---

“Billy’s Garage”

by Richard Dansky

---

Billy was a weird kid.

I don’t mean he was weird in the sense that he liked roleplaying games or heavy metal or anything like that. He wasn’t really into that anyway, and the kids who were, well, they were only nerds of one stripe or another.

Instead, he was just kind of creepy. When you talked to him, you got the feeling he was focusing on a point about an inch inside your skull instead of making eye contact. He talked about weird stuff, too, if you could get him to talk, which wasn’t often. Mostly he kept to himself, and mostly the rest of us liked it that way.

But I drew Billy as a lab partner in biology, which meant that he and I had to talk on a regular basis, and I guess that got him thinking we were friends. We weren’t, but I at least tolerated his conversation, which made me closer to him than anyone else.

One day we were supposed to dissect frogs. A bunch of kids in the class begged off, claiming it was against their religion or something when really they were just afraid it was going to be gross. But not Billy. He was totally into it, at least until the dried-out frog carcass we were supposed to take apart landed in front of us.

“Shit,” he said.

“Watch the language in front of Mrs. Stamper,” I said. “She’ll send you to detention.”

“Oops,” he said, and then “Thanks.” He prodded the frog with the scalpel we had been provided with. The frog, being long dead, did not react.

“It’s a shame,” he said. “All these frogs have been dead for ages. They’re dried out. Their ghosts are gone.”

“Ghosts? Frog ghosts?” I said, and laughed. Then I saw the look Billy was shooting me and I stopped laughing. “Don’t tell me you believe in frog ghosts.”

Billy nodded solemnly. “Everything living’s got a ghost in it,” he said. “Most of them don’t last long, but there’s all sorts of ghosts out there. Not just people ghosts.”

“Gentlemen?” That was Mrs. Stamper, the biology teacher, a no-nonsense type with no patience for chit-chat when there were frogs to dissect. “I am sure your discussion is fascinating, but we have work to do and less than a period to do it in. So if you’ll allow me?” She trailed off into silence, leaving no doubt as to whether or not we were going to allow her anything she damn well pleased.

“Yes, ma’am,” we said in unison, then Billy turned to the frog to await instructions on which incision to make.

“Tell you what,” he whispered, “after school come over my place and I’ll show you.”

“Show me frog ghosts?” I said, disbelieving.

“Something better than that,” he said, and then Mrs. Stamper was announcing instructions and Billy bent to the task of following them.

---

After school Billy was waiting for me by the bike rack. “Hey Billy,” I said, uncomfortably aware of the eyes of the other kids on me, judging me a weirdo for talking to the weird kid.

“Hey Steve,” he said. “You going to come over this afternoon like we talked about in class?”

I looked around. The other kids were already drawing away from me. I had been tainted with weirdness, and there was no way to escape it. “Sure,” I said. “You got a bike?”

“Sure do,” he said, and pointed to a battered Huffy three-speed. I had a newer model, a twelve speed my parents had gotten me for Christmas with the unspoken warning that it was going to be all the transportation I got from them for a good long while.

“OK,” I said, and took the Kryptonite lock off my bike as he unchained his. Then he set off at a pace I could easily follow. We dodged the juniors and seniors in their cars and headed out toward wherever Billy called home.

We rode for a couple of miles, making turns at regular intervals until he finally pulled into the driveway of a respectable looking ranch house with a beat-up Volvo station wagon in the driveway. This kind of took me by surprise. I had no idea where Billy might live, but I never expected it to be somewhere so ordinary. But before I could say anything he was walking his bike up the drive and beckoning me to follow him.

He parked the bike beside the kitchen door. I put my bike next to his and followed him in.

“Hi Mom,” he said, as we walked in. “This is Steve. We have biology class together.”

“Hello, Steve,” his mother, an attractive woman with brown curly hair, wearing mom jeans and a dark red blouse waved us in. “It’s so nice of you to come. Billy so rarely has friends over.”

The kitchen looked normal. Again, I didn’t know what I was expecting, but normal was not it. The walls were painted light yellow and there were decorative plates mounted on the walls. A bouquet of tulips sat in a vase on the kitchen table.

“Umm, happy to,” I managed to say. “Thank you for having me over.”

“It’s our pleasure,” she said. “Can I get you boys a snack?”

“No thanks, Mom,” Billy said, disappointing me because I really did want a snack. “We dissected frogs today in class so neither of us are hungry.”

Billy’s mom got a pained look on her face. “Oh Billy,” she said. “Don’t tell me you brought Steve here to see the collection?”

“Well…” Billy said and came up short. “Kind of,” he finally admitted.

