Fergus MacDuff

Oct 18, 2018

For as long as I can remember, the name “Fergus MacDuff” has been a part of my consciousness. When I was a child, my parents used the name as a threat or motivation for correction. “If you don’t clean your plate, Fergus MacDuff will get you. Clean your room or Fergus MacDuff will find you in the night.” As kids, we imagined old Fergus MacDuff lived under our beds, his long, dirty fingers grasping for our ankles every time we went to turn in for the night. Most of the time we would run to our beds and take a long dive onto the safety of the mattress, relieved we avoided another murderous, grasp by Fergus MacDuff.

The reality was Fergus MacDuff didn’t live under our beds but, rather, in an old hovel a block from the abandon gas station, a quarter of a mile from our house. At least that’s what all the kids at school said. We were all very aware of the dilapidated Fergus MacDuff house that sat in the middle of the overgrown plot of land we had to pass when we walked to the ball field. People would tell stories about seeing Fergus MacDuff standing in the shadows of his porch, watching all of us kids playing across the street. Some people said they saw him clutching a butcher knife. Ginny Blair said she saw him holding a chain saw. Troy Bolin claimed he once crept up the weedy pathway to Fergus MacDuff’s door, only to find him sitting on his porch pulling feathers off of a dead, bloody chicken. No matter the variety of stories, one detail was always consistent. Everyone claimed they saw old Fergus MacDuff wearing a dress. Why that old man would wear a dress, I couldn’t imagine but that was the thing about him the creeped me out the most.

In sixth grade, my best friend was Dewey Milk. Yes, that was his real name and no, you couldn’t come up with a new name-joke that Dewey hadn’t heard a million times before. For three or four years, Dewey Milk and I were inseparable. We always pretended we were Mulder and Scully only, in our fantasy world, I was Mulder and Dewey always wanted to be Agent Scully. He always said it was because of his red hair but I knew he had more personal reasons. Dewey Milk and I would travel the neighborhood investigating all rumors of paranormal activity. It was usually just blowing the lid off crazy tales we heard around town like Mrs. Stallings’ possessed cat or the space alien someone said the Berrier’s were hiding in their dairy barn. We never really found anything, of course, but we thought we were making some sort of difference to the safety of the neighborhood. It was all just innocent fun. Innocent, that is, until one day when Dewey Milk suggested we climb the back fence of the abandon gas station, crawl through the weeds and get our own view of Fergus MacDuff.

Sometimes in life you do things you would normally find so terrifying, you just have to shut your mind off and do ’em. Like pulling off an old band-aid. Don’t think about it, just do it. That’s how I felt about Dewey Milk’s suggestion. I said “yes” without thinking much about it and I told him we should do it immediately, since it was starting to get dark and I knew in a few more minutes my mom would be calling me in for dinner. But, really, I just wanted to get moving before I talked myself out of it.

We scaled the gas station fence and soon found ourselves, on our stomachs, in five feet of weeds. The sky was that deep blue glow which happens right before everything goes completely black dark. Dewey Milk was right next to me and I was sure he would be able to hear the thumping of my heart, if it wasn’t for the pulsing screams of the cicadas. We laid there for what seemed like two hours. I wasn’t exactly sure what we were looking for. We stared at the silhouette of the old shack.

“I think I see him,” Dewey Milk said in a low whisper that scared the shit out of me.

“Where?” I asked. I couldn’t see anything but black.

“Right there in the middle,” Dewey Milk said. “See? It’s a window. You can see a little orange glow coming from it.”

I stared at the scraggly black building for a few moments. I’d been looking at the remaining light from the sky but when I let my eyes adjust to the darkness of the old shack, I, too, could see a glow coming from what looked like a window. It was the first time I really thought about what we were doing and, at that moment, I realized I didn’t want to do it.

“We gotta go back, Dewey,” I said. “My mom’s gonna bust my ass.”

“It’s too late, Mulder” Dewey said. “We’re in this too deep.”

Dewey Milk was right. We were engaged. It was too late to abort the mission. And, before I could agree, I heard a whimper come from him, then a low, gurgling, choking sound. Before I could ask if he was okay, I felt cold, leathery fingers grab the shirt at the back of my neck and pull it tight. I couldn’t tell what was happening but I could feel my entire body being lifted from the ground. I looked over at Dewey and could barely see him as he looked behind me. I knew from the panic on his face, the bony fingers which had me in their grasp, belonged to none other than Fergus McDuff.

