"The Organ Grinder" - October 3, 2024
Growing up in Revolution, Ohio, meant nothing special happened to you... ever. However, one Labor Day morning, a group of pre-teen children find themselves at the heart of a violent event...
Every Thursday, Silver Gecko Publishing highlights one of my stories, either a work of short fiction, a novel, or an audiobook. This week’s spotlight is on my novel THE ORGAN GRINDER. It is available on Kindle now. The audiobook and paperback will be available later this month.
This book had its origin in the National Novel Writing Month a couple years ago. And I’ll be completely honest… I did not finish the damn thing in a single month. I had good intentions, but life got in the way.
But the important thing is that I did finish it, and now you can enjoy it as we roll into October.
This is a homage to the slasher films of the 80s. It’s a contemporary story, but it has the feel of a mid-80s horror film. I’m rather proud of the masked killer, who you will see in the key art below. I’ll give you three guesses as to whose eyes are behind the monkey mask.
One other behind-the-scenes note for this story… a carousel in the town’s square serves a major set-piece. I have based this on the Richland Carousel in Mansfield, Ohio, which seems like such a bizarre place to build what amounts to a carnival ride. My wife is from Mansfield, and once when we were dating, she took me there to ride it. It’s a beautiful old-style carousel… just seems so randomly placed in the heart of Richland County.
Anyway, if you ever want to visit Mansfield, ride the carousel and drop a couple bucks into their local tourism. Just keep your eye out for the Butcher!
-Kevin Carr
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Illustration contribution by DueterziNET (@dueterzinet-572604) from Pixabay
“The Organ Grinder” by Kevin Carr
PROLOGUE
The girl huddled as far into the corner as she could. Her primal brain had kicked in a long time ago: Get smaller. Stay hidden. Don't make a sound!
She breathed heavily, having run from room to room in the dark maze of the house... if you could even call it that. Under that table, behind moldy boxes of knick-knacks and tools, the girl fought against a cough from breathing in the stale air of the house. She smelled a flurry of scents, and none of them good. Dust. Dirt. Hair. Fur. Wood. Rot. And a whole mosaic of other unpleasant odors she couldn't recognize but supposed it was animal feces and insect filth.
It was almost completely dark under the table, save for a thin slice of light cutting through a boarded-up window across the room. The sun was low in the sky, and it seared through the trees outside to spill across the table and expose a spine of light across the floor.
The girl cowered away from the light, pushing herself back into the corner as much as she could. The darkness was her friend now.
Then, she heard the sounds of footsteps outside the room. Shuffling feet. Heavy feet. The feet of an extraordinarily large man. The feet of the Butcher.
The doorknob rattled as the Butcher opened the door. A massive shadow lumbered into the room, and the girl immediately heard his heavy wheezing and huffing as he walked around.
The girl, hypersensitive to the sound, clamped her hand over her own mouth, trying to stifle the sound of her own breath. If she could hear his breathing, she supposed, then why can't he hear hers?
The massive man moved across the room, eclipsing the slice of light coming in from outside. When he passed by her, a glint on the wall under the table caught her eye. She looked to her left and saw a cracked mirror in a frame leaning against the wall behind a mountain of boxes.
Could the Butcher see it too? The girl clearly saw the outline of her own face in the mirror, so she supposed it was at an angle that wouldn't allow her stalker to find her. But that sense of logic did not calm her nerves.
The Butcher slowly moved around the room, still breathing heavily. The girl could hear the rattle in his mouth, rumbling in his chest like a child who had just drank a glass of chocolate milk.
But it wasn't chocolate milk the Butcher drank. And if she were to look upon his face, she was certain it would not be milk she'd see covering his beard and dribbling down his shirt.
No. Not chocolate milk. Far from it.
The girl looked to the mirror again, and with her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she could make out her own face. It was a face of terror she barely recognized.
She felt a wave of nausea wash over her, and she bit down on her tongue to force it away.
Silence was her friend.
As she sat under the table, staring at her own face in the mirror, the girl thought back on how this all began. She supposed if the Butcher managed to get to everyone, and if anyone managed to figure out what happened, the story would be written that it all started this weekend with a wayward poacher, a rusty blade, and a stolen cell phone.
But she knew that was not the full story. This bloodletting began in the past, almost a decade ago. And it began with a monkey, a merry-go-round, and the biggest mistake she had ever made in her life.…