Categories > Original > Horror
Barney
There's been a series of disappearances from around a Chippewa settlement. One night Eddie, a patrolman, goes out to visit Carl, a local crazy, but harmless, hermit. During his stay Carl's pet, Bar...
?Blocked
After last night's full moon the silver disc in the midnight sky above the Chippewa settlement was on the wane. It was only late fall but there was already a faint frosting of snow on the ground and the air smelled sharply of winter.
The rolling Wisconsin fields stretched away in the moonlight. The Indian trailer park was the only blot of straight-edged shadow and honey-colored light for miles around.
In a rusting and yellowed mobile home, the lights went out in two windows, leaving only the nervous glow of a TV in one of the rooms. Three days had passed since the light in the third room had been turned on or off. Three days since the teenage girl who lived there with her baby, her two younger siblings and her grandmother had left the trailer park with some friends in a beat-up Toyota truck. People said they'd been in town, getting drunk and making noise, before heading back at some unearthly hour in the morning. The disinterested policeman, Deputy Eddie, who'd come out after two days look into it found that the truck tracks stopped at the edge of the forest, and that people had gotten out there. Upon questioning the other teenagers that had been with the girl that night, they said the females in the group had demanded a relief stop; so they'd halted at the woods. The one girl didn't return after five minutes, so they looked for her, threatened to leave her behind if she didn't give up on this practical joke, and, hearing nothing, finally did.
When asked why they hadn't reported her disappearance to the police, they said they'd forgotten, or hadn't realized she hadn't returned on her own.
From the trailer park to the edge of the woods it was a good 35 miles.
Eddie had driven out to Crazy Carl's shack in the woods, shaken the old man out of his drunken stupor, shared a cup of strong coffee with him, and found he knew less about a missing Chippewa girl than anybody else did. With that the case landed in a file with a hundred eighty-three other unresolved reports of missing persons from the past thirty years. Occasionally Eddie wished some nosy reporter would decide the disappearances were fascinating enough to research, and so take some work off the shoulders of the law. But then he figured the journalist would be just as happy to criticize the police for not doing more, and the cases served as reading material during the long winter days that Eddie spent at the station, waiting for a call to duty and hoping none would come.
As causes of death go, they varied. There was the prostitute that had been shot in the back, or the truck driver who'd fallen asleep and run off the road. There were a lot of Indian victims. Drunks who didn't come back; children – teenagers mostly – who went off in twos or threes and disappeared. Or that baby that was stolen out of a trailer through an open window.
What did link all the cases, and the reason they were all kept together in a file, was the fact that none of persons were ever found, dead or alive. Witnesses were there for the crashes, or found bodies, reported them at the next phone and returned to find the carcass gone. Or that case from last summer where a drunk driver had careened off the road and killed himself. Another motorist stopped and called 911, but when the police got there all they found was one wrecked car, one parked car and six spent .454 Casull casings. The next day the gun itself was found with considerable damage on the rubber grip and barrel.
Some people said the damage was bite marks, big bite marks, and the communities in the area started talking about Sasquatch, aliens, mutated bears or the windigo. One theory was as good as the next to Eddie. Despite being three-quarters Chippewa himself, he had to go look up what a windigo was, the first time he heard the name, and found that nobody else really knew either – just a name handed down through Indian legends. It was a cannibalistic creature that could be nothing but red eyes, a perfectly normal human, smokeless fire or some Hollywood creation with lipless fangs and rotten flesh.
More interesting that aliens, to be sure.
Still, if he thought about it logically, having a windigo on the loose around here was unlikely. One of the first victims it would have found would have been Crazy Carl, wiling away his days in the aluminum-sided shack in the middle of the forest, glass bottles and beer cans scattered around for hundreds of feet, a surefire approach warning system. Crazy Carl kept himself alive on what he shot with his Marlin .22 and kept himself drunk on the social security check and didn't bother anybody. He'd been in that shack for decades now, thirty or forty years, maybe. He was at least eighty. He'd come there with wild stories and a small fortune, which he'd gambled away at the Indian resorts. He lived off the charity of the Indian women, until he pushed his luck too far and a bar room brawl cost him an eye, most of his seeing power, three fingers and half his teeth. His brain might have taken a knocking too, because since then he hadn't bothered anybody. He cashed his monthly check, bought his beer, and disappeared into his shack again.
