Haunted MTL Original – Check The Children – J.M. Brannyk
“Check The Children” by J.M. Brannyk
In the still night, he watches his steps. Balancing his weight from one side to the other, he moves slowly, as if the weight of quietness is pushing against him like a very angry wind.
The scent of soap and popcorn confronts him the closer he slips towards the other people in the house. He imagines the shadows are drawn lines that separate him from them, and the silence colors them so differently. Like animals — here they graze and lower their heads as he sneaks up to them, saliva barely held in by the sharp, powerful teeth. If he could be any animal, he would be a lion. A hungry lion.
Toys are scattered like oracle bones on the carpet and he cautiously doesn’t move them, not out of reverence, but out of disgust. The warmth of children has always carved an inch deeper into his guts. The things that could not be changed after the accident are still solid and immeasurable.
“Have you checked the children recently?” He had asked her before hanging up the phone upstairs, taking a moment to hear his own heart get lost in the corridors of his ears. So much more was at stake than watching tv and talking to her boyfriend, and it hurt him that she was so young but thought she knew so much…
Unimportant thoughts free themselves as he swallows and finds the door to the bedroom –twin boys, bunkbeds. He saw the bedroom through the window when he climbed the tree during dinner time to get to the attic. He had wondered what their hair smelled like. What they would dream?
He’s calmer, much calmer, than he imagined he would be. The handle of the ax is wet under his tight hand. Holding it to the side, he reaches for the doorknob. In a quick, nervous twitch, the door is spreading open, the eerie glow of the nightlight spilling into his eyes. Without breathing, he can’t even hear himself as he moves to their beds.
‘Have you checked the children?’ His words, the nervous gravel of his voice, echoes so clearly as he bends over the bottom bed, but finds nothing but sheets.
After a moment of looking at nothing and becoming used to that nothing, he realizes that she must have taken the children downstairs. To draw her out, to shake her up enough to slip up and keep slipping, he decides to call her again.
And maybe it’s just about hearing her voice and that little tremble that makes him feel just a bit naughty and a bit irreparable. He’s learning that the only thing he exceeds at is damaging everything around him.
The ring of the phone is a soft hum sleeping against his ear and he starts to feel in control again, and so stuffed with power that his breath leaks out the access. There’s a click. She’s picked up. That full breath into the phone, fat with power. “Have you checked the children?”
“Have you checked them?” Her strained voice lands like a wounded bird with a long and slender neck, broken at the base. The repeated question pulls out that confidence, his warm glow of contentment. How could he be questioned? The tone of her voice spirals down his stumbling system without the hope of lifting; he needs to find the children now. Their livelihood is marring his own; their presence is disconnecting him from completion.
His face resurfaces angrily from question after question. Would he like to make a call, would he like to please hang up and try again?
The intimacy of suspense is crushed.
He tears through the house in cyclone strides. Door hinges bend and violently cough when he slams them open. He knows that she knows that she has been violated, that he was here with her the whole time, that there never was any safety.
Each time, after each giant heave and door slamming, there is only emptiness and that stillness that he naively thought he invoked, when she stole it away from him. Pieces of the shadows are ruined by hastiness and rising desperations. Had he checked the children? He should have so much sooner; he should have tied them down or waited for them to come to him. Each room so vast and empty of all life, leading him into further uncertainty like a mirage of a cold desert in the middle of the imposing jungle.
She doesn’t flinch when he finds her in the bathroom, dripping wet, shaking in delicate teaspoon doses. There’s water resting on the floor and the room feels like it’s going through the aftermath of something very loud and fierce – not quite believing what had just happened within its own walls.
In the tub are the two boys, heads under the calm water. Their nighties are soaked and the cloth clings cozily to their limp bodies. Water droplets still roll down the wall.
The ax slips in his hands, but doesn’t fall and he doesn’t understand – things like this just didn’t happen. He doesn’t understand.
Her eyes are sharp and thin like wire, taking the skin of his arm, chest, face right off with her quick glances. The stillness builds against them into such an immovable tower, locking them both in place, together, even mixing them. Who was he? The one with the ax and the anger? Or the one with the resolve and desperation? They both are such inconsistent characters, changing roles and words, balancing them onto nothing and they’re not surprised at the harsh sound of breaking.
In this moment, he learns how to feel horrified. The sounds of the door swinging shut behind him pins him there, with her, forever in his mind. The lights of red and blue kaleidoscope off the window, onto their faces and hands, hers are still dripping, his are still slipping the handle of the ax.
“Why?” he manages to pull out of his mangled, split thoughts. He’s the one to ask why, to break the barrier between them.
“Better me than you.” It’s all she says while their perfect stillness is invaded by noise and chaos as the front door is kicked in and their moment is taken over again by the outside world…
J.M. Brannyk lives in constant duality, like a tossed coin, but is steadily adjusting to the movements. They study geology and other nihilistic interests. Surprisingly, there’s a romantic side that’s hard to kill.
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.
