Quittin' Time

Tessie’s beer wasn’t cold enough, the evening was too got-damn hot, and she wanted a cigarette like nobody’s business. Since only one of those problems offered an easy solution, she threw some cans into the freezer box while she wrangled the hens for the night and locked the coop. After a whole 10 minutes, the beer was still lukewarm, but it was enough to sip on resignedly.

It was Friday the 13th, and Tessie’s first full day without a smoke. As prescribed, it was also day seven of her quitting meds. When the lady doc wrote her the script for varenicline with instructions to start taking it one week before she chucked them for good, Tessie thought it would be funny to pick a Friday 13th to quit, since one was right around the corner. Funny at the time, at least.

“Ain’t them’s the drugs they say cause weird dreams and stuff?” she had asked the doctor.

“Yes. Patients commonly report this side effect, and sometimes sleepwalking,” Lady Doc had responded in a perceptible accent that wasn’t from these hills. Tessie couldn’t quite recall the physician’s name, save that it wasn’t one you’d be likely to come across at any clinic in southern Appalachia, much less in her backwoods hometown. She did remember the way her brassy earrings brushed against her smooth neck as she craned it to write on her clipboard. That sent a momentary jolt of loneliness through Tessie.

She snapped out of it as Lady Doc continued, “…as such it is recommended you avoid alcohol. That will decrease the risk of other possible contraindications you may experience, such as headaches, upset stomach, mood fluctuations.” She paused and looked up from her clipboard. “How much has your alcohol consumption increased since the loss of your wife, Tessie?”

Tessie had worried than an honest answer to that question might impact whether Lady Doc decided to finish writing that prescription. Quitting smoking had been Tessie’s repeated promise to Grace in those last weeks as she slipped away and the cancer metastasized. But Grace never said nothing about giving up beer.

Wryly, Tessie had simply responded, “Let’s tackle one vice at a time, Doc.”

She thought that shit was supposed to have curbed the cravings by now, but between the heat and force of habit, she was fixing to crawl out of her skin. She would leave it in the rocking chair in a pile and skinless Tessie would take the truck to the Gas-Up for cigs and a good spook for the neighbors. Not that spookin’ superstitious Bible-Trumpers in this neck of the holler was that hard; as Tessie and Grace had learned, all it took was a couple of middle-aged lesbians from the city moving back into the cabin Tessie inherited when Ma had passed a decade ago. This seemed particularly true for old Brenda from up the way. Brenda’s tract house was the only visible home from Tessie’s cabin, barely at that. Still seemed that there weren’t enough trees between them to get that bigoted old bitch to mind her own. For a spell, they kept a collection of the church pamphlets Brenda would not-so-surreptitiously leave on their doorstep, new warnings of fate that awaited wicked homosexuals like themselves every few weeks. Tessie’s chest tightened as she thought of the many evenings they spent rocking, drinking, and smoking together on this very porch, hootin’ over those pamphlets, Grace thoughtfully critiquing the vibrant illustrations and choice of vernacular.

“They even made correct use of the Oxford comma,” Grace had once mused. “’Fire, brimstone, and eternal suffering.’ And they say education in the South is lacking.”

Tessie could still hear the ring of her laughter. It caused another craving to swell. She chugged the rest of her disappointing beer to drown it before popping open the tab of another, watching the sun sink behind the trees.

The soft, rhythmic dripping of rain woke her. Good, was her first conscious thought. That’ll cool shit down. The second was that she was on her living room sofa, where she had apparently retired before abruptly passing out hard. Unsure of the time, she groaned and began to shuffle down the narrow hallway to her bedroom.

Her third thought was a halting realization that the moonbeams streaming through the kitchen windows meant that sound was not the rain after all. Something suddenly told her that it wasn’t just a leaky faucet, neither, and that it was coming from the bedroom.

The dripping paused just long enough for Tessie to unfreeze and start back down the hall, when it resumed as gently and constant as before. Craning into the dark room, she peered out from behind the door frame at her bedroom window. It was just enough to discern a dark silhouette outside, nails clicking on the glass pane.

Tessie thanked the stars that the gun cabinet was mere feet away. Her shaking hands and fingers somehow worked together to find the right combination on the padlock, then her double-barrel shotgun, then the ammunition, without a single shell clattering to the floor as she loaded both chambers and her shirt pocket with four rounds total. With the butt of the gun at her shoulder, she strode into the bedroom and pivoted to aim at the shadow.

As her sight adjusted, Tessie realized she was facing Grace. She was naked as the day she was born; nekkid, as they said around here. Grace lowered her hand and cocked her head. Her body practically shimmered in the faint moonglow, healthier and sturdier than it had been in years. Her lips half-smiled in that demure, slightly sneaky way that she had mostly reserved for their private moments alone. Tessie’s grip on the gun slackened, apprehension keeping her mild arousal in check. “Grace?” she rasped through her constricted throat.

