The Napper Man

04 October 2009

This is a horror story I wrote when I was nineteen years old, as a bit of a nod towards Stephen King. Words: 3755.

Joe stepped on the clutch and pushed the ancient truck down into third. The engine whined in protest, the familiar shudder of the bodywork pulling itself apart. The dashboard vibrated so badly that Joe had lost his house keys somewhere down in the foot well.

The Ford was a rattletrap old thing twenty years past its sell by date, as far as Joe was concerned, and right now, he was concerned because he couldn’t see two feet in front of the grimy damn windshield.

The rain was coming down so fast it felt like heaven must’ve set the fire sprinklers on hell. He cursed good-naturedly - Joe was always good-natured - and struggled to wipe the desert dust away from the inside of the glass with his handkerchief. It made no difference of course. Just smeared the whole lot around a fair bit, that’s all, just like when Joe’s missus mopped the kitchen floor.

Just like when Joe’s missus mopped the floor. Joe sniggered to himself. He’d have to remember that one for the boys at the bar. Hey, hang on – was that a shadow over there to the right? He thought it was, and gingerly touched the brakes. He must be here by now, surely. He knew the route to old man Landers’ place like the back of his skinny yellow hand.

Joe climbed over to the passenger seat - the driver’s door was so bent out of shape that it wouldn’t open, after being side swiped by a blind old coot in the grocery store parking lot last week. Said coot – old Jenners was his name – had only been doing a crawl, but it had done damage all the same. Jenners, the wizened old raisin, had sat there peering over his wheel, blinking like a mole in the sun. Bernie wasn’t the most careful of people when it came to fixing the grocery store truck. After all, it was Joe, not his manager, who had to drive it.

Joe had to climb over the crate of foodstuffs to get to the darn passenger side door! Damn that guy. He could at least fork out for a little repair like this one. He cupped his hand against the pane, peered out. Yeah. Here he was. Joe braced himself and opened the door.

The rain stung his skin. It sang aloud, falling so hard it threw the orange Texas desert sand up into the air in little puffs as it hit the earth. The weather vane on top of Landers’s roof was whirling round like a regular dervish.

He pulled the crate of groceries off the passenger seat and made two attempts to shut the door with his ass. Good job there wasn’t any loose bread in this crate. It wouldn’t last long in this rain.

“God damnitt!” he exclaimed, running through the rain towards the house as fast as his elderly body would carry him. By the time he reached the porch, wet orange sand had so covered his work shirt that he could barely make out the checked pattern underneath.

He put the crate down, brushed himself off and peered out through the torrent of rain to where the truck stood at the edge of the dirt road. Yup, there had to have been a small tornado somewhere around here to have that much dust in the rain. There was a real storm of it coming down too, a few flashes of lightning over the distant hills. The wind was picking up. At this rate, he might have to stop a while.

That thought made him grimace. Landers wasn’t the most hospitable of guys anymore. Got kinda old and cranky in the last few years. The last Joe had heard, Landers had gotten a little weird. Took to sitting out on his porch with a big old rifle in his lap last summer. Some silly fool had asked him what it was for, and Landers had touched his nose and winked. “Freaks,” he’d said knowingly, nodding his head.

Jees. Joe didn’t want to wait around to find out who was classified as a freak or not.

He sighed and turned back to the house, went to the door, careful to avoid the third plank after the steps because it felt sort of springy. Nearly rotted through, it must have been here for some years to get that bad out in a dry place like this. Have to have a word with Landers about that some day, he’d nearly broken his ankle on the last visit.

He put the crate down again and rattled on the door, yelled real loud – Landers was getting kind of deaf too – and waited.

And waited.

“Landers!” he hollered after a minute, glancing at his watch and then back to the truck, which was growing orange in the downpour.

No answer.

Well, hell, he didn’t want to get stuck out here all day. Landers bitched if Joe left the groceries on the porch because critters got into them. Joe went over to the window and rubbed at the muck. “Lan-ders!” He rattled the pane.

No movement, no sound, no nothing from inside the house. Landers was never out when his groceries were due.

He peered through the grime, but it was no use. The room inside was dark, and all he could do was make out a couple of silhouettes of furniture. He turned to go back to the door. Hey – wait a minute – was that someone sat in the armchair by the hearth?

Joe didn’t know. He couldn’t tell from here. Whoever it was, they weren’t moving a whole lot. Then a thought occurred to him.

