Eyes in the Dark - Tales from the Milkwood Lounge

*Note: It's been almost nine months since I initially put up my original introduction for my Tales from the Milkwood Lounge series. I'm ashamed to say that I never delivered on the promise of delivering any short stories since. After some time, I actually pulled the post down as I decided to wait until I had something tangible to offer. Now, I do. I tried writing my third novel through much of 2019 and 2020, but as many things got in the way, I eventually scrapped it. Despite all of that, there's some fun to be had from that original piece of work. Here's an isolated piece from that failed project. I hope you enjoy it.

Eyes in the Dark

It was a late night in Raven’s Peak, and that was how Doug liked them. For a town of around five thousand, there wasn’t much crime to deal with on a usual basis, and with the massive snowfall as of late, Doug expected even less to do. Of course, that was until he got the call to check out an apparent disturbance on 133 Prentice Street at around three o’clock in the morning.

“The whole goddamn point of workin’ the graveyard shift is so that I have less to put up with around here…” Doug grumbled to himself as he stormed out of Nero’s Diner toward his police cruiser.

The snow was still coming down hard and he dreaded the knowledge of shoveling out his townhouse when he got home after his shift. His neighbor had agreed to help, but that guy was a frankly a pansy and couldn’t be relied on to cut his own grass during the summer. Yes sir, Doug thought, if a job needed doing, it was better to do it alone than rely on the grace of others. It was the only way to make sure the task at hand was done right and proper.

The ride to Prentice Street didn’t take all that long. It was a quaint place across the street from the high school. A large red and white billboard on the school grounds announced holiday greetings with a cheery “Go Ravens!” The snow was barely drivable and Doug made sure to thank the gods at General Motors for equipping his cruiser with enough horse-power to plow through it all.

The call had come in on the disturbance from the next-door neighbor. Ms. Santizo was a single mother that helped out Ralph Drefcinski (the owner of 133 Prentice St.) from time to time and had seen Ralph’s door had been left wide open while caring for her baby daughter who apparently had an ear-infection.

Ralph had been retired for years on account of his busted hip and some nightmarish trauma he saw at Khe Sanh in 1971. Doug had never heard of him and, according to his cruiser’s computer, this was the first call that had ever been put in on Ralph. The DMV photo of Ralph showed a pale and rotund man with large eyeglasses and barely any hair left atop his dome.

Doug figured this was going to go one of two ways. First, the old bastard had suffered a coronary while taking in the groceries and Doug would find him face down in his kitchen. Either that, or he had forgotten to properly close his door and had died in his sleep from hypothermia as it was around ten degrees Fahrenheit outside. Doug hoped it was Option B, but knew his real luck would mean it was the former. Corpses were a pain in the ass to deal with, and Doug always got the shitty jobs.

Doug pulled into the drive of 133 Prentice Street and saw Ms. Santizo’s face from inside her house peering out. Ralph’s car must’ve been in the small garage as it wasn’t in the driveway. A faint light was coming from the inside of Ralph’s house, but beyond that it was pitch black from what Doug could see. The front door was wide open and it looked like a fair amount of snow had begun to accumulate within the doorway.

“Dispatch, this is Doug.” Doug spoke into his radio. “I’m at 133 Prentice Street.”

Doug waited for a response, but there was none. Doug wasn’t alarmed by this as the only person that handled dispatch these days was Maggie Little who was probably older than Ralph. Maggie was half-asleep on most days and had a bladder problem that made her M.I.A. throughout much of the other half of the day. Doug always hoped someone young and hot would replace the old hag one day.

Doug opened his door and a gush of cold air rushed in. He gritted his teeth and pulled up his collar to protect his neck from the chill. The faster he got this over with, the faster he could be back at Nero’s Diner.

The snow crunched under Doug’s feet as he approached Ralph’s house. Ms. Santizo watched the policeman make his way through the frost with his flashlight revealing any potential black ice. She looked as though she was considering going out to “help,” but something seemed to break her from such actions as she left the window as Doug crossed the driveway. Doug knew Santizo meant well, but the last thing he wanted to deal with was some inexperienced bimbo who probably didn’t speak much English, complete with a wailing kid.

Ralph’s front door rested against a small pile of snow that had accumulated at the front step. Doug peered past the door into the dark interior of the house. The house was completely dark except for that same flickering down the hall.

To his right was a carpeted living room with an old CRTV encased in an ornate wooden frame. A cabinet of old photos and porcelain angels were displayed along the room’s nearest wall. The photos were displayed prominently without an ounce of dust between the lot of them. They all showed Ralph surrounded by what Doug assumed was his family. A twinge of finality dawned on the deputy as he regarded the oldest picture. How many of the people in Ralph’s treasured display were still alive? There were no images of children or grandchildren. Most of them were in black and white even.

