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Artwork: The Suicide House by Will Jacques

Just About Full
Lamont A. Turner

All of the people of Mason, that curious little town on the north shore of Bayou De L’Ombre, had heard the stories. From infancy they had been fed tales of the strange things which haunt the swamps, and though they later claimed to view these tales as merely a means to prevent the unschooled from venturing into dangerous places, and repeated the tales to their own children with this in mind, they were never able to completely dispel the fear instilled in them when they were themselves young. For them the swamps would always hold more danger than that which such places would hold for the uninitiated. Daniel Bellmount, however, was not from that region and had not been initiated. For him the swamp presented nothing as lethal as the noose which awaited him should he be caught by the men who pursued him, with a trepidation his circumstances did not allow him to share.

From city to city he had roamed, his compulsion to kill forcing him to lead a nomadic existence. In Cincinnati it had been a prostitute; in Boston a bartender; in New Orleans a twelve-year-old girl. After New Orleans, he decided he liked the young ones the best, and forever after made children his sole prey.

Ah, how he loved the young ones! He relished the thought of the pain he inflicted by taking their lives. With glee he had murdered them, each time thrilling to the thought of the sorrow he was creating. He often thought of himself as a spider, spinning a web of misery. At the center of his web was the act itself, the beautiful slashing and spilling of blood. From this the web spread out to ensnare all who had cared for the pathetic little fly he had so happily drained.

For years he practiced his art, the key to his success being the care he always took in the disposal of his victims. The bodies would be found, must be found, for his art to be fully appreciated, but only after he was safely beyond the reach of those who would spoil his fun. He had killed so many that he no longer knew how many of his little masterpieces he had created. One dead face merged with another, and all of the dying gasps and useless pleading swirled about in his memory to form one unending scream. Such was the music which spurred him on.

Now, however, one voice sounded louder than the others, one voice shrieked in accusation. It grew louder and louder until the din roared in his head, drowning out the sound of his previous accomplishments. It was the voice of his last victim, and it was accompanied by the cacophonous music of the hunt, the shouting of men and the baying of their hounds. It was the intolerable voice of failure.

His instincts had told him not to touch that child, that it was foolish to act without a plan, but seeing the child alone in the seemingly deserted woods was too much temptation to resist. There she was, playing with an old black rag doll, oblivious to him, while the rest of the world was oblivious to her. She seemed to be a gift, a reward for work well done. He had to take her.

To compensate for the lack of planning, he decided to make the kill a quick one. Though he regretted it, he would not be able to play with this one. No, he had decided, this one would have a minor place in his portfolio, a mere sketch rather than a fully realized portrait. He crept up behind the girl and in one frantic motion he slit her throat.

Everything went wrong. Her body was still jerking in his grasp, performing a dance he had witnessed countless times before, and from which he had always received great satisfaction, when he heard a cry, and looking up from his latest work, saw a young boy. The boy’s face was distorted into an expression of revulsion and fear, which was no more extreme than his own expression upon realizing he had been spied upon. For a moment he had stood there, dumbfounded. Then, as the boy turned and ran off into the woods, he cast down the thing which had so foully tempted him to such impulsive action, though he pocketed the doll as a memento, and began to chase the interloper. It was a chase which led both child and murderer to the edge of the woods, where the pursued found safety in his father’s arms, and the pursuer, in turn, became the hunted.

All through the day, and into the night, they chased him. Deeper and deeper into the swamps he led them, until, inexplicably, they stopped. Just when Daniel thought they would finally overtake him, they stopped, merely watching from a mud bank as he waded through the waist-deep morass. Surely they had braved deeper water than this in their quest for vengeance, he thought. Why were they giving up now when they were so close to apprehending him?

It wasn’t long before his pursuers were out of his view, hidden by a curtain of darkness and mist. At last able to stop for breath, Daniel became aware of his surroundings, and for the first time since the chase had begun, he realized he was facing more than the fury of his fellow men. Now it seemed as if all of nature was his foe, and he was caught firmly in its crushing grasp. It reached out to strangle him with tendrils of moss, and slithered out of reeking pools in the form of vines to trip him. All around him silent unseen things swarmed, anxious to taste his warm blood.

He stumbled on, away from the men who would kill him, away from humanity, and toward he knew not what. For what seemed like hours, the darkness was unrelenting, then the clouds parted, and he could, at last, see by the dim rays of the yellow moon what lay ahead. Not far from where he stood there was a shack, propped up on rotting beams above the water. He resolved to seek whatever shelter he could find there.

As he pulled himself up the rickety wooden ladder leading to the shanty’s only apparent entrance, he paused to listen. Had he really heard the laughter of children echoing through the swamp? He decided it had been nothing more than the cry of some strange bird calling for its mate, and continued his assent.

All but a few of the boards that had formed the roof of the shack had long ago resigned themselves to decay, and the moon light crept in unimpeded, exposing the disintegration within. Daniel warily stepped inside, noting that the ruin would offer scant shelter, for the mold and vermin of the swamp did not respect the ineffectual barriers of those four decrepit walls. The swamp permeated all.

At least I’ll be out of the water, Daniel thought, testing each floorboard with the toe of his shoe before putting his full weight down upon it. Cautiously, he made his way toward the center of the room, his goal being to find a space on the floor sturdy enough, and large enough, to permit him to lie down. He had almost succeeded in finding such a spot when someone coughed.

There was no mistaking the sound; this was no bird. There was someone else in the shack. But where? The shack consisted of but one room and Daniel could see every inch of it. As if in answer to Daniel’s question, the coughing began again, a nauseating hacking and gurgling emitting from the small cabinet behind him. Stepping over a hole in the floor, Daniel went to the cabinet, which seemed much too small to conceal anyone other than a very small child, and pulled open its doors.

