Wirrhaus

By Alexander Jay Nelson

In the fall of 1994, the island town of Davenport, NY is panic-stricken when a young boy is found dead in the woods, and 16-year-old William Miller discovers a talent for story writing he didn't know he had. But he also has a new passion, a dark secret.
No one can know.
With the guidance of an equine phantom and a mad doctor, William descends into a world of insanity, dread, and chaos. The world of Wirrhaus, his first masterpiece.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexander Jay Nelson
• Release date: Sep 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463698082

Alexander Jay Nelson

Alexander Jay Nelson was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador and grew up in the Galapagos Islands. He's been writing since his early teens and hasn't stopped since. He dropped out of the same college his father dropped out of in the 1960's. Alex studies screenwriting and makes illustrations. His newest hobby is crocheting.

Book preview

WIRRHAUS

Alexander Jay Nelson

Distributed by Smashwords

Copyright 2018 Alexander Nelson

Prologue

Arlo caressed the trigger. I know I can do it.

He’d been standing there for more than half a minute without shooting.

Just get your finger off the trigger. Never put it there unless you’re ready to shoot.

He lowered the revolver. I never shot a gun in my life, a’ight? Dunno if I even like ’em, they’re loud, the fuckin’ thing could misfire--

Stop, stop, stop for a moment. Now hold it up again and just aim. Pretend the gun is an extension of your arm. He did as he was told. Concentrate and keep one eye open.

Which eye?

You’re right handed, aren’t you?

Yeah? Okay. Right eye.

Arlo shut his left eye and fired. The bullet grazed the side of the beer can and sent it spinning off the fence. He jumped up and down.

Did you see that, William? He said this like a boy would to his father. I can shoot.

He tried to twirl the gun but it fell from his fingers to his feet on the grass. I snatched it and held it up, finger off the trigger. He held his hand out. C’mon, lemme have another go.

Arlington Westbrook was pushing sixteen but behaved like a twelve-year-old. He had sandy hair and heavy-lidded brown eyes, and he always wore the same army green jacket, even in the summer. It once belonged to his big brother Aaron. I could trust Arlo with a few secrets and let him borrow my cassettes but it was different with a gun, and especially different with someone as clumsy as Arlo.

When he was eleven, he chopped off the top of his left index finger while we were helping his mother with dinner. He was cutting the onions when it fell into the sink and down the drain. I was there when the blood ran out of his finger. I was there at the hospital, waiting for my parents to pick me up while my friend was in the surgery.

When he came back to school, some kid in our class gave him fingerless gloves as a bad joke. I stood, getting ready to defend Arlo in an oncoming fistfight, but the joke flew over Arlo’s head and he happily accepted the gift and actually began to favor fingerless gloves after that day. He was wearing a black pair right now, along with a look of honest surprise and disappointment when he realized I wasn’t going to give him the gun.

Why can’t I?

I don’t take it out often, and I don’t want to waste all my bullets. Besides, you’ll never be as good as I am. I held up the gun and fired. It was a direct hit. The second can was blown off the fence. Arlo whooped.

Goddamn, dude! You’re like a fuckin’ marksman, or a born killer! If that can was a guy, it woulda been a total dick shot or an ass shot! He bent over and mimed talking out of his ass like Ace Ventura. "Could I ass you a question?"

Please stop.

"Aw, don’t get all bummed out. He stood up straight and made a dumb little smile, then looked back at the remaining cans on the fence. Think you could shoot someone in the heart?"

Hm. I’m pretty sure I’m that skilled, so, yes.

"Cooooool."

Arlington Westbrook probably wasn’t dumb, but he wasn’t smart enough to know he was standing with a murderer. Of course, this was before I decided to kill people.

PART 1

PLAN

October 26

Wednesday

When I was a junior, I would always finish my work before anyone else did and that meant I had free time to do any activity (as long as it was quiet) but I’d forgotten my book, so there was nothing to do other than watch the clock and look at my surroundings. Twitch Bitter, who sat next to me, was chewing on his pencil. His real name was Mitch, but everyone called him Twitch or Jitters and he earned his nicknames from how jumpy he was. Always afraid he was going to get beat up. If you got too close to him he’d leap ten feet in the air. And as if that weren’t enough, his genes had given him ginger hair and acne. I had no problem with either, but on more than one occasion he’d had water thrown on him as a prank because "we thought your head was on fire! or to bless" him. That Wednesday, he had a big pimple scab in the corner of his mouth. He picked it off, looked at it, and then flicked it away.

I quickly grew tired of looking at Mitch, and looked at the far left side of the classroom, where Arlo was sitting. He was looking out the window, most likely lost in a daydream of tits and a haze of weed. He always came to school stoned--that is, when he actually showed up. Suddenly, he sneezed at full blast. It was so powerful that it startled Mitch enough to make him gasp and drop his chewed-up pencil. He picked it up and turned his head to stare at Arlo, like everyone else in the class was. Our Geometry teacher Mrs. Hunt had a sharp look of disgust in her pinched, fat dog face. She didn’t even notice that Levi Harron had thrown an eraser at Mitch’s head when he’d reached down to pick up his pencil.

