Six Scary Stories

Neil Hudson is a writer from Birmingham, United Kingdom who has typed stuff on a keyboard for Vice, Wonderland, Sick Chirpse and other places on the internet people go to avoid doing work. Having last year completed a Degree in English Literature and Creative Writing, he is currently working through his Creative Writing MA alongside finishing his first book.

While Neil has no real experience of living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, he does reside in the Irish Quarter of Birmingham where they annually hold the St Patrick’s day parade – this has allowed him a unique view of what life may look like on ‘the day after’!

The central character in ‘The Bear Trap’, Calvin, is named after Bill Waterson’s beautiful comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes. Mr Waterson’s Calvin had an animal companion too. His was considerably friendlier . . .

‘It is a stretch to choose one favourite King book as I’m a huge Stephen King nerd . . . However, Pet Sematary is the first adult novel I ever picked up and it tears the heart out of my chest every time I read it. I’ve been checking the bedroom closet for Zelda ever since.’

THE BEAR TRAP

The genny was almost out again. It’d started to splutter and strain, which was generally never the best of signs. The bright, avocado paint that had formerly clung to its chassis had shed like snakeskin, presumably shaken off by the furious seizures it underwent any time it was being used. Now the machine simply looked like a dull hunk of metal. Calvin regarded it with his brow all crinkled up, making his twelve-year-old face comical with concern.

‘Dang it,’ he muttered. ‘Dang it to heck and back.’

The generator stood in the middle of the big red barn next to their farmhouse. Theirs had become a relative term recently. It’d been over a year since Pops had left the farm to go get Uncle Jake, tearing off along the untended strip of dirt that connected their house to the freeway in his sand-worn Volkswagen, mumbling something about Russkies as he left. Tears had been spilling down his cheeks, but he’d not gone to Calvin for any comfort before slamming the screen door.

Just hours after he’d departed the soot had begun to fall from the sky, thick and terrifying. The ash had hammered down so furiously that when Calvin summoned the courage to peer outside, looking out on the front yard had been like staring through static on a TV that’d lost reception. Calvin had been plenty relieved when the ash had ceased raining down six weeks later. Seeing the world outside like that had put a fright in him so bad he’d pretty much stayed in the basement the whole time, eating beans straight out of the can with a loaded BB gun set across his lap.

Finally, it had stopped.

The ash storm had left the ground thick with black dandruff, which shifted and swirled in tight little curls when the wind kicked up. It had been dark ever since. Clouds so obstinately impenetrable not a lick of sunshine shone through. It’d been hard for Calvin to get used to every day looking like midnight in winter, but he was an adaptable young fellow and made sure he carried a torch with him most of the time. It had a hand-crank on it so didn’t need any batteries, just a little gumption. He had a radio that worked the same way, but hadn’t gotten a single clear station on it since everything went to heck. Every so often a preacher’s voice would burst through the static, squawking about revelations and raptures. Calvin had an idea that the preacher wasn’t part of no legitimate radio show. He thought this because occasionally the self-proclaimed minister would start snickering darkly during his sermons, like maybe someone had whispered a particularly wicked joke in his ear. Calvin had not liked that, and the radio got switched on less and less as time went on because of it.

He thought a lot on where Pops and Uncle Jake might be. Pops was not, what he’d heard one of his schoolteachers refer to as, a ‘positive parental figure’. Miss Bailey, under whom he’d taken second period English, had claimed this, and Pops had made some fairly enthusiastic suppositions about her parentage by way of response. Nevertheless, there was no getting around it – Pops liked to tie one on. He’d often been known to disappear for days on end before moping in like a sore grizzly, ruffling Calvin’s hair with hands that stank of cigar smoke and Scotch.

‘Gas,’ he said, stalking off to the corner of the barn where it was kept.

He supposed he couldn’t stay mad at Pops, even though Calvin was sure wherever he was, he was off having fun without him. Uncle Jake was probably talking his ear off, or they were playing ’nopoly. Pops said when him and Jake were playin’ a game of ’nopoly, why, most occasions they’d just up and forget the time. It did seem to run away from them so.

