TOADHEAD Chapter 1

Coming in 3 weeks!

Jul 05, 2025

Toadhead is coming on 25 July 2025, so over the next 3 weeks I’ll be sharing the first 3 chapters of my new horror novella.

Readers with advance copies have said that Toadhead is:

“Written by a horror fan for fans of horror fiction.”
“Gloriously nuts, gory, scary and unnerving.”
“Channeling a vibe akin to early 80's Stephen King.”

Chapter 1

Teddy Doucet awoke with something on his head.

He was in the driver’s seat of his battered Chevy pickup, stiff and cold. The windows were steamed up on the inside from his sleeping breath, but he could still make out the grey light of oncoming dawn outside.

Had he slept here all night? He couldn’t even remember getting into the truck, let alone driving anywhere.

When he had been around seven or so, Teddy had gone through a spell of sleepwalking. His older brother would usually tell him about it the following day, or his mother, if she had been the one to catch him wandering. There were some mornings, though, when he would wake up alone in the barn, or down by the creek, shivering in his starched cotton pyjamas, his feet cut and muddied. He would catch merry hell from his mother for dirtying his “jamas”, and the memory of that made him flinch, even now.

He was fifty now. Had all that started up again in middle age? And was he driving in his sleep now?

The thing on his head wriggled. It was squat and heavy.

Without thinking, still a little groggy, Teddy brought a hand up to dislodge whatever it was. His hands were grubby and there was fresh dirt beneath his fingernails, but he didn't have time to ponder that because the thing on his head twisted and hissed, stopping him cold.

His first thought was that a snake had found its way into his cab overnight, attracted by the dying heat of his ticking engine and then moving towards his body when the engine got too cold. There were plenty of snakes around these parts and most of them were harmless. He and his older brother George had caught plenty of garters and watersnakes when they were younger, back before George’s accident. But there was always the chance, no matter how slim, that he could be dealing with a juvenile timber rattler or massasauga.

He moved his hand away from his head as calmly as possible, avoiding any jerky movements, and took hold of the handle on the inside of his car door. He wound the window down a few inches and cold air slid in, giving teeth to the chill. In the pre-dawn murk, Teddy saw that he was parked quite a ways off the road, beneath a sagging old willow tree, near the large and rusting entrance gates of Plainview Cemetery.

What was he doing here?

He must have slept badly; there was a dull ache in his lower back and across his shoulders. He wanted to twist and stretch in his seat but he didn’t dare move. How close was the nearest hospital? Would he be able to drive there if he got bitten? His hand would swell and burn like the Devil. He would get light-headed and have trouble breathing as well. And what if he couldn't fling the snake out of the window and had to ride along with it as it got bounced around and madder with each mile? It could strike his legs and ankles at any time.

Teddy kept his head as still as possible and stretched his hand towards the rear-view mirror. The thing on his head moved again and he froze. Long seconds passed and the cold morning air slipped its fingers down the back of his collar. He suppressed the urge to shiver, gritted his teeth, and waited until it had settled back down. Then he waited a minute or so more, just to be safe. Finally, he hooked his fingers around the edge of the mirror and tilted it towards himself so that he could confirm what he was dealing with.

The toad sat square on top of his head, its mouth turned down like a grim king on a throne. Teddy sighed loudly and slumped his shoulders in relief. A damned toad! He let out a terse bark of a laugh and then reached for the thing once more. The toad hissed again, and in the mirror he could see it puff itself up. It snapped at his fingers with surprisingly sharp little nips, as if its mouth was lined with needle teeth. Now it was Teddy’s turn to hiss, this time at the sudden and unexpected pain. Blood immediately rose from three of his fingertips in tiny, bright beads.

“Son of a!” he said. He shook his head to try and dislodge the fat little thing but it dug its toes into his hair and clung on for all it was worth.

He flipped open the glove compartment, hoping to find something he could use to pry it off, but there was nothing there that might do the job.

Cursing some more, Teddy jumped out of his pickup and flung his head this way and that, dancing a mad jig on the grass by the cemetery walls. The toad held on, straining to keep its grip, snapping any time Teddy’s flailing hands got too close. It managed to nip him a couple more times before he slowed and stopped, his breath steaming like a pony after a gallop.

Back in his Chevy, still breathing hard, Teddy looked in the rear-view mirror once more. The toad was perched at an angle now, an imperious brown-green blob that seemed for all the world to be gloating.

“God damn!” he said in frustration. What the hell was happening here?

The sky was getting lighter by the minute. A couple of crows were calling hoarsely to one another from a distant tree. All the nocturnal creatures had gone to ground a long time ago and the daytime world was waking up. It was still quiet out by the cemetery, but cars would soon start passing by and no doubt the groundskeeper would eventually show up to begin his day. Teddy didn’t want to be seen near this place, especially since he couldn’t readily explain what he was doing here. Maybe this stubborn creature on his head would climb down of its own accord on the journey back to the farmhouse. If not, there were plenty of things indoors that he could use to force it off. He was already thinking about using the large knife in the drawer by the kitchen sink.

