Disclaimer by the author:
A part of me wishes to apologize for the pervasive profanity contained in this story, but in the interest of artistic integrity, I cannot. It has always been my observation that teenagers—especially boys—have no brain-to-mouth filter whenever they think adults aren’t listening to them. Thus, this tale faithfully recreates—for better or for worse—the flippant, profane speech of adolescents who are still trying to figure themselves out and have yet to fully absorb social niceties.
The Monolith
A short story by Virginia Wallace
Chapter One
October 31, 2021
We brought something out with us that night.
It only sheltered us—welcomed and protected us—just long enough to dig its claws into our very souls. But when it was finally strong enough to ride out of Dodge—triumphantly borne aloft by our fevered consciousnesses—it drove us out, and itself with it. The house that remained behind would forevermore be nothing but an empty shell. The powers that animated the place no longer needed a physical dwelling, for we were now cursed to forever carry them upon a shared, internal litter that we could never put down.
Harry stopped reading and closed the hardback graphic novel, just as he had every Halloween for thirteen years now. The aging ‘leftover hippie’ was getting old, and now life seemed like less of a party and more like a dull, languid purgatory.
He stared across the moonlit lawn, eyeing the stone monument rising from the freshly-mown grass. The concrete monolith was only about four feet high, but it loomed large in the dark drama that had become his life. Even the two women standing behind him, holding their hands gently upon his sagging shoulders, were little comfort.
The powers that animated the place no longer needed a physical dwelling, for we were now cursed to forever carry them upon a shared, internal litter that we could never put down …
There wasn’t enough marijuana in the world to undo such a tragedy as this, or to make the pain go away.
***
March 12, 1999
“Godammit, you two are some stinky motherfuckers!”
Moe smiled, blowing a cloud of cigar smoke. From the back seat, Rotchy took a long draw from his pipe.
“Why can’t y’all just smoke cigarettes like normal people?” moaned Shoe, sticking his head out the front passenger window.
“’CUZ THEY STINK!!!” laughed Moe and Rotchy, in perfect unison.
Shoe breathed in the balmy spring air as the battered Impala careened down the road, trying to ignore the tobacco-fouled interior of Moe’s jalopy.
The three boys were fast friends; they always did everything together. They drank whenever they could find someone willing to buy alcohol for underage consumers, and they watched horror films. They also played “Dungeons and Dragons,” and these three favorite activities of theirs often intermingled. They lived in their own little world, with its private jokes and shared quirks, and could often be found ‘crashing’ at one another’s houses. Shoe and Rotchy lived in rural North Carolina. Moe lived in urban Virginia; fleeing his terrible home life by escaping with his friends was the very essence of his ‘happy place.’
Keith ‘Moe’ Morse was a handsome boy of seventeen, with long hair and an impish smile. He got his nickname because he did construction work during his summers off school, and his co-workers had ignominiously dubbed him ‘Elmo’ after the littlest Sesame Street Muppet. Over time, his friends began shortening his moniker to ‘Moe.’ It was inevitable that the girls would love him for his striking good looks, and they did. Moe often loved them back, but only on his own quirky terms; he could only stand their affections for so long before he would feel like he was losing himself. Whenever that happened, he would dump the young lady in question, and bury himself back into role-playing, drinking, and horror films … all the things his bosom buddies loved to do. Moe was a brooding boy, artistic and introspective despite his flashy charm. He was an artist, and a fledgling writer; he dreamed of working in comic books one day.
Ric ‘Shoe’ Beck was the classic, burly ‘best friend.’ Well over six feet tall and three hundred pounds, he was built like a classic Teutonic ox. Easygoing and reliable, he was the perfect balance to Moe’s tempestuousness and Rotchy’s eccentricity. He was good at working on cars; he was also adept at playing both the guitar and PlayStation.
He didn’t smoke, although hanging out with his best friends often made him wonder if he shouldn’t just take up the habit and be done with it. Moe had nicknamed him ‘Shoebox’ for his odd habit of rolling around with a stack of old Playboy magazines in the backseat, stashed in a shoebox. Not, of course, that Moe was above flipping through the Playboys. But he did enjoy teasing his friend about it, and the nickname stuck. Eventually, ‘Shoebox’ evolved into simply ‘Shoe.’
Rochester ‘Rotchy’ Alvin was the polar opposite of Shoe. Scrawny, with wild frizzy hair, he looked like an emaciated ‘nutty professor.’ He was legally blind, so his eyes looked nearly as big as his head through his thick glasses. Of the three boys, his IQ was the closest to genius-level …
His social awkwardness, however, did somewhat offset his intellect.
Where Rotchy truly shined was his genius at storytelling. Whenever he stood at the head of the gaming table—waving his arms over the ‘Dungeon Master screen’ as he told his ghoulish tales—hearts began to pound and pulses began to race. When the players reached for their dice, they did so with the knowledge that ‘Dungeon Master Rotchy’ might have some terrible fate planned for their hapless characters. But that never stopped them from coming along for the ride. There was just something about Rotchy’s fantasy tales that was far beyond bewitching.
“So where is this place again?” asked Moe, blowing a final cloud of smoke as he threw his cigar butt out the window.
“We gotta turn down Nosay Road,” said Rotchy, knocking his pipe ashes into the ashtray on the armrest. “It’s on Old Swamp Road, right on one of the corners.”
“Is this the place Royce was talking about?” said Shoe.
“It is,” said Rotchy. “He’s probably full of shit, but maybe it’s worth checking out anyway.”
In addition to being gamers, horror aficionados, and occasional carousers, the three boys were also avid explorers. At least, that was how they described themselves; anyone else would have said ‘habitual trespassers.’
“Did you remember flashlights?” Rotchy asked Moe.
“I only had two,” he replied. “So someone has to use the decrepto-light.”
Rotchy was about to say something when Moe and Shoe both shouted, ‘NOT IT!’
“Dammit,” moaned Rotchy. “I always get the decrepto-light!”
“Sh!” ordered Moe, killing the headlights. “We’re almost there.”
The boys often drove with no headlights on, usually when they were up to no good. Moe slowed the car a little, letting his eyes adjust to the bright moonlight.
“Turn down the gravel road, and park on the shoulder,” said Rotchy. “There’s a front entrance, but it’s pretty overgrown, with a ditch on either side. We can scope it out from the inside and pull in there later.”
