11:11

Eleven Pipers Piping - A Dark Tidings Horror Story

Twelve Days of Christmas—Dark Tidings is a Substack special holiday event. Each day beginning Friday the 13th, we’ll count down to Christmas Eve with a dark tale featuring one of the gifts from the classic Christmas carol. A guide to all the stories can be found here.

art by MARK of the BRAND

You open the door and smell cigarettes. Cigarettes and body odor and cigarettes. The smoke curls out and freezes in the cold air. Cigarettes and laughter, body odor, weed and something else. And again, cigarettes.

A hundred people in the rickety old Victorian, all smoking, and you're smoking too. You're inside already, drinking lukewarm, stale, piss-flavored beer. Kegs of it. Six packs, forty ouncers. Bottom shelf vodkas with names of Russian czars. And cigarettes. And laughter.

You move down into the basement, amidst the crooked faces, all yellowed and premature in age. Doughpeople dressed in flannel and jeans grappled to sagging, bloated asses. Stooped and overworked spines. Drinking and smoking.

Your cigarette dies and you light another one. You look into your pack. Unfiltered menthols. Eleven left. The night is young.

An old bathtub fills with piss and trash and cigarette butts, cans and bottles, loogies, snot rockets, more piss, tissues with hacked up blackness. And again, cigarette butts. A brown, stinking slop.

The music rattles the beams of the old Victorian. You're still drinking and you're still smoking. The dense fog of cigarette smoke permeates everything. The warped shadows of the drinkers and smokers. The smoke oozing from your vision. The smoke oozing through the baseboards, oozing through the cracks in the windows, where it freezes in the cold night air.

You make your way upstairs and you see that the stove clock is showing 11:11.

It's wrong. Too late for that. It must be. Because by the time you make it to the attic, your wristwatch is also showing 11:11. And surely time has elapsed. Surely time hasn't frozen like the cigarette smoke oozing through the cracks in the floorboards and the cracked windows to freeze in the cold night air.

The attic is where the real action is. Not the cigarettes. Not the piss-poor booze. Not the Romanov court of bottom-shelf Russian vodkas. Not the Barbie passport stamps of acid tabs. The colorful Pez of pills marked and unmarked, known and unknown. The little snow caps of powders reflected in the frozen rivers of hand mirrors, vacuumed up by the monstrous nostrils of giants.

Yeah, these people are your friends, aren't they? Friends and kinsmen united by your shared mutiny against sobriety. Your taunting war against consciousness.

Up in the attic, that's where the real action is. Ten men and women slumped on ratty couches and beanbags or lying on the floor. And with you, that makes eleven. Eleven of you passing around eleven pipes. Eleven, eleven. Each with a black mysterious tar smoking in the bowl. Scents quite unlike that of the cigarettes. Eleven pipes, eleven pipers. Eleven eleven.

It's all elevens from here on, baby.

You take the pipe. Who handed it to you? You don't even know. There are no who's anymore. Just ghosts. Ghosts in the smoke. Lost sailors drowned in the bathtub of piss and booze. You bring the metal to your lips. It's hot and it burns. And you don't care. And you suck. You breathe. You slobber. You draw the smoke in, in, down, down, to your lungs.

To the little extraterrestrial living inside this perambulatory meat suit. Some call it a soul, but whatever it is, it's trapped in your body and it needs to either get the hell out or die. And truly, when the smoke hits, it does one or the other. One to one. Eleven eleven.

Oh, that lovely blackness.

Every pinprick, pore, ice pick wound across your face opening to the smoke, which seeps in. It tantalizes. Absorbs. And sublimates. You vanish in the black.

*

1:11

You wake and something is crying, screaming, bawling, and banging, rattling the heating duct.

Hello? you say. Or do you? It's hard to tell if your mouth can make words at this point.

The smoke has eaten everyone alive. No one else answers. You're still there in the attic, right? But no one else can move.

You pull yourself up from the flearidden carpet and all the little hands of loose thread grip you and wail, No, come back. Come back to us. But you pull yourself up and you stumble to the heating vent, rattling, the source of the cries.

