Pig Pen

Fortune cookie proverbs, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” Sound advice. Lovely sentiment. Kiss my ass. I like it down here in the dirt. It's grimy and people are scrambling to move away. The real-estate is cheap. There is no Home Owner's Association knocking on your door wanting dues to be paid. Down here in the dirt nobody cares what the yard looks like.

I like it down here. Which is good, because I'm pretty sure I broke my leg when I fell off my high horse and lost my crown of hypocrisy. Fall down seven times, get up eight. You've got to keep on trying! You're a cute little kitten and you just need to, “Hang in there!” Whatever. This is my dirt. My pockets are full of it and it's under my fingernails. It's in my shoes. I've got mud on my face. I can taste the grit between my teeth. I love it.

Give me your dirt. I'll haul it away for free. I'm going to make mud pies and sell them two for one on Tuesdays. I'm going to take your dirt and plant a flower garden. All you saw was dirt. Grime. In a few months when the petunias start to bloom don't you dare come back around here wanting your dirt back. You will though, and I'm going to go dig through the dirt somebody else left, find a dirt clod, and chuck it at your freshly shampooed head.

From time to time as I've walked my way down the road of my flawed existence there have been people that have seen me stumbling along with my wheelbarrow full of dirt. Some have offered to help. They want to take a shovel and remove some of my dirt. It doesn't work like that. Whatever dirt you remove is going to be sitting right there where you left it waiting to get stuck on someone's shoes and then they're going to track it into the house. Drop the shovel and help me push the wheelbarrow. This is my dirt. I'm keeping it and somewhere along the way there is going to be a pile of dirt that someone else left behind. I'm going to scoop it up with my hands and put it right here on top of my other dirt.

Dirty is the word of the day.

Also, where is your wheelbarrow? Where did you leave your dirt? Are you trying to hide from it? Did you go wash your hands and imagine that all of a sudden you're clean? Give me back my wheelbarrow and go find yours wherever you left it. When you catch back up we will get us a wagon or a dump truck and combine our dirt. Don't you damn dare come back wringing your sanitized hands in a freshly bleached shirt.

Fall down seven times, get up eight. You go ahead. I'm going to stay right down here with the worms, the rocks, and the dirt. I'm going to get grass stains on my jeans and watch the ants crawl across me. I'm going to get all itchy. If you insist that I get back up then I'm going to shake my head and crawl right to your best couch. Scotch Guard ain't got shit on my dirt. The best thing you can do once I crawl back out into the grime is to pull that couch out onto the yard and set it on fire.

When you get tired of washing your hands until they're red and raw, go change out of your school clothes, and you can come on down here with me. Don't forget your dirt, Pig Pen.

Walking with Windmills.

As she walked away he couldn’t stop watching. Her walk was ethereal. It reminded him of being on some dark and lonely country back road with an old friend and catching a glimpse of a falling star through a dusty windshield. It was hope packaged in blue jeans and sitting on the top of heels. Not everybody had a walk like that. Most folks just ambled around from place to place, non-descript and plain. There were no metaphors and absolutely no amount of alliteration that could describe her walk. He felt foolish for even trying to unscramble the words in his brain to make sense of that walk. For him to try and describe that walk was akin to Don Quixote tilting at windmills. He liked to tilt at windmills though.

His head was full of images and words. The paper was laid out in his thoughts like a super sized Scrabble game and he was searching for double word scores. There had to be something he could write down that would make it less ethereal, something that would keep that walk from escaping into the aether. Less ethereal? No, that wouldn’t work; her walk flowed too well with the rotation of the world. She walked along the floor like the trade winds flowed along the equator. Warm and calm.

This was elegance on two legs. This was the word lovely come to life. He had to be dreaming, that was the only thing that could explain how this scene was playing out. It went on forever, and eventually it had to fade to black. There was no option available, after she left the room, but for the curtain to fall. The lights stayed on, the curtain stayed up, the scene was over but the play was not finished. This was a one woman production. Everyone else was simply scenery or part of the crew. Key grips and paper-mache rocks.

He was surely going to go insane if he watched her any longer. This is what purgatory must be like. There she was, sweet as salvation, but just out of reach. Every step he took she took one as well, she kept walking. He wanted to catch her and walk with her, walk beside her and see what wonders might be in her heart. He wanted to just stand still and watch her move along the hardwood like a ghost with purpose. As long as her purpose was to haunt him she could rattle all the chains she wanted.