Oh-oh.

Joe dismissed the thought like any sensible person. He stood by the window looking through the pane at the figure in the chair in the dark, that might not have been a figure, and listening to the sound of the weather vane whirring, the singing of the rain.

Weather vane, singing rain, windowpane, there was no point standing here all day. “Landers!” he yelled, going back to the door and pounding on it.

Damnitt. Well he couldn’t just leave here if he was in there and he was...

He tried the door-handle. It was open. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed. Landers never left his door open; he had about six strong bolts on the inside, to keep the freaks out.

Okay, be cool about this.

Joe picked up his crate and booted the door open with his ass. He was in the kitchen. He paused to consider. He could always leave the groceries on the island and get the hell out of here.

On the other hand, how would that look if he was...

Joe considered some more. There wasn’t any smell. Well, aside from the usual musty, urine smell of this place. Jees, can’t you just tell when there’s an old guy on his way out?

If he was still about, that was.

He darn well should be. Old Man Landers may have been loosing his marbles and getting kind of cranky, but he was still an able old goat. He drove into Dodge most days to sit out front of the market place with all the other old coots, playing cards or bowls or some other old folk’s games like chess. Joe had seen him running after stray shuttlecocks before now, but, you know what they say. It can happen just like that.

Weather vane, singing rain, windowpane: someone ought to make a song out of that.

“Landers!” He strode out of the kitchen and into the hall, took a glance up the stairs, nothing there.

There’s the front room. Go on, go in.

“Shit,” Joe said and walked in.

All right. So no smell. But there he was in the chair. Maybe he was just sleeping.

Does he look like he’s just sleeping?

Nope. He looked pretty dead, and it wasn’t very pretty. It didn’t look like a freaking stroke either.

Joe hadn’t really been expecting this at all. He’d been expecting to find old Landers trashed out in his chair with a bottle of Jim Beam in one hand and a ciggie drooping in the other.

Joe went nearer. He didn’t feel as bad as he thought he ought to but he had to get a closer look at this mess just for the sheer morbid curiosity.

Landers was in his chair. He was sat there, and he could have been sleeping, except for that God-almighty look on his face and that great red stain that ran down his shirt all the way to his trousers.

Joe was near enough to be uncomfortable now. He was starting to get that twitch up his spine that said get the hell out. Landers’s wrinkled, yellowing face was curled up in the strangest expression. What was it? It could have been horror. It could also have been ecstasy.

The sight of a corpse with that kind of expression on its face is enough to send someone crazy. Joe curled up his lip in disgust, began backing out of the room.

He stopped again, because he was trying to understand the wound at the neck. It was pretty messy, sort of like someone had put a knife in there and swivelled it around, or like he’d been savaged by something.

Someone had killed this guy. Joe shivered. What if they were still here?

He scooted out of the room backwards, staring at the corpse.

He almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of a scream piercing the air behind him.

He whirled around to see the shape of a small child disappearing up the stairs.

“Hey!” Joe ran after it, almost slipping on the frayed carpet that had come loose from its tacks at the bottom. His heart was skipping like diddly. He clutched his chest and forehead, paused halfway up the stairs to get his breath back.

He got to the top in time to see the kid disappearing into one of the bedrooms and slamming the door. Oh great: a kid in the house with a corpse. Screw it up for life, that one.

“Hey, kid!” No lock. He could feel the weight of the youngster on the other side, trying to keep it shut. He struggled briefly and pushed it open.

The kid dodged around the other side of the bed, screaming at the top of its lungs, knocking a vase over on the way and shattering it all over the wooden floorboards.

Joe stopped and put his hands up. “Look. I’m not here to hurt you! Calm down, honey!”

The kid continued to scream, which didn’t surprise Joe at all. Joe stood there in the doorway speaking to it softly, how he wasn’t going to hurt it, and how he was as scared of the kid as the kid was of him.

The kid calmed down after a while and stood staring at him blankly, and he stood staring at the kid.

Now Joe could see her, it was obvious she was a girl child. No more than what? Six? Seven? She was wearing a pair of dusty jeans and a t-shirt. Light brown hair all messed up, in two little bows at the sides of her head. God, Joe thought again. She’s been in here with that corpse.

“Hey, it’s all right. I’m a friend. I’m not going to hurt you. Look, I was just here delivering the groceries when I found...”