The grate comes away in your hands. It must have cut them because they're bleeding, but you can't feel a thing. You reach into the grate and you grab something slick, like a wet rope. Is it bloody in its own right? Or is it bloody from the blood on your hands? Maybe it's a link of sausages. Maybe as you pull and pull, you'll be bringing out breakfast for your friends. The fellow mutineers passed out around you.

Something is dragging towards you with your pulls of the slick rope. In the light — where's that light coming from? You didn't order a light — you see that it’s flesh. A cord. A cord of flesh attached to a throbbing bloody bundle.

A baby.

You pull it out and you hold the bloody, screaming newborn in your arms. And you cradle it. Its face is blue. The cord wraps around its neck. You tug the cord, loosen it, let the damn soupy little thing breathe, and it rewards you with fresh cries.

Hey! you say. Did anybody lose a baby?

*

11:11

This time in the a.m., you wake up to a pounding on wood and a pounding in your head. And screaming and the sounds of a scuffle.

You look around. Your ten other pipers are passed out. Some with open eyes like frosted glass. Maybe they're dead. Or maybe they're still in the second dimension.

You goddamn fucking bastard! A male voice bellows from downstairs. You wrecked my house! You bastard! Oh my god! You broke my TV!

I can't believe you would do this! A woman, sobbing.

Crashing and thumping. Now people are stirring. People are running. The floors shake as the mutineers flee. Glass breaks.

How could you do this to your mother? The man roars and goddamn he’s loud.

You wrecked my house! The woman screams and cries.

You know it's time to go. You stumble down the staircase, leaving smears of blood on the railing. Your hands are bloody. So, that part at least tracks. You skirt around to the mudroom avoiding the shouts and hollers from the kitchen.

And then with everything in you, you run. You run across the backyard, through the ghosts of hanging laundry to your truck. Your love. Eaten by rust and road salt but with an engine that never quits. That always purrs to life.

You leave bloody red hand turkeys on the fluffy white steering wheel cover as you scream onto the snowy dirt road.

*

I heard Jason — he got kicked out of the house for what he did. Serves him right, I think. His mom is so nice. I can’t believe him throwing a party like that. And then him trashing her house. I hope you didn't do any of that. People were kicking holes in the wall. Just being animals. They smashed up all the deck furniture and burned it in a big bonfire.

Uh huh. You fumble with Bridget's belt. Finally, you get the clasps undone and jerk it out of the loops.

Hey, careful, Bridget says. I'm a delicate flower.

Yeah, real dainty, you say.

Are you listening to me? Bridget says. You think you can just come over here and take my pants off like this?

I'm listening. You get the top button of her jeans undone and then unzip them. They're tight on her legs, so you have to peel the lip down and yank.

She slaps your hand and then grabs one of the pillows on her bed and hits you with it. I'm serious, she says. You can't just come by here whenever you want and use me like a sex doll. You gotta talk to me and stuff. Buy me dinner. Or at least a bottle of wine.

I got some shooters in the cab, you say.

Well, that's good enough.

By the time you get back with an armful of baby liquors, she's got the belt back on. And another layer of armor — a thick wool sweater.

Dang, it's cold in here, Bridget says. Dad’s got the thermostat just high enough to keep the pipes from freezing.

I know what'll warm you up, you say.

I wanna know what you were doing there. At Jason’s. You weren't going there to see her were you?

Who's her?

Oh, you know who I mean.

I really don't.

Jasmine. Jasmine Perkelson.

You think I went there to Jason's to see Jasmine Perkelson?

I know she was there. Courtney Delaney told me.

Well, I didn't see her.

Well, who did you see?

I didn't see anyone. Jason's a loser. His friends are all losers. They're a bunch of college dropouts. Delinquents. Broke ass nobodies. Stealing from their parents to feed their habit.

Then why'd you go if you’re so not that?

You shrug. I wanted to get lit.

And did you?

Yeah, I did. So what?

Bridget crosses her arms and taps her foot, looking at you in a way that radiates like nuclear fallout.

Can I use your shower? you ask.

I wish you would, she says. You reek of cigarettes. Just be quick. Dad will be home any minute. And I don't want him catching you here.

What time is it?

Eleven eleven.

Shut up.

Don't you tell me to shut up, mister.

What time is it really?

