October Tales: Seven Creepy Stories (Stories to SERIOUSLY Creep You Out Book 1) by Vernon Steve

Author:Vernon, Steve [Vernon, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Stark Raven Press
Published: 2014-10-11T04:00:00+00:00

FIDDLELEGS

Daddy lit the tithe-fires, smoky blue and gray. The house stank like burning pork chops. The foundations creaked and groaned like fat Mr. Plackard at last summer’s blueberry pie-eating contest, his suspenders stretched and creaking like they were getting ready to snap.

Davey knelt in the living room, playing with his cars and trucks and his Sword in the Stone jigsaw puzzle, listening to a lonely cricket squeaking out a song. The cricket spoke from somewhere unseen, somewhere underneath in the darkness, between the cracks of the floorboards and the hidden rib beam rafters.

There was always something moving down under the floorboards of the house, especially when Daddy lit the tithe-fires. It was like the house was hungry for the heat. Sometimes Davey heard the house shudder, like there was something inside that scared it; something that crawled in the dark below the basement, creeping in the cracks of the stone foundation.

Davey looked at his puzzle. He knew there was a piece missing. There always was. Granddaddy had been up to his old tricks, pocketing the missing piece, so that just as Davey was about to complete the puzzle, Granddaddy could roll into the living room with the very last piece.

Davey heard the cricket, dragging its legs together. Daddy called it fiddling. The cricket is fiddling, he’d say. It means there’d be gold coming into the house. Davey didn’t mind the fiddling. It kept him company.

Of course, Granddaddy would have clacked his teeth and said the cricket was fiddling because it wanted some women flesh to fiddle with. Then he’d snigger that low wet Granddaddy laugh of his that always made Davey a little scared to be around his Granddaddy for long.

It was mostly Granddaddy’s wheels that frightened Davey. The wheels on his big, high-backed wicker chair that he squeaked around the house in; the wheels that left tracks on the wooden floorboards. They looked like large snail trails, all dark and smelly. No matter how much Davey coated that big fat axle with lard and beeswax, Granddaddy’s old wheelchair still squeaked and creaked like it was rolling over a road paved with baby mice and dead frogs.

The cricket kept making its noise. It didn’t sound like fiddling to Davey. There was something too meaty and greedy in the sound. It sounded like Granddaddy used to sound when he would clack his false teeth together and gum his lips, while Daddy carved up the Thanksgiving turkey.

“Bones and meat,” Granddaddy would always say. “Good gods, let’s eat.”

Granddaddy always wanted the drumsticks. He swore that if he ate enough of them, he’d grow back his legs.

“Like needs like,” he would always say. “Sacrifices must be made.”

Davey sat there and listened to the cricket sing. The aluminum blinds painted prison bars across the wooden slats of the living room floor. It looked like a giant crossword puzzle, with the floorboards running one way and the blind shadow-stripes running the other. Davey ran his trucks and toys along the floorboards and the shadow-stripes, following the

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