Long Chills Read online

  He tidied up the Grand Caravan first; picking up snack wrappers and sweeping stray crumbs into a Wal-Mart bag he had liberated from Trish’s stash of neatly-folded grocery bags in the kitchen pantry. Then he went out back to stick the makeshift trash bag in the garbage can.

  He was a little aggravated to find the lid off the can again, laying a couple of feet away on the floorboards of the deck. “Dadblamed raccoons!” he muttered.

  But when he reached the can, he wasn’t sure that raccoons had anything to do with it. Lying atop the garbage was the strange, leathery pod… except that it wasn’t the same as before. Its oval body was split open, from end to end, revealing a dark, empty pouch inside. If anything had occupied the ugly thing, it was gone now.

  How completely weird is this? he thought to himself as he crouched and examined the ruined pod. He grimaced at the stench that hit him as he came closer. It was like a combination of animal and vegetation decay; a cross between fresh roadkill and a ripe compost heap.

  Again, that inexplicable urge to touch the thing overcame him. Roger reached out and pushed open the raw edges of the pod’s opening. Strangely, they were soft and pliant, like the lips of a woman’s vagina. The thought repulsed him, but he continued to examine the object anyway. He dipped his index finger into the hollow and withdrew it just as swiftly. A thick mixture of liquids – or was it secretions? – dripped sluggishly from his fingertip. It was like a combination of human blood and tree sap.

  A breeze rustled through leafy branches directly behind and above him. He turned and regarded the big tree that grew at the edge of the rear deck. It was a strange tree; one that he had never been able to identify, despite several books he had checked out of the New Middleton Library on Dendrology. It was tall and full. The bark of the trunk was coarse and uniformly textured, bearing an almost reptilian pattern in its configuration. But it was the leaves that were the strangest point of interest. They were broad and jagged, like a maple leaf with multiple points, and the network of veins was complicated and almost black in color. One side was traditional green, while the underside was crimson in hue. The leaves remained that color from spring through fall and, while the other trees in the backyard shed their leaves in autumn, this one held a mystery that Roger had been unable to solve in three years of living in the Rolling Meadows subdivision west of town. One day in late fall the tree would be full of green and crimson leaves and then, the next, it would be as bare as could be… with no evidence of exactly where the missing leaves had gone.

  Suddenly, Roger felt the tip of his finger grow numb. He hurriedly wiped the nasty mess off and looked down at his hand. His fingertip was red and blistered, as though he had pressed it to the eye of a stove.

  Roger felt like concealing the strange pod from sight with the lid of the trash can, but he simply couldn’t. Instead, he went inside, got a Ziploc bag from a kitchen drawer, and, going back to the can, scooped the deflated object into the plastic sleeve. As he drew the edges of the bag together, he caught a whiff of that odor again and, this time, it was vaguely familiar.

  At first, it eluded him. Then he recognized it.

  It was the rich, visceral scent of new birth. One he had experienced twice before in the delivery room, when Tyler and Cindy were born.

  Later that afternoon, after lunch with Jack McCall at the country club, both men prepared for their Sunday round of golf. They had rented a cart and were about to head across the green to the first hole, when Roger decided to ask his friend’s opinion about the thing in the bag.

  “Hold up, Jack. I’ve got something I want to show you before we get started.”

  Roger took the Ziploc bag out of a pocket of his golf bag and laid it on a rear fender of the cart. Jack McCall stared at it with interest through the plastic.

  “What is it?”

  “That’s what I was hoping you could tell me. After all, you’re the doctor.”

  “Sure,” said the physician. “But I’ve never seen anything like this. Where did you find it?”

  “In the trash can out back of my house,” Roger told him. “We went to Florida last week and, when I got back, this was waiting for me.”

  “Mind if I take a closer look?” asked Jack. His curiosity was definitely piqued.

  “Go ahead. That’s what I brought it for.”

