The Climb Up To Hell
By Sean Eads & Joshua Viola
Published October 2024, Issue 130
After Chet and David’s candles were lit, the five of us gathered at the base of the tree and Jake put his flashlight under his chin.
“Time to explain the dark secret of Kingwood, ladies. This treehouse was built by John King himself for his twin sons after he discovered they weren’t his. Once his wife’s secret was out, he poisoned her. It was a long time ago and everyone thought she just died, but his crime was discovered decades later when his diary was found. He was going to poison the boys as well, but he stopped himself.”
“Because he knew they were innocent?”
“No, he thought poisoning was too good for them. He wanted them to suffer. So, he built this treehouse and made the boys live in it. Spring, summer, fall, winter. All the time. And he put two big Dobermans down at the bottom to attack the boys if they tried to leave. So, they didn’t. Even when they started to get hungry and thirsty after John King quit bringing them food and water. In the diary, he says he finally let the boys go and told them to never come back. That he didn’t care what happened to them. Then he wrote that he tore the treehouse down. But all of that was a lie. The treehouse is here, isn’t it? Randy, Mark, and I were the first to discover it–and the truth on Halloween night. We climbed up and saw the skeletons. It was gnarly.”
“That’s right. Gnarly.”
“We buried their bones, but the skulls keep coming back every Halloween.”
“So . . . they’re up there now?”
“Yeah, numbnuts, just like we said. The three of us have taken our turns appeasing them. Now it’s up to the two of you, rookies. Start climbing.”
My face felt as hot as the lit candles David and Chet Somerset were being forced to carry, part of the dumb prank being played on them. The little flames flickered as the brothers made their climb with David in the lead. Jake, Randy, and I stepped back several feet and aimed our flashlights up at them.
“Dude,” Randy whispered. “They bought every word of it. Holy shit.”
“Did I tell it as good as you, Mark?” Jake said.
Randy aimed his flashlight into my eyes. “Sure you don’t want to go up there with your buttbuddies?”
Jake snickered. I told them both to fuck off. “Chet made all that up.”
“He sure knows what your room looks like.”
“I told you my mom let them come over. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Sure.”
Jake, Randy and I had been best friends since we were seven. We were fifteen now and I couldn’t tell where I stood with them after Chet started talking about him and David hanging out in my room. They didn’t say it outright, but I knew I had to help them scare and humiliate Chet and David. Restoring myself in their eyes required this Halloween sacrifice, and the idea the Somerset brothers believed this was some friendship initiation rite just made it better to Jake and Randy.
“Keep climbing, girls,” Randy said, his tone filled with merciless joy. “And don’t forget, if the candles go out, you have to climb down and light them again.”
Jake lowered his beam a few notches to Chet’s ass. He snickered. “Is that a brown spot I see?”
I joined Jake and Randy’s laughter just enough to keep up pretenses. But in my imagination, I saw David slipping and falling. He was already ten feet off the ground with another twelve rungs to go. I trained my flashlight beam on the next rung so David could see it. There was just a little sliver of moon, too weak to reach through the trees. Appropriate for Halloween.
Inside the treehouse were two large pumpkins and two carving knives, courtesy of Jake. The pumpkins came from a little patch his uncle kept, and the knives were swiped from his mom’s kitchen. It’d been a bitch hauling the pumpkins up there one at a time in an oversized backpack, but they’d insisted I do it, a bit of hazing I endured to keep them happy.
David reached another rung and looked down to check on Chet. David was my age, Chet a year younger. They had almost the same face, freckles, and a pug nose. But Chet had brown eyes and David’s were blue. They walked side-by-side everywhere, in lockstep. It was hard not to picture them being joined at the hip, so it was weird seeing one ahead of the other.
They entered the treehouse. The light of their candles made the windows yellow, and I exhaled a long-held breath.
🔥
The whole thing started on the Fourth of July, when Kingwood’s population of 2,000 milled around the town square eating ice cream and hot dogs, listening to the high school band play John Philip Sousa shit, and sweating out lemon aid and Coke under a blistering sun. Jake, Randy, and I were hanging against the brick wall of Kingwood Community Bank. I had a bag full of snaps and was still throwing them on the sidewalk a good hour after the novelty wore off.
