Horror and Thriller Fiction posted November 11, 2024


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Bobby is gently persuaded to check in on his neighbor.

Someone Should

by Slo_6


“Yes, you.”

He squinted his eyes, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and stared at her.

“His car hasn’t moved. We haven’t seen him for several days. He didn’t put any trash out yesterday.”

He raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes from side to side.

“Bobby, he’s an old man, just go check on him.”

He pointed at his chest.

“Someone should.”

His silent protest had not worked. “He isn’t a particularly nice old man.”

“No, he’s not,” she agreed, “but you are a very nice young man.” She kissed his cheek and exited the room before he could challenge her any further. 

“It’s a good thing you’re cute,” he barked through the doorway.

Bobby put on his sneakers but decided against a jacket. It was cold for a t-shirt, but he didn’t want to look like a wimp just crossing the street. 

Mr. Miller’s house was an eyesore. It wasn’t falling apart. It wasn’t strewn with trash. It just wasn’t nice. It was white with black shutters, and the black was faded, and the white wasn’t very bright. The black iron railing on the porch was sturdy but old, out of style. The front yard was mowed but barren, no bushes, no flowers, no color. The whole house was completely lacking updates and character, out of place with the other more decorated, landscaped, renovated houses on the block.

He pushed the doorbell but couldn’t hear a ring, so that didn’t count as an honest effort. When he knocked, the door came ajar. His shoulders sunk and his head dropped to one side. 

“Mr. Miller?” Bobby was pretty sure that calling his name two more times would satisfy the task here. His etiquette calculation changed, though, when he saw two bare feet protruding sideways from behind the couch. They may have even twitched ever so slightly.

“Mr. Miller are you ok?” He called more loudly this time. There was no answer, but he was now certain there was some small movement in the feet. For the third time, he called, “Mr. Miller?” but more quietly this time. He stepped cautiously around the couch and saw him lying there.

Mr. Miller wore faded yellow boxer shorts with a worn, white V-Neck t-shirt. He was lying on his left side with his left arm pinned beneath him. His right arm was moving below the elbow, up and down, or rather, side to side because of his horizontal position on the ground. His fingers made a minute grasping motion, grabbing at the air over and over again. His legs were still but his feet continued a gentle teeter tottering of his toes and heels. His mouth was opened wide and sometimes he made just the beginning of a biting motion, baring his teeth but never closing them. His eyes were buggy wide and rolling. His head moved slowly, slightly and randomly.

“Mr. Miller? Should I help you get up? Should I not touch you? Should I…I should call for help, right? Mr. Miller, I’m going to call for help.”

Bobby turned away and dialed 911. That phone call went pretty smoothly until his brain short circuited, and he gave his own address instead of Miller’s address.

“No, sorry that’s my house. 425 not 424…Right 425…Right, he’s at his house now, 425…Yes, I can stay until they get here… No, not related, just a neighbor...Yeah, just checking up on a neighbor…No, I’m not aware of any health issues. I mean, he’s old, elderly, elderly older man…I, uhhhh, no I’m not sure of his first name…It’s maybe…wait! One second.”

He’d been mindlessly pacing, stepping in every way except towards the prone body of Mr. Miller. At this moment, he was turned towards the doorway of an adjacent room and could see the edge of a desk with some mail on it. He stepped fully into the room and was caught off guard by what he saw. 

The room was outlined by several simple, modern looking, white writing desks, no drawers, just legs and tabletops. The desks were all up against the walls, one right up against the other, almost perfectly in concert with the wall space. Computer monitors and keyboards at a ratio of about three to one were on every desk. Below the desks, he counted seven tower computers. Beneath one desk was a router/modem identical to the one Bobby had from the cable company. On the other side of the room was a similar device, but more like the unit he’d seen at a friend’s house who had tv and internet service from a phone company. In the middle of the room was a cushy, electric blue chair on wheels. There was one window in the room facing Bobby’s house across the street.

The voice on the other end of the phone shook him out of his dazed confusion. “Yeah, I have his mail here. Bernard. His name is Bernard…Yes, OK. I’ll wait here with Mr. Miller. …Thank you, ma’am. Goodbye.”

The mail was neatly piled on the desk in front of a landline phone with an answering machine against the wall. To the left of the phone was a wooden box. Bobby looked at the envelope he was holding. It was a bill from the cable company. The next envelope on the pile was a bill from the phone company.

