Matthew C. Funk

Bad Spirits

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Garrard woke to a bad sound: A door that was not supposed to be open was clicking closed. It had come from the back door—the one to the alley.

He lay under his towel, trying to weigh whether he had heard it or just imagined it. Garrard remembered Mama locking the back door very late that night. Her coughing had woken him. Her dusty lungs made her sound like a cartoon train as she made her way to the back door, secured its deadbolt, and retired to her room. She did so every night. Best she could, Mama tried to keep Garrard and his older brother, Ryan, safe.

Garrard believed in that locked door with the golden faith reserved for ten-year olds.

He must have imagined it clicking. Being scared all the time made for fertile imagination.

Garrard began to extract his attention from the quiet, blocking out the sound of roaches crawling on the mangy floor of his room. He hated those roaches—how they swarmed, their sudden stops and surges, their plump and shiny bodies. They reminded him of how goblin fingers must look. It was hard to sleep sometimes; his withered, crib-sized mattress sharing the ground with them germinated fantasies of those goblin fingers caressing his closed eyes and prying into his lips to pick his teeth.

Garrard forced his eyes closed, forced away the scuttling sounds that boiled out of the room corners with their colonies of hair and crust, and from the pus-yellow water stains skirting the walls. He concentrated to imagine what clean looked like. Then he heard something else creeping, outside in the hall.

The boards of the long, shotgun-house hall were moaning. Garrard knew it was the sound of footsteps—of something heavy trying to walk light. He was certain he heard it now. And Garrard was certain of something else. No matter what Pastor Kerry preached at the Missionary Baptist on Sunday, that whispery sound was not an angel at secret work.

Garrard knew angels didn’t come to Desire. There were no pictures of angels with dirt on their robes, and there was no walking through Desire without getting dirty. Garrard’s neighborhood belonged to other spirits. Bad spirits.

Ryan had told Garrard all about Desire’s spirits. The Axeman. The Needlemen. Pistol Pete. And the worst of them all—the one with duct-tape hands and zipper mouth—the Bogeyman.

Mama trusted in the Jesus to keep Ryan and Garrard safe, and to see them through. The Jesus was to thank for bringing her boys home on these red Spring nights when so many of their friends did not make it home, and the Jesus put food on the table. But every night except for Sundays, the food on the table was eggs and rice and red beans. The Jesus gave just enough to keep them alive and hungry for more.

The footsteps stopped. Garrard felt like the silence was starving him. He gnawed on his memory of the sounds. They had faded outside Ryan’s room.

Garrard choked a gasp to death as he figured the Bad Spirit must have come for Ryan. Ryan knew all about them. He was all that kept Garrard safe from them and told Garrard how to really protect himself.

The Bad Spirit had come to take Ryan and then it would take him.

He pushed the towel aside. His hand felt numb, but it moved. He was soaked with cold terror, so much that it was running from his skin like a sponge, but he had lost too much already for someone who didn’t have much to begin with. Garrard would not let the Bad Spirit take Ryan.

The butcher knife he stowed under his mattress felt 10-feet long picking it up.

It felt only three inches when he reached the door.

“Go for the hands first,” he repeated in his head, just like Ryan had told him.

Garrard had been playing with Reese, the dog shared by his block who roamed around and lived off trash and candy, when Ryan told him. Ryan had snatched Garrard’s hands from rubbing between the terrier’s ears and held them up before his face, setting the lesson in a hard frame.

“Knock a motherfucker’s hands out first and that bitch will drop his guard.” Ryan had hissed, singeing the lesson into Garrard with his cigarette-butt eyes. “Then you take his head off.”

Whatever stirred in Garrard to hear that made Reese whimper.

Garrard felt like whimpering as he turned the door knob. The metal whined for him.

His breath was a block of ice. So was the silence of the hall. Garrard imagined the Bad Spirits stalking out there—stretched to glistening like the images reflected by the dead screen of the old antenna TV that hunkered in their living room corner. Ryan’s lessons were a teeming fever in Garrard’s head.

“Axeman, he comes in through a panel in the door.” Ryan had told Garrard loud, trying to smother the sound of the older boys—the Old Crows—hollering and pushing and strutting on the street corner across from the Missionary Baptist. He’d pulled Garrard’s attention away from their proud shoulders and shining jewelry with the gravity of what he said and how. “Axeman’s a big baller, but he’ll slip through that tiny square and wake you up with a blow from his hatchet.”

Was it the Axeman out in the hall? Garrard peered out and saw only darkness.

“Needlemen, a door’ll keep ‘em out. They lurk in the bushes and the tall grass.” Ryan had said, pointing to the edged growth that rose from a desolated lot by the Crows.

“Is that why the Old Crows keep going over there?” Garrard had asked. He and Ryan had spent an hour waiting while Mama had her special sit-in with Pastor Kerry. The Old Crows had gone over to the scrub of the lot four times, coming back each time with something under their shirt.

