The Denizens of Louie Shepard

Michael Wolf 

f it's true that every dog has his day, then call me Fido, thought Louie as he knelt beside the large hot tub to oblige the request of the woman. She was lying naked, face-down on the redwood deck next to the audibly churning hot-tub. She had simply asked him to rub oil on her, but Louie had read enough Penthouse Forum to know what might eventually happen. He gave it only a passing muse that he had no idea who this tanned, naked goddess was—or even what he was doing in this steaming redwood bath house—it was more important to take advantage of the situation before it slipped away.

Louie could live to be 600 million years old and it would still amaze him how soft a woman’s body could be. He ran his well-oiled hands over the graceful swells and swales of her back and legs, edging closer to the more erogenous zones with each pass, carefully monitoring her for any negative reaction.

He had just slipped his hand between the gentle recesses between her thighs when she turned and sat up. His heart skipped a beat and he gave her his best smile. Any fear of miscommunication quickly dispelled, however, when he saw her purposeful grin and felt her hand slide up his back.

“Take off your clothes,” she whispered as she leaned toward him, punctuating her words with a flickering tongue in his ear. She eased away with a glimmer in her eye that told Louie it was showtime. He stood upright and tried to take his button top polo shirt off by pulling it up over his head. The shirt was in the air, covering his head and arms before he realized it was stuck-the collar still buttoned. He stumbled around, struggling with the shirt, feeling like a blind, crazy sail with legs, when he heard her giggle. She was next to him. He felt her hands on his body again and a gentle push that toppled him into the hot tub with his shirt still wrapped around his head and arms.

He fell into something that was not water. He felt a soft crunch as if he’d landed in a stack of loosely piled hay, then a feeling of being tickled all over by little feathers. Feathers that flitted over his skin with a million lives that instilled a sense of urgency in removing his shirt. Panicking, he tore away his shirt and found himself chest deep in a black, twisting mass that seethed and bristled with life.

Spiders.

Millions of them, crawling over one another making the eerie rustling noise of countless tiny scrambling legs. With a gagging scream, he lunged forward only to succeed in submerging himself completely into the arachnid bath. Darkness and cold mindless terror engulfed him. He opened his mouth to scream but it quickly filled with the skittering madness. He could feel every hideous appendage madly raking his body. He was suffocating, his mouth stuffed with writhing horror. He lost control of his bowels and didn’t care. It was at this moment of insanity that the sheer impossibility of the situation came to him.

Dreaming. I’m dreaming! Louie thought. He suddenly realized he had fallen prey to an incredible swindle of his senses. He lost his fear but not his revulsion as he clambered up and began his familiar ascent through the layers of muddy dementia separating nightmare from reality. Louie fought to wake up. He knew he was dreaming, but remained deep within the convoluted folds of his subconscious, a drowning man, struggling to the surface of a winter lake only to find an impenetrable ceiling of ice.

(Claw at the ice)

A sudden impact around his neck forced his eyes open and bulging. Innate orientation instantly put him in the familiar setting of his dimly lit room. He choked once from the pressure on his trachea, then the cold, hard hand that had awakened him closed around his throat like a wrecking yard claw.

(Pound on the ceiling of ice)

Louie’s eyelids fluttered and his lungs bucked in protest, but it wasn’t until he saw the large figure hovering over his bed that he realized what was happening.

(Look for the light, pound on the ceiling of ice)

There was a stranger in his house, pinning him against his pillow. The intruder’s head was covered with a stained, white pillowcase tied off with a length of bullrope. There were holes cut out for one eye of a spectral luminosity, and another just a dark hole of seeming nonexistence.

(Pound, look for the light)

With incredible strength, he held Louie to one side as he turned his intentions to Catherine, who lay sleeping obliviously beside them. Louie saw the glint of the stranger’s blade in a rising bony fist. He felt the bed pump and heard the soft chucking sounds of murder.

(Ice rending, groaning... weakening)

Then it was him. Louie was The Stranger, stabbing Catherine’s limp body two times, knife raised for the third, before he realized that he had changed personas. Her lifeless face framed by her luxurious auburn hair made his gut wrench and he saw what was at the end of his other arm. He looked down to where he was lying just before-and saw the stranger there instead of himself. Louie looked at the bloody knife in his raised hand and screamed. He screamed again and again, each successively louder-until he finally did break through the last plane of sleep.

(Face through, glaring light... air... breathe... breathe.)