Eddie had never seen him sober, but Crazy Carl was friendly enough when he was sufficiently capable of pouring a coffee. Sometimes Eddie would stop by the shack during his rounds in the morning and check on Carl, just to make sure he was still alive.
Carl, when he could speak coherently, only ever had one subject on his mind: Barney.
"Windigo Barney," Eddie chuckled, cruising the road that ran along the Indian trailer park.
They were similar, those two names. If Carl knew what Barney was, he did a good job of concealing the fact. Carl usually said Barney was a dog, but when asked what kind of dog, or how big, he never understood the question. Plus, he couldn't make up his mind whether Barney was a dog in the present or past tense. Really, it didn't matter anyway. It kept the old man occupied, and Eddie figured that if Barney still existed, it was good for the old guy to have some sort friend.
The deputy realized that he was driving toward the woods, his patrol car ambling down the potholed dirt road. He didn't usually visit Carl in the evenings. Carl could talk for hours, or be adamant about keeping company around long after they wanted to go, and long after the subject of Barney was exhausted. But Eddie was on the road now, and it kept going until it hit the woods. He felt too lazy to turn around.
About fifteen minutes later, the patrol car pulled up next to Carl's shack. There was a light on inside; Carl had his electric lantern on. Eddie knocked on the door.
"Hey, Carl? Carl, it's Eddie, the deputy. You sober?"
No answer.
"Carl!"
Still no answer, which wasn't unusual, so Eddie pushed open the door and went in. The old man was sitting at his table, matted hair hanging down over his face, shoulders hunched.
"Hey, Carl." Eddie nudged his shoulder.
Carl slowly raised his head, showing bloodshot eyes and dirty wrinkles. "Depooty! Still doin' yer rounds? Coffee?"
"Sure. I'll get it."
"Y'ain't seen Barney, have ya?"
"I dunno, Carl. How does he look?"
But Carl had already slumped over his empty can of beer again.
Eddie left the door open while he made them both coffee with hot water that Carl had boiling on a wood stove. Carl tried to keep water ready all the time, just in case Eddie stopped by. Eddie was the only person who ever visited him.
The alcoholic fumes began to dissipate as the deputy set down the mugs of black coffee. "Here you go, Carl."
"Close a door."
"Scuse me?"
"Door," Carl mumbled. "Close a door. 'S cold."
It was cold. Eddie leaned over and pushed the door shut. "There you go." He waited for Carl to mention Barney.
Minutes passed as Eddie drank his coffee. He wondered how a seventy or eighty-year old man could survive on nothing but squirrel and alcohol for so long. Carl didn't look healthy, but he never looked ill or waning, either. And Eddie had been visiting him for a good five years now.
His musings were interrupted by the crunch of aluminum. "Somebody's outside, Carl."
The old man started up briefly. He'd been nodding over his cup of coffee.
"Ah yeah. 'S jes Baaaarney. 'S he buggin' yeh? Ah'll tell 'im te shet up."
Before Eddie could tell him not to bother, Carl had shoved himself to his feet, flailing his arms to keep from falling over backwards. He took a big step that brought him to the door. Falling on the handle, he swung out into the night. "Barney! Dang nammit! Shet up!"
There was an annoyed grunt from outside. Eddie couldn't decide whether it sounded canine. It was followed by some rustling, and then Carl blundered back into the shack, misjudged the distance to the table and fell on the floor.
Eddie helped him to his feet ad put the old man's coffee cup in his hands.
"Brought me a present agin," Carl slurred, slapping a fresh hunk of meat down on the dirty table.
Eddie looked at the meat. He couldn't place it on first glance, but he didn't care. He wasn't going to look into the legalities of it – after all, it was hunting season.
The silence didn't last long. Eddie disliked it; it made him nervous. "So who's Barney?" He'd heard about him often enough; still, maybe Carl would let a hint drop that he hadn't mentioned before.
"Barney's ma dawg."
Eddie waited. He knew Carl could go on and on about Barney.
"Good dawg, 's Barney," the old man mumbled to himself. "Good dawg. Treed bears and skwerls and rabbits and deer… Good dawg."