“Look at those two,” Jake said, nudging us. Chet and David walked past, backs straight, arms limp. Chet had on a blue and red plaid button-up and David had on a white polo.
“Put ‘em together and you’ve got the flag,” Randy said, and gave a smart salute at their backs. “God bless the USA.”
“Let’s follow them,” Jake said.
We tailed them through the crowds. The brothers acted like tourists. Sometimes they stopped to point out something, like the big white banner hung across Main Street, stamped with Kingwood’s motto — Friends Growing Strong Together. Kingwood kids got a lot of flak from other schools for that slogan. We followed them for twenty minutes and word got around that Jill Clarke had changed into a t-shirt that was almost see-through, and since she was the senior captain of the cheerleading squad, we three kings went to investigate. I didn’t get the fuss. Sure, there was the dark suggestion of Jill’s black bra, but so what? Jake and Randy meanwhile almost shook their fist at the encroaching sunset. I listened to them talk about sucking Jill’s tits and getting their hands up her shirt until their voices got too loud and scornful adults gave disapproving looks. Then I put some distance between us and wandered off as the fireworks started.
Downtown Kingwood had plenty of nooks and crannies, private places. What was I looking for? That question ended when I stumbled upon the weird brothers around the back of Fitzhugh’s corner store. David had his back against the brick as Chet bent to press his left cheek against his brother’s chest. David ran his fingers through Chet’s hair. How strange, how comforting, how different, how very real compared to the shadowy importance of Jill Clarke’s bra.
I spent a moment just standing there before I realized they were looking right at me. The shorter brother broke away and took a few steps, his trembling hands stretched toward me.
“Please don’t say anything.”
I shook my head.
“We’re . . . new here.”
“You mean you aren’t visiting?” I said.
“No. We moved here two weeks ago. I’m Chet. This is my older brother, David.”
David nodded and smirked.
The fireworks bathed us in changing colors. We turned blue, green, purple, and bright red. We didn’t speak until a starburst made us white as ghosts, our shadows dancing.
“What’s your name?” David said.
“Mark.”
“Be our friend, Mark,” Chet said.
“A real friend,” David said.
Um, sure . . .
The answer felt more like a thought, but I must have spoken it because the brothers smiled at each other.
“Our first friend,” David said, and Chet nodded.
They opened their arms as if to hug me, but I was having none of it and ran off. The fireworks were ending, and I found my mom with her boyfriend Jeff, who planned to be my stepdad by next year.
Why did I tell those two freaks I’d be their friend? I went to bed remembering them holding each other and I dreamt that the three of us were huddled together, arms across each other’s shoulders. Tighter and tighter, like there was something small in the middle we didn’t want to escape. It was an uncomfortable dream and I seemed to still be in it when the doorbell woke me at almost noon. I stared at the ceiling and listened to Mom open the front door. Half a minute later, two sets of footsteps sounded on the stairs. I figured it must be Jake and Randy. Mom had been letting them storm up into my room ever since I could remember.
Then my bedroom door opened, and Chet and David stood there.
“How are you?” Chet said.
David stepped forward. “Yes, how are you, Mark? Did you sleep well?”
I was just in my underwear, and I pulled the sheet up to my neck. David frowned. He looked at Chet and said, “I told you it was too soon.”
“What?” I said.
“To come over.”
“We’re very lonely,” Chet said.
“It’s true, Mark. Until now, we’ve only had each other.”
That’s still all you got, I thought. I dressed and stole a look out the window, afraid I’d see Jake and Randy riding up the street. The neighborhood seemed deserted but there were eyes everywhere and I didn’t want to risk being seen outside with these weirdos. So, I pulled out my Atari and told them to choose a game. Then I went downstairs. Mom was already making peanut butter sandwiches for us.
“Your new friends seem interesting.”
“They’re not friends.”
“They said they met you yesterday.”
“That’s sort of true.”
“Well then.”
“I didn’t tell them where I live.”
“Don’t have to be a detective to use a phone book.”
“Mom— ”
“They smell much better than Jake and Randy.”
