THE FEAR SUIT
A Horror-Comedy Novella
Only a dollar!
A harrowing, hilarious story from the award-winning author of the Outlaw King steampunk fantasy series and the #6 best-selling Horror epic Malus Domestica.
Oxford's yearly furry convention OxFurred is almost here, and Dylan doesn't have a costume to wear. His friends discover a realistic bear suit on Craigslist, but after he spends the weekend wearing it, he discovers he can't take it off.
And as the days pass, he gets hungrier and hungrier, and angrier and angrier…until his friends slowly realize that he's not alone in that costume.
Oxford's yearly furry convention OxFurred is almost here, and Dylan doesn't have a costume to wear. His friends discover a realistic bear suit on Craigslist, but after he spends the weekend wearing it, he discovers he can't take it off.
And as the days pass, he gets hungrier and hungrier, and angrier and angrier…until his friends slowly realize that he's not alone in that costume.
Excerpt
Luckily most of the road to Roanoke is a two-lane 55mph highway, so I made it there in a little under an hour. I went slow through the main glob of “town,” looking for Eric’s truck, but I should have just gone straight to the church because that’s where I eventually found it.
I tried the front door of the church, but it was locked, so I went counter-clockwise around the perimeter of the building, trying doors as I found them. Around the very back, where the one wing went up onto the hill, I found another parking area. Eric’s truck was back there, along with one of those huge Econoline vans with the slide-out wheelchair ramp.
The back of the truck was full of gardening tools—rakes, shovels, a tank of herbicide.
Inside the back door of the church, I found a dark hallway with offices branching off to either side. Muffled organ music came from the second door on my right. I crept over and found a fat old man in a motorized wheelchair, typing at a desktop computer.
Gospel music poured out of an old radio, the kind in a wood cabinet that’s about as big as an oven and has a record turntable on top. It was channeling the local AM Christian station, which next to the FM country station is one of the two clearest stations on the dial. I crept past as quietly as possible. Never heard the wheelchair move.
In the dark, the church turned out to be a bit of a maze, with long hallways cut into blocks of shadows by light coming from open doors. Probably a half an hour I wandered around in it. I kept forgetting to look at the sign out front, but as I explored the premises I learned that it was a Baptist church, which made sense considering where it was.
Wandering from the rear office block I found myself in a huge chapel with dozens of rows of pews, and behind that were several Sunday school classrooms. Eric was in none of them. With the bear suit firmly in the middle of my mind, I kept expecting to see some kind of cult imagery or paraphernalia—a bowl made of a human skull, an aquarium full of snakes, a mural of death and dismemberment—but no such luck. Everything looked above-board. Lots of dog-eared Bibles, pocket comic-book tracts, posters of Jesus at picnics and clutching mendicants to His heavenly bosom.
A stairwell led down to a sort of basement. At the bottom I found an underground tennis court and a small lunchroom with an elevator.
What the hell kind of country church has an underground tennis court? I found the wall mural I was looking for, but instead of people being ripped apart and fed to devil-faced machines, the tennis court was surrounded by pastel colors and bunny rabbits batting shuttlecocks to each other in the woods. With the lights on I’m sure this place was a real family sanctuary, but in the dark it felt like a place that makes Kool-Aid in bathtubs.
Off the tennis court was a pair of small locker rooms. The scuffle of shoes came echoing out of the womens’ side. I went in and found Eric mopping the floor. To his right was a row of toilet stalls, and on the other side a door led to a row of showers.
“Hey,” I growled, coming up behind him.
Eric jumped a foot in the air and almost fell. “What are you doing here?” His face darkened and he squished the mop down into a wheel bucket full of dirty water.
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here,” he said, scowling as he churned water. He wrung out the mop and went back to mopping. “I’m the janitor, asshole.” As he said it, he glared up at me from under his eyebrows like I was the stupid one.
“Oh.” I watched him mop for a moment, trying to gather my words.
“The hell do you want?”
“The bear-skin suit.”
He continued to mop. “What about it?”
“What’s up with it?”
Eric kept mopping quietly. He paused, started to say something, pushed the mop one more time, then sighed and said, “I lied about it when I was on the phone with you. My daddy didn’t make that thing. It’s been in our family for a few generations.”
