Poe Lector the Body Collector (Dred Baird)

Poe Lector the Body Collector

Dred Baird of the Red Pen Men

CHAPTER ONE- Nightshade

Poe Lector never fit anywhere, and he never wasted time thinking about it. Kids crossed hallways to avoid him. Teachers watched him longer than anyone else. His mother said he needed a hobby. He already had an obsession. The kind his mother would have him committed for.

Sometimes the world touched him wrong, with static crawling over his arms, cold air stroking his ribs, darkness shifting like it wanted him back. It felt like something unseen was wrapping him up, knowing exactly where to press and where to linger. Most people would have flinched. Poe breathed it in.

It started on his fifteenth birthday with a box of tapes. He found behind the abandoned TV station off County Road 7. Mostly junk. Old weather. News clips. Local shows nobody wanted. One cover stopped him in his tracks. Sometimes life lined things up for him in ways he didn’t understand. This tape felt like it had been waiting for the exact wrong kid to pick it up. A woman in a cheap nurse outfit holding a scalpel, posing as if she were begging someone—anyone—to finally see her.

Nurse Nightshade. Season Two.

He carried it home. He climbed to the hayloft, the only place that felt like his. Dust. Straw. Quiet. Nobody came up here unless they had a reason, and nobody ever did. He fed the tape into the old TV VCR combo and sat back to watch.

The logo across the top looked like it was drawn with a marker. Along the bottom, in tiny white letters:

“Midnight Matinee with Nurse Nightshade – Channel 6 Local.”

The kind of public-access, late-night horror hostess shows people used to stumble on before streaming existed.

The picture rolled and the colors bled, but she came through anyway. Dark hair. Heavy makeup. Outfit cut low on purpose. Poe thought she was perfect.

She stood in front of a fake hospital backdrop, plastic curtain, metal bed, an IV stand that leaned wrong. A set you could knock over with a sneeze. None of it felt real except her.

She leaned toward the camera with a sultry smile.

Her fingers traced the top of her chest and settled in her cleavage, staying there long enough to make her point.

“Take me in, sugar…”

Her voice slid into him like it belonged there, warm and wrong in the same breath. His body leaned toward the screen as if pulled from behind his ribs. He did not understand it, and he did not care. His body did not want it to stop.

The camera wasn’t her target anymore. He was.

Then came the smile. The kind of smile a grown man clocks as crazy but is too fucking dumb to give a shit.

“Come closer, sweet cheeks. Let me see you.”

Nightshade turned mid-scene, a slow, knowing smile blooming as she stepped toward the camera.

The episode behind her stuttered, jumped, then blurred out completely, like the tape couldn’t decide what was supposed to be playing.

She wasn’t looking at the audience anymore. She was looking at him.

Her words slipped past his ears and sank somewhere deeper. Electricity swarmed across his skin like a thousand desperate needles…

Behind her, the tape snapped back to the episode footage — a shadow wrestling someone down, forcing motor oil into their mouth…

Nightshade gave a soft laugh. “Ah ah ah, honey. Eyes right here.”

Something in him tightened at the sound of her command, a small sharp pleasure that pushed everything else out of his mind. His gaze locked on her and stayed there like it belonged.

A choking gurgle tore loose behind her, then maniacal laughter rolled through the shot. Poe didn’t hear it. Nightshade filled every inch of his mind.

“Good boy.”

“Stay with me.”

“You pay attention. I like that.”

Everything else in the show was cheesy and hollow. But her voice hooked into his mind and pulled, steady and sure, claiming the inside of his skull as hers.

After a week he heard her even when the TV was dark. Not full sentences. Just that same low tone pressed against his ear.

The tone followed him through the house, quiet and steady, the kind of siren’s song. It looped through his mind claiming a corner of his thoughts moving in without asking.

One night, stretched out on the barn floor staring at the rafters, he heard her as clear as if she leaned over him.

“Do something for me. A small thing. Something that belongs to us.”

