Short Story - Andyland (Patreon)

As promised, here is one of my short stories. This is one I wrote for my creative writing class, so it actually got edited and workshopped. It's still not perfect, but it's still pretty good, in my opinion. Chapter 43 comes tomorrow. I got about halfway through, but I have a morning class tomorrow, so I need to sleep. 

Andyland

The pool of blood beneath me grows ever larger as I lay dying under the discount rack, and I can’t help but to recall my uncle Andy. He had always been my favorite uncle, even if the rest of the family thought he was crazy. I wish he had been crazy. Then my memories of him might be only fond.

His appearance was terrifying. Though he was my father’s brother, they looked almost nothing alike. My father was the very picture of a typical 9-5 office worker, while Andy wouldn’t have looked out of place on a pirate ship. He was a head taller than his younger brother, and after spending most of his early years working on a farm, he was muscled like a professional strongman. His head was bald, but he had a pitch black beard streaked with white that grew down to his chest. He only had one eye, with the other covered by an eyepatch surrounded by a mess of scar tissue.

I saw him for the first time  at Thanksgiving when I was 2. When I did, I cried. It was my mother’s favorite picture in the family photo album. It showed a terrified little me wailing and clinging to my annoyed-looking father while my uncle stood nearby. To a stranger, he might have seemed indifferent, but as I got to know him and know his mannerism and what few expressions he had, I was able to tell that he was actually amused.

The next year, I was a bit braver. I didn’t cry like I had the previous year, but I still couldn’t work up the courage to talk to him. It was the same the next year, but when I was 5, I finally went up to him to say hi. Every year after that, he was always the first person I greeted. His stories were enthralling, and his warnings and advice were so unusual that they stuck in my mind. The fact that my parents didn’t want me spending too much time with him only fueled my interest.

Every year on Thanksgiving, I would ask him for more stories, and he was more than happy to comply. My parents thought his stories were not altogether appropriate for someone my age, but he felt otherwise. He would tell them to anyone who would listen. My parents scolded us both, trying to stop him from telling his tales, and stop me from listening to them, but we were both too stubborn. They eventually gave up, and when they did, more of my family members began listening in on our conversations. ‘Storytime with Uncle Andy’ became a Thanksgiving tradition that we all looked forward to every year. At least until he disappeared.

Once I warmed up to him, one of the first things I asked him was how he got his scars. My father had told me that Andy was mauled by a pack of wild dogs, which is how his face got scarred and his brain got scrambled. Andy had a different story. When I asked him about them he said, “Which ones?” At the time, I didn’t realize that he was joking, and just pointed to his face, not sure what else to say. That was the first time I heard him laugh. It wasn’t a long laugh– just a short bark– but it was then my fear of him fully melted.

“I lost my eye to a hellhound,” he said in his deep rumble. “It was my first time in the Land’a the Dead, and I didn’t know how to defend myself against ‘em. Bastard snuck up on me while I was trying to figure out why the power wasn’t working. Took my eye, and nearly lost my arm.” He rolled up his sleeve to show what was unmistakably a bite scar.

“Nasty things, those hellhounds. Modern media likes to show ‘em as angry-lookin’ dogs with fire comin’ outta their mouths, but they’re not like that at all. They’re more like- like peeled wolves. They have no fur, and their skin is so thin, and stretched so tight that ya can see their muscles and bones underneath. They don’t have lips either, so the remnants'a whatever they eat just dangles from their teeth and rots and stinks like- well, like a rotting corpse. Ya can sometimes smell ‘em before ya can see ‘em.

“And there’s no fire. Nothin’ there has fire. They hate fire. The only reason I survived the attack is ‘cause I happened to have a lighter in my pocket. It was tearin’ at my good arm and I dropped my wrench, so I pulled it out as a last resort, and as soon as I flipped it open, the mutt let go and backed off. I was able to spook it for long enough to limp back to the Land'a the Living. If yer ever trapped in the Land'a the Dead, make sure ya have a way to make fire. As long as ya have that, you’ll eventually be able to find yer way out.”

I spent the rest of that night until I had to go to bed listening to more stories about hellhounds. He told me about their strengths, which were many, and their weaknesses, which were few. I learned about their habits, habitats, diets, hunting patterns, and anything else I could possibly need to know about how to kill them. Of course, being 5 at the time, I understood very little of what he said, but I was fascinated all the same.

