It was my senior year of college and Lizzy couldn’t stand that.
“It’s simply unacceptable.” She used to say to me, “Completely unacceptable.” I can still hear it in her voice. That chirpy midwestern accent. The way she moved her head when she said it. She thought it was deeply hilarious I had made it that far in life without having ever summoned Mr. Applesauce.
“We’ve got to do something about that. It’s a right of passage. You can’t be an ‘adult’ without having summoned Mr. Applesauce!” She’d said it probably ten thousand times before and we’d just… never gotten around to it. It was a kid game, after all, and we were adults busy with our own jobs and lives and studies.
When I got into her car that night I didn’t expect anything different. Graduation was only a couple of weeks away. In my own words, ‘short of a colossal disaster we’ve made it’. We were pretty much done. Finals had been handed in, grades were being calculated, things were wrapping up and we were getting ready to embark upon the next chapter of our lives.
“It’s going to be weird not being roommates anymore.” She’d said to me the night before. I smiled and agreed, not thinking anything of it. In hindsight-
It’s just funny, isn’t it? The way you can see things lining up toward a life changing event AFTER the fact? I guess that’s what they mean about hindsight being twenty-twenty.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.” She smirked at me as soon as I buckled in.
“What?” I asked, more amused than concerned, “Wait, no. Let me guess. It’s a party.” Lizzy was all about parties all the time. It was a miracle she’d made it as far as she did. I don’t think I ever saw her wake up Monday morning without a hangover.
“Yes, but not like you think.” She reached into the backseat and produced a carton of eggs.
“What? Are we going to go egg Samuel’s house?” I joked, “I thought you were over that.”
“I am over that idiot. No! We’re going to go meet Alison and Monica and have a sleepover. You know, like it’s highschool again. Kind of reliving our youth. Except with wine coolers.” She scoffed, rolling her eyes but smiling the whole time.
“Okay. So… why the eggs?” Unless sleepovers had been WAY DIFFERENT in her highschool than mine I really didn’t see the point in bringing a dozen raw eggs.
“Not eggs. EggSHELLS.” She corrected, poking her tongue out when she smiled.
“Oh my god, Lizzy. Not this again.” I sighed, but couldn’t hold back a laugh, “What is your OBSESSION with Mr. Applesauce? This isn’t normal. You need to see someone about this.”
“It’s fun, first of all- I mean, didn’t you ever do Bloody Mary as a kid? It’s like that. You just have to do it one time. I mean, were you ever really a child if you didn’t try to summon Mr. Applesauce?” She tossed back.
I popped the carton while she spoke, inspecting the empty shells. What had she done with the yolks?
“I can’t believe you went through all this effort for a game.” I shut it and smiled. It was sweet, in a weird way. It was obviously a bonding thing. Since we wouldn’t be living together anymore after the end of the semester. And it seemed like a harmless way to ring out our college years.
Why not? I remember thinking.
“There’s applesauce in the back too.” She bounced in her seat, recognizing my tone for what it was- and then she turned up the radio and we sang along to every Savage Garden song. We reached Alison’s house before the CD ended. She and Monica were waiting for us outside. Monica had a pack of coolers in either hand. Alison was holding a stack of pizza boxes. We all screamed when Lizzy and I got out of the car.
“I can’t believe you’ve never done this before.” Monica laughed while Alison and I brought the rest of the supplies inside.
“I didn’t grow up around here, remember?” I pointed out to her, smiling as I passed the carton of eggs and applesauce to her.
“That’s right! I keep forgetting. Sometimes it feels like you’ve been around since forever, y’know?” She called over her shoulder on her way into the kitchen. I took that as the compliment it was intended to be.
“Did you get the nest?” Lizzy asked Alison while she grabbed the last of the beer from the back of the car.
“Oh, shit- No, damn. Wait! Wait, wait! Hold on. I think there’s an old one above the garage in that little light fixture thing. Come hold the ladder real quick while I grab it.” I listened to their voices as they rushed off in that direction, smiling at Monica.
“Whoops. Almost ruined the whole night. Good thing she lives way out here, isn’t it?” I meant it as a joke, but Monica wrinkled her nose a little bit.
“Oh ew, there’s going to be like- bird germs all over it. Yuck. You’re supposed to make it YOURSELF.” She threw up her hands and faux shuddered, “I’m not touching it. I bet it’s covered in shit. You know birds have no bowel control. They just go whenever, wherever. On everything.” Turns out that wasn’t true, by the way. Monica wanted to be a nurse though. She spoke with an air of authority.