“You will do no such thing,” Billy’s mom instructed him. “Now have a good time hanging out, and if you want anything, you let me know.” With that she turned back to the sink, where she was preparing some kind of vegetable, presumably for dinner.

Billy escaped from the kitchen and I followed him to his room, which was down the hall and on the left. It was decorated with a couple of band posters from acts I’d never heard of and the walls were painted blue – kind of weird, but not really. He had a dresser and a desk and a bed in there, and a stack of comic book longboxes. “You read comics?” he asked.

“I used to,” I admitted. “Haven’t in a while.”

“You can borrow anything you want from my collection,” he said, and gestured to the longboxes.

“Gee, thanks, Billy,” I said, and I meant it. It was a genuinely nice gesture, even if he was a weird kid and I wasn’t likely to take him up on it. “Was that the collection your mom said you couldn’t show me?”

Billy shook his head. “No, that’s out in the garage. I’ll show it to you another time, I guess. Do you really want to see it?” he asked.

“I want to know what you meant by frog ghosts back in class. If you’ve got a box of ghost frogs out in the garage, I’d totally be into seeing that.” Much to my surprise, I was serious.

“Not frogs,” he mumbled. “Something else.” Then he perked up. “But seriously, one day I’ll get to show you and you’ll see it and you’ll believe me.”

“Show me what?” I asked. “Come on, you’ve got to tell me.”

He sighed. “All right, but you can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

“Okay,” He leaned back, less intense. “The thing is, like I told you, everything can have a ghost. People, dogs, cats, everything.”

“Even bacteria and stuff?”I asked, snarkier than I intended.

“Dunno. Never looked for them,” he replied seriously. “The thing is, I can see ghosts. All of them. Animals and people. There’s a ghost janitor in our school. I talk to him sometimes. It makes him happy.”

I flashed back to one of the things that made Billy so weird – the fact that some kids had caught him supposedly talking to himself in a corner by the janitorial closet. Now it made sense – if I believed him.

I mustered a “Weird,” and then prodded for more information. “So why isn’t the world filled with ghosts?”

He shrugged. “Near as I can tell, if ghosts don’t get attention they fade away. That’s why we aren’t swimming in dinosaur ghosts or wooly mammoth ghosts or whatever. They all just drift off after a while. It’s kind of my mission to keep them from drifting off if I can. Some of them, anyway.” He looked at me sideways. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you.”

“No,” I managed. “I just never thought about any of this stuff before.” Which was true enough, as it went.

“Huh,” Billy said. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to weird you out, but it feels so good to talk about it with someone. Thank you, Steve.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “So your collection is…ghosts?”

Billy looked around conspiratorially, as if to make sure his mom wasn’t listening. “Sort of. A special kind of ghost.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. “You know Palmer Lake?”

“Sure.” Everyone knew Palmer Lake. It was where the older kids would drive to in the evening to make out in their cars. Those of us with bicycles could only gaze on with awe and envy.

“Well, there’s the main landing, and then there’s a smaller one over on Logan Road. And people go to that second landing to do something terrible.”

“Human sacrifice,” I asked, only mostly kidding. We’d had an assembly program about Satanic cults at school a few months back, which we had mostly laughed through. The best part was when they had showed us a slide of a supposed Satanic alter where someone had spray-painted the words “SATIN RULES”.

Billy shook his head. “Worse. That’s where people go to drown kittens.”

“What?” I wasn’t sure which was more shocking, the idea of someone drowning a kitten or the fact that Billy considered it worse than human sacrifice.

“I’m serious, man,” Billy said. “People don’t get their cats spayed, they wind up with a load of kittens they can’t handle, so they put ‘em in a sack and go out to Palmer Lake to drown them.”

“That’s sick,” I said. “Killing kittens like that?”

Billy nodded in agreement. “The thing is you can’t really stop people from doing it. I mean, I can’t hang out at Palmer Lake all night, and it’s not like people would listen to me if I tried to get them to stop. So I do what I can.”

“You come for the ghosts of the kittens,” I said, realization dawning. “You bring the ghosts home and that’s your collection.”

“All they need is a little love. But Mom says I have to keep them in the garage, and I can’t share them with anybody,” Billy said, and he sounded heartbroken. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this, okay?”

“Sure thing,” I said. “I won’t tell a soul.” Which was true, because it sounded crazy and I didn’t want the other kids to think I was weird like Billy.

But the whole thing nagged at me. Did Billy really believe he had ghost kittens in his garage? I had to find out, just for my own curiosity. I mean, I didn’t really think he had a ghost collection, but he clearly thought he did, and so did his mom, and that made me curious.

