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The doorknob turned, and Conehead’s barks immediately turned to growling snarls, trying to sound as intimidating as a Labrador possibly could. The metal hinges on the door squeaked as Ronnie imagined it slowly swinging open.
She continued to crawl back, not looking away from the corner. Something was breathing, but it wasn’t near the ground. The phone buzzed with another text message. It sounded like it came from near the ceiling. The screen illuminated, revealing sunken eyes on a pale face staring down at her.
“Don’t leave me, baby,” the familiar voice said. She recognized Rick, Mr. No-Good-What’s-His-Name, immediately. Except it wasn’t exactly him. It sounded like a slowed down recording of him. The side of a grinning face floated into her peripheral. Ronnie bolted as the laughter of a young man faded behind her.
And then she noticed the shower in the reflection above her right shoulder. She stared into the mirror at a tall, skinny silhouette standing behind the shower curtain.
Conehead stopped and stared at something beyond Ronnie. She saw fear in his eyes and panicked. “Coney?” The floor rumbled. Ronnie, transfixed by Conehead’s sudden change in demeanor, almost didn’t notice. The bathroom light flickered as it died. Conehead snarled at something behind her, and then the room went dark.
Ronnie watched in horror as the dog’s body appeared to elongate, bones snapping and reshaping before her eyes. Her eyes widened as Conehead’s fur moved like slithering maggots.
Her dying image was that of her daughter cowered in the corner between the toilet and the shower, eyes wide and fixed, mouth hanging agape, frozen in a scream caused by God knows what.
“IF YOU TEACH for a good amount of time, you’ll inevitably have to deal with the death of a student.”
He stood up and took a step toward the porch. Conehead barked. Matt turned back around. The dog was looking over his shoulder, barking, growling, snarling at something behind him.
Matt made sure no semis or other vehicles were coming—he’d read Pet Sematary in high school and learned from those characters’ mistakes. The last thing he wanted was a reincarnated version of Bonehead.
As the hallway door was closing, he heard the woman say between sobs, “Why is she doing that? What’s wrong with her? Make her stop!” Once the door shut and muffled the commotion, Matt looked down at Conehead and was shocked to see that he had his head bent up and back at an unnatural angle, staring at him with lifeless eyes.
She glanced at the dark window beside the door, and her heart stopped. The reflection of the waiting room behind her showed that the hallway door now stood wide open. She had just come from there and knew that she had closed it. She spun around. The receding light of the waiting room lamps made the shadows stretch like elongated fingers down the deep corridor.
The truck’s brakes screeched and squealed across the crimson skids of flesh and bone as it came to an emergency stop moments too late. Aside from the stains in the road, and a blood-spattered purse, the only remaining element of Casey was her phone, lying face up on the concrete near the curb. The screen was dimming, but a voice kept asking, “Hello?” and then, “Hello? Is someone there?
As they walked down the sidewalk, Lucy noticed the white sheet in the middle of the road. There was a deformed shape underneath—nothing like a human body. She saw the surrounding area and understood why. It looked like someone took a bucket of shark chum and chucked it across the asphalt. The blood looked like tar in the moonlight, only turning red when one of the cruiser’s lights would dart across it.
As shocking as the dog’s death was, what bothered Lucy more was the dog Matt had brought in. She forgot his name. The cream-colored Lab sat on all fours lapping at the steady red drips from the kennel above him.
He was pulling the door shut when he saw the smiling face underneath Mikey’s bed. His heart froze as the black eyes and pale skin receded into the dark.
exCUSE ME?????
He hurried over to the bed and crouched down, reaching blindly underneath to grab it. When he felt its fur, he squeezed. The object in his hand wasn’t a squishy stuffed animal. It felt like he was gripping the top of a person’s head. He instantly recoiled and backed away.