‘Alley-oop!’ Calvin grunted, heaving the gas canister from its place next to many, many others on the shelving unit Pops had set up. Pops called himself a Prepper. Far as Calvin knew, that meant someone that liked to keep stuff handy just in case. Well, just in case had come around. In spades.

‘Tiglet! Open all hatches!’ Tiglet, Calvin’s third favourite bear, sat atop a dented bucket in the corner. He did not open the hatch; just sat there, staring at the genny like all the work in the world was going to do itself. One of Tiglet’s eyes had started to come loose, and Calvin knew he’d have to get handy with a needle and thread if he wanted Tiglet to keep his eyesight 20/20.

‘Man, you sure are lazy, Tiglet. If Fozzo were out here, why you know he’d pitch in. That bear’s got a good work ethic. It’s okay, though. Y’all just sit there, relaxing. Make old Calvin do all the work.’

Tiglet did not seem to mind this course of action one bit, and stubbornly continued sitting on his bucket. Calvin unscrewed the genny cap his own self, as he knew he’d have to. There wasn’t a bear on this whole farm, he thought, that knew how to do an honest day’s labour.

He finished topping off the genny and lugged the significantly less weighty can back to the racks. It took only four tugs on the ripcord to get the generator chugging along, making that nice steady noise Calvin liked, the one that meant he could turn the lights on and cook his meals up good and hot.

‘Job done,’ Calvin said, gathering up Tiglet. He exited the barn and latched its big red door behind him. Calvin ambled over to the farmhouse, swinging the bear merrily by one arm. He could see Fozzo sitting on the porch, probably waiting for him to make breakfast. Well, that bear could have cereal as far as he was concerned; eggs were for workers, powdered or not.

‘Stay right where you’re at, boy.’ A voice spoke behind him.

Calvin spun on the spot, almost dropping Tiglet into the ash and filth that coated the ground.

‘Goddammit, boy, I done said freeze!’

Striding over was a man dressed in rags. A bandana covered the bottom half of his face, and a John Deere cap most of the rest. His eyes peered from the gap in between, creased and as blue as penny marbles. Calvin noted that the man looked as though he’d run his whole outfit through a wood chipper before deciding on getting dressed that morning.

‘Where your folks at?’ barked the man through the rag that covered his face.

Calvin stared, his fingers tightening reflexively around Tiglet.

‘You deaf? Don’t you make me ask twice.’ The man drew back his raggedy coat; an AR-15 peeked out.

‘My pops is with Uncle Jake,’ Calvin managed, as loudly as he could.

‘They gone then,’ the man said, looking around the property, as though he were considering putting a bid on it.

‘They’ll be back, soon too. You better scoot, mister. Pops has got a fierce temper, you wouldn’t wanna be around for it.’

‘Yeah, well I guess he ain’t met me yet,’ the traveller said indifferently. ‘Where’s your food at?’

‘I got cereal, you want some of that?’ Calvin gestured animatedly towards the house. The cellar within was stocked well enough, but nowhere near as overflowing with bounty as the barn, the shelves of which groaned under an amount of pickled and canned goods so extensive it could’ve fed a small town.

‘Sure. You show me what you got in there, kid,’ the traveller said, unhooking his gun from the underside of his coat and fitting his finger insider the trigger guard. ‘No tricks. This gun’ll turn a grown buck to hamburger – think on what it’ll do to your face.’

‘I ain’t no liar. We got cereal, I was about to fix Fozzo a bowl till you showed up.’

The traveller shooed him on to the porch with a wave of his gun barrel. Calvin scampered up the steps, grabbing Fozzo on the fly. Calvin had only seen one other person since the mess of ash had fallen: Chrissy Draper, who’d run the farm north of theirs. She’d walked past in the night while it had still been pouring soot, wailing and hollering. Calvin had gone out to ask her if she knew where Pops was, but she’d been naked and crazy. He knew better than to bother naked, crazy people. Calvin held the door open for the man to walk into his home. Hospitality, Pops used to say, was something a man should take pride in. Not that he’d been a particularly studious practitioner of the art himself.