“Mr. Miller, do you have service from two different providers? Did someone take advantage of you?” He was talking out loud, but quietly. It didn’t seem likely that Mr. Miller had been scammed into this elaborate setup. The possibilities cycled through his head as he drifted towards the center of the room. Mr. Miller was a spy, probably a foreign spy, cleverly disguised as a curmudgeonly old man. Mr. Miller was a super hacker, like you see in bad movies. Every one of these screens was an attempt to break into some high security facility: missile command centers or maybe credit card mainframes. No, there was a more practical answer, and it made Bobby queasy: porn. He was surrounded by an unimaginable quantity of digital porn. Under his breath he invoked a desperate plea, “please, please, please just regular porn, nothing weird, just regular old-fashioned, dirty old-man porn.” 

More details of the room came into focus. The monitors all displayed generic, factory default screen savers except for the largest monitor, centered on the wall opposite the window. It was a map of the world, a simple black background with neon purple borders. There were no words, but many of the easy to recognize countries had six-digit numbers. The United States had a seven-digit number. Bobby started tapping keyboards and moving mice to get out of screen savers, but it just gave him locked screens with factory default backgrounds.

This unexpected discovery had made him very uncomfortable, and it occurred to him that he didn’t need to reconcile any of it. He entered the house to check on an elderly neighbor who very much needed an ambulance. Bobby could go back to the other room, say reassuring words to a non-responsive man, and the nice paramedics would bring this whole ugly episode to a close.
 
When he turned to exit the room, Bernard Miller’s barely dressed, gaunt body stood in the doorway, gaping bug-eyed, baring teeth, left arm limp, right arm grasping air. Bobby squeaked out a short burst of a scream. If felt silly to feel threatened by this standoff, but that was the situation. Bobby was pinned in a cyber porn dungeon by a disgusting corpse-like old man. The impulse to rush him, knock him down, and escape was overwhelming, but he didn’t actually want to touch Mr. Miller. It would also be hard to explain to the paramedics. He tried to regain his calm and normalize the situation.

“Mr. Miller, I think you should sit down. I have an ambulance coming. They’re going to help you, OK? You can sit down out on the couch. Or in this chair. You want to sit in your office chair?” Bobby slowly rolled the chair towards Mr. Miller. He wondered if he could simultaneously push the chair under Mr. Miller to get him seated, while also using it as a battering ram to clear a path out of the room.

Mr. Miller didn’t quite turn, but he shifted to his right, and his barely functioning arm knocked some of the mail pile off the corner of the desk. His eyes shut tight for a moment then opened again.
 
“Your mail? Did you want your mail?”

It looked like Mr. Miller was shouting or howling, but nothing came out. Bobby wasn’t sure that the old man even exhaled. His bony right hand again brushed the corner of the desk.

“Your phone! Your messages! Did you want to play your phone messages?”
He didn’t wait or look for a response. He circled a little to his left, pushing the chair in front of him, keeping it between him and Miller. Now moving sideways, he approached the desk and reached as far as he could around the chair, past the wooden box, to push the play button on the answering machine.

The answering machine’s synthesized voice announced, “You have four messages. Tuesday, 2:47 pm.”

It was a woman. “Bernard, you’re not feeling very well today, are you? It’s about time, don’t you think? You know what to do.” Click.

“Monday, 11:23 am.”
The same woman’s voice spoke. “Oh, Bernie. You’ve been a fine vessel, but you’re done here. Open the box, Bernie. It’s time for me to spread out.” Click.

“Friday, 3:51 pm.”
Bobby realized that without dates, he had no idea how old these messages were.
Still the same voice: “Oh. That was a bad fall. Are you hurt, Bernie? No one is coming for you if you’re hurt. It’s time. Open the box. Release it into the breeze. And then you’re done. We both…” and then a click ended that message abruptly.

Sunday, 7:13 am”
Bobby could only assume this last message was the same woman. The tone and delivery were so different. “SPREEAAAD, BERNIE! <giggles> It’s time to…SPREEEAAAAAD! 

Mr. Miller’s whole body started swaying. One leg began shaking slightly. Bobby reached and allowed a moment of hesitation before grabbing Mr. Miller’s shirt and pulling him down into the chair. Mr. Miller collapsed sideways, now pinning his right arm while his upper torso hung halfway off the chair. Bobby rolled the chair back a few feet, enough to allow a path to the door out of the room.
     
Bobby and Nichole were newly married when they bought their house three years ago. Several young couples were bidding aggressively for homes in this desirable neighborhood. This block was especially charming with an eclectic mix of architecture. His instincts told him, though, that he should not buy a house directly across the street from a house that he didn’t like. Every morning, walking out the front door, he’d have to look at this tasteless, worn-out remnant from one of those unsightly eras of affordable but ugly home ownership. Every day he mowed his lawn or washed his car or sat on his porch, he’d get a view of this dismal house. So many people advised him that no house is perfect, and that he should be glad for the opportunity he and Nichole had here. Besides, it was an older man. He wouldn’t be there forever. And then, someone would snap up that house, fix it up nice, and that would benefit the entire block.

