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I don’t know if my Uncle Abner had always been inside out. It wasn’t really something we talked about. Twice a day, one of us, usually me, would take his meals up to his room in the attic and leave the tray outside of the door. Once I hid behind the stack of boxes in the corner and waited for him to come out, but I regretted it. What I saw wasn’t pretty. His reaction upon seeing me made it even worse. His jaw fell open and his black eyes swelled up so they looked like two big holes in his face. The tray clattered to the floor, scattering the rice and greens, which was pretty much all he ever ate, all over the place. I felt bad, and wanted to say something, but I couldn’t get my feet to take me any closer. I’m ashamed to say I was a little scared.
As far as I know I was the only person in the house, other than my mother, who had ever had a good look at him up till the day he got out. Not that we kept him locked up, it was just better for everybody if he stayed put. He never left his room except on days when we would all go into town and he would put a sack over his head and roam around the house, or go out back to stare at the pond. Once in a while, in the winter when the sky was clear and the stars were bright, I would hear the door close and look out my window to see him staring up at the sky. I felt sorry for Uncle Abner, I think we all did, but it couldn’t be helped. Momma said he was like a baby in some ways, and didn’t know how to be around people. He must have been pretty smart though, judging by all the books he had us bring him. Most of them had titles I couldn’t even read. This was all the more amazing since I’d heard he couldn’t even speak English until he was a full grown man.
We didn’t get many visitors up our way. Being a good ten miles from the town and back off the road a ways, most people didn’t even know we were here. The mail man delivered to our box a quarter mile down the road, and no salesman had ever knocked on our door. Except for the crickets and the toads, it was always quiet. That’s why we were all surprised when a man showed up at the door with a bag of money and a bullet hole in his arm. He dropped as soon as my sister Betty opened the door. She screamed, bringing us all running. The stranger was quite a sight. It had been raining, and his clothes were soaked right through. His teeth kept chattering and every so often he would let out a moan, which at least showed he was still alive. Momma saw the blood, and knew right off he’d been shot. She had us lift him so she could get his shirt off, and Betty cradled his head in her lap while Momma poked at the wound.
“Looks like it went clean through,” she announced, and we all agreed that was good, but judging from the trail leading up to the porch he couldn’t have had too much blood left in him. Momma had us fetch some water and rags, and her sewing kit, and she went to work on him.
When that fella woke up, wearing a pair of Papa’s old trousers and a work shirt, you would have thought he’d be thankful, but all he was worried about was his bag. We admitted we had looked inside and saw all that money, but we ain’t thieves, and we told him as much. He still insisted on counting every last bit of it, and seemed more confused than grateful when he found it was all there.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Just one of these stacks of bills has got to be more than you people have seen in your lives, and that includes you, grandpa.”
Gramps just gave him a toothless grin and went back to his whittling. Momma got a little red in the face like she does when me or Gramps slips up and says a bad word.
“We follow the ways of the Lord here,” Momma told him. “A lot of folks in these parts would have dragged you back out into the yard and let you bleed to death. You ought to be saying a prayer of thanks it was our porch you wandered up on.”
“And where might ‘these parts’ be?” the man asked. “It was raining pretty hard when I stumbled on this place, and I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to where I was heading.”
“You’re ten miles out from Cedar Grove and thirty from Charleston” Momma told him. “How’d you end up here?”
“I was driving in from Cincinnati when my car threw a rod. I walked for about a mile before I spotted the light from your window through the trees.”
“You made it all that way with that hole in your arm?” Betty asked, wide eyed.
“Naw,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “I was being chased. The guys I was running from caught up with me a few miles outside of Charleston and they let me have it. I was lucky I got a few shots off myself and took out their motor so they couldn’t follow me. I managed to keep most of the blood in my arm until I had to start walking. I fell a few times and made it worse. Call me clumsy.”
“Were these men who were after you police?” Momma asked quietly, almost in a whisper.