“They’re probably wearing perfume or something.”
“It’s called soap. Here. Take these up.”
Mom handed me a plate of sandwiches and three Cokes.
“What if Jake or Randy come over?”
“The five of you can play together.”
“Would you tell them I’ve been grounded? Please?”
Mom rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.”
“Tell them I was caught sneaking one of Jeff’s Bud Lights.”
“Your reputation will never be greater.”
Back in the bedroom, I found Chet and David sitting beside each other, the Atari untouched.
“We’re not allowed to play video games,” Chet said. “Our parents only let us watch television for sixty minutes a day, and it has to be the news.”
I took up my sandwich and cracked open my Coke. “They sound like dicks.”
The brothers looked at each other. It was slow at first, but all of a sudden, they were both cracking up. Red in the face and shoulders shaking.
David gasped. “You’re so funny, Mark!”
“Very funny,” Chet said, breathless. “It’s great to have a friend who’s funny.”
I couldn’t believe them at first. Whenever I hung out with Jake and Randy in a larger group, they’d be cracking everyone up, and then I’d say something that made everyone quiet. No matter how funny I tried to be, it never worked. Jokes don’t when they reek of effort. But here were Chet and David almost rolling on the floor over something I said. Their reaction was as weird as everything else about them, but also so — genuine.
I polished off my Coke and belched. They laughed at that, too, and I held up the two Atari controllers.
“Who wants their ass whipped first?”
The new King of Comedy had his minions.
🔥
We didn’t ask questions when we found the treehouse two years ago. We just climbed the rungs straight up through a floor hatch. Outside, the treehouse looked like a small Victorian mansion stretched across the cradling branches of a maple that might have been two hundred years old. It loomed high against the cloudless sky. The dilapidated structure was flanked on both sides by turrets that framed the peak of its partially collapsed roof. It looked like the house in Psycho, that movie we watched at Jake’s last Halloween. The interior wasn’t nearly as spacious, taken up by a mess of strange, disorienting angles that left just a small practical space tailor-made for three people to hang out. There were windows here and there and they were all sorts of irregular shapes too.
It was one of those strange things waiting to be found by the right kids, the kind of kids who sneak cigarettes from their mother’s purse. We weren’t the first ones inside, but it’d been a while between occupants. We found broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, and used condoms. There were scattered pages from titty magazines, faded and water damaged in the most frustrating way possible. While Jake and Randy obsessed over them, I found a rolled piece of paper in the corner. It was yellowed with age, but not crinkly at all when I unrolled it and realized it was a wall calendar with all the months printed in little square blocks above a flowery script — Fitzhugh’s Apothecary. What the hell was an apothecary? The calendar was from 1916, several years after Kingwood’s founding.
“Look at this, guys. Figure it means this place was built 70 years ago?”
Randy and Jake weren’t interested. They’d discovered more ripped pages from some porno mag and knelt on the floor in a desperate effort to fit the jigsaw scraps together.
Fitzhugh. I thought of the town drug store. How long had it been there?
“Mark, get over here,” Jake said. “We’re like three scraps away from seeing pussy. Help us find the missing pieces!”
“Hunt for the cunt,” Randy said, and soon we three kings chanted it together and giggled. I wasn’t any help, though. My thoughts were on that calendar. On questions of time and who’d built the treehouse. I sat back and thought about it. A story sprang to mind so readily it was like someone spoke it to me.
“John King built this,” I said.
“The statue guy?”
“For his sons. Twin boys. But he discovered they weren’t really his kids, so he . . . ”
They applauded when I finished telling the story. “You should be a writer,” Randy said. “That was fucking awesome. Especially that line about the one starving brother realizing you can climb up to Hell.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t explain how the story just came to mind. I guess I’d made it up in a burst of imagination.