Her words infected him. A darkness wrapped around him and pressed down. It felt right in a way that scared him.

The next night, sketching in his notebook, she came back again. Her voice wove itself through each line the moment it left his pencil.

“Show me you are worth my time.”

His hand tightened until his pencil snapped.

“Good boy,” Nightshade said, her voice sliding in as smooth as silk. “Now break something that isn’t yours."

Her praise ignited something - a satisfying wrongness spreading through the darkness of his mind.

A quiet heat burned in his gut...

Oil.

He didn't overthink it.

He didn't need to.

A name flickered into his head. A thin shiver slid through him, his mind warning him to stop. He shrugged and flipped to a clean page.

Chapter Two- Mr. Sturgeon.

Mr. Sturgeon was always loud and rude, bitching every night like the world had wronged him personally. You could hear him from a block away. Every glance he threw at Poe said the same thing, trouble wearing a human face. Last winter he told Poe’s mom she ought to keep that boy on a leash. Poe heard it from his loft. He never forgot that bullshit.

Sturgeon talked down to everyone, especially kids. It grated against Poe’s nerves like sandpaper, the kind of thing that made the dark part of him twitch under his skin.

Nightshade invaded his thoughts. Soft. Close. “This is your moment. Prove your love for me.”

He felt himself agreeing before he even thought about it.

Poe closed the notebook.

Got to his feet.

And walked straight for where the motor oil was stored.

Poe crept across the yard to where Sturgeon’s truck sat in the driveway.

Stooping low, Poe poured out the oil, letting it run across the concrete right where Sturgeon usually stepped. He was finishing the pool when the porch hinges squealed.

Poe slid under the pickup fast, dragging the oil bottle with him. Bits of gravel dug into his shoulder as he shifted for a better angle. It was cramped and smelled like old grease and weed killer. Above him, Sturgeon stomped onto the porch and cussed about his missing keys.

The door slammed.

Quiet settled again.

Poe finished the last of the oil from where he lay, watching the dark shine spread across the concrete. He set the empty bottle aside and waited.

A few minutes later, Sturgeon came out again. Toolbox dangling. Cigarette stuck to his lip. He muttered down the steps and cleared his throat loud enough to shake dust off the frame above Poe.

Then his boot hit the oil.

Poe saw the shoes skid sideways inches from his face. Saw the leg shoot out. Heard the tools scatter across the concrete.

The metal toolbox hit with a heavy clang.

Sturgeon’s skull came down on its corner a heartbeat later, splitting wide with a wet, final crack.

Blood dripped from the truck and spattered onto the concrete inches from Poe’s cheek.

When the twitching stopped, Poe slid out from under the truck. He brushed dirt off his clothes, flipped open his notebook, and wrote:

Sturgeon caught. Hook line and sinker.

He waited for guilt. Nothing came. All it did was confirm what he already suspected. The silence inside him felt honest.

Poe thought the oil kill was slicker than shit. It was cleaner and easier than he expected. He liked knowing he could make something happen when he wanted it to. He wiped the oil and blood off his shoe in the grass.

As he crossed into his own yard, he stepped straight into a pile of dog shit and his foot shot out from under him. He landed flat on his ass.

“Fucking poodle.”

He didn’t mind the pain. He minded the insult.

Anger snapped up in him hard and sudden.

Nightshade’s voice twisted through his ears.

“Someone needs to be taught some manners.”

Poe stood up slowly. A smug smile forming on his thin lips.

Tomorrow the dog shit hits the fan.

CHAPTER THREE – MORNING AFTER

Poe woke to the sound of tires crunching gravel. Not just one car. A whole line of them. Blue and red lights bounced across his ceiling in slow, lazy flashes.

He sat up and looked out the window. Two county cruisers, one unmarked sedan, and Sturgeon’s red pickup still sitting crooked in the drive.

His mother’s voice carried up the stairs.

“Poe? You awake?”

He pulled on a shirt and stepped into the hallway. She was at the front window, arms folded, chewing her lip like she always did when she was worked up.