The man got a real kick out of that. I haven’t heard anybody laugh that hard since we stopped getting Amos and Andy on the radio. He laughed so loud he must have woke Uncle Abner ‘cause we could suddenly hear him stomping around above us. The man heard it too and stopped laughing. He asked us what was making the sound, and Momma told him it was just rats. I don’t think he believed her, but thankfully, Uncle Abner was quiet after that.
The stranger said he needed to hole up for a spell, and told Momma he would pay her if he could do it at our place. He said it was just about perfect, and that nobody would ever find him. Momma said he could stay until he recovered, but then he had to go, and that he needn’t worry about giving us any money. I happened to glance at Betty and saw she was grinning ear to ear, at least until she caught me staring at her.
The stranger told us his name was John, but he didn’t say much else the first few days. I could tell he was trying to stay out of everyone’s way, but he would still wake us up at night tossing and turning on the couch and pacing around the living room when he couldn’t sleep. One night we all came running downstairs because he was screaming, but he told us he was just having a nightmare and to go back to bed.
After about a week, Momma got tired of him sitting and peeking out the window, and told me to get the poles and see if he didn’t want to do some fishing in the pond out back. He lit up a little when I asked him, said he hadn’t been fishing since he was a boy, and off we went.
For a guy who hadn’t been fishing in years he was pretty good at casting a line. As he drew back, I couldn’t help but notice the gun in his waist band.
“Ever shot one?” he asked, noticing I couldn’t stop staring at it.
“I never even held one before,” I told him. “Papa used to have a rifle, but he never let me get around it. He said I was too young.”
“Your Papa was a wise man,” he said. “You have to be old enough to respect a gun before you can handle one.”
“I’m old enough now,” I asserted. “I’m almost thirteen.”
“What does your father say?” he asked, pulling in his line and scowling at the empty hook.
“He’s dead,” I told him, “and all Gramps wants to do is whittle.”
He patted me on the head, and told me he was sorry. I just nodded and handed him the jar of worms.
“We’re pretty good pals, aren’t we?” he asked as he speared the worm on his hook.
“Sure,” I said. “And I can tell Betty likes you too.”
“Betty’s a sweetheart, but it’s different with us guys. We’re kind of in a club.” He said solemnly. “We share everything, no secrets.”
“No secrets,” I repeated.
“Good,” he said, casting his line back out. “Then how about you let me in on what’s going on in the attic? I’ve seen you bringing trays of food up there.”
I started to tense up, and I guess he noticed because he gave me a big grin and let go of his pole with his left hand to pat me on the shoulder.
“It’s OK,” he said. “It will be just between us. Tell you what, I’ll tell you a secret first so you know I’ll never tell anybody else yours.”
“What kind of secret,” I asked, eager to learn anything I could about him.
“I’m John Warren,” he said, poking his chest with his thumb.”
“Johnny Warren!” I shouted, dropping my pole. “Public Enemy Number One, Johnny Warren?”
He shushed me and nodded. He suddenly seemed ten feet tall.
“What are you doing out here?” I asked when my breath finally caught up with me.
“I had a disagreement with some of my associates, a bunch of rats, really. They thought they should get all of the money, and were planning on cutting out on me. I didn’t like that, so I took it all and left.”
“Were they the ones who shot you?” I asked, and he said they were.
“Now you know my secret, you can tell me yours. Who’s in the attic?”
Suddenly Uncle Abner didn’t seem all that important to me. I told him how he wasn’t really my Uncle, and how he had showed up at our house just like he did, only I was just a baby then. He was in pretty bad shape, and, though he didn’t know much English, he managed to tell Momma and Papa how he had crashed in some kind of air plane or something. I told him how Papa found it later, way back in the woods, and said it didn’t look like no pictures of air planes he ever saw, though he admitted it was pretty beat up.
“Why does he stay in the attic?” John asked. I told him it was because Uncle Abner didn’t want to scare people. I told him how he looked kinda like a skinned deer, with his insides showing through his skin like somebody had turned him inside out.
“Hell of a way to live,” he said. “It sounds like being in prison.”
“It’s not just the way he looks,” I added, not wanting him to think we were they kind of people who couldn’t over look something like that. “He’s afraid somebody might touch him.”
“Because it hurts him?” he asked.