The next few minutes moved super fast. I don’t remember moving from the cover of the weeds to inside the old shack but, in the blink of an eye, there we were sitting in front of a small, soot-covered fireplace. I assumed we were in the living room of Fergus McDuff. It was difficult to determine where we were though. In every inch of the house was piled boxes and books and paper and trash and mounds and mounds of shit. How anyone could live in that environment, I don’t know. It smelled like old water, old food and dead animals. No telling how many bodies of mice, rats, possums, raccoons, and, who knows what else, were rotting under the piles of garbage. It was sometimes impossible to tell if we were indoors or outdoors. I guess I’m still not sure. I looked at Dewey Milk sitting next to me and noticed he, too, was scanning the contents of the room while at the same time trying to figure out if there might be some miracle way of darting out of the room.

I could see the outline of Fergus MacDuff sitting in a chair in the dark. I could hear the clunking of metal which I eventually recognized as the sound of a spoon in a can. Was Fergus MacDuff eating while holding us prisoner? After a few minutes, an empty can of corned beef hash was flung out of the darkness and hit me on the bottom of my shoe. I heard a hacking cough in the middle of the void, the crinkling of paper and chewing noises. Dewey Milk reached over and touched me on the knee and pointed at the fireplace. On the mantle, I could see twenty or thirty little handmade dolls lined up in a row. They were crudely made but each one had it’s own distinctive look. Skinny dolls, fat dolls, boys with glasses, girls with braces, one doll in a wheelchair, just a lot of different dolls. I looked at Dewey Milk and he shrugged. I knew what he was thinking. What would this creepy old man be doing with all of these dolls? I was thinking something else. Why did Fergus MacDuff bring us here and what was he going to do with us?

After about forty five minutes of sitting on the dirt floor in front of the fireplace, I had had enough. “Can we go home?” I asked. “My mom and dad are going to be worried and they’re going to start looking for me.” I waited for a response from the dark and heard only a guttural noise. I couldn’t figure out if Fergus MacDuff was clearing his throat or laughing at me.

“Ginny!” Dewey Milk whispered.

“Ginny?” I whispered back. Dewey Milk pointed at one of the dolls on the mantle. It was a doll with curly brown hair and big, wire glasses, almost as big as her entire face. He was right. The doll looked like Ginny Blair. In fact, I suddenly recognized another doll. The one with braces was Carol Thornton. And there was Ray Beale. Johnny Brooks was there, Reneé Kincaid, and the wheelchair doll was definitely Kimmy Morgan.

Dewey and I looked at each other with wide eyes. We recognized our entire class there on top of Fergus MacDuff’s fireplace. I could feel tears pooling in my eyes. I was terrified and I wanted to get out of that creepy house. I scanned the room for an exit opportunity.

It was hard to see anything through the piles of trash but I noticed an open door in the room across from the living room. That was my big chance. I caught Dewey Milk’s eyes and subtly ran a pointed finger across the floor toward the open door. I counted in my mind, ready to dash toward freedom. Five… four… three… two… one…

Suddenly, a large pile of trash moved in front of me and blocked the open door. No. It wasn’t a pile of trash after all. It was Fergus MacDuff. The glow from the fire let me see Fergus for the first time. He was like a mountain. His hair and beard looked like the weeds we hid in outside his house. His face was wrinkled and looked like it was made of an old horse saddle. A wet stream of tobacco juice ran down the corner of his mouth. He reached over my head and, for the first time, I noticed the dress everyone talked about was actually an old kilt. Like the one I saw in a book about Scotland at the school library. Only, this one looked like it hadn’t been washed in at least 100 years.

I looked up at Fergus MacDuff and he grasped for a doll on the mantle. Holding his arm at a 90 degree angle he danced the doll over his arm and made squeaky noises. The doll was chubby with bright red curly hair. I immediately recognized it as the doll version of Dewey Milk. Fergus MacDuff cackled with a phlegmy laugh. He was obviously very entertained at his weird little puppet show. He slowly handed the doll to Dewey Milk but when Dewey reached out to take it, Fergus MacDuff quickly tossed it into the fire where it ignited into a ball of flame. Fergus MacDuff laughed with an even bigger cackle of phlegm.

