Something new, The Scrapyard Dungeon (Patreon)

This is what happens when I get bored while driving. New ideas pop up and slowly grow. I'm taking this story slow, and mapping it out bit by bit. Here's the first chapter. This is meant to be a creepy story, with some trauma thrown in the mix. It's set in a fictitious part of Allentown PA, in a spot down on the Lehigh River where there used to be an old steel mill and other factories. Rusttown is typical of places in the Northeast and Midwest that suffered when the steel industry left.

Unlike those towns, something has been attracted to the despair and poverty that makes everything worse. And the rest of the world isn't far behind.

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"Damn, Huck, this is one seriously disappointing sandwich; I was really hoping for a better donation from you today. Two apples that you picked off that half-dead tree in front of your house and a toast sandwich?"

Vincent stared into the crumpled brown bag that had been used for a sack lunch many times. Huck and his friend Tim stood still, their backs to the brick wall of the school, while Vinnie, Louis, and Ben determined if there was anything they wanted from their lunches.

Louis glanced at the sandwich. "You don't want it. That's a Huck Special. The bread's from the stale shit they sell at the outlet. Three loaves for a buck. The stuff is so hard you have to toast it to eat it. Huckster here puts a thick slice of that nasty government cheese in his sandwiches and adds mustard. I tried one last week, near killed me."

Vincent made a face and handed back the lunch. "Damn, Huck. That's so bad a lunch; you make me feel sorry for you." He handed back the bag and moved to the next victim. "What does Timmy have today?"

Ben was grinning. "Timmy here is doing a good job of feeding us. He gets an A. I spy with my little eye a meatball sandwich from the Marcozzi Deli, celery sticks with cheesy spread, and for dessert, a chocolate pudding cup. Thank you, Timmy. Please come see us again tomorrow." He patted Timmy roughly on the head, aided by the foot difference in their height, and then the three older boys left Huck and Timmy in relative peace.

Timmy balled up his fists and kicked the wall. "I hate those guys."

Huck shrugged, grabbed his friend by the arm, and pulled him into the stairwell that led to the locked doors of the boiler room. He pulled a second sandwich out of a pocket inside his coat, followed by a couple of day-old donuts, slightly worse for wear. "Here, I brought extra. Two secrets to avoiding the 'Food Tax:': Hide your food, and have shitty decoys."

Timmy took the cheese and mustard on toast sandwich, and bit into it, stifling a groan at the taste of the cheese. Complaining about a gift sandwich from someone who ate them every day was a dick move. "What did he mean by Government cheese?"

Huck finished his sandwich in three bites, his donut in two, and started on his apple. "Government Surplus. Uncle Charlie told me the Feds have all these big warehouses full of food in case of emergencies. When they have too much, they give it to food banks. Someone tossed a block on our porch two weeks ago, along with some powdered milk. I think Father Paul put my uncle and me on a list of people needing donations. I'm not turning my nose up at five pounds of free cheese, even if it does taste odd. It's better when it's melted for a grilled cheese."

"Why do you even let them take your stuff? You're bigger than Vincent."

Huck shook his head. "Not worth the fight. I'm tall, but Vince has all the muscle. And two friends. Easier not to fight back. Fighting back gets you hurt." He said the last words with a finality that kept Tim from questioning him further. He dropped the subject.

"Hey, I'm getting together to play some DnD after school with my group. Want to come over? You can stay for dinner."

Huck was tempted. He didn't know anything about the game other than it had too many rules. When Tim and Ron started talking about their games, he just got confused, and his head hurt like when he tried to do math. But a meal he didn't have to cook would be nice. Would have been...he had to get home. "Thanks. But it's a recycling day. I have to work over at the yard and cook for Uncle Charlie."

Tim had asked before and would ask again. "Sure, maybe next week."

A buzzer rang, announcing a five-minute warning until class started again. Ben looked at Huck. "You coming? Or taking off again? Too many absences, and they send a truant officer by to talk to your uncle."

Huck looked away and mumble something like, "Good luck with that." Then shook his head. "Won't happen. The principal knows how bad Charlie is getting, and I have to work the scrapyard three times a week, plus Saturdays. If I show up in the morning, they don't care much when I leave. I scam the free 'poor kids' breakfast, sleep through math and English, and then take off. They just mark me down for the whole day and get the daily money from the state. That's all they care about."