Well, eleven twelve now but it was eleven eleven when you asked me. Why? You got a job interview? Ha.

No I...never mind.

You shower, using big handfuls of all the soaps and conditioners and everything else you can squeeze and squirt from a bottle. And the biggest fluffiest towel.

I can't believe the mess you made in here, Bridget says, inviting herself into the bathroom. You really are a piece of work. I don't know why I love you.

I don't either, you say. Must be my rugged good looks.

Bridget looks you up and down and gives you a little bit of a smile. Well. You ain't that bad to look at. And it sure as hell ain't your personality. She checks her watch. You really better go. Dad will be home soon.

It's not eleven eleven still, is it?

How would it still be eleven eleven? What the hell does that even mean? You know how time works, don’t you?

Forget it. Can I call you Saturday?

You better call me Saturday. You better not be throwing rocks at my window or nothing like that. Crawling up the tree. Barging in here. Trying to poke me in the ass with that thing while I'm sleeping. But yeah, you can call.

Alright I will. Right after I call Jasmine.

You think that's funny to me?

Sorry. Okay, I'll call.

You let yourself out and then take the black rubber hose out of your truck bed. You pop open the gas cap of Bridget's jeep and run the hose into the fuel tank. You fellate the other end good and hard until gasoline squirts up and makes you gag. A few gallons — nothing that will be missed — flow from a fuller tank to an emptier tank.

Eleven gallons, you think. Eleven gallons in each tank.

Eleven eleven.

*

Jason takes a heavy hit from the pipe. He scrunches up his red face like a cartoon and then exhales, filling your cab with thick, heavy smoke. The smoke curls against the windshield. It sneaks out through the thin crack at the top of your window and freezes in the cold black air.

Jason coughs and coughs, and then hands you the pipe. You look at the dashboard clock.

11:10

You hover the lighter flame under the bowl and inhale.

You know. Just as the smoke hits your lungs. Just as that creature living inside you called the soul begins to squeal. You hear the heavy thunk of the digits turning over. A one slams into the zero’s place.

11:11

The whole world might be shaking. Or maybe it's just your brain, angry and frothing at yet another insult. Another death cloud of mustard gas, fuming up through the barrier of blood protecting it from all this shit you just can't stop putting into your body.

You cough and cough and enter the plane of annihilation.

It's real, Jason says, still coughing. They did it. They kicked me out this time. Threw all my shit out. They threw out my clothes, my whole bong collection. Dave just tossed it all out the window. Fucking bastard. As if it were his house. It's my mom's house. My house. What, I can't throw a party in my house? He's acting like I ain't paying rent. Like I ain't paying utilities? I got more right to be there than Dave. Motherfucker. Literally.

Where are you staying? you ask.

Psh. Where am I staying? I'm staying with Steve in the back room of his trailer. Doesn't have any fucking heat. I'm freezing, man. Sleeping in a sleeping bag. Got two trash bags full of all my worldly goods.

It won't last, you say. It never does. Dave will be gone and you'll be back in as soon as you know it. Liz’ll see he's a scumbag and kick his ass to the curb. And call you up crying and beg you to come back.

I don't know. I hope so. But Dave's got his fucking tentacles in my mom's brain. I don't know what he's doing to her.

Well, shit, I don't want to think about that.

Oh, you think I do? You think I want to think about what my mom's boyfriend is doing to her? And I don't mean it like that. I mean, he's got some kind of spell on her. Some kind of magic. Dark magic.

Oh, what the fuck. You open the cab door and hop out into the frozen mud.

Where the fuck you going? Jason says. You're letting out all the heat.

You slam the door behind you, not listening, and look into the darkness. You flick on your headlamp, shooting a beam through the rows of pines, cedars, beeches, and oaks, and the swirling flecks of snow that never stop coming from the eternally clouded skies. There's something out there in the trees. You can see it darting around.

There's something out there, you say, echoing the voice in your mind. Is it your brain or your soul talking? You don't even know anymore. All these creatures hiding in your skin, pretending to be you. Is there any actual you in there? Or is it just blood, spit, and whiskey at this point? And drugs designed to rip up all the threads connecting your brain cells like a cat going at the curtains.

It's a deer, Jason says.

It ain't no deer, you say.