“So it is a Coosa medicine man costume?”
“I guess. I don’t know where it came from—y’know, what Indian tribe it came from.” Eric spoke as much with his hands as he did with his mouth, gesticulating as he mopped. He seemed to be speaking slower and more clearly, though I don’t know if that was because he was at work and hadn’t had any meth in a while, because he’d had a fix for the day, or because he started the day with a joint, or some combination of the above. “All’s I know is that we can’t get rid of it. We been tryin for years and years and years to get rid of it. The fucking thing don’t burn; we’ve tried to burn it a hundred damn times. My daddy says when he was a boy about your age he filled it full of rocks and threw it into the lake.”
“What happened?”
“The next time he went fishing, he got a bite but instead of a fish, he pulled up that bear-skin. All the rocks was gone out of it.”
His head snapped up and he looked over my shoulder at the locker room doorway. I followed his eyes but there was nothing there.
“Sorry, thought I heard something.”
I stared him down. “Do you know why my friend—the one wearing the suit—is speaking French?”
“The suit makes you speak French because of the guy who owned it or some shit, some hunter back in the slavery days. We all think it must be haunted.”
I tried to digest this.
“Is he turning into a bear?” I asked.
“What?” The pinched expression on Eric’s face was probably the same one he had when one of his toilets was backed up.
“I said, is he turning into a bear? You said it was a medicine man’s costume. Does it turn you into—”
“No, he ain’t turning into a bear. And I’m the one on drugs?”
“What else does it make you do?”
Eric licked his lips and studied my face, his eyes suddenly haunted. They flicked over my shoulder, then locked on my face again. “You know what? This was a mistake. You need to get out of here.”
“No.”
“Your friend is done for,” he said, waving me away. “Deal with it.”
I marched over to him and grabbed the lapels of his coveralls. To my surprise, he didn’t flinch at all, just bored into my face with his crazy dope-fried gray eyes. They looked like they’d witnessed the Ark of the Covenant. “What else does the suit make you do?”
“It makes you kill people. My family, in particular, because of who we’re all kin to. It always comes back. It haunts my family, the Lecroys, because we’re descended from some Frenchie or somebody, a hunter who owned the skin back in the Civil War days. It haunts us, it runs in our family—it always comes back.” He seemed to summon himself up and said with venom, “And it makes you go after whoever got you to put the damn thing on in the first place.”
“Steven and Ashleigh.”
“They the ones the bought the suit offa me? The nerdy kid with the money?”
“Yeah.”
And, in retrospect, probably me and Jacob too. We were all responsible for putting Dylan in the bear suit.
Ah, god.
I tried the front door of the church, but it was locked, so I went counter-clockwise around the perimeter of the building, trying doors as I found them. Around the very back, where the one wing went up onto the hill, I found another parking area. Eric’s truck was back there, along with one of those huge Econoline vans with the slide-out wheelchair ramp.
The back of the truck was full of gardening tools—rakes, shovels, a tank of herbicide.
Inside the back door of the church, I found a dark hallway with offices branching off to either side. Muffled organ music came from the second door on my right. I crept over and found a fat old man in a motorized wheelchair, typing at a desktop computer.
Gospel music poured out of an old radio, the kind in a wood cabinet that’s about as big as an oven and has a record turntable on top. It was channeling the local AM Christian station, which next to the FM country station is one of the two clearest stations on the dial. I crept past as quietly as possible. Never heard the wheelchair move.
In the dark, the church turned out to be a bit of a maze, with long hallways cut into blocks of shadows by light coming from open doors. Probably a half an hour I wandered around in it. I kept forgetting to look at the sign out front, but as I explored the premises I learned that it was a Baptist church, which made sense considering where it was.
Wandering from the rear office block I found myself in a huge chapel with dozens of rows of pews, and behind that were several Sunday school classrooms. Eric was in none of them. With the bear suit firmly in the middle of my mind, I kept expecting to see some kind of cult imagery or paraphernalia—a bowl made of a human skull, an aquarium full of snakes, a mural of death and dismemberment—but no such luck. Everything looked above-board. Lots of dog-eared Bibles, pocket comic-book tracts, posters of Jesus at picnics and clutching mendicants to His heavenly bosom.
