Cameron Wood (A Short Story)

 

                        By Robert Pettus

“Wake up and dance, you old bitch!” came a booming, slurred voice. The sound of it reverberated off the thin walls of the now closed dive bar.

Mikey nudged the bartender, Elliot, who was sleeping in a Windsor-back side chair in front of the counter. He was snoring, sliding slowly from his seat. Elliot, being the only bartender, also owned the bar.

Mikey kicked Elliot, he thought gently, in the shins. Elliot lunged forward, snapping awake:

“What the fuck!” he said.

“Wake up and dance,” repeated Mikey, now boot-scooting across the hardwood flooring of the dark bar. The place was closed. Elliot wasn’t sure how Mikey got in, but he knew that it would be damn-near impossible to kick his ass out.

Mikey brought more money into the tiny town of Grayslick than all the other 200 or so residents combined. As soon as he moved in two years prior, he began growing the biggest field of grass you’d ever seen, and no one batted an eye at it. Not the local cops, not even the Kentucky State boys. Hell, Grayslick residents loved him. The old ladies at St Anthony Catholic Church – the only church in town – conjured up some home-cooked goodness for him damn-near every day of the week. Chicken tetrazzini, cherry cheesecake, banana croquette – everything he liked. He never had to go to the grocery. He was a local celebrity.

“Get the hell out of here, Mikey,” said Elliot, “You goddamn, spaghetti-eating motherfucker.”

Elliot called Mikey a spaghetti-eating motherfucker because Mikey was Italian. He was the only ethnically Italian person in Grayslick. Elliot didn’t know any racial slurs for Italian people, so he made up ‘spaghetti-eating motherfucker’. He also liked calling him ‘Tommy Mozzarella’ – spoken in what he thought was a New Jersey accent. It didn’t sound very Jersey, though – he couldn’t completely mask his rural Kentucky drawl when making vowel sounds.  It got under Mikey’s skin, sometimes. Not tonight, though.

“Hey now, hey!” said Mikey. He was in a jovial mood, “I got no intention of getting out of here. I’m not done partying tonight – not quite yet. Them fuckers up in the field were too puss to get more beers once we killed the case, so I figured I’d see what in the hell you were up to. You fuckin’ sleepin’!”

“Yeah,” responded Elliot, “I was sleeping because I had a long day and I was fucking tired.”

“Aw, shut the hell up. You wasn’t tired. You and I both know there wasn’t nobody in this fuckin’ place. I know about it any time there’s a party at The Comfy Corner. I would have knowed about it if there was anything popping off here. You just a lazy old bitch!”

Mikey stepped over to the jukebox. Wrenching free a collection of quarters from his jeans pocket, some of which fell jingling to the floor, he slid a handful conveyor-like into the machine and pressed through the available tunes, flipping the selection of ‘45 records. It was an old jukebox, which was one of the main draws of the bar. The locals loved it. So did the out-of-towners, on the rare occasions they patronized The Comfy Corner. Mikey pushed the button impatiently, finally settling on Slow Train Coming, by Bob Dylan.

“Hell yeah!” he said, “Slow train comin’ ‘round the bend. That’s the truest shit I ever heard.”

Mikey dumped a heaping line of blow onto the counter. He sniffed it glutinously, snapping his head skyward – sweat flung from his long, black hair dampening the floor – screaming like a rabid raccoon. He finished the beer he had snagged for himself – a bottle of Schlitz, free of charge – and smashed it on the counter. He stumbled backward from the counter onto the dance floor and kept dancing, now livelier, though more belligerently. Elliot squinted at him in frustration. He didn’t feel comfortable kicking him out. Mikey was too well loved by the community; he was also crazier than shit – Elliot didn’t want to get on Mikey’s bad side. Nobody did. As much as they loved him, everyone in town knew it was true.

“Hey!” said Mikey, “Check this shit out.” He swaggered out the front door into the night. Elliot thought about closing the door and again locking up, but he knew he didn’t have enough time. It wouldn’t matter, anyway – Mikey would force his way back in. He returned a couple of minutes later, a sawed-off shotgun in hand:

“Look at this shit.” he said, flashing its barrel one-handed across the barroom as if scoping out what to blast. “We was hunting earlier,” he continued, “Couldn’t find a goddamn thing – not even a doe. Not even a goddamn dove. This bastard here is still fully loaded. Never hunted with it before today. I was looking forward to pointing it one-handed – like this – down the nose of a big-ass ten-point, just blowing its fuckin’ brains out all over the side of some tree. I don’t need no mounts for my walls, you know what I mean? I just need fuckin’ burgers for my grill. I need fuckin’ bacon wrapped, cream cheese stuffed birds for my belly.”

