After bagging a twenty-five-point buck, which was the highlight of his hunting career, Louie Shafer decided he had finally brought down a deer worth mounting. He could already visualize the head and shoulders of the beautiful beast over the fireplace in his cabin in Nashville.
Surprised he could not find a local taxidermist on the Internet, he dusted off a dog-eared copy of the yellow pages he kept in the garage. Again, he was disappointed to find only a tiny ad for taxidermy services on a page entirely devoted to tax preparation. The shop was located in Sharpsburg, which was a one-stoplight town twenty miles away. He had hoped to request bids from several vendors since he had no idea what he should pay for the mounting. He also wanted to see examples of the work of various taxidermists to compare the quality. Unfortunately, with only one supplier, a Mr. Osgood Blood, the point was moot.
Looking at the small ad in the bottom corner of the yellow pages, the name “Blood” stuck in his craw like a bitter pill. Did he really want to hire someone with the distasteful surname of “Blood” to mount his most prized treasure from twenty-five years of hunting? He wondered what nationality would have such a frightful name. He had certainly not met anyone with that name before.
He was planning to invite about twenty of his closest friends to his cabin to celebrate his fortieth birthday. He could picture their jaws dropping when they feasted their eyes on the awesome rack above the fireplace. Twenty-five points! None of them had even seen such an animal before, and neither had he. He picked up the phone and called the number.
On the third ring, a weird voice that reminded Louie of Lurch, the butler from the Addams Family, answered with a deep “Hello, Blood’s Taxidermy.”
“Hello, My name is Louie Shafer. I’d like to ask about having you mount a twenty-five-point buck I bagged this morning. I placed the head and shoulders in ice in the back of my pickup as soon as I could. I need your advice on what I should do to preserve the specimen until I can get it to you.”
“Twenty-five points! You don’t see an animal like that very often. How far from my shop are you?” Blood said in an odd accent Louie had never heard before.
“I would guess about twenty miles”
“The sooner you can get the deer to me the better. It’s important to fold the skin inside the carcass in a certain way before it goes into cold storage.”
“It’s a mountain road with a lot of hairpin turns, but I think I can make it there in forty minutes, tops.” Louie replied.
“My shop is behind the petting zoo, which I also own. It’s a long rectangular building on the right side of my home. I’ll be waiting for you.” Louie marveled at how every word Blood spoke resonated in the earpiece.
“But before I make the trip, can you give me an estimate of the cost and how long the process will take?”
“The price for a head and shoulders mount is $750, and based on my current backlog, I can start on yours in about nine months, so…I’d say I can have it for you by September 1. How does that sound?”
Louie couldn’t believe what he’d heard and shot back, “I had no idea it would take that long. I’m having a birthday party for a group of friends June 5, and it’s critical I have it by then. If I pay double your fee, do you think you can put me higher on the list?”
Blood replied with no hesitation, “I’m sorry. I’ve already promised nine other hunters a date on their mounts, and there’s another one standing at the counter right now trying to make up his mind. I’m sorry, but I can’t modify these prior commitments. An alternative might be to offer to pay for one of the mounts already scheduled. I’m pretty sure one of the hunters will wait longer if you pay their fee.”
“Can you recommend someone else for the job?”
Blood hesitated. “I can give you some names, but I can’t say I can recommend any of them. Once you see my work, I am confident you will not want anyone else to work on such a rare animal. Why don’t you bring what you have to my shop? It’s an extremely hot day, and I want to be sure the remains are preserved correctly to insure maximum quality.”
“Okay. I guess I’m sold. I’ll see you in about forty minutes.”
Louie removed three bags of ice from the backup refrigerator in his laundry room and added them to the twenty bags he had purchased at the 7-11. To make sure the carcass didn’t slide around during the trip, he placed two cinder blocks on the corner of the black tarp he used to shield it from the sun.
In forty-one minutes, Louie pulled his pickup into the parking lot of the address he’d jotted down from Blood’s ad in the yellow pages. He couldn’t believe the number of cars in the lot. A large sign on a ten-foot high fence read “Pigley Wigley’s Petting Zoo.” There were acres and acres of fenced in areas housing all types of animals. A surprising crowd appeared to be having the time of their lives. Carnival games and many upscale rides bustled with activity. Gigantic balloons of every color of the rainbow decorated the concourse.
Granted, this was no Disney World, but it certainly was a thriving enterprise.”
Looking in all directions, he finally noticed a small sign with an arrow pointing toward the rear that read, “TAXIDERMY SERVICES”.” The rectangular metal sign was so small, he was almost on top of it before he saw it.