“Because he is afraid of upsetting Momma,” I told him. “Gramps had too much of his sweet sauce one night and told me how, after Papa had passed from the fever, Uncle Abner had touched him. Gramps said he turned into Papa. He didn’t know how he did it, but Gramps said he looked just like him till momma started screaming and he went back to being inside out again. After that he just stayed in his room upstairs.”
“Gramps was just pulling your leg,” John said. “That ain’t possible.”
I just shrugged. I wanted to hear more about Johnny Warren, bank robber, and get off the topic of Uncle Abner.
We all warmed up to John over the next few weeks. He got Gramps to put down his whittling knife to play cards, and Momma liked that he always helped with the dishes. Me and him spent a lot of time fishing, but not as much time as he spent picking peaches with Betty. I guess I would have been a little jealous if not for the fact I was the only one who knew who he really was and got to hear all his stories. At least I don’t think he told Betty. The way she looked at him, I doubt she would have cared much if he had come from the moon, but I still don’t think he would have told her.
One day he talked Momma into letting him give her some money so she could take Betty into Cedar Grove for a new dress. He said it was the least he could do since he’d been eating up all our food, and the dress she was wearing was getting kinda thin and ragged around the hem. It was while Momma and Betty were in town that the men showed up.
John saw them first. He was out in the yard, playing around under the hood of the old truck that had sat there since Papa had died, when he saw the dust their car was throwing up as they pulled onto the road leading to the house. I was just coming out the door when he grabbed me and dragged me back inside. He told me he was going to hide in the attic and not to let on that he was there. He said it would be alright because he would be watching from the top of the stairs, and that if they started any trouble he would handle them. I was a little scared, but I was determined not to show it, especially not to him. I said I could handle it, and he gave me a pat on the back.
“Just remember to look them in the eye, kid,” he said. “Look at your shoes and they’ll know you’re lying.”
There were three of them, all dressed in fancy suits like you see in the magazines. One of them, a lean, sour looking man with a white scar running from the corner of his mouth all the way up his right cheek led the way. Two bigger men followed, looking all around like they expected somebody to jump out at them. One of them was missing two of the fingers on his left hand. The scarred man pounded on the door, and I pulled it open.
“We’re with the police,” he said, shoving a paper in my face. “You see this guy around here?”
I looked at the wanted poster with John’s face on it and shook my head no.
“You sure about that, kid? We found his car a few miles up the road. We know he’s in the area.”
“We ain’t seen him,” I told him, handing the paper back. I tried to look him in the eye like John said, but there was something scary about his face, something even scarier than Uncle Abner’s.
“How about we have a look around just the same,” he said, pushing past me. I glanced up at the stairs and hoped John did something before they found Gramps and he gave it all away. The scarred man looked at the stairs too.
“What’s up there?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he told the other two to go check it out.
The next few minutes were the longest in my life. I know people say that a lot, but it was true. While I listened for some sound that might give me a clue as to what was going on in the attic, the scarred man went through the house, finding Gramps asleep in the back room. He dragged him out and pushed him down into his rocker. Gramps was still in his union suit, and his hair was all messed up, but he was wide awake. I could tell he was plenty scared, though when he saw me he tried to hold it all in. He wasn’t too successful though. His whole body was shaking so bad I thought he might rattle himself to pieces.
“I’m not looking to hurt you, old man,” the stranger said, sounding like he didn’t really mean it. “I just want you to level with me. Where are you hiding him?”
Gramps looked at me, and I felt a little sick seeing how scared and confused he was. I wanted to rush over and knock the scarred man down, but I knew I didn’t stand a chance. He was at least three heads taller than me and twice as wide. Gramps started to whimper, and a yellow pool formed under his chair. The man looked down, saw what he was standing in, and jumped back shouting: “You got piss on my shoes, you rotten old bastard!”
I felt my breath freeze in my lungs as he pulled a gun out from under his jacket and stuck it in my grandfather’s face. I couldn’t bear to look, so I shut my eyes and started praying. Then there was a shot. I braced myself for the worst and opened my eyes. To my relief, Gramps was alright, or at least as alright as he could be under the circumstances. Looking around, I saw the scarred man was already at the foot of the stairs, yelling up to ask what was going on. He had made it up about three steps when the attic door swung open and the big man with the missing fingers appeared in the doorway.
