What Do Monsters Fear Read online

  Phobos dropped Andrew’s broken leg to the snow, then lifted the other one. A second snap cracked out.

  The large man let out an agonizing wail, his voice muffled and strained before Phobos stood, stumbling about, laughing. He wiped his hands together, the snow coating his bare back and shoulders. Then he raised his head to the three of his, his glasses crooked.

  “Ta-da!”

  He raised his arms like a child finishing a particularly good magic trick. Behind him, Andrew sobbed into the snow.

  “He’s fucking insane,” Donald said. “I mean . . . What the fuck?”

  Phobos wagged Walter’s lifeless finger at them. “Oh now, now. Don’t spoil this, my lovelies. Watch my next trick very carefully . . .”

  He fell to his knees and slogged towards Andrew’s twitching body. Then he buried his face into the back of the large man’s neck. Andrew let out an ear splitting howl.

  Donald jumped from foot to foot, his eyes wide. “He’s fucking eating him alive!”

  “Inside the house,” Peter ordered. “Now!”

  Donald led the way. Once in, Peter slammed the door shut and found a chain bolt. He slid it across with shaking fingers.

  “The grandfather clock,” Peter said. “We need to get this door secured. We can’t let that thing inside.”

  “You two get that,” Henry said, his voice unstable. “I’ll see what I can find to board up the windows and back door.”

  Peter and Donald made for the large oak clock without a word between them, Henry rushing for the kitchen.

  Donald looked to him. “Can you believe it? A moving fog, my head could take, all right? But a dead dude getting up and eating somebody alive? What the hell is this? A fuckin’ zombie movie?”

  Peter didn’t respond. His stomach sloshed in waves of nausea. Outside, if he strained, he could hear Andrew weeping. Faint, but there.

  “Come on,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “On the count of three. One, two . . .”

  They grasped the base of the clock, their arms straining. With some effort, they managed to skid it across the polished floor to the front door, leaving two long trailing scrapes in the hardwood.

  “Here’s good,” Peter said, and dropped the clock. It clanged down with a hollow ringing.

  Walter’s voice came from beyond the bolted door. “Why, is that the dinner bell I hear?” his voice repeated around the empty house. “I’m mighty hungry, fellas. Been a long time since I had a good meal.”

  Peter’s flesh crawled. He looked to Donald who looked ready to vomit. “He’s tryin’ to eat us? He’s actually gonna eat us?”

  Henry returned, jogging across the hallway. “Did you hear that? What he just said?”

  Peter avoided the question. “Did you find anything in the kitchen to board the place up?”

  “No. Not unless we pull apart the table. But I had another idea.”

  “Oh?”

  “The barn, Peter. The planks, the hammer, the nails. The whole lot is out there.”

  “You’re right. But that won’t do us any good tonight. You’ve seen the speed he moves at.”

  “Shit.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t take Andrew’s body over Walter’s?” Donald asked. “Why don’t he switch? That Andrew guy’s is in better shape.”

  “Because the only way to kill Andrew was with his bare hands. Or teeth. And that’s a messy job. Besides, he has three more of us right here, all in better shape than Walter. He’s got a selection. And doing that little act right in front of us got us very frightened, weakened us. He’ll be able to get inside our heads better, make us take our own lives.”

  “Sure,” Donald said. He swallowed and gave a chuckle. “Or maybe we just taste better when we’re scared. And in that case, I’m as tender as a gourmet fuckin’ steak.”

  “Come on,” Peter said. “I have something in mind. Let’s gather more books from the library, take them to the living room and see what we can find. There’s got to be something useful.”

  Back in the living room, they dumped another fifteen books to their pile and Donald made for the kitchen. He returned pulling the breakfast table behind him.

  “Hold the fuckin’ door open, kid. Gonna rip this thing to shreds. Light us up a fire.”

  Donald had the table apart in a matter of minutes. He started by setting the table against the wall and kicking through, splintering it to pieces. With the table in two, he worked the rest with his bare hands.

  “Donny,” Peter said, watching the act with interest. “You seemed well adjusted to carrying Walter’s body . . . Seeing you rip that table apart, I can’t help but ask, you ever kill someone? Where did you come from?”

