Haunted MTL Original – Frank’s Hideaway – Bryan Fontenot
Frank’s Hideaway by Bryan Fontenot
Last week I received word that Frank had died in a bar fight, his throat cut by another man. Frank wasn’t a friend, not for a long time now, but when we were twelve years old, we had been best buddies. I was overdue to visit a few relatives, so I came down for the funeral, and now, with the burial over, I decided to take a walk down here, to the little hideaway we used to visit. When we were middle school friends, this little patch had been a refuge, a place to play hooky, sneak a little chewing tobacco, and play cards. But that was before Frank murdered his kid brother Joe. It was this awful patch of ground that had changed Frank.
I’m not going any closer. This is far enough. It smells rotten here, the air heavy and putrid. I’m convinced now this is truly an evil place. It’s really just an ugly pimple of dirt and bushes, no bigger than the backyards I remember from childhood. Frank’s death brought me back here. I came because I needed to know if my memories were false memories, or the real thing. Now I know, because I’m not twelve years old anymore, but a highly functioning 25 year old, and this cesspool still feels like a crypt of demons.
I remember Frank telling me he had a “cool” place for us to hang out after school one day.
“Nobody knows about this spot,” said Frank. “It’s behind the subdivision, going towards the warehouses, where they keep all the rusty pipes. When the ground slopes down, the place is invisible from all sides. A crazy optical illusion, man.” And he was right, it was a private place, ignored by most people. Happy, bright eyed, normal people would no doubt just go around this place, without even thinking about it, the way you step around dog poop, instead of stepping right into it.
“But it stinks here,” I had said. “Smells like dead rats or dog crap.”
Yet, he was so proud of the hideaway that I said okay, and we started going there to play hooky or just to hang out. One day it really reeked, and I walked up to the spot gagging. But there was Frank, laying on his side, reading a MAD magazine and eating a Snickers bar. It was then that I noticed the dead possum, only about ten feet from Frank. It was covered with buzzing green flies, the flies that only show up when something is dead.
“Jesus, Frank!” I called, covering my mouth and nose with my shirt collar. “What the hell, man. It smells horrible.”
“He looked up, continuing to chew his Snickers bar, and started sniffing the air. Sniffing! Like he was trying to catch the subtle odor of distant wood smoke.
“I guess so,” he said skeptically, then kept reading his magazine.
That’s how it started. The place was a stinking, festering hole, but Frank didn’t seem to notice, and slowly he began to change. Instead of shooting soda cans with his BB gun, Frank began shooting birds. One day he started torturing a large box turtle we had caught. I told him to stop and we argued, shoved each other, and then he killed the turtle. I left in disgust. His cesspool (a crazy optical illusion man) seemed satisfied somehow. It buzzed with flies and pukey little green shimmering beetles. Looking back, I think the diseased little pimple of dirt and bushes infected Frank with something dark and ugly.
That summer between seventh and eighth grade, I didn’t hang out much with Frank. But sometimes I saw him walking back to his house from the old hangout. I couldn’t understand why he would go there alone, to that haunted, boil of a place. Two events convinced me that Frank killed Little Joe that summer, although everyone else thought it was a terrible accident. Joe was a 6 year old, snotty nosed little brat, and I loved him. Everyone loved Little Joe – everyone except his big brother. I visited Frank’s house the day before it happened, because Frank had called me on the phone and invited me over to see the new color television his dad had bought. So I was there when Frank’s dad put the old TV up on the hallway shelf. I saw him carefully tape the electrical cord into a coil and tuck it away. So how come the police and neighbors all said that Little Joe had pulled the cord and caused the TV to fall on his sweet little head. Everyone wondered how anyone wouldn’t know better than to create such a safety hazard. There was a lot of anger directed at Little Joe’s dad. But I saw something else the morning it happened. I saw Frank climb out of his bedroom window and run towards his cesspool of a hideaway. Soon after, there had been frantic movement around the house, police sirens, a fire rescue unit. Little Joe was dead, his skull fractured by a falling Zenith television.
Why did Frank climb out the window? Why not use the door? And the look on his face as he started running for the hideaway, it was the look of a thing that enjoyed death – tongue sticking out from one corner, eyes too bright and lustful. I don’t know if Frank just unwound the electrical cord and hung it so Little Joe could reach it (here little buddy, want to play? Pull the pretty rope Little Joe) or if he pulled down the TV himself. But I know he did it.
Suddenly, I feel like a dumbass for coming here. What did it matter anyway? So what that my best friend had turned out to be a sadistic monster. Or more likely, it was just a freak accident, because that careless, screw-up of a dad put a busted television on a high shelf. Maybe if I see Frank’s and Little Joe’s screw up of a dad in town, I’ll bust his face before I leave. Yeah, I’m a dumbass for coming back here, just wasting time and money. I wasted my money on that flea bag of a motel where I rented a room. If that arrogant little punk of a clerk is on the desk when I get back, I think I’ll slam his head on the counter bell – just bounce his face up and down so the bell rings again and again and again!
Bryan has written short stories, now and then, during the past ten years, and is working on a longer story. His favorite book is “The Pickwick Papers”, but also enjoys mysteries, science fiction, and lots of horror stories. He lives near San Antonio, Texas.
I wrote this script for Beyond the Veil awhile back, exploring the bond between two twin sisters, Edith and Edna, who had lived their lives together. There was a terrible car crash and someone didn’t make it. The other is trying to contact them beyond the veil…
Beyond the Veil Setting:
Two women reach out to one another individually in a séance setting.
One sits on one side of a dining table. The other sits at the other side. Each studies a candle just beyond her reach; there is darkness between the two candles. The long table is barely hinted at in the interstice between the two but it is clearly present.
