Necro Files: Two Decades of Extreme Horror

Bait

Ray Garton

“Bait” was originally published in Cemetery Dance magazine Volume 5 Number 3/4, Fall 1993 and reprinted in his 2006 short story collection Pieces of Hate.

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Ray Garton is the author of more than 60 books, including the horror novels Scissors and Ravenous and the thrillers Sex and Violence in Hollywood and Meds. His short stories have appeared in magazines, anthologies and in eight collections. His 1987 vampire novel Live Girls was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and in 2006, he received the Grand Master of Horror Award. He lives in northern California with his wife Dawn and their seven cats, where he is currently at work on something or other.

“Go over to the dairy stuff and get a gallon of milk,” Mom told them as she stood in the produce section of the Seaside Supermarket, squeezing one avocado after another, looking for ripe ones. “Low-fat, remember.”

They knew, both of them: nine-year-old Cole and his seven-yearold sister, Janelle. Their mother always ate and drank low-fat or non-fat everything. And besides, they knew the brand of milk on sight. The two children headed down the aisle between two long produce display cases.

“And hurry up!” Mom called behind them. “I wanna get out of here so I can have a smoke. Meet me up in the front.”

“She’s always in a hurry,” Janelle said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah. Usually to have a smoke.” They found the dairy section and went to the refrigerated cases, scanning the shelves of milk cartons—different sizes, different brands. When he spotted the right one, Cole pulled the glass door open, stood on tip-toes, reached up and tilted the carton off the fourth shelf up, nearly dropping it. He let the door swing closed behind him as they started to head for the front of the store to find their mother. But Cole stopped.

“Here’s another one,” he said quietly.

Janelle turned back. “Another what?”

He turned the carton so she could see the splotchy black-and-white depiction of a little boy’s smiling face. It was such a bad picture—as if someone had run the boy’s face through a dysfunctioning copy ma-chine—that he looked more nightmarish than pitiful. But pity was exactly what the black writing on the carton seemed to be aiming for. Cole read it aloud to Janelle:

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY? 9-YEAR-OLD PETER MULRAKES LAST SEEN IN EUREKA, CA PARKING LOT OF SAFEWAY SUPERMARKET. MISSING—1 YEAR, 7 MONTHS.

There were a few more details that Cole skipped over, along with a phone number to call if anyone should see the boy or have information regarding his whereabouts. At the very bottom, he read silently to himself:

A NON-PROFIT COMMUNITY SERVICE OF VALENCIA DAIRIES, INC.

“Where’s Eureka?” Janelle asked.

“Couple hours down the coast from here, I think,” Cole replied, staring at the haunting face with its smeared features and splotchy eyes. “I wonder where they go,” he muttered to himself. “I wonder what happens to them when they disappear … who takes them … and why.”

He turned and went back to the dairy case, opened the door and began turning other milk cartons around.

“Mom said to hurry,” Janelle said. “She wants to smoke.”

“In a second.”

Each carton had a face on it, some different than others: little boys, little girls, some black, some white and some asian … but all with the same splotchy features and blurred lines that would make the children almost impossible to identify, even if they were standing right there in front of Cole.

“They have ’em on the grocery bags, too, y’know,” Janelle said in her usual casual, detached way.

“Yeah … I know.”

“What the hell are you two doing?”

Cole spun around, letting the door close again. Their mother stood with her cart, frowning at them.

“C’mon, now, I forgot the fish,” she said, waving at them. “Hurry up, I wanna get out of here.”

So you can have a smoke, Cole thought.

They went to the seafood counter where, beyond the glass of the display case, Cole and Janelle looked at all the shrimp and scallops, squid and octopus, fish, clams, oysters, crabs, lobster, eel …

Like a dead National Geographic special, Cole thought.

Some of the fish were still whole and their dead, staring eyes looked like glass.

“How did they kill ’em, Cole?” Janelle asked.

He blinked; at first, he thought she was still talking about the faces on the milk cartons because they were still on his mind. “The fish? Oh, they caught ’em on hooks.”

“How?”

“With bait.”

“What kinda bait?”

He hated it when she did this. “Sometimes other fish. Y’know, smaller fish. And sometimes other things … whatever the fish like to eat.”

The man behind the counter offered to help Mom, and she said, “I’d like a couple of swordfish steaks, please.”