Bobby’s acquiescence to purchase their home now stood hand in hand with his agreement to wait inside with Mr. Miller for the ambulance, both terrible, unnecessary compromises. Clearly, waiting out on the porch would have been good enough. Now here he stood, pushing around a half dressed, half dead, probable porn addict on a video gaming chair. Would the paramedics ask how they got into this position? Surely, the old man should be on the couch or even the floor. He imagined their disappointed voices as they corrected him. “Sir, you really want to raise the injured person’s feet here.”

Several iterations of imagined scolding raced through Bobby’s conscience until he was again startled into a short burst of a shriek. The phone rang. “I don’t need to answer that,” he said out loud. It rang a second time. He shook his head through the entire third ring. After the fourth ring, he took a deep breath. The ambulance was coming. The fifth ring seemed to last longer than the previous four, until finally, the answering machine kicked in. It was the same woman’s voice, but cheery and deliberate, slowly pronouncing a rehearsed speech for her answering machine. “Hello, you’ve reached Bernard and Adelaide. We can’t take your call right now, so please leave us a message after the beep. Have a wonderful day.” The beep that followed was painfully long. Who even still had answering machines like this? Mr. Miller had enough CPU power to launch rockets into space, but he had an answering machine from the late 1990s.

Bobby knew her voice was coming. Despite the confusion and the nonsensical logistics here, and despite the sickening feeling in his stomach, he was still clear headed enough to begrudgingly acknowledge the voice that would speak after the beep. He was not, however, expecting to hear his own name.

“Bobby,” she began, “we find ourselves in an interesting situation here, almost a standoff. You’re a bright young man. You know why I’m calling. I’m sure the finer details of this matter are a mystery, but really, they aren’t important to you at all. You know what I need, and that’s all you need to know. You can fulfill your responsibility here, and then just go on living your life. You’ll pretend this never happened.”
The idea of responding, and the voice hearing his response, and then responding directly back to whatever he said was decidedly less comfortable. He remained silent, preferring to assume that the answering machine offered only a one-way conversation as the manufacturer intended.

“Now, you might be telling yourself that you have no obligation here,” she continued. “You can just do nothing, like you probably wished you had done before you ever checked in on poor old Bernard. But, Bobby, that would be a mistake. Let’s not explore that path. Just go on over there to the box, Bobby. No need to escalate our standoff.”

Despite how badly he hated this current moment in his life, the voice had provided him some unexpected footing by posturing this as a negotiation. That was a better form of conflict for Bobby. He often won negotiations, and his competitive nature gave him some confidence. The voice wanted something from him. It probably needed something from him. It was probably desperate, and it was probably bluffing about escalation. Why be so vague? Why tell him he “didn’t need to know?” No, this was a common tactic. The voice had nothing to bargain with here, so she lobbed an indeterminate threat to induce a quick mistake from Bobby in a moment of panic. He crossed his arms and stood firm.
 
When the phone hung up, Bobby felt vindicated. The ambulance would be here any minute, and he was going to exit this situation when it did.
Then his pants pocket buzzed. An inner monologue served as his calming focal point. “I’m breathing. The ambulance is almost here. I’m breathing. The ambulance will bring this to a close.”

His pocket buzzed again. He knew it was the same message just buzzing again because he hadn’t looked yet, but it felt like more activity, and his resolve failed him. He pulled out his phone and stared at the screen.

It was a group text between him, Nicky and an Uknown Number: “Hi, Nichole! It’s Bernie Miller across the street. Your husband is helping me out here. Can you bring us his tools?”
  
Bobby stared in disbelief. His negotiating position had dissolved instantly. He quickly tried to call Nicky’s number but got a “No carrier” message in the upper right corner of the screen.

His hands dropped to his sides and his shoulders slumped. Mr. Miller’s house phone rang again. Bobby finally separated from the chair, and he slid his feet slightly towards the phone, or perhaps, towards the box. On the second ring, he leaned down and looked more closely at the box. It had a glossy wood grain and a small brass plaque on front that read, “Adelaide Miller,” and then beneath, “1940 – 2014.” There was no lid on the box, nothing to open. Did Adelaide expect him to smash the thing? With just his right hand, he gingerly pushed it against the wall to get leverage, then slid his fingers underneath enough to lift. There were screws on the bottom of the box, one in each corner, except that screws in two opposite corners had already been removed. 

