Home Coming
Even after all those years, the yellow eyes still haunted him. A sickening feeling roiled in his stomach. He looked out the window and saw the ground below him menacing, almost grinning at the prodigal son’s return. He started to play with the strap of his seatbelt, cinching it as tight as it would go around his midsection. He opened and closed his tray table. His eyes glanced at the emergency exit. It was too late, though; he had returned west despite his intentions of never returning.
As he exited the plane, Rudolph Legothe felt as though he was being pulled into a whirlpool, the world attempting to drown him. For as long as he had been away, the monster had lain in wait. It reached out with a flicking tongue, aiming for his ankle, an arm—any part of him it could seize and drag back toward its mouth, where it would devour him whole. No one knew what he and Tom had seen when they were alone. No one knew the truth of what they had done.
He gritted his teeth, knowing it couldn’t be helped. He had come too far now not to visit his aging mother, to reassure her that the shadows and burglars she complained about were simply some squirrels mucking around or some neighborhood prankster. He would show her that her concern and worry was all for nothing—just a murderous face made up of blankets in the back of a closet.
His chest tightened as he drove, and he thought more about his younger brother, Tom. He thought about that day all those years ago, the day that had caused him to get as far away as he could. Now he felt helpless to the pull it had on him, like it was calling him home. He turned on the radio and tried to pay attention to the sports talk, his nerves getting the better of him.
Rudolph stopped at a gas station and bought a twelve-pack of beer. He opened one, took a swig from it, then started the car back up. One road beer wasn’t going to do any harm, and it seemed to do the trick of calming him. He opened a second one when he pulled off the highway.
“Might as well celebrate coming home,” he muttered to himself before taking another taste from his second beer of the night. He passed through his old hometown. He had no desire to linger. The place had changed somewhat but still evoked a flood of thoughts about growing up. Hometowns become part of you, he supposed. No matter how much distance between you and it, it brings you right back to those early years.
He thought about grabbing a third beer before turning up the road where his mother would be waiting, but thought better of it. He had to pace himself; the twelve needed to last him a little while. Still, reluctance kept him scanning the trees, and there was a fear that spiked in his throat. His heartbeat increased. The memory of the yellow eyes. Rudolph could almost remember the words they had recited all those years ago, the incantation that brought such evil into this world, the monster that had broken Tom’s neck. He wondered if it would recognize him after all these years.
He could almost still remember Tom’s faint, quivering voice telling him, “I’m scared, Rudd.” Soon, he would have to face those childhood fears. Returning home stirred memories of his life. Like fog over the surface of a lake, it swirled in his semiconsciousness, his mind plagued by the trouble he and his brother got into. The voices from the radio became the dithering voice of his brother, mumbling incoherently in a whisper: “I’m afraid, Rudd. I’m afraid, Rudd. I’m afraid.” He tried to force the terrible memory away but was unable to prevent its approach.
The voice of his brother Tom mixed with his faint recollection of the chant they had recited, the strange spell they had stumbled across, a random gravestone with a curious epitaph. Tom struggled with the letters and went on reciting them, until that monster had appeared. They ran and jumped over a river. Rudolph had scampered up the bank on the other side. Tom never got that far.
The memory of returning with his mother and father brought tears to his eyes. The sight of Tom lying face down in the river, neck broken . . . Rudolph could never forget it. He could never look away. It was a scar so deep that time could never touch it, a fear too big, but that was when they were children.
The gravestone with the terrible epitaph, Tom’s voice struggling with the words, stuttering, as if the very sounds they made frightened him. “I’m scared Rudd, I’m scared.” It racked his insides like a vicious bell, as if a ghost bellowed it to move with a chill breath. He tasted something bitter in his mouth—bile or fear.
He grimaced and shook the thought that it was an actual monster. He reasoned it was just an optical illusion. He let out a breath and moved the car onto the driveway of his family home. He parked and got out. The sun was taking its time setting, and the dying fires of orange and red burned in the sky.
He carried his belongings and the opened package of beer to the back step, opened the back door, and went inside. Any ability the town had to remind him of his childhood paled in comparison to standing in the house where he and Tom grew up. It gave him such a strange, acute sensation, from the smells that lingered, the scents of their adolescence spent exploring the woods around the home, to the pain that still felt tacked to the walls after the loss of his little brother. Everything felt like it was trying to smother him. He looked back to the open package of beer. He reached for his back pocket, hoping there might be a cigarette left. There wasn’t.