“Sorry, but we’re all out. Till tomorrow.”

She sighed. “You mean, we live right here on the coast and you’re out of swordfish?”

“It happens.”

“Okay, then … how about shark?”

“Oh, yeah, got some fresh shark steaks here. How many?”

“Two. And, uh—” She looked down at Cole and Janelle. “What do you guys want for dinner?”

“Not fish,” Cole said. “I hate fish.”

Janelle added, “So does Daddy. He said so.”

“Well, that’s just too bad for him. He could stand to lose weight and red meat is really fattening. Besides, it causes cancer. Fish is good for you, so what kind do you want?”

When they wouldn’t respond, she ordered some whitefish.

Janelle leaned over and whispered to Cole, “Poor fish. I don’t wanna eat ’em if they’ve been tricked into bein’ killed.”

Cole looked over the top of the counter at the enormous swordfish on the wall behind it. It was shiny and regal, with its long, needle-like nose jutting into the air. And, of course, it was very dead.

Once they had the fish, they had to walk fast to keep up with Mom on her way to the register. They stood in line for a while, then when they got up to the counter, they started looking over the racks of candy bars and gum to their right, asking Mom if they could have some.

“No, absolutely not, you know what that stuff does to you?” she hissed, bending toward them. “Just go on outside and wait by the car. I’ll be right out.”

So, they did. But not before Cole noticed the brown paper bags that were being packed with groceries at each counter.

Smeared faces looked back at him from the sides of the bags as if they were watching him lead his sister out of the store. The faces were haunted … and haunting.

On the way to the car, they passed the newspaper vending boxes and Cole stopped when he saw a picture of a little baby on the front page of the local paper with the word MISSING! beneath it. The word made him stop. He read the headline, frowning:

2 MONTH OLD BABY STOLEN FROM CRIB IN MIDDLE OF NIGHT—POLICE HAVE NO SUSPECTS

Cole stared at the baby for a while, frowning, wondering what had happened to it. Who would want to take a little baby? Why?

With a slight burning in his gut, he turned and hurried after his little sister toward the car.

They stood by the car, kicking a smashed soda can back and forth between them over the dirty pavement. The nearby ocean gave the chilly, damp breeze a salty smell and seagulls circled overhead, calling out sharply.

The musical voice of a little girl called to them from a few yards away.

“Hey! Wanna see my puppies?”

She stood beside a gray van. The sliding door on the side was half open.

“What kind of puppies?” Cole asked as he and Janelle took a few steps toward her.

“Little bitty ones.” She held her palms a few inches apart to demonstrate.

“Let’s go see the puppies!” Janelle said, grinning.

“Okay. But keep an eye out for Mom.”

* * *

Mom pushed her cart of grocery bags through the automatic door and stopp ed just outsid e the store. The door closed behind her with a h um as she fished a Marlboro out of her purse and turned against the wind, l eaning her head forward to lig ht up.

It was while she was lighting her cigarette that the gray van drove by.

By the time she lifted her head, taking a deep drag on the cigarette, the van was already gone.

So were the children.

* * *

Cole awoke in complete, solid, almost tangible darkness.

His ears rang loudly and his head throbbed. The ringing eventually subsided—slowly, gradually—and was replaced by the cry of a baby.

No, no, the cry of two … no, three, maybe four … no, several babies.

Somewhere nearby, there were voices that barely rose above the crying of the babies.

But there was something else … something weird … something wrong …

The ground beneath him and the damp, cold darkness all around him was moving … tilting back and forth … this way, that way, back and forth.

He reached down to feel the surface beneath him, but suddenly realized that he could not move his arms. His wrists were tied together behind him and his ankles were tied together before him.

Then he noticed something else: A low rumble that made its way through the surface beneath him and up into his body, gathering in his chest like quivering indigestion. It sounded like an engine.

Are we on a bus, or something? he thought, then: We? We?

“Janelle?” he said, his voice hoarse and weak. “Janelle, you here? C’mon, Janelle, say something!”

“Who you talkin’ to?” another voice asked. It was the voice of a child, a boy, somewhere around Cole’s age.

“What? I’m … talking to my sister,” Cole said quietly, uncertainly.

“Who?” a little girl asked from somewhere in the darkness, her voice trembling. It wasn’t Janelle. “Who are you talking to?”