For the first time, Mr. Miller made a sound, a soft gurgling followed by a wheezing. Bobby stood frozen while the machine answered the call. When Adelaide’s greeting was finished, there were several seconds of painful extended silence. Finally, her voice broke through again, “It’s to your left.”

Underneath a monitor on his left was a well-worn screwdriver with a wooden handle. From where he stood, he could reach it with the tips of his fingers on his left hand, and he pulled it closer. With his right hand, he gently spun the box and lowered it so the bottom now faced upwards. He began to work on the remaining screws; they turned easily. The machine was still recording silence on the other end. He set the screws aside.

“Over to the window, Bobby. Just set me free, and set yourself free.” 

He straightened himself, held the box in both hands by the sides, and turned towards the window, but his motions were unnaturally slow.

The voice changed, or maybe more voices were added to it, making it lower, louder, less natural.

“Over to the window, Bobby.”

Mr. Miller wasn’t exactly in the way, but Bobby took an exaggerated circuitous path around the chair.

“Open the window, Bobby,” the voices sounded mad, impatient.

Bobby set the box down on the desk just to the right of the window and opened it wide. In the distance, he could hear an ambulance siren. Across the street, he saw Nichole approaching with his toolbox in her hand.

“The ambulance is coming,” he said out loud.

“Finish, Bobby,” the voice commanded.

“I have to meet the ambulance, though. That’s urgent.”
 
Bobby ran out of the room, then towards the front door. His thigh slammed into the arm of the couch that had obscured Mr. Miller’s body earlier, and Bobby spun down to the floor, landing hard on his hip.
 
“Wait, wait,” he said out loud. With his hands on the floor, he propped up to one knee, then got his feet beneath him again. He rubbed the leg that was throbbing to get it working again.

“Wait,” he said again.

He hop stepped to the door, and fell forward, but managed to catch himself on the iron railing outside. The ambulance siren was just around the corner. Bobby waved his right arm wildly and forced a smile. He called out to Nicky, “Garden tools. Ha! He meant garden tools. Can you get the good shovel and the small hand rake?”

Nichole looked uncertain and a little frustrated.
 
“Yeah, just leave them right there, right in front of that window. Thanks!”
 
Nichole shook her head and threw up the arm that wasn’t holding the toolbox. She turned back towards their house and disappeared into the garage.

Bobby continued waving his arm, but now it was for the ambulance driver, who pulled in front of Mr. Miller’s house.

“Hi! Hello! We’re in here.” The paramedics, a man and a woman, both young, already seemed certain about where they needed to go, but Bobby felt obligated to shout out directions. They unloaded the stretcher and approached the door. Bobby realized a little too late that he was standing in the way.

“Yeah. This way, in here.” Bobby’s leg was still a little numb, so he half-limped inside.

“He’s right in this room, right…”

Mr. Miller was now lying face down, half in and half out of the porn/hacker room.
 
“You found ‘em like this?” the man asked. 

“Uh huh,” Bobby responded.

The woman hopped over Mr. Miller and through the doorway so that she could get to his feet. The man lowered the stretcher to the ground and turned it parallel to the wall with a little space for them to work. As they gently repositioned him outside of the room, the woman asked if he had any known medical conditions. Bobby shrugged, then realized that they weren’t looking at him.

“I don’t know.”

“Does he like video games?” The man asked while they lifted him onto the stretcher.

“I don’t know.”

“Looks like he does. You’ont really know him?” the man asked.

“Nah. I was just checking on an elderly neighbor.” Bobby stood and watched.

“Mr. Miller,” the man said loudly, “Can you hear me? We’re going to get you back to your video games, OK? But first we gotta get you right, OK?”

Had it not been for those well-intentioned, kind and reassuring words, Bobby probably would have stared and watched them leave the house. Instead, he took the queue and continued the conversation.

“Don’t worry Mr. Miller, I’ll take care of everything. You just get better, OK?” He followed them closely as they rolled the stretcher towards the door. “I think I have everything, Mr. Miller. You can just get fixed up, and I’ll take care of things. No worries.” He ran out the door behind them.

As they loaded him in the back of the ambulance, Bobby held his ground importantly just outside the front door. Nicky came walking over with the shovel and the hand rake.

“Oh my God, is he ok?” she asked.

Bobby raised his eyebrows and shook his head.

“Is he dying?” she gasped.

Bobby extended an arm straight out in front of him and made a few chopping motions with an outstretched index finger. This time he nodded his head.

“Heading in that direction, yeah.” 

“Then why did he ask for tools?”