HOLY FUCK NO
He kept waiting to hear Mikey say something about the dog’s odd and frankly, creepy behavior, but he remained silent. It wasn’t until they pulled into Matt’s driveway, and he put it in park that he was able to turn around and see what his son was doing, and it made his stomach tighten. Just like the dog beside him, Mikey’s head was tilted all the way back to the point that he was all neck and chin from Matt’s perspective. Both of them were as still as statues, and they both looked like they were smiling.
“I think he saw the deer,” Matt said. “What deer?” “The ones you just pointed at.” “Those weren’t deer.” “Well, then what was it?” “Shadow people.”
The yellow light illuminated the hallway to show Mikey crawling across the ceiling and back to his bedroom. The door slammed shut, and all lights in the house turned off.
NOPE NOPE NOPE
He took the most cautious step he had ever taken in his life, with his arm extended at shoulder level. His palm collided with something hairy. Lightning struck and illuminated the hallway for a split second. Matt couldn’t believe the horror that stood before him. Conehead was standing on his hind legs staring straight at Matt, grinning ear to ear.
Lightning lit up the sky again, and for the first time, Matt could see that it was Conehead dragging the boy away from the house.
When he turned back around, Mikey slammed his face into the cereal. Milk and Lucky Charms splashed the wall.
When he stepped back into the dining room, he caught something out of the corner of his right eye. His head spun around to see one of the strangers standing at the sliding glass door looking right at him. He gasped and nearly dropped the butcher knife.
Finally, some movement came from the room. Someone was approaching the door from the other side. “Open the door. Let me in. There are people outside,” he whispered.
This person looked like Ronnie, but not exactly. Ronnie never stood completely erect like this figure, nor did she cock her head and smile like that. “Ronnie, is that you?” he asked even though he knew better.
Conehead, no longer the Ronnie thing, stood there on two legs, his mouth open and smiling, eyes black as coal.
This is your house. Go in there and get cleaned up. You’re in no shape to drive to the ER, and you have everything you need in the first-aid kit upstairs. Upstairs? Fuck . . . A cold chill rattled his bones at the thought of going back up there. This. Is. Your. House.
“Mikey,” a child’s voice said. The boy froze in fear. “Hey, Mikeyyyy. I got your birdie.” After a throaty chuckle it said, “Did ya hear me? I got your birdie. Wanna see what I did with it?”
“Turn around, Mikeyyy, or I’m gonna eat him.” The whispering voice dropped a few octaves like a slowed-down recording. Mikey remained a statue. “I’m going to start by biting off his head.” It giggled and then there was a violent snap and crunching sound like something was chewing on peanut shells.
The squeaking sound of the closet door opening made Mikey squeeze his mommy even tighter. Lucy put her arm on her son’s back. He tried to look, but his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark yet. “Lewis, just shut it. He didn’t want you to open it,” she said. There was no response.
Mikey watched as a floating figure emerged out of his room. It came up behind Lewis, lifted him off his feet and hurled him down the staircase. Even in the semi-darkness, Mikey could see its smiling face, as joyful as a child’s.
“What happened?” The terror in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. He had never seen an expression like that from her. It has something to do with that damn dog. I know it.
“So let me get all this straight. The dog—Conehead—was with Ronnie Young when she committed suicide and her mother died. You adopted him and took him to her for a checkup. While he’s there, Casey Burke was on camera acting like someone was pursuing her until she ran into the road and got hit by a semi-truck. You take the dog home and see an intruder and flee your house with the dog. You then see Rick Bateman in town, and he sees the dog. Rick and his parents are dead less than 24 hours later. Was the dog with you at all times, Mr. Matheny?”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Mund said. “Six deaths and two home invasions in just under a week, and the only link is a Labrador named Conehead.”
Somehow, Matt was staring at himself standing in Mikey’s window. He watched as his doppelganger lifted half of a broken liquor bottle, smiled, and plunged the glass into his throat. Blood fountained onto the window as he yanked it back out. Window Matt smiled even wider and then repeatedly jabbed both eyeballs until they were dark, gaping holes. Matt gripped the armrests and pushed himself back into the seat, too shocked to scream.