‘Whoo-ee, you got a nice place here, all right. Boy, this is like a goddamn oasis!’ The man did a little jig on the spot, waving his gun about in the air like some fool.

‘If I feed you up, will you get on your way, mister? I surely don’t want my pops to get back here, seeing I’ve been feeding half the county.’

The man pulled down his bandana, releasing a filthy beard that looked like it hadn’t seen soap nor water since it’d started sprouting. Calvin thought he saw something move in there – maybe a bug or a tick, he thought. The man bellowed a hollow, jagged laugh.

‘You don’t know how right you are, boy. Why, I bet we do make up half the population of this whole county, right now. Maybe the state.’ The man wiped his eyes with the bandana and shoved it into his pocket. ‘Sure, kid. I’ll eat and be on my way. I’m certain that there’s a place just like this, with food and warmth and whatnot, just down the road a ways. I’ll shack there.’ The man’s eyes were narrow slits, they told Calvin that, like as not, this filthy stranger had no intention of upping his sticks any time soon. Not now he’d found a place so nice to set them.

‘Okay, I’ll fix you something then,’ Calvin said, leading the man into the kitchen. Tiglet and Fozzo were too small to sit at the kitchen table, the seats on the wooden chairs were too low. Calvin had had to construct makeshift seats by arranging old books into a kind of throne arrangement for them, one each, on top of the table. Pops definitely wouldn’t have approved, but there really was no other way to seat them that Calvin could think of.

‘What’s with all the bears? You got the fag gene in you?’ the man said, then spat something thick and green on to the clean hardwood of the kitchen floor.

‘You ain’t got no manners,’ Calvin muttered.

‘What you say?’ said the man.

‘Nothing,’ replied Calvin, as meekly as his pride would allow.

‘That’s what I thought.’

Calvin opened a cupboard and rummaged around, selecting his least favourite cereal. He put it on the table and brought over a bowl, spoon and some powdered milk he’d mixed up the day before.

‘That’ll do for a start,’ said the man, pouring a mountain of flakes into the bowl, haphazardly sloshing milk over it, getting most on the table.

‘That sign out front; what it say?’ the man asked.

‘You can’t read?’ Calvin replied.

‘Don’t get smart. Punks that get smart get hurt,’ the man said, through a mouthful of bran fibre.

‘It says: “Beware of the Bear”,’ Calvin muttered. The stranger sat at his table burst into gales of laughter. Cereal sprayed from his braying mouth, splattering the table and floor.

‘You are a funny little retard. I can tell your daddy sure did love his sister a whole lot. Do you have to concentrate much when you walk?’ The man tittered like a baby being tickled.

It seemed to Calvin that something might have broken up in the stranger’s head. He remembered Mrs Draper and hushed himself. No use arguing with crazy. You’d be a fool yourself to try, he thought.

Calvin poured a glass of bottled water for himself, and one for the stranger. His jaw clenched, and Calvin had to keep in mind to loosen it. He got the impression the stranger would notice any hostility, and might react in a way Calvin might not be best pleased with.

‘You seem pretty well stocked here,’ the man said, looking over the kitchen, his eyes covetous like a magpie’s. ‘I could get used to good living like this.’

‘This is mine and Pop’s stuff,’ Calvin said, his eyes downcast.

‘Share and share alike, that’s what my pa taught me.’ The stranger grinned. ‘But then, the good book itself says: “Stolen waters are sweet.”’Calvin laid down a bowl in front of Fozzo, and another in front of Tiglet. He shook a small amount of cereal into each of their bowls. No use in overloading them. After this nasty business was done with, Calvin had decided that he, Fozzo and Tiglet would celebrate with enough eggs to choke a horse, laziness be damned.

‘This bear thing you got going on? ’Bout the dumbest thing I ever saw. Gimme that!’ The man reached across the table and snatched up Tiglet. The man lifted the bear to his face to inspect it.

