Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #9), DeYtH Banger [best novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗

birthday, I arrived later than usual. My mom had invited a couple classmates and some cousins over to our house to celebrate, a gesture which I found more tedious than touching—really, I just wanted to spend my birthday sitting and reading and smelling paradise. Eventually, our guests went home, and I made it to the library about fifteen minutes before closing time. That didn’t matter; the workers never checked down there before they locked up. I was free to stay as late as I wished. This particular night, I was devouring the final chapters of an epic adventure; knights, swords, dragons, and the like. I didn’t smell it until I read the final words and closed the book.

 

The once exquisite aroma of that room had turned sour. I sat for a moment, unsettled. Objectively, I could recognize that the smell was actually the same as it had been before—that mixture of citrus and pine. I just perceived it differently, and I didn’t like it anymore. It was the nasal version of an optical illusion; you know, the one that looks like a young woman glancing backward, but all of a sudden you see that it’s really an old woman facing toward you? You can’t unsee that, and I couldn’t unsmell this. The spell was broken.

 

The odor also seemed, for the first time, to be coming from somewhere specific. With a fair amount of trepidation, I stalked around the room, sniffing the air like a crazed canine until I came to a shelf near the back. The shelf was perfectly normal, with the exception of one title—a large, leatherbound cover of solid faded maroon, with one striking black footprint at the top of the spine. This was the source of the smell. I opened the front cover, and saw one sentence scrawled neatly in blood-red ink atop the first page:

Rest your sorrows down, friend, and leave them where they lie.

 

I stared at this sentence, mesmerized, as I began to retreat to my chair. I turned a page. Blank. The smell became stronger. Another page, blank, and the smell grew stronger still. I stopped for a moment, suppressed a gag, and continued walking. Then, as I neared the armchairs, I turned one final page—and there, in the same sinister print, was the last thing I expected to see: my own name. I dropped the book. I began to sprint toward the door, but as I shifted my gaze forward, my heart leapt to my throat and I stopped in my tracks.

The empty chair wasn’t empty anymore.

An aged man in a suit sat before me, one leg crossed over the other, contemplating me with piercing gray eyes and a light smirk. This was all too much. I fell to my knees and expelled the contents of my stomach onto the carpet. I wiped my mouth, staring at my vomit, when I heard the man let out a chuckle.

I stared at him disbelievingly. “Who are you?” I asked, panic in my voice.

The man leapt to his feet, grabbed me gently by the shoulders, and helped me to my chair. He sat, once again, in his own. “I fear we got off to a bad start,” he said, glancing at the pile of sick on the carpet. “The smell . . . it does take some getting used to.”

“Who are you?” I repeated.

“Tonight, you will know hardship like you’ve never before known,” he said. “I come as a friend, offering you refuge from it, and from all other storms which lie ahead.”

I wanted nothing more than to leave at that moment, but I remained seated. I asked him what he was talking about.

“Your mother is dead, my boy. By her own hand, in her kitchen. The scene is gruesome, I must admit,” he said in sorrowful tones, but was there a playful glint in his eye? “Surely you wish to avoid this path. I can show you a safer one.”

My blood ran cold at the horrors this man spoke of, but I did not believe him. “What do you want with me?” I demanded, trying to sound braver than I felt. He laughed, an old, raspy yelp that seemed to shake him to his bones.

“Nothing but your friendship, dear boy,” he said. Then, sensing I found his answer inadequate, he expounded. “I want you to come on a journey with me. My work is noble and you will make a fine apprentice. And maybe, when I’m done”—he sighed tiredly, running his bony fingers through his thin white hair—“maybe then, my work can be yours.”

I stood up, shuffling toward the door but never breaking his gaze. “You’re crazy,” I told him. “My mom isn’t dead. She’s not.”

“See for yourself, if you must,” he said, gesturing toward the door. I threw him a contemptuous glare and bolted for the exit. As my hand closed around the knob, he said my name softly. In spite of myself, I turned around.

“Your road won’t be easy, friend. If it ever becomes too much for you, and I mean ever,” he said, pausing to sweep his hand over the room, “you know where to find me.”