“My sister, Janelle. Janelle? You there? C’mon, Janelle, you gotta be there!”

The voices paused for a long moment. Cole could hear the babies crying, some of them gurgling and making spitting sounds, and when he listened very closely, he could hear the breathing of other children. Some were making purring little snoring sounds. There was a lot of rustling in the dark, squirming movement.

He called for Janelle a few more times, raising his voice in spite of how much it hurt his head, in spite of the way his stomach was beginning to feel sick because of the lurching back-and-forth movements.

Finally, there was a little voice … so small and weak and frightened: “Cole? You … are you there?”

“Yeah, Munchkin. I’m here. I’m right here.”

“Where?”

“I’m here, real close. You hear me?”

“I can’t see you.”

“Yeah, I know, but you can hear me, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good, then that’s all that counts right now. We’ll see each other soon, okay? You just stay still and don’t be afraid, ’cause I’m here.”

“Okay. Good. Okay.”

Her voice was so small, like a thread being pulled through the darkness by a dull needle.

They were all quiet.

A few of the babies had stopped crying.

Cole thought of the faces on the milk cartons and grocery bags.

We’ve been taken, he thought. Just like them.

He wondered what he and Janelle would look like on those cartons and bags. Would their faces be as splotchy and smeared? Would Mom even recognize them if she saw them?

The voices outside were more audible now, easier to make out. But Cole was able to catch only snatches of what they were saying.

“—’cause these here sharks are damned easy to catch, and ’cause most of the shoppers goin’ to their local fish counter in the grocery store are so fuckin’ stupid that they—”

“—don’t know what you’re figurin’, that they’re goin’ in to buy shark steaks and they don’t even know that we’re—”

One of the babies wailed for a moment and the voices melted together into a single meaningless sound, and then:

“—go into the grocery stores and restaurants as cheap scallops and swordfish steaks and, a course, shark steaks, so we pick up the money and they can—”

“—why that stuff’s so cheap in some places, ’cause we’re out here—”

“—people eating more fish these days to stay healthy and lose weight, so we’re able to—”

There was another noise behind the voices, a noise that was hard to identify at first although it was so familiar, as if it were a sound Cole had heard just yesterday, a sound he heard frequently.

Then, quite suddenly, he realized it was a sound he heard almost every day—the ocean! He was on the ocean! That was why everything was tilting back and forth—they were in a boat!

A door burst open loudly and sudden blinding light cut through the darkness. Cole turned his head away and clenched his eyes tightly shut.

Heavy footsteps sounded on wood and there was a sharp click! and the room filled with light that was bright enough to stab through Cole’s eyelids and into his head like a hot knife.

There was deep, booming laughter from one man while another barked, “See? Here they are! All we need! Lessee, whatta we want here, now, huh? Lessee …”

Cole tried to open his eyes. It was hard at first, painful because of the sudden bright light … then he tried opening them gradually, just a little bit at a time, until he was squinting. First, he saw only bright light … then shapes moving back and forth … then the light began to diminish and the shapes became more distinct and took on faces and features.

“Well, we’ll need a few a-them,” one man said, pointing to some shelves with rows of cardboard boxes on them.

The other man—taller, bigger, with broad shoulders and big arms—said, “Yeah, okay, you get them. I’ll get these. A couple of ’em. Lessee, lessee … which ones?”

By that time, Cole’s vision had cleared enough to see the enormous, bearded man looking down at him.

“You awake, boy?” the man growled through a grin.

“Huh? What?”

The man kicked him, digging the toe of his boot beneath Cole’s right knee. Hard.

“Owww!” Cole shouted, trying not to cry.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re awake, all right. You’ll do.”

The man reached down and slung an arm around Cole’s chest, carrying him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, until Cole could see only the wet wooden floor below.

“And you!” the man growled, his voice passing through Cole’s entire body. Cole could feel the man picking up another child. Then the man turned and said to his partner, “Go ahead and take four of ’em outta those boxes, just go ahead. We’ll need at least that many. Fact, we’ll prob’ly hafta come back in here and get more.”

Cole raised his head and saw all the children tied up with their backs against the wall or lying on the wooden floor. Then he saw Janelle. She looked up and their eyes met.

“Cole!” she shouted, her voice thick and trembling.

