The Scavengers - new short story...

Subject: The Scavengers - new short story... Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:01 pm

My dreams are a strange place (much like me) and I just wrote a short story based on a dream I had. For those of you who've never read my works before, here is an opportunity to sample the range and depth of my writing style.

I have a penchant for the Noir more so than for horror because after a while Horror tends to meld together.

This is one of those strange Noir type stories that I love so much.

THE SCAVENGERS

There are some things in this world that simply can’t be explained and this is one of them.
I have always loved scavenger hunts. I’m a big kid at heart I guess and looking for things, being led to one location after another and all the adventures in-between is simply a lot of fun for me.
But this newest adventure I went on…well, let’s just say it is one I will never forget anytime soon and hope to never partake in again!

When I got the invitation to go scavenger hunting I was all for it. I put on my thinking cap and was ready to employ all my detective skills to find what I needed to win.
I arrived before starting time and waited, watching all the people who’d decided to come out. Oh, I can beat these dolts, easy I thought. Little did I know that winning the scavenger hunt wasn’t really the biggest challenge…getting out alive afterward would be.
The hosts spoke to all of us, thanking us for coming out and then I was placed with a group of women whom I knew had no business being with me. I’d have rather been with a bunch of fifth graders. Why they’d decided to go on a scavenger hunt, I had no idea. They had no clue how to hunt for anything, decipher clues and all they did was whine, complain (usually I see the two as the same thing, but this time, trust me, there was a difference!) and act like victims because I left them behind in the hunt. I wasn’t going to wait for them! They were slowing me down.
So into old abandoned buildings I trekked, figuring out clues, traveling up stairs in rickety old houses and avoiding explosions. I have no idea whose property we were on or what it had been at one time – looked like an old homestead or an abandoned camp of some sort – but yes, most of the houses should have been condemned and explosions were set off at intervals to keep us on our toes. The explosions were minor and well-placed meaning that unless everyone was out of a house or building, the explosion didn’t go off. If you hadn’t found the clue there yet and the house exploded, you were out of luck.
Of course I found what I needed in the white, two story house, paint peeling and leaning to one side…a picture of a baby hanging on the wall at the top of a rickety staircase. Simple you think? Nope…try water cannons sprayed at you, stairs that went out from under you which left me (more than once) sliding backward and having to try to climb them again and get to the picture without doing whatever I did to set off the stairs again.
The women of my group were too old to be of any help really and there was no way they’d have survived the stairs in the house so they’d bowed out when we got to that area and I didn’t see them again until I came walking out of the house with the baby picture. Of course they were pleased as could be. Well, I guess they would be! I did all the work and yet they got to share in the glory!
Then there was the old telegraph shack.
The women I was with gave up at that old shack. Not that they’d been any help anyway – at all – throughout the day. Yes, I questioned again why they even bothered to come. They came into the old shack with me but that was as far as it went. They seemed more interested in the old bottles of whiskey in the long-unused boxes that lined the walls and then they left.
As for deciphering the clues scratched out in gunpowder and the threat of a keg exploding, breaking bottles and paper that disintegrated in my hands, this one almost did me in too, but I was determined not to be defeated.
I came out, victorious (finally) after spending more than two hours in the old wooden structure, to see the old bats sitting at the picnic tables, talking about me and eating.
I didn’t even bother to say anything to them and went off in search of the next clue…and it was on this path that I found myself in a fight for my life.
It was getting dark and the hunt was still going on, but I’d gotten way off the grid somehow.
I was walking along and saw an ambulance at a house at the end of a large, grassy piece of property. An ambulance…out here? Weird.
I kept walking and it was then that the sense of foreboding overtook me. I looked up at a fence and saw men working. I began to ask directions and it was then that I saw what they were. Dressed in flannel and blue jeans, they looked like loggers but were far from that – or anything anyone else had ever seen.
With long, greasy, black hair, one man had pus coming out of the large hole in his face that served as a mouth, another had a tooth that protruded, grotesquely large from his mouth and I immediately knew I was in danger.
They spotted me and although they never approached me, I knew it would be a matter of time before I’d end up like the hapless ambulance drivers that had been called to, I’m certain, a false call.
I tried to look nonchalant. Maybe if I ignored them, they’d ignore me? While good thinking, my luck has never been so kind and I knew that I was in serious danger, which manifested itself as I got closer and saw what the men were using to mend the fence.
Buckets, like the kind tile-setters use for grouting, held human heads in a toxic and nauseating sludge. The men were using long hair from the victims to twine into the fence to repair and reinforce it.
Just when I thought about running, a man came by me on a horse…well-dressed and nothing like the things that were repairing the fence; he did seem to be one of them though. Black, curly, shoulder length hair, his clothing was unkempt and though not handsome, had he taken a bit of pride in his appearance, he could have looked all right.
“You need to leave,” came a voice from behind me. “I’ll help you get out of here.”
I turned around and saw another man on a horse but he was different, so much different from the men I’d been looking at and hoping to avoid.
Long, straight black hair cascaded past his shoulders and his black eyes regarded me with both kindness and sadness. Handsome, he spurred his horse after the other man. I stood, motionless and watched the men pull the sludge-laden hair from the buckets and continue to mend the fence – all the while their eyes on me.
I just knew I was dead. You know the feeling…and if you don’t, I hope you never have to.
Suddenly I looked up and the men were riding back toward me. The man with the curly hair dismounted and the man with the long hair did so right after him, grabbing the man by his arm and yanking him around.
The conversation was a hushed, but almost pleadingly angry one.
“What is wrong with you? Why? You are my brother and I love you, but this must stop.”
The man with the curly hair, whom I could now see was much shorter than his brother, refused to look the obviously elder man in the eyes, attempting to push his way away from him.
“I’ll help you, but you have to help yourself as well.”
The handsome man held the smaller man tightly and kissed his curly head and then released him.
The curly haired man got back on his horse and took off in the direction of the men repairing the fence. He stopped and said something to them and they all looked at me.
This is it…I’m dead. Should I run? Yeah, right, like I can get away.
The handsome man walked back toward me and I both feared and hoped in him to save me like he’d offered to, rather than turn me over to this sicko brother and his fiends.
“I’ll show you the way out, but you need to leave now and never speak of this place to anyone. Please.”
It was the last word that got me. It wasn’t an accusation or a threat, but a solemn and earnest request.
The man put his arm around me and walked me past the buckets filled with rotting human-head-sludge and out the gates. He pointed the way back to the camp, assuring me that no one would bother me.
I arrived back at the camp just as the sun set. Jumping into my car, (which incidentally was the only one left in the area) I started up the engine and began to back out of my parking space when I saw it…it was the man who’d helped me. He was cleaning up the staging area where the scavenger hunt had taken place.
He never looked at me and I ignored him feeling it was better that way and drove home.

Some things in this world simply can’t and maybe shouldn’t be explained and a brother’s love is just that… a brother’s love.
People do what they can to protect their own, those in their fold that are – to the outside world – freaks and this man was no different.
He was simply trying to live two lives…one of normalcy and one of protection.
As for me…I think I’ll hold off on scavenger hunts for a while. Next time, I don’t think I’ll be so lucky.