The Diaper Man Page 4

  The sound of slow, deep breathing interrupted his thoughts. His eyes darted around the dim room to find the source. Nothing. He was a ghost. The breathing seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Then there was a shift in the shadows. A moment later Connor heard a heavy, fleshy thud as his bare foot hit the cement floor. Then again, and again until the Diaper Man stepped out into the shaft of fading light.

  Soiled and tattered linen covered his waist and part of his face. His massive, hunched and asymmetrical countenance was difficult to lay eyes upon. He was a freak of nature. His face remained shrouded in mystery as harsh shadow lines cast themselves downward from the light above. But his body, muscular in the arms and shoulders yet neglected and oafish in the midriff, bore years of caked-up filth. The savage man smelled foul and putrid; the rank odor filled Connor's nose from several strides away. It was a wretch-inducing slurry of rotting cheese, stale death, and fresh, loose bowels. Connor’s mouth immediately filled with sick as a thick waft of the stench overwhelmed him. He tried to hold it back but the vomit dribbled out from behind his lips and trickled down his face, eventually plopping down in haphazard piddles and splashes onto his lap, where he began to piss himself with fear.

  The Diaper Man took notice of the spreading stain of wet that grew between Connor’s legs. He cocked his head on an angle like a wild dog twisting its ears to an unfamiliar sound. Connor balled up against the cold wall as the psychopath approached. The Diaper Man reached down and yanked Connor’s shorts off, nearly dislocating his hips from his thighs. Then he slowly unraveled the dried, crusted linens from around his head and face, revealing the charred, cracked and blackened skin beneath. The edges of his burnt skin smoldered with blood and pus, like lava trickling down a black, ashen mountainside. His lips on one side curled away grotesquely to expose a yellowed and brown set of decayed and broken teeth. His eye socket above was nothing but an empty black pit. The flesh on the other side of his face seemed to have melted, drooping over his brow to partially cover his remaining milky, cloud-white eye beneath. His skin sagged down from his jaw line, creating a loose, dry, leathery dangle of giblet. His nose was a small, shriveled bit of charred cartilage that barely covered the nasal cavity in his skull beneath.

  The Diaper Man flopped the rancid bolt of linen cloth at Connor’s feet, as if to suggest that Connor should wear a diaper made from the soiled face bandages. The Diaper Man leaned in closer. Connor shook with fear.

  “Please. No...”

  The Diaper Man cocked his head again, as if he had never heard another man’s voice. He pushed the bandage closer with his calloused and grimy foot.

  “No. I won’t,” Connor insisted.

  The Diaper Man nudged it closer still, this time with an ominous growl to follow. Connor cowered, pulling himself back further against the wall as far as he could. The Diaper Man put his face within inches of Connor’s. Without a split second of thought, Connor gnashed his teeth in defiance and chomped at the crusted remains of the Diaper Man’s nose, biting it off in one swift tear. He instantly spit it back out at the Diaper Man, bouncing it off the crisped black flesh on the burnt side of his face. Then a nervous and frightened vomit sprayed out uncontrollably, soaking the Diaper Man in sick.

  The Diaper Man became furious. His breathing quickened and his shoulders hulked up and down repeatedly. He jammed his roughened hand down into Connor’s crotch, clutching his dick and balls tight, so tight his testes burst out the skin of his scrotum. Connor let out a high pitched yelp, like a dog when its paws are stepped on. Then there was silence. The Diaper Man pulled and yanked, until Connor’s genitals were completely torn from his pelvis. Connor heard the stringy bits of flesh snapping and ripping below, but he couldn’t bear to look. His head tipped upward, his mouth gaped open, and he screamed in silence. The Diaper Man reached up with both hands and yanked apart Connor’s jaw, nearly tearing Connor’s mandible off his face. The beast stuffed Connor’s cock into his busted mouth; he jammed the bloody testicles in too. His enormous fist nearly reached down into Connor’s lungs as he gagged him. A moment later Connor was dead.