  Donald stopped and wiped his forehead. “From Jersey, kid, that’s about it. Nothin’ out of the usual. Just had a life with tales to make a grown man weep, you know what I’m sayin’? But yeah, I’ve killed two men, if you’ve just gotta know. One was some sick fuck banging my wife while I was inside. Went in on possession, only served half my time. The missus wasn’t expecting that. Had some fuckin’ cunt of a neighbor over most every night stickin’ her. Can’t even remember what happened clearly.” Donald gathered the four legs of the table in his arms and carried them to the fireplace. He began to build the fire as he continued. “Saw red, man. That’s all I fuckin’ know. Started punchin’ the bastard in the face. Bam, bam, bam. Caught him in one of my bathrobes, can you believe it? Sitting in my living room, watching my TV. Punched him until he stopped screaming. And that’s all I know. Was in another world. But, I tell ya, I wasn’t even coked up. If I’d had a few bumps, he’d be pulp. Now he wasn’t much better, the way it was, but I probably would have kept slammin’ his face for hours if I’d been jacked. I stopped when his eyes stopped focusin’. His fuckin’ teeth were lyin’ around like pieces of popcorn. Must have broke his skull in a million places. Cops were there before I knew it, pullin’ me off.”

  He paused for thought with a shake of his head, then lit a wad of newspaper he’d put beneath the table legs in the fireplace. He spotted a bottle of lighter fluid on the mantle and squirted a liberal amount onto the wood. The fire danced an orange glow on his face.

  “There,” he said. “Table should keep us goin’ for a while.”

  “Thanks, Donny,” Peter said, still curious. “And the second man?”

  “Prison. You don’t need to have a very fuckin’ broad imagination to wonder why I did that, new guy and all. Split his neck open with a broken plastic knife in the cafeteria.”

  “How long did you get for doing that?”

  “No one saw nothin’. They knew who he was. Even the wardens were waiting for someone to do it. He was some fat-cat drug lord or something, well known on the streets, lotta manpower behind him. Nobody wanted to touch him.”

  “But you did?”

  “I did. And no one saw me do it, you get me? If anything, that little stabby-stabby sped the process of me gettin’ outta there. I was a fuckin’ hero.”

  Donald’s eyes seemed far away as he thought. Then he stood. “And if you think some bastard, supernatural or not, is going to end Donny Bove’s life with his mouth, you got another thing comin’. He’ll choke on my fuckin’ bones at the least. He’s fucked with the wrong dude. Now you just tell me what we need to do.”

  The request snapped Peter back into reality. He thought it over, something striking him as funny. Nothing to laugh out loud about, but still, something interesting. Back in the days of Throttle, the other members would always wait for him to make the big decisions, just as Donald and Henry were now. Robby and Bill never scheduled rehearsals, never booked a recording session, never signed a contract without Peter doing so first. They left those jobs to him, making him their leader. And it went back even further. Peter remembered being a kid in his grandmother’s place. Down the street there’d been a trailer park that would fill up during the Summer. On a few occasions, he’d had a handful of kids to play with for a while, other than Beth. They were nice kids, and to
gether they played all week long. Video games, mess-wrestling, imaginary war missions, all the usual things that children do. But those kids had also asked Peter what it was they were going to do next, each and every day. Peter had never much thought about it. He fell into the role without question, because it was all he ever knew. He’d never had someone else try to take the reins. They followed by default, and Peter was left to lead. Whether he liked it or not.

  “Well?” Henry asked. “What are we going to do?”

  “We read through these books,” Peter said. “We find something to help us.”

  From outside, Phobos laughed. “Little pigs, little pigs, let me in . . .”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “ANYTHING?” DONALD ASKED. “WE NEED to speed this up, fellas. That sick fuck could be anywhere.”

  Peter lowered the book in his hands. He didn’t know whether to say he’d found nothing, or that he’d found too much. Engraved on the pages were images of creatures unimaginable. On one page, more of those Lizard Men stood around an open cauldron, while on the next, a giant worm or leech took up the entire page that left Peter ill. After some more pages of text came a hairy, humanoid entity, giant claws swinging by its sides. After that, sea creatures. Another page showed what appeared to be a vampire with crooked, thin teeth jutting from its lips. Peter tried to control the tremors in his chest.