Mike was massaging his stomach, glaring in cocaine-addled excitability. He then started rubbing the barrel of the gun like he was jerking it off. He swayed it around the room, pointing it outward from his crotch as if it were his dick. The gun waved back and forth chaotically, out of tune with the stuttering, drunken step of Mikey’s boots. Out of rhythm with Bob Dylan’s prophetic, screaming vocals. He continued dancing to the music. He was struggling to maintain balance.

“Shit.” said Elliot, “Don’t fuck around with that thing. You could wind up…”

Mikey waved the shotgun back across the barroom, in his intoxicated state accidentally pulling the trigger. The canon erupted. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it was close. The deer slug struck and pierced Elliot just above his pelvis. The aging man slid from his chair, slithering involuntarily across the floor, leaving a necrotic, slug-like trail of blood, thumping his fist to the floor, and screaming as the thick, metallic liquid pooled.

Elliot was in agony. He could make no discernable language. He continued writhing. Mikey realized what he had done. He ran to Elliot, asking him if he was okay, stroking his thin gray hair. Elliot gave no response. Mikey turned and ran from the barroom, heading across the gravel street to St. Anthony Catholic Church, its steeple towering high above the surrounding central Kentucky wood – Cameron Wood, as the locals called it.

The angry spirits of a long-ago murdered family haunted the wood. Everyone in town knew that.

Mikey banged on the door, screaming for Father Dickey. Father Dickey would open up – Mikey knew that – Papa Dick was always there. Father Dickey lived next door; if he for some reason weren’t in the church, which he always was, he would still hear the noise from his adjacent, dainty hovel.

The creaking double front doors of the church sprung ajar:

“What?” said Father Dickey, rubbing his drooping, wrinkled eyelids, “What do you want, brother Mikey?”

“The bar!” said Mikey, “Come to the bar! Elliot been shot.”

“Shot?” said Father Dickey, “Do you think I can provide medical support? I can’t!”

“I know, I know.” said Mikey, “Ain’t know where else to go. Ain’t no hospitals in Grayslick, is there? Come on, let’s go – he fuckin’ dying in there!”

Father Dicky paced briskly into the bar, clothed in his black priestly garb. It was far too late for Elliot, who was bleeding out all over the floor. Who knows how long it would take to remove those stains from the wood; they may never fully clear.

The priest glanced backward, scowling at Mikey. Dickey wouldn’t say anything to him – Mikey was far too much of a hot head for proselytizing – but he thought Mikey understood his point, just from a look. Mikey could be dumber than hell, sometimes. He was a hell of a farmer and a natural businessman, but in all other facets of life, he was an idiot.

“It’s too late for him,” said Father Dickey, beginning to administer the last rights.

“Wha… what? What the hell do you mean it’s too late? The old bastard was just sitting there all grouchy-like just ten minutes ago. I shot him with a dull-ass deer slug; you can’t kill a man with a fuckin’ deer slug.”

Mikey was speaking frantically over Elliot’s babbling final confession. Father Dickey couldn’t understand a word – Elliot was far too incoherent – but he nodded, as if understanding. Elliot’s incoherent gurgle, combined with Mikey’s paranoid, childish raw emotion, filled the barroom with an unnerving, grating soundscape. This abysmal noise fused with the still-playing jukebox, which had continued the Bob Dylan album, now playing Gotta Serve Somebody.

Elliot gobbled up the body of Christ lip-smacking like an infant yet to learn manners. He was struggling to keep the unleavened bread in his mouth – pushing it out involuntarily with his uncooperative, dying tongue. He finally swallowed it, washing it down with the wine – a bottle of Gato Negro cabernet – Father Dickey had grabbed from behind the bar. It wasn’t standard, but he didn’t have any sacramental wine on him, so it would have to do. He blessed it. He thought Jesus would understand, considering the circumstances.

Elliot died. Father Dickey closed the bartender’s eyes with his shaking, wrinkly hands. Blood covered the entirety of the floor. Mikey, horrified, ran sprinting from the room, out the door, across the street, and toward the wood.

The streets were dark and barren – there were no streetlights in Grayslick. Mikey ran out of the bar, past the church, and through the adjacent Idle-Hour Park on his way to the wood. He hopped the chain-link fence of the baseball field, scrambling and flailing across the infield like a clumsy second baseman as he bolted through the dusty, cobweb-lined dugout, up the concrete steps, and into Cameron Wood.

The wood was black. It was always dark – darker than anyone thought it should ever be. Most Grayslick locals said it was because of the haunted presence of the Graves family – out-of-towners who had moved to Grayslick generations ago, back during the Great Depression, looking to open a business. Locals hated The Graves’, moving to such a small town like Grayslick and stealing commerce from in-town families during such an unfortunate economic time.

