Split Scream Volume Three

SO QUIET, SO WHITE

Patrick Barb

Twin beams of pale light pierce the darkness, illuminating the front façade of the old backwoods country house that locals call the Grimsby House. The vehicle’s headlights resemble the eyes of a nocturnal scavenger sneaking up as close as it dares to civilization so it can dig through the refuse for the tastiest morsels. The abrupt appearance of this light outside his home doesn’t wake Roger because he’s not gone to bed yet. As it stands, he’s been sleeping less and less since they released his grandson from the hospital and let the boy return to his grandfather’s care. That permission came with gruff warnings to both that they shouldn’t leave town. Roger Grimsby, who gave his name to the Grimsby House, isn’t one to dwell on those types of threats though. He’s well aware of his and his grandson’s rights and the words of a sheriff twenty years his junior won’t be the thing to cause him a sleepless night.

Most evenings, Roger’s upstairs in his studio working on that week’s painting commissions, keeping one or two canvases ahead of the next deadline. Lost in the brushwork for a retro creature-feature piece, adding details of radioactive crackle beneath the buzz and hum of his many work lamps. He keeps the overhead lights on as well. He’s awash in their electric glow, leaving the darkness to its own designs.

As a result of this cocooning in artificial light, it takes a moment for the extra bit of illumination outside to register for Roger.

Something pops in his back when he straightens. His doctor’s monthly matter-of-fact recitation of everything Roger does wrong in his day-to-day existence plays on a loop in his head. You need more sleep, don’t sit like that, you need to exercise, don’t worry so much…

Roger slides his feet into the house shoes he keeps nearby and the old wood floor creaks under his slow trudge around the room. He turns off the lamps and flips the switch for the overheads. Darkness falls with slick determination, like a damp bath towel slithering off a towel rack and unfurling across a steamed-up bathroom floor. Living on a mill road with an acre of towering pines with spindly branches exploding toward the sky on either side, separating his home from the nearest neighbor and the rest of the world, when the lights go off in Roger’s home no star shine or moonglow’s getting in.

But those twin beams remain steady in their silent assessment of the house.

It’s Clint. Gotta be. Boy snuck out, now he’s pushing the old Mustang down the drive so I won’t hear when he cranks that engine. It’s what his daddy used to do. Too bad Clint probably snuck into my stash beforehand and got himself too shitfaced pre-gaming on my Johnny Walker to notice he’d gone and turned the high beams on…

Clint’s daddy was Roger’s son though. Richie.

Richie: the lost and broken link in a chain meant to connect the old artist and the sullen teen now living under the roof of the Grimsby House. Back when Richie was the one trying to creep out or back home (depending on the hour), Roger had the bandwidth to work on his paintings—cranking them out to keep up with the demand of paperback publishers whose lurid horror titles filled the racks of the grocery marts until they didn’t—and to listen for his son’s foolhardy attempts at sneaking around in a too-loud and too-fast car.

Now, when he’s lost in his work and the quiet leaves him holding conversations in his head to pass the time, Roger’s certain he wouldn’t even notice if Clint pulled out, Mustang’s tires spinning gravel, horn honking loud enough to wake the Brandons’ coon dogs next door.

In the dark, his hands grip the window. Arms tensed, he’s prepared to push it open and give this intruder more than a little piece of his mind.

But he stops short of doing so. Instead, he steps away from the latch and stands in the shaft of light bouncing up from the slick gray stones of the gravel driveway. Gazing out the window, Roger spots his silhouette etched across the ground, a black form in the middle of a white circle. Like the Man in the Moon’s crash-landed in the front yard.

Moon and all.

Roger waits. And listens.

Listens and waits.

He’s sure the Mustang’s engine growls in the dark, like a caged lion whose lazy afternoon at the zoo’s been interrupted by someone falling over the protective barrier surrounding the beast’s enclosure. An unexpected treat to reveal the limits of the savage creature’s domestication…

No matter how far they come, it’s never far enough.

Then, Roger changes his mind about what’s rumbling, deciding it’s much closer. Now, he’s sure it’s his stomach making the racket. He believes he ate some meal that day. But he’s not certain. Things like food get away from him when he’s painting.

Grandpa! A car’s in the driveway! I dunno whose.

With the exclamation from the downstairs bedroom that Clint’s staked for his own and inhabited ever since the boy’s daddy went away, Roger’s breath hitches. It’s like he’s taken a bad swallow of rotten moonshine reality. The truth goes down the wrong tube and it burns.

Shit.

Downstairs, Clint’s plodding teenage feet stomp toward the front of the house, echoing with each step so it sounds like he’s an army of one. Gonna check who it is out… The boy’s grumbling speech lapses into incoherent muttering.

Probably believing he’s still asleep and this is all some strange dream, right?

Roger doesn’t fault him for that mistaken perception. After all, it’s been a while since any visitors pulled up their winding driveway.

Only one bar way out this way, the Miller’s Daughter. Is that ol’ juke-joint even still open?

When Richie was a kid, the family would get drunks pulling off the mill road and onto their driveway, slow-rolling the vehicles close enough to the Grimsby House—but never too close. They’d sleep off their drunk and be gone by morning. Harmless.

Hell, it was a sure sight better for public safety than having ‘em driving drunk and too fast on these old country roads out here.

But another voice, striving to make itself heard from the back of Roger’s head, suggests there’s something more at play. It’s a familiar voice, but one he hasn’t heard from in years. Suddenly, it finds its tone and tenor once again, before proceeding to tell the old man that the person behind the wheel carries ill intentions directed at the old house’s two inhabitants.

Roger doesn’t have his number listed and he keeps his address out of the phone book white pages as well. Since he uses a P.O. box for his art business, he doesn’t find much reason for folks to know where precisely he hangs his hat.

Still, they live in a small town. Small enough for someone to procure that information quite easily if it’s what they desire. God knows the reporters had dug the details up fast enough after the news about the dead bodies at Clint’s summer camp broke onto the national wires. Cars and vans parked in crooked lines on either side of the old mill road, all their tires sinking into the churned-up muddy roadside. Heavy cameras hefted on wide shoulders swept across the pines until they found a gap in the foliage, then they waited for Roger’s truck to emerge from the driveway and turn onto the road. Those savvy camera operators snapped photo after photo in a blur of hot, white light. He couldn’t see their faces then, but he could well imagine what they looked like. Eager, desperate, hungry.

Now, Roger can’t help but wonder: did all those cars and trucks and vans belong to professionals, folks out doing a job and looking for a good story? Or a good angle on a bad story? Behind the flashes, the ebony camera shutters’ blinking, was someone else blending