The only way Mark could keep track of how many people he’d seen get eaten on the corner of Maple and 8th was by counting the video files he’d stored.
There were forty-four, each two or three minutes long, since his mother bought him the camera. It was an expensive DSLR she brought home a week after he'd last seen his father. It still had the pawn ticket on it, and Mark couldn't quite do the math on how many extra shifts she'd have to pull to make up for it. What he knew for sure, though, was she was about to be home even less than usual. It was almost enough to make him give it back. Almost.
He crouched on his bed and looked down on the northwest corner of Maple and 8th from his second-story window. His eyes barely poked above the frame. His left hand gripped the camera, lens against the glass next to his face. His right hand whipped his butterfly knife open and closed, clink-whir-clink, blind and efficient.
"Balisong," his father had called it, his drunk tongue sticking the consonants to the roof of his mouth. He'd smelled like cinnamon mints floating on hospital antiseptic. "Don't tell your mother." He flipped it open with an expert hand. Mark watched, transfixed. His father knew everything.
During the day, the corner was a gray collision of street, sidewalk, and brick storefront. Traffic never stopped there—8th crossed Maple and ended a half-block west of the corner—and pedestrians would jaywalk to avoid that corner. They blindly crossed the boulevard through a rage of horns and cursing drivers, never blinking at the noise. Like they didn't hear a decibel of it.
At night, the double doors of the bar just north of the corner's shadows spat everyone out to lurch and stumble across and down the street. Most of the storefronts had apartments above them, and the renters had mostly learned to sleep through the noise the drunks made. They scattered in all directions, using all of the street and sidewalk to get home. Except the corner of Maple and 8th, where the streetlight always went out just before the bar closed.
No one ever purposefully went near that corner.
That streetlight threw a yellow glow on the wall behind Mark. It flickered, then died. His alarm clock cast the only light left in the room, and it made his Hulk posters and Calvin and Hobbes books look cold, the shadows in his room colder. Kid's stuff, he thought. He shivered.
Given the heat of the day, their corner never warmed up the way it should have in the thick of August. He used to wonder if that was why his father was gone. Mark would have understood, to an extent—he himself couldn't stop complaining about either sweating through his clothes during the day or not being able to feel his toes at night. But his father had always seemed to him to be tougher, able to withstand more than he ever could. They'd camped, he'd chopped kindling and built fires, and even last year, when Mark was eleven, his father had still handled the metal cup of hot chocolate for him until he'd blown it cool enough to drink.
"Careful, now," he'd said to Mark. "Can't bring you home with any scars. Not permanent ones, anyway." He'd winked and tipped his beer upside down over his mouth, exaggerating his enjoyment of the last few drops.
Mark had smiled, drank from his mug.
A stumbling drunk left the bar and stepped toward Maple and 8th, then stopped. On a shaky heel, he one-eightied and headed the other direction. He leaned against a wall and heaved. Mark heard the splatter hit the pavement, saw it splash the drunk's shoes, watched the drunk stumble up the block and around the corner.
The first night with the camera, Mark had taken pictures of the bar's patrons from his window, the flash off. He imagined himself trying to catch his father down there, maybe returning to the scene of the crime like on all the TV shows. Without the flash, he couldn't pick up much of anything, but in the shadow on the corner—he didn't know what to call it. He'd never seen anything like it.
Mark looked over the camera at the corner with his own eyes, saw the blank absence of light under the streetlamp. Another drunk left the bar, teetered, turned toward the corner.
Mark hit the RECORD button, dropped the knife, and slammed his window open. The drunk looked up. Mark clicked the flash on and the bright LED whitewashed the street in soft light. The drunk shielded his eyes with his hand and lurched forward, slurred at Mark.
"What—"
Mark watched it happen over the top of the camera. Without the view screen, the drunk looked as though he'd fallen hips-first toward the shadows and then was swallowed by the darkness under the streetlight. No screams, no blood. He was there, about to ask what the hell that bright light in the window was, and then he wasn't. Mark recorded for a few seconds longer, then the streetlight buzzed back to life and wiped the alarm clock's glow off his walls. He breathed hard, his heartbeat slammed against his chest. He closed his eyes.
Forty-five.
When the adrenaline subsided, he shut his window, quieter this time, glad his mother was out pulling an all-nighter at the diner she ran. If she was home and heard, he would have had to explain himself. She'd ask about the camera, and he'd have to show her. And that wouldn't do.
