Pray You Die Alone: Horror Stories Read online

  Pray You Die Alone

  Horror Stories

  Andersen Prunty

  Pray You Die Alone: Horror Stories

  copyright © 2012 by Andersen Prunty

  Cover photo copyright © 2012 by Michel Omar Berrospé

  Cover design copyright © 2012 by Matthew Revert

  Grindhouse Press logo copyright © 2012 by Brandon Duncan

  Contents

  The Summer of Flies

  Deathtripping in New Orleans

  Durning

  Air Cathedral

  The Nowhere Room

  Black Rosita’s Man

  Rayles

  Also by Andersen Prunty

  Sunruined: Horror Stories

  The Driver’s Guide to Hitting Pedestrians

  Hi I’m a Social Disease: Horror Stories

  Fuckness

  The Sorrow King

  Slag Attack

  My Fake War

  Morning is Dead

  The Beard

  Zerostrata

  Jack and Mr. Grin

  The Overwhelming Urge

  T he Summer of Flies

  In May, Marcus thought of it as the hottest summer he could remember. By August, he thought of it as the summer of flies. But it wasn’t just the flies that were bad that summer. All of the other insects seemed to be out in abundance, as well. Every day, waking up in his fly-infested apartment, he would find another mosquito bite, looking more like a welt. The flies were the gross kind, slow and green, the kind Marcus always imagined liking shit. Another disgusting thing Marcus realized about the flies—where there were flies, there were maggots. He imagined them under the damp kitchen tile in his apartment, squirming together in trashcans throughout the town, preying with militant glee in the graveyard.

  The maggots were there. The flies were there. But the flies, as they swarmed and irritated everyone, were not the only things making the summer memorable. There were also the disappearances.

  The early afternoon temperature was in the mid-90s. It would hover around 98 before the sun went down in the evening. Marcus had finished sweeping up those fat flies littering the floor, the victims of daily pesticide spraying, when he decided to go sit on his second-story apartment balcony and lazily flip through the classifieds.

  Not finding any jobs, he put the paper down, lit up a cigarette, and leaned back.

  Fuck it, he thought. I’ll look tomorrow.

  It was eleven o’clock and he already wanted a beer.

  Marcus contemplated going to the refrigerator to get one when something caught the corner of his left eye. It was a girl, a teenager by the looks of her, wandering aimlessly down the sidewalk. Her bright orange tank top was what caught his eye. The thought of what was underneath held his gaze.

  She also wore a pair of cut-offs and Marcus watched her legs as she sat down on the retaining wall in front of the library.

  Probably waiting on someone, he thought.

  He stood up, arched his back, and went into the house for that beer. In the kitchen, he took his time. He’d drunk ten of the twelve-pack last night, contemplated waiting until later and then convinced himself he would just drink the last two, since he’d have to leave to get more anyway. A big black roach, the size of his thumb, scurried under the refrigerator. Marcus watched it with bland indifference.

  He went over to the turntable, flicked a couple dead flies off the dusty plastic lid, and put on a Ramones record, turning the speakers so he would be able to hear it from out on the porch. He didn’t think the neighbors would mind. He hadn’t seen them for days. Grabbing a fresh pack of cigarettes from the carton on top of the refrigerator, he went back out onto the balcony, ready to do some heavy duty lazing. He became nearly giddy with the prospect. This is what every American wishes he could do, Marcus thought.

  The girl was still there, looking this way and that. Like she was waiting for someone. Marcus drank her in, wondering if she even noticed him up there. He got up to change the record three times. He’d smoked through half the fresh pack of cigarettes, finished up the second beer, and had to dip into the Johnnie Walker Black.

  The girl never moved.

  Christ, he thought, she has to be baking.

  But that wasn’t all he thought. What he really thought about was the complete oddness of the situation. Ever since May, there had been two to three disappearances a week which, in a town like Green Grove, significantly diminished the population. He knew many families, especially those with kids, had fled the Grove. The police force, small to begin with, was depleted. But fear became the new law, exercising its control. As he sat there staring at the girl on the wall, it dawned on him that she was the first person he’d seen outside in nearly a week. He hadn’t seen any children or teenagers in probably a month.

  After another shot of scotch and a joint, smoked with abandon on the small stoop, he decided it would simply be the neighborly thing to do to offer her a ride. Maybe she was in shock or suffering heat exhaustion or something. He pulled on a t-shirt and went downstairs, crossing the street in the midst of the lengthening shadows. Unlike a lot of girls in the Grove, this one got more attractive the closer he came to her. Her body filled out the top and shorts and Marcus put her age at sixteen or seventeen. And, at that point, his interests weren’t solely prurient. She looked lonely. If, as he drew closer to her, he noticed a lazy eye and a harelip, he would have still offered her a ride.

  “Get the fuck away,” she spat at him just as he was ready to open his mouth.

  “Look, I was just going to offer you a ride.”

