Night Witch: Part IV

A short story

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Day 7

The man was a walking stereotype. Curled dirty blonde hair stuck out unbrushed from a black baseball cap. An insect, six legged and ant-like, was embroidered in yellow at the center of it. His van was supposed to be white. Dirt streaked the sides of it. Yellow pollen dust clung to the windows. Little child handprints like carved ivory marked the body, the handiwork of probably a dozen children that he towed to and from school everyday.

A round ball of a belly hung precariously out of the underside of his powder blue buttoned shirt. DAN was stitched across the pocket. As if anticipating her reading his name tag, he put a hand to his hat and tipped it slightly.

“Dan Serrod is the name. Pests is my game.”

She reached out a hand and he took it heartily.

“The name’s June. June Huntsman.”

He pulled back and eyed the porch. A swarm of flies buzzed around the front of the house and along the sides. Some of them darted aggressively for the door, only to be repelled back. They hung in the air, dizzied. 

“You weren’t kidding!” A huge grin spread across his face.

“I know. They just kinda showed up a few days ago.”

“Anything rotten in the freezer? We get a lot of those in abandoned houses. Folks forget about the freezer and then the utilities switch off. A few days later and you’ve got this.”

“No. Nothing like that. As far as I know the house has been empty for a long time.”

He nodded his head and stared like he was thinking real hard about it. 

“Well, I’ll make sure that we find the source of the problem. Flies congregate like that for a reason.” He looked over at her. The big shit eating grin was back. “You know. Like when something dies.”

She nodded. “Yeah. I got it.”

He made his way around the front, shined a flashlight underneath the porch to the right of the steps, then disappeared around the corner. He appeared around the other side of the house a moment later. She walked in his direction.

“You think you’ll be able to take care of this in the next couple of days?”

“Depends.” He was bending down and staring into the dark underneath the porch. 

“My kids are coming for the first time this weekend. To see the place.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can ma’am. But I’m going to be honest with you. There are a lot of flies here. I mean a lot. I don’t know how many visits I’ll have to make to take care of your problem. And that’s if I can find what’s driving them here.”

He was still bent over, his jeans slipping down and exposing the crack of his ass when he made the decision to go under. He didn’t look small enough. Had to lean over and walk stooped like a kid in a sewer drain. The round of his belly pushed against his legs as he squatted down and walked out of sight.

“Be careful!” June yelled to him. She walked towards the porch side to see what he was doing. As she approached she could hear his heavy breathing and little grunts from the effort. She peered under where he had entered and stared. The grass had been carved into a little path where he had walked. Six feet or so in, she could make out the shape of a man. He was pulling at something. With each movement of his arms she could hear a loud buzzing erupt. 

“I think I found your problem.”

“What is it?”

She held her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun, trying to make out what he was seeing.

“Might want to step back. It don’t smell good.”

“Is it an animal?”

“Maybe was,” he said, and pulled backward hard. That movement brought not just the noise of flies, but the smell of death with it. She covered her mouth and turned, fighting the urge to vomit.

“Told you to step back.”

She was stepping now, moving away from the porch and into the sunlight. 

“Oh my god,” she said as he appeared from underneath. He was still smiling. “What is it?”

“I can’t tell exactly, but something big. Probably a deer or a calf. You got any cattle out here Mrs. Huntsman?”

She straightened and breathed through her mouth. 

“It’s Ms. And I’m not sure. I just moved in.”

“Well I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.” 

He breathed in deeply through his nose and looked around. His chest puffed out, holding the air. 

“Beautiful country out here,” he deflated as he sighed the words out. “Well, once I get that cleaned up, I’ll give the place the old spray, and I think your fly problems will be gone.”

“They’re not inside the house.”

He stopped and looked at her. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I said. There isn’t a single one in there.”

“Find that hard to believe with the plague you’ve got on your hands out here.” His smile was too toothy, a carved jack o’lantern glowing in the night. She crossed her arms defiantly.

“Well it’s true.”

She brought him inside to see for himself. 

“Even when I leave the door open they won’t come in.”

She led him up the stairs to the door and demonstrated. He watched with creased brows. Sweat dripped down the curl of hair around his ears and down his jaw. 

“Would you look at that?”

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

He let the screen door shut. As soon as it closed he smiled again.