It took a couple of turns of the key before the engine would start. Teddy pulled the steering wheel round and carefully guided the pickup off the grass and back onto the road. He drove at a steady pace, not wanting to attract the attention of any early risers, and although he wanted this situation to be over as soon as possible, he took a longer route home, rattling along uneven back roads so as not to be seen. All along the way he kept flicking his eyes up to the rear-view mirror which was still angled to catch his reflection. The toad sat amongst his greying curls, quiet and seemingly content.

“Trust me, critter,” Teddy said to the bouncing reflection of them both, “you don’t want to still be there by the time we arrive.”

Everything around them was getting brighter now. The stars were fading and the eastern horizon was an orange glow. The fast-approaching sun had turned the undersides of the threadbare clouds there a vibrant pink, but the Moon was still visible through the dirty windscreen. Teddy knew that the Moon was 238,855 miles away. He knew that he was seeing it as it had been 1 and 1/3 seconds ago because that was how long it took light from the Moon to reach Earth. When the Sun finally rose he would be seeing it as it was eight minutes and 20 seconds ago for the same reason, and the further out he looked the deeper into the past he was seeing. The stars were a tapestry of the past, billions of years old. In fact, some of those twinkling points of light were already dead, but from our point of view they still shone. Teddy was a voracious reader. He knew all sorts of things about many varied subjects.

By the time he passed the picket line of birch trees that marked the perimeter of his property, a few miles out of town, the rising sun had turned the dew in the fields into a low-lying mist. The farmhouse seemed to float on that haze as it came into view on the long, crunching approach past the stables and outbuildings. Teddy’s house was a simple wooden structure, two storeys with a covered porch that ran the length of the front of the building. Once upon a time it had been painted a vivid oxblood red with white shutters and frames. That fresh lick of paint had long since peeled and faded and to Teddy’s eyes it looked more like the colour of a scab now.

The toad had been benign during the ride home and its steady weight on Teddy's head had become somewhat comforting, in a strange way. Teddy pulled to a stop and his dirty fingers began to throb again as he uncurled them from the steering wheel. They were still oozing little pearls of blood and that strangely soporific sense of ease evaporated. He got out of his car and tried to shake the toad loose one last time but it held fast. He had been bested, but not for long.

He took his boots off at the front door just as he had been raised to do. They were thick with mud and he would catch merry hell if he traipsed that muck indoors. Caligula, the farm cat, came out of nowhere and shot past him into the house. She was a scraggy old ginger thing who had appeared one day, many years ago. Teddy and George had been kids when they first spied her around the farmyard; just a glimpse of dirty orange here or there to begin with, but over time she became a regular sight around the farm. There would be long stretches when they wouldn’t see her at all, and they would wonder if she had moved on or returned to her original home. But then they would find the occasional mouse head or decapitated bird left out on the porch, and they knew she was still around somewhere.

The boys started leaving food out for her; sometimes it would be gone in the morning, most times it would not. After about a year of this, Caligula deigned to appear every once in a while when they called for her. In the second or third year after she appeared, Caligula agreed to come inside from time to time. After that she would condescend to eat indoors as well, but not always.

For reasons that Teddy could never fathom, the cat had seemed to like his father the best. That was back when his father was around, of course. That man came and went much like the cat did until he eventually disappeared for good. The cat was the only thing that drunken old bastard treated with any consistent kindness. She would even sit on his lap when he took his rest out on the porch and sometimes he would get so drunk that he would fall asleep out there and spend the night in his rocking chair, and Caligula would curl up and sleep right there with him.

The boys had wanted to call her Apricot because of the colour of her fur, but Teddy’s father named her Caligula on account of her four white paws, like socks. He’d told them that Caligula meant “little boots”, and that had been her name from there on out. By the time Teddy read about the Roman emperor Caligula, his father was long gone. It irked Teddy, even now, that his father had given the cat a man’s name, but he was certain that his old man would not have given a good god damn.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. Everyone else had either left or died, but Caligula remained. How old would that make her now? Teddy’s head went swimmy any time he tried to calculate the cat’s age, so he didn’t think about it.

That morning, Caligula ran straight through the gloom of the cluttered hallway, past the staircase and into the kitchen at the back of the house. Teddy took off his overcoat, hung it on the rack just inside the door, then followed the cat inside. The darkness in the hall deepened when he closed the heavy front door behind him. He passed the oval mirror on the wall without looking at his reflection. The passive weight of the toad was constant, and it reminded him of the time his mother had made him balance a book on his head to improve his posture. The grandfather clock which stood in the hallway ticked away faithfully. That constant and familiar sound seemed, to Teddy, to hold this place safe in amber rather than mark out the passage of time. His limbs felt heavy, and even though the day had only just begun he was overtaken by an almost bone-deep weariness.