  “You think these things exist?” He asked. “I mean, if Phobos is real, what about the rest of these? I mean, look at this one.”

  Peter held the book out to Donald.

  “Jesus,” the large man said. “Those fuckin’ zombies?”

  “If they exist, I want to die right now.”

  “Calm it, Peter,” Henry said, his face buried in a book. He raised his head. “Keep searching for something useful.”

  Peter returned to the text, and not long after, found something. An ink spatter, not unlike a Rorschach test. The word Phobos had been repeatedly underlined with a red pen.

  “Think I’ve got something,” he mumbled. “The text is in another language, same as the rest, but Jerry or Harris made some long hand notes on the side. Check it out.”

  He passed the book to Henry who scanned it while Donald peered over his shoulder. “Leave it with me,” Henry said, not taking his eyes from the page. “I think I’ve got something else, too. I don’t know what it is just yet, but it’s nagging me. Look.”

  Henry held up the other book and Peter squinted at a crude drawing of the sea. Next to it, within the foreign text, the word Phobos repeated over and over, along with illustrations of cadavers in various stages of decomposition. “There’s a connection between these pages,” Henry said. “Like solving a puzzle. Give me more time with it.”

  Peter nodded. “We need to find this basement. You think Jerry’s got any food or water? A toilet?”

  “Who gives a shit,” Donald said. “Let the fucker starve.”

  “What I mean is, he’ll have to come up at some point.”

  “I’m more concerned about the clock in front of the door,” Donald said. “Took two of us to lift it, but what if he’s got some sort of super-human strength or some shit?”

  A heavy crash from the hallway answered the man’s question.

  “Come on!”

  Peter dashed to the hallway, Henry and Donald close behind. His breath caught in his throat. “He knocked it over . . .”

  The clock lay in shards on the hardwood, snow bellowing in from the open door. Peter saw no sign of Walter.

  Phobos, He corrected himself. Not Walter. Not anymore. It’s Phobos.

  Henry swallowed, his eyes glistening. “He’s playing with us. Like a damn animal playing with its food. He’s trying to frighten us.”

  “You think he’s here in the house?” Donald whispered. Peter knew why the man kept his voice down. It felt wrong to speak aloud, as if the walls had ears. The safety of the living room didn’t exist out here. Now they stood in the territory of a wild beast that could strike at any second.

  A window smashed.

  “We gotta stop that freak from getting in,” Donald said, “Come on!” He rushed to the television room, Peter and Henry following close behind. Donald elbowed the door and fell inside. “Jesus Christ!” He swung out his arm and hit Peter in the chest, stopping him.

  Phobos swung his arms about on the shattered window frame, raking his flesh over shards of glass. The glistening spikes, like jagged teeth, tore his arms to ribbons as dark crimson dribbled down the inner wall.

  Phobos giggled. “It tickles, did you know that? How utterly delightful to feel again.”

  The creature continued sawing his arms, back and forth, back and forth. A swinging vein caught on a sharp piece and severed, spraying blood onto the wall.

  “Make some room, boys. I’m comin’ in.”

  Peter fought to stay grounded. He wanted to run, make a break just as Andrew did.

  “You fuckin’ creep,” Donald spat. “You sick fuckin’ freak.”

  He tossed a lamp from a nearby tabletop and it shattered on the deadman’s bald spot.

  Phobos raised his head. “Well, that wasn’t very nice of you. I’ll do you slow for that, Donald Bove.”

  “Try it, you sick fuck.”

  Although Donald put up a strong act, Peter noticed none of them were stepping inside the room. They weren’t running, either.

  Phobos shook his head, spilling off the remnants of the lamp. “Up we go, boys!”

  Then the deadman jumped, impaling his large stomach on the window cavity. He lay half in, half out, legs kicking in a frenzy. Peter’s stomach flipped as the shards bit their way into the fat of their dead friend’s belly. Phobos wheezed, continuing to slither inside. He gave a grunt as he tipped, crashing to the pool of crimson and glass on the carpet. His shredded stomach jiggled, the deep cuts beginning to open. He sat like a baby, legs spread.

