Three Truths and Other Unsettling Tales Read online

  My parents went to sleep early, but they let me stay up. “Not too late,” my father warned. “Santa won’t stop here if you’re still awake when he passes by.” He winked while I forced a laugh.

  The house became eerily quiet. I sat in the parlor next to our grand, decorated tree. The fireplace kept me warm as I settled into my father’s leather chair. The old manor creaked and groaned as the night cooled. I grabbed a blanket off the couch and pulled it up to my chin. I waited in silence. I might have dozed off, so I’m not sure what time it was when I heard the low rumbling of an engine. I perked my head up. It’s really happening, I thought. The sound grew louder as its source drew closer. The headlights illuminated the room and cast morbid looking shadows along the wall. The car came to a stop right outside the parlor window, but the engine kept going. It revved until the walls shook from the noise.

  I completely lost my nerve at that point. I’d sworn to myself that I would meet Corbin head-on, but in that moment, listening to the engine scream, I threw my blanket off and ran upstairs to my parents’ bedroom.

  I got to their door and slammed into it as I turned the knob. It might as well have been a block wall – it didn’t budge. No matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t open. Outside, I could hear Corbin kill the engine. The complete silence that followed was broken by the car door opening and then closing, followed by gravelly footsteps coming up to the house.

  I could hear nothing from the other side of my parents’ door. I said a prayer that they were okay and then walked down the hallway toward the stairs. I poked my head over the banister and stared down. Some firelight from the parlor flickered beneath me, but for the most part I was looking straight into darkness.

  Corbin’s voice fractured the still air. “You can come down now.”

  I waited at the top of the stairs.

  “Don’t piss me off again, boy. I’m in the kitchen.”

  I walked down the stairs with wobbly legs that could barely support me. I felt like I weighed a thousand pounds.

  He was in the kitchen going through our refrigerator. “You didn’t leave out any milk and cookies,” he said with a wicked laugh. He came out from behind the refrigerator door holding a turkey leg, which he pointed in the direction of the table. “Sit down,” he said right before taking a bite. In his other hand he had a gallon of milk, which he took a swig from as soon as he swallowed his first bite of turkey.

  We both sat at the table, directly across from one another.

  “So you failed, kid.” He took another bite of turkey before speaking again. “You had a chance to save Mary and you wasted it. You changed virtually nothin’ that happened that night... almost like you weren’t there at all. She died the same way.”

  “Her name’s Magda,” I corrected.

  “It don’t matter much. It certainly don’t change the fact that she’s a dead little bitch.”

  I tried to stare him down, but I was shaking too much to maintain eye contact. Instead my gaze shifted to the floor.

  Corbin glanced around the room. “Never cared for this house much.” He put the milk bottle to his lips and drank the whole thing, nearly an entire gallon. He belched loudly and spoke again, “I don’t like this place at all. I don’t like being here and I certainly don’t like you. The problem is, I don’t choose who calls out to me. Either I hear your thoughts or I don’t. And if I hear you, you’re basically fucked.”

  Corbin dropped the turkey leg to the floor and pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. A flame came from his finger and lit it. He took a long drag and continued. “I don’t fancy coming back here year after year, but as long as you’re alive I gotta do it. You see, I can’t physically hurt a kid I visit, at least not while he’s still young, but I can kill his family, I can kill his friends – heck, I can even kill his dog and take all of his favorite little things. Year after year, I come back, each time taking a little more. I think my buddy at the garage might’ve explained it to you.” He stared across the table at me until I could feel his glare penetrate to the back of my skull. “I’m gonna make you a deal. We can just end it this year.”

  “How do we do that?” I thought.

  “You ask for your protection to be removed.” He said it slowly and seriously, before perking up and speaking again. “So that’s it, you ask for it, and then I gut you like a little piggy, and the rest of your family stays safe.”

  “I don’t want to be gutted like a pig.”

  “Of course you don’t. Nobody does. That’s what makes it so goddamn fun. But I’ll tell you what, if you don’t agree to this, I’ll make sure that you wish you had.” He pointed upstairs to my parents’ bedroom. “Remember when you wished that you could beat your father at basketball?”

  I thought back to months earlier when my father and I had gone to the park and played one-on-one. I’d made such a wish after he’d defeated me handily. I guess I’d reached the age where he no longer felt he was required to let me win.

  Corbin let the memory sink in, then started up, “Well you won’t have any trouble beating your father after I rip his fucking arms off. And remember when you wished for a little brother or sister?”

  I nodded yes.

  “Good, I’m glad you remember. Let’s just say I’ll take care of that too. Only, it won’t be your daddy makin’ the deposit.” He glared at me. “And that’s just the beginning. They’ll wind up dead, sooner or later, as will everyone you know or care about, that is, after I’ve had my fun with them.”

  Okay, just kill me, I thought.

  “No, you have to say it out loud.”

  “Kill m-,” I trailed off, unable to say it completely.

  “Say it!” he screamed.

  “Kill me!” I finally blurted out with tears beginning to flow down my cheeks.

  He relaxed back into his chair and took a drag from his cigarette. “Well?” he said.

  I didn’t know what he wanted.