“Someone’s gonna notice a honkin’ big sedan on the side of the road!” objected Shoe. “This fuckin’ thing is white, even if it is half rusted!”
“Not to worry!” grinned Moe, pulling off onto the shoulder. “I bought a dark green car cover. It won’t make us invisible, but you’d drive right by unless you’re looking for us.”
“Right on,” said Shoe.
Moe covered his car promptly after the three boys piled out of it. He was right; one would have to be looking for it to notice it. He took a bag out of the trunk before stretching the canvas over it.
The boys were dressed entirely in black, which was their habit whenever they were somewhere they didn’t belong. Moe pulled two plastic flashlights out of the bag and handed one to Shoe. The third was an old-fashioned ‘torch’ style light, heavy and long, with a huge lens. It often flickered or didn’t work, hence the name ‘decrepto-light.’
“This thing weighs more than my left leg,” whined Rotchy, taking the flashlight.
“A night-light weighs more than your left leg!” laughed Moe. “C’mon, let’s get off the road.”
“There’s supposed to be a footbridge over the ditch, on this side,” said Rotchy.
The grass was tall, un-mown. The boys searched the side of the road, letting the moonlight guide them. All their flashlights had blue filters—cut from plastic legal binders—so their light would look more natural. Nevertheless, they knew better than to turn them on too close to the road.
“Here it is,” said Shoe at last, in a loud whisper.
Moe and Rotchy headed toward him, stepping carefully through the weeds. There was indeed a small footbridge over the drainage ditch, about six feet long. It was completely overgrown, but visible enough once one came close enough.
“You found it,” said Moe. “You first.”
Shoe stepped onto the bridge, and his friends behind him. But rather than simply crossing onto the overgrown, wooded property, all three boys found themselves standing on the bridge, examining the railing.
The hand rails were covered in concrete, expertly molded over the metal railing. Small, faux jewels were pressed into the stone by way of decoration, and there were words chiseled onto the left rail.
THE BRIDGE TO 1,000,000 WHYS, read the engraved letters. “Well, if that don’t set off your ‘weird shit-o-meter’ …” said Moe. “Wow.’
“Maybe Royce wasn’t full of shit after all,” said Rotchy. “There’s a kinda-sorta path from here. It looks like someone dug a trail through the property.”
The boys turned on their flashlights as they entered the property. The decrepto-light actually worked for once … for about ten feet. Rotchy smacked it in frustration. “Why the fuck do I always get this damn …?”
“Shut up,” interjected Moe.
“What do you mean, shut up?!” demanded Rotchy.
“I mean, look at this.”
Stretching over the trail was a tall, wrought-iron arch. It looked like the entrance to some imposing mansion, grandiose and foreboding at the same time. But instead of having the name of a manor, the iron letters made an ominous statement.
DAMN THE CRIPPLES, it read.
“What in the blue-green fuck does that mean?” asked Rotchy, as the decrepto-light flickered back to life.
“What did ‘bridge to a million whys’ mean?” retorted Shoe.
The boys followed the trail around the property, stepping carefully. Toward the end of the trail—nearly to the road—the path was flanked by footlights, long ago broken and rusted out.
“What is that?” asked Rotchy, nearly walking into Shoe as he stopped.
“It’s a model of a ship,” said Moe, shining his flashlight on the metal monument.
It was about six feet long and artfully welded together. It sat in a circle of footlights, clearly meant to be a show piece. “I think it’s supposed to be the Titanic,” said Rotchy.
“I think you’re right,” said Shoe, shining his light on a narrow lectern nearby. “There’s broken glass here, and I’m betting there was a picture under it once. You know, like those pictures at the zoo next to the animal cages.”
“There’s the main entrance,” said Moe. “It looks like we can pull in between those two big trees, and we’ll miss the ditch.”
“Does anyone notice anything weird?” asked Rotchy.
“What?” asked Moe and Shoe in unison.
“Where the hell is the house?”
It was soon determined that the trail ran around the perimeter of the property. The house was nestled deep in the trees, with only a small clearing around it. A breeze arose as the boys entered the clearing, unseasonably cool for a Southern spring. While it was often unreliable, the decrepto-light had the longest range, and Rotchy shone it upon the house.
The boys felt their hearts pounding as the hair stood up on the backs of their necks. They gazed for the first time upon the house that they once suspected was a myth. It rose toward the trees like a castle, eerie and still.
“What … the … fuck …!” breathed Moe.
The house was gaudy, almost laughably so if it hadn’t been so forbidding. There was ornate molding all along the roof and down the sides. Doors were mounted in the second-floor wall that clearly opened into absolutely nothing. Cabinet doors were mounted at random intervals, as though this were not a house but rather a storage closet. Some elements of the structure were wood, while others were concrete or masonry. The house looked as though it had been haphazardly slapped together by someone playing with leftover building materials.
“Well,” said Shoe bravely, “Let’s do the damn thing!”
Shoe stepped forward, holding his light aloft. It was an odd dynamic that the trio had. Usually Moe was the brash one, the bold one, the one who charged in first—but not always. Occasionally quiet, steadfast Shoe would unexpectedly take the lead.
Rotchy, on the other hand, often got stuffed into claustrophobically tight spots in which his friends were too burly to fit. Holes in crawl spaces, narrow gaps through collapsed walls … Once they even lowered him into an abandoned septic tank. “Such is life,” he’d always sigh, and then he would melodramatically paraphrase the line from the classic television show “TinyToons”: “Rotchy go down the hole.”
The house grew stranger and stranger as the boys approached. There was a well of some kind on one side of the house, surrounded by a waist-high stone wall. There was also an exterior, wrought-iron, spiral staircase heading up to the flat roof.
“Wanna see what’s up there?” asked Moe, following Shoe.
“Fuck that,” replied Rotchy bluntly. “I see moonlight through the broken windows, which means the roof is caving in. That staircase will be next.”
Discretion being the better part of valor, the three adventurers agreed that the staircase was best left alone. They did wonder, however, why it led up to the roof when there was obviously nothing up there.
“This house is crazy, man!” breathed Shoe, shining his light on the walls.
Indeed it was. The concrete parts of the structure were all much the same: decorated with faux jewels and engravings. The writings seemed to be an odd mix of apocalyptic Biblical passages and esoteric symbols.
“This symbol’s everywhere,” said Moe, as the three examined the outer walls. “Look, it’s a five-pointed star, with the letter R engraved twice—one forward, and one backward, facing each other. Isn’t that a Masonic symbol?”