“Did you get him?” asked the scarred man. The other man grinned but said nothing. It was the kind of grin you’d expect to see on someone who thought drowning cats or knocking baskets out of the hands of old ladies was funny. It was an ugly grin. He walked down the stairs until he stood on the step above his boss, staring down at him. His grin got so big I expected it to split his head in two.
“Please tell me you got him to cough up the dough before you plugged him,” the scarred man said, but the other man just stood there with that weird smile plastered across his face. His temper boiling over, the scarred man started to push past the other man to go up the stairs, but a big hand landed on his chest with a loud thump, knocking him back. He stumbled down the steps onto his back where he stared up in disbelief at his underling. His lips were moving, but he couldn’t seem to get any words to come out. That was when I noticed the man had somehow grown his fingers back. Gramps let out a gasp and jumped up out of the chair as the big man’s face began to twitch. His hair seemed to crawl back into his skull and his skin faded away to reveal the muscle and veins beneath. The scarred man finally found his voice but all that came out was a scream. He reached inside his jacket for his gun, but Uncle Abner was on him, pulling him to his feet and shaking him like an old rag doll. He shook him harder and harder until I heard a crack, and saw the man go limp in his hands. Uncle Abner held him there for a minute, shaking him so his head flopped around like a scarecrow nodding in the wind, before letting him drop to the floor. We all stared at the dead man until we heard a thumping and turned to see the body of the third man come sliding down the stairs. He landed next to his boss on the floor, and we saw there was a bullet hole between the glassy, empty eyes. John stood at the top of the stairs, his fist wrapped around his gun. He nodded at Uncle Abner, and Uncle Abner nodded back.
“I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t think they’d find the car,” John said as we finished burying the three men in the woods out by the pond. We had all decided it would be best if Momma and Betty didn’t know what had happened, though Gramps had taken some convincing. It took us a good while to calm him down, but after a few sips from his jug he had finally stop shaking enough to get himself cleaned up. John drove the car off while I cleaned up the place. He showed up a few hours later, just as Momma and Betty were pulling up in the Ford. He told them he had been out on a stroll.
Uncle Abner had disappeared back into his room in the attic as soon as he wasn’t needed any more. John told me later he’d been visiting with him while the rest of us were sleeping, and that they had become pretty good friends. It seems Uncle Abner liked to play poker.
Over the next few months, John became one of the family. Momma forgot all about making him leave once his arm was better, and I’m sure Betty wouldn’t have allowed it in any case. The two of them had grown pretty close, so close I figured John was going to end up being my brother-in-law before long. The notion pleased me. Imagine having a famous outlaw for a brother! Even if I couldn’t tell anybody, it was still quite a hoot. We were especially glad to have John around when Gramps passed away in the spring. He was a big help when momma was laid up with grief for a week or so, helping Betty cook and keep the place clean. Momma even told him about Uncle Abner. He did a pretty good job of acting surprised. Of course, she didn’t tell him all of it, saying only that Uncle Abner had a condition.
No more men showed up looking for John, but I could tell there was something troubling him. As spring gave way to fall he seemed edgy, like an animal that had been caged up too long. He always kept his temper with us, but he started sitting up all night again, and when momma asked me to pour out what was left of Gramp’s hooch, I discovered all the jugs were empty. I had a suspicion John hadn’t been drinking alone, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if Uncle Abner had a taste for the stuff.
“Don’t make the same mistakes I did,” John would tell me while we were out fishing or skipping stones across the pond. “Keep your nose clean or you’ll end up looking over your shoulder your whole life.” He told me he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in over a year.
I noticed he was backing off from Betty a little too, like he was afraid he was going to bring her bad luck. Betty pretended not to notice, but she didn’t smile as much as she used to, and once I caught her crying in the kitchen when she thought I had gone to bed.