“There are cops all over next door,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”

Poe shrugged. “Sturgeon slipped and cracked his skull. Happens.”

She shot him a look. “That’s not funny.”

Poe didn’t smile.

He wasn’t trying to be funny.

She turned back to the window. “Lord, look at all of them… I should go check on the Doyles later. They live two houses down. You remember them?”

Poe’s stomach tightened. “Yeah. I guess.”

“I ran into Leah,” she said, not looking away from the cruisers. “Leah wondered why you haven’t been down at the creek lately.”

Poe's jaw twitched. “I don’t like her like that anymore.”

His mom finally turned, eyebrows lifted just enough to sting. “I didn’t say you did.”

Poe stared past her at the cops. One of them knelt by the truck bed and pulled the tarp tight over something long. The shape underneath shifted.

His mother exhaled. “You’re slipping away from me.”

He wasn’t sure what she thought she was losing.

He blinked. “Why?”

“You keep to yourself too much, Poe. And you don’t have to be so mean about everything.” She paused. “Like yesterday when you snapped at me about the shed.”

He didn’t remember snapping.

He remembered Nightshade’s voice, low and even, offering quiet affirmation.

His mother sighed. “Look, just… be normal today, okay? And pick up that dog mess in the yard. Buck’s poodle tore through again last night. I stepped in it when I took the trash out.”

Poe’s jaw tightened.

The poodle.

The shit.

Tom Buck’s voice yelling at that damn poodle like it was the problem.

The dog was just a symptom. Buck was the disease.

“Yeah,” Poe said. “I’ll take care of it.”

His mother nodded like the matter was settled.

She walked into the kitchen, fussing with the coffee pot.

Poe stayed at the window.

Watching the cops. Watching the tarp.

Nightshade’s voice brushed his ear, soft and gentle.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

Poe didn’t flinch.

Buck’s last day had just started. He just didn’t know it yet.

CHAPTER FOUR – THE BUCK KILL

Poe stepped outside with the child sized yellow sand pail and plastic shovel dangling from his fingers. The cold air bit at his nose, but the yard was worse. Poodle shit littered the grass.

Buck must’ve trained that fucking dog to think Poe’s yard was its personal dumping ground.

“Fucking Buck and his goddamn poodle.” Poe muttered.

He scooped the pile, slapped it into the pail, and moved on. The second pile clung to the grass in long strands. The third was soft enough that it broke apart as Poe lifted it. By the time he was done, the pail was heavy and warm. A perfect offering.

Nightshade’s breath slid across his ear.

“Good boy… get every drop.”

Poe headed for the barn.

Inside, the grinder fought and whined but worked long enough for him to melt the shovel’s edge to a sharp point. The plastic hardened, and cooled into a jagged spike. Something that wouldn't just cut—something that would tear.

Nightshade hummed her approval.

“Make it ugly. Make it meaner than your mom thinks you are.”

Poe lifted the shovel.

Sharp enough.

Mean enough.

Tom Buck’s stucco house sat across the yard, the paint peeling off the trim like dead skin. Concrete steps led up to the storm door. Poe crossed the yard calm and easy, the pail swinging lightly from his fingers.

The poodle barked inside, high and frantic. Poe climbed the steps, set the pail on the upper frame, and tested the balance. The bucket rocked, then settled.

Perfect.

He pressed the doorbell and slipped sideways out of sight.

The barking stopped.

Buck stomped toward the door.

“What son of a—”

He kicked it open.

The bucket flipped with a hollow clunk, dumping shit down his face. Thick, warm ropes of it smeared across his mouth, nose, and eyes. Buck staggered back, gagging so hard he slapped a hand against the stucco just to stay upright.

“WHAT in the ever loving fuck!"

Poe stepped forward and drove the sharpened shovel point into the soft tissue just above Buck’s collarbone.

The spike punched through skin and muscle with a wet snap, sinking deep into his throat.

Buck gurgled, clutching at the handle, blood bubbling between his fingers as he staggered back.