  “I don’t need one. Fuck off.”

  He thought about arguing but, as he opened his mouth, he realized he was way too hot, high, and drunk to go forward with it. Instead, he retreated slowly and cautiously back to his apartment where he shut himself up in the bedroom and turned the ancient window air conditioner up to its most frigid level. He made himself comfortable under the sheets and drifted off into some winter dreamland.

  When he woke up, he put a Miles Davis record on and went over to the balcony to take in the evening air and smoke. He opened the door and nearly tripped over the girl sitting on the balcony. Surprise ran through her eyes as she adroitly leapt to her feet.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t know what your problem with me is.”

  “It was shady up here. It looked cool, all right.”

  “That’s fine. You could have come in if you knocked. I have an air conditioner.”

  “And I’ll tell you what my problem is…” She wiped a sweaty strand of brown hair off her forehead. “My problem is these disappearances.”

  “I’ve heard about those.”

  “I’m sure you have. Anyway, I really need to find out who’s doing this and I thought to myself: I’ll just go stand someplace and mind my own business and the first person who comes along and offers to give me a ride or any shit like that, that has to be the murderer…”

  “I don’t quite understand your logic. So you think murderers are basically friendly people? And besides, how do you know they were murdered? They could have just run away. Or been kidnapped or something. Or gotten sick and been part of some government cover-up. I’ve thought about these things too, you know.”

  “No, they were murdered.” She looked at a spot somewhere off behind Marcus, phasing out, before snapping into the present and saying, “Hey, give me a cigarette.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Look, burn out, I’m not a cop.”

  “Okay. You want some pot?”

  “I’m not a burn out, either. Sorry.”

  Marcus flipped a ciga
rette through the torn opening and held the pack out to her, taking one for himself. He was afraid she was getting ready to go and realized he kind of wanted her to stay. It was somewhat intoxicating just to be standing close to her, smelling her scent. How long had it been since he’d talked to anyone except the old man at the carry-out?

  “So,” he said. “What makes you think these are murders?”

  “I know where the bodies are.”

  Marcus coughed out a sputtering spume of smoke. “You what?”

  “I’ve seen the bodies. I’ve counted them. The paper said there’s only been ten disappearances, but there’s been a lot more than that.”

  “Like how many?”

  “Uncountable.”

  “You wanna come inside?”

  “Bet you’d like that.”

  “I would. A lot, actually. You wanna come in and sit down?”

  “You wanna go for a ride?” she said in a voice mockingly similar to his.

  “Look,” he said. “That’s weird shit.” But even as he stood there, rambling, thinking she was probably the crazy one, he knew he was going to say yes. He had to say yes because she was standing there in the damp night air, the nearly-full moon illuminated just over top and to the left of her head, casting an exotic purplish glow over her face. And there was this look in her eyes. Something that made her seem either incapable of lying or so hypnotic that a small lie, even a huge one, didn’t really matter.

  “I’ll be waiting down on the sidewalk,” she said.

  He looked at the back of her neck. She had her hair pulled up and he noticed she had a small mole to the left of her spine and just under her hairline. Marcus went inside and grabbed the keys.

  When he got down to the street, she was standing beside his truck.

  “It’s unlocked,” he said.

  “I’ll drive.”

  “Do you have your license?”

  “No. Does it matter?”

  He tried not to look at her. It was when he looked at her that his will power seemed to break. She brushed a fly off her chest. Marcus tossed her the keys.

  “Are you even sixteen?”

  “You seem to have this hangup about age.”

  “I have a hangup about being arrested.”

  “Just relax. I’ve been wandering around all week and haven’t seen a single copper.”

  “Where are these bodies?”

  “Do you know where Womack is?”

  “Womack’s a long road. Which part of Womack?”

  “Out near County Line.”

  “Okay.”

  She seemed way too small for the big truck. He enjoyed looking over at her seat, watching her leg muscles as she worked the accelerator and clutch. She’d obviously driven before. They slid along all the back country roads, in between the deep, high fields of corn, never passing another vehicle. Reaching Womack, they turned left.

  Womack was an amazingly straight road. That was the thing Marcus had always found interesting about this part of Ohio. One minute, you might find yourself on a road with so many twists and turns, ups and downs that it felt like Tennessee. The next minute it would be flat and straight as Kansas.

  “So, you’ve seen these bodies, huh?” Marcus asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “By the way, what’s your name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yeah. Kind of. Unless you want to be remembered as ‘That Girl.’”

  “Maybe I don’t want to be remembered at all.”

  “God, you’re difficult.”

  “My name’s Ellen, okay. Relax.”

  She had the truck up to eighty, the old tires flapping away under the rusted body.

  “So do you really think going back to look is going to solve anything?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What are you hoping to find?”

  “The killer, for one thing.”

  “So, you’re hoping he comes back?”

  “So far, he’s come back again and again. At first I find two dead bodies. Then there are four. Then eight. And now…”

  “Think maybe you should have told the police?”

