The House at 126 Dark Street

The House at 126 Dark Street
By M.L McBryar



There is evil in the world. Sometimes this evil comes from outside sources, but the worst of all evil lies in the heart of man.
I’ve been a cop for a long time and after a few years I thought I had seen it all. All the evil that can hide behind the most pleasant of faces.
I was wrong.
Some folks think that evil is limited to the big city, that it leaves our small towns alone. I know different, evil is where it wants to be, and if evil wants to be in your town, that’s where it will be.
-Carl Byrge
1996





Carver’s Grove Tennessee is a small community, a place where time seems to stand still. There isn’t much here, not even a red-light. There’s a little mom and pop store, complete with gas station.
The sheriff's office has only four people on staff. Violent crime is unknown in Carver’s Grove. There is a problem with missing kids, though for the longest time it was chalked up to them running off to greener pastures, to make a life in the city.
I was born and raised in Carver’s Grove as were my parents. I ran for sheriff three times and three times I won. Things around here become a habit, nothing changes. Except, now I think things will start to change, they must. I broke the order of things.
Just past the post office sits a house, it’s been there since the beginning of Carver’s Grove. Originally, this was a mining town. Like most other mining towns though, the mines eventually dried up. People left and looked for work elsewhere. The Carver family came into the area and saw potential. Before long they had formed a little community. There has, until now, always been a Ms Carver living at 126 Dark Street. That’s another thing I reckon I broke.
I guess I ought to start at the beginning, like anyone would. My name is Carl Byrge and during the summer of 1996, my second year as Sheriff, the disappearances began happening more frequently. We had no less than eight kids missing. No common factors, some were teens and some were kids. One was black and the others were white. My office was working overtime trying to find these kids, but there weren’t any clues at all.
The kids all went out for a bit, some to play, some to just hang out with friends. Supper time came and went. None of the kids came home. Jon Marlow went missing on June 12, Amber James on June 20, Ryan Walden and Mark Bolton on June 27, Sarah Hatmaker on August 1, Michael Kellogg on August 6, and then on August 30 Thomas Peabody and Alice Ridenour went missing.
I prayed and prayed for a break in the case, but I suspected that I, like my predecessor would be unable to solve the disappearances.
Since the forming of Carver’s Grove in 1928, there have been too many disappearances. My office has hundreds of files, some so brittle with age that they can’t be read, not one of the missing kids has ever been found.
In September of 1996, we finally received a break.
The day dawned nice and cool, much better than the heat we’d been having. I set out for the office, not looking forward to yet another day of chasing dead ends.
Once I reached the office, everything changed. I’d just opened the door when I was knocked off balance. I grabbed the door to steady myself and looked down to see what had hit me. Huddled by my legs was a young boy. His clothes were bloody and scratches covered him.
“Woah, son. What happened to you?”
His startled eyes looked up at me and I cursed, I was looking at Thomas Peabody!
“Thomas! Where have you been? What happened to Alice and the others?”
He wrapped his arms around my waist and started to cry. “They’re dead, they’re all dead and she almost got me too.”
“Who, Thomas? Who did this?”
He collapsed against me. I knelt down and lifted him into my arms, the kid didn’t weigh hardly nothing. I rushed inside the office and set him down on the couch to rest while I called the doctor to come and check him over. While I was waiting I looked the boy over. There were some strange hairs clinging to his shirt. They looked like animal hairs. I plucked a few off and put them in an envelope to try to place them. At this point, any clue was a good one.
Doc Williams arrived quickly and began his examination. While he was working, Thomas woke up. Doc tried to get him to talk but the boy wouldn’t say anything. I pulled the Doc aside to find out what the hell was going on.
“Why won’t he talk to me?”
“It’s a common reaction to shock, Carl. In my opinion, he’ll begin talking once he feels totally safe.”
I swore softly. “Hell, Milton, I need to know who did this to the boy. If he can’t tell me then, it’s gonna be damned hard to figure out who’s responsible. He said Alice and the others are dead and that ‘she’ almost got him too.”
“Well, there you go. You’re looking for a woman.”
I shook my head and then thought of something. “Say, your boy, Sam, he’s a vet ain’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Reckon he’d take a look at some hairs I found on the boy?”
“Give him a call. He’ll give it a shot. Sam’s a good boy, he likes to help out when he can.”
#