“Don’t worry, Munchkin, just stay right there, don’t you move, and don’t worry about a thing. I’ll see you in a little while, okay? Okay?”

With her little mouth hanging open, all she could do was nod.

The man carrying Cole laughed long and hard. Cole wondered if he was laughing at the exchange between him and Janelle.

The children disappeared the moment the man slammed the door behind him.

Then there was sunlight, brilliant and blinding, and Cole groaned as he clenched both his teeth and his eyes.

Cole was dropped and hit the floor hard. The wind was knocked from his lungs. He gasped for breath, thrashed around straining against the ties on his hands and feet until he was on his back, staring up at the sky: patches of blue surrounded by dark, pregnant clouds.

He saw the other man with things under his arms … things wrapped in white cloths … things that wailed … cried … sobbed …

Babies. They were babies.

“Okay, here they are,” said the man who had carried them out. “Let’s get to it, guys.”

Lying on his back and watching, Cole tried to count the babies. There were three … no, four men. Or was that guy over there the fifth? He couldn’t tell, and quickly didn’t care.

One of the men lifted a baby high by the ankles. He unwrapped the white cloth until the baby was naked, then he handed it to another man, saying, “Remember, the shoulder, that’s where it’s gotta go.”

“I know, I know, whatta you think I am, some kinda amateur?” He took the baby roughly in his left hand.

Cole gasped when he saw the large, barbed hook in the man’s right hand.

The hook went through the baby’s shoulder.

Blood spurted, then flowed from the wound.

The baby screamed so hard and so long that its face turned dark red as its arms and legs flailed and kicked.

The hook was attached to a cable and was thrown over the side of the boat. A couple of the men laughed loudly.

Cole’s eyes were so wide they hurt as he gawked at the men. He felt as if he might throw up.

A man at the other end of the boat holding an enormous fishing pole—like no fishing pole Cole had ever seen before—shouted, “Oh-ho, well, I guess we’ll see what I get here, huh?”

One of the men bent over Cole then, clutched him with both hands and lifted him up.

“I’ll hold him,” he said to another. “You cut the ropes.”

Another of the men some distance away bellowed, “You know, I never thought about it before, but hey, this way we’ll make the liberals happy ’cause we ain’t killin’ any dolphins, right?”

The others, including the one holding Cole, roared with laughter.

Someone cut the ropes and his limbs were free.

Big hands with fat, rough fingers ripped his shirt off and peeled his pants from his legs like the thin seal from a sausage. They pulled his shoes and socks off and tore his underwear away until he was completely naked and shivering.

“Okay, you take him,” the man said. “Give ’im to Corny—he’s good at hooking the bigger ones.”

Moments later, Cole was looking at a big man with huge moles on his face. He smiled at Cole. “Tell ya what, kid, I ain’t gonna hit any a your organs or arteries or nothin’. It’ll hurt, but you’ll be okay, I promise.”

The man stabbed a large barbed hook through Cole’s right shoulder. The excruciating pain made him scream for an instant, then he passed out.

He woke to big hands slapping his face.

“Kid! Hey, kid!” the man slapping him shouted. “You gotta be awake for this, okay? You gotta be awake and kickin’!”

Once Cole was alert and crying out for help, one of the big men wrapped his thick arms around Cole, sending explosions of pain from his pierced shoulder through his entire body, lifted him and threw him over the side of the boat and into the cold water.

Under the water, Cole held his breath, cheeks puffed out like little balloons on each side of his face. The pain was unbearable, but at the moment, he was more interested in breathing.

He began to thrash and kick.

He found the surface, got his head above it and cried, “Help me! Please help me help me help me help—”

Through bleary, watery eyes, he saw the men looking over the edge of the boat, grinning at him.

“Go get ’em, boy!” one of them shouted with a laugh.

He went under again, quite unexpectedly, still kicking and flailing, mouth closed and eyes open. He saw it.

The shark.

It came out of the darkness aimed directly at him, its predatory, dead-black eyes staring, teeth showing in his half-open mouth, rows and rows of crooked razors.

Cole felt the impact and was jerked through the water.

His own blood clouded the water around him until the silent predator looked like a nightmarish ghost moving through the night.

Cole let out his breath and screamed under the water as the shark’s face came out of the darkness again, mouth open.

Closer and closer …