The combination of the two businesses seemed bizarre. Why would the owner of the multimillion-dollar children’s park personally waste his time on a rinky-dink taxidermy business? Also, why would someone with undeniable business savvy not have a web page on the Internet? He smiled and decided it takes all kinds of people to make a world.
To add to the puzzlement, when he rounded the bend in the road, his mouth dropped open when he saw a sprawling colonial estate surrounded by palatial gardens. “This couldn’t be the place,” he said to no one. Then, Louie saw the long, rectangular building and a sign with the single word “BLOOD’” in the window. The scarlet letters printed on a pure white background in an eerie font suited for a horror movie billboard caused him to remove his sunglasses and scratch his head in bemusement. “This weirdo, Blood, must have a warped sense of humor to go with his graveyard voice.”
Despite his continued apprehension about this place, Louie knew the ice was melting in the bed of his truck, and he had nowhere else to go. He was the only vehicle in the lot so he parked right in front of the entrance and climbed out of the truck.
Immediately, a blast of hot air almost buckled his knees as he crossed the sidewalk and approached the front door of the showroom. This had to be a record heat wave for this time of year. The tacky Pepsi Cola thermometer on the wall read “97 DEGREES.” Yet, he felt an icy tremor of unease creep up his spine as he reluctantly took hold of the door handle and entered. Once inside, he cringed when the door squeaked eerily closed behind him, and an otherworldly bong sounded somewhere in the back of the store.
On the walls behind a long glass display case, the eyes of various animals seemed to follow him as he approached the counter. This made his already nervous stomach queasy with an even more disquieting feeling.
The room seemed peculiarly dark for a showroom. Subdued spotlights fixed on each animal provided the only light. Several of the larger mounts were so alarming; Louie hesitated to turn away for fear the foreboding beast would leap from its perch on the wall upon him. He had seen mounts at the Moose and Elks Lodges, but he had never seen any so realistic it could produce a creepy sensation of fear.
The illuminated display case contained a rattlesnake, cobra, and large lizard so real, Louie stood a comfortable distance from the glass.
“Are you Mr. Shafer?” A deep, bass voice boomed from behind him.
Louie felt as if he had jumped a foot off the ground when the deep Lurch-like voice seemed to rattle the windowpanes. Like a phantom from out of nowhere, a giant of a man at least a foot and a half taller than he stood shrouded in the shadows behind the display case.
“Jeepers,” Louie said, turning to face the ominous man dressed in black. “I didn’t hear you come into the room. I’m sorry, I…” His voice quavered as his eyes fixed on Blood’s repulsive face emerging into the light. He thought of running for the door, but he was so paralyzed with fear, he couldn’t get his legs to move.
The taxidermist’s head was much too big for the rest of his body. His face, and particularly his enormous ears, had ugly patches of stiff bristles only something like a hedge clipper could remove. He had miniature tusks for his lower incisors that extended in sharp points above his upper lip. Instead of a nose, he had a snout brimming with a yellow mucous that oozed into his mouthful of jagged, discolored teeth.
Blood finally broke the prolonged silence with a nervous chuckle, ”I apologize Mr. Shafer, I forgot to warn you about my appearance on the phone. I got distracted and forgot to put on the Donald Trump mask I wear to meet customers. It always breaks the ice with a laugh. I can’t believe I blundered into the showroom without it.”
Louie’s face reddened with embarrassment as he stammered, “I’m frightfully sorry for my initial reaction. I hope you can forgive me.“
“It’s all right. You’re the first customer who has seen me this way. I can imagine how much of a shock it must have been. I am the unfortunate victim of a rare birth defect very few people have. A wild boar bit my poor mother during her pregnancy, and I ended up with some of its DNA. I hope this does not interfere with our doing business.”
Louie turned his gaze back to the mounts on the wall and wished to God Blood would put on his Trump mask. Trying to change the subject to regain his composure, he muttered, “From what I’ve seen at the local Moose and Elk Lodges and on the Internet, your work is unbelievable.”
“I hope in a good way,” Blood said with a crooked smile.
“Absolutely, beyond compare.”
“In talking with you on the phone, you struck me as someone who doesn’t have a lot of hunting experience,” Blood said as he surveyed Louie from head to toe with a mental tape measure.
Louie didn’t understand why he made that assumption and replied, “That’s actually not the case, Mr. Blood. My father started taking me hunting when I was only eight years old. I’ve been an avid hunter ever since. Unfortunately, I’ve never bagged a deer worth mounting before, and I don’t know much about taxidermy.”
“So you’ve successfully hunted deer for many years?”