She opened the door and walked outside. This was not a mode of transportation; a means to get from point A to point B. Her walk was the destination; it was all the places that needed to be reached. He moved, awkwardly towards her, and sat down. He needed to rest. He had taken a step for every one of hers and then one for each of his own. He looked over and realized that it wasn’t just her walk that was a dream, a production worthy of an encore. She sat there, legs crossed, quiet as the space between them, and she was still ethereal and elegant. She was still the destination and the windmill. He watched her quietly; anxiously. He closed his eyes and dreamed of her walk.

The Devil Cheats at Solitaire.

“I'll drive up the road from the old house and park off behind that stand of trees then walk to the house and hide upstairs. I'll get there about 9 o'clock and wait for y'all to show up and then scare the hell out of them when they get upstairs.” “You're going to sit up there in that house, by yourself, at night?” “Yeah.” “You're a lunatic.” “Whatever. Just don't be too late.”

That was the entire conversation. It was no big deal. I was just volunteering to sit by myself at a place we affectionately called, “The Devil House”, no big deal!

It was 1996 or '97, I don't really remember. It was around Halloween and I was driving down a dark road headed straight for an even darker one. I passed by the shining eyes of deer standing stupidly close to the highway and made my way towards a narrow gravel road on the left. It was chilly out. I had on jeans, black Reeboks, a white t-shirt, and a dark blue flannel shirt. I was young and didn't give a shit. I was scared of nothing. I had already seen enough to know that there was plenty that science couldn't explain and just as much that they didn't talk about in Sunday School. I was chasing ghosts. Literally and metaphorically. I did a lot of that back then, still do, and sometimes I catch them.

I pass by white fences, in my mind they are there to keep the bad things on the other side of the road. In my mind as long as there is a fence, I've got a place to put my back if things get too spooky. I pass by the glowing eyes of things smarter than deer. They stay just outside of the light. I start to think that I've made a big mistake. The radio goes quiet, the cassette tape has reached it's end, and Tupac is no longer rapping in Iambic Pentameter. Young ones, be thankful for CDs and their ability to start over when finished. It's too quiet, gravel crunches under tires, there aren't any more white fences, creepy crawlers rustle around in the leaves.

There ain't a single wide spot in the road to turn around in.

I keep on moving, straight ahead, around curves and up hills. The moon peeks through the trees and the gravel looks like an illuminated path. Keep on going it says, don't stop, don't turn around, just keep going. I'm a stubborn man, a dummy. I turn onto a bumpy dirt drive and put the car in park. I turn it off and cut the lights. There is nothing like a full moon on an October night in the woods to keep the blood pumping. Have you ever noticed that when you're out in the woods that the quieter it gets the louder everything is? Over there a twig snaps. To the left something is walking across leaves. Just exactly what in the name of the Wolf man is kicking gravel around behind me? Then I have to tinkle. I puff my chest out, unzip my fly, and wet the tires; while in the back of my head the only thing I can picture is the boogeyman and a quiet dude in a hockey mask playing paper, rock, scissors for my intestines.

Fly zipped back up I make my way along the road towards that old house. I can see the chimney against the night sky. It's all red brick and mortar. It hasn't seen a fire in years. The house is falling apart but it was built right in the beginning. It's foundation is sturdy. The windows are long gone as is the door. There are now just empty holes where adornments once resided. Blind eyes and missing teeth stuck in a wrinkled face that used to be pretty. Nobody loves it any more. It's usefulness is long gone and now it's just half a shelter for nocturnal creatures and a ghost chasing man who is barely past being a boy. There is no cell phone, nor flashlight. A flashlight would have meant that this idiot endeavor had been properly thought out.

I walk in, I cross the threshold of where the door used to be. Something is not right. The air is thick and muggy. It doesn't smell like an old house should smell. It doesn't smell of rotted wood and varmints. It smells like sweat and blood. I can taste the iron and copper. I stop and listen. Nothing. There are no leaves rustling and nothing is walking along the glowing gravel. I look back outside to make sure Lucifer isn't playing Solitaire on the front porch. Right inside the doorway is a staircase on my left. Why the shit is everything on my left? I can't see very far into the front room and I can only make out a few of the steps leading upstairs. I light a smoke and a light bulb appears above my head. The Zippo will work for awhile, I just filled it up this morning.