The kitchen was brighter than the rest of the house. Every other room had heavy curtains that were always closed tight against the outside world, but there were no curtains in the kitchen and the morning light could push its way through grimy net curtains that had seen better days. Most of the surfaces were covered with boxes and piles of magazines and junk which had accumulated over the years. The large table in the middle of the room had one chair pushed beneath it and space enough for Teddy to lay down a plate, if he ever chose to eat in this room. Teddy had never liked this table; it never felt like a thing a family should sit around. It was a heavy, functional object which looked more like a giant chopping block than a place a family might gather for a meal.

Caligula was stalking back and forth in front of her empty saucer. Teddy stooped to pick it up with a grunt and he automatically raised his hand to try and keep the toad from slipping off his head, as you might hold onto a hat. The amphibian wriggled uncomfortably at this intrusion and sliced into his fingertips once again with its needle teeth.

“God DAMMIT!” Teddy spat.

Caligula growled, but Teddy couldn’t tell if the cat’s throaty warning was meant for him, the hitchhiker on his head, or if she was just voicing a general dissatisfaction at the absence of food.

“Alright, you scraggy bitch,” he said, “I’ll see to you first and then I’ll deal with this devilish thing.” This morning’s madness would be at an end soon, at the sharp end of a knife if need be, but first Teddy took the cat’s saucer over to the refrigerator by the back door. He grabbed a half-empty bottle of milk, smearing it with fresh blood in the process, and filled the cat’s saucer until it was sloshing at the rim. Some of the blood from his stinging fingertips mixed with the milk; red tendrils twisting in the white, slowly turning into pink clouds. The toad became agitated at this. It scrambled forwards so that it was almost perched across his brow and it began to make a strange smacking sounds with its fat lips.

Teddy paused with the saucer in hand, listening to those wet noises. He could feel the toad’s legs pushing against his scalp.

“You want some of this?” he said, and almost as a joke he raised the saucer up past his face, sloshing the contents. He felt the toad straining and then he heard greedy gulping as it feasted on the offering of blood and milk. He scrunched his eyes against the rivulets of milk that ran down his face and he held himself still until the slurping sounds stopped. He wiped a flannel shirt sleeve across his face and the toad settled back into his nest of curls. He half expected it to let out a contented burp. The saucer was empty.

“Not one for sharing, huh?” Teddy said. He was about to pour more milk for the cat but Caligula had vanished. She must have slunk off somewhere in protest, as she often did.

“Okay then,” he said, “time to get you gone, Mr Toad.” He dropped the dirty saucer in the full sink and then yanked at the stiff drawer there. It was full of odds and ends that rattled as he wrestled with it: a rusty tin opener; a pair of pliers; rolls of wire; clamps; dull cutlery that hadn’t been used in years. The kitchen knife was hiding in the back of the drawer and Teddy removed it carefully. “Time’s up,” he said.

Back in the dim hallway, Teddy stood in front of the oval mirror and gripped the knife handle. This was his first chance to get a proper look at the creature that was squatting on top of his head. Despite the gloom he could clearly make out its thick, squat form. Its wide, downward-turned mouth seemed to be sneering, and its bulging eyes regarded him with a detached, alien intelligence and no little disdain. Those bug-eyes were amber with a horizontal black pupil floating in the centre. When it blinked - a languorous action - a thin, pale inner lid slid up and over its eyeballs. It had a dark ridge over each of those eyes and its knobbly back was patterned with green and brown blotches. Its underside was a kind of sickly grey and its throat constantly pulsed while its fat belly spread across the crown of his head. Its front feet were splayed and its toes poked through his hair.

“Last chance,” Teddy said as he raised the knife. Using the reflection in the mirror, he awkwardly angled the tip of the blade inwards and brought it slowly towards the toad’s vulnerable underside. As the knife came closer the creature began to twist and turn, and when the tip made a small dimple in its pallid skin it opened its mouth and let out a shrill scream that made Teddy pause. It sounded like a lamb going to slaughter. Teddy didn’t realise that toads could make that kind of a noise.

“Just get! Go on now! I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.” Teddy prodded the thing again and its cries went a pitch higher, now squealing like an infant in distress. Still clinging to his hair, the thing scrambled backwards, making it harder for him to see it in the mirror. As he twisted around to try and get a better look at the back of his head, he felt something warm trickle down his neck. He was sure that he hadn’t cut the creature, so it could only be toad piss.

“That tears it,” he said, gripping the knife so tightly that his hand was shaking. The toad sounded so pitiful that he was caught between feeling sorry for it and wanting to jam the blade down just to shut it up, even if that meant poking a few holes in his scalp and spilling its guts over his head in the process.

Caligula began to yowl from somewhere upstairs and the cries of both creatures grew, each feeding the other until Teddy, with gritted teeth, wasn’t sure he could take anymore. His knuckles were popping white around the worn, wooden handle and he just wanted to jab and jab at the top of his head until there was silence.

Then the doorbell rang and everything went quiet, as if some kind of spell had been broken.

Teddy Doucet stared at the fuzzy shape of a person through the frosted glass window of the front door.