Chapter One

"Okay. It wins. That is the absolute creepiest thing I've ever seen."

Trevor's expression had changed from a severely curious frown to something resembling absolute acceptance. He leaned back from the window we were peeking through and folded his arms non-chalantly across his thin chest.

I opened my mouth to reply but closed it again when I couldn't think of anything to say. He was right. This was the creepiest thing we had ever seen. There's something about a man masturbating to a video of two dogs humping, with the male eventually puking mid thrust (a lovely video, very big on Youtube), that the human brain simply cannot accept as normal behavior.

"Like… that is completely and utterly fucked!" Trevor said, losing his cool.

I wasn't about to mention that it was a little more fucked up that we happened to be spying on a guy masturbating to a video of two dogs humping and vomiting. I tried to make light of the situation.

"Could be worse. He could be slapping the ol' stick around to Two Girls, One Cup."

Trevor looked at me as though I'd just sprouted an alien head out my belly button.

"Fuck, Roxanne!"

We turned back to the window. Yep. There was no doubt about it. Our eleventh grade biology teacher, Mr. Crawbury, had severe issues.

"Ugh." I said after awhile, "It's like I want to look away but can't! I think my brain just imploded on itself."

"I know!" Trevor cried, quickly rubbing his eyes, "I'm just glad we can only see his back."

"Yeah, no kidding."

We stood mesmerized for a few more minutes before I finally managed to drag myself away from the scene of fucked-up-ery and we started to make our way up the street, passing periodically through circles of light under the streetlamps.

"I'm still bored." Trevor said, shoving his hands into the pouch on his hoodie.

It was the whole reason we'd snuck out that night at all. After downing a case and a half of Coca Cola amongst ourselves, we had a serious caffeine high on a warm summer night with absolutely nothing to do. Well, nothing productive anyways. Trevor had come up with the idea of doing one of our town raids and just peeking in on our favorite townspeople and getting up to date on all their going ons. So far we had masturbating science teacher, masturbating prepubescent teenager and drunk homeless guy passed out face first in a pie on a bench. A pretty slow night.

We were walking over the small road bridge that crossed the river and led into the now darkened Granum Woods, commonly mispronounced "Geranium Woods" by the odd tourist who happened through there. Granum Woods was notorious for the fact it harbored drug addicts, drunks and a graveyard, which had once consisted of many a mummified body but had only been used once since the 1800s.

"Oh my God, let's go to Harding's grave!" Trevor cried, stopping in his tracks and grabbing my upper arms. He shook me ever so slightly (and unnecessarily thank you very much) and my hood fell from my head revealing my baseball cap and static-stricken brown hair.

Victor Harding was an urban legend. You know the type I'm talking about, the man with the hook instead of a hand that terrorizes the oversexed couple as they're going at it in the car or the sketchy hitchhiker someone picks up in the dead of night on some abandoned road that ends up being an ax murderer. He was a story, the kind you tell around campfires or at the rare sleepover party to freak out the other kids.

I'd never even seen the guy when he was alive, but every kid of my whacked generation knew his name. Every unexplained creak at night or missing object that just simply could not be found was blamed on Victor Harding.

That uneasy feeling you got when you were walking alone through the woods, like someone was watching you?

Victor Harding.

That breeze you felt from a window that you were certain you didn't leave open?

Victor Harding.

That weird noise you heard in the middle of the night like a dying cow giving birth simultaneously?

It was all Victor Harding.

To be perfectly honest, I used to feel kind of bad for the guy, because it was bad enough to have kids ridicule you, but every adult in the county joined in. Everyone loved to talk about it in this sick kind of way, especially the way he died. It gave everyone a rush and those little goose bumps on your arms, and to be truthful, we were all hard up for a rush.

I pushed Trevor off and frowned down at the ground in contemplation. It was a damn good idea, that was for sure, but I had no serious desire to go skipping gaily off into the dark woods where there was a very realistic chance of getting jumped by a heroin addict and having him butt rape your corpse.

"Come on Roxy! It's perfect! We haven't done it in so long! Please?" Trevor was practically aquiver with excitement. I suddenly had a fleeting thought about how disturbing it was that my best friend was more excited about going to sit near a dead guy than he was about Krispy Kreme doughnuts or puppies. I was suddenly extremely self-conscious about the type of people I hung out with.

"Unless of course, you're scared." He said, looking up innocently from under thick eyelashes.

Dick.

"Of course I'm not afraid, asshole! Let's go." I growled.

I pulled my hood back up over my baseball cap and started stalking determinedly across the bridge.

"Yes!"

Trevor came prancing up behind me. I had the urge to tell him he looked gayer than a butterfly in tights pooping rainbows when he frolicked about like that.

I remember the night I really learned anything about Victor Harding. It was just going on evening and the regular group from the block was sitting on our next door neighbor Linda Romas' porch, sipping off Diet Cokes and Kool-Aid, their tanned bare legs sticking out of shorts in the summer night.

For some reason, parents always find the absolute worst time of day to tell scary stories to their kid. Which one got the bright idea to tell us all the story that would not only become the basis of anything supernatural or exciting in our lifetimes but would also scare the living shit out of us within the next two hours when we had to go to bed?