Inside the cabinet there was a tiny, shriveled thing, not more than two feet in height. It squinted up at him as if the dull moonlight pained its swollen yellow eyes. Its withered skin, what little of it Daniel could see through the mass of matted hair which clung to it like a grey mold, was nearly black. The thing looked as decayed as its abode, yet somehow it lived.

Daniel’s first impulse was to kill the thing; however, he had lost his knife during the chase, and he was repelled by the idea of touching the creature. Until he could find something with which to crush it, a rock or a loose board, he would have to let it live.

As if it had read his thought, the thing in the cabinet hissed, “If you kill me, I’ll be inside you.”

The sound of its voice sickened Daniel almost as much as did the thing’s appearance, and the notion of it being inside of him, however unlikely that may have been, disgusted him.

Again the thing warned, “If you kill me, I’ll be inside of you, but I won’t be there for long.”

“Who are you?” Daniel asked it, wondering if he spoke to an actual being, or to a nightmare spawned by exhaustion and fright.

“I’m of the swamp. Lots of lost souls here in the swamp. Souls keep a body alive if you can catch ’em before they slip off,” the thing replied.

“You expect me to believe you feed on souls?” Daniel asked.

“I do feed on them, and so do you, Daniel Bellmount,” the thing said. “Only difference between us is, I don’t kill to get ’em. They got too much hate in 'em when you take 'em that way.”

Only a demon conjured up by his own mind could have known so much about him, Daniel decided. The thing was not real. He closed his eyes, and repeated to himself “not real” several times, hoping to convince himself, and thus dispel the demon, but when his eyes opened, it was still there. He pinched himself, and shook his head, but still the thing remained.

“Since I can’t seem to get rid of you,” Daniel finally said, convinced he was speaking to a manifestation of his own subconscious, “tell me what you, or rather I, since I’m the one who dreamed you up, mean by all of this?”

“You only got so much room inside of you, and you’re just about full. You’ve been a glutton, Daniel, and you’ve feasted on forbidden fruit. Eat any more and you’ll die.”

“Ah,” said Daniel, “you’re my conscience! No wonder you’re so small and shriveled. I should have made you my first victim.”

“I’ll be your last,” stated the thing matter of factly.

Unable to tolerate the situation any longer, Daniel pried up a floorboard, and brought the impromptu bludgeon down upon the creature’s head. It exploded like a rotten pumpkin as the board hit its mark. Instead of the elation which usually followed a kill, Daniel felt only revulsion as he watched his victim disintegrate, the head of the thing withering away as a noxious black ichor gushed up from the shattered skull. In a matter of seconds, the creature was reduced to a pool of amorphous black slime, which bubbled and gurgled as it oozed from the cabinet to the floor.

Horrifying Daniel even more than the dissolution of the creature was the way the product of that dissolution slithered forth as though guided by a malignant intelligence. Real or not, Daniel was not about to be overtaken by the filth that was steadily creeping toward him. He leaped backwards to avoid it, and then turned to run, but only progressed a few steps before falling through the rotten floor, barely grabbing hold of the decayed planks in time to halt his descent into the swamp. As he strained to pull himself back up through the hole in the floor, he saw the black ooze rushing toward him with definite purpose. He tried to scream as the ebony pool expanded to engulf him, but it was already in his nose and mouth, choking him. Then there was only darkness.

Daniel awoke to the music of unseen birds. The sunlight streaming in through the ruined roof stung his eyes as he gazed up at the morning sky. He was lying on his back on the floor beside the hole he had fallen through the night before. Across the room the cabinet was empty. No monsters, or anything else for that matter, were present. He laughed. It had all been a dream, just a nightmare born of exhaustion and inhospitable surroundings. He was, for the moment, safe.

He stood and checked himself for injuries. He was, he found, intact. Other than a few scrapes, he was in good shape and ready to continue his trek across the swamp. Soon, he thought, he would be back to his old routine. There were a lot of children out there who needed his attention.

As he descended the ladder leading down from the shack he became aware of a pain in his stomach. Assuming it was the result of hunger, he tried to ignore it, but it grew more intense as he approached the marshy ground. Groaning, he pulled himself back up into the shack to lie curled up on the moldy planks. It will pass, he told himself, but the pain increased with each passing second, causing him to doubt his own hopeful prediction. Then he belched, and something slid up his esophagus to tickle the back of his throat. Suddenly terrified, he tried to stand, but the pain was too intense. He clutched franticly at his expanding abdomen as rusty nails and splintered boards tore at his flesh.

As his shirt became tighter and tighter, he remembered what the thing in his dream had said, only, he realized now, it had not been a dream. He had really encountered the creature in the cabinet, and he had not heeded its warning. He had killed one victim too many, and now he was “full.”

The buttons on his shirt popped off, one by one, and fissures spread across his distended belly. He felt his ribs breaking from the inside, and he knew it would not be long before he finally exploded, covering the walls of the shack with the black putrescence within him.

When, several weeks later, Daniel’s body was found where Daniel had left it, in a corner of the old shack, no one in the town of Mason was surprised. The father of the murdered girl had been bolder than his companions, and had ventured beyond the boundary of superstition to track her killer, and it was he who confirmed what everyone had assumed had been the fate of the murderer. Yes, the killer had become lost, dying of exposure and hunger in the unforgiving swamp.

One detail, however, was not shared with the people of Mason, for the one man who knew of it could not bring himself to recall it for fear of the nightmares it would evoke. He could not think of that rag doll, the play thing of his murdered child, the doll the killer must have, in his haste, carried off with him as he fled from his pursuers. He could not bear to think of that doll, that doll whose head protruded from the mouth of the corpse he found in the corner of the shack in the swamp.

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