“Let me see the message?” He took the phone from her and pulled up the message. With a few subtle swipes, he blocked the unknown number.
“It’s his dying wish. He thought the house would look nicer with some landscaping, in memory of his deceased wife.” He handed the phone back to her. “I promised him I would. Can you pick up some bushes at the garden store? Something nice and hardy.”

“OOOOOk. That is kind of sweet. Would he like…”

“I think he’d appreciate if you picked. It’s for his wife, you know? A woman’s touch? But something strong that grows quick, OK? The strong roots have symbolic value.”  

Nichole walked back across the street. 

With a noticeably sense of urgency, Bobby dug an extra deep planting bed the width of the window. The manual labor was good, pushing the blood through his body, making him feel strong, making him feel confident. As he dug, he mapped out his plan.
 
Back in the computer room, Bobby made his first move. On his knees under a desk, he pulled a power cord out of a computer, then another. Then he waited for the phone to ring, and then he waited for the answering machine.

“We’re done with those machines, Bobby. That was Bernard’s role.”

But it bothers you that I’m doing it, he thought, and you’re not lashing out at me. If you had real leverage, there would be no reason to hold back. But does she actually see me? Or does she only know that some computers went down? He slid back from under the desk, stood up, and walked over to the big screen with the global map. There was silence. Now they really were in an interesting standoff. He fingered the cable on the back of the monitor and tugged gently to find which computer was connected beneath the desk. Still silence. He dropped down to a knee and put his hand behind the computer tower. 

“Go ahead,” she encouraged him.

He pulled the power cord and slid backwards to sit on the floor.

“Are we done?” she asked.

“What would I find on all these computers?” he asked. Several seconds passed with no reply.

“Why tower computers? Everyone uses laptops now.” Again, there was no reply.

“Gaming computers are good for AI. Is that it?” He’d read an article about that and bought some stock in video game chip manufacturers.
 
Sitting in the chair would be much more comfortable, but Mr. Miller had been in that chair, and that was gross. So, he stayed on the floor and remained silent. The phone line went dead. This tactic surprised him more than it should have, and his mind raced to get back on plan.

One of the still working monitors flickered, then rendered the familiar black and purple global map. The map scrolled to center on the United States, and then it zoomed. State lines appeared, then county lines, then street names, and suddenly the entire screen was a three-block radius of Bobby’s neighborhood. The number 0 appeared in the center of the screen. Bobby considered this but was slow to react. The number 0 changed to 1. He launched himself forward and started pulling out plugs, all the plugs. When he was finished, and all the screens were blank, he rolled onto his back and held his head in his hands. He waited, and the phone responded.

It was the unnatural voice, the many voices that spoke. “Too late, Bobby. You were safe. Whatever you were worried about, it was elsewhere. Not now. Now it lives with you. It’s in your air. It’s in your neighbors.”

This new development changed his plan. The phone voice had pushed a new threat on the table, and Bobby could either try to talk his way out of it, or he could retaliate. 

“The box is open, Bobby. The window is open. It’s time to spread me in the gentle, Spring breeze.”

He picked himself up off the floor and stepped to the window where the box waited for him. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He lifted the box. His phone buzzed again, and again. The voice wasn’t negotiating anymore, it was piling on pressure. It was taunting him, goading him. It either didn’t know about the trench under the window, or it didn’t care. With negotiations over, Bobby didn’t see any reason to hold back. In one swift motion, he thrust his arms out the window, flipped the box over, and dropped it straight down.
 
The line went dead the moment the box breached the window.

Bobby ran outside, careful to stride around the couch this time. Outside, under the window, the box lay right side up, with the exposed bottom and contents touching the dirt. His trench was twice the depth he would need for bushes. He had to lay on his stomach just to reach his hands in and grab the box. He lifted it up, just a few inches, then shook out the ashes. With the hand rake, he spread them as evenly as he could across the bottom. Then with the shovel, he threw dirt from his pile back into the trench, creating a new bottom layer. The root balls would sit on top of this, restored layer of dirt.

While he rested, he checked the new text messages on his phone. There were three friends that would need explanations about still unspecified apologies or confessions he had to make to them. It would be awkward but manageable.
 
It was likely that some ashes had escaped the trench. It was possible that he would never know what the numbers represented. It was also possible that he would one day find out. 

Nichole returned with three hydrangea bushes. Eventually she was satisfied that he should complete the job himself, alone. Yes, he would water them until they were established. He had shared an important, meaningful moment with Mr. Miller. This was the right thing. He really should. 

“What happens when someone new moves in?” she asked. 

“Well, I’ll explain that these bushes are for the previous owner’s dearly departed wife. I’m sure I can negotiate a permanent residence for them.”

 
The End
 



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