  Carefully, the doctor opened the zipper edges of the bag’s mouth. His nostrils flared slightly at the stench that escaped. “I’ve smelled that odor before, but not from anything like this. It looks like an egg of some sort… leathery like a reptile’s egg, but it has characteristics that totally baffle me.” He pulled the bag open enough to expose the split pod further. “Part of it has an almost reproductive quality to it.” Meticulously, he pulled the edges of the pod’s opening apart.

  “Don’t get that residue on your hands,” Roger suggested.

  “How come?” When his friend showed him his scarred fingertip, Jack smiled and shook his head. “Amazing.”

  “Painful was more like it. So, what is it?”

  Jack McCall took an ink pen from his shirt pocket and poked and prodded at the inner depths of the oval object for nearly a minute. “Its inner tissues… well, this is really impossible… but they have the texture and capillary patterns of the inner lining of a human placenta.”

  “You mean, this thing is some sort of… womb?”

  Jack frowned and shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Incredibly, it appears to be. The question is, where or what did it originate from, and if this egg produced an organic life form…then what kind was it?”

  The two men stood there for a long moment. Then Jack turned excited eyes toward this golfing buddy. “Do you mind if I take this back to my office? Run a few tests on it?”

  “No, go right ahead. I was just curious as to what it was.”

  Jack regarded his friend for a moment, then reached out and plucked a couple of hairs from the crown of his head.

  “Damn! What did you do that for?” snapped Roger.

  “There seem to be human-like hairs growing from the outer tissue. Hair the same color as yours.” The doctor found a gas station receipt in his wallet, then wrapped the procured hairs in the scrap of paper, and spirited it away. “It doesn’t hurt to double check everything in this sort of case.”

  “Well, it doesn’t have anything to do with me,” Roger told him. “I just brought it because I thought you might be interested.”

  “And I am.” Jack refastened the plastic bag and stuck it an outer pocket of his own golf bag. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  “Come on,” suggested Roger. “It’s starting to cloud up. I want to at least get in a few decent holes before it starts raining.”

  “Lead the way, Rog,” Jack said, setting his clubs in the back of the golf cart. “But you know I’m gonna beat your ass.”

  “You always do.”

  Laughing, the two jumped into the cart and headed for their first tee.

  Several days passed. The matter of the strange pod in the trash can grew less disturbing and was nearly forgotten by the following Wednesday. Then on Thursday night, around eight-thirty, something overturned the trash can on the back deck.

  “There go those stupid raccoons again!” said Tyler. The eight-year-old and his little sister were lying in the living room floor, working on opposite pages of a SpongeBob SquarePants coloring book.

  “Honey,” said Trish, glancing up from the Debbie Macomber romance she was engrossed in.

  “Okay,” said Roger with a sigh. He laid the Ron Malfi novel he was reading on the coffee table and stood up. “I’m on it.”

  “The Critter Police is on the move,” Cindy said from the floor. The six-year-old beamed a picket-fence grin at her daddy.

  Roger winked at her. “You got it, Princess.”

  Reaching the utility room that separated the kitchen from the rear deck, Roger took a broom from a narrow closet beside the washer and dryer, and then stepped out the back door.

  The floodlight was
already on. The trash can was over on its side, its contents scattered all over the boards of the deck.

  “Damned scavengers!” Roger grumbled beneath his breath. He started toward the far end of the deck and the overturned garbage can. “Get out of here you freeloaders! Come back and I’ll knock you to Nashville with this broom!”

  The branches of the strange tree near the end of the deck rustled overhead.

  But there was no breeze that night. The air was humid and still.

  A feeling of unease gripped Roger Perry; one so intense that goose bumps prickled the flesh of his arm, despite the heat of the evening. It was at that moment that he realized that the night was silent. Completely silent. No crickets singing in the grass, no frogs belching from the creek in the woods that bordered their back yard. No sound at all… except for the thing in the tree.