The next year, I learned about ghouls. The year after that, it was zombies. Then ghosts and wraiths, and the differences between them the next year. The year after that, was the first time one of my cousins joined us. I suppose their parents, not being Andy’s siblings, were more wary of him, and didn’t let them get too close to him before then. And every year after that, another one would come over, and sit down on the floor in front of Andy as he told us his stories. Whenever a new one joined us, he would always give the same introduction.

“Have ya ever found yerself somewhere that just felt… off?” he would say. “Like there’s somethin’ kinda dangerous nearby, but ya don’t know what it is or where it might be, or whether it even exists in the first place? Maybe it was an abandoned parking lot, or an empty movie theater, or yer school after everyone else went home, or even yer own kitchen when ya go out for a late-night glass'a water. Sure, those places are a bit different than you’d normally see them, but there’s nothin’ inherently dangerous about ‘em.

“Or at least, that’s what yer brain tells ya. Yer gut disagrees. It wants ya to get outta there, and to do it right now. Ya try to rationalize, sayin’ that ya can’t see anythin’ dangerous, so there’s nothin’ to be afraid of. Since y’all are still here, that means that at the very least ya listened to yer gut a little and got outta there quick. That’s good. We have instincts for a reason. They exist to help us survive, and if you’ve ever been in a place like that, they might be the only reason yer alive right now.

“What ya felt was the Land'a the Dead. Sometimes, when yer in a place that’s usually fulla life and people, but isn’t anymore for whatever reason, the border between the Land'a the Living and the Land'a the Dead gets weak, and people can accidentally wander in. Most’a the time, they don’t stay long enough to die, but not all the time. Sometimes they get unlucky, and there’s a ghoul or a pack'a hellhounds waitin’ on the other side, and they don’t even have time to feel uneasy before they die.

“Murder and kidnappin’ ain’t actually as common as you’d think, based on the missing persons numbers. Most missing people are actually the ones that don’t make it back from the Land'a the Dead. Fortunately, it’s real easy to get out. Just go right back through the door ya came in, and don’t go back in for at least an hour, so that the border’s had time to seal back up. As long as ya get out quickly, you’ll be fine.”

Hearing that same exact speech over and over again, every time someone new joined our little group annoyed me, and in annoying me, made me dismiss it. When I got a little older, I began to think that he only said that for dramatic effect. He just wanted to get people intrigued, and get them to stay. And maybe that was part'a it, but the main reason he would tell that to everyone was that it was the most important thing he could say.

When I was younger, before I stopped believing in his stories, I always wondered why I didn’t get to see him more often. He was my father’s brother, and he was so fun to be around,  and he was always there at Thanksgiving, so surely it wasn’t impossible to see him. It wasn’t until I was older that I understood that my father was embarrassed of Andy. He fully believed that his brother was crazy, and did his best to keep his relationship with Andy hidden from his peers.

Aside from Thanksgiving, the only time I ever had any kind of contact with him was when he would send me birthday and Christmas presents. His gifts were always odd, and rarely appropriate for my age. Only a few of them actually reached me, as my father threw them out before anyone else knew they existed, and the ones that I did get were the ones that my mother fished out of the trash, and checked herself. When I turned 10, he had sent me a gun. Or so my parents said. I never saw it. But I did hear my father ranting about it to my mother after he thought I had gone to bed.

After the gun incident, Andy realized that his more ‘practical’ gifts would never make it past the firewall that was my parents, so he started saving those items and sending more innocuous things like books. Usually the books were instructional non-fiction books about survival, but a few times, he also sent works of fiction that he claimed were not actually fiction, but were instead true stories about the Land of the Dead.

On Thanksgivings though, when I finally got to see him in person again was when he would try to give me the other presents. The only one of those I managed to keep was a modified zippo lighter that he snuck into my pocket when he hugged me one year. While I was trapped within his massive arms, he leaned in close, tickling my ear with his beard and whispered.

“Don’t let yer dad see that. I modified it a bit, so it burns brighter than a normal one. It doesn’t last as long, though. If ya ever get stuck in the Land’a the Dead, that’ll give ya 10 minutes’a safety.”

I never got the chance to go to his house until he disappeared. When I was 15, he didn’t show up to Thanksgiving that year. We rarely contacted him outside of Thanksgiving, and he rarely contacted us, but the fact that he missed Thanksgiving was strange, since he always said he looked forward to seeing us. We waited a month, but when his Christmas gifts were similarly absent, we decided to go visit him to figure out what happened.

He lived in a cabin deep in the woods. He said that places full of people were more prone to spontaneously generating portals to the Land of the Dead, and that living out there away from people was safer. He always tried to convince my family to join him, or at least get their own cabin in the woods. Of course, we didn’t listen. My parents thought he was crazy, and by the time he disappeared, I thought he was crazy too.