You walk into the woods, into the shadowy boneyard of trees. There it is again, flitting behind the trunks. You hear laughter, giggling.

It's a kid, you say. It's a little fucking kid.

There ain't no kid playing out in the goddamn woods at eleven p.m., Jason yells.

It's not eleven p.m., you say. It's eleven eleven.

What the fuck does that matter, Jason calls back. You losing your fucking mind?

Yeah, you're losing me, your mind says. Maybe you lost me a long time ago.

You can see him, the kid. He's, what, five or six? How old is little? Buck-toothed, blond-haired, a pale, scraggly runt. Frozen like a deer in the beam of your headlamp. He peeks around the trunk of an ash tree. He grips with bare hands, pale, bare arms, wearing a t-shirt and shorts. And bare feet.

Hey, you call to him. Hey, you're gonna freeze to death out here. You gotta come in. You gotta come into the cab, kid.

He just stares at you. He's gotta be stupid or something. How'd he even get out here?

You alright there, kid? Come on. I ain't gonna hurt you.

Who the fuck are you talking to? Jason's hot, stinking, pepperoni breath wets the back of your neck. He clasps your shoulder in a heavy, jerking motion, half camaraderie, half mortal blow.

There's no one out here, he says.

Right there, you say.

Look, there is no one out here, Jason repeats. You fuckin' smoked yourself stupid.

Look, you say. And then you point at nothing. At empty, black space. At snowflakes swirling in circles in the beam of your headlamp.

Nothing. Jason spits. Come on, man. I still got a little bit left. You aren't gonna get weird on me, are ya?

You go back to the cab and pass the pipe back and forth.

One hit, you think. No, this is my second hit. I already took one. Where do I start from? Me or Jason? Do I just count mine or do I count his?

Doesn't matter, your soul creature says. Just count. You'll know the answer.

You'll know, your brain echoes.

Okay. Two for Jason, two for me. Four, five, back and forth. Six.

I’m losing the numbers, your brain says. I can't track 'em anymore. You're killing me. You know that, right? You're killing me.

I know, you say.

He knows, the soul creature says, crawling around in your belly.

Hey, when was the last time you ate? your belly says.

Seven. How did we get to seven? Is that right? you ask.

It's right, your brain says.

Eight, nine. Jason's hogging the pipe. You don't care. You should care. You paid for half.

You want to take less of this stuff, your brain says. You've had enough.

Nine, ten. That's all Jason. Ah, it comes back to you. You knew it would be this way, didn't you?

We knew, your brain and your soul creature say.

Maybe your belly chimes in. Maybe your ass chimes in, too. The whole chorus of freaks living inside you.

The eleventh hit. The smoke rushes in.

The clock ticks, and the heavy digit slams down, knocking the zero out with a one.

Eleven hits

12:11

Eleven eleven.

*

You know about numbers, don't you? you say to Jasmine, as she's pulling on her joggers. The joggers that you took off her an hour and eleven minutes ago. You don't even have to guess anymore. Your brain can track it. You don't even need to count. Your soul can track it. You just know. It was seventy-one minutes since you first put your mouth on her. One hour and eleven minutes later, she's putting on her clothes.

What do you mean, numbers? Jasmine asks.

She pulls on her pink silk bathrobe, and you watch from the bed, enjoying the warmth from the vents. Jasmine's house is always nice and hot. Her family always has the money to keep the heat on. The floors in her bathroom, the bathroom as big as your truck, are all heated. The whole place is a paradise of warmth and sweet-smelling things.

And Jasmine, who smells like the sweetest thing of all. She lights a bundle of Palo Santo and places it on her desk next to a quartz crystal and a tiger eye.

A dreamcatcher hangs above the bed. Maybe it'll catch your nightmares and trap them.

A mandala decorates the wall. Maybe your nightmares will get lost in the mandala and starve to death.

Numbers, you say. Magic numbers. Like, if you see the same number over and over again, does it mean something?

Oh, you're talking about numerology, Jasmine says. I wouldn't expect you to believe in things like that. What number are you seeing?

Eleven, you say. Eleven eleven.

Eleven, eleven, Jasmine says. Hmm. Well, that can mean a lot of different things.