Mark made sure the file saved, but didn’t watch. No need. He already knew it wasn’t his father, who might go to that bar, might slip out at closing time, might sneak back into the house and wake him up like he used to with another gift he shouldn't tell his mother about.
Like the butterfly knife. An eighteen-inch police-issue flashlight heavy enough to smash the cantaloupe in the kitchen that Mark couldn't let remain round and perfect with all the power of the flashlight in his hand.
Mark's dad had laughed. "Still works, too, I bet." He'd grabbed a smashed piece of melon and chewed it down. "Tasty."
And the prize of the lot: the collapsible baton. Illegal, deadly.
"No fruit smashing with this one. This one is for serious business," he'd said.
"Serious business?"
"Only when you need to make something dead." He'd looked Mark in the eyes, grabbed his cheeks with rough hands. "Promise me. Only when it's you or him."
Mark had nodded, felt the weight of the moment press down on his insides. His father had planted a wood-smoked kiss on his forehead and left him alone in his darkened bedroom.
The memory hurt. He picked the knife back up, watched the streetlight, absently flipped the blade open and closed. Looked at the rest of his father's gifts sitting on his bed. When the streetlight went out again, he'd be ready.
After the first few days without his father, Mark had put the knife and the baton and the flashlight in a box in his closet and tried to forget they were there. It sounded weak when he said it out loud, but in his head, it made perfect sense: looking at those things would make him think about his dad, and thinking about his dad hurt.
Until he'd thought about the bar, and his dad coming out of it. He'd shone the camera down and made the first video, some blurry-faced woman whose impaired balance tipped her into the darkness forever. Mark had caught it on accident. He'd forgotten he was recording and watched the shadows envelop the woman, then stared slack-mouthed at the space where she'd been, tried to understand.
Then he watched the video and screamed. His mother had run into the room, turned the camera off, and when Mark tried to tell her—
"Shh," she'd said. "Just a bad dream."
She'd stayed until the next morning, but he didn't sleep. She tried to call in sick to work.
"I'll be okay, go," he said. "It's fine. I'll sleep."
But he didn't. He watched again. Screamed again, but not as long or loud. He definitely hadn't been dreaming the night before, and that confirmation set a new fear in him: how many more were there? And that led to a much bigger question, much more important to Mark, one that continuing to record might answer.
The shock wore off after the first few videos, but there was always fear. He couldn't get rid of that. He never watched the screen while he recorded, because he was afraid he'd shake too bad to get anything worthwhile. And because it was easier to identify the faces leaving the bar without the camera in the way.
He never saw his father, though. Plenty of people he didn't know, a few he recognized from the neighborhood, but never his dad. Only one option, he thought. His dad certainly wouldn't have just up and left him. That meant he'd been taken by the thing on the corner already. Mark could keep watching, keep waiting, but deep in the most sacred places a twelve-year-old boy kept hidden and safe, he felt his father was already gone.
So, Mark studied.
It had habits. Clockwork, almost. One right when the bar was closing, another a few minutes later. Then Mark went to bed, because there usually wasn't enough traffic on the road to justify watching once the last of the drunks trickled home. When the streetlight was on, and during the day—when the light washed the shadows away—it slept. But when the streetlight went out, it fed.
He thought he might be able to match the way he saw the shadow move to the—thing? Monster? Abomination?—whatever it was he saw in the videos. They never quite matched up, though. Hitting it would be tough. He'd have to have the camera going, the view screen in front of him to see what he was aiming at. And he wasn't strong, he knew. That presented another question. If he hit it with the knife or the baton, would he do any damage?
Maybe, if his science classes made any sense. Centrifugal force. Only one way to find out, and since every night he didn't try was another night he let someone else die—
He wrapped the knife handle tight to the end of the baton, blade open, with several layers of duct tape. Tried it out—whipped his wrist out and the club extended lightning quick. Collapsed it, and then again—swung it like a hammer this time, and the knife's weight and momentum at the end of the extended baton kept his arm swinging down and through his target space. He taped the flashlight to the base of the baton, wrapping that in several layers as well, so that in one hand he'd have his weapon and his light. Together, the assembled parts were heavy. A real tool with a real purpose.
If it could be hurt, that would do it.
Serious business.
He put on his jacket and gloves, armor against the cold, and picked up the weapon. The camera hung around his neck on a strap long enough that he could hold it in front of his face and still see around it, so that he didn't have to take his eye off the real world.
