Salt Peter written by JPLOVECRAFT
“Old man’s ass…”
Opening lyric to “Parafin” by Ruby
He used to come into my room at night. I was 11, maybe 12 years old. We had just moved into this old house. Being that we had always lived in apartments I was excited to finally live in a house with a yard and plenty of room for everyone. It was old though and creepy. The feeling of the place was just odd, offputting, strange…
Things were normal
in the house for a few weeks. It was creepy but, I mean, I read all sorts of goosebumps books and watched Are You Afraid of the Dark on the weekends so I figured my imagination was giving me a free show. I liked being creeped out to a point, ya know, when I could control it… it hit different when it was happening in real life.
It all began one night after I got a really strange feeling coming from the laundry room. The laundry room being the basement. Typical, right?! Every scary story starts in a basement, or a desecrated church, or at a summer camp full of intoxicated counselors, or a Dennys at 3am…
I was pulling my clothes out of the dryer when a vision popped in my head. It was sudden, blurry, strange, wrinkled… hairy…? Mashed potatoes? Two adjacent piles of crumpled up laundry? A pair of pine needle covered volcanoes set to erupt? I know, it’s weird. Milk colored jello? It was a vision that held no context for me, it chilled me, it was ominous, it beckoned…
I hurriedly grabbed my clothes and ran upstairs. It was strange, as I ran I swore I heard someone whispering to me, a single word in repetition, four syllables: “California…? Supercalafragilistic…? London bridges…?”
Nonsense.
That night was the first time he came into my room.
Where I lived with my parents was pretty isolated. No one around but us really. I was half asleep in my bed. I knew my parents were already asleep so I went into a mild shock when my bedroom door knob began to slowly turn. It felt like I was asleep, half asleep, sleep paralysis maybe, it was dreamlike. Time seemed to pass at a fraction of its normal flow. The knob turned slowly. Then the door moved. It opened slightly, with a creak, just a crack. Seconds went by, my heart was in my throat, I was paralyzed. The door opened a bit more, then a bit more, then just wide enough for a spindly leg to pass through. All I could see at that point was a leg but I knew that leg didn’t belong to anyone that I knew. The leg danced a bit, seemingly waiving, almost as if it were underwater. Then a hip revealed itself, then an arm, then a face.
It was an old man. He looked almost like a cartoon, a caricature. No teeth, full cheeks, grey stubble, wide eyes. He was impish. He was giggling.
He stared at me with a strange sense of delight.
Slowly he crept toward the side of my bed as if he was starring in a mock ballet. His eyes twinkled. He was hilarious. He was terrifying.
He stood next to my bed and stared at me, grinning, vibrating. He bent down a bit as if to inspect me closer. He seemed very satisfied with what he saw. He straightened back up and dare I say, gave a little shimmy.
He then headed back towards the door, walking backwards, slowly, rhythmically. He seemed to be mouthing out the word I heard while running away from the dryer with my clothes earlier that evening. When his back was to the door he clearly whispered: “not yet.” Then he giggled once more and disappeared behind my bedroom door. I have no idea how I got back to sleep that night.
When I woke up it all seemed so silly. It was obviously a strange dream. Kooky, not at all scary in retrospect. I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me. Yeah, food was definitely messing with me… haha.
I had this dream intermittently for the next few years… It had to be a dream, it was so ridiculous. I chalked it up to watching too much Ren and Stimpy on Saturday nights. The dancing geezer looked a lot like the old guy that always ended up in the bathtub, making ren and stimpson j cat uncomfortable, the one with the turkey leg floating over his head like it was his hair… way to ridiculous to be real… my imagination was a strange land full of strange plans. That’s probably why I ended up going to art school, droppping out and diving head first into years of classes on centuries old strange legends and symbology.
The dreams stopped after I left home and that strange little town to pursue my complicated education… only resurfacing when I would go home to visit for holidays and such. At that point it was like seeing an old friend. Not ominous, just quirky and strangely comforting.
He would always sneak in my room, slowly, dramatically, with a shimmy and a shake, seemingly choreographed, smiling, giddy, giggling, slowly making his way over to my bedside to inspect me… strange, I had no idea what he was looking for, he seemed to be keeping track of something… biding his time, waiting… on the way out always stating ambiguously “not yet… not yet…”
Oh… and occasionally when I would go down to the basement to do laundry I would hear those strange whispers… or at least what my imagination must have made out of a creaky old basement in an old house, with random drafts, leaky pipes and random noise from settling. Yeah… my imagination was quite the large, festive tent housing a constant circus… haha… welcome back my friends to the show that never ends.