With the Zippo burning like an underachieving torch I decide to skip exploration of the violent smelling room and walk up the stairs. I make it up two before I turn around. I make it back down one before I turn back around and walk up three, four, then five steps. I'm looking at a wall and to my left, go figure, is a turn into darkness. I hold the lighter out and a breeze from somewhere makes it flicker. I see another step heading further up. I swing around wide, back against the wall, nothing there. There are four more steps then a door. This time the door is actually there. The entire inside of the house is white except for this bastard door. The door is black.

Forget that mess. There is no way I'm about to open that door. The cigarette, totally forgotten, burns my fingers. I cuss, to be specific I said, “Damn it!”, and then drop the cigarette and put it out with my shoe. I shake my head, go over the situation one more time, and then I turn around and start to walk back down the stairs. Then I hear it, a car slowly making its way up the road coming towards the house. It sounds like it's some where close to the last hill before the flat stretch leading to where I am. I reassess things and the knowledge that I will soon not be alone sways me towards the black door. I'll be alright is what I say to myself. There will be a dozen teenagers here making noise, girls giggling, boys cussing. I'll just open the door, hunker down, and wait.

I turn the knob and push but it doesn't open. I take the Zippo back out and shed some light on the situation. There is a lock on the door, a spike run through two iron loops. One loop on the door and one on the frame. Why is there a lock on the door? It doesn't matter. I'm running out of time. I hear the car stop and I pull the spike out. I open the door, close it back, and refuse to look around me. I stand still and listen. There is no giggling and no cussing. I hear heavy footsteps downstairs. One set of footsteps. It takes about two-tenths of a second to realize that something bad is about to happen. It takes the rest of that second for me to think of a dozen different ways that this is about to get really real. Those footsteps sound very heavy. Purpose laden weight. I have a rusty spike and a lighter. Discretion is the better part of valor.

I walk slowly towards the back of the room, the only light is the moon through the window, which given my luck is actually there. It's like this part of the house was kept intact for a reason. No quick scamper off of the roof for me. The shadows run deep in the back corner, the left corner, away from the moon. I have no choice. I tip toe across the room and head towards the corner. There is something there. I can't make it out and I'm not really looking for details at this point. It's inanimate and that is all that matters. I can squat down behind it and be out of sight. Heavy feet start up the steps. I squat, I hide, and I wonder why I ever thought this was a good idea.

The steps stop at the door. There is stillness and then the door flies open. I don't move and somehow I don't piss myself. Flight or fight is in full effect. Every hair on arm, neck, and head is standing on end. Goosebumps have conquered my arms and claimed them as their own lands. No more steps, just the quiet and a whole lot of goosebumps having a house party. I'm not looking. If they aren't coming in then I'm not looking. Not going to look. I look. There is a figure there. I stop looking. I fumble through “yea though we” and “we shall fear no evil.” The door closes. Yes! I hear something slide through the two iron loops and the door being tested. Shit!

I sit down and wait. I can hear steps downstairs. I hear them walk around and I hear things being moved here and there. I sit and I listen. I sit and think about how I am ever going to get out of this mess. I have a feeling the crooked smile isn't going to work this time. It gets quiet again and then I hear something being scratched against one of the walls. Nothing else is stirring anywhere. The only sound is the scratching. It finally stops and then I hear the steps walk out of the house, across the yard, crunch in the gravel, and then I hear a car door shut and an engine roar to life. I'm alone again. I light my last smoke and look at my watch. It is 11:30. I've been here for two and a half hours. I decide to give the reason I'm here thirty more minutes and then if they aren't here I've got to decide how to get free from this place.

Before five minutes have passed I have changed my mind about staying. The feeling I had when I first walked in is back and exponentially worse. It's heavier than those footsteps. It's a feeling of deep depression. Sadness, regret, desperation, and terror. It isn't even my feeling. The feeling isn't internal. The air has been replaced with those things. It falls over me like a slow cold rain. I've got to get out. I get up and walk towards the window closest to the road. I can see the gravel glowing and beckoning for me. I try to lift the window up. It's a no go. I try the door. Nope. I go back to the corner I was in and flick my Zippo open to take a look at what I was hiding behind. I should have just jumped out of the damn window.