It wasn’t important. Whoever built the treehouse didn’t matter. It was ours now and we spent damn near every day that first summer here, cleaning it up, making it ours. We pledged to tell no one about it except girlfriends, when we got ‘em. We vowed to lose our cherries up here. That summer in the treehouse, life was more real than ever before. The three of us did the same shit we would have done in the park or the woods, but we did it in our own world. Our dreams carried more weight in the treehouse, and our friendship was never stronger than when we occupied it together. I went there by myself only once, when Jake and Randy were off on family vacations. I don’t know why, but I thought the treehouse was almost angry with me for coming alone. I got creeped out by the sound of the groaning wood, the creaking of the branches and stood up. I went to look out one of the windows and something seemed off. The world outside was different, like the picture on an old postcard. I didn’t even feel like I was looking out of my own eyes.
I left a few minutes later and didn’t return until Jake and Randy were there. Then it all felt right again. Our fascination with the treehouse lasted through that summer and stayed strong into the second one and was still going good in the third. We went there almost every day, up until that Fourth of July. Then I began hanging out in secret with the Somerset brothers and my room became a sort of treehouse for the three of us and we never left it. Mom kept covering for me whenever Jake or Randy showed up. I started feeling like I had two separate lives that mustn’t intersect. They’d have to when school started, I supposed, but that was a ways out.
I didn’t ditch Randy and Jake, of course. When I was determined to hang out with them, I set off early on my bike. As far as I knew, Chet and David didn’t have bikes, but I always kept looking around expecting them to be running after me. I never saw them once, but only felt hidden from them once we were a quarter of a mile into the forest.
“Dude, what’s been up with you?” Jake said after we’d climbed the rungs and could lounge in privacy.
“What do you mean?”
“Sneaking beers? Flipping off your mom? You got a death wish or something?”
I grinned. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do sometimes.”
Their look of respect was priceless.
“You’re going to be grounded the whole summer at the rate you’re going.”
I shrugged. “It’s totally worth it. Fuck that bitch.”
I winced inside. As moms went, mine wasn’t as lame as most. Her excuses were making me look badass, but how far would she go if Chet and David kept coming over?
Jake had scored a copy of Playboy and had the magazine open on the treehouse floor. As the three of us knelt around it, Randy took out several cigarettes. They were bundled in a paper towel and were a little squished and bent. He had a lighter and kept flicking it until he finally gave up.
“I don’t get why my lighters never work up here.”
“Maybe it’s out,” I said.
“I just got it.”
He sighed and went to the hatch door.
“Light one for me,” Jake said.
“Me too.”
Randy flipped us the bird as he descended the ladder. This took about half a minute. Then he shouted, “Hey, guys!”
We went to the door and looked down. Randy was small on the ground, but I could see him grinning and holding up the lighter. The flame flickered.
“See? Fucking weird.”
He put all three cigarettes into his mouth, passed the fire across them and inhaled.
“Don’t get the filter wet with your spit,” Jake said. He pulled back and I followed. “I fucking hate a wet filter. It’s like I’m kissing him or something.”
We sat with our backs to the wall as Randy poked through and climbed inside, billows of smoke around his head. He plucked two cigarettes from his lips and handed them to us. Mine was damp, but I didn’t mind. I smoked and thought how I’d like to take David up here. David and Chet, of course, but more David. I thought he’d love the treehouse.
They both would.
🔥
Both brothers screamed, and Randy and Jake giggled and fell against each other.
“Guess they found the skulls,” Jake said. “Those pussies are too freaked out to even realize they’re fake.”
Randy ran to the base of the tree and hollered, “Get to it, girls! Carve a face in the pumpkins and put the skulls and candles inside. The brothers want their new heads!”
They screamed again.
“I’m going up there,” I said. “This needs to stop.”
Their flashlight beams lanced at me.
“It really is true, isn’t it?”
“Chet was just lashing out because you were bullying his brother and he knows me. He was trying to get me to stop you. They’re just desperate for friends. They wouldn’t be out here if they weren’t.”
The brothers screamed again. Randy stormed back to the tree, climbed up three rungs and shouted at them to shut up and start carving.
“Dude,” Jake said, his voice softer. “I don’t know what to think.”
I didn’t either. Memories of the end of summer and the start of the school year flooded me. David and I playing Atari as we sat on the edge of the mattress, with Chet asleep behind us like a little kid. David flexed his calf against mine. I flexed back.
“Look,” I said. The candles had gone out in the treehouse. We listened. Silence.