“And the All-Seeing Eye, the Pentagon, and the Eye of Horace,” confirmed Rotchy. “This dude was into the occult, big time.”
It took a while for the three to enter through the open door. The rooms inside were decayed and rotting, and none of them dared to tread the staircase to the partially collapsed second floor. The kitchen was full of handmade cabinets, all warped and rotting. The main living room had a crumbling fireplace, and rotten wooden bookshelves all around. The shelves had glass doors on them, but the glass had long since been broken.
“Do you notice,” asked Rotchy, tapping the decrepto-light to keep it from flickering, “that the frames over the bookshelf don’t open? They’re not doors, like a cabinet. It’s like whatever went into those shelves was for display and never meant to be taken out.”
“Weird, man!” said Moe. Shoe promptly echoed the sentiment.
The three wandered outside again, scanning the yard with their lights. There was a small, concrete monolith in the middle, about four feet tall.
“Looks like the Washington Monument,” said Rotchy. “Like an Egyptian obelisk, you know? Also a Masonic icon, a tribute to their ‘great architect of the universe.’”
“It’s engraved on all four sides,” said Shoe.
“Yep,” said Rotchy. “Look at this side. This is some weird shit, man! It’s a Bible story about Jesus. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.”
“We should take it,” said Moe firmly.
That, as it turned out, was easier said than done. The engraved, bejeweled monument was poured deep into the ground, with metal re-bar keeping it solidly anchored. “We ain’t gettin’ this out,” said Moe in frustration. “We’re gonna have to come back with like, ten swamp donkeys and a bunch of shovels.”
“Will you quit calling North Carolineans ‘swamp donkeys,’ ya fuckin’ Virginian?” demanded Rotchy, sounding half playful.
“You know I say that will all due affection!” replied Moe, giving his friend a wink. “But you get my point. I mean, fuck this!”
As Moe was venting his frustration, Shoe was walking slowly toward the house. When he reached its wall, he turned with a strange expression on his face.
Moe felt rather than heard Shoe’s thunderous footsteps as he ran toward the obelisk. He violently tackled clueless Rotchy, who was still examining the scripture verses engraved on the monument. Both hit the ground with a thud as Shoe drop-kicked the obelisk over their heads.
“FUCK!!!” shouted Rotchy. “WARN a guy before you do that, k?”
“Well, excuse me for not letting Attila the Hun here kick your fuckin’ head right off!” retorted Moe, rising and offering Rotchy his hand.
Shoe had fallen heavily on his padded rear end, and he rose with a rueful expression on his pasty face. “Sorry,” he murmured sheepishly.
The monument was lying on its side, completely unearthed.
“Damn!” whistled Moe. “We gotta add that one to our D&D game: ‘plus ten monolith kick,’ you know?”
“Yeah,” said Rotchy glumly. “Now we gotta get that stupid thing outta here!”
The rest of the evening was filled with grunting, cursing, and complaining as the three intrepid explorers dragged their new treasure toward the Impala. It took several attempts to lift it into the trunk, and when they finally managed, the rear end of the car sagged alarmingly low.
As the Impala slowly rolled away, the moon dropped a little in the sky. A shaft of light shone through the trees, illuminating one of the engravings on the wall of the old house.
The Biblical book of Isaiah—in chapter forty-three and verse ten—says the following: You are my witness, declares the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen.
The engraving lit by the eerie shaft of moonlight said something similar. Maybe the wording was meant to be a paraphrase, or maybe it was meant to be blasphemy. In either case, what it said would give any religious person pause: One of you is my witness, declares the Architect, it read, and my servant whom I will choose.
“Do y’all think it’s too late to hit up Stinky Dave for some booze?” asked Moe, keeping an eye on the road as he lit a cigar.
“No,” said Shoe. “It’s too late to take him to the liquor store, but he’ll have plenty on hand. If he bathed as often as he drinks, he’d smell like roses.”
“Good,” said Moe with satisfaction. “I could do with some Fighting Cock after that workout.”
“Why the hell do we drink that swill? I’m surprised that shithouse vodka is even legal!” moaned Shoe, sticking his head out the window again. “It’s engine degreaser, man. Seriously.”
“Because Stinky Dave always has plenty,” grinned Moe. “And he’s happy to sell it to us cheap!”
Rotchy voiced his agreement as the Impala rolled merrily down the road.
And the old house basked in the moonlight, silent, and still …
Chapter Two
October 31, 2021
“What am I meant to see?” asked Penny. “And what’s that smell?”
“Just wait,” said Roberta. “Sometimes they come right at nightfall, and sometimes it’s almost dawn. But they always come on Halloween; it was their favorite holiday.”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Penny. “Keith and I had just moved back from L.A. when they … well, you know. I only met Ric and Rochester once.”
“Moe usually stayed here when he visited, which was often,” said Roberta. “Or if he didn’t, he was hovering around. Harry and I kept an eye out for him.”
Penny was Moe’s widow, an attractive brunette fast approaching her forties. Roberta was Rotchy’s mother. And it was difficult to believe that Harry had sired the burly Shoe, so small was he in stature.
What all three had in common was their grief.
This was Penny’s first Halloween here at Roberta’s house. Roberta and Harry had been doing this vigil since the beginning, but they had long hesitated to let Penny in on the secret; it was finally Roberta, conscience-stricken, who had finally spilled the beans.
“I almost want to set a six-pack out there for them,” said Harry mournfully.
“Between Moe and Shoe, you better make that a case,” said Roberta. “Maybe two.”
“Why don’t you?” asked Penny.
“You can’t go out there,” said Harry. “You just can’t, not on … this night. When it happens, you’ll know why. You’ll just feel it.”
“Why can’t we go out there?” demanded Penny.
“My wife, Betsy—Ric’s mother—ran out there, years ago,” said Harry dully, holding his head in his hands. “She couldn’t bear to let our boy slip away.”
“What happened?” asked Penny, her tone softening.
“She isn’t … with us any more.”
Penny wiped away a tear and laid a consoling hand on Harry’s shoulder. “So we wait, then?” she whispered in a conciliatory tone.
Harry and Roberta answered in unison: “Yes.”
***
November 6, 1999
“Three Whoppers,” said Moe to the Burger King drive-through speaker. “All with extra mayo, and one with no onions.”
