AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Just that old gas station,” Malcolm said.
“Sounds like a scam.” I handed the crinkled paper back to Taylor, shaking my head. “I’ll pass.”
“Bro, come on!” Taylor smacked the flyer with the tips of his fingers. “This looks fucking awesome! I drove by to scope it out. It’s legit. You can’t see much because of the woods and the cornand shit, but there’s tents and lights and this creepy ass music right behind the gas station in that big field.”
“I’m tired,” I sighed, suddenly feeling twice my age. I always did when it came to my friends. It wasn’t their fault, it’s just how life shook out for us. While Taylor was in line to take over his father’s booming car dealership one day, Malcolm had secured himself some ritzy corporate job out east. I, meanwhile, labored day in and day out, slicing and dicing carcasses for people like them to feast on, pretending I was satisfied with the direction my life was going. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to do something different, that I didn’t yearn for somethingmore, I simply had no idea what that was or where to even find it.
“You’re always tired!” Taylor shot back.
“I had to wake up at four thirty this morning to unload a fucking meat truck! What time did you roll into the dealership today? Hmm?”
“Please, Griffin? Pwease?” Taylor put his hands together in prayer, pushed out his lower lip, and gave me his best puppy dog eyes.
“You know he’s going to get more annoying,” Malcolm said, clearly resigned to being dragged along on this latest adventure, like the time we cajoled him into going to the old, haunted prison in Joliet or any number of slasher films over the years.
“You hate this shit,” I pointed out, raising my brows at Malcolm and doing my best to ignore Taylor, who’d started whining in earnest.
Malcolm shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Can’t be any worse than that Basement of the Dead thing last year, right?”
“Come on!” Taylor said again, louder and even more dramatic. He grabbed either side of my leather apron and shook me like a rag doll, as if giving me brain damage would get me to agree. “You love Halloween! You love horror movies! Thisspooky shit is right up your alley! And it’s only one night! Live a little, man!”
“Alright, alright! Jesus.” I rolled my eyes and pushed him off. “But if it’s lame, I’m going home.”
“Deal.”
There were somany cars parked near the old gas station that we ended up parking half a mile down the road in front of the cornfield, practically in the ditch.
“I didn’t even hear about this thing coming to town,” I said as we joined the crowd, funneling into the decrepit building in a line.
Someone had nailed a dirty white banner over the front door, “Enter” scrawled across it in red paint. A few of the letters dripped.
“Me either,” Taylor said, ducking under the edge of the ripped sign. “If it wasn’t for the flyer, I wouldn’t have known.”
“Lucky us,” Malcolm said, turning his nose up at the musty aroma inside the store. It smelled like fifty years of neglect, dirt, and rot, with an underpinning of gasoline. It looked like it too.
The windows might not have had boards on them anymore, but they weren’t very clean, either. Everything had a thick layer of dirt and grime. Old-fashioned light bulbs flickered overhead, buzzing loudly, threatening to go out at any moment.
“They could have swept or something,” Malcolm said, trying to sidestep a pile of leaves and random garbage.
“Adds to the ambiance,” I replied with a chuckle.
“Look at this creepy motherfucker,” Taylor said, elbowing me and gesturing behind us. “Who’s he trying to be? Bane?”
I half-turned to look. When I saw who Taylor was talking about, I turned around all the way, eyes widening.
Outside of the gas station, a man stood wearing ripped black jeans and little else. Black Celtic knots ran from his left shoulder down to his wrist in what looked like an impressive sleeve. The lower half of his face, from his nose downward and along his jaw, was covered with a black mask. Short dark hair swept up from his forehead and back, like he’d run his fingers through it recently—or intentionally styled it that way. What the fuck did Malcolm call that? A quiff?
It was the guy’s eyes that made me forget my entire train of thought, though. Until that moment, I thought the concept of a “smoldering gaze” was horseshit, something that Hollywood came up with. Bane, or whatever his character was, proved me wrong. In the distance, his eyes looked black—and they were staring right at me. Heat spread along the back of my neck, down my spine, twisting through my insides like a serpent. His body alone would have been enough to make me hard, even if I had no idea what his face looked like. Throw in the way he was staring at me?Goddamn…
Before I could commit Bane to memory for later fantasies, my view was rudely blocked.
Another scare actor darted in front of my walking wet dream, completely killing the illusion. The other guy’s entire head was stark white, devoid of any hair or fur, like he was bald—or a skeleton of some sort. Long, jagged gray teeth jutted out the front of his mouth like a mutant rat. Tilting his head as he looked at us through the window, his teeth chittered. His spindly fingers wound around themselves in obvious excitement. Once again, it felt like all eyes were on me andnotin a good way.
I took a step back, away from the revulsion churning in the pit of my stomach and away from the gnarled teeth and wringinghands causing it. Even with a pane of glass separating us, I didn’t want to be anywhere near that thing.
Then, the creepy rodent-looking guy smiled. Charging forward, he ran full-tilt toward the window, black-clawed fingers outstretched.
At the last second, he was jerked backward, his horrible face twisted into a snarl.