“Absolutely,” Louie beamed. “I hate to brag, but I would estimate I’ve had over fifty kills.”
Blood looked at Louie with an odd expression and continued delving into his history as a hunter, “Do you hunt for food or just for the sport?”
“I hate to admit it, but I detest venison. It gave me the runs the few times my father made me eat it. I have no desire to eat the meat from the animals I kill, I’d much rather have a juicy beefsteak, a Big Mac, or a Whopper. I simply love to set the sights of my crossbow on a wild thing and pull the trigger.”
Blood face turned ashen at this remark and recoiling backwards a step, he said, “I’ve talked with a lot of hunters in my time, but I’ve never heard anyone describe the killing of an animal quite like that before.”
“The rush I get is almost orgasmic,” Louie ranted, out of control. “To have the power of a living thing’s life or death in your sights is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. Once in a blue moon, you can’t plan it, when I don’t get off a perfect shot, and I’ve only wounded my prey, I get an extra rush of adrenalin when I feel the warm blood gushing through my fingers when I slit its throat. To feel the intensity of its heartbeat… To see the fear in its eyes… Christ! I’m almost getting a woodie just thinking about it. And then to witness its body shutting down as the creature breathes its final breath. It’s mind-blowing.”
Louie saw Blood’s tusk-like front teeth clinch with obvious disdain at his lengthy outburst of emotion, but he held his tongue, if he had one.
Despite the troubled look on Blood’s face, Louie asked, “Can you help me with the carcass? The sun is blistering hot, and the ice in the pickup is melting.”
“Of course. Let me get a cart,” Blood said as he proceeded through a door behind the display case. A moment later, he returned wheeling a flatbed across the room. Louie followed him out the door into the parking lot.
When Louie unlatched the tailgate, he was immediately drenched with a sudden gush of water from the melted ice that had accumulated in the truck bed.
Blood expected what was coming and stepped away in time to avoid the ice bath, and said, trying to control his laughter, “I guess you felt something like a member of the Polar Bear Club diving into ice cold sea water on New Years Day.”
Louie did not find the remark funny, but said nothing. Then, removing the tarp, they lifted the head and shoulders of the deer on to the cart and rolled it inside the shop to a refrigerated room.
When Louie entered the cold storage area, he saw nine rectangular metal tables each with a bloody sheet covering an elongated outline of something underneath.
“I see you’re a man of your word, Mr. Blood. You do have nine mounts scheduled before mine.” Almost immediately, Louie’s wet clothes started to freeze around him as he grumbled through chattering teeth, “For God sakes, Blood, what temperature do you keep it in here?”
The taxidermist smiled his weird hog-like smile and replied, “After I apply my special preservatives, I find ten degrees below zero best for storing more than six months.”
After they transferred the carcass from the cart on to the metal table and covered it with a sheet, Louie felt his wet shoes sticking to the freezing cement floor. With no warning, Blood lunged toward him and placed a handcuff, linked by a chain to a steel ring on the floor, on Louie’s wrist.
“What the hell are you doing?” Louie screamed as he watched Blood make a beeline for the entrance to the shop. He heard the whoosh of the heavy freezer door closing and saw Blood’s face morph into something not human through the insulated glass panel. He saw his cruel, savage eyes bulging with insane delight.
Louie shrieked at the top of his lungs and twisted at the handcuff like a madman in a futile attempt to escape. The unforgiving, freezing blast of cold air falling from the ceiling vents engulfed him. In a few minutes, he could feel his whole body stiffening. Ice sickles formed in the snot dangling from his nostrils from his all out struggle to escape the unbearable, biting cold. The blood from his ravaged wrist had partially frozen in a pool at his feet. The thermometer on the wall read ten degrees below zero as he grimaced at the hopelessness of his situation.
Moving almost in slow motion to the closest table he could reach with the length of chain, Louie raised the frozen, bloody sheet draped over something on the table. He glared in horror at the head and shoulders of a hunter he had shot the shit with at Maggie’s Diner only a few weeks ago.
One of the glass eyes of the man in the mount staring up at him was cockeyed. The blue lips of the work in progress sported a large artificial red apple clinched between his teeth.
[bctt tweet=”OCTOBER TERROR 2018 Short Story Award – Entry #34 ‘THE TAXIDERMIST’ Billy Wells – Enjoy all this terrific, disturbing material you have in your hands, lots of horror stories at your disposal for your dark delight and vote!” username=”theboldmom”]
On October 23rd we’ll close submissions and open a poll for the readers to choose their favourite one! You’ll have a week to make your choice and on October 31st we’ll announce the winner!!!