"Lucky you. No health or science class. Have fun; I'll see you tomorrow." He ran off, joining the other students and re-entering the old brick building.

Huck started walking home. "Yeah, Lucky me." He used to like school. It hadn't been so hard when he was smaller. Now it felt like he'd forgotten anything he'd ever known, and it was all just a big knot in his head. He wasn't coming back next year, even if it meant missing out on breakfast.

A half-mile walk took him past the front of the scrapyard. Only one truck was there waiting. Scooter, the guy bringing in a load of salvage, was always a dick to him, so Huck went home first to check on Uncle Charlie and make him wait longer. The rusted chain link of the scrapyard was on the right, and the row of boarded-up houses was on his left, their windows looking like the empty eyes of a blind man. Most of this row was empty except for a half dozen homes whose flickering lights were the exception, not the rule.

Uncle Charlie's house was across from the row, with vacant homes on either side. With the town talking about condemning the houses near the river, there wasn't much reason to put money into repairs. The porch on the three-story home they lived in was looking worse. One support was lower than the other. Huck figured it was rot or termites. That was a job for next summer, not November. Hopefully, it would last the winter.

He grabbed a stack of mail that had been accumulating in the tin box next to the door. He usually used the back door and tended to forget about the mail. Not his, anyway. All junk mail for Uncle Charlie and bills that would join the stack of other bills on the kitchen table. The bills were beyond Huck's understanding; Uncle Charlie would figure them out someday. Or maybe not. He was getting worse lately. He took a deep breath before opening the door and hoped for a good day.

The smell hit him as he entered the room, telling him that it wasn't one of his Uncle's good days. On a good day, Charlie was lucid enough to talk about things and even help out a little with cooking or doing dishes before he went back to watching TV. On a bad day, which today certainly counted as, he roamed the house trying to remember who he was, half-dressed and not knowing the difference between the hallway and a bathroom. Huck had a bucket and mop ready with some floor cleaner he stole from the janitor's cart at the school. He was going to need it today. There was a pool of urine on the linoleum floor of the dining room and a smell from the kitchen that indicated worse. The guy at the scrapyard was going to wait a little longer.

Mopping the dining room took no time at all. But the kitchen looked like hell. Besides the worst mess, Charlie had drank some of the milk, and it must have been bad. He'd dumped it on the floor, along with some of the leftovers which Huck was going to heat for their dinner. It was going to be grilled cheese again tonight. He cleaned up the best he could and went upstairs. Charlie was sitting on the end of his bed wearing a suit jacket, shirt, and tie, and nothing else. "Huck! Your home from school. I was thinking we'd go out to the movies tonight."

"Sorry, Unc. I've got a lot of homework, and I have to go do the recycling. Are you ok? Sorry about the milk, must have gone bad."

"Milk? Haven't eaten a thing. How about steak tonight, maybe down at Tony's on 4th Street? Some of the guys will be there."

Huck listened to his Uncle change his mind about dinner a dozen times as he coaxed him out of the suit jacket and into his pajamas and got him into bed. "Baseball game is on soon, Unc. How about I put on the pregame, and I'll get us some sandwiches when I get back." His uncle just nodded, the talkative time over, and his quiet time beginning. Quiet time was happening a lot more. Huck shut the door to his room, wondering for the umpteenth time whether he should put a lock on it during the day. That felt too much like locking up a bad dog. And as much trouble as Charlie was, it was still his house. Charlie took Huck in when there was no one else, so now Huck took care of Charlie. Only fair.

As he was leaving, he noticed the basement door was open. Charlie must have an extra key to it. Huck had locked it securely before he left. He'd have to check and see what he knocked over when he got back. Stuff was piled high in some places, the result of Aunt Ginny's hobby of clearing out every garage sale she could find within ten miles. He'd have to get a padlock for the door. There were a couple over in the garage in the scrapyard. Ducking out the back door, went through the gate at the back of the yard and into the scrapyard. There was a narrow path left between the stacks of crushed cars that formed a fence around the yard, in addition to the rusted chain link. When he was smaller, he'd imagined it was a magic gate to a magic place, like in the wardrobe book. s

Five minutes later and he was opening the gates. Scooter drove in his truck, hopped out, and pointed at the back where a pile of copper pipes was loaded precariously on the flatbed under a tarp. Huck wondered how many pieces he'd lost on the drive over.