To Doug’s left was an open doorway to a kitchen. Like the living room, it was spotless, but far more spartan than the living room. No knick-knacks or baubles to bother the old bastard while he ate. Doug considered checking the fridge to possibly swipe a beer, but decided against it.

Directly across from Doug was a long dark hallway with multiple bedrooms. Doug pointed his flashlight and was able to make out a laundry chute attached to the back end of the corridor. Directly to the right of the chute was the room with the flickering.

“Mr. Drefcinski!” Doug called out into the dark hallway. “Are you there? This is Deputy Burnette.”

There was no response.

“Mr. Drefcinski!” Doug called again, albeit in a somewhat more irritated tone. “We got a call that you might be in trouble. I need to check that you’re okay!”

Once again, Doug heard nor saw any response to his shouts. He looked back at his car briefly. It was probably still warm in there. He could simply close up the front door, walk back to his car, and write this one off with some coffee at Nero’s. No one would know except Ms. Santizo, and she was clearly too busy with her brat to get further involved. He could easily pawn this off on the morning relief.

Chunk! Chunk! Chunk!

The sound snapped Doug from his contemplation and drew his sight back down the hall of Ralph’s house. It had been faint, but he knew what he heard. It sounded like a bunch of cans getting slapped down, one after the other. Doug shined his flashlight down the hall again, but there was nothing different in sight.

“Ralph!” Doug shouted again. “Quit fucking around back there! Tell me you’re all right so I can leave your god-damn frozen ice-box of a house!”

Like before, there was no response. Then, just as Doug was starting to get irate, the chunking sound emanated once again.

Chunk! Chunk! Chunk!

“That’s it, Ralph!” Doug snarled as he shook his head and stomped a few feet down the hall. “I’m coming back there! You better not have some Rambo-PTSD bullshit and try and stab me with a K-bar or something! I will not be responsible for fucking braining you if you do!”

Doug stomped down the hall gripping his flashlight so tight that his leather gloves felt like a second skin. The door to Ralph’s room was half-way open. A type of repetitive jingle chimed in conjunction with the continuing chunk noises.

Doug shoved the door open with his free hand to find a bedroom that had apparently been repurposed into some type of den or office. An old green sofa stood against the wall while an old radio sat atop a wooden nightstand across the room from it. Opposite of Doug was Ralph slumped in his chair in front of what looked like a computer from the early 2000’s.

From where Doug was standing, Ralph’s gray head was visibly resting on top of the keyboard to the computer. His head had a clammy sheen to it as though it had been sweating profusely. The computer was playing some old casino slot-machine program with the chunk noises coughing up every time the spinners stopped. Apparently, the placement of Ralph’s head had caused the game to auto-play.

By the time Doug registered that Ralph was indeed dead, the smell hit him like crate of bricks. It was like a mixture of metallic iron and congealed fecal matter on a hot day. Doug had smelled death before, but it had never been this bad before.

Doug strode across the room and checked Ralph’s pulse. The skin was slimy as the smell intensified. As expected, the pulse was gone, but it was when Doug’s hand dropped from Ralph’s carotid artery that he noticed something reflective on the ground under Ralph and his desk. It had been hard to notice at first as Ralph’s large form was literally leaning on his desk. Doug held his flashlight up and nearly threw up when he saw it.

Ralph’s guts were literally hanging from his large stomach. A large and jagged cut (or was it a tear?) had been made from the old man’s groin to the center of his abdomen. The intestines had spilled out along with god-knows what else. Doug jerked his face away from the sight in revulsion. The slot machine hit triple sevens at that exact moment and Ralph won a cool three hundred thousand fake-dollars amidst a loud trumpet-like victory chorus. 

“Dispatch! Dispatch!” Doug half-yelled into his radio. “Maggie, where the fuck are you? Pick up the god-damn radio!”

Gruuuunk!

Doug whipped around at the sound of scraping wood somewhere else inside the house. He yanked his handgun from its holster as he turned, but got so excited it slipped from his hand and landed a few feet away with a dull thud on the carpeted floor. He swore and scrabbled to pick the gun up before pointing it wildly at the door to the hallway.

Nothing emerged from the darkness of the hallway though. Doug pointed his gun at the oppressive darkness for what felt like an hour. His arms felt heavy and his hands shook with a nervousness he’d not known since he was a child.

A door could be heard creaking either opened or closed down the hall. A rapid succession of thuds followed before being followed by silence.