The camera is stationary showing both in profile staring through each other.
The women are both portrayed by the same actress who is also the voice of the narrator, who is unseen. All three voices are identical so that it is impossible to tell which of the two women the narrator is supposed to represent.
Both women are spliced into the same scene. They are together but apart. The two candles remain for the duration of filming so that the two halves of the film can either be overlapped (so that both women appear incorporeal) or cut and sandwiched in the middle between the candles (so both women appear physically present). It is possible to set the scene thusly using both methods in different parts of the story, with both women seemingly flickering in and out of being, both individually and apart.
Script:
I. Black, audio only.
Narrator:
I was riding with my twin sister.
We were in a terrible car crash.
The car drove over the median and rolled.
It spun off the road where it caught fire.
There was smoke everywhere.
My sister didn’t make it.
II. Fade in to the long table with two lit candles; flames flickering.
Two women are just sitting at either end.
They stare blankly through each other.
Call and Response
Edith: Now I’m trying to contact her…
Edna: …beyond the veil.
Simultaneous:
Edith: Edna, do you hear me?
Edna: Edith, do you hear me?
Together (In Unison):
If you hear me, knock three times.
Narrator:
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Call and Response:
Edith: I miss you terribly.
Edna: I miss you so much.
Edith: Do you remember…
Edna: … the car crash?
Edith: We rolled…
Edna: … over the median.
Edith: There was fire.
Edna: There was smoke.
Edith: I could hear the sirens.
Edna: They were coming…
Edith: … to rescue us.
Edna: But they were so far away.
Edith: So far…
Edna: … away….
Simultaneous:
Edith: Are you okay?
Edna: Are you hurt?
Together (In Unison):
Knock three times for yes. Knock once for no.
Narrator:
Knock
– pause –
Knock
– pause –
Together (Syncopated):
What’s it like, on the other side?
– long pause –
Simultaneous:
Edith: I miss you, Edna.
Edna: I miss you, Edith.
Together (Syncopated):
It’s so lonely here.
Call and Response:
Edith: There’s no one here.
Edna: I’m all alone.
Edith: Without you…
Edna: …the spark of life…
Edith: …is gone…
Edna: … so far away.
– pause –
Together (Entirely Out of Sync):
It’s so dark.
III. Fade out to black
Narrator:
I was riding with my twin sister.
We were in a terrible car crash.
The car drove over the median and rolled.
It spun off the road where it caught fire.
There was smoke everywhere.
I didn’t make it.
I had planned to actually turn this into the video for which it was written, but quickly discovered that my plans for recording required a space that was too drastically different from my new house (and new large gaming table) and that my vision for filming could not be well-fully executed or realized. So now it exists as a script only.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
Yeah yeah, the insects tend to get ALL the attention here on Nightmarish Nature. But honestly, this one takes the beefcake. It’s the New World Screwworm Fly, and it’s as terrifying as the name suggests. And they aren’t limited to the Americas, there is an Old World version as well, as they can be found pretty much anywhere tropical or seasonably suited.
Revolting Little Buggers
The Screwworm Fly is a parasitic fly larvae that burrows into its host to feed, named because it seems to screw deeper and deeper into the flesh over time. This process is called myiasis and do NOT look it up online, you WILL regret it. They blur those images out for very valid reasons, trust me (and not because of pornographic content). And these maggots will continue to burrow en masse, rather than staying put as a botfly larvae would.
Do Not Do an Image Search on Screwworm Myiasis, Like Seriously – You Will NEVER Unsee That
The female Screwworm fly lays her eggs on an open wound or orifice of her chosen host… And not just one egg or a couple of eggs, no – hundreds, even thousands of them. Let’s let that sink in a bit, shall we? Or screw in as it were. Although any warm-blooded animal is a prime target, cattle are a fly favorite, costing millions of head of cattle to this sick and disgusting horror annually. And if beef isn’t on the menu, Fido or even yourself might be.
The Great American Worm Wall
In fact, this particular feature here on Nightmarish Nature is so terrifying that the United States has made agreements with all of Central America, even including countries that do not generally share its interests, in order to create a “Great American Worm Wall” to prevent them from spreading back into the United States. I’m not going to go into all of the creepy and juicy details of this bizarre science fiction freak fact, you’ll just have to watch it here on Half As Interesting’s YouTube channel.
Essentially, the Worm Wall is a complicated byproduct of scientists studying radioactivity on the flies’ maturity as well as the flies’ sexual lives and using this information against them to nearly eradicate the species and banish it from much of its former range. So, Peter Parker, if you thought everyone was messing with your love life before, be glad you weren’t bitten by a radioactive Screwworm.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
Like I said before, I’m really getting into the spirit of the season this year. So reconsidering The Mourners yet again, and haunting the faith a bit, I decided to share a poem that I wrote thinking about All Hallows Eve as a preview of more things to come this month of October.
On Becoming Hallowed
Holy. Holy. Holy. Light the candle. Chant the hymn.
For now the veil between the living and the dead grows thin.
Fingers held to lips in silence; lies beneath their skin.
Family found, ancestral ghosts return to haunt their kin.
Skeletons in closets, grotesque yearnings trapped within.
A bleached and bony face flashes a slightly knowing grin.
It’s not the shadows but the darkness that we fear therein.
Bless this Church whose saintly bodies live and dwell herein.
Unto Death, they claim to sanctify our souls from sin.
Those familiar faces shame; this fight we cannot win.
Come what may, they betray. Pray/prey and heads will spin.
Forevermore and evermore to nevermore… Amen.
I thought this poem really captured All Hallows Eve, in some of the same sentiments as the movie High Spirits, which I loved almost as much as Beetlejuice back in the day.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