  #

  Eventually Billy came upon a set of rusty iron rungs built into the wall. He climbed them to another hatch that opened up into a maintenance closet. He tried his cell phone but there was no signal. He slowly opened the door and entered a hallway. The walls were covered in children’s murals depicting exotic animals and picturesque views of sunshine and rainbows. They were free, alive; in stark contrast to the gated and locked institution, crumbling and dying.

  There was a distant pitter patter of quickened movement; not quite running. Billy slinked into a small room that was once used as a play room or recreation room. Dilapidated and warped wooden shelving bowed down in gradual U-shaped bends. The picture books that once filled them were scattered about the floor beneath, randomly spilled open to faded pages. Their once vibrant and captivating colors were wasting away in the daily whitewash of sunlight that bathed the room through barred windows, eroding their tales of happiness and discovery and replacing them with dust and decay.

  The footsteps neared. Billy heard panting too, and fearful whimpering. It’s Layla. “Layla!” he yelled. But he quickly realized it was a dumb move. He stepped out into the hall to track her more quietly. A moment later she rounded the corner of an adjacent hallway and came upon him. She screamed at first, startled by the presence of another. But then she fell into his arms with a sigh of relief.

  She stammered between huffs of breath. “Connor. He took Connor. The Diaper Man. He’s real.”

  “I know. Ryan’s gone. He killed him. We gotta get out of here.”

  “Everything’s locked. How the hell did you get here?” she asked.

  “The tunnels.”

  “Well let’s go!” She tugged his shirt sleeve.

  “We can’t. He’s down there.”

  “No, he’s up here!”

  “He’s everywhere. Those tunnels lead all over the place, into every building. If he knows them he can pop up anywhere.”

  “We have to be able to break out through some boarded up doors or something. People get in and out of here all the time.”

  “Do they?” Billy asked rhetorically.

  Just then they heard heavy footfalls down the hallway, around a corner. It was him. Billy pulled Layla into the recreation room and made straight for one of the large wooden cabinets that lined the room. They crouched inside and closed the door to hide, listening intently as he approached.

  His movement was painfully slow. The fear and suspense was agonizing. Layla was crying. Billy held his finger to his lips when he heard her sniffle and squeak. He mouthed the words shut the fuck up with angry eyes. That seemed to do the trick.

  His steps stopped directly in front of the recreation room. His labored and harsh breathing filled their ears with terror. The floor crackled as he shifted his weight back and forth. Coarse grains of dirt, broken glass, and years of blustering debris were crushed beneath his immense, hardened feet. Then there was nothing. Complete silence. The quiet was so still that the racing of their hearts seemed to fill the room with noise; two pulsating beacons to broadcast their location directly to the Diaper Man.

  He snapped into a fit of rage. He growled and grunted. He began smashing things and flailing around the room, destroying everything in his path. During the loud thrashing Layla let a short, frightened breath escape her lips. Billy immediately seized her, putting his hand over her mouth. The Diaper Man continued destroying things in the room. Shelves collapsed, desks were busted into splinters of wood scraps, glass broke, and the grating sound of iron scraped across the old tile and concrete floor. They waited in tense anticipation. Eventually he would turn his sights toward their cabinet. His massive hands would set upon it and seconds later it would be destroyed, and they would be revealed. But the crazed maniac came to a sudden stop, and the ensuing silence was different. They could hear the birds outside, and the wind whistling through shards of broken window panes.


  That grating sound. Maybe he tore the bars right off the windows, Layla thought. Her eyes lit up with possibility. A way out! Billy knew it too. They waited. And a few moments later the Diaper Man left the room. His fading steps trailed down the hallway with an echo that seemed to become more and more thunderous the farther away he went.

  Billy slowly pushed open the cabinet doors. The room was empty. Trashed, but empty. And the iron bars that were once on the windows were now bent and twisted on the floor. Broken glass was everywhere, and the setting sun beamed in through the shattered windows.

  “Let’s go,” Billy whispered to Layla, who was still quivering in the cabinet.

  “I have to find Connor,” she mumbled.

  “Believe me, if he took him, he’s dead. I saw what he did to Ryan. We need to save ourselves and get to a place where we can contact the police.” Billy eyed his phone. Still no service.