I scanned the fireplace for my doll. I knew I was the next star of Fergus MacDuff’s show. I was a lanky girl with a short, bob hair style and tomboy clothes. But none of the dolls looked anything close to me. It didn’t make sense to me. Why would everyone else in our class be there on his fireplace mantle in doll form but not me? I turned to look at Fergus MacDuff and he stared down at me like he knew what I was thinking. His bony fingers moved down between his legs. He fondled around in the old leather pouch on the front of his kilt until he opened it. He reached inside and pulled out a crushed, misshapen doll. He ran his fingers over the doll a bit until it smoothed out and he handed the doll to me.

He started laughing the biggest laugh yet and he turned and walked into the dark part of his house and closed a door. Dewey Milk and I immediately ran to an exit door and kept running as fast as we could toward my house, the laughter of Fergus MacDuff fading into an echo behind us.

When morning came, I found myself questioning whether my experience with Fergus MacDuff the night before was real or a dream. I wanted to ask Dewey Milk, but his mom said he went with his grandparents to a church function. My dad was sitting at the breakfast table reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee. I asked him what he knew about Fergus MacDuff.

 “Fergus MacDuff?” He asked, surprised. “Well, honey, I think you’re old enough to know the truth about Fergus MacDuff. There’s no real Fergus MacDuff. I mean, there was a Fergus MacDuff. Long time ago. He was a custodian at the school you go to but somebody said he was inappropriately… well, you know… interacting with some of the kids. He was fired and he just went away by himself. Everyone started using his name as a kind of boogie man, you know? “Last one to the porch will be killed by Fergus MacDuff!” It started out as something funny but I guess it just became silly. Your mom and I always did it in a joking way. I don’t know, maybe it went too far. Anyway old Fergus MacDuff died ten years before you were born so there’s no way he’s ever going to get you.”

I never talked to my parents about the night Dewey Milk and I spent in Fergus MacDuff’s creepy living room. It was a secret Dewey and I locked away in our own minds. We never even discussed it ourselves.

Even though we were so close, eventually we drifted apart. Dewey’s parents moved to Nevada and we wrote each other letters for a year but that stopped eventually. There was no email or Facebook then so it was easy to just gradually lose touch.

The last time I heard from Dewey Milk was five years ago after my husband Alan and our son Daniel drown in a boat accident while on a fishing trip. Dewey heard about it from his sister and called me to tell me how sorry he was. We both cried together on the phone and promised we would soon get together. But we never did.

Then, I heard last week that Dewey Milk was on a business trip in Los Angeles and, along with twenty-two other people, died in a hotel fire. I was devastated. I was also haunted by that night when Fergus MacDuff tossed Dewey’s doll into the fireplace. I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe that had something to do with Dewey’s death. And it made me wonder the whereabouts of the doll Fergus gave to me. I hadn’t seen it in thirty years or so. Last I remembered, I put it in a cigar box my dad gave me and I stored it in my attic.

I decided to dig out that cigar box and take a look at the creepy old doll. I went into the attic and moved piles of boxes and other stored items. For a second, it reminded me of the piles of junk in Fergus MacDuff’s living room. I found an old box of toys and mementos from my elementary school days and I pulled off the tape. It was mostly dusty, plush toys, softball shirts and gloves and sports cards. I cleared away the layers of memories until I finally located the wood cigar box. I remember wrapping the box with rubber bands, ribbons and strings which I pulled and cut off. I opened the box expecting to see the crude, straw doll, but I was horrified.

The doll Fergus MacDuff had given me was gone. In its place were two others: one unmistakably Alan, my husband, dressed in his fishing gear, and the other, a small boy with bright blond curls, was Daniel. The stitching on their mouths was crude and uneven but I immediately knew it was them.

Frantically, I dug through the cigar box, scattering its contents across the attic floor. I turned over every toy and scrap, but my doll was nowhere to be found. I had sealed this box myself thirty years ago, hadn’t I? How could these dolls have gotten in? Where was mine? Was there some way Fergus MacDuff could have reclaimed the doll? How could he and if so… why?