And cuts up his own meat, thought Eddie. Sort of. The meat wasn't cut. It was torn, very animal-like.
"What kind of dog is Barney?"
"Eh?"
"What kind is Barney? Lab? Retriever? Shepherd? What's his color?"
Carl grinned, showing his rotten mouth. "Dunno. Can't see no more. Barney's big. Smells, too. Jes like me." He considered hard. "Nah. Worse'n me. Worse'n a barrel of dead rats."
Eddie smiled. "Is that why you don't let him in the…" He wondered what the best designation for this pile of scrap metal and tinder was. "…house?"
Carl laughed, one finger pressed against his nose. "House? Inna house? Barney tried comin' in once and took off the roof. Too big, is Barney."
Eddie looked at him in mild alarm. Another one of Carl's alcohol-induced hallucinations. "Big dog," he commented.
Carl started. "Where? Where's a dawg?"
Eddie shook his head. "Never mind, old man. No dog."
Carl slumped over the table again. "Hand me a can, won'tcha, depooty?"
Eddie figured this was a good time to head off home. He handed the old drunk a beer and stood up. "I'll be getting on, Carl."
Carl looked up at him. "Barney ain't gone yet. Ya better stay here."
Eddie frowned. "What, will he eat me?"
"Yup. Set down and chat. Barney won't be long."
"With what?"
"Chow. He likes beer with his meat, just like ah do." Carl cackled and upended his can. "Barney comes and shares meat with me, and ah share beer with Barney."
Eddie waited, listening to the quiet rustling and crunching outside. Crazy Carl was dozing off again. The deputy reached over and patted him on the shoulder. "See ya, Carl. G'night."
Carl nodded, his eyes still closed, and waved a weary hand.
Eddie went to the door and opened it.
The scent that lingered outside really was as putrid as a barrel of dead rats. The deputy caught a flash of red, but realized that the moonlight was shining on the rear reflectors of his patrol car. He was getting tired; he saw the red double and it was fuzzy and seemed to moving. He blinked a few times to clear his sight.
"Hey! Barney! Git away, ya ol' glutton! Git!"
There was a snort and receding rustling. The stench lingered.
Carl was leaning against the doorway. "One Barney's as bad as t'other," he mumbled. "G'night, depooty."
"G'night, Carl."
Eddie drove home, wondering if that lonely, drunken, crazy old man knew where his meat had been coming from all these years.
The rolling Wisconsin fields stretched away in the moonlight. The Indian trailer park was the only blot of straight-edged shadow and honey-colored light for miles around.
In a rusting and yellowed mobile home, the lights went out in two windows, leaving only the nervous glow of a TV in one of the rooms. Three days had passed since the light in the third room had been turned on or off. Three days since the teenage girl who lived there with her baby, her two younger siblings and her grandmother had left the trailer park with some friends in a beat-up Toyota truck. People said they'd been in town, getting drunk and making noise, before heading back at some unearthly hour in the morning. The disinterested policeman, Deputy Eddie, who'd come out after two days look into it found that the truck tracks stopped at the edge of the forest, and that people had gotten out there. Upon questioning the other teenagers that had been with the girl that night, they said the females in the group had demanded a relief stop; so they'd halted at the woods. The one girl didn't return after five minutes, so they looked for her, threatened to leave her behind if she didn't give up on this practical joke, and, hearing nothing, finally did.
When asked why they hadn't reported her disappearance to the police, they said they'd forgotten, or hadn't realized she hadn't returned on her own.
From the trailer park to the edge of the woods it was a good 35 miles.
Eddie had driven out to Crazy Carl's shack in the woods, shaken the old man out of his drunken stupor, shared a cup of strong coffee with him, and found he knew less about a missing Chippewa girl than anybody else did. With that the case landed in a file with a hundred eighty-three other unresolved reports of missing persons from the past thirty years. Occasionally Eddie wished some nosy reporter would decide the disappearances were fascinating enough to research, and so take some work off the shoulders of the law. But then he figured the journalist would be just as happy to criticize the police for not doing more, and the cases served as reading material during the long winter days that Eddie spent at the station, waiting for a call to duty and hoping none would come.
As causes of death go, they varied. There was the prostitute that had been shot in the back, or the truck driver who'd fallen asleep and run off the road. There were a lot of Indian victims. Drunks who didn't come back; children – teenagers mostly – who went off in twos or threes and disappeared. Or that baby that was stolen out of a trailer through an open window.