Like what?

It could mean that you've opened a door. A door that you can't close now.

You laugh. Oh, well, I've opened a lot of doors I ain't been able to close. So, I doubt that has to do with it. Or if it's only catching up to me now.

Hmm. Could mean that your angel's watching over you. Could mean that your luck's about to change.

Well, that would be really good, you say. I could use a change of luck. And I could certainly use an angel. Maybe you're my angel.

I don't think so. Maybe you can be your own angel.

That’s it. I’m an angel. You laugh but your soul doesn’t find it funny. Did you hear what happened to Jason?

I heard, Jasmine says. She pulls a brush through her tousled hair. Where were you? I missed you at the party.

I went upstairs.

To the attic?

To the attic.

You know what they were doing up there, don't you? Is that what you were doing?

I was.

Gross. Jasmine crinkles up her nose.

I saw something when I was up there. It's when I saw eleven eleven the first time.

What'd you see? Jasmine comes back to the bed and curls up next to you. She puts a hand on your chest and twirls one of the hairs.

A baby.

You saw a baby?

Yeah.

You really gotta quit doing that shit. You're seeing babies.

Then I saw something else. I saw a kid.

A kid?

Yeah, in the woods. Later. I don't know. Seeing kids and babies — means I'm gonna be a father, maybe? You're on the pill, right?

Jasmine laughs. Yeah, I'm on the pill. You think I want you to be my baby's dad? You think I want to be a mom now?

Maybe not now, but someday.

With you? No, I don't think so.

What's she saying? your belly growls. That you wouldn't be a good father?

Well, you wouldn't, your brain says. Obviously not.

*

In the warm gas station, you fill your pockets with candy and sneak out. The bell clangs and tinkles as the door closes behind you. The flannelled mound of fat behind the counter doesn’t even look up from his phone.

You gnaw the wrapper to a peppermint patty open with your teeth and scarf it down. The cold makes your hands ache, makes the bones in your fingers throb. You lost your gloves somewhere.

You need another fix.

A light flickers madly above the bathroom door by the dumpster, casting shadows into the snowy woods, catching the everdrifting snowflakes in its strobe. In the blink of the light, you see the blinking of the numbers on your truck’s dashboard clock.

1. 1. 1. 1. 11. 11. 11:11

Someone hunches in the doorway. You know who it is. Who else could it be? It's the kid. He's older now. Maybe eight or nine, and dressed in jeans and a sweater — better, but still he'll freeze to death in this cold.

Hey kid, you say. You alright?

The kid looks at you. Well, maybe he looks past you.

You walk up to him, holding out a stolen chocolate bar. You want something to eat? Don't worry, I ain't gonna hurt you.

Now the kid looks at you. Dead on.

And he's gone with the blink of the light.

On, off, blink, blink. 1. 1. 1. 1. 11:11

Fucking hell.

You breathe in a black icicle of frozen night air and then you hop back into the cab of your truck, rubbing your hands together. But you don't turn on the heat, because you don't want to waste the gas.

*

You're back in the attic. One, two, three four…you don't need to finish counting. You know there are ten other people here. And with you, that's eleven.

No, it's not the attic. It's Billy's barn. The one he converted into a kind of flop house out at the edge of town, where you can all smoke your pipes unmolested. The air fills up with that thick, heavy smoke, and the smoke pries at the cracks under the doors and around the windows. It’s too hot, desperately hot in here, trying to escape into the cold black air, where it can freeze and fall and shatter and return to the earth from whence it came.

You feel yourself falling too. You're returning to the earth. Your stomach growls. The soul thing inside you burrows eagerly into the ground.

It's not time yet, your brain calls. We don't want to go back to the earth. If we go back to the earth, we'll cease to be. We'll be something else.

Isn't that all you ever wanted? To be something else? The soul creature giggles.

It always gets like this when that beautiful, heated smoke comes into your lungs and twists your head off.

You're falling, falling, falling into a bedroom. Is it Jasmine's? It looks nice, but all the teddy bears and pink, fluffy, girly shit is missing. It's a nice, respectable adult bedroom.