A stairwell led down to a sort of basement. At the bottom I found an underground tennis court and a small lunchroom with an elevator.
What the hell kind of country church has an underground tennis court? I found the wall mural I was looking for, but instead of people being ripped apart and fed to devil-faced machines, the tennis court was surrounded by pastel colors and bunny rabbits batting shuttlecocks to each other in the woods. With the lights on I’m sure this place was a real family sanctuary, but in the dark it felt like a place that makes Kool-Aid in bathtubs.
Off the tennis court was a pair of small locker rooms. The scuffle of shoes came echoing out of the womens’ side. I went in and found Eric mopping the floor. To his right was a row of toilet stalls, and on the other side a door led to a row of showers.
“Hey,” I growled, coming up behind him.
Eric jumped a foot in the air and almost fell. “What are you doing here?” His face darkened and he squished the mop down into a wheel bucket full of dirty water.
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here,” he said, scowling as he churned water. He wrung out the mop and went back to mopping. “I’m the janitor, asshole.” As he said it, he glared up at me from under his eyebrows like I was the stupid one.
“Oh.” I watched him mop for a moment, trying to gather my words.
“The hell do you want?”
“The bear-skin suit.”
He continued to mop. “What about it?”
“What’s up with it?”
Eric kept mopping quietly. He paused, started to say something, pushed the mop one more time, then sighed and said, “I lied about it when I was on the phone with you. My daddy didn’t make that thing. It’s been in our family for a few generations.”
“So it is a Coosa medicine man costume?”
“I guess. I don’t know where it came from—y’know, what Indian tribe it came from.” Eric spoke as much with his hands as he did with his mouth, gesticulating as he mopped. He seemed to be speaking slower and more clearly, though I don’t know if that was because he was at work and hadn’t had any meth in a while, because he’d had a fix for the day, or because he started the day with a joint, or some combination of the above. “All’s I know is that we can’t get rid of it. We been tryin for years and years and years to get rid of it. The fucking thing don’t burn; we’ve tried to burn it a hundred damn times. My daddy says when he was a boy about your age he filled it full of rocks and threw it into the lake.”
“What happened?”
“The next time he went fishing, he got a bite but instead of a fish, he pulled up that bear-skin. All the rocks was gone out of it.”
His head snapped up and he looked over my shoulder at the locker room doorway. I followed his eyes but there was nothing there.
“Sorry, thought I heard something.”
I stared him down. “Do you know why my friend—the one wearing the suit—is speaking French?”
“The suit makes you speak French because of the guy who owned it or some shit, some hunter back in the slavery days. We all think it must be haunted.”
I tried to digest this.
“Is he turning into a bear?” I asked.
“What?” The pinched expression on Eric’s face was probably the same one he had when one of his toilets was backed up.
“I said, is he turning into a bear? You said it was a medicine man’s costume. Does it turn you into—”
“No, he ain’t turning into a bear. And I’m the one on drugs?”
“What else does it make you do?”
Eric licked his lips and studied my face, his eyes suddenly haunted. They flicked over my shoulder, then locked on my face again. “You know what? This was a mistake. You need to get out of here.”
“No.”
“Your friend is done for,” he said, waving me away. “Deal with it.”
I marched over to him and grabbed the lapels of his coveralls. To my surprise, he didn’t flinch at all, just bored into my face with his crazy dope-fried gray eyes. They looked like they’d witnessed the Ark of the Covenant. “What else does the suit make you do?”
“It makes you kill people. My family, in particular, because of who we’re all kin to. It always comes back. It haunts my family, the Lecroys, because we’re descended from some Frenchie or somebody, a hunter who owned the skin back in the Civil War days. It haunts us, it runs in our family—it always comes back.” He seemed to summon himself up and said with venom, “And it makes you go after whoever got you to put the damn thing on in the first place.”
“Steven and Ashleigh.”
“They the ones the bought the suit offa me? The nerdy kid with the money?”
“Yeah.”
And, in retrospect, probably me and Jacob too. We were all responsible for putting Dylan in the bear suit.
Ah, god.
