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“You’ll probably die. Some other people died,” Charlie remembered her saying. He rubbed his eyes. Blinked. The little girl’s face swam and changed.
And there she was. A different little girl, from a long long time ago.
Charlie retched. He’d thought his hatred gone, once. But now, looking there at this other little girl, the one who was almost his young twin, he felt it surge back a hundred-fold. Blood boiled in his veins. He wanted to tear apart his skin, press his eyes in until they bled. But still he couldn’t look away from her: the ghost of his little sister, who he’d hated from the day they brought her home.
And with everything that had happened that night, the hatred took over and he forgot that the girl was indeed a ghost. A figment. That she couldn’t be real because he’d found a way to make the anger disappear altogether, a long long time ago.
He’d been nine years old then.
And no one said or could do anything about it. Not really.
She was just, gone. So was his anger.
And yet she was there. There in front of him. Taunting him. Like those other women had always taunted him. The ones who looked just like her.
He’d hurt them, too, but it wasn’t ever the same. He’d never felt anger like that again. Not enough to push so far.
But here she was. There she was.
An animal part of him took over. An excited part, too. As if somewhere inside he’d been chasing that first time. When he’d gone that far.
If she was here, he could do it again. But this time he would do it better. He would do it right.
The little ghost-girl let out a shriek and ran back into the house as Charlie bent his body toward her and began to run, grunting and frothing at the mouth like a bull, his arms outstretched, his dirty finger nails ready to bite into her pale skin, an emptiness rattling in his belly like a bad craving. He’d forgotten all about his dream, or the room, or the bang. Had forgotten all about the little girl laying in the marsh. All he could see was red, and though the itching choking dry-hot feeling still swept through him as he approached the house, nothing could have stopped him from going in.
He rushed across the threshold, his boots thumping through the grubby dark kitchen, shaking the entire house from top to bottom. Blood rushed in his ears. His heart beat so fast he could feel it fluttering in his neck. His breathing came hard, wheezy, but still he pushed on through to where he’d seen the girl go down the hallway and into the main living room. He would get her there. She had nowhere else to go.*
The thought gave him momentum, and half-way there he let out an in-human screech, one that had been pent up for 27 years. It was a yell that would have made the coyotes howl, had they truly been out there in the first place. It was triumph. A hunter who has found his prey.
Because he was sure she would be cowering in the corner, or under his pull-out bed. He knew her, even after all this time. Knew all the places she’d liked to hide.
But when he finally got into the room, she was nowhere to be seen. All was quiet. None of the dust had moved. The front door hadn’t been opened.
But one thing had changed. He noticed quickly as he started to tip-toe across the room that the door to the pantry was open, and the chair had been pushed aside quickly to allow it.
Charlie did not stop to think about this. Instead, he crept towards the open door, and closed it tight, shutting the little girl in. He swore he heard her whimper from behind the wood. But just in case, he bent and looked under the bed, keeping the doorknob in his hand; looked in each of the corners of the room. Nothing.
She’s in there, he thought, and smiled. Showed all his crooked rotting teeth. Showed the hard lines of his face, etched in the half-morning light of the still-dark living room. Cast like a statue there, for a moment, in horrible marble form. Then he pulled the door open just enough for his body to fit, slipped inside, and closed the door quickly behind him. The thrill was almost unbearable. I have her.
Then, with his back to the door, he heard it.
A little tap and a click.
Like a door-latch being flipped.
Or a lock clicking closed.
The hair on the back of Charlie’s neck stood tall. His eyes grew wide in the full dark of that little room, searching into the black for the sign of cloth or skin, anything that would tell him that what he’d just heard wasn’t what he’d just heard. His breaths came in difficult waves, and he struggled to catch it as panic shook him. He turned and grabbed for the doorknob, which turned easily enough, but when he pushed, the door barely budged. The latch and lock held fast from the outside.
Charlie could no longer swallow. Drool hung from his chin, bouncing along with the chattering of his teeth. He was cold. Freezing, actually. He rattled the door against the latch, his body taking over, his breathing in hysterics. “What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck,” he mumbled again and again under his breath, his body soon slamming against the door. He thought about the scratch marks then and a whine crawled out of him; a sound he’d never heard himself make.
Then he froze. For he heard another sound, too. A sound he’d heard before, when he’d first got there.
Laughing.
A little girl** laughing.
Then another sound still. The sound of a chair being dragged across the floor. The sound of it being pushed up under the doorknob. And the sound of small footsteps dying away, the even smaller laughter dying with them.
Everything was silent then except for the sounds he made himself. And still, Charlie could not move. He had nothing left in him but fear. He knew the little girl was no longer in the house with him, yes, but the darkness there did not feel empty. For some reason, he did not want to turn around.
His body came back to him then and he began to claw and scrape and pound against the door, screaming with all his might, only to hear it come out in barely a rasp.