Victor Harding had been in the news for weeks by then, but he'd originally been known as a missing person before he became a stalker. Victor had a reputation for being somewhat touched according to anyone I could get to talk to me about it. He was known to talk to himself in a squeaky high-pitched voice when he thought no one was listening and he kept to himself mostly (something practically unheard of in the small town of Granum, Alberta). No one remembered ever having shared a beer with him down at The Oasis or ever being invited to visit out at his cabin.

That really should have been their first clue right there. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who lives in a cabin is a whack job stalker, but really, have you ever heard of a real psychotic freak that didn't have a cabin way back in the woods? They are a rare breed those ones. It's like some rule for stalkers:

Thou shalt have a sinister cabin in the wilderness!

Twenty minutes or so later we stood in front of the house in question. The hair on my arms immediately stuck up and I experienced a feeling in my gut somewhat like having to pee while being punched in the stomach; A.K.A. fear.

Victor Harding's house was something of an urban legend in itself. Right after Victor was reported a missing person (the grocer, Clyde Green, reported it having noticed Victor hadn't come in for his regular carton of 2% milk and barbeque sauce in two weeks; something that hadn't happened in the memory of time) the police searched his house (creepy cabin lair is more like it) and supposedly found all this weird shit. Animal parts in the fridge, countless photographs of people around town on the walls, a strange shrine like thing in the closet that no one could quite figure out what it was devoted to and perhaps the most frightening of all, a generous supply of various sized dildos and vibrators in a box in the attic. It was all this among other things. No one could figure out the last time there'd been running water in that place and there was no electricity whatsoever.

I know people who'd probably say that he sounds like a pretty fun guy, if it hadn't been in relation to Victor. But even the strangest of the strange (which was pretty much everyone I hung out with regularly) were afraid of Victor Harding and his house of accumulated oddities.

Linda Romas had looked out over her lawn that night as she absently tipped the silver can in her hand into her mouth.

"You know, I think she killed him."

"What?" I asked.

"I know I would if I were her."

"Who?"

"Really?" My mother asked, "Did they find proof he was stalking her? I mean I know the guy was a little… strange, but if he didn't do anything he doesn't deserve to have his memory sullied like that."

"Who sullied who?"

"Apparently that wall of Polaroids he had had been mainly of her. Tom Earls told me some of them were of her in the shower and when she was sleeping."

"Ugh! When she was sleeping?"

Really mother? Really? You're more disturbed by the fact he took pictures of her when she was sleeping rather than when she was stark naked in the damn shower? That's what bothers you?

"Who was sleeping in a shower?"

Linda and my mother seemed to suddenly realize I was there and turned to look down at me.

"No one, sweetie." My mom said, leaning back on the palms of her hands.

My mother; the always-concerned parent.

My feet squelched in the damp grass as we made our way through, past the cabin. I didn't like turning my back on it to be perfectly honest. I always got the feeling that the building itself was watching me. It's funny how some things can do that to a structure, give it a personality like it's owner's. It wasn't Victor himself, but it had sucked up parts of him and now it sat quietly waiting to exert those parts at the most opportune moment. I didn't want to be there when that day came.

There wasn't any wind to hide the sounds of nature as we hurried on and the eerie stillness added to my already surging peeing-punching feeling. I rubbed my arms and sighed as we finally got out of sight of the cabin. Trevor looked down at me and frowned.

"Hey…Hey!"

I stopped walking as he stepped in front of me and grasped my upper arms again (a somewhat obnoxious habit he seemed to have).

"I didn't think that it really bothered you! We don't have to go Roxy if you don't want to. I was just playing around."

He stared into my eyes for a moment. His eyes looked completely black in the dark. I imagined mine looked the same. I shuddered.

"No it's fine." I said looking away.

It was so not fine! But I wasn't about to abandon our little journey through the LSD forest of magical experiences and admit I was afraid. I knew Trevor wouldn't say anything to anyone, but I hated it when something proved I was really a girl on the inside. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my vagina and all that jazz, but I'd grown up as one of the guys. Being a chick wasn't an option if I wanted to have any respect whatsoever from my friends. Fuck being a woman was so much more complicated than just cramps and shoving a baby down the old canal. You had to be a man too.

He didn't loosen his grip as I tried to pull away. Instead he frowned down at me for a moment than sighed and pulled me into a hug. We weren't really "huggy" people but it wasn't so awkward between us. I didn't feel like the Care Bears were about to launch their demonic little love-spreading selves out from a hole in the ground and turn me into a dress-wearing lollypop-sucking bubblegum princess.

After awhile we pulled away and kept walking. We didn't talk. I was determined to make him as scared as me. If I was sinking, he was going down with me and than there wouldn't even be the slightest chance of blackmail later on.

The moonlight trickled through the tree leaves every few steps, illuminating some leaf or another. I was staring down at my feet admiring this light when something scurried across the top of my shoes. I shrieked, sounding much like a ten-year-old boy whose balls hadn't dropped yet, but when I stopped the shriek kept going.

Trevor stood on one foot looking wildly around him, emitting that ungodly noise.

"What?! Where is it?! Kill it!"

The sudden surge of pure joy I had at the fact Trevor was as big a pussy as me quickly died as I looked up.

"Trev…"

"What? Is it back? Where? Is it on me?!"

"We're here."

He lifted his eyes slowly from the ground and followed my outstretched finger to a single tombstone a few yards ahead of us.