So I decided why the hell not, and I decided to ask him.

He must have noticed I was distracted, and he poked me. “Hey. You still there?”

I gave a quick grin. “Yeah. You know, that collection of yours actually seems really cool. Why doesn’t your mom want you to show it to me?”

Billy shrugged. “I dunno. Most people I showed it to didn’t take it real well. One of them threw up. A couple of them ran. I guess Mom just didn’t want me to lose another friend.”

“But I want to see it,” I said. “And ghost kittens sound cute, not scary. If you show it to me, I promise not to freak out.”

He perked up at that. “Really?”

“Cross my heart.” And I was serious. I did want to see it, and I didn’t think I was going to freak out when I did. Where was the harm, right?

Taking a deep breath, Billy came to a decision. “OK. I’ll show it to you. But we’ve got to be careful, or I’ll get in trouble. Mom can’t know we’re doing this.”

“Gotcha.” I nodded. “So what do we do?”

“Follow me,” Billy said. “And be quiet.” He eased his door open, stepped out into the hallway, and gestured me to come with him. I waited a second for his mom to come thundering down the hall, and when she didn’t, I followed.

Billy made exaggerated sneaking steps as he went, putting each foot down carefully. I didn’t quite match him, but I tried to be quiet, and after a minute and a turn we were at the interior door that led to the garage.

“You have to be quiet if you want to hear them,” Billy said in a stage whisper. “They don’t make a lot of noise.”

I nodded, and he opened the door so we could step inside.

It was a garage, just like any other garage. At least that was my first thought. I could see boxes and a ladder on its side and tool rack and pretty much what you’d expect in a suburban garage. It was dim in there, with only a little light filtering in from the door we’d walked through, and I was about to ask Billy to turn the lights on when he pointed and said “There.”

I looked at the corner he was pointing to. At first I didn’t see anything. Then the dim outlines of a sack from one of the local big box stores appeared, translucent in the dim light. I caught my breath, not daring to breathe, and then I heard it.

The mewling. The pitiful, pained mewling. Faint at first, but then louder as my ears grew accustomed to it. And as I looked I could see the sack squirming like it was alive. A kitten face popped out of the top, eyes barely opened, ears folded down. It was followed by another one, then another.

I took a step back and as I did, I looked away. Big mistake. Because now wherever I looked, I saw another sack of dead kittens, crying out for something I couldn’t give them.

“You see them, don’t you?” That was Billy, his voice unreasonably loud after all the soft wet kitten noises.”Shhh, kitties, Billy’s here.” He walked over to one of the sacks and petted the phantom kitten trying to crawl out of it. It squealed and climbed back into the sack, eliciting a chorus of responses from its brethren. He repeated this with each of the collections of kittens. Not one seemed glad to see him.

Me, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. Eventually Billy looked up at me. “You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “Just a lot to take in. I mean, it’s real.”

“I told you,” he said. “Do you believe me now? About the frog ghosts and everything?”

“I believe you,” I breathed. “Can we go now?”

“You’re not going to freak out, are you?” He looked worried.

I shook my head. “I said I wouldn’t. Just…wow. It’s a lot.”

Billy nodded and gave the kittens he was near one last pat. Then he straightened up and led me out of the garage, back to his room. I walked in, head still spinning, and he shut the door behind me.

“So what did you think?” he asked.

“It was…amazing,” I said, which was true. I was amazed that what he said was true, and that he did have a collection of kitten ghosts in his garage.

But I was also horrified, not that I could let it show. I was no expert on cats but those ghosts did not sound happy. The idea of being trapped forever in Billy’s garage, half-blind and barely able to crawl, dripping wet for all eternity was monstrous.

Billy didn’t see it that way, though. From his perspective, he was rescuing these kittens from oblivion, fading away unremembered and unloved. Was that wrong?

I thought about it for a second. Yeah, if what I saw in the garage was the result, then it was wrong.

If he noticed my hesitation, Billy didn’t give any indication. “That’s really cool that you could see it without going apeshit. I’ve lost a lot of friends that way over the years. Until you came along, I’d pretty much given up.”

Inside, I winced at the guilt trip Billy was laying on me. Outside, I played it cool. “I told you I was going to be cool with it. And I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

That last part was definitely true. Who would believe me?

“Thanks,” Billy said. “I knew I could trust you.”

“Sure, sure,” I said. “Now, you said something about comics?”

---

I stayed a couple more hours at Billy’s before it was suppertime and I excused myself. Mucking around in Billy’s comics collection had actually been pretty cool, but I just couldn’t shake what I had seen in the garage.

