The Beast of Fort Meade (a short story)

Note:

I hadn’t intended to put this story online yet. But I recently entered it into a short story competition Macabre Monday, and got second place.

So here it is The Beast of Fort Meade.

The theme for this competition was to make some type of twist on proprioception— a person’s internal sense of space, how they’re oriented to their surroundings.

Enjoy.

***

Knock. Knock, knock, Slap.

A palm plants itself on my front door, two strokes before dinner. Five smudged fingerprints squeak their way down the frosted glass. A man’s palm.

“They’re after my wallet!”  

I wince. I thought my slide into the hallway’s side alcove had been subtle.

“Who?” I mutter.

“The Muggers! Three of them!” his voice breaks. “Been following me since Winchester Corner.”

I release a long breath and pull aside the curtain with my pointer finger. This stranger is a well built kid. Enlisting age. Frantic eyes. Pacing up and down my wooden porch. Glancing down my all-but-black front pathway.  Clasping and unclasping his fists.

Would you let him in?

Think about the longshot he’s taking here if this is legit. Well and truly cornered himself if I don’t pull through. I’d love to think some Samaritan would do the same for me if roles were reversed. He picked the right house. The rest of my street is all army wives and pensioners. I’m his only shot tonight.

                                                                         ***

Theory One: Mitch Hedgerow

Most folks around here have big opinions. They’ll tell you they know all about The Beast of Fort Meade.

They don’t.

They clink glasses over each new body that turns up and chat about his past as if it’s some urban legend. As if it’s some fun TV drama to swap theories over. That business makes me ill, but their worst sin is the advice they throw around to people who are only just hearing about The Beast. Like he’s something you can understand.

Nine bodies in the space of three months can testify, that ain’t possible.

I’m not gonna do that to you. The beast can’t be understood any better than a woman’s mind. The best we can do is make comparisons.

My trade is teaching boxing up at the Barracks, so fist-fighting’s the only tool I’ve got to make any kinda sense of things.  

The Beast of Fort Meade goes about his work like a good prize fighter.

He’ll twitch his shoulder—a dead ringer for the start of a stiff jab.

Naturally you’ll duck or counter.

He’ll crouch down real low, and wind up to the left.

A body shot coming for sure! But then it never comes.

Is any of this making sense?

I guess what I’m tryna say is, The Beast creates a dilemma for you.

Do you swing on that jab, when you know it might not be real? Cause if you take that approach all night, you’ll be exhausted by the end of round three!

But if you don’t respect any of his punches. The ones that are real will leave your nose crunchier than a punnet of eggs that got packed in your shopping bag underneath your week’s-worth of meat!

This is all just analogy though. I doubt The Beast ever had the guts to set foot in a boxing ring. Like I said, The Beast of Fort Meade can’t be understood.

                                                                             ***

I let him in.

Yea it’s dumb, but I like to go about my day calling myself a good person. Keeping that door locked wouldn’t have let me do that. Shoot me.

He does a good job of making me feel like I made the right call. Turns back to the door the moment he’s inside, latches the deadbolt and even the security chain. Is that what you call those things?

He doesn’t stop there either. I’m about to take back my charity when he heads right into my lounge, but he comes back seconds later and makes a similar dive into the front bedroom. This time I follow him and see he’s simply pulling the curtains shut.
Finally, he turns to me and runs a palm over his black hair. “You’re a Godsend.” He buckles onto his knees and bows his crown. “Not many would be brave enough to take this gamble.”

“Not many would associate the word bravery with my name…” I mutter.  

Suddenly he seems to look at me properly for the first time. I take a proper survey of him as well. He’s in the Barracks Khaki. His buzzcut has grown out by about six weeks. A pang of jealousy pricks me. Mine never made it past that duck down sheen.

“Bravery ain’t just reserved for jarheads with a hardon for gun fire, y’know?” He says this with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and that’s as far we get on the topic. I never do catch his full name. But by the end of this short exchange, I understand this man on a deeper level than my own little brother.

Suddenly he picks up his nose, points it to the ceiling and sniffs in three hungry drags of air, “We sharing a chicken roast dinner tonight?”

A burst of laughter escapes me, he throws me a wink, but by the time he lets the faux entitlement drop from his expression, my attention is consumed by the front door again. My limbs fill with concrete.

Two, then three sticky palms are pressed against the glass. Something steel taps, tink, tink, tink, and before I know it sharp frosted shards are exploding across my hallway rug.  