Buck managed half a word through his shredded windpipe:

“Wh—y…”

Poe didn’t answer. Some people didn’t earn reasons.

Then he yanked sideways.

The wound opened like a ripped feed bag. Buck slammed back into the door frame, leaving a thick, sloppy smear of shit-colored blood down the jamb. His head bounced off the threshold landing with a dull thunk that made the poodle inside start barking again—harder, sharper, panicked.

Poe kneeled at the body.

He turned Buck’s head, watching the last twitch drain out of him. Shit mixed with the bright red pumping from his torn neck. He looked less like a man and more like something scraped off the back of Sturgeon’s truck.

A violent thud hit the door. The poodle slammed itself against the frame, snarling and barking.

Poe's eyes slid toward the noise.

“You’re next, mutt.”

The dog froze mid-bark.

A yellow stream hit the linoleum behind it.

Poe’s smile barely twitched. Good.

The poodle whimpered, spun, claws skittering on the floor, and bolted into the back of the house, leaving piss tracks in its wake.

Nightshade purred.

“Animals always recognize the monster first.”

Poe wiped the shovel clean on Buck’s shirt twice.

He opened his notebook and wrote:

Buck tagged and bagged.

He closed the notebook, turned toward home, and walked away.

Nightshade’s approval simmered warm in his chest.

CHAPTER FIVE – THE BARN

By afternoon, the sirens still hadn’t come for Buck.

Poe checked from his bedroom window twice, then a third time. The body still slumped on the concrete steps. The poodle still howled inside the house, a high broken siren that had nobody listening. His mother stood at the sink, hands in dishwater, staring out the window with that gone look she got when she was thinking too hard.

“Poe,” she said. “Something’s wrong over there.”

He took a drink of milk and swallowed slow. “Yeah.”

“That dog has not stopped since this morning.” She wiped her hands on a towel. “And I don’t see Buck’s truck moving. He’s usually gone by now.”

Poe shrugged. “Maybe he slipped and cracked his skull on the steps.”

She turned just enough to frown at him. “You cannot say things like that.”

He stared at the window instead of answering.

Her eyes lingered on him a second too long, then drifted toward the barn.

“Have you been out there today?”

He took another drink. “No.”

“Mm.” She folded the towel, too precise. “Well… I need to grab something from the loft. You left a mess up there last week. We’re going to clean that out this weekend, you hear me?”

Poe set his glass in the sink. The clink sounded too loud.

“The loft is fine,” he said.

“I will decide that,” she said, soft but firm. “You have been off lately and I am tired of not knowing why.”

She walked past him. Her shoulder brushed his.

He did not move.

Nightshade’s voice slid in behind his ear.

“Let her look. She cannot unsee it.”

The screen door shut behind his mother.

Poe stood in the kitchen a long moment, staring at the back yard. The barn sat where it always had. Faded red. Sagging roof line. Hay dust clinging to the high windows.

His chest felt tight.

Then he heard it.

His mother’s shriek.

Not a little one.

Not surprised.

Not annoyed.

Full.

From somewhere deep.

Like someone had reached in and ripped the sound out of her.

Poe walked out the back door calm as you please.

The grass was damp under his shoes. The air smelled like rain and old oil. The distant poodle barked, the sound following him to the barn.

The big doors were open a crack. That was new. He slipped inside.

The ladder to the loft shook with every movement above.

He could hear her crying.

Hear her talking to herself.

“Lord… Lord… what is this… oh my God… Poe…”

Nightshade’s tone dipped low and pleased.

“She found your presents.”

Poe climbed.

His head rose past the loft edge and he saw her.

She was on her knees in the straw, one hand over her mouth, the other shaking as she held up his notebook. Pages flipped in the draft from the cracked window. Every page full of tight writing. Oil. Sturgeon. Buck. Little sketches of Nightshade’s eyes.

The bloodstained plastic shovel leaned against the wall beside her. The empty motor oil bottle sat on the crate where he had left it. The VHS tape case lay open, cover staring up with its cheap nurse outfit and scalpel and smile.