Uncle Abner seemed different too. Sometimes I would find the trays of food still sitting, untouched, outside his door where I had left them. Other times I would hear him pacing back and forth, sometimes for what seemed hours. Occasionally, I’d hear laughter coming from his room, and knew that John was up there with him, trying to cheer him up, but mostly they both seemed mopey and off kilter. That’s how it was right up to the night of the storm.
We knew it was going to be bad when all the birds stopped chirping and we heard something that sounded like the roar of a train echoing through the hills. Momma herded me and Betty into the storm cellar while John went up to fetch Uncle Abner. He was still out there when it hit. Huddled together, we could hear the cracking of boards, and things were bouncing off the cellar doors so hard we were afraid they’d come crashing through. Betty kept calling John’s name, and tried to pull away from us to get out, but Momma pulled her back and held onto her tight. It got quiet for a spell, and Betty begged Momma to let her go, but Momma said it wasn’t over yet, and that we were still in the middle of it. She was right. The winds came back, even stronger than before, judging from the sounds. The cellar doors rattled on their hinges and rain blew in through the cracks. I was even more scared than when the men had showed up with their guns because this time I knew John wouldn’t be there to save me. I doubted he would be able to save himself.
When we finally came out Momma took one look at our house and started to cry. The walls had stood up to it, but the roof was mostly gone, and there wasn’t a window left intact in the frames. Betty rushed into the house before we could stop her, screaming John’s name over and over. We followed her in and watched her fall to the floor as she looked up the stairs and saw they no longer led to anything.
“I’m sure John wasn’t up there,” I told her, “I’m sure he got Uncle Abner out and found some cover.”
She knocked my hand off her shoulder and let out a wail that would have woke the dead, but it wasn’t the dead that answered. Somebody was moaning in the kitchen. Betty got there first and was already tugging at the table wedged in the corner when I got there. We slid it back and found John, barely conscious and with a big purple bruise on his forehead. We managed to get him to his feet and into the living room while Momma brushed the debris off the couch. We laid him on it and Betty rubbed his hands while I went out to the well to get some water. There was wreckage everywhere. The old truck had been tossed clear across the yard, and lay on its side by what was left of the outhouse. Most of the trees were down, but in one of the few that still stood I saw something white fluttering from the branches. I walked over to take a look and saw it was a piece of a mattress. Figuring it had been Uncle Abner’s, I lifted up some of the boards piled against the trunk of the tree, and found some of his books, but no trace of the man himself.
As John came to, I asked him about Uncle Abner. He looked up at the hole in the ceiling and shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The last thing I remember I was pounding on the door to his room. I don’t even know how the hell I ended up under the table.”
“Maybe you got knocked out and Uncle Abner put you there,” I suggested. “Maybe he saved you and then got to somewhere safe.” John fell back onto the pillow and closed his eyes, and Momma and Betty just looked down at the floor. They all knew there weren’t any safe places aside from the storm cellar. It felt a little like being at a funeral.
We searched all over, but we never did find Uncle Abner, or, oddly enough, our Ford. John said he had lived through several twisters as a boy growing up in Indiana, and that it wasn’t unusual for trucks and cars to be swept off and carried miles away.
Thankfully, John had plenty of money, so we didn’t have to move. He bought us a new truck too. Pretty soon we had an even better house than the one we’d lost, with a porch wrapping around the sides and a garden just like Momma always wanted out back. John even had them put in two chimneys so we could keep all that extra space warm. I would still get a little sad when I thought about Uncle Abner and how he had saved us from those gunmen, but for the most part we were pretty happy. John and Betty were closer than ever, and John even started going into town with us after Momma brought back a newspaper with an article about a gangster who had been killed. She thought it was funny that the man looked so much like John. I remember John just laughed it off, but I snatched the paper from her hands and spread it out on the table. There, over a picture of Johnny Warren’s grinning face was the headline “Public Enemy Number One Dead!” in big bold letters. I read how the G-Men had caught him out on the street in Chicago and gunned him down. The official story was he drew on them first, but some of the witnesses disputed that. They claimed he had been shot in the back and was face down in the street before he knew what hit him. He had mumbled something before he died, but nobody caught it. There was another article saying how Johnny’s father had at first refused to identify the body because he said his son had blue eyes, and the corpse’s eyes were almost black, but he later changed his mind and claimed the body.