The classic hamburgers costing a mere dollar made the trio regular visitors. Late-teen boys are often ‘flat broke,’ and Moe, Shoe, and Rotchy were no exception. “Cover that paintball gun!” hissed Moe as he pulled up to the window. “You wanna get the cops called on us?”
Rotchy threw his jacket over the long, black rifle as Moe paid for their order, and took the food. He passed out the burgers before pulling onto Ehringhaus Road.
“This one has onions,” said Shoe. “Who’s got mine?”
“Me,” said Rotchy. “Here.”
“It’s the weirdest thing,” said Moe as his friends traded hamburgers. He sounded a bit muffled due to his face being stuffed full of Whopper. “I spent all afternoon down at the courthouse, and I couldn’t find a damn thing on the Dream House. No property deed, no records, nothing. It’s like it legally doesn’t exist.”
“Maybe it got tacked on to one of the properties next door?”
“Newp. I checked those records, too. I’m telling you, this place is a complete blank.”
“I tried an AOL search in the computer lab,” said Rotchy. “That came up blank, too.”
Moe pulled onto the road known as ‘the causeway,’ which led out of Elizabeth City and into rural Camden County. “I just don’t see how a motherfucker could build a place like that, and keep it off the radar,” he complained.
“Maybe it’s been abandoned too long,” said Shoe.
“I doubt it,” said Rotchy. “Remember that one monument, by the mausoleum? The one that says, ‘BENEATH LIES IN PEACEFUL SLUMBER—A SNAKE—A POSSUM’? The date on it was nineteen sixty-two, and that’s the latest date inscribed anywhere. So, if I’m right, it hasn’t been abandoned nearly so long as some other old houses we know.”
The conversation went quiet the rest of the way to the spooky relic that the boys had dubbed ‘the Dream House.’ They’d lost count of how many times they’d visited the crumbling ruin; its bizarre mystique held them in absolute thrall.
Moe killed the headlights a mile or so from the house, and turned into the overgrown, nearly invisible driveway. He looked over at Shoe, grinning in the moonlight.
“NOT IT!!!” they said in tandem.
“Goddammit!” moaned Rotchy.
It took only a few minutes to cover the Impala, and the boys sallied forth. Shoe was carrying the paintball gun, while Rotchy was stuck—yet again—with the unreliable, ancient, heavy decrepto-light. “I’m gonna buy, like, a whole box of flashlights next payday!” he fumed.
“Not with your comic book habit, you ain’t,” said Moe, turning toward the main house. “Let’s see if the owners fixed anything else up.”
“Yeah,” agreed Shoe.
The last few times the boys had ‘visited,’ it was obvious that someone was making cosmetic improvements to the interior of the house. Painted doors and molding, freshly shellacked cabinets … it struck them as strange that someone would make superficial improvements to a building that had a collapsing roof and shattered windows.
Moe entered the building, and walked toward the kitchen as Shoe and Rotchy followed him.
“Someone’s been smoking in here!” he said, shining his light around the room.
Indeed someone had. There was a large bowl on the counter, overflowing with cigarette butts. They were also all over the floor, and stubbed out on the shelving. “These are fresh,” said Moe, frowning. “Every single one of them, like an army of people came in here and smoked through a couple cartons all at once.”
“Why doesn’t it smell like smoke in here?” asked Rotchy. “Like, at all? And it looks like someone was cooking, too.”
Rotchy picked an empty hot-dog package off the counter, next to the large bowl of butts. It was obviously a cheap brand, and simply said Eight Frankfurters on the label. “Franks n’ butts,” he said. “Dinner of champions.”
“You guys notice anything weird?” asked Shoe.
“Did they paint or stain anything new?” asked Moe, gazing around.
“No …”
All three boys went dead silent, stricken by a sudden, strange sort of fear. Not only was nothing new painted or stained, but the cabinets and trim that were once made new were now rotting, and peeling.
“What … the … fuck?” breathed Moe, backing toward the door. “I get that they might have been sanded clean, but this is plain old rot! How could …?”
He let the sentence trail off as he turned and left the kitchen. All three flashlights were now trained on the floor as the boys left the main house, as the decaying boards made for a treacherous exit. Reaching the outside, the boys began walking the ravine around the property. The moonlight was bright, so they clicked off their flashlights like they always did when there was enough light to see.
“Gimme a sec, guys,” said Moe. “I gotta lake a leak.”
He took only a minute to climb out of the ravine and water a nearby tree. He returned, looking further down the trail; Rotchy and Shoe were a little ahead of him. “Watch your step,” he called. “It’s a little muddy under the leaves.”
“Sure thing, man,” came Shoe’s reply …
From behind him.
Moe turned his head sharply, illuniating his compatriots with his flashlight. “Have you been standing there this whole time?” he demanded.
“We were waiting for you,” said Rotchy. “Stick together, remember?”
Moe turned his flashlight toward the place where the other two figures had been standing; there was no one there now. “We gotta go,” he said nervously. “There’s someone else here.”
Shoe immediately picked up Moe’s cue. “Good thing we have a GUN!” he called loudly, brandishing the weapon.
“Yeah, but it’s just a paintball gun,” objected Rotchy.
Moe and Shoe turned their flashlights on Rotchy, who immediately hung his head in embarrassment. “Goddammit, Rotch!” muttered Moe, shaking his head. “Seriously?”
They made their way carefully back toward the road. The Impala was parked barely inside the tree line, as the old driveway was rutted and muddy.
“Lights out!” hissed Moe, extinguishing his.
There was a car moving in their direction; its high-beams were clearly visible through the trees. The boys stood stock still, waiting for it to pass.
Except that it didn’t pass. It slowed down …
“FUCK!!!” moaned Moe in a loud whisper. “Hit the deck!”
The boys promptly disappeared into the bushes as the car came almost to a stop, and began to turn.
At that exact moment, a car coming from the opposite direction screeched to a halt, facing the first car on the side of the road. The boys breathed a collective sigh of relief as police lights flashed to life, illuminating the area. Both cars were within fifteen feet of their hiding places, so they kept perfectly still while the officer conducted his business. They couldn’t hear speaking over the hum of two car engines, so it was anyone’s guess as to whether the officer warned the driver away from the property or wrote him a ticket for something. But at last, the police cruiser pulled away.