‘Looks like you gonna have to get a cane for this fella,’ the man added, plucking Tiglet’s dangling eye from the thread and tossing it over his shoulder. ‘He’s as blind as a bat.’ He yanked on Tiglet’s remaining eye, pulling it off, tearing the worn fur underneath so that a plume of stuffing came with it.

‘Stop, mister! That’s my third favourite bear!’ Calvin shouted.

The man laughed again, it came in harsh, hacking fits and ended with him spitting at the floor again.

‘Where’s your favourite bear, kid? This him?’ The man slapped Fozzo, who tumbled to the floor. Calvin picked him up and brushed him off, placing him back on top of the seat he’d made.

‘Diablo’s my favourite, and he’d be mad he seen you do that.’

‘Well, Diablo can take a sizeable stroll off of a short pier, son. Now, where your daddy keep his good whiskey? I know you got some around here somewheres.’

‘Out back. You want me to show you?’ Calvin asked.

‘Why not, I could use a jar to help me settle into my new abode.’

Calvin picked up Tiglet’s glassy eye and placed it next to the bear on the table. He could fix that later; what the stranger had coming to him wouldn’t be fixed with no amount of needle and thread. The man got up off the chair and walked over to the door that led out back. Calvin opened it and, as manners dictated, let the man out ahead of him. It was middle of the morning, but as far as the sky was concerned it was night. Had been for quite a while now. There were no stars to see by, no moon to shine down either. Well, maybe they were up there somewhere, but Calvin hadn’t had acquaintance with them since Pops had gone.

‘I can’t see two inches in front of my face, boy. Where’s this whiskey?’ the man hollered.

‘Keep going forward, mister. He keeps a still in back – you’ll see it soon,’ Calvin answered, making sure to stay a few steps behind.

They kept going forward, Calvin standing off to the left: close enough so the man didn’t think he was up to mischief, far enough so that he didn’t have to worry about getting any blood on hisself. That was when they heard the rustling of a chain being pulled. It was a big chain, Calvin knew. Not the kind you’d use to chain up a Pomeranian. No, you could use this chain to tow a truck if needed.

‘The hell was that?’ whispered the man.

The tremor Calvin heard in the stranger’s voice would’ve made Tiglet happy, of that Calvin was certain.

‘You got a light? Turn that thing on.’

‘Sure thing, mister,’ Calvin said.

The dust in the air cut the light from the torch by quite a ways; but not so much that Calvin didn’t see the black bear rear up ahead of them. Pops had fed him up to near five hundred pounds; ’course, he’d lost some of that over the last year. Diablo’d had to make do with dog feed and whatever Calvin could find in the barn that served purpose.

‘That . . .’ The man screamed and fumbled unsuccessfully for his rifle. In truth, he’d probably had more to say but the bear took his jaw at the hinges with one swipe of his paw. Calvin was disappointed to find he’d not kept distance enough to spare his clothing. ‘Dang it!’ he said, moving back a few more feet.

Diablo moved quicker than he’d any right to, being chained out in the yard for such a time. The stranger tried to scramble away on his belly. Which would’ve been quite the feat, all things considered – but the bear was on him. Calvin thought he heard the man’s ribs snap as the bear sat astride the freshly bloodied trespasser. Diablo crooked his neck and dived forward to take a chunk from the stranger’s shoulder. Jeez, thought Calvin, I’d be bawling some now, that were me. ’Course, not having a mouth to holler out of cut any complaining by a considerable stretch. The man flopped and thrashed under the bear, like an adder on a hot griddle. Blood streamed readily from the gaping, red pit that used to be his face.

But still, he lived.

Calvin was pretty sure that continued to be the case when he turned around to walk back to the farmhouse. He always thought it best to leave Diablo in peace to eat his meals. He might not be as congenial as Fozzo or Tiglet but still that grumpy old cuss was certainly his favourite.

Now, Calvin thought, where did I leave those eggs?