“Nope. But I guess it’s like they say. You learn something new everyday.”

He opened the door again and stepped out, then turned back before he shut it.

“Oh, ma’am, you might want to close everything up while I clear it.” 

“The thing under the porch?”

“Uh huh.”

June nodded. She closed the front door behind her and looked around. The house was already getting stuffy. All the windows and doors to the outside were closed. A thin film of dust hung in the air and glowed in the morning sunlight. She made up her mind to leave, and walked out the back fifteen minutes later. 

She stared at Dan’s van as she passed on her way to her car. He was busy getting his gear ready. A shovel and wheelbarrow by the looks of it. She got in and watched from the driver’s seat for a few minutes to see if he would put anything on. There was no mask or gloves. He started walking slowly towards the porch with nothing but the clothes and the tools. June decided it was time to leave. The scene was more than she could stomach.

She got back home two hours later. It was morning, but late now. Her trunk was filled with new gardening tools. The guy at the store, Jet had been his name, recommended a shovel and a pair of loppers to deal with the underbrush around the woods. He was eighteen years old, tops. She wasn’t sure if he had any landscaping experience beyond lawn mowing jobs, but she took his advice anyway. 

If the dog was in the woods, which she knew it was, and if she was going to find it, she would need a path. She had walked the line of trees that formed the edge of forest on her property from one end to the other calling for it. A few times she had attempted to push into a thicket. But there was no way through. At least not for a human. Blackberry brambles grew up thorny and thick. She had come back to the house with scraped legs that welted and burned in the shower that night. She would have to cut through the brush.

She looked around the property, but Dan was nowhere in sight. She stepped out of her car and listened. She couldn’t hear anything. His van was still parked where it had been. The back doors were propped open. She could see piles of tools strewn about the floor inside. A pair of large yellow gloves streaked in brown dangled on the bumper.

He didn’t use his bare hands. 

Relief fell over her. She had been anticipating an awkward goodbye when he left, her hands clasped behind her back as she nodded a thank you and refused the inevitable handshake. She had planned to make herself scarce and deal with the payment over the phone if it came to it. Now she could shake hands with some confidence that his weren’t stained in the decomposing entrails and maggots beneath her porch.

She waited a moment for him to appear. When he didn’t, she decided she had her own work to do. The trunk creaked open with effort. She reached in and grabbed the fresh supplies. She would try to start in the shadiest part of the woods, but soon there would be nowhere to hide from the sun. Unless she could get a little ways into the trees. She looked at the work gloves, the sharpened loppers. The tip of the shovel shined in the sunlight. She thought she could.

When she emerged, her body was slick with sweat  and four hours had passed. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Her white T-shirt was damp, and clung to her skin. The air was oppressively still. The cuts on her arms stung. She hoped Dan was done so she could shower and get on with her life. She wanted a nap. Something to eat. A nice cold drink and a porch sit if the flies were gone.

She climbed the hill to her house and saw even at a distance that the van was parked exactly where it had been. A flash of anger ran through her. What on earth could this guy be doing? How long could it take to shovel a pile of guts from under the porch? 

Not long.

But she was paying by the hour. He was probably slowing the process down on purpose. Trying to make a buck off the single woman who didn’t think to check for something dead when a bunch of flies showed up on the porch. Same as the mechanic as the car salesman as every damn handyman that she was going to have out at the place from now until forever. Until she could stand up for herself, she would be a victim to it.

The shovel and loppers weren’t heavy anymore. She marched up the hill ready to get the asshole off her property. She would deal with his supervisor about payment later. Her thoughts were churning with a prepared speech. A lecture she would give when she found him. She was maybe fifty feet away when she saw the van’s back doors. They were still propped open like before. The yellow gloves hung with the fingers dropping groundward. The brown stains on them had turned black. 

She slowed and looked around. Dan wasn’t anywhere. She called for him and waited. There was no answer. Sweat gathered at every crease of her, the slow drips down her skin chilled and raised her gooseflesh.

“Dan?”

She walked to the back of the van and peered inside. It was messy. There were gardening tools and half empty bags of wet cement. One was laying sideways, the contents spilled in a little pile. If water touched it, it would have hardened there on the spot. She walked around the van and to the porch. She peered under it, the way he had when he first arrived. The little path of bent grass was wider now. She could see a deep track of black earth turned up where a wheelbarrow had been pushed through. 