Doug pied around the corner of the doorway of the room. His flashlight only showed the bare white walls of the hallway. Ralph’s old photos of various relations glistened in the torch’s glow. Ralph’s game continued to play in the background, occasionally puncturing the silence with the sound of a jingle or fake coins spilling out of a machine.

“I’m the police, asshole!” Doug shouted out. “I’m armed and you better come out now or I swear to fucking God, I will put you in the ground!”

Like before, nothing answered. This time though, Doug knew something was out there. It sure as heck wasn’t the wind that caused that scraping sound, and the thud noise sounded almost as though it were beneath him.

Doug tried his radio again, but Maggie was still missing in action. He grit his teeth and rushed out into the hall with his gun raised. He could see the doorway to outside, down the hall, but nothing else stood out.

Out of nowhere though, the loud sound of polka began to play, that nearly caused Doug to shoot a round out of pure shock. Doug jerked the gun around every which-way to find the source of the incessant music. It wasn’t coming from the nearby bedroom, and as far as the deputy could see, Ralph hadn’t leapt back to life to play some tunes. The mixture of tuba, accordion, and other instruments were supposed to be incredibly cheering, but Doug felt almost nauseous as it continued to play.

It was shortly after Doug had checked the adjacent bedroom to Ralph’s den that he realized the music was coming from the laundry chute. He reached out with a now-clammy hand and lifted the wooden flap of the chute. The music played slightly more loudly now, and it became abundantly clear where the origin of the polka was coming from.

Any chance Doug had of hearing the mystery person, running rampant in Ralph’s house, was next to nil with that damn polka playing. Doug swallowed hard and gripped his handgun before quickly walking to the other end of the hall of where he had originally come from. By the entrance-door, he could see his cruiser parked outside. It was an inviting beacon of safety from whatever absurdity was going on in 133 Prentice Street.

Doug yearned to get the hell out of the house and make a break for it, but Ralph had been murdered and the prime suspect was still in the house! A lot of his drive as a law enforcement officer had died away since he’d signed on as deputy, but he just had to try and stop what happened to Ralph from happening again. He tore his gaze from the cruiser and returned to the kitchen where he had seen a corner leading to more doors. He was going to shackle the son-of-a-bitch that had killed an old man if it was the last thing he did.

Doug crossed the kitchen and came across three wooden doors. He made sure to keep his gun pointed in the direction he was moving. He yanked the door in front of him and a large brown figure fell in front of him with a series of loud wumps! The deputy squeezed off a shot at the figure in the split-second it had come at him and recoiled back!

“Fuck me…” Doug gasped as he stared down at the sack of potato spuds that had apparently fallen from the top shelf of the closet he had just opened.

Nothing else stood in the closet beyond the standard pile of clothes, boots, and throwaways Ralph had apparently stored there. Doug kicked some of the loose potatoes aside and closed the closet.

“You’re pissing me off asshole!” Doug shouted out into the dark house. “I know you heard that fucking gunshot! The next one’s got your name on it too if you don’t come out, right fucking now, and surrender!”

Doug didn’t even wait for the silence as he became somewhat giddy with anxiousness. He checked his handgun to ensure the safety was still off before opening the door to his immediate left. This door led to a screen-door that connected to Ralph’s garage. A rusted blue Mazda sedan sat in the messy garage surrounded by old carpentry tools with an incredibly archaic green bicycle hanging from hooks on the ceiling above. The backdoor of the garage, which led to the backyard, had been kept wedged open with a brick.

Doug slowly opened the screen-door in an attempt to try and keep quiet but forgot about the loud polka music still playing in the house. If Ralph’s killer had broken into his home, Doug figured this was the way he came at least. Just like the front-door, the garage’s back entrance had begun to fill with snow, although it was under somewhat of an alcove so the snowfall was not as bad.

Doug strode over to the snow-coated exit and looked around. A wooden soda-can crusher had been affixed to the wall with a large bin of perfectly smashed root beers inside. Beyond, in the backyard, no visible signs of footprints were to be had. The snow was doing as good of a job of masking Ralph’s killer as the god-damn polka music was inside the house.

The backdoor didn’t look broken. The doorframe was intact and the window of the door was intact. It would have been too easy to smash the back window and just unlock it by reaching through the hole, but the killer didn’t do that…

“What the hell?” Doug muttered as he looked down at the doorknob.

The outside door handle had a key sticking out of it. A keychain with a worn leather fob hung from it that sported images of a sun on one side, and a snowflake on the other. Doug considered pulling the key out to examine it, but decided against it. Somehow, this guy had gotten a key to Ralph’s place and strolled right through.

Wham!

The door from the garage to the inside of Ralph’s house slammed closed violently! Doug whipped around with his gun at the ready. Nothing greeted him in the dark garage, but that door’s closure was not a random act of the wind.

