The Sealer's Shed
By Snakefire
A/N: Hey, just a little heads up: This story contains some vomit. It's not super graphic but please decide for yourself if you want to read or not.
Anyhow, this is a little Halloween story that's been scratching at my brain. There'll probably be a few of these posted over the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more horrifying Canadiana.
Newfoundland's house was a cheerful little cabin overlooking the ocean, right on the outskirts of St. John's in a little community called Quidi Vidi. He'd lived in many places throughout the province over the course of his long life, with fire and disaster taking away this home and that, but through it all, the Newfoundlander kept his good cheer and hope for the future.
At the back of his house, right by the woodpile, was a cute little shed with a trim little roof and its own small chimney, bedecked with nets and floats and wooden fish. The windows were small and always covered by curtains pulled tight. But the most curious thing about the shed was that nobody had ever been invited inside or gotten so much as a glimpse through the windows. Not Newfoundland's neighbours, not his fellow provinces, nobody.
One fine day in April when snow still blanketed the ground, Nova Scotia was sitting at Newfoundland's kitchen table, enjoying a beer and staring out the glass back door directly at the shed. Newfoundland was bumbling around the kitchen, chopping an onion for supper, and Nova Scotia took another swig of his beer.
"Hey, Newf," he said, "You gotta tell me, bud. What's in that shed of yours? I think we're all dying to know."
The sound of chopping stopped abruptly with an aggressive THUNK into the wooden board, and Nova Scotia quirked an eyebrow.
"Stay outta me shed." Newfoundland said flatly, voice deadly serious. He still had his back turned to his fellow province, head bowed as he continued to stare at his cooking.
"Um…okay? That doesn't really answer my-"
The chopping started again, aggressively, and Nova Scotia turned back to his beer, confused and concerned.
"Uh, alright, then." He said, getting up from the table and heading towards the stairs. "I think I'm gonna…go see how Brunsie's doing." He said awkwardly, heading up the stairs with his drink in hand.
New Brunswick was in Newfoundland's living room, relaxing in an armchair with a bar of Ganong chocolate and watching the news. As Nova Scotia walked in, he caught the tail end of the broadcast.
"…And in local news, a team from Memorial University is currently studying the tales of so-called "Sea Beggars"- reports of people arriving at someone's door, in the middle of the day in the dead of winter, usually dressed in clothing from a past century and requesting a meal. The team is interested because the number of reports of this phenomenon seems to have increased over the last twenty years, with a particular peak all throughout the 1990's. While it's sharply dwindled recently, Professor of Anthropology Danny Murphy says there might be a connection to…"
"Whatcha watchin', sis?" he asked in French, flopping down on the sofa and looking at the report. New Brunswick shrugged and took another bite of her chocolate.
"Some folklore thing? I guess the tramps up on the North Shore are the luckiest bums to ever exist." New Brunswick replied, happy to get a chance to use French herself. She gestured at the map on the TV screen. Indeed, the cluster of dots the news program was showing was all clustered around various outports dotted across the province- towns with no access to the outside world via roads.
Nova Scotia shrugged. "Whatever. It's just some stupid story. How many people have seen the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, eh?"
"Too many." New Brunswick agreed.
They sat in silence for a few minutes as the two provinces watched the news, until finally Nova Scotia could bear it no more. He'd come up here for a reason, and he'd be damned if he was letting it drop.
"By the way, I gotta ask…you know that shed of Newfy's? I tried asking him what he was hiding in there, and he shut me the fuck down. He's probably hiding all his weird porn in there, let's be real."
New Brunswick chuckled.
"I'm sure he is. I'll go ask him myself. He's always been weirdly protective of that stupid shed of his." She said, getting up from her seat and crunching up the candy wrapper in her hands.
New Brunswick got up from her chair and headed down the steps to where Newfoundland was putting some chunks of cooked and seasoned meat into a pie dish full of pastry. He sprinkled a layer of chopped onions over the top, humming the lines to a tune- Lukey's Boat, she realized.
The bilingual province leaned on the counter comfortably as her host carefully filled the rest of the pie dish with vegetables and laid a piece of dough overtop.
He crimped the edges of the crust with deft fingers, and New Brunswick smiled pleasantly.
"Sooo, Newf. Tell me something, eh?" She said pleasantly, grinning at him, "Tell me what you got hidden in that old shed of yours? You've never told anyone, and I can keep my mouth shut. It can be our little secret."
Newfoundland went ramrod stiff when she said that, arms seizing up as he looked away.