The girl was shaking. She was crouching against the far wall between the bed and the wardrobe. For want of anything better to do, Joe squatted down.

“He’s dead...” the girl moaned. “He won’t wake up.”

“Okay, honey. Don’t worry about that now. Who is he? Your grandpa?”

The girl pursed her lips, shook her head. “Don’t know him, mister. Napper man,” she whispered. “It was a napper man and he napped me.”

Joe frowned. “Napper man? You mean he kidnapped you? Old Landers?”

The girl made a confused motion with her head. “Look out for the napper man,” she told Joe, wide eyed.

“Okay,” Joe nodded. “We need to get you out of here. Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you did he?”

The girl shook her head. “I runned away from him. You really have to look out for the napper man, really, really.”

“Okay,” Joe said softly, wiping his forehead, stressed. He considered the situation. As far as he was aware, Landers didn’t have a phone. Joe obviously couldn’t leave her here. He looked back up at the kid. “Do you want to come with me?” He asked carefully, holding out his hand.

The girl looked at his hand and nodded slowly. “Okay. You’re not like the napper man, I think.” She came towards him cautiously.

“What’s your name?” Joe asked gently, taking her hand.

“Mikey,” the girl replied.

He stood and began to lead her out of the room. “Mikey. What’s that short for? Michelle?”

“No,” the girl murmured. “Michaela.”

Joe wiped his brow. They were at the top of the stairs. Her hand was clammy and cold in his. “Okay, Michaela, we have to go downstairs. I have a truck outside, and I’m going to take you back to town with me, and we can find your mommy. Is that all right with you?”

The girl nodded again. She looked so small and delicate, big dark shadows under her eyes, like she hadn’t slept for a week.

Joe tried to pick her up, and she let him. “Don’t worry about Landers down there. He can’t hurt you.”

“I know,” the girl muttered next to his ear. “But you’ve got to be careful of the napper man. In case he comes back.”

The remark threw Joe. “I don’t think Landers will be coming back anytime soon,” he said, carrying her down the stairs. “Do you mean someone else? Did someone else bring you here? Is that who killed him?”

The girl shook her head. “He said he was going to put me under his house with all the other ones if I didn’t behave. He said he got a whole collection of other ones.”

“Landers?” Joe wondered.

The girl didn’t reply.

He set her down when they got into the kitchen. She gave a wary glance back through the door into the hall. “Don’t worry,” Joe told her again, leading her towards the door. He thought about picking the crate up and taking it with him, then shook his head, stupidly. He left it where it was on the unit.

Joe frowned at the string of garlic cloves hung against the inside of the door. He led her outside onto the porch. The sky was black as pitch. The rain was still singing.

“We have to make a run for the truck, honey,” he told her, and she nodded compliantly.

They made a run for it, rain stinging at their skin. He struggled over the passenger seat, helped her in beside him, shut the door. He shook the sand out of his hair.

“I’m hungry,” the girl said after they had settled in, and now he wished he had brought those groceries back with him.

“That’s okay hon, we’ll get you a nice big milkshake and fries at the diner when we get back into town.” Joe would call the local sheriff from the public phone at the diner.

The girl grinned eagerly. Then she frowned. “But watch out for the napper man,” she told him sincerely.

Joe shook his head. “Don’t you worry about any napper man now. You’re safe here with me, and I won’t let anybody nap you.”

He started up the engine. The girl fell silent, staring at the dusty dashboard. Then she began to sniffle.

“Hey, honey, it’s all right.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a handkerchief for her to use, began turning the truck around to head back into town. Joe was thinking about what he would say to the sheriff. I just knew there was something wrong the moment the door opened on me like that...

The wipers weren’t working too well. He could hardly see where he was going. Sand spattered all over the windshield, rain blasting the paintwork. Then I heard this almighty scream. I tell you, that kid has got one helluva scream. I nearly jumped right out of my skin...

The girl sat sniffling into the handkerchief in the passenger seat. Guess if he was going to see the sheriff, Bernie was going to get in trouble about this old van, but to heck with Bernie. Look at the kid crying like that.

“Want to talk about it?” He asked her after a moment.

She shrugged miserably.

“Tell me. Come on. It won’t hurt.”