My new friend is in the lounge before the uniformed arm that follows the glass has patted its way up to the deadbolt.

“No get in here!” I yell. “To the panic room!”

                                                                             ***

Theory Two: Beth Birch

Now this is all coming second hand from my ex-husband’s stepson, so take everythin’ I say with half a gram of salt, but I hear The Beast used to live on the Barracks.

I hear they marked him as a real psycho from day one.

And not even the type of psycho you want in the infantry! He wasn’t your standard chest beating Rambo type. They say he was a small guy. Used to clean his gun way too much. Would never join in with the rest of the boys when the bottles got uncorked. Sometimes they’d come in and catch him whispering out loud to himself in his cot.

They say one of the more clued-up Lieutenants found a way to discharge him before the crazy bugger took someone out Full Metal Jacket style.  

They say, he never got over that slight. They say every one of his murders was a way of getting back at the US Army.  

Now, I know what you’re probably gonna say. Here in Fort Meade, what citizen ain’t attached to the US Army in some way? Throw a dart at a crowd and you’ll be able to draw that link.

Idunno though. It makes sense to me. With all the kids who go through that Barracks, it’s only a matter of time before one of the eggs they crack turns out to be rotten.

I just wish they’d ship them out to some other town when they find one!

                                                                             ***

My front door slams open, and I never hear them close it. I think they must have split up based on all the bumping and banging I hear.

Taunting voices fill my hallways, up the stairs and into each bedroom. “Mikey, Mikey, Mikey, you can’t hide from us forever!”

I draw in a long breath and look across the dim, cupboard sized saferoom with gritted teeth. There’s six inches of steel between me and the kitchen tiles where I know my home invaders will end up standing in a few minutes, but I’m suddenly occupied by a more immediate threat.

“Mikey?” I ask. “These ‘muggers’ know your friggin’ name?”

Pounding steps thud down the stairwell behind the saferoom. I shudder as they advance across the hallway and echoing boots cross the tiled kitchen floor.

“Hey boys, get in here.”

 A palm slaps the outer face of the faux- cupboard we’re bailed up behind.

My new friend—Mikey I guess?—slumps against the wall and slides all the way to the ground. He shakes his head. “Don’t worry. As long as they can’t get through the door, we’ll be safe.”

“Safe? Yea, they’ll clean out my entire house. But at least you’ll be nice and safe!” I let him feel what I think of him with a crunched nose. “How do you know these spooks?  Are they buddies of yours?”

The self-pitying pout on his lips makes me want to use violence, but I restrain myself long enough to hear him out.   

“They ain’t here to steal. They’re here for me—”

On cue, a hand taps on the door and in sing-song cadence pleads, “C’mon Mikey, we wanna give you the benefit of the doubt that you ain’t really deserting us right now. But this…this ain’t helping your case.” He caps off his line with whichever sharp steel object he used to break through my front door. He taps tick, tick, tick then proceeds to scrape it down the metal door with chalkboard slowness.

A second deeper voice chimes in. The realization that these kids are all sub-twenty years old somehow adds to the illness in my belly.  “It’s perfectly fine if you couldn’t cut it at Fort Meade Mikey!” he says. “But you don’t just get to just leave us like this! We didn’t sign up, to protect a public like you. You’ve gotta give us the chance trim off the fat!”

Mikey rolls his eyes and raises two palms towards me. “Trust me, this is all going to be ok. It’s a Sunday night. They’ve gotta be back for morning drills!”

I release the most humourless scoff of my lifetime. “That bloke is talking about trimming your fat right now buddy! You really think we’re dealing with a sane crowd here?”

“You don’t get it,” he says with a sigh. “If there’s one thing these goons value…it’s their protocol.”

Despite my growing desire to feed this stranger to his pursuers. This information does bring me a modicum of relief. Relief that lasts right up until a burning scent creeps beneath the door. The chicken roast.

Another sage assurance waits on the edge of Mikey’s lips. “Hey relax guy. As long as they’re out their chanting. We’ve got more than enough air to breath in here.”

“Oh so I just let my house burn down in the meantime?”

He shrugs. “A house is a house. If you’re filleted by sun up. Your precious property ain’t gonna mean much to you is it? Just stick it out till their curfew.” I’m knocked breathless by how genuinely annoyed my protests seem to be making him.