“You a wise man, Little G,” Ryan had plucked at the black rubber band he wore as a bracelet. “Them Crows is tight with the Needlemen.”

“How about the Bogeyman?” Garrard had asked, the compliment making him feel bolder.

Ryan had slid a look down the street. It seemed to Garrard that a cloud had settled on his brother’s face. Under it, Ryan’s features made a fist.

“Bogeyman’s bad as they get. True evil.” Ryan had plucked the rubber bracelet harder, faster, mean. “Got to be just as bad to roll with him. As bad as those Grub boys.”

Garrard shook the memory away and slinked against the wall toward the back door. The water-wracked wallpaper rubbed like an old lady’s skin against his bare shoulders. He could feel the paper’s stains, long and dark, like witches spent the early hours licking it. It made him want to shiver, but Garrard set his shoulders like he saw the Old Crows do—like Ryan did.

Garrard got his breath free of his chest when he saw something that punched it out of him in a gasp. There was something wrong with the back door.

The lower door panel was set loosely. It looked like it had been removed. Under it, chips of paint and splinters were scattered in a pile. It had been chiseled away.

The Axeman had come in. The Axeman or, worse, the Bogeyman himself.

Garrard glanced to either side of him. A wail for Mama welled up in his throat. He bit it down when he saw something glistening on the knob to Ryan’s room. And behind him, the bathroom door was ajar.

He couldn’t call to Mama, Garrard knew. If he yelled—even if he whispered, or whined, or made any noise—the Bogeyman would wrap those duct-tape fingers around his mouth within seconds. Then he would drag Garrard through the loose panel or out the window or down a drain. The church women would find him curled up, dead and fly-dressed, in a desolate lot.

Just like they had found Davey last Saturday. And little Owie, the kid from Garrard’s grade with earrings, the week before. Or Ryan’s best friend, Cedrick, just Wednesday.

“Did the Bogeyman get Cedrick?” Garrard had asked Ryan, trying to stop his brother from staring at the dead TV and letting his tears run.

“For sure.” Ryan had answered after a long time. He studied the stretched shadows in the glass like Owie had dissected his snot in English class. Like Ryan was trying to find what made them live. “Bogeyman himself. Mister Gotcha-Getcha.”

“Why?” Garrard had asked. Ryan had no answer.

“Was it because he was bad?” Garrard asked. He knew that the Jesus sometimes let bad things happen to bad people who didn’t pray enough. Then again, Pastor Kerry said that a lot of times, the Jesus let bad things happen to good people.

“No,” Ryan had said. “Because Cedrick wasn’t bad enough.”

Garrard felt like his knees were leaking away. He knew what that panel meant. He knew the Bogeyman would hear his heart knocking. He knew what was glistening on Ryan’s door knob. Garrard had seen blood before.

He’d smelled it flapping through the air on the corner by the Missionary Baptist where the Old Crows boys got lit up by the Grubs, even after it was rinsed away. He’d seen it studded on the arms of the men and women who tried to wave him over when Ryan walked him home—the crusty women, the rubbery men, the thin victims of the Needlemen. Garrard had tasted blood more often than he had chocolate syrup, running down the back of his throat after he took beatings from school boys who hated Ryan.

Garrard knew it was blood on the door knob. He knew it just like he knew there was no way he could keep standing.

He began to sink to the ground. He wanted to ball up in the corner, ball up so small his Mama could carry him back to bed and tuck him under his towel and whisper the Psalms to him. He needed his Mama’s washed-out whispers and he needed to be tiny. The Bad Spirits were all too big for him.

His bottom touched the ground. It felt like giving up. And Garrard felt something new burn up in him. He felt hate.

He hated being weak. He couldn’t stand not standing up. He hated any world that would rob Ryan from him and he had to face it. He would kill it or it would kill him.

Garrard stood up. He set his shoulders back.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he heard his Mama whispering of the Lord’s glory, of flowers and gold. Garrard shut that sound away. It had no place here.

Here was the butcher knife and the water stains and the Bad Spirits. Here were roach whispers, not Psalms. Here were flies buzzing, not power lines. Here was Desire. Here was his home and he shared it and all he had with Ryan and Mama.

It was time to protect what he had. Garrard felt the shadows of the bathroom spilling over his back as he marched forward, but they slid off his set shoulders. He pushed open Ryan’s door.

The Bogeyman stood over the shape tucked into Ryan’s bed and the Bogeyman was huge.

In the face of that size, Garrard felt like he was falling, falling through the floor, falling straight into Hell.

The dark shape was seamless with the dark of the room. Garrard could see the Bogeyman bending over the bed—his black sleeves hanging like loose skin; his black hood peaked. His back was to Garrard, arms bent as if reaching into his stomach.

Inside Garrard’s stomach, there was so much nothing. A void yawned and fed, darker than the thin brown skin over it. Garrard knew what it was—he’d felt it before in the Missionary Baptist when Pastor Kerry roared and Mama wept; he’d ached with it when he heard about Owie. It was just what Hell felt like.