What did link all the cases, and the reason they were all kept together in a file, was the fact that none of persons were ever found, dead or alive. Witnesses were there for the crashes, or found bodies, reported them at the next phone and returned to find the carcass gone. Or that case from last summer where a drunk driver had careened off the road and killed himself. Another motorist stopped and called 911, but when the police got there all they found was one wrecked car, one parked car and six spent .454 Casull casings. The next day the gun itself was found with considerable damage on the rubber grip and barrel.
Some people said the damage was bite marks, big bite marks, and the communities in the area started talking about Sasquatch, aliens, mutated bears or the windigo. One theory was as good as the next to Eddie. Despite being three-quarters Chippewa himself, he had to go look up what a windigo was, the first time he heard the name, and found that nobody else really knew either – just a name handed down through Indian legends. It was a cannibalistic creature that could be nothing but red eyes, a perfectly normal human, smokeless fire or some Hollywood creation with lipless fangs and rotten flesh.
More interesting that aliens, to be sure.
Still, if he thought about it logically, having a windigo on the loose around here was unlikely. One of the first victims it would have found would have been Crazy Carl, wiling away his days in the aluminum-sided shack in the middle of the forest, glass bottles and beer cans scattered around for hundreds of feet, a surefire approach warning system. Crazy Carl kept himself alive on what he shot with his Marlin .22 and kept himself drunk on the social security check and didn't bother anybody. He'd been in that shack for decades now, thirty or forty years, maybe. He was at least eighty. He'd come there with wild stories and a small fortune, which he'd gambled away at the Indian resorts. He lived off the charity of the Indian women, until he pushed his luck too far and a bar room brawl cost him an eye, most of his seeing power, three fingers and half his teeth. His brain might have taken a knocking too, because since then he hadn't bothered anybody. He cashed his monthly check, bought his beer, and disappeared into his shack again.
Eddie had never seen him sober, but Crazy Carl was friendly enough when he was sufficiently capable of pouring a coffee. Sometimes Eddie would stop by the shack during his rounds in the morning and check on Carl, just to make sure he was still alive.
Carl, when he could speak coherently, only ever had one subject on his mind: Barney.
"Windigo Barney," Eddie chuckled, cruising the road that ran along the Indian trailer park.
They were similar, those two names. If Carl knew what Barney was, he did a good job of concealing the fact. Carl usually said Barney was a dog, but when asked what kind of dog, or how big, he never understood the question. Plus, he couldn't make up his mind whether Barney was a dog in the present or past tense. Really, it didn't matter anyway. It kept the old man occupied, and Eddie figured that if Barney still existed, it was good for the old guy to have some sort friend.
The deputy realized that he was driving toward the woods, his patrol car ambling down the potholed dirt road. He didn't usually visit Carl in the evenings. Carl could talk for hours, or be adamant about keeping company around long after they wanted to go, and long after the subject of Barney was exhausted. But Eddie was on the road now, and it kept going until it hit the woods. He felt too lazy to turn around.
About fifteen minutes later, the patrol car pulled up next to Carl's shack. There was a light on inside; Carl had his electric lantern on. Eddie knocked on the door.
"Hey, Carl? Carl, it's Eddie, the deputy. You sober?"
No answer.
"Carl!"
Still no answer, which wasn't unusual, so Eddie pushed open the door and went in. The old man was sitting at his table, matted hair hanging down over his face, shoulders hunched.
"Hey, Carl." Eddie nudged his shoulder.
Carl slowly raised his head, showing bloodshot eyes and dirty wrinkles. "Depooty! Still doin' yer rounds? Coffee?"
"Sure. I'll get it."
"Y'ain't seen Barney, have ya?"
"I dunno, Carl. How does he look?"
But Carl had already slumped over his empty can of beer again.
Eddie left the door open while he made them both coffee with hot water that Carl had boiling on a wood stove. Carl tried to keep water ready all the time, just in case Eddie stopped by. Eddie was the only person who ever visited him.
The alcoholic fumes began to dissipate as the deputy set down the mugs of black coffee. "Here you go, Carl."
"Close a door."
"Scuse me?"