He was awake now. He was sure of it. Eyesight spinning, he looked at Catherine. She was sleeping safely. He felt sick, but at least he was awake. He rolled out of bed, picking at the pajamas glued to his body with sweat, and staggered towards the bedroom door. He slid down the hallway against the wall like a sailor deep within the viscera of a storm-wracked ship. His sight would not stabilize or focus, so he made his way down the hallway from memory.

“...time is it?” he muttered. It seemed like hair was growing on his eyes, but as he rubbed them he could make out the clock. “Only eleven-thirty... Jesus.” He moaned, then put his face against the wall. He had been asleep for only one hour.

Louie began his “waking up” routine. Everything he looked at in his cosmopolitan condominium was gilt with an alien sheen. He felt groggy but dared not sleep until he was fully detached from the invisible tendrils that still bound him to the dream-atrocities.

He was a grizzled veteran of the slumber wars. Batteries of doctors had treated his affliction with an array of drugs. All were unsuccessful. Nevertheless, Louie privately prided himself on keeping a cool head through it all. Even his wife had a hard time telling when things were going badly for him. It was only after she’d wakened more than twice to find him greased with sweat, trying to kill imaginary crawlies with an invisible weapon or clutching the bedposts, babbling about finding his genitals, that she insisted he see the doctor. Because he was an excellent computer programmer who genuinely loved his job, they had given him an tentative diagnosis of “narcolepsy” and six months sick leave.

Now he had his own way of dealing with the aftershocks of each successive trip to the nighttime netherworld. His favorite was to smoke a cigarette and watch television. He had quit smoking for over three years, but had been driven back to the habit. He remembered his first smoke after all that time. It went down easy. It went down good. Like he had never quit, and he thought he heard a papery whisper as he inhaled that first draw that said, “Welcome back, Louie... Old friend.”

Yes, but at these times of self-imposed calm, a smoke and the blessed TV were the only sure link to the outside world that kept him busy while he cleaned house in his brain. What worried him lately though, was the way the usually definitive line between dreamland and reality was beginning to dissolve. He could start to tell Catherine about something and then realize he wasn’t sure if it really happened or not. And the real creeper came when he began to have trouble with his eyesight. He started to notice things skirting just inside his peripheral vision. At first they were just amorphous multicolored shapes that would vanish spontaneously when confronted. But lately they had started to become bolder and more lucid, with clearly defined features, and Louie started recognizing them as the denizens of his sleeping disorder.

A person might think it was time to quiver on over to the nearest basket-weaving academy, but for some inexplicable reason he had managed to hold a detached, rational view of even some of the most horrible apparitions. Probably for the same reason he despised those flailing characters in the horror movies who always went catatonic at the first sign of trouble. As long as every other aspect of his life remained intact he could justify his claim to sanity.

But it was on nights like these that the little beasties were particularly active. He tried to concentrate on the television. There was a news commentator talking about the latest serial killer before Louie switched channels in disgust. Star Trek was on and Mr. Spock was performing a Vulcan-Svengali mentalism trick on a giant stone caterpillar. Most of the time it only took around fifteen minutes to shake the sticky membrane caping his senses after waking, but this one was stubborn.

He was rubbing his brow, contemplating the woodgrain on his coffee table and thinking, This can’t be happening to me, I drive a Volvo for God’s sake. Nothing ever happens to people that drive Volvos. The fingers of his free hand strolled over the perfectly cleaned and waxed surface of the table. He glanced down to the immaculate, plush carpeting that resisted stains better than any other brand, then to the precisely stacked magazines. Catherine was not only gorgeous, but an impeccable housekeeper, whipping every room of their condo into a photo from Better Homes and Gardens. Sometimes he wondered how such an incredible woman could want a road-toad like him.

It was then he got a whiff of a strange odor. It was a slight, sour ammonia scent that welled under the cupped palm of Louie’s hand as he kneaded his forehead. It teased the center of his groggy head. He paused, then parted his fingers to look around the room and confirm to himself that it was just another mind quirk rolling down the pipeline. Instead, he saw something that topped every drunken-buddy ghost story he had ever heard.

There was a kind of man sitting in the easy chair directly across from Louie. It was Death’s ugly cousin, escaped from a locked back bedroom while the Grim Reaper was distracted by someone who came knocking. It sat back with its hands clenching each arm rest, its skin a waxy yellow disease pulled taut over a mask of gleeful rage, with one dead eye that looked off to the left at nothing, while the other boiled and danced like a porthole to hell. Then in jittery claymation motion, it held up two wads of material, one clump at the end of each of its outstretched, gangly arms. It cocked its head in a twisted grin, then let unfurl a dirty rope and a torn, bloody pillowcase from its hands.