His mother turned as she heard him. Her eyes were purple-red from crying. That pretty, tired face now cut with something he had not seen on her before.

Hate.

“Poe Lector,” she choked. “What did you do.”

He stepped onto the loft. Said nothing.

She held up the notebook, pages trembling.

“These… these are not stories,” she said. “These are not stories, Poe, these are—”

Her voice broke. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“Sturgeon is dead. Buck is… Buck is not moving on his front steps. And you wrote it here. All of it. How could you. How could you.”

She dropped the notebook and grabbed the tape case.

“And this,” she whispered. “This filth.

What is this, Poe? Why do you even have something like this? This filth does NOT stay in my house.”

Poe’s jaw went tight.

“Put her down,” he said.

His mother stared. “What did you say?”

“Put. Her. Down.”

She looked at the cover. At him. Something changed in her eyes. A coldness under the fear.

“No,” she said. “No, I am done letting you rot your brain with this. I am done pretending you are just going through a phase. You are sick.” Her voice shook but she kept going. “You are sick, Poe, and you need help, not this… this demon nurse whore in your head.”

Nightshade’s voice went cold: “She hates you. I never have.”

She raised the tape case like she meant to snap it in half.

Nightshade’s voice brushed his ear, velvet and steel.

“She wants to kill me, sweetheart.”

Poe’s hand curled without him thinking about it.

His mother lifted the case higher. “I am throwing this away. You hear me? Nurse Nightshade is gone. Season two, season anything. GONE. I will burn every last piece of it, I swear to God.”

Poe stepped forward.

“Do not,” he said, voice gone flat as concrete, “touch her.”

His mother’s lip curled. “Listen to yourself. ‘Her.’ She is not real, Poe. She is a sick joke some old pervert cooked up thirty years ago. And you let her crawl into your mind. You let her tell you what to do.”

She pointed at the shovel. At the oil. At the notebook.

“You killed people, Poe. In this town. Our neighbors. Because of this.” She shook the tape again. “You are going to a doctor. You are going to jail. I do not know. But this.” She lifted the case higher, fingers white-knuckled. “This is done.”

She bent the case.

Something in Poe snapped, quiet and final.

He crossed the loft in three quick steps and hit her in the face.

His fist driving straight into the bridge of her nose.

The crack was louder than he expected.

Her head snapped back. Blood sprayed across the hay in a crooked line. She dropped the tape. It landed in the straw with a soft thump.

She clutched her face, eyes wide, mouth open.

“Poe?” her voice came out thick and wet. “You… you broke my nose?”

He stood over her, breathing steady. Looking down like he had just tipped over a bucket.

“Let me help,” he said.

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked.

She screamed. Hands flew up, clawing at his wrist, trying to pry him loose. He dragged her through the straw toward the far side of the loft, toward the open gap where the ladder dropped down.

She kicked out, heels beating a frantic rhythm on the boards.

“Stop—Poe, stop—please—baby, you are hurting me—”

Nightshade hummed, pleased.

“That is the point, darling.”

He reached the gap and shoved her forward.

Her foot missed the rung.

She fell through, body twisting, hitting the edge hard before dropping to the barn floor below in a messy sprawl that knocked the air out of her in a brutal grunt.

Poe climbed down after her, slow, methodical. The moment his feet touched the dirt, he grabbed her hair again and pulled her across the floor.

The grinder sat on the bench where his father had left it. Old, chipped, half wrecked. Poe had coaxed it back to life for the shovel. It would do one more job.

His mother’s voice broke into raw sobs.

“Poe, please, please, you’re scaring me, this is not you, this is not you, baby, please…”

He shoved her face down against the bench. Blood smeared across the wood in a bright streak. Her fingers splayed, nails scraping for purchase.

He flipped the grinder switch.

It whirred once. Twice.

Then it screamed to life.

His mother thrashed harder. “No—no, Poe, please, no—”

He wrapped his free arm around the back of her head and pushed.