Sitting there in front of me is a dollhouse. It's made of wood and looks like the actual house. I look inside it and see the stairs and the damned black door. I see the room I'm in. It's painted red. There is a figure made of match sticks inside the room. The feet are black, the legs are blue, the torso is white and dark blue. I look at myself. Black shoes, jeans, white t-shirt, dark blue flannel shirt. The matchstick man is chained to the wall. The next thing I know I've covered the floor in what is left of a half digested bacon cheese burger and a large order of fries. My guts are empty. That rain of desperate emotions is coming down hard. I utter a, “Fuck that” and pick the heavy dollhouse up and chuck it straight out of the window. I'm right behind it.

I slide down the tin roof, reach under at the edge, and grab onto the frame of the porch and swing down. I'm on the ground, I'm cut up a bit from glass and tin. I start towards the road and then turn around and look at the house. What did he scratch into the wall? One second passes. It doesn't matter. Two seconds pass. Yes it does. I walk back in. I have to push through the thick air. I walk towards where the scratching sound came from using the stairs to get oriented. I open my lighter, flick the striker once then twice. The flame burns and I move my hand towards the wall. There are words there. A sentence. A subject, a verb, and an object. I read the words once and then again. Under the words there is a date. The date is my birthday of the next year. I read the sentence again and look at the date. I hear something slide wickedly across the floor upstairs. Something full of sharp and boney parts is sliding across the damn floor of the room I just vacated via a window. Something that was locked in the room I just left is sliding across the floor towards the window that is now open to all of the world.

I'm out. I'm doing the forty yard dash in under four seconds. This is not training or quick twitch muscle moving me. This is the palpable fear of death that is moving me. I hear something clack against the roof. I hit the gravel with visions of me as a child riding my bike down a gravel road until my untied shoe laces get caught up in the chain and I tumble to the ground. I tumble to the ground. I'm rolling head over heels and back to my feet. I don't miss a step. I hear the fingernails on a chalkboard sound of murder and the devil sliding down the tin roof. There is the car. I'm in. It starts and I'm moving. I hit the lights and to my left is a darkness darker than tar. I'm headed to the right. Gravel flies as I fishtail onto the road and leave early demises behind. I drive a mile and eject the mix tape, flip it over, put it in, and hit play. Tupac starts singing, “If I die Tonight” as the tires of the car hit blacktop and ahead of me I see white fences.

To be continued...

Rabid possums, white fences, and the darkness.

Not going to do the other Skinwalker or Sin-eater story just yet. I’ve got to think about it some. I’ve never told either story, out loud, or otherwise. I really don’t know if I even want to. I do have another boogeyman tale from closer to my home though. 

This happened two summers ago.

It was late, like closer to dawn than midnight late, and I was sitting in my old Ford F-150, parked on John’s Creek Rd. I was star gazing, which is a metaphor for fooling around in the woods after dark, necking. I don’t care how old you are if you can’t enjoy some good quality after dark necking on a back road then your life has taken a disastrous turn for the worse. We had been out there for quite awhile, nobody had been by on the main road which was a few hundred yards away and it was nice and quiet. It was peaceful. There really was some good star gazing that night. The sky was clear and the moon was new, non-existent. The conversation had been a little heavy but nothing unusual. It was good. I felt nice and content for the most part. It was a lovely night.

Then all hell broke loose.

So picture this, I’ve got my weary head lying in a warm lap, I’m talking about metaphysics or maybe how much it sucks that my windows refuse to roll down. Same thing, really. I’ve got one skinny leg draped over the steering wheel and the other is propped against the stubborn window. She’s got her hand on my cheek, finger tips down around my chin and thumb resting comfortably against my ear. It was about as close to perfect as you could get while being cooped up in the cab of an old red pickup truck. There was a moment of comfortable silence and just about the time I was going to say something I’m sure would have been an existential masterpiece I hear a scratch down the outside of her door. Here is my rundown of the thoughts that flashed through my mind, “What the shit was that? Is there a deer out there? No it couldn’t be a deer. Werewolf? Possibly. It has to be a werewolf.” I look up and catch her eye, “Did you hear that?” “Hear what?” “That, um, noise.” “The scratching?” “Yeah, that.” Then it scratches again. And again. 