Aside from the thick layer of dust and cobwebs covering everything, his cabin was almost exactly as I imagined it. It was small, and a bit misshapen. I’m fairly certain he built it himself. It only had 4 rooms: a kitchen, a dining room, a bedroom, and a weapon room. The weapon room had all sorts of weapons, many of them that I recognized from his stories. There were a few flamethrowers, blades of various lengths, explosives, and a lot of guns racked on the wall. Some of the racks were empty.

The cabin clearly hadn’t been used in months, which meant that Uncle Andy had been missing for a while even before Thanksgiving. We reported him missing, but the police couldn’t do anything about it. With no close friends and minimal contact with family, and such a long time since his disappearance, they had no way to track him down. The case went cold in days.

My family always assumed that Andy had finally completely lost it, and gotten himself killed and eaten by some wild animal. I assumed the same, but sometimes, a thought in the back of my mind nagged at me. Something he had said a few times in between stories.

“If I ever go missing, don’t look for me. I’ll probably be somewhere in the Land of the Dead. Or in a few different somewheres in the bellies of whatever eats me. It’s not worth goin’ to look for my body. It’s way too dangerous. I don’t want y'all anywhere near that place.”

The first time he said this, I said, “If it’s so dangerous, why do you keep going back then?”

“Sometimes, I don’t even know, myself,” he said. “I know it’ll be the death'a me, but I can’t just stop. I suppose it’s ‘cause I’m tryin’ to save people. If I go in and kill a pack'a hellhounds, that’s one less pack that can eat the next guy to wander in.”

When I was younger, that answer had awed me. It was as if my uncle was a real life superhero, fighting off monsters to keep the common folk safe. When I was older, and no longer believed him, that answer still brought me comfort. Even if he was delusional, and spent his days off in ‘Andyland’ as my father liked to call it, he still was trying his best to help people, in his own strange way.

We actually did find his journal when we checked in on his house. Well, ‘find’ probably isn’t the right word. The leatherbound book was sitting on a table right in front of the door, and ‘READ ME’ was written on the cover in large, black letters. It started out with the typical “If you’re reading this, that means I am already dead” stuff, and then the rest of the pages were filled with his stories. Every story he ever told me was there, as well as a few he hadn’t. On the back it said “If you find this, publish it.”

My father wanted to get rid of it. I barely managed to convince him to let me keep it, after promising that I would never publish it.

“The world doesn’t need to know about Andyland,” he said.

I seriously considered disobeying my father and publishing it anyway. I wish I had. But even if I didn’t plan on publishing his stories, I was still glad to have them around. Andy may have been completely mad, but he could tell a damn good story.

I must have read through the whole thing a dozen times in the two or three years after he vanished, hearing his voice telling me the stories as I flipped through the pages. Once I moved out of my parent’s house though, it found its way into the bottom of a moving box, and it never left. I slowly began to forget the details of the stories as I made my way through life and until now, I hardly ever thought of them at all.

Funny, what dying does to the mind. Or maybe it’s the alcohol. I swear I had forgotten most of this stuff, but here I am, remembering every detail. If only I had remembered all this a few hours ago. I wouldn’t have led my buddies on a drunken midnight adventure to the run-down outlet mall. I wouldn’t have gone into the clothing store that the employee had forgotten to lock up. I wouldn’t have let them pressure me into staying, even after sensing the danger. I would have stopped them from going to investigate the rotting smell. I wouldn’t have forgotten about the lighter in my pocket until it was too late. I wouldn’t be bleeding out in a place where my body will never be found.

No, that still wouldn’t have changed anything. Even if I remembered it all, I wouldn’t have believed it. Even back when I was a teenager when he was still around, I didn’t take him seriously. The only reason I even carried the modified lighter around was as an act of rebellion against my dad, who so desperately wanted to rid himself of anything related to his brother.

I wish that Andy had been as crazy as everyone thought he was. I wish that Andyland really was just a place he had dreamt up. When I am eventually declared dead, and my family goes through my possessions, there’s no doubt that my father will toss out Andy’s diary as soon as he finds it. Dammit, I wish I had published that thing. Now, the secrets of the Land of the Dead will die with me.

.

.

.

The flame is smaller than it was before and the horrors around me are getting closer. It looks like I won’t get to enjoy a relatively painless death by blood loss. Or maybe I will. Everything’s getting blurry and distorted. The monsters around me are swaying like sailors in a storm, and their faces keep going in and out of focus.

Hey, that one looks kind of  like Uncle Andy.