I slammed the door behind me and took the decrepit stairs two at a time. I exited the library, clambered onto my bike, and high-tailed it home. The front door was wide open. I dismounted, leaving my bike in a heap on the ground, and approached the house cautiously. The old man was lying—he must have been. Still, tears began to sting my eyes. Heart pounding, I stepped inside and called for my mother. I heard no answer, so I turned into the kitchen.

To this day, I don’t know why she did it.

I’ve lived in that small town in Maine my entire life, although I’ve kept mostly clear of the public library. Once, in my late 20s, I summoned the courage to step inside. Life was good at that time, and my fear had begun to morph into idle curiosity. Where the door to my basement sanctuary once stood was only a blank wall. I asked the librarian what had become of that basement, though in my heart I knew the answer. There was no basement, she said. There had never been a basement. In fact, if she had her facts correctly, city zoning ordinances prohibited a basement in the area.

 

 

 

 

I’ve been haunted by that sickly-sweet smell, that poisonous blend of citrus and pine, ever since that long ago birthday. When I saw my mother in the kitchen that day, collapsed in a pool of her own blood, I smelled it. When a man claiming to be my father knocked on my college apartment door, begged me for money and beat me to within an inch of my life when I refused, I smelled it. When my wife miscarried our second child, I smelled it, and again when she miscarried our fourth. When our oldest son got behind the wheel of the family Buick completely shitfaced and got his girlfriend killed, I smelled it.

I began to smell it periodically as my wife became sick. She died late last year, and now, I’m alone for the first time in more than half a century. Now, I smell it every day, and it feels like an invitation.

A few months ago, I went back to the library and the small oak door with the ancient handle was there—right where it used to be. My evening walk has brought me past that library every day since, but I haven’t gone inside. Maybe tonight I will. I’m frightened to die, yes, but lately I’m even more frightened to keep living. The old man was right—my road hasn’t been easy, and I doubt it will get any easier.

Rest your sorrows down, friend, and leave them where they lie.

He promised relief. A refuge, he said. Was he right about that too? There’s only one way to find out. After all, I still know where to find him.

Report #1

 by AwaitingDeath

 

 

 

Got a report of a missing husband. He told his wife and family of 6 children that he was going to get his tires changed, but never returned, and this was 12 hours ago. They had purchased another house in a neighboring community, and the relationship with the wife was under pressure, so the wife assumed he was staying at the other house, and claimed he would never kill himself.

 

The strange thing about this report though was that he emptied his personal bank account into his wife's this morning as well. The wife explained this off saying that they recently had a fight about finances, and he agreed that he was bad at money and maybe they should just have a joint account that she controls.

On a hunch, I asked his 14 year old boy if there were any areas in the mountains nearby that his father enjoyed going, and the son identified a road about 10 miles away. It was nearing midnight, but I decided to drive to the top of this old and abandoned forest service road. As I drove through the snow and started to climb the road, I felt a gut feeling that I would 100% find this guy up there either thinking about or already acted out a suicide. The snow-laid gravel road had some sign of travel, but no real indication of how fresh the vehicle tracks could be. As I reached the top of the road after an hour of travel I was honestly surprised that I did not find his black truck.

 

I spent the drive back down thinking about "gut-feelings" and how they are unreliable, but that I somehow felt different about this one. As I traveled up the road, I did notice over a dozen smaller roads branching off, but they were not mapped, and I had already spent too much time on a single occurrence in a busy city with too few police officers. Nonetheless, I decided to check a single of these secondary roads, and about 3/4's of the way down I picked a road at random to check, and sure enough my headlights lit up the back end of a black truck about 100 yards past the first corner. Even if I hadn't memorized the licence plate beforehand, I wouldn't have had to run it - it was clearly his. I radioed that I had found the truck, parked my vehicle, and traveled the 20 feet to his truck with my heart beating like I was doing it at a sprint rather than a normal walk.

 

What I found inside was a mess of brains and blood caused by a self-inflicted shotgun wound under the chin. I'll save you from the description.

 

There was just something about that gut-feeling while traveling this abandoned and quiet mountain road, followed by a sense of being tricked by the gut-feeling, then finding out it was true by discovering such a gruesome scene, having to wait 3 hours next to his truck waiting for body removal, and then to end it all by having to go to the family who was expecting good news to deliver to them the worst news possible, that makes me feel creeped out to this day.