The Graves were allegedly murdered, but no one knew why. That case was never closed. They simply went into the forest one day for a picnic and didn’t return. Days later, when local folks had finally decided to recognize the bizarre nature of their stores continued vacancy, they checked the woods. They found the family dead in a clearing previously thought to be the most serene spot in Cameron Wood. The bodies weren’t peacefully deceased – they had been completely mutilated; limbs twisted morbidly in every unnatural direction; cracked bones split out from the skin. Their faces were drained pale, wide-eyed and screaming. Cameron Wood was decided haunted, after that, whether because of the presence of The Graves family, or of their twisted killer. Nobody went there; nobody besides Mikey.

 Mikey knew that story was a bunch of old horseshit. The wood was dark because it was old. It had never been chopped, never been plowed – it had grown thick, mostly undisturbed, for thousands of years. Crop rotation had yet to shift to that dark collection of ancient foliage. That’s why it was so dark. Mikey thought it was comforting, being in the wood. He liked the darkness, sometimes. It allowed him a mental escape.

Mikey continued sprinting. His heart – already beating at full blast thanks to both the adrenaline from the previous situation, and the remnant, chaotic energy from the coke – seemed to stabilize the more he ran. This helped Mikey calm down. He ran and ran, through the heart of the wood into a perfectly circular clearing. He knew the place well – he always came here when the cops pretended to be suspicious about his field of bud. It was an excellent place to escape.

Mikey sat kneeling on the soft ground, his breath heaving as he struggled to catch it. Even in the heat of summer, even in years of drought, this inner sanctum of the wood stayed somehow well-hydrated. Mikey felt refreshed simply being there. He continued panting, his hands clutched firmly to his thighs – his now dirty jeans sticking like glue to his chafing, sweaty legs. 

The wood further darkened, which Mikey considered strange. He didn’t spend much early-morning time this deep in the dewy thick of the trees, but he knew that it should be brightening outside. Morning was breaking, only not in Cameron Wood.

Mikey looked around the clearing. A wind was kicking up, rustling the dry leaves and dirt of the forest floor.

A circular, tornado-like gust abruptly blew spinning about the clearing. The brittle leaves ruffled from the ground skyward. Mikey noticed the leaves briefly taking a humanoid shape. They then fell back to the earth. The towering, old trees shook and groaned as if in otherworldly communication. No light shone in from outside their enclosed canopy. Mikey was afraid. He stood up and backed away, making to exit the wood. He didn’t care about the damn cops; he didn’t care about Elliot or Father Dickey – not anymore – he would risk it. This fuckin’ place was giving him the creeps. He turned his back to the forest clearing and darted in a frenzy toward the wall of dense foliage.

Before he could make it out of the clearing, he was swept up, legs first, hanging in the air. He was spun around, upside down, through the trees. Apathetic nocturnal wildlife gazed at him from the shaking branches – bats, raccoons, opossums, and owls looking on without care. Mikey shrieked in terror:

 “Ahhhhhhh! Fuck; Fuck!”

His body leveled; he was no longer upside down. His belly was facing the ground as if to fall the fifty feet back to the forest floor; a crushing belly flop. The possessed wind dropped him. He fell hard, hitting the soft dirt and immediately twisting uncontrollably, writhing in pain. The wind picked him back up. He was again upside down, revolving faster and faster as dead leaves swirled as if to encase him in a mummy-cocoon. Out from within the visual blockage created by the swirling leaves, he saw the ghostly figures of four people – a mother, a father, and two young children. The Graves family. They stood staring without care at what was happening. They weren’t creating the chaos – Mikey could feel that – but they also had no interest in stopping it.

The pressure from the force of the spinning wind was crushing. Mikey could feel it splitting his skin and bruising his bones. His eyeballs were pressed to at any moment dislodge. His teeth cracked, continuously buffeted by the supernatural weather. In his final moments, Mikey saw the red-tinted shape of Father Dickey run into the clearing. The priest expressed a knowing look; frantic, though unsurprised. Lifting a bible, he began yelling verses at the growing havoc. Mikey’s time had come. With the wind and the leaves still swirling around him – with the pressure finally becoming too much – Mikey’s body was split, literally. Blood and bone sprayed outward from the cyclone, coating Father Dickey, his bible still thrust forward in defense. The thick, red, life-sustaining liquid saturated the damp dirt of the clearing and the thin, waxy pages of Dickey’s ancient text.

Father Dickey knelt to the earth and sobbed. It had happened again. Looking forward, he saw the family – the first known family taken by this mysterious, demonic force. They looked at him and turned, without care, back into Cameron Wood. Mikey would soon join them, wherever they went.

Father Dickey wept, heaving in the clearing, inhaling dirt and dust. Above the canopy, a new day brightened.

About the author: 

Robert Pettus is an English as a Second Language teacher at the University of Cincinnati. Previously, he taught for four years in a combination of rural Thailand and Moscow, Russia. His short stories have been published in numerous webzines, magazines, podcasts, and literary journals. His first novel, titled Abry, was published this spring by Offbeat Reads. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, Mary, his daughter, Rowan, and his pet rabbit, Achilles.