I shoved the box back into its hiding spot and turned to leave. As I stepped onto the creaky stairs of the attic, I froze.

Behind me, in the darkness, came a faint, phlegmy laugh. The same laugh I hadn’t heard in thirty years.

©2016 Rick Baldwin. All Rights Reserved.

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE – This story is under the full copyright of the author who gives permission for royalty-free performance/readings of the story for non commercial purposes. This story must not be changed or altered in any way without permission of the author. Any performance of this story must credit the author, Rick Baldwin. This story may not be reprinted without permission of the author.)

The Old Lockhart House

Oct 18, 2018

(Based upon true events.)

I come from a very rural part of East Tennessee. It ain’t “the sticks,” since there’s a large city twenty minutes away, but a person could still get lost on the winding country roads surrounding our house. It’d take someone familiar with the area to help you get back out to civilization.

Behind our house, a steep incline led to an old sawmill operated by Elmer Nicely. The train tracks ran right alongside Elmer’s mill, and when a train passed through — approximately once an hour — our house windows would tremble for a good ten minutes. Elmer slaughtered hogs there, too, so it was nice when the train passed by, masking the squeals coming from his small wood slaughterhouse.

A one-lane gravel road cut between our house and the sawmill. I had seen cars pass through at all hours, but I had never ventured far down that old road. It seemed intimidating to me. The trees and kudzu had overgrown, and the road was a path into a dark tunnel of leaves, vines, sticks, and dust. I knew people lived down that road, but not personally. They were reclusive country folk who preferred to keep to themselves, and I wasn’t one to go messing with them.

As I grew older, I would occasionally take walks along the gravel road. The road passed by the sawmill and the slaughterhouse, then curved left and crossed the railroad tracks. My first time past the tracks I couldn’t recognize anything. It was as if I had stepped into a secluded, backwood village. There were occupied, rusted trailers tucked away in the brush, and old houses constructed from scrap wood, plastic, and cardboard. A small creek ran behind them, one I’d never seen before. Every other house seemed to have an old, mangy hunting dog tied to a tree or a decaying doghouse. The entire area sent shivers down my spine, making my hair stand on end.

Just past the shacks, an overgrown cornfield stood tall. Perched on a wooden post was a pitiful scarecrow, its only arm raised as if attempting to hitchhike its way out of the desolate landscape. Strangely, someone had dressed the scarecrow in a burlap kilt, complete with a corncob kilt pin.

Nestled beside the cornfield, far from the main road, was a decrepit three-story white house. Every window was shattered, and a machete would be required to cut through the dense brush to reach the front door. Despite its dilapidated state, the house still held an air of grandeur among the shacks. It must have been a magnificent home in its heyday, and I couldn’t help but be curious about its history.

The following day, I shared my discovery with some school friends. One of them remarked, “That’s the old Lockhart house. I’ve heard it’s haunted.” Although neither of us believed in ghosts, we couldn’t deny the eerie atmosphere surrounding the place. I was intrigued by the story but unsure of where to find more about its background. I knew of some Lockharts around school and figured they didn’t live there anymore. Or did they?

Weeks later, I brought up the topic again, and someone behind me burst out laughing. It was Chris Mullins, one of the school football stars — good-looking, a nice guy, one of the few jocks who would ever talk to someone like me.

“That’s an excellent make-out place,” he said. “Take a girl there, make her feel scared, then tell her you’ll protect her. She’ll do almost anything you ask her to.”

I didn’t believe Chris Mullins needed a haunted house to persuade a girl to do anything he wanted, but it was good advice anyway. “I’m taking Jenny Quarles to that house this Friday after the game,” he said. “The only thing she should be afraid of is what’s in my pants!” We all laughed.

That Friday night, on the eve of Halloween, the football game was against one of our fiercest rivals. We won easily, and the celebrations continued into the night. However, I decided to head home early. The wind had picked up, and the full moon was obscured by rapidly moving clouds. I couldn’t shake the thought of Chris’s cryptic remarks about the Lockhart house. Perhaps I should drive by and check on them. I wondered if he had the guts to actually go through with it. I would drive out, circle past, and head home.