  Layla nodded in agreement and they both climbed out of the recreation room, into the overgrown weeds that stretched out toward the woods.

  “Let’s run into those trees so he can’t see us. Stay low. Crouch down. Let these weeds stay over our heads as we move.”

  When they reached the woods Billy held his cell phone up high in search of a signal. There was a lone bar of service jumping in and out of connectivity the higher he held it. “Need to get up a little so I can dial out. Look around for a tree I can climb.”

  “What’s that there?” Layla pointed.

  Ahead was an old tree fort of some kind. Pulpy wood steps were nailed into a sturdy tree, leading upward to a warped old plywood platform and the remains of a spongy set of walls rising upward to form a crude tree house.

  “Here. Hold this,” Billy said as he handed her the recording device he found on the reporter. “That’s our alibi. Don’t fucking lose it.”

  “What is it?”

  “A recording of this reporter guy getting murdered. We found his body.” Billy started climbing up into the tree fort.

  “Connor was saying something about identities being switched. Something about how the Diaper Man was a John Doe, and that this Abraham Davis guy was the wrong man.”

  “Told you. They killed the wrong guy that night. The stories were true, all of them.”

  Billy reached the top, where he found a stack of old titty magazines, bleached and faded from exposure to the sun. The images depicted dated hair styles and under-groomed pubic hair. Billy chuckled as he flipped through the clumped, wavy, water-damaged pages.

  “What?” Layla asked.

  “Nah, it’s nothing. Just an old treasure trove for an 80’s kid. Ancient porn mags. Must’ve been some local kid’s hideout back in the day.”

  Layla shielded her eyes from the sun that poked through the shifting trees above. “Anything?” she asked.

  Billy was dialing, holding his phone up as high as he could reach. A moment later his screen lit up with hope. “It’s ringing! Holy shit, yes!”

  “9-1-1 what’s your emergency?”

  He answered the operator. “I’m at the King’s Park Psychiatric Facility. My friends have been murdered. Hello?” The connection was spotty, but he heard a reply.

  “Are you safe?” she asked.

  “No. We’re hiding. Please come quickly,” he responded.

  “Okay sir. Please try to stay on the...”

  Then the call dropped. The signal was lost. Billy climbed back down.

  “What’s that smell? Did you fart or something?” Layla twisted her face in disgust.

  “No.” Billy looked around nervously. “It’s him. Run,” he whispered.

  Layla bolted without even thinking. As Billy turned to follow he was pelted in the chest with a warm, thick mud. He wiped the brown filth off only to realize it was feces. His head whipped around in every direction, looking for the savage creature. He smelled him, but couldn’t see him. Then he was peppered again with more shit, this time in the face and head. He immediately spit out the bits that found their way into his mouth and ran in Layla’s direction. He followed her tracks, never looking back, fearful of the horror he might see at his heels. But a moment later he felt an odd thud at his knee and found himself tumbling through the dried, dead leaves on the forest floor.

  At first he didn’t believe his eyes. He tried to get up, rejecting the vision he saw, but it was no use. His right leg had been lopped off at the knee. He watched as his lifeless leg gushed blood just a few strides away from him. Then a delayed pain surged through his body. He screamed in agony.

  The Diaper Man stepped out from behind some brush with an old, crimson-smeared fire axe in one hand, and a severed head in the other. Billy’s vision was blurred with torment and tears, but it looked like Connor’s head. He squirmed and tried to scurry away with all his might, leaving a trail of gore behind him. But there was no point. He couldn’t escape.

  The Diaper Man patiently watched Billy as he accepted his fate. He calmly set Connor’s head down and then leaned the axe up against a nearby tree. Then he snapped off a heavy tree limb with his bare hands and cast it aside, creating a thick, pointed spear that jutted out from the trunk of the proud oak. He lumbered toward Billy.

  “Oh God, no!” Billy begged, pleading for his life. But the Diaper Man just kept coming. The smell, the heavy breathing, the grunting, the hulking and sloping of his mangled body... The blood... Billy felt his life draining. He was weakening, fading.