“C’mon,” whispered Moe. “Get the fuck out of here …”
The car sat there for a good five minutes—making the boys more and more nervous with each passing second—but it finally pulled away. They exited their hiding places, and walked away from the road. “Do we bail now or wait?” asked Rotchy.
“We should probably wait,” said Moe. “Someone could be watching from one of those farmhouses across the road.”
“I thought you said someone else was here?” said Shoe.
“I was probably just jumpy,” said Moe, not really believing himself. “Didn’t even have my flashlight on, you know?”
“Why don’t we take a closer look at that woodwork?” suggested Rotchy. “Maybe we were a bit jumpy about that, too.”
Moe and Shoe agreed, and the boys began walking back toward the main house.
“You know what?” said Shoe. “That cop car looked old. Like, really old. Fifties, maybe? Did you notice the fly-rod radio antenna? That thing was a road ocean liner. Why would the cops still be using it?
Moe probably would have dismissed such a comment from Rotchy, but Shoe was a car nut. If he said the police cruiser was a nineteen-fifties model, then he was almost certainly right. “Did it have an antique plate?” he asked.
“Yes, and no.”
“What?”
“It didn’t have one of those plates that say ‘antique.’ But it didn’t have a normal North Carolina license plate, either. You know, the white ones that say ‘First in Flight.’”
“What did it look like?” asked Rotchy.
“It was yellow,” said Shoe, “and it said ‘drive safely’ across the top. You see those at old car shows sometimes; they’re from the sixties.”
“I thought you said the car was from the fifties?”
“Well, I’m sure it ain’t like the cops replace the cars every year!”
“Maybe it was a personal vehicle,” said Rotchy.
“With lights on top?” retorted Shoe. “Personal, my ass!”
“You know,” said Moe ruminatively, stopping at the front door and laying his hand on the door frame, “this place would make one hell of a setting for a spooky story!”
“That it would!” agreed Rotchy heartily, while Shoe nodded in agreement. “You should totally write that shit! I’d fall all over myself to …”
A deafening thunderclap exploded overhead.
“… to read it,” finished Rotchy nervously, looking up.
The wind rose with terrifying suddenness, howling through the trees like an army of banshees. Moe shined his flashlight toward the main door, wordlessly thinking that it might be better to ride out a sudden storm inside the Dream House rather than getting drenched trying to make it back to the car; a partially collapsed roof was better than no roof at all.
The wooden door had long ago been kicked in, and it was lying on the rotting floor. Suddenly—in the revelatory glow made by Moe’s flashlight—it flew across the room and slammed itself into the door frame with a loud bang.
Moe turned to face his friends, sidestepping along the wall away from the door. “Did you see that?” he demanded.
Before his friends could answer, a cacophony of banging sounds came from inside the house. Moe turned just in time to see what his companions did: rotten, graying boards flying around inside, each one rushing to slam itself over a window frame. Moe turned away as all three of their flashlights died at the exact same moment. They clicked the switches on and off, desperately—and unsuccessfully—trying to get them to re-light.
They were just about ready to run when the decrepto-light blazed to life, brighter than it ever had before—brighter than was natural for an old incandescent bulb.
Rotchy and Shoe froze, staring.
Moe was standing in the glow of the decrepto-light, looking pale and faint. His back was pressed against the concrete-covered wall, with all its cryptic, random engravings.
On his left side was the paraphrase of Isaiah’s writing: One of you is my witness, declares the Architect, it read, and my servant whom I will choose.
Both Rotchy and Shoe were inexplicably stricken by the sight, so much so that Rotchy read the writing on Moe’s right aloud: “Of making many books there is no end,” he whispered. “Ecclesiastes chapter twelve, verse twelve.”
At that, the light died.
Abandoning the flashlights, the boys charged recklessly toward the car. It began raining before they even made it halfway there, but they were so terrified that they completely ignored the brutal downpour.
The Impala’s cover was missing; its headlights were on, its engine was running, and all four doors were open. “FUCK THAT!” shouted Shoe, sliding to a halt. “I’M NOT GETTING IN THERE!”
“IT’S NOT THE CAR!” yelled Moe, throwing himself into the driver’s seat. “IT’S THIS PLACE! GET IN!”
Rotchy and Shoe hesitated for a moment, but they jumped inside anyway. As they did, all four doors slammed shut of their own accord. Moe reached for the shifter, only to watch it drop down to ‘reverse’ all by itself. He forced himself to go easy on the gas pedal as he backed toward the road, lest the tires ‘peel out’ and get stuck. But when his rear wheels were safely on the cracked, aging blacktop, Moe slammed the gear shifter into ‘drive.’
Then he pushed the pedal all the way to the floor, and held it there.
Chapter Three
October 31, 2021
Roberta, Penny, and Harry all squinted in the darkness as a cloud passed over the moon, trying to see the monolith through the blackness.
Being younger—and unaccustomed to this yearly ritual—Penny started getting goose bumps as a tiny flame suddenly appeared, dimly illuminating the engraved monument. She trembled as it moved through the air and began glowing more brightly.
She held her hands to her face, her eyes flooding with tears as the flame lit the tip of a cigar. And in the feeble glow of the match, she could see her husband. His hair was long, not short as it’d been when she’d met him, and he was clean-shaven. His stylish goatee was nowhere to be seen upon his calm, boyish face.
“No!,” sobbed Penny, trying desperately to dam the flood of tears by wiping her eyes. “It can’t be! He’s .. he’s been gone to long. This isn’t happening! This isn’t REAL!”
“I’m afraid it is, honey,” said Roberta flatly.
Another match lit in the darkness, and the flame brightened as it appeared to flicker downwards. Penny trembled in terror as a puff of smoke drifted from the now-lit pipe, and its smoker slowly came into view: Rotchy.
“Dear god …” moaned Penny, as the cloud passed away from the moon.
Now she could see clearly. Moe, Shoe, and Rotchy were sitting around the monolith, looking quite comfortable on their lawn chairs. “Are they …?” whispered Penny.
“Don’t say it!” warned Harry. “Please, just don’t.”
“They look so young!” hiccupped Penny, still choking on her tears.
“I expect they’ll look that way forever,” said Roberta dully.
“What happened?” asked Penny.
“They became obsessed with a house built by … well, his name isn’t important,” said Harry. “The place was a house of dreams, known as ‘Old Spooky.’ They couldn’t have easily researched the place; the internet was new back then, and search engines weren’t all that smart. They just had to learn the truth for themselves. I wish they hadn’t, but they did.”