  The rustling of leaves stopped and a low, hissing laugh echoed from the dark network of branches above. It sounded like coarse sandpaper rubbing against hard wood.

  “Broom,” someone said in a thin, reedy voice that was no more than a whisper.

  Roger took a quick step backward and swallowed dryly. “Who… who the hell’s out there?” he demanded.

  Again the gritty laughter.

  “BROOOOOOOOOM!”

  Roger’s heart pounded in his chest. What are you? he almost blurted out loud, but didn’t. He looked down at the trash can and immediately thought of the leathery pod. Empty… void of the squirming thing within.

  Stop thinking that way, he told himself. It’s crazy!

  So unnerved was he, that he took a couple of retreating steps backward and tripped over Cindy’s tricycle. He dropped the broom going down and landed hard on his butt.

  “Uh-oh,” said the voice, tiny and sad. “Daddy fall down.”

  Frightened, Roger scrambled to his feet, ran across the deck, and grabbed the knob of the back door, ready to wrench it open and dart inside.

  Again, that low, hissing laugh. Then a peculiar sound… a sound like the fluttering of flimsy, paper-thin wings.

  Without further hesitation, Roger entered the back door and slammed it shut. Nervously, he fumbled with the lock on the knob and then the deadbolt just above it.

  “Daddy?” came a thin, whistling voice from behind him.

  Startled, Roger turned, his heart thundering in his chest.

  His daughter Cindy stood in the kitchen doorway.

  “Did you chase those pesky raccoons away?” she asked, her words lisping almost comically through the gap of her missing front teeth.

  “Yes, baby. The raccoons are all gone.” And probably scared to come back.

  From outside, echoed a loud, brittle CRACK!

  Cindy took a step forward. “What was that, Daddy?”

  Roger stepped to the small, narrow window that looked out onto the darkness of the back yard. He quickly pulled the blinds closed. “Nothing, sweetheart. You and your brother better put the crayons up and get ready for bed.”

  “Aw, can’t I have a snack first?” whined the six-year-old.

  “Okay. Just a little one. Some milk and a piece of that chocolate cake your mom made today.”

  “Deal!” smiled Cindy.

  That night, lying in bed, Roger found it hard to fall asleep. He kept listening in the darkness, for the sandpapery laughter and the sound of fluttering wings, but they never came. All he heard was the hum of the AC and the noise of Trish’s sound machine on the dresser, turned to the “gentle rain” setting.

  The next morning, before heading to work, Roger checked the rear deck.

  He found the broom lying in two pieces near the trash can, the inch-thick handle snapped cleanly in half at the middle.

  A week passed.

  Roger was rarely at home for the next seven days. First a training seminar at his company’s main office in Lima, Ohio for four days, then in-the-field experience with the fellow he was replacing as regional sales manager throughout the Middle Tennessee area.

  While attempting to keep his mind focused on his work and the responsibilities that the new position demanded, Roger still couldn’t shake a sensation of unease and dread that stayed with him constantly. He was on his cell phone every other hour, checking on Trish and the kids.

  “We’re fine,” his wife told him after his twentieth call. “Now keep your mind on your work or they’ll bust you down to company janitor. You’re going to have another mouth to feed before long, you know.”

  Roger knew she was right. But he simply couldn’t get the thoughts of that night on the back deck out of his mind. Late at night, in the strange darkness of his hotel room, he would lurch awake, listening for the coarse hiss of laughter in the tree, as well as the fluttering of wings. He would think of his wife and children alone at home and that broom handle broken in half, a mean feat for a strong man, let alone a… a what? He still didn’t know what he had encountered on the deck that night and what it had to do with the mysterious pod he had discovered in the garbage can.

  The following Monday he was fortunate enough to be given the day off. He stayed at home with his family, glad to be among them again. Even then, in the middle of their various activities, Roger’s thoughts continued to gravitate to the deck and the back yard beyond. The kids had never taken to the yard behind the Perry home for some reason. It had everything a kid could dream of: tall shade trees, grass as soft and devoid of weeds as possible, and a swing set with a playhouse tower on the end with a curved slide. But for some reason, both Tyler and Cindy preferred to play in the front yard… or stay in the house, playing in their rooms.