  “At least try to make this interesting for me. I already made the trip out here.” He took another drag of his cigarette and flicked it to the ground. “You stupid? Run.”

  I stood up and slowly backed out of the kitchen. Corbin went back to the refrigerator and began rooting around. “Run,” he said with his head hidden behind the refrigerator door.

  I took his advice and darted through the kitchen doorway and down the hallway. I paused to consider which way I should go, my gut instinct told me upstairs, but as my foot hit the first step I saw her – Magda, standing silently before me. Her arm rose up and she pointed her finger in the direction of the front door. I quickly decided that hiding in the nearby woods would be best. I shot out the front entrance and down the steps.

  As I turned and headed toward the wooded area at the edge of the property, I heard a crashing of glass behind me. I twisted around and saw the refrigerator, which had been thrown through the kitchen window, smashing to the ground. Corbin poked out from the shattered window and laughed. “There wasn’t anything good to eat in there anyway.” He effortlessly hopped out the window and landed on the ground.

  I doubled my pace, running over the lawn to the wood-line at the edge of the property. Once under the cover of the trees I slowed down to catch my breath. I looked back, but I couldn’t see my tormentor until I heard a rustling in the tree above me. Looking up, I saw a smiling Corbin standing on one of its branches. I took off running again, farther and farther away from the house, for what seemed to be an eternal uphill sprint.

  I fell down exhausted. The cold night air was torturing my lungs and I was beginning to think that any effort to escape was probably futile. As I lay panting on the ground, I saw Magda once again. Her mouth was opening and closing, and like the time before, her finger rose up and pointed. I brushed myself off and looked to where she was directing me. It was back from where I’d come. “I just came from there,” I protested.

  Then, with a high-pitched shriek, her voice broke through, “Save ussssss!”

  I looked again at where she was poi
nting. Her finger wasn’t aimed at the manor house like I had originally thought, it was aimed at the row of Christmas trees that were well on the other side of the property.

  I started running again, making my way to where she’d directed me. Corbin’s voice boomed from behind, “Getting tired yet?” He gave a frenzied laugh that resonated through the woods.

  I ran as hard as I could until I tasted bile coming up from my throat. For all my effort, Corbin was never far from me, taunting me and laughing. My eyes filled with tears, dirt and sweat, making it nearly impossible to see where I was going. I tried to wipe them clean with my sleeve, but that only rubbed the dirt in.

  Magda’s shrill scream howled out once again. “Charlie!” I stumbled toward the direction of the voice and finally collapsed in despair.

  The sound of crunching snow told me my pursuer was closing in. In a final act of desperation, I had the thought that maybe Perla could be used as some sort of protective talisman. I grabbed the doll from my pocket and held it up in front of me as Corbin approached, but I lost all hope when I saw Perla begin to fall apart in my hands. Corbin just looked at me and laughed. “You think a fuckin’ doll is gonna help you?” He kept stepping toward me unabated. The doll was worthless.

  His arm shot out and he grabbed my shirt, using it to lift me from the ground. “You’re a pathetic little shit,” he said as I heard his switchblade open. My sight grew dimmer until I only saw darkness. “It’s time for you to die.” I faded out of consciousness and my body went limp.

  “Okay, so then what happened?” my son asked in anticipation. I was telling him the same story I just told you, though for him I cleaned it up a bit.

  “Well, I’m not sure exactly,” I responded.

  “What do you mean you’re not sure? Where did that man Corbin go?”

  I looked at my son’s face, which was lit by the few remnants of dusky sunlight that filtered through the window of my study. I could see his brow furrow as he tried to make sense of what he’d just heard. He was just about the same age as I was when Corbin first came to me. He looked out the window to the grounds of Biltfort Manor. Our second-floor vantage point gave us a spectacular view.

  “I don’t know where he went exactly. I guess he returned to his garage. All I know for sure is that I woke up the next morning in the same spot where he left me. I brushed off the snow and dirt and crawled back to the house. I never saw him or Magda again.”

  “And grandma and grandpa were okay?”

  “Yeah, they were fine.” My parents, who’d lived happy lives, passed away naturally many years later. They were never even aware of what had happened.

  “Why didn’t he kill you?”

  “I’m not really sure.” I continued to study my son’s face to gauge his reaction to what I was telling him. I didn’t want him to get too disturbed by what he was hearing. I suppose it may seem weird that I was telling my young son a real-life horror story, on Christmas Eve of all nights, but I had some good reasons. First, it was therapeutic to finally tell someone what’d happened all those years ago. He was at the right age where he’d still believe me, but was old enough to rationalize it away if he wanted to. Second, I wanted to make sure that Corbin hadn’t ever come to visit him, and judging by how he responded to what I was telling him, he’d never met the man. Finally, I told him the story because he asked me about the 1958 Christmas tree. And to be clear, my son didn’t ask me why it was missing, as I had once asked, instead he asked why it was so big.

  I continued with my story. “So that spot where I woke up Christmas morning, the spot that Magda lured me to, can you guess where it was?”

  “It was where the 1958 tree is. Right?”

  “Yep!” I said. “When I passed out I dropped Perla in that exact spot. And do you remember what she was made out of?”