Doc took Thomas back to his place to keep an eye on him. I’d called the Peabodys and let them know their boy was all right. I asked them to keep it to themselves for the time being. There were still other children missing, and I was afraid their parents wouldn’t get the same good news.
Sam came over to look at the hairs for me.
“Carl, these are cat hairs. My guess is they belong to a Persian. Not a cat you see often around these parts.”
My blood ran cold, there was only one person in this town with a Persian cat, and if you’d asked me, I’d have said it was impossible for it to be her. For one thing, she was an older lady. For another, she was a pillar in this community. My mind immediately leapt to another conclusion, maybe the kidnapper wasn’t Ms. Carver, maybe the kidnapper was holding her hostage.
I stared at Sam thoughtfully. “There’s only one person in this town with a Persian.”
“Yup. It can’t be her though, hell, Ms. Carver was old when I was a kid. Though, she does look damned good for her age,” Sam replied.
It was true, come to think of it. She had been old when I was a kid too. My brow creased in thought. How could that be? I’d never really paid attention to Ms. Carver’s age. She’d been old back when I had been a kid and that was forty eight years ago. In spite of her age, there was a beauty to her. A timeless look, as though one day, she’d just stopped aging.
Chills ran along my spine like the icy claws of death. “Hey Sam, is it just me, or have we all never paid any attention to Ms. Carver and her age?”
Sam studied me. “No, Carl, I ain’t never given any thought to her age either. She has got to be over a hundred, but she sure don’t look it. As far back as I can remember, she’s always looked like she was in her fifties. A well preserved fifty something.”
I watched Sam leave and picked up the phone. Originally, my men had been told to come in at noon, I needed them in here now.

#

We descended on 126 Dark Street, the house that we’d always ignored. In fact, it seemed we’d been doing an awful lot of ignoring in this town. The disappearances had spanned over 60 years, and until now there had never been a single clue. I couldn’t speak for the men who’d held this job before me, but I had questioned every person in town, every person but Ms. Carver. It wasn’t like me to overlook anyone, but somehow when it came to questioning, I completely forgot about her.
From the outside the house looked simple, and unremarkable. It was the type of house that you tended to glance over, nothing really stood out. I went up to the porch and knocked on the door. “Ms. Carver? This is Sheriff Carl Byrge, I need you to open this door now.”
I waited. There was no sound from within the house. I motioned to my men that we were going in. I tried the door and found it unlocked, we stepped into the hallway and immediately gagged.
There was a stench in the air. The only time I’d ever smelled anything like it was the time I’d gone to a slaughter house. This was just like back then, the smell of blood and death rode the air. My chest tightened, if those kids were in this house, they were beyond my reach.
We spread out and began searching the house. I headed down to the basement to check it out. I have nightmares to this day about what I found.
The center of the basement had been dug out, into a pit. There were hooks above the pit and each of those hooks, save one, held a small decayed body. Some of the bodies were so old that they were nothing more than bone. Others were fresh, too fresh. All the missing children were here in this basement.
I stared at the little bodies, trying to will life into them. Something in the pit stirred, I looked down to be met with red eyes. I backpedaled, trying to put as much distance between me and that pit as I could. A voice rose from the pit, striking fear deep within my heart.
“So nice of you to drop by, Sheriff. You’re too late, I have awakened my master at long last. It has taken me over a hundred years, but it was all worth it.”
The eyes loomed at the edge of the pit and moved closer up out of the darkness. My breathing grew faster and faster. Just as the thing climbed over the edge of the pit, the floor spun up to meet me.

#

I came to in the basement with Doc slapping my face. I blinked up at him and remembered the creature from the pit. Panic set in and I fought to escape.
“Carl, calm down. It’s all right, man.”
I look up and saw the bodies of the children dangling from the ceiling, nothing was all right and it never would be.
I swallowed hard and turned to Doc. “How long was I out?”
“About fifteen minutes or so, I guess. I tell you, Carl, this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t blame you for passing out.”
He was wrong, the bodies of the children were awful, but what I saw climb from that pit was worse. Far worse and no one would ever believe me.
Doc motioned my men upstairs. Once we were alone he turned to me with a worried frown.
“Carl, I need to ask you something. What the hell did you see down here? These bodies are not enough to cause what I’m looking at.”
“What are you talking about, Milton?”
He studied me carefully, making me feel like I’d missed something. “Your hair, it’s gone white in areas. You weren’t gray when I saw you yesterday, Carl. So what the hell did you see down here?”
I pointed at the pit with a shaking hand. “There was a beast in that pit. A horrible beast with red eyes. It talked to me, told me that it had awakened it’s master. Then it climbed out of that pit and I got a real good look at it. It was Ms. Carver, or at least it used to be. She was all hairy and twisted with fiery eyes and fang like teeth. Now, tell me I’m crazy.”
Milton stared at me for a minute. “I don’t think you’re crazy. After seeing all these bodies, anything is possible. You know, there’s always been rumors about the Carvers and then there’s even the address of this place.”
“126? What does that mean?”
He looked off in the distance. “It means something when you break it down, Carl. Twelve divided by two is six. So 126 becomes 666.”
I shook my head, the reasoning sounded far fetched, but I could not deny that what I’d seen had been evil. “Let’s get the boys down here to take care of the bodies and everything. I need a strong drink.”

#

It’s been two years since I found the bodies in the Carver place. I tried to have the place torn down. A lot of the parents were with me on it. The historical society blocked us, said that it’s just a house and that it needs to remain as it was the first building in our town. It may be just a building to some, but to me it’s more than a building. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and in my heart I know that the pit in the basement isn’t just a pit. It’s an opening and someday the master Carver spoke of will come out of it.
I started attending church regularly these days. I wear my cross at all times and sleep with my gun. I’ve made my peace with God and when the master comes out of that damned hole, I’ll be ready.
-Carl Byrge
Sheriff of Carver’s Grove