John seemed a lot happier after that, and why not? He was free. Nobody else would be coming after him. As for Uncle Abner, I never did learn if he and John had cooked up the idea together, or if Abner had come up with it on his own, wanting to help out the only person who had really ever been a friend to him, but I guess it didn’t matter. He was free too.
CONTRIBUTORS
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Gavin Turner is a writer from the UK. His short story and poetry has been published in Punk Noir, Furious Gazelle, JAKE, Voidspace and Roi Faineant press. He has released two poetry collections, The Round Journey (2022) and A Mouthful of Space Dust (2023). You can find him on twitter @gtpoems
Vincent Endwell is a writer, composer, and researcher originally from unceded Onondaga territory (Central New York). Endwell's writing has been previously published in The Ghastling Magazine and the Your Body is Not Your Body anthology from Tenebrous Press.
Dale T. Phillips has published ten novels, over 80 short stories, over a dozen story collections, and non-fiction. He took writing seminars from Stephen King in college, has appeared on stage, television, and in an independent feature film, and competed on Jeopardy. He’s a member of the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and is active in their Speaker’s Bureau.
Mikel J. Wisler has had two other short stories published in Cosmic Crimes and right here at Dark Horses ("Subscribed"). He has also had two novels published by DoxaNoûs Media. His latest science fiction short film (which he adapted from "Subscribed") has brought home several awards, most recently one at X World Film Festival in Rome, Italy.
Wayne Kyle Spitzer is an American writer, illustrator, and filmmaker. He is the author of countless books, stories and other works, including a film (Shadows in the Garden), a screenplay (Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows), and a memoir (X-Ray Rider). His work has appeared in MetaStellar—Speculative fiction and beyond, subTerrain Magazine: Strong Words for a Polite Nation and Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History, among others. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University, a B.A. from Gonzaga University, and an A.A.S. from Spokane Falls Community College. His recent fiction includes The Man/Woman War cycle of stories as well as the Dinosaur Apocalypse Saga. He lives with his sweetheart Ngoc Trinh Ho in the Spokane Valley.
Seán McNicholl is an Irish GP who enjoys writing short stories in a variety of genres. He has been nominated for the Best of the Net (BOTN) award 2024 and had been published in Beyond Words, Raw Lit, 34th Parallel, Bindweed and Intrepidus Ink. He has featured on the Blue Marble Storytellers Podcast and the Read Lots Write Lots podcast. For more: www.sean mcnicholl .com
Freddie Kölsch (she/her) lives in the heart of New England with her high school sweetheart-turned-wife, a handful of cats, a houseful of art, and a mind's eye full of ghosts. Her first novel will be published by Union Square & Co. (in the US) and Farshore/HarperCollins (in the UK) in Spring 2024.
Angus Stewart is host of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast and an editor for a pharmacy education institution. He likes animals, walks, and the occasional beer. He is from a suburb of Dundee, and lives in a satellite town of Manchester with his girlfriend, dog, and hedgehog.
Scott Coon’s debut sci-fi novel, LOST HELIX, was published by Dancing Lemur Press in 2020. He also contributed "Tangled Fate" to IT CAME FROM HER PURSE, published by Hiraeth SFF Publishing in 2021. “Satellite Archaeology” is in the Ninth Annual LA NaNoWriMo Anthology, ALIEN GAZE, 2022. He is also an award-winning short story writer. He’s also appeared in MOBIUS: The Journal for Social Change and The STEAM Journal at Claremont University, amongst others. His short stories and writing advice can be found on his website and YouTube channel.
Lamont A. Turner’s work has appeared in over 200 online and print venues including Mystery Weekly, Mystery Tribune, Cosmic Horror Monthly, Metastellar, as well as many other magazines, podcasts and anthologies. His short story collection, Souls In A Blender, was released by St. Rooster Books in October 2021.A second collection, Bleeding Out In The Rain, was released in 2023.