"Stay out of me shed, Brunswick." He said flatly, putting on some oven mitts and robotically putting the pie in the oven.
"Oh, come on. That's what you told Scottie. C'mon, Newf. You gotta let me know what kind of freaky porn you got stashed in there."
"I don' have porn in me shed." Newfoundland said, "An' when it comes ta secrets, ye's leakier than a fuckin' sieve in the hands of Julian Assange."
New Brunswick blinked a few times, watching him clean up the spilled flour and scooping the onion rinds into the trash. The pan he'd used to fry the seal meat went into the sink- it looked like they were having flipper pie for supper.
"Aw, c'mon, Newf. Give me a hint, at least? Everyone's dead curious. Maybe just something to keep me guessing?"
Newfoundland looked at her and sighed. "If I gives ye a hint, will ye shut up an' promise ta stay da fuck out?"
"Yeah, I promise!" New Brunswick said, stuffing a hand in the pocket of her red hoodie and crossing her fingers.
Newfoundland didn't miss the gesture and just rolled his eyes.
"Somethin' ye really wouldn't like." He said, "Now go an' get yer brother. Supper's almost ready an' since I cooked, ye two are settin' da table." He said firmly, gesturing at the table and turning back to the mess he'd made of his kitchen.
New Brunswick frowned at the non-answer and cracked open the fridge, pulling out an Iceberg Beer for herself, from the Brewery that Newfoundland's house literally overlooked.
She popped the top with the opener that Newfoundland usually had laying out on his counter and went back up the stairs to where her brother was on his phone, texting someone.
"Well, I got nothing. By the way, he wants us to set the table." She said with a defeated sigh, "Who are you texting?"
Nova Scotia looked up. "NWT, actually. She called me yesterday to ask if I could get Newfy to send her some sealskins. She's trying to teach Nunavut how to make some traditional Inuit shit and they keep running out of seals. He just got done his hunt, so she figures he'd have plenty she could buy off him."
"…Why didn't she just call him herself?"
"Said he wasn't responding to his phone calls."
"Ye arseholes gonna sit up dere jawin' away in French, or are ye gonna come set da damn table? Food'll be ready in five minutes!" Newfoundland called up the stairs, and Scottie stuffed his phone in the pocket of his jeans.
"Comin' bud, fuck's sake!" He gave New Brunswick a look of "what the fuck is wrong with this guy" before getting to his feet and leading his sister down the stairs.
They set the table quickly and before long, Newfoundland was serving up slices of fresh flipper pie, leveraging a generous slice onto the plates of his fellow provinces. He sat down, serving himself a decent portion. The meat was already on the fork en route to Nova Scotia's mouth when Newfoundland coughed.
"Grace, b'y? If ye wouldn't mind."
Nova Scotia rolled his eyes and put his fork down, putting his hands together as New Brunswick did the same.
"Father we thank thee fer da riches of da ocean and yer protection from her evils on dis day. In Jesus' name, amen." Newfoundland said, smooth and even and really fuckin' weird.
"…Amen." Mumbled Scotia and his sister, the two of them staring at Newfoundland as he tucked into his meal, trying to keep crumbs out of his red beard.
That was a fucking weird grace. A normal grace was something along the lines of "Thankyoulordforthefoodw'reaboutt'receive, amen" said at top speed to get straight to the fucking food already.
Nova Scotia opted not to comment and instead picked his fork up again, shovelling some of the delicious flipped pie into his mouth. He chewed- and furrowed his brows. Something wasn't quite right.
"…This seal tastes weird." He said aloud. It was salty enough, that was for sure, and it tasted a it fishy, but mostly it just tasted like…lean pork.
Seal was not a lean meat by any stretch of the imagination.
Newfoundland coughed sharply, like he was choking, and Scotia dropped his fork and helpfully banged on his back a few times. After a few more coughs, whatever he was choking on seemed to have gone down, and Newfoundland dabbed at his mouth with his serviette.
"Sorry," The old man croaked, "What was dat?"
"I said, the meat tastes weird. This doesn't taste like seal at all. You sure you went hunting this year?"
"I didn't, actually." Newfoundland said, eyes still watering, "I just bought some meat off me neighbour, because he did. I guess da fucker sold me pork instead. It's hard ta tell when it's all frozen and wrapped in plastic."
Scotia turned to his sister and raised an eyebrow.
How could someone who'd hunted seal for literal centuries mistake pork for it?
And on top of that…it didn't quite taste like pork either.