The first touch of the wheel tore skin.

She wailed like a banshee, a sound so sharp it needled behind his eyes. The grinder dug in, ripping flesh from cheekbone. Blood sprayed the bench, hot and fine, misting his hands. The belt caught the edge of her eye and chewed.

Her hands slammed the wood, smearing red across it. One hand found his wrist and clawed, nails digging deep, but he held her steady and forced her forward.

The grinder ate her face.

Nose cartilage shattered. Bits of lip, shredded skin, and hair tangled on the spinning wheel. He pushed through it, the air full of hot metal, and burning meat.

Nightshade’s voice purred in his ear, almost tender.

“Look at you. Fixing the problem.”

His mother’s screams dropped to gurgles, then to ugly animal noises, then to wet, choked gasps as her jaw came half loose.

He almost felt something, almost.

When there was nothing left worth grinding, he let go.

She sagged sideways, hitting the dirt floor in a heavy thud. What was left of her face was a raw red ruin. Bone showed through in places. One eye hung low, barely attached. Teeth jutted at strange angles from meat that had once been lips.

She still moved.

One hand twitched, then pawed weakly toward him. A sound crept out of what used to be her mouth. It might have been his name. Might have been a prayer.

He planted his boot on the side of her head.

She gurgled.

“Shouldn’t have touched her,” he said.

He stomped.

The skull cracked under his heel. Her body jerked once. He stomped again, harder. Bone gave way. Something soft and gray slid out across the dirt. Blood pooled fast, soaking into the straw.

He lifted his boot and, with one final stomp, demolished what was left of her head.

Poe stepped back, breathing a little faster now. Chest rising and falling in steady climbs.

Nightshade sighed in his mind, long and satisfied.

“That is love,” she said.

Poe wiped his hands on his jeans and looked around the barn to recover his trophies.

Hay everywhere. Old wood. Oil stains. Dust and straw and the smell of blood thick in the air.

He kicked loose hay over her body until she disappeared under a pale, lumpy mound. He grabbed the oil can from the workbench and poured a dark line across the pile. A trail sloshed away toward the ladder, the posts, the old bales stacked in the corner.

He dropped the empty can.

Pulled a matchbook from his pocket. Flicked one to life.

The flame burned small and steady between his fingers.

He tossed it onto the oil.

Fire raced along the dark shine and climbed into the hay, turning gold in an instant. Smoke curled up, licking the rafters where he had once lain on his back and stared at the beams.

He did not stay to watch.

Poe stepped out of the barn, the fire already roaring behind him. Smoke poured from the loft window, thick and black. Sparks snapped into the sky.

Down the road, the poodle barked itself raw.

He walked past the house, past the kitchen window where his mother’s coffee cup still sat in the sink, half full. Out to the gravel, then down to the highway.

Cars hissed by now and then, distant and uncaring.

Nightshade walked with him. He could feel her there, just over his shoulder, keeping pace. Her hand was not on his arm. It was behind his eyes, curled around the soft parts. Holding.

“You did well,” she said. “You cleaned up your mess. You chose me.”

Whatever he’d been before the fire didn’t exist now.

He reached the edge of the highway and started walking along the shoulder. Thumb out. Head down.

A pickup slowed after a few minutes. Rust along the fender. Farmer hat behind the wheel. The window rolled down halfway.

“You lost, kid?” the man called.

Poe looked up, smoke haze still drifting in the distance behind him.

“No,” he said. “Just leaving.”

The man squinted. “You need a ride somewhere?”

Poe glanced back once. The barn was a dark smear of smoke on the horizon now. The sirens had finally started up, faint and too late.

He opened the truck door and climbed in.

Nightshade settled in beside him, invisible and pleased.

As the truck pulled away, leaving the burning farm and the poodle’s echoing cry behind, her voice curled sweet and certain through his skull. “More,” she whispered.

Poe leaned back in the seat and opened his notebook.

“What's your name?” he asked the trucker.

Names were always the first step.

The End