Arlington, please do us all a favor and cover your mouth next time you sneeze, she said.

Arlo nodded without taking his eyes off his schoolwork and continued breathing through his mouth. He was drooling a little.

Fifteen more minutes. I looked around the classroom, which was covered in Halloween decorations. At Northern Hills, a K-12 school of about 300 students, they usually only adorned the little children’s classrooms with whimsical, cartoonish decorations from the dollar store. Happy spiders. Bullshit. I bet that if someone threw a tarantula into the 2nd grade classroom, everyone’s atavistic fears would kick in. We made all our decorations in art class the month before.

The skull I’d made was stuck on a pike in a row by the back wall. I was originally going to make a fleshy severed head, but when Mrs. Hunt overheard me, she thought I was taking it too far. I wanted to protest, but when the bitch was set on something, she couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind. One skull, cracked and yellowed with tea to add an age effect. I was proud of my work. I remembered my previous Halloweens, and going trick-or-treating. My favorite costume was a bat costume my dad made when I was nine. The wings, which were made of rubber tubes and black fabric, were so cool that I tried to wear them every day. I finally got tired of them after a week and stored them in my closet.

I looked back down at my empty desk and traced an invisible line across the wood with my finger. The desk was varnished a long time ago, and showed evidence that many kids had sat there before me. In the top left corner, D + L carved inside a heart. But that wasn’t very old. I knew it was Dan Friedman and Lee Kelly. They graduated when I was a freshman. The oldest memory engraved in my desk had been there since before I was born. I opened my desk to look at it and smirked. In small print it read: Grace Weinstein survived the class of Mrs. Cunt, 1968.

1968. Even back then no one liked Hunt. It was 1994, and whoever Grace was is all grown up now. Either still here in dinky little Davenport, or out there in the real world doing real things. But it didn’t really matter to me. I closed the desk and went back to being bored, back to wishing I had my book with me.

The book in question was Pet Sematary. I was a big Stephen King fan. I had a collection of his books in my nightstand. I’ve seen just about every film adaptation, and nearly all of them were sub-par. For some reason when horror novels are turned into screenplays, they always leave out the parts that could really scare you. I don’t get it. My dad told me the reason why movies don’t go too far anymore is because violent scenes can alienate the audience, and make them worry about the actors. But no matter how many times he’s explained it, I just can’t understand him.

I looked at the clock again. Ten minutes till the bell, and I was lost inside my mind. Since I was a kid, I would have conversations in my head as if there were a separate entity in there, a second William with other musings. Not the voice of my conscience. I don’t know if I have one. Just another voice. It was the two of us in there, and sometimes it said things that I couldn’t conceive on my own.

Seeing as you’re so desperate to read something, you might as well write something.

The thought came to me like divine inspiration, and it must have been, because I had no idea how much of an impact it would have on my life. I don’t know if I would’ve turned out better or worse, but I know that something changed in me that day.

I raised the desk lid and took a notebook and pencil. But I accidentally dropped the lid and it made a noise as loud as Arlo’s sneeze. Jennifer Moretti, who sat in front of me, jumped and shrieked (so did Mitch). My eyes went up to Mrs. Hunt. She gave me the same sharp look and in return, I gave her a well-practiced smile.

I’m sorry, Mrs. Hunt, I said in a sincere voice. I wasn’t being careful.

She went back to her Danielle Steel novel. I really hated the old bag even though I had good grades and she didn’t have a particular distaste for me. I just didn’t want her to be there. I looked at Mrs. Hunt’s jowly dog face and had an intense desire to hit her. Beat her head in with a wooden ruler as she looks at me in fear and confusion. Take the Steel book from her hands and hang it out the window in a taunt.

"You want it, dog? You want it?"

Hunt pants and frantically nods her head up and down.

"Go and GET IT!"

I throw it out the window and she jumps over the table and out the window. The whole class hears her skull crack open when she hits the bottom. The blood pools around and soaks the book.

"Good doggy."

I went to the back page of the notebook to let all my thoughts pour out.

William Miller, age 7

I killed my teacher today. I really didn’t think I’d get caught. It felt like a good plan at the time.

I quietly walked down the hallway, to my classroom. She was in there, reading. She didn’t even notice me walking in with a fire extinguisher. She never noticed anything important. I said hello to her and sprayed the foam right down her throat. She tried to scream. Her eyes popped out like goldfish eyes, and she ran around in panic with the few seconds of life she had left. Finally, I pushed her out the window and watched her fall. Her head smashed against the blacktop like a watermelon. The children on the playground screamed at the sight of their dead teacher, but they didn’t see her killer looking out the window, grinning down at the foam and blood streaming from her mouth and her eyes, forever widened in terror. So that was my day, how was yours?

The bell rang.

I jumped up from my seat and grabbed my backpack, ripping the paper out of the notebook and tucking it in my pocket as I walked out of the classroom. Everyone else turned in their papers. Arlo caught up with me in the hallway.

Hey man, does it look like I got a cold?

Not really.

"It doesn’t? Goddamn it, all day I was hoping that they’d let me go to the nurse’s office and then I could go the fuck home. But these shitty teachers see right through me. I fuckin’ hate Missus Cunt."