I’m up, my moment of peaceful content is over and existential thoughts have all fled. I don’t look out of her window. I start the truck, it roars to life, I blow the horn, put it in drive and roll out like I just finished watching Gone in 60 Seconds and Old Black Betty is playing on the radio. The radio doesn’t work though. She starts to turn her head to look in the back of the truck. “What are you doing?! You can’t look in the back of the truck, turn around!” “What, why?” “Cause it’s the rules! You don’t look back there until we are in a well lit and populated area.” “Okay!”

I’m barreling down this country road, I’d be trying to keep it between the lines but there aren’t any. There’s a white fence on my left, all out in this area there are fences like this one. In my mind it is there to keep the bad things away. There is no fence on the right, where the scratch happened. I get to the end of the road, nobody is coming, and I wouldn’t have cared if they were. I blow past the stop sign and turn to the left. The fence is gone. Now there are some lines and I’m between them. I’m still rolling fast. Old Black Betty is still playing in my head. I can she wants to look in the back of the truck, “Don’t you dare.” “Alright!”  

We drive on, I slow down a bit, my imagination does too. “You can look now.” She turns her head and says, “Nothing there.” I’m thankful. “You did hear it though, didn’t you?” “Yes mam, I did.” “What was it?” “I have no clue. Probably nothing. It’s dark, late, and quiet out here. I’m sure it sounded a lot louder than it was. Maybe it was a possum.” “Maybe.” “This is a spooky place though; I’ve got a lot of old stories about weird shit that happened out here.” “Well, don’t tell me any right now.” “Don’t worry, love.” As I’m driving I pass by Sand Hill Rd. on my left, and I’m thinking how many of those aforementioned stories happened on that road. I’m lost in thought.

“What the hell is that!?” “What?” She points straight ahead, “That!” I look ahead, straight and to my right, there is a stop sign at the end of Brewer Rd. where it runs into the road I’m driving down at about 40 mph, “I don’t see anything.” “Stop!” I stop. “Look above the stop sign.” The stop sign is about 50 yards ahead. I’m at the top of a small hill and my lights are shining on the sign. I see a dark patch, slender but humanoid shaped and at the top of this dark patch there is one huge glowing eye. This entire thing is dark, darker than the moonless night sky, but that eye is shining like a spotlight.

I’m in quite a quandary. Behind me is a werewolf or a rabid possum and in front of me is something that I can actually see and it looks like death come to collect overdue rent. I don’t know how I know but it turned, slightly, towards us. It seemed to me that it was a little bit perturbed that I interrupted its boogeyman activities with my headlights. “This can’t be real.” “There is no way.” Those were the last words said for a long time. As soon as they left our mouths it moved and the sign disappeared. There were no details to see, just a black void, devoid of light, and that damned eye.

The eye was bad enough but the way this thing moved was impossible. It moved like it didn’t have a spine and the only way you could tell it moved was the up, down, and sideways movement of that stupid sleep haunting eye. Well that and the darkness. The movement of the eye was a visceral thing, it was physically frightening. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and my arms. I wasn’t scared for my life but I could feel my soul trying to escape. I mean that literally. Something came over me and I could feel everything in me that made me who I am trying to get away before it was too late.

It moved to the middle of the road. Up and down, sideways, the eye would be over six feet in the air one second and then so low to the ground the next that you couldn’t slide a piece of paper between it and the road. The darkness moved with it but the darkness seemed to be more of just a vessel. It seemed like the only reason it was there was to give the eye a home. Contrast maybe. It was stopped there in the middle of the road and then it started in our direction. All herky-jerky motion. I did the only thing that seemed plausible; I flipped on the bright lights. The eye closed. A second or two passed by, maybe an hour, I don’t know. Then they eye opened again on the far side of the road. It stood there for a minute. Floated? Then it moved down the side of and into a gully. The eye visible the entire way down and up the other side. The motion of it made me queasy. Then it was gone. The darkness and the eye were moving across the woods, I hoped.

We drove on, and we didn’t say much. There were no songs playing in my head and my soul had settled down. She reached out and grabbed my hand and we headed home, back towards well lit and populated areas. Away from the darkness.