“Mom, I’m here,” called Rudolph. “It’s Rudd.” He found his mother sitting upstairs with a lamp on. She sat under a blanket and looked out the window.
“Hello, dear,” his mother replied, her voice just as frail and quiet as it had been on the phone. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
“Not really.” He caught the sound of running water in the kitchen. “Are you making something?” asked Rudolph. He didn’t wait for a response and turned the corner into the kitchen. Both the faucet and oven were on full blast, but they were empty. He turned them off and turned out the light in the kitchen.
“That damned burglar again,” said his mother when he returned.
“Mom, you ever think about selling this place?” he asked.
“How would Tommy know where to find me if I moved?” she countered. Rudolph followed his mother’s gaze. It was still out the window, grazing the tops of the dark pine trees.
“Mom,” he started, but stopped himself. He decided of all the things she could forget, that one would be okay left in the past. He almost envied the idea of losing memories, each day being a brand-new start, each day being one and done, nothing ever chasing you from one day to the next. It sounded freeing the more he thought about it.
He sat with his mother as they watched the sunset. She made comments now and then about the colors. After his mother went to bed, Rudolph went back to his belongings. He unpacked, opened a third beer, then sat and listened to the sounds of the wind in the trees and the groan of the old house. His fears felt distant, like they were just silly childish worries—being afraid of the dark, a noise coming from the basement, or a pipe turning on and off. He made the decision in his mind that it would be the same with the epitaph and the yellow eyes. It became silly as he thought about it all.
He had been worked up about nothing. Tom had hallucinated or forgotten about the river entirely. It was a boulder that broke his neck, not some creature in the woods. Time and age put any irrational reasons away from him. He smirked at the idea that there was anything so terrifying. He had to be the rational one now.
He finished his beer and went to bed. The wind now and then rose to a whistle, but it did not disturb Rudolph. There was nothing that could not be explained with rational thought. His irrational thoughts were what caused him to leave the West and escape to the East. Now years and the passing of time revealed that he was afraid of nothing. The thought of the yellow eyes that had disturbed him shrank to minuscule points, like flecks of sunlight that shimmer in the forest. All that had happened was explained. He had simply been caught up in the senility of his aging mother.
Obviously, the issue was only exacerbated by the recent trauma of losing her husband to a premature heart attack. The next morning, he ate breakfast with his mother, then decided to see if he could find the curious epitaph in the woods. He imagined that it was just some odd poem left on a rock.
In his long absence, everything appeared to have shrunk. The wild-grown trees clumped together, but there was no menace to them as he trekked through the woods in search of the spot that had frightened him and Tom as children. He thought about Tom as he moved branches and squeezed past trees. It took a lot more effort to navigate the forest now that he had grown in height and size as well. The constant string of cheap beer did nothing good for him, and it was not long before he was hot and sweating.
He found the river again. The place had been burned into his mind and still held sway as he recalled. Something dangerous. . . . He guessed as best as he could, trying to keep to a relatively straight path, though now and then, he had to move to the side to get around a large growth or when the way was too difficult to navigate.
The ground rose and leveled off unevenly, and Rudolph found he had traveled a good distance into the woods. He found the stillness comforting, but the silence traced a finger up his spine, leaving a cold mark. Memories stirred in his brain from years ago.
“Rudd, how deep are we going?”
“Come on, keep up. You said you wanted to go explore, right?” Everything about that day—the words they had said to one another, all of it—rushed at Rudolph like a tidal wave, or a boxcar train filled with memories. The sun was slanted and angled, and the leaves smelled like damp earth and worms. In an instant, Rudolph Legothe was sent back in time, shot backward, to the beginning, to the dawn of fears—the first night that mankind huddled and shivered, as the savage world yawned and chewed, and monsters hunted the lands. The very world more savage than the men and women who scavenged and fought back to claim a meager existence among the trees and caves. The mountain lion’s prowl, the sharp angle of its shoulders rising as its weight shifts from paw to paw. The more terrible fear that he and Tom had awakened, the monster they had called back into the world, the monster from beyond.
A wind touched the branches, and the trees spoke in their ancient voices, as if they too remembered the damage done by Rudolph and his brother Tom. They had come by accident, but now Rudolph looked past the trees in search of the tombstone. In a moment of thought, a piece of the words came back to him.
