Halloween is creeping ever closer, ladies and gentlemen! That means you’ve only got a few weeks left before this blog transforms back into an eclectic assortment of shit no one really cares about. But for now, can’t you just feel that sort of creepy electricity in the air—where every night feels like it’s a scene right out of a horror movie?? Okay, maybe it’s just me, but man, I am AMPED for All Hallows Eve this year.

So thanks to everyone that took the time to read my depressing bit of reality horror last week. I got some pretty quality responses. “How about something a little less conducive to wrist-slitting” was a good one. “It read like an episode of ‘Autopsy’” was another. But my favorite was, “So I just read your blog from last Friday, and I’m sad that the dinner I’m making will go to waste. I’m literally nauseous, so, congratulations.” Awesome!

Well the next two stories are probably closer to what you’d typically associate with the horror genre. Both this story and the one to be posted next week are based on really vivid nightmares I had. Of course I had to rework them to a certain degree to incorporate some kind of cohesive plot and narrative. But I did my best to retain the atmosphere and imagery that both nightmares left me with upon waking.

I thought about splitting up this story to cover two weeks, but I figured I’d shoot my load in one swift burst (God, I spoil you guys). Plus, there are three Fridays left before Halloween and the story that starts next week probably needs to be broken up into three parts. I think it’s going to be a long one. (That’s what she said! Oh!) So once again, you guys are rewarded with a sense of closure upon completion of this piece. Bully for you!

The Altruist

The girl couldn’t have been older than ten. Her dark hair made her sad, brown eyes seem that much gloomier and, despite the powerful sunrays baking the edge of the lake, her skin was exceptionally pale. She was perched on the edge of the dock, her short legs dangling just above the surface of the water. It was hot out—maybe eighty-five degrees—but she wore jeans and sneakers with an oversized brown longsleeve shirt that billowed around her in the breeze coming off the lake. Her exceptionally thin frame made her look like a flagpole with some banner of unknown origin flapping behind her.

Even from our vantage point of twenty yards away, my sister could see the single tear on her face twinkle in the sunlight as it rolled slowly over the sparse freckles of her cheek.

“Jesus, can you see that?” My sister nudged me with her elbow. “Tell me that isn’t just the picture of sadness.”

My sister: always the altruist and always on duty. She could see the beauty in just about anything, particularly the morose and despondent, undoubtedly because she had visited their unfortunate depths. After our mother died in a car accident when Kat was only fifteen years old, she plunged into an ugly breakdown. Her response to personal trauma was never very strong. And even though I was only nine at the time, I can still remember seeing the look in her eyes change. As our father sat us down at the kitchen table and explained that our mother had been killed, I recall looking at my sister and seeing this immediate transformation in her stare. She didn’t cry or scream, but as she glared at my father, her eyes darkened, like some forbidding storm was rolling in behind her irises. It was a look of fierce instability—one that culminated with a violent, self-destructive episode. Even after a brief period of hospitalization and an extended period of medication, it still took years for that brooding storm behind her gaze to depart.

But as time passed, Katrina found she had an uncanny ability for helping others. She became the epitome of ‘those that can’t do teach.’ So she taught people how to deal with the tragedy in their own lives in a way she never could. As a result, she became a committed and genuine do-gooder at the age of eighteen. That’s why she’s held such an obsession with the darker elements of the world—she’s felt the burden of sorrow and she’s always wanted to change it, make it easier for others. She’s wanted to call attention to the sadness people typically just gloss over or ignore. That’s what pushed her towards a profession in (somewhat ironically) mental health.

So, as that lone tear slid seemingly purposefully down the little girl’s face, I wasn’t surprised when my sister suggested we approach her.

I was a little resistant. “What the fuck is wrong with you? She’s not you’re daughter. C’mon Kat, you know I hate kids.”

Katrina grumbled, making no attempt to hide her frustration. “Do you seriously want to be what’s wrong with this world? You see a little girl crying by the edge of a lake on a beautiful day and you don’t want to know what’s bothering her?”

“I exhausted my morbid curiosity within the first fifteen years of my life.”

“It’s not about morbid curiosity, Sam. God, you can be such a prick sometimes.”

“So you want to go over there and take on the responsibilities of her parents? How do you think they’ll feel about that if they come out and see you trying to do their job?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake Sam, what if daddy just got finished giving mommy a black eye and little daughter’s next on the hit list?”

“Jesus… over dramatize much? She’s probably just upset because she forgot her favorite teddy bear at home.”