Her bewilderment yielded to terror as the thing outside lifted a long, clawed finger. A ragged nail scratched slowly down the pane as its mouth drew back to reveal an enormous, garish grin of what must have been a thousand fangs. Even in the darkness, Tessie could see the bloodstains on them. Recent ones.

Tessie watched in paralysis as her beloved wife’s doe-like eyes transformed into two grapefruit-sized, insectile black orbs. The thing then tilted its head back, revealing an almost comically elongated gullet. Its maw parted at the sky and erupted in a shrill, jagged shriek that pierced the night, seemingly scaring every dog in the holler into silence. Its razor claws retracted and released.

Tessie’s inner voice told her to hold her fire, reminding her that pulling the trigger at this range would mean a brand new entry way through her bedroom wall, which is surely what this thing came seeking in the first place. For better or worse, all those tales of cryptids that had surrounded Tessie as a child had also inspired years of strategizing for this in the actual event of the Mothman or Boogerman showing up on her front porch.

Fuck. Oh fuck. The porch.

Just as she had no memory of stumbling inside to crash on the sofa, she also had none of locking the door behind her. As if this monster had read her mind, it lurched at top speed toward the front of the cabin as Tessie sprinted down the hall. Through the walls, she heard it growling like a puma. She clutched the gun with one sweaty hand, freeing the other to hit the lock.

A wave of sickness hit Tessie as she noticed the front door was ajar, moonlight seeping in through the crack. The shape of the creature eclipsed it just as Tessie’s palm made contact with the knob. She slammed her body into the door and flipped the deadbolt. Tessie heard a hiss, followed by the noise of something scraping the porch floor. She scarcely got a second to consider the front kitchen window that also opened up to the porch when it exploded, glass flying along with Tessie’s rocking chair. The creature burst in behind it.

Its resemblance to Grace was all but gone, the creature’s facial features stretched gruesomely to support its massive jaws on its long, swiveling neck. Tessie could see that its outstretched, serrated claws were the size of steak knives. What had been Grace’s legs were now bent the other way entirely like a bird’s, resting on huge and grimy talons. Its odor reminded Tessie of the chicken coop at its rankest. It opened its mouth widely in an exhale of something even more foul that Tessie couldn’t identify, and didn’t want to. It stung her face from across the room, blurring her vision.

Tessie blinked, raising the shotgun and widening her stance. At least this sumbitch was at close enough range to mean she didn’t have to think much about precision before firing the first round. Buckshot pellets and smoke blasted through her kitchen and spattered the wall with a dark ooze that immediately gushed in torrents from the tattered remains of the monster’s face. Its remaining black eye glinted ragefully. The strangled cry it emitted rattled the cabin as it lunged at Tessie, who stumbled backward as she fired the second round. This hit went askew as shots peppered her kitchen cabinets, but squarely striking the creature, which keeled over. It heaved and threw its body back the way it came though the window, leaving a trail of that putrid, inky fluid in its wake.

Tessie flew to the porch, loading the shotgun again. She thought that the creature would be dragging itself away, an easy target, but was stunned to see it loping at a three-legged tilt through the field to the edge of the woods. By the time Tessie’s third shot rang out, it had already reached the forest darkness and vanished into a thicket. She held the gun in place until the sound of the thing crashing further away into wilderness faded, replaced by the holler dogs’ yips and howls as they resumed through the valley.

She wondered if heavy breathing like this could induce a heart attack. Another reason to keep on the quitting train, though she doubted that anything that had just occurred would ever be listed on the surgeon general’s warning about smoking. Got-damn, did she ever want a cigarette right about now. Needed one, in fact, if just to stop her shaking and to slow her down as she tried to piece together how in Satan’s realm that whole encounter had just happened.

Tessie thought about the glorious taste of nicotine on her lips as she crouched in the corner of her dining room floor with her gun at the ready for what felt like endless hours, eyes pinned to the gaping hole in the wall until the the crickets’ chirping gave way to birdsongs. As the sky slowly lightened, she wrestled with sleep until it inevitably won with heavy force.

Tessie flinched as the sunlight moved across her face on the cabin’s floor, but wasn’t sure if it was the glare, the sweltering heat, or the smell that caused her to sit bolt upright (this she immediately regretted, her throbbing back reminding her that she had been slouched over the shotgun in her lap for hours by now). Then again, perhaps her splitting hangover was the culprit. And boy, this one was a whopper; Lady Doc had all but warned her of this. But no elixirs nor hair of the dog could cure whatever rottenness was emanating from outside.

Pleasant shock sank in as she scanned the room to see her plaid curtains framing the fully intact dining room window. Outside, her rocking chair was also undisturbed, an empty beer can balanced on its armrest. In fact, the only things awry were two pillows knocked off the sofa and the front door barely ajar. And if that wasn’t enough to make sense of, Tessie became aware that she had slept in a pair of black Doc Martens. Throughout the ruckus of whatever had (or hadn't) played out last night—and Tessie sure as shit couldn’t begin to analyze that just yet—she had never been conscious of whether she fought that bastard of a thing in boots or barefoot. Clearly, though, she had slept with them on throughout the night, maybe even slept-walked through the house with them.

