a firearm. We were just happy that the abductions and killings would end.
And for a few months, they did. But by the time Christmas came that year, things had changed for the worse.
I remember rushing downstairs on Christmas morning, seeing the flashing of police cars through the windows. The red and blue from the emergency vehicles mixed with the red and green hues from the Christmas tree lights, shining off every decoration in a rainbow of colors.
My mother stood at the front window, a steaming cup of coffee in her hands as she worriedly stared outside.
“What’s going on?” I asked her, coming up behind her and giving her a hug.
“The neighbors,” she said, looking across the street. “The Haydrichs. Apparently, they were all found dead in their house. Murdered. The crime scene people have gone in and out all morning. I saw them taking the body bags out on stretchers.” I felt cold all over. Where was my father? Did he know?
I wondered whether I was being foolish. It couldn’t have been that same man, that Edmund Chase. I saw him die. Of course, there could always just be two psychopaths operating in the same area. Why not? It happened in California with Ed Kemper and Herbert Mullin, after all.
But as I saw the authorities taking out one black body bag after another, a cold chill ran through my body.
I found my father and uncle in the garage, their faces pale and expressionless. I had heard whispering when I entered, but when they saw me, they stopped talking.
“Frankie,” my father said in a falsely cheerful voice, “merry Christmas. You should be celebrating. It’s almost time to open presents.”
“Did that guy Edmund kill our neighbors?” I asked. My father and my uncle shared worried glances.
“That’s ridiculous,” my uncle said. “Why would you ever think such a thing? You saw him get shot in front of you. We buried his body deep, six feet down at least. He’s dead, Frank. He’s as dead as disco.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, frowning. “We haven’t had a murder in our town in forever, right? Then suddenly, one guy goes crazy and starts killing random people. And you guys stop him. So…”
“It just can’t happen like that,” my father said, shaking his head. “Dead is dead. You’ll see. The cops will catch whoever did that horrible shit to the Haydrichs before you know it. There’s no goddamned way it’s connected to Edmund Chase.”
***
Despite my father’s assurances, rumors began to spread like wildfire. For there was a connecting factor in all the murders and disappearances, including the Haydrichs.
In all cases where the police recovered bodies, they found the bodies drained of all their blood and their hearts cut out. All victims showed signs of extreme torture, and in all cases, household tools such as pliers, hammers and saws were identified as the murder weapons.
Police surrounded Edmund Chase’s house after a couple days. From what my father later told me, they had gotten a break in the case after finding carpenter’s screws and microscopic pieces of wood shavings at the crime scenes. They had begun to look at anyone in the area who was a known carpenter or involved in woodworking, and eventually had identified the screws as the exact same type used in his carpentry shop.
But, of course, they found the house empty. A massive search began, and every car going in and out of town was stopped at checkpoints.
Over time, the furor began to die down, and after a couple weeks, I had nearly forgotten about Edmund Chase. I tried not to think about what had happened, or the gruesome death I would have suffered if my father and uncle hadn’t come.
The night that he came back, I had gone to sleep early. Ever since the abduction, I had a recurring nightmare where a faceless silhouette of a man drove nails into my eyes while he whispered in my ear, “Heeeyyy, little boy, how you doing now?”
I woke with a start, feeling a cold hand pressed over my mouth. In the dark, I could only see the tall shadow of someone standing over me.
“If you try to scream, I’ll cut out your eyes,” the familiar voice of Edmund Chase said. It sounded different, gravelly and deep, as if he had been inhaling dirt for the last few weeks. I felt a blade forced against my neck, pressing hard against the jugular. A drop of blood rolled down my skin, warm and sticky in the cool night air. I smelled rotting flesh and soil, an earthy odor and a foul, choking one mixed together. I whimpered, trembling and terrified.
“Get up and come with me. If you try anything, I’ll take you out of here piece by piece. The Master doesn’t care if the blood is warm or cold, after all.”
I rose slowly, putting my hands up in the air. I thought about calling for help, but I knew it would be suicide. He could stab me twenty times over before my father or uncle got in here from their rooms with a gun.
He moved me towards the center of the room, standing behind me and keeping the blade pressed hard against my throat. Once we had reached the center point, he took out a vial from his pocket filled with black fluid. He flipped off the top and flung the droplets in the air. I watched in amazement as they hung there, frozen in place, glistening like greasy oil. Then he began speaking in some demonic, gurgling language I had never heard before. The frozen droplets in the air immediately got sucked towards a center spot, like a black hole eating comets.
I watched in amazement as a pinpoint of blinding light erupted in the center of the room. For a moment, it looked far too bright, and I averted my gaze, seeing spots dancing behind my closed eyelids. But after a couple seconds, I looked back over and saw it had dulled and expanded considerably.