“Well I’m going over there. So you can either come with me, stand here awkwardly or go back and watch dad reminisce with uncle Dan and aunt Megan. And it’s been years since they’ve had an opportunity to sit on their favorite porch by the lake and talk about the good ole days. I’m sure they’ve got hours and hours of catching up to do. So… what’s it gonna be?”

I thought for a moment. “Congratulations… you’re the least of three evils.”

She smiled knowingly and led the way over to the dock. The girl didn’t even seem to notice us until our flip-flops began smacking the old wooden boards. She turned around and greeted us with the same forlorn expression that had been plastered on her face since we first caught sight of her.

“Hi,” Kat said. It was a greeting so dripping with friendliness, I had to marvel at her ability to be so genuinely personable. “My name’s Katrina and this is my brother Sam. We’re here for a little family reunion and we saw you sitting here all by yourself. What’s your name?”

The girl just stared at Katrina for a while, her face totally unreadable. I stood awkwardly next to Kat, doing my best to avoid involvement in the potentially budding conversation.

Finally the girl responded. “I’m Sarah,” she said softly.

“Sarah?” my sister replied with unwavering enthusiasm. “That’s such a pretty name! What are you doing out here all by yourself, Sarah?”

Sarah glanced around, as if she wasn’t certain she was all by herself. “Daddy and Laura are up in the cabin. They didn’t want to come out today.”

“Oh, so you’re here with your family?” Kat asked.

“No,” Sarah replied abruptly. “I’m here with my Daddy… and Laura.” The name ‘Laura’ was pronounced with such disdain, I could see my sister taken aback by the astoundingly scathing nature of this little girl’s response.

“Oh,” my sister said, clearly caught off guard. “And they didn’t want to come out on such a beautiful day?”

Sarah just shook her head slowly.

“Well… we’re here with our family too,” Kat continued. “We come here every year. At least we used to. We had a… um… family issue when Sam and I were younger that made it hard to make the trip.” It was plain to see that even vague allusions to our mother’s death still made Katrina uncomfortable. After a brief pause and a sizable breath, she continued. “But we managed to work it out this summer.”

There was a painfully awkward silence as my sister mentally searched for some kind of common ground with the less-than-forthcoming Sarah. She threw a quick ‘help me out here’ glance in my direction, which I met with a ‘this was your idea’ shrug. Finally, with my sister clearly trying to transition into the real reason she approached, she just came out and said it: “Sarah, I couldn’t help but notice you look really sad. Is everything okay?”

Sarah just dropped her head and stared down at the boards beneath her feet. My sister took this evasive tactic as an indication of something suspicious.

“Hey,” Kat said, moving closer to the girl. “It’s okay. We came over because we thought you looked like you could use a friend. You can talk to us. You know, Sam and I have both had to deal with some pretty unhappy times. And it wasn’t easy, but we both got through them. Sometimes you just need a little help from other people. And that’s what I do Sarah; I help people that are feeling sad.” Katrina went to put an assuring hand on Sarah’s shoulder, but at the moment of contact Sarah retreated with such force, she nearly tossed herself off the end of the dock.

Katrina turned her head quickly to look at me and mouthed a single word, assured only I could read her lips. “Abuse.” She then turned her attention back to Sarah. “Oh Sarah, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just want you to know you can trust us. Nobody likes to see such a sad girl on such a beautiful day.”

At that point, I was about ready to concede that my sister’s selfless intuition was right: there was something wrong with this girl. Such an extreme reaction wasn’t normal. Granted, maybe her parents were extremely adamant about staying away from strangers. But that kind of response to a friendly hand on the shoulder from a sweet, pretty, thirty-year-old female seemed totally excessive. If Kat had been a balding forty-year-old man, I would have understood the reaction. Hell, even if I had walked over by myself and tried to put my hand on the girl, that response would have been warranted. But something about Sarah’s almost violent avoidance of human contact was unsettling.

“I’m sad because Daddy doesn’t want to play with me now that he’s got Laura,” Sarah finally responded, still refusing to take even a single step closer to Katrina. “Laura’s trying to take him away from me because she doesn’t like me. Laura’s a stupid fucking bitch!”

Even I was caught off guard. “Holy shit,” I muttered audibly.

Katrina turned to me. “Sam, that is not appropriate.” She turned back to Sarah. “Sarah, you shouldn’t use language like that. Even if you don’t like someone, that’s still an awful thing to say. I’m sure your father wouldn’t be happy hearing you say something like that about someone he cares about.”