Louie knew him. It was The Stranger from tonight’s nocturnal horror show. Louie remembered the dream-and the demon-but the shock of the actual encounter made him freeze and stare with his heart beating in his chest like a salvo of M-80s detonating in an empty oil drum. Then the man-thing got up from the chair. As it rose, Louie saw it left a gray smear on the easy chair. Putting its mottled, bony hands on the coffee table it leaned within a foot of Louie’s face. Rancid vapor puffed from a rotting maw as it spoke. “Hi Louie... Got any gum?”

Its head kicked back in a shrieking laughter of many more voices than its own. Then its head snapped back into a stare-down with Louie so fast, it looked like trick photography. The creature had shifted moods instantly. An almost orgasmic anger shook its grotesque body and clenched its lipless jaw so hard that Louie saw two of its yellow-gray teeth actually crack. Louie had never actually felt hatred in his life but this being positively crackled with an unspeakable malevolence.

“G-Get outta here!” Louie heard himself stammer.

The creature’s expression suddenly slackened while its lidless, jaundiced eyes skipped back and forth, its bad eye only grudgingly mimicking the active one.

“We’re going down, Louie, and it’s good.” The thing shuddered, panned the ceiling luxuriously, then back into the stare-down. “Gotta wreck you. Drag us from the pickup, put your dick in the dirt.”

Us? Louie thought. Maybe us meant the man-thing and the other creatures he had dreamed of.

“No, not me and other creatures you have dreamed of,” it said, and grinned.

“You know what I’m thinking?”

“You’re looking for something to bash me with, Shepard.”

The thing was right. Louie was scanning around for something within reach to use as a weapon but the most deadly thing he could see was a newspaper lying on the coffee table. Yeah, a rolled up newspaper, the heart of home security. Then he thought of his gun in the nightstand, and pushed the thought away. Keep talking, look at the newspaper keep the thing distracted. He snatched up the paper as if it were a real weapon.

The creature looked puzzled for a second, seemingly not picking up the thought of the gun. It then brightened and continued talking as if suddenly remembering a funny story.

“Do you remember when you were a kid Louie?” it clattered. “You’d get in some nasty fights with Wayne wouldn’t you?”

Louie simply gaped.

“You would go to your room just twisting with rage. You’d pound your fists on the bed and wish Wayne was dead. You even imagined bashing his head in with a rock, didn’t you?”

“You can’t tell me that,” Louie said. “What the hell are you anyway?” Suddenly Louie was angry as well as scared. He was getting defensive, which was in line on the instant boxcar bump of emotions, the final boxcar being guilt. The thing was right...

“Watched his forehead cave in, didn’t you?”

...but so very wrong at the same time. Louie had realized long ago he loved Wayne firmly, and the sibling wars they had while growing up were pretty common stuff. Wayne lived out of state now...

“Saw his brains spill from his crushed skull, didn’t you?”

...but he seldom missed an opportunity to visit. Always the older brother and always the bachelor. A successful automobile salesman now, “I could sell a glass of water to a carp!” was one of Wayne’s threadbare quips. Louie would just smile and nod because everyone knew he was an unquestionably good guy. If anything, the memories had only...

“Didn’t you?”

...drawn him and Louie closer when tempered with the all-healing elixir of time. And even when they were kids, it had never been that big a deal to anyone the next day, least of all to Louie, but the way this creature said it made him feel dirty and criminal.

“Hey... I’ve been out, Louie,” it graveled flatly and momentarily broke the stare-down to snatch the newspaper out of Louie’s hand and roll it out on the table. It looked at the front page for a moment then back at Louie. Cocking its malformed head like the ghost of some evil, wall-eyed librarian it said sweetly, “Page three.”

Louie lifted a hand for the paper, he was suffering from an acute case of brainlock trying to mentally separate and catalogue the incredible chain of events that were happening to him. But for now he moved as an automation, unfolding and turning the paper to page three.

It poked at him, “Read, Shepard.”

He searched around the page and found a tax levy story, a human interest bit, and then the only thing it could have been talking about:

 

HOMELESS KILLINGS CONTINUE

An anonymous tip directed police to the discovery of the third skid row murder in the last two weeks. The dismembered body was found in the trash receptacle behind 35^th Street in the Lebanon Hills district. When police were asked if the killer had followed the earlier pattern of missing body parts they had no comment. The victim was...