  “I told them after the first two.”

  “And they’re still there?”

  “Go figure.”

  “I think you’re fucking with me.”

  “I don’t see much point in that.”

  “Maybe you’re just taking me out here so you can kill me. Do you have a gun?”

  He reached over and put his hand on the back of her shorts, knowing there wasn’t a gun there. If there had been one, the shorts were way too small to hide it. She swerved the truck savagely to her right, dredging up the dirt shoulder and rolling him back to his side.

  “Get the fuck off me!” she shouted. “How do I know that you didn’t come along just so you could get me out here and rape me.”

  “More and more, it’s starting to cross my mind.”

  “That’s not even funny.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Don’t you even care that people are dying?”

  “Of course I care, but you have to understand how abstract this all sounds to me. You just seem crazy.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I mean, come on, you sit outside all day when it’s like a hundred fucking degrees. I try to give you a ride and you tell me to get the hell away. Then I find you curled up on my porch and begging for a ride. After accusing me, in so many words, of being a murderer.”

  “I told you… it looked shady up there. And I don’t beg for anything.”

  “Let’s just go see the bodies. My name’s Marcus, by the way.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t care much for the name Marcus, is that okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  Ellen slowed the truck way down and came to a stop by the side of the road. She creaked the door open and hopped out. Marcus got out his side and walked around the front of the truck.

  “I don’t see any bodies,” he said.

  “The bodies are way back there.” She pointed to a narrow dirt path, perhaps big enough for a tractor. If he had driven down the road with the corn this high, he wouldn’t have even noticed it. “You have to walk back this little path quite a ways. Just before the corn becomes the woods, there’s like this clearing… that’s where they are.”

  “Couldn’t we have done this during the day? Why does he just leave them out in the open?”

  “It’s not exactly out in the open back there, is it? Besides, most of those serial killer types want to get caught.”

  “You bring a flashlight?”

  “Did you find a flashlight when you felt me up back there? It’s a full moon. What more do you want? Look, it’s bright enough to see your shadow.”

  It was amazingly bright. Ellen headed for the path and Marcus went behind her, watching the moon light up her body and trying to figure out how many months it had been since his last sexual encounter. He realized that, by focusing on the prospect of sex, he relieved a little bit of the uneasy tension twisting his neck muscles up in knots.

  “Why didn’t we just drive back here?” he asked her.

  “I didn’t want to surprise anyone.”

  “How long is it?”

  “Probably almost a mile.”

  “How did you find this place, anyway?”

  She didn’t answer immediately. He almost asked her again, thinking maybe the crispy rustle of the corn and the crickets had drowned him out, but then she said: “Me and my boyfriend used to come back here.”

  “Oh, all that personality and she puts out too.”

  “It was more than that. We were gonna get married when we turned eighteen. This place was kind of like what we thought marriage would be like. You know, kind of a place away from the parents.”

  “A secret place.”

  “Yeah. Or so we thought.”

  “What happened to your boyfriend?”

  “He was the first to go. The first to d
isappear.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We should be quiet now.”

  They continued down the moonlit path, in silence, for a few minutes. The clearing was now in eyesight. It was like driving toward the ocean and finally coming upon that strip of blue beneath the horizon.

  “Follow me,” Ellen said, cutting to her left and into the corn. At the perimeter, she turned and barked, “Quickly.”

  Marcus was suddenly and overwhelmingly filled with terror. Maybe it was just the fog of his various addictions, but he hadn’t really taken any of this seriously until now. All the childish fears, those moments when certain feelings washed over him and lit that burning pit of dread in his stomach, all came scouring over him, rooting him to that narrow dirt path. He looked over to where Ellen entered the corn and the absence of her by his side forced him to move.

  The corn was sharp and itchy on his arms. A hand reached out and took his.

  “Come on,” Ellen pulled him after her.

  Blindly, they made their way through the corn, still headed toward the clearing but comforted with a blanket of seclusion.

  “Why don’t we just run for the truck?” Marcus thought about his sunny, music-filled apartment and realized he desperately wanted to be back in it.

  Ellen turned around, getting closer to him than she had been all evening. Her eyes were wild, dancing around in her head, an indiscernible color. “I’m not turning around now. I have a lot more in this than you. If you’re scared then just stand here. That’ll be safer than running back to your truck. But I’m going some place where I can see that bastard throw out another victim. I’m gonna get close enough to see his face.”

  Marcus lowered his head. He didn’t have a macho streak in his body but she had somehow made him feel low. He began to understand the significance this had for Ellen.

  “I’ll come,” he mumbled.

  “Then let’s go,” she said.

  There was enough of a breeze so their movements weren’t too noticeably loud. Nevertheless, the closer they felt they were getting, the more they slowed down and tried to squeeze between the stalks. Once they could see the clearing, they stayed back in the corn, using it like a security blanket.