You see a woman on her knees. Could it be Bridget? Is she on her knees for you? No, she's blonde like Bridget, but older. Crying, well, maybe that could be Bridget, but no, she's too old. She's on her knees and her hands are clasped together and they're shaking.

And you can see on the bedroom clock that the red lights are blinking and flashing, just like the lights at the gas station, just like the lights of your dashboard clock. One, one, one, one, eleven, eleven.

And the woman is begging, and she is pleading, and she is praying out loud: Please, please just let him live. Just let him live. Let him be with us, Lord, even for a little while. Let him stay with us. Don't take him from us, Lord. I’ll do anything, give anything.

And you feel like a pervert floating in this room, a perverted ghost, unable to move or speak or do anything other than to just watch, watch this woman with her prayers, which she repeats over and over again. And even though time must be passing, you see it's got to be 11:11.

And then you know that's it. You're the God or the angel, the protector. You're going to give her this time. Eleven eleven. That's exactly as much as she's going to get. And you know exactly what to say.

You approach the woman and you put a hand on her forehead and you can feel that it's hot and red and warm and real. And she stops crying because she feels your touch, though she doesn't see you. She knows you are there. She feels your icy presence. For you are the smoke that has drifted through the cracks into the black cold air. And you have frozen and solidified in this moment.

And you bring your head down to hers and you touch your foreheads and you whisper. You whisper words you don't even understand. You say things that are comforting. You say things that are true. You say things that are wondrous and beautiful and at once horrible. But really, all these words, they all add up to one thing.

Eleven eleven.

*

Bang, bang, bang!

A cold wind batters the unlatched barn door and it swings open and shut.

Bang, bang, bang!

The door between this world and the second dimension.

The other pipers, they're all gone. They're dead, or dead to this world. They can't hear the bangs or feel the torturous cold wind blowing in. The freshly fallen powder of overnight snow whirls in with the frigid wind and dusts them all like sugar candy coating.

You stir and stumble to your feet. This is the bell tolling, summoning you. Eleven bangs and the door hangs open, beckoning you out into the black cold night.

You kick your way through the windswept snowdrift, blown in through the open door. You run through the dark woods in your t-shirt and your jeans, immune to the cold because you are the smoke and the cold cannot freeze you, for you have frozen already.

You find your truck and you hop in the cab and you turn the key and the engine purrs to life as it always does, always dependable. Your love.

And you drive. You fly. You race down the roads. You know exactly where you're going. The clock guides you. You can see the numbers ticking up.

11:03

11:04

11:05

It's coming, you know. You're in the half-world. Right in the colon between the two elevens. The eleven of now and the eleven of the future, fusing together to form 11:11, the eternal moment. You close your eyes, and you let the cold wheel move in your frozen hands, flying towards that frozen moment across time.

11:06

11:07

You turn onto the road to town, knowing this is the way you must go. You press the gas.

11:08

11:09

You open your eyes as the clock strikes 11:10. A car skitters around the bend and skids across the black ice into your lane. Its fog lamps bathe you in a silent white purity.

You slam the brakes because that's what you do. That's what anyone would do. But you know it's not going to work. The moment has captured you.

You answered the prayers. And now you must play the role of the angel, taking back what you've given. You are the smoke frozen in the black night air, falling hard.

11:11

Your grill slams into the driver side of the car. The airbag deploys. The seatbelt carves into your chest and navel. The wretched, alien soul inside you jerks free from the shock. The chiding bloody brain splats against the prison bone of the skull. Hot, watery puke surges from your belly and dribbles out your mouth.

11:11 the clock stops.

You free yourself and kick open the crumpled cab door and fall to the black ice. You slip and claw yourself to the car and look through the shattered safety glass of the passenger window.

The kid’s face is blue from the bruise of the impact, nose broken and weeping blood. He wails an animal wail, and your soul creature wails with him. You open the door and pull him gently from the deflated airbag and hold him in your arms, like you held him as a baby.

His mother’s dead eyes watch you gratefully from the driver’s side. Eleven bloody tears run down her cheeks.

The crisscrossing headlight beams.

The bare frozen branches of the trees.

The broken ribs in your chest.

The curls of smoke from your frozen breath.

The sacred incense of burning rubber.

The wail of souls.

And cigarettes. And body odor. And cigarettes.

*

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