Nova Scotia decided to just cut his losses and tuck in. The meat was really good, whatever it was; lean and tasty and just slightly fishy. Maybe it was a large seabird or something, and Newfoundland was lying to them because hunting a lot of those birds was illegal nowadays. Whatever it was, Nova Scotia cut himself another slice of the not-flipper pie as his host watched.
Newfoundland had a small smile on his face as his two fellows tucked into their meal, and he didn't stop smiling even after all the meat was gone.
Later that night, Nova Scotia was awoken by his sister shaking his shoulder.
Night had fallen on the island of Newfoundland and the moonlight was gleaming off the snow out the windows. Nova Scotia sat upright on the couch he'd been sleeping on, his weird dreams interrupted. Groggily, he rubbed his eyes, and without saying a word, reached for his glasses.
"What d'ya want, Brunsie?" he whispered, adjusting his spectacles and blinking up at his sister. She was fully dressed and looked like she'd been raring to go for some time- bright eyes and a determined look on her face.
"Get dressed," She whispered back, "We're going to go see what the fuck is up with that creepy shed of his."
"It's three in the morning, though."
"That's exactly why we have to do this now. We fly out tomorrow at noon."
"There's snow. He'll see our footprints."
"Correction, it's snow-ing. Any footprints we make will be wiped out by morning. And," she added with a smile, "He shovels the stone path from the back door to his shed. We just need to re-shovel it when we're done."
Nova Scotia sighed and moved his sheets aside, reaching over for the lamp sitting on the end table and clicking it on.
She turned around so he could get changed out of his pyjamas. While he was pulling a sweater over his head, a thought occurred to the Scotsman, and he whispered it as soon as he was mostly dressed.
"What if the shed's locked? I can't imagine he'd leave the door open for anyone to just walk in and stare at his freaky lobster porn."
"Good thing I already went looking for the key before I woke you up then, eh?" New Brunswick said with a smug grin, producing a nondescript key to a Master lock on a keychain which looked like a small patch of seal fur.
Nova scotia rolled his eyes as he pulled his socks on. "How do you know that's the shed key?"
New Brunswick turned it over and let him see the back of it, where Newfoundland had written SHED KEY in Sharpie on the flat side of the hide.
"Ah." he said, standing up as soon as he was fully dressed.
The two of them tiptoed towards the back door, sneaking along the edge of the floor right by the wall. Newfoundland's house was on the older side, and although he had carpet in most of his house, the floorboards underneath were still known to squeak every now and again. Better safe than sorry, after all.
New Brunswick had been pretty busy while he'd been out, but then, she had access to the downstairs guest room where she could sneak around in peace, considering the master bedroom was upstairs. She'd moved their boots and jackets to the back door, and Nova Scotia silently slipped into both of his, holding his breath as his sister turned the knob on the back door-
And the security system beeped. Both of them froze and sucked in a breath, waiting for the inevitable thunderous roar as a furious Newfoundlander stomped down the stairs, screaming obscenities.
That didn't happen. Instead, the house just sat there silently for one second, which bled into ten, as the snow fell silently outside.
Thirty seconds of holding their breath and letting the snowflakes blow into the house slid past in sullen silence before New Brunswick finally took a deep breath and stepped out into the snow.
There was no moon and no stars overhead as the snow softly fell; the only light came from the yellowish sodium vapour lamp installed on Newfoundland's shed, illuminating the front door and turning its cheerful red paint job into a hideous deathly black. New Brunswick nervously stepped into the snow, letting the thin layer crunch under her boot as she stepped onto the back deck, and Nova Scotia followed behind her.
They walked as silently as they could, each soft crunch of snowflakes under rubber soles sounding like they were stamping on pebbles with cleats to them. What had seemed to New Brunswick like such a grand idea when she'd first gotten out of bed was losing a lot of its appeal, and by the time they got to the door, her hands were shaking as she pulled the key to the padlock out of her pocket.
PLEASE KEEP OUT was painted on the door in block capitals, and New Brunswick couldn't help but shake as she jammed the key in the lock. This was a bad idea. This was a very, very bad idea.
She froze with a hand on the lock, and Nova Scotia sighed and grabbed it from her.
"Let's get this over with," He muttered in English, "You better have a VHS tape of a hockey player gangbang in there, old man…."
He turned the key and grabbed the lock, hissing as he pulled it out- the metal was ice cold and he wasn't wearing gloves, and it was flat-out painful to touch it. The metal sapped all the warmth out of his hand as he pulled the lock free from its holdings, wincing as the cold metal scraped against more cold metal.
The door creaked open.
And then the smell hit their noses.