  “Look at this,” he said, “Such thin lines . . . Gonna open as wide as a mouth any moment now, don’t you think?”

  The three men stood frozen by the door, silent with shock.

  “Could speed it along, huh? That might help.”

  Henry moaned as Phobos slid a hand inside one of the slices, the skin resisting at first, but with a wiggle, it popped right through. All the way to the wrist.

  “Ah . . . The sting’s damn good, you know that? So good . . . You don’t know how lucky you have it . . . Better run, boys . . .”

  Peter grabbed Henry and Donald by their shirts and pulled them from the room. They sped by the shattered clock and into the living room. Peter slammed the door shut and rammed his shoulder against it. Donald and Henry did the same. The three of them pressed their weight to the frame, listening for any sign of their dead friend. It didn’t take long.

  Footsteps clomped along the hallway, Walter’s bare feet smacking the hardwood, making the sound louder on purpose.

  “I wonder where you’ve gone?” Walter’s announced. “You were only here a second ago, how strange . . . It’s almost as if you just disappeared into thin air, isn’t it?”

  Henry whimpered and Peter shushed him.

  “You wouldn’t happen to be inside, oh, I don’t know, say, the kitchen?”

  Phobos waited for a response. “Okay. How about the living room then? How. About. The living room?”

  Donald shot Peter a wide-eyed look, sweat beading down his forehead. Peter closed his eyes, his heart punching his chest. What he would give for a damn swig of whiskey at this moment.

  “I guess I’ll just try the living room, then. Seems a good a place as any.”

  “Shit,” Donald whined. He shook his head back and forth. Outside, Walter’s footsteps sped up as the deadman charged the door.

  Peter braced, anticipating the smack. The footsteps shook the floor, like an elephant charging—and then stopped short of the door. Peter’s squeezed his eyes shut, waiting. He gritted his teeth.

  Phobos’ breathing came fast and heavy just beyond the frame, inches away. Peter’s skin
crawled. He swallowed, his throat clicking in the silence.

  The deadman ran his fingernails down the other side of the door at a steady pace, the rumble-like scratch seeming to last a lifetime and reminding Peter of faraway thunder.

  “Come on, fellas . . . Give it up, will ya?”

  He brought his hand back up and scraped his nails a second time. “It’s your pal Walter . . .You know I’m not safe by myself out here. You know I need someone to look after me . . . That wasn’t very friendly of you to leave me outside in the snow. Half naked of all things. My poor little pecker froze right off.”

  Peter could hear the deadman trying to keep the laugher from his voice. “I might have a good bit of blubber on me, but that wouldn’t keep me alive out there for a whole night, now would it? Nope.” The word smacked on his lips. “No, no, no way. See, that wasn’t very friendly . . . Not friendly at all.”

  “Go away,” Donald whispered. “Just go the fuck away, you fuck. Go away . . .”

  Phobos slammed the door with a fist, making the three of them shout. “Ah fuck it,” he said. “Done playin’.”

  The deadman’s hand smashed through the wood, wrapping around Peter’s shoulder. He tried to pull away but the fist felt like a vise.

  “Shit!”

  Peter beat at the hand, wincing at the cold, slimy texture.

  Like an icy slug, he thought. Oh, Jesus . . .

  “Help me!”

  Phobos roared with laugher, his grip tightening. “You scared, you fuckin’ alco? You scared?”

  Donald raced to the fire place and came back with a leg of the table. “You sick fuck!” he yelled, raising the leg like a spear. He brought the splintered end down hard on the dead hand, missing Peter’s shoulder by inches. Phobos wailed.

  “You do that so good, Don! Oh! Do it again, baby!”

  Cold blood trickled down Peter from the wound, staining his shirt and filling his nose with a metallic scent. Then Phobos released his grip.

  Peter stumbled from the door, gasping and wiping the blood from his chest. He stood by the other two, watching the door.

  It’s going to burst open at any second, I just know it . . .