Is that what that sneeze and dribbling were about? You should’ve made more of an effort. Next time, steal some rouge from your mom and rub it on your nose and upper lip so they look irritated. And get some water or something up your nose so it’ll look like you’ve got snot.

Duly noted. he said, nodding. You got the mind of an outlaw, y’know? Ha-ha!

When we walked out of the building, he said, Wanna know why I wanted to go home early?

To smoke some more.

Well yeah, but this time I got another reason! I rented some horror movies yesterday but I fell asleep an’ I just really wanna watch ’em. You wanna come over and get high? Watch guys bleed corn syrup?

Yeah sure, but not right now.

Is tonight good for ya?

That’s fine.

Cool. Just come to my house at like seven. My folks are gone, so you don’t gotta worry about them barging in like the lame shits they are.

OK. See you.

Later, Will!

He ran to his bike and rode away. I didn’t bring mine. The walk back was a long one, even though Davenport is a small town on a fairly small island called Chamberlain, four miles off the coast of New York City. My school was up in the highlands and Davenport was down the highway. I wished I’d gone to school on my bike instead of letting my dad drive me. I already knew he wouldn’t come back to pick me up. Walking was my only option.

****

Somewhere on the forest highway, I read my story for the third time. It made me feel something, something that in those days I could only describe as the closest I ever get to feeling good.

Now I was reading the part where I stared down at her body. I could imagine myself there as a kid in little denim shorts. My sneakers matching the red stripes on my t-shirt. The laces double-knotted. A grin one size too big. Glaring eyes. Eyebrows covered by brown bangs. I made the face myself, even though I couldn’t see it, nor could anyone else because it was only me there on the bare highway.

Mommy runs into the classroom in horror and sees Teacher’s corpse sprawled on the concrete and she screams.

"Oh dear god billy what have you done oh billy why did you do this oh my dear sweet little billy my little angel is a--"

Killer. I am a killer, Mommy.

I sniggered. I’m a writer now. A lot of us kill people. Legal serial killers.

I thought about Arlo’s big brother Aaron, who was murdered three years ago. Nobody caught the killer, and whoever did it was very lucky, because if you’re going to commit murder on an island, you’d better do a damn great job. And this guy did one great bastard of a job.

Aaron Westbrook was your typical tall, handsome steel blue-eyed guy whose towhead remained after babyhood. In October 1991, his body was discovered in the woods eight days after he went missing when he’d gone out for a run. It had been left under a pile of leaves and dirt, not even buried. He’d been stabbed twice in his back and more in his chest. Wound after wound after wound, it took the killer a while to stop themselves. Some of Aaron’s limbs were missing too. An arm and a few fingers cut off and never found, other bits of him gnawed off, possibly by feral dogs. His right ear was split in half and his lower lip severed by his own teeth. Even his genitals weren’t spared. They were burned off after he was already dead. But from what I overheard at my parents’ bar one day from a couple of drunk cops was that the worst sight was his expression, which was the one he died with. It wasn’t a wide-eyed stare and a gaping mouth infested with maggots, or an unrecognizable pulp. Aaron looked like he was weeping. As if he were still alive and in excruciating pain. He’d died terrified.

The only thing the police could figure out was that the killer knew Aaron. It wasn’t a random kill. It was deeply personal. But they couldn’t find out who did it, because Aaron was very popular and none of his friends could think of anyone who’d want him dead.

Arlo had been affected the most by his death. Aaron was the perfect older brother. He was the first one to call him Arlo when Arlington started to sound too pompous. He helped him grow up, played with him, took him fishing at the docks, and taught him to do many things, like skateboarding, how to do a burnout, he even had to teach him how to shave. Their father never taught him any of that stuff because he and Mrs. Westbrook were alcoholics and barely ever had time for their sons. They were almost never home either. Sometimes they would quit, but it was only a matter of months before they’d fall off the wagon. So Aaron was the family patriarch. And now the Westbrook brothers were the same age. But Aaron Westbrook would be sixteen forever and his little brother would continue growing.

I don’t have any siblings. I’m the only child of a man named Robert and a woman named Nancy.

Robert was forty-seven in ’94 and owned a bar in town called Rocky Road. It used to be an ice cream parlor in the ’50s, but when my grandfather took over the business after his father passed on, he turned it into a tavern. Then my father took over and kept the family business going. Nancy’s the thirty-nine-year-old bartender. My dad was working the night he met Nancy Schneider, in 1974. She was a pretty little girl at nineteen, in her sophomore year of college. Her hair was a long and flowing brown then, and she always wore bell bottoms and long, paisley skirts. Dad told me she had tinted orange glasses that night. He’d been working behind the bar, serving a drink to his best friend Tommy, a regular.

One more shot of Wild Turkey, Bob. I’ll gobble it down and you keep ’em coming.

I’m telling you, man. One day you’ll get cirrhosis and they’ll blame you and me and four-hundred turkeys.

You’re the turkey. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to tell the client he’s going to kick it someday? Rude. Terribly rude.

Right, but you’re also my buddy, and I think you’ve had enough. I’m cutting you off.

Tommy scoffed and swallowed