Doug kept his gun at the ready and re-opened the screen door. He pressed his ear to the wooden inside door that led to the rest of the house. Of course, all that could be heard was polka music, still blaring away like some type of menacing Oktoberfest.

He pushed the door open and saw the third door, he had yet to open was now ajar with a sliver of light coming through the small opening. Doug navigated to the lit door and opened it all the way. It led to a basement where the light emanated from a bare-hanging lightbulb equipped with an inordinately lengthy drawstring.

“I know you’re down there, asshole!” Doug shouted from the landing angrily. “You got nowhere else to hide and I’m beyond fed up with your bullshit!”

Doug waited for a response from the basement, but only polka music replied.

“That’s it!” Doug continued to shout as he began to make his way down the steps. “You’re last fucking chance is that you better be on your knees with your hands above your head when I get down there!”

The stairs were wooden with a type of black material covering the main portion of each step to prevent slipping. Doug took great care to watch his head as he descended. There was someone down here and the last thing he wanted was to bump his head and get caught unaware. As the deputy passed the lightbulb, he could make out the floor of the basement, which was some type of smooth stony surface with poorly maintained gray paint. It led to one room, which expanded to the left of the bottom of the stairs (naturally, headed toward the laundry chute he’d seen earlier).

Upon reaching the edge of the stairwell, Doug posted along the wall. Whatever had done Ralph in had likely been some kind of knife, but that didn’t mean that was the only thing the killer had. Doug would poke his head out to catch a glimpse of the intruder’s position and then make his plan of approach. He’d seen it done in the movies before.

Doug popped his head out for a split second and saw a mostly empty room. The far back corner had a wooden cabinet crowned with a wicker basket placed directly under the laundry chute. Across the room was a set of washing and drying machines, along with a bookshelf. In the center of the room was an exceptionally thin, forest-green colored futon flanked by a standing lamp and a slide projector.

The slide projector was on and had been set on ‘auto’ as it flicked through its slides. Old photos of Ralph through his life were thrown up on the bare wall of the back of the room. Next to the cycling photos was a pink and gray boombox, which the polka music was undoubtedly come from.

The missing item of the room was clearly Ralph’s killer though. There was nowhere in there that he could be hiding. All the same though, Doug kept his sidearm out as he approached the boombox. Things had gotten too weird around here and he had every intention of getting the heck out once that damned polka was off.

As he approached the stereo, Doug saw the many iterations of Ralph click by. The first appeared to be that of a very young Ralph in his teens, with the next being of him enlisted in the military sporting an olive drab service uniform. Ralph looked incredibly proud of himself in that photo and it made Doug ponder about why the old man had been targeted.

Doug switched the stereo off, however the ensuing silence was no comfort to him. Another slide popped up as Doug looked up from the boombox and it was of an older Ralph. He was still in a uniform, but this one had many more ribbons. Ralph wasn’t smiling so much anymore. His facial features were hardened and his jowls hung a bit looser. Doug didn’t know military rank, but he imagined Ralph had been someone important when that photo had been taken. At least…more important than an old man whose death was in the dark alone with the exception of his murderer.

A strange bug crawled into the picture, along the wall. It looked like a cross between a cockroach and a centipede. Its riveted body was black and oval-shaped. Its many legs were partially concealed beneath its outer-facing shell. The vilest aspect of it though, was its incredibly long feelers. There were two with one on either side of its head like a giant mustache. They were incredibly thin and each approximately a foot long, and they ended in a leaf-shaped design.

The foul thing stood in the center-right corner of the projection as its feelers swept to and from along the wall. Doug felt as though he was in some type of disgusted daze as he watched the insect in silent revulsion.

His heart began to beat, faster and faster, as his face became clammy and hands grew sweaty and slimy. His stomach churned and his eyes burned but he could not look away from it. His mind felt as though it had been dunked in a water-tank as his vision grew blurry and his jaw grew slack. He began to lose his balance and stumbled backwards into the lamp, which smashed into the floor of the basement with a loud crash! The misstep had caused him to break his sight of the grotesque bug though and, when he regained his footing, when he looked back at the projector’s wall again, it was no longer there.

A small, yet sharp pain jolted him in the back of his neck suddenly. Doug swung blindly at what was behind him as he immediately became groggy. A vice-like grip grabbed his arm and Doug pulled the trigger of his pistol three times as it was pointed into the ceiling by the powerful grasp.

“Nnnoooo!” The deputy groaned drunkenly as he lost his footing completely.

A pair of fleshy and pink eyes stared into his as he lost consciousness. Had Doug been able, he would have screamed.