Freshly killed game has a particular aroma to it. Mostly it smells like nothing, but then you catch the faintest whiffs of slightly spoiled meat, which is just enough to make your stomach do a few uncomfortable contortions.
This was precisely that. A faint, palpable smell of slightly spoiled flesh, but something about it smelled…wrong. Like the meat from the pie they'd eaten earlier.
Nova Scotia stepped into the darkened shed first, watching his breath coil away into the darkness, and fumbled along the wall for the lightswitch.
His fingers hit it after some fumbling, and several powerful halogen lamps flicked on.
The shed was crammed with stuff, shelves, benches, an armchair, a wood-burning stove; and right in the middle of all of that, hanging down from the ceiling overtop of a plastic bucket, was a headless, armless, human torso.
With a massive chunk missing out of the right thigh, a square section that looked like it had been carefully cut out with a butcher's knife.
Nova Scotia turned around, stepped out into the snow, took off his glasses, and rammed his fingers down his throat.
New Brunswick stared at the body in horror as she listened to her brother retch up his supper into the snow outside, unable to move anything except her eyes. Just- the body. The human body. With no arms or head. What had he done with them? Why and how had he- who was that? Where was their head?!
The body was female, which, New Brunswick just shuddered. No sane person or personification did something this depraved. She needed to get out of here. Call the cops. Call all the cops, RCMP, RNC, CSIS, the fucking Army, Navy, and Air Force. Get a bomber to just flatten this place, a sniper to take him out from six hills over. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and took a picture of the corpse with trembling hands, carefully moving around the body to take another from the other side. She took pictures of the bloody cutting tools on the table- and the weirdly dark colour of the woman's flesh.
And then New Brunswick stepped on something soft.
The floor of the shack was all concrete, so she looked down.
There was a sealskin on the floor, rolled up like a carpet. It had unrolled slightly, and it looked like it had fallen off a pile of identical sealskins, rolled up like carpets themselves. And there was something about it, something that made her pause.
New Brunswick knelt down and picked it up, letting the skin unroll, and she balked.
At the edges of the skin was a zipper.
A zipper, fused into the flesh itself, and when she touched it, it felt like…a tooth. Like the teeth of the zipper were made of pure enamel. Her fingers rubbed at the skin where it met the zipper, and all along the front of the pelt, and- no stitches. Nothing. The zipper was grown from the flesh.
Nova Scotia staggered into the shed, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. He looked deathly pale.
"It- not all of it- I couldn't get it all out." He whispered, shaking like a leaf, "I swallowed it, Brunsie-"
"I know. Come here. We're- We're calling the cops. All of them. Just- look at this." She said, holding up the pelt. Nova Scotia was clearly in no mood for French, and she really couldn't blame him. She wasn't in any mood for English, but what mattered was bringing their psychotic host to justice.
Nova Scotia stumbled over, keeping his eyes trained on literally anything that wasn't the human corpse dangling from the ceiling, and took the pelt from her hands.
"What the fuck…" he whispered softly, feeling at the zipper along the edges.
"What the fuck is this?!" He whimpered- and then his eyes fell on the pile of identical pelts just like it. He picked a random one off the top of the pile and unrolled it-
Buttons. This one had buttons. And they weren't attatched with string; feeling them, it was clear that the tooth-like toggle clasps, weathered and ancient, were… grown from the flesh. Like a piece of sinew was sprouted out of it, and the skin had wrapped itself around the toggle clasp, which felt like it was made of enamel.
"The- it's- it's organic." He whispered softly, eyes wide."
"I'm calling the fucking cops-" New Brunswick said, grabbing her phone and tapping on the call screen.
And then the door swung wide open, slamming against the back wall.
In her fright, New Brunswick's phone tumbled out of her hands and hit the concrete, the screen smashing on impact.
"Oh, Merde-"
"Ye can say dat again." Newfoundland growled, glaring at the both of them.
He'd bothered to get dressed, that much was clear; he'd also bothered to light a cigarette, which was dangling out of his mouth, glowing brightly in the darkness.
He reached up with his free hand and took a puff, exhaling the smoke and tapping some ashes onto the floor as he sized the two Maritimers up.
"What'd I tell ye about COMIN' IN MY SHED?!" Newfoundland roared, lifting up a weapon that had his fellow provinces trembling in terror.
A long wooden shaft with an iron spike at the head of it. A hakapik. A tool used to crush the skulls of seals.
Ironically, a tool that was far more humane than bullets, since seals that died from it were dead instantly instead of slowly bleeding to death over the course of minutes.