Slowly, almost lazily, it morphed, sections of it popping out in the air as the center hovered, defying gravity. Through the pieces, I could see another world where a pale sun shone, a place filled with steep cliffs and silver streams that wound through the canyons. The dark purple color of the sky reminded me of blood clots and fatal injuries. As the pieces expanded, I quickly realized the portal was growing into the shape of an archway.
“This is where the Master roams,” Edmund said as he pushed me closer to the portal. “This is his world.”
At that moment, my door flew open, and my father and uncle stood there, peering in.
“Frankie?” my dad called. “Are you OK? Uncle Roger said he heard footsteps and talking…” At that moment, they saw me, the knife pressed against my throat, my feet only inches from the portal.
“No!” my uncle cried, taking my dad’s arm and running forward. My father stumbled and then caught his feet, rushing to catch up.
I passed through the skin of the portal. It felt like walking into a warm, buzzing lake, the silky texture of reality splitting as I came out on the other side. Before I knew it, I was being dragged past a massive thirty-foot-tall rock and down a steep trail. I looked back and saw the portal closing, its archway shape collapsing back into its central point in large, irregularly-shaped patches. Two men lay at the foot of the portal, slowly rising to their feet.
***
Everything seemed surreal, as if I would just wake up at any moment. The last thing I knew, I had been laying in my bed, so it made sense. But the small pebbles that got stuck in my sandals and bit into my skin told me I was awake.
This was the first time I had seen Edmund Chase in the light. As I regarded him from the corner of my eye, the bile rose in my throat.
Blood and dirt stained his clothes. His skin looked very pale, like marble. His eyes gave off a slight, silvery glow, and the iris itself had turned the color of white gold. HIs lips looked very red and every one of his teeth had grown long, sharp and pointed. The places where my father and uncle had shot him had regrown. Black tissue with a rough surface like coral shone through his ruined clothes.
“Come on!” he whispered. He gripped me tighter, the rotting smell coming off his body in waves. I tried to look back to see if my dad and uncle were following, but the massive boulder blocked any view.
We traveled for twenty or thirty minutes across this dead world, the sun above barely giving off any heat. I didn’t see a single animal, insect or plant the entire time, and I wondered if this entire place was devoid of life. It seemed like only rocks and walking corpses could survive here.
When we got close to the Master, I felt it. We had just begun traveling over a flat plain of cracked granite and limestone when I first glimpsed the tent.
It stood out against the dry, rocky world, bright and colorful above the muted browns of the landscape. It looked almost like a medieval circus tent, its entire surface colored bright-red with interspersed black and silver lines, all meeting at the top point of the structure. As we got close, I could smell a sweet, cloying incense carried on the wind.
A minute later, we arrived. Edmund Chase pulled aside the flap and motioned for me to go inside.
***
The entire tent looked filled to the brim. I heard chattering in many foreign languages. Looking around, I saw people of all races and builds, sitting or standing in the bleachers. The smell of rotting bodies in that tent rapidly became overwhelming. I looked around and saw all of the people had sharp, vampiric teeth and skin that looked as smooth and hard as a statue’s. All of them had silver eyes that seemed to shine with an inner luminosity.
In the center of the stadium, I saw an ancient man. His withered arms and legs looked like sticks, and he had no hair on his body. His eyes had turned into wide, silver orbs, and he gnashed his sharp teeth together over and over, licking his dry lips. He had on some coarse brown cloth that covered his chest and waist.
“We bring another sacrifice to you, Master,” Edmund Chase said to the withered old man, going to him and kneeling beside the elaborately-carved bed. “Is it time to begin?” The Master waved his hand as if he were shooing away a bug, which Edmund took as a call to begin. He stood up in the center of the crowd, raising his arms. Everyone went silent.
“We will begin with a prayer to the Master,” he said. The audience bowed their heads and chanted in unison.
“We throw the dust to the wind in celebration of old skin,
“We move Heaven and Earth in celebration of His birth.
“Under the eye of a hungry god, skeletal and thin,
“Hooded and cloaked, filled with hunger and mirth.
“We act only in his eternal name,
“The Master who feeds the flock.
“We eat the hearts to feast on light,
“We eat the eyes to gain his sight.”
The crowd rose, hundreds of silvery eyes turning towards me. Edmund Chase grabbed me by the arm and brought me over to the Master.
“We have brought food for you, Ancient One,” he said. The Master didn’t seem to care one way or another. He didn’t even look at me.
“I just want to die,” he whispered in a soft, raspy voice. “You all feed me, and then you feed on me. I am just a cow and my blood is my milk.” Edmund ignored this, instead taking a large dagger out of his pocket. It had a handle of polished obsidian and, on the blade, it had strange symbols and runes embossed in silver.
“You must eat, Master,” Edmund Chase said, putting the blade to my wrist. With a quick slash, he drew the knife across my skin. I yelped, trying to jump back, but his iron grip wouldn’t allow it.