“I feel like I’m seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing,” said Penny tremulously. “I feel like I’m supposed to leave, to stay away from … them. The smell coming from the yard is pretty freaky, too.”
“You’re safe in here,” said Roberta reassuringly.
“I hope so,” Penny half-sobbed, wiping her eyes.
***
October 31, 2008
“It was a lot cheaper, cruising around back in the day,” observed Rotchy, basking in the sunlight from the backseat of Moe’s mint-condition, fully-restored, antique Impala. “What was gas then, like eighty cents a gallon?”
“Like that matters to my man, here!” laughed Shoe. “At least you quit smoking, Moe.”
“I didn’t!” said Rotchy. “Do you mind?”
“Fire it up,” said Moe cheerily. “Let’s christen this ride, now!”
“Dammit …” moaned Shoe, rolling down his crank window. “Some things never change!”
In the years following their teens, the ‘boys’ had gone in separate directions, at least for a while. Rotchy moved to Illinois, where he lived still; it had been an impulse decision on his part to come visit. Shoe never left; he was an integral part of Camden County, and one would be hard pressed to imagine him anywhere else.
Moe, on the other hand, had just moved to Camden, preferring the swamps of North Carolina to his native asphalt jungle in Virginia. In the years prior, he’d spent most of his time living in Los Angeles, California.
How he came to be there was a strange tale, indeed.
Rotchy and Shoe had both—as would most people—put the strange affair of the Dream House completely out of their heads. They told themselves that they were just jumpy and had overactive, youthful imaginations. In time, their memories faded.
They never went back, though.
Moe, on the other hand, was tormented by the experience. It haunted his dreams and inflamed his imagination. The memory of that night was never far from his thoughts. The tension built and built until, at last, he could stand it no longer. So, he picked up his pen and began writing. Finding some catharsis in composing his story, he soon began drawing as well.
The result was a full-length graphic novel entitled I Have Not Forgotten, set partially at the mysterious, forbidding Dream House. He was half-hearted about his chances of getting it into print, but Moe nevertheless submitted it to an obscure publisher.
The results could not have been more explosive.
I Have Not Forgotten promptly sold nearly a million copies within two months, and netted its creator the coveted Eisner Award. It made the New York Times’ bestsellers’ list, and reviewers compared it to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Its cover tagline—My name is Legion, for we are many—appeared in every imaginable literary circle.
But it didn’t end there.
A movie studio bought the rights to the story and turned it into a major motion picture; Moe wrote the screenplay, and found himself writing screenplays for other studios before I Have Not Forgotten even came out of post-production. When it finally released, the film made a former unknown named Sadie Lee into an instant breakout star; she went on to win numerous awards for her performance—including an Oscar—as the film racked up an impressive array of accolades.
Not everyone was a big winner, though.
An aspiring young actress named Penny Lynde was working in a diner when the casting call went out for I Have Not Forgotten. She was soundly rejected by the studio: too short, they said, and no experience except for community theater. Besides, she was a brunette when they needed a redhead. But the affair wasn’t a total loss for her …
She married the screenwriter. Moe swore when he moved to Hollywood that he’d never date—let alone marry—an aspiring actress; he always joked that he’d marry an Asian mail-order bride first. But somehow, pretty Penny managed to fly under his defensive radar.
It had taken some work to convince her to move to the East Coast, but she finally agreed. So now the three friends were ‘at it’ again. A wife and two girlfriends had been artfully ditched for this occasion: the ‘breaking in’ of Moe’s newly-restored, mechanical piece of rolling nostalgia.
“I forgot how nice these old hoopties ride,” said Rotchy, blowing smoke. “And this one doesn’t drop parts on the road like your old one did.”
“It was only that one time!” laughed Moe.
“The muffler, or the drive shaft?” asked Shoe, waving away a cloud of smoke. “Don’t one part plus another part equal two parts?”
Moe responded with a friendly, profane epithet …
And then he frowned. “What’s up?” asked Shoe.
“Old Swamp Road is up ahead,” said Moe tersely.
“We should stop,” said Rotchy. “Seriously, I mean, the Dream House made you a boatload of money, didn’t it?”
“You wanna go back?!” yelped Moe.
“It’s broad daylight,” said Shoe. “We just scared ourselves silly, man! No big deal. C’mon, it’s Halloween! The Rocky Horror Picture Show doesn’t start ‘til midnight, and Norfolk’s only an hour away. We got time!”
“I dunno …”
“Pussy!” laughed Shoe.
“Okay, okay!” said Moe. “You’re right, I’m being a pansy … and a moron. It’s probably completely collapsed. And if the other kids in the county are like us, they’ve already stolen all the stonework.”
The men went silent as they rolled toward their old haunt. A strange sense of trepidation overtook them, or perhaps budding nervousness …
But now that the challenging epithet of ‘pussy’ had been thrown out there, there was no turning back.
Chapter Four
Moe was disturbed by how easy it was to turn his prized car in between the two large trees; it was almost as if he’d just been here yesterday. Perhaps he had, at least in his mind. As he climbed out of the driver’s seat and closed the door, he suddenly realized why he’d turned into the hidden driveway so easily …
It wasn’t ‘hidden’ anymore.
The grass was mown, and the overgrown shrubs pruned. “What … the … fuck?” breathed Shoe, climbing out of the front passenger seat.
Rotchy climbed out of the back, his pipe clenched between his teeth. “Well, at least now I don’t need the decrepto-light!” he laughed, shaking the ashes into the grass and stomping them out. “And I don’t hafta worry about getting ticks! The place looks pretty manicured.”
“Did someone buy the place?” asked Moe.
“If they did, they had money,” said Shoe, pointing. “Those rusty, busted-ass footlights have all been replaced. Look! They even cleaned up the Titanic.”
The trio eyed the neatly-kept property in wonder. “Perhaps they added it to the historical register?” asked Moe. “But this place was falling in on itself! What is this?”
“The ravine around the property is still here; that must have been an original feature. We can still follow it,” said Shoe. “Let’s take a look at the house.”
“As the Architect’s servant,” said Moe drily, “the one whom he chose, that idea kinda makes me nervous.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Rotchy, laying his pipe in the backseat and closing the car door.
“Nothing,” said Moe sheepishly. “Sure, let’s check the house.”