I came across the old gravel road just as a distant train horn echoed in the air. By the time I reached the curve and the crossing, the train was barreling towards me, so I waited. Once it passed, I sat for a moment in the deep silence that follows a train’s passage. I drove on past the trailers and shacks, up to the cornfield, and I noticed something peculiar. The scarecrow was gone. Its weathered and splintered post remained, but the figure was nowhere to be found. Perhaps it had toppled over, I thought. Or perhaps Chris had taken it down as part of his plan to frighten Jenny.

Ahead, I noticed a car pulled off the road in front of the house, but there was no one inside. I cautiously passed by, peering through the window. The front and back seats were empty. Surely Chris wasn’t brave enough to take her inside. Or foolish enough.

I pulled over, killed the engine and lights, and rolled down the window. The air was filled with the scent of decaying leaves, motor oil, and damp soil. The moon, now completely obscured by clouds, cast everything into a deep indigo darkness.

If you’ve never heard a hog’s death scream at midnight, it’ll send shivers down your back. It’s worse when you realize the sound you just heard wasn’t a hog at all. It was human. And it was coming right toward you.

Jenny Quarles burst from the brush, tried to open my locked passenger door, then leapt onto the hood, pounding the windshield like she meant to break through. It took me several seconds to realize it was her. I jumped out. She threw herself into me, legs giving out, still screaming. I tried to calm her, asking what had happened. She couldn’t speak, just grabbed my hand and pointed toward the Lockhart house. She could only say “Chris,” over and over, pulling me that direction.

A small path had been trampled through the weeds, and she dragged me along it. It all happened too fast to think, though nowadays I can’t believe I ever followed her in there. We stumbled through the brush until we came to a clearing under some twisted trees. Jenny pointed and screamed again.

On the ground lay a scattering of straw soaked in blood. Hanging from one of the trees was Chris Mullins — his throat cut from ear to ear, and stuck right in the middle was what looked like a corncob kilt pin.

I grabbed Jenny’s arm and ran. When she tripped, I dragged her, both of us crashing through vines and briars until we reached the car. We tore out of there and drove to my house, where we called the police and her parents.

It was months before Jenny could tell what had happened that night. She and Chris had left the game and stopped at a store where his brother worked and sold them beer. Chris joked that he wanted to take her to his house, then drove to the Lockhart place, saying that’s where he lived. They sat on the car hood, drank a couple of beers, and made out under the moonlight.

After a while, Chris suggested they walk up to the house. Jenny didn’t think that was such a good idea, so Chris made a bet with her. Jenny had to agree to go to the house if Chris could hit the old scarecrow with all four of their empty beer bottles. Even in the dark, Chris nailed it. Each bottle landed squarely on target, the last one almost taking off the old scarecrow’s head.

Jenny reluctantly went to the dark old house with Chris, and after they got under the trees, Chris began trying to scare her by running into the old cornfield and then running back out. At one point, he didn’t come back out. Jenny thought he may have snuck back to the car just to spook her. She wandered her way back to the car, through the maze of the thicket, and, not finding Chris, she sat on the hood of the car and drank another beer. When the light of the train cut through the blackness, she once again made her way to the side of the house, and it was there she found Chris Mullins hanging from the tree.

On Halloween night, hardly anyone dared to let their kids trick-or-treat. People stayed home, locking their doors tightly, fearing that a killer was on the loose. It was the first time I had ever seen my parents lock their doors.

Around nine o’clock that night, a friend called to say some of the guys from the football team planned to burn the Lockhart house down at midnight. A little after twelve, I drove down the gravel road. The sky ahead glowed orange. When I crossed the tracks, I could smell smoke and see flames flickering high above the trees. The old Lockhart house was fully engulfed. No cars, no people. Just fire.

And, to my surprise, silhouetted against the bright orange light of the fire, hung that old scarecrow; kilt around its waist, arm stretched out, and head held high.

©2016 Rick Baldwin. All Rights Reserved.

(COPYRIGHT NOTICE – This story is under the full copyright of the author who gives permission for royalty-free performance/readings of the story for non commercial purposes. This story may not be changed or altered in any way without permission of the author. Any performance of this story must credit the author, Rick Baldwin. This story may not be reprinted without permission of the author.)