No one will find you, he thought.
But the thought wasn’t his. It was another man’s voice. Deeper. Darker. Slow and terrible and patronizing.
Charlie knew that voice. He’d heard it before in a dream. In that dream, the one about the room. He remembered what the dark man had told him then; remembered what he had so desperately tried to forget: I am cursed to this place, the man had told him. I am the curse on this place.
“Yes, that’s right.”
Charlie heard the voice out loud now. Heard the rumble grating in the man’s throat. And instead of fear, suddenly, Charlie felt calm. Numb. As if his soul had left his body and was watching him from somewhere up above.
From up there, he saw the morning’s full light creep through the thin crack under the door. Saw a crumpled, sick man shaking terribly with his hand clutching the doorknob. Behind him, darkness. Darkness and the dull sheen of thin light on black boots.
Charlie did not have to turn to see the tall, dark man standing behind him. Could see him as clearly as if he’d looked at him in broad daylight. The black, wide-brimmed hat. The gaunt, hanging face, like a sick horse. The thin, wasted body beneath a tattered black jacket, hanging almost all the way to the floor.
In his dream, he’d been able to turn around and look at him.
In his dream, he’d been able to wake up.
“You’re just like me,” the man growled.
Charlie did not answer. Just rested his head against the scratched wooden door.
“You hate them, too,” he continued, as if every word pained him to say: “They’re like whispers. Little whispers. Crawling inside your head and making a mess of your brains.”
Both Charlie and the man were quiet for a while. Who knows how much of the day passed before they spoke again, while Charlie froze from the cold. But neither of them moved otherwise. Just stood, one with his back to the other in that dark dark room.
“How’d you like to do it?” the hat man asked finally. But there was no voice left for Charlie to answer with. He only listened, tears streaking silent little trenches through the dirt on his face.
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” the man offered, wheezing, but still nothing. Finally, the man spoke at terrible length, each word a knife in Charlie’s back.
“There’s an age when fruits spoil. Same’s with children.” The Hat Man paused then, licking his parched, thin lips. “Can’t stand to see ‘em spoil. Girls and boys alike. The devil takes and puts something dark in ’em. You can see it in their eyes. Not that everyone sees it. Not the way yous and I sees it. They just let things keep going on like they are. All these little demons whispering to you in your sleep, or while you’re awake. Getting inside you. Digging inside, more like.” Charlie’s head tapped against the door. Then again. Like a tic. He mumbled nothingness under his breath, but the man did not care to listen.
“Thing is, you can stop it. I know you found out how like I found out how. So I started stopping it. And I saw them. The thank you in their eyes. From under the water where I put them down with rocks. Their little eyes. Thanking me. For saving them. From the devils. From the demons. That’s what you’re doing. That’s what we’re doing.”
The room was silent again for a moment, and then quietly the man whispered:
“But there’s a price to pay. Yes. A price to pay. Always a price to pay…”
Charlie felt a sharp pain in his chest and the uncomfortable return to his body, like slamming his face into the cement. But it woke him up to himself, and he began to rattle the doorknob again, crying under his breath, “Let me out let me out let me out let me out.”
“There’s no getting out,” the hat man mused. “They locked me in here. All of them demons. Made them mad. But that’s the price. For seeing the truth. For battling evil.” He spit on the floor, rolled his shoulders back, and then said simply:
“I had to wait a long time for my body to die. Was in here what felt like months.” Charlie’s skin crawled; he heard the man take one step closer.
“You ain’t gotta go like that.”
Charlie gasped for air. He felt the shelves, the walls, the door closing in on him. Felt him take another step closer. Saw the scratch marks in the door and knew they were made by the hands of the Hat Man who stood behind him.
“I’ll make it easier on you.” Was all he said.
And then everything after that was just as Charlie had seen it in his dream.
The man came closer, and rested his cold, wraith-like fingers on Charlie’s shoulder. Ice shot through him at the man’s touch, and he crumpled to the floor, his head on the ground, his eyes just able to see out through the crack beneath the door.
He thought about the woman at the grocery store. About the dark-eyed man who had pointed him out to the end of the road. Then he thought about his sister, helpless then as he was helpless; a rag-doll on the floor while the hat man knelt, smiled down on him, and wrapped his cold, lifeless hands around Charlie’s throat.
This story is now complete & will be released in print form in 2027.
Read the whole story for free by exploring each chapter of The End of the Road: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.
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*Early on in the story writing process, I mention that there is a basement in the house. As the story grew, the basement never came into play. When this story gets published in print, this note will be revised in the text.
**Early on in the story writing process, I mention that Charlie hears a laugh from a woman in the beginning. Later on in the story, this laugh makes more sense coming from a young girl. This will also be revised in the print copy. Stay tuned!
Jessica Barratt 