As millennials in this economy my brother and I were struggling to keep our heads above water. We both had crappy jobs that wouldn’t pay off our student loans in a hundred years. My car payments and their hidden fees were crippling. Robby at least was smart enough to get a motorcycle. Yeah parents, with the cost of gas and title loans, two wheels is now the safe option. Thanks for deficit spending. Anyway, moving out of our parents house was a pipe dream for both us and them. Dear old dad was pissed and he took every opportunity to make us feel unwelcome in his house; the house he bought when he was 22 with two kids and a wife to support as he reminds us on a regular basis. Don’t ever mention that houses of the day were only a miniscule fraction of the cost even adjusting for inflation or you’ll be sleeping on a friend’s couch for a week. Correction, a friend’s parent’s couch. I was ready to find a nice corner to live on when a miracle happened. I feel like the devil for saying it but grandpa Joel finally passed last October and left the house to me and Robbie.
I love him and I’m eternally grateful for his generous post-mortuary gift but I’d be lying if I told you I missed him. He was unkind, vindictive, and intolerably racist. He scared the hell out of me and Robbie as kids and he still made my skin crawl as an adult. There was just something off about him. Worst of all, were the huge snakes he kept uncaged in his house. He swore they were harmless but I knew they weren’t. If he left me alone with one of them I think I would have died. Either the snake would eat me or the fear of it would kill me first.
When we got older and dad couldn’t force us to visit anymore, he took to calling us individually at least once a week. I can’t even repeat on paper some of the things he said on his frequent phone calls to me and Robbie. His favorite topics were slut-shaming me while simultaneously encouraging Robbie to experiment with the ladies; this all starting before we were teenagers by the way. He often accused Robbie of being a sissy and me of being a tomboy; while warning us away from the “African Americans” (not the word he used), latinos, arabs, and asians. Actually none of those were the words he used but I can’t even bring myself to write down his actual words.
The only thing that distracted him from feeding us old world bigotry was his obsession with his pet snakes. I think he loved those snakes more than us. He even made up stories about a giant serpent god he called Yig to scare us. If we ever stepped on one of his precious little devils a giant flying snake would find us and eat us. I still have nightmares about a giant snake with wings slithering through the crowds. I’m too small for it to notice, thank god. That is except for once.
It happened the same night as one of our last visits to grandad’s house. As we were leaving one of his smaller snakes shot out in front of me. Well, I stepped on it. It wasn’t hurt, not really, I barely put any pressure on it and I backed off immediately. It hissed angrily then twisted and snapped its jaws on my shoe. It barely made a mark on the outer layer and my response was more of a squeak than a scream but I turned to grandad terrified of what he might do. He was just staring at me coldly. I apologized but he didn’t say a word.
That night, I dreamt of the giant snake again. It was storming in the dream and I couldn’t see through the dark clouds until its giant head emerged. It was so close and coming closer. It was glancing back and forth, tasting the air with a forked tongue the size of a school bus. I sunk into the tall grass and froze. It passed me by, almost; but then one of its terrible reptilian eyes focused on me and it turned almost too fast to see then it came at me like a bolt of lightning, jaws opened wide. The sound it made was like the hiss of a normal snake but amplified and so much deeper. I woke just as its jaws were snapping shut on me. It was just a dream.
Robbie and I decided to live in the house together, at least for the time being. I hate to admit it, but I wouldn’t have lived in that creepy place alone. I can’t stop imagining some of grandad’s old snakes still slithering around in the walls and under the floor. Robbie acts tough but I think he’s just as afraid of them as I am.
We got along fairly well as far as brother-sister teams go; maybe because we were twins or maybe because we were both just so damn happy about moving out of our parents house. The one place where we differed was Robbie’s ridiculous obsession with Halloween and dressing up in scary costumes, always monsters, never anything cute. And he was not above giving me an occasional jump-scare with a snake mask. This year was worse than ever, without mom and dad to keep him in check, he turned the whole house into a haunted Halloween palace. The place already had a spooky reputation with the neighborhood kids and Robbie was ready to turn that to his advantage.
I don’t mean to say that he was actually creepy. Kids loved him and his girlfriend Racheal neutralized any potential phobias parents might have about a man with too much interest in their kids. Not to mention his kick-ass sister. His halloween fervor was “all in good fun” as they say; that is until the prank phone calls started.
As soon as Halloween season began, creepy old grandad’s regular phone calls resumed as if they had never stopped. I didn’t doubt for a second that Robbie was responsible, he even used the old land line, just like grandad used to. “How are you doing little worm…” (winner of the least endearing pet-name ever.) “I’ve missed you…” I hung up without giving him the satisfaction of a reply. That didn’t stop him from trying though. Every other day, when I was out of the house I would get a call from “beyond the grave”. I ignored it everytime.
Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back. October 31st and I was working night-shift at the nursing home because of course, I needed every penny and the lousy holiday pay was the one thing that could put me in the black. I spent the early hours of the night pampering the few residents whose families were there to see they got the best treatment even though there were others in far greater need and of far less attention, as per the shift manager’s orders of course. Not that it prevented the innuendos of perceived neglect to my manager from the aforementioned families.
The demands for my attention finally settled down as the lopsided clock ticked close to midnight and pen-in-hand I was ready to spend my lunch break filling out the mountain of paper-work required to prove that I had done my job so far - paperwork that I suspected would never be read by anyone.
I flexed my pen hand and scratched the itch at the back of my scalp with the other. I swear not even prescription shampoo could help me. They say psoriasis flares in times of stress so I was lucky that my entire scalp didn’t shed off. Before I could put pen to paper I heard the supervillain themed ringtone that I reserved for only a single number. Of course who should call, minutes to midnight but my dear old dead grandad with an old fashioned slut-shaming phone call. My wall of stoic patience collapsed and this time I answered. I was ready to give my brother the berating of a lifetime. “Robbie, I swear to god…” but he cut me off.
“I’m waiting, little worm. The attic door is unlocked. It’s time to undress.”
He hung up before I could scream at him. I called back but there was only dial tone. I was so angry I didn’t even think to call his cell. I told the other nurse on the unit that I was going out for lunch after all. “Be back in an hour” … with blood under my nails.
It was a twenty minute drive with no traffic, too early for drunk drivers to scream at. The porchlight was off but the light of a TV saturated the windows. The little shit was sitting on the couch in the middle of a grope-fest with his girlfriend.
I liked Racheal; she was in on it? My blood was seething. I didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“What kind of messed up fuck are you!?” I shouted
“What the hell Jess! What’s the matter with you?”
“You’re what’s the matter with me! Calling me at work pretending to be our dead grandfather! I’ve had it! I swear if you don’t cut this shit out I don’t know what I’ll do!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I have not been calling you!”
His phony outrage only made me angry and then Racheal interjected herself, “He hasn’t. We’ve been passing out candy and watching movies all night.”
I took out my phone and held it up in front of them. Missed calls from grandpa Creepy… I hadn’t changed that little bit of silent disdain from my contact list since before he died but the number was the same. I had Robbie dead to rights and in front of Racheal no less. It occurred to me that he might have made the call from the bathroom without her knowing.
He looked at my phone confused.
“Caller ID is a bitch.” I said.
After a moment he looked at me and said, “Jess, you know we haven’t had a landline since moving in. It was the first thing we canceled.”
Suddenly I remembered, hell, I was the one who canceled it. Of course I did. What use did we have for a landline in this century? Robbie wouldn’t waste money to reactivate a landline for a prank… Before I could logic my way out of that little problem, a loud creaking started from the attic. There were footsteps like someone impatient pacing back in forth. Robbie looked genuinely shocked and a little scared. Was someone living in our attic? We didn’t use it, hadn’t been up there much… had we been up there at all?
“You two go to the neighbors house, I’ll…” Racheal grabbed Robbie’s hand and shook her head silently.
Her unspoken plea was right, there was someone in the attic and the only safe thing for the three of us to do was leave and call the cops. They could check the attic.
Robbie nodded without making a sound and the three of us tiptoed out the door. Before we reached the sidewalk we heard a decisive tapping on the attic window. We all looked and there, of course, was a silhouette of a fat old man.
Then, instead of letting the hand fall, he reached to the back of his head where the other joined it. In the dark it looked as if he was putting his hands on his head like a cop might demand but then the shadow started to tremble slightly as if it were straining against something stubborn and resilient. I heard a ripping sound like leather might make but also the whet sound of meat being pulled apart. The man pulled off his skin like a thick winter coat but the thing underneath wasn’t a man. No… god, there were so many eyes and, and arms? No, arms didn’t writhe! And they sure as hell didn’t end in jaws! All snapping and stretching and what? Yawning?
Then the man in the window knocked on the glass a second time. This time though, the mouth he knocked with left a slimy black streak!
I was so scared that I couldn’t even speak, let alone comprehend what the thing in the window was trying to communicate. Robbie realized before I did that he wasn’t just pointing at his head, but the back of it. The same spot where it grasped a moment ago when its man-suit was still on. Where he started to pull when the world made sense!
“Jess…”
With an effort I turned to look at Robbie. He was fingering the back of his skull, looking at me with eyes bulging. The itching at the back of my scalp swelled worse than ever. I hadn’t even noticed until now. It had been getting worse for weeks but now it was unbearable. I felt the need to scratch, scratch so hard and pull! It itched so bad! I wish I could just rip my skin off! It itched so hard I forgot about the thing in the window. I heard that leather tearing sound again and then there was screaming! Racheal was screaming! I couldn’t stand the itch! I’m tearing and Racheal is screaming!
“STOP SCREAMING! I CAN’T THINK,” Red is oozing down my face, covering my eyes! Everything is red! If she won’t stop screaming, I’ll make her!!!