"Good stuff for you today, Huck. Antique copper pipes. Great shape. Sell it to some of them yuppie bastards that want fancy copper kitchens. Make a fortune."

Huck shook his head. "That's old and corroded shit from some vacant house you stole it from. You know the deal. I pay half of what the big place over in Bethlehem pays if you take a check and wait until I tell you to cash it. Or half of half if you want cash. Which would be sad since I don't have cash today. Dump it on the scale, and we'll weigh it."

Scooter looked unhappy at the idea. "Half isn't fair, Huck. All you have to do is load it up and haul it over there."

Huck pushed down his anger; it was the same fething argument every time Scooter came.

"Go ahead, Scooter. Take it over there. They don't like little loads. I have to save up your copper and hope for more to come in so I have a full load. And clean up or melt it down. If I go with a full truck, they don't ask questions. Little loads, they get annoyed and wonder where you got it from. Almost like they want to discourage people coming to them with some pipe they stole out of a basement." The grumbling continued, the copper pipe was weighed, and a check was written. Scooter would hold it until Huck got back from taking loads of metal to the bigger yard, and then Huck would buy back the check. It wasn't perfect, but it was a system.

Next in line were two carloads of cub scouts with trash bags full of crushed aluminum cans. Huck helped them take the bags to a larger pile and then gave them a receipt. The scouts got points or merit badges or something. Huck turned the aluminum in to be recycled. A little bit went to Huck and a little bit to the Boy Scouts. Everyone was happy. Huck stayed for another hour, but that was it for the day. He closed the gates and trudged home. Even by his standards, business was crappy. Charlie was the one that knew how to work the crusher and make the deals with the bigger metal dealers; Huck just bumbled along the best he could, buying and selling recyle.

It was getting colder as the sun went down. Huck slouched inside his coat, trying to keep the cold winter wind out. It never seemed to snow anymore, just bitter cold and the wind whipping off of the nearby Lehigh River. He remembered liking the snow during the winters when big storms came barreling down off Lake Erie. Everything looked better. The trash of empty lots was covered in a white blanket, and even the abandoned factories seemed softer with drifts of snow up against their aging brick walls. The scrapyard behind his uncle's house had become a winter playland of piled white snow and icicles.

And winter had meant more than cold. There was Christmas in the middle, which was a big thing here, so close to the town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 'Christmas Town,' everyone called it. He'd gone there every three times with his Mom to see the nativity sets and hear the caroling. They shopped at the market and brought home nut rolls and Polish sausage. He didn't know if the market was still there; Uncle Charlie didn't like to go. And Christmas didn't seem to visit Rust Town. The town didn't waste time and money decorating streets in an area where half the houses were boarded up.

As he neared his house, he saw that he wasn't alone. Feral shadows darted in and out of the piles of scrap and crushed cars. He hurried his pace and arrived home before the pack got to him. There was a heavy wooden chest by the back door. Opening the lid, he grabbed a heavy bag of dried dog food, an 18" crowbar, and a Kevlar armguard used for training guard dogs. With the crowbar under his arm, he went to feed the pack of mutts that lived in the yard.

Every junkyard had dogs. They kept down the rat population down and kept people from stealing. Of necessity, they weren't always the best dogs. Huck's mangy pack was no exception. Auggie was the first to limp up. He was a friendly black lab from a bunch of puppies no one wanted. Something was wrong with his left-front leg today, giving him a limp. His thick black fur and dark eyes made him nearly invisible at night. Huck petted and played with him until the other came in. He couldn't feed Augie until Bruno got fed. Bruno was a beast, weighing close to two-hundred pounds. He was a mastiff-pitbull cross the size of a purebred mastiff and the face of a pit. Both breeds of dogs had been bred to fight in the middle ages and again in modern times.
Someone had trained Bruno to fight, then dumped him. It happened with older dogs.