Beyond, the grass tangled and obscured her view. The smell of the dead thing was gone, but the flies on her porch buzzed steadily despite that. She watched as they darted towards her door, and saw that it was open. From this angle she couldn’t see inside the house. She would have to get closer. She looked down in her hands, weighing which tool she could wield against an intruder, then decided on the shovel.

The loppers were too heavy at the handle, and she wasn’t sure if she could plunge them into flesh if needed. She dropped them and heaved the head of the shovel over her shoulder and behind her. If someone was in there, she could hit them with it, hard. Knock them out and call the police. 

Or hit them and get the hell out. 

Yeah. That was a better idea. She made her way quietly to the stairs. The cloud of flies were trying to get past the threshold of the door. They darted aggressively, moving like hummingbirds to nectar. Each time they were repelled. Not by a screen like when they first came, but by an invisible forcefield that June herself had refused to believe in until now. 

Her breath was shaking, and she had to steady herself on each step. The boards creaked despite her careful movements, and with each stair, she readied herself for the inevitable. For a moment she thought of Dan, his wide smile and the way he acted when he moved whatever the dead thing was. He had inhaled. Inhaled when she was nearly puking. Like he was used to the smell.

He probably is used to it. He’s an exterminator for god sakes. 

(No. You’re wrong. He’s probably in there right now. Waiting for you to come in. That’s why he left the door open.)

It was a female voice in her head. Close to her own, but off. This was the first time that she had heard it speak.

(That’s not true. Remember the dream?)

But the voice and her words had been lost to memory as soon as June woke. She brushed off the words and took another step, fighting against her body’s urge to run. Fear had been her guide for most of her life. Had led her into the addiction spiral that ruined her. She wasn’t going to start listening now. Not when she had worked this hard to stop. 

(He’s in there. You’ll see.)

“No he’s not,” she said through gritted teeth.

(Okay, maybe not him. But someone.)

There they could agree. 

And that’s what the shovel’s for.

She adjusted her grip as she took the last step onto the porch. When she put her weight onto it, the wood beneath her groaned. She held her breath and waited. Nothing. The flies were like a curtain now. They flew kamikaze style into the open door, then dropped into a pile that was forming on the welcome mat June had laid out two days before. 

June moved through the haze of them without flinching, all of her focus on whoever was in the house. They landed on her eyelids, and she blinked, hardly aware of the hundreds of tiny legs and moving wings that fell on her. They crawled in and out of her ears and nostrils. She kept her lips tight to keep them from going into her mouth. She couldn’t see through the black cloud into the entryway until she stepped over the threshold. An orb like a halo of flies formed around her head as she moved slowly into the house, as if through a surface of water. They stayed behind on the porch, dripping off of her as she entered their forbidden place.

She looked straight ahead to the staircase. Her hands opened and the shovel dropped behind her. The clang of it echoed against the walls of the mostly empty house. Her hands were at her mouth, her fingers steepled in a prayer. They trembled against her parted lips and caught tears as they dripped into the crevices between each finger. The salt dripped onto her scraped arms and stung them, but June couldn’t feel it.

(I told you he was in here.)

The voice spoke in a sing song I Told You So voice. June could almost see a finger wagging at her.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change.

Dan was inside. He was laying on the stairs, his eye lids open, forever staring up to the second floor. His mouth was open, his tongue flopped lazily to the side. His belly bulged bare and milk white, totally unscathed except for a smear of blood across the side of it. 

His right leg was gone, the jeans torn and shredded where his shin should have been. His arm was the same. The white bone of his bicep poked out, but below the elbow, that was gone too. It looked cartoonish, like a giant turkey leg at a fair. She bent and wretched at the image, her body contorting as she let all the contents of her stomach out. Through tears she could see the wooden floors were blood streaked. Dan must have dragged himself inside. She turned back, wiped her mouth, and looked at the porch. 

There was a pool of blood in the entryway. She hadn’t noticed it when she stepped in the sticky red of it, tracking bloody shoe prints on her newly cleaned floors. There was no sign of injury beyond that. Something had attacked him at the front door. Maybe he was knocking. To let her know that he was done and get the money. She thought of the yellow gloves, his van’s open door in the late morning sun. No wonder there were still flies.

He had been dead for hours.