Pulling my arm forwards, he put my spurting wrist to the lips of the old man. Rising with difficulty, the Master licked his lips with a snake-like tongue that had been split down the middle. Then he began to suck at the wound. With a sense of revulsion, I felt his light touch as he drank, pulling my wrist closer with each satisfying gulp. I pleaded for him to let me go, to let me live. As he continued to suck at my blood, I felt like gagging, my stomach doing flips as I saw rivulets of blood streaming down my arm.
After what felt like an eternity, he let me go. I turned to see Edmund Chase grinning, looking at me.
“Got to get his strength up,” he said. “I think your jugular vein would give a lot more sustenance for the Master.”
“The meat has the strength,” the Master said, “but the blood has the consciousness.”
“We’ll give you his heart,” Edmund Chase promised. “Then you will feel strong again. Then we can drink from you, Master.” The Master scowled. I had a feeling that he was a prisoner here just as much as I was.
Edmund Chase put the knife to my throat and walked me over to the Master. He made me bend over, so that my neck would be above his mouth. I began to pray, knowing I was about to die.
A gunshot rang out. I didn’t dare move with the knife pressed so close to my jugular. I had my eyes tightly shut.
“Drop the knife!” I heard my father’s voice shout, and another gunshot rang out. I heard the sacrificial dagger fall with a clatter, the pressure on my neck disappearing in an instant.
“Boy,” the Master whispered to me as chaos erupted all around us. I looked behind me, seeing Edmund Chase on the ground with a bullet wound in his head. The area was rapidly healing, black tissue creeping over the spurting hole and covering it. “Your only chance to survive is to drink my blood and gain the powers spread through it. You are surrounded by hundreds of abominations. If you listen to me, you will survive.”
“What are you asking?” I said. He looked at me with his hypnotizing eyes.
“Drink my blood, a small bit, and you will gain the ability to leave this place with a few words that I will teach you. You’ll also gain some ability to heal. In exchange, I want you to cut off my head. I want to die. I’ve wanted to die for the past five hundred years. I’ve been around since the time of Emperor Justinian, and I’m very, very tired. These abominations just bleed me for my powers. They drink from me over and over so they can live forever.”
“What’s the command?” I asked quickly. “The words to get out of here?” He told me, and I memorized them, whispering them over and over. I took the sacrificial dagger, kneeling before Edmund Chase as he twitched on the ground and quickly slicing through his neck with the sharp blade. I rose and went to the Master.
“Thank you,” he moaned as I cut his throat. I knelt close to his papery, ancient skin and sucked some of the blood from the spurting wound. It tasted sulfuric, like rotten eggs, with a strange sweet aftertaste that made me want to gag.
By the time I had finished cutting his head off, his head and body had started to dessicate. I saw the skin sucking in towards the bone, then dissolving into dust. Soon his head had turned into a dried-out skull in my hands. I put it down on the ancient bed next to his other bones. Then I turned, grabbing Edmund Chase’s head, deciding it was time to get the hell out of this nightmarish place.
My father and uncle both had pistols, and they were rapidly shooting. The gunfire exploded over and over in the tent as they made their way towards me during all of this. None of the audience members realized I had killed their sacred cow. They all focused on my father and uncle, hissing, jumping out of the bleachers and running at them.
My uncle swore as one tackled him from behind, biting at his back and shoulders. He raked my uncle’s back with claw-like nails, shredding his clothes. My father put another magazine in the pistol and shot the creature in the head. It fell to the side, its eyes rolling back in its head as it gnashed its teeth and kicked its feet before going limp.
My uncle tried to rise, but a dozen more creatures filled the gap, biting and clawing. I ran towards my father with Edmund Chase’s head cradled in my arm. Two of the creatures tried to grab my father, but he ducked, pistol-whipping another across the head before sprinting towards me.
“We have to get Roger!” my father cried as he ran, but I shook my head. I knew we couldn’t save my uncle. If we tried, we would all very likely die in the process. Without another word, I grabbed my father’s hand and uttered the commands. I felt hands dragging us back, and I pulled against them with all my strength. The portal blossomed in front of us, and as my uncle screamed and fought with the abominations, I pushed my father through and followed him back to our house.
***
“What should be done with a demon’s head?” my father asked a local occultist the next day. I had been watching the head closely, and it sometimes opened its eyes or moved its mouth. I didn’t like it. I wanted to make sure Edmund Chase didn’t return and start killing people in our town all over again.
“You either put it in salt and bury it, or you freeze it forever,” she said. “Either one should keep it safe. But if it gets out, the remnants of life left within it may allow it to escape and begin its evil all over again. It’s different if the being wants to die, of course. But I don’t get the sense that the head you possess has renounced its life energy.”
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t get out,” I said. “And if it does, I’ll deal with it.”