Sarah turned her back to Katrina and stared out over the lake. “She’s not a nice lady,” she said. “She says there’s something wrong with me and I need help. She’s a scary woman and she says she has… plans that can help me.”

I could tell what Katrina wanted to do. She wanted to look Sarah in the eyes and flat out ask, “Does Laura hit you, Sarah? Has she ever physically hurt you in any way?” But even Katrina realized how inappropriate that would be. Sarah was clearly angry with the woman that had stolen attention away from her. Even if Sarah said Laura beat her with a rusty pipe on a daily basis, that didn’t make it true.

“Well, maybe you just need to get to know her better,” Katrina responded. “I’ll tell you what—how about you introduce us to your Dad and Laura. We’re going to be here for another week. Wouldn’t you like to show them that you made some new friends?”

Sarah turned away from the lake and looked up at my sister. An unexpected smile cut across the little girl’s face and she nodded enthusiastically. “That’s our cabin up there,” Sarah pointed to a small cabin situated in the woods a few hundred yards from the lake. “Follow me; I’ll show you.”

Just like that, Sarah took off running up the dock towards the cabin. When I thought she was out of earshot, I grabbed Katrina’s arm. “Are you fucking insane?” I asked her. “This is completely inappropriate. You’re gonna have that girl introduce the two older strangers she met at the lake as ‘her new friends?’ Do you have any idea how wrong that is? We’re gonna look like sex offenders!”

“Keep your voice down,” Katrina replied. “I know it’s a little weird, but something is definitely not kosher with that girl. I guess you didn’t notice the dried blood on her neck.”

“Blood? What are you talking about?”

“On her neck. Her hair hid it. I didn’t even notice it until she jumped away from me. The wind kicked her hair up and there it was.”

“Oh… so in the split-second the wind blew her hair, you’re completely sure you saw what was definitely dried blood?”

“Well…” she replied without much certainty. “It definitely looked like blood. But if her dad’s new girlfriend is beating her, we can do something to stop it.”

“Do something to stop it? What are you, Charles Bronson? How are you going to know? You’re going to meet Laura and your Spidey senses are gonna start tingling? This is none of our business. Okay, maybe Sarah needs a psychologist or a social worker—maybe that’s the ‘help’ Laura was talking about—but you are not that social worker. We’re on vacation for fuck’s sake.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. Maybe I’m not that social worker but I am a social worker and I can read people pretty damn well. That’s how I make a living and I’m fucking good at it. Now I can tell you something isn’t right here, and if I don’t think I did everything possible to help that girl, I’m going to hate myself. What if tomorrow’s newspaper has a picture of Sarah on the cover under a headline ‘Young Girl Beaten to Death’? How are you going to feel then?”

I was really flustered. “Ohhh… this is such bullshit! Fine, you want to go up there? Then we do it my way. We play it off like we’re just bored people using Sarah to meet the neighbors. We came across the girl on the dock and asked her about her family. We’re just friendly fucking vacationers looking to meet other friendly fucking vacationers to pass the time and get away from our boring family. Okay?”

“Fine,” Katrina said, and without another word, she took off after Sarah.

“Unreal,” I muttered to myself, following after her.

We reached the cabin a little behind the girl. Sarah threw open the screen door and pushed the inner front door open. She turned around to make sure we had followed and then rushed inside. I paused at the door, shooting Katrina a final look of caution. She grabbed my arm and pulled me through the threshold into the living room of the cabin.

The cabin wasn’t all that dissimilar from the one our family was staying in. Ours was slightly larger and had a loft bedroom, but aside from that, the layout was almost identical. Sarah stood in the center of the living room, watching us with anticipation. She had her little hands wrapped in the excess fabric of her long shirt and she was shifting her weight from one leg to the other, like a child that needs to use the bathroom.

“They’re in here,” she said, moving towards a door that, judging by the corresponding layout of our cabin, would be the master bedroom.

Katrina and I stepped cautiously closer. I could tell by the look on Kat’s face that the awkward nature of the situation was finally setting in. “Um, Sarah… if they’re sleeping you really don’t need to wake them. We can meet them a little later.”

“They won’t mind,” Sarah replied as she pushed open the bedroom door. From a brief glimpse into the room it was evident they were definitely in bed, almost certainly sleeping.

“No, really,” Kat whispered in a last-ditch effort to avoid waking the slumbering couple. “We don’t want to make a bad first impression.”