I wouldn’t be going back to Billy’s any more, I decided. And I’d ask Mrs. Stamper for a new lab partner. I was pretty sure ghost kittens were against my religion, particularly sacks of drowned ones lined up in a row. Enough of the weird – it was time to get back to normal. And that started with riding home from Billy’s as fast as possible.

A turn and a turn and I realized I was on Logan Road. And there it was, the turnoff to Palmer Lake, the sign barely visible through overgrown shrubbery. The sky was getting dark and I needed to be getting home, but for some reason I turned into the driveway that led to the parking area by the lakeshore.

It wasn’t much of a lake, more of a pond really. There was a Chevy Cavalier pulled into the gravel parking lot, and I could see a couple of guys arguing back and forth across the hood. I decided to stay far away, and looped around to the far end of the lot. Then I walked my bike down to the water’s edge and stared in.

Nothing stared back. A heron flew overhead, making weird dinosaur noises as it went, and somewhere out in the water a turtle slipped off a rock, but that was about it.

And then I heard the two guys coming down to the water.

“This is stupid,” one of them said. “Just take them to the shelter.”

“Shelter’s just going to put them to sleep anyway,” said the other, who was taller, bearded, and carrying a sack. I looked at the sack for a moment. It was squirming.

“Oh no,” I said.

“Dude, you’re asking me to help you drown kittens.” The first guy, who was skinny and wearing a jeans jacket with the Who logo painted on the back, was distraught.

“You don’t have to help. Just get out of my way, Sam,” the taller man said.

“Hey!” I said, much to my surprise. “What are you guys doing?” I started walking toward them.

“Nothing,” said Sam, and “None of your business” said his friend.

“What’s in the sack?” I asked, coming closer.

“Nothing, said Sam, and “None of your business,” said his friend.

The two of them looked at each other, then looked at me, then took a step forward.

“Listen, kid,” the tall one said. “Do yourself a favor and ride your bike on out of here. What’s going on is none of your business.”

“You’re going to drown a bag of kittens, aren’t you?” I said. “I didn’t think people actually did that, but you’re really going to. You’re a monster!” I mustered all of my self-righteous indignation and pointed at the sack. “I’m not going to let you do that.”

“You’re not going to stop me,” the tall man said.

“I can report you to the police,” I said. “I’ve got your license plate number.” I didn’t actually, but they didn’t know that.

Sam, the short guy, came forward. “Listen, kid, there’s no need to bring the cops into this. These kittens don’t have a home and the shelter can’t take them. It’s a mercy what Tony is doing.”

“I heard you,” I said accusingly. “You didn’t even try the shelter.”

Sam held his hands up. “Shit, Tony,” he said. “You got any ideas?”

“One,” he said, and came towards me. “Listen, punk, you’ve got two choices. You can leave right now and forget you saw anything, or I can kick your ass and send you crying home to your mommy. Either way, I’m gonna do what I have to do, you understand.”

“Give me the kittens,” I said, and reached for the sack.

“Fuck off,” Tony said, and shoved me hard, in the middle of my chest.

I went backwards a step and my heel slipped on some mud. Next thing I knew, I was falling and then there was an explosion of pain as my head hit a rock at the water’s edge.

“Oh, shit,” Sam said. “What did you do, Tony?”

“It was an accident! I swear, I just meant to scare the kid, and he fell and hit his head on that rock.”

“That’s a lot of blood,” Sam observed. “Help me pick him up.”

“Are you kidding?’ Tony asked. “He was gonna call the cops over a bunch of kittens. What’s he gonna do now that I did this to him? No way, man, can’t do it.”

Sam was frantic. “We can’t just leave him there!”

“We’re not going to just leave him,” Tony said ominously.

I tried to say something but nothing came out. The blood streaming down the side of my head was a warm flood, and I knew I was in serious trouble.

Then Tony was kneeling down next to me, his hands cradling my head. “Shhhhh,” he said. “It’ll be easier that way.”

“Tony, no!” Sam yelped.

“Shut up, Sam.” Tony answered, and shoved my face into the water.

I struggled, but it didn’t do any good. I tried to hold my breath, but the pain from my head was like a knife, and too soon my lungs were desperate for air. Then I breathed in my first mouthful of water, and everything went red, and then black.

The last thing I remembered was a splash next to me, and faint mewling as a sack filled with water.

---

I woke up in a vaguely familiar-looking garage, unable to feel my hands or feet or anything else, really. It was cold, so cold, and the air around me was filled with the soft sounds of kittens. I looked around and there was Billy.

