The Demon of Dewey County

The full moon lit up the night sky and fields giving the landscape an eerie glow. The headlights of the car illuminated little of the road ahead. Margaret shifted uncomfortably in the passenger’s seat as she looked out the window. Although she wasn’t cold, she hugged herself to keep out the chill she felt.

She and her husband Tim made this trip to his grandmother’s secluded, uninhabited farmhouse only two or three times a year to make sure it did not fall into disrepair. Earlier trips took place during the daytime hours but Tim had to work late and with traffic leaving the city clogging the highways, their arrival at Grandma’s house got pushed back to well after ten o’ clock.

From the driver’s seat, Tim seemed to sense her uneasiness. “You okay?”

Margaret hesitated before answering. “Yes. I’m fine.” She didn’t sound convincing to herself. She knew Tim wasn’t buying it either.

“What’s wrong?”

She heard the concern in his voice. “I guess I’m spooked about staying in your grandmother’s house tonight. It’s creepy enough during the daytime.”

Tim slowed to turn off the road into a driveway that consisted of well-worn tire tracks amongst the encroaching weeds and tall grasses.

Margaret’s ill-ease increased as the headlights shone forward into nothing. The moon hung in the sky directly in front of them, illuminating the drive in defiance of the ineffective headlamps from the car. She gasped as something scampered along a tree branch stretched overhead, across the driveway.

A cat? she thought.

Tim maneuvered a slight curve in the path and the two-story farmhouse loomed in front of them, lit dimly from the headlights. It sat dark with no signs of habitation. Nearly all of Grandma’s belongings were removed when she went into the nursing home in Oklahoma City several years ago. These visits were to ensure the roof hadn’t started leaking, pipes hadn’t burst or vandals hadn’t destroyed any of the property.

The stranger-than-fiction truth was that nobody wanted to near the place, and no one lived around for a great distance. Dewey County sat in a rural area of Oklahoma. The nearest town to the place was Taloga, nearly twenty miles away. People didn’t come around here.

Tim killed the engine and they climbed out of car. With the moonlight, they could see their way to the porch without the flashlight Tim carried. Margaret slid next to him in step as if his closeness would put her mind at ease.

“That’s odd,” Tim muttered.

The uneasiness that rose in Margaret now rang in her ears. “What?”

“The front door’s open.” Tim sounded more confused than worried.

“Don’t go in!” Margaret hissed. “Let’s call the police!”

“No, that’ll take too long.” He clicked on the flashlight and trained the beam on the door jamb. The wood around the lock splintered where it had been forced. Tim pushed the door open wider, slowly, keeping the flashlight directed in front of him.

A putrid, rotting stench assaulted their nostrils and Margaret put a hand over her face to fight down the urge to vomit.

Tim staggered back, holding his nose. “What the hell?” Keeping a hand over his nose and mouth he pushed the door open completely. He let out a yelp of surprise, jumping back. Holding her breath, she stepped behind Tim, peering over his shoulder.

On the floor at the bottom of a staircase, a body lay rotting and covered in maggots, a mass of putrid flesh. It had decomposed to the point it was unrecognizable. Margaret’s mind raced with thoughts trying to comprehend the horrible scene in front of her. Her hands dropped and she fainted.

**

Four weeks later, Tim and Margaret sat with his grandmother Eileen in her room at the nursing home. When told of the break-in, Eileen reacted with horror even before she learned of the condition of the intruder and retreated inside of her mind. She appeared to have finally dealt with the shock and came back to lucidity. But the fear remained.

“From what the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation determined from the level of decomposition, the guy must’ve busted in about two or three weeks prior. He fell down the stairs and broke his neck,” Tim recited.

Eileen nodded but didn’t respond. Tim glanced at Margaret, who shrugged. “I know this must be a shock to you, Grandma, but nothing was taking from the house. It appears he went up to the attic and was running back down the stairs when he slipped and…”

“No!” Eileen shouted with sudden terror in her features.

“Grandma?”

“NO!”

“Grandma!” Tim’s voice edged with annoyance and fear cut through his grandmother’s hysteria.

Eileen fixed her eyes on her grandson with a piercing stare. “You must seal up the attic again.” Her words trembled as she spoke, but Tim harbored no doubt that this was not the babblings of a delirious old woman. Eileen was terrified.

“Grandma, what’s up there?” Tim asked. “As long as I remember that door to the attic has been boarded shut. Mom even said she was never allowed in there growing up.”

“I can’t tell you, dear, but you must go back there and close it back up at once!” She grabbed his hands in hers, which felt like ice to Tim.

“Why? It’s empty, the police said. They think something must’ve scared the intruder because there are footprints in the dust on each step going up there and in the attic. Coming back down he was taking them two or three at a time, when he slipped and fell breaking his neck.”

Tears formed in Eileen’s eyes. She turned to Margaret and asked her for a stack of newspapers on a small table near the bed.