Sarah ignored her and walked into the bedroom, using an exaggerated tiptoe motion to show she was doing her best to wake them softly and keep our visit a surprise. Daddy and Laura were obviously asleep under the covers. The room was silent except for the minor drone of the window air conditioner, clearly operating on full-blast. The couple’s heads just barely poked out above the top comforter. Sarah approached the bed and put one hand on the cover, shooting us an excited grin as she yanked the cover off with as much force as her little body could manage.

I watched as the comforter moved below the couple’s heads, displaying a sloppy array of deep crimson splattered beneath. It took a moment for the scene to register. In fact, I didn’t quite comprehend what I was seeing until I heard my sister scream behind me.

The comforter had been covering two bodies bathed in blood. At first, it just looked like a chaotic orgy of red-painted flesh. After a few moments I could see that the woman had multiple stab wounds covering her torso—at least ten or fifteen. A large carver knife was lying next to her, its stainless steel blade tainted with blood. The man’s neck had a gaping wound right below his chin. This was complemented by an array of bloody gashes just inches beneath. Nothing about the scene said surgical precision. It looked like a drunk had committed the murders in a fit of passion. Or perhaps some severely disturbed child whose actions were rushed by Daddy awakening in the midst of Laura's execution.

Sarah climbed onto the bed and started jumping around, her small feet doing an expert job of avoiding the two corpses. Between enthused giggles she would let out an excited high-pitch scream as she pounced up and down on the blood-soaked mattress. Little wet droplets of crimson bounced into the air around her, like she was dancing amidst the sprays of some grotesque fountain.

Suddenly she stopped jumping and bent down to give her father a kiss. When she turned back to us her face was smeared with Daddy’s blood. A broad, gleeful smile hung between her cheeks and her eyes danced with the naïve excitement one only expects to see in a child around her age. She was panting as she stood on the bed and stared at us, almost inviting us to come join her.

I was afraid to take my eyes off Sarah, but I heard Katrina mutter, “Jesus” behind me, followed by a loud splattering sound on the floor. I could tell from the subsequent stench that my sister had thrown up. This must have really tickled Sarah because she erupted with laughter. She practically convulsed as she stood on the bed, laughing outwardly until she lost her balance and fell over on the body of Laura.

I used this opportunity to turn around and go to my sister. She was doubled over, staring at the floorboards with vomit dripping from her mouth. As I put my hand on her back she fell to her knees and threw up again. I looked back into the bedroom just in time to see Sarah crawling over Laura’s bloodied corpse and grabbing the carver knife as she went sprawling to the floor. Everything about her clumsy, childlike mannerisms portrayed a little girl that was just trying to play a game. But the two gore-splattered bodies on the bed implied otherwise.

“S-Sarah,” I stammered. “How did you…” I trailed off, the massive weight of the situation confounding my tongue.

“Heavy sleepers!” Sarah exclaimed with unwavering jubilance. She let out an elongated giggle and repeated the phrase over and over again with the same enthusiasm. “Heavy sleepers! Heavy sleepers! Heavy sleepers!”

I looked toward the kitchen table. Four empty bottles of wine were situated dead center. Heavy sleepers indeed.

Katrina looked up from her puddle of vomit and saw Sarah getting to her feet, bloody carver knife in hand. If the scene wasn’t so horrific and real, the sight of such a small child wielding such a large blade could have been darkly comical, like an astonishingly genuine Halloween costume.

“We have to get out of here,” Kat said to me. “We need to run and call the police. She’s going to kill us.”

My initial reaction was to agree; to put my hands beneath Kat’s armpits, pick her up and pull her out the door. But my mind finally seemed to grasp the situation and I stood, leaving my sister kneeling on the floor.

Sarah began advancing on us. She moved slowly at first, that same excited smile hanging on her face. Then she started skipping in our direction. Katrina, still from her position on the floor, was helplessly tugging at my shirt. “We have to go, Sam,” she said to me. “We have to go.”

Sarah was no more than ten feet from us, skipping cheerfully, knife in hand. She approached with the blade pointed towards my stomach and as she came within a few feet, I lifted my leg and kicked the girl square in the face. Sarah dropped like a rag doll, the knife falling from her clenched hand and clattering to the floor. I looked towards my sister who stared up at me with disbelief.

“I may not be the toughest guy on the planet,” I said to her. “But I’m pretty confident in my ability to knock out a nine-year-old girl.” I gave Katrina a hand and lifted her off the floor. “Now let’s call the police and get out of this horror show.”

I scanned the room. I saw the phone sitting on the counter in the kitchen and walked over while Katrina used the bottom of her t-shirt to wipe the remnants of vomit from around her mouth. I picked up the receiver and was about to press 9-1-1 when I realized there was no dial tone. “Of course,” I muttered under my breath. “Kat,” I called to my sister. “Do you have your cell phone? This phone’s dead.”

