Sticks and Stones Part 3
A Found-Footage Short Horror Story
Gunfire echoes in the small office. The acrid nail-polish odor fills the room. The blast of the gun lights up the dark corners behind the TV, which was still playing the VHS tape.
The glass explodes as two bullets sail through it.
Detective Wallas runs over to the window and looks outside. Cuts his left palm on the shattered glass.
“Fuck!” He wipes the blood on his collared shirt. Leaving a black tarry smear swipe across his chest.
There is nobody he could see outside. Just the lonely pines creaking as a breeze bullies them.
Pine Haven was the sort of place where the police station was not a 24/7 operation. Any calls for help were rerouted a county over and the chief would be phoned up at his home if the need arose, which it almost never did.
So Wallas was the law for the moment. He was the person you’d call for help. So who the fuck was he supposed to call?
He takes out his cell and calls Chief Bellevue. The man doesn’t answer. He calls Officer Ramirez, instead.
“What?” comes his groggy voice.
“I need you down here, now. There was somebody spying on me from the window. Shots fired.”
No reply for a moment.
“The fuck you talking about man? Spying? Shots?”
“Just get your ass down here and bring Jeffries too!”
Wallas ends the call and shoves the phone back into his pocket.
The tape is still playing.
Nobody is speaking, all he can hear is the heavy breathing of the couple and the kicking over of a metal object. Then what sounds like Becca saying. “I don’t want to be here.”
Wallas pulls over a pop-up table and wedges it into the broken window. Locks his office for the first time in years. Maybe he hadn’t seen anything outside. Hadn’t really seen those legs that were far too long to be human. It could have been a trick of the light. His mind made sensitive by the tape he was watching.
If all of that were true, he’d admit it and laugh. He’d be okay with Ramirez never letting him live it down. Fuck, he’d buy him lotto tickets every Sunday for the rest of his life.
If it meant he was wrong.
“Oh my God!”
The voice belongs to Becca. Wallas looks at the TV screen. The couple had moved into the lumber mill and most of the footage was too dark to see anything with clarity.
The camera shakes as Becca tries to focus the lens on the murky pale object lying on the floor.
“Kyle what the fuck is this!?” Becca nearly screams.
Wallas’s attention was now snared by the tape, forgetting the thing he saw at his window.
Kyle materializes out of the dark like an angler fish emerging from a cloud of muddy water. His smile catches light from the camera and shines in the dark. What looks light a glint of gold in his smile. The camera shakes some more and tracking lines warp the screen.
“You…recogniz…m?”
Kyle’s voice is garbled.
Kyle’s face retreats into the dark.
“Where are you going!?” Becca screams.
A rustle of chains from somewhere in the distance.
A buzzing sound that reminds Wallas of getting his teeth drilled at the dentist. The camera swerves and aims at the ground. Bobbing frantically as Becca was presumably running.
The buzzing grows louder.
The camera flips over several times before standing still. The screen shows Becca, lying on her side, her hair spilled out over the rotting floorboards. A trickle of blood runs down her nose to her lips. She coughs and cries and gets to her elbows. She reaches for the camera, probably because it had a light and the mill was as dark as the bottom of a well.
The camera spins wildly around as Becca aims it ahead of her. Heavy breathing and choked sobs cause the mic to pick up a distorted whoosh sound and several distinct pops from her.
Nothing but darkness in front of her. The camera's light reveals a chair, thick spider webs stretching from it to something that looked like a loom, and a pale glimmer off in the left corner of the shot.
Becca appears to not notice that glimmer. Wallas notices it. Sees the thin spider-leg fingers fan out from what looks like a hand. Notices that hand is near the ceiling. Estimates that the roof must be at least fifteen from the floor.
Becca moves the camera in the direction of that hand. There is nothing there but a pile of wooden boxes. She moves the camera along the wall. There are black lines on that wall. They look like grooves cut into the wood. Obscure stick figure representations of people. One looks like a pregnant woman, with a bowed line that could be her stomach. There is one figure that is much bigger than them all, standing in the middle of six smaller people—pregnant woman included. The tall thing has something that looks like a crown of stick nailed to its head. There is red paint spilling down from what could be head wounds. The camera slides further down the wall. There is another scene, with the tall thing—razor-like teeth lining an unhinged jaw—swallowing the pregnant woman.
The buzzing sound emerges from the absolute silence.
Becca lets out a choked sob and runs.
The camera dips up and down multiple times.
She is wheezing and out of breath.
Sudden daylight washes out the screen. Becca has reached the exit of the mill. She runs towards the open door.
The buzzing is so loud now Wallas can’t hear Becca’s breathing. She reaches the threshold.
The buzzing becomes a metallic screeching mixed with a sound that reminds Wallas of his wife using an electric knife to cut into Thanksgiving turkey.
The camera falls to the ground. Shows the outside on the right half of the screen, the dark interior of the mill on the left.
Something heavy is being dragged away. Scraping along the floor. The buzzing has stopped. On the far left of the screen, in the distance, Wallas sees a human hand fall to the ground. The nails are red and there is a golden bracelet on the wrist. It slides away by whatever is dragging it.
Becca’s hand disappears into the dark.
The screen erupts in waves of static. The last image is still there, but Wallas can hardly make anything out. There is something walking in the midst of the static. Something tall. Wallas pauses the video to find a clear view of the thing but finds none.
It hides in-between the lines of clarity.
But Wallas knows what it looks like. In his mind the thing is tall. The thing wears a crown of sticks nailed to its head. The thing devours women. Pregnant women? And how does Kyle play into this? Where the fuck is he?
Furious knocking at his office door.
“Motherfucking duck fucker!” Wallas yells out as he clutches his heart. Thinks for a moment that he may actually be having a heart attack.
“Dicky you in there?” It is Ramirez’s voice at the door.
Wallas pauses the video, which still shows the tall thing behind the static. Unlocks the door and opens it.
“Scared the shit out of me you prick,” Wallas gruffs at the man.
Ramirez smiles but doesn’t speak. The dim yellow hall light catches his gold tooth.
“Well, you coming in or what?”
“I think I found what you called about,” Ramirez finally says.
“Shit, who… what is it?”
“I’ll show you.”
Ramirez turns and walks down the hall.
Wallas stares at the officer as he stands by the door that leads outside. Something off about him. Wallas grabs his jacket and puts it on. Holsters his gun and follows Ramirez just as he steps outside.
He keeps his eyes on the perimeter of the parking lot. For anything that should come out from the treeline. Ramirez walks around the building, to the window Wallas shot at, and crunches the glass underfoot.
“So, what you find?” Wallas asks.
Ramirez looks down at the glass, his back to Wallas.
“Hey man, you’re acting real weird. Freaking me out.”
Wallas’s phone vibrates. Come to think of it, it’s been going off for awhile now. He was so absorbed in the video he didn’t really notice.
He looks at his phone.
One missed call and a few texts from Ramirez.
The top one reads, as of two minutes prior: SORRY MAN I’LL BE THERE IN TWENTY MINUTES, HAD TO DEAL WITH SUMPIN.
Ice clogs Wallas’s veins.
He now knows what was so off about Ramirez. It was that Sunday preacher smile.
It was the same smile Kyle had in the video.
That glimmer of gold.
Wallas looks up and what he sees causes him to take out his gun and begin firing.
Man, that's edge-of-the-seat stuff. The stick thing conjures up a lot of madness in my head. Wallas didn't start shooting for nothing. This is getting good. Thank you for sharing, Shawn.
Stick heads are also so creepy!