As Margaret collected them, she noticed that they were recent issues of the Taloga newspaper, the main source of information in Dewey County. She stretched her arm out to hand them to Eileen when a headline jumped out at her. She froze, the color draining from her face.

Tim stood up and walked over to her, looking over her shoulder. Together, they read stories of cattle mutilations that got closer and closer to the town. Then farmers and their families were slaughtered in their homes, their bodies ripped to shreds as if by a wild animal. The inhabitants of Taloga lived in fear of an unknown being bent on killing, which happened every night for over a month.

“The killings started about the time the OSBI think the intruder broke into your house, grandma.” Seeing that his grandmother was on the verge of breaking down, Tim knelt beside her chair and hugged her. When she seemed to pull herself together, he released her and sat back on his heels.

“What’s in the attic, grandma?”

**

For the second time that month, Margaret found herself on the way back to Eileen’s house after dark. She and Tim hadn’t said a word since leaving the nursing home. Neither had anything to say after the horrible revelation from the old lady. Tim drove recklessly. In his fear, he seemed to have forgotten about anything other than returning to the farmhouse.

The full moon sat just above the horizon when they turned into the dirt driveway as it had just four weeks ago. They had a terrible and dangerous task ahead of them: Reseal the attic and trap the demon that had resided there for decades.

Tim left the headlights on high beams as they pulled up to the house and jumped out of the car.

“Do you think we’re in time?” Margaret asked in a low whisper.

“The newspaper reports said the killings took place after midnight, and it’s only ten-thirty, so we should be okay. Let’s hope it’s still asleep.” He grabbed some small boards, a bag of nails and a hammer from the trunk. The door of the house stood open. Gathering up his bravery, Tim mounted the porch and flipped on the light switch inside the doorway. He breathed a sigh of relief as the overhead light came on, bathing the room in a welcoming glow.

Neither of them felt any warmth. They ignored the stain from the body on the floorboards that the bio-cleanup crew couldn’t remove. Margaret ran through the house turning on all the lights while Tim disappeared into the cellar. When he emerged, they ran up the stairs to the second floor. Looking down the corridor, they saw the door to the attic stood wide open, revealing only blackness beyond.

Margaret felt an icy chill that emanated from the opening, one that permeated her body as it had that night a month ago. She noticed a putrid stench, unlike the odor of the decaying corpse but still nauseating and overpowering.

The eagerness in their bolt up the stairs evaporated at the foreboding sight. They crept forward listening for any sound, any indication the demon was aware of their presence. The house sat deathly quiet. Margaret held her breath as they reached the opening. Tim grabbed the door knob.

The lights went out plunging them into pitch black darkness. Margaret gasped in shock. She felt Tim put his hand on her arm.

“Margaret!” he shouted in alarm.

A hissing noise snapped their attention to the top of the stairs in the attic. A hideous, skeletal figure with a skull displaying a protruding jaw and jagged teeth descended the wooden stairs with the appearance of floating instead of stepping down. An eerie dim glow shrouded the demon, bathing its emaciated body in an eerie light. Its skin stretched over the rib cage narrowing to an impossibly thin waist and then clung to a deformed pelvis. From there, the light faded where the legs would have been.

The creature, with red eyes shining evilly from the dark, reached out with bony claws for Margaret’s neck.

Tim grabbed the door and slammed it against the demon’s arm, who howled in pain as its limb got pinched in the threshold. He seized Margaret’s arm, jolting her out of her frozen state and yanked her back down the hallway. He turned the flashlight on, its beam bobbing up and down in a frantic motion as they ran. The demon hissed furiously behind them in pursuit.

Tim and Margaret bolted down the stairs. The car headlights shone through the open front door, illuminating their path out of the house.

Tim pulled the door shut behind them and held it closed, dropping the wood and flashlight on the porch. The demon shrieked behind it, tugging on the doorknob.

“Margaret! Nail it shut! Hurry!” he shouted.

She scooped up the boards and secured one across the door as fast as she could. With one in place, Tim let go and helped her with the rest. Soon the door was sealed shut and the demon howled in rage behind it.

“Is that it? We just leave it in there?” Margaret’s voice shook with fear.

Tim nodded. “Grandma said it can’t pass a physical barrier,” he said in a tone as shaky as hers. “That’s how they kept it trapped in the attic all these years.”

“What now?”

“Get in the car!” Tim ordered and Margaret obeyed without hesitation. She gasped as the demon glared out of a window at them, its red eyes glowing with hatred. Its claws scratched at the glass. Margaret feared the window would break releasing it once more.

“While I was in the cellar…”

The house erupted in a huge orange fireball. Margaret screamed at the explosion. Even in the car, she felt the heat of the blast. Splinters and debris pounded the windows and roof of the vehicle. It rocked violently from the shock from the detonation.

The fireball faded, leaving a raging inferno in its place. As smoke rose from the ruined building, they heard a faint shriek rising with the ashes and it faded to silence in the night.


WC: 1987