THE SKINLESS KIDS

Short Horror FIction by Tom Cash

My brother's been down there an awfully long time, and I'm starting to get nervous.

I'm standing in the doorway to the basement, staring into the darkness.  Thunder peels in the distance, causing me to jump.  The storm knocked the power out a few hours ago.  Bradley, his mood getting worse with every beer he cracked open, stumbled to the garage and returned with a heavy duty MagLite, its shiny blue metal casing glinting in the candle light.

“Game'sh in twenny minutesh,” he slurred, “an’ I'll be damned if I'm gonna mish it.”

Bradley and I are a lot alike in a lot of ways, but one of the things I pride myself in us my speaking voice.  I speak loud and clear, free of the heavy backwoods Pennsylvania mush mouth that my dad, my brother, and most of my relatives have.  Neighbors too.

I'm not saying they're dumb people, but that way of talking always sounds dumb to me.  Lazy.  Like you don't live in a world of TV and movies and podcasts, like you don't hear how normal people sound when they talk.  It's almost like they take pride in sounding that way.  Or maybe they just don't hear it.  I don't know 

“Bradley” I call again.  Nothing.  No noise at all.  I heard him going down the stairs, and then nothing at all for the longest time.  I'm really stoned, so my sense of time is fucked, but I know it's been at least an hour.

What if he's hurt down there?  What if he's dead?  I'm starting to panic again, my chest rising and falling rapidly.  I know I need to go down there, but the candle I'm holding isn't a very powerful light source.  I don't like it already, and that inky black void beyond its glow makes the shadows dance menacingly.

Bradley and I have lived together for about three and a half years, in this neat little farmhouse outside of town.  With his factory wages and my web design, we make damn good money.  Neither of us have kids, and while Bradley’s girlfriend Marissa can be a little expensive in her tastes, she's not a goal digger.  I'm between girlfriends, myself, but that girl with the short black hair, the glasses, the rose tattoo?  So cute!  And the way she smiles at me makes me want to order more coffee.

I know I should ask her out, but I don't like entrapping people at work, when they can't even get away if they want to?  What if I make her uncomfortable?  The place she works makes the best cup of coffee in town, and it's within walking distance of my work.  I hate to have to go to that chain store down on Market.  Crap coffee, overpriced biscotti, and too many people.  Megan's workplace was small, quiet, and tidy.  The baked goods were made daily from fresh ingredients.  Every day was something different.  I was putting on a little weight, if I'm being honest.

But what else am I supposed to do?  Stalk her, wait til she gets off work? That's even more creepy.  So would looking her up on Facebook.

Sometimes I'm just such a fucking pussy!  She likes me, I know she likes me, and I don't think she's seeing anyone because I did some asking around: see?  Like a high school kid, I can't even ask her myself.

Just like I can't will myself to go down into the basement.

I'm not afraid of the dark.  I'm afraid of something I can't name.  That basement has always geeked me out, ever since we moved in.  I'll be down there doing laundry and I'll be watching the shadows the whole time.  I'll rush up the stairs, laundry basket in tiw, seconds away from some scaly, clawed hand reaching up to unzip my guts like a suitcase.

And now it's black and silent and Bradley is still down there.  Alone.

I think briefly about calling the cops.  No way.  The cops already don't like us around here; we raised a lot of hell in our teen years.  I just know they'd send Officer Grant.  Terry Grant used to torture me all throughout school.  He pushed me down the steps outside of the library once, and I needed four stitches on my leg.  I have a scar.

Besides, there's like an ounce of weed here.  Even if I hid it, they'd smell it.  They'd know I was high.

No way.

But if I didn't go down there, who would?

I'm going through a list of who to call.  Marissa?  No, she doesn't like me.  She probably wouldn't answer.  Dad?  He's probably sleeping.  He gets up at three am to start getting ready for work.  It's ten now, so he's definitely asleep.