It took her a few moments to respond. “Sorry,” she called back, her voice taking on an extremely detached and absentminded sort of quality. “I left it at our cabin.”

“Fuck. I guess we need to go back and call from our cabin. We should probably tie Sarah up. Either that or one of us needs to stay and babysit the little demon.”

Katrina didn’t reply.

“Okay,” I said, growing impatient for her response. “Let’s start looking for something to tie her up with. Keep an eye out for bungee cords, duct tape, anything we can use to make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.” I looked into the bedroom and saw the gruesome scene. “We could probably use the sheets from the other bedroom—tie her up and throw her in a closet or something.” I stopped and thought for a moment. “Wait a second, I definitely saw you grab your cell when we were leaving. I remember I was going to grab mine, but I saw you were taking yours.”

I looked over to see her staring at Sarah’s unconscious body, almost hypnotized by it.

“C’mon Kat!” I snapped at her. “Coming up here was your goddamn idea. You need to give me a little help.”

She ignored me; her eyes didn’t break from the girl’s body.

I walked over and grabbed her arm. She pulled away and nearly tripped over Sarah’s limp body in the process.

“Look,” I said. “I know this is awful, but just a few more minutes and we’re out of here. So help me and we’ll be able to put this shit behind us.” I reached out and grabbed her arm one more time. Again, she pulled away.

“What the fuck, Kat? Let’s get this over with. We need to either call the police or get this little bitch tied up before she comes to!”

Katrina continued to ignore me. She leaned down, appearing as though she was going to touch Sarah, but at the last moment she reached out and picked up the knife lying next to the girl’s hand.

“Kat… what the hell are you doing? You need to put that down. Just hand it over and we can get out of here.” I reached out to take the knife from her, but she brought the blade down right into the palm of my hand. I retracted my arm and put my bleeding hand under my armpit. I looked at her face and saw something so dishearteningly familiar in her eyes—an ominous, unstable darkness that brought me back to a tragic conversation around our family's kitchen table. “It’s okay, Kat. It’s over. We just need to call the police and they’ll take care of the rest.”

“The police can’t help her.” Katrina replied simply. “No one can help her.” And without another word of explanation, she brought the blade down directly into the chest of the unconscious Sarah and removed it with astonishing speed.

Sarah shuddered violently as her eyes shot open. An ear-shattering scream rose from her mouth as a geyser of blood shot up from her chest. Katrina stared down at her calmly and, without hesitation, brought the blade down again, Sarah’s blood spraying upwards onto her face. Katrina stabbed the girl four more times until Sarah lay bleeding and lifeless on the cabin floor.

“Oh God,” I said, staring with disbelief at the scene before me. “Oh God, what did you do?”

Katrina just looked down at Sarah’s mangled corpse, a quivering frown polluting her face. “Some people just can’t be helped in a traditional sense, Sam,” she said, some form of curious certainty creeping into her voice. Still staring down at the little girl’s body, she continued, “I’ve never seen anything like it—someone so young so detached from reality. I saw pain in her face when she was on the dock, but I thought it wasn’t her fault. I thought her parents were the ones to blame. But that wasn’t it, Sam. Did you see the way she jumped around their corpses? The way she covered herself in their blood? The way she came at you with the knife? Like it was all some perfectly acceptable game. She was a deranged girl far beyond treatment. Laura could see it. Maybe her father could, too. But they were too close to her to realize how it needed to be handled.”

I stared at her: my sister the altruist. My sister the euthanizer. My sister, who could see beauty in every dark corner, her face streaked with blood, her eyes nothing but cold, stormy canyons of disillusionment. “Needed to be handled?” I asked softly.

Katrina looked at me and exhaled a long sigh. “I help people, Sam,” she said, bending over to place the knife next to Sarah. “Even people that seem like they can’t be helped. Sarah couldn’t go through life like that. And all the doctors, therapists and medication in the world would never change that. The rest of her life would’ve involved a cold, padded room along with a steady, debilitating diet of sedatives and anti-psychotics. That’s no kind of life for a little girl.” She stopped to point towards the grisly scene in the bedroom. “And neither is that.”

I was speechless. I looked at Katrina, her eyes glazed, her breathing slowing to a more normal rate. She looked down at the dead girl in front of her, a thin sense of assumed accomplishment spreading across her face. “I help people,” she muttered quietly. “That’s what I do.”