“Beyond, beyond, the path from the dawn. The path to the dark.” He tried to remember more of it, but the words were lost. He continued his search as the smell of worms and wet earth increased, then followed a smell of rot, of fruit fallen from wild apple trees, of dead things lying in the sun, festering and melting into the earth like bones in sand.
In the middle of a small grove, he saw a black stone out of place, emerging from earth tones—like a polished, jet-black grave marker. Chiseled into the stone was the rest of the horrible epitaph. He dared not recite it out loud and instead read it in his mind. He recalled Tom’s stammering voice shaking through their juvenile voices. Tom spoke it in time in his mind.
Beyond, beyond
The path from the dawn
The path to the dark
The way never strays
He comes, he comes
With devilish fun
So run, run
Run away
Make for the sun
He comes, he comes
With devilish fun.
Rudolph stood and examined the strange poem. He remembered Tom’s voice peaking at the words “run.” It still gave Rudolph a feeling of unease, so he shivered. The cold touch of time ran up and down his spine. He tried to laugh it off, but when he turned to leave, from the shade of the trees, he caught two piercing yellow eyes glaring at him.
Unease took him by the throat. At once, all the childish fears swept over him like a sudden storm. He was no longer a child, but something stirred in him as he looked at the monster that killed his younger brother, the terror they called back into the world. Its golden eyes, yellow like lances of sun, were hot and full of dread for the one boy that got away all those years ago. Rudolph heard Tom’s voice splinter in his mind. It cried out in untouched childish words, just as it had long ago.
“Run! Run! Run away!“
Rudolph did not run. He would make his stand here against the creature that killed his brother. He would do what he should have done all those years in the distant past. He should have faced the monster; if he had, Tom might be home right now. The terrible yellow eyes narrowed on Rudolph, and the monster moved toward him. It towered like a giant bat with folded wings. The eyes never blinked and were lidless, burning away in a demonic skull—this devil with reptilian flesh the color of scorched earth, a razor grin of sharp, terrible teeth.
The smells of rot and death roiled, and the wind increased, stirring the world around. The monster moved closer, taking long strides. Rudolph felt fear rise in his gut. His body quivered with the electricity of trauma, his bones melting in the gaze of two yellow eyes. He looked around for something to fight the monster with. Beside the grave marker was a broken piece of wood that had a point to it.
Rudolph went for it. He jumped, and the wind swept up, filling his face with leaves. He reached out, knowing the monster would soon be on him. His hands raked the ground, his nails cracking as he reached for the sharp stake. Through the wind and sudden storm, the eyes bore down on Rudolph.
He felt claws sinking into the flesh of his back. Talons took hold, ready to hoist him high into the air. He screamed and lunged forward before being pulled back. The monster unleashed its wings, and a beating of ancient, dreadful winds buffeted Rudolph. The force shook him like sea waves crashing relentlessly against stone or lightning splitting the sky.
The beating of wings continued, and Rudolph was lifted from the ground. The muscles of his back were being pulled from the bone. The monster rose into the air. He desperately clung to the object in his hand, but the monster continued to rise into the dark sky.
Rudolph struggled to steady the stake in his hands.
He could see the tops of the trees. The world below him fell away, and there was the river, burned into his mind. The monster was going to repeat what it had done to Tom. It was going to break Rudolph’s neck on the rocks below.
Rudolph drove the weapon behind him and attacked blindly. Each stab drew dark blood that spewed out of the monster. He drove the sharp length of wood again and again. The river drew closer. The monster screamed a reptilian roar, and Rudolph caught the distinct sound of blood pooling in the throat, the sound of lungs desperate to breathe.
The monster’s grip loosened, and as it aimed Rudolph toward the rocks, he plunged the blood-slick weapon behind him and felt the claws release from his back. He dropped and landed feet first before the rocks. The river pulled at him, and he screamed. He dropped into darkness. Water filled his mouth, and he fought to keep from drowning. He pulled himself to the bank, still clutching the length of wood, and staggered out of the water.
The monster lay on the ground, its wings crushed under its struggling body. The yellow eyes still burned but were no longer menacing. Rudolph would make sure they closed for good.
About the Author
Kemal Onor holds an MFA from the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College and is the author of the novella Curse of the Black Horn. His work has been featured in Tales from the Moonlit Path, The Dark Void, and The Creepy Podcast, among others. A two-time recipient of the JSC/VSC Fellowship award, he lives in Michigan.