  The cogs and wheels in his brain turned. “Wasn’t her head a pinecone?”

  I nodded yes. “That next spring, I noticed a new tree growing. By the time the next Christmas came along, it was already over ten feet tall.

  My son, who was much more logical than I ever was, took issue. “Trees don’t grow that fast! And you didn’t even plant it correctly, you just dropped a thirty-year-old pinecone in the snow!”

  “I know all that,” I said in agreement. “I can’t totally explain it. All I know for sure is that the tree kept growing at a tremendous rate. After a few years, it was as big as the trees that had been there for decades. Now, it’s the biggest tree out of all of them, by far.”

  My son scratched his head in contemplation as he looked out the large picture window. The fading sunlight painted the snowy ground gold and silhouetted the Christmas trees against the sky. The fireplace behind us crackled as the festive lights along the eaves turned on automatically, illuminating the house. “I bet Magda’s buried under that tree,” he concluded.

  I was speechless. What’s the expression? Out of the mouths of babes? He was right. Sometimes the truth is so obvious that you can’t help but miss it if you’re looking too close. You never see the full picture if you spend all your time looking at the individual brush strokes, but all of the sudden, everything made perfect sense. I was almost embarrassed at the fact that I never figured it out for myself. Corbin, after murdering Magda, needed a place to quickly dispose of her body, and what better place than a hole that he’d already started digging and would no longer be needing?

  “Dad?” my son prodded, bringing me out of my deep thought.

  “I think you’re right, son.”

  “Whoa,” he said in awe.

  For thirty years I’d believed I’d failed Magda, but I finally realized that when I dropped Perla in that exact spot, I’d actually given her spirit the means to make her mark on the world. She was the girl who nobody knew existed – the girl whose entire life was erased without leaving even the slightest mark behind. The tree served as a living grave-marker that was grander than anything that could be carved from stone. It was a way for her to be remembered, a way for her to avoid being removed from history completely. The entire time, her spirit had been pushing that tree up towards the heavens, that’s why it was so big. I never saved her life, but whatever it was that I managed to do, I somehow saved her soul. I can’t say that I completely understand how it worked out this way, but I know in my heart that I’m right.

  “Should we have her moved to a cemetery?” my son asked, again breaking me out of my thought.

  “No, I think she’s happy where she is.” I put my hand on his shoulder as we both stared out to Magda’s tree. “You know what? I don’t think my job is done. We have some time before your mom gets home, do you want to go down there and put a few ornaments on that tree?”

  “We’ll have to bring a ladder,” my son replied with a serious tone, “but we should do it. Magda will like that, I think.”

  “She will. I’m sure of it. And next year,” I said, “we’ll hire a crane to decorate the whole thing with thousands of lights. We’ll make it a new tradition. It will be the grandest Christmas tree in the state, maybe even the world.”

  “Cool!” he said, barely containing his excitement.

  On our way out of the house we stopped by the parlor, where my son pulled an armload of ornaments off of our tree. I took only one, a little figurine of Santa, and with that, we headed outside to spread some long overdue Christmas cheer.

  The Grim Melody

  Brady Hollis fell forty-seven floors and lived.

  Even after hitting the ground he was still conscious. He was aware of the screams and the panic that surrounded him, and he felt a tinge of relief when the ambulance and firetruck arrived. There was no pain when the responders carefully placed him on a backboard and finally got him into the ambulance.

  “Inbound with a male construction worker. Twenty-seven years,” the paramedic said into his radio as she called ahead to the hospital. She looked Brady up and down. “Possible blunt force trauma. Pulse sixty, blood pressure one-twenty over eighty.”

 
The driver raised his eyes and shot a look through the rear view mirror. “Double check that. There’s no way his vitals are THAT normal.”

  “I already did!” the tending paramedic shot back.

  Their trip was short – Saint Augustus Hospital was only a few blocks away and the midday traffic was light. As they pulled up outside the ER, the ambulance doors were flung open and Brady, still alert, was greeted by a team of medical professionals who tended to him immediately.

  “He fell from the top of that huge tower they’re building,” the paramedic reported.

  The doctor flashed a light into Brady’s eye. “How is he still in one piece?”

  Both paramedics looked at each other and shrugged as Brady was wheeled into the emergency room. “I don’t know. When we got there he was on the street. Witnesses said he hit the asphalt head on.”

  “Wow. Well let’s take a look at him,” the doctor said as he followed the gurney inside.

  The stunned doctors kept him overnight for observation, but aside from some bruising and abrasions, they found nothing wrong with him. His construction buddies visited – more than could fit in the room – and eventually they had to be shooed out by Carla, Brady’s nurse for the night. “He needs room to breathe, gentleman,” she said as she worked her way past the broad-shouldered men.

  The men said their goodbyes with a procession of handshakes, fist bumps, and solid pats to the shoulder. Soon the room quieted down, and Carla was alone with Brady. She went through her spiel – call button on the side of the bed, pitcher of water on the table, TV remote next to the bedrail – but halfway through she stopped her automated speech and looked at him in awe. “I’m sorry, but did you really fall from the top of that building? It’s just so hard to believe.”