Garrard realized that is where he was: Those flies he heard were the same that hatched from Owie’s eyes and ears and lips. The roaches had crawled into him when he slept. The Bogeyman was here to take away everything left.

The Bogeyman raised his hand over the form in the bed. A blade jutted from his grip, shining like chocolate syrup and stinking like the beatings. A strip of silvery duct tape hung.

Nothing would have to be enough.

Garrard had to protect Ryan.

Hollow as he was, Garrard had never felt quieter as he stabbed for the Bogeyman’s back.

The blade sunk into the Bogeyman’s side. It went on and on. And Garrard had a lash of fear—maybe the Bogeyman was a ghost too, unstoppable, death himself.

The Bogeyman turned. Garrard drew the knife back for another stab. His eyes lunged out at the sight of the Bogeyman’s face.

The face hung from the hood, boneless. Bloodless, eyeless, its grin was a great stare stretched like a scythe, stitched like a zipper. It was all white.

Garrard stabbed for that face.

It took too long. The Bogeyman was too quick. He batted aside the knife and his arms swallowed the space around Garrard.

They closed into a hug.

Garrard smelled blood and turned earth and the sharp tang of the tape glue.

“I told you,” The Bogeyman’s voice smothered him. “Go for the hands first.”

Garrard breathed in Ryan’s smell.

He had to take in, digest it inside him, before he was nourished enough to stop shaking.

Ryan pulled off the mask by then. He pushed aside the pillows that he’d laid in his bed to imitate his sleeping body and sat Garrard beside him. For awhile, even the roaches stopped whispering. The brothers just breathed together.

Ryan took his hands off of Garrard and looked at them. Smears of blood were still snug in his knuckles creases. He rubbed at them, plucking his rubber bracelet, looking at Garrard with embers in his eyes.

“You gonna kill me?” Garrard said.

It struck him as funny as soon as he’d said it, but Ryan didn’t laugh. Ryan didn’t laugh much at all these days. Not since the bodies started showing up in the desolate lots.

“No.”

“Why are you the Bogeyman, then?”

“Is that who I am?” Ryan’s face made its now-familiar fist—knuckles for brows, mouth and eyes between clenched fingers of muscle. “I guess I am.”

“Why, if you ain’t come to do evil and kill me and Mama?”

“I’m going to protect you.” Ryan said. His fingers hid blood in the flock of Garrard’s hair. “That’s why.”

Garrard bowed his head to look at his stomach. He still felt that hungry nothingness inside him, still growing and getting no fuller. He wondered if it would go away.

He wondered if he wanted it to. It had made him strong enough to protect his brother.

“Why you got to protect me?”

“And Mama.”

“Yeah.” Garrard nodded, remembering that Mama could not protect herself, with only the cheapskate Jesus on her side. “Why you, Ryan?”

“Because,” Ryan’s hands shook as he hid the bloody knife under his bed. He jammed them in his pockets quick as he could. “Like I told you, Little G, there are bad spirits out there.”

“Like the Needlemen?”

“Worse. Like the Grubs.”

“They been dealing with the Bogeyman, you said.”

Ryan’s shoulders set back. The arms that found Garrard again felt hard as a cage. “That they were. Leaving our boys dead, their people crying. I settled all that tonight.”

Garrard understood. He didn’t like the feel of Ryan’s arms, but he’d take it over having those arms gone and buried.

“So you became the Bogeyman.”

“And made sure those Grub killers woke up dead.” Ryan said it as cold as a nightmare needed to be.

“Is it over?”

“Shit like this is never over, Little G.” Ryan looked away, down under the bed. Garrard caught a glimmer of tears on his brother’s cheek. It made him feel angry that Ryan would try to hide that from him. He wanted someone to cry with.

He hit Ryan on the shoulder.

“I want to protect you too.” Garrard crushed the whine out of his tone. He wanted to be close to Ryan. Strong for Ryan. He was done with being afraid of the bad spirits.

He wanted to make them afraid.

Ryan’s smile was bloodless rubber. Almost white. It made the void inside Garrard feel something like hope.

“Good thing I bought two of these, then.” Ryan said, lifting another skeleton mask from under the bed. It smiled even wider than him. Not wider than Garrard though—not when Ryan pulled the plastic of it open and raised it for his brother’s head.

“And I think it’ll fit you fine.” Ryan said, putting the mask over Garrard, shutting out the whisper of roaches and Psalms, leaving only a ghost’s white silence.

It fit well enough for Garrard to know he would grow into it.

–

Matthew C. Funk is a social media consultant, professional marketing copywriter and writing mentor. He is the editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine, FictionDaily, and a writer for FangirlTastic and Spinetingler Magazine. Graduate of the Professional Writing MFA at USC, Funk’s online work is featured at sites such as Yellow Mama; A Twist of Noir; Thrillers, Killers and Chillers; ThugLit; Powder Burn Flash; Pulp Metal Magazine and others. You can check him out at MatthewFunk.net