He shut the door on his comic books and model trains. Then out the front, down the stairs and out into the street. He could imagine his mother telling him two in the morning was no time for a child to be roaming the streets, summertime or not. If she'd been home, she'd probably say something like that. But she wasn't, and neither was anyone else to tell him what to do.
Mark didn't feel like a child anymore.
He stuck to the shadows in the corners the sidewalks and buildings made, semi-invisible to drinkers focused on staying upright, and slunk his way to the corner opposite the streetlight. It flickered and died again.
Mark took a step forward and someone walked out of the bar. Keys jingled, the lock turned, and the man looked right at him. The owner, Mark assumed. He'd seen the man leave every night.
They froze and stared at each other. Mark knew he was caught, but couldn't put together a reasonable answer to a non-slurred interrogation. The owner usually walked directly away from the shadows, turning the corner at the end of the block opposite Maple and 8th, but tonight—
He took a few steps in Mark's direction, a question forming on his lips, and then his hips swiveled and he walked toward the thing on the corner.
Mark hit RECORD and walked into the street, focused the lens at the back of the shadow under the broken streetlight. The man walked right into it, without slowing. Mark flipped the LED on and watched, one eye on the screen, the other on the man walking into the darkness.
It was over quickly. Mark heard breathing, fabric on concrete, a taught stretching like chicken skin being pulled from its meat. And then the corner was still.
Forty-six.
And he'd missed his chance. The man was gone, the shadows were deeper than they were just a moment ago, and the second feeding of the night was over.
Mark stopped in the middle of the street and lit the flashlight, combined it with the LED on the camera. He should have been able to see the corner of the building, the junction of sidewalk and wall. Instead, the light shone into the darkness, not terminating on anything, just dissipating like he was pointing the light into the sky.
He cursed once, twice, louder the second time, both words unpracticed and awkward in his young mouth. He looked down at the view screen and played the video:
The man. Darkness. The man half-shadowed, then barely visible, and then—teeth. All around him, sharp and jagged, lining gums rimmed by scaled lips. A fang-lined wormhole in the night. Long scissor-blade bones on either side of the mouth open wide, sharp edges to the street, hooks on the ends. So that the meat can't wriggle free. The scissor-bone teeth mangle the man, fold him in jagged sections. His mouth forms what would have been an "Oomph" of lost air if he could make a sound. The hooks drag the man in deep, and he is bent at dead and broken angles. He disappears slowly, his hands and feet hiding the top of his head. Then darkness.
Mark stopped the video and shivered. The thing was much bigger up close.
He didn't notice that the streetlight hadn't clicked back on. The shadow swelled under the post and reached a tendril toward him. He shivered again, finally looked up, and saw it reaching.
He thumbed the record button and started screaming.
He heard someone shout, "Shut the fuck up, it's two in the morning!"
He didn't. He aimed the camera at the corner, strode forward with purpose, and whipped the knife-end of the baton at the thing he saw in the view screen.
And missed. It retreated, flattened out, then shot toward him. He swung again, and the blade bounced off the thing’s scaled lips. Mark dropped the weapon and it clattered on the asphalt.
The thing blasted out a hot breath tainted with rot. Mark choked on the smell, tried to back up, but a snake-like tongue whipped around his ankle.
He screamed again, this time in fury, and fell to his right, reaching out for his weapon. He wrapped his hand around it and came up again, grinning. The camera kept running.
Mark reared back with his weapon to strike again, tensed his shoulder and then unleashed all the strength he had. The blade hit the thing between two fangs and ripped a gash open. Hot blood splashed. Mark swung again, hitting one of the scaled lips, more blood, and he kept hacking—
"Mark?"
From behind him. Familiar as cinnamon and antiseptic.
Mark turned around. The movement drew his attack up short and the knife broke on the street. The blade bounced up, tumbled, splashed the camera's LED light around the darkness in hard circles. Stuck in his forearm. He didn't notice.
There was his father, not dead.
The man’s face was bruised and his cast-and-slung arm half obscured the detective's badge crooked on the chain around his neck.
An immense joy flooded Mark’s throat and he drew a breath to speak—then didn't feel anything at all when the thing on the corner pulled him in and closed its scissor-blade teeth and broke him in half.
END.
“Video Forty-Seven” was originally featured in macabre-museum.com in 2019
Eli Ryder lives in Coastal Texas, where he teaches college English and is trying to kick a mean donut habit. He stole his M.F.A. from UC Riverside’s low residency program in Palm Desert, CA, and his horror fiction and criticism have appeared in numerous venues online and in print.
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