Things got a bit more strange when my parents both died in a car accident, leaving the house to me. It was so sudden, emotional. I found myself heading back to that strange old town and isolated ancient house to settle the estate and continue work on a book I was writing about obscure symbology.
I hadn’t been back in quite a while, perhaps it was the suddenness of the death, the complex emotions, the fact that I was older. The place seemed stranger than usual, smaller, darker… it may sound strange but… it seemed alive, like it had been waiting for me, like it was most happy to see me. I felt watched… my imagination was creating those old whispers again… somehow, this time a bit more clear… fallah smidgen…? Surreptitious…? Cala midgets…?
Oh… my weird little mind.
(Over dub whispers: callipygous)
The first couple of nights were quite quiet. I established my ritual. Organize and clean during the day, go for a nice walk, have a sensible dinner, open a bottle of wine and settle in for a few hours at night to research and write. I quickly found that this old town had quite a library, lots of old and obscure volumes strangely enough along the lines of my culty interests… old towns can be interesting… I was finding way more forgotten information and lore in the library than was available on the super patchy internet available at the house. Although I was grieving the loss of my parents I was also appreciative of the quiet and the resources afforded to me at this critical time. This book was to be my gateway to notoriety and possibly the chance to teach my own courses at the right college or university.
Then the dreams started again…
This time though… they seemed to go, further? They would start the same, my bedroom door would creak open, the strange old geezer would catastrophe ballet to my bedside to inspect me but… the dreams were getting longer, strange music began to manifest and those whispers were getting louder. Soon the old guy was dancing circles around the room and seeming to occasionally, taunt me with his ass… which was surprisingly round and dare I say… firm. It was strange that his entire body looked like cold mashed potatoes except for him bum, which was, well, it was nice. Thumbs up dude, keep doing those squats. Then one night after completing his evolving ritual he stopped short at the door on his way out and instead of saying “not yet” as was his normal conclusion he looked at me intensely and mouthed out the word “soon.”
I woke up laughing even though I was also a bit chilled. A wrinkly old dancing man that looked like the ren and Stimpy chicken leg for hair guy with a nice ass… oh my prurient imagination, the circus was most definitely in full swing.
The nights went on and the dreams progressed and became more vivid and… well… the term that comes to mind is “clown orgy…” Do you know about the clown orgy, it was fucking in tents… get it, that’s an old joke but the dreams were most definitely growing more and more intense, then one night…
One night I was able to move. In every dream up to that point I was paralyzed or never thought to move but one night… he invited me to dance with him… and I did, we frolicked and shook our groove thangs… He seemed to be checking out my rear the whole time, cheeky old guy… then he motioned me to follow him, out of the room, down the hall, we danced the whole way downstairs to the basement. The whispers surrounded us as we danced and laughed then he darted towards the corner of the basement and disappeared behind the dryer. What the hell? I ran towards the dryer, looked inside, nothing, then I pulled it away from the wall and… there was something carved into the cement…
I woke up on the basement floor, naked, holding an empty bottle of wine. Perhaps I had been indulging a bit too much during my research. I got up, no hangover though I was a bit wobbly and proceeded to shower and get on with my day.
As I boxed up the materials that comprised the lives of my late parents I couldn’t shake the dream, the dancing, the basement, the carvings behind the dryer. It was just a weird dream driven by my wild imagination but still, I couldn’t stop obsessing over it. I had the strangest urge to look behind the dryer in the basement. I couldn’t let it go. Of course there was nothing there but I couldn’t put it out of my mind. After hours of wrestling with reality and common sense I resolved that I wouldn’t be able to rest until I looked behind the dryer.
I ventured down the hallway in a haze and descended the staircase heading straight for the dryer. It moved way too easily and gawddammit. There were carvings on the wall. They looked like runes, circling a crude drawing of, hills, mountains, quite round and strangely from a seemingly overhead perspective. They were symmetrical and minimal and looked to be old.
I took a picture with my cell phone and immediately headed for the library to check out some books on runes. The runes on my basement wall were not common at all, they looked to be variations on established runes, custom if you will. My research was proving to be fruitless until I flipped to the back of a certain volume and found those precise runes hand sketched on the inside back cover along with an etymology of their evolution and a translation: Callipygian. Sect. Order. Worship. Deity. Possession. Sacrifice.