There are thick rolls of blackened smoke wafting under the door now. The chants from outside continue to sing as if encouraging the burning onward. “Shit I’m…” I splutter. “I’m feeling a little faint. How are they standing out there in that? How are they still…” cough, cough. “Chanting!”

“Who them?” Mikey, starts to laugh. “You think they need to breath oxygen?”

                                                                 ***

Theory Three: Dr Fraser Alec Albanese

Contrary to local reports from tabloids and anecdotes, there is a wealth of emerging literature on Duplicus Albasis, colloquially know as The Beast of Fort Meade.

The beast does not have the signature black beard, dripping with saliva that has oft been associated with him. The eyes from hell, the canines of a sloth bear. All of that nonsense is fear mongering. Though as I’ll explain, perhaps not entirely grounded in imagination.

Duplicus Albasis in fact, has no physical form that is visible to the naked eye.  

The BOFM has been identified as an airborne virus, who procreates through a novel evolutionary adaptation this researcher is, frankly, fascinated by!

Its spawning mechanism requires decomposing hosts to repopulate. However, unlike its spike protein cousins, Duplicus Albasis has no biological mechanism to kill its infected host.

In a similar vein to the Cordyceps Fungus or Toxoplasmosis which infect the neurology of caterpillars and felines alike, delivering them to a secondary death at the hands of a natural predator, Duplicus Albasis attacks the natural survival mechanisms of a mammal.

As many readers may know. Human brains are adapted to survive in a hunter-gatherer environment. We are tuned in to see eyes in dark surfaces, sense danger at the first sign of sound at night.

Often these cues can be deceptive, mistaking a hanging coat for the shape of an intruder, however, the cost of being wrong in such cases is much lower than the survival benefits of overreacting, therefore we carry these reactions into the twenty-first century.

Duplicus Albasis capitalizes on these mechanisms, hijacking them often to the point of full-scale hallucinations. The virus fabricates a threat in its host’s immediate environment. Providing the target’s mind with false proprioceptive leads, causing them to believe there is an immediate threat in their midst, meanwhile desensitizing or diminishing the genuine threat of everyday dangers this host would otherwise be savvy to.

If undetected this commandeering of the senses can stay with a victim for up to twelve months until the host eventually terminates by their own hand. Walking in front of a bus while fleeing a non-existent Jaguar, forcing themselves to vomit to the point of no return under the delusion that they’ve swallowed some poison that carries some taboo too extreme to admit consumption. The list of these tragic instances goes on too long to include here.

This sad phenomenon is known among researchers as “Surviving your way into the grave.”

While Duplicus Albasis found popular awareness through the publicity of The Beast of Fort Meade—a miscategorized campaign of a hunting serial killer—cases have been found in over two dozen northern hemisphere locales. No recorded cases have been confirmed in East Asia or Baltic regions to date however.

                                                                        ***

One palm, then three, back to one again, then two more. The last were Mikey’s. Slapping against my front door. Slapping against my safe room. Trying to reach me. Trying to bargain with me.  

Now my eyes are open, I can see it was just the one palm with me all this time. A mature palm tree outside my bedroom window. Funny the way the brain twists things around. I got one detail right, the word palm, but the rest so wrong.

 I’m up here on the second story where I can see the ocean from my bed, and the upper leaves of a tropical canopy. Nothing can reach me here. Not even The Beast.

There must have been a storm last night based on the amount of water droplets accumulated on that glass and the broken frond being held up against it by the wind. I must have heard the palm banging against the glass all night, trying to get in.

Glad I managed to stay in bed this time.

These episodes seem to be getting less severe with each week that passes. I hope they let me stay on until I’m all the way better. I hope they don’t palm me off to some other clinic. I hope they don’t ship me home to the Fort Meade infirmary.  

I’m not so naive to let them do that to me though. I know they think they’ve got me fooled. Coincidence that a Fort Meade Medic just happened to see flames through my window? Just happened to break in on time to save me at the last moment?

No. I’m not so dim-witted. Crazy, but not a fool. I’ve been waiting for them to cash in on that trust since my first day here. Shipping me out here to a special beachside rehab unit? Pfff. Funded by the US Army no less. Give me a break.

They’ll never let my time back in the Barracks go. They’ll never accept that I didn’t want to be one of them. Rejected that Uniform.

Of course the can’t chase their retribution publicly though.

That would let the public see that truth. Which would force them to see the truth. They’ll never let that happen.

But don’t worry about me.

I see them.