She blew her nose and looked at the sand accumulating on the windshield. “Momma always said to look out for the napper man. She said some day he might try to nap me and take me away from her, and I didn’t like that. But he napped me from the corner of Delaware where the park is, and he put me in the back of a van, and I kept screaming but it didn’t do anything. He said he was going to take me to an expert. I don’t know what he meant, but that was what he said. An expert, just like that.” The girl held her stomach as if she were getting a pang there. “I’m real hungry. I need something to eat real bad.”

He studied her in concern. When was the last time she’d eaten? Poor kid, she looked half-starved. “Well, there might be some boiled sweets in the glove compartment,” Joe said doubtfully. An expert. Oh Jesus. An expert. So that was what old Landers was nowadays, was he? An expert?

The girl checked, shuffling her thin little fingers through the mess of papers and garbage. There weren’t, damnitt.

The rain was easing up a little now, and Joe could see better. “How long you been in that house, honey?” he asked her. “You remember?”

The kid clutched her stomach. “Don’t know,” she replied with a shrug. “A couple of nights I think. But I don’t know. He shut me up in the dark, and he wouldn’t give me anything to drink. He made me cry, and I got real hungry, mister. I got so hungry I couldn’t see nothing straight. Then he came in, and I told him that if my momma was here, she’d get him bad, and that she was going to come after him, but he didn’t believe me.”

Joe nodded thoughtfully. “Do you know where your momma lives? Where are you from? Cause I don’t think you’re from round here. Your accent’s unusual.”

“Where am I?” The girl asked.

“You’re in Texas, honey.”

“Texas?” The kid asked in surprise. “I ain’t from Texas.”

“That’s what I figured,” Joe replied, smiling at the expression.

She didn’t answer. She just sat there looking thoughtful with her arms clutched around her stomach.

“You sure they didn’t hurt you or nothing, hon?” Joe asked again.

The girl got another pang and bent up almost double. She shook her head. “I didn’t give them no chance to hurt me. Momma always said what I should do, if the napper man got me. She said scream real hard, and kick him, and if that didn’t work then I should bite him real hard.”

Joe nodded. “That sounds like pretty good advice,” he replied.

“But it didn’t work, and he said he was going to take me to an expert, and he kept me in his van, and I was screaming so much, and it took ages and ages. Then when he got there everything went funny, and they shouted a lot.”

“Was it the napper man that did that to Landers?” Joe asked, curiosity overruling any notion of sensitivity.

The girl shook her head.

“Then who did?”

She doubled up again, face screwed up in pain. “The napper man said he was going to tell someone, and Landers didn’t want him to, so the napper man left. Landers said he was going to study me. He said he wanted to put me with his collection of pickled monsters under his house.”

Joe looked at the girl, puzzled. She had her arms wrapped so tightly around her waist.

“I really am hungry mister. You’ve got to get me some feed real quick, because I’m going all funny inside again.”

“Okay honey,” he murmured. “When we get into town I’ll get you something to eat. It’s not much further now.” He looked at the kid and frowned hard. Collection of pickled monsters? What the heck was all that about? Maybe stopping in that house with the dead man had addled her brain.

“No,” the girl was saying, “I need feeding now. I can’t wait no more. You gotta feed me or else.”

Joe looked at her in surprise. Her voice was so strained and sharp. She didn’t sound exactly like a kid. She sounded sort of like Joe’s missus when he’d done something to bug her. “Okay hon,” he replied, trying to stay patient. “We’ll be there any minute. Just hang on, and we’ll get you something to eat.”

She was crying again, tears coming down her cheeks in a little stream. She put the handkerchief to her nose and blew it angrily. She doubled up in pain again. Joe was starting to get worried. Something weird about these pains. He’d seen a pregnant woman having contractions before now. The girl sort of looked like that.

“I’m so hungry,” she whispered. “I’m gonna die if I don’t get some feed.”

“Just wait,” Joe told her again, feeling helpless. “I can’t do anything for you right now. Just wait.”

“Mister?”

Joe glanced at her. She looked so cute and innocent sat there with her hair in two little bows at the sides of her head.

“I’m real sorry mister, you’re a nice man, but I’m real hungry, and when I get hungry I gotta do something about it...”

“What..?” Joe began –

But the girl had pulled out of her seat, and then she was on him, and he couldn’t see a thing. The truck skidded off the dirt track and into the scrub, engine whining in protest. He let out a muffled cry of surprise, reaching helplessly for the handle to the jammed door. The last thing he felt was the sensation of her teeth scraping at his throat.

Copyright © 04 October 2009

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