Teeth for the Lonely: A Halloween Tale

One day at the edge of town a crack appeared in the Earth. Sometime later a man crawled out, dusted himself off, and walked away. I'd tell you what he looked like, but I never saw him.

The first person the man met was Julia Mystery. That wasn't really her name, but she was short, ugly and had a voice like a barking crow. So she dressed in dark colors, wore her hair long, and called herself Julia Mystery. She held herself together very tightly and despite the sneers and jeers of her contemporizes at the local high school she never wept, she never expressed any emotion but contempt, and her she never responded with more than a raised eyebrow when she saw herself in mocking caricature on blackboards or when she swept aside the tacks she found in her chairs.

It was in the graveyard that she cried. She'd go there at night once her family had gone to bed and on the grave of Ernestine Dunkel, who had died in 1852, and cry herself to sleep every night.

It was there that the man from the crack in the earth found her and took her to paradise.

Once she was finished screaming.

The second person the stranger met was Ernest Conway, a middle aged man who had spent his life doing nothing in particular and was very upset about it. No wife, girlfriend or sometime lover to wile away the hours with, he spent his evenings either perusing the internet looking for something to be interested in or endlessly flipping channels looking for something interesting to look at.

He was very surprised when the back door burst open and the strange man came to see him and take him to paradise.

His screams lasted much longer than Julias, but then he was older.

Henry, who had no last name he knew of, was the towns only full time drunk. He begged spare change, drank too much, and lived his life in the shed of a kindly couple on the edge of town. He had long lost whatever dreams and ambitions he might once have had and did his best to drown every memory in alcohol, regardless of whether it was good or bad. At this point in his life, he couldn't tell the difference anyway.

The kindly couple was wakened by his screams, and the husband raced outside, thinking either that Henry was having a fit or was being attacked. He found nothing but blood on the walls and a large hole in the ground, a hole from which the most noxious of fumes, like a cross between fetid swamp gas and a rotting corpse, emanated. He had to rush outside to be violently sick, and the investigating police were forced to wear gas masks until the smell dissipated.

Nobody went into the hole, but then it clearly only went down a few feet before it ended in a pile of disturbed earth, coated lightly with a glistening slime.

Mary Ellen Boxter was a bright happy child who was much beloved by her schoolmates and much admired by her teachers. Her only eccentricity was the way she always wore long sleeved shirts and long pants regardless of the weather. This was to cover up the bruises her father left on her when he visited her bedroom every other night or so. Mary Ellen's mother had long since indoctrinated her that such visitations were her own fault for being such a bad little girl and that if anybody else ever found out she would hauled off to prison. A prison where big, ugly men would do the same things to her that her father did, but take pictures of it and put them in the paper for everyone to see. So Mary Ellen was very happy because that was the way mother said she should be.

Her parents were awakened by the smashing of glass. When they went to look they found blood all over her room and the window burst in. But Mary Ellen had never screamed.

Mary Ellen had become very good at not screaming.

It was when Officer Haliburton disappeared under very unusual circumstances that people began to get really concerned. Officer Haliburton left nothing behind him except a pool of blood, a truly foul stench, his unfired pistol, and a half finished suicide note.

The papers screamed bloody murder, the police roamed the streets with high powered flashlights, and a young boy was killed while playing with the gun his father had purchased for the protection of his family.

But despite the efforts of reporters, police and concerned parents, the abduction/murders kept occurring. In the course of a month thirty four people were taken, and there was no common thread to connect them, at least not any that could be seen.

The town became a place of locked doors and barred windows. Its secrets became things hidden by lock and gun rather than the folded curtain or the unwhispered rumors of the time before the arrival. Committees were formed, investigations were made, and had questions were asked. But no one could guess at the motive of the unknown.

No one was ever able to ask the right questions, because they didn't want the right answers.

But I knew.

I knew exactly what was happening.

But no one listens to me because I'm old, crazy, and sit drooling during all my waking hours.

They think I'm senile.

But I just think a bit more than the average person.

I hear what people don't think I hear and I see what people don't think I see, because the living dead aren't supposed to hear or see anything. We're supposed to slump in our chairs, vegetate, and wait for the sweet mercy of death while wishing for the presence of children we never cared that much about when we were capable of going to the bathroom by ourselves.

But I'm not like that.

At least not about the vegetation part.

I heard the muffled screams when Mrs. Wallace vanished last week. Old Mrs. Wallace, who because she still had a bit of her beauty contest figure despite the fact she seventy three and almost lost to Alzheimers, received regular nightly visits by the janitor.

I heard the noise she made when the screams stopped. I heard the sound she made just before the grinding of wood and stone that was the creation of the slime filled hole in her floor that the nurses would find the next morning. I know what her last thought was before she was dragged down into whatever dark place the man from the crack took her.

I heard her gentle laugh and her last whispered words.

"Thank you."

I can hear them all you know. In the dark hours of the night I can hear their whispered words in the earth outside my window, in the drains of my sink, and in the creaks of the floorboards. I can hear them all down there in the dark beneath the ground, laughing gentle laugher as they crawl and burrow, eyes wide with blind happiness in their dark new world.

There are so many of them now.

Down there.

In the dark.

Tonight the janitor, desperate after the loss of Mrs. Wallace, visited me. I am livelier though, and he struck me several times to quiet me. When he left, he toppled me out of my bed, so that in the morning the nurses would think my bruises the result of my fall.

Here, lying on the cold hard floor, the voices from below are much clearer. I can hear them their laughter clearly. Never any words, just their cold laughter. They must be very happy.

I..I wish I could be happy again.

There is a step nearby.

A nurse?

No, a man. A man covered in raw earth and muck, and naked beneath the earth. He smiles at me and in his hand are knives. Or are the knives his hands? I can't see very well. No light but the streetlight outside.

He smiles and kneels beside me.

I see dark eyes, and I am surprised to see they are human. Strange, mad, and dark, but human.

He brushes back my hair and the knife in his hand or the hand in his knife cuts me to the bone. Blood fills my eyes and the pain is horrible. Worse than the stroke that stole my legs and voice all those years ago.

He tells me he loves me in the voice of an angel and then he shows me what pain really is, as he cuts, cuts, cuts all the pain away.

After that all is darkness and mud and dragging and bones and cries in the dark and teeth shining and blood dripping and all sorts of other things.

And now I am happy.

We crawl and We burrow and We laugh and We smile and We listen, listen, listen for the unhappy ones. The poor lost ones who have no love.

For We are love.

And now here I am. So close to you I could reach right up through the boards of the floor and tickle your feet.

I am listening to you, very closely.

Are you loved?