“Woo! Party saved!” The girls returned from the garage triumphant, Alison holding the nest above her head like a trophy.
“Check it out! There’s actual feathers and stuff in it still.” She lowered it so we could all see. Monica recoiled, waving a hand, “Ew, no! Count me OUT. I am not getting avian flu.”
“Oh my god, don’t be such a baby Monica. You have to touch it to put your egg in or it doesn’t count, remember? You can wear gloves or something.” Lizzy pointed at her with the slice of pizza she’d just grabbed out of the box.
“Did you even wash your hands?!” Monica gasped.
“I didn’t touch it!” She shot back, pointing at herself with the pizza next.
“But you touched the LADDER, didn’t you?”
I stopped listening after that, watching Alison get a paper plate off the top of her fridge to put the nest on. It was brittle and soft looking at the same time. I realized I’d never seen an actual bird’s nest in person before. It was kind of weird.
“So how do we do this, exactly?” I asked.
“Okay, so you take half an egg shell and you pour a little applesauce into it, like a cup- then you put the egg in the nest and set it on a windowsill. You have to say Mr. Applesauce’s name seven times for every egg you put in there, and then if you did it right he’ll come in the window at midnight.” Lizzy explained from the sink. I saw she’d given in to Monica’s harassing and gone to wash her hands.
“That’s so goofy.” I plucked a shell out of the Styrofoam and a spoon off the table, dipping it into the sauce to pour a little into the shell.
“Yeah, but it’s the fun kind of goofy.” Alison did hers as soon as I surrendered the spoon. I went and balanced my egg carefully against the side of the nest so that it wouldn’t spill. Then I went to take over the sink from Lizzy.
“I should have done this before washing my hands.” She sighed, going back to the table to join the other girls. They started chanting as soon as Monica’s egg was in the nest. I passed the hand towel to Alison and counted along in my head.
Mr. Applesauce, Mr. Applesauce, Mr. Applesauce-
26, 27, 28.
“There. All done. Now we just have to put this baby on the windowsill and we can go watch the Ring while we wait.” Lizzy snatched the towel out of Alison’s hands and used it to grab the nest, carrying it like a bowl of soup over to the window someone had already opened.
I remember how cool the night air felt. How nice. It smelled good. Like pine and the jasmine in the garden.
I’d honestly forgotten all about it by the time midnight rolled around. The movie was so much scarier than I’d expected it to be. I was holding my breath when the smell of something kind of vinegary, kind of apple-y caught my attention. I sniffed and lifted my chin, looking around a little and wondering where it was coming from.
That’s when I saw him. Standing next to the window. I want to say he was smiling, but it’s hard to be sure because he was also holding his mouth open- as if he’d bitten into something too spicy or hot. Drool was cascading down his jaw and throat. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen up until that point.
I screamed. I think anyone would under the circumstances. Alison whipped around and screamed with me. It was Monica who jerked to her feet and then started laughing.
“Jesus, Lizzy. Wow, good job. Who is that? Sam?” She put her hand on her chest and sighed. I got to my feet too, Alison right behind me.
“I… don’t know.” Lizzy whispered, getting up to squeeze my arm, “I didn’t… that’s not me. I didn’t call anyone. Set anything up.” She was stammering, clearly as shocked and uneasy as the rest of us.
His eyes were running. I watched it drip down his cheeks and off of his chin. The liquid was too thick to be tears.
Viscous.
“Guys?” I whispered, “I think that’s a real- intruder. We need to call the police.” I’d just finished saying it when he jerked forward. Twitched forward. I don’t really know what to call it except that it didn’t look like walking- it looked like a marionette someone had rattled in our direction. He choked and something yellowish bubbled out of his mouth.
His whole head rattled he was gritting his teeth so hard- and then he started running. In place. Around in circles. It’s difficult to describe how horrifying it was watching him stomping around in tiny circles with his arms out, head vibrating, yellow foam splashing out of his mouth. Lizzy screamed. Alison broke for the kitchen.
She was halfway there when he flipped around and tackled her. He screamed. He screamed in her face while she screamed and then he bit her. Right across the chin. So hard I heard both their jaws crunch.
She stopped screaming almost immediately. I hope to god she was dead then, before the yellow foam started gushing out of his nose and mouth. He didn’t let go even when it did. Even when Lizzy sprinted over with the baseball bat and started wailing on him. He twitched and spasmed and even lurched to the side a couple of times but he never loosened his grip on her face.
Not until she was completely covered in the yellow foam. A thick, fizzling pile of it where she’d been just a few seconds ago.
