The Candyman- Part 5

The front door slamming was what tipped me off that this wasn’t just another dream.

The laugh...oh god, that laugh.

It starts out almost impossibly quiet, this strange vibration just barely at the lowest range of human hearing. You can’t quite hear it, but you know something isn’t right, that something alien and deeply perverse has leached into your brain.
Then it goes up an octave, and you understand with a sick clarity that yes, this was happening, yes, this exists.

You will never understand the feeling one has once this realization comes to light, the awful certainty that something was there, something was THERE, and this thing was GLAD it was there. That you were there with it.

You will never quite get that sense of terror, the feeling that whatever it was that made that sound was in your house and walking up the stairs.

Because that’s what it was doing, see, what THEY were doing, the things that spoke in my parent’s voices, they were coming closer, laughing all the while.

But the mirth. The mirth, see, it wasn’t there. There was no real happiness in their chuckles, their jittery giggles, their desperate gasps between. Theirs was an empty, joyless sound, a voice without a person.

A person without a soul.

Their bodies are outside my room now, can you hear them, Ezz, can you hear them listen with me, Ezz, can you hear their chuckles, their sound of victory?

Tell me I’m not the only one who still hears their voices when all goes silent and the wind grows still, tell me I’m not the only one who can discern the echoes of their madness over the rasp of breathing and the sound of a lonely cell door rusting and the shuffles of unwashed skin over wan cheekbones.

Tell me I’m not alone.

...

Their faces. The faces of my parents’ corpses, grinning and leering out of the dark.

Their voices, sounding like honey dripping off bones.

Their scent, as they take my face into their bosom and caress my hair, smelling of ice cream that sat in the sun too long.
They told me I was a good boy, such a good boy, that they found a new job, that this would be good for us.

Us, they said.

Mr. Trundermann’s Confectionary Delights, a gaudy, saccharine mockery of what once was, and what would never be. A fine place to work, indeed. Or so they told me.

Their too-red lips stayed stretched in those empty grins and their eyes sparked in their empty sockets as they said this, both stark against their powder-white flesh, both speaking volumes more than their empty promises.

It was their uniform, they told me.

Uniform number two, I thought.

A design painted on a second skin.

...

The rest of the morning I remember as a faded smear; I only recall feeling confused and disturbed on a level and in a way I hadn’t recognized yet, and a single, overarching phrase that looped and repeated in my mind like a broken record:

I need to get out of here and I need to do it right now.
I need to get out of here and I need to do it right now.
I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE AND I NEED TO DO IT RIGHT NOW.

When I got to the bus stop, I sat down with my feet sprawled out over the curb, and whistled a tune to myself. I don’t know what I whistled, but I suppose It doesn’t matter- I’d seen some cartoon character on T.V. do that when walking through a dark, scary set of woods once when I was little, and it seemed to work for him, so that’s just what I did.

The only problem was, it wouldn’t be a cartoon ghost or a man under a sheet shouting “boo”, this was real, far too real, and I knew there wouldn’t be anything so luxurious as a warning before things hit the fan.

Clark cleared his throat, and I turned to look at him.

I stopped whistling.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked. Another stupid question. I needed to stop doing that.

“Were your parents acting loony, too, Clark?”

“Kinda.”

Clark shifted around in his blankets and a bag crinkled. My stomach growled. The bag shook, and a pile of salty crumbs trickled out into my outstretched palm.

“Got hungry being out here this long,” he explained apologetically. I stared at the pile of salt and grease for a bit, then gingerly sprinkled it into my mouth.

“Anyway, why are you out here? Your parents were acting loony, you said?” I thought about what I would say, but Clark interrupted me before I could speak.

“Say...did your parents come home last night?” I almost fell backwards at this and began to regret the handful of chips I’d just eaten.

“Yeah, why?” Clark sat there in silence for a moment, seeming to gather his thoughts before responding.

“Because mine didn’t, and it’s been two days.”

It was then that I understood. His strange temper yesterday, his early arrival at the bus stop, it all made sense now.

“A house without a soul...”

“What was that?”

Nothing, Clark. It was nothing, after all.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | END

All images for this series were drawn by me, using a procedural drawing tool called "Mr. Doob Harmony".