They began walking with strangely reluctant steps. Moe was tempted to turn tail and run when the house finally rose from the trees, looking just as strange as it always did …
And fully restored. Freshly painted, and inviting.
“The monolith is missing,” observed Shoe. “They recreated everything else. Or at least polished it up. The mausoleum, the stonework … look, y’all! The fountain is actually working. And hey, no wonder the spiral staircase went up the roof. There was a garden on it.”
Indeed there was. Tomato plants were sprouting cheerfully on the flat roof, easily accessible from the painted spiral staircase.
“Why,” demanded Moe, pointing, “is there a damn pigpen in the front yard?”
Indeed there was. Moe was pointing toward a fenced-in pen full of piglets, cheerfully rooting in the dirt. The men approached the pen with slow steps, and it was Rotchy who read the painted sign over the gate out loud. “Please enjoy our petting zoo,” he read. “Do not feed the piglets.”
There was an image of an owl next to the writing. “Why an owl?” asked Rotchy, turning around.
“Owls are a sacred symbol to occultists, to Freemasons,” said Moe grimly. “Trust me, I would know; they control Hollywood. That’s why all major films have at least one or two shots with an owl in them. In fact, Masons they control all mass entertainment; that’s why Led Zeppelin’s fourth album was named after a demon. This place was absolutely covered in Masonic, pseudo-Satanic imagery, remember?”
“It was also covered in Bible verses,” observed Shoe.
“That’s the part I can’t figure out,” said Moe. “In order to become a Mason, you have to disavow Christianity. You have to proclaim that ‘you were living in darkness, and now wish to be brought into the light.’ So, what was the dude who built this place thinking? C’mon, let’s check the main house.”
Moe reached the door first and was surprised to see a handwritten note below the knocker. We’re out at the moment, it read. But feel free to look around!
“This sounds like some “Twilight Zone” shit,” said Moe, opening the door. “I wonder if we came in through the ‘Bridge to a Million Whys’ and ‘Damn the Cripples’ side of the property, would this place still just be a decrepit old ruin?”
“Doesn’t look like it,” said Rotchy, following Moe inside and looking around the living room. “Why is there an empty fish tank above the fireplace?”
Indeed there was. There was a tank of water above the burning, cheery fire. “It’s a statement,” said Moe. “Hell and high water …”
“What the fuck?” demanded Shoe. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“I don’t know,” said Moe, looking away. “Look at all the books behind the glass, with no way to pull them out. It’s all the knowledge that the world has forgotten—the Library of Alexandria, re-created with tragic effect.”
“Will you QUIT being so melodramatic?” groused Rotchy. “Seriously, I’d actually rather hear you say ‘NOT IT’ right now! Let’s check the kitchen.”
Moe followed his friends into the kitchen, driven by a strange sense of destiny.
“Wow,” whistled Shoe. “They fixed this up nice, now! Look, they have books about the place on the counter.”
“It beats cigarette butts and a hot dog package,” said Rotchy.
“Franks n’ butts!” said Shoe cheerfully, plucking a volume from the countertop. “So, let’s see what happened here. This one is ‘The History of …’”
“Of what?” demanded Moe.
“Uh … the Butts house,” said Shoe. “That’s weird! C’mon, let’s go into the living room.”
Moe and Rotchy followed Shoe into the living room, where he promptly dropped his sizable rear end into an overstuffed chair. “So,” he said, opening the book, “let’s see what we have here …”
Moe and Rotchy watched in silent trepidation.
“Uh, guys?” said Shoe, looking up with a strange expression on his face.
“WHAT?” demanded Moe and Rotchy, obviously on edge although they couldn’t say why.
“This place was … well, it was actually built by a man named Frank Butts.”
Moe went ghost-white at that. “What?” he peeped.
“He also called it his ‘dream house.’ It was also known as ‘Old Spooky.’”
“We couldn’t … we couldn’t have known,” quavered Rotchy. “‘Franks n’ butts’? ‘The Dream House’? We had no idea! We … we couldn’t have!”
“Frank Butts was a brick mason, known for his apocalyptic predictions,” said Shoe, scanning the book. “His church expelled him. He spent decades adding onto this house. His family even had him committed to a mental institution for a while.”
“What else is in the book?” demanded Moe.
“It says that in twenty-sixteen, a novel was written about the place. It piggy-backed on the work of Keith Morse, the author and illustrator of the graphic novel I Have Not Forgotten.”
“IT’S TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT!” screamed Moe and Rotchy, in tandem.
“Right. Um, k, let me check the copyright date of this book,” said Shoe nervously.
Moe and Rotchy stared daggers at him as he flipped through the pages. “Uh, fellas …?”
“SPEAK, godammit!” shouted Moe.
“The copyright date on this book is twenty twenty-six.”
“WHAT?!”
“Look, maybe it’s a fuck-up,” said Shoe desperately. “Let me flip back to where I was …”
“Hurry up!” ordered Moe grimly. Rotchy echoed the sentiment.
“Uh … wow …” said Shoe, settling on a page.
“WHAT?”
“It says here,” whispered Shoe, “that this place was torn down in two thousand, after an application to preserve it as a historical site was denied.”
“So, they re-created it,” said Rotchy, sounding more than a little frantic.
Moe turned away from his friends and looked out the window, gazing upon the petting zoo full of piglets. “Frank Butts was trying to save us,” he intoned, sounding nothing like himself; his voice was like a narrator’s from a movie preview, transcending reality.
“What do you mean?” asked Shoe.
“Something evil found this lonely place,” said Moe, still looking away. “Something ancient, something malignant. Something … hungry. Maybe Frank turned to Freemasonry seeking answers. Maybe he found his answers, or maybe he eventually decided that the Masons were full of horse shit. He also turned to the Word of God. Maybe he built this place because he was trying to contain something evil. Maybe he wasn’t trying to send a message out; he was trying to keep something in.”
“What was he trying to keep in?” whispered Rotchy.
“Who knows?” shrugged Moe. “We felt at … peace in this place, at least for a while. Something evil lived here. But so did something good; I think Frank was a decent man. So the Dream House mimicked our nature: made in the image of God, and yet prone to sin. Whatever evil lived here meant us harm, but Frank watched over us.”
“How do you know all this?” demanded Shoe, still holding the book.