It crackled and hissed like a fresh can of soda. He sank into it- first up to the elbows, then up to his neck, and then the rest of him vanished into it.
Lizzy kept swinging the bat until the only sound was the whiffle of the bat through the air and the sudsy slosh of it hitting the foam. Monica rushed over then, wrapping her arms around her waist and pulling her away.
I ran for the front door. There was a cordless phone there. It was the opposite direction of the kitchen so I thought-
But I smelled it even before I swung into the entry. The vinegar, cidery-smell.
The door was gone. There was only yellowish foam. The same that had swallowed up the man and Alison. I gasped, then gagged, then covered my nose and mouth with my arm and darted forward just far enough to snatch the phone out of the cradle.
As soon as it was in the air yellow foam started surging out of the mouth and ear piece. Some of it splashed across my wrist. It burned so bad that I dropped the phone in shock and jerked back, reflexively running into the hall bathroom and plunging my hand into the sink. I didn’t think about it- I didn’t think anything except for a wall of pain and panic until the water rushed down my arm and chased the foam away.
I looked up in the mirror and saw him standing in the hall behind me. When I jerked around to face him I accidentally slapped the spray of water. Droplets of it swung around me in an arc. A few of them splattered on the ground before him. He jerked away from them and screamed the most animalistic, terrible scream I’ve ever heard.
I hadn’t even known he was there until that moment. By the time I registered that he was he was gone. He plunged backward into the wall of foam where the front door used to be and vanished. It swallowed him whole like a bottomless pit.
I was standing there in stupefied silence, the burnt skin on my arm sagging like a wet plastic bag, when Liz came around the corner, gesturing frantically for me. I broke out of my shock and ran to her, shaking so hard I could barely take her outstretched hand. Monica was waiting for us in the hall.
“The basement!” Monica was hissing, “There’s a back door down there. And tools-”
She shouldered the door open and staggered down the steps first. Alison came after me. It was pitch dark until Monica snatched the light cord. It was barely better after.
“I don’t understand.” Alison whimpered somewhere in the darkness. All three of us gasped, instinctively jostling against one another.
“It was just a game!” It was her. I watched her stagger out of the back of the basement clutching her face, “It never worked before. W-w-why?”
“Alison?” Monica gasped, “We thought you-”
She staggered into the edge of the light and dropped her hands as if to look at us. Impossible, since she had no eyeballs. No face at all that I could see. It was all golden-brown mush. I don’t even know how she was speaking, but I watched it bubble when she did.
“Oh god.” I said.
“W-w-what did w-we do w-w-wrong?” Alison begged, staggering at us with her hands out. There was the same yellowish foam on her hands. The smell was everywhere. Monica gagged. Lizzy fainted. She swung to the side and I tried to grab her but I was only able to slow her down, not stop her, and she hit the ground with a thud like a bag of concrete mix.
“Lizzy?” Alison cried, “Monica? Help me!” The goop was sliding down her arms. And her neck. And her shoulders. The further it got the less… solid she seemed. As if it were eating her up. As if she were turning into it.
“Guys?” She bubbled. Her voice was less and less recognizable as her, “Help me!”
She collapsed into a puddle just as she reached Lizzy. We reached Lizzy. I grabbed her arm at exactly that moment, just as splashes of the yellowy stuff speckled her unconcious face. She jerked awake with a yelp. Toward me- knocking my legs out from under me and us into the shelving unit, which knocked IT into the wall with enough force that it bounced back off.
Onto us.
Not just the heavy metal shelving, either. Everything that had been on it. Tools, trays, ceramic pots. An avalanche of things that flung both of us to the floor. My right arm broke on impact. I didn’t find that out until later.
Lizzy was less lucky. It knocked her directly into what had become of Alison. She was still screaming when Monica ran up the stairs. I didn’t start screaming until a few minutes later, when I realized that I was pinned.
Trapped.
I could barely breathe. My arm wouldn’t work. My leg hurt so bad that I nearly blacked out every time I tried to move it. I tried calling out for help, but there was nobody. No one. Lizzy was drowning me out anyway. There was nothing I could do to help her. There was nothing I could do to help myself.
Lizzy stopped screaming eventually. After that it was quiet.
Quiet enough that I was able to hear everything when Mr. Applesauce caught up to Monica upstairs.
The running. The slam of two bodies hitting something. The wall? The floor? I don’t know. The screaming that dissolved into helpless gurgling and then the silence again.
Finally footsteps in the dark.
With me.
I flailed with renewed vigor but nothing I did seemed to do more than shove debris around. And in the meantime I could hear him getting steadily closer making these strange almost yipping hiccupy noises.
