Morris reached into the medicine cabinet to retrieve the trustworthy salve he’d been using for the past decade. Just a dab of the stuff cleared things up for weeks. The cap was crusted with dried-out unguent, mixed with dust and a few stray hairs from his beard. The tube seemed to have some secret reserve, because as he rolled it tighter and tighter every year he could always muster another blob of the stuff, until today. Morris tried unrolling the tube and then carefully milking it with the back of his toothbrush, but the tube only dispensed his bitter effort. His rolling and unrolling over the years had rubbed the ink off the tube and the spent aluminum carcass yielded no useful information. He needed another tube, and had to reach back a decade to recall its source.
“The voodoo store!” Morris said to himself.
He remembered a woman he used to date; a zealot for homeopathy and other alternative medical treatments. She took him to a natural remedy store in a failing strip mall as part of a Sunday shopping tour. Morris did not abide such witchdoctor curatives but given the woman’s many charms he happily followed her wherever she wandered. At the time, he mocked the very shop that provided his curative. The woman behind the counter gave him the evil eye as he joked about the “eye of newt” no doubt to be found in the ointment he purchases. As she did so, he felt a shiver ripple up his spine and his mouth turned as dry as cardboard. The charming woman dumped Morris on the drive home.
***
Morris arrived at the strip mall, but it was vacant. The barber shop, the used appliance store and the voodoo hut all had their windows papered over to mask the blight. A yellowed paper from a dot-matrix printer still hung on the inside of the door, “Moving Soon. See us for all your healing needs at Idaho and Main.”
“That’s stupid. They run parallel.” Morris reached for his iPhone and said, “Idaho and Main, Boise.” A satellite map appeared, zooming in from space and ending on a point where the two streets merged into one, with Idaho continuing west. Morris got back in his car and headed to the new location.
He found a vacant house. Plywood covered the doors and windows, straw-colored weeds had overtaken the former lawn. He walked around the building but found no failing windows or doors.
“Great. Another dead end.” As he again reached for his phone to try and look up another source for the salve he heard a creaking sound. He turned to see the front door swinging open.
“Give me a break. Who’s in there? Lonny? I can see you Lonny! Very funny.” But nobody answered. The door squeaked to a stop. Morris could see the house had been converted into a store, with a checkout counter and shelves installed in the living room. Slits of light broke through cracks in the plywood and Morris saw merchandise still inside. He stepped closer and saw rotten baskets with nests of little jars inside. A table thick with dust featured new-age knick-knacks and deeper in the darkness he thought he saw a display with a row of shiny aluminum squeeze tubes. Morris stepped on the porch and flipped on his phone’s flashlight. He started through the doorway, but stopped, remembering that at this point in most stories, as soon as he stepped inside, the door would suddenly slam shut behind him. He looked around for something heavy to prop against the door and saw a bowling ball bag in the weeds. Like everything else, it was mostly rotten, but the ball was still inside so he used it as a doorstop. He pushed the door all the way open, set the bag against it and stuffed a claw-like bowling glove under the door for good measure. Satisfied, he started inside.
He passed his flashlight over the walls, and saw over the entry to a hallway that said “Office–Magik Spoken Here,” with a closed door in the back. The house had a slight smell of mold and a hint of the candles and incense he saw on a display table. Most of the stuff in the store was still in place, but the bins and shelves were half empty. The tubes in the basket he’d seen from outside turned out to be toothpaste made with chalk, cinnamon and sage ash. Not what he was looking for, but he felt he was on the right track.
He swung his phone around, carefully stepping over the debris and toppled items on the floor as he searched for his salve. It worked unlike any of the prescription medicines he’d tried over the years and he felt stupid for not buying more once he realized its effect. But that lady behind the counter creeped him out, so he stayed away. As Morris continued through the house he kept an eye on the front door to make sure it remained open. He’d been in every room, checked every shelf, box, basket, table and display. He found a few interesting items which he pocketed, but not the one he needed most. The only room left was the office. The hallway was as dark as a cave, and sign above the door made him feel uneasy. But Morris needed his medicine, so decided he had no choice.
The office door wasn’t locked but it felt like something was on the other side as he pushed it open. He needed both hands to edge the door open enough to get inside for a look. As he pushed, he heard a thump, then a scratchy voiced yelled, “Stay out!”
Morris froze, his heart pounding. He turned to run out the front door, then heard several more voices say the same thing. “Stay out!” but some were slurred, and some kept repeating the phrase over and over. It sounded like a recording, and he kicked himself for being so jumpy. Once he shoved the door open enough to get inside, his phone revealed a crate of novelty coin banks spilled out on the floor from a toppled crate. Little green plastic hands reached out from under a door in a little coffin to retrieve a coin with the warning, “Stay out!” as the hand retracted into the box. They had varying levels of battery life, some struggling to push against the lid, their warning a slow, inaudible moan. He also saw what was blocking the door—a big pile of old clothes and shoes. He shrugged and continued into the office. Boxes and boxes of merchandise lined the walls, and as he pawed through them he again saw the glint of a silver tube. But this time it wasn’t toothpaste, it was his magical salve. “Jackpot!” Morris checked to see if there were any similar boxes nearby. As he did, the office door closed. He stopped briefly, then resumed his search. Morris felt a scratching on his ankle and tried to brush it away with his foot. Then he felt a pinch on his calf, then his thigh.
“What the hell is going on?” He turned his phone flashlight to his leg and saw little bat-like imps with green hands and feet, tipped with hooked claws scrambling up his leg. He swatted at them, dropping his phone on the floor. The creatures jumped to his belly, arms and face biting at him and latching on with little mouths ringed with serrated teeth.
Morris pulled them off, each time tearing away chunks of his skin as he dashed them to the floor. They simply bounced, recovered, and skittered back up his legs. As he struggled he tripped, hitting his head against the corner of a shelf his way down. Dizzy, he couldn’t stand as the creatures raced to his hands and face, their claws and teeth burning like hot sparks as they went. Covering his hands like angry mittens, Morris couldn’t grab the little monsters overtaking his face. They clamped his nose and mouth shut, and he quickly succumbed. The tiny devils finished Morris, bones and all, adding his clothes to the pile behind the door.
Outside, the zipper on the rotten bowling ball bag failed. The ball rolled into the weeds as the door squeaked shut.