That damn vareni-whatever prescription. That’s what that was. Just weird drugs causing weird dreams, that’s all it was. The booze must’ve kicked them into overdrive. And if that combo wasn’t causing this banger of a headache, it sure wasn’t helping it. Maybe it was time to start following doctors orders’ and cut back on the sauce too, leastaways before bedtime.

Tessie instinctively checked the shotgun’s chambers to find a single shell. Odd. Why in the Sam hell would I have half-loaded this thing? But the second chamber held no shell casing, which Tessie reckoned was probably a good sign that it hadn’t actually been fired. Sleepwalking was disconcerting enough, but sleep-shooting?

The nearby croak of a turkey buzzard drew Tessie’s faculties back to the stench at hand. She hoisted her creaking body upright, taking the gun with her as she began to trace the source of the smell, just in case. Once in the backyard, Tessie stopped in her tracks to absorb the scene before her.

Several buzzards hopped excitedly around multicolored mounds strewn about the yard. The coop door yawned wide open. Feathers covered the yard like flowers, flies buzzing all around. Tessie saw the detached head of a hen at her feet, its lifeless eyes staring up at nothing. She dropped to her knees and vomited into the grass.

The reek of death was almost too overpowering for Tessie to notice what was leading to the edge of the property line toward an overgrown thicket, exactly where the thing (Imaginary thing, Tessie firmly reminded herself) had escaped in last night’s dream-fueled chaos. A dark, thick trail stained the field in a straight line and disappeared into it, as though someone had marked the grass with an oversized paintbrush. The noxiousness of the air and thrum of the flies grew as she began to follow it, shotgun at her side. Something much larger than a chicken was in there. She simultaneously needed and dreaded to find out what.

Gravel crunched loudly behind her. Tessie whirled around, nerves shot, to see the sheriff’s patrol car pull to a stop at the front of the cabin. Relief coursed through her as she hurried to meet him, raising one hand with the other pointing the gun at the ground.

The sheriff exited the car and walked slowly toward her. “Afternoon, Tessie,” he said.

“Afternoon?” Tessie asked, stunned. She couldn’t recall the last time she had slept past 8 a.m.

The sheriff looked at her quizzically, eyes darting toward the gun. “Reckon you wouldn’t mind unloading whatever you got in there, Tessie.” It was an instruction, not a request. Tessie pressed the breech lever and set both the lone shell and the shotgun down. “Tell me,” the sheriff continued, nodding at the gun, “that wouldn’t have anything to do with commotion last night some of your neighbors have been talking about, would it? Screams, shots fired, that kind of thing?”

“Sheriff, I can’t say for sure. I’m just not sure of anything right now. My chickens, they—"

“It’s a peculiar thing,” the sheriff interrupted. “A few of these calls come in very early this morning. Nothing too unusual, mind—teenagers and Friday the 13th mischief and what not. Exceptin’ they all say they thought the racket was coming from up this direction. Woulda stayed just a little peculiar, no reason to go knockin’ on doors, ‘til the other call come in.

Something about the way he said it made the hair on Tessie’s arms prickle. “What other call, sir?”

“Your neighbor, Miss Brenda. Didn’t show in church this mornin’. Folks saw her yesterday evenin', no sign of her today. And you know Miss Brenda don’t skip a Sunday service.” The sheriff’s eyes shifted in the direction of the chicken coop and narrowed in disgust as he registered the smell. “Holy hell. Critter back there die in its own shit and piss or something?”

“Brenda’s missing?” Tessie said, feeling the color leave her face. She glanced over her shoulder in the direction of Brenda's house, glancing at the thicket in the distance; two of the buzzards had flown over, cawing with interest.

The sheriff noticed this as well, his eyes widening slightly before returning to Tessie. “Yes ma’am. Something don’t feel right about it. Figured if anyone was to have seen somethin’, that’d likely be you.” The sheriff’s gaze narrowed again in the direction of the thicket. “Tessie, don’t suppose you’d mind if I take a look and see what’s got them buggers all riled up, do you?”

He did not wait for her permission before striding past her into the backyard, hand on his holster. When he abruptly halted and swore loudly, Tessie knew he had seen the chickens. Perhaps he would realize that, whatever terrible things had happened last night—somehow Tessie knew in her bones it was bad—she had nothing to do with any of it.

The sheriff suddenly bent down to pick something up. He examined what was in his palm and slowly turned around.

“These your shell casings?” He held up three of them.

In the midst of the oppressive heat, Tessie felt her blood chill. The sheriff stared at her for a long moment, his expression made of stone. Once again, before waiting for her to respond, he strode into the thicket. A buzzard squawked.

As she heard the sheriff scream expletives in horror, followed by the hideous, slavering shriek of something that damn sure wasn't human, all Tessie could think about was how she had never in her got-damn life needed anything as much as a cigarette.