Then he looked through Mund’s back windshield, and Conehead was staring at him. The dog had his head twisted completely around with the edges of his mouth twisted up in a hideously demonic grin.
Conehead not only saved your son; he saved you, too. The dog isn’t the problem. The dog needs your help.
“Like I said, it ain’t a person. At least, not anymore. It wants nothin’ more than to drive ya insane and then kill ya.” Evan said as he took another long drink. “And there ain’t just one.”
“Brett killed hisself in prison. Seven years later, his son done damn near the same thing.” “Your ten-year-old stepson killed himself?” Matt asked. Evan shot him a glare. “Not exactly. Wyatt killed seven other boys and a man about your age before he was killed.”
Matt nodded his head, knowing full well how each new generation of kids, especially since COVID, had gotten worse. Not worse. Worse is too simple a term for it. Don’t sugarcoat it. Each year, they’re more disrespectful and don’t give two shits about learning anything other than the latest social media trend or video games. They also endured a worldwide pandemic, experience the threat of gun violence on a daily basis, see the rising rates of teen suicide, and have to find a good enough reason not to resort to getting high to block it all out. The world experienced a collective existential
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truth!!!
“She sobbed into Wyatt’s pillow. I tried rubbin’ her back, but she just got up and stormed out the room. I heard her screamin’ and sobbin’. Me and Buster just sat on the bed. I didn’t know what the fuck to do. That’s when she ran back in the room and jumped on the bed. She grabbed that dog by the ears and demanded it to let Wyatt come back. She said somethin’ about Wyatt bein’ lost and not knowin’ how to get back to her, so she begged whatever was out there to bring our boy back.” Evan poured himself another shot and took it twice as fast. “And that’s precisely where I believe she fucked up,”
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He remembered Conehead fleeing the wilderness behind Ronnie’s house, starved and malnourished, probably just as traumatized as any other sentient being would be as it lost control of its mental faculties. It was a body full of ghosts, but not all of them were bad.
That’s when the thing dropped to the floor and scurried under our bed like a damn cockroach. It was so fast and quiet. One minute it was on the ceiling and then it was right under us.
“It’s bad enough to lose a child—even worse to see it happen on videotape. None of that compared to what I was lookin’ at under that bed. “It was Wyatt, still wearing those hospital clothes, but his face was a hole of cherry pie and bone. There were three other bodies under there with him. They just looked like dark shapes. They was biting his arms, ripping more gobs of flesh from his hollowed-out skull with their white hands. Looked like they was eatin’ it. “I screamed. They all froze and looked at me. I could see their pale faces and bloody mouths, smilin’. All at once they crawled toward
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Conehead’s head had twisted upside down like his neck had snapped. His bulging eyes were pale white, and his face was fixed in a demonic smile. Drool pooled down both sides of his jowls and into his eyeballs.
He stepped onto the linoleum kitchen floor and looked up at the microwave to see what time it was. The neon green display of time was there, but the dead man sitting at his kitchen table stole his attention before he could read it.
HUH?????
With that, the top of Cedric’s head flopped forward and stared at Mund with its mouth agape. It was pulled up to its feet, knocking its knees on the table. The Marshall-thing glided backward across the floor and slid its hand into Cedric’s open throat and began to operate him like a sock puppet. “Well, golly gee willickers, Mr. Mund,” the Marshall-thing spoke through Cedric’s corpse. “If I can do that to my own nephew, imagine what I’m going to do to you. Imagine what we’re going to do to everyone in this shithole town.”
In some impossible way, the Marshall-thing squeezed its head into Mund’s open mouth. The man stared down at the sight below his nose. The Marshall-thing’s body was reshaping itself to inch its way down Mund’s gullet like an octopus fitting inside of a Coke bottle. It slithered and snaked through his esophagus and into his stomach, forcing his belly to bloat out like he was pregnant with triplets. Mund would’ve screamed if his throat wasn’t full of feet. And then he was falling.
“It’s OK to be scared, son,” he said, keeping his focus. “It’s what you do when you’re scared that counts.”