 

Louie glazed over and stared at the paper long after he had finished reading it. A burning began to rise inside of him. His body was on autopilot now. Primary fight-or-flight chemicals, inherited from his Neolithic ancestors and tempered by civilization, coursed through his gut. He began breathing deeper... and harder... fanning the glowing spark of desperation that kindled the coals of human defiance. The fuel then quickly exploded into a flame that consumed his fear and made him stand up to face his antagonist. “Who... are... you?” Louie asked evenly through a clamped jaw.

“Who do we think Shepard? Put it together.” It leaned closer and Louie winced at its foul breath. “Can’t figure out who wanted to bash that fat hen at the market today? Remember she wanted to pay for her groceries with pennies counted one-by-one while you were standing behind her, late for work?” It sucked a breath in deeply-Louie heard something rattle deep in its sinewy chest-and continued, “Can’t figure out who wants to lay that new girl at the office? Can’t figure out who wanted to kill our own brother?”

“Are you supposed to be me?” Louie asked, trying to retain a golly-eyed interest look on his face while he ransacked his brain for some way out of this situation.

“I am not you, Shepard, but I am of you.”

Then, as if from the silhouette of a man burned into a wall after a forgotten future nuclear holocaust, middle finger up in the final act of defiance, Louie found the irrational courage and strength to lash out. He sprung a strangle-hold on the creature while it was still talking. Its neck collapsed in Louie’s hand like papyrus, exposing iron hard vertebrae in its neck and Louie just squeezed anyway. The thing laughed hoarsely and seemed not to care that it was being throttled. “WHO ARE YOU?” Louie bellowed.

“Of you, by you and for you, Louie, but separate and distinct. The backside, the devil if you want. The Great Scapegoat. The evil in everybody trying to get out, but with you it was easy.”

“Bullshit!” shouted Louie and tried to choke the thing harder. He couldn’t understand how it could still speak clearly while being strangled, and shaking it had all the effect of trying to bare-handedly unearth a telephone pole.

The thing continued indifferently, “The drugs helped, especially that one from the experimental program that quack doctor of yours recommended. And I’m sorry we had to put us through all those terrible dreams but that was an important part of my birthing process.”

Louie was at fever pitch and cried “If I’m crazy then... then...” He shook the creature as hard as he could one final time. It just cackled at him again and Louie let go and dropped on the couch in frustration.

“You’re not crazy, Louie, the truly insane never doubt their sanity. If you want proof of my ‘outings,’ maybe we can go down to the storage freezer and maybe see if any parts of those victims we read about might maybe be stashed in there.”

The statement hit him like a anti-tank missile. He could go and see but he didn’t want to find out. He hadn’t looked in the storage freezer for a month.

“What’s more important is the business at hand. We know things, don’t we Shepard? We know things about that slut Catherine.” Louie jumped at the mention of Catherine. It had hit a nerve. He didn’t completely understand what was going on but he was going to make sure she wasn’t hurt by any of it. It began wringing its hands and smiling, “Yo, Shepard, here’s the real meat. John Skykes, remember the name?” Louie liked almost everyone he ever met but he remembered John Skykes as the most self-centered jerk in the world. “While you were in Fresno, last year, she screwed him.”

“What? She wouldn’t do...”

“You found his number in your phone book, dipstick! What else do you need?” Louie was finding it hard to look away-its eye had locked on to him.

“There was a reason for that,” said Louie, wisps of gray vapor swirled and collected in his head, confusing him. “He knew one of Catherine’s friends. And... and... and that was the only way he could get a hold of her!” The fog roiled and coalesced. Fog... fog...

He felt a voice inside him.

It was an unfamiliar voice.

And it was quickly gaining ground in Louie’s head as he stared into the thing’s eye.

A change came over the man-thing. Louie watched its good eye beam and its pupil became the center of attention. It seemed to glow and spin like some kind of reality vortex. Louie felt his will being siphoned away, being replaced by anger.

Diffuse, general anger at first, then more specific.

Anger at Catherine, and the creature seemed to guide its path. “While you were gone they had some drinks, yes, and you know how after a couple of drinks she turns into The Whore of Babylon,” it said.

“I don’t..” Louie’s words stumbled, “she was with Skykes...”

“She’s been with many before Skykes.”

“She isn’t...”

“’Around the world with Louie’s wife! With whistle stops in Sodom and Gomorrah!’ That’s what he brags to your friends. Kinda catchy, don’tcha think?”

Through the fog in Louie’s head, a shape began to form. “...can’t do this... I’m...”

“He rode her, Louie,” it said, “rode her like a dog.”

Louie imagined the scene. Then he remembered how Catherine had treated him just that day, perfectly innocent, as if nothing had happened. Great liar.