We waited. Several minutes passed.
“Let’s go up there,” I said.
“You can.”
“They’re up there in the dark. They’re probably too scared to move.”
Jake and I were about to argue when Randy shouted, “Gross, what the fuck?”
He dropped his flashlight and fell off the third rung and landed on his side, holding his hands up. His fingers glistened wet and red in our flashlight beams.
“Dude, did you cut yourself?”
“No, man, it just started dripping on me.”
Randy got on his knees and began scraping his palms against the dirt. Jake and I stood next to him, pivoting our lights up the length of the tree. The rungs were wet, and the dripping became a steady pour.
“David?” I shouted. “David, are you up there?”
Jake got Randy to his feet. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
I grabbed Jake’s arm. “How much red paint did you put up there?”
“What?”
“You had a can rigged to fall on them like pig’s blood, right?”
Jake pulled his arm away. “I didn’t have any paint, Mark.” His voice was hoarse, every word like straw.
“Randy, did you have paint–”
“I’m out of here, man. I don’t even care.”
They took off. I followed them a few steps, begging them not to go. Then I made a helpless pivot and ran back to the tree.
“David? David, it’s okay. Jake and Randy left. It’s just me.”
A minute of silence lasted longer than an hour of noise.
“Come on, guys! Chet?”
You’ve got to go up there, I told myself. I put my foot on the first rung and my sole slipped off. I whimpered. There was no way I could make it up without falling.
“Please, David.”
A whisper came from the opening. David? Chet? Both? Then something appeared. Thank God, I thought. The prank had gone on long enough. I pointed the flashlight for a better view and only just dove out of the way of the pumpkins as they fell. But it wasn’t the pumpkins. It was David and Chet’s decapitated heads.
I ran into the darkness. The huge maple tree shook behind me. It sounded like a roar. I tripped and scrambled to keep going. The whispers became more distinct. Chet and David. But how could it be — when their heads were —
I turned. The Somerset brothers were there, but not on the ground. Their forms hung suspended in the air, substanceless. Boneless. It took a moment to comprehend just what I was seeing. Their skins had been peeled away and seemed draped like sheets. But what were their skins draped over, and who did the draping? The pumpkins were there in place of their heads, and each bore the face of one brother, carved with the exacting detail of a photograph, and lit from within by the very candles they’d been forced to carry. We stared at each other, and I couldn’t help but remember what they’d said to me outside of the drug store.
Be our friend, Mark.
A real friend.
David floated toward me.
“The story was wrong, Mark,” he said.
“The brothers were never twins,” Chet added.
They hovered over me as I fell to my knees.
“Then — then — what were they?”
“Triplets.”
Sean Eads is a writer and librarian living in Denver, CO. He has a Masters degree in literature from the University of Kentucky and a Masters degree in library science from the University of Illinois. His works include The Survivors (finalist, Lambda Literary Award), Lord Byron’s Prophecy (finalist, Shirley Jackson Award and the Colorado Book Award), Trigger Point, 17 Stitches, The Feast of Panthers and Confessions. See more of his work on website.
Joshua Viola is the owner and founder of Bit Bot Media and owner and chief editor of Hex Publishers. He is a Colorado Book Award winner and edited the Denver Post #1 bestselling horror anthology, Nightmares Unhinged, and co-edited Cyber World — named one of the best science fiction anthologies of 2016 by Barnes & Noble. He is the co-author of the comic book slasher series True Believers with Stephen Graham Jones, which features official cameos by Jamie Lee Curtis, R.L. Stine, and more. As a producer, he has worked on films like Skinner’s Shrine of Abominations, Deathgasm II: Goremageddon, and most recently with Slash of Guns N’ Roses on Steven Kostanski’s Deathstalker reboot. As a videogame developer, he worked on Pirates of the Caribbean: Call of the Kraken, Unioverse, The Smurfs, and TARGET: Terror.
In case you missed it, check out Sean and Joshua’s last Birdy install, The Devil’s Reel, and Josh’s last interview feature, TRUE BELIEVERS #2: An Interview with the Creators, or head to our Explore section to see more of their work.