Animal control had found Bruno running around town, feral and wild. He'd broken out of his cage and jumped out a glass window to make his escape. Huck had heard the story from his friend Leo who volunteered at the shelter. A week later, Bruno shown up at feeding time and been Huck's problem ever since. He didn't follow commands and would attack another dog if he didn't get to eat first. But there were good points to keep him around. He had run off a half dozen other dogs that went after Augie, Lonesome, or Cinders, and the scrapyard reputation as a place not to steal from had become legendary. Huck was giving him time but being careful.

The armguard was to protect him if Bruno got 'playful.' He was so strong that his jaws drew blood, even when playing and petting. He'd been either a pit fighting dog or a guard dog and could become aggressive instantly. That was why Huck had the crowbar. If Bruno ever attacked, the odds were on the dog. Bruno finally came in to eat, walking slowly. His hips were hurting him, and he didn't move fast. He also had some odd lumps on his skin. He chewed his dried dog food as fast as he could, then curled up nearby to wait for the others. As soon as Huck put out a bowl for Auggie, Cinders, and Lonesome came running up. Cinders was an Australian Shepherd, missing one eye and had scars on the side of her head. Lonesome was a Whippet half-breed. He was fast as lightning and could run 45 miles an hour, even with only three legs. He liked to chase trucks but got to close to them. One leg was gone after he got run over.

Huck had rescued Cinders and Lonesome from the pound two years ago. Auggie was only six months old. He had digestion problems from being sick when he was a puppy. No one wanted sick puppies. Huck took some extra time with Auggie, putting hot water on his food to turn it to mush. That seemed to help. Bruno was old and sick but still the toughest of all of them.

They didn't let anyone but Huck get near them, and that was only because he fed them three times a week. He played a little with the three younger dogs, tossing sticks from a pile by the door. They always chased, but the sticks didn't get returned much. He carefully approached Bruno, and the old guy let him pet him for a minute before growling. Huck backed away, and then Bruno got up and took his pack back to where ever they slept.

Huck headed in to make his dinner. Charlie had gotten up again. The refrigerator was open, and the cheese was on the counter; a loaf of bread was scattered on the floor next to a pool of urine. Huck pounded on the counter and held in a scream. He was just so tired. He cleaned up, again. There was half a loaf left, but he couldn't find the butter, so he used a little oil to make the grilled cheese. He ate one, then took the other to Charlie on a paper plate. His Uncle was asleep. The TV was on one of those weird stations that never had anything but a test pattern. He turned it off, woke Charlie, fed him, and got him to use the bathroom. Huck noticed how thin he was getting.

He decided to skip school tomorrow and work in the scrapyard. He needed the money that taking metal out to Bethlehem Recycling would bring in. They needed food, and the truck needed gas. And he should pick up kerosene for the heater in case the electricity went off. The winds this winter had knocked down power lines twice. There was a food bank out at the big church near there, and then he could swing by the one by the old cathedral in Allentown. There was usually more food this time of year. People got generous during the first half of winter but not so much in January, so he tried to get extra.

Huck decided not to go upstairs to his room. Uncle Charlie was getting too restless and roaming the house. Huck slept hard and never heard him leave his room. He only knew because of the disasters he found in the morning. He pulled the old recliner from the living room nearer to the base of the stairs and collapsed into it, not even taking his boots off. He'd meant just to relax for a few minutes but soon fell asleep.

He awoke later, in the middle of the night. He could hear the sound of liquid hitting the floor, and the smell of piss was strong in his nostrils. Frustration and despair flooded through Huck. Not again! He flicked on the light next to the chair as he got up and started to yell at his Uncle. "Dammit, Charlie! ...." He didn't get any farther; Charlies wasn't the one making a mess on the floor.

As whatever it was turned to look at him, Huck lost all thoughts. It was only four feet tall, with gangly arms and legs, large hands and feet, and an oversized head. Large green eyes looked into Huck, and the thing opened its mouth showing sharp teeth. There was no hair on it, just rubbery-looking black skin. It pulled up its pants, the only clothing it wore.

The light must have surprised it, and it shielded its eyes with one hand. Then seeing Huck, it flipped him off with the other and scampered toward the open basement door.

Rage fought with confusion and caution, and rage won. Huck put himself between the basement and the creature. "Oh no, you don't, you little bastard!" It just grinned, showing teeth and flexing its clawed hands before it came at him.