A light just came on down at the bottom of the stairs.  I'm breathing a little easier now.  Bradley has been drinking, even though it interferes with his medication.  Sometimes he'll pass out after only a couple beers, and tonight he had a lot.  He probably just shut down while he was down there.  Now he was obviously waking up 

“Come on up, B, the game’s almost over.  We can still catch it on my phone.  Or maybe we can go to… Shakey's…”

I've made it to the doorway again, and I see now that the the light is coming from Bradley's MagLite, lying by itself on the ground at the foot of the steps.  I listen hard, but there's still nothing.

I gotta go down there.

Bradley would go down there for me.  Even if he was scared.  The thing about my brother that's way different than me is when he gets scared, he gets brave.  I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it's true.  See, nobody else can tell he's scared, but he's my little brother, I used to scare him with my monster drawings all the time when we were kids   I know that look on his face.  I know how he's face down every bully, do every dare, try any drug, no matter how scary it might be.

I'm not like that.  I don't shrink at my own shadow, don't get me wrong.  I don't take risks.  I go to my job, I come home, I play some Borderlands or Warframe (old, I know, but still my favorite), I eat dinner, I go to bed.  I'm not going out to clubs or shows,band I hate bars.  I don't even drink, having narrowed it down to weed and occasionally some mushrooms.  Coke, too, if I'm in the right mood and it's around, but the number of times those things coincide are exceedingly rare.

Bradley, though, he doesn't like weed.  Makes him paranoid.  We used to smoke together a lot in college, but around the time he turned thirty, he said it hit different.  I get it, I used to love to drink.  Now it gives me a headache. People's tastes change, sometimes, but sometimes it's your body slowly giving up and saying, “I'm too old for your childish bullshit.”

I want to go down there and grab the flashlight.  It would be so easy.  Then I could go down the street to Dave's house.  He'll be home, he's usually home on Monday nights.  Maybe he can help me with looking for Bradley.  I'm embarrassed, but Dave is a good guy, and he won't judge me.

I'm frozen in place, though.  I can't will myself to move, either to go get the flashlight, or forget about it and go get Dave.  I keep thinking there's something down there.

Something like the things from my dream.

I'd forgotten about that dream until just now.

It was three days ago, I remember because it was the hottest day of the year and yet I woke up with a chill.  I don't remember all the details, but I was in my childhood home, and I was playing with Sadie.  Sadie was our cat, a black long-haired domestic with bright yellow eyes and the sweetest disposition.  I miss that cat.  Anyway, she had run through the cat flap to the basement, and I followed her, but when I went through the door I was in the basement of my current house.

Then I was in total darkness. I could see the light from the windows set in the upper walls of the basement, but the light didn't seem to illuminate the room at all.  It felt distant, like the safety of the outside world was a million miles away.

As I watched, there appeared on the walls the shapes of humanoid figures, chalk outlines with faces, moving subtly as they drifted lazily around the walls, an unnerving screensaver being displayed from some unseen projector.

I became aware of a musical tone coming from somewhere behind me.  Four discordant notes, repeating every few seconds.  Something was dreadful about them, and I began edging towards the stairs, feeling around in the darkness for the bannister.  Animal panic was welling up in my chest, and the song was getting louder.

I turned and saw something in the darkness, impossibly clear and detailed in spite of the darkness.  Its head was massive, misshapen, blind white eyes the size of dinner plates drifting off in separate directions.  Lulling on a thin neck that looked like it couldn't support the weight of a normal sized skull, the creature was otherwise gaunt and sickly looking, with shiny, ropy muscles exposed to the open air.

In dreams, you can have memories that never happened.  And I remembered this thing.  It was scary, but I couldn't look away, because I recognized it from childhood.

It was one of the Skinless Kids 

It reached out for me, and I snapped awake, my sweat soaked skin frigid in the air conditioning.

And now I'm sure that goddamn thing is down there.

But I'm going down anyway.

For Bradley.  Because he'd do it for me.  Because if something happened to him and I did nothing, I would hate myself forever.

Because I'm tired of being afraid.

And tomorrow?  I'm asking Megan out on a date.