"Y-You said- you-"
"Dat's right," he growled, "I said STAY OUT. I said, KEEP OUT. I said, DON'T GO IN ME SHED. And what did you do?"
The Newfoundlander took a step forwards, and Nova Scotia's eyes darted to the window.
"Wh-Who was she!?" New Brunswick screamed hysterically, pointing at the body, "Why- what did you DO?! WHY DID YOU KILL HER-MURDERER!" she screamed, and Nova Scotia grabbed his sister's hand and balled his fist.
Newfoundland smiled.
He fucking smiled.
"I lied about not huntin' seals dis year." He said softly, "I did go huntin' fer a very special type of seal. A seal so stupid it wears its skin even when ye comes up to it wit' a club. A seal so vicious dat it RAPES HUMAN WOMEN." He snarled, putting his smoke to his lips to have another draw.
"Wh-What?!" New Brunswick spluttered, turning to her brother in a panic. "You've gone- you're insane. You're crazy! You're fucking delusional!" she shouted.
Nova Scotia's eyes darted to the bloody knife on the table.
"Ye heard me. I said, I went seal hunting dis year. Little known fact: Selkies are fuckin' retards. Fuckin' retards, b'y. I hate dem. I hate dem wit' all me heart an' soul. They. Need. To. Die." Newfoundland snapped, looking more and more manic and harried as he spoke. There was a look in his eye and in his posture- one that left him looking completely deranged.
"S-Selkies?! FUCKING SELKIES?! SELKIES AREN'T REAL-"
"Da pile of sealskins behind ye begs ta differ." Newfoundland said flatly, taking another step closer, "DA women dey used ta rape when dey'd come inta town begs ta differ. Da people dey'd hurt, da families dey tore apart. Animals. Animals who need ta be culled, da lot of 'em. So. I club dem. I take dem ashore. An' den I unzip deir skins an' put da bodies in plastic bags. Triple-bag 'em an' tape it all up. Add cement so it don't float up.-"
"Wh- WHY DID YOU MAKE A PIE OUT OF THIS ONE?!"
Newfoundland snorted. "Waste a' good meat, otherwise. Don' give me dat look. Dey ain't human. Dey don't matter. No selkie has ever been a registered citizen. Selkies aren't people, an' besides…"
He grinned nastily, "I'd say ye b'y's found dey taste pretty nice, eh?"
Nova Scotia lunged at the bloody knife on the table, hands snatching it up- and then he lunged straight at his fellow province. No time to think. No time to talk. Just fight. Fight for your fucking life.
He stabbed the knife deep into Newfoundland's left shoulder and the man roared in pain, toppling over and taking the Scotian with him. Something ran past them, but Nova Scotia was a little bit busy struggling against a man who was fifty pounds heavier than him.
Newfoundland jerked his knee up, nailing Nova Scotia square in the stomach, and shoved him off with his good arm, the one that was holding the hakapik. The Maritimer tumbled into the bloody plastic bucket, getting blood splashed on his white winter coat and scraping his face across the floor. His glasses skittered away into the corner, and suddenly the entire world was a blurry mess.
Nova Scotia struggled to his hands and knees, disoriented and confused; he looked up, and a large, blurry shape was looming over him-
He could see a red shape, a blocky red shape that looked like a jacket. A man wearing a red jacket, with the right arm raised up in the air-
And then that blurry red arm swung downwards towards him.
Inside the house, New Brunswick had found her brother's phone and frantically dialled 911 for emergencies.
"Hello, 911, what is your emergency and do you need police, fire department, or ambulance?"
"Police. Police and an ambulance and the army-He- he's killed a woman. There's a dead body in his shed. There's- my brother- he- I don't know if he killed my brother-"
"A dead body? Is the killer in the area with you?!"
"Yes! Yes, please-" New Brunswick was scrambling towards the door, desperate to get outside and run for her life.
"Alright, where are you? What's the address?"
"The- The address?! Oh god, I don't- I-"
"121 Cuckhold's Cove Road." A voice growled behind her, and New Brunswick turned around to see the freshly-bloodied hakapik raised up right above her head.
A/N: Have some Halloween fic for your Friday commute across the internet. I owe the good people of Newfoundland a profound apology for my depiction of your province here; rest assured I think the best of you guys. I wouldn't be living in St. John's if I didn't!
More Halloween fic to come in the near future, (hopefully,) it being spooky month and all that.
If you liked it, hated it, or think I should stick my head down a seal's breathing hole, leave a review! I really appreciate them.