  The Diaper Man lifted Billy into his arms and shoved his body onto the pointed tree branch, impaling him through the chest. Billy could barely summon the strength to scream. His breath slowly hissed though his pierced lungs as his body hung there on the tree, suspended above the ground. A pool of blood gathered on the dirt beneath his feet as it poured from his leg, gurgled out his mouth, and oozed down from the hole in his chest.

  Then the Diaper Man picked up Billy’s severed leg by the ankle, wielding it like a club, resting it upon his massive, malformed shoulder. It bathed the Diaper Man’s torso in blood as he walked toward Billy. The beast raised Billy’s hacked-off leg high and brought it down upon Billy’s head with a thunderous thud. He bashed him over and over, well beyond Billy’s death. He beat him until Billy’s leg broke upon his own, twisted neck.

  #

  Layla stopped only for a brief moment when she heard Billy’s tormented screams echo through the woods. Her heart pounded and her limbs shook. She was almost too weak and paralyzed with horror to carry herself forward. She had no idea where she was, or which direction she was going. She just ran with everything she had. She cringed when wiry twigs whipped her face and arms as she whizzed through the woods without watching where she was going. Her ankles burned with pain as her footing constantly changed from soft ground to hard ground, angled ground to flat ground. Her knees twisted as she slipped on slick, moss-covered stones and tripped over fallen branches covered by leaves. The monotony of twigs and logs, dips and hills, puddles and mud seemed to overwhelm her. She felt crowded, trapped. The woods was closing in.

  I swear I saw that tree just a minute ago. I better stay straight. I must have gotten turned around. She picked a direction. The sun. Run toward the sun. If I always keep it in front of me I won’t get turned around.

  But the sun was low and filled her eyes with a blinding glare. She crashed into trees, stumbled over exposed roots, and took lashings from prickled vines, pointed thistle and barbed brush. If he doesn’t kill me these woods will. He’s right behind me, I know it.

  Then she saw a clearing ahead. The woods thinned out and a small stretch of tall grass appeared. Beyond that she could see the marshy shoreline: Cat tails and beach grass; A low orange sun reflecting delicately off the glassy water; The peaceful croaks and chirps of nature at dusk. Birds. Toads. Crickets. They were in no danger from the menace lurking in the woods.

  She ran, her eyes transfixed on that beauty, that freedom ahead. Hope filled her soul, and thoughts of home filled her head. She recalled the loving embrace of her parents, and the familiarity of
her bedroom with all her music and posters. Comforts felt like luxuries that she took for granted. The tall grass slapped at her waist, dampening her jeans with freshly formed dew. It chilled her to the bone. She thought of the warmth in her living room at Christmas time, when the fire crackled and she wrapped herself in a fleece blanket and rested on the carpet with her golden retriever beside the Christmas tree. She longed for that safety, that innocence.

  Her footing gave out and she met face first with an unusually soft ground. A blinding pain shot up her foot and needled halfway up her leg. Her ankle was broken. She looked around through the tall grass to see several small, round-topped stone bumps surrounding her, jutting up from the overgrown ground. Headstones. They were the grave markers for the unknown and unclaimed patients’ bodies that died in the institution. A Potter’s Field; no names – only numbers. She glanced down at her twisted foot to see the number 666 crudely etched on the stone beside it. Panic came with the pain. Then she heard the thuds of something heavy approaching. She ducked down low in the grass to hide herself. She smelled him, heard his animalistic breathing. She quivered with fear for just a moment, before something rolled up beside her foot through the tall grass. It was Connor’s head.

  She screamed with terror and pushed herself up with all her might. She tried to ignore the pain. At first it was difficult, but when she saw the monster rise up from the grass and begin to shamble toward her, her adrenaline overwhelmed the pain. She struggled through it. Her limp became a stumbling trot, and her trot became a belabored run.

  “Help!” she screamed, over and over. He gained on her easily, two strides to her one, even at a walk. There was no need for him to run. She would trip, or become weak. Her ankle would give out, or she would finally succumb to the limits of human endurance. He would have her then, and he would make her pay for her trespass with the currency of blood and agony. A currency he would draw from her body like sap from a tree; prodding her with holes and emptying her life liquid to the discordant and chaotic symphony of her brain-piercing screams.