"Door," Carl mumbled. "Close a door. 'S cold."
It was cold. Eddie leaned over and pushed the door shut. "There you go." He waited for Carl to mention Barney.
Minutes passed as Eddie drank his coffee. He wondered how a seventy or eighty-year old man could survive on nothing but squirrel and alcohol for so long. Carl didn't look healthy, but he never looked ill or waning, either. And Eddie had been visiting him for a good five years now.
His musings were interrupted by the crunch of aluminum. "Somebody's outside, Carl."
The old man started up briefly. He'd been nodding over his cup of coffee.
"Ah yeah. 'S jes Baaaarney. 'S he buggin' yeh? Ah'll tell 'im te shet up."
Before Eddie could tell him not to bother, Carl had shoved himself to his feet, flailing his arms to keep from falling over backwards. He took a big step that brought him to the door. Falling on the handle, he swung out into the night. "Barney! Dang nammit! Shet up!"
There was an annoyed grunt from outside. Eddie couldn't decide whether it sounded canine. It was followed by some rustling, and then Carl blundered back into the shack, misjudged the distance to the table and fell on the floor.
Eddie helped him to his feet ad put the old man's coffee cup in his hands.
"Brought me a present agin," Carl slurred, slapping a fresh hunk of meat down on the dirty table.
Eddie looked at the meat. He couldn't place it on first glance, but he didn't care. He wasn't going to look into the legalities of it – after all, it was hunting season.
The silence didn't last long. Eddie disliked it; it made him nervous. "So who's Barney?" He'd heard about him often enough; still, maybe Carl would let a hint drop that he hadn't mentioned before.
"Barney's ma dawg."
Eddie waited. He knew Carl could go on and on about Barney.
"Good dawg, 's Barney," the old man mumbled to himself. "Good dawg. Treed bears and skwerls and rabbits and deer… Good dawg."
And cuts up his own meat, thought Eddie. Sort of. The meat wasn't cut. It was torn, very animal-like.
"What kind of dog is Barney?"
"Eh?"
"What kind is Barney? Lab? Retriever? Shepherd? What's his color?"
Carl grinned, showing his rotten mouth. "Dunno. Can't see no more. Barney's big. Smells, too. Jes like me." He considered hard. "Nah. Worse'n me. Worse'n a barrel of dead rats."
Eddie smiled. "Is that why you don't let him in the…" He wondered what the best designation for this pile of scrap metal and tinder was. "…house?"
Carl laughed, one finger pressed against his nose. "House? Inna house? Barney tried comin' in once and took off the roof. Too big, is Barney."
Eddie looked at him in mild alarm. Another one of Carl's alcohol-induced hallucinations. "Big dog," he commented.
Carl started. "Where? Where's a dawg?"
Eddie shook his head. "Never mind, old man. No dog."
Carl slumped over the table again. "Hand me a can, won'tcha, depooty?"
Eddie figured this was a good time to head off home. He handed the old drunk a beer and stood up. "I'll be getting on, Carl."
Carl looked up at him. "Barney ain't gone yet. Ya better stay here."
Eddie frowned. "What, will he eat me?"
"Yup. Set down and chat. Barney won't be long."
"With what?"
"Chow. He likes beer with his meat, just like ah do." Carl cackled and upended his can. "Barney comes and shares meat with me, and ah share beer with Barney."
Eddie waited, listening to the quiet rustling and crunching outside. Crazy Carl was dozing off again. The deputy reached over and patted him on the shoulder. "See ya, Carl. G'night."
Carl nodded, his eyes still closed, and waved a weary hand.
Eddie went to the door and opened it.
The scent that lingered outside really was as putrid as a barrel of dead rats. The deputy caught a flash of red, but realized that the moonlight was shining on the rear reflectors of his patrol car. He was getting tired; he saw the red double and it was fuzzy and seemed to moving. He blinked a few times to clear his sight.
"Hey! Barney! Git away, ya ol' glutton! Git!"
There was a snort and receding rustling. The stench lingered.
Carl was leaning against the doorway. "One Barney's as bad as t'other," he mumbled. "G'night, depooty."
"G'night, Carl."
Eddie drove home, wondering if that lonely, drunken, crazy old man knew where his meat had been coming from all these years.
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