“Hi, Steve,” he said, cradling a ghost kitten in his hands. “So, about the collection. Guess you’re a part of it now.”

---

Host Commentary

Hi folks, just to let you know pet mortality and general mortality of the vulnerable is a major part of this story. If that’s an issue you’d rather not hear explored, please do what you need to do to feel comfortable. Thanks

 

PseudoPod Episode 877

August 4th 2023

Billy’s Garage by Richard Dansky

Narrated by Brian Lieberman

Audio Production by Chelsea Davis

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart

 

Hi everyone, welcome to PseudoPod, the weekly horror podcast. I’m Alasdair your host and this week’s story, audio produced by the amazing Chelsea, is from Richard Dansky.

Richard Dansky is a twenty year plus veteran of the video game industry, currently working on HUNT: SHOWDOWN. He has published eight novels, most recently GHOST OF A MARRIAGE. His most recent book is the short fiction collection A MEETING IN THE DEVIL’S HOUSE AND OTHER STORIES. Prior to working in video games, he was a key contributor to White Wolf’s classic World of Darkness setting. Richard lives in North Carolina with two cats who loosely tolerate each other, a lot of books, and a whole lot of scotch. Dansky is one of my favourite writers and TTRPG creators and it’s an honour to host this story. You can find his socials in the show notes.

 

Your narrator this week is our own Brian Lieberman who’s two fisted engineering skills and extraordinarily amenable social presence are big parts of the EA Foundation. We’re honoured to have you with us, thanks, buddy.

 

Now, get ready because the weird kid has something to tell you and we promise you its true.

 

Richard left this note for us:

 

‘This is my contribution to the “kids on bikes” subgenre of horror. It’s set back when I was a teen, and yes, we did have to dissect actual frogs.

Incidentally, the author in no way condones any of the actions depicted in this story, except for reading comic books.’

 

We did the frogs too. And we also had one of these spots. My best friend at school made it into the local paper for saving a bag of kittens from this exact fate. It happened at the old quarry at the far end of the island, the one that was notionally deserted but that our cross country running route used as an end point. The one with a deep water table at the bottom and at least one car. The end of the line, one of those places where everything feels like a boundary and that boundary sometimes feels entirely too thin.

 

The quarry, it turns out, is where the limestone that built Castletown (We have a castle, it’s a good one too) was mined and it’s still there. It’s been cleaned up a little bit, and there’s a nature centre on the hill above it now that proudly declares it ‘sits between the quarry where the limestone that made Castletown was mined and the limestone kilns.’

 

Like I say, places between places. Boundaries getting thin. Terrible, or desperate, or bored people doing terrible things in the hole history was dug out of. You change but your surroundings don’t and the only thing you can do is cling on all the harder.

 

But what Dansky does here that’s haunting is look at that desperate grasp on history from a different perspective. Remembrance is compassion, but remembrance can also be penance and worst, imprisonment. You calcify, your one job becoming to remember everything that’s gone, everyone that’s gone. You hold the future in your hands so tight it becomes set in stone, and so do you and your only response is to complain how things aren’t how like they used to be and cling all the harder, not letting yourself feel the past you’ve built on crumble in your grasp.

My friend who saved the kittens is no longer with us. We used to meet up every year to remember him, travelling from across the country to do so. Some of us still do. All of us remember. But none of us cling on anymore. Instead we hold the past carefully, and we do our best to make something better around, not keep something the same because of it. Remembrance as foundation not imprisonment. Remembrance as the beginning of a new story, not every act of an old one. I like that. I’d like to think, one day, Billy would too.

 

Thanks everyone. I really liked this one.

 

We’re an independent production, and one powered entirely by you. We rely on you to pay our authors, staff and cover our costs. There’s a recession, a pandemic and yet here we are, making art for you. We can only do that if you help us.

We’ve got Paypal and Patreon subscriptions that start at 5 bucks a month.

Both get you access to our audio archive. The Patreon subscription tiers get you all sorts of goodies

at the higher levels. Please help out if you can. It’s always needed.

If you can’t help financially, we understand completely please consider talking about us. It helps a lot too. If you liked an episode, please link to it, or blog about it or leave a review on your podcatcher of choice. It all helps and with your help we can keep doing this.

 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

 

PseudoPod returns next week with episode 878, a double bill of Horacio Quiroga stories. The Son (El Hijo) and The Feather Pillow (El almohadón de plumas). Diogo Romos narrates for us, Chelsea’s on production and I’ll be your host. We’ll see you then, but first PseudoPod wants to remind you they will find him, but not the way they want to.