“Maybe I read it on the internet,” said Moe, still sounding hollow. “Or maybe something touched me, something that we took out into the world after the house cast us out. Maybe that ‘something’ has been whispering to me ever since that night. Frank scared us with the phantasms I saw, the doppelgangers of you guys. He wanted us to leave. He also sent the car to pull in here, to catch us. But the Entity fought him; it sent the specter of the old police car to keep us on the property. Frank boarded up the house, but the Entity possessed the decrepto-light to show us what it wanted, what it needed in order to be set free. One of you is my witness, declares the Architect, and my servant whom I will choose. Of making many books there is no end.”
“Who the fuck is the ‘Entity’?” demanded Rotchy. “What did it want?”
“I don’t know who—or what— ‘the Entity’ is,” said Moe dully. “But I know what it needed to be set free. It needed for someone to write a new version of its story, a modern re-telling of its evil. And I … I did that.”
Shoe looked down, completely unable to process Moe’s grim words. Desperate for some distraction, he turned back a few pages in his book.
“Uh, guys …?” he moaned.
Moe and Rotchy moved swiftly to his side. “What?” they asked.
“It says,” said Shoe, “that three men disappeared here, in two thousand and eight. Only their car was found, and no one knows what became of them.”
“Are there names?” demanded Moe.
“Yes,” said Shoe, visibly trembling. “There’s also a picture.” He turned the book around, holding it open before his friends’ terrified eyes.
“It can’t be …” whispered Rotchy.
“You gotta be shittin’ me!” breathed Moe.
“This has to be a joke!” groaned Shoe.
The brightly-lit living room went silent for a moment; the only sound to be heard was the cheerful grunting of piglets outside …
“FUCK!”
Chapter Five
October 31, 2021
“I can’t see them!” fretted Penny, peering into the darkness. “And I can hardly breathe from the smell!”
“They always flicker in and out,” said Roberta soothingly, laying a hand on Penny’s slender shoulder. “It’s like they have trouble holding onto reality. The cloud will move away from the moon soon enough, honey.”
“She’s right, though,” said Harry dully. “The smell has never been this strong before.”
“I know.”
Finally the moonlight shone again. Shoe, Moe, and Rotchy were sitting companionably around the monolith once more. Moe was puffing away on a cigar while Rotchy smoked his pipe, and—as he always had—Shoe was waving away the smoke. They chatted soundlessly under the harvest moon, looking as natural as ever.
“That’s my HUSBAND out there!” screeched Penny, turning on her heel.
“GET her!” screamed Roberta as Penny ran for the door.
Harry jumped up and ran after her, slamming the door loudly in his haste.
Please, God, let him catch her before they do, begged Roberta internally.
There was only about thirty feet between Roberta’s house and the neighboring cornfield; the monolith sat in the middle of the yard. What Roberta saw was Penny running straight into the cornfield, with Harry in hot pursuit.
That was not, however, what Penny saw. She saw her husband and his friends so far away that they were nearly out of her sight, and she ran toward them with all the strength she could muster. Similarly, Harry saw only panicked, pretty Penny running frantically across a long, open field.
Roberta hung her head, fearing the worst as the moon went dark again.
When it rose once more, she saw six figures around the monolith. They were all sitting in lawn chairs, except for Penny …
Penny was sitting on her husband’s lap, her head lying affectionately upon his shoulder. Moe was no longer smoking his cigar, nor Rotchy his pipe; instead, they all looked on as Harry lit up a joint, took a ‘hit,’ and passed it to his son. He reached over to lay a loving hand his long-lost wife’s arm, and she squeezed his hand as she waited for the joint to come around to her.
Around and around the joint went, and Roberta could smell the dank marijuana even over the usual stench. She wasn’t aware of the exact moment in which the landscape changed; she only knew that it struck her senses rather suddenly.
Pigs.
The otherworldly visitors were surrounded by fat, ghost-like pigs. Gone now was the neatly-mown lawn; the pigs were all wallowing in wet, slimy mud. It occurred to Roberta that the last thirteen Halloweens had always smelled like a hog farm, although she could never quite place the odor before.
As she stared out the window, the pigs all turned to face her. They looked at her with glowing, demonic eyes …
And as they stared, an enormous owl crashed against the window, and fell into the muck.
Roberta jumped away from the window, too terrified to run. Suddenly there were no more pigs; instead, her yard was full of people. And what a motley assortment they were! Some looked normal enough, modern enough. But others? She thought she saw an ancient Rabbi standing next to a Roman soldier, and that was only the tip of the iceberg; it was as if all of human history had suddenly gathered in her yard.
Her resolve shattered at last, Roberta turned to run. She needed to leave this place, this house, and she needed to do so right NOW!!!
But something stopped her.
There was a man standing in her living room, a very old man, and he eyed her with a dull, weary gaze. He was holding a concrete trowel in his hand, like a readied weapon …
But he didn’t raise it. “WHO ARE YOU?” demanded Roberta.
The old man said nothing, and Roberta stood staring at him for what seemed like forever.
Suddenly she knew what lingered outside, what had taken over her yard. It went by many names, this entity—and Harry and Penny were only its most recent acquisitions, for it was many. It was ancient. It was malignant. And it was … hungry.
But it couldn’t hurt her; this, Roberta instinctively knew. She was beyond its reach, even if she didn’t understand why. “Thank you,” she whispered to the old man.
He smiled as the sunlight began shining through the window, holding his trowel to his forehead in salute. And then he was gone, as though he had never been; Roberta couldn’t even tell when he disappeared.
She walked slowly to the window, just in time to see the hogs fleeing the de facto cemetery that was her yard. Cast out of their stolen domain, the pigs rushed into the sea of corn, and drowned in the chaff of a thousand drying stalks.
Roberta took a seat, watching the sun rise. She would make this Halloween vigil again, just as she had for thirteen years …
But next year, she would do it alone.
The End
Afterword
Frank Butts (February 28, 1889—September 30,1973) was real. His ‘Dream House’ was also real and appeared almost exactly as described in this tale. ‘Old Spooky’ was torn down in December, of the year two thousand—but not before this author got the chance to thoroughly explore it.
I’m not the only explorer, mind you. I would like to thank Mr. A, Mr. M, and Mr. S for helping me clarify my recollections, and for providing additional details that I never knew or had forgotten. These men are hardcore horror fans, lovers of history, and—above all else—lovers of literature. Thank you, gentlemen, from the bottom of my heart. In gratitude for your kind assistance, I hereby dedicate this second printing of “The Monolith” to the three of you.
Stay Scared! – V