Strange. I knew all the words except for Callipygian. Who wrote this weirdness? I flipped through the volume again finally noticing that the book had only been checked out by one person, years ago. A man by the name of Aloysius Breech.
I went to the front desk and flagged down the quite elderly librarian.
“Pardon me miss, do you know this person, Aloysius Breech?”
The librarian looked puzzled at first, then, as librarians do, seemed to recall something in the archives. She led me to a back room with stacks of archived local newspapers and documents. She said the name was familiar but couldn’t recall why and that I might have some luck in the local archives.
Wow, this was definitely old school research which of course meant that I didn’t get a lead for a few hours but when I did… whoa.
A newspaper article from the local paper, September 24th, 1949: Local man responsible for child abduction and murder. There was a picture, oh god, of course it was the man from my dreams, this was straight out of Goosebumps or Are You Afraid of the Dark. Seems this guy was responsible for a bunch of missing children in the late 1940s. He would crawl in through their bedroom windows at night, giggling, dancing and leading them to their doom. The police found him and the remains of his victims in his basement at… of course… his house was now my house. The basement was covered in strange markings and crude pictures of hills and mountains, from an overhead view. When questioned, Breech nonchalantly disclosed that he was collecting souls in order to deify himself in the Callipygian court. An obscure ancient religious sect that worshipped an all powerful deity whose defining feature was extremely shapely buttocks. He also stated that he had collected enough souls, all that was left to do was choose a successor to start the next cycle, someone to keep the souls coming and maintain the power of the sect.
Breech was tried, convicted and executed in the early 1950s for the abduction and deaths of supposedly dozens of children from the surrounding areas. After his death, the house was slightly remodeled and remained on the market for quite some time, decades until, shit, until my parents bought it for a song. They never told me the history of the house. Probably didn’t want to frighten me. At least we didn’t have to live in crummy apartments anymore.
I ran home and went back to the carvings behind the dryer in the basement. How were these still here if the rest were cleaned up? I began searching the rest of the basement and wherever I pulled an appliance, a shelving unit, anything of size away from the walls I found runes, hills from overhead, occasionally what looked like dried blood. Good lord.
Whomever was in charge of cleaning up this place cut quite a few corners. Too bad I wasn’t a horror writer, this story was writing itself.
Suddenly I felt dizzy. The sun seemed to go down insanely fast like life was in fast forward. I slumped to the ground barely able to sit up. The whispers started again, the strange music and then, from behind the dryer came the dancing man. This time incredibly giddy. He was ecstatic in his movements. He danced over to me, looked down upon me and said “it’s finally time.”
“Time for what?” I asked.
“Time to appoint my successor.” He exclaimed while twirling around in a circle.
“I’ve waited for decades for the right person to come along. After my execution my soul became trapped in this house, waiting for the right person to come along and take my place, setting me free to be the deity that I long to be. No one would live here until your parents moved to town and brought you. I kept my eye on you, waiting for the right moment but you moved away, decades passed once again and Lo and behold, you came back! Now it is finally time. The transition will be complete upon you doing just one thing.”
“What’s that?” My voice quivered.
He beamed: “Touch my round bottom, ha haha…”
He turned around and jiggled his ample bottom in front of me. I tried to look away but I was so weak and my body seemed to be functioning independently of me. I wanted to resist but my hand wouldn’t heed my commands. Slowly my hand raised and traveled towards the freaky old man’s jiggling cheeks. Just as I was about to touch them he stopped jiggling. His cheeks opened up and clamped down upon my hand. Holy shit what a grip. I couldn’t break free. The whispers became shouts then screams: callipygous! callipygous! callipygous!
The man dragged me by my hand towards the dryer. I pleaded and cried but to no avail as he pulled me into the wall and then everything went black.
I don’t know how long ago that was. I know that I’m trapped in this house. I haven’t seen another soul for what seems like quite a long time. I’ve heard some people rustling around outside for the past couple of days, talking about flipping the house for a nice price, something about a young family wanting to move in. A family with a young child.
I’ve been working on my dance moves and my backside has grown quite firm. If I’m stuck in this existence I might as well become a deity… bring on the new tenants. callipygous! callipygous! callipygous!
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