  He had always had a feeling that maybe something was wrong with his kids. It had never dawned at him that something might be wrong with the yard itself.

  That suspicion was verified later that afternoon, when Trish and Cindy laid down for a nap. Roger and Tyler were in the living room, playing Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, when Tyler suddenly tired of the game. “Dad… can I talk to you?” he asked quietly.

  Roger turned off the game console. “Sure, sport. What’s up?”

  Tyler fidgeted on the couch for a moment, then looked his father straight in the eyes. “Dad… I’m scared.”

  “Scared? Of what?”

  “Of something in the back yard.”

  Roger’s heart skipped a beat. He moved closer to his son on the couch. “What did you see, Tyler?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” the boy admitted. “It’s just a feeling I get when me and Cindy are out playing. Like someone’s watching us.”

  A sinking sensation settled in the pit of Roger’s stomach. “And what about Cindy? Does she feel like that, too?”

  Tyler rolled his eyes. “Dad, you know how weird Cindy is… all her make-believe friends and all. She says she’s heard someone out there… talking to her. From the tree at the end of the deck.”

  Roger’s mouth dried to the point that he had to swallow twice to even answer. “What did this… imaginary friend… say to your sister?”

  “She claims that it said ‘Sister. Pretty, little sister.’”

  Roger’s blood ran cold. “What do you think? Is she just play-acting, like usual?”

  The eight-year-old looked out the side window, toward the back yard. “It’s hard to tell with her… but I think she’s scared, too.” Tyler moved a little closer to his father, until they almost touched. When the boy spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper. “I think something out there doesn’t like us, Dad. I think something in the back yard wants to hurt us.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Tyler’s eyes began to tear up. “I just feel it. Feel it strong.”

  Although Tyler had shied away from showing his dad affection lately – the way growing boys do when they think they’re too old for hugs and kisses – he did not refrain from going to his father at that moment. Before Roger knew it, Tyler was in his arms, sobbing against his shoulder. Roger embraced his son firmly, stroking his back.

  “Hey there, sport,” Roger said
softly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I won’t let anything happen to you or your sister.”

  “You promise?” asked Tyler, between sniffles.

  “You bet.” Even as he said it, Roger wasn’t a hundred percent sure that what he was saying was true. How could he protect his family when his new job put him on the road five days out of the week? At that moment, he loathed the sales manager position and found himself wishing that he had never accepted it.

  “Just promise me something, will you?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Tyler. “What?”

  “I want you and Cindy to stay away from the back yard and that tree next to the deck, until I tell you everything is okay again. Alright?”

  “I’m not setting foot out there, Dad. And I promise to keep Cindy away from there, too.”

  “I know you will, sport. You know your old dad loves you.”

  “I do, too,” the boy simply replied, feeling a little embarrassed and awkward.

  “Let’s not tell Mom about our little talk, okay?” Roger added. “She doesn’t need to worry… what with the new baby coming and all.”

  “I understand.” Abruptly, a look of fresh terror blossomed in the boy’s eyes. “Dad, you don’t think that thing out there… you don’t think it would hurt the baby, do you?”

  Roger’s dread doubled in intensity. “Tyler… nothing’s going to hurt any of you. Not mom or the baby. Not you or your little sister. I swear to God.”

  Tyler looked surprised. “Dad! You know you’re not supposed to swear, especially not in front of Him!”

  Roger couldn’t help but laugh. He ruffled Tyler’s blond hair. “You’ve got way too much of your mother in you, buddy. Okay… I promise not to swear. Now, do you want to play more Mario?”

  “No,” said Tyler, looking exhausted. “I think I’ll go to my room and take a nap. Like Mom and Cindy.”