The shape in the fog became clearer. It was a face. The face of this creature in front of him, and it exuded an emotion.

Revenge.

Excellent liar.

An emotion that became him. Revenge. Sweet, sweet revenge. “That cunt,” Louie hissed.

Perfect liar.

“Good... Good... Now that you know the truth, we must go to her.” It turned and moved toward the hall. “Go to her and work things out. Follow me, Louie... Follow me.”

It had an obscene walk, like its legs were hinged wrong, and Louie followed. Face slack, arms hanging limp at his side, he followed.

They walked through the living room, into the bedroom. Louie stopped beside the nightstand. The thing went to the other side of the bed. Catherine lay sleeping between them.

“Get your gun, Louie.”

He mechanically stooped down to the end table drawer, opened it, and pulled out his nickel-plated Colt automatic.

“Think, Louie, think about what she did to you. Aim the gun, Louie.”

Louie’s hand rose and the barrel centered on her face.

It jabbered excitedly, “Think about it Louie, she made you look like a fool! Everyone knew but us! All your friends are laughing at you!”

Louie’s arms started shaking, the gun had turned hot and sweaty with the dancing barrel pointed at Catherine.

He despised her for what she had done.

(it’s a lie... think about it later... not now)

He saw her passion, saw John Skykes on her, heard her moans and breathing. The whole encounter ran through his mind like a grainy home movie.

“Kill her!” the creature hissed, obviously trying to keep its voice down.

He saw her exquisite naked form clenched to that jerk, John Skykes’. Close-up of their wedding band pressing into his back. Louie hurt so much. He saw Skykes...

“She’s a whore Louie and you’re her cuckold!”

...moving on her, leering, basking in the pleasure she gave, and he didn’t deserve.

Louie was shaking violently now, streaming perspiration and puffing madly.

“I have to.” Louie whispered. “And it’ll be ok... I’ll leave...”

“Shoot her you coward!” It was hopping and waving its gristle strip arms.

“...ok because everyone will know what she’s done to me.”

Almost on its own, the gun boomed like a howitzer, the unexpected kick throwing Louie back against his folding closet doors. The mind lock was broken. And as he laid on the floor, he was smashed with the realization of what he had done.

He had shot his wife.

Shot her... shot her... in the head.

(God help me.)

A scream slapped him back to reality before he had a chance to feel anything more. He saw Catherine sitting up in bed facing away from him and toward the demon. She was shrieking.

Louie blinked-and again, hard-then was sure.

He had missed.

The way he was shaking he couldn’t have hit the Hindenburg Zeppelin if he were standing next to it, but now his head was clear and he was in control of himself.

The thing threw a caustic glare at Louie. Its sparse, wild hair and both eyes pointing different directions made it a wall-eyed, maniacal sight. It started to move towards Catherine and everything inside Louie instantly turned to stone conviction. He had one chance only. In a precision sweeping motion, he leveled the gun and fired an easy head shot at the hunkering creature.

A tuft of scalp flipped away from its deformed head and it made a sound like someone gargling eggs as it dropped forward onto the bed. Louie watched it fall and only had time to see Catherine’s imploring face to him before he felt a blow to his head and his consciousness exploding into streaking lights and a high pitched whine. He knew nothing more until he heard Catherine’s voice in ever increasing clarity over the sound of a reverse recording of someone being thrown down a well. His face broke the surface of the murky loch that was his consciousness and he became aware of her physical presence. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it seemed like two minutes of oblivion.

He opened his eyes and croaked, “Cathy...”

She lit up like Christmas in July. “You’re awake!” she gasped. “I’ve already called an ambulance.”

Louie gulped dryly. He felt something on his face and raised a hand to feel a rivulet of blood. Tracing it up his face, he felt a small gouge on his forehead he knew would develop into a softball sized bruise. He rasped, “You’re OK. I... I didn’t mean to...” Then he saw the thing as it fallen on the bed. It was stone-still, staring sightlessly.

Catherine looked over too. “What is it?” She asked, throwing her arm around him, pulling him closer.

“It’s dead.” He answered. He shifted, looked down and whispered, “It made me... I didn’t know what I...”

Before he could finish she had him in a firm but awkward hug. Louie felt her breath hitch and warm tears on his neck as she spoke softly. “Save your strength, Louie,” and began to rock him slowly. “Save your strength.”

“One thing, babe...” he said to the ceiling.

“Yeah, Lou?” she said, and sniffed.

Turning to her, slightly wall-eyed with a strange half-smile he whispered, “Got any gum?”