The smell of cinnamon and vinegar became so thick I could taste it. It was sweet. The back of my good hand caught the edge of something sharp. I could feel the spark of skin tearing but survival instinct was stronger. I wrapped my hand around it and pulled it to me intending to use it for self-defense but when I realized what I had an idea came to me. The water heater was right next to me.
And I had a hammer.
I started attacking it with everything I had. all of it the tank, the pipes, the spigot- I had latched on to image where he screamed and staggered away from the drops of water in the bathroom, and that was the only hope I had.
Several things broke. Water both hot and cold sprayed on me.
Not just me.
I looked up and there he was. Just a handful of inches away from me. The yellow stuff was already starting to ooze down his jaw – a couple of flecks of it scattered across the metal shelving and started hissing sizzle.
I saw the fear in his black eyes when the water struck him. He screamed that awful scream – so hard that my ears rang. I screamed back.
He jerked away, knocking the shelving as he went. Just like Allison I briefly thought before I realized the weight on my legs had shifted. I was able to wedge them against a lower shelf and start pushing- continuing in the direction he’d already knocked it- using the back end of the hammer to help.
Adrenaline did the rest. I managed to move it far enough that half my body was free and that was all I needed to get the rest of me out- Kicking, wriggling, and leaving copious amounts of skin behind. Especially off my burnt arm.
I wasn’t stuck anymore, but I wasn’t free either. I still had to find a way out- without succumbing to the same fate my friends had.
And I didn’t know where he was.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as the growing puddle of water washed away the pile of mush that used to be Alison. It was too much to comprehend that she was dead. Dead! I would never see her again, never talk to her, she’d never graduate-
And Lizzy too. Probably Monica. I hadn’t seen either of them- but it was so QUIET and I was sure if they were still alive they’d at least be moving around. Making some kind of noise.
I took a cautious step forward, mirroring the spread of water. A little at a time, breathing shallowly and slowly, always listening and watching the shadows.
He could be anywhere and I wouldn’t know it until he was on me. At some point it occurred to me that the hammer I was still clutching wasn’t the most effective weapon available to me. I dropped it in favor of a jug of fabric softener sitting on one of the still-standing shelves. I emptied it onto the floor and stumbled back to the water heater, filling it as best I could off the spray.
In the eternity that followed I crept along, clutching my jug and waiting one agonizing minute at a time for the water to spread a little closer to the door. Each step I took I listened, straining my ears. Every now and again I thought I heard footsteps that weren’t my own- but it wasn’t until I was halfway to the door that I heard something I could pinpoint as absolutely, definitively real.
“Ruth!” Lizzy called me, “Please, oh please, o h g o d, help me it burns-”
I looked up at the door, just a few feet away. The source of her voice. The fizzling, hissing, peroxide-ish mass blocking my exit. Her words were slurred and heavy, as if she’d gone through that case of wine coolers all on her own.
“Monica? ALison?” She barely made it to the end of Alison’s name before it devolved into incoherent, bubbling screams. What was worse- what I wish I could unhear- was the echo from upstairs.
Monica.
I turned my head once- briefly- and saw him standing at the edge of the water behind me. His eyes were round and wide, his limbs weirdly stiff. No way back. No way out. I made a decision that haunts me to this day.
I turned and hurled the water in my jug at the door. Lizzy’s scream rose to a kettle shriek. The curtain of foam parted. I could see the door behind it. I seized my chance and ran for it.
My foot hit dry concrete. I heard him growl. Not behind me like I expected, but a few inches to my right. I heard the echo of footsteps other than mine. No splash. My vision narrowed to the gap and the door. I threw myself at it, felt the latch burst beneath my weight, and then I hit the ground on packed dirt.
I didn’t stop there. I clawed and kicked my way to my feet and ran like hell toward the road, screaming my lungs out the entire way.
By then the police were already on their way. Some neighbors had heard the screaming.
Not mine.
They picked me up a half mile down the road. I spent six months in the hospital, recovering from what I’d seen.
It’s been almost twenty years and I still don’t have any more answers than I did that night. The police don’t know what happened. I don’t know what happened. My psychologists can only guess. There are no other reports of anything similar ever happening in town.
Maybe we tapped into something just waiting to take a shape. Maybe we accidentally rediscovered some kind of summoning ritual. Maybe it was just like a game of russian roulette that someone finally lost. Maybe we were just really unlucky and caught the attention of something bad that wanted to make victims out of us all.
All I know is, according to Lizzy, I’m an actual adult now.
Old enough to know that rules only apply some of the time.